Latest / Andy Stanley Sermons / Andy Stanley - Power of Supercommunicators x Charles Duhigg
Transcript
- 0:05Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, Welcome to the Andy Stanley Leadership Podcast, a podcast.
- 0:09Speaker 2: Designed to help leaders go further Faster.
- 0:11Speaker 1: I'm Andy Stanley and joining us today is my friend
- 0:14Speaker 1: and someone who's about to become your friend, Charles Dohig.
- 0:17Speaker 2: Author Charles do Higg.
- 0:18Speaker 1: Charles is a public Surprise winning reporter and the author
- 0:21Speaker 1: of the Power of Habit, which many of you have read.
- 0:23Speaker 1: I'm sure it actually spent three years on the New
- 0:26Speaker 1: York Times Bestsellers list. His second book, Smarter, Faster, Better,
- 0:29Speaker 1: was also a New York Times bestseller. Currently, he works
- 0:33Speaker 1: for the New Yorker magazine and our organization has had
- 0:36Speaker 1: the privilege of hosting him twice for events, and he's
- 0:40Speaker 1: an incredible person. He's the real deal, and so I'm
- 0:42Speaker 1: thrilled to have him back on the podcast today.
- 0:44Speaker 2: So, Charles, welcome back.
- 0:46Speaker 3: Thank you for having me back, Andy.
- 0:48Speaker 1: So Charles, today we're talking about your latest book, Super Communicators,
- 0:51Speaker 1: subtitled How to Unlock the Secret Language of Connection. And
- 0:56Speaker 1: this book is so important. It's important for a couple
- 0:59Speaker 1: of reasons. As leaders, we're constantly trying to communicate. We
- 1:03Speaker 1: talk a lot, whether we communicate or not. As the
- 1:05Speaker 1: subject of the book, and we'll talk about that in
- 1:07Speaker 1: just a minute. But the other reason this is so
- 1:09Speaker 1: important is because of what's going on in our nation
- 1:12Speaker 1: right now.
- 1:12Speaker 2: And I don't know if.
- 1:13Speaker 1: You're going to want to talk about that or not,
- 1:15Speaker 1: but it appears that there's way more accusing than listening,
- 1:19Speaker 1: more attempts to convince than to converse. So anyway, this
- 1:23Speaker 1: is going to be a fascinating conversation. So again, we're
- 1:25Speaker 1: so glad.
- 1:26Speaker 2: That you're here.
- 1:27Speaker 3: It's always such a treat to get a chance to
- 1:28Speaker 3: talk with you. It's a thing.
- 1:29Speaker 2: Well it's been too long, it's true.
- 1:32Speaker 1: So what's obvious to anyone who knows you is that
- 1:34Speaker 1: you actually communicate for a living, and so nobody should
- 1:37Speaker 1: be surprised that you actually wrote a book about communication.
- 1:40Speaker 1: But this is not a book about talking or writing
- 1:44Speaker 1: to people.
- 1:46Speaker 2: This is different. In fact, this is better. This is
- 1:48Speaker 2: about conversation.
- 1:49Speaker 1: And I didn't warn you about this ahead of time,
- 1:51Speaker 1: but I was going to begin with the question that
- 1:54Speaker 1: you probably always get at the beginning of an interview
- 1:56Speaker 1: about one of your books. It's like the lamest question
- 1:59Speaker 1: of Charles led you to write this book. So we're
- 2:03Speaker 1: going to dispense with that. What I'd like to do is,
- 2:06Speaker 1: I would like to actually read a portion of your
- 2:08Speaker 1: book to you, where I think you explain in an
- 2:12Speaker 1: extraordinary way why you wrote the book, and to some extent,
- 2:16Speaker 1: I think what you wrote is an illustration of what
- 2:19Speaker 1: this book is about. So, if it's okay with you,
- 2:21Speaker 1: I would like to read a couple of paragraphs, really
- 2:24Speaker 1: three paragraphs of your book to you.
- 2:25Speaker 3: So, oh please, do I love that?
- 2:28Speaker 2: Here we go. Here, here's what you wrote at the end,
- 2:29Speaker 2: and this is in the afterwards.
- 2:31Speaker 1: So this is at the very end of the book,
- 2:32Speaker 1: which honestly I almost skipped because I think most of
- 2:35Speaker 1: us skipped the conclusion.
- 2:36Speaker 2: But anyway, here's what you wrote. You write. So one night,
- 2:39Speaker 2: and I know this sounds strange.
- 2:41Speaker 1: I sat down and scribbled out a list of all
- 2:42Speaker 1: the times over the last year that I could remember
- 2:45Speaker 1: screwing up a conversation.
- 2:47Speaker 2: You know, Charles, who does that? Right then, you said,
- 2:49Speaker 2: I wrote down the.
- 2:50Speaker 1: Times when I had only half listened to my wife,
- 2:53Speaker 1: when I had failed to empathize with coworkers as they
- 2:56Speaker 1: told me something vulnerable, when I had ignored a good
- 3:00Speaker 1: idea because I had already decided to follow my own notions,
- 3:04Speaker 1: all those meals I had spent talking about myself instead
- 3:08Speaker 1: of about others, the times, and then you put in
- 3:10Speaker 1: parentheses that shames me to say, the times when I
- 3:13Speaker 1: told my kids to please stop asking me stuff so
- 3:17Speaker 1: I could get some work done, And then you right.
- 3:20Speaker 1: But writing all of that out forced me to confront
- 3:24Speaker 1: some hard questions. Why was it that at times I
- 3:27Speaker 1: had so much trouble hearing what someone else was trying
- 3:30Speaker 1: to tell me? Why was I so quick to get
- 3:33Speaker 1: defensive or should glide past the emotions people were clearly
- 3:37Speaker 1: trying to share? And then I skipped a couple of pages,
- 3:40Speaker 1: and I'll close with this, you're write, how was it
- 3:42Speaker 1: possible that I, someone who has been communicating my whole life,
- 3:46Speaker 1: could still get it so wrong? This book is the
- 3:51Speaker 1: result of that journey that so humanized everything in this book, Charles, So,
- 3:56Speaker 1: could we begin by you just responding to that for
- 3:59Speaker 1: a minute.
- 4:00Speaker 3: Yeah, And it's really heartfelt, and thank you, thank you
- 4:02Speaker 3: for reading that. It sounds even better coming out of
- 4:04Speaker 3: your mouth out of my fingers, it's yeah, you know,
- 4:09Speaker 3: I was. I was working at the New York Times
- 4:12Speaker 3: a couple of years ago before the pandemic, and they
- 4:15Speaker 3: made me a manager, and I thought I would be
- 4:17Speaker 3: a great manager, Like you know, I've had managers my
- 4:20Speaker 3: whole life. I have a fancy MBA from a business school.
- 4:23Speaker 3: And I was good at like the logistics part and
- 4:25Speaker 3: the strategy part, and I was terrible at the communication part.
- 4:28Speaker 3: And I couldn't figure out why. Right, I think a
- 4:31Speaker 3: lot of us are asking why are we bad at communication?
- 4:34Speaker 3: Like we thought we were good at this stuff. The
- 4:36Speaker 3: moments we are proudesst of in this country are moments
- 4:40Speaker 3: like the Constitutional Convention when people came together who disagreed
- 4:43Speaker 3: with each other, some of whom hated each other, yep,
- 4:46Speaker 3: And they had conversations and arguments for three and a
- 4:48Speaker 3: half months, and then they wrote a constitution together. Right,
- 4:51Speaker 3: That's when we're at our best as a nation. That's
- 4:53Speaker 3: when we're at our best as people. When I can
- 4:56Speaker 3: sit down with neighbors and even if we have some disagreements,
- 4:58Speaker 3: we can connect with each other. Or I can sit
- 5:00Speaker 3: down with coworkers and I can really hear what they're
- 5:02Speaker 3: trying to tell me. And I wanted to understand why
- 5:07Speaker 3: why do are we sometimes so good at this and
- 5:09Speaker 3: an other times so bad at it.
- 5:11Speaker 2: And to think about the fact that they stayed essentially
- 5:16Speaker 2: in the same room for three months. Their lives are
- 5:21Speaker 2: at risk, and they just refuse to quit. They refuse
- 5:24Speaker 2: to walk away, they refuse.
- 5:26Speaker 1: To capitulate, and they found compromises that created a nation.
- 5:29Speaker 1: And I know this is so irrelevant in our discussion,
- 5:31Speaker 1: but as someone who has started an organization, that's so
- 5:34Speaker 1: hard and start hard to start an organization.
- 5:37Speaker 2: Yeah, imagine starting a country.
- 5:40Speaker 1: I mean it's just you know, nobody, you know, you
- 5:42Speaker 1: don't get to start a country.
- 5:44Speaker 2: And again, there was so much disagreement.
- 5:47Speaker 1: We see the pictures and think, oh, they were all
- 5:48Speaker 1: on the same page, agreed about everything. Absolutely not. So
- 5:51Speaker 1: we know there's a way forward. And that's what this
- 5:53Speaker 1: book is about. So effective communication. Again, we're leadership podcast.
- 5:58Speaker 1: It's so important for leaders, but it it tends to
- 6:00Speaker 1: be for leaders kind of top down when the boss.
- 6:04Speaker 1: I mean, I know this for me, I have to
- 6:05Speaker 1: be so careful when I start talking. Everybody stops talking
- 6:09Speaker 1: and they lean in and I know they're all having
- 6:11Speaker 1: imaginary conversations or in conversations in their mind about what
- 6:14Speaker 1: I'm saying. And now we're negotiating because there's not equity.
- 6:18Speaker 2: I'm the boss, you know my words.
- 6:19Speaker 1: As my assistant Diane Grant reminds me, Andy, your words
- 6:22Speaker 1: weigh five hundred pounds.
- 6:23Speaker 2: You know, your words aren't equal with.
- 6:24Speaker 1: Everybody Else's not because I'm great, I just I'm just
- 6:27Speaker 1: the boss.
- 6:28Speaker 2: So and as leaders, whether.
- 6:31Speaker 1: You're managing three people or three hundred people, your words
- 6:35Speaker 1: weigh so much. And again there's inequity because of the position, and.
- 6:40Speaker 2: So it's even more difficult to actually commune.
- 6:43Speaker 1: It's easy to talk, but it's more difficult to communicate.
- 6:47Speaker 2: Have you seen that dynamic?
- 6:48Speaker 1: I mean, apparently you did in your own situation talk
- 6:50Speaker 1: a little bit about the whole leader.
- 6:52Speaker 3: But also but also as you know, as a as
- 6:54Speaker 3: a business reporter and as a as a business person.
- 6:56Speaker 3: You know, the thing that I find is that when
- 6:58Speaker 3: I talk to the best CEO like yourself, inevitably what
- 7:03Speaker 3: they say is they say, my job is to be
- 7:05Speaker 3: a communicator. Right, I can't make all the decisions myself.
- 7:08Speaker 3: I can't do all the work myself. My job is
- 7:10Speaker 3: to elucidate our vision, to bring people together. But that
- 7:14Speaker 3: doesn't mean that they're a great lecture. That doesn't mean
- 7:17Speaker 3: that they're a great monologuer. That means that they're a
- 7:19Speaker 3: great communicator, and communication is about back and forth. Communication
- 7:23Speaker 3: is about listening as much as we're speaking. It's about
- 7:25Speaker 3: showing someone that we're listening. It's about asking the right
- 7:28Speaker 3: kinds of questions. Right, And you're exactly right that when
- 7:31Speaker 3: you're the boss, it is so there are so many
- 7:34Speaker 3: things in place to nudge you to monologue, and there
- 7:37Speaker 3: are so many things in place to stop people from
- 7:40Speaker 3: challenging you and to make it hard to listen. But
- 7:43Speaker 3: what we've learned from science is that there's these skills
- 7:45Speaker 3: that we can practice that our brains actually makeing the
- 7:47Speaker 3: habits very very quickly that make it more natural and
- 7:51Speaker 3: more automatic to have a conversation instead of these dueling monologues.
- 7:55Speaker 1: And your personal experience drove you to figure this out
- 7:58Speaker 1: because you felt like you weren't getting it right even
- 8:00Speaker 1: at home.
- 8:01Speaker 3: That's exactly right. So I got into this bad pattern
- 8:03Speaker 3: with my wife, and we've been married for twenty years,
- 8:05Speaker 3: where I'd come home from work and I'd start complaining
- 8:07Speaker 3: about my day, and she would offer this really good advice,
- 8:10Speaker 3: like why don't you take your boss out to lunch
- 8:12Speaker 3: and get to know each other a little bit better,
- 8:13Speaker 3: and instead of being able to hear her, I would
- 8:15Speaker 3: get even more upset, and I'd say, like, you know,
- 8:17Speaker 3: why aren't you supporting me. You're supposed to be outraged
- 8:19Speaker 3: in my behalf. She would get upset that I was
- 8:21Speaker 3: attacking her for giving me good advice. I think everyone
- 8:23Speaker 3: listening has had this experience at home, right, Sometimes you're
- 8:26Speaker 3: all the side of it, yes, And so I went
- 8:29Speaker 3: to researchers and I asked, I'm like, what's going on here?
- 8:31Speaker 3: Why am I having trouble at work? Why am I
- 8:33Speaker 3: having trouble at home? And what they said is said, well, listen,
- 8:36Speaker 3: we're actually living through this golden age of understanding communication,
- 8:39Speaker 3: really for the first time. Because of advances in neural
- 8:42Speaker 3: imaging and data collection, we can see what's happening inside
- 8:45Speaker 3: your brain when you talk to another person. And what
- 8:47Speaker 3: we've learned is one big thing, which is we tend
- 8:51Speaker 3: to think of a discussion as being about one thing. Right,
- 8:53Speaker 3: We're talking about my day, or the kid's grades, or
- 8:57Speaker 3: a passage that we want to understand better. But actually
- 9:00Speaker 3: every conversation is made up of multiple kinds of conversations,
- 9:04Speaker 3: and in general, these kinds of conversations. They tend to
- 9:06Speaker 3: fall into one of three buckets. There's these practical conversations
- 9:09Speaker 3: where we're talking about plans or solving problems. But then
- 9:13Speaker 3: there's emotional conversations where I might tell you what I'm feeling,
- 9:16Speaker 3: and I don't want you to solve my feelings, I
- 9:18Speaker 3: want you to empathize. And then there's social conversations, which
- 9:21Speaker 3: is about how we relate to each other in society
- 9:23Speaker 3: and the identities that are important to us. And what
- 9:26Speaker 3: they said is what we've learned is all those conversations
- 9:30Speaker 3: are legitimate. But if you're not having the same kind
- 9:32Speaker 3: of conversation at the same moment, what within psychology is
- 9:35Speaker 3: known as the matching principle, You're not going to be
- 9:37Speaker 3: able to hear each other, You're not going to be
- 9:38Speaker 3: able to connect with each other. It's going to feel
- 9:40Speaker 3: like you're two ships passing in the night. And for me,
- 9:43Speaker 3: that's been revelatory because it now introduces and invites me
- 9:48Speaker 3: to pay attention to what kind of conversation is happening
- 9:51Speaker 3: as much as I'm listening to the words coming out
- 9:53Speaker 3: of someone's mouth.
- 9:55Speaker 1: One of the great things about your books, Charles, is
- 9:58Speaker 1: You aren't this time topic or subject expert, but you
- 10:02Speaker 1: have an uncanny ability to go out into the broad
- 10:05Speaker 1: world and bring all that information that the rest of
- 10:07Speaker 1: us don't have time to go find, and to boil
- 10:09Speaker 1: it down to bite sized chunks that are so applicable.
- 10:13Speaker 1: And so in the book, you take everything you just
- 10:15Speaker 1: said that most of us don't understand, and perhaps you
- 10:18Speaker 1: didn't understand the first time it was explained to you either,
- 10:20Speaker 1: but you boil it down to these four rules, and
- 10:22Speaker 1: you actually just touched on all four real quickly as
- 10:25Speaker 1: it relates to the kinds of conversations that are going on.
- 10:27Speaker 1: So can you sort of list those and then maybe
- 10:30Speaker 1: we can unpack those, because as I read this in
- 10:33Speaker 1: the book, I mean again, I did what you did.
- 10:36Speaker 1: I'm rehearsing conversations that would have gone better if only
- 10:39Speaker 1: and especially around the whole idea of the identity thing,
- 10:44Speaker 1: which is number four. Yeah, that was so convicting to
- 10:48Speaker 1: me because there are people I've worked with for years
- 10:49Speaker 1: and years and years and I just haven't even been
- 10:52Speaker 1: curious about that side of their life.
- 10:55Speaker 2: And that's just I'm a pastor.
- 10:58Speaker 1: I should you know, I'm supposed to know how to
- 11:00Speaker 1: do this right or do it in two toil anyway,
- 11:02Speaker 1: So I'm getting ahead of myself.
- 11:03Speaker 2: So those four rules, good, real, QUIEA.
- 11:05Speaker 3: Yeah, let's go through them one by one. And I'd
- 11:06Speaker 3: love to hear your experiences because I think I think
- 11:09Speaker 3: you've you've experimented with these in a lot of ways.
- 11:13Speaker 3: So okay. So the first rule is to figure out
- 11:15Speaker 3: what kind of conversation we're having, right what what are
- 11:18Speaker 3: we like? Is this an emotional conversation, a practical conversation,
- 11:21Speaker 3: a social conversation. And one of the easiest ways to
- 11:23Speaker 3: do that is to ask questions, particularly a certain kind
- 11:27Speaker 3: of question. So when researchers have looked at super communicators,
- 11:31Speaker 3: and we're all super communicators at one time or another,
- 11:33Speaker 3: but consistent supercommunicators people can connect with anyone. What they
- 11:37Speaker 3: found is that on average, they ask ten to twenty
- 11:40Speaker 3: times as many questions as the average person.
- 11:42Speaker 2: Wow.
- 11:43Speaker 3: And some of those questions are what are known as
- 11:45Speaker 3: deep questions. And a deep question is something that invites
- 11:48Speaker 3: us to talk about our values, our beliefs, or experiences.
- 11:52Speaker 3: And that can sound a little intimidating, but it's actually
- 11:55Speaker 3: as simple as you know. If you bump into someone
- 11:57Speaker 3: and they're a doctor, you could ask them to your
- 12:00Speaker 3: practice medicine, or you could ask them a deep question
- 12:03Speaker 3: like what made you decide to go to medical school?
- 12:05Speaker 2: Wow?
- 12:06Speaker 3: Or what do you love about practicing medicine? Did you
- 12:08Speaker 3: always want to be a doctor? And the reason why
- 12:10Speaker 3: I question like that is deep and it's easy to ask, right,
- 12:13Speaker 3: that's not probing or intrusive. But the reason why that
- 12:15Speaker 3: question is deep is because it invites this other person
- 12:19Speaker 3: to tell you something real about who they are. You know,
- 12:22Speaker 3: if I asked you, you know, what made you decide
- 12:26Speaker 3: to become a pastor, you'd probably start talking about your dad,
- 12:29Speaker 3: and you'd start talking about the role of faith in
- 12:31Speaker 3: your life. You would tell me so much about who
- 12:34Speaker 3: you are. I'm just guessing you can tell me if
- 12:37Speaker 3: I'm getting this wrong.
- 12:38Speaker 1: Now, well, that's a better question than what do you
- 12:41Speaker 1: like about being a pastor? Or you know those kind
- 12:44Speaker 1: of general Lets keep it up there. But that question
- 12:47Speaker 1: takes you into the backstory of my life story. And
- 12:51Speaker 1: most people like to talk about their story. And one
- 12:55Speaker 1: of the things we have learning what we do, Charles,
- 12:57Speaker 1: is very few people ever have an eye opportunity to
- 13:01Speaker 1: tell their story, and we have an environment called starting
- 13:04Speaker 1: Point for people who are starting a faith journey.
- 13:06Speaker 2: And the first thing we do is we let people
- 13:09Speaker 2: tell their story.
- 13:10Speaker 1: And we've discovered no one's ever asked them about that before.
- 13:14Speaker 1: And in a matter of one meeting, ten strangers bond
- 13:20Speaker 1: within an hour and a half.
- 13:21Speaker 2: It's like that because to.
- 13:23Speaker 1: Your point, there's been a conversation that's gone beyond just
- 13:26Speaker 1: the facts.
- 13:26Speaker 2: Keep going, I don't want to erupt.
- 13:28Speaker 3: No, no, And it's magical, isn't it. It is, it feels,
- 13:31Speaker 3: it's that feeling you get from a great conversation. Our
- 13:34Speaker 3: brains crave connection. They crave conversation. You know, if you
- 13:39Speaker 3: think about communication has been Homo Sapien's superpower. The reason
- 13:44Speaker 3: why our species has done so well is because we
- 13:47Speaker 3: can build families and communities and churches and towns. It's
- 13:51Speaker 3: because we can share knowledge with each other by not
- 13:53Speaker 3: having to experience the learning, but just describing it. And
- 13:57Speaker 3: so communication is our superpower, and our brains become very
- 14:00Speaker 3: finely tuned to be good at communication. Right, We're able
- 14:04Speaker 3: to talk to most of the people we bump into.
- 14:06Speaker 2: It sort of amazingly at some level. Yeah. Yeah, So
- 14:09Speaker 2: the first rule is pay attention.
- 14:11Speaker 1: And what I wrote down is pay attention to what
- 14:13Speaker 1: kind of conversation is occurring, whether it's practical, emotional, social,
- 14:18Speaker 1: So identifying that and in the book you tease out
- 14:20Speaker 1: these categories. There's there's so much there. The second rule
- 14:23Speaker 1: was I pushed back on this. To be honest, this
- 14:25Speaker 1: seemed a little intrusive. The whole idea of sharing the
- 14:29Speaker 1: way I wrote it down and share your goals about
- 14:32Speaker 1: what the goals of the conversation are and ask what
- 14:34Speaker 1: others are seeking.
- 14:35Speaker 2: Talk a little bit about that.
- 14:37Speaker 3: So it can sound a little formulaic when we put
- 14:39Speaker 3: it that way, right, Yeah, Like it sounds like we're
- 14:41Speaker 3: sitting down for a business negotiation, right, But we actually
- 14:44Speaker 3: do this all the time. Like sometimes we see someone
- 14:46Speaker 3: and we're like, hey, man, I want to catch up
- 14:48Speaker 3: with you, like like what's what's been going on. So actually,
- 14:51Speaker 3: when we say that we're announcing our goal, like I
- 14:53Speaker 3: don't have I don't have an agenda. I just want
- 14:55Speaker 3: to catch up with you, sonny.
- 14:56Speaker 2: The goal isn't an agenda.
- 14:58Speaker 3: The goal is just to share, you know, here's what
- 15:02Speaker 3: this conversation means to me, and I want to know,
- 15:04Speaker 3: like what would make this conversation a success for you.
- 15:07Speaker 3: And what's really interesting is there was an experiment that
- 15:09Speaker 3: was done by some researchers at Harvard Business School where
- 15:11Speaker 3: they told a bunch of students, Okay, you're going to
- 15:14Speaker 3: go have a conversation with a stranger, which is like
- 15:16Speaker 3: one of the most anxiety producing things, so we can
- 15:18Speaker 3: tell someone to do. And they said, before you do this,
- 15:21Speaker 3: take seven seconds, just seven seconds, and write down three
- 15:24Speaker 3: topics you might want to talk about, right like have
- 15:27Speaker 3: you seen any good movies lately? Are you going to
- 15:29Speaker 3: the game this weekend? And students did this seven seconds,
- 15:32Speaker 3: wrote these thirty things down, They sent them off to
- 15:34Speaker 3: have the conversations, and then they asked them afterwards how
- 15:37Speaker 3: to go. And what the student said was, you know
- 15:39Speaker 3: those things I wrote down, they almost never came up.
- 15:41Speaker 3: But the conversation. I felt so much more comfortable and
- 15:44Speaker 3: relaxed in the conversation. It went so much better than
- 15:47Speaker 3: I was worried it was going to go. And it's
- 15:49Speaker 3: because I knew that I didn't have to feel anxious
- 15:52Speaker 3: because I had this stuff in my pocket. I had
- 15:54Speaker 3: if there was an awkward science, there was something to
- 15:56Speaker 3: fall back on. But it's also because they had tried
- 15:59Speaker 3: to figure out what do I want from this conversation,
- 16:01Speaker 3: Like like if I'm talking to a stranger, what's going
- 16:03Speaker 3: to make that feel like a success for me? And
- 16:06Speaker 3: we can all do that before we come home and
- 16:08Speaker 3: we have a discussion with our wife or our kids
- 16:10Speaker 3: before at work. When we're walking into the meeting, we
- 16:13Speaker 3: can take seven seconds and say what do I hope
- 16:16Speaker 3: to learn in this meeting and what do I hope
- 16:18Speaker 3: to share with others?
- 16:20Speaker 1: So this isn't necessarily something you tell the other person.
- 16:23Speaker 1: Is this just something you get clear in your head?
- 16:25Speaker 3: Or I mean you could like sometimes you walk into
- 16:27Speaker 3: that meeting and you say, like, look, the point of
- 16:29Speaker 3: this meeting is for us to discuss the next year budget. Right,
- 16:32Speaker 3: I know what you want and does that work for you? Sure?
- 16:34Speaker 3: But sometimes that's a little awkward. Sometimes we don't need
- 16:37Speaker 3: to announce it, simply knowing it in our own head.
- 16:40Speaker 3: Knowing I'm going into this meeting and my goal is
- 16:42Speaker 3: I want to convince Jim to stay in this job,
- 16:46Speaker 3: but I don't want him to feel pressured if I
- 16:48Speaker 3: have elucidated that to myself, And then I walk in
- 16:51Speaker 3: and I say, Jim, tell me, what's going on with you?
- 16:54Speaker 3: I like, we have thirty minutes together, Like, where are
- 16:57Speaker 3: you hoping we get in this discussion?
- 16:59Speaker 1: Yeah, if it's clear here, then I'm going to stay
- 17:01Speaker 1: on that track. And so let me tell you what
- 17:03Speaker 1: comes to mind. And I don't know if you can
- 17:05Speaker 1: relate to this. And I'm sure I did this to
- 17:07Speaker 1: my kids. I would try not to because it was
- 17:09Speaker 1: so paralyzing when my dad would do it.
- 17:11Speaker 2: He'd say, Andy, I need to talk to you about something.
- 17:14Speaker 1: Well, he needed he needed to tell me the topic right,
- 17:17Speaker 1: announce the grip, you know, he needed to do.
- 17:19Speaker 2: Number two, share your.
- 17:21Speaker 1: Goals for this conversation, because what does every kid think
- 17:23Speaker 1: when their dad says that I'm in trouble, in trouble
- 17:26Speaker 1: thinking of what I did.
- 17:28Speaker 2: He find out? You know, how long has he known?
- 17:30Speaker 2: You know?
- 17:31Speaker 1: So again that's kind of an exaggeration of this dynamic,
- 17:34Speaker 1: but for so many people, just being upfront about that,
- 17:38Speaker 1: just you know, the temperature comes down.
- 17:39Speaker 2: So that's number two. Then number three.
- 17:42Speaker 1: This is something I learned about years ago and I
- 17:44Speaker 1: feel so fortunate. And it was in a seminar actually,
- 17:46Speaker 1: so this was a developed skill. The whole idea of
- 17:49Speaker 1: ask about others feelings and then share your own. So
- 17:52Speaker 1: this is the emotional rule. Talk a little bit about that.
- 17:55Speaker 3: And the thing is, emotions influence every one of our conversations,
- 17:58Speaker 3: right whether we acknowledge them or not. When we're talking
- 18:01Speaker 3: to each other. The fact that I like you so
- 18:04Speaker 3: much and I want you to like me, and that
- 18:07Speaker 3: it's been a while since we've seen each other. There
- 18:09Speaker 3: are these emotions that influence every conversation, and particularly in
- 18:12Speaker 3: a conflict conversation, particularly when we're disagree with each other,
- 18:15Speaker 3: particularly when there's some tension. Not acknowledging those feelings does
- 18:20Speaker 3: not make them mean that they go away. It just
- 18:23Speaker 3: means that they show up in ways that you're not
- 18:25Speaker 3: planning on and that you're not choosing. And so very
- 18:29Speaker 3: often it's important in a conversation to ask a question like,
- 18:33Speaker 3: you know, like how did that make you feel? Like
- 18:35Speaker 3: when when your dad would say that to you, how
- 18:37Speaker 3: would that make you feel? Or like we haven't caught
- 18:39Speaker 3: up for a long time, I'm just wondering, like I
- 18:41Speaker 3: miss you, like like it's good to talk to you.
- 18:44Speaker 3: When we introduce our own emotions and we invite others
- 18:48Speaker 3: to talk about theirs, one of two things happens. Either
- 18:52Speaker 3: those emotions are really positive and it gives us something
- 18:54Speaker 3: to connect with each other on, or the emotions are negative,
- 18:58Speaker 3: in which case voicing them helps us set them aside. Right,
- 19:03Speaker 3: if I'm angry at you, if I'm anxious, if I'm
- 19:06Speaker 3: scared of what you're going to say, if I get
- 19:08Speaker 3: to say that to you, if I could say, Dad,
- 19:10Speaker 3: you know the way that you asked me to have
- 19:11Speaker 3: this conversation, maybe really really worried. Yeah, now I can
- 19:14Speaker 3: set that worry aside a little bit and we can
- 19:16Speaker 3: really connect with each other.
- 19:18Speaker 1: Well, in his case that case, I would always say
- 19:20Speaker 1: the same thing, Am I in trouble? That's the first
- 19:21Speaker 1: thing I say, Am I in trouble? And then he
- 19:24Speaker 1: would look at me like, what kind of dad?
- 19:25Speaker 2: Am I? I just want to talk to you, and you
- 19:27Speaker 2: think you're in trouble.
- 19:28Speaker 1: But again, well, because there's not and this goes back
- 19:30Speaker 1: to the leadership thing, there's not equity. We're not peers,
- 19:33Speaker 1: we're not friends. You're holding all the cards. I'm fourteen, right,
- 19:38Speaker 1: So I think for leaders listening because the pushback on
- 19:42Speaker 1: this one, and again we're skipping along the surface. There's
- 19:45Speaker 1: so much in the book about all of these is okay.
- 19:48Speaker 1: In the marketplace, we don't really talk about emotions. We
- 19:51Speaker 1: deal with facts and numbers and progress and goals and
- 19:53Speaker 1: did you or didn't you. But if you're going to
- 19:56Speaker 1: have a long term even business relationship with somebody, or
- 20:00Speaker 1: corporate relationship with somebody, you if you don't engage in
- 20:04Speaker 1: this at some level, well, first you're not going to
- 20:06Speaker 1: get out of people.
- 20:07Speaker 2: You're going to get their hands and over their heart.
- 20:09Speaker 1: You know, to just use some old language, and it's
- 20:12Speaker 1: not a matter of being manipulative.
- 20:13Speaker 2: What it says is I genuinely care.
- 20:15Speaker 1: I care past the numbers, I care past the you know,
- 20:18Speaker 1: the performance.
- 20:19Speaker 2: I care past all that. I want to know who
- 20:21Speaker 2: you are exactly. I want yes, yeah, yeah.
- 20:24Speaker 1: And that's more comfortable for some people than others. But
- 20:27Speaker 1: one of the things you talk about in the book,
- 20:29Speaker 1: and you implied it here is oftentimes it needs to
- 20:33Speaker 1: start with it's weird to say, tell me how you're
- 20:36Speaker 1: feeling about that's not.
- 20:38Speaker 2: A good intro.
- 20:39Speaker 1: I've got to be vulnerable before I ask you to
- 20:42Speaker 1: be vulnerable. Otherwise it's just a little bit awkward. And
- 20:45Speaker 1: that's that's such to learn skill empathetic.
- 20:48Speaker 3: To learn skill. Yeah, and again, our brain is very
- 20:50Speaker 3: good at making these inhabits once we once we know
- 20:53Speaker 3: the skill exists, and we practice it just a little bit.
- 20:55Speaker 3: You know. One of my favorite examples I was in
- 20:56Speaker 3: a meeting a couple of months ago, and you know
- 20:59Speaker 3: how before meet starts, you're just kind of like chewing
- 21:01Speaker 3: the fat with a guy next to you, and I
- 21:03Speaker 3: asked him, Oh, how is your weekend? And he said, oh,
- 21:05Speaker 3: it's great. Like I went to my kids graduation. It
- 21:07Speaker 3: was really fantastic, And the most natural thing to do
- 21:10Speaker 3: would have been to say, oh, congratulations, like and now
- 21:13Speaker 3: let's get down to business, here's the agenda, right, Yeah.
- 21:15Speaker 3: But instead what I did is I tried to match
- 21:17Speaker 3: him and I said, oh, man, you know, I actually
- 21:21Speaker 3: I think about my kids graduation and it makes me
- 21:23Speaker 3: really excited, but it's it also a little sad because
- 21:25Speaker 3: I'm going to leave home. I'm just wondering, like, what
- 21:27Speaker 3: did it feel like to you watching your kid wask across?
- 21:30Speaker 2: See, that's a great example.
- 21:32Speaker 3: Yes, and it's and it's not probing, that's not too intrusive, right,
- 21:36Speaker 3: that feels very natural. But what I'm saying is I'm saying,
- 21:39Speaker 3: I recognize that you have an emotional life, and I
- 21:43Speaker 3: want to know about it because I want to know
- 21:44Speaker 3: who you are. It's where that comes from that really
- 21:47Speaker 3: makes us understand each other.
- 21:49Speaker 1: And some people are so good at this the rest
- 21:52Speaker 1: of us. It's a learned skill.
- 21:54Speaker 3: You know. I think for those people who are good
- 21:55Speaker 3: at it, it's also learned for them. Like one of
- 21:57Speaker 3: the interesting things is, when I started writing this book,
- 22:00Speaker 3: assumed that the supercommunicators are going to be people who
- 22:02Speaker 3: are really charismatic, people who are extroverts, and it turns
- 22:04Speaker 3: out that's not right at all. It's basically anyone can
- 22:08Speaker 3: become a super communicator. It's just a set of skills
- 22:10Speaker 3: that we learn. And when you talk to those people
- 22:12Speaker 3: who are consistent super communicators who can do it with
- 22:14Speaker 3: almost anyone, and you ask them if you always been
- 22:16Speaker 3: good at this, what they often say is no. In
- 22:19Speaker 3: high school, I had real trouble making friends. I had
- 22:21Speaker 3: to study how kids talk to each other, or or
- 22:23Speaker 3: my parents got divorced, and I had to be the
- 22:25Speaker 3: peacemaker between them. In other words, what they're saying is
- 22:28Speaker 3: there was a time in my life I had to
- 22:30Speaker 3: think about communication just a little bit more. And it's
- 22:33Speaker 3: that thinking about communication that makes us good at it.
- 22:36Speaker 2: Wow, all right. Number four.
- 22:38Speaker 1: The way I wrote it is explore if identities are
- 22:40Speaker 1: important to the discussion, and they're always important to the discussion.
- 22:44Speaker 2: Yeah, this is I think this is complicated.
- 22:46Speaker 1: I think it's so rich talk a little bit about
- 22:49Speaker 1: this whole issue of identities, because this could have been
- 22:53Speaker 1: a whole book.
- 22:53Speaker 3: I think I totally agree, And you're right, it is complicated,
- 22:57Speaker 3: particularly now right it almost feels like talking about ID
- 23:00Speaker 3: is like kryptonite. And yet yet we know that it's
- 23:06Speaker 3: not only our similarities that bring us together, it's also
- 23:09Speaker 3: our differences. The reason I enjoy talking to you is
- 23:11Speaker 3: that you do see things a little bit differently than me,
- 23:14Speaker 3: and that's interesting to me. And if I came into
- 23:16Speaker 3: this conversation and I didn't say, you know, Andy, I
- 23:19Speaker 3: know that you're a man of faith and I have
- 23:21Speaker 3: less of a faith practice. Or you know someone you're
- 23:24Speaker 3: talking to, you know you're black and I'm white, and
- 23:27Speaker 3: you probably see some things in our city differently, and
- 23:29Speaker 3: I'm kind of curious about that. I want to learn
- 23:31Speaker 3: about that. When we acknowledge our differences as much as
- 23:35Speaker 3: we acknowledge our similarities. What we're doing is we're setting
- 23:39Speaker 3: ourselves up to have more robust conversations to really learn
- 23:42Speaker 3: who the other person is. Now, there's some pit holes here, right.
- 23:45Speaker 3: You gotta be careful about this stuff. For one thing,
- 23:49Speaker 3: you don't want to talk about just one identity. If
- 23:52Speaker 3: I say to someone, oh, you're the black guy, or
- 23:54Speaker 3: you're the woman, or you're the pastor.
- 23:56Speaker 2: Yep.
- 23:57Speaker 3: So like, what I'm doing is I'm pushing you into
- 23:59Speaker 3: a stetereotype. And it's probably a stereotype that doesn't feel
- 24:02Speaker 3: good to you, because you are so much more than
- 24:05Speaker 3: a pastor. Right. You're a pastor, you're a father, you're
- 24:08Speaker 3: a son, you're a business leader. You are someone who
- 24:11Speaker 3: invests in the community. If I say, Andy, I'm wondering,
- 24:15Speaker 3: let's take policing. You know, you probably have some thoughts
- 24:18Speaker 3: on policing in Atlanta as a pastor, but as a
- 24:21Speaker 3: business leader you probably see it from a slightly different perspective.
- 24:24Speaker 3: And as a father you probably think about this a
- 24:26Speaker 3: little bit different. I'm wondering, when we invite all those
- 24:29Speaker 3: identities to the table, how do you think about this? Now,
- 24:33Speaker 3: what I'm doing is I'm saying, show me the multitudes
- 24:37Speaker 3: you contain, and we all contain those multitudes.
- 24:41Speaker 1: Reading this section was so convicting because you know, when
- 24:44Speaker 1: you meet people in a corporate environment, they've done an interview,
- 24:48Speaker 1: so they've presented, you know, one facet of themselves to
- 24:51Speaker 1: some extent. Then they come to work for you and
- 24:53Speaker 1: they have a job description, and then there's performance reports.
- 24:56Speaker 1: You know, if I'm not careful, if we're not careful,
- 24:58Speaker 1: it just stays in and they're just in that box. Yeah,
- 25:02Speaker 1: and then one day you walk out of the parking
- 25:03Speaker 1: lot and you see what they're driving, and you're and
- 25:06Speaker 1: suddenly even oh, like they have a car, you know,
- 25:11Speaker 1: they're going they're going home, you know, or they mentioned
- 25:14Speaker 1: something about their children.
- 25:15Speaker 2: It's like, oh, yeah, she's a mom. You know. I
- 25:17Speaker 2: know it sounds so trite.
- 25:19Speaker 1: But learning or disciplining ourselves or creating the habit of
- 25:23Speaker 1: moving the conversations past the why we're here initially to
- 25:28Speaker 1: those multitude of identities, because the other thing too, in
- 25:32Speaker 1: Christian world, we get caught up in we talk about
- 25:34Speaker 1: an identity, and that's incorrect. We all have multiple identities,
- 25:40Speaker 1: and to bring that into the context of conversation just quick,
- 25:46Speaker 1: little anecdotic, and I think I've shared this before on
- 25:48Speaker 1: our podcast. I don't even know what the context was,
- 25:51Speaker 1: but Sandra's my wife, you know. For me, she's wife
- 25:55Speaker 1: and was girlfriend and wife and you know, best friend.
- 25:59Speaker 1: The most emotional moment almost of her life was when
- 26:02Speaker 1: her dad walked down when she we just had her
- 26:04Speaker 1: first child and she's holding Andrew, she's feeding him. Her
- 26:07Speaker 1: dad comes downstairs and watches her feeding Andrew and he
- 26:10Speaker 1: says to her, and I can she still gets emotional.
- 26:13Speaker 1: Her dad says to her, you're a great mom. Well,
- 26:19Speaker 1: what he did in that moment, she is primarily his daughter.
- 26:24Speaker 1: He recognized one of her identities, and hearing her father
- 26:29Speaker 1: recognize that again, it's we're multiple identities. That story has
- 26:34Speaker 1: reminded me, and I just try to keep it front
- 26:36Speaker 1: center that everybody I'm come into contact with there are
- 26:39Speaker 1: layers of identities, and if I truly love them and
- 26:42Speaker 1: care about them and want the best for them, I
- 26:45Speaker 1: can't do that well if I'm not at least curious
- 26:48Speaker 1: and acknowledge what's obvious in terms of multiple identities, and
- 26:52Speaker 1: at the same time explore and get enough information to
- 26:54Speaker 1: where I can appreciate those things.
- 26:56Speaker 3: So anyway, and I'm sure Sandra felt so seen by
- 26:59Speaker 3: her dad such a deep and meaningful.
- 27:02Speaker 2: To this day, and that was thirty, like thirty years ago. Yeah,
- 27:05Speaker 2: it's still an emotional yeah, yeah.
- 27:08Speaker 3: Well, And it's interesting because when we think about business,
- 27:11Speaker 3: like I think, and I think every leader listening probably
- 27:14Speaker 3: feels this in one way or another, that our goal
- 27:17Speaker 3: as a leader is not only to be a communicator.
- 27:19Speaker 3: Our goal is to make our exchanges with folks not transactional.
- 27:23Speaker 3: It's so easy, right, It's so easy to fall into
- 27:25Speaker 3: that you're an employee. I'm paying it X number of
- 27:28Speaker 3: dollars per hour. I want eight hours a day out
- 27:29Speaker 3: of you. We all know that, Like, we don't do
- 27:33Speaker 3: our best work or give our best work when it
- 27:34Speaker 3: feels like a transaction. And so how do we get
- 27:37Speaker 3: beyond that transaction. The way we do is by saying
- 27:40Speaker 3: to the other person, I see you as more than
- 27:43Speaker 3: just my employee. I want to understand who you are,
- 27:47Speaker 3: because the truth of the matter is that the value
- 27:49Speaker 3: you bring to this company is not just your labor.
- 27:52Speaker 3: The value you bring is your experiences and perspectives. And
- 27:56Speaker 3: if I don't invite that and unlock that I'm robbing myself.
- 28:00Speaker 1: Right now, all of this okay, if I can just
- 28:03Speaker 1: play Devil's advocate for a minute, which is a pastor.
- 28:06Speaker 1: I'm never supposed to play that role, but I will
- 28:07Speaker 1: for just a minute.
- 28:09Speaker 2: So I don't think anybody listening this would argue like, oh,
- 28:12Speaker 2: that's ridiculous. Well, the pushback is, wait, wait, wait, how
- 28:16Speaker 2: in the world do I keep all of this?
- 28:17Speaker 3: Oh?
- 28:17Speaker 2: Wait?
- 28:18Speaker 1: Do I need to walk around with the list? So
- 28:20Speaker 1: can you now that you've kind of teased those four out,
- 28:23Speaker 1: how does this actually work? Or how do you catalog this?
- 28:27Speaker 1: Or how do you as you approach a situation? Do
- 28:30Speaker 1: you have some tips for keeping these four things front
- 28:32Speaker 1: and center? That would be so helpful?
- 28:34Speaker 3: And I think the key is because you're exactly right,
- 28:36Speaker 3: it can feel like a lot right, and you don't
- 28:37Speaker 3: have to do all of this at once. You don't
- 28:39Speaker 3: have to do it in every conversation. That's why I
- 28:41Speaker 3: think it's making it into skills is so important. And
- 28:43Speaker 3: I think there's just three basic skills that if somebody
- 28:46Speaker 3: learns them, it's going to set off a chain reaction
- 28:48Speaker 3: that lets them do all of this.
- 28:49Speaker 2: Oh good.
- 28:50Speaker 3: The first one is just listen a little bit more
- 28:54Speaker 3: for when people tell you what kind of conversation they want.
- 28:57Speaker 3: If I say this something emotional, If I say I
- 28:58Speaker 3: saw my kid graduate this weekend, asking that emotional question,
- 29:02Speaker 3: what did that feel like? That's going to let us
- 29:04Speaker 3: have an emotional conversation. So you're not going to get
- 29:07Speaker 3: it right every time, and that's okay, and you don't
- 29:09Speaker 3: have to remember every time, but just whenever you're listening,
- 29:12Speaker 3: just say like, is this person in a practical state
- 29:15Speaker 3: of mind or a social state of mind or an
- 29:17Speaker 3: emotional state of mind. That's first skill. Second skill those
- 29:19Speaker 3: deep questions. If you ask deep questions, you're ninety percent
- 29:24Speaker 3: of the way they are because you are asking questions
- 29:27Speaker 3: of people that allows them, invites them to tell you
- 29:30Speaker 3: who they really are, and your instincts are going to
- 29:33Speaker 3: take over. You're going to ask a follow up question,
- 29:35Speaker 3: You're going to share something about yourself. We all know
- 29:38Speaker 3: how to have real conversations. It's hardwired into our brains
- 29:42Speaker 3: and we often trigger it with a deep question. And
- 29:45Speaker 3: then the third skill is sometimes we need to prove
- 29:49Speaker 3: that we're listening, you know, particularly in a tense conversation,
- 29:53Speaker 3: particularly in a conflict conversation, there is this suspicion in
- 29:57Speaker 3: the back of my head as I'm arguing with you,
- 30:00Speaker 3: you're not actually listening to me. You wait for you
- 30:02Speaker 3: to stop.
- 30:03Speaker 2: Yeah exactly, yeah.
- 30:04Speaker 3: Exactly, and you think the same thing about me.
- 30:06Speaker 2: Right.
- 30:06Speaker 1: Well, we've all done it, right, we all yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
- 30:09Speaker 1: whatever my turn yeah yeah.
- 30:11Speaker 3: And so what we have to do is we have
- 30:13Speaker 3: to prove that we're listening. And that's not in our
- 30:15Speaker 3: behavior while someone is speaking, that's in our behavior after
- 30:18Speaker 3: they finish speaking. And there's this technique that I love,
- 30:21Speaker 3: particularly for conflict conversations that's known as looping for understanding,
- 30:24Speaker 3: and it has these three steps. Step one is you
- 30:26Speaker 3: ask a question, preferably a deep question. Step two is,
- 30:30Speaker 3: once they answer the question, repeat back in your own
- 30:32Speaker 3: words what you heard them say, but in your own words,
- 30:35Speaker 3: don't just mimic them, match them, show them you're processing this.
- 30:39Speaker 3: And then step number three is ask if you got
- 30:43Speaker 3: it right. And we often forget that third step right
- 30:46Speaker 3: because but it's the most important one, because what I'm
- 30:49Speaker 3: doing when I ask you if I got it right,
- 30:51Speaker 3: is I'm asking you for you might say no, no, no,
- 30:53Speaker 3: You actually miss the point I'm trying to make or
- 30:55Speaker 3: you might say, what I'm really doing is I'm asking
- 30:57Speaker 3: you permission to acknowledge that I've listened to you, and
- 31:01Speaker 3: that's going to make you so much more likely to
- 31:02Speaker 3: listen to me in return.
- 31:04Speaker 2: Wow.
- 31:05Speaker 3: And if you just practice those three skills again, you
- 31:07Speaker 3: don't have to do it every conversation, you don't have
- 31:09Speaker 3: to do it every day. But if you just practice them,
- 31:12Speaker 3: whatever occurs to you, your brain will make them into
- 31:15Speaker 3: habits and you will find yourself almost automatically doing it
- 31:19Speaker 3: without even thinking about it.
- 31:20Speaker 1: Well, as we wrap up, I want to go back
- 31:22Speaker 1: to the first one of those because I think if
- 31:24Speaker 1: we get the first one right, the other two I
- 31:27Speaker 1: think they flow naturally from it.
- 31:29Speaker 2: Those deep questions give us.
- 31:31Speaker 1: Some more examples, and you can pick a relationship or
- 31:33Speaker 1: a non relationship, you.
- 31:35Speaker 2: Know, because it's how you doing, where are you from?
- 31:37Speaker 2: Where'd you go to school? Yeah? Me too?
- 31:39Speaker 1: Wouldn't the game good service? Service service help us with
- 31:42Speaker 1: that a little bit?
- 31:43Speaker 3: So here's the rule to kind of remember. Don't ask
- 31:46Speaker 3: about the facts of someone's life, ask how they feel
- 31:49Speaker 3: about their life. So there's a guy named Nicholas Epley
- 31:52Speaker 3: who's a professor at the University's Chicago, and he studied
- 31:55Speaker 3: this a lot. And he does this thing where he'll
- 31:56Speaker 3: get on a bus and he'll sit next to a
- 31:58Speaker 3: stranger and his goal is to get to someone's hopes
- 32:01Speaker 3: and dreams within three questions. And so we'll ask them like,
- 32:04Speaker 3: you know, where do you like? Like what do you
- 32:07Speaker 3: do for a living? Oh, I'm an accountant. Oh did
- 32:09Speaker 3: you always want to be an accountant? Is that what
- 32:10Speaker 3: you dreamed of as a kid? Or you know where
- 32:13Speaker 3: do you live? Oh? I live over I live in
- 32:15Speaker 3: the heights. Oh you know, I was just wondering, like, like,
- 32:18Speaker 3: what do you love about living in the heights'? What's
- 32:20Speaker 3: the thing that keeps you there? These are easy things
- 32:24Speaker 3: to ask. They don't seem awkward, right. They seem like
- 32:26Speaker 3: a curious question. And yet because I'm not asking you
- 32:29Speaker 3: about the facts of your life, I'm asking how you
- 32:31Speaker 3: feel about your life. Wow, I am inviting you to share.
- 32:34Speaker 3: I'm not mandating that you share. It's not an interrogation,
- 32:37Speaker 3: but I'm inviting you to share something with me.
- 32:40Speaker 1: And again, in organizational life, this is easy to do
- 32:45Speaker 1: if we'll just remember to do it. Yeah, and again,
- 32:48Speaker 1: and then flowing from there and keeping the identity thing
- 32:51Speaker 1: in mind. Anyway, there's so much in this book, and
- 32:53Speaker 1: I can understand why you sort of put your personal
- 32:56Speaker 1: journey at the end of the book because of the
- 32:57Speaker 1: way the book is structured. But when I read that,
- 32:59Speaker 1: I kind of thought, this makes you so human and
- 33:02Speaker 1: as opposed to being an author and there's personal anecdotes
- 33:05Speaker 1: and you know, business and all the stuff.
- 33:07Speaker 2: But when I read that, I thought, Okay, you know
- 33:09Speaker 2: what it did.
- 33:10Speaker 1: It did for me what you're teaching me to do. Suddenly,
- 33:14Speaker 1: you weren't just an author. You weren't just a great presenter.
- 33:17Speaker 1: You weren't just a business person who's you know, successful
- 33:21Speaker 1: and written a lot of books. You're somebody who struggled
- 33:24Speaker 1: with communication with your wife, your children, friends, And I'm
- 33:29Speaker 1: like me too. Yeah, there's so many things we don't
- 33:33Speaker 1: know about each other. But it didn't matter. Suddenly there
- 33:35Speaker 1: was so much common ground in that transparency. You know,
- 33:40Speaker 1: I'm in and we can all do that if we
- 33:43Speaker 1: just stopped to think about it.
- 33:45Speaker 3: Absolutely agree. And to your point in what you opened
- 33:47Speaker 3: with about where the world is right now, the truth
- 33:49Speaker 3: of the matter is, if I have a neighbor who
- 33:52Speaker 3: puts a sign on his lawn for some candidate I
- 33:55Speaker 3: don't like, and I've got a different sign on my lawn.
- 33:57Speaker 3: I don't want to be an enemy of this guy.
- 34:00Speaker 3: This is my neighbor, right, I want to be friends
- 34:02Speaker 3: with this guy. And by the way, who we're going
- 34:05Speaker 3: to vote for is like half of one percent of
- 34:08Speaker 3: what we spend our time thinking about. We have so
- 34:10Speaker 3: much more in common. We both care about the sinkhole
- 34:12Speaker 3: on the street. We both send our kids to the
- 34:14Speaker 3: same school. When we learn to converse with people and
- 34:17Speaker 3: we learn to connect with them, we all have differences, yep,
- 34:23Speaker 3: but we get beyond those differences.
- 34:25Speaker 1: Yes, and there is common ground with everyone somewhere, if
- 34:29Speaker 1: we'll start looking for it. And once you know about
- 34:32Speaker 1: somebody's story, is I you know? And if I can
- 34:34Speaker 1: kind of put on my pastor hat for a minute. Yeah,
- 34:37Speaker 1: I say to our folks all the time, the reason
- 34:40Speaker 1: your heavenly father can forgive you regardless of what you've done,
- 34:45Speaker 1: is because he knows your entire story. And when you
- 34:50Speaker 1: know someone's entire story, you can find grace. If all
- 34:54Speaker 1: you know is what they've done and you stop there, well, yeah,
- 34:57Speaker 1: it's easy not to like people. But when you story,
- 35:01Speaker 1: everybody has the same response.
- 35:03Speaker 2: You go oh oh.
- 35:07Speaker 1: And now our humanity is on the front burner and
- 35:10Speaker 1: we can make progress anyway. Well, Charles, unfortunately, that is
- 35:13Speaker 1: all the time we have today. Thank you so much
- 35:15Speaker 1: for being here, and to all of our listeners, we
- 35:17Speaker 1: want to thank you for joining us and invite you
- 35:18Speaker 1: to check out charles brand new book, Supercommunicators How to
- 35:22Speaker 1: Unlock the Secret Language of Connection wherever books are sold. Also,
- 35:27Speaker 1: be sure to visit Andy Stanley dot com. Andy Stanley
- 35:29Speaker 1: dot com where you can download the Leadership Podcast application
- 35:33Speaker 1: guide that includes a summary of this discussion plus questions
- 35:36Speaker 1: for reflection or group discussion, and join us next week
- 35:40Speaker 1: for our Reverb episode where we will dig deeper on
- 35:43Speaker 1: the topic of becoming a super communicator right here on
- 35:46Speaker 1: the Andy Stanley Leadership Podcast