Something You Should Know - Why Feedback Often Fails & A More Effective Way to Have a Conversation

Episode Date: August 19, 2019

How physically strong are you? Interestingly, men today are not as strong as they once were. I begin this episode with the explanation of why that is and the surprising health consequences of not having the physical strength of your ancestors. http://www.menshealth.com/fitness/grip-strength-weaker-today “Can I give you some constructive feedback?” Usually, that question is followed by some criticism you would probably rather not hear. The “annual performance review” is a good example of this. Yet feedback – when done correctly – can be very powerful and quite helpful according to Tamra Chandler, founder and CEO of PeopleFirm, LLC and author of the book Feedback (and Other Dirty Words) Why We Fear It, How to Fix It (https://amzn.to/2Z10SXB). Tamra joins me to explain how to better give and take feedback and why this is so important.   How important is it for children to have siblings? Is being an only child a handicap? That has been an assumption for a long time but lately it is being questioned. Listen as I explain what the research says about the pros and cons of being an only child. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/one-true-thing/201106/susan-newman-the-case-the-only-child The purpose of having a conversation is to communicate and share thoughts and ideas. However, a lot of conversations seem more about making a point or telling people why they are wrong and/or why you are right. Communications expert Andrew Blotky has worked in political communications at Facebook, The White House and Congress and he is author of a book called Honestly Speaking: How the Way We Communicate Transforms Leadership, Love and Life (https://amzn.to/2YL4W36). Andrew joins me to discuss a better way to approach important conversations so that everyone feels heard and ideas are actually shared. This Week's Sponsors -Capterra. To find the best software for you business for free go to www.Capterra.com/something. -LinkedIn Job. For $50 off your first job post, go to www.Linkedin.com/podcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

As a listener to Something You Should Know, I can only assume that you are someone who likes to learn about new and interesting things and bring more knowledge to work for you in your everyday life. I mean, that's kind of what Something You Should Know was all about. And so I want to invite you to listen to another podcast called TED Talks Daily. Now, you know about TED Talks, right? Many of the guests on Something You Should Know have done TED Talks. Well, you see, TED Talks Daily is a podcast that brings you a new TED Talk every weekday in less than 15 minutes. Join host Elise Hu.

She goes beyond the headlines so you can hear about the big ideas shaping our future. Learn about things like sustainable fashion, embracing your entrepreneurial spirit, the future of robotics, and so much more. Like I said, if you like this podcast, Something You Should Know, I'm pretty sure you're going to like TED Talks Daily. And you get TED Talks Daily wherever you get your podcasts. Today on Something You Should Know, men have less arm and hand strength than men did 30 years ago. I'll explain why that's a big deal. Then feedback, you know, people or your boss telling you what they think of you. A lot of times it's not very helpful. So I think what we need to do again is redefine this idea of feedback. It's not these ratings, it's not rankings, it's not the numbers, it's the conversations. And sometimes

it's just that little nugget offered in the moment that can completely change your life. Then is there really anything wrong with being an only child and improving the art and skill of conversation? What we're really trying to do here is help encourage people to sort of be a little more precise and a little more focused on what the words are that they're using. And that requires a little bit of work on the front end when you're not even having that conversation and being able to set yourself up for it when you're having a contentious conversation. All this today on Something You Should Know.

People who listen to Something You Should Know are curious about the world, looking to hear new ideas and perspectives. So I want to tell you about a podcast that is full of new ideas and perspectives, and one I've started listening to called Intelligence Squared. It's the podcast where great minds meet.

Listen in for some great talks on science, tech, politics, creativity, wellness, and a lot more. A couple of recent examples, Mustafa Suleiman, the CEO of Microsoft AI, discussing the future of technology. That's pretty cool. And writer, podcaster, and filmmaker John Ronson discussing the rise of conspiracies and culture wars. Intelligence Squared is the kind of podcast that gets you thinking a little more openly about the important conversations going on today. Being curious, you're probably just the type of person

Intelligence Squared is meant for. Check out Intelligence Squared wherever you get your podcasts. Something you should know. Fascinating intel. The world's top experts. And practical advice you can use in your life. Today, Something You Should Know with Mike Carruthers. Hi, welcome to Something You Should Know. We have an official announcement coming up shortly, but it has to do with the fact that a lot of people have asked us, why do you only do two episodes a week? So we're going to change that, and I'll have details coming up.

First up today, men today are weaker than they were 30 years ago, according to research in the Journal of Hand Therapy. In a study, men ages 20 to 34 had lower grip and pinch strength, which measures how strong your hand and upper extremities are, than the same-aged men did three decades ago. In fact, the average grip strength for men ages 25 to 29 is nearly 26 pounds lower today than it was before. Why?

Well, the assumption is that men are less likely to work in jobs that require physical strength. And you may think, so what? Well, here's the so what. Research in previous generations has linked lower grip strength to a variety of serious health problems, including arthritis, heart disease, stroke, and neurological conditions. In addition, maintaining body strength is important for mobility as men get older. And that is something you should know.

Feedback is an interesting word. We all, I think, like to give our feedback on things, on people, on ideas. Yet many of us are less excited about hearing feedback about us. Your boss, your partner, your parents, your friends, they might offer feedback in the spirit of helping you, but it doesn't always come across as help. In fact, it often isn't helpful at all, it's just criticism. But feedback has become part of how we communicate and supposedly improve, particularly on the job. Your boss probably reviews your performance and offers feedback,

but does it help? Do people perform better after hearing feedback? Is there a better way or even a right way to offer feedback so that it actually does help? Let's find out with my guest, Tamara Chandler. She is founder and CEO of an organization called PeopleFirm, and she works a lot in an area that's called performance management. She is author of a book called Feedback and Other Dirty Words, Why We Fear It, How to Fix It. Hi, Tamara. Thanks, Mike. I'm really excited to be here. So the assumption is that we all need feedback, that you need to hear what I think of you and your efforts, whether you like it or not, because that's going to help you improve.

It's just assumed to be a good thing, it seems. If you go back and you think about your days on the playground, we've learned really bad habits about feedback in those early days about being, you know, sort of ornery and spiteful and very direct with people and not always honest and looking to help people actually improve or grow. From an organizational perspective, we've created these ideas of feedback through things like the dreaded annual performance review, where people think of feedback as this big, heavy meeting where, you know, we're going to spend an hour and I'll put a box of Kleenexes in the middle of the table and we're going to talk about some of your strengths and then we're going to rehash over things that happened over the past year

and what went wrong and those things you should be working on as you go forward. And I think all those different experiences that we've had as individuals taint our beliefs and understanding and responses to feedback. Well, what does the science tell us about how people receive feedback? Feedback does amazingly wonderful things when we do it right. The challenge is that, as I said, we frequently don't experience it in the right way. So if we offer feedback with the idea that it's short, it's sweet, it's light, it's provided with the full intention of helping and not hurting, if it's future focused, right? So if I say to you, Mike, I know that you're interested in taking, you know, your podcast even to this next level. And, and I've got some ideas

or feedback that I think might help you, would you like to sit down and talk about those, then that's offered in the spirit of what you care about, and what's about the future. And it's very focused. So we talk a lot about focused, frequent and fair feedback in that I'm not going to give you my judgment or my assumptions. I'm just going to share what I witnessed, what I observed, what I've experienced and have a conversation with you for the together for us to explore how that might help you achieve what is important to you. And I think if you go back to like those performance reviews, those are often rarely future focused. They're usually looking back. They're rarely about one thing. They may or may

not be about something you care about. They're often loaded with assumptions and judgments. You know, they're usually use positional power where it's usually a manager telling the employee their views of what's right and wrong. And as Laura, my colleague would say, a yell, tell, sell approach. That doesn't work. So often it seems, and as I think back on my own career working for other people, that feedback, when you sit down with your boss and get the annual review or other feedback, it's rarely about what you want to talk about. It's what the boss wants to talk about. And it's usually focused on where you need to improve, what your weaknesses are, how you screwed things up. And, you know, I would always cringe at those meetings because I didn't find them helpful. I was kind of hoping they forgot about those things, and let's move on to a brighter future. You were asking about the science. One of the things to

know about the science and our human brains is we can only process so many things at one time. And so if you sit in, you know, a longer session and go through a whole list of things, if you go through that annual review with, you know, your list of your ups and your downs, people can't process that information. And it all just gets lost. And of course, because as we say, we're positively negative, we usually exit any of those conversations. Even if you said four lovely things and two negative, the people are only going to walk away remembering the two negative, if that. Right. Because you always remember the criticism. You're less likely to remember the praise because for whatever reason, you take the criticism to heart, yet you're typically more willing to dismiss the praise as just fluff. Yeah, and our brains are wired that way, and it's been, you know, if you go back to our history as an evolving human, it was a protectionism. We

remembered the bad things, so we remembered that, you know, be scared of the saber-toothed tiger. And so our minds process negative information faster. We hold on to it way longer than we hold on to positive information. Often when positive information comes at us, it doesn't even get consumed. We sort of say it's that Teflon effect. It bounces off. And if we get negative information, it's Velcro. It just sticks to the brain. And so part of what all of us have to do when we shift our ideas of feedback is even sort of learn to how we change our own minds. How do we change our brains so we hear the good stuff and we process what is coming in that is meant in the spirit of helping in a way that is helpful, you know, that helps us look at progress. It helps us think about what are the things I can do? What is in my control? How harmful was that really to me to take it in,

right? So, we need to kind of rethink our own approach as we are engaging in feedback ourselves. Well, I can imagine managers, employers listening to you saying, well, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Look, if I'm paying your salary, I have every right to tell you when you screw up because it could easily be costing me money or prestige or loss of market share, whatever. So I have the right to sit you down and say, no, that's wrong. You can't do that. want to help the people that work with you and for you to be their best selves, then I would tell you that what we know and what science validates is that the best way to do that is to help people understand their strengths, to help them understand the value that they're providing, to help them move forward. Now, that doesn't mean we should avoid constructive feedback or help somebody be redirected if they're off course. And, you know, by gosh, if someone's getting ready to run off,

you know, a ledge or the train is off the tracks, then you've got to be more proactive at getting involved. But what is sad is too many managers spend their time thinking, oh, I need to go tell them what's going wrong because that's what a good manager is, rather, oh, I need to go tell them what's going wrong because that's what a good manager is, rather than thinking, I need to go tell them what's going right and I need to stay tuned in and I need to have my people know that I see the work that they're doing,

I value the work that they're doing and I'm here to help them take it to the next level. And when we shift our minds to that type of leadership, that not only drives stronger teams, but there's tons of research out there by Zinger and Folkman that look at how leaders are assessed by their people, that look at the impact that leaders have in organizations. And those leaders who give positive feedback are the leaders who are ranked the highest and who have the strongest and most engaged teams. There will always be times, though, when you do have to criticize, when you do have to deliver

bad news, when you do have to say, no, this was wrong and you didn't do it the way you were supposed to. So in that case, is there a way to deliver that kind of news? You know, like you've heard the old sandwich technique where you tell them something good, then you tell them something bad, and then you end on something good, so they walk away feeling good. Is there a technique or a way to deliver negative news? Yes, there is a way. And I would say the approach to giving feedback should really be the same, whether it's positive or negative. And we really should avoid what you're talking about in the book. I won't use the R-rated version of what we call it in the book, but let's call it the poo sandwich for our PG audience.

And when we come at somebody with a compliment, and then we put hard feedback in the middle, and we close with a compliment, we're really destroying the trust, and we're really diluting our message. And the receiver of that is unclear of what did we really, what was important in the message? Is anything positive you said true or did you just say it because you really wanted to get that big meaty tough feedback out in the middle? And so our credibility is lost and the value of anything you were trying to say gets lost. The alternative to that is to be very specific. We say focus on one thing, provide the context. I want to give you this feedback because I want to help you grow. Here's what I noticed, sharing what you noticed, saying this is what the effect of that was.

I noticed that the crowd really got engaged when you started talking through the numbers because you know those numbers so well. Did you experience the same thing? And then move again into a conversation about that and say well now let's think about how you can take that strength or that goodness you presented in the front of that group and take it to the next presentation or to you know some other place where we can use your expertise in the numbers for value so I think the more that we can provide the context you focus on one thing you share what you've noticed without judgment, and you share what the effect was that you noticed that had, and then you engage in a conversation. So if it's negative, that can take a lot of the risk for both you and the receiver out of the equation, right? Because you're just sharing what you noticed. You're not judging or assuming.

And you're engaging them in a conversation to understand, did they experience it similarly? Were they feeling the same way? How did they see the effect of their experience or performance impact the people around them? I'm talking about feedback today, and I'm talking with Tamara Chandler. She's founder and CEO of PeopleFirm and author of the book Feedback and Other Dirty Words, Why We Fear It, How to Fix It.

Hi, I'm Jennifer, a founder of the Go Kid Go Network. At Go Kid Go, putting kids first is at the heart of every show that we produce. That's why we're so excited to introduce a brand new show to our network called The Search for the Silver Lining, a fantasy adventure series about a spirited young girl named Isla who time travels to the mythical land of Camelot. Look for The Search for the Silver Lining on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts. Since I host a podcast, it's pretty common for me to be asked to recommend a podcast. And I tell people, if you like something you should know, you're going to like The Jordan Harbinger Show. Every episode is a conversation with a fascinating guest.

Of course, a lot of podcasts are conversations with guests, but Jordan does it better than most. Recently, he had a fascinating conversation with a British woman who was recruited and radicalized by ISIS and went to prison for three years. She now works to raise awareness on this issue. It's a great conversation. And he spoke with Dr. Sarah Hill about how taking birth control not only prevents pregnancy, it can influence a woman's partner preferences, career choices, and overall behavior due to the hormonal changes it causes. Apple named The Jordan Harbinger Show one of the best podcasts a few years back, and in a nutshell, the show is aimed at making you a better, more informed, critical thinker.

Check out The Jordan Harbinger Show. There's so much for you in this podcast. The Jordan Harbinger Show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. So, Tamara, it sounds as if, based on what I've heard you say so far, that the whole concept of an annual review is flawed because, A, it's a year-long review. It's not short. It's backward thinking, and it doesn't focus on one thing. So why do it?

Well, I would say don't do it. I think the better solution is to look at continuous feedback models and to create habits and patterns in which we're connecting on a frequent basis, where we build muscle, where if we're working together, we can be coaching each other through that process in the moment when those events happen. Because you're exactly right, those annual reviews, they're biased by our perspective. They're biased by recency. You know, I'll remember what happened for the last three months, but gosh, can I really remember what happened 10 months ago? Probably not. You know, so the more it's current and in the moment, the more impactful it will be for all of us. Well, it also seems like

it's biased just because you didn't like what somebody did doesn't mean what they did was wrong. It's your management, but if I'm to give you a rating and say, hey, you're a, you know, I think you're a 4.5 out of a five point scale, that rating in the end is about 60% about me. It's how do I, you know, what's the scale that I use? How am I doing this? What does it mean? It also would seem that when people know they're going to be reviewed, they're going to be judged, they know their boss is going to sit them down and talk about what they've done over the last six months or a year, that people get more cautious in their work. They play to the review. They do the safe thing so they don't get called out for screwing something up. Right.

And people don't like to take risks when they know they're going to be judged. And particularly if we're working in an organization where we're trying to drive collaboration and the process that we're using is comparing peer to peer or team to team, we're really eroding the value we're trying to create through collaboration, right? So people aren't showing up to do their best work, like you say, they, they're not going to stretch, they're not going to go that extra mile, because that fear of failure and what the implications of that failure would be. And then they may hold back on really helping their peers or their others, because they see as, you know, if I hold stuff close to my chest, is that power for me? Does that set me up better than my cohorts? And that's not a great place to be for an organization or a team. I know you talk about the idea of

seeking feedback, that we would be better off rather than shunning feedback to seek it out and that that would be a better way to go? There's so many benefits of this. First is if I'm seeking feedback, I'm in control so I can manage my fear a lot more. I'm seeking feedback about things I care about versus what someone assumes I'm caring about. And I can pick the time and the place and who I'm seeking that feedback from. So I think what's really important is for us to start to think about how do we become feedback seekers. And that often would open up maybe some of those tougher conversations because I might be more willing to say, you know, sit down with one of my colleagues and say, you know, I've really been struggling on this project and I need your help in helping me understand what's happening because I don't seem to be able

to solve it on my own. And that starts a feedback conversation that may get to things that are, that, you know, a person had a perspective, but they weren't going to tell me until I actually sat down and asked them. You mentioned something about ratings, and I've never been in an organization that did that, but that sounds horrible. I personally think it is horrible. And, you know, there's this interesting human phenomenon that happens because we assign a number to something, we suddenly think it's so much more valuable. And it's not. That number is, it's a fallacy that there's any real meaning in those numbers. And with this idea of feedback, we're trying to get people back to conversations because I would bet a lot of your listeners, if they took a moment out and they thought about what is one piece of feedback that really impacted them, maybe changed their lives, maybe drove them to change their careers, maybe opened up an idea they'd never thought about

before. That feedback probably wasn't in an annual review. It was probably delivered by somebody they trusted who really offered it with the idea of trying to help them grow or improve. And it might have been life-changing. And so I think what we need to do, again, is redefine this idea of feedback. It's not these ratings. It's not rankings. It's not the numbers. It's the conversations.

And sometimes it's just that little nugget offered in the moment that can completely change your life. Yeah. Restaurants have ratings. Yeah. Not people. That just seems wrong. Because as you said... Even worse is rankings. Thankfully, most organizations have moved away from that. But some companies, you know, rank their people from one to whatever. Well, as you said, I mean, if somebody gives you like two stars, well, then you're going to feel like a two star person. You're going to perform like a two star person because you're now a two star person. Right.

So why would you do that? It's like, it's just very odd. I guess, don't you think a lot of this is people, organizations do this stuff because they think they should? They don't necessarily know what it does or why they do it, but they think, well, that's what a good organization does, so we better give our people feedback. Yeah, it's really interesting when you look at the common approaches in the space of performance management. And what we're talking about here, the annual review, the ratings, when we first started researching this years ago, we found that 95% of organizations in the US did this process and over 90% globally. There's been a lot of hype about moving away from these ideas, given the idea of modernizing our relationships and modernizing the way that we're running teams and people and organizations. Yet what we're finding is still about 70 to 75% of organizations are still doing ratings, still doing the annual reviews, still in

these old processes. And exactly to your point, Mike, I think it's because, well, I know what it's because. This is what they've always done and they know it well. But the big issue that keeps getting in the way is we need to figure out how we pay people. So they say, well, if I give you a rating, then I can pump that into my spreadsheet and that's going to tell me what your compensation is. And it's sort of an escapism from having to make an actual decision, from having to put the human back in this equation, and really sort of stepping up and holding ourselves accountable to the decisions we make. And that's harder. So, it's been slow to see people move away from these old models, even though, you know, emotionally, they hate them. I haven't found an organization yet that

loves their process if they're in the old models, but they still have been reluctant to move forward. So lastly, and obviously it takes a whole book to explain this, but what's the prescription in a nutshell? What's, in your view, the kind of the perfect layout of giving and receiving feedback in an organization? I think the way we solve this is that we start as seekers and that, you know, maybe you take a small team that you lead in your organization, you spend some time building your skills and your confidence around sharing feedback and some of the ways that we talked about in the positive ways, you really spend some time understanding what good feedback means. We offer a new definition about that being with the sole intent of helping you grow, improve, or thrive or advance. You know, really start there and start with seeking. And then as we start to seek more feedback, again, we can start to build habits that that's the way we work together. And then we hope that people start

to build an army of seekers, you know, welcome more people into the movement and say, hey, we're all getting out here and seeking feedback about things that are going to help us get better. None of us are perfect. We're all a work in process. We all know that. So let's work on it together, but let's create it safe. Let's build trust through the process and go forward. So that's what I understand what it is, how it works, how to best give it and how to best receive it. Tamara Chandler has been my guest. She is the founder and CEO of PeopleFirm, and she's author of the book, Feedback and Other Dirty Words, Why We Fear It, How to Fix It. And you will find a link to that book in the show notes for this episode. Thank you, Tamara. Thanks, Mike. It has been a real pleasure. Thank you so much. Do you love Disney? Then you are going to love our hit podcast, Disney Countdown. I'm Megan, the Magical Millennial. And I'm the Dapper Danielle. On every episode of our fun and

family-friendly show, we count down our top 10 lists of all things Disney. There is nothing we don't cover. We are famous for rabbit holes, Disney themed games, and fun facts you didn't know you needed, but you definitely need in your life. So if you're looking for a healthy dose of Disney magic, check out Disney Countdown wherever you get your podcasts. Hey everyone, join me, Megan Rinks. And me, Melissa Demonts for Don't Blame Me, But Am I Wrong?

Each week, we deliver four fun-filled shows. In Don't Blame Me, we tackle our listeners' dilemmas with hilariously honest advice. Then we have But Am I Wrong, which is for the listeners that didn't take our advice. Plus, we share our hot takes on current events. Then tune in to see you next Tuesday for our listener poll results from But Am I Wrong? And finally, wrap up your week with Fisting Friday, where we catch up and talk all things pop culture. Listen to Don't Blame Me, But Am I Wrong on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday. We all know that having a conversation with someone is a two-way street,

and yet we often don't approach it that way. More often than not, we use conversation as a way of making our point, saying what we want to say, telling our side of the story. But here's the important thing to remember about any conversation. It matters less what you say. It matters more what the other person hears. And those are often not the same thing. Here to discuss what it means to have a meaningful conversation is Andrew Blotke.

Andrew is a leadership and communications expert. He built and led a global employee communications team at Facebook. He's worked in political communications at the White House and in Congress, and he now leads an executive coaching and consulting firm. He's also the author of a book called Honestly Speaking, How the Way We Communicate Transforms Leadership, Love, and Life. Hi, Andrew. Welcome. Thank you. I'm really glad to be here. So this may seem like a very elementary question, but why is it that what I say often isn't what somebody hears? What goes on in that communication typically where I'm saying what I want to say, and the other person hears something else.

Oftentimes, there's an intention behind words, right? So it's not just we're not, we're not robots, we are emotional people. And even in a work context, there are emotions that get, you know, that are associated with every conversation that we have, whether we like something or that we don't like something. And so I'm saying that at work, at home, online, being a little bit more thoughtful on the front end will really help you be much better at communicating because people will have a clearer sense for what your own intent is and what your own purpose is behind what you're trying to convey. So what does that look like? It certainly makes sense that yes, if you give it a little forethought to what you're going to say, maybe it will communicate better. But how do you do that?

What's the process of doing that forethought? So really doing the work of trying to think, okay, well, what am I really trying to convey? If something is bothering me, well, what really is bothering me about this? Or if I have to give a presentation, what really is the purpose of doing this? What do I really want the one or two takeaways to be? So doing the work on the front end of being a little more self-reflective, so that my audience, the person that I'm talking to, or the group of people I'm talking to, will interpret what I'm saying in the way I want them to. When I think about most of the conversations in my life, they don't really allow for me to do what you just said

because they're much more off the cuff. They happen when they happen. There isn't really time to sit down and do the things that you're talking about to prepare for that conversation. I'm already in it. So how can I make better use of those conversations when I don't have the time to prepare? Well, so that's a really good question. And I don't disagree with the point at all. I would say that one of the benefits of doing this kind of work around

thinking about the front end, who's my audience, what's the purpose, being a little bit more self-reflective is that you don't need to do the whole process every single time you have a conversation. If you sort of habituate the practice of doing that and you get into the habit of understanding it, it's sort of cumulative. So if you generally are a little bit aware of how you react and you're a little bit self-reflective of what are the kinds of conversations that I like to have or that I often find myself having, and what could make them a little bit more clear or a little bit more productive, all of that work, even if it's not right in the moment, you'll be able to draw on it in the moment. And the other thing I would say is, if you are having kind of a contentious

conversation, it's totally fine to sort of say, hey, time out, I need a second, take a break. Sometimes things get so heated that our emotions end up clouding even the content of what we're trying to communicate. So it's actually totally fine to sort of say, hey, I need a minute, I need to go walk around the block. Hey, I need to take a break. I want to come back to this so that clear heads can prevail. What we're really trying to do here is help encourage people to sort of be a little more precise and a little more focused on what the words are that they're using. And that requires a little bit of work on the front end when you're not even having that conversation and being able to set yourself up for it when you're having a contentious conversation. So give me a real life situation example, whether real or theoretical.

Let's put this into practice. You know, one of the ways that I think we often have really polarized type conversations where people very often sort of, you know, emotions get, you know, charged really quickly is actually online on social media. And, you know, it happens both sort of on platforms like Facebook or elsewhere, but it also happens on if you just read news like websites, like the New York Times, some of the comments in some of the articles are pretty heated and pretty crazy. And what I'm suggesting is that these conversations can be a little bit better and a little bit more productive if we think less about just pushing out a message into the world and we seek to try to find some common ground. You know,

communication is about communing, it's about commonality, finding some kind of common shared understanding of knowledge and facts and feelings. And so what we need to do is just take a little bit more responsibility for doing that we almost have gotten a little bit lazy and sort of not wanting to sort of take responsibility we just sort of think we put the words out into the world and you know our political views for example just we can kind of spew them out online and there's almost no consequence because there's so much volume and there's so much out there and so i'm saying you know if you can you know i'd preference having an in-person

conversation because it's a lot easier to read people's body language, emotions, and kind of get a sense for how somebody's, you know, reacting to the words that you're sharing. And I also sort of think that, you know, it's important to sort of think in the social media context around how are you showing up both as a producer of content? Does it reflect accurately the way that you present yourself in the world? And would you say the things in person to somebody that you're saying online? And you also on social media need to think about how you are as a consumer. Are you allowing certain things into your life that are toxic, that are not really helpful

to you? And if they aren't, then maybe you can kind of make a change or get rid of it. So thinking of yourself as a consumer and a producer on social media is one way that you can actually think about yourself as somebody who's communicating. And then you put yourself immediately in the position of the audience, which helps you get better at seeing multiple sides of a conversation. Well, what you said at the beginning of that answer, that communicating is about being communal and finding common ground, and that that's the beginning of that answer, that communicating is about being communal and finding common ground and that that's the purpose of having this communication. Well, there are an

awful lot of conversations where that's not the premise. That's not the purpose. It isn't to find common ground. It's to convince you that you're wrong and that I'm right. And that's the purpose of the communication. Yeah, you know, and if you just sort of think about the very, very beginning of, you know, humankind, one of the gifts that we as humans have evolved to have is this ability to convey facts, thoughts, feelings through words, but it doesn't matter. What does it matter to convey them unless somebody else hears and reacts to them, right? And so you have to sort of think about, okay, is your desired reaction to get a rise out of somebody or to hurt them?

Or is the desired result to actually try to help somebody to see what your point of view is or understand your perspective? So often, especially in this polarized environment that we are in, in this country, and actually in so many countries around the world, we tend to only like to talk to people who will kind of agree with us. We live in kind of increasingly large echo chambers. And what I'm saying is, I think this whole aspect of our own, you know, humanness is about communicating, and that's about just sharing thoughts and feelings. But it doesn't matter if you share them, unless there's somebody else that you're sharing it with. And if you're finding

some kind of common ground. Well, it would be great if everyone played by the rules you're outlining, but what about when, even when you are using the rules that you outline and the other person isn't, and the other person is yelling back, how do you stay true to what you're talking about and deal with someone who's playing by a different set of rules? If you're talking to somebody that might be of an opposite political persuasion from you, or if you're talking to somebody who you know actually knows far less about a particular topic than you do, it's sort of up to you to calibrate how you want to communicate with that person. And you also need to sort of listen because it's really about, you know,

not just hearing the words that they're saying and immediately preparing your rebuttal and your response. It's about trying to actually internalize, okay, where's this person coming from? What might be some of the things that are underlying what this person is saying that clearly maybe is upsetting them? And how can I then help get this to be a conversation that moves in a more productive direction? You know, I don't think anybody likes having a really contentious conversation where it sort of escalates and you sort of just feel like wrung out at the end and you may feel better, perhaps very briefly in the moment, but I bet if you walked away for an hour or two or the next day, very few of us actually feel better. And it hasn't really resulted in

any kind of meaningful change. So give me a specific example of how you would put what you're talking about into practice. Let's say you're having a conversation with somebody at work that you're having a disagreement with somebody at work that you're having a disagreement with and then you sort of say okay well who who is this person what do they know about the situation how are they approaching the interaction do we have a history of not working well together because i might have to answer things differently then you think okay well what's my goal in this conversation what do i want the outcome to be of this conversation and then you think okay well what's my motivation for communicating this now? Why is it important that we're having this

conversation? What makes it hard? And then you think, okay, well, what's the tone that I want to strike here? Do I want to be adversarial? Do I want to sort of be informative? Do I want to be supportive? And then you sort of think, okay, well, what's the content? What do I actually need to say? And then how is this best done? Is this best done in person or in writing? And then is there any action that needs to happen? The root to authenticity is through the action and through doing it in a way that feels right to you. So what I've done is asked a bunch of questions and given frameworks for people to develop and hone their own authenticity for themselves, rather than trying to be what they think is authentic for somebody else.

Being authentic means doing this in a way that feels honest and open for you and figuring it out in a way that's going to be successful for other people in hearing what you want them to say. A lot of times, though, in conversation, it seems less important for me to be authentic to myself and be true to who I am. It's much more about I'm trying to convince somebody to get on board, to buy what I'm selling, to believe in my idea, whatever it is. It's not about me. It's about them. What we're trying to do, though, is trying to find the maximal amount of overlap that we can between my feelings, my understanding, my desire, my goal, and the other person's feeling, desire, mindset, and goal. Because we all carry around these stories and these desires and these goals for ourselves, and they're

all a little bit different. And so if we can understand, rather than just having sort of the two circles or the two bubbles butting up against each other, well, you know, where is it that we can find a little bit of overlap, you know, between those two things? That's what we're trying to find. And so it doesn't matter whether it's a sales job or whether it's a, you know, a contentious conversation with your manager at work. What we're really trying to do is sort of invite people to be a little bit more thoughtful and rational. My whole argument here is that so much of the challenges that we face in communicating

in any context could easily be headed off if we just did a little bit more work on the front end and a little bit of thought around how are we showing up and how do we want to show up, rather than just letting our own emotional reactions dictate how we show up. Is there a way strategically to begin a conversation or carry out a conversation by saying something that neutralizes the tension almost before it begins, where you divert that, the screaming and the yelling, and make it, prevent it from happening so that you can have a conversation? I think when we sort of put our battle armor on, people pick up on that. It may not be physical armor, but it certainly is visible to people people and they experience you as sort of a guarded sort of way.

And so what this authenticity is really about is about being sort of vulnerable and being honest. And so, again, being honest and clear with yourself. That's why I called it honestly speaking. with yourself about your own motivations, about what's bothering you, about, well, is the other person maybe right about something here, really helps you sort of enter that conversation sort of saying, I understand, like, I, you know, I respect you, I hear you, I want us to have a conversation, I want us to get to an outcome that's, you know, that's, you know, that's successful, and that feels good for both of us. And then being really honest about, okay, well, what are you trying to achieve here? If you just sort of start laying into somebody,

rather than trying to build a little bit of rapport or a little bit of connection, I think it makes it really hard to find that common ground because our own instincts when somebody comes at us that way are to sort of put our own armor on to sort of fight back. So if we sort of can try to sort of invite the other person to join us in a conversation, and part of that means being a little bit more authentic, being a little bit less perfect, taking the armor off a little bit, I think that will go a huge long way to doing it. There are people who just either don't consider themselves good conversationalists or good communicators who struggle with this, whereas some people are really good at this. So what about the people,

though, who don't enjoy this, who don't feel comfortable doing this? What's the advice for them? That's a great question. The first message I would just share is this is something that everyone can do, and it's something that we all struggle with. Even the people who I think are the best communicators work at this stuff. I know because I've spent time working with them. It's something that we all can get better at. But my argument is by spending a little bit of thought and a little bit of extra effort, it's something that we all can get better at.

Yeah. And it doesn't seem as if it takes that much effort if you get intentional about it, that you can improve your communication and your conversation skills fairly quickly. Andrew Blotke has been my guest. He is a leadership and communications expert. He's worked in communications at Facebook, at the White House, and in Congress, and he now leads an executive coaching and consulting firm. His book is called Honestly Speaking, How the Way We Communicate Transforms Leadership, Love, and Life. And you'll find a link to his book in the show notes. Thanks for being here, Andrew.

Awesome. I appreciate it. Thank you. Did you know that the number of only children has been increasing? For many years, there had been this vague sense that there's something wrong with children who grow up without siblings. That idea was first put forth by a psychologist in the late 1800s. But modern research can't seem to find anything to support the idea that only children are flawed in some way. According to Psychology Today magazine, a lot of studies have attempted to show this, but none have succeeded. The assumption is that by growing up alone, a child doesn't develop the social skills like a child with siblings does. But when only children are

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