Truth At Work Seminar Overview

Hi, I'm Mark Murphy, author of Truth at Work, and I want to tell you a bit about our upcoming seminar and certification program. Truth at Work is a book that delves into the science of delivering tough messages. It's really the follow-up to my book 100 Percenters, and the reason I wrote this book, frankly, is to not only give us the science but really help make our workplaces a bit more honest. Right? Something we could all use a bit more of. Now, sometimes people will say, well, do we really need more honesty? One of our studies asked managers, how many of you have actually avoided giving somebody tough feedback? 81% of leaders say, I have avoided giving somebody tough feedback because I was afraid their head was going to explode. They were going to react terribly. Here's the really bitter irony of this, though. 51% of employees say, I just don't get enough feedback or constructive insight from my leader. And that's a real problem. Now, there have been books, Steve, delving with this issue and dealing with this issue going on decades. Why now? Why another book right here? Well, the reality is this world is different. The book you got 10 years ago doesn't work in today's environment. Think of it this way. One of the things that has happened in the past few years is that social media has trained our brains to react exactly the wrong way to tough feedback. Why do people's heads explode? Well, because Facebook and Twitter and all the rest have trained us to respond emotionally and reactively to everything. You know, when we think about the Facebook emojis, there's no emoji that says, oh, I'd like more interesting, I'd like some more insight, I'd like some more information, this seems factually incorrect. No, it's all emotional. Haha, yay, wow, I'm sad, I'm angry. This is how the world has trained us to operate, and it is the exact wrong way to operate if we want to actually have difficult conversations at work. We did a study recently taking a look at whether or not fake news and alternative facts and all of that nonsense have made their way into the workplace. And people say in the past 6 months, more than 50% of people say, I've seen an increase just in the past 6 months of making excuses. Nearly 50% of people say, I've seen an increase in dismissing others' ideas, sarcasm, blaming, hyperbole or exaggeration, and the list goes on. This is a radically different era than it was 5 years ago, 10 years ago, and we need some much better science and a new generation of techniques in order to have these kinds of difficult conversations. There's an increase lately in the number of truth killers we see roaming around. These are the psychological mechanisms that prevent us from really hearing the truth. Cognitive dissonance, Dunning-Kruger, all of these crazy things are stopping us from hearing tough messages, and they're making it nigh impossible for leaders to give feedback, for employees to give feedback to one another, for an employee, let alone to give feedback to their boss. So we need a whole new generation of techniques. That's why this Truth at Work seminar and certification program came about. Now, there's a couple things we're going to talk about. Number one, there is a 2-day intensive training on the science of delivering tough messages. Not just the science, but actually how to do it. Let me talk for a minute about what's in that 2-day course. Number one, we're going to talk about the truth killers, all of the psychological blockages that stop people from hearing the truth, and how do you actually overcome them. Things like cognitive dissonance— when we put up boundaries whenever we hear something that is dissonant with or at odds with ourselves self-image, we tend to put up barriers, we tend to shut down. Things like the Dunning-Kruger effect, a wonderful but insidious little technique that says essentially we think we are a lot better than we actually are. We don't recognize our areas of incompetence, and it's a tricky little thing to overcome, but it's one we're going to show you the science behind how you actually get somebody who is confident and unaware to become a little more aware. We're going to talk about fact-based communication. Turns out in every conversation there's really 4 layers. There's facts, but then there's all the interpretations, emotional reactions, and desired ends. And that's where conversations start to get haywire. Turns out people don't react so badly to the facts. What they react badly to is all of the interpretations, reactions, and ends. But we're not just going to teach you the science behind this. We're actually going to train you how to, in any conversation, immediately dissect and identify Why? Was that a fact or was that an interpretation? Was that an emotional reaction? Was that something else entirely? We're going to talk about some very cool techniques like perspective-taking and temporal distancing, things that actually calm us down when we're going into a tough conversation and that actually calm other people down as well. We're going to talk about word pictures, a technique for putting boundaries on any tough conversation. Not only is it an amazing tool for setting expectations for people, it's also a way for us to make sure that no conversation ever gets too far out of whack. We're going to talk about scripts like the IDEAS script. It's a way of turning a confrontation into a conversation. Think of it this way: conversations, to really be a conversation, there needs to be about as many questions as there are statements. But think about the last tough discussion you had. Were there really as many questions as there were statements? How do you actually pull that off in real life? That's where tools like the IDEAS script come into play. We're going to look at techniques like structured listening, why it's so much more advanced than the old active listening. Active listening was okay, but this new one, structured listening, much more robust to actually reveal what's going on with another person. We're going to take a look at the language that people use, trigger words, what sort of language actually sets people off and makes conversations go haywire very quickly. We're going to make sure that we turn our conversations away from backwards-looking conversations into much more forward-looking conversations. How many times have you seen somebody, a manager for example, go and give somebody constructive feedback and the person makes the corrective leap, they get it, but the manager just keeps going and going and going and pounding it into their heads until the person breaks down? We need to stop those kinds of behaviors. We're going to do all of this within a context of all of the applications you're gonna need this for in the workplace. Not every conversation is going to be a neat and clean sit down and have a deep discussion with somebody. Sometimes you're gonna be doing it in a meeting. Sometimes you're gonna be doing it with a boss. Sometimes you're gonna be doing it with a colleague. You're gonna do this with clients. You need to know all of the various applications for this. Now, that's just a hint of what we're gonna cover in the 2-day intensive workshop. But there is another option in addition to doing the 2-day intensive workshop so that you can for yourself master the science of delivering tough messages for having what I call truth talks. There is another option to this program, and that is to add on a 3rd day to this training program. So the first 2 days are the intensive learn for yourself, but if you want to, there is a 3rd day that you can add on that is your certification program where After you've mastered the content in the first 2 days, we take this 3rd day and we teach you how to deliver this training to everybody else in your organization. So if you want to become certified in Truth@Work, you go through the 3rd day. And the 3rd day, we take all of the content you just learned and we now teach you how to teach it to others. And it's a very cool setup because you get all of the practical applications. How do I teach this in a 1-hour class? How do I teach this in a half day? I wanted to do the full 2 days like you just did, Mark Murphy, how do I do that? We're going to teach you how to apply all of this to things like change management and difficult conversations and performance reviews and innovation initiatives and all the rest. This certification is a little bit different than some of the other certification programs you've seen. Yes, you go through the 2-day intensive training, then you go through the 1-day certification program. Now How is it different? Well, there's a couple things. Number 1, once you're certified, you don't have to come back and pay us to get workbooks for all the people you're going to train. When you get certified by us, there is just an annual license fee, and you can train as many people as you want to train. You can take all of the materials, you get all of the materials, our videos, our exercises, the PowerPoints, and you can customize this training however you want. We're not going to say to you, you have to train everybody in your company in a 2-day session. No, listen, if you only have an hour to train people, we're gonna show you how to actually do this training in 1 hour. You can make up your own handouts. You take all of our materials and you can cut it up and create the handouts and the exercises you want for whatever particular group. So if you're going into a group of executives, you're going into a group of newly minted employees, you learn all of this content, but you get the flexibility to apply it however you want. And as I said, you do not have to come back, and every time you want to hold a class of 30 new managers in your organization, you don't have to come back and pay us $200 ahead to get the materials. You've got the materials. So I invite you, take a look at the program, decide first where you want to go, which city you want to go to, which dates you want to go to, and then decide, do you want to go to just the 2-day program, or do you want to add on that 3rd day and actually get certified so you can bring Truth at Work, all this advanced new science, all these advanced new techniques, to your company and get everybody in your organization speaking the truth. With that, you know you can always get a hold of us at any time at leadershipiq.com. We hope to see you at this upcoming program. Take care.