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Feb 07
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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.

Jan 31
0

256: Science-based Solutions for Delivering Tough Truth at Work with Mark Murphy

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Mark Murphy says: "The real goal of a difficult conversation... is to create some change, to come to some resolution."

Author & trainer Mark Murphy explores the intersections of diplomacy, truthfulness, and difficult conversations at work.

You’ll Learn:

  1. Top reasons why people don’t tell the truth at work
  2. Common phrases that create defensiveness
  3. Why having a difficult conversation is better than just fixing the problem yourself

About Mark 

Mark Murphy is a New York Times bestselling author, weekly contributor to Forbes, ranked as a Top 30 Leadership Guru and the Founder of Leadership IQ. He’s trained leaders at the United Nations, Harvard Business School, the Clinton Foundation, Microsoft, MasterCard, SHRM, and hundreds more organizations. He has written several award-winning books on leadership and been featured in many premiere media outlets.

 

Items Mentioned in this Show:

Mark Murphy Interview Transcript

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

Mark Murphy
Oh, Pete, thanks so much for having me. I’m excited.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, yeah. Well, I am intrigued by so much of what you have to say here, so I think this will be a great one. And I wanted to start, though, I learned a bit about you that you once addressed the United Nations. What’s that story?

Mark Murphy
Well, yeah, that was a pretty cool experience. So, for several years, I was a faculty at the UN. They essentially developed an academy to develop leaders within the UN, and so their focus is on really teaching all the people that are working in diplomacy how to, (a) lead more effectively, but, (b) how to communicate, how to be diplomatic, how to deal with difficult conversations, tough situations. And it was part of a program that they have put together to really develop the leaders within the United Nations.

And so, it’s a pretty exceptional program they had going, and they would bring in experts, like myself, to come in and talk about particular aspects. So, I talked to them about different kinds of tough conversations and why people resist tough messages. And you can imagine, given the kinds of situations we face across the globe, that, yeah, the United Nations has a little bit of experience in dealing with tough conversations.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that’s awesome. Yeah. Well, I was a loyal Model United Nations Secretary General when I was in college so I keep a little bit of an eye as to what’s going on with the real one. And so, I guess, now I’m thinking, if you are teaching diplomats how to be more diplomatic, well, you must be quite a master diplomacy yourself.

Mark Murphy
Well, you know one of the things I have discovered that it’s not always perfect, right?  We can go into conversations with the best of intentions, and that’s part of handling tough conversations and difficult situations is, (a) knowing what to do but then, (b) making sure that you have some handy reminders in place that you can pull on it any moment, because the reality is that most difficult conversations don’t take place on your schedule.

Most of the time, whey they happen, you get blindsided and that’s it’s so important, no matter how sophisticated your methods are, to have something that you can fall back on quickly. And that’s really one of the essential lessons, is distill it down, get something you can fall back on because that difficult conversation is not going to come most of the time when you’re fresh and you’ve just had a nice cup of coffee. It’s usually going to come at the end of a long day when you’re wiped out and this is the last conversation you want to have.

Pete Mockaitis
Understood. Okay. Cool. Well, I’m excited to dig into some of these. And it’s so funny that we talk about diplomacy and difficult conversations, I have this weirdest temptation just to be super rude to you to see how you’ll respond, but I’m going to reel it in because that’s not how I am. It’s just a kind of a silly cartoon-like fantasy of mine which I’m going to put it aside for now. You jerk. Okay, that’s it. That’s it.

Okay. So, then, now you lay out some of these things to fall back on in your book Truth at Work. So, tell us, what’s that about? And kind of what’s the alternative? Are we all just lying at work?

Mark Murphy
So, one of the things that I found in doing research for this and some of my own studies is that it’s not so much that we lie in that we walk in every day and are telling blatant falsehoods, but rather we’re avoiding telling the truth. When I ask leaders or employees, “Do you avoid having difficult conversations with people?” And somewhere between eight out of ten, or nine out of ten, depending on who you ask, of people, say, “Yeah, I avoid telling my boss tough things. I avoid telling my colleagues tough things. I avoid telling my employees because I’m just afraid of how they’re going to react.”

And that’s the real reason we avoid difficult conversations. It’s not so much that we are afraid of letting the words come out of our mouths, rather we’re afraid what’s going to happen when this person hears what it is we have to say. And that’s the coming up with techniques for mitigating some of those bad reactions and calming people down, and creating conversations rather than confrontations is ultimately what we’re after in this.

And that’s really what the book is about, how to tone down some of those negative reactions and deliver messages that would, otherwise, be tough to hear in a way that the recipient will actually engage with you and talk to you about this stuff.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Cool. Well, so I want to dig into these tactics and your great acronyms and such to those ends. But, first, I’m thinking, when it comes to that fear, we’re concerned about how the other person is going to react and what will become of it, I’d love if we could sort of take a bull’s eye aim at that one right up front. And, say, when it comes to the fear what are some perspectives that folks should bear in mind in terms of managing that right before we even begin to say a word?

Mark Murphy
So, there’s a number of things. So, one of the things we discovered is that there’s these things we call truth killers, and they’re really the reasons why people resist the truth. And there are four big ones that we really identified in this and there’s a thousand reasons why people won’t listen to tough messages. But if you kind of clump them all together – the big four. Number one, there’s what I call confident unawareness. Sometimes it’s known as the Dunning-Kruger Effect.

And what this means is, essentially, people think they’re right, they think they know what they’re doing, they think they know what they’re talking about, but in reality they’re absolutely clueless. So, I think about it like this, if I grew up on an island with no other humans around me, I might think that I’m a fast runner. I might run across the beach on this little deserted desert island and think, “Wow, I’m really fast,” because I’ve never seen another fast runner.

But that’s not my life, and I’m married to a woman who is a significantly better runner than me, I’m incredibly slow. And so, I watch her run and now I don’t have confident unawareness. I watch her run, and I say, “Oh, yeah, that’s what fast looks like. Oh, I’m really slow.” But there are lots of people walking around the planet who think that they’re really fast, or think that they’re really smart, or think that they have high emotional intelligence.

And if you’ve ever seen somebody that talks with great confidence that they know exactly what they’re doing, and in reality they’re an idiot, that would be confident unawareness. And that’s a tough one to overcome. And sometimes when you give somebody feedback, like, “Listen, you’re not doing such a great job with our customers over there. You’re not doing such a great job advancing your career.” They’re like, “I’m awesome. I’m fantastic.” “Well, okay, we’ve got to…” That’s a tough one to overcome.

Another reason that people resist hearing tough messages is what we call psychological resistance. And this one of the things that happens when you have a tough conversation with somebody whether it’s a friend, a spouse, a colleague, a boss, whoever. Oftentimes you’re telling them something that is at odds with their self-image, with how they view themselves.

If you came to me, Pete, and said, “You know, Mark, I think you’re kind of dumb and I think you’re not a very nice person,” well, that’s at odds with my self-image and so I’m likely to turn around and attack you, or attack your message, “Well, Pete doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Pete, how does he know that? He didn’t hear that last conversation I had before I hopped on the phone with him. What does he know? He’s a jerk. I’ll bet you he’s real nasty in his life.”

And it’s this, whenever somebody tells us something that is at odds with our self-image, it is just by human nature it’s going to engender what’s either psychological resistance or cognitive dissonance. It causes us to attack the message and the messenger.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, that’s powerful. And so, you zeroed in on it there. It’s like, what is it that’s likely to trip a wire or an explosion versus not, and I think that’s interesting when it comes to the running. It’s like I think folks could criticize any number of things about me, like, “Yeah, that’s right. Yeah, I don’t know anything about that. Yeah, you’re true, true, true, true, true.” And then there are a few things, it’s like, “Hold up right there, sir.” And so, it’ll spark a different reaction.

So, I loved it when you talked about, you have zeroed in, in fact, on seven key phrases that are sort of actual scripts or verbiage that create defensiveness within people. So, could you lay those out for us in terms of what are some of those phrases that we should not say? And what do we say instead of those?

Mark Murphy
So, one of the things that was interesting is that when we talk about having difficult conversations is that oftentimes having a tough conversation is as much about listening as it is talking. And a lot of conversations go off the rails before we ever say anything, we issue a command, a directive or anything like that. It begins with how we listen or rather don’t listen.

So, a friend of ours comes up and says, “Oh, I’m having such a tough time at work. My boss is such a jerk and I think there might be layoffs at the company.” And when they say that, what we’re trying to do, if we do it correctly in that moment, is build some empathy. Take their perspective so that we can give them some guidance, we can just listen, we can be empathic, we can do whatever we need to do.

But there’s seven things that humans generally say to each other that basically tell this other person, “No, I don’t really want to help you out here.”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Perfect.

Mark Murphy
So, things like, “Well, you know, listen, griping about it is not going to make it any better.”

Pete Mockaitis
All right.

Mark Murphy
Or, “You know, you just need to suck it up,” or one of my favorites, “Well, life is unfair. You know, sometimes crap happens. It’s just bad stuff,” or one that we’ve been seeing a lot more lately is, “Well, you know what, maybe this is a blessing in disguise. Maybe this is all for the best. There’s a reason for everything and you don’t worry about it. It’s just that all those concerns, they’re not important. This is all going to work out just great.”

Then there are the classics, “Oh, don’t worry, you’ll get over it,” or, “Well, you think you’ve got problems. Let me stop listening to you and tell you about what’s going on in my life because mine is a lot worse than yours is,” and it becomes a competition of who’s got it worse. And then, of course, there’s the classic, “Well, yeah, but.”

And it’s funny because the word “but” gets used constantly but – there it is – it’s an absolute conversation killer when it’s used in this kind of a scenario, in a difficult situation where somebody is opening up, they either want a sounding board, they want somebody to listen to them, maybe, down the road, want somebody to give them some guidance.

But these are all phrases – and you can come up with a hundred variations on these – that people say that just tell, whoever you’re talking to, “I don’t want to hear any more. What you said is stupid. I’m not really paying attention to you and, you know what, I don’t want to listen to you. I want to talk. I just want to tell you stuff.” And that’s a quick way to end any conversation, let alone a difficult one.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, yeah, I like that. Okay. So, quit griping, suck it up, life is not fair, stuff happens, maybe it’s a blessing in disguise, don’t worry, you’ll get over it, you think you got problems, well, yeah, but. And so that is the theme, it’s like any of these is just sort of like dismissive, like, “Okay. Well, yeah, no need to really hear any more of what you have to say. We’re moving on.” And it sort of conveys, “What you’ve said is not really consequential or does not really matter to me. I don’t take it all that seriously or it doesn’t have much weight or importance to me.”

So, I could see that theme coming clear. And it’s funny, I’m thinking about my wife right now. I’ve said a couple of times what I thought was reassuring, that’s really what my intention was in my heart, it’s like, “Oh, honey, we’re going to make it through this just fine.” And so, she interpreted it in that kind of a way which is, “I don’t care to talk more about this. I am sort of not proactively encouraging you to tell me more about what you think and feel with regard to this scenario in so far as I’m trying to kind of move on.”

And I wasn’t trying to move on, I’m in big belief that we were going to get through it just fine, and I thought a show of confidence and support would be the thing, but it wasn’t the thing in that moment.

Mark Murphy
It happens a lot. And there are kind of two things I think go on with this a lot whether it’s at home or at work, is that, one, we’re taught to be solution-oriented, so, “Just solve it. I don’t want problem-bringers around me. I want problem-solvers. Just solve it. Just get right to it.” And, too often, what happens is, in trying to skip to the solving stage, we basically kill off the empathy stage which is a problem.

The other thing that happens, and this is a fairly recent phenomenon, is that you think about social media, and what social media is training us to do; social media is not encouraging us to respond with additional questions, it does not encourage us to respond with empathy. It basically says, whenever somebody shares an issue, what does Facebook want? What does Twitter want? They want reactions. They want you to jump in.

And if somebody says they give a little soliloquy, they want you to match that with a soliloquy, and they want it emotional, intense, and everything else. They don’t want dialogue because that’s calming and that takes longer. What they want is quick reactions because that’s what gets eyeballs. And it’s interesting that social media has essentially trained us to respond the exact wrong way to difficult conversations.

And the next time one of your friends post something a little sketchy on Facebook, and you’re tempted to jump in with what I would call reciprocated diatribe, that is one person makes a speech and you make a speech back. Instead, try just asking a question, “Well, tell me more about that. I’m interested as to how you came to that conclusion. Tell me what data backs that up. I’m just looking. Or are there any facts that underlie your assertion here?” Something that engages them in more conversation rather than shutting down the debate instantly.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, that’s good. Reciprocated diatribe is a great turn of a phrase. Is this a Mark Murphy original?

Mark Murphy
It’s one that I came up with and then as I was doing research, I discovered that it had actually been coined about 30 years ago, and so I actually can’t take ownership. Yeah, there were some sociologists actually talking about it about 30 years ago, yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, those sociologists had no idea the amount of reciprocated diatribe that was to be unleashed in the decades to come.

Mark Murphy
Oh, yeah, they had no idea what was headed our way.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Cool. Well, so now, I’m thinking a little bit now and talk about don’t do reciprocated diatribe, and you have a couple other kind of tools or techniques. One is called de-layering a conversation into multiple parts. Can you walk us through what’s that about, what’s the value of doing so, and how is it done?

Mark Murphy
So, this I think is actually probably the most important part of having difficult conversations. So, if you think about it, most conversations have really four components to them, there are four layers to them. There are facts, that’s sort of the initial objective reality; somebody said something or somebody did something. You could videotape it, you could audiotape it, that’s a fact, it’s verifiable.

But that’s not what gets us into trouble. What gets us into trouble is that based on that fact we, then, make an interpretation. The human brain is very much an interpretation engine. We do not look outside our window, and say, “My, isn’t that interesting? Today the weather is 39 degrees and 60% cloudy.” No, we look outside the window and say, “Ugh, I’m so sick of it being gray. Oh, my gosh, it’s so cold outside.”

And we’re making a judgment about it. We’re interpreting it. The fact is it’s 39 degrees Fahrenheit. Our interpretation though is, “That’s cold,” or, “That’s hot,” or, “That’s better than I thought,” or, “That’s worse than I thought.” Based on that interpretation we then have an emotional reaction, “I’m happy to go outside,” “I’m disappointed,” “I’m feeling depressed now because I haven’t seen the sun in a few days.” And then based on that emotional reaction we have this desired end. We want something to happen, “I want to move to Hawaii. That’ll be so much better.”

And so, I think of this as this four-part model. I call it the FIRE model; it’s facts, interpretations, reactions, and ends. Now, here’s the thing, when we’re having a difficult conversation, it is the first step, before we do anything else, the first thing we want to do is strip away anything that is not a fact. So, let’s say, for example, that one of my colleagues, I asked them to work on part of a report, and they bring me the report, and I noticed there’s a couple of typos and a mis-formatted chart.

And so, if I’m dealing just with the facts, I might look at this and say, “Hmm, isn’t that interesting? There’s three typos on the first page, and there’s a chart that’s incorrectly formatted.” Now, my natural human reaction is to say, is to interpret that, and say, “You know what, it’s like they didn’t listen to anything I asked them to do.” Now, my emotional reaction is, “You know, that’s just so irritating. Like, I can’t trust you.”

And now my desired end is, “You know what, I’m not going to ask you to do anything in the future. I’m just going to avoid you entirely. I’m going to ask Bob or Sally instead because you clearly can’t do this correctly.” So, that’s my normal kind of human reaction. So, what I want to do is, as soon as I feel myself starting to head down that path, what I like to do is literally write a little “T” on a piece of paper. Just make myself a little grid, and basically four boxes, right? So, put an “F” in one, an “I” and an “R” and an “E”, and I write down everything I want to say.

What I want to say is, “There’s two typos in the memo,” or, “Three typos in this thing and the chart is not formatted.” Now, my interpretation is that, “You didn’t listen to anything I asked you to do.” My emotional reaction is, “I’m irritated and angry.” And my desired end is, “I don’t want to give you any more work to do.”

What I’m going to do is, after I write these all down and put everything into its respective little box, I then want to draw a big “X” through the “I”, the “R”, and the “E” because essentially, if I go into a conversation and I start out with, “You know, Pete, I just have to say I’m pretty disappointed in the work I got back from you because it’s like you didn’t listen to anything I said. And when you don’t pay attention to my request, it makes me feel like you’re disrespecting me, and that makes me feel like I don’t want to work with you anymore.”

That’s the worst conversation we can have because two things have happened.

Pete Mockaitis
I was hoping that was the bad example because, I don’t know, he’s using a lot of “I” statements and emotions, so I felt it was bad because it feels very bad to me. Okay. Good. We’re on the same page.

Mark Murphy
Yeah, exactly. And two things, two big things happened. One is we are now going to have a conversation about hurt feelings and judgments, and judgments that could easily be wrong, and so we’re completely into this ugly emotional hard-to-manage territory. But the other thing that happens is that we’re no longer talking about the typos. I mean, honestly, all we want to get fixed here is we just want a memo without typos and a good-looking chart. That’s it. There’s nothing else we really need to discuss at the moment.

And that’s the very first thing that I encourage people to think about when they’re going into a difficult conversation, is before you open your mouth, strip out all of this stuff that is going to cause you problems in this conversation. And that stuff is the interpretations, reactions, and ends. You want to talk about the facts; those are safe. We can problem-solve like grownup adults and without ever having a raised voice if we talk about the facts.

But the whole “I” statement and “making me feel like this,” oh, there’s two bad “F” words in tough conversations. One is the obvious one, but the other bad “F” word is feel. If you’re saying the word “feel” in a difficult conversation, we’ve probably gotten off track because now we’re not talking about stuff that we can easily fix. Now we’re into a deep emotional ripping off some scabs, and that’s just not going to help us.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Excellent. Thank you. And so, now I’m thinking a little bit about, okay, the fact, interpretation, reaction, and ends, I just want to make sure I get this dead on in terms of distinctions amongst them. So, fact is the thing that happened, we could all agree, we can see this; interpretation is the meaning I affix to it, like, “You are lazy”; and then reaction is my emotion about it, like, “I am enraged at this person who’s ignoring me,”; and then ends is the desired outcome or decisions, like, “Therefore, I plan to no longer assign any important work to him.”

Mark Murphy
Yes, exactly.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Cool. So, I got that clear. And so, then, all right, noted. So, if that’s the wrong way to go in terms of just laying it out there, in terms of your feelings and what you think all of this means, what is the model pathway to engage in that conversation well?

Mark Murphy
So, once we’ve stripped away all the other stuff and we’re left with the facts, so now I want to go talk to you about these three typos, let’s say. So, I have essentially two approaches. If, let’s say we worked together for 20 years and we have a good relationship, I could walk up to you and go, “Hey, Pete, two typos.” And then you’d go, “Okay. Oh, dang it, all right. All right, man. I missed those but let me go fix those.” And that’s, honestly, all we need to do.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Facts alone. That does it.

Mark Murphy
Exactly. It’s there, pretty easy to take. Now, that’s not always the case, right? That’s not always the case, you’re having this conversation with a buddy, and you can just go up and say the facts and call it a day. So, when we need to do a little bit more, we created what’s called, what we call the idea script. And it’s essentially five parts that it takes about 12 seconds to do and it’s essentially a preamble to having a tough conversation.

And it goes like this. Step one, just invite them to partner, so basically that means just say, “Hey, Pete, would you be willing to have a conversation with me about that memo you wrote the other day?” That’s step one.

Pete Mockaitis
“No, Mark. You’re not my real dad.” I don’t know. How can you say no? Okay.

Mark Murphy
Exactly. That’s the thing, you know, people will say, “Well, what happens if somebody says no?” If, in once in a blue moon, somebody will, when they say no you just say, “Well, do you mind if I ask why?” And now we’re going to get to the heart of why they don’t want to talk to us but most of the time people will go, “Okay, fine.”

And then, step two, I’m just going to disarm myself, I’m just going to throw the guns down, raise my hands and say, “Listen, I just want to review this situation, make sure I’m on the same page as you.” Step three, I’m going to say, “And if we have different perspectives, well, we can talk about those and figure out a plan for moving forward.” Step four, I’m going to say, “Does that sound okay?” And then, step five, “Do you want to talk now or do you want to talk this afternoon?”

So, in essence, what I’m doing is a couple of things. Number one, I’m coming to them in a gentler way. I’m opening the door to talk about whatever these facts are, but what I’m communicating to this person is that I want an honest-to-goodness conversation. And, here’s the thing, most conversations have a mix of statements and questions.

And so, just in this little quick script, “Would you be willing to have a conversation with me about that memo you wrote yesterday? I’d just like to review the situation, make sure I’m on the same page as you. And, listen, if we have different perspectives, we can talk about those and figure out a plan for moving forward. Does that sound okay?”

Essentially, I’ve got two questions, two statements, so I got a good 50-50 mix, and in doing that, what I’m communicating to them, is, “This is not a me talking to you like you’re a child. I’m not coming to yell at you. I’m not looking for a fight because they only way we’re ultimately going to solve this is if we come to this as equals and hash this out, and both get to some level of agreement about how we’re going to move forward and fix this issue.”

Because if all I do is say to you, “You know, Pete, the memo stunk. Fix it.” Well, you may go fix it but our relationship, even if it’s subtle, has just taken a little bit of a hit because, now, you’re buy-in isn’t all that high. You’re walking away at some level thinking, “Ah, boy, he’s kind of a jerk. He could’ve said that nicer, and disrespected me a little bit. I have taken away some of your agency.”

But if, instead, I come to you, one adult to another, and I say, “Hey, would you be willing to talk with me about this?” Well, now, you’re going to have to ante up and actually participate in this. And that’s what I’m after.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s cool. I like it. And so, then, thinking through the framework again, I was following with, okay, we invite, that’s the “I”; we discern, or disarm the self, “D”; and the last one, I guess, is schedule, “S.” But the “E” and the “A” what are the words you’re using for those?

Mark Murphy
So, it’s invite them to partner, eliminate blame is the “E” and is, “I just want to review,” and then affirming their choices. So, that’s basically the, “Does that sound okay to you?” And, again, some of this is incredibly subtle in that I want them, because even if they begrudgingly say, “Yeah, okay,” I’ve at least gotten them to say, “Yeah, okay.”

I’ve gotten them at some level to agree to participate in this with me. And, one of the models I think about it is if you have a, let’s take a football example, if you have a superstar coach and a superstar quarterback. If the quarterback makes a bad throw, throws an intersection, comes over to the sideline, the coach and the quarterback, the coach does not come over to the superstar quarterback and say, “Hey, that was a really stupid throw,” because the quarterback is going to go, “Yeah, I know. I saw it.” “Well, no, I mean, I need to make sure you know that was a stupid throw.” “No, I get it. That was a stupid throw.”

Instead, what they do is, it may be a little terse, but they’re going into a conversation of the form, “All right, how do we fix this? How do we not do that again? What needs to change?” And they’re actually having a dialogue because the thing that they’ve each realized is they can’t solve the problem without the other person. The coach cannot win the game without the quarterback, and the quarterback cannot win the game without the coach.

And, in this case, if we apply this to work case, or a relationship with our spouses, I can’t fix this issue if, let’s say, you know, one of our kids is doing something, I can’t do this without my wife. We have to, even if we have different perspectives on this at first, it’s going to take both of us to figure out what to do next. If I have a problem with that memo you wrote, I can’t fix the memo without you.

And one of the big kind of a-ha moments about difficult conversations is that it’s not something you can fix by yelling at people. These are not issues where one person can fix it. It takes both parties to actually have a dialogue come together and hash it out to come up with a workable solution. Otherwise, I’m just yelling at you, and that’s not going to get us anywhere.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, so I want to address, if any listener is challenging that in his or her own mind, like, “Well, I could just fix their mistake for them, and just do it myself.” What’s your reply to that?

Mark Murphy
You can. And the problem is you haven’t actually resolved the issue. You’ve just taken their issue over and put it on yourself. And, listen, if you do that, ultimately what’s going to end up happening is you’re going to bear the weight of the world on your shoulders, and that’s problem one. Problem two is that the people around you aren’t growing and developing.

So, imagine if every time your kid has an issue, you jump in and solve it for them. Okay, well, that may get them through this week’s problem. But what happens – not to get morbid here – when you’re dead? Now, all of a sudden, we have a kid who is ill-equipped to live on their own, to go out and survive the world.

We’ve taught them nothing because every time this happens, even if it’s an employee, if every time one of my employees has an issue, say, and I jump in and I do it for them, I’ve pretty much guaranteed that they will never grow and develop beyond where they’re at. And whether it’s my role as a parent, or my role as a leader, or just in my role as a friend, I haven’t helped this person. And so, it’s not until they own 50% of this issue, and partner with me on it, it’s not until they do that have I actually given them some real tools to do better out in the world.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Understood. Appreciated. That makes sense. You talked a lot about how to say things but you said a huge part of this game is the listening so I want to make sure we give a little bit of airtime to that. Tell us about your take on structured listening.

Mark Murphy
So, the first part of, of course, structured listening is basically not to say all those things we talked about earlier, the “suck it up” “life is unfair.” That’s the what-not-to-do. The what-to-do, structured listening, think of it as a step beyond what we were all taught years ago as active listening. And active listening sort of became a bit of a cliché where you nod your head and go, “Mm-hmm,” and, “Oh,” “Yes,” “Oh, wow,” “Mm-hmm, interesting.” You know, we grunt a little bit and we furrow our brow, and that’s supposed to mean we’re there.

And what we found is that that’s just insufficient. So, structured listening really involves, e-listening, so encouraging this person to talk so saying something to them like, “Well, I’d really like to understand your perspective here. Can we just review this and I’d like to learn more so I can get on the same page as you?”

And so, when I talk about Facebook, when one of your friends says something a little bit provocative, going back to them and say, “Well, I’d like to understand your perspective a bit more. I’m not sure I totally get it. Would you share a little bit more about them?” Get them to reveal where their head is at, that’s step one of listening.

Step two of listening is to actually just listen. Now, one of the things that we have found is when people sit there and they furrow their brow, that’s usually insufficient to make them truly present. And while it is a dying art, honest to goodness, especially, and it sounds weird. I know this sounds hokey, but when you’re having a tough conversation, even with your spouse, saying something to them, like, “Listen, do you mind if I just jot some notes down? Because I want to make sure I actually get everything you’re saying.”

And what’s interesting about this is not only does jotting some notes down, and again I know it sounds weird if you’re like talking to your wife about X, Y, Z, “Like, do you mind if I take some notes?” It sounds weird. But it puts you in the moment, because when you take notes it forces you to pay more attention than just sitting there does.

The second thing that happens, though, is, even though it’s weird, it communicates to the other person, “I, honest to goodness, want to understand your perspective here because I’m paying attention. I’m paying so much attention that I actually want to write this stuff down. That’s how important what you have to say to me is.”

And then the third step is to confirm. And confirming means we want to spit back to them what they said. Now, this is a little bit different than the old paraphrasing that we used to be taught, “So, what you’re really saying is…” No, no, I don’t want to do that. Because if I do that I run the risk that I’ve completely miss the point.

So, I want to go back to my little FIRE model, and what I want to say to them is, “Okay, I just want to make sure I got this. The facts as you saw them are this. You, then, interpreted that to mean blah, blah, blah. Based on that you had the following emotional reaction, and because of that you now want this outcome, this desired end. Did I get that right?”

Pete Mockaitis
You know, it’s so good. It’s like even as you’re saying this, I imagine if someone says something just like outrageous, and you like play it back for them, they may very well say, “You know, I’m sorry, Mark. Never mind, it’s fine.”

Mark Murphy
And, honestly, Pete, that is a huge part of it, and that’s where structure comes from. Because when you spit this back to somebody, and you force them to listen, so many people do not listen to the words that come out of their mouth. When you spit it back to them, and you’re not passing any judgment, you’re just restating it with a little bit of structure, half the time they look and they go, “Ugh, that doesn’t sound good. That’s, yeah, no. As you say, I’m sorry. No, let me retract. Just forget I said anything.”

And, it’s funny, so much of these difficult conversations are about holding a mirror up to the person who sparked this in the first place. Now, if we have a legit disagreement maybe about the typos, we disagree on phrasing, whatever, okay, well, let’s just, like adults, come together and hash that out. But if something does something where it’s nasty or it was emotional, and in the heat of anger they said something bad, when we hold up the mirror we’re essentially saying, “This is what you just said. Is this what you want to go with?”

And quite oftentimes when they look at it, they go, “Ah, no. Nope, I would rather not have that on the record because I can see that that was just bad.” And just the repeating back solves half the issues with this.

Pete Mockaitis
Perfect. Now, Mark, tell me, is there anything else you want to make sure to mention before we shift gears and hear about some of your favorite things?

Mark Murphy
The one other thing that I would just share in the context of difficult conversations is whenever you’re going into it, it is always a good idea to pause for a second and ask yourself one simple question, “What do I really want to accomplish with this?” And I tell you that a lot of people go into difficult conversations, and what they want to have happen is they want people to apologize, they want people to feel bad for what they said.

And I can tell you that in looking at these conversations, all the research I’ve done on this, that that almost never ends well. That the real goal of a difficult conversation, of a true talk, is to create some change, to come to some resolution so we can both move forward into a better place. And if my goal is to just make you feel terrible for that thing you said, all of it is going to end up as hurt feelings on both sides. Whereas, I don’t care if you apologize or don’t apologize. What I do care is that we’re able to move together, move forward together better.

And if we can do that, eh, I don’t want to make anybody lose face by having to give an apology because that’s just going to make them angry and drag this thing out. Let’s just fix it and life gets better.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Very good. Thank you. Well, so now, can you share with us a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Mark Murphy
You know, there are a number of things that I have found incredibly helpful as going through this. And I should back up for a second because one of the things, one of the books that was an influence on me early on was Peter Drucker’s The Effective Executive, and this is an old, old book, this is 40 years. And one of the things that came out of this book is that some of the simplest things are the things that make us most successful.

Things like, “Where does my time go?” and, “How am I spending my life?” and, “What am I doing?” and, “Who should I be talking to?” And when I think about this, sometimes there is a tendency to overcomplicate everything. And, honestly, that is a big a problem in difficult conversations as it is anywhere else.

And one of the things that we’re trying to help people do is essentially simplify it, is just say, “Listen, you know what, this doesn’t have to be super complicated. If we just focus on some basic issues, if we focus on some simple things, let’s talk about facts. Let’s not muddle this up.” One of the things that I found is that a lot of people seem to make their career off of making things more complicated than they need to be.

And, you know what, honestly, if we can avoid doing that, we’re going to be in much better shape. So, in terms of where some of the inspiration for this, Peter Drucker died years ago, but that was one of the great things he did for anybody that we’re essentially we’re trying to have any kind of conversation or be a better person, be a better leader, whatever, is just focus on some of the simple things. So, that’s a very long answer to your question.

But given all of that, one of my favorite quotes is actually not even a leadership quote. So, Peter Drucker has a million and one great concepts, but there’s another one that actually comes from Kurt Vonnegut, and he said – I’m trying to get this right – he said, “We are what we pretend to be, so you need to be careful about what you pretend to be.”

And I may have missed that slightly, but, in essence, it’s, listen, you turn into what you’re pretending, so be careful about what you’re pretending. So, going back to the Peter Drucker concept for a second, where you put your time, how you talk to people, all of it ultimately informs who you really are. So, if you have jerky conversations, it’s not just a jerky conversation, that’s actually turning you into a jerk. If you’re spending your time all day not actually helping people become better, well, you’re turning into somebody who’s not helping other people become better.

And this idea that the words that come out of your mouth, they turn you into who you are. The actions you take on a daily basis, they turn you into what you are. I think the Vonnegut quote is sort of a cautionary message for all of us that, at the end of the day, and I’d mentioned this with having difficult conversations, if I’m somebody that goes into a tough conversation and I just want to make you feel bad, well, I’m becoming somebody who just makes other people feel bad.

If I’m somebody who goes into a conversation to try and make the world better for both of us, well, then I start to turn into that. And these words, these actions, where we spend our time, how we have conversations, all of this ultimately turns us into what we are, and they’re not separate things. The words you say and who you are, they’re not separate. They ultimately become the same thing.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Awesome. Thank you. Now, could you share with us a favorite tool, something that helps you be awesome at your job?

Mark Murphy
So, there’s a number, but it’d probably be the one that is the single most effective, the one that I do no matter what day of the week it is. It’s, one, I don’t check my email before I do this. So, technology stays off until I’ve done this one thing. And the one thing is I ask myself the question, every morning, “What do I need to accomplish today for this to be a successful day?”

And the reason I ask that question is my to-do list can become a mess, but my to-do list is not necessarily a barometer of what drives my success. My success is going to be driven by one or two things. At any given day there’s one or two areas where I can really make a difference. Now, I may do 30 other things, but those are, eh, they’re not giant inflection points, they’re not bending the curve, they’re not making me more or less successful; they’re just kind of checking things off a list.

But asking that one question, not only does it help me focus my energy for the day but, I will tell you, if you’ve ever had that experience of waking up in the morning and the first thought you have is all the work you didn’t get done yesterday, and you know how awful that feeling is, I hate that feeling. By asking myself, “What’s the thing I need to do today for this to be a successful day?” I do that one thing and, even if I didn’t kill off the rest of my to-do list, I can still go to bed with a feeling of accomplishment that, “You know what, I did that one thing today. That, I got that done.”

And that allows me to sleep better at night and wake up in the morning, and my first thought is not, “Ugh, I didn’t get so many things done yesterday. Yesterday was such a waste.” I don’t have that feeling because I know that, yeah, I may have 30 other things I still got to do today, but I did the big one. I did that one thing and so yesterday was a successful day because of it.

Pete Mockaitis
Perfect. Thank you. And is there a particular nugget that you share that you tend to hear back often as being super helpful and transformational for folks?

Mark Murphy
One of the big ones actually is the FIRE model, the idea that just strip out the interpretations, reactions, and ends, write it all down. That’s fine. Get it out on paper. Make yourself feel better. But then draw a big giant “X” through it and say, “I am not allowed to say that stuff because it is going to cause me problems.” It forces us to dial down our conversations, to de-layer them so that anytime you speak, you’re speaking factually.

And not only does it reduce angst, and anger, and vitriol in conversations but, from a career perspective, man, it makes you look smart because you’re somebody that isn’t walking around making hairbrained interpretations and saying stupid things because you’re forcing yourself to be calmer and more rational and more factual.

It ends up building up your expert power, and you become more of a person that people turn to simply because not only do you sound more intelligent but you end up becoming more intelligent because you’re forcing yourself to stay away from all of the stupid rush to judgments that humans generally make.

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

Mark Murphy
Our website is one big place at LeadershipIQ.com. And there’s a section on our website called Quizzes and Research, and there are a whole bunch of free tests and quizzes on this and other leadership topics, and a whole bunch of research, over a hundred articles there. It’s a good source where we’ve stuffed a lot of tools and expansion on all of these topics we’ve discussed today.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, perfect. 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?

Mark Murphy
The one big challenge would be to identify a conversation that you’ve been putting off, and map it out for yourself. Think of what we talked about today, take that FIRE model, write down what you want to say to this person, and challenge yourself. Listen, I’m not saying you have to do it the day before a major holiday, but force yourself, within the next week or two, to actually sit down and have that conversation.

Pretty much every one of us has a conversation that we’ve been postponing because we don’t feel comfortable that we can pull it off successfully, but we need to. Make yourself have that conversation and simplify it. As I said, keep it simple, just focus on the facts and see if you can’t start a dialogue with this person. It doesn’t have to be a confrontation, just a conversation about it.

Pete Mockaitis
Awesome. Well, Mark, thank you so much for taking the time and sharing this wisdom. I wish you tons of luck with all your conversations, tough and fun, and anything in between.

Mark Murphy
Pete, thank you so much. This was a blast.

Jan 15
0

249: Leading When You’re Not in Charge with Clay Scroggins

By | Podcasts | 2 Comments

 

 

Clay Scroggins says: "We feel like we've got to be in charge in order to lead, and it's just not true."

Clay Scroggins discusses how to lead without being in the top position.

You’ll Learn:

  1. Three simple questions to help you collaborate better
  2. The equation for powerful leadership
  3. How to have difficult conversations with your boss

About Clay 

Clay Scroggins is the lead pastor of North Point Community Church, providing visionary and directional leadership for all the local church staff and congregation. Clay understands firsthand how to manage the tension of leading when you’re not in charge. Clay holds a degree in industrial engineering from Georgia Tech, as well as a master’s degree and doctorate from Dallas Theological Seminary. Clay and his wife Jenny live in Forsyth County, Georgia, with their four children.

Items Mentioned in this Show:

Clay Scroggins Interview Transcript

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

Clay Scroggins
Oh, Pete, I am excited and honored to be a part of this. I have listened to a few episodes and I’m a big fan, so thank you.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, cool. Thank you. Well, I’m so glad to have you. I think we’re really going to enjoy this chat because one episode we had before, Dodie, Gomer, talked about leading without authority. It was a hit. And you had a whole book on this subject so I think we’ll have some fun digging into it. But, first, I want to hear, we had to reschedule you because you had a new baby to welcome into the family. How is that going?

Clay Scroggins
Oh, my goodness. I should’ve asked you earlier. Do you have kids?

Pete Mockaitis
You know, we are expecting our first in a couple of weeks.

Clay Scroggins
No kidding.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, or maybe he’ll already be here by the time this airs. We’ll see. It’s any day now, yeah.

Clay Scroggins
Well, it is our fifth, and so I don’t know. How is it going? I know the drill and it is, I’ll be honest with you, I love kids. I don’t really like infants.

Pete Mockaitis
Speaking about men, in general, because they don’t do anything.

Clay Scroggins
That does feel like, I don’t know, more of a guy thing to say, but I’m not against infants. Yeah, kind of like, like you said, they don’t do a lot. And then they’re just kind of you just kind of get through the first three months, so I’m trying not do that. I’m trying to be present and enjoy the little moments. And the great news is he’s healthy and everything is great, I mean, that’s a huge deal. And birth really is like this crazy amazing miracle to get to experience.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. Yeah. What is the name of your newest addition?

Clay Scroggins
His name is Whit.

Pete Mockaitis
Wit? Nice. How do we spell Wit?

Clay Scroggins
Whit Aries Scroggins, and at some point I’ll stop enunciating Whit so strongly but for now like it’s appropriate.

Pete Mockaitis
Is it W-I-T?

Clay Scroggins
W-H-I-T.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Oh, yeah, like Whitman or Whitney, okay.

Clay Scroggins
Or Whitney, yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. I got you.

Clay Scroggins
Or Whitney, yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, and you said your name is a little bit fun. So, tell us, what is Clay short for? And what’s the origin of this?

Clay Scroggins
Yeah, I’m Robert Clayton Scroggins, Jr. and, yeah, my parents grabbed the middle name and they call me Clay. My wife is so funny because when we had our first child, Regus, the first child was a girl, second child boy. I said, “Okay, we’re going to go Robert Clayton Scroggins, III,” and she was like, “I’m carrying this child for nine months. I really would like to have a say in the name of this child,” which I loved, and so we don’t have a third.

But, anyway, yeah, she’s also a big fan of naming the child what you’re going to call the child. And so, it does create some complications but it helps me. Whenever someone calls me, and they say, “Hey, is Robert there,” I realize, “Oh, this is a person that doesn’t know me.” So, it helps me screen the call.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I had read that somewhere online that it was short for Claytonius.

Clay Scroggins
Oh, my gosh. So, I had this guy write some copy for this website I did. He’s a good friend of mine, he’s very funny, and he did make that joke. Or, in college, I’m a big OutKast fan there in Atlanta, rap, going to college in Atlanta. They had an album.

Pete Mockaitis
Alright Alright Alright.

Clay Scroggins
That’s right. Alright Alright Alright Alright. They had an album that were released called Stankonia and they called me Claytonia in college quite a bit, but, no, it’s just short for Clayton.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, I thought you’d say, “Yes, it’s short for Claytonius,” so, yeah, I thought it was going to go into an interesting Roman emperor sort of vibe. It’s just a gag.

Clay Scroggins
Like, I’ve never been asked that. I wonder what it means by that, but, yeah, it does say Claytonius or something. I don’t know. That was a joke.

Pete Mockaitis
Claytonius Maximus Claudius Brusus, you know.

Clay Scroggins
That’s right. That’s right.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, now we know. Now that’s settled, to set the record straight once and for all. So, I want to chat about your book How to Lead When You’re Not in Charge. But maybe, first, we could get sort of the quicker version of your backstory. You know a thing or two about leading when you’re not in charge. So, could you give us a quick overview of that tale?

Clay Scroggins
Sure. I moved to Atlanta in 1998. I grew up in Alabama – Tuscaloosa, Alabama, home of the University of Alabama, they play a lot of football there, and I went to Georgia Tech in Atlanta to major in industrial engineering. I studied engineering there. It’s a great engineering school and it made me realize very quickly that I am not cut out to be an engineer, but I stuck with it, finished school.

While I was in Atlanta, I got connected to this church called North Point Community Church which is in kind of the northern suburbs of Atlanta, and I volunteered there while I was in college. I was kind of a mentor to high school students, and just found a lot of purpose in that, really enjoyed it. It was really a great way for me to try to give back and try to help some people in a way that I felt like I had been helped in my life.

And so, anyway, I graduated from school with this engineering degree, and committed to never use it because I really felt like I wanted to find, I don’t know, purpose is a big deal to me. I really want to be able to find what I do to have a lot of meaning. Anyway, so I went to seminary to get a Masters in Theology, and ended up becoming a pastor at this same church in Atlanta called North Point Community Church.

So, now I lead, we’re a multisite church, so we have six campuses or six churches in the Atlanta area, and I lead our original campus in Alpharetta, Georgia. And, yeah, that’s what I do. It’s a pretty young vibrant church, it’s fairly large. On a Sunday we’ll have, I don’t know, anywhere from 10,000 to 12,000 people here, and I manage our staff here that’s about 110 people. But, in a way, I kind of lead a franchise, like a local franchise.

Pete Mockaitis
Can I have fries with that?

Clay Scroggins
That’s right. I do the burgers not the fries. And I have loads of bosses. So, yes, I do manage a good amount but I still have, I don’t know, there’s probably four or five people technically that are my bosses. But the whole process of, I don’t know, the kind of franchise multisite, you’ve got a central headquarters, and you’ve got these churches that are out trying to kind of do similar things, that’s really where I bumped into these principles of influence and authority is through my own professional story.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Cool. Understood. Thank you. So, then, well, could you unpack a little bit of sort of the key sort of theme or principles or messages inside your book there in terms of how does one go about leading from a spot of influence as opposed to authority like, “I am the boss who is in charge because of my title or position”?

Clay Scroggins
Yeah, I think what happened to me was I got a few promotions. The first job right out of graduate school, for me, was to manage one of our high school ministries at one of our campuses. And, I don’t know, I had dreams, I had aspirations, I had things I wanted to do, I had ideas, and then you quickly kind of get, I don’t know, you feel a little stuck, you feel a little frustrated, and kind of the reality of the way the working world works where you realize, “Oh, I can’t do all that I want to do because I don’t have enough authority. If only I had my boss’ job, if only I had all of the authority that my boss has.”

So I kind of started bumping into that, then I got a promotion and started managing more and, in a sense, I had a bigger job but still had the same feeling of, “Oh, no, I can’t do all that I want to do.” Then I became what we call the lead pastor of this one location and that’s when it really set it that, “Oh, my goodness, I’ve got a lot more authority than I ever have had but I still feel kind of hamstrung by what I don’t have,” and I think I was focusing on or feeling victim to the authority that I didn’t have at the time.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, most interesting.

Clay Scroggins
And I started realizing and, honestly, I wrote this book thinking no one would read it. But the more I’ve gotten to be able to go into organizations and a lot of businesses and speak to teams and companies about this topic the more I realize this really, it does connect with people that a lot of people feel the same way. They feel like, “Yeah, I’m on the team and I sit in the meetings but, man, if I were in charge this is what I would do.” Or, “If I had more authority this is how I would handle it.”

And so, we end up, what happens is I found that I became passive and I would sit on my hands and I felt like I was waiting until someone put me in charge of more to be able to really step out and try to make a difference, try to bring some progress or some change. And so, honestly, it was through a few promotions that I bumped into this myth about leadership that we feel like we’ve got to be in charge in order to lead, and it’s just not true.

Pete Mockaitis
You know, that’s so interesting when you say, “It’s like I need more authority in order to do the thing that I want to do,” and then you got some more authority, it’s like, “Oh, wait a second.” And I think that there may be any number of resources, I guess you might call it, in the course of life and work in terms of, “If I only had more budget, if I only had sort of more personal income, if I only had more ‘free time’ then I’d really be able to do,” you know, whatever.

And so, it seems like it may be is sort of a theme or pattern in terms of similar lies or deceptions that we’re entertaining for ourselves. So, maybe, you could get at that sort of what do you think is at the root of the lie and why we buy into it in the first place?

Clay Scroggins
Yeah, you know, Jim Carrey is not necessarily the source for How To Be Awesome At Your Job, but here’s a Jim Carrey quote. I don’t know where he said it or when he said it, but he said, “I really hope that everyone could everything they ever wanted in life so they realize that it doesn’t meet all their needs or it doesn’t fulfill them.”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay.

Clay Scroggins
It’s a great statement and it’s kind of what you’re saying that maybe one of the most disappointing things in life is thinking you need more and then getting it, and then realizing that didn’t do it. and I would imagine there’s a lot of people listening today who feel that way about a promotion or about, to your point, “If only I had more income,” or, I’m single. I wish I was in a relationship,” or, “I’m in a relationship, I wish we could get married,” or, “We’re married, I wish we could have kids,” or, “We have kids, I wish they would leave the house.”

And then you get there and you go, “Huh, this wasn’t it.” So, I think part of what is in that for all of us is to try to figure out, “How can I not be a victim to my circumstances? But how can I use the circumstances I have to own the moment, and to say, ‘Hey, what do I have? What’s unique to the situation that I have?’” And there’s some power to bringing some ownership to the situation that you currently have and not be victim to it but instead try to leverage what you have to help make somebody else’s day better, to help make somebody else’s world better. So that may be is at the root of what I was experiencing.

Pete Mockaitis
Right. Yeah, and as you’re speaking I’ve got this lyric in my head, it’s from a song by The Avett Brothers, and the song is called Ill With Want, and the lyric goes, “I’m sick with wanting and it’s evil how it’s got me, and everyday is worse than the one before. The more I have the more I think I’m almost where I need to be, if only I could get a little more.”

Clay Scroggins
Wow.

Pete Mockaitis
And I think that song is powerful, and it’s a good tune. I mean, check it out. But I think it really plays into that notion, it’s like, “Oh, you know, I’m almost there. A little more authority would do it. Oh, well, maybe not quite. A little more.” And so, then you wake up, the Jim Carrey realization so, then, very cool. Thanks for sharing that.

Clay Scroggins
Real quick one about that. You know, one of the things I’ve loved about writing this book was getting to interview a number of leaders who have experienced being in a role where they’re not the senior point leader. One of the people that I talked to was a guy named Frank Blake, Frank from, I think like maybe, 2007-2014, he was the CEO of the Home Depot, an Atlanta-based company, it’s maybe, I don’t know, fourth or fifth largest retailer.

Frank is a fascinating individual because he has worked or a lot of great leaders. He worked for Jack Welch for a long time at GE and worked for both Bushes in different parts of the government. Worked at the Home Depot for Bob Nardelli, the CEO. But he’s always been in a kind of a second or third-chair position, he was never the senior leader until he became president of Home Depot, the CEO of the Home Depot.

And I asked him about this, I said, “So, Frank, I’m sure once you got in charge then you could finally lead like you wanted to lead.” And he kind of laughed, and he said, “No, that’s a very true point that even when you get to be the CEO you still don’t have all the authority that you feel like you need.” He said, “I remember the first week I was CEO of Home Depot, and I’d sent this memo out to everyone of our employees, saying, ‘Hey, from here on out this is something we’re going to do,’” and he said, “I walked down the hallway not 20, 30 minutes later and I see the memo in the trash can.”

And he said, “It made me realized, ‘Oh, there it is, authority alone doesn’t create great leadership.’” Which that’s one of the major tenets of this book, is that we all know leaders who have a lot of authority and they’re not leading well. And we know people who don’t have a lot of authority who are getting a lot done and are making a pretty significant difference in their world. And I would just rather be the one that is not using my lack of authority as an excuse. And so that’s what I hoped to help people with through this process.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Awesome. Cool. Well, let’s get into it. Let’s say, hey, here you are in the middle of a professional career, and you want to exercise some more leadership and getting some results, make some things happen, and you got to lean upon influence instead of authority. How do we make that happen? What are some key principles or action steps to do it?

Clay Scroggins
Sure. Well, I think the first thing anyone could do, I would imagine maybe if you’re listening to this and you’re running on a treadmill or driving then I wouldn’t write this down, please. But if you are at a place where you could, I think just jotting down the question, “How would someone cultivate influence?” I think that basic question is worth everyone of us answering.

And maybe even flipping the question of, “Hey, the people that I look to that have influence over me, what have they done that has cultivated influence in my life? Why do I want to listen to them? If they called me, and said, ‘Hey, here’s an idea,’ why would I be willing to try it? What makes me give them my ear when they talk?” I think that alone is really that’s where I started. It’s just saying, “Hey, if I’m not in charge, which I’m not, how do I begin to cultivate more influence with my boss, with the people around me, and the people that work even for me?

And so, what I did was I wrote down, “Here’s four things I want to do. Here’s four behaviors, I don’t care if anybody else does this, this is for me. I’m not trying to prescribe this. I’m no John Maxwell leadership guru. I’m just a guy. So, what can I do?” And that’s where I started. And then, for me, they really are behaviors that I’m trying to do.

The first one is to lead yourself well, and I know that seems, you know, there’s been so much written on self-leadership, so much content about self-leadership, but that really is where it begins, is to go, “You know what, we’re all so apt to blame our boss for how are boss is or isn’t leading us. And the truth is we have an opportunity, and maybe even a responsibility, to lead ourselves well. And the great news is if you lead yourself well you will ensure that you’re always well-led.”

And so, you can always start there, going, “Okay, what does it look like to lead me really well?” For me, self-leadership is all about knowing where I am right now, that’s the hardest part, because I think a lot of us have an idea of where we want to go, where we want to be, but you can’t get where you want to be until you know exactly where you are.

And I have tried to have a ruthless curiosity about my own strengths and weaknesses, my own blind spots so that I can be more aware of where I am right now so that I can lead myself out of where I am to, ultimately, where I want to go.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, now, you said knowing yourself and where you stand right here, now, in the moment is the hardest part, and you try to be ruthlessly curious. So, I’d be curious to – I’m curious about your curiosity – specifically in terms of what were the processes by which you came to find the answers to those questions?

Clay Scroggins
I do a lot of live communication in front of groups and audiences, and I love asking that question, Pete, to a crowd, is just say, “Hey, what is the easiest way to find out when you don’t know?” And it’s usually peoples gut-level response which is great, you know, “Well, you ask somebody. How do you know what you can’t see in the mirror?” Because none of us can really see ourselves clearly in the mirror. We’re all biased towards ourselves, and the easiest way to find out, “What do I really look like?”

This is one of the hardest things about getting married or being in a meaningful relationship is that other person oftentimes is a mirror to ourselves, which is hard, you’re like, “Wow, I never knew my breath smelled as bad as you say it smells,” or, “I never knew I had that little tick that you say I have whenever I meet someone new,” or whatever it is. But asking someone is the greatest way.

So, for me, my last job change, I left one of our campuses that has about 50 people that work there, and I just sent three simple questions, I just made a Google Form and asked three questions to all 50 people. And not everybody filled it out, but maybe, I don’t know, half of them did. I said, “Hey, here’s three questions. Number one, what do you feel like I’m good at? What do I do that inspires you?” to say it in another way.

“Second question, what am I not good at? What bothered you about me?” I think actually is what I said. “What bothered you about working with me? And then, number three, what are my blind spots? What do I not see about myself?” And it was amazing how basic and simple that process was but it was, I mean, to say it was life-changing might be a little strong, but it was genuinely I felt some significant breakthroughs in my own life that things about myself that I knew but I was hoping no one else saw.

People said, I mean, one of the themes was, “We feel like whenever you’re leading a meeting we don’t really feel like you’re prepared for the meeting.” And I was like, “Well, you’re right. I’m not usually prepared because I can think off my feet pretty quickly and when you can you rely on that too much which is not always great.” So that really changed me, it made me go, “Okay, I can be more prepared for meetings.”

A number of people said, “Hey, when we’re on one-on-ones with you it feels like you’re not always listening.” And it’s true, I have a hard time focusing listening. So, one of the things I did is I started spacing my meetings out. I pull a little space in between them to give myself a chance to have a breather.

Pete Mockaitis
Makes all the difference too. You listen better I found. I’m with you there.

Clay Scroggins
It was so helpful because it allowed me to take a little walk around the building and then walk back in the next meeting, and I had a little more mental clarity. And then the other thing was they said was, “It feels like you’ve moved ahead. You’re thinking about the next thing,” which is very common. But, anyway, all of those things just helped me identify things in my life that I wouldn’t have identified if I hadn’t asked. And now that I know where I am I can know how to lead myself better. But I would’ve never have chosen to lead those areas until I identified them.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s perfect. Now, on this Google Forum, was it anonymous?

Clay Scroggins
Oh, I’m sorry. I had a friend execute it essentially. So, I had a friend send it out. I say, “Hey, I think I sent an email to a number of people so you’re going to get an email from so and so, and I’ve asked them to send this form and they’re going to compile the results.” Yeah, just to make it anonymous because you spend half the time trying to figure who said what which is not good.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, absolutely.

Clay Scroggins
You go, “Yeah, that sounds like Johnny.”

Pete Mockaitis
I wonder if there’s like a piece of software that is just like, “Okay, paraphrase this paragraph so they can’t tell it’s from me.”

Clay Scroggins
Right, because, like you said it, yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
But I know that it’s great. Especially if they know that you mean it and you care about it, and I think it’s so cool to offer an example. Like, “For example, someone so gave me this feedback which is very helpful because I’ve been trying to work on that and I found some improvement.” And so, it’s like, “Oh, he means it.” And I’ve noticed that thing, too, now that you mentioned it. Okay. Very cool. So, leading yourself is where it starts. And where do we go from there?

Clay Scroggins
So, I saw recently, I still haven’t got a chance to listen to it but I’ve meant to, but you had a podcast on positivity. That was my second behavior that I tried to, you know, I just decided, “Hey, I want to choose positivity. I want to be a person that drops the negativity and the cynicism,” which, it’s crazy, but I don’t know. I can lean there very easily.

And I just decided that more important than my education, my ideas, whatever talent I may have, my energy is the best thing that I bring to the team that I work on. And we’ve all seen this. You’ve seen people that you work with that can change the climate of a room because of their energy. And if that’s true of them then it can be true of us as well, that we all have that potential.

The hardest thing about working, to me, is having to bring it every single day. I remember being in my 20s thinking, “Good grief, when do we get spring break? When does summer happen? Have we taken summer off?” Because it’s exhausting to have to bring it every single day. But the truth is that’s the best thing I have to bring, is the energy that I have.

So, instead of being a 40-watt bulb, I’ve really tried to be a 100-watt bulb. And the hardest time to choose positivity, to me, is when you’re being handed a decision that you didn’t get to weigh in on but you’re being asked to buy into it. Patrick Lencioni, a quote from The Advantage, he says, “People are more likely to buy in when you allow them to weigh in,” which I think is so true. It’s a great truth and axiom about the way we should lead other people.

The problem is most of us who are not in charge are being handed decisions all the time that we didn’t get to weigh in on, and we’re like, “What idiot made this decision and asking me to make it work? This is terrible. It’s a dumb process. It doesn’t work.” But what I’ve just learned is that it’s in that moment that I have a decision to make, “Am I going to take this and make it better and actually make it work? Or am I going to sit on my hands and be angry and sit back and watch this fail?”

And more important than making the right decision is owning the decision and making it right. I really believe that’s possible, that you own a decision that you don’t even agree with fully but you can own it with such positivity that you can make it work, and we’ve all seen that. The best companies in the world aren’t the best companies because they have the best ideas; it’s because everybody is leaning into the same idea. And I think that’s possible.

Pete Mockaitis
And I like that metaphor, the 40-watt bulb and the 100-watt bulb. I was curious with your cover. It’s got these three light bulbs, and one of them is illuminated. It’s not the one in the front. Is that the metaphor you’re going with?

Clay Scroggins
That is, yeah. And it’s a little bit like how the Counting Crows got their name. It’s like one little lyric from one of their B-side songs or something. But that was the attempt, was just to give a little nod to the light bulb metaphor.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. I dig it. And so, when you say it’s exhausting to bring it every day, so how is it that you are expending energy to be positive? Sort about smiling and such. So, like what are those sort of little choices that you’re making over the course of the day to choose and exude and radiant the positivity?

Clay Scroggins
Well, here’s something that just has helped me, is it hit me one day that I’ve got days where I love my job and I’ve got days where I don’t love my job. And I think I was in one of those days where I wasn’t loving it, and I had the thought, “Am I going to be in this job forever?” And I started realizing, “Well, of course not.” I’m 37 years old, there’s no way I’m going to be in this job forever, and neither will you.

In fact, I bet 98% of people listening to this podcast, you’re not in the last job you’ll ever have. If you don’t like your job that’s good news, you know. But I think, on the flipside, recognizing that if this were the last job you ever have, can you be content enough with this job to enjoy it, to choose to enjoy it? Most of us are fairly fortunate to be able to earn a living and support ourselves and help out other people.

I think it’s a great place to be and to go, “I’m content enough in this job that if it is the last job I ever have I’m going to give it all that I got because when I leave this job I want people to be surprised. I want them to go, ‘Wow, we had no clue that you were thinking about leaving. You were so bought in.’” But what’s the alternative? “Oh, he was half in, half out. We kind of always thought he was about to leave.” That’s not going to cultivate influence.

Pete Mockaitis
Right.

Clay Scroggins
And, on the flipside, I think there’s a lot of hope just to know that if you don’t like your situation today you’re not going to be in it forever. There will be a shelf life to the job that you’re in. And so, you can be hopeful knowing that there’s a better future that there’s something else in your future, but you may as well buy in today because it’ll help your future if you choose to be positive about what you’re doing today.

And if you can figure out how to do that, it’s a skill that will help you the rest of your life, “How can I choose to believe the best about the people that I work around? How can I believe the best about my boss? How can I go into this with good intentions not accusing other people of trying to ruin my world? But, instead, he’s trying to do the best he can do. She’s trying to do the best she can do, and I’m going to choose to be positive about this situation. And it will, ultimately, cultivate influence for you if you choose to do that.

Pete, I was speaking to a group of virtual assistants. It’s an amazing company. You can hire somebody for 10 hours a week to be a virtual assistant for you.

Pete Mockaitis
May you drop the name. I’ve used several of these companies.

Clay Scroggins
Sure, yeah. It’s called BELAY, B-E-L-A-Y.

Pete Mockaitis
I haven’t used that one. Okay. Cool. Cool. Continue.

Clay Scroggins
Anyway, so I’m in the middle of talking about choosing positivity, and this lady – I’ll never forget this moment – she’s over on the side, and she just blurts out, she goes, “That’s so inauthentic!” And, honestly, it caught me off guard, and I was like, “Dang! She’s kind of right. Like that is inauthentic,” because you can’t just walk around being positive about things that you’re not positive about, that you don’t feel great about.

But, then, fortunately, in the moment, I had the thought, “Well, hang on a second, we’re not talking about how to be true to yourself right now. We’re talking about how to cultivate influence, and you can get excited about something that you’re not actually that excited about without being dis-ingenuine. We’ve all done it. And your boss, I guarantee you, your boss wants you to be excited about what you’re working on.”

“And when you become a boss, or maybe you currently are a boss, you want the people on your team to be excited about what they’re working on. And if they’re not, you want them to talk to you about it so you can at least help them understand why you’re excited about it.” And I think that’s a better way to cultivate influence.

Now, there might come a time where you go, “You know what, I just can’t fake this any longer,” but I do think there are times where when I choose to be excited about something and see the best in it, I end up finding the best in it and I end up actually getting excited about it, and it’s amazing how we can lead ourselves to do that.

Pete Mockaitis
Certainly. Yeah, inauthentic, you know, it’s interesting because that word is both so heavy and so loaded.

Clay Scroggins
It is.

Pete Mockaitis
And, I mean, in a sense, I guess, there is a measure of inauthenticity in terms of, “I don’t feel like this but I’m going to try to dig it.” Well, hey, you have an infant now, another one in your life. I imagine there are times you don’t feel like tending to…

Clay Scroggins
You’re exactly right, Pete. That’s right.

Pete Mockaitis
… to the sweet angel’s needs.

Clay Scroggins
That’s right.

Pete Mockaitis
But does changing a diaper or whatever make you inauthentic? I’d say, my hunch is, I guess my interpretation on that point, it’s about in terms of faking it.

Clay Scroggins
That’s right.

Pete Mockaitis
I guess you’re being authentic to a higher value of yours which is to be a loving father or a compassionate human being, a disciple of Jesus, a lover of neighbor, whatever your role or identity is. So, you’re authentic in that realm and what are you is a higher authenticity than being “true to your desire,” yeah, in the moment.

Clay Scroggins
That’s right. That’s a great way to put it.

Pete Mockaitis
But I guess I’d wrestle with the same question myself in terms of, “Yeah, I don’t really feel like talking to this person because I think they’re kind of weird, and I would have a whole lot more fun talking to this other person over there. So, am I being inauthentic by like pretending to be interested?” And I think, in one way, yeah, I don’t actually care what this person has to say, that happens. I care about what all my podcast guests have to say profoundly, by the way, that’s why I’ve chosen them, so, Clay, you’re off the hook.

Clay Scroggins
Right. You’re playing solitaire as well while I’m talking.

Pete Mockaitis
“Well, let’s check out Belay, huh? Let’s click around.” But, in a higher sense, you know, “Hey, I’m being authentic to the person that I’m trying to be in terms of a generous kind, loving human being.” So, anyway, that’s how I have navigated that tension. But, yeah, I feel the concern is real and it’s cool that you have some candid audience members who will get you real good.

Clay Scroggins
I did appreciate that, you know. I was like, “Thank you for your honesty.” As opposed to just giving me a kind head nod, you know. So, thank you.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s good. Okay. So, after leading yourself and choosing positivity, where do we go from there?

Clay Scroggins
So, I love the combo of these middle two behaviors because there are a lot of people listening right now that you’re not wired for positivity. You’re wired for results. You’re wired for progress.

Pete Mockaitis
All right, yeah.

Clay Scroggins
You come to a meeting and you see all the things that we need to do that aren’t getting done. In my world, I sit in a lot of evaluation meetings because Sunday happens every seven days, every week, and so on Monday we sit there and evaluate, “How did it go yesterday? Did we like what happened? Did good things happen?”

And we have a lot of people that want to talk about all the good things, and then there’s a lot of people that sit there and go, “Okay, let’s move on from the good things. Let’s talk about how to change this and make it better,” because of just the way you’re wired. A lot of people, when you hear about choosing positivity, it kind of makes you, I don’t know, sick to your stomach, because you think, “Oh, come on. Like am I supposed to walk around like with my head in the clouds going, ‘Oh, this is so great. Everything is so awesome’? Like those Legos in the Lego Movie.”

You don’t have kids just yet, Pete. But have you seen the movie?

Pete Mockaitis
You know, I haven’t but we had a podcast guest talk about the creation of the Lego Movie, Jennifer Riel and about how they agonized over how to get that made.

Clay Scroggins
There’s this little song in the movie that they sing over and over again, “Because everything is awesome,” because they’re trying to basically brainwash the Legos. And I think a lot of people think, when they hear that point of choose positivity, they’re supposed to walk around just everything is awesome all the time, as if that alone cultivates influence. And it does in and of itself, but when you combine it with the skill of thinking critically I think it creates a really powerful leader with or without authority.

I know, for me, someone passed me this article one time about millennials, which I hate all the articles being written about millennials, but it says, “Millennials – are they misguided optimists or rainbow-puking unicorns?” I thought, “What a great word picture! A rainbow-puking unicorn.” And that’s the way people see positive people sometimes.

But the truth is that is if you can combine the posture of choosing positivity with the skill of thinking critically, you can really become a powerful synergistic leader who’s making a significant difference in a really positive way wherever you find yourself, whatever seat you’re in. So, thinking critically really is a powerful skill. I think it’s really simply the ability to notice things, question things, and connect things.

To observe things, to be curious and question things, to figure out how they work, and then to make connections between variables that are being changed and the outcome that you’re looking for. And everyone of us can get better at this skill. That’s the great thing about skills; skills are things that we can improve upon but we have to practice in order to do that.

And so, I think part of the reason why, in my own life, I have a harder time sometimes thinking critically is because I’m not practicing it because I’m either too busy, I either haven’t given myself enough space, mental space to be able to step back and think about my job, or I’ve squeezed out those opportunities. I think the phone is probably the greatest competitor.

The smartphone is probably the greatest thief of critical thought that there is because in the moments when we used to sit back and think about how to make things better, now we just aimlessly scroll through random Wikipedia articles about how rockets are made or whatever.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that’s a little more productive than some options on your smartphone – Wikipedia.

Clay Scroggins
That’s good, yeah, than playing something.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, yeah, I think I was kind of stuck when you mentioned, okay, every Monday you have a chat about how things went at church services on a prior Sunday. And I was like, “Well, maybe that’s part of how you were ranked the largest church in America in 2014, 12,000 people?” Hotdog! I thought, “Well, how does that happen?” And I guess that’s part of how it happens in a way.

I don’t know of many people in many organizations who are putting that much regular thought and iterative repetition on making something better. Like, do it, reflect upon it, then do it again, reflect upon it, do it again. I think that’s a pretty powerful formula for excellence right there. Could you share maybe some of those questions that you ask, that you drill into when you’re thinking critically to surface these insights and how to do better?

Clay Scroggins
Well, that’s interesting, Pete, to hear that because I’ve never thought about that being odd.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s culture for you.

Clay Scroggins
It really is, I know. It’s so much a part of our culture that I’ve never even noticed it. But we are so passionate about one of our values as a team is make it better. I mean, that’s really what we’re looking for in employees at every level. It doesn’t matter if you’re an intern, we want you to walk in, in fact, we ask interns a lot of questions because they’re walking in with fresh eyes.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s good.

Clay Scroggins
And they represent future generations, and so we want to know from them, “Hey, what did you see that we’re doing that’s kind of weird?” Because it’s so easy to just get so inundated with your own world that you don’t see kind of like the fact that I fail to even realize that evaluation meetings every week might be a bit much perhaps, or maybe a good thing. I don’t know.

But, yeah, the key to learning to think more critically, I think, is to figure out, as basic as this is, “What are we trying to do? What’s the goal here?” And then to start there and go, “Okay. Well, in our case, what we’re trying to do is we’re trying to get people to take steps. We want everybody who watches a message, or sits in a room for one of our church services, to take some kind of step metaphorically, figuratively-speaking, toward being a better person, toward helping someone else, toward looking more like Jesus, toward a growing relationship with God.

And so, when we step back and go, “Okay. Well, that’s what we’re trying to do,” then to try to be mentally present in the environment and go, “Okay. How is this going? What did we do that became an obstacle? What did we do that helped with that?” And then just trying to be as curious as possible in trying to notice things, question things, and connect things.

But, honestly, the greatest enemy is time. We just don’t, we very rarely do this. I ask people usually and in live environments, “Hey, when do you have your best ideas?” Do you know what the number one answer is, Pete?

Pete Mockaitis
Shower.

Clay Scroggins
A hundred times out of a hundred, people say, “The shower.” It’s crazy. And so, because I’ve Googled it, I’m an expert on this, evidently there is research that says that is the number one answer, and that it’s actually true. There’s something about the mundane task of the shower that actually allows our brain to function well and actually think things.

But, honestly, a lot of people say, after the shower, they’ll say, “Oh, driving to work,” “Laying awake at night,” “Doing yard work,” “Working out of the gym,” all of these kind of mundane physical tasks that we do that kind of free up our minds to be able to work. Well, here’s what I’m trying to do in my own life, is I’m trying to go, “Okay. Well, instead of having to wait until tomorrow morning when I take another shower, or instead of having to go try take a shower in the middle of a work day to have a great idea, like surely there’s some practice that I can learn something from it and put those in place.”

And so, for me, it really is about time and space, it’s about creating some space in my calendar to think about how to make what I’m doing better. And so, for me, it’s been waking up earlier in the morning, giving myself more time in the morning to actually just sit at my desk in front of an open notebook, or an open Word document, or an open Evernote file, and say, “What’s on my schedule today? What’s on my calendar? How can I make it better? How can I help the person that I’m going to interact with? How can I help solve the problem that we’re facing? How can I help fix this situation that’s in front of us?”

I really believe that if you can try to do that in a positive hope-filled “I’m trying to help other people” kind of way, it really can create some influence for you wherever you are, whatever seat you’re in. So, I think it’s a powerful behavior to try.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. I dig it. Well, Clay, tell me, is there anything else you want to make sure to mention before we shift gears and hear about a few of your favorite things?

Clay Scroggins
You know, where I land the book is I got done with a lot of the content, I thought, “You know what, I just envision someone sitting there reading this going, ‘I need to go have a hard conversation with my boss because I see things that I think need to change, or I have ideas that I’ve been holding onto, or I feel like I’ve been sitting back and not engaging as much as I want, and there’s some reasons why.’”

And so, I wrote a couple chapters on having a hard conversation with your boss which, to me, that’s one of the most difficult things to do, is, “How do you setup a time or walk in your boss’ office and have a challenging conversation?” So, that was a lot of fun to write about and, as people have read the book, it’s been one of the things that people have commented on most, is, “Hey, that was super helpful.”

Because I’ve tried to give just, “Here’s a game plan. Before you just walk in there and say, ‘This sucks. You’re stupid. I hate this,’ like let’s put a little thought into it, let’s get a little game plan on how to do that well.” So, I really hope that that’s helpful for people as they process how to challenge up because that’s not as easy to do.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, so I can’t let that go. If you give us a quick tip or two associated with how to challenge up well and effectively, let’s hear it.

Clay Scroggins
I mean, the first thing I try to do is I try to declare my intentions right up front. We’ve all read books on conversations, I would imagine. One of the most crucial ingredient to a difficult conversation is safety. People got to feel safe. And so, if you walk in, and it’s crazy to think, “Why would my boss be threatened by me?” But your boss is human, and maybe you intimidate your boss, or maybe you bother your boss. Who knows?

But if you can, right up front, declare your intentions, and say, “Hey, whatever you can say that’s most true, I really appreciate what we’re working on here, and I can tell that you really care about it. And I just want to let you know that no matter what we talk about here, I just want to let you know that I think you’re a really great leader,” or a great person, or, “You’re a nice person,” or, “I appreciate how hard you work.”

Anything we can do to try to declare our intentions, and say, “I don’t want to ruin your day. I’m not trying to tear this thing apart. I just had a couple ideas on how maybe we can make it better.” I think it goes a long way to help the relationship what I have found. And it’s something that I would want people to do for me because you can’t catch people off guard with some challenging conversation, I think, unless you state it up front, “Hey, I’m for you. I want you to win in life. I want you to do well. I want you to do good things in life.” I think it’s just a helpful thing to begin with.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes, I like that. Cool. Okay. Well, now, could you share with us a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Clay Scroggins
Yeah, I don’t know where I read this, but I read this awhile ago, and it’s been sitting near my desk. But Thomas Watson, former CEO of IBM in the mid-20th century, said, “Nothing so conclusively proves your ability to lead other people as what you do on day-to-day basis to lead yourself,” which is so actionable and helpful to me because I just think, “You know, instead of being frustrated at what the opportunities I’m not getting or how I’m getting passed over, or whatever I don’t have, I’m going to pick up the mantle to lead myself well today. And if I do that, then it will conclusively prove that I have the ability to lead more.” So, I love that quote.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And how about a favorite book?

Clay Scroggins
Favorite book. Well, I’m obligated to say the Bible, Pete.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay.

Clay Scroggins
Kidding. Kidding. Kidding. No, I would say probably Leadership and Self-Deception.

Clay Scroggins
It’s a little book. It’s a short read. It’s kind of like Lencioni, kind of written like a fable a little bit, like a lot of his books are. But it’s terrific and it helps you create better relationships with people that you work with which, ultimately, I think is going to create more success for anyone of us in our careers. But it’s a fantastic little read. We read it recently with our leadership team here, and it was very helpful.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, thank you. Excellent. Perfect. And how about a favorite tool?

Clay Scroggins
I mean, Evernote is probably what I use more than anything. It’s amazing how, I mean, I have a number of different screens that I use, so just to be able to pick up any screen and have what you need is terrific, so I’ll go with Evernote.

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

Clay Scroggins
You know, stating out loud what I’m grateful for has been something I’ve been trying recently, which I really enjoy. I heard recently someone say that, “Suffering ends when gratitude begins,” which I think is so true, and it is amazing the power of just being grateful. It’s hard to be unhappy in life and be a really grateful person. Joy and gratitude usually go hand in hand. They’re like peanut butter and jelly sandwich kind of thing. So, I try to start my day by just saying, “Hey, here’s a couple things I’m grateful for,” which feels weird to do in the car by myself but no one else is around, so.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s all good. And is there a particular nugget, a piece that you share that seems to really resonate, connect with folks, a Clay original quotable gem?

Clay Scroggins
Gosh, my favorite statement or, I don’t know, kind of the big idea of the book is that influence always outpaces authority. I really believe that. I believe that instead of waiting on authority or instead of leveraging authority, influence is just far more powerful. So, I really hope that whoever is listening, wherever you’re sitting today, whatever you’re doing, that you can allow yourself to cultivate more influence.

Because it will allow you to help someone else today and create more progress and try to make somebody else’s life better. And I think that, ultimately, is what anyone of us are wanting to do is to try to help somebody else. It’s the greatest joy in life. And so, if you can figure out how to cultivate more influence, it outpaces authority all day, every day.

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

Clay Scroggins
I’m on Instagram and Twitter @clayscroggins, and then I have a website ClayScroggins.com that has a weekly newsletter or weekly email that I send out that really has got some great interviews that I’ve done with some terrific leaders both in business world and also the non-profit world on this topic. So, I’d love to keep in touch, say hello. I love this idea of this podcast, Pete, and I love the name because I’m a big fan of How-To names, How To Be Awesome At Your Job.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, cool. Thank you, yeah. And I think it makes it clear like this is what we’re trying to do here.

Clay Scroggins
Sure. That’s right.

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

Clay Scroggins
Yeah, I would just say, hey, there’s a lot of people today that probably don’t like their boss. I don’t know, I’ve just interacted with a lot of people because of this whole process, who say, “Hey, that sounds great, but I just don’t like my boss at all.” But I just want to encourage you today that just because you don’t like your boss doesn’t mean you can’t get anything done, that people for centuries and centuries have gotten a lot done working for awful people.

And one of the great things, one of the hard things, but great things working for a boss you don’t like is learning to take notes of things that you don’t want to replicate when you become a boss. And maybe the very reason why you’re in the position you’re in is to learn some really difficult lessons, and that’s hard when you’re in the moment, but it’s just the way life works that resistance is what creates strength.

And so, if you feel resistance from a terrible boss, just know that there’s an opportunity for you to create even more strength because that’s the way the world works. And that might not be fun but I hope that’s encouraging to whoever is listening that if you don’t like your boss it doesn’t mean that you can’t learn anything and it doesn’t mean you can’t get anything done today.

Pete Mockaitis
Awesome. Well, Clay, thank you so much for taking the time to chat. This has been powerful stuff. I wish you all the best, and that your Sundays keep getting better and better and better with all the thoughts that you put into them.

Clay Scroggins
Thank you.

Dec 18
0

243: How to Be More Popular–and Why that Still Matters at Work with Mitch Prinstein

By | Podcasts | No Comments

 

Mitch Prinstein says: "Popularity is now changing the very blueprint of our existence."

Mitch Prinstein helps us understand the different types of popularity and teaches us how to boost our popularity by working on our likability.

You’ll Learn:

  1. Subtle ways to boost your likability in meetings
  2. How and why to distinguish between the two kinds of popularity: likability and status
  3. How to get people to stop looking at their phones to talk to you

About Mitch 

Mitch is a professor, scientist, university administrator, teacher, author, speaker, and an exhausted dad.  He and his research have been featured in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, National Public Radio, the Los Angeles Times, CNN, U.S. News & World Report, Time magazine, New York magazine, Newsweek, Reuters, Family Circle, Real Simple, and elsewhere.

Items Mentioned in this Show:

Mitch Prinstein Interview Transcript

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

Mitch Prinstein
Thanks for having me.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I think we’re going to have so much fun chatting, but first I want to get your story behind, you had perfect attendance for 12 straight years, kindergarten through high school, or is that 13 years? Yeah. How is that done?

Mitch Prinstein
Yeah, that’s a good question. I’m not sure. I think I was a little bit of geek who liked school, but also I seemed to get sick on Friday nights and be better by Monday mornings. So, I don’t know exactly how that happened.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s a pretty convenient timing. Well, it’s interesting you talk about school ‘cause as I was prepping for this interview, you reference in your research adolescence and the impact it has and it lingers with us. And so, could you orient us a little bit to what were you like in adolescence?

Mitch Prinstein
Yeah, that’s a great question. I think what’s important is that people when they think about their popularity they recognize that there are two very different kinds of popularity. But for the kind that everyone probably thinks about – who is cool and who is most well-known and most influential – that was not me. I was a short statured, kind of skinny, bifocals-wearing kid who was doing pretty well in school, I guess at the time. And so, I was kind of a geek, I would say.

Pete Mockaitis
And I was really intrigued as I was prepping for this here. I kept thinking back to those years and I feel like I really did sort of live on both sides, of being popular – and we’ll talk about the multiple definitions there, with regard to, in grade school – I’d say pre-fourth grade, I was sort of teased a lot. I liked Star Trek, I liked computer games, I was a smart kid and had good grades. And then I met a good friend, who I guess was cooler and popular in that sense, so folks sort of laid off.
But then I went to a bigger high school and all of a sudden few people knew my prior self, and I naturally really liked meeting people. So, in that environment I just flourished. And it was just nuts how I was sort of like a super, I guess nerdy, teased kid, and then in high school it’s sort of a fresh start. And then I became the homecoming king. It was like, “Whoa!” I felt both sides and it’s intriguing how both of the experiences really do kind of shaped my perceptions of things that are going on now in some ways.

Mitch Prinstein
That’s interesting, ‘cause a lot of people do say that there’s a part of them no matter how old they get that still really resonates with that adolescent version of themselves. Somehow what they perceive every day, as you say, the way the interpret social experiences – it somehow still rings back to how they felt about themselves in adolescence.
There’s a pretty cool study actually that looked at earning potential and how much adult men made, their salary, and tried to correlate it with their height. And of course they found that tall men tended to make more money than short men, but what they found was that it wasn’t the height of the men as they were adults. The much stronger predictor of their performance as adults was how tall they were when they were 16. It’s just a really great example about how much that version of ourselves we were back then – it kind of sticks with us. It’s still inside us somehow.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, that is wild. So, I don’t want to get ahead of ourselves. For folks who don’t have as much the back story, could you orient us a little bit to what’s the central idea behind your book Popular, and why is that important particularly for professionals?

Mitch Prinstein
Sure. Well, there are two different kinds of popularity. One kind is really focused on our likability, and the other kind is our status. And we have a natural human biological tendency to care about others think of us, even a little, but for some people a lot. And if we don’t understand the difference between those two kinds of popularity, we might just be searching and caring about the wrong one for the rest of our lives.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So could you expound upon that a little bit? What does likability mean and what does status mean?

Mitch Prinstein
Absolutely. So our likability is really the kind of popularity that five-year-olds experience. In fact, even kids as young as three can tell you who are the most and least likable. And without intervention that tends to stay really stable for a very, very long time. The people that are likable are those that make others feel good, make them feel included and valued. The people that are leaders by helping everyone to feel important and that they’re working together, they’re creating group harmony. So that’s important.
That’s very different from the kind of popularity we all remember and think about back in those high school years. That kind of popularity, or that status as it’s called, is defined by being kind of powerful, visible, really well-known and influential. And actually the thing that makes you really high in that kind of popularity are a couple of things – physical attractiveness, but predominantly aggressive behavior. The bullies tend to be very popular, even if we don’t like them very much.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, interesting. So now, aggressiveness can boost status in the sense that they are powerful, they’re visible, they’re well-known and they’re influential. But it sounds like they are not necessarily folks who have a lot of people on their side. Is that fair to say? I guess I’m thinking about homecoming king stuff again, so it’s sort of like when it comes to a vote count, it sounds like the likable people are going to do better in that contest, but when it comes to a, “Ooh, that’s that guy” – that’s more of a status category there.

Mitch Prinstein
That’s right. So, our status is really going to be based on things that are often out of our control, and ways that people regard us ‘cause they’re looking up to us, because they want us to kind of give them attention. There’s actually research that shows that even being high status, getting markers of high status or having people treat you as if you’re high status, creates a kind of biological response that’s kind of in the pleasure center. It’s very similar to the response that someone might get from some kinds of recreational drugs. So it can be a very addictive type of popularity to have.
It’s kind of what social media is in large parts based on – having lots of likes and followers and retweets, things like that. That’s different. The way to get that is to try and put others down to make yourself seem more important, to try and get all the attention on you, rather than calling attention to other people. And many of these tactics are exactly the opposite of what it takes to become likable. And the reason why that’s so important because the people who are very likable tend to be more likely to be hired and promoted, they end up making more money, they enjoy their work experiences more, they’re liked by their coworkers, of course, and they’re actually more satisfied with their jobs. And that’s not necessarily the case for those high in status.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, now that’s intriguing. Now at the same time it seems like if you have high likability going for you and you just keep following that life to where it leads you, you may very well find yourself as a CEO or a head of state or cut a big deal, who then also has status.

Mitch Prinstein
That’s right. People who are high in status and also likable tend to do very, very well. But people that try and go for high status without recognizing that it’s more important, at least initially, to also be likable – that’s the problem. Everyone can remember that boss or knows of some manager who led in one way or the other – the person who was very domineering and aggressive and was only interested in using all their employees as a pawn to increase their own elevation in the company, versus the person who really took the time to get to know the people they were working with, and the status kind of almost came for them incidentally.
The reason why that’s important, not just for people who are one day wanting to rise up the corporate ladder, but also for companies, is that we are likely to follow that high status leader to the extent that we have to, but we’re not bought in to what they’re asking us to do. There’s no loyalty, there’s no investment. But a likable leader – we will follow them to the end of the Earth. We will do whatever they want us to do because we feel genuinely connected to them. And that leads to so much more innovation, productivity and satisfaction.

Pete Mockaitis
I’m with you here. I think about companies as well – the ones I like versus the ones that just have the power, whether it’s a cable company or a service provider for an area where you live. It’s sort of like, there’s not much loyalty there. The second I have another option, I might very well choose to switch, because they’ve got power but I don’t like them. And so then, I’m intrigued by what you say with regard to aggression. So now, aggression can increase your status. Can you give me maybe an example or two for how that could play out?

Mitch Prinstein
Sure. So, the person that kind of enters into a room or a group discussion and says, “All of your ideas aren’t correct; mine are the best. Let me explain to you why I have more understanding of this or I have more authority” – people resent that. People don’t appreciate that they weren’t heard, that their input wasn’t incorporated. Likable leaders can accomplish the exact same objective by saying, “I hear what you’re all saying, I understand that. It’s making me think about an extension of that or an idea related to that.”
And even if they ultimately give the exact same idea as the aggressive person, the fact that they’ve tried to make it sound like they’ve heard and listened and incorporated what others have said, makes a tremendous difference. That’s the way it tends to look in a corporate setting more. Of course in the news there are plenty of different examples of more egregious ways of being aggressive, whether we’re seeing it in the world of politics or in Hollywood right now, we’re seeing other ways of being very aggressive and powerful and letting that power kind of go to your head. I think people can easily think of examples of that.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So I guess I’m sticking a little bit on aggressiveness increasing the status, because I hear that no one likes to be aggressed upon – that sucks. And the likable way is a more productive way to get buy-in and good relationships and engagement and long-term followers. And so, could you maybe give us an example of how an act of aggression boosts someone’s status?

Mitch Prinstein
Yeah, absolutely. It turns out that it’s many different species where this happens, it’s not just humans. But if you think about how we all kind of got to this point, status was developed as a way of helping to organize groups, so that way people knew which were first to get food or a mating partners or resources of some other sort, and which were last.
And the truth is, being aggressive does lead to very short term, quick solutions. It’s not a healthy way to do that, of course, but rather than having everyone in the entire herd battling over every single decision, an aggressive hierarchy, whether it’s in chimpanzees or in humans, makes very, very clear who’s alpha and who’s not. For that reason there’s this way in which our brains are built that have programmed us to care about high status, to be understanding that groups are going to be organized by that status hierarchy.
The thing that’s different of course about us is that we’re not chimpanzees, we’re human beings and we don’t hand out resources based on who’s the alpha and who’s the toughest. We also have relationships, and we’re also able to focus on likability. So, this is where we see the short term gains of someone who’s high in status, but it leads to long term problems because we are not an animal kind of society that only cares about the alphas.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And so then I can see maybe an action of a bully – for example someone would say, “Oh, we all know who that person is. They’re powerful; we don’t want to mess with them. We may well do what they say.” But you don’t like them, and so when they do their acts of aggression, that just sort of resurfaces it all over again, like, “Ooh, look at the power there.”

Mitch Prinstein
A bully is a great example, and it’s the same for a corporate manager. If you do assert your aggression and you get your way, then everyone says, “Well, they actually were able to get what they needed.” So, that did make them higher because they made someone else seem lower. So it does have the intended effect – it makes everyone hate that person, it makes them want to topple that person, but it is at least in the short term a way of demonstrating, “I do have more power.”

Pete Mockaitis
Now, is it aggression that you said was the biggest predictor of being disliked, or is there another one?

Mitch Prinstein
No, that’s it.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s the one, okay. So, it can boost your status but it will decrease your likability, and likability is a better asset to have, it sounds like, for making things happen. So, could you maybe give us some examples – is it possible to accidentally be aggressive? When I think of the word “aggressive” and imagine the things that an aggressive person does, it almost seems like they are a jerk and they just don’t give a darn about anybody. But I’m wondering, can we be aggressive just sort of accidentally or unintentionally, and are there any sort of particular things we should watch out for?

Mitch Prinstein
Yeah, we absolutely can. I think one of the mistakes that most people tend to make is by being dismissive. And it’s not meant to be aggressive – it might be that someone’s preoccupied, they’re not responding to emails, they’re not acknowledging other people’s comments, they’re not inviting everyone they can to teams or even to go to lunch. Things that might have nothing to do with others – maybe just they’re very in their head – but people tend to see that dismissiveness as potentially an act of hostility or as a slight or an exclusion, in a way that really can hurt others.
And for that reason a lot of people are seen as being aggressive, even when they genuinely don’t mean to be whatsoever. So it does take energy to kind of invest in the human aspects of our jobs. No matter what job we’re in we’re still humans interacting with each other, and we do need to engage in those things that continually remind others, even if just infrequently, that they are valued, they’re heard, they’re people we wish to connect with. That tends to be one of the biggest ways that you see people accidentally being aggressive towards others.

Pete Mockaitis
Excellent, thank you. And so, I’m curious, how do we get a gauge or a read on how likable we truly are? I imagine we tend to overestimate our likability the same way we overestimate… What is it, some huge percentage of people say they’re a good driver, or above-average driver. And so, that’s not possible statistically. So, how do we get a true sense for how we’re doing?

Mitch Prinstein
Yeah. I always joke with people to ask everyone who likes you to meet you in Conference Room A, and if you get there and you’re the only one in the room, that’s your answer. It’s really very hard for us to know this for ourselves, because we surround ourselves with those people who do like us, or at least will tell us to our face that they like us. And it’s very difficult to know. In fact, very many people tend to overestimate or in some cases underestimate their likability. The best thing to do is to get information from peers directly. So the way that it’s done in research of course is that we ask people to simply tell us, “Of everyone in your contacts, who are the people that you like the most?” And you can literally take a vote and get a tally of how many times people are nominated to that question. And that gives us the information that’s needed, but when we ask people to tell us where they think they would fall on that scale, very few people tend to be accurate. And that might be okay; I think the problem is when people are egregiously off from where they actually are.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And so then, I’m curious about what are the most sort of top bang for your buck highly-leveraged things that professionals can do to be more likable?

Mitch Prinstein
Well, I think that there are a few different things. One of them, let’s just say, interaction and behaviour in meetings. This is kind of the time when people really get an impression of one another, and ideas tend to take hold or not take hold in part based on the value of the idea, but also in large part based on how likable the person is who offered the idea. A great idea offered by someone that no one around the table likes is maybe not going to get any pick-up or follow-through, simply because of the messenger.
So, one of the key high-leveraged things to do is to kind of be aware of what psychologists would call the “social norms”. What is the vibe in the room? What are people thinking and wanting, and what is the mood? What really likable people do very well is that they’re able to assess and move that just little by little. If everyone’s happy, then they’re also going to be happy. You don’t want to be the one cynical person in the room. And if everyone is very upset or stressed, you don’t want to come in and unrealistically be too positive either. People want to feel validated and joined. They want to be met where they are.
Paying attention to those norms, and then trying to move them slightly, little by little, is what when you watch the most likable people in meetings – this is exactly what they do so skilfully. So, a good idea is to kind of be patient, bring up ideas not with the big idea right away, at the beginning of the meeting, but let it grow, plant your seeds, let people start to pick up on the idea on its own. Don’t be in a rush to get credit for it – that’s a way of seeking status. And ultimately by the end people will recognize that you led them there, but they’ll feel great about how they got there. So that’s one of the key ways to think about the minute-to-minute behavior in, let’s say a meeting, that leads people to become very valued and very well-liked members of a team.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s really interesting, and I’m thinking about speakers on stage right now, in terms of everyone’s kind of sleepy, it’s a morning session. And then they appear on stage and they say, “Good morning!” And there’s a grumble back, like, “I said good morning!” I don’t know, it sounds like what you’re saying is yeah, that’s annoying to everybody and it’s not just me. Because I’m often the chipper person, in terms of, I feel good, I’m enthusiastic, I’m genuinely delighted to hear what you have to say, so much so that sometimes… I’ve gotten this feedback before – it’s been helpful – that folks say, “Is this guy for real?” It seems like it’s almost too much, in terms of the enthusiasm or the interest or the positivity or cheeriness.
That happens, and so that’s a good tip there, is to read the room and to shift it little bit by bit, and to not be the super cheery, “Good morning!” big and loud cheerleader figure right off the bat. But so, could you maybe give us a couple, I don’t know, if you’d say scripts or key words, phrases, things you’ve seen in action that are just masterful nudges in the positive direction?

Mitch Prinstein
Yeah, I see that people that are very successful at this are very good at reflecting what they hear. So, if someone offers an idea, they don’t tend to just say, “Okay, here’s another idea.” They summarize the room very well and they say, “Okay, so what I’m hearing here is that Jane is thinking that it would be good if we worked on it this way, and I see some values in that. That’s helpful. Okay, Joe, you were saying this.” And everyone gets an opportunity to feel heard and that their information was really sunk in – someone gave them pick-up, someone took what they said and moved it forward down the field a little bit.
That’s really skilful, that’s a very good thing to do, even if at the end they say, “Well, I have some questions about that. If we put all those ideas out there, what might be some of the things that would be difficult about executing that? Or what about this tweak to it?” And again, you can get to the same exact place. It might take a little bit longer, but it doesn’t have to take much longer. That’s very, very helpful.
So, a lot of people when you talk about reflecting are just simply – even in a one-on-one with an advisor or a supervisee – kind of just repeating back what you’ve heard and seen: “Let me just make sure I’m hearing this right. Let me just throw this back at you here and make sure I’m hearing what you’re getting at here.” People find that to be a conversation that they say, “It was so deep. We were connecting, we really understood each other’s language.” And honestly, the person did nothing, other than just say back what they heard. But it changes the dynamic so dramatically that it really enhances likability.
And we’re all in so much of a rush that we think we know what people said before they even finished saying it. We’re like, “Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay. I know what you’re going say. I’m already constructing my response.” And it’s about slowing that down and saying, “Let me just make sure I’m really getting what you said there.” And obviously you don’t do that after every sentence – that would be silly; but doing it every once in a while is remarkably powerful.

Pete Mockaitis
It really is magical on the receiving end. I’m thinking back to, I had a chat with this insurance guy, who was just masterful at talking about selling life insurance or their products. So, we had one chat about all my life goals and aspirations and things, and then we met up a little later and he said, “Pete, I heard you say this and this and this. And it sounds like what’s really important is this.” And so it was so weird because it’s like I knew I told him those things, and yet as shared them back to me, it felt like he was reading my soul.

Mitch Prinstein
Exactly, exactly.

Pete Mockaitis
It was fascinating, and I just realized if this is noteworthy to me, then it must be pretty darn rare.

Mitch Prinstein
And interestingly, most people don’t even realize when it’s happening. So people will say, “Yeah, yeah, that’s right. That’s a great way of saying it. That’s exactly what I was thinking.” And people won’t realize, “Well, actually you just said it before. This is someone just repeating it back to you.” They might repeat it back with a slight elaboration, but people love to feel heard, they love to feel validated, they love to feel like someone’s taking the time to truly listen to them. And it’s such a simple strategy, but it’s one that really, really enhances likability because it fosters this sense of connection, of bonding. It’s almost simplistic, but it’s beautiful in that simplicity because it’s so powerful.

Pete Mockaitis
Absolutely. And I noticed in your example that you used the name, and I imagine that would pack an extra punch.

Mitch Prinstein
Yes, sometimes so. I think it’s always important also that when talking with people about being more likable, you don’t have to shed your personality. If you’re the kind of person that uses names and it sounds natural, then great – yeah, I think that it can add that extra punch. But at the same time, if that’s just not your style and it’s not something that comes out naturally, I think it’s never going to come off okay if someone’s trying to become someone that they’re not. This is all about how to enhance and exaggerate the best aspects of oneself, rather than trying to suddenly act in a way that feels awkward to them.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And so now I’m imagining another scenario, in which folks are just kind of grumpy, and who knows why? It’s early in the morning, it’s a mandatory training that nobody wants to be at or something. So folks are just sort of grumpy, and you know it, and maybe you even ask folks “How are you doing?” and they’re like, “Oh, fine.” And so, I’m wondering in that milieu, what are some pro tips for doing some of the nudging, even before we are kind of actively contributing content that can be actively listened and parroted back?

Mitch Prinstein
So, like you say, coming in and screaming “Good morning” and trying to get everyone to match your enthusiasm – if you’re one of those speakers, for instance – that doesn’t work. That is annoying, as you say, because that’s kind of saying, “I’m going to railroad your feelings. I’m going to force you to fit me, even if the entire group is feeling differently right now.”
The best thing to do is kind of more of a matching, and again, a slow movement – say, “Wow, yeah, this is a pretty tough morning.” Maybe even ask a few people, “Tell me a little bit what’s going on for you, or what are you so stressed about. I think everyone’s stressed.” Do a lot of just focusing on, “Yeah, that makes sense, I can validate that, I agree with that.” It can be very, very brief, even just nodding of the head: “Yup, sure, makes sense.” Like, “Well, I guess if we’re going to move forward on this, let’s think about this piece a little bit.”
And rather than jumping in and saying, “I’m going to change everyone’s mood in one instant”, slowly, gradually kind of getting them there. And people say, “Well, okay, I get it. You are where we are, but yeah, we have a discussion we have to have, so let’s start moving there.” And within 10-15 minutes the mood can change. But don’t force it. Read the room and don’t ignore what you’re reading. Follow in kind.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, cool. Well, any other top recommended actions to boost likability?

Mitch Prinstein
I would say that it’s the kind of thing that we shouldn’t need to talk about anymore these days, but just taking a couple of minutes at the beginning or end of a meeting to check in with people more generally, is so remarkably powerful. But we are all so interested in optimizing every minute and not thinking about socializing at work or anything like that, but that’s unfortunate – that message – because there really is a lot that comes from having something that is just a general “I care about you” check in.
And it doesn’t have to be mushy or obviously inappropriate, but some way of saying, “Hey, how are you doing? How is it going?” Or even saying back to them, “You seem a little bit stressed, or you seem a little bit more tired. Are you okay?” Just a little thing like that builds such allegiance and kind of alliance between people.
And believe it or not, it’s discouraged in a lot of places, kind of, “This is just business. We should only be talking business, and if you’re not saying something productive, it’s not a valuable use of your time.” And people are told, “Don’t spend any time on that.” But a company that treats everyone like robots gets a company full of robots working for them; and we don’t want that. We want people to be bringing their most innovative, most energetic selves.

Pete Mockaitis
Absolutely. And I’m imagining the scenario right now, in terms of you walk into the conference room and you’re two minutes early or the rest of the attendees are two minutes late. And so, you sit down and there is a colleague or two near you, and of course they are up in their phone. And so, I’m thinking this is a prime opportunity for you to engage a little bit in the “How are you doing? I care about you” small talk. But I think that odds are without some sort of, I don’t know – provocation, interruption, jolt of some sort, they will just continue to be on their phone until the presenter or meeting presider begins speaking. So, any pro tips on nudging in the direction of “eyes off of the phone and toward a conversation”?

Mitch Prinstein
Yeah. Isn’t this exactly what happens all the time? We stand in a room with 100 people, but none of them are talking to one other, because everyone’s head is buried in their phones and emails. Yet research is showing that the more we become electronically networked, the less connected we actually all feel and the more lonely people are feeling over time.
I think that taking it from the online to the offline, creating that bridge is always what’s important. So, two people looking at their phones in an elevator and one person saying, “Hey, did you see this latest report about what just got tweeted out?”, let’s say . And that right there – people will look up and say, “Oh yeah, I heard it” or, “No, what happened?” And it’s referencing again: “I get that we’re both looking at our phones, so I don’t want to just break into something that’s not related. But I’m going to bridge from that to talking to each other off of that.”
And some people will be interested and some will not, but it’s a really important way of trying to reestablish some human connection when we do have those times to do it, because we have less and less opportunity to have real voice-to-voice conversations anymore. And research is showing that that’s having pretty bad effects on us, as really a species. So it’s very important that we try and reclaim some real human connection, even just a little bit.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, I love that nudge, that bridge is so brilliant. It’s like, “I too am among you, looking at my phone, and here’s something I noticed on my phone I would like to discuss with you.” That’s good, very nice. Well, we could probably have another whole episode on this, but I’d love it if we could touch for a minute or two how do we think about this whole likability, status thing in the world of social media, and how should we use it in a prudent way that will not leave us depressed and feeling miserable?

Mitch Prinstein
Well, social media is not the problem. There’s actually a lot of research that says that social media can be very good – it can be good for kids, it can be good for adults, it can lead to really positive outcomes. The issue is how we’re using social media, and granted, it’s designed to really get us to focus on status. When we log in, it immediately is telling you how much activity you had, or any new followers that you had, or how many people liked your posts, which has nothing to do with likability, despite the use of that word; it’s really a marker of status.
So, I think we need to recognize that there is, again, this addictive reaction that we get biologically from that on social media and despite the opportunities to do it for fun, we can get addicted, we can get too sucked into it. We need to be really careful that we also use these new great tools for interaction to engage in some real relationship-building as well.
That means that sometimes the posts have to be directed to specific people, maybe using the private message feature. Or your relationship needs to exist both offline and online. So, take what you learned about them online and continue that conversation on the phone or at work or an actual get together. A lot of our relationships have been replaced by what we do on social media, which everyone knows is just far more superficial and artificial as well. People post only what they want other people to think about them. So I think that’s a really important piece.
I think there are ways that we can get sucked into the caring too much about what we think will get us more activity. And there’s actually some recent research that shows that could be very dangerous. Research that also looks at the brain and shows what happens while you’re on social media says that if you look at something that’s very immoral or dangerous or illegal, there’s a part of the brain that actually is responsible for your inhibition and it will appropriately kind of make you think, “I don’t want to engage in those behaviors” or, “I don’t want to have those thoughts.”
But if you see the exact same image with indicators saying that it’s been liked a lot or retweeted a lot, it shows that the inhibitions center of the brain stops getting activated; it shuts down. In other words, just seeing something that’s popular on social media is literally changing the way that we might be responding to these images at this neuro level.
This is not at all different from the way that people kind of exploited the whole “fake news” phenomenon months ago to try and perpetuate the sense of ideas being popular and therefore true and desirable. And so I think people just need to recognize that this stuff is manipulating with our brains a little bit and changing our values, whether we realize or not, and we just need to be a little more careful.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh yeah, I like that a lot. And I think you just nailed the distinction, in terms of, “Am I doing this in order to get a bunch of likes and sort of affirmation?” You just articulated what kind of puts a funny taste in my month when I’m looking at some people’s Facebook quotes. I remember someone put a photo of themselves and then someone said, “Oh, you look so gorgeous!” They just said, “Yeah, that’s why I picked this photo, obviously.”
And I thought, I guess in a way that’s obvious, but in another way that troubles me, and I don’t quite know why. So Mitch, thank you – you’ve put that mystery to bed. It’s because yeah, you put it up in order to seek affirmation, as opposed to just sort of share. That’s the distinction – are you building relationships, or are you trying to get plugs?
Because if you share something about your life – and you might look great in the photo – but in the course of taking the photo it’s like, “Oh, here’s a cool thing that happened to me, world. Now you know it.” And then your friends that you’re out of touch with said, “Oh, that is so cool. I didn’t know you were doing that. I’ve been experimenting with that as well. Check this out.” And then there you go. You’ve sort of built a bridge and nourished a relationship, as opposed to said, “Praise me, world. I need it.”

Mitch Prinstein
Exactly, exactly. So well-articulated, I agree. And kids are always ahead of us on everything with social media, and I’ve been doing a lot of talks recently with corporations, but also with high schools. And what adolescents are telling me is that they have started to recognize that on social media – they’re starting to recognize the artificiality. And they’re creating on Instagram in particular two different profiles – one that they call their “fake” profile and one that they call their “real” one.
But the interesting thing is that they call their real profile the profile that has all the curated images on there, all of the things that are trying to portray a public persona. But the one that they call their fake profile is actually where they express their real feelings, their real desire to connect to other people. So although the semantics are a little bit backwards, they’re starting to trend. Or the pendulum is starting to swing the other way to say, “Maybe we should be using this in a way that’s actually about true connections and not just PR opportunities.”
And I think that’s interesting, because for many people that are in the workplace right now, you’ve got a couple of different generations – you’ve got people, increasingly so, who have been raised on understanding communication exclusively through social media, and you have people who have never experienced social media; and somehow they all need to work together, although their understanding of the way to think about popularity and social relationships is diametrically opposed. It’s a really interesting time for thinking about how that’s affected the way that we interact with each other in the workplace.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, that’s so good. And so then when you say “fake” and “real”, I guess the nomenclature they’re referencing is, “Does it have my real name on it, or does it have my super secret name that people who know me…” And I remember I had a friend who was like, “Oh, that’s going to go under the SteffersMarie handle, as opposed to the full name handle. I was like, “Okay, this is sort of silly”, but no, now I see what she’s on to. It’s like, “I’d like to have one to meaningfully connect and just be silly and me, so the public face can’t see it; and then I have one that is my name, and so I need to look awesome so that people associate that to my name.”

Mitch Prinstein
That’s exactly right. And it’s a great swing of the pendulum, I think. I think that people are maybe starting to get a little bit sick of the idea that everything that’s on there is really a bit fake, or a bit more status-seeking, which also tends to be a way that leads to dislikabilty. If people think that you’re trying too hard, it’s a really good way to turn people off.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, Mitch, this is so good. Anything else you want to make sure to mention before we shift gears and quickly hear about some of your favorite things?

Mitch Prinstein
No, no, go for it.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, cool. Well, could you start us off by sharing a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Mitch Prinstein
Yeah. I’ve been thinking about that a little bit recently in fact, and I don’t know where this is attributed to, I’m afraid, but I know for me at work I have continually tried to follow the adage, “Have learning goals, not performance goals.” I think people who tend to be high-achieving or perfectionistic or at a stage in their life where they’re really trying to do well, forget that no one’s expected to know how to do everything perfectly right off the bat. Everyone throughout their job is in a developmental process and is constantly having to fall down in order to learn how to do better the next time. So, I love that quote and I think it’s a good one to keep saying as much as possible, especially in a high-pressured work environment.

Pete Mockaitis
Alright. And how about a favorite book?

Mitch Prinstein
Oh, there are so many. I think it would be a little trite if I talked about Malcolm Gladwell’s books, but I do absolutely love them and I think that The Tipping Point is a great way of also talking about the power of popularity and why it is that we’re so just naturally tuned to trends and what others do as a way of guiding our own behaviour.

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

Mitch Prinstein
Well, there’s recently been a study that shows that our popularity, or I should say our lack of it, ends up affecting us in ways that we never even knew about. Believe it or not, at the moment that we feel excluded or isolated, we now know that it activates dormant DNA in our bodies to turn on and prepare us for imminent injury or attack, which of course in 2017 doesn’t tend to happen very often. So instead it throws off the regulation systems in our brain and affects our neuro transmitters. We’re literally learning that popularity is now changing the very blueprint of our existence, and yeah, it has the capability of changing which DNA is being expressed in our bodies. And to me that’s just incredibly cool and incredibly powerful.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s wild. Now I’m wondering, with the inflammation or the DNA expression, are you strengthened by having a stress response and recovering from it? Are you healthier for having had an unpopular kind of bout, or are you sort of damaged or diminished by having a so-called attack of being unpopular?

Mitch Prinstein
It’s the latter, unfortunately. Research now shows that people who are not popular and more socially isolated are twice as likely to die as their same aged counterparts of equal health. In fact, research has shown that the only factor that is a stronger predictor of illness and mortality is heavy smoking – that’s how powerful this popularity effect is.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So if I have good friends I can just go ahead and smoke, and they’ll counter it?

Mitch Prinstein
I don’t know about that, but…

Pete Mockaitis
I can reach no other conclusion that this, Mitch. I’ll tell my wife. Okay, cool. And how about a favorite tool?

Mitch Prinstein
A favorite tool. Oh, that’s a good one. But why don’t I go old school and say the telephone? Anything that gives you an opportunity to make a true, human social connection. I’ll go with that.

Pete Mockaitis
Alright, cool. And how about a favorite habit?

Mitch Prinstein
Oh, I would say exercise, working out, without a question. And for psychological reasons as well – there’s nothing more important than… Everyone knows that the minute they stop working obsessively on something is when all the good ideas come. And there’s no better way to stop thinking about whatever you’re stressing about than to try and lift 200 pounds off of yourself for fear of death. So I would say exercise is a great way to shut off your brain and get it to start working again.

Pete Mockaitis
Awesome. And is there a particular nugget or piece that you share in your teaching or writing or speaking that really seems to connect and resonate, getting folks giving you all those status retweets or Kindle book highlights or vigorous note-takings?

Mitch Prinstein
I would say if you feel like you were not the most popular person in your school, and there were times in your life where you wished you were, I would say that you’re in the 99% majority and you should be very happy, because it turns out that those who grew up being the very, very most popular, in some cases are at higher risk for problems in the long run than those of you who were just average.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, now I think we have an over-representation of the 1% in this audience, so I will follow up. What are the risks that folks who were popular early on may suffer?

Mitch Prinstein
The people who were the highest in status, but they were not likable – and that’s an important distinction, but the ones who were not likable – research shows they tend to continue to view the world through their status lens. They continue to think that the only way to get ahead is to make themselves seem higher in status, even at the expense of others, and to constantly be evaluating their own position on the status hierarchy. For that reason, research has shown that the highest status, but simultaneously not likable people have greater risk of relationship difficulties, addictions, depression and anxiety.

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

Mitch Prinstein
Probably the best would be MitchPrinstein.com, or check out the book.

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?

Mitch Prinstein
I would say take a moment to think less about how everyone is thinking about you, because people aren’t thinking about you; they’re all thinking about what you think of them.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. [laugh] That’s good. Mitch, thank you so much for coming on, sharing this wisdom and expertise. I hope that you have way more cool research, insights and publications and all that good stuff, and you’re both high in status and highly likable.

Mitch Prinstein
Thanks so much, it’s a pleasure.

Dec 11
0

240: Mastering the Art of Connection with Michael J. Gelb

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Michael J. Gelb says: "Connection, or the lack thereof, is a huge factor in our wellness."

Michael J. Gelb walks us through the power of connectedness, the importance of being aware of the people around you, and practices that can help your internal wellness.

You’ll Learn:

  1. Why uber-busy global leaders make time for face-to-face interactions
  2. How to consciously spread positive emotion
  3. Practicing the opposite of stress response

About Michael 

Michael is the world’s leading authority on the application of genius thinking to personal and organizational development and a pioneer in the fields of creative thinking, executive coaching and innovative leadership. Michael co-directs the acclaimed Leading Innovation Seminar at the University of Virginia’s Darden Graduate School of Business and is on the faculty of the Institute for Management Studies.  He brings more than 30 years of experience as a professional speaker, seminar leader and executive coach to his diverse, international clientele.

Items Mentioned in this Show:

Michael J. Gelb Interview Transcript

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

Michael J. Gelb
My pleasure.

Pete Mockaitis
Now, before you were writing influential books, I understand you had a career as a professional juggler who performed with some pretty big names. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

Michael J. Gelb
I worked my way through graduate school as a professional juggler. I used to juggle in Harvard Square. I once made about $80 in quarters in three hours.

Pete Mockaitis
All right.

Michael J. Gelb
I used to do children’s parties, and I lived in England for a while. And my buddy, who was the science editor for Reuters news service in Europe, he and I used to get together and practice our juggling in Hyde Park. And one day a fellow came up to us and said, “Hey, how would you like to juggle on stage tonight with Mick Jagger and The Rolling Stones, we’ll pay you 50 pounds.” We said, “Sure.” And we were on stage that night and it worked out well so they invited us to the whole tour. And then we got to perform at the Knebworth Rock Festival in front of an audience of hundreds of thousands of people on a stage shaped like Mick Jagger’s mouth.

Pete Mockaitis
Like his mouth. I don’t know, is his mouth different than any other mouths? I guess I’ve got a picture in my head. This is fascinating.

Michael J. Gelb
Yes, it’s just like you picture it. It’s just like you picture it.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, so how you’ve come so far. I don’t know, maybe you’ve slid. Which is higher? I don’t know, they’re just different, you know.

Michael J. Gelb
It’s not higher.

Pete Mockaitis
Absolutely.

Michael J. Gelb
The funny thing is I wasn’t a wild Stones fan or anything but I knew it would be a good story, and I got a friend of mine into the concert as a guest and he is still grateful to me to this day. And then we got invited to juggle at a series of Bob Dylan concerts, and I got my friend into that, so he’s still, he just will be eternally grateful to me for getting him into those events.

And I did take my early experience as a professional juggler and I leveraged it into corporate seminars where I would use juggling as a metaphor for teaching people how to learn. I’d put them in teams and get them to pick the balls up for one another and coach each other, and use it as a way to teach people principles of coaching that they could use to be more effective leaders. I once taught a thousand IBM engineers how to juggle altogether in a big hotel ballroom, so I’ve had a lot of fun with the juggling, and I still work it into my programs for groups all over the world.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, awesome. Well, today I also want to chat about some of your perspectives in your latest book The Art of Connection. What is The Art of Connection all about? And why is it particularly important right now?

Michael J. Gelb
Well, what it’s all about is building relationships. And why did I write this book? Because for most of the years I’ve been consulting and training, leading seminars for organizations around the world, my focus has been on creativity, on innovation and accelerated learning. But if you really want to get anything done you’ve got to do it with other people.

So, I’ve been paying attention to what really works to build those relationships that will help you resolve conflict, come up with solutions in a more effective way, and implement those solutions, and The Art of Connection is packed with pretty much everything I’ve learned in 38 years of working with people around the world.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, beautiful. And I’ve read some disturbing research in terms of just how we have fewer friends now than before, we’re more disconnected. Can you maybe give us a little bit of the lay of the land to perhaps the problem or diagnosis?

Michael J. Gelb
Well, we have a blessing and a curse. The blessing is we can get information from people around the world instantaneously, and that’s amazingly seductive. I mean, you can tune into anybody anywhere almost anytime if their phone is on, so that’s, on one hand, how marvelous is that. On the other hand, it’s a relatively superficial level of communication.

So, we have more so-called friends or people in our network but less real connection, less real heart-to-heart, face-to-face, soul-to-soul human interaction. And that does nurture us in all sorts of ways. There’s a lot of research showing that person-to-person connection is a key source of our sense of wellbeing, our longevity, our health, our happiness, and it also translates into success.

What’s fascinating is I work with lots of people who run global organizations and, of course, they do lots of connecting, lots of meeting, lots of information sharing on their devices, but these people will tell you that face-to-face in the room, eye-to-eye relationships and connections are more important now than ever before, and they all go out of their way to make sure they have those connections with the people who are important to them.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s a pretty compelling proof point because these are among the most busy in-demand, maybe most tempted to execute communications as brutally efficiently as possible.

Michael J. Gelb
Well, the thing is it’s important to be able to be efficient, to get things done, and we can use the technology to help us. That’s the blessing part of it. But if you use it as something to hide behind, if you use it as a way of objectifying people and viewing people only in a transactional manner, well, people ultimately don’t really like that.

Pete Mockaitis
I’m with you there.

Michael J. Gelb
Everybody wants to be seen, wants to be respected, wants you to connect with them, wants you to empathize with them, and it’s just so much more effective to do that in person.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. I’m with you there. And so, I love it that you’ve gone beyond some of this philosophy and really broken it down into a few key actionable principles or practices. We love actionable here. So, could you walk us through some of the top practices that facilitate great connections?

Michael J. Gelb
Sure can. The first one is to embrace humility.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay.

Michael J. Gelb
And, obviously, this one comes first because if you don’t embrace humility you’re probably not going to read the rest of the book because you think you know it all already.

Pete Mockaitis
All right.

Michael J. Gelb
But it’s really the attitude that makes us curious. If I think I know you, if I think I’ve got you figured out, if I think I know what type you are, if I think I’m a good listener, well, chances are I’m not, and chances are you probably wouldn’t agree with me.

Pete Mockaitis
All right.

Michael J. Gelb
It’s only when I have that attitude that says, “Gee, if I’m paying attention over the years I’d probably notice that people miscommunicate all the time.” When I get people in a classroom on this topic, one of the exercises we do, we take a simple word, we take any word like the word art, and we get people to write down the first 10 words they think of.

And then we put them in groups of four and we get them to share the words they wrote down and make a little chart of how many they had in common. And what we discover is that people have almost nothing in common.

Pete Mockaitis
So, one person might write movies and cinema and actors, and someone else might write sculpture and clay. Is that what you mean?

Michael J. Gelb
Exactly. Exactly. And then even when people get one or two in common, if you get them to do 10 words of association on the one they had in common, you find out they meant something different by it anyway.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, interesting.

Michael J. Gelb
And this translates into everyday communication challenges. I mean, people are all too familiar with the notion of having a conversation, the other person nods in agreement, and then what happens is different than what you thought you agreed, “Oh, but I thought you said,” “Oh, but I thought you meant,” “But weren’t you listening?” How often are those sorts of phrases repeated in everyday life?

So, one of my mottos is, “If you’re not humble it means you’re not paying attention.” So, once you embrace that attitude, that opens up your curiosity. The other thing it does, if you have this humility, people perceive you as more responsive, as more open, as more accessible and they’re more likely to engage with you. And engagement is, obviously, the key to building relationships, so embrace humility is where the journey begins.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, yeah. Right now, as you described this sort of misunderstandings, I can’t help, I’m thinking about randomly the movie Bridesmaids in which they’re talking about different ideas for the event, the festivities. And one person says, “Oh, how about a night in Paris or something?” and everyone says yes. “And building off that idea, Fight Club?” and someone is like, “What?” It’s not even remotely connected or related.

And so, I think that’s a funny little exchange that sticks with me because it’s like, “That’s so ridiculous.” But what you’re saying, “No, in practice, folks are rampantly misunderstanding each other all the time.”

Michael J. Gelb
And emoticons and emojis are not substitutes for body language, voice tonality, eye contact and being together with people.

Pete Mockaitis
Even if it’s an animoji, Michael?

Michael J. Gelb
Hey, look, I have as much with them as anybody and they’re delightful tools to play with but, again, if you use it all as a substitute for connecting with people in real time face to face, you’re going to find that your life just becomes a little more shallow and that there’s a lot more misunderstanding.

Pete Mockaitis
I hear you. So, the core of the humility then is just acknowledging, you know, you probably don’t understand what that person said. So, get off your high horse or don’t presume that you have it figured out, but go ahead and humble yourself and ask the key follow-up questions to make sure that you’ve properly received what they’re trying to convey.

Michael J. Gelb
Yes.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Cool. Well, so now, you’ve got a few other great practices. What do you mean by being a glowworm?

Michael J. Gelb
Well, this comes from a quote from Winston Churchill. He said, “We are all worms but I do believe that I am a glowworm.”

Pete Mockaitis
I love the accent. Please keep those coming.

Michael J. Gelb
And Churchill, this is in the days when the only way that the leader of the nation could communicate with the people was on the radio, London was being bombed every night for 56 nights straight. People were sleeping in the subway in the underground, and they didn’t know then that they were going to win the war and defeat pure evil.

But one man, with this amazing vision and courage, through his words and through his voice tone, inspired a whole nation to persevere under incredible odds and to emerge victorious, so Churchill really was a glowworm. And, in contemporary terms, we now know, as Churchill understood intuitively, that emotions are contagious for better or for worse. So, a glowworm is somebody who consciously spreads uplifting positive emotion.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And so, now I’m curious, in practice how does one do that in a way that’s authentic and real and gets folks taking you seriously? I guess I’m wondering, it’s probably possible to be over the top in a way that’s like, “Oh, this guy, you know, he’s not even for real.”

Michael J. Gelb
All of this is ideally sourced through authenticity and find a natural way to express yourself. If you’re a pessimist this is harder, which is why in a previous book I reviewed the work of Dr. Martin Seligman who wrote Learned Optimism, so it’s a skill you can learn. It’s a skill of emotional intelligence.

And since optimists get sick less frequently, recover faster when they do get sick, make a lot more money in the course of their careers, outperform their aptitude tests, and live seven years longer, you might consider cultivating this particular aspect of emotional intelligence and do it in an authentic way because your attitude not only affects your immune system moment to moment, that’s why optimists live longer, and that’s why they’re more resistant to disease, why they recover faster because they have stronger immune systems.

So, you want to recognize that your way of responding to challenges in life – and, look, anybody can be an optimist when everything is going your way. It really counts when you’re facing adversity. But the power here is that it’s not just affecting your immune system, it’s affecting the immune system of the people around you.

So, if you get together with people as many people’s idea of bonding is to commiserate, which means to be miserable together. So, we all get together and complain about how bad everything is, “Oh, that’s nothing. It’s even worse for me.” And I got to tell you, what we’re talking about here is a powerful secret of building healthy positive relationships. It’s also a secret of longevity.

My parents are 90 and 87, and my dad recently did 28 pushups. He’s just amazing.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, great.

Michael J. Gelb
And they’re super sharp. I go visit them and bring them a nice wine, cook them a nice meal, and we have stimulating, vibrant, wonderful conversation. They’re super engaged in life, they’re reading three or four books at a time, and they get together with the people in the community where they live. They’re in one of these active retirement communities.

And my dad runs the wine-tasting group, my mom, who used to be a psychotherapist, runs a couple of discussion groups, and they just meet to have breakfast and conversation with their friends. Pretty much every day they go down to dinner. My dad brings a bottle of wine. And they have a rule, and the rule is, “No organ recitals.”

Pete Mockaitis
Right.

Michael J. Gelb
In other words, you’re not allowed to complain about what’s going wrong with various parts of your body.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, man, it sounds like fun. I want to be part of an active retirement community. That sounds awesome.

Michael J. Gelb
But what’s great about it, part of why and when these communities are well-run, and theirs is, it extends people’s lives and the quality of their lives because it turns out that connection or the lack thereof is a huge factor in our wellness. And as we get older, the margin for error gets less.

I wrote this book called Brain Power: Improve Your Mind as You Age, I wrote it to celebrate my 60th birthday five years ago. And one of the studies I reported on in that book, they took cohorts of people who were 80 years old, and those who reported themselves as lonely were mostly gone before 85 and had much higher incidences of various forms of dementia.

Those who reported having three or more positive social interactions on a daily basis were much more likely to be alive at 85 and had much, much lower rates of dementia. So, social connectedness keeps your brain healthy, strengthens your immune system, and it’s also just correlated with what researchers call perceived sense of wellbeing which is a fancy term for happiness.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Excellent. So, then, in practice, if you’re being a glowworm, so you’re taking an optimistic view, you’re trying to make meaningful connections with folks and taking interests in their lives. And so, are there any other maybe key senses or opportunities in which you can really habitually be a glowworm whether it comes to appreciating people or thanking people? Or what are some of the easy ways to do that every day?

Michael J. Gelb
Well, here’s one that’s research-based and really powerful. Maybe you’ve heard about the Pygmalion effect, it’s also known as the Rosenthal effect for the researcher who first documented it about 50 years ago and one of the most striking experiments. They took Army drill sergeants and they told the drill sergeants that the recruits they were getting for the next six weeks were below average. And at the end of the six weeks those recruits performed about 25% below the average standard.

Then they told the same drill sergeants that the next group they were getting were above average. And you guessed it, at the end of six weeks that group performed 25% above average. Now this is measured in real performance, things like the number of pushups they could do.

Pete Mockaitis
Or like shooting accuracy, like quantitative measures of performance.

Michael J. Gelb
Quantitative measures. Of course, the groups were completely average, the only difference was the way the drill sergeants were primed to view their recruits. And when they told the drill sergeants this they refused to believe it. Same kind of studies have been done over and over again with teachers. If a teacher is told that children are gifted, guess what? They perform like gifted children. And if the teacher is told that the children are slow and difficult, guess what? They perform more slowly as though they were more difficult.

So, the notion of looking for the best in others, and this is really important in a marriage. I mean, if you look at Gottman’s research on what makes marriage work.

Pete Mockaitis
I’ve been doing that, yes.

Michael J. Gelb
Yup, one of the really important things is you look for the best in your partner. William James said, “Wisdom is knowing what to overlook,” so this gets really, really powerful, too, when you realize that the same thing applies to your self-image. So, are you looking for the best in yourself every day? So, this isn’t just rah-rah cheerleader optimism on some superficial level. This is powerful.

How do you see yourself in your own potentiality every day? How do you give other people the best opportunity to do well to bring out people’s best? And here’s the thing, this is, again, it’s not mediated by some cosmic, well, maybe it is mediated by cosmic energy but we can’t validate that. But when Rosenthal looks at what happens when the teacher who’s been told that a group is gifted, what does that teacher do?

In the interaction with those children, the teacher is nodding in a positive way, she’s smiling, she’s making eye contact, her whole body language is affirming and encouraging, and in that environment the child is more likely to come up with a good answer. And when the teacher has been told that these kids are difficult, all too often what happens is she’s shaking her head subtly in the negative, and she’s less patient with the answer, and she’s more likely to interrupt the child, and say, “You’re wrong.”

So, it’s mediated by these subtle, non-verbal cues, so if you can, you want to consciously choose to be sharing uplifting positive cues with other people and yourself throughout the course of your day. That translates into what we often call charisma.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. I love that. So, in proactively seeking out the good in people, it’s sort of like you’re not faking it in the sense of you’re just actually responding naturally to what you believe.

Michael J. Gelb
Sure. And it doesn’t mean you’re not critical and discerning. Yes, please be critical and discerning. See the weaknesses, see the challenges, see the difficulties, and then figure out how you’re going to make the best of that particular situation, that particular relationship. And having said that, be wary of people who you experience as continuously draining your energy, people who are rude or obnoxious or abusive, and do your best to avoid being around those people whether they are in your life or on your television screen.

So, there’s a little section in the book where I say, “To be a glowworm, avoid tapeworms,” so that kind of sums up the message right there.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, fantastic. Thank you. Well, could you share with us a couple of the other most powerful principles and practices here?

Michael J. Gelb
Sure. Well, the next one in the book is to achieve the three liberations.

Pete Mockaitis
All right.

Michael J. Gelb
And what are the three liberations? The first is to free ourselves from the reflexive tendency to view everything from our own evaluative lens. In other words, “Do I like it or do I not like it?”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay.

Michael J. Gelb
And this isn’t helped by contemporary sites that have a thumbs up and a thumbs down for absolutely everything we see. And it’s fine to like or dislike things but if that’s the only way you look at the world you may not be seeing it as it is. You’re just seeing it in terms of how the lower centers of your brain view it in terms of, “Is it good for my survival or not?” which isn’t the way we view the world in the most enlightened manner. So, first liberation is to be free from evaluation and learn to observe things in a more objective manner.

Pete Mockaitis
All right.

Michael J. Gelb
The second one is to learn not to take things personally, and this is kind of tricky. And I confess, my personality type, I’m the type I take everything personally. I’m ready to just have a big conflict very quickly, that’s my nature. That’s part of how I’ve learned all this because I’ve learned to not react in my automatic habitual way which might be to make things worse because I’m from New Jersey. People say, “You talking to me? You got a problem?” People can be very confrontational where I grew up, and usually that makes things worse.

So, I’ve learned to ask myself the question, “How would I respond to this if I didn’t take it personally?” And I love that question because, all of a sudden, it opens up a lot more circuitry in your brain to think of creative ways to respond instead of responding in a defensive ego-centered manner.

And then the third of the liberations is to liberate yourself from whining, blaming and complaining because that’s just going to get you basting in your stress hormones and exacerbating the stress hormones of your fellow commiserators, so free yourself from whining, blaming and complaining, and start focusing on solutions.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, Michael, you sound like some great liberations. Indeed, it would be liberating to either be free of these things. So, I guess, in practice though, if these are sort of deeply ingrained mental habits, how do we get the momentum in achieving these liberations?

Michael J. Gelb
That’s why in the book each chapter has a practice at the end I call the greatest point of leverage, because there’s all sorts of practical things you can do. But I’m really thinking in behalf of the reader, on behalf of the students in my classes, “What’s the one thing you can do that will just have the greatest point of leverage for really having the ability to apply this?”

And one of them is to learn to organize your nervous system. Now in the book I put in a practice that I teach martial arts, I teach Aikido, Tai Chi and Qigong.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, cool.

Michael J. Gelb
And one of the great things in martial practice, you’re basically learning to shift your whole physiology out of the fight-flight response and into a centered balance freedom so that you can respond and relax way. The more dangerous fighter is the more relaxed fighter. You look at all the clips of Muhammad Ali floating like a butterfly who’s able to sting like a bee because he just looked so easy and comfortable. And that’s what we say about people who are really good at anything, is they make it look easy.

So, if you want to be really good in building relationships, or the art of connection, you want to cultivate this ability to shift out of the amygdala hijack, stress response, fight-flight modality and into this poised, centered, balanced, alert, ready-for-anything modality. So, one of the things people can do, there’s a practice in the book, you can do it every day, it doesn’t even take that long but it’s a great way to center yourself, organize yourself.

And if you do it every day when you’re not in a crisis or a conflict or a difficulty, then you’ll have much more ability to really utilize it when you need it. If you just try to say, “Oh, what was the thing that guy wrote in that book,” and try to use it when all of a sudden you feel you’re under a personal verbal assault, you probably won’t be able to bring to bear, so it’s something to practice every day.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, can you maybe walk us through one of those live right now?

Michael J. Gelb
Sure. Okay. So, obviously, people want to make sure they’re in an environment where it’s okay to bring your full attention to what you’re doing in the moment besides, for example, driving. Or don’t do this while you’re doing something else basically. So, put down the scissors.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s the quote of episode, “Put down the scissors.”

Michael J. Gelb
Right. So, create an environment where you won’t be interrupted if possible. And once you know this, once you know how to practice this you can then pretty much do it anywhere, but for learning it in the beginning, and if you’re sitting, either sitting or standing, let’s just say you’re sitting. You want to have your feet flat on the floor evenly distributed between the two feet.

You want to sit, feel around in your rear end for your sitting bones, feel the two points of contact with the chair. You want to be aware of those two points, two feet on the floor. And then you want to sit at your full stature, so align around the vertical axis.

Pete Mockaitis
All right.

Michael J. Gelb
If you say out loud the phrase, “Let go.” Just say it right now.

Pete Mockaitis
Let go.

Michael J. Gelb
Let go. Do you notice where your tongue goes when you say L in let go?

Pete Mockaitis
It’s like up and into the front.

Michael J. Gelb
Yeah, just behind your upper teeth, your palate, so let your tongue rest on that point. It turns out that that point is an acupuncture point that connects the flow of energy down the front of your body and up the back of your body. So, your tongue rests lightly on that point. Now, can you picture the Mona Lisa in your mind’s eye?

Pete Mockaitis
Yes.

Michael J. Gelb
You know her famous little smile?

Pete Mockaitis
Mm-hmm.

Michael J. Gelb
Do your best to imitate her little smile.

Pete Mockaitis
With the tongue still there?

Michael J. Gelb
Right, with your tongue still there.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. I’m with you.

Michael J. Gelb
Got your little smile. Eyes are open and soft, so you’re using your peripheral vision and you’re seeing as much of the space that you’re in as you can. So, you’re aligned around the vertical axis, eyes are soft, tongue on the point, got the little smile. Next ingredient is invite the breath in through your nose and fill your lower belly with your inhalation, so your lower belly is going to expand, your lower ribs and your lower back expand on the inhalation.

And then exhale and, of course, your lower back and lower belly and lower ribs compress. And then real simple, expand the time of the inhale, slow it down, so maybe start with the count of six              on the inhale, and then a count of six on the exhale. And then practice that for a minute or two at least once a day. If you can do two or three times a day so much the better.

But what you notice about that simple practice is we’re doing things that are the opposite of the stress response. What happens to your posture in the fight-flight response? You’re trapped.

Pete Mockaitis
Right. You’re like tensed up and raring to go.

Michael J. Gelb
Right. You’re ready to go, you’re ready to fight or run away. So, when you’re upright it sends a different message to your whole nervous system. What’s your facial expression like when you’re in the fight-flight response?

Pete Mockaitis
It’s like a warrior like ready to aargh.

Michael J. Gelb
Yeah, it’s some kind of frown or gritted teeth or angry look. Instead we have a little smile like the Mona Lisa. What are your eyes like? They tend to get tight and focused on a point. So, here we’re softening the eyes and taking in the periphery. And your breathing when you’re in the fight-flight response tends to be just in your chest and very rapid. So, we’re breathing all the way into the belly and we’re slowing it down.

So, we’re training ourselves to do the opposite of the stress response and this puts us in a very resourceful, centered, balanced place. And it’s not that you can stay in this place all the time, but if you practice this for a few minutes a day you can get back to it faster when you need it, and that’s the real key. It’s not that you don’t lose it. We all lose it from time to time. How quickly can you get your center back so you don’t say something or do something that you’ll regret?

The founder of Aikido, the martial art that I studied and taught for many years, is one of the great martial arts masters ever. And one of his senior students is one of the masters that I studied with, and this master once said to the founder, “You’re perfect. You never make mistakes.” And the founder said, “Oh, no, I make mistakes all the time. I just correct them so quickly that you can’t see it.”

Pete Mockaitis
All right. That’s good. And I’d love to get your view then in terms of in great detail – and thank you for that, that’s really nice to make it complete and actionable – about what’s going on with the body. And so, is the mind, where are we focusing that? Are there particular thoughts? Or where is the attention should that be placed upon?

Michael J. Gelb
Lovely. So, for starters I just get people to place their attention on their breathing and on the little checklist I just gave you. Make sure you’re smiling, put your tongue on the point, check that you’re at your full upright stature aligned around the vertical axis, feet on the floor, balance on the sitting bones. So, at first, that’s more than enough for people to do with their minds.

Once you have consolidated this so that you can just say, “Okay. Center. Boom.” And then if I say that to myself I don’t have to repeat all those things. I instantaneously shift my posture, open my vision, tongue goes to the point, I have my little smile, and I invite the breath in to my belly. So, then, you can invoke a quality or an intention that you want to bring in the moment.

So, a useful one is courage, for example, if you’re facing a difficult situation, or grace, or poise, or creativity, or compassion.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. Sorry, keep going. Keep going. I guess I’m thinking for a connection, I was like, curiosity, yeah.

Michael J. Gelb
Mm-hmm, or humility, or being a glowworm. So, you get the ideas. Now you’re conscious and you can choose the way you want to be. From this physiology you have way more freedom. If you’re in fight-flight you gave up your freedom. You’re preprogrammed. It’s all played out and you’re probably going to make the situation worse, so free yourself. And this is the physiology of internal freedom. And then, you’re right, it’s good to add a conscious intention and we just shared some of my personal favorites. People can make up their own.

Pete Mockaitis
I dig this. I dig this. And I’m chuckling a little bit because I see Dr. Marcia Reynolds is one of your book endorsers and it feels like a little bit of her is what I’m reminded of as we do this. We had her back in Episode 14, one of the most popular episodes, and it’s powerful stuff.

Michael J. Gelb
Well, she’s an old friend of mine and she teaches you how to outsmart your brain. What she’s talking about is outsmart this habitual preprogrammed part of yourself so that you can use your creative intelligence. She and I have always, we just had a meeting of the minds when we first met because we’re on the same wavelength of using different metaphors to teach people these universal truths about self-balance and self-understanding and inner freedom so that you can have a more beautiful life. That’s really what this is about.

Pete Mockaitis
Excellent. Well, tell me, Michael, is there anything else you want to make sure to mention before we shift gears and hear about a few of your favorite things?

Michael J. Gelb
One of the fundamental points of this book, I emphasized it by translating into Latin is, “Conjungere ad solvendum,” which means, “Connect before solving.”

Pete Mockaitis
All right.

Michael J. Gelb
It’s based on a lot of really practical wisdom. It’s based on the work of some of the greatest therapists. They find people in therapy resolve their biggest issues when they feel they’ve made a real empathic connection with the therapist. Well, guess what? Same thing happens with your husband or your wife or your children, and the same thing happens with your team at work, so connect before solving.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, excellent. Thank you.  So now, Michael, could you share with us a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Michael J. Gelb
Okay. I got a lot of favorite quotes but I’m going to give you my favorite quote that I put in The Art of Connection, and it’s in the chapter on listening. It’s from Andre Gide who won the Nobel Prize in Literature, and he said, “Everything that needs to be said has already been said. But since no one was listening, everything must be said again.”

Pete Mockaitis
That’s good. Oh, it’s fun. I could chew on that for a while. Very nice. And how about a favorite book?

Michael J. Gelb
Favorite book. Well, the book that really got me started was Man’s Search for Meaning. There’s two actually, Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl and Man’s Search for Himself by Rollo May. I read those two books when I was 14 or 15, and then I read Toward a Psychology of Being by Abraham Maslow, and then I read Memories, Dreams, Reflections by Carl Jung. And I’d say those books set the course for the rest of my life.

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

Michael J. Gelb
Oh, well, it is centering practice. It’s what I shared earlier and to me it’s so important. I do it for probably about an hour a day.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, wow.

Michael J. Gelb
I do about 20 to 30 minutes of Qigong standing meditation and then I do various sets of Qigong that I’ve cultivated, I teach. I’ve studied this for many years and I try to teach the ones that are most helpful to others. And I’ve been teaching the ones that I actually do myself because I figure there’s a reason I chose to do them, so they’re the ones that I think I will share with others.

And my other key tool or practice is when I’m home I take a silent walk in the woods every day. Actually I took one earlier today in between interviews, and I just shut off the phone and go for a walk, and I don’t speak. I mean, if somebody says hello, I say hello, so I’m just going out for a walk. But basically it’s just silence and nature and, wow, I mean, what a blessing.

Pete Mockaitis
Awesome. And is there a particular nugget that you share in your books or when you’re speaking, working with clients that seems to particularly resonate, get folks nodding their heads and taking notes with all the more vigor?

Michael J. Gelb
Well, it’s fun that you mentioned that one because this book, The Art of Connection, building relationships, the notion of being a glowworm, the idea of being around people who inspire you, so one of the ideas that I’ve had around that for many years is it’s great to find real people who you can be with, who inspire you, and you can also draw on historical sources.

So, I wrote a book called How to Think Like Leonardo da Vinci, and why did I do that? Because Leonardo is my childhood hero, and I immersed myself in studying his notebooks and translated it into this book. And the point of that is I love Leonardo so I learned as much as I could about him and it enriched my life immeasurably. So, the nugget for people is figure out the historical figure that inspires you the most and immerse yourself in that person. You can have a virtual mentor as well as a real-life one.

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

Michael J. Gelb
I invite them to my website MichaelGelb.com, it’s G-E-L-B. People can sign up for our free newsletter. We’ve got lots of free articles and we’re just getting our YouTube channel going, but we’re going to be posting all kinds of practices for people. If people are interested in the Qigong we have a couple of those that are up there. You have to hunt around for them a little bit but we’re going to make it clear and more accessible. It’s all at MichaelGelb.com.

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

Michael J. Gelb
Yes. Yes. My challenge is to bring passionate curiosity to understanding the dynamics of your relationships. Don’t take people for granted. Don’t put them in a box. Try to see everybody in a fresh, open, compassionate, empathic, loving way, and then notice the effect that has on yourself when you look in the mirror in the morning.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, beautiful. Thank you. Well, Michael, this has been a real treat. You can hear it in your voice that you walk the talk, and so thanks for sharing all this wisdom. Great stuff. And I wish you lots of luck in staying centered and book sales and teaching and changing lives and all you’re up to.

Michael J. Gelb
Thank you so much.