Afford Anything - [I] The Hidden Information That's Costing You Money [GREATEST HITS]

Episode Date: December 23, 2025

#672: Welcome to Greatest Hits Week — five days, five episodes from our vault, spelling out F-I-I-R-E. Today's letter I stands for Increasing Your Income. This episode originally aired in August 2024, but the strategies are more essential than ever. Jeff Wetzler, Ed.D., reveals why the people around us withhold crucial information — and how asking better questions can transform your negotiations and net worth. __________ You've mastered the art of asking for what you want — or have you? Jeff Wetzler, Ed.D., a former education executive, joins us to reveal why most of us fail to extract crucial information from the people around us. Think about it: when was the last time someone told you what they really thought about your work? Or shared that game-changing idea they'd been sitting on? Wetzler discovered four categories of information people routinely withhold — and the cost runs deeper than you might expect. We explore why people stay silent about their struggles, unpopular opinions, observations about us, and innovative ideas. The reasons range from fear to simple exhaustion, but one stands out: they don't think we want to know. Here's a startling example from Harvard Business School research: investigators planted smudges on their faces and surveyed people. Less than three percent told them about the mark that they could wipe off in one second. But when asked later, 100 percent had noticed it. If people won't share something that simple, what else are they keeping from us? Wetzler shares his Ask Approach — five steps that unlock hidden information in any negotiation or relationship. We walk through real scenarios, from salary negotiations to buying cars, showing how curiosity beats strategy every time. One mechanic story drives this home. Facing a $2,000 air conditioning repair, Wetzler asked one question: "Do you have any other creative ideas?" The mechanic paused, then offered a $75 solution that worked perfectly. That five-second question saved $1,925. We discuss practical listening techniques, including the "doorknob moment" — why therapists know the most important information comes at minute 49 of a 50-minute session. Wetzler explains why our minds process 900 words per minute while our mouths manage only 125, creating a massive information gap. The conversation includes AI's surprising role in sharpening these skills, helping us frame conversations into content, emotion, and action. Wetzler demonstrates how technology can enhance rather than replace our uniquely human ability to connect and learn from each other. Timestamps: Note: Timestamps will vary on individual listening devices based on dynamic advertising run times. The provided timestamps are approximate and may be several minutes off due to changing ad lengths. (00:00) What's at stake in asking better questions (02:33) Four categories of information people withhold (06:33) The smudge experiment reveals our silence (09:13) Why people don't tell us what they think (12:53) The Ask Approach begins with curiosity (14:48) Making it safe for truth-telling (18:53) CEOs share how to get honest feedback (22:13) Posing quality questions vs crummy questions (30:58) Listening across three channels (34:28) The doorknob moment phenomenon (37:43) How to listen better in negotiations (42:13) Reflect and reconnect strategies (44:53) Applying the Ask Approach to car buying (51:33) Working through a complete negotiation (01:02:13) Using AI to sharpen your asking skills (01:06:13) Why this approach is learnable Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today is Tuesday, December 23rd, and we are playing the second of five episodes in our five-day series on F-I-I-R-E. Welcome to the Afford- Anything podcast. I'm your host, Paula Pan, and this is Greatest Hits Week, where every day this week we play an episode from our greatest hits vault themed around the five pillars that we discuss on this show. F for Financial Psychology played yesterday, where we aired an interview with Dr. Daniel Crosby, the behavioral psychologist, behavioral finance guy, in honor of the first of the two-letter

eyes, increasing your income. Today, we're speaking with Jeff Wetzler about mastering the art of asking for more. This episode originally aired on August 20, 2024. So in honor of the first of the two-letter eyes, here is Jeff Wetzler discussing common mistakes people make and best practices when it comes to asking for what you deserve. Welcome, Jeff. Thank you. It's so great to be with you, Paula. Thank you for being here. Now, let's talk about what the stakes are.

Are we talking about haggling over five bucks at the flea market? Are we talking about hundreds of thousands of dollars in your job? To what extent when we make these big ticket asks, those happen only a few times in our lifetime. How do we prepare for that? So I think there's two things at stake when we think about asking questions, information and relationships. So I'll start with information. The people that we have around us, whether that's people we are making deals with or people we just work with every day, our clients, our investors, they all have so much information. They know things, they have

experiences, they have feedback for us, they have ideas, they have perspectives, they have interest, they have concerns. If we could actually find out the most important information that they are holding, we would make better deals together, we would make better decisions together, we would innovate, we would save money, we would save time, we'd be more creative. The problem is far too often, they actually don't tell us some of the most important information that we need to know. So one thing is information that's at stakes. The second thing that's at stake is our relationships. People want to be valued. People want to be cared about. People want to know that we're interested in them. And so by asking questions, we dramatically increase the chances that we

actually give the other person a chance to express who they are, to say something that matters to them, to let us know what they think. That relationship value is just as important as the informational value, both because relationships are an end of themselves. At the end of the day, connections between human beings, there's nothing more important. But also, the stronger our relationships, the better we're going to be as partners when we do business together. To that second component, the relational component. A lot of people think that if they know somebody well, they're able to sort of interpret them, to read their faces, their expressions, their moods. But the data actually shows otherwise. Tell us about that. So it turns out that in general,

we are much worse than we think at guessing what other people know and think and feel. So this whole problem I just talked about about information, if we could actually just guess what they're thinking, that wouldn't be a problem. But we're really bad at it. And even some of the most common conventional wisdom that tries to help people be good at this, doesn't work. So, for example, we're often told, just try putting yourself in their shoes. Well, we're not in their shoes. And so it's still a guess. And often we don't really guess right.

Or read their body language. We can read body language, but that doesn't actually tell you what's going on inside someone. Even trained TSA agents at the airport, no better than chance in terms of reading body language as well. And so even people who have been trained to figure out what's going on with someone else, it just doesn't work. A lot of us think, well, surely I could know my spouse or my partner. or my really close friend or my business partner what they must be thinking and feeling.

But it turns out we're overconfident about that too. We think that because we've been with them for so long, we must know what they're really thinking and feeling, but they're different people and they change as well. And so we're bad at guessing that. Research shows that there's only one thing that reliably allows us to know what someone else is thinking and feeling and knowing. And that's simply to ask them. But asking is easier said than done.

So let's talk then about when people are withholding information. Yeah. what kind of information do people withhold and why? And that's two questions. So we'll start with a what. Yeah. The research that I did revealed four big categories of information that the people around you may be thinking and feeling and not telling you. The first is they're concerns and struggles. So what they're dealing with, what's hard for them, what they're really going through, oftentimes people will suffer in silence in one way or another, in big ways and small ways. So one of them is, you know, their struggles. A second thing is what they really,

really think about an issue, especially if it's a controversial issue, especially if it's one where they think their own views are unpopular views, they will often hold that back. Or if they do let on to what they're really thinking about something, they are unlikely to tell you where that comes from, like what life experiences, what information, what they're really drawing on to get to that view. A third thing is people around us have all kinds of observations about us, feedback, suggestions, ideas for how we could be our best selves, how we could be better. But quite often they don't tell us that. And then the final thing is people in teams and organizations and even in communities and our lives have ideas. They have ideas for what's that new thing we could be doing? What's

that thing we could be going after? What's that pivot that we could make? Something that might even seem crazy. And oftentimes they just hold that back. And we don't find out the thing that might actually be the game-changing idea that they have. So those are the four biggest things that I have found that people around us are not telling us. I think when we put all four of those together, that's kind of like a treasure trove of information that's right under our noses that we don't find out. So let's talk specifically about number three and number four on that list because both of those in particular seem like they could have outsized ramifications in terms of allowing us to improve in our professions. If we invest, they allow us to improve as investors, as

managers, as, you know, in every realm of life. Yeah. So number three is the feedback that they have for us. There was just a fascinating study done at Harvard Business School by a researcher Nicole Abiasper and her colleagues. They planted on their face a little smudge. Sometimes it was a lipstick smear. Sometimes it was a little chocolate, sometimes a magic marker. And all they wanted to do was find out, will people tell me that I have a smudge on my face? So they did a survey where they went around in person with a clipboard asking people questions presumably about something else. But what they were really doing is guessing what fraction, what percentage of people gave them that small feedback about the smear that they could just wipe right off their face. Do you have a guess

as to how many, what fraction of people might have actually told them about that? I'm guessing 10%. It was less than 3%. Less than 3% told them that they had something that, you know, in one second they could just get rid of. Ninety seven percent of people stayed quiet. Then they said to that 97% of people, just out of curiosity, did you notice the thing on my face? A hundred percent of them noticed it. Wow. They said I noticed it. And no, you may think that that's a trivial thing, but I think to myself, if, you know, less than 3% of people are going to give us feedback about something we can just wipe right off, what percentage of people are giving us feedback about something much more high stakes? Right. You're mispronouncing my name, or you're being

confusing in this presentation, or it's not compelling what you're saying, or there's a fatal flaw in your strategy, any number of those different things. It just shows how common this withholding of feedback is. So that relates to number three. And then, and then on number four, the ideas that people have for us. I'll give you just a very small story about this. It relates to when my car broke down last year, the air conditioning died in the car. Was it summer? It was summer. It was so hot. It was ridiculous. Just like today is a really hot day that we're recording this. I went to the mechanic and I said, what is this going to cost me to fix? And he said, well, from what I can see, it's going to be at least $2,000. It might be more once I figure out what's going on. There's clearly

some leak going on towards the back of the car. And I thought to myself, what am I going to do? this is an old car, is it worth it or whatever. And then I just said to him, before I decide on this, do you have any other ideas, any creative ideas for any other way that's not going to cost me $2,000 for my air conditioner? And he stopped and he thought about it for a second. He said, well, you know, I could just shut off this one vent and you'd still have all the other vents in the car. Would you want to do that? And I said, well, how much would that be? And he said, it'd be like $75. And I said, yes, I'd like to do that, please. The car will be just fine if all the other vents are working except for one vent where the leak was. So we did that. And I don't think

he was withholding that idea from me originally. I think he just had a frame of mind, which is I want my air conditioning fix. So this is what he's got to do. But once I said to him, what are your creative ideas that gave him the space to actually draw on what he knows and came up with this idea that was, you know, was perfectly fine given how old the car was. Right. So he was sort of procedurally going through the motions. Like if customer comes in, then, quote, for precise. Right. He was technically answering the question of fixing the air conditioning. But what I actually didn't care about was fixing the air kit. I just cared that I just cared that I just didn't mean it had to be fixed in all the

traditional ways. It just meant I needed to get the thing mostly working. So it went from a narrow scope of work to a broader, how do we achieve given result? Exactly. And he had that knowledge that I never would have had of how to do that. But the question allowed me to tap into that creative idea that he had. Right. And you saved quite a lot of money.

Yeah, over $1925. Exactly. Just by one question. Right. Which took, you know, less than five seconds to ask. Yeah, the hourly rate on that is incredible. Good. Yeah. So those are the biggest things in terms of what people withhold. Do you want to talk about why? Yes, exactly. So I'm obsessed with this question as well because as a leader and manager in an organization, I've had many situations where I have said to myself, why did the person not tell me this? There was one situation I remember where I was a new manager. I was managing several hundred people. We were putting on different events. And one of the events was about to completely go off the rails at the very last minute and it was going to be very public and very problematic. And we had been planning for this thing all year long. And all year I'd been saying to the team, how's it going?

Can I help? And all I had been getting back was, I know things are pretty good, a few bumps, but we got it. And it turned out that really what was happening is all kinds of struggles that people didn't feel comfortable telling me. Finally, we got it back on track. Someone stepped in heroically. I was obsessed with this question. Why are they not telling me? And so one of the top barriers for why people don't tell you what they are really thinking and feeling is fear.

In my case, they were afraid that it was going to make them look bad, that I would get them in trouble. Maybe I would fire them, whatever. Of course, what I would have just done is rolled up my sleeve and trying to help. but they were afraid of the impact of telling me. Sometimes people are also afraid of the impact on the relationship. Is it going to put tension in the relationship? It's going to create more conflict. So this fear of the impact is a huge barrier that stops people.

That's one. The second barrier is that sometimes people are thinking something, but they just don't have the words to tell us. It might be like a gut feeling that they have in their body, but they just don't know how to put it into words. Or the words that they do have sound pretty toxic, and they know if they say it that way, it's going to make it worse. One thing that I found is that sometimes people,

brains work faster than the mouth, they just can't get the words out. I discovered that the human mind can think at 900 words per minute, but the human mouth can only get out 125 words per minute. And so any- I can get to 150. I know this because I've timed it. Yeah. You've timed it. I've timed it. New Yorkers can maybe get up to 150. But even so, if you're thinking 900 words a minute, like that means if I'm talking to, I'm hearing like 15% of what you're saying, of what you're thinking, not because you're being malicious or trying to withhold for me. It's just the math works that way. So there's a lot that people are thinking that they don't. So that's another reason. A third reason is that people sometimes just are too tired or they feel like

they don't have a time or maybe if they tell you what they're thinking, then you're going to want to have a conversation about it and deal with it. And they're just like, I'm too busy. I don't have time for this. So it just, it feels more efficient to keep quiet. And then the last reason, which I think is the most interesting reason, is that people don't tell us things because they don't realize we want to know. They don't think we're interested. They don't think that we value what they have to say. And so why bother? And so they keep, so all four of those reasons, I think, are at play for so many people. And often it's multiple of those reasons at play, which to me combines to make it more likely than not that we're going to not hear all of what they're thinking and often not

hear the most important things that they're thinking. And the fourth reason particularly makes sense in the context of, in America, it's considered rude to offer an unsolicited opinion. Right. Right. That's not true across all cultures, but I've noticed that to be true in American And there's also messages that our culture sends to certain subgroups as well. So if you are in a group of people that has gotten the message over and over again, it's not your place to speak, your opinion is not valued, it's not safe to say what you really think, then that particular barrier is going to really apply to you even more. What we've established so far is what's at stake, which is potentially a lot of money,

both in terms of savings that you're not getting and raises that you're not getting. We've talked about what people are withholding. we've talked about why people are withholding it. How do we address this? How do we ask a better question? Yes. So asking a better question starts with curiosity. Even before we get to, what are the words of the question? We actually have to be genuinely curious to learn from the other person. Otherwise, it will feel like a gimmick. It won't work. People will see through it. But on the flip side, when we're genuinely curious, people sense that from us. We give off a certain energy and that energy makes people want to share more with us. And so in this approach that I call the ask approach, step one is called choose curiosity. And I say choose curiosity because I believe that curiosity is not just a trait that some people have and other people don't have. It's not just a state of mind that we might be in. It's an actual choice. And we can decide to be curious. That choice

is always available to us. And what it means to make the choice to be curious is really to center in our minds one question, which is what can I learn from this person? So when I'm sitting across from you or anyone else or someone I'm negotiating with, instead of thinking to myself, how can I get the most out of them, or how can I show them that I'm right and they're wrong, or any number of things, I center the intention of what can I learn from this person? And that changes everything. It quiets down all the other kinds of voices. And then it starts to give rise to other questions. Like, huh, what do they know? What ideas do they have? What might they have been through? What are they concerned about? What feedback do they have for me? So it starts with getting curious.

Okay. So let's talk about in the context of you are applying for a job. Yes. You are meeting with your department head or you're meeting with HR. You're in the process of beginning a salary negotiation. Yes. What you want, the desired outcome, is the highest possible salary. But the approach, as I'm understanding it from you, is start with that curiosity. What is it that they're looking for within this context, within this new relationship that is forming?

Yeah. And so in that particular context, I'd be thinking to myself, what is this person up against? What matters to them? So, for example, if I'm negotiating with a manager, I might be curious about how much discretion do they actually have on the salary to get because they may or may not be the decision maker. They may be having to work within a salary frame related to other positions in the same organization, but they may have other things that I may also be curious about what else

could they give to. So maybe it's not just salary. Maybe there's stock options. Maybe there's a bonus. Maybe there's tuition reimbursement. Maybe there's relocation. Maybe there's a title that I really value. And so I can start to get curious beyond.

just how do I get the most money for my salary out of this person to be thinking what are all the kinds of value that they have? And also, what are they up against and what matters to them? They may also be constrained about, you know, I can't do this, this budget year, but once the new budget year comes, a new salary schedule up. And so if I step away from just trying to get the most salary right away and really understand what's going on for them, and also if I can get curious about what's the value that they most want for me as an employee, maybe they want sales, maybe they want new relationships. Maybe we want other different kinds of things. If I can really understand what they need and what they want, then what I can bring to the conversation

is also a demonstration of that value as well. And so before I would really push for any kind of salary, I want to really understand what the world looks like from their perspective and what I look like from their perspective. And that can open up all kinds of new possibilities and new options, including salary, but far beyond salary too. Right. What if this is happening by email? It's harder to express curiosity by email. Definitely. I mean, the first thing I would say if this is happening by email is I would say, can we have a phone call? Or can we get on the video or something like that to do that. I've never been involved in a salary negotiation that can only happen by email. And so I think most of the time people recognize this is an

important enough conversation to let's actually have the conversation. Yeah. But if I was restricted to email, I'd be asking some of those questions in email as well. I once had a negotiation. It was a contractor that I was bringing on. He wanted to do the entire thing asynchronously. Did you tell you why he wanted to do any synchronously? He is such a devotee of the concept of asynchrony, I think there was a little bit of proof of concept in it for him. He also is in a very different time zone. So there is that. So he lives in Europe.

And so living in Europe, there's a little bit of an overlap. So that was part of it as well. Yeah, that makes sense. So anyways, it starts with curiosity. The second thing before we pose the questions, I call Make It Safe. And this is a recognition that even if I'm curious to learn from you, if you don't feel safe, telling me your full truth, if you don't feel comfortable telling it to me, I'm probably not going to hear the most important things that you have to say. And so make it safe is really about lowering

those barriers, making it feel easier, more comfortable, more appealing for people to tell you what they really think and feel. And there's a few different ways to do that. One is creating connection with the other person. Some of that is, do we know each other as human beings? Do we have a level of trust? And if we don't, we need to do that well before we're trying to negotiate or learn from the other person. The deeper our prior relationship is, the deeper our prior relationship is, the deeper our prior connection is, the better. But then there's also the question of when and where and how do we create connection in the actual moment of the conversation. And one of the things I learned in the research for the book from talking to CEOs of big companies is that where and when you have

the conversation truly matters. And I went to interview CEOs because they are notorious for not getting the truth from people. People tell CEOs what they think the CEO wants to hear, what they think is going to make them look good in the eyes of the CEO. So I said to these CEOs of big companies like craft in Medtronic. I said, how did you get the truth out of people? Especially people who are multiple layers away from you who might feel really intimidated by you. One of the common things that they said was, if I really want to learn from someone, I'm not going to drag them into the CEO office when it's convenient for me, make them sit across the big CEO desk from me and assume they're going to feel comfortable telling me the truth. They're just going to be too

intimidated. I'm going to go where they want to go. We're going to have lunch somewhere where they want to have lunch. I'm going to go to the factory floor. I'm going to go on a ride along on a sales call. We're going to take a walk. And there was no single answer other than wherever the other person feels more comfortable, even if it's not what I would have preferred. And so if you really want to learn from someone else, part of it is create connection where they want to do it, when they want to do it, when they have the time and space to do it, because they will feel safer. They will feel more comfortable telling you what's really important to them. That's part of making it safe. Another part of making it safe is also opening up

first. Like if we want the other person to tell us what matters to them, it can help if we open up first. If we say, even just to say, let me tell you, here's why I'm asking you the question. I'm asking you because I actually really care what you think, or I want this deal to work for you, too, or I don't know enough, and I think you know a lot more. Even things like that can help reveal our agenda, so they're not guessing and they're not suspicious of our agenda. And the more we can expose, the more vulnerable we can be, the safer it feels for the other person to do the same thing as well. Up until now, we've been talking about the case of a salary negotiation, but let's flip that. We are selling a couch on Facebook marketplace. Yes. In a context

like that, how can you develop rapport or camaraderie or, you know, how do you make it safe when it's such a brief interaction? Yeah, it's just such a momentary transaction. I think there is a certain point where if it's just such a momentary transaction, it may be more efficient and faster to simply just have the transaction and do it. Like if you're on a store and you're buying something and you're not negotiating, you're just going to do the transaction. But let's say it's a couch that we're trying to sell and it means something to us and it's not like we're trying to get 50 bucks for the couch. But we're trying to. Yeah, yeah, you're selling a, it's an $800 couch. It's been in our family for years or something like that. I think in that case, I would

probably do the same thing and say to the other person, hey, can we have a little bit of a conversation? This couch means something to me and I'd love to know who you are and what you're thinking and why it's valuable to you. And there's, again, a whole set of things that might create value in the transaction other than the cost of the couch. For example, would it make a difference to you if there was flexibility as to when you could come pick it up? Or would it make a difference to you if we delivered it for you, where you planning to put it? Is there something about recovering it that would matter to you? Or even just like, tell me who's going to be on it. And I want to share with you a little bit about the story of the couch. And can I learn something about what you care

about that could connect the story of the couch to something that you value that might actually make it even more valuable in your eyes? And so if it was something as meaningful as, you know, not just a $50 couch, those would be some things I'd be wanted to do, partially because I would be learning things that might help me make a better deal for the person. And that deal might not just be a financial deal, but the total value for me and for them. But honestly, partly as a human being in the world to say, now I get to know someone else. And that's valuable too. And by the way, you just never know who you're going to meet and who they are and where else that might go as well. We've talked about creating curiosity and choosing curiosity and making it safe. Yes.

Number three is the heart of the ask approach. It's called pose quality questions. I define a quality question very simply as a question that helps us learn something important. from someone else. And I distinguish a quality question from what I call a crummy question. A crummy question. Yeah. Which I love the sound of a crummy question. Yes. And there's all kinds of things that I think pass for questions that are really crummy questions. Things that are clumsy, like we're asking three questions in a row and the other person doesn't know. Or my favorite clumsy question is, you know, I might be explaining something to you. And then I say, isn't that right? And it's very difficult for you to say, well, no, I mean, the question almost implies. Yeah, it's leading.

And then there's also sneaky questions that try to, you know, manipulate you like the way a lawyer would do to get someone to admit that they're guilty. And there's attack questions like, why would you ever think that? So there's all kinds of questions that I would say are all crummy questions. A quality question, I think of almost in the same way that I think a surgeon might think of their scalpel and all the other tools that they use. There's a specific question you can get at depending on what you need to do. And most of us have never been taught the range or the taxonomy of quality questions that we

can be asking, but there is a range. I'll give you a couple examples. One of my favorite quality questions that people often overlook asking is simply the question of requesting reactions. So to do that is to simply say, like, I'm sharing something with you, maybe giving some feedback or some direction or explanation. And then I pause and I just say to you, how does that sit with you? What's your reaction to that?

How does that land with you? What does that make you think? What might I be missing? Any one of those questions is far more likely to reveal what you actually think of my thinking of what I have to say than if I just say it and then I go on or if I say it and assume that you're just going to tell me, because for all the reasons we talked about earlier, people may not feel safe to tell you they're thinking, they're thinking about your thinking or their reactions. So by requesting reactions, you open that way up. That's one. A second one that I think

is really relevant to negotiations, for example, or deal making, is just trying to understand what is the concern or interest underneath someone's position. So if someone says, I want to sell it for this amount, or I want to do this on this day, or I want us to do X, Y, Z, rather than coming back and saying, let's just meet in the middle, or how about this, the question of, tell me why that's important to you, what are you trying to solve for? What's the interest that you have behind that? What's the concern that you're trying to address? There's a classic story in the world of negotiation. You may have heard this. It's in the kind of fundamental book, the Bible of negotiation, which is the book called Getting to Yes.

By William Yerry. Yeah, by William Yeri and Roger Fisher and Bruce Patton. It's about two siblings who are arguing over an orange. It's the last orange that's left in the kitchen. And they each want the orange and they're fighting and they're pulling and they're tugging. And finally the parent says, all right, I'm just going to have to cut the orange in half. So the parent cuts the orange and half of the orange. The brother takes his half of the orange and he takes the meat of the orange, the flesh of the orange in the middle and he eats it and then he throws away the rind. The sister, on the other hand, takes the rind and use it to zest it to make a cake and throws away the flesh. And so here both siblings have gotten

half of what they could have gotten. If only they had just said to the other, why do you want the arch? What do you plan to do with it? They could have given the entire zest to the sister and the entire flesh to the brother, and they would have literally had twice as much value. And I think that comes up all of the time when we are making deals with people. If we can understand why it's important to them, what they're solving for, then we can put ourselves on the same side of the table. We can get far more creative, but it all comes down to being curious, making it safe so that they can actually tell us what they really care about, and then asking why, how come, what matters to you?

Perfect. So pose quality questions. Pose quality questions. That's number three. Not crummy questions. Not crummy questions. Yeah. And really the quality questions are all about will they help with learn something important from the other person. All right. Choose curiosity, make it safe, pose quality questions. Yes. That's the first three steps. There's two more. We're going to take a break right now to hear from the sponsors who allow us to bring you this at no cost to you. And when we come back, we'll hear the next two steps of the ask approach. Reality says the odds are stacked against us.

I think our U.S. men's national team can ever raise the world's biggest trophy. Be the first soccer team to beat them at football. Never. But here's the thing about us. Refusing to accept reality is kind of our thing. Being unrealistic, that's not a flaw. It's a force. It's fuel.

Because if you want to be great and make history, never chase reality. Join U.S. Soccer Insiders today. Be part of the journey. Welcome back. So far, we've covered three out of five steps. We've covered choose curiosity, make it safe, pose quality questions. What happens next? Once we pose the quality question, it all comes down to how well we listen. Most of us think we're far better listeners than we really are. 96% of people think they're good listeners. But in general, we retain half of what someone else is telling us. we actually really don't listen particularly well.

In the research for the book, I also interviewed professional listeners, people like journalists, people like psychotherapists who listen for a living. I learned a lot from them. One of the journalists that I interviewed was an award-winning journalist, Jenny West Anderson. She would tell me that when she interviews subjects for her reporting, she will try to record the interviews, and then she will listen to it again afterwards. And then she'll listen a second time, a third time, a fourth time. And she said, every time I listen again, I hear something.

something so important that they said that I literally did not hear the first time or the second time or the third time. And I think to myself, if someone as trained a listener as Jenny was misses all of this, how much must we be missing as mere mortals who just listen the first time and then keep moving on with our day? We can get so much better at listening than we typically are. Many of us, myself included, are inclined to listen for the facts that someone is saying the logic, the claims, the arguments, the propositions, that's all the content that they're saying. And what I discovered is that that's only one third of what we really need to be listening for. There's two other pieces to listen for. The second is the emotion. Are they feeling frustrated?

Are they feeling angry? Are they feeling happy? Are they feeling that they wish that they could get something? Are they feeling lonely? Whatever it may be, there's the emotions that they're expressing. There's the emotions that they're displaying. And sometimes quite often, that's actually more important than the facts of what they're saying. So that's second piece. And the third piece is the actions that they're taking? Are they agreeing with us? Are they pushing back? Are they offering support? Are they making requests? When people are interacting with us, they're not just saying things and displaying emotions. They're actually taking actions, literally in the interaction with us as well. And we can learn to listen for or observe those actions. When we can pay attention to the content

and the emotion and the actions, I think it's kind of like a music aficionado who can listen for the percussion and the harmony and the vocals and many other things. And they could isolate each one if they wanted to. But when they put it together, it's such a rich or more complex experience they have. The same as with human beings. We can learn to listen through these different channels and hear so much more. And there's ways that we can train ourselves to do this. One of the most powerful ways. And I would say, like, if you listen to this podcast and there's nothing else you take away except for this one thing, it is simply to paraphrase back what someone is saying to you and check if you heard them right. So it's just to say, hey, I think this is what

you're saying, did I get that right? Or let me just say it back to you and what am I missing what you have to say. I think it's like a magic listening move to make. It has many benefits. One is that you actually hear the better. I would say at least half the time when I try that, I'll say to someone. So this is what I think you said, did I get that right or what I miss? At least half the time, they'll say, that's not exactly what I meant. And they correct me. Or they say, that is what I said, but now that you say it back to me, there's something more I want to tell you as well. So you just get much better information. But the second thing is, And I think this is really powerful if you're in a negotiation, especially if it's getting heated or tense.

It slows the conversation down. Instead of, you know, you say your thing and I haggle back and you got whatever, if I just say, before we keep going, let me just check. Is this what you're saying about what you want and why you want it? It just changes the entire energy and tempo of a conversation. It gives both people a little bit of space to think and just reset themselves. But the third reason is it also demonstrates to the other person that we care about them. We care enough about understanding them and who they are and what they're saying, that we're taking

our own time, using our own words to check. And that sends a really powerful message that I think also just creates a different dynamic in a discussion, negotiation, a collaboration. So that is the magic listening strategy. And there's lots of research that shows that teams who do that are more effective and productive together, when they just stop and check if they've understood each other. Because so often we just say things that are slightly vague or ambiguous or can be interpreted in different ways.

And by checking, we just continually put ourselves back on the same page with each other. Beyond paraphrasing what the person said and reflecting it back to them, beyond that, are there any other actionable exercises that the people who are listening to this can use as they're practicing the skill of becoming better listeners? Absolutely. So I mentioned for this, I also interviewed psychotherapists who are professional listeners. One of the things that they consistently talked about was this thing called the doorknob moment. The doorknob moment is right at the end of a therapy session. So if a therapy session is like 50 minutes, this is like minute 49 and 45 seconds, as the patient is getting up, puts their hand on the doorknob, about to leave.

Invariably, that's when the most important thing comes out of their mouth. That's when they say, I'm thinking about leaving my spouse or, you know, I'm getting investigated by the government or some other major thing. This sounds like high drama on a television show. Totally. Right? And the therapist is thinking, we just spent. nearly an hour together. You didn't tell me any of this. And now you're dropping this right when you're handed on the doorknob as you're leaving. And what that indicates is people often are

not going to tell us the most important thing right away. Maybe they didn't say it to their therapist because they were working up the courage to say it. Or maybe they were waiting to see how their therapists responded to something that seemed lower stakes first. Or maybe they were just, you know, they're putting the thoughts together in their mind or who knows what. But when we are having a conversation with someone and asking them a question, we can't assume that the first answer that they give us is the real answer or even the most important answer. It may be hidden behind the first thing that they say it to us. And so the actionable strategy is simply when someone says something to us, I call it pull the thread. Just say to them, interesting. Say more about that.

Or what else? Tell me more. Any other thoughts about that? Sometimes when I'm with people on my own team and they're sharing a suggestion to me or naming a concern. I'll say, thank you, what else? And something else will come out that's even more interesting. And then again, and sometimes I will even say to them, just so you know, I'm going to keep asking you, what else, until you tell me, that's all I got. And then I'll say, thank you. We're good. But the more I ask, the more interesting and important the ideas are that come out. So the strategy, just pull the thread. You can do that by saying, say more about that, or what else? Hmm. So tell me more about that. What else? Exactly. Well, so those are just a couple of strategies for listening. There are other strategies. One of the other ones is simply, this is maybe the simplest one of all, is to keep your mouth shut. So often during a conversation, if there's a momentary silence, many of us feel uncomfortable with that. We jump in. We quickly fill the silence. And when we do that, we cut off the ability to continue to hear from the other person. But if we just let that silence be, it could even be two or three seconds of silence. And it may feel,

slightly uncomfortable if you're someone who doesn't like any silence. Often that gives the other person more time to think, maybe more time to work up the courage to say what they really have to say, more of a signal that you really care about them because you're willing to wait. So that would be another listening strategy I would recommend. And then the one that I would say to avoid is something called BS listening. It stands from back to self-listening. That's when someone is telling you something that's important to them or about them or telling a story. And then you immediately say, that reminds me of this other thing that I did or that I want to tell you or that I have that I want to share with you. You're bringing it back to yourself.

And that's a BS listening strategy because you're immediately sending the message to the other person. I don't really want to hear anything more from you. I just want to tell you. And I'm not saying you should never share anything or related it back to yourself. But if you're someone who has the tendency to bring it back to yourself fast, my challenge to you is ask a follow-up question or a couple of follow-up questions before you bring it back to yourself. And you'll be amazed what else you hear. What's interesting about that is that oftentimes people will say that by virtue of relating a story back, you're creating connection. You can create connection.

It's true. And so that's why I say, don't stop yourself eventually from sharing that story back. Ask a couple more follow-up questions to learn more before you share that story back. And you'll find out more and you'll demonstrate that care to the other person as well. And sometimes they will be more interested in your story too if you've given them a chance to share some things about themselves. Right. A lot of podcasters, I notice, often jump in and tell stories about themselves. And my style on my podcast, as anyone who's listened to this for a while knows,

is I shut up and let the guest talk. Well, you're modeling that listening strategy. And you are a professional listener and question asker as well. And so I'm impressed by the questions that you're asking. Oh, thank you. Thank you. Flattery will get you everywhere. Flattery is also a negotiation tactic.

That is true. It is true. It is true. Should we tell about the final step? Yes. So the final step, basically it's like, okay, now, once you've asked you, the question, once you've listened, what do you do with what you've heard? How do you process what you've heard in a way that actually tells you what you can change, what you can learn,

how you can grow, what actions can you take? And that all comes down to reflection. Reflection is how we take the experiences that we have. We convert them to insights and ideas and convert those insights and ideas into actions. If we don't do that, we're just walk around the world having experience after experience, but not actually getting the meaning from those experiences. And so this final step is called reflect and reconnect. I do think that sometimes people think of reflection as something that's hard to do. It's not very practical. I might have to like go meditate to reflect, but it can be simple and practical. I have a strategy I call sift it and turn it. And so the sift it part is just to say, if I've had a conversation and someone's told me

10 things, what are the two or three most important things that they've told me? And what can I release of the rest of them? Because not everything we hear from someone is equally important. But if we just take a moment and say, what was really most important? Oh, when they told me the thing that's most important to them, that they're in a rush, that they're trying to save time, that can help me know when I think about what I want to come back to them with, for example, in a negotiation, that's a really important one to do. So sift it. Sometimes I say it can be helpful to sift it with a help from someone else, a friend, a colleague, a coach, because sometimes we can sift out the wrong things, you know, through our biases, but if we

have someone helping us, we reduce the chances of throwing out the wrong things. Once we've sifted it, then we turn it over in our minds. And I say there's three turns to make. The first turn is this turn of how does what I heard help me update my story about the other person. Now I know what they care about or my story about myself or my story about the situation of what's going on here in the, you know, in this situation. The second turn is simply based on that, what steps should I take? What actions can I take? Maybe I want to make a different offer. Maybe I want to expand my offer. Maybe I want to apologize. Maybe I want to walk away. Maybe I want to, who knows what it is. But what steps can I take? And the third one is the deepest one. This is all about

our stuff, kind of our deeper assumptions, our biases, our ways of being. in the world. Is there anything I heard from the person that would shed light on who I am and how I can grow more deeply on my stuff? So we turn it for our stories, our steps, our stuff. That's the sifting it and turning it to really squeeze the most learning out that we can out of a conversation. But it's not enough to just take it away for ourselves. This is why it's called reflect and reconnect. So the reconnect is going back to the other person and saying to the other person, thank you for telling me all that and for sharing and taking the time to do that. and if it felt uncomfortable for taking the risk to do that.

And here's what I took away from our conversation. And here's how it changed my own thinking. And here's what I plan to do about that. And by the ways, there's something different you were hoping I would learn from the conversation as well. And when we close that loop, which I think is very rare, it lets the other person know how much we value them, how much, how powerful they are in the sense of how they've impacted us and that they didn't waste their time.

And I think it really increases the chances that they're going to want to continue to share with us over time because we've learned. let them know how important it was to us. Can you elaborate on the stuff part of it? Because of the three Ss, that was the one I don't think I quite followed. Yeah. So maybe I can share a story to elaborate it. Perfect.

So there was a time on my team when I was asking somebody to take on a certain project. And they said no. My initial, incurious reaction was, how dare they say no? And don't they know how hard I'm working and how hard everyone else is working? And we all roll up our sleeves and aren't they committed to the mission and, you know, all those different kinds of things. Once I got myself back to a place of being curious, I, with the help of, by the way, of my partner, Alon, who said to me, you know, maybe you're making some assumptions here. Maybe you need to go back to what can you learn

from this person? I asked the question, how come? And what I discovered from the other person is that they were taking on a different project that I was unaware of that I too would have wanted them to be doing instead of the thing that I asked them to do. And so when I started to reflect on that, you know, I can reflect on, it changed my story because my story was no longer this person is uncooperative or not a team player or that kind of thing. It changed my steps because it led me to ask somebody else to take on the project instead of asking this person to this project. But when I reflected on my stuff, I said to myself, how come I jump so quickly to the place

that this person is not a team player? What was it about my own assumptions about how people should relate? Maybe I just was being a little bit power hungry. Then just assuming when I asked someone to do it, they're going to do that. Maybe I'm actually being overworking myself because I'm so exhausted that I'll take on anything that someone says, and here's someone who's actually responding differently and not taking on everything. And it got me worked up, but what is it about me that got me so worked up when someone said no? And so those are some of the deeper stuff questions that I can ask myself to say, you know,

maybe there's something key for me to learn and grow from as well. And in fact, that person could teach me something to say that when I'm doing something else and someone else to me something, I don't just jump. I actually, you know, stay focused on what I'm doing. Now, of course, maybe they could have said, here's why I'm not doing it. And so there's coaching that could go in both directions. But there's also something deeper for me to sit with it as well. So would it be accurate then to say that story and steps are more outward facing? It's how you relate to the other person. And then the stuff part is more inward facing. I love that. And I think you could also add to that story and steps are more about the situation in this moment. And stuff is more

enduring. It's about some of the things that have accumulated in me over time as well. Let's apply this again to you're negotiating for a car. Yes. Right. It's not as deep as you're getting a job because that's a prolonged relationship, a multi-year relationship that you're just beginning. And it's not as momentary and transactional as selling a couch on Facebook marketplace. Yes. This is somewhere in the middle. Let's say it's a prolonged car negotiation that maybe lasts for a week or something like that. Can you walk through how the five steps of the ask approach would apply to a situation like that? Yeah, let's do it together. Okay, perfect. So, and I did buy a car about nine months ago. Finally, they are conditioning. She came broke again. And I had to,

you know, I had to ultimately get rid of that car. And I actually had to get a car. What did you get? I got a RAV4 prime. It goes part of the time on electric and then part of the time on hybrid. Oh, nice. Yeah, I'm really happy with it. Oh, fantastic. Yes. That was a negotiation, too, between me and my wife. And that was what we landed on. And it worked out really well. Nice. So let's say I'm trying to buy a car. Let's go to first of all, choose curiosity. what are all the things that I could be curious about from the person who's selling me the car. I mean, maybe let's just do this together. Okay.

I'm selling you the car. You're selling you the car. So what are all the things that I could be curious about that you might care about in the context of making me the sale of the car? I might be curious, for example, does it matter to you what time of the month we're in? Because maybe at the end of the month you're going to hit a sales quota or something like that. And so is there something about that? It might not be curious about how competitive it is to sell the car. Like if I don't buy it, are they going to be able to sell to somebody else tomorrow?

Or if I don't buy it, it's going to sit on their lot for a long time? I could be curious about who is this person? Is this the person who has the final decision making? Or is this the person who has to get authorization from five other people? Is this the person who is new and trying to kind of prove themselves and get another sale going or that kind of thing? Do they have any incentives, the manufacturer of the car, to move this car? Those are a set of different things that I could be curious. And if I just came in and I said, how much is the car and I decided do I pay it or not?

And I wasn't curious about all those things. I think I'm missing a whole bunch of degrees of freedom in doing that. If I'm trying to make it safe in the conversation, I think I am trying to increase the degree to which you feel comfortable telling me some of those things as well. And so I might be asking you some questions or let me just say this. I might be saying to you like, I want to get this car, but I also want this to be a good deal for you. So what do you care about? Do you care if I buy it or if I finance it? Do you care if I'm getting it now or if I waited two weeks?

Would that make any difference to you? Do you care if I get this particular one? And I'm saying to you, I'm asking you this because I want this to work for you, too. And I don't know enough about what matters to you in doing this. And so I'm trying to encourage you to feel more comfortable sharing those kinds of things with me. Let me pause for a second. Just say, like, as the person is selling me in the car, what does this all make you think? And what reactions are you having?

Hmm. Okay. Let's assume that I work at a car dealership. I've been there for two and a half years. I was recently passed over for a promotion. I'm a little bit salty about it. There's another round of promotions that's coming up at year end, but that's not for another seven months. So it's sort of on the horizon, but it's not imminently on the horizon. I have sales quotas at the end of the month that I need to hit. I don't have any specific incentives from a manufacturer. Yes. I am generally considered sort of a mid-level salesperson within this company. I'm not the best. I'm not the worst. Yes. And I'd like to try to be better, but also I'm a little bit peeved about the new supervisor

who just came in. So I have like mixed feelings about my job generally. Now, all of this is information that you do not have. And many of those things would be valuable for me to know. Right. What could I do to make you feel more comfortable telling me that? if I were to try to make it safe for you? Well, certainly it would be unsafe for me as a car dealership employee to tell you

any of the ways in which I'm frustrated with my new supervisor, because if there's any risk that that information could go back to him, then that could cost me my job. So that's off the table right off the bat. We're under strict orders not to discuss sales quotas or timing with customers. So that's something that due to externalities would also be unsafe for me to tell you. It also just would be inappropriate for me to tell you about getting passed over for a promotion. That's not the type of thing that you share with. So a lot of this right off the bat is not something that I would share with the customer.

Yeah. So what, if anything, could I do as the customer to make you feel more comfortable than safe sharing any of that stuff? For example, what if I were to say to you, car aside, like, what's it like to work here? How do you like your job? how long you've been in the industry, and we just kind of built a little bit of a relationship. What's it like to be, you know, to be doing this? Honestly, I would probably give you some stock answers. I'd be like, oh, you know, it's, it's, I've always loved cars when I was a kid.

My dream was to work with cars, so it's nice to be around cars every day. Yeah. And if I started then open up myself and tell you a story, you know, I also thought about being in the car industry and that I ended up taking a turn and I did this. And, you know, it's pretty good, but some days are harder than others. And I'm sure every job, like, what do you like most about your job? and I just tried to get to know you a little bit. Honestly, I would still provide stock answers within that rapport.

Is there anything that you could imagine that could make you feel more comfortable or interested in opening up? You know what? Maybe the question, if you didn't have this job, what else would you be doing? Tell me more about that. I think the reason that would help me open up in this situation is because what I'm feeling is dissatisfaction with my job, but it's unsafe for me to express that, particularly to a customer. And so, imagining a hypothetical alternative scenario where I had some different job is a safe way

of exploring an idea that I at least imagine would be happier. Yes. It's an appropriate way to do so in the context of a conversation between a car salesperson and their customer. I think that's beautiful. Yeah. It also made me curious. let's say I did that and I could learn a little bit more about what was going on for you.

And I've had, by the way, plenty of experiences. I don't know if you have as well where people eventually do reveal things they probably shouldn't reveal in terms of how professionalism or those kinds of things. I might be also thinking, could I help you in any way? Could I help you be in better standing with your supervisor? What if I bought the car and then went out of my way to let your supervisor know what a great experience it was working with you? Or to let the owner of the car dealership know, what a great experience. I had and how likely I am to come back and buy the next car there or to tell my friends about it or different things like that. And is there something that might be going on for you in your

experience or that I can help you with? And would that have any value to you? Maybe the value that that has is far more than the $250 that we might be ultimately, you know, haggling about or those kinds of things as well. Right. And so part, you know, that I learned in the research for the book that the Latin root of the word curious is care. And so I think this is not often associated with a car negotiation. But if I'm still coming back and ultimately caring about you and ultimately thinking, not just how do I learn from you so I can like squeeze the last dollar off you, but I can actually be thinking like, how do I actually have you work away from this as well, feeling cared for? It's going to go better.

Get to know yourself and your roots better with ancestry DNA. Want to know where your family comes from in northern France? Maybe you'd like to see how you're genes influence certain traits like diet, fitness, and allergies. There's so much of you and your heritage to discover. Visit ancestry.ca and get started with an ancestry DNA kit today. What would be nice, actually, about a customer proactively suggesting, hey, what if I tell your supervisor about how amazing this is? Would it be helpful if I were to reach out that's the type of thing that as a car dealership salesperson, I might not proactively ask you to do.

But to hear you volunteer that would be, you know, it would signal to me, hey, great. A move like that would actually be helpful to me. And it might not even occur to you that a customer would ever do something like that or want to do something like that. But if I offer to do that and then ask you the question, to what extent would that be helpful? Or is there some other thing I could do that would be even more helpful to you?

Because I don't know your total context. you might both feel the care and learn something as well. Right. So then if we go into some of the questions, and we've been obviously starting to get at these a little bit as well, including, I think you're a good question about like, if you weren't doing this, what else you would do or whatever. Let's just start with that question.

If I were to pose that question, I would then be probably pulling the thread. Let's say that you said, well, if I wasn't doing this, I might be selling insurance or I might be this. I'd be like, huh, that's interesting. What's interesting to you about that? And what do you think the pros and cons of something like that are versus what you do? I'm almost positive that I would start to learn something about what's going on in your situation here,

especially if I wasn't just listening for the answers that you gave, but also listening for the emotion that was going on. And I say, huh, that's interesting. You know, you seem so animated when you talked about that. You seemed a little frustrated with like, what's that about? And to be able to listen and learn more about that. But then there are, I think there's more kind of simple and tactical questions I might ask. That's simply like, you know, to say, I'm actually pretty flexible about.

about when I take delivery of the car. Would it make a difference to you if we did this transaction today or if I came back next week with my wife or something like that? And let's say the person said it would be a lot better. I might say, that's interesting, how come? And I'd like to hear.

And then if they don't say it, I might say, you know, I know in some situations that's because we're at the end of the month would that make a difference to you. And I think they would probably say, yeah, that is important to me. And so I'd be asking those kinds of questions as well. And then continue to listen and also say,

you know, so I think you're saying today's better because for X, Y, Z reason, is that right? Or is there some other reason? And I'd be asking those kinds of questions, too. Even posing different alternatives and ideas and saying, so one scenario is I do this card today and this way and we finance it and another I'm not sure which one I want to do, but from your perspective, A, if you were my shoes, what would you do?

And if all of us was equal, would you prefer I do this one or that one and tell me why and how come? Is there anything else I could do from my end that would make this, you know, a better deal from your perspective, those types of things? Right. The reason that I wanted to run through a car example is because in the example of selling a couch on Facebook marketplace, it's a more or less a single issue negotiation. Right. There's the couch. Right. There's the couch. And there's maybe when do you take delivery or how do you? So, yes, it's a little bit more than just a single issue. But for the most part, it's a single issue negotiation. Whereas with a car, there are so many components to it that it's a multi-issue negotiation inside of a price. of the car, the model of the car, the way we pay for the car, all the features on the car, when we get it. Yeah, I love that point that you raised because I think that so often, even the thing that we talked about earlier, like the salary negotiation, it can seem like a

single issue thing. But when we unpack it, there's actually a lot more complexity around something that we're trying to make a deal about. And for every one of those different aspects of that complexity, even just the half dozen that we just ran through for the car, the other person has different interests and concerns and cares about different things and is up against different things for every one of those things. If it's worth it to us, if this is a meaningful enough deal or transaction or negotiation that we're doing, it's worth it to us to unpack those different pieces

and understand where they sit and what matters to them as well, because then we can get creative together and say, so you care the timing on this and I care about this model and you care about this. So let's just think together what's the best thing that we can put together that would address as many of your and my interest and concerns as possible. And now we've got two minds together thinking about maybe we should just give you the rind and I'll take the flesh and all of a sudden double the value

that we've got. Right. Okay. So we've talked through in this car how to create curiosity, how to make it safe, how to pose better questions. And then really kind of incumbent in all of that is listening. Is the listening. And so I'm listening for when this salesperson is talking about their job in their life, I'm listening for what really is beneath that, underneath that. And I'm testing that. I'm paraphrasing and I'm checking back with that. I think you're saying this. Is that right? I might be asking them to say more. I might just be staying silent and see what else they say if I don't say anything else as well, because maybe they would want to share more or maybe they will want to fill the void if I'm staying quiet as well.

So all of those things. And then finally, they're reflecting and reconnecting. And this is where in this particular context, I might say, you know what, let me just take a walk for a minute. I want to think through everything you just said. And I'd be asking myself, okay, so what did I hear from this person? Well, they told me that the timing does really matter to them. It also seems like there might be something I can do that could help them in their standing in their sales organization as well. So let me just think about that. And let me think what else. And so now I've got a picture in my mind really of what they care about. That's helping me to update my story about them and what's going on. And then I ask myself, all right, what are the steps I can take? So

maybe the step is to say, all right, what if I bought it today but took delivery next week so that you were not in a rush in prepping the car and also said, you know, by the way, I'm going to stop by the owner's desk and let them know how great this was. And if I did all, All of that, how would that seem to you for this price or that kind of thing? So it's helping me, the steps in this case, I think, are putting together the moves I would make maybe for an offer that I would make or a counteroffer that I would make for this. And then I'm asking myself, is there any deeper stuff I'm reflecting on? And I'm not sure in the case of a car situation.

Maybe there is something that I'm learning about my own life and my own career. And when this person talked about what they like or their own work, or maybe if I do ultimately get to why they don't feel good about their supervisor, I get to ask myself, huh, I wonder if there's anybody in my organization who have that same thought about me, or I wonder if there's some way in which I'm that same person in my own life as well. And so it's giving me moments just to think about that too. Right. The other part about reflecting on your own stuff is at what moments did you fall back on your tendency to become a people pleaser? What moments did you fall back on your tendency to become too aggressive? Yes. How did I show up in this interaction? Right. I love that.

I totally agree. Thank you for seeing the whole ask approach through that good scenario. a scenario that's more complex than it might seem on the surface. And I think invariably we're going to end up either saving money or making a better value for doing that. Excellent. Well, what have I? Oh, you know what? I know what I haven't asked about.

And this is the one other thing that I wanted to cover. Yes. The use of AI in assisting with this entire approach. Yes. Inside of your book, you've got these breakout boxes of how to use AI to generate better questions. So can we talk through some of those? Yeah, excellent.

We're at the very beginning of this whole AI revolution. It is taking all kinds of jobs away from people. My son is in technology and coding, and he is telling me, like, it can just take something that might have taken him 12 hours, and he can do it in two hours now because it can debug all the code, it can write code. It's just amazing. And so when I think about like, all right, if he's going from 12 hours to two hours, how many jobs are about to be taken away from AI and all those kinds of things.

But I don't think AI will ever be able to replace the most essential human things, which is our ability to learn from each other, our ability to truly connect with other people. But what I discovered is that AI can actually help us do that better. AI can help us get even more curious. So, for example, let's say that you are feeling just the same way I was in that story I told you about my coworker who didn't take something on. You're feeling really righteous or really certain and you put into AI. I can't believe anyone would vote for this particular politician and they're so crazy and this and this and then you're just simply right at the end, what might I be missing? or you're saying my business partner wants to grow in these directions.

I think they're crazy. We need to work on our quality instead of growing, whatever. It might be, what might I be missing? Just that question, what might I be missing? You put that into whatever your favorite chatbot is, and all of a sudden, it will tell you what you might be missing. It will give you tremendous, like all these different angles that you never thought about. And it's not to say that you're wrong.

It's just to say there might be other stories. There might be other truths to what's happening. And it can implant question marks in your own mind and help you loosen the grip of your own story on your certainty to a point where you can start to get more curious. AI can also help you literally to generate better questions. If you're, let's say, in an argument with someone or in a negotiation with someone, and you say to them, here's the situation, what are six questions I could be asking the other person and this?

It will generate questions. You could ask 20 questions. It'll generate as many as you want. And they won't all be perfect, high quality questions, but I can almost guarantee you there will be two or three questions that you never thought to ask that it's going to help you to ask. And so it can literally just help you ask better questions. They're going to open up new insights, new possibilities, new degrees of freedom in a situation. So it's your brainstorming buddy. It's basically your brainstorming body for questions. It can even help you listen better.

This was the one that I was most surprised by. You can record a conversation, obviously, on, you know, Zoom or any video platform, and you can get a transcript instantly of the conversation. You can take that transcript and just feed it right into AI. You can even feed the recording right into AI and say to the A.I. Can you help me listen for what did the other person say? And you can ask it to listen through the three channels that we talked about. You can say, can you summarize the key points that the other person made in the conversation, that's content. You can also say to AI and now tell me what were the emotions that the other person expressed or displayed in the conversation? And it will give you its read on that. And you can say, what actions did the person take in the conversation?

And it will let you know what actions it saw the person take. Not to say that it's perfect, but it's a way to calibrate it against your own. And to see, what did you notice? What did AI notice? What did you miss? And it's a great way to train yourself to listen through those three channels. And also in any given situation, just hear better in the first place. It's only going to get more and more interesting with AI, but already with where the technology is, it can really help you build your own muscles at the ask approach. With the last question, what actions did the person take within the span of the conversation? Yes. What do you mean by actions? Yeah, it might say, for example, the other person was

raising objections. That's an action. The content of the objections is what the content is. but the action is they're raising objections or the other person agreed to three action steps or the other person gave reasons for why they didn't do something, which we might call make excuses, but you could just say the action is that they gave reasons for why they didn't or the other person defended their actions against your critique. When we look at the other person's talk through the lens of what actions, those are the kinds of things that we could say. That makes sense. So the other person defended themselves from your critique is the action. And then the content of that defense is the content.

Exactly. Right. And so it sounds to me like what AI can be really useful for is allowing you to frame a conversation into these different groupings, these different boxes. And then train yourself on each one of these things to really tune your listening. Right. Which actually solves the question. You know, I've heard some people say, well, isn't AI going to make us lazier thinkers because of the fact that we can outsource our brainstorming now? Right.

But what I'm hearing you say is it actually can sharpen our things. It can sharpen. It can be, yeah. I mean, I think some kinds of technology do make us lazier, like the GPS that we have on our phones. I know myself, I don't have a good sense of direction. I don't really know where I'm going because I'm just following my phone. But if I can use AI to actually help me do the uniquely human thing better, then it's actually not degrading my human capabilities, but strengthening them. Can AI be used for, you know, we talked about there's story, there's steps, and then there's your own internal stuff.

Yes. Can you train AI to help you solve? reflect in that regard? It's a great question. I have not tried. I'm not sure. My wife tells AI her dreams and asks AI to interpret her dreams. Wow.

And she loves the interpretations that she gets back from AI. And she will even say, give me a Freudian interpretation. Now give me a youngian interpretation. Now what would Carl Rogers say about this dream? I mean, it's so interesting. So I suspect that we probably could ask AI to help us reflect on our stuff. And now that you've said that, I'm going to try it. Oh, all right.

Try it and let us know. Yes, I totally will. Yeah, report back. Let us know how that goes. Yeah, yeah. Thank you for that. idea. Oh, excellent. Well, thank you, Jeff, for spending this time with us. Is there anything that I have not asked about? You have asked so many good questions. I think the one thing I would just

underscore for people is this is really learnable. These are a set of very powerful human practices that I believe anyone can learn. I think we actually all have it innately in us because we all were kids once and kids are so naturally curious. Sometimes school and society can beat that out of us, but it's still deep in there. And so in many ways, I think this is reawakening ourselves to the curiosity and question asking that we all started with and then just some simple ways that we can strengthen these muscles, individually, inside of teams and inside of organizations. Excellent. Well, thank you again. Thank you so much for having me. I really enjoy the conversation.

Thank you so much to Jeff. And thanks to all of you for being part of the Afford Anything community. This is our five-day special series on F-I-R-E. You just finished listening to Jeff Wetzler, about negotiations that's for the letter i increasing your income tune in tomorrow christmas eve where we talk about the second letter i investing this is the afford anything podcast i'm paula pant and i'll meet you in tomorrow's episode