How you can bring out the best in others (Transcript)
Fixable
How you can bring out the best in others
August 26, 2024
[00:00:00] Anne Morriss:
Hey everyone. Welcome back to Fixable. We're thrilled to be back with you again. We hope you all had a fantastic summer and are ready like we are to welcome a new season.
[00:00:18] Frances Frei:
And I'm back in Cambridge. I'm refreshed, ready for a new school year, which is New Year's for us.
[00:00:24] Anne Morriss:
It really, we never really left the academic calendar.
[00:00:27] Frances Frei:
No.
[00:00:27] Anne Morriss:
This is, this is the start of it all.
[00:00:29] Frances Frei:
This is the start of it all, and I'm not sure anyone should ever leave the academic calendar. Um, but we have a great show signified today in honor of the academic calendar. We have a Teach-In.
[00:00:39] Anne Morriss:
Yes, it is the appropriate way to start with a little classroom energy.
Some of you may remember the last time we did this, we did a teach-in on the topic of building and more important for most of us rebuilding trust. This time around we're gonna look at a related topic, which is how to create a context where other people can really excel. So we're gonna call this topic, leading high performance teams.
It's a little corporate. It's a little corporate, the title, but I think, uh, I think it, it communicates. Frances, can you improve it?
[00:01:14] Frances Frei:
Yeah. How to bring out the best in others.
[00:01:16] Anne Morriss:
Yeah. Yeah. How to bring out the best in other people.
[00:01:24] Frances Frei:
Yeah. And it's an enormously important topic, um, because each of us, it doesn't matter where we are in the hierarchy, and it doesn't matter if we're personally or professionally, it's within our ability, within our discretion to set someone else up for success.
So we're gonna learn how to do that today.
[00:01:37] Anne Morriss:
Yeah, it's a super powerful pivot to take responsibility for creating the conditions for other people to show up and, and essentially bring their best self to the task. And often we, we take responsibility for that when, when we have people reporting to us. But what I think is, is, is really interesting about the conversation we're gonna have today is this is also about creating the context where our peers can excel or even people that we're reporting to.
This is about how to just bring that energy into any relationship at work.
I'm Anne Morriss. I'm a company builder and leadership coach.
[00:02:15] Frances Frei:
And I'm Frances Frei, I'm a professor at the Harvard Business School and I'm Anne's wife.
[00:02:25] Anne Morriss:
And this is Fixable from the TED Audio Collective. On this show, we believe that meaningful change happens fast, anything is fixable, and good solutions are often just a single brave conversation away.
All right, Frances. I wanna start with the mechanics of this, and usually we have the benefit of a blackboard behind us to kind of walk people through this, so without that trusty blackboard, take us, set the scene for us here. How do I even think about setting someone else up for success?
[00:03:04] Frances Frei:
Well, here's the incredible thing.
There are two things we can do that will invariably help someone else's performance improve. And I just wanna pause for a moment here. This is magical to me. There are things I can do that will get you to perform better. You know, before understanding this, I thought the only way I could improve my performance is by me concentrating on my performance.
But it turns out there are mindsets other people can have that can increase my performance. This is, it's often easier to think about it in the leader, team member or in the coach player metaphor. But that is, I just still to this day find it to be miraculous.
[00:03:48] Anne Morriss:
Alright, well I'm leaning forward. What can I do so that somebody else performs better?
[00:03:55] Frances Frei:
So, the first one is that if I experience you setting high standards for me, I will perform better. So in the presence of high standards, we perform better. You can think about this, if we have goals, we perform better than if we don't have goals. The goals are a way of setting standards. So if I experience your expectation that I can do more, I will do more.
[00:04:23] Anne Morriss:
Mm-Hmm.
[00:04:23] Frances Frei:
Which is, again, incredible.
[00:04:26] Anne Morriss:
Right. Right.
[00:04:27] Frances Frei:
We call it the privilege of high standards, the privilege of expectations, but it helps to be around people who have high standards for us, because our own performance will improve.
[00:04:40] Anne Morriss:
Got it. Okay. So that's ingredient number one. So I, I should set high standards.
[00:04:46] Frances Frei:
Yes. And ingredient number two is all things being equal. If you experience that I am deeply devoted to your success, you will perform better. If you--
[00:04:58] Anne Morriss:
Wow. Yeah. Okay.
[00:04:59] Frances Frei:
If you experience that I really care about you being successful, and I mean really care about it, and that I have your back and that I want you to thrive, just experiencing that caring, what we call devotion, just experiencing that devotion to my success, I will perform better. Again, miraculous.
[00:05:24] Anne Morriss:
Again, miraculous. And so there are only two ingredients on this list.
[00:05:28] Frances Frei:
Only two, two things.
[00:05:29] Anne Morriss:
So if I want you to perform better, I should set high standards and reveal my deep devotion to your success.
[00:05:36] Frances Frei:
That's exactly right.
[00:05:36] Anne Morriss:
And that's it. That's all. Those are the, those are the two magic inputs.
[00:05:39] Frances Frei:
Those are the two magic inputs, and when you do that, other people's performance doesn't get a little better, it gets wildly better.
[00:05:48] Anne Morriss:
Okay, so this sounds like it's not that hard.
[00:05:53] Frances Frei:
Ooh. But that has been been the devil's--the devil in the detail.
[00:05:55] Anne Morriss:
That has not been my experience and your experience. So what gets in the way of doing these things that sound relatively simple to do?
[00:06:02] Frances Frei:
The, the main thing that gets in the way is that when I put myself in a position to have you experience my high standards, I often shield you from my deep devotion to your success.
[00:06:12] Anne Morriss:
Okay. So, I'm setting high standards, but for some reason I'm withholding my devotion.
[00:06:21] Frances Frei:
Yeah.
[00:06:21] Anne Morriss:
And why is that? Why would I do such a thing?
[00:06:24] Frances Frei:
I think that sometimes we feel like we have to tense ourselves up. We have to like, you know, there's like this phrase of tough love. Like I have to be tough and I have to, you know, kind of dehumanize you a little bit so that I don't mind being tough. And so we've all like digested tough love is good. Eh, it's actually not great because there, well, let me just say there's a much better way. 'Cause tough love is high standards, low devotion.
[00:06:50] Anne Morriss:
So, okay, so if I'm, if I'm up here, I'm setting high standards, but I'm withholding my devotion or my commitment to your, so we're gonna call that tough love.
[00:06:58] Frances Frei:
Yeah.
[00:06:59] Anne Morriss:
And that is one option on this menu, but it doesn't work as well.
[00:07:03] Frances Frei:
No.
[00:07:08] Anne Morriss:
When if, when we're, when we're looking at other people's, I mean, it's pretty simple to matter.
[00:07:08] Frances Frei:
Yeah.
[00:07:08] Anne Morriss:
Like, is other people's performance improving or not improving. With tough love, you get somewhere, you just don't get as far as you can get if you're doing both at the same time.
[00:07:18] Frances Frei:
That's right. That's right. And another reason that it's hard relatedly is, and often what happens subsequently. So I'm giving you tough love and then I get feedback that I'm not awesome to be around. The toughness.
[00:07:33] Anne Morriss:
No, it doesn't feel great, but tough doesn't feel great, doesn't feel great.
[00:07:35] Frances Frei:
So I might get that if it an employee setting, I might get, you know, oh, the engagement survey of my team or, or I'll, I'll get some feedback and then we usually overcorrect.
[00:07:47] Anne Morriss:
Mm.
[00:07:48] Frances Frei:
And so then I'm like, “Oh my gosh, I want you to experience my devotion to your success.” And without even realizing it, I insidiously lower the standards. So unless we're careful when we express our deep devotion to someone's success, we let them off the hook. We lower standards, and that too isn't great. But those two states are very common.
[00:08:14] Anne Morriss:
Yeah. So we think these things have to trade off on each, that's our, our intuition is they have to trade off on each other.
[00:08:25] Frances Frei:
That's exactly right.
[00:08:20] Anne Morriss:
It's, it's like it's one or the other. And the magic zone is to do both at the same time.
[00:08:27] Frances Frei:
Yes.
[00:08:27] Anne Morriss:
High standards, deep devotion simultaneously. And that's where we wanna be.
[00:08:31] Frances Frei:
And our instincts and human nature is that you get one or the other. But if need, these two things don't have to trade off against each other, but in practice, unless we're really deliberate about it, we almost always do one or the other and we usually toggle back and forth depending on the most recent round of feedback we've received.
[00:08:53] Anne Morriss:
Okay. So that's why this is hard.
[00:08:56] Frances Frei:
Yeah.
[00:08:56] Anne Morriss:
So if I do the work and kind of overcome this trade off, what's the payoff at the end of the rainbow?
[00:09:03] Frances Frei:
Performance is dramatically improved in the presence of both. It's not incrementally improved. It's dramatically improved. So for example, if you experience my deep devotion to your success, I can set much higher standards for you than if they, if you don't.
So this is incredible, right? If I, it's almost like the tough love has a ceiling on how high the standards are that, that someone will endure for you from you. But if you experience my deep devotion to your success, you can achieve even more because I'm gonna be able to set even higher standards for you.
[00:09:38] Anne Morriss:
So, so the, all this good stuff happens, uh, when we're doing both at the same time. And what you're saying is performance, however you measure it, improves, uh, like the rate of improvement goes up. Output, impact, whatever you're measuring goes up in, in my experience working with this framework one, the other, the other way, ways that I can tell that I'm doing both at the same time is the way other people are feeling.
[00:10:04] Frances Frei:
Yeah. So.
[00:10:05] Anne Morriss:
So when people are in this high standard deep devotion play, they're, they're more confident, they're more creative. Um, they're contributing, like all these beautiful C words, they're contributing.
[00:10:16] Frances Frei:
Yeah.
[00:10:16] Anne Morriss:
Like this is the zone where they're feeling good and I'm feeling good.
[00:10:21] Frances Frei:
In, in fact, we often categorize the performance buckets as sentiment.
I feel better.
[00:10:28] Anne Morriss:
Mm-Hmm.
[00:10:28] Frances Frei:
And achievement, I perform better.
[00:10:31] Anne Morriss:
Yep.
[00:10:31] Frances Frei:
And both sentiment and achievement go up when you get to experience both of these simultaneously.
[00:10:36] Anne Morriss:
Got it. Got it. Okay. Ground me in some examples, if you can, um, of, of, of these different boxes. But I think where we're heading is how do I get into this, this high achievement, high sentiment zone? Like how do I, how do I move myself in, the people around me into that space?
[00:10:56] Frances Frei:
Well, when we're coaching people, we usually ask them to find themself in each of these states, so who in your life experiences your standards, but you have reserved your devotion? And who in your life experience your devotion, but you're not raising the standard very much.
We find that if you can actually name the per, like, give them a name and you know who they are, what we're about to say is gonna make more sense. So find yourself in each of these places. Who in your life is experiencing your standards without devotion or your devotion without standards?
[00:11:33] Anne Morriss:
Can I, can I make a suggestion just for the purpose of this conversation? I know we use kind of, um, academic old timey names for these different zones, but I'm gonna try to, in real time, let's see if we can come up with better ones.
[00:11:43] Frances Frei:
Yeah.
[00:11:44] Anne Morriss:
So I'm gonna call the, um, high standards, low devotion, tough love.
[00:11:50] Frances Frei:
Yeah.
[00:11:50] Anne Morriss:
Right. Right. That's intuitive. We've talked about that.
[00:11:52] Frances Frei:
Yeah.
[00:11:53] Anne Morriss:
And I'm gonna, I'm gonna describe the low standards, high devotion as like, it's like, um.
[00:11:59] Frances Frei:
Cozy love.
[00:12:00] Anne Morriss:
If it's, if it's, if it's tough love, real love, it's like fake love. It's, uh.
[00:12:06] Frances Frei:
That's pretty harsh though for the people.
[00:12:11] Anne Morriss:
Yeah, it’s pretty harsh, that it's being hard.
[00:12:09] Frances Frei:
On sentiment. Yeah.
[00:12:11] Anne Morriss:
Yeah.
[00:12:12] Frances Frei:
Um, it's sentimental love.
[00:12:14] Anne Morriss:
It's sentimental love.
[00:12:15] Frances Frei:
Yeah.
[00:12:16] Anne Morriss:
Hmm. All right. We're gonna, we might have to workshop that.
[00:12:19] Frances Frei:
Okay.
[00:12:19] Anne Morriss:
But I like it for now.
So what are we gonna name this be the beautiful end state, we're trying to get to high standards, deep devotion?
[00:12:26] Frances Frei:
Well, I, I mean.
[00:12:19] Anne Morriss:
Yeah.
[00:12:28] Frances Frei:
I ultimately believe it's love.
[00:12:31] Anne Morriss:
It's like real love.
[00:12:32] Frances Frei:
It's real love. It's true love.
[00:12:34] Anne Morriss:
Say more on this interesting, true love.
[00:12:36] Frances Frei:
It's true love.
[00:12:37] Anne Morriss:
Say more on this interesting topic. Yeah.
[00:12:38] Frances Frei:
Well, I think the greatest form of love is for someone to experience your high standards and your deep devotion, and I think you're only doing half your job if you only give them one.
[00:12:48] Anne Morriss:
Yeah. Okay.
[00:12:49] Frances Frei:
Yeah.
[00:12:49] Anne Morriss:
So these are the cat, these are the categories
[00:12:51] Frances Frei:
Yeah.
[00:12:51] Anne Morriss:
That you have to, and, and your advice to our listeners is find yourself in all four of these categories with people in your life.
[00:13:03] Frances Frei:
I think so. So, and, and, and often when we advise people, we say, “Do it a one round professionally and one round personally.”
[00:13:09] Anne Morriss:
Mm-Hmm.
[00:13:10] Frances Frei:
Um, but who in your life experiences your tough love?
[00:13:21] Anne Morriss:
Hmm.
[00:13:16] Frances Frei:
Who in your life experiences your sentimental love?
[00:13:20] Anne Morriss:
Yeah.
[00:13:21] Frances Frei:
Who in your life experiences your true love both.
[00:13:26] Anne Morriss:
Yeah.
[00:13:26] Frances Frei:
And who in your life experiences no love? And no love is usually in the form of being invisible. Who in your life do you just walk on by? You just neglect.
[00:13:36] Anne Morriss:
Nice, nice. You're just not acknowledging their humanity.
[00:13:43] Frances Frei:
You're not acknowledging.
[00:13:39] Anne Morriss:
You know, my obvious follow up here, Frances. So find yourself in these four categories.
[00:13:44] Frances Frei:
Yeah. Oh me?
[00:13:46] Anne Morriss:
Yeah.
[00:13:46] Frances Frei:
Okay. Who experiences my true love? Students.
[00:13:49] Anne Morriss:
Students.
[00:13:50] Frances Frei:
Students.
[00:13:49] Anne Morriss:
Yes. Yes, for sure.
[00:13:55] Frances Frei:
Students experience my high standards. In fact, it's one of the things that they like very much about it and they experience my deep devotion to their learning. Now, notice I didn't say deep devotion to them. It's deep devotion to their success and in the education environment that's to their learning. So students experience my high standards and my deep devotion to their success, and they build on each other and it honestly is true love.
[00:14:13] Anne Morriss:
Yes. And is it, why is that an, why is it easy for you to be, to kind of ch-channel that version of yourself with students?
[00:14:22] Frances Frei:
Let's go through the other ones and then we'll see why it's hard.
[00:14:25] Anne Morriss:
Okay.
[00:14:25] Frances Frei:
And then I might be able to get to why it's easy, but I have to say.
[00:14:28] Anne Morriss:
Great.
[00:14:28] Frances Frei:
It's effortless. So I'm, um, in there and, uh, if I had to answer it without a warmup, I would say it's because it's so not about me.
[00:14:39] Anne Morriss:
Yeah.
[00:14:39] Frances Frei:
It's just.
[00:14:39] Anne Morriss:
And you walk into that room knowing it's not about you.
[00:14:41] Frances Frei:
It's absolutely not about me.
And in fact, anytime I've ever struggled as a, as an educator, it's when it's, I've made it about me.
[00:14:49] Anne Morriss:
Yeah.
[00:14:49] Frances Frei:
And it's hard to have true love when it's about me. True love is like.
[00:14:53] Anne Morriss:
Mm-Hmm.
[00:14:53] Frances Frei:
The definition of other oriented.
[00:14:55] Anne Morriss:
Yeah.
[00:14:55] Frances Frei:
And I think we're gonna, what we know is that tough love and sentimental love are both about us. Okay. Uh, so that's true love the students. For tough love, I would say that historically it's my senior colleagues at the Harvard Business School that experience my tough love.
[00:15:13] Anne Morriss:
Mm-Hmm.
[00:15:14] Frances Frei:
Um, and that is, if I'm not careful, I lead with my standards and I forget to reveal that I'm devoted to their success. And here's what's important.
It's not that I'm not devoted, but I forget to demonstrate it. I keep it private. I keep those thoughts to myself, and they do nobody any good when I keep them to myself. And so when people only experience when, the only thing I'm saying is the high standards part, and I'm not revealing the devotion with words or actions or nonverbal, that's a lot to take.
And why should someone take it. And so, you know, maybe they'll perform better, but for sure they're only gonna perform better in my presence and not in my absence because they're only doing it.
[00:15:57] Anne Morriss:
Yeah.
[00:15:57] Frances Frei:
You know, a little fear based.
[00:15:58] Anne Morriss:
Yeah.
[00:15:59] Frances Frei:
Um, and a little like, “I'll do it, but I'm not gonna like you for it. In fact, I'm gonna do it, but I'm gonna dislike you for it.” And I have historically had that challenge with my senior colleagues.
[00:16:13] Anne Morriss:
Mm-Hmm.
[00:16:13] Frances Frei:
Um, uh, now with my junior colleagues, I have your sentimental love and it feels sentimental to me.
[00:16:21] Anne Morriss:
Yeah.
[00:16:21] Frances Frei:
'Cause I remember what it was like to be a junior faculty member and it was so darn hard and I felt like so many people didn't see me.
[00:16:33] Anne Morriss:
Yeah.
[00:16:29] Frances Frei:
And so many people were, I didn't know if it was intentional or unintentional, but they were making it harder for me than it needed to be. And they weren't nourishing me along the way in ways that I just felt like I was starving and thirsty and I couldn't believe it. So I work so hard to see junior faculty and I get.
[00:16:46] Anne Morriss:
Mm-hmm.
[00:16:47] Frances Frei:
What they've been in and it really does feel sentimental. Um. And if I'm not careful, I insidiously lower the standards on them.
[00:16:55] Anne Morriss:
Mm-Hmm.
[00:16:56] Frances Frei:
And it does not help them.
[00:16:57] Anne Morriss:
Mm-Hmm.
[00:16:57] Frances Frei:
And it is about me. It's about my sentimentality.
[00:17:00] Anne Morriss:
Yeah.
[00:17:00] Frances Frei:
It's not about their sentimentality. Um, so those are.
[00:17:09] Anne Morriss:
And a huge opportunity cost because that's a community that would have, you know, responded so powerfully to, to your expectations being clear and high.
[00:17:15] Frances Frei:
And I mean, if you wanna ask me where do I have the greatest regret at the Harvard Business School, it's junior faculty who I only gave sentimental love to and they didn't achieve enough to get promoted.
[00:17:26] Anne Morriss:
Mm-Hmm.
[00:17:26] Frances Frei:
And I know in retrospect, I could have done something different. And you know why I didn't? 'Cause it was all about me and my darn sentimentality. And it torments me.
[00:17:35] Anne Morriss:
Right, right. And it felt good in the moment you felt you were doing the right thing.
[00:17:39] Frances Frei:
It felt very good in the moment.
[00:17:40] Anne Morriss:
It, you know, the, the energy of this lane is, you know, pro protector energy and loyalty, um, and.
[00:17:48] Frances Frei:
Compassion. It feels like compassion.
[00:17:49] Anne Morriss:
Keeping the harshness of the world back.
[00:17:50] Frances Frei:
Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:17:52] Anne Morriss:
It's a very parental energy and it does know any, it does no one any good.
[00:18:00] Frances Frei:
Yeah.
[00:17:56] Anne Morriss:
Yeah. That's great. Those are great vivid examples.
[00:18:00] Frances Frei:
The no love for me are people who, um, no love usually comes when I experience people who have struggled teaching and they don't acknowledge that they've struggled teaching, they think it's a student's fault and not their fault, and thus they don't have any desire to improve. They just have a desire for the students to change.
[00:18:27] Anne Morriss:
Yep. That's good. All right, let's get into the final part of this, Frances, which is, how do I, how do I move into this real love place when I'm starting from these other lanes?
[00:18:54] Frances Frei:
Yeah. So this is fun. So, and if you've, if you have taken our advice and have written down names of people or categories of people. Pick one that you have in the sentimental love quadrant.
So just identify one person there who you really wish they could experience your true love. So, someone who you have a desire to have them experience both your standards and your devotion. Um, 'cause it's not gonna be everyone that's in sentimental of, but pick the one who you're like, after this conversation, you're like, “Huh, I wanna give them the gift of high standards without giving up the deep devotion.”
And now with that person or that group of people in mind. Here is the exercise. I'm first just gonna give you, uh, something to think about, to sort of open up our aperture of how we think about this, and that is to think about the amazing Carol Dweck. So Carol Dweck gave the world the notion of the growth mindset, and so now, this is like universally known term.
It's not always traced back to her, but it indeed originated from her. And she's a, uh, just preeminent child psychologist. She's in her early seventies now, has had a storied career, but in studying children, she came up with growth mindset and it's, um, evil twin, fixed mindset.
So there's growth mindset and fixed mindset. And what she found is that she and her team could predict how well children were gonna do, controlling for all the factors you thought you should control for, by narrowing it down to what kind of mindset did the children have? Did they have a growth mindset, which is a learn it all mindset, which is a, “Oh, here's a challenge. I can't wait till I'm on the other side of that challenge.”
Or a fixed mindset, which is a know it all mindset, which is, “Here's a challenge, let me avoid it.” So if you have kids that are good at one thing and they wanna learn another thing and they enjoy not being good at it. On the way to being good at it.
Growth mindset. If you have kids that are good at one thing and then they try something else and they're not good at it and they wanna abandon it 'cause they don't like the feeling of not being good at it. Fixed mindset. If we take Carol Dweck's, sort of have the image of her and our mind and the growth mindset.
[00:21:18] Anne Morriss:
All right. I'm channeling Carol.
[00:21:19] Frances Frei:
Here is the sentence or, or the observation that I attribute to her. She told the world, “There are two ways to parent. One of them is the right way.”
[00:21:31] Anne Morriss:
Uh oh. This is not gonna end well for us. Frances.
[00:21:37] Frances Frei:
I can remember the first time I was introduced to this, I was like, “Uh, I don't know what the two ways are. I just know I'm doing the wrong one.” Just really confident. “I'm doing the wrong one.”
[00:21:46] Anne Morriss:
Uh, for sure.
[00:21:46] Frances Frei:
And it turns out I was.
[00:21:47] Anne Morriss:
I'm impressed that you kept reading.
[00:21:49] Frances Frei:
I, it turns out I was, but I was able to overcome it. Get better as a parent, as a result. So that's, that's the gift we're about to get here, which is there are two ways to parent, and one of them is the right way.
The first way is to prepare the child for the path, and the second way is to prepare the path for the child.
[00:22:11] Anne Morriss:
Oh, yes. Okay.
[00:22:14] Frances Frei:
So should you prepare the child for the path or should you prepare the path for the child?
[00:22:22] Anne Morriss:
Now, is this a multiple choice question?
[00:22:23] Frances Frei:
It is.
[00:22:23] Anne Morriss:
Yeah. I think I should prepare the child for the path.
[00:22:29] Frances Frei:
And what do you think your wife was doing?
[00:22:40] Anne Morriss:
I think we were both just weed whacking that path.
[00:22:39] Frances Frei:
Oh my gosh.
[00:22:39] Anne Morriss:
Particularly with our firstborn. Oh, oh gosh. God.
[00:22:41] Frances Frei:
Oh my gosh. It's a miracle that we didn't do more damage. A miracle.
[00:22:45] Anne Morriss:
Yeah.
[00:22:45] Frances Frei:
We just carried around that weed whacker. I'd get up early in the morning. I'd stay up late at night.
I'd go out and weed whack the paths. I thought I'd go weed whack imagined paths. Particularly if I could buy another weed wacker on Amazon, I would definitely, like, I was just weed whacking. And.
[00:23:00] Anne Morriss:
So if I'm in that sentiment, what you're saying, if I'm in that sentimental place.
[00:23:03] Frances Frei:
You're probably a weed whacker.
[00:23:04] Anne Morriss:
I'm weed whacking for the people around me.
[00:23:06] Frances Frei:
Yeah.
[00:23:07] Anne Morriss:
Like I'm doing all the hard work and they're benefiting from none of it.
[00:23:10] Frances Frei:
That's right. Because what you're doing is making them reliant on you. So if you are there,
[00:23:16] Anne Morriss:
Oh yeah.
[00:23:16] Frances Frei:
And you can weed whack the path for them. They can make it, but what are you gonna do when you're not there? And they encounter a path with even a pebble on it?
[00:23:26] Anne Morriss:
And so what does that, what does it mean in the workplace if I'm ready to prepare the person for the path?
[00:23:33] Frances Frei:
Well, one is I would not shield them from what great actually looks like.
[00:23:38] Anne Morriss:
Mm-Hmm.
[00:23:38] Frances Frei:
So one way we, one thing we do that is sentimental. We're like, “Oh, you're doing fine.” When you're not.
[00:23:47] Anne Morriss:
Right.
[00:23:47] Frances Frei:
So we give you an easy grade. Like if you are getting a two out of 10, we shouldn't say, “Oh, you're doing fine.” We should say, “You're getting a two out of 10. I know it sounds bad, but I believe in you and I believe we're gonna get up there and let's start talking about a plan.” So one is don't shield them from what great looks like.
Don't insidiously lower the standards. Let them know what reality.
[00:24:12] Anne Morriss:
Yep.
[00:24:12] Frances Frei:
And also that they're not alone when they're doing it. So that's one thing. So let me ask you, in your coaching, what's another one that works?
[00:24:21] Anne Morriss:
Yeah, so one I really love is, um, any signal that sends our job is to learn. Your job is to learn my, or the team's job is to learn.
So things like a, after action review where we pause and figure out, you know, what is it that we did well? What do we, what do we wanna change? What do we, what do we need to do differently? What did we do well, you know, all of that stuff signals this growth learning orientation. I think that can be really powerful.
I just heard, uh, interview with Jon Stewart about the kind of breakout success of The Daily Show. And, uh, someone was just interviewing him on the, on the mechanics of it and, and he brought up the idea of, of an after-action review and they, the interviewer said, “Oh, okay. So then the next day you get in the room with team?” He was like, “The next day? That night, after every single show, we get in a room and agree what worked, what d-didn't work.”
And what I love about those team moments too is you get to create norms around, like taking a swing. It's, it's not about like, it's, it's not just about did, did it land? You know, did we make contact with the ball, but what did we learn from the attempt? So there's so much that can happen in this room that reinforces this growth mindset and this is the path to getting better and better.
The mantra that I think about, uh, a lot on this one. And that I used to think about a lot all the time when I was responsible for bigger teams, was treat someone like their better future self. You know, like, and 'cause I knew, I know Frances was gonna show up. You know, with all you know, my job is to be aware of your strengths and limitations, but if I interact with you like your better future self, then I, I, I'm immediately oriented towards the path to get to that better future self and...
[00:26:13] Frances Frei:
I'll become the better future version of myself more quickly.
[00:26:16] Anne Morriss:
Much faster. Much faster.
[00:26:17] Frances Frei:
You know, I do that in the classroom with students. So a student will make a comment and let's say that it was 75% right. I know how to interact with them so that they will get to a hundred percent in like a second.
[00:26:31] Anne Morriss:
And is it fair to say you interact with them as if they nailed it?
[00:26:34] Frances Frei:
I do interact with them as if they nailed it. In fact, I, um, I will often say, “As Anne said.” And then I'll just improve it a little bit.
[00:26:44] Anne Morriss:
Beautiful.
[00:26:44] Frances Frei:
And, but I do it in an accessible and an aspirational way so that the next time Anne says, she says it at least that good. In fact, she usually gets better than even what I said in tr in the synthesis of it.
[00:26:59] Anne Morriss:
I love it. Alright, so what do I do if I'm in that tough love space?
[00:27:00] Frances Frei:
Yeah. So this one, if Carol Dweck inspires us to go from sentimental love to true love. Um, Anne Morriss inspires us to go from tough love to true love. And so this is something I've gotten from studying you. Um, and the words I heard you say, uh, once and I wrote them down and, and started living by them is, “The currency of love is attention.” The currency of love is attention. And what I learned from you is that there are particular kinds of attention that we are withholding from people in tough love.
[00:27:39] Anne Morriss:
Mm-Hmm.
[00:27:40] Frances Frei:
So we're letting them experience our toughness, but they're not experiencing other forms of attention. And if we give them those forms of attention, we can make them better. So I'll give you two examples of the kinds of attention that we typically withhold from people in tough love that when we give it to them, their performance, their sentiment, their achievement, everything skyrockets. The first one is, and we've talked about this on the on, on Fixable before, but the first one is, curious inquiry.
[00:28:17] Anne Morriss:
Hmm.
[00:28:13] Frances Frei:
Bring curiosity.
[00:28:15] Anne Morriss:
Yeah.
[00:28:15] Frances Frei:
To someone who's been experiencing your tough love, which means they've been experiencing your judgment. Introduce curiosity. Be curious about something that they're doing. First of all, they'll be startled and just magically, and so the easiest way I know to express curious inquiry is ask someone a question I don't know the answer to, and I wanna ask someone a question, I don't know the answer to that reveals that I care. So here is my go-to. “How might I be helpful?”
[00:28:47] Anne Morriss:
Hmm.
[00:28:48] Frances Frei:
If you ask that.
[00:28:49] Anne Morriss:
It's so, it's so simple, but so powerful, that one.
[00:28:51] Frances Frei:
If you ask that question to someone who's been experiencing your tough love, who is only experiencing, how am I falling short?
[00:28:59] Anne Morriss:
Mm-Hmm. Mm-Hmm.
[00:28:59] Frances Frei:
How might I be helpful? It just opens up the aperture to the types of conversation that you can have and then, whatever they say, be helpful.
[00:29:10] Anne Morriss:
Yeah. Yeah. I love that. So this is moving from tough love to real love. This is a conversation I have with a lot of our, uh, of our, our coaching clients. And there was one, uh, one client we were both getting really frustrated.
[00:29:29] Frances Frei:
Who? Who? Oh, you and the client were getting--
[00:29:31] Anne Morriss:
Yeah. Yeah. And, and, and the, uh, I'll just call 'em the client. This was the, this was the tech CEO. We were both getting really frustrated with each other. He was basically like, “Anne, I don't have this kind of time.” And I was like, “What? You don't, you, you don't have the time not to do this. 'Cause we're talking about removing the barriers to your team excelling. So, first of all, so you don't have the time not to do this because your team is not yet optimized to, to both contribute and be supportive of you.”
So we were kind of going back and forth and I was like, “And by the way, this takes like, this takes like three minutes. We're just talking about asking better questions, making observations. You know, that curious inquiry takes no time. This is just an a different emotional posture.”
So we were going back and forth. I was frustrated. He was frustrated and he was like, “Can you just, write me like a fucking cheat sheet. Can you just tell me the questions I should be asking and the statements I should be making and just put it on a sheet and send it to me?”
And I was like, “Fine, fine.” So we just like ended, ended the conversation. And I remember in frustration just sitting down just and writing, here are the examples. And they were like, 20 questions. What can I take off your plate? What's getting in the way of you contributing fully? What's energizing to you about your job? Like, what do you like to do?
[00:30:49] Frances Frei:
Yeah.
[00:30:49] Anne Morriss:
What do you--
[00:30:49] Frances Frei:
It's great. It's great. It's great.
[00:30:50] Anne Morriss:
--want to do, um, like when do you feel like you're most connected and contributed to our mission? Then I was like, well, there are also statements you can make. Um, and so I did a quick round of statements and the, the ones that I think on, on that list that are most helpful are, to, to your point about, um the currency of love is attention is naming right, is communicating that this person in front of you is seen by you. So statements like, "Here's what I love about working with you, Frances."
[00:31:27] Frances Frei:
Wow.
[00:31:28] Anne Morriss:
Here's why I hired you. Like, here's the impact I know you can have on the team, and this can be in the context of a difficult conversation about you not making those contributions. But it starts with, "Here's what I know is possible for you."
[00:31:48] Frances Frei:
Yeah.
[00:31:44] Anne Morriss:
And you know, the conversation I wanna have with you today is, is to understand what's in the way of you having the impact I know you can have on this team. 'Cause there's things that I can probably do to make it more likely that you make that contribution.
[00:32:00] Frances Frei:
Yeah. So good. It's so good.
[00:32:03] Anne Morriss:
All right. Is there anything else we wanna cover on this?
[00:32:05] Frances Frei:
And the only thing I will say is for our no love quadrant.
[00:32:09] Anne Morriss:
Yeah.
[00:32:09] Frances Frei:
So for the people that you have in no love, it's a myth, I think I would to think that you can go from no love to true love. It's just too hard to do both at once. So here I think are your choices. You can go from no love to either tough love or sentimental love, whichever one is more natural to you.
[00:32:29] Anne Morriss:
Okay.
[00:32:29] Frances Frei:
So, young Frances, tough love was like much easier and for me than sentimental love. My fear as I have aged is that I'm, I'm spending too much time in sentimental love, but whichever one is easier for you to go from no love to, you can go either to tough love or sentimental love. Um, so I would rightsize my ambition. But the other thing to think about is when we have someone in no love, consider whether or not they should be on your team.
[00:32:56] Anne Morriss:
Hmm
[00:32:57] Frances Frei:
And consider moving them out because I have to tell you, leaving people, as you said, like you know, you, we leave people in this no love, that we leave them in the freezer and we think, well, that's not good for them, but maybe they deserved it 'cause they did some infraction, right?
Here's the real da-danger. Everyone else on the team sees that we have neglect in us. That's terrible culturally. So if someone is truly deserving of no love, maybe you're supposed to move them out and let them go find a team where they can get high standards and deep devotion for someone else so they can make the contribution they're supposed to make in the world.
So we hoard no loves and don't nourish them. And it's not to their benefit. It's not to our benefit, and it's not to the team's benefit. So there I would say either have a path to tough love or sentimental love, or a gracious exit path and do it with dignity and generosity, um, and take responsibility for the fact that you weren't able to bring out the best in them. You co-produced their being in that no love state.
[00:34:04] Anne Morriss:
Yeah. That feels really right.
[00:34:06] Frances Frei:
Yeah.
[00:34:07] Anne Morriss:
Awesome. All right, Frances, I think we're gonna wrap it here. Um, what do you want listeners to take away from this conversation?
[00:34:17] Frances Frei:
That our mindset can improve their performance. Our mindset improves their performance, and in particular, there's two things in our mindset that will really drive someone else's performance.
[00:34:30] Anne Morriss:
Setting high standards and revealing our deep devotion. Those are the two mindset choices.
[00:34:37] Frances Frei:
And when you do that, marvel at how someone else improves.
[00:34:49] Anne Morriss:
Fixable is brought to you by the TED Audio Collective. It's hosted by me, Anne Morriss.
[00:34:54] Frances Frei:
And me, Frances Frei.
[00:34:56] Anne Morriss:
This episode was produced by Isabel Carter from Pushkin Industries. Our team includes Constanza Gallardo, Banban Cheng, Alejandra Salazar, and Roxanne Hai Lash. This episode was mixed by Louis at Story Yard.
[00:35:10] Frances Frei:
If you're enjoying the show, make sure to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and tell a friend to check us out.
[00:35:21] Anne Morriss:
And one more thing, if you can please take a second to leave us a review. It really helps us make a great show.