February 15, 2019 • 28 mins
Francesca and Becca try their first joint experiment: They set out to learn how to be a better team. To help them in their quest, they find a management coach who specializes in pairs. After undergoing the workplace equivalent of couples therapy, the two attempt to use their newfound self-awareness to solve a podcast production conflict.
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
So what percent of your time is dedicated to the podcast.
I'm gonna ask you about some things that have been
challenges between the two of you. What do you think
gets in the way of your communicating more directly Tobecca,
you're trying to corral Francesca and you're feeling spoken down
(00:26):
to what are one of our couple of Francesca's buttons that,
by the way, thank you very much for closing that.
This week on Works for Me, we get grilled m.
(00:49):
Welcome to Works for Me, the show where we test
out productivity strategies on our own personal problems to find
out if they'll work for you. I'm back at Greenfield
and I'm Francesco Leavy. This week it's Francesco's turn and
Becca's turn to tackle a thorny workplace problem. We're doing
things a bit differently this week. Instead of one of
(01:10):
us taking on something we're struggling with at work, we're
going to solve a problem together. Yeah. So we're right
in the middle of making this first season of our show,
and we realized that we have a work issue we
could both address how to work together better as a team.
We're in close contact a lot for this podcast and
(01:30):
naturally attentions arise. But we also realized we've never treated
our own collaboration as a thing to work on. We've
just kind of taken it for granted. Yeah, like any team,
we we have conflict, We get into fights, and we
don't really address though I wouldn't say we avoid them,
but we've never taken the time to sit down and
talk through how we feel about a conflict about it.
(01:54):
We just move, keep on keeping, keep on moving. And
I think that's true for most teams of people working
closely together. You do the work, sometimes there's these little
moments of frustration, and you just keep on going with
the work. You know, actually consider the relationship. So that's
what we're gonna do this week. We're going to focus
on how to work better together. So the first thing
(02:25):
we did was we went out and found a duo
that's been working together well for years. I am Erica Cerulo,
one of the co founders of a kind of business
that I started with one of my best friends from college,
Claire Maser, and I'm Claire Maser. I'm the other half
of this of a kind co founding work life writing team.
Claire and Erica have been friends for seventeen years and
(02:46):
business partners for nine, and they spent a long time
figuring out how to make their working relationship thrive. I
would say one of the things that we've learned over
the course of our relationship is a willingness to be
vulnerable with one another, to not be afraid that if
you express that you're overwhelmed, or that you know stuff's
not going well, or you don't feel great about a project,
to not be afraid that the other person is going
to judge you forward and be like, oh, she's really
(03:08):
fallen off. And I think the other thing that goes
hand in hand with that is transparency. I think the
more you can share with one another, whether that be
about you know, context of your professional life outside of
just your relationship, or even context of your personal life,
the more that helps inform the other person's understanding of everything,
including your vulnerabilities. Claire and Erica also believe that the
(03:31):
power of female friendship has helped them succeed. For their
new book, Work Life, coming out in March, they talk
to other successful female payers to explore what special about
women working together we think about the qualities of female
friendship that when they start becoming part of the workplace,
reshape the workplace. Just the caretaker role that women often
(03:52):
play by nature of the way our society works and
has worked, means that they bring more fluidity and so
by lee with these qualities like compassion and vulnerability and
emotional transparency, you just create a totally different environment. What
I like about their point of view is that they
treat being women like an asset and not a liability,
like I think a lot of the times that when
(04:14):
people talk about women working together, there are a lot
of negative stereotypes about it, and they instead their whole
take is women actually bring qualities to working together that
make businesses better and hopefully podcasts. So our problem is
(04:37):
that we think we could work better as a team.
Ideally we'd work together as well as Claire and Erica do.
So we dug a little deeper with them to figure
out how they got to such a healthy place, and
Claire told us they see a management coach. It's not
necessarily right for everybody, but when you're working really closely
with some one day and and day out, it can
be huge. We say that he's one part executively ship,
(05:00):
one part therapist, and one part marriage counselor clarien Erica
essentially go to couples therapy. I know, I was kind
of relieved to hear that that they weren't just born
perfect collaborators. And also I had no idea that there
were people who do that, who will just be your
work wife couple therapists. I love it. So that's this
week's experiment. We're going to find a management coach and
(05:23):
see if one session can help us improve our working relationship. Well,
consider the experiment as success if a week after our
session we've implemented any of the coach's tips to solve
a problem. I'm extremely nervous. I'm just terrified at the
idea of having to kind of think through this stuff
and talk openly about it. It's a weird thing to
(05:44):
do at work. It's way easier to just let it fuster.
We found a management coach named Ben Micalis, who, according
to his website, Dr ben Micalis dot com, is an
(06:06):
elite performance coach for CEOs and business partners. He costs
four hundred dollars an hour procession, so not cheap. Before
we met him in person, then asked us to take
some time to think about our relationship. He wanted us
to send an email with some things we liked about
working together and some things we didn't. But this part
(06:26):
definitely made it feel real for me. I don't know
about you. Yeah, it was like uncomfortable to put to
words my thoughts and feelings. Yeah, and I knew you
were never going to read the email because we sent
separate emails to him, and even just writing down my
private thoughts about what I thought we could work on
was nerve wracking without dangerous. Then after that stressful experience,
(06:50):
the day of the session arrived, I feel like I'm
like interviewing right now with the two of you, like
like I mean, like the job. Ben met us on
a Friday morning. We sat down facing each other, made
some small talk, and got started, and now we're just
going to play you an edited version of what happened next.
(07:14):
So you know, I'm I'm pretty direct, and so I'm
gonna ask questions and if you don't want to answer them,
like feel free to just not answer them. But I
actually my goal is for both of you to actually
have real takeaways at the end of today, so that
like you actually have some things to to use. So
this is not just helpful for people outside, but for
the two of you. What would you say, Becca, is
(07:35):
one of your favorite things about working with Francesca? Yeah, yeah,
you can say several of them. Well, I like, I mean,
we like each other, Like I like hanging out with
somebody who's I like to hang out with. We talk
about a lot of things, and we have similar interests
and like talking about the same thing. So that's cool
and really fun. And then more on like a work
note that I think to a lot of good big
(07:58):
picture ideas, so like this as our idea. I have
a hard time timing up with ideas. Everyone does, so
it's nice to work with somebody who came up with
good ideas that you get to work on. That's so nice.
And how about you, Um, well, I would say the
same thing that like, I think we're we're compatible as friends.
She's really thoughtful about giving critiques and edits. She'll go
(08:20):
through a script and or an episode and give me
her thoughts on it. And she's not she's not rude,
but she's direct about what you know she thinks needs
to be changed, and I'll usually agree, or if I
don't like, we'll talk through it and we'll come to
another decision. Obviously, the two of you really like each other,
you really respect each other, and which is great. So
really we're we're doing is we're looking at sort of
(08:40):
optimizing your relationship, which is a great, great place to be.
So what we're going to move into now is I'm
gonna ask you about some things that have been challenges
between the two of you, and I'm going to let
either of you start. I can start, okay, since Becca
started with the nice things. UM So I am really
(09:02):
oversubscribed with all of my other work, and that's my fault.
But UM, I feel like that sometimes assumes that I
I'm just not working hard enough on this project because
I'm not or because I'm you know, I'm putting an
offer and being lazy. And I think that I have
often had to triage, and I have found myself triaging,
(09:24):
and I have bumped this show down the priority list
at times, and so I think that that pisces back off.
And then I think that she will sometimes demand a
lot of time for the show, or request a lot
of time for the show. Um in a way that
makes me feel a little bit like she just doesn't
she doesn't think I'm working hard enough on it, but
I I feel like I also just have other things
(09:45):
to do. Any thoughts about that, By the way, thank
you very much for Well it's it's true. You're right.
I get frustrated, like I want us to work on it,
but it's not like I don't think you're not working
on other things. Like I know why that's happened. I
know you're busy, but I also think you're not. You've
never told me that. I mean, it's really interesting to
(10:06):
hear Becca say while she understands, and while she understands
in the abstract that I have other work to do,
I've never actually said this day or this week is
dedicated for me this particular other project which would be
very easy to do, and I haven't done it, and
I think my guilt gets in the way. How do
you communicate like over the course of like, okay, we're
(10:28):
working on this podcast, how does that information gets get
transmitted between the two of you? For I know it's
a bit of a ham fisted question, but like like
how are we doing it now? Yeah? How are you
communicating what what like the workload for a week? I
mean in our chat? Okay, sorry I'm cutting you off,
but I sort of set you up for that when
(10:50):
you're communicating emotional information like oh, this is not going away.
I thought it would if you can do it in person.
If if you're going to need to push a deadline
or if you're trying to push back, do it in person.
You're entitled to be upset if a deadline isn't respected.
(11:13):
But I do think that if you communicate like your
disappointment visually, what does that do does a couple of things.
It Actually there's a real consequence for you not having
kept up the agreement is the emotional consequence of seeing
your partner be disappointed. So it makes you less likely
to do it in the future because you're like, oh,
I don't want to I don't want to do that.
(11:34):
And you actually can soften some of the disappointment through
communicating face to face, but you can do it in
a way that's empathic as opposed to online. Everything gets lost,
and I do find that a lot of fights between
partners or disagreements happen because of the lack of context
on those channels. I get meeting face to face completely,
(11:56):
but I don't necessarily need to understand Beca's disappointment because
I feel like I anticipate because disappointment at all times understood.
But one of the things that I'm trying to actually
help with is increase the reliability of the signal. So
because you anticipate things, Becka might be like, you know,
having a week where she's just like hanging out drinking
(12:17):
Margarita's at her desk, which happens all the time, I understand,
Or she may be anticipating a vacation, or or she
may be under some other deadline. And I think that
you imagine more disappointment than is actual. Um, okay, so
I have a question for you, Um, what are one
(12:40):
of her couple of Francesca's buttons, things that like she
just does not like that do not work for Francesca.
Oh my goodness, I have to think about that. Do
you know what your buttons are? I mean, the only
thing I can really think of when it comes to
our relationship is when you're just expressing like your frustration
that time frame is being compressed, or that a deadline
(13:01):
is going to be master that we're not going to
get down what we expected to get done. Um, it'll
come out as like okay, but guys, were really you
know now we're really pushing it, are now really behind
on time, and I feel like UM talked down to So.
I was thinking about how these things get communicated, and
I'm wondering if you switch the language to UM, so
(13:26):
I understand that we need to push the deadline. It
just it makes me very nervous. And it's sort of
a soft emotion that you're holding that you're expressing, as
opposed to not even that you express a heart emotion,
but you're reading a heart emotion, UM. And so being
conscious of the fact that Francesca actually tends to read
hard emotions because UM, of some of the check try guilt,
(13:50):
like some of the guilt that you you expressed that
if you if you own it and you say it
just makes me a little bit nervous, it may have
a better effect as opposed to feeling like like feeling
like Becca's becas pissed at me. Yeah, that seems right.
I am conscious that I can sometimes be harsh and
people are like, you're direct, like if they say that
in a nice way, But I also know that means
(14:11):
I know what that means. Would it help if I
responded with the way I was feeling about it? If
I was like, I'm also nervous about this. I just
feel like it's assumed or it's understood or should be
understood that I'm also worried about all these deadlines and
worried about getting things done on time. Would it help
if I communicated that better in the moment where but
(14:31):
I'm like, guys, I'm really worried about this, but I
can't see any other way then for us to push
this two days. Yeah. I think sometimes it comes off
as like you're more laws I fair about it, and
like it'll just get done in the time and it'll
get done because that's what we have. And it's like, my, uh,
I don't know. So by doing that, you're you're joining Becca.
(14:52):
It's like, hey, I'm with you on this. I feel
I feel nervous about this too. You know, how can
we solve this? Think that that's going to be a
far more effective way of you strengthening the relationship as
opposed to eroding the trust. Cool. Yeah, I think that
I had. It's my style sometimes where I have a
(15:13):
tendency to under communicate those feelings. I kind of like
lockdown and I become defensive because I'm like Becca doesn't
think I care, and then I reinforce that by not
expressing that I care. So that's a weird self self
sabotaging thing that I do. Um, But I I think
I just need to not be not reading Becca's concern
(15:35):
as like an indictment of me and actually be open
about the fact that I'm concerned too. One thing that
I think, um, we tend to do especially now, but
is like the idea is that everything is an emergency.
I'm not saying that you shouldn't have a really high
standard of quality for your work product, but also realized
like it's really not an emergency. I think I saw
(15:59):
from that, and that just seems like in our work lives.
Everything in my work life, like everything is like a
reflection of who I am, and like everything is the
most important thing. So I think, yeah, it feels higher stakes,
and maybe we need I need to dial down the
stakes a little bit. Like it's a fun, frankly very
(16:21):
silly show about productivity and it might not be perfect.
You know, there's nothing in nature is perfect. It doesn't exist, right,
and like taking that burden off of yourself, but also
the imperfection is the show, you know, is the whole thing,
and it's like for me anyway, it's the things that
are imperfect that are interesting, and like it's the moments
(16:43):
where things don't go right that you get to really
I mean, you know it sounds a little tripe, but
you do get to learn about yourself and it's it's
kind of fun. That's you know, that's basically it. I
mean usually like you kind of have the takeaways, um,
and so I would have you guys sort of work
on those things together and see how it's going, if
it's if it's improving, it's not improving, um, and then
(17:06):
you know that would be the next step. Yeah. Well,
we happened to be in the midway point of this
season for this show that we're doing, so there are
many of these we can apply these experiences to come
thank you, thank you. This is so good. Yeah. How
(17:40):
did you feel after that session with Ben? I was
exhausted and I felt like I needed to go home
and take a nap. Yeah. It was the first thing
we did in the morning, and I couldn't believe I
had a whole day ahead of me where I had
to do more. I just had to go back to
our desks and act like it was a normal work day,
but I felt good about it. We we said things
that needed to be said, we didn't hurt each other's
(18:01):
feelings too much, and we realized we were much more
aligned on a lot of things than we thought we were. Yeah,
you didn't call me I mean b In fact, some
of the things that I thought you didn't like about me,
you actually like about me. So yeah, I thought it
was productive and I took away three specific tips that
I think we could use going forward in our relationship.
(18:22):
So the first one I would say is that we
could communicate more face to face. Ben was pretty adamant
about that. The second one is try to remind ourselves
that not everything is an emergency all the time. And
the third one is that we can talk about our
emotions more when we're communicating instead of telling the other
(18:44):
person what we think they need to do. Yeah, so
the next step was to see if any of these
tips actually work. We'll see how that went after the break.
(19:20):
So now it's a few days after we've met with
Ben and he's given us some tips, But honestly, we
weren't thinking about them that much because we were busy
trying to wrap up an episode of this show, and
then something happened. Becca. You requested a last minute change
to an episode that was about to be published, and
you did it over chat I know, and you had
(19:44):
left for the day and you didn't get to sign
off on the change, which is what needed to happen,
but it ended up going through anyway, and you were
understandably not happy about it. Yeah, so I sent you
kind of a terse message over chat, basically saying it's
too late to do anything about this now, but I
(20:04):
don't like the way we handled this. And then of
course it dawned on me this was the perfect opportunity
to test out Ben's advice to handle these things in
person and not as we were doing over chat. So
the next morning we found a spot to sit in
the newsroom to talk over our issues. So last night
(20:27):
I was annoyed about something that happened over chat after
I left the office. First, I'm sorry that had happened
that way, Like, I agree that we should not be
doing last minute and it's let the person who owns
the episode, which you did, does not get to sign
off on. And I kind of, in back my mind
knew that was happening, but we were both less like
chaosma or you were. I was running to an appointment
(20:49):
and it was five am. I think maybe you felt
more strongly about it than I gave you credit for,
because you said I want this edit. I had taken
a bunch of your other edit it's on a previous draft,
and then I had said this one thing that you
said I don't really agree with. I think we should
keep it in. Yeah, And then you heard it in
the final draft of the show that was right about
(21:11):
to be published, and you were like, I still don't
like this, And that was the thing I didn't have
a chance to respond to. It wasn't just an edit
I didn't like. It was something where I like the
way I've not sounded that I was saying something I
don't want to be on the record saying, and don't
be in and I think that I don't know how
to like quotify this. I'm not sure if we can.
But it's if you ever were like, I don't want
(21:33):
to say this on tape, I feel like there should
be some sort of clause clause, and like making a
show where it's like if you ever were like I
hate people who juggle, and then you were like, great,
I don't believe that, but I think I could have
explained that to you in person and also be more
clear about it. I understood that you felt like you
(21:55):
you weren't represented well and this thing that you said,
and I felt like you were overreacting, and so I
think probably I didn't understand the extent to which I
bothered you. And then I also kind of was like,
I think she's overthinking this. Like I think to me
that moment when I listened to it sounded perfectly incu
like a perfectly omacuous exchange. And I think that probably
(22:17):
what needed to happen was you needed to communicate to me,
I don't like this. You're not getting why I don't
like this, But this isn't about This is about, yeah,
something about me that I don't want on tape. I
think that the not to get too bad about it,
But I think the value of talking face to face
is that the issue I thought we were having was
(22:38):
that we had is that like I was like, well,
this this is my episodes where I should be the
final sign off, which I think, but you basically agree
with that. Yeah, Well, I'm glad we didn't let it
continue to unfold over chat because this is a busy
morning and that would have been easy to do. Yeah,
I feel like we came to two important points, which
(22:59):
is that like, the one who owns that episode should
on the episode and we should be respectable of that.
And we should also be mindful if there's like times
and episodes people really feel uncomfortable with what they're saying
and tried to express that better. I think we should
have a paganism though, Like I don't want anyone to
feel like they can't say like, no, you sound good,
and we keep it in because I think that instinct
(23:19):
is right too. We should be like I'm invoking yeah,
I'm invoking the you know, personal discomfort clause. Yeah. I
will say, as somebody who does like face to face encounters,
(23:40):
that one even better than I thought it would. You
were in paradise, that was so face to face, and
it would have been a bigger fight if it had
stayed on chat, yeah, because we would have just kept
kind of missing each other's main point and staying annoyed
privately about the things we were annoyed about. So I
(24:00):
honestly felt bad about sending you a snotty chat message
at like nine thirty at night the minute after I
did it, and then I was nervous about sitting together
and talking about it, and then so relieved that we did.
And I think that we we came away from it
understanding something that we didn't understand before, which is that's
the whole idea. Yeah, I agree. I will say that
(24:23):
we spent twenty minutes talking about this one chat, and
I don't know how people how we're supposed to do
that for all of our interpersonal conflicts like that seems.
I think if we had snotty chat arguments every day,
we would have to probably be more efficient about the
I r L conversations. But this doesn't come up that often.
(24:44):
It's not that common that we have a real life,
bona fide conflict like this. Maybe like every two or
three weeks, once a month, I don't know. So we
could do a twenty minute we could do a twenty
minute heart to heart every month. Yeah, alright, let's we'll
try to commit to that. I don't even like you
want to do it twenty hard to heart every day
right now. I think it's fair to say we enjoyed
(25:19):
a lot of these experiences, but the measure of success
for our experiment was if we used a tip that
we learned from our coach and it worked, then we
would consider it a success. Would you say that we
did it? I think we did. Yeah, yeah, totally. I
mean we wouldn't have talked face to face if it
hadn't been for Ben, And the face to face talk
(25:40):
was way more fruitful than a chat conversation would have been,
So I think that equals it worked. Yes. Agree. I
think we need to say that seeing Ben is not
a reasonable option for most people who are just working
on work projects with their cut workers. Yeah, they don't
have four out of pocket to spend on improving their
work relationships. But I do you think it is I
(26:00):
able to work on your work relationship And that's something
that Erica, who we talked to earlier said is a
skill that most of us aren't trained for. I think
if companies were smart, they would pick up the slack
here a little bit, like maybe not invest in four
management coaches for everybody, but do some training around this
with their employees and take it seriously as something people
(26:23):
need to work on. I don't know I would be
down for a certain company to continue paying for four
therapy sessions. I don't know it's a good idea. Next
week on Works for Me, Francesco cleans out her inbox.
(26:48):
Where would you say I rank and like among all
the people you work with? Am I like the worst
about email? Or am I in the middle? Or am
I post to the bottom? I don't think you're at
the very bottom, but you're near the bottom. Thanks for
listening to another episode of Works for Me. If you
like our show, head on over at to Apple Podcasts
or wherever you listen to podcasts and rate, review and subscribe.
(27:11):
This show was hosted by me Backa Greenfield and Me
Francesca Leivie. And if you have a workplace problem you're
trying to solve, we'd love to hear about it. So
leave us a voicemailt with two one to six one
seven zero six and we might use it on the show.
Or you could tweet at us I'm at Francesca today
and I'm at rs Greenfield. You can find more great
(27:34):
Works for Me content on our show page at Bloomberg
dot com slash Work for Me, where we also have
illustrations done by Jordan's Spear. The show was produced by
Cooper four Hits and Francis Bellivia is Bloomberg's head of
podcast
So what percent of your time is dedicated to the podcast.
I'm gonna ask you about some things that have been
challenges between the two of you. What do you think
gets in the way of your communicating more directly Tobecca,
you're trying to corral Francesca and you're feeling spoken down
(00:26):
to what are one of our couple of Francesca's buttons that,
by the way, thank you very much for closing that.
This week on Works for Me, we get grilled m.
(00:49):
Welcome to Works for Me, the show where we test
out productivity strategies on our own personal problems to find
out if they'll work for you. I'm back at Greenfield
and I'm Francesco Leavy. This week it's Francesco's turn and
Becca's turn to tackle a thorny workplace problem. We're doing
things a bit differently this week. Instead of one of
(01:10):
us taking on something we're struggling with at work, we're
going to solve a problem together. Yeah. So we're right
in the middle of making this first season of our show,
and we realized that we have a work issue we
could both address how to work together better as a team.
We're in close contact a lot for this podcast and
(01:30):
naturally attentions arise. But we also realized we've never treated
our own collaboration as a thing to work on. We've
just kind of taken it for granted. Yeah, like any team,
we we have conflict, We get into fights, and we
don't really address though I wouldn't say we avoid them,
but we've never taken the time to sit down and
talk through how we feel about a conflict about it.
(01:54):
We just move, keep on keeping, keep on moving. And
I think that's true for most teams of people working
closely together. You do the work, sometimes there's these little
moments of frustration, and you just keep on going with
the work. You know, actually consider the relationship. So that's
what we're gonna do this week. We're going to focus
on how to work better together. So the first thing
(02:25):
we did was we went out and found a duo
that's been working together well for years. I am Erica Cerulo,
one of the co founders of a kind of business
that I started with one of my best friends from college,
Claire Maser, and I'm Claire Maser. I'm the other half
of this of a kind co founding work life writing team.
Claire and Erica have been friends for seventeen years and
(02:46):
business partners for nine, and they spent a long time
figuring out how to make their working relationship thrive. I
would say one of the things that we've learned over
the course of our relationship is a willingness to be
vulnerable with one another, to not be afraid that if
you express that you're overwhelmed, or that you know stuff's
not going well, or you don't feel great about a project,
to not be afraid that the other person is going
to judge you forward and be like, oh, she's really
(03:08):
fallen off. And I think the other thing that goes
hand in hand with that is transparency. I think the
more you can share with one another, whether that be
about you know, context of your professional life outside of
just your relationship, or even context of your personal life,
the more that helps inform the other person's understanding of everything,
including your vulnerabilities. Claire and Erica also believe that the
(03:31):
power of female friendship has helped them succeed. For their
new book, Work Life, coming out in March, they talk
to other successful female payers to explore what special about
women working together we think about the qualities of female
friendship that when they start becoming part of the workplace,
reshape the workplace. Just the caretaker role that women often
(03:52):
play by nature of the way our society works and
has worked, means that they bring more fluidity and so
by lee with these qualities like compassion and vulnerability and
emotional transparency, you just create a totally different environment. What
I like about their point of view is that they
treat being women like an asset and not a liability,
like I think a lot of the times that when
(04:14):
people talk about women working together, there are a lot
of negative stereotypes about it, and they instead their whole
take is women actually bring qualities to working together that
make businesses better and hopefully podcasts. So our problem is
(04:37):
that we think we could work better as a team.
Ideally we'd work together as well as Claire and Erica do.
So we dug a little deeper with them to figure
out how they got to such a healthy place, and
Claire told us they see a management coach. It's not
necessarily right for everybody, but when you're working really closely
with some one day and and day out, it can
be huge. We say that he's one part executively ship,
(05:00):
one part therapist, and one part marriage counselor clarien Erica
essentially go to couples therapy. I know, I was kind
of relieved to hear that that they weren't just born
perfect collaborators. And also I had no idea that there
were people who do that, who will just be your
work wife couple therapists. I love it. So that's this
week's experiment. We're going to find a management coach and
(05:23):
see if one session can help us improve our working relationship. Well,
consider the experiment as success if a week after our
session we've implemented any of the coach's tips to solve
a problem. I'm extremely nervous. I'm just terrified at the
idea of having to kind of think through this stuff
and talk openly about it. It's a weird thing to
(05:44):
do at work. It's way easier to just let it fuster.
We found a management coach named Ben Micalis, who, according
to his website, Dr ben Micalis dot com, is an
(06:06):
elite performance coach for CEOs and business partners. He costs
four hundred dollars an hour procession, so not cheap. Before
we met him in person, then asked us to take
some time to think about our relationship. He wanted us
to send an email with some things we liked about
working together and some things we didn't. But this part
(06:26):
definitely made it feel real for me. I don't know
about you. Yeah, it was like uncomfortable to put to
words my thoughts and feelings. Yeah, and I knew you
were never going to read the email because we sent
separate emails to him, and even just writing down my
private thoughts about what I thought we could work on
was nerve wracking without dangerous. Then after that stressful experience,
(06:50):
the day of the session arrived, I feel like I'm
like interviewing right now with the two of you, like
like I mean, like the job. Ben met us on
a Friday morning. We sat down facing each other, made
some small talk, and got started, and now we're just
going to play you an edited version of what happened next.
(07:14):
So you know, I'm I'm pretty direct, and so I'm
gonna ask questions and if you don't want to answer them,
like feel free to just not answer them. But I
actually my goal is for both of you to actually
have real takeaways at the end of today, so that
like you actually have some things to to use. So
this is not just helpful for people outside, but for
the two of you. What would you say, Becca, is
(07:35):
one of your favorite things about working with Francesca? Yeah, yeah,
you can say several of them. Well, I like, I mean,
we like each other, Like I like hanging out with
somebody who's I like to hang out with. We talk
about a lot of things, and we have similar interests
and like talking about the same thing. So that's cool
and really fun. And then more on like a work
note that I think to a lot of good big
(07:58):
picture ideas, so like this as our idea. I have
a hard time timing up with ideas. Everyone does, so
it's nice to work with somebody who came up with
good ideas that you get to work on. That's so nice.
And how about you, Um, well, I would say the
same thing that like, I think we're we're compatible as friends.
She's really thoughtful about giving critiques and edits. She'll go
(08:20):
through a script and or an episode and give me
her thoughts on it. And she's not she's not rude,
but she's direct about what you know she thinks needs
to be changed, and I'll usually agree, or if I
don't like, we'll talk through it and we'll come to
another decision. Obviously, the two of you really like each other,
you really respect each other, and which is great. So
really we're we're doing is we're looking at sort of
(08:40):
optimizing your relationship, which is a great, great place to be.
So what we're going to move into now is I'm
gonna ask you about some things that have been challenges
between the two of you, and I'm going to let
either of you start. I can start, okay, since Becca
started with the nice things. UM So I am really
(09:02):
oversubscribed with all of my other work, and that's my fault.
But UM, I feel like that sometimes assumes that I
I'm just not working hard enough on this project because
I'm not or because I'm you know, I'm putting an
offer and being lazy. And I think that I have
often had to triage, and I have found myself triaging,
(09:24):
and I have bumped this show down the priority list
at times, and so I think that that pisces back off.
And then I think that she will sometimes demand a
lot of time for the show, or request a lot
of time for the show. Um in a way that
makes me feel a little bit like she just doesn't
she doesn't think I'm working hard enough on it, but
I I feel like I also just have other things
(09:45):
to do. Any thoughts about that, By the way, thank
you very much for Well it's it's true. You're right.
I get frustrated, like I want us to work on it,
but it's not like I don't think you're not working
on other things. Like I know why that's happened. I
know you're busy, but I also think you're not. You've
never told me that. I mean, it's really interesting to
(10:06):
hear Becca say while she understands, and while she understands
in the abstract that I have other work to do,
I've never actually said this day or this week is
dedicated for me this particular other project which would be
very easy to do, and I haven't done it, and
I think my guilt gets in the way. How do
you communicate like over the course of like, okay, we're
(10:28):
working on this podcast, how does that information gets get
transmitted between the two of you? For I know it's
a bit of a ham fisted question, but like like
how are we doing it now? Yeah? How are you
communicating what what like the workload for a week? I
mean in our chat? Okay, sorry I'm cutting you off,
but I sort of set you up for that when
(10:50):
you're communicating emotional information like oh, this is not going away.
I thought it would if you can do it in person.
If if you're going to need to push a deadline
or if you're trying to push back, do it in person.
You're entitled to be upset if a deadline isn't respected.
(11:13):
But I do think that if you communicate like your
disappointment visually, what does that do does a couple of things.
It Actually there's a real consequence for you not having
kept up the agreement is the emotional consequence of seeing
your partner be disappointed. So it makes you less likely
to do it in the future because you're like, oh,
I don't want to I don't want to do that.
(11:34):
And you actually can soften some of the disappointment through
communicating face to face, but you can do it in
a way that's empathic as opposed to online. Everything gets lost,
and I do find that a lot of fights between
partners or disagreements happen because of the lack of context
on those channels. I get meeting face to face completely,
(11:56):
but I don't necessarily need to understand Beca's disappointment because
I feel like I anticipate because disappointment at all times understood.
But one of the things that I'm trying to actually
help with is increase the reliability of the signal. So
because you anticipate things, Becka might be like, you know,
having a week where she's just like hanging out drinking
(12:17):
Margarita's at her desk, which happens all the time, I understand,
Or she may be anticipating a vacation, or or she
may be under some other deadline. And I think that
you imagine more disappointment than is actual. Um, okay, so
I have a question for you, Um, what are one
(12:40):
of her couple of Francesca's buttons, things that like she
just does not like that do not work for Francesca.
Oh my goodness, I have to think about that. Do
you know what your buttons are? I mean, the only
thing I can really think of when it comes to
our relationship is when you're just expressing like your frustration
that time frame is being compressed, or that a deadline
(13:01):
is going to be master that we're not going to
get down what we expected to get done. Um, it'll
come out as like okay, but guys, were really you
know now we're really pushing it, are now really behind
on time, and I feel like UM talked down to So.
I was thinking about how these things get communicated, and
I'm wondering if you switch the language to UM, so
(13:26):
I understand that we need to push the deadline. It
just it makes me very nervous. And it's sort of
a soft emotion that you're holding that you're expressing, as
opposed to not even that you express a heart emotion,
but you're reading a heart emotion, UM. And so being
conscious of the fact that Francesca actually tends to read
hard emotions because UM, of some of the check try guilt,
(13:50):
like some of the guilt that you you expressed that
if you if you own it and you say it
just makes me a little bit nervous, it may have
a better effect as opposed to feeling like like feeling
like Becca's becas pissed at me. Yeah, that seems right.
I am conscious that I can sometimes be harsh and
people are like, you're direct, like if they say that
in a nice way, But I also know that means
(14:11):
I know what that means. Would it help if I
responded with the way I was feeling about it? If
I was like, I'm also nervous about this. I just
feel like it's assumed or it's understood or should be
understood that I'm also worried about all these deadlines and
worried about getting things done on time. Would it help
if I communicated that better in the moment where but
(14:31):
I'm like, guys, I'm really worried about this, but I
can't see any other way then for us to push
this two days. Yeah. I think sometimes it comes off
as like you're more laws I fair about it, and
like it'll just get done in the time and it'll
get done because that's what we have. And it's like, my, uh,
I don't know. So by doing that, you're you're joining Becca.
(14:52):
It's like, hey, I'm with you on this. I feel
I feel nervous about this too. You know, how can
we solve this? Think that that's going to be a
far more effective way of you strengthening the relationship as
opposed to eroding the trust. Cool. Yeah, I think that
I had. It's my style sometimes where I have a
(15:13):
tendency to under communicate those feelings. I kind of like
lockdown and I become defensive because I'm like Becca doesn't
think I care, and then I reinforce that by not
expressing that I care. So that's a weird self self
sabotaging thing that I do. Um, But I I think
I just need to not be not reading Becca's concern
(15:35):
as like an indictment of me and actually be open
about the fact that I'm concerned too. One thing that
I think, um, we tend to do especially now, but
is like the idea is that everything is an emergency.
I'm not saying that you shouldn't have a really high
standard of quality for your work product, but also realized
like it's really not an emergency. I think I saw
(15:59):
from that, and that just seems like in our work lives.
Everything in my work life, like everything is like a
reflection of who I am, and like everything is the
most important thing. So I think, yeah, it feels higher stakes,
and maybe we need I need to dial down the
stakes a little bit. Like it's a fun, frankly very
(16:21):
silly show about productivity and it might not be perfect.
You know, there's nothing in nature is perfect. It doesn't exist, right,
and like taking that burden off of yourself, but also
the imperfection is the show, you know, is the whole thing,
and it's like for me anyway, it's the things that
are imperfect that are interesting, and like it's the moments
(16:43):
where things don't go right that you get to really
I mean, you know it sounds a little tripe, but
you do get to learn about yourself and it's it's
kind of fun. That's you know, that's basically it. I
mean usually like you kind of have the takeaways, um,
and so I would have you guys sort of work
on those things together and see how it's going, if
it's if it's improving, it's not improving, um, and then
(17:06):
you know that would be the next step. Yeah. Well,
we happened to be in the midway point of this
season for this show that we're doing, so there are
many of these we can apply these experiences to come
thank you, thank you. This is so good. Yeah. How
(17:40):
did you feel after that session with Ben? I was
exhausted and I felt like I needed to go home
and take a nap. Yeah. It was the first thing
we did in the morning, and I couldn't believe I
had a whole day ahead of me where I had
to do more. I just had to go back to
our desks and act like it was a normal work day,
but I felt good about it. We we said things
that needed to be said, we didn't hurt each other's
(18:01):
feelings too much, and we realized we were much more
aligned on a lot of things than we thought we were. Yeah,
you didn't call me I mean b In fact, some
of the things that I thought you didn't like about me,
you actually like about me. So yeah, I thought it
was productive and I took away three specific tips that
I think we could use going forward in our relationship.
(18:22):
So the first one I would say is that we
could communicate more face to face. Ben was pretty adamant
about that. The second one is try to remind ourselves
that not everything is an emergency all the time. And
the third one is that we can talk about our
emotions more when we're communicating instead of telling the other
(18:44):
person what we think they need to do. Yeah, so
the next step was to see if any of these
tips actually work. We'll see how that went after the break.
(19:20):
So now it's a few days after we've met with
Ben and he's given us some tips, But honestly, we
weren't thinking about them that much because we were busy
trying to wrap up an episode of this show, and
then something happened. Becca. You requested a last minute change
to an episode that was about to be published, and
you did it over chat I know, and you had
(19:44):
left for the day and you didn't get to sign
off on the change, which is what needed to happen,
but it ended up going through anyway, and you were
understandably not happy about it. Yeah, so I sent you
kind of a terse message over chat, basically saying it's
too late to do anything about this now, but I
(20:04):
don't like the way we handled this. And then of
course it dawned on me this was the perfect opportunity
to test out Ben's advice to handle these things in
person and not as we were doing over chat. So
the next morning we found a spot to sit in
the newsroom to talk over our issues. So last night
(20:27):
I was annoyed about something that happened over chat after
I left the office. First, I'm sorry that had happened
that way, Like, I agree that we should not be
doing last minute and it's let the person who owns
the episode, which you did, does not get to sign
off on. And I kind of, in back my mind
knew that was happening, but we were both less like
chaosma or you were. I was running to an appointment
(20:49):
and it was five am. I think maybe you felt
more strongly about it than I gave you credit for,
because you said I want this edit. I had taken
a bunch of your other edit it's on a previous draft,
and then I had said this one thing that you
said I don't really agree with. I think we should
keep it in. Yeah, And then you heard it in
the final draft of the show that was right about
(21:11):
to be published, and you were like, I still don't
like this, And that was the thing I didn't have
a chance to respond to. It wasn't just an edit
I didn't like. It was something where I like the
way I've not sounded that I was saying something I
don't want to be on the record saying, and don't
be in and I think that I don't know how
to like quotify this. I'm not sure if we can.
But it's if you ever were like, I don't want
(21:33):
to say this on tape, I feel like there should
be some sort of clause clause, and like making a
show where it's like if you ever were like I
hate people who juggle, and then you were like, great,
I don't believe that, but I think I could have
explained that to you in person and also be more
clear about it. I understood that you felt like you
(21:55):
you weren't represented well and this thing that you said,
and I felt like you were overreacting, and so I
think probably I didn't understand the extent to which I
bothered you. And then I also kind of was like,
I think she's overthinking this. Like I think to me
that moment when I listened to it sounded perfectly incu
like a perfectly omacuous exchange. And I think that probably
(22:17):
what needed to happen was you needed to communicate to me,
I don't like this. You're not getting why I don't
like this, But this isn't about This is about, yeah,
something about me that I don't want on tape. I
think that the not to get too bad about it,
But I think the value of talking face to face
is that the issue I thought we were having was
(22:38):
that we had is that like I was like, well,
this this is my episodes where I should be the
final sign off, which I think, but you basically agree
with that. Yeah, Well, I'm glad we didn't let it
continue to unfold over chat because this is a busy
morning and that would have been easy to do. Yeah,
I feel like we came to two important points, which
(22:59):
is that like, the one who owns that episode should
on the episode and we should be respectable of that.
And we should also be mindful if there's like times
and episodes people really feel uncomfortable with what they're saying
and tried to express that better. I think we should
have a paganism though, Like I don't want anyone to
feel like they can't say like, no, you sound good,
and we keep it in because I think that instinct
(23:19):
is right too. We should be like I'm invoking yeah,
I'm invoking the you know, personal discomfort clause. Yeah. I
will say, as somebody who does like face to face encounters,
(23:40):
that one even better than I thought it would. You
were in paradise, that was so face to face, and
it would have been a bigger fight if it had
stayed on chat, yeah, because we would have just kept
kind of missing each other's main point and staying annoyed
privately about the things we were annoyed about. So I
(24:00):
honestly felt bad about sending you a snotty chat message
at like nine thirty at night the minute after I
did it, and then I was nervous about sitting together
and talking about it, and then so relieved that we did.
And I think that we we came away from it
understanding something that we didn't understand before, which is that's
the whole idea. Yeah, I agree. I will say that
(24:23):
we spent twenty minutes talking about this one chat, and
I don't know how people how we're supposed to do
that for all of our interpersonal conflicts like that seems.
I think if we had snotty chat arguments every day,
we would have to probably be more efficient about the
I r L conversations. But this doesn't come up that often.
(24:44):
It's not that common that we have a real life,
bona fide conflict like this. Maybe like every two or
three weeks, once a month, I don't know. So we
could do a twenty minute we could do a twenty
minute heart to heart every month. Yeah, alright, let's we'll
try to commit to that. I don't even like you
want to do it twenty hard to heart every day
right now. I think it's fair to say we enjoyed
(25:19):
a lot of these experiences, but the measure of success
for our experiment was if we used a tip that
we learned from our coach and it worked, then we
would consider it a success. Would you say that we
did it? I think we did. Yeah, yeah, totally. I
mean we wouldn't have talked face to face if it
hadn't been for Ben, And the face to face talk
(25:40):
was way more fruitful than a chat conversation would have been,
So I think that equals it worked. Yes. Agree. I
think we need to say that seeing Ben is not
a reasonable option for most people who are just working
on work projects with their cut workers. Yeah, they don't
have four out of pocket to spend on improving their
work relationships. But I do you think it is I
(26:00):
able to work on your work relationship And that's something
that Erica, who we talked to earlier said is a
skill that most of us aren't trained for. I think
if companies were smart, they would pick up the slack
here a little bit, like maybe not invest in four
management coaches for everybody, but do some training around this
with their employees and take it seriously as something people
(26:23):
need to work on. I don't know I would be
down for a certain company to continue paying for four
therapy sessions. I don't know it's a good idea. Next
week on Works for Me, Francesco cleans out her inbox.
(26:48):
Where would you say I rank and like among all
the people you work with? Am I like the worst
about email? Or am I in the middle? Or am
I post to the bottom? I don't think you're at
the very bottom, but you're near the bottom. Thanks for
listening to another episode of Works for Me. If you
like our show, head on over at to Apple Podcasts
or wherever you listen to podcasts and rate, review and subscribe.
(27:11):
This show was hosted by me Backa Greenfield and Me
Francesca Leivie. And if you have a workplace problem you're
trying to solve, we'd love to hear about it. So
leave us a voicemailt with two one to six one
seven zero six and we might use it on the show.
Or you could tweet at us I'm at Francesca today
and I'm at rs Greenfield. You can find more great
(27:34):
Works for Me content on our show page at Bloomberg
dot com slash Work for Me, where we also have
illustrations done by Jordan's Spear. The show was produced by
Cooper four Hits and Francis Bellivia is Bloomberg's head of
podcast
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