Latest / Wired to Build / Guest Intro: Kyle Majchrowski

Transcript

Guest Intro: Kyle Majchrowski · Wired to Build

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Hey, what's going on everyone? Welcome to Wire to build, a
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data-driven, technology focused podcast digging into how
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building owners and operators use technology to manage the
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full life cycle of their projects.
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I'm Nick Caravella, your showrunner and curator, and I'm
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excited that you're joining us today to talk about the people
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that drive the change in our industry.
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You. Now, today's conversation is an
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exciting one that our guest and I go way back to when I first
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moved to Colorado and was trying to figure out the who's who in
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the zoo out here. Kyle and I met Thomas Grasky,
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who's our guest is author of Powerful Conversations, how to
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Talk About What Matters Most in Work and Life.
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And we met at a Ripple Intent meeting where Kyle kind of
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serves as a leadership coach, focusing on the high stakes
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dialogue between complex teams, really building off of his
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experience with Banner Health and Construction and all the
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different kinds of stakeholders it takes to get rojects built.
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O Really excited to kind of bring Kyle onto the show today.
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I get to know him a little bit better.
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O Welcome to the show. How you doing?
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Thanks and I appreciate it. It's a nice intro.
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Good to be here. Yeah, thank you.
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So I know you pretty well, but I want to get our guests a chance
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to kind of get to know you better.
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So let's get a sense of your journey.
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How did you get to this point where conversations became your
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craft in the construction industry?
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That's a great question. So I started a long, long time
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ago in the construction industry working as subcontractor con
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general contractor. And not too long after a little
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bit of that moved over to the owner side, the distant
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technology for a few minutes. But I've been on the developer
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side and the client owner side for by far the majority of my
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career. And early on it was, you know,
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pretty easy to focus on policy and process, procedure, just
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getting stuff done and ticking stuff off.
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It was, it was really my focus. I was good at it.
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I was able to be organized quick.
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I had all the tools. And and then I got the
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opportunity to lead a group that was pretty disengaged.
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And part of my challenge, and that hire was all right, you got
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to not only deliver work, but you got to get these folks back
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to be re engaged. And so I tried what I knew best,
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which was all that policy stuff and procedure and let's get
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educated and all this other stuff.
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And it didn't work. And so at some point, some of my
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team, which I really hold dear to this day, grabbed me and
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said, Hey, don't forget about us.
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And I said about who they said about us, the people.
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And that really started my journey down the path of
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focusing on the people involved and less on the stuff involved.
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And I think that there's so much power to that exact moment of I
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think there's always the aspect of planning versus doing and
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what happens in isolation, trying to come up with a an idea
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or approach that's separate of the the people who are actually
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going to be responsible for them driving that approach forward.
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So I'm curious, I guess in that initial engagement with with
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your peer, you know, what were some of the things that maybe
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you had blind spots over that they called attention to?
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I mean, a couple of them were pretty straightforward at the
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time. It was, you know, we're not all
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the same. We all have different drivers,
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we have different attributes, we have different motivations, we
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have different goals. We're all trying to do
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something. We're all individuals and you
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can't stereotype or lump us all together to say if, if I'm going
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to have a senior project manager, than this is what they
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look like and then carbon copy that person.
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Same thing. Then that expanded to project
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teams. You know, when you're running
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hundreds of projects at any given time as a department,
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every single one of those teams is unique and different.
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And while a client likes to, and even to this day, I, I still
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think it would be great, but I also think it's very
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impractical. We could give everybody the
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playbook on here's how we get things done.
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What, what I learned quickly was that will only apply to some
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teams because those teams again are made-up of individuals and
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those individuals have different needs, different wants,
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different drivers, different things.
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And So what if we flipped it around and said, let's figure
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out what the people want to do per project and we'll give them
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the freedom of empowerment to make that happen, as opposed to
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we'll tell them how to deliver work.
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And that's, I like how you say like teams and everyone's
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different and the, the aspiration for the, the
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playbook, the one, the one playbook to solve them all and
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kind of how that falls apart. And I feel like there's a, a
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good tie into like how that even translates to something
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everybody understands, which is sports.
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And like no team, two teams are the same.
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The chemistry amongst players are different and there's always
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that you know, how do you work with the ingredients versus how
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do you necessarily create a recipe from things that you just
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may not even have. When you do get to understand
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that team maybe like to keep digging into the the background.
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From your experience of you know, being a sub up to GC and
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even working on the owner developer side, what were some
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of the patterns you saw that or the around capital programs in
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the conversations that either led to the success or possibly
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even the shortcomings? I think the shortcomings were
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the easy ones because you we were able to see, OK, you have
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the the typical metrics, we were over budget, we were behind
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schedule, that consistent stuff. But then we're also very angry.
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There are a lot of fights, there's a lot of drama, a lot of
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infighting, not just within the the team, but within the
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organization. You have multitude of support
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services that you're supposed to work with and you turned up
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working against everybody. And then you have varying needs
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of different clients within the client.
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And so that all resulted in disengagement or feeling of
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helplessness or like I used to joke, you know, if we had AT
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shirt that said it's not me, it's this place, something
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people would wear it with pride. And with that, it was pretty
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obvious that, yeah, there's a lot of consistencies here, even
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with all different people that we have, we we seem to go
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through processes that result in the same thing.
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And so that those were huge motivations to be like, OK, not
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only are we not getting the work done, it's burning our people
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out. It's frying our people.
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I mean, it's causing good people to leave and then of course it
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causes less people to who want to be attracted to work with us
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and that's not helpful. So you start looking at some of
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the solutions. We started slowly, not all at
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once, but slowly we started empowering the teams.
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MO, as much as I want to say here's the playbook of how to
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deliver a capital project in our organization, what I want to say
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is part of delivering a project is you need to discuss all these
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different attributes of the project and figure out how this
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team wants to make those things happen.
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Yeah. So what's what's holding people
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back from having that conversation?
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Like to me it's like go, it doesn't go back to the project
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kick off and inviting people into the room to have the
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conversation like what? What's the trepidation?
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Most of the time it's the organization and the contract
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that comes with it. If you if you look at most large
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scale owners, you know, serial builders who who constantly are
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investing and their campuses and their organization and their
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facilities, they're going to have, I love your sports analogy
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because this is perfect. They're going to have the
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playbook of how to deliver a project and it's going to be
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built on all the past successes. But as we know, you don't coach,
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there's there's no two teams in the world that repeat with the
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exact same players year to year. People change, people grow,
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experiences impact us. The coach, the leader in the
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environment, has to recognize that and make adjustments
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accordingly. So you can't just pile up all
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the best practices. My gosh, if we did that, if we
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took all the best practices of every project ever delivered, we
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would never have a problem on a project again.
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Yet we continue to have them. So the question is, we know
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what's holding people back. I think part of it, a huge part
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of it in my experience, is that, well, there's either a
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perceived, implied, inferred, or flat out stated.
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This is how we do things and thou shall not deviate.
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So how do you give people the courage or how do you give them
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the empowerment to go, OK, well for this team, doing it XYZ
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might actually be better. If we do it ABC, can we do that?
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And there's some people who do it and some people who don't and
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some people who are nervous about doing and all those other
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different things. But I do think it's as implied
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or inferred if you don't explicitly state you're allowed
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to do what you want to do. And we can get to some examples
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about what this means. But when you start giving people
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the freedom to choose how they want to deliver the work, that
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opens up all kinds of doors. Yeah, it's risky, but the
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benefits are amazing. Yeah, and it's AI want to go
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back to where you talked about like all the best practices.
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And there's always a like a diagram that shows up on my
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LinkedIn feed about the the planes and, and the World War.
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And they're like doing the analysis of all the planes that
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came back and they see like bullets litter to the wings and
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all these other things. And, you know, the immediate
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reaction that even I had when I first looked at it is like, OK,
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well, we need to reinforce the wings and then we will protect
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the planes better. But then the the point of the
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entire article is like, well, flip it.
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You know, there was planes that didn't come back and that's
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where that those planes weren't hit.
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It's the the bullets that hit the cockpit.
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It's the bullets that hit the other, the other areas of the
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plane. And so I think there's this
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aspect of where, you know, focusing on best practices and
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this almost kind of has an interesting corollary to AI,
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which is really largely built off of, you know, best knowledge
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that we have at the time of it's not new ideas.
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It's the average good idea that best practices kind of are.
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And how to then take something where we're going to dig into
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curiosity pretty heavily on the next episode.
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But, you know, taking that step back and allowing people to
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challenge those best practices with better ideas that comes up
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with the new innovative stuff. Would you agree?
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Yeah, I would say so if, if we get really practical for a
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second, let's just talk about this is this is 1 real simple 1.
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So how are we going to meet on this project?
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Almost everybody has the weekly OAC cadence meeting.
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We're going to have that meeting.
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We're going to invite 35 people, half are going to show up.
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We're going to start it with a safety moment that we're going
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to talk about open issues. We're going to talk about this,
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talk about we have our script. And for some people that
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scripted cadence agenda is like a gold mine.
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Yet everybody despises that process for some reason or
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another. So instead of saying on this on
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on every project, we're never weekly OSC, the question we ask
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instead is on this project with the people who are involved, how
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are we going to meet? When are we going to meet?
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What are we going to talk about? We let them decide.
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And then first it's like, well, we got to have a weekly meeting
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and then somebody inevitably goes, well, why?
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Why do we have to have that weekly meeting?
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And then it evolves. And so, yes, some projects
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warrant a weekly OAC meeting or some version of that.
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There's nothing wrong with it, don't get me wrong, but other
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projects require a once a month in person with some phone calls
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sprinkled throughout. That allows them to touch base
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and connect. And if they need an additional
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meeting along the way, they'll schedule an additional meeting.
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But that situation isn't always explicitly granted, of course,
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from all the players of the project, we say, how did, how
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does this team want to meet? Well, what do we normally do?
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Let's ask AI what's the best practice for meetings?
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Well, then you're going to get what I started with.
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And it's like, well, that may not necessarily fit the people,
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the project, the needs. O now we're putting square peg,
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round hole. O you take it back three steps
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and just ask the team, how do you guys want to meet with what,
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with who and what frequency and that sort of thing.
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So it's the empowerment piece that changes.
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Yeah. And there's also like it forces
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the agenda where I think when we do fall into the weekly cadence
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meetings, it's really like we're meeting to meet rather than
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meeting because we have to and letting the teams kind of author
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like I need to meet weekly because I need to talk to these
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people and coordinate these things or I need to meet
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monthly. And because there's this kind of
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moving parts, I think it helps get the right flavor.
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And this is where probably the grunts, you know of us and we
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all happen to have been grunts at one of our lives is like
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going to these meetings are like frankly purposeless and
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valueless. And how those then start to take
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away from the excitement to work on the job because it becomes
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grueling to check the box for the best practice.
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That is probably not the best practice on this project.
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Yeah, absolutely. The one that I love to that that
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came out of this pretty quickly was communication and everyone
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we could, we could talk about communication all day.
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But the specific around this one was, I'm sure you've seen it
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too, and you probably experienced this.
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I mean, how many times do you send a note out to multiple
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people and somebody hits reply all and says thank you?
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Too, too often. And there's part of me that I
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like it 'cause I'm a very feedback driven person.
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So it's like, yeah, I appreciate the response.
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Now that we're like an emoji, like I started to emoji react to
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emails. I think that that cuts down on
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that though he's a little bit. But again, I think that
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highlights like everybody has their own flavor.
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Like I want, I want my read receipt.
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I want it. I want the acknowledgement that
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what I sent out for what's read, but I do not.
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Everybody probably wants that and we don't.
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Yeah. Half the people are like, this
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is awesome. We're spreading good cheer and
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gratitude, right? It's thank you and yay.
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And then the other half are like, I get so much damn e-mail,
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I don't need another thank you. Please stop replying.
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Oh well, guess what? We go back to that drama and
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stuff on the project. It's never one big thing that
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causes A-Team disintegrate. It's seven months of thank you,
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reply all meetings when you just happen to hit the wrong person
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at the wrong time and they totally flip their lid.
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It's the end of the world. My God.
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And then all this tension and everything blows up, right?
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So when, what what we do is upfront is you ask that
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question, you ask the team, right?
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The, the, the, the group of people who were there and you
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say on this project, how are we going to send those emails or
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not? And no surprise, there's two
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very strongly opinionated camps in answering that question.
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So one of those camps is going to win.
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Yes or no. We're going to do it.
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If they say no, let's not do it to cut down the traffic and the
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noise and all that stuff. The next question is then how
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are you all going to share gratitude?
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And that's the more important question.
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And I, and I like that because gratitude is not something that
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is frequently, at least my personal experience, like
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frequently visited in construction.
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And so, you know, I'd love to dig into that a little bit more.
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What do you mean? What does gratitude look like, I
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guess, on the construction site, across construction teams, and
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how do we build that into our culture?
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Now we got to practice it, first of all, and that's the biggest
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thing. And it's more than just, you
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know, hey, Nick, thanks for showing up today or hey, good
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job today, or thanks for taking a shower before coming to see me
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this morning. And it's more than that.
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It's got to be. And when you think of all the
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good stuff, yes, the things that we do, things that we see people
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do, things that actually we see tangibly take place, yes, you
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can say thank you. There's nothing wrong with
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saying thank you. It's good manners, but it's not
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necessarily gratitude. Gratitude in our world has to be
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focused on both behavior and impact.
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I saw you do this thing and this is what you did, and I saw how
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it impacted other people. That's awesome.
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That is the gratitude that we see practiced and we need to see
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practiced. And that's I think it's yeah,
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it's I love that you separated the difference between thank you
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and true gratitude of like visible like seeing the impact,
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I think, and recognizing and calling attention to it.
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Because that's where I think the little things you go with this
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is going to be probably be a big conversation about little
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things, which is kind of cool. And where, you know, everybody's
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showing up on the site and they're doing their own little
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thing. And it's all of those own little
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things that results in the project delivery at the end of
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the day. And where something as simple
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as, you know, installing a toilet flame just probably not
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so special to everyone on the project.
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But it could have been a really big deal to The Apprentice.
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That was the first time they ever did it on their own.
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And they did it right. And like being able to meet them
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on their moment at the journey. How, you know, important, I
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guess is, are, is meeting people at their moments.
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And, you know, how does that start to drive, I guess, the
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powerful conversations, what we're going to be talking about
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today? Yeah, you got to understand your
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people. There's no doubt about that.
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You got to understand who's there.
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There was. I've been watching a school
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expansion for the last year and a half, literally across the
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street from my house where I'm sitting right now.
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I'm looking right out the window and the expansion is they're in
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landscaping, so they're almost done, which is great.
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And at one point I've seen a lot of great stuff on this project,
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just observing it a few days a week here and there for, you
17:13
know, 18 months. And there was 1 moment where
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this guy's driving the, the forklift and he, he was carrying
17:20
almost a full dumpster and he bounced down the curb and the
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poor dumpster took forward and it dumped all over.
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The only access for that they had in and out to the site.
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Well, literally within about two minutes there were probably 10
17:33
people out there helping him pick stuff up and refill that
17:37
dumpster. And so it's not the matter of
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hey idiot, you dump the dumpster.
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It was the recognition that then came after that of kudos to all
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the other 10 folks that dropped what they're doing, came over
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and help them pick it up without saying a word, without making
17:54
fun of them. I mean, there's probably a
17:56
little jab in here and there, but it was only fun and they
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knew what needed to be done, so they got it done.
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And so when you recognize that behavior and say, hey, I saw you
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get 10 people come over to help someone out who needed help
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without being told, without being asked, you just did it and
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you guys did it. You clean everything up and then
18:13
you went back to what you're doing and that was it.
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That impact speaks volumes for the overall site, speaks volumes
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about the Superintendent. When you have that culture,
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that's amazing. And that's so powerful because
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it reminds me, we had the Hannah Amish on the show a couple
18:30
episodes back and talked about just the psychology of when
18:34
things go wrong and how that can just result in bad vibes.
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And I'm sure the person who spilled that dumpster was
18:40
thinking about it all day, if not all week.
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But because people jumped in to help them clean up the spilled
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milk, if you will, you know, the probably the impact of the
18:50
psychological impact of that mistake is probably far less
18:54
greater than them getting reamed out and feeling self-conscious
18:57
about something that they already probably were beating
18:59
themselves up over. So to the title of your book is
19:03
called Powerful conversations. What defines a power powerful
19:08
conversation in your eyes? More than surface level
19:11
conversation. So no in the in the book little
19:14
context there. So there's there's 20 plus
19:17
topics and the second book has 20 plus more topics.
19:22
So we've got I've got over 44 topics of things that we should
19:28
be having conversations about, but we often skirt over and a
19:33
powerful conversation. I'll give you an example.
19:36
When we start a project on the team, somebody inevitably says,
19:40
well, one of the ways we're going to succeed is we need to
19:42
trust each other. And everyone kind of nods their
19:44
head and goes, yeah, yeah, yeah, we OK.
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And then we move on. Well, turns out trust being a 5
19:52
letter word is a very complex with lots of depth and lots of
19:56
research and lots of books and lots of information.
19:59
And, and it's complex partly because of the matter, the topic
20:02
matter, but it's also complex because of how we all bring our
20:06
personal views about it. And so owerful conversation
20:10
takes you through really four steps and helps you dive into
20:15
each of those topics in a way that helps you do some self
20:18
exloration, allows you to do some learning, allows you to do
20:21
some alication, and allows you to actually look for oortunities
20:24
to take that subject and do something with it, with the
20:26
people around you. Yeah.
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And it's we say a lot of times like trust is consistency over
20:33
time. So when teams are new, how do
20:34
you cultivate that trust when you haven't had that opportunity
20:37
to deliver that consistency? And that's where I think part of
20:40
that flavor of like all teams are different come so true is
20:43
that, you know, we're all learning to work together many
20:46
times for the first time on every single projects.
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So even if you may have worked with me on Project A and Project
20:53
BI, collaborators could probably be completely different.
20:56
And so the amount of trust that you have for me from Project A
20:59
and then I'm going to end up doing probably something a
21:02
little bit different on Project B because the tools in my
21:04
toolbox are a little bit different could impact what
21:07
you're expecting of me. And I, I think there's just so
21:11
much awareness around that. That's so important.
21:15
So we talked about trust, starting to talk about
21:17
awareness, how in these environments like ours where
21:21
things are moving so quickly, stakes can often times be high.
21:25
Do we start to make more time for the coaching moments and the
21:29
the direct conversations that sometimes just we don't feel
21:32
like we have time for? Well, I think that's where on
21:35
the Ripple intent side that so we started that, that nonprofit
21:39
many years ago and we started having these powerful
21:42
conversations and groups and now we're in about 17 cities across
21:45
the country. And that accelerates the
21:49
opportunity to do this. Most people is if, if you are on
21:53
a project team or if you lead a team of people or if you have
21:55
peers and you go, hey, let's sit down and carve out an hour to
21:58
talk about trust. They might look at you funny.
22:01
What, what are we doing here? Or even gratitude.
22:05
Let's talk about gratitude. Oh, well, HR sends this stuff.
22:07
This is how we're supposed to express gratitude.
22:09
And you're like, OK, well, no, I want to, I want to talk about it
22:12
from personal. It can be hard, it can be
22:14
difficult. And that's where the more we did
22:18
the Riplington Breakfast Clubs, the more people were asking me
22:21
for either copies of the slides, the subject matter we're
22:24
covering or, you know, I want to do this with my group, can you
22:28
help me out? And that's really was the the
22:31
reason to put the book together was people were very, very
22:34
interested to have these conversations with the people
22:37
they worked with. They just didn't know how.
22:39
Yeah. And that's I really that was, I
22:41
think the ripple sessions were so impactful to me because I was
22:45
he's at the time, it's probably almost 10 years ago.
22:47
I was just getting my architectural license in a new
22:52
city, trying to figure out, you know, there's a lot of
22:54
differences between New Jersey, New York area and Colorado.
22:58
And I and I really have appreciate learning to kind of
23:01
slow down and not meet things with the level of urgency that
23:06
the East Coast can often times be associated with its rat rays.
23:11
But it was it was so great to be in a room with people from other
23:15
trades who were able to share from their personal experience.
23:19
And for me at the time where I was the I really embraced kind
23:23
of trying to be as vulnerable as I could be as a younger
23:26
professional of, you know, I don't always have all the
23:28
answers and how do I work with peers in and find space to be
23:34
vulnerable. And what I love about ripple in
23:35
town. If you do have a ripple, if our
23:37
listeners have a ripple in tent in the neighborhood, is it does
23:40
create that forum for like the low stakes conversation.
23:43
There isn't an attached project to the conversations that really
23:47
helped remove those kind of barriers of vulnerability.
23:51
That professional expertise. Often times, like you don't want
23:54
to get sued saying we don't know something.
23:56
So then we have to position ourselves, and there's a lot of,
23:59
I guess that song and dance that's done throughout the
24:02
industry about how do we say we don't know without saying we
24:06
don't know. But maybe that is where we can
24:09
zoom in on is that tension between process and people and
24:14
responsibility. And so how do we start to
24:18
facilitate those conversations where, say, you have a design
24:22
team that put together a design and of course, that design's not
24:26
soup to nuts. It never is and then you have
24:29
your subcontractor, general contractor with a problem in the
24:32
field in the field impact. Where do you perhaps as the the
24:36
owner in this picture, help start to facilitate the the
24:40
breaking of bread that maybe needs to be done between the the
24:43
two quote opposing parties? Yeah, it's, you know, it's my
24:48
fundamental belief is every project is inexperienced tension
24:53
in some level. At some point it's going to get
24:55
hard, it's going to get difficult, you're going to have
24:57
problems and two things are going to happen.
24:59
It's no different than any sports team.
25:01
It gets hard and you either fracture or you perform.
25:05
And what we try to do is set up all the teams with enough
25:08
practice and enough foundation so that when it does get hard,
25:12
they actually catalyze and come together and are able to deliver
25:16
and they don't fracture. It's difficult, but during our
25:21
onboarding process, during our kickoff process, believe it or
25:25
not, that the question I asked about the reply all emails, we
25:27
actually have that conversation during our project kickoff
25:30
because it's funny then, but it's not funny when it's seven
25:33
months down the road and things are hard and everyone starts
25:36
getting irritated with each other.
25:37
So we want to try to minimize the amount of irritations by
25:40
understanding what's going to actually cause those
25:42
irritations. But we do it by how are we going
25:44
to work best together? Yeah.
25:46
And it's actually the, the 1st chapter of your book was like
25:50
really the aha to me. And you kind of talked about
25:54
like struggling with connections a little bit.
25:56
And it was something that I, I felt, I realized as we in
25:59
business get driven by the transaction, right?
26:01
Well, it's like, what do we need to do together?
26:03
What's my responsibility? What's your responsibility?
26:06
How do we go away? How do we make the transaction
26:08
occur? And in our companies, the pat on
26:11
our back comes with the transaction, not with the, how
26:15
are you and, and how are you doings.
26:17
And So what are some ways that if you're at A at an
26:21
organization and you're experiencing kind of the
26:24
transactional nature of conversations that you can
26:28
perhaps bring the humanity back into it to help empower powerful
26:33
conversations? You're touching on a a real near
26:36
to my heart conversation, which is around connection.
26:39
It's it, it's something that I think is a country we've lost
26:44
the ability to do over decades. You can't just point to the
26:48
millennials or Gen. Z or anything like that.
26:50
You can't just, that's an easy button of saying they, they
26:53
don't know how to do it. The fact is, is as time has
26:56
marched on the way our society functions, we have lost the
27:00
ability to connect. It is very easy to have a
27:02
transaction, whether it's at Starbucks or anywhere else that
27:05
you go, OK, here's your thing, here's my thing, we trade
27:08
whatever and on we go. And it's the same thing at work.
27:10
Here's my e-mail. I need this, you give me that,
27:12
then we're done. How do we take the next step to
27:15
actually connect with people? That is one of the things I have
27:18
found in the feedback I've got on the book is by going through
27:22
the question sets in the book with other people, you're
27:26
actually accelerating the ability to connect with each
27:29
other. And we're not sitting down and
27:31
saying, hey, by doing this, we're going to connect.
27:33
It's, let's go through one of these topics.
27:36
I'll give you an example of a friend of mine.
27:38
She was struggling with somebody at work and couldn't quite wrap
27:41
her head and why and finally got this person's attention after a
27:46
long, long time and said, you know, can we just get coffee?
27:49
Because I know there's tension and we need to figure out and,
27:53
and it's just not, it's not a good place to be.
27:54
And the other person agreed. And so they sat down and the
27:58
first thing they did was pull out the book.
28:02
And she said, can we use some of the questions in this particular
28:05
chapter around motivation to talk through the starter
28:11
conversation? And the other person said, sure,
28:14
she really didn't know where this was going.
28:16
Well, the conversation then of course went couple hours between
28:19
the two of them because they use those questions to guide their
28:22
conversation. And those questions, of course,
28:24
resulted in a conversation that allowed the two of them not just
28:27
to become friends, but to understand better where each of
28:31
them are coming from and realize that they're not each treating
28:34
each other poorly on purpose. Lot of perception, a lot of
28:37
misunderstandings out of all their all that other stuff out
28:39
of that drama. But the power of the questions
28:43
that I gave them to guide that conversation allowed them to
28:46
basically tear down and rebuild their entire relationship.
28:49
That's really powerful because there's so many times where I
28:54
found it just my own personal experiences, like many times
28:57
when people are promote, have a resistance to something, they're
29:01
generally speaking from their fears, whether it's something
29:04
that they're not aware of or this is uncomfortable, something
29:06
they've never done before. And so they're worried about the
29:11
what ifs and they, they, the perspective they carry is their
29:14
own. And this is, I think where
29:16
connection becomes so powerful is that when you start to bring
29:20
connections together, it's no longer about a, a singular
29:23
perspective. It's about the shared
29:25
perspective of the whole. And how does, say my experience
29:29
help inform your experience and vice versa so that we can work
29:32
together as a team become so impactful, whether on on any
29:37
conversation of any level. I'm really, I really jazzed to
29:40
like dig into curiosity as a topic.
29:43
But before we kind of start to wrap this episode, I do want to
29:47
really like, you know, bowl and underline, you know what, who,
29:52
who do you think? Outside of everyone, of course,
29:54
Who do you think it really, you know, benefit from, you know,
30:00
picking up your book and what are some of the chapters that
30:03
you think can help people navigate some of the high stakes
30:07
moments that they may be trying to navigate, I would say.
30:10
You know, there's there's if you work with other people and you
30:13
have to actually work with them. We all like to understand and
30:17
believe that the way that we see the world is the right way and
30:23
other people can see it slightly different, but and, and for most
30:27
part, we, we are the right way. And a lot of the, the starting
30:33
point is with that self-awareness.
30:35
Who are you? How are you wired?
30:36
What's important to you? Where are you coming from when
30:39
you spend time there? So there's actually a chapter in
30:41
there about self-awareness and why it's important, how to walk
30:44
through some of the steps to get there.
30:45
And I highly encourage taking some sort of personally task
30:48
personality test or two or three.
30:50
They're all very insightful, but they help you understand
30:53
yourself. And that's what I would say is a
30:57
great place to start is with the self-awareness piece.
31:01
Trust, like we've talked about, is a widely misunderstood and
31:06
misapplied conversation. We talked about gratitude, grace
31:11
and patience is also a fantastic one.
31:14
When we talked about handling mistakes, when you see people
31:18
make mistakes or you see people struggle or you see people
31:20
moving through, some of us have natural inclinations to jump in
31:25
and help jump in and do it. Tell people how to do stuff.
31:28
If you have kids, you know exactly what I'm talking about.
31:31
Finding that pause within you to go, should I let them figure it
31:35
out for themselves or is it time to step in and actually do
31:38
something? That's the first step is
31:41
self-awareness, recognizing your own drive and wondering is now
31:44
the right time to do what my natural instincts are telling me
31:47
to do. So any one of those is a great
31:50
place to start, but I'd also encourage not to the extreme is
31:56
my example before, but if you have a friend or a close
31:59
colleague at work that you like talking about this stuff with
32:01
from time to time, rope them in and go through it together.
32:05
Pick one of those topics, ask each other questions just like
32:08
we will do in the next episode, but have that conversation
32:11
together and explore the topic together.
32:14
It's amazing how much fun, how much more fun and how much more
32:17
in depth you can go about yourself when you go on a
32:19
journey with somebody. And I think that's the perfect
32:22
tease into the next step is said.
32:23
So you know, when I think we we chose the chapter of curiosity.
32:27
I I I chose it largely because we try to promote that that
32:31
avocado and with everything we do around leading with
32:33
curiosity, trying to make sure we understand other folks.
32:37
And so that felt like a good fit.
32:39
And then the other aspect of where, you know, this is unknown
32:42
for me is this is going to be really my first time taking the
32:45
hands off the wheel of the podcast, really putting put a
32:48
guest of the driver's seat here to run a workshop.
32:51
And so there's, you know, I think a great way I'll, I'll
32:55
explore some of my uncertainties right now.
32:57
If you is just like, you know, I don't know how it's going to go.
32:59
I don't know, you know, you have a little bit more of the agenda,
33:02
I think. And, you know, there's things
33:05
that I have to understand that, you know, I've known you long
33:09
enough so that I know that you're never going to, you're
33:11
not going to leave me down any dark alleys unless we wanted to
33:14
mutually go down them, of course.
33:16
But it's, I think that's the exciting part is, you know,
33:21
being able to do something new requires you to be comfortable
33:24
trying something new. And I'm really jazzed about what
33:28
our next conversation's going to be as we dig into this topic and
33:31
learn more. So for those of you tuning in,
33:34
wrapping up the episode. But in our next session, Kyle's
33:39
going to actually walk us through how to structure a
33:41
difficult conversation, whether it's delivering bad news,
33:44
pushing for alignment, or addressing what's going on Said
33:48
we're going to frame this a lot around curiosity and how to kind
33:51
of approach new conversations and things that we might not
33:55
have done before. And so we're going to prepare
33:58
for that moment, that moment, surface what matters and and
34:01
figure out how to structure the conversation real time.
34:03
So I'm excited to kind of get vulnerable with Y'all on the
34:07
next episode. Thank you so much for joining us
34:09
today, Kyle. This has been an amazing
34:10
conversation, a powerful one, if I may even say so myself.
34:16
And so for those of you who enjoyed this episode, be sure to
34:19
tune in in two weeks. You know, subscribe, rate US,
34:22
share this with a colleague who might see some value, and keep
34:26
in the loop by subscribing to the Avocado Toast newsletter.
34:30
The links to Kyle's book will be in the show notes.
34:33
So please, if this is interesting to you, you grab a
34:36
copy and we'll see you in a couple weeks.
34:38
Thank you so much for tuning in. Stay wired to build.