Transcript 0:00 Hey, welcome back everybody. Um, back in the studio here with Bob Tipton. I should say the virtual studio, talking about navigating times of radical change. 0:10 Bob, we wanna talk about communications today to start off, don't we? Yeah, that's the primary, uh, topic for today is finding ways to be able to communicate effectively during times of radical change. 0:22 What I find is, I think we talked about this in the first episode also, is that 0:27 when things are challenging, we tend to find ourselves adrenalized, and our physiology, our brain chemistry only gives us a limited number of choices at that point. 0:39 Let's pause just a second and welcome Mike Peterson into the conversation. Hello. Hey, Mike. I'm glad you could make it today. 0:46 Mike is a former VP of HR and IT, um, and he and I have been in, in a common network together for a number of years. Uh, and also a published author and has recently published a book on leadership. 1:00 Maybe we'll touch on that later as, if, if it ties in. But, uh, welcome in, Mike. Go ahead, Bob. Sorry to interrupt the flow. 1:08 [laughs] We're teeing up the whole topic for today of, of, of starting with communications and how to communicate in this challenging environment. Yeah. Thanks, Joe. And hello, Mike. Nice to meet you. 1:19 Nice to meet you too. So I'm coming to you from the Denver area. I don't know where you are, Mike. I know where Joe is. He's, like, in Florida, right? You're in- Yeah. I'm in northwest Arkansas. Northwest Arkansas. 1:32 Spent a lot of time in Fort Smith. Oh, great. Um- Just down the road. Yep, a whole lot. North- northwest Arkansas is beautiful. Yeah, it sure is. Yeah. Really special part of the country. Anyway, um, 1:44 yeah, we were talking about this idea that when things are hard, when things are challenging and difficult and we find ourselves with a whole bunch of adrenaline that's been pumped into our body, we don't have a lot of executive function available. 1:57 We basically have fight, flight, or freeze, and that doesn't help when it comes to communicating effectively usually. 2:04 So, yeah, that's a topic for today is to how do we bring better tools and approaches when it comes to communicating? 2:13 So I guess the first thing I wanna put out there is leaders often find themselves navigating challenging situations just like the people that they're leading. But we have a special relationship, obligation. 2:27 Kind of a big word, obligation, to be able to quell some of our own concerns and our own nervousness and uncertainty and be able to help those around us. 2:39 So one of the first things that I like to think about before we start communicating is are we in the right mindset to do so? And that right mindset requires sometimes just taking a deep breath 2:50 and relaxing a little bit, giving yourself a moment. In fact, I've got th- three kind of rules about answering emails or communicating. So if it's something that's really important, 3:04 I mean, it's, like, life-changing potentially, I have a 48-hour rule. I'm not gonna say anything until I sleep on it twice. Then I have an hour rule. 3:12 If it's something that looks like it's something that's significant, really have to deal with it, I'll still wait an hour to make sure that I've actually metabolized my adrenaline. 3:22 And then if it's something that's on fire, actually has to happen immediately, I still have 90 seconds. So this knee-jerk reaction to communicate immediately when somebody says something, 3:36 I'll always wait at least a minute and a half, and I get a m- a, a mental timer going. The good news about that is after 90 seconds, the adrenaline actually starts to c- be converted. So that's first. 3:49 Are we in the right mindset to communicate? Have you ever received a flaming email from somebody? They're just- [laughs]... full of concern, full of all kinds of things. Ever felt like- Never. 3:58 [laughs] Never gotten one of those, have you? Oh my God. Well, our natural reaction is to communicate immediately. That's where road rage comes from too. 4:09 It's an immediate triggered response based on a lack of 90 seconds of waiting. So that's first. Are we in the right mindset to communicate? Uh, that's necessary. And then from that, [clears throat] 4:25 when we're looking at things of radical change, you know, the first things we talked about, is it even real? Um, is it something that belongs to me? 4:34 And I think one of the things we didn't talk about a lot in the first episode is this idea of what if I'm wrong about this? You know, we find ourselves in echo chambers. We talked about that a fair, a fair amount. 4:45 We find ourselves victims, quote unquote, of algorithms and social media and all the different things that come across our news feed. Um, we're not really victims. We're choosing that. 4:57 It's just we kinda get, uh, reinforced. We find ourselves, in some cases, addicted, I guess, to that sort of a thing. But what if we're wrong about it? So one of my favorite things to bring forward... 5:09 Well, two things, I guess. One, um, a, a marvelous TED Talk from 2011. Kathryn Schulz had a TED Talk on something called On Being Wrong. She's actually a researcher that looked into the subject, 5:24 and she started her TED Talk with this story. See if I get it right. I'm not sure if I get it completely right, but you get the gist of it. 5:31 She and a traveling companion were driving across the United States, and they kept seeing this weird symbol. They thought, "Why do we keep seeing this Chinese or Korean or Japanese symbol on the signs?" 5:42 And after a while, one of them finally decided to look it up to see what it actually was, and it wasn't this Chinese kanji symbol. It was a s- it was a sy- a, a picnic table. [laughs] It was a symbol for campground. 5:55 So just the context was completely wrong i, in what they thought they were seeing. Totally different. And then she asked the question of the audience, she said, "How does it feel when you're wrong?" 6:08 So Mike, Joe, how does it feel when you're wrong? It's a little bit embarrassing, I think, because it reveals back to that knee-jerk response and maybe from... 6:20 I've built context based upon maybe the echo chamber that I've been in or the paradigms I was holding. Right. Except you didn't answer the question that I asked. [laughs] And this is what, this is what she said. 6:33 The question that you asked is, how does it feel when you realize you're wrong? How does it feel when you're wrong? It feels like nothing or it feels like you're right. You don't know. 6:46 So that's a little bit to add to the mix of what we talked about in the first installment, is this idea of, are my soice- sources even accurate? Who paid for that research? 6:55 What timeframe are they looking for the statistics? What things are they comparing? You know, this... You wanna do something fun with, uh, Copilot or ChatGPT? Give it, uh, this prompt. 7:06 Say, "Find me a ridiculous correlation." So I'll butcher this. This isn't exactly right, but it sounds right, um, or similar. 7:15 The number of people that die from poisonous spider bites every year correlates to the number of movies that, uh, Nick Cage is in every year. [laughs] The graph looks exactly the same, but it's ridiculous. 7:28 So it's back to this idea, first of all, am I right about what I'm about to communicate? How much time do we actually spend checking sources? 7:38 Per capita cheese consumption in the US is strongly correlated with the number of people who died by being tangled in their bedsheets. There you go. [laughs] It makes no sense, but it correlates. [laughs] Yeah. 7:54 And a lot of the stuff that we see, Mike, when it comes to messaging, has that kind of nonsensical feel to it, unfortunately. But we're either not aware enough or we don't care enough to be able to check it out. 8:10 So Joe, that's first, I think, when it comes to, are we in the right mindset and do we have the right information to be communicating? 8:19 So from that, if we can say yes to that, I'm in the right mindset or I think I am, and I think I'm right because I've checked the sources, then it gets down to, what do people actually need 8:32 when we're communicating with them? And the third installment, when we get to that, I'm gonna get in more specific behaviors from a leadership perspective, so I'm not gonna get into so much of that right now. 8:42 This is gonna feel a little bit more like training. Sorry, not sorry. 8:46 Um, but a couple of tools that are really important when it comes to communicating effectively, and the first one I wanna talk about is relevance theory. Have either of you heard of relevance theory before? 8:58 Not ringing any bells. No. So what I find is many of those that are in technical professions, and I started that way. I was an IT person for many, many years. 9:10 Didn't spend much time in the humanities section of the university before we, uh, got our degree and started working. 9:16 I find that with doctors and lawyers and engineers, there's not a lot of time spent, maybe one mandatory communications class you had when you were a freshman, but that was it. 9:29 And [coughs] what we tend to believe, there's a myth about communication, and that is everybody should find everything that I say to be relevant. 9:38 It's a very personal, individual way of looking at things, and in reality, it's not true. A, not everybody cares about what we have to say, and B, it's the listener that gets to decide whether this is relevant or not. 9:53 So as we're sitting here pontificating about stuff, dealing with times of radical change, those that are listening to this get to decide whether it's relevant or not and whether they wanna pay attention to it or not. 10:05 It's not what we wanna say as we sit here. So imagine a Venn diagram. [coughs] In the Venn diagram, on one circle, it's what you want to say. 10:15 The other circle is what they want to hear, and the overlap is where relevance exists. Now, driving up relevance, there's actually some things to help, and this is what this idea of relevance theory shows up. 10:28 So two pieces, and I'm, I'm warning you, you have to imagine a little bit of a math problem in your mind here. So I don't know how good you are at that, but I'm gonna ask you to imagine a bit of a math problem. 10:40 So relevance theory is a simple computation. It's contextual effects divided by processing effort. And what I mean by c- contextual effects is how quickly am I able to connect this to something that I already know? 10:57 So a couple of weeks ago now, I was in a workshop with some real live engineers, water engineers, and they were looking to build a sophisticated water treatment plant to get rid of forever chemicals. 11:09 And one of the things I know, having worked in the water treatment industry, although I'm not an engineer, but I work in that industry a lot, there's a term called flocculation. 11:19 Joe, Mike, have you ever heard the term flocculation before? No, but I, I'm, I'm holding my tongue, trying not to use my chemistry background to extrapolate a potential meaning. [laughs] So I'm holding it. 11:31 [laughs] Fair enough. No, maybe you've got background here that you can understand a bit about what that means because of your training and your background. Most people have no flipping idea what flocculation means. 11:44 So there was a very senior water engineer in the room, and I was sharing a slide that had this math formula, processing or contextual effects divided by processing effort. 11:55 And I said, "Can you help me with the term flocculation so I can get it quickly?" He said, "All right. It's like making ice cream." I thought, "Okay, cool." No pun intended. Making ice cream. What does that mean? 12:09 Well, you start with this liquid with all sorts of stuff in it, and what you wanna do through this paddle that is stirring in the ice cream is you wanna create some- Some glob. 12:19 You wanna make something kind of come together. I thought, "Okay, I get that." That's what flocculation is. 12:26 Yeah, it's about taking particulates, it's about taking things that are floating in the water, and you want to attract them to each other through agitation, and there's some chemicals to make that possible. 12:38 So what you do is basically cl- create globs of stuff. I thought, "Great. Now I have a really clear understanding of what flocculation is because I know how ice cream is made." 12:48 So the contextual effects for me were off the chart. It's like I get it right away. And by the way, if you ever watch drinking water being made, the last step is flocculation, 13:00 and what they do is they take all the particulates and so on in the, the water, create these nasty-looking globs of stuff that are heavier than the water. 13:10 They float to the bottom, they're scraped off, and the finished water is ready to be sent into the distribution system. So this is an example of relevance theory. 13:20 In that case, Bob, was the way he explained it, my first response was he impacted the denominator. So he was in-- he made it easy. But then 13:33 in his example, he also seemed to make it more relevant to something you could relate to, so he kind of did both at the same time. Yes. 13:42 So if you imagine the, uh, numerator and the denominator, what you want is it to be ten over one. You don't want it to be one over ten. When it's one over ten, it's like you're speaking in a foreign language. 13:54 People have no idea what you're saying. It's- I'm out... not relating them-- to them at all. They don't get it. So this idea of relevance theory really is pretty straightforward, except that not enough leaders use it. 14:08 They don't care about it. It's not something important to them. It's like, "I, I, I held the town hall, I sent the email. What the heck?" 14:16 And they wonder why people are still running around going, "I don't know what to do now. I don't know how this affects me. I don't know what to make out, make out of this." So does it take a little longer? 14:27 Does it require some empathy? Does it take some effort to be able to see what other people might need? Absolutely it does. So I haven't been a practicing IT professional for a long time. 14:41 I still am involved in the strategy associated with organization that often includes technology, but I haven't been doing it for quite some time. 14:51 Do I still have a, a basic understanding of how to communicate things to people? I think so. Can I help... In fact, I don't know who I was talking to. Maybe it was you, Joe. 15:01 I don't know who I was talking to, but I'm a former CTI- CTO and former CIO, and I discovered that people still have trouble communicating the strategic value of IT to their organizations. It was us. 15:13 Year twenty twenty-five. It's like- We had a sidebar bef- uh, I think- Really?... before the last, uh, the first, uh, session on this topic. Yeah. It was us. I'm, I'm-- I was hoping that y'all had it figured out. 15:26 [laughing] I really did. It's one of the most common, and Mike, you'll, you'll relate 'cause we, we touch on this in our communities. 15:34 It's one of the most common things that come, comes up is, especially people a little bit more junior than CIO, but still there too, and that is: How do I get a seat at the table? You know? 15:45 So it's kinda, it's related to that. In other words, why aren't people listening to, to what I'm saying? Why am I not having influence? Huh. Maybe you're not making it relevant for them. [chuckles] Exactly. 16:00 Maybe you're making it very difficult for them to understand 'cause they don't get the nuances of cybersecurity. They don't get the nuances of risk when it comes to artificial intelligence. They don't get that. 16:12 What they get instead is the meme that somebody posted on Facebook or Instagram the day before. They're getting something out of their echo chamber. 16:20 They're not getting the actual facts in such a way that they can understand it. 16:25 So anyway, I go back, gosh, this has gotta be twenty-five years ago or more, developing websites, and the tool we used back then, where I think they're probably still using something like this, is called Personas and Journey Maps. 16:38 I don't know if you're using- Mm-hmm. Oh, yeah... any version of that, but information architecture and who are we talking to? 16:45 Well, I've translated that into team dynamics using that same tool now for decades, but in a non-IT kinda capacity because it's the same issue. 16:53 We don't spend enough time understanding who we're communicating with and what they need, what their pain points are, how they view the world, what their actions and behaviors are. 17:05 So there's a really specific thing that we can use, especially for a technology-related audience. It's not anything new. It's been around for decades, but we don't use it enough. How come, do you think? 17:18 Why don't we use things like Personas and Journey Maps enough? Uh, I think it's-- I just answered a, a, a question like that, so th- thank you for reminding me. And I, you know, one of the answers that I 17:33 came across is, is just, um, time. You know? So, so many people are, um, overburdened. They feel overburdened with work. They're playing catch up, and doing things the, the right way takes a lot of time. 17:50 And so a lot of people, from my perspective at least, know, know what the right way is. They just don't necessarily, uh, wanna take the time to do it the right way. 18:01 And, and I think, um, in many ways, those journey maps are a great example 'cause they've been around for so long as, as kind of a best practice, that it's started to become like, "Well, I don't... 18:13 I know what, I know what needs to be done. I know how to do it, so I'm just gonna skip the process and go right to some assumptions about, about what I think I know." 'Cause it's gonna save me a lot of time. 18:24 Until it doesn't, right? [chuckles] Exactly. Right. [chuckles] Yeah. Again, going back to my days in IT, it was, uh, "Why do you keep giving me the things I ask for as opposed to the things I need?" 18:36 I don't know how many times I heard that question from users. It's like, "I know I asked for this, but it's not what I really need." So taking the time to understand how you actually interac- interact with them. 18:46 I mean, I go back now 30 years ago, there's a bi- book written called Moments of Truth by Jan Carlzon. He was the former s- CEO of SAS Airlines, and SAS, the Scandinavi- Scandinavian airline, they were horrible. 18:58 I mean, they had the, some of the worst customer service imaginable, maybe worse than imaginable. 19:04 And he came in, and he decided he was gonna turn that airline around, and what he came up with was every interaction that we have with a customer, no matter what it was, from a business card to a face-to-face meeting, whatever it might be, is a moment of truth, and what does the customer come away with as re- as it relates to an experience? 19:24 So what it forced his leadership team and ultimately the whole organization to focus on is: who's in front of me? What do they need? What are they looking for? What do they actually want? 19:34 And it fundamentally transformed the airline. I don't know if it's any good anymore, but at the time, it was a fundamental transformation. So this whole idea of empathy, oh my gosh, um, 19:45 there are some in the world that talk about empathy as a waste of time or, uh, um, a marker of weakness. I am not one of them. [chuckles] I think empathy is a superpower in the year 2025 and beyond. 19:59 Not taken to an extreme, right? So that's part of what we talked about in the first installment, Joe, is I'm not gonna pick up your burden just because it's sitting there telling me I should pick it up. 20:08 I can be empathetic, and I can be compassionately detached and know that you need to do your own growth, and you need to go through your own suffering, quote-unquote. 20:18 The hard thing with being a parent is you have to let your kids grow. If you don't, you're gonna wind up taking care of them for their whole life. Right. So empathy, in my mind, is a superpower, 20:32 and I have a very simple definition of empathy that goes beyond walking a mile in someone else's shoes, which is the way most people think about it. Let's try this one on for size. 20:44 I hear your lived experience, and I believe it. Not my job to judge it- Mm-hmm... criticize it, put it in the category of right or wrong. 20:53 I believe that you believe that, and that's a great platform to build communication using another tool if you're ready to move on to something that still feels a bit like training. 21:04 If I could, I wanted to just swing back a little bit. Um, it seems to me, I'm correlating here, [chuckles] that when Mike was saying that people know what the right thing is to do, 21:18 but it feels like too much of a heavy lift based upon time, and I would also insert the pressure that they're under at the moment to deliver- Mm-hmm... um, then they don't take that path. 21:32 Likewise, and I think you, you sort of did a hat tip to this, Bob, when you said they think it's right until it's wrong, or it, it, it really gets into this point of do you have the space to look at the long view, 21:46 or do you feel like you are reacting constantly? Which to me correlates and ties back to this adrenalized state that so many of us are in. 21:58 And I think about a technology leader, you know, most technology leaders have a service part of what they do. They have hopefully people who are helping them take care of the services that support the organization. 22:12 You know, is the email always running, et cetera. If there's problem-- I mean, they're responding constantly to issues, their organization is. 22:23 So there's a sense or a belief in this adrenalized state, "I don't have time to deal with the right thing to do 'cause I have to respond." I'm, I'm not saying it's true. I'm just saying that longer view, 22:40 um, seems expensive, going back to your, your formula. It seems costly to me as the person delivering the message, so I just wanna bypass it. 22:54 So the question that I would s- lay on the table, and we can get to this later, is how do you help people put the practices into place to de-adrenalize themselves so they, they can do the right thing? 23:09 First, you gotta have the tools, and that's part of what you're delivering here. But I think it's also important to talk about 23:15 assuming I have the tools, how do I enable the right practices and habits to, and awareness to utilize those tools? Again, back to what we talked about in the first, 23:28 uh, ep- uh, installment, there are three levels of awareness, and the levels of awareness come with experience. They come with time. And one of the first things about 23:40 getting out of being adrenalized is realizing that it's possible to be so, that that is a choice. It's not an inevitability. We are completely in control to how we react to everything. 23:53 Some things, um, they're, you know, the fight, flight, or freeze because nature puts it in. If you see a bear, you probably decide it's time to do something, although we tend to do the wrong thing. 24:05 We run away from the bear. Uh, the bear is faster than you are, [chuckles] and it also primes its instinct to chase prey. So one of the better things to do is to become large and loud. 24:18 You have a better chance of surviving an encounter with a bear if you do those as opposed to running away from it. So that comes with some training. 24:24 But first of all, Joe, it's this how many times we actually find ourselves encountering a bear in our lives? Once. I remember as a kid, my dad, my, uh... We were camping at Yellowstone. We had a bear encounter. 24:35 And what did my father do? He decided to throw rocks at the bears. [laughs] Fortunately, he actually hit one on the nose, and the bear decided that that was better to run away than to come back. 24:47 But I could've been fatherless when I was about eight- Mm-hmm... because my father was throwing rocks at the bears. Anyway, enough about my personal life. 24:55 It's a matter of being aware that the choice is possible, and that comes with experience. 25:01 So I believe the more gray hair we earn, the more t- trips around the sun we have, Joe, the more we realize that sometimes the expense up front is worth it. 25:10 And it's also a choice through awareness that I don't have to respond to everything. As I said a little while ago, I've got these three timers that go off about things. I will not respond immediately to anything 25:24 unless I'm in a plane crash and a flight attendant t- tells me to get off the plane. I've got 90 seconds to do that or I'll die. Okay, I won't wait 90 seconds to see how I feel about what he or she is saying. 25:34 So to me, it's a cop-out to say I constantly have to respond to things. That's not true. That's a choice. Each thing that comes along, you have the ability to say, "I'm gonna take a deep breath at least." 25:50 So these three levels of awareness we talked about, the, the first level of awareness is, "Crap, I just did what I always do. I responded." But you realize it sometime after the fact. 26:00 There's a teachable moment for you at that point to say, "Do I wanna do that next time?" But it's an awareness to say, "I've just done what I've always done." So I, I'll give you an, an example. 26:11 Imagine you're on a buffet at a, on a cruise, and the food is available 24/7, and it's amazing food. And what you're trying to do in your life is to get your A1C down. 26:25 You're trying to get away from being pre-diabetic, and you're trying to eat, uh, healthier. What do we do when we see a buffet? 26:33 We load up the plate because somewhere inside of our alligator brain, it's like we're never gonna eat again. Every time we load up the plate, it's a choice. 26:42 So the second level of awareness is you're in the middle of loading your plate. You look at it and say, "I'm not gonna eat this in three meals. I don't need this n- uh, number of carbs for three days." Mm-hmm. 26:54 And you can decide to quit loading your plate. So you have a choice in the middle of it. And the third is, "I'm about to get a plate and go through the line. I'm going to pick things that fit my priorities." 27:06 So the tool that I'm talking about here, Joe, is it's an intentional disruption to the automatic pilot that we find ourselves on with the echo chamber stuff that we've talked about so much. Oh, 27:21 okay, maybe I'm the only one that feels this way. I don't know. We'll find out. Maybe some listeners are giving up at this point. But we are in control. 27:30 We can put our hands on the wheel and decide what our actions will be, and if we choose to respond constantly to things, we play Whac-A-Mole all day long. That's a choice. Even if you don't think it is. Correct. Yeah. 27:45 Because you're conditioned. You're conditioned. And, and it's funny 'cause, uh, not funny, and that relates to some of the other things we discussed in the, in the first episode about all the messaging we get externally. 27:58 Um, I find that a lot of times, uh, in this particular example, leaders tend to keep reinforcing their own messages back to themself and, and, uh, take away their agency to make a choice in the moment. Um- Yeah... 28:12 which gets back to something else. I had, uh, someone close to me interact with me based upon the first episode, asked me some questions, um, a- about how do I evaluate, you know, the messaging that's out there. 28:27 And I said, "Well, one thing I do is kind of use this Columbo technique where I, where I basically ask the person delivering the message to, to, to me, or if I'm getting it somewhere, I just basically say, 'What exactly 28:42 are you saying?'" And then the second question that fits in here is, "How did you get to that?" How did you decide that? How did you decide that that is true? Mm-hmm. 28:54 Which also relates to what you've been saying about, uh, challenging these things. Um, but also, is the belief that I have, are the tapes that I'm running through my own brain actually true? Correct. 29:10 Yeah, one of my favorite examples of that, Joe, is who said the line, "Luke, I am your father"? The answer is nobody. The line does not exist in the movie, 29:23 but we've heard it repeated over and over and over again so much that we believe it's true, but it isn't. The actual line is, "No, I am your father," not, "Luke, I am your father." [chuckles] Mm-hmm. 29:37 So it's one of those simple examples that we look at and say, "Well, what's the foundation for my belief?" Or, or, "What do I think about this? Is it true?" 29:46 Now back to the first thing we talked about in this installment is, are you in the right frame of ma- frame of mind to communicate? So again, 29:56 a cop-out, what a '80s word or a '70s word, but it's this idea that I just simply give up my responsibility in the matter, and I am reacting like Whac-A-Mole. 30:06 Well, maybe get your chainsaw out and cut the mole off so you never see it come off or come up and down through the hole. Maybe it's nothing. 30:15 So people get good, in fact, really good at knowing what your, where your buttons are, especially children and a lot of our employees. They know exactly how to make us react. 30:28 What if we had, you know, the react button that we have on our chest here where people walk up and push the react button? What if we had no wiring behind the button? Well, it's not gonna be used very well. 30:42 Would it frustrate the person that's pushing the button? Yeah, the first couple of times Yeah But no response, none. I tried that with my younger daughter. Oh, she got mad. 30:50 [laughs] It's a very powerful tool, for sure But it really worked. So those are a couple of ideas, Joe. 30:57 So the nice segue here is into another type of awareness, and this is based in how we process our satisfaction when we ask a question why and we get an answer back. 31:11 So we're constantly processing why, especially in times of radical change. It's just what's going on? Why did they, why is this happening? 31:20 So the answers that we get back are different, um, or, or we need different answers based upon who we are. 31:28 So there's a, a level of awareness when it comes to who are you, and then there's a n- a level of awareness about who you're communicating with. And if you're communicating with an individual, it's easier. 31:39 If you're communicating with a large group, it's important to communicate in all four ways. There's four quadrant, four, uh, elements in the quadrant. I dream in two-by-twos. My staff laughs at me, but it's true. 31:50 I actually dream in two-by-twos. So imagine this quadrant. There's four pieces to it. There are two ways that we are satisfied with the answer to the question why that are emotional. There are two that are logical. 32:08 So top and bottom. Left and right now we have two that are intrinsic and two that are extrinsic. 32:15 So, and about 25% of the population is spread into each of the four quadrants, and yes, there's nothing that is absolute about it. 32:23 It's a model, not a mandate, but it's a model to say kind of where's home, when we're adrenalized, what do we prefer? So it's a way to be able to kind of get to what we're gonna default to in terms of communication. 32:36 And if we only communicate from our quadrant, 75% of the population is unsatisfied. So it's a realization that my preferred way of communicating may not be effective, 32:48 and probably isn't if we're only using our own preferred way, unless the other person we're talking to has the same preferred way. 32:56 So let me go give you a quick tour of the four different quadrants, and then we can see how it might be useful. So if you're an intrinsic, logical decision-maker, 33:06 you look at facts, data, numbers, amounts, quantities, and you think the facts should speak for themselves. I've done the numbers, I've run the numbers, I've put it through my spreadsheet. 33:19 Out pops the formulatic response to say, "This is the answer. That's all we need to do." That's useful, but it only speaks in-i-implicitly to 25% of the population. 33:29 There are a lot of technical professionals that believe that that is the capital T, way, capital W, the way to communicate. It's not enough. 33:39 Unless the person you're talking to on the other side has exactly the same way of looking at it, then it's great. So f- now, if you're an emotional, logical decision-maker, what you look for are external sources. 33:50 It's not you running the spreadsheet, it's what study have you read? Which PhD, what research, what example is available to prove that this actually works? 34:02 Data is incredibly important, but I wanna see this actually in action somewhere, so I look on the outside for validation. There are a whole lot of people in technical professions that do that also. 34:13 They wanna look at case studies or research. You know, I don't know if Gartner's still around. They were a big source- Oh, yeah Okay. Yeah. They were a big source of research when I was doing it 20, 25 years ago. 34:23 In fact, I managed the Gartner relationship for the consulting company that I was the CTO for. It's incredibly valuable stuff. You know, where are you in the magic quadrant? The magic quadrant, the hype cycle- Right... 34:36 et cetera. Yeah. S- and that's, that's supposed to justify everything. Right. Well, that's only half the population now that we've talked about. Only half. 34:46 And by the way, that's where most communication and organizational life comes from, is from those two dimensions. The other two are emotional. 34:53 And one of the things that happens when we're in the middle of a radical change is we can become emotional decision-makers, all of us. 35:00 So if you're about to lose your job or you have lost your job, you become an emotional decision-maker first, and that's one of the most important things during times of radical change. 35:10 If you're a leader, people will quit listening to your data. They don't care about COBRA. They don't care about co-pays. 35:16 They don't care about, um, anything until they get satisfied with what this means to me, and that's the emotional, intrinsic decision-maker. How does this make me appear like a politician or a policy maker? 35:32 I wanna know what this looks like to me, and until I have that satisfied, I don't care about your data or your studies. They're useless to me. So how does this make me appear? How does this change my life? 35:44 Where am I gonna work? Who do I sit next to? What's my drive look like? So technical professionals who love data and love studies, they look at this need to tell somebody how they feel about something as being useless. 35:57 Well, guess what? When people aren't satisfied with the answer to the question why that they get over and over again, do they get more quiet? They do not. They get louder. They find different ways to drive you crazy. 36:10 So this is another one of these examples, Joe, where some time upfront is very well spent to be able to answer the questions from the different viewpoints. All right, so there's a fourth one. 36:19 That's where I self-identify. I'm an emotional, extrinsic decision-maker, and here's how I get satisfied. I get satisfied that you're presenting me enough right answers that the best right answer is included. One study, 36:34 one set of data, one set of information about how this affects me isn't enough. I need to be able to know that you've done your homework. 36:42 I need to feel that you've taken it seriously by looking at more than one potential answer. 36:48 So back to what I said at the beginning with this particular tool, if you're talking to somebody that's just like you, it's easy. 36:54 If you're talking to someone who isn't like you, like someone Who's at the table, and you as an IT professional want a seat at the table, and the person that's at the table wants to know how this appears to them. 37:07 The worst thing you can do to try to get a seat at the table is to justify your position with data- [chuckles] Right... or studies. Is this making any sense? Yeah. Yeah. 37:21 What I find is people just don't give this any attention. If they do, it's short, m- minor attention. 37:32 And what I find by using this tool, especially when things are uncertain, when things are challenging, when things are a mess, the more you spend time preparing your communication from all four elements in this quadrant, you'll look like a communications hero. 37:48 You'll be so out of phase with everybody else, they'll look at you for the s- for the source of the truth. Confidence that what you're saying is, uh, believable, it's authentic, it's true. So 37:59 when might this tool be useful? It's like, how about all the time? By the way, the, the type that's most challenging for us is the one that's diagonally opposite. Mm-hmm. 38:09 So for me, being a, a, an emotional, uh, extrinsic decision-maker, it's the intrinsic- Internal... logical decision maker. Yeah, yeah. Guess who I was married to for forty-five years- Hmm... before she passed away? 38:22 I miss her- Yeah... logic. I miss her intrinsic decision-making because I can get lost in possibilities. She used to tell me, "Can we just fricking decide where we're [chuckles] gonna go to dinner?" 38:36 "No, I wanna look at all these different options. I just wanna look at different possibilities and choices." "Can we make a decision, Bob?" 38:44 So finding ways to be able to glue them together, get the best of both for the diagonally opposite, trying to get all four wrapped up into your announcement memo or your staff meeting or your town hall. 39:00 So that there's connection points in the overall messaging- That's right... rather than exclusion zones because you haven't made the effort to form the communication to touch those different types. That's right. 39:17 And back to the, "I don't have time." Yeah. Yeah. It, it, it reminds me of the old, uh, total quality examples, right? You don't have time to do it right the first time, 39:31 so you pay for it in spades, uh, just forever on the back end. I love that one. Yeah. Yeah. That, that's a great example, Joe. You know, one of the-- [chuckles] You just brought up a whole nother subject in my mind. 39:48 I don't know if this is a, a weird non-sequitur, but I'm gonna go there. Have you ever known a company that won the Malcolm Baldrige Award? Well, I know we were chasing after it w- when I was at Syntex years ago. 39:58 You, you know Syntex. You were one of our providers there. Um, so I know we talked about a lot of companies that won it. Um, but no, I have never been close to them, if that was the question. 40:11 Well, it's like, it's like winning the lottery. Yeah. How many people after winning the lottery say it's the worst thing that happened, ever happened to them? Most. It ruined their life. 40:22 [chuckles] Well, the same thing with chasing after the Malcolm Baldrige Award. The companies that won it, many of them said it was horrible afterwards. Why? 40:29 Because there was such pressure to be perfect that they never brought forward the issues that needed to be brought forward. So that's, that's a whole nother subject for another day, Joe. 40:39 But this idea of psychological safety, you know, psychological safety is another communications cultural sort of a marker that says what needs to be said is said at the time it needs to be said, to whom it needs to be said, and the way it needs to be said. 40:53 Using all these tools, relevance theory, using the four different ways, but we say what needs to be said in a plain, um, way. 41:01 That's another thing that we find really challenging in the world of, or in the times of radical change, is people don't feel safe to communicate that way. 41:11 You know, Bob, I can't resist the temptation to, uh, speak to both of you and Mike about the leadership books you've written. I remember your book Jump, 41:22 where it, it was a-- And Mike, it, it's a-- followed a similar format to your, your book you just released. Why don't you just throw the title out there? I'll let you do it. Leading in the Age of Digital Disruption. 41:33 Right. And you used the sort of the same format where you had a story on the front end, and then you had the teaching, I think, Bob, you did this too on the back end. 41:44 Um, and I'm just kind of curious, um, how what we're talking about today connected to some of the scenarios, Mike, if you don't mind, you're thinking about your, uh, your new freshly minted CEO, [chuckles] 42:00 which I thought it was kind of humorous and came out of being leading a, HR. [chuckles] Nice one there. Um, but 42:09 some of the dynamics of building the team and dealing with the challenges that the company went through, I think touch on some of these same themes, do they not? One hundred percent. 42:18 And then maybe after you're done speaking to that, maybe Bob, you could talk about how it ties into... Jump was a number of years ago, but it's still on my bookshelf [chuckles] and used. Yeah. 42:30 I, I, I mean, I think everything, uh, it's almost like Bob could have written my book. I mean, it's... 42:35 We're, we're, we're definitely saying very similar things, uh, with the, the order of operations just slightly different. You know, I think, um, i- in Leading in the Age of Digital Disruption, the, the three, uh, 42:51 uh, ingredients to success is trust, transparent communication, and accountability. And, um- You know, starting out talking about, um, empathy. 43:02 Empathy is a, a huge, uh, factor of building trust, and, um, psychological safety is, is w- absolutely necessary to have transparent communication. 43:16 And, uh, and just like Bob said earlier, I think that, um, it's about saying-- uh, having the, the tough, direct conversations when they need to be had, um, in the, the best interest of the organization, right? 43:31 Not necessarily in the best interest of Joe or Bob, but, um, doing what's right for the company. And, um, and so you have to build, 43:41 uh, a really thick layer of trust in an organization to, um, to have employees f- feel comfortable, uh, saying what they really feel, right? 43:54 And, uh, and in those times of radical change, uh, which we're certainly in right now, uh, people tend to operate in fear, um, rather than in trust. 44:06 And, and so it takes even more, uh, intentional effort to build that psychological safety than it, than it does in other times. Uh, definitely. Well, amen. I'd give you a high five if you were sitting next to me. 44:19 [chuckles] So here's a virtual high five. There you go. Um, yeah, there's just some, uh, you know, profound truths, uh, in, in the world, and I'm-- it sounds like you-- I need to read your book. 44:32 I, I would love to learn your viewpoint on it. 44:35 You know, one of the things I heard Stephen Covey say a long time ago, he was being interviewed by some gotcha journalist at a, at an event, and they were trying to catch him. 44:46 "Well, isn't what you're saying pretty much the same as everybody else is saying in their books?" And he looked him straight in the face and said, "Yes. 44:53 However, the audience that I relate to and the way that I say things is different, and we're all in the, um, business or have the mission to be able to help people realize things. Not everybody relates to me." Yeah. 45:09 W- well said. You know, I was talking to publicists in my publishing journey, and they would always say, like, "What, what makes your book different? What..." You know, and I'm like, "Well, it's, it's not really." 45:18 I, I believe a good leader 100 years ago would still be a good leader today. Um, it's just evolved slightly to, to work in this environment of hyper technology that we're now living in. 45:32 Um, but, you know, was Abraham Lincoln a, a good leader then? Would he be a good leader now? You know? I'm, I'm not saying he's wrong. [chuckles] Correct. 45:42 Yeah, there are some basic principles, deep truths that have been true forever, and that underpins how I think about things. I've learned a lot of hard lessons from people. I've had some great teachers. 45:54 You know, I wish I could say that I came up with much of anything on my own. It was more the, how it connects, how it relates. 46:02 So f- the, the primary focus in "Jump," Joe, was this idea that things don't have to take a long time. Things can happen quickly if you let them. 46:13 In fact, I believe that the universe is conspiring to help us all the time, and we're the ones that get in the way. We gum up the works. We put the monkey wrench in the gears. 46:23 The natural path of things is to move and move quickly. So Mike, as you were talking about being stuck in fear, any message in my mind that is designed to keep us small and afraid, it's not a leadership message. 46:38 It's a different type of communication. Mm-hmm. So we'll get into that, Joe, in a big way in the, the third installment here, some of the behaviors and actions that leaders can take. 46:50 I've got seven things that we want from our leaders and five things that we don't, and one of the things we absolutely do not need from our leaders is to be more confused- Mm-hmm... 46:58 or to feel like they're withholding something, like they know the answer, they're just not sharing it with us. You wanna erode trust immediately in a time of radical change? 47:07 It's like somebody knows what's going on, but nobody's talk- talking to us about it. 47:12 So productivity goes in the dumper at that point because everybody's talking about what they think the withholded, withheld information actually is. 47:23 So another point about this too, Joe, is that there's a really practical side to communicating effectively. The organization not only feels better to be part of, but it's more productive. 47:35 So back to this group of water engineers that I was working with and talking with them about psychological safety. You know, the, the joke about an, uh, introverted versus an extroverted engineer. 47:45 Have you ever heard that joke? Uh- Yeah... is there an extroverted engineer? Yeah, so a, an introverted engineer stares at their shoes. An extroverted engineer stares at- Stares at somebody else's. 47:58 [laughs] Oh, that's funny. It's funny, but yeah, and engineers just shake their heads at this idea. But 48:08 there's a real practical side to being able to make effective decisions faster if people feel like they are in a safe environment. Things cost less, and they move faster. 48:19 So yeah, "Jump" is about making things happen quickly, and there's almost like a quantum leap. That's where the, the title sort of comes from. 48:26 It's like an electron moving from one orbit to another- Talking about, yeah... around a nucleus without going any, uh, uh, never experiencing the things in the middle. So with the right 48:36 framework and the right preparation, the right time spent, I see it over and over and over and over again with leadership teams and organizations. 48:45 All of a sudden, the realization is incredibly powerful, profound, and they think it came out of nowhere. No, it didn't. It came from your preparation. So the need to be able to trust the sources of information 48:59 A little bit more in jump too is this synergy. Synergy's waiting to happen constantly. You know, one of my favorite examples of synergy is a gift bag. Can you imagine not having a gift bag in the world? 49:12 I'm old enough to know, maybe you are, you're too, Joe, when we didn't have gift bags. There was wrapping paper and there were sacks. Yes. And somebody somewhere said, "Hey, what if we put 49:23 the two together and have synergy to come up with something that hadn't been invented yet?" What a change that would be for four-year-old birthday parties. 49:30 It's a brilliant idea, but you needed to allow those circumstances to be present for that to be true. 49:36 So if your fear gets in the way, if you're constantly playing Whac-A-Mole, you're responding to everything, sometimes you have to do that. 49:43 I don't wanna make it sound like it's im- just wave a magic wand and all of that goes away. But bit by bit, step by step, day by day, week by week, you can start to erode the number of things that you respond to. 49:57 You start using the timer to say, "How long am I gonna wait before I react?" You take a deep breath between things, and your world changes. Yeah. 50:07 Going back a l- little ways when you were giving your three rules, you know, your timers, um, I see those as intentional, uh, upfront ac- actions and practices to help you maintain your awareness 50:25 and, and your long arc of your intention of how you wanna live. 50:30 The problem is, without these tools that we're talking about today and in the last episode and hopefully a third one, um, people tend to operate like they're in The Matrix, you know? Until Neo realized he w- [chuckles] 50:45 he was in The Matrix, he couldn't see the real world. So... Yep. Is it real? That's back to the first- Is it real? Right. But- That's back to the first episode or the first installment. 50:57 I actually had a picture that looked like The Matrix, but it wasn't. It was- And then you do have the, the one, uh, uh, trader who decides to go back in The Matrix. 51:09 [chuckles] That's an interesting thing to talk about and how that applies. But, um, it's, to, to your point, your last point, it's fine to take those quick actions in a calculated, measured way, 51:24 not betraying the intention of how you wanna live. Correct. And that comes with time. It comes with establishing boundaries and values. Discipline. You know, the maturity and leadership. Mature leaders are value-based, 51:41 and until you're able to establish boundaries around your values, I don't think you've really reached the level of maturity to call yourself a leader. You can be a manager. 51:51 It's a little bit like I, I, I worry about 25-year-old, uh, vice presidents. You know, they haven't had much life experience to be able to apply it to the theory that they're using. 52:02 I remember when I was 25, I was insufferable. So yeah, exactly. It's not complicated. 52:11 Back to what Mike and I were talking about a little bit, a little bit ago, this is stuff that we know, but do we practice it, yes or no? Not complicated, but I will say difficult because- Very... it's often emotional. 52:23 Yeah, especially when... Oh, here's another, another tool. Maybe it's one of the last things we'll talk about today, but another tool is I stopped using the word busy about 15 years ago. If somebody asks me, 52:35 "How are you? Busy?" It's like, "No, I don't use that word," and I haven't used it for 15 years. Why did I take busy out of my vocabulary? 52:43 Because I discovered people use it for two reasons, neither one of which is empowering. People use it either as a shield, "I'm busy, stay away," 52:54 or they use it as a medal, as something to reward themselves, "Look at me, I'm busy." In reality, both are disempowering, and they also c- tend to keep us in the echo chamber where busy is somehow a goal 53:12 or it's some way to keep people away. So what I say instead of saying busy, it's like, "I've had a really full day. I've had a lot going on today, but I'm never busy." Is that weird? 53:25 Am I the only one that feels this way? Could be. I love that. I, I feel like when I 53:33 would walk the halls and ask people how they were doing, I would, nine times out of ten I'd get busy as an answer, and it, and it doesn't really mean anything, right? 53:44 Is, is the, uh, they might be busy, but is the work they're doing valuable? Are they doing the right work? Are they doing the wrong work? Are they busy making coffee all day? 53:54 Or, [chuckles] you know, what, what does that really even mean? [chuckles] Absolutely. I think it's a, it's a, a practice that should be normalized. [chuckles] Let's try it today. Just try it for an hour. Mm-hmm. 54:08 Uh, every time the word busy starts to come into your awareness, just replace it with something else. It, it, that kind of a practice, Joe- Yeah, that's good... um, I think that's a simple one. Mm-hmm. 54:21 It is a simple one, and, and I, I also think it, it, when you say it, you're putting yourself in the place of being a victim and you're disempowering yourself. 54:31 Um, and a word popped up into my mind just a few minutes ago when you were talking about this, and that is, uh, overwhelm. 54:39 You know, often I coach people, and the term that comes to mind is, you know, you're in a state of overwhelm. And so you can't live in a state of overwhelm too long without serious consequences. 54:53 [chuckles] So it's very- Yeah. And I can take that- Very good one... from a health perspective. It's one, it's one of those weird words. We get underwhelm and overwhelm, but when is the perfect amount of whelm? 55:02 It, it is a word, but we just never use it. We always use under or over. That's good. Well, that's a good-- maybe that's a good place to, to kinda round this out, this conversation. Thanks again, Bob. 55:13 And, and, uh, Mike, great input. I appreciate you jumping on. Give us a little bit of a preview, Bob, for next time. What are you, what are you thinking about? 55:20 I think you touched on it earlier, but remind us, including me. [laughs] Yeah. The, the, the, the, the primary things are, well, first getting some to some leadership behaviors and some actions. 55:31 I've got, um, like I said, seven things that we really need from our leaders during times of, of, uh, radical change and five things we don't. 55:40 And often we reward the wrong things, or we believe that people that are doing these things that are not helpful, they have ice water in their veins, or they're be-be able to make-- be decisive. 55:53 It's like, yeah, but they're ruining things. They're creating this vortex of destruction that somebody else has to come and fix later on. Yeah, they're making hard decisions, but are they good decisions? 56:04 So that's part of what we'll talk about. And then summarizing, kinda pulling it all together and saying, "Here's how you might put this into action." Thanks, Bob. 56:12 And maybe you could also remind, uh, listeners, uh, who may have just tuned in this episode about your webinar and where to find, uh, registration for that, that really goes into much more depth, I think. 56:26 Yeah, definitely. I think as you edit this, Joe, you can pop up something. I don't know. Sure. Absolutely. It's kinda hard to have you remember a URL- [laughs]...put it out there. 56:34 But yeah, teamtipton.com and then /nav-radical-change. And a couple times a month I offer a webinar, um, that gets into some detail associated with all of this. Um, love to have you be part of that if you'd like to. 56:51 Any of the listeners, it's, uh, something I do a couple times a month. Great. Any final comments from you, Mike? [laughs] No. Uh, thank you so much for, for having me, Bob and Joe. Really appreciate it. 57:03 And, uh, sorry I was out sick last, last session, and I'll look forward to joining the next one as well. Well, at least you didn't say you were busy. Yes. [laughs] Oh, gosh. Listen, thank you so much, guys. 57:16 Really appreciate it, Bob, in particular. Thanks a lot. Look forward to, uh, our next session together. Thank you, Joe. All right. Bye. Thanks, Mike. 57:24 [upbeat music] Hey, thanks for joining me today on Titans of Transition. I hope you enjoyed the episode. Please check the show notes for additional information.
