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577: Jeff Wetzler - Tap Into the Hidden Wisdom of People Around You for Unexpected Breakthroughs In Leadership and Life (ASK)

April 7, 20240 comments♥ 0
00:00 It's actually the, quote, smartest and most successful people who are worst at learning. It is amazing how often people don't actually feel safe to tell us the truth. You wrote an entire book about asking questions. We walk around feeling certain far more often than we should. We can be more curious. We can ask better questions. We can become a better listener. I prefer to look at curiosity as a choice.
00:24 If you do it, it's life changing. There's a lot of people who don't necessarily take that final step, which is the hardest step. which is the are able to plant. Welcome to The Learning Leaders Show, presented by Insight Global. I am your host, Ryan Hawk. Thank you so much for being here. Text Hawk to 666866 to become part of Mindful Monday. You, along with tens of thousands of other learning leaders from all over the world,
00:54 will receive a carefully curated email for me each Monday morning to help you start your week off right. You'll also receive details about how my book, The Score, That Matters. We'll help you become a more effective leader. Text Hawk to 66866. Now, on to tonight's featured leader. Jeff Wetzler is the co-founder and co-CEO of Transcend. Transcend is a nonprofit focused on accelerating innovation in the design of learning environments.
01:26 Before that, he was the chief learning officer of Teach for America. He's also the author of a new book called Ask. Tap into the hidden wisdom of people around you for unexpected breakthroughs and leadership and life. You can imagine that I would have some curiosity about a person who writes a book called Ask. During this conversation we discussed, the five-step ask approach. Then we went inside the interview process for a leadership role. What are the best questions to ask when you're the interviewer and what are the best questions to ask when you're the interviewee? And also, we want deep on how we can become better listeners and ask better questions to deepen our most important relationships.
02:18 This is outside of work as well as inside at work. Ladies and gentlemen, please enjoy my conversation with Jeff Wetzler. Jeff, welcome. It is awesome to have you here on The Learning Leader Show. Thanks for having me. Great to be here. I'm curious, you were a magician in high school. How does being a magician help you become a better communicator?
02:44 Well, when you're a magician, the number one thing you have to obsess about is the other person and how they're perceiving what's going on. Because you're essentially as a magician trying to deceive them. And so you've got to put yourself in their shoes and say, What are they seeing? What would they be thinking? If I communicated this way, how's that going to impact them? And so for a magician, you're doing it for deceptive or you could say entertaining purposes. But it builds a muscle, I think, as a communicator and as a leader to say, how is this other person experiencing me?
03:19 How? What is it like behind the scenes as a magician? Because to me, I am fascinated by like, wait a second, especially the guys you're up close with. I was at like a golf event. I remember and they had one of these magicians going from table to table. And I literally think, how in the world is that possible? Like some of these tricks just made no sense. It was like real magic. I'm just curious, what's the process like for you to learn those tricks so you can fully deceive people?
03:49 The best way to start is by watching someone else do it. Not surprisingly in any, you know, in any learning process. And then it is just an immense amount of practice. in front of the mirror to the point where you can, it just becomes natural. And then it's practice among people that you would, you know, who could tell you if they could figure it out. And then every time you do it,
04:11 it's still a little nerve wrecking to say, is this going to go wrong? Is this going to go right? And I do have occasional moments when it has not gone right. But it's really all about just like any learning process, practice feedback, practice feedback, until it just feels second nature. And it also feels like the best magicians have this super,
04:29 confidence and ownership of their space and of the room. And I'm curious, like, I think that could translate to all different areas of leadership and just of life in general. Is that born out of practice or where does that confidence come from? I think for me, it was entirely practice. It was not necessarily something I was born with. But it's also not something that is necessarily the same thing going on to the inside. but you've got to get to such a point where you create that level of space and comfort and just expectation.
05:06 There's a lot of emphasis on essentially directing the attention of other people and by holding the space in the way you do, you essentially kind of create the context through which people perceive what's going on. How has that helped you in other areas of your life? So I think I've spent a lot of my career thinking about learning and thinking. about how to design deep and impactful and powerful learning experiences. And I believe that the experiences that I had, you know, growing up as a magician, really kind of built that into my DNA because as I was saying earlier, when you're a magician, you're
05:43 essentially creating a learning process for someone. You know, you're in effect helping them learn the wrong thing because then they reach the wrong conclusion they think it's magic. But you've got to be saying if I say it this way, if I frame it this way, if I create, if I put it in this sequence, et cetera, what is what's going to be? on inside their learning process. And so I actually think that it's been incredibly helpful in the learning leadership I've done. Can we do a quick coaching session now? This is off top of my head. Now that you said, you talked about creating a great learning experience or an environment for learning
06:16 to happen. Okay. So I have members of my learning leader circles. We're getting together in person. We only do this one time per year. So I think about it year round. Like it's nonstop because I want them to really learn, to connect. It's about first. 40 to 50 people, okay, just to set the stage. We get together for two and a half days. All the other meetings are on Zoom. And so like I said, it's nonstop year round. Like, how do I make this one like the best event they've ever gone to in their life?
06:43 So they learn, they connect. What are some general ideas from a guy who runs, thinks all the time about learning and about development and leadership? what are some of the keys to hosting an awesome event with people in person where you want them to learn and connect and grow and get better? I would say the number one thing that we try to do in my organization and that it's just a general principle for me is co-creation of the event itself. There's often a sense that I've got to put this on for them. I've got to design the whole thing. I've got to make it the right thing. and that involves a lot of guesses.
07:26 But if you can flip it and actually say, this is our event, what do we all want to get out of it? And what are all of our best ideas for how we're going to do it? And let's co-create this thing. Takes a lot of pressure off of you and vastly increases both their investment and just exponentially increases the number of, you know, breakthrough ideas you could be considering to bring to the table. So you ask them.
07:50 You ask them. You ask them. and you engage them and you put them in the space of owning it with you. Do you ask them like months ahead of time or while on site, both and? I'm curious. Both and. I mean, some of the macro design decisions are hard to make in the moment on site because you've set certain parameters up.
08:11 And so, you know, when we do things, we would often say to people, is there a subset of people who want to be our design team, who wants to be the core design team with us? and then some people say, I'm in. And other people say, I'm in, but I don't have a lot of time. And so then maybe they're the extended design team. So you and the core design team, maybe that's a half dozen people can be designing this thing together. And then maybe there's another 15, 20 people who say, I want to be on the extended design team, and they get a chance to hear the initial ideas, give a little feedback,
08:39 shape it maybe on a call or two. And then all of a sudden, you're bringing people together and you've got something that the group has collectively designed and owned. And then there's a million micro design choices that even in the moment, I think a lot of times people feel like I've got to make this calculation privately in my head. Do we spend time on this? Do we spend time on that? Do we, et cetera?
09:01 Versus to say, here's a moment. Let's pause and say, how are we going to handle this thing together? I find that the dynamic just absolutely transforms when design becomes participatory as opposed to something that one person does for other people. How does that land with you? Well, I mean, I love it. I'm actually like almost was going to start drafting an email, but I'd get distracted. So I'm not.
09:22 I'll do that. I'm taking notes. So I'll do that afterwards. Because it feels like a great idea would be to send a note ahead of time. This sounds actually obvious now coming out of my mouth. But I haven't necessarily done it, which is what, what do you want from this? What are some ideas? What do you want to do?
09:39 One thing we have done on site, not to get too into this, but I think a lot of people do leadership off sites and they do them poorly. So this could be helpful for anybody at any company anywhere. What we do is I have them all introduce themselves. And then I have this huge sign that says big ask with the K, big ask sitting up there. Okay. And on this little, they fill out a little sticky note. They write a question or two.
10:06 And then we, me and a couple other people that are, I guess, co-creating the event will go. And they'll also ask the question when they're introducing themselves. And then they stick it up on the big ask. poster. And what this does is I make sure that every single person's question is answered. Sometimes there's too much to like go in depth. But sometimes what happens is that someone else, as they're listening to them intro themselves, they hear the question. They go, oh, I got that. And this could be anything wide ranging. I got the answer. And so they pull them aside and they have a 10 minute conversation in between a meeting, which we try to allow a lot of space for that. And
10:46 And boom, they become friends and that person got their question answered. So there is a bit of co-creation there, I guess, with the big ask post. I love it. I love that. Yeah. And so this could be extending that to the design of the whole thing. And I think when you ask people what they want to get out of it or what ideas they have, sometimes we feel like we can't share our own ideas as well.
11:09 I either have to ask them or I have to tell them. But I actually think there's space to do both. You can say, here's some of my starter ideas. I'm holding them loosely. Want to know what do you want? And also, do you have reactions to these starter ideas as well? You wrote an entire book about asking questions. So I get a ton of pitches, Jeff.
11:29 You could imagine probably like 30 to 40 a day. But when I saw that you wrote a book about asking questions, I thought, hmm, I need to go deeper here before I respond to the team that you're working with. And then I went down the rabbit hole. Jeff about you and I thought, I got to talk to this guy because you've done the work. To me, collecting great questions and then just this overall mindset of asking has changed my life. Quite frankly, I've done this for nine years with when it comes to my podcast and asking people to come on the show and then asking questions has changed my life.
12:07 What is it about asking that has made it that is so interesting to you that you said, I'm going to write a full book about this? Yeah. Well, you know, I'm obsessed with learning. I just think that the opportunity for us as human beings to raise our game, unlock our potential is enormous. That is my passion and my purpose in life. And anytime I see a missed learning opportunity, to me, that's kind of like a mini
12:34 tragedy. It's a missed chance for us to actually get better and grow. And in a variety of roles that I've held, I have watched this pattern of missed learning opportunities happen all over the place and I've experienced myself. And the specific missed learning opportunity I'm referring to is the opportunity to learn from the people around us. Every single one of us is surrounded by people. I mean, I'm talking about our colleagues, our customers, our clients, our bosses, the people who serve us food, you know, are everyone who's got something that they could teach us. They have ideas, insights, feedback for us, perspectives, observations
13:12 that could literally be game-changing for our understanding, for our improvement, for decisions that we make, for innovations we try to pursue, et cetera. But what I've watched over and over again is that far too often, they don't actually tell us those things. It stays stuck in their heads, in their hearts. And so to me, asking in this approach that I've written about called the Ask approach is the key to unlocking that immense goldmine,
13:42 learning that's all around us. I can tell you a little bit of a story of kind of one place where it started, which is I was working at a company called Monitor Group, which is a very extraordinary consulting firm. This was my first job out of college. I stayed there for almost a decade. And one of the leaders of Monitor was a guru named Chris Arjuris. And he was a, he had a dual appointment at Harvard Business School and Harvard Ed School. And he was obsessed with this question of how smart people fail to learn. And one of his observations was sometimes it's actually the, quote, smartest and most successful people who are worst at learning from one another because they've been rewarded for giving the answers. They haven't built the muscle of failing and asking questions and things like that.
14:25 And he developed this methodology, which I'll never forget, and I continue to use this to this day, which is he would ask leaders to take out a sheet of paper and draw a line down the paper. And on the right side of the paper, he would say, just write me a little snippet. from a recent interaction that you had that was super challenging. And so someone would write, I said this, she said this, I said this, just almost like the script of a play. And then he said, now on the left-hand column, I want you to write down all of the thoughts and feelings that you were thinking, but never said to the other person.
14:59 So the left-hand column is essentially your unspoken thoughts and feelings. And at Monitor, I spent a lot of my time working with people around these cases. So I saw hundreds and hundreds of people's left-hand columns. And what I saw inside those left-hand columns, in addition to frustration and emotion and all that kind of thing, was an immense amount of actual information and ideas and insights that never got across to the right-hand column, never made it over to the other person. And I thought to myself, look at this. I mean, the decisions that organizations could get to if they were better, the relationships, the partnerships, they could get deeper. And so while there are a number of books that I think do a great job saying to people, here's how you can be more direct in saying what you're thinking. and feeling. What I think is an underutilized lever is how do we actually ask to make it easier
15:46 for other people to actually tell us all those things that are in their head. Why don't we do this? Like as kids were curious, and it seems like maybe the curiosity gets beat out of us as we grow up, which is a shame. Maybe that's it. But why are we not? This seems obvious. Just ask. Ask the questions. Ask the follow up. Listen, ask another follow up. why are we not good at this? Why don't we do this? Well, so first of all, you're absolutely right that as kids were born incredibly curious in one of the chapters of the book, I go deep into the research on kids curiosity. And there's some fascinating studies. You know, there's one that talked about basically observed that kids are asking somewhere between 25 and 50 questions per hour,
16:30 per hour. And, you know, up to 400 questions a day. And so if you add that up over a kid's childhood, yeah, that's tens of thousands of questions that kids are asking, it drops off precipitously as kids get older and they go to school. There's a lot that happens in schools that essentially squashes curiosity. There's one interesting study that talked about how they followed kids around and they saw kids are asking 50 questions a day at home and two questions a day at school. And so we've built our entire education system around kids feeling like they need to give answers as opposed to posed to pose questions.
17:08 So there's a whole bunch of that stuff in terms of how kids are socialized. But to your broader question of like, why don't we ask more questions if it's so powerful to do that? I think there's a few reasons. One is that it doesn't actually occur to us to be curious. We walk around feeling certain
17:24 far more often than we should. And in the book, I talk about what's the mechanism for this, which is essentially we've got a whole set of assumptions and ideas and mental models about how the world works. Then we walk into a situation and we essentially just go confirm that. We select information that confirms, this is what I thought about this person,
17:42 this is what I thought about this issue, et cetera. And we quickly develop stories that essentially just reinforce what we believed in the first place. And so we have this sense of like, yeah, I know how it's going to go. Here we go again. And this all happens in microseconds,
17:54 so we're not even aware of this. So I talk about in the book, this idea of we're all stuck inside our own certainty loops. And if you're feeling certain about something, why would you ask a question? It would be logical to just, continue to talk and share and not ask questions. So that's one of the reasons. And we can talk a little bit about how to break out of that certainty loop if if you like. But there's a couple other,
18:15 I think, real barriers to people asking questions as well. Um, yeah, go ahead. I just have I'm, that one puzzles me because I actually feel the opposite. Um, I almost feel like I never know what's going on. So I always have to ask. I'm okay, I'll just take an example last night, take my daughter to lacrosse practice. And we got through a little early in the coaches there. And she, she agreed to work with her. And I think I probably asked the coach, I don't know, five to ten questions before she started working with her about different ways to play the sport and to practice and what we could do at home and equipment and all this stuff because she's
18:49 brand new at it. She's a little young kid. Then went to soccer practice and had more questions there after that. And then I went to a banquet late night. It was kind of a busy night. Banko late night. And you know, you're sitting around random strangers or people that you've seen at school, but you don't really know that well, you know, ask about what they do.
19:03 Oh, that's interesting. Oh, you got promoted. And it's just a series of questions that. And maybe this show actually now that I think about helps with that. But I feel like the entire night was just a series of questions. And if I analyze most nights, that's kind of how it goes all the time. So maybe it's because there's just a lot of practice. And I'm spewing this out in real time, Jeff, for you.
19:26 But that to me doesn't line up with I feel like how I live. Or am I just not aware enough to realize that this? I think you are an outlier, is my assessment of what you're saying. It's very rare for someone to show up in all those different circumstances that you just said and pose questions. I mean, you do it obviously for a living in terms of all the podcasts and questions that you do. Maybe that's it. Maybe it's the repetitions that help, you think?
19:55 I think part of it's the repetitions that help. And I think what's helpful about the repetitions is that you get feedback back to say, when I ask a question, I learned something interesting. and also when I ask a question, it doesn't shut the other person down. And my sense is that you're a naturally curious learner in the first place. But when I look at the kind of spectrum of humanity on this dimension, you are you are like far out on one dimension. I think that's incredible. And I think you're a model for people.
20:24 Are you? I feel like I have, I feel like I'm in that same zone as you. When I get on an airplane, I am constantly, essentially, essentially. to somebody, I'm constantly thinking, who is this person? What's their life story? Where'd they come from? What are they doing? What is that thing they're thinking about and working on?
20:41 And I, you know, I don't, I don't know that that's the norm. Do you, you probably get asked to lunch and coffees a lot. Yeah. So they say, hey, Jeff, I want to pick your brain or that type of note. And then you show up with a coffee and then they kind of talk about themselves the whole time and ask you no questions and you ask them questions the whole time. Is that how it goes? That happens more often than I, you know,
21:03 Yeah, and I would like that happens almost every time for me, right? Can I pick your brain? Can I ask you questions? Can I learn about all writing books, podcasts, speaking on stages? And then you show up and you leave and you've asked 20 questions and they've asked none. Is that like, isn't it bizarre? That's weird how that works. Totally.
21:19 Totally. I don't get it. There's a consequence when we behave that way. One is we're not learning because what, you know, what are they learning if they're talking to you about themselves? But two is there's an impact on the other person as well. And there's some really interesting findings that talk about how when we ask other people questions, it actually brings them closer to us.
21:40 It makes them want to engage with us more, et cetera. And the flip side, I think is also true. I've had long conversations with my wife about this. My love language is curiosity. Me too. Me too. So like that goes both ways. So because of those lunch and coffee things, which I don't do as much or ever anymore,
21:58 because of so many bad experiences, which is kind of a shame now I think about it. But when I talk with her, I've told her this. I wrote about this in a book that when you ask me questions, like I fall in love with you. Yes. Now, I'm always asking too, right? Because I think curiosity is the ultimate form of respect. And it shows interest.
22:21 And like you said, there's science. It brings you close together. So when there is this great back and forth with two really curious people, I fall in love. I really do. And I think that's, those are the people I want my life. I love being around curious people who ask questions. So we have this awesome back and forth of I'm asking you. I'm asking follow ups and then you're asking and it goes back and forth.
22:45 And I think like that's that's the juice, man. Like that's the thing that I'm always in search of. Amen. Same thing. My wife and I, when we have people over or we go out, we sort of say like, wow, they asked us great questions or they didn't ask us a single question. And it's for me, it's a barometer of my own affinity. for somebody. Interesting. When you do go out, like what are some of your favorite questions? Let's say
23:06 they don't know who you are, right? And you're at a dinner party or a random thing and you meet somebody and they seem interesting and you want to learn about them because you're a curious guy. What are some of your favorite questions to ask in a situation like that? My favorite questions are all about stories. I think there's so much that's wrapped up in stories because they can bring in not just data and information, but also people's emotional experience in life as well and reveal their values. So one of my favorite questions is just kind of like, what's the story for how you ended up living here? What's the story for how you ended up meeting the person you met? What's the story behind why you do what you do? And when you can get those stories,
23:49 that's just like a thread you can start pulling. And then there's all, you know, all kinds of follow-up questions come from that too. I love asking couples. How do you meet? When you're Did you know? Like, how'd you get through the rocky times? Like for there's always that stuff. It isn't it fun? And you see people like couples light up. They look at each other and they start lighting up telling the stories.
24:10 And sometimes they're wait, wait, what? Like you know, they have a little bit of disagreement about how they met or about when they broke up and got. You know what I mean? It's so fascinating to see because it, it's funny. People don't actually tell that story very much. And so you hear them and see them connecting. And that is a good dinner day. when you see that, or I like asking like, especially a woman, like, what are your non-negotiables?
24:33 What were your non-negotiables when you were like looking for someone to marry? And they're married like one of my best friends. And it's funny to see them talk through that. And then you have follow-up questions. Like, I don't know. Those types of nights are the best. Like, they're so much fun. I totally agree.
24:50 And people appreciate being asked. I mean, back to your question about why don't we ask. A lot of times I think we carry an assumption. that this is too sensitive a question to ask. They're not going to want to be asked this question. This is going to put them on the spot. And there's also some powerful research which shows in almost every circumstance, people actually appreciate being asked those questions that we think might be too sensitive to ask.
25:12 And it brings us closer to them. I was at a soccer practice, Jeff. Met a dad who was divorced. And I knew him a little bit, but not like a ton. you know, you see parents at soccer games. And I just said, why'd you get a divorce? And for a second, I could tell he was like a little surprised. I don't know if anyone had asked him, but I was genuinely curious, like, why did you get a divorce?
25:40 And then he answered and he gave like, you know, as personal and detailed and obviously everyone has different reasons. I felt like, and I asked follow-ups, that he was actually really happy that I asked him, even if he was a little bit surprised because I was genuinely like, you know, I don't want to do that thing. I was curious as to why he did. And it almost brought us closer. And we've become friends since then and talk a lot more. But I just think it's interesting to learn why things happen, whether they're good or bad things.
26:13 I think that's a beautiful example of overcoming what we fear might be too sensitive of a question and how that can actually enable someone to share something. Maybe that they hadn't expressed to someone before. But I want to point out one thing about your story, which is. is as you relate it, you were genuinely curious. Oh, yeah. You could have asked that question with a judgmental tone, why don't you get divorced? Or any other kinds of things that would sort of send the message to this person of, you know, I'm something other than being curious.
26:42 But when we actually have that genuine curiosity, it's amazing how much that just cultivates in the other person and desire to tell and desire to share. This, I've read about your childhood. And I'm just curious about if you could share the deeper story about why you became so drawn to both asking and listening. Yeah. I think, you know, part of it is I'm, I think I'm naturally just interested in people and curious. But I grew up at a time and in a place where I didn't always feel safe in my town based of my, you know, my religious identity as a Jewish person. And it, there were, there were subtle signals to me and sometimes overt. signals to me that you're not welcome here. This is not a place where you can be yourself or feel
27:31 safe. And in context like that, you know, I think we all retreat to what's going to make me safe. And I felt like I was going to be safer observing, listening, watching, asking questions compared to just announcing my view. Because you never know if you say what you really think, if someone's going to whack you, you know, whether physically or, or, you know, emotionally. And so I spent a lot of my childhood listening and watching and observing and asking questions. And you learn a lot that way. But it also becomes, you know, a habit. And then that habit becomes a muscle.
28:09 And so it wasn't always easy or pleasant in those ways growing up. But I think, you know, many of us are able to convert that into something that can also be a strength. Did and when you're like that though, aren't you like hoping people would ask you what you think? 100% and waiting. And you know, if I'm honest right now, I still am sometimes. You know, sometimes I'll be at a, you know, at a, you know, in a meeting or an interaction. And for whatever reason, not feeling totally safe to, you know, to just blurt it out. But if someone asks me, I'm like, yes, I totally want to share with you.
28:47 And if they don't, I'm feeling a little. you know, maybe sad or, you know, wishing I could share more. Let's, Jeff, let's help people who maybe don't have an awareness of this. Let's help the person who says, I want to pick your brain. They go out to lunch and they talk about themselves the whole time and don't ask questions. Okay. I'm determined to fix this, right? And maybe that's misguided, but I think we can.
29:10 Right. So what are some of the ways? And let's just for the sake of anybody in the world where we are all this person. Even if you think you're not, all of us, me, Jeff, you, me, we're. I'm that guy. You're that guy. We all are that person. Let's make that assumption. What are some of the, some of the ways that we can not be that person, that we can be more curious, we can ask better questions, we can become a better listener. We can become more connected with that other person we're talking to. Yeah. I would say, and maybe I'll use this as a way to share a little bit about the ask
29:41 approach because I think it's a perfect application of it. It's got five steps. And the first is literally something that you would do even before you set foot in that coffee meeting, which I call choose curiosity. And some people look at curiosity as a state of mind or even a trait that people have. And I think there's some truth to that. But I prefer to look at curiosity as a choice we can make. And it's a choice that is always available to us if we consciously decide that we actually want to awaken our curiosity.
30:13 So I think the first thing that we need to do is to actually say, I'm going to put myself in a curious mindset as I go into this. And there's one single question that I find to be particularly powerful in getting into that mindset. And that question to ask ourselves is, what can I learn from this person? And so if I really sit with that question before I go out and have coffee or before I meet with somebody and I'm thinking to myself, what can I learn from this person? All of a sudden, I'm thinking to myself, all right, well, maybe I can learn how they got here.
30:44 Maybe I can learn what their advice would be for me of this. Maybe I can learn what was one of their best moments or their hardest moments or different things like that. So by centering on that question of what can I learn from this person, which I kind of infer might be one of the perpetual questions you've got at the front of your mind, that can actually start to get us into that curious mindset as well. Does that make sense? My friend Larry Seiler, he wrote this great paper about this time. He was in Washington, D.C. And he met a guy cleaning up the streets. And he had his son.
31:13 And so he really values curiosity. And so he started asking questions about the city and about the area to the guy who was the trash man or cleaning up. And the guy said it was an amazing, like an amazing interaction. And he walked away when he spoke to a son, he said, son, you need to treat everyone like a mentor. You can learn something from everyone if you're curious if you ask questions. I've never forgotten that story because it's so true. And I feel like that is choosing curiosity as opposed to just walking by that person or thinking he's below me because he's cleaning up or whatever. it's treat everyone as a mentor.
31:49 You can learn something from everyone. And if you make that choice, as you said, right, part one, choosing curiosity, that then opens up the opportunity to learn, right? But that's a choice. That's a choice. That's an intentional choice that you have to make as opposed to just being like, well, I'm better than you or there's nothing to learn. No, no, no, no, no.
32:09 We're going to choose curiosity in all of these situations. You never know. Okay, so that's one. Okay, I know there's five parts. What's two? Two is all about actually making it safe for the other person to tell you the truth. Because even if I'm curious, that doesn't mean that you're going to feel safe or comfortable sharing with me. There's a huge body of research, which I think is incredibly compelling by Amy Edmondson on the topic of psychological safety.
32:37 It is amazing how often people don't actually feel safe to tell us the truth. I learned this the hard way myself as a leader when I stepped into my first kind of major operating role. And I thought I was curious. I thought I was asking all the questions. And we had sort of a near disaster happened under my watch because people weren't feeling free to actually answer my questions with the truth and tell me about the problems that were going on. Thankfully, we averted it. But it was a very close call. And I learned a lot about what makes things unsafe for people.
33:08 People often think, well, maybe he's going to judge, you know, maybe they're going to judge. us for, you know, for what we really think. Maybe it's going to harm our relationship. Maybe, maybe it's not even worth my time. And so we have to go out of our way to make it safe. Part of that is creating connection on their terms. One of the, you know, I have a teenage daughter and I love to know what's going on in her life. And when she comes home from school and I say, how is your day? When you, you know, what happened, I get almost nothing. You know, I get fine. But if I stay up until 11 p.m. and sit in her room once everything is kind of like she doesn't want me to leave she just wants to talk and talk and tell me everything that's going on and so part of making it safe is actually
33:51 finding the right context that's not right for for us but right for the other person for when they want to you know lots of leaders talk about i want to um i want to take my meetings taking a walk with people because more can come back so we've got to figure out that part of making it safe is also um being vulnerable ourselves opening up so actually letting them know why i'm asking why i really need to know and need to learn from you so that they actually realize it's a good use of their time. And I think to me, the most important part of making it safe is actually what I call radiating resilience, which is essentially saying to the other person, I can handle whatever you're going to tell me. And if I have an emotional reaction, which I might because I'm human, I'm not going to
34:32 blame you for it. I'm going to kind of take responsibility for my own emotional reactions. And there's a lot of different ways that we can do this. But all of that adds up to actually making it safe so that when it comes time to asking the questions, we're about to get, well, yeah, we're going to get what, what's really going on for the other person. Leading with vulnerability, radiating resilience, doing it on their terms, go for walks, be in her room at 11 o'clock. I find driving side by side with teenage girls. I totally agree.
34:57 Really good. Or when you go out to restaurants, sit at the bar, um, side by side, uh, sometimes opens, you have the TV sometimes. Yeah, it can be a little distracting, but it also opens up makes it makes it, makes it easier for those conversations. to happen. I love walking a dog together, driving together, sitting side by side at a bar together. It feels like those are, as dads, like we probably think about this all the time, but those are good opportunities to get them to open up. Okay, so make it safe to tell the truth. That's two. What's three?
35:27 Three is now all about the questions, posing quality questions. And this is all about expanding the repertoire we have of questions. We all have, you know, some of our go-to questions that we ask, but it's a pretty narrow and limited repertoire. Lots of research shows that leaders think they ask questions, but if you look at the transcripts, like at best 15 to 20% of the time, people are asking questions, the rest of the time they're actually telling things.
35:52 And there's a whole bunch of questions that we think are questions that are not actually questions. So sometimes there's things that I call clumsy questions, which is like you might ask four questions at once and then state your view at the end. And it's like, what's the person supposed to do with that? or sneaky questions where you're actually asking a question like, don't you think you should see a therapist?
36:13 Have you ever considered that? Which is, you know, that's not really a question. And then, of course, there's a tack questions as well. Quality questions are totally different than those kinds of questions. My definition of a quality question is a question that helps you learn something
36:26 from someone else. And so in the book, we talk about a whole taxonomy of questions. The first is what I call here the headline, essentially asking people, what do you really think about this issue or this question or this topic or et cetera. And it's amazing to me, how often people don't tell us the actual headline. Like, where do you really come down on this unless we ask them?
36:48 They might think it's obvious or they might not want to actually just put it out there. It might feel too confronting. But if we just literally ask any number of those questions, we can hear the headline. Many of us stop there. But the next set of questions that I talk about are what I call dig deeper. Everybody's headline comes from somewhere. comes from a set of information that they have, comes from a set of life experiences that they have,
37:12 comes from stories that they have, et cetera. We've got to dig deeper. Where does that come from? What makes you think that, et cetera. And then finally, if they don't already do this, I talk about see what they see, which is not just like, why did you believe this or what leads you to think that,
37:29 but give me some examples. Tell me some stories. What are you seeing that I might not be seeing? And so that kind of sequence of questions from here, their headline, to dig deeper, to see what they see is a really powerful way to get a much more kind of colorful and textured and full understanding of what people are thinking and where it comes from. There's a couple other categories of questions that I think are really underutilized. One of them is what I call requesting reactions. A lot of times, even if we ask someone what they think, what we rarely do is ask them, what do you think of what I think. So what might be the holes in my own perspective?
38:09 If we were to say, here's what I'm thinking about doing. I mean, we could go back to your coaching scenario at the beginning, where you would, you know, if you were to say to the people coming to your gathering, here's some initial thoughts I have, help me poke holes in this. What am I missing? What, you know, what else should we be thinking about, et cetera? That's an example of requesting reactions to, you know, to what you're doing. And people, the thing is that people have,
38:35 those reactions. But if we don't request those reactions, they're likely not, you know, they're not going to give it to us unless they really feel safer invested to do that kind of thing. And that I just wanted to point back as you said, it's, it's really important that you've created a, I guess a safe space for them to actually tell you the truth. That's where make it safe comes in. Yeah. Exactly. So if you do like the good, good boss, bad boss exercise, one of the things that usually comes up in the bad boss side of things is they tell you to, hey, you know, what do you think? Give me feedback. Let me know. Let me like, which we do? What am I doing wrong? They tell you that, but they don't actually mean it versus the ones who tell you and actually mean it. It's they've
39:13 created that safe space because I've had that boss who's like, oh yeah, I want feedback. And the second you start giving him feedback, I'm thinking of an actual human right now, the second you give them feedback, they get really defensive. They explain it away. They tell you out why you're, you don't have all of the full story. So that's why what you're telling me isn't accurate. You go, oh, no, no, you don't actually want feedback. You said you did, but you're don't because you ask for my perspective, I shared it and you don't like it because you can't handle it. So as leaders though, because we're in leadership roles now, Jeff, when we are asking that, when we are requesting their reaction, right, we have to make sure we do a good job of
39:50 thinking of how we're going to react to them when they give us, let's say, critical feedback or they tell us we're off on something. If we don't get that right, we're going to ruin getting any useful feedback in the future, right? So like, how do you think about that as a leader? What do you do to make sure that when you request a reaction, that even if it stings, you don't like show that too much to the point to where they'll want to stop giving you feedback? Yeah.
40:19 Well, so I think that's a beautiful example and a perfect illustration of a leader who has skipped steps one and two. Yeah. They are not genuinely curious. If, you know, if they're just saying that because they think that's what they're supposed to say, say, but if they're genuinely curious, they're going to be much more likely to authentically react in a way. It's not going to be a technique. They're going to be much more likely to authentically react in a way that lets you know they actually want that feedback because
40:42 it's coming from a place of true curiosity. Similarly, if they've actually created that context of safety, it's going to be much more likely that you're going to actually believe that they can handle it. They want to do it. But I think your question is actually a good segue to step four, which is once you pose the question, how do you listen? And And in the book, we talk about a number of channels that you need to listen through. So many of us are taught to just listen for like, what is the thing that people are saying, which is important, but I call that the content channel, listening for content. There's two other channels to be listening through it that we've got to train ourselves to at the same time.
41:22 One is emotion. So what is the feelings that they're expressing? And third is action. What are the actions that they're actually taking? Maybe they're trying to persuade me or enlist me or convince me or join me or any other things. And if you really want to be good at listening, just the same way, if you want to be good at listening to a piece of music, you can break it down and say, what are the vocals? What's the percussion?
41:44 What's the melody, et cetera? You got to break down, what's the content, what's the emotion, what's the action? And to be really listening. And I would say a leader who's really listening for all those things is much less likely to react defensively immediately because they're going to be seeing, you know, how deeply committed you are if they're you know if they're really watching for your emotion they're going to be noticing that you're trying to help them if they're if they're watching for your action etc so part of it is one of the lenses that we listen through but then if i were to say like one simple thing that if
42:13 any leader were to do as it relates to listening could overcome the problem that you're that you're saying it would be this check if you heard it right um that's the single most powerful thing that we that we can do in listening which is just paraphrase and say this is what i think I heard you say, did I get that right? What did I get wrong? What am I missing? What would you add to my takeaways? And I'll tell you why that is so powerful. One, you know, reason number one is if you're having a strong reaction, it can just slow everything down. It can actually just kind of buy a little bit of time for you to take a breath and calm down. And if that's all that it does, that's great. But the other thing is so often we don't actually hear it all. You know,
42:59 for the book, I interviewed, you know, an award-winning journalist. And she said to me that after every interview she does, and journalists, of course, are professional question askers and listeners. After every interview she does, she goes back and listens to the recording, sometimes two, three, four times. Every time she hears the recording, she hears something new and different in what the difference. So we are missing a lot of what people say. And by pausing and saying, this is what I heard you say.
43:25 What else did I miss? What did I miss? Did I get that right, et cetera? We give ourselves a chance to take in so much more. but we also communicate to the other person that it's really important to us that we really understand what they're saying. And that leads them to feel valued and cultivates in them a desire to keep sharing as well. Okay.
43:40 Four, focused on how you listen. Listening to learn. Exactly. Listening to learn. Okay. What's five? Five, I think it's probably the most important of them all, which is what I call reflecting and reconnecting.
43:53 And I know you have written about and think a lot about how do we grow? How do we learn? how do we update our beliefs, change our minds, how do we get better and better? That's what reflecting is all about. And I think, you know, the word reflecting, we sometimes get, gets a bad rap or it seems like this is a lost art or this is something that monks do in monasteries and, you know, on mountains or whatever. But I actually think that reflecting is the whole engine to actually growing. And so reflecting is all about essentially sifting through. What did we hear from the other person?
44:24 Sometimes this can happen in the moment with the other person. sometimes this can happen afterwards. But it's basically saying, what can I take away that's of value from the other person to update my thinking and ideas and mindsets to influence the actions that I take? And sometimes if we're lucky, to actually give us like a deeper push in terms of our,
44:45 this is something that's really provoking or adding to or challenging some deeper held assumption I have or way of being in life or value that I have, et cetera. And so in the book, I talk about a process of essentially turning, turning it over three times what someone says to us. First is say, how do I update my knowledge? Second is, say, what action should I take?
45:02 Third, to say, what is any deeper learning I should take from this? So reflecting can be broken down and it's a systematic process. But what I end with, and I think is an important piece of this, you know, ask approach, is to say, reconnect with the other person. Go back and tell them. And I know you talk about this too, writing people follow up emails to say, here's what I've taken from what you do. Reflect and reconnect.
45:24 because when we reconnect with the other person, we essentially are saying to them, it was a worthwhile use of your time to actually have shared this with me because you've contributed to my learning. But we also are giving the other person a chance one last time to correct what we took away and to say, you know, I'm glad you took that away,
45:41 but here's one other thing. Or glad, you know, this isn't exactly what I've meant, et cetera. And so it kind of closes the loop to the whole interchange. And I think vastly increases the chances that the next time you ask a question, they're going to want to share again with you because they realize this is a person who actually takes it in and takes it seriously
45:57 and learns. That reflecting and reconnecting, it's funny. I was speaking with a long-term, long-time, overperforming sales professional. I'm fascinated by the profession of sales. I did it for the first 12 years of my career. Actually, we are all in sales every day, even if you don't carry a bag or have a quota. But anyway, he still is in sales, has a quota, right? That's part of how he gets paid and feed his family.
46:21 And I said, what's the one thing? the one thing that makes you the best of the best. He's one of the best in various industries over the course of decades. And he said, I follow up. I'm like, what? He's like, I follow up. I'm like, well, there's got to be more than that. He's like, I don't know.
46:37 I'm not sure. I go, can I read what you say? Like when you call them or when you email them, like, can I read what you say? And he's like, sure. And he sent me some of the emails. And what I noticed was what he does in his follow up notes. Now he's very disciplined. He's got all the work ethic and resilience.
46:52 But what he does is he makes sure they feel heard. He is very detail oriented. And this is what happened during our last meeting. This is what you said you need. This is where we're at. And there's no real selling. It's just making that person feel heard that you care about them. Because he does.
47:11 That's why he's the best because he genuinely does care about his customers. And then, yes, he sells them what they need. But he also doesn't sell them what they don't need. And so it's, but it's all about the discovery phase. of sales is everything. I think if you ask good questions and you listen and then you follow up and tell them, this is what I heard. I'm going to make sure that I heard you right. He's like, that seems to work. And he didn't really even describe it that much other than like, yeah, I follow up. I follow up. I follow up. My word followups are amazing. He's like, well, I mean, I listen to what
47:42 they say because I need to make sure that I got it right, you know, that I got it right what they want. And so it almost, I love the simplicity of like, oh, I follow up. Well, there's so much to that follow-up that makes people feel hurt, and that's why they connect, and that's ultimately why he sells people what they need and has done so well for a really long time. It's fascinating how that all works. It's a perfect illustration of reflecting and reconnecting, and it's also rare, and I think that's probably why he stands out. But when we can actually, you know, reconnect with the other person and follow up in the ways that you were just saying, it distinguishes us because people don't get that very often. And so it has all kinds of benefits also. That doesn't
48:20 seem that hard, though. That doesn't seem that hard, is it? I don't think it has to be. That's why I'm trying to lay it out for people because I think it's a learnable skill that we can all do. Of course, it takes time, but the rewards are so great of doing that. How do you do this? Maybe there's an example or two. I'm curious about whether it's all five that you implement into your daily life as a dad, as a leader, as a teacher.
48:43 How do you do this? I mean, I try. First of all, I'm a student of this, not perfective in this. And so I fail all the time. and I'm just constantly getting back on the horse and trying to do it over and over again. So I want to start by saying that. But maybe if I, you know, to stick with the reflecting and reconnecting in the organization that I co-lead called Transcend, we have about 125 people or so on our staff.
49:07 They're spread across the country. I remember a couple of years ago, we had grown very quickly and we had a real hiccup in one of our biggest teams that was causing a lot of pain for, a number of people. And my co-CEO and I learned some hard lessons based on the feedback that people had given us over the course of this in terms of what we could have done better, particularly as it relates to growing quickly without putting enough attention to the kind of systems and supports that we need to support an organization at a different level of scale. And he and I did a lot of reflecting on what we had heard. and then at our annual retreat for the organization where we had everybody kind of, you know, together for a couple of days, we did a session where we essentially stood up in front of everybody and we said, here's what we heard from you. And not just here's what we heard, but here's what we learned from it. And not just like we learned that we need to do better at XYZ, but we really thought hard about like, why did we fail to do this thing in the first place?
50:13 and what caused us to fit, all of that kind of stuff, to a point where I was actually quite nervous that by the end, they would have basically lost confidence in us for having exposed all the way to like, not just our failures, but like the deepest roots behind our failures as well. I mean, going back to like, I thought about my dad and my mom and what lesson, you know, all that kind of stuff. And I was completely floored at the end because I looked up and I was like,
50:37 thank God this thing is over. At least we did it. The next thing that happened is they literally stood up in a standing ovation. And I'd never seen anything like this before. And we had people say to us afterwards, this is why I'm working for the right organization, because I have a leader who actually is going to learn from this. I expect all leaders are going to make mistakes. But what's different is that you're actually learning from it. And you are coming back to me and showing me what you learned from it.
50:58 And so to me, that was a massive lesson in the importance of this kind of like reflection and reconnection. What a great example. Okay. I want to, Jeff, I'll ask you a question about the interview process for people going, into, is a little specific, going into a leadership role. I don't know why, but I'm fascinated by this process of about how leaders get hired from both sides of it. Okay. So let's start with the person you're going for an SVP role. So you're already been a leader, you're a VP at a company, you're a Fortune 500 company, and you're going for this role. And I know part of them
51:38 making decision is on what you've done in your past. I get that that's part of the deciding. But let's say you're in the final five candidates and they're doing full-blown panel interviews with questions and you've got to show up as the candidate and blow them away. And I think one of the ways to do this is to be the one who is most curious and ask really quality questions. What are some questions that would be on your mind that you'd want to ask if you're in the final five for an SVP role and you're thinking, okay, I should be asking these types of questions or these actual specific questions. in the panel interview. Yeah. So one question that I think is rare that people ask is what concerns do you have about me? And, you know, sometimes I'm, you know, I'm often in the position of raising funds from investors
52:34 for what we do. And one of the things that they often get surprised when I ask them is, what concerns do you have about me? and you could just pose it that way, but I think an even more powerful way to proceed it would be to say, look, here's how I self-assess myself for this role. Here's what I think I'm, you know, good at,
52:54 but also here's some real areas where I think I would get pushed and grow and this would be new for me, et cetera. And if I were in your shoes, there'd be a concern I have. How does my own self-assessment line up to your concerns and pushes? Because I'd be curious to know, you know, how aligned our thinking is on that. And I think a lot of people would be thinking, I don't want to implant concerns in their minds. I don't want to get them in a negative mindset about me.
53:18 I was like, are you sure you should do this? But the thing is, if they have the concerns, they have them. Yeah. And so it's not like you'd rather know. You know, and that way, you know, first of all, I'm reading resilience. I can say, I'm showing them. I can handle what you have to say to me because I'm telling, I'm putting out there myself. In fact, I'm telling you my own concerns about myself.
53:36 But I'm also want to know what yours are. and then once I know what they are, I can either be like, okay, well, that's right. Or I can say, actually, I think you're making the wrong assumption here. Let me tell you a story. But if I don't actually know what their concerns are, they're going to talk about them with the panel debriefs without me. And I have no chance to influence them at all versus if I can actually get it out on the table now, then we can actually have a dialogue and they can see I'm the kind of person
54:00 who can handle it. Now, of course, it's not the only thing I'm going to say in a panel interview. But in terms of like what might be some questions that are unusual that would make me stand out. That would be one example. What about you're on the other side now, which is what you do, right? You're a senior leader at your company. You're running the company. So now you're interviewing somebody for a big, big leadership role. What are some of your favorite questions to ask of that? I know there's specifics on you got to do this or that, right? But outside of the specifics of the actual job, which by the way are table stakes, but what are some of your favorite questions to ask when someone's
54:33 going for a big job like that? Yeah. I think one of my favorites is to say let's fast forward a year from now and let's look at two different scenarios one scenario is you're just crushing it you're knocking out of the park we're having you know you're having the greatest possible success um what's the story behind how you got there now let's flip to the other scenario and say it's just not working out um either because you're struggling or you're not happy here or whatever else what would be this what would be the story that would have led to that scenario as well. And that there's all kinds of threads that you can pull from that. So what are you hoping to learn by asking that question? I'm hoping to learn A, what are some fears
55:18 they have about their ability to be successful in the role? B, what are some concerns they might have about how they would fit into the organization and culture and see how what are the strategies that they would be using to navigate those? to get through that. Okay. What are some of the must have qualities to be hired as a leader on your team? So the first I would say is alignment with the mission. We have a very ambitious mission.
55:52 We are essentially trying to reinvent education as we know it in this country. And it is not easy. We're swimming upstream against all kinds of forces. And so we need to know the people who are on the bus with us. are hell-bent on doing this thing. This is like as important to them as it is to the rest of us. So that's one quality. The second is core values.
56:14 We have six core values. We made them up right at the beginning of the organization and they are not just things that sit on the wall or on our website. Like we live and breathe them every single day. And those core values include everything from results for kids because we're a very results-driven organization, sitting right next to love because we're also a human organization and we care about people in relationships.
56:35 And another core value is perpetual beta because we're constant learners. And so we are screening people through those core values left and right to really say, how have these shown up in your life? What about these are you, you know, do you feel comfortable with? Which ones would be hardest for you to live into, et cetera? So that would be the second thing. And then beyond that, it would essentially be the, you know, do you have a track record? Now, you may not have done this exact job, but what in your track record shows us that you can,
57:03 likely rise to the challenge of this role. And then the last thing, and this is something that I actually learned in my very first job interview for my very first job is, are you yourself a learner? And so in my very first job, I didn't realize that at the time, but the very final thing that happened after the whole panel interview and case discussion is they sat me down and they gave me a whole bunch of critical feedback. And I thought to myself at the time, I guess they're not going to give me the job and they're just telling me why.
57:32 but really what was happening is they wanted to see how I responded to that critical feedback. And they wanted to see that I get curious about it. Was I leaning into it? Was I learning it or else I get defensive about it? And so is someone a constant learner is one of the most important things for us too. I'm tempted to ask you a question to judge some of my questions that I like to ask. Would you be okay to do that? Sure.
57:55 Let's try. In the interview process for a leadership role, I've asked the question. and this may be too like projection-ish, but I've asked them, what is your process to ensure you're improving every day? And so I want to ask you to think about that for a second, why I go on to give you time to think. I ask it because I'm genuinely curious about their process to ensure that they're getting better each day because that's very important to me. What do you think of that question? So I'll tell you what I love about it and I'll tell you, you know, one concern about it.
58:33 What I love about it is, first of all, it signals to them how important it is that they are getting better every day because that's kind of the premise of the question. And it also lets you know, do they have a process? And some people don't have an intentional process. The thing that I think could be a shortcoming of the question and there's a way to overcome this is it's one thing for people to kind of tell you what it is. but it's not it's another thing for people to actually live it and do it. And so I would follow up that question by saying, give me an example or two of when and how you have lived that process. So that it's not just a theoretical thing.
59:08 The other, the other thing is that there's a lot of research that shows that it's, you know, it's one thing to be able to learn under situations that are calm. But it's a totally another thing to be able to say, how do you actually learn under situations of stress and threat and uncertainty when you're pushed to the wall. And so I might also consider asking people, what's your process when that's happened, you know, when you're really triggered, when you're up
59:36 against the wall? And how does that differ from your from your day-to-day process as well? Okay. Another question I ask everybody, whether it's at an interview for a job or on my podcast or just in life, is a version of this. What have you found to be the commonalities among leaders who have sustained excellence over an extended period of time. I'll pause for a second for you to think about that. I ask it because again, I am genuinely curious about what people have found in others that has led them to whatever their version of excellence is or their definition of it. But I use the word sustained because I'm not as interested in people who have done it once or do it every once. in a while or the one hit wonders, I'm curious about people who have sustained it over time.
01:00:31 And I could ask this to everybody all day, every day, and never ever get tired of it. What do you think of that question? And how could it be better? Beautiful question. And I think similar to the previous one, it really conveys to people what matters to you, sustained excellence over time. And also that you care about people who are studying others and trying to learn from others. And so both, it, both sends a message but also gives you rich information. And the only thing I would potentially add to it would be to say,
01:01:00 and how does that influence your own life and your own work and your own practice? So you're not just someone who's out there studying somebody else, but are you able to apply it? Because there's a lot of people who are good anthropologists and researchers who don't necessarily take that final step, which is the hardest step, which is to actually bring it back to their own work and life and practice. So I might add that.
01:01:22 It's interesting when people make up an answer as they go. You can usually kind of feel that versus the ones who actually have thought about it and talk to people and studied it. It's usually pretty, pretty quick. And I've asked some people who are quite famous that question on this podcast who are absolutely making it up as they go and I have no idea. It blows my mind when that happens. But it does.
01:01:47 It does. Maybe I'm too picky or too fanatical about that. but it's important to me. I got one more before we go. I know we're already over time, but Jeff, we definitely need to have a round two if you're game for it because I can talk about asking questions and being curious and being a good listener all day. I've gone to improv training. I've tried really hard to get better at both asking and listening because I know I still struggle, but it's so critical to be good at this as a leader. But this is more of a general life and career question for you because you've put together an amazing career in life. And that is your media,
01:02:21 somebody a bit earlier in their career? Maybe they just graduated college in that age range. What are some general pieces of life slash career advice you'd give to that person? Yeah. I think I'd say two things. One, especially if you're just starting out, don't feel like you got to figure it all out right away. Try a lot of different stuff. See what sticks. See what you like. See what you don't like. See where you're good. see what you're good at, see what you're not good at. I have a mentor, Jim Cutler, who gave me his theory of decades, which has been just such important advice for me,
01:03:01 which he basically said, you know, if you can in your 20s, just try a whole bunch of different stuff. Because you're not going to know, in your 30s, dig into one or two things. In your 40s really build something hard, you know, go hard at building something. In your 50s, you can begin to harvest, et cetera. And that way of looking at life in decades in that span,
01:03:21 And if you're privileged enough to be able to do that is really powerful. And then the second thing I would just say is it matters so much more who you're working with and who you're working for than what you're doing. If you can actually surround yourself with people who you want to be with, want to be like, want to learn from, and who will invest in you, that is one of the greatest gifts that you can give yourself. So good. The book is called Ask.
01:03:49 tap into the hidden wisdom of people around you for unexpected breakthroughs in leadership and life. This will not be the last time, Jeff and I talk. I am so grateful, man, for you for coming on and sharing, for writing this book. It's extremely well written. It's useful. I think this is one if you actually implement what you're learning, which is I know a big goal of yours, not just to read and go, oh, that's good, a good story, is a good book. It's to actually implement it. If you do it, it's life-changing.
01:04:20 It literally is life-changing. And I truly mean that. So, Jeff, thank you so much, man. And I would love to continue our dialogue as we both progress. This is great. And thank you for being a model of everything in the Ask approach as well. It's not always that I meet someone who really just gets it as deeply as you do. And so it's a pleasure.
01:04:37 I'd love to keep the conversation going. Thank you, man. Trying our best, man. Appreciate it. It is the end of the podcast club. Thank you for being a member of the end of the podcast club. if you are, send me a note, Ryan at learning leader.com. Let me know what you learned from this great conversation with Jeff Wetzler.
01:04:57 A few takeaways from my notes, the ask approach. Choose curiosity. This is an intentional choice we can make. Make it a safe space to tell the truth. Lead with vulnerability, right? Be receptive. Pose quality questions. Those questions are ones that help you learn something.
01:05:17 Then listen. Check if you heard them right. Rephrase and sometimes re-ask the question to ensure that you heard them right. And then reflect and connect. This is all about follow-up. Make sure the other person feels that you've both listened to and heard them. Next, learning design. Got off track a little bit, but I am deeply curious about hosting my Learning Leader Circle members and making it the best event of their year. And I love that he said, well, why don't you ask them? Have them help you co-create the event? I'm like, that makes so much sense. That's the first thing I'm going to do after recording this is send them an email to ask them what they want. Ask them to help me co-create a world-class event. And then what are the best questions to ask in an interview for a job? As the interviewee asked them what concerns they have about you.
01:06:12 Now, I was initially skeptical about this, but it made sense the more he talked about it. mainly because they're going to talk about these concerns when you're not in the room. You might as well talk about them when you are in the room. And so ask them what concerns they have and then maybe you can address them. As the interviewer say, fast forward one year. There are two scenarios. One is you've crushed it. Two, you didn't.
01:06:37 Tell the story of what happened in each of those scenarios. What a cool question. Once again, I want to say thank you so much for continuing to spread the message and telling a friend or two, hey, you should listen to this episode of The Learning Leader Show with Jeff Wetzler. I think it will help you become a more effective leader. And because you continue to do that, and you also go to Apple Podcasts and Spotify and you subscribe to the show. You write a review of the show. You rate it five stars, hopefully.
01:07:04 And by doing that, you continually give me the opportunity to do what I love on a daily basis. And for that, I will forever be grateful. Thank you so much. Talk to soon. Can't wait.