Jeff Wetzler shows you how to uncover startling wisdom from the people around you through better asking.
You’ll Learn:
- The mysteries of the unspoken–and how to tackle them
- The five-step ask approach
- The trick to posing quality questions
About Jeff
Jeff Wetzler is co-CEO of Transcend, a nationally recognized innovation organization, and an expert in learning and human potential with more than 25 years’ experience. Wetzler combines unique leadership experiences in business and education, as a management consultant to the world’s top corporations, a learning facilitator for leaders around the world, and as Chief Learning Officer at Teach For America. Jeff earned a doctorate in adult learning and leadership from Columbia University and a bachelor’s in psychology from Brown University. Based in New York, he is a member of the Aspen Global Leadership Network and is an Edmund Hillary Fellow.
- Book: Ask: Tap Into the Hidden Wisdom of People Around You for Unexpected Breakthroughs In Leadership and Life
- Ask Diagnostic Assessment: Assessment.AskApproach.com
- Instagram: @askapproach
- LinkedIn: Jeff Wetzler
- Website: AskApproach.com
Resources Mentioned
- Book: Radical Candor: Be a Kick-Ass Boss Without Losing Your Humanity by Kim Scott
- Book: Remaking the Space Between Us: How Citizens Can Work Together to Build a Better Future for All by Diana McLain Smith
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Jeff Wetzler Interview Transcript
Pete Mockaitis
Jeff, welcome.
Jeff Wetzler
Great to be with you, Pete.
Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’d love it if you could open us up with a riveting tale of someone who saw some cool breakthroughs when they upped their asking game.
Jeff Wetzler
Well, I can start with my own self, if that’s good enough, and I think this can be super simple. I’ll share a story with you early in my career when I was just learning some of these methods, where one of the questions that I was encouraged to ask was simply the question to somebody, “What’s your reaction to what I just said?”
And it’s a funny question because so often, I think we can assume that if the other person has a reaction, they’re going to tell us what that reaction is, but that’s often not the case. Often, if someone disagrees or doesn’t land well, they’re not going to tell us, unless they actually believe we want to know. So, I was a new manager. I had a direct report. I had just finished giving him a bunch of input and guidance and direction, and I thought to myself, “You know what? Maybe I should just try this question.”
So, I said, “What’s your reaction to what I just said?” And he said to me, “To be honest, it’s completely deflating. I’m so demotivated by what you just said.” I was floored. I had no idea. I thought I had just helped him out, given him direction, sent him on his way, and little did I know that it had totally landed the wrong way with him. And had I not asked that question, I never would have known.
We were then able to unpack it and realize the problem was I was operating with different information than he was about what our client needed, which was what was leading me to make some of the suggestions that I did. We were then able to talk it all out, get on the same page, and truly we were in a good place. But had I not done that, he would have been a lot less happy, a lot less successful, and we wouldn’t have done as well.
Pete Mockaitis
That’s right. And it’s amazing how much stuff is going on and we just have no idea about.
Jeff Wetzler
And that is basically the premise of the book. That’s the whole premise, is that we are surrounded by people who have all kinds of ideas, thoughts, feelings, perspectives, feedback for us in their heads, and far too often, we don’t get access to it because they don’t tell us. But it is a solvable problem, and that’s what the book is trying to do.
Pete Mockaitis
Well, Jeff, let’s start right there in terms of they’ve got this good stuff, they’re not freely volunteering it. Why has it got to be my responsibility to dig it out of them? Shouldn’t they just speak up and say what’s up?
Jeff Wetzler
Well, what I would say is, it is what it is, and so if they’re telling you, if they are speaking up and volunteering it, cool. But if they’re not, then what are you going to do about it? And so, this is a book that’s trying to empower people to say, “If it’s not coming to you, or if you’re not sure it’s coming to you, you’re not the victim of that. You don’t have to be at the effect of someone else’s choices about what to share or not share. You can do something about it. You can invite it out of them. Not just for your own benefit, but for the benefit of both of you.”
Because when you give somebody the chance to tell you something that they’re thinking and feeling and not saying, that’s a gift to them too. You’re enabling them to be more self-expressed. You’re communicating to them that you value them, and you want to hear what they have to say, and usually it brings you closer.
Pete Mockaitis
Well, Jeff, I’d love it if you could share, if those are skeptical, like, “You know what, I think people around me, they pretty much speak up and tell me what’s on their mind”? Can you disabuse us of that notion? Any startling statistics or studies or stuff?
Jeff Wetzler
I’m happy to share that, yes. I mean, even in doing the research for this book, I came across fascinating research that, in organizations, just to take one study for example, over 85% of people, and this was across many different industries, admitted to remaining silent with their bosses about something that was seriously concerning to them. And three-quarters of those people said that their colleagues were also aware of it, and were not talking about it as well. And so, that’s in the direction of upwards to a boss.
But I’ll just give you another example. There was a fascinating study that was done at Harvard Business School by Nicole Abi-Esber and her colleagues, and they were pretending to go around and do a survey of people, but what they did instead is they put a very, like, blatant smudge on their face. In some cases, it was lipstick, some cases it was chocolate, some cases it was a marker smear, and they just counted up the percentage of the time that people said, “Hey, you got a smudge on your face. You could just wipe that off.” And can you guess what percentage of the time people did or didn’t tell the researchers?
Pete Mockaitis
You know, I’ve lived this experience, Jeff, so I’m guessing it’s pretty tiny. Lay it on us.
Jeff Wetzler
Well, 97% of people said nothing. Absolutely nothing. And yet later, 100% of the people said, “Yeah, I noticed that. It looked a little weird.” But 97% of the people said nothing. And I think to myself, if that’s just a smudge on the face that could be wiped off with one little pat, imagine what they’re not saying about the hole in your business plan, or your strategy, or the way that you’re impacting them, or how you’re demotivating them, things that are much higher stakes. So, it’s really all around us.
I’ll just give you one other study, which I thought was fascinating, which is that between 60% and 80% of people, depending on their background and demographics, have admitted that they actually don’t tell their own doctor something important about their health, because they either don’t want to waste the doctor’s time or be judged by the doctor.
And so, think about that. If this is information about our own health that could literally make us well, life or death, and we are not telling our own doctor because we don’t want to waste their time or be judged, imagine all the things that are so much less personally significant that people are not saying. So, those are a couple examples that help me appreciate how widespread this phenomenon that I call the unspoken is.
Pete Mockaitis
I love that. Thank you. And so, that notion right there, “I don’t want to waste their time, and I don’t want to be judged,” so two drivers. Because I was just going to ask, with the smudge or these scenarios, sort of why? What’s behind that? With the smudge, I’m thinking, “Well, I would like to think I’m in the 3%.” But if I wasn’t, if I didn’t speak up, I imagine it’d be because, it’s almost like, if you’re pretty sure, someone’s pregnant, I’m not going to risk it. Like, “Oh, boy, when is a little bundle of joy due?”
It’s like, “I’m not pregnant, I’m just overweight. Thank you for pointing that out.” Versus like a smudge on their face, it’s like, “Oh yeah, you got a little smudge.” Like, “Actually, that’s a birthmark. Thank you very much. It probably made me look weird.” I guess I fear being judged or some sort of negative reprisal.
Jeff Wetzler
That was the top reason, they did not want to embarrass the other person, because they were then asked, “Well, why didn’t you say something?” And they said, “Oh, I didn’t want to embarrass the other person.” And that is, in the research for this book, I identified what are the top barriers that keep people around us from telling us what they really think, feel, and know. The number one barrier is that they’re worried about the impact.
That can be the impact on us, they don’t want to embarrass us. The impact on them, they don’t want to look stupid, they don’t want to embarrass themselves, or the impact on our relationship. They don’t want to create tension in the relationship. So, that is one of the biggest barriers. But there are other barriers as well. Another barrier is they just don’t know how to say it. They don’t have the words to say it, or, mathematically, it doesn’t work.
And what I mean by that is, I discovered a neuroscience study that human brain thinks at about 900 words per minute, but the mouth can only get out about 125 words per minute. That means that less than 15% of what someone’s actually thinking, they’re telling you, if only because the math doesn’t work to get more out of it as well. So, there doesn’t even have to be any motivation to spare you embarrassment or whatever, they just can’t get it all out.
Pete Mockaitis
That’s right.
Jeff Wetzler
I was going to say, to me, one of the most significant reasons people don’t tell us things is they just don’t know we care. They’re not sure we’re interested. They don’t know that we actually value what they have to say, and so why bother?
Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, they don’t know we care. That’s well said. And so then, I’m curious, before we dig into the best practices for the asker, as we, holders of wisdom, that we are keeping silent to ourselves, any mindset shifts or reframes you might suggest for us so we pipe up more often to the benefit of others?
Jeff Wetzler
So, we don’t actually need to force the other person to do the work of asking us? Is that what you’re saying? From my perspective, I would offer, share it. The number of times that I have coached somebody on my team and they’ve said, “I’m really thinking this person needs to get better at X, Y, Z.” And I say to them, “Well, have you told that person?” And they say, “Do you think I should?” And I say, “Yeah, I really think you should.”
It is very common for me, when I coach people in my organization, they will say, “I’ve got this issue with so-and-so,” or, “I’ve got this idea for how so-and-so could do something differently.” And I’ll say to them, “Have you told that person?” And they’d say, “No, I haven’t. Do you think I should?” And I’d say, “Yeah, I think they would really value it.”
And so, a huge percentage of the time, the things that we’re withholding, we overestimate the degree to which that the other person might be fragile, or might not want to hear it, or might not be interested. So, my blanket advice is, consider if you were in the other person’s shoes, would you want them to tell you that if they were thinking that? And quite often you would want them to be thinking about that.
Now the advice has to be nuanced because there are power dynamics, there are dynamics based on other forms of difference, and sometimes the things that we’re thinking we’re right not to say because it’s going to make it worse. And so, the only other advice I would say is, if you think that actually saying the thing to the other person might actually be toxic or make it worse, talk to a friend first. Try it out. Get a little bit of context. Get a little bit of advice from a thought partner.
Pete Mockaitis
That’s good. All right. Well, before we delve into the depths of asking well, can you share what are the general maybe categories of wisdom or goodies that we’re bound to discover if we get in the practice of asking more often?
Jeff Wetzler
Yes, there are four. The first one is the challenges and struggles that someone else is facing. They are very unlikely to tell us that unless they think we really care and can help them. But imagine if you were a parent and your kid was really struggling with something and not telling you, or if you were a friend and your friend really that you cared about wasn’t doing this, or if you’re a manager.
When I was a leader, my first operating role where I was managing several hundred people in an organization, one of the teams that was under me was going through some major challenges, almost to the point where something like pretty visible and massive and high stakes up was about to blow up. And I had thought I was talking with them and coaching and asking questions all along, but they were just not telling me. And the issue was that they were dealing with challenges and they were coming up against things they didn’t know how to handle. They didn’t feel safe telling me, and so I didn’t find out. So, that’s one thing, we can understand what are the challenges and struggles that someone’s facing.
A second thing is, what do they really think about a topic or an issue or question? Maybe they really disagree with this plan that we’ve got. Maybe they think that there’s a better way forward. Maybe they’ve got some differing opinion. And often we will discover that they haven’t told us, but if we ask in the right ways, we can find out not only what they really think but I think, more importantly, where that comes from, what are the underlying reasons and values and perspectives and life experiences that got them to that view. So, that’s number two.
The third one is their observations and feedback for us. And so, literally, just two days ago, I was having lunch with a colleague, thought we had a great conversation, and I just said at the end of the lunch before we left, I said, “By the way, do you have any observations or feedback for me in my own work with this team, and my own leadership of the team?”
And she said to me, “Well, now that you asked, there is this one person on this team who’s really struggling with you for X, Y, Z reasons. I don’t think it’s your fault, but you need to know you’re having this impact on that person.” Had I not asked that question, I would have walked away from that lunch without any of that insight. Now I can go do something about it.”
And then the fourth thing is their best ideas, their most wild, crazy ideas that could be the thing that is actually the breakthrough for your team, for your relationship, for the innovation that you want to have, but that they often hold back because they might think it’s too crazy to say. So, those are four things that I think, personally, are like a treasure trove of insights and wisdom that’s all around us, waiting to be tapped into if we know how to do it.
Pete Mockaitis
I love that so much. And as you’re sharing this, what comes to mind is when I ask someone, maybe it’s about a product or service feature, quality thing, and I say, “Oh, so is it good at doing this?” And they say, “Well, we haven’t heard any complaints.” That never really sat very well with me. It’s like, “I don’t think you’re telling me much.” And as we have this conversation, like, “Yeah, that means almost nothing.”
Jeff Wetzler
That’s right. Because if people have complaints, and they don’t think you’re interested, they’re not going to be telling you.
Pete Mockaitis
Absolutely. And I’m thinking about some podcasts I’ve listened to that are just like brutally packed with ads, and then I look at their reviews, it’s like, “Yeah, surely there’s going to be a lot of people saying these ads are insane,” and then no one has spoken up. And it’s funny, it’s, like, how odd, and yet I’m not speaking up. I’m not taking the time. It’s like, “Dear, podcaster, allow me to pen this email to you.”
Jeff Wetzler
Exactly.
Pete Mockaitis
“Or raise this review,” and I’m just sort of moving on and doing something else.
Jeff Wetzler
It’s also why if you are leading a team, or in any kind of relationship really, and someone does take the risk to tell you those things, that’s a huge gift because it doesn’t often happen, and that’s something to appreciate and reward, too.
Pete Mockaitis
Absolutely. All right. Well, tell us, if we want to surface more of this wisdom, insight, goodness, you’ve got a five-step ask approach, how do we do that?
Jeff Wetzler
The ask approach is a science research-backed, practice-tested set of methods that when we put them together give us the greatest possible chance of really tapping into the wisdom and insights all around us. So, I’ll just run you through each of the five steps real quickly, and stop me if you want me to go deeper.
But number one is what I call choose curiosity, and this is the root of all asking. If we’re not genuinely curious, whatever questions we put out there are going to come across as inauthentic. But if we are curious, it really sends a message to the other person that creates a desire and motivation for them to share.
And I look at curiosity, not so much as a trait that someone has or doesn’t have, or a state of mind that we’re in, but as a choice that we can make, a decision that is always available to us to be asking ourselves one question when we’re interacting with someone. And that question is simply, “What can I learn from this person?”
If we put that question at the center of our minds, we’re far more likely to enter in a curious space. And I’m talking not about the kind of curiosity that’s like, “I’m curious about the history of Russia,” or “I’m curious about how trees grow.” It’s what I call connective curiosity. It’s curiosity about the thoughts and feelings and experiences of somebody else, and it’s the kind of curiosity that connects us to them. So, that’s number one, choose curiosity.
Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And I’m curious, if we’re not feeling that, but we’d like to, how can we get to conjure more of that up?
Jeff Wetzler
So, in this chapter of the book, I talk about a couple things. One is to become aware of how it is that we construct our view of any situation, which I call our story about the situation, in a way that’s so certain. And the way it typically works is that we will walk into any situation, and there’s, of course, thousands of things that we could pay attention to, what this person said or didn’t say, or what they’re wearing, or the temperature of the room, or any number of things, and we can only select just but a tiny slice of that, otherwise we would go crazy.
The problem is we do this in microseconds and we forget all the things that we’re not selecting, and we just think the thing that we’re selecting is the is the thing, is the totality of the reality, and then we zip up, what in the book, I talk about as our ladder of understanding, all the way to reaching a conclusion, which basically, quite often, reinforces the assumptions that we brought in the situation with in the first place that caused to select what we did, and so, we get stuck in this thing called a certainty loop.
And so, if we want to break out of that, what we need to do is inject some question marks into the story that we’re telling. The first question mark we can inject is, “What information was I paying attention to? And what information might I have been overlooking?” All of a sudden, it’s like, “Huh. Oh, you know what, maybe there was more to it that I wasn’t zeroing in on. Maybe something else was going on. Maybe the other person was up against something that I didn’t realize. Maybe I was contributing in some kind of way.”
And then the next question we can ask ourselves is, “What might be a different story that somebody else could tell, about this information, than I would tell?” Now, sometimes we need to, in fact, enlist other people, find a friend, and say, “Hey, this is how I looked at it. How would you look at this situation?” because curiosity is a team sport. It’s much easier when we can get other people to help provoke that kind of curiosity.
So, we can start to find how we construct that story, and then once we understand how our mind works, we can begin to put question marks in different parts of that story.
Pete Mockaitis
Oh, yes, I think that’s beautiful, because if we just know that we know, and of course, that’s how it is, and we’re certain, then there’s not much at stake within that curiosity, there’s not much motivation or need for it. And yet, I think it’s also fair to say that, boy, we humans are astoundingly overconfident in so many domains, it’s just I’m flabbergasted by it in terms of human nature, that’s one of the most intriguing. I’m sure I’m the same way. I’m not above it.
But when I hear people say things with such conviction and certainty about the future, I was like, “Wow, have you ever been wrong before? Tried to plan that didn’t work? Experienced the emotion of surprise? Well, then I’m surprised that you are so vastly certain that this future will play out precisely as you have said.”
Jeff Wetzler
Exactly. Exactly. And in the chapter, I also talk about things that zap all of our curiosity. I call them curiosity killers, one of which is being emotionally triggered. And so, I know for myself, when I get upset, when I get threatened, when I get stressed out, when I get pissed off at somebody, my curiosity just dies.
And so, I offer some strategies to say, “How might we flip that?” And instead of having our curiosity killed, could we use our emotions as cues to say, “This is the moment when I most need to be curious, when I’m actually feeling furious”? Just like the same way we would put a rubber band on the door to say, “Oh, yeah, this is going to remind me to do the dishes. I’m noticing that I’m feeling really righteous right now, really certain right now. All right, there’s something I’m not seeing. I got to get curious right now.”
Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And so, what’s our next step?
Jeff Wetzler
So, the next step is called make it safe. And this is a recognition that even if I am dying to know what you really think and know, if I’m super curious, if you don’t feel safe to tell me your truth, especially if it’s a hard truth, it doesn’t matter how curious I am. This is building off of the research by Professor Amy Edmondson on psychological safety, and it is really about lowering the barriers that other people feel.
And this is particularly important, by the way, if we’re operating across lines of difference, especially power differences. CEOs are notorious for being insulated from the truth, but that’s really the case for any leader where there’s any hierarchical situation. But other kinds of identity differences as well: race, class, gender, ability, etc. those can all contribute to a less safe situation. And so, making it safe involves a few things. One is choosing how and when we connect, creating connection with the other person.
And so, for the book, I actually interviewed some iconic CEOs and asked them, “How did you get away from being insulated from the truth? How did you get people to actually be honest with you?” And one of the patterns that emerged is they were very intentional about where and when and how they engage with people.
So, Bill George from Medtronic said, “I would never invite someone to my office and make them sit across the big CEO desk from me, and assume they’re going to feel safe to tell me their truth. If I really want to know the truth, we’re going to take a walk. I’m going to sit on the couch. We’re going to sit across from each other on a couch, or I’m going to go to their turf. I’m going to go on a ride along with them on a sales call, etc.” And so, they were really intentional.
And I think the same is true in our own lives. If I want to learn from my teenage daughter what’s really going on for her in school, and I say to her, when she gets home from school, “How was your day? What happened? What did you learn?” I get absolutely nothing. But if I follow her lead about where we should be connecting, we’re going to do it at 11:00 p.m. when she’s done with her homework, done talking with her friends, decompressed from the day, and it all comes out, and she doesn’t want to stop talking. And so, part of that is like the where and how of connecting.
Another part of it is if we want someone to open up with us, we’ve got to open up first, and that opening up could be, “I’m opening up about what I don’ t know and why I’m asking the question so you don’t have to guess at my agenda,” or, “I’m opening up about something that might feel vulnerable to me as well, so that I can show you that we can both do that.”
And then another part is what I call radiating resilience. And this is so important because it’s demonstrating to the other person, “I can handle your truth. If you tell me something, I’m not going to crumble. I’m not so fragile. And also, I’m not going to punish you or hold you responsible for my own reactions.”
Pete Mockaitis
And how does one radiate resilience?
Jeff Wetzler
It could be as simple as saying to somebody something like, “Hey, listen, if I were in your shoes, I might feel really frustrated at this moment, given what happened. What’s going on for you? Is that what you’re feeling?” That’s one way to do it. So, you’re basically normalizing it. And so, if they can then say, “Yeah, I am feeling kind of frustrated,” I’m showing them that that’s not going to bother me if they say that.
I had an investor in my current organization, Transcend, say to me, “Look, I’ve made the investment. I just want you to know, my expectation is that things are not going to go the way that you pitched them to me when I made the investment, because no one can predict the future. If you could predict the future, you’d be rich right now, and you’d be betting on horses and winning the lottery. And so, I’m actually interested in how are things going that are different than what you pitched and expected. And if you tell me everything’s on track, I’m going to be suspicious.” And all of a sudden, she said to me, she can handle any bad news that I might throw her away.
Pete Mockaitis
That’s nice. That’s nice. Or, imagine if people are telling stories of, “I heard this surprising, unpleasant feedback, and it was so usefully transformational for me.”
Jeff Wetzler
Totally, yes.
Pete Mockaitis
It’s like, “Oh, I appreciate this thing.”
Jeff Wetzler
And leaders can do that publicly, too, and they can invite that hard feedback publicly, and they can just acknowledge or reflect on it publicly, too.
Pete Mockaitis
All right. And I guess, also, there’s some body language signals in terms of if there’s scowling or nodding or shaking your head. It’s like, “Oh, it looks like you really hate hearing this. Maybe I’ll stop talking now.”
Jeff Wetzler
Yes. One of the people I interviewed for the book was a clinical psychologist who said that one of the top things that stop adolescents from telling their parents the truth is if their parents flip out and have strong reactions. And so, you shouldn’t necessarily be stone-faced, but monitor your reactions, because whether on the positive or the negative side, if you get really overreactive, it makes the other person feel like then they have to take care of you as opposed to continue to express what they have to say. And the same is true in business settings as well.
Pete Mockaitis
All right. And let’s hear the next step, pose quality questions.
Jeff Wetzler
So, the next step is really, what are the questions that we’re posing? And I distinguish between quality questions and crummy questions, because there’s a lot of questions out there that we ask that are not quality questions. They could be questions that I call sneaky questions, where you’re actually trying to get the other person to the answer that you want to get them to and manipulate them. They could be, like, attack questions like, “What the hell were you thinking?” So, there’s a whole bunch of questions that are not quality questions.
The definition of a quality question is simply a question that helps us learn something important from somebody else. And just the same way that a surgeon has all kinds of very precise scalpels and other tools to get at what they’re trying to get at, questions are the same exact way. We can use different kinds of questions depending on what we’re trying to learn from someone.
So, like what I shared at the very beginning of this conversation, when I said to that coworker of mine, “What are your reactions to what I had to say?” That’s a particular question strategy that I call requesting reactions that we can use to understand what we had to say land with someone and what we’d be missing. But there’s other categories of quality questions, for example, one that I call “invite ideas,” which is simply to say, “Hey, I got a dilemma. How might you think about this? What ideas do you have for how we could do something differently?” That’s another category of quality questions.
And then I would say another category is, this is one actually that I think is so underutilized but so powerful. I call it clear up confusion, which is just simply to say, “Hey, when you talk about expanding into new markets, what do you mean when you say expanding into new markets? When you talk about, ‘We got to get better at X,’ what does X mean to you?”
Because so often we’re using the same words but meaning different things and just pausing and saying, “Hey, what do we each mean by this?” can unlock so much insight.
Pete Mockaitis
Well, thank you, those are great questions. Could you also demo some of the crummy questions that are asked all too often?
Jeff Wetzler
Well, so one category of crummy questions is clumsy questions. And clumsy questions could be, for example, when someone says, “I think we ought to go in this direction, right?” I’m just adding “right.” It’s kind of like, well, it makes it very hard for someone to say “wrong,” or, “Am I right?” or that kind of thing.
Or, sometimes it’s clumsy just to layer three or four questions on top of one another, and then the other person is like, “Well, which one am I supposed to be responding to?” Or if they say yes, you don’t know which one they’re actually responding to. So, sometimes questions can be well-intentioned but just super clumsy as well.
And then there’s questions that are more like leading-the-witness kinds of questions, questions that a lawyer might put on, say, to somebody on a stand, where they’re trying to get them to admit, like, “Don’t you think you could’ve done it a little differently better this way?” Or, even like, “Have you considered seeing a therapist about that?” Where it’s like, “We got an opinion behind that question.” Those are all categories of kind of crummy questions.
Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. Boy, saying “right” after a statement is, ooh, that’s a tricky one. I don’t even know if I’m supposed to say anything at all. That’s how it feels on the receiving end.
Jeff Wetzler
Totally. Totally.
Pete Mockaitis
Like, “Is this just your vocal pause instead of ‘um,’ ‘like,’ ‘you know,’ you’re saying ‘right’”? One time I heard someone say, this is kind of insensitive, but I thought it kind of rang true to me. It’s like when someone says, makes a big statement, followed by “right,” what they’re really saying is, “Can I move on now, or do I have to slow down for you dummies?” “Okay, yeah, that’s how it feels.”
Jeff Wetzler
It can have all kinds of impacts like that. And I think the sad thing is that sometimes it’s also coming from a good place where they’re actually trying to check, “Does that resonate? Do you agree with me? Are we on the same page? Am I making any sense?” But it’s clumsy by just saying right, because it has all those unintended impacts.
Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, next up, step four, listen and learn.
Jeff Wetzler
So, once we ask the question, it all comes down to how well we listen to what people actually have to say to us, and most of us think that we are far better listeners than we actually are. And there’s a difference between trying to listen and actually hearing what someone’s saying or what they’re not saying.
For the book, I interviewed professional listeners, including world-class journalists. I remember one journalist, Jenny Anderson, saying to me that whenever she can, she will audio record her interviews with the people that she’s reporting on. And then when it’s over, she’ll go back and listen to it two, three, four times. And every time she listens to it, she’s astounded that she hadn’t heard that important thing in the previous time, or in the time that she was live.
And I think to myself, if a professional journalist doesn’t hear it the first time or the second time or even the third time, imagine how the rest of us mere mortals, who are not recording most of our conversations, how much we’re missing as well. And so, listening to learn, part of it is expanding the channels that we’re listening through. Many of us, myself included, tend to focus in on one channel of information, which is the content that someone’s saying, the facts, the data, the claims that they’re making.
But there’s two other really important channels to be listening through. The second one is the emotion. So, what are the feelings that someone is displaying or expressing in the conversation? And the third is action. What actions are they taking in the conversation? Are they repeating themselves? Are they constantly pushing back? Are they just going along with what we have to say? Those are all different examples of actions.
And so, just the same way that we can appreciate in so much greater richness a piece of music by being able to listen for the percussion and the vocals and the harmony and some other instrument, we can train our ears to also listen for content and for emotion and action, and then put them together and ask ourselves, “Are they consonant? Is there tension between those different things?” and really take in a much richer range of information.
One way to do that, and one thing I write about in the book to keep in mind for listening, is that often the first answer that someone gives to our question is not the most important thing they have to say about that question. Psychologists, clinical psychologists, have a term for this that they call the doorknob moment, where they’ve just been through a whole session with somebody of therapy, they’re at minute 49 out of 50, the person is about to get up, starts to put their hand on the doorknob to leave, and that’s when they actually say, “I’m thinking about leaving my wife,” or, “The government is investigating me,” or whatever.
And that would have been the most important thing to talk about during the whole session, but it only comes out at the last minute. And I think the same is true in many of our conversations. People can be thinking to themselves, working up the courage, “Do I have the courage to actually say this?” or, “How are they going to react?” or, even just trying to put the words together. And yet, if we ask a question, someone gives the answer, we think we know what they really think and we move on in the conversation, or we just react to it, quite often we are not actually getting it.
And so, an important way to overcome that when listening to someone, one thing is just to wait because more might come out. But a second is to just say, “Say more about that. Is there more? Anything else you have to say?” Sometimes in my own work conversations, if I’m brainstorming with someone, or asking them for thoughts or ideas, I’ll say, “Cool. Thank you. And what else?” And sometimes I’ll say, “I’m just going to keep saying to you ‘what else’ until you tell me that’s it, because each time I say what else you come up with an even better idea.”
And then, of course, you have to respect it when you’re done. But those are a couple of ways to really listen for what’s at the essence of what someone has to say.
Pete Mockaitis
All right. Great. And step five, reflect and reconnect?
Jeff Wetzler
Step five is my favorite because I am a nerd and junkie about learning. And step five is all about “How do we take everything we just heard and squeeze the learning out of it, convert conversation into actual insight?” And I talk about a method that I call sift and turn. So, the first part is sifting it, asking ourselves, “Of all the things I just heard, or maybe wrote down in my notes, what’s valuable? And what can I let go of?” because it’s not all equally valuable.
And so, sifting it is, first, just kind of getting down to “What are the nuggets?” And sometimes it’s helpful to sift it with the help of other people because we may bring our own biases or assumptions about what we filter in and filter out. So, we can ask other people who are in the conversation, “What did you think was most important there?” Or, we can show our notes to some friends, etc.
But then once we’ve sifted it and we know what the goal is, then it’s about turning it. And turning it, I talk about three reflective turns. The first reflective turn is to say, “From what I heard, how did that affect or challenge or confirm the story I have about this person and about the situation?” So, I call it story-level reflection. And then we can say, “Now, based on that, what steps can I take in this situation? Maybe I need to course-correct. Maybe I need to apologize. Maybe I need to double down on my direction,” whatever it may be, but really thinking through what are the steps.
And the third turn I call stuff-level reflection, and this is to say, “Is there some insight I had here, or something they said that might help me get new perspective on my own deeper assumptions or values or ways of being, something that’s deeper in the stuff that I have?” And so, we can walk through these three turns, and I think a lot of people think about reflection as some esoteric thing. But this is a very kind of simple and concrete and practical way to take a conversation and really get the most out of it.
But we can’t stop with just the reflection. It’s important to reconnect to the other person. That’s why I call it reflect and reconnect. And the reconnecting is simply to go back to someone, and say, “Here’s what I learned from our conversation, and here’s what I’m going to do about it.” Because oftentimes, people are thinking, “I don’t want to waste my time. Did I waste my time? Are they going to actually do anything with that? Did I waste my breath?”
When we go back and we say, “Here’s what I got from what you said, and here’s what I’m going to do about it,” we not only let someone know we value them, they didn’t waste their time. We also give them the chance to modify what we took away because maybe we took away the wrong lesson. But I think we vastly increase the chances that, in the future, they’re going to want to share more because they know it’s a good use of their time.
Pete Mockaitis
Lovely. Thank you. And I’m curious, if folks are jazzed, they’re going down this route of asking, asking away, and they find, “Huh, I’m not getting much when I ask,” in terms of it’s like, “Fine. Nothing much. Sounds good,” what do you recommend we do? I guess you’ve already pinpointed any number of the potential barriers or gaps that could be explaining things, but if we’re the asker and we find we’re not getting much on the other side, how would you recommend we approach diagnosing and addressing that?
Jeff Wetzler
I would go back to the make-it-safe step first, and I’d be asking myself, “To what extent does the person truly feel safe to share?” And I’d be asking, “Have I really created a connection of trust with that person? And are we doing this at a time and place where they really feel safe?” But then the second thing I talked about was opening up.
Part of opening up can be even being honest and saying, “I would have guessed that there might be more that you had to say on this. You might have more thoughts on this. And I’m wondering, is there anything more that you have to say about this? I’m also wondering, is there anything about how we’re having this conversation or what that I’m doing that might be making it harder for you to share if you do have it as well, and naming that and inquiring?”
Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, Jeff, tell me, anything else you want to make sure to mention before we shift gears and hear about some of your favorite things?
Jeff Wetzler
I think I would just summarize by saying, this problem of the unspoken is pervasive, it’s painful, but it is not inevitable. We can truly do something about it.
Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, now could you share a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?
Jeff Wetzler
Yes, one of my favorite quotes comes from…do you know Bill Nye the Science Guy?
Pete Mockaitis
Yeah.
Jeff Wetzler
So, Bill Nye says, “Everybody you will ever meet knows something you don’t.” And to me, that really sums up a lot of what this book is about, which is that I want to understand what is that thing that somebody else knows that I don’t. And it’s a reminder to myself, there is something I can learn from everybody.
Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite book?
Jeff Wetzler
There is a mentor of mine named Diana Smith, who just actually, two days ago, released a book called Remaking the Space Between Us. And it talks about a lot of the application of many of the similar ideas to what’s in this book, but applying it to our democracy and our society. And it talks about how we have grown distant from one another, and how we’re complicit in that, and how we can reconnect with one another, Remaking the Space Between Us.
Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And a favorite tool?
Jeff Wetzler
I, actually, about nine months ago, started using, this may sound a little dorky, but I started using a to-do list program called Things. I don’t know if you’ve heard of it or not. But when writing and launching a book, it is amazing how many moving pieces there are, and how many work streams there are, and this tool called Things, literally, helps me get my head around every bit of it, but then I can also only have things show up that I need to do on the day I need to think about it, and the rest of it can be in the background. I don’t even have to think about it. And that has, I think, been a lifesaver for me.
Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite habit?
Jeff Wetzler
One of my favorite habits, you saw my dog make a cameo appearance earlier in this podcast, I spend probably three to five minutes every morning when I get up, my dog is usually up before I am, and she just jumps all over me, and I lie down on the couch and I just let her sort of like stand on top of me as if she is, like, one dominated our relationship, and I just get to pet her and play with her, and it’s a kind of a center of attention for our whole family. And so, I guess that counts as a habit and I enjoy it every morning.
Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And is there a key nugget you share that really seems to connect and resonate with folks; they quote back to you often?
Jeff Wetzler
Well, this is one that I learned from Kim Scott, who wrote Radical Candor, but I have found that it resonates and people often repeat it back, which is, “When you’re furious, get curious.” That’s the time when we most need to get curious, and I think the rhyming just helps it stick a little bit more.
Pete Mockaitis
All right. And if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?
Jeff Wetzler
www.AskApproach.com is the website. I’m also on LinkedIn, Jeff Wetzler. There’s an Ask Diagnostic on the website, or you can get to it at Assessment.AskApproach.com, and that really helps you understand how well do you learn from people around you, and which parts of the Ask Approach are you strong at, and which ones do you need to get better at. And then we’re on Instagram at Ask Approach.
Pete Mockaitis
All right. And do you have a final challenge or call to action for folks looking to be awesome at their jobs?
Jeff Wetzler
My call to action would be to approach every single person with the question in your mind, “What can I learn from this person?”
Pete Mockaitis
All right. Thank you. Jeff, this was fun. I wish you much access to hidden wisdom.
Jeff Wetzler
Thank you. I wish the same for you and for all your listeners.
