Latest / Hope + Possibilities: Trust, Leadership + Strategic Foresight / Say What They Can't Unhear: Tamsen Webster

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Say What They Can't Unhear: Tamsen Webster · Hope + Possibilities: Trust, Leadership + Strategic Foresight

0:00
I'll see you next time.
0:22
Thank you so much for joining me.
0:23
I'm Nola Simon.
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I'm the host of the Hybrid Remote Center of Excellence and joining
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me today is Tamsen Webster.
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She is a prime example of somebody that I've built a relationship with over time.
0:35
I've actually followed Tamsen probably for years.
0:37
When did the red thread come out?
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That came out in 2021, but I've been talking about the
0:44
red thread for eight years now.
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So my role was actually my corporate role was actually restructured in 2020.
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So I started paying attention to LinkedIn.
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I wasn't writing, but I was consuming a lot.
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And so I think I started noticing you around there.
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So I've honestly been following you probably since then, but
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I just connected this year.
1:01
And I had attended one of your workshops that one of my other podcast guests
1:04
Marty Constant had made available.
1:06
And then I connected after that.
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So I always tell people I, I don't accept pitches from my podcast.
1:11
I like to invite people that I've got to know online.
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So I know your work, and Tansyn's work has been instrumental to helping me
1:18
develop the messaging for my business.
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And I'm really excited that she's come out now with a new book,
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another new book, which is called Say What They Can't Unhear.
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And I gotta tell you, the ding is something that we really have to talk
1:31
about because I know that although it manifests differently for me as well.
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Tamsen, how do you describe your profession?
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Obviously you're an author, you're a keynote speaker you're
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deeply involved with TED Talks How do you describe yourself?
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Like what's your perfect message to deliver who you are?
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So I, for folks that would understand at least somewhat intuitively I say that
1:54
I'm message designer, so I have, after a lot of trial and error, that seems to be
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something where most people generally.
2:02
Yes, correctly what that probably means.
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So meaning you've got something you want to say and you're trying
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to figure out how to say it.
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I help you do that.
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My more my like sassier answer, my cheekier answer, which is also correct is
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that I'm an English to English translator.
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Because I think that's what I'm I help people do.
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But fundamentally, I feel like that my I don't even feel, I know that
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my deep passion is helping people help other people create change.
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And so whatever I can put together, learn, process, size, tams and eyes,
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whatever, to help people really get what their, their difference of perspective,
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their approaches, their offerings, their ideas, their initiatives, all of
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these things that they're, investing time and money in to make a change for
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themselves, for the world, for clients, customers, whatever it might be.
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I want to make sure that they have as much opportunity for success as possible.
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And so that's where I come in because I've somehow cobbled together this deep and
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long interest, both in transformational change and in communications.
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And so I've put those together.
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To create message design.
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Awesome.
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Perfect.
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Yeah.
3:21
I was always fascinated that part of your origin story really is Weight Watchers.
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And a lot of that, when you're trying to lose weight is cause I remember my
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mom did this probably in the eighties.
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A lot of it is,
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She did manage to lose a lot of weight.
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She came back, but that, that was always something that caught my attention
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because I remember her experience with that, but a lot of times it's the
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stories that you tell yourself, right?
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Yes, absolutely.
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And yes, it is a hundred percent.
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I think it's to quote one of my members she always said that it's 99 percent
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mental and the rest is just food.
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And that's, that is, we know now that's, it's not quite as pure as that.
4:06
I think that's one of the things I'm delighted that science has caught up
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with what was observable in the 13 years that I was a Weight Watchers leader.
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And that is, is that.
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There are fundamental physiological differences between people that
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no amount of retraining your thoughts or positive self talk
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or willpower will, will overcome.
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And so it's not that it's not possible.
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It's just that it was one of the of so many lessons I learned in the years that
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I moonlighted as a Weight Watchers leader.
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One of them is that to be very wary of one size fits all.
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Anything, right?
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One size fits all approach.
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One size fits all message.
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Because.
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That is bearing it, that bears with it a lot of assumptions about what you're
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offering and who you're talking to.
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And those can get you in trouble on both sides.
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I don't like getting in trouble that way, which is probably why I've spent
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so much time You know, because I've had some horror stories of just whoop,
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that was not the right way to say that.
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And so that's, that's part of where all this has come from.
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And now that I've gotten to a certain point in my life, in my career, where I
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feel like it's mathematically impossible for me to be the age that I am, but
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there are some objective truths, that I really have gotten to a point where it's.
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Where I feel like, I have something to say on this like I,
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I, I have put all this together.
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I've seen this work.
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I've done the work.
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I have done the research.
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I have done the testing just to see what it is that works and doesn't work so
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that within a world that is constantly changing and with people who are you
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know, I feel I have something to say on this like I, I Just absolutely different.
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Person to person in so many different ways.
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What are some of the things that are reliably true, no matter what, no matter
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who you're talking to, no matter what the situation is, because that I think gives
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you at least a place to start and gives you a place to start where you're starting
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with the strength of what is Known, right?
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This is how people think about things, this is how people make sense of
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information, this is how people react when they're treated a certain way.
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If those are some of the things that either will move a change forward or
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back or get in the way of the message or accelerate it, , it, solvable problems.
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Unsolved solvable problems drive me nuts.
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And this is one of those where I, when I come to looking at messaging and change
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messaging, I'm like these, most of the things, most of the places where we go
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wrong are completely solvable and I just really wanted to help people solve that.
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Yeah, no, it makes sense.
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So in Tamsyn's book, she has these nine principles that are they're so
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logical, they're so straightforward, but they're brilliant, right?
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Thank you.
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And one of them that really caught my attention, I think that's really where
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you're talking about this too, is the deepest beliefs are the hardest to shift.
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And I always found that because I always lived north of the north
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of Toronto and worked in the city.
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And so they would the company would often come out with like
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messages that were designed to be for the majority of employees.
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I wasn't the majority of employees because I didn't live in the city.
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I, A lot of and a lot of times I didn't fit so they would come out my favorite
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was always the, let's save the planet.
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Let's bike to work.
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I don't know.
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I live 60 kilometers north of the city like that's not going to happen.
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You can't bike on the freeway for one.
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It's illegal to I'm probably going to be.
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I'm still biking six hours later and then I have to turn around and go home, right?
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So fundamentally, like my belief was, this is not a message that's
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designed for me because you have no clue how I even get to work.
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You don't even know who I am.
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Or that's, oh, or that's all you're left to think, absent the information, any
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other information being put out there.
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So Again, it's such a solvable problem, right?
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All that take, took, all that would take is a, I'm no grammarian
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a dependent clause that says, for those of you who live in the city.
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But, right?
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Yeah.
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Because at least what that does is say, this is for you.
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And when it comes to those deep beliefs, so the way that I, as you probably figured
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out by reading these things they're all like nine different perspectives
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on what kind of sits in the center is.
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The same thing.
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It's not all the same thing, but it's different avenues into this kind of nut
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of what is it that people have to hear in order to understand and adapt a new idea.
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And.
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The deepest beliefs are the hardest to shift.
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That one is in the trio, like that one sits at the heart of the book.
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It's number five.
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So it's like literally in the middle of all the pieces, because I
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think, for me, it is one of the most counterintuitive principles of inspiring
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long term change or creating the conditions that are more likely for it.
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And there's good reasons for that.
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The good reason for it is that it's counterintuitive is that when we think
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about deep beliefs and, we'll acknowledge that they're hard to shift, and the
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reason why I chose that phrasing was because most people, A, would agree with
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it, but B, they see that as a problem.
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They see that it's a problem that deep beliefs are hard to shift.
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And my perspective is that.
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No belief.
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Very few beliefs.
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Let me be careful.
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One always has to be careful with absolutes.
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Very few beliefs that anybody holds are equally true for
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them in every context, right?
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And what I mean by that is so all that has to happen when you combine that
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principle with let's say every decision has a story, which is the second one,
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which is All someone has to hear is something else they believe to be true
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or recognize as true that is just as strong or stronger and that they can
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notch into the story they're telling themselves, but in a different way.
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And though I didn't have the language for it back when I was a weight watchers
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leader it's again, one of the ones that, that truly had its birth there because
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so often, your experience with weight loss was my experience with weight loss,
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which is that I had tried and failed any number of times before I finally found
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and created this kind of combination of factors that, that worked for me.
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And certainly one of the things that I observed over 13 years was that
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one of the biggest and most dangerous things that could happen was someone
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faulting themselves for failure and adding that to the mental tally of
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this belief that I can't do this thing.
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And so often when that's the operating deep belief, I just can't, it's my genes.
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Like I'm just destined to be this way.
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And I felt that way about myself, which is just like I come from
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a family of overweight women.
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And so maybe this is just who I'm supposed to be.
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And what I found that was the antidote to that kind of, setting where
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people set themselves up for failure was instead of saying, put okay.
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Instead of putting all your eggs in a belief that you haven't tested this is
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possible for me, or in a new behavior of let me stop eating some food that I love.
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What would happen if, it really started with a question, what would happen if
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we could map over something that they are already good at someplace else?
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And for me personally, just as an example, I am.
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almost pathologically a rule follower and a systems follower, which is
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one of the reasons why for me Weight watchers was a really good match.
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It is not a good match for people who See it as a constricting framework.
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And or and aren't able or don't have a leader who could show them or
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present them with a different way to conceive of those same guidelines.
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But for me, it was like, once I found a system, I was like, yes, this is awesome.
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I am great at following rules.
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Just give me rules as long as the rules aren't too hard to follow.
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And for me, it was like mapping that over and saying, oh, it's just a budget.
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And instead of thinking of myself like, oh, I'm a bad person, food is
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good or bad, it for me, that system neutralized the emotional attachment
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to it all to, to me, to, to the food.
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And so again, for me, once it, once, it was, this is just about, solving a puzzle.
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Another thing I love, like how do I get the food I want?
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into this framework that's being presented to me, then it
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became actually like a game.
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Not one that I chose to gamify, because, again, a thing I learned over time,
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was that, like, when you're trying to play that game you win, you lose,
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and if you lose, you win, right?
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It's just you're, it's all you.
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Who are you trying to win against?
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Who are you playing against?
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Exactly.
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And, but I would, so once I was like that, again, it wasn't the program
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that worked for me so much as there was this aspect of the program that
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I could link to something that I was already confident that I did well.
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And so that was a stacking.
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Before habit stacking was a thing, really.
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Yeah, because it was just like this idea of again I'm, I love puzzles.
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Let me figure this out.
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Let me let me figure out how to do this.
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And I'm also a little ornery.
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I'm contrarian.
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So if you're like, It's not possible to keep doing X, Y, or Z.
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Then I'm like I'm going to see if it's possible if I can still have
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dark chocolate every day, and I can still have my ice cream, and
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I can still have these things.
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The whole reason why I joined walked into Weight Watchers for the first
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day is because I saw this hilarious episode of the Oprah Winfrey show.
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When Sarah, the Duchess of Ferguson was on here, this is
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dating me rather significantly.
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That's okay.
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We're the same age.
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Yeah.
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And they were, they like a got themselves pretty much drunk on television and
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then attempted these two women who really don't cook for themselves
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to make chocolate chip cookies.
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And I just, Hey, it was such like a joyful thing, but also this whole idea
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of Oh, it linked into to bring it back to some of the things that I talk about
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in the book, something that I recognized is true, which is that if I couldn't
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lose weight doing the things that I love, how could I possibly keep it off?
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So it just again from a thing that You know, from assessing for myself.
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What hadn't worked in the past was like, okay, if it's too restrictive,
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I'm not going to stay on it.
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If I telling me if I don't, if I feel embarrassed about telling somebody
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else what I'm doing to lose weight or to get healthy I'm not going to do it.
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If it's too extreme, I'm not going to do it.
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And so it was really getting to a point of saying, okay, I know what I need
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from something in order to make it work.
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And then it was just about finding that intersection.
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And that was the role that I saw myself as a way watchers leader with
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my members was, one thing that they said that the company said to me once
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upon a time, which I couldn't unhear.
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And I still use this in any number of ways was, they said to us at one point
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during ongoing training that we would have that, our job was to be the expert.
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In the program and to recognize that our members were the expert in themselves
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and that our job was to figure out how to blend the expertise, not to presume
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that we knew what the right way to do.
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The program was for them, but to get as much information and Understand the
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program so thoroughly that we could really adapt it to wherever somebody was.
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So an example, I find a window or a door, right?
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Exactly.
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And one of those windows of the doors was I grew up in the point
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system of Weight Watchers, which is basically like a budget, right?
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You get a certain number of Points to eat in a day and food has points and your job,
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like a budget, is don't go over budget and one of the things that was very difficult
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for people was when they deeply believed that they were a night eater, like a
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label that they would assign to themselves saying that they're a night eater and
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what that means for folks that may not be familiar with that term is that it.
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They were they were great fleeing things that you were they were,
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they felt like they really had great and strong control through
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most of the day and through dinner.
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And then somewhere between dinner and bedtime, the wheels would just come off.
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And some of that.
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As I observed over time again, 13 years and, with a number of
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meetings that I led in, around my day job, I did the math one time.
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It was 3000 meetings.
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You pick up some data from doing that.
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And one of the things that I did.
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Picked up was that people that would get so desperate because they would
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run out of points because the, the points have worked for 24 hours.
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Most people started them in the morning.
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And so again, if you get to the end of the day and at the time they wanted
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to or needed to eat or, do whatever food was doing for them was the time
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when they had the fewest points.
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And they had got a lot of them again.
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We get to that point where they were just like, then I can't do this because
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the program doesn't work with who I am.
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And I spent some time trying to figure this one out for people
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because there really are a lot of people for whom this is a challenge.
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And then I was like but there's nowhere in this literature that says
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the points start in the morning.
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The points are just 24 hours.
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What I ended up doing was saying to them, hey, guess what?
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There's no, nothing says that you have to start the points in the morning.
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It's just 24 hours of points.
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And yeah, it's going to mean you're going to need to play with the journaling
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things that we've got and where you write things down a little bit.
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But as long as you can feel like you can keep track, then start your
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points at dinner because deeper belief that I anchored it to.
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That there's 24 hours in a day.
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Yeah.
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And that 24 hours can start at any time.
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And so for many people, I'm not saying all, but for many
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people, just that simple shift.
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Again, I didn't have to tell them they weren't night eaters.
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I didn't have to change who they were.
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All I was doing was saying, there is something else that is
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actually, in this case, outside of you, that's even more reliable.
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That it that when it comes together with you actually
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gives you a path forward here.
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And that works too for, cause like people who work night shifts, it's a way to be
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more flexible with the reality of who they're like, who they are in their life.
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Yeah.
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And.
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There's always something like that.
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I I should say I always start with the assumption or the belief that
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there's something like that because it allows me to start looking for it.
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Then, if I come into any situation where I'm trying to help someone
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change or help someone help other people or their organization change.
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If I come in saying, how do we get them to say yes to this?
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Then I've created a really binary situation where it's just Yes, not
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yes to this change, not how can I open up and say, All right, we are
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trying to achieve this larger thing.
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Are we all in agreement about that?
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Are we trying, in Weight Watchers, are we trying to achieve health goals?
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Yeah.
20:41
Okay, great.
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Then as long as we're in agreement about that, we're going to start there.
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Now let's take point by point and say, what, where else are we
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where are the points of conflict?
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Where aren't they?
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But by avoiding looking and trying to challenge those deep beliefs and really
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just coming at it from whatever the situation is from a different direction
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and finding something that is strong as strong or a stronger than what's
21:09
standing in the way, then we allow people to tell themselves a different story.
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In their head or one that now has a possibility of success,
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whereas the current one doesn't.
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And when somebody wants the outcome enough, they will, at least at that point,
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be willing to try because they'll agree in principle now that it's possible.
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And.
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For a lot of us and with a lot of change that we're trying to do in
21:38
organizations, like that's the first barrier that we run up against, which
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is people reject it at a hand before even because there's just dismissed.
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It is not possible.
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And this is where I, I, one of the many things I hope that people pull from the
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book is just this idea of that little tiny yes, that comes saying, is it possible?
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Do you agree in principle that this would work, that this is, that this makes sense?
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Again, not based on data and evidence.
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Those are important.
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They come later.
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But intuitively, based on what you recognize as true become something
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that will shift what you how you think about the world or how
22:25
you think about the situation or how you think about this change.
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And I think that's really where the key is so that it comes it flips from the
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deepest beliefs are the hardest to shift as being a problem to the deepest beliefs
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are the hardest to shift actually tell you where to start to solve the problem.
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Start with by building on those deep beliefs rather
22:48
than trying to challenge them.
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Yeah, no, I the question comes up with my work is the whole return to office
22:55
debate and everybody, like all these CEOs trying to bring people back in
22:59
because of collaboration and innovation.
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And, that the work is just better in the office and people
23:05
fundamentally don't believe them.
23:07
Because for one, they've been able to work well at home.
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Two, their role doesn't really involve innovation or collaboration.
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And as we've tried in the past, they haven't succeeded to actually influence
23:20
that innovation and collaboration.
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And so fundamentally there's that disagreement about those beliefs.
23:27
Yes.
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And I would venture to say.
23:31
That
23:37
in some of those cases where the leadership is bringing people back,
23:43
they don't actually believe that it they don't believe it either.
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And that actually isn't the reason.
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Bringing them back.
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And so the thing is that, particularly, I think people's intuitive BS
23:55
meter has always been very good.
23:58
But employees to their employers is super good because they have a lot of history
24:06
with the behavior of the organization.
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And and guess what?
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We are, as humans, we are actually Nonverbal first.
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Like that.
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And we will trust what we experience with all of ourselves far more than
24:30
any words we ever attach to it.
24:32
Yeah.
24:32
And this is where, again, as part of the motivation of this book, which is just
24:37
saying, listen, if you can't actually make a, I know this is gonna sound super.
24:44
rational.
24:45
I don't get to the reason why it's not.
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But if you can't make both a valid and sound argument that
24:52
your audience agrees is valid and sound, and what I mean by valid and
24:55
sound is it is a logical argument.
24:57
Like it's complete, meaning this plus this equals this and they agree with you.
25:03
And sound, meaning the premises upon which you are, like, the thing where
25:07
you're saying, this is true, and this is true, therefore, if they don't agree
25:11
with one of those two things, then the argument is dead in the water.
25:15
And I know you're right.
25:16
Because I've seen and I know you're right because I've seen it as well that people
25:21
don't believe that they're more creative or innovative when they're all together.
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I also know that the studies say that.
25:29
They are wrong that when people are together, they actually are.
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And then you're going to say yes.
25:34
And some of those studies came from places like Microsoft.
25:37
Of course, it's self serving again.
25:38
Everybody's we can get the numbers to say whatever we want.
25:42
But here's what I would say that even people who are
25:49
reluctant to come back to the office.
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All the time, regardless.
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You know what I see, and you probably see it, too, because I go into organizations
25:58
to speak often at these occasions when they have brought everyone together
26:02
when they've been remote is that magic happens, particularly in the non formal
26:10
situations when you bring people together when there's lunches together when they
26:15
all go out to karaoke together and those kinds of things and What I, where I
26:21
think these back to work and I get not an expert in all of this like you are,
26:25
but where I suspect a lot of this breaks down is that if the leadership actually
26:32
articulated their own case to themselves,
26:38
they actually wouldn't be able to make an argument that actually because if
26:41
they took off, one of the things I talk about in the introduction to the
26:44
book is what I call the persuaders paradox, meaning we get so convinced
26:49
of our own idea Or so charged with.
26:52
We have to make this thing happen that I have to convince people that
26:56
we often will engage in a persuasion techniques and attempts that if we were
27:02
to take that hat off for a moment, we would never tolerate for ourselves.
27:06
Yeah, and.
27:09
It's one of those things where, you know, cause I see it a lot.
27:12
It's the role I often play in organizations.
27:14
So thank you, brave clients where, they'll say we believe that it's, it's
27:18
going to be better for collaboration.
27:20
Innovation.
27:20
I'm like, and I would say, do you believe you are more collaborative and
27:25
innovative are equally collaborative, innovative working remote.
27:28
And I think a fair portion of those people would be like yeah, I am, but.
27:33
They aren't.
27:34
Right?
27:34
And it's this kind of perspective.
27:36
So anyway, I think a lot of it comes down to really thinking about
27:42
what would be an argument that The employees would agree is true.
27:47
What would be the premises that the employees would agree would make sense.
27:52
And I think one of the one of the avenues for that is recalling a recalling
27:59
those experiences where there has been something magical about getting people
28:03
physically together and then be making sure that your policies procedures
28:08
that are in fact what's happening.
28:10
The way that I've come to define something that someone can't unhear
28:14
is that it is a recognizable truth that creates, crystallizes, or
28:22
corrupts how they see the world.
28:26
And the issue is when you're trying to get someone to change, And they and the
28:32
whatever you're presenting to them does not do one of those four things, right?
28:39
It's not a recognizable truth.
28:41
They don't see it in play or it doesn't do one of those and
28:45
then it's not going to work.
28:47
So when it comes to back to office again, it's like, where do people agree?
28:51
Can we start there?
28:53
And.
28:53
Again, I think the path is like there.
28:55
There are these magical moments where when people are physically
28:58
together, other stuff happens.
29:00
It may not be collaboration and innovation.
29:02
It may be something else that enables more of that to happen later.
29:07
But then the second step is critical on the part of the organization, which
29:12
is to set up the situations where those things are actually going to happen.
29:17
Because the vast majority of people I talk to who have been at.
29:21
In their terms, forced back to work part of the reason why they're so frustrated
29:26
by it is because they're sitting physically at work in online meetings.
29:32
Yes, I survived a return to office mandate in 2013.
29:37
So long before online meetings were really regular, I think.
29:41
And part of it was we were brought back because the infrastructure didn't
29:45
necessarily support everything that we were trying to do at that particular time.
29:50
And I had driven a lot of it and I knew it was completely possible to do it.
29:54
They just needed to work together and they needed to get their act together.
29:58
So I had made specific recommendations, but the way that I coped with that
30:03
was actually flipping it and basically saying that I can make this work for me
30:09
because this is what I need to do so that when we bring it back, it'll work well.
30:15
So I flipped it to be like I could totally work from home.
30:19
I could make this work.
30:21
But what do I have to do?
30:22
How can I help so that everybody else can get to where I am.
30:27
So I went in and I started training people how to use webinar software.
30:31
I built out operating protocols and I, I worked with like the tech
30:34
team and I did all of that work.
30:36
Like I never really stopped working on it, even though it was never my job.
30:40
And so assuming that identity and flipping that helped me deal with the
30:45
emotional impacts of it, even though, it was still aggravating, but it's
30:48
at least I could flip my perspective.
30:50
And I became the person who is going to make it work.
30:53
He was invested and committed for the longterm.
30:56
Yeah, that, that's the,
31:03
the risk in this approach is that you discover that As most marketers know
31:11
about marketing messaging, and this is where a lot of this started for me,
31:14
cause that's where my career started.
31:16
Marketers know that no amount of great marketing will fix a product problem.
31:22
It's another version of, nothing killed a bad product, like good advertising.
31:26
There is no amount of messaging.
31:29
that will make a change that is not fundamentally in
31:33
someone's favor, in their favor.
31:38
And I would argue that anything where you're trying to get them to believe
31:42
that it's in their favor is Out of line with my own personal ethics.
31:47
People's own mileage may vary, but the thing is that
31:52
eventually they'll figure it out.
31:53
Let's we can get all Shakespearean on it.
31:55
Like the truth will out again, over time, people will see whether
32:00
there's a gap between what they were told and what they experience.
32:05
And they are always going to trust their own experience more.
32:09
And so when You know, in those situations where it really isn't going to work
32:17
out for some people on the team, that's where, this underneath a lot
32:24
of, there's a, there is a realization that may come to some readers of this
32:29
book, which is that what this is.
32:33
And what that shift in approach does is that it shifts the risk of the
32:37
change onto the person asking for it or onto the people asking for it.
32:42
And that's again my bias.
32:46
I've got a lot of reasons for why I think that's appropriate,
32:49
but it like get intuitively.
32:51
This is definitely for a book for people who would agree that is true,
32:55
that if I am asking you to change.
32:58
The.
33:00
If it's a worthwhile change, I should believe enough in that change to
33:04
assume the risks of giving you my honest, fully transparent reasoning
33:11
for it and acknowledge and take the risk that you may not agree.
33:17
Oh, yeah.
33:18
Yeah, we had that once with a software program.
33:21
They were trying to bring in.
33:21
They did spend 2 million dollars on like a.
33:24
Basically, like a custom CRM before Salesforce was a thing.
33:28
And then they're like we spent 2, 000, 2 million on this.
33:30
We need you to use it.
33:31
And I'm like, okay, but you're making my life.
33:33
More difficult.
33:34
Why would I use it?
33:35
Because it doesn't solve any problem that I have.
33:39
You're just adding to my day.
33:41
And then eventually they started adding in things that were useful.
33:45
So then it's okay I can see the use case for that.
33:48
That's making my day easier.
33:51
I'll use it.
33:52
I don't really care about your 2 million that you spent on it.
33:55
That's poor planning on your part.
33:58
Yes.
33:58
If you make my day easier.
34:00
Okay.
34:00
I'll support you.
34:03
And that is where, and that's, for me, that's always the place to start
34:07
a message of change is what, in what direction are the people you're
34:11
talking to already traveling, right?
34:15
And one thing that you can rely on is that your team always
34:20
wants their day to be easier.
34:21
They always want there to be less annoyances.
34:25
They always want to be, they always want more time to do the things that they love.
34:31
Right now in some companies that culture is do more of the work and other for
34:36
other people and maybe even within that company that for other people that's
34:39
spending more time with friends, family, loved ones, crossword puzzles, dogs.
34:44
I don't know what that is.
34:47
This comes back to that fifth principle of the deepest beliefs are the hardest
34:51
to shift because part of the belief is that I want the thing right?
34:56
And if I'm already organized and wired in the direction of, I'm going to
35:00
pursue and be open to anything that legitimately will make my life easier,
35:07
then start the message of change there.
35:10
Pretty much one thing that's usually not going to fly is that it's for the good
35:13
of the company, that may fly with your C suite, but it's still conditional on as
35:20
long as it doesn't make my job harder.
35:24
And so starting from there is the first thing.
35:27
And then again, so often what we do when we, All forms of messaging, but
35:34
particularly around messaging that's meant to drive a shift in thinking or
35:38
behavior or just create an action is that we think that, at least we've learned
35:45
that just telling people what to do doesn't work or doesn't work long term
35:49
or doesn't work and build the kind of relationships and culture that you want.
35:53
So we've we've, Thanks in no small part to Simon Sinek.
35:56
We've got, we've got this we've understood now that we, yeah, exactly.
36:00
We have to at least explain why.
36:02
Why are we doing this thing?
36:04
We're doing this thing because now I would say that when
36:07
you're trying to drive action.
36:09
That we use the why that doesn't resonate for people a lot of times,
36:14
or it does, but it's a distant, it's seven rooms over, right?
36:18
Whereas if there was something closer, like for you to say that to, for them
36:22
to say we invested a lot of money.
36:23
You're like, that doesn't ring my bell at all.
36:26
But if it were legitimately, even if it were initially positioned as this is going
36:33
to make your life easier, what we miss.
36:36
And what that means is that is starting with not just the why behind
36:42
what the change is, but the why, but behind what, how the change works.
36:47
In other words, why will this change actually accomplish this thing?
36:54
And that's the one we skip, and that's the one where we, More often than not
36:59
end up with things that we trying to argue based on things we wish were true,
37:04
like the collaboration and innovation, but not things again, something that
37:08
someone can't unhear is a recognizable truth doesn't mean it actually is, but
37:13
they have to recognize it as truth.
37:15
And this is where we resolve this tension between someone going,
37:19
this is a very logical approach.
37:21
It's logic that uses beliefs in its input.
37:25
That's not rational, totally not.
37:28
So this is where we find that middle ground.
37:31
But it starts with saying, if you want people to go along, it's not
37:37
their job to move in a new direction.
37:40
It's your job to show how the thing that you're asking them to do doesn't
37:46
take them off the path that they're on.
37:48
And in fact, may actually accelerate them towards whatever
37:52
it is that they're pursuing.
37:53
But it's your job, it's your team's job, as a leader, as a colleague to, If
38:00
you don't know specifically what those things are to just to do the little
38:04
bit of human work that would say what would a smart, capable, good person,
38:09
which all of your team is, by the way, what would they most likely care about
38:15
the most, what would be the most, what would be the thing that they're most,
38:20
caring about again, not, and it isn't by the way, long term avoiding pain.
38:26
It's.
38:27
Yes, they want to avoid pain in the short term, but they also want, there's
38:30
something else that they're looking for.
38:32
So there's a lot to it, but ultimately it is, does come down to very simple
38:37
principles, which is why I wrote the book.
38:40
I like to the smart, capable, good approach because it helps
38:44
people approach it with empathy.
38:46
Right, and put themselves in somebody else's shoes, I find.
38:49
So if you assume that everybody is smart, capable and good, which the
38:53
majority of people want to be, I maybe Elon Musk claims to be an evil genius.
38:57
I'm not sure, but if everybody wants.
39:00
Yeah, from that perspective, then you have to consider that, there's a reason that's
39:06
driving them that it makes you start that curiosity thread, which I think is.
39:11
It's helpful.
39:12
That's right.
39:13
So yeah, I love this topic.
39:15
It's a couple things.
39:16
One is, again, most of the things that I've put in here come from trial and
39:21
error experience of what business leaders and humans do and don't talk, right?
39:28
And.
39:30
And one of those, particularly in business, it can be for not for all people
39:36
in business and not for all leaders.
39:37
But the empathy is can for certain people feel quite squishy on.
39:44
And that's because oftentimes that we've conflated that there's only one
39:48
kind of empathy when, in fact, there's actually multiple kinds of empathy and
39:52
Most of the time what we're, what we think we mean with empathy is emotional
39:57
empathy, which is understanding what somebody else is feeling.
40:01
And that feels very touchy feely to particularly, task oriented
40:07
leaders and things like that.
40:08
Not everybody's wired towards relationships and that's okay by the way.
40:14
But one thing that can help to understand is Hey you don't.
40:18
Control how somebody feels about something.
40:20
You do not.
40:22
And they do.
40:23
And that's On that.
40:25
And so not only does it feel uncomfortable for certain people
40:29
because of how they're wired.
40:31
I don't feel comfortable on this feeling thing on another level.
40:37
Other people may resist it because they're like, I don't feel comfortable.
40:40
I don't directly control how they feel anyway.
40:43
So again, what's for some folks that maybe they're efficiency oriented.
40:46
Like I don't, even if I wanted to know or could know, I can't, there's, it's
40:51
not a thing I can directly affect.
40:54
And there's lots of people who actually don't really understand
40:57
what they're feeling either.
40:59
Like admitting their own emotions to themselves.
41:02
So it's complex.
41:03
And this is where understanding that there's another avenue towards empathy
41:07
that can be really important and that's cognitive empathy, which is understanding
41:12
what somebody else is thinking.
41:14
And there's a huge amount of support for the fact that many of our feelings
41:19
are directly tied to our thoughts.
41:22
And so if we can back up and go, whoo, this person is super
41:26
passionate about this, or, ooh, this person's really angry about this.
41:31
And instead of going.
41:33
I don't understand the feeling, which you may not, you're probably not going
41:36
to understand it unless you start to say what must they be thinking?
41:41
Or what could they be thinking that would produce that anger would produce that
41:47
doubt that would produce that resistance?
41:50
And.
41:51
You're right.
41:52
The smart, capable, good thing is that most people want to be it.
41:57
And I chose the phrasing in the book quite consciously that most
42:00
people want to be seen that way.
42:03
Because I've spent enough years in therapy to know that not everybody's
42:06
convinced all the time that they are smart, capable, or good.
42:10
Most of us.
42:11
The majority of us, I would say even the Elon Musks of the world
42:16
want to be seen as smart, capable and good to their in group, right?
42:20
Or to other people.
42:22
And so they're very happy to be seen as not good by a huge group of other people
42:27
as long as they feel validated by the people whose opinion they want or need.
42:33
And so this is where.
42:37
Again, putting that lens on just saying again, you don't even have to
42:42
believe I suggest that you do, though, because still going to leak out.
42:46
If you don't have to, though, but at least take that step of saying,
42:50
okay, let's just thought exercise.
42:52
If this person.
42:54
We're actually currently smart, capable and good.
42:57
Why would this make sense?
43:00
Because people do follow their own internal logic.
43:04
It may not be logical to you, but it is to them.
43:08
We do not, as humans, operate outside of internal logic for very long.
43:14
We don't.
43:15
We are very internally consistent people.
43:19
Even if we're consistently inconsistent, right?
43:21
It's like Dan Ariely's like predictably irrational.
43:25
We in fact are predictably irrational, but we're irrational in very predictable ways.
43:30
We are logical and very illogical ways.
43:33
And that's what we can count on.
43:35
So if you can marry those two things together, that people will operate.
43:40
Long term on their own internal logic.
43:41
So there is one there's some kind of mental model or collection of models and
43:47
beliefs and frameworks and worldview.
43:50
Absolutely, which I love, by the way, favorite topic and that people want
43:54
to be seen as smart, capable and good.
43:56
Then you can start to solve for the worldview.
43:59
You can say, I can see this reaction, if I assume they're smart, capable, and
44:04
good, given what I know of the world, and of people, and even this person.
44:09
What would have produced that?
44:11
And if you can't figure it out guess what?
44:13
It is a beautiful point, to your point, Nola, of becoming
44:17
curious, and asking them.
44:20
What makes you say that?
44:22
What is, what is it that you are?
44:25
That are, what is it that you are angry about?
44:28
Again, not why that can be a very triggering question.
44:31
Like, why are you so angry?
44:32
It's just what is it?
44:33
Because that can start to really focus the question on, you could, if
44:38
someone said that to you with your resistance to coming back to work or
44:41
that to that implementation of that software system what is it about this?
44:45
That is, is so frustrating to you.
44:47
You're like, it makes my job harder.
44:52
It does again, like we operate.
44:56
From these worldviews with the assumption that people see
44:58
the world the same way we do.
45:00
And if we stop and for just even a split second and go of course, not everybody
45:05
does or can, but our brain saves brain cells by assuming that everybody does.
45:12
And so sometimes we have to create those moments either in conversation
45:18
or by presenting this case for change that again, people can recognize.
45:29
In that moment, because it doesn't take long to really say because I
45:33
believe this is true, and this is true.
45:35
That's why I believe this is the approach that's going to produce this
45:38
outcome that doesn't take much to help people identify where the friction
45:45
is, where the alignment is, where there's opportunity and where there is.
45:51
And where there isn't and regardless, what I have seen is that being able
45:55
to do that and have that discussion allows people to civilly agree to
46:00
disagree and say, oh, I understand.
46:06
I just don't agree and then it's up to the leadership.
46:09
It's up to you as an individual working with that leadership
46:12
to decide what that actually.
46:14
Means for you.
46:14
And like you did, you said how can I reframe it so that I can do something
46:18
with this and be helpful towards it?
46:21
But that's how that response is always gonna be personal to Yeah, and
46:25
fundamentally, I think that's really where the whole return to office thing
46:29
breaks down is it's related to identity.
46:32
So these leaders who want to bring people back, that's how
46:35
they've always been successful.
46:36
If they tell the story of their careers, it's told in person
46:40
because that was their reality.
46:42
You would think that they want to mentor people, they want to train people,
46:45
they, and to do that in the frame of referenced in to their history, they
46:51
can't do that if the people are at home.
46:55
Like their reason for being successful is fundamentally related to the
46:58
fact that they were in person seeing people in different contexts.
47:02
And so they have to reframe their whole entire understanding of their
47:07
career success in a way that's really uncomfortable for a lot of people.
47:14
Yes, and that also means that in many cases, it reveals to them in a way
47:23
they may not want to face quickly or ever how they were viewing the
47:27
people who work with them, right?
47:30
Meaning they were looking them as workers.
47:34
Not as people because again, as a person to put the persuaders paradox back in
47:40
play as a person, they wouldn't want to be seen as just a worker either.
47:47
They would resist it.
47:48
And so sometimes it's having that perspective of just it's where
47:52
that classic 90s 80s and 90s.
47:55
It started in Toyota.
47:56
The five wise.
47:58
comes into play of just keep, it isn't always five.
48:01
Sometimes it's three, sometimes it's seven, but keep going down until
48:07
you, it's a, or even share Lockian.
48:09
The only thing that's left is what must be true.
48:12
And sometimes that's uncomfortable and but if you're really trying to get a change
48:18
to be successful, that's the work, right?
48:22
And sometimes the work is going to be This realization that you are putting the
48:31
needs of the company ahead of the needs of your employees and that may go against
48:37
what you have said Your values are right.
48:41
And so that's where the trust breaks down, right?
48:43
Because it's the story doesn't hang together, right?
48:48
Exactly.
48:48
It doesn't it.
48:49
It doesn't.
48:50
It is not recognizably true.
48:52
So that's what you know, for me this idea of these recognizable truths apply both
48:58
to individual pieces and parts of this story, but also to the story as a whole,
49:04
because sometimes, we can hear something that just completely, Like just shifts
49:09
everything, and it just rewires the rest of a story that's already in play.
49:14
I would say we've seen that this week in Kamala Harris's response on Call
49:21
Her Daddy when she said there are many women who do not aspire to be humble.
49:25
And for many women, I'm not saying all, for many women, that was
49:29
one of those recognizable truths.
49:31
All of a sudden they heard the words and they're like.
49:34
I recognize that as true and I recognize that as true about me.
49:39
And so what it did was it crystallized for a group of people.
49:45
This is why this something didn't work.
49:47
This is why, some like something about the story I'm being told about my
49:53
role as a woman doesn't work because I've just heard a recognizable truth.
49:58
And then to your point, Nola, sometimes it's the whole story, right?
50:01
It's just it's, these things don't track together.
50:05
And that's, I, sorry to get all Aristotelian on it, but it's it's not
50:09
a, it's not a valid argument, meaning A plus B does not equal C in this case.
50:15
And And if that's verifiably true, based on your audience's experience, if
50:21
your audience cannot validate it based on their own experience, first test.
50:26
Test.
50:27
Dead in the water.
50:28
And so this is why so much of the approach that I'm talking about in this
50:32
book really relies on those underlying, sometimes implicit, unspoken, in
50:39
practice principles that are guiding what the leaders do and team members do
50:46
every day, because that is what we do.
50:50
That is the first validation of the change.
50:54
The first yes, that always has to pass is does it check?
50:58
Does it check with my head?
51:00
Does it make sense?
51:01
And does it make sense?
51:03
Does it feel right?
51:05
And the ding, it has to be, I don't hear an audible ding.
51:08
When I hear a truth, I feel it like in, in my chest, it's not audible.
51:14
It's a feeling right.
51:16
And that actually happened once where it was something that somebody was dealing
51:20
with an insurance claim and somebody told me something that they shouldn't have told
51:23
me and I'm like, Oh, this is the truth.
51:26
This is what you're trying to do.
51:27
And I got a 34, 000 settlement out of them because I recognized their truth.
51:32
Yes, we there's a lot as I'm, as I am learning right now, cause
51:38
I, I started amidst all of this.
51:40
I started a doctorate program this summer.
51:42
We have.
51:44
I think overlooked in particularly Western and Western culture and in business,
51:52
the other forms of.
51:55
Knowledge, wisdom and learning that we have and you know it what is
52:04
intriguing to me in this environment of incredible complexity and incredible
52:11
change is how important it is.
52:16
To be able to
52:21
not just articulate quickly why something what something is, why is it
52:26
important and what and be able to give people that information that allows
52:30
them to do that to do a very quick check, but to be able to recognize.
52:37
That actually nothing that happens up here happens without the gut check happening
52:45
first, and I don't care how B2B or how engineering or tech or science focused,
52:55
an organization is it's, it's proposal review committee is or whatever that
53:02
data, we're going to trust the data.
53:06
That either aligns with what we've seen and experienced ourselves, or in
53:11
rare cases, we will trust it because it either comes from a source that
53:16
we really trust, or again, that it finally unlocks, even in a way that
53:21
we weren't expecting, something else.
53:24
One of my best examples of that, and I know we're running out of time,
53:27
but one of my favorite examples of that was with with Jay Baer.
53:30
So Jay Baer is a customer service and customer experience expert.
53:34
And two books ago, three books ago, he wrote a book called Hug Your Haters.
53:39
And it started with, he started with, by, he started it by doing research.
53:43
So he started it by doing, by gathering information on.
53:48
Like, how often you need to respond to the haters online and what the
53:52
expectations were and all of that.
53:54
And to Jay's eternal credit, his original hypothesis about it, I don't
54:00
even remember what it was disproved.
54:02
And what he discovered in the data was not that was that the haters were actually
54:07
deeply passionate about the brand.
54:10
And when they got angry, it's because they cared so much.
54:14
And so this is one of those places where, when it suddenly, for him, what that
54:21
created was, and I remember we worked on the messaging around this, which was,
54:25
That it wasn't that the haters weren't the problem, ignoring them was the
54:28
problem, because they were so passionate about the brand, the company, etc.
54:34
That hearing that disconfirming data is what unlocked for him why haters could
54:41
have, like, why they carried such power.
54:43
It's because the people who I would submit, it's because that passion.
54:48
For the brand or for the way things should be was so intense that people felt it
54:55
even through, the austere online world.
55:00
Yeah, I actually built my customer service career around difficult
55:04
callers and dealing with people that other people couldn't deal with.
55:08
And.
55:08
That was how I was successful because I listened to them, because honestly,
55:13
the majority of the time is they had a vision of what could be, and they
55:17
were actually trying to help you get there, if only you would pay attention.
55:21
Yes.
55:22
Yes.
55:22
And that actually is what's happening with the whole return to office thing
55:25
is, it's not that people object to.
55:28
And it's not that they don't want to work.
55:31
It's not that they refuse to go into the office.
55:33
It's because they don't feel heard.
55:35
That's the really big thing that's happened.
55:38
That's right.
55:38
And they are.
55:40
And it's and when the leadership says we don't feel heard either.
55:43
This is where I would urge people to say,
55:48
because are you asking people to hear something that you haven't actually said?
55:52
And that is how could they hear that?
55:55
And so this is why so often it really is so important to it's, to say what
56:00
they can't unhear, you have to say what they can't hear first, right?
56:05
In order for that to be the case.
56:07
And that sometimes means digging deep into really understanding what is driving
56:14
why you believe a particular change is actually the right thing to do.
56:18
And then discovering what in that.
56:21
And then deciding what does that mean for either how you change the
56:25
message or how you're going about making the change in the first place.
56:31
All right we should wrap it up because we are over time at this
56:34
point, but thank you so much.
56:36
It's always lovely to chat with you.
56:38
I did find the book immensely helpful.
56:40
I think in my review, I actually wrote immediately useful because.
56:45
I was actually applying it.
56:46
If I, if you go back through my social, you'll actually see I was
56:49
weaving, smart, capable, and good.
56:51
And I was actually weaving it into things I was already writing.
56:54
Oh, I love that.
56:56
Yeah, it was, is really cool.
56:57
And so definitely the book is out today.
56:59
I checked my mailbox to see if it had arrived.
57:01
It hadn't arrived yet.
57:02
But it's already hitting the charts.
57:04
So if you get the book, Say what they can on here by Tamsyn Webster,
57:07
write a review for her on Amazon.
57:10
And we want the next book in the series because it's helped me to this point.
57:14
You got to keep going.
57:15
No, thank you so much.
57:18
It's so generous to share your time with me.
57:20
And I'm just very grateful to be able to have such an
57:23
engaging conversation with you.
57:25
Oh, thank you so much.
57:26
I appreciate it.
57:27
I'll see you next time.