Speaker 1: As a listener of how I work.
Speaker 2: You've hopefully picked up a few tips on this show
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Speaker 2: Hop onto Amantha dot com to pre order. Now, how
Speaker 2: often do you think about trust and what it really means?
Speaker 2: Do you trust your boss, your colleagues, or the company
Speaker 2: that you work for? And how would your day unfold
Speaker 2: if that trust wasn't there, or if you didn't have
Speaker 2: the trust of your customers or your clients. Trust is
Speaker 2: something that Francis Fry sees as the foundation of everything.
Speaker 2: I was lucky enough to be in Vancouver in twenty
Speaker 2: nineteen to see Francis deliver her now famous Ted talk
Speaker 2: on bringing trust back into Uber and it was a
Speaker 2: game changer for me. Francis is a Harvard Business School
Speaker 2: professor and together with Anne Morris, has written several best
Speaker 2: selling books about trust and leadership. So how do these
Speaker 2: world authorities on trust go about building it into their
Speaker 2: own day to day lives.
Speaker 1: My name is doctor amanthe Immer.
Speaker 2: I'm an organizational psychologist and the founder of behavioral science
Speaker 2: consultancy Inventium. And this is how I work, a show
Speaker 2: about how to help.
Speaker 1: You do your best work.
Speaker 2: So Frances and Ann are not only partners at work,
Speaker 2: they are also partners in life. And every year they
Speaker 2: go through an annual New Year's reflection process, and I
Speaker 2: wanted to know what it looked like.
Speaker 3: So we and when I say we, I mean I
Speaker 3: look for any excuse for group reflection, which is my
Speaker 3: idea of a good time, and it may not be
Speaker 3: shared by my better half. So New Year's is such
Speaker 3: a powerful moment for all the obvious reasons, but Monday
Speaker 3: can also be a time for reflection. So I do
Speaker 3: try to drag you, Francis into these conversations more frequently
Speaker 3: than just the turn of the year. But it is
Speaker 3: what we end up doing, and it has become a
Speaker 3: nice ritual that involves, like you know, swing by a
Speaker 3: local pub. But it is to just free form reflect
Speaker 3: on what is it that we want to achieve in
Speaker 3: the coming year.
Speaker 4: And it's what's beautiful about it is that it has
Speaker 4: no rear view mirror. There is no accountability for the
Speaker 4: last year. It is only what is our ambition and
Speaker 4: our greatest hopes for the upcoming year, and.
Speaker 1: The questions like is there a structure that guides you
Speaker 1: in doing that forward planning?
Speaker 3: Quite importantly, there's no. There's no shared structure. So usually
Speaker 3: each year we you know, as you're writing as structure
Speaker 3: emerges for each of us, but there's no overlap in
Speaker 3: the structure, and then we sort out.
Speaker 4: On righte is parallel play. So we'll sit down, we'll
Speaker 4: write at the same time, and then whichever one of
Speaker 4: us has moved to go first will go first and
Speaker 4: narrate the list.
Speaker 3: And that's a really important part of the process is
Speaker 3: then to describe it to each other. Yeah, and in
Speaker 3: the description we're also allowed and encouraged to ask each
Speaker 3: other questions, clarifying questions, contextual questions. That's definitely part of
Speaker 3: it too.
Speaker 2: So is it more like a story or a narrative
Speaker 2: as opposed to hear is a list of things for
Speaker 2: the ya?
Speaker 4: Yes it is. It is, But it's a comprehensive narrative
Speaker 4: because it will cover, you know, in years, it covers health, wealth, family, ambition,
Speaker 4: you know, like big small, want to go out for walks?
Speaker 4: More like it can be anything on it, but the
Speaker 4: context is very important. To Anne. Left to my own,
Speaker 4: I could have a crisp list, but within no list
Speaker 4: is crisp.
Speaker 3: Francis has never forgiven me for springing on her the
Speaker 3: night before that. I thought we should write our own
Speaker 3: vows for our wedding the morning of. I keep trying
Speaker 3: to give myself more lead time in the retail, just
Speaker 3: willing in the retelling of the story. Was it the
Speaker 3: morning of?
Speaker 4: It might have been the morning the pen you had
Speaker 4: just bought and a notebook you had just bought, and
Speaker 4: I was looking for the hotel pen and the hotel
Speaker 4: scrap of paper. I felt under enormous pressure, which you delivered.
Speaker 3: I rose to delivered. Yes, you wrote it was the
Speaker 3: first real test of our marriage. Four minutes in.
Speaker 2: Wow, that is such high pressure. I feel like I
Speaker 2: took weeks to refine mine. But I'm divorced. So you know,
Speaker 2: you guys are winning on that front. So now we're
Speaker 2: in May. So we're five months after you've gone through
Speaker 2: this knees planning session. How is that narrative evolving into
Speaker 2: the year, Like is it matching closely?
Speaker 1: What are the things that are aligned and what do
Speaker 1: you do with the things that are not?
Speaker 3: So it is a vehicle to have a very direct
Speaker 3: conversation around what is important to each of us. And
Speaker 3: we get to say in this ritual, what is important
Speaker 3: to you? What is important to me?
Speaker 1: Is right?
Speaker 3: That is that is the car In response, I think
Speaker 3: where it shows up six months later is I have
Speaker 3: no idea what I wrote and I've never revisited it. Francis,
Speaker 3: I think that's probably true for you as well.
Speaker 4: Yes it's true.
Speaker 3: But we have had variations on that shorter variations. Let's
Speaker 3: ritualize variations on that conversation subsequently as new information presents itself.
Speaker 3: And I think that to me, that's the value of
Speaker 3: keeping that muscle warm. And what happens on January first
Speaker 3: is a recommitment to use the muscle and then I
Speaker 3: think we probably have some version of that conversation monthly
Speaker 3: for maybe more. But what is important to you, know,
Speaker 3: and it is it is often that is the frame
Speaker 3: of this is what has value to me now, and
Speaker 3: this is the new insight that I have into it.
Speaker 3: And for instance, is the first person I want to
Speaker 3: share that with. Obviously she's my wife, but I think
Speaker 3: also because that's a dialogue we've been having now for sixteen.
Speaker 2: Years, Francis, a lot of people might have come across
Speaker 2: you from your work around trust, and I would love
Speaker 2: to know if you, when you're first meeting someone that
Speaker 2: you have to build trust with, how do you go
Speaker 2: about doing that?
Speaker 4: Yeah, so I am, and I'm I really like to
Speaker 4: build trust quickly. It's much easier for me to build
Speaker 4: it quickly if it's doing it over time. I'm not
Speaker 4: very good at the slow gear. So I'm either on
Speaker 4: or off or my two preferred states. And so I
Speaker 4: like to reveal the real me. So I'm just I
Speaker 4: just open the door, you know, in a disarming way,
Speaker 4: sharing something about how I'm doing or what I'm thinking about.
Speaker 1: Like what's an example of that?
Speaker 4: Yeah, so I will. I can't remember the last time
Speaker 4: I met someone who I didn't have a story about
Speaker 4: Anne or my family in it. So I am. I
Speaker 4: am more personal about my family life than almost any
Speaker 4: other person.
Speaker 3: I know.
Speaker 4: It comes up in every conversation, and usually you have
Speaker 4: to know people to do it, not me. I start
Speaker 4: with it. It also calms me down. It puts me
Speaker 4: in a great mood to do it, So I think
Speaker 4: that's the It's usually that or if i'm you know,
Speaker 4: if I've just gone through something, and usually you will.
Speaker 4: I would tell the next person I speak to about that,
Speaker 4: like I'm a very.
Speaker 3: And you confess.
Speaker 4: So I grew up in a very strongly Catholic family.
Speaker 4: Confession was a very big part of it, and I
Speaker 4: have kept that part of Catholicism. I confess everything to anyone,
Speaker 4: and so it's to the next person I talk to.
Speaker 4: That's who I'm doing it. So that's actually a crisper
Speaker 4: way of doing it. That takes care of the authenticity
Speaker 4: part of trust. If there's three parts to it, authenticity, logic,
Speaker 4: and empathy. I'm keenly aware of the other person in
Speaker 4: the conversation, and I'm always thinking, how can I be
Speaker 4: of service to you? Like what, what are what? What's
Speaker 4: the underlying way that I can be helpful? And and
Speaker 4: that's the empathy part. And then my brain, I can't
Speaker 4: shut off the pattern seeking parts of it and the making,
Speaker 4: the sense making, and that's the logic. So it comes
Speaker 4: quite naturally to me when it's a stranger or a
Speaker 4: new person, particularly if I'm not the one who's asking
Speaker 4: for something. I'm so clumsy when I'm asking for something.
Speaker 4: But when some were meeting, I just quickly find out
Speaker 4: how I can be helpful to them, And that's a
Speaker 4: really helpful orientation for me.
Speaker 2: When you were first brought into Uber to help rebuild trust?
Speaker 2: Is that an accurate way? It's sort of a statement,
Speaker 2: maybe what were some of the very first things that
Speaker 2: you did to help that process.
Speaker 4: One is by talking about it in a way that
Speaker 4: didn't make it feel like it was a third rail, right,
Speaker 4: So you know, I remember the first senior meeting I
Speaker 4: was in with the ce I only overlapped with the
Speaker 4: CEO for two weeks, but I was in a meeting
Speaker 4: with the CEO and the rest of his direct reports.
Speaker 4: And in the meeting, people were texting in the meeting
Speaker 4: A number one, B number two. They were texting each
Speaker 4: other in the meeting about what other people were saying.
Speaker 4: Now that had just become common nature. So there was like,
Speaker 4: so everyone was excluding, everyone was excluded. Now you could
Speaker 4: have had it, but it was there was no empathy
Speaker 4: in the room, even though the people actually liked one another.
Speaker 4: There was the structure. So it was just like having
Speaker 4: you know, when you're new to a place, you get
Speaker 4: to put on the glasses where you see what's you know, interesting,
Speaker 4: And it was willing to share my new glasses with
Speaker 4: those that were already there because they no longer realized it.
Speaker 1: And then when I.
Speaker 4: Described in the way I just described it to you.
Speaker 3: They were like, I love that example, interesting habit. I
Speaker 3: love that example of for instances, because what we'll often
Speaker 3: say when we work with people on empathy as shorthand
Speaker 3: is to be present in the presence of others. And
Speaker 3: so that moment, first of all, everyone is distracted by
Speaker 3: their devices. Everyone is distracted by their devices, which is
Speaker 3: the number one empathy killer in the world right now,
Speaker 3: and we're all guilty of it. But also the erosion
Speaker 3: of safety in the fact that there's a conversation happening
Speaker 3: about everyone in the room at the same time, and
Speaker 3: so we have no choice but to be self distracted
Speaker 3: in that moment because we have to protect ourselves. And
Speaker 3: so unraveling that scene, which I know you did right
Speaker 3: away in your work there, but unraveling that scene which
Speaker 3: is happening, by the way, first of all all over Valley,
Speaker 3: but in many organizations that kind of behavior has become
Speaker 3: totally normalized, and it's it.
Speaker 4: The amount that it holds the team back is mind boggling.
Speaker 4: So people are like, oh, yes, we do that. I'm
Speaker 4: like you, so, oh yes, we underperform by orders of magnitude,
Speaker 4: Like that's what that's what we're acknowledging. So we can
Speaker 4: choose to continue to underperform or we can make a
Speaker 4: small and kind adjustment.
Speaker 1: So what happened when you brought that to their attention.
Speaker 4: Oh, at first they did just what you did, right,
Speaker 4: They they laugh at it. But it's then it's important
Speaker 4: to put processes in place. So I was one of
Speaker 4: the things that Travis asked me to do is to
Speaker 4: facilitate the senior team, and so I run the meetings.
Speaker 4: So we just in the beginning, we just had to
Speaker 4: say all technology gets put over there. So we just
Speaker 4: had over in the couch area in the table area,
Speaker 4: and it totally freaked people out. And I was like,
Speaker 4: we just have to learn how to be free of
Speaker 4: it because the tethers are too tight. And then we
Speaker 4: would tell any of the assistance if you have to
Speaker 4: come in and get someone because people were And then
Speaker 4: over time people could be like, well, I really want
Speaker 4: to take notes on my computer. Okay, well we have
Speaker 4: to be away from it for a while, so we
Speaker 4: have paper and pens and then you could slowly bring
Speaker 4: it back in. But it needed to be a hard
Speaker 4: a hard cut in the beginning, just to feel what
Speaker 4: it was like. And I have to tell you it. Also,
Speaker 4: the meetings became better. They went we went through materials
Speaker 4: faster and deeper as a result, because when you're interacting
Speaker 4: with only distracted people and only people who are feeling unsafe,
Speaker 4: that takes forever and you hardly get anywhere. So it
Speaker 4: really improved speed and quality quite monumentally.
Speaker 2: And you mentioned that devices one of the biggest issues
Speaker 2: we have around building empathy. How how do you bring
Speaker 2: that insight into your in line lives.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a great question. These devices are so seductive
Speaker 3: and they are meant to be and so I think
Speaker 3: putting up strict boundaries. For me, putting up strict boundaries
Speaker 3: is the only way to go. So I never bring
Speaker 3: it into our bedroom. I never bring it onto the
Speaker 3: floor where I'm trying to sleep. Uh, you know meals.
Speaker 3: You know, all devices have to be away from the
Speaker 3: table for me to be present. I think I've removed
Speaker 3: apps from my phone that are more distracting. I just
Speaker 3: think that the it's the we are. I am in
Speaker 3: the phase of a relationship with my devices where prohibition
Speaker 3: is the only thing that is working right now. But
Speaker 3: other people are at a healthier place with.
Speaker 4: Them and and for me, I so I don't use
Speaker 4: my devices very often at all. So I'm never on
Speaker 4: zoom and on something else. I'm always there. I check
Speaker 4: my email at most two times a day, but probably
Speaker 4: once every other day is a more natural rhythm. So
Speaker 4: and I learned that lesson from the late Clay Christiansen,
Speaker 4: when I once asked him, how are you so much
Speaker 4: more productive than everyone else? And he said, I check
Speaker 4: email twice a day, so I'm not distracted by it.
Speaker 4: And then I made the maybe like five years ago,
Speaker 4: I made the parallel to consumption of news and the
Speaker 4: intra day consumption of news. I haven't seen that be
Speaker 4: helpful to anyone, and so I no longer do intra
Speaker 4: day consumption of news. I would for a while I
Speaker 4: had to go cold turkey so and would just narrate
Speaker 4: whatever it was important.
Speaker 3: The capital is being attacked Francis by.
Speaker 4: Our own people, and now I can check in. But
Speaker 4: I don't check the news every day. I certainly don't
Speaker 4: do it intraday. Those were that's for me. I've never
Speaker 4: been very late to the social media landscape, and so
Speaker 4: I don't have any kind of They're designed to be addictive,
Speaker 4: but I've never gotten that far up the participation curve
Speaker 4: for that to be an issue. But I like to
Speaker 4: have total blockout of those things so that I can
Speaker 4: focus on either my work, the television program I want
Speaker 4: to watch. Like I consume a lot of alternate things
Speaker 4: to spark to spark my thinking. But it's almost never.
Speaker 4: It's almost never the traditional way of doing it. And
Speaker 4: you'd think that I was hard to get in contact with.
Speaker 4: I'm not that hard. It turns out we're not checking
Speaker 4: email more than once a day because we need to
Speaker 4: be in people need to be in contact with us.
Speaker 4: It's something much deeper than that, because I'm plenty easy
Speaker 4: to be in contact with.
Speaker 3: No, we're just trying to find out am I loved
Speaker 3: or am I not loved? What about now? I am
Speaker 3: I love?
Speaker 4: Now? I go downstairs and ask my wife, you.
Speaker 3: Have a wonder. It's been super provocative in the best
Speaker 3: sense for me to watch you set these boundaries. I'm
Speaker 3: on the other end of the spectrum. I'm not as
Speaker 3: far gone as some of the people, some of our
Speaker 3: loved ones. But but I think you're you have you
Speaker 3: have said an excellent and challenging model for me. I
Speaker 3: was definitely overconfident in my multitasking. I thought it did
Speaker 3: not come at a price. And even small experiments in
Speaker 3: scaling that back had pretty pretty profound payoffs. And so
Speaker 3: that that's what has spurred me to come closer to
Speaker 3: the light where I see you standing.
Speaker 4: I'm as productive as I'll ever be because I've trimmed
Speaker 4: out all of the multitasking. So this is it.
Speaker 1: It doesn't get any to go in. So and what
Speaker 1: do you do with your emailment?
Speaker 2: Because that it's exactly that. It's like checking to say,
Speaker 2: does anyone love me right?
Speaker 3: Now?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 3: And then do the right people love me right? If
Speaker 3: you get certain, if you hit scale, then you got
Speaker 3: to go then you got to go to quality. It's
Speaker 3: never ending. So I mean, you know what is the
Speaker 3: structural solution? That's hard work? You know, that's that is
Speaker 3: the hard work around. Why am I seeking external affirmation
Speaker 3: which the world has turned into all of these incredible devices.
Speaker 3: But I think if you if you don't want to do,
Speaker 3: if you don't want to work that hard, then you're
Speaker 3: then you're in setting up setting up boundaries and running
Speaker 3: experiments on.
Speaker 4: How you're great at running the experiments and.
Speaker 3: Learning, like let's try like how does it feel to
Speaker 3: take Twitter off my phone? That feels? That feels good?
Speaker 3: That feels good. Uh And and and that's I mean
Speaker 3: we in the work that we do with individuals and organizations,
Speaker 3: a lot of it is encouraging people to just run
Speaker 3: experiments on their lives, on their leadership, on their ways
Speaker 3: of working, you know, just to bring that kind of
Speaker 3: can do, joyful, curious energy to all aspects of their lives.
Speaker 3: And our relationships with our device. For some of us,
Speaker 3: it's the most devoted, meaningful relationship that we have right now.
Speaker 3: We're sleeping with our devices, we're caressing them, we're checking
Speaker 3: in with them constantly, and I think that, you know,
Speaker 3: there's a lot of great experimentation that can be done
Speaker 3: around that relationship.
Speaker 2: So, and what are a couple of the most powerful
Speaker 2: experiments that you've run in your own life in racing times?
Speaker 3: Oh beyond devices anything.
Speaker 4: Oh my gosh, this is such a good question for
Speaker 4: Antie does them every week?
Speaker 2: Well?
Speaker 3: So, yeah, I don't know that we have the amount
Speaker 3: of time to have this conversation fully. But one sandbox
Speaker 3: that has made a big difference in my life is
Speaker 3: to be very deliberate about my own bioorhythms. So when
Speaker 3: I do different kinds of work and now and now
Speaker 3: people just refer We should give them different names, but
Speaker 3: people just refer to my morning brain and my afternoon brain.
Speaker 3: It's five point thirty in the afternoon right now, I've
Speaker 3: been up for a good like thirteen plus hour. We're
Speaker 3: getting close to my bedtime. That anything coherent is coming
Speaker 3: out of my mouth that could be a benefit to
Speaker 3: your listeners is astonishing. But I did learn. I started
Speaker 3: to be very protective of the morning. I started to
Speaker 3: be very deliberate about what were the what was the
Speaker 3: kind of work I was doing in the morning, what
Speaker 3: was the kind of work I was going to do
Speaker 3: in the afternoon, And I redesigned my schedule around that idea. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and it was really transformational.
Speaker 4: So people all over the world are trying to reserve
Speaker 4: morning brain slots for Ann. I think it's the most beautiful,
Speaker 4: intense It's like breath taking otherworldly. You can only get
Speaker 4: it from plank Am plank Am, and it's usually like
Speaker 4: four thirty to six thirty am like those And so
Speaker 4: that's precious. You got to reserve ahead.
Speaker 3: Right, and there are some scarcity dynamics at work here.
Speaker 3: But then the next experiment is can I extend that
Speaker 3: that morning brain slot and what will it take and
Speaker 3: you know, when when should I exercise? What should I
Speaker 3: be eating? When should I go to bed? You know,
Speaker 3: and with these things, you know, the motivation to kind
Speaker 3: of do those things well when it's general for me
Speaker 3: was not that helpful, like oh, be a more righteous person,
Speaker 3: go on this walk, not helpful, but extend that like
Speaker 3: a few hours and maybe even beyond like that, that
Speaker 3: was super motivating. And so things like meditation, timing of exercise,
Speaker 3: you know, sleep hygiene, and you know, the whole category
Speaker 3: of sleep hygiene. One of the experiments Francis and I
Speaker 3: started running was I'm going to not get her name,
Speaker 3: but there's a wonderful reporter from ABC who just published
Speaker 3: a book on sleep. One of the recommendations she makes
Speaker 3: in her book is, when you're going to bed at night,
Speaker 3: before you fall asleep, write down every problem you have,
Speaker 3: anything that and the idea is anything that you would
Speaker 3: possibly be thinking about were you to wake up in
Speaker 3: the middle of the night. But she really pushes you
Speaker 3: to go deep, like any grocery, like anything, write it
Speaker 3: all down on like one half of a page, and
Speaker 3: on the other app put the next thing you are
Speaker 3: going to do an immediate next step you're going to
Speaker 3: take on every single one of these problems, and.
Speaker 4: You don't take those steps, but you have to write
Speaker 4: down the first step, and then that calms your brain down.
Speaker 4: And so this has free it's.
Speaker 3: I'm gonna put I'm gonna I'm gonna tighten that a
Speaker 3: little bit because this is the intuition. It trains your
Speaker 3: brain that you solve problems in the daytime because what
Speaker 3: and I was getting really stuck on this. I would
Speaker 3: wake up after a couple hours of sleep, my brain
Speaker 3: would be firing and I would try to start solving problems,
Speaker 3: and then my brain started to think that's when I
Speaker 3: solve problems, which is, you know, at two in the morning.
Speaker 3: And this ritual and her data is really fun because
Speaker 3: people think, oh, I'm going to now have to do
Speaker 3: this for the rest of my life. She said it
Speaker 3: took her two or three weeks of doing this and
Speaker 3: her brain was retrained. So we are. This is an
Speaker 3: experiment that Francis and I are in the middle of
Speaker 3: right now. I think we're maybe four or five days
Speaker 3: into it.
Speaker 4: And not let anyone think that I run experiments. I don't,
Speaker 4: so I don't think about exercise dieting, Like, I don't
Speaker 4: think about any of that stuff. But what I do
Speaker 4: is I let Anne amortize the great things she learned,
Speaker 4: and so once she cycles through, she'll share with me
Speaker 4: the one to try. I don't have to read the book.
Speaker 4: She just tells me the thing, and I happily do it.
Speaker 4: So I'm not an experimenter. I'm a borrower of best practices.
Speaker 1: I think that sends very wise Francis.
Speaker 2: Now, and you do a lot of work with leaders
Speaker 2: and coaching leaders, I'd love to know what what are
Speaker 2: the very first questions that you're asking.
Speaker 1: A leader to get a feel for what you're working with.
Speaker 3: So I do a lot of work with the highs
Speaker 3: and lows. You know, when are you at your best?
Speaker 3: What are those circumstances? What are the circumstances surrounding when
Speaker 3: you don't feel like you're at your best and you're
Speaker 3: contributing fully. I think, again, a lot to learn in
Speaker 3: those edges. I think emotions are data, So what are
Speaker 3: you feeling? You know, we start in the workplace, but
Speaker 3: you know, really the conversation I seek to have with
Speaker 3: people about it, what are you know? What are the
Speaker 3: lives that they want to live, and so how do
Speaker 3: they feel as they move through those lives? I think
Speaker 3: is really important information. What what is a legacy that
Speaker 3: you want to have? You know, how are you defining meaning?
Speaker 3: How are you defining success?
Speaker 4: So and I'm going to bring my confessional nature to you. So, So,
Speaker 4: you had two coaching calls today and in both cases
Speaker 4: the people you were coaching ended up in tears, Which
Speaker 4: isn't that uncommon of an outcome for you? I mean
Speaker 4: that it's actually quite startlingly high. What leads to that?
Speaker 2: Like?
Speaker 4: What what is that about? And these are good tiers?
Speaker 4: But how does that happen?
Speaker 3: That?
Speaker 1: That's such a great question, Francis, do you want a
Speaker 1: job on how?
Speaker 4: I No, I don't. I just confess, So I answer,
Speaker 4: but I'm just confessing. I know that happened today and
Speaker 4: it would be wonderful.
Speaker 3: Yes, well, I love the question. It's there. They were
Speaker 3: good tiers and not that there are any bad tears.
Speaker 3: In fact, I would argue. But one of the great
Speaker 3: privileges of this work is that I get to have
Speaker 3: a conversation with people about what matters to them, and
Speaker 3: I get to when I'm doing my job, I get
Speaker 3: to create a space where they can really get in
Speaker 3: touch with the best version of themselves, and sometimes that
Speaker 3: version of themselves they have not given that person permission
Speaker 3: to come out and play and come out and work,
Speaker 3: and come out and be part of the world sometimes
Speaker 3: for a long time, and that that's the space for
Speaker 3: him or her or them to come out and play.
Speaker 3: I think can come with a lot of powerful emotions,
Speaker 3: particularly if they've been hanging back for a while.
Speaker 2: We will be back soon with and talking about how
Speaker 2: one of the keys to her coaching work with leaders
Speaker 2: is making it less about them and more about those
Speaker 2: around them.
Speaker 1: If you're looking.
Speaker 2: For more tips to improve the way that you work,
Speaker 2: I write a short fortnightly newsletter that contains three cool
Speaker 2: things that I've discovered that helped me work better, ranging
Speaker 2: from software and gadgets that I'm loving three to interesting
Speaker 2: research findings. You can sign up for that at Howiwork
Speaker 2: dot code. That's how I Work dot co. I know
Speaker 2: that one of the things you think about with Lee
Speaker 2: doesn't coach them through is making it less about.
Speaker 1: Them and more about those around them. Can you talk
Speaker 1: about that?
Speaker 3: Yeah? I think, particularly as people move up in the hierarchy,
Speaker 3: the gravitational pull of self distraction can get really strong.
Speaker 3: It's almost like climbing a cliff and you look down,
Speaker 3: so suddenly you're confronted with the stakes, but you're also
Speaker 3: confronted with the fact that there are lots of people
Speaker 3: paying attention to what you say and what you do,
Speaker 3: and that whole ride can be very self distracting. So
Speaker 3: some of what we do in our work is give
Speaker 3: people permission to look outward. Sometimes the metaphor we use
Speaker 3: is look away from the mirror and look out the
Speaker 3: window at what the people around you need. Often that's
Speaker 3: a very relieving message, because again, the best version of
Speaker 3: us is a very I believe, very service oriented version,
Speaker 3: and it is eager to get out there and be
Speaker 3: of service to the world. But the way leadership has
Speaker 3: been defined, the way it's been done and practice, the
Speaker 3: world's obsession with individual leaders and you know the succession
Speaker 3: story and the palace intrigue, and you know the way
Speaker 3: we talk about leadership that the stories we tell, they're
Speaker 3: very focused on the individual leader, when in fact, where
Speaker 3: the real action is is what's happening in the rest
Speaker 3: of the palace, the rest of the building.
Speaker 2: And so we.
Speaker 3: Invite people to reframe the work that they do when
Speaker 3: they are practicing leadership in that way, and that can
Speaker 3: be a powerful pivot.
Speaker 4: One of the great things that I've learned from n
Speaker 4: On along this line is that you might have a
Speaker 4: hierarchy a management position, but nobody's a leader twenty four
Speaker 4: to seven. So even if I'm in a hierarchical position,
Speaker 4: I'm only in the act of leadership when I am
Speaker 4: centered on others. And when I'm self distracted, which you
Speaker 4: have to be put the oxygen mask on yourself, you
Speaker 4: are not participating in the act of leadership. And the
Speaker 4: separation of leaders and leadership can be super powerful to people.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, I mean just so that I think that
Speaker 3: insight Francises can be so helpful and practical. Just this
Speaker 3: idea that leadership is a is an action, it's a practice.
Speaker 3: It is not an identity. Uh, And it's you know,
Speaker 3: you're you're leading when you are focused on setting the
Speaker 3: people around you up for success. And there are other
Speaker 3: things that you need to do for your own security
Speaker 3: and survival and happiness and well being, and those those
Speaker 3: things are valuable too, but it's not leadership. And that
Speaker 3: that message has also been helpful to a lot of
Speaker 3: the people we work with.
Speaker 1: Now invite your roles.
Speaker 2: You would spend a lot of time giving people great
Speaker 2: advice and listening. And I'm wondering for you guys, over
Speaker 2: the courses of your career out what stands out as
Speaker 2: some of the best career advice you've both received and Francis,
Speaker 2: maybe do you want to take this one first?
Speaker 4: Yeah, Well, by far, the best career advice I received
Speaker 4: is from Anne, so I might if I ever have
Speaker 4: disproportionate success, I get twenty four to seven of this,
Speaker 4: so it's so fair. But I'll tell you some of
Speaker 4: the things. I mean. And helped me understand the window
Speaker 4: mirror metaphor and that to be other distracted. I had
Speaker 4: intuition about it, but she really helped me understand that
Speaker 4: you met me at the trust. Well, Anne and I
Speaker 4: worked on that talk. I happen to be the one
Speaker 4: that delivered it. So I would work overnight and she
Speaker 4: would work in the morning, and then I would work overnight.
Speaker 4: And what I learned is that the purpose of a
Speaker 4: first draft is to be embarrassed by it by the
Speaker 4: second draft. I did not know that, And I mean,
Speaker 4: and then I thought the first trap Okay, well, the
Speaker 4: second draft, let's poor liquid svent on that, and then
Speaker 4: she would do another and another and another, and I
Speaker 4: it just blew my mind on that part. So it's
Speaker 4: the looking out the window of others and that think
Speaker 4: that writing is a really wonderful form of thinking. And
Speaker 4: I just always thought I was a bad writer, so
Speaker 4: I didn't participate in it very much. And it has
Speaker 4: just unleashed my ability to think and improved my ability
Speaker 4: to communicate, even though I still communicate with shapes more
Speaker 4: than words. I hear it like in that Ted talk,
Speaker 4: I had to draw shapes on the on the blackboard.
Speaker 4: But I think those two things really the mirror and
Speaker 4: the and the revision of ideas, and that that's and
Speaker 4: that writing is a great form of thinking. Love that.
Speaker 1: How about you, Anne.
Speaker 3: I'm gonna I'm going to answer this as a category
Speaker 3: advice of advice with the headline of don't believe everything
Speaker 3: you think. And I'll add a little texture to that
Speaker 3: which so I am an authenticity wobbler, an empathy anchor
Speaker 3: authenticity wobbler in our a lexicon. When I was starting
Speaker 3: companies in a previous career, I spent a lot of
Speaker 3: time raising money from venture capitalists, a task at which
Speaker 3: I was terrible in the beginning. And back to our
Speaker 3: conversation about trust. It is one of those conversations that
Speaker 3: is all about I mean, particularly when you're raising money
Speaker 3: for a company that does not yet exist. You are
Speaker 3: asking people to jump off a cliff with you, and
Speaker 3: so if they don't trust you even a little bit,
Speaker 3: there's no way they're taking that leap. And so in
Speaker 3: the beginning, I would, you know, get up at the
Speaker 3: front of the room. And I was very distracted by
Speaker 3: the idea that I was a woman, and I was young,
Speaker 3: and I had never done this before, and I was queer,
Speaker 3: and I was in some rooms where no woman had
Speaker 3: been in except to like take a lunch order or
Speaker 3: deliver a like. I was so distracted by the surroundings,
Speaker 3: and as I tried to figure out what was going wrong,
Speaker 3: I kept misdiagnosing and kept you know, confidence and swagger,
Speaker 3: and I just became more There was more and more
Speaker 3: preteenpse pretending to be the person in the front of
Speaker 3: the room that they wanted to see, which people can
Speaker 3: figure out very quick. The human animal can smell that
Speaker 3: one from a well anyway, So I figured out it
Speaker 3: was authenticity. One of the frameworks that was very helpful
Speaker 3: to me was the Wonderful Byron Katie's for essential questions,
Speaker 3: and the idea is to identify the thought, so the
Speaker 3: you know, the thought in that room might be this
Speaker 3: is a room that doesn't value me. So the first
Speaker 3: question on the list of essential question is is it true?
Speaker 3: And your answers, of course it's true. The second question
Speaker 3: is is it really true? Jus as zooming your answer
Speaker 3: the verson one is wrong and in fact it's never
Speaker 3: totally true. And then the questions get really fun, which
Speaker 3: is they're like, well, could the opposite be true? Could
Speaker 3: it be that you don't value the other, you don't
Speaker 3: value the people in the room, or you are undervaluing
Speaker 3: your It's not that they're undervaluing you, it's that you're
Speaker 3: undervaluing you. And let's take a look at the data.
Speaker 3: Your name seems to be on the list, like you
Speaker 3: seem to be invited to stand up at the front
Speaker 3: of the room and take everyone's time. Somehow you've concluded
Speaker 3: that your voice is not being valued, and yet you
Speaker 3: are the only one speaking. Everyone is taking notes on
Speaker 3: what you're saying, right, So it's really fun and then
Speaker 3: the last question is really the moment of liberation. And
Speaker 3: I think this idea of freedom is what is most
Speaker 3: motivating to me in this work. Can I help get
Speaker 3: people in touch with a sense of freedom that they
Speaker 3: have not been able to give themselves up to this point.
Speaker 3: But the moment of liberation is, well, who would you
Speaker 3: be if you weren't dragging this story around? And do
Speaker 3: you have the power to let it go? And what's
Speaker 3: on the other side of letting that story go? And
Speaker 3: it doesn't mean that there's no data to support your
Speaker 3: original story, and it doesn't mean that there's not someone
Speaker 3: in the room that's thinking, well, I really prefer a
Speaker 3: dude maybe, but that's not helpful to me, and that's
Speaker 3: not what everybody's thinking. And that guy may be easily
Speaker 3: persuaded once I actually say something useful as opposed to
Speaker 3: getting stuck in my own head and that like, those
Speaker 3: are the sandboxes that are really fun for me. And
Speaker 3: that's part of the experimentation. Is if I'm not willing
Speaker 3: to do that work in my own life, then I
Speaker 3: cannot be helpful in facilitating that kind of work for
Speaker 3: anybody else.
Speaker 1: That's awesome.
Speaker 2: Now, I don't know where time is gone, but like
Speaker 2: it has and sorry, look, i'd love to know, I
Speaker 2: added Francis for people that want to reach out, get
Speaker 2: in touch, consume more.
Speaker 4: Of your work.
Speaker 1: What is the best way for people to do that?
Speaker 4: For me, it's LinkedIn and it's at Francis Frye. It's
Speaker 4: a place. And if you look back at historic posts
Speaker 4: I've done, particularly over covid, I did a lot of
Speaker 4: instructional thing I just if I had thought, I tried
Speaker 4: to write, if I understood something, I tried to share it.
Speaker 4: I'm very much about democratizing education, so if I know it,
Speaker 4: I want to tell everyone else. So I would want
Speaker 4: is to see new thoughts. But also you can look
Speaker 4: in the library of things. But LinkedIn is a pretty
Speaker 4: good place for me. I'm very good about the messages
Speaker 4: and things there excellent.
Speaker 3: And yeah, I think LinkedIn is a is a good
Speaker 3: starting place for me too. We are not very good
Speaker 3: at promoting ourselves. We probably could frame it as promoting
Speaker 3: ourselves as opposed to just giving the people access. So
Speaker 3: that's that that's more work that we'll do. Uh now,
Speaker 3: And if we could, we could continue this conversation at
Speaker 3: five a m. And I would have a lot more
Speaker 3: at off for your listeners.
Speaker 2: Oh gosh, I have just enjoyed this conversation so much.
Speaker 2: It's like it's it's a novelty for me to have
Speaker 2: two faithful that I'm talking to and saying again, a novelty.
Speaker 2: But oh, you're just both such joys. I wish I
Speaker 2: could just like take you home and like invite you
Speaker 2: to every dinner party that I have, Like, so thank
Speaker 2: you so much for sharing your wisdom. It's just been
Speaker 2: a joy.
Speaker 4: It's such a.
Speaker 3: Pleasure, such a pleasure. Yeah, delighted to have this country.
Speaker 3: We love what you're doing in the world and love.
Speaker 4: It inspiring creativity. It's really wonderful.
Speaker 1: Thank you.
Speaker 2: I loved the metaphor that and uses with leaders about
Speaker 2: looking away from the mirror and looking outside through the window.
Speaker 2: There are definitely many times in my own work life
Speaker 2: where I can get caught up in myself and the
Speaker 2: impression that I'm trying to make. And I find that
Speaker 2: when I do this, like when I do this before
Speaker 2: a keynote presentation, for example, it can make me feel
Speaker 2: quite nervous. But when I remind myself that it's not
Speaker 2: about me, it's about the people that I'm there to help.
Speaker 2: It really does help to settle my nerves and I
Speaker 2: can refocus, and I find I also get so much
Speaker 2: more energy when I shift to that servant kind of mentality.
Speaker 1: So that is it for today.
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Speaker 2: like yourselves have called their favorites. How I Work is
Speaker 2: produced by Inventing with production support from Dead Set Studios.
Speaker 1: The producer for this.
Speaker 2: Episode was Liam Riordan, and thank you to Matt Nimba,
Speaker 2: who does the audio mix for every episode and makes
Speaker 2: everything sound so much better than it would have otherwise.
Speaker 1: See you next time.