CM 266: Jeff Wetzler on Deepening Connections
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We forgo the opportunity to raise our own game when we don't benefit from the ways in which other people can contribute to our learning.

Well, could be curious minds at work. I'm your host, gale Allen. We're surrounded by people with knowledge, the manager who can provide expert feedback or the colleague who has important information.

These kinds of insights can help us achieve our goals yet as much as we need their knowledge, we often don't act in ways that can fight IT. It's when the project runs behind, we can make our numbers that we realize, often too late, that asking sooner could have made all the difference. These are the results jeff wetzler r can help us avoid.

His book ask, tapped into the hidden wisdom of people around you for unexpected breakthrough of leadership in life, is call to arms for regularly making. Asks that i'll visit the insights we need. His strategies are important for individuals, teams and organizations.

Before we start one quick ask, if you like the pot test, please take a moment to liberate atlas, itunes or whatever you subscribe. Your feedback sends a strong signal that people looking for their next podcast. And now here's my interview with jeff wetzler. Jeff wetzler, welcome to the podcast.

Thank you. So great to be with you.

You're bookers about the impact of making certain kinds of asks. Can you explain that kind of ask you talking about and why these are so important?

Yes, i'm talking about the kind of ask that really helps us to learn something from someone else. So this is not about a book about the kind of ask of making requests to other people, though that's important as well. This is really focused on asking questions that help us tap into what other people know, what they experience, what ideas they have, what perspectives and feedback and suggestions they have. It's really about tapping into the wisdom that other people hold, but so often don't necessarily volunteer to us.

IT should seem obvious, but I don't think that always is. What are we miss out on when we don't make these kind of asks? What does IT cost us?

Well, I would say IT costs us three kinds of things. Um one is IT costs us results. We make worse decisions when we don't really know what other people are thinking and feeling. We fail to innovate in in ways we waste time. All of that I would put in the bucket of results. Um the second is I actually think IT IT cost us relationships to um IT keeps us more distant from other people when we don't give them a chance to really share what they know, what they think to be self expressed. And the third, in my mind, maybe the most important to me, is that IT causes us learning, and we forgo the opportunity to raise our own game when we don't benefit from the ways in which other people can contribute to our learning.

If the information that we need to share and the others need to share is so important, let's talk a little bit about why do we withhold IT.

yes. So this is a question that I obsessed about um both in the research for the book but also in my own life as a leader because I ve had many experiences when I haven't found out from people until IT was nearly too late sometimes when I was too late what they were really thinking, feeling you are not telling me the chAllenges that they were up against, the feedback they had for me, the you know the ideas that could have taken us in a Better direction, what they really thought um and so I really I really got uh obsessed with this question of how come they don't tell us know if if we would be Better off.

Aren't they just you know say IT already um and in the research of the book, uh I came across three four big barriers that stop people from sharing with us. Um there one of them the most significant one is that they are worried about the impact of what they would have to say maybe they think they would upset us, maybe they think we'd get defensive, they think we would judge them, I would impact them, maybe they think that would impact our relationship and put tension into the relationship. And so rather than dealing with any of those potential consequences, they don't say IT.

So that that's one where being worried about the impact. Um another one is that they just don't know the words to say IT. They they may have IT as a gut feeling, but they do not have to say IT in a way that would feel constructive.

Or maybe you know this, was that a very interesting one? I learned IT as part of the book. The human mind thinks at something like nine hundred yards a minute, but the mouth can only get out one hundred and fifty words a minute. And so less than fifteen percent of what someone is thinking, they actually say, just based on how the math works out, they may not even be trying to withhold us. They just can't get IT all out.

And once that's another example of not being to find the right words, sometimes people hold back because they just think IT would take too long to get into IT if if I tell them what I really think they they going to ask me questions that they're to talk about IT and and they just they are exhausted. They are have the time of the energy um but to me that the one that I think is most interesting and also most fixie um is that people hold back because they don't realize we're interested don't they don't actually think we care or want to know what they what they think or have to say. And so you know know and I can I can find myself in this as well.

It's like if i'm talking to one and I don't really think they're interested in what I have to say um I may not volunteer IT, maybe because you know I like what if they don't want to know IT why why would I tell them? Why would who really would want to know what I really thinking? And so all of those are barriers that, that can hold people back. And I think in many cases, it's overdetermined. It's multiple of these things going on at once, which makes IT more likely than not that we're not really finding out the totality of what someone else knows.

You have developed an approach to help us with this because this is a big problem. And you've explained, you know what IT costs us. And if you run a company is that translates into money, people, time.

What you're missing out on in terms of innovation, we need to talk about amy event later. But you know, he talks about all the things that cost us when we don't have meetings that feel safe. And I felt like a lot of what you were saying really was in the same camp, partially run safety.

We're going to talk about that psychological safety, but a lot around what we miss out on when people don't bring these important issues to the table. So you've developed an approach that's called the ask approach. What is this approach? And i'm going to ask you know a number of more detailed questions about IT, but kind of writ large. What is this?

yes. So the ask approach is a combination of five practices, all of which are based in research that, when put together, give us the greatest possible chance of truly tapping into the insights, the ideas, the feedback, the perspectives that other people hold, but too often don't share. And so do I need to just run through the highest level? What the five are would OK.

So number one is choosing curiosity and this is really centering in our minds the question of what can we learn from the other person um as the core intention that we have in a conversation. The second one is called make IT safe and this is really about making IT as comfortable, easy and appealing as possible for other people to tell us things, especially hard things. Number three is pose quality questions.

And this is really about broadening ing the repeat a of questions that we have so that we can truly get at the essence of what someone else knows, thinks and feels. Number four is what happens after we post the questions, which is how do we listen? It's not listening to learn.

And listening to learn is really about opening ourselves up to what is the most essential thing that someone is trying to tell us. And number five, which is my favorite because I am a i'm obsessed with learning um is called reflect and reconnect. And this is really about how do we freeze the insight out of what someone else has to tell us and that's through reflection. That's really about sifting through what did they tell us and then turning IT over in our minds in a structured way, truly get the most important insights out so we know what actions to take and then reconnecting with the other person to let them know how they affected us.

Jeff, we're going to get into key components of this asked approach. One of the ways I want to get into IT as something that's just a personal I need to be self this year. It's a personal favorite of mine, but I think it's one of those.

The more people know IT, the more I can really change their lives, I believe. And that is the latter of understanding. Yes, talk to us about that. And what, how does IT shed light on the stories that we tell ourselves? So the latter of .

understanding is based off of a concept develop by someone named Chris argerich, who I had a chance to work with early in my career. He's one of the leaders in the field of organizational behavior, organizational learning um and the latter of understanding really is a way to help us unpack why and how IT is that we enter situations and Operating situations with so much certainty that we forget that there's anything to be curious about.

And so the way that works is if you can imagine, imagine the concept of a the visual of a latter that sticking out of a huge swimming pool um and that swimming pool represents all of the bits of information that are going on in a situation um well, let's just even take this conversation. Everything you've said, you know that everything i've said, the the temperature of the room, the you know the sights in front of me, I mean, just there are millions of data points Operating. And if we were to try to pay attention to all of the different data points that we are swiming around in in that pool, we wouldn't be able to functions.

We would just be just, you know, almost paralyze. And so in a very adaptive way, we have to just select a couple of tiny data points in the entire pool and igor, everything else. And so that's the first step.

As we start to walk up the latter, we select a small number of data points. The problem is when we select those data points, this happens automatically in microseconds um not in our consciousness warehouse. And we tend to forget that the data points that we selected are only but a small fraction of the totality which we tend to select.

That's what's going on in the situation. And then we start to race up the latter. We we start to interpret those data points.

We say, uh huh, that must mean this. And we reach our conclusions and the conclusions that we reach our essentially the story that we tell ourselves about a situation. Quite often the story sounds something like, you know, i'm right, they are wrong. My job is to help them see how i'm right there wrong but the story can be any number of different things.

Um and so the latter of understanding really helps us um to slow down our thought process so that we can see how do we get to that story and to recognize that the choices that we make about constructing a story are not random. The choices we make about which data points to select, which data points to omit, the choices that we make about how to go up that letter by preying and drawing conclusions and telling ourselves the story are not random. They're shaped by the preexisting assumptions that we bring into a situation, the biases that we have, the world views that we have, those shape how we walk up the letter.

And so often we end up reaching conclusions and telling ourselves stories that reconfirm the original assumptions that we had in the first place. And so we often end up with this experience like, aha, I knew that they always act this way. Here we go again.

But what's really happening is this self reinforcing loop that I call the certainty loop. And when we get stuck in the certainty loop, our curiosity completely shuts down because there's nothing to be curious about. We know exactly how it's gonna go. And then we construct to ourselves a story that that that reinforces that. And so once we understand how this thought process works using the latter, we can then, uh, inject question Marks in different parts of the latter.

So for example, the first place we can inject a question mark is at the bottom of the latter, we can ask ourselves, what data points did I select? What data points might I have overlooked? Or what other da points might somebody else have in the situation? And in the book, I talk about some different kinds of data points that are often hidden from us, things like the way that we impacted the other person or what the other person is up against.

Those are those are things that are typically um in our in our blind spots that we're not aware of um and so that's one place we can use the latter to help us get more curious. Another way that is that we can use the latter to say, what's a different way to interpret the data points I selected? How might somebody else walk up their letter? What's a different letter? And then when we start to get into interactions with other people, we can recognize that each person that we are interacting with has constructed a story by walking up their latter of understanding. And we can start to get curious about what do they select and what stories that they tell, and how did they worked the way of the letter.

Know, one of the important things about this as well is, you know, we have these stories. We're going to see things a certain way. And the part work is really chAllenging is the next step, which is we're going to take actions based on this.

That is right. The stories that we tell have consequences. Um and if we are stuck in the certainty loop, if we raised the top of the latter and we don't get curious, then we just rushed to action.

So for example, they go back to the story of i'm right, you're wrong. My job is to help you see where i'm right and you're wrong. The action would naturally be to tell you what to do. I would be to explain to you what you might be missing would be to try to convince you um and so those actions um then play into the data that the pool of data um that goes on. They were all Operating in, often then interpreted through our again through our own lens of our assumptions and our biases and our world views. But those actions have a lot of consequences and that's why it's so important that we understand the stories that we're telling ourselves and also recognize that they are mere constructions that were making and how that works.

One of the books that i'm reading right now is a book called co intelligence by ethon moloch. And of course, it's about A I. And what I loved about your book is that you repeatedly in your book, show us how you use A I to help us think about these things, to chAllenge some of our thinking. In this particular section of your book, you talk about how A I can help us with this letter of understanding in these loops that we're getting ourselves into. Can you talk a little bit about what you did in this part of .

your book with A I absolut, as I was writing the book, A, I was just started to kind of explode on the scene. And I was fascinated by the ways in which A, I can actually help us get Better at learning from other people. I don't believe A, I will ever replace the ability of humans to connect with and truly learn from one another.

But I I was really excited to see the ways in which you can help us to do that human human activity more effectively. So I just typed into AI questions like, you know, i'm disagreeing with my business partner. I think we should do this and he thinks we should do that and I think he's wrong.

And then I just put in at the very end of my prompt, what might I be missing? And I hit enter and all a sudden, in the privacy of my own home without having to be publicly reacting in front of other people. IT came back in IT said, well, here's some of the things that you might be missing.

Here's some of the things that he might be trying to solve for that you're not thinking about. And then I did IT again, and I said, you know, I have these really strong views about this particular politician, and I think they're terrible, and I can imagine why anybody would vote for that person. What might I be missing? I put that in and over.

Sudden, the most fascinating things came out about why somebody actually would be interested in that politician for legitimate reasons, in ways that I have not really thought about. And it's started to get me more curious. It's started to help me see there are some other data points in the pool of data that I was overlooking um and so IT was a great way to start injecting question Marks into my otherwise .

certain stories. It's such a great it's such a great tool. I was again so thrill that you did that because increasingly i'm trying to use ChatGPT help me chAllenge my thinking and I find that I don't IT doesn't push my button as much as, you know, a person sitting across from me, right?

Because it's this, this, you, this online entity, if you will. And IT forces me to kind of say, well, you know, this is, this is kind of someone who doesn't know me. It's impartial.

It's not personal, as you know, seemingly objective, not always accurate, but I can do the research to figure that out. But IT really does help me push myself more. So i'm glad you brought this up. This is a great way to kind of uh, just spr on some thinking that also chAllenge ourselves a bit. And it's a tool that's so readily available to us.

Exactly, exactly.

You know you're talking about the power of curiosity, and many of us might think that we're curious and that we convey curiosity effectively. But I know for my own experience as a curious person that there are absolutely some things I do that can actually be curiosity killers. Talk to us about those things that we should be aware of when IT .

comes to curiosity. Yeah, there are several things that I think truly shut down curiosity really in all of us. Um the number one thing is emotional hy jacking.

You know all the sudden when we start to panic, when we start to get angry, when we start to get upset, when we start to get you know truly truly fearful, um that shots our curiosity down our brain goes into A A fight or flight mode, we start to say, what can I do? How do I protect myself? All that kind of stuff. And so, uh, I actually think that those are the moments when curiosity matters the most, even though it's harder to become curious in those moments.

And so one of the things that I talk about the book is how might we flip that? How might we actually use those moments when we are truly triggered to say wait a second I know this is a moment that I need to actually get more curious um and think about you know sometimes if we might put like a rubber band on the doorknob to remind us to take the dishes out of the dishwasher or any number of your little cues that we give ourselves. Can we develop enough awareness that when we realize we've jumped up to the top of the latter, we have really, really gotten pissed off? okay.

That's a moment I realized I got to step back and get more curious here. And IT takes time to do that. It's it's not an immediate thing. But if we can start to just get a small amount of distance, and that can be through journal, that can be through taking a deep breath, that can be through meditation, that can be through using a friend, help us see that then all of the sudden, the moments that we are actually most emotional can be the reminders for us to really start to get most curious.

I'm really glad that you talked about the fact that it's is a practice if we think that we get emotionally hijacked and it's gonna easy to get curious. And then when we go to do IT, we fail and we kind of judge ourselves and say, we'll see, I can do this. It's really hopefully think to hear from folks like yourself that it's a IT takes practice. IT is not our default setting. Yes.

yes, exactly. I have. I have a mental film cards are. He used to say curiosity is a team sport um and that IT gets easier just like any other team sport when you practice with someone else. And so you know i'm lucky enough to have a coc E O my organization and when he sees me get emotionally hijacked um maybe because there's somebody on the team who didn't do what I thought they were supposed to do and i'm complaining to him about how could they possible do this. He will remind me, you know maybe you're at the top of your letter right now and this might be a moment to get curious and um I I get curious much more quickly and easily when he reminds me of that. Then if I have to know get myself, you know walk myself down the letter.

you know getting to read your book and reminding myself of the power of. The latter of inference, I actually printed out, you know, an image of a latter of inference. And I keep IT on my desk now, ever since I ve write your book to forced myself on a daily basis to say, what letter and I climate up today.

You know, that's how powerful I think this is. And that's why I think you writing about IT in this book is just so compelling. So, yeah.

do you want me to talk about some of the other curiosity killers?

Yeah, if you would tell us, tell us what they are, we might not do a deeper dive on them, and I think it's really important to be aware of them.

yeah. The second one is the pressure that I think we all feel for speed and urgency, which could create so much stress when we're in a rush. We absolutely a curiosity shutdown. We're just in go mode. Um so that's number two. And then the third one is the pressures that I think we all feel increasingly in our divided society to express and perform certainty um when we are surrounded by people, whether in readings or in our personal life or on social media who are sending the message, don't you think x don't you agree with the me on this um that pressure to to to appear and to express certainty itself can start to shut down our curiosity.

You know, even when you use that word certainty a the first worth that comes to mind for me, there is no just absolute bara. You know, like when when I when I feel super certain about something, or when I hear others feel super certain, just like why we just really close the door on everything. And if we got there because we worked through a process, but that that need to be so certain to me is just to create such an uninteresting space.

I totally agree. And there I think there's so much there. There's so few things in life, you know that are complex that we can actually be completely certain about. There's always there's always something more to IT. So when we say we're completely certain, I do agree with we've really cut off the inquiry in in ways that, that make IT much less interesting.

And when we're in organizations is tRicky, right? Because the organization itself um can make you feel like we have to be certain, as you said, that we have to perform certainties. So I really like the language that you used.

So to counter that, you know you and I talked a little bit about this before we started to talk for the podcast, but i've had amy evenson on the show. She's wonderful. We talked about psychological safety and how important IT is. You point this out in your book that if we're going to help people feel safe to open up to both ask the kind of questions, these harder questions, and to answer them share hard things that you explain, that we need to create what you call a safety cycle. What does this include?

So the goal of the safety cycle is to make IT as safe, comfortable and appealing as possible for people to tell us hard things. I actually had the opportunity to um talk with amy about this part of the book as I was working on IT.

And he pointed out to me that it's important to say as much as possible as opposed to absolutely, it's going to be safe for people because, you know, he pointed out, it's never one hundred percent safe, especially when they are power dynamics at play. But we can certainly reduce the barriers, and that's what the safety cycle is about. And so the safety cycle talks about several things that we can do to increase the psychological safety of interactions.

And I think it's especially important anytime, or interacting across lines of difference at any time. There is a power differential. We've gotta really work even harder at this. So one part of IT is around how do we create connection, what's the level of trust that we're building between us and other people. And all the things that I found particularly interesting in researching the book is that even the time and place and space of the connection that we're creating can make an enormous difference.

I interviewed iconic CEO for the book, people like the CEO of craft and metro ic, who would say to me things like, if I ever want to talk with someone and haven't be safe for them to tell me the truth, i'm never gonna call them into my office and make set across the big CEO desk for me and assume that they going to feel safe to tell the truth. You know, no, we're going to take a walk. I'm going to go eat where they want to eat.

I'm going to go right in their car where they're are doing sales calls. And so the key the key part of creating connection is around making sure that's a connection on the other person's terms with. They're going to feel most safe to do that.

So that's one part of the safety cycle. A second part of a safety cycle is opening up, which is that if I want the other person to open up, i've got ta open up first. Now that could be simply opening up about why i'm asking them the question in the first place to say, look, i'm uncertain. I really don't know. Here's why i'm struggling.

Here's what I need your help, here's what I admire, what you're doing that's leading me to ask you this question because if we don't do that, the other people can make up their own stories about our agenda um and rather than have the makeup you know false stories, let's just open up so that they can actually know where we're coming from. But IT can also be opening up about something that we are feeling vulnerable about as well, which can then send the message that okay and that we can have a recipe c opening up. And then the third part of the safety cycle, uh, which I think is maybe the most interesting, is how do we radiate resilience? So we talked to earlier if about we, one of the biggest barriers to people sharing is the word about the impact on us for our relationship in what they're saying.

Radiating resilience is basically letting them know I can handle IT I am not onna crumble based on what you tell me. I'm not going to get upset with you if I have a reaction. I'm not going to hold you responsible for my reaction.

I'm resilient and IT could be as simple as saying something like, look, if I win new shoes, I might be really frustrated right now and if that's what you're feeling, I would totally understand. Love to hear more about IT or what what are you experiencing and by making IT discussions, we say to that, we demonstrate to that person, we get IT. We resent if you tell us your pissed off, you tell us frustrated. We understand .

that in this interview, jeff wetzler teaches us by asking matters and how to make IT a priority in our lives, shares how IT deepens connections and contributes to greater success. If you're eager to learn more about how deeper connections at work can support your goals, check out episode two seventeen of curious ized at work with an dol farm on how to succeed as a project clear to be a leader and to find gratification and satisfaction in your job, you have to put yourself in IT.

So the book has a lot of advice about how to tackle things in a way that isn't so processor ended and is about really building report and connections with people. And at the end of the day, what makes you a good leader is your ability to connect with people and actually care about them. Now let's get back to my interview with jeff wetzler. There are all kinds of questions, and you said this, I think, a little bit earlier. You make a distinction between what you call quality and non quality questions about this.

yes. And so there were more in um step three of the asked approach called post quality questions. Quality questions I defined very simply as questions that help us learn something important from someone else. And I distinguish quality questions from crummy questions because so often the questions that we ask might have a question market at the end of them, but they they don't meet that criteria of helping us learn something really important for someone else. Maybe because they're leading questions, they are sneaky, they trying to manipulate somebody else, maybe because they're are attack questions or maybe because they actually are well intention, but they are just cosy.

You know that maybe we're asking a question that um just has they were right at the end and or or layer three or four questions on at once and someone doesn't know which one to respond to. So so whole budget waste that our questions can be creamy. But quality questions, I kind of think of almost the way that I think a surgeon might have a whole set of tools, scamp es and other kinds of tools and and different questions are trying to get at different things.

And there are there is a taxi of questions that we can ask depending on what we're trying to learn from the other person. And we can all stand to broader the rapidity of of questions in our know in our texan's. Y would you like an example or .

to give me a crummy question?

Let's start there.

Do you think that's the way we should go, you know or I that that I off that sort of get to me off and is when someone will say something and then just at the word you know, isn't that right? Don't you agree at the end? And they might even mean IT to know, like does the other person actually agree? But it's very hard to give an authentic reaction, you know, authentic answer when someone poses a question that because IT comes across as if there's really only one ready to that question, which is yes, of course I agree.

So jeff, can you give me you know, the opposite. Is there a question or are there a couple questions that make your heart sing when someone you know actually asks them?

One of the strategies of questions that I think is so important, but often overlooked, is one that I call request reactions. Because so often when we say what we think to someone else, or give them some ideas or advice, we can assume that theyll let us know what they think of that. If they agree theyll tell us, and they disagree theyll tell us, that raises the barrier for them, they'll tell us.

But quite often, for all the reasons that we've talked about, they're gonna tell us. And so requesting reactions is literally just saying to the person something like what's your reaction to what I just share there or how does that land with you or what does that make you think or what might have overlooked um something that truly lets the other personal we genuinely want their reactions um and makes IT easy for them. To or easier, I should say, for them to share what they're actually thinking.

You know, one of the things the quality questions do as you say in your book, as they help us to quote, hear their headline, what does this mean?

So so if we go back to the latter of understanding um the headline is really the conclusion that someone reaches at the top of their latter is the sort of headline of their story and hearing their headline is is basically saying to them something like, you know where do you come down on this question or what do you think about this or you know what do you know what what you are you conclude about this question that we're talking about.

And so often people don't actually tell us their headline, especially if they think that we might disagree with that or they might be hard for to here. They might be telling us some data points or some other things. But just literally thanks, you know. So so ultimately the land on that um is about hearing their headline. And then if we've got this metaphor of the latter in our minds, we can realize, okay, well, that's the headline that's at the top of the latter.

But if I really want to understand the totality, their perspective, then I have to use a strategy like dig deeper, which is say, you know, can you walk me how you get to that or how did you reach that conclusion or what makes you think that what were some of the reasons that they got you there um that started to walk them down their letter? And then lastly, we go down we have to go down to their data pool um to say and I I call this strategy, see what they see, which is to say how interesting what are some examples that make you think that or what was some the information that you used or sometimes people don't don't the data doesn't occur to them as data points but but instead of story so you can say you can you tell me a story about the time that you saw that experience that um and so if we can use hear their headline, dig deeper and see what they see, then we essentially give ourselves a much more complete view of their latter. How do they, how do they construct the story in their minds?

How can AI help us here? So AI, again.

I found you really interesting to experiment with for this part of the ask approach. And I would put into the chatbot something like, you know, i'm having a dispute with my wife about X, Y, R, Z. What are some questions I can ask? And all of a sudden, IT generated a bunch of questions.

Now they were not all quality questions, but I would say seventy five percent of them more quality questions. And of that seventy five percent, probably half that I hadn't thought to ask. Uh and so IT IT can give us literally new questions if we just put in a little bit of context of the situation and then we explicitly prompted to give us questions to ask. Um I was amazed at some of the questions that that I add to my own reparata. With the help of the eye.

i've learned that my questions are never as good as as I think they are, especially when I use a chap out to help me. Whenever is a chap out to help me, I think, man, how did I miss that, or how did I know, think about that? And so I was thrilled that you put that in here because I just think our questions could be made so much Better if we do have the time to craft them with. You know, AI as a thought partner is really.

really powerful. Totally, I totally agree.

Another component of the ask approach, listening is hard. And i've had several people on the show, me, we've talked about this. I really like your approach.

You describe listening as having three channels, content, emotion and action. What do you mean? yes.

So this comes from the family system therapies, David canter, who would watch families interact um and realized that they were sometimes speaking different languages from one of other some of times one was communicating. I know information. In fact, what i'm referred to hear is content when someone else was you Operating in this domain of and people would miss each other and clash. So if we really want to understand what we have, the totality of what someone is is, is experiencing and trying to convey to us, there are three channels that we can listen through. So content is really listening for.

One of the facts, one of the information, one of the claims that somebody y's making up the meanings that they are trying to convey e emotions is simply, you know, one of the feelings that they're displaying or expressing when they're communicating with us and action is what are the what are the steps they're taking, what are the things they're actually doing in a conversation? Maybe they repeating themselves a lot. Maybe they're asking us a lot of questions or not asking us any questions. Maybe they are showing support for our point of view or pushing back on our point of view. So when we start to listen through content, emotion and actions, we realize there are so much more that we can take in. I like IT IT to you how I think a great music efficient auto would be able to listen for the percussion and also hear the vocals and also hear the harmony um and then put IT together and just have a much more textured understand A P the music that I certainly would um and we can train ourselves one by one to listen three of these you know you can take video recording of a meeting or transcript um or you know really any any just cut from a favorite T. V show and start by saying, I let me just listen to the content, what's the information you share, then let me he listen to the feelings, the emotions, and then let me watch for the actions and then put IT together and just .

see so much more when you're interacting with people, let's say, people who report to you or people who do work either within outside the organization, maybe clients, you found that when IT comes to content versus emotion versus action, did you have sort of a default setting of where you would kind of live? And then over time, you've had to develop your .

reputation around this for me might go to has always been content. Um and I think that's partly just who I am in terms of my personality and my wiring and also just the training that i've had professionally has been very much in in the analytic kind of what's going on here.

And so for me, the work has been to how do I listen to the emotion, how do I listen to the action and i've started realize over time, sometimes the content is the least important thing is going on in a conversation is that perhaps the emotion or the action is it's what's going on. So I think all of us have have a initial inclination or a leaning to where we start um and that's great because we can build on that as a strength. But then we can know this is what I need to .

brought yeah yeah. It's almost like we can give ourselves maybe some stretch goals here and and push ourselves to say, okay, we know we're going to focus on the content. How can we really walk away with some ideas about the emotion?

exactly. exactly.

You give us seven practices for listening to learn. We're not going to go through all seven, but one that you describe is called pulling the thread. Can you tell us what that is?

How IT works? yes. So pulling the thread basically using this metaphor year, if someone shows us just a little bit of thread um don't stop there. We can start to pull and and ask follow up questions.

And some of my favorite follow up questions just include questions like can you say little bit more about that? Or what else do you have when I see you're thinking about that? And often times when I pull the thread, I realize that the first thing they said or even the second is not the most important thing.

They have to say. It's only when I actually is you invite them to say more and more and more that I start to get to the good stuff. And I and as part of doing the research for the book, I I learned that psychotherapists often have this experience.

And they called the dorot moment, where they might be in you a fifty minutes session with the client. And they are, you know, forty nine minutes, the clients about to put their hand on the door b and to leave the room. And that's actually when the most important thing comes out.

That's when the clients says i'm thinking about leaving my spouse or something. You got investigated for this for this terrible thing. I'm really worried about this. And you know the questions I go, why did I not say that during the first forty eight minutes of the session? Why wait until the last minute of the session to say that?

Uh and I realized it's because um they may be they may be wanted to see how the person reacts, they may be building up the courage. They may be working working on their minds for how to even say that. Um and so if if we just stop with the first thing that someone says we don't pull that thread, there's a very good chance that we actually might be even though we think we've answered our question, that we might actually miss the real answer to our question.

I want to get to this part because you mentioned that this is kind of your favorite part of the ask approach, and that is the reflection components. So let's say you've asked some good questions and let's say that you've learned some important things now. why? What do you have the power to do? What are some ways you should think about the information you have in some great next steps?

yeah. So reflection is really how we get the meaning from what we hear from somebody, how we turn, talk into action. And I think sometimes reflection can get a bad rap because I can seem a little bit vague or abstract or like something that we don't really have time to do in less.

We're off on some meditation retreat. But I think reflection can be very practical. I use, I introduced a method called shift and turn.

So the first step is to sift IT is to say, of all the things that I heard the person say, or maybe all the things that I rode down in my notes are, you know, seeing the transport from a conversation, chances are there are a few nuggets that are really the most important thing. And there may also be a bunch of things that actually are not important or even maybe harmful. And i'm just going to let those go and i'm going to really shift to get the most important nuggets.

Ts, and I do say the danger is that we can sift out the wrong things. And so it's helpful to get a friend help us to do that safety, to say to someone here's here's a bunch of stuff that I heard. Here's what I think the most important here, or to let go or to say somebody else that who is in the same meeting or interaction, you know, what do you think was most important here so that we can really make sure that we're shifting the right stuff.

And then once we shift IT, then we can turn IT. Um and I introduce three what I call reflective turns that help us essentially to kind of walk back through our latter of understanding to make sure that we're freezing the most important learning. So one of the terms is what I called story level reflection. So it's to say, what did I hear from this interaction that might adjust my story about the situation maybe IT tells me something new about the other person or or something about myself or changed the belief I had about was going on here.

That's a story level reflection then we can move from our story to our steps um and to say, aren't given what I heard and and how IT changed my story, what steps can I take? Maybe I want to follow up, maybe want to thank the person, maybe want to apologize, maybe want to repair, maybe want to double down whatever steps that is. And then the third is what I call our stuff, stuff level reflection.

That's the deeper stuff that I was talking about earlier, the assumptions, the biases, the world views, the ways of being to say there anything I heard here that really might have bearing on my deeper stuff, the ways in which I Operate in the world. That's not always the case. But when we give ourself a chance to ask that question, that some where some of the deepest growth happens.

And so these three terms that we take can be quick. We can just do IT in the shower. We can take a walk and think them through.

We can write IT down in our journal. We can do IT with a friend or coach or therapies. There's a whole bunch of different ways to make these terms.

But these three turns are, in my view, are the ways that we squeeze the most learning out of an interaction with someone. But I always say it's important to not just squeak the learning out and walk away. It's really important to reconnect um and I think this is very, very infrequently done and I think it's a rare experience that people have to get reconnected with.

But this is really about going back to the other person and saying to them, here's what I learned from you, here's what I heard, here's what I took away, here's going to do about IT, maybe here's what i'm not going to do about IT and here's why. Here's how I grew from IT. And by the way, you know any reaction to that? Has that strike you? Has that line up to what you were hoping I would take away? And also, by the way, thank you um because you took the time to do that, you didn't have to do that.

And that kind of closing the loop, that reconnecting, I think has so many benefits that IT sends a message to the other person how much we value them. He does give them the chance to to modify our nuance, what we took away. And I think maybe most importantly, IT keeps the lines of communication open for the future because they know that when we asked them a question, we're not wasting their time. We're actually valuing their time so much that we're coming back and letting them know how we learned from them here.

Are there one or two ways that the folks are listening, many of whom either work on teams or lead teams, lead organizations. What are two ways to kind of scale this approach, to bring him back and start to kind of fill their organization with this kind of approach, this kind of mindset?

absolutely. So if we want to build this kind of learning orientation, the ability to tap into the collective genius of your team or of your organization, there are a few different levels. Um mean one is obviously keep ability building um and so having people um read read the book, go through training those kinds of things, I think I think this is a muscle.

I think it's a skill set. And so actually investing in that kind of capability building is one a second one that I think is really important is the role, the leader, the leader modeling this kind of work and know if you had to start anywhere in organization, I would start, I would start with people, informal leadership positions, even though I think everyone has a role in exerting leadership. The people who are positions of authority do to have a special role in setting the tone, in demonstrating that is okay, to be uncertain.

In fact, it's good to be curious. In fact, it's good to ask people questions and process that. Uh and so making sure that leaders are Operating almost in the position of learner and chief to really demonstrate that other people that sends a huge message. And then maybe just one last one I will share is um there are certain practices and we use these in my own organization.

One of them is called the two by two, where multiple times a year, everybody has a two by two meeting with anybody else that they were closer with, where they simply say that the water, two things i'm doing well, are two things I could do Better and offer the same back to them. And that ritualizes this idea of asking so that things don't build up and also is just it's kind Normalizes IT. So if there's anything that feels awwad about saying with someone what can I knew Better you're knowing that we're all doing this with each other just makes IT that much smoother.

How if you found getting people to be able to say that, is there any way you scuttled that to get them there like they're modeling IT? Or because I would imagine IT still could be tough?

Yeah I mean, we do only have tools and and templates. And so anytime somebody is two people are sitting down for two by two meeting, they don't literally have to pose that question, because the template that they fill out for each other poses that question for them.

It's literally know, what are two things jeff doing? Well, what are two things jeff can be doing Better? And people have the choice as to whether to share that writing or share that verbally. But because it's it's templates, zed, no one has to have the awkwardness to asking that question just in the water.

Just what we do. Two questions to wrap up. These are questions I ask every guess that comes on the show and the female podcasts ers. Curiosity, what is most curious of about today?

And I was just talking with my wife about this over the weekend. I really do see huge variation in the degree to which people ask questions or not and and i'm person ally very sensitive to if I had a dinner party or just you know hanging out with friends.

If someone asks me, there's some people who ask a lot of questions and there are some people who literally ask zero questions and then there's lots of variation between and I used to get you know hurt by not being asked any questions or judgmental of those people or whatever. And I just said to my wife this week, I just cared. It's like I want to understand more about what drives that variation.

Um what do I do that contributes to IT? What are the conditions? Is that a personality vary? I just really very, very curious to understand what leads people to ask more and less, more and fewer questions.

I'll tell you if you make that something that you write about or or do some work with, i'll be honestly that would be that's one of my burden curios. yes. So i'm going to be really hopeful that you're going to figure some things out there because I do puzzle over that quite a bit.

Really fascinating.

My last question for you is that, you know this book is so rich and there's so many great things in IT, I am, you know covering just a small percentage of what's there anything I haven't asked that you want to be able to speak to our leave, our relationship with.

I mean, I think I would just end with the reflection about one of the other motivations I had for reading this book at this moment time, which is I think we're living at a moment in time in our society where there is more certainly less, where there is more pressure to perform that certainty than less, when we're seeing real divides across so many different issues that I think you're pulling us apart in alienating us from each other and even maybe tearing at the threats of our our society, our democracy.

When we see someone who seems different than us, who seems other than us, who seems like the opponent or the enemy, could we ask ourselves, is there anything I can learnt from this person? What could they teach me? And and i've been experimenting this with this myself.

And as i've been doing, and especially review across lines of difference that feel particularly harsh or threatening, I ve just been struck with, there is always something I can learn. And when I do that learning, I always find more in common. And I just I I my wish for all of us is is to be asking that question and reaching across those device because I think we need IT now more than ever.

the great message to leave us with. Jeff, I can't thank you enough. It's been such a pleasure to speak with you, and it's such a terrific book.

Thank you. That means a turn. It's been greater to talk with .

you curious maze. That work is made possible through a partnership with the innovative circle and executive coaching firm for innovative leaders. A special thank you to producer in editor, rob.

Make a belly for leading the amazing behind the scenes team that makes IT all happen. Each episode, we give a shadow to something that feeding our curiosity. This week is the historical novel washington black. By esc addition, her vivid prose takes us inside the minded heart of a nineteen century black man as he forges his identity through slavery, freedom, global travel and scientific discovery. SHE shares an outsider er's perspective on an incredible and incredibly heartless period in history.