November 12, 2024 • 57 mins
Say What They Can't Unhear with Tamsen Webster
In this episode, host Nola Simon interviews Tamsen Webster about her new book "Say What They Can't Unhear" and discusses effective messaging strategies for driving change.
Key topics covered:
- Tamsen's background as a message designer and "English to English translator"
- The importance of understanding deep beliefs when trying to inspire change
- How to find common ground and build on existing beliefs rather than challenging them
- The "smart, capable, and good" approach to empathy in communication
- Why the "deepest beliefs are hardest to shift" and how to work with that principle
- Challenges with return-to-office mandates and aligning messaging with employee experiences
- The concept of "recognizable truths" that resonate with audiences
- How to present change in a way that doesn't conflict with people's existing worldviews
- The role of cognitive empathy in understanding others' perspectives
- Why messages need to pass both logical and emotional checks to be effective
Tamsen shares insights from her experience as a Weight Watchers leader and how those lessons apply to organizational change. She emphasizes the importance of starting with where people already are and finding ways to align change with their existing goals and beliefs.
The conversation explores why many change initiatives fail and how leaders can improve their approach by truly understanding their audience's perspective. Tamsen's book "Say What They Can't Unhear" provides a framework for creating more effective and resonant messaging.
Learn more about Tamsen Webster:
Part message designer, part English-to-English translator, part magpie, Tamsen Webster helps leaders craft their case for large-scale change. In addition to her work in and for major organizations such as Harvard Medical School, Fidelity Investments, and Klaviyo, she’s a judge and mentor for the Harvard Innovation Labs, a professional advisor at the Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship, and has spent over 10 years as the Idea Strategist for one of only nine legacy-level TEDx events in the world. She was named to the Thinkers50 Radar in 2022 and is the author of two books, Find Your Red Thread: Make Your Big Ideas Irresistible and Say What They Can't Unhear: The 9 Principles of Lasting Change. She lives in Boston with her husband, two sons, and two brindle Greyhounds, Hazel and Walnut.
Tamsen Webster - Message Designer, Author, Keynote Business Speaker
www.messagedesigninstitute.com
https://www.linkedin.com/in/tamsenwebster
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
You can't breathe.
One, two, three, four, five, six,seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven,
twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen,sixteen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty.
Twenty seven, eighteen, nineteen,twenty one, twenty two, twenty three,
twenty four, twenty five, twentysix, twenty seven, twenty eight.
in orbit.
Nola Simon (00:22):
Thank you so much for joining me.
I'm Nola Simon.
I'm the host of the Hybrid RemoteCenter of Excellence and joining
me today is Tamsen Webster.
She is a prime example of somebody thatI've built a relationship with over time.
I've actually followedTamsen probably for years.
When did the red thread come out?
That came out in
Tamsen Webster (00:40):
2021,
Nola Simon (00:42):
but I've been
Tamsen Webster (00:43):
talking about the red thread for eight years now.
Nola Simon (00:46):
So my role was actually my corporate role was
actually restructured in 2020.
So I started paying attention to LinkedIn.
I wasn't writing, butI was consuming a lot.
And so I think I startednoticing you around there.
So I've honestly been followingyou probably since then, but
I just connected this year.
And I had attended one of your workshopsthat one of my other podcast guests
Marty Constant had made available.
(01:06):
And then I connected after that.
So I always tell people I, I don'taccept pitches from my podcast.
I like to invite people thatI've got to know online.
So I know your work, and Tansyn's workhas been instrumental to helping me
develop the messaging for my business.
And I'm really excited that she'scome out now with a new book,
another new book, which is calledSay What They Can't Unhear.
(01:26):
And I gotta tell you, the ding issomething that we really have to talk
about because I know that although itmanifests differently for me as well.
Tamsen, how do youdescribe your profession?
Obviously you're an author,you're a keynote speaker you're
deeply involved with TED TalksHow do you describe yourself?
Like what's your perfectmessage to deliver who you are?
Tamsen Webster (01:48):
So I, for folks that would understand at least somewhat
intuitively I say that I'm messagedesigner, so I have, after a lot of
trial and error, that seems to besomething where most people generally.
Yes, correctly what that probably means.
So meaning you've got somethingyou want to say and you're trying
to figure out how to say it.
(02:09):
I help you do that.
My more my like sassier answer, mycheekier answer, which is also correct is
that I'm an English to English translator.
Because I think that'swhat I'm I help people do.
But fundamentally, I feel like thatmy I don't even feel, I know that
my deep passion is helping peoplehelp other people create change.
(02:31):
And so whatever I can put together,learn, process, size, tams and eyes,
whatever, to help people really get whattheir, their difference of perspective,
their approaches, their offerings,their ideas, their initiatives, all of
these things that they're, investingtime and money in to make a change for
(02:53):
themselves, for the world, for clients,customers, whatever it might be.
I want to make sure that they have asmuch opportunity for success as possible.
And so that's where I come in because I'vesomehow cobbled together this deep and
long interest, both in transformationalchange and in communications.
(03:15):
And so I've put those together.
To create message design.
Awesome.
Nola Simon (03:20):
Perfect.
Yeah.
I was always fascinated that part of yourorigin story really is Weight Watchers.
And a lot of that, when you're tryingto lose weight is cause I remember my
mom did this probably in the eighties.
A lot of it is,
She did manage to lose a lot of weight.
She came back, but that, that was alwayssomething that caught my attention
(03:41):
because I remember her experiencewith that, but a lot of times it's the
stories that you tell yourself, right?
Tamsen Webster (03:48):
Yes, absolutely.
And yes, it is a hundred percent.
I think it's to quote one of my membersshe always said that it's 99 percent
mental and the rest is just food.
And that's, that is, we know nowthat's, it's not quite as pure as that.
I think that's one of the things I'mdelighted that science has caught up
(04:09):
with what was observable in the 13 yearsthat I was a Weight Watchers leader.
And that is, is that.
There are fundamental physiologicaldifferences between people that
no amount of retraining yourthoughts or positive self talk
(04:30):
or willpower will, will overcome.
And so it's not that it's not possible.
It's just that it was one of the of somany lessons I learned in the years that
I moonlighted as a Weight Watchers leader.
One of them is that to be verywary of one size fits all.
(04:52):
Anything, right?
One size fits all approach.
One size fits all message.
Because.
That is bearing it, that bears with ita lot of assumptions about what you're
offering and who you're talking to.
And those can get you introuble on both sides.
I don't like getting in trouble thatway, which is probably why I've spent
(05:15):
so much time You know, because I'vehad some horror stories of just whoop,
that was not the right way to say that.
And so that's, that's part ofwhere all this has come from.
And now that I've gotten to a certainpoint in my life, in my career, where I
feel like it's mathematically impossiblefor me to be the age that I am, but
there are some objective truths, that Ireally have gotten to a point where it's.
(05:40):
Where I feel like, I havesomething to say on this like I,
I, I have put all this together.
I've seen this work.
I've done the work.
I have done the research.
I have done the testing just to see whatit is that works and doesn't work so
that within a world that is constantlychanging and with people who are you
know, I feel I have something to say onthis like I, I Just absolutely different.
(06:04):
Person to person in somany different ways.
What are some of the things that arereliably true, no matter what, no matter
who you're talking to, no matter what thesituation is, because that I think gives
you at least a place to start and givesyou a place to start where you're starting
(06:25):
with the strength of what is Thanks.
Known, right?
This is how people think about things,this is how people make sense of
information, this is how people reactwhen they're treated a certain way.
If those are some of the things thateither will move a change forward or
back or get in the way of the message oraccelerate it, , it, solvable problems.
(06:48):
Unsolved solvable problems drive me nuts.
And this is one of those where I, when Icome to looking at messaging and change
messaging, I'm like these, most of thethings, most of the places where we go
wrong are completely solvable and I justreally wanted to help people solve that.
Nola Simon (07:05):
Yeah, no, it makes sense.
So in Tamsyn's book, she has thesenine principles that are they're so
logical, they're so straightforward,but they're brilliant, right?
Thank you.
And one of them that really caught myattention, I think that's really where
you're talking about this too, is thedeepest beliefs are the hardest to shift.
And I always found that becauseI always lived north of the north
(07:26):
of Toronto and worked in the city.
And so they would the companywould often come out with like
messages that were designed tobe for the majority of employees.
I wasn't the majority of employeesbecause I didn't live in the city.
I, A lot of and a lot of times I didn'tfit so they would come out my favorite
was always the, let's save the planet.
Let's bike to work.
(07:46):
I don't know.
I live 60 kilometers north ofthe city like that's not going
Tamsen Webster (07:51):
to
Nola Simon (07:51):
happen.
You can't bike on the freeway for one.
It's illegal to I'm probably going to be.
I'm still biking six hours later and thenI have to turn around and go home, right?
So fundamentally, like my beliefwas, this is not a message that's
designed for me because you haveno clue how I even get to work.
You don't even know who I am.
Tamsen Webster (08:11):
Or that's, oh, or that's all you're left to think,
absent the information, any otherinformation being put out there.
So Again, it's such asolvable problem, right?
All that take, took, all thatwould take is a, I'm no grammarian
a dependent clause that says, forthose of you who live in the city.
(08:35):
But, right?
Yeah.
Because at least what thatdoes is say, this is for you.
And when it comes to those deep beliefs,so the way that I, as you probably figured
out by reading these things they'reall like nine different perspectives
on what kind of sits in the center is.
The same thing.
It's not all the same thing, but it'sdifferent avenues into this kind of nut
(08:59):
of what is it that people have to hear inorder to understand and adapt a new idea.
And.
The deepest beliefs arethe hardest to shift.
That one is in the trio, like thatone sits at the heart of the book.
It's number five.
So it's like literally in themiddle of all the pieces, because I
(09:20):
think, for me, it is one of the mostcounterintuitive principles of inspiring
long term change or creating theconditions that are more likely for it.
And there's good reasons for that.
The good reason for it is that it'scounterintuitive is that when we think
about deep beliefs and, we'll acknowledgethat they're hard to shift, and the
(09:44):
reason why I chose that phrasing wasbecause most people, A, would agree with
it, but B, they see that as a problem.
They see that it's a problem thatdeep beliefs are hard to shift.
And my perspective is that.
No belief.
Very few beliefs.
Let me be careful.
One always has to becareful with absolutes.
(10:06):
Very few beliefs that anybodyholds are equally true for
them in every context, right?
And what I mean by that is so all thathas to happen when you combine that
principle with let's say every decisionhas a story, which is the second one,
which is All someone has to hear issomething else they believe to be true
(10:33):
or recognize as true that is just asstrong or stronger and that they can
notch into the story they're tellingthemselves, but in a different way.
And though I didn't have the languagefor it back when I was a weight watchers
leader it's again, one of the ones that,that truly had its birth there because
(10:55):
so often, your experience with weightloss was my experience with weight loss,
which is that I had tried and failed anynumber of times before I finally found
and created this kind of combinationof factors that, that worked for me.
And certainly one of the things thatI observed over 13 years was that
one of the biggest and most dangerousthings that could happen was someone
(11:19):
faulting themselves for failure andadding that to the mental tally of
this belief that I can't do this thing.
And so often when that's the operatingdeep belief, I just can't, it's my genes.
Like I'm just destined to be this way.
And I felt that way about myself,which is just like I come from
a family of overweight women.
(11:41):
And so maybe this is justwho I'm supposed to be.
And what I found that was the antidoteto that kind of, setting where
people set themselves up for failurewas instead of saying, put okay.
Instead of putting all your eggs in abelief that you haven't tested this is
(12:03):
possible for me, or in a new behavior oflet me stop eating some food that I love.
What would happen if, it really startedwith a question, what would happen if
we could map over something that theyare already good at someplace else?
And for me personally,just as an example, I am.
(12:27):
almost pathologically a rule followerand a systems follower, which is
one of the reasons why for me Weightwatchers was a really good match.
It is not a good match for people whoSee it as a constricting framework.
And or and aren't able or don'thave a leader who could show them or
(12:47):
present them with a different way toconceive of those same guidelines.
But for me, it was like, once I found asystem, I was like, yes, this is awesome.
I am great at following rules.
Just give me rules as long as therules aren't too hard to follow.
And for me, it was like mapping thatover and saying, oh, it's just a budget.
(13:08):
And instead of thinking of myselflike, oh, I'm a bad person, food is
good or bad, it for me, that systemneutralized the emotional attachment
to it all to, to me, to, to the food.
And so again, for me, once it, once, itwas, this is just about, solving a puzzle.
(13:29):
Another thing I love, likehow do I get the food I want?
into this framework that'sbeing presented to me, then it
became actually like a game.
Not one that I chose to gamify, because,again, a thing I learned over time,
was that, like, when you're tryingto play that game you win, you lose,
and if you lose, you win, right?
It's just you're, it's all you.
(13:51):
Who are you trying to win against?
Who are you playing against?
Exactly.
And, but I would, so once I was likethat, again, it wasn't the program
that worked for me so much as therewas this aspect of the program that
I could link to something that I wasalready confident that I did well.
And so that was a
Nola Simon (14:09):
stacking.
Before habit stacking was a thing, really.
Tamsen Webster (14:15):
Yeah, because it was just like this idea
of again I'm, I love puzzles.
Let me figure this out.
Let me let me figure out how to do this.
And I'm also a little ornery.
I'm contrarian.
So if you're like, It's notpossible to keep doing X, Y, or Z.
Then I'm like I'm going to see ifit's possible if I can still have
dark chocolate every day, and Ican still have my ice cream, and
(14:35):
I can still have these things.
The whole reason why I joined walkedinto Weight Watchers for the first
day is because I saw this hilariousepisode of the Oprah Winfrey show.
When Sarah, the Duchess ofFerguson was on here, this is
dating me rather significantly.
That's okay.
We're the same age.
Yeah.
And they were, they like a got themselvespretty much drunk on television and
(14:58):
then attempted these two women whoreally don't cook for themselves
to make chocolate chip cookies.
And I just, Hey, it was such like ajoyful thing, but also this whole idea
of Oh, it linked into to bring it backto some of the things that I talk about
in the book, something that I recognizedis true, which is that if I couldn't
lose weight doing the things that Ilove, how could I possibly keep it off?
(15:21):
So it just again from a thing thatYou know, from assessing for myself.
What hadn't worked in the past waslike, okay, if it's too restrictive,
I'm not going to stay on it.
If I telling me if I don't, if I feelembarrassed about telling somebody
else what I'm doing to lose weight orto get healthy I'm not going to do it.
If it's too extreme,I'm not going to do it.
And so it was really getting to a pointof saying, okay, I know what I need
(15:47):
from something in order to make it work.
And then it was just aboutfinding that intersection.
And that was the role that I sawmyself as a way watchers leader with
my members was, one thing that theysaid that the company said to me once
upon a time, which I couldn't unhear.
And I still use this in any number ofways was, they said to us at one point
(16:08):
during ongoing training that we wouldhave that, our job was to be the expert.
In the program and to recognize that ourmembers were the expert in themselves
and that our job was to figure out howto blend the expertise, not to presume
that we knew what the right way to do.
(16:29):
The program was for them, but to getas much information and the Understand
the program so thoroughly that we couldreally adapt it to wherever somebody was.
So an example, I find a window
Nola Simon (16:44):
or a door,
Tamsen Webster (16:46):
right?
Exactly.
And one of those windows of thedoors was I grew up in the point
system of Weight Watchers, whichis basically like a budget, right?
You get a certain number of Points to eatin a day and food has points and your job,
like a budget, is don't go over budget andone of the things that was very difficult
for people was when they deeply believedthat they were a night eater, like a
(17:13):
label that they would assign to themselvessaying that they're a night eater and
what that means for folks that may notbe familiar with that term is that it.
They were they were great fleeingthings that you were they were,
they felt like they really hadgreat and strong control through
most of the day and through dinner.
(17:34):
And then somewhere between dinner andbedtime, the wheels would just come off.
And some of that.
As I observed over time again,13 years and, with a number of
meetings that I led in, around myday job, I did the math one time.
It was 3000 meetings.
You pick up some data from doing that.
And one of the things that I did.
(17:55):
Picked up was that people that wouldget so desperate because they would
run out of points because the, thepoints have worked for 24 hours.
Most people started them in the morning.
And so again, if you get to the endof the day and at the time they wanted
to or needed to eat or, do whateverfood was doing for them was the time
(18:17):
when they had the fewest points.
And they had got a lot of them again.
We get to that point where they werejust like, then I can't do this because
the program doesn't work with who I am.
And I spent some time trying tofigure this one out for people
because there really are a lot ofpeople for whom this is a challenge.
And then I was like but there'snowhere in this literature that says
(18:40):
the points start in the morning.
The points are just 24 hours.
What I ended up doing wassaying to them, hey, guess what?
There's no, nothing says that you haveto start the points in the morning.
It's just 24 hours of points.
And yeah, it's going to mean you'regoing to need to play with the journaling
(19:02):
things that we've got and whereyou write things down a little bit.
But as long as you can feel likeyou can keep track, then start your
points at dinner because deeperbelief that I anchored it to.
That there's 24 hours in a day.
Yeah.
And that 24 hours can start at any time.
(19:22):
And so for many people, I'mnot saying all, but for many
people, just that simple shift.
Again, I didn't have to tellthem they weren't night eaters.
I didn't have to change who they were.
All I was doing was saying,there is something else that is
actually, in this case, outsideof you, that's even more reliable.
That it that when it comestogether with you actually
(19:45):
gives you a path forward here.
And
Nola Simon (19:47):
that works too for, cause like people who work night shifts,
it's a way to be more flexiblewith the reality of who they're
like, who they are in their life.
Tamsen Webster (19:55):
Yeah.
And.
There's always something like that.
I I should say I always start withthe assumption or the belief that
there's something like that becauseit allows me to start looking for it.
Then, if I come into any situationwhere I'm trying to help someone
change or help someone help otherpeople or their organization change.
(20:15):
If I come in saying, how do weget them to say yes to this?
Then I've created a really binarysituation where it's just Yes, not
yes to this change, not how can Iopen up and say, All right, we are
trying to achieve this larger thing.
Are we all in agreement about that?
(20:37):
Are we trying, in Weight Watchers,are we trying to achieve health goals?
Yeah.
Okay, great.
Then as long as we're in agreementabout that, we're going to start there.
Now let's take point by pointand say, what, where else are we
where are the points of conflict?
Where aren't they?
But by avoiding looking and trying tochallenge those deep beliefs and really
(20:59):
just coming at it from whatever thesituation is from a different direction
and finding something that is strongas strong or a stronger than what's
standing in the way, then we allow peopleto tell themselves a different story.
In their head or one that nowhas a possibility of success,
(21:21):
whereas the current one doesn't.
And when somebody wants the outcomeenough, they will, at least at that point,
be willing to try because they'll agreein principle now that it's possible.
And.
For a lot of us and with a lot ofchange that we're trying to do in
organizations, like that's the firstbarrier that we run up against, which
(21:44):
is people reject it at a hand beforeeven because there's just dismissed.
It is not possible.
And this is where I, I, one of the manythings I hope that people pull from the
book is just this idea of that little tinyyes, that comes saying, is it possible?
(22:05):
Do you agree in principle that this wouldwork, that this is, that this makes sense?
Again, not based on data and evidence.
Those are important.
They come later.
But intuitively, based on what yourecognize as true become something
that will shift what you howyou think about the world or how
(22:26):
you think about the situation orhow you think about this change.
And I think that's really where the keyis so that it comes it flips from the
deepest beliefs are the hardest to shiftas being a problem to the deepest beliefs
are the hardest to shift actually tellyou where to start to solve the problem.
Start with by building onthose deep beliefs rather
(22:48):
than trying to challenge them.
Nola Simon (22:51):
Yeah, no, I the question comes up with my work is the whole return
to office debate and everybody, like allthese CEOs trying to bring people back in
because of collaboration and innovation.
And, that the work is justbetter in the office and people
fundamentally don't believe them.
Because for one, they've beenable to work well at home.
Two, their role doesn't reallyinvolve innovation or collaboration.
(23:15):
And as we've tried in the past, theyhaven't succeeded to actually influence
that innovation and collaboration.
And so fundamentally there's thatdisagreement about those beliefs.
Tamsen Webster (23:27):
Yes.
And I would venture to say.
That
in some of those cases where theleadership is bringing people back,
they don't actually believe thatit they don't believe it either.
(23:48):
And that actually isn't the reason.
Bringing them back.
And so the thing is that, particularly,I think people's intuitive BS
meter has always been very good.
But employees to their employers is supergood because they have a lot of history
with the behavior of the organization.
(24:09):
And and guess what?
We are, as humans, we areactually Nonverbal first, right?
Like that and we will trust what weexperience with all of ourselves far
(24:29):
more than any words we ever attach to it.
And this is where, again, as partof the motivation of this book,
which is just saying, listen, ifyou can't actually make a, I know
this is going to sound super direct.
rational.
I don't get to the reason why it's not.
But if you can't make both avalid and sound argument that
(24:52):
your audience agrees is valid andsound, and what I mean by valid and
sound is it is a logical argument.
Like it's complete, meaning this plusthis equals this and they agree with you.
And sound, meaning the premises uponwhich you are, like, the thing where
you're saying, this is true, and thisis true, therefore, if they don't agree
with one of those two things, thenthe argument is dead in the water.
(25:16):
And I know you're right.
Because I've seen and I know you're rightbecause I've seen it as well that people
don't believe that they're more creativeor innovative when they're all together.
I also know that the studies say that.
They are wrong that when peopleare together, they actually are.
And then you're going to say yes.
And some of those studies camefrom places like Microsoft.
(25:38):
Of course, it's self serving again.
Everybody's we can get thenumbers to say whatever we want.
But here's what I would saythat even people who are
reluctant to come back to the office.
All the time, regardless.
You know what I see, and you probably seeit, too, because I go into organizations
(25:58):
to speak often at these occasions whenthey have brought everyone together
when they've been remote is that magichappens, particularly in the non formal
situations when you bring people togetherwhen there's lunches together when they
all go out to karaoke together and thosekinds of things and What I, where I
(26:21):
think these back to work and I get notan expert in all of this like you are,
but where I suspect a lot of this breaksdown is that if the leadership actually
articulated their own case to themselves,
they actually wouldn't be able to makean argument that actually because if
(26:42):
they took off, one of the things Italk about in the introduction to the
book is what I call the persuadersparadox, meaning we get so convinced
of our own idea Or so charged with.
We have to make this thing happenthat I have to convince people that
we often will engage in a persuasiontechniques and attempts that if we were
(27:03):
to take that hat off for a moment, wewould never tolerate for ourselves.
Yeah, and.
It's one of those things where,you know, cause I see it a lot.
It's the role I oftenplay in organizations.
So thank you, brave clients where,they'll say we believe that it's, it's
going to be better for collaboration.
Innovation.
I'm like, and I would say, do youbelieve you are more collaborative and
(27:25):
innovative are equally collaborative,innovative working remote.
And I think a fair portion of thosepeople would be like yeah, I am, but.
They aren't.
Right?
And it's this kind of perspective.
So anyway, I think a lot of itcomes down to really thinking about
what would be an argument thatThe employees would agree is true.
(27:48):
What would be the premises that theemployees would agree would make sense.
And I think one of the one of theavenues for that is recalling a recalling
those experiences where there has beensomething magical about getting people
physically together and then be makingsure that your policies procedures
(28:09):
that are in fact what's happening.
The way that I've come to definesomething that someone can't unhear
is that it is a recognizable truththat creates, crystallizes, or
corrupts how they see the world.
And the issue is when you're trying toget someone to change, And they and the
(28:33):
whatever you're presenting to them doesnot do one of those four things, right?
It's not a recognizable truth.
They don't see it in play orit doesn't do one of those and
then it's not going to work.
So when it comes to back to officeagain, it's like, where do people agree?
Can we start there?
(28:53):
And.
Again, I think the path is like there.
There are these magical momentswhere when people are physically
together, other stuff happens.
It may not be collaborationand innovation.
It may be something else thatenables more of that to happen later.
But then the second step is criticalon the part of the organization, which
is to set up the situations where thosethings are actually going to happen.
(29:18):
Because the vast majority ofpeople I talk to who have been at.
In their terms, forced back to work partof the reason why they're so frustrated
by it is because they're sittingphysically at work in online meetings.
Yes, I survived a returnto office mandate in 2013.
So long before, online meetingswere really regular, I think.
(29:42):
And part of it was we were broughtback because the infrastructure didn't
necessarily support everything that wewere trying to do at that particular time.
And I had driven a lot of it and I knewit was completely possible to do it.
They just needed to work together andthey needed to get their act together.
So I had made specific recommendations,but the way that I coped with that
(30:04):
was actually flipping it and basicallysaying that I can make this work for me
because this is what I need to do so thatwhen we bring it back, it'll work well.
So I flipped it to be like Icould totally work from home.
I could make this work.
But what do I have to do?
How can I help so that everybodyelse can get to where I am.
(30:28):
So I went in and I started trainingpeople how to use webinar software.
I built out operating protocolsand I, I worked with like the tech
team and I did all of that work.
Like I never really stopped working onit, even though it was never my job.
And so assuming that identity andflipping that helped me deal with the
emotional impacts of it, even though,it was still aggravating, but it's
(30:49):
at least I could flip my perspective.
And I became the person whois going to make it work.
He was invested andcommitted for the longterm.
Yeah, that, that's the,
the risk in this approach is that youdiscover that As most marketers know
(31:12):
about marketing messaging, and thisis where a lot of this started for me,
cause that's where my career started.
Marketers know that no amount of greatmarketing will fix a product problem.
It's another version of, nothing killeda bad product, like good advertising.
There is no amount of messaging.
that will make a changethat is not fundamentally in
(31:34):
someone's favor, in their favor.
And I would argue that anything whereyou're trying to get them to believe
that it's in their favor is Out ofline with my own personal ethics.
People's own mileage mayvary, but the thing is that
eventually they'll figure it out.
Let's we can get all Shakespearean on it.
(31:56):
Like the truth will out again,over time, people will see whether
there's a gap between what theywere told and what they experience.
And they are always going totrust their own experience more.
And so when You know, in those situationswhere it really isn't going to work
(32:19):
out for some people on the team,that's where, this underneath a lot
of, there's a, there is a realizationthat may come to some readers of this
book, which is that what this is.
And what that shift in approach doesis that it shifts the risk of the
change onto the person asking forit or onto the people asking for it.
(32:43):
And that's again my bias.
I've got a lot of reasons forwhy I think that's appropriate,
but it like get intuitively.
This is definitely for a book forpeople who would agree that is true,
that if I am asking you to change.
The.
If it's a worthwhile change, I shouldbelieve enough in that change to
(33:05):
assume the risks of giving you myhonest, fully transparent reasoning
for it and acknowledge and takethe risk that you may not agree.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, we had that oncewith a software program.
They were trying to bring in.
They did spend 2 milliondollars on like a.
(33:25):
Basically, like a custom CRMbefore Salesforce was a thing.
And then they're like we spent2, 000, 2 million on this.
We need you to use it.
And I'm like, okay, butyou're making my life.
More difficult.
Why would I use it?
Because it doesn't solveany problem that I have.
You're just adding to my day.
And then eventually they startedadding in things that were useful.
(33:46):
So then it's okay I cansee the use case for that.
That's making my day easier.
I'll use it.
I don't really care about your2 million that you spent on it.
That's poor planning on your part.
Yes.
If you make my day easier.
Okay.
I'll support you.
And that is where, and that's, forme, that's always the place to start
(34:08):
a message of change is what, inwhat direction are the people you're
talking to already traveling, right?
And one thing that you can relyon is that your team always
wants their day to be easier.
They always want thereto be less annoyances.
They always want to be, they always wantmore time to do the things that they love.
(34:32):
Right now in some companies that cultureis do more of the work and other for
other people and maybe even within thatcompany that for other people that's
spending more time with friends, family,loved ones, crossword puzzles, dogs.
I don't know what that is.
This comes back to that fifth principleof the deepest beliefs are the hardest
to shift because part of the beliefis that I want the thing right?
(34:57):
And if I'm already organized and wiredin the direction of, I'm going to
pursue and be open to anything thatlegitimately will make my life easier,
then start the message of change there.
Pretty much one thing that's usually notgoing to fly is that it's for the good
of the company, that may fly with your Csuite, but it's still conditional on as
(35:21):
long as it doesn't make my job harder.
And so starting fromthere is the first thing.
And then again, so often what we dowhen we, All forms of messaging, but
particularly around messaging that'smeant to drive a shift in thinking or
behavior or just create an action is thatwe think that, at least we've learned
(35:46):
that just telling people what to dodoesn't work or doesn't work long term
or doesn't work and build the kind ofrelationships and culture that you want.
So we've we've, Thanks in nosmall part to Simon Sinek.
We've got, we've got this.
We've understood nowthat we, yeah, exactly.
We have to at least explainwhy are we doing this thing?
We're doing this thing becausenow I would say that when
(36:07):
you're trying to drive action.
That we use the why that doesn'tresonate for people a lot of times,
or it does, but it's a distant,it's seven rooms over, right?
Whereas if there was something closer,like for you to say that to, for them
to say we invested a lot of money.
You're like, that doesn'tring my bell at all.
But if it were legitimately, even if itwere initially positioned as this is going
(36:33):
to make your life easier, what we miss.
And what that means is that isstarting with not just the why behind
what the change is, but the why, butbehind what, how the change works.
In other words, why will this changeactually accomplish this thing?
(36:54):
And that's the one we skip, and that'sthe one where we, More often than not
end up with things that we trying toargue based on things we wish were true,
like the collaboration and innovation,but not things again, something that
someone can't unhear is a recognizabletruth doesn't mean it actually is, but
they have to recognize it as truth.
(37:15):
And this is where we resolve thistension between someone going,
this is a very logical approach.
It's logic that uses beliefs in its input.
That's not rational, totally not.
So this is where wefind that middle ground.
But it starts with saying, if youwant people to go along, it's not
(37:38):
their job to move in a new direction.
It's your job to show how the thingthat you're asking them to do doesn't
take them off the path that they're on.
And in fact, may actuallyaccelerate them towards whatever
it is that they're pursuing.
But it's your job.
It's your team's job as a leader, asa colleague to, to If you don't know
(38:02):
specifically what those things are to justto do the little bit of human work that
would say what would a smart, capable,good person, which all of your team is,
by the way, what would they most likelycare about the most, what would be the
most, what would be the thing that they'remost, caring about again, not, and it
(38:24):
isn't by the way, long term avoiding pain.
It's.
Yes, they want to avoid pain in theshort term, but they also want, there's
something else that they're looking for.
So there's a lot to it, but ultimatelyit is, does come down to very simple
principles, which is why I wrote the book.
I like to the smart, capable,good approach because it helps
(38:46):
people approach it with empathy.
Right, and put themselves insomebody else's shoes, I find.
So if you assume that everybody issmart, capable and good, which the
majority of people want to be, I maybeElon Musk claims to be an evil genius.
I'm not sure, but if everybody wants.
Yeah, from that perspective, then you haveto consider that, there's a reason that's
(39:07):
driving them that it makes you startthat curiosity thread, which I think is.
It's helpful.
That's right.
So yeah, I love this topic.
It's a couple things.
One is, again, most of the things thatI've put in here come from trial and
error experience of what business leadersand humans do and don't talk, right?
(39:30):
And.
And one of those, particularly inbusiness, it can be for not for all people
in business and not for all leaders.
But the empathy is can for certainpeople feel quite squishy on.
And that's because oftentimes thatwe've conflated that there's only one
kind of empathy when, in fact, there'sactually multiple kinds of empathy and
(39:54):
Most of the time what we're, what wethink we mean with empathy is emotional
empathy, which is understandingwhat somebody else is feeling.
And that feels very touchy feelyto particularly, task oriented
leaders and things like that.
Not everybody's wired towardsrelationships and that's okay by the way.
(40:16):
But one thing that can help tounderstand is Hey you don't.
Control how somebodyfeels about something.
You do not.
And they do.
And that's On that.
And so not only does it feeluncomfortable for certain people
because of how they're wired.
I don't feel comfortable on thisfeeling thing on another level.
(40:39):
Other people may resist it becausethey're like, I don't feel comfortable.
I don't directly controlhow they feel anyway.
So again, what's for some folks thatmaybe they're efficiency oriented.
Like I don't, even if I wanted to knowor could know, I can't, there's, it's
not a thing I can directly affect.
And there's lots of people whoactually don't really understand
(40:59):
what they're feeling either.
Like admitting their ownemotions to themselves.
So it's complex.
And this is where understanding thatthere's another avenue towards empathy
that can be really important and that'scognitive empathy, which is understanding
what somebody else is thinking.
And there's a huge amount of supportfor the fact that many of our feelings
(41:21):
are directly tied to our thoughts.
And so if we can back up andgo, whoo, this person is super
passionate about this, or, ooh, thisperson's really angry about this.
And instead of going.
I don't understand the feeling, whichyou may not, you're probably not going
to understand it unless you startto say what must they be thinking?
(41:43):
Or what could they be thinking that wouldproduce that anger would produce that
doubt that would produce that resistance?
And.
You're right.
The smart, capable, good thing isthat most people want to be it.
And I chose the phrasing in thebook quite consciously that most
people want to be seen that way.
(42:05):
Because I've spent enough years intherapy to know that not everybody's
convinced all the time that theyare smart, capable, or good.
Most of us.
The majority of us, I would sayeven the Elon Musks of the world
want to be seen as smart, capableand good to their in group, right?
Or to other people.
And so they're very happy to be seen asnot good by a huge group of other people
(42:28):
as long as they feel validated by thepeople whose opinion they want or need.
And so this is where.
Again, putting that lens on justsaying again, you don't even have to
believe I suggest that you do, though,because still going to leak out.
If you don't have to, though, butat least take that step of saying,
(42:52):
okay, let's just thought exercise.
If this person.
We're actually currentlysmart, capable and good.
Why would this make sense?
Because people do followtheir own internal logic.
It may not be logical toyou, but it is to them.
We do not, as humans, operate outsideof internal logic for very long.
(43:16):
We don't.
We are very internally consistent people.
Even if we're consistentlyinconsistent, right?
It's like Dan Ariely's likepredictably irrational.
We in fact are predictably irrational, butwe're irrational in very predictable ways.
We are logical and very illogical ways.
And that's what we can count on.
(43:37):
So if you can marry those two thingstogether, that people will operate.
Long term on their own internal logic.
So there is one there's some kind ofmental model or collection of models and
beliefs and frameworks and worldview.
Absolutely, which I love, by the way,favorite topic and that people want
to be seen as smart, capable and good.
(43:58):
Then you can start tosolve for the worldview.
You can say, I can see this reaction,if I assume they're smart, capable, and
good, given what I know of the world,and of people, and even this person.
What would have produced that?
And if you can't figure it out guess what?
It is a beautiful point, toyour point, Nola, of becoming
(44:19):
curious, and asking them.
What makes you say that?
What is, what is it that you are?
That are, what is itthat you are angry about?
Again, not why that can bea very triggering question.
Like, why are you so angry?
It's just what is it?
Because that can start to reallyfocus the question on, you could, if
(44:39):
someone said that to you with yourresistance to coming back to work or
that to that implementation of thatsoftware system what is it about this?
That is, is so frustrating to you.
You're like, it makes my job harder.
It does again, like we operate.
From these worldviews withthe assumption that people see
(45:00):
the world the same way we do.
And if we stop and for just even a splitsecond and go of course, not everybody
does or can, but our brain saves braincells by assuming that everybody does.
And so sometimes we have to createthose moments either in conversation
or by presenting this case for changethat again, people can recognize.
(45:31):
In that moment, because it doesn'ttake long to really say because I
believe this is true, and this is true.
That's why I believe this is theapproach that's going to produce this
outcome that doesn't take much to helppeople identify where the friction
is, where the alignment is, wherethere's opportunity and where there is.
(45:53):
And where there isn't and regardless,what I have seen is that being able
to do that and have that discussionallows people to civilly agree to
disagree and say, oh, I understand.
I just don't agree and thenit's up to the leadership.
It's up to you as an individualworking with that leadership
(46:13):
to decide what that actually.
Means for you.
And like you did, you said how can Ireframe it so that I can do something
with this and be helpful towards it?
But that's how that response isalways gonna be personal to Yeah, and
fundamentally, I think that's reallywhere the whole return to office thing
breaks down is it's related to identity.
(46:33):
So these leaders who want tobring people back, that's how
they've always been successful.
If they tell the story of theircareers, it's told in person
because that was their reality.
You would think that they want to mentorpeople, they want to train people,
they, and to do that in the frame ofreferenced in to their history, they
can't do that if the people are at home.
(46:57):
Like their reason for being successfulis fundamentally related to the
fact that they were in personseeing people in different contexts.
And so they have to reframe theirwhole entire understanding of their
career success in a way that's reallyuncomfortable for a lot of people.
Yes, and that also means that in manycases, it reveals to them in a way
(47:24):
they may not want to face quicklyor ever how they were viewing the
people who work with them, right?
Meaning they were looking them as workers.
Not as people because again, as a personto put the persuaders paradox back in
play as a person, they wouldn't wantto be seen as just a worker either.
(47:49):
They would resist it.
And so sometimes it's having thatperspective of just it's where
that classic 90s 80s and 90s.
It started in Toyota.
The five wise.
comes into play of justkeep, it isn't always five.
Sometimes it's three, sometimes it'sseven, but keep going down until
you, it's a, or even share Lockian.
(48:11):
The only thing that'sleft is what must be true.
And sometimes that's uncomfortable and butif you're really trying to get a change
to be successful, that's the work, right?
And sometimes the work is going to beThis realization that you are putting the
(48:33):
needs of the company ahead of the needsof your employees and that may go against
what you have said Your values are right.
And so that's where thetrust breaks down, right?
Because it's the storydoesn't hang together, right?
Exactly.
It doesn't it.
It doesn't.
It is not recognizably true.
(48:54):
So that's what you know, for me this ideaof these recognizable truths apply both
to individual pieces and parts of thisstory, but also to the story as a whole,
because sometimes, we can hear somethingthat just completely, Like just shifts
everything, and it just rewires therest of a story that's already in play.
(49:16):
I would say we've seen that this weekin Kamala Harris's response on Call
Her Daddy when she said there are manywomen who do not aspire to be humble.
And for many women, I'm not sayingall, for many women, that was
one of those recognizable truths.
All of a sudden they heardthe words and they're like.
(49:36):
I recognize that as true and Irecognize that as true about me.
And so what it did was itcrystallized for a group of people.
This is why this something didn't work.
This is why, some like something aboutthe story I'm being told about my
role as a woman doesn't work becauseI've just heard a recognizable truth.
(49:59):
And then to your point, Nola,sometimes it's the whole story, right?
It's just it's, thesethings don't track together.
And that's, I, sorry to get allAristotelian on it, but it's it's not
a, it's not a valid argument, meaningA plus B does not equal C in this case.
And And if that's verifiably true,based on your audience's experience, if
(50:23):
your audience cannot validate it basedon their own experience, first test.
Test.
Dead in the water.
And so this is why so much of theapproach that I'm talking about in this
book really relies on those underlying,sometimes implicit, unspoken, in
practice principles that are guidingwhat the leaders do and team members do
(50:48):
every day, because that is what we do.
That is the firstvalidation of the change.
The first yes, that alwayshas to pass is does it check?
Does it check with my head?
Does it make sense?
And does it make sense?
Does it feel right?
And the ding, it has to be,I don't hear an audible ding.
(51:10):
When I hear a truth, I feel it likein, in my chest, it's not audible.
It's a feeling right.
And that actually happened once where itwas something that somebody was dealing
with an insurance claim and somebody toldme something that they shouldn't have told
me and I'm like, Oh, this is the truth.
This is what you're trying to do.
And I got a 34, 000 settlement out ofthem because I recognized their truth.
(51:34):
Yes, we there's a lot as I'm, asI am learning right now, cause
I, I started amidst all of this.
I started a doctorate program this summer.
We have.
I think overlooked in particularly Westernand Western culture and in business,
the other forms of.
(51:57):
Knowledge, wisdom andlearning that we have.
And, it what is intriguing to me in thisenvironment of incredible complexity and
incredible change is how important it is.
To be able to
(52:22):
not just articulate quickly whysomething what something is, why is it
important and what and be able to givepeople that information that allows
them to do that to do a very quickcheck, but to be able to recognize.
That actually nothing that happens up herehappens without the gut check happening
(52:45):
first, and I don't care how B2B or howengineering or tech or science focused,
an organization is it's, it's proposalreview committee is or whatever that
data, we're going to trust the data.
(53:07):
That either aligns with what we'veseen and experienced ourselves, or in
rare cases, we will trust it becauseit either comes from a source that
we really trust, or again, that itfinally unlocks, even in a way that
we weren't expecting, something else.
One of my best examples of that, andI know we're running out of time,
(53:28):
but one of my favorite examplesof that was with with Jay Baer.
So Jay Baer is a customer serviceand customer experience expert.
And two books ago, three books ago, hewrote a book called Hug Your Haters.
And it started with, he started with,by, he started it by doing research.
So he started it by doing,by gathering information on.
(53:49):
Like, how often you need to respondto the haters online and what the
expectations were and all of that.
And to Jay's eternal credit, hisoriginal hypothesis about it, I don't
even remember what it was disproved.
And what he discovered in the data wasnot that was that the haters were actually
deeply passionate about the brand.
(54:11):
And when they got angry, it'sbecause they cared so much.
And so this is one of those places where,when it suddenly, for him, what that
created was, and I remember we workedon the messaging around this, which was,
That it wasn't that the haters weren'tthe problem, ignoring them was the
problem, because they were so passionateabout the brand, the company, etc.
(54:35):
That hearing that disconfirming data iswhat unlocked for him why haters could
have, like, why they carried such power.
It's because the people who I wouldsubmit, it's because that passion.
For the brand or for the way things shouldbe was so intense that people felt it
(54:56):
even through, the austere online world.
Yeah, I actually built my customerservice career around difficult
callers and dealing with people thatother people couldn't deal with.
And.
That was how I was successful becauseI listened to them, because honestly,
the majority of the time is they hada vision of what could be, and they
(55:18):
were actually trying to help you getthere, if only you would pay attention.
Yes.
Yes.
And that actually is what's happeningwith the whole return to office thing
is, it's not that people object to.
It's not that they don't want to work.
It's not that they refuseto go into the office.
It's because they don't feel heard.
That's the really bigthing that's happened.
(55:38):
That's right.
And they are, and it's andwhen the leadership says
we don't feel heard either.
This is where I would urge people to say,
because are you asking peopleto hear something that you
haven't actually said, right?
And that is how could they hear that?
And so this is why so often it reallyis so important to it's, to say what
(56:02):
they can't unhear, you have to saywhat they can't hear first, right?
In order for that to be the case.
And that sometimes means digging deepinto really understanding what is driving
why you believe a particular changeis actually the right thing to do.
And then discovering what in that.
(56:23):
And then deciding what does thatmean for either how you change the
message or how you're going aboutmaking the change in the first place.
All right, we should wrap it upbecause we are over time at this
point, but thank you so much.
It's always lovely to chat with you.
I did find the book immensely helpful.
I think in my review, I actuallywrote immediately useful because.
(56:46):
I was actually applying it.
If I, if you go back through mysocial, you'll actually see I was
weaving, smart, capable, and good.
And I was actually weaving itinto things I was already writing.
Oh, I love that.
Yeah, it was, is really cool.
And so definitely the book is out today.
I checked my mailbox tosee if it had arrived.
It hadn't arrived yet.
But it's already hitting the charts.
So if you get the book, Say whatthey can on here by Tamsyn Webster,
(57:09):
write a review for her on Amazon.
And we want the next book in the seriesbecause it's helped me to this point.
Share your time with me.
And I'm just very gratefulto be able to have such an
engaging conversation with you.
Oh, thank you so much.
I appreciate it.
You can't breathe.
One, two, three, four, five, six,seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven,
twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen,sixteen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty.
Twenty seven, eighteen, nineteen,twenty one, twenty two, twenty three,
twenty four, twenty five, twentysix, twenty seven, twenty eight.
in orbit.
Nola Simon (00:22):
Thank you so much for joining me.
I'm Nola Simon.
I'm the host of the Hybrid RemoteCenter of Excellence and joining
me today is Tamsen Webster.
She is a prime example of somebody thatI've built a relationship with over time.
I've actually followedTamsen probably for years.
When did the red thread come out?
That came out in
Tamsen Webster (00:40):
2021,
Nola Simon (00:42):
but I've been
Tamsen Webster (00:43):
talking about the red thread for eight years now.
Nola Simon (00:46):
So my role was actually my corporate role was
actually restructured in 2020.
So I started paying attention to LinkedIn.
I wasn't writing, butI was consuming a lot.
And so I think I startednoticing you around there.
So I've honestly been followingyou probably since then, but
I just connected this year.
And I had attended one of your workshopsthat one of my other podcast guests
Marty Constant had made available.
(01:06):
And then I connected after that.
So I always tell people I, I don'taccept pitches from my podcast.
I like to invite people thatI've got to know online.
So I know your work, and Tansyn's workhas been instrumental to helping me
develop the messaging for my business.
And I'm really excited that she'scome out now with a new book,
another new book, which is calledSay What They Can't Unhear.
(01:26):
And I gotta tell you, the ding issomething that we really have to talk
about because I know that although itmanifests differently for me as well.
Tamsen, how do youdescribe your profession?
Obviously you're an author,you're a keynote speaker you're
deeply involved with TED TalksHow do you describe yourself?
Like what's your perfectmessage to deliver who you are?
Tamsen Webster (01:48):
So I, for folks that would understand at least somewhat
intuitively I say that I'm messagedesigner, so I have, after a lot of
trial and error, that seems to besomething where most people generally.
Yes, correctly what that probably means.
So meaning you've got somethingyou want to say and you're trying
to figure out how to say it.
(02:09):
I help you do that.
My more my like sassier answer, mycheekier answer, which is also correct is
that I'm an English to English translator.
Because I think that'swhat I'm I help people do.
But fundamentally, I feel like thatmy I don't even feel, I know that
my deep passion is helping peoplehelp other people create change.
(02:31):
And so whatever I can put together,learn, process, size, tams and eyes,
whatever, to help people really get whattheir, their difference of perspective,
their approaches, their offerings,their ideas, their initiatives, all of
these things that they're, investingtime and money in to make a change for
(02:53):
themselves, for the world, for clients,customers, whatever it might be.
I want to make sure that they have asmuch opportunity for success as possible.
And so that's where I come in because I'vesomehow cobbled together this deep and
long interest, both in transformationalchange and in communications.
(03:15):
And so I've put those together.
To create message design.
Awesome.
Nola Simon (03:20):
Perfect.
Yeah.
I was always fascinated that part of yourorigin story really is Weight Watchers.
And a lot of that, when you're tryingto lose weight is cause I remember my
mom did this probably in the eighties.
A lot of it is,
She did manage to lose a lot of weight.
She came back, but that, that was alwayssomething that caught my attention
(03:41):
because I remember her experiencewith that, but a lot of times it's the
stories that you tell yourself, right?
Tamsen Webster (03:48):
Yes, absolutely.
And yes, it is a hundred percent.
I think it's to quote one of my membersshe always said that it's 99 percent
mental and the rest is just food.
And that's, that is, we know nowthat's, it's not quite as pure as that.
I think that's one of the things I'mdelighted that science has caught up
(04:09):
with what was observable in the 13 yearsthat I was a Weight Watchers leader.
And that is, is that.
There are fundamental physiologicaldifferences between people that
no amount of retraining yourthoughts or positive self talk
(04:30):
or willpower will, will overcome.
And so it's not that it's not possible.
It's just that it was one of the of somany lessons I learned in the years that
I moonlighted as a Weight Watchers leader.
One of them is that to be verywary of one size fits all.
(04:52):
Anything, right?
One size fits all approach.
One size fits all message.
Because.
That is bearing it, that bears with ita lot of assumptions about what you're
offering and who you're talking to.
And those can get you introuble on both sides.
I don't like getting in trouble thatway, which is probably why I've spent
(05:15):
so much time You know, because I'vehad some horror stories of just whoop,
that was not the right way to say that.
And so that's, that's part ofwhere all this has come from.
And now that I've gotten to a certainpoint in my life, in my career, where I
feel like it's mathematically impossiblefor me to be the age that I am, but
there are some objective truths, that Ireally have gotten to a point where it's.
(05:40):
Where I feel like, I havesomething to say on this like I,
I, I have put all this together.
I've seen this work.
I've done the work.
I have done the research.
I have done the testing just to see whatit is that works and doesn't work so
that within a world that is constantlychanging and with people who are you
know, I feel I have something to say onthis like I, I Just absolutely different.
(06:04):
Person to person in somany different ways.
What are some of the things that arereliably true, no matter what, no matter
who you're talking to, no matter what thesituation is, because that I think gives
you at least a place to start and givesyou a place to start where you're starting
(06:25):
with the strength of what is Thanks.
Known, right?
This is how people think about things,this is how people make sense of
information, this is how people reactwhen they're treated a certain way.
If those are some of the things thateither will move a change forward or
back or get in the way of the message oraccelerate it, , it, solvable problems.
(06:48):
Unsolved solvable problems drive me nuts.
And this is one of those where I, when Icome to looking at messaging and change
messaging, I'm like these, most of thethings, most of the places where we go
wrong are completely solvable and I justreally wanted to help people solve that.
Nola Simon (07:05):
Yeah, no, it makes sense.
So in Tamsyn's book, she has thesenine principles that are they're so
logical, they're so straightforward,but they're brilliant, right?
Thank you.
And one of them that really caught myattention, I think that's really where
you're talking about this too, is thedeepest beliefs are the hardest to shift.
And I always found that becauseI always lived north of the north
(07:26):
of Toronto and worked in the city.
And so they would the companywould often come out with like
messages that were designed tobe for the majority of employees.
I wasn't the majority of employeesbecause I didn't live in the city.
I, A lot of and a lot of times I didn'tfit so they would come out my favorite
was always the, let's save the planet.
Let's bike to work.
(07:46):
I don't know.
I live 60 kilometers north ofthe city like that's not going
Tamsen Webster (07:51):
to
Nola Simon (07:51):
happen.
You can't bike on the freeway for one.
It's illegal to I'm probably going to be.
I'm still biking six hours later and thenI have to turn around and go home, right?
So fundamentally, like my beliefwas, this is not a message that's
designed for me because you haveno clue how I even get to work.
You don't even know who I am.
Tamsen Webster (08:11):
Or that's, oh, or that's all you're left to think,
absent the information, any otherinformation being put out there.
So Again, it's such asolvable problem, right?
All that take, took, all thatwould take is a, I'm no grammarian
a dependent clause that says, forthose of you who live in the city.
(08:35):
But, right?
Yeah.
Because at least what thatdoes is say, this is for you.
And when it comes to those deep beliefs,so the way that I, as you probably figured
out by reading these things they'reall like nine different perspectives
on what kind of sits in the center is.
The same thing.
It's not all the same thing, but it'sdifferent avenues into this kind of nut
(08:59):
of what is it that people have to hear inorder to understand and adapt a new idea.
And.
The deepest beliefs arethe hardest to shift.
That one is in the trio, like thatone sits at the heart of the book.
It's number five.
So it's like literally in themiddle of all the pieces, because I
(09:20):
think, for me, it is one of the mostcounterintuitive principles of inspiring
long term change or creating theconditions that are more likely for it.
And there's good reasons for that.
The good reason for it is that it'scounterintuitive is that when we think
about deep beliefs and, we'll acknowledgethat they're hard to shift, and the
(09:44):
reason why I chose that phrasing wasbecause most people, A, would agree with
it, but B, they see that as a problem.
They see that it's a problem thatdeep beliefs are hard to shift.
And my perspective is that.
No belief.
Very few beliefs.
Let me be careful.
One always has to becareful with absolutes.
(10:06):
Very few beliefs that anybodyholds are equally true for
them in every context, right?
And what I mean by that is so all thathas to happen when you combine that
principle with let's say every decisionhas a story, which is the second one,
which is All someone has to hear issomething else they believe to be true
(10:33):
or recognize as true that is just asstrong or stronger and that they can
notch into the story they're tellingthemselves, but in a different way.
And though I didn't have the languagefor it back when I was a weight watchers
leader it's again, one of the ones that,that truly had its birth there because
(10:55):
so often, your experience with weightloss was my experience with weight loss,
which is that I had tried and failed anynumber of times before I finally found
and created this kind of combinationof factors that, that worked for me.
And certainly one of the things thatI observed over 13 years was that
one of the biggest and most dangerousthings that could happen was someone
(11:19):
faulting themselves for failure andadding that to the mental tally of
this belief that I can't do this thing.
And so often when that's the operatingdeep belief, I just can't, it's my genes.
Like I'm just destined to be this way.
And I felt that way about myself,which is just like I come from
a family of overweight women.
(11:41):
And so maybe this is justwho I'm supposed to be.
And what I found that was the antidoteto that kind of, setting where
people set themselves up for failurewas instead of saying, put okay.
Instead of putting all your eggs in abelief that you haven't tested this is
(12:03):
possible for me, or in a new behavior oflet me stop eating some food that I love.
What would happen if, it really startedwith a question, what would happen if
we could map over something that theyare already good at someplace else?
And for me personally,just as an example, I am.
(12:27):
almost pathologically a rule followerand a systems follower, which is
one of the reasons why for me Weightwatchers was a really good match.
It is not a good match for people whoSee it as a constricting framework.
And or and aren't able or don'thave a leader who could show them or
(12:47):
present them with a different way toconceive of those same guidelines.
But for me, it was like, once I found asystem, I was like, yes, this is awesome.
I am great at following rules.
Just give me rules as long as therules aren't too hard to follow.
And for me, it was like mapping thatover and saying, oh, it's just a budget.
(13:08):
And instead of thinking of myselflike, oh, I'm a bad person, food is
good or bad, it for me, that systemneutralized the emotional attachment
to it all to, to me, to, to the food.
And so again, for me, once it, once, itwas, this is just about, solving a puzzle.
(13:29):
Another thing I love, likehow do I get the food I want?
into this framework that'sbeing presented to me, then it
became actually like a game.
Not one that I chose to gamify, because,again, a thing I learned over time,
was that, like, when you're tryingto play that game you win, you lose,
and if you lose, you win, right?
It's just you're, it's all you.
(13:51):
Who are you trying to win against?
Who are you playing against?
Exactly.
And, but I would, so once I was likethat, again, it wasn't the program
that worked for me so much as therewas this aspect of the program that
I could link to something that I wasalready confident that I did well.
And so that was a
Nola Simon (14:09):
stacking.
Before habit stacking was a thing, really.
Tamsen Webster (14:15):
Yeah, because it was just like this idea
of again I'm, I love puzzles.
Let me figure this out.
Let me let me figure out how to do this.
And I'm also a little ornery.
I'm contrarian.
So if you're like, It's notpossible to keep doing X, Y, or Z.
Then I'm like I'm going to see ifit's possible if I can still have
dark chocolate every day, and Ican still have my ice cream, and
(14:35):
I can still have these things.
The whole reason why I joined walkedinto Weight Watchers for the first
day is because I saw this hilariousepisode of the Oprah Winfrey show.
When Sarah, the Duchess ofFerguson was on here, this is
dating me rather significantly.
That's okay.
We're the same age.
Yeah.
And they were, they like a got themselvespretty much drunk on television and
(14:58):
then attempted these two women whoreally don't cook for themselves
to make chocolate chip cookies.
And I just, Hey, it was such like ajoyful thing, but also this whole idea
of Oh, it linked into to bring it backto some of the things that I talk about
in the book, something that I recognizedis true, which is that if I couldn't
lose weight doing the things that Ilove, how could I possibly keep it off?
(15:21):
So it just again from a thing thatYou know, from assessing for myself.
What hadn't worked in the past waslike, okay, if it's too restrictive,
I'm not going to stay on it.
If I telling me if I don't, if I feelembarrassed about telling somebody
else what I'm doing to lose weight orto get healthy I'm not going to do it.
If it's too extreme,I'm not going to do it.
And so it was really getting to a pointof saying, okay, I know what I need
(15:47):
from something in order to make it work.
And then it was just aboutfinding that intersection.
And that was the role that I sawmyself as a way watchers leader with
my members was, one thing that theysaid that the company said to me once
upon a time, which I couldn't unhear.
And I still use this in any number ofways was, they said to us at one point
(16:08):
during ongoing training that we wouldhave that, our job was to be the expert.
In the program and to recognize that ourmembers were the expert in themselves
and that our job was to figure out howto blend the expertise, not to presume
that we knew what the right way to do.
(16:29):
The program was for them, but to getas much information and the Understand
the program so thoroughly that we couldreally adapt it to wherever somebody was.
So an example, I find a window
Nola Simon (16:44):
or a door,
Tamsen Webster (16:46):
right?
Exactly.
And one of those windows of thedoors was I grew up in the point
system of Weight Watchers, whichis basically like a budget, right?
You get a certain number of Points to eatin a day and food has points and your job,
like a budget, is don't go over budget andone of the things that was very difficult
for people was when they deeply believedthat they were a night eater, like a
(17:13):
label that they would assign to themselvessaying that they're a night eater and
what that means for folks that may notbe familiar with that term is that it.
They were they were great fleeingthings that you were they were,
they felt like they really hadgreat and strong control through
most of the day and through dinner.
(17:34):
And then somewhere between dinner andbedtime, the wheels would just come off.
And some of that.
As I observed over time again,13 years and, with a number of
meetings that I led in, around myday job, I did the math one time.
It was 3000 meetings.
You pick up some data from doing that.
And one of the things that I did.
(17:55):
Picked up was that people that wouldget so desperate because they would
run out of points because the, thepoints have worked for 24 hours.
Most people started them in the morning.
And so again, if you get to the endof the day and at the time they wanted
to or needed to eat or, do whateverfood was doing for them was the time
(18:17):
when they had the fewest points.
And they had got a lot of them again.
We get to that point where they werejust like, then I can't do this because
the program doesn't work with who I am.
And I spent some time trying tofigure this one out for people
because there really are a lot ofpeople for whom this is a challenge.
And then I was like but there'snowhere in this literature that says
(18:40):
the points start in the morning.
The points are just 24 hours.
What I ended up doing wassaying to them, hey, guess what?
There's no, nothing says that you haveto start the points in the morning.
It's just 24 hours of points.
And yeah, it's going to mean you'regoing to need to play with the journaling
(19:02):
things that we've got and whereyou write things down a little bit.
But as long as you can feel likeyou can keep track, then start your
points at dinner because deeperbelief that I anchored it to.
That there's 24 hours in a day.
Yeah.
And that 24 hours can start at any time.
(19:22):
And so for many people, I'mnot saying all, but for many
people, just that simple shift.
Again, I didn't have to tellthem they weren't night eaters.
I didn't have to change who they were.
All I was doing was saying,there is something else that is
actually, in this case, outsideof you, that's even more reliable.
That it that when it comestogether with you actually
(19:45):
gives you a path forward here.
And
Nola Simon (19:47):
that works too for, cause like people who work night shifts,
it's a way to be more flexiblewith the reality of who they're
like, who they are in their life.
Tamsen Webster (19:55):
Yeah.
And.
There's always something like that.
I I should say I always start withthe assumption or the belief that
there's something like that becauseit allows me to start looking for it.
Then, if I come into any situationwhere I'm trying to help someone
change or help someone help otherpeople or their organization change.
(20:15):
If I come in saying, how do weget them to say yes to this?
Then I've created a really binarysituation where it's just Yes, not
yes to this change, not how can Iopen up and say, All right, we are
trying to achieve this larger thing.
Are we all in agreement about that?
(20:37):
Are we trying, in Weight Watchers,are we trying to achieve health goals?
Yeah.
Okay, great.
Then as long as we're in agreementabout that, we're going to start there.
Now let's take point by pointand say, what, where else are we
where are the points of conflict?
Where aren't they?
But by avoiding looking and trying tochallenge those deep beliefs and really
(20:59):
just coming at it from whatever thesituation is from a different direction
and finding something that is strongas strong or a stronger than what's
standing in the way, then we allow peopleto tell themselves a different story.
In their head or one that nowhas a possibility of success,
(21:21):
whereas the current one doesn't.
And when somebody wants the outcomeenough, they will, at least at that point,
be willing to try because they'll agreein principle now that it's possible.
And.
For a lot of us and with a lot ofchange that we're trying to do in
organizations, like that's the firstbarrier that we run up against, which
(21:44):
is people reject it at a hand beforeeven because there's just dismissed.
It is not possible.
And this is where I, I, one of the manythings I hope that people pull from the
book is just this idea of that little tinyyes, that comes saying, is it possible?
(22:05):
Do you agree in principle that this wouldwork, that this is, that this makes sense?
Again, not based on data and evidence.
Those are important.
They come later.
But intuitively, based on what yourecognize as true become something
that will shift what you howyou think about the world or how
(22:26):
you think about the situation orhow you think about this change.
And I think that's really where the keyis so that it comes it flips from the
deepest beliefs are the hardest to shiftas being a problem to the deepest beliefs
are the hardest to shift actually tellyou where to start to solve the problem.
Start with by building onthose deep beliefs rather
(22:48):
than trying to challenge them.
Nola Simon (22:51):
Yeah, no, I the question comes up with my work is the whole return
to office debate and everybody, like allthese CEOs trying to bring people back in
because of collaboration and innovation.
And, that the work is justbetter in the office and people
fundamentally don't believe them.
Because for one, they've beenable to work well at home.
Two, their role doesn't reallyinvolve innovation or collaboration.
(23:15):
And as we've tried in the past, theyhaven't succeeded to actually influence
that innovation and collaboration.
And so fundamentally there's thatdisagreement about those beliefs.
Tamsen Webster (23:27):
Yes.
And I would venture to say.
That
in some of those cases where theleadership is bringing people back,
they don't actually believe thatit they don't believe it either.
(23:48):
And that actually isn't the reason.
Bringing them back.
And so the thing is that, particularly,I think people's intuitive BS
meter has always been very good.
But employees to their employers is supergood because they have a lot of history
with the behavior of the organization.
(24:09):
And and guess what?
We are, as humans, we areactually Nonverbal first, right?
Like that and we will trust what weexperience with all of ourselves far
(24:29):
more than any words we ever attach to it.
And this is where, again, as partof the motivation of this book,
which is just saying, listen, ifyou can't actually make a, I know
this is going to sound super direct.
rational.
I don't get to the reason why it's not.
But if you can't make both avalid and sound argument that
(24:52):
your audience agrees is valid andsound, and what I mean by valid and
sound is it is a logical argument.
Like it's complete, meaning this plusthis equals this and they agree with you.
And sound, meaning the premises uponwhich you are, like, the thing where
you're saying, this is true, and thisis true, therefore, if they don't agree
with one of those two things, thenthe argument is dead in the water.
(25:16):
And I know you're right.
Because I've seen and I know you're rightbecause I've seen it as well that people
don't believe that they're more creativeor innovative when they're all together.
I also know that the studies say that.
They are wrong that when peopleare together, they actually are.
And then you're going to say yes.
And some of those studies camefrom places like Microsoft.
(25:38):
Of course, it's self serving again.
Everybody's we can get thenumbers to say whatever we want.
But here's what I would saythat even people who are
reluctant to come back to the office.
All the time, regardless.
You know what I see, and you probably seeit, too, because I go into organizations
(25:58):
to speak often at these occasions whenthey have brought everyone together
when they've been remote is that magichappens, particularly in the non formal
situations when you bring people togetherwhen there's lunches together when they
all go out to karaoke together and thosekinds of things and What I, where I
(26:21):
think these back to work and I get notan expert in all of this like you are,
but where I suspect a lot of this breaksdown is that if the leadership actually
articulated their own case to themselves,
they actually wouldn't be able to makean argument that actually because if
(26:42):
they took off, one of the things Italk about in the introduction to the
book is what I call the persuadersparadox, meaning we get so convinced
of our own idea Or so charged with.
We have to make this thing happenthat I have to convince people that
we often will engage in a persuasiontechniques and attempts that if we were
(27:03):
to take that hat off for a moment, wewould never tolerate for ourselves.
Yeah, and.
It's one of those things where,you know, cause I see it a lot.
It's the role I oftenplay in organizations.
So thank you, brave clients where,they'll say we believe that it's, it's
going to be better for collaboration.
Innovation.
I'm like, and I would say, do youbelieve you are more collaborative and
(27:25):
innovative are equally collaborative,innovative working remote.
And I think a fair portion of thosepeople would be like yeah, I am, but.
They aren't.
Right?
And it's this kind of perspective.
So anyway, I think a lot of itcomes down to really thinking about
what would be an argument thatThe employees would agree is true.
(27:48):
What would be the premises that theemployees would agree would make sense.
And I think one of the one of theavenues for that is recalling a recalling
those experiences where there has beensomething magical about getting people
physically together and then be makingsure that your policies procedures
(28:09):
that are in fact what's happening.
The way that I've come to definesomething that someone can't unhear
is that it is a recognizable truththat creates, crystallizes, or
corrupts how they see the world.
And the issue is when you're trying toget someone to change, And they and the
(28:33):
whatever you're presenting to them doesnot do one of those four things, right?
It's not a recognizable truth.
They don't see it in play orit doesn't do one of those and
then it's not going to work.
So when it comes to back to officeagain, it's like, where do people agree?
Can we start there?
(28:53):
And.
Again, I think the path is like there.
There are these magical momentswhere when people are physically
together, other stuff happens.
It may not be collaborationand innovation.
It may be something else thatenables more of that to happen later.
But then the second step is criticalon the part of the organization, which
is to set up the situations where thosethings are actually going to happen.
(29:18):
Because the vast majority ofpeople I talk to who have been at.
In their terms, forced back to work partof the reason why they're so frustrated
by it is because they're sittingphysically at work in online meetings.
Yes, I survived a returnto office mandate in 2013.
So long before, online meetingswere really regular, I think.
(29:42):
And part of it was we were broughtback because the infrastructure didn't
necessarily support everything that wewere trying to do at that particular time.
And I had driven a lot of it and I knewit was completely possible to do it.
They just needed to work together andthey needed to get their act together.
So I had made specific recommendations,but the way that I coped with that
(30:04):
was actually flipping it and basicallysaying that I can make this work for me
because this is what I need to do so thatwhen we bring it back, it'll work well.
So I flipped it to be like Icould totally work from home.
I could make this work.
But what do I have to do?
How can I help so that everybodyelse can get to where I am.
(30:28):
So I went in and I started trainingpeople how to use webinar software.
I built out operating protocolsand I, I worked with like the tech
team and I did all of that work.
Like I never really stopped working onit, even though it was never my job.
And so assuming that identity andflipping that helped me deal with the
emotional impacts of it, even though,it was still aggravating, but it's
(30:49):
at least I could flip my perspective.
And I became the person whois going to make it work.
He was invested andcommitted for the longterm.
Yeah, that, that's the,
the risk in this approach is that youdiscover that As most marketers know
(31:12):
about marketing messaging, and thisis where a lot of this started for me,
cause that's where my career started.
Marketers know that no amount of greatmarketing will fix a product problem.
It's another version of, nothing killeda bad product, like good advertising.
There is no amount of messaging.
that will make a changethat is not fundamentally in
(31:34):
someone's favor, in their favor.
And I would argue that anything whereyou're trying to get them to believe
that it's in their favor is Out ofline with my own personal ethics.
People's own mileage mayvary, but the thing is that
eventually they'll figure it out.
Let's we can get all Shakespearean on it.
(31:56):
Like the truth will out again,over time, people will see whether
there's a gap between what theywere told and what they experience.
And they are always going totrust their own experience more.
And so when You know, in those situationswhere it really isn't going to work
(32:19):
out for some people on the team,that's where, this underneath a lot
of, there's a, there is a realizationthat may come to some readers of this
book, which is that what this is.
And what that shift in approach doesis that it shifts the risk of the
change onto the person asking forit or onto the people asking for it.
(32:43):
And that's again my bias.
I've got a lot of reasons forwhy I think that's appropriate,
but it like get intuitively.
This is definitely for a book forpeople who would agree that is true,
that if I am asking you to change.
The.
If it's a worthwhile change, I shouldbelieve enough in that change to
(33:05):
assume the risks of giving you myhonest, fully transparent reasoning
for it and acknowledge and takethe risk that you may not agree.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, we had that oncewith a software program.
They were trying to bring in.
They did spend 2 milliondollars on like a.
(33:25):
Basically, like a custom CRMbefore Salesforce was a thing.
And then they're like we spent2, 000, 2 million on this.
We need you to use it.
And I'm like, okay, butyou're making my life.
More difficult.
Why would I use it?
Because it doesn't solveany problem that I have.
You're just adding to my day.
And then eventually they startedadding in things that were useful.
(33:46):
So then it's okay I cansee the use case for that.
That's making my day easier.
I'll use it.
I don't really care about your2 million that you spent on it.
That's poor planning on your part.
Yes.
If you make my day easier.
Okay.
I'll support you.
And that is where, and that's, forme, that's always the place to start
(34:08):
a message of change is what, inwhat direction are the people you're
talking to already traveling, right?
And one thing that you can relyon is that your team always
wants their day to be easier.
They always want thereto be less annoyances.
They always want to be, they always wantmore time to do the things that they love.
(34:32):
Right now in some companies that cultureis do more of the work and other for
other people and maybe even within thatcompany that for other people that's
spending more time with friends, family,loved ones, crossword puzzles, dogs.
I don't know what that is.
This comes back to that fifth principleof the deepest beliefs are the hardest
to shift because part of the beliefis that I want the thing right?
(34:57):
And if I'm already organized and wiredin the direction of, I'm going to
pursue and be open to anything thatlegitimately will make my life easier,
then start the message of change there.
Pretty much one thing that's usually notgoing to fly is that it's for the good
of the company, that may fly with your Csuite, but it's still conditional on as
(35:21):
long as it doesn't make my job harder.
And so starting fromthere is the first thing.
And then again, so often what we dowhen we, All forms of messaging, but
particularly around messaging that'smeant to drive a shift in thinking or
behavior or just create an action is thatwe think that, at least we've learned
(35:46):
that just telling people what to dodoesn't work or doesn't work long term
or doesn't work and build the kind ofrelationships and culture that you want.
So we've we've, Thanks in nosmall part to Simon Sinek.
We've got, we've got this.
We've understood nowthat we, yeah, exactly.
We have to at least explainwhy are we doing this thing?
We're doing this thing becausenow I would say that when
(36:07):
you're trying to drive action.
That we use the why that doesn'tresonate for people a lot of times,
or it does, but it's a distant,it's seven rooms over, right?
Whereas if there was something closer,like for you to say that to, for them
to say we invested a lot of money.
You're like, that doesn'tring my bell at all.
But if it were legitimately, even if itwere initially positioned as this is going
(36:33):
to make your life easier, what we miss.
And what that means is that isstarting with not just the why behind
what the change is, but the why, butbehind what, how the change works.
In other words, why will this changeactually accomplish this thing?
(36:54):
And that's the one we skip, and that'sthe one where we, More often than not
end up with things that we trying toargue based on things we wish were true,
like the collaboration and innovation,but not things again, something that
someone can't unhear is a recognizabletruth doesn't mean it actually is, but
they have to recognize it as truth.
(37:15):
And this is where we resolve thistension between someone going,
this is a very logical approach.
It's logic that uses beliefs in its input.
That's not rational, totally not.
So this is where wefind that middle ground.
But it starts with saying, if youwant people to go along, it's not
(37:38):
their job to move in a new direction.
It's your job to show how the thingthat you're asking them to do doesn't
take them off the path that they're on.
And in fact, may actuallyaccelerate them towards whatever
it is that they're pursuing.
But it's your job.
It's your team's job as a leader, asa colleague to, to If you don't know
(38:02):
specifically what those things are to justto do the little bit of human work that
would say what would a smart, capable,good person, which all of your team is,
by the way, what would they most likelycare about the most, what would be the
most, what would be the thing that they'remost, caring about again, not, and it
(38:24):
isn't by the way, long term avoiding pain.
It's.
Yes, they want to avoid pain in theshort term, but they also want, there's
something else that they're looking for.
So there's a lot to it, but ultimatelyit is, does come down to very simple
principles, which is why I wrote the book.
I like to the smart, capable,good approach because it helps
(38:46):
people approach it with empathy.
Right, and put themselves insomebody else's shoes, I find.
So if you assume that everybody issmart, capable and good, which the
majority of people want to be, I maybeElon Musk claims to be an evil genius.
I'm not sure, but if everybody wants.
Yeah, from that perspective, then you haveto consider that, there's a reason that's
(39:07):
driving them that it makes you startthat curiosity thread, which I think is.
It's helpful.
That's right.
So yeah, I love this topic.
It's a couple things.
One is, again, most of the things thatI've put in here come from trial and
error experience of what business leadersand humans do and don't talk, right?
(39:30):
And.
And one of those, particularly inbusiness, it can be for not for all people
in business and not for all leaders.
But the empathy is can for certainpeople feel quite squishy on.
And that's because oftentimes thatwe've conflated that there's only one
kind of empathy when, in fact, there'sactually multiple kinds of empathy and
(39:54):
Most of the time what we're, what wethink we mean with empathy is emotional
empathy, which is understandingwhat somebody else is feeling.
And that feels very touchy feelyto particularly, task oriented
leaders and things like that.
Not everybody's wired towardsrelationships and that's okay by the way.
(40:16):
But one thing that can help tounderstand is Hey you don't.
Control how somebodyfeels about something.
You do not.
And they do.
And that's On that.
And so not only does it feeluncomfortable for certain people
because of how they're wired.
I don't feel comfortable on thisfeeling thing on another level.
(40:39):
Other people may resist it becausethey're like, I don't feel comfortable.
I don't directly controlhow they feel anyway.
So again, what's for some folks thatmaybe they're efficiency oriented.
Like I don't, even if I wanted to knowor could know, I can't, there's, it's
not a thing I can directly affect.
And there's lots of people whoactually don't really understand
(40:59):
what they're feeling either.
Like admitting their ownemotions to themselves.
So it's complex.
And this is where understanding thatthere's another avenue towards empathy
that can be really important and that'scognitive empathy, which is understanding
what somebody else is thinking.
And there's a huge amount of supportfor the fact that many of our feelings
(41:21):
are directly tied to our thoughts.
And so if we can back up andgo, whoo, this person is super
passionate about this, or, ooh, thisperson's really angry about this.
And instead of going.
I don't understand the feeling, whichyou may not, you're probably not going
to understand it unless you startto say what must they be thinking?
(41:43):
Or what could they be thinking that wouldproduce that anger would produce that
doubt that would produce that resistance?
And.
You're right.
The smart, capable, good thing isthat most people want to be it.
And I chose the phrasing in thebook quite consciously that most
people want to be seen that way.
(42:05):
Because I've spent enough years intherapy to know that not everybody's
convinced all the time that theyare smart, capable, or good.
Most of us.
The majority of us, I would sayeven the Elon Musks of the world
want to be seen as smart, capableand good to their in group, right?
Or to other people.
And so they're very happy to be seen asnot good by a huge group of other people
(42:28):
as long as they feel validated by thepeople whose opinion they want or need.
And so this is where.
Again, putting that lens on justsaying again, you don't even have to
believe I suggest that you do, though,because still going to leak out.
If you don't have to, though, butat least take that step of saying,
(42:52):
okay, let's just thought exercise.
If this person.
We're actually currentlysmart, capable and good.
Why would this make sense?
Because people do followtheir own internal logic.
It may not be logical toyou, but it is to them.
We do not, as humans, operate outsideof internal logic for very long.
(43:16):
We don't.
We are very internally consistent people.
Even if we're consistentlyinconsistent, right?
It's like Dan Ariely's likepredictably irrational.
We in fact are predictably irrational, butwe're irrational in very predictable ways.
We are logical and very illogical ways.
And that's what we can count on.
(43:37):
So if you can marry those two thingstogether, that people will operate.
Long term on their own internal logic.
So there is one there's some kind ofmental model or collection of models and
beliefs and frameworks and worldview.
Absolutely, which I love, by the way,favorite topic and that people want
to be seen as smart, capable and good.
(43:58):
Then you can start tosolve for the worldview.
You can say, I can see this reaction,if I assume they're smart, capable, and
good, given what I know of the world,and of people, and even this person.
What would have produced that?
And if you can't figure it out guess what?
It is a beautiful point, toyour point, Nola, of becoming
(44:19):
curious, and asking them.
What makes you say that?
What is, what is it that you are?
That are, what is itthat you are angry about?
Again, not why that can bea very triggering question.
Like, why are you so angry?
It's just what is it?
Because that can start to reallyfocus the question on, you could, if
(44:39):
someone said that to you with yourresistance to coming back to work or
that to that implementation of thatsoftware system what is it about this?
That is, is so frustrating to you.
You're like, it makes my job harder.
It does again, like we operate.
From these worldviews withthe assumption that people see
(45:00):
the world the same way we do.
And if we stop and for just even a splitsecond and go of course, not everybody
does or can, but our brain saves braincells by assuming that everybody does.
And so sometimes we have to createthose moments either in conversation
or by presenting this case for changethat again, people can recognize.
(45:31):
In that moment, because it doesn'ttake long to really say because I
believe this is true, and this is true.
That's why I believe this is theapproach that's going to produce this
outcome that doesn't take much to helppeople identify where the friction
is, where the alignment is, wherethere's opportunity and where there is.
(45:53):
And where there isn't and regardless,what I have seen is that being able
to do that and have that discussionallows people to civilly agree to
disagree and say, oh, I understand.
I just don't agree and thenit's up to the leadership.
It's up to you as an individualworking with that leadership
(46:13):
to decide what that actually.
Means for you.
And like you did, you said how can Ireframe it so that I can do something
with this and be helpful towards it?
But that's how that response isalways gonna be personal to Yeah, and
fundamentally, I think that's reallywhere the whole return to office thing
breaks down is it's related to identity.
(46:33):
So these leaders who want tobring people back, that's how
they've always been successful.
If they tell the story of theircareers, it's told in person
because that was their reality.
You would think that they want to mentorpeople, they want to train people,
they, and to do that in the frame ofreferenced in to their history, they
can't do that if the people are at home.
(46:57):
Like their reason for being successfulis fundamentally related to the
fact that they were in personseeing people in different contexts.
And so they have to reframe theirwhole entire understanding of their
career success in a way that's reallyuncomfortable for a lot of people.
Yes, and that also means that in manycases, it reveals to them in a way
(47:24):
they may not want to face quicklyor ever how they were viewing the
people who work with them, right?
Meaning they were looking them as workers.
Not as people because again, as a personto put the persuaders paradox back in
play as a person, they wouldn't wantto be seen as just a worker either.
(47:49):
They would resist it.
And so sometimes it's having thatperspective of just it's where
that classic 90s 80s and 90s.
It started in Toyota.
The five wise.
comes into play of justkeep, it isn't always five.
Sometimes it's three, sometimes it'sseven, but keep going down until
you, it's a, or even share Lockian.
(48:11):
The only thing that'sleft is what must be true.
And sometimes that's uncomfortable and butif you're really trying to get a change
to be successful, that's the work, right?
And sometimes the work is going to beThis realization that you are putting the
(48:33):
needs of the company ahead of the needsof your employees and that may go against
what you have said Your values are right.
And so that's where thetrust breaks down, right?
Because it's the storydoesn't hang together, right?
Exactly.
It doesn't it.
It doesn't.
It is not recognizably true.
(48:54):
So that's what you know, for me this ideaof these recognizable truths apply both
to individual pieces and parts of thisstory, but also to the story as a whole,
because sometimes, we can hear somethingthat just completely, Like just shifts
everything, and it just rewires therest of a story that's already in play.
(49:16):
I would say we've seen that this weekin Kamala Harris's response on Call
Her Daddy when she said there are manywomen who do not aspire to be humble.
And for many women, I'm not sayingall, for many women, that was
one of those recognizable truths.
All of a sudden they heardthe words and they're like.
(49:36):
I recognize that as true and Irecognize that as true about me.
And so what it did was itcrystallized for a group of people.
This is why this something didn't work.
This is why, some like something aboutthe story I'm being told about my
role as a woman doesn't work becauseI've just heard a recognizable truth.
(49:59):
And then to your point, Nola,sometimes it's the whole story, right?
It's just it's, thesethings don't track together.
And that's, I, sorry to get allAristotelian on it, but it's it's not
a, it's not a valid argument, meaningA plus B does not equal C in this case.
And And if that's verifiably true,based on your audience's experience, if
(50:23):
your audience cannot validate it basedon their own experience, first test.
Test.
Dead in the water.
And so this is why so much of theapproach that I'm talking about in this
book really relies on those underlying,sometimes implicit, unspoken, in
practice principles that are guidingwhat the leaders do and team members do
(50:48):
every day, because that is what we do.
That is the firstvalidation of the change.
The first yes, that alwayshas to pass is does it check?
Does it check with my head?
Does it make sense?
And does it make sense?
Does it feel right?
And the ding, it has to be,I don't hear an audible ding.
(51:10):
When I hear a truth, I feel it likein, in my chest, it's not audible.
It's a feeling right.
And that actually happened once where itwas something that somebody was dealing
with an insurance claim and somebody toldme something that they shouldn't have told
me and I'm like, Oh, this is the truth.
This is what you're trying to do.
And I got a 34, 000 settlement out ofthem because I recognized their truth.
(51:34):
Yes, we there's a lot as I'm, asI am learning right now, cause
I, I started amidst all of this.
I started a doctorate program this summer.
We have.
I think overlooked in particularly Westernand Western culture and in business,
the other forms of.
(51:57):
Knowledge, wisdom andlearning that we have.
And, it what is intriguing to me in thisenvironment of incredible complexity and
incredible change is how important it is.
To be able to
(52:22):
not just articulate quickly whysomething what something is, why is it
important and what and be able to givepeople that information that allows
them to do that to do a very quickcheck, but to be able to recognize.
That actually nothing that happens up herehappens without the gut check happening
(52:45):
first, and I don't care how B2B or howengineering or tech or science focused,
an organization is it's, it's proposalreview committee is or whatever that
data, we're going to trust the data.
(53:07):
That either aligns with what we'veseen and experienced ourselves, or in
rare cases, we will trust it becauseit either comes from a source that
we really trust, or again, that itfinally unlocks, even in a way that
we weren't expecting, something else.
One of my best examples of that, andI know we're running out of time,
(53:28):
but one of my favorite examplesof that was with with Jay Baer.
So Jay Baer is a customer serviceand customer experience expert.
And two books ago, three books ago, hewrote a book called Hug Your Haters.
And it started with, he started with,by, he started it by doing research.
So he started it by doing,by gathering information on.
(53:49):
Like, how often you need to respondto the haters online and what the
expectations were and all of that.
And to Jay's eternal credit, hisoriginal hypothesis about it, I don't
even remember what it was disproved.
And what he discovered in the data wasnot that was that the haters were actually
deeply passionate about the brand.
(54:11):
And when they got angry, it'sbecause they cared so much.
And so this is one of those places where,when it suddenly, for him, what that
created was, and I remember we workedon the messaging around this, which was,
That it wasn't that the haters weren'tthe problem, ignoring them was the
problem, because they were so passionateabout the brand, the company, etc.
(54:35):
That hearing that disconfirming data iswhat unlocked for him why haters could
have, like, why they carried such power.
It's because the people who I wouldsubmit, it's because that passion.
For the brand or for the way things shouldbe was so intense that people felt it
(54:56):
even through, the austere online world.
Yeah, I actually built my customerservice career around difficult
callers and dealing with people thatother people couldn't deal with.
And.
That was how I was successful becauseI listened to them, because honestly,
the majority of the time is they hada vision of what could be, and they
(55:18):
were actually trying to help you getthere, if only you would pay attention.
Yes.
Yes.
And that actually is what's happeningwith the whole return to office thing
is, it's not that people object to.
It's not that they don't want to work.
It's not that they refuseto go into the office.
It's because they don't feel heard.
That's the really bigthing that's happened.
(55:38):
That's right.
And they are, and it's andwhen the leadership says
we don't feel heard either.
This is where I would urge people to say,
because are you asking peopleto hear something that you
haven't actually said, right?
And that is how could they hear that?
And so this is why so often it reallyis so important to it's, to say what
(56:02):
they can't unhear, you have to saywhat they can't hear first, right?
In order for that to be the case.
And that sometimes means digging deepinto really understanding what is driving
why you believe a particular changeis actually the right thing to do.
And then discovering what in that.
(56:23):
And then deciding what does thatmean for either how you change the
message or how you're going aboutmaking the change in the first place.
All right, we should wrap it upbecause we are over time at this
point, but thank you so much.
It's always lovely to chat with you.
I did find the book immensely helpful.
I think in my review, I actuallywrote immediately useful because.
(56:46):
I was actually applying it.
If I, if you go back through mysocial, you'll actually see I was
weaving, smart, capable, and good.
And I was actually weaving itinto things I was already writing.
Oh, I love that.
Yeah, it was, is really cool.
And so definitely the book is out today.
I checked my mailbox tosee if it had arrived.
It hadn't arrived yet.
But it's already hitting the charts.
So if you get the book, Say whatthey can on here by Tamsyn Webster,
(57:09):
write a review for her on Amazon.
And we want the next book in the seriesbecause it's helped me to this point.
Share your time with me.
And I'm just very gratefulto be able to have such an
engaging conversation with you.
Oh, thank you so much.
I appreciate it.
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