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Aug 21
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892: Tools for Thriving amid Change with Curtis Bateman

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Curtis Bateman shares simple tools that make uncertainty less frustrating and more rewarding.

You’ll Learn:

  1. The simple model that makes change predictable and actionable
  2. The critical first step to introducing any change initiative
  3. How to keep poor results from discouraging you

About Curtis

Curtis Bateman is one of FranklinCovey’s lead change experts and the author of Who Rocked the Boat: A Story about Navigating the Inevitability of Change and co-author of Change: How to Turn Uncertainty into Opportunity.  He is also the Vice President of International and a Senior Change Consultant.

Resources Mentioned

Curtis Bateman Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Curtis, welcome to How to be Awesome at Your Job.

Curtis Bateman
Hey, thanks, Pete. It’s nice to be here.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m excited to be chatting about your book, Change: How to Turn Uncertainty Into Opportunity. And I’d like to kick off by hearing about one of the biggest changes you’ve made in your own life.

Curtis Bateman
Well, one that I love to talk about was a few years ago when I was deciding to either leave a business or stay, and the change that I ended up making was I offered to buy the business. So, the journey was pretty interesting because I was realizing I wanted to be doing more, and the whole fear notion got in the way for me and I was stuck for quite a while, thinking, “I want to do more. I think I could do more with this company. Should I leave? Should I stay?”

And then my wife, one day, quoted a line from Who Moved My Cheese, and she said, “What would you do if you weren’t afraid?” And, suddenly, the realization of answering that question meant, “I’m going to make a change. I’m going to buy this business versus staying in the employee situation,” so it was a massive change for me.

And, frankly, the reason I like to mention is because it transformed my career and my life, that one significant change and decision that I made.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s awesome. Okay. Well, tell us, what’s the big idea with the book Change?

Curtis Bateman
Well, there’s two big ideas in the book. The one is that there’s a predictable pattern, and that this pattern applies to personal change, work change, teams going through change, even organizations taking their whole organization through change. So, it’s this idea, there’s a predictable pattern, and if we can learn it, then we can start to drive some opportunity or some advantage from it. The second big idea is that individuals have more choice even though they don’t really feel like they do when the change is being imposed on them. And so, pattern and choice.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And so, tell us, what sorts of benefits or goodness is on the other side of understanding and mastering this stuff?

Curtis Bateman
In some research I’ve done, we found that as many as 88% of people think that a change is going to lead to something worse for them.

Pete Mockaitis
No kidding?

Curtis Bateman
Yeah. Now, you might be thinking, “Wait a minute.” But the data, over time, with thousands of respondents says a lot of people really think change is going to lead to something bad for them. Now, I’ve asked that question mostly in an organization context where change is a decision made somewhere else and I’m living with the consequences of it.

But what happens is most people start from the paradigm of, “Oh, this is going to lead to something worse for me and I don’t like it because I’ve had experience after experience where that’s the case.” And so, we’re trying to help people recognize that that doesn’t have to be the case. So often, it ends up being a lot better than they think, and so we’re trying to help people frame it differently, see it differently, and use some tools to get better success from it.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that really is interesting, and I don’t think it’s even occurred to me personally until you cited this, is that that is sort of my default reaction, like, “Uh-oh, here it is.”

Curtis Bateman
“It’s happening again.”

Pete Mockaitis
“Okay. All right.” And it’s like, in terms of, “This is going to be a big hassle. It’s going to be difficult. This is going to upset…” whatever. And, boy, maybe that just speaks to that human nature in our very, I don’t know, biochemistry or nervous system.

Curtis Bateman
It does. It does because we’re programmed as humans to protect ourselves. And so, often what happens is because we have experienced bias that says, “Change is cruddy for us,” and it feels threatening, it activates this, “I’m going to protect myself.” So, we immediately revert to, “How do I fight or flight on this?” rather than “How do I get something better from this?” So, it’s part of what we’re trying to point out and help people realize there is a choice in there and we can do some things to help you have a better experience with it.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s true. So, 88% percent of folks think going into it, “Okay, this change is going to be bad for me,” and yet it’s true, if I objectively assess, “Changes imposed upon me historically,” it’s probably more like 50/50 in terms of, “Yes, that was more of a pain,” or, “Actually, I’m so glad we made that change. It’s way easier now.”

Curtis Bateman
Yeah, and if it’s a change that, as an individual I’ve initiated, like, let’s say I buy a new house and I have to move, that’s a massive change, and you dread it, and you hate it, but there’s a reason you did it. You want something better. And when you finally settle into the new circumstance, you think, “I love this,” yet you take all that stuff in the middle, and you think, “This is going to be lousy.” And it may be difficult, to your point, but maybe there’s a little more joy in the journey if you realize it’s going to lead to something better for you.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, tell us about this journey of the change model.

Curtis Bateman
Yeah. So, there’s two variables, two axes. One is results, up and down or vertical, and horizontal is time. And we have this space where we’re achieving outcomes that we’re really comfortable with. We call that the zone of status quo. And then a change is introduced. Either we introduce it or it’s introduced to us. And when that happens, we start to see this decrease in outcome. It might be our engagement. It might be a financial outcome. It might be a relationship outcome. But whatever it is, there’s this negative impact that starts to create this downward path.

And what’s happening is we’re looking to understand “What’s changing? Why is it changing? And what’s the real impact on me?” And so, we stay in that space, this space of disruption until we really feel like we’ve got some answers. At which point, we pass through a decision point where we choose to opt in. And then we start working on, “How do we make this change come to life? How do we implement it?” It’s called the zone of adoption.

It’s a messy space. That’s where most changes really fall apart. They fall apart organizationally. They fall apart individually because it requires some determination, some acceptance if things didn’t work right the first time. And as we move through that, then we start to get back to a level of outcome that we’re happy with, then there’s last zone, which often gets overlooked, and, hopefully, we’ll get a chance to talk about that.

But it’s the zone of innovation where we take everything we’ve learned, and if we can really get curious about it, we actually can create higher, stronger, better extended outcomes from the change that really create even more value from the change rather than just making it through the zone of adoption.

Pete Mockaitis
And so, is it fair to say that this is the pathway of all or nearly all or the vast majority of changes of all flavors?

Curtis Bateman
Yeah, I’ve been asked that question for years and years and years, and I keep looking for exceptions. Leaders often want exceptions. They want to jump to that third zone and skip the other two zones. It doesn’t happen as much as they want to try, push, cajole, encourage, whatever the right adjective is. So, all change follows this pattern. All change personal, professional, nonprofit, kids, teenagers, it goes through this pattern. And if you can learn that and appreciate it, it instantly starts to create awareness that you can do something about it.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, so just to make this all the more real, I’d love it if you could walk us through three examples. One would be a personal initiative, maybe it’s fitness, maybe it’s a hobby, or something, “I’m going to get organized,” or something, a personal initiative, a relationship, maybe a friendship or close romantic relationship but kind of one on one. And then an organizational team situation.

Curtis Bateman
Yeah, good. Let’s get practical. So, on an individual basis, we experience this pattern with so many things that happen, and we give them other labels. So, to your point, let’s say we’re going to start a fitness program. Status quo is where we are, what we’re doing, how we’re eating, our weight, our health, all of those things just kind of maintained at this level. And then what comes along, the New Year’s resolution, “I am going to eat healthier and be fit, or more fit.”

And we start to change our behaviors, and so it pushes us from the status quo into a different set of behaviors: eating patterns, exercise patterns, even thought processes, and that creates disruption. It takes us in this downward slope, which we’re just trying to figure out, “Is it worthwhile?”

Now, if we start a little differently, if we start with a vision of, “What is it that I want as the outcome?” and we stay focused on the benefits of that, it actually helps us move through this process. But if we don’t, if we just say, “I have to be more fit,” and we don’t really have a connection to the outcome that motivates us, what we find is we start to exercise a little bit, we start to eat differently, and we’re attempting to move through this dip part of the curve.

And this is where, in the zone of adoption, it gets messy, it gets squishy because we miss exercising one day, or we go out with friends and we eat differently, and we think, “Oh, I’ve lost it. I failed.” And what happens is we can get stuck in the bottom of that change process because we’re not pushing through the difficult part.

So, if we do, if we start to move through that, and we develop a new set of habits, those can take us either back to a new status quo where we’re eating a little differently, exercise a little differently, or they can take us continuing up the curve to a point where we get better and better outcomes.

And what happens often with individual New Year’s resolutions where we lose that momentum, is we get stuck in the bottom of the curve and we drift back to our old status quo. So, the vision, the focus on the value, to me, is what will help you move through the dip part of that curve towards the top, at a better pace and with some success. So, that’s an individual example.

I love that you asked about a relationship example. Take a parent and a teenager relationships are interesting, and if we think there is our normal reactions to each other, for example, I have a teenage son, he loves to challenge everything.

And so, if I’m thinking I want to improve my relationship with him, my status quo is he challenges everything, so it’s easy to say, “I told you so. I’m the parent. You’ll do it this way,” and we maintain the status quo, which is perhaps a lower level of relationship result than we would hope for.

And if you think, “What’s the result I want in this relationship with my teenager? I want to have a friendship. I want to be able to influence. I want them to trust me.” But if my status quo behavior is, “Gosh, this kid really pushes my buttons. I’m going to tell him what to do,” I’m stuck in that space between, “This is my result, and the result I’d like is up here. I’d like this better relationship.”

So, I say, “I’m going to change.” The person with the most responsibility in the relationship has to initiate the change. So, I initiate the change, and say, “I’m going to behave differently.” Well, I have to figure out, “What does that mean to me? What is it that I need to do differently?” And that’s that zone of disruption, “Why am I doing this? What does it mean to me? And do I really want to do this? Yes, I do.”

So, then I jump into the zone of adoption that says, “I’m going to behave differently. I’m going to choose different behaviors that will increase the nature of the relationship result.” And it’s going to be hard because I’m going to have a moment where he pushes my buttons, and we start to really feel some friction, and I think, “Okay, what’s the new behavior I want? I didn’t do that right last time. How am I going to do it better?”

And I have to work through that. I have to have some failures. I have to recommit to the change I want. I have to recommit to the relationship I want. And as I do that, and persist with it, I find myself moving up the change curve towards a different style of relationship. In my example, I’m saying, “I want higher trust. I want better friendship. I want higher levels of influence, and I don’t want to be activated by that behavior.”

And so, that’s where you commit and you recommit, and you start to see even better ways that you can improve your relationship. And so, that change journey is real, and I love that we can see the application that the result is the nature of the relationship. It’s not economic or anything else. It’s a relationship result. So, that’s a second one, Pete.

And the third one is an organizational change. Let me approach this from a different angle, and this is the angle where the change feels like it’s happening to me. In the other two examples, I might’ve been the one driving the change. But in a professional context, I might show up to work, or at a charity where I volunteer, whatever the organizational situation is, and they say, “Hey, this is what’s happening.” And I think, “Wait a minute. Why are you doing this to me? I like it the way it is.”

So, they’re saying something about my status quo is going to change. They introduced that change. Maybe it’s an organizational restructuring. Maybe I’m reporting to a new leader. Maybe it’s I’m being asked just to take on different things in my role. All of those represent changes, and it’s happening to me. Somebody else is telling me, “This is the change.”

So, that launches me over the edge of the change, and this is a little bit trickier because we have to figure out, “Okay, what is it that they’re saying that’s changing, and why?” And understanding the why in this context will really help. It will in the others, “I want a better relationship, etc.” “So, why is this happening? What does the organization need?”

Well, as I come to grips with what and why, I start to piece together a storyline that says, “What does it mean to me? And am I okay with that?” So, I reach the point where I say, “Yes, I am. I get it. I like being here. I like this job. I like the work.” So, I start to engage in implementing the change. Well, I have to learn new skills. There may be some new skills I have to learn. There may be some new relationships I have to develop.

And so, the process of doing that leads to starts and stops, successes and failures, and so that’s why this third zone, the zone of adoption, causes us to really feel like, “Argh, I’m not going to get the full outcome we want.” But as we work through that and we accept moments that don’t work, and moments that do, and we trial and error, and as a boss or a leader helps clear some of the obstacles out of the way, we find ourselves moving through that zone of adoption. And then we might even start to realize, “Hey, this can lead to something great for me in the zone of innovation.”

Here’s what’s interesting in all three scenarios that I think is really important for listeners to pay attention to. The middle two zones, the zone of disruption and the zone of adoption, represent a cost to the change. There’s an emotional cost, a relationship cost, a productivity cost, perhaps an economic cost. And the more we can do to shrink those two zones, move through them at a better pace, and move through them with less severity, we decrease the costs that we experience with change, and we get to the point where we’re starting to experience the benefit of the change.

And the better that we can become at that, that’s where the book title comes into play, “How do we turn that uncertainty into opportunity? How do we shrink the costs and increase the benefits?” So, tell me what you think.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. Well, I think it’s handy and, one, I’d recommend folks, in the show notes, you’ll find a link to the Amazon page for the book, which I think is so useful, because as we talk about these zones and these axes, you want to look at the picture. So, that’s the audio medium. Hope that you could visualize that. We see a straight line, and then a dip downward, like a U, and then a nice big high level, so like a ladle, if you will. A ladle with a handle facing to the right is kind of what we’re visualizing, so check that out if you want the visual reinforcement.

But I think, one, it’s just so handy to know upfront, “Hey, just expect there will be a phase unavoidably in which your results dip down. This is worse, it is less than what we had before, and the way it will look, sound, and feel will vary based upon the nature of the change you’re making.” So, in terms of fitness, it’s like, “Actually, I’m exercising. This hurts, I hate it,” “I’m eating healthier. This doesn’t taste good. I don’t like it,” “I am eating less to lose weight. I am hungry and sleepy and cranky often. This sucks.”

And so, just to know straight up that is the nature of change and how it goes down. There will be a trough in which you think, “This sucks,” and you actually seem to be worse off than you were before. And now, boy, I’m thinking, biblically, just like the book of Exodus, it’s like, “Hey, I know we were enslaved before but, actually, we prefer that. We’re hungry out here and it sucks worse than being slaves back there.” And I think you can find this in sort of many bits of literature or great story. This is what‘s going on.

Curtis Bateman
When we wrote the book, we actually talked about that, that there are so many examples in literature where this model plays out. And once you recognize the model and know it, you start to see it in places in your life and in what you’re reading. Even what you’re reading in the news “Oh, there’s a change going on here. Here’s what it means.” It’s fascinating and, hopefully, really helpful to people as they learn to recognize the pattern. It does not make the change like a magic wand but it makes it 20, 30, 50% better, and it makes you more capable of approaching it because you know what to expect.

Pete Mockaitis
Absolutely. And in those relationship areas in which you’re making a change, it won’t look like or sound like, “My body hurts,” but it might sound like, “Why is dad being weird? This is really kind of odd. Like, okay,” and then it feels like, “Oh, it feels like we’re more distant because he’s giving me weird looks, and says I should stop being weird. But what’s weird is just the fact that I’m doing something different than what I have done before, by definition, weird.”

Curtis Bateman
That’s right. And I think, as an observer of somebody going through change, we need to give people permission to try it because we usually change to get a better outcome, to be better, to become better, to have a better circumstance. And so, one of the things we can do if we’re watching change from the outside is to recognize where they are in the process, and give people support, to say, “Hey, it’s going to be worth it if this is a change you want,” because there is a funny space in the middle,” just like you’re saying, Pete, in that we have to recognize.

Pete Mockaitis
And so then, how do we make that space in the middle less brutally unpleasant?

Curtis Bateman
Yeah, that’s a good question. And we had spent a lot of time exploring this, so let me give you a few ideas here that highlight what you can do. So, in each zone, we have a really clear one-word idea that we need to be looking at. In the zone of status quo, before a change starts, we should be thinking about preparing. What can we be doing to be ready for the change? And that actually helps with the middle two zones, this idea of preparing, developing our capability, whatever that might be.

In the zone of disruption, what we’re looking to do is clarify because mostly what we’re feeling there is uncertainty. And the more we can disambiguate, the more we can clarify what’s going on and what kind of impact it’s going to have. That clarity, that information starts to help us get traction and feel like we can make some decisions. So, prepare, clarify.

In the third zone, most of what we talk about in the book are ways that we can persist. How do we keep at it? How do we take something that didn’t work and do something better with it? And there are a lot of different tools that we provide to help with that, but if you’re going to remember one thing, “Hey, I’m in the zone of disruption. I know the thing I need to do is persist. It might look different in each circumstance, but if I persist, it’s going to make a difference.”

And then, as we get into that fourth zone, there’s a lot going on there but I would say curiosity is one of the best things we can do in that last zone. So, in the middle two zones, clarify and persist, and we’ll provide…if you take a look on Amazon, we’ll provide lots of specific tools on how you do that. But from a radio, from a podcast point of view, if we just listen and think, “Okay, I’m in the zone, I need to clarify. What are the questions I want to have?” You’re going to find it will help you a long way down the path.

Pete Mockaitis
Could you give us some examples of tools or key clarifying questions that make a world of difference there?

Curtis Bateman
Yeah, I’ve mentioned a few in one of the zones, so I’ll just restate those, and then I’ll mention a tool that can help in the zone of adoption. So, in the zone of disruption, this is largely a personal space even in organizational change. So, we’re trying to clarify what’s changing, and we’re actually looking to understand, “What are we moving from?” so this is a tool, just to list, “What are we moving from – behaviors, actions, and results? And what new behaviors, actions, and results are we moving to?”

And if we can clarify that with our leader, with our peers, our colleagues, or in an individual circumstance, like my teenage son, “What is it that I want to change from? What are my old behaviors when I interact with him, and to?” So, from and to statements is a great tool there. And the other thing that I should mention in that zone, I can’t say it enough, is we need to really declare what we believe is happening for me, “What’s the impact on me?” so we’re clear about that.

In the zone of adoption, what often ends up happening is we discover there’s this list of 30 new things we think we need to do to make the change work. And, as a result, two things are happening. One, we’re feeling overwhelmed, and, two, we’re struggling to know what to do with all the ideas. So, there’s two sorting tools that I’ll tell you about, easily just write these down on a piece of paper. They’re really easy.

The first sorting tool is, “What’s my stop-doing list? There are all these new things I want to try with the change. What should I stop doing so I create space to work on it?” And that’s really difficult, particularly in an organizational change because we have this accumulated list of stuff we just believe we need to do. So, we need a stop-doing list.

The next thing we need to do is we need to sort through all of the new ideas, and we need to say, “Which ones are hurdles, meaning I can jump over these? They’re in my path. And what kind of obstacle is this?” The next one we need to look at, “What are the quicksands? Where am I going to get stuck on these new ideas? And where do I need help?”

And then the last one, the last bucket to put things in is, “What are the brick walls? Where is it that I can’t solve this but somebody else can – a leader, a change sponsor?” And so, as we look to sort, “What can we stop doing?” and then we look to sort through obstacles and opportunities and hurdles, quicksand, and brick walls, it lets us know, “Here are the ones I can focus on. I’m in complete control of these, and here are the ones where I need other people to help.”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, that’s great clarification. And then for persisting, any pro tips there?

Curtis Bateman
Well, on the persist part, in an organizational context, if I’m an employee and I’ve got a leader, one of the things I need from my leader is for them to stay engaged in the change. Why do I say that? A lot of leaders think that once they announce the change, people will just go make it happen. So, I need a leader to stay engaged. If I am a leader, I need to stay engaged so that I can help clear the path, and I can help acknowledge successes. That’s one of the things.

The other thing that I need is the leader, like I said, to clear the path to understand where they can take obstacles out of the way. And if I’m an individual contributor, and I’m thinking, “Wow, I’m really stuck here,” what’s happening is I’m giving you a language that doesn’t threaten anybody, “Hey, team or leader, we’re stuck in the zone of adoption. We’re working hard, putting a lot of energy into it, but this seems like an obstacle that we don’t know how to get out of our way. Who can we go to? Or, boss person, can you get this out of the way?”

And so, the language pattern I’m giving is a non-threatening way to talk about it, that’s one way to persist. A leader clearing the path is another way to persist. And then the third thing I would say is if we really feel stuck and that we’re sliding backwards, one of the things we can do to persist is reconnect with, “Why are we doing this? Why are we even going through this change?” And the why can create energy and motivation to recommit and keep pushing ahead.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, now I’m curious, any super favorite examples of how you’ve seen this play out beautifully that really illustrates it and inspires?

Curtis Bateman
Yeah. Let me tell you from an organizational perspective first, and then I’ll hit a personal one. Here’s what normally happens with a change. We have leaders working together for months on a change they want to introduce. They’re going through the data, they’re understanding what’s going on in the market, and they have all of this run-up to when the change is going to be introduced.

And a normal pattern is they’ve been working on it performance, they stand up in a town hall, and they say, “We’re making this change,” and then they think their work is done. And the problem is they’ve been on a journey of understanding why we need to make a change, and what we’re asking the organization to do.

And if you just stand up and make this proclamation, what happens is you don’t give the people the space to come on the journey with you. So, from a leadership perspective, and this can be a team leader, this can be a senior leader, it’s any level of leadership, what happens is if you’ll just capture some of your thoughts and some of what you’ve been learning into a story, and say, “In our organization, we’re seeing this and this and this happen in the marketplace, and so we need to make these changes to stay competitive.”

Maybe that’s, “We need to upgrade our technology.” Maybe that’s, “We need to modify how we go to market with our commercial model.” Whatever the case may be, we need to explain how we came to that conclusion, and then that’s the ‘why’ behind it. It becomes a storyline so the people can say, “Oh, I get it. I understand why you’re asking us to go through a change.”

And so, it’s not a super complex thing. What makes it complex is we usually skip it. That’s where the complexity comes in, Pete. And so, we’re telling leaders, “Don’t skip it. Bring your people on the journey,” and so it’s really the art of storytelling. And then let’s take a personal example about a change and why we would need to have that case for change. So, I’ll go back to the relationship example with my teenager.

If I say I want a different level of relationship, why is that? Well, somewhere in there, I see value in having a better relationship. Now, talking personally, I would say, personally, for me, Curtis, “Why does that matter?” Well, there’s going to come a point, because I’ve seen it with older kids, where my ability to say, “You will do this” goes away, and my ability to influence and help him is based on my relationship. So, the more that I can do to move from, “I will tell you…” to we build a trusted relationship, the more likely it is that I’ll have influence with that child long term, that relationship long term.

So, that’s the why, that’s the compelling why, that matters to me. Now, that may not matter to everybody. I’m just telling you; you need a compelling why. You need a compelling why.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, I don’t know if it matters to him, not to dig too deeply into your personal family dynamics, it may not be of interest to him.

Curtis Bateman
And it may not right now. That’s right. But for me, it has value, and so it’s a compelling why, and that compelling why is what gives me the motivation to go through the cost of change. Now, that same thing could be true on just an individual level. Let’s say…I was talking to a friend who is mid-career, and he’s really stuck right now, and he needs to make a fairly significant change.

And so, the reason he’s not making a change right now is he doesn’t have a compelling why. Every time he starts to make the change, he’s told me about two different times he’s really started to make this professional change, and he gets stuck because his compelling why isn’t there. And I think that’s really one of the obstacles, because once we have that, it helps us have the courage and the tenacity to move through the cost part of the change model.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And I guess I’m curious in terms of the case or the story, so you’ve got a great why for you, but how about a great why for the other stakeholders who were up in it?

Curtis Bateman
Yeah. So, when we do organizational change, hopefully, whoever is sponsoring the change has a compelling why and what’s changing, and examples of what we’re moving from and to at the top of that change. What’s special then is if the next group, let’s say there’s four teams that are underneath that, if each of those teams go through that compelling case for change, and they say, “How do we take this case for change and create a version of it that’s aligned but it’s our story, making it our story, our compelling why, aligned with what’s being put forward, helps us engage and connect with it?”

And I’m not naïve. That doesn’t always become possible. Some changes are really just they struggle to create that alignment, but a lot are, and a lot do. And so, as we can create our own case for change, and sometimes there’s two or three tiers of organization, if at each level we can create our own aligned case for change, it connects us to what’s going on, and it allows our people to connect to our substory.

And I’ve seen that work at large scale. I did some work with a call center in India, offices in Mumbai and Pune, about 5,000 people, and we started with leadership, and we took it all the way down to the front-level team supervisor, and we wrote this case for change. They’re short, they’re brief, they’re one page. But as we did that, and as we’ve reviewed them, what we found is it created the engagement top to bottom. Even the frontline workers were aware of what their case for change was.

And we were looking to move them from a kind of a mid-tier ranking in the JD Power for ranking for customer service, and they wanted to get to number one. And over a period of 18 months, they moved all the way to the top of the charts because we were able to take that story, that case for change, and help everybody be aligned. Then they started to align their behavior and their work in that zone of adoption and persisted through it to get the kind of outcomes they wanted.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m also curious to hear, when it comes to, we talked about persisting, and the disruption, and the adoption, and there’s a dip, and we’re in the middle of it, I think it’s also quite possible that you learn once you’re in the midst of it, it’s like, “Oh, shoot, this was the wrong change.”

Curtis Bateman
“Wrong change.”

Pete Mockaitis
“And it’s not a matter of us being resistant to change, or having a messy middle, but, like, for real, we probably should have never embarked on this, or new stuff has come to light, and probably the best course of action is to abort or change in a very different strategic direction than the one we did do.” How do you distinguish that in terms of noting, “Oh, no, seriously, that was the wrong change, and we need to switch it up,” versus, “Hey, we’re just in the midst of disruption and that’s how it goes”?

Curtis Bateman
Yeah, what a great question. The model supports that. Now, there has to be some courage, as a leader or an individual, to say, “Oh, this isn’t it.” How do you know? So, if you’re looking at the costs in the dip part of the model, if you start to realize that no matter what you do, you’re not going to be able to offset the costs of that change, and it’s just back-on-the-envelope math, whiteboard math, saying, “What is it costing us to work and we’re getting this kind of outcome?” or, “What is the impact on our employee attrition because we’ve got low engagement from this?”

You just have to look and ask a couple questions like that, and you think, “Oh, I can start to just do some back-of-the-envelope math, and realize I don’t think we’re ever going to create an outcome that offsets that.” And that’s where having the framework says, “Okay, that means we’re stuck with a lower outcome. That’s not okay. What do we do? Do we go back to where we were? Or, do we just initiate a modified version of the change based on what we’ve learned?” And once you know that framework, you can realize where you are, and analyze what the cost impact or the implication is of the dip. You can make those choices.

The other thing you can do is, knowing the model, I really encourage people to think through while they’re in the zone of status quo and they’re considering a change, “What is the cost here? How significant is it? Is that cost worth it for the outcome we think we’ll get?” And I think if there’s more intentionality before we initiate changes, you can head off some of those mistakes. You can get to them before you ever get to the scenario you described. If you do get to that scenario, use the model, the framework to analyze cost and make a different decision.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And any quick do’s and don’ts associated with conversations and word choice when announcing and sharing a change with folks?

Curtis Bateman
Yeah. So often what we find when we’re announcing a change is we initiate a monologue, “I’ll do all the talking. I’ll tell you what to do.” And if the change gets announced, and that’s the end of it, and it’s all monologue, you have set yourself up for failure. You have to create a mechanism or a forum for dialogue because it’s very unlikely that I will understand all the consequences of a change for an entire team or organization. So, you need to give people a place to have that heard.

So, the second key to that, which is a tool, leaders don’t like that sometimes. They get a little nervous, because they think, “Well, what if I don’t have the answers?” I usually encourage people to make a list of all the questions I don’t have answers to so that you just acknowledge it upfront and work together on it rather than avoid the dialogue. And when that’s the case, it makes it a lot easier to engage in a dialogue. So, that’s a massive, “Don’t do this. Don’t just monologue.”

The second thing I would say is a big no-no, we talk about common reactions to change in the book. There’s a parable and we talk about some common reactions. Sometimes people use those common reactions as a label of “You’re this kind of person,” and labeling is not the intent of those reactions. Those reactions are to say, “These commonly appear. They’re not right or wrong. Recognize it in yourself and in a colleague, and then if it’s not the best reaction, use the non-threatening language to talk about what is the right reaction and how do we help people get to that space.”

So, don’t label people so they’re stuck there. It takes away their permission or ability to go through the change, and make sure you engage in a dialogue so people have input.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, Curtis, any final thoughts before we hear about some of your favorite things?

Curtis Bateman
Final thoughts are it’s a really easy to understand model. If you can learn, share it, draw it, talk to people about it, you’ll find that it’s stuck with you forever, and it’s really easy then to reference it. So, rather than have it be an idea that you hear about and goes away, the minute you just draw it on a napkin and share it with two or three people, you’ll find that it becomes part of your thinking, and it’ll be a great tool for you to use the rest of your career and your life.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, now could you share a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Curtis Bateman
Actually, I have this thought I put on a wallet. It’s from an Indian philosopher, and it talks about the need for silence because silence gives you space to consider, reflect, and get better. And, for me, I don’t know if you read Susan Cain’s Quiet, I’m a lot like some of what she describes there. And so, for me, the idea that comes from that thinker, that thought leader, is this notion of giving yourself space to reflect, and think, and to discover. So, that’s kind of what comes to mind.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And can you share a favorite study or experiment or bit of research?

Curtis Bateman
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I just recently read Dan Pink’s book, When, and it’s a research-based book. And what I love about it is he’s explored what’s going on with startings, middles, and endings, and our energy. And I love all of the research that’s gone in there to understand how to be and put forward your best self, your best effort, your best energy.

So, I use that a lot when I’m coaching people or working with employees, is energy management and timing management. So, that’s an area of research that I’ve been thinking a lot about lately, is Dan Pink’s When.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And any other favorite books?

Curtis Bateman
Well, I mentioned a couple business ones. I’ll give you a non-business one. I love books. So, Great Expectations, I’m a big Dickens fan. And maybe the reason is because there’s so much change that goes on in some of the characters, but, yeah, Great Expectations is one that I absolutely love.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite tool, something you use to be awesome at your job?

Curtis Bateman
Yeah, I’m a productivity junkie, so I use Evernote. I use it to organize, to plan, to think, to create, so productivity tools. You could probably list 20 of them and I would love them all but Evernote is a good one that I use.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Now, I’m curious. So, Evernote. What’s maybe also on the top five for you?

Curtis Bateman
I use a journaling tool called Day One that I love. I use it for reflection, for when I’m doing mindfulness, or when I’m reading, I’ll capture learnings, and I do it in Day One. Also, what I love about that is it pulls from my Instagram and my LinkedIn, and so it creates this comprehensive journal of everything I’m thinking about on days and weeks, and I love to go back and reflect on it, so another one.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite habit?

Curtis Bateman
Planning. Weekly planning. This is a very Franklin Covey, in which is where I work, a Franklin Covey answer but it’s been part of my whole life. I love to reflect each week at the start of the week on my mission, my vision, my personal values, the people that I want to impact, and then incorporate that into my daily and weekly planning. That’s one of my favorite habits. I really look forward to that time every Sunday evening.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And is there a key nugget you share that really seems to connect and resonate with folks; they quote it back to you often?

Curtis Bateman
I was looking through on Amazon where people make quotes or in my LinkedIn and other places, and I was looking to see what that’s like. And I had somebody recently say from the book how much they valued understanding the human reaction and the human part of change, and I get that a lot. One of the things we’ve endeavored to do is acknowledge there’s all that change process stuff which is important but that there’s a human component to it, and how much the work we’ve done really helps people as an individual and a human move through change, not just having a checklist or a process.

And I’ve had several people, just recently on social media and other places, make that comment to me. So, I love that, I love that that’s the case that really gets a lot of value for people.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Curtis Bateman
So, I’m pretty active on LinkedIn. I continue to write blogs. I do keynotes and other speeches. And as I learn more and I think about more, I write blogs to update that and to the books, and that’s at Curtis A. Bateman on LinkedIn, you’ll find me there. And then FranklinCovey.com, there’s a Speaker’s Bureau link, and I’m listed there with bio and information and videos and things. So, FranklinCovey.com, Speaker’s Bureau, or Curtis A. Bateman on LinkedIn.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And do you have a final challenge or call to action for folks looking to be awesome at their jobs?

Curtis Bateman
Yeah. I’m going to say it again, and this for everybody – individual contributor, teenager. If you’ll learn the little change model that we’ve talked about, just how to draw that ladle-shaped curve, you just said, Pete, and you just explain it to somebody, I guarantee, 100% money-back guarantee, if you’ll learn it and teach it to people, it will start to make a difference in your work and in your life. You’ll find connections and it will help you.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Curtis, this has been a treat. I wish you much luck with all the changes in your world.

Curtis Bateman
Thank you, Pete. Nice to talk to you today.

Aug 07
0

888: How to Get Results without Damaging Relationships with Dr. Nate Regier

By | Podcasts | No Comments

 

Dr. Nate Regier reveals his process for practicing compassionate accountability that builds relationships.

You’ll Learn:

  1. The three switches for greater compassion every day
  2. A handy template for dealing with any conflict
  3. Why lowering standards doesn’t help those struggling

About Nate

Nate Regier, PhD, is the CEO and founding owner of Next Element Consulting, a global leadership consulting and training firm helping build cultures of compassionate accountability. Dr. Regier is a former practicing psychologist and expert in social-emotional intelligence, interpersonal communication, conflict skills, and leadership. Recognized as a Top 100 keynote speaker, he is a Process Communication Model® Certifying Master Trainer. Nate is the author of four books: Beyond Drama; Conflict without Casualties; Seeing People Through; and his newest book, Compassionate Accountability. He hosts a podcast called “On Compassion with Dr. Nate,” writes a weekly blog, contributes to multiple industry publications, and is a regular guest on podcasts.

Resources Mentioned

Nate Regier Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Nate, welcome back to How to be Awesome at Your Job.

Nate Regier
Pete, it’s great to be here. Thank you.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m so excited to get into some fresh wisdom from your latest book, Compassionate Accountability: How Leaders Build Connection and Get Results. But first, I think we need an update on the barbecuing situation. Are you still competing? Where does that stand?

Nate Regier
Well, that’s a good question. I got some good news and I got some kind of sad news. Yeah, the competing continued and, in fact, I’ve taken on helping organize a local barbecue competition in my own community as part of a festival. So, we’re doing that but, sadly, the team that I talked about last time, we’re kind of on a hiatus.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, the butts.

Nate Regier
Yeah, my brother-in-law and the pit boss and the main organizer and the main impetus behind it all, he passed away from cancer last year.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, I’m sorry.

Nate Regier
Yeah, thank you. So, we’re barbecuing in his memory these days but not quite the same level of competition.

Pete Mockaitis
Understood. Well, I’m glad to hear you’re continuing to stay involved and good things are happening in the community and with barbecue. I was recently on a camping expedition, and someone brought their smoker with them. It wasn’t backpacking. That would be a whole nother level of commitment.

Nate Regier
Oh, yeah, they make tabletop ones but, man.

Pete Mockaitis
And, yes, it was exceptional. So, tell me, any best practices for meat that you think normal folks who are not 100% committed at competition level should know about?

Nate Regier
Man, I tell you, I am such a fan of the Big Green Egg and you can give them almost anywhere now, and it’s just really hard to mess anything up in those things. So, that’s what I need. And they make little tiny ones. So, that’s what I’d recommend if anybody wants to get started in the smoking business.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Now we know. We put it on the record. All right. Now, let’s talk about the book here. Any particularly surprising, or counterintuitive, or striking discoveries you’ve made about accountability as you did your research for your book Compassionate Accountability?

Nate Regier
Yeah, a couple, actually. This whole notion that accountability is not contrary to compassion and is not in competition with compassion is really the biggest thing that we’ve been discovering in that people really seem to think that they’re different. And that when push comes to shove, most people will choose one or the other, thinking that they’re somehow opposite. And it’s just an interesting phenomenon, and leaders struggle like crazy with that dilemma.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, how would you articulate the perceived disconnect?

Nate Regier
The word accountability is really loaded. This whole idea of, “We need to hold people accountable,” or, “They need to be held accountable for their actions,” it’s a huge word, it has somewhere, I think, people mean something like owning up, or maybe being punished, or maybe having consequences, or somehow need to have it pinned on somebody.

And so, the word has really negative connotations, it’s loaded. And so, it’s kind of like a hot potato, yet in leadership, as in most relationships, accountability is incredibly important for trust, for consistency, for integrity, and yet we don’t see a lot of people that are comfortable doing that in a way that preserves dignity, that preserves relationships. It isn’t kind of a gotcha kind of a mentality. And so, that’s where we’re kind of at that nexus between those two.

Pete Mockaitis
You’re right. The word accountability, it often shows up in criminal, like, law and order proceedings, “We need to hold them accountable,” which is a very different vibe, “We’re going to collect evidence and prosecute this person and send them to prison” than “Oh, hey, you didn’t quite do some of the things you committed to doing earlier in the workplace.” Very different charge and yet the same word pops up there.

Nate Regier
Well, the way you just said it invites me to clarify something that I should’ve said earlier, which is accountability isn’t something we do to people, and that seems like kind of the way you and I describe it, it’s like, “Oh, we got to go do this to them, make sure they own up and pay.” Accountability truly is something we do with people, so it’s really a process that happens within relationships. And so often, accountability, in today’s world, seems to be such an adversarial kind of a thing.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s a good one. Thank you. So, it’s collaborative process, not so much an intense, “I’m doing this to you. I’m inflicting accountability upon you.”

Nate Regier
“Oh, you’re going to pay.”

Pete Mockaitis
Lovely. Well, so before we dig into some of the details, I’d love it if you could get us fired up by sharing an inspiring story of someone who adopted some of your compassionate accountability perspectives to see some awesome results.

Nate Regier
Yeah, I’ll tell you one. I’m not going to name names because we’re kind of right in the middle of an engagement with this organization but the president shared with me the other day on one of our leadership team consulting sessions, she said, “Man, this template you’ve developed for compassionate accountability, it’s no joke.” She said, “I kind of was like, ‘Yeah, I’ll try it, I’ll try it.’” She goes, “I used it with my kids and it’s magical. Like, I couldn’t believe how we just resolved the situation.”

And she goes, “And so then I started using it with my employees and it just works.” And she goes, “I never really thought, I never really conceptualized that you could build a relationship at the same time that you’re trying to pursue accountability, and it’s really pretty cool.” She said, “I’m enjoying what it’s doing with my relationships.”

Pete Mockaitis
Well, Nate, we’re going to have to immediately go to that. Tell us about this magical template, what is it? Where can we get it? How does it work?

Nate Regier
Well, we’ve been teaching a process for engaging healthy conflict. I think I visited it with you on the last time but we’re really trying to make it simpler and simpler and simpler. And what we’ve identified is what we call the three switches of the compassion mindset. And it’s a way of thinking about ourselves and others that embodies the fullest intention, the fullest meaning of compassion. Compassion which means to struggle with.

Remember we talked about it’s a collaborative effort, these are hard things. And so, we’ve identified these three switches that we call value, capability, and responsibility. And we can give people some basic kind of guardrails and guidelines to say, “Are you keeping your switches on?” And if you have all three switches on when you’re engaging with somebody, you can really have pretty transformative conversations. And if you need more help, then we can get down to the nitty-gritty about some of the templates and formulas for how to actually do that.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, the three switches: value, capability, and what?

Nate Regier
And responsibility.

Pete Mockaitis
Responsibility. So, then what do we mean exactly by having these switches on versus off? Could you maybe go into some demonstration of what that sounds and feels like in practice?

Nate Regier
You bet. So, the metaphor switches we chose carefully because, I’m right here, I’m actually holding, you can see these, I’m holding some switches.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, there you go.

Nate Regier
And we have them in our house. Imagine a three-switch wall played on your house, each one runs a different light or a different appliance or whatever, and behind all these switches is this incredible amount of energy, electricity, just waiting to be used. And when you turn on that switch, you complete the circuit and you give, you intentionally free that energy to go do its job.

And so, each of these switches is an intentional choice we make on how we’re going to spend energy in order to light up the world. And each one of these switches, the switch of value is powered by this fundamental belief that human beings are unconditionally worthwhile. We are valuable because we’re humans, not because of anything we do or say. And nothing can diminish our innate human value.

And so, that invites and imply certain behaviors. Same is true for the capability switch, which is powered by…well, let me just stop there. So, anything you want to know more about there, about this whole metaphor of the switches?

Pete Mockaitis
That’s cool. I dig it in terms of we flip it on or off, and the electron can flow to light up something when we’ve got it on versus it can’t if it’s interrupted, so understood there. And then when it comes to value, yes, I think that’s fantastic as just sort of a fundamental reorientation reminder maybe for every day and every human interaction that human beings have unconditional dignity just cuts.

Nate Regier
Right, just cuts.

Pete Mockaitis
Not because they perform well or poorly but just intrinsic to their humanity, whether you draw that from a religion, or wisdom tradition, or the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights. I think that is a foundational notion that is just great for all mankind to get down with and to recall.

Nate Regier
And, Pete, it doesn’t mean that anything goes. Saying that you are unconditionally worthwhile as a human doesn’t mean you can do whatever you want because the person and the behavior are two very different things. And this is where we really start to talk about what accountability means. Because if I treat you as unconditionally worthwhile, what that means is I take seriously your humanity, I take seriously your emotions, your experiences, the way you see the world. Your innate differences are a beautiful part of who you are.

And so, I see that for what it is and I don’t judge it, but that’s very different than behaviors, performance, goals, those kinds of things. And those are addressed in the other two switches.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Got you. So, let’s talk about capability.

Nate Regier
So, capability is the next switch. So, if we turn on the switch of value, it’s like, “Hey, I’m worthwhile, you’re worthwhile. Nothing we could do or say is going to change that, so let’s level the playing field on our humanity.” Then, capability is powered by the fundamental belief that anyone can contribute under the right conditions.

Now, that’s kind of loaded, anyone can contribute, meaning everyone and anyone can and should be part of the solutions in their lives, should be agentic beings participating in their own future, in the solving the problems that they’re dealing with, and that everyone has a capability of doing that. So, that means we look for gifts, we try to apply strengths, we teach people things, we mentor, we get curious, we learn and grow.

And when we fail, we pick ourselves up, and say, “What can we learn?” instead of saying, “Well, see, I know you couldn’t do it anyways,” which is a grave thing you would say if your switch was off. So, capability is about nurturing capacity because people are capable, and looking and finding ways that they can be part of the solution.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And responsibility?

Nate Regier
Responsibility now, if human beings are valuable and they’re capable, then they’re also responsible, meaning that we make choices, and we live in communities where our behaviors matter. And so, the switch of responsibility is powered by the fundamental belief that everyone of us is 100% responsible for our thoughts, our feelings, and our behaviors, no less and no more. So, what that means is, “No matter what happened before, I am 100% responsible for what I do next.”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, then when we talk about the switches being off or on, what does that mean on a daily basis? Because in some ways, these are sort of beliefs or assertions, and I think that I can imagine they’d say, “Yeah, I believe those three things, so I guess my switches are on.”

Nate Regier
Sure. Yeah, so let’s talk about specific behaviors. So, let’s say I claim that my switch of value is on, and, Pete, you come to me in a moment of darkness and a moment of struggle, and you’re my peer. And you say to me, “God, Nate, I just don’t know if I feel comfortable sharing this with you but I’m just really feeling uncertain about this task that’s been put before me. I don’t know if I can pull it off. And I would hate to be embarrassed in front of my boss.”

You shared something really vulnerable that’s just kind of about what you’re struggling with. How I respond in that moment will let you know if my switch of value is on or off. Am I going to see you as less than because of what you’ve shared by saying something, like, “Dude, suck it up”? Which means I completely discounted your struggle.

Or, am I going to say something like, “Pete, thank you so much for sharing that. I’m really touched that you trusted me. I see you”? Or, maybe with my switch of value off, I would say something like, “Well, everybody feels like that at first. You’ll get over it.” Like, I just kind of say, like, your feelings aren’t that serious, and I’m not taking seriously your experience.

Or, I could turn my switch on and empathize, and say, “Man, I remember what it was like being new in my job. It sucks. I’m here for you, man.” Do you feel the difference between those two ways of responding when you kind of showed me your humanity?

Pete Mockaitis
I do, yes. And so then, I guess if someone does give a suboptimal response, like, “Oh, suck it up. It’s part of the job. Deal with it,” I could see how that’s inconsiderate, invalidating, although I’m not sure if I see how that is saying, “You do not have dignity,” or, “You do not have value as a person.” It comes off as, “I don’t care about your experience,” I guess. So, if we bundle the human experience within the human person, fundamentally, we’re getting real philosophical here, Nate.

Nate Regier
Well, you know, you’re getting at something real deep and it’s really important but I’ll let you finish.

Pete Mockaitis
So, yeah, I guess that’s what I’m thinking about in terms of distinguishing or uniting these concepts. Help me out here a little bit.

Nate Regier
So, when I say, “Suck it up,” or I say, “Oh, you don’t need to feel that way,” what I’m doing is I’m saying that I’m not comfortable with the way you’re feeling and I want to change it. I want it to be different than it is. You didn’t ask me for that. You didn’t say you wanted to feel different. I am now judging the value of your feelings and trying to change them or fix them, good or bad.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, value of feelings.

Nate Regier
Right, when I say, “Suck it up,” I’m basically saying, “Look, I’m uncomfortable with this. You need to change how you’re feeling in order to be okay for me.” Like, somehow your worth is now conditional on you being tough or being non-emotional. Or, let’s say I just shut down.

You shared something with me, and I’m like, “Look, I can’t handle this. I don’t got the bandwidth. Like, don’t bring your crap to me.” What I’m saying is, “I can’t handle your feelings, which means they’re too hot for me. Like, I’m not comfortable, which means I don’t see them. I don’t want to see them. Like, keep them out of my sight.” And those send really important messages about who’s okay and under what conditions that really contributes to psychological safety.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. So, then the value is perhaps broader than simply the human beings’ intrinsic dignity and value and worth but rather the entirety of their human experience. You are acknowledging the value therein and appreciating it and not rejecting it.

Nate Regier
Yeah, definitely. Well-said. And some of the traditions, like the self-compassion, mindfulness meditation kind of practices, they really try to be able to experience things without judging. They call it a nonjudgmental observation, nonjudgmental presence. That’s cultivating this capacity to see myself as worthwhile, independent of what I’m experiencing, and see my experiences as really useful teaching tools that are part of who I am but they’re not good or bad.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, so now let’s hear about responsibility.

Nate Regier
If we want to talk about, like, specific behaviors. Can we take your scenario and take that through the switches?

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, sure thing.

Nate Regier
Because, let’s say you come to me with that, and I’m like, “Oh, man, that sucks. I remember that,” well, you’re still an employee, you still have responsibilities. Just because you’re anxious and not feeling good doesn’t mean you get a free ride today. Just because I care about you doesn’t mean that you’re off the hook. So, the capability switch now starts to get curious about, “So, what are the resources at our disposal to help deal with this?”

So, I might say things like, “What have you tried?” or, “I’d love to learn a little more about what’s going on with you,” or, “What are you struggling with?” or, “How can I help you?” So, now we’re starting to get kind of dynamically engaged in problem-solving, and I’m kind of owning that you’re capable of dealing with this situation that you’re in. I don’t have to fix it for you but I’m certainly happy to be helpful if you want.

But then, at the end of the day, to your responsibility switch now, the reality is you still have to get your work done no matter how you’re feeling today. And so, the responsibility switch sounds something like, “Okay, so our deadline is still Friday. How are you feeling about getting that done on time?” or, “How can I support you in meeting the deadline under these conditions?” or, “Can I still count on you n having it done?”

Pete Mockaitis
Understood. And so then, the switches, they really do seem to want to go in that order in terms of value first, then capability, then responsibility. Because if you jump right into responsibility, that says not feeling great on the other side of that.

Nate Regier
Oh, no, it’s not feeling good. And if you want to know what that feels like, talk to any of my daughters about their sports coaches. That’s pretty much where they like to hang out, is, “Here’s what you got to do. Here are the goals. Here’s what you’re doing wrong. You’re breaking the rules.” That’s all they ever do but they never acknowledge the value of the players and they never acknowledge the capability of the players.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, that was a useful example. I’d love it if maybe we could roleplay some more. Let’s just say that someone doesn’t even come forward to you in the first place. Like, you discover it, like, “Wait a second, this thing is not done or has lots of mistakes. Now, I got to have this conversation.”

Nate Regier
Wow. So, now I’m Pete’s boss, and Pete hasn’t told me anything is wrong, but I’ve discovered he’s behind. And I’m his boss, so it reflects on me. I’m accountable to my peers for your performance even though I’m not the one that’s supposed to do it. And if you don’t get the stuff done on time, it kind of lets the whole team down. All right?

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah.

Nate Regier
So, now I’m the one having a difficult experience. I’m the one that just noticed something. Maybe I’m surprised. Maybe I’m anxious. Maybe I’m angry at you. Maybe I’m, like confused by, “How come I didn’t know?” So, if I’m going to turn my switch of value on for myself, what I have to say is, “This experience is relevant. I have to pay attention to it, and I got to own it. I got to do something about this.”

So, I would probably come to you and I would turn on my switch, and say, “Hey, here’s what I’m experiencing. I just want to let you know that I’m kind of anxious about something, or I’m kind of shocked about what I just found out yesterday, and I want you to know.” Well, then I have to go to the capability switch, and say, “Because I’m also capable of handling my feelings and solving my own problems,” so what does that mean?

Well, maybe I need to start asking some questions. Maybe I need to get curious with you, and say, “Hey, can I check an assumption with you?” or, “I want to tell you what I saw and see if you can shed light on this,” or, “What do you know about what happened?” So, I’m getting curious and we’re learning about it.

But if my switch of responsibility is on, what I also have to realize is that, at the end of the day, I’m ultimately accountable to my team, I’m ultimately responsible for my feelings, and I have to be a leader, so I need to do what I need to do to get this corrected. It doesn’t mean doing your job for you but it means having a hard conversation, realigning priorities, figuring out what needs to happen, getting new commitments from you, removing barriers, whatever I need to do so that you can get that job done. Or, maybe I’ll learn something when I’m curious that I had no idea, and I have to completely change my frame of mind. Maybe it wasn’t you. Who knows?

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And could you give us some examples of actual verbiage you might use?

Nate Regier
Yeah, I might come to you, and I might say, “Hey, I’m really anxious about something I just found out the other day, and I want to tell you about it. Here’s what happened. So, I was going through the reports, and I noticed for three consecutive weeks, you’ve missed the numbers by 20%. The reason I’m concerned is because here’s what this means. So, I’m just curious if you could shed light on this. Let me know what I need to know, because, at the end of the day, this puts you in, whatever, 50th percentile, and you’ve got to be in the 70th in order to continue to get your performance raises.”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Understood. And then we just sort of see what happens.

Nate Regier
See where it goes, and we never know. As long as my switches are on, I can keep mobilizing responses that affirm your value, your capability, and your responsibility.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, so tell us a little bit more about the compassion side of this in terms of what are some of the do’s and don’ts for ensuring that the compassion part comes through?

Nate Regier
Well, the good news is the switches are, turning on the switches is how we manifest full compassion because our definition of compassion is it’s the practice of demonstrating that people are valuable, capable, and responsible in every interaction, so we have to demonstrate this through our behaviors. And so, the compassion part means keeping our switch on and open by affirming your value. Keeping our switch on of capability by affirming your capability, and also by taking ownership over our stuff, and letting you do the same at responsibility.

In my book, I give a lot of examples of narratives and what you actually say and how you address these situations, but that is the compassion part, it’s making sure our switches are on.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And you say people are these things. And I’m curious, what if folks are not, like folks are just not taking responsibility for their stuff?

Nate Regier
Well, they are responsible for the behavior whether they want to own it or not. By function of your job, you are responsible to get that stuff done. Now, whether you do or not, you might be shirking your responsibility but it’s still your job, and it’s still your thing to do. And so, that’s the conversation we have about that.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And so, your client who mentioned that this template is magical, what unfolds on the template?

Nate Regier
So, the template is something we teach in our leadership trainings, it’s called ORPO. And it stands for open, resourceful, persistent, open. And ORPO is a four-step process where when there’s conflict, when there’s a tough situation, where there’s a gap, and we got to talk about it, we go in, first, being open, which means touch the humanity, kind of like I did. I came in and I said, “Hey, I’m really struggling with something here. I want to check it out with you.”

Then we go to resourceful, which is where we get to being curious about what’s going on, let’s understand the problem. Then we go to persistent, and we get crystal clear about what’s at stake, what are the boundaries, what are the non-negotiables. And then we circle back to open, and finish back at a human connection point.

So, I might really shorten that example I gave earlier, I was using that template, where I said, “Hey, Pete, I’m concerned about something. I want to share it with you,” that’s open. “Here’s what happened. And I’m curious about how you saw it,” resourceful. “At the end of the day, we still have to have this in by Friday,” that’s the persistent part. Then I might finish by saying, “How are you doing with this?”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Understood. And then any particular verbiage, thoughts, things to say, things to not say when we’re doing this stuff?

Nate Regier
What we see is most challenging for people is to get vulnerable by letting people know how they’re actually doing, how they’re actually feeling. And people have all kinds of reasons that they don’t want to, “And I’m going to be judged,” “They’re not going to take me seriously,” “No one’s ever been through this before,” “I don’t want to burden you with my stuff.”

And so, that’s one of the hardest things. And so, if I could say anything, I would say, “Look, don’t share it because you know the other person isn’t going to take you seriously. Share it because you matter and because it’s on your heart. And you got to take ownership for yourself and share that stuff because that’s the only way you could start working with other people, struggling with other people, to start doing something about it.”

Pete Mockaitis
And so, what are some examples of this stuff that gets not shared, withheld often?

Nate Regier
Putting a lot of pressure on myself to deliver because I need to impress people, maybe, for example, which is legitimate. Why don’t we talk about it? Needing to please people. Trying to be perfect in order to, somehow, be okay, and then just getting yourself tied up in knots because you’re just never good enough. So, when we talk about those things, we can get reality checks, we can get support, we can get people in there with us, helping us figure it out.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And then, I’m curious, how often do folks abuse our compassion or kindness?

Nate Regier
I’ve never heard that question before, and I love it, so I’m going to take a beat here. I don’t know that anyone has the power to abuse my compassion. I would never give that to them. I can choose to be compassionate. I can choose to have my switches on, and they can choose what they’re going to do. They may not accept the invitation. They may do their own thing. But my compassion stays my compassion. They cannot change it.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Maybe I am comingling some ideas inappropriately. I suppose I’m thinking about compassion in the sense of if there is maybe you might call it lenience or mercy in a certain context, like, “Hey, I understand that some stuff came up and you couldn’t get it done on time. Let’s revise the deadline and make it this,” and then that’s sort of taken advantage of in terms of, “Aha, so this guy is a softy. I can walk all over him. I can make excuses.”

Nate Regier
If I did that, I would only have one or two of my switches on so that wouldn’t really be compassion. So, if I‘m not holding firm to boundaries or being reasonable, and if I’m not upholding the highest standards throughout, then I’m not doing my job and that’s not compassionate. So, I wouldn’t say that that’s a person abusing my compassion. That would be me not really being compassionate in the first place.

Pete Mockaitis
I see.

Nate Regier
And sending the message that, somehow, because you’re struggling, then the standards are lower for you. Why would we treat someone as less capable of meeting the goals just because they’re struggling? I would say we’d come around them and work with them to meet the standards. Now, yeah, there’s always opportunities where I might say, “Wow, this is a pretty extenuating circumstance. Look.”

My partner got all his flights delayed, and his family ended up in a hotel, didn’t get home till 4:00 a.m. in the morning, and we had a 9:00 o’clock meeting that day. And I was like, “Dude, let’s cancel the meeting. Let’s reschedule the meeting.” But I might’ve just given him a break for…? No. That’s kind of a one-time thing. We worked it out. We still have to get it done by the end of the week. But I guess you have to keep all three switches on or there’s no compassion on, really.

Pete Mockaitis
Now, I think that feels fresh in terms of looking at you’re being…in your worldview, you are not being compassionate if you allow someone to lower their standards.

Nate Regier
Yes, I am. I agree with you because what I’m saying is, “I don’t believe you’re as capable. I’m lowering my estimation of their capability, but I’m also shirking my responsibility to uphold the standards of the contract, of the family, of the company at the same time.” So, I’m letting my team down when I do that.

Pete Mockaitis
And what happens if we discover that, hey, sure enough, someone really is not capable of executing to the standards after all?

Nate Regier
The fundamental belief behind the capability switch is everyone is capable of contributing.

Pete Mockaitis
Contributing.

Nate Regier
That may not be in this job, it may not be today, and it may not be with this skillset. And so, what that means is we invest in them, we invite them to stretch, we are alongside them when they fail, and we don’t set them up to not be able to do stuff. It may be a different position, a new training. It might be even letting them go because this job is asking things of them that just set them up to fail. But that’s really not an indictment of their capability. It’s an indictment of their competence, and it’s commenting more on their skillset and competence for this job, so we look for places where they can thrive.

Pete Mockaitis
Got you. So, they’re certainly capable of making a contribution. However, it may be that the particular responsibilities of a role are poorly suited to them, and, thusly, they would be doing some bigger contributions in a different context.

Nate Regier
Yeah, I think sometimes we let people down because we either don’t equip them with the skills and training to do the job so they fail, or we just move them around in an organization, hoping something will work. And by doing that, we tell them we really don’t care about them as a human being anyways. And in both of those situations, the end result is the switches of capability and responsibility get turned off.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, Nate, tell me, anything else you want to make sure to mention before we shift gears and hear about some of your favorite things?

Nate Regier
Well, coming through COVID, I tell you what, compassion and accountability were on a wild rollercoaster ride through the last three or four years. Which one are we going to pick? And one day, we’re all in this together because everybody has COVID. The next day, we’re all trying to hold each other accountable for who’s wearing a mask or who’s not getting a vaccine.

So, I think what this has proven is you can’t treat these two things in isolation. They have to come together. Never before in our history have we needed both in full measure, together, to deal with the kind of stuff that we’re having to deal with. So, that might be my last thing I really want to emphasize.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, now could you share a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Nate Regier
I’ve loved this quote, this has been my favorite for years, and it’s a quote by Wayne Dyer. I used to think Albert Einstein said it, but it’s actually from Wayne Dyer, and it says, “When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.”

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite study or experiment or bit of research?

Nate Regier
I’m a fan of the research that’s reported in the book Compassionomics. It’s a wonderful book about the power of compassion in the workplace. And there’s some research, neurobiological research on brain scans showing that when people are experiencing empathy, the pain centers of the brain are triggered, but when people are experiencing compassion, the reward center of the brain gets triggered. And that is critical. Different places in the brain, different things, and it shows you that compassion and empathy are not the same thing, and that compassion is actually energizing and intrinsically rewarding.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that is intriguing. Well, now could you expand upon the distinction between compassion and empathy?

Nate Regier
Yeah, empathy is a really important human trait, where the mirror neurons in our brain, they kind of sense how other people are doing, and they replicate those sense in us. And it’s really important for humans that we can kind of sense how people are doing so we can support them. But also left unchecked, empathy becomes we just take on pain, and it just, like, fills us up, and this leads to what we call, well, it’s misnamed compassion fatigue but it’s really empathy fatigue, and burnout, and depersonalization.

But compassion, in the way that I’ve been demonstrating it throughout our conversation, that’s a dynamic, active, generative, creative process. It’s hard work but the results are great, and I feel so good afterwards.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Thank you. And a favorite book?

Nate Regier
Right now, I can’t get enough of Brene Brown’s book called Atlas of the Heart. It’s a really cool book. And for kind of technical people like you and I, we like to see things organized, it organizes the whole gamut of human emotions. It helps give you the history of it, how it came to be, why that emotion is unique from other emotions, how to talk about it, how to express it. It’s amazing. It’s really helping me improve my emotional fluency, and I’d recommend this book to anybody who wants to get more compassionate.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And a favorite tool, something you use to be awesome at your job?

Nate Regier
I can’t mention my favorite cordless drill?

Pete Mockaitis
You can.

Nate Regier
I am awesome at woodworking with my favorite cordless drill. But at my job, I love Calendly. I love that app for scheduling, and it’s just awesome. It makes it so much easier for people to find a place on my calendar and it takes care of the business. It was so cool that someone had just learned it the other day, called it Calendar Lily. And I’m thinking, “That’s kind of cool. It’s a calendar lily.”

Pete Mockaitis
It is. It’s like a refreshing flower in a landscape of weeds.

Nate Regier
I know, right? Makes my life easier, for sure.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite habit?

Nate Regier
I stretch every morning. I’ve been doing it for about 35 years. I have a routine, a series of stretches. It keeps me kind of limber. And then I love to go on walks with my dog, and with my wife, or both of them at the same time. It’s a wonderful time to process, to clear my mind, and I need the exercise.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And is there a key nugget you share that really seems to connect and resonate with folks; they quote it back to you often?

Nate Regier
One of my favorites is not so much related to compassion, but we do a lot of work with personality, diversity, and communication. And I like to say that personality is not an entitlement program, and people seem to like that, especially if they’ve been burned by being trained in a personality model that puts them in a box, and stereotypes them, and people are thrown labels around, and all that stuff.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Nate Regier
I’d just say LinkedIn. Look me up on LinkedIn, Nate Regier, and that’ll take you anywhere you need to go.

Pete Mockaitis
And do you have a final challenge or call to action for folks looking to be awesome at their jobs?

Nate Regier
Yeah. I started using the hashtag #compassionateaccountability about 18 months ago. And if you go use that hashtag, you can find so many nuggets, daily tips, little things to be awesome at your job, to practice more compassionate accountability. So, yeah, just search hashtag #compassionateaccountability and see if something doesn’t pop that you can use today.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Nate, thank you. This has been a treat. I wish you much luck and much compassionate accountability.

Nate Regier
Well, thank you. It’s our mission. I appreciate this opportunity to be with you and your guest.

Aug 03
0

887: How to Navigate Conflict and Find Clarity with Marc Lesser

By | Podcasts | No Comments

 

Marc Lesser shows how to navigate difficult emotions and conversations to build thriving relationships.

You’ll Learn:

  1. Why we shouldn’t be afraid of conflict
  2. The one question you need to ask when dealing with difficult people
  3. How to assess any relationship in 4 words

About Marc

Marc Lesser is a speaker, facilitator, workshop leader, and executive coach. He is the author of four books, including Seven Practices of a Mindful Leader: Lessons from Google and a Zen Monastery Kitchen, and CEO of ZBA Associates, an executive development and leadership consulting company. Lesser helped develop the world-renowned Search Inside Yourself (SIY) program within Google and was director of Tassajara Zen Mountain Center, the oldest Zen monastery in the Western world. He lives in Marin County, California, and leads Mill Valley Zen, a weekly meditation group.

Resources Mentioned

Marc Lesser Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Marc, welcome to How to be Awesome at Your Job.

Marc Lesser
It’s great to be here. I think it’s really important to be awesome at your job.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, thank you. And I think you’ve got something to say that will be helpful in that quest with your latest book, Finding Clarity: How Compassionate Accountability Builds Vibrant Relationships, Thriving Workplaces, and Meaningful Lives. That’s stuff that we’re into over here.

Marc Lesser
Yeah, and I think it’s no small thing just to have the aspiration to be awesome at your job. I’ve noticed it’s easy, cynicism is easy. Awesome requires work.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, you know what’s funny, when I was doing the original research to put this together, I was using some survey tools and trying to get a sense for, “Does anyone care about this thing I might want to make because I don’t want to build something nobody wants?” I’ve learned that lesson about four times. And, yeah, it was about 4% of people were ten of ten extremely interested in listening to such a show.

And so, that means 96% were not, and I don’t blame them. There’s a lot of different domains of life to focus on or to be awesome at, and sometimes people just want to leave work at work, and that’s okay, in certain times and seasons.

Marc Lesser
Yeah. Well, I’m not saying anything everyone doesn’t know, it’s that we spend a lot of time at our work. And any place where we spend a lot of time, man, we should be awesome.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, yeah. And that’s the vibe, I think, with me and listeners that it’s just more fun being awesome discovering how to be more awesome, contributing to awesomeness in others, and it’s a beautiful thing.

Marc Lesser
Yeah, it is. It is. It’s a great word. It’s a great word – awesome.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, you know what’s funny, you just got me going. I almost deliberately chose it because it was a little bit radical even. Because I remember one of my first speaking engagements, I was talking to the Illinois CPA Society, so a bunch of accountants, and there was this partner who was talking about professionalism, and she said, “I, for example, would really not appreciate it if a youthful member of my staff were to say that something was awesome, for example.”

And I thought, “Really? Because I love that.” So, I guess I’m sticking it to her. No, I wish her the best. I really do. But I think it conveys a little bit of a vibe. It’s like we’re going to be ever so slightly irreverent and would be professional enough to pass along with your teammates and colleagues but, hopefully, edgy enough to keep your interest.

Marc Lesser
Yeah. Well, awesome is way up there on the continuum of aspirations. Awesome is pretty high up there, but I think it’s good, too. I’m a big believer in the importance of being aspirational.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes. Yes. Me, too. And, Marc, it’s funny, usually we spend the first couple minutes of me learning about you. But look at you, you’ve got some compassion and some vibrant relationship-building action going on over there.

Marc Lesser
Yeah. Well, it took us some time to get past the title of the podcast but I think we’ve almost achieved that.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, so speaking of titles, you’ve got a fun one. You were once the director of a Zen monastery. What’s the story here and maybe some cool experiences from that role?

Marc Lesser
Yeah, that was kind of an amazing experience. My one-year leave of absence from Rutgers University when I was back in my college days, that one year turned into 10 years of living at the San Francisco Zen Center. And five of those years were at this amazing place called Tassajara Zen Mountain Center, which is in the mountains in Central California, and it functions as somewhat, I have to be careful, traditional Zen monastery.

Very traditional in certain ways in terms of the schedule based on kind of some ancient processes and formations of Zen practice but also California, men and women living together, children living at this monastery. But traditional in the sense that, man, we got up early in the morning, 3:40 a.m. wakeup bell, and a lot of meditation, a lot of study, a lot of ritual and being together, but also a lot of work.

And it was there in that role as director that the lightbulb went off for me, and I realized that I thought of myself as a Zen student but I was leading, I was in a leadership role, I was managing. So, this Zen monastery turned into a conference center and resort in the summer time. So, very quiet and chill, secluded all winter but very much like any other conference center, workshop center, 70 or 80 overnight guests, gourmet vegetarian meals served, three meals a day, so it was pretty intense kind of workplace.

And the aha I had was that I was in a leadership role, and that I loved it, and that I got to get the experience, very much the full-on experience of integrating meditation, mindfulness, spiritual practice with running a small business, managing a staff, dealing with money, dealing with all the problems and opportunities of any small business.

And I wondered, “Why isn’t everyone integrating these, what looks like these two different practices?” And that kind of set me on the path of this whole wonderful world of mindful leadership, and it was why I got the call several years later from Google, saying, “Hey, we want you to come and develop a mindful leadership program for Google engineers,” and that was also another amazing opportunity.

Pete Mockaitis
And so, when we talk about mindful leadership, is there a key way you would articulate what that is and how it differs from normal or sort of mainstream traditional leadership?

Marc Lesser
Well, now we’re going to go back to where we started. Yes, it’s an aspiration to be awesome but awesome, I think, I’m kind of teasing but I’m also being real that I would say that mindful leadership is about bringing one’s full heart, mind, body, spirit into your work, and that all those things really matter, and that it’s great aspiration for results and effectiveness and doing things at the highest level possible, and bringing in a great sense of one’s humanity and emotional intelligence into leadership.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, that sounds swell. Tell us, along the way, any particularly surprising or counterintuitive discoveries you made in researching this or putting together the book Finding Clarity?

Marc Lesser
Yeah. Well, this has been my life. Finding Clarity is actually my fifth book, and all of my books, in some way, have been about, I’d say, this integration of one’s whole life, that everything in your life alignment, and a wholeheartedness. I know you’re going to ask me this later but I’m going to give you the answer to this right now.

One of my favorite quotes is from the poet David White who says, “The antidote to exhaustion isn’t rest. The antidote to exhaustion is wholeheartedness.” And I would say that, like, “Well, what is it that makes one’s work awesome?” One answer that I have is about to be wholehearted, meaning that your work is fully aligned with what you believe in, with what your values are, with some aspiration that you might have of doing good things, doing important things. Your work is an offering that you’re making to the world. So, to me, these are all ways of talking about, again, whether you use the language of mindful leadership or wholehearted leadership.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Cool. Well, then tell us, what’s this concept of compassionate accountability?

Marc Lesser
Yes. So, compassionate accountability, I’d say, is maybe a subset of that. It’s a focus on holding oneself and others accountable. It’s interesting, accountable is a word that’s used a lot in the business world, as it should be. But generally, often people have sort of a negative connotation with this word accountability. So, I sometimes substitute the word alignment, which is maybe a softer, gentler form of accountability.

But accountability, people usually think of it as obvious things like doing what you say you’re going to do, like having goals and benchmarks and being accountable to them, like actually being able to look at and report on how is it going, but, really, accountability is about aligning about what success looks like, but also, I’d say, aligning around how we’re working together, how we are dealing with success and failure, with conflict, what happens when things are difficult, when there are challenges. Then what?

And the compassionate piece is marrying accountability and alignment with a sense of care and trust and compassion. Compassion is kind of one step up above. Empathy is talked about and the importance. There’s a lot of studies on how important empathy is. Empathy is feeling the feelings of other people. And compassion is feeling other people’s feelings and wanting the best for other people, wanting to heal people’s suffering and stress and anxiety.

So, compassionate accountability, it’s beautiful. They seem like they’re contradictory but they are two, I think, essential practices in the workplace, and I think important practices toward working with more awesomeness.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, could you perhaps paint a picture with some examples of, “Here’s an approach that we would consider compassionately accountable,” versus some other common approaches that are lacking either in compassion or accountability that are rather common?

Marc Lesser
So, I think what I’ve noticed is that accountability is hard in the workplace because it means dealing skillfully with conflict. And dealing skillfully with conflict is, well, it takes skill but it also takes emotional intelligence. So often, whenever there are gaps in people not meeting certain goals, they might be financial goals, they might be product goals, they might be you’re trying to build a team or roll out a particular product.

And accountability means paying attention and checking in and really looking wide-eyed and with as much clarity as possible about, “How are we doing in meeting those goals? What’s working well? What’s not working well? Where do things stand?” and having those conversations where you’re not overreacting or underreacting.

So, compassion is I think of compassion as the sweet spot of being able to be direct and clear, and, at the same time, to be caring and to be building, to seeing anytime where there are gaps between what we’re trying to accomplish and where we are, that those gaps are opportunities to build trust and connection as oppose to eroding trust and connection.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, could you maybe give us a demonstration in practice if, let’s say, someone was underdelivering on a goal or commitment, how might you approach and articulate some messaging to that person?

Marc Lesser
Sure. Yeah, I was thinking of an example that I often use, and maybe this is close to what you’re saying. An example is you’re carpooling with someone. And day after day, they’re late. You’re standing there in the corner and you have an agreement that they’re going to pick you up at 8:00 and it’s, sometimes, 10 after 8:00.

And most days, you just get in the car and you don’t say anything. But, at some point, you say, “We need to talk about this. There’s a gap between what we’ve agreed to do and what is happening. And here’s what I’m seeing, and I’m kind of feeling not so good about it. In fact, I’m a little angry. I don’t feel respected. What are we going to do to close this gap to fix this problem?”

But then you have to listen because you might find out some things that surprise you about what the other person’s experience and story is, having to do with either family matters, or some sickness, some health issues, that, “There was construction on the road that wasn’t supposed to be there, so I went another…”

But it means being able to have such a conversation. Now, these conversations and these gaps are very much affected by context and by role and relationship. The one I was just talking about was kind of equal people, one person just picking up another. Now, if I’m the person in charge, and you are regularly late with handing in the accounting information that I needed, that might be a different conversation.

That might be, “We have a problem. Here it is. I hear there’s a lot of reasons why your reports are late but this is really important and this needs to be fixed.” And it might be, “Do you need some support? Is there something you’re missing?” So, the compassion piece might be caring enough to ask, “Hey, do you need some support?” understanding what the problem might be, understanding why these accounting reports are regularly being handed in late, maybe being willing to help support and fix them. So, that’s the compassion piece.

The accountability piece is bringing it up and talking about it, and having the clarity and the skill, the directness to say, “We’ve got a problem here. We need to talk about this.” And it’s amazing how often that doesn’t happen.

Pete Mockaitis
It certainly doesn’t. Can you share some key drivers as to what’s behind that happening so rarely?

Marc Lesser
I think people don’t like conflict. People are often afraid, “Is this person going to be mad?” I think we all want to be liked. We all want to be loved. We’re afraid, “If I bring this up, is it going to make it worse? It’s not really going to fix the problem anyhow.” Or, any set of stories about, I think, fear of making it worse or I’ve noticed often people just give up.

You might bring up a conversation and it didn’t go the way that you wanted it to, and you stop having those conversation, and just go home and complain to your spouse, or just let that ulcer build, let those stressors. And I think this is how not to create an awesome workplace, is to not face into the gaps. I think this is such an important…and not just in work. I think in all our relationships.

Like, not only do I want to be awesome in my work. I want to be awesome in my marriage. I’d like to be awesome as a father. I’d like to be awesome as a brother. And it means, actually, leaning into, “What does awesome look like? And what are the gaps between what I’m feeling and observing and seeing now and my own desire, my own aspiration, my own vision for what awesome look like?”

So, there’s the kinds of examples I’m giving. Awesome looks like agreeing on when we’re going to get picked up, and it actually happening, or agreeing on when those reports are going to happen. But there are also, I think about, that we’re working together in a way that feels supportive and energetic and clear, maybe even fun, at least enough fun.

Yes, so being able to hold those aspirational visions and to work skillfully with others in working to close the gaps in order to make things if not better, maybe even awesome.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And I’m curious, do you have any pro tips if someone is having that thought, like, “Okay, I probably got to say something about this issue but I’m scared. I want them to like me. We might make it worse. Last time that didn’t go so well”? If we’re in that loop of self-talk, do you have any, I don’t know, statistics, or data, or reframes, or wisdom to help us get over the hump?

Marc Lesser
Yeah. Well, yeah, there’s many, many pro tips. Here’s one, one of my favorites. A really easy way to find a way into such dealing with some of those gaps or some of those conflicts is to start by saying, “You know, the story that I’m telling myself is that you’re late every time you’re supposed to pick me up, and, therefore, you don’t respect me. You’re not respecting me and my time. That’s the story that I’m telling myself.”

So, it’s a way of, “I’m taking responsibility. This is something I’m experiencing and seeing. I’m not blaming. I’m not coming after you, saying you, blah, blah, blah, you don’t respect…No, it’s like this is something, this story I’m telling myself is really…” Again, this isn’t for every situation but it’s one way to start the conversation is by leaving the blame.

And often what happens is, by the time we have these conversations, there’s some anger built up, there’s some resentment built up, and you don’t want to…it’s usually not very skillful to start these conversations with anger or blame, but to start with, “Here’s what I’m noticing. Here’s what I’m feeling. Here’s what’s happening with me.”

“And I’m curious, what’s happening with you? What story are you telling yourself? What’s happening with you? And what do we need to do? What do we need to do to close the gaps?” Or, “Here’s a request I have for how I think it would go better in the future.” Any one of those. Those are all a few different tips there.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s great. And I imagine when you open that way, with, “The story I’m telling myself is that you don’t respect me that’s why you’re late,” it’s probably pretty rare that your counterpart says, “You know, you’re right, Marc, that’s exactly what’s happening. I don’t respect you and that’s why I’m late.”

Marc Lesser
Yeah. Part of the other answer, I think you were asking about, like, “Why don’t we have these conversations?” I think most people are incredibly vulnerable, and we all have, I think, a pretty well-developed inner critic, inner judge. We are hardwired to be very cautious and careful, and we don’t want to be hurt. It’s almost like a kind of death that to be vulnerable enough to show how we’re really feeling, to show our vulnerability, to show that we feel disrespected or we feel not seen. All of that comes up.

And so often, it’s not actually what’s happening. It’s not real. So, it’s a little bit unnerving, a little bit vulnerable to come forward with things where we feel where we’re being let down or hurt or challenged, any of those things.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. That’s beautiful. Thank you. Well, you’ve got a number of great tidbits in the book, and so I’d love to hear your view on how we could shift our thinking associated with “difficult people.”

Marc Lesser
Yeah. Well, this is where, I think, I tell the story in the book of, often, in public trainings and workshops, it’s not unusual that someone will ask, “How do I deal? Give me some tips for how to work with difficult people.” And I often will wonder if the person asking the question is one of those difficult people. Now, I think I have to say, of course, there are difficult people, there are people who are toxic, just go around leaving trails of stress.

But those such people, I think, are very, very rare, are very small miniscule percentage of the population. Mostly what we’re talking about is our bosses who just don’t act the way that we want them to all the time, our coworkers who, again, are doing things differently than, in some way, we’re not as comfortable with, or many, many situations where anytime things don’t go the way we want them to, we can then label those people as difficult people.

Now, I’ve been CEO of a few different companies, and I make it a habit to do anonymous surveys of my employees. And I’ve learned that I’m perceived, hard to believe, but some people find me difficult. So, what’s interesting is that some people who work for me feel that I don’t include people enough, and that I’m making decisions too quickly, not being inclusive enough.

And other people find me too inclusive, too slow, asking for the input. So, it’s like, man, we all see the world through different lenses. So, I think this is the key to, I think, working with so-called difficult people, is to start by being curious about, “What lens am I seeing the world through? And what lens are these other people seeing the world through that’s making it difficult and challenging for me?”

And this is chapter one of my book Finding Clarity, is entitled ‘Be curious, not furious.’ And this, I think, is maybe step one about working with these so-called difficult people is noticing if you’re furious, noticing feelings and anger and emotions that are coming up, and to start by being curious about yourself, start by being curious about, “Huh, wow, this has a real charge for me. I wonder what that’s about.”

And, also, a key thing about working this issue about difficult people is to not confuse impact and intention. This is one of those classic rules of thumb in having difficult conversations. So, impact is you do something, Pete, and I’m like, “Ouch! That hurt. That didn’t feel good.” Well, we humans are wired, we go right to thinking, “I know why, that I know your intention, that you must’ve had some bad intention.”

But instead of going right from impact to intention, to be curious, “Hey, that hurt. What just happened there, that didn’t feel good to me. I’m curious, what was that about? What were you thinking? Why did you just do what you did?”

Pete Mockaitis
That’s good. That’s good. Well, you talked about the anonymous surveys for a moment. In practice, how does one execute that? You just, anything, Google Forms, Typeform, or a specialty consulting 360 feedback company that you engage? How does one execute that if they say, “Ooh, I want anonymous surveys”?

Marc Lesser
Well, there happens to be one in the back of my book that when I was CEO of my last organization, I was doing a lot of work with Google, and my friends at Google were happy to provide me with a very well-developed anonymous survey that they used at Google. And I took it and I worked with my team and we customized it and worked it to be as useful and effective for our environment.

And so, yeah, I think it actually takes some thoughtfulness to develop what are the things that you want to measure, what are the things that you want to know from your employees. And, yeah, so it’s designing just the right questions, and it can be a handful of questions, or, I think, the one that I have in the back of my book is about 60 questions. It’s pretty thorough because it gives you a benchmark around culture, around management, around the CEO.

And once you have it, yeah, you just put it out there as any. There’s a bunch of different platforms you can use for forms, and collect the information, and spend a lot of time looking at the results, and it’s hard. I wanted, I’ve always aspired to have awesome workplaces, and, generally, the results of those surveys can be surprising to find out that a lot of people might find the workplace awesome, but a lot of people maybe don’t find it so awesome, and to get more information about what are those gaps, and what can we do to close those gaps.

One of the things that I found out was that things like spending time with employees’ personal and professional development was something that mattered a lot, and that it wasn’t, as CEO and in the last company that I helped grow, there was a gap there. We were not spending, we were not prioritizing really making sure that people felt that their personal and professional development was a high priority, and that we had to put in different systems and mechanisms for being able to support employees more in that way.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. You’ve also got a good tidbit. You say that there are four most important words to assess a relationship. Lay them on us.

Marc Lesser
Yeah, I think the four most important words are, “How are we doing?” And I tell a story in my book about having that conversation with my adult daughter, where I think there’s just something about, again, I think especially if there is any tension or anxiety or gaps in any kind of relationship, the tendency is to not address it and to not talk about it.

And my experience is that’s usually a bad idea. It’s a bad idea in the workplace. It’s a bad idea in our primary relationships with our partners, with our children, with our parents. So, just being able to check in, like, “How are we doing?” But it takes some skill and some presence, actually, to ask that question and to ask it in a way that is real and where you’ll get some real feedback.

Because, usually, I hear this a lot, and I’m sure especially with young kids, “How are you?” “Everything’s fine.” It’s always fine. In the workplace, generally, “Everything’s fine.” So, you might have to dig a little deeper and ask, “Well, what are some things that aren’t fine? Tell me, there must be one thing or a couple things that could be improved in how we’re working together because I want this workplace to be awesome, and it sure doesn’t look to me that you think this is an awesome workplace. What could be better?” And I think it starts with the, “How are we doing?” conversations.

Pete Mockaitis
And if I may ask, where did the conversations with your adult daughter go in terms of highlighting ways to be doing better?

Marc Lesser
Yeah. Well, it wasn’t easy. I got to hear, which I really wanted to, about some things that were bothering her. There had been some challenging miscommunications that happened between me and my daughter, so I suspected there were some lingering feelings, some gaps, some resentments, and I got to hear about those things.

But I felt like talking about them and airing them was really important as opposed to shoving them under the rug or pretending that they didn’t exist. And I also got to express how much I appreciated my daughter being able to tell me about things that were bothering her, and I let her know, “That’s really important to me. I want to know that.”

And I got to express my own sense of how important that relationship is and how much I loved her, and how much all that good wonderful yummy stuff that we get to do with them, our children.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, I’d also love to get your view of when it comes to storytelling, if that could be an effective means of producing compassion accountability and awesomeness in environments. Any perspective on how we can share and receive stories all the more effectively?

Marc Lesser
Yeah, I’ve been working with a few different leaders on the importance of storytelling as a way of expressing. I think it’s a really important skill to be able to express a vision, to be able to tell stories about things that were awesome, things that were successful, specific stories about what customer engagement, employees that went above and beyond what was expected to do, things that were amazing, and to tell stories about failures, and breakdowns, and what happened, and what we learned.

Yes, storytelling, I think, is, I’m surprised there aren’t more MBAs, more business school classes on the art of storytelling, such an, I think, important competency and skill for leaders.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, so it’s important. Any tips on doing it better?

Marc Lesser
It’s funny, I used to do and I still do it, a fair amount of keynote speaking. And being able to be a good storyteller, I remember years ago, hiring a coach and consultant. And part of it is practicing, practice telling a story. Take specific events and talk about them. I think the typical arc of any story is describing what’s happening, what’s the challenge, and how we overcame that challenge, and what we learned from it.

It’s like the hero’s journey. The hero’s journey starts with that we’re all heroes in the journey of life, and it starts maybe with the aspiration for awesomeness, the aspiration to find our true home, to find meaning, to find connection. And then there’s always the challenges and how we find our own power to meet and overcome these challenges. Star Wars, apparently, according to George Lucas, was based on his reading of the traditional hero’s journey process of stories and of life.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, tell me, Marc, anything else you want to make sure to mention before we shift gears and hear about some of your favorite things?

Marc Lesser
I think we’ve accomplished a lot here.

Pete Mockaitis
I think so, too. Well, so now you gave me it before, but I want to hear it again. It’s so good. Favorite quote, drop it on us.

Marc Lesser
Well, I’ve got many favorites. I started and ran a greeting card company for 15 years so I am a professional quote collector. But one of my all-time favorites is Wendell Berry, who’s a fifth-generation Kentucky farmer, who said, “Be joyful though you’ve considered all the facts,” which I think is great on a hard day in business or reading the newspaper. Like, don’t shy away from the facts but practice with joy.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And do you have a favorite study or experiment or bit of research?

Marc Lesser
Oh, man, favorite study, bit of research. Yeah, I love some of the studies on meditation and how studies showing how meditation will, over time, change the gray matter in your brain, and studies showing that meditation, the relationship between meditation and developing one’s own leadership skills and emotional intelligence. Lots of studies out there, thousands of these people studying meditation and mindfulness.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite book?

Marc Lesser
Well, the book that I was thinking about while I was talking today is a book called Difficult Conversations. And it’s a book that’s one of the best edited books. Every word in that book matters. Yeah, it comes out of the Harvard negotiating team and it’s simply called Difficult Conversations.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And a favorite tool, something you use to be awesome at your job?

Marc Lesser
I love my MacBook Pro. It faltered as I was starting it this morning, I said, “Oh, no, I depend on this computer so much these days.” So, yeah, I love my MacBook.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite habit?

Marc Lesser
Getting up every morning at 5:30.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And is there a key nugget you share that really seems to connect and resonate with folks; they quote it back to you often?

Marc Lesser
Yeah, the four most important words, “How are we doing?”

Pete Mockaitis
And if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Marc Lesser
My website, MarcLesser.net with lots of my writing and audio and video. Yeah, worth a visit.

Pete Mockaitis
And do you have a final challenge or call to action for folks looking to be awesome at their jobs?

Marc Lesser
Yeah, don’t avoid conflict. Learn to get awesome at noticing and working skillfully with the gaps between what is and what would be awesome.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Marc, this has been a treat. I wish you much fun and clarity.

Marc Lesser
Thank you, Pete. It’s been a pleasure.

Jul 31
0

886: How to Become an Executive with Adam Bryant

By | Podcasts | No Comments

 

Adam Bryant shares powerful insights on how to get promoted and be successful as a leader.

You’ll Learn:

  1. What every aspiring leader should know about themselves
  2. How to get promoted without asking for a promotion
  3. The key ratio that positions you for advancement

About Adam

Adam Bryant is Senior Managing Director and Partner at the ExCo Group, where he works with hundreds of senior leaders and high-potential executives. As the creator and former author of the iconic “Corner Office” column in The New York Times, Bryant has mastered the art of distilling real-world lessons from his hundreds of interviews and turning them into practical tools, presentations, and exercises to help companies deepen their leadership benches and strengthen their teams. He also works with executive leadership teams to help drive their transformation strategies, based on a best-practices framework he developed for his widely praised book, THE CEO TEST: Master the Challenges That Make or Break All Leaders.

Resources Mentioned

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Adam Bryant Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Adam, welcome to How to be Awesome at Your Job.

Adam Bryant
Thank you for the invitation, Pete. I’ve been looking forward to this.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, me, too. Me, too. Well, I’m excited to hear the wisdom you’ve collected in your book, The Leap to Leader: How Ambitious Managers Make the Jump to Leadership. But, first, we need to hear about you and ping-pong. What’s the story, training with a ping-pong coach?

Adam Bryant
Yeah, that’s a sentence that I never thought I would utter in my life, which is that I have a ping-pong coach. But we moved down to New Orleans a few years ago where my two daughters are, including now my son-in-law. And he was blessed with great hand-eye coordination for things like golf. And in the townhouse we have, my wife generously gave me the loft for my “office,” and I put that in air quotes. But I have my desk up there, I have a pool table, a foosball table, and a ping-pong table.

And I just got determined to get better at this, and I found a ping-pong coach in New Orleans, and I train with him a couple of days a week, and it’s pretty cool. At my age, I’d recently turned 60, but it’s cool to get better at something. And my son-in-law used to beat me pretty consistently. I now beat him, I’d say, a little more than half the time.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, congratulations. And I’m just imagining these training sessions with the ping-pong coach with sort of Rocky montage type music in the background, and he’s, like, screaming at you to push yourself to the very limits. Is that how it goes down?

Adam Bryant
Not so much, but he’s a good coach. He’s from Vietnam and there’s a word he’s taught me, which is “Cho-le” which means sort of, “Let’s go.” And when you hit a really good shot, you celebrate and yell, “Cho-le.” The other thing, you’re taking me down a rabbit hole, Pete, but the one thing that is very cool about the world of ping-pong is that when you hit a lucky shot, generally, you sort of put up your hand just to sort of signal to your opponent that you acknowledge it was a lucky shot.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s friendly.

Adam Bryant
I think it’s very refreshing compared to some sports, like soccer, where people always just, like, fake flopping and things like that, so.

Pete Mockaitis
Right. It’s like, “Yes, I know. I’m so amazing. Look at me, I can pull it off.” Well, so tell us, I imagine there’s a lot of practice you invested. Are there any sort of tips or principles for folks also looking to be awesome at ping-pong? What would you suggest for them?

Adam Bryant
Well, there’s kind of basement ping-pong where you’re just sort of flailing your arms, but to do it properly, it is, and I know this sounds silly, but it is an incredible workout because you basically have to be squatting very low and also be on your toes. And footwork is a huge part of it, so you got to be super agile on your feet while you’re squatting, while you’re on your toes, and to get yourself in a position to hit the shots. So, it’s one of those things, like a lot of things in life, from afar it looks pretty easy, but it is an incredible workout. I get the same calorie burn from that as like a Peloton workout, so.

Pete Mockaitis
No kidding. All right. Good to know. Well, so now onto…

Adam Bryant
Less important matters, how to be awesome at your ping-pong, right, Pete?

Pete Mockaitis
Well, now for some insights which could have maybe an even greater transformational impact on people’s careers. So, you’ve interviewed over a thousand CEOs over your life and career. That’s pretty cool. Can you share with me any interesting themes associated with what’s kind of different about these people than others? And how do they generally get to become one?

Adam Bryant
And just to give you the context, so when I first started interviewing CEOs, it was for a series I created at the New York Times called Corner Office, which was based on a very simple what-if, which is, “What if I sat down with CEOs and never ask them a single question about their company?” which is how CEOs are usually interviewed, and just focus on the leadership lessons and early influences, and how they talk and think about the sort of universal challenges of leadership.

So, that was my initial focus. I, also, from the very start, embraced diversity in, literally, every sense of the word in the people I interviewed. And so, looking back now and kind of saying, “Well, what are the patterns?” I think one of the clear patterns that emerged is this skill, this habit of mind, to be able to simplify complexity. And, to me, it is one of the common threads.

I don’t think you can lead effectively if you don’t have that because I do think it’s a leader’s job to take the complexity of the world, their industry, what’s happening in their company, and it’s just one of those key leadership moments to be able to stand on a stage, whether it’s literal or virtual, and basically answer the kind of questions that little kids ask in the backseat, which is, “Where are we going? And how are we going to get there? And when are we going to get there?” And I know that sounds simple but simple is hard, and I just think it’s such an important skill. Because if you know how to simplify complexity, then you’re also going to be a good communicator.

So, to me, that’s like one of the core skills that you have to have. In terms of how they became CEOs, what’s been so refreshing and so what I’ve really enjoyed just hearing people’s past and their stories is that, yes, I met a few CEOs over the years, Pete, who just seem like from central casting, like they were the class president, they were the frat house president. There were just those kids who, from an early age, they said, “You’re going to be a CEO someday.”

And I met a few of those but I have to say they were kind of in a distinct minority. I met a lot of people who you just never would’ve guessed, like they were former elementary school teachers, they studied classical organ in college, just really unusual backgrounds, theater. And, suddenly, they’re, like not suddenly, but now they’re running a huge company.

And I have thought a lot about this because I think people are hungry for career advice, and I think part of the thing that they’re looking for is an answer to the question, “Am I on the right path? What is the right path? If I want to move up, if I want to get that CEO job, what is the right path?” And what I always tell people is there are some obvious directional things you have to do. Like, if you want to be a CEO of a really big company, you should get a job at a really big company at a young age.

So, once you check the obvious things, what I always tell people is that there is no right path. The most important path is the path that you are on. And the thing that really separates people that I find is whether they keep their eyes open, and they look around, and they’re always, it’s this kind of machine learning of whatever their experience is, and keeping their eyes open, they’re just always sort of sifting that experience, it’s like, “What am I learning? What am I noticing? Boy, that boss seems to be really effective. What is it that he or she does? That seems like a really bad boss. Why is that? This team is effective.”

And so, to me, it’s just that quality of keeping your eyes open. I often reflect on a saying that I heard from a college president named Ruth Simmons. And what she would tell students is that, “You should always be prepared at any moment of your life to learn the most important lesson of your life.” And I think it’s just a great sort of guide for your life just to keep your eyes open and learn, because there are lessons everywhere.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s powerful. And I think, a lot of times, in my own experience, that can come up in just the form of a wild idea in terms of, “I’m noticing this and I’m wondering that. And then, what do you know, and now this is a business. Well, how about that? That was interesting.”

Adam Bryant
Yeah. And, to me, like a lot of that comes from silence. Like, yes, there is that sort of habit of mind. And, as you just described, you’re always questioning, like, “Why is that?” And you see sort of like a seam or a gap in the world, it’s like, “Why is that there?” And it is that sort of curiosity, that relentless questioning. But I also think that a lot of that, making the most of the experience that you’ve had, processing it, looking for the patterns, probing it, it does require time for reflection.

And I think a lot of people, silence isn’t comfortable, and they pick up their phone, and they start scrolling or something. And so, I always tell people, it’s like, “You need to get comfortable with silence, and just to have those conversations with yourself so you can process what you’ve been learning.”

Pete Mockaitis
And when it comes to the simplifying complexity, could you give us an example of, “Here’s complexity and here’s, on the other side of a CEO simplification. See how that’s great?”

Adam Bryant
Yeah, sure. And I often use the example of Bob Iger, the CEO at Disney. So, the backstory before he became CEO at Disney, he was the internal candidate, and I think the board actually wanted an external candidate. So, he went on this campaign for the job, and he basically created this very simple, like, three-part plan, he said, “If you make me a CEO, these are the three things that I’m going to focus on.”

He said, “Great content.” You can say, “Well, that’s obvious, right? Like, you’re Disney.” But, “Second one was global expansion. So, we’re going to place those bets. We’re going to go into newer markets.” And you could say, “Well, that sounds obvious, too.” But the third one that he said is that, “We are going to embrace technology in all its forms. New technology. So, whatever new technology comes along, whether it’s streaming, even if it undermines our traditional business model in the short term, we are going to embrace it.”

And what’s been interesting is that, Pete, he has never ever wavered from those three things. If you read his book, The Ride of a Lifetime, which is a good book, there’s good insights, it’s not that sort of CEO victory lap kind of book, you can just sort of see, like the growth of the company. It’s, like, all along those three pillars. And he’s just relentless about communicating that.

Last time I checked, the second sentence of his bio on the corporate website referred to those three things, like, great content, global expansion, embracing new technology. And so, to me, that is a good little case study of what that looks like. Because, again, like it’s a sweet spot, you can look at that and say, “Well, isn’t that obvious?” And it’s like, “Well, actually, great content maybe yes, but the other two were very clear bets and clear paths.”

And the great thing about when you get it right, when you do simplify complexity as a leader, then it’s actually really great for morale because everybody kind of understands how you’re going to win, they understand how the work they are doing can contribute to the success of the company. And there’s this popular expression you’ve probably heard that culture eats strategy for breakfast. You hear it a lot at conferences. It’s always attributed to Peter Drucker. It turns out there’s no record that he ever said it, and I increasingly believe it’s wrong.

That you need to have that really clear strategy, that simplified complexity so that everybody can understand how they are helping the team win. And if you do that, I think that’s great for morale and culture.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. So, in the Disney example, the simplified version is great content, global market, embracing technology. What would be the complex version that a CEO who is floundering might put forward?

Adam Bryant
Listen, you’ve probably seen them yourself. I certainly have. A lot of companies pull together strategy decks, and they’re 40-slides long, and they use 8-point font. You can’t even read it from the back of the room. There’s lots of pyramids, and there are colors and cork screw arrows, and just too much. And it’s the kind of thing that they may make sense in the moment but the key thing is, like, “Do you remember them?”

And we all know all the neuroscience shows that most people can’t remember more than three or four things day to day. And you can have that really complicated strategy document but you have to pass the hallway test. So, you just imagine, if you pick some random person in the hallway and stop them, and said, “Do you know what our strategy is?” would they be able to echo it back to you? And that’s why it’s so crucial to be able to distill that strategy.

I interviewed one CEO and she had this great line. She referred to her father, who used to talk about cows, chickens, and taters. And she internalized that as just a reminder, it’s like, “Just use really simple everyday language. Keep it simple,” because there is this bias in the business world.

People like reaching for that $20-word, it makes things sound better and more formal and fancier and all those things. And it takes so much discipline to hit that sweet spot of simplifying complexity so people go, “Okay, I get it. I get how we’re going to win and I get how the work that I’m doing is helping the team win.”

Pete Mockaitis
So, even if those synergies are highly impactful, you don’t want to say it like that.

Adam Bryant
Exactly.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Understood.

Adam Bryant
Exactly.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, so thinking about, specifically, your book, The Leap to Leader, any particularly surprising or fascinating discoveries that you came across in the direct preparation of the book or in the background leading up to it?

Adam Bryant
Yes. So, look, I think writing books is a process of discovery. You sort of write books to figure out what you know and to really put a sharp point on things, and I will call out a few things. The first section of the book is called ‘Do you really want to lead?’ And I think it’s an important question that people should really ask themselves because there is this kind of like momentum that just happens, either personally or institutionally, within organizations where you just kind of get carried along.

And if you’re a high performer, it’s like, “Well, of course, you want to lead, of course you want to move into that management position, and then a leadership position.” And I think people really need to stop and spend some time, again, in silence. Spend some time with themselves to be really clear about why they want to lead others and whether they want to lead others, and not just be carried along by that sort of river of promotion into the bigger title.

Because I think, a lot of people, it’s like, “Of course, I want that job because there’s a bigger title and there’s more money with it.” Or, they may want to lead because they like the idea of having more power or whatever. And I just think that leadership is so hard, and a lot of people get into leadership positions, and they go, “Wow, like I had no idea it was this hard.”

You’re dealing with people’s problems, you’ve got fires you’re putting out every day, the day is kind of a three-shift day, you’re tossing and turning, staring at the ceiling at 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning. And so, you need to be very clear in your mind about why you want to lead. And so, just having that moment, I think, is really key.

Another insight I’ll share is this idea of how to be awesome at your job, and I’m sure you talk in big part of the audience of people who want to move up in their career. And one of the things that I came to appreciate is that, look, we’re always taught, “You got to have your elevator pitch ready.” People are told that early in their career, “Have your elevator pitch ready.”

And, to me, that generally means one of two things. One is your elevator pitch are like, “What are you working on?” In case you’re in the elevator with a CEO, “Hey, what are you working on?” you got to have that ready. And the second elevator pitch is, like, “Well, what do you want to do? Like, what are your career goals?” You got to have that elevator pitch ready.

And what I’ve come to really appreciate is that people don’t spend enough time on their third elevator pitch, which is that if somebody were to ask you, “Who are you as a leader?” what would you say to them? And you may go through your entire career, taking over new teams, and nobody will ever ask you that question, but what if they do? And, to me, that then raises a question, “Well, how do you answer that? Like, what does a good answer sound like?”

And, to me, it’s about being able to say, “Look, these are the three values that are really important to me,” and you don’t just stop at the words because there’s a lot of fridge-magnet poetry in the leadership field. There’s a lot of words that people just sort of toss around, they sound right and good. But I think when people reflect on and think about how they’re going to talk about their personal values, it’s not enough to just say these words, “These ideas are important to me.”

You then need to be able to back them up, and say, “These are the stories of how these became important to me. And this is why they’re important. And this is what it looks like in action. And this is how I found these values to be really important and effective for driving success in the teams that I’ve been part of.” Really bring those ideas to life.

I talk about it as like your personal leadership brand, like, “What do you stand for as a leader? And when you’re not in the room, like how would a direct report describe you to a job candidate?” So, you want to be clear about what you stand for. And I think, in this day and age, just in the last few years, there’s been so much more talk about humanity and transparency and vulnerability and authenticity, all these qualities that people want to see more in their leaders.

And I think being very clear about your personal values and being willing to share those, I think that helps with all those things because you want to take the mystery out of who you are as a boss, because you’re always being studied by your direct reports, they are trying to figure out who you are, like, “Are you moody? Like, are you happy?” They’re studying your body language.

And the more you can be sort of up front, and say, “Look, this is who I am. This is my personal values. This is what’s important to me,” then your direct reports can say, “Okay, I got that. Now, I need to spend less time trying to figure you out, and I could spend more time getting my job done.” And, to me, that’s success on a lot of levels.

Pete Mockaitis
And so, to that first point, “Why do you want to lead?” you say it’s very hard, and you need to have a good why in place as opposed to just, “Oh, well, hey, you know, I’m doing pretty well and I like winning and achieving, so that’s the next step. Let’s just go ahead and do it.” So, that’d be a lame or ineffective why, it’s almost no why. You’re just sort of going with the flow. What would be some rich articulations of effective whys for leading?

Adam Bryant
Yeah, look, the older I get, the more I like sentences that begin with, “There’s only two kinds of people, Pete,” and sometimes those work. But I do think there’s only two kinds of managers in the world, and only two kinds of leaders as well, but I think there’s this sort of framework. It’s not black or white. It’s not one or the other, but I think some managers and leaders are more selfless and some are more self-centered.

And I think, to me, the best leaders, the best managers, are selfless. They’re doing it because they want to help the team, the organization. They want to help their direct reports. And, to me, not that there’s a right answer, but I think really effective whys start there, that you believe in what the organization does, you can see the impact that the organization can have. And then you want to have impact as a leader, and I think that means elevating people, and making them better, and helping build their skills, and seeing trajectories for their career that maybe they didn’t even see for themselves.

I say in the book that leadership is complicated and it’s okay to have a complicated relationship with leadership, and I have, in my career. I’ve been in plenty of roles where I was the number two, and I was very happy in those roles. And I was in other roles where I was the leader. And, to me, it wasn’t about being number one. It sort of kept my ego in check.

And the thing that motivated me in all my management and leadership roles was I approached the job as a coach, “I am here, I’ve learned a few things in my career, and I want to share them with you. And I want you to achieve, like, wild success. I want to help you get better,” and that was my why in all those years.

Pete Mockaitis
And I’d love to get your take, having interviewed a thousand CEOs, and I guess it’s hard you can’t peer into their souls, but what’s your sense of roughly what proportion of leaders are selfless versus self-centered?

Adam Bryant
If I could take your question and maybe reframe it slightly, it’s like my understanding of their why, like, “Why are they doing this?” again, people are complicated so there’s, like, a thousand layers of motivations.

That said, I have noticed sort of patterns, and I put them into three or four broad categories, because I’ve always been curious in, like, “Why do you want this job?” One of the questions that I ask so many of the leaders that I interviewed, Pete, is like, “Where does your drive come from?” Because I’m curious about that because you need a certain amount of drive and stamina to do these big jobs. Like, on paper they’re kind of awful jobs. They’re just all-consuming, there’s a lot of responsibility, there’s a lot of weight on your back.

And so, as I’ve tried to probe that, the patterns that I’ve seen, the first one is they grew up with some kind of adversity and sometimes really tough adversity. I cannot tell you how many times I’ve heard really sad stories about growing up, and not just sort of financial straits but alcoholic parent, abusive parent. I’ve heard stories about growing up in a comfortable middle-class lifestyle, mom stayed at home, dad worked, and then he died at a young age, and there was no life insurance. And, suddenly, the family was kind of scrambling to just put food on the table and pay the electric bill.

And there was one time I interviewed two CEOs, back-to-back, and they said the exact same thing, told me the same life story that I just explained to you. So, they had that kind of trauma, that adversity at a young age, they know what it felt like to be out of control, and so that was a big part of their driving motivation. And, again, not to get sort of too shrink-y here but I think sometimes people, when they face a lot of adversity early in their life, they want to have a little bit more control. So, maybe that helps explain part of their drive.

I think another big category is some version of, like, the immigrant story, which is this idea of the first in your family to do X. And I think if you grow up and you’re always the first in your family to go to college, to do this, to do that, that you spend so much time kind of forging a new path that, ultimately, that just becomes, like, your comfort zone. And you need that kind of mindset as a leader, it’s like you’re always comfortable doing new things and dealing with new problems.

I put another category. Some people just like hit the parent lottery, like had a great family, maybe they’ve got an interesting blend of DNA strands where an entrepreneur parent and the other one was a psychologist, or there was an engineering parent married to…and the other parent was an artist, so you get that sort of interesting yin and yang, and just had sort of great messages and lessons growing up.

So, again, armchair psychology on my part. It probably wouldn’t stand up to peer review in a scientific journal, but those are the patterns I’ve seen.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, now I’m curious, when it comes to the actual, let’s say, okay, we’ve got some great reasons, folks are raring to go, they want to become a leader executive, can you maybe start us with a story about someone who was not getting promoted, they wanted it, but then they made a switch in their approach and they pulled it off, they made the leap?

Adam Bryant
To me, a big part of making that leap, usually there’s a story under there where people explain, like, “What was that moment? What was that mindset shift?” and there’s a few that come to mind. There’s one executive I interviewed where she was moving up, and she hit this point where she realized she couldn’t do it all, and she needed to delegate. And she had the insight that she had to start giving away the stuff that she really liked to do and that she was really good at, so that she could then get to the next level.

And I can really relate to that because as people are moving up, we all have the things we’re really good, our strengths and weaknesses, and we tend to really like to do the things that we’re good at. But the point is if you want to get up to that top leadership position, at some point you have to start giving that stuff away, and letting other people do it.

There was another moment from another executive where she had become sort of a new CEO of a startup, and she was going to the chair of the board and sort of running key decisions past the board chair. And, at some point, the chairman just turned to her, and said, “Look, I can give you my advice but you need to realize, ultimately, this is your decision. And if you are wrong, we are going to fire you.”

And it was just that sort of moment of clarity, it’s like because when you are a leader, part of the mindset is it’s not about asking for permission anymore. To have that top job, you’ve got to own the accountability and you’ve got to own the outcomes of your decisions. And that’s a big part to me of making the leap to leader is being comfortable making decisions when the data isn’t there, because the higher you move up, like the decisions get harder, there’s less data, there’s more gray areas, there’s more unhappy people. Whether you go left or right, or up or down, you’re going to make some people unhappy.

And, to me, a big part of leadership is being willing to make decisions, to take the risks and own the outcomes, because, honestly, Pete, a lot of people aren’t comfortable doing that.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s good to surface there. And I don’t know if there’s a recipe for how one gets comfortable doing that. Is there?

Adam Bryant
Well, I think it’s being aware of the fact that it is your job to make those hard decisions. I reflect on a conversation I had with one CEO, he was a first-time CEO, and he’s just feeling like, “Wow, like every day is kind of a hard day. These problems are coming to my desk, and I don’t really know what the answer is.” And the lightbulb went off for him where he realized, “This is my job. And, yes, it’d be nice to have the easy decisions come to you, but they generally get taken care of farther down in the organization.”

So, at some point, you have to make the shift, and realize what may seem like a burden is an opportunity. It is your job. There are no easy days. And you need to see those tough decisions as interesting puzzles, because I do feel like we’re in this, we’re just living through this breathtaking moment of change for all the obvious reasons since the start of the pandemic. But I do think managing people and leading people has gotten five to ten times harder.

And in our consulting work at my firm, The ExCo Group, we do see a lot of fast-rising executives who are kind of tapping out, and saying, “Look, I didn’t sign up for how hard this is.” And I think we are in this moment where it is kind of black or white, like we are not in this moment anymore where there’s some playbook for leadership and how to have these new conversations about compassion and remote work, and all these things. It’s like these are new and very hard problems for which there’s no clear answer.

And I think you need to do a gut check. It goes back to this idea of, “Do you really want to lead?” And you have to ask yourself, like, “Are you excited about this?” Because if you’re excited about it, and say to yourself, “What an amazing time to be managing and leading people where we’re figuring out the future of work, the future of leadership, and you have an opportunity to shape that and be a part of it. Wow, that’s really exciting.”

So, are you that kind of person or are you saying to yourself, “I just find all these problems just kind of overwhelming. Everything seems so hard. Just the lines are blurring between the personal and professional. Everybody is kind of trying to figure out this new world of work and expectations. And I just find this all exhausting and somewhat overwhelming”?

And you need to be honest with yourself because I do feel like we’re at this moment where you really have to look at yourself in the mirror, and say, “Leadership is getting harder. Managing is getting harder. Do you want to do this?”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, now to dig into a couple of your particular concepts in the book, I was intrigued by you’ve got a notion called the say-do ratio. What is that? And how do we perfect ours?

Adam Bryant
Sure. So, the third section of the book is called ‘How to get promoted without asking for a promotion?’ And it’s sort of this is in your sweet spot of how to be awesome at your job. How do you set yourself apart? Because if you are ambitious and you want to move up, the question at the core of that is, “Okay, how do you set yourself apart?”

And, to me, one of the easiest ways to do it is to have a great do-to-say ratio. And that comes from a CEO that I interviewed; a guy named Brett Wilson. When I first heard it, I kind of fell out of my chair but what it means is “What percentage of the things that you say you’re going to do, do you actually do?” And it’s about reliability, it’s about dependability, it’s about your reputation, it’s about trustworthiness.

And I think if you want to set yourself apart, if you just have this rule that whatever you say you’re going to do, that you follow through on. And if, for some reason, you can’t, you tell people, it’s like, “Hey, I know I promised you that but this happened. I need an extra day.” You’re just upfront about it rather than letting them discover that you missed the deadline. I think if you build a reputation as being super reliable and dependable, you can really set yourself apart.

And the beauty of this is that it is so easy to improve. Again, you got to be honest with yourself. Pete, your listeners need to ask themselves, “What is your do-to-say ratio? Is it really high? Or are there some things that you say you’re going to do that you don’t always follow through on? And the beauty of this, it’s like a really easy hack to improve your do-to-say ratio, which is just whenever you say you’re going to do something, just write it down. Make a note to yourself, your computer, or mostly on your phone. It doesn’t matter where, just keep a list somewhere.

And even in the small stuff, if you say, “Oh, I’m going to connect you with that person,” and you follow through on it, like if you do that consistently, people are going to start noticing things, like, “Wow, this person always does what they say they’re going to do.” And then that builds your reputation, and so you’re going to get more responsibility because people just know you’re that kind of person that’s going to own it and deliver it.

Pete Mockaitis
Absolutely. You say that compartmentalization is a crucial art. What do you mean by that? And how do we get better at it?

Adam Bryant
Well, I think as you get higher in leadership positions, like the problems get harder, and as we discussed, the decisions get more difficult, you’re going to make mistakes, you’re going to be second-guessed, you’re going to be criticized, any decision you’re going to make is going to leave somebody unhappy just because of all the tradeoffs.

And so, I think a key skill of leadership is to be able to compartmentalize and to keep everything in perspective. Because if you’re not good at that, what does that look like? It means like you’re always beating yourself up for any wrong decisions, or you don’t take criticism well, you’re always worrying about the impact of your decisions on other people, you’re staring at the ceiling at 2:00 in the morning when you should be sleeping, and you’re just not going to be an effective leader.

And some people over-index the other way, Pete. I’ve certainly seen people who are so good at compartmentalizing, it basically means they have no empathy, like they just let everything roll off their back, and they don’t seem to appreciate the impact of their decisions on people. And maybe that’s not healthy either, but, to me, being able to compartmentalize to sort of acknowledge the challenges, but then sort of keep them in a box in your mind so that it’s like, “Okay, I’ve dealt with that, I’m thinking about that. I’m going to park this here and I’ll come back to it later.”

Pete Mockaitis
And if our compartmentalization art is not so artful and we do tend to ruminate and think about the thing that’s not so handy and we’d prefer to have it compartmentalized, how do we get better at it?

Adam Bryant
Part of it is to let go of perfection, because if things are chewing you up inside, it’s, first, you’re not going to be perfect and to give yourself a break. One of our mentors at my firm often shares this advice with startup founders and stuff, and it’s a great line. He says, “Look, if you talk to your friends the way you’re talking to yourself, you wouldn’t have any friends.”

And, to me, that’s a sort of a great point to keep in mind. It’s like you need to take care of yourself. And some people are very driven and they’re really performance-oriented and success-oriented. If something doesn’t go well, you could spend a lot of time beating yourself up, and you just need to let that go.

Another trap that people fall into is that we want to be liked. Like, who doesn’t? As a manager, as a leader, you want people to like you, and you need to let go of that as well, and shift from wanting people to like you to people respecting you. It doesn’t mean that it’s fine if they don’t like you because they’re not going to follow you, but just to worry less about whether people like you.

And I think if you just keep, for every decision you have to make, you can get chewed up about, “Well, is this the right thing to do? And it’s going to affect this person this way and have these consequences.” If you just run every decision that you face through a simple framework of, “What is the best for the company or for the organization that I’m running, or the team that I’m running?” like, that’s a way of sort of simplifying and clarifying.

And then you could probably sleep better at night, and say, “Look, I know there are some disruptions here. I know I’ve kind of created a blast zone, but I know this is the right decision for the organization,” that’s going to help you compartmentalize. So, I think those are a couple of specific strategies.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And how do you recommend we build our self-awareness muscle?

Adam Bryant
It starts with five words that I heard from a young CEO years ago, and it was one of those moments when she said it, it was kind of burned into my head. And the backstory was that she had a really rough childhood, very difficult relationship with her parents, they moved a lot, she was bullied at school, and she was sort of telling me about her life story.

And, at one point in the interview, I had said, “Well, you have such a positive attitude. Where does that come from?” And she said these five words, she said, “Reality is just source material.” And what she meant is that, “Look, there is the reality of the things we experience but it’s just a reminder that we are always creating narratives for ourselves. We are constantly sort of editing the films of our experience and focusing on certain things to tell ourselves good stories, bad stories.”

And, to me, that’s such an important insight because if you believe in the idea that reality is just source material, and that we’re always, in effect, telling ourselves stories, that it allows you to sort of step outside yourself a little bit and to ask yourself, like, “Wait a minute. What story am I telling myself about that experience? And is there another way to look at it?” And I think that helps guard against some of the traps that people fall into in the stories they tell themselves.

So, one of the common traps is the victim narrative, “Stuff is happening to me,” and you just start feeling like a victim when you should see everything as a learning opportunity. It reminds me of that expression I heard from one CEO, which is that, “Ninety-five percent of the worse stuff that happens to you winds up being the best stuff that happens to you because you really learn from those experiences. It builds your character, gives you a lot of wisdom about life.”

So, the victim narrative is one trap. The fairness or unfairness narrative is another trap. You can often feel like, in organizations, things aren’t fair. And it’s just a matter of, like, “Look, reality is what it is.” And if you really push yourself, it’s like, “Am I thinking about this in the most productive way? Am I seeing everything as an opportunity?”

Because, to me, that’s one of the things that really separates entrepreneurs. I’ve interviewed hundreds of entrepreneurs, and they are wired slightly differently. And I think one of the key ways is they don’t sort of dwell on bad news. It’s like everything is an opportunity, “What’s the plan B? What’s the plan C here?” and they just keep pushing forward. So, to me, those are a couple of the key things to keep in mind just to help build that self-awareness muscle.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And any thoughts on politics, office politics, networking, trickery?

Adam Bryant
Well, politics, there’s politics in every organization, especially the organizations that like to say, “We don’t have any politics.” And the one tip that I always keep in mind with politics is you really need to understand what the other person’s scoreboard is in their head for their own success. To me, that’s the secret to understanding office politics because, as much as companies like to say there’s a shared scoreboard and everybody is going to work together as a team, the reality is that everybody has got their own part of that.

And everybody is building their part of the business, and they tend to focus almost with blinders on about that. And so, to me, one of the ways to sort of help you navigate politics is always start by understanding what is the other person’s scoreboard. Because if you understand what is their scoreboard, then you’re much more likely to add clarity about how you can help them, and how you can kind of find a common ground. So, that’s my best insight about politics.

And I would also say about networking, I don’t know about you, Pete, but I’m an introvert. I don’t like the idea of networking. That’s sort of like, “There’s 20 people over there, just go mingle during drinks before a conference.” That makes me really uncomfortable, and I’m not good at it. But I think it’s important to build your network. And if you focus on, “Well, how do you build your network?” to me, the most effective way to do it is not just, “Hey, can we have a coffee? Or, do you want to grab a drink or something?”

To me, the most effective way is to do things with people, to build something together, just be on a committee with them to do some project together, maybe it’s outside your day job or something. But, to me, like that’s the way to sort of really cement those relationships. Whether it’s with colleagues internally or, like, maybe serving on a board, or part of an organization outside your company, but the way to build your lasting networks, so those relationships really last, is to do something with people rather than just share a coffee.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, Adam, tell me, anything else you want to make sure to mention before we shift gears and hear about some of your favorite things?

Adam Bryant
I’m over to you, Pete.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Now, could you give us a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Adam Bryant
I mentioned the early one from Ruth Simmons about always be prepared at any point in your life to learn the most important lesson in your life. That’s one of my favorites. The other favorite is “Play in traffic.” And whenever people are asking me for career advice, I often mention that. And what it means is just, like, get out there and do stuff. Meet people. Get involved. Just start doing things. Play in traffic, and you’re going to build those connections that are going to lead to things.

And I think about that often because I think, sometimes, people when they’re first starting out their careers, they tend to have very specific ideas about their career plans, like, “By this age, I want to make this much money, I want to have this title,” and it’s sort of very linear. But that’s not how life works. Your career path is going to be shaped much more by the people you meet, the people you work with, people you connect with.

And so, you really just want to get out there and meet a lot of people in the context of work and doing things, so that’s why I love that expression – play in traffic.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite study or experiment or bit of research?

Adam Bryant
There is a study about capuchin monkeys. And if your listeners look it up, capuchin monkeys fairness study, and it’s this great video about two monkeys in cages, and they’re fed like a cucumber versus a grape, and it’s sort of how the two monkeys react to getting either the grape or the cucumber. It’s just a powerful reminder of how, as human beings, one of our triggers is fairness. It’s a hilarious video.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite book?

Adam Bryant
I love In the Heart of the Sea. It’s a great book about whaling that got made into a movie. I love books about sort of adventure and resilience, and what people do, like, in really tough circumstances. I often go back to that.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite tool, something you use to be awesome at your job?

Adam Bryant
I’ll probably say my recorders because I’ve done a thousand interviews, so that’s probably my Swiss Army knife. It all starts with that.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, now I need to know. Recorders, we’re talking about, like, an external…?

Adam Bryant
Yeah, I’m a lot older than you, Pete. So, I grew up using external recorders.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, sure. Well, that’s handy when you’re out and about. Sure.

Adam Bryant
Exactly. I’m dating myself but, yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
I have one as well, so. And a favorite habit?

Adam Bryant
Probably the best, but maybe not my favorite is just, like, exercising every day, like trying to go out for a run. And, to me, that’s how I kind of stay centered and blow off steam. I will share that I basically listen to the same playlist every time I go for a run. It’s not because I’m listening to the music. It’s I like to have music, but to me it’s just background noise. It’s kind of like a green screen that I can think against. So, I probably just overshared there.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, no, actually that’s perfect, and I would like to know a couple of the tracks on the playlist.

Adam Bryant
There’s Dave Matthews in there, there’s U2, John Legend. It’s a pretty eclectic mix, I have to say.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And is there a particular nugget you share that really seems to connect and resonate with folks; they repeat it back to you often?

Adam Bryant
One thing, I’m sure, like an important insight for me, and it goes back to there’s a famous interview question that Peter Thiel, the entrepreneur who’s pretty famous for asking people, which is like, “What do you believe that 95% of the world disagrees with you on?” And I think it’s a great way to sort of getting that creative thinking and stuff.

And I have to say, like it was an important insight for me that I think the world has it completely wrong on in the following way, that the world tends to refer to children as young adults. And I think it’s backwards because I think adults are older children. And I think if we sort of all acknowledge that and recognize that, and that people bring their little red wagon of stuff into work, and we’re all motivated by a lot of the same things that kids are motivated by, like, “You want to go first. That’s not fair. Let me do myself,” all those reactions that kids have, adults have them, too.

So, I think it’s a good sort of unified field theory of understanding human behavior.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Adam Bryant
My personal website is AdamBryantBooks.com, and my firm is The ExCo Group, and our website is ExCoLeadership.com.

Pete Mockaitis
And do you have a final challenge or call to action for folks looking to be awesome at their jobs?

Adam Bryant
I think a huge underrated superpower of leadership is listening. I think most people are not that good at listening, and I think our devices are making it worse. But I just think if you want to be awesome at your job and separate yourself, I think it’s about being a good listener, and it’s a muscle that you can practice all day long in your personal life, your professional life. And, again, if the goal is to set yourself apart, I think being a good listener is one way to do it, plus you’re going to learn a lot more if you’re a good listener.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Adam, this has been a treat. I wish you much fun and many good leaps.

Adam Bryant
That’s great. I appreciate it. Thank you, Pete.

Jun 29
0

878: Saying No Masterfully to Reclaim your Life with Vanessa Patrick

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Vanessa Patrick shares the science behind why we struggle to say no—and what you can do to get better at refusing.

You’ll Learn:

  1. The three competencies of empowered refusal.
  2. What to do when someone’s being pushy.
  3. Why it’s better for your reputation to say no.

About Vanessa

Vanessa Patrick, PhD. is the Associate Dean for Research, the Bauer Professor of Marketing, and lead faculty of the Executive Women in Leadership Program at the Bauer School of Business at the University of Houston. She has a PhD in business from the University of Southern California, Los Angeles. She is the author of The Power of Saying No: The New Science of How to Say No that Puts you in Charge of your Life.

Resources Mentioned

Vanessa Patrick Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Vanessa, welcome to How to be Awesome at Your Job.

Vanessa Patrick
Hey, Pete, lovely to be here.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m so excited to dig into your book, The Power of Saying No: The New Science of How to Say No that Puts You in Charge of Your Life. This has been a challenge that many of our listeners are facing so I think this is going to be so cool to get into it. But, first, I wanted to start with is there a particularly memorable no-story you could share with us to kick things off?

Vanessa Patrick
Well, I start the book with a didn’t-say-no story that motivated this whole stream of work. I’m happy to tell you about that.

Pete Mockaitis
Let’s do it.

Vanessa Patrick
Well, it all began when I spent my 24th birthday staring at a fax machine, and it was a memorable day because I spent the evening at the office waiting for a fax. It wasn’t even an important fax. It was just a fax, which said that the client had received a fax that we had sent earlier. And I spent the whole evening waiting for the fax because my boss told me to do so.

And it was a moment where I realized that we very often, in work and life, get stuck doing very trivial things, pretty meaningless things some of the time, that we could easily say no to. And that moment made me realize the importance of learning to say no when the situation merits it.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, tell me, how late was it when you left?

Vanessa Patrick
So, I wanted to leave at 5:00 o’clock. It was a Tuesday. The fax arrived at 9:30 in the evening. And so, I basically spent four and a half hours just staring at a fax machine waiting for that white paper to spew out of the machine, and all that white paper said when it arrived, was, “Received with thanks.” And I remember my 24th birthday and that crinkly white paper so distinctly because it was so trivial.

And, Pete, if I had to redo this all over again, if I were me when I was 24, if I was me, the me now, when I was 24, I would’ve negotiated that ask. I would’ve said something like, “Can I come early tomorrow morning and pick up the fax and put it on your desk? Or, can I ask a friend to please stay back and do it if it was that important?” It didn’t have to be me, and I did not have to spend my time doing that, and yet I did.

Pete Mockaitis
Wait, I’m sorry. You said you were 24 years old, and then you said birthday. This was, in fact, your 24th birthday?

Vanessa Patrick
And I missed the birthday party.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, my goodness.

Vanessa Patrick
It was quite sad. I’ve recovered. Don’t worry.

Pete Mockaitis
But it is definitely seared. We could tell that memory was really seared into you because you remember it was a Tuesday and the exact text of the fax, and the time that it arrived. Now, these are some details.

Vanessa Patrick
Yes, because when you’re sitting over there for four and a half hours, knowing that everyone in your house is having a party, people are coming and going, people are eating dinner, they’re leaving, you think about these things and you realize, “Why am I doing this? Is this worth it?” And those are the feelings that we need to kind of capture and memorize so that we don’t make those same mistakes again.

So, I talk about, in the book, the importance of learning from our mistakes, and the fact that when we say yes when we want to say no, we sometimes have to pause and actually let ourselves feel bad about that because we naturally, as human beings, have this coping mechanism, something called the psychological immune system, which jumps in as soon as we feel bad and tries to repair the situation, trying to find the silver lining, trying to look for something good out of that bad situation.

And that is why we don’t learn very well from bad situations. We need to stop, embrace that horrible feeling so that we learn from it, so the next time we’re in that situation, we can manage it a little bit better.

Pete Mockaitis
Absolutely. And what’s interesting is because of the drama of this particular instance, like it’s a task that is so trivial, I don’t know, maybe there’s lives on the line associated with this fax.

Vanessa Patrick
There were not.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, there weren’t. So, it seems super trivial, and it’s four and a half unnecessary hours in which you’re not actively engaged, and you’re missing out on something really cool, all really come together. So, in a weird way, I like the notion, the psychological immune system, this was kind of a blessing because you had an epiphany that, I believe, has served you well over the subsequent years, and now you’re enriching many thousands with this work. So, indirectly, I guess we can thank that boss for this request.

Vanessa Patrick
Yes, I do think that it did kind of change the trajectory of my life. You start questioning. It was my first job, you start questioning, “Is this the kind of job that I want? Is there something more meaningful and important I could do?” And, also, the curiosity about “Why do people do this? Why do people behave in certain ways?” which has shaped my career as a consumer psychologist.

Pete Mockaitis
And for many of us, when we say yes when we should’ve said no, the pain we experience is more minor. It may not be enough for us to really rewind, evaluate, and make some changes.

Vanessa Patrick
But we do feel resentful very often. A lot of the people in my studies often talk about the fact that they’ve said yes when they want to say no, and they feel very resentful towards the other person, and really wished they did not do that. And so, in many ways, but we also search for reasons as to why we said yes and come up with the fact that it might be a growth opportunity. It could open doors. It could lead to a promotion. So, we make up these things to make ourselves feel better but sometimes we need to just see it for what it is and not make the mistake again.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s interesting how we resent them, and, though, I guess we’ve got at least 50% responsibility as to having said yes.

Vanessa Patrick
Yes.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, you’ve done a lot of studies, you’ve engaged a lot of people here. Any particularly surprising, fascinating, counterintuitive discoveries you’ve made here when it comes to us humans and our relationships saying no?

Vanessa Patrick
Yes. It’s no surprise that, of course, human beings have trouble saying no, but one of the things that come out consistently in my research is the fact that no is a gendered issue, that women struggle way more to say no than men do. Women are more likely to say yes to a workplace request than men are. Women are more likely to be asked to do unpromotable work, or unpaid work, or the office housework, but they’re also more likely to take those things on.

One of the most interesting things in my studies is something that I call the spotlight effect. And the spotlight effect is this feeling of being in the spotlight when someone makes their ask of you. So, in a study, I put people in different conditions. In one condition, I told them that they were asked to do something that they didn’t want to do, and there was a crowd of people who had already agreed to do it.

And based on the research of social psychology, we know that we are more likely to conform to that ask. The spotlight is going to shine way more brightly on us when we know that other people are watching and expecting us to say yes. So, of course, both men and women are more likely to say yes when there are lots of people watching even if they want to say no.

I also do another scenario where that request is an interpersonal request. There’s no crowd, it’s just one person versus another person, the asker and the askee. And in that situation, you find that men are significantly more likely to say, “No, this is not going to work,” if it’s a one on one, but women still respond at the same level as if there was a crowd watching.

So, women, it’s almost like women have conjured up this imaginary crowd that is watching them, and the spotlight shines brightly on them, whether it’s a one-on-one interaction or whether it’s a group. I, personally, think that’s a super interesting finding, and it’s fascinating to think about why that is, and why women feel that pressure to say yes, feel more intense spotlight regardless of whether it’s a one-on-one ask or it’s a crowd.

Pete Mockaitis
And can you share with us a rough sense of these figures here, the crowd effect versus the one-on-one effect, that is at stake here? Is it a smidgen more pressure and probability of saying yes, or is it like double, triple, quadruple?

Vanessa Patrick
So, when it was a social ask, and when both men and women responded equivalently, so about five on a scale of one to seven, on, “How much attention did you feel was on you?” That drops to four for men, which was significantly different, statistically significantly lower compared to women who remained at around 4.5.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, got you. And I guess I’m curious about the percentage of percent of time said yes and didn’t want to.

Vanessa Patrick
The number of times they said yes, so we don’t have that. In the experiment, we didn’t look at that. The scenario required everyone to say yes or no.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, got you.

Vanessa Patrick
So, everyone wanted to say no. It was a clear scenario when no one wanted to do it.

Pete Mockaitis
What is our scenario?

Vanessa Patrick
Yeah, so it was something like spending your spring break doing some volunteer work for a friend who just caught you. So, it was the first day of spring break and someone pulled you aside, and said, “No, you need to help me with this volunteer work, and spend your entire spring break doing this, making calls on my behalf,” which is something we pre-tested no one wanted to do, no one wanted to spend their spring break doing.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, it would have to be some pretty, meaningfully interesting, powerful calls. It’s hard to dream up the scenario where that would be a win, like, “Oh, yeah.” Okay. Cool. Thank you. All right. So, there we have it, interesting tidbits there. So, then, overall, what would you say is sort of the main thesis or big idea behind the book The Power of Saying No?

Vanessa Patrick
So, a lot of people, successful people, and, in general, most people know that it’s a good thing to say no to the things that you don’t want to do. The question is how. So, the big idea behind the book is the way in which you communicate your refusal and something called empowered refusal, which is the basis of my research.

Empowered refusal is a super skill of being able to say no in a way that’s effective. And what effective, essentially, means is that you are able to communicate a no response while maintaining your relationship with the other person and securing your reputation.

Pete Mockaitis
That sounds perfect.

Vanessa Patrick
It does.

Pete Mockaitis
How do we do that?

Vanessa Patrick
So, I talk about the fact that you need to develop three competencies to develop the skill of empowered refusal but, essentially, empowered refusal requires you to say no by looking inwards. You need to say no by giving voice to your values, priorities, preferences, and beliefs. So, it’s a no that stems from your identity. And when you say no that stems from your identity, giving voice to what you believe, the way you believe things should be, people are less likely to give you pushback and more likely to be persuaded by your no.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, tell us, what are the three competencies and how do we develop them?

Vanessa Patrick
Right. So, the three competencies, I call the ART of empowered refusal, A-R-T, awareness, rules not decisions, and totality of self. So, your empowered refusal begins with self-awareness. It begins with you looking inwards and developing a sense of what you uniquely bring to the table, what you care about, what do you value, how do you want to find meaning in your life.

So, an awareness of your preferences, your beliefs, your values, forms the foundation of step number two, which is setting up a system of rules, and not having to make decisions all the time. So, once you understand yourself, then you can set yourself up with a set of personal policies or simple rules that guide your actions and decisions. So, if you have rules in place, or policies in place, it’s much easier for you to say no because you already have a very firm stance on what you believe and how you want things to be.

And the final piece of the puzzle is the way you communicate your empowered refusal, which is using your whole self, using not only your language but also your nonverbal cues. Nonverbal cues that both convey empowerment but also secure your relationship with the other person. So, I can give you a few examples.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay.

Vanessa Patrick
Let’s imagine that someone asked you to fly somewhere. Unprepared, unannounced, you’ve got fly over the weekend to do something that is not part of your job, and you don’t want to do it because you do not work on weekends, or weekends are family time as far as you’re concerned. So, you have a personal policy in place about how you’d like to spend your weekends, and you are able to better communicate your refusal based on that stance.

What usually happens when people ask you for something that you want to say no to is that we grasp for the first available excuse. And excuses are much less effective than policies. Policies reflect a long-standing stance which stem from something that’s important to you, something that you value. And when you use a policy, you are more likely to get compliance than if you use an excuse.

Pete Mockaitis
Interesting. You say compliance, as in the requestor just overrides you.

Vanessa Patrick
No, the requestor will either push back or they will respect your refusal. Those are the two main options. So, when someone asks you something, they typically expect a yes. It is societally expected that an invitation, an ask, a favor, is going to garner a yes response. There’s a ton of research that shows that we say yes to the most ridiculous requests because we are socialized and hardwired to help.

We are conditioned to be cooperative. We are psychologically poised in many ways to say yes than to say no. And because of that psychological makeup and that socialization, when we say no, we often get pushback from the asker.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s intriguing on so many levels. One, I’m thinking that’s kind of absurd that that’s in us humans. Two, I’m thinking I guess there’s probably a set of contexts that make that true versus not true. So, the majority of my emails are pitches from publicists and authors, etc. to want to be on my podcast, maybe the plurality of emails.

And so, I would imagine they don’t really expect that I will say yes because, in their own experience of any sort of recruiting, sales, business development activity, the majority of people say no. And I find it a little funny when they say, “I’m just making sure you got my email. Like, this is the weirdest thing that you didn’t reply.”

Like, in some ways, I find that a little bit irksome because there seems to be, like, almost dishonesty there. It’s, like, “You don’t really expect a response. Of course, you would like one.” So, I guess that’s what I’m thinking. Like, in the context of a stranger who’s asking hundreds of thousands of people the same thing via an impersonal platform, email, I don’t imagine they expect a yes. But you tell me, maybe they really do.

Vanessa Patrick
You hit the nail on the head in terms of the impersonal platform. So, we are 34 times more likely to say yes to a face-to-face request.

Pete Mockaitis
Thirty-four.

Vanessa Patrick
So, email is actually the best way to say no to people because it’s impersonal, as you just mentioned. You take away that face-to-face concern. I also think that if you think about the studies that people have done, like Vanessa Bohns, for example. She has people ask people to do the craziest things: defile library books, “Can I play in your backyard?” “Can you mail this for me?” completely crazy things, and she finds that people are much more likely to say yes, even to those completely ridiculous requests than say no.

And there’s a lot of evidence out there that people do struggle with saying no, and so it’s just easier to say yes. And so, I talk about it in terms of the fact that society favors the asker. So, if you’re the asker, you get to ask and then everybody feels really terrible about saying no. But we have to remember that an ask is just an ask. We don’t have to say yes to every ask that comes our way. And for a lot of people, they struggle with that.

Pete Mockaitis
Thirty-four times. Well, now I’m intrigued. Do we know where phone calls stack up, because in a way it’s live and real time, but there’s not a face? So, I imagine it’d be in the middle. Do you have the numbers on that?

Vanessa Patrick
No, I do not. But I’d imagine that it’s somewhere in between the face-to-face and the email. But I think, because it’s technology-mediated, it becomes easier to say no even on a phone call compared to a face-to-face request.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. That’s powerful right there.

Vanessa Patrick
Yeah. So, one of the things that I mentioned is the importance of putting technology in between you and the asker when it becomes a very difficult ask, or when you’re dealing with a very pushy asker. Convert the conversation to a digital medium or put some technology between you. It’s easier to text, it’s easier to phone, a phone call converted to an email than to handle people face to face.

Pete Mockaitis
You know, I’m reminded of I’ve got a buddy who’s a priest. He tells me that after church, there’s crowds of people, and they shake hands and say hello. Well, it’s a good way for people to have a little bit of a relationship exchange, community-building there. And he said that he was inundated with requests, like, “Oh, you should come over have dinner. We should hang out in this way or that way.” And he used to say yes all the time, immediately, and schedule, he’s like, “Oh, my gosh, my calendar is out of control.”

And so, he decided his new policy was, when they make an invitation, assuming he doesn’t want to immediately do it, he says, “You know, that sounds great. Please call the office on Monday and talk to Debra, or whomever, and she owns my calendar, and she’ll find a good time for us.” And he said, invariably, like way over 90%, he told me, of the incoming requests just disappear because it’s quite a difference to say, “Hey, I had this fun idea. Why the heck not?” versus, “Okay, I’m going to actually have to remember to put into my calendar, to call the administrative assistant, and get that sorted out.”

So, I thought that was brilliant in that you’re continuing to show interest and it’s not blowing them off.

Vanessa Patrick
I think your priest friend has got two principles right in the book, that I talk about in the book. Never say yes in the moment, like always buy time. And second is, if you have the opportunity to delegate to someone, and that person says no on your behalf, it’s a win. So, Debra from the office, if she says no to the person, it’s not going to feel as bad as when your friend has to say no.

Pete Mockaitis
Certainly. And just the dramatic reduction in terms of folks who even do that is huge.

Vanessa Patrick
Will follow up, yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
So, now, tell me, when it comes to the rules, I don’t know who, if this is from a TV show or a movie somewhere, but someone was hiring a nanny or a housekeeper, and they just laid it like, “I don’t do dishes, I don’t do laundry, I don’t do cooking, I don’t do diapers.” And it’s sort of like, “Okay. Well, this isn’t going to work, is it?”

And so, I think that emotional side of us, in terms of a rule, that sounds like, “Ooh, that sounds awesome.” Like, you can communicate a rule, you have some extra conviction, they understand not to ask again, so that has a lot going for it. But it can feel a little more scary, “I’m not just saying no once. I’m saying no to a potential hundreds of future requests in one fell swoop.” And that’s even scarier to say, Vanessa, so how do you think about the articulation of rules?

Vanessa Patrick
So, these rules are just simple rules that you set up for yourself to increase things like your productivity, to enhance the quality of your decision-making, to make your relationships better, to advance yourself in your career. These are things that all of us care about in working life, and these are all the things that we need to think about, setting small rules.

It is not this rule, like the nanny you were talking about, not to do the job that you were hired to do. It’s about doing the job the best possible way you can. And sometimes you have to protect your time to be able to do that job. I think one of the things that we see in the workplace right now is the tyranny of the number of meetings that you’re dragged into. You don’t actually have time to do what you were hired to do.

And so, sometimes just setting up rules around when you meet and when you work, or when you can take some time to do some deep work that needs to be done and protect that time, these are simple rules that just enhance your productivity and actually make you a more valuable member of the organization.

Pete Mockaitis
Now that sounds awesome. Do you actually articulate some of that stuff if you were to, say, have this conversation with a manager?

Vanessa Patrick
Yeah. So, think about what your priorities are, what the job is, what do you need to do? So, one of the conceptualizations that I really love that I use in the book is this notion of, “What is good work?” And Howard Gardner from Harvard University, he’s an educational psychologist, comes up with a lovely definition of what is good work, good work that is meaningful.

Good work has three main dimensions, kind of like a DNA strand. It is excellent, it is emotional or engaging, and it is ethical. And so, when we do good work, we are essentially devoting ourselves to work that brings out the best of us, that leverages our strengths, that showcases what we bring to the table. When we do good work, it is emotionally gratifying. It feels good to do. We feel as if we’ve achieved something meaningful. And, finally, is that it does good, like it has an ethical dimension. It makes the world better. You leave the place better than you found it.

And so, when you think about work, and when we think about work, if we can think about this framework of work, and then try and achieve on a daily basis that sort of quality work, and in order to do that, we do need to set up these personal policies that facilitate that sort of activity.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And so, to tackle the fears head on, if we fear that, “Oh, I’m going to be perceived as not a team player, or I’m lazy, I’m not manager or executive material because I’m not truly committed with my rules and my no’s,” do you have an answer, or even better, some real data on what it’s like on the receiving end?

Vanessa Patrick
So, this is the concern for reputation. So, there are two main concerns for why we say yes when we want to say no. One is we want to be liked. So, one is a concern for relationships, and the other is a concern for reputation. The concern for relationships deals with the need to be liked, to be included in a social group, to have friends, to be part of something.

And our reputation is the other thing that we’re really concerned about, the notion that we want to be seen as competent, on the ball, a team player. Reputation is, essentially, what people say about us when we leave the room, and we want people to say good things.

And so, these are two key drivers for why we say yes when we want to say no. So, your point about, “Oh, I’m concerned about these things that people will say,” is the reputation concern. And I always say, of course, you should take on things that you can handle and that you can fit into your schedule, but I call it the house of cards trap.

Essentially, if you think about every ask that comes your way, and if your goal is to be a team player and to be seen as competent, and you just keep saying yes to that stuff, you’re essentially adding more and more cards to an increasingly fragile house of cards that is going to collapse if you do not, at some point, essentially.

And so, thinking about your reputation in the short term, like, “If I say yes right now, they will like me, they will think I’m competent,” as opposed to thinking about your reputation in the long term. If you keep taking more stuff, you’re going to drop the ball, you’re not going to be able to deliver, you’re not going to be able to deliver quality.

And so, I always argue, “Is it better to say no up front, because it is just something that is not in your wheelhouse or doesn’t leverage your strengths, or you simply just don’t have the time to do it? Say no now or drop the ball later, and have your reputation take a hit, or a bigger hit perhaps.”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, now could you give us some example articulations of the no that is artful and it’s an empowered refusal? And I say, “Hey, Vanessa, I would love it if you could stay late. We got this really big client presentation coming up on Friday, and I think we’re behind, and there’s really a lot at stake. So, could you stick it out for a few hours?”

Vanessa Patrick
That may not be the best time to say no.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay.

Vanessa Patrick
So, one of the things I talk about is deciphering the ask, like, “How do you decipher to say yes to and what to say no to?” If it’s a high stakes, really important thing that you need to pitch in for, it may not be the best thing to say no to. But if someone asks you, “Hey, can you organize the retirement party because someone is retiring?” That is something that is not urgent, not terribly important, and anybody can do it. That may be the thing to be saying no to.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, that’s good. Well, I was going to ask, in terms of we’ve got our rules, how do we think about bending rules and under what circumstances?

Vanessa Patrick
I think they are your rules and they are meant to be meant. But if you bend them every single day then it’s not a rule. You need to have rules, and you need to have contingencies, and you need to have a sense of, let’s say, “I never work in the evenings because 6:00 to 8:00 is family time.” Assume that that’s my rule. But as you just said, if someone says, “Hey, Vanessa, can you pitch in because we have this really important thing, and can you make an exception and come just this Thursday evening because Friday is this big deadline?” By all means, you can break your own rule if you choose to.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And do you recommend articulating that in a special way?

Vanessa Patrick
So, I often talk about saying things in terms of using very absolute words, “I don’t,” “I always,” “I never,” “It’s my policy.” These are words that communicate that you are speaking from a place of power, so they are empowered language. They also reflect your stance on the matter. So, “I don’t,” “I never.” So, one of the research studies that we did was compared words like, “I don’t” versus “I can’t.”

So, whenever you frame a refusal, you can always say, “I’m really sorry, I can’t do this,” or, “I’m sorry, I don’t do this.” So, let’s imagine you’re at a party and someone is offering you chocolate cake. You can say, “I’m sorry I can’t eat the chocolate cake.” It comes across as disempowered and you’re most likely going to get someone saying, “Why not? It’s just a piece of cake. Go ahead and eat it.” You’re going to get the pushback.

Imagine that you say, “I’m sorry, I don’t eat chocolate cake.” No one pushes back. This is your rule, “I’m not a chocolate cake-eating person.” It implicates the identity. And using language that implicates the identity is less likely to get pushback.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s true. It takes an extra level of courage and curiosity to dig into that. And I think most people probably wouldn’t feel comfortable saying, “Well, why not?” but rather is just, like, it’s almost you have to do more mental work to think about how I engage that conversation further if I were going to, such as, “Oh, that’s interesting. What led you to adopt this policy?”

Vanessa Patrick
Yeah, and most often you don’t get that conversation continuing. Most people accept a refusal when it stems from your identity because that’s who you are, that’s the kind of person you are, right?

Pete Mockaitis
I remember when I was at a party, and someone said, it was a husband and wife, and she said, “Oh, Ricky doesn’t drink anymore.” And so, I’m so full of curiosity, I was like, “Well, now I really want to know what happened with Ricky’s historical drinking.” It’s like, “I’m not going to.” I just met the dude and he’s friendly and cool. I hope we get to maybe have that conversation later. But not the time or the place for me to dig into his history of his relationship with alcohol, though I’m so curious now.

All right. So, I hope Ricky is doing great. Now, you also recommend that we frame our refusal using more nouns instead of verbs. What’s the thinking here?

Vanessa Patrick
So, research shows that nouns, again, implicate your identity. When you say, “I am a writer,” “I am a teacher,” “I am a mom,” these are nouns. They describe your stable stance. Whereas, verbs, like, “I write,” “I teach,” lots of people write, lots of people teach, you are just one of them. And so, verbs, essentially, describe an activity, whereas nouns describe who you are, again, implicating the identity.

And so, if you have to talk about yourself, and there’s research that shows that when we talk about ourselves in terms of nouns, we come across as more authentic and, like, stable individuals who can communicate what they do. And so, there’s some work that talks about how we should talk about these things in our resumes and in job interviews by using more nouns than verbs.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And now, Vanessa, we didn’t quite do a demo because you wisely mentioned, “Maybe this is not the time to say no,” but now let’s say it is the time to say no, and I’m saying, “Hey, Vanessa, could you pick up my drycleaning this afternoon? It looks like I’m not going to be able to make it there after all.”

Vanessa Patrick
“I’m sorry, I go to the gym every afternoon between 3:00 and 5:00.”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, and that’s that. There’s no elaboration.

Vanessa Patrick
Yeah, know it’s a complete sentence.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. There we go. Let’s try again. “Vanessa, could you scan these documents and email them to me?”

Vanessa Patrick
“I believe we have someone who does those kinds of things. I’m not the person.”

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, this is fun. I can do this for a while.

Vanessa Patrick
Are you just going to do this all day?

Pete Mockaitis
Maybe. Maybe. I don’t know. Okay. “Vanessa, could you look over this proposal and make sure I didn’t make any silly mistakes?”

Vanessa Patrick
“Sure, absolutely. I’m really good at looking at proposals, and it leverages my unique strength, and I’m happy to strengthen your proposal for you.”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, so that’s a yes, and that’s cool?

Vanessa Patrick
Yeah. And so, when you’re talking about this, the deciphering the asks, it’s really, I come up with this framework where you can use this mental model to help you to figure out what you say yes to and what you say no to. So, all the things you asked me, I, essentially, looked at them through that framework, and said, “What is the cost to me and what is the benefit to the other person?”

So, there are some things that are low cost to me but huge benefits to you. Like, looking over a two-page proposal and scanning it and making it better, that’s my strength. I’m good at it. I can make it better. I know it’s not a huge deal. I’m going to say yes because it’ll benefit you. But this, “Pick up my drycleaning,” and, “Check the weather and do this rubbish,” that is stuff, no, you shouldn’t be asking anyone to do.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And do we know, from the person who makes a request, and they received a no done artfully, do we have a sense in terms of their thought about you, like the relationship and the liking that we’re worried about that’s at risk? To what extent is that a boogeyman of our minds versus that’s real?

Vanessa Patrick
I think we exaggerate the impact that our no’s will have on others. Most often, when you say no to somebody, they simply go ahead and ask the next person. If it’s something that anyone can do, they just go down the list. We do that ourselves. If someone says no to us about something, we just find somebody else to do it. You don’t really think that much about it.

If it’s something that is meaningful and important to you, then, by all means, think about taking it on after you’ve asked the necessary questions, “Is it important? When does it need to get done? How can I contribute? Why did you ask me? Is there something unique that I can do?” By asking questions, we can figure out what to say yes to.

So, I call these the hero’s journey asks. The hero’s journey asks are the ones that are high effort on our part but hugely beneficial to others. And so, we should say yes to those hero’s journey asks because those hero’s journey asks is what makes work life meaningful.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Vanessa, anything else you want to make sure to mention before we shift gears and hear about some of your favorite things?

Vanessa Patrick
I have this concept in the book that most people seem to like, which is called the walnut trees.

Pete Mockaitis
Let’s hear it.

Vanessa Patrick
And so, there are some people, despite your artful no, will not take no for an answer. And so, we need to figure out how to deal with these pushy askers. And in my book, I talk about these pushy askers as walnut trees. There are several descriptors of these kind of people in the literature – pushy people, bullies, etc. – but I choose to call them walnut trees, and I can tell you why.

A walnut tree is, essentially, this big tree with a luxuriant canopy, and it has a root system that spreads out 50 feet. But what it does is that it exudes in the soil a chemical called juglone and it stems the growth of everything around them, and so that’s why I call it that. It’s easier to deal with people when you can recognize walnut tree behavior, and say, “Oh, that’s walnut tree behavior,” when someone is being an exceptionally pushy asker. And there are strategies that you can develop to deal with walnut trees when they are being pushy, including, like we talked about, bringing in technology, delegating the ask, etc.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Now, could you share with us a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Vanessa Patrick
My favorite quote, and one I say to myself almost every day, is, “Be in demand. Stay in control.”

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite book?

Vanessa Patrick
I read a lot, so it’s hard to choose. But my favorite book of recent time has been Lessons in Chemistry.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite tool, something you use to be awesome at your job?

Vanessa Patrick
QuillBot.

Pete Mockaitis
And what does that do?

Vanessa Patrick
It’s an AI-writing tool.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite habit?

Vanessa Patrick
I wake up every morning at 5:15 so that I have some alone time. I thrive on the solitude of the morning and the serenity of the morning.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And is there a key nugget you share that really seems to connect and resonate and they quote back to you often?

Vanessa Patrick
“It goes the way you say.”

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Vanessa Patrick
I’m on LinkedIn, I’m on Twitter @vpatrick23, and on Instagram vanpat23, and my website is VanessaPatrick.net.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And do you have a final challenge or call to action for folks looking to be awesome at their jobs?

Vanessa Patrick
Yes, don’t be afraid to say no. Invest in the art of empowered refusal and say no to the things that don’t matter.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Vanessa, this has been a treat. Thank you and I wish you much luck and fun in all of your refusals.

Vanessa Patrick
Thank you. You, too.