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Mar 19
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275: How to Manage Your Manager with Mary Abbajay

By | Podcasts | 2 Comments

 

Mary Abbajay says: "If you don't know what your boss' priorities are... sit down and have a conversation."

Mary Abbajay shares how to manage up, understand who your boss is, and adapt to different personality types.

You’ll Learn:

  1. One tiny, yet powerful, thing you can do to differentiate yourself from 99% of employees
  2. Obstacles to managing up
  3. Strategies for dealing with difficult bosses

About Mary

Mary Abbajay is the president and co-founder of Careerstone Group, LLC, a woman-owned, full service organizational and leadership development consultancy that delivers leading-edge talent and organizational development solutions to the public and private sectors. She currently serves on the regional Market President’s Board of BB&T Bank. She was Chairman of the Board for Leadership Greater Washington where she led the adult Signature program, the Youth Leadership Program and the Rising Leaders Program.

 

Items Mentioned in this Show:

Mary Abbajay Interview Transcript

Pete Mocakitis
Mary, thanks so much for joining us here on the How To Be Awesome At Your Job podcast.

Mary Abbajay
Thank you so much. I’m very excited to be on this podcast and to meet you and, hopefully, have a little bit of fun today.

Pete Mocakitis
Oh, yes. Well, I certainly think we will. And speaking of fun, I understand you co-founded and co-owned a fun spot in DC. What’s the Toledo Lounge all about?

Mary Abbajay
Oh, digging up my past, are you, Pete?

Pete Mocakitis
Yeah.

Mary Abbajay
Yeah, it’s my claim to fame. Yeah, you know, it’s funny. My sister and I opened a bar, I want to say, it was in the ‘90s, that shows you how old I am. And it was called the Toledo Lounge because it was our home town was Toledo, Ohio and we’re in Washington, DC and we thought DC was a little too self-important so we’re going to open up a little dive bar. And our little dive bar turned into this huge raging success, packed every night, and we ran it for like 13 years.

But I only worked there for a couple of years. But the best part about it was that a lot of the people that came back then in the ‘90s, the mid to late ‘90s, are now very famous people that you see in TV all the time. And I knew them when they were just young drunk people.

Pete Mocakitis
That’s great. And so what’s the status of the Toledo Lounge today?

Mary Abbajay
We sold it a couple of years ago. So I worked at it for a couple of years, and it’s really, really boring, let me tell you, to own a bar. But we kept it running, my husband’s brother ran it for like 10 or 12 years, and then we sold it. And the people that bought it tried to keep it as the Toledo Lounge but everybody knew, without the sisters there, it wasn’t very good. So they didn’t do well and they had to close it.

But I will tell you, one of the reasons I opened the bar was because I was really tired of having really bad bosses, and I thought, “You know what, I can be my own bad boss.” So actually looking back it was kind of a pivotal moment in my life in terms of what I went on to do afterwards.

Pete Mocakitis
Well, that’s cool, yes. And so, tell us, orienting quickly a bit, what is it you’re doing now afterwards in the world of professional development?

Mary Abbajay
Yes, so what we do, I own a little company. I have about five people in my team, and we do organizational development and professional development trainings. So I like to say we do one or two things. We’re either helping organizations to create environments where people can be really successful, can be engaged, can do great work, or we are helping the people be able to be great workers and bring their full self and be really successful in the work life. So we help people play well together and we help people play well.

Pete Mocakitis
Okay. Excellent. And so along those lines you’ve got this book Managing Up, an important topic. What is it all about and why is it important now?

Mary Abbajay
Oh, gosh. So I think it’s very important now for a couple of reasons. Well, first of all, it’s important because managing up is an essential skill for your career, right? You have one career and it’s up to you to manage it. And part of what’s going to help your career is your boss, like your boss actually matters. Your boss has a lot of influence over your career trajectory, a lot of influence over the kind of opportunities that come your way.

So it’s really incumbent on you to really develop that relationship, right? And it’s about what you can do. And the other reason I think it’s important now is I think we’ve gone really far to the employee engagement side which is a great thing. I’m all about that. And I think that we have lost or some of us have lost sort of the understanding that we have to bring our best selves to work as well and that we can’t really wait or expect our leaders and our managers in our organizations to do everything for us. We’re partners in that.

And so Managing Up I think is important, especially the demographics of the workplace change, to remind people that, “Hey, it’s not all on the organization to do everything for you. You have to bring some stuff as well.”

Pete Mocakitis
Okay. And so, then, I think for some who have never managed up, that maybe require a little bit of paradigm shift.

Mary Abbajay
Yeah.

Pete Mocakitis
Like, “Is that even appropriate?” So maybe you can start there in terms of what is the appropriate way in terms of broad mindset and perspective to think about the extent to which we should be managing our bosses and how that works?

Mary Abbajay
Yeah, that’s a great question and it does require a paradigm shift for many people. So the first thing you want to think about is, “Who is your boss? And what are you willing to do to adapt to your boss?” And when we talk of managing up, I want to say a lot of people have a misconception about it. They think it’s about brownnosing or manipulating or sucking up or being a bootlicker or anything like that. And it’s really not that at all.

In fact, if you are doing that, you actually aren’t managing up. You’re just being a manipulative, you know, brownnoser.

What managing up is it’s about building consciously and deliberatively a robust relationship with people who are higher in the food chain with you, and these are people that have different perspectives, probably different priorities, they may have different work styles. So it’s about looking at how your boss likes to work, how you like to work, and assessing that gap and then taking adaptive strategies to really work well with your boss.

And the thing is, Pete, it’s actually about being a really good follower. And in America, we hate the word, the effort, right? We hate the follower word because we love leaders in America, right? Leaders, we teach it, we preach it. It’s a $14 billion with a B industry. But with all those leaders, who’s doing the work, right? Who’s following?

So it’s about really understanding how you can close that gap in power and structure and to build that relationship. It’s about becoming an empowered follower, right? Being adaptive.

Pete Mocakitis
Okay. Understood. And so, then, it sounds like you’re suggesting that, in many ways, it’s just about getting the clear understanding of how you work, how boss works, and how that can work well together. So can you maybe give us a bit of an example in terms of, “Hey, here’s something that could be causing a bit of friction and the optimal way to address it”?

Mary Abbajay
Yeah, I mean, it goes from things as simple as understanding what’s important to your boss. Okay, so, for me, and we have a consulting company. So, for me, clients are important. We live and die by our clients. We love our clients. Like I’ll do anything for a client within reason and that’s legal, right? That’ll be helpful.

And one of the things that’s important to me is that they know that we’re there for them. So I really expect my team to, if a client emails us, to get back to them pretty quickly. You don’t have to have their answer but you have to acknowledge their email or their communication.

So if you know that’s important to me, then you need to do that. And so, for example, it’s also important for me, as a boss, that I know that you got my email, and you better say you got it instead of just waiting for weeks and then later saying, “Oh, yeah, I got it.” So it’s those little things like that, like knowing those preferences and what matters and adapting to them.

It could be that to like really big things. Like what are the priorities that your boss wants to accomplish? What are their goals? And how are you aligning your work to achieve their goals? It’s really important that we don’t sit around and wait for the boss that we wish we had. Instead, we have to deal with the boss that we do have.

And while bosses should adapt to you, like a great boss should adapt to you if you are a morning person, they should be a morning person as well. The truth is, only 33% of bosses adapt to their employees. So you might be waiting a long time. We have to say, “Stop waiting for the unicorn and deal with the boss you have.”

And the other thing that’s really important is we have to understand that most organizations, as I’m sure your listeners know, most organizations promote people based on their technical skills and not their managerial skills. So your chances of getting a boss who’s not perfect are pretty high in the workplace. So instead of sitting around and waiting for that boss to be perfect, you want to use adaptive skills and use adaptive strategies because, by the way, you’re going to need those when you’re the boss if you want to be a great boss.

Pete Mocakitis
Okay. Well, in a way it seems like these conversations, associated with managing up, are nothing to be feared. In fact, your boss will probably feel delighted, you know, “What a breath of fresh air that you’re proactively asking me things like, ‘Hey, what are your priorities? What are your goals? What are your preferences?’” And so are there any sort of best practice ways to elicit that information or you just ask the question? There it is.

Mary Abbajay
You just go in. And, you know, you’re right about being a breath of fresh air. So we’ve been doing Managing Up workshops for about 10 years and talking with leaders of all sorts and regular people, everybody. And I can literally, Pete, count on one hand the number of leaders or managers that have told me that one of their employees had that conversation with them, on one hand.

And I’ve probably talked about this subject to literally 5,000, 6,000 people. So, yeah, it’s something people don’t do. And it’s so easy to do. So that’s my first tip takeaway, listeners, is if you don’t know what your boss’ priorities are, or you think you do even, sit down and have a conversation. Go for a cup of coffee. Find out what’s important to her. Find out what he likes. Find out what her pet peeves are.

It’s really important to find out and take that in, and then see what you can do to either honor those priorities or avoid those pet peeves.

Pete Mocakitis
Okay. So that’s interesting. So, I guess, mathematically speaking, you know, you actually ask the question, “Hey, raise your hand if this has ever happened to you in your career.” And you just don’t get many hands raised.

Mary Abbajay
Yeah, that’s exactly right. And when we were doing the book, I interviewed hundreds of people just for the book, and all the people I interviewed that really is are managers, I asked them, “Has an employee ever sat down with you and asked you about your workplace preferences or your style?” And, again, like nobody said yes. Like two people said yes.

Pete Mocakitis
Wow.

Mary Abbajay
It’s crazy.

Pete Mocakitis
Well, that is striking, you know, because I figured, you know, you’d be the minority, right? But to be in the ballpark of under 1% is striking.

Mary Abbajay
It’s crazy, yeah.

Pete Mocakitis
And so, oh, wow, what a takeaway right there in terms of it don’t take much to really stand out and be supremely impressive.

Mary Abbajay
I know. Because the truth is to be awesome at your job, you have to be awesome at your job. And, as you know, like the world isn’t a meritocracy, right? So you also have to be awesome at that relationship, and that’s one way to be awesome at that relationship.

And what gets in the way, I think, for people managing up, so whenever we do a workshop where I give a talk on it, there’s always a couple of people that are like, you know, “I object. This is stupid” And what happens is that we get in our own way. So one thing that gets in our own way is our ego gets in our way.
We get caught in this trap of like, “Well, you know, my boss should give me more information,” or, “My boss should know what I’m working on,” or, “My boss should be more proactive in reaching out to me,” right?

Should’ve, could’ve, would’ve, right? If your boss isn’t, then you have to be the one that adapts and goes to ask for what you need. And those that gets in the way, “You know, we feel like it takes extra effort.” Like when we talk about a micromanager like, yes, managing up is going to create extra work on your plate. But it’s extra work that’s going to be good for you, your boss, and the organization. So that gets in the way.

And then the last thing that gets in the way, besides your own ego and our own sort of like desire not to have to do it, is perspective. And so what we talked about in the beginning, having the right paradigm and the mind frame, is we have to start being able to look at things from other people’s perspective. And your boss has a different perspective. They have a different skillset probably, definitely a different experience. They sit in a different place in the organization. They probably have different pressures.

And so once we can get out of just our own narrow perspective, which may or may not be right, and we can actually do a little empathy, a little like, “Huh, I wonder what the world looks like from Pete’s angle?” Whatever expands our choices and what kind of strategies we can use for our boss.

Pete Mocakitis
Okay. That is good stuff in terms of what an opportunity for differentiation. And with regard to taking the time, my hunch is that you may find yourself having saved time because by getting a real clear sense of the goals and priorities, you can go, “Oh, so this other stuff doesn’t really matter that much, so I could maybe just put that on the bottom of my list and not worry about it and nothing explosively bad will happen to me as we go.”

Mary Abbajay
That’s exactly right. And oftentimes, you know, what you think is important and what your boss thinks are important maybe really different. So you’re absolutely right. It can save you time by understanding what they care about and what you can kind of let go off and not spinning your wheels on things that they don’t really care about.

Pete Mocakitis
Okay. That’s powerful. Well, so I guess when I think about managing up, I guess, my first thing that my brain goes to is, “All right, boss is doing something annoying, troublesome, unprofessional, rude,” just that is driving you nuts in one way or another, you know. And so you got to have that tricky conversation with a conflict, but then there’s a power dynamic in which you are on a lower – so that’s the first thing I think of when I hear managing up. I go right to the most dramatic, unpleasant.

Mary Abbajay
Worst-case scenario.

Pete Mocakitis
I’m glad we started easy, like, “Do that thing. Be a 1% professional and have that conversation.” But then when things get into the tricky territory, like, you know, I’m thinking, let’s say, there’s a complete lack of clarity. Here’s an example, there’s a total lack of clarity associated with decision-making roles, associated with a group collaborative project, and you say, “Hey, boss, this is kind of driving us all nuts. We don’t know who’s in charge, and then you just say, ‘Hey, just collaborate.’ And it’s like we decide we need to know. We need to know who’s got the decision-making authority and what kinds of areas?” but the boss isn’t giving it.

This is super detailed example but I’m just saying I think that this does happen in which you want something from the boss, you’ve asked for something from the boss, the boss gives you sort of an answer that’s not really satisfactory or sufficient. How do you get what you need?

Mary Abbajay
Yeah, that’s a great question. So there’s a couple of things in that example. First of all, you have to frame requests correctly. Okay, so, and you did a nice job in that. So you want to go to the boss and what you don’t want to say is, “You need to do this,” because that doesn’t fly very well.

So you want to go and say, “Hey, boss, so we need your help, or I need your help,” if it’s you or the team. Make sure you’re speaking, “We’re unclear about who is responsible for buying the apples for the company picnic, and we’re also not sure on the budget, or if we have the authority to actually go buy the apples. Can you clarify that for us? That would be really helpful.”

Pete Mocakitis
“Well, Mary, just figure this out. I can’t be in the weeds on all of this stuff with you, Mary.”

Mary Abbajay
“Oh, got it. All right. So that’s perfect. So here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to buy the apples, I’m going to spend $50, I’m putting them on your credit card. Is that acceptable?” So when they say that, then you come right back, and you say, “Here’s my plan. Does this work for you?”

I mean, in some ways, if your boss isn’t giving you information because they’re kind of like, “I’m too big of a picture. Go figure it out,” which, by the way, is the kind of boss I am. Then you need to come back with that boss and say, “Here’s what we’re doing. I’m going to be in charge of this, or George is going to be in charge of this.”

So it depends on what kind of boss you have. If it’s that kind of boss who wants you to figure it out, then you need to go figure it out but tell that person what you did. If your boss is just hard to pin down, then you need to go and say, “Here’s what I need, and here’s why I need it.”

Pete Mocakitis
Okay.

Mary Abbajay
Does that make sense?

Pete Mocakitis
Understood.

Mary Abbajay
So you’ve got be a boss detective. You’ve got to know who you’re dealing with when you go have those conversations. Like it drives me crazy. So I’m definitely a hands-off boss. I am, until I’m not. And so I want them to go figure it out, and I want them to come back to me with options. Like I don’t want to have to hold their hands. But they know that about me because I tell them every day. But you have to know who your boss is.

Pete Mocakitis
Okay. I’m with there. So, now, you’ve done a little bit of categorizations associated with bosses and types, any boss, naughty boss, some work style personalities. Could you give us the quick orientation to these concepts to see sort of who we’re dealing with here?

Mary Abbajay
Yeah, absolutely. And, I mean, if you can’t label your boss, who can you label anymore in this world, right? So we cover some different – we take Managing Up from the perspective of personality and work styles because that’s really what you see. And so what we did, what I did, is really broke people down to a couple different personality types, and then we went and took after that, then we went and talked about 10 difficult boss types.

So the main personality types are introversion or extroversion, so that’s very helpful to know that. Then we went and talked about four work styles. And one work style was what we call the advancer, and the advancer is the person that’s – I’m an advancer, for example – fast-paced, task-oriented, wants to get a lot of stuff done quickly, doesn’t really want a lot of, you know, soft huggy muggy relationship building.

I love my people but I don’t want to talk to them all the time about it. And just really focuses on tasks and getting things done, and wants to make decisions quickly, very pragmatic, move the ball forward all the time.

Then another boss type is also very fast-paced. We call this boss the influencer or the enthusiasts. And this boss is about high energy, moving things forward, but moving with people. So the kind of a cheerleader, like the inspirational person, loves to take risks, loves to innovate, loves to do different things, and wants it done with people along their side. So fast-paced and people-oriented.

Then the third type that we talk about, these are the people that we call them the evaluators. So they slow it down, you know, they’re the efficient perfectionist, they’re task-oriented, so not warm and fuzzy but not cold. They love the details, they want things done right, they’re like the measure twice, then measure twice again, and then cut once. We call these the evaluators. Different energy, and what they care about is getting things right every single time.

And then the last boss that we talk about is people-oriented. They are people-oriented and they are also moderate pace. So they want to kind of slow things down, they care about the people. These are the people that want to build team, they want to make sure everybody is happy, they don’t want to make anybody unhappy, and they want to get things right, and they want everyone to be secure. And this boss we call the harmonizer.

Pete Mocakitis
Okay. Understood. And so, then, once I know that, I imagine you’re saying, “Go ahead and give them what they want.”

Mary Abbajay
Yeah, so, for example, if your boss is an advancer like me, and they are fast-paced and they want to get stuff done, and they don’t want to be huggy muggy, and they don’t want a lot of chitchat, they want decisions made. Then you want to really pay attention to that personality and do things that work best with them.

For example, if your boss is always impatient and in a hurry and just wants stuff done, when you go into their office, don’t sit down, fall of on a chair, and then just chitchat for 15 minutes. We’ll want to punch you in the face. You want to be able to like go in, be brief, be business-like and be gone. So you want to pay attention to different personalities and work styles so you know what works for these bosses.

For example, if you have an energizer boss, one of the qualities of this boss is they’re optimistic, they’re enthusiastic. And they’re going to come in, Pete, they’re going to be like, “Wow, let’s do this new idea. Let’s put an office on the moon.” And you’re going to be tempted to be like, “That’s dumb,” and be a wet blanket.

And so you can’t do that with that boss. You’d have to say, “Oh, that’s an interesting idea, and we may have some challenges.” So you want to know that you’re working with them and not against them in a way. So you want to find out what your boss is and adopt strategies that are going to work for that boss that doesn’t push them away from you.

Pete Mocakitis
Okay. Very good. Well, then, now I want to hear about there’s some things that are just bad behavior, you know, no matter what your work style is, things that can be disrespectful, just mean. And so how do you handle those tricky ones?

Mary Abbajay
When you’re the mean person or when your boss has the bad behavior?

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, the boss is mean, you know, the boss seems to just have little regard for you and others as human beings and steals credits, publicly shames, they’re just like all the naughty things the boss does.

Mary Abbajay
So when you have a boss that does that, you want to think about the spectrum of behavior. So on the one end, you have the good boss, they’re easy. They might do that once in a while or occasionally like be snippy. Then you have those bosses in the middle that might do this behavior frequently. Like we call those the difficult bosses, like the narcissists, the impulsive, the pushovers, we have some difficult bosses.

But then you have, on the other end of the spectrum, I put it like the red, like, “Danger, danger, Will Robinson.” We have what we call the truly terrible, and these are the psychos, the crazies, the bullies, the people that are screaming at you, the egomaniacs. Now they’re a whole another category of bosses. And with those bosses, it’s not so much about managing up as is about surviving.

And I talk about, I always caution people like it’s okay to quit. I think you want to talk about that later but, you know, if you have truly psycho behavior on your hands, or behavior that is just not acceptable, then you don’t have a lot of choices. You can’t do much managing up. You have to choose to protect yourself.

But if the boss is kind of snippy, well, maybe you need to look at, “Are they really snippy or are you just taking it the wrong way?” So you have to kind of assess the behavior.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Understood. And so then can you help us make that distinction between, well, what’s kind of tricky, okay, there’s this sort of snippy every once in a while, they’re in a mood versus truly terrible? I think it might be eye-opening for some in terms of if you can just sort of lay it out in terms of these are behaviors or examples that tend to be almost unworkable and, thus, it’s time to explore the exit.

Mary Abbajay
Yeah. So, you know, I don’t know if you’ve ever read any Eckhart Tolle. I love his stuff. He said that human beings have – he wrote The Power of Now – human beings have three choices when they’re faced with a difficult situation. Choice number one is you can change the situation or you can, choice number two is you can adapt to accept the situation, or, choice number three, is you can leave the situation.

And so when you’re talking about someone who’s truly terrible, you know, screaming, raging bully, then there’s not much you can do to change other people. There’s nothing you can do to change other people. And in terms of your choices about going to HR, for example, those are pretty risky as we’re seeing now with the MeToo, and it gets even riskier the smaller kind of business you work in.

So maybe if you work for a really large company with a robust HR department it might have some traction. Going to you boss’ boss is also a little risky. Your boss’ boss probably hired that person and they may not be as supportive as you want.

So the next choice is to accept and adapt it, right? And when the behavior is so bad, like if they are screaming at you on a daily basis, when you are feeling demeaned, when you are feeling sick, when you are physically and emotionally strung out, when you are planning your day more about how to survive than how to thrive, it may be time for you to take that third option which is to leave.

And this is a very difficult choice for many people but quitting is always an option. And quitting as an option, more people I do think need to consider. I mean, look, you spend most of your waking hours, most of us spend at work, and those should be good waking hours. And those should be hours where you’re alive, and you’re doing great stuff, and you’re feeling great, and you’re contributing to something.

If you have a boss that’s truly terrible, that’s irredeemable, then we really do – you need to leave because you will become sick. I mean, there are studies after studies that have shown how toxic bosses make people physically and mentally sick. You need to get out if you have one of those.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Thank you. Now, you used the word irredeemable, and I would love to get your take on, if you do need to have a tough conversation, like, “Hey, you know, every other week or so you say,” the boss says something that’s just kind of super hurtful.

Mary Abbajay
Terrible? Yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, just terrible. So I guess there are some things that could be in the blind spot of the boss or, you know, they just – it’s hard to know. It’s like, “Yeah, I know I do it. I don’t care,” versus, “Oh, I had no idea I was being interpreted that way.”

Mary Abbajay
Yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
So how do you dance in that world of providing feedback in the hopes that a boss will change a behavior?

Mary Abbajay
So it depends on the relationship you have with your boss and it depends on your boss. Like can you imagine someone like – take Donald Trump, for example. There are certain people that can give him feedback and there are certain people that can’t give him feedback, right, from what we read in the news. And he’s a pretty powerful boss, he’s the President of the United States, so it’s about your relationship.

If you have the kind of relationship that you can give feedback then you want to do it, you want to do it privately, you want to have that conversation, you want to make it so that you are showing your intention as to make them successful, and your intention is to also let them know that you’re on their side and you’re going to, have a request of a different behavior.

But let me also caution that if the boss is truly terrible, they may not take that feedback well. If you really believe that it’s a blind spot and they don’t know, that’s good. But if they are truly a bully or a true really heavy narcissist, that conversation may backfire on you, so you want to be really careful. Also, you want to look at, “Are you the only one being targeted or is it everybody?”

So that conversation is very difficult and that’s a case-by-case situation. And if you do have that conversation, be prepared for it not to go well and role-play it first. Because the truth is a lot of people might just say what you did. They might just say, “I’m a screamer. I don’t care.” So now the choice is clear for you.

You can either stay there and deal with the screaming, right, and kind of put on your golden work shield every day so it doesn’t impact you, or you can choose to leave. And the other thing you have to do is assess, “Is it worth it?”

So I know a lot of people would say, “I would never work for someone who screams, or belittles me, or embarrasses me in front of people, or is a narcissist.” Well, then a lot of people would never have worked for Steve Jobs, right, because that’s pretty much how they described him. So only you can decide what you’re willing to put up with and what is worth it to you.

But what I don’t want people to do is think that they don’t have choice. Really, at the end of the day, I want people to be in choice. You get to choose what adaptive strategies you use for your boss, and you get to choose how you want to be treated.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Very cool. Thank you. Now toward the end of the book you’ve got 50 tips for managing your manager. Can you share a couple of those that have been just supremely resonant with folks and helpful?

Mary Abbajay
Well, the first tip is really learn what your boss wants and adapt to it, right? It’s not about, if you’re waiting for yourself to adapt, if you’re waiting for your boss to adapt to you, you might be waiting for a very long time. So you want to really find out what’s important to him or her and see what you can adapt.

You want to bring solutions not problems. And depending on what kind of boss you have, it will depend what kind of solutions you’ll have. So, for example, if you have an advancer or you have an extrovert, then you’ll want to go and bring a couple of solutions.

So one thing that people tend to do in the workplace is they tend to complain. But inside every kind of complaint is request. So don’t bring a problem without a solution, and don’t bring a complaint without a request. I mean, these are just classics. And they’re classic because they work.

The other thing is respecting your boss’ time. When you walk into her or his office, you want to be clear and prepared about what you need. Because in addition to managing you and others, your boss most likely has her own tasks to accomplish so know what you need from your boss and then get out.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay.

Mary Abbajay
Make sure you align your priorities. You know, oftentimes we get stuck in our own priorities and we’re not shifting for our boss’. Being proactive is huge, and that means really – you know, when my staff is proactive, I love it when they look at my calendar and like, “Oh, you know, Mary is doing a podcast. Let’s get on top of things that she might need for that before she asks us for that.” So being proactive is always a way it’s going to make you stand out.

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

Mary Abbajay
I would like to talk a little bit about and give one specific strategy about what I see is the boss that most people hate the most.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, let’s do it.

Mary Abbajay
All right. So the micromanager is the one that comes up all the time about the one that drives people crazy. The micromanager is the boss that’s always over your shoulder, that is always telling you what to do, doesn’t give you an authority, and is just on you all the time.

And most people find this really frustrating, because we like to have some autonomy at work, right? We like to stretch our own creative muscles and we like to be able to make our own decisions. And so the micromanager, well, is probably the most annoying to most people. It’s also the easiest one to manage up to.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay.

Mary Abbajay
And do you want me to tell you how to do it?

Pete Mockaitis
Please do, yeah.

Mary Abbajay
All right. So it’s so obvious, Pete. What would you think you would do if you ever had a micromanager?

Pete Mockaitis
Yes. Yes.

Mary Abbajay
And how did you handle it? What did you do? Aside from being frustrated.

Pete Mockaitis
I think I just continually tried to anticipate what they were going to ask and need, and then just like over-did everything.

Mary Abbajay
Dude, you go it. You could’ve co-wrote the book. And that’s so easy but most people are like, “I’m resisting this. Like I don’t want to do this. It’s unfair.” But you need to flood them with information before they ask. You need to anticipate this behavior. You’re not going to change them right away. Either it’s based on their lack of trust of you, or they just need to know, so stop resisting it and just give them the information before they ask. Give them as much as you can, whenever you can, and find out what’s important to them.

And a lot of times you will gain their trust once they see that – and do things their way. If they like the Oxford comma, use the Oxford comma, but it’s really about being forthright, proactive, and giving them information before they ask.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Got it. Thank you.

Mary Abbajay
You’re welcome.

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

Mary Abbajay
Oh, yeah, oh, that’s a hard one. So I think, and I’m not going to get it exactly right. I tried to find it before this. But it’s from Cher, it was something that I read years ago when I was younger trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my life, and she said, “I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life, so I just kept not doing the things I didn’t want to do, and pretty soon I was doing the things that I wanted to do.”

And I really like that because I think your career is a journey, and it’s a marathon, and I think that there’s a lot of pressure to know exactly what you want to do as soon as you get out of school. So for those of us who took us a little while to figure out what you do, just keep trying different things.

Pete Mockaitis
Great. How about a favorite study or experiment or a bit of research?

Mary Abbajay
Well, you know, I’m really into lately, I’m really into like the neuroscience of emotions and interactions. So there’s some great work being done by people like David Rock that really they’re pinpointing like what parts of your brain lights up with different emotions and what human beings need. So it’s actually giving the hard science to what people call the soft skills and the soft science. So I’m really into that lately.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, cool. And how about a favorite book?

Mary Abbajay
Well, you know, I’m an English major so this is like choosing a favorite child so I’m going to say I’m going to go fiction, being an old English major, and my favorite book, I would to say, is a book called Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston. And I love this book because it’s a story of a woman and her life just – most of us would be like, “Oh, my God, how horrible. Terrible things have happened to her.”

By the end of the book, she is blessed and thankful for everything that her life brought to her, and I just really like that sort of embracing what life is and never letting yourself be a victim.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, thank you. And how about a favorite tool, something that helps you be awesome at your job?

Mary Abbajay
So I couldn’t do my job without Google. Like let’s just give old-fashioned Google a big shout out. And I think I’m really lately into something called the Pomodoro Method, I’m kind of old school here, which is this 25-minute productivity tool where it forces you to work for 25 minutes straight without answering email and I’m loving that.

And then, of course, I don’t know what I would do without my Starbucks pre order app because I hate waiting in lines. So those are three favorites.

Pete Mockaitis
Thank you. And how about a favorite habit, something that helps you flourish?

Mary Abbajay
My favorite habit. I take a walk. Well, I’m a 10,000-step girl, right? So I try to get my 10,000 steps in every single day. In fact, when I’m going to this podcast, even though it’s raining, I got 1300 more steps to get in today. But I really find walking for about 45 minutes to an hour every day is something that really keeps me sane.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, cool. And is there a particular nugget or piece that you share that seems to get quoted back to you frequently?

Mary Abbajay
Oh, God. Yeah, there’s a lot. But I’m thinking lately, people always say that I say, “Just do it. Just do it. Like don’t complain. Just do it. Make it work. Figure it out and take control of your life.”

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

Mary Abbajay
Okay, if they want to learn more about me, they can either go to Twitter @maryabbajay, they can go to my website, either careerstonegroup.com or managingupthebook. But if you want to get in touch with me, I’m kind of old school and I do like to email. It kind of runs my life. So if you need to talk to me, you can email me mary@careerstonegroup.com.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And do you have a final challenge or call to action you’d issue to folks seeking to be awesome at their jobs?

Mary Abbajay
I do. It’s kind of a two-fold. One is adapt. It’s really important to be awesome at your job, to always be willing to adapt, to be able to accept change, to be able to look around, be strategic and adapt to what is. As we know from biology, that in evolution, that people who adapt, people who could be flexible are the people that were going to be around for the long haul.

And the second one, which I feel very strongly about, is take responsibility. And I mean this in two ways. I think people need to take responsibility for gaining the skills that they need to be awesome at their job, they take responsibility that they’re always developing their career and their skills, and responsibility for driving their career.

And we all need to take responsibility for our impact in the world and our impact in other people. It’s about understanding, separating your intention from your impact. And to be someone that impacts in a positive way, which I like to say leaves a positive wake after every encounter with people so that people feel great about you, about the encounter, but mostly so people feel great about themselves.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, beautiful. Thank you. Well, Mary, thank you so much for taking this time and writing this book. I think it’s going to be transformative for a lot of folks in terms of relationships improved, fast tracks joined and some bosses left. So everybody wins no matter which way it goes. So much appreciated and please keep up the great work.

Mary Abbajay
Thank you. And, Pete, you are a doll face. It was so much fun to be in your show. Thank you again for having me and I wish you the best.

Mar 16
0

274: Enhancing Collaborations by Improving Civility with Chris Edmonds

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Chris Edmonds says: "Create an environment in your team... where people can speak up."

Chris Edmonds returns to talk about crafting a culture of civility in the workplace.

You’ll Learn:

  1. Troubling research pointing to incivility on the rise
  2. The 3 Ds that destroy civility
  3. A reframe on blame

About Chris

Chris Edmonds is a sought-after speaker, author, and executive consultant who is the founder and CEO of The Purposeful Culture Group. After a 15-year executive career leading high performing teams, Chris began his consulting company in 1990. He has also served as a senior consultant with The Ken Blanchard Companies since 1995. Chris is one of Inc. Magazine’s 100 Great Leadership Speakers and was a featured presenter at SXSW 2015.

Chris is the author of the The Culture Engine, the best seller Leading At A Higher Level with Ken Blanchard, and five other books. Chris’ blog, podcasts, research, and videos can be found at Driving Results Through Culture. Thousands of followers enjoy his daily quotes on organizational culture, servant leadership, and workplace inspiration on Twitter at @scedmonds. Visit his website at www.drivingresultsthroughculture.com.

Items Mentioned in this Show:

Chris Edmonds Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Chris, thanks so much for joining us again on the How to be Awesome at Your Job podcast.

Chris Edmonds
Pete, I am excited to be here. Appreciate the opportunity.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, I’m excited too. So we chatted way back when in Episode 149.

Chris Edmonds
Wow. Almost a year ago.

Pete Mockaitis
It’s wild, but the time flies. And you’re still making great ideas out in the world, so it is fitting that we chat again.

Chris Edmonds
Well, I thank you for that. And I certainly have found that my focus is upon culture and leadership, and we still have culture and leadership problems all around the globe. So I have job security.

Pete Mockaitis
It’s true, it’s true. Well, I was also intrigued by… You have another – I don’t know if you’d call it a job, an avocation – you’re a published songwriter and performer. What’s the story about this here?

Chris Edmonds
It’s true, it’s true. I was convinced… Okay, this is going to go back probably before the year of your birth. So I started playing guitar when I was 12 – that was 1964. Yes, it was The Beatles that inspired that. And by the time I hit college in 1970, I was convinced that I didn’t need a college degree; I was going to go to Hollywood and get work immediately. So, that did not play out, but I did lose almost a full year of college courses, which there was some pain having to recover from that.
But what I realized is that I’ve been a working musician forever in LA and in San Francisco and in Austin, which is a very, very cool music town even today. And we’ve been here in Denver for 12 years, and I started with a band and it wasn’t the perfect match from a values standpoint. What a surprise that that would be one of my biases. And joined a team in late ‘06 that I’m still a part of, and they’re twisted, they’re immensely talented, great songwriters, great performers.
And so we’ve been playing together for 11-12 years and have evolved from a country thing to a country-rock thing to a classic rock thing, to now I’m learning Gaga and Pink, because the market is… They want variety. And so we do mostly corporate stuff and weddings and stuff. We do some festivals, we do a few clubs here and there. But I actually got official songwritership from ASCAP for some of the music I wrote back in the early ‘70s. Because once you perform it and someone pays you for that, you are an official professional songwriter. So, I haven’t written anything in the last 10 years; most of my writing goes around the culture and leadership thing. But I have a studio 20 feet away that has 20 guitars hanging in humidified cabinets. It’s a problem.

Pete Mockaitis
Twenty?

Chris Edmonds
It’s a problem. I’ve cut back. And years ago my wife would just kind of… We’re celebrating 39 years of wedded bliss next month, so there’s another podcast story potentially. But I said, “I found a guitar, I want to buy a guitar.” She said, “Fine, which one are you going to sell?” Rats! So, she’s pretty smart, she’s pretty smart.

Pete Mockaitis
So, just like at work when they make a request, if you say, “Okay, sure thing. Which of these things on my plate should go?”

Chris Edmonds
“Which of these projects would you like me to let go of?” But I hated, hated selling guitars, but I’ve actually been pretty good. And I’ve got some banjos and I’ve got some mandolins and I’ve got a base, and I make reasonable music on most of them.

Pete Mockaitis
Cool. Alright, so the main topic of today is not so much your musical career, although that’s intriguing; or your guitar collection, but you caught my eye with your take on civility, which I think is an important issue. And I want to hear why it’s important to you.

Chris Edmonds
Well, it’s so interesting because my bias has been, let me help leaders A) be aware of the quality of their culture, and let’s craft a proven template of sorts, a system of sorts, that will allow leaders to be more intentional about the way people treat each other. But boy, what an interesting year we’ve had with the “me too” approach and the dynamic that it has caused with women who’ve been badly treated for, oh, let’s call it centuries, by men in power – being able to stand up and say, “Not anymore, never again.”
And so, what really struck me is Weber Shandwick is a firm – yes, at WeberShandwick.com – and they’ve done the state of civility surveys research for the last 6-7 years or so. And so at about the time of the “me too”, let’s call it tidal wave, Weber Shandwick came out with this wonderful, completely depressing data about how basically 69% of people surveyed – that’s workplace plus it’s community, so it’s neighborhoods – 69% said that there’s a problem with civility today in America. And in 2010 it was about 65%, it dropped to about 63% in ’12 and in 2013, but it’s a problem.
And 75% believe that incivility in America has risen to crisis levels. That’s not a, “Oh, this is something someone ought to look at.” This is a significant red flag. And so, I just believe that if we allow the incivility to continue, these numbers aren’t going to get better. They’re going to get worse. And I’m convinced that with as much time as people spend in their workplaces or doing work if they’re remote workers, which of course is growing – the degree of them being treated with trust and respect is not offsetting the degree to which they’re being treated incivility-wise.
So I’m convinced that this is something that leaders need to not just be aware of, but grab the bull by the horns and look at the quality of relationships in their workplaces. And if we can start there we might actually make some headway in the next year or two.

Pete Mockaitis
Chris, it’s interesting – this is a very serious topic and yet I can’t help but chuckle as I imagine all the uncivil things I might say to you as a joke.

Chris Edmonds
But we could there very quickly, which of course the twisted mind of mine is, I laugh. But then it’s, “No, no, no, no, no. We can’t say that on the air. That’s not good.”

Pete Mockaitis
Right, so keep the iTunes clean right in here. So, maybe let’s get clear with definitions a bit. When you talk about “civility”, how would you roughly define that, and what is the opposite of civility?

Chris Edmonds
It’s interesting – I’ve learned over the years, and blessed with Ken Blanchard’s friendship and mentorship. And Ken Blanchard taught us the power of simple stories and simple ideas. And he of course with The One Minute Manager way back in 1978 taught us that there were three secrets. So one of the things that I’ve learned from Ken is there are three things that we can remember as humans.
So, one of the things that has been very, very consistent – and I’ve been doing research around, again, the quality of workplace cultures for 25 years – and so my 3 Ds are perfect descriptions of the absence of civility. And they are Dismissing, Discounting, Demeaning. So, if we think of the workplace experiences that we’ve had over our careers, those three come up very, very quickly, and we can see different faces popping up on the little movie screen inside of our foreheads.
And it can be driven by power, it can be driven by politics, it can be driven by flat-out angry people that have really no business supervising anyone, including themselves. But the idea of dismissing others’ ideas, dismissing others’ efforts, dismissing others’ accomplishments – there’s no good in the relationship that’s going to come of that. There is going to be a logical erosion of trust, respect and dignity – what a surprise.
And my three Ps of course are around the culture side, which is Purposeful, Positive, Productive. And none of those three Ps are going to be able to gain traction and be sustained if you have any of those Dismissive, Demeaning, Discounting behaviors happen. And the reality is that as we look at our workplaces and we look at the kind of behavior that often gets recognized, gets rewarded, gets people increasing responsibilities and all of a sudden, “You’re a great sales person”, meaning you’re aggressive, assertive, you’re the most bold with getting customers to give in to your demands for buying X or Y or Z, then you might then become a team leader, in which case because you were a terrific – by the way, maybe a bit mean – individual contributor, then naturally we’re going to put a team under your control.
And if there’s not really a sensitivity that, “Managing a team is different than managing myself”, the 3 Ds is not going to get us anywhere; the 3 Ps will get us somewhere. So, you’ve heard me use a couple of three different languages – the 3 Ds, which are going to erode the trust, respect, dignity. There’s the trust, respect, dignity statement alone which is pretty important. And then it’s the Purposeful, Positive, Productive team culture, division culture, work culture. So, anything that happens that is in those 3 Ds is going to fit right into the incivility side.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’d love to get your take… I have a feeling that listeners and myself included would say “I don’t dismiss, I don’t discount, I don’t demean.” Can you share what are some maybe subtle or overlooked ways that we can be guilty of doing this stuff?

Chris Edmonds
It’s so interesting, and it happens often in one-on-one kinds of scenarios. We have a lot of organizations, especially in the US and in Europe are doing a lot more project-driven work environment. So in other words I might be in a team of – and I’ll use a classic one – of sales people, but we’re working on a big project, which means I’m working with technical folks and folks that do manufacturing for example, or they are delivering services out in the field around the globe or what not.
So my project team may not be a team that is a, quote, “intact” team; it might change from project to project. And what can happen in that dynamic is there is often – again this is very Western – it’s about showing up others. So if I can withhold information from you, then I look like I know more than you do, I’m smarter than you are, I’m more valuable than you are, and yet what I’m doing is I’m eroding the team’s ability to get their work done and to wow that customer consistently. So I can be very indirect by withholding information that you have asked me for that I’m supposed to give you, but I can be very, very, very subtle in that way.
The ideas that often get generated in a project team, and most project teams are not calm and cool, they’re “hair on fire”, right? They’re moving pretty fast, and often deadlines are increasing and we may not be delivering exactly according to plan, which increases everyone’s heartbeats and what not, so the pressure goes up. It can again help me as a player on that team – maybe not a leader on the team, as a player on the team – to say, “Weren’t you supposed to have that done last week? I still am waiting for X.” That’s discounting, that is the dismissing.
Someone comes up with an idea: “I know we can fix this if we just all stop and do X right now.” And if you and three others in the room go, “That’ll never work. We’ve tried that before” – there’s the dismissing thing. The idea of winning… It’s so interesting as I look at organizations, and as metaphors we use sports a lot, and of course it’s a very American thing, I get it. It certainly happens in Europe, but the sports things is about winning too. It’s not about a great locker room and a great team and we all sacrifice to win. It’s about me beating you, us beating your team. So those subtle things are all about keeping score and about me looking better than you, including me making you look bad. So that’s one avenue.
Another avenue, and I remember a culture client that was a delight, because they made such great progress. But what I typically do when I go into a client who’s saying, “We think our culture’s bad / broken, and we don’t know what to do” Leaders are really not asked to manage the quality of their culture, so when they discover that the culture is bad or broken, they may not know exactly what to do. So they may do nothing – that’s not helpful. They may try something which could be helpful. They may bring a consultant like me in, which could be helpful – hopefully helpful.
So this particular client I did probably 24-25 phone interviews – part of my discovery – to learn what are the norms in this culture, what are the things that get valued and validated, what are the things that get quashed or discounted in some way. And what I learned was that the executive team – there were five members of that executive team – teased each other and their direct reports mercilessly. I mean from the moment they hit the door they’d been thinking of cutting remarks they could use, quote, with their “buddies”.
They really did like each other and they really did trust each other, but what the interviews helped me realize is that those comments – hilarious, creative as they may be – erode trust, respect and dignity. And people basically said the teasing is so bad that, “I can’t simply show up without my armor on.” And my armor on might be, I’m on edge, or I’m thinking to myself of what’s the comeback I’m going to make to Lee when he comes by, or whatever it is. It creates an energy-sucking and heart-sucking kind of dynamic. And these guys were shocked; they said, “No one’s ever told us that the teasing is bad.” And they all of sudden kind of got… I said, “No one?” And they said, “Well, we’ve had a little bit of feedback, but we dismissed it.” There’s one of my Ds.
So, it’s interesting the bold dismissive things, the “You’re an idiot, you shouldn’t be in charge of this project, you always fall apart when the pressure…” – those kinds of messages are not teasing; they are very, very bold and demeaning and eroding people’s confidence. And again, it’s the “I win, you lose” kind of a dynamic. It’s the subtler things that leaders may not be aware that are, “Oh, he’s only teasing”, right? Well, sure, but if through that teasing you are reducing trust and respect, you’re reducing the likelihood of people proactively solving problems for their customers and for the company – that’s really stupid. That’s not just dumb; that is full on stupid.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, that’s a great example there with regard to the teasing. I’d love a few more, maybe even some non-verbal things. I didn’t even say a word, but I am indirectly or unintentionally being dismissive, discounting, demeaning.

Chris Edmonds
Absolutely. Let’s see how many eyes have rolled across tables in yours and my careers over the years. So there’s the heavy sighs… Again, some of us can go to our own families, and my mother was a pro at the non-verbal dismissive stuff; my poor father. Mom’s 96 years old, still here. She’s actually turned very kind, which is just a shock to most of us, but… I’ll go visit her next month, which is kind of cool.
But the body language conversation, and it’s about the slumping in the chair and it’s the holding one’s hand in your hands and shaking your heads while someone’s explaining their idea or their solution, or “Here’s what I tried to do and it didn’t quite work” – all of the those things, everybody notices. And especially if you’re in a leadership position and you begin to either, again, verbally discount and demean, verbally dismiss people’s efforts and ideas – everybody else is watching.
And so there’s this interesting dynamic of, “I don’t want the eye roll. If they get the eye roll, then I could be winning, because I’m not being judged at this point by the boss or what not.” And it’s so interesting to think back to some of my – they weren’t “worst” bosses, but they were really, really challenging bosses. And one I remember I worked for him for a couple of years, and I remember him being incredibly talented at the full body dismissiveness, and it was classic, it was just wonderful. It was the heavy sigh, and it was the shaking of the head, and it was the getting up and pacing while someone is…
Those are not subtle; those are very, very bold. And his intent was to express disappointment that we weren’t doing the right things, that the problem wasn’t solved, that the customer wasn’t satisfied, etcetera. But his anger was so powerful in the room. And the thing that was very interesting – as you posed that question I got this guy’s image clearly pacing in one of our conference rooms. And I remember when I left that job, that he wrote me a very kind card that said, “Appreciate all you’ve done. You’ve really advanced our programs, and your customers love you” and yadda, yadda yadda. And I completely dismissed it, because it was the first time in two years I’d ever heard an encouraging word from him. So you think about my expectations day-to-day around him – it was, “I hope he is mad at somebody else today”, as opposed to, “We’re all going to rock it and he’s going to love us.”
And then I go to my best bosses – Jerry Nutter, who’s is the best boss that I celebrated in my book The Culture Engine. And he had Nutterisms, he would say, which we of course – his team… I’m still connected to these folks that I worked with under Jerry; 30 years later we’re still connected, we still remember Nutterisms and kind of share them a little bit.
But Jerry’s view was, “You guys are brilliant, you’re closer to this than I am. I’m kind of over here doing more strategic things; you guys manage the tactics and if you need something from me, then let me know.” And he was great in front of a big team, he was great in front of our volunteers. But what I remember, what all of us remember was, when we did something wrong, when we fell short, Jerry never demeaned, discounted us, never dismissed us; but he engaged us in conversations. It was almost worse. It’s easy to discount someone who’s going to go, “Oh, you’re an idiot. You just screwed it up again.” It was like, “Yeah, whatever.” I’m going to go off and do my own thing, because I’m not going to get anything of validation from this boss, or from these peers.
But Jerry was so driven to want us to make new mistakes every day, not the same ones. It was totally cool, it was totally cool. And so we often… And again, I’ve had this conversation with Sue and with Anne – part of this team that worked for Jerry for quite a while – we would go into that meeting with a full plan of what we should’ve done different, and what we’ll do next time.
If I was dealing with Skip – the other boss – I wanted out of the room as quickly as possible. I didn’t want to engage, because even if I came up with an idea, I knew it wasn’t going to be good enough. And so, there’s this deflation that happens and it’s like, “I’m going to go get beaten up again.” And again, I think all of these bosses are attempting to find the magic; they’re trying to craft a way to motivate people, a way to inspire production. And mostly it was all production.
What was great about Jerry was that… And again, some other great bosses that I’ve had and been blessed with – is it wasn’t just about production; it was about production, but it was also about learning, and it was about growth, and it was about opportunity, and it was about, “What can we do different? How do we wow these folks next time, because we’re going to do this cool program in three months again? How are we going to completely wow them, because now we’ve kind of wowed them again? What are we going to do?”
And it was this constant feeling like I can come up with ideas. They may be stupid; I’m not sure they’re stupid or not. But we had an environment with Jerry that no idea was stupid. It might be less brilliant than others will come up with, but the ideas of, “How do we make this better? How we do this different?” moves you away from maintaining a system to actually creating new experiences and better loyalty from customers, and even more important – and you can hear it in my voice – better loyalty from the employees, because we felt valued, we felt validated.
When we screwed up it was mostly kind of laughter and, “Gee, that didn’t turn out like I thought.” But if you think of the productivity, which is often the sole output that is driven by lousy bosses and okay bosses. Great bosses are typically interested in growth and maintaining a good relationship and in essence being kind, but also being kind of the “tough love” thing – being truthful about, “Here’s our target, here’s what happened, where we felt short. What are we going to do?” But it’s much, much my experience – and Pete, I know yours is too – it’s much, much more likely that we’re going to drive harder and move the organization forward faster if we feel trusted and respected and treated with dignity, than not.

Pete Mockaitis
Absolutely, yes. And I want to kind of touch upon that point when you said you knew you screwed up and you were going in for the conversation, and it wasn’t demeaning. What were some of the questions posed to you, or how did that conversation unfold?

Chris Edmonds
Well, it’s so interesting because I think back to… And let’s use the Skip and Jerry comparison, because the classic lousy bosses and a great boss. And Skip was always interested in blame, and it rolled off his tongue very, very quickly. And so, if I was going in as an individual contributor that had fallen short, I knew I was going to get blamed. And maybe this is going to give you some insights into the way my mind works – it’s like, “What creative ways is he going to blame me today?” I was really kind of intrigued with that. “Where is he going to go with this?”
But it wasn’t that I was interested in learning from him; I wasn’t feeling like I was going to leave inspired. It was, I was going to be blamed. And I didn’t want to be blamed; I wanted somebody else to be blamed, which is again, not a team-building thing; it’s a team-eroding thing.
And so, the questions that Jerry asked were about, “Tell me what you’re thinking now. I know what your plan was, we went through the plan. If there was one or two things that you wish you would’ve done different now, knowing what we know now, which we didn’t know before, what are they?” So it’s the solution thing. What are we going to do different next time? He would say all the time, “How do we make new mistakes?” I remember him asking me once, “Did we make all new mistakes on this thing, or did we make some old ones?” And I said, “Well, I think we made a couple of old ones.” “Well, tell me more about that.”
And so it wasn’t a power conversation, it wasn’t him better than me, him dismissing me, demeaning me, discounting me. It was, what’s out there that we can learn from? How do we share this with the rest of the team? So again, we make new mistakes, we do different things. What are people going to be asking for next, because we’re going to have to deliver it? How do we inspire a much, much better experience?
And again, I was a non-profit executive – I was a YMCA executive for 15 years, and it’s like, how do we create those environments without spending a lot of money, and wowing these folks and wanting them to increase their loyalty and increase their feeling like we’re helping their kids, we’re helping them with validating, character-building kinds of programs. And again, yes, what I’m saying is, in this environment, Christian-based, Christian values-based, pretty classic non-profit organization with a crystal clear purpose about serving others and building character, and yet I had some of the worst bosses I ever experienced, in that organization. And I had some of my best bosses in that same organization.
And I went into the, boy, corporate finance. How’s that for moving from an environment of a non-profit into the opposite? And I found – not surprisingly – bosses that came at this thing from fear and didn’t want their people to make mistakes, and were demeaning, dismissive and discounting. And in the same environment I had absolutely great bosses. In that scenario I was a coach, I was an internal consultant. And so, I saw the same behaviors.
So, there could be some humanness to this, but the idea to get to… Hopefully I answered your question around what did Jerry ask, what did your best boss do to kind of inspire learning and resolution to whatever we screwed up. And I think both bosses were interested in the same thing, but one was about creative solutions and validating what we tried, and the other was about blame.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, very good. Thank you. Well, tell me, Chris – anything else you want to make sure to mention before we shift gears and talk about some of your favorite things?

Chris Edmonds
Well, I really hope that there’s something to be said for… And the “me too” movement continues to gain some powerful advocates, and I’m hopeful that we can craft more civil, validating experiences for anyone who’s ever experienced that kind of harassment. But what I want leaders to do, and you said it earlier, that, “I don’t do anything dismissive. I don’t do anything that could be remotely seen as harassment.” And I think, “You know, there’s some of my teasing that I probably did.”
So, it’s the idea that as leaders you need to be aware of how people feel, and whether or not they’re feeling trusted, respected in every interaction. And I think you will be shocked and surprised to find that for the most part incivility is very, very common. We could look at the bullying influence, which is unfortunately classically American. But there are great leaders doing great things in organizations and not letting people mistreat others. And we spend, again, so many hours in the workplace, that’s something that I’m very, very hopeful about. So, I’m going to keep pushing, and I appreciate you giving me a forum to kind of preach to the choir.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, that’s good, thank you. Certainly. So now, we did it last time, but I’d love to see if maybe anything’s new and evolved. Could you share with us a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Chris Edmonds
Oh boy, where I’ve really gone, and it’s certainly been shaded by some of these conversations around civility, is I go back to Nike’s “Just do it” mantra. And I’m kind of like, “No, if we do it and we’re mean and nasty and ugly – yes, we might win but others may not.” How about, “Just do it nicely?” So, can we evolve to actually being civil, and maybe even the next layer of that is being nice to each other? That’s my bias right now.

Pete Mockaitis
Alright. And how about a favorite book?

Chris Edmonds
I just finished Shawn Murphy’s The Optimistic Workplace. Shawn’s a longtime friend, and I was pleased to help him with his launch a couple of years ago. And I was sad to say that I didn’t read the whole book. So, read the whole book and I just love it. And I think, again, what an interesting title, looking at how do we create workplaces where people want to go to work, where they want to contribute, where they want to be creative, where there is a natural optimism that we’re actually – God forbid – improving the lives of our community members and our employees and our customers. That’s a high, high target. And I want to give a shout out to Shawn – he’s just gotten a contract for his next book, which is going to be about belonging, which I’m very excited to hear about. So, couple of shout outs to Shawn Murphy there.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, thank you. And how about a favorite habit, a personal practice of yours that’s handy?

Chris Edmonds
I just had a wonderful opportunity last week at a learning session. I was qualified in an assessment that is about leadership impact. It was really, really cool; but a whole bunch of consultants in a room at one time, which can be kind of dangerous. And what was really, really interesting was going out to dinner with all these folks. Again, I travel a lot; most of the time it’s a very, very solitary life. And for the last seven years or so I’ve been on Tim Ferriss’ low carb diet and it’s worked very well for me.
So, we go into these beautiful restaurants and I’m like, “How’s that prepared. Can I have it grilled and not fried? No starches, no potatoes, don’t even bring me the breads.” And people would look at me and it’s like… We did this three nights in a row. And they’re like finally on the third night, “You’re really serious about this”, and I said, “It’s something that if I don’t feel my best physical self, then how can I do well?” I just turned 66 and I’m out traveling all the time; it’s exhausting to travel. So my habit continues to be to be disciplined in how I fuel my best self, and it’s working still pretty well.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, great. And do you have a preferred means of folks contacting you or reaching out if they want to learn more about your stuff here?

Chris Edmonds
Absolutely. I’d send them to my absolutely wonderfully, recently redesigned website, which is at DrivingResultsThroughCulture.com. I know it’s a handful, but I’ve got my books available there, I’m in the midst of Year 2 of culture, leadership charge videos – little 3-minute videos on how leaders can be more effective in managing their team culture. So, that’s probably the best place – DrivingResultsThroughCulture.com.

Pete Mockaitis
Alright. And do you have a final challenge or call to action you’d issue to folks seeking to be awesome at their jobs?

Chris Edmonds
Absolutely. So, one of the things that is critical – and again, we can take it from the “me too” and people speaking up – create an environment in your team. And you don’t have to change the whole company, but in your team, where people can speak up, where people can say, “We’re not working together well. We’re mistreating each other, the teasing has gone too far”, so you can start to address what could be harmless intentions. That may not always be the case, but to in essence reduce those things that erode trust and respect in the workplace. Let people speak up. It can be hard conversations, but to continue on a path of dismissing and demeaning folks, isn’t going to serve you well.

Pete Mockaitis
Alright. Well, there you have it. Chris, thank you so much for chatting again, this was a lot of fun. And I wish you and your company and your book all sorts of success and luck in the months to come here.

Chris Edmonds
I so appreciate it, Pete. Again, thanks for the opportunity, always enjoy speaking with you.

Mar 09
0

271: Building Social Wealth with Jason Treu

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Jason Treu says: "The most important capital we'll ever have in our life is the relationships that we build with people."

Jason Treu shows how to encourage strong and meaningful connections.

You’ll Learn:

  1. Easy ways to facilitate more meaningful connections at work
  2. How to address your blindspots more quickly
  3. Questions to cultivate empathy

About Jason

Jason is a top business and executive coach. He’s a leading expert on human behavior, influence, sales, networking and leadership. At the heart of his strategy is the understanding that people and your relationships are your true “wealth.” Everything we accomplish in life is with or through other people.

Items Mentioned in this Show:

Jason Treu Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Jason, thanks so much for joining us here on the How to Be Awesome at Your Job podcast.

Jason Treu
Well, thanks for having me on the show and speaking to your fantastic tribe.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I want to hear first and foremost about a game and workshop you invented called Cards Against Mundanity. What’s the backstory here?

Jason Treu
Well, probably now going on 18 months or more ago, I was talking to one of my mentors. And they told me that I needed to try to do something that had the potential to go viral, and I needed to pick something big and something I was going to go all in on. And it was just like, “Well, you just need to figure it out and do it.” And although that’s sort of not specific, I knew that there was some big idea. And I went through a list of things I was like, “I really would like to do a TEDx speech, but if I do one, I want to do one that’s a “How To” speech because then if I finish it, I’ll have something specific that I can translate to a corporate audience or entrepreneurial audience, other people.
So, I thought to myself the one thing that I really wanted to try to do was to try to work on some challenge people might have on culture and performance. And so, I spent about three months doing research and I almost gave up because I wanted to find a research and then build the idea around that, not go in with the premise of something that I thought might work, because I thought that ultimately would be flawed and that might lead me to a result that wouldn’t be as good as the one that I would come up with.
So, I was looking through some research and I came across this professor – his name is Arthur Aron – and he did some research back in 1997, and it was on how to make best friends. And I was like, “This is pretty interesting.” So I read through the research report, which is always pretty dry. And as I was reading at the end the thing that really jumped out at me was, he did a game with 54 grad students that were complete strangers, had never met each other, had no knowledge of each other or anything else, sat them in front of each other, put 36 questions that they asked each other in only 45 minutes.
And they measured afterwards what those people thought of the experiment, and 30% of the people rated that relationship with the complete strangers that they did not know any knowledge of before, as the closest relationship in their life.

Pete Mockaitis
Wow, yeah.

Jason Treu
That’s pretty amazing. Just think about that – in 45 minutes someone has done what most people are doing decades or a lifetime – they had done in 45 minutes. And I thought to myself, “That is absolutely extraordinary.” And then in the original research study, one of the couples ended up getting married. But the interesting part is that’s 1997 – pre-social media, so none of the distractions. But he’s done it dozens of times since then and the results have stayed pretty much the same every time that they have done it.
And then the other part of it, I was going across some research by Google, and they were looking at how to build the perfect team. And they hired researchers and they spent three years and millions of dollars, and they could not see any patterns or trends. And then one of their researches walked in on a group and the manager of the group said, “I have stage 4 cancer and I may not make it. I want to let you all know.” And they saw the performance in that team soared over the next six months. And they figured out the only characteristic across all of Google’s 180 teams was psychological safety.
And that’s a fancy word for “vulnerability”, and what that means is that they got to know each other on a deep personal level, they were able to raise controversial ideas and ask questions about people making fun of them or anything else. And that is the basis, and in fact it’s become so embedded in Google’s culture. They had this other business called Project X – it’s their secret business where they go and try these crazy experiments, and they’re spending I think a billion dollars a year on this business. And the first thing that everyone goes through in training is psychological safety, over everything else.
So, when you combine all that, it was like, “Okay, how can we do this in a group scenario?” And so basically I put together cards, like Cards Against Humanity, and you ask questions, such as, “If you could pick one year of your life to do over, which one would it be and why?” And you share this in a group full of people.
And it’s extremely powerful, people who’ve done it had great results, because you start to bond people over experiences. You get emotionally involved with the people. And the thing about it is when you start to care about other people in the room, your performance goes up, your collaboration goes up, your communication goes up, and it’s just like magic. You’ll see results overnight, and teams have rocketed in their results, and organizations, if you’re a small business. So it’s pretty interesting.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that’s so cool. And I’ve played with the Arthur Aron’s study, and once on Valentine’s day I was with my girlfriend at the time. I said, “Hey, let’s go through these questions.” And sure enough it did facilitate closeness. And I know that Aron has replicated it, in terms of same gender and mixed gender cohorts in doing it. So, with your game, how many questions are there and to what extent are they same versus different than Arthur Aron’s?

Jason Treu
I switched them around; they’re not the same. Some of them are. And so, what I do is I put it in a group full of people, and you can play on the small side of it it’s four people, and I’ve done it up to 15, which is probably the maximum; 12 is probably closer to it. And I asked people to do about three rounds, because I’ve seen that’s the magic number. And the other part of it I changed is that at the end everyone goes around and has one minute to say three things that they learned about people inside of the group, because I found it’s very powerful to be able to do that, because it shows you’re listening and hearing other people.
And one of the things that in research and my TED Talk I found is that if you have a very good to best friend in an organization, your productivity is seven times higher and your retention rate on staying in the organization is seven times if you have that. And so, it’s really to find even one person that you’re really closer to out of this experiment is game-changing for any team or organization. And the other last thing I found is that I’d done this on parallel teams in bigger organizations, meaning they haven’t participated in the same room and you see the results, as long as they know that they’ve both done it.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s so cool. So then, I’d like to dig in here a bit. So, when you talk about coworkers being able to engage with each other and create these meaningful connections – so you have one specific tool, which is the card game and that facilitates psychological safety and good friendship formation, which is linked to all kinds of goodness. So, could you share with us in workplaces what are some additional tools or approaches or mechanisms by which we can encourage and facilitate this kind of transformation to take root?

Jason Treu
Yeah, so another thing that you can do that I’ve had clients do is when you start off a weekly meeting of any kind, is I’ve had people bring in pictures. And have 30 seconds to a minute and share a story about what that picture means to them and why it’s meaningful. And that builds really great connections and you’ll find that people who do that in a short period of time will rate that meeting as their favorite meeting of the week that they have. And they’ll be way more productive because they have a lot more of emotional investment inside of the organization.
I found other things, like if you have a meeting with people, if you allow the junior staff to go first and senior people last, you create a lot better conversations between people, and if you get them out, and I think that’s pretty important. I found the other thing too that’s helpful is when you have a big event, is to go back and really have a brainstorm on what went right, what didn’t go right. But do it in a very productive way, where there is no right or wrong answer necessarily.
At the beginning and you start to have a brainstorm and then you whittle it down, because then everyone has a voice and you get all of the people to communicate. And that’s why creating psychological safety is so important, because what happens is that a lot of the greatest ideas in the business aren’t getting shared, because no one’s putting them forward, because they don’t know where to go to.
So I’d say the last thing, and a quick thing is, people who own businesses or are at a senior-level often get entrenched and never really communicate with people in the organization. And so, I have them walk around for 15 minutes three times a week and just talk to people about what’s going on in their life. And they immediately see significant results, because it shows people that you care. And I think that if you start to do that, you’ll have people come up to you with ideas, suggestions, they’ll be much more engaged, because the key element of building trust, which is the fabric that holds everything together, is caring. And that is the one factor that trumps everything else. And so you’ve got to deeply care about the people and organization and have everyone do that from the top down, or you’re missing out on a lot of productivity.

Pete Mockaitis
I love it. Jason, you went right to the actionable tactics, which is great fun and so handy. And so then, you sort of, I guess, synthesized a number of the drivers for why this stuff works into a few key principles, which you lay out in your book Social Wealth. Can you orient us to that a bit?

Jason Treu
Well, one of the things I did with the book Social Wealth is I wanted to do a “How To” guide on how to build relationships, because I found they’re really learned behaviors, and I think a lot of people believe that they’re born with these skills, and if they don’t have them, then they won’t be good at them or they’re introverts or socially awkward, which is really the majority of people. And so then they just opt out or they just don’t have great relationships or they settle for way less than they should.
So I wanted to go through and have it so people could understand that there are great ways to meet people, build these skillsets. It’s just like going and getting in shape. If you go once a month, you probably won’t be in great shape, unless you have freaky genetics. So, you’ve got to go and do that. And the reality is the most important capital we’ll ever have in our life is the relationships that we build with people. No one had a tombstone that said, “I worked a good life.” That’s not happening. So, it’s the relationships and the experience. My dad passed away…

Pete Mockaitis
I’m sorry.

Jason Treu
Several years ago. He shared with me in a moment at the end that he was like, “I should’ve invested more in the relationships and in people, because there’s a lot of regret I have with relationships in my life.” And I thought to myself, “That’s pretty wise words from someone who’s hours away from passing away.” And I truly believe that in the end the only thing we’re going to look back is the relationships that we had built; nothing else. So we need to spend time doing this.
I think also what’s happening is that you’re seeing that there is no work-life balance, there is no work-life integration. Basically what’s happening – people who work – their friends are at their job, they’re one and the same. And so you’ve got to be able to navigate that, you’ve got to be able to build these relationships, you’ve got to understand how to do it, and build the best ones for you. And that you are going to have to change those relationships over time, because just like there’s a great quote by this movie Stand By Me, and it said, “Friends will come in and out of your life like busboys in a restaurant.” And I really believe that.
Now you’re going to have some good friends that might last for a whole lifetime, but a lot of people won’t evolve the same way you will and they’ll go in other directions. And if you continue to hold on to those relationships, those are the ones that hurt us the most because they tend to start being 70/30, 80/20, and then we feel used and taken advantage of, and they take a really big emotional toll. When the reality is then when you get out of balance you should have a conversation, and at some point you’re just going to have to let them go, if they don’t readjust and swing back.

Pete Mockaitis
Interesting. Now when you say 70/30, 80/20, you mean sort of like the give-take?

Jason Treu
Yeah, the give-take, yes.

Pete Mockaitis
And so, that’s intriguing. Could you give us an example of that unfolding? So, how one person maybe grows in maybe a greater or different direction than another, and as a result there’s more taking that evolves, and then how that conversation could go?

Jason Treu
I think if you look at a person who is focused on their career, on their personal growth, on creating a better version of themselves – there’s not that many percentage of people that are doing those types of things, right?

Pete Mockaitis
Jason, I’d love it if you could drop a number for us. Rough guesstimate inside your heart and mind.

Jason Treu
I probably would say 5 or 10%. I think that may be even optimistic. But I think the challenge is if you’re of those people or maybe a version of that slightly down, that’s at least 75% committed to that, and you’re around people that are very complacent or okay with what’s going on and are not looking to be accountable in their life and looking to overcome challenges and are willing to choose paths to help them get better – they’re going to eventually drag you down, because they are looking out for themselves and they’re not going to be in a situation where they’re givers. And that is the challenge that we all have.
So when that starts to happen, you emotionally more invest in people – you’ll start calling them more, you’ll start planning things more, you’ll start spending more money when you go out and do stuff. You’ll see all these things start, the tide will turn. And you then have to have conversations with people about that and then take a hard look at the relationship you have with people, and that can either be personally or professionally. And then you’ve got to make some decisions based on their response and your interaction. If they’re committed to their own growth and their own creation of a better version of themselves, or if they’re fine sitting in their comfort zone and complacency, and that is where they’re committed to stay.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, thank you. So then, I’d love to hear some more, in terms of the skills and principles to bear in mind as you’re going about living life and doing work. How do you recommend that we go about engaging with others to create all the more meaningful connections that we can make?

Jason Treu
I think that the key is, change comes from the inside out. And the first step is self-awareness, and understanding your own emotions and how you’re reacting to situations. So I think it’s important to go back and understand and find out what are your blind spots. What are the patterns that can sabotage your own success? Because if you don’t, you’re going to have a difficult time interacting with other people, because you won’t understand why you’re torpedoing your relationships or not building them forward. You’ll think it’s someone else, luck, or all these other things, when the reality is that everyone has these challenges, and you just have to start to identify them.
So, for instance an example would be, I had a client and I did sales training a couple of years ago. And this woman came up, and she has a pretty high-pitched voice and she was in her mid-30s and was saying, “I want to sell better. I’ve been doing well…” And this is in front of her peers and other managers. And I was like, “Okay, let’s talk about this.” And we ended up getting out of her that she felt shame, that she was really despondent, she felt she wasn’t good enough.
And the reason stemmed from back in high school and college, whenever she got on the phone and she talked to her mother or grandmother, they would make fun of her voice. And they would say things like, “You’re never going to be successful in business. You’re never going to get married. You need to lower the tone of your voice.” And they almost always mentioned it to her, and it’s something that stuck in her head. So now, every time when she gets on the phone with clients, that tape is running in the back of her head. So, you could tell her how to build better relationships, but that’s not the issue in and of itself. It’s the fact that you’ve got to turn that on its head and eliminate that, because otherwise she’s going to be maybe a little bit more successful, but not much, because those things are going to continually hold her back.
So, that self-awareness and fixing that issue and challenge is going to go a significant amount of way, because then you can teach people the next step, which is more social awareness and the emotions, thoughts and behaviors you can sense then in other people and better relate to them. And that is how you build faster, quicker relationships. But if you can’t relate to yourself, then you’re not going to be able to do it with other people, if that makes sense.

Pete Mockaitis
Understood. So then what are some of your top suggestions for getting that self-awareness, and surfacing and addressing blind spots quickly?

Jason Treu
Well, the challenge is you really ultimately need help from someone else, because our brain is wired to keep us safe. It is not wired to keep us happy, so it blacks out these things. Now, what you can start doing is start asking yourself, “Okay, what behavior do I want to change?” The next question to someone else is, “What are the stories that I’ve made up in my head about that behavior?” For instance if it’s, “I want to lose weight in the new year”, and the story is, “Well, I can’t lose weight because people are constantly making fun of me, people won’t interact with me because I’m overweight, and that’s holding me back.” Okay, that’s great.
Well, then you start to look in what emotions that is coming up from, what emotions are you feeling when you feel that you aren’t losing weight and you aren’t making progress? And then you start to battle and grapple with that, and then you start asking yourself questions around, “What are the limiting beliefs that come up when I feel those emotions? I’m not good enough, I’m not smart enough, I’m not pretty enough”, I’m whatever it is. And then you ask yourself, “When’s the first time that I’ve ever felt that way that I remember?”
And you really have to push yourself, because then that starts to jog a memory in your head about when was the first time you felt like that, because then it starts to trigger patterns and show you what’s gone on, and when and how long and pervasive this has been. And you can start linking it back. And then you have to go back up the stack and you have to say, “Okay, if weight was not an issue and I was in great shape, then what beliefs would I have around that? I’m enough, I’m awesome. What emotions would I be feeling? What stories what I have around the world around me?” And then you can start reverse engineering what it is and how you’re feeling, and then start to read that, take a look at it, and then take actions.
But the other part of it too is that I found that there are two things that people mistake. One is motivation and drive. And motivation is very fleeting. It’s like we’ve all read a book or seen a movie or done something and we’ve been like, “Man, that’s awesome. That’s great, I love that.” And the next day nothing happens. Well, the differences is drive, is you understand the “Why” behind whatever you’re doing, and you will do that. For instance you will run when it is 10 degrees outside; you’ll not make an excuse that it’s too cold, because the drive is much more powerful. But you have to ask yourself questions: “So why am I doing this? Why is that goal or what I want, why do I want it?”
And then you have to ask yourself the harder question: “What am I lacking in my life that that goal is going to help me with?” Because once you do that, then in both of those questions you can move forward and you’ll be really successful because now you’ll be holding up basically an accountability in and of yourself, and getting to the real answers, instead of letting yourself off the hook and dealing at the surface level. Then you can start really having much greater self-awareness, and you can create massive change in your life really quickly.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, excellent. So from that point of having collected some self-awareness, what are some of your top suggestions for building that social awareness?

Jason Treu
So I would say one, you need to practice empathy, because I think when you can practice empathy with people, you can start to understand their viewpoint and you will find common ground much quicker. I tell all my clients and in my conversations with my friends I say, “You’ve got two choices in life – you can be right or you can be happy. Rarely can you be both. So which one do you want?”

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah.

Jason Treu
When you cut it down like that, then you have to realize that is a significant part of life. And I think when you have more empathy, the other thing that happens is that you’re able to have more difficult conversations with people, because really that’s the requirement for being a great leader or a manager, is having difficult conversations when you don’t want to have them, because then what happens is that you get a greater understanding of the people around you, of the challenges, of emotions, and then you’re on the same page.
And that really is game-changing, because then you don’t have this stuff bottled up for months, years or whatever, or never have it. And then that will make a significant conversation. With empathy there is listening skills – that’s a requirement to do that. I think you start doing a few of these things, you’re going to see significant changes in how people respond to you or people interact with you, how people want to help you, because it will be different than how they are interacting with other people.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Now when we talk about some of these empathy elements, do you have any favorite questions that you use either to ask yourself internally, or to ask the person that you’re speaking with, that sort of naturally cultivates more empathy?

Jason Treu
Well, I like to ask people questions… In my head I try to ask myself, “What would the other person be thinking or feeling?” Not how I would be doing it. And then that helps me put me in a frame that takes me out of my defensive posture, and also puts me more in the moment. The other thing too is I try to listen without formulating my counter-argument, because if you do that… That’s what people do, typically they’re not really listening and they don’t really hear what the other person is saying.
And I ask clarifying questions. So, if someone says to me, “You know what? Jason, I’m really upset with you because you didn’t show up for my party or event.” And then I’ll tell them why, and then I’ll be like, “Okay. Well, is there another reason? Is it because you feel like I haven’t been showing up?” And if they say “Yes” or “No”, I try to ask a clarifying question, like, “Okay. Well, there’s something else going on here. We need to dig deeper in order to figure it out, because I’m willing to do whatever it takes. I just don’t know and I need your help to understand why it is that you’re feeling this way and what actions I can take to make the situation better.” So you have to dig down and keep asking “Why?” and ask clarifying questions, and then I think you can get at the heart of the matter, because usually it’s several layers deep.

Pete Mockaitis
And that takes some courage too, because it could be like, “Well, because, Jason, you always do this.” You tell me. We could role-play a little bit. “Because, Jason, you always do this, and you’re one of my best friends. And you said you’d make it and you didn’t. And so, it just makes me kind of wonder what can I really count on you for, and it just makes things feel pretty darn insecure.”

Jason Treu
Yeah. And I think what you’d say to someone in that situation is that, “I hear what you’re saying, and being late and not showing up is a problem. So I’ll make a commitment to you that if I say that I am going to come, I’m going to come. And if I can’t make it, I’m going to tell you I can’t make it and not feel bad, because the problem is I feel bad if I can’t make it, so I just always say ‘Yes’. And I need to draw more clear boundaries and communicate them better, because the way that I’ve been acting is not helpful and it’s not considerate of your feelings, your effort, your time and everything else, and I have to be accountable for that.”

Pete Mockaitis
And what I like about this is, it sounds almost like yeah, of course, we should always do this. But it’s not as much common practice as it may be common sense.

Jason Treu
It isn’t at all. And the problem when you don’t do this is that people harbor ill will and you don’t know why that is. And if you’re in a business setting, that undermines what’s going on, because then people’s retention goes down, they sabotage projects, they don’t put forward their best effort, they don’t help people collaborate. All this stuff is a chain reaction. And the same thing obviously in your personal life.
So, the key thing is, you have to be accountable, and that requires you to lower your ego and you’re going to have to put it in a different place and realize that you don’t have all the answers, and you are on a journey and you’re going to have to pivot constantly in your life. Now, if you’re unwilling to be in that situation and you’d rather be right than happy, then you’re going to be getting very limited results in your life and you’re going to live a very, very small life.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, so big stakes. Jason, thanks for this. Tell me, is there anything else you really want to make sure to highlight before we shift gears and hear about some of your favorite things?

Jason Treu
I would say that if you’re going to go out and start building relationships both personally and professionally, the key thing is to get in the right rooms with people, because I feel like if you’re not there, then it’s a waste of time. And the places that I love to go that are gold mines are charity organizations, because they have movers and shakers, people who are socially aware, that care, are successful people; cultural places such as museums, symphony, opera; and the other place, which may have a mix of people but at least they have things that you’d be interested in, is interest groups, like running groups, art groups, painting, book clubs, whatever it might be. Those are great places to meet people, because you have things in common. And I think a group scenario’s helpful, because then you can meet a lot of people quickly in those organizations, and people have their defenses down, so they’re much more open and it’s much easier to meet them and to build relationships. And obviously that helps you both personally and professionally.

Pete Mockaitis
Alright, thank you. Well, now, could you share with us a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Jason Treu
Yeah, so the quote that I really like is a quote from Maya Angelou, who said, “I’ve learned that people forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” And I think unless we really understand the true role of emotions in our life, and being able to relate to other people and how powerful that is, we’re setting ourselves up to live a really small life, because people – it’s about how you make them feel when you engage and interact with them. It’s not an intellectual contest.

Pete Mockaitis
Thank you. And how about a favorite book?

Jason Treu
Really, I would say anything by Brené Brown. She’s a great author on leadership and management. And she’s a shame researcher and she has the top five most downloaded TED Talk of all time called The Power of Vulnerability, and she really talks about a lot of these issues on shame, vulnerability, how to build better relationships. And I think it can get at the real nuggets that are going to help you both in your professional and personal life. And every time I hear her speak – and I’ve heard her several times – she’s brilliant in what she does. So, I would highly recommend her, and she has quite a few books out, so you really can’t go wrong with any of them.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, thank you. And how about a favorite habit, something that helps you be awesome at your job?

Jason Treu
Again, I use two things. One is an accountability mirror – to ask myself every day what am I opting out of doing, and why? Because that helps me keep real in what’s going on and not procrastinate and put stuff off. The other thing is, I just go old-fashioned, I use Google Calendar and I schedule everything in for the week.
I sit down on Friday or Saturday or Sunday at the absolute latest and put in time when I’m going to work out, I’m going to go do meetings, after at night, or whatever I’m going to do, so I can see what I need to do. And when I need to wake up, and the rest of the things that I need to do during the week, because I feel like you’d be way more productive when you know what you have to do and you’ll procrastinate a lot less, because you’ll understand what’s possible and what’s not, based on the calendar that you have. And also if you don’t have any free time, you’re going to find out that you’re going to turn into someone in business who’s very tactical, and you’re probably putting out all these fires and not being strategic, which means you’re not really working to your capability, and the organization itself is suffering. So, you’ve got to block out time and you’ve got to use it.

Pete Mockaitis
Thank you. And is there a particular nugget that you share that seems to really connect with folks and gets quoted back to you frequently?

Jason Treu
Again, I think that the one thing I found from doing my TEDx Talk with people is that you will build relationships a hundred times faster if you’re vulnerable. But the key is that everyone wants everyone else to be vulnerable, but they don’t want to be vulnerable themselves. So what you have to do is be vulnerable first, and share something, even very small, because when you’re vulnerable and you share, people unconsciously believe that it’s safe for them to share because you led with it, and they’ve been taught that their life when people do that.
So, be vulnerable, lead with something, and ask really great questions. The questions I like to ask people initially when I meet them is like, “What are you most excited about in your life right now?” Or a question might be like, “What are you passionate about at work?” or, “What are you passionate about in your life?”, because it gets to the core things that people care about.
And you can ask that during a first conversation; you don’t need to wait. Waiting around is just because you feel like that’s a story in your head that needs to happen. Because I do it all the time, and it leads to way better conversations and I speed up the relationship-building process really fast, because I’m getting to real conversations when I meet someone the first time. I’m not waiting until the third, fourth, fifth or tenth.

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

Jason Treu
So, they can go my website at JasonTreu.com. And then if they want they can go download the game that we talked about in the beginning – Cards Against Mundanity – at CardsAgainstMundanity.com. So, playing it is free, and you can get results, and you can play with your friends. And you can play you’re your wife, so you have a Valentine’s Day thing.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, thank you. And do you have a final challenge or call to action you’d issue to folks seeking to be awesome at their jobs?

Jason Treu
I think it’s true, and it may seem trite, but all growth comes outside of your comfort zone. So if you don’t feel like you’re doing something that’s scary or making you feel awkward, you aren’t really pushing yourself. And you’ll find the people that are the most successful are learning to deal with more and more uncertainty, but dealing with it in a healthy way. And that requires years and years, so you might as well get started now and just you’re going to see your life go in some magnificent directions.

Pete Mockaitis
Awesome. Well, Jason, thank you so much for sharing this great stuff. I wish you tons of luck, and hope that you keep on rocking with your coaching and your mundanity-breaking, and all that you’re up to!

Jason Treu
Yes. Thanks a lot, and thanks for having me on the show!

Feb 16
0

263: Building Relationships like a Superconnector with Scott Gerber

By | Podcasts | No Comments

 

 

Scott Gerber says: "Social capital is the new currency."

Scott Gerber discusses the “superconnector” approach to build meaningful human relationships and go beyond networking.

You’ll Learn:

  1. How to become a conversational Sherlock Holmes
  2. Questions that spark great conversations
  3. How to introduce yourself with impact

About Scott

 

Scott Gerber is Founder and CEO of CommunityCo and founder of YEC and Forbes Councils. He is an industry leader in building and managing personalized, invitation-only communities for world-class executives, entrepreneurs and professionals. Scott is an expert on youth entrepreneurship, community building, youth unemployment in America, recent college grad unemployment and small business.

 

Items Mentioned in this Show:

Scott Gerber Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Scott, thanks so much for joining us here on the How to be Awesome at Your Job podcast.

Scott Gerber
Thank you so much for having me. It’s going to be a lot of fun, Pete.

Pete Mockaitis
I think so too. Well, I was intrigued. When you filled out the form to get this conversation going, you described yourself as a big family man. And I just had my first child born mere weeks ago, so I’m very interested to hear…

Scott Gerber
Congratulations.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, thank you. So I’m interested to hear all about that from you today.

Scott Gerber
Absolutely. It’s funny. People look at me, I’m a 34-year-old living in New York City, three-bedroom apartment with four children, a wife, and a dog. And we’re as in it as it gets because they’re ages, seven, five, about to be three, and eight months.  So we’re not sleeping, we’re dealing with multiple levels of personalities at all different ages. But, as I tell all my professional and business friends, what’s the point of doing what you’re doing if you don’t enjoy actually building a life?
And so, having these amazing, unbelievably different kids interested in so many different things, a very loving wife who is a wonderful mother, but also someone that we share our passion for really not just being present in the physical space of our children, but present with our children, and growing and learning together. Those are the kinds of things that make working so hard actually worth it. So that’s what we’re all about. There is no such thing as work-life balance by any means, but I think there’s something to be said about working so you can have a life.

Pete Mockaitis
Alright, very good. And tell me, any pro tips on managing low sleep?

Scott Gerber
Well, I am the first one to say I believe I truly have the best individual piece of advice, from one parent to another. Are you ready for this?

Pete Mockaitis
I’m so ready.

Scott Gerber
The best piece of advice, from one parent to another is, “Don’t listen to advice from any other parent. ”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, got it. Alright, well then I’ll stop asking you about parenting matters, and completely shift gears to your book. So, Superconnector – what’s it all about and why is this important for the world to learn about right now?

Scott Gerber
Yeah, so Superconnector: Stop Networking and Start Building Business Relationships that Matter – my partner and I wrote it really with one core idea, and that is people as a society at this point are really falling into this lazy, out-for-yourself, transactional mindset of networking more and more. And as the world gets noisier, and as social platforms become even more ubiquitous, you need to actually be a human that builds relationships, and not a technology that amplifies non-human practices. You need to go back to being human, to build human relationships.
And so we’ve spent the better part of a decade building a number of very engaged professional communities for YEC, for its councils, others, for ourselves, for other brands and companies, to learn the ways in which you can actually build these meaningful relationships from the ground up, and not have these tips and tricks and hacks and growth hacking and conversion strategies, but rather just going back to saying, “I want to build smart ways to communicate with people, and smart groups of people to surround myself with, because that makes life better.” And when you’re valuable to other people, they can also be valuable to you. But it doesn’t mean you have to go into every relationship you’ve ever built looking for value.
So that’s why we wrote the book, taking all these best practices and frameworks, really to help people learn the mindset of a connector from our insights and from the top superconnectors around the world in various industries, so they stop doing these really stupid and terrible inhuman networking practices that we all love to hate.

Pete Mockaitis
Inhuman networking practices and processes. Okay, so maybe could you really lay out that contrast first to clear for me here? So, could you share with me, “Here is an inhuman networking process. Instead, do this.”

Scott Gerber
Well, here’s something I think we can all relate to here. Everybody has been subjected to a networker, right? It’s the person that walks up to you, shaking your hand with the right hand, having the business card in the left hand, talking at you about themselves while looking over your shoulder at the next person they should try to meet, right? The person that’s not investing real time, that’s trying to get the stack of business cards, that’s not really listening and only guiding and taking on a conversation for their own personal gain.
And then in 30 seconds, instead of thinking about, “How do I figure out where value can be created for you, the person I’m talking to?”, they’re thinking about, “Is this person going to be relevant to my individual goal or need or revenue metric?”, or whatever KPI you’ve decided on that day is valuable for your time, instead of the more practical way to do it, which is just to have a framework of the kinds of people you want to surround yourself with, and dedicate meaningful, smart, context-rich time and conversation to over not one year or one month, or any definitive amount of time, but over a lifetime; build a tribe around you of people that would be there for you in an instant and you do the same.
I think it’s a different mindset to look at surrounding yourself with great people that you can create mutual value, and exchange, and knowledge-share, than just trying to have this really, quote-unquote, focused way of looking at someone as dollar signs or a stepping stool. And so that’s the difference, I think, between the two categories. It’s not semantics. It is a fundamental difference of belief in how you view the point of a business relationship.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, certainly. So, that sounds appealing, to be surrounded by people that you think are fantastic and there’s a mutual sharing of goodness over the course of a lifetime. So in practice, how is that done? How does one become a superconnector? What are some of the habits and practices and beliefs that they roll with?

Scott Gerber
Yeah, I think first and foremost, you have to learn how to have a real conversation. I think a lot of people suck at conversations – they have an issue leading them or they have an issue being a part of them, because your instinct is always to go to the lowest common denominator or lowest hanging fruit like, “Oh, the weather is nice today.” Small talk, right? Things that are inconsequential, that don’t really extract any new learnings or knowledge. And so first and foremost you have to understand, what is the point of a conversation? And I know that sounds like remedial. I’m sure someone right now listening to this is, “Oh my God! Great, Scott, you know how to talk. Well, that’s obvious. You’re so stupid. Why are you wasting my time?” Yet, they don’t do it, right?
So first it’s, what is the point of good context? Well, any conversation that allows you to extract context means that you’re creating a treasure trove, if you will, of great insights and data to really learn about someone, and not just the surface-level LinkedIn, Facebook-type stuff, but things such as what the goals of an individual are, or what they’re working on right now. That way, you can learn about what they’re working on, what is success and what is failure to them, what’s the timeline by which they’re looking to do these things – that kind of information that you can play an active role in, right? So great context.
Great context comes from good questions. So, in order to know what a good question is, you first have to ask, “What is a bad question?”, right? And a bad question is – I love this one – are you ready for it? It’s, “How can I help you?” Don’t you love that question? That question is horrible. It’s one of the worst questions ever created, and it’s become a social script marketing tactic for most people. Why does it suck? One, it puts the onus on the other person that in some cases you’ve just met, with a homework assignment or to come up with a good answer, or they’re going to feel stupid.

Pete Mockaitis
Alright.

Scott Gerber
Number two, it’s not founded in any kind of specificity. It’s incredibly broad. Number three, if you had a conversation with them, the logical answer should be, “Don’t you know how to help me? If I’ve given you all the pieces to the puzzle, shouldn’t you be able to put the last one in to complete the puzzle and tell me the help I need?”
So it’s not specific, whereas a question like, “What are you working on right now?”, as I just mentioned – much more specific, comes with a timeline, comes with something that they’re passionate about and excited about, because it’s right now and it’s meaningful to them, comes with a series of naturally next step curious follow-ups: “What does that mean?” or, “Can you tell me more about that?” or, “What made you think that this is important to do right now?” or, “What’s the steps to success?” Again, things that you can help them help you to help them.
And then finally, again, it’s about putting together the pieces of the puzzle, the context, to figure out, “Who in my world or what resource do I have that might be able to fill the void?” So, maybe you’ve heard a series of things that it’s like, “Oh, well, I know this guy John and this woman Sally that have expertise in XYZ. Would that be helpful to you if I can see if they’re interested in having a conversation on that?” Again, you’ve given actual next steps versus, again, a wall, like a “Yes” or a “No”, or some sort of question that leads to a phrase that goes nowhere. These are the kinds of ways to have that conversation.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, excellent. So, you’re taking that proactive initiative to say, “I’ve done the work. I’ve done the work for you,” instead of asking, “How can I help you?” You have done the digging to discover a few valid potential suggestions, and then brought up the specific idea, and then they can approve, or veto, or defer as necessary.

Scott Gerber
Correct. It’s almost like you’re the Sherlock Holmes of discourse, right? Because, look, if they love the suggestion, you’ve created a bond. The person knows you’re really listening, you really care. Even if it’s not the exact right fit, I appreciate the fact that you’re actually making a proactive suggestion. It’s very rare people do that, and that’s why it really does stand out.
Number two – if they say, “Oh, that’s a little off-base” – what does it do? It gives you the opportunity to ask more questions of, “Why do you think it’s off-base?” and, “What part is off that I can maybe tweak in my framework that I’m thinking of in my head?” So, again, it naturally lends itself to a hypothesis, and then either, is the hypothesis true or false, or incomplete?
So, you never want to end up with a wall like, “The weather is nice, isn’t it?” “Yes. ” Okay, great, now what? That’s why these continuous conversations where you’re leading, and not being about me, or trying to talk about you all the time – that’s where ultimately the difference is made, in showing you care, not just telling. And I think that is where ultimately people leave a conversation, and know that if they see you again, they will remember more times than not, that you were actually a thoughtful individual, that you actually did express interest and tried to do your best even if it didn’t exactly work out – and if it did, even better – because you cared. How many people can say that? Not many. And I think it all starts with great conversation.

Pete Mockaitis
That is great. And so then, one of the best questions there was, “What are you working on right now?” And can you share a few of the other great questions that often pop up when you’re doing your Sherlock Holmes-ing of discourse?

Scott Gerber
Yeah, it depends on the kinds of conversation we’re in. So if it’s a personal type thing, I might say, “What’s something you’ve tried recently that’s totally out of your comfort zone?”, because again, it allows for an anecdote and a series of stories that might bring in other context like how big is their family, or where’s the place they like to travel to. Again, all these little things individually might not mean the world, but put together, you really paint a picture of someone. And if you store that information – again, it could be in the contacts at Notes section, it can be in a CRM – over time, you’re going to develop this unique profile that no one else has access to, except you, so you know how to engage further later on.
Another question I ask people all the time is, “If I see you again in a year from now, what dictates success to you in the next year?” And there’s a million ways you can go with that direction. I think the goal is when you get people to feel comfortable talking about themselves – again, not in an arrogant or celebratory sort of way, but in a way that helps them to navigate an anecdote, or a series of things that they’ve been wanting to talk about but couldn’t articulate – you really are helping to lead without being the leader. And I think that is very meaningful for not only results but to build the foundations of a smart relationship.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, that’s good, thank you. So tell me, Scott, maybe could we do a demo here? You will ask me some questions and be the Sherlock Holmes, and we’ll see what happens.

Scott Gerber
Sure. Paint the scene, because here’s another thing, just before we get started: Context isn’t just the words out of your mouth. It’s where we are, is if we’re at an event where we were both invited by a mutual friend, if we’re at a generalized networking event, is it a conference that brought us here?
So just to keep in mind, and maybe not for the demo purposes, but as people are listening to this – I want you to think about everything in an environment as context, because it’s a very different situation that if you and I are randomly at a bar having a beer, and we’ve never met, and it’s just a random Friday afternoon burning steam, versus we’re at an exclusive invitation-only event with 15 people invited, and our mutual friend is the person that brought us both there. Whole different level of conversation, right?
And so, it’s just about looking at the whole board, and not just the moment or the zone you’re existing in. So with that being said, I kick off and I can introduce myself, and you would introduce yourself, and I may ask a question like, “It sounds very interesting, what you do. What made you get into that type of XYZ?” And then you would respond.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, sure thing. Well, I’m just so fascinated about people and what it is they find has really worked for them, in terms of generating particular results. And I’ve just always had an interest and enthusiasm in this skill-building stuff, about leadership, success, influence, communication, problem-solving, creativity, ever since I was a teenager reading books about it in the library.

Scott Gerber
Were you ever somebody who had a bad example, or a setback, or a major setback of some kind where everything you thought you were doing right was actually the wrong way to do it, and that’s what led you to want to learn best practices?

Pete Mockaitis
Well, kind of. I’d say, I was interested in the information and the power within it, just because the possibilities opened up before me even before, I guess, I had to experience some setbacks. But then afterwards certainly, yeah, along the way.

Scott Gerber
Have you learned about one particular leader or two particular leaders that you think are fundamentally best-of-breed that you’d recommend to everybody?

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, from just a leadership perspective?

Scott Gerber
Just someone that whether it’s a CEO, or a politician, or an inspirational person that you’ve read about their leadership style, or way of looking at the world, and that just was a fundamental game-changer for you.

Pete Mockaitis
It’s funny. As a child, Tony Robbins was my role model, and I wanted to be just like him. [laugh] I just thought he had the coolest job that there could be, and I wanted to be him.

Scott Gerber
What’s really cool about Tony Robbins, out of curiosity? I don’t know enough about him.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I guess what I liked is that he was just so outrageously goofy and perfectly himself. And in some ways, that could really turn people off with all the F-bombs and profanity, and it kind of turns me off at times. But in other ways, it’s like there’s a guy who’s just genuinely doing his thing. And in a way, that was kind of liberating in a sense that I got my own weirdnesses and eccentricities, and so I can express those in a large space and find success like Tony did.

Scott Gerber
And so, there you go. See, in that short period of time, what have I learned about you? Professional development, you really care about. You wanted to meet someone or learn about someone that made it okay for you to be the person you are, and to form your own framework around what leadership meant to you, and so on and so forth. And all these things start to add up, right? Not every conversation is going to end up in a situation where you’re going to just immediately help someone. That’s not always an action step. Not everybody needs help, right?
But it could be the kind of thing where it’s like, if you could have a conversation with a leader, would you want to have a conversation with someone that is totally contrarian to you, or someone that’s exactly the way you think but at a bigger level or a bigger stage? And if you were to say someone like a contrarian, my response would be, “Oh man, let me just think. Do you know XYZ or XYZ? If he’s game for it, he loves debating this kind of rubric or this kind of challenge.” Now all of the sudden, I’ve engaged you in, “What do you disagree with him about? No, what a great debate that would be.” And you know that I’m connected.
So you get the point. There’s a lot of variables and directions to go, but you’re playing with a lot of information, and you’re moving your brain as quickly as you can to figure out where you can provide value. The key for that is at the end of the day, there’s one mindset shift that you have to have. And this is the moment when I tell people you have to audit yourself. So if I went into a conversation with you like we just had, and I, in the first 30 seconds, said, “Oh God, professional development. I want nothing to do with this guy”, then I would know that my mindset is that of a transactional networker, because my instinct is to say, “This person is not valuable to me.” And if people think that way, then they have to totally reverse course, and break themselves, and deconstruct themselves down, because they’ll never be a true connector.
Whereas in the way that I think, and other great connectors think as well, is I’m trying to find the different ways in which I can understand you to be of service to you. And I’m thinking, “Where’s the value that I can provide?” – resource, person, challenge request, whatever, as you’re speaking. And that’s my initial thought; not, “Man, how am I going to figure out a way to get you to introduce me to Tony Robbins?”, if you said you knew him. So that’s the whole thing. I think people need to understand who they are at their core and what they’re trying to achieve – great people, great conversations, great outcomes that scale long-term. Short-term gains, transactional value, totally a no-no.

Pete Mockaitis
And that’s interesting, that mindset shift audit. In some ways, that gets to the very core of a human being, in terms of how generous versus selfish are they in their whole life?

Scott Gerber
Yep. There is a great quote and I’m going to muck it right now, of course, because I’m saying it off the top but, “To give selfishly is to give selflessly,” right? It’s the idea that habitual generosity is the cornerstone of what a connector strives to do – to always be of service, to always provide value.
But it shouldn’t be thought of as a tactic. This is a total overhaul of a framework of how you should live your life. And I think it’s important people understand that, that it is the marketing hacks, and the growth hacking, and these various different pedestals that social media and vanity metrics have created, that have put the wool over our eyes to think that this is the stuff that we should be caring about.
Let’s talk about power and money for just a minute here. If we’re going to go to the most successful elites in the world – those people get the game. They understand that relationships are currency. Social capital is the only currency that matters long-term. Why? Because somebody can reach out to one person one time in one phone call and do a billion-dollar deal. A thousand people can reach out to that one person and never get a call back. That’s the difference.
Everything we talk about here should be the beginnings of you internalizing, auditing, thinking, but none of these should be, “I’m going to do this exact thing five times a day, because if I do it five times a day, my ROI will be XYZ. And that’s how I should reverse-engineer my success.”

Pete Mockaitis
Certainly. So I want to dig into that a bit and talk about your whole life shifting. So, what would you recommend are some of the initial baby steps if someone has habituated selfishness, and is primarily thinking about their own wants and needs and desires from the first minute of waking up to the last minute of night, not just in conversation, but in…

Scott Gerber
In life.

Pete Mockaitis
In any number of things. That’s such a tall order, so how do you start chipping away at that, Scott?

Scott Gerber
It’s funny. First off, I’d say this is where guys like you and I have it made being family men, because we gave up selfishness if we’re good dads or husbands long ago. The second you change a diaper for the first time, life changes as you know it, right?

Pete Mockaitis
I saw a coupon for $5 off diapers today, and I was excited by this. It was like something has shifted.

Scott Gerber
My, my, how things change, right?

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah.

Scott Gerber
But again, for the every man and woman in any state of life and any level of profession – again, I start with what I said earlier – you’ve got to begin with the audit, and you can’t lie to yourself. Listen, if you’re a truly selfish individual, and you just can’t fundamentally break yourself out of that, I feel bad for you, because you’re missing out on a huge opportunity. And you can’t gamify this, because all you’re going to do is cheat yourself and cheat reality.
Number two – I would give yourself an additional audit to determine a couple of key things. The best connectors have three fundamental traits. The first one is self-awareness. They are okay to assess themselves and figure out their strengths and weaknesses. They are okay to understand and can fundamentally figure out what people think of them in an honest and non rosy-glass colored way. So that’s the first thing, self-awareness. How self-aware are you with? Would others say you’re self-aware? That’s one key thing.
The second trait is emotional intelligence. Are you empathetic? Do you actually care about other people? Can you allow yourself to care more about others, or feel for their plights, big or small, put yourself in their shoes, regardless of situation, regardless of level of severity, and regardless of your personal feelings towards whatever they deem their level of severity being?
And then finally, number three is the idea of curiosity. You have to generally be curious. You have to be someone who really doesn’t have to care about a subject matter to want to learn more about it, or feel like if you’re not an expert, you don’t care. Again, there’s going to be many people who can be very valuable to you and you to them along the way. But if you cut short because they want to talk about physics and you’re a liberal arts grad – well, you’re going to miss out on a lot of the context that could create mutual value for the long run if that relationship is to be. And so those are some of the key things you have to look out for yourself.
When you determine you want to be someone who is a connector, you also… And this is where I will say you have to be selfish in only one regard. There’s only one way you should be selfish as a connector, and that is your time. Because it is the one asset you cannot buy more of, and it’s fleeting every day. And so if someone is going to take your time, you want to make sure your investment is going to be valuable. Again, not valuable in an ROI way, but valuable even in the exchange you’re going to have, that it’s not a one-sided selling fest, that someone is really understanding the value of that time and being specific, or not just saying, “Oh, we should get together sometime,” and getting mad when you don’t because they don’t have an agenda of specificity.
Because the one thing I’ve learned in my life, and I say this in the book – there’s a saying that one of my mentors said to me early: “You cannot cheat real time. And relationships take real time.” And so for every amount of real time you spend in a real relationship, that’s less time you have for other relationships. So you are placing bets on the people you want to surround yourself with, that you feel are going to help you to make your life amazing, and you to help make their lives more amazing.
If you misplace that trust, or misplace that time, or misplace that relationship-building prowess, you could put yourself on the wrong path, or you could find yourself meaning nothing to no one instead of something to someone. And that’s really crucial, to be methodical about protecting your time. A couple of key productivity hacks that we found from some of the top connectors to give some color to what I mean by that. There are many people, I’m sure you being included in this, that get hit up all the time, “I’d love to take you for coffee.” I’m assuming that that has been an ask somebody has made of you, probably recently, right?

Pete Mockaitis
That’s right, yeah.

Scott Gerber
So, what a lot of the top connectors will do is they’ll take these people that ask them and say, “Look, I don’t have time right now, but I get people together once a month or once every couple of weeks that all want to meet me for coffee, and we all get together and have one big cup of coffee.” So here you are, taking one-on-one meetings that would take an hour, to make it ten-on-one meetings. And it’s a better experience; it’s curated because the person can say “Yes” or “No” to who’s invited, and you’ve just maximized your time, met everyone, and learned more than you probably would have in a one-on-one introduction.
Plus, on top of that, if you are the curator of that experience, you probably have a stronger relationship now with each of the original ten, because all of those ten received exponentially more value than you, had you been just one-on-one. It’s a more worldly perspective, less time, very clear, right? So that just gives an example of, it doesn’t mean you have to be less human or say “No” to everything necessarily, although “No” sometimes is the right answer. But it allows you to think about the blocks of time you have as maximizing efficiency and community-building investment. Because again, you want to go incredibly deep and meaningful, but you want to do it in a way where you can find the right time for the right people, and not lose that time.

Pete Mockaitis
Right, and you talk about the art of selectivity in the book. And so, I’d love to get your sense for what are some of the guidelines you’re using. in terms of making determinations like, “This is a person that I really think it would make sense to invest heavily in good time there.”

Scott Gerber
Yep. And first and foremost, I always want to tell people, when we talk about these things like the art of selectivity, this is not, said another way, the art of elitism snobbery. It’s not meant to be, “You only want to be with these elites, professionals, or individuals.” That’s not it at all. It’s the idea that you want to have a cross-section of people that share not only your business professional interest or industry, but your value system, the way that you spend your personal time.
Again, community is not just meant to be some goal-oriented KPI, like we‘ve been talking about. It’s how do you want to spend your time to create a meaningful life, personally and professionally? And so for example in the book we talked to Elliott Bisnow, who is the founder of Summit Series and the owner of Powder Mountain in Eden, Utah, which is a telluride for the 21st-century concept. And he talks about this idea that he wants to not just be surrounded by entrepreneurs all the time, or specific kinds of entrepreneurs in his industry, but rather health-conscious, athletic people that are big on travel and worldly conversation and share his ethics and moral and value systems.
And so it’s about creating these almost criteria sets for what do you want to be the average of in the circle you’re in, and then really figuring out who that initial circle is, and again, taking the proper time. This is not a day-to-day exercise. This is a life-long exercise of creating that small intimate circle. Mind you, that small intimate circle might eventually be dozens of people, but the goal of these spheres is to feel incredibly intimate regardless of size, because the values, the moral systems, the cross-section of value that you’ve created is only bringing in other very similar, authentic, meaningful people that those in the sphere have brought into the fold. And that’s the key for success in any time you’re trying to be selective with those you’re building strong, meaningful relationships with.

Pete Mockaitis
And I would also would like your take on that – is there a potential risk of having an echo chamber or folks who all agree with you and thus not giving yourself the mental challenge of thinking and seeing as others do?

Scott Gerber
I think that it’s interesting. I believe that there’s a time and place for any kind of relationship to be segmented in different communities, different thinking. And so for example, I have a lot of friends who are political junkies. And I purposely surround myself with people that are on opposite ends of the spectrum in a big way, because I want to have these more thoughtful debates. I don’t want just some Facebook commentary style argument, “Oh, he sucks, he’s terrible. He’s great, he’s not”, but rather like, “Why?” Can somebody actually articulate the “Why”?
And so, surrounding yourself with people that you believe to be morally and values-driven, but not necessarily share your specific vision of the world – that’s the time and place for that kind of community, whereas in certain ways, when you’re talking, say, about business… I have a group connector friends who I don’t want them to be network-y type thinking people, because I wouldn’t want that in my circle, because to me that would go against every fiber in my body of my most core professional belief.
So there’s a time and place to figure out where is the place where you want to have fundamental agreement, and where you want to allow for contrarians or total disagreement, but know the value system is aligned with your overall view of a human. You know what I mean? There are certain people you might fundamentally disagree with, but you love and trust. You’re going to fundamentally disagree with them about politics or money or something like that, but it’s not because they’re crazy or whatever. It’s just they have a different set of principles, but that are rooted in wholesome values that you can link to.
I think it’s important not to be in that echo chamber, but that’s why I also think you should never allow yourself to just be in one community at any given time. I think the value of having multiple communities that collide and create value, where you can pick and choose different kinds of conversations or relationships or depth of relationships you want to have in different sort of groupings, allows you to be a more well-rounded human being.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, cool. So you’ve got close friends you like and trust who love Hillary and who love Trump, and you enjoy the enlightenment that could come about when you engage in such discussions.

Scott Gerber
It’s the idea of respecting people, and respecting the place by which their position comes, because it can be defended or discussed in a material and mature manner. And that is the bond, right? The bond is, you might want to harden your position by being able to defend against someone else’s, or you might want to be able to open your eyes to a different perspective. I think that right now in this country, if there was more community-building around communities of dissenters that were thoughtful dissenters, we’d probably not have such a red-blue or whatever the specific subject matter or issue is, be so black and white.
I think a connector’s job – and going back to the context conversations or ways in which they run their relationships – is to always play in the gray, because that’s where you can form relationships out of what would be assumed on the surface level as an adversary. Because the adversary is the people that don’t go beyond surface level and stop there, but the most meaningful relationships might be nine out of ten points connected but one point disconnected, but those nine out of ten allow you to listen and thoughtfully respond to the one you don’t.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, I love it. Thank you. I also want to make sure we could quickly touch upon your pro tips for introducing yourself well.

Scott Gerber
So the number one way – and I know this is going to sound sort of counterintuitive, because obviously you have to be able to say who you are, what you do, and so forth – but the number one way that I enjoy people finding out who I am and what I do is by other people telling them the results we’ve driven, or their perspective on what I do. Most times, when I go to say, an event or meet with a group, I very rarely will go to a large group setting without a very core group of my influential sphere. Again, not influential in the sense of they’re big-name people, but influential in my world – people that I deeply trust and care about, my anchors in life and business.
And more times than not, they will go ahead and actually introduce me in a group that I wouldn’t know, which immediately lends credibility. We talk about this in the book. It’s called the power of association. The people you know move trust through them to the person that you’re connected to, and infinitely create stickier glue and a more immediacy to a bond than if you were introducing yourself or asked to introduce yourself.
So that’s more times than not what I like to do, because it doesn’t come off as I’m marketing to you, it doesn’t come off as I’m trying to be ego-driven or pat myself on the back or shoulder. But rather that others feel compelled enough that you and I should be connected, and they’ve gone the extra step to give the bona fides in whatever way and lens they see fit, which also lends to conversation as a natural next step, as, “Oh, tell me more about that.” Instead of you talking about yourself, you’re being asked, and that starts the conversation. So that’s my number one way, I think, that you should always look at it. Don’t just try to introduce yourself. Look for others that can really play the heart card rather than the bona fide, CV, LinkedIn profile card.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, great. Thank you. Tell me, Scott, anything else you want to make sure to mention before we shift gears and then hear about some of your favorite things.

Scott Gerber
I think what’s most important to me and why we wrote the book, at the end of the day, is we really do believe that relationships are the cornerstone and the fundamental purpose for your professional and personal lives, and so many people are squandering that opportunity every day. And frankly these are, in many cases, very smart people who if asked, “Do you want to be approached this way? Would you like to be talked to in this way as a networking relationship?”, they would say “No”.
Yet, they’re guilty of doing the same stuff. That’s the irony of today. This laziness, social media-esque response mechanism, or series of frameworks that we’ve been put into by the powers-that-be, has really taken a step back for human touch. And so, my message today is whether you buy the book or not, I hope you find value in it and the connectors that were thoughtful enough to share their time and tradecraft and secrets of what they do.
It’s just to take a step back and realize when you look around you, are you happy with the relationships you have? Do you feel you could have better, more meaningful ones? And for the people that you believe are your most trusted relationships, do you really know them at all, beyond what everyone else knows about them? If you can answer those questions in an honest way, I think you’ll surprise yourself more times than not.

Pete Mockaitis
Great, thank you. So now, can you share with us a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Scott Gerber
I have a quote from my grandmother, who passed a number of years ago, but she used to say, “Don’t dream to live. Live to dream.” And it sounds funny. I didn’t really understand it at the time she told me, in middle school or high school, whatever it was. But the idea that you should live a life of wonder and excitement, and wake up every day to be thrilled about what’s possible, rather than what you have to do and be a cog in the machine, I think, says a lot. The other one I mentioned earlier which is, “Real relationships take real time, and you can’t cheat real time.” I think that if you really understand what that means, you’re going to be better for it.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, cool. Thank you. And how about a favorite study, or experiment, or a bit of research?

Scott Gerber
I think that right now, while I’m not going to cite a specific study because there’s a number of them going on right now, I would encourage people to take a look at a lot of the studies around social media’s effect on the human body and the human psyche. I think that these kinds of studies are scary and startling.
Even the founders like Sean Parker talking about the dopamine effect with social media, and what that’s doing to people, especially for dads and moms out there, to talk about the effect of social media on their children, technology on their children. I think all this ties very deeply to what we’re talking about today around building relationships, because we’re letting technology be the deciding factor, be the driver, instead of us driving the technology. We’re letting technology amplify the wrong things instead of the humanity being amplified. And I think it’s time we understand what the effects of these various platforms are.
So I would encourage people to really do their homework on all of that, whether you’re a parent or not, looking at it personally or professionally. There’s a lot of really unique studies out there right now about the effect on the brain, social anxiety, depression, all kinds of things that are very important for you to understand.

Pete Mockaitis
Alright, thank you. And how about a favorite book?

Scott Gerber
Ooh, anything by Adam Grant is just… He’s just an amazing human being. Give and Take, Originals, Option B – these are all amazing books, and he’s just solid. And I hate to be on the bandwagon with millions of other fans, but I really do think that everything Tim Ferriss does is gold.

Pete Mockaitis
Alright. And how about a favorite tool, something that helps you be awesome at your job?

Scott Gerber
Okay, so I run my entire company off my iPhone. Even though we have nearly 100 people in our headcount, and everything else, I rarely go to the office. When I meet with people, it’s over coffee, or video chats and so forth. But it’s the idea that if you really think through how you use your phone every day, there are so many ways to cheat productivity time, or to develop instrumental systems that can scale your human brain, to allow you to do the things we’ve talked about today, like simple as writing notes in your contacts Notes section is what I do when I meet people.
Three to five bullets that was most compelling or very new information, so next time I meet them, I’ve got my cheat sheet of things that are valuable and important to them. It lets me continue the conversation and have key things to remember. Just little ways to go all in on your phone, but not let it control you but you control it, I think is something that I’m a big proponent of. Giving yourself the freedom to do what you will in your surroundings, your environment, and so forth, but use the tools you use every day smartly and effectively to do the things you love.

Pete Mockaitis
Alright, thank you. And how about a favorite habit, a personal practice of yours that helps you flourish at work?

Scott Gerber
I am really big on letting my team actually make decisions, explain their decisions to me, and stand by them. I offer advice, not mandates. And so when big decisions are made, I rule by consensus. It’s not a full democracy like it isn’t in any business, but I don’t rule as a dictator, so to speak. My partner and I are very methodical about groupthink and letting smart people do smart jobs, but they have to be able to defend their position, and they have to be able to take criticism and defend the points that they put out there to the idea that if I came and attacked you point for point, you could stand your own. So I think the exercise in critical thinking on a regular basis is one that I believe has fundamentally helped us to improve company culture, the business as a whole, revenue, and the customer experience for sure.

Pete Mockaitis
Alright, thank you. And is there a particular nugget you share that seems to really connect, resonate, get Kindle book highlighted, retweeted, and heads nodding when you say it?

Scott Gerber
I think that the most important thing that sort of sums up this entire interview and what we’ve been talking about for the last hour is, “Social capital is the new currency.” It’s not Bitcoin or Ethereum, or all those things that are coming out now. It’s social capital. And it’s the idea that when you have the right walled-off access to people that are valuable and find value in your company and those that you’ve surrounded them with, it’s an invaluable community that cannot be replicated, and you can’t buy it.
And I think that more people need to invest in creating these sort of very tight-knit communities. And when I say that, I don’t mean necessarily a membership group or something like that. I mean literally mastermind group, or a group of people that enjoy each other’s company, go out for drinks once a month, whatever it is. But creating the value that enables you and those you surround yourself with to have direct and indirect access to an exponential number of more people, because the people in the circle all trust one another so implicitly, is literally, in my opinion, the most valuable currency you will ever have. No one will ever beat it, and it’ll be the reason you’re successful.

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

Scott Gerber
Yeah, for daily communication, you can ping my partner and I on Twitter. His is @ryanpaugh, and mine is @scottgerber. And you can definitely check out the book at SuperconnectorBook.com or pick it up wherever books are sold.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And do you have a final, a parting call to action or challenge for those seeking to be awesome at their jobs?

Scott Gerber
Don’t treat it like a job. As someone who has never worked for someone else since I went into the professional world. ‘ve always been an entrepreneur; I’ve never been a nine-to-fiver. But I’ve watched really impressive people meet me and really impressive people work for me that really put in the extra work on two key things.
One was allowing themselves to listen and be empathetic, to understand, take in, and adjust as a result of those two things. And the second is the idea that they were responsive and timely and understood the investment of time that my partner and I were making in them, and that every moment that they were given was to be valued. Especially as a family guy, sort of going back full circle to where we started – I want to watch my kids grow up and be there.
And if you can tell me in a business meeting something in five minutes versus 50, and the same outcome as a result, and I trust you as the steward of the information and action steps – go at it. Take the five minutes, not the 50; let me go watch my kids play baseball. So, understanding that putting the effort in, in community building and responsiveness and empathy, I think, are things that anyone from an entrepreneur to someone who works for others in a day-to-day job – I think that is the difference maker.

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful. Well, Scott, thank you so much for taking this time and sharing this goodness. I hope that you sell many, many copies of Superconnectors, and that it is empowering and enriching to folks in all the right ways.

Scott Gerber
Thanks so much for the time.

Feb 07
0

259: How the Best Teams Operate with Adrian Gostick

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Adrian Gostick says: "Customer experience will never exceed the employee experience."

Adrian Gostick talks about what the best teams today are doing differently.

You’ll Learn:

  1. The differing forces that motivate each generation
  2. How to encourage your leaders to initiate regular career discussions
  3. The best ways to disagree without causing offense

About Adrian 

Adrian Gostick is a global workplace expert and thought leader in the fields of corporate culture, teamwork, and engagement. He is founder of the training company The Culture Works and author of the #1 New York Times, USA Today and Wall Street Journal bestsellers All In and The Carrot Principle. His books have been translated into 30 languages and have sold 1.5 million copies around the world.

Items Mentioned in this Show:

Adrian Gostick Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Adrian, thanks so much for joining us here on the How to be Awesome at Your Job podcast.

Adrian Gostick
Well, thanks Pete. Thanks for your interest in our work.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, certainly. Well, I’m quite interested, and it seems like you are too, and you apply it in multiple contexts, when it comes to studying teams and great performance, as well as in the context of being a high school soccer coach. So, I’m curious what inspires you to volunteer this way and keep volunteering this way.

Adrian Gostick
Well, it’s something I’ve done for several years. I started when my son was the high school goalkeeper and I got involved, and it’s just great to see young people need that connection to team. It’s one thing we’ve noticed in our research too, is that especially Millennials, Gen Z coming up into the workplace, really sparked great teams. And unfortunately so many of us as managers, maybe we’re not as good at creating those great teams. So it’s kind of fun to try some of our philosophies out on the soccer pitch.

Pete Mockaitis
I’m intrigued. Any stories of sort of leadership, team management sparking goodness coming to life with the high schools?

Adrian Gostick
It’s funny – I think in life we learn more from our mistakes than we do anything positive that we do, unfortunately. And when I first started I was assisting the head coach, and I don’t think you realize the importance of these concepts of motivation. It was more about the Xs and the Os, and he was very good at that. But slowly over the years we’ve helped him understand that you’re going to get a lot more out of these young men when you begin to understand their drivers – what motivates each of them individually, and quit worrying so much about the Xs and Os and worry about each individual – what drives them, what motivates them. And now he’s got a team that for the first time ever was in the state finals last year. And he’s got a team of young men who walk through fire for him, but it didn’t come until he began worrying about the soft side of leading people.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, cool. So then, I understand as I’m flipping through here, that is much of the good stuff inside your upcoming book The Best Team Wins. Tell us what’s sort of the main idea within this book, and why it is important here and now.

Adrian Gostick
Chester Elton – my co-author – and I, we do a lot of work with large organizations – American Express is one of our clients, California Pizza Kitchen. We’ve got some really fun clients that many people have heard of over the years. But what we try and do as we work with the CEOs and the leaders of these teams, is to realize sort of what their worries are. So, for example about five years ago we were hearing a lot on culture, and we were lucky enough to become one of the first to write a big book on culture and how you build a great culture. It was called All In, with Simon & Schuster.
And then over the last few years we’ve been hearing so much about teams. I know we’ve heard about teams for a long time, but things are changing, and there are challenges facing teams today – working cross-functionally, with Millennials coming into the workplace, with the increased speed of change – that a lot of the CEOs and senior leaders we were working were saying, “Really, teamwork has changed so much in the last few years, there’s really no guide to help me and help our organization understand how to navigate the waters of teamwork today.” And so, that really was the impetus to write The Best Team Wins, was how do we face the challenges of leading a team in 2018?

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, let’s go into it then. So you’ve actually laid out five disciplines of team leaders. Could you maybe orient us a little bit with a preview to start and hear what are those disciplines?

Adrian Gostick
Now again, we’ve got about 850,000 people in our database that we’re looking at, so we’ve got a plus or minus here at a fraction of a percentage that help us understand really what the best teams today are doing differently. Now, The Best Team Wins isn’t a Bible of everything that you ever need to do to build a team; there are still some really solid fundamentals out there but there’s been lots written on those.
So what this is about is what’s different about the best team leaders today, and as you mentioned, Pete, five disciplines emerged that we saw in the best teams, that they had the highest performance, the highest engagement levels. The first was that managers really did understand there were differences in the generations that they were managing, and they learned that they had to manage, say, Millennials different than Boomers, different than Gen X. So we talked about that, but it was very data-driven, and we’ll talk about that in a moment, I’m sure.
The second idea was that while we do worry about the generational differences, the best leaders are managing to the one, especially helping people drive their career development. That’s one of the biggest differentiators today, is helping me as an employee grow and learn and develop.
The third was that they’re much faster. Great team leaders really speed productivity – they get new people and teams up to speed a lot faster than their peers.
The fourth idea was that these great teams that we studied really were challenging everything. They had amazing debate within their organizations, and almost we call it “discord”, where they were really challenging each other and ideas.
And the final thing we found was that great teams had a focus on the customer that was laser. Now, there’s probably not a team in America or wherever you’re listening, who doesn’t believe that we’re customer-focused, but these teams truly were. Every decision, every debate revolved around what really would be the benefit to the customer. So, at a high-level those are the five disciplines we found in the research.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, yes, thank you for that preview there. And I would like to dig into each of these a touch. So, yeah, let’s talk first about these generational differences. And thank you for being data-driven – that’s what we love here. So, I’m a Millennial, I guess just barely, although most Millennials don’t like to be called Millennials. And that median listener – their age, according to my last survey… Maybe I need to get 850,000 data points, that’s awesome – is also in the Millennial age zone. So tell us – what are the “for real” differences amongst generations, versus sort of the “hype myth” differences between the generations?

Adrian Gostick
That’s a really good point, because a lot of people start tuning out once you start talking about entire generations. It’s a little like saying, “Everybody in Costa Rica does this” or, “Every left-hander is this way.” Of course, that’s just ridiculous. But what we can find in the data are there are some big changes happening in the workforce that we need to be aware of as leaders.
So for instance, autonomy has long been heralded as one of the biggest drivers of human behavior. Dan Pink wrote a book called Drive where he said autonomy was the most important factor driving engagement and motivation for people. Well, what we find is actually that’s true if you’re a Boomer, it’s true if you’re a Gen X, but it actually is not true for the vast majority of Millennials. Most Millennials coming into the workplace – 80% in our data – really want to be coached and managed, and part of a productive team.
They value teamwork a lot more than my generation – Gen X did. We much more valued the cowboy – being able to do things autonomously and independently. Well, this is a new generation. It really does value working in a team, they found that they’re more productive that way, better things are accomplished that way. Well, that’s a big overall finding that as leaders we should at least be aware of, and it may change how we manage. Another thing that came out of the data…

Pete Mockaitis
If I could jump on that in a little bit more detail, please. That’s intriguing. So yes, I too have heard autonomy is the thing we all want. And so then, maybe I just want to get clear on definitions a bit. So, I think of autonomy as sort of the ability to do your work the way you want to and with the time horizon more or less that you want to, in the location that you want to. But how are you defining and viewing autonomy in your investigations?

Adrian Gostick
That’s a great question. And one of the things we’re finding is that of course, nobody likes to be micro-managed, do they? What we really think about with autonomy as we study this, is that if I am driven by autonomy, I typically prefer to be my own boss and I like to have a degree of freedom … I typically prefer working alone more than working in a team. I’m giving you the definitions in our survey of people. I typically feel I get more done when I work more independently.
Now, as I mentioned though, almost nobody likes to be micro-managed. What we’re looking at with autonomy are people who like to work more independently. What we look at though and what we’re finding is indeed, out of the 23 human motivators we found autonomy ranks 4th highest for Boomers, it ranks 22nd out of 23 for Millennials.
So that’s a huge data shift. Now that’s something we need to look at that says whether it’s because of where I am in my career, or because of the generation that I grew up in, where teams were more important – something is happening here, where people prefer now to work more collaboratively. And so as a manager, whether I’m managing Millennials or anybody coming into the workforce, I’ve got to find ways to help people work together more effectively, if that’s making some sense.

Pete Mockaitis
I hear you, yes. And so, I suppose there is a natural tension. I guess as I’m thinking about myself, it’s like I want my autonomy, but I also want to collaborate. But in a given hour of work, it’s somewhat binary, in the sense that, of course none of us like to be micro-managed or be in crazy, pointless, time-wasting meetings. But I think you’re right – it’s like you’re either doing your thing your way or you are having a back-and-forth and doing something in, I don’t know, kind of like a compromise, or a jointly agreed-upon way, as opposed to any way you care to roll.

Adrian Gostick
Exactly. And by the way, nobody of course is one-dimensional, just as you say. Actually autonomy is one of my strongest drivers. As a Gen Xer, that is really one of my strongest drivers. I love to work more independently, but other times… Yesterday I went down to work with our little 12-person team, and it was invigorating and it was wonderful. And today I’m working alone in my office. You’re right – we’re all a mixed bag, but again, we’re talking about trends right now and what we can do with them.
One of the other trends we found, which was fascinating, is that Millennial-age people, especially those in their 20s right now, are about three times more likely to be driven by external drivers like recognition than older workers. And yet, where do most organizations spend their time recognizing people? It’s people who’ve typically been there a little longer, who achieve big things for the organization. Where, who needs the recognition? People who are newer in the organization, those who may be a little bit more even insecure about their role. Recognition helps them understand really what they’re accomplishing and how valued they are to the organization.

Pete Mockaitis
And so then, recognition here – we’re talking about kind of public. Is that fair to say? In terms of, “Hey everyone, we’re presenting the Rockstars of the Year awards. So come up on stage and we’ll clap for you as we say something cool you did this year that was meaningful for us.”

Adrian Gostick
Yeah. And really, when we look at recognition though – those are nice, but that’s once a year and maybe it’s once every five years. Those really don’t drive that individual performance. What we’re finding with recognition, especially with younger employees – that it’s it’s got to happen frequently, it’s got to be specific though. It can’t just be, “Boy, Pete, you sure do good work.” No, no. It’s, “Pete, I listened to your podcast last week. Insightful questions…” You can see already, I know what you’re doing.

Pete Mockaitis
I’m motivated, Adrian. You’ve got me motivated.

Adrian Gostick
Yeah. So what we’re finding is recognition has to be much more frequent, specific and timely than it’s ever been, as we sort of think about managing a new generation.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So that’s a top tip there for the Millennials. Anything that you would say in terms of a top driver for the other generations?

Adrian Gostick
Well, one of the things we find, and again this kind of leads us into our next idea of, while we’re being sort of generic here, what we do find is there are certain things that happen as we age. One is that we become a lot more interested in ideas like variety in our work. The worst thing you can do if you’ve got somebody who’s in their 50s working for you, the worst thing typically you can do is make their job rote – just the same thing day after day. We become much more interested in variety as we age, much more interested in ideas like developing others, leaving a legacy, creativity becomes actually even more important as we age, to challenge ourselves.
What we also found is that there are some things that are really quite similar though, in our DNA, no matter what age we are. We all want to make an impact. Or I shouldn’t say “all”, but really the vast majority of us have “impact” as a top driver. Another is learning. And what was fascinating to us is that it didn’t matter if somebody was in their 20s or 70s – learning typically fell as a top driver for the vast majority of people. So a couple of really interesting findings – we’re more similar than we may think, and there are also some interesting little differences we found.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s good. And so you were getting at, rather than going into broad groups of people, manage to the one, in terms of the particular drivers for an individual. And so, I’d love to get your take on, how do you elicit some of those drivers and then play to them effectively?

Adrian Gostick
Yeah, that’s a great question because I may be sounding like I’m talking out of both sides of my face, because I’m saying in one way you’ve got to understand generations, and that does help us understand from a mass perspective who’s working for us. But really the best leaders that we’ve studied over the last three or four years as we’ve been writing this book, really do get to know their individuals too.
And in the book we have a lot of ideas about how you figure out the specific drivers of your people, but this all leads to an idea we call “job sculpting”, where really you’re going to sit down with each of your people, and many of the great organizations we’ve been studying, they do this as often as monthly with their people, and they have career development discussions every single month with their people: “Where are you going? Are you having the right training, the right opportunities, the right challenges to get you where you want to go in your career, even if you may leave us one day?”
What we’re finding is organizations that worry about their people’s careers are cutting turnover dramatically, and they’re increasing engagement levels. And this is something that’s well within the control of every manager. I might not be able to give you a huge raise at the end of the year, I certainly can’t impact probably your bonus structure too much, or your benefits, but what I can do is meet with you and talk about your career and how I can help you with that, as a manager.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So the sculpting then is kind of like, “Okay, now that I know that you’re interested in analytics, I’m going to be on the lookout for some analyticky pieces of work that are coming up and try to get that flowing your way.” Is that what you mean there?

Adrian Gostick
Exactly, yeah. And what we do is we give people the structure to be able to talk about this, because in many cases they really don’t know what gives them that skip in their step every day. And so we give them a series of questions they can go through, and then they can begin having these conversations with their managers that they can sculpt their jobs and say if it is analytics that drives you…
Unfortunately sometimes we as leaders sort of peg people into, “Well, Pete – he’s the creative guy, so he always wants to be creative” or, “Susan – she’s the behind-the-scenes, detail person. I always give her those assignments.” Well, maybe Susan wants to work with some clients and challenge herself and push herself. So really, this is a two-way conversation, to be able to understand what drives our people, and also if there’s a chance, to be able to give them a few things that’ll motivate them. In many cases people will actually even work harder if you take the time to work with them in that way.

Pete Mockaitis
So then, I’d love to hear some of those excellent questions that help surface the stuff that people like and gets them going.

Adrian Gostick
Well, a few of the things we really challenge people to think about in this case, is, “What is it exactly that you’re doing on those days when the day really flies by? What are the activities that really you are undertaking?” And also, “What are the activities that frustrate your work, that on those days when you have to do them, you hit the Snooze button? What exactly is it about those activities that demotivate you?”
So we just start driving down. You’re using the Socratic method of saying, “Why?” “Why does that demotivate you? What is it about it that’s frustrating you?” So very simple questions that we’re pushing there. And what you do is you start near-term and then you move farther-term. So you start with the day-to-day – what’s motivating, what’s demotivating – and then you go bigger picture.
For example, “If you had three wishes for your career, what would they be?” Because then people typically are thinking a little further out – 5, 10 years. And then you can sort of talk about educational, skills, opportunities that’ll be needed, different things that’ll help you get to that point. And of course too, as a leader, you’re also helping temper expectations and say, “To get there, this is what you’re going to have to do” or, “You may not be ready to get there yet”, and just be able to have those honest conversations with people.

Pete Mockaitis
And what I think is so powerful about this is not only sort of the content that flows from it for job sculpting; it’s also the content that flows from it from an organizational perspective. It’s like, “Oh, we’ve got a process that’s just broken. You hate it because it really does not make any sense that we do this dumb thing.” Or, “Oh, in this certain area the decision-making roles are just wildly unclear. Well, no wonder that just sucks. So let’s see if we can clean that up.”
So I guess it helps them both in terms of the assignments they’re taking on, as well as cleaning up little messes all around, as well as just conveying that, “We care about you.” Because I don’t know, maybe you’ve got some data on this – how many organizations take the time to have these conversations? And I guess it can vary even leader by leader inside an organization, but if you had to give a rough guesstimate here, what proportion of leaders are having conversations like this on a regular basis, versus aren’t right now?

Adrian Gostick
Yeah, that’s a really good question. I don’t have the specific data; we just know what we’re showing is this is what the best leaders that we found were doing, those that had the highest engagement scores. But also, when we would go into an organization to study them, we would… For instance we went into Danaher, which is a 70,000-person technology company and we said, “Okay, give us your best manager.” And they would send us to XYZ person and we would interview that person.
So typically we’re getting the best of the best, and this is what we’re finding the best were doing. And they were having these sort of career discussions, these job sculpting discussions, as well as regular weekly updates with each of their people about what was happening in their jobs. So really, this is what the best of the best are doing. If I had to guess, probably 10% of managers, I would say, are probably really good at these types of things, but those 10% are blowing the doors off of performance.

Pete Mockaitis
And I guess now I’m wondering if someone’s listening and you’re in an organization like, “Dang, I wish my boss did that, and we just don’t.” Do you have any pro tips on trying to do a little bit of steering the change or starting the shift within, if you don’t have sort of a big power title authority from a positional perspective?

Adrian Gostick
Yeah, a couple of things you can do. The Best Team Wins really is a book for anybody who leads a team, but also anybody who aspires to or anybody who tries to influence others around them. And so there are lots of sort of hacks for all of us to help us become better at this. If you find yourself as a member of a team and maybe your manager isn’t as good at this as perhaps he or she should be, you can always hopefully set them up for success, to be able to give them a few of these ideas, to be able to say, for instance on this idea of job sculpting, “Hey, here’s what I read in this book. This is what some great leaders are doing.”

Pete Mockaitis
“Buy it!”

Adrian Gostick
Yeah, buy them a copy of the book. But that besides, “This is what some of the great leaders are doing. They’re having regular career discussions with their people. Doesn’t cost them anything. It’s a 15 to 30-minute conversation once a month and it helps them sculpt jobs, find out what’s frustrating them, helps them give direction. I’d love to do that with you. Is that something that you feel like you could commit to, just for a few months to see how it goes?” There are some simple things you can do to help your manager see the power in some of these very simple ideas.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, thank you. So, I want to hear maybe just a quick bit about speed productivity, because I want to go into some depth on healthy discord and challenging things. So, how does one get productivity flowing all the faster?

Adrian Gostick
Well, what we find is there are a couple of things here. One is that we have to help people understand this idea – it’s security, if you will – it’s overcoming the fear factor and understanding that, “Look, you now belong on this team. You may be a new employee, you may be brand new to our team, but here’s why you were invited, here’s why you are important, and here’s the role that you play.” Clarity is so huge in this process.
The second part – and I’m giving you very fast here – is context. It’s helping your new people understand not only where they fit in the team, but where the team fits into the entire organization. You think about it as you’re in the mall and there’s the red dot that says, “You are here.” Well, I know it sounds odd, but we are so poor in most organizations at helping people understand not only the big picture, but how the widget I’m making or the thing I’m selling or the customer I’m speaking with, really impacts the big picture, and giving me that context.
And the last one may sound really warm and fuzzy, but in great teams that speed productivity there’s a greater level of affiliation, which basically means friendships: “I feel like I’m accepted here, I’m valued as a human being.” We found one bank in our study – it was a call center – that simply had everybody go on break at the same time, versus the old system, where people would sporadically go when they could.
The entire team went on break for 15 minutes. It was a silly little thing, but they had to do a lot of work to send the phones elsewhere, but all of a sudden productivity soared, and people started looking out for each other. And why? Because they knew each other’s families, they started talking about things. All of a sudden they became a tighter team. So there’s lots of little things you can do to build these ideas of affiliation and context and security to help build a great team, and fast.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, cool. And that notion of security, I think really does help enable folks who feel capable of engaging in some healthy discord and to do some challenges. And so, I think that you had a great turn of a phrase about “disagreeing without causing offense”. And boy, what a skill for our time and place right now, and I think that it’s huge. And so, I’m a believer and I’m so curious on your take on this. Any sort of data-driven insights, and particularly how do you get there, especially whether it’s sort of changing from within: “When people disagree with me, I feel offended.” I know you can’t change people exactly, but influencing others to adopt that same kind of a mindset, where they too can be challenged and not think, “Well, this person’s dead to me” or, “They’re an enemy of mine.”

Adrian Gostick
Yeah. It’s unfortunate, but how often do we… Probably most of us have worked at some place or other over the years where debate is just quashed, whether overtly or covertly. I had boss who stormed into my office once after I debated with him in one meeting and he told me, “You’ll never do that to me again.” Do you think anybody was giving their best ideas in an environment like that?
So really, what we found, and we do have quantitative data that says those environments that are more about the debate, are more innovative, etcetera… But this is more on the qualitative side, that when we went into these great organizations, we would ask them, “Okay, how do you create this discord without it turning into a … and it turning into, as you said, where feelings are hurt, etcetera?”
So typically they have some sort of ground rules – things like, “You challenge the position but never the person, you don’t make things personal.” And again, the ground rules come up and the leader of the debate may say, “Whoa, whoa, whoa, I think we’re crossing over the line there. You remember our rule is…” For instance, another one: “Seek to gather facts and don’t jump to conclusions.” Okay, so another rule we heard in another team. Another one was, “Remember, you’re in a competition to win. The best ideas win. You’re not here to ram home your points.”
And so, I could go on with the rules, but really that’s the “A-ha” from this, is that there are rules, and that there are some rules to make sure the debate is lively. All of us want to argue out things. You think of your last family event. Did you guys sit around and just make small talk or did you start debating politics and sports and all the things you’re passionate about? Of course, we do it in our personal lives. We want to debate in our work lives; we want to make things better, but there do have to be rules that help keep us positive and focused on the right things.

Pete Mockaitis
You said we could go on about the rules, and I really would. I’d love for you to go on about the rules. Could you share a couple more?

Adrian Gostick
Yeah. Another one is – and this is an interesting one – is that one other word we heard quite often was, “Look, after the team makes a decision collaboratively, we’re going to support it, even if it wasn’t our own idea.” Now that’s huge, because you may not agree with it after you leave. And it doesn’t mean we all have to be automatons and robots here walking around, but the point is if we are a team, we’re going to support the team.
And one of the things we heard, one great CEO that we interviewed for the book said typically 98% of the time he says, “My team as they’re debating, is able to come up with consensus.” He says, “I really don’t have to make a decision as a leader, because it’s so obvious by the time we get there.” And there are a couple of things he says you’ve got to do though. He says typically you may have somebody on the team who hasn’t spoken up, and you’ve got to make sure they’re really bought in, because they could leave and sort of undermine everything.
So he may say, “Cindy, you really haven’t said anything. I need to hear from you. What are you thinking? Do you feel like we’re on the right track or not?” And he says, “There are times where I do have to make a decision, I do have to say…” But he says you can still be very respectful about that as well. So for instance he may say, “Boy, this has been great debate on both sides of this issue. A reasonable person could go either way. I feel like we’ve got to make this decision and go this direction this time, but thank you so much for this excellent debate.”
Now, really simple, right? He says by doing that, next time people feel free to speak up, and when they leave the meeting they don’t feel like they’ve been quashed. They feel like their voice has been heard. So just some really simple little things we can do to create this environment, where we lead debate and we help steer it toward a great conclusion, where people are still respectful but the best ideas emerge.

Pete Mockaitis
Perfect, thank you. Well, Adrian, tell me – anything else you really want to make sure to mention before we shift gears and hear about some of your favorite things?

Adrian Gostick
One of the other things I guess I would say with this is – and it’s always fun to hear – is that now and then after we put out a book… And I think this will be the same way – our book’s coming out February 13th. So typically I get some emails afterwards about different things and how people are using this in their work situations. But what’s been really fun is that people will send me an email and they’ll say, “I’ve now tried this at home and it actually does work.”
Some of these different ideas about debating healthily, or the ideas about understanding what drives each person, or figuring out what our collective challenges are, what our purpose is within our families or our relationships. So it’s fun to see this work at work, but it’s really quite heartening to see these also work in our homes lives too, in our personal lives. So there’s just one little thought.

Pete Mockaitis
That is good, thank you. Cool. Well, now can you share with us a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Adrian Gostick
One of the things Maya Angelou once said was that people don’t care or they won’t remember what you say or they won’t remember what they do, but they’ll always remember how you make them feel. And really, what our whole career has been about is helping leaders and managers and people who want to become leaders of others succeed.
And one of the things that really we have to remember as a leader is that we don’t know where people have been their other 16 hours they’re not with you during their day, but the 8 hours they’re with you can be the best hours of their day. But really it’s a sacred charge; we’ve got to realize these people in our care are literally in our care. And how do we motivate them, how do we engage them, how do we challenge them to do more than they ever thought possible? That’s our charge.

Pete Mockaitis
Cool, thank you. And how about a favorite study or experiment or a bit of research?

Adrian Gostick
Let’s see. Well, we do so many research studies ourselves. One of the bits of data from The Best Team Wins actually is – and this really shocked us, but we found it over and over again – was that how much time people typically spend today in working collaboratively. Deloitte has found that 80% of an average employee’s day is spent working collaboratively. Now, that is definitely a change from even just a few years ago. We’re moving at light speed toward a world where we no longer work alone. We work with others, and we really have to figure out how we work best with each other, and in many cases change our thinking about this.

Pete Mockaitis
Thank you. And how about a favorite book?

Adrian Gostick
Let’s see. I just finished a terrific book called Beneath a Scarlet Sky, I believe it’s called. It’s about during the Second World War an Italian young man who helped Jews escape across the mountains, the Alps, during the Second World War. And it was one of the best reads that I’ve read in a long time.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, thank you. And how about a favorite tool, something that helps you be awesome at your job?

Adrian Gostick
I travel a lot, so I’m always on the Weather Channel app, I’m always sort of surfing blogs. Really, it’d be hard to nail it down because I really do believe whether I’m reading The Wall Street Journal online or the Harvard Business Review blogs, that there are so many great ideas out there, and unfortunately so much of it can start sounding the same.
And what I really look for, and as a team, our little company is called The Culture Works – we’re firing things back and forth every day using Slack actually – one of the tools we use – and, “Hey, did you read this article?” Like yesterday there was an article from ESPN on the Patriots and sort of the dysfunction that’s going on right now via communication in their team.
And we started talking about what’s falling apart for a franchise that’s done so many amazing things for so many years. And we started talking about that idea – it’s communication, is Belichick having problem with generations, and this, that and the other. We just started bouncing ideas around; it was a really fascinating discussion. And so, I think that’s one of the things we have to do, is keep pushing ourselves and our teams to learn and to grow and to think about problems from different perspectives.

Pete Mockaitis
Excellent, thank you. And how about a favorite habit, something you do that helps you flourish at work?

Adrian Gostick
Well, one of the things, every day I’ll probably put in three or four hours of writing. Sometimes I’ll be out working with a client, but if I’m in my office probably half a day will be spent writing, but the other half will be spent reading. So, I think it’s so important, whether you’re reading a new business book or articles in journals or publications, or blogs, or listening to podcasts like yours – whatever we do; I think that one of the things I try to do is make sure I’m learning and growing and I’m not stagnating.

Pete Mockaitis
And is there a particular nugget or a piece that you tend to share with clients or audiences or readers that you find is often repeated back to you? An Adrian original that’s really resonating?

Adrian Gostick
One of the things we try to help people understand is, because everybody is so focused on the customer, and we let them know the customer experience will never exceed the employee experience, that you’ve got to start the service profit chain with your people, because if you care about them, they will care about what you want to care about. But they’ve got to know you care first.

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

Adrian Gostick
TheCultureWorks.com. We’ve also got a website at CarrotGuys.com, so we’d love to connect with you. Send us a note, pick up the new book The Best Team Wins, and we would love to hear if it’s working for you and your organization.

Pete Mockaitis
Alright. And do you have a final challenge or call to action you’d issue to folks seeking to be awesome at their jobs?

Adrian Gostick
I think probably the most important thing is really every day you’ve got to be focused on… If you are a leader of people or you’re a leader of projects or teams, the little things really do make a big difference. And what we’re saying from all of this – I’ve thrown out lots of ideas and talked about a lot of stuff today – really, try one thing at a time, and don’t try to eat the elephant.
Is there one thing you can add tomorrow to your management style, your leadership style, the way that you are part of the team or operating the team, that may make you more effective, that may make you more valuable to your people and to those around you? Don’t try to do everything. In the back of our book we’ve got 101 ideas for real team leaders. Grab one of those and see if it makes your team better. That’s what I would recommend, is don’t try to do everything. Just try one thing and see if it works.

Pete Mockaitis
Alright. Well, Adrian, thank you so much for taking this time and sharing these perspectives. I think this is so powerful and has the opportunity to be transformational in many ways for many work places. So, I wish you tons of luck with this book and all the things you’re up to!

Adrian Gostick
Hey, thanks, Pete, and thanks so much for your great questions. Appreciate it.