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Daniel Murray The Empathy Gap · Hardiness with Dr Paul Taylor

0:08
Speaker 1: Daniel Murray. Welcome to the podcast.
0:11
Speaker 2: Thanks Paul, great to be here with you.
0:13
Speaker 1: Exciting Damie at your book has when did it release?
0:16
Speaker 1: Very recently?
0:18
Speaker 2: Yeah, a couple of days ago. Came out in bookshops,
0:20
Speaker 2: so it was a bit of a surreal moment of
0:22
Speaker 2: walking in. I was actually in Sydney, went into the
0:25
Speaker 2: Dimicks there on Pitt Street and yeah, I got to
0:29
Speaker 2: go in and see it on the shelf and next
0:31
Speaker 2: to all those other wonderful books and authors. It's pretty
0:34
Speaker 2: exciting to hos.
0:35
Speaker 3: That's the cool bit, isn't it When you actually see
0:38
Speaker 3: it in a bookstore and then you go, shit, this
0:40
Speaker 3: is real.
0:42
Speaker 2: It's it's felt real for a while, but you're right
0:45
Speaker 2: when you see it. You know, I was there underneath
0:48
Speaker 2: diary of CEO Steven Bartler's book and some other familiar
0:53
Speaker 2: faces around it. It's exciting, very exciting.
0:56
Speaker 3: Yeah, well you're in good company underneath there, all right,
0:59
Speaker 3: So tell me there's it's just because I've just finished
1:02
Speaker 3: my second book. How long did the did it take
1:04
Speaker 3: you from the conception to actually getting the final edits.
1:11
Speaker 1: Off and off to print? How long do you recket?
1:14
Speaker 2: Oh? Look, it was a bit of a weird one
1:16
Speaker 2: because I've been writing bits of this book for a
1:19
Speaker 2: couple of years. Some of the frameworks and tools that
1:23
Speaker 2: I've developed and put in the book have been around
1:25
Speaker 2: for a bit longer. It was probably a good twelve
1:29
Speaker 2: months or so from okay, I'm going to make this
1:32
Speaker 2: a proper book, and really going through and refining and
1:35
Speaker 2: pulling pieces together to then the part where a friend
1:39
Speaker 2: of mine said, I don't self publish, don't talk to
1:42
Speaker 2: my friends at Wiley, and that sort of started that process,
1:46
Speaker 2: putting a proposal together, getting them across the line, and
1:49
Speaker 2: then the editing and the proof as you probably know,
1:52
Speaker 2: the proofing, the editing, the blood bath that comes back
1:55
Speaker 2: when you realize you can't fell or punch away, as
1:58
Speaker 2: well as this good. Yeah, it was a bit of
2:01
Speaker 2: a journey, a bit of a journey, and good to be
2:03
Speaker 2: at the end of it. Yeah.
2:05
Speaker 3: Now, your book is all about empathy, So just top level,
2:09
Speaker 3: give us a kind of a definition of empathy.
2:11
Speaker 1: And what is that?
2:12
Speaker 3: What are the overlaps and the differences between empathy, sympathy,
2:18
Speaker 3: and kindness.
2:20
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a lot in there so that there are
2:23
Speaker 2: lots of clinical or academic definitions with the book, I
2:28
Speaker 2: really want to make it accessible for people to practice
2:32
Speaker 2: and to put it into the world to do empathy,
2:35
Speaker 2: not just to think about it. So I discuss empathy
2:38
Speaker 2: as understanding why people do what they do, just as
2:42
Speaker 2: simple as that. So what drives people, And sometimes that's emotions.
2:47
Speaker 2: Sometimes that's very deeply an emotion drive. Sometimes it's much
2:53
Speaker 2: more strategic or logical or rational. There's a whole bunch
2:58
Speaker 2: of things that drivers. We're prett complex human beings, so
3:01
Speaker 2: it's really trying to understand what's going on in another
3:05
Speaker 2: person and what's driving them. I think some of the misconceptions,
3:10
Speaker 2: the first one I talk about, which might be surprising
3:13
Speaker 2: to people, is I don't think empathy is walking in
3:17
Speaker 2: someone else's shoes. And the reason why I don't think
3:20
Speaker 2: that's the case is if I was really struggling with something,
3:24
Speaker 2: really having a hard time in a situation, you might
3:27
Speaker 2: find that situation isn't very difficult at all. You might
3:31
Speaker 2: walk on my shoes and go, actually, not a big deal.
3:36
Speaker 2: Your experience in my shoes is not important to me.
3:41
Speaker 2: My experience is important to me. And so if I
3:43
Speaker 2: really want to understand someone, I've got to think it's
3:45
Speaker 2: not about me. It's not about me as a good
3:48
Speaker 2: proxy or any of those sorts of things. It's about
3:50
Speaker 2: understanding somebody else and what's going on in their world.
3:54
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's more, but less walking in their shoes and
3:58
Speaker 3: more in being in their personalized hallucination of reality is
4:04
Speaker 3: what I talk about. Your experience is a personalized hallucination
4:09
Speaker 3: of reality because all of your life experiences, your genetics,
4:14
Speaker 3: go into the mix, and it's all very personalized, isn't
4:16
Speaker 3: it so?
4:17
Speaker 2: Absolutely absolutely? And you know the I was chatting to
4:21
Speaker 2: someone the other day about this. They're saying, oh, look,
4:23
Speaker 2: we're having this conflict in our workplace, et cetera. And
4:28
Speaker 2: this happens in all walks of life. This is the truth,
4:31
Speaker 2: and this is what that person thinks of happening. And
4:34
Speaker 2: I always say, well, they don't worry about the truth.
4:38
Speaker 2: Just think about these plausible narratives. So your plausible narrative
4:43
Speaker 2: is it sound good, wonderful? You like it? Well done? You?
4:46
Speaker 2: Their plausible narrative is something different to yours. Deciding who's
4:51
Speaker 2: right and wrong is a waste of time deciding. How
4:55
Speaker 2: do we start to understand each other's narrative so we
4:57
Speaker 2: can bring these storylines together a much much better way
5:01
Speaker 2: of thinking about it. Because at the end of the day,
5:04
Speaker 2: to answer your other question, what empathy, sympathy, kindness, My
5:09
Speaker 2: objective is to make empathy something that helps us bring
5:12
Speaker 2: these narratives to be able to not be the same,
5:16
Speaker 2: but to blend them together so that we can work together,
5:19
Speaker 2: we can interact with each other, we can we can
5:22
Speaker 2: get along and create a better, more collegiate or harmonious
5:27
Speaker 2: sort of society where we're not we're not picking these
5:31
Speaker 2: us and then battles all the time. And this is
5:36
Speaker 2: where I think empathy can be that tool sympathy. The
5:41
Speaker 2: way I understand sympathy is my feelings about your situation.
5:46
Speaker 2: So it's very much self centered how I feel about
5:49
Speaker 2: what's going on for you, and where that relates to
5:52
Speaker 2: things like compassion kindness. If I feel bad for you
5:57
Speaker 2: and I take action that I think will help you,
6:01
Speaker 2: or I take action to relieve my feelings and feeling
6:04
Speaker 2: bad about it. You know, like there's a poor person
6:08
Speaker 2: who doesn't have, you know, who looks homeless on the
6:10
Speaker 2: side of the road. If I throw them two dollars,
6:12
Speaker 2: I feel less guilty good on me. That is not
6:15
Speaker 2: helping that person necessarily at all, and it's really not
6:18
Speaker 2: about the other person's about me. Yeah, so that's where
6:21
Speaker 2: sort of sympathy can drive. I think myth myth aligned
6:27
Speaker 2: compassion or kindness at times, whereas or it's a bit
6:30
Speaker 2: more like nicenesses and I'm trying to be nice to
6:32
Speaker 2: the person, whereas I would say being kind is hey,
6:35
Speaker 2: what's going on in their world? What's really happening for them?
6:39
Speaker 2: What do they need? And how can I help them
6:43
Speaker 2: with that? And that takes more than just sympathizing. It
6:48
Speaker 2: takes empathizing, and it's a much more challenging thing to
6:53
Speaker 2: do and not something I think we can or should
6:55
Speaker 2: do with everyone all the time. But when we really
6:58
Speaker 2: see something, we want to step in too and understand.
7:01
Speaker 2: Empathy is that tool for us to build that deep
7:03
Speaker 2: understanding so we can take better decisions.
7:06
Speaker 3: And I want I want to come back to all
7:09
Speaker 3: the time, because as you describe it, that takes time
7:12
Speaker 3: and effort, right and to actually do that.
7:15
Speaker 1: So I want to circle back to that in a minute.
7:18
Speaker 3: But this idea of a plausible narrative, I actually really
7:23
Speaker 3: like that, and because it links to what I said
7:27
Speaker 3: about people's view of reality, being a personalized hallucination. And
7:32
Speaker 3: anybody who says that this is absolutely the truth is
7:37
Speaker 3: full of mad dog shit in my you know, any
7:40
Speaker 3: scientists will tell you we you know, we we there's.
7:45
Speaker 1: Very few things in science that are absolute truths.
7:47
Speaker 3: It's just about certainty that that that they're not due
7:52
Speaker 3: to chance and these sorts of things. Right, So when
7:55
Speaker 3: did you come up with this idea of describing it
7:59
Speaker 3: as a plausible narrative? And when you came up with that,
8:04
Speaker 3: did you just kind of sit back and go, I've
8:07
Speaker 3: kneeled it.
8:09
Speaker 2: I didn't sit back and think I've nailed it, because
8:13
Speaker 2: that just might be my own delusion. Right, But it's
8:17
Speaker 2: about it's about sitting with people. And this happened a
8:21
Speaker 2: lot working with in big organizations where someone would say,
8:25
Speaker 2: this person, and I'm sure you've seen this in your
8:27
Speaker 2: personal this person is doing this because and then they
8:30
Speaker 2: run off this huge sentence or a storyline, and I
8:35
Speaker 2: could sit back and go, but what if it's not
8:37
Speaker 2: because of that m and what happens for us? You know,
8:41
Speaker 2: to go back to your point, what are brains like?
8:44
Speaker 2: It's certainty. They don't like uncertainty, And so the narrative
8:48
Speaker 2: the reality that we make up is our brain saying
8:52
Speaker 2: you've got this, you understand everything. Everything's going to be okay,
8:54
Speaker 2: and I'll put it. It's in this box everything everything's
8:57
Speaker 2: going to sweep that. It can be quite soothing in
9:02
Speaker 2: the moment, but really destructive in the long run. And
9:05
Speaker 2: so what I kept finding, even working in big organizations
9:09
Speaker 2: at times was we'd have the most beautiful plans, the
9:12
Speaker 2: best PowerPoint deck and all that sort of stuff. You
9:17
Speaker 2: see it in communities where people go, oh, this is
9:19
Speaker 2: how it's going to work. It all makes perfect sense.
9:23
Speaker 2: But then when you add humans to the mix who've
9:25
Speaker 2: got all of their weird, wonderful craziness, then things can
9:29
Speaker 2: go astray really fast. And I was chatting with a
9:34
Speaker 2: friend about it the other day. Share bicycles, shared students,
9:38
Speaker 2: you know, if you've got them in Melbourne and Sydney,
9:39
Speaker 2: where you can go and jump on those little e
9:41
Speaker 2: bites and stuff, and they make perfect sense, great sensible,
9:45
Speaker 2: logical way of moving around a city. Think about the
9:49
Speaker 2: effort it takes to pick one up and throw it
9:52
Speaker 2: in the river. That's what effort. Yet people do that.
9:56
Speaker 2: You go, well, now one would go to that effort
9:58
Speaker 2: that seems like a lot of wasted energy to go
10:00
Speaker 2: and throw that thing in the river. However, people seem
10:02
Speaker 2: to do it all the time. And so if you
10:05
Speaker 2: don't understand some of these strange and weird narratives that
10:09
Speaker 2: people are building in their heads that justified the behavior,
10:12
Speaker 2: you're never going to be able to stop those things
10:14
Speaker 2: from happening or even feel better ways to work with
10:17
Speaker 2: people going forward. So that sort of as a mathematician
10:21
Speaker 2: at heart, which is a strange thing to admit to, sometimes,
10:25
Speaker 2: I'd love it if the world was like maths.
10:28
Speaker 1: Predictable, certain certainty. And yes, yes, it's just not.
10:33
Speaker 2: And so the narrative idea gives us a bit of flexibility,
10:37
Speaker 2: gives us some room to move, gives us a bit
10:40
Speaker 2: of a way of getting away from that brain's desire
10:42
Speaker 2: to put things in black and white.
10:45
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I think, look, everybody's been guilty of all
10:48
Speaker 3: the lessers have been guilty of going why can't this
10:50
Speaker 3: deckhead see things the way they are?
10:53
Speaker 2: Right?
10:53
Speaker 1: Of course, we've all been enough because.
10:56
Speaker 3: That is our plausible narrative, which the us seems not
11:00
Speaker 3: plausible but certain and the truth. And so I really
11:04
Speaker 3: do like this idea of saying applausible narrative because what
11:08
Speaker 3: it does is as well as Mick you think about
11:12
Speaker 3: how they might be seeing the situation, is that it's
11:16
Speaker 3: always a little bit of seed of dit into your
11:20
Speaker 3: own interpretation of this that you have at absolutely one
11:23
Speaker 3: hundred percent yield.
11:24
Speaker 2: And well, of course I'll give you a really simple
11:29
Speaker 2: example of this. Road rage goes down when people go
11:35
Speaker 2: on holidays. So when people are at home, we're busy,
11:39
Speaker 2: we're trying to get to drop the kids off at school,
11:41
Speaker 2: pick up something, and go to an appointment, whatever the
11:43
Speaker 2: case might be. Road rage where the first person I'm
11:47
Speaker 2: beating the horn? Are you alpohol, get out of the road.
11:49
Speaker 2: Right When we go on holidays, we're driving along the
11:53
Speaker 2: a moalthy coast. We're looking out, how beautiful is this?
11:57
Speaker 2: We're the ones puttering along and someone's behind us beeping.
12:00
Speaker 2: Settle down? What's wrong with you? Relas it look how
12:03
Speaker 2: beautiful it is? So we sort of forget that we're
12:08
Speaker 2: very subjective in the way we see the world, and
12:11
Speaker 2: we change at different times in different moments with whole
12:14
Speaker 2: different stimulus going on. So I like this idea of
12:17
Speaker 2: narrative because it just says Okay, our brain's just creating
12:21
Speaker 2: this storyline. But I have some power to adapt the storyline.
12:26
Speaker 2: And there isn't an absolute truth. It's just lots of
12:28
Speaker 2: different ways that it could happen, and then I've got flexibility.
12:33
Speaker 2: I think it's far more empowering to think, well, I
12:35
Speaker 2: can shift between these different narratives than to say no, oh,
12:39
Speaker 2: this is the truth and everyone else is wrong and therefore,
12:42
Speaker 2: you know, let's burn them at the stake or whatever.
12:45
Speaker 2: Ludicrous In my.
12:48
Speaker 3: I see that concept of world beautical stamen people who
12:52
Speaker 3: was on holiday. It just reminded me as you were
12:54
Speaker 3: talking about that about the Good Samaritan study.
12:57
Speaker 1: I don't know if you've heard of this one, and I'll.
12:59
Speaker 3: Probably probably get some details slightly wrong, so you can
13:02
Speaker 3: put me up, and if you don't, listeners will put
13:04
Speaker 3: me up. But basically my memory of this is there
13:08
Speaker 3: are a bunch of people who were brought in It
13:10
Speaker 3: was in a university study, and they were read a paragraph.
13:14
Speaker 3: Some of them were primed with the parable of the
13:17
Speaker 3: Good Samaritan, and then others were just read a control
13:20
Speaker 3: thing and then they were told they had to get
13:22
Speaker 3: across to do a talk on the other side. Of
13:25
Speaker 3: the quad or something in the university, and there was
13:29
Speaker 3: an old person who dropped a heap of books, and
13:32
Speaker 3: they were looking to see who would stop and who
13:35
Speaker 3: didn't stop, right, But they actually manipulated the condition where
13:39
Speaker 3: some of the people had plenty of time and some
13:42
Speaker 3: of them were.
13:42
Speaker 1: Quite tight for time.
13:44
Speaker 3: And it wasn't actually whether or not they read the
13:47
Speaker 3: Good Samaritan that drove whether or not they stopped to help.
13:51
Speaker 1: It was when they had time. So even when people
13:55
Speaker 1: had read the.
13:55
Speaker 3: Good Samaritan, but they thought there wasn't a lot of
13:58
Speaker 3: flex in theirs, they just walked right past right as
14:00
Speaker 3: sort of kind of goes to your point about how
14:03
Speaker 3: are our own personal situation and actually changes how we
14:08
Speaker 3: interact with reality one hundred percent.
14:11
Speaker 2: And I think they were actually theological students.
14:15
Speaker 1: They have to get right, actually, yeah.
14:17
Speaker 2: So they should have of stop should have also, well,
14:23
Speaker 2: we all should stop potentially. But your points are really
14:26
Speaker 2: good one, which is your brain prioritizers looking after you.
14:31
Speaker 2: As much as we'd like to think it doesn't, it's not.
14:34
Speaker 2: It's designed to look after you. It's perfectly designed and
14:38
Speaker 2: has been created this way over you know, lots of
14:42
Speaker 2: time of evolution to work in social groups. Yes, absolutely,
14:45
Speaker 2: to care about others because of that social nature. Yet,
14:49
Speaker 2: but its underlying function is to keep you safe. And
14:54
Speaker 2: if that means I'm really busy and there's there's objects
15:00
Speaker 2: in my way, there's problems my way, how do I
15:03
Speaker 2: get past them as fast as possible to meet what
15:05
Speaker 2: I'm trying to do. That's exactly what we should expect
15:08
Speaker 2: it to do. And so this is where empathy takes work.
15:12
Speaker 2: It takes effort. I have to actually put in some
15:17
Speaker 2: some stoppages and blockages from the natural path I would
15:21
Speaker 2: take of look after number one to think, Okay, I'm
15:25
Speaker 2: I'm going to do something different. Now I'm going to
15:27
Speaker 2: interrupt that natural flow and try something else, which is hard,
15:31
Speaker 2: and we should acknowledge that it's hard, because if we
15:34
Speaker 2: don't acknowledge it's hard, then what we tend to do
15:37
Speaker 2: is go, well, you went those students who didn't stop,
15:40
Speaker 2: They must be terrible people. They're bad and obviously they
15:44
Speaker 2: don't believe in their religion or whatever. Right, But that's
15:47
Speaker 2: not a useful way of looking at these people. They're
15:50
Speaker 2: just humans and we're all fallible.
15:52
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, Now that does bring in the question
15:55
Speaker 3: that I was going to ask about the time and effort. So,
15:58
Speaker 3: because this does take time, and it does take effort
16:01
Speaker 3: to actually slow down, challenge your own assumptions and actually go. So,
16:06
Speaker 3: how might Daniel in this situation, you know what might
16:11
Speaker 3: he be thinking? And we're in fast piaced business like
16:18
Speaker 3: when people are going, I don't have time for this
16:21
Speaker 3: empathy stuff. That's all very nice, but there's deadlines here.
16:26
Speaker 3: Whether that's an individual in a team or a leader.
16:29
Speaker 3: What would you say to those people who are going, yeah, Daniel,
16:33
Speaker 3: I get all of this, and it's great when I.
16:36
Speaker 1: Have time, but I've got a bloody deadline to meet.
16:39
Speaker 2: Yeah. Agree, So let me think of it this way.
16:45
Speaker 2: There's the old phrase measure towards cut one.
16:48
Speaker 1: Yes, love it, love it? Yeah.
16:50
Speaker 2: Why does that exist? Well, because we know that when
16:54
Speaker 2: we rush, when we don't, when we're not careful in
16:57
Speaker 2: doing certain activities, there's a good chance we can make
17:00
Speaker 2: mistakes and errors. In most big organizations, now, if someone said, hey,
17:08
Speaker 2: we've got to make this decision, we could either do
17:11
Speaker 2: some measurement and study, get some data behind it, or
17:14
Speaker 2: we can just guess. I would suggest to you that
17:20
Speaker 2: the vast majority of organizations today, people would say, maybe
17:24
Speaker 2: there's gravi at least some data. Let's not just get right,
17:26
Speaker 2: let's get some data and let's get some numbers in
17:29
Speaker 2: what do the reports say? And you know, the idea
17:31
Speaker 2: of data driven decision making? People go, oh, absolutely, we
17:35
Speaker 2: should be getting lots of data, and I go one
17:37
Speaker 2: hundred percent agree. Mathematician couldn't agree with you more. However,
17:42
Speaker 2: some of the things that influence humans the most aren't
17:46
Speaker 2: things you can measure and put in a spreadsheet very easily.
17:50
Speaker 2: So things like emotions and values and relationships and culture.
17:56
Speaker 2: You know, if you said relationship with my I could say,
18:01
Speaker 2: my relationship with my wife is seventy three. What would
18:04
Speaker 2: you do with that number? Okay, what does it mean?
18:07
Speaker 2: How interesting or important is that number? In making it?
18:10
Speaker 2: It's pretty much useful. But if you understood the relationship
18:14
Speaker 2: I had with my wife, and you were trying to
18:17
Speaker 2: sell me something or lead me or help me make
18:21
Speaker 2: a decision in my financial world, for example, that would
18:25
Speaker 2: be pretty important data. Would you agree the seventy three
18:29
Speaker 2: I don't know what to do with that. But if
18:31
Speaker 2: you spoke to me and understood the emotions and the
18:34
Speaker 2: relationship and all those other hard to measure but really
18:38
Speaker 2: important pieces, you'd make a better decision. And so what
18:41
Speaker 2: I would say to people is, if you're going to
18:44
Speaker 2: be working with another human and you need to make
18:47
Speaker 2: decisions or you need to take actions around this person,
18:52
Speaker 2: are you telling me that it's not worth understanding that data,
18:56
Speaker 2: which is in most cases when you're dealing with another person,
19:00
Speaker 2: that's all the gold, right, that's where all the really
19:02
Speaker 2: important stuff is. So, yes, it's hard, Yes, it's challenging.
19:06
Speaker 2: Can you make decisions about it? Of course you can
19:08
Speaker 2: sometimes you have to. My challenge back would be if
19:13
Speaker 2: you can better understand if you're talking on the phone
19:15
Speaker 2: of someone who's had an insurance claient, understanding what the
19:20
Speaker 2: context is of their life at the moment, it's going
19:23
Speaker 2: to be much much more important for you to make
19:24
Speaker 2: a decision. Then what's the policy? How do I put
19:27
Speaker 2: you through this sassage factory and to pitch you at
19:30
Speaker 2: the other end? Right? Yeah?
19:32
Speaker 1: Absolutely.
19:33
Speaker 3: Now, when I'm running some workshops with leaders, particularly I
19:38
Speaker 3: do a high performance teams workshop, and in part of
19:41
Speaker 3: that I get everybody sitting around in a circle with
19:46
Speaker 3: no tables in the way, and then I just thought
19:49
Speaker 3: out there right, we're going to talk about the most
19:51
Speaker 3: challenging thing we've ever had to deal with emotionally, right,
19:55
Speaker 3: And I generally lead off on that, and it's it's
19:59
Speaker 3: a tough session for a lot of people. And you
20:03
Speaker 3: can see straight away some people tensing up and going
20:06
Speaker 3: oh shit, And I actually say to them, now your
20:09
Speaker 3: bringing is now whizzing around, going fucking else Should I
20:13
Speaker 3: talk about this or will I just talk about the
20:16
Speaker 3: lesser one? And I go hard, right, And then the
20:19
Speaker 3: longer people with the more nervous they get. But and
20:22
Speaker 3: it often becomes very emotional. But afterwards when we debrief,
20:27
Speaker 3: people go, oh my god, and now really understand why
20:32
Speaker 3: you do what you do. And I'll also get the
20:34
Speaker 3: people to say Hyatt's had an impact on them and
20:37
Speaker 3: their view of reality. And that's a very powerful session
20:42
Speaker 3: for getting people to really it's not so much about
20:47
Speaker 3: understanding the individuals, but just understanding how everybody has got
20:52
Speaker 3: shit going on in their lives that impact why and
20:57
Speaker 3: how they do things sometimes profoundly. Now, that is a
21:01
Speaker 3: powerful session, but it takes a fur bit of time.
21:05
Speaker 1: So what would you say then.
21:07
Speaker 3: To people who who live in are operating in teams,
21:11
Speaker 3: whether they're a leader or not about how they can
21:17
Speaker 3: Is there any questions or is there a method that
21:20
Speaker 3: they can use to help them to understand someone else's
21:27
Speaker 3: view of the world without having to sit around and
21:29
Speaker 3: get the tissues out.
21:33
Speaker 2: It's a great and it sounds like a fascinating workshop,
21:36
Speaker 2: and I'd love to be applying the wall in some
21:38
Speaker 2: of those. I'm sure it's some really interesting things come out.
21:44
Speaker 2: Here's the challenge I have back with the question, though,
21:47
Speaker 2: if you're looking for a trick to build trust quickly,
21:52
Speaker 2: it's not going to work. Yeah, you might have heard
21:57
Speaker 2: of this one before. Paul talked about it before that.
21:59
Speaker 2: The model I always think about inside people's brains as
22:02
Speaker 2: an elephant with a man riding on his back. Have
22:04
Speaker 2: you heard this one? So the writer is that conscious, smart, intelligent,
22:08
Speaker 2: you know, thoughtful, pragmatic brain, the strategic part of our brain,
22:13
Speaker 2: and the elephant is our emotional core. It's that intuitive
22:16
Speaker 2: and instinctive piece and the writer, the writer thinks he
22:21
Speaker 2: is in full control until the elephant has strong emotions
22:24
Speaker 2: besides its game off. It's all onto the elephant man.
22:29
Speaker 2: And what you're talking about here is getting people to
22:32
Speaker 2: really expose some of that emotional core. The reason why
22:37
Speaker 2: it's so powerful because it builds trust. Elephants are the
22:41
Speaker 2: things that determine if I trust someone or not. Not logic,
22:44
Speaker 2: not rationality correct. And you know, if I said to you,
22:47
Speaker 2: tell me someone you really trust, tell me the exact
22:52
Speaker 2: things they did to build that trust. And now what
22:55
Speaker 2: I'm going to do is I'm going to do those
22:57
Speaker 2: same things. So then you have to trust me the same.
22:59
Speaker 2: Right you would say no, because's the way you ask
23:02
Speaker 2: the question. I definitely don't trust you. This sounds tough, right,
23:07
Speaker 2: because it's emotionally. It's decided by the ell you feel trust,
23:11
Speaker 2: you don't think trust. And so if you want to
23:15
Speaker 2: build that relationship of trust, then you do have to
23:18
Speaker 2: invest the time to actually genuinely take care and concern
23:22
Speaker 2: for that person. You have to genuinely demonstrate you want
23:25
Speaker 2: to know. Some of the easiest ways to do it
23:28
Speaker 2: is actually ask someone a question and then just listen,
23:32
Speaker 2: that's really interesting, tell me more about that. How did
23:34
Speaker 2: that feel? And just shut up and listen. Don't try
23:37
Speaker 2: and bring your experience in. Don't try and oh well,
23:39
Speaker 2: yeah that happened to me once too.
23:41
Speaker 3: Oh hi, many fucking people do that right as soon
23:45
Speaker 3: as people start talking and like they take over the
23:48
Speaker 3: conversation about about them, And it's difficult not to do it,
23:54
Speaker 3: isn't it, because it just triggers something in your brian
23:57
Speaker 3: and you want to you want to kind of shore
23:59
Speaker 3: and show that you're connected. But that can that can backfire?
24:04
Speaker 1: Really count it?
24:05
Speaker 2: Oh well, of course again again it's natural your brain goes, oh,
24:09
Speaker 2: what about me? What about me? What about relate this
24:13
Speaker 2: to my experience? And it does take conscious effort. I
24:17
Speaker 2: remember working with a brilliant CEO, a gentleman named Peter
24:21
Speaker 2: Harmer who ran I AG at the time, and we're
24:25
Speaker 2: in a meeting and he got really upset, worked up
24:27
Speaker 2: about something and he put his hands in the dest
24:30
Speaker 2: and went calm down, Peter. And you know, he was
24:35
Speaker 2: obviously very emotionally engaged in this conversation and the development
24:39
Speaker 2: was ready to jump on in, but he knew that
24:42
Speaker 2: to make a good decision in the team he had
24:45
Speaker 2: to try and let others have space. And the CEO,
24:50
Speaker 2: you know, comes in and says, I think we should
24:52
Speaker 2: do this. Everyone else goes, okay, that's just for a
24:57
Speaker 2: better and you don't necessarily get a great outcome. So
25:00
Speaker 2: it's important to be able to park our elephants as
25:03
Speaker 2: much as we might feel sad or gutted or upset,
25:07
Speaker 2: whatever it might be. And you see this in people
25:10
Speaker 2: like Louis Throu You see this in really great interviewers
25:15
Speaker 2: and people have Andrew Danson does this very well. They
25:19
Speaker 2: sit with things without putting themselves into it, without letting
25:23
Speaker 2: their emotions overwhelm it. And it's a hard thing to do,
25:26
Speaker 2: but really important to build that trust.
25:28
Speaker 3: Louis Throu I think it's exceptional at it really really good. Yeah,
25:34
Speaker 3: you just need to watch Louis Throu about how to
25:37
Speaker 3: how to really open help somebody to open up. And
25:40
Speaker 3: it reminds me actually of motivational interviewing. You're familiar with
25:44
Speaker 3: motivational interviewing, which I started years ago, and it was
25:47
Speaker 3: a bit of a game changer for me actually in
25:50
Speaker 3: dealing with clients and the Ore's approach that they have
25:55
Speaker 3: of asking open ended questions right so that you get
25:59
Speaker 3: somebody to talk, then giving people affirmations, you know, telling
26:03
Speaker 3: them something that you'd like or admire or whatever, reflective
26:08
Speaker 3: listening to your point earlier to actually listening in reflect
26:12
Speaker 3: back the emotions I'm hearing that you're frustrated or whatever
26:16
Speaker 3: it may be, right, and then in the yours approach
26:19
Speaker 3: to then there's summarizing, but that's really about change talk.
26:23
Speaker 3: You're summarizing change. That's that's when you're in a behavior
26:26
Speaker 3: change thing. But it's that the open end of questions.
26:29
Speaker 3: The aff for me is the reflective listening, because when
26:33
Speaker 3: people feel that they've been heard and understood, that is
26:39
Speaker 3: when you start to create that connection and that deeper
26:41
Speaker 3: level of trust, isn't it absolutely?
26:45
Speaker 2: You know? What I see in people like Louis Thrue
26:48
Speaker 2: is he can sit in a place where he's talking
26:51
Speaker 2: to someone who he vehemently disagrees with, but he's still
26:56
Speaker 2: open to hearing, you know, you know, rushing the challenge
27:01
Speaker 2: and shoot down their ideas and thoughts, and because of
27:05
Speaker 2: that you create this space for them to share more
27:07
Speaker 2: and share more. And again people say to me, oh,
27:11
Speaker 2: but it's wrong, they shouldn't say that. They're saying something
27:14
Speaker 2: that's terrible, And my response is always, but do you
27:18
Speaker 2: understand why they're saying it? And if you don't understand
27:22
Speaker 2: why they're saying it, shutting them off too fast and
27:25
Speaker 2: telling someone that I think what you're saying is terrible.
27:28
Speaker 2: Often what people do is they don't stop thinking a
27:30
Speaker 2: bad ideas, they just stop saying them. And herefore you
27:34
Speaker 2: don't get access to the information that drives it. And
27:38
Speaker 2: we've got to be able to build those bridges sometimes.
27:40
Speaker 3: How important is curiosity for building empathy.
27:48
Speaker 2: Vital? So when I started researching and studying this idea
27:53
Speaker 2: of empathy is a way of building better decisions and
27:58
Speaker 2: working more effectively in my career, I wanted a process
28:02
Speaker 2: and I couldn't find a process for building empathy. So
28:06
Speaker 2: I developed one. And the first step in the process
28:10
Speaker 2: is what I call being consciously curious. And what I
28:14
Speaker 2: mean by being consciously curious is acknowledging I have believed,
28:19
Speaker 2: I have biases, I have heuristics, I have assumptions. I've
28:24
Speaker 2: got a mind. I've got a head full of stuff
28:26
Speaker 2: that's ready to make a judgment within a millisecond of
28:29
Speaker 2: anything I see. It's all there, ready to go. Happy days.
28:33
Speaker 2: My brain thinks it's all correct and I'm awesome. But
28:37
Speaker 2: what I need to do to be consciously curious is go, Okay,
28:40
Speaker 2: I'm here to meet Paul. I'm just going to put
28:42
Speaker 2: all that stuff to the side. I'm fronting up with
28:45
Speaker 2: a blank sheet of paper, and I'm really interested. And
28:49
Speaker 2: so this conscious curiosity is easy to say, hard to do.
28:52
Speaker 2: But that's the fundamental part of empathy, is it's not
28:58
Speaker 2: about the reason why it is so important. But if
29:01
Speaker 2: I don't, if I'm not consciously curious, what I'll do
29:05
Speaker 2: is I'll ask questions. I'll explore with a view to
29:10
Speaker 2: validating what I already think is true exactly.
29:14
Speaker 1: And I think that's hugely important. I really like that
29:18
Speaker 1: as a first step, actually.
29:20
Speaker 3: Because all people need to do is just pause this
29:23
Speaker 3: podcast and google cognitive biases, list of cognitive biases, and
29:29
Speaker 3: you will see a huge list of cognitive biases. And
29:33
Speaker 3: if you read through it, you realize that most of
29:36
Speaker 3: us do most of these things quite a lot of
29:39
Speaker 3: the time, right And we have, as you said, all
29:42
Speaker 3: these heuristics, all these shortcuts that we have.
29:45
Speaker 1: To do to be able to exist in the world.
29:48
Speaker 3: But it makes our thinking become a little bit more
29:53
Speaker 3: narrow And if you hang out with the same people,
29:56
Speaker 3: and if you're going to test your assumptions on people
29:59
Speaker 3: who generally I agree with you, you're just bunching off
30:02
Speaker 3: the echo chamber, aren't.
30:03
Speaker 2: You absolutely, and where we're becoming even better experts are
30:08
Speaker 2: doing that than we've ever been before. You know, I
30:13
Speaker 2: you don't have to look far past or far into
30:15
Speaker 2: something like Facebook to find groups of people who are
30:18
Speaker 2: just just consciously just constantly seeking more and more data
30:24
Speaker 2: that validates what they believe and completely ignoring anything to
30:28
Speaker 2: the contrary. And we've done it for a long time.
30:31
Speaker 2: Humans are experts are doing this, have done it for millennia.
30:34
Speaker 2: But in a world you know, I've said this at
30:38
Speaker 2: a conference the other day, Paul, the world has never
30:42
Speaker 2: been more complex than it is today. Right, Never ever
30:46
Speaker 2: in human history has it been as complex it is
30:48
Speaker 2: as it is today. And it is the simplest it
30:52
Speaker 2: will ever be again. Today today is the simplest. In
30:57
Speaker 2: the future. Things are only scaling up ter the complexity,
31:01
Speaker 2: and the more we train ourselves to be sure to
31:05
Speaker 2: be closed to think. You know, I don't want to
31:08
Speaker 2: make it political, but going back to the good old
31:11
Speaker 2: days making it great again, it's all all it's all
31:14
Speaker 2: complete rubbish. We have to be open and curious and
31:17
Speaker 2: working together to find new ways of connecting this in
31:20
Speaker 2: this future. Otherwise we'll just keep diverging, keep creating more
31:25
Speaker 2: groups of us and them, and I think that's the
31:28
Speaker 2: path where humanity starts to fall apart and do terrible
31:31
Speaker 2: things to each other.
31:32
Speaker 3: Look, I think you're right, and I think with you know,
31:36
Speaker 3: you see it, and I think a lot of it
31:38
Speaker 3: has started in the United States, of that polarization of
31:43
Speaker 3: the US and them and of the lack of de
31:46
Speaker 3: be it that there's no spreading around the world.
31:49
Speaker 1: And as you will, no social media has got a
31:51
Speaker 1: lot to do with it.
31:52
Speaker 3: With Eccule Chambers, I think people are becoming more and
31:55
Speaker 3: more unconsciously rigid rather than consciously curing.
32:00
Speaker 1: And it's a bad thing. So I love your first
32:04
Speaker 1: thing in the process. Tell us about the other steps
32:06
Speaker 1: in the process. Let's explore those a little bit.
32:09
Speaker 2: Yeah, so there's four steps that we've got to go through.
32:12
Speaker 2: Being consciously curious is important, then is to openly explore
32:15
Speaker 2: and openly explore. The second step is about asking questions,
32:19
Speaker 2: speaking and sitting in people's experience, trying to gather as
32:22
Speaker 2: much data as we can. And what I mean openly explore,
32:26
Speaker 2: it's really not rushing to find the answers I want.
32:30
Speaker 2: And you know, if we take the US as a
32:33
Speaker 2: good example, there people are very black and white on
32:36
Speaker 2: things like gun laws. Oh well, people are pro guns
32:41
Speaker 2: because they like guns, because they're gun toting hillbilities and
32:44
Speaker 2: want to shoot everything. Sure, that's a good first thought assumption,
32:49
Speaker 2: very fast. But what if it's that they're actually deeply
32:52
Speaker 2: afraid of not being able to protect their family. Because
32:56
Speaker 2: I love for my family is something that I can
32:58
Speaker 2: relate to really strongly, and if I had a dpp
33:01
Speaker 2: if and not being out of well, I could empathize
33:03
Speaker 2: with that pretty quickly. How do I explore that? How
33:06
Speaker 2: do I ask questions to understand that and understand the
33:09
Speaker 2: real context behind that? What else will cause people to
33:12
Speaker 2: think that way? This openly explorer about sitting in that
33:16
Speaker 2: unknown world and just gathering that data.
33:21
Speaker 3: In this, sorry Daniel to jump in, but in this
33:23
Speaker 3: do you have to cultivate a sense of openness?
33:28
Speaker 1: And the reason I'm asking that question.
33:32
Speaker 3: I mean people will at work and a lot of
33:35
Speaker 3: them will have done like a Myersprings test or a.
33:40
Speaker 1: I can't remember what the other.
33:42
Speaker 3: The disk test and these sorts of personality ones. But
33:45
Speaker 3: most serious psychologists will tell you that they're kind of
33:49
Speaker 3: pop psychology, and the most validated one is the Big
33:53
Speaker 3: five personality traits, one of which is openness to experience.
33:58
Speaker 3: I'm just wondering, I don't know if you've seen any
34:00
Speaker 3: research whether that is linked to empathy, whether people who
34:03
Speaker 3: are higher in openness are actually higher in empathy.
34:09
Speaker 1: So that's that's one question.
34:10
Speaker 3: Then the second one is that do we have to
34:13
Speaker 3: with this openly explore? Do you have to prime yourself
34:17
Speaker 3: to be open to having new knowledge and having your
34:20
Speaker 3: assumptions challenged.
34:22
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think they fit together. So I haven't seen
34:25
Speaker 2: research on that particular, because I know the Big Five
34:30
Speaker 2: there are. What I always say with those of the
34:33
Speaker 2: personality profiles is there are different underlying habits that we have,
34:40
Speaker 2: and neurologically, what's going on here is our brain is
34:43
Speaker 2: connecting these different neural pathways. There's trillions dollars, incredibly complex,
34:47
Speaker 2: but the more we use them, the more they become
34:49
Speaker 2: habitual and the go to. And so what we know
34:54
Speaker 2: is that after a certain period of our lifetime, we
34:57
Speaker 2: start to form pretty strong habits and we keep enforcing
35:00
Speaker 2: in those pathways. This is important because it's for some
35:05
Speaker 2: people they think, well, that's just how I am and
35:07
Speaker 2: I can't change. Bullshit.
35:09
Speaker 1: No, that's right.
35:10
Speaker 3: That's how you've become because of your repeated behaviors. Donald
35:14
Speaker 3: had the Scottish neuroscientists right, nerve sales that fire together,
35:17
Speaker 3: wire together.
35:18
Speaker 2: Exactly right. So neuroplasticity means you can always change your
35:22
Speaker 2: entire life. There's no sort of stop to that. But
35:26
Speaker 2: you change through deliberate practice, not through yes. And so yes,
35:30
Speaker 2: you have to prime yourself, particularly if you're not someone
35:33
Speaker 2: who is always that curious. You have to prime yourself
35:37
Speaker 2: to go, Okay, this is a time when I really
35:40
Speaker 2: want to understand when the hell's going on him. This
35:43
Speaker 2: is a time where I need to be able to
35:45
Speaker 2: park my assumption and just sit with the uncertainty and
35:49
Speaker 2: the discomfort that will exist in this next conversation. I'm
35:54
Speaker 2: going to actively stop going oh but what about or no,
35:58
Speaker 2: that's not right, or yeah. It takes practice, and you've
36:03
Speaker 2: got to catch yourself sometimes knowing that you thought you
36:07
Speaker 2: weren't going to do it, and then you just did
36:08
Speaker 2: it anyway because you're human, and I'm going to practice
36:11
Speaker 2: again and practice again. So yes, I'm sure there are
36:14
Speaker 2: people who are much better at this. Also the word
36:17
Speaker 2: naturally and what that means, But that who have become
36:20
Speaker 2: better at this over time, and there are people who
36:22
Speaker 2: are a long way down the scale and need to
36:24
Speaker 2: work harder. Yes, that's all true. But the deliberate practice
36:28
Speaker 2: will make you better no matter where you are on
36:30
Speaker 2: that scale.
36:31
Speaker 3: And that's the point of the framework, right, is that
36:33
Speaker 3: deliberately practice the framework. So we've got firstly being consciously
36:38
Speaker 3: curious and then openly explore by I assume there's there's
36:43
Speaker 3: an element of asking skillful questions in there and then
36:47
Speaker 3: asking people to tell you more and exploring emotions.
36:50
Speaker 1: What's the what's the third one?
36:54
Speaker 2: Yeah? Before the other thing is you can brainstorm and
37:00
Speaker 2: age outside of yourself about another person when you don't
37:04
Speaker 2: have access to talk to them. So, you know, if
37:07
Speaker 2: I was to think why might someone become a suicide bomber?
37:11
Speaker 2: I don't agree that. I think the terrible thing to do. Don't.
37:14
Speaker 2: Don't think it's a great action to take. However, if
37:18
Speaker 2: I just assumed, oh, that's because they're evil, Okay, tick
37:21
Speaker 2: a box, that's a good assumption for me to take.
37:24
Speaker 2: It's a short, quick assumption. Is it particularly useful? What
37:28
Speaker 2: do I do? Now? Do I go to around people
37:29
Speaker 2: and go, hey, make sure you're not evil, don't be evil?
37:32
Speaker 2: Is that going to really have an impact? No, So
37:34
Speaker 2: I can still without knowing them talking to them, I
37:37
Speaker 2: can probably imagine that it's a pretty effective way of
37:40
Speaker 2: causing damage when you don't have many resources. It could
37:44
Speaker 2: be driven by religion, it could be driven by a parent,
37:46
Speaker 2: it could be driven by a love. That can be
37:48
Speaker 2: driven by politics and a sense of nationalism.
37:51
Speaker 3: It can be it's a huge and a big one
37:54
Speaker 3: is a lack of hope in your current situation.
37:57
Speaker 2: Absolutely lack of hope. It could be want my children,
38:01
Speaker 2: my generations of family to have a better life. And
38:05
Speaker 2: this is the only course of action I feel empowered
38:07
Speaker 2: I can take. So when I start the brainstorm there again,
38:12
Speaker 2: I don't think any of these are good, valid reasons
38:16
Speaker 2: to do that, But that's not really the point. The
38:19
Speaker 2: point is, if I'm going to try and influence and
38:21
Speaker 2: change the decision someone's going to make, I've got to
38:24
Speaker 2: have this visibility of these things, right at least understand
38:27
Speaker 2: that these things could exist, because it gives me more
38:29
Speaker 2: starting points to have conversations and explore further. So it
38:33
Speaker 2: is asking questions, but it's not the only way. If
38:37
Speaker 2: you've worked at a big company. Sometimes people up there
38:40
Speaker 2: make a decision and you sit there and go, what
38:42
Speaker 2: are these idiots doing there to make our life hard?
38:48
Speaker 2: And quickly I'll go to a team, Are they're idiots,
38:50
Speaker 2: they don't like us? Or where on the out I
38:53
Speaker 2: make an assumption. I start communicating that assumption. It spreads
38:56
Speaker 2: like wildfire. If instead I sat with my team, I said, hey,
38:59
Speaker 2: they thought this, and one of my team goes, good,
39:01
Speaker 2: their dicads, Okay, they might be What else could be
39:04
Speaker 2: driving them?
39:05
Speaker 1: Mhm?
39:06
Speaker 2: You know that it's acius us so much more opportunity.
39:09
Speaker 2: And what it then does is it allows us to
39:10
Speaker 2: do step three, which is challenge my models. What are
39:14
Speaker 2: those assumptions by a p heuristic? You know all those
39:18
Speaker 2: things I've already got. What's the story? The plausible narrative? Again?
39:21
Speaker 2: What's that? What it was that before? Now I'm going
39:25
Speaker 2: to make a conscious decision to potentially alter it. Right
39:29
Speaker 2: before I thought this, they are all just evil. Now
39:32
Speaker 2: I go, well, actually, some people are going to be
39:35
Speaker 2: doing it for different reasons. And once I can change
39:39
Speaker 2: my mind and alter my mental models, that I can
39:42
Speaker 2: use all the powers back to me. Isn't it now?
39:47
Speaker 1: For some people, the force is very strong in them.
39:52
Speaker 3: I what I think by that is the sense that
39:55
Speaker 3: that that I am right and my model is right.
39:59
Speaker 3: What sort of is there any guidance techniques that you
40:04
Speaker 3: can give to people to being open to challenging their model,
40:09
Speaker 3: or to deliberately challenge their model, because I think it's
40:13
Speaker 3: a hugely important thing. I mean, I will often just
40:18
Speaker 3: to give me a kind of case in point that
40:21
Speaker 3: leverages off what you'd said earlier on, I tend to
40:25
Speaker 3: read news from opposite sides of the political spectrum right
40:30
Speaker 3: and it's a really interesting experiment going on to CNN
40:36
Speaker 3: and then jumping across the Fox News and it's like
40:38
Speaker 3: two different words. But even here in Australia, you read
40:40
Speaker 3: the Guardian and then you read the Australian Right and
40:44
Speaker 3: very very different takes.
40:46
Speaker 1: And it gets you then.
40:47
Speaker 3: To see that yes, there are different ways of interpreting things,
40:52
Speaker 3: of viewing the world of all of this sort of stuff.
40:54
Speaker 3: So what sort of things or what advice would you
40:57
Speaker 3: give to people to be more deliberate about that, or
41:02
Speaker 3: to to help them become more effective and challenging their model.
41:05
Speaker 1: Because I think that this is this is really huge.
41:09
Speaker 2: It's it's hard because there isn't an easy way. I
41:14
Speaker 2: think doing things like you're doing are really really useful,
41:18
Speaker 2: exposing yourself the stuff you don't agree with, being able
41:21
Speaker 2: to sit there and go, hey, I can hold this,
41:23
Speaker 2: I can look at this idea, I can hold it
41:25
Speaker 2: in my mind. I can interrogate it and think about
41:27
Speaker 2: it without believing it, without accepting that it's true. And
41:33
Speaker 2: one of the things often say, particularly for people making
41:35
Speaker 2: decisions leaders in teams, that's not even in a relationships.
41:40
Speaker 2: Do you want to be right or do you want
41:41
Speaker 2: to get the right outcome? Because sometimes you don't get both.
41:46
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, and.
41:48
Speaker 2: It's obvious, right, we want the better app.
41:52
Speaker 1: You can get both, but you'll pess people off.
41:55
Speaker 2: Potentially potentially well sometimes you can. Yeah, but I know
41:59
Speaker 2: lots of people who will burn things to the ground
42:03
Speaker 2: to stand on the smoldering actions and say, well, see
42:06
Speaker 2: I was right. Take that ball, I was right. A
42:11
Speaker 2: cool where we now right? Instead of saying, hey, how
42:16
Speaker 2: do we move forward here? And we saw this. This
42:19
Speaker 2: is a study done quite a long time ago, and
42:23
Speaker 2: the modern context it's probably made it worse, where they
42:26
Speaker 2: would show a very similar news article to people who
42:29
Speaker 2: are pro Palestinian and pro Israeli, and both of them
42:33
Speaker 2: would record report back how biased the same article was
42:38
Speaker 2: in opposite directions directions we are when we see the world,
42:43
Speaker 2: we don't see it in any sort of objectivity. We
42:46
Speaker 2: see it through huge amounts of bias. And one of
42:49
Speaker 2: the tips I always give people is to go, but
42:52
Speaker 2: what if you're wrong? So in any situation, you know,
42:56
Speaker 2: let's make a decision in a business, so we need
42:58
Speaker 2: to you know, customer buy it. It must have been
43:02
Speaker 2: because it was too expensive. Okay, cool, write that down.
43:05
Speaker 2: What if we're wrong? Because if we're wrong, we might
43:09
Speaker 2: well reduce the price and still not sell anything. Right,
43:12
Speaker 2: we might do a whole bunch of marketing on this
43:14
Speaker 2: new price and get no results. It would be bad,
43:17
Speaker 2: wouldn't it. Okay, cool, Before we just dive headfirst into
43:21
Speaker 2: this shallow pool here, let's step back and go what
43:24
Speaker 2: if we're wrong? What are the other things? And interestingly enough,
43:28
Speaker 2: I think there's elements from practices like risk management which
43:32
Speaker 2: are really useful here.
43:33
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I was just about to say, stuff, get
43:36
Speaker 3: go ahead with this because this is.
43:40
Speaker 2: Just good practice. To go what else could be true?
43:43
Speaker 2: How can we change this? What if we're wrong. And
43:46
Speaker 2: I really challenge anyone to tell me that they know
43:52
Speaker 2: all the answers, they've got it all right. You know,
43:55
Speaker 2: the people when they say oh, I know everything and
43:57
Speaker 2: I've got everything right immediately cause others to go bullshit. Yeah,
44:02
Speaker 2: until you've become president, you know. Yeah.
44:06
Speaker 3: And I think I think the best teams will will
44:09
Speaker 3: actually have some people to to, you know, if they're
44:14
Speaker 3: they're coming to a decision or they think this is
44:16
Speaker 3: the decision. Have some people actually go away and create
44:20
Speaker 3: a case for why we're wrong.
44:22
Speaker 1: Right, So why did this feel? If you project forward?
44:27
Speaker 3: Because that's all about challenging assumptions that we often have,
44:30
Speaker 3: those assumptions that are are either maybe not wrong, but
44:35
Speaker 3: maybe not complete and can lead you down the wrong path,
44:39
Speaker 3: right if you don't challenge those assumptions.
44:43
Speaker 2: And look, one of the things that I think is
44:44
Speaker 2: so important, the conversation around DEI and the attack on
44:49
Speaker 2: diversity that's going on and all that sort of stuff
44:51
Speaker 2: that's floating around. I have someone I get why it's
44:57
Speaker 2: probably gone too far in some spaces. The sure, let's
45:00
Speaker 2: get back to the nuts and bolts of this. If
45:02
Speaker 2: we can get people who see the world differently surrounding
45:06
Speaker 2: us and adding different perspectives and different points of view.
45:09
Speaker 2: That makes that stronger. But without doubt, if I can
45:12
Speaker 2: get people who can see the things that I can't see.
45:15
Speaker 2: If I just fill the room with people who believe
45:17
Speaker 2: what I believe, I've got a good horsepower. I'm just
45:20
Speaker 2: kind of maybe heading the wrong.
45:22
Speaker 1: Direction and very quickly, very quickly exactly right.
45:25
Speaker 2: And so Paul, this is where how do we how
45:27
Speaker 2: do we get people to do this sort of stuff?
45:29
Speaker 2: We'll bit with interest and curiosity about people who disagree
45:33
Speaker 2: with you, bring them closer to you and go, that's fascinating.
45:36
Speaker 2: I don't totally disagree, but I'm interested.
45:39
Speaker 1: And be anymore yeah, in that.
45:42
Speaker 2: Space, and don't try and get an answer or who's right?
45:46
Speaker 2: Throw that stuff away and just sit with it and go,
45:49
Speaker 2: there's something in here. And you know, that's where we
45:52
Speaker 2: find so much gold when we do it authentically. But
45:57
Speaker 2: it takes that trust building that we talked about. The
45:59
Speaker 2: excess you you mentioned earlier become really crucial because if
46:04
Speaker 2: I ask people who don't trust me to tell me
46:07
Speaker 2: what they think, they will modify what they say based
46:11
Speaker 2: on what the relationship we have. What they think all
46:14
Speaker 2: that sort of stuff clouds and it gets real messy,
46:16
Speaker 2: real powers.
46:17
Speaker 3: And then often they will agree in the meeting, and
46:20
Speaker 3: then they will go out and they will sabotize the
46:23
Speaker 3: decision because I often say to this, people need to
46:26
Speaker 3: feel heard if they're going to be committed to a decision,
46:30
Speaker 3: even if they don't agree with that decision, if they've
46:33
Speaker 3: actually been heard and it's been discussed, then they're much.
46:36
Speaker 1: More likely to get on board.
46:38
Speaker 3: But if you just shut them down, often they'll go
46:40
Speaker 3: out and those sabotage and it fucking destroys organizations. I've
46:44
Speaker 3: seen it, and it spreads like a cancer to your
46:47
Speaker 3: point earlier on, then they go to their team and
46:49
Speaker 3: go these decads and blah blah blah blah blah. Right,
46:52
Speaker 3: and then it just it just gathers legs and spreads
46:56
Speaker 3: like a cancer. Absolutely, So we got the first three,
46:59
Speaker 3: So be consciously curious, openly explore, challenge your model, your
47:03
Speaker 3: mental models.
47:04
Speaker 1: And then what's the fourth one?
47:06
Speaker 2: And to your point, it's what I called leading with
47:08
Speaker 2: empathy with which is what I mean by that is,
47:10
Speaker 2: make decisions, take action, navigate through this world with your
47:17
Speaker 2: new found data and understanding about the situation. So your
47:22
Speaker 2: point that you just raise there is an exact example
47:25
Speaker 2: I talk about often. You have to make a decision,
47:28
Speaker 2: maybe as a leader or a business owner or whatever it.
47:30
Speaker 2: But you got to make a call. We're going to
47:33
Speaker 2: do X or Y. You talk to your team, you
47:37
Speaker 2: gather information, you get their perspectives, to hear them. But
47:40
Speaker 2: then at the end of the day, you've got to
47:42
Speaker 2: make a call. And sixty percent of your team thought
47:44
Speaker 2: it was a twenty percent b the rest thought both
47:48
Speaker 2: are terrible. What do you do? You have to be
47:52
Speaker 2: able to use all that information to go team, I've
47:55
Speaker 2: heard you, I've listened, this is what we're doing. Now.
47:58
Speaker 2: At best percent of them might be a little bit
48:01
Speaker 2: happy that you've chosen their but what about the rest?
48:05
Speaker 2: And to your point, as a leader, your job is
48:08
Speaker 2: not to go well, I made the decision because of
48:10
Speaker 2: the majority, I made the decision because it'll make most
48:14
Speaker 2: people happy, or I'm not making a decision because I
48:16
Speaker 2: need to make everyone happy and not everyone agrees. All
48:19
Speaker 2: of that stuff is not leadership. In my view, Leadership
48:23
Speaker 2: is saying I've listened. I have to own this decision.
48:26
Speaker 2: This is what we're doing, this is why this is
48:29
Speaker 2: how I've thought about it, and we're going to announce
48:31
Speaker 2: take action. And you know that's a real challenge for
48:37
Speaker 2: lots of people in organizations is to be able to
48:41
Speaker 2: hand on heart they I've just I've made a call
48:45
Speaker 2: now to your point. If I do that, but I've
48:47
Speaker 2: not listened to anyone, it's the captain's call from the
48:49
Speaker 2: you know, my behind closed doors, then everyone in that
48:53
Speaker 2: room's got the right to have the ship. God said.
48:58
Speaker 2: But if I've listened to you and I can sit
49:00
Speaker 2: and come back to you and go, hey, point, I
49:01
Speaker 2: know this decision isn't the one you would have wanted.
49:04
Speaker 2: I understand this, but look at this is what we
49:07
Speaker 2: were facing. This is the sort of stuff. Is how
49:08
Speaker 2: I thought through it, and I know this isn't exactly
49:11
Speaker 2: what you wanted. So I wanted to talk to you
49:13
Speaker 2: through this because I want to make sure we're on
49:15
Speaker 2: the same page with how we're going to move forward,
49:17
Speaker 2: and it's really important that we've got your commitment to
49:20
Speaker 2: stake those steps. Now.
49:23
Speaker 3: I love the way that you bring that up, because
49:24
Speaker 3: as you were talking about all of this, I'm thinking
49:28
Speaker 3: about the high Performance Teams model that I used that
49:31
Speaker 3: was created by pat len Chuney. And at the bottom
49:35
Speaker 3: is trust, but it's a deeper trust based on vulnerability
49:40
Speaker 3: and understanding, not predictive trust, which is all the stuff
49:43
Speaker 3: that you've talked about. Then it's about engaging in productive conflict,
49:48
Speaker 3: as he sell, So it's that debate, hearing the other
49:51
Speaker 3: sides of the story, which is very aligned to what
49:53
Speaker 3: you're saying. Then it's about commitment, right because only when
49:58
Speaker 3: you've had the productive conflict, you've had the conversations, you've
50:01
Speaker 3: explored other ideas, can you expect people to commit and
50:04
Speaker 3: they have to commit even if they don't agree to it.
50:07
Speaker 3: Everybody has to commit. And then the next step is
50:11
Speaker 3: holding people accountable to what they've actually committed to and
50:14
Speaker 3: to their plans, which I think is is really critical.
50:18
Speaker 3: So it's very very aligned with that high Performance Team's model.
50:24
Speaker 1: And I wanted to go back to.
50:28
Speaker 3: Where we talked about that that that diversity of opinion,
50:32
Speaker 3: because you know, the whole diversity thing, as you said,
50:36
Speaker 3: is very polarizing, right there were there's there's people who
50:40
Speaker 3: think we need more of it, there's people who think
50:42
Speaker 3: we've gone too far and we need less of it.
50:44
Speaker 3: So how do you how do you get that balance
50:47
Speaker 3: as a leader. Let's think particularly or if you're an individual,
50:52
Speaker 3: you've got a team, and how much.
50:55
Speaker 1: Diversity do we need? Like where does it stop? And
50:59
Speaker 1: and and then.
51:02
Speaker 3: Is it you know, are you looking to peck people
51:06
Speaker 3: who have an opinion but aren't emotionally completely welded to
51:11
Speaker 3: that opinion or is there any guidelines here about how
51:14
Speaker 3: to make this process efficient and not just get completely
51:19
Speaker 3: stuck because there's fifteen points of view that people are
51:22
Speaker 3: just like, this is the way it has to be.
51:25
Speaker 2: How do lock that lane sots? Let's start by going, Wow,
51:30
Speaker 2: it's gray, and it's messy, and is the complexity explodes
51:34
Speaker 2: as soon as you get a bunch of people in
51:35
Speaker 2: a room. Okay, so let's accept that that's just the
51:38
Speaker 2: nature of the beast here we're stepping into it. Therefore,
51:42
Speaker 2: the wrong ways to go about diversity and inclusion by
51:46
Speaker 2: metricating it with specific processes that say that there is
51:51
Speaker 2: a simple and clear answer to this huge, messy, you know,
51:55
Speaker 2: completely complex space. So I think the answer to your
52:01
Speaker 2: question is not, well, you put a quota in place,
52:03
Speaker 2: so you do this, you do that, And that's not
52:04
Speaker 2: to say that those can't be useful tools. But my
52:09
Speaker 2: real question before people even look at this whole what
52:12
Speaker 2: diversity do need is what are you trying to achieve?
52:16
Speaker 2: What's your outcome here? What are you trying to do? So,
52:18
Speaker 2: if I work where I work with mining companies like
52:21
Speaker 2: php Afford used you and they're trying to bring more
52:24
Speaker 2: people in, trying to bring more resources, they need more
52:28
Speaker 2: female workers because otherwise fifty percent of the population is
52:32
Speaker 2: just ruled out because of how their gender. Well, that's stupid.
52:36
Speaker 2: They've also found that they're often women are much better
52:39
Speaker 2: at driving machinery because they don't push them too hard exactly.
52:45
Speaker 2: Put that aside, So how do you navigate through it?
52:49
Speaker 2: I think the first thing is to go it's going
52:51
Speaker 2: to be hard, whether the paradox we have to grapple with.
52:55
Speaker 2: We like people working with people who are like us.
52:58
Speaker 2: It's easy. We finish each others sentences, we agree at
53:01
Speaker 2: field nights. We need to work with people who are
53:04
Speaker 2: not like us. But it's harder, it takes work, and
53:07
Speaker 2: it takes time to build trust. So how do you
53:11
Speaker 2: do that? Well? I think this is where you have
53:14
Speaker 2: to be inclusive of a whole bunch of factors like gender, rate,
53:19
Speaker 2: all that stuff. You can be very inclusive of those things,
53:21
Speaker 2: but exclusive on your values. This is what we stand for,
53:27
Speaker 2: This is our mission, this is what we believe. And
53:30
Speaker 2: I don't mean values like integrity, honesty, communication, right, I mean,
53:36
Speaker 2: let's really bring these down a few levels. I wrote
53:38
Speaker 2: another book on this before, but let's bring these few
53:41
Speaker 2: down a few levels to the We will always and
53:44
Speaker 2: we will never type statements of how we will show up,
53:47
Speaker 2: what we believe, what we're trying to achieve, how we'll
53:50
Speaker 2: treat each other, because it's in that context of those
53:54
Speaker 2: values that we can interact in a way that creates trust,
53:57
Speaker 2: creates certainty, creates that sense that we're aligned, and then
54:01
Speaker 2: you can have lots of diversity in argument, but we're
54:05
Speaker 2: on the same page because we're still really committed to
54:07
Speaker 2: the mission we're on.
54:08
Speaker 1: Yeah, I like it. I like it.
54:10
Speaker 3: And that requires that businesses have proper values, not the
54:16
Speaker 3: fluffy bullshit that me and you have seen so many times.
54:20
Speaker 3: I'm always like, your values have to be or should
54:24
Speaker 3: be behaviorally based, where you, Daniel can say to me, Paul,
54:28
Speaker 3: you're not behaving in accordance with this value. They should
54:31
Speaker 3: be there as a as a guide or a north
54:35
Speaker 3: Star for making decisions.
54:38
Speaker 1: I like that.
54:39
Speaker 3: So we want the diversity of opinion and background and
54:43
Speaker 3: rais and all of that stuff. But we're in the
54:46
Speaker 3: same company that has the same values and as these
54:49
Speaker 3: values that we're using to make these decisions.
54:52
Speaker 2: Absolutely, and so to your point, if where you asked earlier,
54:56
Speaker 2: you know, if we're making decisions and people aren't agreeing
54:59
Speaker 2: and they don't want to commit, you know, we've said
55:03
Speaker 2: maybe we're we're an organization that says to drive the
55:07
Speaker 2: amount of energy electricity we need to be functional in
55:11
Speaker 2: the next twenty years. We can't just use green energy, right,
55:15
Speaker 2: We've looked at the numbers. It's just not going to work. Now,
55:18
Speaker 2: someone in my team might go, I absolutely vehemently disagree
55:22
Speaker 2: with that, and we might say, well, okay, I understand it.
55:27
Speaker 2: I respect your decision. I can see how that wouldn't
55:30
Speaker 2: be a problem. But if that's going to be an
55:32
Speaker 2: issue for you, then let's talk about how we part
55:35
Speaker 2: ways respectfully and graciously and carefully. You. I want to
55:40
Speaker 2: be kind to you, I want to support you in that,
55:42
Speaker 2: but what I don't want you to sit here is
55:44
Speaker 2: with this cognitive dissonance every day that you're in a
55:47
Speaker 2: place that you don't think he's doing the right thing
55:50
Speaker 2: because that's not good for us and it's not good
55:52
Speaker 2: for you. And you know, sometimes people think empathies being
55:56
Speaker 2: nice to people. It's not. It's been kind and you know,
56:00
Speaker 2: kindness of saying hey, Paul, we need this standard from
56:04
Speaker 2: you and you're not making it. So maybe this isn't
56:07
Speaker 2: the right spot, Maybe this isn't the right job, maybe
56:09
Speaker 2: this isn't the right role. Maybe we need to do
56:11
Speaker 2: a lot more training. But this gap is a big problem.
56:14
Speaker 2: And I want to support you and help you be
56:16
Speaker 2: successful and happy. This is not going to happen here.
56:19
Speaker 2: What can we do that's empathy for you, and that's
56:22
Speaker 2: caring about you, not coddling you and going, oh, well,
56:26
Speaker 2: let's just give it a few more months while everyone
56:28
Speaker 2: else in the team is pissed off because you're not
56:30
Speaker 2: pulling your way. All that stuff goes on, right, and
56:33
Speaker 2: we just destroy people's confidence in their future career because
56:36
Speaker 2: we're not we don't care enough, or we're not brave
56:42
Speaker 2: enough to hold that uncomfortable conversation and sit in that
56:45
Speaker 2: emotion and be real with someone.
56:48
Speaker 3: Yeah, I look, I completely agree on that, Daniel. This
56:51
Speaker 3: has been excellent. I really like the idea of empathy
56:57
Speaker 3: being based on those plausible narrative and the process, the
57:00
Speaker 3: four step process that you have. So anybody who wants
57:04
Speaker 3: to have better connection with other humans. So unless you
57:08
Speaker 3: want to go and live on an island by yourself,
57:11
Speaker 3: the empathy gap, I think would be a very useful resource.
57:15
Speaker 3: Why can people go to find out more about you?
57:18
Speaker 3: Buy the book as a speaker? If they want to
57:21
Speaker 3: bring in or consult in their business, what's the best
57:23
Speaker 3: place to send them?
57:24
Speaker 2: Yeah, look, Daniel Murray dot au is the easiest handle
57:28
Speaker 2: to find me. That's my website. You can come and
57:31
Speaker 2: connect with me. I'm on LinkedIn all the time, as
57:34
Speaker 2: many of us are these days, and Empathic Consulting dot
57:38
Speaker 2: com is our business side as well. But any of
57:42
Speaker 2: those parts will leads through to me. And yeah, the
57:46
Speaker 2: books hopefully everywhere now, working hard to get it everywhere
57:49
Speaker 2: we can, and always always welcome those conversations, you know, Paul,
57:55
Speaker 2: I've really enjoyed this something. We could talk for hours.
57:58
Speaker 2: But I had a person who who messaged me on
58:01
Speaker 2: LinkedIn and they really challenged They said, I think this
58:04
Speaker 2: is bullshit. You know, I think empathy and sympathy are
58:06
Speaker 2: largely the same thing, and it's a weakness. And I
58:09
Speaker 2: really enjoyed that conversation because it gave me insight to
58:13
Speaker 2: what's really going on in the world around us. And
58:16
Speaker 2: i'd encourage anyone if you've heard this year, listen to
58:19
Speaker 2: this and go yeah, but it's not quite yeah. You know,
58:22
Speaker 2: I want to push back and reach out. I'm not
58:25
Speaker 2: going to tell you you're wrong, and you know, I
58:28
Speaker 2: don't wish you to blow smoke up as about it.
58:29
Speaker 2: I want us to really talk about it because the
58:33
Speaker 2: future is going to be shaped by all of us
58:35
Speaker 2: if we work together, or it's going to be torn
58:38
Speaker 2: apart when we want to be right and wrong and
58:41
Speaker 2: throw sticks at each other.
58:42
Speaker 1: Yeah. Very cool, excellent Daniel.
58:44
Speaker 3: Thank you, good statement, and I wish you all the
58:47
Speaker 3: success in your book.
58:49
Speaker 2: Cheers mate, Thank you,