Speaker 1: We put ourselves in situations, we push ourselves to the edge,
Speaker 1: and we do that in order to uncover better questions
Speaker 1: and insights. Welcome to the one you feed Throughout time.
Speaker 1: Great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have.
Speaker 1: Quotes like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what
Speaker 1: you think ring true. And yet for many of us,
Speaker 1: our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity,
Speaker 1: self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't
Speaker 1: have instead of what we do. We think things that
Speaker 1: hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not
Speaker 1: just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent,
Speaker 1: and creative effort to make a life worth living. This
Speaker 1: podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in
Speaker 1: the right direction, how they feed their good wolf m
Speaker 1: Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is
Speaker 1: Hal Gregorson, executive director of the Leadership Center at m I. T.
Speaker 1: How is a prolific author and motivational speaker, recognized by
Speaker 1: Thinkers five hundred as one of the world's fifty most
Speaker 1: innovative minds. He has authored or co authored ten books.
Speaker 1: On this episode, Hall and Eric discussed his book Questions
Speaker 1: Are the Answer, a breakthrough approach to your most vexing
Speaker 1: problems at work and in life. Hi, how Welcome to
Speaker 1: the show. Hi Eric, It is a pleasure to have
Speaker 1: you on. The latest book is called Questions Are the Answer,
Speaker 1: a breakthrough approach to your most vexing problems at work
Speaker 1: and in life. And we are going to dive into
Speaker 1: that here in a moment. But let's start like we
Speaker 1: always do, with the parable. There's a grandfather who's talking
Speaker 1: with his grandson and he says, in life, there are
Speaker 1: two wolves inside of us that are always at battle.
Speaker 1: One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness
Speaker 1: and bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf,
Speaker 1: which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And
Speaker 1: the grandson stops and thinks about it and looks up
Speaker 1: at his grandfather and says, well, grandfather, which one wins?
Speaker 1: And the grandfather says, the one you feed. So I'd
Speaker 1: like to start off by asking you what that parable
Speaker 1: means to you in your life and in the work
Speaker 1: that you do. Powerful parable, Whether we know it or not,
Speaker 1: I believe we're all living a question I happened to
Speaker 1: call those questions keystone questions. Like an arch with bricks,
Speaker 1: there's a center, keystone that holds it all together. And
Speaker 1: the real issue, at least in my life and in
Speaker 1: the leaders that I've encountered in my life, is whether
Speaker 1: or not we know what those keystone questions are. And
Speaker 1: these are ones that are powerful, centering, orienting, productive, positive
Speaker 1: and at the same time I've discovered Eric that there
Speaker 1: are shadow questions, and it's the other side of the
Speaker 1: wolf that you're talking about. These emerged from fears and
Speaker 1: shame and other kinds of things that draw us into
Speaker 1: a completely different orbit. And so one of the things
Speaker 1: that I've wrestled with in my life and some of
Speaker 1: the leaders that I've encountered throughout my research and life
Speaker 1: is um the tension actually between these keystone questions and
Speaker 1: shadow questions the drive who we are and what we do.
Speaker 1: Can you give me a little bit of an example
Speaker 1: of that, like what a keystone question might be versus
Speaker 1: sort of shadow question might be. The shadow questions for
Speaker 1: me were the first ones I discovered actually, and for
Speaker 1: me individually, they came over the course of a lifetime,
Speaker 1: and so they started to surface and emerge. Most abundantly
Speaker 1: through some really crucible moments in my life, and I'm
Speaker 1: just going to dive in, if that's okay, Eric, because
Speaker 1: they're the way in which these things became more real
Speaker 1: and apparent to me. So it was twenty fourteen January.
Speaker 1: We've been living in Boston for two years. I've been
Speaker 1: working for a French based university, traveling intercontinentally three or
Speaker 1: four times a month, and January I ended up giving
Speaker 1: a speech in southern California early in the morning. Went
Speaker 1: down to set it up, ended up um feeling pressure
Speaker 1: on my chest and discounted his anxiety. Went down to
Speaker 1: the place where I was giving the speech, got everything ready,
Speaker 1: continue to feel the pressure, breathe deep, tried to relax,
Speaker 1: wondered why I'm being nervous about giving us speech that
Speaker 1: I've given a hundred times. I was able to get
Speaker 1: enough energy, you know peace, said a little prayer, and
Speaker 1: stood up and did a ninety minute speech. Then afterwards
Speaker 1: the pressure came back, and then I started to get nauseous,
Speaker 1: and then I started to feel achy, and I'm not
Speaker 1: I need to get out of here. So I went
Speaker 1: up to my hotel room where my wife was as
Speaker 1: soon as I walked through the door, She's like, what's
Speaker 1: wrong with you? And you don't look well? And I
Speaker 1: explained to her what I just explained to you, and
Speaker 1: she looked at me quizzically and she said, are you
Speaker 1: having a heart attack? I, honestly eric said I don't know,
Speaker 1: but let's find out. So I grabbed my computer, looked
Speaker 1: up heart attack symptoms, had a list from one of
Speaker 1: the medical web pages, and everything was happening, and I
Speaker 1: said to my wife, my wife, let's go to the
Speaker 1: hospital right now, and she said, I just exercised. Can
Speaker 1: I shower first? I'm like, nos, cuz let's go to
Speaker 1: the hospital right now. And she was generous enough to
Speaker 1: give up the shower. We raced to the hospital and
Speaker 1: the moment that I had the words come out of
Speaker 1: my mouth, I'm having a heart attack, I completely shut
Speaker 1: down and couldn't say anything else. And I woke up
Speaker 1: the next day with three stints in my heart after
Speaker 1: two arteries have been blocked. And first of all, my
Speaker 1: father had had three major heart attacks when I was
Speaker 1: one was at four years old, one was it about
Speaker 1: thirteen years old for me, and one when I was
Speaker 1: an adult um and that one killed him in the
Speaker 1: final third one. But when I was an early young adult,
Speaker 1: I had committed to never have a heart attack, so
Speaker 1: I learned everything there was to not have a heart attack,
Speaker 1: and I ended up exercising, eating right, doing all that
Speaker 1: sort of stuff. But frankly, I never learned what heart
Speaker 1: attack symptoms were. So what I didn't know, I didn't
Speaker 1: know about heart attack simpstince almost killed me in that instance.
Speaker 1: And afterwards, about two weeks later, after this heart attack,
Speaker 1: I um, I was classic male, pretty quiet, kept at
Speaker 1: all the myself, the churn and the turmoil. Ands iide
Speaker 1: and ended up visiting with a marriage counselor. We're a
Speaker 1: blended family, we've been married then about a dozen years,
Speaker 1: and complex issues with children and marriage and all that
Speaker 1: kind of fun stuff. And she knew me well, the
Speaker 1: counselor did. And she looked me in the eye hole
Speaker 1: and she said, if you don't stop being nice to people,
Speaker 1: you were going to gift yourself another heart attack in
Speaker 1: very few years. And I realized that it just like
Speaker 1: thumped and hit me right between the eyes and right
Speaker 1: in the chest, and I just realized she's spot on.
Speaker 1: And that's the point in which the shadow question that
Speaker 1: I've been living surfaced in ways that I'd never quite
Speaker 1: grasped before, which was how can I make people happy?
Speaker 1: How can I, you know, professionally and even personally make
Speaker 1: people happy? So you wake up in the morning. And
Speaker 1: that's the question that I was living um and had
Speaker 1: its own deep and dark story that I'm happy to share.
Speaker 1: But but that was the question that at one level
Speaker 1: had propelled me to some incredible professional success because I
Speaker 1: worked really hard in so many different ways to make
Speaker 1: people happy, but it had literally warned me the bone
Speaker 1: and almost killed me. Thank you for sharing all that,
Speaker 1: And and the deeper, darker part of it for you
Speaker 1: was UM, a childhood that was not great. And your
Speaker 1: original question was how do I make my father happy?
Speaker 1: Which then morphed into how do I make everybody happy?
Speaker 1: And that's where I realized started to sort out and
Speaker 1: sift and uncover and and realize that, Uh, in today's terms,
Speaker 1: my father would have absolutely been emotionally abusive and to
Speaker 1: some degree physically, but in the continuum of abuse, it
Speaker 1: was mild in comparison to what so many people deal with.
Speaker 1: But for a four year old, when you're dealing with
Speaker 1: being whacked over the head or you know, hit with
Speaker 1: a belt for what you've done. You just you behaved
Speaker 1: a friently and you learn how to make this adult,
Speaker 1: big person in your life happy. Right? So, yeah, that
Speaker 1: was the That was the realization that that internalized shadow
Speaker 1: questions that grew as a young child when I did
Speaker 1: not have the ability or the capacity to respond differently
Speaker 1: besides just protect myself by making someone happy. That had
Speaker 1: lived on, and it had lived on vibrantly in a
Speaker 1: powerful way throughout my life. And so once you realize
Speaker 1: that was the shadow question, how did you start to
Speaker 1: unwind that? I'm going to ask that in a slightly
Speaker 1: specific way. Can we tie that back to questions in general?
Speaker 1: Because you know that's where we're going to go with
Speaker 1: the rest of this conversation is all your research and
Speaker 1: work on questions. Did asking better questions help you to
Speaker 1: unravel that shadow question? I think it was a series
Speaker 1: of questions Eric around and where did this desire to
Speaker 1: make people happy come from? Um? It was doing some
Speaker 1: powerful work with Keegan's framework around competing commitments, where you
Speaker 1: worked down to big, frightening assumptions you hold in your
Speaker 1: life and then you realize they're closely linked to these questions.
Speaker 1: It also came with the harrowing experience on Mount Everest
Speaker 1: a year later, in that that highest mountain on planet
Speaker 1: Earth forced me back into the same space of you know,
Speaker 1: what's the point, what's the purpose? Why am I here?
Speaker 1: What am I doing? And you know, it was a
Speaker 1: combination of really its combination experiences that leveled me eric.
Speaker 1: This experience that Everest leveled the emotionally, spiritually, physically, and
Speaker 1: otherwise in after year after the heart attack, and it
Speaker 1: was in that place of just being completely aware that
Speaker 1: I'm a piece of dust on planet Earth caused me
Speaker 1: to realize there must be a better way, a better question,
Speaker 1: a better approach. And and that's where I started to
Speaker 1: explore what might that be? And in fact I found
Speaker 1: my inspiration from a person who asked and answered some
Speaker 1: powerful questions and crete Alexander Popaderos. It's a whole different
Speaker 1: story there, right, It's quite a story though about him.
Speaker 1: Maybe we should tell that one real quick, because I
Speaker 1: think it's pretty powerful. It's incredibly powerful. So here's this,
Speaker 1: here's this young boy, Alexander Papadero screw up and create
Speaker 1: um a young little boy when World War two was
Speaker 1: going on in The Germans invaded Create in large part
Speaker 1: because the Greek government, as I understand that, took away
Speaker 1: the took away literally the guns and the arms and
Speaker 1: the protective means for the creations in the island of Crete,
Speaker 1: because they hope that the Germans would invade Create, not
Speaker 1: invade Athens. And so the Germans did invade. The Creations
Speaker 1: literally defended themselves against the vaiting Germans with farm implements,
Speaker 1: and they didn't have guns, if any, to really do
Speaker 1: much about it. And he ended up beating and pushing
Speaker 1: the Germans back, to the point that a few days
Speaker 1: later the Germans returned in much larger numbers and ended
Speaker 1: up massacring a few villages. It was just horrific in
Speaker 1: terms of the consequences. And so this little boy I
Speaker 1: was then to Papa Darius, and midst of all this,
Speaker 1: discovered one day a little piece of mirror broken off
Speaker 1: from a German motorcycle had been broken on the island,
Speaker 1: and as a little boy, he ended up sharpening the
Speaker 1: edges of that to where it was around like a quarter.
Speaker 1: And he ended up playing with it as a little
Speaker 1: boy and absolutely loved doing it, shining light onto things
Speaker 1: but here's this little boy growing up, growing up in
Speaker 1: the context where the island he lived on hated the Germans,
Speaker 1: and that was his context. But he was always a
Speaker 1: little boy in love with shining this mirror into dark places.
Speaker 1: And then when he became an adult, he actually found
Speaker 1: his keystone question question to some degree, which is how
Speaker 1: can I build a bridge of peace between the creations
Speaker 1: and the Germans? And he set up a piece institute
Speaker 1: to do so. And at one point he was in
Speaker 1: the midst of a presentation and one of the people
Speaker 1: in the audience asked the question what is the meaning
Speaker 1: of life at the end of this two weeks conference?
Speaker 1: And everybody kind of laughed and shuffled their feet and
Speaker 1: was ready to leave, and Alexander Papa Darius looked at
Speaker 1: the person very intently, realized the person really wanted the
Speaker 1: answer to the question, and told everybody to sit down,
Speaker 1: settle down, and then he explained that he's not going
Speaker 1: to share with him what the meaning of life is,
Speaker 1: but he's going to share with him what the meaning
Speaker 1: of his life is. And that's where he pulled out
Speaker 1: this literal, little piece of mirror and he explained what
Speaker 1: happened when he was a little kid in Germany and
Speaker 1: why he founded this piece institute. And he explained also
Speaker 1: that as a kid he had shined this little light
Speaker 1: into places just out of pure fun and joy. As
Speaker 1: an adult he actually enjoyed using in the same mirror.
Speaker 1: But it was a metaphor for his life, and his
Speaker 1: life was essentially wound up in how can I shine light,
Speaker 1: truth or whatever you want to call it, into the
Speaker 1: darkest places, the darkest hearts, in order for peace and
Speaker 1: good to come from that? And I just deeply admire
Speaker 1: Papa Darrow's and that story and that metaphor and that image,
Speaker 1: because that was the keystone question he ended up living
Speaker 1: day in and day out. How can I shine light
Speaker 1: and truth into the darkest hearts in order for things
Speaker 1: like peace to come out of that? O, let's change
Speaker 1: directions and kind of go backwards a little bit, because
Speaker 1: I want to I want to start to talk about questions.
Speaker 1: You say that if you want better answers at work
Speaker 1: in life, you have to ask better questions. You quote
Speaker 1: Peter Drucker who says the most important and difficult job
Speaker 1: is never defined the right answers, he wrote, it is
Speaker 1: defined the right question for there are a few things
Speaker 1: is useless, if not dangerous, as the right answer to
Speaker 1: the wrong question. So let's talk about you know, your
Speaker 1: statement that it's the questions that are important. Share a
Speaker 1: little bit more with us about that. Whenever we're stuck
Speaker 1: in our personal lives or our work lives, that's stuck.
Speaker 1: Goodness always emerges from asking the wrong question. And earlier
Speaker 1: we talked about me having a heart attack, and I
Speaker 1: was asking their own question, how can I avoid having
Speaker 1: a heart attack? When I should have also been asking
Speaker 1: what are heart attack symptoms? And it you know, it
Speaker 1: could have been incredibly dangerous. But in a work setting,
Speaker 1: it's the exact same scenario again, or at home with
Speaker 1: our family or partners or spouses that were around that
Speaker 1: we cared deeply about. Whenever we have that stuck moment,
Speaker 1: we're almost always asking the wrong question. And so a
Speaker 1: good friend of mine who is a senior leader at
Speaker 1: a not for profit organization that's global around the world,
Speaker 1: we were talking first about professional things, and then then
Speaker 1: it sort of merged into personal issues, and then it
Speaker 1: came up that he really had valued and treasured his
Speaker 1: relationship with this oldest daughter who was now turning into
Speaker 1: a teenager. She was starting to be with friends, and
Speaker 1: she was starting to pull away in the out, like
Speaker 1: the relationship was changing. And he asked a very legitimate question,
Speaker 1: which was how can I keep this relationship strong going forward?
Speaker 1: And and yet he was stuck. He felt like it
Speaker 1: wasn't going where he wanted it to go. Eric and
Speaker 1: I cared about him and we had a good friendship,
Speaker 1: and I said, I said, basically, let's just here at
Speaker 1: this restaurant where we're having dinner. Let's take four or
Speaker 1: five minutes, get out some napkins, pull out a pen,
Speaker 1: and right down as many questions as we possibly can
Speaker 1: about this issue in your life. And we're not going
Speaker 1: to answer any of the questions. We're not going to
Speaker 1: explain why we're asking the questions. We're just going to
Speaker 1: ask as many questions as we can for four or
Speaker 1: five minutes, essentially brainstorming questions. You actually have a methodology
Speaker 1: around this, yeah, you know, and it's called a question first,
Speaker 1: but it's essentially brainstorming nothing but questions as a means
Speaker 1: to create the conditions where new questions can emerge. And so,
Speaker 1: in this very informal way with my friend, we did
Speaker 1: this with Natkins in a pen, and we ended up
Speaker 1: with about twenty questions. And by the end of those
Speaker 1: twenty questions, these were questions like where are you spending
Speaker 1: your time? And what does your daughter really value? And
Speaker 1: when do her eyes light up? And are you helicoptering
Speaker 1: too much? And when is she independent from you? And
Speaker 1: and how could she be more independent from you? And
Speaker 1: what do you see in her eyes when she shares
Speaker 1: her fears or when she's excited. And at the end
Speaker 1: of these questions, I could sense him getting more and
Speaker 1: more serious about the situation. And then it was quiet,
Speaker 1: and I remember tears coming to his eyes and my
Speaker 1: eyes when he said, I thought all along this was
Speaker 1: all about me keeping a relationships strong. But I've really lies.
Speaker 1: This is all about letting my daughter find her. And
Speaker 1: the question really became Eric, how can I let her
Speaker 1: find her? And how can I help her find her?
Speaker 1: And so the starting point question of how can I
Speaker 1: keep this relationship strong wasn't necessarily bad, but it only
Speaker 1: could go so far, and in fact, it was keeping
Speaker 1: him from deepening the relationship. And when he changed the
Speaker 1: question to how can I help her find her? It
Speaker 1: wasn't about him. It was about her, and it actually
Speaker 1: ended up deepening the relationship, which is what he really
Speaker 1: wanted in the first place. And part of the awakening
Speaker 1: there is, I think, a realization that some of the
Speaker 1: things he was doing weren't in line with leving that
Speaker 1: new question. Why don't we ask good questions? You know, Eric,
Speaker 1: we were all three or four years old, and barring
Speaker 1: severe abusive, horrific situations, four year olds everywhere on planet Earth,
Speaker 1: they ask a lot of questions day in and day out.
Speaker 1: And then they moved from family settings where those questions
Speaker 1: might be supported in the educational settings, where, at least
Speaker 1: in the United States, between first grade and twelfth grade,
Speaker 1: the average child asks one question per hour in the
Speaker 1: entire month for an hour long class. So if they're
Speaker 1: sitting in class for six hours a day, they ask
Speaker 1: six questions a month about the issues of the class,
Speaker 1: the subject matter. So essentially they learned really fast. Where
Speaker 1: teachers are asking fifty to a questions per hour, they
Speaker 1: learned really fast that answers matter a lot more than questions.
Speaker 1: And so those teachers are giving these students a second
Speaker 1: to answer every question. If they don't answer, they follow
Speaker 1: up with a question. If they don't answer that they
Speaker 1: give him a half second to answer. And so we
Speaker 1: grow up by the time we're adults going into college
Speaker 1: knowing that fast, quick answers are going to move us
Speaker 1: far forward, more forward than questions, And unfortunately the data
Speaker 1: aren't much better in college. And unfortunately, when we graduate
Speaker 1: from college and go to most first jobs in life,
Speaker 1: most organizations crush questions just as well as those school
Speaker 1: systems didn't. So that's a that's a long trajectory of
Speaker 1: our life story, which is for most of us, questions
Speaker 1: get crushed at every stage, often at home, mostly at school,
Speaker 1: then our first jobs, and then you know, we often
Speaker 1: get promoted for being the smartest person in the room
Speaker 1: with all the right questions until we hit the top,
Speaker 1: which is a whole different story. And so bottom line
Speaker 1: is the the world is against us being able to
Speaker 1: formulate and ask powerful what I call cattleted questions that
Speaker 1: challenge false assumption to give us energy to do something
Speaker 1: about it. And can I contrast that with the the
Speaker 1: arc of others lives where they're good at asking questions.
Speaker 1: So you take someone like Ri Gardish, who's the chairwoman
Speaker 1: of Vein of Bank consulting group, where you take someone
Speaker 1: like Jeff Bezos at Amazon, or you take someone like
Speaker 1: Diane Green who found the vm ware. You take someone
Speaker 1: like Debbie Sterling who founded um Goldie Blocks toys for girls.
Speaker 1: All of them grew up either with schools or families
Speaker 1: or both where it was project centered life. You showed
Speaker 1: up at school, maybe it was a monastery school and
Speaker 1: a National Backglaurette school, and the kids they showed up
Speaker 1: at school with interests and projects they were working on,
Speaker 1: and anything they were learning was trying to figure something out.
Speaker 1: Or are your Jeff Bezos going to your grandfriend parents
Speaker 1: house in Texas and your grandparents your grandfather buys a
Speaker 1: broken down tractor at the beginning of the summer and
Speaker 1: you're there for three months. And the whole point of
Speaker 1: the broken down tractor is the chief teach Jeff Bezos
Speaker 1: that here's a big project. You might think you're smart,
Speaker 1: but the tractor smarter, and you have to try something
Speaker 1: a hundred thousand times for it to work. And so
Speaker 1: these folks grew up and learned how to be relentless
Speaker 1: problem finders and solvers, and to do that, they asked
Speaker 1: a thousand questions. So Aric Gadish had teachers in her
Speaker 1: school system growing up that would write in her her
Speaker 1: little yearbooks in junior high school or always asked those
Speaker 1: two or three questions because she would always raise her
Speaker 1: hand when the teacher said questions, and she'd ask them.
Speaker 1: And so these were people who, for whatever reasons, had
Speaker 1: the world in their favor that said questions matter instead
Speaker 1: of that they don't. You quote a statistic that in
Speaker 1: some research has shown that the ratio of teacher questions
Speaker 1: to pupil questions is as high as nine to one.
Speaker 1: You know, you sort of touched on this, right, But
Speaker 1: I think all of that experience teaches us to want
Speaker 1: to have answers, not questions right. And so we want
Speaker 1: to be right. We want to be smart. And and
Speaker 1: you say that, you know, nothing shuts down questioning activity
Speaker 1: more than the determination to be and be seen to
Speaker 1: be unquestionably right. It reminds me of the famous teachers
Speaker 1: Suzuki who talks about beginner's mind. You know, in the
Speaker 1: beginner's mind there are tons of possibilities and the experts
Speaker 1: there's only one or I'm not getting that quite right,
Speaker 1: but that's the basic idea now it is, and a
Speaker 1: beginner's mindset is one of the conditions that exceptionally inquisitive
Speaker 1: good questioners engage in every day. So these folks who
Speaker 1: are good at asking questions, they are seeking out conditions
Speaker 1: where they themselves are wrong and uncomfortable and reflectively quiet.
Speaker 1: And and that's what that Zen saying is describing. It's
Speaker 1: like instead of waking up in the morning, dad said,
Speaker 1: on what am I right about? It's waking up in
Speaker 1: the morning like sture Brand does, and he actually is like,
Speaker 1: what am I dead wrong about? Today? And frankly a
Speaker 1: little bit disappointed at the end of the day if
Speaker 1: some part of his mental map of the world doesn't
Speaker 1: get disrupted turned upside down. It's like, that's a bad day.
Speaker 1: Where Sarah Blakely at founder of Spanks, who had a
Speaker 1: father who regularly asked her at the end of the
Speaker 1: school day or the end of the any day of
Speaker 1: a week, you know, what mistake have you made today? Sarah?
Speaker 1: And if she wasn't making big enough mistakes, he would
Speaker 1: be like, you're not trying hard enough. And and the
Speaker 1: whole point of that is we put ourselves in situations,
Speaker 1: we push ourselves to the edge, and we do that
Speaker 1: in order to uncover better questions and insights. That's what
Speaker 1: these folks are doing, and that's that beginner's mindset is crucial.
Speaker 1: That um, what I may be thinking is right could
Speaker 1: be dead wrong. And that goes against the grain of
Speaker 1: some of our most prevalent ways of thinking right, the
Speaker 1: confirmation bias. We are looking to be proved right at
Speaker 1: every turn. We ignore things that don't confirm what we
Speaker 1: already know to be true. It is so true, and
Speaker 1: it's so exacerbated in the world we live in. We
Speaker 1: know these words echo chambers, isolation, and so on. We
Speaker 1: it's just it's a world that is increasingly moving into
Speaker 1: smaller and smaller tribes. And those tribes, unfortunately for many
Speaker 1: of them, are based upon being quote unquote right. We're
Speaker 1: right and they're wrong. And it's a perfect way to
Speaker 1: get dead set on questions that become aged and outdated
Speaker 1: and actually quite unproductive. And so it takes it takes
Speaker 1: active effort on all of our part to not get
Speaker 1: sucked into those isolated echo chambers, because in those spaces,
Speaker 1: answers are everything. Yeah, you know, asking questions is is
Speaker 1: the violation of the rules of the game. You have
Speaker 1: a have a little story in here about Walt bet
Speaker 1: injured and I pronounced that right. I think this is
Speaker 1: so interesting. He says. The difference between successful executives and
Speaker 1: unsuccessful ones is not the quality of their decision making.
Speaker 1: Each one probably makes six or good decisions or something
Speaker 1: like that. The difference is the successful executive is faster
Speaker 1: to recognize which were the forty or forty five percent
Speaker 1: that we're wrong and adjust, whereas the failing executive often
Speaker 1: digs in and tries to convince people even when they're wrong,
Speaker 1: that they were right. Boy, does that ring true to me?
Speaker 1: In the corporate world or the software startup world or
Speaker 1: all that was you know, that ability to you know,
Speaker 1: the people who just would dig in versus the people
Speaker 1: that would go, well, this isn't working. What are we
Speaker 1: gonna do well? Which you know? Here are two classic examples,
Speaker 1: positive and negative. And positive, You've got Travis Clinic, founder
Speaker 1: and CEO of Uber, hopping in the back of an
Speaker 1: Uber car a few years ago and being recorded at
Speaker 1: the end of the ride. The driver basically is saying,
Speaker 1: here are some things in the system that you own.
Speaker 1: It's causing me as a driver to not be able
Speaker 1: to do my job well. And Clinics response is instant
Speaker 1: and aggressive and in his face about the driver's the
Speaker 1: problem and not him. And here was this perfect, perfect
Speaker 1: moment for the senior leader founder of a company to
Speaker 1: get some passive data, some passive information that's not just
Speaker 1: coming out and actively through his own direct report of
Speaker 1: the system. But it's live, it's real, it's human, it's purposeful,
Speaker 1: it's meaningful. But he is not interested. Contrast that with
Speaker 1: someone I met when I lived in the Middle East,
Speaker 1: Fadi Gondor, who founded a logistics company called Aramex. He's
Speaker 1: the CEO of the founder, wealthy, top of the organization,
Speaker 1: has every reason, like Travis Clanic, do not listen to
Speaker 1: passive data that's uncomfortable and disc disc it's awkward for him.
Speaker 1: But funny lands in a foreign country, maybe it's Dubai.
Speaker 1: For example, two o'clock in the morning, he's got an
Speaker 1: eight o'clock meeting. Instead of having a limo taken to
Speaker 1: the hotel. At two o'clock in the morning, he has
Speaker 1: an air Max delivery truck driver show up and he's
Speaker 1: actively seeking passive data from that driver, what's working, what's
Speaker 1: not why and fought he does this so much the
Speaker 1: driver trust him he tells him the truth. At the
Speaker 1: end of the day fought, He's like, we've got problems here,
Speaker 1: and he has an all person meeting the next day
Speaker 1: to get to the bottom of the issue and to
Speaker 1: start trying to solve it. Those are just like polar opposites,
Speaker 1: kolanic versus funny. And what these great leaders do at
Speaker 1: work and frankly in life is they are actively seeking
Speaker 1: the data that's passive, that's just sitting out there. They're
Speaker 1: going to the edge of their organization. They're talking to
Speaker 1: people that they wouldn't talk to that might cause them
Speaker 1: to be a little uncomfortable. And you know, it's the
Speaker 1: same thing even inside of our own families. It's what
Speaker 1: are we doing to just sit back, observe, watch, talk
Speaker 1: to the people in ways that information comes to is
Speaker 1: that otherwise wouldn't right. And one of the biggest pieces
Speaker 1: of this is um observing and listening, you know, moving
Speaker 1: out of the mode particularly of being telling. You know,
Speaker 1: I'm always telling people what to do, how it should be,
Speaker 1: what it you know, kids, coworkers, employees, whatever it is,
Speaker 1: and moving into observing and listening. This is the logic
Speaker 1: of of asking the better question is putting myself in
Speaker 1: a condition where I am reflectively quiet, I am observing,
Speaker 1: and I am listening, and I'll never forget bumping into
Speaker 1: Mark benning Off at um Economic Form DA was meeting.
Speaker 1: Unlike many of the other country and company leaders there,
Speaker 1: Mark did not have a ring of steel around him.
Speaker 1: He did not have a bunch of people protecting him
Speaker 1: from people like me coming up and asking the tough question.
Speaker 1: And I asked, Marcus, said, what do you do Mark
Speaker 1: that helps you ask the better question? Because he's done
Speaker 1: some He asked some great questions to build salesforce and
Speaker 1: to make a difference in his community. And he looked
Speaker 1: me right in the eye, Eric, and he said listen.
Speaker 1: And then he waited about five seconds and looked at me,
Speaker 1: and I think he was trying to figure out how
Speaker 1: well I was gregorson listening and is he all here? Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: I think I passed the test. And we had a
Speaker 1: fifteen minute conversation about what does it mean to have
Speaker 1: a beginner's mindset and clear your mind and really listen
Speaker 1: and and and that's the power of what he does
Speaker 1: to get new insights. I also had the chance to
Speaker 1: interview Duval Patrick. It used to be the governor of
Speaker 1: Massachuset citizen if all calls it the power of the pause.
Speaker 1: And he said, you know, is that last two to
Speaker 1: three seconds and you ask a question, you shut up,
Speaker 1: you'll listen, and if you can wait three, four or
Speaker 1: five seconds like I just did, he said, it's that
Speaker 1: last two seconds that signals to somebody else, whether it's
Speaker 1: the person you're working with or the person you're trying
Speaker 1: to serve as a politician, or your wife or husband,
Speaker 1: or your kids. It's that last two seconds where they
Speaker 1: get it like you care, like it matters, and whatever
Speaker 1: you're going to say, you're going to pay attention to
Speaker 1: it's not going to be discounted. That's the power of
Speaker 1: the pause. It's it's profound. You quote Scott de Valerio.
Speaker 1: I think I said that right, Yeah, And he says
Speaker 1: he reminds himself constantly to listen to understand versus listen
Speaker 1: to defend, which is an approach he learned from his wife.
Speaker 1: And that is such a great little phrase. It is Eric.
Speaker 1: And you know another persona dude, said the same thing,
Speaker 1: Hal Baron, who is an incredible medical researcher. And you know,
Speaker 1: he said, we're so often when we're in conversations like
Speaker 1: you and I are right now, we're trying to figure
Speaker 1: out what we're going to say next, and the point becomes,
Speaker 1: I've got to clear out that space in my head
Speaker 1: and in my heart. And we talked earlier about this
Speaker 1: question first method, where it's literally, I don't care what
Speaker 1: the problem is if I'm alone or with some other people.
Speaker 1: If I just sit down and force myself to ask
Speaker 1: nothing but questions range from hythm questions, don't answer them,
Speaker 1: don't explain why I'm asking them. It's doing the same thing.
Speaker 1: It's creating quiet space. People are just like chomping in
Speaker 1: the bit in that exercise to fill the space between
Speaker 1: questions with explanations about why they're asking an answers about
Speaker 1: you know that they've got to just get the solution
Speaker 1: out quick. But what's fascinating is if we just provide
Speaker 1: either artificially that space in the question versus brainstorming question
Speaker 1: process or in our lives, create that space, that quiet
Speaker 1: where we can be reflective, those are the points at
Speaker 1: which these cattlet of questions start to surface. You tell
Speaker 1: a little story about a gentleman. I think the last
Speaker 1: name is Piazza, who is a mediator, which means he
Speaker 1: gets people who don't agree together and helps them define
Speaker 1: to help them find an agreement. And he says, any
Speaker 1: time you come in with assumptions about what is going
Speaker 1: to get someone from state A to state B, then
Speaker 1: you're setting in motion a cascade of bad things because
Speaker 1: and now I'm sort of paraphrasing, you are sort of
Speaker 1: analyzing the behavior to a common pattern, you're type casting.
Speaker 1: And then ultimately, what he says is that you are
Speaker 1: creating separation. And he says his goal is to minimize
Speaker 1: the amount of separation because it's within that space, that separation,
Speaker 1: that the collisions occur that fuel the process of fighting.
Speaker 1: And I just thought that was so fascinating. Tony was fascinating,
Speaker 1: And what you just described that he had shared with
Speaker 1: me was it was stunning. And I had heard from
Speaker 1: someone who had used Tony in a high stakes mediation
Speaker 1: between two companies, and he basically said, you've got the
Speaker 1: two parties. Tony meets with the first one listened intently
Speaker 1: to their perspective. Without the other party, there can literally
Speaker 1: mirror back not just the words, but the emotion and
Speaker 1: the affect associated with the words to the person he's
Speaker 1: just heard, and what it signals of that person is
Speaker 1: Tony Piazza heard me, he was really listening. He gets it,
Speaker 1: and then he does the same thing with the other party,
Speaker 1: and he's already now reduced the defenses on both of
Speaker 1: them walking into the same room because they believe he
Speaker 1: understands them, because he's listened so carefully and almost unnervingly
Speaker 1: to be able to tell someone else, you know, here's
Speaker 1: what you just said, and here's the feeling you have
Speaker 1: behind it. That's a unique ability. And yet you know,
Speaker 1: people who create these questions that change their lives and
Speaker 1: change the world, that listening ability is at the core
Speaker 1: of what they're doing. It is so crucial. It's interesting
Speaker 1: that you bring up that, that ability to mirror back
Speaker 1: so closely exactly what some person said, you know, even
Speaker 1: using their exact words or inflections. My my girlfriend was
Speaker 1: sharing this with me recently, that there's someone in her
Speaker 1: life who does that, and how how powerful it is
Speaker 1: to hear your exact words and your actual inflections, like
Speaker 1: it lands in a deeper way, and it's just not
Speaker 1: something I had thought about. I certainly have the idea
Speaker 1: of listening to understand and making sure that I can
Speaker 1: sort of say back, like, well, what you're generally saying
Speaker 1: is blah blah blah, but the the idea of being
Speaker 1: able to do it that specifically. When we do that again,
Speaker 1: we are creating a safe enough space, a psychologically and
Speaker 1: emotionally safe enough space for the people in that conversation
Speaker 1: to entertain a different way of living and working in
Speaker 1: the world. That's what it's coming down to. What happens
Speaker 1: in those moments is we start asking the different question
Speaker 1: um and it's provocative and compelling. Reminds me of the
Speaker 1: prayer of St. Francis. You know, seek not to be
Speaker 1: under stood, but to understand, to give it a spiritual connotation,
Speaker 1: you know that the outside of just being you know,
Speaker 1: a good business practice or a good practice with your family, like,
Speaker 1: there's there's deeper roots to that idea. The deepest roots
Speaker 1: for me in some of our conversation ERK is so
Speaker 1: many people in the schools they've gone to, so many
Speaker 1: people in the places that they work, so many people
Speaker 1: in the homes they're living in for whatever reason, they
Speaker 1: are isolated. They're fearful, and it's extremely difficult to do
Speaker 1: anything that we're talking about And you know, this is
Speaker 1: why I care so deeply about this creating these conditions
Speaker 1: where new questions can flourish, because at the end of
Speaker 1: the day, it's it's connecting with ourselves in a whole
Speaker 1: sort of way. W h o ELI, it's connecting with
Speaker 1: others in the same way, and it's it's acknowledging imperfections
Speaker 1: in both of us that we're just here to try
Speaker 1: to build something better. And that's where you know, we
Speaker 1: started out with these shadow and keystone questions. To me,
Speaker 1: they're light and dark. It's night and day. I landed
Speaker 1: at one point at the end of the book questions
Speaker 1: or the answer. I landed with this part of AHA
Speaker 1: that instead of letting this question of how can I
Speaker 1: make people happy, it's how can I find and reflect
Speaker 1: the light inside of you? And that might mean that
Speaker 1: I'm doing something that actually makes you very angry, but
Speaker 1: that might be a stepping stone to behaving and seeing
Speaker 1: and doing things in the world that actually could be
Speaker 1: far more productive. And so it may sound like the
Speaker 1: same question, but it started opening up a different engagement
Speaker 1: with my family, with friends, and with the world of work.
Speaker 1: But then I just recently realized Eric that I rejoiced
Speaker 1: at one point at locking that shadow question into a cage.
Speaker 1: There was a picture I took on the island of
Speaker 1: crete that represented that at the end of the book,
Speaker 1: that there's two big locks holding the darkness inside of
Speaker 1: these metal doors, and there's a little pinhole that shows
Speaker 1: the darkness inside. And I'm kind of coming to learn
Speaker 1: and accept that that may not be the best metaphor
Speaker 1: that darkness, those difficulties, that childhood, it's going to be
Speaker 1: with me from now until the day I die, and
Speaker 1: there is light that actually emerges from that dark. There's
Speaker 1: good that comes out of that. But the dark does
Speaker 1: not have to dominate the light in my life. And
Speaker 1: so I'm now trying to explore, you know, that intersection.
Speaker 1: And I'm reminded of Leonard Cohen's song Anthem, and there's
Speaker 1: this phrase in there where he says, ring the bells
Speaker 1: that still can ring, forget your perfect offering. There's a
Speaker 1: crack in everything. That's how the light gets in. And
Speaker 1: what I realized was Cohen's talking about light getting into
Speaker 1: the dark place so that it can reflect more light
Speaker 1: out of the dark. That to me is where I'm
Speaker 1: trying to to to position move experienced life where it's
Speaker 1: not an either or it's there are shadow questions that
Speaker 1: are powerful, and there are keystone ones that are powerful
Speaker 1: to their opposite. Is a tension there, but but that's
Speaker 1: where the best work comes from. That is a beautiful
Speaker 1: place for us to wrap up the conversation. Interestingly, I
Speaker 1: do many episodes I call him teaching song and a
Speaker 1: poem that I give to supporters of the show. And
Speaker 1: the last the one I just did and released this
Speaker 1: weekend was anthem. Was the heart of it? That that
Speaker 1: that line and talking about you know how we you know,
Speaker 1: ring the bells we can how you know, forget our
Speaker 1: perfect offering? And I shared some poems that relate to
Speaker 1: that and some things from my own life. So it's
Speaker 1: so funny that you brought that up because I just
Speaker 1: released that episode. Um, besides, how Lujah, that's probably his
Speaker 1: best known phrase, that that short little turn there, because
Speaker 1: it's so powerful. There's another person I really enjoy. It's
Speaker 1: Lindsay Sterling who's a violinist and a dancer, and she
Speaker 1: has a song called Shatter Me where the light actually
Speaker 1: comes out of her in her video to the rest
Speaker 1: of the world, and it's it's really breaking down. Some
Speaker 1: of her shadowy passed, but it's called shatter me and
Speaker 1: letting the light come out of that darkness. Um. And
Speaker 1: I don't know if you saw recently, but on America's
Speaker 1: Got Talent, I forget his name, but he was a
Speaker 1: young man playing the guitar. Simon Colewell told him to stop,
Speaker 1: told him that he was too stiff, he was afraid
Speaker 1: of taking risks, and Simon did not know his story.
Speaker 1: But this young man's story was his parents divorced when
Speaker 1: he was young, and he had built walls to protect himself,
Speaker 1: just like I did as a little kid. And I
Speaker 1: had so much empathy for this young man on the
Speaker 1: stage of America's Got Talent, because Simon had poked with
Speaker 1: a hot proud his shadow questions on stage in public,
Speaker 1: in front of so many people. And yet he the
Speaker 1: young man, was given the chance to go off, find
Speaker 1: a new song, come back, and he came back in
Speaker 1: a very different attitude, and his song was absolutely stunning.
Speaker 1: But the reason I'm raising that is I think what
Speaker 1: we're talking about here, Eric, is exactly what happened on
Speaker 1: that stage, is this young man had been living a
Speaker 1: shadow question. He had been incredibly successful. He had a
Speaker 1: beautiful voice and great guitar skills. But you know, Simon
Speaker 1: poked and it was uncomfortable. It was awkward, and he
Speaker 1: realized some element of what he was doing is wrong
Speaker 1: for the singer, and he came back in a very
Speaker 1: humbled way. But boy, his voice was authentic and deep
Speaker 1: and rich, and I have little doubt that over the
Speaker 1: course of this experience he's going to surface some questions
Speaker 1: that will give him more light than those shadowy ones
Speaker 1: that have grabbed him to richly in deep wonderful. That
Speaker 1: is a great example of exactly what you're describing, pushing
Speaker 1: the questions, taking us to an uncomfortable space. And you
Speaker 1: and I are going to continue this conversation in the
Speaker 1: post show conversation where we're going to talk about exactly that,
Speaker 1: how our comfort zone prevents us from asking good questions.
Speaker 1: And so we'll talk about that in the post show conversation. Listeners,
Speaker 1: if you're interested in that, or you're interested in hearing
Speaker 1: the mini episode I just described, you can go to
Speaker 1: one you feed dot net slash support, become a member
Speaker 1: of what we're doing, and you get access to lots
Speaker 1: of extra things. So Hal Thank you so much for
Speaker 1: coming on. I really enjoyed the book and this has
Speaker 1: really been a deep and rich conversation. Thank you, Eric,
Speaker 1: thank you. I feel the same and um, I'm walking
Speaker 1: away with a little more light. Thank you me too. Okay, bye,
Speaker 1: good bye. If what you just heard was helpful to you,
Speaker 1: please consider making a donation to the One you Feed podcast.
Speaker 1: Head over to one you feed dot net slash support.
Speaker 1: The One you Feed podcast would like to sincerely thank
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