Getting The Unsaid Said - Steven Gaffney - Fractional C-Suite Retreat - Episode # 34

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Once a week, we take a break from the hustle and bustle in business to talk about innovations and what's new in the C-suite. This is the Fractional C-Suite Retreat, and I'm Joseph Frost. Pull up a seat at the fire, grab a drink, smoke a cigar, and just join me as we relax, learn, and get inspired. This retreat is sponsored by Your CMO, helping organizations grow with better marketing strategy.

Welcome.

Today's guest is the president and CEO of Stephen Gaffney Company, an author of 6 books in organizational communication and change. Stephen's an expert in honest communication and resolving conflict, a National Speakers Association certified speaking professional. Welcome, Stephen Gaffney. How are you?

Good. Thanks for having me on, Joe.

Yeah, it's great to have you here. I'm, I'm excited. I've been thinking about what you and I talked about just last week for, uh, for quite a while, and I'm, I'm excited to go get into it. But before I do, I wanna open with just a simple question, for all of our guests, which is, what's one thing that you think the C-suites out there need to know about today? An opportunity or, or something that you think's really interesting that C-suites just need to know about that they may not?

Well, it's really the biggest problem I see out there. And, you know, a lot of the work we do is around teams, executive teams, but it's the biggest problem in all relationships. All organizations is not what people say. It's actually what they don't say. And in fact, that would be the big headline, getting the unsaid said, right? I mean, how often have you thought, why didn't they just tell me that? If they told me that, we could have fixed the problem. And so we do a lot of work around how to get the unsaid said, and we can even talk about that. But that's the one thing I would just want everybody to remember, because I think all problems can be traced back to, if they had just told me, we could have probably fixed the problem.

So, you know, how do you do that? Or how do you get that message across? Or what are some of the tactics to get those unsaid things said?

Well, there's a lot of things, but I think the first thing is making people aware that that's the problem, right? So Dr. Will Shoote wrote a book years ago called The Human Element. He studied all these organizations, but he basically found out that the number one problem is lack of honest communication. But honest communication, not meaning about like truth or lies, Is this what people just didn't say to each other? That's the form of honest communication. So I, what a lot of what the work we do is first making people aware. And then as soon as I say that, getting the unsaid said, most executives and people say, yeah, that's it. You know, and here's an easy example of that. And then we could talk about, you know, ways to kind of address this. I was doing a session for a client of mine, a government entity, but do a lot in the corporate world. But anyway, this lady, pushed back on me. She goes, I don't think that's the case because sometimes you get the unsaid said and people get upset. And I said, yeah, that's true. I said, well, what, give me an example. So she said, you know, my coworker, my peer is not doing the right job and dropping the ball. So I let him know, you know, look, you're dropping the ball and, you know, this isn't good. And he got really upset. And I said, okay, I can understand that. I said, but why did you say that? And she said, well, because I care about him. I definitely care about the organization, the mission, and I want us to all do great together and to accomplish what we're set out to do. And I said, did he say all of that? And of course she said, no. I said, I want to contend, I want to push back and say in response is when you really look at most problems, it isn't what people say, it's what they don't say. I mean, think about it even just on a human level, like somebody's feelings get hurt, right? Because you share something. Well, hurt feelings don't make people leave a relationship or check out. It's that when somebody's feelings are hurt or gets upset and we just leave, or the other person leaves. But if you stick with a person and you say, look, I don't mean that, it's not my intention, but here's what I'm trying to do, a lot of people are very understanding about it. So I think the first thing is being aware of the problem, and then we can go through a whole bunch of strategies. And so here's one as an example. Creating emotional safety. So, you know, most of that stuff out there is around psychological safety. Of course, you've heard about that and most people have, but I don't like that term because psychological safety, I mean, what is that? I mean, it's too cerebral. The bottom line, people need to feel safe. So you might say, okay, well, how does that play into it? Well, have you ever given somebody honest feedback and they flipped out? Yeah. And then next time you ask them for, or next time they ask us for feedback, we just go, oh, I'm not going there. Yeah. Yeah. So I think the first thing is to really make sure that our reaction makes the other person feel safe. And if we get upset, which sometimes we do, is to clean it up, to just say, look, I just, I'm sorry about that. Just, I'm glad you told me that. And so another strategy, and I'll just throw this out there, then we can go wherever you want. Is rewarding honesty. And if you think about it, how often have organizations done like these employee surveys, right? And they take 6 months or 8 months to get the feedback to the employees. And so people say, well, I feel safe to speak up, but nothing happens. So there's no reward, there's no payoff, you know? So it's a, it's a big issue making people feel safe. But then on the other hand is rewarding honesty. All of which we could talk about. And there's a lot of other strategies, but those are some of the things.

When I can see times where you might say too much then, like, when do you know, when is, when is it, when do you need to stop? You know, sometimes you don't wanna say the unsaid, or maybe you shouldn't for certain reasons, or maybe you should. I don't know. When do, how do you, how do you filter that? You start building this, this culture of complete honesty and then You know, at what point does it stop?

Well, can you think of an example? Because I can just respond overall. But if there's an example that comes to mind, I can kind of go through how that would be something where somebody might say too much. Yeah.

I mean, it's hard for me to think of a specific example, but I can imagine, you know, it's probably hard to really say too much. As I'm reflecting on my question, there's, there's probably nothing that you couldn't say that you shouldn't say.

Yeah.

In a true organization that's open and honest and appreciative of that, and that's inside that culture, there rarely is a— you really could cross the line, I would guess, is what you found.

Yeah, I, I agree with that. There are some, um, situations like— so first of all, there's certain things that we legally and ethically can or cannot say, you know, that kind of thing. So let's put that aside because those are kind of obvious, you know, some things are just wrong to say and that type of thing, and hopefully wouldn't think that way. But whatever, it's not right to say. But I think what happens is that a lot of people think their opinions are facts. So one distinction is to distinguish fact from an opinion. So for example, if we think somebody is lazy, disrespectful, or rude, let's just say, and we say that, well, okay, you could look at should we say that? But the other thing is that's an opinion. What are the facts? So let's say the fact might be they didn't respond to our email. And we may, and you know how it lands with us, our opinion is that they don't care about us. Well, if we just say to the person, look, I just wanna be upfront, you don't care about me. Well, that's sharing my opinion as if it's a fact. So we do a lot of work around distinguishing fact from opinion because you can communicate the facts. So a really safe way to have an honest conversation is to present the facts and then ask a question. You don't even have to share a lot of your opinion. For example, You might say, look, I noticed I haven't heard back from my email, and I noticed I heard through the grapevine that you're upset. What's going on? Or can you help me understand where we are with that? Or is there anything I could do to improve things? That would all be safe to say. All I'm eliminating is my opinion. And there's another exercise we do in a lot of the work we are— a lot of the company, you know, a lot of the organization we do work with.. And that proves, and here's a startling thing, 50 to 70% of our opinions on a daily basis are wrong. In fact, most what people think in their head on a daily basis is just incorrect, but people think they're right, right?

Yeah.

Because we remember that. So that's a big distinction, is distinguishing fact from opinion, and then at least communicating the facts and then asking a question. Does that make sense?

Absolutely. Yeah, it helps. I guess where I was going with the, my thought was also we have assumptions about how people are gonna react to things we say.

Yeah.

And a lot of times those assumptions are not correct either. They're just our assumptions.

Yeah.

So when I was going down, well, if I said this and this and this, that person might take it the wrong way and therefore maybe that's where I should stop saying as much as I wanna say. But if you're really laying out the facts, and you're not letting your own self-talk get in the way, it should be a conversation that's worth having in the right environment.

Or at least finish off, right? So we could say our opinions, but then make sure we say the rest. Look, I care, and this is the reason why I'm explaining it, and this is what I'm trying to do. The problem is that usually people is, again, it's not usually what we say that trips us up. It's what we leave out. And it's just sharing it all. And then usually that goes well. And even if it doesn't, in the end, it works well. I'll give you an example. So we do a lot of work with executive teams. And so this president of this organization hired me to obviously do a session and to work with the team. And so part of the work we do is interviewing people privately and finding out what are some of the issues. So he was saying, look, I want to hire you because the team isn't working as effectively. And they're, you know, he had a lot of challenges with them. But what the report came back was he was the problem. And so, so, you know, because we're from the outside, people feel safe to say it. And we only say things that, you know, there's other people that say, not just one-offs. And so he got upset. I gotta tell you, Joe, he didn't like it. And so I said to him, look, when's a good time to find this feedback out? I mean, so, and let me coach you on what to do about it. So I worked with him on changing some of those behaviors, and it all worked out well. And in the end, he was happy. But so where am I headed with this? Sometimes we say feedback, and initially it is upsetting, but if you stick with it and on the other side, we have to make sure we make people feel safe and we use their feedback in a good way. But when you really think about it, I, you know, I work with a lot of executive leadership teams, and there's usually, it's a big issue what they're not saying to each other.. And you gotta get that unsaid said.

I love it. Now that kind of transitions into the area that I wanted to talk about that, that you mentioned. It's that a lot of teams work as committees and a lot of, yeah, groups work as committees and not teams. And I, I'm curious how you came about that understanding and then how you differentiate the two. That was a big aha moment when you mentioned to me, I'm like, that makes so much sense. I'm just curious, how you evolved to that point, and then how you differentiate and make people aware of how they're acting and behaving as teams or as committees.

So first, let me kind of back up and just say, so for people listening or watching or whatever, the work we do is all around, as I said, executive leadership teams, but specifically it's around creating consistently high-achieving teams. And I don't like the word hype or the terminology high-performing teams. Because I think it's a little bit dated and it's missing— performing could be confused with hard work, and it's really about achieving, producing results, and then how to do it consistently. And there's 5 characteristics of a consistently high-achieving team, and one of them is what you're referring to. And if people want to know, they can send us an email and I can, I can send them a document. It doesn't cost any money, and they can kind of see how they're doing. But the first characteristic is it operates— a team wins and gets challenged together. A committee wins or loses separately. And in other words, they all kind of have their own agenda. And my experience is that most leadership teams, most of them are really committees and they're not teams. And the first person who got me thinking about this distinction is Alan Weiss. And he wrote a book called, and written many, many books, but one of his bestselling books is Million Dollar Consulting. People can look him up. He's been a mentor to me and I've really learned a lot. But he made me aware of that distinction. And there are other distinctions, but when you really think about it, you sit there with the teams and they represent their own area. And then as soon as there's a problem, they go, well, Joe, I'm doing the right job. They're messing up. Well, that's a committee, right? Because a team would say, well, that person is dropping the ball, but how can we help them out? Because we're all going to win or get challenged or win or lose together. Versus a committee. So when I go through that distinction, a lot of people realize, you know what, we are a committee. So we gotta address what it is. The second characteristic, which kind of helps with that, is thinking of the team first and then position second. Team first, position second. And if you think about it, a lot of people go to a leadership team and, or team, and they think they should represent their area, but that's not correct. They should think of the team that they're participating in first and then back into the position. And so an example of this, I had a client of mine that took this principle and changed things. And what he did is he took over an organization that wasn't doing well, and he said to his leadership team, look, I want you to leave your position at the door. When we meet as a leadership team, everything's fair game, and you have the right to challenge each other. And just, we want to work at them. We have— when have debate and think of the team, the organization first, then the position. And within a year, they had almost doubled their revenue and they cut 30% of the workforce. But the— what's startling about the 30% of the workforce is it wasn't because they needed to cut it, but there was so many duplicate areas that people weren't sharing with each other. So they had built their own little resources, right? Because when we don't trust another area, we we develop a little bit of a backup area. So that's how it all fits together. And it's almost magical when you think about it because it begins to explain why a lot of teams aren't doing well because they're representing their area. I don't know if you've seen that, but it's—

Oh yeah, I see a lot. And it's particularly common amongst, I would say, like growing teams, new team members, you know, teams that have been around for a long time and really comfortable with each other. You don't see it as much, but some of the newer organizations or newer leadership teams that evolve is where I see it. And I'm curious when it gets to goal setting, that's in a lot of organizations.

I just wanna say, I just wanna say I see this with, I get dropped into obviously new teams, but I've seen this with teams that have worked for a long time together. They almost respect each other's areas too much. And if you think about it, and this is a question I love to ask people, What is in it for the other person? What's the value we bring to someone else when we don't have their expertise? When we don't— if you think about it, a lot of times we sit there in a meeting, we go, I don't have their expertise, so I'm just gonna defer to them. But actually, we bring value to them because we don't have their expertise. And that's of course, because they're in that box, right? And so what you tend to find out is organizations they've almost developed these little silos, right? And because we're too respectful instead of challenging. So anyway, I just wanna throw that out there cuz I see this a lot. And the reason why I wanna bring this up is cuz when people go, oh, my team's been together for a long time and I can see that. Look, that's just, it's, these are easy fixes. We just gotta deal with that and move it forward. But anyway, you're starting to say something about goals. I just wanted to make sure I got—

No, thanks for pointing that out cuz yeah, I didn't wanna make it suggest that it's pervasive against all Across all organizations and all teams and tenures. But I think I see it a lot when it gets to goal setting. You know what, I'm around a lot of companies that do quarterly prioritization of goals, rocks that sometimes called, and, and then they assign a rock to an individual and then it, like, they assign these, they come up with these company priorities and then they individualize the owner of the rock. In this situation, and then the owner of the rock goes out in a silo and either achieves the rock or doesn't achieve the rock. And I see a lot of, of that lack of teamwork, as you mentioned, in, in that scenario. Are there alternative ways to set goals and assign accountability that teams have that maybe committees could, could evolve into?

Well, you bring up a really great point on— and a lot of application in a lot of different ways. So under the, the consistently high achieving teamwork that we do, there's 12 essential elements. There's like, if you plug 'em in, it'll make the team work really well. And one of 'em is kind of what you're addressing around goals. And I call it, uh, know your north star PGS. And PGS stands for purpose, goals, and strategy. So why we exist, and we can talk about that and with impact, but the goal part, which you're specifically addressing, and I see this a lot, you, you're spot on. And the problem is that we have individual goals, but we act, we want the team to kind of work together instead of having the joint goal. And so another essential element is collective accountability. And so the collective accountability is we're all in this together. So you're right, if I sit there and I assign somebody a goal, but I don't make it part of a team goal, and there are, you know, there are reasons to have individual or area goals, but if we don't have a joint goal that we hold everybody accountable to, then no wonder it's not working as a team. I'll give you an example. A client of mine was brought in because what happened was the CEO was saying, look, we all wanna work together. We're one team. And, you know, all the typical slogans, right? But the reality is the executives weren't. And the reason for that is because all their compensation and how they were judged by performance was in their own area. There was no, I mean, yes, they got, it's good for the overall company to work, But there was not really an accountability from the high end and to hold people accountable for on the whole point. So of course, if we're sitting there and we're part of a team, we're sitting there going, yeah, we should work as a team, but you're going to judge me only on my own area. Okay, well, of course I'm going to focus on my area. Now, there are workarounds for all of that because the truth is that even in that scenario, Great teams produce great performers, but great performers always don't necessarily produce great teams. So we should be better at our job by being part of a great team. But to your point, the goals are usually lacking and there has to be those collective accountability type of goals. Otherwise, you're right. It's not, you know, it's, these are just gonna be slogans, you know, all these, like, there's no I in team and all these things that don't make a bit of difference. You know, it's a slogan won't move it. It's what we're, how we're, how we're acting and behaving. So I don't know if that addresses what you're saying, but that's what I'm thinking anyway, as you're talking. Yeah.

Um, it does a little bit. And I just, practically speaking, someone, I don't know how familiar, are you familiar with EOS Traction or Scaling Up?

Okay. Well, I'm not very familiar with that, but I'm familiar with it. I don't know the system in detail.

So the, in, oh, one of the premises behind EOS Traction is every individual needs to have a rock or priority for the— for each quarter, at least one. So it gives them focus. And I— there's value to that, right? Everybody knows what they need to do to add value to organization. But it also kind of enforces that siloing effect that you're bringing to. And I'm just curious if you've seen any innovative ways that you can have more than one person or a team on a goal, because I also believe that, you know, one, if not one person's accountable, nobody's accountable. So you kind of have to have, absolutely, give it, give and take there. So how have you reconcile those two ideas where you want people accountable for specific things, but you also want everyone accountable for the team outcomes?

I'll give you a great example, a recent example. So I was brought in with a client that the issue was we're not really integrated and they're, they're kind of working together, but not so integrated. And the CEO, the president of the company wanted them to be very integrated. So we talked about it. We could talk about goals, but we ended up— what I ended up doing was facilitating a conversation around, about the subject matter and then having people be accountable for particular parts. So they were like, okay, who's— because joint accountability, to your point, means no accountability, but individual for particular parts of it. But they were also judged for the total picture. And so it's an and, not an or. So I think the problem is when we make it an or, or only an area, just like if it's only collective accountability and there's no individual accountability, that's a problem because somebody will say, oh, I thought they had it. And sometimes we want to be able to own a certain area and do really well. So it's an and, not an or.

That makes sense. That helps. Yeah, I can see that. Um, there's a lot of individuals on a team and a lot of different personalities and types of people. There's, you know, the hard— the high A's and the, you know, all the personality tests. Um, and each one has a little bit different approach to problem solving or natural ability or instincts. Or how do you— how does that play into what you teach? Because I And when I think back to the original question or conversation around what's not said, there's a lot of people that just naturally don't wanna say they're not talkers or they're not, they're, they're intuitive thinkers. So how do those, that variability, how do you flesh that out? And I'm sure awareness is part of it, but are there other tricks or tips?

Well, people definitely have a natural tendency, but I was, but my thought around getting the unsaid said and people's tendency is not sharing is a learned behavior. And my evidence to prove this point is if you look at little kids, right, they share and share, and then they're told, don't say that, don't say that. And some of it is appropriate to not say, but we're told not to share. And then some people have had bad experiences over time where they've shared and something bad happened, you know, or maybe they got fired or maybe penalized. Because I've been brought into situations where the previous people that were running it was, yeah, they wanted people to share, but people were penalized, right? So all of this could happen. So it's a learned behavior. So here's what I've experienced, that even the most quiet people, you could say, if they feel safe and they're rewarded for their honesty, they will speak up. And actually, I've been at this for over 25 years. I've never seen an exception. I can get almost anyone to share as long as those two things are happening. There are other techniques, but the reason why I say this is because often we will defer to somebody, oh, they're just quiet. They don't want to share. And here's why that's an issue. Because if we're running a team and we say, okay, any questions, or anybody got anything to share, that way of thinking only lends itself to people who feel comfortable to share. But there are quiet people that have great wisdom to share. So another essential element is everyone shares to get the unsaid said. And what I mean by that is I'm a big proponent of calling on people. You know, it's not okay to hide out. But then when you call on people, they may be, you know, you let them know it's happening, but then you got to do this other stuff, otherwise they will get upset. So I do understand that people have different personalities and tendencies, but I think we write off way too often where somebody says, oh, they're quiet, they don't have something to share. Well, that's not true. They're just not sharing it. And here's the big— and here's the overall reason why, as if you're running a team, you want to make sure everyone shares to get the unsaid said. Because if we don't, we make a decision based on the loudest voice. And let's face it, myself included, we've all made decisions because we thought a lot of agreement, but it was just the most vocal people that we worked towards. And it also could be the opposite. Have you ever been in a situation where somebody gave negative feedback so you course-corrected? But you found out everybody else was pretty much okay. It was just that big complainer. And so what happens is we can go off track. I mean, I'll share with you what happened to me. I was doing a session years ago and somebody said, and I, as you could tell, talk pretty fast. And they said, could you go faster? And I'm like, okay. And so I started going faster. And somebody said, wait a minute, why are you doing that? And I said, well, I just got that feedback. And they said, We all don't think that. And it dawned on me, even as an instructor's embarrassing, and I know this stuff, it's easy to get drawn off, off of what one person says or the loudest voice. So we have to counteract that by asking people and just making sure everybody shares to get the unsaid said, because quiet people can have great wisdom, and often they have the spectacular wisdom that we really needed to hear all along.

Yeah, that happened. I can see how that happens to me too. That it's, it's easy to correct for the first thing or the loudest thing you hear. It's not always the reason you should correct for, but it happens quite— it's easy to see it happening.

Yeah. The other thing too is we have a tendency for confirmation bias. We have an opinion and we search for evidence that's consistent with it, right? So, um, sometimes like we will— there's other evidence, but we almost see what we want to see instead of really counteracting it. So that's why another sign of a healthy team is debate. You know, people say our team doesn't argue, we don't have problems. That's a problem. I mean, have you ever heard of a couple that say, oh, we never argue, and then they get divorced? I mean, the, the thing is, it's healthy to have debate. So this is what I often say to people: debate isn't the problem. Not resolving the debate is the problem, right? It's— we want to have a debate. And here's something else that I found that's kind of counterintuitive, or often we don't hear this. I don't think anybody's afraid of conflict. I think people are afraid of unresolved conflict. They're not afraid of conflict, they're afraid of unresolved conflict. And here's my evidence. Even people say, well, no, no, I don't like conflict. I'll say, is there anybody in your life that you speak your mind to? Like, you just will let them have it. And they can usually cite a spouse or a child or a best friend. And I'll say, why do you speak your mind there? And when they think about it, it's because they know I'll get it resolved somehow. It'll get resolved. But when we feel like if we speak our mind, it won't get resolved, there won't be a payoff, we won't share it. So it's really— I like to turn things on its head where people, like, see these phrases. It's just not correct. People are not afraid of conflict. They're afraid of unresolved conflict.

Yeah, I see. That makes good sense. So in a high-achieving team, who's the leader, or how do you define leadership within the team?

Yeah, great question. So overall, I mean, there is a leader, official leader of the team, but you bring up really interesting thing about leadership, right? So leadership to me is a state of mind. It's not a position. It's a state of mind. It's not a position. My evidence for this is, have you ever met somebody who's officially the leader but nobody follows them? Yeah. Yeah. And then we've all met people who don't have that official position and we gravitate towards them. We follow them. And it's a state of mind. It's not a position. And the other thing is, which a lot of often people don't think about, is we are— part of our job is lead up, is lead across, and somehow leadership is taught as like a top-down. And, you know, we work with our leaders. But what I like to open the aperture is that we're all leaders. We gotta lead up, we gotta lead down, we gotta lead across. We have to lead our families, we have to lead our customers. It's a state of mind. It really isn't a position. And as a, you know, I do a lot of work in the military as well. And as a general once said to me, even though I have the position to, you know, tell people to do stuff, I don't like to do that because they may do it, but they're not really bought into it and it's gonna show up in other areas. And, and I've worked with people where they realize, you know, the bottom line is you gotta win the hearts and minds of folks. But anyway, a lot to consider when it comes to leadership that I just, you know, it's, we, it's part of our job is we gotta lead everybody. Yeah.

I've been really curious about the idea of decentralized leadership and that everybody is a leader at every level of the organization. And, and I like how you put it. It's a state of mind, not a position. So I'm curious, what do you think are some of the characteristics that a good leader has?

I'll tell you the most important thing, which is something I addressed earlier, and I'll say it and then I want to prove it to you, right? I think the most important trait of a leader, right? Official leader or whatever, is to make people feel safe. And here's my proof. All the books out there will say vision and holding people accountable and all that stuff. And I agree. And winning the hearts and minds and all the things we just talked about. But here's the thing. If a leader or whoever's running the organization or team doesn't make people feel safe, they have to make every— they've got to— every decision they make has to be spot on. But if they make people feel safe, they don't have to worry about this. Here's an easy example. If I'm a leader and I'm saying, this is where we need to go and these are our goals and this is our vision, mission, whatever, and I make people feel safe and they're lost, they're going to tell me that, no idea what you're talking about, or do you mean this or this? But if I'm creating fear, nobody's going to give me that feedback and I've got to make sure that's right. So if you just make people feel safe, you'll get the feedback and you course correct. So I have found the most important trait above everything is just the propensity to make people feel safe. And I think that's a big thing that organizations need to look for because I've seen people who don't make people feel safe. And, and you, and they do it sometimes in ways that people may not think about. For example, just not giving people feedback. It can make people feel unsafe. Like, ooh, was that right? Or I was just working with a team that they had allowed there was somebody on the team whose eyes roll, you know, like that, you know, and they weren't on top of it and they lost a really great performer, a high achiever, because high achievers are going to leave, right? They don't want to be part of that. And so it's really about making people feel safe. There's a lot of other attributes, but I think it really comes down to at least checking that box, which is not easy, especially when we hear things we don't like. But it's still good to hear it and making people feel safe.

If you extend the team to include a fractional professional, what are some of the nuances that come into play?

Well, it, it's something we talked about even before starting with, I think you're spot on. It's about building trust quickly. And I think one of the ways to build trust is to get the unsaid said right and do that. And, and really to look at when we look at trust and and jumping into an organization is it's not so black and white. People say, I don't trust people. And I'll say, okay, really? And they go, yeah, I don't trust people. I'm like, well, do you drive? Well, sure. Well, how do you drive? I mean, you're driving down the road, you're trusting that somebody's not going to cross into your lane. I mean, otherwise you'd never leave your house. So the truth is, and then I'll say to people, do you trust, do you think the person's going to rob you? Well, no, no, I don't think that. And so what you really realize, it's certain types. So I think when somebody gets dropped in an organization, that everybody's wondering about them. And one of the things I think is important is to be vulnerable and share that, right? Because they try to act like they know everything rather than asking questions. Some of the best leaders I've worked with ask a ton of questions and they share things and like, look, we're at this together. The worst ones jump in an organization, say what everybody needs to do, and people just kind of back off. That's what I've seen. How about you?

What do you see out there? Yeah. Well, what you said earlier about not the, the unsaid. Now that's being able to say a fractional professional has the ability to go into an organization and say more of the unsaid than a full-time person might feel comfortable doing because the eggs aren't all in one basket. Yeah. And when someone understands that, embraces that, and goes into an engagement and says some of the unpopular or the, you know, the unsaid things that maybe other people haven't said in the past. I think that's a way they can build trust. I think it's a really good opportunity, um, and it's, and it's in a way it's being vulnerable as well. The unsaid things are some of the vulnerable things, uh, I think if a fractional professional can really embrace that concept that you shared at the beginning, I think that could be super powerful in, in building that trust early in an engagement and Connecting with the team members. Yes, I think so. You know, it's hard for a fractional professional to feel like part of a team. So that's why I asked the question, because you do feel like you're on an island or you've got your area of focus and you're fractional for a reason because they don't have anybody else that does it. And so they're bringing in for that expertise, but not everybody else is rooting for you. And helping you perform your duties 'cause you're the outside paid fractional. It's your job, not their job. And I think that teamwork concept is harder for a fractional plug into. So awareness might be helpful, facilitation might be helpful, conversation around it might be helpful, but I think it's just, so it's a, and it might be the same for like a remote team member with a full, with everyone else's full-time. You could have the exact same indications or issues.

Well, and there's some other strategies too. For example, asking the question that needs to get asked, you know, fuzzy questions create fuzzy answers, direct questions create direct answers. And so what I often challenge people is there's really a question that's on their mind and that's what needs to get said or asked, and they just dance around it rather than asking. So for example, this isn't necessarily appropriate for a fractional leader, but I do see this as a whole lot where we're worried about the answer. So I was doing a session in Philadelphia and this lady came up to me. She said, I need some advice on working with my boss. I'm just worried that he thinks I'm doing a lousy job, but I feel like I'm doing a good job. I said, why don't you just ask him, do you think I'm doing a great job or not? And she started actually getting upset. And she said, and I said, what's going on? She said, I'm afraid of the answer. So when's a good time to find out? So I think when people get dropped into teams or anywhere, it's like, ask the question because it's always better to know. And that's one thing. The other thing that we can do is a way to get people to share more is share what you think they're thinking. So try it out next. If you have somebody quiet in your life or who doesn't share, just say, and you ask them a question, direct question or whatever, and they don't— somehow they don't share. Just start saying, you know, I think you're thinking this. I think you're thinking this. And it's very hard to sit there and not react. In fact, people can try it out. Like somebody said, what do you want for dinner? And somebody go, I don't know. Just say, well, I think you want American, or maybe you want Italian. You just start saying, and they will speak up. They just can't sit there and be quiet. I love that.

I'm going to try that with my kids.

There's so many strategies, but I also wanna go through a mindset that I think is important as a leader, and we're working within, and it's what's been, what I've been working on for a book, my new book that's gonna eventually come out. And it's, and the idea with the book is gonna be called Unconditional Power. But I wanna draw something cuz it's a really easy distinction but can really help out people. The 3 type, first of all, we, our mood impacts how intelligent we, how intelligent we are. You ever notice that when you're in a good mood, you're smarter and we all, yeah. Like, yeah. But, but when we're in a bad mood, we're not so smart and we make bad decisions. Right. And an easy example is somebody throws us a problem when we're in a bad mood or lack of sleep or whatever, we go, gosh, here we go again. But when we're feeling good, somebody throws a problem, we say, hey, we'll get a handle. Well, there are 3 overarching moods or, you know, that people get into and organizations do. There's a powerless mood, and that's where we feel like, what difference can we make? We're only one person here, and we all can sometimes feel alone and like that. The second type is conditional, conditional power. And conditional power is where I believe most people are. And this is where you say, somebody will say, well, I can do this as long as we get more resources, as long as we get more money, as long as, as long as, as long as there's always a caveat or a condition. But the ideal mood or mindset is a powerful mood. And a powerful mood is we recognize those conditions, but we're like, what are we gonna do about this? And so this sounds kind of obvious, but most people I experience are really conditionally powerful, and they don't even realize there's a whole nother dimension. I mean, after this session and after this podcast, I, and, you know, I challenge people to start to listen for the conditional mood. They'll say, You know, somebody will say, well, I can get that done as long as this, or as long as this, or, but, or what? They just don't say in a powerful way, yes, I will get this done. And if there's any problems, I'll let you know and we'll work through it. And so this, okay, so now that I've laid this out, here's the problem. Whenever there's challenges, people shift to the left. Easy example of this was COVID, which is so talked about, but it's an easy kind of thing to think about any challenge. You probably saw people who were pretty powerful become conditional, right? Oh my gosh, what's the government gonna do? What's gonna happen? And then some people conditional became powerless. And during COVID there was a new category that was developed called the frozen people. You ever met one of those frozen people? They're, when they're faced, and this is true even today, they're faced with a challenge, any challenge, like a reorg or whatever, and the person just goes, they don't do anything. Yeah. And they wait. But great leadership is about shifting people to the right. And that's— and how do we do this is we've gotta get and be in this mindset. So what are strategies around this? And one strategy is bringing awareness that, wait a minute, I'm being conditional. So an example would be, I had a client that taught them this distinction and folks came in and said, look, we have a problem. And he— and all he said was, okay, as— and they were complaining and he said, okay, where are we on this continuum? He said, oh, we're being conditional. He said, okay, how would we act and what would we do if we were being powerful? And people started sharing ideas. And then out of that, they were able to pick an idea. And he said within about 5 to 10 minutes, it was solved because it was just a matter of shifting the mindset. So you just think about things. And so even fractional leadership, right? Well, I can do this, but there's all— I'm only one person. We don't have resources or I'm given this or whatever. And we create these conditions in our mind. And what I would advocate is be powerful and say, this is what I'm gonna do, and this is what I would do, or find out or whatever. Because powerful people recognize the conditions, but they're in the driver's seat and say, and they focus 100% of their energies on what they could do about it. I don't know how, if this is resonating, but this is, I see this a lot with people. They're in this conditionally powerful, but they think they're being powerful. Yeah.

I, it's an interesting topic. I think it'd be fun to test that on different challenges to see, to flesh it out further. My mind goes to, I believe that being powerful and kind of have a, that mindset makes a ton of sense. And I think sometimes that mindset, you know, it isn't like it learns to leverage the conditions and maybe not dependent upon the conditions. So, yeah, the conditional is true. Like, there's just some— there's certain resources that are available or not available, or things that are available or not available, and you can be beholden to those conditions on your ability to be powerful. But the same token, I think you can understand and be aware of those conditions and still find ways around them, or new ways to do things, or different resources if you're, if you're coming from a powerful mindset.

Does that make sense? Absolutely. In fact, let's kind of, in fact, when an organization moves in this direction, they're slowed up. Here's an example. Have you ever had somebody where you're trying to work with them and they'll say, well, Joe, I sent them an email. I mean, I made the call and you're like, well, do call 'em again. Do something. Yeah. Let me know about, that's the conditional mindset. Yeah.

And I think of that powerful. It's, it's the, it's the creator's mindset because when you're in that creator space, there are, there's all the conditions in the world, and then there's all the other things you can come up with to go bypass those conditions. And, and if you're just constantly creating, you're in a totally different space than someone who's stuck.

Yes. And so one of the strategies, there's many strategies to go through, but one of the strategies to move people to a powerful kind of mindset and perspective is to reframe, to refocus. And so You know, we all know about reframing, or in case people don't know, I mean, you have a problem and there's a frame around the problem. Well, some people have a conditional frame. If we create a powerful frame, it can make a huge difference. And there are 3 types of reframes that I found really useful. One is to reduce the frame. And an example would be there where people are really being conditional and slowed down on a complex problem, and we reduce it and we make it simple. Like, I mean, it takes, you know, I think Albert Einstein or somebody said it takes genius to make something simple. It doesn't take any genius to make it more complex. Have you ever met somebody who just can take something complex and make it really complex? And so people then go, oh my gosh, I don't know all these things. But for example, if we, so I worked with a client and their, their pipeline was not good. You know, it was, it, it was not, not good at all. So And it's like, oh, they had all these key performance indicators. It was way too complicated. I suggested, why don't you look at the key performance indicator of going to see the customer, just going to see them? Because they, they were too internally focused. They weren't going out and talking to the customer and just being with the customer. And I suggested just take that key performance indicator and maybe a couple others, but nothing more, and just focus on that. And they were able to turn the pipeline around. And the reason is, is because when things get complex, they become conditional and slow down. That's reducing. Another way is to enlarge a frame. And enlarging the frame is when we've all had this where let's say something bad happens and we're down. And it, whenever we have a, a bad time or something bad, it tends, the picture tends to be all-consuming. But if somebody says, well, enlarging the frame would say, look, while this is the case, we did mess up, or this is an issue. In the scheme of things, we're doing this right, this right, this right, and this right. And that's a way so people start to feel powerful because if they don't, if enlarging the frame, that it's, they'll just slow down. So if we enlarge it and put it in a larger perspective, we could reduce it, but we could also enlarge it. But my absolute frame favorite, uh, reframe is to change the frame to the reality we want. And, um, uh, I give you a great example of this. So I was working with this company. And I had hired them and it was an IT project and, and they had been at it for months. And I was like, my gosh, how long is this gonna take? So I asked them, it was July, and I said, how long is this gonna take? And, and they said, till November. And Joe, I'm thinking we're a small company. This is not a complex thing. And I was starting to get upset and then I thought, okay, I'm gonna change the frame. So I said to them, given that I would like this done in a month, Ideally, what would need to happen? I didn't say it has to. I said, given, ideally, I'd like it to happen in a month, what would need to happen? And I'll credit the company. The company came back with a list of things on how they could get it done in a very short period of time, all of which I could agree to. So we did, and it was done in 6 weeks. If I hadn't done that, what would we usually do? We usually work within the frame that they had said. And so sometimes in life when we don't like the frame, we just gotta change the frame. Another example of changing a frame would be when somebody says this is a problem and we could say it's an opportunity for a breakthrough. Or how about this one? Instead of using change, you, we use the word evolve. Look, people, you know, resist on change. You just say, well, we're evolving cuz we always gotta get better. That's a lot easier to move. So I had a, a client of mine that changed everything from change to evolve. And people started moving. So anyway, I, so those types of reframes are ways to get this over here. I don't know how this is resonating, but these are some of the—

Oh, it's great. Yeah. No, I, I love it. I love frameworks like that and it just helps you think differently and excited to get that book out.

When's it coming? It's gonna be out. It's, well, it was supposed to be out in October. I imagine now it'll be around November. It got slowed up on a couple things, but they can look at it.

What if I wanted to read that book in July? What would happen?

I love it. I love it. You know what? If people want to, I, we could see about whether, how soon the, the, the electronic version could be ready. Yeah. So that is something actually, I like your question cuz I hadn't really thought about pushing to get the electronic version out. So we can do that. And there actually are shorter versions that we can get out. So on a, on this powerful culture piece, which is a basically the framework. Yeah. Yeah.

Very good. Well, we've had, we covered a lot. I really enjoyed our conversation, Stephen. Thank you so much for everything. I, I can't, uh, imagine, uh, the, what else we could talk about. If we had another hour, we'd just keep going and going. You are a wealth of knowledge.

Thank you so much. My pleasure. And thanks for having me on the show. And if every, anybody, uh, you know, wants more information, they can reach us at, um, uh, justbehonest.com. That's justbehonest.com.

And we'll help 'em out. All right, so for all of our viewers out there, thank you for listening, and, uh, be on the lookout for the electronic version of Stephen's book here in the next, uh, 2 to 4 weeks. Uh, thanks for listening, and we'll see you next week on the C-Suite Retreat. And that's a wrap.

There's another successful episode of the Fractional C-Suite Retreat. See our show notes and more episodes at fractionalcsuitretreat.com. This podcast is sponsored by Your CMO, helping organizations grow, Save time and money with better marketing strategy and fractional execution. Visit them at yourcmo.com, yourcmo.com, spelled wrong on purpose.