How to Lead Better Through Positive Communication with Julien Mirivel Part 1

Most people, many people think that communication is just a way of transmitting information. It's a way of, you know, just sharing messages and our technologies capitalize on that. But what you really have to understand is that the act of communication is actually an act of relating.

Welcome to the Happiness Squad podcast. Your weekly dose of practical tips and inspirations to help you operate at your fullest potential by integrating the science of flourishing into how you live, work and lead. In each episode, we will share insights, tips and stories from leading experts, company executives and flourishing solution providers that you can implement right away to make happiness your competitive edge and find more success, joy, health, love and meaning in everything you do. Hi dear friends. Welcome to the Happiness Squad podcast where we share weekly tips to help you flourish and make work wellbeing your competitive edge. I'm your host, Ashish, and I'm delighted to host my dear friend, Dr. Julian Marivel, who's a professor of applied communication at the University of Arkansas, Little Rock and one of the founding scholars in the field of positive communications. Julian has published four books on this topic and delivered hundreds of trainings worldwide. His mission is to help us speak in ways that inspire, uplift and unite at work and at home. In this first of two episode series, Julian shares the personal stories that led him to dedicate his life to this work and we explore the first three foundational behaviors that we can all integrate around greeting, asking and complimenting. If we have to communicate positively, you'll walk away today with practical insights to build stronger relationships and unlock greater performance. One conversation at a time. Hi there Julian. It is so, so lovely to have you with us on the Happiness Squad podcast. Thank you for joining and sharing the amazing work you've been doing in the field of positive communications.

Thank you so much, Ashish. It's a pleasure to be with you and I'm so looking forward to our conversation as well.

So, Julian, I'm curious. I wanted to start with a little bit of the spark behind your mission, right? I mean, it's, you know, academic life. You dedicate yourself to a topic, you research it extensively and it's quite different than all the self help gurus out there on LinkedIn, you know, posting five times a day, five times a week on things that not necessarily always research back. So what first drew you to really, you know, dedicate your life to studying this topic of positive communication? Like, was there a moment that clarified for you, like how powerful words can be? Like, what was it?

So I think there's, you know, a couple experiences that really have made Kind of have leaned me in that direction. And the first one is a person. So, you know, we're going to talk today a lot about communication, but really we always have to realize communication is connected to people.

Yes.

When I was an undergraduate student, I fell in love with the study of communication. And I had a wonderful mentor. His name is Marvin Jensen. And I think he really, truly inspired me to reach for a higher level of being in the way that I engage with other people. And in fact, everything he taught me now, I graduated in 2000, so 25 years ago with my BA and I went on to do my master's and my PhD. But when I came to UA Little Rock as a faculty, I basically decided to go back to what he was teaching me. So instead of continuing, I was trained as a microethnographer, as a discourse analyst, which I love. But really my passion, which was grounded in what I was learning from Marvin in his classes, I think changed and really influenced me. He left all of us, the students, by saying, if you're going to be a communication professional, your mission is to exemplify that the spoken word, spoken honorably and well, can make a difference that no other form of communication can equal. So that was, you know, he wrote that 26, 27 years ago when I was taking his classes. I still remember it today. So I would say that's. That's a key experience. There's another one that's a little bit more personal. Do you mind if I share it? Please? Okay, Please. So the other story is simply, you know, I'm originally from France. I came when I was to the United States when I was 15 years old. I flew from Geneva, Switzerland, as a young 15 year old who wanted to learn English and landed in what seemed at the time like the middle of nowhere, they call it Iowa. And I landed in Iowa and I had to stay with the host family. But one thing you should know is that in that experience, I couldn't speak the language. I couldn't. I really didn't know the language at all. I couldn't express myself. I couldn't understand anything. I couldn't really listen or connect. And. And as a result of that, I became really, really tremendously isolated. I could not interact with my host family. I could not make friends at school. And it really became kind of at some point I decided, you know, I'm going to do everything I can to learn the language. But the beautiful part of it was that as I learned the language, as I learned to improve my communication skills, well, the magic happened I started to build relationships with people and in fact made a very great friend who is like a brother to me. We're a lifelong friend and he inspired me to come back. So I came back to the United States for a second year. I've been in the United States ever Since, became a US citizen now just a year ago for my 30 year anniversary into 2024. So I think these two experiences being completely isolating, realizing the power of communication for relationship and then meeting Marvin along the way is really what triggered me in that direction. So I'm in Iowa, I'm picked up by this host family and begin really, the journey began with me not speaking a word of English.

That must have been so hard.

It was, in some ways it was devastating. You know, it was very isolating. What happened is because I couldn't speak, I couldn't understand, I couldn't express myself. You very, very quickly feel completely isolated and alone. But it became a motivating force for me to learn the language. And the beauty, which is what I teach to people today, is that as I develop my communication skills, as I learned to express myself, as I learned to understand what people were saying, well, the magic of communication took place because communication is always relationship. And as I communicated then I started to build these really meaningful connections. But it really was building my communication skills that allowed me to transcend my sense of aloneness. And I think that experience, as well as meeting Marvin along the way really shaped my focus on positive communication.

You know, I love both of those stories, Julian. No, I really do. And you know, it's interesting, most people, and I'm so drawn to you, your work, and especially this work around positive communications because many people, you know, think about language as a way we describe the world.

Yeah. Yes.

They might even describe. And it can be describing the external world. Right. Here's what I'm seeing. I'm sitting in the garden, there's a tree, there's, you know, some birds outside. Or I describe my inner world. You know, this is what I'm thinking. I was like, oh my God. For my listeners, in a moment of transparency, we were recording and the. And my camera went off. And before that my headphone wouldn't connect. So I'm like, oh my God. Julian must be thinking, I'm like complete novice, like what, what have I gotten myself into? But, you know, so I might describe my thought or what I'm feeling. Right. But we always think about it as describing. But I think there is a deeper role that language play and that's why Your work, I love. We generate new worlds, New worlds, new realities for ourselves and others through the words we use. And they matter.

Absolutely.

And nobody teaches us how to do that in a more positive way versus not, Right?

That's correct. Yeah. We don't really get a lot of training, but it's also a fundamental change in your thinking. Right. And I do think that in my work, I try to change that thinking, because most people, many people, think that communication is just a way of transmitting information. It's a way of just sharing messages. And our technologies capitalize on that. But what you really have to understand is that the act of communication is actually an act of relating. And so relationships are always in the making. It's just a question of whether they're formal, distant, you know, isolating, or they are, you know, connecting you or really warm and friendly. So really what we're doing is we're just navigating this world by how we are interacting with one another.

Yeah, no, it's beautiful. So I want to talk a little bit and have you define positive communications.

Sure.

Because there are so many who will say, you know, oh, positive communications. You're just talking about all positive positivity. Right. But that's not what positive communications is. So describe for our listeners. When you say positive communications, what do you really mean by it?

That's a great question. So in general, I've got multiple definitions, but I'm referring to behaviors and actions in the act of communication that people take that are productive, meaning they lead the relationship in a good direction, that are healthy, they reflect our potential, our possibility in terms of how we communicate. They reflect a sense of confidence in who we are, but also in the relationship that we have with other people. So there are a lot of behaviors that would qualify for that. But I like to always make clear that positive communication is not just about being friendly. It does include politeness, it does include friendliness, but it's also an optimistic way of engaging with people. It's also a healthy way of engaging with people, and it reflects behaviors that, to me, connect to an ethical way of being. So sorry to explain. This is going to get a little nerdy for a second.

No, no, no. I think it's really important, especially in today's world right now where I don't know. I don't. You know, 90% of the time, what I'm getting from the press, what I'm getting externally is not any of that. So. No, please get into the details. I think it is important to know what we're talking About.

Yes. I mean, so in my originally kind of like, earlier work in terms of getting at the behaviors we'll talk about in the model here, I really started with this notion of excellence that dates back to Aristotle. So what does it mean to be excellent? And Aristotle was very clear that being excellent is actually living in accordance with virtue, that our capacity as human beings, we can fall flat. Right. We sometimes make mistakes. We can be obviously violent and problematic, and we can attack each other, but there's also sometimes where we really shine. And so I think, for me, positive communication is a word I use to talk about moments of communication, things we do, things we say. That exemplifies a higher level of being, this notion of excellence. So just to put it succinctly, positive communication is not just being nice. It includes things like being courageous. It includes things like speaking truth to power. It includes things like confronting and really living towards a sense of social justice. You can be both. You can be encouraging, and also at the same time, sometimes need to speak truth to power. And we want positive communication to be conceptualized in that way.

Yeah, it's beautiful. In a lot of the work we do with Pearl, we talk about having constructive conflicts. And oftentimes team leaders say, wait, what do you mean? I thought conflicts are. Conflicts can be constructive. I'm like, yeah, absolutely. Right. Tell me what innovation came out of not having a conflict where somebody held a very different point of view then what was the accepted way?

Yes.

Right.

Yeah, we're totally on the same line. Yeah, absolutely.

And so, no, conflicts can actually be a huge force for good. The question is, how do we have it exactly right? We can be nice to our employees and never give them the feedback because we are, you know, hurting their feelings and then have to let them go because they haven't grown to what we need them to be.

Exactly.

I mean, which one is better, you know, to kind of be truthful, be honest, do it from the right place. So I want to get into behaviors, because that part of your model is great. So we will say great. So positivity is not about just being, you know, pollyannish and being just always positive and, you know, blah, blah, blah. It's about doing hard things in human ways.

That's correct.

So talk to me. You outlined six foundational behaviors in your model, and you do most of your training around those. Talk to us about what those six are.

Yeah. So I have, in my model of positive communication, I really focus on, to me, six behaviors that I would call them kind of the white belt moves of positive communication. You know, they're like, they're the place, they're the foundation where I want you. If you want to improve the way you communicate, this is a great place to start. So the first behavior is greeting. And in my model that's connected to a larger principle which I say that when you greet, you have the ability to create human connection. The second behavior is really related to the power of asking questions. When you ask meaningful, open ended questions, you have the ability to put yourself in a position of discovery and to discover other people and what you don't know. The third behavior is complimenting. Complimenting, I argue in the model, really affects people. It affects people in the moment, but more importantly, it affects who people become. So it's like realizing that communication has consequences. The fourth behavior is disclosing or disclose disclosure. But disclosing in the model, argue when it's done genuinely, when it's done authentically, can actually deepen our relationships with other people. It's kind of like my friend Alex in our book calls it the magic wand of communication.

Yes.

The fifth behavior is encouraging. You know, there's a lot of suffering around us. I know in your book on happiness, you, you give a lot of strategies for how to really elevate ourselves, including meditation. But I think as communicators, we have to be aware of that suffering and we have to be attentive to it. And what can we do? Well, we can encourage each other. So encouraging allows us to give each other the support we need to overcome challenges, difficulties, crises, and hard times. And then finally, the last behavior is listening. And when we listen, we have the ability to transcend our perceived differences. You know, there are differences, cultural differences, gender differences, But I think we are more similar than we are different. And with good communication, including listening, we can really transcend those differences. So for me, those are the six kind of foundational elements of positive communication and of communication excellence. Meaning if you want to be a great communicator or a great leader, well, start on those because they seem easy, but they're really not. You know, they're easy to do, just not simple.

Yeah, I want to get into the, I want to get into the specifics of some of these and what they mean. And I'm just, you know, reflecting, you know, again, on which of these do I do really well and which are places where there are opportunities for me. Right. And so I think about, you know, personally, for me, complimenting, greeting, disclosing are things that I think I'm naturally, I mean, I'm I'm a very open book. I think I have a lot of work to do. Julian, on asking open ended questions and. Yeah, really. And I think deep listening is something that I think we can all work on.

Absolutely.

We can never be, we will never. I mean, it's a muscle we have to keep learning. As the more expert you get in the field, the more you get impatient, like, oh, you know, I've seen it, I've got the answer right. And so I think we have to kind of pause. So I think that's what I struggle with. So I want to get into these behaviors a little bit. But my first question is, you've done this work now with so many different companies. What is the impact that companies can experience or leaders can get in terms of team performance and other aspects when this becomes part of how work gets done?

Yeah, actually I've been thinking a little bit about this and it's a short story, but I think it, to me it illustrates kind of the shift that I'm asking leaders to do.

Yeah.

And this conversation took place in an impromptu way. So I was traveling to Costa Rica to do a training on positive communication for local businesses there. In the evening, I go out by myself to go to dinner. I'm asked to eat at the bar because there was a really famous restaurant busy. So I sit at the bar and then there's another person who's also eating by themselves. And I struck up a conversation with them and turned out that there are Japanese business businessmen traveling the world to try to create these deals. Anyway, as we engage in this conversation, he starts to share with me like the paradigm shift in his career that's happened, that's literally unfolding in front of his eyes. And this is what he's saying to me. He says, you know, Julian, I'm just like realizing that I've been treating people as objects. And I'm going, I'm going to the office. And when I go in, I see all my colleagues interacting with and I don't even say hi. I go straight to my desk in front of my computer and I start working. And I'm realizing like when people coming into my office and somebody said, I don't know, drops off documents or ask me, I barely acknowledge them. You know, I'm like so focused on the task that I completely ignore that there's another person there. And so here I am in Costa Rica. I've traveled from the United States to do a talk on positive communication. And that very evening, a meeting with a businessman who is like Telling me I've done all of this wrong and I can't live like that. And so to me, what he was going. The journey he was going on is on, really on going on a positive communication journey. He's thinking, I need to connect with people. I need to get to know them. I need to create a team that's not just about task, but also about relationships and in the beauty of it. And I know you know this, Ashish, but is that when you do both, when you do relationship and task, your performance is going to be extraordinary. And we know that. We just, We. We just don't want to accept it, you know?

Absolutely.

Any thoughts on this story?

Well, I am just. I mean, talk about the universe, you know, the invisible hand of the universe. Who brings. Who brings the two people together. I'm just curious, did you ask him what shifted that change in perspective and why he was asking a question and wanting to change his way of being.

I really think, you know, I wish I would have put more deeply. I'm not somebody who's gonna. I mean, I was always so lucky to. Already feeling lucky that he was sharing all of this with me. For him, I think he just realized one day how lonely he was.

Yeah.

And how separated and isolated he was from. From his team. I mean, another thing he told me too, is that, you know, he was. When he was giving people feedback to talking about complimenting, he would just literally tell him, this is everything you're doing wrong, Go fix it. And some of it he told me, you know, it was like some of his upbringing with his father and in Japanese culture, obviously. But he said he just really fundamentally realized, I am treating people as objects and I just can't do it that way anymore. I've got to. I've gotta be a different person.

Yeah. No, I love that. And you know what's amazing, Julian? As I reflect a little bit on myself, you know, I was a young associate partner at McKinsey and, you know, you step up quite meaningfully. Right. Very quickly. Right. It was. I'd stepped into that role four years into the firm, and all of a sudden, instead of one project, you've got multiple projects. Instead of just delivery, you're actually focused on development. So you can imagine you're putting into leadership roles. There's so much to do. Right.

Absolutely.

I've always been a very person first. So I wasn't even from a place of treating people like objects. But. And I'll tell you this story, and it was. It was a big shift for me when I realized the wake, what I was leaving behind in my wake, I thought as in that know my biggest help that I could give people was to solve problems and tell them what they could do to get better. To do better. Right. And so when you've got so much in your calendar to do, and I think this will be true for many startup founders, leaders who we are being stretched in so many ways. You know, we feel we show up, we have people who've done the work, they present to us and my job is to tell them, hey, yeah, this is great, here's the five things you need to go do. And then I'm done and I move on. There isn't a lot of time for greeting. How are you? I'm fine. Okay, great. Let's talk about what we need to do.

Yeah, it's dismissive almost right?

Almost like just throw away from phrase I was doing that second it would be okay, let's have a conversation. They would present halfway through the presentation. I might not fully even listen because like, hey, I've seen this seven times over. This is your first time. So let me just tell you what you need to know and give you the answer.

Exactly.

So not listening, not asking a question, if they had a different point of view or what they were seeing, which was different, and then move on to the next call and the next call and the next call. And no surprise, you know, for all of those who were very much kind of task oriented or valued, that I was actually making time to help them, loved me, but most others were like, oh my God, you know, it's, it came across as transactional, it came across as unappreciative. And once I realized that, you know, it's a very simple shift and it's a very small shift, you know, stopping for a moment, checking, asking, somebody has put in 20 hours of work to present in a 20 minute meeting. Give them the time.

That's right. Yeah.

To share their thinking. If it counteracts your own point, make it a learning moment to inquire about where they're coming from and help them realize maybe it is different. And it made a big shift for me. It was really, really cool to just see all of that when I saw your model.

Oh, thanks.

So even if you don't treat people as objects, reflect on how you are as leaders. And if you're especially feeling busy and stretched as we get into this next section, I want you to think about how you can include these six behaviors into the way you're showing up. Because no matter how Busy we are. We can't afford to not. You can't afford to not leverage the power of positive communications.

Yeah. I mean, as you know, it just has so many. So many positive impacts. Right. It affects employee engagement. It affects whether people are satisfied in the workplace. It affects employee loyalty. It affects performance. You know, the thing that I try to show in all my trainings is that, yes, you can do your job in this way, like by focusing on tasks. The difference is that when you want to reach extraordinary levels, the people actually in these. At these levels, in the extraordinary ways, as I'm sure you've discovered by talking to Jane Dutton and others from the Michigan school, is that they actually perform at a higher level. So if we really were truly interested in performance, which I don't think we always are, then we would actually be very concerned about what kind of culture we're creating. Am I connecting with the people around me? Am I a source of encouragement for my team? Am I doing these things? And what you would find is when you do these things, performance goes up. It's just a natural progression.

Absolutely. Positive deviance, so to say.

Right, Exactly.

Deviants away from the norm. Absolutely. You know, this whole zone of possibility that Jane talks about that we actually quantified with this OHPI diagnostic. More on that later. But let's get into these six behaviors first.

Okay.

Let's start with greeting and walk us through what is a way in which, through our way, we meet others, we can create positive spirals.

So, I mean, the first thing I think about with greeting is this little movement. You know, it's. It's. It seems simple, but it's a movement. As a communicator, I have a couple choices. I can withdraw from interaction, or I can move towards people. And as we saw in the case I was just describing with my Japanese friend, right, he was moving away from people. He was withdrawing from interaction. So as a leader, what I want you to be thinking about with that behavior, just in a very simple way, is are you creating opportunities for connection? Are you moving towards people, or are you withdrawing from interaction? And are you the initiator? So we don't want to be waiting around for people to come connecting with us, which is often a move leaders make, right? We want to be initiating those connections because that's when relationships are going to be actually being made and being cultivated. So greeting for me, very simple way is, you know, making meaningful greetings. Like yesterday, my. Actually, my wife told me a story at her work where a colleague came. They're going through she works in the health department, you know, so a lot of changes happening, and somebody came to her and said, hey, I just want to know, how are you doing? Really? You know, and it wasn't what you were describing earlier, like, just a greeting in passing. It really was, how you doing? And my wife was reflecting, like, man, that was such a. It was so good for one person, a colleague, to come to me and even just ask that simple question. So that's what I think about when I think about greeting in a very simple way.

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Nice.

And, you know, we did this exercise. Julie and I think that you will love it. Might actually even be inspired by you. You know, our ideas spread out there, and then they come back to us and you go like, wait, like, yeah, I. I did that. But I literally had these folks do this really simple exercise. I said, turn to somebody next to you and ask them, how are you?

Yeah, that's great.

I love that. And give them two minutes. And I said, you have two minutes. So we'll keep track till you hear the gong. If they finish, I want you to just ask them again, how are you? Really? Yeah.

That's awesome. I love that, Ashish.

And just hold space, right? And then in two minutes, we're gonna switch.

That's right.

Oh, my God. Like, it was five minutes. And as we debriefed, the stories of what becomes possible were amazing. You know, like people one just being able to tune in. They're like, you know, I hadn't thought about how I am, really, because I've been running. And the second they're like, oh, my God, that vulnerability, that disclosure, that conversation just created such a. You know, we talk about creating safe spaces and building trust. I mean, those are the things. When we see the other person, it just Creates that. So no, I'd love that. So just really in. So your, your point is when you greet somebody, create the space. If you use how are you? Let's actually use the space where we can tune into what is going on with the person before we go with the rest part of our conversation.

That's right. And keep in mind that, you know, I also think of these as skills that can grow and develop. Right. So first this, this move, movement from initiating, which becomes important. Like it's easy to initiate with your good colleague that you love, but it's a little harder to go reach out to the person that you don't like. It's a little harder. Like we do this in our own romantic relationships. You have a fight with your wife, your spouse, the next day you wake up, you're like, well, I'm not greeting them, I'm going to wait for them to greet me. We can have this little paradox. So I think about that too. In the workplace. Meaning it's really this movement. To what extent am I withdrawing? To what extent am I initiating? And then I think of it as kind of like you can level it up too. Right. So can you greet in multiple languages? If you visit a country, like in intercultural communication, one of the most meaningful things you can do is start interaction with the native language of the culture you are interacting with. So they seem simple. But you know, none of us can speak 50 languages and say hello in 50 languages. So I think it's a skill that can really deepen with you.

Yeah, beautiful. So greeting the first moment when we meet somebody. Let's go into asking.

Okay, asking. All right, so that one, you know, the basic scale that I'm trying to get people thinking about with asking is actually a movement that I've noticed, which is a movement from closing the interaction, controlling the interaction with what we call close knit questions. Right. You can say, and we do this all the time, we're like, did you have a nice weekend? Which really actually begs the other person to just answer with yes or no. Like, I'm going to dismiss this moment. But if you open up the question, if you go to a colleague and you say, hey, tell me, what have you been up to this weekend? Now you've opened it up, you've opened up the space for conversation. So you know, questions are really powerful because they set in motion what comes up next. That is their job interactionally. The question sets up the topic, the question sets up what is what is going to be said. And it's, it's setting up how long the person will speak and what they're going to speak about. So all of those things are really consequential in human interaction because questions and answers are like the primary mechanism of conversation, which means they're the primary mechanism of relationship. Yeah, think about that.

Open versus closed ended questions. So how does one build a skill here, Julian, because I'm with you, I think I ask often close ended questions. I could do so much better on open ended questions. So tell me a little bit about what are three things I could do to make this a core way of being.

So I think the first thing is awareness, honestly. So I would first start as a leader, begin to pay attention to the questions you're asking. Are they closed? You know, are you saying are you, will you, did you? And closing down the encounter. And then I would start to be prepared to, you know, to really develop easy things. Like imagine you're working with your team and you're trying to solve a problem. Very common for leaders to already have answers to the problem. But something as simple as, here's the problem guys, what do you think we can do about this? And I want every person around the table to tell me what they think. That's going to slow down the process of communication. It's going to make sure that everybody around your team is willing. That's an open ended question. You can use similar technique like if you're opening a meeting. My chair does this beautifully. We've been working in our own department about having better meetings, times of connection. So she starts every meeting now, every single meeting we have, whether it's in person or over, zoom with a prompt. And the last one that I really love was what's a moment that's giving you a lot of joy lately? And I know you would like that question.

I love it.

But you know, and suddenly even I, the positive guy, I remember being in the room going, oh, do we have to do this right now? But then my colleagues shared a story and then I connected with it. And as we teach, as we try to promote, the impact was immediate. People were connecting with each other. It's also the best move you can make when you're having a really difficult conversation.

Right.

So when I teach difficult communication or difficult interaction at work, particularly, most people think about what they have to say. So I want the leader to be like, no, that's not where you're going to start. You're going to start with a question, what's going on with you? I'm noticing that you've been late Lately, late to work, what's going on with you? And you start with the question, not necessarily by disciplining the employee or confronting the problem. You're just opening up a different space. Is this helpful? Am I answering your question?

You are. It is super helpful. Right. We are so quick, quick to judge and blame. And I think what you're inviting us to do is rather than focus on the behavior and tell your own story, become the judge, jury and executioner. Rather than judge the behavior, inquire into the intention or what is going on with the person that might be driving the behavior.

Yeah, absolutely.

And really get curious, really inquire. Right. It requires us to assume positive intent even if the behavior doesn't support that. But what we might find is there are things that are getting in the way that might allow us to actually address the issue, but not in the way we want. That tear us apart, that bring us together.

Exactly. I love what you said. So another way of thinking about the behavior, to use your words, is being curious. It's really about putting yourself in a position of discovery. And when you do that, you're realizing that you're going to start honoring people around you. So again, as a skill, as a communicator, as a leader, I'm starting to think, okay, lots of ways to do that. You know, we haven't even touched base on how do you inspire people? Well, you know, big questions are there. You know, what's. If you want to tap into people and you want to transform a culture from a negative culture to a positive culture, we know this from appreciative inquiry. You want to start with positive questions. Right. Things like, well, what is going well right now in this workplace? Not just what is the problem, what is going well? What do you love about your workplace? What is really inspiring you today to contribute to this organization? So typically with appreciative inquiry, we're going to start right away with positive open ended questions too.

Yeah, I love that. What's inspiring you? In fact, I'm going to use that. We're going to do some mission, vision, values work with the business school here next week. We're helping them assign it. I'm going to open with that question. I think we are going to open that session with that question. What's inspiring you about the workplace? What's inspiring you about the school right now?

Exactly.

Thank you. So let's now move to the third move, which is complimenting.

Yeah. All right. So this one I'll try to do very quickly. So if you look at the Model. You know, the. The principle is complimenting affects people's sense of self. So really, what I want people realizing before we even get to complimenting is you have to realize that as a person, as a leader, you are going to affect the people around you in a very real way. You know, and I'm sure we've all had this. We've all worked with a boss who was really not great, who in some cases was terrible. And it affects us. You know, it affects our health, it affects our home life. It affects the way we interact with our children, and sometimes it totally discourages us. So communication has that power. So complimenting, to me is like the choice you make as a leader. To focus on what people are doing well doesn't mean you can't give them feedback, but it means that you are seizing the opportunities in your interactions to let people know how you think or feel about them. Because in leadership, it's very important for people to understand. In a relationship and leadership, in all spheres of life, people do not have access to what is in your head.

Yeah.

They don't have access to our thoughts. We think they do, but they don't. They do not have access to what is in your heart. Yes, we have lots of emotions. What they have access to is what you say and do. And I think that complementing actually can be a really powerful force for people in positions of power, because that's the key way they can let the people who work for them know, hey, I know that you're a resilient person. I see you as somebody who is really working hard on this project and who's making a world of difference. It's how we communicate to each other that this kind of. I think we can be a mirror. We are a mirror to each other about who we are, and we need to realize that power.

Yeah. You know, you remind me of this study that was done at the Workforce Institute where they asked employees, you know, and 69% of employees believe that their manager affects their mental health more than the doctor or the therapist. And it's true. I totally believe that. Way more. Way more of an effect. You know, people leave managers, bad managers. They don't leave companies. We know that.

Absolutely.

And then when the research. When I was at McKinsey, we were doing. Being valued by your manager or by the organization is one of the biggest drivers for what employees want.

Yeah.

And so I love that, you know, if we fundamentally build a muscle of complimenting, of sharing what's in our heart with the person, I think we have A way of uplifting, motivating, inspiring them way more than pointing their deficiencies out.

Exactly.

Or telling them what they're not doing. Well, talk to me a little bit, Julian, about, you know, there's a lot of people who compliment. There's the right way to compliment, which actually has a powerful impact. And then there is just a throwaway. You're great, right? You're doing good.

Yeah, yeah.

So talk to me about how do you really fine tune and complement in a way that it lands and it has the effect we want it to have?

Yeah, that's a great question. And it is a skill. So again, you know, I always think of these behaviors. I think we can focus on and learn our entire lives. You know, I don't think. I mean, I've studied communication my whole life and I don't think there's an end to me really learning how to deliver meaningful compliments. I think that, you know, particularly if we're talking in the workplace, that telling a person they did a great job is not a meaningful compliment. It's nice, sure, but it's not going to really affect the person. So what you have to do and what I ask people to do in some of my trainings actually is I'm like, okay, think about this person. What do you really love about them? What, like when you think about this employee, what do they do that you really value? What do they bring to the table that you admire? And then I ask them to list, you know, maybe a recent event that the person did, maybe it's a recent project and they did a presentation to a team of 20 people. And you know that in that presentation they made a difference. So you start to be specific about the moment. And then the last step that I typically teach people through is you explain the outcome of what they did and how that shaped a particular desirable outcome for the relationship or the company. So once I work with people in this way, they quickly realize, ah, that's what a meaningful compliment is. You know, and I'm not doing that. And I think if we were honest with ourselves, we are not doing that. We go to the easy, oh, thanks, that was great. But what people need actually is. Is more in the direction that I've just described.

Yeah. So this notion of again, being specific, talking about what they did, talking about the impact that that had.

Exactly.

On the company, on you, on the team. Right. So it's grounded in kind of we are saying, I think in effect through that. What we are saying is and what we are showing is that I see You.

Exactly.

And I appreciate you.

I see you as you are.

Yeah, as you are. And appreciate you. You know, I have to tell you the story again. I go back to my early days, you know, I was actually not a very good early manager. You know, this is like 15, 20 years ago, you know, Julian. And I was reflecting, you know, I was always. I was very complimentary of people who did well, right? I mean, if you did well or if you kind of, oh, my God, you're amazing, you're unbelievable. Blah, blah, blah. You know, if somebody wasn't doing well or they made a mistake or it wasn't where it needed to be, you know, again, high intensity McKinsey projects, right? There is always a pressure, there's a deadline. You're supposed to do your bit, you're now delayed. Now we're going to have to work on it. I couldn't cut myself too. You know, I always had all of this. I was so mad, I was so upset at, like, oh, my God, now this is going to be another night out because I gotta clean up your work. I just couldn't do it. I couldn't do it till one of my mentors asked me this question and it changed everything for me. Think about who we hired at McKinsey, right? Every person we hire, we hire insecure overachievers who are trying their best to do the best thing they can, right?

Yeah.

And he said to me the following. He said, ashish, let me ask you a question. Who do you think is working longer, harder, and is putting more of their heart and soul into it? The person for whom this work comes easy or the person who's struggling.

Yeah, Interesting. Love that.

And I thought about it and I was like, oh, my God. So the person. I am only giving compliment on the output, not on the input. And if I think about the input they're putting in, they're giving it their best. And it's my job as a leader to reflect that, to tell them, I see you. And as a leader, step in to help where they need help by asking them what's missing. Going back to your prior move, right?

That's correct.

And that was a big shift for me because, one, it wasn't faking it.

It's very powerful.

Once that mindset shifted for me, all of a sudden, one, I got curious to say, what, what can I do to unlock the potential of this person? But also the compliment came naturally because I knew that was the person who was putting 60 hours a week, if not more, trying to do a good job. Absolutely right.

I love what you said too about like, so I think of that typically as even a higher level skill. Right. So first we have to move people from not complimenting to doing it. And then we've got to move people once they start to do that. Then we can take it up to me in the higher level, which is, you know, we focus way too much on the outcome and learning to complement process is even more critical. And all the research that we read particularly on, like how we shape, you know, fixed mindset and growth mindset, the work by Carol Dweck is really critical there. So that would be to me like the third step, you know, in kind of developing people's competency around complimenting making that move that you made, which is like, oh man, I'm only celebrating the outcome. I'm not celebrating really who this person is and the process that they're engaging in to sometimes succeed and sometimes fail. Sometimes we do our best and we don't reach the outcome.

Yeah, absolutely.

You know, I think of a story that I really love because it tells you a lot. So I was following the. The New York Yankees coach, Aaron Boone, he was featured in the New York Times, I would say about six, eight months ago because of a new strategy he used with his players. So of course at the end of every game they have awards for players which, you know, again, something to learn about that at the highest level of athletic performance, coaches are rewarding performance at every turn. But then what he did is he also developed a new practice where at the end of every game he would take a baseball and he would give a baseball, he would write a note, like a positive note on that baseball and he would hand deliver that ball to a player who did something that maybe no one else noticed, but that made a difference in that game. And that's a very process oriented, you know, one, it was like the award, you're the best player because you help the team in this way. But this one was, you know, nobody else saw this, but I saw that you did this in this game. And it was the, it was a great move. And so he writes a personal note and I tell this story because it's. To me it's thinking about, you can't get much higher as a coach in baseball than coaching the New York Yankees. But what is the coach doing? He's continuously thinking about how he can tell his players the way he sees them. It's beautiful because he knows, he knows that higher performance will be achieved if he can allow and let his players know how he sees them.

Yeah.

Because that will be a mirror to that player. Anyway, I think it's fun to think about.

I think it's beautiful. It also is a very powerful way to build self efficacy and confidence. Absolutely. Because look, I mean, you know, every decision you make is not going to be the right one. Everything you set out to do, you're not going to succeed. And you might even have a series of times where you don't. Right. How many times people strike out in baseball or in leadership roles, in those moments our confidence can get shaken.

Absolutely.

Have I still got it? Am I safe? And in those moments, if we can give people the self assurance, the confidence, reflecting on what they are doing that we are appreciating, I think we can actually positively impact that. Otherwise downward spiral that might somebody get into.

Absolutely. Yeah.

So greeting, asking questions, open ended questions, complimenting, sharing with people what we see them do really well.

Yeah.

Talk to me a little bit about disclosing.

Disclosing is a touchy one.

It is a big touchy one. It's a big one.

This is a big one. This is a big one. You know, I don't know that we'll have time. We should like do a whole show on disclosing. So in the model, I simply propose that, you know, when we can reveal who we are and reveal what we think and reveal how we feel and reveal what we know in an authentic and genuine way that generally as a principle, we are able to deepen the relationships that we have with other people. That if you pay attention to kind of like these moments when we feel connected to other people, very often the connection comes as the result of a process. And the process is simply someone is able to express themselves authentically and genuinely. And we're like, oh, it's human, it's true. And now I feel connected to this person. And that's why Alex calls disclosing the magic wand of communication. Because when you do that very often then people reciprocate. You know, there's like, oh, this person shared this with me, maybe I can do it too. And that allows for that relationship to grow.

So, Juliet, just keeping an eye on time. I bet you have something you need to get to at the top of the hour. Would you be open if we find another hour in the next couple of weeks to continue our conversation? We can go big into disclosing. We can go into sounds encouraging and listening because I've just gotten so much. I think we kind of varied off the script a bit because I think there was so much richness in what you were communicating that I wanted to make sure that I think as listeners, they didn't just stay at the surface, but went down.

Yeah, that's perfect, Ashish. I'm enjoying the conversation too. I hope it's helpful.

Oh, it is helpful. Thank you, my friend. Listen, I'm grateful for your time. I'll reach out to schedule part two of this episode and for our listeners. Sounds good. Between now and then, please try and implement some of the things Julian highlighted and notice what shifts for you for your team. Thanks.

Perfect.

Thank you, Julian.

Thank you, Ashish.

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