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926: The Five Codes that Make and Break Trust with Jeremie Kubiceck

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Jeremie Kubicek shares how to end misunderstandings with the five codes of communication.

You’ll Learn:

  1. The root of every misunderstanding
  2. The simple trick to consistently meet people’s expectations
  3. How to repair damaged relationships  

About Jeremie

Jeremie Kubicek is a powerful communicator, serial entrepreneur and content builder. He creates content used by some of the largest companies around the globe found in the books he has authored: The 100X Leader; 5 Voices, 5 Gears; the National Bestseller, Making Your Leadership Come Alive; and The Peace Index. His new book, The Communication Code, co-authored with his business partner, was released last November.

Jeremie is the Co-Founder of GiANT, a company that certifies coaches and consultants that serve companies and their employees. Jeremie has started over 25 companies while living in Oklahoma City, Moscow, Atlanta and London.

Resources Mentioned

Jeremie Kubicek Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis

Jeremie, welcome back to How to be Awesome at Your Job.

Jeremie Kubicek

So good to be here. Always good to be with you, Pete.

Pete Mockaitis

Well, I want to hear about your book The Communication Code. You’ve done a lot of research on humans, relating, communicating, interacting. Any particularly noteworthy discoveries or learnings you have on all these lately?

Jeremie Kubicek

Yes, I do. In fact, we basically have a tool that we’ve used for eight years in our GIANT business, our community. But I’ve just done a lot of research around the idea of, “Why do people miscommunicate? And then, “How does miscommunication affect relationships? And what does it actually do?”

And so, the big aha that Steve Cockram and I had in this is every communication has an expectation attached to it. And every expectation has a code word, a clue. And if you can figure out the code word of what the other person is inferring or expecting, you’ll unlock that communication, that transmission of communication will get unlocked.

And when that happens over and over again, you’ll build healthier relationships, you’ll build more camaraderie, you’ll lower miscommunication, which will impact the other person. And so, how many people have relationships in their life?

Pete Mockaitis

I do.

Jeremie Kubicek

Yeah, everyone. And how many want those to be the best it possibly can be? Well, if that’s the case, wouldn’t it be good if you knew what the code words were? And wouldn’t it be great if you could figure them out before they told you, or the other person could tell you what the code word is? And that’s what we figured out.

We saw, like, “Oh, my goodness, there are five code words. If you figured out those five code words, it will unlock that communication, that one transmission of communication, which could then unlock the relationship.”

Pete Mockaitis

That’s so cool. And what’s coming to mind for me is I remember I had a really sweet woman, and mentor, her name is Marilyn Holt. Shoutout to Marilyn. And she just thought it would be kind of fun to get some students together to meet up with this billionaire friend of hers. She just thought, “Oh, I think you’ll probably learn some things from him, have some fun.” She’s like, “Hey, Ron, I think it might be great to get some students that I’m working with together to meet with you.”

And so, he just said immediately, “What do they want?” And she said, “You know, Ron, I’m sorry. You probably have everybody always wanting something from you. We just thought it’d be fun to get together and see a little bit about your story and journey, and have a cool experience for these kids.” Like, “Oh,” so he’s like surprised, like, “Oh, yeah, okay, let’s do that.” Because we do, we have this expectation which is formed by any number of things, and part of it could just be what most people tend to want when a stranger is calling up a billionaire.”

Jeremie Kubicek

That’s right.

Pete Mockaitis

And he’s like, “Oh, that’s probably what these guys want, too, is something in the world of what I could do for them with, I don’t know, jobs, or internships, or investments, or something.”

Jeremie Kubicek

And, in our case, we figured out this the really hard way. Steve Cockram is my business partner, he’s British. I was in London, we were meeting, I had just celebrated closing a strategic partnership, it was a pretty sizable partnership, and I was super excited about it. And I’m like, “Dude, we got to go to lunch. I’ve got so much to share.” That was a code, that was a clue, of like, “I want to celebrate.”

We get to lunch, and I start sharing the details of what I was excited about. And, again, I’m expecting celebration, high five, “Let’s have a great time. Let’s celebrate in this for a minute,” and he begins to critique. And the critique was, “Well, why did you do it that way? That’s not how you said we were going to do it. And what about this? And didn’t they provide this? And haven’t you…?” And I start turning green and red, Hulking out.

And, all of a sudden, I’m like, “What are you doing? Why can’t we just celebrate?” and I freak out. And he’s like, “Why didn’t you tell me you wanted to celebrate?” I’m like, “Wasn’t it obvious I wanted to celebrate?” And what we realized was, in this whole encounter, that Steve’s tendency is to critique in the form of collaboration. He wants to collaborate but it can come across as critique. My aha was I wanted to celebrate, or I wanted to at least clarify beforehand, and that was the game that we’re playing. I was trying to express my celebration, and he was bringing his full critique, and we missed, and we realized, “Oh, my goodness, how many times does that happen?”

So, I took this executive team recently through this exercise. They’re all married. I said, “Think about your spouse and what they tend to communicate, and what do you receive, and what do you communicate, and what do they receive?” And eight out of eight missed it. They wanted different things, “I want care,” or, “I want you to clarify.” “What do you get?” “I get critiqued or collaboration” “I want collaboration and celebration but I only get care and I don’t really need that.”

In each case, they missed. So, then I reversed it, and I said, “What about you? What do you tend to do to them? And what does your spouse want?” And only seven out of eight were wrong. One of them got it right. My point was, “How many people are missing it every single day?” So, what happens when you miscommunicate? You begin to put up walls. You begin to move back. You pull away. You begin to infer, “Oh, yeah, you know, Pete. That’s just how he is.”

And then we work around people because we know how they’re going to respond. And then, over time, relationship expectations go down. You begin to not expect much and just kind of live with it.

Pete Mockaitis

Yeah. It is funny how we do make these assumptions, like, “Wasn’t it obvious I wanted to celebrate?” And it’s obvious in our own minds and yet we can get it wrong all the time. So, lay it on us, you’ve got five flavors here, each one starts with the letter C. Can you start by giving us what are those five C’s?

Jeremie Kubicek

Yeah, so celebrate is the desire to express what you’re excited about. Care is the need for wanting to make sure that you’re taken care of. And clarify, clarity is really to clarify, “Is this what you’re saying, Pete? Let me make sure before I go in another direction. Let me make sure that I understand what you’re saying.” And then collaborate is the idea that you want me to help you. We want to work on this together. And then critique is you’re going to hold something up, I’m going to make it better. I’m going to show you where it’s wrong so that it can be right.

So, if you think about those five, that most of our interactions, the expectations are tied to those. So, if I’m going, like Steve example, I wanted to celebrate, and I wanted him to either clarify but he said, “You didn’t tell me. Why didn’t you just tell me?” And I’m like, “Why didn’t you just get it? It was obvious.” So, in this case, now I will go to someone, like in that case, I would say this, “Hey, Steve, I am so excited. I want to celebrate a few things. So, today is all about celebration, but then if you don’t fully get it, clarify. Ask me any questions. That’d be awesome.”

And I’ve given him two codes but the main one is, “I’m here to celebrate.” Or, he might come to me, as he does often, he goes, “Hey, Jeremie, I want to collaborate. I really value your input on such and such. I know you care for me. I’m not really here to celebrate. You can clarify if you want, but I really want to collaborate.” I’m like, “Cool. Got it.” So, now, I’ve been given the open door. I’ve been given the code word, and so I should be able to meet expectations. When we don’t meet expectations, that’s when all friction comes into relationships.

Pete Mockaitis

Yeah, this is good. And so then, collaboration, it seems like…well, I guess they’re all pretty big categories. Collaboration seems like just about anytime we’re trying to do a thing, it would fall into the collaboration zone, like, “I want to sell you something,” or, “I want to buy something from you,” or, “I want to figure a thing out together.” Then all that’s in the collaboration zone.

Jeremie Kubicek

That’s right. And it doesn’t have to be so rhythmic where you have to say it every single time. You get good at it over time. I can now figure out expectations. By even asking a few clarifying questions, I can figure out what they need. But sometimes with my wife, we’re set in a hot tub and we’ll talk at night, and it’ll be like, “So, what do you need tonight?” And she’ll be like, “I just need you to listen.”

That’s care. Got it. That means she doesn’t need my critique, she doesn’t need any collaboration, she doesn’t want to celebrate. She just wants me to listen. That’s care. So, showing her care is different. Now, her showing me care might be a little different than hers. I need to talk out loud so I need her to listen in a different way, so there’s nuances to it but we get the gist of it.

But to start out, Pete, if you and I were in a meeting, you’re like, “Hey, Jeremie, I really trust you. I’m almost finished with this presentation. Critique it, man. Blow holes in it so that I can make this really, really tight.” Great. You gave me the communication code to know what to do.

Pete Mockaitis

And it is so handy when you know. It’s funny, I think critique is among the most dangerous. It’s like, “I am not looking for a critique.” And we’ve had some other guests say that one of the best things you can do when you’re offering feedback is to, first, ask for permission to provide some feedback, or I guess you’re getting clarification there.

Jeremie Kubicek

That’s it.

Pete Mockaitis

It’s like, “Oh, you know, I’ve got some ideas for improvement. Would you like me to share them?” And then for the other person really has permission to say, “You know, not today. We’re not in the headspace for that, but other days you are.” And it can be so valuable. Like, when you’re really wide open for it, it’s so huge.

I’m thinking about I was listening to Mr. Beast, the famous YouTuber, as to how he got so huge. And he said, “Oh, I had a number of friends and we would always just get together. We would just roast each other’s videos.” And I like he used the word roast because roast is sort of like a funny thing, comedians do a roast. So, it almost sounds fun and celebratory, and yet what it consists of is being told all the things you’re doing wrong in your videos and how you can make them much better.

And so, you’re right. If you’re not feeling that, it’s just like you’ll get way mad. You’ll get way mad at that person, like, “Hey, shut up, jerk. I’m out of here.”

Jeremie Kubicek

It’s not helpful. Right, because what happens is critique is different than being critical. Critical is when it’s negative, “So, you’re against me.” Well, if we’ve done communication really well, if we’ve used a communication code, we’ve built up really good communication, expectations are being met, that means I trust you. I know that you’re for me, you’re not against me. If I know that you’re for me, I’m probably going to be more open to your critique than if I feel that you’re against me, it’s going to feel like you’re critical and you’re always critical. So, constructive criticism, those words don’t go together.

It also, though, plays out to different personality types. So, we have something, I think, last time I shared on the five voices, which is our personality system that is so, so scalable and potent, but we have thinkers and feelers. Well, thinkers, the thinker voices are going to be pioneers and guardians. They’re going to be way more open to critique than the feelers, the nurturers, the connectors, some of the creatives, because they live in logic, and they live in just the thinking mindset, so they’re fine, “Sure, shoot holes in it.”

So, they go, “Hey, what do you think of my idea, Pete?” and they shoot holes in it, and they go, “Okay, great.” They leave and then they come back, “What do you think now?” “Oh, it’s great.” “Perfect. Thank you.” The feelers take an idea, and they go, “Hey, Pete, what do you think of my idea?” and they put it right over their heart. And, all of a sudden, you shoot at it, and then there’s blood, and they’re like, “Oh, dude, why did you put it over your heart? What were you thinking? Move it.”

And so, the feelers have a harder time, and I’m one, have a harder time. We have a hard time with anything that feels negative towards us. So, that means we have to really build up the right rapport, the right relational trust with another person, and that takes time. And that’s what we’ve done, is we just built tools that make leaders more relationally intelligent so that they can not miss. They can actually hit what the expectations of the other person are.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. Well, Jeremie, this is sort of your knack, is you present something, it’s simple, it’s like, “Well, of course. I should just do that and we’ll all be better off. Cool. Cool. Cool.” Tell us, Jeremie, what are some the nuances, or the tricky parts, or the sticking points, like, “That sounds easy enough. How about we all just go do this, declare what C we’re in, we’re looking for?” Where do things go wrong?

Jeremie Kubicek

Yeah, it goes wrong because you need to think about your past. Every single person has a past with you. So, what’s it been like on the other side of you for the last five years or the last 25 years? So, it’s one thing if you’re like, “Oh, great. Figure out a new technique. Here we go,” and I start practicing it on someone. Like, well, wait. They’ve experienced you in a negative power test. They’ve experienced your domination where you brought low support and high challenge to them. You’ve been critiquing them for 15 years.

You can’t just change overnight. You actually have to get through a process of like, “Oh, my gosh, Pete. I’ve read this book, and I think I’ve realized I’ve been dominating. I didn’t mean to. I’ve been critiquing the entire time. I’m so sorry.” Stage one. Stage two is, “I’m going to practice The Communication Code.” But you’re going to have to do it for a long time for them to realize this is the new norm.

Because if you’re in a negative power, if you’re in a negative situation with someone, then it’s been an abuse of power, an abuse of your personality, abuse of your communication style, and that’s worn the other person out, and maybe their walls are so high. So, you got to let them drop their walls a little bit so they’ll actually begin to trust you again. That’s a nuance that people have to realize. If they want to experience true relational change, then they have to go back in the past and clean it up, which can be hard.

Pete Mockaitis
So, could you maybe give us a sample of what that conversation might sound like in practice?

Jeremie Kubicek

Yeah.

Jeremie Kubicek

“So, Pete, man, I’ve been reading this concept called The Communication Code, and I think I’ve realized in the first two chapters, it talked all about the negative power test. I think sometimes my personality is so overbearing that I feel like I probably don’t give you the chance to breathe or talk, or I think I’ve noticed also that you probably feel my critique more than you feel my celebration. Is that true?” And then I give you a chance to share.

And if you’re like, “Oh, yeah, that’s it.” It’s like, “Oh, my gosh, I’m so sorry, man. I probably didn’t realize that was just naturally happening. So, if you’ll give me a chance, I’m just going to work on some things. So, I’m going to ask you a question whenever we get together. What do you need right now? Do you want celebration? Do you want care? Do you want clarity? And then I’m going to start there. If you want me to collaborate or critique, I’ll let you tell me but I’m going to try to work on clarifying first or celebrating a little bit even though I’m not very good at it.” That’s an example.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. Yeah, that seems like it’d be lovely to hear on the receiving end of that.

Jeremie Kubicek
That would be nice.

Pete Mockaitis

You might be met with some skepticism, like, “Okay, Jeremie, let’s see how long this will last till you’re onto your next flavor of the month.” So, you might get some skepticism but it’ll be a hard time imagining a strong negative reaction. There’s a scene from Brooklyn Nine-Nine which cracks me up where they get an amazing new captain that they’re skeptical of, and they say, “Oh, she wants to meet with us and talk about our goals and our strengths. Like, what’s she up to? This can’t be good.”

And so, that makes me chuckle in the professional development space. But tell us, how are some ways that might be perceived negatively that we should be on the lookout for?

Jeremie Kubicek

Yeah, so it’s what you said, it’s being consistent. Consistency is the key to great leadership. If you’re consistent, and people know this isn’t the flavor of the month, this is something that you’re doing, and then you’re using the language consistently, then you’re going to probably work around it. We use language and tools at GIANT that get embedded in the water system. And over time, it creates common objective language versus subjective, subjectivity.

And that common objective language is a real source of help. So, that’s what we’ve experienced is if you can do that really well, just by practicing, that’s it. Just keep being consistent. And then, over time, it will break the other person down, and then they’ll start using the language. And it’s not crazy, right? We’re saying people have expectations. What if you met their expectations? See how that relationship will change.

Pete Mockaitis

Yeah, all right. Well, I’m curious then, if folks feel a little weird using the lingo, it’s like, “Jeremie, do I have to use the words care, celebration, collaboration, critique, and clarification? It doesn’t feel like me.” Are there any other ways you recommend flexing or adapting it?

Jeremie Kubicek

So, the way that I do it, I do it now. I’ll meet with somebody, and they haven’t read The Communication Code, or they don’t know the language. I’ll just ask, like, “Hey, can I ask you a few clarification questions?” if I feel like it needs to. And they’re like, “Yeah, yeah, sure.” “Great. So, in this case, are you saying this or this? Because I want to know, do you want me to…? Like, I’m ready to celebrate. Or are you looking for me to collaborate?” So, you can naturally weave it in almost like a decision tree, “Are we going to go left or are going to go right?”

So, by weaving it in naturally, it didn’t have to be crazy. If you sense someone just needs you to listen, you don’t have to say, “Do you need me to care?” You can just say, “Hey, do you just want me to listen? Would that be the most helpful?” “Yeah, it’d be great.” Because you have to train other people because they’re not used to sharing expectations either. Think of it, most of us don’t know how to share our own expectations. So, you have to give expectation and you have to pull expectation, and that’s ultimately what we’re trying to get people to do.

Pete Mockaitis

Now, I’m curious, when you mentioned one flavor of caring is listening, are there a few core subtypes or subcategories you might put in each of these?

Jeremie Kubicek

It’s based on personality. So, like a pioneer, which is a thinker, they would be someone, like in a Myers-Briggs, an ENTJ. They’re very type A driven, care for that person. It might mean that you’re listening to them and being a sounding board, and giving them a chance to vent or share their frustration. It’s getting the poison out so they don’t blow someone else up. That’s actually showing care.

Very different then to a nurturer because they want you to care for the things they care about. So, it’s just the idea of understanding care. And in the book, I go through each chapter. So, care, if you don’t know how to care, and here’s all the nuances, here’s all the subparts of care. The same with celebration. If you don’t know how to celebrate, what is a celebration? What’s it not? It’s not people looking for a parade. Just teaching people how to do these things that aren’t natural.

Pete Mockaitis

I’d love to get your hot take on sort of a couple of these details in terms of what is something that’s really high impact for folks, and that they tend to get wrong a lot?

Jeremie Kubicek

It’s interesting, and I think if you’re listening to this, you probably know this too. It’s almost like this Brooklyn Nine-Nine thing. There’s a cynicism that’s in culture. And when people hear buzzwords, they’re like, “Oh, he wants to celebrate. Oh, what does he want? Does he want us to throw…?” And they go off on these long tangential misnomers. And it’s like, “No, the guy wanted to high-five.”

So, here’s what we realized. There’s a custom communication code. There’s a general communication code, “Okay, hey, I want to celebrate or care, whatever.” But when I’m talking directly to Steve, for instance, and he’s talking to me, I can now tell him exactly what I want. Whenever we meet, “I want some care because you live across the pond. It can feel transactional if we’re only doing Zoom. Let’s text each other. Like, how is your weekend? How is your sports teams?” It’s just that we’ve been business partners for 10 years, so let’s make sure there’s some camaraderie. That’s showing care for me.

Then I want to be able to celebrate. But when I celebrate, I don’t want to celebrate me. I want to celebrate us. So, it’s nuanced, it’s specific of each word. I want to celebrate the whole dream team, the Avengers we’ve put together. I’m not looking for a personal celebration. That’s the way I roll. So, that’s what it means to being in third, and fourth, and fifth.

He did the same thing, he goes, “Jeremie, I want to collaborate with you. I want you to know you have freedom every single time to collaborate, which means I want to collaborate with you, too.” So, we went through each of them and we actually created a custom communication code. Oh, my goodness, the depths of like, “Oh, that’s what you want.”

So, now, imagine every marriage, every partnership, every friendship, every coworker, those that you spend the most amount of time with, let’s say the top three to five people. Imagine if you knew the custom communication code for everyone of those people. The chances of you communicating well will go up. The chances of your relationship to thrive goes up.

Pete Mockaitis

Yeah, that’s intriguing. And I’m thinking about with my wife in terms of critique. It’s like there’s a time and a place and a zone in which I really am, I’m eager, I’m hungry to hear, to learn, to understand. And I’ve even asked explicitly, directly, “What can I do that will help you feel most loved?” which is funny because that’s me. That’s my heart as a husband and as a strategy consultant at the same time.

Because it’s true, “We have finite time, energy, attention, resources, like I really do want to know what’s going to have the most bang for the buck, but it’s because I care about you, not because I’m an optimizing robot.” So, there are times in which I’m really hungry to know that, and there are times in which, like, “You know what, I’m really not in the mood to hear that right now. I don’t recall asking for your input on how I made this popcorn.”

Jeremie Kubicek

That’s right, yeah.

Pete Mockaitis

And so, yeah, I guess there’s an example right there with my communication code for a critique, is I don’t want the critiques to come unexpectedly, impromptu, out of nowhere. I want them to come in a, “Hey, let’s do some reflection about where we can improve and grow and do better.” And then it’s like, “Game on, yeah.” I’m anxious, I’m raring to go in those contexts. But when I’m thinking about something else, I have a set of expectations, I’m quite irritated by it.

Jeremie Kubicek
That’s right. Yeah, you just said it. And the better you get at it, the more you try, it becomes natural. It doesn’t become so rhythmic. And so then, it just kind of weaves itself in. And then sometimes I’ll say to my wife, “Hey, remember I’m needing a little clarity before a critique.” So, now I’m just giving a little hint, like, “Oh, yeah, yeah, you’re right. You’re right. Okay. So, let me ask it again.”

Because, again, it comes back to, “Are you an external processor or an internal processor?” So, that you’ve got extroversion and introversion, you’ve got thinking and feeling. All of these dynamics are at play between two people. Add in kids, add in a team, now the complexity is there. And if you can create common language, and you start realizing every communication has an expectation, and every expectation has a code, “Got it. What is the code?” Solve the code, solve the relationship.

It does not always work out that way when it comes to mother-in laws, or people who have narcissism, or other issues, but it’s still the idea that it makes relationships better.

Pete Mockaitis

And I like the way you said that in terms of, “Hey, it’s a reminder. I’m looking for this and then that,” which comes across as much more friendly than, “Um, I think what you meant to say was this.” It seems like you can provide that input in a very gentle, kind, friendly, non-accusative kind of a way which will, hopefully, be received fairly well most of the time, I’m guessing.

Jeremie Kubicek

Totally. That’s right.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. Well, Jeremie, tell me, anything else you want to make sure to mention before we hear about some of your favorite things?

Jeremie Kubicek

I think we’re great. It’s been fun to be with you, Pete. Appreciate it.

Pete Mockaitis

Oh, yeah. You, too. All right. Well, let’s hear about a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Jeremie Kubicek

“Don’t despise small beginnings.”

Pete Mockaitis

And a favorite study or experiment or bit of research?

Jeremie Kubicek

I’m doing research right now on fear-based performance. And what fear-based performance does inside teams, organizations, but also fear-based living, and what it does to your body, and where most of our health problems are coming from, from heart attacks, to arthritis and so forth. It’s very interesting.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. And a favorite book?

Jeremie Kubicek

The book I’ve re-read, it was The Second Mountain by David Brooks. It was a really good book. The concept is there’s a first mountain that everyone is trying to climb. And most people, once they get to the top, they’re like, “Was that it?” And then there’s a second mountain. It’s maybe my age. I’m 52. I believe that 55 to 72 are the influence years of life. For a productive individual, those are the most influential years. So, I’m preparing for that 55 to 72 run. And The Second Mountain gave me a really good context for that.

Pete Mockaitis

And a favorite tool, something you use that helps you be awesome at your job?

Jeremie Kubicek

I do this thing every day, it’s called The Examen. I do it at 5:30 every day. On the way home, usually from work or wherever I’m at, and what I do is I do three things. I look backwards, and go, “What was I grateful for today?” I’ll text that person usually. Second, “Where was I off? Where was I not at peace today?” And I radically go after it, “What was my tendency? What’s my pattern here? What happened? Why did I wake up on the wrong side of the bed?”

And by doing that, I’ve figured out I have 32 tendencies, and they’re interesting. Being defensive, oversharing, tendencies to namedrop, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And what it’s done for me is it’s allowed me my evenings to go better because I keep short accounts, and I don’t let things build up any more like I used to.

So, every single day, I’m kind of like, “Yup, good. I’ve put that to bed.” And then I think about my schedule the next day, “Am I ready for it and prepared for it?” That’s the last thing I do. So, that has helped me tremendously be at peace at night, sleep better, I wake up more energized. That’s my tool.

Pete Mockaitis

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

Jeremie Kubicek

Yeah, it’s something I always say to people, and it’s really about limiting beliefs, and it’s, “Who says you can’t?”

Pete Mockaitis

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

Jeremie Kubicek

JeremieKubicek.com. J-E-R-E-M-I-E-K-U-B-I-C-E-K.com. That’s my speaking site. Or, GIANT Worldwide, so GiantWorldwide.com is what our main business is.

Pete Mockaitis

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

Jeremie Kubicek

Yeah, I think for each of you who are learning today, it’s like realize communication is a process, it’s a journey. It’s not a one-time transaction. If you want to get really, really good at it, you’ll start to think about the other person more than just yourself. What is it that they need right now? What are they wanting? What’s the expectation? Use the code words. When you do, you’ll start seeing breakthroughs happen. And just keep staying consistent at it, and that’s what I’m excited about.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. Jeremie, thank you. This is fun. I wish you many lovely communications decoded.

Jeremie Kubicek

Thank you, mate. Appreciate you, Pete.

924: Enhancing Your Most Valuable Career Asset: Coachability with Jacquelyn Lane

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Jacquelyn Lane shows why being coachable is the key to career progression–and how to improve your coachability.

You’ll Learn:

  1. The 4 key elements of coachability
  2. How to reframe how you view feedback
  3. What to do when you’re running low on motivation

About Jacquelyn

Jacquelyn Lane is the president of the 100 Coaches Agency, codesigner of their proprietary curation process and relationship-first philosophy, and the Wall Street Journal bestselling author of Becoming Coachable. She has been with 100  Coaches Agency since its founding and is a critical pillar of the 100 Coaches Community. Jacquelyn comes to the world of executive coaching through her previous roles in the energy industry and lifelong commitment to improving the lives of all people by elevating the quality of leadership.

Resources Mentioned

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Jacquelyn Lane Interview Transcript

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

Jacquelyn Lane
Thanks so much for having me, Pete. Happy to be here.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m excited to dig into some of the wisdom you got in your book Becoming Coachable: Unleashing the Power of Executive Coaching to Transform Your Leadership and Life. But first, could you open us up with a really powerful story about how being coachable was really impactful for somebody?

Jacquelyn Lane
One of my favorites is of our friend Hubert Joly. And Hubert Joly was brought in as the CEO of Best Buy at a time when Best Buy was fully expected to go bankrupt. I’m sure a lot of people remember Circuit City had gone out of business just a year or two before, and Hubert was one of those people who had just come from McKinsey, he’d been a McKinsey consultant and then he’d been the CEO of another company called Carlson.

This is self-described, by the way. He described himself as being someone who had all the right answers, who knew how to do things, and that was a lot of his job, especially as a consultant, was to be the person with the answers. But he realized very quickly with Best Buy that he didn’t have all the answers and that he was going to need some help.

Luckily for him, he had Marshall Goldsmith as his coach at the time, and they decided to go against some of the conventional wisdom, which was, at that time, to cut headcount, to right-size the company, reduce expenses, and try to save it in any way they could. But, instead, he realized that the frontline workers probably had some answers.

So, he says his favorite thing that Marshall taught him was that he would go into a store, and say, “Hello, my name is Hubert Joly. I’m the CEO of this company and I need your help.” And in that moment, he became very open to other people having the answers, including, again, these frontline workers, people that he wouldn’t normally have gone to. And they did have a lot of suggestions for him about how to compete with Amazon, and what they were hearing and seeing from customers.

And, ultimately, he took their feedback and advice. He right-sized the company, or actually they didn’t actually reduce any headcount because Hubert came up with a term, he said, “We can’t afford to reduce heart-count. And heart-count is really the heart of our company. That’s how we’re going to turn things around.” And it was this amazing story where, over the course of, I think, five or six years, the company grew 330% at a time when the S&P 500 remained almost flat.

So, it’s this amazing turnaround story all because he was open to being coachable, leaned into the process, and made real change.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s good, “I am the CEO and I need your help.” That sounds about as coachable as you can get right there in terms of “I am almost desperate in terms of, seriously, you’ve got the stuff.”

That’s awesome, Jacquelyn, about the Best Buy CEO there.

I’m curious if you have another story about someone who’s perhaps more in the middle of their career.

Jacquelyn Lane
So for the sake of anonymity, I’m going to change some details of the story and just say that this is a mid-level leader at a major manufacturing company. And, we were approached about finding a coach for him.

There were some things that he was struggling with, where he just wasn’t listening to feedback particularly well. Some people on his team were either a little bit afraid of him, certainly intimidated by him, just had this attitude that he knew best. And, I remember when we talked to the head of HR, and she told us about him, she mentioned that this is a great guy that we would love to see promoted in the organization, but the reality is he’s burning people out.

And he’s making a little bit of a hostile work environment for them. And so unfortunately, if these things don’t change, this could be the end of his career. Right? We may need to actually get rid of him. Even though we would love to be able to promote him. Because we think that he could be someone who, let’s say, could be a major executive in the future.

And, she was skeptical, certainly, that he was going to be open to being coached. But again, he really started leaning into that process and recognized that he had to make a change. And he got excited about the process of making a change. Because he started working with a coach who was really fantastic and I think inspired him and painted this picture for how life could be different.

And so they started working on some things together. And amazingly, within three months, he got one promotion. And that was great, and they came back to us again, and three months after that, so six months have elapsed, and he got a second promotion, and they said, the head of HR said, “You would not believe the transformation, not only has he completely changed the way that he interacts with his team, they’re all, gelling as a team so much better, and it’s so much healthier, but he attributes all of this change and growth to getting a coach, and so the entire organization is now saying this is an amazing transformation.

We’re interested in being coached as well,” and she said, “But the other thing I didn’t tell you six months ago when we first talked was that there was someone else in the organization that had a very similar situation, and it was very clear that he could also benefit from some coaching, but he didn’t really want to get a coach.”

And so unfortunately now, six months later, not only has this other guy gotten two promotions in rapid succession, but that other guy is no longer with the company.  So, I think that’s a great example, too, of someone who, who leaned in and the difference that it made for them, for their life, and for the entire organization.

Pete Mockaitis
Absolutely. And then I’m curious then,  what would be an example of a behavior that someone starts or stops doing and discovers from a coaching kind of a process that  can make a big impact in terms of changing the trajectory from gonna get fired to gotta get promoted?

Jacquelyn Lane
For this gentleman, he was originally all about himself. He cared about his own role and positional power and authority. He was very proud of the life and career he’d built for himself and was vocal about that. And again, the attitude was, like, “I’m in this for me.”

And the major change was that he realized he was not going to be a leader without followers. That he needed to change his perspective into serving the people who reported to him, and to removing obstacles from their path, putting their needs first, not, you know, understanding how they were feeling, understanding the culture of the team and the organization, and just, and, the funny thing is, of course, by shifting his perspective away from himself and towards other people, he created so much more for everyone.

He created a healthier work environment for them, but he certainly created more for himself, since he did get those two promotions in rapid succession. So, it’s just amazing that that one shift can have such a profound impact.

Pete Mockaitis
How prevalent is coachability in this day and age in the workplace? And how do we measure such things?

Jacquelyn Lane
Right. It’s funny, I think of coachability as being very much a spectrum. It’s not quite as binary as coachable or not coachable. I think we’re all coachable to some extent. And do I believe that there are people who are truly un-coachable? I’m not totally sure, the jury is out for me there but that’s part of why we used the word becoming in the title of our book Becoming Coachable because it’s always this journey of becoming.

So, it’s not as common though as you might think for people to really understand what that means or how to lean into that process. Coachability is a word that’s being thrown out more and more these days, especially I hear in the world of executive search and other companies that are looking to identify successors to major C-suite roles. They’re asking, “Is this person coachable?”

So, it’s becoming more and more requested, more and more looked for, but I would say most people, maybe half of the people we talked to at the 100 Coaches Agency are ready, willing, and eager to lean into the coaching process. But I think by the way that we work, and then working with a good coach, they naturally become more coachable and more open to the process. So, if they’re going to get any results by the end, yes, they are definitely a coachable leader.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, as I think about the word, and I’d love to hear your definition, it is a spectrum. But, generally speaking, those on the less coachable side of the spectrum, when you offer some input, you’ll hear defensiveness, why that’s wrong, excuses, and more or less the input is one way or another rejected. And versus those on the opposite side of the continuum, when very coachable, would say, “Wow!”

They really think about that, they chew on it, they ponder it, and then they seek to understand it, “Can I have some examples? And then they get after that. And so, that’s how I view the word coachability. Do you have a particular definition that you like?

Jacquelyn Lane
Yeah. Now, I love the way that you broke that down, Pete, because I agree. It does have a lot to do with the way that we respond to different stimuli. It’s a mindset and some of these behaviors. Certainly, we can get into some more of that. So, to understand what coachability was and what that meant, my co-authors and I decided to talk with a lot of the people that are within the 100 Coaches community and just hear their thoughts.

Because, again, over and over and over we heard the same thing, that the best coaching engagements are with people who are coachable, that that’s the major differentiator. And so, we started digging into this, trying to understand, “What does that really mean? What goes into coachability?” And there were four key elements that came up as common themes repeatedly.

And that’s being open to change, open to feedback, open to taking action, and open to being held accountable. And if a leader can do those four things, then they most certainly are coachable.

Pete Mockaitis
Certainly. And do you have a sense from your research, just what kind of an impact on career trajectory do we have if you’re highly coachable versus not so coachable?

Jacquelyn Lane
I think it has an amazing impact on someone’s life and career. And that was one of the most surprising findings as we were really researching and writing this book was that the leaders who are the most coachable, they go on to be some of the most successful leaders.

And the reason is if you are a leader who’s open to change, open to feedback, open to taking action, and open to being held accountable, then those are all qualities of great leaders. And so, it has an enormous impact on their career trajectories, where they can go, and the type of impact that they can have on the broader world around them.

Pete Mockaitis
And I’m curious, going meta for a moment, talking about coachability, are there some beliefs you had about coachability that you used to have but you’ve since abandoned or changed those beliefs?

Jacquelyn Lane
Well, I used to believe that coachability was a little bit more binary. I did really believe, for example, that some people were beyond being coached, that they were not coachable. But really, if you are willing, I think that’s kind of the first word, willing or open, then you can be coached. But I would say a lot of people have disbelief at first, and I think a little bit of skepticism is common, and maybe even wise.

But if you’re willing to suspend disbelief for just a little bit, lean into the process, and recognize that none of us do this alone, that we all need support in some form or fashion, then that really begins us all on the process of becoming coachable.

Pete Mockaitis
And I’d love to maybe step into the shoes of someone who might be on the lesser side of coachability or might have some valid concerns or skepticism, and say, “Hey, I think I’m coachable. It’s just that most of the feedback I’m getting is from total idiots who are way off base.” How do we discern that, Jacquelyn? Like, maybe we’re getting some garbage feedback or input coaching, or maybe we’re being super defensive and resistant about it, and we got to look in the mirror. How do we make that judgment call and discern and disentangle that?

Jacquelyn Lane
Right. And maybe it’s some of both, it probably is. Most people are not very skilled in giving feedback or not trained in that. And, similarly, people are not really skilled or trained in how to receive feedback, so it’s no surprise that it’s a little bit messy in that area. I find that acceptance is a great first step. Just hearing it for what it is, and Marshall has this great simple rule, he says, “No matter what anyone tells you, no matter what the feedback is, whether you agree or disagree, it’s glowing or it’s horrible, just say thank you and only thank you.”

Because if you respond to a first piece of feedback, and you say, “Wow, that’s so great. Thank you so much for that feedback. That’s fantastic.” And then the next piece of feedback that person gives, you say, “Hmm, okay. Thank you. I’ll think about that.” And then the last piece of feedback, you respond and say, “Oh, I don’t know if that’s true,” or, “I don’t know if that’s on base.”

Well, what you’ve done right there is you’ve graded the feedback. You say, “I agree,” “I’m not sure,” and “That’s horrible.” So, A, C, and F as if you’re going to give letter grades for that feedback. And that actually makes people less likely to tell you things that you don’t want to hear. So, the best thing to do, and maybe it’s a little bit unnatural at first, the best thing to do is to say thank you and just thank you, nothing else. And that really begins that process.

But, of course, once you receive that feedback, it’s time to chew on it a little bit. Again, this goes back to what I’m saying earlier, maybe just suspend disbelief for a moment, just sit down, think about it, ponder it maybe overnight, sleep on it. And if it still feels like it was completely off base, it’s still telling because they still have that perception of you.

And so, if only for that reason, it’s very interesting to note. And they’ve given you a great gift by telling you what they really think. So, at the end of the day, if we can just change our relationship with feedback and see it as the gift it is, I think we’ll respond much better.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s well said, Jacquelyn. And feedback, really, is a gift, and that’s almost cliché, it’s like, “Oh, feedback is a gift. I’ve heard that.” But I think I’m realizing just how wisely true it is because, one, it takes a risk for someone to share something with you, particularly if it’s challenging, as opposed to, “You’re great, Jacquelyn.” “Well, thank you. That’s awesome.”

Jacquelyn Lane
“Yeah, I feel good about myself.”

Pete Mockaitis
But if someone gives you a critique, they’re really putting themselves out there, and they’re taking a risk for your benefit, maybe. And there are some sociopaths out there from time to time who are not doing it for your input. They love to watch you suffer. That happens, unfortunately, but for the most part, people who are helpful do share, they are doing so at a risk, or a cost, or some discomfort to themselves for your benefit, and it truly is a gift.

And it’s funny, in the world of podcasting, I’ve been really just going dorking out on stats lately, and I was looking in Apple Podcast and this thing called Followers, and just how, over these years, I have had thousands of people go through the effort, which isn’t that easy, to do several taps on Apple Podcast and click unfollow the How to be Awesome at Your Job podcast, which is heartbreaking.

Jacquelyn Lane
What a shame.

Pete Mockaitis
But not once has someone said, “Pete, I’ve decided to unfollow your podcast, and here’s why. There are four things that you’re doing with your show that really aren’t working for me, and so I thought it might be helpful for you to know about them.” That’s never happened once. And, likewise, I think in our own lives and professions, there are lots of people noticing lots of things we’re doing to our detriment that are harming us and our ability to get where we want to go, and are not opening their mouths when we are just blindly stumbling in the dark, fundamentally unaware of these pieces of input that we need.

You got me on a soapbox, Jacquelyn. So, where feedback is a gift, I don’t think it’s just a cliché but it is a profound truth that we reject because it usually sucks to hear.

Jacquelyn Lane
Right. And, again, we’re not trained at how to give or receive feedback very well. Again, it’s one of those blind spots in our education system. You would think that somewhere along the way, we would learn this but, unfortunately, there’s not a great system yet. And so, of course, I think of myself, anytime when I was working in corporate America, if someone said, “Hey, can I give you some feedback?” What was the first thing I did? I immediately buckle up and I prepare myself to go to battle, or to be told something really abysmal.

Like, I have a physiological reaction to hearing the phrase, “Hey, can I give you some feedback?” I think a lot of people do because we don’t normally call positive feedback, feedback. We usually call it a compliment or praise. And so, usually, when people say, “Can I give you some feedback?” they’re really meaning, “I want to give you some constructive criticism.”

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s true. They rarely say, “Hey, I want to give you some feedback about that report you gave me.” “Okay?” “It was perfect in every way. Do every one just like that, please.” It’s usually not what comes after that sentence.

Jacquelyn Lane
Correct. So, I really would love to rebrand the word feedback in that way, and start using it in both a positive and constructive way. But Marshall gets around this by doing what he calls feedforward. So, Marshall says that the word feedback, kind of by definition, is referring to something in the past. Feedforward is about, “What can you do differently looking forward?” So, that’s another way to frame it that just kind of naturally, by construction, feels a little bit more positive and a little bit more constructive.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, let’s put ourselves in the shoes of the feedback receiver, and say, okay, fair enough. There’s a baseline physiological reaction in which someone is giving us feedback, we don’t like it. So, that’s sort of there. Can you share with us, is there a way we can learn to love it?

Jacquelyn Lane
Yeah. Again, I think this is a training exercise that we all go through, and I will certainly speak for myself, and say that I work on this all the time. Of the four elements of coachability – change, feedback, action, and accountability – feedback is the one I struggle with the most. And it’s some of my own, again, experiences in corporate America and my own relationship with that word.

But it’s this constant exercise that I have to make with myself to say, “Feedback is a gift. Feedback is a gift. I’m going to remind myself that this person is sharing really valuable information with me, and this is for my ultimate betterment. Whether it’s something I can improve, a way that I can grow, or simply understanding how it is that I’m perceived in the world, that is a wonderful gift to receive.”

Because, again, none of us do this alone. And especially for people who are in leadership positions, we need the reflections of other people. And it becomes so much more difficult for leaders to get feedback, especially, because there are some real and perceived power dynamics that are at play. So, especially for people who are leaders, we have to be constantly asking our team, asking the people around us, “What can I do better? What can I do differently? How can I serve you?”

And I find that people, they’re often a little shy at first, but that feedback has been just so rich, and has allowed me to grow exponentially faster than if I didn’t have that in my life.

Pete Mockaitis
Absolutely. And it’s interesting when you mentioned these senior executives, it’s rarer and rarer, and harder and harder to get. I’m reminded of a friend of mine who’s a relationship therapist say that she’s given some tough feedback to some big-deal corporate executive folks and they love it, like, “Wow, nobody gives me this sort of perspective on how my behavior is problematic. Nobody, except you, relationship therapist.” And they eat it up. So, like it’s rare but, boy, they’re open to it and it’s hitting the mark.

Jacquelyn Lane
Right. I love that they’re hungry for it. I think that attitude will take us so far. If we’re hungry for it, if we’re asking for it, I find that that is really positive. That’s another thing that’s helped me. Because when someone says, “Hey, can I give you some feedback?” That’s feedback you weren’t expecting. But when you ask for feedback, “Hey, do you think you could tell me how I did in that presentation? Do you think you could tell me how my latest podcast appearance was?” then the feedback is solicited and expected, and I find that I am much better prepared to receive it.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s excellent. So, being open to feedback, we shared that key part of it is just embracing that mindset, feedback is a gift, and returning to it. Likewise, for the other open-to’s – open to change, open to taking action, open to accountability – are there any master paradigm shifts or perspectives that really open that opening all the wider?

Jacquelyn Lane
Right. I think, for me, the other big one is change. And that is the reason that open to change is the very first in our construction, is that, really, everything is changing. And we find so many people have this idea of control, or that they want other people to change, “If only other people would become coachable. If only other people would change their perceptions of me. If only other people would make changes, then my life would be better.”

But I think the call is to look at ourselves, first and foremost, and especially for those of us who are in leadership roles, to really lead by example and be open to making changes ourselves. And the way that we live that and the way that we communicate that with other people has enormous ripple effects.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, let’s say that maybe I want to be open to change, but I’m naturally not. It’s uncomfortable. I’ve got a good groove going. I don’t want to rock the boat, but I know I should be more open to change in order to unlock new business of opportunity and goodness. So, how do I shake myself up?

Jacquelyn Lane
Again, I think it comes back to that idea of awareness or openness, and that’s part of why we use the word open to, to describe every element of coachability because we find that just that openness makes such a difference. But, again, the idea with change is recognizing that if we’re not getting better, we’re getting worse. I don’t think, especially with so many things changing in the world around us, I don’t think there’s any such thing as just staying in the same place.

Pete Mockaitis
Can you expand on that? If we’re not getting better, we’re getting worse. Can you prove it?

Jacquelyn Lane
So, I think of a few different executives we’ve seen over the years, and again that was roughly the attitude they had, they said, “Oh, I got here because of my skills, my merit, my natural personality and gregariousness, or my innate leadership skills. And I’m pretty satisfied with the life and the career I’ve built for myself. I think I’m doing pretty good. I don’t think I need any support. I think I’m going to stay here.”

And I get that to some extent, but the reality is the company continues to grow and to change. The person they’re married to continues to grow and to change, and, ultimately, that person gets left behind. And I have seen them be blindsided by both a company that has decided they’re no longer really serving the needs of the organization, and how that’s evolved, or a spouse who decides, “You know what, this just really isn’t working for me anymore.” And so, I think there’s an openness to reinventing ourselves because the world around us is not staying still.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s powerful. In some ways, that’s self-evident, and yet, if you really stop and ponder these implications, it is just a very tidy logical argument. Your surroundings, environment, world, profession, everything is changing. If you are not changing, then, by definition, you are fitting worse than you used to. And by that measure alone, you are worse.

Jacquelyn Lane
Right. That’s correct. Yeah, if you have certain skills that got you here today, by tomorrow or next year, those skills will no longer be enough.

Pete Mockaitis
And when you put a loss frame on it, it really sort of sparks the motivation.

Jacquelyn Lane
Yeah, I couldn’t agree more. And I think to myself of the example of professional athletes. No professional athlete could possibly consider themselves at the very top of their game without, at least one, and probably multiple coaches, because they recognize that even if they’re the best in the world, if they’re not still consistently pushing the limits and getting better, and working with someone who can see them from outside themselves, then they’re not going to stay in that number one spot very long.

Pete Mockaitis
Right on. Okay. So, we talked about openness to change, open to feedback. How about open to taking action?

Jacquelyn Lane
I think this one, it feels the easiest in some ways, or at least the easiest conceptually, where you can express being open to change and open to feedback, you can talk your way through those things, but action is where the rubber meets the road. So, in our example of, let’s say I want to get in shape. I can express that I’m open to making a change in my life or my lifestyle, and I can hear some feedback and some ideas from the people around me about going to the gym, or getting a trainer, or changing my diet, or any number of things.

But when it comes time to actually do the work, am I going to show up and go to the gym, and put in the reps, and do it again and again and again and again? Because, let’s be honest, change is hard. But it only works if we work.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s true. No doubt. So, if we’re feeling lazy, do you have any words of wisdom to spark us into getting going, taking that action?

Jacquelyn Lane
Again, for me, this is where I find that I need support, I need a coach. And now, a coach can come in a lot of different forms. Certainly, this can be someone you hire as an executive coach, or a life coach, or any number of different areas and specialties that exists out there. And there are some great agencies and organizations that help people find the right coach or the right resource for them.

Or, this can be a friend, a close accountability partner, a peer that you work very closely with. In some cases, it can be a supervisor, kind of depends on the relationships that exist in someone’s life. A mentor is similar, not quite the same thing as a coach. But depending on some of those different relationships that exist in your life, you may be able to find that support that helps you remember your goals and actually take the steps to achieve them.

So, for me, again, using my own example of I want to get in better shape, I had to hire a personal trainer. New Year after New Year, I was committed to getting in better shape, and the gym was crowded, I came up with too many excuses, I can’t get up early, I don’t want to do the work. But it wasn’t until I started paying money to a personal trainer, and I knew I was going to be paying the money, whether I showed up or not, so I might as well show up. And that was what I needed to really make the change, take the action, and make it stick.

Pete Mockaitis
Jacquelyn, I really appreciate you sharing that and the humility there because you are a high-powered, high-achieving, very capable woman.

Jacquelyn Lane
Thank you.

Pete Mockaitis
Your accomplishments, your credentials are plentiful. And you want to be in better shape, and yet you were unable to accomplish that for yourself for years until you hunkered down and parted with money to have someone assist you in the matter. And in my experience with personal trainers, no offense to the personal trainers listening, it is less about their deep expertise in anatomy, physiology, and movement, and more about the fact that they make you do the thing that gets it done.

Jacquelyn Lane
Right. I could not agree more. And I’ll give you another example. So, Marshall Goldsmith, who’s my co-author at Becoming Coachable, I’ve spent a lot of time with Marshall. Marshall is, by most people’s accounts, the number one coach in the world, and has been for decades. He invented a lot of the tools that we use for coaching today. And Marshall literally pays someone to call him every single day for the last, I don’t even know how many years, to ask him his daily questions.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s right. We had Marshall on the show, and we discussed that, and I love that, so underscore there. So, a key to taking action is perhaps having another human being help you to take that action.

Jacquelyn Lane
Right.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that kind of says that we’re already talking about your fourth open to, accountability. What do you got to say about this?

Jacquelyn Lane
The key idea behind accountability is you want to make the change lasting. So, accountability is especially pertinent if you have reached a certain goal. Again, you’ve gone to the gym, you put in the reps, so taking that action and the accountability are intertwined.

But then, at some point, I think when I’m no longer working with that personal trainer, am I still going to maintain the habits? So, I’ll give you another example, I was working with a personal trainer for about a year and a half. Again, got in great shape, I had a great relationship with him, and I was seeing him twice a week to go to the gym. But when I stopped working with him, there was a moment in time where, again, I kind of fell off the bandwagon. I stopped working out and I got really frustrated with myself, and I realized it’s because I needed accountability.

And so, my husband actually became that accountability partner for me. So, now, twice a week, we have it on the calendar, and we’d go to the gym together. If my husband does not go to the gym with me, I don’t go to the gym. Period. And I consider myself a pretty motivated person, and yet I’m so good at finding excuses why I can’t, “Just too busy,” “I got to send that email,” “I got to call that person,” “I got to clean the house.” But there’s something about having an accountability partner, be it a coach, a trainer, a friend, who just says, “No, we’re going to do this,” makes a world of difference.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, Jacquelyn, tell me, any other critical do’s or don’ts you want to make sure you put out there to help people become more coachable?

Jacquelyn Lane
Yeah, I think the big thing is to remember why we’re doing it. Why does any of this really matter? And I think the answer that we came to in writing this book is, yes, being coachable helps us get more from our coaching. We have goals and ambitions that we want to meet, and that’s great, and those are important. But it’s even bigger than that. It’s not just about having a better life. It’s not just about becoming a better leader. And I agree that becoming a better leader is a great thing as well.

But engaging in this process and becoming coachable also makes us better human beings. We learn how to interact with the world around us better, to see ourselves reflected in the feedback of other people, and so we start to see our place in the world, and our impact in the world, in a more accurate way than if we just see things from only our vantage point.

Have you heard the many eyes theory? So, it’s like when a school of fish are swimming, and it looks like the whole school of fish just moves around obstacles, or again a shark will swim into the school of fish, and they will seem to disperse and rejoin. But it’s this idea of many eyes, that a single fish actually can’t function very well on its own. It’s more susceptible to predators, which is why they end up staying in schools.

And, in fact, they kind of have this mind that melds in a way where there’s these theories that the fish see through the eyes of the others, that they become aware of things in a way that they could never do on their own. And, similar, when we become coachable, that we can experience life through the many eyes. And, ultimately, the power of that is that in understanding the impact we have on people and on the world around us means that we can live more flourishing lives, we can have more flourishing communities, better flourishing families, our companies, and certainly ourselves.

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful. Thank you. Jaquelyn’s about to share her favorite things, and one of my favorite things are our sponsors: Today, Stanford Continuing Studies and UpliftDesk.com.

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Well, now could you share with us a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Jacquelyn Lane
One of my favorite quotes attributed to the Buddha is that, “A single candle can light a thousand others and never be diminished.”

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

Jacquelyn Lane
I am really loving this study currently called “More in Common.” It talks about how much commonality we have with people even on opposing sides of the political spectrum. And if we can just learn to remember the things that we have in common instead of our differences, how much more powerful we can be as a collective.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And a favorite book?

Jacquelyn Lane
My current favorite book is David Brooks’ new book How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen. I think it is the most important book written this year. I highly recommend it.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite tool?

Jacquelyn Lane
Well, right now, it’d be hard to say I don’t love ChatGPT. That has been my go-to for a number of different use cases, and I’m sure everyone is coming up with creative ways to use it. We certainly are over at the 100 Coaches Agency as well.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, let us know, Jacquelyn. It’s so funny, when I play with it, sometimes I’m annoyed and frustrated, and other times I’m amazed. And so, it’s just I’ve yet to really get clear on the boundaries of, “This is what this is amazing for, and this is what it’s totally terrible for.” So, tell us, what do you think it’s amazing for?

Jacquelyn Lane
Well, I am currently using ChatGPT where I’ll tell it, “You are a world class therapist, or a world class coach. Here’s what I’m struggling with, or here’s what’s going through my mind. What would you advise me?” and just asking it for some ideas. And I can even instruct it, “Ask me a few good questions,” and I’ll answer those questions, and then the cycle continues.

So, it’s a really powerful thing if I want some quick feedback or some quick ideas to, essentially, stop looping and get out of my own head. I found that that’s really powerful. Great for summarizing content, especially on notes from a call or anything else, and putting together action plans and next-steps. It’s been really fantastic.

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

Jacquelyn Lane
I do find that the idea that’s resonated with people has been the third section of our book, which is called “To what end?” and that’s where we talk about human flourishing and the power that great leaders can have on the world. It’s really this aspirational and inspirational idea. We’d love to hear what people think about that.

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

Jacquelyn Lane
I would send them to, you can go to 100 Coaches Agency, that’s Agency.100Coaches.com. Or, you can go to BecomingCoachable.com. Of course, you can find me on LinkedIn. My name is Jacquelyn Lane. And please connect. Let’s stay in touch.

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

Jacquelyn Lane
I think just keep that growth mindset. Keep an open mind. Stay humble. Stay hungry. Ask for feedback. You can’t go wrong with any of those.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, Jacquelyn, thanks so much for this. I wish you much fun and much coachability.

Jacquelyn Lane
Thank you so much. Right back at you, Pete. Thank you.

912: Maximizing Your Impact by Leading with both Head and Heart with Dr. Kirstin Ferguson

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Kirstin Ferguson shares how modern leaders can best meet the challenge of the new work landscape.

You’ll Learn:

  1. Why traditional leadership is lacking–and what you should do instead
  2. Why you may not be as self-aware as you think
  3. Why you might want to talk less in your next meeting

About Kirstin

Dr. Kirstin Ferguson, PhD is an award-winning leadership expert, best-selling author, columnist, and keynote speaker. Kirstin has been called “Australia’s own Brene Brown” and been named one of the world’s top 30 thinkers to watch by Thinkers 50. Her latest book, Head & Heart: The Art of Modern Leadership, has been named one of the top 10 best new management books in the world in 2023.

Resources Mentioned

Kirstin Ferguson Interview Transcript

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

Kirstin Ferguson
Hello. It’s fabulous to be here.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m excited to hear about some of the wisdom you have for us from your book, Head & Heart: The Art of Modern Leadership. But first, I need to hear a little bit about your time with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. And most top of mind is what was your involvement with Bluey?

Kirstin Ferguson
Well, every Australian likes to claim that Bluey is somehow connected to them, but I have two connections with Bluey. It’s made in my hometown where I live in Brisbane and produced there, and I was on the ABC board when we commissioned it.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, beautiful.

Kirstin Ferguson
But I can’t claim any responsibility for that but it’s fabulous, isn’t it? Have you got young children?

Pete Mockaitis
It really is, yes. I’ve got kids – five, four, and one – and Bluey, wow, is maybe the top thing. I think Daniel Tiger, in my own opinion, for whatever it’s worth, Daniel Tiger is very strong in terms of enriching, but Bluey I think is just about as enriching but so much more entertaining.

Kirstin Ferguson
Yeah, they’ve done so well to make it entertaining for adults to watch as well. My children are now not children, they’re 23 and 21, and I can tell you I wish we had Bluey on repeat rather than The Wiggles and Wesley. I love The Wiggles, of course. Another Australian children’s export but there’s only so much, so many times you can listen to their songs.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, so you’re on the committee that commissioned it. And, I’m curious, when it comes to creative works, it’s like do you know if you have a hit on your hands or do you not? Like, people have famously passed on The Beatles and other smash hits in terms of culture and creativity. But what was the vibe, like, “Yeah, let’s give this a shot. Some blue dogs? Yeah, it can’t hurt”?

Kirstin Ferguson
Well, this is where I can’t claim any credit. The board is a long way from most kind of commissioning discussions. And I remember, at the time, our head of television, who’s now the managing director or the CEO of the ABC, quite visibly so, I remember he said to me, “Hey, I’ve just commissioned this show about a dog called Bluey.” And he said it’s going to be a massive hit. So, I think the people who know, know, and he certainly said that before anyone had seen it, and he was right. So, I don’t know, whether I could’ve had the same skill, I’m not so sure.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, Kirstin, I’m now going to force a segue. I think Bluey does a fine job of engaging the head and the heart.

Kirstin Ferguson
It does.

Pete Mockaitis
And I’d love to hear, with your book, any particularly surprising or counterintuitive discoveries you’ve made as you’re learning and researching and putting it together?

Kirstin Ferguson
I think your podcast is fabulous because it’s all about helping people to be awesome at their job, obviously. And what I really hope people take away from our conversation is that delivering whatever your job is, an inverted commerce, your job description and the outputs and the KPIs and all those sorts of things, are obviously incredibly important to retain a job but to be truly successful, you have to be able to balance that ability to deliver, and that is sort of encompassed by leading with the head, and we can go through what that looks like, but with leading with the heart.

But I think people sometimes forget that. And that’s because, as leaders, and let me say, we are all leaders. It doesn’t matter where you are in the org chart, you are leading in your families, in your communities, and in your role, so it doesn’t matter who’s listening right now, I’m telling you you’re a leader because you’re impacting those around you through the words you use, the choices you make, and the behaviors that you role-model.

And so, I think leading with the heart, which is around humility, and empathy, self-awareness and things, it has to be balanced with all those technical capabilities to be awesome at your job.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, certainly. And so then, are there some folks who just totally don’t have it in their head that they’re a leader or that they need to lead with their head or their heart? What are you seeing is sort of the antithesis of that message or that experience?

Kirstin Ferguson
I think anyone who thinks they know everything and is the smartest person in the room, we all know those people, they’re a challenge because they’re the kinds of leaders, and we all worked with them, who aren’t interested in diverse points of views, they’re not interested in feedback, they’re not interested in a different way of doing things, and I think those kinds of leaders are not the modern leaders that we need in the workplace today.

So, if you’ve got a leader like that, that’s going to be really challenging but don’t be that leader yourself. So, it’s really easy to identify who those people are but it’s much harder for us to look in the mirror, and think, “Actually, am I doing some of that myself? And is my leadership style still fit for purpose?”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, you mentioned modern leaders, and that’s also in the subtitle, would you contrast that with traditional or old-school leaders, or…?

Kirstin Ferguson
Dinosaurs, I tend to call them. Yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
Dinosaurs. Okay.

Kirstin Ferguson
It’s not too bad. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But my mission is to rid the world of dinosaurs.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, sure.

Kirstin Ferguson
That pretty well covers most.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Understood. So, that’s the mission. So, then could you maybe paint a picture for what does a dinosaur or old-school traditional leadership look, sound, feel like that you’re saying is not what we need right now?

Kirstin Ferguson
Oh, my goodness. I reckon everyone listening have someone in their mind who doesn’t believe in remote working. They think if you’re not right in front of them, you’re not working, you’re just relaxing at home somehow, watching television. They don’t believe in doing things differently. Everything is done the same way. They’re not interested in feedback, as I said. They’re really just there to tell you what to do and to make sure we deliver on the KPIs for the organization. And that’s really work is a task to be done rather than a way to sort of be as humans.

And I think you can’t separate who we are when we come to work. We have lives, we have issues we’re dealing with, we’ve got all sorts of challenges, and I think modern leaders actually understand that and factor that into their leadership.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Understood. So, that’s a view of the dinosaurs. And then we talked about head versus heart. I’d love to hear how you think about this in terms of it sounds like it’s sort of a both-and approach as opposed to all head or all heart.

Kirstin Ferguson
Absolutely.

Pete Mockaitis
How do you think about, I don’t know if the word is balanced, or both, or simultaneous, or the same time, but what’s a view for too much of one versus too much of the other?

Kirstin Ferguson
I think we all know individuals like that, and, you’re right, being all heart is just as unhelpful as being all head. So, we would know, or people might know leaders who run a not-for-profit organization or really great causes, but they’re all about how they can benefit people, which is wonderful but they don’t think about the strategies for how they’re going to get there, how they’re going to fund it, all of those kinds of things. That’s as unhelpful in leaders as the CFO, and I always pick on the poor old CFO, but who’s just focused on balance sheets and not thinking about how decisions are impacting others.

So, it is about balance. And the art of modern leadership that I write about is knowing what is needed and when. And I guess I feel I’ve been really fortunate because I’ve been a leader myself for 30 years. I started in the military, I went through, as you heard, I sat on company boards, I’ve been a CEO, but I’ve also got a PhD in leadership.

So, not only was it important to me to write this book based on research. It also was sort of a counterpoint to some of the anecdotal leadership books you get, which are all very interesting. But I want to know, “How do you know that? And what’s the datapoint to show that?” And that’s how I came up with, obviously, it’s a metaphor, the head and heart, but four attributes of leading with the head, and four with leading with the heart.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, it’s fun, as we’re chatting, I just finished listening to the Walter Isaacson’s biography of Elon Musk, and, well, there’s some head there.

Kirstin Ferguson
Yeah, yeah. Well, I went and heard Walter recently, just a week ago, in LA.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, no kidding?

Kirstin Ferguson
Fantastic. Yeah, yeah, talking about the book.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, yeah, it was riveting. It was 20 hours, and I was, “Wow, am I done already? I wish it were longer.” So, there were these periods of, I guess, what he would call being ultra-hardcore, and having a surge, and saying, “This thing needs to happen by this time or everybody’s fired.” Now, that sounds super head and minimal heart. I’m curious, is there a place for that ultra-hardcore? And how do we play that game?

Kirstin Ferguson
Look, I don’t think so because there’s always repercussions for behaving in that way. When things are steadier, you’re going to have people around you that don’t know when you’re next going to decide that it’s time to be ultra-hardcore. There’s obviously times when there’s a crisis, for example, and your leadership needs to change.

And you, as a leader, may have once been very consultative and taking the time to get everyone’s feedback, and, suddenly, that is not a priority. You actually, as a leader, need to step up then and make some decisions, and perhaps have just a very small core group around you. It doesn’t mean though that you need to lose your humanity.

So, decisions still have impacts on people, regardless of whether or not you’re making them in a crisis or whether you are doing them because you want to save money because you just bought a new company. I think we must, as leaders, be thinking about what the impact is beyond ourselves. And, yes, in a crisis, the consequences may be weighed up differently but it doesn’t take away from our need to be human.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, so you’ve got a number of attributes associated with being a great head leader and a great heart leader. Could you share those attributes and maybe a pro tip or best practice for doing that well in practice?

Kirstin Ferguson
Yeah. So, the four attributes of leading with the head, this is all the tangible stuff we’ve been rewarded for at school and being promoted, and that we feel really comfortable in, so there won’t be too much of a surprise. There’s curiosity. Most people love curiosity but it’s scary to think that, while the research shows 92% of us value it, only 24% of us get to feel curious at work. So, that’s a real challenge for leaders.

The second attribute is capability, and that’s all about how we feel capable in our jobs. We’re not just capable, but how we actually believe we can do things, and that we know that making mistakes is all just part of the learning process. The third one is wisdom, and that’s all about decision-making and we gather data and evidence to make really good decisions.

And the last one, which is the most important, actually, of all eight, is called perspective. And that’s about, in basic terms, how to read a room and really bring in the signals that you’re seeing, understanding the environment and the context that you’re leading in. And it also means that you can see who’s missing from the room, which is incredibly important. And it’s highly correlated with empathy because it means you can put yourself in the shoes of others.

So, they’re the four head-based attributes. And, generally, people are pretty comfortable with this. And I should mention now, anyone listening can just jump on HeadHeartLeader.com, totally free, but I’ve had 16,000 people complete this scale since January, that’s one I built with one of the universities in Australia, and will give you personalized report and a comparison to how you’re going on each of these.

And same with the heart. So, the four heart-based attributes are humility, which is all around confident humility, intellectual humility, knowing we don’t know all the answers, and being quite okay with that. Second is self-awareness, which obviously understanding that impact that we’re having on others. Feedback is a critically important tool there.

Third is courage, and that’s the courage to speak up for what you believe in even in the face of pressure not to do so. And the final is empathy, and that’s our ability to really understand that your lived experience is not the same as others, and to appreciate that you’re going to need diverse points of view to make the best decision that you can.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, so within these eight attributes, I’d love to hear are there some particular tools, or tactics, or practices, things that you’ve discovered, “Wow, this little thing makes a world of difference in improving curiosity or perspective or empathy”?

Kirstin Ferguson
Yeah. Well, let me share one with you that I, first, came up with about 10-12 years ago when I first started sitting on company boards, and I was only 38 then, so I’m 50 now. And I remember feeling really insecure, and feeling I needed to contribute to every conversation even though I wasn’t adding much value, I felt I needed to say something, sort of prove myself. I think we’ve all been in that situation.

But, at the same time, I was noticing that my really experienced colleagues around me barely said anything at all. And they might only ask a single question, but that question was gold, and it would change the course of the conversation. So, then I came up with a concept I still use now called the word-to-wisdom ratio, and I would write, back in the day when it was still hardcopy papers, WTW, on the corner of my page.

And it was to remind me that I really needed to be mindful of the impact I was having on those around me. And at that stage, the number of words that was taking me to add any wisdom at all was pretty unhealthy, whereas my colleagues clearly were doing much better than me. But as I’ve become more experienced and a more senior leader, what I use it for now is to really make sure I’m not taking up all the space in meetings.

So, for people listening who do have a team, if you’re going into a meeting, and you’ve already got the answer in mind, and you sort of are just checking in to make sure they all agree with what you’re proposing, then it’s likely you’re taking up so much space no one else gets an opportunity to contribute. And the word-to-wisdom ratio is something you can think about in terms of your coaching ability.

And I would encourage modern leaders that even if you know the answer, use that opportunity, when you’ve got the time and it’s appropriate, to really ask good questions of those you lead so they can feel they’ve come to answer themselves.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, that’s a fun one, the word-to-wisdom ratio. Anything that you’d also put forward in terms of boosting our perspective?

Kirstin Ferguson
Yeah, like reading a room is, I think, we all know sometimes it’s easier to do than others, and sometimes we get it wrong, and we really need feedback to calibrate whether or not we’ve read it correctly. But one of the challenges to reading a room is if you’re someone, firstly, who has blinkers on and pretty much thinks you’re right all the time, then you’re basically the only person in that room, and so that’s a problem.

So, you need to make sure that you’ve got people around you that are actually giving you dissenting opinions, respectfully, of course, but that you’re not surrounding yourself with people who just agree. But I think, also, around leading with perspective, it’s important to be getting feedback, and to really understand whether or not you’re reading of the situation is the same as others. Test that with people because, invariably, we’re not going to get it right.

Sadly, our self-awareness is very high, we think. About 95% of us we think we’re self-aware but only 10 to 15% of those we lead would agree. That’s a pretty scary statistic, and that’s why feedback is so important.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And I’m also curious about boosting that self-awareness. If we think we’re self-aware but we’re not, well, first, how do we know if we really are? And, second, how do we boost that?

Kirstin Ferguson
Yeah. Well, that is why you need trusted people around you, and you need to sniff out the bad news. I think we, invariably, like to hear from people that tell us we’re doing a good job. We’re human, obviously, we love to be reassured, but they’re not the people that you actually want to seek feedback from. You also don’t want to go to the people who are really critical of you because that’s not helpful either.

But it’s finding those people in your life who know you well enough that they are unafraid to tell you what they think, and that they want you to succeed. So, it’s given in a way that’s there to help you actually do better. And I think if you’ve got those people in your life, whether they’re mentors, colleagues, your boss, someone that’s in your team, really thank them and take their feedback with a gratitude because it’s a gift.

And if you can be doing that for someone else, make sure that you’re open to that. I should say that when you’re getting feedback, though, curiosity is the most important attribute to bring into that conversation because we’re all going to have triggers. There’s three triggers we all feel when we get feedback.

The first is you think, “Well, you’re an idiot.” But the conversation or the feedback is clouded by your relationship with the person. Regardless of how valuable the feedback might be, you’re thinking, “How dare you tell me this?” The second trigger we’ll have is, “You’re wrong.” And you’re just thinking, “Well, I don’t agree with your perspective,” so you shut down, and that’s not helpful either. You need to stay present, even if you don’t agree. It’s not a matter of having to change based on the feedback but you do need to be able to hear it if you want to encourage others to give you feedback again.

But the third trigger is something in us, and it’s about shame, or embarrassment, or ego, or whatever gets triggered. And I think knowing that that’s going on for you, and still being able to stay present, is one of the most important things leaders can do when they’re practicing self-awareness.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And so, zooming out a little bit, one of your key messages in the book is that we need to sort of know when is the right moment to lead with more head-style versus lead more heart-style. What are some of your top indicators or telltale signs which tend to nudge you one way or the other?

Kirstin Ferguson
Oh, that’s an impossible question to answer because that’s the art. And there’ll be situations, I know I’ve gone into meetings, that I think are going to be all about deliverables pretty much, and I’ve got my documents, or my policies, or whatever it is that you think you’re there to do. But in the course of that conversation, you know those things go a little bit off the rails. And some leaders need a huge amount of humility or empathy, whatever it is, to get that conversation back on track.

So, I think, in any given context, you’re going to be mastering this art back and forth, and that’s part of the learning process of being a good leader, and we never get it all right. It’s not as though you’ll ever get to a point in your career where you can say, “Alright, I’ve mastered that now.” And that’s okay, that’s part of being a modern leader.

You know you’re going to have a misstep but a modern leader doesn’t really fear that so much because they’re able to say, “Oh, I’ve got that wrong. Let’s talk about how we can get this back on track.” It’s freeing to be able to do that.

Pete Mockaitis
Understood. So, there’s no cut-and-dry, hard-and-fast rules and algorithm that we can turn down.

Kirstin Ferguson
Wouldn’t that be easy if we do?

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’ll just sort of see from my own experience, think about in Myers-Briggs language, thinker versus feeler, I am a feeler slightly. And I think there are definitely times where I need to be less accommodating and more hardcore, maybe not ultra-hardcore like Elon Musk.

Kirstin Ferguson
No. Talk it over.

Pete Mockaitis
So, what might be some indicators that more of a head approach is needed in a given moment?

Kirstin Ferguson
I’m similar to you, and so I’m naturally one who wants to make sure everyone’s on board with an idea, and I’ve consulted, and we’ve all got buy-in, and then I notice there’s been times in my career that that style, I’ve used it, and it just isn’t the right style for the moment, and so I haven’t read the room properly. And I think part of being self-aware is that you realize that fairly quickly. You’re assessing what’s going on, the response to that, whether or not it’s timely because, obviously, in some situations, it just practically takes far too long to be consultative in that way.

So, there’s definitely situations where you need to be adjusting your leadership style in that response, but you’re still using these attributes. Just think of it like a pendulum. You’re sort of moving back and forth as you need to, and really being intentional about the kind of leadership style. That’s all this is about. It’s about not mindlessly leading one way forever, and thinking that’s going to work.

And I think that might’ve worked in the past where it was pretty consistent at work that if you are ultra-hardcore, back in the ‘80s in some organizations where that was the culture, and you could just do that day after day for 20, 30 years, get to the top and then retire. I don’t think that is how organizations work now and it’s certainly not how individuals succeed.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, maybe instead of talking about broad-based rules, maybe you can just give us a couple examples in terms of, “Here’s a leadership situation, and, wow, that really pointed to head would be better,” versus, “Here’s another situation that points to heart would be better.”

Kirstin Ferguson
Well, I think a common scenario lots of people find themselves in, especially if you’re leading a team, is you’ve got your team meeting, and you sit down, you’ve got a bit of a plan you need to come up with, and you’re telling everyone what the plan is, and you ask, “Are there any questions or any feedback?” you’re trying to do the right thing, and it sucks, and everyone goes, “No, it’s great and it’s fine.” And everyone goes back to the meeting. This is a very common situation.

In that circumstance, it’s easy for a lazy leader, and I’m going to be pretty hard there, to just go, “Okay. Well, no problem. Let’s all go do this.”

Pete Mockaitis
“I guess there’s no questions. All right. Good news.”

Kirstin Ferguson
“I get to go to lunch early.” The better leader, a modern leader, I think, would see that as a signal, and like, “Okay, that’s something about my leadership is giving the impression that either I don’t want to hear questions, I don’t want to hear feedback, I’m not curious as to different ways we could do things.” I always think leaders need to look at themselves rather than thinking it’s the problem of the team.

And so, in that situation, you really need to turn it around, and maybe not in that meeting, but maybe having a second meeting afterwards to go, “Look, I noticed that in all our team meetings, there’s never really any feedback. What am I missing? Is it something about how I’m presenting the information? Is it something about how I’m asking? I’m really keen to know because I know you guys have got far more to contribute than what you’re showing. And I really need your contributions to make the best outcome.”

So, there’s different ways you can create a safe environment and try and explore what’s going on. And if you ask the right questions in the right tone, you might find that someone brave enough says, “Actually, well, when I did raise something three months ago, you really bit my head off, and I don’t want to bring it up again.”

Now, if someone was to say something like that, the only response you should have as a leader is gratitude because that person has had so much courage, firstly, to say that. But secondly, you’ve obviously not even remembered that that was an impact that you had. And remember at the beginning, I said I think leadership is just simply a series of moments. And that is a moment that you’ve missed, and you’ve got to do a lot of work to rectify it. But finding out what’s going on is the most important goal.

Pete Mockaitis
And it’s funny, as I imagine situations where I’m in the room and I have no questions, sometimes it means I am completely satisfied with the wisdom that I have received. And other times, it means, “I think this is boring, and stupid, and lame, and I shouldn’t really even be in this meeting in the first place. And I’m hoping this can be over as soon as possible.” Now, I’m not going to say that out loud. If someone really pressed me multiple times, one on one, yeah, I might let them know. But, generally, it’s like, no, I’m not going to go there.

Kirstin Ferguson
But if you think that, the chances are other people think that that meeting is a waste of time, which means leaders need to also be assisting, like, “Have I asked for feedback on whether these gatherings are even worthwhile? We sit here and you just listen to me for an hour. Is there another way you guys would prefer to work?”

And you might say, “Actually, I’d rather do all this stuff asynchronously because I don’t want to have to come in, or even get online, and have these meetings. I can be doing something else. But why don’t we…?” And you’ve got suggestion A, B, and C. If I’m prepared to hear that, it’s much more likely others in the team are going to have suggestions. And, suddenly, you come up with an agreed way that you’re going to lead, move forward, and you will be, as a leader, getting feedback.

Now, it might be that I’ve always thought, “It was better in a face-to-face meeting.” And, suddenly, when you are asynchronous, you’re giving endless feedback in a document. That’s something as a leader I need to get my head around.

Pete Mockaitis
Absolutely. And it seems like, I guess, this is sort of next level humility for leaders to realize, “Oh, this whole initiative or project that we’ve been embarking upon is really ill-conceived, and should be shut down and reversed immediately. Oh, good to know.”

Kirstin Ferguson
But a modern leader goes, “Okay. Well, great, better we know this now than later. So now what?” And that’s when this isn’t all about bending to other people’s will. It’s about saying, “Okay, I’ve heard you now. Now, we’re accountable because this is an idea as a team we’ve come up with. What are we going to do? How are we going to get there? Who’s delivering what?” So, this is where that head and heart balance comes, but I don’t think you get there unless you’re prepared to open your mind to not having all the answers.

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

Kirstin Ferguson
Well, I’d love people to take a look at the book. It’s just been launched in the US. It’s been named in the Top Ten Best New Management Books for 2023 by Thinkers50. So, you can find it on Amazon. I’m all over the socials. I love connecting with people. So, please find me online. And do the HeadHeartLeader.com, go there and I’d love to hear how you go with the scale.

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

Kirstin Ferguson
Oh, that is so hard but I think the best advice I’ve ever been given that I give others, and perhaps I can sort of do it that way, is to just say yes. Say yes to opportunities as they come along. Even though I’m guaranteed that you’ll likely to think you’re not ready for them, say yes anyway because you just never know what other opportunities will come from them. And that’s certainly advice I’ve followed throughout my career.

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

Kirstin Ferguson
There’s one in my book that I’m currently loving, which is a guy who wanted to get better at chess, and this is back in the ‘60s, and he did an experiment with chess grandmasters and amateurs to see if chess grandmasters just had better memory, and it turns out no. They can read a board. Anyone who’s watched The Queen’s Gambit and seen her look at the ceiling and all the chess pieces move, that is perspective. They read the room or the read the board really well. But you can read more about the study in the book.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, yeah, I think I’ve heard of this in that if pieces are just randomly placed on the board, the grandmaster has no better memory than your average Joe.

Kirstin Ferguson
That’s exactly right.

Pete Mockaitis
As opposed to they go, “Oh, wow, so that bishop is putting that kind in check right now, and so then he’s going to have to…” Like, it means something to them, like a configuration.

Kirstin Ferguson
It does. The researcher, his name was Adrian de Groot. And, yes, he put all, initially, just put the pieces in a position on the chess board so the amateurs couldn’t remember where they were, but the grandmasters easily because they must’ve looked at it, and go on, “Oh, that’s the queen’s gambit,” so they could put it back. But when he randomly mixed them up, as you said, they were no better than the amateurs. Not sure that it made old Adrian a better chess player, but he did learn about how they can read a board.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite book?

Kirstin Ferguson
Well, I’ve just picked up Elon Musk’s biography as well because I went and heard Walter Isaacson speak. So, I’m midway through that but I’m also reading the new book by Michael Lewis on Sam Bankman-Fried. So, I, obviously, have a penchant for reading about questionable businesspeople at the moment. I love reading about different types of leaders.

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

Kirstin Ferguson
I like the app Calm. So, it’s got good soundscapes, so this helps me get to sleep. I love having a good night’s sleep. So, I think every leader needs to sleep well.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And could you share a favorite habit, something you do that helps you be awesome at your job?

Kirstin Ferguson
I walk my dog. I live on the beach in Australia, which is pretty tough, I can assure you. We’ve got a ten-mile beach in front of our house, and I definitely try to walk my dog when I’m at home every day. That helps me just center myself and remember what’s important.

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

Kirstin Ferguson
Yes, to remember that everyone’s a leader, and that leadership is simply a series of moments. And every moment is an opportunity for you to leave a positive impact in your wake.

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

Kirstin Ferguson
Yeah, go to my website KirstinFerguson.com, or HeadHeartLeader.com, or you can find me on the socials.

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

Kirstin Ferguson
Yeah, have a look in the mirror first. So, as much as we can easily point out all of those leaders around us who are doing a bad job, it’s much more important that we’re considering how we’re going, and get feedback, and just work on it every single day.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Kirstin, this has been a treat. I wish you much luck and good head and heart moments.

Kirstin Ferguson
Thank you very much. It’s been a pleasure.

908: How to Work Across Differences and Overcome Polarization with David Livermore

By | Podcasts | One Comment

 

David Livermore discusses how to engage and get along with people who strongly hold opposing views and beliefs.

You’ll Learn:

  1. Why we’re better off when we address our differences
  2. How to overcome the discomfort of discussing differences
  3. The one question that helps bridge divides

About David

David Livermore PhD is a social scientist devoted to the study of cultural intelligence (CQ) and global leadership and the author of several award-winning books. He is a founder of the Cultural Intelligence Center in East Lansing, Michigan, and a visiting research fellow at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. Prior to leading the Cultural Intelligence Center, Livermore spent twenty years in leadership positions with a variety of nonprofits and taught in five universities.

He is a frequent speaker and adviser to leaders in Fortune 500 companies, nonprofits, and governments, and he has worked in more than one hundred countries. He has been interviewed and referenced by myriad news sources, including The Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, CBS News, Christian Science Monitor, The Economist, Forbes, NBC, the New York Times, USA Today, and the Financial Times.

Resources Mentioned

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David Livermore Interview Transcript

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

David Livermore
Thanks, Pete.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m excited to dig into the wisdom of your book, Digital, Diverse & Divided: How to Talk to Racists, Compete With Robots, and Overcome Polarization, to help folks become more awesome at their jobs. But, first, I want to hear a cool story from you about maybe a time you and a friend had some opposite views but came to a really cool mutual understanding.

David Livermore
Oh, wow, we’re going right in, right? Yeah, so there are many. I’m thinking about a conversation that I had with someone right after the first Trump election, so to jump right into politics. And without me really getting too far into the weeds of it, we voted differently, and we were having lunch together the next day, and kind of started around, like, “I can’t believe this,” and, “What, because you didn’t get your candidate to win?” And so, we were kind of bantering for a while.

And then we started to talk about, “Okay, let’s put everything on hold here for a moment. What’s most important to you and me?” And we were both dads – we are both dads – we started to talk about that. And, thankfully, by the time we ended the conversation, I think we both decided the world wasn’t going to come to an end, though we still retained some of the concerns that each of us had related to our politics.

So, that was the first of many conversations with him and other people about kind of my feelings about politics and issues related to diversity, reproductive rights, and on and on, the list could go.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And you remain friends to this day?

David Livermore
We absolutely do.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Okay. What I found troubling during some of those contentious elections were the proclamations, like, “If you voted this way, then you can unfriend me right now because we have nothing in common.” I was like, “Ooh, that feels like the opposite of what we need to do here,” is kind of my intuition. It sounds like you’re on my wavelength.

David Livermore
Yeah. And, Pete, name the issue of the week, we kind of get some kind of that. I’m watching it right now as we’re…watching, at least the time of recording, the atrocities going on in the Middle East, and it’s the same kind of rhetoric that’s been there, “Just unfriend me now if you believe X.” I’m like, “Okay, how does that help any of us move forward?” So, yeah, I think you’re right. Our unwillingness to even be “friends” on social media with someone who has a different viewpoint is clearly a problem.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s right. Well, to counterpoint that, David. The social media friendship is one of the most intimate and sacred relationships that we have, so, in all fairness.

David Livermore
No, fair enough that you say that because when the book first came out, people were often asking me about, “How do you work through some of these, like, conflicts you have with people?” And I’m like, “Well, I’ll tell you one thing, it’s not on social media.” And I swear, a couple weeks later, I suddenly found myself in a very cantankerous debate with someone on social media, I’m like, “I just violated my own principle.” So, yeah, you’re absolutely right. Part of the problem is if we assume there’s going to be meaningful constructive debate on social media, we’re probably already off on the wrong foot.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, maybe before we get too much into all these fascinating alleys and corridors, could you make the case, David, for why does understanding this stuff help a person be more awesome at their job?

David Livermore
Yeah. Well, it’s interesting because most of my work has actually been oriented around how it helps people be awesome at their job, and then I kind of backward-designed it into how does it also relate to personal relationships. So, a little bit of context to that, that response. Most of my work is in the field of cultural intelligence, so, “How do you understand people who come from different cultural backgrounds?”

So, in the job context, usually what that has meant is, “Hey, you are part of a team that’s scattered across Europe, Asia, and the US. How do you just deal with some of the frustrations of not only time zones but different ways of getting work done, etc.?” And the longer that I got engaged in that work, the more I was observing, just at a personal level, some of these increasingly polarizing conversations that happen in our own neighborhoods, maybe even in our own extended families.

So, I started to say, “How can we actually use some of these same principles that you might work in the work sphere in personal relationships?” So, I would say you’re hard-pressed today to be engaged in a work environment that isn’t going to be working with people who have different viewpoints than you and different backgrounds than you.

And we can try and stuff it for a while but, particularly under stress and time pressure, it’s going to start to surface. And the better that we learn the skills for how to actually lean into our differences and use those rather than ignore them is going to be helpful for all of us to become more awesome at the work that we’re doing.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’d love to get your take in terms of these sorts of conversations, if they are a political or other sort of hot button or divisive controversial matters. To what extent ought we not talk about them at work, versus, absolutely, engage, bring your whole self, your whole person? How do you think about that ball of wax?

David Livermore
Yeah, I’m a classic academic so I’m going to say it depends on the situation, because, in part, we’ve been told, particularly in US work culture, more the first point, like, just leave it alone, don’t go near politics, don’t touch. But that’s become harder and harder to do, particularly when some of the politicized issues are around unionization, or around reproductive rights, or whether or not people should be working from home or not, etc. So, it’s not realistic to say that this is never going to come up.

And in the wake of some of the atrocities that were happening after the George Floyd murder, like, sometimes people of color were sitting there on a Zoom call, going, “Everybody’s asking how my weekend was. I don’t even know how to engage in this conversation because I’m still reeling emotionally.”

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, I hear you. It’s like, “Well, this thing happened and it was horrifying for me. Am I supposed to say that or am I supposed to not say that?”

David Livermore
Yeah, exactly. So, I think it comes down to what a lot of our friends in the DEI space say of creating psychologically safe environments where we’re not walking on eggshells, where it’s okay to voice our viewpoint but being mindful that there may be someone on the other side of the table who has a very different opinion, and it takes a special kind of leader to know how to create awesome teams who can handle that kind of intellectual honesty with each other.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, now we settled that. Thank you. So, can you share with us any particularly surprising or fascinating discoveries that might be sort of counterintuitive as you dug into this work and put together the book?

David Livermore
Yeah, a couple things. So, the first would come more from our broader realm of research in cultural intelligence. One of the things that was surprising to me is sometimes those who know a lot about the other side, whether the other side be how a German works versus an American, or whether it be a Republican versus a Democrat, actually, sometimes do worse than those who don’t know a lot.

And what emerged in the research in that is if I think I know a whole lot about you, then that can tend to make me arrogant and close minded, and think, “I already know how people like you think.” So, it was a bit counterintuitive for someone like me who’s in academic to go, “Actually, knowledge by itself can be dangerous.” But when combined with the other facets that we look at in cultural intelligence, “To what degree are you open and motivated? How do you actually strategize? How does that actually help it?”

The one that was more specific to the book in looking at, “How do we actually use these ideas to help us around some of these polarizing issues?” was surrounding an issue that we call, in the academic arena, perspective-taking. So, your listeners can certainly wrap their minds around it pretty quickly. Perspective-taking is just when I stop, and say, “Let me see this through your point of view.”

And so, there was some interesting research where Adam Galinsky at Columbia University, a colleague of mine, wanted to look at what happened when he asked a group of students to examine an elderly gentleman sitting outside on a chair in New York City. And the first group of students, he just said, “Write what you see.” The second group of students, he said, “Write what you see but avoid negative stereotypes.” The third group of students, he said, “Write what you see but I want you to write it in the first person as if you’re the elderly gentleman.”

And what happened? The first group of students with no parameters, they wrote all kinds of stereotypical things about this poor dithering man who’s been here and he’s losing his mind, he’s lonely.” The second group of students, it was relatively clinical, “He sits here every day. He’s been here for lots of years.” The third group of students who were asked to view it through the first person, they wrote the most humanizing, positive view of, “Ah, I’ve had such a rich life, and I’ve watched some of the same kids grow up on these blocks, etc.”

And so, it became a very useful kind of somewhat surprising finding of a simple trick to say, “What if I actually enter the mind of someone who views vaccines as the best or worst thing ever, and start to think about, ‘Could I argue their point of view from their perspective?’”

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that really is powerful for just about any issue in terms of…because it’s easy to judge, to demonize, but then if you put yourself in a position of a mother, had triplets, they got vaccines, and then they all developed autism days afterwards, like, what is she to conclude? What is she to think? And she’s terrified, and so that’s going to be the perspective she’s going to have. It’s like, “Hey, vaccine is horrific.”

David Livermore
Great example. And shouting at her with the science isn’t even addressing the fear that she feels at that point as a mother.

Pete Mockaitis
Certainly.

David Livermore
But it’s also super hard, right, because the minute we start to view that other viewpoint, we immediately start to, “Yeah, these clueless sheeple who think blah, blah, blah.” Like, “Hang on, just you’re them right now. How do they view it?”

Pete Mockaitis
That’s right, “I’m a clueless sheeple.” That’s not what they’re thinking.

David Livermore
Right, probably not.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, so then lay it on us, is there a key theme or thesis that enables us to both talk to racists or compete with robots and overcome polarization? Is there a master key, David? Teeing you up.

David Livermore
Well, thank you for that question, Pete. I would say that one of the solutions to it is coming at it through this research-based work that I’ve done on cultural intelligence, and that is if we were to exercise with our racist uncle the same kind of perspective that we might exercise being with someone on the other side of the world, maybe we would get a little further along. And to be a bit more concrete about it, the first thing we know about just being more effective when you’re traveling or working with someone from a different cultural background is just openness, “Am I open to considering a different way of doing things?”

So, one of the tangible things that I suggest to people in the book, but just more practically in my interactions with my own friends and people that I’m working with in organizations, is if somebody has a strong opinion that differs from yours, like my friend did, related to the example just a few minutes ago, just simply asking the question, “Are you willing to consider a different perspective?”

And very rarely will someone go, “Hell, no.” And if they do, then there’s really no point in going any further because if someone has just said, “No, I’m absolutely closed-minded here. Anything more you have to say?” then don’t waste your breath. You might actually make it worse. But if there’s at least, “Okay, sure. I’ll, at least, listen to a different perspective,” that’s kind of an inroad. And, of course, coming back to the perspective-taking, it requires that I’m willing to do the same, “Am I willing to do that?”

And then the other key thing I would say that really try and bring out in the work that we do with people to be awesome at their jobs, and the kinds of things I write about in the book, is to find a shared problem that we both care about. Like, if it’s in the work setting, we both have to meet this deadline for this client. So, you might think the best way to go about is A, and I think it’s B, but, at the end of the day, we got to figure out how to get this done so that they’re pleased and they want to continue to do business with us, etc.

So, zooming wider than a my-way-versus-yours, to, “What’s the shared problem we’re trying to solve?” and then actually trying to use our different viewpoints of, “Can we actually come up with a better solution by both of us contributing to it?” Found that that can be a way that helps unlock people’s kind of close minded nature toward it to actually getting fixated on something that’s a little bigger than just our individual differences.

Pete Mockaitis
And, David, could you share a cool story of some teams, some folks in the workplace using some of this stuff to have some cool breakthroughs?

David Livermore
Yes. So, one example that comes to mind is we did quite a bit of work for a while with Goldman Sachs, and, in particular, there were many of their individuals in their Asian offices in Tokyo, Beijing, Singapore, etc., who felt like they were continually being passed over for promotions by people in London and New York. And so, they were hitting what often gets talked about as the bamboo ceiling. They weren’t being assertive in the way that perhaps their Western counterparts wanted them to do so.

So, we began to design a whole four-month program that would talk about, “How do you take on a different perspective? How do you kind of change the way that you voice things?” And so, a really concrete way that we worked with them on it is they had to leave a voicemail leaving the same information for three different individuals, sort of the caricature of somebody who was in New York, the caricature of someone who was in London, and the caricature of someone in Japan. Same information but how do you communicate it differently?

Of course, we cautioned against stereotyping and all that, but then gave them some feedback on, “Okay, if I’m your stereotypical New Yorker, here’s the way I heard that message sound.” So, this goes broader than just the, “How do you work across polarization?” but how do you actually develop this skillset in your job to be able to more effectively communicate in ways that people are going to hear things differently based upon their background and perspective?

Pete Mockaitis
Intriguing. So, in this exercise, they were delivering it in a way they were imagining a stereotypical New Yorker or Londoner would want to receive it.

David Livermore
Correct.

Pete Mockaitis
So, I’m just hearing accents in my head as I’m imagining such and such. Can you share with me some actual content? Like, what might that sound like and how that difference goes?

David Livermore
Yeah, no, fair question. Well, I’m speaking more about the words that are spoken and the level of assertiveness. So, with New York, no surprise, it’d be very direct, to the point, succinct, get the word out quickly. Whereas, in the UK, London, still not overly obtuse but perhaps a little bit more deferential, showing a little bit more respect for authority, and then all the more so with the Japanese example, all kinds of deference, more indirect.

So, it was more than nuance of how you communicate this in a way that you would be perceived to be competent, confident, assertive, and all those kinds of things but not over the top, or like, “Who is this dude that’s leaving me this voicemail that sounds like they’re arrogant or something else?”

Pete Mockaitis
That’s good. And I’m thinking about your magical question there, “Are you open to considering another perspective?” And I can hear it’s rare they’re going to say, “No way, no how, not ever.” Although, I think if I’m being honest and I’ve got a good relationship with someone, I might say, “You know, I’d rather not do that today. I’m not in that space today for that.”

David Livermore
And I think that’s actually a super mature response in some cases, like, “Yes, some day but today is not a good day for that.”

Pete Mockaitis
Certainly. Do you have any other favorite or least favorite words and phrases that are very productive or very destructive in these contexts?

David Livermore
Yeah, another, well, least favorite but then I’ll counterpoint it with what I would add to it. The minute you say, “That makes no sense.” Like, that’s just derogatory. It’s dismissive. And so, I just encourage people to say, just add “To me.” Like, “That makes no sense to me.” We don’t need to be super, like, we’re walking on eggshells, and, “Oh, Pete, I’m not sure I entirely get that.” But, like, it gets fair for us to banter then, “That makes no sense to me. Help me understand it.” But to just, “That makes no sense” sound like, “You’re not logical,” “You don’t make any sense,” etc. So, that’s another one that I like.

I think I already said this in our interview earlier but another favorite phrase of mine, and it’s one that I’m often known for, is “It depends.” When somebody is, “Should it be this or this?” “Well, it depends on so many different factors.” I think it’s fair for people when I’m facilitating a session in the workplace or something for them to say, “It depends on what?” Like, it’s not fair for me to just walk out of the room, and go, “It depends.”

But there’s far too much of our workplace advice, our advice for how you overcome polarization that’s super dogmatic, and it’s like, “What’s the nature of the relationship?” You just mentioned it. You said, “Well, it would depend on the friend and the relationship I have with them.” Exactly. There’d be some individuals where you might say, “Not today. I’m not open, okay? I’m shooting straight with you. Like, this is not a good day for me to enter the perspective of how you’re feeling about this.” So, those are a few of my favorites.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, okay. And so, generally speaking, cultural intelligence, what are your pro tips for how folks go about cultivating it and improving in this set of skills?

David Livermore
It won’t surprise you that there’s no substitute for developing cultural intelligence other than direct experience, so actually interacting with people who have different backgrounds than you. And so, to come back to your example, when we unfriend someone, whether virtually or in real life, just because they have a different perspective, like there’s very little hope we’re going to develop the skillset if we don’t purposely put ourselves in places where we’re interacting with people who are different.

We could say that when we’re talking about the more full-on cultural standpoint. The same would be if I’m not interacting with people from different races, ethnicities, as well as people on other sides of the world. Along with that, there is all kinds of research that says that formal education. We tend to see that as people get engaged in higher-level thinking in that, that it actually does have a link to cultural intelligence.

Many of your listeners may be very familiar with the idea of emotional intelligence, that is the ability to monitor and detect my own emotional state and the emotional state of another person. We know that that’s a key part of how you develop cultural intelligence because if I’m not, first, self-aware, or aware of the emotions of people from similar backgrounds, there’s very little hope that I’m going to do it with other individuals.

So, those are a few that are there. One more that I should just mention, obviously, absolutely key, is just starting with a self-awareness of, “What’s my own identity? What’s my own ideology? Can I transcend a little bit, again, engage in a bit of meta cultural intelligence, if you will, to take a look at myself, and say, ‘How am I, myself, shaped by my background, my upbringing, the profession that I’m in, the people I hang out with, etc.?’”

Pete Mockaitis
I’m curious to hear your perspective when folks, they hear, “Yeah, that probably is a wise move to talk to people who have the opposite point of view than me and some things?” And maybe they’ll make the determination for, “That’s kind of too risky to start at work,” or with this team, or with this individual. But if there’s a sense of terror associated with putting forth a perspective and hearing another person’s perspective as the opposite, like, “I actually think that abortion is murder.” It’s like, “Okay.”

If people feel terrified to voice their view, or the opposite view, it’s like, “I think that is oppressive to say abortions are forbidden,” then how do you recommend folks dip their toe in? Like, I think in some ways, these muscles, these skills have sort of atrophied in recent years as folks see the fireworks fly, and they shrink from that, say, “Okay, duly noted. That results in very spooky conversations and consequences. I’m not going to go there.”

And if we want to develop the cultural intelligence, it sounds like go in there is part of the game. So, how do you recommend we do that in a way that seems lower risk and higher safety?

David Livermore
I think one part of it is realizing we can’t go there with everyone. So, because someone just says it in line in the supermarket behind us doesn’t mean that we’re not being true to our convictions if we don’t engage it. And a more realistic example, like you said, just because someone might quip about that in a team meeting, now may not be the time.

So, it’s kind of say, “Who are the people with whom I really want to engage in this?” And then it’s probably an offline conversation, “Hey, let’s grab a drink together. Let’s have a meal together, and I’d love to talk about this further.” And this is where I would suggest we take on some of these tools that I’ve mentioned throughout of, “Okay, would you be open to considering a different perspective rather than just automatically assuming that it’s oppressive or assuming that it’s murder?”

Could you voice a perspective that somebody who is religiously similar to you and has a similar view of life, how they could actually arrive at a place that makes abortion legal as compared to you? So, sort of coming at it that way of forcing each other to not go to these soundbites. So, I realize it’s easier said than done, but I think finding a few individuals with whom we can go deeper on is probably going to be a lot better than us thinking that, on an offhanded comment or a quick social media post, we’re really going to get people to either change their perspective or get us to rethink ours.

Pete Mockaitis
And what sounds so powerful about this in terms of the cultural intelligence, if you engage in this practice multiple times, then you’ll have a greater confidence, courage, capability to disagree with folks about issues that may not be hot button cultural issues, but just like, “You think your boss is absolutely headed down the wrong path with this initiative.”

It’s, like, you have developed some reps of going there with folks in terms of saying, “Hey, are you open to considering a new perspective on the trajectory of this project?” And then a lot of that emotional stuff you’ve worked through a number of times.

David Livermore
I love that example, Pete, because I think that does bring it closer to home because, for many of us, it may feel daunting to dive into the deep end of reproductive rights, or Hamas versus Israel, or whatever the timely issue is. But clearly starting with some kind of, “Hey, on a team when we have a different view of how quickly should we be out to market, or how much time shall we spend consulting with 75 other people before we decide which campaign we’re going to roll out as a marketing team,” practicing some of these within a team on lower stake in terms of emotionally lower-stake issues is a great way to think about it.

And, to your point that the two are connected, that’s why I talk about cultural intelligence, which may seem a drift to people, of like, “Wait, why are you talking about Germany versus Americans at the same breath as you’re talking about Trump versus Biden, or January 6?” Well, some of those same muscles get exercised of, “Okay, I have a very different perspective that I’ve been socialized into seeing the world, as do you. How do we use some of these same kinds of techniques that can be used whether we’re talking about cultural issues or whether we’re talking about ideological ones or political ones?”

Pete Mockaitis
And, David, zooming into the heat of battle, if you’re hearing some things, or having a conversation, and you can feel yourself getting riled up, your defensiveness or judgment, “This guy is an idiot,” like whatever that internal voice sounds like, do you have sort of a stop-drop-and-roll or an immediate prescription for when you’re in the moment, and you’re starting to feel some intense feelings that are at risk for derailing your logical thinking abilities, what do you do?

David Livermore
A couple thoughts. One is, this is why I said emotional intelligence is a piece of it, is I do have to know myself enough to know, “Am I going to be able to engage in this in any kind of constructive way?” And if my heart rate is going, and I’m starting to think about four-letter words that I want to call you, then probably better to be, like, “You know what, kind of back to your strategy, now is not the day for us to talk about this, but I’d like to engage it.”

The other thing I think is really important for me to acknowledge, people can’t see me, but if they look me up at all, I’m a white, straight, middle-age guy. And so, some might say, “Okay, fine day for you to say that I should confront a racist bigot or whatever else. But what if you’re the person who’s continually on the receiving end of discrimination, bigotry, bias?” I absolutely give people an opt in or opt out of saying, “Hey, it might not be your job to say ‘Today is the day that I’m going to school the manager on how what they just did is a microaggression in that.’”

So, I think this does need to be something that is opt-in. I’m not campaigning for everyone that you all need, every time you hear something, you need to come up and challenge it, and have a culturally intelligent conversation. There may be times where any of us are not in an emotional state to do that, and all the more so if you’re somebody who has a very visceral reaction to this because of something in your own identity or a personal life experience. You may need to opt out and let someone else be the one who jumps in and takes the flak for it.

Pete Mockaitis
And, well, I was just going to ask, if you are on the receiving end of some, I don’t know, just rude, ignorant, discriminatory just bad news comments, what do you recommend you do in response? It sounds like it depends. But if you could share with us maybe some of the different contexts that suggest different responses.

David Livermore
Quick story, if you will, and I’ll come at it that way initially. So, a number of years ago, the university where I was, I was on a taskforce, and one of my colleagues also on the taskforce was a woman who always advocated for the importance of opportunities for women in leadership, staff, faculty, students, etc. And this taskforce I was on, the individual chairing the meeting, he knew that that was sort of Cristy’s, like, hobby horse even though it wasn’t her formal role.

So, he was just making every sexist statement in the book to just sort of push her buttons, “Oh, Cristy, why don’t you take the minutes for us? And how come you didn’t bring us cupcakes today?” And I’m just like, “Dude!” And she didn’t say a word. So, kind of coming back to, “What is your response?” She engaged in the meeting professionally in light of her role at the university but she didn’t engage in this banter at all. She’s a pretty good friend so I walk out of the meeting with her when it’s done, and I’m like, “Cristy, I can’t believe you took that.” And she’s like, “Yeah, I was hoping you would say something.” I’m like, “Duh!”

Yeah, so now I feel a little defensive, I’m like, “Wait a second, how is that not like the white male riding into, like, ‘Dude, don’t say that to my friend Cristy.’” She’s like, “No, I didn’t need you to defend me. I needed you to speak up on your own behalf of how you feel about that kind of banter and the role of women, etc.”

And so, it was a real reminder to me of when we hear all this buzz about allyship but that was a moment of what allyship would look like is, hopefully, there’s somebody else who can speak up. And it shouldn’t have been on her to have to speak into it. And sometimes people will say to me, like, “Isn’t it a little awkward being a white straight middle-age guy talking about all this stuff?”

And I’m like, “I don’t pretend for a moment to know that I have the lived experience of many of the groups that I care passionately about, promoting inclusion and equity for, but there’s a role for me to play, leveraging power, etc. in ways that others might not have it.” So, I guess it’s to think about that you’re not in it alone. Who are others that can help you with it?

And if you’re on the receiving end, it’s back to where I go. Opt in carefully. And if your mental health can’t handle it, you have my full support if you say, “It’s not on me to challenge the bigotry that’s going on right now. I need to just protect my own sanity in it.”

Pete Mockaitis
And I suppose then, in that context, there’s multiple ways that you can engage that challenge. You might bring that up right then and there in the meeting, or you might chat with the boss afterwards, like, “Hey, the cupcakes stuff is, like, some people will probably think it’s funny but other people would really don’t, so just heads up.”

David Livermore
I think that’s a great point. And I would say my preference overall, based upon my personality but also what I think helps people be awesome at work, is to do it offline rather than shame them. I guess the counterpoint I would offer to it is there’s also a message that’s being sent to everyone else in the group. If perhaps I was the leader and somebody else on the team was doing that, I think there would be some. And not necessarily shaming but some kind of intervention that’s needed right in the moment that demonstrates to the team, “This is not the kind of behavior that we want to be part of what we’re doing.”

And I think you could still do it in a way that isn’t like, “Shame on you, individual,” but, “Hey, we might all, like, be tired and sarcastic, and think we’re doing funny but we’re about an inch away from when it’s funny and when it’s actually offensive to people.” So, to your point, it depends as there are myriad ways you could confront it. But for those of us who at work are in leadership roles, I think there’s a different level of responsibility on us to call it out even publicly for the benefit of what everybody else is observing and learning from them.

Pete Mockaitis
And, David, if you do feel sort of excluded in the sense that it’s clear that your views or identity or whatever is not welcome or respected, I guess there are some environments where it’s just sort of like, “Don’t you dare wear a MAGA hat in this room,” or the opposite, “Don’t you dare wear a Biden shirt in that room.”

So, I guess I wonder about the extent of, and it probably just varies person by person, like, is that just sort of okay or should we speak up, which is like, “Hmm, something that I believe strongly is completely unwelcome in this room, and that’s just how it is, and I’m just going to live my life, and not bring that up”? Versus, do you think we miss out on a lot of good people engagement, whole self at work stuff when we’re in that vibe?

David Livermore
I think we do miss out. Like, I realize it’s idealistic for me to say that in every case you ought to just speak up, and be your whole self, and be authentic. And there are certainly cases where I would say if you don’t have the right power or if you just feel like this is just going to be misconstrued and it’s pointless, I give people all kinds of agency to figure out what bringing their whole selves to work is.

But I do think the team and the organization is missing out because the example you used, the Biden and Trump, look at the polls. Regardless of whether or not you think they’re legitimate, the fact that we can even be close to a margin of error of 50/50 on Trump versus Biden shows that if we have a whole room of people that thinks somebody of the other perspective is not welcome here, well, then we’ve just cut off half the country.

So, wouldn’t we be better to somehow be informed by that perspective, whether it’s from a business idea, whether it’s a way of developing a better product for people, or whatever it might be. So, I’m going to very much lead on at least the ideal is it’s better if we can speak that up, at least in certain cases. But I recognize that, as individuals, we have to pick our battles wisely, and may say, “I just don’t have the energy to go at this again if I’m the lone one on debating this with everybody else.”

Pete Mockaitis
And I think you brought up a wise point there with regard to the 50/50, is I guess I’m surprised at how often people seem to say things, which suggests they’re assuming everybody in the room holds their same views, or they don’t care at all, and they’re just going to say it loud and proud and deal with it.

David Livermore
I think of this often even, which no surprise, but even when you hear it on media interviews, “Americans want…” Which Americans? But then, likewise, like sometimes even I’ll meet a stranger in an Uber, the driver, or on an airplane, and the assumptions that they’re making of me, after like three minutes of talking about my presumed agreement with them about their political perspective, I’m just like, “Whoa, whoa, whoa.”

So, it’s actually one of the things I’ve mentioned to you before we started the interview, I recently moved to San Diego, and I came here from the Midwest, a very conservative sort of community, politically conservative, and I think everybody there was like, “You’re moving to the left Coast. Are you ready for this?”

But San Diego actually has quite a bit of political diversity, I think, because of the military presence, and it’s actually one of the things I’ve really enjoyed here is most social gatherings, as well as professional that I end up with, you can’t just assume that because someone lives in this town, they vote one way or the other, or even because they’re military that they might feel one way or the other about Trump or Biden.

So, I think we’re richer people, communities, and workplaces when we create space for that, but I’m with you. It’s amazing to me how a lot of people just…you couched it by saying either they think that or they just don’t care. And I think both are probably viable hypotheses of why individuals do that.

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

David Livermore
I think I would just encourage people to have the difficult conversations because I think we learn so much from that and it’s much easier to just default to people who think, believe, vote the same way we do but there’s this vast fascinating country, or world, that’s out there. So, have a conversation with someone who views an issue differently than you and see what comes of it.

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

David Livermore
So I’m going to have to use one that I actually used at the very beginning of the Digital, Diverse & Divided book. It’s from the great Martin Luther King, Jr. who says, “People fail to get along because they fear each other. They fear each other because they don’t know each other. They don’t know each other because they have not communicated with each other.” For me, that kind of says really well what I’m after. A lot of this is driven by fear, and fear of people that we don’t really know at a deep level because we aren’t talking.

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

David Livermore
For someone like me, a favorite bit of research is a tough question, but one I’ve been thinking about a lot lately is there’s this whole body of research around you see what you pay attention to. And so, just this kind of idea of I’m paying attention to certain things in my life, and that directly impacts the way I view life. There’s all kinds of research on if you pay attention to negative things, you tend to have a more negative orientation. So, that field is outside my own expertise but is one that really fascinates me.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite book?

David Livermore
So I’m actually going to say Abraham Verghese, Cutting for Stone which is just a brilliant novel that I love.

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

David Livermore
I am an obsessive journaler, and it’s something that I do almost every morning. It’s the way that I work through problems. It’s the way that I reflect on things, make meaning out of things. So, for me, journaling is an absolutely essential skill for both productivity and just making sense of my life.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite nugget you share, something that really seems to connect and resonate with folks that they quote back to you often?

David Livermore
I think I would say that amid all of our differences that I’m really keened in on helping people pay attention to, but that, at the end of the day, we’re all human beings. And so, calling people to our shared humanity, not instead of our differences but alongside our differences, that’s something I found that has really resonated to people.

And polling from the Human Genome Project that tells us we’re 99.9% the same DNA, I find that that, in the space of talking about differences, polarization, diversity, and working around the world is a piece that really sort of resonates with people, like, “Oh, yeah, as Livermore says, we have the shared humanity that needs to shape the way that we interact and live.”

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

David Livermore
DavidLivermore.com is the easiest place to start.

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

David Livermore
Thanks so much, Pete. It’s really great to be able to interact with people who are thinking deeply about how they just do their work better and live better. And my challenge is going to hearken back to what I said to you earlier. Have a conversation with someone who has a different opinion to you, and see what you learn.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, David, thank you for this. I wish you many enriching conversations.

David Livermore
Thanks so much, Pete.

898: How to Reduce Workplace Drama and Ego with Cy Wakeman

By | Podcasts | One Comment

 

Cy Wakeman discusses why engagement is overrated and what really drives results.

You’ll Learn:

  1. How your ego ruins 2.5 hours of each day
  2. Three questions for breaking free from your ego
  3. Why to stop saying “should”

About Cy

Cy Wakeman is a drama researcher, international leadership speaker, and consultant. In 2001 she founded Reality-Based Leadership. She is the author of four books: Reality-Based Leadership: Ditch the Drama, Restore Sanity to the Workplace and Turn Excuses Into Results (2010), NY Times Bestseller, The Reality-Based Rules of the Workplace: Know What Boosts Your Value, Kills Your Chances, and Will Make You Happier (2013), No Ego: How Leaders Can Cut the Cost of Workplace Drama, End Entitlement, and Drive Big Results (2017), and her newest release, Life’s Messy, Live Happy.

Deemed as “the secret weapon to restoring sanity to the workplace,” Cy Wakeman was voted in the top 100 leadership professionals to follow on twitter for 7 years in a row. In 2021, 2022, and 2023 she topped the Global Gurus list of Top 30 Leadership Professionals across the globe, coming in at #1.

Resources Mentioned

Cy Wakeman Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
I am excited to be here as well and I have so much I want to learn about drama, and ego, and entitlement, and accountability, and results. So much juicy high-stakes stuff, Cy. But, maybe, first, could we back it up and tell us there’s a tale in which you had an accidental discovery which led you down the path of being a drama research. Could you tell us this story?

Cy Wakeman
Absolutely. I was doing some academic work, my Master’s degree, but also, at the time, managing position offices. I had 19 clinics and I was a pretty young leader, and wanted to combine my work with my studies so I could kind of do two things at once. And so, I was wanting to study how physicians were adapting to a lot of medical records, and I thought I would do a quick time study just to see if using dictation and moving to the computer where they had the keyboard would really change their productivity negatively.

So, I put an observer in every room and I had them time how much time the physician was spending with the patients or how much time they’re spending typing because I had a baseline from their dictation how much time they spent on recording. And I just wanted to see if the new electric medical record had really slowed physicians down as much as they were telling me that was the case.

And, very quickly, I got a call and I had only given the group two ways to record time – time with patients and time with the keyboard – and they pointed out they really wanted a third column, and I really wanted the research not to be changed. I just wanted to write my paper, graduate from graduate school, and be done. And they convinced me I would really lose out on a huge discovery if I hurried the completion of that course.

And I asked them, I got curious, “So, what would the third column be?” And they said, “Well, we record time with the patient, time with the keyboard, but the third column would be how much time the physician spends complaining about the keyboard and the patient.” And that was so juicy that I said, “Oh, my gosh, I’m a psychology social work background, I want to know this.” And it came out to be an astounding two and a half hours a day per person.

Pete Mockaitis
So, these doctors were spending two and a half hours a day complaining about how dumb it is that they had…and I guess this was in the early stages, it’s a new change. I guess, like, they would get old, I imagine, after some weeks or months.

Cy Wakeman
It doesn’t.

Pete Mockaitis
Like, years in, they’re still complaining for two and a half hours a day.

Cy Wakeman
Yes, the average person. So, when I found out that the average person, and it’s not just venting, but it’s internal, “This is freaking wrong. This shouldn’t be happening.” I thought, “Maybe these physicians, it’s a new change or they’re just whiners.” And I went out and I looked at nursing, I went out and looked at other healthcare, technical roles, I looked in finance, I just kept repeating this research, and the average person, good performer, spends about two and a half hours a day walking around, going, “I’ll do it, but I shouldn’t have to, and this is sick and wrong, and somebody should figure out a better way. And I was a consultant and no one asked me,” and it’s just this huge emotional waste, this source of emotional waste.

And so, that eventually ends up it’s 816 hours a year. And it’s not even about productivity because people can work while they complain. It’s about time spent being miserable needlessly because most of what people are complaining about, their suffering comes from story not actual reality. It’s their story of how things should be, not the real inconvenience of how it is. So, it just really opened up a lot of people’s minds to the emotional wastes that is really a problem.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s powerful. So, two and a half hours a day, and so some of this time is spent complaining and working at the same time, so it’s not necessarily all two and a half hours of that time…

Cy Wakeman
It’s not like we’re taking a break to vent, although some people do. But an example, as a senior vice president in a health system, we had a policy that really saw a patient or their family loss, we would be service oriented, we call it wayfinding. No matter your position, you would greet the patient and ask them where they want to go, or their family, and you would personally walk them there because hospitals are confusing complex places. It’s not always laid out very clearly.

So, while I’m doing that, with a smile on my face, “Where are you going? How’s your care here?” internally, I am thinking, “Screw all this. I have a paper bag. How hard could it be to do a GPS app to get people where they need to go. The signage around here is absolutely ridiculous.” But, outwardly, I’m kind to people but burdened because I shouldn’t have to be, “This is somebody else’s responsibility. I’m surrounded by jerks and idiots.” And it’s just that constant judging that separates and erodes, and it’s really the source of ego. It comes from ego.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, fascinating. So, some of this complaining is internally, inside our own headspace. You’re not verbalizing it externally.

Cy Wakeman
A lot of it is. A lot of it is judging. Yup, judging not helping. It is even creating a story about someone so that it inhibits your collaboration because your mind is saying, “I already know what this is about. They’re out to get me. I’m a victim. They want to disprove me with my boss.” Like, there’s so much dialogue internal and external. But what I’ve come to do with my research is teach people two things.

I teach them how their mind works so they quit getting played by their ego, and they quit believing everything they think as if it’s true, and I teach people how the world works so they stop arguing with reality, which is an argument you’ll lose, like, 100% of the time. Two colossal wastes of energy when people really could have an impact.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, boy, Cy, there’s so much to jump into here.

Cy Wakeman
Is that by topic?

Pete Mockaitis
All right. So, the book is called No Ego: How Leaders Can Cut the Cost of Workplace Drama, End Entitlement, and Drive Big Results. So, maybe first, let’s just define ego. What precisely do we mean by ego?

Cy Wakeman
So, ego is not a bad thing. We all have it. The way I talk about it is it’s a part of your mind that can provide protection, it helps you when you’re two years old, separate out from your mom, and come to know that you’re separate in the world. And, as human beings, we tend to really overuse it. It’s a very primitive part of our brain. Its job is really to keep us safe and be pretty paranoid, and not give people benefit of the doubt.

The way I explain it is, like, if you imagine having a light switch on your forehead, like a toggle switch, an old-fashioned switch, not a dimmer, not Alexa, like just a toggle switch. And when it’s toggled down, you’re seeing the world through the lens of ego, and it’s like wearing a pair of glasses, prescription glasses, but it’s the wrong prescription. It distorts your view of the world.

So, when you’re getting information in through the lens of ego, you see fact plus story, fact plus color commentary, and your view of the world is very distorted. You see the world as more dangerous. You come to the conclusion, usually, that you’re the victim, somebody else is the villain, and you’re helpless, and it’s distorted information upon which you make pretty outlandish decisions based on, and then you co-create the very thing you probably feared.

So, let me give an example. I’m driving down the road, and all I know if I told you the facts were that someone appear to be male, driving a pickup truck, bumper stickers which I disagree with on the pickup truck, saying things that I would not support, moves into my lane of traffic, allowing me less room than I prefer. So, all this happens on my morning commute as I was driving, and someone, who I described, moves into my lane of traffic, and I prefer more room than that person driving gave me.

Now, if that’s all the information I have, if I just keep it right there an accurate view of reality, I would make good choices. I would say, “Oh, my gosh, I prefer more room, so I will slow down and allow this person in, and continue my beautiful commute. There’s nothing to be upset about, there’s nothing to be mad about.”

However, many of us experience those facts and we add story, “He’s a male chauvinist. Obviously, he doesn’t care about human life. He’s the problem with this country. He doesn’t care about human life. Got up this morning, he doesn’t respect me, tried to kill me as if he owns the road. It’s absolutely ridiculous.” And it sparks in me what feels like real emotion and anger, but the anger didn’t come from reality. Our suffering isn’t from reality. It’s from the story we make up about reality.

So, what choice do I make? “I prefer safety and room between us, but given his behavior, game on, I speed up. If he wants it unsafe, I’ll show him unsafe.” And now I co-create the very thing I said I stood against, so I get to work. It’s not very bonding to say, “You know, Pete, my commute, just a lot of it is adjusting to other people moving into my lane with less room than I prefer. How was yours?” There’s no bonding to happen.

But if I’m like, “Oh, my gosh, thanks for asking. Attempted murder. This guy, like, literally, tried to take me out, and it was absolutely ridiculous and it escalated.” And now, what my ego has got me doing is just crunching on dopamine, crunching on like a brain cocktail, and actually believing everything I’m saying. And we operate at that heightened distorted view of the world.

And the conclusion I come up with is, “I was an innocent victim. He’s a villain,” and that we have to have very harsh consequences, two people who act like that. And we just keep separating it out. At the time at work, we need to be collaborative, we need to be inclusive, we need to be turning towards one another, and putting all ideas on the table. We’re judging, not helping.

And so, when you’re toggled down, you’re using the most primitive part of your brain and you usually don’t have very many options. You have fight, flight, freeze, or fawn, so what people do is they say, “There’s nothing I can do.” They disengage. They create impact. They disengage, they can’t have impact, and so then they feel, like, work is not engaging them but it’s actually their story that’s not engaging.

But when we’re toggled up, because we have another option, you’re bringing coherence, you’re using high levels of consciousness, you’re seeing the world as it really is. And when you’re toggled up, you have a thousand more choices, and it doesn’t feel like such a burden. And so, as you toggle up, you’re naturally your best self, you’re most evolved, you’re highly accountable, you’re collaborative, you’re resembling all the things that you could be to really co-create some amazing things.

But most people toggle down, outsource their happiness and their circumstances, rather than toggling up, seeing reality as it really is, and looking for ways they can plug and play that rebuilds and has impact, and is inclusive and collaborative, and creative and innovative. And so, once I can teach people how to run their toggle switch, which is simply through the act of self-reflection and questioning your own thinking, once I can teach them that, the same job is very different, the same colleagues are partners.

It’s not toxic positivity. It’s not just thinking better about people. It’s seeing reality as it really is so you realize most of what you thought happened never did. So, it was just your brain trying to protect you.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. All right. So much good stuff here. So, toggle up, toggle down is like we sort of have a switch or a gear shifter, and we got the down mode, which is our primitive lizard limbic stuff, fight, flight, freeze, or fawn. I understand fight, that’s aggress, “Let’s rip into it.” Flight, “You know what, I’m out of here. Forget it,” leave the room or check out.

Cy Wakeman
Or quiet quitting, “I stay and just quit.”

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. Freeze, that’s just sort of like you just sort of disassociate or do nothing. You’re just sort of like do. And, now, what’s fawn? I don’t know about this one.

Cy Wakeman
Fawn is when, let’s say, we stop at the gas station, the guy goes, “Hey, sorry I cut you off.” And I’m like, “It really wasn’t any issue. I didn’t even get upset about it. I understand. It’s hard to drive a pickup, especially with all those bumper stickers on it. It might be difficult.” It’s that fawning is really a passive-aggressive approach.

So, like, in a meeting after the meeting, you talk really aggressively about what happened. And then when somebody asks you directly, “Do you want to add any comments or talk about the risk of this idea?” you’re like, “No, I think it looks amazing.” So, it’s really kind of self-abandonment, fawning is.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, and it’s interesting to think of it in the same context of those other options because it almost feels more devious and conscientiously chosen.

Cy Wakeman
And people say, “Our culture is just nice. We treat people like family.” I’m like, “That sounds a pretty dysfunctional way to treat family.”

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. Okay. And then toggle up, so I like it. There’s a limited set of options versus toggling up. I’ve got a whole broader set of options, like, “Do I engage? Do I give a gift? Do I problem-solve something?” So, there’s a whole lot of ways we can go about that. All right, understood.

Cy Wakeman
And, usually, when you’re toggled up and you’re in high levels of consciousness, you’re helping not judging. You’re curious, you’re compassionate, you’re open-minded, open-hearted, “How can I give a person the benefit of the doubt? How can I turn back towards them? How can I approach this with curiosity?” because you’re not being driven out of, “I’m in danger and I have to do drastic things.”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay.

Cy Wakeman
I think your listeners want to know if they do this, go on social media, read some posts you disagree with, and look at how you respond. So, if you agree with me, and write, and like, “Heck, yeah, Pete, great post.” If you don’t agree, I just put an emoji, like a calf and a poop symbol, and go, “I hate for this woman to be my manager. She sucks,” after a one-minute video. And instead of, “Tell me more,” or, “How might you apply this to this particular situation?”

Like, so many of the algorithms in our daily lives drive us towards polarization and settle in cognitive dissonance where many things can trip us in time with simplistic polarized yes-no, “Whose camp are you in?” and then, like, “What if we can sit if there’s only one camp?” It’s like the world and the human race. There’s all these divisiveness, and that’s really the work of the ego.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, so then what are the tools we would use to do the toggling up to get out of some of the drama and unpleasantness here?

Cy Wakeman
Really simple. There’s these great questions that will set you free, and the first question I like to ask myself is, “What do I know for sure?” And that loosens the ego’s grip on my view of the world. Like, “You tried to kill me,” like, actually, I don’t know that for sure. “He’s a male chauvinist pig,” I don’t even know if it’s his pickup. I don’t even know if he believes the bumper stickers. I really don’t know what those four words mean to him.

So, when I ask, “What do I know for sure?” it gets me back to reality. And then the next question, now that I’ve stopped judging, I can ask myself, “What could I do next that will help? If I say I want world peace, what can I do next to be peaceful? If I say I want safe commutes, what could I do next?” And now it brings us back into helping, not judging, and personal accountability. And sometimes what I can do is just bless them or give them the benefit of the doubt. It doesn’t have to be any action.

And then a really final call for me is I often ask, because I want to live according to my principles and integrity, is, “If I were great right now, if I were my most evolved self, what would my next right action be?” And those three questions, those questions live in me. I just walk with them and I ask my teams a lot. So, when they come in and they’re mad at that colleague, I’m like, “What do you know for sure? Now, that you’ve stopped judging, what could you do to help? And if you were great right now, what would great look like?”

And that, people in their higher self, they usually come up with really helpful things that will move things along in the direction we all hope for.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, maybe could you give us an example? Let’s say someone is upset, they feel like they should’ve been included on an email, on a meeting. They feel undermined, cut out, excluded, something along these lines. It’s like, “I was not consulted, and I don’t like it.” How would we work through that?

Cy Wakeman
So, I would first premise with is a lot of people are like, “I just need to vent,” and they think venting is sharing feelings but venting, really, is a behavior, and it’s not sharing feelings. Venting is feelings plus story. So, feelings are like, “I’m frustrated.” A little context is, “I understand there’s a meeting that happened that didn’t include me, and I have some expertise in that area. My preference would be getting included.”

The venting is the respite, “They did this crap on purpose. They’re purposely excluding me. They want to discredit me. They’re trying to get by with something. And then you go back in history, they’ve done this 18 times. I’ve kept score.” That’s the venting part. So, let’s say my team member Alex comes in, and for my team, we’ve committed to note third options. You can either step in and impact. You can radically accept and extend grace, mercy, and tolerance.

But the third option where they don’t want to do either one of those, they just want to vent about it, most really great spiritual teachers, if you want little suffering, say, the third option, you can impact, and not control, its impact, or you can radically accept. Alex comes in, and says, “I’m so frustrated.” And as a leader, I want to validate his feelings, his experience, I’m like, “You look frustrated. What’s up?” “Well, Sara didn’t give me the information I needed for my report tomorrow. I’m going to have to stay late and I’m going to miss my kid’s ballgame.”

So, I can validate for him his experience, “Gosh, that sounds frustrating.” What I don’t need to validate as a colleague, a friend, or a leader, is the sense his ego is making of that.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, “Boy, she really did you dirty there.”

Cy Wakeman
Yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
We don’t go there.

Cy Wakeman
Feelings sharing is like, “I see you’re frustrated,” but when he goes on to say, “She does this crap on purpose. She’s just trying to discredit me. Ever since she got that promotion, she thinks she’s all that bag of chips, and doesn’t realize that we’re still equal.” And I’m like, “Time out, time out. Two choices. If you were great right now, what would great look like? Please step up and impact this.” And he might consider that because self-reflection, you can’t vent and self-reflect at the same time. Your brain cannot do that.

That’s why it’s such a good hack because you can’t vent and help at the same time. So, I’m like, “Consider this question. If you were great right now, and you really wanted to impact your working relationship, that you were included and informed, what would that look like?” And he’s like, “Ahh, I could just simply like maybe put a reminder on our calendar three days before due date every month I needed the information, and to reach out to her to see if there’s any issue.”

I’m like, “Oh, my gosh, awesome. Go be great.” He’s like, “Yeah, but I shouldn’t have to.” The ego came calling. And I go, “Oh, my gosh, you were almost great.” The ego makes up rules that aren’t real and then when people violate it and we get really mad about it, like, “I shouldn’t have to put a reminder on a colleague’s calendar that’s helpful.” So, I said, “No problem, you don’t have to impact it. Then your other choice is can you radically accept it, that some days are like that? Have you ever been in a position where you missed a deadline? Can you extend mercy, grace, and tolerance?”

And his heart softened. He’s like, “Oh, my gosh, yes. She’s a good team member. We’ve had a lot going on. She helped me out before.” And I said, “Perfect. Like, can I help you? Like, if you have to stay late, I’ll pull some numbers for you. What do you need?” And we start working on that, and Alex goes, “Well, wait a minute. So, she’s just going to get away with it?” And I’m like, “So, you’re not letting it go? So, you’re going to impact it.”

And when you put the bagel in a squeeze box like that, you can see it grows more and more ridiculous, “So, you want her to pay for it and you don’t want to help her remember it, and you want an engaging great place to work without you being willing to do any part in helping your human companions?” And so, that whole piece of it, in the beginning, people get really mad because the ego can’t find a place to be a victim in there. It’s like adulting. It’s how the adults step up to impact. Yeah, it’s like adulting.

Pete Mockaitis
These are fantastic distinctions which just really clarify and crystallize things. So, sharing feelings plus context is different than venting. Venting is creating a big old story, it’s like, “I felt this associated with these things.” Okay. And then the main choices are: make an impact, change the situation, radically accept this is how it is, and extend mercy, grace, and tolerance, which feels nice. But don’t vent because then you’re just sort of giving ego fuel and being a victim, and that’s not really great for anybody in terms of our emotions, our engagement, our feeling good, our work relationships, etc. So, that’s cool.

Cy Wakeman
Exactly. And that’s a great point because a lot of people, I’m like, “So, why do you want to vent?” They’re like, “I want to feel better.” I’m like, “I have a more scientific way proven to feel better, which is accountability.”

Pete Mockaitis
Absolutely. Yes, I’ve seen some of the research.

Cy Wakeman
People are like, “I want to feel better,” but venting comes with a hangover. And the more you vent, the more you’ve trained your neural pathways that you need cheap dopamine and heightened disgruntlement. And for the ego to stay alive, it needs to stay mildly disgruntled. It eats anger for lunch. So, now you have to look elsewhere in the world for something that is wrong. And what we start doing is we outsource our happiness, “I’ll be happy when I have the perfect boss who’s never human. And I’ll be happy when everyone works exactly like I do. I’ll be happy when everyone agrees with me.” I’m like, “Well, your world has got to be pretty small then for you to get happy.”

Pete Mockaitis
Absolutely. That notion, “I shouldn’t have to,” and you said we make up rules, and then are angry when other people don’t follow them. And I’m thinking, I got a book on my shelf, Feeling Good, Dr. David Burns, talking cognitive distortions and ‘shoulds’ is a big one. I would love for you to dig into this territory a little bit. How should we think about ‘shoulds’? And what is an optimal approach when we hear our brains firing off that stuff?

Cy Wakeman
I’m so glad that you bring up on your podcast the solid evidence around cognitive distortions and all the ways that we do that. I think the best way I can explain my view on should is a question. So many people come to me as a therapist, it was about marriages, “Should I stay? Should I go?” And at work, like people come to me all the time, like, “Should I stay here and put up with this crap? Or, should I just leave and find another job?”

And what I tell people is, “If those are your questions, you’re never going to get good answers. If you want better answers, get better questions.” And when you’re using should, “Should I?” it’s a problem. One, it’s external focused, “What would you do?” or, “What would another person do?” or, “What would a good girl do?” or, “What would God have us do?”

It’s also very conditional, “I have a good week at work, then I should stay,” “I have a bad week work at work, then I should go.” So, it really keeps us externally focused. It’s so conditional, made-up, and silly. I would ask people, “What’s your soul craving right now?” or, “What do you hope to see happen? And then, how can you get that using your words and your actions, and evolving yourself to move through the world more skillfully to get that more often?”

Because that should piece has so many implications, like, “The world owes me something. There’s a formula on how the world should work. And I’m in charge of how people should behave. And I had some agreements, somebody’s ripping me off because my birthright is a perfect boss.” It really gets you into territory that you’ll be chronically disgruntled.

Pete Mockaitis
Understood. So, if we catch ourselves in a should, is there sort of like a stop, drop, and roll or key protocol or steps you recommend we do?

Cy Wakeman
When you get into should, know that you’re absolute into story of how you would prefer the world to work, but you haven’t even questioned that. You may not even prefer it that way. But when you get into ‘shoulds,’ it is the key indication that you are externally attached and you’re into ego, your view is distorted, and you’re trying to dictate and control people, places, and things, and it will lead to complete and utter misery. It’s like co-dependency.

So, the minute you just start hearing that in your language about, “Here’s what they should be doing,” or, “Everyone knows that this is how it should happen,” just back out of it, and just say, “What is it that I want to be part of creating? And if I were doing that splendidly, what would I be doing right now? Invite other people to join me in that creation.” Like, get that internally focused. Get focused on, “What if we could? And how could we?”

And, for me, those stop, drop, and rolls are energy management. So, a lot of people are putting their energy into, “Why I shouldn’t have to.” If an organization has this strategy, like, “Well, they shouldn’t ask us to do that. And here’s what we shouldn’t have to. And here’s why it won’t work,” and I say that leaders today aren’t there to manage the work of people. They’re there to manage the energy of people away from why we can’t and why we shouldn’t have to, to how we could. And people get fired up about being part of the creation process.

And so, it’s like, “Well, let’s dream and scheme what would great look like. And what if we could, how could we?” and you re-plug people’s energy into that, now people have impact, which is what we all crave, and we’re in high levels of consciousness, and we’re out of ego. We’re seeing a lot of options that we didn’t see before. We’re into creativity and we’re into some big energy stuff. Very nourishing anti-burnout stuff.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And I think when it comes to should, in my own head, some of the most loud, or resonant, or powerful, emotionally feeling ‘shoulds’ involve things that are, I guess, associated with the law, like, “They should not be breaking the law,” or, “They should not be lying,” or sort of legal, or moral, or just like abundantly obvious resource things, that cost ten times what it could.

Cy Wakeman
It could be. I think what happens with should is it’s the way we feel justified in judging because I really believe that people are innocent till proven guilty. And so, I’m like, “They deserve a fair trial,” and I’ve already tried them and decided that what they did was wrong, or if a jury of your peers has said that by all accounts seems they have broken the law, then we support the consequence society has agreed on.

But we tend to take it out of the judicial system or out of the consequence system and put it in our own judgment system, and that’s where I have an issue. I wish people would replace the word ‘they should’ with ‘I prefer’ because that’s really owning it. That’s really owning it. Like, I grow as a therapist and social worker, and if you look at many of the people incarcerated, we can get from a privileged statement that’s really judge-y, and like, “They shouldn’t have broken the law.”

And so many times I want to say, “Come with me, give me all your money, give me all of your defenses, you grew up in a crappy environment, you have no boundaries, you’ve been traumatized, you’ve been sexually abused, your brain doesn’t work right, and you need position, power, food, something. Where’s the ‘should’ come into that?” Like, it’s very predictable when there aren’t those support systems there that the same people believing their same thinking will commit the same thing.

And that’s why most people who are saying ‘should’ have so much hypocrisy in their lives. Like, “People should not steal,” “And I cannot put something in my taxes because it’s not a big deal, and it’s not going to get caught. And the IRS is really underemployed,” or, “People should not lie.” And I lie every day. Actually, it’s a federal offense when I lie. I go into security at the CDC or NIH or NASA, the places I get to work, and if you lie to a security officer upon entry, it’s a federal offense. And they ask for my ID. And every day I turn over my driver’s license that says I weigh 150 pounds.

And so, all I’m saying is that when we are really focused on what other people should and shouldn’t do, we have these moral stances, it’s really just trying to protect ourselves in trying to control the world. Instead, I could say, “I would prefer we all seek to be more honest with one another.” That’s a more inclusive turning towards one another, but it happens a lot, too, at townhall meetings. Leaders should be kind and transparent, and create psychological safety, and make the world safe, and listen, and include.

Like, the list for leaders is long, and then in a townhall meeting, people are standing up, and are like, “Well, I don’t have all the facts, that I know that you’ve lied about this, and you fired that person,” and there are behaviors from employees that are not kind, or psychologically safe, or demanding answers, and it’s like their anger at leaders should include them, and we can also include in our leaders. Leaders should never lie to us, “Did you say when you called in sick that you weren’t sick, that you just really want to go to the Taylor Swift concert?”

And that’s where I think we need to be careful at ‘shoulds’ because ‘shoulds’ lead to shame but internally. We’re trying to shame others for not living up to it but they lead to internal shame because once I ‘should’ you, I’ve just guaranteed that probably a standard for you that I could never live up to.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, well said. Well, so while we’re hopping around your worldview, you also say that we should reject the fads of engaging employees and meeting their needs. What do you mean by this? And what should we do instead?

Cy Wakeman
Yeah, this is often taken out of context. What I have found out is that we really over-rotated on engagement. It’s like, “How can we create this workplace where people don’t have to face any sort of hardship and we can take care of as many needs as possible?” And while it’s beautiful, if it’s not balanced with personal accountability, it will lead to entitlement.

And so, I want people to create great engaging workplaces for high accountables. And the reason I say this is the same behavior will not please someone who’s in the state of low accountability and high accountability at the same time. So, if we need to make changes in our organization to stay competitive in the marketplace, if we slow change down, high accountables are like anxious, like, “Why aren’t we implementing this to stay competitive?” But if we speed change up, low accountables are getting anxious, like, “Why do we keep changing things? Why can’t we keep it the same?”

So, to think that we can engage people in a state of low accountability is really just not supported in the evidence. I can only work with the willing, and engagement has a lot to do with my shared accountability to lead. And what we found in the research, people in states of high accountability are more reasonable and they engage more easily in the same workplaces that people are in, say, low accountability are disengaging, that there’s a big part of engagement that is a choice that says, “I realize reality will be imperfect, and I would like to join you in relationship where we can move through that skillfully.”

And a lot of people, their minds are very conditional, “I’ll buy in as long as I get communication and I get this, and no one ever adds something on, and we’re all paid the same, and we’re always given enough notice.” And I’m just like, “What are the odds that that world is ever happening?” And it’s like, “Then what are the odds of you ever engaging?” And the part about that when you disengage is that you feel separate and you feel not part of something. And if you are a disengager, you will disengage at many relationships over time.

That’s just my therapist background, “I just show up at work and do no engagement. I do nothing. I hate it there. My life at home is amazing.” And I’m like, “Probably statistically impossible.”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, then when it comes to engaging employees, it’s not so much that, “We’re going to do a thing that’s going to engage them,” but rather…

Cy Wakeman
“I can’t buy you love.” “I cannot buy your love,” that’s co-dependency.

Pete Mockaitis
Understood. And, likewise, meeting their needs, it’s sort of like there’s an independent sort of responsibility piece that cannot be fulfilled by an external third party. Is that kind of your main message there?

Cy Wakeman
It’s my main thing. And I’m not anti-engagement. I think the people that work for me would tell you that it’s a fantastic place to work. We have very few rules. We just deliver great things. But the prerequisite is that you’re an adult, and a high accountable, and have a lot of skills to move through the world with a lot of loving kindness, inclusivity. The key is I can’t buy you in. Buy in is a verb. If you buy in, then we all have a responsibility to create a wonderful workplace.

And so, here’s a great tool to see where you’re at on this. A lot of people do engagement surveys, and then the leader comes in and says, “Okay, here’s what you said in the survey. Let’s make a list of what we need, what you want here at work. Like, what do you want? What would great look like? What do you want created?” And people come up with a really gold-plated list, like, “We want everybody included, and everybody should be consulted. Decisions have to be made quickly, and even if we don’t have expertise, and even if we have no stake in it.”

And this list is long, and most people want the leaders to take that list and go fix reality and deliver that. And a real question is, “Before I take that list to somebody’s leader,” I say, “Well, here’s the second part to this assignment. What are you personally willing to do to get it?” And a lot of times, that list is really short. The list is long that they want, and what they’re personally willing to do is, like, “Wait for it,” or, “Be here when you get back with it,” or, “Participate if everybody else does it.”

And I’m like, “What are the odds of that working?” And we just fill that list more robust where that’s personal accountability. And then our really awesome list is the third list, “Now that we have people participating, what can I, as your leader, what can the organization do to support all of this?” And that’s called attribution in a healthy way.

When high accountables are stressed or suffering, they first look to themselves, and they go, “What’s my part in this?” Like, I was betrayed in a marriage. Everybody could think he was the bad guy. I had a part in that. I abandoned myself long before he abandoned me. Like, I compromised on some. Like, if I don’t learn that, then I can’t really trust anybody in a relationship. I had to learn that.

So, once people identify that, then it’s like, “Here’s what we’re willing to do. What can the organization do?” So, when a high accountable suffers, they go, “I’m in pain here. What’s my part in it? And then what do I need from others?” And then they use the words and they don’t demand it. They request it and work to a solution.

If somebody is in low accountability, and they’re struggling, they skip that part where they attribute anything to themselves, they’re like, “I’m struggling. My leader sucks,” or, “I’m struggling.” What the ego does is it intellectualizes feelings, like anxiety into grievances. I wake up today anxious. I do a body scan, and I’m like, “I feel anxious. And so, great information. How can I move through today knowing I feel anxious? I can be more careful with people. I can really remember that they don’t read my mind and ask for what I need, and move through with that information.”

A lot of people have outsourced their happiness. They wake up, and go, “I feel anxious,” and then they intellectualize it, they’re like, “Why? Oh, I know, because my leader doesn’t tell me anything.” And so, we’re intellectualizing so many things into grievances, and now we’re outsourcing, we’re dependent upon everybody else for how we feel, we’ve outsourced that.

And I’m just inviting people. This isn’t blaming the victim. A lot of people get in, like, “Oh, she’s gaslighting.” And I’m like, “That would be your ego trying to discredit. Just stay curious for one minute longer and just wonder if your life might improve if you just reflect on what is also your part in this, and how can you partner differently with the people that can help you.”

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Cy, this is a refreshing completely alternative way to run the brain to a common practice and culture, and I dig it. Tell me, anything else you really want to make sure to mention before we shift gears and hear about some of your favorite things?

Cy Wakeman
I really invite people to do what you did, the books on your shelf. Get to know you as a human being. Where is your co-dependency? Where is your dysfunction? Where is your trauma? Where is your own cognitive dissonance and limiting beliefs and ways your brain is playing you? And as you discover that, a whole new world sort of opens up to you. So, I just encourage people to become a student, a curious person.

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

Cy Wakeman
Okay. Favorite quote, most of them that I love are from Rumi, a poet. And favorite quote is, “Out beyond the ideas of right-doing and wrongdoing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there.” And that’s just really a call for me to get out beyond judgment and just meet people where they are, and love people up, and call people up.

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

Cy Wakeman
My favorite study is the study that showed the observer effect, where as they shut light, it acted differently when it was being observed than when it wasn’t being observed. And it really just shows that we’re always involved in a process of co-creation. So, take your part of co-creation very seriously. We’re always affecting the outcome.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that experiment is so trippy.

Cy Wakeman
It’s mind-blowing.

Pete Mockaitis
Some folks are like, “This is proof we live in a simulation.” I was like, “You know what, I don’t know if we can jump to that conclusion.”

Cy Wakeman
It’s mental blue pill Matrix. I’m like, “No.”

Pete Mockaitis
It certainly makes you scratch the head, like, “What is going on here?” And a favorite book?

Cy Wakeman
My favorite book is, I’m huge into poetry, so my favorite book is anything by David Whyte, probably Consolations.

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

Cy Wakeman
I’d say it’s still low tech, my journal. If it needs to be self-reflected on, or remembered, or attended to, it goes pen to paper. I really think all war internally belongs in the ear. Once you get out beyond the ego, you can see it for what it really is. So, it’s got to be pen and paper, Byron Katie from TheWork.com talks a lot about that.

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

Cy Wakeman
Yeah, your ego is not your amigo, and stop believing everything you think, every question. If you think something that causes you, like you’re hooked, or you’re sure, or you’re out of curiosity and compassion, I would question them.

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

Cy Wakeman
I am at Cy Wakeman everywhere. Our newsletter is fantastic and you can sign up for that at RealityBasedLeadership.com/newsletter. We don’t sell you stuff. We just give you a great short content to consume and use with your team, friends, and colleagues.

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

Cy Wakeman
My final challenge would be tune in more to your own thinking and be an observer of your thinking. You are not the thinker. You’re the observer. And a lot of us are moving through life pretty unintentionally.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, Cy, this has been a treat. I wish you much fun and love and minimal ego.

Cy Wakeman
Thank you. And thank you for the honor of being on the show. It’s fun to talk about these things. So, thanks for what you do.