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Welcome to this negotiation masterclass edition of Negotiate Anything.
With over 1600 episodes featuring some of the world's brightest minds, we've carefully curated three powerful conversations for you.
What makes this so special is that you'll hear how different experts from different industries approach the same challenge in their own unique ways.
Our goal is to give you multiple perspectives so you can build your own unique style.
Success doesn't look the same for everyone.
And in this masterclass, you will see exactly why.
Let's dive in.
David, thanks for joining us today.
Kwame, it is an absolute pleasure, my friend.
Yeah, it's a pleasure to have you.
I've been excited about this since we first spoke.
So let's jump into it.
How about you tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do?
Cool.
Well, my name is Dr. David Arrington.
I have over 15 years of leadership development experience.
I have 20 plus years actually of leadership experience.
I am the COO of Arrington Coaching.
I am the author of Promotable.
And, most recently, I have created Leading Under Pressure, which is an executive leadership development community.
Fantastic.
I love it.
And so leading under pressure.
David, why do you think it's important for us to understand how to do that?
Well, I could just stop there, right?
You know, just 2020.
But if you notice, the leadership landscape has changed fundamentally and indelibly.
It's not going back to the way it was.
And we have leaders have been put through a lot of changes and And what I've noticed working with leaders in a number of different industries is that they weren't ready.
Right.
The changes that happen, moving from in-person to remote handling, remote teams still being able to adapt on the fly as other leadership needs changed.
There was definitely a gap for a lot of leaders.
We're going to see change continue and it's going to speed up.
And most leaders, again, still aren't ready.
So what I've done is I think that this is the time for leaders to learn how to lead under pressure.
You can argue that leaders are always leading under pressure, but this is one of those moments, that is, a standout moment, where the pressure is so intense.
It's so heavy.
The pressure is so great right now that people can actually step back and say yes, I need to step up what I'm doing as a leader.
Absolutely.
Man, this is great.
This is great.
So let's jump into it.
So the three things that we're going to cover today are first, presence.
Second, 360 degree success.
And then lastly, how we treat people and lead people, really just rounding it all out.
So What do we need to know about that?
So executive presence is basically making sure that you are staying focused on the right things.
You're enabling your team to stay focused on the right things.
And you're not running around panicking and messing up the morale and doing more harm to your team and your culture than you're doing good.
So one of the things I've noticed during this time is that many people didn't panic As outwardly as you'd think, but they retreated.
It was a way of them dealing with overwhelm.
And when you're in a time of crisis as a leader, you can't retreat.
You can't hide out.
You cannot because as you go.
So goes the team.
So goes morale.
So goes culture.
So, as a leader, a big part of what you're going to be doing is demonstrating that presence to let people know that you can stay calm.
We may not have the answers, but we're working on it.
I can't say what's going to happen, but we're working to make sure that everyone's jobs are stable intact, moving forward.
We're going to take care of you.
It's a lot of reassurance.
It's a lot of people management above and beyond assigning tasks and making sure that things are getting done and hitting targets.
This is the softer side of leadership that is more nurturing.
And a lot of leaders have gotten away from because they don't see themselves as motivational.
They don't see themselves as nurturers.
They see themselves as employers making sure that people get work done.
And fundamentally, that's a big difference between management and leadership.
One of the things I liked about that is the fact that you said focus.
And that was interesting because typically when you think about executive presence, people say well, stand up straight, shoulders back, shake with a firm handshake.
Now, virtually, I guess a firm wave, whatever it might be.
Right.
And I like that you started off with focus.
That was interesting.
So tell us why it starts there.
It starts there because what you're focusing on is what your team is going to focus on.
And I've heard all of the same stuff the firm handshake.
Look them in the eye, hand your business card with one hand and shake with the other.
That's not necessarily executive presence as much as it is making a good impression, right?
Right.
Executive presence goes well beyond making a good impression to ensuring that your team can function through crisis.
That's fundamentally the role of executive presence.
And coming back to focus, As you help your team to stay focused not on the crisis, but on what they're doing now and how they will move through the crisis and who they will be on the other side of the crisis.
That is, executive presence.
Helping your team to stay focused on getting the right things done, Even when everything is a distraction.
When they can't turn on the news without being distracted.
They can't get away from the distraction because perhaps it's hitting them personally.
Perhaps it's hitting them in their social circles.
They're being distracted.
There are things outside of your control that are happening, clamoring for their attention.
Your role and the fundamental role of executive presence from.
What we're talking about right here is making sure that they can function, letting them know that you understand being a human being in the middle of this crisis, allowing your team to breathe and understand that.
Yes, it's not good right now, but we're going to get through this.
That's executive presence, that calming presence that lets your team know we're going to make it.
If you're running around, I often use the six days, seven nights, Harrison Ford.
And I can never remember the young lady who's in that with him.
I love that movie.
But there's a scene when they've tried everything.
And Harrison Ford, who was a pilot in this movie, walks in this tall grass and he starts shaking the grass and cussing and kicking and everything.
And he walks back out and the actress looks at him and says, I understand you're upset.
Don't ever do that again.
I can't afford to see you like that.
That's understanding executive presence.
You can't kick the grass.
You can't go off and have a hissy fit or a meltdown.
That's public, because it will undermine not only their confidence in the direction and tomorrow, but it will undermine their confidence in your ability to get them there.
That makes a lot of sense.
And we can understand why it's so important for leaders to be like this, right?
But we understand at the same time that it's incredibly difficult for them to be like this too because, just like how their employees are feeling pressure and they're afraid too, the leaders feel the same way.
And for a lot of leaders at the top, that's almost like Not almost.
It really is the loneliest place in the organization.
So how do leaders still maintain this presence while still maintaining their mental health?
So two things.
One, it's Anne Hetch, or Anne Hetchy.
I didn't remember her name.
And two, the...
You're hitting a great point here.
For leaders, it's always lonely.
In times of crisis, it's even lonelier because the stakes are even higher.
So one of the things I've done working with my clients I become that safe space, I become that calm in the middle of the storm, as it were, the eye of the storm, where they can step back, think they can game plan and they can get ahead of the curve, versus always playing catch up and always fighting fires and always trying to figure out what's next.
I become a confidant that allows them and this is in executive coaching and even in the program we do this give them an opportunity to step back and think and breathe and take the loneliness out of leadership, because that's one of the things that's different now.
It's always been lonely, but before you were lonely in the same office building, right?
Now you're lonely at home, really feeling disconnected from your people, not being able to get those subtle cues in a meeting, or those subtle cues as you walk down the hallway or in between meetings.
You're not able to read the people like you could before.
So now it feels even more disconnected, as leaders are making decisions that have greater impact, that are more crisis-driven than vision-driven, right.
So you end up having leaders struggling.
And this program I mentioned Leading Under Pressure is designed.
Leadership doesn't have to be this lonely.
And that's why I built a community.
But when I'm working with clients one-on-one.
One of my clients was when I went and spoke to his entire executive all of his peers at an executive level.
The way he introduced me was David helped me when didn't even know I needed the kind of help he gave.
He helped me to think through things.
He helped me to understand what was happening and to not react, but respond more effectively.
So those are the types of things that having someone like myself, a coach, or someone who, in your sphere of influence that works with you, help you, as a leader, to make those good decisions and not react but respond more effectively.
That makes sense.
And folks out there who fit this right, who you are a leader in your company and you're looking for resources.
I strongly and highly recommend that program.
There's going to be a link in the description below so you can learn more about that as well.
And I think this is a really great opportunity for us to address the fact that I know there are some hard-charging leaders in this audience who are saying well, I hear this David guy here talking about being nurturing.
Well, nurturing, I have numbers to hit.
Of course.
Isn't that coddling somebody?
And I hear that a lot.
I hear that a lot.
And the reason I hear that a lot is because we don't fully understand what leadership entails.
And in our Western approach to leadership, it's all numbers.
When I was doing my doctorate, one of the papers I wrote was people first, then process, right?
And I would update it now to say people first, then profit.
Because if you lead people effectively, the targets will hit themselves.
If you focus on people, the people being nurtured, being motivated will hit those targets.
And people will say, David, oh, it's not going to work here.
If I had a dime for every time I was in a workshop and said someone was like, oh David, that's not going to work here.
I would I'd have at least 30 bucks.
Right.
So the point is that.
It will work here because people are people are people.
It doesn't matter what company they're in, what industry they're in.
People need to feel as though they are valued.
And when they know they're not valued and they're just cogs in the machine and they're just there to help you hit a target, they become disinterested, disengaged.
I mean, the numbers, the engagement numbers are insane.
Only 38% of the population is engaged.
So, and that's a Gallup study.
That's not David Arrington, that's Gallup.
So you'll find now that even in a remote environment, you have to learn to engage people.
I often say when you're leading, leadership is relationship.
And you're never leading a team.
You're always leading individuals.
Individuals, you have to galvanize to work as a team to hit that common goal.
But if it starts with the goal backwards, generally, that's what your focus is on.
If it starts with the people forward, then that's what your focus is on.
I had another client speak to me, and this was over the summer.
She was telling me how she had spent so much time working on her team that now the results come so much more clearly.
Simply, they come without the friction.
They come without the arguments the, the dissent and that you would normally get, because people are on the same page, they know that they are appreciated and they give the leader the benefit of the doubt when things are in question, versus questioning everything and and choosing to die on every hill right.
So that's what you get when you focus on people.
So you touched on a a um, a hot button topic for me, because people are the backbone of your success as a leader.
I had an experience.
I'll tell this story and then I'll let you get back.
But I had an experience.
I was working with a leader, right?
And I firmly believe you can learn more from people that are terrible leaders than sometimes you learn from good leaders, right?
You learn what not to do.
So I was working with this one leader and I went in first conversation.
I'm here to help you look good.
I'm here to make you look good.
And I was very sincere because I was, I understood that my success was his success.
Problem was he didn't understand that my success was his success.
He thought his success was his success and his, his role was to drive me into the ground.
Right?
So that didn't work out well.
And when people feel, and it may not always be that adversarial, right?
It may not always be someone wants to drive someone else in the ground.
When your team feels that you're neutral to them or you could care less, or they're nice people, but they're only here to do X, Y and Z.
When they know you have checked out on their success, they will check out on yours.
And that's a symbiotic relationship.
Most people don't see when it comes to leadership because they say well, I'll fire them.
Good luck with that.
We all know the cost of hiring and all that good stuff.
So you go.
You want to make sure that you can build an A team with the people that you have right now.
And that's one of the things I like to think I do very well.
I help people take F troops and turn them into A teams.
I love it.
And I think this is a great opportunity for us to shift to 360 degree success.
And that's a term that I wasn't familiar with.
So I'm really interested to hear what that is and how it applies.
So 360 degree success means you're succeeding at work and at home.
Most people focus, especially my hard charging leaders who are listening right now.
Most people focus on business success.
I had one client this summer who went through my goal sprint course and he said one of the things that he really didn't see before was that he had no real personal goals.
As a self-employed business owner, my family depends on me.
I think a lot about how I'm going to provide for them, how I'm going to build the business and how I'm going to support Whitney and the boys.
But I had a moment recently where I asked myself a harder question.
If something unexpected happened to me, would my family be okay financially?
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All of his goals were tied up in hitting business and corporate targets and he realized he didn't have any personal goals.
That's one of the things that we allow to happen, and it's almost subliminal.
It's in the background.
It's white noise.
We start losing sight of our goals and we are more and more surprised, focused on professional success, but unfortunately it comes at the loss of our personal success.
So we may give 150% at work, But when we get home, we're already tired.
We've had a long day or we've just been on so many calls and we've been homeschooling and we've been keeping up with the kids and doing all the other things we have to do all in one place.
By the end of the day, you just don't have anything left.
And who loses out there?
The people that matter most.
The people you go to work to provide for are usually the ones that get the short end of the stick.
Okay.
So I understand that.
That makes sense.
And again, I'm going to play devil's advocate here.
Please.
What about somebody who is single?
They don't have anybody at home.
And so they say, well, let me just work hard right now.
Let me make my money now and push my team really hard, push myself really hard at work.
Yes, I feel tired when I get home, but I'm really hitting these goals.
And then I'll focus on a family later when they come.
What's the harm there when it 360 degree success if they don't have that same concern?
So great question.
And it doesn't extend just to families because there are a number of single people.
You have a life outside of work, whether it's hobbies, whether it's friends, whether it's recreation, whether it's things you do to fill you back up.
If you spend not a hundred percent of you focusing on work goals outside, That means there's 0 left for you to nurture you.
That's going to be a recipe for burnout.
It's going to be a recipe for bitterness.
It's going to be a recipe for you not being the best you.
You're going to need constant Snickers moments because you are not going to be your best self, because you're burning yourself out.
You're grinding gears.
It doesn't matter how much the Lamborghini costs.
You can only run that Lamborghini flat out for so long before the engine blows.
And if we take that metaphor before I stretch it too far and apply it to us, there's only so long you can continue to work tirelessly for a job, for your business, even before you burn out.
That's what I'm talking about.
When you're 360 degrees successful.
It means that you have outside interests, things that you can decompress with things that bring you joy and fill you up.
It doesn't have to be necessarily a family.
It could be your pets.
It could be a social group.
It could be anything that fills you up.
That's what I talk about.
And most of us lose sight of what fills us up, what recharges us.
And we just have 100% business goals.
And we're trying to climb the corporate ladder only to find out if we climb it without building us.
By the time we get to the top of that ladder, we don't even recognize us anymore.
Yeah, it makes a lot of sense.
And I think, again, for those folks out there who are really hard charging, it helps.
This is an important part of that process because it makes you better at work.
And when you think about negotiation, we often focus so much on the external that we forget that we can negotiate with ourselves.
And I think this is an important internal negotiation that we have to have when we're setting boundaries with ourselves, to make sure that we can take the time to rest and recharge.
Absolutely.
And as you're resting and recharging, you make sure that it's for you.
It's not for other people.
So you have to find things that bring you joy.
And let me be very clear.
While it sounds like I'm doing the whole Sears in the 90s, the softer side of leadership.
Right.
What I want you to understand is.
I focus on helping people hit goals.
That's critical.
I never downplay that.
We identify the goal and then we create a plan to hit that goal.
But I also make sure that my clients hit the goals that are outside of business as well.
So it's fundamentally critical.
Making sure that you don't lose you in the shuffle, in all of the work and all of the the busyness, that you don't lose yourself, that you are still a whole individual and someone.
Other people want to be around, someone who can carry a conversation beyond what happened at work today.
Yeah, it makes sense.
And let's take a little bit of a detour here.
Sure.
Because I know there are going to be people listening to this episode who are saying to themselves you know what this is?
Something blah blah blah needs to hear.
There's somebody who's coming to mind.
And so if there's somebody out there who is saying hey, I need to talk to this person about this, other than, of course, sending them the podcast and letting them know about your resources.
How would they have that conversation?
What suggestions do you have for them to have that conversation to maybe persuade the person to think differently and consider 360 degree success?
Oh, so that's tough.
And the reason I say it's tough is because most people, it's a blind spot.
And when you tell them they're not balanced, they'll give you a hundred reasons.
They'll play devil's advocate, just like you did, and give a hundred reasons why what they're doing is the right course of action.
This is one of those elements in life where people have to come to it themselves.
You can't force a horse to drink this water.
You've got to let people get there on their own at their time.
And when you see people that are growing more restless, That are looking, they're starting to display signs of early stage burnout right.
They're becoming more combative, more argumentative.
Their mindset and outlook is becoming less and less positive and more and more sliding to the negative.
That's when you can start to have a conversation and say, hey, you know what?
What are you doing for you?
How are you developing you personally and professionally?
What is it that you do at the end of the week or the end of the day that is just for you, something that fills you up?
And don't let them get away with, I sit on the couch and veg, because that's not filling you up.
That's just passing the time.
That's just living to death, right?
That's not actually growing you in any tangible, substantive way.
Ask them what they're doing.
And and they may say, you know I, you know I used to go horseback riding or I used to, I used to to.
I'm trying to figure out how to say archery.
I used to shoot.
I used to play basketball.
Let me go to a whole different example because I couldn't couldn't conjugate that there.
So I used to play basketball or I used to play touch football, but we can't do that anymore.
So then you say, well, how have you shifted now that things are different?
What have you filled that gap with?
Because that's what a lot of people are suffering with.
A lot of their pastimes have been taken away by this pandemic and this moment.
So how have they adapted?
How have they shifted?
They've done a lot of shifting at work and that change leads them to change overload, right?
So now they don't have the energy to figure it out for themselves.
So you just got to ask them how, and then present them another way to change.
Make those changes for themselves, because you can't force people to invest in themselves.
You can't force people to make good decisions that will keep them from burning out.
But you can just hint at them and you can share resources to help them do that for themselves.
This is great.
And I know the listeners are probably familiar with this phenomenon where it turns into a personal therapy session for Kwame.
Oh, my gosh, I need help.
But I think this is this is really great.
And again you've made some fantastic points just recognizing, helping people to become a little bit more aware of the fact that hey, you might have had some things outside of work that you turn to and that you might have had a healthy balance.
But it might have gone away and you have to make an adjustment.
I think that's brilliant.
And again, one of the things that you mentioned was that the fact that If you're not maintaining this 360 degree success, where you're not just focusing on success at work, but also success personally in your personal life, it changes the way that you treat people.
And that's the third point that you mentioned, how we treat people and lead people.
And now we're coming back all around full circle.
So what are the things that we need to keep in mind there?
So, in crisis leadership and in when you're leading under pressure right, you've got to remember to be more patient.
Because, as a leader, you're already stressed and your stress is going to.
It's going to be passed along, right.
And you have to remember that everyone else is stressed as well.
It's not just you stressed right now, but the people you lead.
And this is one of my clients this summer, this was a big Eye opening moment.
This is an aha moment for him where I said, guess what?
I hear you.
I understand you're trying to hit these targets.
I understand that things are going crazy and it may not happen for you because of everything that's happened.
But understand this as well.
Everyone on your team is stressed right now.
We had so many things happen from race protests to a pandemic to murder hornets.
I mean, this was 2020, right?
There's a lot going on.
Everybody was stressed and it's not you alone.
One of the ways you can treat people with respect during these times is to acknowledge their stress, to be patient with people, to be understanding, because sometimes Everything everybody keeps saying oh, new normal, new normal, new normal.
You know, I get that.
I hear that.
This ain't normal.
This is not normal.
The way we're living right now, I really don't want to continue this forever.
I'd like us to figure out how to harness this, start imagining, reimagining what can be.
But in the moment that is we need to.
Well, I keep saying be patient, be clear, be Let your folks know exactly what the goalpost looks like.
Then celebrate when you get there.
I would encourage leaders to celebrate things now more than ever.
Give people more opportunity to take a victory lap, right?
You have to be the chief motivational officer for your team.
One of my clients, this was her hangup.
She was not, she was all about business, business, business, business, right?
I just had a Lego movie.
For those of you who have kids and have seen Lego movie, you'll know that business business, business.
But well, she was all about business.
And one of the things I shared with her is I said you've got to become the chief motivational officer, right?
When people see you, they need to smile, not frown.
People need to walk up to you to share their good stories, not try to avoid you because they think you're just going to hit them with something else.
And when you're leading under pressure and you're leading in crisis moments, we have a tendency to double down and try to muscle up and man up and woman up and put it on our shoulders.
And that means we drive people harder so we can get results.
And guess what?
When people are already grinding gears, all that does is accelerate burnout, accelerate drops in morale, accelerate you not hitting the targets, because people keep checking out.
So yeah oh man david, the timing of this is so, oh so, so painful, because i, i think uh for, for me as a leader, i'm just, i'm confront, i'm being confronted with with my, my failures, quite frankly, my failures.
I, i realize that i have a um high tolerance for change.
And, as an entrepreneur, there needs to be a willingness to move fast, break things and do better and continue to iterate.
And then I have to remember that other people aren't like me in that regard.
And I need to be more patient.
Now, patience is something that I...
It is nausea inducing for me.
I cannot, never have been good at patience.
We are, yes, audience, yes, we are turning this into a personal therapy session.
It's my podcast.
I'll do what I want.
How does one become more patient?
I didn't know if you were done with the question.
So I'm going to blow you away with a very simple answer.
Practice.
Practice.
Yeah, there's no other, you can't force patients.
So I'll give you a, for instance, with me personal, right?
So when I'm like, I pull it because we're entrepreneurs, we do this, right?
There'll be times when I'll pull an all nighter and I'll be working on something and I'll be up.
I'll get two hours two, three hours of sleep and then I'll see my kids, right.
On those days, I have to be very intentional.
So practice, and here's the second one, intentionality.
I have to be very intentional to say, David, you didn't get a lot of sleep last night.
You have a tendency to be short when you're tired.
Listen, don't react.
Don't say something dumb.
I'm telling me this, right?
Don't say something dumb that's going to upset your kids, and then you've got to deal with that.
Be patient.
Listen.
Be kind.
And I've done this for years.
My oldest is 22, so I've got a little practice.
Like I said, practice.
So that is something you learn, and it happens with repetition.
You can't just be patient tomorrow.
It's not one of those things.
You can't zen that.
You can't will that.
You can't man that up.
You can't willpower that into existence.
It does take patience.
It takes patience, practice and intentionality.
Yeah yeah, yeah.
I think the the what is it?
The saying that says the only way past is through yep right, you have to.
You have to kind of get get through that, and i think that's that's tough, especially for people who are very competitive.
I, i would assume that people who are listening to this show have some level of competitive drive where they want to improve.
I mean, we i think we're pretty entertaining guys, but people probably don't look at this to laugh.
They probably want to get some tangible skills right.
In order for them to improve and do better.
And so, again, I might be speaking for a lot of folks out there.
It's tough to be patient because you're competitive and you recognize when you're slowing down you're not hitting those goals.
But what you need to do is think differently about those goals.
What's really the goal?
Yes, hitting some numbers, that's nice.
That is a thing that you could go for.
But also, what does your team need from you right now in order to be a good leader?
As a leader, it's not always about the goals.
It's about what your people need in this moment to perform.
And that performance will provide the goals.
You cannot...
Coerce people to high performance.
You can't beat people up and expect high performance.
You can't walk into a room and give people both barrels and give them a piece of your mind and expect high performance.
At best, you'll get mediocrity after that.
I'm giving you this is not.
I've seen this happen and I've helped leaders turn things around when they've screwed up like this.
So you walk in, be patient, be human, be understanding, Be in the same moment everyone else is, even though you may be looking at that moment through different lenses.
But as a leader, you've got to be able to sit in everyone's seat and say OK, if I were this person, what would I need?
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Starting something new isn't just hard.
It is terrifying.
I remember when I first launched this podcast and built the American Negotiation Institute.
I had all of the same what-ifs running through my head.
What if no one listens?
What if no one buys?
What if I fail publicly?
And when you start something, you're betting on yourself and that doubt can be loud.
But choosing to make that leap was one of the best decisions I've ever made.
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If I were this person, what would I need?
And this is a whole.
We're jumping into leading high-performing teams, but you're going to step into understanding how to motivate each of your team members.
And that's a skill that most leaders don't never realize they need to develop right here motivate, motivate.
And then they say i'm not a motivator.
I mean, i again, if i had a dime for every time somebody told me they weren't a motivator, i'd have at least 30 bucks.
So you have these folks that say i'm not a motivator, i'm not a nurturer i'm, then i'm.
Then i'm going to say you're not a leader.
I'm going to say you're a manager.
I'm going to say you, you help people get places.
You're not leading them anywhere, though They're doing a job for you.
They're not working with you.
Wow.
Okay.
Now David hypothetically, maybe there's somebody out there who listens to this podcast and says wow.
The third point was how we lead and treat people.
And I realized that I may have left a lot to be desired with how I lead and treat people.
As a leader, how do I recover and start to rebuild that relationship with my team?
You're not gonna like this answer either.
It's gonna be slowly and again intentionally, because this is what people don't learn and they don't get.
When you give people a piece of your mind, let's just say you've gone in and you've given people double barrels, and doesn't?
You don't even have to do this to everybody on your team.
If you do this to one person on your team, right?
If one person on your team, everybody.
So if you've watched Parks and Rec, you know, Jerry is just the butt of every joke, right?
So if there's somebody on your team who everybody knows is a Jerry, that means I could be the next Jerry.
Right.
So you create this more stressful situation because you don't treat everybody the same.
So if you've broken trust with anybody on your team.
Now you've got to rebuild trust with everybody on your team.
That takes time.
So how do you rebuild that slowly?
And you're going to have to prove time and time and time again that you're not that guy, you're not that lady, because your team is going to have a very long memory for your mistakes and a very short memory for their own.
That makes a lot of sense.
And again, it falls in line with the things that we've heard on this show a lot.
There's no quick fix, right?
There's no easy way through it, you know, and that's the thing.
We need to develop new habits, right?
And I think this is fantastic.
And David, as you know, because we've had long conversations already.
I could keep on going, but I'm really excited for your program.
I'm really excited for the next time I have you on the show, because you know this isn't the last time.
But before we go, make sure you let the listeners know about this exciting new program starting in January.
Excellent.
So thank you, Kwame.
And of course, I look forward to the next time, you know, being on because I love our conversation.
So leading under pressure is coming up starting again because leadership has become so lonely.
We're creating a community with structured leadership development.
So it's not going to be.
You know shotgun, like a lot of things I've participated in and a lot of things you've seen as well.
So there's going to be coaching, community, and courses.
So the courses I say I build, they're going to be a part of this community where people can come in and they can grow intentionally.
The reason I built this, a couple of reasons.
One, because things have changed so dramatically.
And I've talked with and worked with so many leaders who are struggling to keep up struggling to develop communities.
On the fly in the moment like building the plane as they've already jumped off the cliff the leadership skills that they need for this new moment.
Right.
And those skills that are going to be needed after, because things are never going back to the way they were now.
So also it's I've developed this because for a lot of my I work with a lot of people.
And I've talked to a lot of people who wanted to work with me but they couldn't afford me for smaller and mid-sized companies.
Even some executives were like, David, I like that, but I don't have the money for that.
I get that.
I understand completely, especially after everything's happened, budgets have been slashed.
So that's another reason we built this because I wanted to make a bigger impact, to share these types of skills and these types of insights with more leaders.
Because if we can do that, we're going to create a better leadership environment for everyone.
One of my stated goals is to impact an entire generation of leaders.
And leading under pressure is one of the ways I'm planning to do that.
So if you are listening to this amazing podcast and you're one of Kwame's regular listeners, then you want to go to erringtoncoaching.com slash Kwame, K-W-A-M-E, erringtoncoaching.com slash Kwame.
And there you'll get an opportunity to I think there's a link there to schedule a one-on-one conversation with me.
And there's a value to that.
So you probably want to take me up on that.
Then there's opportunity to attend a webinar, if you'd want to, on getting more information about leading under pressure.
And there's some other goodies on that page as well.
But I'm not going to give it all away because you should probably go check it out.
But yeah, you want to go to erringtoncoaching.com slash Kwame.
Fantastic.
David, thank you so much for sharing your expertise with the audience.
Thank you so much for this personal coaching session with me.
Really appreciate it, man.
Anytime, my friend.
This has been a blast.
That was the first part of today's masterclass.
Up.
Next we'll hear from another expert with a different approach, giving you even more strategies to add to your toolkit.
Let's keep it rolling.
Matt, thanks for joining us today.
Yeah, Kwame, I'm excited.
Thank you.
Me too.
Me too.
So how about we get started by telling us a little bit about yourself and what you do?
Yeah.
I wear a couple different hats.
One of my first hats, I'm an organizational development specialist at NASA.
I've been at NASA for about seven years, but none of what I say and none of what I'm talking about is a representation of NASA.
I wear a couple other hats and that's what I'm bringing to the table.
My wife and I have a consulting and coaching firm and we really train executives leaders, managers on how to.
Our tagline is living and leading wholeheartedly.
And my wife got trained by Brene Brown.
And she's a social worker and she is a researcher and she has these incredible findings in vulnerability, leadership and shame and how to be the best person possible.
So we extrapolated a lot of her research and applied it in how we can help individuals live and lead wholeheartedly.
And so primarily, we fall under that umbrella, doing a lot of leadership coaching, leadership training under the Insight Company.
And then another thing I do is we started a golf academy, a mental training golf academy.
And so we work a lot with elite golfers.
And once you get at a certain level in golf, then it becomes mindset and mental training.
And so my background, I have my doctorate in clinical psychology.
That's been my thing for a while, working a lot with kids and at a pediatric hospital.
And then I have a specialization in sports psychology.
So wearing many different hats and kind of juggling it all, but I just love working with people and And so when you asked me to come on this podcast and working and I love your tagline and there is a lot of life and beauty and a lot of great things on the other side of the difficult conversation.
I truly believe that.
So I was really honored to be on your show, Kwame.
Oh, well, I appreciate it.
And I was honored that you accepted the invite because I know you're busy wearing all of those hats.
So we appreciate your time.
And the value that you bring is so profound, because a lot of times people focus so heavily on strategies and tactics and those are important but they forget the mental side of the game.
And you have a lot to offer in that regard.
And one of the things that you talk a lot about is mindset.
And before to mindset, I'd like to get an idea of what your definition of mindset is.
That's nice.
Definition of mindset.
So I believe the mindset is the control center.
And if you think about an athlete per se, are three things that we really focus on in athletic performance, or any type of performance, whether it be an executive or leader having to perform in their workplace.
So there's three things that an individual needs to really focus on and master.
Number one is their craft.
They have to be good at their training, their craft, their technical skills, whatever it might be.
So with a golfer which I specialize a lot in, you got to have the fundamentals and consistently replicate that under pressure.
Number two, an individual has to really focus on their body.
Your body needs to perform the way it needs to perform on demand.
And executives these days are.
If you look at some of the top executives, they're working out, they're getting in shape.
Mainly because it requires that.
Like we're on the go, constantly meeting after meeting, going to different board meetings and different forms and functions.
And we just have to be on our game and our body is our mechanism to do so.
The last thing, and I think the most important thing is mindset.
Because I think the mindset controls everything else.
You can have the best craft, the best technical skills and you can have the best body and be in shape.
But if you're crippled by anxiety and fear, or you're crippled by distractions, then no matter.
So all those things ride together.
I think they're like a three-legged stool and that the mindset is just as critical as your technical skills and as your body, but it's all three in combination that makes one perform at their best.
I love this.
This is great.
This is great.
Strong start, Matt.
I'm loving this because you're right.
Mastering the fundamentals, but under pressure.
That last part is often overlooked, right?
And that last part of the pressure piece ties in really nicely with mindset, because your mindset will help you to perform under pressure.
Or if you don't have the right mindset, it'll hurt your ability to perform under pressure.
Because I think in sports we've all heard of the people in the locker room who they crush it in practice, but they can't perform when the bright lights are shining.
And we think about our colleagues down the hallway who are incredibly articulate with brilliant ideas, but then when they are in front of people in a meeting they kind of fall apart.
So that's really important.
It's not just getting the fundamentals, but mastering it under pressure.
The body, it's funny that you talked about executives getting in shape.
So for me, Matt, with my TED Talk, I was vain.
I was saying, oh my gosh, I got this gig, but Kai's two years old and I'm developing a dad bod.
So I need to work out.
And so I was working out five days a week and I was planning on just stopping once I was done, but it was the business benefits that surprised me the most.
I was so much more productive, so much more energetic.
I was able to keep a high level of mental acuity longer in the day.
So that body is really important for us as everyday professionals, but none of that matters if we don't have the mindset.
And I think this is a really, really great way to encapsulate it for the listeners.
Yeah.
You know, And she's saying that we as a society are facing is a mental health pandemic.
And we're starting to see this where there's a lack of boundaries and burnout.
Burnout is a term that has been originally used in the workplace.
What's the World Health Organization defined burnout as when you're feeling emotionally exhausted or you're not feeling as productive or effective and you're losing interest in things that normally give you pleasure.
So anhedonia in the psychological term.
So now... it's translated out of the workplace and in an everyday life.
Now there's parenting burnout.
It's like there's this lack of boundaries, where workplace, personal life has kind of shuffled together and mixed up.
Now everybody is like meeting after meeting and adjusting on the fly.
And it's caused a lot of internal stress.
And so Drs.
Amelia and Emily, Nagowski, they wrote a book called Burnout, Completing the Stress Cycle.
And they have some incredible research on the importance of understanding that in life there's stress and there's stressors.
Oftentimes, when we get burnt out, we often look at the stressors, which are the external things in life the deadlines, the meetings, the picking up schedules of kids, the groceries, the finances, all these things that are outside of us.
But often we neglect the stress, which is internal.
And so if you do not address the stress that is inside And one of the best ways to address the stress inside, the internal things is physical activity is walking, getting out in the sun, working out, playing golf.
There's so many benefits of getting outside in the sun, moving around and physical activity can complete the stress cycle that is internal.
So it's really important for us to kind of really consider that there's stressors external and stress that really cause the burnout.
Wow.
This is great.
First of all, new word alert, anhedonia.
That's great.
New term.
Did I pronounce that right?
Yeah.
Anhedonia.
Loss of pleasure of things that normally gave you relate to that in different aspects of our lives.
But that distinction between stress and stressor is so important.
And tell me if I'm encapsulating this in a way that makes sense, Matt.
So we have these stressors that cause stress.
And so we identify the stressors and we say I'm stressed out because of that, this and the other thing.
And so my solution is to address this and that.
And so we might effectively address those things, but we have yet to address the residual stress that is still within our body.
Yes, 100%.
And the analogy that the book used, the research used, was oftentimes when you have a big deadline or a big project like, for example myself, when I was working on my dissertation and I had to finish it during a certain deadline and I finally got it done.
It was one of the most stressful things that I've experienced kind of in my research.
And I got it done.
And the day after I got sick, like my body broke down.
And I got sick.
And I was thinking, I just got it done.
I should celebrate with champagne and things.
But I caught a cold.
I got sick.
It's because the stress inside was not addressed during the whole time.
I was trying to address the stressor.
We experienced that in life.
We have these milestones. but we feel really depleted and we can get sick oftentimes.
Matt, this is great.
And I appreciate you accepting the invitation to this counseling session, because that's exactly what happened to me at the end of last year.
I checked off that one last box the last Friday and I sent Whitney a text like we closed a big deal and I sent Whitney a text.
I said, All right, I'm going to buy champagne.
We're celebrating tonight.
So literally closed the deal at like noon, sent Whitney the text at one and I was at urgent care at five.
Like literally, Matt, getting wheeled into urgent care.
It's like my body completely shut down.
I felt great after I closed that deal.
I'm planning the party and my body just shut down. we can get into that psychology a little bit.
Is it that your body, it's almost like a fight or flight response.
Your body is geared up for war.
And then once that war is over, it's like the floodgates of stress come and take over.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And oftentimes that floodgate of stress takes over and we don't address it properly.
Like, and what they're saying is completing the stress cycle.
We often get and they said there's this imagine a tunnel And at the other side is completing that cycle of stress.
And we often get stuck.
And we do certain things and we get stuck in this tunnel where we're not addressing the physical ailments that stress causes inside.
So the community, the physical activity, the sun, all that, the stress that we feel, so it doesn't come crashing down on us at the end of that thing where we get stuck with it and we deal with the ramifications of physical ailments and sickness.
But, along the way, if you can continue to address the internal stress while you're dealing with the stressors, By making sure you take care of your body, making sure you have belly laughs, they said, or doing something like hobbies that make you passionate, where you forget about work and you're constantly working on mindset and internal emotions.
When you can address those things along the way, then you don't have that experience of crashing at the end.
Amazing.
This is great.
There's so many... fascinating realizations that are happening in my life.
And I think it's the same as happening for listeners, too.
And I'd love you to paint a picture here.
Let's do a little hypothetical case study.
So let's say we have two scenarios, but for the same person.
We have somebody coming into a negotiation or a difficult conversation and they have stressors that cause stress, but they haven't completed the stress cycle.
And so there's lingering stress going into the conversation versus the same person who has addressed the lingering stress, and they have completed the stress cycle and they go into the same conversation.
What would be the differences in performance in those situations?
I love this.
One term that Brene Brown says a lot is a term called offloading hurt.
Offloading hurt.
And so we have two scenarios here.
Scenario number one someone who is feeling they both have a difficult conversation that they're entering, but one hasn't dealt with the stress internally and one has
The person that has not dealt with the stress internally.
Oftentimes you'll see that they're a little bit more irritable.
They react a lot quicker.
They're less mindful and patient.
Things that you preach all the time, Kwame.
And we often offload hurt to the ones we care about and love the most around us.
So we're triggered by something emotionally.
Something triggers us and we have not yet afford time to explore what it is and getting to the root cause of it, because we have no space.
We have not dealt with the stress because we're constantly fighting and dealing with stressors in our life.
So we're reactive.
We're very reactive and we don't create that space.
I think that's a key word is creating space, because Viktor Frankl He wrote you know Man's Search for Meaning.
And one of my favorite quotes is, you know, between stimulus and response, there's a space.
And in that space is our freedom to choose.
So people who deal with stress and the stressors simultaneously, when they can constantly monitor themselves?
What I see happening is they get curious.
They have room to get curious and explore whether their emotions are where they're being triggered.
What are they feeling?
And there's a term called name it to tame it.
And it was written by Dan Siegel, a psychiatrist who wrote the book, Whole Brain Child.
And he said, if you can name your emotional experience, it's like an iceberg, right?
We only see the tip of the iceberg and all these emotions are below.
And it's really big.
It's vast.
Our emotional language is really vast.
But if you're able to accurately name and label what you are feeling and why you're feeling this, then you're able to tame that emotion.
So, In order for you to be able to have the clarity and the space to name that accurately, you need to have the mental acuity and the space.
And I think those who create that by addressing the stress, getting curious about their emotions when they're walking into a difficult conversation, they're.
There's room for this back and forth negotiation tactic where there's a little bit more space.
They're a little bit more calmer.
They know what their triggers are.
So they're not constantly reactive and offloading hurt in wrong places.
So that's where I see the difference between one who addresses the stress and one who doesn't going into a negotiation or difficult conversation.
It's incredible.
And what we're seeing here is that this is not a...
It's a mental challenge based on stress.
And I think that sometimes, when we think about stress, but also sleep deprivation, things like this, we are so chronically in a bad position.
We're so chronically stressed, so chronically sleep deprived, that we don't even know what it feels like to be well anymore.
And so you might not even be able to perceive the level of stress habituated to it over time.
And so you listen to podcasts like this and we talk about compassionate curiosity, acknowledging emotions, managing your own emotions, being more curious, not being as reactive, and you're listening to this and you're blaming yourself, saying i'm not good enough.
I'm not good enough, but it's mental health.
You cannot be better because you're so stressed.
And, Oh man, you know athletes are really ahead of the game on this.
And I think executives and leaders and typically athletics, has always been about 10 years ahead of the business world, where athletes, they work on their body and executives started to pick up on this and how physical training can help with the mental acuity and performance.
Athletes worked with sports psychologists or mental coaches to help them perform better.
And nowadays business leaders and executives.
They're starting to hire a lot more executive coaching and leaders to work on this mental performance side of things.
What we find is that and there was a research done at Stanford, Sherry Ma, I think, MA.
Her research was featured on ESPN.
And she talked about the criticality of sleep.
Like, Sleep.
If you look at athletes, they get a minimum seven to eight hours.
And if they're napping throughout the day, because that's where the body recovers.
So in executive training and leadership development we have this phrase called slow down to speed up.
It's very, you know, you say, okay, yeah, I get it.
I get.
You know, slow down to speed up, we don't really apply ourselves.
We have the head knowledge.
I mean, we're learning all these things, we read all the same books, they're all the basic same concepts out there.
But those that actually apply it and those that actually do it, where they take the time out of their day to meditate or they take their time to just slow down and work on themselves, you know taking walks, when you say I can't afford that, like I'm just I'm so busy, then back to back to back to back the meetings that you have you just over time.
You're just not as effective, you're not performing at your best, you're worn down.
It's like a car.
You're constantly going, as opposed to kind of resting, letting it cool down a little bit, you know kind of recharging, refueling.
And our bodies are vehicles that move us from place to place.
And our bodies need rest in order for it to be in tip top shape.
So those three things, working on your craft, it's great.
You got to work on your body and you got to know your body, to know when it needs time off and a break, because then the mind kicks in, and the mind.
You need to get the mind to rest too.
All these three things ride together.
And so I agree with you.
We need rest.
Well-being is not just a soft thing.
Oh, yeah, yeah.
Take care of your well-being.
Go ahead.
But executives, high performers, they really have to do something about it in order for them to not only model it for the people that they're leading, but really taking care of themselves so they can sustain this long term high performance.
I love this, Matt.
And when you think about it listeners, we've been talking for a bit, but when it comes down to it, everything that we have said can be encapsulated in one word science.
These aren't just our thoughts, our opinions.
This is based on science.
And I think a lot of people don't respect the science because we have this self-serving bias where we think we can overcome it right.
It's either we think we can overcome it.
So there might be some hubris, some arrogance, some ego in that, but also it might be some insecurity too, because we don't feel like we're worthy until we're pushing ourselves into the ground.
And so I think a lot of times we have to recognize that we don't fully understand the difference between a luxury and a necessity.
We think mental health and time and the ability to reduce stress is a luxury, but it's a necessity.
We can't function without it.
Yeah.
Based on science.
So my wife and I we train on an instrument that's called EQI 20 emotional intelligence 20 and it's from multi-health systems.
And they have tons of science backing this instrument.
And it's both reliable and valid.
And one of the few in, And we're both research-based, so it's really important for us that any assessments we use on leaders is valid.
So they have a wellbeing indicator where you can actually measure wellbeing in your of emotional intelligence and assessing yourself is.
It's a snapshot in time.
So, for example, if you score low on the wellbeing indicator, it just shows that right now in your season, you might be overly stressed and your wellbeing is low.
But it shows you what you can do to address well-being specifically to increase that, to have more of it.
And so you can model it for others in an accurate research-based way.
And the four indications or the concepts behind it is when self-regard is high.
So I have high self-esteem.
I believe in myself.
One, self-actualization where I have passion and purpose in what I do.
Like what I'm doing has meaning and this is really purposeful for me.
There's a deeper connection there.
The third is optimism.
When I have high levels of optimism, then it goes directly into my wellbeing score.
And then the last one is interpersonal relationships.
So social network and the community around you is so critical to one's wellbeing.
Like we can't do this alone.
We're never meant to do this alone.
And so you know connection, genuine connection, and having that close network of friends or mentors mentees, just people in our lives, is so important.
It's not how many, it's just having those deep relationships and connections that matter.
So all four, you can actually measure wellbeing.
Incredible.
Matt, This has been exceptional.
I really appreciate you taking the time here.
And I know a lot of people are listening and saying, I need more Matt in my life.
So can you let them know again about the different companies that you have and then also how to get in touch with you.
Yeah.
So we have a website.
It's called theinsightcompany.org.
And you can find us on social media, Instagram, The Insight Company or LinkedIn.
That's primarily our coaching consulting.
And then we also have a golf academy.
If you're an elite golfer, if you want to work on your mindset, it's called MPGA.
So Mental Performance Golf Academy.
And that website is mpgagolf.com.
So yeah.
And thank you for having me, Kwame.
I really appreciate you.
My pleasure.
Likewise.
You've just heard one powerful perspective and now we're moving on to the next, a fresh voice with a new angle on the same challenge, so you can keep expanding your skills.
Let's dive in.
Matt, thanks for joining us today.
Thanks.
I am super excited to be here with you.
Yes, and we are excited to have you, my friend.
So how about you get us started by telling us a little bit about yourself and what you do?
Yeah, I am somebody who is passionate about communication.
I'm a lecturer at Stanford's Graduate School of Business, where I've been for over 13 years.
I teach strategic communication.
I host a podcast called Think Fast, Talk Smart.
It's all about communication skills.
And I have a new book coming out called Think Faster, Talk Smarter.
And it's about how to speak better in spontaneous situations, like answering questions, like we're about to do, giving feedback, making small talk, all of that.
So I'm very excited to share all of that with you.
I love this.
And listeners, you're going to get a masterclass here because now we're going to actually see it.
Can he answer questions?
I'll give him the tough ones.
Okay.
I promise.
This is great.
And hey, listeners, we are making sure that this goes live on September 26 was also my birthday.
So as my birthday gift that I want you to give me is I want you to support Matt and his book.
So check out the book, check out the podcast, we're going to put links to both in the description.
So let's make sure we get Matt some love for that.
Perfect.
And now, let's jump into it.
Let's start off with a really broad question to kind of set the stage.
When it comes to this really narrow focus of communication.
What is it that drew you to focusing on this narrow element?
So communication is critical to success in our personal lives and our professional lives.
And I saw this play out all throughout my life.
I saw my friends.
I saw colleagues at work who were successful, being able to communicate effectively and adjust and adapt their communication.
Similarly, I saw people who were not as effective in their communication suffer from that.
And they might have had the best, most brilliant ideas, but weren't able to express it.
And as I've begun my teaching and my consulting, I've been fortunate enough to meet with many people who have just amazing insights and ideas to share.
But for some reason or another either a past experience, a little bit more anxiety than most of us feel they've really struggled to do that.
And through the work I've done with them, it's been amazing to see these people open up, feel more confident and share what's really important to them.
I love it.
Yeah, I agree 100%.
And I feel like effective communication in many ways is becoming a bit of a lost art.
So it's really important for us to continually hone our skills as much as possible, because even though we might be talking every single day, that does not mean we are expert level communicators.
There's still a lot more that we can do.
I'm not at an expert level yet, and I've been doing this a long time.
So I agree.
We have to focus on it and we have to have the courage to actually try.
It takes a certain amount of courage to say this is something I want to work on.
And many of us find speaking in high stakes situations very nerve wracking.
So having the courage, the tenacity to work on it is critical, but the rewards are plentiful.
100%.
And let's zone in now a little bit on this very interesting element of communication the responding to the questions that people are asking and the things that they're saying.
What is it that makes this so challenging?
Well, for many of us, we feel out of control, right?
We don't know what's coming at us.
We often attribute negative intent behind people asking us questions.
You know, imagine you give a pitch or a presentation at work and people start asking questions.
So a lot of what gets in the way is the is a challenge, something we have to defend against.
I personally think that one of the single best things we can do to open ourselves up to any spontaneous communication, not just QA, is to reframe them as an opportunity to extend and expand, to connect.
And nowhere is this more important than in QA, where we can really feel intimidated by those asking us questions.
It's so interesting how it always comes down to mindset first.
Absolutely.
No, mindset matters.
So in the new book I've written.
The whole first half of the book is a methodology that I've been teaching and working on for almost a decade now.
And the first four steps of the six step methodology are all around mindset.
The second two have to do with the actual messaging itself.
Mindset is so critical to many of the aspects of our lives.
Fascinating because again, I think a lot of times people focus so much on the skill set and what they should do and how they should say it, the strategies and tactics and things like that.
But it's almost like they're approaching it in the opposite direction, in the inverse, right?
And can you kind of paint the picture of what happens if we just focus exclusively on the skills but not addressing the mindset first?
Yeah.
So, first and foremost, if all you do is focus on your content and the way you're saying it, it'll give you a leg up, for sure.
But I think it gets in the way of the adaptability and especially in what I call these spontaneous, in the moment opportunities to communicate.
You don't have the agility that you need to adjust and adapt.
You might have a great way of doing it, but you need to adjust.
It's like an athlete who's really good at one thing.
And that's great if that one thing becomes that opportunity for you.
But you have to, in the game, be able to adjust and adapt to what's happening in front of you.
And if you don't have that flexibility in your mindset, it's going to be much harder to be successful repeatedly.
Absolutely.
And I think this is where a lot of people struggle, because they say, all right, I want to get the skills.
I want to know what to say.
I want to know how to say it and those type of things.
But then we talk about the spontaneity, the necessity of adaptation in the moment, the fluidity that's required.
And people say, how do I even practice that?
Isn't that one of those things that either I have it or I don't?
And so for people who have that concern, what do you say to them?
Yeah, great question.
So a lot of us carry around this notion that we just aren't gifted in that way.
We don't have the gift of gab, if you will.
And in fact there's research to suggest in my own experience in coaching and teaching, in my own lived experience, you can absolutely adapt, learn and develop these skills.
It takes some adjustment, and it certainly takes practice, as you alluded to.
But you can practice being spontaneous.
The whole book in methodology I've created is full of ironies, and one of the biggest ironies is you have to prepare to be spontaneous.
And there are things you can do.
One, going through the methodology, learning the different techniques and mindset.
But two, finding opportunities to practice.
I am a huge supporter of Toastmasters.
I think Toastmasters is a wonderful organization.
It gives people the opportunity to practice both planned and spontaneous speaking.
You can use generative AI to help you barred whatever and type in the position you're applying for, the company at which you're applying, and ask it to generate questions for the particular role.
And then you just practice in the moment answering those questions.
So there are lots of opportunities to practice once you firmly believe that you can make the changes that you'd like to make.
And it's funny, because when we talk about practice, that requires a mindset shift as well, because we are surrounded by all of these opportunities to practice, but we don't look at them as practice opportunities and therefore they don't become practice opportunities.
Well, no, you're absolutely right.
And I think this gets to a fundamental mindset change that has to happen in most communication, especially spontaneous speaking.
And that is we have to remind ourselves that the goal of communication is connection.
It's not perfection.
Many of us don't like to practice or put ourselves in environments where we can test out these new skills, because we want to do it right.
We have this drive to do it right.
And I'm here to tell you, after doing this work for decades, there is no right way to communicate.
There are better ways and worse ways, but there is no one right way.
So putting that pressure on ourselves to do it right is not only reduces the likelihood of us being able to do it well, because we're constantly judging and evaluating everything we say, but it also precludes us from even trying to do it at all.
So a fundamental mindset shift is to put the premium on connection rather than perfection.
This is great.
And I'm with you 100 percent.
And I know that this can be really empowering because you realize, OK, I can be authentic.
I don't need to do it like somebody else.
I can do it like me as long as I hold on to these fundamentals.
So that can be liberating.
It can also be scary for those people who are very type A, very driven.
They want to check boxes.
They want to know how they're improving and those type of things.
And so for those people who are a little bit more focused on controlling the communication and not willing to let go and flow, how do you get them a bit more comfortable letting go?
That is a wonderful question and a question I deal with every single quarter that I teach, and I teach a lot.
So in my strategic communication classes I start the class on the very first day and I say in this class The goal is to maximize mediocrity.
And I want you to understand.
These are Stanford MBA students, some of the best and brightest young business minds in the world.
Their jaws drop when they hear maximize mediocrity.
Nobody has ever told them to do this.
And I go on to explain why this is so important.
When we strive for greatness in our communication, it precludes us from achieving it.
And it comes down to cognitive load.
Your brain is like a computer.
It's not a perfect analogy, but for my point I'm trying to make, it helps.
Think about when you're running multiple applications.
You have multiple tabs open.
Your CPU, your central processing unit is processing each of those apps, each of those tabs, a little less efficiently.
That's because it doesn't have the bandwidth.
When I am constantly judging and evaluating and reevaluating everything I'm saying or about to say.
I too communicating with less bandwidth than I could.
So when I turn that dial down a little bit, that is, reduce the pressure on myself, reduce the evaluation, I actually then can do better.
So at the end of my first class I come back to my admonition and I say strive for mediocrity, maximize mediocrity so you can achieve greatness.
And by the end of that class, the students understand.
So the first part is, I think, understanding that at a neurocognitive level, the pressure we put on ourselves works against us.
And that can really be liberating for people.
The second thing I suggest is we have to reframe this whole notion of doing it wrong or making mistakes.
You know, many of us, we don't want to make a mistake.
And in fact, mistakes are the building blocks for learning.
So one of the ways I encourage my students and the people I coach is to reframe mistakes as missed takes.
If you know anything about television or movie production, they will do several takes of to get the right shot.
So they'll ask the actor or actors to do the same scene multiple times.
Each time is not a mistake.
It's not wrong.
They're just looking for a perhaps different, more creative way to communicate or demonstrate the emotion in the moment.
If we see our communication when it go the way we like and we see it as a missed take, that takes a lot of pressure off of us.
It doesn't mean it was wrong or bad.
It just was different.
Let's try it again.
Reframing mistakes as missed takes also takes that pressure off of ourselves and makes those of us who are type A and driven more accepting of taking the challenge to speak in the moment.
Brilliant.
I think that's a great mentality because again, you're right.
These conversations, these high stakes, crucial conversations, they come with enough pressure.
We don't need to add the pressure of perfectionism as well to that cocktail of emotion.
So I really appreciate this advice.
And when you're thinking about in the moment now, when we're actually starting to answer questions.
Let's get into the more actual, tangible elements of what it takes to be more effective.
There's so many different things that we could talk about.
Where should people start?
The number one mistake people make in their communication is they start from the wrong place.
They start by saying, here is what I want to say.
Here's what I want to say.
And I would argue it's not about what you want to say.
It's about what your audience needs to hear.
So it's not about what you want.
It's about what they need.
Which means the very first place you have to start is not creating your content.
It's thinking about my audience.
What do they know?
What do they need to know?
What are their attitudes?
Where are their areas of resistance, hesitation, and concern?
I start there, and then I begin crafting a message that will be meaningful to them.
So the number one place to start to help people hone their communication planned or spontaneous is thinking about your audience and their needs.
Once you do that, then you can begin to structure a message in a way that is meaningful, relevant and impactful.
It's brilliant and very hard to do.
It is hard to do, but you'd be surprised that if you open yourself up to it, you can.
You know most of.
There's a famous quote, and I don't even remember who said it, but it goes something like this
Crafting a high stakes communication without thinking about your audience first is like addressing a love letter.
High stakes communications in our personal lives.
We often think about it.
I have two teenagers.
You and I were talking about our kids before we started.
My kids are incredibly adept at honing their messages based on their audience.
So my kids don't come ask me for extended curfew or getting to drive the car when I come home tired from work.
They wait.
They do something nice for me.
We are constantly adjusting our communication in our personal lives based on what we know.
We need to take that into our professional lives as well.
And I think one of the things that is so frustrating to people about improving their communication skills is that when you tell them what it is that they need to do, they say I know that.
Why don't I do it?
It's so hard to do.
And I think sometimes we feel so strongly about whatever it is that we came here to talk about, that we just focus on ourselves.
And it's an egocentric form of communication, not because we are bad people, but because we just get so excited to say what we want to say.
So in my book, I talk about the curse of knowledge.
This idea has been around for a long time.
We know too much about what we're speaking on and we assume everybody else is interested at the same level.
We are
But I also introduce this idea of the curse of emotion, the curse of passion.
We are so passionate that we forget other people need to be scaffold and built up so that they can understand and be as passionate as we are way.
The only antidote to the curse of knowledge and the curse of passion is empathy.
We have to remind ourselves of the other people's perspective so that we can open the door to the knowledge and excitement that we have for the topics.
Let's talk about empathy.
This is a perfect time because you've been in the industry for a while and I know you have seen a lot of takes on empathy.
It's become a new buzzword, not even new buzzword, but a buzzword that people go to a lot.
But I feel like a lot of times people don't have a full understanding of what it means.
And so, when we're talking about empathy, what would you say are the biggest misunderstandings about the concept that hold people back?
Well, I'll start by saying that are some in the academic world who believe the sole purpose of communication is to increase empathy, right to increase connection among people.
And the term communication really stands for to make common, to bring community about.
So empathy and communication go hand in hand.
I think what people misunderstand about empathy is it's not just about putting yourself in the other's perspective.
It's really understanding and appreciating that perspective.
And perspective isn't just thoughts and ideas.
It's emotion and lived experience.
And so that means you have to be a good observer.
It means you have to ask questions.
You have to clarify.
You have to check in.
So empathy isn't just saying, yeah, if I were that person, here's how I would feel.
It's really about doing a personal ethnography and getting in there and figuring it out.
That's what makes the big difference.
And that's what allows for the connection, the immediacy and, dare I say, intimacy that communication can bring about.
See that last part, intimacy.
I think that's what people really struggle with, because it requires a bit of mutual vulnerability in order to really get the depths of empathy.
And so how do we get people to feel a little bit more comfortable opening up?
Yeah.
So I've done a lot of research for this book on small talk, because I think small talk gets a bad rap.
Small talk is all about building connection, building empathy.
And yet we think it's just this necessary evil that we have to go through to get the free wine, the you know the swag at the conferences we go to.
So that's a whole different conversation.
I think we need to rebrand small talk for sure.
But in that research I did in terms of reading up on it and talking to experts in the field part of it is really about mutual disclosure.
So if I want to connect with you and better understand you, I need to be open and inquisitive about your perspective.
And I have to share at an equal level about my perspectives.
And many of us are more comfortable asking others than sharing ourselves.
And so we need to really think about how we continue the conversation going.
I want to take another lesson learned from small talk in talking to researchers who study it.
They look at conversations through one lens that looks at the turns we take.
And they're really two different types of turns.
They're supportive turns and shifting turns.
A supportive turn is where I dig deeper into what you've said.
And a shifting turn is where I shift it to a different topic or to myself.
So imagine we start a conversation.
We don't know each other.
And you tell me about a trip you recently took.
You say, hey, I just went to Los Angeles.
And I could say, oh, really?
Where did you go?
Did you visit Disneyland?
That's a supportive turn.
Or I could say, oh, I just got back from Phoenix.
And now that's a shifting turn.
What we have found is for intimacy, for connection, for mutual disclosure and trust building more supportive relationships.
Responses are helpful.
Now you can't be exclusively supportive, because then it looks like you're hiding and you're building a wall between you and the other person.
So the research suggests maybe two thirds to three quarters of your responses should be supportive, with a third to a fourth being shifting.
So there are things we can do to bring about that intimacy in terms of what we say, that's asking questions and disclosing appropriately, but also in the types of turns that we take.
This is so good, because one of the things I love about this the supportive turn versus the shifting turn is that it helps us to operationalize the ratio kind of game that people play.
When they say 70-30 rule 80-20, whatever it is, we want the other person to try to talk more than us.
And we can say that to people.
But sometimes they're saying how in the world do I manage to do this?
And this is a really simple but powerful and effective way to keep the spotlight on them in a way that triggers empathy and makes them feel more appreciated and validated, while at the same time allows you to become a better listener too.
Absolutely.
And let me share one other technique that I think is Absolutely essential to accomplish the goals you just mentioned, and that is paraphrasing
Paraphrasing to me is one of the top essential communication tools we should develop.
And it's not a speaking thing listening for what's the bottom line, what's the essence of what you're saying.
And it doesn't even matter if I get it right or not, because the next step is for me to paraphrase what you just said.
To me, paraphrasing is not parroting back word for word like a five year old does.
Instead, it's pulling out the key essence of what the person said, sharing it.
So you do two types of validation.
One type of validation is of the person.
I heard you.
It doesn't mean you agree.
It just means I heard you.
The second type of validation is for making sure that fidelity is high.
So when I paraphrase, you have an opportunity to say, yes, exactly.
Or you can say, no, not exactly.
Here's what I meant.
It's a way of building connection, building trust, buying time for you to think some more.
Paraphrasing is a wonderful tool and I encourage everybody to leverage it as you try to build intimacy, connection and trust.
This is great.
And this is definitely something that, especially in negotiations and difficult conversations, we need to do.
And especially in these scenarios where we might not agree with the other person.
How do do that in those types of scenarios, without making it seem as though we are encouraging bad behavior or endorsing things that we don't agree with?
So understanding and agreement are different.
And I think it's really important to distinguish for ourselves between those two.
And so conveying that we understand and even appreciate somebody's perspective is incredibly helpful in these challenging types of conversations where we express I appreciate that this is your position and I understand what this means for you.
Doesn't mean I agree.
So starting from respect, starting from a place of understanding, I think is critical.
In most feedback and negotiation situations, I like to frame them as problems to be solved.
And if I'm looking to solve a problem, that means I need to collaborate with you.
And that means I need to try to reduce the defensiveness you might feel and that I feel.
And then I try to find connection points where we can connect on certain things.
So let me give you two disparate ideas that popped in my head based on your question.
One is I have learned and leveraged a lot from the world of improvisation.
I think improv has a lot to teach us in terms of how to be better communicators in the moment and better communicators in general.
Foundational principle of improv is this notion of yes and.
And you might be saying, Matt, I'm talking about negotiation.
If you always say yes and, that's not a negotiation.
What yes and says, though, is you look for opportunities of connection.
So if we're negotiating, if we have a confrontation or a challenge, I look for areas where we actually have some connection.
We might disagree on the operationalization of something, but we at least agree on that this is a problem.
For example,
So one thing we need to do is look for those yes and moments that we have.
The other issue when it comes to negotiation, beyond framing it as a problem to be solved, is we need to make sure that we keep in mind how we say things is as important as what we say.
So pausing a little, monitoring our vocal intensity, allowing for the other person to speak, and for us to affirm that they have spoken by saying uh-huh or yes.
Those also play into these as well.
So it's not just about what you say, it's about how you approach it, what you look for yes and, but also you're or dealing with conflict.
Matt, I know exactly what every single listener is saying.
They're saying, I need to buy this book.
Well, thank you.
That would be great.
I mean, my whole goal here is to help people.
And I think the book is a vehicle for that.
I hope the podcast Think Fast, Talk Smart also helps.
I just want people to hone and develop their communication skills.
And you are doing a great job with that, my friend.
I really appreciate you joining us and can't wait to have you back on again.
Thank you for the opportunity, Kwame.
It was great to chat with you.
And I just want to compliment you on your questioning and the language that you use.
I find it really refreshing and delightful.
I appreciate that.
