Peter Kurty: Authentic Listening Over Solving Surface-Level Problems

I would help everybody see what really is the outcome here, the longer rooted outcome, and paint the picture of what we truly want. And what we truly wanted was not about books. It was about how do we help support this child as a successful reader? What are the components of successful reading? Because the parent's not wrong and the teacher is not wrong, you do need to provide some perseverance and challenges to the student and be able to push them in certain areas. And, and the teacher's not wrong. You need to have joy and a love of learning or you're not going to do it. So neither of them were wrong, but maybe painting that picture of understanding, how do we incorporate challenge? Where would challenge come from and who can provide it? And then, same thing with joy. Where can joy come from? And how do we foster that love of learning? And both of those components can come in the classroom as well as at home.

Hey, I'm Kwame Christian, and you are about to step into the world of Negotiate Anything, the number one negotiation podcast in the world, where we teach you how to make difficult conversations easier while getting more of what you want in the process. Each episode is packed with practical tips and strategies from the experts. We delve into negotiation, conflict resolution, and leadership skills that are crucial in both business and and in life. Whether you're closing a deal, managing a team, or navigating personal relationships, Negotiate Anything provides you with the tools you need to succeed. Our conversations are real, relatable, and most importantly, rooted in practicality. So if you're ready to transform your conversations and elevate your negotiation skills, join me on Negotiate Anything. Subscribe and listen on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you love to listen to. Let's make every conversation a winning negotiation.

Pete, thanks for joining us today.

Thanks for having me, Kwame. I'm excited about this.

Yes, me too. This has been a long time coming. So how about you start us off by telling us a little bit about yourself and what you do?

Sure. Absolutely. My name's Pete Kurdy, and I'm just a guy. I'm just a regular guy with regular trials and tribulations of life, trying to strive to have positive relationships with the people in my life and trying to be a better person and leader and seeking more joy and meaning in my life in general. So I know that's not what you meant by myself, but that's certainly important to me. And then personally, I'm a father of two teenage girls, so wish me luck. One of them is driving. I'm a husband, and we just celebrated our 20th wedding anniversary this summer. So that's me personally, and then professionally, it's probably really what you meant, but I know the others are important and so is this. I'm an elementary school principal, and I've been a principal for 16 years in a suburb in Ohio. And before that I was an elementary school teacher in an inner city district. So have diverse experience with that. I ended up getting, I think much like yourself, Kwame, an undergraduate degree in psychology and as well as double major in elementary education. So during that time, I ended up getting my master's in educational leadership and then becoming a principal. I got my doctorate in educational leadership. So that is me personally and professionally. But the reason I say both of those is really because being a leader and an educator has helped me significantly be a better person. I often find the parallels between how I lead and interact with people in the workspace can translate to my own personal life and how I interact with my friends and family. And I've seen that leading is about the needs of people and how to communicate and connect and listen and give and empathize, yet that's the same that I would often do with the people in my life. So to the listeners, whether you're a leader or not, I hope that you can apply some of these strategies in multiple aspects of your life, personally and professionally.

And listeners, now you know why I was so excited to have Pete on this show. This is great. And I love that we're starting off in this way because a lot of times we can compartmentalize ourselves unnecessarily. We have the work version of ourselves versus the home version of ourselves versus the version of ourselves that's hanging out with friends, whatever it might be. But I'm really glad that you started off that way because the skills that and the. And the mindset that makes you such a great leader at work, those are the same skills and attributes and mindsets that lead you to be a great father, a great husband. Congratulations on 20 years, and congratulations on a daughter that's almost in college, which I know is scary too, but again, it all connects, and I think that's a major part of authenticity. Today's podcast, what we're going to do is talk about the conversations and leadership skills that you have in the education space, but then also talk about the through line between that and everything else that we have in our lives. So can you start off by giving us an idea of the types of difficult conversations that come up in your work life day to day?

Yeah, absolutely. And before I do that Kwame, I kind of want to paint the picture of really what we'll be going through today. And the first is just the difficult or compassionate conversations in the educational field in general and what that looks like as a leader or as a teacher or as a parent. And then how I handle those and how I navigate those, using authentic listening skills in those compassionate conversations. And then I hope to provide some additional strategies in general for compassionate conversations as a leader. But again, the through line, as you had mentioned, is authentic listening and the parallel between the leadership and personal lives. Because you're right, we want to be authentic selves, both an authentic leader, an authentic true person. And the irony is, the older I get, Kwame, the less I really know about myself. So I get that introspection on and reflection on how I can be a better person.

Incredible.

With that said, I want to start actually with a story. And that will also paint the picture of what it's kind of like to navigate and be in a compassionate conversation. Now I'm using the word compassionate. I think that might be a term that you have used frequently, rather than difficult. I think there's a lot of difficulty in conversations and interactions. But taking a authentic listening, the word authentic is much more appropriate than difficult. It is certainly difficult, but authentic listening is certainly a component of it is compassion. So I was a brand new principal and I wake up one morning, as I often do, and immediately go to my email inbox, as we all do, and I noticed that there's an email from a first grade parent. And in that email I could tell that there was some intensity to it. And really what the message of that email was that the parent was upset and they were upset because their child was coming home with books that were not challenging for them. Now we can get to why there was some intensity to that and why in the education field there might be some intensity. So for those listeners thinking out there, okay, not a big deal, but it was very emotional and intense for the parent. So at that time, you may know that first grade is a pivotal time for reading and there's a lot of pressure on the teacher and the parent and the student for coming out of first grade being a successful reader. And they read a lot in the classroom, but they should also read a lot at home. So naturally, as a new principal and the boss, I needed to navigate on what to do with this email and how I can solve the problem, which is what leaders should do, right? I say with a little bit of sarcasm. So I emailed the teacher and set up A meeting between me and the teacher and the parent. And fast forward to that meeting. And the parent shared that the child was reading Harry Potter at home and was a really accomplished reader at home. And they were able to read significantly more challenging books than what they were bringing home from school. But as they're sharing that, you could tell that the intensity still continued to climb. The parents were very passionate about what they were messaging about the date difficulty, or what they were looking for in terms of the challenging book. So they wanted more challenging books. The teacher reciprocally shared that they wanted the child to have a love and joy for reading. They wanted the child to be able to select the book from the classroom library and bring it home and simply just have joy in the reading environment at home. Now you could see that there's already a difference of opinion on what the child should be bringing home. The parent wanted the child to select a book to come home that was challenging. The teacher wanted the child to select the book that was enjoyable. So as the conversation increased in intensity, there was just a clear tension and no one seemed to really be conceding or listening or understanding. Both reiterated, but just in a different way. So as the principal, I thought, okay, here I come. I'm going to put on my principal boss cape and I'm going to swoop in and solve this problem and make everybody happy. So I thought, okay, let's compromise. The child can still select the book just like the teacher wants, but the teacher has to approve the difficulty of the book and make sure that it is a difficult book. So I'm like, win, win, problem solved. We end the meeting. I walk the parent out of the building and I go back to greet the teacher and just kind of summarize and talk to the teacher again. And immediately the teacher turns to me and says, I can't believe you just did that. Why did you undermine me? And I was completely shocked. I was. I was not seeing that coming. I didn't understand why the teach felt that way. And now I was in my own compassionate conversation as a principal to a teacher. So I went from navigating one to now being in one. And I learned a lot about that conversation and navigating compassionate conversations in general, mostly as my role as a leader in that position and how to support people in situations like that. And I learned that I wasn't listening. I wasn't really being a good, authentic listener in that situation. I was trying to be a problem solver. I was looking at the surface level needs and really not digging into the Deeper level of needs. So that is what I'd really like to address today. A little bit on how we often try to solve problems, how we often try to listen, and we think we're listening, but we're not necessarily listening. So I went on for a long time, Kwame and I wanted to paint that picture of that story, to really share what it's like to have difficult conversations and compassionate conversations in the educational field. And they become very difficult and compassionate because education is a passionate field and it's a really hard job. But passion is what makes educators amazing at their job. And it's also the things that make things feel intense and sometimes more intense than it needs to be on the surface level. This was just about a book. It was just about who should pick the book and how difficult the book should be. But really it was deeper than that. It was about children's learning and supporting the child and their development as a reader, which then can make it feel intense. The teacher's job is to have a successful reader coming out of that classroom, and the parents job is to support them being a learner and a reader as well. So a lot of conflicts come into education about what is best for kids and the direction that we should go. So that is kind of the baseline of where a lot of difficulty and compassionate conversations come from, is what is best for kids and how we get there.

And listeners in that short story, we now know why Pete has been a principal for 16 years and married for 20 years. Because this. This is a masterclass. I love this story because it can encapsulate the multiple dimensions of difficult conversations that happen within the education space. We have talking to parents, we have leading as a leader in the space. And then we also have the. Just also the interactions between co workers as well, colleagues. So we have all these difficult conversations, leading, having conversations with our colleagues and the parents too. And we're tied together with passion. Everybody who is in education cares about this conversation and cares about the kids and cares about the learning outcomes. And with passion comes intensity. And that leads to highly emotional conversations. And what I love about this is that we weren't saying here, all right, what we needed to do in this conversation was do this, say that, do this, whatever it happens to be, and create a little playbook here. It wasn't necessarily a strategic issue at its core. It was more of a mindset issue that translated into a skills issue. Right. And so the mindset is being willing to invest in deeper into these conversations, which then leads to the skill set of Authentic listening on a deeper level. So let's say we can go back in time and now you are coming in with all of this experience. It is Pete today, coaching Pete of the past. What would you tell yourself to do strategically, differently, as you approach the conversation? What would it look like?

Great question, Kwame. Don't you wish we all had the capacity to be Monday morning quarterbacks of ourself in the past? So. But the benefit of that and the joy of that is the learning journey and we can all be better at what we do and learn from it. So thank you for asking that question. And really the foundation of what I would tell myself is really teach myself about authentic listening and what it means to really listen, and I did not coin the term, but really authentic listening is about understanding the perspective of others. It's the act of increasing one's own understanding of a different perspective, while at the same time, and this is key, at the same time decreasing your own bias or personal perspective. So it is level setting between what the one person is saying and what you think they are saying. So it adds that you want to be on a level playing field when you're authentically listening. And we naturally have bias and personal perspectives based on our own experience, but sometimes those get in the way of what we're really trying to hear and what the person is really trying to convey. So authentic listening, sometimes you need to get to the real thing. And as I mentioned, this real thing was not about books. And there's a phrase, the thing is not necessarily the thing. And that was absolutely the case here. And so in the story, on the surface level, the parent wanted a more challenging book, but the parent wanted hard books to accomplish that. Or they wanted the child to be challenged, but they wanted a book to be the avenue. And the teacher wanted the child to have a joy of reading. And the teacher wanted the child to personally select the book and have fun doing it, but the real underlying thing. So the thing that isn't immediately obvious as the thing is they both wanted the child to be a successful reader. It's about being a successful reader. And the parent thought the journey to get there or a strategy to get there was challenging them, making them pick hard books, or giving them Harry Potter to read. The teacher felt that being a successful reader means that you have a joy and a passion for it. And possibly challenging them too much might squelch that joy and passion. But ultimately, if you peel back the layers, you understand that they both wanted the same thing, and they both wanted the child to be successful. It was just the avenue and strategies were completely different. So to get to your original question, what would I do differently in that situation? I would help everybody see what really is the outcome here, the longer rooted outcome, and paint the picture of what we truly want. And what we truly wanted was not about books. It was about how do we help support this child as a successful reader? What are the components of successful reading? Because the parent's not wrong and the teacher is not wrong. You do need to provide some perseverance and challenges to the student and be able to push them in certain areas. And the teacher's not wrong. You need to have joy and a love of learning or you're not going to do it. So neither of them were wrong. But maybe painting that picture of understanding, how do we incorporate challenge? Where would challenge come from and who can provide it? And then same thing with joy. Where can joy come from and how do we foster that love of learning? And both of those components can come in the classroom as well, as well as at home. A parent is not solely responsible for pushing their child. They are also responsible for providing that joy. So what does challenge and joy look like at home that the teacher can get on board with? And then what does challenge and joy look like in the classroom that the parent can get along with and get on board with? So that's really how I would have navigated it is I would have asked a lot of questions, which we can get to some strategies about how to get through authentic listening, but I would have asked a lot of questions and I really would have helped paint the full picture of what we're really trying to get at. And what is the thing that is really the thing?

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Elevate, negotiate and succeed. This is amazing. So I've got three points to make on this, Pete, because I love the introspection that went into that response, right? Because it's going to be different for different people. But the outcome More or less should look the same. And I was interested to see your approach, like, what would the mechanics be? And a couple of things are standing out. So first, we're recognizing that in this conversation and in a lot of the conversations that we have, whatever field we happen to be in, ultimately, majority of the conversations we're going to have that are tough are going to be with people who are more or less on the same team. And within the education space, you, as the principal, are working to the same goal as the teachers, and the teachers are working to the same goal as the parents. We all want what's best for the kids. We want them to be educated and be successful and be happy. Right? Those are the core goals. We just differ on the pathway. And I think a lot of times we run into situations where we think the answer is common sense. And then we introduce that common sense to somebody else, and we realize that they have different common sense. That can be really tough, because when you are confronted with a situation where you have to explain what you believe is obvious, it becomes really hard to communicate that, especially when somebody's coming from a different perspective. And then one thing you said that was really powerful, which actually adds to the complexity of this conversation, is that neither person was wrong in this. You can say there are legitimate arguments for both sides in this interaction, but we need to come together and ultimately make a decision. And that can be really challenging because in that conversation, the mentality could be like, I know I'm not wrong, so why should I give any ground? And they're thinking the exact same thing. So it turns into an unnecessary war of attrition. But if we can take some time and align people on the mutual intent that we all have, the mutual positive intent, and the fact that ultimately we want to go to the same place, that changes the whole dynamic of the conversation. Because I'm not working against you. I'm working with you to find the best possible solution. And then it leads me to the last point, Pete, and this is the most important point. I just got a text message from a listener who somehow is listening in on this conversation. And they said, I need to. With authentic listening, I need to understand their perspective while decreasing my bias and not focusing on my perspective. I don't want to decrease my biases. I like my perspective, and I'm coming here to let the other person know the right way to do things. How so you're asking me to do something that even if I do it well, I don't think it would feel good to do that. So how do I change my mindset to even accept authentic listening as an option when I know that doing it might not feel very good in the moment?

Yeah, great question. And all of those points get back to the phrase of what's best for kids. And that phrase is a very damaging phrase in education because what it does is it creates a rock brain and it stops you from understanding a full perspective. When we say things like, I'm doing this because it's what's best for kids. And a lot of times we're right, maybe it is what's best for kids. But you stop thinking and seeing the full perspective of it, and it stops you from understanding really why it's best for kids or what other components could also be what's best for kids? So that's the first thing. The second thing I would say to the listener's question and concern is authentic listening is not about conceding. It is not about thinking that you lose. And in education, there is no real winning and losing. And if you think about it, you want to all support the student. And when you lose, what does that mean for the student? So that's what I would say about the listener's first concern. Second thing is when you are authentically listening, you're really just trying to understand, and you want to paint the picture of what and why the other person is saying something, not necessarily to change your mind, but to understand the. The full problem. You want to know what the problem is and your perspective is. You're right, it is. It could be a very strong and right opinion, but there's often more to a situation. For example, we recently posed a scenario as we go through with our staff. We often deal with culture and situations like this at our staff. And I posed a scenario. You bring lacroix to work and you put it in the staff refrigerator, and you bring a whole big case of it, and you put it in there, and one by one, it starts to disappear. And immediately your mind goes to, okay, what is happening here? Somebody is doing something to me. And there are disrespectful people that work here. They have something that's called the fundamental attribution error, where they automatically attribute something negative that's happening to a personality trait. So somebody is stealing my LaCroix that I put in the lounge for me. And now that person is a bad person, a disrespectful person, unkind person, when really there could be more to that situation. And in fact, this is almost a real life situation, Kwame, where somebody Brought in Lacroix and somebody that was taking it was the same person thought that somebody brought it for them, somebody owed a LaCroix for another staff member, brought it in, put it in the fridge, and because it's a communal fridge, the person was. Was taking them. When finally we put the picture together and we didn't have to have a compassionate conversation in that case, but when we finally connected those dots, the person taking them, in fact was not being disrespectful. They truly thought that they were Lacroix, that somebody else had owed them and brought them in and they were just taking them from the fridge. Yet the third party person that actually owned the Lacroix thought that somebody was purposefully stealing them and being disrespectful. So that is a very minuscule situation where a problem, which feels like a big problem and a disrespectful problem, it was being disrespected to the person, being disrespected to the core, granted, over a LaCroix, but they really was not about disrespect. It was about just misunderstanding. So in some cases, gathering more information than authentic listening can be about gathering all of the information in a problem, in a situation in order to solve it or meet what the person's needs are.

Brilliant. Brilliant. And I think when it comes down to this, it's truly wanting to understand. Because a lot of times we want people to expose their vulnerabilities. It's like, all right, tell me what you think so I can tell you where you're wrong.

Okay.

That's the purpose of my curiosity. And I think we have to have genuine curiosity in order to gather that information. Because again, you could ask great questions, but if you are not listening the right way, we are often listening to confirm our already stated and held beliefs and biases. And I love the fundamental attribution error because it shows a unique blind spot in humanity. Because when somebody does something that doesn't work for us, we attribute negativity to it. We say, that's a bad person. Fundamentally, as a human, you are a bad person. But then if we swap the facts just a little bit, we can find ourselves doing completely innocuous activities. And they're innocuous to us, but it has a detrimental impact on somebody else. And somebody's looking at us as evil when we just thought somebody brought us Lacroix. We're just enjoying it.

Right, Right.

And so I think just remembering this helps us to approach these conversations with a little bit more humility. Because at the end of the. We are limited in our understanding and our perspective based on just our lived experience. I have not gone through what you have gone through. I don't know what's happening in your mind. I need your help to understand that. And very importantly, recognizing that listening and just validating in terms of understanding and demonstrating that you understand the other side is not a concession. It's not diminishing your position. But a lot of times even it feels like, even when we hear something that we disagree with, it feels like a threat, threat to our identity and our perspective. And it's that emotional barrier, I think, that holds people back the most from listening. Because if you put somebody in a different circumstance, they can listen just fine. It's not a skills issue. A lot of times it's an emotional issue and a mindset issue that holds people back from listening authentically.

Well, you hit the nail on the head, Kwame, and going back to what we said earlier about getting to the root core of something, if you are saying something and the other person's not listening, are you truly saying it? Are you truly getting your message across? So just because you're saying it doesn't mean that you're going to change the mind of somebody else. And the research shows that. You could argue, you could have great points, you could have great research to back it up, but the more you try to convince, the actual less somebody listens and tries to understand. So ironically, you know what does allow two people to come closer together in their thinking is empathy and authentic listening. So that does prove when there is a connection between two people, even two people that disagree on opposite ends of the spectrum, being able to find a connection, and not necessarily in agreement, but find a connection and seeking that understanding, if there is an understanding, the other person is more willing to listen to your side and they're more likely to be able to change their mind, if that's your point. Now, you also said something about it being a mindset, and you again, are so true in that because if you go into a compassionate conversation trying to convince, then your mindset is going to be closed off, off from a lot of information. So you really want to do a couple things, because in a compassionate conversation, first of all, it's a. It can be a fight or flight situation. I think no matter how many times you've had compassionate conversations, difficult situations, it is stressful and you become in a fight or flight mentality and you want to defend, you want to defend or you want to blame or you want to complain or you want to fight. So the first thing really that I often recommend and what I still do myself, both as a father, especially with two teens, as I mentioned, and a leader, is I pause. I want to put space in between the antecedent and my reaction. I find that rarely, unless it's an emergency situation, do I react productively when it's out of emotion. So putting that space. There are actually two phenomenal, insightful leaders that I have learned this from. The first is Tim Kite and our factor, and he calls it press pause. And pressing pause allows you to that space to just kind of regulate your emotions and your passion in order to have a very clear action or reaction based on the information you're gathering in. The other one is Shane Parrish and he calls it clear thinking. And he wants to put again, space between the input and your output. So it really is a mindset or that is a strategy in order to get into the mindset. Then now you have to figure out what are you going to do once you have pressed pause. And that's where you shift your mindset into that space that you have just created. You've taken emotion out and now you need to put your clear thinking in and your rational thinking into that space. So you want to go into it with a mindset of curiosity and wonder. It's not about right or wrong. It's not about really negotiating at this point, even though negotiation is a part of a large part of all of our conversations and lives. But it really is about understanding and trying to figure out the mindset and motivations of the other person. So if you go in thinking, what can I learn from this? What can I learn from this situation? It does still take a introspective personal viewpoint, but really you're trying to learn from the other person, learn what they're, what they are understanding, and try to gain knowledge about what are you not seeing. So purpose of all of that is to really uncover the real thing, because as we said, the thing is not necessarily the thing. And because somebody is telling you something. If you go into it with a mindset of curiosity, wonder and questioning, then you might be able to unpack what the true needs are, what the true problem is. And then you might be able to make a closer connection and problem solve because you have really uncovered what the true aspect or needs are mutually.

Oh, Pete, this is great. This is great. We're at 30 minutes and I was trying to land this plane, but now we're taking it around for another spin. This is great because when we Talk about the strategies. A lot of times people are, again, they're looking for playbooks. Looking for playbooks. But what you're finding here with what you just said, it was so robust. And really, it comes down to recognizing that the proper skill set often flows organically from the proper mindset. Because we often go in there with the goal of convincing, persuading. I have a job to do. I want to get it done quickly and efficiently. I need the other person to succumb to my greatness and adjust their position accordingly.

Right.

But here what you're saying is I'm coming in with a desire. My only desire here is to connect with this person. And then I love the additions that you put around curiosity, because you mentioned three things. You said curiosity, which I think people understand to a certain extent. Questioning, which people understand to a certain extent. But we can see how curiosity and questioning with the wrong intent can lead to a cross examination. And nobody likes that. And I'm a lawyer, I don't like that either. But that word wonder, that changes everything. Because when somebody is in a state of wonderment, it's genuine curiosity. I'm excited to be here. I'm excited to experience this, whatever this happens to be, I'm here for it. But when we think about it in terms of just curiosity and questioning with the wrong mindset, then we're like, hey, I'm going to ask questions to get the information I need to break you down and tell you what it really is. And what's fascinating about this is that we are not going in this conversation to try to be somebody's therapist or just listen aimlessly. But what often happens is by going through this process the right way, by making sure that you're pausing enough to think clearly, and then you go in with genuine curiosity, wonderment, and the desire to create a connection, the solution comes organically from that interaction. And by focusing too much on the outcome, we often don't focus enough on the process. And that's where people mess up.

Absolutely. And you're right, there is not necessarily a playbook or sometimes the playbooks lack the mindset because it is a very clear mindset that you need to do, a precursor to asking questions and gathering more information. Because some people are great questioners, but may not think are the right mindset or vice versa. Some might have the right mindset mindset, but not know what questions to ask. So to those listeners that are like, okay, what questions can I ask? Then that's great, Pete, I can change my mindset. But now what do I do with that from there? And I've talked about this a fair amount and I would do presentations and people would often say, okay, what are those questions? Because one of my strategies is after I press pause, I usually ask two questions. And a lot of people will say, okay, Pete, what are those two questions? They're sitting on the edge of their seats, like give me the golden two questions that I need to ask in order to understand. And I earlier in my days of presenting, I would say, well, it depends on what the conversation is. And they would, they would leave disappointed. And I didn't. They understood that they needed to ask some questions, they understood that they needed to have a mindset, but they didn't leave them with the tool. So I've kind of refined that in my practice and refine that in my advice for those people that do need a little bit of a playbook and a little bit of scaffolding on how to ask questions. Because absolutely, as you said as an attorney and questioner, sometimes questions can feel very attacking, especially like what questions or how questions. So off my first question that I would, I would offer as a strategy really isn't a question at all. It is simply tell me more about that and tell me more about that is just a phrase that eases into a difficult conversation and it shows the person that you are curious and wonder really about what they're saying and not even about why. That is sometimes a why question can feel, make people feel defensive or they have to understand why they have emotions in a particular case. But saying tell me more about that forces the person to dig deeper, forces them to think through introspectively and reflectively about why they're saying something or about the cause of it. But if you go directly to why are you telling me this? Or what happened or how did that happen? It gets to surface level. But when you say tell me more about that, then that forces them to do that and sometimes you need to have them dig deeper and then have a follow up question of and what else. So that strategy just is an easy way to enter the conversation to gather more information. It brings the guard down of the other person a little bit and that way you can help find out what the true root or cause is.

That's so good, Pete. And I tell you that simple question of tell me more. It is so underappreciated. So underappreciated because again, one of the things that's tough in the moment is coming up with an insightful question. It can feel really daunting to come up with a good question just off the fly. And this allows you to accomplish the same goal of asking a question without you having to use the question format, which under pressure and duress might be really challenging. You can say tell me more about and then fill in the blank with anything. That used to be my go to when I was mediating and negotiating as the lawyer, I would just say, all right, I know I need to ask a question, but man, I have been. My brain is a little bit fried right now. This is a heavy conversation. I don't know how to ask it. But I do know that if I say tell me more about slow enough. And so I know when I ask that question, I can come up with something reasonable in enough time that it. That suffices for the goal at hand. So I really love that. And again, it is simple without being simplistic because a lot of times we overcomplicate what people need to do and say, which almost guarantees that they will not do or say those things. And I love that we are operationalizing curiosity in such a manageable way. This is really powerful.

You know, I think the other thing that going back to combining questions as well as shifting a mindset, oftentimes in those compassionate conversations, I thank the person for sharing with me. And that sometimes is really, really difficult. But they're sharing something with me because they have a need. Sometimes it is really contentious, sometimes it is forces them to be vulnerable, sometimes it forces me to be vulnerable. But oftentimes when I thank them for sharing that with me brings down their guard a little bit. And they're often more willing to hear my perspective as well. So truly I thank them and I mean it. And that goes back to the mindset. And then lastly, I want to make sure that I understand. So following those questions of the tell me more about that or what else? Or help me understand is another good phrase. Help me understand. And you can fill that in as well. It goes back to the onus of I want to understand. I would like you to say more words to help me understand. You're not telling me what to think, but you're helping me understand what you think. So that's. That's the other one. But lastly, just rephrasing their own, rephrasing what they're saying in your own words. And again, that brings down the guard a little bit and they now felt feel understood from what they're saying. So again, going back to the listener's question of is this about conceding? Nope, it's it's not the person didn't win because you heard them, they you just understood what they are saying. So that you have as much information as possible to decide what to do next. And that's ultimately what the difficult conversation, compassion conversation is all about is now what? Otherwise it just becomes a fight that goes nowhere and it becomes more contentious or a bigger problem than before. So the authentic listening really is the precursor to the now what, what are we going to do with this information? And any good problem solver, any good leader wants as much information as possible in order to do something with it. So that is the whole purpose behind all of this, with the mindset and the questions and just thanking the person and acknowledging and rephrasing it before and after the questions helps you build the full picture of what's really happening.

Coming into this interview, I have to tell you, my expectations were sky high and yet you still exceeded them. This has been great. And before you go, can you again remind the listeners about maybe how they can get in touch and maybe learn more?

Yeah, absolutely. One thing I didn't quite mention is I do a little consulting work on the side I have leading to leverage, which is just organizational leadership. And again, it's been a lot of the strategies that I've learned just in my life as a leader. And I'm passionate about culture of an organization and helping leaders and helping people be great leaders and connecting with those people. So you can search for me at Leading to leverage. Com and the two is either a number two or a to but leading to leverage. Com or you're welcome to reach out to me. You can google me, google my name and you can find out the contact information and where. I am the elementary school principal. I'd be happy to help and help you with your authentic listening needs. So both of those aspects are where you can find me and hopefully you found some usefulness in this podcast. And my joy is giving you joy in some of those strategies. So I appreciate the listeners and what the experience they have brought to me as well.

Amazing. Pete, thank you so much for joining us. And listeners, we will have links to the everything that Pete just mentioned in the description of the episode.

Thanks so much mommy. I appreciate, appreciate it.

Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.

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I'll catch you later.