How to Get Anyone to Open Up | FBI Level Psychology with Michael Reddington

Today's special guest is none other than Michael Reddington. Sit back and enjoy the show. The Lead on Purpose podcast is sponsored by NZ Mortgages. Learn more at nzmortgages.co nz. Michael, a huge welcome to the Lead on Purpose podcast.

Thank you for having me. It's great to be here.

Oh, I'm so excited about this one. So I want to talk about interrogation. I've watched it on movies. I've read about it. I've talked to some people in military and in the police that have been interrogators, and often when I think about interrogation, it's pretty ugly. So I'd love to just ask, you know, what is some of the worst form of interrogation?

A chicken suit.

Okay, tell me more about that.

I wasn't gonna leave it hanging. I promise. That would be a really rude way to start the conversation. Right? So I want to say I was either. I know these are two for the people in the United States. These cities are not anywhere near each other. But it's sometimes hard for me to keep my memory straight. I was either in New Orleans or Los Angeles, which, on a map, they're nowhere near each other. But I was at an establishment after a program in the evening, enjoying a beverage with a couple gentlemen that had been in the class. And one of them said that when he was coming up as a detective, there was one particular detective on in his unit that when they were really struggling to get a confession from someone. I'm going to come back to that in just a second. He would put on a chicken suit, like a mascot chicken suit, and then he would come in and he would allegedly rough people up. And the whole thing was, who is ever going to believe somebody who says, I got beat up by a chicken suit? Like, so. It almost like it makes the story unbelievable. So I can't vouch for it. I wasn't there. Honestly, I hope it didn't happen. But that's. That's the one that jumps to mind when you ask the question, to answer your question in generalities. And I want to come back to that confession word as well, if I have enough time. Of course, I appreciate it, but really, anytime we're taking a confrontational approach to a conversation, unnecessarily or out of the gates, we are making it more difficult for ourselves. And when you think about getting a confession from somebody, which I would much rather rephrase as encouraging someone to share the truth about a regrettable choice they made in life. So if. If really what we're doing is looking to get the truth from somebody. What we're asking them to do is share sensitive information under vulnerable circumstances in the face of consequences. And right now we're talking about that in the world of interrogation, which I'm very happy to do. But that same exact concept applies. If you're talking to somebody who works for you, if you're talking to a customer, if you're talking to somebody in your family, if you're asking them to share sensitive information under vulnerable circumstances in the face of consequences, that cognitive process is going to be extremely similar. We could take that even further and say you're asking someone to share a secret with you, and that could be a secret that they've never shared with anybody else ever. So if I come in out of the gate being confrontational, being threatening, being demeaning, trying to assert an unnecessarily unnecessary level of control, like all of these things, yelling, screaming, name call, you know, whatever, you can even think about that swinging light bulb, I don't ever want to interview somebody underneath the swinging light bulb. Really, everything I say and do should be to put somebody into the mindset where they can begin to align telling me this secret with their self image. Because once they can make that lineup, now they're more likely to tell me. So I do want to certainly give deference to some of the people you've spoken with. You know, context drives the decision. So somebody in a military context, their context is going to be different. Somebody in a law enforcement context, their context might be a little bit different. You know, for me, I'm going to use a nerd term for a moment. The majority of interrogations I conducted in my career were non custodial, meaning that nobody was Mirandized here in the United States. They were the. Everyone's seen it in Hollywood. You have the right to remain silent, anything you can, and be. So they weren't read their rights, which meant they were free to get up and leave anytime they wanted. And for my teammates and I to get called in, there probably wasn't any evidence. Everybody had probably been interrogated several months ago when we were coming in, trying to clean it up. So believe it or not, in most scenarios, if you want someone to tell you the truth, really what they need to experience is they need to believe that you're credible. They need to believe that the truth either is known or will be imminently known. And they need to have the opportunity to save face. And more often than not, we skip the saving face. And there's judgment associated with the conversation, which is Entirely counterproductive. And when we try to create the impression that we're credible and the truth is known, you know, there's positive and productive ways to do that and there's counterproductive ways to do that. So that's where a lot of the trip up typically comes. But to wrap this up finally for you, and then I'm happy to get into as much detail as you want for us in the war. And I'm on the board for the International association of Interviewers. So even though interrogation is no longer my main thing, I'm still quite involved in the world. There's a big difference in techniques, in success, in approaches, honestly, in the legal ramifications for interrogators who are confession focused and interrogators who are truth focused.

If you go into a room and you want to get a confession out of somebody, you can find a way to do that, whether it's a truthful confession or not. If you sit down with anybody, I don't care who it is, your wife, your husband, your child, your coworker, a victim, a witness, a suspect. And your main focus is obtaining the truth. Now, again, there's lots of ways to do that, and maybe the truth isn't the confession, but maybe the person in front of you didn't do anything wrong. So therefore, the truth is far more important than a confession.

Incredible. Michael, thanks for sharing that. And, you know, I look at it from so many different angles. One with my son, you know, he's 8 years old, and he likes to kind of elaborate on things at this stage and kind of make things up. And he's very creative, and I love it. But also, I'm like, did that actually happen at school? Or, you know, are you making that up? So I don't want him to confess, but I certainly want more of the truth. I think of it from what we're doing right now. So I sit down with world leaders, I sit down with top athletes, and I want to get them to share intimate details, stories of what they've done, the absolute truth, and feel comfortable, even though it's very vulnerable. So I'm looking at it from that point of view, but I know there'll be lots of listeners listening at it from a leadership point of view, going, hey, I'm leading others. I want to know what's happening in the field. Did that go wrong when that thing screwed up? Let's get to the actual truth. And I don't need a confession, but I just need the actual truth. So what's the best Way to approach that. Is there body language involved? Is there tonality? Is there certain questions? How do we approach getting to the truth of the matter?

All of that can be involved. But to go back, it starts with helping people save face. And I really want to address your son interviewing people, the leadership aspect, all the above. And when we think about it, for me, I believe in operating under the principle that people are more often motivated to withhold information. They're not motivated to share it. And the number one fear that will stop people from being open and honest is that fear of embarrassment, that fear of being judged, fear of making the situation worse for themselves. So when we think about encouraging people to be open and to be honest and to do so in detail and helping them save face is enormous. So we line their self image up with the idea of, it's okay to answer this question. I'm not going to feel judged. This lines up with who I see myself as, but then also how we ask the question and how we approach it is extremely important as well. It might be a little bit different with all three examples, but not that much. My son is seven, so we're probably in a pretty similar boat there. And for me, and I'm sure you know, with your son as well, you spend so much time with anybody, you start to pick up on behavioral patterns and norms and shifts, and you pick them up one day versus the next. You're like, oh, he had a great day. I'm not so sure he did, just based on how he kind of walks out of school or whatever. But for me, I guess a couple of things. I'll do the parent thing first, and then we'll jump through, if that's okay. One of the we talked about earlier, before we came on about the importance of outcomes being outcome focused. My long term strategic outcome for my son is that he is a happy, smart, intelligent contributor to society who lives a fulfilling life. So for me, every little thing we go through has to be to set him up for that. It's not what really happened at recess today. I can probably tell you what really happened at recess today without asking him, but it's using whatever happened at research recess today to build that. And especially for kids who are the age of hours. I also want to keep in mind that the, and I say this in air quotes for people who might be listening, trouble that he gets in now isn't really trouble, but the trouble he's going to get in when he's in high school is trouble. And his last name is Reddington. So that trouble is coming. I don't know how to prepare my wife for that. It's coming. So what I'm doing now, what we're doing now as parents of young kids, is we are setting their expectations.

For what it is. Like when they are in air quotes, trouble, how do we talk to them? How do we listen to them? How do we deal with it? What do they get to say? Of course there's going to be consequences, but how does that whole process happen and based on how we handle it now, is going to have an impact on how honest he is when he is 14, 15, 16 years old. That's the important thing to remember. So when I pick him up at school every day, I ask him three questions. You know, we walk out, hey, how you doing? Blah, blah, blah, whatever. But once we get in the truck and we're rolling, three questions. What was the best part of your day? What did you learn? And who did you help? Those are the only three questions I get. And to be honest, I'm very, very. Thank you. I'm very interested in his answers, but I also don't really care if they're not super detailed answers. And he's fumbling through a snack because it's starting the conversation. And it's starting the conversation in a way that is safe for him to talk about at supporting the good parts of his day. And it makes it easier for him to begin to open up about issues that he had. And if I feel like based on his behavior that there's something he's not telling me about, I can wait a little bit. I'm not going to jump on him. And then at some point after that, I can say, well, hey, buddy, let's look at it the opposite way. What was the biggest challenge you really had to work through today?

And now we can start that conversation. So I'm not saying, is there another note in your backpack? Did your teacher make you sit out at recess again? Because that just is going to make them feel terrible. My wife has a sticker on our fridge that says, you can't make a kid do better by making them feel worse.

Brilliant. I love that.

And honestly, it's true for most adults. Some of us, depending on who we are and how we're wired and who we're talking to us, you know, I like to think for the most part, I do a pretty good job taking critical feedback. So if you're like, mike, that really sucked. That was dumb. Don't do it again. I probably like, oh, you're right. I shouldn't do that. We're. We're better off assuming that we need to earn the right to give people feedback like that, and we can just do it. So even when we're interviewing people, if I'm having a conversation with somebody and I want them to feel comfortable answering a question, there's a principle that we affectionately refer to as illustrate before you investigate. So I want, if I think of every question like its own little investigation, I want to preempt that question with an illustration that builds a little credibility and helps people save face. So if I'm interviewing a former. Well.

I was able to interview a former Irish senator who happens to be a mentor of somebody who I look up to and extremely fortunate to have him around as somebody who's been an influence on me. But when I was asking him questions about a bill that he got passed, I'm sure there are a lot of ways he's proud to talk about it. But then there's other ways where there's probably some conversations that happen behind the scenes that need to stay behind the scenes. Right. And this guy is a pillar of integrity, so I don't think he was cutting backdoor deals, but there's a way that those deals get done. So I want to be respectful of that. So when I think about asking the question, it's how do I. And of course, I did ask him the question, and it is on tape. So we'll see if how I tell you is anywhere near how it actually happened. But in principle, it's how do I help him save face? So I don't want to ask it by saying, so what did you have to do to get a bill passed that was supported by both parties? Because that never happens anymore. Because now it almost create the. What did you have to do? Is almost like, wait a minute, what are you insinuating? What are you saying? But now I can say something along the lines of not being a politician. I can only imagine the amount of time, effort, and intentionality it takes to create relationships on both sides of the aisle. So everybody sees value in a bill that you're passionate about. So I would be. I would appreciate it if you could please walk me through the process of earning bipartisan support for your bill.

I love it.

So now the illustration shows that I'm being humble. I'm not trying to put myself in your world. I'm not assumptive. But I'm also showing the intention. So there's none of that. Where are you going with this? Is there a trap? And then for Me, when I ask questions, one of my favorite ways to ask a question is please walk me through. Because it insinuates, I want detail and I want, you know, time, order and all those things. So it tends to provide better answers. And the same is true. I know I said I would do the leader as well. And with the leaders, when we want the truth, one of the things, especially if we're talking to people who work for us, is it's very easy to unintentionally make the person feel attacked. Questions can be perceived as invitations or attacks. If they're perceived as invitations, they'll open up. If they're, they'll be perceived as a text, they'll defend. And we also have to be careful of implied expected answers. Too many times as leaders, we ask somebody a question with an implied expected answer. Like based on how I ask you the question, you know what the right answer is. So when you tell me the right answer, I accept it. I walk away a week later. It's not the truth. I get pissed and blame it on you. When really, if I asked you a question a different way, I would have gotten the truth to be begin with. So we call that staying out of the entitlement trap. I feel like I'm entitled to information. You're really entitled to protect yourself. I need to respect that and I need to curate the communication experience that causes you to feel better about giving me the information I want. So just to do like a ubiquitous example, let's say that we have to talk with somebody who's leading a customer experience team there. It's a project for a difficult customer and we're worried we're not going to make the deadline. So if I walk up to that employee, especially if I do it in front of other people in a public forum or when they're walking out the door at the end of the day, or when they're going to get lunch or any of these things that might be convenient for me but inconvenient for them. And I say, hey, are we going to make that deadline?

They're going to say yes, like this. The only acceptable answer. And so now I'm like, oh, great, we're going to make the deadline. And then a day before the deadline, I realize we're not, and I get mad at them instead. If at a time that's better for them, where they're actually able to focus and participate in the conversation, they don't feel like they're under the swinging light bulb, they don't feel like they're getting embarrassed or threatened. And if I could say, you know what, James, I appreciate you taking a couple minutes to talk to me today. And anytime we're dealing with customers, we've got to remember that part of the deal in helping customers is they get to change the rules of the game, but we don't get to change the deadline.

So I'm curious, considering all the hoops we've had to jump through already with this customer, what are the three current obstacles that are most likely to jeopardize our ability to hit their deadline?

Incredible. Such a shift.

The odds of you getting the truth to that answer is almost 100%. Yeah, because first I almost gave you an excuse, right? They can change the rules, but we can't change the deadline. Oh, that sucks, man. We all get it. But now I asked you, I didn't say, what are your problems? What do you need help with? What are you doing wrong? It's what are the three largest obstacles that are likely to jeopardize our ability to make the deadline? So now it's about the obstacles. It's not about you, which makes it easier for you to be honest.

I really love that, Michael. And what I hear as well, you're pointing at the situation. You're pointing at the outcome rather than pointing at the person, just by the words that you're using. And the word that you've used a lot, even when you were talking about the three things that you asked your son is the word what? Use what a lot as opposed to why or how like you're going to what? So what is it about the word what that makes that an important way to open people up?

I appreciate you recognizing that. Thank you. I will answer your question. I promise. I want to reinforce the importance of staying away from why. Why feels like an accusation. Why are we behind? Why didn't this happen? Why did you say this? Why didn't you do that? I could be asking with the purest of intentions, but as soon as I say why, that feels like an attack. Just like, did you or why didn't you? Like, simple thing. Did you take out the trash? Yeah, I took out the trash. I take out the trash every Thursday. But really, I'm asking because I'm on my way to the garage, and if you didn't, I'm happy to. So taking out the word why, I'm not saying always. I mean, there's appropriate times to ask. But generally, if I want somebody to open up, the word why isn't going to help. And the questions did you or why didn't you? Or let's combine them, why didn't you? Why did you? Like, those are typically not going to be helpful. So for what? It gets right back to what you said. The mantra that we live by is focused on the issue, not the person. Focus on the resolution, not the consequences. If I focus on the person or the consequences, it's defense up. I'm making my life harder. If I focus on the situation, if I focus on the problem, then if I focus on the resolution, even if consequences are coming, it tends to lower the guard and it tends to bring people into the conversation. So if I say what are the three obstacles now it's clearly not about you, it's about the obstacles. It's easier to talk through. I do like how, how is one that I will use in varying situations.

So we'll take another question. Can you do this?

Well, depending on whether they want to or not, they're going to tell you yes or no if they want to, but maybe can't. They're still going to tell you yes because they want to. If they don't want to, but probably could, they're going to tell you no because they don't want to. So instead of asking, can you, it could be how long would it take? When would you need to start? How many additional resources would you need? What would be the three questions I could answer that would be most helpful? Before you started. So now I'm not asking somebody can you do it or not? I'm going to ask how long it would take. Just as one example. So now you talk about non verbal behavior and I know people might not, they might be listening, not watching, but if they give you one of these.

Their eyes get really big, they turn their head that big, inhale, exhale. This could be a problem. Maybe they don't know how to do it or they don't feel confident doing it. But now I know because I asked the question that allowed me to evaluate the response. I can then compare what they tell me next to then determine the best way to move forward as opposed to just saying, can you do this? No, no, no, don't think I can. That doesn't give me a lot to work with. So.

Sort of interject. Are there certain things from. So if we're doing the listening and we're trying to elicit the information, is there anything with our body language that we should be aware of that could either shut people down or open people up?

Yes. Great question. I'm gonna, I promise I'm gonna Answer your question. I keep doing this.

I would say this when we think about being more persuasive, I would honestly coach to start with working on our phrasing before working on our body language. It's success in any conversation comes down to variable management. The more variables we have under control, the more successful we'll be. The more variables we're trying to manage, the more difficult it's going to become. So if I'm walking into a very important conversation like, okay, I'm going to try new way of asking questions and I'm going to try this new way of behaving while I ask the question, probably going to sound like a cat fighting a garbage can. Like, I don't necessarily want to do that. So if I can start by saying, okay, let me really work on my questions, my phrasing, how am I actually delivering once I feel better with my delivery. Now let me go back and layer on the nonverbal communication piece. After that would in one man's halfway unsolicited opinion, that's how I would coach it. But to answer your question, yes. So lots of different things. I mean, we could get into crazy detail, but just things that people can apply. And by the way, I don't want to be taken that I'm speaking in absolutes. Context is going to be super important. So I'm here in the United States for the people who are familiar with the United States. I grew up in the Boston area. My wife was from Alabama. That may as well be two different planets based on how we grew up. You've lived in both hemispheres. So as we talk about cultural differences and even personality differences, this is going to change a little bit from person to person and place to place. So that contextual awareness is important. But for me, even how, not even, especially how I approach and position myself around people is very important. People tend to react the strongest to what they observe first. So if I march right up to somebody and I get right in their personal space, that's probably not going to help. So generally, I want to be mindful of my pace. How quickly am I approaching somebody? I also want to be mindful of, believe it or not, of my angle. I know we're virtual right now, but if I walked up to you nose to nose at some point as I get within probably 6, 7ft of you and approaching, you're naturally going to start feeling defensive because I'm approaching you directly. Not in all, but in many cultures, many Western cultures, we introduce ourselves by shaking hands. Well, if I know I'm going to shake hands. I want to take one step to my left and now approach you shoulder to shoulder. So now our hands are lined up for the shake, but I'm off your center line. You don't feel as threatened, so you're not already getting defensive before I get there. There's been plenty talked about what a good handshake looks and feels like. So I think we're probably all okay there. Firm right, not too hard, not too soft, all those things. But a lot of times what I'll do when I'll first meet somebody is when I'm done shaking the hand, I'll actually open up after. So if you can't see it and you're just listening, I shake hands. So I probably step in with my right foot and my right hand, which means my right foot is closer to you than my left. So now as I take my right hand back, I bring my right foot with it. And now that creates just that little bit of extra space between us. So now you can have that, like, okay, he's not crowding me. He's being respectful of me. So the approach can help. The spacing helps a lot. Culturally appropriate or situationally appropriate eye contact. I don't want to be staring hole through somebody's face if that's not what they're used to. Right. So I want to be cognizant of that. But then above all else, I think we all know what it feels like when somebody is being friendly, and we all know what it feels like when somebody is trying to be dominant or abusive, is probably too strong or to bully, something like that. So for me, I always try to err on the side of friendly. So I'm going to create a little bit more space. I'm going to try to be careful with my tone, my pace, so I sound a little bit more friendly. I mean, if it's. If it's something a little bit more serious, I can kind of quiet down a little bit so I can match, like, the tone of the topic and the conversation. I do talk with my hands some. So try to have more friendly emblems in Illustrator. So my palms facing to the sky more, these kinds of things. But for me, it's. It's going to sound silly. How does everything I say and do help me achieve my goal? And if my goal is to get the truth, then how does my entire approach help me do that? So now that I've gone into probably more detail than maybe I should have, how can I respect somebody's space? Respect their self image and sound and look friendly enough when I'm asking the question that my delivery itself doesn't give people a reason to resist.

I want to get into this because you've written this incredible book and I want to talk about it and I'm going to put a link in the show notes for the Disciplined Listening method book. But before I do that, one other observation, and this might be that you're just really kind and thoughtful, or this could be partly something that helps us. A number of times in our conversation you have asked for my permission. You said, james, do you mind if I do that? Do you mind if we come back to that? Is it okay if I. And you've let me feel like, hey, you're, you're kind of driving the ship here. Is that something that's very useful in terms of getting to the truth, Making people feel at ease is seeking permission.

In a lot of ways, yes. And I do want to thank you for calling me kind on a recorded conversation. So if my friends ever need like an outside opinion, I can say, hey, look, it's here. So thank you for that. That's going to come in handy at a later date, I'm sure, but yes. So I'm a big believer that in many to most contexts, the best way to maintain control of a conversation is to allow the other person control of the conversation. Now for you and I, this is very much your show, very much your audience, very much your agenda. And I am primarily focused on, on how do I give you and your audience things that are very helpful to them. But I'm a nerd, and I'm a nerd with adhd. So there's times when you're going to ask questions. I'm like, oh, yeah, I could answer that, but I could also say this and I can also do that. So I want to make sure that I show respect and in some way deference to you, because this is your show, this is your conversation. So if there's something that I believe is important to get out, I don't want to earn the space in order to get it into the conversation. As opposed to you feeling like, oh, Mike thinks this is his show, he's a guest on my show. What's this all about? So to say, the best way to keep control of a conversation is often to let the other person keep control of the conversation. That might sound a little bit more manipulative than I mean it, especially in this conversation where we're speaking to each other out of genuine curiosity. But I do Use the same techniques when I'm meeting with the clients I coach, when I'm working with the teams that I teach, when I'm negotiating on behalf of my clients. Because I do want to keep people's guard as low as possible, as long as possible. It makes my job easier if their guard is low. So little things like saying, great question, do you mind if I go somewhere else first? I'll come right back and answer it. And even saying, I'll come right back and answer it is important because if I say, well, do you mind if I do this first? Well, maybe I do, because I really wanted you to tell me that. So by reassuring, I'll come back here, makes it easier for them to accept. And then honestly, when I do come back and answer the question that was asked, we have this growing. We have this stronger social contract in this growing trust between us as the conversation goes on. So I really appreciate you picking up on that and asking. So I think at this point it might not be because I'm kind. It's more habitual, and it does have the positive impacts on the conversation. But we all, and you were very kind to yourself before we came on, asking me, is there anything I'm trying to get out of the conversation and would like for the call conversation? This is what I want. Like, just a fun, educational, open conversation. That's all I want. But there's always something that we want. So for me, I want to have fun. I want to talk about the things that are exciting for my nerd brain. So I've got to continue to earn the opportunity to do that throughout the conversation. And I think for all of us, if we're leaders, if we're interviewers, our families, whatever it is, if we think about it like, how do I continue to earn the right to have the communication experience that I want? Then these little types of interjections or questions or comments or permissions can make a huge difference.

I can really feel it. And also when you said, you know, sought my permission and you said, I'll come back and answer it, then when you did, it almost closed the loop for me psychologically. So I had like an emotional kind of like, oh, cool, that closed the loop. That was great. Now we're going to talk about the book. I want people to understand the discipline listening method. And this is not the disciplined coercion method, the discipline manipulation method. It's listening. Right? We can all do it. And so I want to look at the core principles of that. But before we do, who's this Book for, you know, who could use this book? You know, salespeople, people in relationships, people leading others. Who's it for?

Great question. And you hit it. So one of the things we worked really hard to do writing the book and one of the things I challenged the editing team with was having examples that resonated with everybody. So yes, it is written for sales professionals, it's written for business leaders, it's written for family, it's written for investigative interviewers. There's examples and stories and applications for all of those. Because when again, you put all those conversations on a Venn diagram and you're looking at like a giant circle with ears on all sides, like they overlap significantly when you break down the core of how we communicate, what we're trying to do and why. So for me, and thank you for asking, it was important. Work hard to write a book that would resonate and have examples for all of the above.

Incredible. And please tell me more about some of those core principles of being a disciplined listener.

I appreciate you asking. So the Disciplined Listening method was created by integrating research and best practices from the world really of non confrontational interview and interrogation. Thank you for setting that up at the start of the conversation with these business communication research and best practices. So within that, there's really two core tenets. And one is how do we uncover hidden value in every conversation? And I know it sounds cheesy quoting the COVID of the book to start answering your question, but that helps get us out of the check the box mentality. There's so many times in conversations where we expected to hear something or we wanted to hear something or we were going for one thing that if we hear something that's even close to it, we check the box and we walk away. And we don't ask the follow up questions. We miss the emotional connotation. There's so many things that we could do to dive in and expand that, but we don't realize the opportunity because we didn't connect it to anything larger. It was just, I need to know this now. Okay, now I know it. Conversations over. No, whatever we need to know now has hooked its links and chains that's connected to other conversations, other relationships. And the other one I touched on earlier really is creating the communication experiences that other people need so they will share the information and change their behavior in the way that we want. So we mentioned it before, people are generally more motivated to withhold information than they are to share it. We can't fault them for that. That's the human condition. So if I go into a conversation based on what I want to say, what I want to do, that might feel great for me, but it's not going to land for the other person. It's going to put their guard up. So it's really thinking about, okay, if these are the. I'll answer a question that you didn't ask. I appreciate you giving me a little bit of room when, when people will ask, Mike, how do I free, you know, how do I ask a question to a certain person? Or how do I get somebody to tell me a piece of information? The first three questions I ask them are what's your goal? Who do you have to achieve it with? And what's the context of the situation?

So if I can answer those three questions, here's the goal I really want to achieve. Not just right now, but like the bigger, more strategic goals. Here are the people I have to achieve them with, and here's the context of the situation. Now I can start to think about what's the best way to approach this person? What do they need to experience? What do they need to feel, what do they need to understand? What would make them want to open up and talk? So to wrap it up, how do we focus on uncovering hidden value, not just checking the box? And how do we uncover that by creating the communication experiences that our counterparts desire so we can get closer to achieving our goals.

That's so valuable. And I often think about discipline. I think when we're more disciplined, we have more freedom. Sometimes discipline can seem difficult, but actually it's to me gives us options. So if we go to the opposite of that, what would an undisciplined listener look like?

An undisciplined listener is likely having significant conversations in their own brain while somebody else is talking. They likely cannot articulate what they're trying to achieve in this conversation with this initiative or this relationship. They likely have a difficult time withholding, maintaining, remembering important details, elements. They likely miss crucial opportunities for follow up questions. And they likely completely miss on trust building opportunities after the conversation to continue building the relationship and make life easier for all parties moving forward.

Wow, that's absolute gold right there for the listener. Please go back, rewind, write all that down. That is pure gold. The one thing that came up for me there really, really stood out is this idea of monomaniacal focus when we're listening, like singular focus. Don't dilute that focus. So are there any skills in terms of tactics rather than strategic, Any skills that people can develop today to become A better listener.

Yes. When you're talking about, like, quiet the noise, pick up on the nuances, what's the totality of the message I'm receiving? There are they might not like them, but they are. The first one comes down to preparation. I think I mentioned it before. Success in most communication endeavors comes down to variable management. So if I'm walking into a conversation with you and I'm not clear on the goals I want to achieve, I'm not clear on the illustrations I want to make, the questions I want to ask, I'm not clear on the game plan or talk track that I think will get me there. I'm not clear on how I will likely respond to any challenges that you might give me in the conversation. That means I have to figure all of this out while I go. So not only do I have to get back to what you were talking about earlier, how am I behaving? How are they behaving? What's going on in the room around us? Oh, now I got to come up with what I'm supposed to say and do in real time. So to your point about the discipline creating those opportunities, earlier today I was leading a session talking about the importance of scripts and not for the sake of just do the same thing every time and be a robot. Well, if I know that in a given set of conversations, they by and large follow the same track most of the time, then I want to create a middle of the road script for that type of conversation and memorize it. So now if I'm preparing for a similar conversation, I don't have to recreate the whole conversation. I just go back to the script and I take out the three or four lines that won't work today and I replace them with three or four lines that I do. Everything else is consistent. So by being well prepared and you don't have to have the whole thing memorized, but well prepared on the goals you want to achieve, the paths you think will get you there, the most important questions to ask, illustrations to make, answers to give to, challenges you might have. Now you can quiet your brain. And because you're not talking to yourself and you're not focused on those things, you can focus more on the person who's speaking with you. So preparation is one for sure. Limiting distractions is going to be another one. So that can be done sometimes with room setup. So I make fun of myself for the whole add thing. It's true if I need to be really locked in with you, if I have any control of how the Room is set up. I don't want you sitting in front of a window and me looking towards that window, because I'm going to be boing, boing, boing. Every shadow that goes by is going to get my attention. So even looking at how we set up the room can be important. Where the chairs are set up, how close we are, no table in between us, no distractions, all of those things. We all have our phones in our pocket. If the conversation is important enough, put the phone on silent.

It's been well documented that we don't get the dopamine blast when we look at the message. We get the dopamine blast when we realize there is a message and we're curious as to who it's from and what it's about. So if I just have my phone vibrate, oh, was that my wife? Was that my client? Is that. Is that my buddy? Do I have to coach tonight? What's going on now? I'm not paying attention. So. Preparation, limit distractions. One that I probably should have even mentioned before. Preparation is have a goal in mind. All too often, we miss what really is strategic intelligence. Valuable comments, questions, observations. But they're not valuable to us because we don't have a goal to tie it to. So if I know going into this conversation, if I do a really good job connecting with James today and he opens up and shares this information with me, here is how it moves our relationship forward. Here's how it moves this initiative forward. Here's the goals that we can attain. Okay, cool. If those are the goals. Now, I'm not listening for you to say a specific thing. I'm observing for any type of communication that gives me an opportunity to achieve those goals. So being outcome focused and very clear on what those outcomes are, preparing better, limiting distractions. And then the last one that I would say for now is intentionally trying to quiet your internal monologue. If you've got a good outcome in mind and you prepared, your internal monologue should be less anyway. But I literally can't listen to you. If I'm talking to myself, my own voice is going to drown out yours. So I really want to do the best I can not to shut it off, because to some degree, we need to talk to ourselves, but to really limit that. So that could be as simple as I catch myself talking, like, oh, I need to listen, and I just shut it off. One of the things that we like to try to help people with is when you find yourself getting offended by something within reasonable parameters, if you find yourself Getting offended, getting emotional. Now is probably the most important time to listen. Now's the most important time to learn. Now's the most important time to seek clarification and understanding as opposed to shutting down. And a lot of times our internal monologue is directly tied to our emotional shifts. So this is going to sound crazy, but one of the things I would encourage people to do when maybe if there's a wife or a husband or a brother or sister or somebody that can help you figure out what your own tell is, when your emotions start to change, which one of your behaviors changes first. I'll be honest. For me, it's typically one of two. I'll curl my toes in my shoes. The second I feel my toes curling in my shoes, I know my emotions are shifting. The other one, you can make fun of me for it. I never leave the house without chapstick.

So I might feel myself making a fist, like around my chapstick in my pocket.

It.

So those would both be subtle behaviors that other people are almost certainly not going to see, but I can recognize them. So now if you and I are talking and I feel my toes start to curl, I can tell myself I'm getting lost in my emotions. This is my interpretation. I need to refocus on him. And I can get my emotions under control quicker. And I can wrap up my internal monologue quicker by recognizing when my body is telling me that my emotions are shifting.

That's really powerful to recognize the cue and then sit in the pause and almost coach yourself to go, hey, I can recognize the cue. Okay, I'm getting emotional clearly. Okay, this is time for me to get more curious, not furious, and I'm going to ask a question and tell me more. I really, really like that. What about the connection? Often when I think of listening, I think of writing and sometimes writing things down or a bullet point or, oh, my God, Mike just shared that I need to write that down for later. Is there any connection between discipline, listening, and actually capturing things or getting them out of our head?

Yeah, there certainly is. And a couple of ways to do that. And let's see if my answer lines up with how you were thinking about the question. One is if while we're talking, I don't necessarily want to take a lot of notes because depending on the situation, that just be really weird, but it also becomes distracting. But what I can do is often, even without looking at the paper, I can write one word or I can write three initials. And that way I'm not sitting here going, how am I ever going to remember that? I can just glance down. Oh, that reminds me. And then I can re engage based on that quick note there. But often when we think about listening, when people look for evidence that we listened, often that comes down to what do we remember? What did we remember to either do or say? And it's not just in the conversation, it's really after the conversation. I'm sure everybody listening has had a conversation before where somebody summarized everything they said very well and then forgot all about it, never did anything about it, got distracted. And so now we feel like that person ignored me. They didn't even listen to me. They were faking it the whole time. Well, not necessarily, but something changed after the fact. So if I really want to prove to somebody that I listened, the only way to prove to them that I listened is to take something that they shared during the conversation. And it's best if it means something to them. It doesn't mean a whole lot to me. Take something that they said during the conversation and give it back to them at a later time date. Because when we did remember, it comes across as oh, Mike remembered, Mike cared, I do matter. And then it gives them that little self esteem bump and you feel the connection and we're moving forward. So yes, I do think that there is that connection because the writing does help with recall, does help with capturing the detail. And certainly after a conversation, if somebody has the time, you hang up the call and you write down what were the most important things you heard, what were the biggest takeaways? How are you going to tie this into future conversations, all of that stuff? The sooner you can note that down after a conversation, the better. Because if your brain works like mine, this starts to disappear after a little while. If you don't, well, mine's the same.

I've got way too much information coming in all the time. So when I'm interviewing, I don't like to be writing because I want to just be fully connected. But afterwards write down some notes. I'll obviously use sometimes AI to capture all of the transcript and then go, okay, what were the key takeaways? And to me it's just reinforcing the learning. But I'm the same as you. I don't like to be writing as I'm conversing now, I want to go to more of a macro level. And if we were to think of what's going on, Ukraine, Gaza and countless other places, let's say, Mike, you had a chance to sit down with President of your country, Prime Minister of the UK or a dignitary, somebody who had influence over other leaders in these countries that are at war, what would you say to them? This person that has the opportunity to go and influence a leader that's at war with another country using your methods, what would you say is the most important thing for them to do? To approach this war leader and ask them questions or listen in an effective way that might influence them to see the situation differently.

The first thing you have to help them save face, have to do is pick any military conflict and pick. Doesn't even matter what your perspective on that conflict is. We likely classify one party as the aggressor and another party is the victim. And depending on who we are, that might be classified differently, but we're almost certainly going to classify it that way. So if we're asking either party, whichever classification, to take steps to end the military conflict, they have to have the opportunity to save face. While doing that, they have to be able to save face as a leader, as a leader on the world stage. They have to be able to save face as a leader of their country, their people, their region. So it looks like they did care and they did do their best to act on their people's best interests. We likely have to help them save face. In regards to what does the future look like, there's probably some messaging somewhere that needs to be unraveled and reframed and all those things. So the core would be saving face. How do we help them save face? The other piece would be finding a way to show a reasonable level of understanding of the situation that they find themselves in. Not necessarily the war, but the situation they find themselves in as being required or asked to participate in very difficult conversations under the most adverse circumstances. So if we can build some understanding around that, then that can help them see some credibility in us as the communicator. Then if we can help them save face, we can start helping them troubleshoot some different opportunities, some solutions, some alternative creation, which they're not going to want to do if they don't have the opportunity to save face as part of the process. So speaking in generalities, also to make sure we don't accidentally offend anybody based on their opinions and ties to the too many conflicts that are going around in the world. To me, that's where it really would start. And that's honestly no different. I mean, it's much bigger and much greater consequences. But it's no different to an approach that I would take with a management team that hates each other's guts. It's no difference. I would take to a customer vendor relationship that's fallen apart. The up how we operationalize those concepts would certainly be different. But there's that instant lack of distrust. There's the previous history that we're bringing into the conversation. There's the negative expectations, the need to win, protect the self image, all of those things. They're going to be at different levels based on the ends of the spectrum that those examples are on. But conceptually, it would be that same.

Approach that's really powerful. And I have seen it done really well in the past. You know, we go back to the Cold War and Gorbachev. You've seen where there's been really influential conversations from other leaders that have impacted decisions. So I'm really hopeful that that will happen in current day as we speak. But also I want to be respectful of your time. So a couple of things. Number one for the listener or the viewer, please go and buy Mike's incredible book. It's called the Disciplined Listening Method. We will put a link in the show notes if you want to follow Michael Reddington. We'll also put all of his socials and his site in the show notes. But, Michael, just one last question.

Sure.

If we were to fast forward many, many years into the future and you were highly aware that it's your last day here on earth, a young person who you care dearly apart about comes into the room and says, mike, how do I go about leading my life on purpose? What would you say to them?

Buy me a Guinness and let's talk about it.

That might actually be how my answer would start.

I love it.

How do I lead my life on purpose? I would go back to words that we've already used today, and I think one I do better with than the other, and it would be really understand what are your goals, what do you want to achieve? And then be disciplined in how you approach those endeavors. And I think often I'm pretty good at having outcomes that that are worth achieving and would be important to achieve, not always as good being disciplined and how I go about them, if I'm being completely honest. So I think that would really be it. I mean, there's know what you want, be disciplined in how you go after it and treat everybody well along the way because it's really easy to snap at people, to get down at people. I'm sure many people you've had on the show, given a thousand reasons why that could backfire which you don't understand about their life. So on and so forth, but treat everybody well along the way, even just selfishly. If achieving that goal means that much to you, you never know who might be willing to step up and help you out along the way. And to me it's also, and we talked about being a teacher earlier, would you rather get to the top of the mountain and look down on all the backs you stepped on, or would you rather get to the top of the mountain and turn around and pull the next person up? So I think that's what I would say somewhere around the first three Guinness.

Or so in that conversation, Michael, I absolutely love it. And to me that really resonates. You know, the idea of getting clear on what you want, who you want to do it with, how you want to make people feel when they leave that conversation and leave the time spent with you. So, Michael, I've really enjoyed today. I know it's not our last conversation, but I want to wish you the best with the important work that you do and a huge thanks for today.

Thank you. Same to you. I appreciate the opportunity. I look forward to continuing our conversations and keep doing the great work with all your guests and spreading such an important message.

Thank you so much. The Lead on Purpose podcast is sponsored by NZ Mortgages. Learn more at nzmortgages.co nz.