Peernovation Season 1, Episode 1 - Craig Weber On Conversational Capacity

Welcome to Peer Innovation, the podcast with Leo Bottari and me, Randy Cantrell. Building on our previous shows, The Year of the Peer and What Anyone Can Do, we turn our attention to helping business leaders build high-performing teams. We'll talk with a diverse group of thought leaders who will share stories and insights that will help you and your teams achieve new heights. If you believe there is strength in numbers and that meeting the challenges of the future can only be achieved if we do it together, then join us for the conversation. Our guest today is Craig Weber. Craig is the author of the 2013 bestselling book Conversational Capacity: The Secret to Building Successful Teams That Perform When the Pressure Is On. He's also the author of the 2019 book Influence in Action: How to Build Your Conversational Capacity, Do Meaningful Work, and Make a Powerful Difference. We welcome Craig to the show. I would say welcome back, but it's a brand new show. Well, it's really the same show. We just rebranded it. It used to be What Anyone Can Do, and that's still— it still is what anyone can do because you can do this, but it's Peer Innovation. We welcome our audience and we have a special guest. We intentionally kind of teed this up because we felt like this was a gentleman whose work is super congruent with our kind of a new, new direction, a little more targeted focus at Peer Innovation. PeerInnovation.co is the way that you can reach us and find out everything that we do. Leo Battari, he is the star of the show. I'm a co-host, but the real star today, and I don't know where you're— but he's here. No, he's— no, he's here.

He's—

I don't know. It's a Zoom deal. We don't even know what day it is. Craig Weber, welcome to the show. We're glad to have you.

My pleasure, Randy. Thank you for having me, you and Leo both.

Yeah, we thought having you on first would be, you know, what anyone can do, but we're going to do it better now, right? So you're going to help us get there today, and we're really excited to have you here with us because obviously a lot of what peer innovation is all about is how do we take what we've learned from group dynamics and high-performing peer groups and how that translates into high-performing teams. And when it comes to people working together, there's nothing really more important than the ability of those team members to have productive conversations, which— so I'd love for you to introduce your work, you know, in a way that, you know, you've been doing it for a while. Of course, Conversational Capacity came out in 2013, if I'm not mistaken. And of course, you've got a new book now, Influence in Action, which has been out for a little while, but I think really kind of stands on the shoulders of Conversational Capacity and really allows, you know, for people to hone those Conversational Capacity skills to a different level. But, you know, tell us what you got. Love it.

All right. Well, and I agree that I think, you know, our work really overlaps nicely. And I think at the core, you know, what really unites our work is this idea that What should matter most when you're working with other people is not being right, being comfortable, getting an ego massage, but learning. And how do you learn together in the most quick, rapid, and efficient way possible, right? So I think learning is what kind of ties this together. And your work around using peers is a really, really great way of enhancing the learning of a leader. And I think another way of doing it is to actually increase what I refer to in the title of the book as your conversational capacity. And I define that in multiple ways. So I'll put out a couple of definitions, and I'd love to get reactions from you and Randy. But, uh, you know, one way to think about it is you can define conversational capacity as the ability— and this can be of an individual, but it can also be of a team of people— but it's the ability to stay purpose-driven rather than ego-driven under pressure. So to keep your eye on the ball. Or a way to think about it, it's a way to maintain really good fit between the purpose of the conversation and your conversational behavior. And so I think high conversational capacity, we're able to keep those two things really nicely aligned. Low conversational capacity, and you'll often start seeing purpose and the conversational behavior start to drift apart. And so how do you make sure, make sure that the way you're communicating with your team, with someone else you're talking to, really lines up with why you're talking with them? And how do you make sure you don't let those two things start to pull apart in a conversation? So that ability to maintain that fit is really a measure of your conversational capacity, whether you're an individual leader trying to run a smart business or whether you're a team of people trying to work together in challenging circumstances. That ability to maintain fit is really critical. I don't know if you have any thoughts to that or any reactions to it.

Well, just, I know that that place where conversational capacity is kind of operating at at its height becomes the sweet spot, right? And, but one of the things that always fascinates me, and I think it'd be interesting for people on the show, is someone could read your book, they could gain all the conversational capacity they could possibly muster, right? And, but then they're dealing with someone who couldn't find the sweet spot with the greatest GPS system in the whole world if they tried for, for, for years, right? Um, So I guess, you know, you and I have chatted about this in terms of, you know, what this looks like. But so what if I know the rules? I get conversational capacity, but the people that are on my team or the people that a person I may be dealing with isn't playing in that space. How do we help create conversational capacity in that more holistic way, I guess?

Yeah, that's actually a really good question. And a couple of things just for the listeners, which do talk about a sweet spot in a conversation. And I define in the book, the sweet spot is that place in, let's say, a meeting where candor and courage are balanced with curiosity and humility. That's where you've got a really good working dynamic, where the conversations are honest, they're courageous, they're open, they're forthright, it's very direct. So you're not wondering what people are thinking about the issue. But what keeps that from just becoming an argument or people butting heads is the curiosity. People are eager to learn. When there's differences of opinion, they get curious and interested. They're holding their views and opinions in a more humble way, a little more like hypotheses and less like truths. That I think is where the good work gets done. And when we leave the sweet spot, it's usually because we've let go of one pole or the other. If I let go of candor and courage, I'm overly guarded and cautious. If I let go of curiosity and humility, I become arrogant and argumentative. And so it's that ability to maintain balance between candor and courage and curiosity and humility. I help people in teams learn to develop. Now, your question is what happens if you're in a meeting and you're the only person in the room who knows anything? You're the only person who even knows there's a sweet spot. And then to make matters worse, other people seem to almost take delight in not working in the sweet spot. They may not know it's even there, but they don't care because they wouldn't work there anyway. What's nice about the discipline— and I described this conversational capacity as a discipline— is that even one person in a meeting who knows these skills can have a profound impact on the way the meeting unfolds. It'll still be messier and a little more challenging, but one person can actually informally or formally facilitate more balanced dialogue. And I have a really good example in the book, and I talk about it a lot in my workshops, of a parent-teacher conference where the teacher is the only person in the room who knows about the sweet spot, about the skills, about this idea of balancing candor and courage and curiosity. Curiosity and humility. And the parents of a special needs child come in and immediately attack the teacher verbally because they think the teacher's giving her poor grades because they don't like the mother, because the teacher doesn't like the mother. And this teacher is able to, just by the way they respond, pull the parents back toward that sweet spot. When they get aggressive and accuse them of grade retribution, rather than get defensive and argue, they get curious and lean in. Can you tell me more? What is it you're seeing from me as the teacher that leads you to think that's what's going on? And was able to slow down the conversation, deepen it, get it focused back on things like evidence. What are you seeing? What are you noticing? Let's talk about the grades. Let's talk about where they're coming from. And the whole conversation calms down. And so it's a really good example of the power this discipline can have in the hands of a skilled practitioner.

You know, it's very— I think it's human nature too. We are terrible with information gaps. Like, if there's something we don't know, and we start not knowing it for long enough, we will fill it in with our own story, right? We'll come up with our own narrative. Oh, that person's 15 minutes late. I've got the whole story down about why they're dissing me and why they're, they're always late and all this other stuff. And who the heck knows what happened, right? But I've got this whole thing conjured up in my mind and I'm all worked up now before. And you know, so getting people, I think, to try to, how do we, discipline ourselves not to make those assumptions when those voids happen, right? When we have those information vacuums, if you will, how do we not dive in and try to fill them in before we're willing to ask questions?

Yeah, that's a really good question. That goes to the core in some ways of conversational capacity. I think you can define it additionally as the ability to hold your views hypothetically under pressure. And as you and I both know, that's not easy to do because your brain does not hand you a view and say, hi Craig, I'm your brain. I'm handing you this point of view, but I wanted to point out here's a big data gap. Here's a cognitive bias and here's a bit of motivated reasoning. So be very, very careful with it. Your brain just hands you a view, a story, as you point out, and says, here you go. And so how do you learn to hold your views more hypothetically? You're a little less attached to your perspective, a little less likely to get worked up unnecessarily about what you think is happening because you're holding your views a bit more skeptically. So a simple practice I get a lot of clients adopting, and I do it myself, is keeping what I refer to as an Indianapolis journal. And I actually talk about this in the new book as a practice. I mentioned it multiple times, but it's a, it's a journal, a record of when you're— when you get it wrong, when your brain screws up like that. So I flew to Indianapolis, I knew where the hotel was, or so I thought. I got in the rental car and got lost immediately, and I realized later the hotel I thought I was driving to was in Wichita. To me, what was great about that is how absolutely convinced I was I knew where the hotel was. I would have argued with you, Leo, if you'd been traveling with me. No, I don't need your help. Thank you. I got this. And I didn't got it because the hotel doesn't exist in Indianapolis. So I call that an Indianapolis moment. And I started keeping records of these things. And now when I teach workshops, I get people doing it. It's one of the more popular practices people adopt, partly because it's funny. And so recently, I went to a store a while back. I'm running through the store with a shopping list. I realize I forgot something on an aisle. So I ran back over to the other aisle, left my cart, ran over, got the item, came back, threw my item in the cart, and began to walk off. And as I looked down at my cart, my brain said to me, "That's weird, someone put a purse in my cart." Now that's hilarious. My brain did not say, "Hey dummy, you got the wrong cart." My brain actually said to me, "That's weird, why would someone put a purse in my cart?" And then of course I heard the woman yell at me, and I'm in the wrong aisle, it's not my cart. So when I tell that story, the audience gets it before I did, right? They're like, oh, that's hilarious. Obviously it's not your cart. But to me, the interesting part was how my brain just completely made up a story, as you just pointed out, and it didn't tell me it was doing it. And so how do you learn to hold your views more hypothetically?

Indianapolis Journal is a really simple but fun practice, you know, and probably a great practice for leaders because you talk a lot about— we've had this conversation too, which I think is really funny. And before Randy, I know, has a question for you, but I want to talk about this idea that as the leader, right, your understanding of all this can mean the difference between making your team either stronger and smarter or dumber and weaker, right? So talk about a little about that.

Yeah, that's a key point I make all the time in my work with, say, CEO peer groups, Vistage groups, and whatnot, is that your job as an authority figure is to make your team smarter and stronger. But you walk in the door in the morning, it tends to get dumber and weaker. And it's not that you're necessarily a bad leader or a bad that person. It's that nothing lowers conversational capacity more predictably than the presence of authority. People are more guarded around the boss. They're more careful, a little more reticent sometimes to speak up. And so a really key skill is to learn to wield your authority, that position power you have, in a way that elevates the dialogue and doesn't dampen the dialogue. And so I think nothing does that more than holding your views more hypothetically, being genuinely curious about the views of others. You know, Level 5 leadership, as Jim Collins talks about it, these leaders who are intensely focused on results, but they're all humble people. I think there's a lot of relevance there to conversational capacity, holding your views more humbly, being more intellectually humble, really being genuinely more curious about things like, what am I missing in this issue? Those can be great ways to kind of increase the psychological safety of the group, make it easier for people to challenge you. I have a range of examples in the book of leaders who've done just that, who found when they first tried to get engaged their team, the team was extremely reticent to engage, right? No, I don't think so, because of past history, their expectations, and to your point again, to the stories they're probably telling themselves. And so they had to go to great lengths in some ways to signal they meant it. Leaving the room, for example, when they wanted input from the team to give their time, you know, team time to talk about the issue without the boss in the room dampering the conversation. Rewarding people when they did challenge the boss's perspective. So people realized not only do you not get in trouble when you challenge the boss, she seems to kind of like it. So suddenly people begin to realize, okay, they're not just saying this, they really do mean it. So that's a really important factor in building a really effective team, is getting people to wield their authority in a more deliberate, conscious, and effective way.

If people— so a person's read the book, they really want to embrace these practices. They're working on it in their own life, but they happen to be working for a leader who absolutely doesn't get it, isn't even trying to get it. What are they to do? What can they do in such a situation to try to turn the tide?

Yeah, I get asked that a lot. Uh, so, um, I think you have 3 basic options, right? One is just put up with it.

Okay.

It's not going to change. You just kind of, okay, I'm going to suffer through it. You know, I'm getting paid for this. This is why they, call it work and not picnic. Two is to engage it, maybe, you know, to bring this up. And then one thing nice about the Conversational Capacity framework is it gives you a language, a set of concepts for bringing these sort of issues up. If you're going to get feedback up the chain of command, instead of saying you need to tone it down or you're too aggressive or you're a micromanager, you might say, I think you, despite your genuinely good intentions, are behaving in a way that's lowering the conversation capacity of the team, so while you may be paying for a lot of really smart people to be around the table, I don't think you're getting full access to the smarts you're paying for. You know, let me give you a couple of examples of where I think there's a disconnect and get your reaction to it, because maybe I'm making a mountain out of a molehill. So you could engage it, you could put up with it, and then of course the last option is pull the ripcord and bail. You may move on. And so I always think, you know, if you're going to— putting up with it I think is the least attractive option. And if you're going to use the third option and bail, then why not go with the middle option first? You know, if you're going to bail anyway, go have the conversation. At least use it as a vehicle for building your own conversational capacity. So at least when you do leave, you have a better night's sleep. You know, I wish, I wish they would have taken the feedback more effectively. They didn't decide to do that, but I feel like I handled the situation in a responsible, above-board way. I'm going to look for a place that will value that.

In a lot of my work, and Leo and I've had this conversation, and I'm sure you have had it probably way more than me, CEOs and business owners typically can be stymied with a difficult conversation. It's not so much a group thing, but more of a one-on-one thing with an employee that they really need to give them some feedback in order to possibly save their job. And may avoid those. What are your thoughts on some, some things that owners, CEOs who avoid those kind of difficult conversations, what they can do to be more effective?

Yeah, that's another really tough one. I get that a lot as well. Giving feedback, especially maybe a star performer, someone whose technical abilities are beyond dispute, they're fantastic at their work, but the way they behave with, say, team members or customers is a bit of a problem. How do you give them that feedback in a very constructive, very user-friendly way? You don't want to just talk in ambiguities. And so again, the Conversational Capacity framework gives you a way of doing that. The two errors they make are one, like you said, they avoid the conversation. I don't want to kill the goose that lays the golden egg. Or two, they go in there and they're so frustrated they go ballistic, right? So it's either too much candor or not enough candor. And so how do you find that sweet spot? One thing is I always say treat your feedback more like a hypothesis you want to test out than an indictment. You're not on a subpoena, you're serving them. It's a hypothesis. So, hey, I got some concerns about your behavior and its impact on performance with the team. If you don't mind, let me give you a couple of examples of what I see maybe going wrong. I have a couple ideas of things you might do to become, you know, to build your effectiveness and work more effectively. And then I want to check it with you because maybe I'm misreading things or there may be other factors I'm unaware of. That are affecting what I'm saying. And so bring it up like, here's the story I've got in my head. Let me bounce the story off you and give you some examples. And I want to check it with you because, again, I could be having an Indianapolis moment here. My view of what's happening may be off, and I want to give you the opportunity to help me correct it. It's not always an easy conversation, but I think it's easier to deliver it when it's a hypothesis, and it's certainly easier to hear when someone's coming in with a hypothesis they want to check with you rather than an absolute truth they're expecting you to accept.

Craig, what do you think of— see, a lot of my experiences around when I've seen leaders have these difficult conversations with the person is they deliver it in what many regard as they kind of serve them the shit sandwich, basically, right? So that the first layer is, Craig, you're awesome. What a great guy. Really glad you're here, blah, blah, blah. Then they deliver the blow, and then all of a sudden they come in the third round is like, hey, it'd be great seeing you next week when we do such and such, and everything's all buddy-buddy again, and then they leave.

Looking forward to the company picnic, brother.

Yeah, exactly. So tell us about that and maybe why I would imagine we can do better than that.

Yeah, I think that's sort of a ham-fisted way to get around that bind, right? I don't want to hit them too hard, and, you know, kill the goose that lays the golden egg, so to speak, make the situation worse. And I don't want to soft pedal it too much because then they're not going to get the feedback. So it's sort of a clumsy way of trying to get around that, where I think a more elegant strategy— come in and say, hey, look, I've got a story in my head, I got to take on what's happening relative to your performance. I'd love to check this with you, kind of lay out the details and check it with you, and let's have a conversation about how to move forward. My goal here— I'm not trying to be mean, I'm not trying to put you in your place, I'm not trying to make you feel bad. I'm trying to provide you some information that will help you be far more effective over time. And if I come across in a way that suggests otherwise, hit the pause button and point it out. I'd be more than happy to address it with you. And so I think being a little more direct and a little more straightforward and quite frankly, a lot more authentic, you know, you're not playing games and being manipulative. The old crap sandwich is a little greasy, I think.

Right.

I don't know if that's a full response.

No, I think it is. And I think What you're talking about really, I think, is in the flow of what a servant leader should be all about, right? It's that conversation about— I'm— this conversation is about helping you be more successful. Yeah. Here's the information I have for you around that. Let's talk about that. Let's— and to your point, and where a lot of your work comes in, I don't come into the conversation completely convinced that I'm right and here's what I'm going to tell you. It is, I want to hear from you as well. And then together we're going to take the information we both know and we're going to work with it. Is that fair?

Well, that's very fair. In fact, what I talk about is that in my books is that with high conversational capacity, the conversation shifts from my view versus your view, my story versus your story, to you and I with our differing takes on this issue versus the problem we're trying to solve. And that's a very different place to converse. A lot easier, I think, when it's you and I with our differing views. Yeah, we don't agree. We see things differently. We've obviously got a very different take on this decision, but let's put our heads together, look at this through one another's lenses, and see if we can expand and improve our thinking and make a better choice than either one of us was capable of making before the conversation. And you could paraphrase David Cote, who used to be the CEO of Honeywell, who once said, my job is to be right at the end of the meeting, not at the beginning of it. And so my job is to be right at the end of the conversation, not at the beginning of it, right? So let's talk, let's learn, let's try to look at this through various lenses. And the goal or the purpose is coming back to the beginning of our, uh, our podcast here. The purpose is to learn, to get smarter, and to make the best choices we can about how to, how to move forward together.

So one thing that I, I want to ask you, because we've never actually talked about this, and I know kind of whom you studied under and some of the foundations of your work, but what took you in the direction of conversation and conversational capacity as something that you decided, this is, this is where I want to focus?

Yeah, that's a really good question. So my background academically, organizational development and organizational psychology. For some reason, when I first got exposed to the work of Chris Argyris, it hit me like a bolt of lightning. And I'm not sure exactly why this research really resonated with me in a very deep way. But I first heard it, I was being in a class with Dean Williams, who's now at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard and works with Ron Heifetz. And when I heard him talk about this concept, it just hit me hard. And I'm not sure why that particular concept. I think in some ways I talk about this in the beginning of my new book. I grew up as a kid deathly afraid of two things. One was going to war and one was going to work. And, you know, because I used to watch the news as a kid, right? Vietnam on TV, horrified. I turned 18, I've got to go do that.

Oh my.

But then I'd also listen to my father talk about his day at the post office and talking about really lame supervisors and managers, mean customers, and all kinds of bureaucratic nonsense. And I remember thinking, man, work sounds like it sucks. And of the two things, you know, it seems funny, but the one I was afraid of most was work. Which seems counterintuitive maybe, but I knew war was possible, but I knew work was inevitable. And so I think eventually, you know, after a number of years of trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my life, really realizing organizational development, you know, corporate development, helping people learn to be more effective in the workplace and helping build more effective workplaces really resonated with me. And I think within that, I somehow dialed into this work that was really centered around how people tend to work together and how they tend to communicate in difficult circumstances. Hmm, this seems like a foundational skill to me, right? It kind of breeds it, you know, if you get that right, high conversational capacity, you're running better meetings, you're making better decisions, you're managing change in a more effective way, you're giving feedback as we just discussed in a much more constructive, healthy manner. So it's kind of a foundational competence that affects everything else in the organization. So I think maybe in that way, that's what kind of appealed to me, I guess.

Nice.

Craig, we are, we're big fans of your work for a lot of reasons, but one of the things that always comes up every time that Leo and I talk about you and your work is humor. What are your thoughts about humor when it comes to the conversations that we have for productivity? And what, what is humor's role in all of that?

Great question, Rand. Yeah. Um, I actually talk about this a little bit in the new book. So I expand the sweet spot fairly dramatically instead of just candor and courage and curiosity and humility. I think in our teams and in our work relationships, we need passion balanced with compassion. So people need to be passionate, but if it's passion, no compassion, it can come across in a pretty aggressive way. But I also talk about the balance of being serious-minded. We need to take the problems and the decisions we're facing in a very serious way, but that doesn't mean we can't simultaneously be lighthearted. So I think humor is really key, particularly in tough situations. And so I think that's a really good place to operate. So I'm a big fan of humor. Especially when it's used as a— directed at oneself. Great way to stay more intellectually humble is to, you know, always be aware of your foibles and to laugh at them. And so I think that's a really key thing. And I'm a bit of a screw-off. I like to goof around. In fact, in the work I do with a lot of places, whether it's the CDC or the Child Poverty Collaborative in Cincinnati or other organizations, I often say if you're not goofing around and screwing off a little bit, you're just not taking the problem seriously. So I think humor is really important. It's a great way to not get too overly stressed out, not to take yourself too seriously. So that's a really good point. I spend a bit of time in the new book talking about that, why humor is so critical.

Yeah, you know, obviously, yeah, because humor can be used as a weapon sometimes for people.

Yes.

You know, when they're— unlike what you said, self-deprecating humor is one thing, but when you use it as to make someone else feel small, You know, that's obviously, I know, not the way.

Yeah, biting, sarcastic humor, right? Which is, yeah, that dark humor, that can be a very destructive weapon, right? So I think that goes to mindset, right? What needs to be more important to you here is learning, getting smarter, making sense of the problem together and moving forward. And if we can use a little humor along the way, sweet.

You know, the other thing too is, and what plays into this is not only our conversational capacity, which some people, might think of in terms of just our ability to speak to these things, but also our willingness to listen for understanding and to listen with the hope, or at least the default position, that what's coming at me is with good intent. So that we're not immediately getting our back up over something where— because we know, and whether it's in the heat of a passionate conversation or something, not everything is going to come out perfectly all the time. People aren't sitting down and crafting notes and framing it exactly the way they would want to say it to you. Sometimes it just comes out there. And sometimes it can be at first blush, you got to take a breath, right, when you're hearing that. So as listeners, how can we just be better about that? Because I think that's tough, especially when we're in a meeting and we don't want to look weak. Because we're somehow not responding in that combative way that may be expected of us. But somehow we're able to do a little bit of jujitsu, a little bit of, you know, again, listening with intent.

Well, I think two things. One, I think if you're holding your own views more hypothetically and you're getting better and better at doing this, perhaps by keeping an Indianapolis journal, you're less likely to just accept that story your brain's handing you about someone else's intent in a conversation. So you may— your immediate reaction might be a little defensive and say, wait a minute, this probably may not be what they mean. You know, I could be looking down at my cart, the wrong cart, wondering why there's a purse in it. Right. And so I think that ability to hold your views a bit more hypothetically helps there. And then I think the other thing is dramatically ramping up the curiosity. You know, why are they reacting this way? Even if they are genuinely upset, maybe they are behaving in a way that's counterproductive. What's going on here? I've always liked a quote from Bob Kegan, the adult developmental psychologist who's also influenced my work a fair bit. Who once said, behind every frustration is something cared about. And so, man, this person's pissed off. They are going off on me. That's interesting. You know, what do they care about here? What's going on? Getting curious about at least where's the motivation for the anger? What's kind of what's going on here? What story are they telling them? Or perhaps I've actually done something to offend them. Maybe it's me who's behaved in a way that's counterproductive and I don't realize it, and I need to identify that as quickly as I can so I can address it. And so I think curiosity, humility, and holding your views more hypothetically are great ways about to guard against that knee-jerk defensive reaction when someone else may not be behaving in the perfect— in a perfect way.

It is funny because to your point, when someone gets really, really angry, it's because they care at some level there, because otherwise they're not getting worked up, which is why sometimes the antidote to that is is complete indifference, you know, we think, right? When we, when we kind of deal with people that way and we think, oh no, you know, that becomes really pretty brutal sometimes.

Yeah, absolutely. Well, a great example again is the parent-teacher conference where the parents start off by saying, I'm sick and tired of you giving my daughter bad grades because you people don't like the way my wife works with the district. And rather get defensive and upset, rather than say, don't come back, don't come in here and talk to me like that, it's not my fault your daughter's stupid. You know, or shutting down and can't, you know, tell me, boy, you know, you're obviously upset about this. Can you give me a couple of quick examples? What leads you to think that's going on here? What are you seeing from me as your daughter's teacher that leads you to think grade retribution is the issue here? So, you know, getting curious about that aggressive attack almost rather than getting defensive starts to slow down the conversation. It also holds them accountable for providing more information. You're not just going to accept their view at face value. You're saying, can you tell me a little more? What leads you to think that? Can you give me an example of what you've seen or heard that leads you to think that's what's going on here? So you can unpack that a lot. But I think it's a great way to respond to someone who's being verbally aggressive, getting curious. It's counterintuitive, which is where the discipline comes in.

And of course, the longer the gap between when the daughter gets her grades and when the parent-teacher conference is, Right, the greater the opportunity to fill that vacuum we talked about with our assumptions. So now that story gets really fine-tuned, doesn't it?

Yeah, they— and then they talk at the dinner table and the snowball gets bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger, and then it comes rolling into the classroom for the parent-teacher conference, and there's a lot of energy behind it, a lot of momentum. That's a great analogy. Yeah, absolutely. And so that ability to stay in the sweet spot when that, you know, big old ball of energy is rolling in with all these stories they've been telling themselves for a few weeks You know, how do you know if you can stay in the sweet spot when that's rolling in the door? That's high conversational capacity. And that's kind of the work I do is try to— how do I help people learn to day over day over day build their conversational capacity? So every meeting, every decision, every difficult conversation becomes an opportunity to practice. So it's not like I read the book and I'm magically good at staying in the sweet spot. This is something that takes some time. Someone recently said what I like about conversational capacity is it's immediately applicable. And yet you can tell there's a lifetime of practice. And I like that way of thinking about it. It is a discipline in that sense of the word.

Since 2013, Craig, what have you— what are some of the big things that you've seen, some of the big shifts that you've seen in your work? What are your reasons for being optimistic and some reasons that you could be pessimistic?

I'm always blown away at, you know, the vast majority of people out there, the vast majority of people want to be good human beings. They want to be good team members. They want to be good leaders. Their heart is in the right place. Place. And I think, you know, what's encouraging is a lot more interesting and really good work going on out there to help people, you know, kind of achieve that. So more and more attention on things like emotional intelligence, psychological safety, engagement, right, creating workplaces that are just good for business, but good for people. So I think there's a lot of encouraging work out there that's not just showing why that's important, that it actually, you know, creates more value over time, but really good research that shows how do you do it, how do you create these kinds of workplaces. So I think that's encouraging. You also see during the pandemic, I've been really impressed with the agility with which a lot of people have made some pretty tough changes in their organizations to deal with the situation. So while it's not been easy and a lot of stress out there, looking at all the creative ways different teams and different business leaders have responded, it's like, wow, you know, we're more flexible and more agile than we give ourselves credit when the chips fall. We may, you know, when things are cruising along, we don't have to tap into that. But I think You know, when the chips are down like it has been here over the last few months, it's impressive to see people kind of rising to the occasion and experimenting with new ways of working together, new ways of making decisions, even in some cases completely pivoting the business to respond in a different way because the world as we know it no longer exists.

You know, I've got one question that I've been meaning to ask, and that is, you know, I think about these groups, whether it's for CEOs or key executives in these peer groups that I think really serve as great practice fields in many respects, right? Because, you know, if you looked up practice in golf, for example, you'd get videos and lessons and all that kind of stuff. And when you look up practice in business, you get like best practices on things because there's no such thing as— you just go and you're suiting up every day and it's game day and there is no practice, there is none of that, right? So these groups, I think, are a great place to practice our conversational capacity for sure. The difference, however, I think, and I'd love for you to speak to this, is there are, there's a whole different layer of consequences in the workplace when you're part of a work team than there is when you are part of a peer group.

Right.

So how does that factor into things? How do we get ourselves past that part of it?

The risks are higher. Yeah. I would often do is say, you know, what, what are the risks of practicing this stuff and building your conversational capacity? Because you're going to trip, you're going to fall down. You know, it's going to, it's going to be embarrassing sometimes, quite frankly. The other thing is, what are the risks of not doing it? You know, what are the risks of not— I think the risks of not building your conversation capacity are far worse when you really pay, you know, if you do a pro-con analysis and kind of like, what are the advantages versus what are the disadvantages? There's no comparison, right? So yeah, it may be a little awkward at first. I've got to experiment with some new skills. As my good friend Frank Barrett said, who wrote the book Yes to the Mess, you know, he's a jazz pianist but also a PhD in organizational behavior, he says jazz artists perform and experiment at the same time. And I think that in some ways we want to build our conversational capacity. We're in meetings, we're performing and experimenting at the same time. So that's an awkward place sometimes to go. But if we don't do that, we're stuck. We're going to be, you know, kind of approaching the same old situations, the same old behavioral patterns, you know, because we're never really investing in trying to make change. And to me, that's a scarier proposition. What if 10 years from now, I'm still having the same lame conversations I'm having right now. Man, that should scare me. I'd like 10 years from now to be operating at a completely different level where I'm less defensive and more learning-focused. I'm able to stay on my feet, balanced, candid, and curious even in circumstances that conspire against it. I think that serves me well not just in my professional career. I'm more likely to advance if I'm better and better at doing this, but I think it's going to have a bleed-over effect in that I'm going to be a better a better, you know, significant other, a better friend, a better spouse or community member. And so I think really getting people to pay attention to what are the risks of not building your conversational capacity.

Yeah, I think that's certainly among one of the big takeaways here today, right, is it's really why not? You know, I mean, this is something that we can all— and I think for everyone to keep in mind as well, this isn't just about the workplace. This is, you talked about parent-teacher conferences to start, this is with our spouses, this is with our family, this is the ability to have these kinds of conversations, you know, with everyone in our lives and to be able to bring that level of dialogue everywhere. But anyway, Randy, any final thoughts before we wrap up?

No, just really, really happy that you joined us, Craig, especially for this kind of our maiden voyage for for PeerNovation, you know, the rebranding of this. Leo and I have been talking over the last few weeks about your work and about this kind of this lane that we really are dedicated to kind of driving our own vehicle down to try to stay more in the lane. So I would say for our audience, we hope that you've gotten great value from Craig. We're going to obviously promote your work and we encourage all of our listeners and our viewers to to read, read your books and, um, really appreciate you being here.

Well, I really appreciate the invitation. It was great chatting with you too. So thank you.

Well, it's been, it's been great. And I think, you know, if I were to quickly summarize a bit of the difference between reading either one of Craig's books and reading most other books, there's just a lot of books out there that'll tell you what to do. There are far fewer books that really crawl inside, helping you how to do it. So I think this is where Craig's work is just worth its weight in gold. I most certainly encourage you to get out and get a copy of Conversational Capacity and Influence in Action, because I think both are terrific. And Craig, we're so thrilled and so, you know, appreciative that you joined us here today. Thanks again.

Thank you both. My genuine pleasure. This was a lot of fun. So thank you.

Thank you for joining us. To subscribe to the podcast and learn more about how you can engage peer innovation for your organization, contact us on the website at peerinnovation.co. Till next week, remember, the power of we begins with you.