Staying Connected in a Virtual World
Guest Speaker Carole Robin, Ph.D.In this episode of WiseTalk, CEO and Executive Leadership Coach Sue Bethanis hosts Carole Robin, Ph.D., leadership expert, former award-winning Stanford Business School professor, and co-author of Connect: Building Exceptional Relationships with Family, Friends, and Colleagues. Carole is the Co-Founder and Head of Programs of Leaders in Tech, a nonprofit which brings two decades of lessons to Silicon Valley startups. She was the Dorothy J. King Lecturer in Leadership at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business where she helped to further develop the Interpersonal Dynamics Course (a.k.a. the Touchy-Feely class) including co-developing the Executive version. She also became the Director of the Arbuckle Leadership Fellows Program. She was known as the “Queen of Touchy Feely” and received the MBA Distinguished Teaching Award and the Silver Apple award for contributions to alumni programming.
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INTERVIEW SUMMARY AND KEY TAKEAWAYS
The pandemic has forced us to renavigate what it means to connect. Carole brings her many years of expertise in building connection and functional relationships to this conversation on what it means to connect in an authentic way. Carole explains that by looking at relationships on a continuum, we can easily see what stage we are at regarding another person and take steps to build a better connection or an exceptional relationship. These steps are known in her book as the six core hallmarks:
- You can be more fully yourself and so can the other person.
- You are both willing to be vulnerable.
- You trust that self-disclosures won’t be used against you.
- You can be honest with each other.
- You deal with conflict productively.
- You’re both committed to each other’s growth and development.
Looking at these stages in workplace relationships, we can begin to see the need for more open, honest, and authentic communication. These are skills that need to be developed and reciprocated in order to create meaningful work. Whether remote, hybrid, or back in the office, we all need to find new ways of connection post-pandemic.
Some highlights and key takeaways from this talk include:
- A great practice Carole offers called “if you really knew me” that can be used at the beginning of meetings to get honest insights into what’s going on in everyone’s life. This practice encourages everyone to share how they are feeling in that moment and to be vulnerable and honest. (12:48)
- To become more interpersonally competent, practice disclosing 15% outside of your comfort zone. Particularly when it comes to disclosing how you feel or feedback, disclosing just a bit more than normal allows you to do so without too much anxiety and will probably be received better. (20:03)
- Creating space for people to give feedback is essential. It’s important to communicate what’s working and what’s not working. Leaders especially need to be able to receive honest feedback well and exemplify that to others. (28:27)
- Always remain curious about others in order to gain a better understanding of those around you. Rather than assuming or writing people off, take a moment to remove judgment and ask yourself why someone might be behaving or communicating a certain way, and find ways to talk openly about it. (36:44)
It’s simple tools like these that can be implemented to establish cultures of openness and connectedness. By taking steps as a leader to demonstrate vulnerability, authenticity, and honesty those around you will feel comfortable doing the same. Start with 15% as Carole mentioned, step 15% outside of your comfort zone toward creating more exceptional relationships and a more connected workplace.
FAVORITE QUOTES
“Relationships exist on a continuum. At one end of the continuum is either contact and no connection, or dysfunction. At the other end of the continuum is what we came to call exceptional…but the continuum is important. Because along the way, you reach functional, robust, strong, satisfying, without necessarily having to get all the way to exceptional.” (6:04)
“People do business with people. They don’t do business with ideas or machines or products or strategies or plans. They do business with people. So unless you pay attention to the people part, I wouldn’t bet that that’s going to be the key to success.” (25:21)
“One of the most important things a leader can do is model being a good receiver. Because if you don’t model being a good receiver, people won’t tell you the truth. And then you get to find out about what actually happened way down the road when it’s a lot harder to fix.” (34:23)
“Remain as curious as you possibly can. Because never has it been more important for people to understand that what is going on for them may or may not be what is going on for someone else….Curiosity is impossible unless you suspend judgment. You don’t have to suspend judgment forever, but you’re gonna have to suspend judgment long enough to actually be curious and find out what’s going on for someone.” (36:44)
RESOURCES
Carole Robin, Ph.D.:
Website | LinkedIn
Book: Connect: Building Exceptional Relationships with Family, Friends, and Colleagues
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Sue Bethanis 0:00
Welcome, everyone to WiseTalk today we’re excited to welcome Carole Robin, co-founder, and head of programs of Leaders in Tech, a nonprofit which brings two decades of lessons to Silicon Valley startups. Carole was the Dorothy J King lecturer and leadership at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business, where she helped to further develop the interpersonal dynamics course, which is the touchy-feely course in case anybody doesn’t know, including co-developing the executive version. Her newest book, co-authored with David Bradford is called Connect: Building Exceptional Relationships with Family, Friends and Colleagues. So thank you for being with us. It’s a pleasure. We had David on before. So this is a treat to have you. Alright, Carole. So I want to talk about your book, I want to talk about touchy-feely, before we do any of that I want to know like, kind of what brought you to this book.
Carole Robin 0:41
So I’ve had a lot of different careers. I started in sales and marketing. I was in consulting; I was in industrial automation. And I’ve had my nonprofit era, what I call my nonprofit era. My Stanford gig was the longest I’ve been at anything that I’ve done, I was there for 17 years. And how did I end up co-authoring this book? We have to start with how did I end up at Stanford because I would have never co-authored this book. If I hadn’t ended up at Stanford, frankly, I ended up at Stanford, kind of on a lark. I had gone back to get a Ph.D., when I decided that I wanted to leave sales and marketing, and get into organization development, consulting, and coaching. And I thought, you know, I kind of want to know what I’m doing on. I’m affecting people’s lives. So maybe I should get a little more education. I was halfway through a master’s in chemistry when I realized I didn’t want to be a chemist. So that’s as far as I’d gotten. However, I had gotten some of the basic business stuff because I was at Northwestern at the time, they were very magnanimous. And let me take some business courses. So I knew accounting and basic accounting, finance, little marketing. Anyway, I decided I didn’t want an MBA, I wanted to go back and get a Ph.D. and I ended up getting a Ph.D. in human and organization systems. And in that process, one of the gentlemen who was on my dissertation committee was actually very close with David Bradford, my co-author. And Charlie, his name was Charlie Seashore. And he said to me, you know, Carole, you should go meet David Bradford over at Stanford because they teach this course. And it was very oversubscribed at the time, they were teaching three sections of 36 students. And I joined them when they had gotten to four. And by the time I left, we were teaching 12 sections of 31. So it was on the rise. And at the time, I was a partner and principal at a consulting firm, and I was traveling all over the world. So it wasn’t really going to be all that practical for me to suddenly go teach all the time. But I thought, well, a quarter a year, I can be off the road. And so you know, and I remember vividly walking down the hall at Stanford at the business school and looking at all the names on the doors and thinking, wow, I wonder what it would be like to have my name on one of those doors.’ Never in a million years imagining someday I would not have a name become known as the queen of touchy-feely, you know, become the director of the leadership Fellows Program. I mean, it was just a lark really. And so then what happened is David was like, yeah, you’d be perfect. So I went to work teaching one quarter a year because that was the only bandwidth I had. And then a number of years later, maybe three years later the school came to me and said, ‘Would you consider a full-time appointment? Because there’s a whole lot we’d like you to do here.’ To get off the road for a bunch of personal reasons I took a leave from my consulting firm and said, ‘Yeah, okay, sure, I’ll, you know, I’ll be full time for a couple of years,’ then I completely fell in love with my students, decided this is what I was put on the planet to do, let my partners buy me out from my consulting firm, settled into my Stanford full time. And then and frankly, to this day, you know, I absolutely adore my students, and I adored what I taught. And by 2017, let me just say that no matter how much I love the students and what I taught, the elite academic institution, the environment was no longer for me. It was too big a cost to pay for me to keep doing it. And when I left, I, you know, I just chose I had earned retirement. I was not ready to retire, but I’d earned it. And so I chose to retire. And when I did, my biggest fear was, wow, I’m not done. And the thing that Stanford did give me that I will always be grateful for is an amazing cohort of students every year, who really wanted to learn this and soak this up and then go change the world with what they learn. And that was the hardest thing for me to leave. So that’s when I started Leaders in Tech, which we can come back to and that’s turned out to be actually a real blast.
Sue Bethanis 5:00
All right, let’s go back to the book. So certainly, touchy-feely had something to do with the book.
Carole Robin 5:06
Oh, yeah. In early 2017, an editor from Penguin Randomhouse, came to us and said, so let’s see, you have this class that 1000s of students for decades have said was worth the whole price of admission and has not only changed their life at the time, but continues to change their life. Why is there no book? And David and I said, because you can’t really learn this stuff in a book, you actually have to engage with other people to become more competent, you can’t read about it. And they said, so you’re okay with the only people being armed with these skills and competencies being those that are privileged enough and lucky enough to get into the Stanford Graduate School of Business? Yeah, that’s when David and I looked at each other and said, I guess we’re just going to have to find a way to write a book. And that’s how the book came to be. It took us four years
Sue Bethanis 5:58
So tell us about the premise of the book. And in that way, you could probably tell us the premise of the course as well.
Carole Robin 6:04
Yeah, the premise of the course, is that interpersonal competence is a determinant of both professional and personal success. Right? From a business standpoint, people do business with people. And that’s why it’s such a popular course at the business school. And of course, why is it a determinant of personal success? Probably ops. So the premise of the book is to take the lessons learned by the students in touchy-feely, they call it affectionately touchy-feely, the course is actually called interpersonal dynamics. Yeah, I always thought it should have been called connecting across differences, by the way, because it’s really easy to connect with people that are just like you, right? And bring those lessons too, as our publisher wanted, the world. Now, one of the things that we realized when we sat down to read the book was, we were thinking about, like, ‘what happens to the students? Like, what do they learn? What is their takeaway, and how do they get there?’ And that’s why it took us so long to actually and then by the way, how do we, how do we have a reader have an experience that’s, in some ways, that does justice to the work really, because it’s not a book, you’re going to pick up the airport in New York, read on your way to San Francisco, and then put in your shelf and say, ‘Oh, that was interesting.’ We weren’t going to write three keys to better relationships. It’s just a whole lot more complicated than that. We landed, as the title implies, on what does it take to build exceptional relationships? And there are six core hallmarks, which we’ll come back to in a moment. But more central is that relationships exist on a continuum. At one end of the continuum is either contact and no connection, or dysfunction. At the other end of the continuum is what we came to call exceptional, which I’ll come back and describe in a moment, but the continuum is important. Because along the way, you reach functional, robust, strong, satisfying, without necessarily having to get all the way to exceptional, we’re not trying to say that you should try to turn every relationship in your life into exceptional because that would be first of all, impossible. Second of all, it’s too hard.
Sue Bethanis 8:21
So let’s go through the six real quick, I don’t want to spend our whole time on it. But like, because what I want to do is I want to talk about the book and those six hallmarks. And then what I want to do is apply it to this situation that we ‘re all in right now. Because we’re thick in a very unique situation, the pandemic, we all kind of similar boat, but now we’re gonna all be in all over the place.
Carole Robin 8:42
Absolutely. So these six hallmarks also exist on this continuum, what happens when you get to exceptional is not only are they all present, but they’re all present to a great depth. So think of these six as the way to move along the continuum, right? The first one is you can be more fully yourself. And so can the other person, neither one of you is into spinning your image, or at least you don’t believe that that’s the way to create more relationships. The second one is related to the first which is that you’re both willing to be vulnerable. Now, that doesn’t mean that I’m going to tell you everything. And that’s why we talk a lot about incremental vulnerability and testing standing outside your comfort zone a little bit at a time, right. The third one is that you trust that self-disclosures won’t be used against you. And as you can see, those first three are iterative, right, a little bit of risk and telling you a little bit about me, then maybe you reciprocate. Tell me a little bit about you, then we both been a little vulnerable, then we both trust each other a little more. That’s how trust gets built. The fourth one is you can be honest with each other. Another way of putting that is you believe that by telling each other the truth, you create stronger relationships. That’s actually a belief and a mental model. Hmm, that one includes your willingness to give and receive feedback, and name what we call pinches, which is something that’s not a huge catastrophe, but a little annoying. The fifth one is you deal with conflict productively, every relationship has conflict, if it’s going to do these other things that I just talked about if you’re actually going to tell each other the truth, and you’re going to, you know, be honest with each other, you’re going to have some conflict, you can either see conflict as something to avoid, sweep under the rug, or something that will weaken a relationship. Or you can see it as something that can actually strengthen a relationship. And the sixth one is that you’re both committed to each other’s growth and development. And when you have all six of those, you’ve already moved off of the end, that’s contact no connection, and dysfunctional, and we’ve moved in towards exceptional and again, we believe every relationship can at least get to functional and robust. If you adhere to this.
Sue Bethanis 11:06
I want to apply this to what we’re going through right now. I mean, I just wrote a paper and I think you’ve got that. And I, the paper that I wrote has to do with we have a chance to refresh our conversations refresh our relationships, refresh, because we went out 18 months ago, without any warning, pretty much.
Carole Robin 11:26
and no training. Nobody, nobody had already told us that we might need some training.
Sue Bethanis 11:32
No training. And we went out. But the point I’m making is that in tech, I’m not talking about frontline workers. I’m talking about tech right now. We all went out in the same unless you’re in biotech, and at the lab, I’m talking about we all went out, we all went, we all went home, and we were all on the same boat. But now it’s all over the map. And, as you say, fragmented, it’s right. Yeah. And, and chaotic. And it already is starting to be, but it’s going to even be more so like I think a lot of companies are doing this September thing because kids go back to school. And so using September as the now we’re going to be hybrid, you know, before we’re working from anywhere, now, we’re going to definitely go into hybrid as they want you to come out the office. So I think that it’s going to potentially fracture, you know, we get two choices here, we can potentially fracture relationships even more because it’s even more chaotic. It’s a perfect storm for dropping the ball, essentially. But it can also be a chance for us to freshen or to refresh or to start afresh. Whenever a metaphor works, these relationships, I want to spend a little time on that I want to open it up to the group. Because I think these ideas here I think are you know even more important now, of course, you wrote the book right in the middle of the pandemic right before.
Carole Robin 12:38
We started it pre-pandemic
Sue Bethanis 12:41
So talk a little a bit, use a couple of them, or however you want to do that to sort of applying it to like how you see things now.
Carole Robin 12:48
first, let me say that one of the things that happened during the pandemic is that, especially in business, is the tasks got more and more foregrounded, while relationships became more and more backgrounded. And work still had to get done. People were more and more exhausted by Zoom, they had less and less relationship stuff happening. And we human beings adapt. And so now that’s the new normal. We used to actually ask each other how we were doing and what we did over the weekend and how your son was then how did that your daughter’s softball game turn out? And you know, so? Right. So that’s the first thing that happened that we have to both be aware of, and proactive about doing something? Yeah. The second thing that I’ll say is that- and its related is that the things that we talk about, which are tools and ways to move relationships along this continuum, and reach some of these hallmarks are something you have to double down on. Now, you have to do it even more. And by the way, lots of doing it even before the pandemic, but now they really have to do it. Right. So I’ll give you an example. Yeah, one of our leaders in tech fellows, we have a number of different offerings. One of them is a fellowship year-long fellowship for CEO founders, one of them after he went through our year-long program. It was right at the beginning of the pandemic. And one of the things that he of course, he’d learned about the power of disclosure, the power of vulnerability, he was a convert and the pandemic began. And one of the things that we do in Leaders in Tech is when we start a session, we have each person go around and essentially say if you really knew me right now, and that has to include three feeling words because you know, they call it touchy-feely because of the emphasis on the feely. Yeah, a different F word. Because if you’re really going to know me, I’m going to be willing to be known. It’s not about my deepest, darkest secrets. It’s about how am I feeling right here right now. So if I was gonna model that, I’d say if you really knew me right now you would know that I’m excited to be on this podcast with you, a little bit tired because I’ve lost track of how many of these I’ve done, somewhat disappointed and disillusioned that the message of the book is taking so long to get out there into the world, very disappointed in our publisher and the job that they did, sorry, and really thrilled that I have a new five-month-old grandson, because if you really knew me, you would know that everyone in my life is served by that because I have two things I really care about to spread my obsessive compulsiveness across. Alright, so that took maybe 30 seconds, right? I was a little vulnerable, you just got to know me a little bit better. And if we were having a conversation in an exchange that would be going farther than I suspect, you might be willing to reciprocate? And say, you know, so what would I know about you? So if I really knew you, you can answer that. But I’ll finish the story, which is that this wonderful fellow started a norm where he brings his team of eight C Suite together every other week. And they start their meetings with if you really knew me right now, and they all have their vocabulary of feelings, which by the way, is in the appendix of the book, in which every student who takes the class has as part of their syllabus, and they actually and they’ve laminated theirs, and they actually have to pull their vocabulary out. Yeah, my three feelings.
Sue Bethanis 16:30
Well, I just again, except this sounds like a simple thing. I mean, that’s the first thing that I said in my article is that to understand one another, and to start afresh, do check-ins, I mean, it was the first thing I said, and it sounds so simple. What you just said was so simple, but it grounds us, it disarms us yeah, the article is about taking our armor off. It’s like we need to disarm ourselves and get vulnerable. Because immediately if we see what’s going on for us, especially right now, not in the moment, then it’s too hard to be an asshole actually. It really is.
Carole Robin 17:03
And I guess I’d say the other thing is, if I am being an asshole, then you might have a little bit of context as to why I’m being. And you might want a little more of a break. Yeah, I and I do think that there are check-ins and there are check-ins. And so the way in which you structure and intentionally and deliberately ask for a check-in that actually has people have to take a bit of the armor off matters. Yeah. If you let me know that I we were at a wonderful barbecue over the weekend. And it was really fun. Did you really get to know me, but its a check-in.
Sue Bethanis 17:37
And I mean, I think that that check-in is a wonderful one. Because it’s something you can just you can do every time and it’s gonna be different. Exactly. And I said the same things like saying, how’s everybody doing? Or how you doing? is not going to do the trick. It’s like, fine. Fine, I’m ready. I’m ready to go. Yeah. And I had a series of questions. And I mean, I think it’s interesting to, to pose different kinds of questions, but I think the idea I love the idea of like, if you want to know me, now, you’ll know that I was scrambling to get on this call, because I was trying to ensure that my son was out the door. And he was knocking on the door like as in, like at the hour and, you know, so he’s a little bit frazzling. And so for me to be able to like just, you know, just get here. Despite that, you’ll know that I’m what I’m dealing with. You’ll know me.
Carole Robin 18:29
Yeah. And I’ll know that you were feeling frazzled. And you know, how are you feeling right now?
Sue Bethanis 18:35
I’m great. Because I knew once I got into this because I love this, it’s one of my favorite things to do that I would be fine. And what’s the feeling word? Oh, yes. I’m feeling relieved. And I’m feeling happy. For sure. Yeah. Great. Thanks. So now I know you even better even more. Okay, awesome. Yeah. So Michael?
Michael 18:56
Oh, hi. Yeah. And I put the same question, thank you so much. I’m so enjoying the meeting today. I’m coaching a client who works in a very, I just call it a tough industry, you know, a whole business of very big numbers. And I’ll say real estate business, but very large public real estate company and the executives there, she’s having a lot of trouble. And one of the things that I know happens to her is that there are times in her old company, she’s new in this company, she would have been able to share sort of feelings that one might call vulnerable or feelings that are quote-unquote, positive. And, for lack of a way to put it, Carole, they don’t know how to deal with that. So she’ll do stuff in front of them. And she’s had me observe their meetings. And I can see these, it is mostly fellas, but I can see these guys going like they don’t know how to deal with it. It freaks them out. And they lose confidence in her and it’s very unfair and it creates kind of a bad cycle. And I’m kind of not blaming anybody in the system. But I want to hear your thoughts about that?
Carole Robin 20:03
Well, I have a couple. The first is that in the book, we talk about something called the 15% rule. And the 15% rule essentially says, We all have our comfort zone where we don’t think twice about what we say, they imagine three concentric circles, the middle circle, then there’s a circle on the outside, which is the danger zone in a million years, I’d never say that. And then there’s the circle in the middle, which is the learning zone. Okay, in order to become more interpersonally competent, we actually have to step outside our comfort zone. My students used to say, but Carole, the minute I’m outside my comfort zone, how do I know I’m not in my danger zone? How do I know I’m in the learning in that middle or the other person’s Danger Zone, or the other person’s Exactly. And so we used to say, think 15%, outside your comfort zone, just a little bit. And if you, if you disclose 15%, outside your comfort zone, you’re unlikely to freak yourself out, or the other person quite as much. So the first place I go to is one of curiosity, about what is the impact of her disclosures on them? And her becoming curious about that, and see if she can learn more about what’s happening for them. At the same time, their response is having an impact on her. So to the extent that their response is impacting her in a way, that’s not good for all of them, aren’t they better off knowing than not knowing. So now we’re into the role of feedback and creating a stronger relationship and moving along the continuum if I’m doing something that’s distancing you putting you off? Making you less likely to want to spend time with me? And you don’t tell me? What are you going to do? or What am I going to do? I keep doing it. And the more I do it, the more it’s going to put you off? There’s something about somebody breaking a cycle, perhaps that they’re in.
Michael 22:06
Thank you for that. Yeah, that’s most of what we’re trying, I think part of what’s happened is, what she thought was within the 15% wasn’t, well, it was in hers but not theirs. That’s right. And kind of like Sue was saying their comfort zone. And she’s now been got a bit of a brand, right. And so she’s in a spot where now what might have been fit within this more allowable circle. So anyway, that’s right in. And clearly, the goal is to get to a place where she and them and everybody can either share or talk about sharing and work it out. And so that’s where we’re heading. But I just appreciate your thoughts about that. I think what happened to her is what used to be 15% feels like close to zero for her. And she has to wonder, can she live in that environment? And how tough is that? and How bad is it? And yeah.
Carole Robin 22:58
And by the way, if I was her boss, and I really valued her, I’d at least want to know that that’s what’s happening for her. And the other thing that I’ll add is that there is a great deal of grit and courage and strength in having her say, maybe not to all of them, maybe start with one, maybe start with the one that’s more likely to be the most receptive or her boss. Yeah, just say, Hey, you know, I’m struggling here. And I’m afraid that I’ve been branded because we don’t know if she’s been branded or not branded is an attribution of something they’ve done, which we don’t know whether they’ve done or not,
Michael 23:40
well, actually, in this case, they do, they use their values for feedback. And without getting into too many of the details, one of the values that they gave her some feedback, she was, you know, hurt and felt this was unfair, but like you say, what did you say they’re complicated? So? Yes, yeah.
Carole Robin 23:59
But the bottom line is, I would encourage her to be careful with what she says so that she sticks with her reality, which is when I do this, and you respond this way, that makes me feel why. And, you know, when you interrupt me three times in a meeting, I feel irritated. And the more irritated I get, the less likely I am to offer up my opinion. But you started the meeting by saying you want to hear from everybody. So I think you should know that you’re likely to hear less from me if you continue to interrupt. That’s kind of the way to provide feedback to them about the impact of their behavior on her as opposed to you’re just trying to dominate, which is what we follow.
Sue Bethanis 24:42
Mike, thanks for plunging ahead and being vulnerable with the question. Okay. I want to talk about this 15% comfort, I use the same comfort, learning and dangerous, I love it. I love it a lot. I use it when I sell coaching when you’re trying to pick a coach like you know, pick somebody that’s your hairdresser. You can pick somebody you feel comfortable with, but at the same time won’t push it right, challenge and support, you need it. You won’t grow and develop. That’s right. And so that’s the way that a manager and an employee should look at their managers. Well, the same idea besides this using that mental model, like what are some ways that managers can use that model in this time that we’re in right now?
Carole Robin 25:21
Well, we’re back to – I’m going to keep coming back to this fundamental principle, which is that which remains unspoken, becomes unspeakable. And you can’t just go from zero to 100 in one fell swoop. So what we’re best served by right now, I think what we’re always best served by but especially right now, is what we just talked about, which is naming the things that are working and that isn’t working. ‘Wow, you’re slowing down enough to give us an opportunity to kind of check-in and see how we’re all feeling. I really appreciated that because I had no idea that you know, John was struggling with x.’ So it does not have to be feedback on something that I wish you would do differently. It can also be feedback on stuff that I really appreciate you’re doing that, that I hope you’ll do more of. Right, but creating the space or more of that kind of conversation because of the trap that we really got into during COVID. And it was a problem even before the pandemic, but the trap is to think we’ve got so much we got to get done. We don’t have time for that stuff. But you know what? People do business with people. Yeah, they don’t do business with ideas or machines or products or strategies or plans. They do business with people. So unless you pay attention to the people part, I wouldn’t bet that that’s going to be the key to success.
Sue Bethanis 26:54
Well, what we’ve noticed about zoom is that it is he mentioned this before, I don’t know if you use this word, but it’s more transactional. It’s easy to get into. Yes, you’re in the box. Let’s get into the call, let’s do it. That’s right, exactly. And so you don’t have a chance to linger. Like at least when we’re in a meeting in the same room, there’s a chance before the meeting actually starts to linger a bit and linger before and after. And I think so one of the things I’m suggesting to people is that like, find a way to linger, you can actually get on Slack after or get on the phone after with somebody and whether you’re on zoom still, because a lot of you know, again, I don’t know what the percentages are. But let’s say there’s, it’s 70% of people are going to be working from home. It’s just it’s a lot more than people going back to the office. So you’re always still can start afresh, even though we might be in the same model work model, we still can start afresh and start doing some more not being so transactional.
Carole Robin 27:46
Yeah. And I mean, to your point, I know some folks who have actually begun to schedule, open the Zoom Room five minutes ahead of time, leave the Zoom Room five minutes afterward, and those who want to hang around, hang around in the same way you used to it a meeting.
Sue Bethanis 28:02
I’ve also seen people open up the Zoom Room all day, I suppose Zoom Room all day as a way to just people literally be at the watercooler. It’s kind of cool to know your team. Let’s talk about feedback. Because I think that that’s, wow, it’s just everybody knows you need to give it and get it. It’s I think it’s still hard. I guess you have it officially under your fourth under being honest with each other. But I mean I suspect that it’s a part of all of these hallmarks in some respects. So let’s talk about it
Carole Robin 28:27
Embedded in any piece of feedback is a disclosure. If I’m going to give you feedback, I’m also going to have to tell you how your behavior is impacting me, by definition, that’s disclosure. That’s right now, one of the things that are really hard for me, Sue is that so many people have had feedback training, I guess some training is better than none. But sometimes some are worse than not because there are so many bad practices up. So feedback is first of all, a skill, as we both know. And there are ways to give it in ways that are easier for the other person to hear and less likely to land. And it’s also people have mental models about feedback, like when I say to people, so what’s the first thing that comes to mind when somebody says, Can I give you some feedback? You go like, ‘okay’, as opposed to like, ‘wow, yeah, sure how cool I’m about you know, I’m going to learn’ I was on a clubhouse right before I came on your podcast with a couple of former students of mine called behind the mask, by the way, and, and one of them said to me, Carole, do you ever get sick of getting feedback? I said that’s like asking me if I ever get sick of chocolate. No, would I want to only do a diet of chocolate? No, but do I ever get sick of it? No. He was like, somehow I thought that’s what you were going to tell me but that’s because I have so internalized the belief that it’s always a gift because I happen to be a big believer in data, and more data is better than less data. So to the extent that feedback contains some data, I am better off. So let’s start with the mental model shift that a lot of people have to make around. Now, mental model, we create those mental models for good reasons. We’ve all either had an experience been witnessed to experience where feedback went terribly awry. And what happens in those cases, nine times out of 10, there are, I think, three things missing, which are addressed by the model that’s in the book, it’s central to the course. And therefore central to the book, the students call it the net. So imagine three realities. In any exchange between two people, there is my intent, and how I see things. There’s what I do. That’s reality. Number one. There’s reality number two, which is what I do, what I say how I say it, that’s reality number two, that’s the only reality known to both of us. And there’s reality number three, which is the impact of what I said and did on you. Okay, now, there’s a metaphorical net, between reality number one and two, I do something you have no idea why I did it. Unless I tell you why I did or said a quick example. My husband comes home. This is many, many years ago. It’s one of the many examples I use in podcasts because it’s very easy to make the point. It’s also in the book, my husband comes home, after a long day’s work plops down on the couch, picks up the newspaper. I come zooming around the corner, I’ve been home with two little kids. I’m like, ‘Oh, my God, you’re home. Thank God.’ And he’s like, ‘Huh, mhm’ Okay, so let’s think about this. The only reality we both know is the reality that anybody watching this would know, which is that I’m speaking, I’m a little agitated, and I’m getting no eye contact. And the only response I’m getting is a grunt. That is what is behaviorally specific reality number two. But you know what I used to say, ‘You’re not listening.’ I don’t know I’m not in his head, I don’t know whether he’s listening or not. And by the way, I feel that you’re not listening for those of you who’ve been trained with ‘I messages’ it’s not an ‘i Message.’ It’s still an attribution
Yeah. And by the way, ‘I feel that you’re not listening’ doesn’t have a single feeling word in it. So if you’re going to stay on your side of the net, a, you’ve got to be behaviorally specific and b you have to talk about the impact of the other person’s on your behavior, period. That’s the data you have for them. Honey, when I speak to you, and you make no eye contact, and the only response I get is a grunt. I don’t feel heard. And when I don’t feel hurt, I feel sad. And I feel distanced. And I’m telling you this, this is the other important part of it. My intent. And I’m telling you this because I want to be there for you in a way that I’m not sure I can be. Unless you can be there for me. When I used to say ‘you’re not listening’, he’s to say, ‘Yeah, I am.’ And by the way he was, because then he’d repeat. Yeah, you went to that new nursery school that hasn’t opened yet your old spot, and then I get even more furious. Right? So I had to stay on my side of the net. When you do X, I feel Y. And I’m telling you this because, right. And that allows us to move into a problem-solving conversation, which is the purpose of feedback. The purpose of feedback is not to change somebody. The purpose of feedback is to say, we have a problem here, the way you’re behaving isn’t working for me. So what shall we do about it?
Sue Bethanis 33:43
I love that because the intent is important. But it isn’t actually as important as the second reality, which is this is what’s happening. Behaviorally specific and then the implication or the impact on you. Exactly. I love that. Let’s take this into a business context. In some respects, it might be easier, in some ways easier to say that to your husband, because there’s more security in terms of you know, the vulnerability, but if we’re taking this to a business context, sometimes people don’t feel that secure in their relationship with somebody to be able to do that. So assuming that’s the case, well, assuming that they are there isn’t security. So we’ll be an example of what they could, how they could say something.
Carole Robin 34:23
Let’s say that my boss, this is the fourth time he’s changed his mind about what he wants in that report. That’s, that’s a behaviorally specific thing. You asked me to do this. I did it. I came back. You asked me to do this. Instead, I did it. I came back. This is the fourth time you’ve done it. Now let’s say that the impact on me is that I’m feeling this is where you need the vocabulary of feelings. It’s an appendix of the book. It’s in the syllabus of the course. You actually have to go pull up your vocabulary, I feel ‘What do you feel? I feel frustrated, I feel unimportant. I feel lost. I feel discouraged. I feel let down.’ So first you have to get in touch with what are you feeling? Now let’s say you’re saying this to your boss. So I’ll be this person who is speaking to my boss. And I’ll say, and, you know, ‘the result of my feeling discouraged and frustrated, is that I don’t have quite as much energy as I want to have for the fifth revision. And I’m telling you this because I can’t imagine that’s what you want as the outcome. I imagine you want me to go at this with all the energy that I’ve got, which I had in the first round. So is there something that we could do to avoid the ongoing shift is there something you need from me? Is there something I can do for you?’ And then we’d have to have an interpersonal exchange? Okay, what do you need from me? What do I need from you? Is there some other way? Now one of the most, I’ll hesitate to say the most, but one of the most important things a leader can do is model being a good receiver. Because if you don’t model being a good receiver, people won’t tell you the truth. And then you get to find out about what actually happened way down the road when there’s it’s a lot harder to fix.
Sue Bethanis 36:31
Right? Right. That’s great. I love that example. Carole, anything else you want to impart in terms of these hallmarks in terms of applying them to how we move into this post-pandemic transition? Hybrid, whatever?
Carole Robin 36:44
Yeah. So I mean, the first one that I want to come back to that just kind of flows from what we were just talking about is, there is nothing more efficient than the truth. People will often say, a colleague of mine at Stanford coined that phrase because we would do these executive programs that people say, Oh, my God, giving feedback takes so much time, it’s, you know, it’s so you know, and we used to say, well, there’s nothing more efficient than the truth. So if I, was going to say, keep a couple of concepts front and center, that’s one of them. The second one is to remain as curious as you possibly can. Because never has it been more important for people to understand that what is going on for them may or may not be what is going on for someone else, right. And so if you’re behaving in some way, that is just maddening to me, I can decide to label you an asshole and want to figure out how to work around you, or I can get curious. You know, what’s, what’s happening here? What’s going on? And by the way, curiosity is impossible. Unless you suspend judgment. You don’t like to suspend judgment forever, but you’re gonna have to suspend judgment long enough to actually be curious, find out what’s going on for someone.
Sue Bethanis 38:04
Not wondering about it like the one you said before, like, if they’re being an asshole, there’s probably a reason why something’s going on at home or, you know, whatever.
Carole Robin 38:13
I am big on always naming my intent so that people understand what’s behind my question. You know, I’m asking you this, because I’d actually like to find a way to work better together. I’m telling you this because I don’t want to get to the point where I’m so discouraged that I actually stopped doing my best work. I, you know, I hope the outcome of a conversation we can have is that we can get to a point where we can figure out together, how we can best get through this. So there’s always the more complete you are, the better the interpersonal exchange is likely to be. And I guess the last thing that I’ll say is that we call the book Connect, because connection is really fundamental to human beings. Human beings want to be seen and heard and valued. We want that and others want that. And so, back to in business, people do business with people. If I don’t think you give a crap about me, I am unlikely to go out of my way to do something for you.
Sue Bethanis 39:22
Right, exactly. I love it. I love the book. It’s called Connect, and you can find it on Connectandrelate.com and leadersintech.org is also your website. Obviously, you can find Carole on LinkedIn. And you can find the book on Amazon, of course, thank you for being so helpful, supportive. I love the examples that you give. I love how calm you are. It’s inspirational. So thank you for that.
Carole Robin 39:45
Oh, thank you. And that I would back at you. I would say that was an excellent example of feedback on something that you appreciated. I never used positive and negative feedback. Some people might have called that positive feedback. I never use that because all feedbacks positive because it’s always data. And when you’re giving somebody feedback on something that you’ve appreciated about them, our tendency is to say, Hey, nice job. That a boy or girl, you know, good job. Thanks. Now, let’s compare that to the level of specificity that you just offered. And now I know what I did that worked for you. And if we were going to do more work together, I’d be much more grounded and have concrete understanding of how to show up in a way that would work best for you. Which by the way, might be totally different than someone else.
Sue Bethanis 40:37
Yeah. So thanks for that. Appreciate it. Mahalo, as we say, here in Hawaii. Let me just real quickly talk about next time. So we’ll be together again, August 25 at 2pm Pacific with Stephanie Johnson, She’s the author of Inclusify: the Power of Uniqueness and Belonging to Build Innovative Teams. Okay, so we’re applying all of what we’re talking about, though, to this to our culture or to the whatever we’re calling it the hybrid, the reopening of the post pandemic, whatever word works, the chaos, the mess, trying to apply all of everyone’s work to that right now, because that’s what’s up. And there’s a ton of uncertainty and we need to get it we need to be doing this together because we’re not going to do it by ourselves. Self care, everybody self care support.
Carole Robin 41:18
Thanks for giving me the chance to spread my spread my message.
Sue Bethanis 41:21
Of course, we love it. We love it. Thanks again, Carole, and thanks, everybody for being here.