Pacing and Leading

Business Brain, the show for entrepreneurs, episode 493 for Wednesday, October 18, 2023. Greetings, folks, and welcome to Business Brain, the show where we take a few topics, we dissect them, we analyze them, we. We do all of this to tune our business brains such that we can each keep on living those charmed lives that are important to us. Sponsors for this episode include fastmail.com businessbrain. That's where you go to get 10% off your first year. We'll talk more in depth about that. For now, here on. We have Casual Friday. I think it's Causal Wednesday in Durham, New Hampshire, I'm Dave Hamilton.

Causal. And in Lafayette, California, I'm Shannon Jean. How you doing on this causal.

Causal window? We gotta cause things to happen. I don't know, man. Like, if we're gonna celebrate being casual, let's celebrate being intentional. I don't know.

That's good. I like it.

Right? I don't know. Yeah, I had a. I had an interesting interaction this week that. That caused me to think a little bit. I'm in this Facebook group of parents who are also fans of the band Fish. It doesn't really matter. I'll set the tone. Fish. Parents sure.

Got it.

And I am. And it's really for parents of, like, younger kids than mine are. Right. Like, it sort of ends with late teens, you know, so my kids are 21 and 23, so I've kind of aged out of this. This group a little bit.

You're like a mentor now.

But now I'm like a mentor. I've been through it, and everybody's like, you know, I generally don't comment, but every now and then I do. And somebody was asking how to deal with managing screen time for their kids. Great question. Right? And their kids are, you know, 10, 11, 12 or something like that. Right. So, you know, they're in that realm. And the world is different now than it was 10 years ago. Certainly different than it was 40 years ago when I grew up. But it was really interesting. And they asked, you know, the question was, what? Sorry, My. My. The audio on. On. On. On the new Mac OS sucks. So that's why I cut out there. But the. The question was, you know, are there any good videos or resources for my kids to watch about the negative effects of screen time?

It's a good.

Thoughtful. And it was like. Well, but it was. It was a loaded question, right? Like that question.

Well, it's selling past. It's going past the sale. They're telling you it's Negative.

Right, correct. And you know, I'm always tuned into those kinds of things because. Yeah, because of that. Right. The selling past the sale. And so I was like, okay, I'm going to write something here, but in the back of my head I'm thinking I'm going to use this content in multiple places. Right. And you know, I started off by telling him, look, you're probably going to want to dismiss everything I'm about to say, you know, my kids have aged out of this group. But yeah, here's. And my advice might seem antiquated because when my kids were coming up, social media was less evolved than it is now. But the same is true for when I was coming up because though I am a 52, 52 year old person, I also grew up as a digital native and that's rare for people my age. Right. It's, it's kind of, you know, it's kind of how it goes. It's.

Yeah, you're in that industry, I would say similar with me. You, you're, you've embraced it because it was part of your career, right?

Well, in part, but not just part of my career. It was part of my childhood. I had a computer at home when I was, you know, from the age of 14 on, we owned our own computer. Before that, I would bring home the computer from school every weekend and I was online, I ran bulletin boards. Right. So like I was, I, you know, I was on social media at the age of 14 and we had, you know, some great discussions and really bonded with people all over the world. We also had flame wars where people were attacking each other. We had people who got bullied online. I had two friends who killed themselves. Right. I mean, like all the things that happen today on social media I saw when I was 14, it was not all roses like it was, you know.

You'Re leading me down that negative pipeline here.

Well, but I'm just saying, like, I've seen it all, like, you know, in, in my way and also in my way, my parents were aware of exactly none of this and I didn't intentionally hide it from them. In fact, I had a very open conversation with my parents. I just had this, my own little world that was going to be. Even though my dad is a, you know, he was an electrical engineer by training and understood how to write software and all that stuff. Like he was fairly and still is fairly technologically astute for his age, but he had never been online before. This was a new thing. Right. And so it was really difficult to explain Any of this to someone who wasn't in it, especially somebody had no context. Right. Whatsoever.

Right.

At least now kids. Parents are on Facebook. So like there's, there's some version of that. And, and so I, I was online, you know, and it was how it was. And then I realized that my kids. When my kids hit that teenage years, I realized, wait a minute, this is kind of the same. Because while I understand the technology and I understand what at a high level, what's possible, my kids are experiencing a different version of this than I understand. And therefore it's simpler for them not to explain every nook and cranny of it to me. Even if they wanted to. It would be simpler not to. And of course, I know they encountered things that they would have felt uncomfortable talking to us about, even though we have a very open conversation. So I'm sure there are things that they hid from us, obviously. Right, Right.

Okay.

But in neither scenario, with us with our kids and my dad with, with me, in neither scenario was screen time treated as bad. And that, I think is really what. What, you know, kind of alerted me by this, this post that I saw where this person was asking I, are you.

And when you tell your kids something's bad, they naturally want to.

They want to do it. They. You limit, you know, if you. But my dad did one thing for me. Of all the things that he could have limited or guided or, you know, all. Any of that, he only did one thing. I would say, all right, I'm finished with dinner. I'm going to go play on the computer now for a while. And his response was always, hey, don't say you're going to go play on the computer. Say you're going to go work on the computer. And this was. I didn't even think about this until I. Until today. Right. But it was. It was a mantra. Like, I knew what he was going to say. And so eventually I just started saying, I'm going to go work on the computer for a while. Because it. It meant I didn't have to have this excess conversation. I knew what he was going to say. So he had trained me to say this because it was an easy request to heed. I didn't care whether I said player work. It didn't, you know, I had no religion on this. This was not my hill to die on. And we kind of did the same thing with our kids. And now the three of us, me and each of our kids, are gainfully employed in careers rooted in technology and social media. And so it Got me to. And they. None of us had hard and fast limits on this. Now we did with our kids and the same would have been true at my house growing up. But it's a little different with phones. We obviously didn't have smartphones when I was a kid. But, you know, in our house, it was like, look, if you're going to be stuck in the car for hours, then using your phone is fine. If you're going to be at the dinner table, we're not going to do that. Right. So there were rules, but there weren't like these artificial. Thou shalt get X number of hours. And listen, I know there are many of you, listen to me. Who have chosen a different path with your kids. There is no one right way to parent. Right. There are many correct ways to parent and there's many, many wrong ways. And limiting your kids screen time, in my opinion, does not fall into, you know, wrong ways or bad parenting by any stretch. Right. Like, it's just different. But I will say that by not limiting it, we didn't make it a thing that needed to be covered.

I like that. It's a good framework. It's another tool. And like every tool, there's a right way to use it and a wrong way to use it.

Sure.

And I think that is a great way to have to share that framework with your kids because they get. Yeah. They're not going to run towards it, you know, oh, this is something, you know, bad or I'm coming up on the one hour mark. I better sneak it here, sneak it there. But, and I like, actually, I love that framework. The challenge, I think, is the fact that there's so many parts of it that it, you know, there's addicting parts of it that you really have to make them aware.

But that's, that's the, but that's a different thing. But that, that like the way to combat a potential, you know, addiction of, of that sort of dope, the dopamine rush, is not to say don't ever do it. Right. Like, it doesn't work. It would be great if that works.

Yeah. I've told, told my kids, listen, don't blow it with alcohol because when you get older, socially, drinking is fun, but once you go way past it and if you ever have a problem with it, you can never do it again.

Right.

So lessons like. Yeah, so it's a, it's a great framework. I'd love to hear. I mean, this is not a show about kids, but you could probably take this into a business you know, concept as well. But it would be great to hear what other people are doing about screen time, whether it's at home or whether it's at your office. Cause, you know, a lot of people lock you out or, you know, at work, you can only go on certain places or whatever. It's a, it's a, it's a good discussion to have.

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Yeah, one of the most powerful things you can learn to do and you can teach others to do. And I learned it from someone else. And kind of the same thing. I realized I was already doing it. And I would say good leaders, good managers, good supervisors, they already do it. And the concept is you're going to identify with whoever you're working with or talking to and you want to pace them. You want to use similar language that then they use. If you're at the golf course, that's probably a different, maybe a different language type than if you're trying to get something done at the truck stop. I don't know, you know, I mean, pick a couple of examples. Just different. You're even clothing that you wear, you're going to pace the crowd that you're going to talk, you know, if you're going to give a talk to the people that are, you know, keeping your warehouse going. Do you really want to show up in a three piece suit now? Maybe you want to be in jeans and a, and a pair of boots so you could help them work, you know, thinking like that. But the, the second part that is critical is once you've paced them for a while and you've built up your credibility is you want to lead them to where you want to go. And we've done, we've talked about on the show here before, I thought you had a great example of someone using it just in a regular, you know, life situation. And it is one of those skills that can help you in business and you know, you'll tremendously can benefit from. But even just in your day to.

Day life, if you've got to deal with someone. Yeah, I was, I was helping a friend who was having like what we, what I would call an interpersonal incompatibility. Right. These, these two people did not get along, but it wasn't because of something that happened. It was just, you know, there was no, like, oh, well, you know, you ran over my dog or whatever. Like there was no incident that caused this friction, but this friction existed. And I said, all right, well think about who this person is. Like, just slow down for a second. And what's going on with this person? We were able to say, okay, well this person, like it's, it's a safe assumption. It might be a wrong assumption, but it's a safe assumption that they are suffering from some pretty consistent social anxiety. Okay, fine. Like that, like we, you know, I certainly suffer from that. I know it seems strange to say that being a podcast host, but you know, it's, it's true. Yeah. And I'm like, okay, well are you suffering from any of that? And the person I was helping said, yes. I'm like, okay, great. Have you ever communicated that to this person? No. Okay, so has, has this other person ever communicated to you? No. How is this communication happening? Well, you know, I show up confident, acting confident and strong. This other person shows up acting standoffish. Okay? These are defense mechanisms to deal with social anxiety. And they're fine. They're like, this is how you protect yourself. But if you want to actually get in with this person, you need to take their defense mechanism down now. Good luck doing that. But one way of doing it is by taking yours down first. I said, so reach out to them and say, hey, we've been, you know, involved in this project together, and it seems like we've never really gotten together. And I know it's probably just me, but I'm, you know, I'm super socially awkward and, you know, I just don't know how to interact. And I'm wondering if you can help me. Showing some vulnerability, asking for help, right? All of those things. It took, I don't know, 10 minutes from reaching out that way for these two people to become fast friends. Because the other person was like, oh, my gosh, same. I have the same thing. I never know how to deal. And then fast friends, within five days, they went from maybe we should never interact with each other to like, we're almost best friends here. And it's like, yeah, figure out what's going on. And again, none of this was, I'll use the term manipulative. It was manipulative, but not in a negative way. This was a productive manipulation, which is something we're all doing all the time. I'm doing it right now to everyone who's listening. I'm trying to manipulate you into thinking about these things in your life. Is this bad? No, I'm doing it because I think it's good for you. It's not going to benefit me.

You know, that's why I like. I mean, I get the manipulation. I like the word persuasion.

Yeah. What's even more? Pacing. Like, the idea of pacing is meeting people where they already are. Right. That's the key to this. Because you can't lead them somewhere else until they trust you. And then. That's. Right. The leading really is the. Once you're in sync with this person, you walk in sync with them for a little bit, you do their things for a little bit, and then one day, it's probably going to happen naturally. You're not even going to notice that you're doing it, but you offer a suggestion. Well, instead of going to this restaurant, why don't we go to that restaurant? Oh, that sounds like a good idea. You have just led them. That's it. Like, it's Those kinds of things.

Yeah, yeah, I love it. And I, you know, there's. I could example that I have is I always talk about our warehouse and one of my businesses. Over time, I noticed that people didn't really talk to each other with respect in the warehouse. And so I was like, I've got to fix this. Because, you know, words have power. And even though it seemed like they're joking around, you know, using offensive language or curse words and that kind of stuff, it's not a positive environment that you want to work in.

Right.

And so I was like, okay, how am I got to stop this? And so I just started hanging out more in the warehouse, and I noticed they didn't cuss at each other around me as much. Right. I was older and the boss or whatever. Yeah, of course. But slowly I got to the point where I could joke around with them, but I wasn't using that language. And I could give somebody a hard time without using that kind of language. And I would go out there every day. I knew when their busiest times were, I'd go after the main shipments got out, this kind of stuff. And I just kind of made it part of my schedule to where I think I kind of ingratiated myself with them a lot more, where they felt more comfortable having me around. And then I just talked to them better. And I noticed over time, the level of. Or the types of language used just, you know, was heightened. And it was much better to where I didn't have to go out there all the time. And, you know, so learning how to read the room and thinking about what your.

What.

What's your end goal? You know, what.

What do you.

What system are you trying to put in place if you want people to dress a certain way? Once you kind of build some credibility with them, you just start kind of turning it up a notch. And it's like, okay, I want everybody to be in this kind of, you know, let's call it a uniform.

Yeah. You want to move them from T shirts to collared shirts? Well, show up in T shirts for a little bit and then.

Yes.

You know, get on their level. And then show up with a collared shirt every now and then. Yeah.

And figure out what kind of collared shirt do you guys want to. We. Do you want the logo on it? Do you want a fun saying? You know, we used catchy phrases and fun, the looking imagery to get our people to wear our shirts. And. And our customers would talk about it. You know, they liked it. You know, you wear the trade show and all that stuff. So pacing, build some credibility, learn to read the room. And you do have to be authentic, though. It's not, it's not something fake.

No, it's. You're not. Yeah. You're not using phoniness to manipulate. You have to throw. And it, it, like think vulnerability. It, it's not always going to be, you know, something as obvious as, hey, we both have social anxiety. Right. Like in my example. But start there. Think in your mind about, okay, have I shown this person any vulnerability? Because if you haven't, think about someone who has never shown you vulnerability. Are they going, are you going to listen to them? What would you listen to us if we didn't show up every now and then and say, oh, yeah, we make huge mistakes all the time.

We've made so many. We wrote a book about us.

Right.

You know? Yeah, yeah. And asking someone to teach you is another great way to do it. Like in this warehouse.

Super vulnerable, right? Yeah.

If I, if I walked out. Yeah. If I walked out in the warehouse and try to jump into the shipping station and show these guys how it's done because I've shipped before, yada, yada, yada. Well, that may be true, but they're just going to look at you and go, look at this, you know, jackass. He doesn't know what he's doing. But if I walk out there and say, hey, guys, I know we've got some new, new stuff going on in the shipping department. Can you show me how we're. How you're using these tools and show me the software and show me that stuff that everybody loves to teach somebody. So you're pacing them right away. And then later when you start to see problems with the shipping structure, if there's something screwy with the system and maybe the reason why you went out there in the first place, because you're having shipping errors. But you got to go about it, you know, you got to think about it a little different because you want them on the same side of the table as you're in, and they're going to help you solve the problem. You're going to work with them together instead of the boss coming down going, you guys are making too many mistakes and then storming out. You know, you've paced them and then you're leading them to a better solution together. So if you use this system, tell us about it, maybe you call it something different. Feedbackusinessbrain show. We would love to hear from you.

Yeah, he said, feedbackusinessbrain show. And as you know, if we use your email in an episode, even if we don't say your name. But your idea came in, we put that on our list. And in what, seven episodes we're going to have a drawing and we're going to give one of you a MacBook Air. It could be you. Feedbackusbrain show. Get in touch with us. Go check out our sponsor, fastmail.com businessbrain and do me one more favor. Keep living that charmed life, huh? We'll see you on Friday.