108: Judith Glaser - Develop Your Conversational Intelligence

Are you thinking about how to grow your business with near and offshore staffing, but you're also wanting to make sure that it's reliable, cost effective and really well done. I think docsa talent is the way to go. Here's why. They don't just fill your jobs. They bring integrity, top talent and a people first approach that's hard to find. I've known the people at Doxa talent for over 20 years now and I say that you can count on them. I have. Talk to Docs of Talent and you won't be disappointed. Go to docsatant.com Bill G. Again, that's doxataalent.com Bill G. One more time. Doxatalent.com Bill G. Check it out today. Conversational Intelligence. We all know about emotional intelligence. We know about intelligence intelligence. Today's show is about how leaders can produce greater results, can be more effective by developing their conversational intelligence. We'll explore how communication can be developed to bring us closer together, can create connections and can actually allow us to co create. This is a powerful show. I hope you enjoy it. Listen in. Hello and welcome again to the Scaling Up Business Podcast. I'm your host and Gazelle's business growth coach, Bill Gallagher. So we're talking about communication stuff today. We're in the world of communication and I have on the show with me today a speaker from our recent summit. If you haven't come to one of our Scaling up summits, you ought to get to one. We just have the best speakers and Judith Glaser is joining us today. She's a founder and CEO of Benchmark Communication, Chairman of Creating We Institute. She's a best selling author, she's been on every TV show you can imagine. She's a visiting professor at. But the best thing at all, she told me in preparation for the show is that she's been in Ripley's Believe it or Not. So she's going to rock your world in the world of communication. So welcome to Show Judith.

Bill thank you. I've been waiting for being on the show with you and excited about what we're going to talk about.

That's awesome. And I can see a very typical New York scene in the window behind you. I'll be in New York Friday or Saturday this week for a few days. So I'm excited you're there. I'm on the west coast and we're talking communication. So welcome to the show again.

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Tell us about like, you know, how do you get into the world does it start at that Ripley's moment? Or, you know, tell us a little bit of your background in that before we get into the ideas of your book, Conversational Intelligence.

Well, I'm going to tell you something about the Ripley's moment, because I think you've nailed me, that you've opened the door for me to talk about neuroscience from the very beginning, which is what I love, which is that every single action, every interaction, and every key event in our life gets mapped in our brain. It doesn't get forgotten, even if you're a little tiny baby. I was only 10 and a half months old when I was in Ripley's Believe it or not, for being able to balance on one foot of my father's hand, now that left. And think about every major thing that's happened to you and everybody else in the world. It leaves an imprint of some sort that begins to create a direction in your life. It often becomes unconscious, unless you're old enough when you're three or four, or you remember certain events, maybe you're more conscious as an adult or as a young child, and you start to make something of that event when you're 10 months old. It doesn't register with words because you don't have words yet, but it does register as a pattern. So imagine it was important for me to be what we call in our family now a oner, meaning that there's only one like you in the world. And that theme of finding how to be a oner, or what does being a oner mean in your life, had a tremendous influence on conversational intelligence and on what I teach leaders about how to create environments where every human being has an identity of their own, so they're not fighting about the identities. Although two people in a job that has the same title at work might find it important to compete. But in reality, if leaders think about every human being unique and different, that creates a completely different atmosphere on how the leader leads and how people respond and how much, believe it or not, how much innovation. And you're about scale up, which is innovation. So how much that can be in the life of a team or an organization is dependent on how well every individual gets defined in their role.

Well, we certainly do a lot of work with having people differentiate, figure out what you're uniquely good at, where you should put your energy, what you should be known for, and not just try to compete with everyone else on the same kind of thing in your category.

That's right, exactly. And keep pushing that and pushing that, and you'll find maybe takes more reflection or getting good feedback from a coach like you to help somebody understand, wow. You're not like others in that way. You're different. And that helps you create a core that will change a person's life for the better, make it healthier.

So you grew up in this family, you're in the right place. You have a family philosophy of being a oner. Right? Tell us more.

So I heard a story from or I discovered a story about my dad when I was 11. I didn't actually think I had a great family. My father was a teller. So he'd tell me what to do and then if I didn't do it right, he'd tell me why I didn't do it right and I should have done it better kind of thing. That coulda, shoulda, woulda stuff. And I just thought that his patterns were weird. So I used to run away and I had different places I'd go, and I sit in a room with another family and go, wow, does that. I was good at feeling energy fields from a young age, and I'd feel it and say, oh, that feels so good. I love it. In fact, it's bringing love into me when I go home and I'd be told what to do. I just had the opposite feeling. So I started. I was very mathematical, very scientific at a young age. And all my siblings and all my cousins were, for some reason we got that gene. But I would keep categorically descriptions in a journal of what felt good and what felt bad. And so at a very young age, I started to come up with a science, which today is the book that's the most best selling of my books called Conversational Intelligence, which took me a whole lifetime to put together in a scientific and neuroscientific way, so that it was different from what was out there. I was also a contrarian, a rebel. I got in trouble. I was thrown out of my nursery school when I was not even three years old. Every camp I went to in Mexico, in the U.S. i mean, I have a history of pushing back. So if I challenge you today, it's just natural. Think of it that way.

You lived in Mexico?

I lived in a. Yes, for three months I lived in Mexico for three months I lived in Peru and for three months I lived in Czechoslovakia.

Wow.

Yeah.

And so you said your dad was a teller. I'm like, oh, he was a banker. Oh, my grandfather's a banker.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

He told you what to do, right?

He told me what to do.

And what was his work or your mom's work that led you around the world in this way?

So my father became an ambassador to the United States, bringing dentistry around the world. So he would look down in people's mouth. He was a dentist, right? And superior. That gave him a chance to be superior and look down while people's mouths were open. But he went to the government and he said, I'd like to bring dentistry around the world. And they said, sure, we'll make you an ambassador. And they did. And he went to 21 countries, including Saudi Arabia. He met with the Shah of Iran. I heard the Shah talking on our ham radio set, which he talked into every night with all these famous people. And so it was. But. But you have to know something about my dad. My father was an emotional orphan. He was rejected by my grandmother, who told him he was the first of four boys, but he had a twin sister. And my grandmother said to him, I only wanted girls, I didn't want boys. And. And so imagine the emotional attack on his ego and his identity from a young age. And so he became a stutterer all the way through school. Brilliant as could be. Learned seven languages by the time he got to be an adult, but. But he was. Self concept was very broken. And this is where coaching comes in. This is what we do as coaches. That's so wonderful and what leaders can do with their employees. This person helped my father get his voice back. So she put him on the stage and she said, you're going to be an actor. And he said, but I can't talk. And she said, no, you're going to do it and I'm going to help you, like the King's Speech. And she helped him take the lead role. He was brilliant. And so he learned that when he stepped into a role of some sort that was defined, he could be without stuttering. And then his life changed and he went on to be the valedictorian of his class, the head of the debating team, you know, on and on drama team. And he went around the world doing all this stuff based on that one person that coached him to recover his identity. Pretty amazing and pretty motivational for me. So when I learned that, I hit the medical books and I said, I've got to figure out what happens in the brain when people are wonderful to us or help us see ourselves in a good light, and what happens when we get smashed and crashed and when leaders give us feedback telling us we're not good enough or parents do all these things. Are chemical shifts in our brain and sometimes structural shifts.

Talk to us then about the. The ideas or I don't know, or share the stories of the conversational intelligence. So the books Conversational Intelligence, How Great Leaders Build Trust and get Extraordinary Results. And you talked about actually not just understanding or appreciating, but actually connecting through conversation.

So what we have now come to see through so much research in the area of neuroscience, of conversations, that when human beings are within 10ft of each other, we have the ability. Our heart picks up a rhythm, an energetic field that's being sent off from us as we vibrate around trying to process the world around us. And that processing, most importantly, includes the connection with other human beings. So we feel that energy field, and as a result of it, it opens up different parts of our brain. If the energy field is, oh, you're such a good person, a leader might say, wow. Or just think, I love that employee. They seem to always deliver on everything, and I want to make sure I promote them. The person may not feel the words, but they feel the energy field that goes with those words. And it'll open up different parts of our brain if we connect in a positive way. We like to mirror neuron other human beings, we have a need to connect and a need to be like others and be same, not be different. There's actually a place in the brain called the rostromedial prefrontal cortex, and it's called the like me, not like me part of the brain. And if I feel through our energy fields that you're like me and I like it and I don't feel threatened by you, then I'm going to open up my brain. It starts to give you access and me access to the prefrontal cortex heart connection. And that part of our brain is where wisdom and insight and strategies and intuition all live. And so imagine leaders can find how to create an environment that opens up that part of the brain that makes people smarter. And that's what conversational intelligence means, that we can do that through conversations if we know what conversations open us up and what closes us down.

So I've done a lot of when I do communication work with people. Right. The training that I learned a long time ago was to try to not just. I mean, you start with like, what are people actually listening to what people say? And we've all seen and know that, like parroting nonsense where. But at least that gets you to the level where you're trying to get the words out, right?

Yeah, it helps you a little bit. But I'm not advocating it. And I hope you're not advocating it.

No, no, no, not. But I've often started there. And then the next one is, what's the emotional state of the other person? How are they feeling like that? So I'm looking for that. And then the one that I learned that makes it's like, what's the thing that they can't even say? Like listening under or behind what people are saying. And when I practice that, people often say I have a superpower for making people cry. But a lot of that comes from just trying to get who people are that they can't even voice.

That's right.

And I feel like in that moment. Is that what you're talking about, where I'm listening for the connection that they can't speak even themselves? Maybe they might not even be conscious of it.

That's right. Well, they may not be conscious in a word view, but they are conscious in a physical feeling view and a state view. And that means that we've been told that we only have seven emotions, which is completely not true. But that's what seems to be out there as the world. It's anger, fear, happiness, things. And they're mostly leaning in the direction of negative feelings, by the way, emotions. And we now know that there are many, many, many, many other emotions. But they fit into context. And so they kind of get stuck down in the gut and in the feeling place in our body, the limbic system. And so people have trouble. And if you're somebody who can read them when they're in that state, you help give them words to the feelings that they've been that may be stuck by or caught by or whatever the words are that hold us back from being the fullest selves that we can be. So you must have an intuition for how to feel that. First of all, you must have great energy fields that connect with people, that are cleansed with neutrality. So that means that if you're thinking about people, but you're judging them while you're listening to them, you're not listening to connect, you're listening to judge or reject. And many people listen to figure out how they can fit into the conversation or to correct somebody so that they get it better, or all those things that we do thinking, oh, I'm listening, I understand what they're saying now. I'm just clarifying what they're saying. That's not. That's not the connection that you just talked about, which is the listening to connect connection.

So I, in order to do that, I have to be generous, Right. And unattached to the outcome. Not trying to get something done or like that. Just sort of setting aside everything and like, who is this person across from me? I noticed that it used to be for me that there are people that were my people, right? Like, oh, those are my people. I can connect with those people. And then there are other people that those are not my people. Those people don't like me or they don't get me or that kind of thing. And if I think about types like their childhood figures, oh, that is a type of woman that I can work with, and that's a type of woman that I can't or like that. I really had to work in leadership development consciously over a long period of time to start with. I can connect to anyone, and there's no type of person I can't. Now, I've since learned some people take more effort, some people are easier, for sure, for sure. But I don't have, like, that there's any theoretical person that I can't find some connection with.

So what you did is you put into place something that I would hope. Every person listening, every leader listening, if you're an educator listening, here's what you said and takes it seriously. Because when we find ways to connect, when we look for things that we might have in common, we actually are speaking to the rostromedial prefrontal cortex. That's the like me, not like me part of the brain and guiding it to have a different type of search function operating in our brain when we're engaging with that person. So you might go for values instead of saying, we're the different colors in our skin. We go to different schools, we lived in different countries. Some people use that and say, I could never get along with people from Ireland, or I never get along with so and so they have these rules that discount people.

For sure.

Yeah. And you have different rules that are inclusive, that look for, how can I connect with somebody? Maybe it's music, maybe it's whatever. Maybe I value something they value. Those are abstractions. And to help us get to that, we have to ask questions. You can't make assumptions. You know, there's this whole assumption group that says, I don't like them because ethnically, you know what's going on, all that kind of stuff.

So there's the, like, gut. Even unconscious, it might be conscious or unconscious that we have when, oh, that person is threatening or that person is not safe, or I have that too, all the time. I work Very hard to try to make it conscious. What is it that I'm feeling or noticing about that person? Especially if I have any strong reaction one way or the other. And I definitely notice that some people, oh, I'm drawn to them or I'm unconscious, comfortable with them. Right. So I always try to be curious first. Oh, what's going on with me about that person? What is it that. Who do they represent?

Right, exactly. And there's a big distinction between when you say, I listen to understand someone and I listen to connect with someone. Big difference. Listening to understand activates this part of our brain. It's the neocortex. It's where knowledge lives. Oh, I understand what you just said. I understand your ideas, I understand your thoughts. That's not necessarily. It says, I understand, but I'm not necessarily connecting. Standing under your reality is what listening to connect is all about. The word understanding means standing under the other person's reality, stepping into their shoes, feeling their experiences. Like when you say you help some of your clients where there's feelings about what's going on, and you help give them some other form of communication. Maybe pictures, maybe mental pictures as you describe what's going on. Or metaphors, something that activates their ability to go from gut. I'm not quite sure what I'm feeling, but I'm not feeling good to words that help it rise up. And that's a special talent that you have that enables people to connect. And that could be something that everybody does if we knew how important that was. Listening to understand is not the same at all.

Yeah. So mostly I am listening for what to say next or how to handle thing, or I have a particular objective in mind when I come in. Right. And then I'm reacting to the stereotype or the way the person occurs for me right in front of me in the moment. Oh, this one's easy or this one's smart, or this one doesn't get me. Or like that. Right. So there's a world of that that's going on.

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And so you're exploring, you're noticing patterns, you're questioning the patterns, you're challenging them in some way. And you've said sometimes in the moment you'll say, well, kind of like, what do I say next? That means you're in the moment. And that's okay. That uncertainty is okay. It's really okay.

So a pitfall that I frequently have, I still have, I struggle with all the time, even though I know it well and I know what to do. About it. Right. This is common, consistent. But you're speaking around it right now, so I'll just bring it in. Or it feels like you're speaking around it is. I think I've understood and heard something. Right. I'm pretty quick thinking, and I'm quick to speak, so I think I've heard something, and then I go right to what I've done with it in my head. Right. And I'm often, you know, maybe if I'm throwing a number out, I'm 95% right, or maybe even I'm 100% right 95% of the time, but I'm often missing a little something. But even if, let's say, I'm 100% right, it still gets me in trouble and makes people mad at me all the time because I've started speaking and responding and thinking about interacting with what they've said, and maybe I'm doing it even now before they've experienced being heard. So I might have missed a little bit. But even if I didn't miss anything, they don't experience that. I got them. I just went ahead in my own mind, and. And then we're not connected. They think I'm talking past around them. They're invalidated in some way, disconnected, unappreciated, and they're mad at me.

Yeah. And they probably think you're addicted to being right.

For sure.

And that's one of our syndromes.

For sure. Right.

I'm glad we got there. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And. And we think we're being helpful because we're giving them a concept, an interpretation, something that we think, wow, look how. And. But what they're hearing is, look how smart he thinks he is. He thinks he figured me out in one word or in two seconds or whatever it is. He's got me pegged. And you know what? I don't want to be pegged. I want to be connected with.

I would say it also shows up more often in male, female. So I'm a man speaking to a woman. It definitely shows up more there than in other relationships, but it can show up anywhere.

Yeah. Yeah. But there is a natural instinct for men to want to help women, and in the helping, they think helping is telling them what to do, how to do it, when to do it, why to do it. You know, all those things fall into place for them. Thinking that's help because, you know, my job is to support this woman and help her be the best she can be. In the meantime, his style of doing it is exactly what's eroding her confidence, her faith in him, her love for him in some cases. So what conversational intelligence helps us do is look at the words we use and double click on them. So one of our key essentials is double clicking. Don't assume that we know what that word means, meaning any word, and say, help me a little bit more. Tell me what you were thinking, because I have an idea of what that is, but I may not be right. What does that mean for you? And you double click and you get inside the mind map. You get that mind map of what that person is thinking. A word means not the dictionary definition, but that unique person's definition. And that's another eye opening skill set for leaders.

What do you mean by that? What is that? Yeah, a specific word, right? You said understand. I went somewhere with that. You had some other. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And when people don't do that, all of a sudden you have people thinking they're fighting each other, when in fact, one level down, the other person could get to the same place that this person is. But you have to go that level down to find the connections, the deeper connections.

So we're speaking a lot and I'm thinking and sharing examples as a coach. Right. But I think that it's really relevant for our entrepreneurs, CEOs, managers, those kinds of people that are the listeners of the show who will also be coaching, holding one on one meetings, working with peers or any number of people and getting to problem solving, but within a conversational environment where they're not really related and connected.

Yeah, exactly, exactly. So there's a story that I can share with you about Angela Arnst. I don't know if you know who she is, but she was the CEO of Burberry. Okay. And now she's at Apple. She's running. She has 65,000 people who report to her.

She runs the Apple Retail group. Right.

The whole Apple Retail, all the stores. And it's now expanding to strategies and all sorts of things. I was her coach in 1996 and have coached her through each one of her companies. I can't take credit, I have to say, for her brilliance only that I've been fortunate enough to be able to work with her and, and see her thrive. And so she just had this decision. She wanted to hire Millennials when she got to Burberry because that transformation had to be done not by people that are older, but people that are younger who saw the world in a different way. And she respected how they saw the world and didn't want to impose their thinking on her, on them, her thinking on them. So she hired them, and then she hired some more. And she describes this millennial project where she says, I want you to look at our company and I want you to try to figure out how to make it grow. I'm not going to tell you how to do it. I don't think we know. And our customers are going to be millennials for the next so many years, and that's who we want to attract. So you are them, and we want you to help us. And she gave them that freedom without telling just a container into which they could think together. And they came up with. And leaders need to know this. Entrepreneurial companies you hire, whether they're millennials or after millennials, the younger people, for their ideas, because they see the world a different way. And so she gave them the chance to do that. And they came up with the ideas of how to video, using Apple phones, by the way, how to videotape the runways, the Runway show, and make it available in the moment anywhere in the world. People at home, stores, anybody could tune in to the Runway, and they made sure that the Runway had closed, that people would buy in the store, which has never happened. It doesn't happen that way in fashion. It's always the special group that gets the Runway. They came up with those new principles. She listened, and that's what all of a sudden became the beginning of the transformation of Burberry. So it's how we listen and how we give credibility to people while we're communicating is something that is felt. And when it's felt, it activates a whole different network in our brain other than this part of the brain. It's this part of the brain which is where, again, innovation lives and all those wonderful things. So entrepreneurial leaders don't want to be in that telling mode that we talked about, or the selling mode of I know it and follow it.

You know, years ago, I took over a company that I didn't start. I took over a company that my wife actually started, and it was a fashion jewelry company. And the customers, clients and employees, the buyers, the end user, customer, the collector, all of them were predominantly women. It was a fashion jewelry, right? Self purchase, not like diamond engagement ring kind of thing. So it was a very different business. And my background had been all in technology and services and telecom and other kinds of things, fields in broadcasting, but I didn't. So now I'm suddenly working in a very female dominant world. And I came in and I did what I Always did was listen to people try to solve their problems and send them on their way.

Oh, my goodness.

And I just thought that was great. Like, I relied on being smart and articulate, and that was sort of my little winning formula. And. And it was disastrous in the beginning, right. And people were upset and like that, and I couldn't figure out what it was. And I'm sure that it was going on or it was a problem before, but it didn't. It wasn't highlighted or it wasn't apparent as a problem until I was in that environment where it was on real loudspeaker. And what I learned to do that made my life so much easier was to listen. Right? Just appreciate the person, this struggle, see what they were dealing with, really get their world, try to appreciate the struggle where the challenge was for them. And I think it made me a better coach in the process. I wasn't thinking about that as much in those times, but get their whole world and then ask them what they needed or what their next steps were, that kind of thing. So I facilitated and I listened deeply and I appreciated them and. And that pretty much was it. And I was sort of stunned that, like, oh, this is really easy. Oh, if I just do this, my life, I don't have to work so hard. I don't have to come up with the answers. And that then moved into other realms in whole team environments where I could just listen, appreciate people. But I did see, like, establishing the direction, articulating the values, sharing the company purpose, Things like that were expected, needed from me. But solving every problem wasn't.

It wasn't. And problem solving, by the way, again, I'm going to dribble neuroscience in because when it's relevant, it helps when you use the word problem. And problem solving, which has been historically what people talk about, let's go in and solve the problems and blah, blah, blah. It's not the language of the future. It's not the language of millennials. It's not the language of X generation X. It's not the generation Y. Problems are historically get you into that yucky place of, oh, you know, I was bad, I have a problem. You know, it's a negative, judgmental word just to comment on. If you have a choice, then you talk about what are your aspirations. When you do that to the millennials, they say, oh, my God, I want to run a company someday. Oh, my God, I want to do this. Oh, my God, I want to do that. That is the prefrontal cortex speaking. The problems are the Lower brain which says, I have a problem and I didn't do so well. Judgmental, you know, limbic. I'm emotionally not equipped to handle it. Aspirations are completely different. And when we can access that part of ourselves, it's like a different us shows up. And that's really amazing for leaders to know that if they talk with their people about the future and what they want to do for the future and how they want to do it and how you can help them and support them, like Angela did where she said, oh my God, you guys want to really help create something new that we've never done before. Let me see how I can help you. And then their ideas got bigger and better and better and better and better. And everything that grew out of that was from validating their aspirations, not working on problems.

So fixing something as a problem is. Yeah, I hear something in that. So fixing something as a problem is dealing with something from a sort of a negative place versus creating something. It's like an or kind of a world versus an and kind of a world. Like that is. Okay, the world is this way, let's go fix that. Or the world is this way. And I see another way to make something right.

Yeah. And once that door opens up again, our brain is designed for so much more capacity for innovation than we ever realized. Neuro innovation is the thing. It is the thing. And when we create the right space, then all of a sudden your world changes internally, the team's world changes around you and your company's future changes. I can guarantee it. I haven't yet seen that fail. That's how important it is for entrepreneurs.

The language of leadership. Right. It seems like there's sort of the good and the bad, the dark side. Right. The light side, to go to the Star wars reality. But I think there is something like we see very continually that you can be sort of fear and problem driven kind of leader. Let's crush those guys, let's stop, let's dominate, let's kill that, let's fight them, let's do whatever. And we can appeal to that and we can actually engage people. We can get people to vote for things, we can get people to spend money, whatever, going to that. And then there's another side that says, I imagine a world that looks like this. We're creating this kind of thing. We have this idea for something that's future possibility, purpose driven, where our values and our purpose, our sort of aspirational things are expressed and being called into being in the world.

Right, exactly. So may I share Another story with you. Okay, so when I started my business, Behringer Engelheim, the pharmaceutical company, was within 10, 15 minutes of my house in Connecticut. And so I called up Bill Summers, I still remember his name, 30 some years ago. And I got rejected seven times for my calls. He just, he didn't care about another salesperson coming in and trying to sell them some program. He said, we just spent a million dollars on Xerox learning systems and we're fine and we'll work it out. Right? Well, finally, instead of trying to sell him anything, I said, you know, I read in the paper about your standing. And out of the 40 pharmaceutical companies, Boehringer Engelheim is number 39, which is not the top of the list. That's the bottom of the list. And I said, would you be interested. Now, it's a question for which I don't have answers. Would you be interested in taking a look at some changes that could radically change your. How people appreciate you in the world? And he said that was the turning point for him because I wasn't selling. I hit a button for him. So I got invited to speak and the first thing I did was 20 aspirations. Not the very minute I walked in the door, but in our first meeting. And he said, 20. He said, if we could do one, I'd be happy. And we did the 20. We did the 20. And he kept going. And he said, that's amazing. I can't even imagine what you're going to do with that. Six months later. We had handled all of those aspirations. His company went from number 39 to number one in eight months. In eight months. They are still working with our approach because it was so significant in the way people's minds changed in the organization. It went throughout the whole company, not just sales, but the whole company. So that's what we look for, is how to shift people's perception of what's possible, how to make a dream. I always wanted to turn dreams into realities. You asked me what was my thing, and that's one of my big things. I want people to know that you can do that, and it's not something that just some special people can do. Every human being, once we acknowledge our aspirations, put them out in front of us, bring people along to look at, well, how could we do this? What would you do? How would you do it? Ask the questions, stay open, not judge people for that was a small idea, or I can't, you know, the worst in research, the worst ideas become the best Transformers of the future because People start out by saying, that's crazy, you can't do it. And they miss it. And then other people say, wow, what a great idea, let's give it a shot. What's the worst thing that could happen? And then they get it. So the rules of the world are changing. That's why the work that we do is called changes. What are the changes that human beings need to make in their mind and in their world, in their friendships, and how they ask questions that. It's not about proving you're right, it's about opening the space for us to work on and co create. That's a new word. We're not collaborating. That means cohorting with the enemy. We're co creating. And how do we do that? How do we make that word have meaning? Once we get that, everything changes.

So I'm just reminded of a story that I think expresses some of what. So I came in and I ran that business with my wife, right. We worked together for many years and along the way we balanced, not always well, often badly, but our relationship. Right. Our romantic married couple relationship and our family and our business. Right. We navigated and we would go when things got difficult or when whatever we needed align on stuff, we'd go out to lunch together and we talked through our calendars or that kind of thing. So we went out to lunch. We were in this Japanese restaurant near my office one day and an old argument came up, right? One of our standard old arguments, right, that we always had.

Yeah.

This one was about. And I don't think the content of them actually matters for the most part. So this one was about whether or not we would watch the TV at night in the bedroom. And I had it that like I couldn't fall asleep with the TV on. It was keeping me up, stressing me out, didn't leave us connected or anything like that. And she wanted to have the TV on it. And I was right that it was a bad move, it was not good for health, for its rest and all that, right? So I was right, she was wrong. We started to have this argument, except I recognized that like it was a many year old argument and it just led to like profound unhappiness, like really, like we can't go on and I think we're arguing about the tv. So I stopped as I noticed it again and I'm like working on the communication skills or whatever and I said, what is she saying? And I, you know, she's talking about the TV and what's her state? And. And I noticed her state. And then I said, what is really going on? You know, I asked myself what is really going on here? And she certainly wasn't expressing anything other than just this TV thing. And, and I suddenly had this insight that to live with me was to resign yourself to never getting your way for the rest of your life.

Wow. Wow. Oh my goodness.

And like even you know, as I speak it now, you may.

Oh, wow. I see you, I see it, I see it in your whole composure.

That moment. This woman that I love, that I have a family with, like that, that she was never going to get her way, she was going to have to fight for her way. And I got her experience, right? And I was instantly moved before I could speak it as I am now. And she said, what happened? Where to go? And I said, I just saw that to be with me is to never get your way for the rest of your life, to have to fight for it. And then she was moved because she was recreated. She was presenced in a way that she couldn't say even for herself. Right. She was gotten like, I got her what was beyond and unspoken. Right. And I, it was a very powerful thing that I remember always. And, and the reminder is when there's something tense or when something growing, there's something somebody can't even say or not. So my, my catch for myself now is to look for these moments of tension that there's something that is not being heard, that can't be said, that there's something else. And to listen for that, to intuit it, to feel what's there and to try to give it voice and give it permission to be like, you know, to speak it into the world, to allow it. And in what, and what reminded me of it now is you said that when we're connected we can create stuff. Like we can co. Create something together in. Right after that we started like, like the TV thing got solved forever. Right.

Right.

It, it ceased to be forever a problem. We have a big beautiful TV in our room now. We've upgraded. So what, what though then happened is we started to create and we were now connected and aligned. There was nothing separating us. There was no tension we weren't fighting for. And then we could look at, well, what do we want to do with the business and what do we want to do with this and that? So not only did we then create like how our home would be, but we began to create. And I know every time there's like that thing when we, when we, when we pull out what separates us when we name it. We. We let people connect, and then we actually can create something together.

Right. And it sounds like what I just learned from you is that that example of TV ness, whether it's on or off, it represented something else. It was a placeholder and a metaphor for the deeper the struggle that was happening underneath that. You said when we talked about it earlier, it's in your stomach and you don't know how to put words to it. We find that metaphors are a door opener. The brain is mostly visual in its nature and the way it operates. And in some way, if we can get to what the visual experience is or message is that you're trying to send each other. And I have to tell you very honestly, my husband and I have had the same thing we still do with the TV at night, and I want to watch MSNBC and he wants to go to bed. And we worked it out by him saying, I'm so exhausted now I'm going to truffle light and just make it light. He'll say, make it softer, and I get to watch. He's given me that space.

You worked out?

Yeah, we worked it out because he said, I know how important it is for you to understand the politics that are going on in the world. And he said, once I got that, then I couldn't hold you back. And so it means something else. And finding that meaning is so critical. So that's a beautiful story for us to have as part of our conversation. Thank you.

Well, we've covered a lot of stuff, and I noticed from the clock that we've run through the typical time for a show, and I think hopefully we've engaged people. And if you want to learn more, if you want to think about your communication style and what's possible and how to build trust and get better results from your team, then you should go get the book Conversational Intelligence and read up and follow Judith and dig deeper into this work together. You'll find the book. I think the easiest thing to do is to tell people to go to Amazon and just punch in Conversational Intelligence. Of course, we'll put a link right in the show notes so people can click on it and go right there and get the book and read it. Judith, you were a great speaker at our Scaling Up Summit, and you're a great guest on the podcast, and I so appreciate a few minutes to talk with you.

Thank you. You've been a great interviewer and brought out. You brought out tears in me and tears in you, and that's part of this when we get to that level, we realize how important these things are and to talk about them and find how to talk about them, which is what we did today is paramount for leaders to be successful with their people. People are just waiting for a leader to have a tender heart and and listen. So thank you for the chance to do that.

Awesome. Well, we bring a new show like this every week. Speakers on leadership and scaling up and all the things that you might grapple with as you try to grow your business. So go find us@scalingupbusiness.com we've got free tools, shows like this every week and blog posts and all that stuff. So go to scalingupbusiness.com and find us there. And thanks again Judith and and we'll talk to you all next week. Bye Bye. I want to give special thanks to our original growth guru, Vern Harnish. Our show is produced by Nye Obeyed Audio production by Podfly Productions Audio editing by Albert Burge show notes are compiled by Ayn Codena with proofreading by Tim McGowan. If you got some value out of the show today, please share it with somebody else and let us know the parts that you loved so we can bring you more of that. Thanks for listening and keep scaling up. Are you ready to turn your goals into daily wins? You should check out our Scoreboard software. Powered by alignment, it's the official software for scaling up. With Scoreboard, you'll get an AI driven coach for priorities and KPIs and it'll help keep your team focused on what matters most. With Align, you can track your goals in real time and you'll even see results on the go. With their mobile app, you can rest easy knowing that Align has world class onboarding and support to set your team up for success. This is really more than just software. It's what I actually use to manage growth in our scaling up client teams unlock clarity and results with scoreboard by Aligned. To try it now, go to aligntoday.com Bill G One more time. Aligntoday.com Bill G that's aligntoday.com Bill G Check it out and try it now.