How to Build Better Relationships (Work and Personal) with Michael Bungay Stanier

In this episode, Michael Bungay Stanier explains keystone conversations and why this is vitally important in building the best possible relationships, both at work and in your personal life. Discover how these seemingly small conversations can lead to stronger, more collaborative, and more fulfilling connections. You’ll also learn:

• How any working or personal relationship can be made better
• Why it takes courage to initiate the invitation to work on a relationship that is important to you
• The 3 core elements of a relationship: safety, vitality, repairability
• Defining keystone conversations and why they’re so important in improving relationships
• How there is an important tension between safety and vitality
• How to look at problems in growth made instead of problem mode
• Why it’s important to make it safe to ask questions
• The importance of actively engaging in relationships so it doesn’t stagnate

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi everyone, I just wanted to share a quick note
that Eric will be live on Instagram this Friday, July
seventh at five pm Eastern time. He'll be joined by
former guest and friend of the show, Ralph de la Rosa,
and they'll be discussing the powerful effects that spending time
in nature has on our mental health, how to connect
mindfulness and nature and more. Be sure you are following

(00:22):
us at one Underscore you underscore feed so that you
can connect with Eric and Ralph live on Instagram this Friday,
July seventh at five pm Eastern. We hope to see
you there.

Speaker 2 (00:34):
There's glory and routine and comfort and familiarity. It's like
one of the great things of working relationships, which is
just how comfortable that feels. And well, I know both
of you might need more than that.

Speaker 1 (00:50):
Wow, Welcome to the one you feed throughout time. Great
thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have,
quotes like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what
you think ring true. And yet for many of us,
our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity,

(01:12):
self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't
have instead of what we do. We think things that
hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not
just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent,
and creative effort to make a life worth living. This
podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in

(01:33):
the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. Thanks
for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Michael

(01:53):
Bungay Stanier, whose book The Coaching Habit is the best
selling coaching book of the century, with over a million
copies sold. In twenty nineteen, he was named the number
one thought leader in coaching. Michael found a Box of Krans,
a learning and development company that helps organizations transform from
advice driven to curiosity lead. He's the author of many books,

(02:16):
including the one discussed here, How to Work with Almost Anyone.
Five Questions for building the best possible Relationships.

Speaker 3 (02:25):
Hi, Michael, Welcome to the show.

Speaker 2 (02:26):
Eric, it's nice to be back. Thanks for having me.

Speaker 3 (02:29):
I am happy to have you back, and we've actually
been talking some in between interviews, so it feels like
a conversation with a friend, which is always the best
kind I was telling you before. Listeners, if you're watching
this I'm wearing the brightest shirt I've ever worn in
my life in honor of Michael, who's a pretty bright guy.

Speaker 2 (02:48):
I'm wearing the dullest shirt I've ever worn in my
life just to kind of fit with you, Eric exactly.

Speaker 3 (02:53):
You're like, that guy is pretty bland. I better tear
it down.

Speaker 2 (02:56):
It's like, can I have something gray, please?

Speaker 3 (02:59):
Now?

Speaker 2 (02:59):
Even gray that please?

Speaker 3 (03:02):
Literally, if I walked into my mom's hospital room right
now and she saw me in this shirt, she might
fall out of her bed because my color palette is
like dark blue, gray, black, white. Yeah, I'll go skyblue
a little bit.

Speaker 2 (03:16):
If you're feeling really kind of punchy, well, you know,
you're wearing a purple shirt, and purple is my favorite color.
As a thirteen year old joining a high school, we
were assigned houses and we were put into the purple house,
and I'm like purple. It was a particularly ugly purple
they had. But a mother of a friend of mine
taught me how purple was the color of royalty in Romana.

(03:37):
You know, they used to line the togas with this color,
which was much rarer than gold because it was made
by crushing tiny, tiny, tiny marine snails. So since that day,
I'm like, okay, I'm just trying to, you know, make
a buger feature. I don't like purple. It's now my
favorite color, so I'm all in on the purple and
you nailed it. So thank you for that.

Speaker 3 (03:55):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Did you have a sorting hat for
being put in these houses?

Speaker 2 (04:00):
It was kind of it was kind of like that.
We didn't have a sorting hat exactly, but it was
a very kind of Empire school. I now realized our
school uniform was kind of this muddy brown, but we
had light blue and dark blue stripes around the socks
and other places, in homage to Oxford and Cambridge. It
was like it was a very colonial Oh. You know,

(04:22):
we're Australian, but you know we look to England for
all the wisdom we have. So it wasn't quite Harry Potter,
but they aspired to do it in their own Australian way.

Speaker 3 (04:31):
I'm reading a book by an Australian writer right now.
We haven't even gotten to the parable yet, We're totally
off topic. It's called The Long Road to the Dark North.
Perhaps that is not correct, but it's a great book.
It won a pullets are a number of years ago,
and right I should know the title of.

Speaker 2 (04:46):
It is that Peter Carey perhaps or no, no, There
are some wonderful Australian writers. David Mloof was such a
big influence on me growing up and imagining life. A
really short book, but this exploration of a journey out
of the head, into the heart and into the body
through the story of Ovid and his exile. Peter Carey,

(05:07):
who's most famous for a book called Oscar and Lucinda
from years ago, but his new book is called Amnesia.
I've just read and it is such a brilliant piece
of writing. And then there's an Australian author who I
think might be your guy whose name has gone on
my head. But he writes about the loneliness and the
isolation and the pain of an Australian man in a
way that is just amazing. His best book is called Breath.

Speaker 3 (05:31):
This guy is called Richard Flanagan The Narrow Road to
the Deep North.

Speaker 2 (05:35):
I read it. He's also a Rhodes scholar like I am.
So you know Richard and I buddies. Not really. All
of his stuff is fantastic, so I'm glad you're reading that. Yeah, yeah,
let's turn this into a book podcast. I know people
are expecting something else completely, but we'll just do literary criticism.

Speaker 3 (05:52):
Well, you have a book podcast which I was on
What a great podcast idea?

Speaker 2 (05:57):
Oh thank you. It's called for people who don't know it,
which is everybody, because not many people listen to it.
It's called two pages with MBS. So people like Eric
read the best two pages from a book that has
moved them and a book that has shaped them, and
then the conversation springs out of those two pages, and
it's like a different doorway you enter into conversation with people.

(06:18):
I love the conversations.

Speaker 3 (06:20):
Yep, it's a really great show. Speaking of shows, this
show actually has a format which we are now going
to honor. Yes, And it starts with a parable, and
the parable goes like this. There's a grandparent who's talking
to the grandchild and they say, in life, there are
two wolves inside of us that are always a battle.
What is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness

(06:41):
and bravery and love, and the other's a bad wolf,
which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And
the grandchild stops. They think about it for a second,
and they look up at their grandparent and they say, well,
which one wins? And the grandparent says, the one you feed.
So I'd like to start off by asking you what
that pair of what means to you in your life

(07:01):
and in the work that you do.

Speaker 2 (07:03):
Well. In my life, some of the most powerful work
I've done has been turning towards the bad wolf, which
is counterintuitive. It's kind of you know, JUNGI in shadow work.
I came to it through a book called The Dark
Side of the Light Chases, which is like one of
the worst book titles ever by Debra Fort, and it

(07:25):
is my first introduction to this type of work. And
as I understand it, shadow work is, we are made
up of light and dark. As children, we are taught
to be good, you know, behave well, and so we
shove a bunch of stuff into our shadow, into I
imagine a big sack behind us, and that shadow. The

(07:46):
stuff in our sack drives us, triggers us, makes us reactive.
And it's only in integrating between the good and the
bad that we become whole. And Jung says, I'd rather
be whole than be good. Jung says, the gold in
the dark. So I want to feed both the wolves,
not to favor one over the other, but to realize

(08:08):
they're both the same wolf. It's the same wolf. And
you know, I'm the eldest son. I'm brought up to
be a good boy and a high achieving boy, and
I've had some of that success, and my journey is
to integrate so that I'm trying to be the richest,
most complex, most nuanced, most whole person I can be,

(08:32):
and that means I need both of these wolves.

Speaker 3 (08:35):
Yeah, it's interesting to think about our journey with those
because as you were talking, I was thinking about, I mean,
one advantage of just letting all hell break loose in
your life like I did for a good number of years,
is your shadow is pretty well expressed. I mean, it's
it's out and surprise, you know, it's right there, got
to the point where it was running the show. And
so then in an attempt to correct that, right then

(09:00):
you start doing the at least in my case, shoving
the impulses that aren't good kind of back underneath. And
then there's a period of sort of you know, reckoning
with those again and going okay, well, geez, that energy
is still there or if I do that. You know,
for me, the biggest downside I think of pushing all
that shadow stuff down is that it pushes my energy

(09:20):
level down right. It takes away my zest, my word
that will get to in your book, my vitality. So
I do think it is this integration of those two
things and really knowing how to work with them when
and in what levels and situations. And you know, because
I think it's obvious we know enough about psychology now

(09:41):
from young and for many other people to know like,
you can't repress things that doesn't work. I mean you can, actually,
but it's not going to work out well. So to me,
it's the question of the nuance is when to lean
into what.

Speaker 2 (09:55):
Part of the gear and shadow work is what annoys
you and other people, It is part of what is
not yet integrated in yourself. So when I think of
like a former boss I had, I'm like, he is
power hungry, napoleonic, status obsessed, money driven, drives me nuts.
And then when I own up to that in myself,

(10:18):
which is like I am status driven and I am
money obsessed, and I have napoleonic qualities and not the
good ones you know, it's when I own that in
me that actually I spend less time being angry at him,
and so it's less about energy levels for me. It's
more around contentment and a willingness not to be kind
of wound up by other people.

Speaker 3 (10:38):
Yeah. Does that mean that the fact that other people
chewing annoys me so much means that I just want
to be able to chew like a cow?

Speaker 2 (10:46):
Well, I'm not sure what that means.

Speaker 3 (10:48):
I don't know what it means either, but it's a
bigger problem than it really should be.

Speaker 2 (10:53):
That's noted when we hang out in person, I'm like,
eat with your mouth shut, Michaeler, take small mouthfuls. Don't
you like a because you.

Speaker 3 (11:01):
Just stick to liquids and don't crunch your ice.

Speaker 2 (11:03):
By the way, Okay, yeah, don't go to it. I
do notice like when little things like that drive me nuts.
Sometimes I'm like, I just have standards and I think
people should behave and be nice and be good. Yeah.
So what's interesting is just rather than just reacting and
responding in a way that you don't fully be mindful with.
It's a classic. It's like just you notice your irritation

(11:25):
and go, this is irritating to me, I wonder why
that's curious, isn't it? How will I choose to respond
to that? Do I actually want to go and say
to that person, you know, we're in a movie theater here,
if you could eat with your mouth shut and not
crunch the ice, that would be great because that would
be my preference. You know, ask for what you want.
You know, you may get no, They may go now
I'm going to chew my ice, and you're like, okay.

(11:45):
But part of it is understanding your response and then
deciding your reaction to it. Sometimes it's I'm just take it, Michael,
and sometimes it's how about you do something about that? Yeah?

Speaker 3 (11:57):
And I think one of the things that this isn't
only young, but I attribute it to him often is
this idea of bringing what's kind of submerged into consciousness, right.
And I think it's the essential step in any sort
of development. And we're going to talk about relationships in
a minute. It's critical in relationships, it's critical in our

(12:17):
own self awareness. We've got to take these things that
are driving us and make them conscious and then we
can choose what to do with them. Like I don't
know how to turn off that irritation. I think it's
technically called mesophonia. It means that you're emotionally overreactive to
very common sounds. Oh yeah, it's a disorder. I suppose,

(12:37):
like I need another. But by being conscious like, oh
that's what's happening, you know, I can ideally react a
little bit less. I can be a little bit nicer
to myself instead of thinking like what a shallow, awful
person you are, Eric like, come on, there are big
problems in this world, like what are you getting up?
You know, and just be like, well, that's kind of
what happens sometimes. And no, I'm not going to say

(12:58):
anything to anybody because that's just kind of a crappy
thing to do.

Speaker 2 (13:00):
Yeah, it is men search for meaning, you know. In
between stimulus and response, life's freedom life choice and choice
is freedom, yep. Because sometimes the thing to do is
not to act, and sometimes the thing to do is
to act. It's being mindful about why would I make
the choice? And whom I being is just the best
version of myself making this choice. Yeah. All right.

Speaker 3 (13:22):
So you've got a new book out and it is
called How to Work with Almost Anyone. I love that title.
Five questions to building the best possible relationships. Yeah, that
almost in parentheses is a stroke of genius. And I
do think it's the sort of title that almost anybody,
I would think would stop and be like, hang on,
I need to read that. So do they actually mean

(13:44):
I could work with my power hungry boss that you
just described, like is there a way? And your point is, well,
almost anyone. But there is a point that you make
that I think is really important, and you talk about
in the book. We're going to get to this in
more detail, you know, best possible relationship, And it points
to this idea that I really love, which is that
nearly any relationship can be made better. It's a core

(14:08):
philosophy I have, which is nearly any situation, anything that's
happening with us, there's a positive move You may not
build it eliminated, that there may be just a small
window of movement, but there's always somewhere to go. And
I love that idea because it comes through in this
book a lot too. And that qualification like the best
possible relationship. Say a little bit more about.

Speaker 2 (14:29):
That, sure, you know when we're going through titles of
the book, Originally it's going to be called the Operating Manual,
and then I'm like, I can come up with a
better title than that. Then it went to how to
Work with Anyone. I'm like, that may be over promised it.
I'm not sure I can pull that one off. But
when we came up with how to Work with almost Anyone,
else like, oh, that is such a good That's like
the best book title I've ever come up with, because

(14:50):
I've not met a single person who I've told that
title too, who hasn't laughed, who hasn't kind of immediately
recognized something that is true about that. And it's just
as you said, I think there are some people where
you like it's probably impossible or it's just not worth
the effort to try and improve that. But when you
think back on the working relationships you have or you've had,
they will kind of map out on a bell curve.

(15:12):
You'll have some up one end where you're like, this
is so delightful. Somehow there was magic in the air.
We brought out the best in each other. We did work,
we cared about, We navigated the hard things with grace
and ease. There's definitely some down the other end, which
is like, you know what, this was a grind sand
in the gears a whole way. We just couldn't click,
We couldn't make it work. And then most of them

(15:32):
are probably somewhere in the middle being they're good enough
most of the time. And the idea is that every
working relationship can be better, you know, asterisks except for
the one that you're thinking about. But yeah, let's work with.
Every working relationship can be better, as lovely as it
is to go. How do we keep the good ones
being brilliant and even more brilliant? Consider taking your five

(15:55):
most irritating or difficult or troublesome working relationships and making
those ten percent better so that they're workable and they're
bearable and that they're good enough. That is such a
big win because our happiness and our success is so
dependent on our working relationships, and yet most of the
time we kind of back away and we just cross

(16:15):
our fingers and we hope for the best, particularly for
the hard ones, which is like, ah, I'm just going
to endure this until it falls apart or we're moved
apart for whatever reason. What if you go, look, look great,
don't like this person, particularly, we don't click, but let's
make this as good as we can, so we maintain
our sanity, we maintain respect for each other, and we

(16:38):
get what needs to be done done.

Speaker 3 (16:40):
Yeah. I mean, I think that's such an important point
because I know with coaching clients over the years, I've
experienced this a lot. And the general way of thinking
of it is do I just need to accept this
person the way they are or do I need to leave? Right?
And those are fairly binary options, right, And what you're

(17:01):
proposing is a third way, which is like, before I
get stuck into one of those two, maybe there's some
work I can do that's going to make this a
little bit better, and that works not all inside me.
I think that's the thing your book is pointing to.
And I think a lot of relationship stuff rightfully, so
we have to look inside, you know, but we also

(17:23):
have to be willing to be courageous enough to try
and cross some sort of imaginary barrier that is there,
and that's really what your book kind of helps us
to do.

Speaker 2 (17:34):
Yeah. I think if there's a singular call to action
that's at the heart of this book is be the
person who reaches out and says, hey, how do we
make this a little bit better? Yeah? I heard the
other day a saying which I love. Nobody likes to
be the first person to say hello. Everybody likes to
be greeted. And this willingness to say this is not

(17:55):
the work for me to do. But what if we
did this work together? So the work for you to
do is to make the invitation. The work for the
two of you to do is go, could we create
something that is a little bit better, a little bit safer,
a little bit more vital, a little bit more reparable
in terms of working on this because just as you said, Eric,
those two binary things, which is like to endure it

(18:17):
as it is or to walk away from it. There's
other things you can do. Yeah, and it may not
even work all the time. It probably won't work all
the time, but it will work some of the time.

Speaker 3 (18:26):
Yeah, And I think, as you said, some of it
is this courage to actually be willing to address the
fact that there is a relationship with somebody at work
and that you actually want to work on that. And
what I like about the book is it makes tangible
how you might do that. You know, even if I
somehow became convinced it's a good idea, which might take

(18:47):
some convincing, right right, I still don't have a foggiest
idea what to do, like what this.

Speaker 2 (18:52):
Is good in theory? Now? Yeah?

Speaker 3 (18:54):
Yeah, And so the book, you know, kind of breaks
that down. So we've kind of covered this idea of
best possible relationship, right that nearly any relationship can be
made better. And you talk about that. In the best
possible relationship, they have sort of three kind of core
elements to them. Who we talk through what those are?

Speaker 2 (19:13):
Sure, I think the best possible relationship is safe, vital,
and repairable. So I'll go through those one by one.
Safe is the one that most people already have cottoned
on too, because for ten years or more we've been
talking about the importance of psychological safety in the way
we work with other people. Amy Edmondson from Harvard kind
of really popularized this, and you know, people like Google

(19:36):
have done a ton of research around effective teams and
effective managers, Project Oxygen and Aristotle, and constantly there's a
sense of we've got to make this safe. People feel
safe in terms of what they say. People feel safe
so they can say what needs to be said without
negative consequences, and safe to kind of show up more
wholly as they are.

Speaker 3 (19:57):
A couple quick thoughts of there. One is before we
go further. We're talking about work, but I assume these
principles apply kind of to any kind of relationship.

Speaker 2 (20:06):
I think.

Speaker 3 (20:06):
So you actually you have a story I meant to
have a start with, but I got distracted by discussing
Australian authors about your mother and father. Yeah, can we
hit that real quick before we jump back in, because
I think it's a beautiful story that illustrates how this
is more than just how to talk with your coworker.

Speaker 2 (20:24):
Yeah. I mean I write for a specific audience, which
is often people at work, but I try and write
in a way that it's useful for humanity, because honestly,
if you interact with other human beings, there's stuff here
that might be helpful for you. About three years ago,
my dad was dying and he had come home from hospital,
which was miraculous in itself because he got sick pretty quickly,

(20:44):
ended up in the intensive care unit, and he came
very close to dying in the ICU there, and we
kind of assumed that was going to happen, but somehow
he came back, and he came back and he ended
up living for another couple of months living at home,
so we had a hospital bed set up. He at
Oxygen and I was back in Australia. I live in
Canada most of the time, and I was living in

(21:07):
the house in my childhood house as well, where I
grew up childhood bedroom, which was great and weird at
the same time. And you could tell that Mum and
dad were both delighted that he was home, and also
that the relationship was under stress for all the really
obvious reasons. They knew my dad had a terminal illness,
they knew that he was dying. He was also stuck

(21:29):
in a hospital bed so not able to do a
whole lot kind of Mum was having to be the
primary caregiver, and for all the reasons you can guess,
a relationship that had been very successful and very happy
for fifty five years was understrain, and parts of me
were screaming, don't do this. I went, let's have a
conversation about how you would like to be with each

(21:51):
other in the remaining weeks or months that you have
so that, particularly for my mom, I was like, I
want your memory to be as good as it can be,
because you know, through psychology, we know about the recency
effect and how the most recent thing influences your sense,
your memory of the whole thing, And I'm like, I
want this to be as good a memory as it
can be, so that you remember how good this relationship

(22:14):
was for fifty five years. So I sat down and
I kind of facilitated a conversation similar to the five
questions that I set out in the book, this kind
of keystone conversation, which is a conversation about how they
would like to be with each other over the remaining
time and what it meant when they were doing certain

(22:35):
things and what it didn't mean. And it was definitely
a bit of an awkward conversation. Mum thoroughly didn't want
to do it. Dad was pretty resistant to it as well,
but they kind of said, well, okay, why not. And
it created a freedom and a lightness in that relationship
because it meant that they kind of named and owned
their stress and the anxiety and what kind of drove

(22:57):
each other crazy about each other in this kind of
new dynamic of working together. And I've been thinking about
this book for quite a few years, because I've been
practicing this on and off for about twenty five years.
But suddenly I was like, this feels like a really
important type of conversation that people kind of know about,
but nobody really knows how to do it, and I

(23:18):
think I can help with that.

Speaker 3 (23:19):
Yeah, it's a beautiful story. We talked to earlier about
having the courage to do these things, like it takes
courage to do this stuff, and yet it turns out
to be really positive. So we were on safety, and
safety is one of the most influential books on me
over the years about having conversations is something called Crucial Conversations,
which has been a great book, and it really to

(23:40):
me introduced that idea of safety quite some time ago
and became clear to me in certain very difficult relationships,
relationships that ultimately were not repair able even with a
fair amount of effort, was how quickly we went out
of safety. I mean, we did be like four words
and it'd be like, well, nobody fell safe. And the

(24:01):
thing that I learned, though, was that to carry on
beyond that was always ruinous, right always, it never was productive.
Once we didn't feel safe. We may not get anywhere
by terminating the conversation when we don't feel safe, but
we don't do further injury.

Speaker 2 (24:20):
Right. So part of what I'm suggesting in the book
is this idea of a keystone conversation, which in a
sentence is, let's have a chat about how we should
work together before we have a chat about what we
should be working on. And most of the time we're
just pulled immediately into the stuff. Let's fix this, solve this,
get going on this. There's always something to crack on with,

(24:42):
you know, and this is at work. But you know,
let's say you're having this conversation with your partner, like
let's talk about my parents, and let's talk about the kids,
and let's talk about the holiday, and let's talk about
the house, and let's talk about the money, and let's
talk about the careers. And there's always the things that
you can put your attention to. But this is the
way you stop and go, hoh, should we be together
to bring out our best and avoid the things that

(25:02):
might bring out our worst. And there's a few benefits
to it. The first is you're having the conversation before
the moment of stress, and that classic saying we don't
rise to the challenge, we fall to the level of
our preparation or the level of our systems, whatever it
might be. You're trying to set up systems, you're trying
to prepare for this. So when you fall out of safety,

(25:23):
and it happens all the time to all relationships, you go, oh,
we've done that thing that we said we'd do. The
second is when you have that conversation, you actually get
some clues as to what will make it unsafe for
that other person or what will make it safe unsafe
for you. So there's a sense of going, oh, we
have a sense of how to negotiate this and manage this.

(25:45):
But the reparability, so say vital and repaarable. The reparability
is this recognition that the relationships that last are ones
where there's an understanding and a commitment that we're going
to need to fix it at some stage because everything
gets a bit dented and cracked and broken. And when
I read the people who are the classic writers in
this space, so people like Esther Perrell or Terry Reel,

(26:07):
or Dan Siegel or John Gottman, these people who just
specialize in trying to figure out how to make relationships
work at a kind of more classic intimate partnership relationships,
they're like reparability is everything in terms of longevity. Most
of us are terrible at repairing because they haven't figured
out how to do it. So part of really the

(26:30):
biggest win from having a keystone conversation is it allows
you to talk about the health of the relationship. It's
become a topic that is part of what you talk about.
So what I would hope, what I dream of, Eric,
is when you're in those conversations and you lose the safety,
you're able to go, we've lost the safety, what will
it take to get this back? Not every relationship then

(26:53):
gets to be magically repaired, but many more do because
you've both got a shared commitment to this best possible relationship.

Speaker 3 (27:18):
It's really astounding how in relationships we don't tend to
think of the processes that happen in them very much.
We tend to think of the people, and that's what
we focus on. But my experience has been and I
think the experience of reading lots of different things like
you have, is that the ability to talk about how

(27:40):
we're going to talk is foundational and that if that
can be figured out, there's so many things that can
happen that are really positive. And if that thing can't
be figured out, You're in trouble.

Speaker 2 (27:54):
Yeah. I mean on a related note, you know, for
quite a while my wife lecture in the business with me,
and it was terrible to start with because she's like,
I hate having a boss that I was her boss,
I was married to her. She's like, down with the man,
and I'm like, Marcella, I am the man. I'm literally
the man. And then it was really good in the middle,

(28:16):
and then it was bad at the end again, but
we figured our way through that. But the thing that
moved us from bad at the start into a really
good period of working together is that our coach went,
look what you're seeing here is not Michael versus Marcella.
It is actually a visionary somebody who has a certain
role and a way of showing up in the business,
versus an operator somebody who has another role. I'm Michael, visionary,

(28:40):
big picture, make it all happen, kind of loose relationship
to reality in terms of how how much time and
effort everything takes, always thinking that there's more available, always
wanting to go faster. Operator, I'm going to make this
stuff happen. I'm worried about the details. I'm practical. I
care about the people doing the work, and there's just

(29:01):
a natural tension between that. When we discovered language that
allowed us to talk about the processes between us, it
became less personal. I'm like Masilla railing against me. As
a boss, I could take that personally, but if I'm
like it is the operator going it's really hard to
work with a visionary because it always is. Then it's
like slightly less personal and slightly more solvable.

Speaker 3 (29:24):
Yeah, Ginny and I work together and we find our
way through it. By and large, it goes incredibly smoothly,
but there are those moments and it is that weird
thing where you're like, well, but I'm the boss, but
I'm mostly your partner. And yeah, you know, it's shape
because those roles can get mixed up if we're not careful.
But that repair ability piece is really important. It's the

(29:46):
knowing that, Okay, when we get off track, we can
talk about it. Yeah, we've sort of hinted it this
keystone conversation a little bit.

Speaker 2 (29:54):
Well, let me talk about the remaining two factors of
the best possible relationships. So safety we kind of covered
and then kind of went into interesting conversation about the
two that are remaining of vitality, more vital, and more apparable,
a repaarability we've kind of talked about as well. So
I just want to just touch on what vital means.
First of all, I love that it has two meanings.
One is that it's essential, but also that it's full

(30:16):
of life. And that's really what I want to talk to.
And after I'd written the book, I came across a
phrase that I'm now using to describe it, which is
psychological bravery. I really love this idea that you're looking
to create a relationship where you find the right balance
for you and another person of psychological safety and psychological bravery.
So it is both a place where people feel that

(30:39):
they've had the fear removed, but it's also a place
where they can amplify the good, amplify the adventure, push
each other, challenge each other, step out to the edge,
being competent, try new things. There's a way that I've
experienced relationships where I'm like they were very very safe,
and they were a bit dead, a bit kind of
bored by it. Also, I had relationships which we are

(31:01):
full of Indiana Jones, full of adventures and I'm like,
but when it went wrong, it went really badly wrong,
and it wasn't It didn't feel like it was fixable
because it didn't feel safe. And what you're looking for
is this tension between safety and vitality with this idea
that repaarability lies underneath that, so that when it does
go off the rails, whether that's from one or the other,

(31:22):
there's a way of fixing it. So that's just to
describe the three core attributes of the best possible relationship.

Speaker 3 (31:27):
I love that idea of psychological bravery.

Speaker 2 (31:30):
It's good, isn't it. I can't remember even who I
heard it from, but I'm like, I will just steal
that immediately, thank you very much.

Speaker 3 (31:35):
Yeah, that's an area I think for me is an
interesting place to explore a little bit because having had
the number of bad relationships I've had in my life. Right,
I'm divorced twice my growing up, it was just the
number of them, right, I'm just like, oh, it's safe, okay, good,
then that's it. Like keep it safe enough is enough?

Speaker 2 (31:55):
Right? Right?

Speaker 3 (31:56):
And it's that you know, knowing that it's safe, and
it's repair terrible to say okay, it is okay. Then
to lean a little bit more into this idea of bravery,
or this idea that things tend to stagnate if the
same sort of thing happens again and again and again
again and again.

Speaker 2 (32:13):
And look at you, You're wearing a purple shirt, like
great things are happening even as we speak.

Speaker 3 (32:18):
Oh yeah, I mean I've taken up surfing over the
last year and a half, rock climbing, all kinds of
stuff because I felt that actually that need for some
degree of vitality that those activities seem to give me.

Speaker 2 (32:33):
Well, I think there's two things to look at. One
is just what it means to keep growing. Like you
and I are both roughly the same age, I'm not sure.
Like I'm mid fifties, you're probably roughly the.

Speaker 3 (32:45):
Same early thirties.

Speaker 2 (32:46):
Yeah, exactly. I have to say for somebody in their
early thirties, you're looking pretty terrible, Eric, I mean, if
you look like your mid fifties.

Speaker 3 (32:54):
Yeah, it's been a rough life. I'm early fifties, fifty three,
mid early fifties.

Speaker 2 (32:59):
And there's a way, which is like a commitment to
our own lives, which is, how do we not stagnate
in the processes of our own lives. I think very specifically,
you can say, what does it take for this relationship
between you and me to have a vitality and a freshness.
There's glory in routine and comfort and familiarity. It's like

(33:21):
one of the great things of working relationships, which is
just how comfortable that feels, and why or both of
you might need more than that, you might need some
degree of that, And that's what you get to talk about.
That's what you get to kind of co create together.

Speaker 3 (33:35):
Yeah, so let's talk about the keystone conversation. Yeah, we've
sort of hinted at it, but describe it a little
more fully. What are we talking about?

Speaker 2 (33:43):
Yeah, the idea to walk away with is what if
we had a conversation about how we be together, how
we work together, and figure that out so we know
how to bring out the best in each other, and
we know how to avoid the worst in each other,
and we know how to fix it when things go wrong.
You know. In the book, I say, look, here are
five questions you can use to structure or spark a conversation,
And with each question comes two or three exercises so

(34:06):
that you can deepen your own self knowledge, so you
have more nuanced language, and you're better able to articulate
who you are and what helps you thrive. But you
don't even need those five questions. It can be simple
as what's a good relationship for you? Let me tell
you what a good relationship is for me, what's a
bad relationship for you? Let me tell you what a
bad relationship is for me. What should we do about that? But,

(34:28):
as I say in the book five Broad Questions, there's
the amplify question, there's the steady question, there's the good
and the bad date question, and then there's the repair question.

Speaker 3 (34:38):
So as you were talking, I just had a thought
or question, which is, let's say I've got a coworker
that falls right in the middle of that bell curve.
It's pretty good. We generally have a pretty good relationship.

Speaker 2 (34:49):
Right.

Speaker 3 (34:49):
It feels to me like if I go to that
person and I say, let's have a conversation about our relationship,
it's the equivalent to me of like when your partner
says to you, well we need to talk.

Speaker 2 (34:58):
And you're, oh, boy, right, no good comes from this.

Speaker 3 (35:02):
Which actually very often much good comes from it. But
still I shy away. But how do we set that up?
With somebody so it doesn't feel like we're saying we
have a bad relationship or I have a problem with you.
You know, like, how do we put this in a
growth mode not a there's something wrong mode?

Speaker 2 (35:19):
Yeah, I think you try and be obvious about it.
Like if I was talking to you, Eric, I'd go, look, Eric,
I would love for us to take a beat and
just say, I mean, I'm really enjoying working with you
right now, but I wonder if what we could do
to make it even better. And I'm wondering if you
and I could have a conversation around that, just to
kind of explore what else could we do to make
this relationship stronger and better and really flourish. And it

(35:40):
could be as simple as that. You know. The book
I'm known for is The Coaching Habit, and I think
the power of that book is that kind of Unweird's
coaching for people. A lot of people go, Okay, now
if that's what they're talking about, well, I can do that.
And what I'm hoping with this book is it Unweirds
this idea of having this type of conversation and with
there was this inclination to make a big deal out

(36:03):
of it Eric, come into my office. It's our monthly
coaching call. I'm going to coach you for an hour.
The person is being someone is like that sounds terrible
to me, and it is terrible because I come in
and like, okay, we've got to act differently. We were
to be differently. We had to have a conversation where
I'm clearly coaching you, and somehow it feels awkward and

(36:23):
weird and broken and fake all of that. And I'm
trying to find the way to give people the language
to do something similar in terms of how they calm
this down, which is just to say, hey, look, this
is great. But I would really value a conversation just
where we take a moment and go, is there anything
else that we can be doing to make this working
relationship even stronger? Yeah.

Speaker 3 (36:43):
I think that's a really good point by comparing it
to coaching, because there is an assumption, rightly or wrongly,
that many of us have, which is, if I need coach,
there's something wrong with me. And the same thing here,
even when you sort of teed up our relationship conversation
as nicely as you just did, there's a part of
me hearing that going, well, what did I do wrong?

Speaker 2 (37:03):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (37:03):
What did they do wrong? So? I guess, like most
things in life, it's a matter of saying. You know,
I found it very often to be like, what I'm
not saying is x. Exactly what I am saying is why?

Speaker 2 (37:14):
Right?

Speaker 3 (37:15):
So to name that thing like this is not a
hidden way for me to bring up a problem.

Speaker 2 (37:19):
Yeah, I agree. So this isn't me being sneaky and
about to launch an attack on your integrity and anything else.
Behind this conversation lays a great cloud around power and
structure and expectations and who do you have these type
of conversations with because, for instance, and we're talking working
situations but kind of the same things echoing beyond work.

(37:41):
But if you're the boss, it's easier to go to
the people on your team let's have this conversation than
if you're wanting to have the conversation with the boss.
But it's still possible if you've got a working relationship
that's been going for six years. In some ways, it's easier.
In some ways, it's harder to have this conversation if
you're about to start working with In some ways that's easier.

(38:01):
But they're like, Okay, I've never done this before, but
it can be a really powerful way to kind of
kickstart a working relationship. And then with different types of relationships,
you have a choice about how deep you want to
go with this, like, for instance, I've just recently hired
somebody to help me with my website and we had
a version of this or I went, ok, I'm excited
to talk to about the website because we need to

(38:23):
update it and all of that. But tell me about
when you've worked with a client like me and it's
been really great, what do they do? And tell me
when you've worked with a client like me and it's
kind of been pretty sucky. What happened? What did you do?
What did they do? Why did it fall apart? And
then I go, well, let me tell you about vendors,
the best I've worked with, the most frustrating I've worked with,

(38:44):
and just what they did and what they didn't do.
And the first time I do that, you can see
the vendor's eyes going, what what are we doing here?
Nobody's ever asked me that before.

Speaker 3 (38:54):
Doing a little Java script here and Michael, relax.

Speaker 2 (38:58):
Yeah, And I don't do this with every vendor. I
need you to do thirty minutes work. I'm not going
to spend an hour and a conversation to set that up.
But I hope this is going to be a long
standing working relationship. So I'm like, I want this to
be good, and I don't want you to piss me
off inadvertently because I haven't told you what annoys me.
So you have that conversation, and that's a certain type

(39:20):
of conversation. If I'm sitting down with somebody who I've
just hired on my team, I'm like, let me tell
you what it's like to work with me. Here's the good,
here's the bad, here's the ugly, because I got all
of that because I want to give you every chance
to delight me, and I don't want to give me
every chance to delight you. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (39:37):
It's interesting because as we're having this conversation and as
I'm reading the book, ideally one would be reflecting on
their own life, right, that's the point. And I'm reflecting
on certain working relationships where I'm like, they're pretty good,
and this inclination in my mind, like do I need
to do that? I mean, things seem to be going
pretty good, right, But it's back to that idea of
we're trying to say, is this the bat possible and

(40:02):
is just working okay? Or do we want it to
be better than that? And so I just noticed that
bias like so sort of right in the fabric of me.

Speaker 2 (40:12):
I feel you. I would say that I've noticed entropy
in relationships, which is things decline over time, Things get
a bit rote, things get a bit broken, things just
get a bit chipped at the edge, and there's a
slow deterioration because that is the nature of the universe.

(40:33):
And even if I'm like looking at a relationship and
I'm like it's pretty good, part of what having an
initial keystone conversation does is it gives you permission to
keep talking about the relationship. So you're like, look, it's
pretty good, but let's check in. I'm wondering if it
could be better. I'm wondering what would make you happier,
What might me be happier? Is there anything that I
kind of haven't really been talking about, But it's just

(40:56):
it's a minor niggle, but I wouldn't mind bringing it up.
A little adjustment in terms of our processes and maybe
they're not much comes out of that initial conversation, But
then you get to go every three months, Hey, checking in,
how are we doing? Am I still the best client
you can be? Am? I still the best employee you
can be? Am I still the best podcast host that

(41:16):
you're producing a show with. What would it take for
me to be the best podcast host that you're producing
the show on? What else would I need to do?
And they may not have an answer for you, But
what an invitation? What a commitment to say, I'm really
committed to try and make this the best possible relationship
with you.

Speaker 3 (41:33):
I probably about to get a long list of things
from Chris our editor.

Speaker 2 (41:38):
Actually, Chris, Chris, slip me twenty bucks to kind of.

Speaker 3 (41:41):
Talk about exactly at the very top of it is
just be mildly coherent.

Speaker 2 (41:46):
Just just aim in the direction. Just step up to
mildly coherent.

Speaker 3 (41:51):
I'd be so happy. Okay, So this keystone conversation has
these five essential questions which you sort.

Speaker 2 (41:58):
Of tease them.

Speaker 3 (42:00):
Yeah, you tease them. Yes, very good. So now that
you have teased us, what is the amplify question?

Speaker 2 (42:07):
So the amplified question is what's your best? And I
know that's actually just slightly awkward question, as I think
about it and keep saying it. But I didn't want
to say what are you good at? I didn't say
what are your strengths? And I didn't want to say
what are your values? Because those all take me in
directions that aren't quite the answer I'm looking for. I

(42:27):
want to know when you shine and when you flow.
That feels to me the essence of this, When do
you shine and when do you flow? This idea, this
concept of flow from Michael Chuck sent me Hiqi, the
Hungarian psychologist that talks about the flow state, where you're
in that right balance between work that matters and work
you know how to do, and work you're learning how
to do, and kind of time speeds up and slows down.

(42:49):
What's that for you? What brings out your very best?
And when do you shine? When do people look at
you and go oh man? Eric is lit up at
the moment. He is in his happy place. I can
see it. And this idea of right, let me tell
you when I'm at my best. You tell me when
you're at your best. And that is already so helpful
because I'm like, right, I need to do what I

(43:09):
can to give Eric more of that. So he's at
his best more often. And then also it's a great
place to start because it is not what's broken, why
do you screw up? Or where is it hard? It's like,
let me just tell you what my best is, because
the best possible relationship is two of us at our best.
Within the context of this working relationship.

Speaker 1 (43:53):
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Speaker 3 (44:43):
So the way you described it, what is my best
is it sounds task related?

Speaker 2 (44:47):
I think it can be more than that.

Speaker 3 (44:49):
Okay, so yeah, explain to me ways that it can
be more than that.

Speaker 2 (44:52):
Yeah. So I'm going to steal a modal from the
coaching habit book the three P Model. The three P
modal says a coaching conversation can kind of three doorways
into it. It's the projects, the people or the patterns.
Projects are the tasks? What's the stuff? So in this context,
what's your best? It's like, what's the work that likes you?
What what gets you super excited? Where are you kind
of in the flow around that? The people is what

(45:14):
are you at your best at in relationship? What does
it look like when you're working with people and you're
at your best? What does that look like? What does
it sound like? What does it feel like? What's going
on that allows your best to be there? And then
patterns is the kind of inner stuff which it's like,
how are you showing up? And that gets more into

(45:35):
what are your essential qualities? What is the core of
who you are? You know, what are your values if
you want to put it like that, But what's like
the most important statements about this is me on this planet,
when I'm showing up as me on this planet, And
so it can be a mix of those three different things.

Speaker 3 (45:50):
I think you make an important point multiple times through
the book, which is that the answers are useful, but
it's the asking of the question that is the primary purpose.
And I would assume that has to do with us
getting to know about each other, right and also in
just making it safe to talk.

Speaker 2 (46:10):
I think it's about making it safe to talk because
you're like, oh, we've just this is an act of
trust and vulnerability and building an adult to adult relationship
by having the conversation. Yeah, the answer is you're going
to remember some of them. You're going to forget some
of them. When you're tell meling me what you're like
at your best, I'm seeing you at your best because
you're light up, so I'm like, oh, like one of that, please.

(46:34):
So it is this understanding that you've started something important
in having this conversation.

Speaker 3 (46:40):
Does it make sense to know how you're going to
answer those questions before you have one of these conversations,
because part of my hesitancy to do this. If I'm
putting myself in the spot of doing it would be
like I don't know how to answer those questions.

Speaker 2 (46:52):
Yeah, I think that's a great insight. You know, in
the book, I suggest there is this kind of structure
to how you have this conversation. One is you prepare,
two as you have the conversation. Three is you actively
maintain the working relationship. So the keystone conversation is not
a one and done thing. It's like it needs you
constantly going back and you know, adjusting a little bit

(47:15):
and amplifying a bit as needed. I think most people
can come up with some answers on the moment, on
the spot, but I really noticed that if they have
had time to think about it and prepare for it,
that can be really helpful. So you asked before around
how you might start this. You can make it a

(47:35):
little more formal. You can say, look, I'd love to
have us a conversation around how we can work better together.
I'm using this idea of a keystone conversation, and there
are five questions. Here are the five questions. I'm going
to do some thinking about what my answers are before
we get there. You know, it's up to you, but
I'd love you to do some thinking as well, just
so we've got the best possible chance of a useful exchange.

(47:55):
Got it.

Speaker 3 (47:55):
So preparation can be helpful, and you can not just
prepare yourself so that you prepared, but actually set the
other person up so they're prepared.

Speaker 2 (48:03):
Yeah, the more preparation you do, the less you'll be
doing kind of sweeping generalities and jazz hands and more. Going,
let me give you some really specifics about me at
my best.

Speaker 3 (48:12):
I was going to say I am all about jazz hands,
but that's a lesson about preparation. That is a good one.

Speaker 2 (48:18):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (48:18):
It's funny the way, like the thing I prepare for
most in the world are these conversations, right, And it's
amazing what that preparation does. And as I'm saying this,
I'm having an AHA moment in my mind, like you
might want to try that with some other things.

Speaker 2 (48:33):
Yeah, because like I'm a transitory person in your working relationship.
I'm a guest, which I love on your podcast, but
it's like, you know, the people you work more closely with,
It's like, what if you did the same preparation for that,
and really, Eric, I'm trying to be sneaky because I'm
really getting people to do self development work, no know
myself by doing the work to prepare for this so

(48:55):
that you're ready for the conversations. But you're just more
attuned to who you are are in this world. I mean,
it comes all the way back to where we started
around shadow work and the Two Wolves, which is like,
know who you are in the light, know who you
are in the dark. And the better and more granular
and more metaphorical or more specific the languages around that,

(49:17):
the more helpful for you and the more helpful for
other people as well.

Speaker 3 (49:20):
So the next question is the steady question. Yeah, you know,
what are your practices and preferences? And when I first
read that, I was like, well, okay, what do you mean?
So can you give me some examples of like the
sort of questions we might ask in relation to this question.
And again we're primarily talking about working relationships, so we
can keep it there, but you could take any of

(49:41):
these sort of they all apply in their own way
to whatever relationship.

Speaker 2 (49:46):
It's kind of the preferred logistics and mechanics of life.
So this can be if you're starting a working relationship,
just even understanding somebody's name and their pronouns. Like, for instance,
my name is Michael Bungay Stanya. It's a located name.
When I got married, I took my wife's name, she
took mine as well. We became the bungay Staniers, the
only existent ones in the entire universe as far as

(50:08):
we're aware. But there's no hyphen in between Bungay Stanya.
So there's a way that like that gets complicated and
people are not quite sure what my surname is. But
what really drives me nuts is when people unilaterally decide
my name is Mike, and I'm like, it's truly not Mike.
Mike is what I'm speaking into at the moment as
part of this interview. My name is Michael, so I'd
be like, let me just tell you my name. I

(50:29):
prefer to be called Michael, not Mike or Mick.

Speaker 3 (50:32):
How often do you get called Mike? I'm curious how
often like these just really obnoxious things happen, because that
just strikes me as obnoxious, Like, yeah, to not even
figure out the.

Speaker 2 (50:41):
Thing is, I don't think people are being obnoxious when
they're doing it. They're like this is my active friendship.
By shortening your name like this, I see. I assume
it's done with the best possible intent. You're probably right, Yeah,
it's like, hey, I shorten all my friend's names. I'm
gonna call you Mick or Mike's Yeah exactly. I might
call you easy or eas or something. And I'm like, you, like, nah,

(51:03):
my name is Eric, never call me that. I'm like, great,
So it could be that. But here's a domestic example.
I quite like vacuuming. I hate mopping. My wife really
doesn't like vacuuming at all, but she loves to run
a wet thing around the floor and kind of And
it honestly took us twenty years to discover this. We're like, ah, well,

(51:27):
then we figured this out a lot earlier, not that
it was causing a great amount of pain, because you know,
we only clean our house once every six months or something.

Speaker 3 (51:35):
But your wife might be an outlier too, if I
just I bet if we pulled one hundred people, most
of them are going to prefer the vacuum to the
wet thing.

Speaker 2 (51:42):
But I know I don't understand it. But I'm like,
I don't mind washing up because I washed up for
years in restaurants, so I reckon I do a good
washing up. I know how to stack something drives me
nuts the way that I mean, you know, I stack
the kitchen sink like a Scandinavian architect. I'm like, I'm
brilliant at it, and like maximum amount of stuff per squerience.

(52:05):
This actually like some drug crazed maniac just throw stuff
on the thing of it. It's like a disaster.

Speaker 3 (52:12):
Somebody trying to do domino structures on LSD.

Speaker 2 (52:16):
That's right exactly. So it's such a small thing, and
yet we can get really irritated by these small differences.
So a conversation about just what how do you tend
what is common sense for you is a really clarifying conversation. So,
you know, I work. It's like I'm a slack person.
I'm an email person. I tend to work in the mornings.

(52:37):
I tend not to have meetings before ten o'clock. I
love to send emails late at night. Doesn't mean I
expect a response. I work over the weekend. I don't
work over the weekend. I orient my working life around childcare.
I pick up my kid from school at four o'clock.
So that's a period of time where I'm not going
to be available. It's kind of that back and forth

(52:57):
on just some of the practicalities about how you work.
Often it kind of confirms that you mostly do things
the same way. Sometimes it uncovers things where you're like, oh,
we're quite different around that.

Speaker 3 (53:08):
Yeah, I love this question of what feedback tends to
be most helpful to you, and how do you prefer
it to be expressed? Like, right, that's a really good question.
Like knowing that we're going to need to give each
other feedback if we want to have a vital relationship,
how do we do it.

Speaker 2 (53:23):
Yeah, Like Ainsley, who's on my team, she generally prefers feedback. Well,
I sat with me first. I like my feedback as
blunt as possible. I'm like, look, I've got a very
healthy self esteem, and beating around the bus drives me nuts. Actually,
just give it to me really clearly, really straightly. A
deearly is in as fewer words as possible, so I

(53:43):
really get it because I'm a little slow. Ainsley is
not psychologically fragile or anything, but there's a way that
she likes us softer in root into the feedback conversation
and like, that's really helpful for me to know, because
otherwise we tend to go this is how I like it.
I'll just project it onto the other people and assume
that that's how they like it as well. Ye, let

(54:04):
me give you the three remaining questions really quickly. Okay,
the good date and the bad date questions. They are
sister questions. The first is what can you learn from
successful past relationships? That's the good date question? And then
what can you learn from frustrating past relationships? That's the
bad day questions? Because patterns from the past repeat again
in the future. So do some forensic exercise around what

(54:28):
was done and not done, and said and not said
by both parties in the good and the bad relationships,
and then bring that forward and say share that with
the other person so that they know how to do
more of the good stuff and how to avoid the
bad stuff. And then the repair question, and we kind
of talked about this in some depth already, which is
how will we fix it when things go wrong? And

(54:49):
there's different ways you can think about how you'll repair it,
but the power of this question is it says things
are going to go wrong, there's not going to be
you know, Honeymoon and unicorn farts for the whole time
is going to have an impact at some stage. How
will we do that? And it's really a statement of
intent around we are both willing and potentially able to

(55:10):
repair this when things do go wrong.

Speaker 3 (55:12):
So I agree one hundred percent that the heart of
that question is the recognition it's going to need to
occur and the permission to do it. But what are
some examples of a response to that question? What are
some examples of ways that people systematize repair.

Speaker 2 (55:27):
Yeah, I've been thinking about that, and I think there
are three great gifts you can bring to the act
of repair. The first is speaking when you've been hurt.
You know, so often damage gets done and you swallow
it and you hold on to it and you feel
resentful about it, or you feel sad about it, or
you feel something about it, but you don't tell anybody
that this has happened. And sometimes it's like I don't

(55:49):
know how to tell them. Sometimes it's like they know,
but they're just like they're just terrible people. So I
think there's something to say. Can you name it when
you've been hurt? The second is can you notice it
when something's not quite right. And this is something that
I'm trying to get good at because occasionally I just
stomp on people's toes in a way that's unintentional, but

(56:11):
I hurt feelings or something happens. Not least because in
the companies I work, I'm the senior person. I started
the company, so I have that status and authority and
that power. And so there it's about that curiosity where
you go, something feels not quite right, let me check
in with you, how you're doing. You know what needs
to be said that hasn't yet been said, So it's

(56:31):
an opportunity to allow that to be spoken. And then
the third thing is a generosity in apologizing or making
it better, because we've all met people who are weasels
and how they apologize I'm sorry you decided to feel
like that. It's like it's not an apology at all,

(56:54):
it's just an insult. But that ability to say, I
see that that was a mistake, I shouldn't have done that,
I'm sorry, sorry, I'll try not to do that again.
That is a really powerful act.

Speaker 3 (57:04):
We've only got a few minutes left, but I want
to talk about a chapter in the book around orienting,
around knowing what's going on, will you put it in
context kind of where that fits. Yeah, I'd like to
go into a couple pieces of it.

Speaker 2 (57:15):
Yeah, sure, after you have that conversation. First of all,
celebrating you for having had that conversation, because having the
keystone conversation is already such a powerful start. But what
I hope is that people don't go, that's great. I've
done my relationship work for this person for now forever
I never have. It's going to be just great from
now on. There's this ongoing process where you want to

(57:38):
keep thinking to yourself, how do I keep making sure
that this is the best possible expression of the best
possible relationship between us as a facilitator, As a teacher,
you're worrying about the content. You're worrying about the audience,
and you're worried about the energy and the experience in
the room. You're worrying about all these things all at once.
So too, in this working relationships, you're worrying about how

(57:59):
you work together. You're worrying about yourself, or you're worrying
about the other person, and you're worrying about the two
of you and how you work together, and so This
idea of actively orienting and kind of noticing what is
going on feels like a really powerful commitment to the
working relationship. And in the book, I talk about the
famous Ouda loop, which developed by a US fighter pilot

(58:25):
as a way of this is the best way to
decide what to do when you're in the stress of
a fighting situation. Ooda orient, observe, decide, and act so orient.
I think of it as like pulling yourself out of
the hurly burley, so you can see what's going on.
You get yourself in a position where you can notice it,

(58:46):
and that is such a powerful act in itself. I
think of it kind of almost as a secret to
emotional intelligence as well, which is like, can you observe?
Can you get into a position where you're not got
blood in your ears and blood in your eye and
you're in the hurly burly of it? Can you pull
yourself out of that moment? Once you're an orient you

(59:06):
can actually observe and you're like, what am I noticing here?
What am I seeing? What's true? What am I assuming
to be true? What are my judgments around the facts
that I have? How are you interpreting what's going on.
Once you decide and make an interpretation, then you go
through those next steps, which is deciding what needs to
be done and then acting on what needs to be done,

(59:27):
and that kind of moves you into the kind of
more of the maintenance piece. But this ongoing piece where
you keep pulling back and going what's actually happening here
and is there anything we need to do about it
is a really powerful commitment to the ongoing health of
the working relationships.

Speaker 3 (59:42):
In that section, you talk about what are the facts?
And I love the way you sort of break this
down because I think the other thing that goes into
emotional intelligence is a first like you said, actually trying
to look around, but also tweezing apart like Oh, I'm
feeling acts in my body, I'm feeling X emotionally, I'm
having these thoughts, I'm having these urges.

Speaker 2 (01:00:04):
I love this model. Yeah, it comes from non violent communication.
I think that's its origin, and basically it says all
the stuff that's swirling around in your head as you
experience something can be teased apart. That's a great verb
that you're using. Eric into one of four different buckets.
It's either the facts, the data. It can be your feelings,

(01:00:25):
how are you feeling about the facts? Mad, sad, glad,
as shamed, and afraid of might kind of go to
five main feelings. Then there's the judgments. How are you
interpreting the facts and how you're feeling. There's a relentless,
endless amount of judgments you have about the situation, about
them and about you and about the situation. There's lots

(01:00:48):
of judgments. And then there's about what you want or
what you need. And part of what you're doing in
this observation thing is, particularly when you're doing this work,
you're like, what are the acts or facts here? There
are always fewer facts than you think. How am I
feeling around this? And this somatic wisdom? I'm not that

(01:01:08):
good at this one. I'm trying to get better, which
is like, what am I noticing in my body? You know,
how is this actually making me feel? What are the
judgments that are feeding the feelings? And what are the
feelings feeding the judgments? Because those two danced together. I'm
furious because Eric's let me down again. Feelings and judgments.
I'm sad because I've lost control of the podcast. Feelings

(01:01:31):
and judgments. None of those are the truth it's just
my interpretation of the truth. And then there's what you
want or what you need, which is really what allows
you to decide and act really powerful if you can
get clear on this is what I think is needed
from here.

Speaker 3 (01:01:46):
You know, it's so hard to tweeze apart that fact
and judgment piece, like if you can really do that,
like what's actually real?

Speaker 2 (01:01:53):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (01:01:54):
And what is my what I'm making it mean?

Speaker 2 (01:01:57):
Because your judgments sound really convincingly like the truth to
you totally, and they're not the truth the it's just
your interpretation of the data.

Speaker 3 (01:02:06):
Yeah. Well, we are no surprise out of time again
for a book that's as succinct as that, there's a
lot in it, you know. It's one of the things
I love about your work is that you are very
to the point. Your things are easy to understand and internalize.
You don't have to learn a ton of information. It
gets quick and easy to put into action. But there's
also a lot of depth there too, so you've done

(01:02:29):
a great job with that in this book. It's called,
as I said earlier, how to work with almost anyone.
And thank you for coming on. It's always a pleasure
to talk with you.

Speaker 2 (01:02:38):
Eric it's been a delight. Thank you so much.

Speaker 1 (01:02:56):
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