 Well, welcome to the show, Jeff. Great to have you. Great to be with you both. Thank you for having me on. So Jeff, how did you develop the Ask Approach? So it starts with a problem that I think is very pervasive and also very painful, which is the fact that all of us are surrounded by people in our lives, whether our co-workers, our investors, clients, customers, friends, who know things. They have ideas, experiences, feedback for us, stories that they could tell us, that would be incredibly beneficial for us to hear. But so often, they don't actually tell us what they're really thinking and feeling. And that comes at a huge cost, because without that information, we don't make decisions that are as good as they could be. We don't collaborate as well. We waste time. We don't innovate. We stay distanced in our relationships. And so the thing that motivated me to do this is that I've personally experienced this problem, and I have seen this problem everywhere, literally with so many different people. But also, I've been very fortunate in my life and my career to have had a chance to work alongside thought leaders and mentors who have offered a set of tools and ideas for what we can do about this problem. And over time, I've been able to both integrate them into my own work, but teach them to other people and just seen how game-changing they can be. And I wanted to pay it forward. I love that. And a recent guest on our show, Nicholas Epley, talked about our inability to read people's minds as well as we think we can. So, oftentimes we assume that we know what the unsaid is, because we're basing it on our own experiences and our own perspective. But in actuality, that unsaid is a huge mystery to us that keeps us from the connection, the relationships that we love to develop. And what I love about the book is there's so many straightforward strategies, frameworks, and examples for us to utilize to start to unpack the unsaid. But I know for many in our audience, they want to know, why aren't people saying this? Why are we holding on to this information and withholding? Yes. And just to say, I love the work of Nick Epley. And what I was particularly intrigued by in his work is the fact that he discovered that some of the most common advice that we get on how to understand other people, things like try to read their body language or try to put yourself in their shoes, it just doesn't work. You're no better off than chance if you do that. And there's literally only one thing that works, that his research documents, which is to ask them. And so, we'll talk more about that. But to your question, why don't people tell us? I've been obsessed with this question. And in my research for the book, I've uncovered several big causes and factors. One of them, and I think the most significant one, is that people are worried about the impact of saying what they have to say. They are worried that it could hurt us. It could burden us. It could offend us. It could expose them for what they don't know. It could put tension into our relationships. All of those are fears that they have about the impact of what they could have to say. That's one reason. A second reason is they literally don't know we care. They have no idea that we're actually interested and wanting to know what they have to say. And so, they kind of assume that we don't. Yeah, I know for a lot of our clients, that's a big one, is assuming that people just won't care about their perspective or what they have to share. And a lot of times, it's in situations where maybe they perceive the other person as having that information, having more information, having more skill, more experience in that area. So, they hold back. And then, the problem with that is there's a misperception that happens with that withholding. So, withholding actually is a negative. It has a negative impression on the other person, even though you think you're trying your best to have a positive impression by withholding. Exactly. Exactly. I want to just give you one other reason because it's fascinating to me. It's just a mathematical reason. I found research by a neuroscientist, Ned Sahin, who basically said, people think at the speed of about 900 words per minute, but they can only get out of their mouth 125 words per minute. So, think about that. We're only at any minute, any given minute hearing 14% of what someone's actually thinking. It's not because of any bad intent that they have. They just can't get the words out. For math reasons alone, we're missing almost 85% of what someone has to say, just because our mouths don't talk fast enough. And with that, I think a lot of us will find difficulty then in asking the right questions. And that's why I'm excited to unpack the Ask Approach, because that gets to the heart of it, really. Once we understand that there's a gap in our ability to read people's minds, there's a gap mathematically in what's being shared versus what's being perceived in the outside world, we obviously want to start to unpack that and start to build and foster better relationships, communicate more effectively, and especially in high-stakes situations, we want to put our best foot forward so that we can reach an outcome that's a win-win-win for everybody. I want to add to that as well. In our X Factor Accelerator Program, we work with folks, and one of the things that we do is we host improv sessions even on Zoom. And one of the rules to improv is the answers are always in the other person. And in hearing that, it makes things so easy, because for a lot of our clients and listeners, for them, it's, what do I say next? Or I blank out, and I don't know what to say. Well, while you're up in your head trying to figure it out, you could be asking the questions that give you everything that you need. 100% agree. And I just love that phrase, the answers are in the other person. I believe that the answers that we most need to our most challenging problems, opportunities, and life are literally right around us. They live in the heads and the hearts of the people around us, if only we can tap into those. I think one part of the consequences of sharing and withholding is humility. So for a lot of our clients, they have accomplished incredible things, but they feel that they'll be negatively perceived if they sound braggadocious or they share all of these accomplishments. And in that withholding, the other person doesn't have a clear picture of who you are, what your wants, desires, and values are, and it makes it very hard to connect with you. Absolutely. Absolutely. And I think that's a perfect example of fearing the impact of saying what they have to say. In that case, the fear is the impact is that they could be perceived as bragging. Yeah. And I know when we talk about consequences, we often think about the negative downsides of like, oh, well, certainly I don't want to judge someone. I don't want to be perceived as insensitive. But there's also times where people want to hear the good things in your life. They want to hear your accomplishments. They want to hear about all the experience that you have to offer. And withholding that has a negative impact. Yes. I mean, I can personally relate to that and fall prey to it. Sometimes I will wait for someone to ask me a question before I'll share more. And my wife is always saying to me, just tell them, don't wait to be asked the question. But I don't think I'm alone. I think there's a lot of people who will hold things in unless asked the right question and unless we feel like someone actually wants to know. I think a key fundamental in the Ask Approach is curiosity. And I know with our clients, especially when they are in their head and they are overly analytical around what they're supposed to say next or how they're being perceived or what that consequence is, it makes it difficult for them to tap into that curiosity. And they often ask us the first step is, how do I become more curious? And I know the book has some great examples. So let's start to unpack curiosity and how we could strengthen that muscle for our audience. Perfect. So choosing curiosity is step one of the Ask Approach. And I think it's important to stop on the word choosing for a second because I'm not talking about the idea that curiosity is something that some people have and other people don't have like a trait or even a state that we're in. I'm feeling more. I'm talking about curiosity as a choice, a decision that is always available to every one of us. And I'm talking about a particular kind of curiosity, not the curiosity that we have about what's the history of Russia or why do trees grow the way they do. I'm talking about something called connective curiosity. This is the kind of curiosity that connects us to another person. It's the curiosity that we have about somebody else's experiences, ideas, feelings, etc. And the way that we choose that kind of curiosity is by centering one specific question in our mind any time we're interacting with someone. And that question is, what can I learn from this person? If I'm centering this question, what can I learn from this person? That will push away my own internal dialogue of what are they going to think about me? What am I going to say next? And if I look smart enough and all that, I'm just back to what can I learn from this person? And so I would say if there's one thing I would leave you with as it relates to curiosity, it's center that question. Yeah, I want to impact curiosity in the professional realm because I know as Johnny was sharing earlier, a lot of our clients are problem solution oriented. And this curiosity, especially connective curiosity falls outside of the bounds of most of our problem solution mindset at work. So expressing curiosity to learn a little bit more about our team members or colleagues or peers can feel like it's not moving as closer to that solution. It's not getting the task done. It's not allowing us to move forward in the project. But again, in actuality, we're robbing ourselves of that connection that brings up everyone's performance, that gets teamwork unlocked, that allows all of us to reach these solutions faster. So when it comes to that curiosity, what can I learn from someone in the workplace? How do we strengthen it with our peers and colleagues? Yeah, and I think it's really important that you highlight the perceived tension between being curious about other people versus solving a problem and getting to the answer faster. Where a lot of this methodology for me originated was in the context of management consulting, where we are solving problems all the time. And what we realized is that if we are just coming into our clients and saying, we've analyzed your problem, here's the solution, here's what you should do. And we don't ask them any questions. Not only does that push them away and alienate us, but chances are the solution that we have coming up with is not a complete solution. It might even be the completely wrong solution. What we need to be doing is to say, here's what I'm thinking. What does that make you think? What am I missing? What is another way to look at this problem? And so the kind of connective curiosity that I'm talking about is not just about what are your feelings and what's our relationship like. It's what do you see? What information do you have that I don't have? What stories have you lived in this company, in this industry, in this life? All of these things that will literally help me to check my own thinking. It's even curiosity about what might be the holes in my own approach. If I can be curious about that and what might somebody else know about that, I'm getting to my answers so much better and so much faster. And sometimes it's as pointed as what is your reaction to what I just shared? What is your reaction? Yeah, we can talk about that as again when we talk about questions. That is one of the most underutilized questions. What is your reaction? How does that land with you? Too often we assume that once I say my view, if the other person has a reaction, of course they're going to say it to me. But there's so many reasons, especially if we're working across any kind of lines of difference or power differences, etc., they're not going to tell you their reaction unless you communicate that you want to know their reaction. And just that simple question is so underutilized. Well, that reaction brings up a good point. That reaction is due to an emotion, a emotion from what was said and what is being discussed. Sitting in that emotion, sharing that emotion is what connects us, right? Just going through the logistics of here's the problem, here's the solution is not going to bond anyone. It's not going to make anyone want to work with somebody. All it does is bring awareness to what this person, how they see what that problem solution is. I mean, we need that back and forth and for us to want to work with somebody and then also in order to connect, we have to feel that the other person understands me. They get me, they see and hear me and that can't happen unless I'm able to fully disclose how I'm feeling, the way I'm looking at things without that. How do I know that this other person is vibing with me, that they understand what I need from them in order for any solution to work? 100%. Yes, that builds the foundation of connection. And we videotape our clients. So getting back to your earlier point around body language, we will often ask them to read just off the cuff, what's their body language? And it's so funny how interesting and often it's mismatched. So the person who's actually reacting is reacting in a way that the body language doesn't actually match how they're feeling on the inside. Yet we have this view of body language, like it's this perfect reflection of how the person's perceiving what we just said, how they're reacting to what they just heard and what their next move or emotion is when in reality we are, again, as you said earlier, just guessing at chance, throwing darts at the wall. So delving a little deeper into curiosity, because this is ultimately the skill set that we want all of our listeners to master because it unlocks all of the other steps in the method. For those of us who like speed, like velocity, want to just move forward and plow ahead, curiosity and taking the time and the pause to survey and ask these questions can feel monotonous, sluggish, and keep us from getting to the results that we want as fast as possible. What do you say to that person who wants to move quickly and maybe not be as curious as they should be? I mean, what I would say to that is if you are happy with the results you're getting in your work and your life, you're doing something right. But chances are, for any one of us, there is some edge that we have. There's a learning edge, there's a performance edge, et cetera. There's some place where we're stuck and it's at that moment that curiosity is going to be the thing that unlocks you. So I'm not saying you have to stop and ask yourself, do I shave this way in the morning? Do I get in my car? Do I head right? Like there's lots of things that we can just do their routine tasks or that we're good at and that we're successful at it and it's working for us. Go for it. But when you want to level up, when you want to get over that challenge, that's the moment when curiosity is going to be your unlock. Beautiful. So now that we've recognized what's going on with our curiosity and how to strengthen it, what's step two in the ask approach? Step two is called make it safe. And make it safe recognizes that even if I'm really curious about what you know, think, feel, et cetera, if you don't feel safe actually telling that to me, I'm never going to learn it from you. And I learned this the hard way. When I was a new manager in an organization, it was the first time I was a line executive. I'm managing a few hundred people and we were putting on major events. And one of the events I learned at almost too late of a moment was about to implode. And all year long, I had been asking questions. I had been curious. I had been thinking I was doing all the right things that a good manager would do. And people were not telling me that there was a problem. And what I only realized nearly too late was it was because they didn't feel safe telling me the power of my position, some of the lines of difference that we were interacting across made them feel like they had to show me that everything was under control when really, if they had been able to tell me that and I had been able to make it safe for them, I could have helped them and we could have gotten past a lot of the barriers that they were facing. And so making it safe is really about increasing people's comfort and desire to tell you truths, especially hard truths. And there's a few different strategies that go into that. One of them is being very intentional about choosing where and how we even connect with somebody. So for the book, I interviewed some of the most iconic CEOs and they were, the consistent thing that they said is that if I want to connect with someone and actually learn from them, I'm not going to have them sit across the big CEO desk for me. That's going to be too intimidating. I mean, we're going to be sitting on a couch, but more likely I'm going to be having lunch where they have lunch. I'm going to be riding in their car along with them on a sales call. So it's really all about their turf. And I've found this even true in my own personal life with my daughter who's a teenage daughter. She's 15. When she comes home from school and I want to hear about her day and learn what's going on, I get nothing, absolutely nothing. If I say, how was school, you know, she doesn't want to talk to me. But if I go on her turf on her terms, which means I have to stay up to 11 or 1130 at night when she's done with her homework, she's done talking to her friends, then she doesn't want to shut up. She wants me to stay as late as possible. And I learned everything I want to learn. I'm exhausted. But if I want to actually make it safe for her, I got to go to her. And so that's, that's one piece of it. I have that exact same experience with my dad. I mean, he would always, I was always grounded for something. And every time that I would come in, how was school? Well, I don't want to talk about it. I don't want to talk about it with you while you're sitting at the table with your coffee, because I know that this conversation isn't going to go my way. Right? But what my dad always knew was if that, if he give me enough time that eventually I would just spill everything. So he, what he would do was he would organize projects around the house that we would be working on. And that way we're in the, we're in the van. We're going to get lumber, where we're going to Home Depot. And throughout the day, eventually it's just once I open up, everything is going to come out. And he knew that. And he knew that if he wanted to get any information, that's what he was going to have to do. That's a perfect example of knowing where and how to create connection with you. I mean, I even see it with my own kids. I get more if we're sitting in the car and we're not face to face. It's just less confronting, it's less intense, and more and more comes out. AJ and I have even, we've had meetings either with employees or vendors and other people where if AJ and I were there first, or before we went there, we would talk about how we would sit and where we would sit in order to make certain people comfortable that we knew would be intimidated in that meeting or in this business acquisition. So whatever these things were, that was always on our mind because I remember even rearranging seats around a dinner table because we had an idea of who these people were and interacting with them, wanted to put them in the best place to get the desired result that we were looking for. Yeah. You wanted to create a certain level of connection with them that they were going to feel comfortable. So that's part of it. Another part of making it safe that I think is really important is what I just call opening up. If you're going to ask someone a question, explain why you're asking the question. Don't just say, don't just blur out the question because people are going to guess at your agenda. But if you can say, here's my question, here's why I'm asking. All of a sudden you've opened up a little bit more and they start to feel safer. Opening up can also be an opening up about something that I feel vulnerable about too, something I'm struggling with so that they can see it safe to talk about that kind of thing. And then the last part of opening up that I think is really important, I call radiating resilience. And radiating resilience is really demonstrating to the other person that I can handle what they have to say. I'm not going to crumble. I'm also not going to punish them for my own emotional reaction. It could even be as simple as saying to someone like, whatever it is you have to say, I'm really interested in hearing it no matter if it's good, bad, or ugly. Or it could be saying something to someone like, hey, if I were you, I would probably be really frustrated. I'm curious is that how you're feeling? All of a sudden I am now saying to them, I get it. If you're feeling that way, I can handle this. I'm resilient to that. I mean, it plays in all our lives. Just recently I had started doing short form content and there's stuff on YouTube shorts and Instagram shorts and TikTok. And one of the things that you can do with TikTok is just as you can turn off your contacts and so that your friends don't know that you're releasing videos and you could just go on there and do your work and have some fun and be creative and see what happens. Whereas Instagram, all your friends are going to see that you posted something. They've been alerted and it makes it much more difficult. In fact, for me, I spent a couple months just doing stuff on TikTok, getting better, having fun with it before I put together an Instagram for that specific reason. I just felt more safe to do the things that I need to do, to make the mistakes that I needed to and to learn on TikTok. Perfect example of how your safety relates to your willingness to share with other people. Now in your example, as a new manager, I think a lot of our listeners, as they move from IC to management, they want to make an impact. But what's often the case is there's culture and norms that they're now working against. So whether that's their previous manager or how this information has been perceived or reacted to in the past, has created an unsafe environment and then you come in there and you're like, great, I have the ask approach. I'm ready to go. I want to get in there and make everyone feel safe. But there's all this history of in past meetings and past situations where they weren't safe. How do we create a reset so that people know now we really can feel safe? No matter what happened in the past, I recognize that I was reactive. I understand that previously the culture maybe wasn't as receptive to what you had to share and difficult conversations. How do we hit that reset button so that people can feel safe moving forward? In some ways, I think the way that you just asked the question points the way to the answer as well, which is to actually discuss it and name it. And so if, and I think this is part of the opening up strategy of make it safe, which is I'm going to open up about how our culture has been before. I'm going to put that on the table. I'm going to make that discussable. I might even ask a question and say, has that been your perception too? I might even ask a question and say, given our history and our culture, what would make it more safe for you? What could I be doing as a leader in order to be able to create a different kind of atmosphere in this conversation? And so take what was in my own unspoken observation, put that out there, make it discussable, and then add a question to it. Yeah, I think that allows everyone to then recognize that in calling out the unsaid, they can start to share what they've been holding back on and what they've been withholding in these conversations to feel safer to share the unsaid. All right, step three. Yeah, so step three is what I call pose quality questions. And my definition of a quality question is very simple. It is a question that helps us learn something important from someone else. And I distinguish this from crummy questions because a lot of us, you know, utter words with question marks, and we think we're asking a question, but it's not really a high quality question. Maybe it's a sneaky question that's trying to, you know, lead someone to our point of view by saying, don't you think we should do this? Or wouldn't it be great if we could do this? Or, you know, all those kinds of things. There's a whole bunch of crummy questions. A quality question really helps us learn something from someone else. And I think of quality questions almost the way that I think a surgeon would think about their precision tools. I want this scalpel for this purpose. I want this for this for depending on what we're trying to learn, we can use different quality questions. And I'll come back to the one that you shared earlier, which is request reactions. What is your reaction? What I had to say? And just, you know, one short story about that. Also, when I was a new manager, I was taught this question and I was taught it's a good idea to ask someone what their reactions are after you give them some direction or some guidance. And so I was managing someone and I thought I had done a great job giving him some guidance and direction. I said, what are you, you know, just to check what's your reaction to what I just said. And he said, honestly, if you really want to know, I found it totally demoralizing. And I was floored because I thought I was doing well being a good manager. But had I not asked that question, he would have walked away completely deflated. We would not have had the kind of results and performance, but because I asked that, I was able to discover that we were able to trace back what was our disconnect. Turned out that I knew something about our client that I was trying to solve for that he, he wasn't aware of. Once I shared that information, we got on the same page. We were, you know, we were, we were good. But just that, just that simple question was a game changer for me. So that's one category of quality questions. I think another category of quality questions that is often underutilized is inviting ideas. Simply to say, Hey, I've got this dilemma. What would you do here? Do you have any ideas for me? How might we solve for this concern that we have? And this is where people have the most amazing ideas, and they aren't going to share them unless they're invited to share them. But when they do, like that can change the entire direction of a discussion or a strategy or et cetera. So that would be a second. And I'll just give you one other kind of sequence of quality questions that I think is very powerful, which starts with what I call hear their headline. It's so amazing when people, how often people don't actually tell us their headline view. Like I actually disagree with this strategy, or I actually think this is the wrong way to go or the right way to go, et cetera. So here, their headline is just simply saying questions like, What do you think about X? Where do you come down on this? What would you do in the situation? But then you can't stop there. Then there's another set of questions that I call dig deeper. And dig deeper is really about where does that come from? What makes you think that? Can you walk me through your thought process? How did you get there? What are the concerns and values that they're making you worried about this or want to do this? And then there's one more step to go, which is what I call see what they see. Because their reasons aren't coming from nowhere. Their reasons are coming from information and experiences they had. So see what they see could literally be just to say, What are some examples of when you've had, when that concern has come up? Or what information are you basing that on? Or can you tell me a story about that? And sometimes when we say what information, people get intimidated because they think, Well, if I don't have it all buttoned up on a PowerPoint slide, I can't give my data. But the truth is that lived experience is also data. And so by saying, Tell me a story of when you've encountered that issue. That's another way to get information from people. What can I learn from you requires a level of humility that at times can be difficult when there's a power imbalance, there's an experience imbalance, or maybe someone has just performed really poorly on previous tasks. And you can feel like, well, what can I possibly learn from this person? They're not getting it done. They're not delivering. And I got to make sure that they get on track because it impacts the whole team as a manager. So in those situations, you know, how do we wrestle with that ego that's telling us, I can't learn anything from this person. There's nothing that I could possibly gain from this interaction. Well, you know, anything could be taken to an extreme. And so if there's somebody who's just like, you know, a completely, you know, underperforming and everyone else is really performing well, there may be a different kind of conversation now. But even in a situation like that, I would be wanting to understand, well, what led you to make the choices that you did? And I might also be wanting to understand, how did I contribute to this being hard for you? Or is there something that stopped you from doing what I was hoping that you would do? So that's an example of what I can learn. It doesn't mean that this person has a PhD and they're going to give me all their wisdom. But even if I'm just learning what stopped them from doing this, or what made it hard for them, or why did they show up late today, or how I got in the way, those are the kinds of examples of things that I could be learning from them. Yeah. I'm really happy that we drilled down on that because I know that can be a roadblock, especially once you make that transition from a top performer to now managing a team, where you've been judged in the past on performance of your peers, recognize that you're performing well, and now you're in charge of leading them. And that can come up where that ego is like, well, last week I was crushing it and now I need you to start crushing it because I'm now responsible for not only myself, but for you. Totally. And so that's when it's extra important to understand their experience of the work and of the relationship as well. And it gives you an opportunity to find those blind spots in your communication too. Because a lot of what I think is happening here is just miscommunication. We have this perception that we're delivering things perfectly because we've probably thought about these difficult conversations. We've probably wrestled with what we're going to say before the meeting and how we're going to deliver it because we want it to have the highest impact. And maybe it's the first time we've had a difficult conversation around performance. So after all of that rehearsal, and then we actually go to deliver it, we think, oh yeah, that worked out swimmingly. And maybe that person got hung up on one word that we said, or one micro expression that we didn't mean because of our own nervous energy and they completely sidetracked everything else that was said. So we have to dig deeper. We have to bring curiosity to the forefront to clear up any of those miscommunications. Yeah, and maybe we can just stick on this concept of blind spots for a second because I think that this is a really good answer to your question of what can I learn from this person? Because just, you know, my kids are teenagers. I mentioned, you know, teaching my son how to drive. We know that in cars we have blind spots. There's things that we literally cannot see. And that's not our fault. That's just the way that the whole thing is shaped and the way the physics of the whole thing work. And it's the same thing in interpersonal relationships as well. And this is something that we learned from social psychology. My mentors at Action Design have developed a really powerful way of looking at this. But there are four predictable blind spots that we can always see in any relationship. One is what is the other person up against? So whatever's going on for this other person in their life, I just cannot know that because I'm not there in their life. A second thing is what is this person's actual intention? I might be thinking they're trying to undermine me or they're trying to show off or they're trying to do this. I literally cannot know. It's in my blind spot because it's in their head. Another one is how am I coming across to the other person? I know how I think I'm coming across. But as we all know by watching ourselves on video, we don't come across the way we think across. And then the last blind spot is what impact am I having on the other person as well? And so if you're thinking there's nothing I can learn from this other person, you could at least come back to these blind spots and say I literally cannot know these four things. At minimum, that's something I could learn from the other person. And everyone needs to get comfortable with the idea of blind spots. So it doesn't mean that you're- We all have them. Yeah, it doesn't mean that you're incompetent. It doesn't mean that you're a bad employee. You're going to have these. And the only way to figure that out is to ask. And the other thing about it is, especially when you're working with concepts in your mind because they're abstract. And the only way that you're going to get a 360 view and perspective of what it is that you're picturing in your mind is to get different feedback from different people. They get all those different perspectives. As if you were a captain of a ship, the only way that you're going to get to your destination, you're going to need longitude, you're going to need latitude, you're going to need wind strength, you're going to need to know north, south, the stars. All of that information, you're going to have to take into account in order to get to where you need to go. Without that information, you're lost at sea. And just to stick with that, if you thought to yourself, it's my job to know all that inside my head, I can't look at a map, I can't look at a compass, I can't ask the person who's looking across the ship, you'd be up the creek because there's no way you could know that. The same thing holds true in our life. There's no way that we can have that 360 degree information in our own head. We've got to know, we've got to be curious and we've got to ask. Yeah. How dangerous of a driver would you be with no rear view mirrors? Right. Never look at your shoulder. And also how dangerous would you be, if you didn't know you had blind spots? We've got to know what they are so that we can know to look. Is there such thing as too many questions? I think it's all situational. As I said earlier, I think everything taken to an extreme, if you're probing someone so much that they become uncomfortable, that's too many questions. If you're asking so many questions that you're never saying what you think yourself and it feels like it's an interrogation to the other person, that's unbalanced. That's too many questions. If you're asking so many questions that you're never actually taking action with what you learned, that's too many questions. But I think most people in life err on the other side, which is that we are doing all those other things and not asking enough of those questions, which is why I decided in the book to kind of anchor in on the thing that is often underdone. And following up, it's important if we're going to ask the question that we're actually listening instead of preparing what we're going to say next and thinking about how to move the conversation forward. So how do we become better listeners as we become more and more distracted with short form video, Johnny's putting out podcasts, books, YouTube calendar notifications, et cetera. That is step four of the Ask A Project. It's called Listen to Learn. So it's not listen to look smart or listen to say the next thing. It's literally listen to what can we learn from the other person. And what I talk about in this chapter of the book is that we need to expand the number of lenses that we listen through. Most of us listen through one channel. And for me, that channel is the content of what someone's saying. I'm listening to the information, the reasons that they're giving, the arguments that they're making, the claims they're stating, all of that kind of thing. That's important. And that's where an analytical thinker stays. That is where an analytical thinker exactly stays. Right. And what I've discovered over time is that there are at least two other channels to be listening through. Channel number two is the emotion. What are the feelings that someone's having? What are the concerns that they're having? What are the deeper values that are really animating what they have to say? And then the third channel is the channel of action. What are the things that they're actually doing? Are they repeating themselves? Are they pushing back on what I have to say? Are they making requests of me? Are they smiling? There's a whole bunch of things that we can see in the actions that someone's taking as well. And kind of the same way as if we were listening to music. You know, you can listen to the percussion, you can listen to the harmony, you can listen to the vocals, et cetera. If you train yourself to focus in on one, then another, then another, then when you put it back together, you just appreciate the piece so much more. The same thing is true with interpersonal communication. We can run through videos and say, let's just first listen to the content for the moment. Now let's first listen to the emotion. Now let's watch the actions that somebody's taking. Now let's start to put them together. And I think to your point earlier, when you were talking about having people watch their own videos, we can say, is the emotion and the content congruent or is there a mismatch? And if there's a mismatch, that's something to get curious about. Like that's something we can... So the first thing I'd say about listening is what are we listening for? And then I think the second thing I'd say about listening is that there are a bunch of strategies that can help us listen through those different things. One of my favorites is... Comes from psychotherapy, where therapists talk about something called the doorknob moment, which basically means that at the end, towards the end of a therapy session, right when a patient is walking out the door, has their hand on the doorknob, that is often when the most important thing that they have to say comes out. I'm thinking about leaving my wife. I'm getting investigated by the government. The entire session went by, and they didn't say the thing that was actually more important. And for me, what we can take away from that is that we should not assume that when we ask a question, the first thing that someone says is actually the most important thing they have to say. In fact, it's very unlikely that it's the most important thing to say. They're probably holding back the most important thing because they want to see how did we react to the easy thing that they had to say, or maybe they're working up the courage or finding the words to say the most important thing. And so one of the strategies for listening that I find very helpful is simply to ask them, say more. Is there more to say about that? What else do you have to say? Sometimes in my own team, if I'm asking someone for ideas, and they give me an idea, I'd say, cool, what else? And what else? And each time I say what else, something even more interesting comes out. And sometimes I'll literally say to them, I'm just going to keep saying what else to you until you tell me that's all you got. And at that point, I'm happy to stop. But more and more comes out. And so it's a recognition that listening is not just about the first thing someone says. It's listening for what's behind that. What else might come out? And it goes longer than the initial interaction, which I think can also be difficult to wrap our head around if we're primarily focused on speed, convenience, solution, that the doorknob method, sometimes people have to noodle on what was just shared. Sometimes you hit them with new information or your question was so striking that they didn't have an answer in that moment. It was thought-provoking. They maybe are introverted and they're just not quick on their feet to respond immediately. And if we just take them at that initial response or we think of listening only in that actual conversation, not following up later over email or checking in tomorrow or circling back in the following meeting to make sure that we heard everything, we rob ourselves of some of those really deep thoughts that people would love to share but just aren't given the opportunity, especially to leaders. Yeah. And if we forget that's the case and we just assume, oh, no, they said it was okay. They said my strategy works or they said whatever. We think I've heard them when really we've just scraped the surface. You see this in other professions as well. Lawyers know doorknob moments, sales folks know doorknob moments. I mean, at the end of all sales, the question always is, is there anything else that you need to tell me in order before we go forward? Because at that point, now maybe they're comfortable because at the beginning, they're going to be a bit guarded. You're not going to get all of those answers. And then of course, if you think of it in a courtroom, there's so much tension, pressure. People are nervous going up there. And so, but after a while, they've been on the bench for 40 minutes. They've been talking, hey, is there anything else that you remember from that evening that you feel is important for this jury to hear right now? And you will get a lot of other information. Oh yeah, well, now that you say that, there was this thing. And it's usually the most important thing. Exactly, it's such a good point. Totally, totally. Speaking of other professions, that one piece of research that I came across is that 60 to 80% of people surveyed report that they don't disclose something important to their doctor about their own health because they're afraid of either wasting their doctor's time or that the doctor's going to judge them in some way. And I was telling this to a friend of mine who's a doctor and he said, yeah, I know that. And that's why when I say to someone, so have you been using drugs? And they say, no, I will say to them, I'll come back around to it in a different way. So does that mean that you've never used drugs or that you've just used it a few times? And once you've finally asked it a couple different ways and you take time and you've, oh yeah, actually, I do use it once or twice a month. All of a sudden, something totally different comes out. In a lot of these situations, there's a lack of comfort as we talked about earlier, not feeling safe. And what's been really interesting to us is to see this transition to feeling safe around AI. So we have clients now finding us from chat GPT because they're being more open and honest about their actual frustrations, concerns and worries searching for answers. But when it comes to human to human where there's judgment, there's potential consequences there, we often do want to protect our own ego, save face. We want to put our best foot forward and it becomes difficult to really share those deeper things, those insecurities, those values, those goals, those fears that we really need to dig deep into to actually move these larger projects, initiatives and goals of our own forward. It is so fascinating what AI is going to is helping us do. There's a small part of the book where I talk about how can AI help us use the ask approach. And one of the things that I just thought was so cool is I put into chat GPT, you know, I think my business partner is making the totally wrong decision because his strategy is going this or that. And then I just say to the question, I just add at the end, what might I be missing? Chat GPT comes back with all kinds of things that I never thought about that I now can get curious about or I've put in like, I think this politician is the worst politician in the world. Why would anyone vote for that person? Et cetera. What might I be missing? In the privacy of my own home without any pressure, any social judgment, Chat GPT gives me all the things I might have been missing and I'm like, huh, never thought about it that way before. So it's really interesting. Our audience loves rules and practices and I know the book has some great examples for listening. So can you walk us through some practices to make us better listeners? Yeah. So one of them is this practice of say more, tell me more, etc. I'll just, I'll give you another one that I think is, you know, perhaps the most powerful, which I call paraphrase and test. This is the most simple thing you can do when you're in a conversation with someone is to literally say, let me just say back to you what I think I heard you say and check, did I get that right? It does so many good things. It's unbelievable. One good thing it does is that it slows down the conversation. So if you're heated, if things are getting a little tense, etc., it just kind of slows it down. Second thing it does is it actually helps you check, did I hear them right? Because so often, we don't hear them right. Literally half the time when I do that, they'll say, well, sort of, but actually what I meant was this, and it helps them clarify themselves or see what I was missing. And a third thing that it does is it actually communicates to the other person, I care about really getting you. I care enough to actually stop and check and see did I really hear and understand what you had to say. And so just such a simple thing, we can all start doing it immediately. And it has just profound effects and there's really interesting research, one of my mentors, Phil McArthur did, where he looked at teams and compared teams that were more effective and less effective. And the teams that just paraphrased and checked to see if they heard each other correctly, that was one of the biggest distinguishers as to whether they were more effective or not. Yeah, that mind meld is so important, especially as it goes beyond just two minds, right? When we get in large group settings and everyone's hearing different pieces and they're holding on to different things, if we're not paraphrasing and allowing the other person to correct any of those inaccuracies, you can imagine how quickly they multiply. The other thing with paraphrasing in summaries is it allows the other person to feel heard, especially when you're able to summarize it better than they were able to state it. It blows their mind. I'm like, this person gets me. It is so satisfying when I'm able to paraphrase back to someone and they say exactly. I think it's kind of a connecting experience because I know I've gotten them and they know that they've been understood. And so I'm always trying to say, can I listen so closely that I can say back to somebody to a point where they can say exactly? Yeah, it's such an important point that if you're wrong, we can correct it and fix it and move forward. And if you're right, it's an opportunity to deepen and strengthen that connection to really show that you care about their emotions, you're validating them, and you actually have been listening the whole time, even if it may have seemed that in the past you'd been distracted or maybe the environment in the past had kept them from feeling like they're being heard. I'll share one last strategy among the list that's in the chapter. This is maybe the simplest of them all. It comes from a mentor of mine who at the top of her pad, any time she walks into a meeting that she thinks is going to be an intense meeting, she just writes to herself, shut the F up. And it's just a reminder to her that one of the best parts of listening is literally just to shut up and listen. And more will come out when we enable silence to do the work. I interviewed Parker Palmer for the book and he talks about we actually have to treat silence as if it's a member of the group and give it its time just the same way that we're giving other people airtime as well. And silence, there's a magic to silence. New learning happens, new things come out, new discoveries happen as well. I want to also, with all of the things that you mentioned, these are all great for dates as well. There are so many people who get so wound up researching who they're going on a date with, writing down topics they think they're interested in, from looking at their social media. It's like, you don't need to do any of that and all you're doing is giving you a reason to go into your head when the best thing that you can do on that date is be present and listen. Totally. And there's research that you may have seen it that shows that when people on dates ask more questions, they are perceived as more attractive by the person that they're dating. Now, what all of our clients love in working on their communication skills is the reflection part. And we force it on them at first in the beginning, some of it with the journaling practice but really starting to unpack what just happened. Let's go back and look at the game tape and think about, okay, now that we've done a great job being curious, we've really tried our best to reflect back to the person what they said and paraphrase it. Okay, let's reflect back on, well, how did we approach it? Is there areas for improvement? Is there areas for us to actually achieve stronger communication in settings or environments where we've felt in the past maybe we haven't been as confident? So often we find our clients just aren't reflecting. They're moving so fast and they're so focused on the next task, the next conversation. And without that reflection, it's really hard to level up and turn this into a real superpower. Totally. And that is the fifth and final step of the Ask Approach. It is my favorite of all the steps because reflection is what converts the whole thing into learning and action. Otherwise, we have a conversation but it doesn't go anywhere. And it's interesting to hear you say that you have to force your clients at first to do reflection because I think reflection has a bad rap. I think reflection is seen as like, I don't have time for this or it's like meditation, like it's very esoteric. Maybe if I'm a monk on a mountain, I might reflect. But the truth is that reflection can be very simple and very practical, very concrete. You talked, you said, let's watch the game tape, like professional athletes reflect. They step back, they look at the game tape, they say, what happened? And so in the Ask Approach, I say that reflection has two parts and I call it sift it and turn it. The sift it part is just to say what did I hear from the other person that's valuable and what can I let go of? And it's often, because not everything that someone tells us is necessary, important for us to sit with or take in or reflect on and that kind of thing. And so the first thing is sift it, get rid of the crap. And this is where friends can help too and colleagues can help because sometimes we might sift the wrong things out. But if we can say to a couple people, hey, here's what I heard them say. Here's what I took from the conversation. What do you think is valuable here? It's a great way to sift it. And then the turn it is just to kind of turn it a couple of times through some questions like what did I learn from this person that might shift my beliefs, change the story that I have about the situation? Based on that, what steps can I take? And then also like, is there anything I heard in this conversation that might push on my own deeper stuff, my own assumptions about the world, my own worldview, my own ways of being, things like that? And if we just can kind of make those three turns, I call them story reflection, steps reflection and stuff reflection, we can squeeze so much out. But the thing I always say is it's not enough just to do that reflection and walk away. The reason I call it reflect and reconnect is because we got to close the loop and go back to the other person. And to say to the other person, here is what I've been thinking about from our conversation. Here's what I took away. Here's what I learned. A, thank you, because you didn't have to share all that with me. And it's, you know, and I'm grateful it was a gift. But also B, did I get that right? Anything you would want to modify about what I took away. And it has the effect of really helping the other person feel so valued. But it also has the effect of keeping the door open for future conversations. Because when they know, like, you really sat with what they had to say, you thought about it, you're actually going to take actions and you went so far as to tell them how they impacted you. That's very motivated to say, wow, this is a good use of my time to talk to this person, to share with this person over time. And it brings us closer. With our reflection, you're not getting the real value of those relationships. And you're just chasing stimuli. Right. That's a really good way to put it. You're having the experience, but not getting the meaning from it. And for those who are time starved and so worried about speed, guess what's inefficient, miscommunication, not understanding the other person, chasing your tail, going after the wrong problems, making directives that no one wants to follow, not addressing the real issues that are going on. So yes, these steps might sound if completely new to you, as uncomfortable, time consuming, maybe even sound wasteful if you really care that much about efficiency. But over time, there is more efficiency to be gained by going through these steps and getting to a deeper understanding of everyone around us, the way they think and feel and act around what we're trying to do together in personal and professional environments. There's so much to be unlocked in all of this. And that's why I was so happy to have you on to share this with our audience because one thing we hear, we had Cal Newport on, you know, everyone feels overburden with pseudo productivity, as he calls it. And because we're so time starved, we often then bring that into communication and we try to shortcut and write shorter emails and send text messages and avoid this deeper conversation that needs to happen to avoid miscommunication. You said it so much better than I ever could have that. Amen to 100% of what you just said. And I think maybe the one thing I would add is any of us can learn this. I consider myself a student of this. There's still times when there's things that other people think and feel that I only find out too late. There's still ways that I can get better doing this. There's still questions I miss or times that my co-CEO reminds me, hey, why are you not more curious about this? But if we continue to work at it, we can get so much better. And everything that's in there is something that someone taught me and I learned and I believe everyone can learn it too. Yeah, whether it's a coach, whether it's a co-CEO, whether it's a peer, a colleague or a mentor, that ability to sift and turn, to really reflect on what just occurred, is so impactful. And a lot of times when people meet me and Johnny, they ask like, how did you guys become friends? We seem like polar opposites. One of the key things that we do is we sift and turn and reflect on all of this that's being communicated, whether it's with clients, potential business partners, other people we're working with, other people we're bringing on the team, or even in our personal lives. Hey, I just had this conversation with my wife and I'm really sitting with it. Can you help me give me another perspective here? It's so valuable when you can build that level of comfort and depth in your relationships to improve your communication, to be a better leader, and to just live an all-around rich, fulfilled life. So where can our audience find out more about the Ask Approach? So you can go to www.askapproach.com. That's probably the best way. Also, follow us on Instagram at Ask Approach. And of course, the book is coming out May 7th and that's at Amazon and anywhere books are sold. It's called Ask. Tap into the hidden wisdom of people around you for unexpected breakthroughs in leadership and life. Amazing. Thank you for joining us. It was a pleasure. Thank you for having me. Really enjoy the conversation.