High Performance Mindset | Learn from World-Class Leaders, Consultants, Athletes & Coaches about Mindset - 202: Authentic Communication for Quiet Leaders with Tom Yorton, Founder & CEO Shyne Advisors, LLC.

Episode Date: August 20, 2018

Tom is a speaker, author and entrepreneur who helps leaders turn their communication “shortcomings” into competitive advantage. Tom’s entire career has been about identifying, reaching and winning over audiences.  In his first career, he did that first as an advertising executive with Ogilvy, Grey and Hal Riney, and as a marketing VP for Sears and 3Com.  In Tom’s second career as CEO of Second City Works, the B2B arm of the famous Second City comedy theatre, he got whole new perspective on winning audiences.  There, he turned the company’s corporate entertainment side hustle into a groundbreaking communications and executive education consultancy.  Over Tom’s 14-year tenure, he and his team used comedy and improvisation to help tens of thousands of leaders improve creativity, communication and collaboration.  He also co-wrote the top selling leadership book: Yes, And How Improvisation Reverses “No But” Thinking and Improves Creativity and Collaboration (Harper Business). Tom just began his third career with the launch of Shyne Advisors, an innovative executive communication company that helps quiet, introverted leaders become confident, original communicators. Tom is a past IncubatorEdu mentor and the proud father of two sons, one of whom is an IncubatorEdu alum. In this interview, Tom and Cindra talk about: The “Yes, And” Strategy What gets in the way of communication Why comparison is a roadblock in communication How we can build our strengths into our communication The big questions you should ask yourself when you don’t want to speak up And how you speaking up impacts the culture of your organization You can find a full description of the Podcast at cindrakamphoff.com/tomyorton

Welcome to High Performance Mindset with Dr. Sindra Kampoff. Do you want to reach your full potential, live a life of passion, go after your dreams? Each week we bring you strategies and interviews to help you ignite your mindset. Let's bring on Sindra. Welcome to the High Performance Mindset Podcast. This is your host, Syndra Kampoff, and I'm grateful that you're here, ready to listen to episode 202 with Tom Yorton. Now, the goal of these interviews is to learn from the world's best leaders, athletes, coaches, and consultants all about the topic of mindset to help us reach our potential or be high performers in our field or our sport. Now, two episodes weekly, we explore

everything related to mindset. You can learn secrets from a world-class consultant, coach, entrepreneur, or leader each week, like today's episode, or you can also listen to me provide a short, powerful message each week to inspire you to be at your best. So if you know mindset is essential to your success, this is the podcast for you. So thank you so much for joining me today. I am here in Minneapolis. Yesterday went to the Minnesota Vikings first home game, preseason game against the Jacksonville Jaguars. That was really fun.

The Vikings are one of the teams that I work with. So today we're headed to the Twins game. So it's going to be a fun day. So I had the privilege this week of interviewing Tom Yorton. And let me tell you a little bit about who Tom is. So he is a speaker, author, and entrepreneur who helps leaders turn their communication shortcomings into a competitive advantage. Now, Tom's entire career has been about identifying, reaching, and winning over audiences. In his first career, he did that as an advertising executive, and then he became a marketing VP for Sears and 3Com. So in Tom's second career as the CEO of Second City Works,

the B2B arm of the famous Second City Comedy Theater, he got a whole new perspective on winning over audiences. There he turned the company's corporate entertainment side hustle into a groundbreaking communications and executive education consultancy. So over Tom's 14-year tenure, he and his team used comedy and improv to help tens of thousands of leaders improve their communication, their creativity, and collaboration. He also co-wrote the top-selling leadership book, Yes, And, How Improvisation Reverses the Know-But-Thinking and improves creativity and collaboration. So he is now beginning his third career with the launch of Shane Advisors, an innovative executive communication company that helps quiet, introverted leaders become confident, original communicators. And in today, Tom and I talk about several different things. We talk about how the principles that we share and Tom shares can be applied to everyone, not just quiet, introverted leaders. Specifically, we talk about this yes and model, what gets in the way of

effective communication, and why comparison is a roadblock into communication. Then we talk about how to build our strengths into communication and what kind of questions we should ask ourselves when we're sitting there and maybe we don't want to speak up, but what's going to help us give us the courage to speak up? And then how speaking up actually positively impacts the culture of the organization. And one of my favorite things that Tom talks about is this quote. He said, look first to agree, take the yes and mentality. Thank you so much for joining us.

If you'd like to connect with Tom and I, the best way to do that is over on Twitter. You can find me at mentally underscore strong and Tom at Tom Yorton. We look forward to hearing from you and without further ado, let's bring on Tom. Hi, Tom, welcome to the podcast. Thanks so much for joining me today.

Cintra, thanks for having me on. I'm looking forward to learning more about Shane Advisors and what you do for leaders. So tell us just kind of a little bit about your passion and what you do. Yeah, my passion is really helping people connect with audiences. There's a through line or a connective story in what I've done for 30 plus years. It's around understanding, reaching, and winning an audience. And we all have an audience in our work, in our personal lives. Everything we do, we're trying to connect people and connect with people. And as simple and fundamental as that is, it's harder for some people to do than others. And the work that I'm involved in now is really helping a particular kind of individual connect in a way that feels original and authentic and real. And I work specifically right now, helping quiet, shy, introverted leaders connect better with audiences, but to do it in a

way that feels right to them without impersonating other folks. I think that's such a powerful audience to or clients to be working with. So Tom, tell us a little bit about before I kind of dive into that and what Quiet Leadership is all about. Tell us about like where you got, you know, where you came from and where you, in terms of now in your career, I know you've had different things that you've worked on and worked with in terms of your career. So tell us a little bit more about your journey. Yeah, it's a, actually I've had three careers. The first career I described as kind of, it was my advertising and marketing career. I was an account guy in different ad agencies. I worked in senior marketing roles in big fortune 500 companies

and did that for 17, 18 years. The second career, well, and I guess the significant thing about all of that was really, again, understanding how to package a message and how to understand an audience. You know, typically you're representing a company or a brand or a product when you're doing that in an advertising and marketing sense, but really kind of building the discipline of understanding, you know, what you're all about in the case of the product and what the audience is all about and how you make a love connection between the two. So that was career number one. Career number two kind of built on that idea as well. I made an unlikely and kind of unexpected move. I went off that corporate marketing track and I went and joined a comedy theater in, like I say, an unlikely move. I became the

CEO of a group called Second City Works, which is the business-to-business arm of the Second City Comedy Theater. It's based in Chicago, but Second City has operations in Toronto and in LA and in Hollywood and in other places as well. But I did that for 14 years. It was really the job of a lifetime where I got to build a company and learn an entirely new way with comedy and improvisation of connecting leaders and helping them to improve communication and collaboration. And it was kind of like grad school for me, but with a lot more laughter, working in a comedy theater. And I wrote a book there with another guy, Kelly Leonard. The book was called Yes And, which was really a

leadership book around using the ideas and the principles of improvisation to help leaders connect and collaborate better in the workplace. So I did that for 14 years. Great run, fantastic run. Was in a really fortunate position to be able to take some time after that and reestablish diplomatic ties with my family. And then I created Shine and launched Shine just in March of this year. And Shine Advisors is really trying to kind of the culmination of all those careers. It's my third career where I take all that I've learned about connecting and reaching audiences, but I guess I embrace and support a different target customer. And my customer and my clients are quiet leaders, quiet leaders who've been told very,

for much of their career, that in order for them to be successful in the workplace, they had to do it like an extrovert and they had to kind of behave and act and communicate in a way that doesn't feel natural. And I was one of those leaders. That's kind of my spec, if you will. And I have a lot of heart for them. And I knew that there was another way to do it. And so that's the work that we're doing right now. It's a coaching and consulting business that really helps people connect in a way that feels right for them. And, you know, Tom, what is your why behind the Shine Advisors and working with these quiet leaders? Like, why quiet leaders? And, you know, what drives you?

Well, what drives me right now specifically is that we live in a noisy world, in a food fight world. Take a look around you, whether it's in sports or politics or media or entertainment. It's like, who's loudest wins? And in my experience, that's not always a recipe for success. And in fact, there's a lot of great ideas. There's a lot of soft-spoken leaders with genius ideas. And if they can find a way to share those genius ideas, we're all better for it. I just feel that we live in a world, it's always been this way, but I feel like it's super heightened right now where we live in a place

and a time where you got to cut through immense clutter. And I think a lot of times if you're quieter or more reserved, you just check out and hold back and we all pay a negative price when those ideas don't come to the surface. And that's my why is like really help people bring forth the ideas that we need to make the world a little bit better. And Tom, before we dive into leadership and how you help leaders, tell us a little bit about a time that didn't go so great for you. Maybe you might consider a failure. And I ask you to share that story so that we can connect with you early on in the interview, but also so we can learn something from a time, you know, that might be considered a failure for you. Oh, yeah. Yeah. As I say to many people, I hope you have a long time because

there's a long list of failures. I won't bore your audience with all of it. But I'll pick, you know, one that kind of was very instrumental, I guess, in the arc of my career. Okay. About midway through my career, I took a job as a senior marketing guy in a technology company right at the height of the first dot-com bubble, and I took the job for all the wrong reasons. I had no intrinsic interest in the work. I had really some feeling that I wasn't the right fit for the organization, but I did it anyway. And I'm a little embarrassed to say it, but the

truth is I did it because we were all chasing the gold rush in 1999. And we were all leaving old economy jobs, quote unquote, to go into this burgeoning new sector with the dot-com era and technology and Silicon Valley, and I fell in love with that dream. I chased a dream which candidly was about material success. Sure. And the lesson I learned is that I got close, but no cigar, and that left a really good, it was a tremendously important experience for me. My failure in this situation was really about not following my gut and trusting my instinct that I wasn't right for this kind of organization.

And it's nothing to do with them. It was my choice, but I made the choice for reasons that I regret today. But I'm really happy that I had that experience because from that point on, I've always been really clear in the work that I do, in the mission that I do, that I have to have some intrinsic interest in the work that's happening there. And I have to believe fundamentally in what it's about and feel like I can make a contribution. And irrespective of what the prospects for success are, you got to look at it that way. And that's a failure that I actually learned a lot from and jujitsu'd into a different kind of career after that. And ultimately I made unlikely moves and kind of

by most career development standpoint or perspectives, some risky moves, but it worked out for me because I knew I should trust myself a little bit more. And I learned to do that with this one job. And I think to do that with this one job. And I think, you know, difficulties can come as gifts, right? Like there's something that you've really learned that has powered you since that situation that you're going to continue to follow your gut

and be intrinsically motivated to do what you do. Yeah, hear, hear. Yeah, for sure. So Tom, I know that you said that, you know, the people that you work with tend to be quiet leaders. Tell us what you mean by a quiet leader and what are the characteristics of a quiet leader? Yeah, it can manifest in a few different ways. Quiet leaders are people who might just be more contemplative or more introspective. They might want or prefer to

have more time to make decisions. They like to ponder implications of things. They're not prone to speaking out out of impulse. They may be people who, to the external world, feel remote or aloof or distant because they're not always excited to engage in networking and, you know, kind of a lot of interpersonal communication. Or when they do do that, and they can be really good at that, they need downtime to recharge and replenish themselves. Whereas more extroverted people, more gregarious people, they find those situations really exciting and they get fueled by those interactions. That's like energy or fuel for them that helps them get up for the day. If you're quieter or more introverted, the chances

are you can do those things, but you do them more selectively and you need equal parts, alone time, downtime, think time, call it what you want to be able to recharge your battery and get up for the fight. But I guess we tend to look at what those quiet leaders don't bring, but they also bring a tremendous number of complimentary assets or traits that any organization can use. And that's what I really do is try to draw those traits out and help them express them in a way that feels right to them. So how might you maybe even help them see what their strengths are? You know, because I think sometimes, right, we might not be like everyone else. It might be easy to compare ourselves to everyone else when really there's like a lot of strength in our characteristics. So what are the strengths that you might point out to a quiet leader? Yeah, that's great. I will address the strengths. You said a great word that I just want to pick up

on because I just recently heard a fabulous quote around comparison and the trap we get into when we compare ourselves. And the quote is, I'm paraphrasing, comparison is the thief of joy, which I thought was really great. And it's been attributed to Teddy Roosevelt and the Bible and both. And who knows, I don't know exactly who came up with that quote, but I really like it a lot. And it really, it really speaks to me because, you know, when I'm trying to be someone else and when I'm focused on what I'm, what I'm incomplete at and try to mimic or model someone else, sometimes that's good, but when you do it compulsively, it sucks. Yeah.

It just doesn't feel right. It doesn't feel good, and it is truly the thief of joy. So back to the attributes of quiet leaders. And again, I didn't come up with a lot of this stuff. There's some tremendous work being done in this space by people like Susan Cain and Jennifer Kahnweiler and Heidi Brown and some others, people who read a lot of their work and been inspired by a lot of what they put out. But some of the attributes that seem to be ignored or discounted are things like the

ability to truly listen, the ability to have deep, authentic relationships with people, the ability to be steady in the midst of chaos, the ability to be persistent and go and work through and sweat the details. If you look at people on perhaps the other side of the spectrum, they may be just prone to the next shiny object. And they're super loud and gregarious, but they might be jumping vine to vine to the next idea. And sometimes when you're running an organization or you're dealing with complex problems, somebody's got to bear down and do the actual work. And somebody's got to actually vet things and take things through. And we live in a society really that is so excited about the next shiny object that we

sometimes discount the work that has to get done. And a lot of times those quiet leaders are the people who actually can be really well suited to do those things in an organization. They can be visionary as well. They just express it differently, either artists and writers. And it's not that they don't have genius original ideas. They do. It's just that they, it's not, it's not all Hollywood all the time for them. Yeah. You know, yesterday, Tom, I was at a hundred dollar, hundred, hundred million dollar company and I was actually speaking to their leaders. And, and one of the things that just my conversations with this CEO and the founder is that, you

know, that everybody's, everybody matters here and a very successful company with great culture. And he was just talking about how, you know, even these quiet leaders, his CFO, for example, was very quiet like that. He mattered within the organization. And I think what you do is tremendous in helping those quiet leaders see more about their value. area that I focus on is because I'm not a PhD clinical psychologist, my area of expertise specifically is around communication and how those leaders can present themselves to the world and interact with the folks around them for greater success. And if you think about how we communicate in business, you could quibble with this to some degree, but largely we communicate in three different buckets. We do kind of written communication, emails and whatnot, and we do interpersonal communication, the one-on-ones or small group meetings that represent so much of what we do during the day,

and then presentational communication. So between the written, interpersonal, and presentational communication that we put out there, people have different preferences and different strengths, and quiet leaders might thrive in one but not the other. And for that matter, any leader might thrive in one and not the other. And one of the first things I have people do is really take stock of how they're spending their day and how well aligned are their preferences and strengths with what they're actually doing. So that's a big part of it is really sizing up as a communicator. Are you playing to your strengths in general? And do you have the latitude to do something more in writing?

Or maybe you're not the most compelling person who can own a stage in front of 500 people, but maybe you thrive in a one-on-one or small group setting where your authenticity and warmth comes through in a one-on-one or small group setting where your authenticity and warmth comes through in a different way. So people, they just assume too often that they have to play it the way others play it. And they're playing someone else's game. And it's funny, I know you do a lot of work with athletes and sports teams and things like that. And it's like playing to someone else's playbook. And when you do that, you put yourself at a tremendous disadvantage. And so a big part of what I do is help people

size up what they're doing. And do they need to do it that way? Is there another way that they can do it where they play to their strengths? Because I actually think the audiences don't care. It's always negotiable. We think it's not, but it's always negotiable. What matters is really that you connect. How you connect is secondary. And I think we place too much stock on how we connect. And because it's the second Tuesday of the month, we've got the town hall meeting and I've got to host the town hall meeting because that's what my predecessor did. Maybe you do, maybe you don't. Maybe there's another way to skin the cat and you're not deficient or broken if you don't do it that way.

You just have to find another way to have that kind of connection and that kind of intimacy with your organization. That's the goal. The goal isn't to replicate the model before you. That's good. Playing to our own strengths. And you said, Tom, about communication

and being an effective communicator. What is your standard? What is your thoughts on what does it mean to be an effective communicator? And how do people do that, maybe regardless if they're an introvert or an extrovert? Yeah, I think it's all about first putting, being audience-centric, understanding what they need in a situation. And too often, we're worried about what we think and what we want to present as opposed to what the audience needs to receive. So the first thing, it's about really understanding the audience and winning an audience. I think another really important point that we forget about too often in business communication is having a point of view and leading with a point of view. Understanding people will disagree with your point of view. That's a point of view, understanding people will disagree with your

point of view. That's just the way of the world. But I think people too, so much business communication is mealy mouth and, and kind of hedging and soft peddling things. And, and you don't really people, it's almost like diplomatic language, which where you're not even sure what's being said and that might feel safe, but the cost of being safe is nobody pays attention. So that's an important thing too. I think surprise is important in communication. You know, I came from the improv world and one of the axioms in that world, there's so many good ones, but one of the ones that is really interesting is this notion of start in the middle. You know, there's usually in business and I say business generically. I know even if

you're working in a professional sports organization, that's a business. It is, yep. So any kind of professional communication, I should say, is what I'm talking about here. There's a flow in an order to how communication works. We lay out our case brick by brick. We build the case, and then we lead to the punchline. And that's nice to follow a nice linear pattern. But every now and then, the idea of starting in the middle, of leading with the answer, leading with the outcome, and then rewinding through, it's a simple thing, but it's a way to kind of grab people by the lapels and shake it up a little bit. And just changing the pace and the order of how you deliver information can help people be more attentive.

And, you know, you think about it, whether you're a marketer or a business leader, ultimately it's around getting people to behave in a certain way. A leader is trying to drive a certain set of behaviors. And before you can get people to change behavior, you have to get them to change their attitude. Before they change their attitude, you have to get them to pay attention. And a big chunk of what I do is about helping leaders reveal a little more of themselves so they can get people to pay attention, to change the bias about how people see them. Yeah. You know, Tom, when you said something about, you know, having a point of view, what if, and maybe you see this in your clients, what if people are saying, well, I don't know what my point of view is, or I have a point of view, what if, and maybe you see this in your clients, what if people are saying,

well, I don't know what my point of view is, or I have a point of view, but I might be fearful of what other people think. What do you think, what is our first step? Or what do you think people can do to overcome that? That's a really good question. And everyone does it a little bit differently and it would be kind of a case byby-case. But some general things I would talk about to anyone in that situation would be, what's the cost of you holding back your point of view? You're focused on what the cost of sharing your point of view is. But what's the cost of not sharing your point of view? What's lost to the organization?

And that's the biggest thing that I talk about because most people want to be givers. Most people want to bring impact to the people around them. And sometimes they can be so deferential and so respectful that they won't share. But I ask them to consider the cost of not sharing. And the cost of not sharing could be a great idea, never comes to the surface. But sometimes it's even more intangible than that. Sometimes by you being willing to share an idea that's not perfectly formed, you create permission in the rest of the organization to do the same thing. You create velocity and pace in communication because people are less concerned with couching stuff and framing stuff. And they're just, they're more willing to share incomplete ideas. And you can't do that all the time. Sometimes you got to, you got to get

to the tight idea, but especially in kind of a new situation or a problem solving situation, you want velocity. You want people to show up with ideas and you want to create a culture where they do that. So I really ask people to consider what the cost of doing nothing is, because they usually don't calculate that. Absolutely. And what do you see when you ask that question? What do you see people's responses? Or my guess is it's an aha moment for them, because I'm thinking about how that applies to me. And I'm like, wow, yeah, I need to speak my mind more often. Yeah, I think that's what it is. Because, again, and then when you when faced with that, it's like, so realize that your unwillingness to do that is actually costing the organization.

And you don't want to be a net drain on an organization. Most people don't most people want to be good in their jobs. And they're they just when you frame it that way, they see that there's value and importance in being more in showing up more. And that they see that there's value and importance in being more, in showing up more, and that there's a real cost when you don't. So often to the well-intentioned person, that's enough often to goose them a little bit to reveal a little bit more. And then sometimes I help them, especially quieter people, they may want to ponder an idea and think of an idea. That's great. But it's also important. Think about that 12 person meeting where something's happening in and you're just, you don't say a word the whole meeting. It doesn't mean you're not productive

and you can be actually, the wheels can be spinning and you could come up with the right idea offline and bring it back and that could be successful. But also what I was saying, what I remind them of is even your small contribution in the meeting is important because it creates a greater permission for others to contribute. It's a lubricant, if you will. And sometimes when you don't do that, the cost of holding back just, it slows things down. And so I just, I just remind people that they can do that. And I asked them if it's tough for them to share an ill-formed idea, declare that it's ill-formed. Preface your remarks by saying, hey, this is a half-baked idea or whatever variation of that you want. And if it helps

you to declare the imperfection of the idea, just so you can get it out on the table, that becomes clay on the table that you can mold and that the group can mold. I think that's a good strategy. And, you know, for people just to keep in mind, especially when they're fearful of what other people might think, or, you know, if they're holding back an idea, just to even say, hey, this is just a half-baked idea, you know, but put it on the table for you to consider. Yeah. And I think, yeah, because then people know that you're a reliable contributor and a visible contributor. And that's not everything. It's not to say that you always have to do that, but I do think you have to be cognizant of the cost of never doing it and do it occasionally. And I think that goodwill that comes from that really is good for the entire

team. So what would you, what advice would you give to quiet leaders who maybe have a hard time connecting with their strengths? Like, what do you think, you know, where's the first step that we should consider what our strengths are? Well, especially strengths as a communicator. I literally, I kind of frame it out. I just, you can write down on a piece of paper on a whiteboard, whatever rank, what is your preference that if I, if you had to write something, talk in a group or present something to a big group, you know, it's just literally one, two, three rank order them.

And then rank order your skill at them, your, your, your self-assessment. How do you see yourself in that? And then I talked to them a little bit more about, so what, what about, you have to drill down and understand what about presenting is challenging for them and, and figuring out most, mostly people fear looking bad. So the game then becomes, how do you help them get over that and not look bad? So let me use myself as an example. Okay, perfect. This was a terrifying thing for me. I was a lousy presenter coming up and it was a real career limiter for me. And one of the things, I got a lot of coaching. I paid for that on my own because I wanted to

develop, but a lot of the coaching that I had really either focused too much in the mechanics and didn't get to the root cause of why I was a nervous wreck. Or they had me focus on modeling someone else, and either explicitly or implicitly, and it didn't work for me. What happened for me, it was just kind of the realization that my moment of terror was the first 90 seconds of any presentation. Once I was past that point, if I lived past that point, I would be awesome. But it was like an airplane taking off, and that first critical 90 seconds to get airborne was everything for me. And I had to find a way to do that. So I built, I learned to build cheats in to the first 60 to 90 seconds. So I was so conscious of the focus being on me. I would build other things into it. I would show a video clip or

show a cartoon or show some other way to warm the audience, deflect focus for half a second, not even so much for their benefit, but for my own psychological benefit and get to the point where I could get past that. And so I had to understand where my moment of weakness was and then work against that. Different people might have different challenges. And so in my work, we'd figure out whatever those challenges are and solve for that problem. But that was mine. And do you tend to see quiet leaders maybe prefer more written versus interpersonal or, you know, presentation or what do you kind of see as the trends? Yeah, I think, I think the common idea is that, you know, they're more written, but not necessarily. I think they can be, first of all, I come into this with the, the, I guess the point of view that any leader, any quiet leader can be not just a good communicator, but an exceptionally good

communicator if they're willing to be original and authentic and share themselves. And so I come at it from that point of view. And so it's not about just, hey, we're going to help you scrape by. No, it's, I think you can be exceptional, but you got to be willing to share a little bit about yourself. So I see people, I've just worked with one woman who her challenge was that she was seen as aloof and reticent and not really contributing. But the challenge that she faced was that when she was observed that way, it was in a particular meeting that was a very interactive, raucous, food fight kind of a meeting. And that was just not her style. But this person ultimately went on in the organization. It wasn't that she was aloof or didn't have anything to say or remote or distant.

She had a lot to say. She just needed a different form to do that. Now she's going on and she's hosting a podcast for the company. She is a tremendous advocate for the work that they do. And she's hosting a podcast and she does a lot of the spokesperson jobs for media around the organization as well. So it's interesting when you see people in one forum only, you can make judgments about their preferences or skills, but it doesn't tell the whole story. And when you help really understand what the root cause of her, what was driving the behavior that people observed,

you realize it wasn't what you thought. And you could actually jujitsu that a little bit and put her in a role where she was not just an okay communicator, but the one, the go-to communicator in the organization. That's powerful. And I think it stems from being original and authentic. So how might, like, let's take her as an example, like as a case study. How would you help somebody figure out ways that they can communicate in an authentic and original way? I kind of come through side doors because sometimes when you attack that one head on, it's hard to get at it. But I ask them, you know, what music do you listen to? I ask them, you know, what TV shows or who's funny. You try to figure out what kind of cultural or communication influences that person finds interesting. So you might find a person,

it wasn't the case with this woman I was just referencing, but you might find a CEO or a leader who loves to doodle and actually has some doodling skills and a pretty good, you know, artist, drawer, whatever you, artist, drawer, whatever you want to call it, illustrator, you can actually help that person make that little side skill that's not a part of his or her communication today. That could be a central piece of communication where that when instead of doing the standard town hall hosting or talking to the sales team at the annual sales conference with a stand-up PowerPoint presentation, maybe it's a series of six doodles that that person does that represents something going on in the organization that he or she thinks is important.

But the reveal is, no, these are my doodles. And it's just an example to show it's a safe way when people play to their strengths. When you share a little bit about yourself, you bring yourself closer to an audience. And what an audience wants to do is connect with you more than anything. Nothing's more uncomfortable to an audience when the speaker doesn't connect. So you want to find ways to do that, bridges to build. And that's just an example. So I would go through that kind of question, answer, just learn a little bit more about what the person likes to do, what interests that person, and try to ground, try to find common ground and use those particular interests as a way to bridge to an audience and communication. I like the idea in terms of like finding what you're already like,

what you're already good at and bringing that to the workplace and bringing that to your communication. Yeah, I think it's really, again, the book I wrote was called Yes And, and it's about affirming and building on ideas that are already there as opposed to jettisoning them and coming up with a new slate. I mean, most of the people I'm talking to are 30, 40, 50 years old. Chances are they know their preferences at that point. And so instead of saying that those aren't worthwhile, we say, no, we're going to use those. We're going to make those the centerpiece. And we're going to anchor things around the things that you already know, because that's what gives you confidence. And when you're confident, that's when you're willing to connect. And when what's most, the most depleting thing that you can do is where

someone else's clothes. And that's what a lot of coaching and training, I think inadvertently does. It gets people to a point where they're, where they're trying to be someone else because they don't believe that their weird novel trait is useful. And I'm there. Remember, I worked in a comedy theater that worked with Fortune 100 companies and nothing was more unusual than the stuff we brought. And so the biggest thing I learned in that 14 years was, pardon my French, but screw the recipe book. The business communication playbook stinks. It's boring, dry, predictable, and awful. So anything you can do, let's not try to model that. Let's bring other things in that. Let's not be afraid to introduce comedy. Let's not be

afraid to introduce the CEO's doodles. Let's not be afraid to let them be themselves in communication because what are we protecting against? We want to model the thing that most people don't like anyway. Who really enjoys sitting through a PowerPoint presentation delivered by most leaders? It's usually not that great. So that's my whole thing is really don't worry about modeling so much what the model is because it's not that great to begin with. And you're going to be a heck of a lot more confident and a heck of a lot more,

heck of a lot stronger if you just reveal one of your, one of your superpowers that maybe people don't know about. Ah, that's good. So what I just heard you say is don't model other people, but instead reveal your superpowers. What makes you unique? Yeah. And to sometimes, sometimes that's, that's a challenge for people because they, they want to protect that. They feel it's not worthy. I could never do that. I could never show that. That would, that would feel weird. And well, it would feel, it does take a little bit of, it's a bit of a risk, but again, I encourage them to find baby step ways to do that where it's not you're not throwing the dice on the biggest presentation of your life where you're doing that where there's some ways

that you can kind of test drive that idea in a lower risk way but also remember what's the cost of what's the cost of a 30-year career where you never do that what's the cost of a 30-year career where you always play someone else's game where you always play someone else's game, where you always wear someone else's clothes. You don't have a lot of joy in the job. You're never quite as effective as you want to be. And believe me, audiences know that they know that you're not sharing and they can't quite tell you what's missing, but they know that you're not really connecting in the eye. And you, I mean, you speak all the time. You know what this is like as you go around and see other speakers you admire. For sure. The people that you admire most are the people who

are probably willing to reveal a little bit of themselves and share things. You asked me to share failure. Well, that's the same idea. It's about closing the distance between people by getting proximate to the people that you want to reach. And that's what we need to do as communicators. Yeah. And I see the best speakers are authentic and original and they don't try to be someone else. Right. And they, they, I think it's easy to be thinking about what is the audience think of me? You know, that's what happened to me, at least when I started speaking. And then I was like, Hey, this is not about me. This is about them and meeting their needs. So I think what you said is powerful. I'm going to switch format here. Can I just ask

you a question? Was there a moment where you thought you had to do that, where it became clear that you had to change the way you were thinking about it? I think for me, it was more because I showed up anxious and fearful and, you know, nervous about what they might think. And then, you know, the, what really, what I realized is like, I am not there for me. You know, I'm just like a messenger. I'm just like a person who's really passionate. You know, my area is the high performance mindset and using your mindset to be at your best, incredibly passionate about it, but I'm not there for me. Like that's self-centered, that's ego, right? And I'm really there for them. And so when I direct the attention back to the audience, it helps me show up as myself. And part of, you know, my,

my message and my 10 practices of high performance, one of them is actually authentic and being, being, owning who you are. And I'm like, you know, if I'm not, if I don't own who I am, you know, I'm not a very good model here, but it's really, it's really hard to do, you know, especially in, I guess, for me in audiences where, you know, like it's a big audience or it's a new audience. I was speaking last week to a pipeline company where, you know, part of the audience was like pipeline workers. And, you know, I had to, I had to be continuing to think about, this is not about me right now, you know, about them. It's so true. Two thoughts come off of that. One is the idea of stakes in communication. How do you raise the stakes or how do you lower the stakes and how do you know the difference?

And a lot of times we think that the stakes are too high. And sometimes when you think that it's not about you, you're kind of lowering the stakes for yourself, that you're just there to present some things and share some things and you're bringing a gift and hopefully they like the gift that you're bringing. But you, in a way, that self-talk there is really around lowering stakes for yourself. There are other occasions where if you really want to compel action and get people to do something differently or think differently, you have to raise the stakes that, again, there's a cost of doing nothing and we must act. So, so much. I really help people think through stakes often in communication. Are we trying to raise them? Are we trying to lower them?

And what's our understanding around that? One other thought that you, that you, that came up as you're talking about presenting and another axiom from my, my last world at the comedy theater was this idea of always look for the crack in the game. And that's a phrase that talks about when people are improvising on stage, you have no idea where the scene that same scene, your name was Tim and now it became Mark, the audience sees that imperfection, that mistake. And that actually is a good thing. So often in business, we try to scrub out all the imperfection in our communication. And nothing is less interesting than perfect communication. Imperfect communication, those little burrs can actually pull people in. And you can make accidents work. And you communication, those little burrs can actually pull people in and you

can make accidents work and you can make those mistakes work for you instead of freaking out when they happen. Because guess what? They are going to happen. And I think about the concept of yes and. So tell us how we might use that concept. I mean, you know, like we can definitely go check out your book, but tell us how we can use that concept, you know, as a quiet leader or just as a leader in general, what do you see, you know, the usefulness of that? Yeah, it's for, for people who don't know what it means, it's a fundamental idea of improvisation. It's kind of the backbone of it. And it's really, it's, it's affirming and building on ideas. So just a quick underpinnings of it. So when actors are on stage without a script and they're improvising, they have to have some way of working together

to get something meaningful done and to be interesting to an audience. So they have this thing called yes and. They don't usually, they don't utter those words literally, but basically if you're one actor and you say, hey, it's a beautiful day out. It's the job of the other actor, whether you agree or disagree or anything with that idea to agree with that and to add something to it, to affirm and build on that idea. And that's how all improv works and how that's instructive in business or in any professional endeavor is as a communicator, usually you get some, we're such critical thinkers. We're always

looking to negate something or know but something or find the holes or the flaw in the logic in someone else's communication or whatever point they're making. And there's a time and a place to do that. You can't agree with everything all the time, but even how you disagree with something, if you do it in a positive, uplifting, affirmative way, you improve a relationship and you create better chances for success. And so you can do it quite literally in communication where you're agreeing and building on an idea in a meeting, in a job interview, in a media conversation, any of those kinds of things. And then I would just say more broadly, not even in a literal

conversation, but if you could take more of a yes and mindset where you look first to agree, you look for commonality versus difference. You can look for difference in an idea and parse things and that's fine. Good thinkers do those things. But if you start first by affirming and building, you get further faster. So can you give us an example of how we might do that when we're leading? Meaning like looking first to agree and then like using this yes and mindset? Well, you might have an initiative coming up. There might be a new system you want to implement and people will be poking holes. You're the leader and there's your executive team of 12 people in the room and people are doing nothing. You know you can't stay

where you are, but you have to get people to think differently about considering the possibility of change because people get stuck where they are and any kind of change requires a little discomfort. So in that kind of a situation, in a change or transformation situation, it's really around, you know, thinking first about what's right about ideas. Let's truly consider our alternatives here before we scuttle them. And so even in a meeting kind of a situation, you can facilitate a conversation where you're looking first about what's right about what you agree, and how you can build that out. Take it as far as it can go and reserve judgment until later. So much of it's like as a boss, as people who run things, as leaders, ultimately you have to judge.

Not all ideas are good, clearly. But when you do that and how you do that can make the difference between if you get two good ideas a year and 2,000 good ideas a year. And if you have that yes and culture, you tend to get more ideas. And I know I've done an exercise that is probably an improv exercise where we had to, you know, just stop what the other person was saying and not say yes and. And then we chose to respond and not say yes and. And then we chose to respond to them with yes and. And it brought a lot more positive energy, you know, just like a lot

more creativity to the conversation. It does. It does. And I think pace, right? Pace. And even if you're in a room where it's happening, the volume's up. People have energy. They're not slunked in their chairs, not offering ideas because they know they're just going to, it's like skeet shooting. People are going to blow their idea out of the sky. And so if you can create an environment where the idea is at least entertained, you don't have to love every idea, but it helps to love every idea for a little while. And you know, Tom, what if quiet leaders get the feedback that they should change, you know, that their communication style isn't effective? You know, what if quiet leaders get the feedback that they should change, you know, that their communication style isn't effective? You know, what advice might you give to them or where would

you start? Well, I would take, I would try to, I would yes and it. I would say, oh, so tell me more about that. So tell me where it's not working. So instead of immediately getting defensive and rejecting the feedback, I would really want to know more about it. So tell me more about it. How is it playing out? Oh, I'm, you know, I'm not, I'm seen as not participating in adding to a group dynamic. Well, when did that occur? How did that play out? What did people see? I'd really try to unpack it a little bit, but coming from a place of, I'm not rejecting it. I really want to, I want to be curious. And I think that's the thing that I really hinge on too, is allow yourself to be curious, to truly understand what, what the other people are, because they're saying it for a reason. And they may very often when people give feedback

unintentionally, they're, they're telling you the solution to the problem instead of just sharing what they're perceiving and seeing. There might be six different ways that you could address their concern, but you don't know that until you start understanding it better. So you have to be curious and you have to be willing to hear some things about yourself that may make you uncomfortable, but ultimately will get you to a better place. Ultimately, again, you're free to listen to that and put it in play or not, but it's really helpful to be open-minded when you get that feedback and see if you can understand it as granularly as possible. Tom, is there anything else that would be helpful for us to know about your work or

how you might work with client leaders or the advice that you might give us? Yeah. I mean, if you want to see more, I'm at shineadvisors.com and it's S-H-Y-N-E as in shy, S-H-Y-N-E advisors.com. And I guess what I'd say is this is for everybody. This is, you know, most of my work obviously is in a professional or business setting, but this applies to parent, kid, student, teacher. There's all sorts of dynamics out there where, again, we live in a world where people are judged by what they're putting out there and often right, wrong, or indifferent. The more you put out the better. I think that's the wrong scorecard, but I don't want the quiet person to completely withdraw from that world because they don't want to play that game. I want to

show them other ways to play that game their way. Absolutely. You know, Tom, I really enjoyed hearing more about what you do and particularly this idea of quiet leadership and how it's valuable. And the two things that I'm really getting out of your conversation that I'm going to take with me, I loved what you said about what's the cost, right? When we were talking about fear of what other people think and you asked like, what's the cost of holding your point of view, of not sharing your point of view? You know, what does it cost yourself or what does it cost your organization and how that's powerful to think about?

And then the second thing that I really enjoyed was this idea of like, yes and, right? And as an effective leader, working to look for what's right, reserving judgment and looking first to agree and how you can do that with a yes and mindset. Where can we find your book if we want to grab that? Oh, sure. People can find it at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, any of those places. And it's Yes And, and it was written by Kelly Leonard, who was my partner when I was at Second City and myself. So we tag teamed on the book and it was a joy to write. Outstanding. So Tom, thank you so much for joining us. Do you have any other

advice or final comments for those people who are listening? Yeah, we're on the planet for only so long. So if you're feeling like you want to do something about this, it's back to that idea of cost. What's the cost of not addressing it? What's the cost of kind of working without energy, passion, and joy? And it doesn't have to be that way. And you can do something about it. Thank you so much for joining us today, Tom. Thanks for having me, Sindra. Thank you for listening to High Performance Mindset. If you like today's podcast, make a comment, share it with a friend and join the conversation

on Twitter at Mentally Underscore Strong. For more inspiration and to receive Sindra's free weekly videos, check out DrSindra.com.