Speaker 1: If you think to yourself, here's my plan, you have
Speaker 1: to say in keeth, I run into problems. What am
Speaker 1: I going to do? Welcome to the one you feed
Speaker 1: Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance of the
Speaker 1: thoughts we have. Quotes like garbage in, garbage out, or
Speaker 1: you are what you think? Ring true. And yet for
Speaker 1: many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us.
Speaker 1: We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy, or fear. We
Speaker 1: see what we don't have instead of what we do.
Speaker 1: We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit.
Speaker 1: But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It
Speaker 1: takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life
Speaker 1: worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep
Speaker 1: themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their
Speaker 1: good wolf m Thanks for joining us. Our guest on
Speaker 1: this episode is Carrie Patterson, the four time New York
Speaker 1: Times best selling co author of Crucial Conversations, Crucial, Accountability, Influencer,
Speaker 1: and Change Anything. He received his doctorate from Stanford and
Speaker 1: has been featured in more than one and fifty print
Speaker 1: and radio programs, including MSN, Career Builder, and CNN He
Speaker 1: is also the co founder of Vital Smarts and Innovator
Speaker 1: and corporate training and leadership Development. His latest book is
Speaker 1: called The Gray Fedora and here's the interview. Hi, Carrie,
Speaker 1: welcome to the show. Thanks for er. I'm excited to
Speaker 1: get you on your book. Crucial Conversations is one of
Speaker 1: those books that made a big difference on me. I
Speaker 1: think I knew some of the concepts in it, but
Speaker 1: when seeing it all packaged up the way you had it,
Speaker 1: it really is a very powerful way to approach interacting
Speaker 1: with the people around us. So we'll get deeper into
Speaker 1: that in a minute, but we'll start off with the parable.
Speaker 1: So there's a grandfather who's talking with his grandson. He says,
Speaker 1: in life, there are two wolves inside of us that
Speaker 1: are always at battle. What is a good wolf, which
Speaker 1: represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the
Speaker 1: other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed
Speaker 1: and hatred and fear. And the grandson stops and he
Speaker 1: thinks about it for a second, and he looks up
Speaker 1: at his grandfather and he 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. Well. It's a nice beginning to our
Speaker 1: crucial conversation because one of the first things you have
Speaker 1: to do with when stakes are high opinion is very
Speaker 1: emotions startingly sung is people start turning sort of ugly
Speaker 1: and you sort of have to ask yourself what's going
Speaker 1: on there and are they sort of going to be
Speaker 1: relegated to that sort of style for the rest of
Speaker 1: the life, Like people change, and the parable sort of
Speaker 1: highlights a battle list and going on in psychology for
Speaker 1: years is do we have these sort of fixed traits
Speaker 1: that we're born with, these qualities and characteristics that can't change,
Speaker 1: or is it a function of how we learn and
Speaker 1: grow and what we feed? And the answer turns out
Speaker 1: to be it's how we learn and go and feed.
Speaker 1: And our book talks about how to avoid feeding bad
Speaker 1: assumptions and how to bring life to good assumptions so
Speaker 1: that interactions go more smoothly. Yeah, exactly, So why don't
Speaker 1: we start off and talk about what is a crucial conversation,
Speaker 1: What makes a conversation crucial versus just another you know,
Speaker 1: a couple of minutes of chatting well, and the stakes
Speaker 1: are high um, and the opinions vary, and the emotions
Speaker 1: want strong, are excuse me? Are running strong? Those are
Speaker 1: the three characteristics of a crucial conversation more than the
Speaker 1: cas well, hey, how you doing? Stakes are high, um,
Speaker 1: we're not both agreeing, easy to going, and our emotions
Speaker 1: are are running strong under those particular cases, and we
Speaker 1: are the worse behavior. That's what makes it shure. And
Speaker 1: unfortunately that seems to be at least my experience is
Speaker 1: when those things are happening, it's the time that I'm
Speaker 1: most likely to be coming out of a very reactive place.
Speaker 1: It's a lot harder to be strategic and think about
Speaker 1: how I want to communicate when I am emotionally charged
Speaker 1: like that. Yeah, well, we're hard wired to do that.
Speaker 1: We didn't know this with any certainty until recently. Was
Speaker 1: the high residents magnetic indugry, where we can just watch
Speaker 1: brain function and we can see what happens as someone
Speaker 1: sort of throws us, you know, under the bus or
Speaker 1: a taxus, or criticize their ideas rather than the same.
Speaker 1: That's interesting when we find out why they believe that
Speaker 1: we prepare for a counter attack. Uh, and we actually
Speaker 1: moved from using the profuneral cortex, where the high cognitive
Speaker 1: processing goes on for rational conversations, into the amygdala, which
Speaker 1: is preparing us to go into side or flight. And
Speaker 1: so the wirings in our body, adrenaline hits and all
Speaker 1: of a sudden, we feel back and we attacked back,
Speaker 1: and we feed that wrong wolf that that amygdala. He
Speaker 1: comes up a lot on this show. It gets into
Speaker 1: all kinds of trouble. Serves a valuable purpose, but it's
Speaker 1: you know, it's a it's a little hyper sensitive for
Speaker 1: for today's world. Yeah, my partners now are certainly righting
Speaker 1: on the topic because people ask so much about it.
Speaker 1: We have colleagues of doing research on the high residence magneticence,
Speaker 1: excuse me, the imagery, and uh, we're learning a lot
Speaker 1: more about it. And uh, it turns out that it
Speaker 1: was beautifully designed for a time where we weren't complicated
Speaker 1: and we didn't live in clans, But now that we
Speaker 1: live in clans and we're interdependent, it doesn't serve us. Well.
Speaker 1: It's nice and when the hair stands up in the
Speaker 1: back of our neck and in the dark alley, which
Speaker 1: happens once in every thirty years, and it doesn't serve
Speaker 1: us well when we go into a meeting and some
Speaker 1: of the taxes we talked about. Okay, we have these
Speaker 1: brains that were designed for when we lived on the savannah,
Speaker 1: for example, But when do our brains start to catch up?
Speaker 1: I mean, is there is there any sense of you know,
Speaker 1: how long? You know. I'm just kind of curious, because
Speaker 1: they've got to be progressing in that direction, I would think,
Speaker 1: and I know that the time I think of the
Speaker 1: world and evolutionary time are very different. Yeah, you're talking
Speaker 1: hundreds of thousands of years. You're talking about genetic engineering
Speaker 1: and incurs in mutations, and mutations occur when certain you know,
Speaker 1: you know, raise, you know, shoot through our head or
Speaker 1: when a cell split, and then then it makes the
Speaker 1: organism better suited to its environment, which which cases rewarding.
Speaker 1: It makes it continues or it doesn't. Most things don't.
Speaker 1: So that process, that that whole process and mutation, because indeed,
Speaker 1: hundreds of thousands of years, we can't wait. We have
Speaker 1: to learn how to be aware of what's happening, catch it,
Speaker 1: what's happening in ourselves and within others, and fill of
Speaker 1: alternate behaviors, because that's hard wiring. And we don't fix
Speaker 1: hardwiring through willing it. You don't fix it through training it.
Speaker 1: You don't fix it through anything other than waiting for
Speaker 1: it to re be hardwired. And I not differ sidencies
Speaker 1: not waiting anymore and then just overwriting it when we
Speaker 1: see it. So let's talk about what the key concepts are.
Speaker 1: You've got a framework for how to conduct crucial conversations
Speaker 1: in a more effective way, so can you can we
Speaker 1: just start sort of walking through that well, First of all,
Speaker 1: as we find ourselves in a position where we see
Speaker 1: people starting to argue, ourselves included, we have to stop
Speaker 1: taking a breath and sort of asking ourselves waiting aute,
Speaker 1: what's going on here? And rather than allowing ourselves kid
Speaker 1: to get angry, we have to stop and sort of
Speaker 1: say why would a reasonable and national persons be doing
Speaker 1: what they're currently doing? And that goes to feeding the wolf,
Speaker 1: that goes to what stories do we tell ourselves? And
Speaker 1: so we try to enter a crucial conversation if things
Speaker 1: start turning ugly, and we try to sort of think
Speaker 1: the best about it is to be a good, good motive.
Speaker 1: So rather than sort of saying, wait a minute, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm sticking tired of you screaming or yelling and whatnot,
Speaker 1: you would say something more like, UM, gee, i can
Speaker 1: see you're pretty upset about this, I'm not quite sure.
Speaker 1: Why could you tell me more? And we moved from
Speaker 1: angry to curious, and curious of course leads to people
Speaker 1: opening up and sharing the whole story, thinking the better
Speaker 1: of others. So I think I've I've heard it, you know,
Speaker 1: assume positive intent. You know, I think it goes against
Speaker 1: the I've talked before on a mini episode about the
Speaker 1: fundamental attribution error, where we sort of give ourselves the
Speaker 1: benefit of the doubt but not others. And you know,
Speaker 1: that is such a powerful way to approach things if
Speaker 1: you approach it with you know why Yeah. I love
Speaker 1: the way you guys phrase that, why would a reasonable
Speaker 1: good person behave this way? Yeah? Rather than what's the
Speaker 1: worst and most personal way that could take? Because you know, yeah,
Speaker 1: which which is the more likely spun? And I think
Speaker 1: the other thing that can be so hard is if
Speaker 1: we've spent a lot of time with um in particular relationships,
Speaker 1: handling our crucial conversations in a devastating way. We've we've
Speaker 1: sort of brought out that worst in that other person
Speaker 1: often enough that it's really hard. You know, it takes
Speaker 1: a lot of effort to get back to pre all
Speaker 1: the damage that's been done from both sides at that point.
Speaker 1: With one clad I was working with who was constantly
Speaker 1: going sort of angry mode, he worked on his skills,
Speaker 1: and some of the other skills, of course, include establishing
Speaker 1: you toual purpose. How can we both succeed in this,
Speaker 1: you know, if they misunderstand your stopping and saying what
Speaker 1: you do mean were don't mean. So as we began
Speaker 1: to teach him and others these skills, this particular guy
Speaker 1: became very good. But the people who were worked with
Speaker 1: worked with him for a ten year period didn't trust it.
Speaker 1: They thought, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, this is something he's
Speaker 1: going through and it will take it'll take a while,
Speaker 1: but he'll be back to sold. Well, well, they didn't
Speaker 1: go back because the skills that he learned were ones
Speaker 1: that helped him in in tough conversations, and those are
Speaker 1: the kinds of things that carry with you. He had
Speaker 1: to be transferred before people would accept him for who
Speaker 1: he became. Tough on each other. Right, So after we
Speaker 1: recognize we're in a crucial conversation and we we start
Speaker 1: with that, um, you know, assuming positive intent with the
Speaker 1: other person, where do we go from there? Well, the
Speaker 1: the issue depends on what you what you're seeing carefully,
Speaker 1: and so you just happy to stop and diagnos and
Speaker 1: if they think you're out to get you, you're out
Speaker 1: to get them. So say something like, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I've seen this all you really wanted. It's best for
Speaker 1: your department. You don't care department at all. You need
Speaker 1: to deal with that directly by establishing mutual purpose and say, actually,
Speaker 1: what I'd like to do is end this conversation by
Speaker 1: solving a problem, the problem in the way that we're
Speaker 1: both satisfied. I'm not interested in winning at your cost.
Speaker 1: And once people realize that your intention is not to
Speaker 1: sort of view win and they lose, they're much more
Speaker 1: likely to settle down to a healthy conversation. Right. And
Speaker 1: So a lot of the work that you guys do
Speaker 1: is in the workplace, but this stuff applies every bit
Speaker 1: as much and possibly more in our own in our
Speaker 1: personal lives and our relationships. Yeah, we were some of
Speaker 1: the first in the country thirty years ago that actually
Speaker 1: offered um workshops after work where the people who have
Speaker 1: been through training would have their spouses come in and
Speaker 1: they would apply and learn the skills. The spouse would
Speaker 1: learn the skills and then the would practice them uh
Speaker 1: in ways that would benefit their home. And it was
Speaker 1: often considered a perk to work in the company where
Speaker 1: you're getting enhanced parenting skills. Now, one of the things
Speaker 1: that you guys talk about, you've got some general general
Speaker 1: framework and one of them that you talk about is
Speaker 1: master my stories. So this is maybe before we go
Speaker 1: into that conversation, what what does that mean? Well, you know,
Speaker 1: people will often say something like, you know, I was
Speaker 1: doing fine and then they made me mad. That's an
Speaker 1: interesting way have describing because no one can make you mad.
Speaker 1: You make yourself that in the process of doing it.
Speaker 1: This is very well known. The other person does something.
Speaker 1: Let's say, for example, you're working on a project and
Speaker 1: you're struggling on one element. You can't get us figured out,
Speaker 1: and as you're getting ready to leave, excuse me if
Speaker 1: to come in to work with the next morning, you
Speaker 1: went into a colleague that says, you know what I
Speaker 1: knew you're working on that problem, and uh, I stayed
Speaker 1: after a little bit because I was waiting for the
Speaker 1: mail to be delivered over here in the dinner departmental mail.
Speaker 1: And anyway, I started working on the problem. I solved it.
Speaker 1: What do you think of that? And the last people,
Speaker 1: how would you feel if someone came and said they
Speaker 1: solved the problem you're working on? About half say I
Speaker 1: would be happy, the other half say I wouldn't be happy.
Speaker 1: And so the issue was, well, what makes you either
Speaker 1: happier or unhappy? And it goes to what you think,
Speaker 1: what was the motive behind what they did? So we
Speaker 1: tell ourselves a story. They didn't that the behavior which
Speaker 1: is neutral. They did something to solve a problem. Half
Speaker 1: the people say, gosh, they did that because they wanted
Speaker 1: to make my life eat here and they're a good
Speaker 1: team keem ware and and I'm happy that they did that,
Speaker 1: and I'm happy in their relationship. And others tell themself
Speaker 1: a different story. They said, oh, yeah, yeah, I know them.
Speaker 1: They did that to make me look better. They're gonna
Speaker 1: announce them the meeting. But they solved the problem that
Speaker 1: I couldn't solve. And so, so you you see a behavior,
Speaker 1: you draw a conclusion about the other person's motives, and
Speaker 1: then that's what makes you angry. Get at the motive
Speaker 1: is bad, you become angry to hit the motive is good,
Speaker 1: you're not angry. And that's the story we tell, and
Speaker 1: that's the process we go through. And now we'll get
Speaker 1: back to the rest of the interview with Carrie Patterson.
Speaker 1: So one of the things I'm curious about, and we
Speaker 1: explore it a lot on this show, is, um, yeah,
Speaker 1: exactly what you described. We're always telling ourselves stories. We
Speaker 1: are making up an interpretation of what happens out in
Speaker 1: the world, and we have some degree of control over
Speaker 1: what that interpretation is. The thing I'm always curious about
Speaker 1: is and the question is when are we When are
Speaker 1: we you know, when are we assuming positive intent? When
Speaker 1: are we doing some positive thinking it's helpful? And when
Speaker 1: do we slide into denial where we're sort of putting
Speaker 1: a happy spin on everything regardless. Yeah, yeah, the idea
Speaker 1: is we're doing this to help us as we go
Speaker 1: into the conversation, so we're not angry, because when we're
Speaker 1: angry just not gonna work. It's not we haven't we
Speaker 1: haven't come to our conclusion. But by asking why would
Speaker 1: a reasonable person do that. What we've done is we
Speaker 1: set our emotions up to apply where we can handle
Speaker 1: it in an effective way. So we then walked in
Speaker 1: and we described the problem and we said, gosh, and
Speaker 1: the problem is the definition of what was expected was
Speaker 1: what was observed. And so we're not gonna go do
Speaker 1: it the problem, but we're gonna be fairly open about it.
Speaker 1: It's gonna sound more curious. It's more it's going to be,
Speaker 1: you know, rather than I can't believe you didn't get
Speaker 1: me the project in time. You would say, Bess, Larry,
Speaker 1: can you talk share um? And you might set it
Speaker 1: aside in a safe environment when just the two of you,
Speaker 1: I was expecting to have this project that at three,
Speaker 1: as you suggested, three came and left. I didn't and
Speaker 1: I didn't get it three thirty and four I couldn't
Speaker 1: find you. Eventually a four thirty it came. I was
Speaker 1: sort of wondering what happened. And so you're describing expected
Speaker 1: what was observed, and then you would do then you
Speaker 1: would pause and ask for their viewpoint on it, because
Speaker 1: you don't know what happened there. Boss may have come
Speaker 1: to them and say it threw that project. We've gotta
Speaker 1: the president coming in, go fix this, and we'll do
Speaker 1: that and let you have no idea what happened. You
Speaker 1: really don't. And so you're going to describe the problem,
Speaker 1: what was expected, it was observed and in diagnosed, and
Speaker 1: you're gonna do it in the context of not being
Speaker 1: a ingredient SMARMI and follow yourself because you haven't told
Speaker 1: yourself about this story that sets the thing. You still
Speaker 1: deal with the problem. Yeah, it's a great way to
Speaker 1: look at it. And you talk about when we go
Speaker 1: into you know, we we sort of so mastering my stories,
Speaker 1: I think is is getting control over that and not
Speaker 1: going in with a negative story, being open, And then
Speaker 1: you talk about the next stage is really the confronting
Speaker 1: with safety. So you talked about describing the gap, you know,
Speaker 1: and so what are ways that we can help people
Speaker 1: to feel safe in conversations because either we've got a
Speaker 1: history of maybe being in unsafe conversations with that particular person,
Speaker 1: or just in general, we're you know, people can be
Speaker 1: really gun shy. So what are ways that we can
Speaker 1: help people with that? So set of things that we
Speaker 1: do to make people feel unsafe. One of them I
Speaker 1: described earlier, is we enter a conversation with ourselves and
Speaker 1: our goals and minds and don't care about others, and
Speaker 1: so they have a reason to feel on safe, which is,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, here we go again. You're gonna argue with me,
Speaker 1: you're gonna beat me down, you're gonna get you, and
Speaker 1: I'm gonna end up having to go do something I
Speaker 1: don't underdo that makes you feel unsafe or or it
Speaker 1: could happen in an instant where you're using inflammatory language,
Speaker 1: you're pushing really hard, you're cutting them off in with sentence,
Speaker 1: You're you're inflating the data to support you and deflating
Speaker 1: their supported data that makes them unsafe. You know, just
Speaker 1: a lot you you know, there's a lot of things.
Speaker 1: And so what you're gonna be watching for is what
Speaker 1: am I doing that would make people sort of pull
Speaker 1: away from the table. But equally important watching them to
Speaker 1: see if no matter what you're doing, are they feeling unsafe.
Speaker 1: Taste upon what's in their head, but it had happened
Speaker 1: to them before. We're watching for evidence that they're feeling unsafe,
Speaker 1: and then, rather than attacking, you make it safe by
Speaker 1: established you needs your purpose or clarifying the difference. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I like where you you One of the things you
Speaker 1: say is to talk tentatively and not like tentatively like
Speaker 1: I'm shy or I'm afraid to talk, but without expressing
Speaker 1: being open to the ideas that other people have are
Speaker 1: coming with it, like well here's what I see. You know,
Speaker 1: what what are you seeing? Instead of you always do
Speaker 1: this or it's you know, we tend to go to
Speaker 1: such extremes sometimes to make a point. Yeah, that's the
Speaker 1: harsh language, that cutting off in fletting them, you know,
Speaker 1: um stating as if it we've got struth or any
Speaker 1: any irrational first knows if they want to see what
Speaker 1: untentative language looks like, if you want to see what
Speaker 1: not to do, if you want to sort of said
Speaker 1: I've been to the pinnacle of bad. Go watch Congress
Speaker 1: and action. Because they're they're prenting, they're prainting for canvas.
Speaker 1: They aren't saying, you know, I've been thinking about this.
Speaker 1: Maybe I could be wrong, but let me just pass
Speaker 1: this that let me pay devil's advocate all language of tentativity,
Speaker 1: all which helps make it much safer to discuss days openly.
Speaker 1: It's sort of like I can't believe the people across
Speaker 1: the aisle are so it gatterly stupid. I mean, that's
Speaker 1: whether whether they're saying it or not. But I mean
Speaker 1: the fact of the matter is is like we're we're
Speaker 1: all right, and you're all wrong, you know, and it's
Speaker 1: like wow and no wonder we can't come to any
Speaker 1: kind of appromise understanding, you know. Third way, Uh, we're entrenched.
Speaker 1: We're not listening, we're not making it safe for people
Speaker 1: to miss us. So if you take a deep breath
Speaker 1: and sort of saying this isn't about preening in front
Speaker 1: of the cameras, it's not about learning, not about looking good.
Speaker 1: It's about adding meaning to the pool. There's this pool
Speaker 1: of meeting in front of us. You have some of it,
Speaker 1: I have some of it. If we can get it
Speaker 1: all out there, will then act with much better information,
Speaker 1: will make much better choices. Yeah, exactly. And one of
Speaker 1: the things I think is interesting is you you know,
Speaker 1: this idea of making it safe in the conversation. Sometimes
Speaker 1: that's not a one time thing. So you you guys,
Speaker 1: describe what you can do that at the beginning of
Speaker 1: the conversation, but you need to be watching throughout the
Speaker 1: conversation to see if people are are indeed feeling safe.
Speaker 1: There are some you know, there's some red flags and
Speaker 1: things you can see, and then you just say, you know,
Speaker 1: step out of the content, you know, rebuild the safety
Speaker 1: and then come back in, and that if you don't
Speaker 1: take the time to do that, you're not going to
Speaker 1: make any progress on the content. No, no, no, because
Speaker 1: they're both of you are in tresh there in trench,
Speaker 1: and so they're treating any information that you're bringing as
Speaker 1: an invading virus. They're going to fight it off and
Speaker 1: sort of gonna say, wait a minute, let me stop,
Speaker 1: let me break this, and you break it, and said,
Speaker 1: and we've talked about severy way, but one of them
Speaker 1: we say, it sounds like you're thinking, what I'm trying
Speaker 1: to achieve, Here is a solution that works for me,
Speaker 1: but it's going to cause you additional work and go yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I have been going on for years. Well, let me
Speaker 1: be clear, I'm not going to be happy if we
Speaker 1: leave with the solution new works for me but doesn't
Speaker 1: work for you, because I know of the long run
Speaker 1: that won't work. And we spend some time and you
Speaker 1: just can watch the tension come off their face, the
Speaker 1: relaxation to sit back. Now it's going to be a conversation.
Speaker 1: They're they're not having to sort of hype their arguments.
Speaker 1: We're not going to be hyping our us. We're not
Speaker 1: gonna end up on our usual sort of fighting and
Speaker 1: then leaving unhappy. We made to stick with this until
Speaker 1: we're both happy. We're going to find a third way. Right. So,
Speaker 1: one of the things is you your book are about
Speaker 1: You've got this method, and it's really about how to
Speaker 1: conduct these conversations. You've got more specifics in other books
Speaker 1: about how do you handle confrontations or how do you
Speaker 1: handle situations of holding people accountable. What I'm curious about
Speaker 1: is so we know now we know how to do it,
Speaker 1: but boy is it hard to step into those conversations.
Speaker 1: It takes a lot of courage. What are some ways
Speaker 1: that people can build up the courage or enter into
Speaker 1: those conversations when they're really hesitant to do so. You know,
Speaker 1: we were learned the skills not by sort of dreaming
Speaker 1: them opposity in an office and brain starting. We watched
Speaker 1: real people at work and we said, didn't that was
Speaker 1: that endive language reduced the sense toness that establishing neutual
Speaker 1: purpose made it so that they were moving together. We
Speaker 1: would see people doing it, and when we saw people,
Speaker 1: you know who really handled what I would consider uh,
Speaker 1: maybe touching conversation and they have dealt with something that's
Speaker 1: difficult to someone's competency exceptive. Um. And afterwards he would
Speaker 1: interview them and seriously, gosh, how did you get the
Speaker 1: curious to do that? They never saw themselves as being courageous,
Speaker 1: and the reason was that they were skilled. Their history
Speaker 1: had dinner sides, so that they interned the high stakes conversation.
Speaker 1: They had so many skills that almost always ended well,
Speaker 1: but almost always ended well would be like sort of
Speaker 1: going to a pliant the head air and bathing and saying,
Speaker 1: you know, I have to worry about that anymore, you know.
Speaker 1: And they didn't worry about the high stakes conversations because
Speaker 1: for them it was normal because they had the skills.
Speaker 1: So the best solution is is to crack open the book,
Speaker 1: sit down with the friend, and work on enhancing their
Speaker 1: skills and the confidence will then fall. Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: there's some truth to that. Um. I've had a bunch
Speaker 1: of successful crucial conversations and I've also had a ton
Speaker 1: of really terrible conversations. And so I still find like,
Speaker 1: even though I've been successful the overwhelming majority, if you
Speaker 1: go back all the years I've been alive, it's it's
Speaker 1: hard to overcome that. Even though mentally I go, yeah,
Speaker 1: I know I can do this, I've done it before.
Speaker 1: Every time I do it, it's good, there's still that
Speaker 1: underlying dread. Well, we're prepared, you know, That's that's the
Speaker 1: sort of that's the coming office Havannah. Preparation that we
Speaker 1: have is prepare for the worst thing of the worst
Speaker 1: that could be the worst. And it's hard to overcome that.
Speaker 1: But once again I'll say, work on your skills. As
Speaker 1: the skills lead to more positive results, this time, you
Speaker 1: will begin to be more confident. Yeah. And I think
Speaker 1: the other thing the books do a really good job
Speaker 1: of the accountability and the confrontation book is is really
Speaker 1: talking about why those things, why it's so important to
Speaker 1: have those conversations, and how valuable it can be and
Speaker 1: and really seeing I think the other side is that
Speaker 1: is when you start to recognize like you can come
Speaker 1: out the other side of those conversations, everybody's way better
Speaker 1: off instead of just it's not like you. You you
Speaker 1: head off a bad situation, you can actually make things
Speaker 1: a lot better. You know, we have a lot of
Speaker 1: people who first cannot get over the notion that so
Speaker 1: what you're gonna teach me is I get my way right,
Speaker 1: because that's the only way they can see a success.
Speaker 1: They can't see a success as being one where I
Speaker 1: bring some things in, you bring some things in, and
Speaker 1: we come up with something neither should have thought of,
Speaker 1: or or maybe I'll say, now that I understand your
Speaker 1: point in two years is a better idea, and that's
Speaker 1: a victory. We are so competitive with a special kind
Speaker 1: of competition meaning I win, you lose, that it's hard
Speaker 1: for many people. In radio interviews, the host often we'll say, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I get this crucial conversation the thing, but you know,
Speaker 1: how do I get my boss? And it's sort of like, well,
Speaker 1: what do you mean? Well, I don't like you, but
Speaker 1: I want to get in, So how do I get
Speaker 1: my busts? We're not time to teach you how to
Speaker 1: get in you and it just because it's no matter
Speaker 1: what we say, Okay, okay, I get that, but how
Speaker 1: do I get my bus? Like this mindset that's been
Speaker 1: you know, sort of tracking, you know, port into their
Speaker 1: ear enough there for years to fill it. And so
Speaker 1: for a lot of people, it's gonna be a long
Speaker 1: time until they learn the skills, apply the skills, and
Speaker 1: then start bringing a different attitude, which is, you know what,
Speaker 1: maybe we both have something to say here. So I'd
Speaker 1: like to change directions to another book of yours called
Speaker 1: change Anything, that's about how we change behaviors habits and
Speaker 1: make them stick over the long term. So, um, one
Speaker 1: of the things that I do some work with people
Speaker 1: about doing this, and I think we have a tendency
Speaker 1: when we're not successful at changing behaviors or habits, we
Speaker 1: have a tendency to say I'm terrible at this, or
Speaker 1: I never can do this, or I don't have enough willpower.
Speaker 1: I'm the kind of person who and you guys have
Speaker 1: done a lot of research that shows that that's not
Speaker 1: really what's happening. Can you tell us what is happening? Well,
Speaker 1: most of us are, you know, um, in a situation
Speaker 1: where the world around us in facts true for everybody,
Speaker 1: it's perfectly organized to create the current behaviors that you're excimiting.
Speaker 1: And so let's say you're you're spending too much, or
Speaker 1: you're not exercising enough. Pick something that we all work on.
Speaker 1: Come in the beginning of the year and we think,
Speaker 1: you know, um, gosh, I'm a bad person because I
Speaker 1: haven't been able to achieve that. I'm gonna really try harder.
Speaker 1: And we call that the willpower trap. We assume that
Speaker 1: if we just tried harder, we'd, you know, we'd end
Speaker 1: up better off. And the fact of the matter is
Speaker 1: we really out to considers that we're blind and numbered.
Speaker 1: There's about maybe ten or fifteen or twenty different forces
Speaker 1: currently acting on it. Some peer pressure to personal drive,
Speaker 1: to our lack of skills, to organizational structure, all lining
Speaker 1: up to get the current inappropriate behavior. We don't even
Speaker 1: see them, and then tell you can see them and
Speaker 1: then deal with them in a broader way. You're going
Speaker 1: to constantly be falling back in wealth thought low power,
Speaker 1: which is insignificant. Have you ever gone into a into
Speaker 1: a casino where they're gambling. Have you thought about the
Speaker 1: design of that casino and what that design is trying
Speaker 1: to achieve? Well, I have, Um, since I've read your books,
Speaker 1: I know where this is going. But I think you
Speaker 1: but you. No, No, it's it's actually good. I mean
Speaker 1: the point you're making is like they just you know,
Speaker 1: the carpet is designed to be so ugly that you
Speaker 1: want to look up and you want to look around,
Speaker 1: you want even look down. There's no clocks, I know,
Speaker 1: all the windows. You don't you don't pay with cash
Speaker 1: because you're losing money. They make you changes. They're using chips,
Speaker 1: and chips are just litill prevent things. And if when
Speaker 1: you win, there's big bells and you're losing, not big bells,
Speaker 1: and you can make a list of maybe two hundred things.
Speaker 1: Maybe a book six I can't remember. I think it
Speaker 1: was with a guy in Australia who was the king
Speaker 1: of this. This is a book like Fences Stick, you know,
Speaker 1: sort of saying this is what's affecting the behavior of gambling.
Speaker 1: What they the goal is to have to lose money
Speaker 1: and not be angry. Keep doing that and the world
Speaker 1: is stacked that way, right. Oh yeah? Somebody My wife
Speaker 1: room at Grand Canyon with a woman who played the
Speaker 1: organ in the great um. Then beautiful it looks out
Speaker 1: over the canyon and normally during the day there would
Speaker 1: be this lovely music being played, but during during peak hours,
Speaker 1: the music would pick off as spirits faster, like roll
Speaker 1: out the mail and got out of out of that
Speaker 1: because people beat faster when there's music play. Here. To
Speaker 1: ask them why they got back from them so quickly,
Speaker 1: I don't think any would say because the music was
Speaker 1: pretty fast. I don't think people who get up off
Speaker 1: of restaurant chairs to get back to their car thinking
Speaker 1: even gonna stay in the fast food restaurant and have
Speaker 1: their food, realize that the reason they got out because
Speaker 1: that chair was designed to be so uncomfortable, So drive
Speaker 1: them out of the rooms and more more customers could
Speaker 1: come in. The world is designed to get their inappropriate
Speaker 1: behaviors around us, and we outline and will change anything
Speaker 1: six different sources that you have to be looking through
Speaker 1: to see how they're playing to either motivate you to
Speaker 1: do the right thing, motivate do the wrong thing, enable
Speaker 1: you do the right thing, or enable to you do
Speaker 1: the wrong thing. And you've got six ways of looking
Speaker 1: at that. Yeah, that's what I wanted to do, was,
Speaker 1: you know, spend time on those six factors of influence,
Speaker 1: so the ways that we can line our lives, the
Speaker 1: people in our lives. All that to ensure the greatest
Speaker 1: chance of success. And you you say that the difference
Speaker 1: between people who don't really use any of those factors
Speaker 1: of influence or only use one or two versus people
Speaker 1: who use six or more is I think you said
Speaker 1: something like ten times the success, right, which is what
Speaker 1: I tell people I work with. This isn't about you
Speaker 1: being a person who has the willpower or person who
Speaker 1: can do this or can't do It's about the strategies.
Speaker 1: How are you going about it? So tell me what
Speaker 1: you know. Let's maybe work our way through what those
Speaker 1: six are. Okay, well, we first recommendo two categories, motivation
Speaker 1: and ability. Motivation means you want to do something, not
Speaker 1: doing as you might guess. Ability means even if you're motivated, canner,
Speaker 1: can canyon not do it? And so we are the
Speaker 1: fundamental attributionary for too earlier has assume that all problems
Speaker 1: and motivation problems, and a lot of the things are
Speaker 1: due to the ability. When you look at people who
Speaker 1: are having trouble with their finances, they often are incapable
Speaker 1: of calculating, um, what's happening with their savings, etcetera. There
Speaker 1: the math. They don't know how to create savings, book, successor,
Speaker 1: et cetera. And that's the aspect that needs to be
Speaker 1: worked on in order for them to improve that they're
Speaker 1: they're clueless, that's what's happening to them. Whereas we thought,
Speaker 1: if we just told them quit spending money, which is
Speaker 1: the motivational piece, that would all go away. So we
Speaker 1: look at the motivation abilities things, and then we look
Speaker 1: at personal you know, am I motivated and intrinsically you know?
Speaker 1: And that's where we often will focus because it's a
Speaker 1: big part of our problem. I like the taste of
Speaker 1: Daddy foods for example, a motivated person. And then we
Speaker 1: look at personal ability, you know, do I have the
Speaker 1: skill set required to enactive behaviors that are required to
Speaker 1: get me to change? From then we move to social
Speaker 1: and he said, I say, you know, we're we are
Speaker 1: indeed social animals. What are others doing? Do we have
Speaker 1: other people, you know, helping me at the problem or
Speaker 1: are they hindering me? You know? Are they you know?
Speaker 1: You know, we enterview people who have been alcoholics for
Speaker 1: thirty years, and many many and many of them found
Speaker 1: out the they were unable to change until they aline
Speaker 1: themselves with people who were going to help them with
Speaker 1: their personal change project as can't hinder it, and so
Speaker 1: others can. Others can be accomplices or they could they
Speaker 1: could be friends, and we have to know what you wish,
Speaker 1: and we often have to have a conversation negotiating with
Speaker 1: them to move them from being an accomplice, a drinking
Speaker 1: body and meeting body and spending boddy whatever they are.
Speaker 1: To someone who says, hey, I thought you were kind
Speaker 1: of working on that. You know, maybe I can help
Speaker 1: you here. So our others motivating us and our anothers
Speaker 1: enabling us. And then the final one and this is
Speaker 1: the one that I was referring to earlier. And when
Speaker 1: you walk into a into a casino, how's the physical
Speaker 1: world and around you structure? If you're having trouble spending money,
Speaker 1: you realize there are people right now pouring over endless
Speaker 1: videotapes of individuals in various shopping scenarios, deciding whether a
Speaker 1: set mark or a dollar mark will once act you
Speaker 1: to buy more? Which one is more enticeable? I have
Speaker 1: any inches away? Can it be? Etcetera. Except for the
Speaker 1: book on Why Why Why We spend Uh that looks
Speaker 1: at the two characteristics of the physical world that's being
Speaker 1: changed so that we purchase more. And so we then
Speaker 1: look at this physical world enable us as a motivate us.
Speaker 1: And we now have all six sources motivation ability for individual, social,
Speaker 1: and organizational or physical world. So the last to the
Speaker 1: structural motivation is um is do we have like, give
Speaker 1: me an example of a structural motivation when it comes
Speaker 1: to say, you know, losing weight, We've been using that analogy.
Speaker 1: What is uh? What is an example of that? People
Speaker 1: kind of do that one? Um uh. In other words,
Speaker 1: putting up putting up signs and reminders would be a
Speaker 1: way to motivate yourself physically, so you don't have to
Speaker 1: have your friends calling you and telling it we actually
Speaker 1: are working. We have developed the product over the years
Speaker 1: and uh that accused people and it sort of says,
Speaker 1: how are you doing today using their smart device that
Speaker 1: has a little conversation with them about whether you know
Speaker 1: what what they've eaten and why and how doing it?
Speaker 1: So you can even see lots of applications coming out
Speaker 1: of the future that you know, pictures of your grand
Speaker 1: shield and you want to play with and that's why
Speaker 1: you're trying to take lay off. Are going to come
Speaker 1: to your come onto your screen fifteen minutes story got
Speaker 1: to launch. That would that would be a structural motivation.
Speaker 1: So say we've we throw off the willpower trap. We
Speaker 1: look at these six sources of motivation and we really
Speaker 1: work to line all these different things up. We've got
Speaker 1: we you know, we learned how to do the things.
Speaker 1: We've got our friends involved. Um, you know, we we
Speaker 1: set up our environment. What are other things that are
Speaker 1: important to staying on course? Because one of the things
Speaker 1: that I think is challenging for a lot of people
Speaker 1: is we start off good, we structure our lives around
Speaker 1: all these things. We make some progress. But particularly if
Speaker 1: it's something we're doing because we're trying to um solve
Speaker 1: a problem or we're trying to change something that causes
Speaker 1: this pain, is that pain tends to recede. So do
Speaker 1: so do the reasons for doing it sometimes? So, do
Speaker 1: you have some tips for how to stay on the
Speaker 1: track when you're doing well? Yeah? What you have to do? Yeah,
Speaker 1: you have to prepare for setbacks. If you think to yourself,
Speaker 1: here's my plan and here's how I'm going to execute
Speaker 1: it perfectly. And that's that's the way you need to start.
Speaker 1: I mean, you want to start off with sell you
Speaker 1: in mind, but you have to say, in case I
Speaker 1: run into problems, what am I going to do? And
Speaker 1: what you're gonna do is you're going to stop and
Speaker 1: say what led to this particular deviations might plan? And
Speaker 1: then how do I restructure the little to make sure
Speaker 1: that doesn't happen again, which is very different to say
Speaker 1: what am I going to do to you know, to
Speaker 1: remotivate myself or um. What typically happens we say to ourselves,
Speaker 1: I'm just bad at this and we quit, but instead
Speaker 1: we sort of say, okay, something just happened, all jeez.
Speaker 1: I sat down at the table, uh, and I had
Speaker 1: three friends with me, and they started going to a dessert.
Speaker 1: I'm not good at restaurants, and I'm going to figure
Speaker 1: out this. In fact, I told them I didn't want desserts,
Speaker 1: and they kept pushing me for desserts. And rather than
Speaker 1: just giving in, I'm gonna have a conversation with them
Speaker 1: and turn them from my confidence into friends that I'm
Speaker 1: gonna say, you know, next time you got working on
Speaker 1: you know, uh, rather you'd not try to talk me
Speaker 1: into eating and sharing deserts, would you? Would that be okay?
Speaker 1: And then and say, okay, so I have a plan
Speaker 1: for overcoming the deviation rather than just feeling bad about
Speaker 1: yourself recuitting. We're near the end of our time. But
Speaker 1: one last question I'll ask you is you describe vital
Speaker 1: behavior so that it's not you know, being on being
Speaker 1: on alert all the time, where's us out willpowers a
Speaker 1: resource that can go away. So you talk about focusing
Speaker 1: on vital behaviors, what does that mean? Yeah, what you're
Speaker 1: gonna find is there's there's going to be certain things
Speaker 1: that if you do then they're going to affect that
Speaker 1: your life in more powerful ways. And so um you
Speaker 1: rather than just affecting one or two things in your life,
Speaker 1: they're going to affect many aspects of your life. That's
Speaker 1: why I think for lots of people, UM finding turning
Speaker 1: their their accomplices into friends is an important way because
Speaker 1: then plays themselves out as a help in so many
Speaker 1: different ways. So the vital behavior, the behavior you're working
Speaker 1: on this, I'm going to talk with people who are
Speaker 1: currently you know, encouraged me to the wrong behavior and
Speaker 1: ask me to stop doing that. Not only will they
Speaker 1: stop doing that, but they may start encouraging you. There
Speaker 1: are people you wanted into all the time, and so
Speaker 1: it happens quite frequently, and so this particularly one gets
Speaker 1: three or four or five benefits out of it. And
Speaker 1: when you do that, you started making me good changes.
Speaker 1: But they're very personal, yea. And I love that when
Speaker 1: you said earlier, the we are we are blind and
Speaker 1: outnumbered when we go after trying to change these things.
Speaker 1: And I'm always amazed by how just a little bit
Speaker 1: of help and encouragement and support and end up and
Speaker 1: creating a plan makes these things so much easier and
Speaker 1: so much more powerful, um, you know, to get done.
Speaker 1: So thank you for creating all the work that you've
Speaker 1: done around that. You're welcome er think thanks for having
Speaker 1: me on your show. Yeah, it's been really enjoyable and
Speaker 1: um we'll talk again soon. Thank you. Okay bye. You
Speaker 1: can learn more about Carry Patterson and this podcast at
Speaker 1: one you feed dot net. Slash Kerry