Self-Awareness Archives - Page 2 of 13 - How to be Awesome at Your Job

Pete Mockaitis

Marsha, welcome.

Marsha Acker

Thanks, Pete. I’m happy to be here.

Pete Mockaitis

Well, I’m excited to talk to you, hear your wisdom. And first, I got to know, your pitch claimed you had the answer for “Why do organizations have the same conversations over and over again without getting anywhere, feeling frustrated?” So, I’m just going to put you on the spot right from the beginning. What’s up with that and what do we do about it?

Marsha Acker

Well, I think that so much of what we do every day is about having conversations with one another, and I think many of us would look at conversations and communication as not something that we need to go get any kind of development around it because we already do it. I mean, we do it all day every day, and I think many of us likely think we’re good at it.

But what, in the work that we do, I have found there’s a model that we use to help all of us look at the structure of conversations, and the structure can actually predict the outcome of the conversation. So, maybe a quick litmus test would be to think about “How often do you feel like you have the same conversation over and over again?”

Like, you had a conversation a couple weeks ago, and now you’re back in a conversation, and you’re starting to have that kind of Groundhog Day moment where you’re going, “Hey, wait a minute. I think we’ve been here before.” So, a lot of times I think many of us have those moments, but we don’t really know what to do about it. So, real quick, I think what we could do is, if you want to play with me for a moment, we could lay down a little bit of the theory, and I can tell you a story about how I apply it.

Pete Mockaitis

Yes. Well, I guess, first, I want to tee up the stakes here. Is it, in fact, possible to exit this? Because I think it was Dr. John Gottman who was talking about married couples, he’s like, “You’re going to be basically having the same couple arguments for decades until you die,” which, in a way, was heartbreaking. But in another way liberating, like, “Oh, okay. Well, then I guess we’ll need to figure out how to disagree in an effective, loving kind of a way.” But are you suggesting that, “No, we are not doomed to this fate”?

Marsha Acker

I think that if we notice that we keep coming back around to the same thing, the way I think about conversations is there’s likely something that, each one of us is thinking, but not really saying, or not saying it in a way that the other person can hear it.

And so, that leaves both of us, in some way, kind of leaving the conversation with a piece that we’re thinking but not saying. And I think that’s part of the work to do, is, “Can we be in the conversation and actually be authentic and be effective in how we’re communicating with one another?”

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. So, is it your premise that should we find a means of effectively articulating the unsaid, then we will escape the groundhog loop?

Marsha Acker

I think when we’re able to really fully name what’s happening for us, yes, because we can escape the groundhog loop because both of us are able to work with new information or new data that comes into the conversation. So, that’s partly what enables us to change the nature of the outcome.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay, cool. And so, you said then, in order to pull this off, you want to cover some conceptual territory?

Marsha Acker

Yes.

Pete Mockaitis

Well, go for it.

Marsha Acker

So, it’s work that comes from David Kantor in his theory of structural dynamics, theory of face-to-face communication. And, basically, what it says is that everything that we’re saying can be coded, and if we can code a conversation, that’s partly what will allow us to change the nature of it. So, there’s quite a bit of depth to it, but the very simplest way to start is in action. So, really, everything that we’re saying can be coded into one of only four actions, everything in conversation.

So, the four actions are, one is to set a move, which is to set direction in a conversation. So, move often points. You just made a move when you said, “Let’s hear what you have to say about the theory.” That would be a move. The second action is to follow. So, the follow gets behind or supports what’s happening in a conversation.

The third is to oppose. So, oppose offers correction. It says, “Hey, hold on. Stop. Wait a minute.” And then the fourth is a bystand. And a bystand offers a morally neutral comment about what’s happening in a conversation. So, to bystand, I might say, “I’m noticing I’m really engaged in a conversation right now.” It just puts some data into the conversation.

So, someone could make a move and say, “Let’s go get ice cream.” Someone could follow and say, “That sounds good to me.” Third person might say, “Nope, don’t like it, don’t want to go.” And a fourth person might say, “Well, I’m noticing we have two different ideas about what we’re going to do. What do we want to do next?” So, it’s sort of prompts for a new move.

Pete Mockaitis
I’m fixating on the, I think, did you say innocent? Or maybe I just added that myself, because innocent bystander tends to go together, like in comic books or something, “Innocent bystander.”

Marsha Acker

Yeah. No, just to bystand.

Pete Mockaitis

To bystand, you said that it’s just an observation. It doesn’t have judgment to it. But I got to know, in some ways, I don’t know, it almost feels like it can, like, “I’m noticing that your eyes are dimming and you are growling.” It’s sort of the implication is almost, like, “You’re behaving angrily and inappropriately in this context.” So, I don’t know, maybe I’m missing too much detail.

Marsha Acker

No, it’s great. So, here’s what’s really great about it. So, what you’re naming is, a lot of times, I think in conversation, what happens is we say one thing, so we voice one thing, and if you were just simply coding the conversation, you might code that as a bystand. But I’m on the receiving end of it and I’m going, “Hmm, that doesn’t feel…” like, I’m not experiencing it as a morally neutral statement because it feels like it’s loaded up behind it.

And so, a lot of times when that’s happening, what we’re doing is we’re saying one thing but we intend another. So, I’m speaking a bystand, but I’ve got judgment behind it, and so I’m really intending an oppose.

Pete Mockaitis

I see. Okay. Levels and layers.

Marsha Acker

Well, that’s the tricky part. So, I’ll tell you a quick story. My daughter, when she was much younger, I called it our Groundhog Day conversation, but it would be the, “Get your shoes on, please” conversation. And I would make a move, and I’d say, “Hey, Lauren, the bus will be in here in 10 minutes. I need you to get your shoes on.”

And her response will be, “Okay.” Walk away. Come back. “Bus will be here in five minutes. Need you to get your shoes on.” “Okay.” Five minutes later, at the door, and when I would turn around and say, “Lauren, the bus is here. Let’s go.” And there’s a little girl at the end of the hallway screaming because she says, “I don’t have my shoes on.”

And so, we had this pattern. I was making moves, and she was voicing a follow. She said, “Okay,” but she intended an oppose. It’s not what she meant. And it sets up this pattern of we’re saying one thing but we mean another. And it creates what we call, in the structure of coding it, it creates a covert action. So, what happens is the oppose, both in your example of you are bystanding, but what’s really behind it is a covert opposition.

My daughter was doing the same thing. She would voice a follow, but she would intend an oppose. Now, you know, why is that? Well, somewhere along the way, I might have laid down the expectations that “You’re not allowed to tell me no,” or, “I need you to do something different.” So, what I learned was that was really much more about…she’s a teenager now and we can still get into this pattern because every time when…so what happens is that we’ll have one or two of these actions that we can tend to do more in our behavior, particularly in different systems. So, in my home space, I’m often the one with her making moves, and I’m sort of expecting her to follow. But what’s not helpful is that she’s quite independent, even as a little person, definitely as a teenager, she’s quite independent.

And so, one of the ways that I started to change our stuck conversation, our stuck Groundhog Day conversation, was I stopped being the one making all of the moves, and I’d start to enter that conversation differently with the intent to give her the space to make the move that I could follow. So, our conversations would sound a little different, I would start to do more bystands, and I would say, “I’m noticing it’s 10 till 7:00. The bus is going to be here in 10 minutes or 15 minutes. What do you need to get done?”

And she’d think about it for a moment, and she’d be like, “Well, I need to put my shoes on.” And I’d be like, “Great. So, do you know where your shoes are?” So, I started to bring more bystand into the conversation and allow her the space to make a move. And it took a little bit more conversation in that way. But eventually, what she would come around to do is say, “Well, I need to get my shoes.” I’m like, “Great. So why don’t you do that? You’ve got 15 minutes. So, when do you want to do that?”

So, where I could, I began to shift the conversation, and it helped to change the nature of how we were engaged in that conversation. And I use that because I think it’s just such a really simple example, but it happens so often in leadership teams, across our workplaces. Particularly in American business, I think we have managed out or trained out the voice of opposition.

Pete Mockaitis

Yeah, that’s intriguing on so many levels. And you said this happens thousands of times. I was like, “Yes, I have asked my children thousands of times to put their shoes on.” What’s intriguing in a number of dimensions, like one, just general coaching principle. If you pose a question and they think about it, then that is more active and engaging and more likely to feel rewarding. Like, “Oh, I figured out that I need to get my shoes.” And then they did, and like, “I’m taking care of things.”

It’s funny, my kids right now, they’re five and six, and one and a half, but the five and six-year-olds, it seems like they’re relishing these little tastes of independence. They could say, “I’m going to make some toast.” All right, you go for it. And so, they’re into it. They really just plow through bread because they enjoy making toast and it’s delicious.

But I think, even more than that, they like that, hey, they can’t use the stovetop on their own, they can’t use the oven on their own, but even the microwave can be dicey. But the toaster is like, “Okay, I push the button and then I walk away, and then there we go.” But in many ways, I think, Kwame Christian said, he was on the show, he’s awesome, Negotiate Anything is his podcast. In many ways, we have an inner toddler within us, and so that’s strong.

And I’m intrigued by, when you say covert action, with the shoes, I think that sometimes what’s going on is that they’re thinking, “Well, I’m not opposed to putting on shoes. But at the moment, I’m very engaged with this little mouse character or whatever.” And so, I think that’s funny because covert action makes me think of, “Okay, I’ve got a spy who’s like sneaking into enemy territory.”

But I guess that, too, can run a whole spectrum associated with, “How much am I willfully saying yes when I mean no because I’m hoping they’re just going to shut up and forget about it,” versus, “How much am I like, ‘Oh, yeah, sure. Cool, yeah. Sure, I mean I’ll get to that soonish, so it’s fine, yeah’?”

Marsha Acker

What I’m often going for is wanting leaders to become more aware, more self-aware, of their behavior, how does their behavior, it’ll likely be different how we behave at home, talking to our children versus how do we behave in our leadership team, versus how do we behave in our development team when we’re collaborating with eight, ten peers.

I think it’ll be different, there will be spaces. And I think a lot of it happens, it gets laid down for us at a very early age, in our formative years, we develop. One of my childhood stories is not to oppose because it’s rude. And so, that got laid down very early on for me. The way that translated into adult and business life is oppose has often been my least used. It’s been the one for me to work on the most. Regardless of the role that I was in, it would be the one, kind of unconsciously, that I would use some of the other actions.

Or, sometimes I’d just make a new move. If I didn’t really want to directly oppose you, I’d just change the subject, which is another pattern that sits underneath of this. Or, many teams fall into the place of they’ll just agree, they’ll say, “Yes,” or, “Sure.” Or, they’ll say, “Sure,” and then they go out of the room after they finished talking to you, and they tell six other people what they really think of your idea, but they don’t bring that conversation in the room.

So, ultimately, what I’m all about, because I think it’s what changes the nature of the conversation, is, “Can we bring the offline conversation online? And can we be more aware of what our behavioral tendencies are, and where we go to say one thing, but we actually intend something else?” and catching sight of the difference between the action and the intent.

Pete Mockaitis

Yeah, that’s intriguing. And I guess, as you have this language and you can start to view conversations in this way, that’s intriguing. So, your goal is to get the offline, online, and get it in there. I think sometimes I follow, maybe often, I follow, I use the words okay, and I do the thing. But internally, I’m thinking, “This is so stupid.”

And I don’t know if that’s valuable, but I guess I’ve also had the internal conversation of, “But it’s pointless to bring this up because it’s not going to affect anything. So, the most efficacious, expedient thing for me to do is to just comply, even though it’s going to result in a worse outcome, but fine.” And I guess maybe sometimes there’s a time and a place where that’s just the reality, and so live it, but go ahead.

Marsha Acker

You and many, many, many, many other people. I watch it over and over. And I often say to folks if you’re in a group of people, and you’re not going to be with them for an ongoing basis, you’ve stepped in, somebody’s made a move, you’re following, like the juice doesn’t feel worth the squeeze, so you just say, “Yep, I disagree or I see it differently, but I’m willing to do it.”

I think doing that intentionally is one thing. Doing it out of a habit is another. And I think those things that you are thinking, what I would offer is those things that you’re thinking are actually quite valuable. But it definitely takes a system, like it takes a group of people that you’re working with on an ongoing basis. Because I think what matters is not that it happens one time or in one moment or with one group, but when it gets to be a stuck pattern, like when it’s a Groundhog Day conversation.

Because I think that’s where you’ll, if you talk to people, all the things that are in the news today about quiet quitting, and people are just burnt out, and they’re tired, and they’re exhausted, and they don’t feel connected, and it’s super hard to connect on Zoom. I hear all of that, and I go straight to this model of, “Yep, because we’re not having the real conversation.”

And people get really exhausted, “At the end of the day, if all I’ve done is have surface level conversations, I’ve not really been able to say what I think, I don’t think anybody wants to listen, so I just sort of fall into this victim mode or this apathetic mode, and I get into doing this sort of I’ll just show up and do the thing until I can do something better.” Like, none of us want to work in that kind of setting or in that kind of situation.

So, I always bring it back to, “Well, I wonder what the pattern is. I wonder which of these actions is being voiced and which are missing,” because those patterns, like things that keep recurring, there will be data in that. And so, I’m a huge advocate for teams, leaders at any level, building the muscle of, “Can we have the real conversation? Can we bring the real conversation online?” And it takes time. It’s not a one-time fix.

Pete Mockaitis

That’s good. So, that’s the main thing is having the real conversation. This reminds me, we had Amy Edmondson on a couple times, talking psychological safety. Any pro tips for how we can have the real conversation more often? One, so we got some coding, we got some awareness, that’s cool. Anything else in terms of building our own conversational courage and/or creating an environment where people feel more comfortable speaking up?

Marsha Acker

Well, I think the work is highly correlated to Amy’s work. Actually, Amy Edmondson and David Kantor worked together at Harvard, so both of their theories are quite distinctly linked. It does take container-building or creating the space. I often say sometimes it can be just helpful to introduce your team to the four-player model as a way to name that, actually, we need all four of these actions in a conversation in order for them to be effective. So, sometimes just all of us starting to gain awareness that we need all four and be watching for when we’re not hearing one of them. So, I think that’s one way.

Pete Mockaitis

Oh, that’s great. That’s pretty simple. You just highlight, “Hey, this is what’s up.” And then someone might say, “Hey, I noticed that nobody opposed anything over this whole three-hour meeting. That’s interesting. All just coincidentally in unilateral consensus agreement? What are the odds? Or is someone not saying something that needs to be said?”

Marsha Acker

And, actually, Pete, what I love about what you’re doing is that you’re doing it with a little bit of humor, and I think that that is key to some of this work is to find a way to make it light and humorous, rather than…I realized really many years ago as I was starting to introduce this model to teams and leaders, so they’d take it and they’d be so excited, and then go off to the next meeting, and it was like, “You, you have made too many moves. You need to stop that,” with a bit of finger pointing.

And I was like, “Well, that’s not really what we’re after.” Like, it’s a model to create awareness, but I don’t think it’s really effective if we use it to sort of poke people in the eye with. So, I love the way you’re sort of tongue-in-cheek saying that.

Pete Mockaitis

Oh, thank you. And when it comes to opposing, I’m curious, do you have any, because I don’t know, maybe it’s just me, but I imagine for many, that might be the spookiest of the four to step up and do. Any pro tips or any magical words or phrases that are great for opposing? I imagine you’re like, “No, you’re wrong!” is probably not the best way to do it.

Marsha Acker

Well, actually, there is. Well, so two things I’d say. One is we likely all know someone who’s really good at it, so just think about the person. It won’t be hard for everyone. It is definitely based on our behavioral model, like our viewpoint of how we grew up and how we think about the voice of oppose and what it does. So, likely there’s at least one person usually in each group. We sometimes load them up and we call them the devil’s advocate or the naysayer, which I’d encourage everybody to just stop using the labels because I don’t think they’re helpful.

But if you find someone who’s really good at bringing oppose, you can just watch and listen. Sometimes, though, for people who are stuck in opposition, the thing that will be challenging for them is to make a new move. So, they can be really good at opposing, but not good at the suggestion.

So, a really effective oppose, like a way to bring a really effective oppose, is to actually start with more follow and bystand because those are the actions of more inquiry. They’re also the places that, so if you’ve made a move, and you’ve said, “I think we need to switch all of our computers out, and go from Macs to PCs.” And if I want to oppose that, if I just come right back and say, “Nope, I disagree,” it’s helpful because it’s a really clear oppose, so that’s great.

But really, if I just say no, and I push back without voicing anything else, then we’re kind of stuck because now you’ve got an idea and I’ve got an idea, and we’re actually put ourselves in this debate or clash about, “Which one of us is going to have the winning idea?” So, a more effective way for me to oppose that might be to start with a follow, so what’s something about what you’ve suggested that I actually do align with.

So, I might say something like, “Pete, I really appreciate, and I actually share your value about keeping us up to date in technology. I’m with you on that.” I might bystand and say, “You know, I’m noticing that that would create…it would be really expensive. And it’s the first part of the year, we’re not quite sure where our revenue is at.” What’s my clear oppose? “I disagree with doing all of them right now and in this time frame.” But my new suggestion, my new move would be, “What if we looked at it, doing it five at a time?” or something like that? So, what’s my new suggestion? Then it would be back over to you.

And now what’s happened is I’ve actually put some of what I’m seeing, what I agree with, into the conversation, and the idea is that now we can continue a dialogue because I’ve put new data in, and it gives us something to build off of.

Pete Mockaitis

That’s good. Thank you. All right. Well, in your book, Build Your Model for Leading Change, you spend a good portion talking about self-awareness. And I wanted to hear your perspective on why self-awareness is important for change, when, really, Marsha, it’s the other stupid dummy heads who are the problem.

Marsha Acker

I know. I think life would be so much easier if everybody else would change, and then the world would work according to how we view it and what we want to do.

Pete Mockaitis

Exactly.

Marsha Acker

Yeah, I’m a big proponent of self-awareness. And I think that there’s so much to be gained from even just building on…so one aspect of Build Your Model for Leading Change is having a way to look at behavior because I think that behavior drives, like everything that you and I’ve been talking about, behavior and how we’re showing up in communication. Everything starts and ends with how we work with other humans.

And knowing, “Why do I do what I do? And where did I learn to do that? And why do I have such an affinity for following and bystanding in a conversation? And, more importantly, where can I grow my leadership range? Where can I expand my behavior so that it’s more effective?” And I think the way to go about doing that is through getting to know ourselves in various ways, and how we change based on the different contexts that we’re in, because I think context matters.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. Well, so you actually delineate seven critical junctures of functional self-awareness. Could you give us the one-minute version of what are each of these critical junctures?

Marsha Acker

So, the junctures actually expand on the theory of structural dynamics. And without going through each of them, what I would say is they’re about “Where are you able to identify what you do? Are you able to expand your behavioral range? And are you able to notice, kind of growing the muscle for noticing in the moment, when the conversation isn’t working, like, when you’re clashing with someone?”

There’s another piece of it is “Beginning to understand when the stakes rise for me and how my behavior changes when the stakes are high.” We talk a lot about what’s happening today in leading from high stakes, which I think many of us are doing, and how when we’re not at our best, so, “How do we lower the stakes?” And then I think the big piece of it is, “How do we expand our tolerance for difference?”

Pete Mockaitis

Okay, sure thing. Well, I’d love it, so there’s a lot that we could dig into. Could you share with us, I believe, was it Tasha Eurich, we had on the show, who says, “You’re not as self-aware as you think,” is her assertion? Can you tell us, is there a particular zone in which many people overestimate their self-awareness? And how do you recommend we get after that?

Marsha Acker

I watched many leaders believe, like even if we just look at the four actions, many leaders believe that they are good at communicating, number one, with others, and that they are being clear in their communication. And I think the biggest gap that I watched people discover is where they’re not being clear. So, just the small examples, like we talked about today, where I think I’m saying to my daughter, “I need you to get your shoes on.”

Like, I think I’m communicating, but really, I’m doing something entirely different. It happens to me all the time, even with my own team. I’m fascinated. I’ve built a structure where we can give one another feedback in the moment about that. And so, I think it’s noticing when I think I’m doing one thing, but I’m actually doing something else, and it’s being interpreted really differently than what I intended.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. Well, could you give us an example of a common way this unfolds?

Marsha Acker

So, we have a monthly team meeting, and often the purpose of that monthly meeting is really for us to carve out some time and actually slow down our conversations so that we can talk about how we’re working together. And so, I had come in with a move around some reflection questions that I was actually teeing up for everybody to think about as we led into the conversation about thinking about how we were working together as a team.

And I have a colleague who would have agreed that the purpose of our meeting is to align on how we’re working together, talk about how we’re working together, but this particular person at that moment wanted to be involved in creating the agenda for the conversation, not to have me come in with some pre-canned questions. And so, the feedback to me in that moment was, you know, I hold on, “I think we set out with the intention to have a conversation about how we work together, and I feel like I’m being driven to your agenda, not a collective agenda that we would create together.”

And I think the stakes were pretty high for that person because it’s risky to say that. I think it’s really risky to name it. I, in that moment, so the stakes were pretty high for me in that moment because I kept thinking, “It’s not what I intended.” I felt quite misunderstood, and I felt like I was being accused of something that was really not my intent at all.

And so, it was in the moment of actually being able to park any further forward movement and talk about where the mishap was, where the misunderstanding was, that we were able to take what was a fairly high-stakes moment, and then I began to realize, “Okay, so it’s not so much an opposition. It was an oppose but not necessarily the intent, but it was definitely an oppose to how I started it off.” And it became a really, really fabulous conversation afterwards, so that sort of friction moment led to a much deeper conversation about how we work and where some of that pattern, even that dynamic that showed up, how it shows up in other places. But it was really challenging, and I am fascinated by the number of times that I watch that happen in teams.

So, when teams have the ability to name it, high stakes are happening all the time for us, and it either leaves us to keep talking about, like, I think about it, it’s like moving deck chairs around on a sinking ship versus talking about what’s really going on.

Pete Mockaitis

Yeah, it’s intriguing. And it was cool that they voiced it, and so you got to go there. And I remember, it is fascinating, one time I was coordinating in this leadership conference, and I just said something like, “All right. Hey, guys, now we’re off to the sketch session,” and then one of the volunteers, their mom, I heard this third hand, their mom said, “Oh, I think Pete just lost Matt as a volunteer for next year.” I was like, “What? What? I just said now we’re going to walk over here.”

But apparently, for Matt, it was rather an important tradition that he – I think he was dressed in a costume of some sort – like, I marched them over, and that was one of his favorite things, and I’m like, “I had no idea.” I looked at the clock, I said, “Oh, it’s time for us to go there.” And then I was completely oblivious that that mattered. And had I known, I’d be like, “Oh, well, let’s wait for a moment for Matt to return with his costume.” Just kind of a goofy camp kind of vibe.

So, you’re right, like we can just be utterly clueless about such things and, yeah, that’s really eye-opening to make sure that we’ve sort of built in those checks associated with asking questions in that context, like, “Hey, what’s the most important for your volunteer experience this weekend?” It’s like, “Okay, good to know.”

Because, I mean, hey, they’re volunteers, right? I owe them everything in terms of when this event occurred, I want to make sure that they’re getting what they need. But I was like, “Oh, I just didn’t make the agenda in terms of the weekend.” So, I’m just rolling the dice, basically. You don’t know who you’re alienating and why if you don’t take the time to get the info.

Marsha Acker

And I love your example because, here’s the thing, none of us will ever be able to plan or attend all the places that we could just make a mess. And unless we have people around us who have the communicative competency to really raise their hand and say, “Hold on a second. Like, that’s not what I thought we were doing,” or to say it rather than go out of the room and stew about it. We will never know, and I don’t think we can ever plan for all of that.

So, I think about navigating all the change and the turmoil that exists today. Like, we’ve got to have people around us that can say, “Hold up, we’re about to go over the edge,” or “I really see something differently here. I think we’re about to miss something important.”

Pete Mockaitis

That’s great. Well, Marsha, tell me anything else you want to make sure to mention before we hear about your favorite things?

Marsha Acker

No, I think we’ve covered a lot, yeah.

Pete Mockaitis

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

Marsha Acker

It comes from James Humes, and he says, “The art of communication is the language of leadership.”

Pete Mockaitis

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

Marsha Acker

I ran across this research, actually, a couple of weeks ago, and it really resonated, still along the same lines, but it was done by ZipDo. So, I think you could go to Google and search it, it was done July of last year. They found that 85% of employees at all levels experience conflict to some degree, and that 60 to 80% of difficulties in organizations come from strained relationships. So, I found that information fascinating.

Pete Mockaitis

And a favorite book?

Marsha Acker

There’s a book by William Isaacs, it’s actually been around for some time, called Dialogue: The Art of Thinking Together.

Pete Mockaitis

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

Marsha Acker

A journal.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. And a favorite habit?

Marsha Acker

I wake up each morning before everybody else, I have a nice cup of coffee, and I journal.

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?

Marsha Acker

I’m known for saying this phrase a lot, “Awareness precedes choice, precedes change.”

Pete Mockaitis

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

Marsha Acker

You can find me on LinkedIn, Marsha Acker, so I’m happy to connect with folks. And then you can read about the book at BuildYourModel.com, and you can also find me at TeamCatapult.com. And if you go to TeamCatapult.com, there is a Re-D-Room, so re, dash, d, dah, room, you can download a handout about what we’ve been talking about today.

Pete Mockaitis

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

Marsha Acker

Find a way to elevate dialogue.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. Marsha, this has been a treat. I wish you many enriching conversations.

Marsha Acker

Thanks, Pete.

Pete Mockaitis

David, welcome!

David Nurse

Pete, it’s an honor to be here, man.

Pete Mockaitis

Well, I’m so excited to dig into your wisdom. But first, I’d love it if you could kick us off with a super riveting tale of your adventures with folks in the NBA.

David Nurse

All right, here it is. 2018, it’s the summer, it is NBA pre-draft. So, NBA pre-draft is before the players are superstars, they have to go through the draft process. Some players get the benefit of having great hype and potential and not having to do NBA pre-draft, but there was a kid who walked through the Santa Monica gym doors, his name was Shai Alexander. Shai Alexander from Kentucky, no one really thought he was going to be this top player, like he would have a good career and people thought maybe, you know, middle of the first-round draft pick.

Now, with pre-draft, I always like to crush the players on the very first workout. You got to test them, “How much do they have? Are they able to go through this grueling process of working out for team after team? Do they have that insatiable drive?” The insatiable drive, I slow down to say that term because I think that is the factor that nobody looks at for NBA players to determine their greatness. I’ll tell you more on that afterwards.

So, Shai walks in and I put him through this workout. It’s like two and a half hours and he’s soaked in sweat. It’s grueling. It’s difficult, and most of the time, at the end of the workout, the players, they kind of, you know, just lay down on the court, or they go to the locker room. The last thing they want to do is more drills. But Shai comes up to me after that workout, he says, “Coach, when are we going tonight?” And I knew from that moment Shai Alexander was built different. I knew he had insatiable drive. The desire to continue to improve even when somebody’s not making you.

The desire to improve even when it’s not on social media. Nobody knows about the workout. It’s the unseen hours put in. Shai Alexander had that. We went every morning, every night, throughout pre-draft. Now, currently, four or five or whatever years it is later, Shai is on pace to be the MVP of the entire NBA. He is arguably one of the top three players in the entire NBA. This coming from a guy who did not have the hype, he did not have many people who knows who he is, he’s also created this incredible brand, he’s like the fashion guy of the NBA with millions and millions of followers.

The point being is, if you have a desire for greatness, you have to have that insatiable drive. You can’t become great at something without this internal fire burning inside of you, and I can tell within the first five minutes of working out with an NBA player if they have it or if they don’t have it.

Pete Mockaitis

Intriguing. Intriguing. Okay, so he said, “Coach, when are we going tonight?” was the indicator to you that it’s there. But it sounds like it may be even beforehand, you witnessed what’s happening within the minutes of the workout. So, can you paint a picture for us for what does a “having it” workout look like like versus a “not having it?”

David Nurse

Well, there’s also a term that I’ve developed over working out with NBA players and training them for 12 plus years, it’s what I call the 17-second rule. It’s mental dictatorship, basically. So, this goes back, and then I’ll bring it back here, of training players for 12 years, I would bring a stopwatch with me because I was interested. I always thought at first that every NBA player loved training, they loved practice, but that’s far from the truth.

So ,when they did not want to work out that day, I would press the stopwatch to see how long it took them to be able to get past that moment of, “Oh, I don’t want to do this,” and then they’d be okay, and on average, it was 17 seconds, meaning by the time I said, “Start the workout,” and I could tell they weren’t feeling it, they did their first few drills, they did their first few shots, then they were okay. They got past that initial sticking point, and that’s huge for people. Like, think about it, most people won’t go work out because they don’t want to start. Most people won’t do something because the start is hard.

After you start, after you do the first couple of reps in the gym, it’s easy. Your body gets in the flow. Your mind gets in the flow. After you make the first few cold calls, if you’re a salesperson having to make cold calls, the first suck. They’re not easy, but after that, you get in the rhythm. So, coming back to the workout with Shai is like I had my stopwatch ready, but there was no need for that. He had the desire. You could see it just in his body language, in the way that he attacked the workouts, the way that he was present, the way that he was asking questions.

And the workout, I mean, I don’t remember exactly what the workout was, but it’s every difficult drill, like defensive slides, all these different conditioning drills, shooting when you’re tired, physical body contact. I used to have this big BOSU ball, if you can imagine doing ab workout in the gym and the guys would have to drive to the hoop, and I would just level them with that ball to see if they could take the contact and finish. All types of physical, mental, the most challenging drills that I could do. And when I knew that a player was able to embrace those, and want more of those, and not shy away from those, then I knew it was different.

And then it goes on to their competition against NBA current players. So, this is going on past the workout when you can tell, like, “Okay, this guy, does he have the killer instinct?” because that’s another one of the attributes that I don’t think you can really teach somebody. I’ve tried to teach it for years in all different fields. You either have the killer instinct or you don’t. You can probably increase it a little bit, but killer instinct meaning, “Do you want this so bad that you will give anything for it?”

So, when Shai was in workouts with the NBA, the current NBA players, like NBA All-Stars and Superstars, a lot of times young players will kind of shy away, like, “I’m not there yet. These guys are the authority. I better just play my role.” Not Shai. He was trying to win every single drill. He was going for their throats. He didn’t care if they’d been a nine-time NBA All-Star. He was going at them. That’s the killer instinct. So, there’s two aspects. You can help somebody develop them but you can’t give somebody these if they don’t have them, and that’s the insatiable drive and the killer instinct.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. Understood. Well, so you’ve put a number of this wisdom in your book, Do It, or, “Don’t Quit,” depending on how you read the cover. Very clever, David. So, when I read “Do It,” I can’t help but think of Shia LaBeouf’s video in which he’s screaming, “Do it!” So, is that what you had in mind as you were assembling this work?

David Nurse

Yes, I wrote the whole book based on Shia LaBeouf and his…No, actually, I did not know that about that until you told me about it. But I will take any type of marketing that comes to it. Anytime somebody says “Do it,” or “Don’t quit,” you now think of the book. I’m planting that seed in everybody’s mind.

Pete Mockaitis

Well, we will link in the show notes to Shia LaBeouf’s screaming, “Do it!” repeatedly in front of a green screen, very meme-able, and you’ll think of this book.

David Nurse

I love it. But the reason that I chose that title, I mean, I’ve got to give credit to my wife who is the creative genius in our family, for sure. She’s an actor, a producer, has done a lot of big work, and I always look to her for creative advice. But the reason it’s “Do It” and “Don’t Quit,” if you look at the cover of it, people are motivated in different ways. You’re either motivated by you want the positivity, you want to see what the gains can be, or you’re motivated by the resistance of failure. That’s the “Don’t Quit.”

If somebody say, “Hey, you got to do this. You can’t quit.” That will motivate somebody. Or, “Hey, go do it. You can achieve this.” So, it’s either the positive or the negative side. People are motivated by different things. So, if you read it, you see it in the way that you read it.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. So, is it fair to say that the difference between taking the action and not taking the action makes all the difference in terms of other results? Is that kind of your main thesis here?

Pete Mockaitis

Absolutely. I think it’s the biggest misnomer today in society, is there’s so many people that are just taking up so much knowledge. There’s content, content, content, YouTube, podcasts, going to Masterminds, events, and you soak in all this knowledge, but the huge disconnect is the difference between knowing and doing. So many people will know and know the right thing to do, but very few will actually do it because this bridge between knowing and doing, there’s a valley. And in that valley, there’s roadblocks, there’s resistance, there’s the unknown, the uncertain, and ultimately everything is based on the fear of the results.

So, “If I take this chance, if I actually take action on this, what will happen? I don’t know. That’s uncertain.” And true taking action, confidently taking action, is taking the step without knowing where it’s going to land. It’s having the faith that if you do take action, something positive will come from it, but most people hold themselves back based on the nine different archetypes that I outline in the book. And what I mean by an archetype is, “Which type of action-taker are you? What holds you back from taking action?” Everything is rooted in fear. That’s literally why people don’t take action. They are afraid.

And the different reasons, some of those reasons are what I call the allodaxophobic, and that simply means fear of other people’s opinions, “Do you not take action because you are worried what other people will think of you?” Fear of the being burnt by the past, meaning, “Do you not take action in the present because something of your past did not go the way that you wanted it to, so you are taking that past example, bringing it into your present?” There’s a thing called traumatic age regression. That means somebody had something happened in their past, they have not addressed it, they have not forgiven that situation, and it holds them back from actually taking action in the present. Seventy percent of Americans have this traumatic age regression.

So, like, hey, you got dumped by somebody you thought was going to be your spouse. You’re not going to put your heart on the line again because you got burnt in the past. That’s a very common one. And there’s many more. There are seven more archetypes that I outlined. And the point of this is you read through, and you see which ones you align with. It tells you what’s actually neurologically going on in your brain of why this is happening, these are real things. And what is going on in your heart or the feeling of it so you’re able to see, “Okay. Well, yeah, you know, what I suffer from perfectionism. That is what’s holding me back. I think it has to be perfect,” or, “I underestimate myself,” “My parents never did anything great,” “I come from this small town. Like, why should I have something?” And you align with these.

Now, the great thing is, on the other half of it, you’re able to see a tool for, “All right, if this is what I struggle with, if this is what’s holding me back from where I am today to where I want to be tomorrow,” that ultimately is the mission everybody is on, whether you know it or not, you are where you are today currently, that’s obvious, and there’s somewhere you want to get tomorrow. In between that is this radical strategic action. So, you read through it, you understand, “Okay, this is what I struggle with, this is how I get over it,” and there’s also a story from some historical figure that you probably haven’t even heard of honestly.

When I first read Malcolm Gladstone, everybody probably knows Malcolm Gladwell, I was really intrigued with the way he told stories of historical figures, you’re like, “Where did you find this story? Who the heck is this person?” I did something similar where I found somebody who struggled with this exact fear archetype, each one of the nine, and I told their story leading up to the point where they had this decision to make, the decision, “Do I go for it even though the odds are stacked against me? Or do I just go with the flow, and do what everybody else is doing, and don’t change the world?”

They obviously make the decision to go against any of the easy route, and they end up changing the world and I show how that is done. Like, for example, a guy named Lewis Latimer, probably haven’t heard of him. Lewis Latimer was the person who pushed forward Alexander Graham Bell’s invention of the telephone and Thomas Edison’s invention of the incandescent light bulb. Without him, he was the guy who made this happen. It was an incredible race. It’s a fascinating story. They should make a movie about the race for the incandescent light bulb, and Lewis Latimer was the one who pushed it forward for Thomas Edison.

But he also had been burnt many times in the past. So, he was the action archetype of the burnt. He thought about it. He debated it. He talked with his wife about it. He almost did not take on this challenge. But he did, Graham Bell and Thomas Edison, because of Louis Latimer.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. Well, so let’s talk about the nine archetypes here. You say all of them, they’ve got a fear of results, and it sounds like there’s a different kind of a result that each is fearing. So, the allodoxaphobic is fearing others negative judgments; the burnt-in-the-past person is fearing, “Oh, this bad thing that occurred last time I did something like this is going to happen again, and it’s going to hurt and suck all over again, just like when I was dumped or whatever.” So, could you unpack for us the other seven types and what it is they’re fearing?

David Nurse

Yeah, the inopportune. So, the inopportune is you just think it’s not the right time, you thought, “You know, I’m just too young for this,” or, “Ah, I’m just too old to start this.” It’s never the right time and it will never be the right time. So, there is no right time to take action, you’re not too old, you’re not too young. And a great way to take this away from your mentality is just do a Google search of people over the age of 50 who have done something great, and it’s an incredible list, or people under the age of 20 who have done something great, so you can align with either side that you’re on.

The blamer is another one where you’re blaming somebody for your situation. You’re blaming your parents. You’re blaming where you were born. You’re blaming God. You’re blaming somebody. It’s so easy to blame and it’s not very often that someone’s going to come back at you, and say, “You know what, that’s actually wrong.” It’s like in the court of law, there’s always a cross-examination. In the game of blaming, there’s not a cross-examination, you’re just pointing the finger at somebody else.

Pete Mockaitis

Yeah, that’s a good point. Folks will rarely just interrupt you to tell you that you’re wrong.

David Nurse

Yeah, they won’t.

Pete Mockaitis

Like, “I can’t do this because my dad never believed in me and dah, dah, dah.” It’s like, because people you’re talking to have little to gain and much to lose by saying, “No, actually, you’re full of malarkey, sir. And this has nothing to do with your father.” It’s like, “Whoa, dude, who are you?” as opposed to the reaction will very rarely be like, “You know what, thank you. That is a wakeup call that I really needed, and you were a bright light of truth for me.” Probably not going to be received that way if you were to speak up.

David Nurse

No, it really isn’t. I mean, you can blame and people are going to let you off the hook. Unless you have a group, and I say this, like, seek wisdom from the wise. Have people in your life that you know that you can come to with something and they’ll give you the honest truth. That doesn’t mean it’s your mom or your dad. They’re going seek your safety. They’re not going seek your best interest.

So, have people in your life that you can say, “Hey what do you think of this?” and they’ll say, “You know what? That’s terrible, that sucks. You shouldn’t do that,” or, “That’s great.” Seek wisdom from the wise. Don’t just seek wisdom from anybody that’s going to agree with you, or be your yes-man, or feel your remorse in your blaming situation.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. So, now with the inopportune and the blamer, the inopportune says, “It’s not the right time,” the blamer blames parents or God or someone. So, what is it that they fear? They fear that there’s just no way this is going to happen for them because of these circumstances?

David Nurse

Yeah, their fear is there’s no way it’s going to happen for them because it’s almost, too, that they’re afraid of success. Have you’ve been around those people that they just blame themselves into a way that if they find success, they’re going to work their way out of it? It’s almost that they’re scared of this success. They’re scared of, “Well, what happens if something does good happen to me?” And they fall into this rut of constant blaming. Or they just really don’t want to put in the work, and it’s easier to blame than it is to actually go through the process.

Pete Mockaitis

And, David, tell us about this fear of success. I mean, why would we fear success? Success is a good thing we want, isn’t it?

David Nurse

It is until you get it, and then a lot of people don’t know how to deal with it. That’s why so many people crash and burn when they do taste success because they don’t know how to appreciate it, and they don’t know how to live with it. Like, an example that I give is one of my close friends is Jeremy Lin, and he went through this time called “Linsanity.” And this was when he was almost cut from the NBA, and he got put into the game, and he just blew up.

He took off. He had an amazing game and he was going on game winners, and 30-point games, and this incredible streak, and he was the number one trending thing in the world. He was on top of the NBA world for weeks and weeks and weeks, and he’d never had that success. He never tasted that, and when he got there, he didn’t necessarily live in the appreciation for that moment. He was living in the what-ifs,
“What if I can’t keep this up? What will people think of me?”

So, when people reach success, who aren’t ready for it, that’s what they think of. They’re like, “Okay, well, what if this goes away?” They think worst-case scenario thoughts and the “what ifs” that ends up eating them alive, and they normally self-sabotage.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. Understood. Well, let’s hit the rest of the archetypes.

David Nurse

So, the fifth one is the test believer. And the test believer, it sounds kind of ironic saying the test believer when this kind of looks like an Enneagram type of test that we’re going through, but far too often, people will see, “Oh, it’s there,” they read their zodiac or their Myers-Briggs or even their Enneagram, and they label themselves with that’s who they are. That’s how they have to act because that’s what the test says.

Similar to the example that I give is, “Are you an extrovert? Are you an introvert?” So, people will say, “No, I’m introverted so I can’t go talk to anybody.” But introvert doesn’t have anything to do with, “Are you able to go talk with people in communication?” It has everything to do with how you recharge. So, it’s an excuse people make that they’re not able to connect with others because they say they’re introverted, and that’s just a label somebody has given themselves and they live into.

So, if there’s a label that you’re giving yourself, whether it’s a test believer, or it’s you label yourself according to your profession, you think you are what you do, that’s where you need to eliminate that from because that will never fulfill you. It will ultimately fail you. So, that’s the fifth one.

Pete Mockaitis

How about the perfectionist?

David Nurse

So, the perfectionist, I think a lot of high performers, this is the one that they struggle with that holds them back. I think they have to have everything perfect before they even start, but you can never achieve anything great unless you actually start. And people will hold themselves back, they think, “Well, I can’t put this out there into the world if it isn’t perfect,” and, really, it will never be perfect. It’s always a work in progress, anything that you do. Perfectionism also goes hand in hand with the term procrastination, which has been actually something that people have said, “Oh, I’m more creative when I procrastinate. I can think better if the buzzer is coming up.”

Well, actually, there’s been many studies done, and there was a study done on thousands of people in Canada, that they found that 90% of people that procrastinate are much more stressed and anxious than those who don’t. So, yeah, maybe you’ll produce a better-quality product at the buzzer but you’ll also live a life of increased stress and anxiety, which I don’t think anybody wants to do. So, the perfectionist just comes down to the mindset of “Ready, fire, aim,” where it’s never going to be perfect. You put it out there and then you continue to.

Refine and define it, and that’s like anything with life. It’s never going to be perfect. You just got to start, and it’ll continue to work its way there. But it holds a lot of people back, especially high performers.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. And then the scarcest.

David Nurse

Yeah, so the scarcest is this mindset of you’ve got to hold on to whatever you have. It’s there’s a 100% of the pie. If you’re looking at a pie with a 100%, you got to take your little slice and you got to hold on to it. This was the whole mentality of hoarding, or people in 2020, they went to the grocery store to get toilet paper and just hold on to it because there’s never going to be any more.

It’s the same thing when they think of opportunities, why people will just hold on to what they have and not give anything else to anybody else because they live in this mindset of there’s a scarcity amount when, in reality, there’s an abundant amount. So that pie that you were taking, that little slice of, and holding on for dear life, like it’s only yours, think about a pie that’s a double-decker pie, or you put a la mode ice cream on top. Like that is why these burger chains, In-N-Out and McDonald’s, and why they’re all together next to each other. It’s not because they’re competing against each other necessarily, but they’re actually competing with each other.

If someone knows, “Hey, this is the area of town to go for a burger,” they’re going to get more traffic there. So, my concept here is what I’ve seen worked so many times, is not the competition directly against somebody else. It’s competition with, “Can you get other people within your industry, in your market, to be on the same team you compete with, and you end up completing with each other?” So, completion through competition leads to more abundance than it will actually the scarcity mindset.

It’s the same thing with if you have the scarcity mindset with money. Usually, if you’re just trying to hold, hold, hold, hold, hold, that’s the best way to never actually earn any or gain any revenue or long-term money by just holding on to it and hoarding it.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. And then the distracted and the underestimator.

David Nurse

Yeah, so the distracted is, this is the one I struggle with the most. And when I say distracted, I don’t necessarily mean it’s distracted by notifications, or your phone, or your tablet. But more so the distracted for this is distracted from, “What is your great? Like, what is the thing that you are on a mission to do?” That is your vision. That’s “great.”

Now there are so many shiny objects that are going come along the way, these opportunities, there’s all these goods that can take you away from your great. That’s what the distracted is. And I feel this a lot, like, I get blessed with many, many opportunities, like, “Hey, do you want to do this business?” “Hey, do you want to go to this mastermind?” “Hey, you got to be here.”

It’s almost like the FOMO that sets in. And if you continue to take these opportunities that you off the path of the mission that you’re on, you’re never going to eventually get to that mission because it’s not the enemy of great is bad. That’s pretty obvious. The enemy of great is good, and that’s the distracted that keeps you away from what you were called to do.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. And the underestimator?

David Nurse

And the underestimator is simply the mindset of you’re either a person who views life as a why-me person, or “Why do I deserve this? Why little old me? I don’t deserve anything great.” Or, you’re of the mindset of, “Why not me?” Somebody’s got to do it. Somebody has to be the top in their field. They have to be the best at what you want to do. Someone’s got to do it. Why not you? And it’s simply looking at any kind of decision or anything that comes upon in your life of which way do you view it?

Do you underestimate yourself? Do you already count yourself out? Do you self-sabotage before it even happens because you view yourself as a why-me person? Or do you view yourself as, “Well, somebody’s got to do it, why not me?” And there’s a lot of things that can go into being an underestimator, but ultimately it comes to that and there’s only two camps of people. You’re either in “Why me?” or “Why not me?”

Pete Mockaitis

All right. Well, so now, David, as I think through this lineup, I’m trying to categorize myself. And my situation is I just don’t feel like doing a thing. So, let’s just say watching the calories and the weight. I think I have successfully gained and lost 10 pounds, maybe five or six times. And so, I know what it takes, and I think, “Okay, the name of the game is tracking those calories and eating less food. That’s what does the trick.” And so, I think, “Okay, that’s what I can do. That’ll make it happen, I think, but I don’t want to.” That sounds unpleasant and annoying to do that, and it’s more comfortable and enjoyable to not do that. Where do we plug this one?

David Nurse

Yeah. So, the question I would ask you is, “Why do you want to lose weight? Why do you want to lose the 10 pounds, or get in better shape? What is the end result of that?” So, you say that you do, but why do you want that?

Pete Mockaitis

Well, I’m a bit more energetic, a bit more confident. I like the way I look in the mirror. I could enjoy not stepping on the scale and not being labeled overweight, according to the body mass index, which makes me kind of feel like a loser. I am overweight by two pounds, David, because of the body mass index said so, and I don’t like underperforming in anything.

David Nurse

Yeah. Well, there you go. I mean, there’s two things right there that you just said in that sentence, which could go into the allodoxaphobic, fear of other people’s opinions. It doesn’t actually have to mean just people. It could mean the society norms and what they have placed upon it, and also the perfectionist, where you don’t want to underperform in anything. So, there’s two that can work together in that one.

But I also would say there’s three different levels to it as well. There is the motivation, which will show you the “there,” which is the motivation is there to lose weight, get in great shape. There’s also the discipline, so that’s the second level of it. The discipline will get you there, and you’ve got there. You’ve said it before, you’ve got there before. So, you have the discipline.

Now, the third level to this is devotion. So, devotion means, “Who are you devoted to? What are you devoted to?” That’s the next level of it. Like, “Are you doing this for a bigger purpose?” If you’re only doing this for yourself and the aesthetics of it, it’s probably going to waver. But if you’re saying, “Hey, I am going to get in great shape and stay in great shape for an amazing example for my kids,” or, “Because I have to be the healthiest and most energetic, I can possibly be at my job.” It’s the devotion that’s the long-term.

Motivation is a spark. Discipline is an up-and-down kind of riding the waves but devotion is the long-term. And once you make that commitment to devotion and you understand why you’re holding yourself back, “Is it, okay, this is the society says this, or I need to be perfect in this, or maybe I’m blaming something in the past of, well, I did it before but this happened?” And you work your way through that.

Now, you decide, “All right, I’m devoted to it,” and you make that devotion, you make that declaration of devotion, it’s almost signing a contract with yourself, and you’ve got a much better chance. I’m not saying it’s not going to still waver but you’ve got a much better chance.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay, that’s interesting. So, it seems like what’s going on there for me is more, like, “I don’t actually care all that much about this outcome.” It’s like, “Whether the body mass index says I’m three pounds overweight, or I’ve got three more pounds to go before I hit the threshold, I don’t actually care that much about what the BMI has to say about me.”

David Nurse

That’s good, yeah.

Pete Mockaitis

And so, when push comes to shove, it’s like, “Well, I could track all my calories but I don’t feel like it so I won’t.” And it sounds like that that, too, can be an acceptable choice. It’s like, “Go pick something that’s more worth your time and effort.”

David Nurse

It’s exactly it. You can’t be devoted to everything. If that’s not the thing, like it’s the difference between if you see a bodybuilder, who is literally tracking every single macro, and weighing on the scale, like, to me, that looks miserable. It sounds like that sounds miserable to you as well. So, that’s not your choice of devotion. You can’t be devoted to everything.

You pick and choose what’s the most important things to you, and you’re choosing lifestyle, life rhythm, over being an incredibly crazy person out to eat where you can only eat broccoli and chicken breast, let’s say. Yeah, you’re not that interested in being a bodybuilder, and I don’t think you’re performing on stage at the World’s Strongest Man competitions coming up.

Pete Mockaitis

Well, I’m insulted but…

David Nurse

Maybe. Maybe.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. Well, thank you. Well, now maybe could you share with us a story of someone who went through this process, in a professional work type of context, in terms of they weren’t doing it, they were quitting, and then they had some insight, like, “Aha, what’s going on? This is the category I fit into,” and what unfolded?

David Nurse

Yeah, totally. So, I’ve been working with a CEO for the past year, and when I started working with him, he’s at a massive company, runs an amazing Fortune 500 company, and he was going through a very difficult time, and just feeling really down, personally in his life and in the business, so we had to figure out, like, “Okay, why? Like, what is the cause of this? You grew this amazing business. Now, what is happening?”

So, we realized that there were certain people that had been hired and they looked like all-stars, they came from other great companies, and they brought the business down. They weren’t on the same mission as he was. It was more for, okay, how much money can they make, but they didn’t really care about the end result product. So, he found this out and now has become blaming-the-past situation that he couldn’t get past. So, it’s very hard especially for someone that successful when you get hit with this, when you have a major roadblock in your career and your life.

So, really, we just had to forgive this situation, had to address it and had to say, “Well, you know, what did we learn from this?” So, one of the most important things from the blaming situation is not just go over it and pass through it, but it’s, “What did we learn from this situation?” So, we really went in depth on this, and the takeaways, the positives that came from very incredibly big losses and negatives that could have driven somebody to just quit or give up altogether. So, worked through the blaming situation to find out, “Okay, now I need to figure out the right team that I have.” So, that was one of them.

But it was also a part of underestimation, too, where there had been repeated history of these types of failures, if you want to call them, and just come over the fact that these don’t have to happen, like, “People aren’t always going to fail. You don’t have to underestimate you or your team.” He built this amazing company despite having these types of action archetypes holding him back from living the life he’d want to live.

And when I say that in terms of the underestimating, it was also the underestimating of giving himself permission to enjoy the journey. That’s a really important one for high performers, or any driven person, giving yourself permission to enjoy the journey. Even if the journey is a struggle moment, if it’s difficult, if you’re going through a fire, you can still enjoy the journey of it because it’s never going to be easy. God never said, “Hey, you’re just going to have this easy life.” No, it’s going to be difficult, but it’s going to be worth it.

So, having that underestimator, working through the underestimator, individually, personally, in his own life, and also the blamer, the things that had happened to the company in the past, to be able to move through it, knowing that there was going to be, you know, it’d be difficult to work through that, but they’d eventually get through it, and now he’s thriving, the company is doing amazing, stock prices are up.

So, it was a, yeah, working through those two archetypes, and I’ll continually go back through all of these with them to make sure, “Are you good here? Or, is this one coming in?” because it can change. It’s very actionable. That’s the example that I give it’s an actionable version of kind of like the Enneagram.

Pete Mockaitis

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

David Nurse

Just check out the book. I think it’s helped a lot of people. It’s a fun read and it can really show you, “Do you have any roadblocks?” I always go back through it because there’s different things that will come up in my daily life and I’m able to identify it, the self-awareness, and then work through it. So, I would just encourage you to check out the book for no other reason than, honestly, it will help you. If it doesn’t, please reach out to me and tell me it’s the worst thing ever and I’ll get you your refund.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. Well, now can you share a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

David Nurse

“What would you do with your life if there is no way that you could fail?”

Pete Mockaitis

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

David Nurse

I’ve got another book coming out in, I don’t know exactly when it’s going to come out, but it’s a very immersive study that I’ve started into now on the focus and flow, putting those together, and how you can find the deepest flow state, and tap into it more regularly and for a longer time. So, now that’s becoming my next study and research project.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. And a favorite book?

David Nurse

Essentialism, Greg McKeown, has been one of my favorites; The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry, John Mark Comer, it’s a great one; The Energy Bus by a good friend of mine, John Gordon; any of my other books that I wrote, of course, are at the top of the list. Those are some of the best.

Pete Mockaitis

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

David Nurse

I use the power of the “I am” statement. So, I start my morning off with coffee because I love coffee, prayer time. I’m reading something from the Bible or a devotional, and spending my first time in the morning, the first few minutes in the morning with God, but then I write down “I am” statements.

And I think these have been really powerful for me because the doubt comes in the morning a lot, “Can you make it through the day? Can you do what you want to do? Is it really going to happen?” And when I write down “I am” and then I fill in the blank with what I’m voting for in that day, it gives me a lot of confidence, it gives me a lot of boosts, a lot of self-belief.

It eliminates these self-talk negative thoughts, which they say there’s 50,000 self-talk thoughts daily, and 80% of those are negative. So, I’m eliminating those from the start. So, I’ll simply say, “I am courageous,” “I am brave,“ ”I am going for this dream,” and it’s a vote for myself in the morning. So, that’s one of my favorite tools that I use, have been using for years.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay, and a favorite habit?

David Nurse

A favorite habit of mine also is, in that morning routine when I’m writing, I write, “How can I pour into my wife? How can I fill my wife’s love tank, Taylor’s love tank?” So, I write in there, when I’m doing this morning journaling, of one thing a day that I’m going to do to fill my wife’s love tank.

Pete Mockaitis

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

David Nurse

Website, DavidNurse.com has everything on there. Podcast is right there too. I have daily confidence boosts that I put out five-minute episodes daily on the David Nurse Show. Social media, DavidNurseNBA, or come out to Los Angeles and, you know, we can kick it and eat some great food.

Pete Mockaitis

Yum. And a final challenge or call to action for folks looking to be awesome at their jobs?

David Nurse

I would say, “Just what is that thing that’s been on your heart that you want, that you’ve wanted to do, that you keep putting off, you keep finding an excuse for why not to do it?” Just do it. Take that first step. The first step is so powerful. The momentum of one step forward daily, I mean, think about this. I’m not a math major, but the one math equation that I do know is 1 to the power of 365 is 1, but 1.01, 1% more, one step forward, to the power of 365 is 37.8. That’s how powerful just taking one step forward a day is. Sometimes it’ll feel like you’re dancing on clouds with that step. Sometimes it’ll feel like you’re trudging through mud, but just keep taking that step forward.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. David, thank you. I wish you much luck and fun with all the things you’re doing.

David Nurse

Thanks, Pete. Appreciate it, man.

Pete Mockaitis
Michael, welcome back.

R. Michael Anderson
Pete, good to be here again. It’s been forever.

Pete Mockaitis
It has. And I was looking at our last conversation, and we moved pretty quickly past your story, which I really want to dig into, into some detail, to hear about your dramatic rise and fall, and rise again, and what was happening on the outside, as well as what was happening on the inside because, I think, when it comes to a Leadership Mindset 2.0, and impostor syndrome, all this stuff, I think there’s gold lessons along your journey if you’re ready to go there.

R. Michael Anderson
I am, Pete. I share it very freely, and it’s nice to be here with you and have some time and I appreciate you asking about the outside and the inside because, as we all know, they’re related but, often when I share this, a lot of people will say that it really resonates. And a lot of times, it’s nice to know that other people go through some of the crazy stuff that we all go through as well.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes. Well, start us, how about you just wrapped your semi pro basketball – that’s a whole another conversation, another story and you’re getting in the business game? Let’s start from that beginning.

R. Michael Anderson
Yeah, I grew up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and then I moved out to California. I joined a software company. They moved me around the world. And then I moved back to California in my mid-30s. There was a gap in the marketplace, and I don’t want to say by accident, but a couple of my old clients asked me to come help them.

I come from enterprise software, so Microsoft Dynamics and SAP, and so there were some big, large former clients that just needed help because the company that I used to be with that got bought out wasn’t giving a good service, and so I started servicing these clients. And then, a lot of the other clients found out that had this software, and next thing you know I had a proper business, I had to deal with offices, there’s these $100-million-dollar companies that used our software to run their business, and was being all managed by little me, and I was not emotionally ready to do all this.

And what happened is, all of a sudden, we have a payroll in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, million, per month, and I was a good business person, I understood management, I understood the industry, but I didn’t understand leadership. And I never knew what emotional intelligence was, and I didn’t have a lot of great leaders to look up to. So, you can imagine, Pete, it was really difficult around those years.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, I’m intrigued. Now, your success was driven just because, well, by golly, there was a gap in the market, and you have exactly what these folks need. And word spread, and, bada-bing, bada-boom, a lot of revenue, a lot of responsibility, a lot of clients, a lot of employees real quick, and you were not feeling so great on the inside in the midst of this external success.

R. Michael Anderson
That’s so right. Because the funny thing is, from the outside, everything looked great. We were so successful, I was on the frontpage of the newspaper.

Pete Mockaitis
Congrats.

R. Michael Anderson
To be quite honest, I had some substance abuse issues around in the early part of my life, and the pressure made them get worse. My father was an alcoholic, I had alcohol problems, I was doing hard drugs. And as this pressure mounted, that became more of a crutch, and so that was getting worse, not getting better, by any means.

Pete Mockaitis
Can you zoom actually way in on the alcohol and hard drugs? What were you thinking and feeling? And what did the alcohol and drugs do for you in those moments?

R. Michael Anderson
That’s a great question. I think I did that to not think because I didn’t have any, I’d say, tools. Like, I didn’t know who I was, and all this stuff was happening so fast. And I was working, like, crazy hours. I would bill my own. I was a consultant so I would bill myself out for eight or ten hours, and go home and do the administration or any or all of it. A couple off hours I’d do sales, and then I hired my friends from the industry.

And it’s, like, there was so much going on. And, Pete, I remember back then, my only goal was to get to the end of the day, get to the end of the week. I was so stressed out and burnt out. I wasn’t even burnt out. I could work massive hours. Burnt out is not the right word. It’s like life was just happening around me, and I was doing my best to hold on.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. So, there’s that sensation of, “Boy, just got to get to the end of the day. It’s tough. Life is happening.” And then what did the drugs and alcohol do for you?

R. Michael Anderson
Well, I think it just gave me a little respite. It’s like stuff was out of control, and my personality really likes to control. And with the substances, it was like I would have a little bit of time that would just numb everything because I couldn’t take everything that was going on, so it was like a little oasis. As bad as that sound, in a way, like I needed it because I didn’t have any other tools.

Pete Mockaitis
No, I totally resonate with that, and I haven’t used illegal drugs much in my life to resonate, but I think there are other times we seek out some kind of oasis, retreat, respite in a way that’s not so helpful, whether it’s overeating, or Netflix bingeing, or whatever. It seems like a break, but then, unfortunately, it doesn’t really satisfy, as my experience, and that of many others.

So, tell us, back on the outer world, you’ve got a lot of busyness, a lot of revenue, a lot of employees, and a lot of drugs, what happens now?

R. Michael Anderson
That’s it. That’s where it ends now. No, I was joking. Well, of course, like anything else, not like anything else, but it started just everything got worse. And I had a key employee who I gave some equity to, pretty much just out of my insecurity. He was doing a good job, and he was taking on some responsibility, but I felt so lonely, and we worked a lot of extra hours together so I gave him some equity, and he had some substance abuse issues, too.

And we ended up getting into an argument one day. It was Wednesday, it was 10:00 a.m., he came in my office, he asked me a question, and tensions were high because I wanted to keep growing the business, and he wanted to just have a bit of a lifestyle business. There was a couple things that we didn’t agree on, so tensions were high.

And he asked me, just like an everyday customer question, an operational question, I don’t remember what it was. And I gave an answer he wasn’t expecting, and he didn’t really want, and so we started to get into an argument. I’m pretty cool, I was just watching him get angrier and angrier. And I don’t know if you’ve ever seen when somebody gets so angry, they get red and start shaking and yelling. That’s what he started to do.

And I said, “Look, it’s Wednesday, 10:00 a.m., there’s employees around. Why don’t you go back to your office. Let’s talk about this after everybody leaves.” And I thought that was the end of it. He went away down the hall back to his office, but then he popped his head back in, and he goes, “I’m going to wipe that smile off your face.”

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, boy.

R. Michael Anderson
And then I watched him come around my desk, and he cocks back, and, with all his might, he hits me.

Pete Mockaitis
Whoa!

R. Michael Anderson
Yeah. I saw it coming, so I turned away but I felt the blow on my shoulder, and then we just sort of looked at each other, and then he left. And I got up and shut my door. And people asked me, like, “What were you thinking back? What were you feeling?” I’m like, “I think I was a bit in shock.” If you’ve ever had something so crazy happen to you, and you know there’s going to be big repercussions, I think that what was going on.

And I kept asking myself, “Did this really happen?” because I knew if it did, that there was going to have to be some major things going on, obviously, and I didn’t want to go down that path, so I was trying to do a reality check to see if what just happened really happened.

Pete Mockaitis
Totally. You know, Michael, by crazy coincidence, I, too, was, one time, punched completely unexpectedly but it was by a total stranger in Chicago, at the Chipotle in Belmont and Broadway. And I had to say, it was so weird, I, too, had the same response. I was, like, looking at other people, just like, “Did that just happen?” And I’m okay, thank goodness, but it is.

When something that crazy happens, you doubt your own senses. Like, I’m pretty sure that just happened, but I would like some kind of a confirmation from somewhere that that really did occur. So, I hear you, it is wild. It’s out there.

R. Michael Anderson
Yeah, that’s a good phrase you used that I never heard before – doubt your own senses. That’s what I was doing. And then I called up a business owner who I met recently, closest thing that I had to a mentor, and I’m like, “This just happened. What do I do?” because I was, like, “Nothing prepared me for this moment.” He was like, “Dude, if this happened once, this is going to happen again. You got to address this. You can’t blow this off.”

So, I went down to the police station, I go, “I’m here to report an assault.” They’re looking at me, they’re like, “What?” I’m like, “Well, my business partner just assaulted me.” And they said, “Oh, do you want us to arrest him?” I’m like, “Oh, my gosh. No, I don’t think so. What else can I do?” They’re like, “Well, you can’t do much else. You can write…”

And so, I logged it, so I wrote it in a book, the date and time and what happened, just so there’s a record of it. And then the next day, I called my attorney, and then the next day, when he came to the office, I had an armed guard hand him a restraining order, a termination letter because I still owned the majority of the company, and then a copy of the lawsuit.

And then, as each one of my employees came up, I had to sit them down and tell them, “My COO, my business partner, so and so, is no longer here because he hit me.” And most of the people reported to him, and then I had to call all of our customers, and he was the executive project manager on a lot of the big projects, and I said, “Hey, the guy you’ve been working with every day for a year, on your multimillion-dollar project, he’s no longer here, and I can’t tell you why.” So, that was a crappy day.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. And so then, shifting into the internal game, like what were you thinking in the midst of having to share this news with your clients and employees?

R. Michael Anderson
I don’t even know how I got through it. I do remember I joined a peer group of entrepreneurs around that time, and when they found out this happened, because I think it happened, I had the weekend to, like, prepare all that stuff. But one guy called me every morning, he’s like, “How are you feeling?” I’m like, “Well, I feel like crap.” He’s like, “Get out of bed,” because I’m basically in depression at that point, that everything just came crashing down.

And, luckily, I had some people that really helped me think through things because I think, often, that happened during a crisis where the most important things you need to do, or within the first 24, 48 hours, and, luckily, Pete, I had a couple people around me that really, really helped me and supported me in that time.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s beautiful. Okay. Well, so then what happens next?

R. Michael Anderson
Well, you talked about the internal, so that evening after I got through that day, I’m sitting on my couch, and I was about to go in my normal methodology of escape, and smoke some weed, do some coke, and drink some whiskey. But I just paused, and I started reflecting on my life, and I’m like, “What’s going on? I’ve always wanted to own a business. And I own a business, and I hate it. It sucks. It’s not fun at all.”

And it’s not becoming more fun as it gets larger, and I’m like, “Maybe I should just go back to being a programmer. I’m good at that. And it’s easy. I made good money, etc.” And I’m like, “No, no way. I did the hard part. I got a successful company. I got to figure out what’s missing.” And I realized I was a good doer.” When I saw other people successful and happy, and I’m like, “Am I broken? Is something wrong with me?” I think I got angry at God and I didn’t even know if I believed in God. It was a really weird self-reflection but really deep and really powerful.

And then I’m like, “Look, I’m a good doer. Why don’t I change my goals? My goals must be wrong. Why don’t I set my sight on becoming happy and becoming a successful business owner?” And I made two life changing decisions that day. Instead of self-medicating, I went for a jog so I went away from my escape, and I met things head on, and I did something healthy for myself, and I made a commitment to myself that I’m going to figure this life thing and this business thing out. That was a turning point in my life.

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful. Okay. So, you went for a jog, then you just made the firm decision. All right. So, often, in such moments, things are easier thought or said than done. Tell us, what did you have to go do to get in a healthy groove with your responsibilities?

R. Michael Anderson
Well, right around that time, I briefly mentioned earlier that I joined a group of entrepreneurs, and two of the entrepreneurs had just a real peace and calmness about them. And until that part of my life, I’ve achieved a lot but I’d never achieved any peace or calmness. And I got to know them, and both of them went through a really unique program, and I found out about it and I signed up for it, basically, because I know I needed to do something or I was going end up dead.

It was a Master’s in Spiritual Psychology. And when I say spiritual psychology, it had nothing to do with religion. We learned six different psychoanalysis techniques from a place of pure compassion, and that’s the “spiritual” part of it. And we take the assumption that we’re all loving beings, and if we have behaviors that aren’t loving, like we get jealous or angry or sad, which we all do, that’s part of the human experience, we don’t judge it, but we say, “There’s an opportunity for healing.” And we use psychology to go in and heal that part of us so that we are more in line in with our true selves, or our soul, if we choose to believe we have a soul.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, so could you share with us, perhaps, some of the most effective practices, interventions, approaches that came forth from that?

R. Michael Anderson
One thing we had to do was, we call it history of loving, so we start with a genogram, which is a family tree, but then we do the family tree, but then we mark down all the alcoholism, the substance abuse, divorces, enmeshments, re-marriages, etc. So, it’s like a whole map of your family.

R. Michael Anderson
And so, once we did that, and there’s a way based on a book called Family Secrets by John Bradshaw. There are ways to follow it up. And, for me, I go after my father’s unresolved issue. He goes after his own father’s unresolved issues. So, my grandfather, his dad, was a failed entrepreneur, multiple marriages, alcoholic. My dad was a failed entrepreneur, multiple marriages, alcoholic. I was getting divorced, alcoholic, and owning a business, so my story wasn’t written yet.

But, Pete, just to see the patterns so obvious in my past, in a way, I knew that, but once I wrote them down and saw how specific these patterns were, it really stopped me in my tracks.

So, then the question is, “I know what the pattern is. How do I heal it?” So, in this case, what I did, and, again, this was over a little bit of a period of time with some great guidance. My father was, when I went through this, about 10, 12 years ago, he’d already been passed away for over a decade. So, what I did was I wrote a letter from my younger self to him, and then I wrote a letter from him back to me on his behalf.

R. Michael Anderson
And just to give you some context, my dad, he had a corporate job, and then he started his business when he was married to my mom and had me and my sister, and the business didn’t go well. And as the business didn’t go well, he started to drink more and more, and disconnect from my family, and just not be available. And then they got divorced, he left, and he really wasn’t in my family much after that at all.

And I know, intellectually, he didn’t leave because of me but I realized it deep down, like, there was unfinished business. And so, I got into this really, I guess, meditative place, and I wrote a letter to him. And the letter said, “Dad, can you help me understand? I really am confused because we had the family with my mom and, Amy, my sister, and it seemed like we’re doing okay, but then, all of a sudden, you left.”

“You never told me you love me. You never told me you’re proud of me. And I don’t understand, is there something that I did wrong? Is there something I could’ve done? Is there something? What happened there? Why weren’t you affectionate? Why didn’t you give me love the way I was looking for? It was really difficult growing up without you and having no relationship. I just wanted to understand more about it.” And it was very, very emotional getting that out.

And then, again, me writing the letter from my dad to me was amazing because he wrote, he said, “Hey, Mike, you don’t understand. I love you so much. I’m so proud of you. And I love your sister. I even love your mom so much. But the fact is, I’m the male, I’m supposed to be the breadwinner. I’m supposed to provide for my family, and I failed in that.”

“And as the business went bankrupt, and I got into tax problems, etc., I just was so disappointed in myself whenever I was around you and the whole family that I figured you all were better off without me, and so that’s why I left because I knew you all were better off without me. And I’m so sorry, and I love you so much, and I’m so proud of you. And I see what you’re doing now, and you’re really amazing.”

And, after that process, I quit alcohol and drugs, Pete, because I had a belief that, deep down, I had this belief that my dad didn’t love me. And I realized in this process, which I know is the truth, in my heart, that he did love us so much that he actually made, I think, a pretty stupid…it wouldn’t be what I ask for, but he made a sacrifice, and he thought he was doing what he thought was best for the family. It wouldn’t be what I chose but he did love us, and he loved us a lot. So, I had a belief that I wasn’t lovable, and then I realized that I was lovable, and my dad did love me.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s cool. That’s cool. And so then, I’m curious, thinking about how that could be applied in their domains, I suppose it might be we zero in on a wound, a challenge, a difficulty from an earlier time, and then write the letters both ways. Have you seen this manifest in other ways? Is it usually the parents or could it also be to, I don’t know, former lovers, or siblings, or business partners? What else have you seen in application here?

R. Michael Anderson
Yeah, that’s a great thing to bring up like that. And what comes to me is that this a lot about unfinished business. And when we have unfinished business, it’s because, internally, we’ve made different agreements, or we made assumptions, or we made decisions. And part of all of us know what that decision is but it’s subconscious so we have to get to it.

So, this two-way writing can get to it, and you can do this two-way writing with your ego, with a part of you that feels scared, and maybe you do two-way writing with the part of you that feels scared. And maybe you do two-way writing with the part of you that feels scared and then Superman, or somebody who has great empathy or compassion or strength, so there’s some creativity that can go into this. but what you really want to do is make sure you’re in, like, I want to say meditative, like a very present state, maybe you go to somewhere special to do this because your mindset, your presence is going to really affect whether this is successful or not.

And then really find out, and the big question is who you have to talk to, or what needs to be healed or released, and then that can be a really, really therapeutic process.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s awesome. Thank you. Okay, Michael, so you did that exercise and it was super powerful. What happened next?

R. Michael Anderson
Well, that’s what people do. Some people ask me, like, “How would you describe your…?” and this is how we’ll bring it back to people in their careers and their leadership, for example. If people ask me, “How would you describe the changes that happened during that?” because I went for the Master’s and then went another two years over this, four years.

And I say that, “I really got to know who I am, know, like, and trust myself,” because I realized back then I was so insecure and I really wanted to be liked, and I wanted to be respected, I wanted to be looked up to that I was spending all my time being the person I thought people would like and trust and respect, and all those things, which wasn’t authentic, and it was taking a lot of my energy to be that person.

And then through this process, I really got to understand, know who I am, and like who that person is, and have the trust to show that. And when we talk about leadership, and this is why I work with leaders, and the last thing I’ll say, Pete, is once I started applying what I learned there, and knowing who I am, and bringing them to my businesses, because one time I owned three, two in California, one in Singapore, then we really started to thrive.

We’re on the Inc. 5000 list a couple years in a row, we won the Number One Best Place to Work, and I won Social Entrepreneur of the Year. That was externally but internally I was finally having fun as a leader because I was bringing my full self to that leadership position. I was showing people who I am and what my values are, and then people would get energized by that.

And then I was creating great relationships with them. We’re creating great value to our clients. And we were giving back to the community, which I think we all want to do but sometimes we get off track. And that switch, Pete, was so instrumental to my life that, if I had to summarize it, that’s really what I help leaders do now in the workplace and in their personal life.

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful. So, the core there is you have a deep, clear, profound conviction of who you are and you’re able to just sort of step in that, and own it, and feel it, and love it, and believe it. Is that accurate?

R. Michael Anderson
Yes. Yes. And I’m actually okay when I make mistakes or if people don’t like me because it’s like, “Look, here I am. You may like me. You may not like me. You may like part of me. You may not like part of me.” And sometimes there’s parts of myself that may not be ideal but I have this massive compassion for myself, and this acceptance, that sort of trumps everything else.

Pete Mockaitis
Massive compassion and acceptance. Okay. Well, so now you got the Master’s Degree, you did some exercises with the letter-writing. Can you illuminate for us, are there any other particularly powerful interventions or things you did that got you to that place?

R. Michael Anderson
There’s tons. I’ll give you a quick bite-sized one. So, I learned what a judgment is, because a lot of people don’t. They heard the word judgment but they don’t really know what that is. And the way it was defined to me is a judgment is assigning a positive or a negative thing to something, so I judge something is good or I judge something is bad.

Now, the Buddhist, they say there’s only one truth in this world, that something is, it is. There’s no good or bad. That’s something that humans assign. And the example I give is, say, I’m dating a girl and she breaks up with me. And the only truth is she broke up with me. I could judge it as bad, like, “Oh, I’m a loser. Nobody likes me. I’m never going to get married,” or I can judge it as positive, “Oh, great. She wasn’t the right person for me anyway, blah, blah, blah, blah.” But those are both human-created, the plus or the negative. The only truth there is that it happened.

And I come from a bit of a judgmental family, to be honest, so once I realized what a judgment is, and let’s say it’s just healthier not to judge, I realized that, through the work day, my life was just one big judgment to the next, like, I’d have a good call with a prospect, and be, “Oh, my gosh, we’re going to get this deal.” And then somebody would come in, and they’d say, “Hey, I’m going to take next week off,” and I’ll be like, “Oh, my gosh, how are we going to survive without them?” It would just be a real rollercoaster of emotions the whole day, and so by the end of the day, I’d be exhausted.

So, for about two months, I really, really worked on just looking at things as they are, just like data, like not this plus or minus, and it was amazing, Pete, because, the end of the day, I would have so much more energy because I wouldn’t go on this rollercoaster, but my decision-making skyrocketed because I wasn’t making emotional-based decisions. I was just looking at what happened and taking it in a very calm, collected, rational way. Because, I don’t know about you, but all my bad decisions were made when I was in a real emotional state.

And by just keeping that level head, and just realizing any time I’d say, “Oh, this is bad,” or, “This is good,” that that’s a judgment. Look, we’re humans, we’re actually, in a way, naturally make judgments here or there. But the more that we can be aware of that, and just take things as information, that can help our mental health, that can help our leadership abilities, that can help our decision-making, and that can help how people will see us as a calm, cool, collected person.

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

R. Michael Anderson
Yeah, for everybody, if I can give one message for everybody, it’s just to give yourself a break. I know, Pete, we talked before. I know there’s a lot of high-achievers and people that are really driven listening to this who want to get ahead in their career and everything, and chances are, you’re like me, listener, that you’re your own hardest critic, and just give yourself a break. You do so many amazing things. Just focus on them. And when you mess up here or there, because you probably will because you’re a risk-taker, just give yourself some slack.

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

R. Michael Anderson
Yes. So, a guy named Viktor Frankl, you’re familiar with him, Pete?

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, yeah, Man’s Search for Meaning.

R. Michael Anderson
Yes. And for listeners out there, he was a psychiatrist during World War II, a Jewish one in the concentration camps. And he learned, he says that the only thing that people can’t take away from you is the ability to choose. So, we all have the ability to choose, and nobody can take that away, and that’s the most powerful thing we have. So, him just reminding me that we have the power to choose is something that I find very inspiring.

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

R. Michael Anderson
Well, what they’re finding now is our DNA can be changed. So, what that means is when we live, for example, a more conscious life, that changes our actual DNA. So, there’s this whole thing about how we’re wired. Nothing is that hardwired, so we can change anything we want in our personalities and our life.

Pete Mockaitis
So, are we talking about epigenetics here?

R. Michael Anderson
Yes. Yes.

Pete Mockaitis
Which I think is one of the coolest things ever. So, can you expand on that just a smidge in terms of, like, what’s a thing we might do that would change how a gene is expressed in a means that is helpful for us?

R. Michael Anderson
Whoa.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, the name of the gene, the letters, and the numbers.

R. Michael Anderson
I’d just say something like pessimism. I think a lot of us can be brought up in a very pessimistic environments and households and things, and we can be very critical to ourselves and others. And with work, we can be rationally optimistic. So, I don’t mean painting a blue sky when things are difficult. Also, finding the good in things and focusing on everything that we have.

Our grandparents came out of a lot of world wars and things, and brought up in depressions, and that went to our parents, so I see just a lot of criticalness and negativity. And I really believe that, with some mindfulness, we can really change ourselves to really live a much more peaceful positive life.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite book?

R. Michael Anderson
Favorite book. I like Mindset by Carol Dweck is one. That might be one you get a lot.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I think Mindset is excellent. And maybe, since you talk a lot about this kind of thing, I want to give you a follow-up on Mindset. Okay. So, I think listeners may have heard it before. Hey, you’ve got a growth mindset and a fixed mindset. And the fixed mindset is you believe that your strength, your skills, your abilities are locked in, like, “I’m smart,” or, “I’m not smart,” “I’m good at this. I’m creative,” “I’m not good at this. I’m not creative.”

Versus growth mindset, “Hey, I’m always capable of learning, growing, developing.” And all sorts of good things happen when you have a growth mindset in terms of the effort you exert and all that. So, I’ve heard that a few times, and I’m all about it. What I find interesting, though – help me out with this, Michael – is sometimes, even though I know that’s true, and I want to have a growth mindset, I have fixed mindset stuff creeps in a little bit, like, “Ugh, I just suck at this.”

And so, my alarm bells go off, like, “Oh, no, that’s wrong, Pete. That’s not the most productive helpful thought,” but, nonetheless, it pops up. What do you do in those moments?

R. Michael Anderson
It’s interesting because I was trying to think, because I caught myself. The funny thing about this is we can learn and understand, and learn it really well, but then there’s parts of our life where it hides, and then later you’d be like, “Oh, I’m doing it there.” I was trying to think if I found a couple lately. And the big thing is awareness.

Pete, I think once you have awareness, you’re halfway there because it’s where these things hide, and we don’t know they’re there, and that’s why it’s so hard. We’ve got to keep looking at ourselves. But, again, we want to learn at ourselves compassionately, not, “We’ve got to fix ourselves. We’ve got to fix ourselves,” because that’s just gets us right back to the non-compassionate view of ourselves, and back in that downward spiral.

I’ll give you an answer, Pete. You want to laugh at yourself. That is it. You want to chuckle, and be like, “Ah, there I go again. It’s going to happen again because you’re never going to be fixed to that.” But if you can take it with a little bit of humor, and instead of, like, “Gosh, darn it. There it is again,” you can just be like, “Huh, there it is again,” and bring a lightness to it. That’s, by far, the best thing you can do.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, now can you share with us a favorite tool, something that helps you be awesome at your job?

R. Michael Anderson
My favorite tool is going to be simplistic, but just listening and listen to your intuition. As a leader, I work almost exclusively with leaders that have teams, and I’m telling them, if they’re talking more than a third in a meeting, even if it’s a one-on-one meeting, they’re talking too much. And, over the years, I feel that I’ve become very wise, and the wise is my intuition, and I access my intuition by listening and really tuning into people.

And we’re all back-to-back meetings, and we’re all running around, but when I can take some time out, and if I have a big meeting, I’ll go for a half an hour walk before it, for example. So, when the meeting starts, I can be tuned in. And I like to be the person in a meeting that doesn’t say anything through an hour meeting, except for 10 minutes left. I say the one question, or the one statement, that brings everything together. I want to be that person that brings the powerful question or statement out, but potentially says the least.

And we do that by really listening and tuning in. And so, that’s my tool, is really tuning and just listening to everybody, seeing what’s not being said, maybe having the courage to say what’s not being said, but to do that in service to really getting the team forward.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite habit?

R. Michael Anderson
Again, it’s going to be common, but meditation. That’s probably changed my life. It’s the single thing that’s changed my life more than anything because it helps everything slow down. And when I don’t meditate, I realize how grouchy I can get and easily upset.

Pete Mockaitis
And when you say meditation, what specifically are you doing?

R. Michael Anderson
Well, I’m a big silent meditator so I go on silent Buddhist meditation retreats, more normally twice a year. But every morning, for 22 minutes, I kneel down on a meditation cushion and do silent meditation. Guided meditation is good but nothing beats silent meditation. And people say, “Oh, I can’t meditate.” I’m like, “I don’t understand.” And they’re like, “Well, my mind wanders.” I’m like, “Well, that’s like saying ‘I’m trying to jog but I get tired.’” It’s like that’s going to happen. That’s a byproduct of trying to quiet your mind.

And the goal of meditation is not to have a quiet mind. It’s to have the awareness. I meditated this morning, and probably 30, 40 times I caught my mind wandering. I just brought it back to center but that’s the muscle you need to strengthen, it’s that one that has the awareness and brings it back to being present. So, I think there’s a lot of confusion about that, and guided meditation is good but I don’t think it’s a replacement for silent meditation.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And a key nugget you share that really connects and resonates with folks; they quote it back to you often?

R. Michael Anderson
So, once they hear it two or three times, they get it, but your relationship with yourself, your leadership mirrors relationship with yourself. So, your leadership mirrors the relationship with yourself. And what that means is all I really help leaders do is work on that relationship with themselves, make them really understand who they are, make them know, like, and trust that person, make them have compassion with that person.

And leadership is a lot about putting yourself out there, and it’s really about trusting yourself. You have to have this inner confidence. Confidence isn’t that you know things are going to work out, whether you know it all. The confidence is, no matter what’s going to happen, that you and the team are going to be okay, and you’ll solve it, but that means being okay with the unknown. And the only way you have that is to really trust yourself.

So, what I do is I work with leaders to develop that relationship with yourself, because, if you talk about impostor syndrome, that’s not having faith in yourself. And, look, when I say we all, pretty much everybody runs through impostor syndrome. I even get it every couple of weeks, but the thing is I have the tools now that I know what to do with it. So, it’s about coming back to yourself. And if you don’t have trust in yourself, it’s about building that trust up with the relationship. So, your leadership is a reflection of your relationship with yourself.

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

R. Michael Anderson
So, my name is RMichaelAnderson.com. And my new book, Leadership Mindset 2.0 is at LeadershipMindsetTheBook.com.

Or if people find me on LinkedIn, drop me. Tell you what, if anybody finds me on LinkedIn, R. Michael Anderson, and says, “I’m connecting with you from Pete’s podcast,” I’m going to send you a free gift. So, there you go.

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

R. Michael Anderson
Yeah, I tell you what. Everybody listening, think about how you were five years ago, like, as a leader. Look at where you are now, and compare yourself five years ago. Chances are you’re calmer, you make better decisions, you trust yourself more, you have better confidence, etc. Now, that just goes to show you that leadership can be learned. It’s a learned skill.

And so, if you want to progress in some of those areas, whatever it is, you got to work on them, and that’s really what I like teaching. So, it’s that confidence, it’s that presence, it’s having difficult conversations earlier and better. It’s all those helping people overcome their impostor syndrome and step into their true powerful selves. All that stuff is learnable.

So, just like we talked about, epigenetics or whatever, set your sight, if you want to move ahead in your career, and that’s what’s stopping you, go out and learn those tools.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, Michael, thank you. This is a lot of fun. I wish you much luck.

R. Michael Anderson
Pete, you got have me back in another six years.

Pete Mockaitis
You got it.

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

Chuck Wisner
Oh, it’s great to be here. Thanks for inviting me.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m excited to get into your wisdom, hearing some tidbits you’ve collected in your book, The Art of Conscious Conversations: Transforming How We Talk, Listen, and Interact. But first, I need to hear about you and rock and roll. What’s the story here?

Chuck Wisner
Oh, boy. Well, when I was very young, I think I was very fidgety and probably a bit of ADD, and my mother took me to school when I was seven, and said, “This boy needs drum lessons,” because I was always (finger drum sound) sitting around doing that sort of thing. So, literally, I was trained professionally, classically, as a percussionist from seven years old.

And then I played all through high school. I was in jazz bands, rock and roll bands. I ended up being in the Air Force National Guard Band because I played timpani, and so that was my first career. And to this day, I still play in a rock and roll band, maybe better categorized as a garage band but four or five of us have been playing together for over 30 years, so we have a great, great time together.

Pete Mockaitis
That is impressive. I’m curious, with this rock and roll band or garage band, any noteworthy performances or encounters you had in your gigs and such?

Chuck Wisner
Well, I had fun when I was a lot younger when I was 18, 19 because the rock and roll band I was in, we cut records and we were on national TV, some small little thing in Ohio. But now, the fun that we have is once or twice a year, we invite hundreds of our best friends and we just have a big dance party.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s awesome.

Chuck Wisner
Yeah. So, that’s how we do it now.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s fun. That’s fun.

Chuck Wisner
Yeah, fun.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, now I’m curious to hear your book, The Art of Conscious Conversations. Boy, you talked to a lot of people about this sort of thing and collected a lot of wisdom. I’m curious, any particularly surprising, or extra-fascinating, or counterintuitive discoveries you’ve made about us humans and conversation and being conscious over your years?

Chuck Wisner
Well, there are several important facets that show up everywhere, whether I’m with a family, a couple, a leadership, a team. And the biggest one that often pops up – there’s two – one is authority issues, and we live in hierarchies, whether we like it or not, families have a hierarchy which is just natural hierarchy, and business has a sort of man-structured, man-made hierarchy, and the issues of power just resonate in every conversation from leadership to parenting. And so, that is something we have to pay special attention to.

And the other piece is that we grow up adopting standards. Now standards is a catchall phrase to mean our morals, what’s right or wrong, what we like, what we don’t like, what’s good, what’s bad, what’s fair, what’s unfair, but we grow up adopting standards from our families and our cultures, and believe that they are the truth, or believe that they’re the right thing, and that gets us in a lot of trouble because, often, our quarrels are because, “I think I measure success this way and you should measure success that way.” So, those two are really big.

And then the other big one is the first conversation in my book is the storytelling conversation. And if we just look at the state of the world right now, we live in stories, and like Yuval Harari’s book, A Brief History of Humankind, we evolved learning to tell stories and we adopt stories, and that’s how we create our culture and our society. The trouble is that when we’re attached to our stories, we believe them as the truth and we’ll do anything to defend them. And that’s a very common theme.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that feels like a, I think, big master key to humanity and life itself. Chuck, not to overhype it, but gives us an example of that in practice.

Chuck Wisner
Okay. Well, let’s say in business, I have situations, I have two actually very similar situations from different companies where the legal department and the finance department weren’t even talking to one another, and two departments that probably should be working hand in hand. They had different stories about what was going on in the company, and they were applying different standards to what was going on in the company, and they were so attached to their story that the other side was the enemy.

And it took bringing them into a room, and just putting, deconstructing these stories so that the finance department could see how the legal guys and gals were thinking, and vice versa. And within a couple days of working hard and playing hard together, those stories started to not be held so hard. And I think if we have a story that we really believe in, and that we think is the truth, it’s like having a story, like having a fist, like we’re telling our story, like, “This is the truth. This is the way it has to be.”

So, anyway, in that situation, deconstruct stories, get them to hear each other, and things start changing rapidly, we start building bridges. And not in business life, but in personal life, even with friends, we have stories and we judge people based on our stories. And if we believe our story is the only one, then our criticisms and our judgments really sting, and they hurt us, and they hurt the other person. So, stories abound everywhere and they cause a lot of the friction and stress that we experience.

Pete Mockaitis
And could you give us an example of an articulation of a story, maybe if it’s not too intricately detailed with the finance and legal, just so we can see how that plays out, like, “Hey, here’s the finance story and here’s the legal story. See how these implications unfold trickly?”

Chuck Wisner
Yeah, I can do that and then I would give you a very personal example, too, of how powerful it is, which might resonate a little more. I grew up with a very redneck grandfather in Pennsylvania near Philadelphia, and I had three older sisters. And when I showed emotion, or when I didn’t want to skin the deer because I didn’t like it because it made me sick, or when I got hurt and cried, the message that I always got was, “You’re not a big-enough man. Be a bigger man. Stop that.”

Now, that’s not a new story. A lot of men my age have experienced that but what I realized was that story I adopted as a child because my grandfather, to some degree my father, but my grandfather, I gave his voice authority, I gave his voice power so I believe I wasn’t a big-enough man. It wasn’t until I was 30 that I was able to bust that story.

And when I busted that story, it was like such a dramatic change because, up to that point, I was a successful architect, I have a family, but I would walk into a room of men and feel smaller than, or not as competent as, or whatever, however, I’m not a big-enough man would show up. And when I busted that story, it was like transformational.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And so then, that’s when you entered those rooms, you experienced those feelings, which are not pleasant, which I guess, in turn, likely reduced your confidence, your willingness to take risks, take on projects and initiatives. What are some of the other implications of that story going on for you?

Chuck Wisner
Well, I think back then was, whether we know it or not, that kind of self-limiting belief, other people read that so it affects how other people see you and then how other people treat you, and, in turn, the story they know about you. So, it does have an effect where it’s literally how you’re showing up in the world. And you may think you’re hiding it but it’s actually quite obvious to people that are paying attention. They noticed it and that affects our interaction.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And how did you break free, bust loose of that story?

Chuck Wisner
All right. Well, I left architecture to study the ontology of language, which is a story of why that happened, but once I was in those studies, inside of there, in the world of philosophy of language and the study of language, there’s a term called master assessments. And so, if you’re looking at, “What master assessments do you have of yourself? Good, bad, ones that serve you, ones that don’t serve you.” This happened to be a master assessment I had in my brain, in my mind, that didn’t serve me.

So, using the ideas around language and the five speech acts in deconstructing language, I was able to sort of take it apart. And when I say deconstruct, it’s like, “Wait a minute. What are the facts here?” Well, I’m six feet tall. I’m happily married, I have two young kids, I’m an architect, and all those facts didn’t line up with the story. And so, as I keep looking into it, and saying, “So, what were the standards that my grandfather was applying?” Well, he was a redneck and that was his story about what a man was, and I happen to be the recipient of that standard that I adopted unconsciously.

And so, that’s what I did. I just sort of took it apart piece by piece until I was, “Aha, this isn’t true. This isn’t who I am.” And the next morning when I went in to have coffee with the president of the firm I was working at, we’re good buddies, it was the first time I was able to stand there, have a coffee, and I said to myself, “Holy mackerel, I am taller than Bill.” And, literally, that was like a moment that I was shocked. I was like, “All this time, I saw myself smaller then.” That’s how sort of like embodied this stuff gets.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that’s powerful. Thank you. Wow! Okay story. Well, we’ll probably talk more about that but maybe we could zoom out a smidge. In terms of The Art of Conscious Conversations, it sounds like we’ve got one major thread in terms of story there. Could you maybe zoom out and tell us what’s sort of the big idea, main message, core thesis? And what do we mean by a conscious conversation?

Chuck Wisner
The core idea is we grow up learning to converse, talk, listen, interact through our culture, through our family, through our education, and we adopt all the norms from those different domains but we’re never really taught to understand how conversations work with the DNA of conversations. And so, through my work and my consulting and my teaching in the last 30 years, I kept seeing clients’ eyes light up or have aha moments when they realized that their stories weren’t the truth, or they didn’t know how to collaborate, or they were abusing power, or whatever, or they adopted standards that don’t serve them.

And then they would say, “Well, where can I read about this?” And there’s amazing information out there but it’s all scattered. And so, I decided to try to take some esoteric work and some work that’s been done by people like Peter Senge and Fred Kaufman, but I decided to sort of compile it into a book, that said, “Look, here’s the fundamentals of conversations. And instead of being unconscious of how they work, let’s have some distinctions so we can become much more aware and make much better decisions about the conversations we’re in and how we want to participate in them.”

And so, one metaphor I like is, like, fish in water. There’s fish swimming, and this old fish swims by two young fish, and he says to them, “Hey, fellas, how’s the water today?” and they just ignore him and they keep swimming. And they stopped, and one of the young fish says to other, “Hey, what’s water?” And so, it’s like they aren’t even aware they’re in water. We, a lot of the times, aren’t aware that we’re in conversations, or aware or conscious of our words and our interactions, in the way as much as we could be.

So, the book presents some distinctions that says, “Okay, let’s think about it. Let’s have some new ways to look at it and see it and experience it.”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, when you talked about having an awareness that we’re in a conversation, you have, in fact, segmented the conversations into four universal types. Can you share what those are? We’ll just start there. Can you share, definitionally, what are these four types?

Chuck Wisner
Yes. So, I’ll do a very high level. So, storytelling, and the byline with storytelling is your stories are not the truth. The second conversation is collaboration, and the byline there is seek to understand, and ask questions to understand, and absorb other perspectives. And absorb being the keyword there. The third one is a creative conversation which is about trusting your intuition and learning to balance your left brain and your right brain, and co-create with others.

And the last conversation is commitment conversations. And that conversation is the action conversation. That’s when you and I agree to do a podcast together. That’s when my wife and I agree who’s going to pick up the kids. That’s when a team decides who’s going to lay the strategy for the board meeting. So, that action conversation is everywhere, and we don’t understand it, and we do it in a very sloppy way. Those are the four.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, so we talked a bit about storytelling. Is there more you want to say there in terms of how do we get to become consciously aware of our stories and the actual truth?

Chuck Wisner
So, in conversations, we all come to every conversation with a story, with our story about what’s happening, there might be some facts, there might be all of our opinions, it might just be a bunch of assessments or judgments. We, humans, all have patterns of interacting. And I like to use the word patterns because it allows us a little bit to step away from, say, a behavior or a habit that we have, and look at it neutrally, say, “Wow, what’s my pattern around storytelling? What’s my pattern of when I enter a meeting, how I’m telling my story or what energy I’m bringing to that?”

And so, the first thing is becoming aware that your story is not the truth, and then, secondly, how you are presenting yourself and how you’re presenting your stories because we all have patterns around judging, around being perfectionists, around being critical of other people’s ways of doing things. And so, becoming aware means we can have a look, and, instead of maybe a reaction or a pattern of defensiveness, we can change that.

So, I mentioned earlier about a fist. One analogy I like is if we have a story and we believe it’s absolutely true, and it’s a really important topic that we care about, it could be business, it could be out of business, it could be political, it could be not political, but if we believe that we have the answer and we are right, we are basically telling our story with a closed fist. And under every story, there are emotions, and facts, and standards, and power issues, and desires that are really what’s the root of our story.

So, when we can change our fist from closed to open, we can be more humble, more vulnerable, and reveal our thinking under our story. Does that ring?

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. Yeah. Let’s talk about standards, in particular. How is a standard articulated in our minds?

Chuck Wisner
So, example, I work with women groups sometimes and, just for fun, and this isn’t anything about dissing women or anything, but, for fun, I would say, “So, how many people in the room, when they leave the house, if the beds aren’t all made, they feel like they’re not a good mom or a good housewife?” And, generally, a large proportion, the majority of people in the room, raise their hands.

And I simply ask, “So, that’s a standard. You have that standard. Where did you adopt that?” So, they adopted that standard from their mother, from their grandmother, from their aunty, or a lesson they learned in school. Who knows? But they adopted that, and I’m not judging that standard, but I’m saying to have the standard, and to investigate it, and to decide consciously, whether you want to keep it or not, is that’s where freedom comes from, that’s where I can say, “You know what? I don’t have to feel bad when I go to work because the beds aren’t made.”

And so, the standards for men, we actually are probably taught not to show our emotions. That, too, is a standard. And so, if we investigate that, we can see the benefits of finding ways to be emotionally intelligent, and to productively and effectively share our emotions. We can shift out of that sort of unconscious standard that we hold that might keep us back.

Pete Mockaitis
So, in the example of the beds not being made, I suppose, can you walk us through a little bit more of the detail of how do we look at it because I imagine that’s not a two-minute operation, “Hey, you know what, that’s silly. The beds don’t need to be made, and I’m still a great mom, huh. Well, I looked at that and that’s now behind me”? I imagine there’s a little bit more depth to it. What’s happening there, Chuck?

Chuck Wisner
Yeah. So, I mean, it can happen like that. There are people that go, “Whoa, that’s a standard I didn’t even know I had,” because, literally, I don’t know, some large number, 90% of our standards, we did not consciously choose. We adopted them from our culture and family. So, it can happen where someone goes, “Whoa, that standard, hmm, I don’t need that.”

Now, that doesn’t mean they’re going to switch overnight because it’s like we’re messing around with neuro networks in our brain, and there’s no switch to make it happen overnight. But, slowly, with awareness, maybe the next time this happens, the woman thinks to herself, “Yeah, I feel a little guilty, but you know what, I’ll make them when I get home.” And then two weeks later, she does it again, she goes, “Oh, screw that. I’m fine.” And three weeks later, she goes, “I’m going to make the beds today because I have time.”

And so, she has a totally different relationship with the standard. She can be conscious of, or choose, when she wants to apply it or not apply it. And I often say every time my clients say, “Well, I don’t want to do this habit,” or, “I want to change that standard,” and I say, “Well, if I had a magic pill and you never did that again, would you pay me $10,000?” And most people say, “Sure,” and I’d be a rich man. But there’s no magic pill.

So, it’s beginning to increase our awareness of what our patterns are, whether it’s standards or some kind of ways that we emotionally react to things, pay attention in a new way, and then begin a process of being consciously choosing how you want to shift that pattern.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s a really good question there with regard to the magic pill, which reminds me, I’m thinking about the book Feeling Great by David Burns, the sequel to Feeling Good. And they asked a similar question about if I had a magic button where you’d never worry about this again if you press it, usually, often they say, “Well, no, I don’t want to press it. Like, there are times and places in which this reaction, standard, belief, story is a value to me. And just sort of severing it entirely is not ideal.”

And so, that question in and of itself, it kind of segments or puts you down a different fork path of potentially insightful exploration, like, “Huh, there’s just no place for this at all,” versus, “Wow, under these circumstances or with these nuances, it’s great.”

Chuck Wisner
Yeah, actually, and that’s being aware of and understanding the underbelly of the standard or the underbelly of the assumption or judgment so you can make a more wise choice about how to apply or how not to apply. There are times when this gets into a little bit of the power issues. At times, you can be in business and someone might say to you, “You did a terrible job.” Depending on the hierarchy, depending on your relationship with that person, you might not give a damn about what they said.

But the next day, someone else with more power, or hierarchy, or higher in the hierarchy, says something, and you trust them and you give their voice a lot of power, you care a lot about what they said. And that, too, is a choice point, but being aware of those differences makes us be able to be much smarter and wise choices.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. All right, so we talked about story bits. Anything that you really want to make sure to put out there about collaborative conversations and how those can go better?

Chuck Wisner
Yes. Now, if you think about storytelling, that’s the primary because that’s where the book starts, and it’s a good 50 pages at the beginning of the book because we have to start with our own stuff. We have to become more aware of our stories and where we are and how we show up in the world with them. Now, we walk into a room, and there’s two people, you and I, or five people, or a meeting of 10 or 20 people, now we have 20 people, 20 stories around the room, 20 different perspectives around the room.

And when we are entering there with a semi-closed fist, or closed fist, there’s a lot of friction and a lot of stress that’s created because everyone is trying to up the other person. And I think the fundamental pattern that we have is to, we’re educated to have the answer, we raise our hands to have the answer, and get the gold star, but the fundamental pattern is that when we enter into collaboration, or let’s just say we enter into conversations, we’re not even aware whether we’re collaborating or not, we enter conversations, we generally can enter in defensively because we want our answer to be right.

And so, the real art of the collaborative conversation is learning to not give up your position, but hold your position with an open hand and reveal the thinking underneath. Are there power issues? What are the desires you have? What are the concerns you have? What are the standards you’re holding? And when we can be a little more vulnerable and open our hands that way, we are also inviting other people to do the same thing.

So, the collaborative conversation is the art of open advocacy and open inquiry. And open advocacy means open hand. An open inquiry means asking questions that you really want to understand, better understand the other person’s perspective, versus inquiry, where you’re asking questions to prove them wrong so you can be right.

And so, there’s a dance there, and there’s no, “I can’t say do this first, do this second,” there’s a dance with paying attention, and there’s a motion, and there’s body language, and it’s this dance of opening and opening and learning together, I call it mutual learning, where multiple perspectives can surface up. And because of that, there’s space for ideas to bubble up, there’s ways that I can say to you, “Oh, gosh, I never thought of it that way.” So, that changes how I’m thinking about the problem.

Pete Mockaitis
And I’m curious, if you’re not in the headspace of feeling curious – curious, not being curious – you’re not curious and you do think someone is wrong, do you have any pro tips on how to just do a mental emotional redirect to into a better head space, groove, flow, to have a higher-quality conversation?

Chuck Wisner
Well, let’s say the best place to start is compare, state what you know is to be real, to be true, to be factual, and see if you can find a bridge with the other person about, “This is what happened,” or, “This is what’s happening,” because the facts are the safest ground we have to stand on in a collaborative conversation.

Now, we know from politics that when that ground is shaky, it’s just a freaking nightmare. So, if you can sort of calm yourself to go, “Okay, we don’t agree, and before we actually start sharing our standards and things like that, what are the facts we agree on? We agree that the…” going back to the legal and financing, “…that the company last quarter, the last four quarters had been pretty miserable, and we have to change things, and we have to push our product in a different way, or be more creative.” We agree on the state of things, and that’s a solid ground to work from.

And then, from there, we can start asking questions, like, “Well, how do you think about X? And what you think about the market share?” And so, that inquiry is how we learn what the underbelly of your judgment is or your disagreement is. It’s always going underneath to find out more, to think about your thinking, or to reveal your thinking.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And I’m curious, in the course of having these conversations, are there any favorite or least favorite words or phrases that you think really open up cool things or shut it down real quick?

Chuck Wisner
Well, I think that most of the time, what shuts things down is judgment. So, someone will maybe put something out there, and another person will rise up right away with, “Well, that will never work.” And that’s why I shy away from the term brainstorming because we all know what that means, but the downside of brainstorming is someone comes up with a crazy idea and someone else in the room goes, “Well, we tried that five years ago, it never worked,” and that closes down the conversation.

So, this sort of gets us into the creative conversation because if you and I are in a mutual learning conversation where I’m saying, “Wow, I never thought of it that way,” and we’re sort of coming to a way of having a mutual understanding, what happens is there’s space in that conversation, there’s space in our minds, and ideas start bubbling up. And together, we might come up with, an idea might bubble up that you didn’t think of, or I didn’t think of, independently, and we both go, “Whoa, yeah, that’s the answer. Wow!”

And that’s how the creative conversation functions. It only functions when all parties are willing to be in that open space, open mind, open heart space.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, “We did that last year” is not a great phrase in a creative conversation. Any other phrases you love and phrases you don’t?

Chuck Wisner
So, a phrase that’s really useful is “Help me understand your position. Please help me understand your thinking. What’s your thinking under your thinking?” That’s a very inviting sort of phrase that tells the other person you’re open to not criticizing but to truly understanding. And your other question was what some that aren’t so helpful.

So, the unhelpful are instead of asking questions, to stay in advocacy, what I call closed advocacy, where no matter what they say, your response is, “Yes, but I think…” blah, blah, blah. And so, that’s a closed advocacy where we still can’t undo that need to be right, and so that’s a real trap. And the distinction that I’ve learned from my teachers is the distinction of being a knower versus a learner.

And so, the bad side of the advocacy and inquiry and the collaborative conversation is to be stuck as a knower, and no matter what the other person does, even if they ask you a good question, you don’t want to reveal your thinking, you don’t want to open your hand, you just go, “No, this is the way it is because this is my experience,” and you’re just stuck. You’re sort of like a solid rock.

Pete Mockaitis
Got you. Okay. And can you tell us what are mindful agreements and how do we get there?

Chuck Wisner
So, there’s a phrase that I have in the book, a little chapter around commitment conversations, that I called the conversational bypass. And what I mean by that is we have storytelling, and we have commitment conversations. Those are our favorite conversations. We like to tell our stories and we like to take action.

The middle two conversations – collaborative and creative – take more effort, take a little more time, take a change in how we’re showing up, and so what I’d say is because we love our stories, and we’re addicted to action, we leap from storytelling to action, and we do a bypass. So, an example might be we’re in a meeting, there’s a couple people, let’s say, someone saying, “Here’s what we’re trying to solve, here’s the problem,” a couple voices speak up, the loud extrovert speak up, the boss might say what his is, and then someone in the room, or the boss, or someone says, “Okay, what are we going to do?”

And so, we make a leap to action and decision, and often those decisions aren’t as vetted as they could be because we haven’t listened to opposing perspectives, we haven’t taken the time to come up with other possibilities. The creative conversation is about possibilities, what’s possible. And so, that bypass makes us make bad decisions.

A good commitment conversation, a good promise, means both sides understand what’s being asked, what’s being promised, and what success looks like. So, that conversation actually involves every time someone makes a request, we do X, Y, and Z, our tendency, our pattern as a culture is to default to yes. And when we default to yes, we miss, we don’t take the time to get clarity, and go, “Wait a minute. What am I really promising here? What’s the timing? What’s the condition to satisfaction? Who’s it for? What format do you want?” Whatever the questions are, we miss that because we are sort of addicted to, “Sure, no problem. I can do that.”

And an example is someone runs by your desk, and says, “Can you put some numbers together for me for Monday morning?” You say, “Sure.” You and your team spend the weekend putting a 30-page report together. Monday morning, the boss takes it, looks at the back page which is a summary, rips the back page off, “Perfect. This is just what I need for my meeting.” And how many manhours were spent because they didn’t take an extra five minutes to ask the question, “Listen, to help you with your meeting, I really want to understand what you really need.”

And now, with the rip of the last page, the boss goes off happy, unaware that 300 manhours were spent, and they’re all frustrated, and they all now have a story about the boss, and so we’re back to stories. So, we can do commitment conversations, just slow the process down a bit. Any request, make sure you have an understanding of what you’re making a promise.

And the other thing is to avoid the yes. Don’t make promises you can’t keep. I can be asked to do something, and maybe I’m not competent to do it, and I have to be willing to say, “You know, I need a week to learn how to do that,” or, “I need help how to do that.” So, there’s all kinds of ways, if we slow down the process, we might discover how we can make them a sloppy promise but a better promise.

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

Chuck Wisner
Yeah, I think, for me, this is a practice. I think learning about how conversations work, there’s no switch, there’s no magic pill, but as we look at the distinctions, it gives us a new lens, and be gentle on yourself. Don’t judge yourself. Be curious about, “Well, what is my pattern and how can I change that pattern?” And that change is sort of a slow process. It’s like it might change overnight but it might take you a week, it might take you two weeks. But if you stay paying attention and patient with yourself and nonjudgmental, you can change those patterns.

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

Chuck Wisner
Well, one of my favorite spiritual teachers is Hafiz who was pre-Rumi. And I love this quote, he says, “Even after all this time, the sun never says to the earth, ‘You owe me.’ Look what happens with a love like that. It lights up the whole sky.”

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

Chuck Wisner
Right now, I’m liking neuroscience, and I’m not a neuroscientist, so I don’t go too deeply, but I think we’re just on the brink of learning how the brain works and how the chemicals interact and the electrical impulses, this incredible complex set of neurons, billions of neurons. And I think what it’s doing is giving us a window into why we humans act the way we do, which takes a little bit of the sting out on some of our habits so we can look at them more neutrally and with a little more compassion.

Pete Mockaitis
And could you share a favorite book?

Chuck Wisner
It’s a few years old but I love Yuval Harari’s book called Sapiens. And I like it because he tells a different story about humans, how we evolved, and how our brains and our thinking evolved. Again, it’s a fresh look at how mythology got created in concert with how our brains developed, and so we learned to tell myths so we can have bigger societies, and then we attach ourselves to those myths. Even money is a story, and law is a story. And so, it’s a way of looking at the world so we aren’t so attached to our particular perspective but we learn a little more tolerance. And the world could use a fair amount of that right now.

Pete Mockaitis
Can you elaborate on how money and law is a story? Because I think, to many, they think, “Well, those things are just ironclad.”

Chuck Wisner
Yeah. Well, over time, money has evolved from a point where at some time in history, shells could be a form of trade. And metals, or precious metals, even tulips, at one point, were the trade for the way that we did trade, and what had value. And so, money is a story because we all agree that this piece of paper has value. The piece of paper is nothing. The value and the power only is in our agreement of its value. And that agreement is a story that we all adopt and live by.

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

Chuck Wisner
Well, I say meditation is a really important tool for self-awareness and learning to understand our minds. And, at my age, yoga is really important, so I think mental and physical things like that, that help keep us awake and aware and able, are really important things to pay attention to.

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?

Chuck Wisner
I think the visual in my book of a spiral, it’s like V-shaped and think of a funnel like you put a quarter in a funnel at a museum of science. And by the time the quarter gets to the bottom, it’s spinning so fast you don’t recognize it as a quarter. I use that visual to help people understand that when something triggers them, emotional trigger, an upsetting event, that, generally, what we do is we spiral down, and it’s usually fear-based. There’s some fear we have that has us spiraling down. And the opposite of fear is love at the top.

And I bring that up because that visual helps people, when they do catch themselves triggered or spiraling, they go, “Okay, where am I on the funnel?” And that stops the spin, and then we can do some investigation into our thinking and into our emotions, and stop spiraling down, and maybe move ourselves up through that awareness.

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

Chuck Wisner
My website is ChuckWisner.com. I believe they can download a free PDF of the introduction. My Instagram, chuck_wisner, and LinkedIn, and I think Facebook is the same.

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

Chuck Wisner
Yes. I’d say investigate your thinking, be kind to yourself, be tolerant, try to be less judgmental, and really practice opening your hand so you can have an open hand and an open heart, and also being aware that you have to protect yourself.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Chuck, thank you. This has been a treat. I wish you many lovely conscious conversations.

Chuck Wisner
Same to you. Hope it resonates.