AA235 - Changing Your Message: Adaptive vs. Manipulative Communication - Arguing Agile

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Brian (00:00):
So you're telling me when a manager tells the exec team
one story about why the projectfailed, and then
they tell the devteam a completely different
story they're just adaptingcommunication style.

Om (00:10):
Yeah.
They're adapting.
Tailoring.
How many times have we seenthat in our past?

Brian (00:16):
This is a chameleon that's shapeshifting
directly in front of me.
When you're in theroom, they speak highly of you.
And when you're out of the room,they're throwing
you under the bus.
Oh

Om (00:24):
boy.
Oh boy.
This is one of the reasons whythis podcast is
very critical forpeople that are
in this situation.
So we need to talk about this.
So hang on.
Fasten your seat belts.
Strap in!

Brian (00:40):
If this is your first time I'm your host product
manager brian Orlando is myco-host Enterprise
Business Agility consultant, Mr.
O Patel and the Saltless Swing.
I think that's definitely one ofhis credentials.
That's both of us though.
Yeah, we are the consultants.
Consultants.
The swing ev like,and subscribe.
Because every like, helpsthe podcast.
And today we're tackling asticky subject.
Changing your language to suityour audience.

(01:00):
And I'm gonna behonest I hate the
advice that peopleusually give and
receive when we're talking aboutthis category.
I hate it.
Because every timethat what I see is someone who's
really good at this, what we'reabout to talk about, changing
your language to suit thedifferent audience
when you speak to management,you've gotta speak the language
of management.
Because every timeI've seen someone that's really
advanced at this quote, skill.

(01:23):
They end up being the person whotakes credit for
your team's, work by themselvesand say, it's it's all me.
And then when things fail, theyblame other people
and they never they deflect allthe blame from themselves, that
kind of stuff.
But this is, this is whatyou're gonna walk away with
today from, fromthis discussion.
There's a couple thingsyou're gonna learn to tell
the difference between someonethat's just adapting their

(01:43):
communication style versussomeone who's being a
manipulative shapeshifter, ah,

Om (01:48):
shapeshifter.
So you're gonna be able to tellthe difference between wizards
and what, what's the other one?
Lizards.
Think.
Lizards.

Brian (01:53):
We're back playing the game.
It's a fun game.
That's it.
That's it.
That's the one We're rolling allthe dice today.
Let's see.
The other thing is we will giveyou a framework for testing
whether someone'sbeing strategic or slimy.
Slimy is strategic.
There, they're very closetogether.
I don't know if you knew that.
Yeah, exactly.
And then how to deal withdifferent audiences without
losing your integrity, andthen becoming the person that
I've been hatingon for the whole introduction,
the 19 minute introduction tothis podcast.

(02:15):
Oh, there we go.

Om (02:16):
So whether you are just freshly into the into
the professionalspace, or you've been here for a
while, you know you're gonnacome across this at some point.
If you haven'talready, you will.
That's an absolute ironcladguarantee.
Yes.
The results of this podcastwill hopefully stand you in good
stead to kind of navigate thosechoppy orders.
So stay tuned.

Brian (02:36):
Or your money back.

Om (02:37):
Or your money back.
Exactly.
It's, this is worth everypenny you didn't pay for.

Brian (02:40):
All right.
Let me ask you something.
Have you ever worked withsomeone who tells the CTO
the project isfailing because of
technical debt andthen tells the CEO
that it's failingbecause of unclear
requirements and then tells theteam it's failing
because leadershipkeeps changing priorities?

Om (02:53):
Or, and or So I'm gonna go the and first.
Homage to people that pointedme out to this.
And it's because the teamsaren't very good at defining
requirements and delivering tothose, right?
Mm-hmm.

Brian (03:04):
I thought you were gonna say, because that
person's a liar.
That's why.

Om (03:06):
No, they, they're lying or they're being economically
with the truth.
Either way.
Either way.
So here, right?
If you're a CTO who is inthis situation, you're doing the
best you can.
We understand thatif you're a team member, though,
your CTO is doingthe best they can,
are you right?
Are people changing theway they're speaking or their

(03:27):
communication.
To basically satisfy ameans to an end that's that's
self-serving for them, right?
Or are they being political andchanging it in a way where blame
is deflected somewhere else,except them, of course, but also
hopefully if they're protectiveof your team, that they're gonna
try and shield you in some way,so the rest of this podcast

(03:49):
is important.
If you are gonnabe successful in navigating this

Brian (03:52):
one would hope.

Om (03:53):
One would hope.
And I think we can deliver onthat promise.

Brian (03:56):
Okay.
So there is a small sectionin the I don't reference Adam
Grant that much'cause I don'treally like his books that much
and a shocker.
But in think again he namesthis thing about people who
frequently change their message.
not the delivery,the message what's
called Narrative inconsistency.
which as you know,destroys trust as
you would expect.
And if we're gonna step backfor a second and kind of define

(04:17):
this problem, this part oneof this problem.
Why we distrust, quote, adaptivecommunicators I'm gonna say
effective leaders,like you said, they, they're
emphasizing different aspectsof the truth depending on
what the audience cares about.
This is the typical advicethat people will give,
especially in the agile space.

(04:37):
They'll say, oh, you gottameet that person where they are.
Executive or C level executiveor whatever, and speak, oh,
you gotta speak about ebitda.
You gotta speak about earnings.
You gotta speak their language.
Speak ROI, you gotta speaktheir language.
That's, the mainthing you'll hear.
That's a one, one point.
The other one is using identicallanguage as executives or
developers or customers orwhatever that demonstrates a

(04:58):
lack of emotional intelligence.
The other point here, the otherpoint in the against for
what I'm saying is that if younever change your language, use
the same languagewith executives or developers
or customers and whatnot, thatdemonstrates that you have a
lack of emotional intelligence.
That you have a lack of theability to tailor your message
to the audience where, how theyneed to hear it to make impact.

(05:20):
So those, those are the two, ifI'm gonna take a
minute and kind ofsteelman, sorry,
I never used the word steelman,working in DC like, those guys
love Steelman and straw man.
Sure.
So I'm gonna startworking that in now because I,
I know a bunch of them havebeen listening to the last
couple podcasts.
So that one's for you guys.
That's my beststeel man argument here is like
the, the effect of people here.
Like they're, they're beingeconomical with the truth

(05:41):
maybe, they're emphasizingaspects of it.
More with different audiences.
And then the other side of itis like, well, if
you don't learnto do that, you're
never gonna getto the top right.
And they're always gonna belike, well, this person doesn't,
he can't speak the language,he can't be my eyes and ears.
So I don't know why they're not,I didn't mean to throw that
one in there.
Yeah.

Om (05:59):
Not effective communicators.
Yeah.
Tailoring yourmessage, tailoring
your communicationlanguage to the
audience that you are targeting.
That's one thing.
Most people, I would say, prettymuch anyone who's
listening to thisdid not go to a class in school
that teaches you this stuff.
You learn this by flapping yourarms and trying to stay afloat

(06:20):
yeah.
That's the word that springsto mind.
You know, as you go throughyour career.
We don't have these skills thatare taught to us.
So how do you get to that point?
Where you can A, survive andhopefully b thrive at some point

Brian (06:32):
well, let's talk about that's the storybook
against case here.
So what do we reallybelieve here?
What are what are we trying toemphasize here?
There's a couplepoints, the main one, which was
my gripe that I started within this podcast was, if the
message changes, like you loseintegrity with me immediately

Om (06:48):
if you find out that the message has changed.
That's true.
You know, the audiences areoften insulated
from one another,but often you do
find out, right?
Yeah.
Because somebody says somethingto someone.
It's really about how far theydrop in your esteem, right?
'Cause they are just basicallybeing a chameleon at that point.
And if you're feeling thatway, you can bet other people
are too, right?

(07:09):
Yeah.
So you have thiscompounding effect
and that person, the messengerI mean, they stand to lose
some credibility right there.

Brian (07:15):
Well, I mean, here look, why are they doing that?
You know, why wouldthey do that?
I mean, there's really, I onlyhave one answer
and I'll throw itout right away.
They're protecting their ownreputation at.
At the cost of everything else.

Om (07:26):
That's it.
That's your card.
And that's the only card in thisdeck, really.
I mean that, that's thereason why they do that, right?
The opposite sideof it is, oh yeah, they're gonna
put themselves out there andsacrifice their net worth, so to
speak, to protectthe team can count
on one hand withfingers to spare.
How many people have actuallydone that?
In my experience?
Oh, very few.

Brian (07:45):
Oh.
Do you have a, doyou have a story?
A a time, I have a story.
A time when you,

Om (07:48):
one time when a person did that,
and they were thefirst people when
the team was at,well teams in this
case when theywere basically off
ramped you know, they were thefirst people that
one of the first persons to say,this is actually not right.
The team is verygood at what they
do, and it's for other reasonsthan they pointed
out the reasons.

(08:08):
And this was in atown hall meeting?
Yeah.
And I remember theleadership saying,
well, if that's your positionthe organization doesn't value
that kind of a, an approachor an attitude.
And they walked and along withthem six other people walked.
Wow.
Right away.
And they knew, these six knew,but those people that were now
left wondering, what's gonnahappen to us?
They found out within a week.

(08:30):
Yeah.
They were all gone.
So, I mean, look,I think it takes
a lot for someoneto say, I'm gonna
wear my heart ona sleeve and I'm gonna just say
what I feel and to heck with theconsequences.
'cause it's theright thing to do.
Most people don't do that.

Brian (08:42):
I got a zinger for you.

Om (08:43):
Let's have a zinger.

Brian (08:44):
My zinger is if you, if you don't want your conversation
played on the, onthe speaker and felt like when
you call somebody and you're onthe speaker on the phone and
you're like, am I on speaker?
That's, that's this person.
If you wouldn't say whatever,you're gonna say, Hey, take
me off speaker.

Om (08:58):
Usually a good red, red signal right there.
Take me off speaker.

Brian (09:01):
If you won't say on speaker to everybody what you
would only say toone person, there
is a good chance that you're notjust adapting your communication
style.
You're changing the message andalso covering your backside.
Yeah.

Om (09:14):
Yeah.
I actually look, there's noarguing there.
I mean, that's, that's atelltale sign.
The other telltale sign is whenyou're in a larger
group setting andsomebody presses
you for you know, for an answeror an opinion or whatever.
Yeah.
And you know, there's amixed audience there, right?
So.
You get outta jail card.
There is, let'stake that offline.

(09:35):
I mean why are they doing that?
Because honestly, if you have amessage, just say it yeah.
But you're reluctant tosay it because you have various
messages.
So you can pick up on that asa recipient of the message.

Brian (09:46):
I have a takeaway here that I wrote down.
before you have your stakeholderconversation, you write down the
facts of what youwanna communicate, because that
stakeholder communicationcould be at any level.
It could be if you look at our,the podcast we
did on stakeholdercommunication,
it's arguing Agile2 0 1, mastering Stakeholder
Communication and Management,where we talked about the power
interest grid and and all that.

(10:07):
But write down, write downsome facts that you need to
communicate, and then no matterwhat audience you're talking to,
you should be ableto communicate the facts of
the situation.
Maybe you communicate thefacts a little differently or
the different, differentaudiences want to dig in and
ask you about different facts.
Sure.
But the facts of the situationdon't change.

Om (10:27):
Yeah, that's true.
If it helps any right, youcould use a loose framework,
like , write down the interestgroups, write down the facts
as you would like to relay them.
In each of the columns for eachinterest group, and then sort
those, right?
So that the like facts are onthe same road, so to speak.
And then decide, given a certainamount of time that you have to
speak, which onesare you willing to go with?

(10:49):
Yeah.
At least that way you'reprepared with your communication
message.
So that might be helpful.
It might not be, but it'sjust something I
thought about youcould do because
you don't have thefloor for long.
Yeah.
But what you say matters.

Brian (11:01):
So now it's up to the audience.
What do you think aboutthis category?
Did we get this right?
Have you worked with people whotells different stories, the
different people, and has thatblown up for you?
Or Yeah, what's been

Om (11:11):
your experience exactly.
What's been your experience?

Brian (11:13):
I wanna move us on to a trickier conversation.
'Cause there is alegitimate benefit slash purpose
to adapting your communicationstyle.
We have to talk about whatthat actually looks like when
you're earnestly doing it.
Yeah.
As opposed to dis earnestlydoing it.

Speaker 6 (11:27):
No, I don't think that's a word.

Brian (11:28):
The line between adaptation
and deception isthe next category.
When I tell the CFO that it'sgonna take us like
another month todo this thing that
he thought was only gonna take aweek because when
we actually got into the code,we realized it was relying on
a whole bunch of other stuff.
And now that we'rein the guts of the
change, we have to do the rightthing that's not
lying like that.

(11:50):
Well, that's evidence based.
That's like I'mtranslating by not
taking him through every singletechnical detail
that honestly you wouldn't wannahear anyway.

Om (11:56):
Yeah.
And, and also you're not, you'renot crafting the message.
To serve your purposenecessarily you
found out that thecode has all these
issues, right.
Et cetera.
So it's evidence-based.
To me, it's justthat does he wanna
see the evidence?
If, if he does, you can presentthat, right?
Yeah, you can present that.
So that's not really the problemnecessarily.

(12:16):
It's, it's those people that aretrying to hide things under the
blanket, so to speak, and justsay, well, we know our code is
terrible, right?
So we have to come up witha reason why.
That's right.
It's complicated.
That's right.
That's right it's complex.
It's like, well, you haveno evidence behind that.
You're just sayingit's complex you
don't understandthere are way too
many moving parts.

(12:37):
If your CFO is technical, orCCIO, for example, if they're
technical, they,or CTO, they can
understand this.
But other people in the company,they're gonna take
your word for it because you arethe trusted party
here as an expert in your domainso, oh yeah.
It's complicated.
So, yeah.
You said it was gonna take usor you thought it would take
us, I don't know, a month.
It's gonna take us three months.

(12:58):
It's just the way it is.

Brian (12:59):
Effective persuasion requires speaking
to each audience speaking totheir different concerns and
their different mental models,but the underlying data and the
recommendations, those staythe same.
So with that being said, letme throw out the steelman side
of the steelman.

Om (13:16):
Think we need a steelman icon.

Speaker 5 (13:18):
Steel Man,

Om (13:19):
man or something.
I

Speaker 5 (13:19):
did the he man

Brian (13:20):
thanks for coming to the live podcast.
So the steel man, here we go.
Any change in languageinevitably changes emphasis and
changing emphasismeans that some audiences will
have different impressions ofpriority and urgency, which is
functionally thesame as changing the message.
Oh boy.
Well, we're

Om (13:37):
transitioning now into changing the message.

Brian (13:40):
So in practice, the line between translation
and spin.
It's very blurry and it's saferto use consistent
languages across all audiencesto avoid even the appearance
of manipulation, especially ifyou're one of these pathological
organizations where Brianalways spins, they caught you
once slipping, andnow Brian always
spins the truth.

(14:02):
So the better way is to neverget caught playing that game
and , you just speak one way.
You speak with the facts andthere you go.

Om (14:10):
This is a great topic.
I, this particularpoint I think is
very, very good.
That's my steel man.
The thing aboutthis point, is it,
it's who you're perceived as asa communicator.
Yes.
Are you perceivedas somebody who's
always shifting from one footto another?
Or are you somebody whosimply says.
Listen, here are the facts.
Well, here's what I believethe facts are.
There's a difference betweenthose two as well.

(14:31):
Mm-hmm.
You know, and thenjust objectively as as possible,
relay the messagewithout looking to deflect
blame in any direction really.

Brian (14:40):
You know, the other one that's been the other one I've
heard people use that is great.
Is what I heard you say was,and then repeat
something that wasnot what you said.
Never said.

Om (14:48):
Now we're straight into politics.
Yeah, yeah.
Well, yeah, exactly.
So, so I wanna go back, right?
Sorry, I jumped ahead to myexperience.
No, no, you, this is actuallypart of it.
I got a story coming up.
Yeah.
So, so here, here's what Iwould recommend people to do,
do not use those corporatesadism, right?
Like, well, we'regoing after the
low hanging fruit.
Mm-hmm.
Well, how low doesit have to be?

(15:09):
Mm.

Speaker 3 (15:09):
Fruit

Om (15:10):
for a garden?
Nome, reach it.
I saw this meme today, but it'sa very valid.
Yeah low hanging fruits.
Like how low?
How low is it?
Do you need a ladder?
Just say it like it is and saywe're going after something we
can deliver in Days insteadof months and then field
for questions.
So in your messaging, donot mix multiple topics and at

(15:32):
the end just, does anybody haveany questions?
People are still absorbingwhat you said.
'cause you had like multiplepoints you made at every point
you make just pause and field.
Yeah.
If you really care to getthat feedback.
Of course yeah.
So that, genuineness thatyou need to bring to the table.
So don't use thosecorporate, sayings
that people often.
Just throw in there I've goteveryday language.

Brian (15:52):
I've got two things that I thought of from what
you just said.
Two things to point out fromwhat you just said
is translation ofthe message versus
transformation of the message,which is also like co-opting the
message, right?
Yeah, exactly.
So the translation changes thevocabulary.
Sure.
But the message is the same.
It preserves the core facts.
Again, we come back to this,just lay out the facts, right?
Just the facts, ma'am and thentransformation changes.

(16:13):
The actual story.
Who's responsible,what the problems are, what the
perception of it.
This is where like the OKRsbugs me in corporate America.
'cause when the stress ison, like people will manipulate
numbers and metrics to tellwhatever story
they want to tell.
And I've seen people tell,twist themselves into knots.
To manipulate the, I'm jumpingforward to experience.

(16:35):
So the, the test here is if youtake all of the statements that
someone's made, again, this isthe same test in this category
as it was in the first category.
If you take all the statementsthey made and you write them
all down, you play 'em all backagainst the facts.
Are they gonna be parallelnarratives?
Or are they gonnabe like, are they all gonna lead
back to the truth?
This is sort of like the singlesource of truth, single document

(16:55):
of truth kind of approach.

Om (16:57):
This is why cops single out people separately
and ask them the same questions.
What version of the story areyou hearing?

Brian (17:04):
Alright, it's, time for us
to bend the truth.
No, just kidding.
You're an enterprise coach, you have to talk
to development teams, youhave to talk to leadership, you
have to talk to sponsors withpeople that just
manage money, theydon't actually work on the
software or use the software andmeet customers.
how do you keep the messagesstraight when you're talking
all different audiences?

Om (17:20):
Yeah, that's a really good question.
I come from theposition of it is
what it is and ifI twist it, it's
going to satisfy some people.
But at the expense of takingoff others that basically just
say why we here.
Right.
So I come from a position oftelling people.
Exactly what's going on.
And then fielding for concernsand questions but one thing

(17:43):
I try to avoid.
Almost always is casting blame.
Because it doesn'tchange things.
You can cast blameall you like, but
it doesn't change where you are.
You're still gonnabe where you are.
This is sort of like that oldthing that I always talk about
on the podcast and say, yeah,you hold up a mirror and say
like what you see.
Sure.
Break the mirror.
Bring another one.
You still gonnalike what you see.

(18:03):
I've seen people though in otherwalks of life, including the
field that I'm in to come in andbasically twist things a little
bit here and thereto the point where
you think you're looking in themirror where it's
like one of thosecircus mirrors, the images are
not what they should be.
Those kinds of trickery let'ssay Chicanery.
Yeah, chicanery.
They don't last long.
You get caught out at somepoint, and when you do, you fall

(18:26):
a long way down.
You lose credibility thattakes so long to
build and it's soquick to destroy.
So don't do it, folks.
It's not worth it.

Brian (18:34):
So if you can't draw a straight line from
what you told theCEO to what you told the intern
and everybody in between, you'renot translating you're lying to
multiple people.
You're transformingBrian, you're, you're lying to
multiple people in multiplelanguages.
That's what you learn.
You're a transformation agent.
That's what you are.
So, rather thanspeaking different
languages, you'relying in different languages.
And I will say,you've done well, grasshopper,
you've learned

Om (18:54):
well, yes.
There you go.
Distorting the truth.

Brian (18:56):
You're ready for a life of crime.
That's what I'm saying.
To sell drugs, do crime.
I don't know, what can werecommend here?
The put the core facts in thecenter and then you branch out
to different audiences withdifferent audience
specific language.
Obviously, executives theyonly wanna hear about impact.
The user, your software, theydon't care about impact.
They want to knowabout what have
you done for them.
Yeah.
What have you done for them,what their specific flow and

(19:17):
stuff like that.
So again, we return to arguingAgile 2 0 1 because again,
at the heart ofa lot of this is,
you have to know how does thatquadrant want to be communicated
with and what is importantfor them.
If the executive quadrant theyonly want to hear about hard
financial numbersand they want hear
about impact, butthey want it to be in terms of
financials and nothing else,which usually.
Especially in larger companieswhere they're so
divorced from anyone product, if

(19:37):
you have multiple products, theydon't even care about talking
about one product.
They just want the numbers andeverything else stripped out.

Om (19:45):
Yeah.
Again, we may have differentpeople in the audience that are
at different partsin the journey.
So the advice I have for thosepeople is, if you're not sure,
don't be afraid to reach outto a peer go to meetups, go
talk to people that are in thesame field, or adjacent fields.
Reach out to them and say, whatwould you do in this situation?
Because you don't learn thisstuff in school.
So I would say reach out, learnfrom people.

(20:08):
And you know, livelong and prosper.

Brian (20:10):
I've got advice as a product manager for people that,
but I'm telling you now, I don'tthink people are gonna want to
hear it is first of all, go doyour homework and watch arguing
Agile 2 0 1 and then a masteringstakeholder communication.
And then when you've watched2 0 1, actually do the grid
actually do write the grid down,start putting people's names in
it, and then go and interview 20people that's five

(20:32):
people per grid gonna interview20 people.

Om (20:35):
It's not a lot really, it,

Brian (20:37):
it is easily doable, but I'm telling like right now,
like 95% of peoplejust dropped off.
I know.
And then ask them like, howdo you want when I come up with
new features or when I, I'mgonna release new things or when
I'm testing thingsor whatever how do you want to
know about it?
You know, oh, I wanna know aboutit before, oh, I
want a video demo.
Oh, I want, whatever.
They'll all wantdifferent things.
Sure.
So, but talk to 20 people andthen come back and, and then get

(20:59):
a handle on whatyour communication strategy is
going to be.
Because if your strategy istelling everyone when they want
to hear and just taking all thepromotions, and now , suddenly
you're running the businessand all the product managers
are under you.
'cause you're like, this isthe episode we just put out.
Yeah a lot of people have landedthemselves in this career or
that, but they just like signall the checks
whether they couldbe cashed or not.
. And suddenly they're like,success is their worst enemy.

(21:23):
And this is a wild problem.

Om (21:24):
People have just become yeah.
They, you've justbeen promoted to
your highest levelof incompetence.

Brian (21:29):
So the takeaway again, in the, in the center, in the
center of that two by two isa circle, which is the core
facts, right?
Because those facts have tobe communicated.
You start with the facts.
You, no matter what thecommunication plan
is, you build foreach stakeholder.
You start with the facts, andthen you branch out from there.
So the, the takeawayhere is very straightforward
and quick.
And honestly, ifyou've talked to
those 20 people, it's gonna bepretty easy.

(21:51):
Believe it or not.
See, it doesn'tsound easy 'cause
like talking to those people andthen wrangling all those cats.
Is that, is it Cat Wrangleror are you Cat Wrangler now?
Cat

Om (21:59):
heard, yeah.
One thing you could possiblydo if you are diligent about
speaking to each individualfor their own concerns is map
those on the two by two and thendraw a concentric circle around
the zero zero and figure outhow many you can group together.
For a given communicationmethod, that might

(22:19):
be your kind ofpractical how to,
and that groups, the 2025 peopleinto groups that you can use for
using specific distributionchannels.

Brian (22:30):
Again, we pass to the audience.
What do you think aboutthis category?
Like is there aclear line between translation
and deception?
I think, or am I off myrocker again?
Like, am I, am I on thesauce again?
Is that what I'masking Right now?
You not

Om (22:41):
off your rocker.
I mean, those of you that areexcelling in one
side of it or theother, you might be ready to go
run for office..

Brian (22:49):
But also if you use the f, if
you go listen to2 0 1 and you look
at the frameworkand you adopt that
, I'm interested ifyou actually can use it and and
how it worked out.
So if you.
Just think about it.
And let us know.
Take it, take it offline.

Om (23:00):
Let us know in the comments below.
We would really appreciate that.
And also let usknow while you're there, what
are the topics you'd like usto delve into?
That's right.

Brian (23:07):
Now let's talk about the most dangerous place that
this shows up.
what managers say about youwhen you are not in the room.
So the, here we go.
We're gonna be in the roomwhere it happens.
That one's, for mycoworker Lauren.
She I would likeoccasionally when
I'm working, she will like, fireoff a Hamilton
related reference.
And it's the funniest thingin the world.
We're in a meeting and somebodysays something.
Anyway, that wasa, that, that's, that's for one

(23:28):
person in the entire worldright there.
That's for Lauren.

Om (23:31):
The next we go to on this part.
That's one person.
The room where it

Brian (23:33):
happens.
What, what they say about youwhen you're not in the room.
I can control whatI say in the room.
I can be responsible likethe, the old extreme ownership
of like, be responsible forwhat you can control, right?
But you have no idea ifyour manager's defending you
behind closed doors with therest of the management team
or whatever.
Or if they're throwing you rightunder the bus, be
like, I could havesucceeded if it wasn't for that
darn kid Brian, I backed myselfinto a corner.

(23:56):
The managers thatI've worked with
anyway, that arethe best at quote,
adapting their language thoseare the ones I trust the least.

Om (24:02):
Yeah, I mean these are the people that are practicing
ruinous empathy.
Right.
As per Kim Scott's book,The Radical Candor.
Go read that folks.
If you haven't,I mean, these are people that'll
tell you one thingto your face and of course you
don't know what they're sayingto someone else'cause you're
not in the room.
Yeah.
But you have thatniggling doubt.
Are they really sticking out foryou or are they, like you said,

(24:23):
throwing you underthe bus but you're
not aware, you don't see the busover here coming.

Brian (24:27):
Let me step in 'cause it's time off for the steel man.
Oh, the steel man coming back.
You didn't know.
You didn't know.
There's so many steel men andthis is like, it's, it's
raining steel man.
This starting to be a village.
People reunion upin this . Oh yeah.
It's really steel man.
Oh my Managers have tobalance advocacy for their team
members with organizationalreality.
And sometimes that meansacknowledging the limitations

(24:47):
or failures that would bedemotivating to share directly
with people.
I know what you're about to say,but, ah, yeah.
I got, wait, wait, wait.
I, I got another one.
I got another one.
This, it gets better.
Trust me.

Speaker 7 (24:57):
But the story might be negative

Brian (24:59):
anyway.
It's like we're children,transparency will
hurt our feeling.
And I know, I know, I know.
Step back.
I got another one.
All right.
Okay, let's go.
Expecting your manager to sayidentical things about you is
naive in the corporate worldbecause context determines the
appropriate amountof disclosure, especially with
HR involved andthe legal action.

(25:20):
I'm trying to throw out allthe excuses in the world.
I'm getting'em all out.
And I'm, so we can justcollectively push
him off a cliffhere in a second.
Okay.
So that's the endof my steel man.
I'm sorry.
That was the worststeel man I gonna
do on the podcast.
No, that's pretty

Speaker 5 (25:30):
good.

Brian (25:30):
Did you like that one about like, oh, we gotta balance
the advocacy because I mean,what if it hurts?
You know, what if it's scaryfor people?

Om (25:38):
There are some organizations where they take this to the
extreme, right?

Brian (25:42):
They take it to the limit,

Om (25:42):
oh God.
Yeah.
So one, one

Brian (25:44):
more time.

Om (25:45):
Yeah.
One more time.

Brian (25:46):
So didn't know we'd be quoting Eagles this podcast.

Om (25:47):
Exactly.

Brian (25:48):
There'll be more of that, where it came from.
There's a lot more Came Lifein a fast Lane.

Om (25:51):
Came from Uhhuh.
Oh, I know.
I can tell you what, there's nopretty maids all in a row here.
Ooh.
Alright, so where were we?
Oh yeah, yeah, that's right.
We were about to, we were,

Brian (26:01):
we were trying to check out, but we can never leave.

Om (26:02):
That's I. Yeah.
Well, I think we've all stayedthat hotel California.
Oh, man.
Listen, if you, if you'veever been in a situation where
the one-on-one you come out ofand you're feeling really really
good, right?
Because you, youmanage your fluff, your feathers
and then you havethis this other meeting, let's
just say maybe that was aboutI don't know, getting a pay

(26:26):
raise, because you know, that'snot the crux of the one-on-one.
It's other meetings wherethat happened and suddenly you
get a different differentvibe there.
Something's kind of offkeyhere and so you can get an idea
pretty quickly where thingshave gone awry.
You heard what your managerthought you should
hear as opposedto what you really
needed to hear.

(26:47):
Mm-hmm.
Now, two things here.
I'm not gonna blame themanagers.
Only for this, although they'renot getting off
scot free either.
But as the recipient of themessage, one of the things you
need to do is don't just feelgood about what you're hearing
and walk out of the meeting justwrite down that
stuff right after the meeting.

(27:07):
Hit back in an email to thatmanager and say, thank you
for your time.
Here's what we discussed.
Here's what I thought Iheard you say.
Put all of those things downbecause all you're
doing is you're gathering atthat point some evidence that
you could use.
Probably futile, butit's better than nothing, right?
When you're passed up forthat promotion or
that pay raise.

Brian (27:29):
I think I'm gonna stay with the steel man.
I'm, yeah.
Yeah.
This is the plastic man.
I, I'm gonna, he'snot a steel man.
I think, I thinkI'm gonna go put
on my cop outfitand hang out with the steel man
while they're raining men overhere or whatever.
I might, I mighthave to throw in
my Cher outfit andturn back time for
for, for Halloweenover here because
I've worked for amanager before who
says, oh, you're doing great.
When they turn around and say,this person's struggling.

(27:50):
Yeah.
You know, they're not protectingmy delicate like
frame or whatever when they'redoing that.
All they're doingis undermining me.

Om (27:55):
They're undermining you, but also they're not really even
good managers atthat point these are people that
are just pivotingat the direction of the breeze.

Brian (28:04):
And also there's a, there's
another saying that I've heardbefore that, oh, as a manager,
it's my job to putup the umbrella and shelter you
from all the organizationalthings that may
rain down on you.
But I remember.
Thinking differently whenI became a manager
for the first timein my career where I had to hire
people and that kind of stuff oflike this, this

(28:24):
is absolutely not,like you can't, whatcha are you
gonna do shelter your peoplefrom everything and become the
organization's Boogeyman,Batman, you know what I mean?
Not organizational Batman.
That's not like you, you're notgonna be able to shelter people.
Like the better thing to dowould be to be transparent
about everything.
And now you don't need toshelter anyone from anything
they're not children , whatare you sheltering them from?

Om (28:43):
Thi this is where a lot of people, when when
I hear again oneof those corporate
seasons that I say we shouldstop using, right?
You're not a family.
The work is not your family.
Family doesn't fire one anotherso when you hear these things,
feel free to politely just say.
That's great.
But Uncle John, right?

(29:04):
You're not my uncle.
Really.
I don't even havean Uncle John or
Bob or whatever.
No.
Seriously though, I, you needto think about this, you know?
And recognize the symptomswhen people are just simply
blowing smoke.
It's a, but it's prerequisite.
Like if you're gonna stay in thecorporate world for any length
of time, you'regonna come across
this all the time.
People will say all of thosethings and you feel, I'm

(29:26):
doing great.
Yeah.
I've been told that by my boss.
And then before it's somethingelse happens.
Not so pleasant soand, and I'm not
saying you'll getfired or anything like that.
I mean, it could just besimple like, oh, you thought
you would get that promotion?
Or you thought you would getthat pay raise?
Or nothing like that even.
So learn to recognize thosekinds of things,
and after a whileyou'll see there's
a pattern here where, wherethe same people will do these

(29:48):
things to you.
So when they do next time aroundyou say, well, this is fine.
Would you mind if I recapour meeting in an email?
Or don't even askfor permission.
Just do it.
What's the worstthat can happen?
Right?
You're just recapping anemail, summarizing
it, I don't know.
It'll make you feel good.
Don't be that manager when youbecome a manager.
Okay?

Brian (30:07):
I don't, I think I'm depressed in this category.
I don't think, I think allyou're doing is documenting like
negotiating forbetter severance.
I think that's the only thingthat's happening
in this category.
I would say your manager'sintegrity is not measured by
what they say to your face.
It's measured by what theysay when you're not in the room.
And boy, I don't even knowhow you get to measure whether
that compass is off or not.

(30:27):
But that's my issue withsymptoms, I guess that's why
this category isdepressing for me.
Like Yeah, I agree.
If I have a takeaway, and thisis not gonna be
a great takeaway, now is nexttime you have a one-on-one with
your manager.
So I guess if you work forMark Zuckerberg or Justin Wang,
forget about it.
But when you talk to them, whenyou ask them when you're in your
next one-on-one, Hey, when youtalk about my performance
in leadership meetings, what arethe main points you emphasize?

(30:48):
You know, and thena good manager will tell you
directly and a bad manager isgonna deflect or get defensive.
And then again,you have to follow
up and say, Hey,is there anything else that you
say in those meetings thatwould surprise me?
If you work for abad manager right
now, even bringingthis kind of thing
up, they're gonna be like, why?
What have you heard?
Right.
Right.
Who said it?

Om (31:04):
That's their insecurity in that case.
Hey, listen.

Brian (31:06):
Yeah.

Om (31:06):
That resume updated.

Brian (31:08):
I don't like, again, this is, I'm angry with
this with thiscategory because I
have too many badexperiences here.
Like this is a I agree.
I do too.
So back to the audience.
Have you ever asked your managerwhat they say about you when
you're not there?
Drop a comment I'd be interestedto know if anybody actually
admits what they say about youin the dark.
What?
So that brings usto the political operators the

(31:29):
people who've turned adaptivecommunication into a dark art.
Ooh, So the people whoweaponize adaptive
communication,

Speaker 6 (31:36):
the saucers

Brian (31:37):
Yes.
the saucers.
They have a pan with sauce.
Anyway I keep using theword political.
Like it's a four letterword, right?
the trade off in this category,which I'll get to
in a second with my steel man.
Okay.
the political operators, youquote political operators
maybe they're just betterat navigating organizational
politics and complexity thanthe rest of us maybe that's a
truth and maybe weshould be learning from them.

Om (31:59):
Well, it depends on what your MO is, right?
If you wanna get up ahead in theorganization, there is no
other way.
Mm-hmm so the most effectivecommunicators are
those ones that can change veryquickly based on who they're
speaking with.

Brian (32:14):
Oh, you mean manipulating the narrative?
Exactly.

Om (32:16):
Yeah.

Brian (32:17):
Yeah, that's, you bring us back to the core issue of the
podcast, which isI'm saying that manipulating the
narrative that's changing themessage, that's
not just language.

Om (32:25):
You might think that's a nefarious thing to do.
However, this canonly be contrasted
with the level of success thesepeople achieve.
And there's a reason for that.
Right?
So if you are ethically boundto not do this and just stand
for what's right,et cetera, great.
Stay with that.
But also don't expect to be,drifting along the halls of

(32:45):
whatever floor power, your sealevel is, right.
The hall of power.
That's right.
Don't expect that because that'snot gonna happen.

Brian (32:51):
Well, you don't even know, but you're in the steelman
point right now, you might aswell continue because what you
were just saying in the steelmanposition was the organizations
are inherentlypolitical systems.
They just are.
People who refuse to adapt theircommunication style to deal with
organizational politics, they'rejust choosing to be ineffective
at organizational politics andtherefore they're basically knee

(33:14):
capping the rest of their careerthat's what you're saying.

Om (33:16):
It's true.
However, I think we've kind ofjust pointed out the binary
situation, right?
There are those people thatcan judiciously operate in the
space where they just sprinkleup enough.
On the whole, they also careabout people to not throw them
under the bus.
Yeah , i've workedwith a couple of
people like that.

(33:37):
Over the whole, my careerI've only come across very few.
I count on one hand with fingersto spare, but these people are
genuine in that you don't seethem necessarily sacrificing
others for their own wellbeingor for their own interest even,
to progress their own purposes.
So, so these people will bethe first to say the teams are
experiencing this,but when it's the

(34:00):
right time, they will also twistthe message the way they feel
it, the messageshould be twisted.
Yeah.
So it's not a binary, Idon't know.
Maybe it's possible foryou to do that and walk on
a tight rope.
Well, and it takes time todevelop that.

Brian (34:13):
Well then let me, let me then step into my
office and let metell you a story.
Let's see if I can't changeyour mind though.
All right.
Let's go, let's go like this.
I'm gonna take the steel manoff the screen for a second
and you can step into my office.
'Cause I'm, I'm gonna tellyou that these quote political
operators, thesethese, these the refugees from
the truth right now, they, theythey have three patterns, okay?

(34:33):
They have three patterns.
Number one, they take credit forcollaborative work.
You get on a callwith two, three
other developers.
You work through this you know,real sticky bug, a real
impactful feature or whatever.
And then that oneperson comes out
and claims credit for all of it.
Number two, they shift blamewhenever the outcome is poor.
They are still on that call orwhatever, they
still do the thing with the bug,but then if it's

(34:55):
badly perceived,they find a way to
exit stage left.
They were never even involved.
You didn't even see them.
They, they were never here.
Yeah.
And then numberthree their story about events
changes based onwho holds power.
So I gave, I just gave youthe three.
So for all y'all listeners outthere for, I dunno
why I went intomy Morgan Freeman
voice went for ally'all listeners
out there looking to exploit theside of evil for

(35:19):
love and profit, Ijust gave you the
three step plan.
It's different than Carmen'sfour step plan,
but very slightly different.

Om (35:26):
Yeah, very slightly.
But also I thinkthis is something
that even Morgan Freeman wouldnecessarily disagree with if
your interest is self-interest.
Primarily, and for the most partthat's what it is.
This is what you show upto work for.
Yeah.
Then those three underscored by,it takes what it takes for me to

(35:46):
succeed I mean,you will succeed,
there's no doubt.
Hope you can sleep at nightsome of us can't, but that's
more on us than anything else.
So those three points are solid.
Again, if you can do this,but also not sacrifice those
that are in due credit, but alsoyou don't have to necessarily
take credit.

(36:07):
You also don't necessarily haveto take cast blame either.
Right.
You can look at the facts andgo with that.
Mm-hmm.
So especially on the blame side,on the credit side, give credit
where it's due.
End of story.
And a leader shouldrecognize that.
But in terms of casting blame,I fundamentally
believe everybody comes to work,do a good solid day's work.
It's not like people come into say, well let's just fail

(36:30):
this sprint or this whatever,this month.
Nobody does that.
But when thingsgo badly, look at
the factors andtackle the issue, the problem,
not the people.
Mm-hmm.
So casting blame on the people,eh, it's not gonna go well
for long anyway.
Yeah.

Brian (36:44):
Well I have the, the other side of this is political
operators are never wrong.
I got the careerstory of this one.
I got you on this one.
As far as like anactual evidence for my career.

Speaker 3 (36:55):
Yeah.

Brian (36:56):
Because political operators are never like
the story.
When I said numberthree, the story about events
changes based on who's in powerso they end up on the right side
of the story.
For example, I wasat a company one
time where the CEOchanged and all these political
operators, saw which way thewind was blowing so the way they
say, well I hadnever agreed with the thing that
you disagreed withMr. New CEO person

(37:18):
or whatever, likethe kind, they're recrafting all
their stories to be like,oh, I always agreed with you.
It sounds funny, it wasnever this like overly dramatic
melodramatic kind of performancethey put on.
It was just a subtle adjustment.
Yeah.
That was just creepy enoughto be perceived by all the
workers as like.
Exactly what it was.
I mean, and, thebest story I have
for this, and I, I've told thison a podcast, but

(37:39):
I'm pretty sureI've not told this
story on a podcast in like 150episodes of there was a I worked
in one place that there wasthis Premadonna developer.
He was an exceptionaldeveloper, first of all , out
of all the developers,he had been at the company
the longest.
So like as likein at, when you're a developer,
time and service is like, tribalknowledge right there,

(38:00):
so you happen to know certainpieces of code, what they do,
and you're more familiar withthem and stuff like that.
'cause you've justspent more time.
So he was sort oflike management's
go-to guy, the heybuddy development, middle of the
night kind of knocking stuffout, making everyone else
look bad.
'cause like, oh, Ipunched this stuff
out overnight.
What are y'alllazy people doing?
Right.
And, these three patterns thatI pointed out.

(38:21):
That was him to a t when stuffwas going on, he
would be the firstguy to be like, I
resolved the bug.
I, worked late and did this newfeature, whatever.
And he completelypulled the bull over management
in everyone else's eyes.
while the rest ofthe development team and the QA
and everybody else was likequiet folks heads down getting
their work done day to day, youknow what I mean?
But he is the

Om (38:41):
teacher spec,

Brian (38:42):
not really kind of ggl seeking glory or whatever.
And at one point we were peer inthe organization.
I was just a QA engineerand he was just a development
engineer, whatever they call it,software engineer.
Right.
And I, boy, I just watched himrise and rise and rise to a high
level supervisory type of role.
And it was just bananas.
'cause he, it wasjust, it was just
this kind of stuff, just changing his

(39:02):
story to always be on the rightside of whatever
argument or alwaysbe seen as a hero.
Shifting blame off to the teamwhenever a failure would happen.
And I remember.
Exactly When I knew that my timeat that company was done, this
is untenable.
I can't live with thisperson anymore.
I can't sit by anymore and havemy credit claim by this person
anymore becausewe had just pulled
like a very indepth sprint where

(39:24):
we committed toway too much stuff
and we ended up knocking thingsout, making the sale, getting
the big customer we ended upknocking out the real impactful
features.
We ended up selling thecustomer making
the sale we ended up basicallycashing the check that the
sales folks and everyone in thecompany wrote.
We did it.
On time, under budget, that kindof thing and it was in front of
the whole companyand the CEO and the C-suite.

(39:47):
It was big, like hurrah.
Yay.
We did an eventthe whole company
is standing there.
And I remember I was standingsort of like in the back and I
could see my team,I was a manager at this point.
I could see my team on the otherside of the room.
And the CEO was calling upthe different department heads
and every single department headwas like, ah, this was a major

(40:08):
opportunity and I couldn't havedone it without this person, and
I couldn't have done it withoutthis person.
And they, some people handedoff to their subordinates
to make little mini speechesor whatever.
Yeah.
Or thanks to this person.
They, they stayed on the phonesline thanks to this person
they went to the customer siteand they slept under a table and
whatever, and thenthey handed it over to this guy.
And he was like, yeah, it took alot of late nights
and I was deep in the code, buteventually I got

(40:29):
it over the finishline and I'm happy
that you all are.
And I was like, wow.
I was like, this guy just tookcredit for the
entire development department,he handed off to nobody.
He gave credit tonobody but himself
in front of the whole company.
Got no pushback from anybody.
And I knew that.
I was like, I'm done.
I'm done here.
That was my momentof zen, my moment

(40:49):
of clarity that a whole worldcame together.

Om (40:52):
These people that are like the person you're
describing also have anothercharacteristic that often goes
hand in glove with, you knowwho they are.
And that is, theyhoard knowledge.
So they, they'renot gonna mentor other people
because their equity is theirknowledge so they're gonna
hoard that knowledge andwhen you see those
kinds of thingshappening in your organization,

(41:12):
you can kind of bracket people.
Yeah.
You know, oh yeah.
That person, chances arethey're gonna claim all the
credit and it costall the blame.
If you're in anorganization where
there are peoplelike that and no one is speaking
up, you could be the person whospeaks up kind of
a risque move toobecause management
is, these people are alreadymanagement pet.

(41:34):
So yeah, keep thatresume updated,
but then speak up.
People, people like this whenthey move up in
the organization,they don't change as a person.
They're gonna have the same mogoing up and up so again just be
aware that these people aren'tgonna change.
If you're in that organization,you've gotta either make a
decision to put upwith it or leave.

Brian (41:54):
So I've got a zinger for you.
It's political operators.
They collect allies andpolitical navigators build
relationships.
One is transactionaland the other is
transformational.
And everybody can tell thedifference.

Om (42:05):
Everybody should be able to tell the difference.
I mean, even the newcomers, youdon't have to be on the job for
very long to beable to see this.
Right.
You hear people talk.
And you'll pick up on the, onthe situation.
So I agree.
I think it's pretty clearthere are very few
people that can kind of straddlethose two.
People are either on the leftor the right, so to speak.
On this scale.
Depending on where you aspireto be, you can align yourself

(42:28):
with these people, right?
Yeah.
I don't advise anybody to be onthat other side, but hey, again,
don't take advicefrom me because you can align,

Brian (42:37):
like you can align yourself
to these people,, that's justlike the Game of
Thrones oh yeah.
Yeah.
At what season are you gonnaget sure.
Wiped out.
Basically likeit's gonna happen.
It's just a matter of time!I have a takeaway here.
I don't know if it's good.
So I'll let you figure out.
So there's this credit to blameasymmetry for my
story about when I needed to getaway from this person, right?
And when you go through thatexperience.

(42:59):
It kind of opens your mind toalways be looking out for people
like that, that are using thiseye language.
And in fact I wonder if,if you've heard this about like,
oh, when you're interviewingyou need to use eye language,
not we language.
'cause people want to hearthat you did the
thing and you're like, yeah, butI didn't directly do the thing.
You know, I was part of a teamand the whole team
did the thing.
And maybe like I was maybeI'm like, as a product manager,

(43:22):
my job is kind of to navigatethe team and that kind of stuff.
, I'm not doing every singlething myself.
Sure.
And modern business, anybodywho's actually doing successful
business knows that things aredone as a team.
Very little thingsare done as a solo
operator, as thehero or whatever.
And then they ask you to changeyour language to make yourself
into the hero.

(43:42):
Yeah.
And I just don't like that.
I don't think it's good advice.
I'm looking out for peopledoing that.
'cause I'm really, I amlabeling those people as like,
Ooh, there's an ego right there.
I dunno if I cannavigate that ego
or coach or manageup or whatever the
other things are.

Om (43:56):
Yeah.
First of all it'sterrible advice in interviews to
always focus on the eye becauseanybody should know that one
person doesn't do all thisstuff, right.
I'd rather focus on havingimproved the conditions for my
team to succeed.
Because isn't thatwhat I'm really
being interviewedfor, not to be the
solo hero here.

(44:17):
That would be my focus.
If you're seeing people whointerview like that and you
happen to be on the other sideof the table where you are
the interviewer.
Ego is one thing.
I mean, these people have gotbad advice, right.
To your point.
You know, focus on you.
They're the ones that are alwayssaying, I. And my actions led
to an improvement of 12%.

(44:38):
Okay, fine.
But really what did you do tomake that happen?
I mean, you can interview aroundthat, but yeah, it
is terrible adviceto always focus
on the I language.
I, whoever came up with that.

Brian (44:50):
I think it's just the pathological nature of the
organization showingthrough mm-hmm.
To be like,

Speaker 7 (44:54):
oh, we're looking for heroes,

Brian (44:56):
you know, oh, we are looking for 10 X developers and
we're all out ofH1Bs to exploit, or whatever.

Om (45:02):
The same people that put in their jds that
were looking for a team player

Brian (45:05):
but this, this thing looking out for people that are
claiming creditwhile those three
things I listed before, lookingout for that.
Yeah.
That, I mean, that shows apattern that's a
political operatorand you need to
distance yourself.
we haven't, it's amazing.
We haven't evenbrought ourselves to our advice.

Om (45:21):
Yeah, distance yourself or keep that resume updated.

Brian (45:23):
That's right , so have you worked with a political
operator?
I wanna hear all about it.

Om (45:28):
Yeah.
Let's know your anecdotes.
In the comments.
I wanna hear

Brian (45:30):
I want to hear your horror stories.
So, if we don't want to beshapeshifters, so
we, but we do needto communicate differently
with different audiences.
Like.
What does that look likein practice?
I'm, I'm sure there's peoplealready screaming at their,
their TVs, at their phones,at their cars.
So how to adaptyour communication
without losing your soul,without giving up
your integrity.

Om (45:51):
Boy, what a great question.
I think first of all be led withthe truth instead of trying to
figure out how youcan manipulate the
message because honestly, at theend of the day, true leadership
should value the message thatcomes across as a true message,
this is really what's going on.
And now look at why, whichcould be the positives and

(46:11):
the negatives, asopposed to going in with those
kind of nuanced the themes thatoften people do.
So the best adviceI can give you is
be data driven.
And be transparentand say the team
either succeededor didn't succeed and here are
possibly some ofthe reasons why.
So at that point you feel freeto call out on team members

(46:34):
and say, well, what do you haveto add to that?
Right.
Well, how would you characterizethe nature of how we fared?
Not necessarily failed whathave we learned?
Also if we succeeded, what,what factors contributed to our
success so that wemay repeat some of
those same things in the future.
Feel free to call on your team.
So the message isn't justyou delivering
something, whether it's upstreamor sideways, or whatever

(46:56):
it might be.
And that way you are hoping thatyou can be more
authentic in yourmessaging instead
of, again, beingkind of slimy and,
come across as.
Something that is serving youover and above everybody else.

Brian (47:10):
For this category we have a, a little bit of
a framework maybesome guidelines to help.
Mm-hmm.
We have, a three point test.
Again, we very borderline aboutthe current four point plan.
We like three.
Yeah, we like three.
We like three dry.
That's right.
And the three point test isgonna go something like this.
It's gonna say test number one.
Consistently state the factsso you have facts that you

(47:32):
can write down.
That was at the center of ourcircle before.
Yeah the you have atransparency test.
We're not trying to hide thetruth to protect
people's feelings.
I don't know a better wayto say that, but basically,
would you be comfortable if allthe stakeholders
heard all of yourdifferent versions
of messages, or would that makeyou nervous?
That's really the transparencytest here, right?

(47:52):
And also like if you wrote,if meeting notes
were automaticallyconstructed by AI
of every meetingand you're in, and
then somebody hadthe wherewithal to put them all
together would you see differentstories emerging?
Would your sliminessbe revealed?
Would the light come on and allthe cockroaches scatter at
that point?
These are the questionsthat keep me up at night.
And then recommendationnumber three is the consistency
test is your proposed actionor decision should be the

(48:15):
same across all your audiences,which is basically
the same as 0.2 transparency.
So those are three things thatgive you an a in.
Integrity in my book.
Anyway, that's it.

Om (48:24):
I fully agree.
I also don't expect to justbe there, right?
You know, quickly,because this takes
time, especially if you'vebeen used to manipulating the
messaging, right?
It takes time toget from there to
the other side.
So give yourselfthe time celebrate
the quick wins, et cetera.
as a product manager again,if you've got that two by two.
You have executivestakeholders and you have like

(48:45):
users of your software, theyboth want to know like, did this
thing, scratch the itch, didthis feature, did this or maybe
it's a test.
Maybe we're testing a marketor something like that.
Did this, did thisthing resonate
with the audience?
I mean, you're relieving theirpain point.
That's one way to talk about it.
You talk about it in terms ofthe pain point and how easy it
is to relieve the pain pointwith the feature you just came

(49:08):
out with, with the executives,it's a matter of
adoption numbersor revenue numbers or whatever
they care about.
In the product management world,it's not difficult to separate
these things.
They are the same message.
It's just the users don't careabout adoption.
Unless you're doing a bit ofmarketing to them and doing
some social proofstyle marketing.
75% of users love that, thatkind of stuff.

(49:30):
, That kind of stuffis gimmicky to individual users,
but to executives,they love that kind of stuff.
I think there's, there aretechniques you can use.
So like for example, ifyou had both audiences in the
same room, Yeah.

Speaker 4 (49:42):
The room where it happens.
That's right.

Om (49:43):
Exactly.
One of the thingsyou could do is just spin up a
simple whiteboardwith a dot board with only like
three bands, there's thebullseye, the concentric circle
around it, and another circlearound that.
And that's it.
Really simple, right?
Easy to do in pretty much anytool, and ask the users to
put a mark at x or whatever,in the circle that represents

(50:03):
how best their needs were met.
By whatever you delivered.
And just have them do that, notthe executives.
When they do that,ask them to say,
okay, what wouldit take for us to
move that X closertowards the middle
to the bullseye?
Right now, the executivesare listening to all this.
No, you are hearing itstraight from the users.
Mm-hmm and there'sno sugarcoating because you

(50:24):
are not the, you're not thetranslator, relayer of
the message.
It's the same message thatthey're hearing.
Try something like that andthen afterwards
you could talk tothem, talk to your
stakeholders or your executivesand say, you heard
the, you heard the users, right?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Now, here are ways that we canpotentially get them closer to
the bullseye.

(50:44):
You've cut off so much crap byjust doing it.
In a simple waylike that, right?
And you are justthe facilitator, right?
You have no ax to grind herein saying, well, shouldn't
it be closer?
You're not anchoring them inany way, right?
It's just a suggestion, butI think you could
do a lot worse.

Brian (51:00):
Integrity, it, it isn't about using the same words
with everyone.
It's about ensuring that ifeveryone compared
notes your story wouldn't fallapart right.
The detectives over here.
Yeah.
Yeah, exactly.
You know, comparing notes yeah.
and like, if you're gonna trythat, that three part framework.
Again, look, we'rejust throwing out
ideas like I, I mean, the real,the real idea here is like,

(51:23):
not to work withpeople that are e
ethically limited.
So let us know if, if, if thiswas useful to you.
Yeah.
I wanna bring us to thelast category.
So what I, whatI've been dancing around the
whole episode.
We, where is it?

Om (51:34):
It's down at the bottom.

Brian (51:35):
What I've been dancing around the whole
episode is I am, i'm not worriedabout techniques, I am worried
about trust.
That's becauseonce you lose your
reputation withwhichever audience
that we're talkingabout on the two
by two you don't get it back.

Om (51:49):
Yeah.
And it takes a long time tobuild up that trust to a deeper
level, and then ittakes very little
time to lose it.
So, yeah, absolutely.
Just as fragile.

Brian (51:58):
Amy Cudd, a Harvard business
school professor.
That's right.
She did a study that found thatcompetence does
matter, but trustis built through.
Behavioral consistencyover time, not through any one
particular eventwhich I feel like
that's the mostcommon sense study
ever done in thehistory of studies right there.
Yeah.
I mean, trust takes timeto build,

Om (52:19):
trust takes time to build.
And, it's something thattrumps pretty much
most other things like technicalcompetency, et cetera I don't
see how you argue againstthat, honestly.

Brian (52:28):
Well, step in my office 'cause get ready
for the steel man.
Here we go.
Let's go with the steel manhere, man.
Let's say re reputation isprimarily built through results
incompetence as long asyou deliver the outcomes.
People will trust you regardlessof minor inconsistencies
of how you communicate.
So your reputationis built through
being consistent with your smallwins over time.

(52:51):
And as long as you keepdelivering people
will trust you.
The great part about productmanagement is if you can deliver
small wins consistently likethis, this is the
best thing aboutAgile, which most
people miss, ifyou are delivering
working software on a regularcadence, that cadence might be
every two days.
Cadence might be once a week.

(53:12):
The cadence might be onceevery two weeks.
And people canset their watch to
working softwaredelivered every, everything else
every other, challenge, fadesaway because people are gonna
know their next window to getworking software is this, and
they're gonna settheir watch to it.
And, over time, that's how youbuild trust.

(53:32):
You just small wins deliveredconsistently on a
rolling cadence.
And enough of them, , , youstack enough of them and you'll
get there.

Om (53:41):
Yeah.
I think trust is at differentlevels in that scenario.
One is with the customers toconsistently expect on a
regular basis some value,

Brian (53:49):
The reason I brought that up was the minor inconsistencies
about how you communicate.
Oh, Brian didn'tquite, he didn't
tell me the impactof widget A or B or whatever
oh, that's just the way Briancommunicates.
He likes to get into the weedsor, oh, that's the way Brian
communicates.
He can't really get in the weedswhen you press him because I've
seen both of those, right.
People will forgive thatkind of stuff as

(54:10):
long as they keep getting theirwidgets, whatever
it is, you know what I mean?
Keep giving me this on aregular basis and I'll forgive
a lot of that kind of stuff.
You're saying that building areputation for integrity, it
requires like a long gameof consistent communication
and changing your language forthese audiences consistently.
And, and buildingthat up over time.

(54:31):
And what I'm, when the steelmanhere is as long
as you're punchingout wins, people
will forgive yourinability to dial the message in
exactly perfectlyfor the audience.

Om (54:42):
A couple of things I wanna say with that one.
Okay.
Consistently churning out wins.
It doesn't happen withoutestablishing trust
at a different level with yourteams you give them the freedom
to do things the way you know,they feel it should, they
should be done.
You're building trust with thecustomer by delivering on a
regular basis somesliver values.

(55:02):
That that's, that's one thing.
However, that consistent cadenceisn't guaranteed.

Speaker 8 (55:08):
Yeah.

Om (55:09):
Things will happen.
You will come across someheadwinds where you fail a
little bit not necessarilyfail completely in delivering
something, but the quality ofthe value deliver
might be subpar at some point.
For whatever reason, we don'teven have to worry
about the reasons.
But when that happens, thatis a direct.
Challenge almostto what happened.
you're always delivering goodstuff and what happened right at

(55:32):
that point, howyou behave matters
at that point.
Do you just say,well it's the team
or whatever, or do you just takeit on the chin and say, yeah,
we messed up.
How do you stand upright there?
That that's whatestablishes your integrity and
either further builds andstrengthens the trust with your
customers, or iterodes that trust?

Brian (55:53):
Reputation is like nebulous.
I almost didn't even want toinclude it here
because it's, it'sthe sum of, if I have to define
it, I'm gonna sayit's the sum of what people say
about you when you're not in theroom like that.

Om (56:03):
Legacy also, right?

Brian (56:04):
Right?
Yeah.
That, that's the reputation I'mtalking about here is but if
you're one of these people thatthey, their, their
narrative is quote inconsistent,that stuff is gonna stick out.
And I will say even one of thosetimes that sticks
with people far longer than anyone-off wins or whatever.
Once, and now I am, I'm onedge twice and now, like your

(56:29):
integrity is in the toilet.
You know, probablywhere it belongs! Once and now
I'm in this modewhere I'm looking to catch you.
Sure.
And now our relationship ison the rocks.
Yeah.
You know, so it's like, whatcan you do?
Just don't get in the best wayto avoid it.
Don't get in thatsituation in the first place, is
what I'm saying.

Om (56:44):
Oh, so you, you're glad when the customers praise you.
Right.
For the success is Yes.
Well own up to failure.
You are human own up.

Brian (56:51):
Sorry.
I mean, these people just can'tthe, the, I know the individuals
we're talking about on thisside, like they just can't like
this and honestly it would beeasier for this podcast if these
were not the most successfulpeople that I've worked with.

Om (57:04):
Agree.
I listen.
That's true these people oftenfall over their own egos before
they can own up to anything, butyeah, I agree.
They tend to be more on thesuccessful side.
Again, not everyone cando that and still get a good
night's rest.
So yeah, it depends on youas an individual as to what you
aspire to be.

Brian (57:22):
I would say it's easier to do
it when you're notin a pathological organization
where everyone'strying, like once
the organization,once the system
becomes corrupted.
It like you get more of this andmore of the more
of this, the morecorrupt the system
becomes and thenit feeds itself.
Yeah, exactly.
The keep your resume updatedadvice here is not it's
not off point.
I mean, if you see this stuffhappening and you start catching

(57:45):
people changing the message, notthe communication style, you see
it once, you see it twice.
You see these people getpromoted.
Like in my story that I toldearlier where.
There was a particular personI worked with at a company that
they just kept getting promotedand promoted and promoted, and
every time theywould stand up in
front of a crowd,it would be all
about, I did thisand I did that and
it was the whole team achievingthe thing.

(58:06):
At that point, he was a manageror a director or somebody
who was far removed from theday-to-day work.
Yeah.
So it's not evenlike him claiming
credit was close to the truth.
He wasn't actively writing codeat that point, so it was a far
exaggeration that he hadresolved any bugs.
Everybody knew.
It was a flat lie thateverybody could
transparently seethrough, but it's

(58:27):
like management just didn't careto see through it.

Om (58:31):
Yeah.
Sad.

Brian (58:33):
This is why it brings you back
to your reputationisn't what you say
about yourself.
And, and it never was.
It's about what people, thestories people tell about you
when you are not in the room orwhen you're gone.

Om (58:44):
Or when you're gone.
Exactly.
So often you'llsee people contact
you long after you've left thecompany to say, Hey, listen,
in case you're looking Yeah.
That's your reputation.
Yeah.
That's the reason why they'recalling you.

Brian (58:55):
Right?
Yeah.
For anyone listening to thiscategory what is your take here?
Is reputation really built onthe consistency of your
communication?
Doesn't matter at all.
Are, am I overthinkingit like that?
This is what I want to know inthe comments among other things.
But that moves us to what did wetalk about today?
what did we learn today?
I think

Om (59:11):
well, we learned that you could either be a sleeve bag or
a good person didn't sleepwell at night.

Brian (59:15):
Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.
No, we didn't learn.
Sorry.
Be a lea back and get promoted.
Or be a good person.
And not get promoted.

Om (59:20):
And not get promoted.
Oh, boy.
You sleep under a bridge.
I, I don't

Brian (59:22):
know if we're coming to the right takeaways from
this podcast.
Well, as long as we're notat the right takeaways like
can subscribe.
That's least do that.

Om (59:29):
Don't weaponize adaptive communication.
Be on the straight and level.
That's basically it.

Brian (59:34):
Two things that kinda came
outta this podcastthat, that ring out for me.
Number one is to not be amanipulative shapeshifter, you
need consistencyof facts and you
need transparency.
So if those two things don'texist, then off to the races
and weaponizing this adaptivecommunication to put you ahead.
At the expense of yeah.

(59:55):
Right.
Everyone else, those are the twothings that ring
out to me of the big takeawaysin this podcast.
Yeah, I

Om (01:00:01):
agree with that.
The only, yeah,the only I really
in your messaging is integrityand that's so not something
you can buy by the pound at thefarmer's market.
You've gotta a build to it,you've gotta invest in it, and
it will, it will pay dividendslong time in the long run.
Yeah.
Well, cool.
Well that's a wrap.
So like, and subscribe, letus know in the comments below

(01:00:22):
and we'll see you next time.

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AA235 - Changing Your Message: Adaptive vs. Manipulative Communication

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}AA235 - Changing Your Message: Adaptive vs. Manipulative Communication