Welcome to the How People Work podcast

‍Intro

In this episode of How People Work, Jordan and Jason dive into more of the research they conducted last year with HR professionals. This week, they discuss what HR leaders have expressed as being the most difficult part of their job — gaining executive support.

Jason and Jordan give an executives’ perspective on how HR can communicate the ROI of people programs effectively and obtain executive sponsorship, driving success for both the HR function and the organization as a whole.

Key ideas and highlights

• The most difficult part of the HR function is gaining executive support.
• Executive support is key to the success of the HR function at any organization.
• HR leaders must understand how people programs fit into key business objectives and how to communicate the ROI effectively.

Word of the day

Yips - Jason wins again!

Timestamps

• 0:00 Intro
• ‍1:56 How the perception of HR’s greatest challenges differs from reality
• ‍4:43 The disconnect between HR leaders and executives when communicating the value of people programs
• ‍5:34 There’s just not enough authority being given to HR.
• 6:24 How HR leaders can effectively command authority
• ‍7:40 Sometimes the executive team doesn’t know what good looks like in terms of people programs
• ‍10:51 HR must align with business objectives in order to gain executive support
• ‍13:16 How to speak to executives about the ROI of people programs
• ‍17:51 The value of people programs is more recognized by Millennials than any other generation
• ‍22:08 Supportive executive teams are essential to HR’s success
• ‍24:05 Why some of the best HR leaders come from the operating side of the business
• ‍25:52 The benefits and culture at your company point directly to your values

Transcript

Jordan (00:05):

How many hours and years of our lives do we spend on work? For nearly all of us, we spend 30 plus years and one third of our days in our vocation, more time perhaps than we spend at rest or at play. But this isn't a problem. Why? Because work is good. Work needs to be integrated deeply into our lives and must be in line with our most important goals and values. And if it is, we have a far more complete and fulfilling life experience. Welcome to the How People Work podcast, where we explore the intersection of how humans think and act and how they apply themselves to their work. When you understand both of these things, you'll be equipped to be insightful, compassionate, and compelling leaders.

(00:50)

Welcome back to How People Work. This is Jordan Peace. I'm here with my co-host Jason Murray, and we're excited to keep talking to you today about our own Fringe HR survey and interviews that we've done. We riffed, we realized Jason and I were just joking with each other about our last episode, we attempted to share with you the highlights of a 15 page document, and we got through about half of page six, not one through six. Just page six. Just page six. So we're going to go back to the top. It was awesome, but it was fun. And we're going to talk a little bit more about the evolution of the HR profession and a question that was posed in the survey and also that I posed right at the end of the episode, which is, what are the greatest challenges you face in your role? This is one of the questions that was posed to these 500 plus respondents. Jason, why don't you take it away around sort of what our curiosity was with that question and what were some of the results of that? And then how does that sort of tie that back into the evolution of the HR role?

Jason (01:56):

So one of the things we were trying to learn from this question was in part perception and in part reality. So what do people perceive to be the greatest challenges? And then what are some of the actual challenges? So some of the questions we ask later in the survey, we're trying to get to the bottom of what maybe some of those actual tensions are, but greatest challenges. There were two ways that we looked at this. So one was which responses out of about 10 that we gave to people were most frequently in the top five by sort of total quantity of selection.

Jordan (02:32):

I see. So these were ranked 1-10.

Jason (02:35):

They were rank order questions.

Jordan (02:36):

This is my greatest challenge and this is my 10th greatest.

Jason (02:39):

So we gave people 10 options and we said, rank your top five. I see. Okay. And so there's two ways we can look at this. One is, which questions most frequently were in the top five. And then we can also look at it from a standpoint of average position in the top five. Got it. And there were actually some different answers depending on how you look at that. So most frequently in the top five, number one was creating a positive and satisfying employee experience. The second was communicating the value of people programs to executives specifically. That's surprising. That's one that we could probably dig into a bit more. And then the third was tools and budget to support employee wellbeing. So primarily the availability of tools and budget to support employee wellbeing. So that was kind of rank order in terms of most frequently in the top five.

(03:32)

So in terms of total number of kind of selections when it appeared in top five, creating a positive and satisfying employee experience was number one. When it came to average position in the top five, there were some little bit of differences, but some overlap in terms of what those responses look like. So number one was aligning people programs with business objectives. Two was soliciting executive support for people programs. And three was support offering fair pay and benefit packages at industry benchmarks. So that one to me was, I don't want to say it was kind of a throwaway answer, but I sort of treat it that way because it's like, yeah, that's sort of HR’s, one of HR’s kind of baseline roles is like, Hey, are we at market in terms of the pay and benefits that we offer? It can be a challenge as we know to figure out what are other companies doing, how are they doing it? Is our pay leveled properly, et cetera, et cetera. And so that one is I think a more conventional part of the HR function in general. But some of the other ones I think are worth digging into. But interested in your responses.

Jordan (04:43):

And I think the first thing that jumps out to me is a couple of these are a little bit similar. That's not a criticism, but I think it's important to have similar questions to see who picks what. But the idea, so in your most frequent top five things that were placed in the top five most frequently, one of the things that jumps right off the page is to us, and you pointed it out, is communicating the value of people programs to executives. And then essentially the same thing in the average position side, which number two was soliciting executive support for people programs. So communicating the value in soliciting support. Kind of similar.

Jason (05:23):

Very similar. They're kind of different sides of the same coin. One is like, Hey, I'm trying to prove ROI, right? The other is I'm trying to garner support to maybe get budget and whatnot, to support this program.

Jordan (05:34):

But you assume that if I could communicate and show our ROI, I would get said support. Right? And I wonder if this answer aligning people programs to business objectives is really tied into the same thing. Because I wonder if it's the frustration of not being able to solicit that support. They're going, well, I, I'm not soliciting support because of something that's my fault. I'm not communicating well enough and I'm not aligning the programs with the business objectives. Because if I were, then the executives would say, oh, I see how the people programs lead to the bottom line, lead to the business objectives. So that all feels very grouped in together with the thing that we talk about all the time, which is there's just not enough authority given to HR people.

Jason (06:24):

And I think one of the things that I took away from interviews that we did is that HR people need to command the authority based on how they communicate and their command of the data that they could be responsible for. And so I think a lot of executives don't know. So we're going to have to segment probably based on company size with some of these. So I would say some of what we'll say is not universally true across all companies, but one of the things, for instance, that I asked, one of the HR professionals that I spoke with was like, well, hey, how do we manage that reality? And what they said was, well, in smaller companies in particular, you know, might have an executive who simply doesn't know what good looks like. So because they don't know what good looks like, they don't know what to ask, they don't have the right questions. It's on the HR person than to be the master who's in command because the CEO -

Jordan (07:27):

Yeah. Yeah.

Jason (07:29):

May not know exactly what to be looking at or paying attention to.

Jordan (07:33):

For those that are audio only. Jason just pointed to me when he said I did, sorry, CEOs who don't know.

Jason (07:38):

Was that an offensive gesture?

Jordan (07:40):

No, I think it was an accurate one. And we went out and we hired a very senior, very professional, very well put together person to be our Head of People, Cassandra. And we mentioned her two episodes in a row now - she actually hosted Bragworthy Culture several times - to do the job because yeah, I think to your point, especially in the areas of compensation, some of the onboarding and what contracts should look like, some of these things were just unfamiliar to me, unfamiliar to our entire executive team. None of us felt like experts on that at the time. And she's been incredible for that reason and for many other reasons that we're even uncovering in terms of her skillset now. But yeah, I mean, point being, that's exactly right. Sometimes the executive leadership doesn't really know what good looks like and they're very reliant on this person to make decisions, prove it out, take action.

Jason (08:43):

Well, and I think this is true of how you operate, I think you would agree, is you want people that you lead to tell you what you should pay attention to. And I think that's one of the challenges.

Jordan (08:58):

I expect them to know more about what they do than I do.

Jason (09:01):

Because you have the humility, I think, to hire people that are presumably experts in the field that we're hiring them to be responsible for.

Jordan (09:09):

Some of us have an easier time hiring people that are smarter than us than others. I'll leave it at that.

Jason (09:15):

I feel like that's a little jab here.

Jordan (09:18):

There was a little jab of myself there, but you know what you can do, what I'm getting at.

Jason (09:22):

So one of the takeaways we had with this was that working with executives in effectively communicating the ROI of people programs in relation to business needs specifically is really essential to the job. And so I don't want this to sound like a knock on HR professionals, but I think one of the things I've come to realize is people like Cassandra are more uncommon than they are common in the profession today. Yeah. Now I think it's moving in the right direction, but in terms of just sheer quantity of people in the HR profession, especially at smaller companies, it's less likely that you have somebody who has that kind of command over how do I talk to executives? How do I understand strategy? How do I understand data as it relates to people programs? I was literally speaking to a company just the other day about some partnership things that we might do creatively with them. And I kind of passingly said, yeah, you mean at a small companies, what happens is you just have an administrative person who gets promoted into an HR job with really no experience, and they're managing HR for a company.

Jordan (10:34):

And the thought is, oh, they're good at juggling a lot of things. They're good at details. They won't screw up the minutiae, just put 'em in this role, it'll be fine.

Jason (10:42):

And now they're managing HR for a company of a hundred, 150, 200 people, right? Yeah. And so again -

Jordan (10:50):

Without the proper training or experience.

Jason (10:51):

Experience, so it's not a knock, but one of the things I think is true that we learned from this is HR is often on this island out there away from the rest of the company. They struggle to get support from decision makers because they maybe don't always understand some of the business contingencies that are going on that are just really necessary in how decision making happens within an organization. And so for you and I that live on the operating side of the business all the time, we're always thinking about how much money do we have? How much money are we making? And it's not simply a profit-driven motive. It's like we got to pay people, we got to make sure the business operates. We got to make sure we're here a year from now.

Jordan (11:34):

In some ways, that's how we caretake the people that we have is we make sure we have a healthy company so that everybody can get paid.

Jason (11:41):

Exactly. But what we're not maybe always thinking about, I think you more so than I am, are thinking about these things by nature of your position is like, well, hey, what's happening with the people and what's the ROI and what's the sentiment and how is employee engagement tying into some of these things? And it's really, I think the burden of HR professionals now to be really savvy with that kind of data and how they communicate and how they surface it up to decision makers. And I think what really crystallized that for me is when I was doing the interviews in particular, there were actually a number of these HR leaders that we interviewed who spent some, or even most of their career on the operating side of the business first. They were VP of operations or even Chief Operating Officers and those kinds of things before they moved into the people function within the organization. And so their grasp of the business needs of an organization were very deep and very holistic.

Jordan (12:48):

So they know how to speak the language.

Jason (12:49):

So they could speak the language of somebody who kind of lives on the operating side, but they could also connect the dots more effectively between, Hey, you know, here's how something like employee wellbeing ties into something that's a critical business metric or a critical business need that we're trying to execute on. And I would say in general, the average HR person probably doesn't have that same grasp on the business needs especially.

Jordan (13:16):

Why don't you think about, let's say your business need is you need to keep your customers, and we're in a difficult economic period right now, for example. And we've been really fortunate, maybe because we're in the benefits world, maybe because we just have excellent people to do an excellent job, probably a combination of the two. But we've done a really nice job keeping our people. But if you would imagine if I'm an HR professional trying to explain to me, here's why we need to take care of our people in the midst of a recession. Here's why we need to prioritize them because they're the ones that talk to our customers, right? They're the ones that keep our customers, our customers. And there's only but so much faking it they can do before they just kind of phone it in. So they're either going to be kind of true believers in the mission and the vision and ascribe to the values and really want to serve our customers and want to treat them the way that we want to treat them.

(14:12)

And that's genuine. Or they're just going to fake it for a little while, fizzle out, phone it in, and then we're going to lose our customers. Connecting those dots together for an executive would just be enormous because an executive can fall into the trap of, and I feel like I'm knocking CFOs, I'm not really trying to do that, but you spend too much time in a spreadsheet, you forget that it's people that keep your customers and it's people that sell new customers, and it's people that build the product. And it's people that use their soft skills here, there in the other place to help the business thrive. And you're just like, well, I don't know. They're just - on the spreadsheet, there's just cost.

Jason (14:56):

And we've had that experience. I mean, dealing with investors and board meetings and things of that nature where you're putting together budgets or scenarios that things can look good on a spreadsheet, but how you actually implement that with real people is a totally different ballgame, right? Altogether. And so things don't always play out in real life the same way they do on a spreadsheet. For sure.

Jordan (15:20):

I think, and I'll let you take back over here in a second, but I think that you highlighted one problem, which sometimes the wrong people are placed into the HR position in small companies, and then those companies don't say, stay small. And then you've got folks that are actually gifted in other areas or simply not trained in a role they probably ought not be in. But I think probably more often than not, maybe you do have a really talented, really good HR person, but your, your CEO in particular is just not a true believer, so to speak.

Jason (15:53):

That goes back to what we talked about.

Jordan (15:54):

They just don’t believe that the people are the ones that make the business thrive and they're just like, oh, people are replaceable, whatever, we just take out a widget, put in a new widget, it'll be fine. And some of that stuff. And I, that's honestly, as I sit here and speak into the microphone, that's who I hope is listening. I hope it's people in my role that need to believe this. They need to get it because these poor HR folks, they might be the most talented people on the face of the earth and they might do all the right things and they just don't have their ear because they're not really willing to accept that their idea or their brilliance or their vision casting or whatever is not enough. That you need a whole bunch of really satisfied talented people that believe in your vision, but also believe that you give a shit in order to, did I just make this an E episode? In order to do the thing and to do it in an impassioned way that your clients are going to respond to? And that's, sorry, this is just what gets me riled up.

Jason (17:08):

Yeah, I mean, me too. It’s spot on.

Jordan (17:10):

If the CEO doesn't believe, none of it matters.

Jason (17:12):

Well, and that's what we talked about in the last episode is companies either get it or they don't. And I think that pertains to people who might be in the HR profession is like, you got to look at the leaders in the company that you work at, and you have to ask yourself, do they get it right or do they not? Because if they're on the sort of side of the philosophical divide that's like people are resources, then -

Jordan (17:36):

You need to find someone else to follow.

Jason (17:37):

It's going to be a rare case where you can convince that individual or team of individuals that there's another way.. But I do want to offer a little hope here according to our data.

Jordan (17:50):

Did I get too dark?

Jason (17:51):

No, no, no, no. I mean, I think it's spot on, right? Because I do think that there is a very clear old way that things have been done that is a bad way to do things, and that those companies will struggle and likely will not exist in the future. And that the faster companies get on board with a different way of thinking, the better. What's more likely to happen, I think, is that the more millennials in particular begin to start taking over and running companies, the more these things are just going to be intrinsically a part of what's done within those organizations.

Jordan (18:24):

Yeah, true. I mean, it's, some of it's just generational solves a lot of this.

Jason (18:29):

Well, and our data supports that. Surprising data, or maybe not surprisingly.

Jordan (18:34):

I'm too anecdotal and emotional. Give us some data, Jason.

Jason (18:37):

So according to the research that we did in the survey results, millennial HR professionals and specifically - so we segmented kind of all the respondents that came in. Millennial HR professionals were most likely to agree that investments in people programs are clearly linked to achieving specific business outcomes. And so my takeaway from that was that -

Jordan (19:00):

And that’s of millennials, gen Xers and Boomers, assuming you don't have Gen Zs in here.

Jason (19:06):

No, we do have Gen Z in here.

Jordan (19:07):

Okay. But that comparison you just made.

Jason (19:10):

So millennial in particular, although Millennial and Gen Z tend to align pretty closely and a lot of the things that we're talking about here. And so that kind of fits the native analog native digital paradigm that we've put forth before. So we believe this suggests that younger employees in particular are actually becoming more astute at thinking about people programs in light of business objectives and feeling that they have the support of executives and shaping those initiatives. And so I think there is a shift that is taking place within the HR profession that millennials and down in particular are feeling that they have a better grasp and understanding of what these things are that they're charged with and naturally then are becoming more astute and educated and equipped at how they communicate the value of those things to the executives and the people leading the companies that they work for.

Jordan (20:10):

What was another question that you asked besides, what are the greatest challenges you faced that you just learned a lot from the responses to? Is there one that would, another one that you would point to?

Jason (20:24):

I think one of the ones -

Jordan (20:28):

Or you can stay home with the same question. Cause I know you sliced the data a lot of ways, so that's totally fine.

Jason (20:33):

Well, I think one of the things that was interesting was people tended not to rank soliciting executive support highly in challenges that they face. So one thing that I thought was going to be true that turned out to be less true was that HR people would generally feel that getting executives to buy into supporting people programs that they're responsible for would rank really high.

Jordan (21:10):

Yeah. I would assume the same.

Jason (21:11):

Based on building the sales team and having lots of conversations with HR professionals, that seemed obvious to me, right?

Jordan (21:17):

Because like 99% of the time, the HR person is all in on fringe things is the coolest thing I've ever seen, but yet our close rate is not 99%. So there's a reason for that.

Jason (21:31):

And so it actually ranked eighth out of nine in terms of total selections, right? Yeah. How many times was it included in the top five? Eight out of nine, but I thought this was really interesting, is when it was included by participants in the top five responses, it consistently fell into the top three. So I think -

Jordan (21:56):

So when it’s a problem, it's a problem.

Jason (21:57):

Exactly. Right? So I mean, feel like now we're kind of beating a dead horse, right? Because it's companies that get it, get it. And the ones that don’t, don’t.

Jordan (22:05):

It’s a horse that needs to be beaten, for lack of a better expression.

Jason (22:08):

I think what this data says is that while many teams do feel there is some support, there can be a lot of variance in the leadership styles from company to company that impact this. And so while people generally feel supported, when they don't, they really don't feel supported. And so I think that's the divide, right? I've got a supportive executive team, or I don't have a supportive executive team. End of story. I think that's a really clear dividing line of what we saw in the data.

Jordan (22:46):

Yeah. And you actually have obviously a ton more sales experience within selling Fringe in particular and having all of these sort of consultative relationships with different HR people and so forth. But it's been clear from the beginning, and that's why you use a phrase, get it, don't get it. Because it doesn't take more than 10 minutes with an HR person to see. And you can see it in their face and their countenance and their language and what questions they ask, whether they're coming from a place of, I have executive support and I'm just here to figure out the best solution for the thing that I'm already supported in. Or I'm desperately looking for something that I think is interesting, and please, God, help me sell this to my executive. Because they're not in.

Jason (23:33):

And most people won’t. I think because they think about their own career and they think about the risk they might be taking. And a lot of times it's like, I'll play it safe. Status quo is safer. And that's human nature. And I mean, I don't fault people too much for that.

Jordan (23:52):

Too much.

Jason (23:52):

Too much. Yeah. Well,

Jordan (23:53):

You do value courage.

Jason (23:55):

Right. Well, I do value courage, I think the thing that I'd say is I always go up the chain and you say, Hey, who's really responsible? It’s the leader.

Jordan (24:04):

Who's really at fault here.

Jason (24:05):

And the buck stops with the leaders who are running the organizations. And so I do want to come back real quick to this notion though, that the most thoughtful of the leaders we interviewed were the ones that had spent notable time on the operating side of the business. They had such a clear understanding. It is fascinating of the value that they bring to the organization. And so I think for them, the compelling story really is if you invest in your people, you'll win. And that was really confirming to me, because I think that's something that we've talked about a lot, is like, Hey, invest in your people. You're going to win. It's a competitive landscape. Companies are literally competing for talent. It's been called a war for talent. It's true. Even today in an economic -

Jordan (24:49):

You should clarify that you don't necessarily mean that every job title in your organization needs to have the highest salary in the company. That's not in the country. That's not what you mean by invest, right?

Jason (25:00):

Right. In financial and non-financial ways. I mean, there is a bottom line aspect to it.

Jordan (25:10):

Yes, financials matter.

Jason (25:12):

But I would say that the piece that's been missing too is, and this is what we're talking about too with people in the HR profession, being able to communicate the value of the ROI. Like the way in which a return on investment looks when you're investing it into your employees is not as quantifiable in the same way as like, Hey, we acquired a new customer and that new customer generates X revenue. Right? We're talking about things like retention. What's the value of having better retention? What's the value of filling roles that you have open faster? What's the value of retaining customers?

Jordan (25:48):

Value of happy employees that are four times more productive, like we talked about?

Jason (25:52):

Exactly. Right. All of those things. But I think good HR people can start to lay out a framework to communicate those things. So I think we believe, and I hope our listeners come around to this too, that top talent comes in and stays because you care for 'em. I mean, I think that's just true. Your benefits and culture that you have at an organization are a huge signal at that point to your values. And HR teams are literally the center of driving those kinds of initiatives. So the efficacy of what you're doing when it comes to benefits and culture, who's responsible for that? It's the HR team. And I'd say that from our point of view, not just from a point of view, I think this is supported by data research and all sorts of things, is that having good benefits, having great culture, all of these things are really not just nice to have. They're imperative to having a successful organization that's going to attract top talent and people that are going to come in and want to stay at your organization.

Jordan (27:01):

Absolutely. Where do you want to take us next week? Jason? We probably should wrap up relatively soon here, but in this document and all this research that you've done, I, I'm thoroughly enjoying going through this. I've read this, but to stop and slow down and discuss it and hear you talk about some of the motivations behind each and every question is super interesting. So maybe talk about where you want to go next, and of course, share the word of the day with us and we'll wrap up.

Jason (27:29):

Yep, of course. So there's a whole bunch of ways I think we can go. So some of it, I'd say we'll see where we end up with some of this as you usual.

Jordan (27:38):

We like the freeform style.

Jason (27:40):

But that being said, I think there's just some interesting dynamics that relate to Fringe in particular with this whole kind of landscape of just a vast multitude of HR tools. So just when you talk about what's at the disposal of an HR person today to help make their job both easier and more effective when it comes to delivering a positive and satisfying employee experience. 20 years ago, there weren't a lot of tools. Now there's literally thousands of technology tools. And so that's one of the things we think a lot about at Fringe. And one of the things that's actually really top of mind in my role at Fringe is like, Hey, how do we help consolidate the landscape here? Because there's just a lot going on in that space that can be really overwhelming. So that's one of the things. I think there's some -

Jordan (28:31):

It's hard enough to have to pitch an executive once or twice a year, but if you've got to add 40 tools to get 40 jobs done, it's all overwhelming.

Jason (28:44):

Some other things around just like how do HR professionals work with data? What are some more effective ways to maybe think about that and reframe it? Are there things beyond attract and retain that are metrics that we ought to be thinking about? It's the topic we've discussed before. Yeah, sure. Mindset shifts and some things that tie into articles and research that we've referenced from third parties prior to this that I think we'll bring into the conversation. So yeah. Cool. There's a whole bunch stuff back.

Jordan (29:15):

Sounds ike three or four or five more episodes. Yeah. Yeah. So do you have a word of the day lined up?Of course. Yeah.

Jason (29:22):

Yep. So the word of day for the next episode. Obstinate.

Jordan (29:26):

Obstinate. Obstinate. That's fun. I'll just tell you a story about my daughter. It'll be great. Been an easy one. Well, thank you guys again for listening to how people work. It's really a joy to record this podcast. Thank you, Jason. You make it easy kind of getting us prepared every week and having good show notes and everything. So thank you for listening, and we'll catch you obstinate listeners next week. All right. That doesn't count. That doesn't count. I got to say it next week. Bye-Bye.

‍

‍Word of the day

• Satiates - said 5:23 ✅

Timestamps

• 0:00 Intro
• ‍2:53 Our own research on what the role of HR should be
• ‍5:38 What has been the traditional role of HR teams?
• ‍7:12 HR’s role goes far beyond the job description
• ‍12:19 Companies either get it or they don’t
• ‍17:01 The average length of time a company remains in the Fortune 500
• ‍18:56 The importance of understanding what and who people are
• ‍22:42 As companies grow, the bad things get worse
• ‍24:04 Our networks are growing at a rate larger than our capacity for relationship
• ‍27:23 Empathy is not an unlimited resource
• ‍30:35 Culture(s) at a large company

Transcript

Jordan (00:05):

How many hours and years of our lives do we spend on work? For nearly all of us, we spend 30 plus years and one third of our days in our vocation, more time perhaps, than we spend at rest or at play. But this isn't a problem. Why? Because work is good. Work needs to be integrated deeply into our lives and must be in line with our most important goals and values. And if it is, we have a far more complete and fulfilling life experience. Welcome to the How People Work podcast, where we explore the intersection of how humans think and act and how they apply themselves to their work. When you understand both of these things, you'll be equipped to be insightful, compassionate, and compelling leaders. All right. Welcome back to How People Work. This is one co-host, Jordan Peace. Across from me is your co-host, Jason Murray. Hey everyone. We're back for episode - I don't even know anymore - 17?

Jason (01:02):

17? 18?

Jordan (01:04):

17? 18?

Jason (01:04):

Somewhere in that -

Jordan (01:05):

We're getting up there.

Jason (01:06):

Ballpark. Yeah. About to graduate.

Jordan (01:08):

About to graduate. Exactly. Thanks for listening today. So we've walked you through some Harvard Business Review articles. We've walked you through some studies that Jason, as I'd like to say has nerded out on, shared with me, and then we've discussed and then shared with you. But today we're actually going to discuss some of our own research, our own survey and data, and some data analysis that we've done internally here at Fringe. And Jason led this project. And so I'd love to kick it to him and have him explain why we did this in the first place and who we surveyed and why. And then we'll get into what we gleaned and what we're doing about it.

Jason (01:47):

Yeah. Well, and shout out to Kip Hart who works here at Fringe and has collaborated with me and he's on the People team at Fringe, technically, but sort of freelances around a little bit in a lot of ways and is super valuable and a great people person.

Jordan (02:05):

Every team try trying to get a piece of him.

Jason (02:06):

Everyone's trying to get a piece of Kip. So, yeah. Well, I guess a little bit of the backstory there is my role within Fringe changed at the beginning of this year, near the beginning of this year where I'd previously been building out the Frowth function, which was sales and marketing and so on and so forth. And that was really my role for the better part of three or four years here at Fringe. And one of the things that we felt was really imperative to our success as a company was, Hey, we've got to continue iterating on what we're building for our audience in the marketplace.

Jordan (02:42):

Because we're designing something to meet the needs of people and the needs of people are changing and evolving over time as new generations and new themes socially. So it just makes sense.

Jason (02:53):

And what Fringe was at the beginning, that's still a very core part of what we are, but I think our, as we've become more knowledgeable about the space just from being in the space, I think we've developed a deeper point of view around what's needed in this arena as it relates to employee experience and what HR teams are trying to do and what is even the purpose of HR and some of those kinds of things. And so as I was moving into this new role, I felt like, well, I've got a lot of opinions on stuff, but let's try and ground ourselves in reality and let's maybe try and validate some of those opinions and really dig in. And so what we put together was a survey with a third party. So we tried to do this as scientifically as possible and got over 500 different HR respondents that participated in this survey that we did where we gave them a series of 10 different questions to self-assess everything from their own perception of their role, metrics that are critical, their engagement with executives and leadership within their organization, needs of the business versus needs of the employees, so on and so forth.

(04:04)

And then we paired that with a couple dozen interviews that we did of actual HR leaders. And so almost all of those were people who work at or for companies that are not customers of Fringe. And so we tried to do this as objectively as possible and not just get people who are already huge fans of what we do or knew what Fringe was to begin with. We talked to a lot of folks that didn't have any idea what Fringe was or maybe had a little bit, but weren't customers of Fringe and were able to glean some really useful insights and information from them.

Jordan (04:41):

Yeah, that's cool. I mean, the last time we approached the market like this was before we started the company and it wasn't even as extensive as this. Cause we didn't have the time nor the money to do this level of research at the time. But I feel like that's the last time that we took a really super objective, scientific, let other people fully speak and not try to influence kind of point of view and it’s super interesting just to see the difference between 2018 and now and what people are thinking about.

Jason (05:14):

So it was great. I mean, you know me and I love doing that kind of stuff. Yeah, course. Cause I get to nerd out on all of that.

Jordan (05:22):

It really satiates a part of your heart then.

Jason (05:25):

It does. Yeah. That's great. Way to work that in there. And so -

Jordan (05:30):

I'm just going to get it in early from now so don't have to worry about it anymore.

Jason (05:34):

Yeah, because the last one, you just slipped it in right at the end there.

Jordan (05:36):

Oh man. Yeah.

Jason (05:38):

So I think the way to start with this one, it might seem a little bit trivial to our audience. Oh yeah, duh. Everyone talks about this, but I think we've got some nuance here that we'll unpack. So the question I want to start with is really just what's been the traditional role of HR teams? So I think there's people listening that are in HR roles themselves, and then there's people listening who are just people leaders, maybe not from an HR specific function. And so I think it's helpful to just level set on the historical context here a little bit. And I know you've got some perspective on that as well.

Jordan (06:16):

I'm trying to think of what show I was watching the other day where this popped up. Oh, it's this goofy show on Apple TV, I think it is, around a tech company that has created a video game. It's like a World of Warcraft type of thing. Mythic Quests is the name of the show and the game. And there's an HR person in the show, but people treat her, she's a counselor of some kind. And so they come in, they lay on the couch and they're just like, yeah, it's been a really tough week. So and so did this and said the other thing, whatever. And then the next person walks in the door and like, Oh, I'm sorry. Are you in a session? I'll come back later. So she calls a meeting and she's like, all right, we're here to all understand what my job is because clearly none of you do. And then I just cracked up. Cause it was just so -

Jason (07:12):

Not a therapist.

Jordan (07:12):

We've, we've had to, we've gotten to, I should say, commiserate with and hear from so many HR leaders over the years of just, here's what my job is, here's what it was stated to be, here's what it turned into. And I'm doing these 47 things that were not in the job description. And then these are all the assumptions that people think my job is. And those are all incorrect.

Jason (07:34):

Wildly inaccurate.

Jordan (07:35):

Wildly inaccurate.

Jason (07:38):

The Office probably didn't help with any of this either.

Jordan (07:40):

Toby, no Toby, poor Toby. Yeah. That's the person we chose to represent the profession on The Office. That was not a good move.

Jason (07:49):

Yeah. Well, I mean, I don't know. I don't want to upset anyone, but ironically there, there's always truth in something that's funny or a kernel of truth in something that's funny.

Jordan (07:59):

It’s got to be, otherwise it's not funny.

Jason (08:00):

And so I think what the kernel of truth was, well, it was largely conventionally a very administrative and compliance related role. And so that was kind of the knock that Michael always had on Toby was he was spoiling all the fun. Yes. But that has traditionally been the role of HR in a lot of companies and a valuable role. I'd say one that I probably underappreciated until Fringe grew to a size that some of those things became necessary. And then we had somebody come in, right, Cassandra, who you all probably heard on the previous episodes that we've had and put in place some things that we needed around compliance and legal things and stuff. It's probably the proper term, right? Legal things.

Jordan (08:45):

Legal Things.

Jason (08:45):

And stuff.

Jordan (08:46):

That's it. Yeah. And stuff. Yeah. You can't forget the stuff. No, no. It is, I mean, that is a truth of the job. And I think that that is what gets the attention. It's essentially, I think you had too many generations of leaders that saw this role as, Hey, your job is to make sure we don't get sued and to make sure people don't get hurt. And if they do get hurt that everyone knows that it's not our fault and whatever. Pay people do these things and they're vital aspects of the company and the company does not run without it. Right. But I even heard as recently as this week, somebody described HR as a pure cost center, and I was just like, do you still believe that?

Jason (09:29):

Yeah, so backwards?

Jordan (09:30):

You really still believe that this is just a cost center just because they administrate the payroll in some cases? No, that is not the case. You understand? And I could go just preach on this, but -

Jason (09:44):

Let's do it.

Jordan (09:44):

I think people just don't understand how much impact there is to someone that's very carefully crafting the experience of what it's like to be an employee at any given company. They just don't get it. That you're going to attract way better people that are 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 times more effective than the more average folks. You're going to attract people that are really bought in, they're going to stay longer, they're going to recruit their friends. They're going to evangelize your company to everybody that they know. So they become clients and customers and users, et cetera. It, it's huge. And then you create an environment, we've talked about this, an environment where people can thrive and they can be happy should they so choose to be happy because that's not the responsibility of the employer fully.

(10:35)

Everyone gets to experience those 8, 9, 10 hours a day, whatever it is that they work because of the experience set up by HR folks. And sure, executive leadership has something to do with that. Everybody has a responsibility to create culture and maintain culture, but the tone is set by the people that are sort of the guardians of the mission, the vision, the values, the who do we recruit, who do we keep? How do we pay 'em and compensate 'em and benefit them? And what do we bring in to add to and enhance the experience? That is so important. And still, like I said, it's just too many generations of people thinking one thing, that it's just taking ages for people to understand the difference.

Jason (11:25):

Yeah, well, and I think, man, that goes back to one of our first episodes where we talked about native analogs and native digitals and that whole paradigm. And I think one of the things that you've got going on is, I mean, somebody who would say such a thing, I would put almost all of my money on betting that they are a native analog.

Jordan (11:45):

Yep. This person definitely was.

Jason (11:47):

Right. So I mean, there's just a way that they see the world that is fundamentally different than how a new generation is coming in and perceives the world. And I think we could probably say that we believe there is actually a right way in some of this to see it. And that was actually something that came out of the research that we did. So we're, we're going to jump around through all this, and you guys listening, don't necessarily have the report fully read out in front of me. We haven't published this thing, we haven't published it, so this is just all fresh.

Jordan (12:18):

Here. We need to publish this thing.

Jason (12:19):

But one of the subheadings that I've got in here is that companies either get it or they don't. And that was kind of a clear takeaway, is like I've always had some sense maybe overly optimistic that, you know, can try and pull companies along or you can try and convince people that there's a better way to go about it. And I think what I've seen both in my own experience in what we've done with Fringe and then in surveying and talking to all of these people leaders, is that there's just companies that get it, what you were just talking about, or they don't. Period.

Jordan (12:56):

So to use a very southern colloquialism, you can put lipstick on a pig, but it's still a pig.

Jason (13:02):

Yeah. You've told me other ones too that are, I mean, I feel like people might know that one. Yeah. But there was one recently you brought up that was about tomato farmers and the field and something I was like, man, that one's really obscure.

Jordan (13:15):

That is out there. I don't remember. I wish I could recall at the moment.

Jason (13:18):

I'm not from the south.

Jordan (13:19):

Sometimes they just have to come to me in the moment. Otherwise I always know they’re part of my kind of nomen or vernacular until it comes out very deep-rooted and then I'm like, oh yeah, I forgot about that phrase. But you know what I mean? And we've done this, we've convinced companies, we've just strong armed 'em, for lack of a better expression, to do what we think is right. And it flopped. Because they didn't actually believe it. They didn't actually get it to use your word. And it's that lipstick.

Jason (13:53):

So one of the things we found, and I think this makes a ton of sense, but it's worth stating because obviously there's a lot of companies out there that don't get it still that, and if the CEO and executives at an organization value culture, that's going to grease the skids for so many of the initiatives that HR ultimately needs to help. And so at companies where culture is not a priority, conversely there can be just a significant tension surrounding how programs get rolled out, how people data is used, even how you think about ROI or I should say how people data is even misused. And so I heard about, this was so shocking to me, and one of the interviews that we did, a woman who is previously Head of Benefits at a large manufacturing company with about 4,000 employees.

Jordan (14:47):

I was worried you were going to name - say the name for a second. I'm not going to say names. Stop. Jason.

Jason (14:49):

We're not going to name names. No. But this was so wild. So it was known from their data that a particular warehouse was the culprit of some bad turnover and bad engagement data from surveys that they had done and retention rates and so forth. And when they looked at it in isolation, so when they actually segmented the data as you should, if you're really trying to get to the root of what a problem is and what's going on, it was clear that there was a need to address matters at the level of that warehouse. But then what this HR leader told me is that when presentations to the executive team were done, that they only shared averages that smoothed the data and it hid the real problem because people on the HR team knew that executives wouldn't be receptive to that data or they would errantly blame people on the HR team for what was going on. And so that's going on inside of companies is that that was obviously a company that doesn't get it. And so therefore people are in their jobs, they're trying to protect themselves, right? They don't want to share bad news because bad news might reflect back on them. Or there's executives that are not going to understand or accept or -

Jordan (16:11):

Or not even care to understand or seek to understand.

Jason (16:14):

Or I would say in that case, this is probably just a truth universally about leadership is like, well, the person to blame is the leader. If you got a problem, you got to own that. And so that's right. Maybe you didn't directly contribute to why somebody left that particular warehouse, but it's your responsibility as a leader and executive of that company to company towards it, to move towards it. So this topic too, I think is an interesting one about companies because I think there's just a really sort of philosophical bottom line kind of thing that wittles those companies out. And I know something that you've talked about a lot in the past is what we'll see in five to 10 years. The companies that get it are the ones that are going to be around. And actually something that I think is really fascinating in that regard, and that we may have talked about this before, is the average length of time that a Fortune 500 company remains in the Fortune 500.

Jordan (17:23):

We did. I've forgotten the stat. Do you recall? Yeah. No, I really don't.

Jason (17:26):

But yeah, it's stunning to me. 20 years.

Jordan (17:28):

20 years.

Jason (17:30):

So the companies that are enduring are the ones that we remember, but then the whole rest of it, it's just a revolving door. And I think that speaks to the fact that building an enduring company, one is just really difficult to begin with. There's a whole lot of things that go on in the world that just make it hard to build a company and sustain over a long period of time.

Jordan (17:50):

You get good at one thing and the world doesn't need that thing anymore, and you just become irrelevant.

Jason (17:55):

But I think one of the most difficult things is, when I think about it, I'm like, well, yeah, you could sustain a company over 20 years by brute force. Yeah. I mean, we're four years, four and a half years into Fringe now. Yeah. Five. So you're like, you think about that and you're like, well, we're 25% of the way into 20 years. And could you imagine forcing it for another 10 or 15? Possibly. I mean, it wouldn't be enjoyable.

Jordan (18:24):

It would be miserable. But because I could imagine how that would be done.

Jason (18:27):

Yeah. You could do it. Right. And so I think that speaks to the fact though, that companies, how companies approach their business strategy, the treatment of people within their organization, that's going to flow out of a philosophical point of view. What do you believe about people, right? Yeah. And is it important to do things and treat them in some way as a stakeholder within the organization? Or are they just resources?

Jordan (18:56):

Well, I mean, let's be honest, that's why we're doing this podcast. You kind of summed up our secret motivation for doing this podcast in the first place is that we're trying to help peopl, leaders understand what and who people are, right? That they're not actually just resources. They're actually very, very, very complex creatures that have to be grown in specific ways, encouraged in specific ways, a certain environment. We talked about plants in the last episode that you just, it's just water and light. It's like that you have to create a very complicated greenhouse to grow people. It is not easy. And so the more you understand about what people are and what they're like, and how they think and what makes them tick, and why they get out of bed in the morning and why they might stay at a company or come to a company, et cetera, et cetera, the better you can do and the more you can go from, yeah, I think I get it. I care about people to a place of, I care about people, and I'm really knowledgeable about how to lead them. So it's just funny. I hear you say that, and I'm like, yeah, that's why we're sitting here.

Jason (20:07):

Yeah. Well, and that I don't binary kind of paradigms. And so I think there's this sense that, well, those things are inherently at odds, and that that's sort of the conventional thinking. It's like, well, I'm going to invest in people, but it means that I am sinking money into something that ultimately doesn't drive a sort of exponentially bigger pie, if you will. And I think that's just a ridiculous sort of presupposition. And that goes to that philosophical point of view. It's like, do we believe we're playing a zero sum game where there's limited resources and we're just trying to carve 'em all up as shrewdly possible amongst this sort of ever-increasing pool, like employees and shareholders and investors and our customers and all this stuff. And we just got to be as strategic as possible.

Jordan (21:04):

Just build a spreadsheet, right?

Jason (21:06):

Or as we've said before, is there a path forward? One in which human flourishing is the convergence of the unique needs that individuals have employees within your organization to live satisfying and fulfilling lives and the business to grow and accomplish its mission in the world. And I think we've been continuously,

Jordan (21:29):

Which in turn, almost regardless of what the mission is of a particular company, it probably exists to serve the human race in some capacity.

Jordan (21:39):

So it's not just the employees and the investors and the executives, but it is the customers. It is. Or the users, to use a tech word, everybody around and inside that company that flourishes if you do it right.

Jason (21:54):

Yeah. Well, and I think that's hard. I mean, it's probably worth maybe playing the devil's advocate a little bit here. Well, I, I'll kind of put the question to you is when companies get big, don't bad things start to happen. So if you think about larger companies, that's where a lot of the negative press tends to be. And it might be because they're more public, it's more obvious. But I would say it's sort of as an operating principle, the larger things get, the more likely there is to be corruption, a dehumanizing aspect to it. It's like it's harder to manage things when they get bigger.

Jordan (22:42):

I think the bad things get worse. So from day one, bad things happen. You remember there, there's five founders in our company. Yeah, that's true. Who're having conflict on the first day. But the only thing that needed to happen when you and I had conflict -

Jason (22:56):

Reconciliation.

Jordan (22:57):

We sit down and personally reconcile through that, and then we get back to work. That is a five minute fix, but it's so transparent and obvious. But things get, there's layers and layers of shields and privacy and partition walls and so forth where you don't see what's going on. And I might not know what's happening with your team, and you don't know what's happening with her team. And so conflict builds up, or somebody makes a decision that's a little bit in a gray space, and then it gets a little bit less gray until all of a sudden it's just completely unethical. But where's the checks and balances? Who's seeing that? Et cetera. So I just feel like there's a relational breakdown as organizations get bigger. So because there's not that same sense of accountability, or in our case, even friendship, there's not a lot of opportunity for these things to come to light before they get big and ugly, and then all of a sudden it's just too late.

Jason (24:04):

I've been listening to this audio book called Sapiens, and it's interesting. I mean, I think it’s probably not one of the best books that I've listened to or read recently, but they bring us some interesting points in this. And one of them is how human culture and society evolved. And one of the points that they bring up that I've heard before is the human capacity for structured relationship, if you will. And so obviously, we lived in very tribal kind of groups a long time ago, and those tribes eventually grew into cities and town cities, cultures that became more monolithic in nature. But what a lot of psychologists or sociologists have found is that the human capacity for relationship really doesn't extend beyond about a hundred people. 200 at most.

Jordan (24:58):

I mean, our generation feels that, don't we? Right. Right. Cause in our childhood, that's all there was, right? I mean, a hundred people, maybe.

Jason (25:06):

Because the network -

Jordan (25:06):

That you knew the names of or whatever your network was, the people geographically located with you, they rode the school bus with you, right? Yeah. They were in your class, maybe even not the entire school, but just the folks that were in your classes. Maybe you belonged to some civic organization or place of worship or something like that. And so there was a group there, and then that's it.

Jason (25:27):

Yep.

Jordan (25:28):

That's it. And you weren't responsible for knowing, and a couple of neighbors, and you weren't responsible for knowing anybody else. You didn't think -

Jason (25:34):

Well and you really couldn't, right? Yeah, because we didn't have internet.

Jordan (25:39):

We couldn't, anyway. Yeah.

Jason (25:40):

There wasn't the internet, you weren't connected with people across the world. There wasn't even a way to know what was going on across the world or even across the town without really putting in some effort to find out. And so our networks have sort of become looser and less connected, and there's all sorts of implications for that. But I think what's interesting is if our capacity to maintain kind of a healthy structure of communal relationships is kind of capped at, say, a hundred or at most 200 people, individuals, what do you do when you've got a company that's a thousand people? Or 2000?

Jordan (26:22):

I'll tell you what you do. You redefine relationship. So let's say you go from a hundred to a thousand, then you have to give one 10th of the empathy, one 10th of the time, one 10th of the care.

Jason (26:34):

Well, that's what happens, right?

Jordan (26:34):

That's what happens, right? Because you don't have a choice. You don't know what I mean, I remember interviewing back when this podcast was called BragWorthy Culture. I interviewed, I believe her name was Mariah Steiner. I'll have to go back and check on that. But she was a sociologist, and I brought up a theory that I'd had for a long time around empathy, and the fact that I actually stopped watching the news because I feel like there's so much that I need to be empathetic for in my family, my extended family, my friend group, and now the company that I didn't have empathy left to hear about a shooting or a fire or someone that drowned or whatever was happening on the news. I'm like, I can't even feel it.

Jason (27:20):

Well, we're literally not conditioned to be able to,

Jordan (27:23):

Right? So it was interesting because she called that empathy fatigue. She said, that's what you're experiencing. You're experiencing empathy fatigue. And she didn't describe it in this hundred person way, but she described it as you have a capacity for empathy for others. And it, there's just a limit to it. Yeah. It's not an unlimited resource. And the minute you get to a place where that fatigue gets bad enough, you just stop feeling it all together, even for the people that you ought to be feeling it. Right? Because you're just tired. And I was like, that is so fascinating. And you feel that in a big organization where, I was just talking about this today with somebody that in a small group, there's 15 people in an organization, somebody quits. We didn't actually have anybody quit until we were 40 some people, which was kind of cool. But at 15 people, somebody quits, it's, I mean, the next day is a funeral. It's just like -

Jason (28:23):

They're gone.

Jordan (28:23):

What? Remember -

Jason (28:24):

What are we going to do?

Jordan (28:25):

Remember Jill? Sorry. We actually have somebody named Jill that still works here. I should use a different name. But remember Jack? We have a Jack too. Oh, we have some stereotypical names. But you, you're reminiscing about it. You're telling stories. But in a thousand person organization, somebody leaves or gets fired or whatever.

Jason (28:50):

10 Jacks, 10 Jills.

Jordan (28:51):

There might be five seconds around the water cooler proverbially that you would be like, oh, yeah, I worked on a project with that guy. Well, he was cool. Well, anyway, how was your weekend? And then there's no mention to this person for the rest of the company's existence, and it's something that's natural about that. Sad, but natural given the capacity that we lack.

Jason (29:17):

Yeah. Yeah. Well, and I think maybe what kind of tying it back into this idea of companies get it or they don't. Yeah. I think for you and I, it's often easy to think of it in our context, which is a smaller company. And so the span of control, I guess you'd say is a little bit easier in some respects. Although there's lots of stuff that's difficult still, even with the company, the size that ours is. And I'd say as the company gets bigger, that's where your managers become so much more important. And I think that's true for us. And so I'm not suggesting that the folks that manage people outside of us aren't equally as important. But when you blow that out to a company that's 10,000 employees, if a company with 10,000 employees talks about culture, it's kind of like, what are you talking about? You don't have a culture. Right? You have cultures. Many cultures.

Jordan (30:10):

Yeah. Hundreds probably, right?

Jason (30:11):

Yeah. Probably limited to -

Jordan (30:13):

As many as you have managers.

Jason (30:14):

A hundred employees at most in these kind of pockets or teams or the man. Right? Exactly. And so I think it becomes all the more important than ask the question, how do we transmit the things that are most important into these cultures that are going to look different? Because it, it's not like you want to -

Jordan (30:32):

Now you’re talking about what HR’s job should be.

Jason (30:34):

Yes. Right.

Jordan (30:35):

Yeah. And there's tons more to talk about here. But yeah, it was a fantastic segue on your part that which we really have just in time to wrap up just in time to wrap up the episode, but we'll continue next week with this. But yeah, that's the whole point right there. There are in large organization that HR function is all the more important because it's so much more complicated to try to figure out how to take values and distill them amongst a dozen or a hundred or 500 cultures, which are probably as many managers as you have, is another culture.

Jason (31:11):

And that's a different job, a different, than what it's been conventionally.

Jordan (31:14):

It’s totally different job. That job that could be completely time consuming and could dominate 80, 90% of teams, I'm not a person, obviously at that level. You have a team, but that probably should take up the majority of the time for HR people and those defensive tasks, paying the bills, getting people onboarded, offboarded, et cetera, et cetera. Those things should be much more technology oriented, much more using tools and software to accomplish, right? Because tools and software don't have the EQ to solve the problem that we're talking about. Right? Right. So yeah, I'm excited to talk about the rest of this, which I'm realizing now is going to be about six episodes.

Jason (31:56):

Probably. So yeah. It's the rest of the season.

Jordan (31:59):

The rest of the season. But that's okay. This is our bread and butter. So Jason, tell us about, obviously they know about next week, because we're going to talk about this, we're going to keep going with this idea of, first, what the HR role has evolved into. We're going to talk about some of the greatest challenges, the HR folks, the respondents, the 500 respondents plus that we have, say that they face, some of which was like, duh. And some of which was like, oh, really? I, okay. Was even surprising to us. And we're steeped in this full-time and have been for nearly five years. So excited to talk about this more. But Jason, team me up for my word of the day, if you even have one. I do. You do. Of course you do. Word of the day for the next episode is You'll like this one: yips.

(

32:46

)

Yes. Maybe instead of saying yips, I'll just struggle to speak for a while. Yeah. I'll just represent yips and maybe the host, and you'll just be Yes, there. Yes. I'll be the fool. I'll be the, the jester. Well, great, great. Yips should not be too difficult if I remember to do it. Again, thank you for listening. Appreciate you guys listening. Would love your feedback. Would love any suggestions that you have on topics after we go through this 27 episode series on this survey that we just did. And we'll need something to talk about on the back end of that. But again, thanks for listening. We'll catch you next week on How People Work.

‍

‍Key ideas and highlights

• Those regarded as the greatest player in their sport of all time almost always have completely different playing styles. So why do we often fall into the fallacy that excellence is objective?
• People often don’t know what their strengths are, especially the younger generation. It’s their managers’ job to help them figure it out.
• Excellence is idiosyncratic. We must train up our people in a way that forces them to ask: “what does good look like for me?”

“We need to unlearn that we must become someone else to be excellent.”

— Jordan Peace

Word of the day

• Cordial - said 32:54 ✅

Timestamps

• 0:00 Intro
• ‍2:10 Recap of Episode 16
• ‍3:42 The Theory of Excellence - is performance universal or idiosyncratic?
• ‍4:45 Sports as an example of the fallacy of excellence
• ‍11:30 Excellence cannot necessarily be taught
• ‍13:06 How do you define the ideal candidate?
• ‍14:02 How to train up your people
• ‍16:44 You need to figure out what your people’s strengths are, especially your younger people
• ‍18:27 We need to unlearn the fallacy that we must become someone else to be successful
• ‍21:14 The idiosyncrasies in excellence force us to ask: “What does good look like for me?”
• ‍22:04 The right way to develop your people is by the language you use
• ‍24:09 What’s wrong with just saying, “good job!”
• ‍27:34 Why you should teach your people to think strategically
• ‍32:00 How pointing people back to their past successes will help them succeed in the future

Transcript

Jordan (00:05):

How many hours and years of our lives do we spend on work? For nearly all of us, we spend 30 plus years and one third of our days in our vocation. More time perhaps, than we spend at rest or at play. But this isn't a problem. Why? Because work is good. Work needs to be integrated deeply into our lives and must be in line with our most important goals and values. And if it is, we have a far more complete and fulfilling life experience. Welcome to the How People Work podcast, where we explore the intersection of how humans think and act and how they apply themselves to their work. When you understand both of these things, you'll be equipped to be insightful, compassionate, and compelling leaders. Welcome back to How People Work. This is your host, Jordan Peace, along with my co-host, or am I the co-host? This is Jason Murray, either way.

Jason (00:58):

Co-both?

Jordan (00:58):

We're both co, I guess co-founders. True. We are both co-founders of Fringe, as many of you know. Our podcast is about people and how they work, how they think, how they do their work, how they go about life and make decisions. And we were talking last week about an article from Marcus Buckingham and Ashley Goodall called The Feedback Fallacy. I think we got through half-ish of that article and we're going to try to tackle the other half today, starting with fallacy number three or The Theory of Excellence.

Jason (01:36):

Yeah. Well, and just as kind of a quick recap, because I love, well, first off, I just say I love these kinds of articles to begin with, where there's just kind of counterintuitive things and things that you know, you feel like are sort of conventional business wisdom. And then you come across some actual science and you're like, wait a second, we're doing this all wrong.

Jordan (01:54):

That’s definitely your favorite stuff.

Jason (01:55):

That is my favorite thing.

Jordan (01:56):

I mean, I love it too, because it flies in the face of conventional wisdom, but when you add this science angle, then you -

Jason (02:03):

Yeah, you feel justified. Yeah, right. It's only right,

Jordan (02:06):

Exactly. Well, I knew this, but I don't know why I knew this.

Jason (02:10):

We've considered this from every possible angle now, and we have arrived at the truth here, which actually is ironically one of the theories that we covered in a previous episode. The theory of the Source of Truth. So yeah, we think we've covered some interesting things around how we learn. Some of the takeaways I had from it, just as kind of a quick recap, giving attention to our strengths or getting attention to our strengths rather from others catalyzes learning versus the opposite. So when we get attention to weaknesses, it tends to smother it. It triggers that fight or flight mechanism in our brains that's just kind of been built in there in our biology. And so when we're talking about learning, it is something that I think requires rethinking a little bit how we're actually doing that, enabling the people that we work with and potentially supervise. And then theory of source of truth quickly again, is just basically we're more aware of a reality that we perceive. And so trying to speak on behalf of somebody else essentially, and saying that we kind of are arbitors of the truth entirely in the world, when that may not actually be the fact and I had a really weird example that I shared that was from scientific research, but chickens and shovels

Jordan (03:41):

Chickens and shovels and coops.

Jason (03:42):

And all that kind of stuff. You'll have to listen to that episode. I'm not going to restate it here. So this last one I actually think to me is the most interesting and exciting of the three theories that they talk about in this. So it's the theory of excellence and the false notion that we often have is the sense that performance is something that's universal, that we can break it down, that we can describe it in really exact terms, and that say, the way that I do something, I could teach you exactly how to do that, and it's going to transfer perfectly into the same kind of excellence. And so that is the fallacy. And so what's actually true, or being put forth by Buckingham and Goodall as the actual case here is that excellence is idiosyncratic. And I think that's just a really interesting place for us to start the conversation.

Jordan (04:39):

That should have been the word of the day, but I got to stick with what you gave me.

Jason (04:43):

And I would've used it.

Jordan (04:45):

It would've been built in. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think this is bad news for sportscasters. What they love to do is describe and analyze and tell you, this is exactly why this team won and this team didn't win. And Jokic had 41 points, but only four assists, and therefore, yada, yada, yada. So I think, but from experience for me, I've seen it on both sides of the coin. I’ve seen my own inability to transfer something that I'm good at to someone else. And that just kind of break down, even though I feel like I'm giving them the fullness of everything that I know and everything that I've done to get good at whatever the thing is that I'm good at, which is only a few things. And I've also experienced even more often being on the other side of that, even today, I had a boxing lesson today, and there's the guy, he manages a bunch of fighters.

(05:43)

He used to fight himself anything from bare knuckle to traditional boxing. And dude's just tough. And he's just trying to teach me. And there was a mirror over his shoulder, and I'm watching him do things and I'm trying to do what he's doing, and I look ridiculous. And I'm just like, I'm leaning too far over. I'm like, I'm not mirroring his movements at all. I think I am until I get a picture of it. And I'm like, oh boy, I, I'm a long way off from excellence here, but I think that I don't, and then what he was encouraging me with is he's like, you don't have to be me to be good at this. You're going to develop a style. You're going to develop sequences and things that are more natural to you that just like your body likes to do those things and it doesn't like to do the things that I do. And it was interesting to just have a conversation about that today. Not even thinking about the podcast and what was upcoming.

Jason (06:47):

It is pretty fascinating. I was actually listening to a podcast driving here for this, and they were talking about mixed martial arts, and people probably have all sorts of feelings about it. I think it's fascinating though, because these guys that get into the ring and women as well to fight each other, they have different styles. I mean, they're coming from TaeKwonDo, Jiu Jitsu, boxing. There's all sorts of all over the place. And so, I mean, again, they're all athletes that are at the top of what they do, but they all have different styles and approaches to it. But I do think what's interesting in that though is there are, I guess you'd call 'em rules of engagement or rules to the game, which I think we even talked about in a previous episode. Part of what makes something fun is there's rules to it. And so we know the parameters within which we're actually competing or doing something like that.

(07:41)

But the way in which you actually achieve success or excellence can be very different. So I mean, you and I both love basketball. I love the NBA. I know you, not so much, we both love college basketball though. But I think about guys like LeBron James or Steph Curry, I mean both excellent, right? Basketball players, but their games could not be more different from one another. And so it gets into the whole how do you talk about who the best players are and this and that. And it becomes really difficult because the excellence isn't just entirely objective. It's an argument that people have ongoing.

Jordan (08:25):

Those debates never get settled. They never fully settle, right? Because there's just always something to point to. Oh, did you know that his plus minus in the last eight years of his career was better than the other? There's always something, but because the definition of what that excellence is is just unclear and it's not the same for each one. So I mean, if LeBron was shooting 38% from three and doing everything else he was doing, he'd be having the season of his life. But if Steph's shooting 31% from three, he's probably just not an effective player in that season. So it's completely different. I love you jotted down the show notes Greg Maddox and Randy Johnson. So for me, I'm just such a baseball guy. The difference between those two is just so dramatic. And nothing against Randy Johnson. He is a pitcher, but he's also a thrower. Right? I mean, the guy just has heat and stuff and talent just dripping out of his arm. He could just make the ball do incredible things, but at a really high speed at what, a  6’11” frame, I think he has. So he's a lot closer to the plate. Ridiculous than anybody else. Anyway, by the time he releases the ball, I've been waiting to talk about sports on this podcast. This is fun.

Jason (09:44):

He’s very scary looking too.

Jordan (09:46):

And very scary looking. Randy Johnson. Extremely.

Jason (09:48):

For those who may not know. Yeah.

Jordan (09:50):

Yeah. I mean, he had the mullet and just crazy eyes and -

Jason (09:55):

A face only a mother could love.

Jordan (09:58):

Yes. A face for radio. And I mean, he just, he's overpowered people. And then there's the professor Greg Maddox out there with his six foot one maybe frame, right? He doesn't even look all that athletic.

Jason (10:12):

Top end speed was like 89, 90, maybe.

Jordan (10:15):

Fastball. And he just carved people up because they never knew what he was going to throw and where it was going to be. And he just outthought everybody. Right? And they both ended up in the same hall of fame making very similar speeches in front of a group of their peers. And I mean, it's just such an obvious, well, I could give a whole inspirational speech on this topic too. Cause you just think about, we tend to compare ourselves to others, and as we're trying to achieve something and be excellent, and it's well documented even on this podcast, my imposter syndrome I’ve felt for a number of years in the CEO role. And I could give other examples of leadership that was offered me that I denied early in my life because I'm like, well, I'm not that guy or woman, that person, whatever. I'm not that. They are like this and I am like this, and therefore I can never be excellent at what they're excellent at. And it takes a long time to unlearn a fallacy that's taken hold. And you go, oh, actually there's a way I can be excellent. I just have to do it in my own way. And nobody can really teach that, necessarily.

Jason (11:30):

Well, I think what's helpful is we probably measure people against standards that maybe we haven't even articulated. And so when it comes to, say, giving feedback, for example, it's like, Hey, I'm giving you feedback against some kind of ideal, right? Presumably because why else? How else do you judge the merit of the feedback of anything, right? But is that ideal actually appropriate given the individual that you're talking to? So I mean, even just come back to the analogy we were using. I always think about the coaches that are coaching guys like LeBron and Steph. It's like, what does a coach say to Steph, right? Steph's having a bad shooting night. What is the coach? You're not going to take the guy -

Jordan (12:17):

Keep your elbow up!

Jason (12:18):

Who's like the leading three point shooter literally of all time and tell him, Hey, we need you to drive to the basket more and dunk it or something. Right? You need to dunk on that guy. You need to be more LeBron James. It would be ridiculous. And so I think in the same way though, you start bringing that into our context in a workplace setting. It's like, what are the assumptions that we're making without even thinking about in terms of what we expect from people or an ideal that we're maybe holding them to. And then we're giving them feedback and it's like, well, do you have a Steph Curry on your team? Do you have a LeBron James on your team? And then are you giving them feedback that's trying to push them into some other kind of model that really doesn't even fit the kind of player they are to begin with?

Jordan (13:06):

Yeah, it's so true. It makes me think about this whole ideal candidate profile idea. And I'm like, how do you define that?

Jason (13:17):

Well -

Jordan (13:18):

There's tasks that need to be done, and people have to have enough expertise to do those tasks.

Jason (13:24):

So there's skills.

Jordan (13:24):

There's skills.

Jason (13:26):

Which can you dribble a basketball? Can you shoot the basketball? Right? Is there a level of proficiency in some fundamentals? But I think I would also separate values from what we might call competencies.

Jordan (13:41):

Right, yeah.

Jason (13:42):

Are you a team player? Do you share the ball? How do you approach the game? What's your mindset?

Jordan (13:46):

Right? A good teammate.

Jason (13:47):

Are you a good teammate? That's something totally different than what are the actual areas of excellence that you thrive in as an individual where you're going to contribute in a very specific and tactical way to the team.

Jordan (14:02):

I guess it begs the question then, if this idea of excellence is not necessarily reliably transferable, then how is it that we develop people, come, let's use an employee for an example. People come into an organization, they've got the basic skills, they understand the software that they need to use, they know how to write a decent email, they can keep up, but how do we develop them? Let's say that I'm a manager of some kind, and I'm trying to become a VP, and I see this person and I see some potential, and I'm like, well, I need to get them up to take my job so that I can go take that job type of thing. How do I transfer? How do I do it then?

Jason (14:54):

Yeah. I don't know that I have an answer per se, but I have thoughts.

Jordan (15:00):

It's an open question.

Jason (15:01):

Around what it might look like.

Jordan (15:03):

I'm not really asking you. I'm asking us.

Jason (15:05):

Yeah. So I think part of it is the way in which that person would do your job is probably different than the way you would do it. Yeah. It's a good place to start. And I'd say something that I've found to be true in my own experience with Fringe and prior working with people, managing people, trying to train and develop them is that 1. It's really hard work managing and leading people and developing them, because the job isn't a corrective one. The job isn't holding up some ideal of excellence and just kind of whipping people in the shape until they perform according to that exact profile, right? Because as we're talking about here, it doesn't work. And I think in my own experience, I've seen it just demoralizes people, right? Yeah. Because you're, what you're doing then, as we've talked about in other places with this article, is you're focusing on weaknesses versus strengths probably. And when you do that, you're actually smothering them because you're triggering that flight mechanism in their brain, right?

Jordan (16:11):

People aren't plants. I think about, I've got a row of five hostas out front in the flower bed there, and they get the exact same amount of water and the exact same amount of sunlight, and they grow at the exact rate, and they look identical to each other. There's really no noticeable difference between these plants. But people do not work that way. You can't just give 'em the same water in the same sunlight and then just boom, look, they all grew and they're all identically successful and identically excellent. Yeah. It's like the opposite of that.

Jason (16:44):

So I think the hard work of people who lead people is figuring out what their strengths are. And maybe some people who are maybe a little more mature, mid or later career, they have a better sense of themselves and what they're good at.

Jordan (17:01):

They can help their manager, they can give them a lot of that information.

Jason (17:05):

But I would say that's a hard thing. I'm just going to speak for myself here. I probably didn't have a good sense of what I really felt like my strengths were until past the age of 35. I'm 39 now. And so really in the last four years, is it that I feel like I have a sense of, yeah, I'm really good at this. I love doing this and this other stuff over here. I'm really not. Before that, it was just a ton of exploration, try and fail.

Jordan (17:36):

You're not 39 till August, I just realized.

Jason (17:38):

That's true. Yeah. Actually, I'm aging myself.

Jordan (17:41):

Close enough. Hey, by the time the episode airs, you might be 39.

Jason (17:46):

Yeah. And so I think that's something to keep in our minds too, is like, well, if you're, say a mid-level manager, for example, you probably have a lot of younger people that you supervise who probably don't have a great sense of, Hey, what am I awesome at? I don't know. I'm trying to figure this out. Can you help me figure it out? And I think that's the hard work. Cause it just takes more time. As a leader, you've really got to invest in people and get to know 'em and really watch how they work in order to understand what they are actually strong at. And so it's not just being a task master, right? It is being that great coach who understands who the players are and what their strengths are and how they all fit together.

Jordan (18:27):

Well, I think that's part one of two, and this maybe more parts here is, I won't say of two, but is identifying those strengths and then maybe developing those strengths is part of that too. Giving people opportunities to use those things. And you give them trust and autonomy and so forth. But also, at least, and I don't think I'm alone in this. I think people need to unlearn the fallacy that they must be someone else in order to be successful. Yes. Even when you're 35 or 39 or 29 or 54, whatever, I think people carry around that fallacy for most if not all of their lives, that in order to be whatever this ideal they have in their mind, they have to be like him or her. And so I think that's part of the leadership responsibility too, is helping people unlearn that and helping people who might hopefully look up to you as a manager to go, Hey, I don't want you to become me. That's not the point.

Jason (19:31):

It's really funny. I have to share this because I just think it's an incredible anecdote. Sports, again, sorry, sports episode. But Marcus Buckingham talks about this in one of his books, a different book where he goes through some of these things as well. And it just came to mind because Lionel Messi is coming to the United States, which is very exciting. And so might actually, yeah, might actually get to see him play in my lifetime, which would be awesome. But he talks about Messi compared to say, Ronaldo, arguably two of the greatest players of all time.

(20:08)

But he talks about Messi, which I didn't know this about him because I'm like a casual soccer slash football fan. And if you go watch replays of Messi dribbling the ball and taking it into score and things like that, he uses his left foot about 90% of the time. Wild would mean meaning not just how he kicks to strike the ball and score. He literally touches the ball 90% of the time with his left foot. So he's so left foot dominant in how he dribbles and handles the ball. And you'd think if a guy touches the ball 90% of with his left foot, that would be a weakness, potentially?

Jordan (20:51):

Something you could pull -

Jason (20:51):

Potentially, right?

Jordan (20:53):

Because in basketball you're thinking, well, if he always goes left, I just guard him on that side.

Jason (20:56):

You know what he's going to do. Yeah. And obviously it doesn't matter, right? Because he still is incredible.

Jordan (21:01):

You could get by you no matter what.

Jason (21:02):

And Ronaldo is much more balanced than his approach and how he handles the ball and things like that. And I just thought that was crazy because I had never realized that about his play and style of play.

Jordan (21:12):

That is wild.

Jason (21:14):

So just I guess part of the point being that when we say excellence is idiosyncratic, it doesn't just mean, oh, there's little differences, but it's kind of the same still, right? It's actually the idiosyncrasies within excellence can be so massive, like Messi and Ronaldo level that I think you really do have to assess, okay, what does good look like for me? Or what does good look like for the people that I manage and supervise? It's probably something very different per individual.

Jordan (21:48):

So this article that Buckingham and Goodall put out, that kind of the next section that it leads into is really around a framework of helping people develop, helping people solve problems, helping people see things that they may not see -

Jason (22:02):

Some practical ways to -

Jordan (22:04):

Self revelation, some of that. So I think it'd be interesting to talk about that a little bit as we're sort of trying to answer our own question or my question, well, then how do we develop people if there's no ideal to guide them towards, right? So I don't know if you want to start with the table here, if you want to go up a little bit, but yeah, so there's a table here, and we'll share this in the show notes for you guys, but the right way to help colleagues excel, and it's around the language that you use. And it kind of goes back to this same idea that we talked about with the kind of fallacy, number one of the source of truth. And you don't want to be the source of truth. You don't want to try to be the source of truth to help people understand what's going well, what's going poorly, whatever. Because otherwise you're just dictating what you think and what they ought to do and who they are. And it engages to all the wrong parts of the brain for people to learn and develop. And so interestingly, the first one here about giving feedback, instead of saying, can I give you some feedback? Try, here's my reaction. Right? It's because it's very disarming. It's not, when you use the word feedback, it implies I'm going to tell you something truer or better than

Jason (23:27):

What you did

Jordan (23:28):

Or what you know. So you're going to get smarter. Ready? As opposed to, here's my reaction. It's just, it's very much just like, I saw that. I reacted this way.

Jason (23:40):

The inference, whether intended or not, is that you did something wrong. Yeah. And so I'm going to tell you what you did wrong. Right? Which, yeah, try that with your marriage and see how that goes over.

Jordan (23:51):

Can I give you some feedback?

Jason (23:53):

Would you say that to your wife?

Jordan (23:55):

I would not, I would not. Not even if she asked.

Jason (23:57):

I would not either.

Jordan (23:58):

For feedback, I'd be like, I can tell you some reactions I had.

Jason (24:03):

I'd like to give myself some feedback for what's about to happen right now.

Jordan (24:09):

Well, the next one here is really interesting because you would never think that saying good job like that, you could do better than that. Right? What's wrong with good job, right? Good job. But again, it's sort of this authoritarian. I know what's good. I saw what you did and I deem it good.

Jason (24:27):

Yeah. Well, this just popped into my head. It’s very nonspecific. This ties into what's recommended. So instead of saying, good job, here are three things that really worked for me. What was going through your mind when you did them? And so what actually jumped out to me was, my kids have been getting into sports. I know yours have too. Yeah. And so I've thought about with my daughter who played basketball for the first time last season, she really didn't know anything about the game when she was starting. And so I would find myself wanting to encourage her after a game or practice. And of course I'd say, good job. And then I would find myself saying, good job. And immediately thinking, that's not helpful to her at all.

Jordan (25:07):

Right. What was good?

Jason (25:09):

It's like, Hey, you tried really hard. You put a lot of effort and hustle in. That was great. Or Hey, when you did this thing, I saw how you remembered a skill that you learned in practice and you boxed that player out. Right? That was awesome. Right. Calling out the really specific things that she did actually then helped her because next time she was like, oh yeah, I remember it. That thing that I did was good. And it felt good to be praised about that specific thing.

Jordan (25:38):

Yeah. Well, also I think this question that they suggest is so great because this whole what was going through your mind, it is another way of saying, why did you do it that way? It's not as direct, which is probably good, but if I'm going to recall what was going through my mind when I said or did something, it was probably my reasoning for saying or doing the thing. And so then they get to self-discover why they made a decision that they made, which helps them learn more about themselves and their own motivations and that’s really good.

Jason (26:10):

How that actually happened today with my son, Caleb and TaeKwonDo. And so they do sparring periodically throughout it. And so they got all their gear on and he's fairly timid. I would say, versus some of the other kids who are pretty gung ho about it, let's go. And they're just like, yeah, let's go kick in and punch in and just kind of wheeling away. And you could tell he gets pretty nervous about it. And so today in particular, he was really nervous and just backing away a lot and not really engaging as much with the sparring and so forth. And so that's exactly what we talked about in the car afterwards because it was like, Hey, buddy, I could tell something was going on. What was going through your mind? Trying to help draw out what he was thinking about. And once we got to, Hey, it just kind of made me nervous because they were so aggressive. And I was like, look, that's totally cool, but hey, here's the thing. This kid and that kid, they are aggressive, but what do they do every time? It's the same thing, right? Roundhouse kick, roundhouse kick, roundhouse kick. They got the same move, so what could you do? And he's like, oh, now that I think about it, he's like, I could block and then counterattack. Or he's like, I could escape and then counter attack. And I was like, yeah, that's great. Now you're actually thinking through the scenario of what you did and you’re self discovering.

Jordan (27:34):

You just taught him strategic thinking just by asking questions.

Jason (27:38):

Well I think that's behind some of this.

Jordan (27:39):

Assess the situation and how should I respond? Yeah, you're right. I think that is what's behind this. This one's a little bit more obvious. Here's what you should do, not the right way to approach the person that you're trying to develop. Here's what I would do, is what they would suggest. Here's what I would do. Which makes sense. Yeah. And it's, it's not saying this is the thing, absolutely. This is the only thing there is to be done, but here's how I would approach it. So one's a little obvious, here's where you need to improve. Obviously that's a little head on, here's what worked best for me and here's why. It's kind of same idea. I can just give you an example of how I did it. Here's why it worked for me, and probably the why part's the most important part. Because the why might actually be something more close to universal. By the way, what's the word of the day? I completely blanked on it. Again, cordial. Cordial, right. Okay. Alright. I'm like, I'm going to miss it again, because if we're on another document and I can't keep one word in my mind, don't suggest it's not suggested that we say as we're developing people giving feedback that didn't really work. Instead say, when you did X, I felt Y or I didn't get it. I didn't get that. I think that's useful because I mean, you're just saying, here is how I felt. Yeah.

Jason (29:13):

I mean, to me that one feels most applicable when I put it in the context of my marriage again, for example, because it's like you don't want to just objectively say, Hey, that sucked.

Jordan (29:24):

Right?

Jason (29:25):

But you want to say, Hey, when that happened, here's what I felt.

Jordan (29:29):

Right? Yeah.

Jason (29:30):

Because it lets you enter into the conversation from a standpoint of, I'm not sure what you were trying to do maybe, and I'm just saying, here's how it landed with me. Versus just saying like, yeah, that was awful.

Jordan (29:47):

I'm sure you get more than that than you give? But yeah, when you did X, I felt Y. There's, there's gosh, there's some good lessons on just apologies in here. Just never say, you made me feel or you forced this upon me or you, right. You did. I felt, yeah. Yeah. I think it's a really safe space to communicate. You need to work on your communication skills, obviously not something, wait, I'd say that one I don't feel like needs to be on the table. I It's mean. Are people actually saying that to each other? Yeah. Well, you probably have. You need to improve your communication skills and instead, here's exactly where you started to lose me. Again, it's just me, how I felt, how I react from my perspective, my perspective. It's not the truth. It's just how I felt. You need to be more responsive. Instead, when I don't hear from you, I worry that we're not on the same page. You lack strategic thinking.

(30:53)

Horrible. Horrible thing to say. Instead, I'm struggling to understand your plan. Yeah. Again, point to myself, I'm struggling. If there's a deficit, it's mine. I didn't get it. I didn't understand it. I felt this way. I reacted this way. Not that there is a deficit, but if there is one, it was mine. I just didn't get it. Help me understand. And then the last one here, you should do X. So in response to a request for advice, Hey, what should I do in this situation? To directly answer, you should do - You should do X, Y, Z. Don't do that. Instead, respond. What do you feel like you're struggling with and what have you done in the past that worked in a similar situation? Again, you're teaching thinking, strategic thinking, analytical thinking, whatever. You're just teaching someone really how to think. And then trusting that the skills and the know-how and the necessary wisdom and ability is already within this person. And you're just drawing it out.

Jason (32:00):

And you're pointing 'em back to a past success, which is something we haven't touched on, but they do mention elsewhere in this article is if you can get people to look at things that worked for them before, you're probably centering them on their strengths. And then you're probably helping them kind of get unstuck mentally on something where they can be like, oh yeah, if I think of it, if I think about it this way, where I was successful accomplishing that thing or getting through that problem, I can maybe bring some of that to bear. And so within myself, I can kind of find the answer.

Jordan (32:31):

Yeah. Yeah. I think it's good. I think that’s a good stopping point. Yeah. We hit this article pretty hard. Two episodes worth really good stuff from Marcus Buckingham and Ashley Goodall, and this again, comes from the Harvard Business Review. So feel free to check out that article and even send us your thoughts and what did we butcher and not understand and not get right. I'd love some feedback on that as well. We cordially invite you to give us feedback. Nice. Sneaky. Got it in that last minute there. Yeah. So Jason, tell us about next week's episode if you'd like, or you can just tell us about the word of the day next week.

Jason (33:07):

Yeah. Well, next week we're going to dive into just some research that we've been doing internally here at Fringe that I've been helping spearhead with some other folks kind of internally. And I think there's some just interesting questions and just insights and things that we've been learning along the way that we want to start to roll out from that, that I think is some interesting conversations. So the word of the day though for today is Satiate.

Jordan (33:33):

Satiate. I like it. All right, I got that one. All right. I'm very confident, which is never goes well. We'll see. Thanks guys for listening to How people work. We really enjoy bringing this podcast to you guys, and again, we'd love to hear feedback from you guys, topics that you'd want us to discuss. We're even considering bringing guests on the podcast in the near future, so if you have suggestions there, we'd love to hear them. And thank you so, so much for listening.

‍

In this episode of How Peo­ple Work, Jor­dan and Jason delve into var­i­ous aspects of the feed­back fal­la­cy and its impact on per­son­al and pro­fes­sion­al growth. The intro­duc­tion sets the stage, high­light­ing the sig­nif­i­cance of man­agers in deter­min­ing the health of an orga­ni­za­tion. The dis­cus­sion then shifts to the com­mon claim that every­one wants direct feed­back, ques­tion­ing its validity.

The pod­cast explores how well-inten­tioned attempts to help oth­ers learn might inad­ver­tent­ly lim­it their growth, rais­ing ques­tions about con­ven­tion­al wis­dom that encour­ages work­ing on weak­ness­es. Instead, Jason and Jor­dan argue to reject this claim and focus on strengths.

Peo­ple hin­der their own growth by fix­at­ing on weak­ness­es, and Jor­dan advo­cates for a shift in per­spec­tive. Great man­agers are high­light­ed as those who pri­or­i­tize lever­ag­ing the strengths of their team mem­bers when build­ing their teams.

Jason chal­lenges the belief that oth­ers are more aware of our weak­ness­es than we are, empha­siz­ing the of self-dis­cov­ery over feed­back, sug­gest­ing that per­son­al explo­ration yields greater benefits.

Now avail­able on: YouTube | Apple Pod­casts | Spo­ti­fy

Word of the day

• Rar­efied — Jason wins again!

Timestamps

• 0:00 Intro
• 2:14 Man­agers deter­mine the health of an organization
• 4:02 Every­one says they want direct feed­back. But do they really?
• 5:30 50% of your rat­ing of some­one else is real­ly just reflec­tive of your own characteristics
• 8:23 Receiv­ing feed­back from some­one you trust may help you accept and inter­nal­ize it more, but you can only pro­mote growth beyond that set point
• 11:21 You could be lim­it­ing your peo­ple’s growth in the way you’re going about try­ing to help them learn
• 12:06 Humans learn­ing as an emp­ty ves­sel vs. buds on a branch
• 14:45 Con­ven­tion­al wis­dom tells us to work on our weak­ness­es. Why we should reject that claim
• 16:59 Peo­ple are sti­fling their growth by focus­ing on their weaknesses
• 18:25 Great man­agers focus on the strengths of their peo­ple when build­ing their teams, not the weaknesses
• 22:07 Oth­ers are not more aware of your weak­ness­es than you are 29:59 We are hard­wired to make up sto­ries of why some­thing might be when we don’t under­stand something
• 35:18 Self-dis­cov­ery is more valu­able than feedback

Transcript

Jor­dan (00:05):

How many hours and years of our lives do we spend on work? For near­ly all of us, we spend 30 plus years and one third of our days in our voca­tion, more time per­haps than we spend at rest or at play. But this isn’t a prob­lem. Why? Because work is good. Work needs to be inte­grat­ed deeply into our lives and must be in line with our most impor­tant goals and val­ues. And if it is, we have a far more com­plete and ful­fill­ing life expe­ri­ence. Wel­come to the How Peo­ple Work pod­cast, where we explore the inter­sec­tion of how humans think and act and how they apply them­selves to their work. When you under­stand both of these things, you’ll be equipped to be insight­ful, com­pas­sion­ate, and com­pelling leaders.

Jor­dan (00:50):

Wel­come back to How Peo­ple Work. This is Jor­dan Peace with my co-host Jason Mur­ray. Say hi, Jason. Hel­lo. Nice deep hel­lo. Wel­come to Episode 16. Today we’re going to be talk­ing about feed­back and some­thing called the feed­back fal­la­cy, as coined by Mar­cus Buck­ing­ham and Ash­ley Goodall in a recent Har­vard Busi­ness Review arti­cle that they wrote. Jason has been, as we like to say, nerd­ing out on this recent­ly. And as he’s going to walk us through this arti­cle, the things that real­ly jumped out to him, and we’ll dis­cuss our thoughts and feed­back on this idea of the feed­back policy.

Jason (01:31):

Yeah, it’s recent as of 2019. Okay. I think when it first came out, but -

Jor­dan (01:38):

So my word, I’m not sure my word recent was appropriate.

Jason (01:41):

Well I mean, the fun­ny thing was when I came across it for the first time, I was like, how have I nev­er heard about this arti­cle before? Although it is one of Har­vard Busi­ness Review’s, like top hun­dred arti­cles of all time or some­thing. So at least some num­ber of peo­ple. I imag­ine that is a large number.

Jor­dan (01:57):

That’s a big one. Yeah, sure .

Jason (01:59):

Has read this, but -

Jor­dan (02:00):

That’s okay. We don’t have to jus­ti­fy the arti­cle you picked. Yeah, it’s our pod­cast. Let’s just do it.

Jason (02:04):

It cer­tain­ly does­n’t feel that it’s become wide­spread or con­ven­tion­al wis­dom, let’s say, as it relates to busi­ness practice.

Jor­dan (02:12):

It takes decades for some­thing to become conventional.

Jason (02:14):

And it felt like it was per­fect for How Peo­ple Work because some of the stuff they elu­ci­dat­ed in the arti­cle real­ly has to do with how we as human beings work. Some of the kind of brain sci­ence behind how feed­back works, as well as how we go about at work. Because the appli­ca­tions of these things are very much in rela­tion to a work­place set­ting and how we oper­ate as teams and what­not. And in par­tic­u­lar how man­agers or peo­ple respon­si­ble for giv­ing feed­back who tend to be man­agers and lead­ers work with their teams. And so I thought that was inter­est­ing because in some pre­vi­ous episodes we have dis­cussed how man­agers can be essen­tial­ly the lim­iters or the gov­er­nors on the growth of an organization.

Jor­dan (02:59):

Absolute­ly. And they deter­mine the health of the cul­ture of the orga­ni­za­tion. The num­ber one rea­son for peo­ple leav­ing an orga­ni­za­tion is their man­ag­er. Right. Hard­er to sur­vey, but I would guess poten­tial­ly the num­ber one rea­son why peo­ple stay is also their manager.

Jason (03:15):

Right.

Jor­dan (03:16):

If they have a good one. That’s my own guess on that. I’m not sure the data around that, but that’s inter­est­ing. I mean, the con­ven­tion­al wis­dom, obvi­ous­ly where we’re head­ed here because the arti­cle is called the Feed­back Fal­la­cy. You would think feed­back­’s good. Feed­back is a very good thing. I’ve had many peo­ple ask me for feed­back or tell me I’m not giv­ing them enough feed­back or that we should do 360 reviews or we should blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. There’s always an ask for how am I doing? Give me feed­back, what­ev­er to scratch some kind of itch of inse­cu­ri­ty or what­ev­er the case may be. So I’m inter­est­ed to dig into this and find out why that is maybe not the right approach.

Jason (04:02):

Yeah. Well, it’s fun­ny because I was lis­ten­ing to a pod­cast ear­li­er this week and they were talk­ing about it. Feed­back came up, it was­n’t the cen­tral theme, but feed­back came up as kind of a top­ic they were dis­cussing. And it was fun­ny because they were say­ing, well, I always ask employ­ees how do they want to receive feed­back? And every­one will tell you that they want direct feed­back. And they were laugh­ing about it. Cause they’re like, every­one lies, nobody actu­al­ly wants direct feed­back because when they get it, it’s real­ly hard and it’s emo­tion­al and you don’t real­ly take it well. And I thought, oh, that’s so fas­ci­nat­ing because it actu­al­ly relates very direct­ly to a lot of the sci­ence and the research and this par­tic­u­lar arti­cle or paper, if you will, around why that is why it’s hard to receive feed­back. So to set a lit­tle bit of con­text here, I mean, many peo­ple lis­ten­ing prob­a­bly under­stand that feed­back is some­thing that has been encour­aged and sort of praise and crit­i­cize what work­ers do.

(04:58)

So your job as a leader man­ag­er is like tell peo­ple when they’re doing a good job, tell peo­ple when they’re doing a bad job. But it turns out from this research that Mar­cus Buck­ing­ham and Ash­ley Goodall have done that the feed­back does not actu­al­ly help employ­ees thrive or it does­n’t help in the way that we’ve often thought it does. And so there’s a cou­ple the­o­ries that they lay out here that we’ll go through, but to kind of set the table for those, the research kind of high lev­el shows that peo­ple can’t reli­ably rate the per­for­mance of oth­ers. And so what they found is that more than 50% of your rat­ing of some­body else real­ly just is reflec­tive of your own char­ac­ter­is­tics, not that par­tic­u­lar indi­vid­ual. Sec­ond­ly, that the neu­ro­science behind all this reveals that crit­i­cism pro­vokes this flight or flight — fight or flight response in human beings.

(05:52)

And which is a very deeply wired kind of evo­lu­tion­ary part of our kind of brain chem­istry. And it actu­al­ly inhibits our learn­ing. And so feed­back is designed or thought of to help pro­mote learn­ing and growth when in fact, crit­i­cal feed­back in par­tic­u­lar trig­gers this fight or flight response, which actu­al­ly means our brain shuts down. We’re not able to learn and grow through that in the same way. And then last­ly, excel­lence looks dif­fer­ent for each indi­vid­ual. And I think this one is real­ly par­tic­u­lar­ly inter­est­ing, but the excel­lence is idio­syn­crat­ic. And so it’s not just sort of some­thing objec­tive that’s trans­ferred from me. I know how to do things well and I’m going to share with you how to do those things well. That is much more indi­vid­u­al­is­tic and con­text spe­cif­ic for each and every indi­vid­ual. So

Jor­dan (06:45):

Wow, that’s fas­ci­nat­ing. It makes per­fect sense. That first bul­let there around more than half of the rat­ing you’re giv­ing some­one else is just a reflec­tion of how you see your­self and maybe how you see that oth­er per­son dis­tinct­ly dif­fer­ent than your­self. And you’re kind of judg­ing what’s good, what’s bad, what are good qual­i­ties, what are bad qual­i­ties, or what’s a good approach or good lan­guage based on me as I am the cen­ter­piece of the uni­verse and the arbiter of what is and should­n’t be. Right? So that makes per­fect sense. We are very focused on our­selves and very much see the world through the lens of how sim­i­lar or dif­fer­ent is some­one else than me. And that’s kind of how we make a val­ue judg­ment. So that’s fas­ci­nat­ing. I’m inter­est­ed in this fight or flight response. I won­der what’s meant by crit­i­cism. I won­der how much the depth of rela­tion­ship mat­ters there. I won­der how much, if there’s inti­ma­cy and trust, then that crit­i­cism can come across as some­thing real­ly help­ful, con­struc­tive, but yeah, that fight or flight intense, that that’s an intense reac­tion to, Hey, I did­n’t real­ly love the way you led that train­ing. Yeah, I think you could have done bet­ter here and there that it is vis­cer­al, just like, well, I’ll just get out of here. No, or I’m going to argue with you about it.

Jason (08:23):

Yeah. I mean, think it’s inter­est­ing and it sort of jumps ahead a lit­tle bit, but it’s worth jump­ing ahead to that point because I think it’s a ques­tion that I had as well when I came across this as well. If it’s some­body that I real­ly trust and val­ue their opin­ion and can maybe receive it with­out such emo­tion­al angst, let’s say that per­haps it’s bet­ter. And what they would say here is that the kind of sci­ence around how our brains work is that there’s sort of a learn­ing set point. And so real­ly neg­a­tive crit­i­cism does­n’t pro­mote growth. It can cor­rect you back to a set point.

Jor­dan (09:07):

Inter­est­ing. Okay.

Jason (09:08):

And so what hap­pens then is maybe from a friend, I can receive that crit­i­cism more open­ly, and so I’m able to accept it and inter­nal­ize it. And when I do so it does­n’t actu­al­ly pro­mote growth beyond that set point. It just restores me to that set point. So it’s like if there is neg­a­tive crit­i­cism that actu­al­ly is true and mer­it­ed, let’s say, yeah, then it’s not nec­es­sar­i­ly help­ing me grow beyond a cer­tain point. It’s just bring­ing me back up to that lev­el set point.

Jor­dan (09:36):

This is a real­ly basic exam­ple, but what came to mind? So my son is in his, what, I guess, third year play­ing base­ball, Jack­son, the sev­en year old, and work­ing with him on his swing and which is a del­i­cate thing to begin with, with kids, because my dad will tell you, he over-engi­neered my swing and actu­al­ly my swing kind of fell apart when I was a teenag­er and he blames him­self and I’m like, I don’t care. I was nev­er going to be a pro base­ball play­er. It’s not that seri­ous. But he still beats him­self up. But I think about all the lit­tle cor­rec­tions I give him, keep that back elbow up, stop drop­ping your shoul­der, those sorts of things. It’s like I’m just get­ting him back to the set point of the swing that’s as good as he can pro­duce right now. But I’m not, well, some­times I do, but when I give him new ideas, I’m just like, Hey, actu­al­ly you don’t real­ly hit with your arms, you hit with your hips. You got to pull your hips through and show­ing that there can be a marked improve­ment. Well beyond the dif­fer­ence between get­ting back to that set point. And I’ve seen, and I know this is sil­ly because, but it’s just what I’ve been focus­ing on the last cou­ple of months with him, and he’s so into base­ball right now. So it’s real­ly impor­tant to him to learn. And he has grown leaps and bounds, but not so much because of the lit­tle cor­rec­tions and the crit­i­cisms, but because of the new ideas, because of the dif­fer­ent aspects of take a step towards the pitch­er or take, get, get back in the box a lit­tle bit and let the ball trav­el a lit­tle for what­ev­er, those new lit­tle things and he just lights up and grows sig­nif­i­cant­ly. Again, it’s maybe not the best exam­ple for work.

Jason (11:21):

I think it’s a great, yeah, a great exam­ple actu­al­ly because I think it does point to the fact that we learn in dif­fer­ent ways and the way in which we are going to pro­mote growth is not going to be the same for every indi­vid­ual. And so per­tains very direct­ly to man­agers because I think our ten­den­cy is to apply the way in which we learn to those that we lead. And so we’re going to approach it in a cer­tain way with­out maybe even rec­og­niz­ing the fact that, well, we could be lim­it­ing some­body’s growth in the way that we’re going about try­ing to help them learn. So it actu­al­ly ties in. So I’m going to go out a lit­tle bit out of order because there’s a cou­ple the­o­ries that they -

Jor­dan (12:02):

Nobody lis­ten­ing has the arti­cle in front of ​‘em any­way, so

Jason (12:05):

Or fal­lac­i­es -

Jor­dan (12:06):

You make up what­ev­er order you want.

Jason (12:06):

So this is num­ber two in the arti­cle if you’re read­ing it, which we’ll share in the show notes. So fal­la­cy num­ber two, they refer to as the the­o­ry of learn­ing. And the fal­la­cy is that the process of learn­ing is fill­ing up an emp­ty ves­sel. And so what they’re say­ing is that the kind of incor­rect think­ing is that peo­ple are just emp­ty vessels.

Jor­dan (12:27):

There’s just noth­ing there at all.

Jason (12:28):

Pour­ing this new knowl­edge into them. And what they say is learn­ing is actu­al­ly less a func­tion of adding some­thing that isn’t there than it is of rec­og­niz­ing, rein­forc­ing, and refin­ing what already is. So think­ing of it more as buds on a branch. The branch exists, there’s buds form­ing. We want to stim­u­late growth along that branch in a bunch of dif­fer­ent ways. And that’s actu­al­ly true when it comes to how our brains work. So in our brains, there’s bun­dles of neu­rons in our brain with synaps­es that already exist. And what neu­ro­sci­en­tists have found is that it’s eas­i­er to devel­op new neur­al con­nec­tions where the bun­dles of neu­rons are already most dense­ly con­nect­ed. Inter­est­ing. And so as a result, what it means is when you find those areas of strengths that peo­ple already have, your brain can lit­er­al­ly form con­nec­tions faster and more eas­i­ly than in areas that it has few­er or weak­er neur­al connections.

Jor­dan (13:25):

Inter­est­ing. Yeah. Yeah, that makes per­fect sense. The image that came to my mind was cer­tain types of exer­cise. If you were, you had exer­cise your legs real­ly, real­ly well and your core real­ly, real­ly well, but you’ve nev­er done a box jump in your life, but you’ve done so many squats and so many sit ups and so many things to exer­cise the core and the legs. And I go, okay, we’re going to put those two things togeth­er and we’re going to jump on top of this 42 inch box or whatever.

Jason (13:59):

That’d be a tall box jump.

Jor­dan (14:00):

Well, 36, let’s go with 36.

Jason (14:02):

Also, it’s a pret­ty tall -

Jor­dan (14:03):

You’re going to nail it, but we’re talk­ing about a per­son that’s real­ly in shape with their legs in, but they’ve nev­er seen this exer­cise before. They’ve nev­er seen the com­bi­na­tion of these two things togeth­er before. But because the indi­vid­ual parts are so strong, com­bin­ing them togeth­er is so much eas­i­er as opposed to try to bring some­thing com­plete­ly new and weak and unde­vel­oped in, that’s tough.

Jason (14:26):

Right. And I think where that exam­ple is good is when I think about -

Jor­dan (14:31):

My num­bers are all wrong and 18 inch, I don’t know. I don’t do box jumps.

Jason (14:34):

If any­one Cross­Fits out there, 24 inch­es would be the pre­scrip­tion for men doing box jumps.

Jor­dan (14:42):

I try to jump as lit­tle as possible.

Jason (14:45):

Yeah. It’s bet­ter for the knees. So yeah, I mean, think what’s use­ful about that anal­o­gy is sort of the oppo­site view­point, which I think is more con­ven­tion­al in busi­ness set­tings, which is work on your weak­ness­es, right?

Jor­dan (15:03):

Right.

Jason (15:04):

It’s like, oh, I have a weak­ness, so I need to focus on that area real­ly intense­ly and improve my weak­ness­es because that’s what’s going to make me bet­ter and make me more well-round­ed. And that’s actu­al­ly just false. One, it’s hard­er. It’s going to be hard­er, lit­er­al­ly hard­er for your brain to actu­al­ly make those con­nec­tions to improve in an area that you’re weak­er and it’s far more effi­cient and far more effec­tive to focus on the areas where you’re strongest. And so what they talk about in the arti­cle is how get­ting that atten­tion to our strengths from oth­ers in par­tic­u­lar. So some­body rec­og­niz­ing areas that you are strong in and point­ing that out to you actu­al­ly cat­alyzes learn­ing. Where­as atten­tion to weak­ness­es tends to smoth­er it.

Jor­dan (15:54):

Did that fal­la­cy, that very thing of try­ing to improve weak­ness­es, focus­ing on our weak­ness­es has prob­a­bly been the biggest stum­bling block in my entire life or career. I think the major­i­ty of where my learned imposter syn­drome has come from in this role as a CEO of a com­pa­ny is from this very thing of, I’ve spent so many years focus­ing on my weak­ness­es and deter­min­ing what all those weak­ness­es are. And there are many. So I had this laun­dry list in my mind of all these things that I’m bad at, and it held me back immense­ly. And I remem­ber when, when we start­ed Fringe, we did­n’t start Fringe with a CEO. It was just, Hey, we got co-founders and we’re just doing this thing togeth­er. Right? And then a day came where we had that con­ver­sa­tion, right? And one, I can’t remem­ber who, but some­body said, I think it should be Jordan.

(16:59)

And I was like, me? Can I give you my list of weak­ness­es, please? And then there was agree­ment around that in the room. And I remem­ber that being a real­ly hon­or­ing moment from peo­ple want­i­ng that, but also a real­ly ter­ri­fy­ing moment of just like, me? And it’s tak­en me years to real­ize that it’s not the weak­ness­es that make me capa­ble of doing the job that I’m doing, it’s the strengths, right? Because I can be dis­or­ga­nized, I can be fuzzy on details, I can for­get peo­ple’s names right and left. I can have all these weak­ness­es. But because of a few things, the abil­i­ty to cast vision, the abil­i­ty to make deci­sions with­out an enor­mous amount of facts and analy­sis to go off of, the abil­i­ty to stand strong in the com­mit­ments that we’ve made and ral­ly the troops and recruit peo­ple and go. Those few strengths, and there’s not a whole lot of ​‘em. And you always tell me I’m too hard on myself, but there’s not a ton. But there are the right strengths for the par­tic­u­lar job, and that’s enough. And man, I mean, that just jumped off the page to me when I read it that I’m like, oh my gosh. Peo­ple are sti­fling their growth to a degree that it’s hard to even explain by focus­ing on their weaknesses.

Jason (18:25):

Well, and I think this is why the work of a great man­ag­er leader is craft­ing the role of peo­ple on your team to fit the strengths. It’s look­ing at your team and say­ing, where is every­body strong and max­i­miz­ing those strengths, right? Because try­ing to mit­i­gate the weak­ness­es is just going to be kind of a fool’s errand. And so it’d be much more effec­tive and pos­i­tive expe­ri­en­tial­ly for the peo­ple on the team to have that focus on the strengths. And so -

Jor­dan (18:58):

Yeah, and thus that third point you read ear­li­er, excel­lence looks dif­fer­ent for each indi­vid­ual. If we define excel­lence as one sin­gu­lar thing and every­one needs to go after that one sin­gu­lar def­i­n­i­tion of excel­lence, right, then, I mean, that’s a dis­as­ter, right?

Jason (19:16):

Right.

Jor­dan (19:17):

Because they’re just things that try as I might, I’m nev­er going to be able to excel at, and there are things that I can excel at that oth­ers just either would­n’t excel at or would­n’t even try. It just seems so far out­side of their skillset.

Jason (19:33):

Yeah. So I think it’s worth, I mean, I don’t think you’d be over­stat­ed here what they’re say­ing about this. So there’s anoth­er psy­chol­o­gy and busi­ness pro­fes­sor who sum­ma­rizes some of this by say­ing that the strong neg­a­tive emo­tion that’s pro­duced by crit­i­cism, so what we would con­strue as con­struc­tive feed­back, which is going to be received as crit­i­cism, because it is, right? It inhibits access to exist­ing neur­al cir­cuits and invokes cog­ni­tive, emo­tion­al and per­cep­tu­al impair­ment. So it lit­er­al­ly sti­fles that abil­i­ty to grow. But what was fun­ny is, I know you’re a sci­ence fic­tion lover as am I.

Jor­dan (20:16):

This is where I nerd out.

Jason (20:17):

es. And it remind­ed me imme­di­ate­ly when I saw that of a quote from the book or the movie now Dune, where they say, fear is the mind killer. So the full quote is, ​“I must not fear. Fear is the mind killer. Fear is the lit­tle death that brings total oblit­er­a­tion.” And so I think that kind of neg­a­tive crit­i­cism, what it does is, what’s it do? It sur­faces fears inside of us, and those fears are lit­tle deaths that we live through because they’re parts of our inter­nal psy­che that are just real­ly dif­fi­cult to push through.

Jor­dan (20:55):

Yeah, yeah, absolute­ly. And I think that fear is prob­a­bly a real­ly good word. Fear is actu­al­ly the thing that par­a­lyzes. The crit­i­cism is like, what’s the word I’m look­ing for? It’s like the pre­cip­i­tat­ing event that leads to the thing that par­a­lyzes peo­ple. It’s not the crit­i­cism itself, it’s the self-talk and the psy­cho­log­i­cal stress caused after the crit­i­cism that leads to the fear of, I’m not good enough, or I’m not wor­thy, or I’m not valu­able, or I can’t, what­ev­er, fill in the blank. That’s the thing that is so dam­ag­ing and so dif­fi­cult to over­come. Cause we all have fears, but I think one of the things that real­ly helps us over­come those fears is if we’re able to see where our strengths are, where our con­tri­bu­tion is, where is the place, it’s okay that I’m bad at X, Y, Z because I’m great at ABC. You know that that’s your way out of that fear in many cas­es. So I love that.

Jason (22:07):

So I think what’s inter­est­ing, and this kind of goes back to fal­la­cy num­ber one in this report that they’ve put out, but it ties into the sense that if we’re think­ing about crit­i­cism, if we’re think­ing about how we learn, the assump­tion often is, well, my crit­i­cism is in fact valid, that if I’m going to offer you some kind of con­struc­tive crit­i­cism that it’s in fact root­ed in some sort of fac­tu­al basis that’s objec­tive­ly true. Right? And what they are putting forth here is that that’s sort of a the­o­ry of the source of truth that isn’t actu­al­ly accu­rate. And so the sort of fal­la­cy that they call out here is that oth­er peo­ple are more aware than you are of your weak­ness­es. And so there­fore, what needs to hap­pen in order for crit­i­cism or feed­back to be good feed­back is that they’re expos­ing to you things that you don’t know about your­self. And what they call it is idio­syn­crat­ic rater effect. But that kind of goes back to the first thing that we talked about is that more than half of our rat­ing of some­one, of some­one else reflects our own char­ac­ter, our own char­ac­ter­is­tics, and not theirs. And so in oth­er words, the research shows that our feed­back, I mean, this is kind of sort of shock­ing to say it in this way, but feed­back is more dis­tor­tion than truth because, if we accept -

Jor­dan (23:45):

Well, you said it was more than 50%.

Jason (23:47):

If we accept the premise, the only objec­tive real­i­ty that we can real­ly ascer­tain is that of our own sense of strength and weak­ness­es and not nec­es­sar­i­ly some­body else’s, then when­ev­er we’re giv­ing some­body else some kind of feed­back, we ought like­ly to be doing it with more humil­i­ty, right? Yes. And prob­a­bly less is an entire­ly true proclamation.

Jor­dan (24:13):

Yeah. I think the only part of this that I would push back on is not so much, not so much the idea that the feed­back about who you are, what your weak­ness­es are. I think that’s a real­ly great con­cept. It tracks that peo­ple are aware of the weak­ness­es, right? Unless I don’t know what the word is exact­ly, but there are cer­tain peo­ple that are so neu­rot­ic that they don’t see any weak­ness­es of them­selves. There are some rare people -

Jason (24:48):

Nar­cis­sis­tic -

Jor­dan (24:50):

But your run in the mill indi­vid­ual is going to see and be keen­ly aware of the things that they’re bad at, the thing that they’re bad at, have held them back in life. They’ve been embar­rassed. They’ve put strug­gle in their way and strug­gle in rela­tion­ships, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So you’re prob­a­bly not telling me any­thing new when you tell me about a trait that I’m like, Jor­dan, you’re so dis­or­ga­nized. Yeah. I’m like, I’ve known that since I was like sev­en. Right? Thanks for the feed­back. But when feed­back I think is use­ful is the par­tic­u­lar event of, Hey, the way you spoke to this per­son that day, you should prob­a­bly go apol­o­gize. You are too hard on them. Those indi­vid­ual mis­takes. I think that is where the peer-to-peer feed­back is use­ful. Because some­times we are maybe inten­tion­al­ly blind to our own fail­ure kind of rela­tion­al­ly and so forth. Not so much, not so much blind to our traits. Just to dif­fer­en­ti­ate the two a bit, because I think there is a use­ful­ness in going like, Hey, man, you were a jerk yes­ter­day. I don’t know if you saw that. Right?

Jason (26:04):

Yeah, that’s true. So I think what’s real­ly, to me, fas­ci­nat­ing about this is, again, some of the brain research, and there’s some oth­er stuff that I was aware of that I think was applic­a­ble here from a book that I read some time ago called The Hap­pi­ness Hypoth­e­sis. And what hap­pens is this very weird thing between our left brain and our right brain. And so neu­ro­sci­en­tists that look at this stuff have actu­al­ly fig­ured out that our left brain and our right brain inter­pret the world dif­fer­ent­ly. And that when there’s gaps between the two, that one side of our brain will fill that nar­ra­tive gap in a way that might actu­al­ly not be entire­ly accu­rate. And so I think that’s part of the rea­son that this sort of idio­syn­crat­ic rater effect comes into play, is our brain isn’t always telling us the truth in terms of our actu­al obser­va­tion. So there was a study that a psy­chol­o­gist did, and I’m going to read this cause I just think it’s so wild.

Jor­dan (27:05):

I was just read­ing it and I’m like, what in the world is this?

Jason (27:09):

It’s so wild. But I think it per­tains, I promise.

Jor­dan (27:13):

And I believe you. It’s just what was going on with this sentence?

Jason (27:15):

So there’s a psy­chol­o­gist, I can’t pro­nounce his name, so I’m not going to try to, but what they did was, in this study, they flashed dif­fer­ent pic­tures to two hemi­spheres of the brain. So the way that they did that is they would cov­er one eye and flash an image to the oth­er eye.

Jor­dan (27:31):

Because your right eye cor­re­lates with your left hemi­sphere. And vice ver­sa. I’ve heard of this.

Jason (27:35):

Exact­ly. So yeah, that’s exact­ly right. And so what hap­pened was they would flash a pic­ture of a chick­en claw to the right eye, and then -

Jor­dan (27:48):

Random.Totally

Jason (27:49):

Total­ly ran­dom. And then they’d flash a pic­ture of a house and a car cov­ered in snow on the left.

Jor­dan (27:55):

Okay. Right.

Jason (27:57):

And so this is how it kind of relates to how your brain’s inter­pret­ing these two things. So the patient was shown an array of pic­tures, and then they were asked to point to the one that goes with quote, goes with what they had seen.

Jor­dan (28:11):

Like a match, a match­ing exer­cise, a child’s game of which of these things go togeth­er type of thing.

Jason (28:16):

Right. And so the patient would point with their right hand to the pic­ture of the chick­en that went with -

Jor­dan (28:23):

Which was the side that was shown to the right eye.

Jason (28:26):

To the left or to the right eye.

Jor­dan (28:30):

Which was the left -

Jason (28:31):

Which your left hemi­sphere processed. Okay.

Jor­dan (28:33):

Okay. Got it.

Jason (28:34):

So the right hand point­ed to the pic­ture of the chick­en, which went with the chick­en claw that the left hemi­sphere had seen with the right eye.

Jor­dan (28:41):

Got it. Okay.

Jason (28:43):

But the left hand point­ed to a pic­ture of a shov­el, which went with the snow scene pre­sent­ed to the right hemi­sphere. But when the patient was asked to explain -

Jor­dan (28:56):

Because you’re think­ing snow:shovel, chicken:chicken claw.

Jason (29:00):

You would think so.

Jor­dan (29:01):

Which is logical.

Jason (29:02):

But then they asked the sub­jects of these tests to explain the rea­son that they had picked — the rea­son for their two respons­es. They did­n’t say, I have no, he did not say, I have no idea why my left hand is point­ing to a shov­el. It must be some­thing you showed my right brain. Instead, the left hemi­sphere made up a plau­si­ble sto­ry where the patient said, with­out any hes­i­ta­tion, oh, that’s easy. The chick­en claw goes with the chick­en, and you need a shov­el to clean out the chick­en shed.

Jor­dan (29:36):

What chick­en shed?

Jason (29:39):

Exact­ly. So that hemi­sphere of the brain did­n’t even reg­is­ter, like house snow shov­el. Wow. It was con­nect­ing the dots to the chick­en and assum­ing, oh, you need the shov­el to scoop out all the chick­en poop in the chick­en shed.

Jor­dan (29:55):

It’s relat­ed to the chick­en and the — right, wow.

Jason (29:59):

The way that these stud­ies, it was very instan­ta­neous flash­es. So the way that they did it, I mean, it’s real­ly fas­ci­nat­ing. There’s a lot more infor­ma­tion on that par­tic­u­lar study that they did in the book. But what’s real­ly shock­ing about it is the fact that your brain, the one hemi­sphere of your brain, is lit­er­al­ly going to make up a sto­ry for some­thing that it sees that does­n’t make sense to it. And so the ways in which we con­nect the dots, then, I think that’s where humil­i­ty comes into play, is acknowl­edg­ing the fact that the way that I might be see­ing the situation

(30:38)

Might not be accu­rate. So to come into a sit­u­a­tion where I’m going to give you feed­back and I’m a hun­dred per­cent con­fi­dent that I’m right in the feed­back that I’m giv­ing you is prob­a­bly inac­cu­rate. And so a bet­ter approach would be com­ing into it think­ing, Hey, I’m see­ing some­thing here. I don’t know if it’s right. Maybe I have a more hum­ble atti­tude in my approach to it, because it’s less, I uni­ver­sal­ly know some­thing to be true about you that you don’t see inter­est­ing. It’s actu­al­ly acknowl­edg­ing my brain. I see some­thing, I don’t know if I’m con­nect­ing the dots here the right way.

Jor­dan (31:17):

Man. I feel like I have two exam­ples that come to mind. One is, I think about a child when they see, every night, my son asked me to close his clos­et door because his clos­et door because the clos­et is dark­er than the room, even though there’s bare­ly any light in the room, he wants me to close the clos­et door. And I think as an adult, I’m just like, well, the clos­et’s dark because there’s less oppor­tu­ni­ty for light to seep into it because there’s a small crack in the door. It’s why it’s dark. But to him, it’s dark because it’s an evil place full of mon­sters. He cre­ates a sto­ry for the thing that he does­n’t under­stand, or under the bed or what­ev­er. That’s chil­dren’s imag­i­na­tions, the adults’ imag­i­na­tions. We cre­ate sto­ries for what we don’t under­stand. The place where I cre­ate sto­ries is I’ll observe some­thing about, just like you’re say­ing, observe some­thing about some­one, see a pat­tern in some­one’s behav­ior, in some­one’s life, and what they do, what they say, how they act, how they walk, how the face they make.

(32:20)

And I’ll make up a sto­ry in my head as to why that exists. And then I’ll make the mis­take occa­sion­al­ly of going to that per­son and say­ing, are you like this because of ABC, this sto­ry that I made up? Some­times you get lucky and they’re like, wow, that was pret­ty good. But oth­er times it’s like, no, and they’re offend­ed. Cause why don’t you just ask me about it instead of just mak­ing up this nar­ra­tive out of nowhere. That’s a fas­ci­nat­ing idea that if we don’t under­stand some­thing, we don’t just chalk it up to like, well, I just need more infor­ma­tion. I don’t under­stand. We will cre­ate some truth, some nar­ra­tive, because we need the clo­sure of this is what it is.

Jason (33:09):

And I mean it, that’s not unknown or uncom­mon and kind of neu­ro­science either. It’s just not some­thing I think that’s com­mon­ly known. I mean, I did­n’t know it until I read this book first, and then this arti­cle obvi­ous­ly brought some of this out, but our brain uses heuris­tics all the time, which are essen­tial­ly short­cuts. And so we cat­e­go­rize things like our brain with­out us know­ing, cat­e­go­rizes things in ways that allows us to make short­cuts so that we can inter­pret the world more quick­ly. It’s like, oh, you’re a per­son like, oh, this, that’s a wall. Well, is it a wall? I don’t know. It’s bricks and there’s paint on it, and you know, could decon­struct it to a lev­el that, but my brain instan­ta­neous­ly just rec­og­nizes it as a wall. It’s a heuris­tic. And so instead of tak­ing in all the infor­ma­tion that you could pos­si­bly take in -

Jor­dan (33:59):

Which would be -

Jason (34:00):

Right, which is infi­nite, it’s an infinite

Jor­dan (34:02):

Like what a trip is.

Jason (34:04):

Yeah, exact­ly. Right. So because you can’t take in this infi­nite, infi­nite amount of infor­ma­tion, your brain auto­mat­i­cal­ly cat­e­go­rizes things and makes short­cuts. And so as a result, your cat­e­gories and short­cuts aren’t always as accu­rate as they might need to be. And I think that’s what per­tains here is when we’re mak­ing judge­ments around feed­back and what’s true -

Jor­dan (34:28):

Based on short­cuts, right?

Jason (34:29):

Yeah. Inevitably, we’re cat­e­go­riz­ing some­thing, our brain’s tak­ing a short­cut, not pur­pose­ful­ly or mali­cious­ly, but we just have to under­stand that it may not be accu­rate in the way that we think it’s accu­rate as a com­plete and uni­ver­sal source of truth.

Jor­dan (34:45):

Thus, the feed­back we give is most­ly unhelp­ful. Cor­rect. Right. Because it’s not com­ing from a place of, for lack of a bet­ter word, research­ing a per­son and ask­ing them ques­tions and real­ly under­stand­ing the depths of what’s going on. It’s com­ing from a place of pat­tern recog­ni­tion of, well, I knew a per­son that act­ed sim­i­lar­ly years ago.

Jason (35:09):

That’s how we do it.

Jor­dan (35:10):

They’re rob­a­bly exact­ly like them, so there­fore, here’s the val­ue judg­ment that I’m going to make.

Jason (35:16):

I mean, it’s fun­ny now that I’m think­ing about it because what’s most pow­er­ful or some­body else telling you some­thing about yourself.

Jor­dan (35:24):

Self dis­cov­ery hands down.

Jason (35:25):

I mean, that’s exact­ly, yeah. I think what we’re talk­ing about here is if you can help peo­ple ver­sus say­ing like, Hey, I know some­thing about you that you don’t know about your­self. Yeah, obvi­ous­ly. So I’m going to bestow upon you this truth that I under­stand that you clear­ly don’t under­stand, ver­sus, Hey, I’m going to ask some ques­tions. Maybe I have an insight, maybe not. I don’t know. But if I approach it in a way that helps you maybe draw out of your­self that self-dis­cov­ery, it’s more valuable.

Jor­dan (35:55):

Yeah. Yeah. Absolute­ly. I think that’s why sto­ries are so pow­er­ful. When you want to get your point across as some­body, or you want to help them dis­cov­er some­thing about them­selves instead of just direct­ly say­ing, Hey, I noticed this about you. What’s up with that? Going, you know, I was in a sit­u­a­tion recent­ly where I was faced with this chal­lenge, and here’s how I respond­ed, and here’s what I learned from it. And you just sort of walk away and let that sto­ry linger. I think peo­ple can con­nect to the, oh, right, okay. Yeah. What they learned is maybe sim­i­lar to what I need to learn, and I think it’s more use­ful. No, there’s noth­ing that’s going to elic­it that fight or flight sit­u­a­tion about just telling your own sto­ry to, giv­en your own expe­ri­ences to some­body that real­ly, I think, helps them learn. Which again, goes back to the con­cept we talk about all the time of inti­ma­cy, right? Yes. You got to get inti­mate with peo­ple. You got to share a lit­tle bit about your­self and a lit­tle bit about your life, or you real­ly can’t help them. But I think that’s the only kind of feed­back that is real­ly a safe space to help peo­ple actu­al­ly grow, is just to kind of hear what you’ve been through and learn from your mistakes.

(37:16)

But that takes some vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty to do that. Well, this is good. I like this top­ic. I think it’s a fan­tas­tic paper. It’s so many, it’s inter­est­ing. There’s so many things that we just blind­ly accept. It’s just like, yep. Feed­back? A hun­dred per­cent a good thing, no ques­tions asked. We should do that. We should do it more. We should do it as often as we can. And then to your point that you brought up ear­li­er, when you ask on that oth­er pod­cast, when you ask peo­ple what kind of feed­back they want, I want direct. I want straight up. Straight up, no chas­er. You got no ice, noth­ing. Just give it to me. You know what I mean? Because we want to sound tough. We want to sound like we could take it. I could take that feed­back. What do you got? Lay it on me, and I’ll just force myself to get bet­ter. What­ev­er it is that you say, and that’s unre­al­is­tic and the wrong way to approach it. But yeah, great top­ic. I think maybe we’ll return to this.

Jason (38:14):

Yeah, we will. There’s still some more to unpack.

Jor­dan (38:16):

At some point. It’s fun­ny because I’m just going to have to take an L here because I, I’m in this arti­cle here, and I total­ly for­got what the word of the day was as a result of look­ing through this.

Jason (38:29):

I got you off the show notes.

Jor­dan (38:31):

So I’m just like, I’m not on the show notes. I don’t know what the word is. Oh, man. Man, that’s right. What was it? Do you remem­ber? What’s the word? Rar­efied. Oh, that would’ve been easy, man. That would’ve been an easy bust­ed out at, were in rar­efied air. Yes. I mean, there’s so many easy ways to incor­po­rate that. Ah, shoot. Oh, well, I’ll take an Ll. That’s a win for you, Jason. Yeah. All right. Well, Jason, tell us about the word of the day next week. Hope­ful­ly I won’t dis­ap­point our lis­ten­ers again.

Jason:

All right. I feel like this one ough­ta be like a layup. All right. Cordial.

Jor­dan:

Oh, okay. All right. If I miss that, I’m, I’m fir­ing myself. Just from the pod­cast, not this job. Okay. The pod­cast is over. Then the pod­cast is over, every­body. If I miss cor­dial next week, that’s a lot of pres­sure. Well, thank you every­body for lis­ten­ing and kind of tun­ing in around this idea of feed­back and the feed­back fal­la­cy. Thanks for lis­ten­ing to Episode 16 of How Peo­ple Work.

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