High Performance Mindset | Learn from World-Class Leaders, Consultants, Athletes & Coaches about Mindset - 598: Respectfully Disagreeing with Justin Jones-Fosu, Keynote Speaker & Author

Episode Date: February 6, 2024

Justin Jones-Fosu, MBA, CSP is a full-time family man who also happens to be a highly sought-after business speaker, social entrepreneur, and meaningful work researcher. He is the founder and CEO of Work. Meaningful. where he combines over a decade of leadership in Fortune 500 companies, his real-life experience and research to help global organizations create new rhythms of sustainable excellence, profitability, and engagement. Speaking over 60 times a year, Justin speaks and leads workshops and training with companies, organizations, and associations in the US and internationally on meaningful work and workplace engagement.  He is passionate about helping organizations and individuals take ownership of their mindset, purpose, and performance to achieve amazing results. His latest book "Your WHY Matters NOW: How Some Achieve More and Others Don't" challenges the reader to merge their purpose and productivity to get more out of work and life. His latest book "I Respectfully Disagree" will be out April 16th.  In this podcast, Justin and Cindra talk about: Why Should You Respectfully Disagree 5 Pillars to Bridge the Divide How to cultivate your curiosity His 3A Framework The Power of 3  His 3 Self-Model   HIGH PERFORMANCE MINDSET SHOWNOTES FOR THIS EPISODE: www.cindrakamphoff.com/598  TO LEARN MORE ABOUT JUSTIN: Justin Jones-Fosu | Workplace Engagement and Diversity & Inclusion Speaker, Trainer and Author (workmeaningful.com) TO ORDER JUSTIN’S NEW BOOK: Amazon FOLLOW SIGN UP FOR THE FREE MENTAL BREAKTHROUGH CALL WITH CINDRA’S TEAM: https://mentallystronginstitute.com/freecall/ TO LEARN MORE ABOUT THE MENTALLY STRONG INSTITUTE: https://mentallystronginstitute.com/ Love the show? Rate and review the show for Cindra to mention you on the next episode: Apple Podcasts  

Welcome to the High Performance Mindset. This is your host, Dr. Sindra Kampoff, and thank you so much for joining me here today for episode 598, almost episode 600, with Justin Jones Fosu. My name is Sindra, and I'm the founder of the Mentally Strong Institute, where we help purpose-driven leaders and athletes play big and achieve their most audacious goals. If you want to achieve your goal quicker, level up your confidence and increase your influence this year, I invite you to sign up for a free coaching call with one of my team members at freementalbreakthroughcall.com. We'll help you create a breakthrough, a moment of clarity and understanding and help you practice

the high performance mindset. So again, you can check that out at freementalbreakthroughcall.com. Today, I have Justin Jones Fosu in the house, and what a delight to have him speak about his upcoming book called I Respectfully Disagree. So powerful and such incredible content that will continue to help us all lead the best that we can. And let me tell you a little bit about Justin. He happens to be a sought-after business speaker, social entrepreneur, and meaningful work researcher. He's the founder and the CEO of Work Meaningful, where he combines over a decade of leadership in Fortune 500 companies and his real-life experience and research to help global organizations create new rhythms of excellence, profitability, and engagement. companies and his real-life experience and research to help global organizations create

new rhythms of excellence, profitability, and engagement. He speaks over 60 times a year and he leads workshops and trainings to help us understand meaningful work and workplace engagement. He is the author of a book, Your Why Matters Now, How Some Achieve More and Others Don't, which challenges readers to merge their purpose and productivity to get more out of their life. And then his newest book, which is coming out April 16th, which I've provided a link if you scroll down to the show notes, you'll be able to see a link to pre-order his book on Amazon. And his latest book comes out April 16th. That is

the focus of our conversation, How to Respectfully Disagree. And we talk about why you should respectfully disagree, five pillars to bridge the divide between people, how to cultivate your curiosity, the 3A framework, the power of three, and his three self-model. Lots of great, incredible content in today's episode with Justin. If you'd like to see the full show notes and description of this podcast, you can head over to syndracampoff.com slash 598 for episode 598. All right, let's bring on Justin Jones-Fosu. Welcome to the High Performance Mindset, Justin. I'm so excited that you're here. So welcome.

I'm pumped to talk to you. I got to meet you a couple months ago, several months ago at the CSP Summit. I had so much fun. And so I'm just pumped that you're here today talking about your new book. How is your day going so far? Tell us how it's going. One, it's been absolutely amazing. I woke up at 4 a.m. and got my in yes i'm one of those people uh so you can respectfully disagree with me about waking up early or exercise

but that's okay um and i just had a really great time with my team um at a great team meeting and um just excited for the week right like one of the things i really leaned into is happy mondays um and this is a great start. So it's been a happy Monday because I've made it so. But externally, it's also been happy. People have been nice and I was dancing in the gym. And so, yeah, ultimately, it's really good. I appreciate you so much.

Great day. Well, so today we're talking about your new book that comes out April 16th called I Respectfully Disagree How to Have Difficult Conversations in a Divided World. And I just thought, gosh, what a great topic that we're going to discuss today. I think our world is more divided than ever before. There seems to be more negativity than ever before everywhere that we, you know, we work and we live. And so why did you decide to write this book called I Respectfully Disagree? Yeah, so I wrote this book for three reasons. And not all of them were obvious at first. So the first one is I've been doing work, consulting, speaking around the inclusive

mindset and how to make, you know, inclusion something that we just are rather than something that we have to do uh and so that involves everybody and so one of the things that was um a statement i would make in the inclusive mindset in one of our modules was that we can vehemently disagree with someone's ideology and still passionately pursue their humanity and it would always be like it's all right and oh yeah like you know i thought it's a nice statement but there always seems to be something there and oftentimes where people come up after the keynote or the presentation i would say the best keynotes are the ones off the stage they would lean into that statement of like i love that statement but how do i do it like like how i really want

to do it so but how do i do it and so um this book became the answer to help people to do that to to how to respectfully disagree um that was number one number two is i want to create a place um where i planted seeds not only for this current generation, but for the next one, where they weren't defined by the divisiveness of the relationship, but rather by the deliberate depths of the relationships. And that was like, for me, as a proud pop of two high energy kids, like I really wanted to put something else into the future and now, but just really plant seeds. And three, I got from my mama. I realized as I really kind of started thinking back and researching respectful disagreement, I was like, my mom used to do this to me, right? My mom would have us not only go to things that were different, there was oftentimes my mom had us to go to events that we disagreed with, that we didn't believe in, or that were a different faith than ours and different things, right? And so I realized that what actually built into me,

and I'm ultimately, you know, called to be a bridge and to help people bridge more divides rather than building up barriers from people. Excellent. So inspiring. And I'm curious, you know, when you think about this idea of just having the inclusive mindset and in the book, you talk about the inclusive mindset vision. Why is that important now than ever before? And like, how could we use just that to guide us in general? Yeah. So when I'm talking about the inclusive mindset vision, it was something I actually included in inclusive mindset, the book, the book right and and I would often like I wanted to have a level setting place of what I mean when I thought about the inclusive mindset

and for me it became something that was really like a sticking point that people would come back to over and over again and so let me give it I think it'd be helpful for me to share it so people can really get. So because of mindset vision, the world can be a place where people are treated with value, dignity, and respect without regard to what they look like,

how they identify, what they believe. That people can engage others every day with a sense of wonderment and curiosity. That people disagree respectfully while honoring the perspective of others. Where everyone feels included, seen, and curiosity. That people disagree respectfully while honoring the perspective of others. Where everyone feels included, seen, and heard, and the voices of the marginalized are elevated and amplified. Where people stand up for others when they see injustice occurring and challenge systems that don't work for others. Where people don't have to be perfect and can

receive grace as they learn from their mistakes. Rehearsing and inclusion are no longer an initiative, but part of our everyday lives. No longer a mandate, but simply a mindset. This is the world that we believe in. This is what we believe the world can be. And that being inclusive mindset vision, it really encapsulated for us what making, what does it mean to make inclusion just who we are where it becomes a

mindset where it's just what we filter our lives out of and now it's a place where it includes everybody right like it's all people uh people who set the systems in place people who are impacted by systems people who are marginalized people who who aren't, people who make mistakes, which is all of us. And just that we could consistently learn and ultimately make progress together. Because at the end of the day, it's a lifelong journey, right? It's not, you know, I love when people think like, oh, I got it now. No, no, no. It's a lifelong journey to engage this. And I'm still learning. I'm still making mistakes. And that's, that's why the inclusive mindset vision is so important. It's foundational because when you realize, Hey, it's all just about how do I treat others with a little bit more humanity? That's,

that's where we're setting up for, um, I respectfully disagree. Yeah. Excellent. Well, I think as you read that, that was beautiful, Justin. Um, and just so powerful. And when I think about, okay, what holds people back from this inclusive mindset vision? I mean, it could be the way that they were raised, like you were raised to embrace all these different, you know, cultures and religions. And, and sometimes I think, you know, it's our beliefs that we're raised in, and maybe what we've heard our parents talk about. What are the things do you think impacts, particularly right now, how inclusive people are and how respectful people are to each

other? Yeah, so I'll answer it two ways. One, from an inclusion perspective, one is how we define it. And that's one of the big things. So I've read to a lot of people that are like, I don't like BEI. I think BEI is stupid. We don't need BEI. What's the point of that? Or we don't need diversity, right? And I love when people say that because the way I define it is diversity is just difference. And everybody is different, right? When you encounter whether you have a spouse or partner that looks similar to you, comes from the same place, has similar economic background, y'all are still vastly different people, right?

We can go back to men are from and women are like vastly different people. And it's how you engage with that person. That's inclusion, right? That's diversity. And oftentimes we only think of diversity as the big three, which is race, gender and identity. But diversity encompasses so much religion, politics, identity, mental health, all these things that every single person is included in this conversation. So, number one, it's really asking, how do we define it? So that's what I often ask people, like when they say I don't value diversity, I'm like, awesome.

Tell me what you mean by when you say diversity. And then as they define it, we're able to have a deeper conversation. So, number one, that's, I think, just the definition is currently stopping people words and how it's being politicized. Right. And I'm not a big politics person. That's not my lane. But it's been politicized in a way that I don't think is helpful, right? When we're having meaningful conversations with people.

And why respect is needed. Man, there's stuff happening in our society that my kids, my 8 and 12-year-old kids, would be disciplined for if they did or talked to people the way I see adults talking to people, right? Without any discipline and things. And so for me, yes, let me be very clear. I think what we see is only maybe 10%, right? Because media will only show us the stuff that will like, oh my gosh, I can't believe they said that. Oh, I can't believe they did that. The vast majority of people want to value the relationships, want to form more connections and disconnect with the people, but they struggle with how to do it. And so for me, why it's needed right now is I think that how people can lean into it is by learning, by growing, by choosing to just to be on the journey that they're not going to be perfect. I still don't make

mistakes. I still have wrong thoughts. I still have bias. Justin Jones goes to, we've been doing this work for over 20 years. I still, even when I was writing the book, I respectfully disagree, disrespectfully disagreed with someone while writing it, right? So it's not a perfection thing. It's a progression thing. And that's why I think if people lean into the mindset of how do I grow rather than how do I impress people with what I know, I think we all can stand to respect people just a little bit more as we consistently grow up on this journey. Yeah, I appreciate that, Justin. I appreciate that you're talking about everybody's different, right? And I appreciate that, Justin. I appreciate that you're talking about everybody's different, right? And I think about my husband. I mean, we grew up actually a similar

town, but we were all, we're both really different, right? And I appreciate that it's like thinking beyond race, gender, and identity as including this idea of diversity and that we all have bias, even when we don't think that maybe we do. So in the book, you talk about these five pillars to bridge the divide. And I thought that was the most, well, part of the most, I guess I'd say meaningful. And you just gave so much great content there of how we could bridge the divide. So maybe what we start with before we kind of dive into these five pillars is what is this divide and how can we build people up instead of, you know, bridging this divide? Yeah. So the divide happens in many different ways. There's macro divide and micro divide. So

it's pretty clear to see some of the macro divides in our society i'm not just talking about us i'm talking about global world right in terms of israel and palestine right like and what your perspective is on that and what's war going on there with certain tribes on the continent of africa with uh certain things that are happening right and you know politically the the divide within the United States, there's a lot of divides from a macro-societal perspective. But there's also these micro-divides.

And these micro-divides are things like, you know, you and I, we saw a movie, and we disagreed on what that movie was about. So we may be in a small division on, wait a minute, you thought that movie was good? What in the world? Wait a minute, wait a minute, Kansas that movie was good how what in the world or on wait a minute wait a minute kansas city you're like kansas women you like such a such

like 49ers like oh my gosh right yeah and so are you for a sports reference, the biggest divide of all is Michael Jordan and LeBron James, who's the greatest. That's so true. Yeah. They're both great. I know. And this is different divides that we have. And what I find is that it's a spectrum, but generally, from a binary perspective, people are generally either building up barriers or they're bridging the divide.

And so they're bridging the divide to people or building up barriers from them. And while there's a spectrum and it's not necessarily just, oh, you're either doing this or that, we've challenged ourselves first, but then others to start spending more time reaching the vibe. And that's what we see as important. And so reaching the vibe is just connecting to others. Connecting, right? It's valuing others. That's reaching the vibe. It's acknowledging others. It's listening to others. These are all powerful yet practical things. Notice I didn't say it's agreeing with others. No, I didn't say that at all. It's ultimately, if I could put it this way,

when we talk about this concept of golden respect in the book, it's respecting others. But what we call golden respect, because we've often, I feel, we've mislabeled, misdefined respect. Like we've said things like, oh, you gotta earn my respect. And my retort is like, why?

Why do I have to earn respect? If respect is truly valuing and providing dignity for someone else, I didn't say honoring, but valuing and providing dignity, like everyone could be given respect the same way we think about forgiveness. We say forgiveness is not about the other person,

it's about me, right? And so if I choose to choose to cheerfully or willingly give it, that's powerful. So when we think about this whole concept of respect, that's what it's doing. We're bridging the divide of disrespect. And that's what the divide is, a place where we disrespect others in our conversations, in our external places, but also internally. I've noticed as a parent of two kids, I disrespectfully disagreed with my kids. I have a divide with them at times. And I'm always trying to make progress to get better to bridge the divide, even what's up. Yeah, I appreciate, Justin, that you're still on this journey and that, you know, it's not perfect. And even when you were talking about the inclusive mindset vision,

right, that you included in there that accepting when people make mistakes and not judging people, because if we're all biased, right, we're not perfect at this. So let's dive into the five pillars. And these are called the five pillars to bridge the divide. Maybe first tell us what these five pillars are and why you decided on these five pillars. Yeah. So the five pillars are challenge, challenge your perspective is pillar number one. Pillar number two is be the student. Pillar number three is cultivate your curiosity. Pillar number four, seek the great. And pillar number five is agree to respect. Now, why did I choose things? They could have been a hundred pillars, by the way.

Yeah. In my research, one of the things that I wanted to do, I didn't want to create a book about how to respectfully disagree in terms of like, read five times when you're in a consulate or, you know, hit your hand or get a rubber band. And, you know, like I think there's a lot of really good books out there about the tactics of respectfully disagreeing, right? Or disagreeing with others. I wanted to provide a book that spoke to the heart of not the how-to specifically, but the why-to of respectful disagreement, because that's the piece I think we're missing.

And our approach is a heart-head-hand model. I feel like long-term growth, impact change happens at the heart level first before we get knowledge. I mean, think about it. We know a lot of the stuff, but we don't always apply it. Why? Because it hasn't sunk into the heart level, the essence of who we are before it comes out in terms of knowing what to do and providing the tactics. And so I had four initially, to be honest.

The first would be the student and the different iterations of it. These words change. But in essence, that was the first one. But then I realized that respectful disagreement just doesn't happen when we're disagreeing with someone. It happens how we engage society and put ourselves in positions of learning, of hearing other perspectives, of watching things that we might not agree with. Those are the things that begin to work in us already so that as we're engaging people, we're engaging them with a sense of humility, not as one of pride where we come with all the answers.'ve summed up with really many many hundreds of articles and many books is that these came to the forefront as practical things that people could do to bridge the divide with others um it it didn't take big cerebral initiatives and things. It's like we wanted to lean into the practical things for the everyday person that just wants to make more connections and disconnections. Yeah. And Justin, I'm thinking about like, how does this impact the bottom line?

Right. Like in a business when there's divisiveness and people aren't coming together, they have a hard time working together, and maybe the profit isn't as strong, or, you know, people can't retain employees if people don't feel like they're included. What do you think the impact of these five pillars are on the bottom line and the way that people might lead and grow their business? Yeah, I love that you asked that question. And I'm all about the business case. There's a lot of great statistics and things from Kinsley, Harvard Business Review on a business case

of all these pieces. These things are amazing. What I would say is that when you don't have places where people feel valued, they don't feel respected, not honored, but respected, but they don't feel that they bring honored, but respected. They don't feel that they bring their full selves to work, including what they think, how they believe, all these pieces. What it

does is it actually stymies a few things. One, creativity, innovation, connection, team cohesion that develops the collaboration that all of us as entrepreneurs and leaders are seeking after. And it ultimately impacts how we get stuff done.

Because if I don't like that person, I have so many conversations, even in our interview for this book, of people that just talked about they avoid certain people based upon how they treat them. And if they need them to get work done, well, guess what? They decided I'd much rather not get the work done or not get it done effectively because I want to minimize the time I spend with this person. I don't want to be on a project team with them. I don't want to go to this event with them. And so when we create this space of leaders and entrepreneurs and executives, we create a space where people can respectfully disagree, it allows for our people to lean better into the space. Let me be very clear. It's not an easy

process. There's nothing that I'm saying. I want to make it look accessible, but it's not easy. When we're talking about creating a space, that means we have to model as leaders the behavior. I have to, and even in my own team, I encourage disagreement right i was like

hey i what about what who disagrees with me on that i'll just like hey who's who's with me right because i think what we we tend to do is that we start to get people to believe into the yes people even if we say i don't want yes people right but i ask who disagree with me and it's a part of that so we can build that in because friction we said is just fueled making us get better. And that's been a built-in piece of our culture. What's the friction? So that's why I think it helped impact the bottom line. allows people to engage in our cultures, engage in bringing who they are to think, to believe, and to operate by the mission of the organization. So that's from a macro level why it's important, I think, for leaders. And it definitely impacts the bottom line.

Yeah, I appreciate you saying that. And really powerful as I'm just thinking about myself as I'm listening, it's like, okay, how can I do more of what you're saying? And I'm curious before we kind of dive into more of the five pillars. Hi, this is Cyndra Campoff and thanks for listening to the High Performance Mindset. Did you know that the ideas we share in the show are things we actually specialize in implementing? If you want to become mentally stronger, lead your team more

effectively and get to your goals quicker. Visit freementalbreakthroughcall.com to sign up for your free mental breakthrough call with one of our certified coaches. Again, that's freementalbreakthroughcall.com to sign up for your free call. Talk to you soon. to help think through this. One I've already mentioned in terms of modeling the behavior, right? When you're leading by example or you're engaging, you know, where you're seeking feedback. When's the last time you as a leader saw feedback about how you do it, right?

We often provide feedback and performance reviews and some organizations use 360s. And so you may get some of that. But when you're on your 101, do you sit down or talk to your team and say, hey, I'd love to get honest, open feedback about how things are going, what you disagree with.

If we're not modeling that behavior, we're not creating a space where people feel safe to be able to share their disagreement or what they say. Number two, and this is one of the things I think is a hallmark of any work on this, is vulnerability. Like, shout out to one of one of my, my heroes, Brene Brown, right? No doubt. That appalted the conversation and the vulnerability of, of admitting and sharing when you've gotten stuff wrong or where you

disrespectfully disagree and what you learned from it. So that's why I'm often in my sessions talking about the many times I did. I'll share a brief story because I think it's helpful. One of my buddies, we're going to go on a hiking trip, planning to go to Patagonia, which I just did this past December. And we're trying to figure out who our group was going to be, right? And one of the questions he asked was like, okay, well, how many men compared to women are going? I was like, that's a stupid question. Why does it matter, right? Let's just get people go, right?

And I think I actually said that out loud. And he was like, well, why is that stupid? And I was like, well, it's like, why does it matter to you? He's like, well, because, you know, my wife, I don't want it to feel like people are coupled up and things like that. I was like, well, people just hiking. You know, there's four four men or women, like,

there's people I, and I actually said words that don't, I think that's stupid. And, you know, I got off the call and I was like, wow, Justin, what'd you just do? And I called him back probably about 10, 15 minutes later. I was like, hey, I just want to apologize to you. Like, I shouldn't have called it stupid. I may not understand or it may not be a priority for me about the ratio of men to women.

But can you better help me understand why this is important to you and why this is ultimately important to your wives? And we were able to have a conversation, right? Now, when i called this stupid guess what he immediately did he defended himself he put up a wall barrier was there because i chose to lean into that barrier with my language um and guess what that happens in our meetings oh yeah it does how does that tell people yeah now that i tell people as a leader as a person sharing i'm the person who's researched this, who's leading into this. People feel comfortable and open and saying, oh, yeah, I've done it too.

Yeah. And as we lead with vulnerability, that allows people to come forward more and to, you know, to share the openness and honesty of where they are. Pretending is not progress. I think oftentimes we create pretending cultures not progressive cultures and and so that's what i think you know and then the last thing uh i think is really really powerful is um when we reward disagreement all right and people may say what allows you to reward disagreement or maybe i reward it right that how are we doing in terms of like just rewarding doesn't necessarily mean financial or thing it could be in a meeting like oh thank you for bringing up that alternative point

right or thank you for bringing up the like just those small little nudges people are paying attention they're asking they're realizing oh wait a minute did she just say thank you for bringing up that important point like yeah that's and now, well, maybe I have a different point, right? Right. I made one present my point. And so these are like the practical things, I think, as leaders that allow us to really engage and to lead our team in ways that are meaningful. So that's, that's why one, I think it's important. But two, it'll be some just some small practical ways that leaders can lean in to helping their teams get better. Yes, and I so appreciate that because I'm imagining what you're talking about when someone

judges you for a belief that you have and then you put up different walls, right? And then you start shutting down and then it does create barriers in the workplace and even at home. It's like, well, I'm not going to share my opinions with people if they're going to judge me, right? And I think about how we judge ourselves, we judge other people, we judge situations. I think it's part of the human nature. But I think when you're talking about pretending is not progress and how can you as a leader just be maybe even celebrating the disagreement that's powerful? Yeah.

And oh, my gosh, you were so on it. One thing that we didn't we had no idea we'd run into in our research because we started noticing we created this disagreement agreement matrix. And we we knew that there's this thing called, you know, respectful disagreement. That's what we're after. Right. We knew that there's this thing called you know respectful disagreement that's what we're after right we knew that there was disrespectful disagreement what we didn't realize was this place of disrespectful

agreement okay so let's talk about the difference there yeah disrespectful agreement is when I'm like hey you said you're like you got I think that's a great idea but behind your back I'm Cassandra, I think that's a great idea. But behind your back, I'm like, yeah, I think that was a horrible idea. Right. Disrespectful agreement.

That's a version of it. The other version of that comes in where I've agreed, but I've disrespected myself in the process because I didn't really believe it. I didn't value it or I allowed or operated by the power differentials, right? Now, what we didn't want to get into is because there's a lot that goes into why people might disrespect or disagree when it's different power dynamics,

somebody's in charge of promotions and stuff like that. We didn't dive in depth into that piece because that's a whole nother aspect of why some people do that. That's just why leaders need to really create that culture. But there are times when I've disrespected myself when I've agreed with you because I didn't come forward. I wasn't courageous in my conversation to share

why I have a different perspective. Do you mind if I share? Yeah. Right. And so I find people disagreeing, disrespecting themselves, but I also find them disrespecting, you know, the new term that people use known as gaslighting. Other meetings and in conversations just to get it over with or just to make it seem like they're on people away, not from disrespectful disagreement, but disrespectful agreement, getting to respectfully disagree. Yeah, I think that's so helpful because, you know, it always comes back to the person. I think when you're disagreeing with them behind their back, you know, it definitely doesn't help with trust and respect. We know one of you, as I talk about these five pillars, again, number one, challenge your perspective. Number two, be the student. Number three, cultivate your curiosity. Number four, seek the gray. And then number five,

agree to respect, right? One of the ones I thought was, I mean, they're all powerful, but I wanted to just dive in a little bit to cultivating your curiosity and you talk a little bit about having courageous curiosity in the book like what does that mean and why is curiosity really important when people are disagreeing yeah oh my gosh you are so brilliant oh i, I love that you asked that. This is one of my favorites. So in cultivating curiosity, what does that mean? And why cultivating it? Because curiosity is one of those things, you know, it's an arming term in terms of cultivating. You have to work at it, right? You have to work at being more curious. But guess when we didn't

have to? When we were eight or nine or 10 years old. That's true. We were just curious, right? I talk about one of the things that I'll say mentioned is what I learned from the kid on the plane who wouldn't shut up. And just this eight or nine-year-old kid who was sitting on a plane. And I'm sitting, he's on the window. I'm in the aisle. And the person next to us, I think was from Laos,

he's, you know, I'm trying to go to sleep, but I forgot my Bose noise-canceling headphones. And he's just yapping, right? I couldn't go to sleep, but I started to listen to what he's doing, right? And he's talking to me, he's asking so many questions. He's like, hey, what's Laos like? What should I know about Laos? And I'm like, oh my gosh, this little kid is engaged in these two powerful concepts.

One, of courageous curiosity and two, authentic listening. Because when we were eight or nine years old, we asked questions like we knew nothing. Yeah. And as we just gotten a little bit older. We ask questions like we know everything. Trying to prove our worth instead of simply understanding the world and the worth of people around us. And this is the beauty of cultivating our curiosity, is that now as we're adults, because our society is pride, and is knowing things and operating in a fixed mindset that Carol Dweck so often talks about, we don't lean into being courageous to hear others' perspectives, especially with those who are different than us.

And so what we challenge ourselves to do, and we borrowed this from inclusive mindset, is we give people practical tools in order to do it. We don't just say, just be more curious. No, no, no. Let me give you some tools to do this. One of these things is 1MC over W. One of the few math things you'll do in the book okay say it one more time so people can hear it can you say it one more time one mc over w okay one mc over w yep it stands for one meaningful connection per week. It's cool.

What if you built into your calendar 15 to 30 minutes each week to have a meaningful conversation with someone, to learn, to ask questions, to hear their story, right? If that's too much, do one MC over M, right? Which is one meaningful connection per month. But as you're doing that, and this is the true aspect of cultivating curiosity, listen to the power of three. Listen to the power of three. Now, what I mean by the power of three, what we found in some of our research is that people normally listen to the

power of one or the power of two. Now, the power of one, think of something as simple as, Sandra, how was your day today? You're like, my day was great. I'm like, my day is great too. But that's power of one, right? i didn't ask the question beyond the question right power two might be simply hey cinderella how's your day today you're like oh my day's great i'm like well may's your day great see you see what just happened right i just leaned into this power of two versus power three you may say oh yeah you know i had it you know great breakfast power three because simply it's like oh what's what do you eat, right? Now, it's not in an investigative

way, right? It's done in a more curious way of understanding. But when we engage people in that curiosity, we hear more of the essence of, one, who people are, two, what people really mean. And that's one of the

things in our disagreements. We're often disagreeing about two totally different things. And until we ask clarifying questions and not assume what you mean, like same thing when I talk about, some people say auto diversity. Well, I used to automatically, well, I'm Trent Derry.

Now I'm going like, what do you mean by diversity? How do you define it? I just ask the question. In the simplest way, now we can have a conversation to say, are we actually talking apples to apples or just apples to oranges? Right? So part of that is that curiosity and cultivating is so important because it allows us to make sure we're in alignment

with what we're actually talking about. And the last thing I think that's really, really helpful is that when we ask questions, it does things to challenge our assumptions. It does things to hear perspective of others. And like, what's the number one thing that most people like talking about? Themself.

100%, most people. You know, even introverts. You can't listen to like, I don't know. Yes, you get energy by yourself, but all of us, not all, but majority of us, like talking about ourselves, especially in meaningful conversations.

And so when we engage people, guess what? Just that simple act of asking questions, of hearing their perspective, of better understanding their viewpoint, it's already swelling up their value cup. Yeah. So that even when you do disagree in a respectful manner,

that they're more willing to hear you because you were more willing to hear them. And how to win friends and influence people, what I love that Dale Carnegie brought forward, he said, how do you win friends? By first being friendly. And that's the same thing. How do you get respect in conversation? By first being respectful. And that's why I think courageous curiosity and cultivating your curiosity is such an important

integral pillar because it's one of those value building things with our clubs. Well, I'm so glad I asked you that question because you just like threw down some like major gems there. So I think we need to go back. Power of three, you know, when someone is interacting with me that way, I feel like they really care about me, right? That it's not just like the superficial conversation, like how was your breakfast, but, you know, really like, hey, I see you. I care about you. I really want to get to know you at a deeper level. And then a few things that you said were just like mic drops instead of proving your worth, instead of understanding other people's worth. Yeah. And then, you know, asking questions

like we know nothing. And you're right. I think the ego gets in the way of us doing that when we get older. But just being curious, you learn a lot about someone's perspective and what's important to them. Yeah. No, you're spot on. And one of the things that we found is that we often vacillate between these mainly two places, these two complexes. But we can our goal is to get to this place of kind of this equal perspective. And so you have, you know, that superiority complex that a lot of people talk about. Right. And you're like, oh, I should know know and i get that a lot of times when i'm dealing with like my as a parent sometimes people in positions of power or who see that they are

better think through like oh yeah i'm you know of course i know this right i have so many stories i can tell you where i was wrong and my daughter was right and as i leaned into to what we call the three self model right and And so the superior self thinks, I'm better than, right? Oh, why do you think that? Oh, you get vaccinations? Oh, how dare, like, you know, or you don't get vaccinations.

So we operate from the superior self. And sometimes we operate from this inferior self where we look at other people and based on their position, their status in life, their celebrity, other things, we have now elevated them in ways that we disrespect ourselves in the process. And the goal of this balancing pendulum is spending more time in the equal self, where you see the value of others, but you also see the value of yourself.

And that's the beautiful aspect of the bridge right is that i spend more time connecting than burying i'm building up barriers so that's to your point yes i think well we can say wait a minute i'm not as high invited as i think i am equal so or i'm not as low compared to this other person that i think i am maybe i can get the equal self and i think those are very key key parts of you know challenging our own perspective right which is one of the other pillars so anyway yeah when you started talking about superiority and stuff like the ego like that's where it came of superior equal and inferior self and how we can work to spend more time as equal self yeah that's so good uh superior

self inferior self equal self and i feel like the equal self you're respecting the other person's perspective but then you're also respecting yours and earlier you're talking about sometimes we we don't we don't we disagree to things even though we don't we we say we agree but we don't really agree because we're not respecting ourselves yeah yeah it's dehumanization and oftentimes we just ascribe dehumanization for other people right we're dehumanizing other people but there's times we dehumanize ourselves right and it's learning to lean into our own voice right and there's some people right and then that's i i'm so grateful right i had a my publishing team there was a person on the editorial part of it that i was not for this book and i had to challenge myself to do what the book says all right and so i said hey let i'd love to

have a conversation with you, right? And got on the phone, had a conversation. I was like, yeah, tell me, tell me, you know, what the story and what the year where they disagreed with the book and things. And one of the things that they shared I thought was so helpful and actually made it into the book and the research was they felt that there's many times where they weren't maximizing their voice. They were diminishing their voice in their organization. And they didn't know how to elevate it. And that's where really leading it to those people who are also disrespecting self in the process came about.

So a lot of this stuff has just been growth and learning and practicing the same tools that I'm sharing with others, even during this book, right? And so I'm very grateful she's now on board and is a fan of the book, but we've included that aspect for people who might lean on diminishing self a lot more than they do to elevating self. Yeah, appreciate that.

Superior self, inferior self, equal self, your three self model. So there's one other part of the five pillars that I wanna ask you about. And it was just really intriguing as I was listening to it or reading about it, I guess, listening to you today, but the fourth pillar is seeking the gray.

And I'm like, well, before I read that, I was like, well, why do we wanna seek the gray? And like, what does that actually mean? Tell us a little bit about seeking the gray and why we want to do that. Yeah. So when you're seeking the gray, I love a chapter called 50 Shades of That, That, That. Yeah, exactly. It's not that type of gray, y'all.

Not that type of gray. It's very gray right now. I'm sorry. Another championship. But one of the things I love about gray is when I was doing my MBA, I had one of those really cool professors that was like dead poet society type of professor. If you've never seen the movie, you got to check it out.

The lady, Robin Williams. Yeah, so good. Yeah, right. movie you gotta check it out with the lady robin williams yeah so good yeah right and so he would have him do things like sit in the middle of the room and just do nothing and then write some reflections on it but one of the books he gave what sounds like why i have to read this book i think the book is you know again book stupid right but he had to read this book that was one of the most transformative books that I've read. Not only Inquisition, but even its work, it's the foundation.

And it's a book called Dialogue. We start thinking together. And why was that so big for me? Now, what I loved about Dialogue is that they talk about, A, most people trying to prove A, and this whole other group trying to prove B. But the real question is, how do we create C together? How would C? And C is not 50-50 often. C could be 75-25, right?

Or 95-5. And when you're seeking the gray, you're realizing that most conversations are nuanced. We like to speak and see things as very black and white. But when you start involving people, they aren't black and white. There's nuances. We're really talking about things from gun control or gun lobbying. Like, there's gray to the conversations.

We're talking about Republicans and Democrats and what should we do about Boris and enough. There's gray. But because we're often so focused on improving our perspective and our point, we don't even see, nor do we validate the points of others that actually might be good. And all I've seen that done is couched under the wall.

So slippery slope. If I give in here, and that's when I've realized, oh, so what we're doing, it's all about winning rather than growing. And when we're more, it's all about winning rather than growing. Yeah. And when we're more focused on winning, then it's going to be never sharing where their viewpoint was actually valid. It's never sharing where, you know, that's actually an interesting perspective. It's never even valuing the person.

When we're focused on growing and seeking the gravy, look for those places where there might be commonality, where say you know what this piece of what you said was really good guess what that does and the research they found is that people who often communicate the commonalities or common zones recall gray people are more willing to listen to their disagreement because they found places where it's not about them just overcoming and bulldozing over other people but they're actually engaged in true listening and finding some aspects of commonality i'm not talking about false commonality just to say well i found i'm talking about where you're genuinely saying wow that i never thought about that that way right or actually this piece of what you said you you said three things. And I think that middle piece that you said, that's great. I've never I've never even considered.

I've never heard it that way before. Right. That allows that then takes off the walls of others to be able to better. Now, how do we do it? Right. One of the things that we do to seek the gray? When I go into disagreements, I challenge myself to ask myself, Justin, find something that's not you, that's not them, that we create together from this conversation. And I say that literally not out loud, but I say it in my head, Justin, what did you find that you all created together in the conversation? That's innovation. That's the gray. It's the nuance beyond the binary thinking, right, where we're considering these multiple perspectives. But it's also realizing that there's ambiguity

there. There's a sense of, there's not a concrete thing because within this gray it's it's often some people consider it murky it's not just clear black not clear white and we often found we want to be in a black and white pure zones because we like the pure um approval so when we start operating in gray they're like wait a minute why did you concede that point but when we realize it's not about winning it's about growing it allows us to actually see the grain even in the book you notice the cover of the book it's a black black side it's a white side and what most people don't see the very same gray line in between it and it's intentional to seek it. Because if we don't seek the gray, we'll never find those points where we're actually more common. We actually have agreement. We're

actually able to say, you know what? This is one thing that we actually agree on. And we may disagree with other people, but I at least found this one thing. It connects with people. It bridges the divide versus building a barrier. That's the gray. Excellent. Well, I appreciate what you said in the book. You said the gray helps you recognize that real world problems often exist in the gray areas that require nuanced collaboration, multidimensional solutions that respect the diversity of perspectives. And, you know, when I think about winning, I think about me over the other person. But when it's like growing, it's like, how can we grow this together? So, Justin, your book comes out April 16th. People can already order it on Amazon. Tell us where we can order it. And then also, you are an incredible speaker.

So tell us a little bit about how people can find more information about your speaking as well. Thank you so much. I appreciate the compliment. And I thank you for the compliment. Yes, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Books in a Billion. You can go all the places, pre-order the books. We are offering some pretty cool goodies and giveaways for those who pre-order. So if you pre-order, just shoot us an email at engage at workmeanable.com um and that comes to us and we'll send off all the beautiful um goodies um we'll have in march we'll kick off our

how to respectfully disagree.com um so people will be able to go and just have one place to be able to grab all the stuff so if you're listening march and beyond the how to respectfully disagree.com um we'll be there also for bulk orders port slight right so we've had some of our clients that they're like hey justin you know we're going to order 500 books right and so that's been great because we've been able to go out and um and then do a presentation or figure out some way to really reward that so port side books is also a way. We can have the conversation about that. So your second point, workmeaningful.com is where you can find out a lot more about the work that we're doing around employee experience and intersection of inclusion. And we improve the lives of people. People feel more included when we respectfully disagree. And so it's a

really, really passionate part for us and the last thing I'll say to this and I think just this last tip I think would be very helpful it's that no matter when or who you disagree with or what you disagree on you can always fully acknowledge the other person always fully acknowledge what does fully acknowledge mean you can say you know as well understand for researchers call out in the book says thank you because thank you because i've never heard it shared this way before right or thank you for sharing your perspective today or wow i really appreciate you being vulnerable enough to share what you believe

and none of those things that i said, I agreed with them. Yeah, that's true. But I did fully acknowledge them. And that's where, no matter who we're talking about, no matter who we're talking to, why we can vehemently disagree with someone's ideology and still passionately pursue their humanity. Thank you so much, Justin, for being on the podcast today. So again, Justin's book

coming out April 16th, I Respectfully Disagree How to Have Difficult Conversations in a Divided World. And to find more information about his speaking, you can go to workmeaningful.com. Justin, there are so many things that I found really valuable today. The way you define diversity is just how everybody is different and how we all have differences. And I think that's a really powerful way to define it, that we all have biases, but we can still move towards this golden respect you talked about. Your five pillars are incredible. And then, you know, my favorite parts of this were when we ask questions, like we know nothing, like a nine-year-old. And then just to prove our worth, we don't want to

prove our worth in these conversations, but understand other people's worth. So thank you so much for describing the power of three, the three self model, and just being here for us to think about how can we have more respectful conversations include people when we have those conversations. Thank you. Thank you so much for having this and the great work that you're doing. I'm honored to be on this on this. Thank you. Thank you, Justin. Way to go for finishing another episode of the high performance mindset. I'm giving you a virtual fist pump. Holy cow. Did that go by way too fast for anyone else? If you want more, remember to subscribe

and you can head over to Dr. Sindra for show notes and to join my exclusive community for high performers where you get access to videos about mindset each week. So again, you can head over to Dr. Sindra. That's D-R-C-I-N-D-R-A.com. See you next week.