 Welcome to the show, Michael. So great to have you. Thanks, AJ and John. I'm really happy to be here. One of the things that a lot of our clients say, especially after the pandemic, is why invest in relationships with coworkers. A lot of us feel some pressure at work, we're feeling some stress at home, maybe in a work from home or a hybrid situation, and it can be difficult to not only maintain but create amazing relationships with their coworkers in the current climate. Why do you think it's so important for us to build great relationships with our team? I think two reasons. First of all, work happens through other people. So whether you want it or not, you've got to figure out ways of working with people to actually have the impact you want, but not just the impact, but also happiness. And to make the point, I would ask people to remember one of the more miserable working experiences they've had, because my guess is you've had a miserable working experience at some stage in your life, and you're like, if you go back to that moment and what was done and what was said, not done and not said, but then if you think about the impact it had on you, people will come up with lots of words, but the word that I hear most often is this kind of diminishing. You kind of shrink, you lose your confidence, you lose your sense of self, you don't do as good as work, you can really feel the impact of a bad working relationship. And likewise, if you're with a really great working relationship and you think back to that moment where you clicked, you connected, you were more than the sum of the parts, some sort of magic happened, well, think what the impact that had on you. You're like, I felt bigger and braver and more expansive, I did better work, I took greater risks. So there's a sense that we underestimate just the impact working relationships have on not just the success we have in our work, but our happiness and our sense of self as well. And for me, I'm like, let's not leave it to chance, let's not just cross our fingers and hope for the best, let's get into it, let's see if you can actually shape the best possible relationships. And I think the first step is really taking responsibility for the relationship. It's so easy to blame your coworkers as the difficult one, the toxic one, the jerk, and not realize how we're showing up in the relationship. So how do you define the best possible relationship with our team? I use the phrase best possible relationship very deliberately because I'm not trying to say you should create magical, wonderful, perfect working relationships with all your key working relationships because, you know, that's just a weird fantasy. Nobody's going to pull that off. We have a bell curve, right? In terms of our working relationships, you've got a few, I hope, at one end where it's like there is some magic, you've probably got a few down the other end where you're like, this is a grind, this is hard, this is a bit miserable, and probably a bunch in the middle. And I think all of those have potential and a BPR, best possible relationship, is trying to fulfill the potential each one of those relationships have. And I think there are three core attributes. They need to be safe, they need to be vital, and they need to be repairable. Psychologically safe to start with, psychologically brave, so that you're actually kind of going out to the edge of what's possible secondarily, and then fixable when things go wrong, because, you know, this is not a spoiler, things will go wrong. It happens in every working relationship. With that, obviously there are work relationships, but it feels like there's a lot of similarities in our personal relationships and our intimate relationships in these three areas. I agree. I've had the good luck to be married for 30 years, so I've somehow successfully got some things right around that. But, you know, when I was writing this book, I spent a lot of time reading the people who I looked to as kind of great thinkers in the space. So, you know, Esther Perrell and Terry Reel and Dan Siegel and John Gottman, these are all people who have made it their life's work to study and understand intimate relationships. And I think there's a great deal that comes over into our working relationships. I just happened to know that my speciality is how do people thrive in organizations and work. So I wanted to bring some of that practical stuff into the way that we work with our colleagues and peers. I think at this point, to go into the best possible working relationship, we should go over those three so that everyone has a clear picture of what those are. And so in their totality, they create that best possible relationship. So let's start with safe, because that's actually the one that most people know about and have heard about, because it's been at least 10 years since Amy Edmondson, a Harvard Business School professor, really got us kind of knowledgeable about psychological safety. And she kind of had a bit of a narrow definition about kind of being able to speak up and say things and not get punished by your team. But I think that's expanded since then. It's like, how can you show up without fear of punishment for who you are? And now when you look at the research from people like Google, Project Aristotle and Project Oxygen, what makes a good team and what makes a good manager, this idea of psychological safety is kind of threaded throughout it. It's about removing fear. But what I came to realize is I don't want a relationship that is just safe. I've actually had those working relationships and they've been fine and honestly a little bit boring at times, a little bit kind of smothering. I like, I want, I want an edge. I want some danger. I want to be pushed. I want to be challenged. You know, one of my beliefs is we unlock our greatness by working on the hard things. So I want to be able to work on the hard things. I want to step out to the edge of who I am and what I know and kind of like be out there. So this is what I mean by vital. It's not just vital essential. It's vital alive. It's going to have a life to it. So you might think of this as psychological bravery. And, you know, AJ, if you and I were trying to work out how we work together, we define our own definition of what's our mix of psychological safety and psychological bravery. You would do that differently with John because we're different people, but we want to have that combination. And then the third element is this idea of repairability. Now, when I was reading Esther Perel and Terry Reel and others, one of the things that became really clear as I thread through all of their work is that the intimate relationships at last are the ones that get repaired, point one and point two. Most of us suck at repairing relationships. Most of us are like, that's too hard. Oh, they betrayed me. Oh, it's all over. Or often just like, you know what? I'll just suffer in silence and, you know, the fabric just gets torn and ripped a little bit and sure it heals a little bit, it's self-healing, but it never quite gets back to what it was. So this idea of being willing to say, when things go wrong, which they will, I'm going to actually be active about seeing if I can fix it, repair it. The minute you went into those three, my immediate attention went to safety and you brought up the paradox of like, well, we want it to be safe, but we also want it to be challenging and be able to apply pressure to get the best out of the people that we work with. And in turn, we want that same for us as well. Completely safe doesn't put pressure in order to challenge ourselves into doing our best work. Culture is going to be a big piece to that and that culture is something that everyone is going to have to buy into because people are not the same. As you mentioned, you made the, of talking about working with AJ comparatively to working with me. And AJ and I, in the 17 years that we've been business partners, we certainly have different ways of going about challenging our team and working with our team. And we've developed that over a very long time and it's a skill that we're always going to get better at. And something else that we're seeing is these shifts in corporate where, well, we want everyone to be happy and excited to work for us. Okay, well, that means that I'm going to spend most of my time working from home where I'm relaxed and I feel safe. Well, if you're home, how am I able to put pressure on you to encourage you to get the best out of you? And that's a long-winded way of going how do we set up this culture in order to get the best from each other? Yeah, it's a long-winded way to say it's complicated. It is, and yeah, you're totally right. You know, there's been a swing in many ways, a good swing to kind of like, to worry about safety and make that a priority. But I do think the pendulum might be swinging back which is like, it just can't be about safety. It just can't be about you feel good and you'll feel comfortable. I'm like, man, that is not only actually a limiting belief for you, it's a limiting contribution to our organization. But then you get into, so how do you shift culture? I've spent 30 years in the world of change management and thinking about organization cultures. It's like, it's hard and it's difficult and you hope it's just a lever that you can pull or a button that you can push or a dial that you can turn in. I'm like, it's not just living, evolving complex organism. So part of what I think about with culture is I think about subculture. And I think about, you know, the culture that you build in your team is its own way of working. And maybe the culture you build in your business unit, your extended team, that's its own way of working. And that might trickle up and down to the organizational culture. There's no doubt that the broader culture of your company, whether it's like a smallest company like mine, which is like 10 or 15 people or a huge company like Microsoft, who I do a ton of work with, which is like, I don't know, one billion people, I'm not sure I have big Microsoft disease these days, but you're like, you know, these are different levels of which to scale and play, but people kind of do jazz hands around, we need psychological safety around here. And I'm like, you do, I think you build it one relationship at a time. I think that's one of the fundamental ways that you construct this. I think you build relationships where people flourish in organizations one relationship at a time. Ensure there are structural things around that, that make a difference. But there's that well-known saying, people join organization, but they leave managers. And this is that moment where you're like, don't be that manager and also don't have that manager. So go find the people that allow you to build the best possible relationship together so you can flourish. We have to talk about obviously when it comes to peers and then it comes to superiors and the hierarchical structure that is on any team, how do we build psychological safety first at our level and then what happens if it's not upwards? Cause a lot of our clients will say, hey, listen, I get along great with my teams, but I have a terrible manager or my manager's manager doesn't allow me to actually express myself in a meaningful way. And that's often where the pushback on the culture that you're trying to build at your level really happens. So the book is called How to Work With Almost Anyone. Yeah, I can see you kind of smiling as you see that because it's, I have to say it's like of all the books I've written, this is the title that rocks because everybody laughs when they hear that title cause I think everybody imagines the almost. And I'm like, yeah, I know you've got one or two or three people or you're like, whatever you're promising in this book, it's not gonna work with that person. I'm like, yeah, I get that. That leaves everybody else. So how do you think about this? And how do you think about the power dynamic? And it's a really essential question. If you're leading a team and you're choosing to try and build the best possible relationships with the people on the team, you obviously have the balance of power. So there's something very interesting for you to think about which is like people are probably gonna say, yes, when you say, let's talk about how we work together. But now you have this decision around how much do you reveal? How vulnerable do you be? How open-hearted and open-minded are you to this because the extent to which you will be vulnerable is the extent to which the people on your team will be vulnerable? You absolutely set the limit around that. So you've got some choices to make around how much and how far you're willing to go. If you're working upwards, and this is less common for sure, but if you're looking at your boss and going, what if I could build a better working relationship with my boss? There's some people who go, it's never gonna happen. If you met my boss some nightmare, it's not gonna be. And I think that might be true some of the time. But I know, because I am a boss, that if somebody came to me and went, I wanna build an even better working relationship with you because you determined my success and my happiness. I'm a big influence on your success and happiness. How do we work better together? I get really excited about that because that's somebody taking responsibility for the quality of their working relationship. That tells me that these people have a maturity and a potential and a way of strategically thinking that is very exciting for me. I think we are often a little too quick to go, this probably won't work. And part of what I'm hoping is to expand people's courage to say it might work. It might be worth me reaching out. It won't work every time, but it might work enough for the times where you go, this risk I'm taking inviting people to talk about how we work together pays off because I might lose two out of 10, but if I win eight out of 10, that absolutely shifts the quality of the working relationships that I have. And it all starts with a conversation. So your ability to communicate both your wants and needs, your struggles, your frustrations, at any capacity at your level and above is really going to determine this relationship. And you call this a Keystone conversation. So let's unpack the Keystone conversation, how we can start to build and repair relationships that we have in the workplace. If you're looking for the one idea here, this is probably it, which is have a conversation about how you work together before you plunge into the work itself and know that the work is always calling you, right? It always feels urgent and important and a crisis or exciting or just there and just the thing that you're used to talking about. So there's always a reason where you just like, let's just leap into it. Let's just get into the thing that needs to be solved or fixed or made progress on. And I'm saying take a beat and look the other person in the eye and go, what if we talked about you and me working together before we get into the stuff? Even if you're in the middle of a working relationship, no, you and John, AJ, you know, get together and go, we've been working together 17 years, but what if we stopped and we looked each other and went, is this it? Is this as good as it gets? What could we do to build the best possible working relationship between the two of us even with 17 years experience behind us? Now it's called a Keystone conversation for two reasons. People have heard of the Keystone, you know, you have two pillars and they kind of bend into each other and the Keystone is a thing that brings the two pillars together and locks it in and makes it stable and makes it strong and makes it resilient, makes it able to bear stress. So it totally works as a metaphor there, but it also works in the world of ecology. So if you more prefer a kind of more natural metaphor, there's this idea of the Keystone species. The best story around this being the introduction of gray wolves back into Yellowstone National Park. There's an amazing film about this, how the whole ecology changed because prior to the gray wolves being there, basically the Elks were kind of like roaming free, eating everything, kind of destroying the habitat. It was kind of, everything was getting kind of worn down. The wolves get shown up again, Elks start getting eaten, Elks get frightened into higher mountains, trees blossom, birds show up, fish show up, the river changes course, beavers show up, the whole thing becomes diverse and resilient and better able to bear stress. So all of that is just what we want this conversation to do, which is like, your relationship is an ecosystem, how do you get it to better able to bear stress and flourish and this Keystone conversation, five questions to ask and answer are one of the ways that you design a better working relationship together. So let's go through these questions because I know that they're going to be highly impactful for everyone listening to this episode. Perfect. So the starting question is called the Amplify question. And here it is, it is what's your best? What's your best? And it's designed to feel slightly awkward and a slightly unusual question because I didn't want to ask, what are you good at? Because actually that's not that useful a question. And I didn't want to ask, what are your values or what are your strengths? Because lots of us have done the strength finder thing and have our top five strengths, but I never know what to do with that information. I'm like, okay, I thrilled that you got those five strengths, but that doesn't tell me how to work with you. What's your best is asking, when do you shine and when do you flow? You know, this idea of the flow state, Mihai kicks in Mihai, which is, I'm in the zone, time speeds up and slows down. I'm doing my very best work. I'm excited, but I'm growing and stretching. No, it's like, tell me about that. No, and the shine is like, you know, if I'm watching you, when do I see you lit up? When do I see you excited? When do I see you elevated? Tell me about that moment. Tell me about the work you're working on. Tell me about the people you're working with or maybe not working with. I know for me, when I'm answering this question, I'm like, one of the best times I'm shining and flowing is when I'm alone doing creative work and I'm not with people. You know, I know it's ironic. It's like, I don't work with almost anyone. Best way to work with me is sometimes not to work with me. Just let me in an office and let me do my own thing. And you know, it's also kind of like, what's essential about how you best show up in the world? So that question, obviously, part of this conversation that we're excited about is, okay, I'm gonna get to talk to this team member. I'm gonna get to talk to my boss. But that question requires a lot of self reflection and preparation before the conversation because in order to have this conversation, you have to actually identify your best. And for some listeners, maybe they haven't experienced their best in the workplace yet. Maybe they're in between roles or they're joining a new team and that's not quite clear to them. So how do we go through that self reflection process and preparation for this conversation? I admit it. I've kind of been a sneaky and I've snuck in a personal development book inside a business book because I'm like, the thing is like, here's how you have the conversation at work. But each of the five questions has three exercises associated with it to help you create new and find new language and more nuance and grittier understanding about yourself so you can communicate it to other people. Now, as an example, for this first question, what's your best? There's an exercise that teases a part. What are you fulfilled by against what are you good at? Because particularly for people who are like me, who like I'm now getting old, I'm like, I've just been on the planet long enough that I've got good at a bunch of stuff just through like time and exposure. Like it's almost impossible that I wouldn't get some degree of competence and a whole bunch of that stuff I never wanna do ever again. Like I'm like, sure I can do it. I can feel the life draining from me as I do that. But here's what we do with other people. When we see that they're good at it, we assume that they're fulfilled by it. When we see that they're good at it, we assume that they're the person that should delegate that thing to. So this exercise is like a classic consultant, two by two box. So imagine a square and then imagine a cross inside the square and along one axis is good at. Yes, and not so much. One is fulfilled by on the vertical axis, good at and not so much. So in the top right hand corner, hopefully there's a bunch of stuff where you go, you know what? This is what I am currently both good at and fulfilled by. You know what? I like doing it, lights me up and I do a pretty good job. Hopefully there is very little in the bottom left hand corner, which is I am not good at this and I'm not fulfilled by it. Cause like, why are you doing this? Like not only does it suck you dry, but you suck at it. It's like nobody is winning by having you assign these tasks. And then you got something really interesting in the other two boxes. You know, what are you good at, but not fulfilled by? That is a very helpful thing to communicate to somebody going, look, I'm good at this. I could do it in an emergency. I could be a safety net, but I could coach or mentor or teach people on this, but do not assign this to me. Or at least if you do assign it to me, know that the consequences, this impacts my sense of self and happiness and fulfillment. And then in the other box you have, this is what I'm fulfilled by, but not yet good at. And that's really helpful because that's actually your learning edge, right? This is where you want to learn and grow and develop mastery. You know, Dan Pink's book is all drive is all about we get motivation from purpose and autonomy and mastery. And so what this is giving you a clue is around, this is where mastery lies for you. But at the same time, you're like, but I'm not yet good enough to be trusted by myself on this. So give me safety net, give me guardrails, give me teaching, training, keep an eye on me, give me the support I need so that I can get good at this. So you're right. All of these questions you can answer quickly, but if you spend some time reflecting and going deeper, that's helpful for you just to get a better sense of who you are and it's gonna make your answers to the other person that much more helpful for them. Yeah, that's great. So the second question is called the steady question. And the question is, what are your practices and preferences? So here you're talking about the mechanics of how you work together. So we've all got these ways of working. It's like, this is how I do email. This is how I show up for meetings. This is how I like feedback. This is my name. I've got a complicated name, Michael Bunga Estanier. You know, when I got married, I took my wife's name and so I got this weird double-barreled name that doesn't have a hyphen. And honestly, it intimidates people. I once got a letter addressed to Michael Banging Spaniel which is both a high point and a low point in terms of how people have maimed my name. So I'm like, look, here's what you need to know. My surname is Bunga Estanier. It's like there's an invisible hyphen. So don't just call me Estanier. Don't call me Bunga, it's Bunga Estanier. And don't call me Mike. Like I've got seven people in the world who call me Mike and it's my brothers and their kids and my mum. That's it. My name is Michael. And it's just one of those tiny little things that stops unexpected irritations appearing. And so now you're trading these kind of mechanical things going, oh great, we're both morning people. Oh, interesting, you're a morning person. I'm an evening person. How will we navigate that? Oh, you love meetings? Oh, I hate meetings. Oh, I'm good at texting, but I'm terrible at Slack. I mean, there's just this way of going, how do we work out the mechanics so that we don't tread on our toes and we give each other the best possibility of creating the best way of working together. That plays to both of our practices and our preferences. And a lot of these things are unconscious for many of us. Like we might even think about them because we just do them naturally. It's like you are a morning person or you aren't. You might not even be conscious of how productive you are in the morning. Maybe like doing your deep work after lunch and you want meetings in the morning. It's just clarifying for those who are on the opposite side of the table who don't see the day to day and especially in a hybrid environment where a lot of this stuff is now happening outside of the office. It really alleviates any pain around those habits that each one of us have. Exactly. I mean, here's a very minute specific example. I use Asana as a way of managing tasks and projects. I have an assistant. I grew up with a guy called David Allen who wrote Getting Things Done back in the year 2000. He was kind of the productivity man of the time. And what I learned from him is every to-do should start with a verb. Like it needs to have an active word right at the start of it so it tells you what to do. And I am unreasonably irritated by to-dos that don't actually have a to-do in them. I'm like, so I grew with Claudine. I'm like, Claudine, it's a small thing but it makes a big difference to me. Every action you assign me has to start with a verb. She's like, I got it. I would never have thought of that. I don't care. I'm like, I do care. And so it's just one of those small negotiations that makes both of our lives a little easier. That's great. The next two questions I think we can combine together. It's the good day question and the bad day question. So they're kind of the either side of one coin. And the key insight behind these questions is our patterns from the past repeat again in the future. They just will. Even though the past relationship was like a different person in a different time, a newer different person. He lives in a different country, a different company, all of the stuff is gonna be repeating again in the future. So let's name it and talk about it and share it. So the good day question is, what can we learn from past successful relationships? And the bad day question is, what can we learn from past frustrating relationships? Because imagine this. No, AJ, you and I are about to sit down together where we're about to launch a joint podcast together. You finally had it with John. You're like, I'm done with this stuff. The other charm, it was a good run, but it's all over now. And Michael was amazing. So let's talk about it. I'm like, okay, so tell me about a really good working relationship you've had when you've been co-creating something. And you'll tell me a story. And I'm like, this is so helpful to understand. You did this, you didn't do that. You said this, you didn't say that. I'm getting a real clue into how the we flourishes. And then I'll go, but you've probably tried to collaborate with people and it's gone a bit south. It may have been a disaster. It may have just not been frustrating. Tell me about that. Tell me about a bad working relationship. And you get to share some of those stories. I reckon, and this is a bit about this kind of the way our cognitive biases work, when you're talking about a bad working relationship, start with your role in that bad working relationship. Because just as you said right at the start of the interview, it's so easy to just blame the other person. Oh, they're a nightmare. They're a psychopath. They were power hungry. They were the reincarnation of Napoleon. I mean, who knows what's going on? You can just point the fingers a lot. But if you go, here's how I contributed to a dysfunctional working relationship. What a powerful gift that is. When you're talking about a really flourishing working relationship, start with what they did. Start with what that other person contributed to building a great working relationship. You'll find yourself talking about big things and small things. Like as a very small thing, one of my least successful working relationships came about because the woman I was working with was scared of me. Why was she scared of me? Because when I think, I get this kind of grumpy look on my face. You know, I'm like, I'm normally a pretty smiley guy and I'm like, I nod and I'm encouraging. But when I'm thinking, when I'm trying to figure something out, I get this kind of grumpy, frowny, angry, bitter, twisted look on my face which I was completely unaware of. And kind of when she quit, she's like, yeah, I've been afraid of you for six months because you always look so angry. And I'm like, I'm the least angry person in the world. How did this even happen? But the gift, I guess, for me from that was I now get to talk to people and say, look, this is what it looks like. So it can be as small as a understand this about, this is what gets misinterpreted about how I show up. Or it could be a bigger thing. Like in my organization, I am known as the vice president of bottlenecking. Because sometimes I'm like, brilliant at kind of moving stuff along and getting things off my plate. Other times they just come and they sink to the bottom of my inbox and I ignore them and I know I'm ignoring them. And I'm like, okay, so let me tell you how to manage me when I'm bottlenecking because rest assured, I will bottleneck you at some stage. It's like, you do this, you set a date, you tell me, Michael, you don't wait and apologize, you nag me. And then you go, Michael, if I don't get this by the end of the day Thursday, we're just moving ahead with it without your approval. And that works really well for us. So we get to preempt all the stuff that's going to derail the conversation and figure out ways of working together around that. I just wanna mention that you are talking about when you're processing, right? You're in your head, you're going over stuff. What that produces intimidates everyone else around you. And in our work, we call that processing phase. And there's a lot of people who don't realize that about themselves and have never been told that about them. So what they see are these, they're recognizing certain patterns of interacting with people that always result in going self because they don't have that reflection. They've never been told that. And so all they see is dealing with people from that state and the reaction that comes with that. And I was recently, we just had this happen in our X Factor, I was talking to one of our clients who was having trouble putting himself out there, going to some networking events. He's doing a great job of putting himself out there but the results were a mixed bag. In my dealing with him, he's not very expressive and this is in a group of people on our Zoom calls and it's very hard for even me to get a read on him. He's engaged, we always have a great session but I spend a lot of time looking at him and not connecting, right? And so I mentioned that I find it difficult to get a beat on him when I'm working with him on Zoom so I can only imagine if he carries that same disposition out into his networking events. He's going, oh my God, this explains everything. Nobody's ever told me this. Everything, so all of a sudden he's able to easily fix that or compensate for that because now he understands that. And that wall where that pattern has now been broken and everything just starts falling into place. And again, this comes with some self reflection and figuring out and getting feedback and being able to receive that feedback because you want a different result. So you're going to need to do things differently. If you get that feedback and you're like, that's not me, oh then you're gonna continue then getting those results. But it's a small thing like that that triggers an avalanche of new experiences and an opportunity to finally work on things that you have felt that were out of grasp because of this hurdle that you continue to run up against and it never changes. I love that point. And I never heard that term processing face before. So that's really helpful for me to learn about. But your bigger point is how small it can be that can derail a conversation, set expectations. And our ability to take one small piece of data, they're not smiling and turn it into a whole story. They don't like me, they're not engaged, they're grumpy. It's like, it's extraordinary. We are story making creatures and that is both a gift but sometimes it backs us into a corner. And what you're doing here is you're helping in this conversation understand each other's stories in a way that you might not otherwise understand and helps you deconstruct some of the stuff you've made up about that other person. So you can get a more accurate read on what that person, what really matters to them, how they really are in the world. Absolutely. And the other thing about it is everyone thinks they're smiling, right? They're in a social place and they're like, oh, I was smiling. I'm like, I can tell you that I've been working with you for weeks and I can't get a read on you. And if I can't, how is anyone else going to? So he had made the conscious decision at that point to make sure that he was extra smiley to the fact that his jaws and cheeks were hurting. But that small shift changed the complete experience around to all of a sudden now people are approaching him and other folks that he had met previously are now more engaged and coming up to him and it just, it changed everything. You know, one of the exercises in the book is called How My Misunderstood. And what most people realize is like, people keep getting this wrong about me. And it's so often it's like, and what is wrong with them? I mean, it's like, I'm, surely I am this clearly transparent, most obvious person, but you're this messy, confusing mystery and enigma. So it's really helpful to say, when I do this, it generally means X not Y. When I look serious, it generally means I'm thinking, not that I'm angry. And that's just a great gift to give somebody else because so often we get triggered by these small things. A lot of times our strengths will often lead to our biggest blind spots. So our clients, very analytical, some of them are introverted and they're deep listeners, deep thinkers. And oftentimes it's great to get all of that data, synthesize all of that information, analyze it, and then come up with the perfect answer. But in the synthesis, the signal that's going out externally is a stoicism, is a negative furrowing of the brow. And it's not letting the people in the audience that you're communicating with feel that they're heard. In fact, they're interpreting it in the exact opposite. But this, they would identify as a strength. Like, I'm a great listener. I'm super analytical. So we challenge a lot of our X-Factor members to look at those strengths and see, is there another side, a double edge to that sword that you might not be thinking about? And if not, that's a great opportunity for you to survey other team members or other experiences or past coworkers to understand, well, what's going on behind my strength? Is there something that I'm missing? Are there some gaps to how I'm perceived so that I can bring that to someone's attention in a new working environment in a best possible relationship opportunity? Yeah. So, if I was to take that from me, one of the things that, one of my strengths is having ideas. Like, I'm great at it and I love that. I get super excited about it. And there's like, here's the problem. This is the real challenge. I'm like, oh my goodness, here we go. And what happens, because in my companies, I'm often a more senior person. What that does is it will suck the oxygen out of the room because when your boss has an idea, it's like, they're not brainstorming, they're telling you the idea. And you're like, okay, you're like, yeah. Oh, great idea, boss. Yeah, actually, that is the best idea. We should definitely do that idea. Thank you, boss. And I'm like, okay, so part of my negotiation with the people I work with is like, when I'm having ideas, it generally means I'm enthusiastic. Not that I want my ideas to be, to be, I have to do a lot of work to diminish the weight of my ideas. They're just random ideas from Michael. They're not the best idea in this conversation yet. And it's one of those learned experiences with somebody going, you're killing me with your ideas because I'm like, A, they're all pretty good. B, I can't do all of them. C, there's no space for my ideas. So I'm like, oh, I've got to manage that about how I am. It's a strength that has a double edge to it just as you were saying. Yeah, it's a beautiful example and it's something that I've experienced on our team, myself, being someone who loves, ideas and solving problems. And oftentimes those problems aren't necessarily the most urgent to be solved, but it's an opportunity for me to create an idea and use that creativity in business. So it's exciting. And that excitement and enthusiasm can overpower the communication of what the team needs to get done or what their priority is. Totally. My team is terrified every time I get on a plane that doesn't have Wi-Fi. Cause it's like, oh my God, he's got four hours of unbroken thinking time. He's just going to come back with random ideas again. So we're like, so we have this conversation. I'm like, these are ideas I had at 30,000 feet. So they're probably, I'm probably a little oxygen deprived. So they're probably A, terrible and B overwhelming. So I'm just going to tell them to you and then we can just ignore them for now. So it would be amazing if every relationship was perfect. You set the tone and just maintain it in a steady state throughout life, but we know they're not. We know that you're going to need to repair things. Things are going to go awry. So what is the fifth question and how do we start to manage the repair? So the fifth question is exactly that, the repair question. And it is, how will we fix it when things go wrong? And there's a, there's an unexpected success in this question because actually it's a hard question to answer. You know, it's like, I don't know how will we fix it when things go wrong? But it starts a conversation. All of these five questions are all about starting a conversation. You know, you're like, you can get curious. Like, tell me more about this. What else of this makes me think of? Often they will open up quite a rich, diverse conversation. How will we fix it when things go wrong? Part of the power of this question is we, how will we fix it? There's a kind of a shared commitment being implanted here, which is like, we will fix it. The other thing that's amazing about it really is it says things will go wrong. Because, you know, often when we start working with somebody, you're like, I'm in the honey, I like working with, this is exciting. We're at the start of something cool. And I'm like, but it will go wrong. Sometimes it's an explosion, but more often it's like it's a dent, it's a crack, it's a misunderstood request, a misunderstood expectation, a slightly, you know, a careless word or a careless action. Something gets torn and dented and ripped. And what this does is it says, let's fix it when things go wrong. Let's actually have a commitment to say, don't walk away from it, don't pretend it hasn't happened, don't overreact to it. Let's see if we can build back together. And I think, you know, if people are like, I don't know, how would I fix it when things go wrong? I think there are three broad actions that you can think about. One is speak up if you've been hurt. You know, that isn't itself quite a gift because so often I would count myself amongst these people, you kind of swallow it down. Like maybe I'll ignore it. Maybe I'll pretend it hasn't happened. Maybe this is the way it always happens. And so I just kind of get, you know, death by a thousand cuts. So it's finding a way of naming the experience and naming what happened. The second thing that you can do is being curious if you think something might have happened. This is something that I've had to work on a lot because there are times I'm just a bit obtuse about what's going on, but I will sometimes pick up that, you know, something's a bit off. And one of the questions that is a favorite one of mine in this context is to say, what needs to be said that hasn't yet been said? Because it's this invitation to say, you know, is there something that's tender or not quite articulated or kind of just beginning to appear that might be helpful to put on the table? One of my team members said, I need to have a conversation with you. And she's opened up because Michael, this is what needs to be said that hasn't yet been said. And it was so good hearing that phrase because it actually told me how to behave. It's like, Michael, you just need to be present and listen because it's taking her some courage to say this to you. She's being really brave here and she's talking about something that will help us strengthen this relationship. So speak to the pain if you've been hurt, be curious about what's going on on the other side. And the third thing is like, learn how to give a really good apology because you can be too little or too much. You know, we all have seen the apology, which is like, sounds basically like, I'm sorry you're a loser. Sorry you feel that way. Yeah, I'm sorry you feel that way because you're weird and you're a loser and you're pathetic. And I'm like, that's not really an apology. But you know, you can go to the other side, which is like, you start apologizing for everything. And what I'm always trying to bear in mind is, I am responsible for my side of the table. They're responsible for their side of the table. And my job is to understand where I went wrong, apologize for my behavior, from understand my intention, say I'm not gonna do it again or I'm gonna do my best not to do it again. But actually there's a way that I'm like, I'm not gonna apologize for the things that I'm not actually responsible for. I'm trying to find that sweet spot between a heartfelt genuine apology about what you're responsible for is a really powerful place to stand. Now with this conversation, there's some preparation on our side, but it also sounds like it's not something you just wanna surprise someone with. So, you know, and I've had this habit being very busy, being like, hey, can we meet real quick? And then getting into a deep conversation like this without letting the other person know, well, meet real quick actually means I wanna talk about some heavy stuff or I wanna get into something that's been really bothering me. So how do we prepare for this conversation? And then what do we do to prepare the other side for the conversation to really make it meaningful? Yeah, so that's great. I think the preparation, we've almost covered already, which is like know the five questions, start building your answers and building your understanding of yourself to answer those five questions. So thinking about it and going, how would I answer that? What would I say? What would I choose to say? Really powerful. But you're right. I think most of the time, you don't wanna be surprising the other person. Now, sometimes though, AJ, I do. Like just the other day, I had a conversation with somebody who is going to build a new website for me. And they showed up and they're like, here's the deck, we're super excited. Here's stuff about websites. And they're like, let's get into it. And I'm like, look, I'm as keen as anybody to see this deck. But before we go there, when you've had a great client before and you've loved working with them, tell me what that was like. You know, what do they do? What do they not do? And now let me tell you when I've had a really great vendor before and we've had a really spot on vendor. And I'm like, I've wanted to work with them for years and I've wanted to refer them. Let me tell you what they did and what they didn't do. And also let me tell you when I've had a really bad vendor relationship and I've been thoroughly underwhelmed by it, let me tell you what that's like. And you tell me what a client that sucks looks like for you. So I know about that as well. And honestly, when I started that, their eyes popped open a bit. They're like, what the hell is going on here? But we had a really good conversation. And in part, the power of this conversation is it gives us permission to keep talking about the strength and the health of the working relationship. Somebody was filming a course for me the other day and something screwed up. And I was actually able to say, let me tell you why I'm disappointed about this. Because we talked about this and this is the thing that drives me nuts and you're now currently driving me nuts. And he's like, I hear you, I get that and I can hear it as a part of our commitment to a working relationship that really thrives. But to your point, particularly if you're kind of, this is a relationship that might be more than just a vendor transaction, but it's like this matters to me. You're like, how do you make this safe for people? So, you know, there's different ways of doing it depending on the person and the context, but saying to them, hey, I wanna build a really great working relationship with you. I've found having a conversation about how we work together before we get into the work is really helpful. I'd love to have that with you. I reckon giving it 30 minutes at minimum, maybe an hour to get into this would be really great. And by the way, here are the five questions that I'm gonna be thinking about and trying to answer. It might be helpful if you have a think about that as well. The more you can be transparent about that, the safer it's going to be. Well, with this, of course, you know, conversations are great, but then actions matter far more. So I can see situations where you have this great conversation, you both leave on a high, you feel like you're really understanding the person and then, you know, urgent tasks get in the way, stress, outside forces, whatever the case may be, you get to a place where it's not the best possible relationship. You're actually struggling quite a bit. How do you approach that around repairing a relationship after having this great conversation where things have really broken down? So you're right. I mean, it'd be lovely, AJ, if you could have this conversation and then you're like, this now future-proofs this relationship against all things bad, it's now just gonna be, you know, farting unicorns and rainbows from now on. That would be amazing. And also that is not reality. So maintenance is a key phase of this relationship because it's not a maybe, it will be hard at times. There will be times where you struggle, there will be moments of frustration. So the rule I have is adjust always. So there's a constant process of going, hey, how are we doing? How's this working for you? Is there anything we should be doing more of? Is there anything we should be doing less of? I don't ask this every single conversation I have with the people with whom I work, but monthly I'm kind of checking in on the relationship, not just the work. Hey, how are we doing? We need to do anything differently. Is there anything that needs to be said that hasn't yet been said? It's repair often. So adjust always repair often. I've had to learn the hard way that I need to talk about disappointments as soon as I can so that we can get through them and process them. Because it turns out I do actually hold a grudge. I'm like, there's part of me that goes, look, I want to be this noble, selfless creature that allows us to shake it all off and put it aside. But there are times where I'm like, I can't shake off the disappointment of this experience. I want to talk about it and I want to fix it because I've come to learn that willingness to fix it often improves the quality of the relationship. You know, in the retail experience where if you're a brand and you screw up but you do an amazing job of fixing the screw up, people are 10 times more likely to promote your brand than if you've never screwed up in the first place. So honestly, if you're building a retail experience you want to design a minor screw up early on so that you can then amaze them and they're like, you should see how they fixed it. It's fantastic. There's a way that in a similar way which is like if there's a minor screw up and you go, let's really sort this out and repair it and make this clean and clear that that relationship is even better because you've had that practice of repairing and shown that commitment to repairing. And then I think the third element of maintenance is reset as needed. And sometimes that is this relationship now needs to end. So how am I choosing to end this working relationship because sometimes they come to the end or sometimes it becomes untenable or sometimes it's like, you know what? We have gone badly off the rails here. What do we need to do to almost kind of restart this and kind of get back on track and acknowledge that where like it's a bit of a mess here. Are you up for a reset around this relationship? You know, one of my first teachers in this was a guy called Peter Block, you know, a great writer in this space. And I remember him saying, talking about what he called social contracting which is a similar idea. He said, what you do and you don't talk about in that first social contracting conversation becomes the things that you can and can't talk about in all the conversations going down the path. So part of what a Keystone conversation does is it allows you to keep talking about the health of the relationship. It allows you to keep adjusting and repairing and resetting as needed. Not because every relationship is going to be perfect but in fact because every relationship is imperfect and what you're striving for is this best possible relationship. The best possible expression between you and that other person of a relationship that is safe and vital and repairable. One thing that really strikes me in all of this is in certainly social media online there's a lot of labeling of toxic culture, writing people off, cutting off co-workers. What do you use as sort of that internal guide or metric to go, you know what, this relationship is completely broken and I'm going to fire this vendor, I got to leave this team, I should start looking for new prospects versus, you know what, this is repairable. How many tries are you going to give it? What does that look like for you? One of the concepts I do hold is the idea of every choice I make has prizes and punishments. So I can choose to not end this relationship and there'll be prizes and punishments to that choice, risk and reward. I can choose to end this relationship and there'll be prizes and punishments. I can choose to attempt to reset and have a keystone conversation and there'll be prizes and punishments. And what I try and do is weigh up the prizes and punishments. What's the potential upside of this decision? What's the potential downside of this decision? What I find is often, if I'm noticing that the upside is that I keep myself safe, I don't expose myself, I don't be vulnerable, I don't take a risk, I don't assume positive intent, I'm like, I should probably do this because it seems like I'm protecting my ego more than I'm committed to the bigger picture here. Often, if I'm unwilling to fire somebody or let them go, it's often again, I'm like, oh, the reason I'm not doing this is I'm protecting my ego, I don't want to have that awkward conversation, I don't want to be shouted at or accused of something or blamed or something. So often what I'm doing is I'm trying to weigh up how much of this is protecting me and how much of this is actually in service to the bigger game that I'm trying to play. I have absolutely not fired people when they should have been fired. I have probably fired people who I should have given a better chance. I've probably got this wrong a thousand times. I'm just trying to take my best guess to get it as right as I can most of the time. I think with all of this, for me, the metric is how does that communication or conversation lead to change and is there effort around change? So you can have the same conversation over and over again and the intent can be, yeah, we want to change things, but if there's no action and there's reluctance to change and when change is brought up, there's finger pointing, blaming, externalizing, all of it, and for me, that says, okay, this relationship, you're not willing to put in the same amount of effort that I am to maintain and repair this relationship, so it's probably not worth it for me to continue in this relationship, whether it's working together, whether it's a friendship, intimate relationship, and I think for many of us, it's so easy once you get good at communicating and maybe you're listening to this podcast because you want to get really good at communicating, that's actually the easier part. If you haven't done it before, it can be the challenge, but the real challenge is, how does that lead to behaviors in that relationship that allow you to maintain and repair it? And I'm curious for you, after all of the work you've done in this book, how you approach personal and intimate relationships? I know it's not your expertise, but what are the learnings you've taken from this work and applied in your personal life? The foundation of all the work I do, through the coaching books that I'm best known through this book is often about how do we build an adult-to-adult relationship with the people with whom we're interacting with? So this is people at work, unless they're people outside work, your friendships and your intimate relationships. And adult-to-adult relationship kind of has roots in therapy, transactional analysis, parent-child relationship versus adult-to-adult relationship. And when people ask me, well, that sounds good, but what does that even mean? One of the best definitions I have for an adult-to-adult relationship is being able to ask for what you want, knowing that the answer may be no. It's quite hard to figure out what you want. And it's quite hard to ask for what you want. And it's quite hard to hear no. Sometimes it's quite hard to say no, even though you want to say no. If I have relationships with my wife of 30 years, with my friends, with my colleagues, where I'm like, I feel like I'm doing a decent job knowing what I want and asking for what I want. And sometimes hearing yes and sometimes hearing no and understanding the consequences of that. It's only comes back to your point around change, AJ, which is like, so we're negotiating this relationship. Now I'm going to ask for what I want. I need you to do this differently. And you're welcome to say no, but there's a consequence to this which is we may not be able to work together. I may have to fire you or I may have to quit depending on what's going on. I think it probably boils down to something as simple and as difficult as ask for what you want knowing that the answer may be no. That's beautiful. Thank you so much for joining us and sharing all these great tools. We love asking every guest what their X factor is. What do you believe is your unique component that makes you extraordinary? I sign my emails. I have a standard sign off and it's you're awesome and you're doing great. And my mom hates it, because she's like, it's not even grammatical. And I'm Australian by birth and she's like, and you sound like a North American and I'm like, I've lived in Canada for 20 years. I kind of am a North American. But I think there's something around being able to see the best in people and inviting that forward and encouragement for them to be the best version of themselves. And you're awesome and you're doing great. Somehow sums up. It's like, no matter where you are and no matter what's going on right now, you're awesome and you're doing great. It feels like a message I'd like to be associated with. It's a great starting point for the best possible relationship. That's right. Work at our audience, find out more about you and the great work you've done and all the books and coaching. If you want some of the bonuses associated with the book, bestpossiblerelationship.com is there. There's some downloads, but there's also a video of me role modeling, a Keystone conversation. And then if you want more of me in general, my website is nbs.works and you can find links to books and social media and all of the usual stuff there. Awesome. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you. Thank you.