Michael Bungay Stanier on How to Rescue Difficult Work Relationships and Do Your Best Work

Living a life in full is a conversation you always wanted to have with that person who gave an amazing TED Talk or the author of one of your favorite books, or that inspirational Olympian you always wanted to know more about. It's graduate level conversations with those making a difference in the world and in the lives of others. This show brings you new ideas and approaches so that you can live a life in full. I'm your host, Dr. Chris Stout and I hope you enjoy this episode. This episode is brought to you by the nonprofit I founded, the center for Global Initiatives. The center is an all volunteer organization so there are no salaries and thus all tax deductible donations can go to the work. While our key country partner is in Tanzania, our work is global and generally focused in the areas of education and healthcare. We also help others to get their nonprofits started or augment others project based initiatives. It's our goal to open source humanitarian intervention and to help make it easier for others to do more good in the world. We are proud to have been ranked a great nonprofit every year since 2011 and to have achieved a Platinum level rating by Guidestar Links. In this episode's show, notes will take you to published articles on our outcomes, a number of helpful tools, and downloadable resources which are all free always. Please Visit us at CenterForGlobalInitiatives.org and be sure to watch our video at Patreon.com DrChrisStout to learn more. Thanks. Welcome to another episode of Living Life in Full. Hello, I'm your host, Dr. Chris Stout. Have you ever had the experience of working with someone and they just didn't get you? They do all the things that wind you up, put you off and drive you nuts. And have you ever worked with someone and you just didn't get them? You couldn't figure out what made them tick. And you know that you were underwhelming as a manager and a leader for them. Of course you have. We all have. So why do these situations keep happening, particularly when we've also experienced the opposite? That's great. Working Relationships that Soar Our working relationships are fundamental, if not critical to our success and our happiness. Now imagine if you could keep your best relationships humming along for as long as possible. Imagine if you could contain the dysfunction of the messy ones so that they're less painful and more productive. Imagine if you could reset your solidly okay relationships so that they when they wobble, they could more quickly get back on track. Well, in his latest book, how to Work With Almost Anyone internationally best selling Author Michael Bungay Stanier writes about a tested process that sets up working relationships for the best possible success. He understands that every working relationship, whether it's our direct reports, our boss, or our co workers, will become challenging at a certain point. In this episode, we'll discuss how to communicate about who you are and how and what brings out the best and the worst in you. Michael has a gift for distilling big, complex ideas into practical, accessible knowledge for everyday people that helps them become a force for good. He's also at the forefront of shaping how organizations around the world make coach like being coach like an essential leadership competency. His books have sold over a million copies, with the Coaching Habit topping the Wall Street Journal bestseller list, and it's also the best selling coaching book for this century with over a million copies sold. Seth Godin called it the best book on coaching and Brene Brown said it's a classic. He's also written an impressive shelf's worth of other notable tomes including Get Unstuck and Get Going. Great Work Provocations Do More Great Work, the Advice Trap, how to Begin, and his most recent book, how to Work with Almost Anyone, which we'll be doing a deep dive into in this episode. In 2019, Michael was named the number one thought leader in coaching. Michael was the first Canadian coach of the year and has been named a global coaching guru since 2014. I first came upon Michael's work via box of Crayons, a learning and development company that he founded and, pardon me, has helped hundreds of organizations transform Advice driven to being curiosity led, and he's trained more than a half million employees for clients that include Microsoft, Salesforce and Gucci. Michael's a compelling speaker and facilitator, combining practicality, humor and an unprecedented degree of engagement with his audiences. He's spoken on stages and screens around the world in front of crowds ranging ranging from 10 to 10,000. In fact, his TEDx talk has been watched by more than a million people. Michael's been featured by Seth Godin, Tim Ferriss, Brene Brown, and has appeared on abc, BBC, CBC and innumerable podcasts, as well as notable publications that include the Harvard Business Business Review, Forbes Inc. And Fast Company. He left Australia about 30 years ago to be a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University, where he identifies his only significant achievement there was falling in love with a Canadian, which explains why he now lives in Toronto. And some formative but not likely causal experiences that have led to today include Michael knocking himself out while working as a laborer. When he hit Himself in the head with a shovel, mastering stagecraft while in law school by appearing in a skit called Synchronized nude male Modeling. And Michael's prolific career pard. Pardon me, writing career got its start when he sold his first piece, a Harlequin Romance esque story involving a misdelivered letter aptly titled the mail delivery spelled M A L E. Michael, welcome to the show. It's great to connect.

Chris, that is a long introduction. I hope I haven't scared anybody away going too much.

You have an awesome, you have an awesome body of work, man. I want to pay appropriate tribute to that. So I have so many things I want to talk to you about. I'm glad this is a long form show. You have such a diverse background including unconsciousness influenced by shovel. But how is it that you became interested in coaching? Did you have a coach or what was the spark for that?

You know, if you. Most of these things are only clear in retrospect but I've got retrospect now, so I can see that that seed was planted. As a teenager, you know, as a teenager I would, you know, as teenagers were very intense and have angst filled conversations about life and love and purpose and all that stuff. And I would often find myself talking to my friends and I often find myself being the person who's listening rather than talking. And I remember thinking, you know, 16 or 17, I'm not really clear what I'm doing here. It feels like this is helpful, but maybe it is or maybe it isn't. I wonder if this is the best I can do. And so at that early age I did some training to be on a youth crisis telephone hotline. So, you know, kind of kids ringing up saying I'm feeling bad or suicidal or whatever it might be. And that was my first TR as a, as a teenager in terms of the art of actively listening. The insight that what they might be saying might not be the only thing that's going on. The ability to ask a question and then be quiet and listen to the answer. All of that sort of happened in those early days when I ended up moving to England and was kind of working in the. As a consultant or something like that. I started seeing this rise of something from the North America, from California in particular, the rise of coaching, of course, because I'm living in England at the time. You know, we have to be skeptical about it because, you know, woo, woo, California. And I was skeptical about it, sure. But I was also curious about it because I'm like, you know, there might be Something interesting there. And when I moved with this company from the UK to the us that was the first time I started talking about coaching. What I was doing with clients was coaching and actually hired my first coaches. But it was only when I moved to Toronto in 2001 that I started doing coach training and hiring my. And finding kind of coaches that really worked for me and really kind of diving into this world of what is coaching and what's it about and why is it a useful technology?

How did you select your coach? What was a good fit and what was not such a great fit?

Yeah, that's a really perceptive question, because the majority of the coaches I've hired have failed. And it's been actually, in some ways, one of the things that has contributed to writing this new book. But, you know, when I started hiring coaches, I would ask friends, you know, do you have a good coach? And somebody would recommend a person and I would talk to them and they think they seem pleasant enough, and I'd hire them and it just wouldn't quite click. It wouldn't quite work out. And I discovered that I had to be really explicit about what I needed and wanted in a coaching relationship. And I had to give people insight as to why I was a bit of a nightmare to coach. Because. Because I am. Because I know I know too much. You know, I'm a bit slippery. I am very good at making it sound like I'm being coached in a useful way when I'm actually kind of avoiding the difficult conversations. And I basically had to find somebody who was as smart as I am, as fast as I am, and would look on my shenanigans with amusement and not get seduced by them. And so I probably hired five or six coaches where we had shortish working relationships, and then through a referral of a friend, found a guy called Ernest Oriente. And Ernest was my coach for 15 years because he was delightful and funny and in no way was fooled by all the kind of the tricks I tried to pull on him to try and avoid the difficult conversations.

It's. There's a certain paradox in that. I mean, a lot of what I've, you know, listened and read about you, you know, that. And I'm a psychologist, clinical psychologist. So, you know, it's.

It's.

It's very familiar with psychotherapy, and it's. That's a similar kind of experience, I think, that a lot of people have in terms of wanting to be coached or wanting to be in therapy, but then, you know, putting up certain kinds of in therapy, maybe it's, you know, defensive defenses kinds of things. And for you, it's like in spite of seeking out multiple coaches to, you know, kind of. There obviously there was a desire on your part to have certain kinds of growth or certain kinds of betterment, but then also nevertheless to have this paradox of sparring with them or, you know, or. And then ultimately not just because sometimes the spar is good and that's growthful, but, you know, but getting to the point of saying, hey, this just isn't working and, you know, I need to go find somebody else and try it again. Have you experienced that on the other side of the couch of being the coach and that with people that had sought you out to be coached or even companies at the larger scale?

Of course I would say I would experience that most times. I think that's part of the process. It is. I think it's systemic rather than personal. That often when you enter into a process, you are looking for change. That's why you go to a therapist or go to a coach. You're like, something needs to be different around here. Mm. But we typically underestimate just the weight, the gravity, the pool of the status quo. It. We love the status quo. The status quo serves us the way it is. So whilst there's one part of us that wants to change, there's a significant part of us that goes, I am being fulfilled by the way things are just now. And this is true even if life is a bit miserable, which it often is. But there's a way that you're like, you know what? This is comfortable, because I know my plan. I like playing the, let's say, the victim role. I have this going. I have this going. It's predictable, it's familiar. You know, I often use the Kapman drama triangle as a way of talking about dysfunctional dynamics. So this basically says, look, there's. When things get a bit dysfunctional, the three roles that are often played out are either victim or persecutor or rescuer. And people kind of can probably immediately take a pretty good guess at what each of those three roles look like. But the thing is, each one of those roles has short term benefits. There's like, I get something out of being the victim and I get something out of being the persecutor, and I get something out of being the rescuer. And often, you know, when you hire a coach or a therapist, you're opening a conversation between future you and present you. And the person who's hired the coach is Future you because you're like, I can see who I'm trying to be and who I'm trying to evolve into. Yeah, but present you, well, I'd say this before that, but what requires you to move towards future you is you saying being no to some things that are true about present you. Present you is like, I don't want to do that. I'm totally content with how things are, even in my misery and dissatisfaction. So that tension, I think is inherent to the process of change, which is you want it and you don't want it. And what a coach or a therapist can do is, you know, take the wanting to 52% of the equation and hopefully enough to keep you, you know, taking steps forward.

It reminds me when you say that of like the prochaskas, you know, readiness for change scale, those, you know, kinds of aspects which I think, you know, are very applicable in business relationships, in business consulting, in psychotherapy, et. I had a friend who was on Nightline a million years ago and he was talking about smoking cessation and there was someone off stage afterward and said, hey, he had talked about some hypnotic techniques. He said, can you hypnotize me to help me quit smoking? And he said, do you want to quit smoking? And he said, no. He said, well then no. You know, you're just, you're not quite there, pal. So once, once it gets to that and you, you think about, it's. I don't know that's even stereotypic, but it's certainly almost like a meme with substance abuse, you know, the people, you know, it's, it's a classic thing and substance abuse treatment of people really getting to that point of bottoming out, so to speak, to say, okay, now this is, I'm really, really motivated for that. And, and you and I have both seen and you know, in the media and people's lives that wind up being public if they're celebrities of, you know, serial failures and rehabilitation centers and oftentimes rehabilitations and re check ins and things like that. So I think that's a, that is a critical. But oftentimes, you know, maybe not until someone's in the midst of it kind of realizing like, well, wait a minute, I'm a little, I thought I wanted to change, but I'm a little ambivalent because I'm going to miss some of these things if I actually, you know, sincerely, authentically do make these changes. So I want to smoker.

That smoker off stage is just being more honest than most of us.

Yeah. Exactly.

I kind of, I kind of don't want to give up smoking. And one part of me does. And, you know, with, with substance issues like drinking or smoking or other drugs, you've got chemical things happening in the brain that make that even harder to kind of manage and overcome. But even in the familiar patterns of our everyday life, there's ways that, you know, our brain rewards us with little doses of, you know, chemicals that make you go, I still want to keep doing this, even though one part of me doesn't want to keep doing this.

Yeah. Yeah. And I think when we look at ourselves in the context as we'll get into with your book, vis a vis Relationships. I mean, obviously your book is, while it's specifically focused on work relationships, I think that, you know, there's a lot of overlap. You can't help but overlap with, you know, other kinds of relationships, you know, romantic relationships, partner relationships, you know, parent and child, child and parent kind of thing. So I think we'll probably sprinkle and circle back to a variety of coaching aspects as we continue on our conversation. But one thing I kind of want to get out of this is like a personal itch of mine, which is kind of, I guess, the whole reason for the podcast. But to, you know, you have an amazing level of productivity, my friend. I mean, you give talks all over the world. We were just talking off mic before we started. You're getting ready, packing your bags and heading off. You have a great weekly newsletter, the works, which I'll put a link into our show notes. Absolutely. And on LinkedIn. Big fan. You do your own podcast, you coach, you write great best selling books. Not just books. And you also have a life. So how is it that you, you manage all of that?

Well, I don't, I don't, I don't actually coach because I decided that's one of the things that I can do. But of all the things I can do in the world, that is not the thing that is my best gift to the world. Okay, so how do I do all that? The first is I have a bunch of teams around me that facilitate a lot of that. So, you know, I founded a training company called Box of Crayons and that delivers training to corporations around the world. But five years ago or four years ago, I stopped being the CEO of that, and now I talk to the CEO of that once a month. We had a breakfast together this morning, in fact, and we have a formal board meeting once a quarter. So Shannon runs Box of Crayons, and it's her company to run and with the MBS Works, which is the company that serves individuals and helps them unlock greatness for themselves and for others. You know, I have a team of four people who do most of the, most of the hard work. And I've. And it's taken me a long time to get here, Chris, but I've. I keep trying to say, of all the things I can do, what's the thing that is mine to do? And what I am best at is creating. So part of the orientation of the last few years is to try and become a writer. And that's kind of a step beyond an author. Like, I'm already an author because I have books that I've written. But a writer is somebody who puts writing at the heart of what they do. And today is a classic example of me not being a writer. I'm over scheduled and I'm trying to do too many things and I. And I haven't sat down to actually write right stuff for too long. I'm still not there yet, but. So I'm trying to figure out how.

To answer your own question, how is it that I do all this? Wait a minute.

But Chris, here's what I'd probably say. First of all, you're referring to my kind of greatest hits list. So you're seeing part of the picture, but not the whole picture. And we always make up stuff about the other people whose lives we see. Secondly, I do have a lot of people helping me. So I write a newsletter, but I have Tuba, who schedules that, proofreads it, structures it, nags me when I haven't written it, asks for, you know, sign off. So my job is to write it, but not to produce it and get it out there. Okay, I have a. I have a podcast, which I love doing, but I have a producer, Audrey, who actually makes it sound beautiful and who nags me to say, michael, you need to do the voiceovers for this and we're waiting for you and how we're going to run this. And I do things like batching. So like for the podcast, which is called Two Pages with mbs, so brilliant people read the best two pages of a favorite book and then we springboard off that. You know, I'm about to, in August move into a recording session. So I'll record 10 or 12 podcasts during August, and I haven't recorded any for a month and a half or two months because I've been all in on a book launch at the moment. So this idea of clustering work together is really Helpful as well. Yeah. And. And I work hard.

Yeah.

And I have less of a life than I probably should.

Well, your. Your craft and your productivity in the sense of what you produce is just, you know, really stellar because there are a lot of people that, you know, can produce a lot of kinds of, you know, different media, different platforms, different types of content. And, you know, and it's okay. But, you know, the quality of what you produce, I think, you know, really comes through in a variety of ways. I have to say, you know, tip of the hat to your producer for the two pages with MBS show, because it sounds like NPR produced it. I mean, it's just lovely. Lovely to listen to, and it's been fun. You've had a couple of guests on that that I know that I've worked with, so that kind of just feels kind of goosebumpy. Yeah. And fun be able to do. And, you know, and I appreciate the. The fact of what you're saying, like, about the batch kinds of aspects. I mean, you know, it's the cliche of work, life balance. And I always kind of felt like it was more of a. Of a ratio kind of thing, that there's time, you know, or maybe it's an agricultural metaphor. There's times to, you know, to plant and to sow and to weed and to harvest. But I'm trying to also do a similar kind of thing with the whole batch kind of aspect because I find in an odd way, it's not as often as I wish it, but when I'm batching some. Something, I'm working, you know, heads down on XYZ project that periodically, maybe 25% of the time, there's some little creative idea or spark that comes from the XYZ that has, in some sense, absolutely nothing to do with the ABC project.

That's right.

But it's additive to it in some weirdo kind of way. It gives me this like, you know, I'll put a little margin note. I'm reading somebody's book about something I'm getting ready for a podcast, and it'll cue something up for another project that I'm working on, you know, and I'll write it there and say, okay, make sure to add this to my to do list. And once I've, you know, talked to the person about it on their. On the podcast or whatever. And that's. That's really been helpful, you know, for me in my own process, my own journey with it. So.

So I find. I find being able to go deep into some different areas creates the ability for crossover into other areas. So I'm trying to create space for me to do reading because I love reading, and I'm a reader and my wife is a reader, and I try and read broadly, and that feeds into newsletters and podcasts and all sorts of stuff like that.

Yeah.

But if I'm spending my. My day skipping along the surface between task and email and all the other stuff that, you know, shout outs noisily from the sidelines, I lose the ability to kind of nourish. Nourish myself.

Yeah. And I don't know about you, but do you feel that. That absence and then say, okay, I need to go back to the well here and, you know, maybe take a break or take a, you know, pause or a timeout from these other things that are being a little bit too distractive as long as I can, you know, put them on hold or. Or, you know, shelf them for a little while. Is that something that. That you've ever tried or experimented with as well?

Well, you know, you talked about my body of work, and I'm trying not to just create content for the sake of content, because there's a lot of that around.

Absolutely.

And, you know, and most of it, I find is pretty derivative or boring or not that interesting. And so I'm like, how do I. How do I create work that is distinct and useful, and that requires kind of practice honing my own voice, but it also requires input. You know, the two pages with MBS podcast. I'm delighted you listened to it, because it doesn't have that big a listener base. But for me, it's. I really. I try and select guests as if my dream guest is somebody who I imagine sitting next to at dinner at some fancy dinner party. And rather than it being a polite conversation where I ask good questions and they come up with kind of okay answers, I kind of get pulled into this amazing conversation. I'm like, oh, my God, this was incredible. Sitting next to this person. Yeah, that's. That's who. I hope. That's who I try and invite onto my podcast. And I'm doing it to nourish myself. You know, it's not a. It's not a business play. It is a nourishment play.

Yeah.

Well, who are these interesting people?

It reminds me like Richard Saul Wurman, who founded Ted back back in the day, in the 90s. You know, he said that same thing. He wanted the ted, you know, before Chris Anderson has now, you know, managed it and grown it originally was to be you know, the, the classic dinner party that he always wanted to hold for. Exactly, almost verbatim with what you said. I don't know if you know him, Guy Speer, he's in Zurich. He runs a hedge fund called Aquamarine. He and I have been buddies for a couple of decades, and he has a podcast that he has. And he said for him, and I've totally plagiarized and used this, but I still give him attribution is that it's an opportunity for him to learn in public. And I thought that really resonated with me. And I feel almost like now, having heard your backstory about the podcast, a similar kind of thing. There is something about wonderful conversations that are, you know, much more than just the chit chat and the superficial at a, you know, at a dinner party, but then also having the opportunity. It's, it's. There's a certain spontaneity. But I also, you know, I script out the questions we're talking about right now. I script out, you know, I do, obviously, I do my, my, my stealthy background research on people and stalk them on online to, you know, find out their little, you know, factoids and whatnot. But I feel like it gives me then this opportunity and then to like to share with friends. I mean, I just, quick aside, there's a friend who will be listening to this episode, and she and I were emailing back and forth, just sort of a coincidentally random thing. I said, oh, and by the way, I'm gonna be talking with Michael on Monday morning, blah, blah, blah. And she's mbs, you know, so she, you know, she knew you and she, you know, it's sort of that same kind of thing where, yeah, it gives me an opportunity to go deeper for the folks that know you and other guests and to then bring you to other guests that, you know, have yet to, you know, hear about you or, you know, learn about your podcast books, etc. So.

Well, it's interesting. I mean, I. For my podcast, two pages with mbs. So the idea for people listening is that people pick their favorite two pages of a book that has moved them and changed them. And whilst I will know the book that they're reading from, I won't know the two pages. And so actually there's not that much preparation I can do for that, that conversation. And I quite like that because it really means that I have to be very present and really listening and trying to bring the best of what I've got into that conversation to make it interesting and ask Good questions and the like. So a completely different approach, but with the same intention, which is, how do I make this deep and interesting and different? You know, for me, a great podcast host like you kind of doesn't set me up with the predictable questions to which I've answered them a thousand times in other ways before. I'm like, I want you to make me think or be personable or kind of disrupt my talk track for everybody's sake.

Yeah, well, that's why I find inspiration, like from your podcast and a few others that are similar ilk of that and really feel like on my own journey of learning, every episode I hope is better than the prior episode. And I have certainly put a lot of that appreciation onto who the guest is. But then. And also, it's sort of like I forget there's an actor back in the 40s and he was being interviewed. I think, God, I'm so old by like Johnny Carson. And he said, well, do you ever watch your own movies? He goes, no, I never watch my own movies. I thought, can you imagine an actor today saying, I never watch my own movies? But, you know, it's that same kind of thing. It's like, oh, gosh, it's gotta be a podcast that's over a year old before I'll even listen to it, because I just hear all the errors and all the mistakes. And then I nevertheless beat myself up after a show because I literally like right now, you know, writing notes and taking notes and trying to always make them better. So it's, you know, it's a, it's a growth process. But, you know, also, again, doing it like Guy says, you know, doing it, doing it in public. So. All right, well, the point of this was to get into your new book. So I'm going to tee this up first with what a couple of other people have said about it. Brene Brown has said, my favorite thing about Michael's work is his ability to deliver actionable tactical strategies that are based on well researched ideas and data, then packaged in a book that I can read on a flight. And the wisdom is real. It sticks. Amy Edmondson, professor at Harvard Business School and author of the Fearless Organization and actually an old colleague of mine from probably 30 years ago. Yeah, yeah, we'll talk about that maybe if we have time at the end. This little volume has actionable advice on every page. And it's a fun read, too. And Seth Godin called it a modern classic. This book will save relationships, careers and organizations. So from that deep shelf that I talked about, in your intro, what was the spark for this latest work, Michael?

Well, I have a history of being distracted by too many ideas. Like, I'm forever going, oh, I'm a genius. Here's a new idea. And then I'll spend 30 bucks on a URL that is like a summation of what that idea is. And after a while, I realized that I'm not that good at having really great ideas. I'm really good at having ideas. And so I have a little folder called my ideas folder. And whenever something pops into my head, rather than trying to take too much many actions about it, I will write the idea down and throw it in the idea folder. And then every now and then, I'll pull it out and go through it and see what's showing up, up. And I try and work in a, in a project by project basis. So I go, all right, what's my next best project I can do? What's the best guess I can think take? That is the best thing for me to be working on. That is exciting for me, thrilling for me. Important in that it contributes to the world and kind of serves the world in the best way I can think of. And it's also daunting, has a learning edge for me and pushes me a little bit. So I think of this trilogy. Thrilling, important, and daunting. And when I get to the end of one kind of project, I then look at, I dig into my ideas folder or just enter my brain. I go, well, of all the things I could do, what's the next thing that I should have a go at? And because I've got clear that writing books is probably one of the things that I, I do most distinctly and in a way, most helpfully for people. I'm like, okay, so is there another book that needs to be written? I've actually got three really good idea book ideas at the moment that are kind of live and jostling in my brain, and I haven't forgotten them. And so I'm like, okay, so about two years ago or a year and a half ago, I guess I was like, okay, I think I know what I'm going to write on. I'm going to write on how change happens in organizations because I've got a point of view on that, and I think there's a book that could be helpful. I started to sit down to try and write that, and I started writing this other book instead. I was like, that's interesting. I'm trying not to write this book right now, but it's the thing that seems to be telling me that it needs to be written. So I'm like, all right, that's very cool. So, you know, 25 years ago, I was in a class with a teacher called Peter Block, an author and a teacher called Peter Block. And he taught me about what he called social contracting, which is you need to decide how you want to work together with that other person before you get into the work itself. And I've been using that and teaching that and adjusting that and adapting that for those 25 years. And this book is my kind of development on this idea of social contracting. It's like, how do you have a conversation about how you want to be together before you get into the. What you want to do together? And the kind of, the, the, the kind of. The additional catalyst to all of that was a couple of years ago, my dad was dying. Had come out of hospital in the ICU and had moved home. But we knew he had a. You know, it was weeks or months that he had left.

Oh, boy.

And I was home in Australia, living in my childhood bedroom, actually, with my mum and dad in the house.

Wow.

And, you know, Mum and Dad were doing brilliantly, but it was also a corsa. Terrible, stressful situation. Everybody knew what was happening.

Wow.

And I noticed that they were both getting a little snarky with each other for all the obvious reasons.

Sure.

And I just didn't want Mum's last memory of her time with dad to be kind of colored by that because, you know, I know about the primacy and the recency effect. Exactly. And how the final bit will color all your memories of it. So you want to make the final bit as good as possible. And so I actually. Rash but useful moment. Suggested to Mum and Dad that I facilitate a conversation between them about how they wanted to be with each other over the remaining time dad had.

Wow.

Beyond all the logistics. Because there's a bazillion logistics to talk about and figure out when somebody's dying in your house. You know, hospital beds and oxygen and Michael meals and cars and all sorts of logistically stuff.

Yeah.

But I'm like, how do you want to be together? And, you know, my parents were not enthusiastic about that idea at all. It sounds like the worst thing ever. I'm like, it does sound like the worst thing ever. I agree. Except for the alternative, which might be the worst thing.

Yeah.

And so they. They both bravely ended up saying yes to that. And we had a conversation and it was helpful and sad and. And happy. And that was a. Was A kind of a confirmation that what I'm trying to write about in this book, which is hopefully for. For less fraught situations.

Oh, my. Wow.

Yeah. So that, that's kind of the, the assorted. The assorted stimuli that got me to get this book out into the world.

Gosh. Wow. What. What a good son you are. Gosh. I'm touched by that story, my friend. Golly.

Oh, thank you.

So, you know, I know that this part, I hate to be repetitive, but I know you've talked about in, in other venues the almost. So if people haven't seen actually the COVID it's how to work with and then in parentheses, almost anyone. Which is pretty, pretty cool, pretty clever. But who is the almost that you're referring to in that title?

Well, you know what I love about this is everybody knows who they're almost is.

Yep. There's that guy.

Yeah. That guy or that gal or that person. You know, as a kind of a meta commentary on writing books, most often, in my experience, anyway, what happens is you come up with an idea of a book, can you write it? And you're constantly searching for like the title that's going to really capture this book, because you need a title that talks about the pain and talks about the solution in five words. Yeah, right. And it's really hard to find that title.

Yeah, yeah.

But with this, I, I had this idea of this title came to me, which is how to Work with Almost Anyone. I was like, that is a really good title.

Yeah.

Now I have to write a book that is, that matches the title. And so, you know, when everybody thinks about how to work with Almost anyone, I would hazard a guess that everybody can come up with a name or two of the person who they think is there almost for whatever reason they might be a sociopath or psychopath because there's a, you know, they say there's, there's. The prevalence of sociopaths in society is about 1% in general. But in the, in the C suite, in the CEO, it's like, I've seen different statistics. It's like 3%, 10% or 21%. There's a lot. But, you know, and sociopaths don't care about how they work with you. They don't care about the relationship at all.

Sure.

There's all sorts of reasons why that person and you just met, you're like, it's just not going to happen. But Chris, I think what it says is that leaves everybody else.

Yeah.

And whether, whether, just as you said in the introduction, whether the relationship is already great, or it's just solidly okay, or actually it's quite difficult. All of those working relationships can be better. And rather than leaving it to hope, what if you were able to more actively shape them to be more effective, more useful, more productive, more fulfilling working relationships. And working relationships is like people on your team, your boss, colleagues, your collaborators, your customers, your vendors. I mean, if you're in that kind of organizational world, you know that there are some really key working relationships that you have. How do you make those last longer, be better, thrive, all of that good stuff.

So I want to dig into that very deeply. I want to kind of step through your book, but before that you had mentioned, you know, sort of like this, this meta aspect vis a vis titling and whatnot. I also want to talk a little bit about something you posted in a recent edition of your newsletter. And that's the meta aspect of kind of being an author. And you wrote these statistics just blew me away. So I have to make these even more public that out of the 45,000 front list books which are front list books are books that are less than a year old and they're not self published, they're by a traditional publishing house that only 0.4% sell more than 100,000 copies, 86% sell less than 5,000 copies, which generally means they don't even break even, which is astounding. But worse than that is 15% sell less than 12 copies. Is that. Did I read that right? That is just unbelievable. So given this dreadful math, you have a different take on your mission with this book. It's a shift from a personal ambition to a purpose driven outcome, which I just really resonates with me. I really love that in addition to just enjoying your work. So you kind of are philosophically shifting from the short term to the bigger game. Could you maybe share with the audience what your thinking is behind that and what your goal is with that?

Yeah. So right at the start of the book, we talk about. The goal of this book is to start a movement that's about improving 10 million working relationships.

Love it.

Which, you know is a big number, but actually isn't that big a number. You know, there's. It shouldn't take. Well, it will take a lot of work, but it's not beyond the imagination to think we could improve 10 million working relationships with this book. And partly honestly, it's a bit selfish. The reason I came up with this, which is like, it's not at all inspiring for me and it creates no sense of longevity or commitment to say, can I shift a whole lot of books? That is just, I mean, I want that to happen, but you know, setting a target. I want to sell 100,000 books or a million books. It feels like fantasy land. I'm just making it up. I mean, you know the statistics of how unlikely it is to sell 100,000 books. It's a bit demoralizing, quite frankly.

Right.

But this idea of going, well, what would it take to improve 10 million working relationships, that feels like a good contribution to the world. And that has me thinking more creatively about the ideas in the book and the book itself and how I might share that and how might get that out into the world. So it's designed to give me a little bit more fuel in my. Wherever you put fuel in my fuel tank, I guess because, you know, this is again the kind of the mechanics of books. Every, most people put everything onto the book launch. You know, it's got the six week period where you're like, okay, the book launch, here I go. And you exhaust yourself and you run around like a headless chicken and you try and hit, you know, lists like the New York Times or whatever. And I didn't not do that. Yeah, I ran around like a headless chick in a fair bit, but I didn't, I didn't run around as much as I have done in the past because I'm like, the launch is important and it's something to celebrate and I'm delighted we having it. And I think it might take three years to get this book really up and running and spinning and taking off and having people go, this is a classic. This is an important book. So it's a three year plan now. So now what? And that changes everything.

Well, there's a lot of synergistic aspects. I mean, even our conversation today, you know, that'll help, you know, get the word out, get the book out, get people, you know, that might not have heard about it necessarily, as, you know, they might have through other channels or if at all. And you also, just a quick aside, I mean from again, me stalking you. You had a pretty good hit on the 27th of June, right? You were topping out chat GPT books, if I read. Right. So that congratulations, tip of the hat and bravo, job well done. That's, that's. Thank you. And you know, I have to say too, I appreciate the aspect of, you know, there's always the sizzle and the flash in the pan and the hitting the lists aspect. But you know, maybe perhaps more Difficult is the longevity of it, the evergreenness of it. I mean, you know, a chat GPT book is going to be, you know, in six minutes or six weeks, you know, going to be outdated and there'll be a, you know, another edition or a different one. But for you, having an evergreen kind of aspect of these kinds of, of the things that we'll talk about in just a minute are evergreen aspects. They're not flash in the pan. They're not just, you know, some clever little tool or technique. They're also scalable. Like I said earlier in the intro that these are things that can be adaptive if it's someone above you, below you or next to you in terms of hierarchy, if it's a work relationship and might also be generalizable in some ways to more social relationships. So I like that idea of three years and I would think, honestly, Michael, I think it's going to have legs longer than that in terms of classic kinds of things that people will come back to when they become aware of it or when they find themselves in that predicament that they get stuck. So bravo.

I've had the good luck really to have a role model in a previous book I wrote called the Coaching Habit and that has, as you said in the intro, sold one point something million copies. Which, you know, when you run through that statistic of how many, how many people sell less than 12 copies, you're like, that's pretty good.

Yeah, not bad.

It's not bad. I'll take it. And, but you know, with that book, I was like, I, I, my goal was for it to become a classic. I wanted it. When people talked about, you know, what are the three books you need to read on coaching, I wanted to be one of those books. And so that was a long term goal for me. And you know, it is now one of those books that is a perennial bestseller on Amazon and other places. It's, you know, always is ranking highly and selling a bunch.

Yeah.

And I'm like, oh, that took a while to get going. And so how do I give this new book the same commitment and same love that I gave the Coaching Habit? Because I think it can serve a, serve a need, people's working relationships better.

Yeah, I think you're, you know, the, the effort you put into it. It's again, I'm, this is, I should put the word paradox in whatever the title of this episode will be. But you put such work and effort. I mean, my gosh, Michael, you described, you know, you tried to work on this one book and this, this book kept popping into your head. You went through this, this heart wrenching, heart touching, you know, experience with your parents and, you know, resulted in this book. You. I'm going to talk about at the end about the design of it, which is quite, quite clever, but the paradox of the amount of time that you put into it. But it's not War and Peace. It's not this huge, intimidating tome, like Brene said. It's something that you can pick up, you can put it down, you can go chapter by chapter, you can hit a QR code and see you give a talk. It's very consumable. It's not intimidating as a reader, you know, to say, hey, this is, this is terrific. Yeah, I can, you know, I can learn a lot from this book and make it very actionable and, you know, not have it be a doorstop, you know, once I'm done. So that, that's a, it's a curious.

That's a very deliberate choice. Yeah, good. I have a design philosophy in general, but for book writing as well, which is, what's the shortest book I can write? That would be the most useful. So I'm trying to write a short book because my goal is to have people like Sarah actually finish the book.

Yeah.

Do you find. Sorry, go on.

Are you at odds with your publisher when it comes to that? Because it's sort of like, you know, a lot of people that are, you know, our authors deal with their publishers. Like you've got, I'm just making these numbers up, but let's say, you know, you've got x thousand x ten, you know, 50,000 words. And maybe that doesn't make a book. And they're saying, well, you know, this is good, but we don't want a brochure or a pamphlet. You know, we need to have, you know, at least this size for this cut of this style of book. And it needs to be this many pages. So you need to, you know, find five more examples and stories and case studies to fill it out to really make it, you know, the size of book that we want it to be. So have you had, has that happened to you? And if so, how have you dealt with that?

Well, I've dealt with it by self publishing my books.

Brilliant. Okay, so, bravo.

So I. So the book I wrote before the coaching habit is called Do More Great Work. And I published that with a New York publisher called Workman. I'm very excited to do it with them. And Workman is a storied brand in that world. And they picked up a previous book I self published and they kind of repackaged it and published it for me. And it did. Okay. You know, it's over the 10 years or so that it's been out in the world, it sold about 100,000 copies, which is pretty. Pretty solid. Solid, absolutely. List book. Yeah. And back in 2015 and 2014, I pitched them what would become the coaching habit. And I pitched them and I pitched them and I pitched them and I kept turning it down. They literally turned it down six or seven times.

Wow.

And I basically, every time I would be rewriting it. So I'd written this book six or seven times. And finally, having endured a certain period of misery.

Yeah.

Licking my wounds and feeling sorry for myself, I went back to them. I said, look, I've got really clear what this book is. Here it is. This is the book. Do you want it or do you not? Because this is a kind of take it or leave it moment. And I was calling their bluff, Chris, because I was like, they're going to take me because I'm a relatively successful author for them. I'm certainly solid enough and I just can't be doing with this, going back and reinvent the book for the ninth time. And they said no.

Wow.

Shocked.

Wow.

I was really, really taken aback. I was so sure that poetic or

literary justice then with its performance.

Good for you. Having recovered from that, I then went, you know, I think this book is really still worthwhile. I'm going to self publish it.

Excellent.

But I'm going to do it as a professional. So I found a designer who I liked and an editor who I like. And actually all of that connected me with a company based in Vancouver called Page Two Books. And now Page two publish my books. And what this is really, it's really not actually self publishing. It's a hybrid publishing model, which is slightly different from self publishing, but quite different from regular publishing in that I am the effectively executive editor of my own book. I get to decide the title, I get to decide the COVID I get to decide the design inside, I get to decide the content and how long it is. All of those are my choices.

Wonderful.

They have useful opinions about all of that and they're guiding me because they're all very experienced publishing people. But the shift changes and I honestly think there's a load of. Of old bollocks in the traditional world of publishing around books work and how they're produced and how they're put out there. It's a, you know, it's a Pretty outdated industry because of how they think about authors and books and business models. And they're up again. They're up against the status quo, they're up against the way things have always been done. So it's not an easy shift. Shift.

Yeah.

But you know, this whole idea of, oh, you gotta. We need to add an extra 100 pages to make it worth 17.95 because people won't. I'm like, that is, that is a ridiculous way of seeing it.

Yeah, Michael, I have been there. I've published probably 8ish books with Wiley, and, you know, and I have this love hate relationship with them. I mean, I, I've been through three different editors, which is fine. You know, people change. That's, that's. They. No one was let go. They all chose to go to someplace else when they chose to. But Michael, I, in my contracts, I would, I had, I had no control. It sounds a little, little weird on for me, but like, I couldn't. Not that I wanted to necessarily choose my font, but I couldn't choose my font. I couldn't. If they wanted to publish it in green ink, they could have published it in green ink. I had no say so. Over cover design, I had no say so. Over interior design, I had no say so, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Just, you know, all of these different kinds of. I mean, when you were describing your experience with the coaching habit, it reminded me I do have a clause, I think, in every contract I've had with Wiley that said they had right of first refusal. And that was about maybe the only thing that I liked. Because I thought, okay, if I have a new idea and I pitch it to them, then I'm kind of primed with them. I've got a decent sales record with them and they would hopefully want to take it. But if they didn't, then I could do what you did. They could say, no, we don't want to, or blah, blah, blah, and like, fine, great, then I'm going to go to Greenwood or ABC or whoever else. So. Yeah, so. Well, good.

I think this idea of writer first refusal is annoying. I'm like, I tell you what, how about you amaze me with what you do with this book and then I will be delighted to. I mean, in some ways they're like, wait, you're contracting me to come back and work with you because you, what, you don't back yourself to do a good job with this.

Good point. So good point.

I think the writer first refusal is, is, again, this kind of weird yeah. Weird understanding about how. What. How the power works in that relationship.

Yeah. And again, when I first started, like, back in the 80s, it was sort of like, you know, they. They actually did some heavy lifting with marketing and things. You know, we. All of my stuff is nonfiction in the. In the space of psychology. And there is like, what was called the Behavioral Science Book Club. And they would try and get you placed there, and they would try, you know, do all these other kinds of things. And over time, it just, you know, as so sort of ironically that, you know, as. As my sales increased and blah, blah, blah, as everything, you know, I'm getting all kind of full of myself, like, oh, this is great. And this is, you know, bigger than the last one. There's less and less marketing on their side. So, you know, I really appreciate that aspect of being able to take control, taking control of your own rights and then being able to, you know, avoid unsold copies, being at the, you know, the dollar stand and then you know, chewed up into pulp, you know, after that. So. So that is awesome. I love that. So I think we've queued up enough about the industry and everything else. Let's get into the book. So you start off with what you call the bpr, the best possible relationship. And there's three factors to it. There's safe, which reminds me of Amy Edmondson's work. But you go well beyond Amy's stuff, which is wonderful and additive to it, and augments that, and so it's safe, vital, and repairable. So why is it that you consider these as the hallmarks of a flourishing and resilient work relationship?

Well, you know, part of me digging into the research in terms of what makes working relationships hum. And, you know, I'm not a primary researcher. Like. Like an Amy Edmondson might be. I'm. I'm reading. I'm a secondary researcher. So I'm reading deeply into, you know, people like Esther Perel and Dan Siegel and Terry Real and. And John Gottman, these people who have been writing for years about relationships in general and, you know, thinking about psychological safety, which, you know, Amy Edmondson has kind of been the champion, the OG of psychological safety. Safety.

That's right.

When she blurbed the book, I was like, hey, Amy, can I call you the OG of psychological safety? And she's like, I'm not sure what the. What OG stands for. Like, it stands for Original Gangster. She's like, how about we go with Harvard Professor? How about we do that? That's fine. But I'm like, I Knew that I don't want a relationship that is only safe. I want something beyond that. And so, you know, safe and vital. Another way of thinking about vitality is, is psychological bravery. How do you step to interrelationship that has an edge and you can push each other and challenge each other and step into the unknown. So there's a sense of, of both a safety net, but growth as well. But with both of those, there's going to be moments in your working relationship where it just goes a bit wrong. Sometimes it'll blow up in a spectacular way, but most often it will get collateral damage. It's the law of entropy. Everything just winds down. Everything gets a bit dented or bent or cracked just through time. And one of the things that became clear through reading all those other relationship experts is the relationships that last a long time get repaired. And most of us are not very good at repairing relationships. So if you can be the person who, rather than just ignoring the damage and hoping that it self repairs, which of course it does to some extent most of the time, but be the person says, how do we get this back to where we were or even better than when we were, how do you make it repairable? That feels like you've got a real option to make something, make a best possible relationship. You know, it's like this is the best version of how you and I might work together.

So the crux of that is what you call the keystone conversation. Is that right then?

That's right.

Okay, so that, that's the infrastructure. So, so tell us how those things interact with the. In a keystone conversation.

Yeah. So our working relationship. This is kind of my, this is my polished pitch.

Okay,

so here's what it sounds like. Our success and our happiness are deeply dependent on the quality of our working relationships. And yet we leave those working relationships so often to chance. We just hope that they'll be okay. Okay, what if you could make this working relationship something that was safe and vital and repairable? What would change then? So everyone's like, I hope at this stage going, yes, how do I do that, Michael? I'm like, great. So here's the idea in a sentence, you have a conversation about how you work together before you plunge into a conversation around what you're working on, realizing that the what you're working on is always bright and shiny and urgent and important and interesting and necessary. And you have a strong pull to kind of getting into the details of the what. But if you pause and go, hey, how do we do this? So we are Both at our best around this, that's where something interesting starts to happen. And if people are going, well, that sounds a bit awkward and a bit unusual, but perhaps interesting, I'm like, perfect. So let me give you five questions that can help you actually structure that conversation. Five questions to ask and to answer so that you can go deeper into those conversations.

And. And those are in the book. Could you maybe give us a little tour of what those five are?

Yeah. So the first question is called the amplify question. And the question is, what's your best? In other words, when do you shine and when do you flow? Because, you know, Chris, if you and I were working together and we sat down and went, right, okay. I mean, I've made up a whole bunch of stuff about who you are and the fact that we are enjoying this conversation, or at least I'm enjoying this conversation, and I've got all these things I'm projecting onto you about who you are and what you do and how you show up and what you'd be at your best. But if I said to you, chris, tell me, when do you shine? When do you flow? And hearing that will be a fascinating insight as to what you're like, when you are at your best, when you're actually in that zone, whether that's about the work that you're doing or about the way that you work with people or just sort of more inherent qualities about who you are. And likewise, if I tell you about what I'm like at my best, all that stuff that you've kind of seen about me and maybe noticed about me, which is like, okay, he's prolific and he does this and he does that. I can actually tell you. Let me actually tell you what it's like to be me.

Let me actually tell you behind the scenes.

Yeah, exactly. And how you will bring out the best in me. So that's the first question, really. Positive start, you know, nods to all sorts of things like appreciative inquiry and positive deviance and positive psychology, which is like, how do we amplify the good? The second question is the steady question. And the steady question is about the logistics of how you work the mechanics. So what are your practices and what are your preferences? Because we've all developed our own quirky ways of interacting with the working world. How we like feedback, how we show up in meetings, whether we're morning or evening people, slack or email. Even things like, what's your name and what are your pronouns? Like, for instance, I really don't like people calling Me, Mike. There are 10 people on the planet for whom my name is Mike, and that's my brothers and their families and my mum. That's it. Everybody else, I'm Michael. So don't be calling me Mike, because that then makes it weirdly awkward if I have to go, you know, know I'm not Mike. Mike's a piece of stage equipment that singers sing into. I'm Michael.

Yeah.

So that conversation about that. Because so often minor disagreements happen because you haven't got clear on your different logistics and how you work together. Yeah.

Just a constant reminder of the disconnect. A little, you know, sand in the gears kind of thing. Sure.

Exactly. Exactly. So you're like, like. So, for instance, as a very small example of a very specific thing, I use asana to manage my to dos and my projects, and I have an executive assistant, Claudine. And Claudine knows that if I have an asana task, it needs to start with a verb. Verb starts with a doing word, you know, and this is something I learned from David Allen, who wrote Getting Things Done.

Yeah.

Many years ago. He's like, you know it's a task when it starts with a verb. And I'm like, that's right.

That's good.

All my tasks should start with a verb. I don't know what to do if it doesn't start with a verb.

Love it.

And. And so when we started working together, I told her that. And then when we started using asana in a collaborative way, she forgot that. That. And I was able to go, hey, remember that whole thing about a verb? This is the. This is it. Verbs, please. And it just meant that I didn't have this kind of weird anger about Claudine.

Yeah.

Inadvertently not doing the. To do for me correctly. I was able to go, hey, you know, this is just part of our conversation.

Yeah.

Because part of the power of a keystone conversation, Chris, is it allows you to keep talking about how you. How you want to work together.

Yeah. And it. As you in your example, too, it doesn't stimulate defensiveness on the other person's part. It's like, oh, okay. Right, right. You said, okay. Yeah, no problem.

Yeah, Exactly.

Yeah. Nice.

So the third and the fourth questions are the good date and the bad date questions. So, you know the key insight, Chris, and you know this because of your work, is our patterns from our past will just keep on repeating. Even if I know you're a different person and the context is different and the other person is different, everything's different, but the patterns keep on showing up, the patterns keep on showing up the same. So let's talk about our patterns. Let's talk about what shows up from the past. And so the good day question is, what can we learn from past successful relationships? And the bad day question is, what can we learn from past frustrating relationships? And you know, it's a remarkable gift. You know, Chris, you and I working together and I sit down and go, look, Chris, when I've worked with a, let's say we're co authoring a book, when I've tried to co author or co create stuff with other people and it's been a disaster. Let me tell you what happened. Let me tell you what they did and what I did and what they didn't do and what I didn't do and what was and wasn't said by both of us. Let me tell you about what that car crash was like so that you get some really big clues around what to do and not to do. To do.

Yeah.

And Chris, you tell me the same and then tell me what, when it's worked really well, when you've kind of zinged in co creation and collaboration, it's just been a delight, it's been joyful. What, what was done, what was said, how did that work? And you're really saying, look, let me, let me tell you, I've, I mean I've been around a while, I've learned a bunch of stuff, I can help you help me help you, help me. And then the fifth of the questions is the repair question. And we kind of touched on this a little bit. But the question there is how will we fix it when things go wrong? And part of the power of that question is it just says things are going to go wrong. It's just the deal. Something always gets, goes off the rails at some stage. So what are the ways that we will actually think about acknowledging it, fixing it, repairing it? And part of the power of this question is it's a statement of intent. We will repair this.

Yeah, it's a nice meta message to it that, you know, hey, it's to be expected. It doesn't mean that, you know, there's no finger pointing to it or, you know, man, we talked about all this stuff and you really, you know, blew it or whatever. And that's kind of a nice theme throughout the entire book that it really, you know, I said, I'll say it again, you know, it really is a way that does not stimulate a defensiveness, you know, or a self protection on the, you know, your Collaborator. Your, your co workers part. So you know, you like with keying up these, these five questions, is it something like would you say I've read the book, I've got this co worker that I'm getting ready to start a project on or they just started or whatever. Let's say they're, it's neutral territory. I don't have good feelings or bad feelings. I'm agnostic. They, they started yesterday and I'm going to meet them today and we're, we've been tossed into working on this project. Do I say to them to like establish my, you know, best possible relationship with them or to have key up my cue up my keystone conversation. Do I say like how would I, how would, how would I frame that? What's the best way to do that? Do I say hey, here's the book or hey, I read this book or you know, hey, here's this method that I use. What, how do I break the ice?

I think ideally you say you should buy 10 to 20 copies.

Michael, you're presuming I didn't already give them 10 to 20 copies.

So we'll see how that goes. Maybe a little self serving for me to suggest that.

But yeah, no, good idea, good idea.

I think that I try and make these things as undevious as possible. So I'm like, so what's the obvious way to say this? And I would say, look, I'm excited about working with you, Chris. My experience is really helpful to have a conversation about, about how we work together before we launch into the, what we're working on. So would it be okay if we have a conversation about that? I tell you, I've got five good questions that I asked. I've got them from this book. I'm going to do some thinking about what my answers are to these questions. If you get to do some thinking, that would be great. When should we talk? When would be convenient for you? Something like that. If you're a new manager and you've just, you know, it's like September and you've got a new person coming in because it's the start of the, well, kind of a start of a work year or a milestone. Somebody comes in and you, and you're like brilliant. I'm excited to be your manager. I know you're probably really keen to get on with the work to prove that you're a valued member of this team and I'm excited about that too. But before we do that, let's just talk about how we might work best Together, you know, when I take, when I work with a vendor, like I'm working with somebody building my website at the moment or rebuilding it. And when we had that first call, they're like, here's our proposal. I'm like, great, we're going to get into the proposal. Just a minute, because I'm interested, but let's have a conversation about, you know, what's an ideal client for you? What do they look like? What do they do? Now let me tell you what an ideal vendor looks like for me. And also let me tell you about what I, an underwhelming vendor, looks like for me, because I don't want you to be an underwhelming vendor and you don't want to be an underwhelming vendor. But it doesn't take much to annoy me because I'm, you know, fussy. But I'm going to give you all the clues I can to, to allow you to avoid inadvertently making mistake about me as a vendor.

That's great. You know, and it also, again, just the meta aspect of that opens up up the room, the space for that kind of conversation. And there's a mutuality, you know, to that as well too, because you ask as well as state. So in spite of that, towards the tail end, you know, that we've talked about the expectation of the repairing aspect. So the final section of your book talks about, you know, keeping alive the best possible relationship and you actually kick it off with the idea that disintegration is inevitable. Can we double click on that? Can you tell us what, what that's all about?

Yeah, I just, I think it's entropy. You know, there's like chaos rules. Yeah, the universe, the universe inclines to chaos and I think a relationship that is not maintained will deteriorate. What's that Woody Allen quote? It's like relationships are like a shark, they need to keep moving. This is a dead shark. I think there's, there's something like that that goes on here. So it would be lovely if you could just have one conversation once. And after that, your working relationship was brilliant forever onwards, but it just doesn't work like that. It's harder than that. What the keystone conversation does is it allows you to have that initial conversation. And just as you're saying there's this idea of kind of meta ness which is like we're talking about how we're going to work together and that can be really helpful, helpful. But now you've got to maintain it, you know, how do you actually keep nurturing and investing in this working relationship. And the second, the final kind of section of the book. Well, yeah, the final section of the book basically is this idea of, well, here's how you keep showing up and you keep allowing this relationship to be the best it can be. So the three principles are you adjust always. So you're always kind of checking in and going, how are we doing? And what do we need to do more of and what do we do less of? You repair often. So you keep looking for moments to go, have I, have I torn something? Have I ripped something? Is something being dented here and how do we fix that as fast as we can? Because, you know, we've all probably had the experience of some minor damage ending up being a significant crack. And then there's the third principle is you reset as needed. It, which is occasionally you're going, hey, we need to do a redo. Yeah, we need. This is. This has gone wrong. We actually need to not just make this a kind of adjustment in the edges or the margins, but we need to either go, let's reboot or let's end this working relationship. Because sometimes the best possible relationship is no relationship. And we're like, we should stop working together.

Hmm. Yeah. And that's, you know, probably quite the difficult, you know, kind of kind of conversation and might be, you know, limited or restrictive by virtue of what that circumstance is. It's one thing, you know, with a vendor I remember, you know, a lot of people talk about entrepreneurs in particular, talk about, you know, firing clients, so to speak, that there's certain clients that, you know, the 80, 20 that they take up so much of their time and, you know, you hear again, it's almost kind of, you know, cliche now about firing certain kinds of clients that are never happy, always want more, et cetera, et cetera. I think that's a very full throated honesty that you have in your book too, to say, hey, this isn't. Not every thing is rainbows and unicorns. Sometimes these kinds of circumstances, in spite of everyone's best efforts, there is a time sometimes that they end and just figuring out the least destructive, most constructive way to be able to do that and shift and move on. So part of it too, I think. I mean, you and I are touchy feely kinds of guys, I think, but not everyone is. And it can still, even with scripting and, you know, the specifics that you offer in your book of, you know, great examples of wording, which I'm going to again get into with design but in spite of all that, there can still be kind of an awkward dance, you know, an awkwardness of, you know, broaching this or whatever. Do you have some suggestions if someone is feeling awkward in doing that or. And the awkwardness leads to hesitancy and then not doing it of, you know, what, what are some tips to be able to get past that and maybe for some, that may feel initially awkward with doing that.

Well, I just think 100% guaranteed that this starts off being a bit awkward.

Call it what is called for what it is unusual.

It's. It is, is. It's. It's a. It's kind of like a. It's not a bug, it's a feature which is like, this is a bit personal and a bit awkward and a bit vulnerable. And you need to gauge how personal and how vulnerable you want to be. Like, it's different. I think if you're the boss rather than if you're the person talking to the boss, there's sometimes you don't want to, you know, share everything or talk about everything. You want to be a bit more guarded. But it is a bit odd, you know, I mean, most people haven't had a conversation too much like this too often, and the more you do this, the less weird it becomes. Just like everything.

Yeah.

And Chris, in some ways I come down to this saying I heard the other day, which I do love, which is nobody likes to be the first person to say hello. Everybody loves to be greeted. So, yeah, I work on the assumption that most people would like the best possible working relationship with you, because what's the. What's the alternative? I'm hoping for a thoroughly mediocre.

I really hope this will be miserable. Like the last five.

Exactly.

Yeah.

And I'm like. And I. And I mostly don't know how to do that. I mostly am just hoping that it's going to happen like that. So if you say, look, let's give this a crack, because the worst that's going to happen is it's probably going to be the same as if you didn't have the conversation. And the best that's going to happen is this could be the very best version of what this working relationship is like.

Yeah, that's a really great way to frame it in the sense of, you know, if we don't do it, it'll probably just, you know, organically go off the rails or, you know, maybe we'll hit this one. Lucky. So, you know, and Michael, I have to say, too, we three years from now and 10 million readers later, this may not be such an awkward conversation. So it'll be.

I hope so.

It'll be the norm. It'll be the norm. So. All right.

Well, I would be pretty thrilled if that was the case.

Well, you know, again, like I said it, I think this is very much a consumable, readable, learnable, evergreen kind of kind of work. So part of that, here's, here's my clever segue. So part of that is, like I mentioned earlier, I'm just really a big lover of, you know, good book and graphic design kinds of things. I'm always on the prowl for creative ideas and ways to, you know, communicate information and knowledge and, and how to work with almost anyone, really. It does not disappoint. I mean, it's, it's like one of those ones where I would also kind of add on my little list of, you know, keep in mind for my next project, good book design, what really clicked, what worked? What, you know, what, what, what made me pick up my phone and hit a QR code and, you know, do this or that. So here's my highlight reel of what I liked. And encourage people to take a look at the book too.

Lovely.

I really liked your use of font variation. I really liked your chapter endings where you've got like, reader tasks that are literally do this and literally say this. I really, I find that super helpful because a lot of times in Words, other, other similar kinds of genres, it's sort of, there's still sort of this abstraction and people, you know, you may get the concept, you've read four case studies, etc. But none of those case studies are really kind of your situation or really, that's good for them but not good for me. So I find those super helpful. And then obviously a person can tweak it to their own voice of the, the do and actions of the do this and the, the voice of the say this. You've got checklists, a go go, which I'm a super fan of. And I nerded out with your, your QR codes for the videos. You've got downloadable white papers and other goodies. So you mentioned that, you know, you worked with someone for design with this, but I'm, I'm sure it wasn't just a, you know, it was an ensemble kind of thing. So how did you come up with all the, the ideas and the formats and to, to be able to execute with what the book wound up being?

Well, it comes back to what we touched on before, which is I'm trying to do a few things here. I'm trying to get people to the end of the book. And that means the book needs to feel like it's friendly when people pick it up for the first time. I imagine people going into the airport bookstore, being grabbed by the title, being reassured by the fact that Brene Brown's quote is on the front. So they're like, oh, okay. Looking at the back and going, oh, okay. There's not too much many words on the back. And on the back cover, it just says every working relationship can be better. Which is like a really strong, I think, statement of intent and promise. They're like, okay, that's probably true.

And pops right in the back too. Again, back to your design. Yeah, Yep. Sorry.

And when they flick through it, they see a lot of white space. So so many books I find are a little. They feel dense and hard and like, I want this to feel easy. I want people to go, maybe I could, I could read most of this on the plane. So that's the starting point.

Brilliant.

And then the second thing that I'm trying to do is I am trying to change behavior. I want people to do things differently. And it's quite hard for a book to actually pull that off. It's hard for a book to change behavior. So part of what I want with this book is it to be a doorway into an ecosystem of other tools and resources for people. So as you say, there's quite a few invitations to say, hey, click on the QR code because you can see a keystone conversation being played out. You can download the questions, you can download other tools and the like. So I want people to feel that they are as resourced as I can give them through the book. The book is part of an ecosystem. It's not a end point in itself. And that's part of why I like this hybrid publishing model that I use with page two too, is they really understand that the book is not the be all and end all. It's a, it's a, it's a doorway. Say it's an entrance hall. And, and a Wiley or another traditional publisher rarely understand that.

Yep, yep, I can, I can attest to that. So well, and, and you close out the book's discussion with again, your bonus exercises. And I love your wording and your juicy bits, which are again, chock full of resources and additional materials and are a treasure trove and also keeps the. There's an economy of having those as resources and go tos that then doesn't make the book like the encyclopedia, which is great. And I have to say, you did lean into. Though I've never seen such a comprehensive thank you section. It was like, oh, man, I don't even think I know that many people, Michael. So.

So.

And I think it speaks to you as a person in your ethos of gratitude. And it also, again, it's a demonstration of that gratitude to be able to say, here's my collaborators, here's my friend, here's my tribe, here's my team. And again, I think that there's always acknowledgment, but that's excellent.

Part of that acknowledgment is so long is because of an experiment that I tried that didn't actually work as well as I hoped it would.

Okay. So.

And it. And it worked brilliantly at the same time. So here's what I mean by that. By the time I had written a third draft of the book and I thought it was shaping up pretty well, I then invited about. It was more than 100 people to be an early reader.

Wow.

And invited them to kind of get an access to the book and read it and leave comments on it. It. And with the promise that I would mention them and say thank you to them in the. In the final book.

Ah.

So on the one hand, I was immediately overwhelmed by all sorts of feedback, most of which I couldn't use because it was about, you know, you shouldn't have a comma here. And even though I was like, give me some feedback on the big pictures. It was like, some people are like, I. What I see are the. What I see a punctuation. And so I'm like, okay, great.

Yeah. Yeah.

But here's what the truth of it was. It fundamentally changed the book because the juicy bits at the end, which there are five questions. And each question has three exercises connected to it to help you deepen your knowledge and language and nuance around how you answer those questions. Originally, they were all at the front of the book. And part of this early reader process was me realizing I needed to move all of that stuff towards the back, even to make an appendix, because I needed to start with the big ideas as fast as possible. Because I think to myself, if people only read one chapter of this book, I need them to read the chapter about best possible relationship. Every working relationship can be better have this conversation. So, like, the big idea is right at the start of the book. And that's why the acknowledgments pages go on forever, is that I'm like, I've got 180 people to acknowledge.

I think that's a very brave thing to do. I learned early on in my marriage that I never give my wife anything to read until it's published. And then I have social proof that it was good because she never liked anything that I ever wrote.

My wife is my first reader and good for you. She will not hesitate to take a red pen out and plunge it repeatedly into my heart.

And I feel you. I feel your pain.

Yeah. And over time I've just got. I know that that's the process. So I'm used to it. The first time it happened I was like holy cow, is this the end of the marriage? Because it's starting to feel like that

I am way too delicate for that. Michael. Oh, well, listen, we, I have, I have consumed a great deal of your time and very much enjoyed our conversation. So.

Me too.

Thank you. So I'm guessing that you are getting ready to go on to with all your other to dos and activities for book promos and things. So what's. So that's the case or is there something else that's that's next that will be coming after that or in parallel with the book prompt promo?

You know, I've got other projects that are brewing. I've got. I'm going to publish a journal in two volumes next year. So that, that's actually almost written. So we're just kind of finalizing the design of that like something that people

would use to fill out. What do you mean by journal?

Yeah, so it's got, it's got daily questions to help drive progress and weekly questions to help drive insight and self knowledge.

Wow. Excellent.

So yeah, I'm excited by that. And then after that is the change book that I was trying to write when I started to write this book. So that will come out in 2025. So starting to write that. And then in January we're launching a course called how to manage Humans which is kind of me teaching the best tools I've got including the keystone conversation from this book.

Excellent. Well keep me posted. I mean obviously. Thanks Will. You know in your newsletter I'll be happy to add them to my LinkedIn newsletter and other you know, places where, where I post things too and share information and whatnot. So. Hey man, Michael, I wish you continued success in, in all your endeavors and safe travels best with this book and, and what's coming on the horizon and I really do appreciate you coming out so much time today to publicly connect. It was really a joy for me.

Thanks Chris I love the conversation as well.

Thanks. Living a Life in Full is a production of Stout Media, a subsidiary of Gordian Knot, LLC. Assistant Producer Gracie Wong Music Dan O' Brien Executive Producer and Host, Dr. Chris Stout to learn more, stop by our website A lifeinfull for show notes and please recommend us to your friends and subscribe on your favorite platform. And as for the obligatory disclaimer, this podcast is for general information uses only and does not constitute the practice of psychology, medicine, nutrition or other professional health care services, including the giving of medical or psychological advice. No doctor patient relationship is formed. Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, I take conflicts of interest seriously. For all of my disclosures as well as show notes, please see livingalifeinfull.org podcast and my LinkedIn profile. Thanks and until next time.