326: How Curiosity and Psychological Safety Build Wisdom with Jeff Wetzler

Aoife O’Brien [00:00:11]:

What could you learn from other people if they felt safe enough to tell you what they really think? I think, dare I say, oftentimes we feel like people are honest with us or that we know everything there is to know and we don’t necessarily need to ask for feedback, but I’d like to challenge that assumption. And after reading my guest’s book, it was really enlightening for me about how to get that feedback that we really need to be able to perform at our best. My guest is Jeff Wetzler, and he’s talking all about his book, Ask. The episode is absolutely littered with loads of nuggets, loads of practical things that you can do differently, but I don’t want you to do it all at once. Think about one thing. that you’re going to take from today’s episode and put that into practice. And I would love to know what that one thing is. As always, feel free to connect with me on podcast@happieratwork.ie, and I would love to hear from you.

Aoife O’Brien [00:01:07]:

Here’s today’s episode. Jeff, you’re so welcome to the Happier at Work podcast. I’m really looking forward to this conversation because I always say that I lead with curiosity when it comes to asking people questions on the podcast. So, I feel a little bit, not that you’re going to judge me, but you will definitely, I hope, feel my sense of curiosity as we go through. For people who don’t know who you are, would you like to introduce yourself to listeners?

Jeff Wetzler [00:01:34]:

Absolutely. Thank you. And it’s so great to be with you. So, my name is Jeff Wetzler. I am based in New York and I wear a bunch of different hats. But one of them is that I’m the author of a book called Ask. Tap into the Hidden Wisdom of People Around You. And I study and teach about and speak about curiosity, inquiry, learning from other people, both how leaders fail to do that and what they can do to overcome it, to really maximize the collective intelligence all around them.

Aoife O’Brien [00:02:09]:

And I love that term that you use, and you use that in the book as well. And I want to give a shout out to Damon Lembie because that’s how I found you in the first place is through his podcast. And I was like, this sounds really interesting. really interesting and ended up using some of those insights in my own book as well, because I was like, this is, you know, it kind of ties in and I’m really fascinated by it. And one of the questions that I had that isn’t necessarily answered by your book, but it was kind of something that I thought is, and, you know, I’m sure you have an opinion on this, what about the people who are afraid to ask the questions to begin with?

Jeff Wetzler [00:02:47]:

Yes, I think that it’s a very natural thing for many of us to be afraid to ask questions. You know, oftentimes I, when I speak to large groups, I’ll say to the groups, you know, stand up if there was ever a time when you wanted to ask something but you felt too shy or that it was unwelcome or that you would be judged. And I think society can send a lot of messages to people about why they shouldn’t ask questions. And so part of what I try to do in the book is to normalize asking questions. Yeah. And to say that this is a skill that we can build. It’s a muscle that we can, you know, that we can start to work out and practice. And I think the more that people try, the easier it gets.

Aoife O’Brien [00:03:34]:

Yeah.

Jeff Wetzler [00:03:34]:

I also think that asking questions can depend on the context. You know, it’s one thing to ask a question in a room of 200 people And it’s a different thing to ask a question one-on-one. The very same question can be easier or harder depending on the situation as well.

Aoife O’Brien [00:03:47]:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I’m thinking of the kinds of people who don’t want to, maybe who don’t want to know, who are not necessarily open to feedback. So they don’t even want to ask that question. Is there anything that, I suppose, is there any way to handle that specifically?

Jeff Wetzler [00:04:04]:

Well, that’s why in the book, I, as you know, I talk about this method called the Ask Approach.

Aoife O’Brien [00:04:09]:

Yes. Yeah.

Jeff Wetzler [00:04:11]:

And posing the question is not the first step of the Ask Approach. Posing the question is step 3. And, you know, the first step is called Choose Curiosity.

Aoife O’Brien [00:04:19]:

Yes. Okay. Yeah.

Jeff Wetzler [00:04:21]:

And so if you’re not feeling curious, you shouldn’t go right to asking the question. You shouldn’t try to force yourself to ask the question. There is work that you can do to help yourself unlock your own curiosity as well. Yeah, yeah. I start by helping people appreciate what it is that they are not yet finding out that they could find out and how valuable that could be to them. Yeah. Whether it’s trying to understand, you know, what is someone else’s struggle, or what’s their real reason for not doing the thing that you wish they were doing, or what, you know, what do they see that could help make you better? And so by trying to, you know, understand what it is that we could be learning from other people, that’s really valuable for us. I think that starts to build motivation to say, maybe I do want to get a little more curious.

Aoife O’Brien [00:05:08]:

Yes, yeah. I think that’s such a good point because I think so many of us are afraid. I’m thinking specifically, let’s say in a work scenario, in a performance conversation. I think a lot of us are afraid to ask for feedback in case someone says something that we don’t really want to hear. And it is hard. And I know from the book that you’ve had those conversations both ways as well.

Jeff Wetzler [00:05:31]:

Yes, I sure have.

Aoife O’Brien [00:05:33]:

So, these are that are really hard to hear, but I think it’s important that we do hear them for all of the reasons that you talk about, you know, for our own growth, for our own understanding of ourselves, for understanding why things are not getting done. I think that came across really clearly is this idea that trying to understand that things are not working out the way you thought because other people aren’t doing what was asked of them. And of course, we’re going to jump into blame and finger-pointing. But actually, if we go in with a curious mindset and ask questions instead, then we can be open to the possibility of our own contribution to what’s not happening or understanding the other side a little bit more.

Jeff Wetzler [00:06:19]:

Yeah. And as you said, it can take courage. But on the other hand, how great can it be if we actually find out why it is that things aren’t happening that we wish were happening? You know, if there’s something that we want in life, as a friend of mine said to me, and we’re not getting it. If we don’t know why, there’s not much we can do about it. But once we figure out why, then we’re much more empowered to figure out what’s our next step.

Aoife O’Brien [00:06:42]:

I love that. There was one of the stories that really stuck in my mind was the conversation that you had with the board. They were a fundraising subcommittee of the board. Do you want to explain in a little bit more detail that situation and how, I suppose, how you approached it? What was going on and What was the outcome?

Jeff Wetzler [00:07:03]:

Yeah, I mean, it was a situation where, you know, I was part of this, and the CEO was basically very frustrated that this committee within the board was not raising the money and was not, you know, doing what they thought that this was their job. And so was pushing and following up and sending more reminders and, you know, reiterating expectations and, you know, all those kinds of things. but was missing the deeper root cause, which is that this committee itself was starting to have doubts about what they were raising funds for. Yeah. And so until getting curious about that, you know, no amount of pushing or exhorting someone to do what you think they’re going to do is, you know, in some ways, that’s just gonna make it worse because they’re getting more frustrated. But the moment you can say, is there some other reason? Is there, you know, is there anything else that’s getting in the way? All of a sudden that opened up a very fruitful conversation, of course, at a much deeper level. But then, first of all, people on the board started to feel heard and respect the CEO for being curious. But also then they could deal with the problem as well and ultimately get to a better place.

Aoife O’Brien [00:08:19]:

But I think it’s interesting and for me very relatable because I think we all fall into that. In a lot of the work that we do, that we tend to default to asking again or sending follow-ups or sending reminders rather than, like you say, asking questions about, well, why hasn’t this happened or what’s getting in the way? And uncovering that kind of deeper motivation to not want to support it because there was maybe this lack of purpose or they didn’t really believe is a way to move things forward and to address the issue head-on rather than keep doing the same thing again and again, and it’s just not working.

Jeff Wetzler [00:08:58]:

Yeah. And I’ll just say 2 things. I mean, one is that you have to come to that conversation with true curiosity. Yeah. You know, if the attitude is like, well, why aren’t you really doing the thing you should be doing? That doesn’t, you know, that doesn’t convey a level of curiosity, and people will sense that, and they’ll just feel judged, and they won’t share the thing. But then, you know, step 2 of the ASK approach is how do you make it safe for them? to actually tell you the answer. It’s not enough in many cases to simply be curious and ask the right question. There’s specific moves that you need to make in order to actually make it safe.

Jeff Wetzler [00:09:32]:

And, you know, one of those moves is having a level of trust and creating connection with the other person on their terms so that they feel that you have a level of relatedness to them. Yeah. And then also demonstrating that you can handle what they have to say as well. So that if they’re worried this might hurt your feelings or you might get defensive or not react well, you’re assuring them, I value what you have to say, even if it’s hard for me to say, to hear, I will still deeply appreciate it.

Aoife O’Brien [00:10:03]:

And I’d love to dive into those aspects in a little bit more detail. Maybe we start with the curiosity and the not faking it, like not saying it just to get your own outcome, but actually going in with genuine curiosity so that people don’t necessarily feel judged. Or do you want to talk us through a little bit about that? That like it is about creating genuine curiosity and not, not this kind of fake curiosity or not like the situations, I suppose, where we can use this or where it’s actually real.

Jeff Wetzler [00:10:35]:

Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, in the book, I spend a bunch of time talking about one method for how to get curious. which relates to unpacking the story that we’re telling ourselves about the other person and the situation using a particular tool called the Ladder of Understanding that helps us see what assumptions are we making, what inferences are we making, how do we jump to our conclusions. And since writing the book, I have developed additional tools like the Arc of Curiosity and other things like that that can really help people notice their own mindsets and decide where do they want to move it. But at the, you know, at the end of the day, ultimately what it really comes down to is, are you approaching the other person with this one question in your mind, which is, what can I learn here? As opposed to, what can I get them to do? Or how can I make myself look smart or look whatever to them?

Aoife O’Brien [00:11:20]:

Yes.

Jeff Wetzler [00:11:21]:

Just kind of shifting that and centering this question, what can I learn here? Truly, what can I learn from the other person? That is the— that’s the curiosity stance. And when you do that, I think it radiates an energy. The other person can tell, like, if you’re genuinely curious. in some ways it doesn’t even matter as much what comes next because they can see that you really want to learn.

Aoife O’Brien [00:11:44]:

Yeah.

Jeff Wetzler [00:11:45]:

I have a mentor named Diana Smith who always used to say, your desire to learn cultivates their willingness to tell. Okay. Yeah. So the more that they sense that you, you’re genuine in your, you know, in, in your, in your seeking to learn, they want to share that with you as well.

Aoife O’Brien [00:12:01]:

Yeah, I love that. And creating that space for people. And a few weeks ago we had Eoin Fitzpatrick on the podcast. I’m not sure if you’re familiar with Eoin’s work and Inner Propaganda. So it kind of, when I was reading your book, it tied in a little bit, I think, with what Eoin was saying in Inner Propaganda in terms of the stories we tell ourselves about situations, the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves, you know, and I’m the victim here and, you know, you are, you’re the enemy that needs to be taken out. And I think really understanding what is that story that we’re telling ourselves and how you describe it is our stuff. Yes. And I, you know, for anyone who’s watching on video, I put the air quotes in there because we all, as you rightly say, we all have stuff.

Aoife O’Brien [00:12:48]:

We all have knowledge and experiences and our entire life experiences. And it’s, there’s some things that need to be unlearned about our automatic reactions and how we perceive situations, or this is happening because of XYZ, or this always happens to me. But I think, Being able to recognize those patterns in ourselves is really important. But I think using that ladder and now your arc to be able to understand that and what we’re actually telling ourselves about situations is really important.

Jeff Wetzler [00:13:18]:

Yeah, it’s amazing how the human mind works. And as you say, we all carry around this stuff. And when we take our stuff and we walk into any situation, how quickly we size it up. to get to our story about this person or that person. And in addition to being quick, it happens out of our awareness. And so our story occurs to us as if it’s reality. It doesn’t even occur to us as though it’s a story. Yes.

Jeff Wetzler [00:13:49]:

And that’s the most dangerous part. But I also think that’s the most empowering part. If we can make that shift and say, wait a minute, that’s my story. That’s not necessarily reality. Now I have my story. My story doesn’t have me. And now I can work with my story and I can say, huh, what other stories might there be? How would someone else tell a story about this situation? And just that awareness itself can be a pathway into curiosity.

Aoife O’Brien [00:14:11]:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I love that. I love that approach. And the next one is about safety. And I saw that Amy Edmondson wrote the foreword for your book as well. She gave me an endorsement for my book and I was so delighted with that. I really admire her work. And the foundation of my model is psychological safety and creating that safe for these kinds of conversations.

Aoife O’Brien [00:14:32]:

So I’d love to get your take on what it means in this second part of the process about creating that safe space for people.

Jeff Wetzler [00:14:41]:

Yes, and as you well know, there are so many reasons why people don’t feel safe. And as a leader myself, I learned the hard way that I thought I was approachable and non-intimidating And, you know, it’s just me. Why would anyone feel scared about me? And I very quickly learned that, you know, there’s a power of the position. My good friend Susan Asiambi told me that term, and she said, it doesn’t matter what you think about yourself. You’re in a certain position, and that alone is going to create a lack of safety for people. Yeah. Not to mention crossing lines of difference, whether gender, age, culture, race, any number of different— all of those things can contribute to a sense of lack of safety.

Aoife O’Brien [00:15:27]:

Yeah.

Jeff Wetzler [00:15:28]:

And so I think for leaders, first of all, just having the awareness that there may be less safety than you think there is. There probably is less safety than you think there is. Yeah. And then the question is, well, what do you do about it?

Aoife O’Brien [00:15:39]:

Yes.

Jeff Wetzler [00:15:40]:

And so, you know, 3 big things that I discovered that, you know, that I write about in this part of the book. One I alluded to earlier, which is, you know, how do you create that connection? And what I interviewed a number of CEOs in researching the book, because CEOs are notorious for not getting the truth from people. People lie to their CEOs to make themselves look good, to get their agenda, you know, to keep the CEO, you know, off their back. And I said to the CEOs, what, you know, how did you get the truth out of people, especially people, you know, several layers down from you or away from you in the org chart? And one of the common things they said is, you know, if I want someone to tell me the truth, I’m never going to drag them into my office, sit across the big intimidating CEO desk from me, and assume that they’re going to feel safe.

Aoife O’Brien [00:16:26]:

Yeah.

Jeff Wetzler [00:16:27]:

What I’m going to do is I’m going to go to them. I’m going to go, we’re going to take a walk together, we’re going to do a ride-along, we’re going to have a meal in the, you know, in the company cafeteria, whatever it is. There was no single answer but other than whatever is going to be most safe for the other person. where they feel most comfortable, that’s the place where we’re going to create connection. And it gave me an appreciation for how, for the power of context.

Aoife O’Brien [00:16:49]:

I love that idea. I don’t know if you’re familiar with the show Silicon Valley.

Jeff Wetzler [00:16:56]:

I’ve seen it a couple of times. Yeah.

Aoife O’Brien [00:16:57]:

Okay. There’s one part in one episode where it’s exactly that. The CEO makes a big announcement saying, oh, we’re going to launch this product in 2 weeks or whatever it might have been. And then it cuts back to the office floor basically. And people are having discussions saying, 2 weeks? Oh no, it’s more like 6 weeks. And then someone else overhears that part of the conversation and they go back and they say, you say 6 weeks? No, like it’s more like 15 weeks. And each person doesn’t want to tell the next level up. I think we could create safety.

Jeff Wetzler [00:17:28]:

I have to go look up that episode. That’s really cool.

Aoife O’Brien [00:17:31]:

I’ll share the link with you. We can put a link to it in the show notes as well. But to me, it is that idea. So you may create safety at the level of your peers, peers or within your team, but you need to think about that level above and how easy it is to challenge an idea or an assumption or to talk about a mistake that you’ve made at that next level. And I loved again how you articulated, you’re like, I’m just Jeff, I’m just the guy. I like playing tennis and I like doing this. And I’m kind of, you know, and this is me and this is my personality. But what goes with everything as we progress in our careers that we don’t even see it, we don’t even realize, that it is that power differential just for the level of experience that we have or the title that we have.

Aoife O’Brien [00:18:15]:

We don’t realize that other people are not telling us the truth. They’re telling us what we want to hear. And therefore, we need to absolutely make it safe for them. So, I’d love to explore that in a little bit more detail about like, how do we model that for them and say that it’s okay, you know, beyond just the location and making it safe for them? Are there specific things that we can do or say to encourage people to not just tell us the truth but proactively come to us when there’s an issue or before something becomes escalated?

Jeff Wetzler [00:18:51]:

Yeah, so 2 things. One is, this is probably the hardest thing for leaders. I say, if you want someone else to open up, you need to open up first. And I think a lot of leaders receive the message, I should hold my cards close. I shouldn’t show any vulnerability. Yeah. You know, if I’m— if I don’t know something, that’s a sign of weakness. I need to project like I’m confident and I have it all together.

Jeff Wetzler [00:19:15]:

And ironically, all of that will make it less safe for people to tell you what, what, you know, what they really need, what they think, what they’re struggling with, what their ideas are, all of it. And so if you can flip it and you can say, especially before you ask them a question or if you want them to come to you, to explain why you’re asking. Yeah. Because people will guess what your motives are and they will probably guess, you know, something suspicious. Like, they’re trying to catch me or they’re trying, you know, whatever.

Aoife O’Brien [00:19:40]:

But they’ll make an assumption. Yeah, they’re trying to catch me out so I say something and then I’m going to get fired or whatever.

Jeff Wetzler [00:19:46]:

Right. But if you can just simply say, look, the reason why I need you to come to me or the reason why I’m asking you is because you have a vantage point that I don’t have. You see things I don’t see. I don’t know what you know. I’m actually struggling with this thing myself. Or I’m stuck on this. Like any of those kinds of things starts to lower the barriers for people and they think, okay, especially if there’s a foundation of trust, now I see why they’re asking. Now I see why they want me to come to them.

Aoife O’Brien [00:20:11]:

Yeah. And you touch on this in the book as well, this, the idea of the frontline workers and how, you know, as we progress, you know, and most leaders don’t have access to the kind of information that frontline workers have, whether you’re in a call center, or a nurse in a hospital or whatever it might be, they have direct access to the clients or the customers or the patients, and they know what’s going on day in, day out. And I’m sure they have an abundance of ideas that they feel the organization’s not listening because they haven’t asked. Exactly. But actually, I think creating that space for people to offer up ideas on how to improve processes or customer experience or whatever it might be, I think There’s a huge opportunity there.

Jeff Wetzler [00:20:55]:

That’s the collective wisdom that exists in every single team and organization that I think most leaders are wasting. They’re not benefiting from what that is. And, you know, in a world where every one of their, you know, peers or competitors has all the answers, the same answers from AI, the only thing that they have that their peers or competitors don’t have is the unique knowledge that the people in their organization holds. And so, if you’re not tapping into that, what else? What’s left? But if you don’t make it safe, you’re not going to get to tap into that.

Aoife O’Brien [00:21:29]:

Exactly. Yeah. No, it’s interesting. Even before the age of AI, one of the top questions that I would be asked by companies that I work with would be, what are other companies doing in this area? I want to do what they’re doing. And my pushback always is, Ask your own employees what they think and what they want, because you’re going to find out a lot more from doing and asking than you are from just copying a strategy or copying an implementation that another organization has done.

Jeff Wetzler [00:22:03]:

Yes. Amen. Exactly. Exactly.

Aoife O’Brien [00:22:06]:

This is it. So, onto the— maybe do you want to talk us through the last couple of parts of the ask? methodology. We’re into the kind of the bit that people probably jump to when they think of these kinds of things and neglect to do the first 2 steps. So I’m really glad that we covered those.

Jeff Wetzler [00:22:27]:

Me too.

Aoife O’Brien [00:22:28]:

And then, yeah, so we’re into asking the question.

Jeff Wetzler [00:22:31]:

Exactly. So if step 1 is choose curiosity, step 2 is make it safe, step 3 of the ASK approach is called pose quality questions. And this is, as you say, this is the heart of the ASK approach. This is what most people associate it because this is about asking the questions. And I think it rests on one simple premise, which is that the quality of the question that you ask determines the quality of the information that you get back. And I think when I was writing the book, AI was not really out and common. But I think nowadays, it’s very clear to all of us that the quality of the prompt that we put into AI—

Aoife O’Brien [00:23:06]:

I was just thinking as you said that, it’s the quality. I’m thinking AI, the context, et cetera, et cetera. Like, that’s what the important thing is, to get the good answers out of it.

Jeff Wetzler [00:23:15]:

So we see that now. And, you know, there’s whole fields of prompt engineering. And, you know, I now think to myself, if only we would put as much attention to the prompt we ask each other as to the prompt that we ask AI, how much better would the answers be as well? And I think, you know, in addition to, as we were saying earlier, leaders getting lots of mess— and people getting lots of messages that we shouldn’t ask questions, Very few people have ever been taught what makes for a good question, what makes for a quality question. And it turns out that just the same way that products have designs and experiences have designs, questions have designs as well. And different designs are better and worse at uncovering the truth from other people. Yeah. Yeah. So, if you take one of my favorite examples is to take a question that I think many, many people, myself included, ask sometimes, which is just a question of, you know, so does that make sense? And, you know, people will often, you know, explain something, say, does that make sense? And when you ask that question, usually you get some kind of a nod.

Jeff Wetzler [00:24:18]:

But even if you, you know, even if you get a nod, we don’t know for sure if that person actually thinks it makes sense or if they’re just afraid to say that they don’t think it makes sense.

Aoife O’Brien [00:24:27]:

Yeah.

Jeff Wetzler [00:24:27]:

Or if they do say it makes sense, does that mean they like it? Or does that mean they agree with it or they understand it? Like, it’s You know, it’s such a common question, but it gets us such little information. Yeah, that’s really useful, as opposed to just simply redesigning the question to say something like, you know, so what’s your reaction to that? Yeah, or how does that land with you? Or, you know, or what might I be overlooking? Or any number of those things. You’re going to be inviting disconfirming data. You’re going to make it much more wide open for people to say the full range of different things that they actually think and feel. And it doesn’t take any longer to say the second version of the question than it says, you know, versus the first version of the question. So it’s not like asking questions has to be something I don’t have time for because it doesn’t take any longer. It’s just a better design. And so when you, you know, have a better design, we know you get better outcomes as well.

Aoife O’Brien [00:25:16]:

Yeah.

Jeff Wetzler [00:25:17]:

So posing quality questions is all about redesigning your questions so that they are more likely to promote learning. And in the book, I talk about how do you redesign the questions, but also what are some high-quality questions you could start with as well.

Aoife O’Brien [00:25:30]:

Yeah. Yeah.

Jeff Wetzler [00:25:31]:

And there’s not like there’s hundreds. I think if people could learn maybe 10, we would all be learning a lot more from each other.

Aoife O’Brien [00:25:37]:

Yeah. That it’s, we’re not shutting down. I think one of the things I found interesting was almost the leading question where you’re giving the answer that you want to hear and then you’re, you know, maybe something like, do you agree with that or something? And like, you don’t really give us much of an option. Yeah. Do you think we should? And you’ve just given the whole reason why we should. Yes. Rather than going in with curiosity, as we talked about at the start, and really trying to learn like what someone’s real thoughts and feelings are about this. The other interesting thing, Jeff, I think at the end or towards the end of the book is the idea that as children, we’re so curious and we ask a ton of questions day in, day out.

Aoife O’Brien [00:26:16]:

And there’s research that shows this. And then as we progress and as we move through school, it’s kind of beaten out of us almost. And I remember my mum saying a few years ago that I was super curious as a kid and I asked the question when it was raining, I was like, who wets the rain? You know? And I was trying to understand like— I love it. Why is the rain wet and who actually wets it? And, but like these kinds of things, you know, I would like to think I’m still quite curious, maybe not in every situation. And I think you do touch on this in the book when we have the emotions going on, when we’re hijacked by our amygdala and we go into stress mode and we just need to get results quickly. we tend to shut down those kinds of curiosity-based things as well. But any thoughts on how to rebuild that sense of curiosity and maybe a little bit of wonder and like wanting to learn from other people?

Jeff Wetzler [00:27:14]:

Yeah, I mean, it’s such a— it’s such— it’s so important. And, you know, in the book I mentioned, like, by the time kids are 4, sometimes they’re asking, you know, hundreds of questions a day, which parents can you know, get tired of. I think that’s partly what suppresses the curiosity because they just say, you know, stop asking so many questions. Or they give them one-word answers. You know, the rain is wet because it’s rain. You know, that kind of thing. That’s what rain is. Okay, now go, you know, go away.

Jeff Wetzler [00:27:41]:

Yeah. But I think, first of all, I think it’s a reminder to ourselves that we all started that way, which means that we have it in us. Yeah. It’s, you know, even if we haven’t practiced that muscle, We still have it in us. And so I do think that even just the act of asking good questions and getting surprising answers itself can be part of reclaiming the inner curiosity that we have as well. Okay, yeah. And then I also think, you know, and I talk a little bit about this, like, how do we just put ourselves in situations that are unfamiliar? And so get ourselves out of our daily routine, take a walk in a different route, Or, you know, talk to different people or watch different TV shows or read someone else’s social media feeds that we, you know, compared to. So anything that could create novel stimuli for us can be a great source of shaking us out of our schema, our, you know, familiar mental models.

Aoife O’Brien [00:28:40]:

Yeah, our default operating system. Yeah, yeah. Yeah,

Jeff Wetzler [00:28:44]:

exactly. So that’s, you know, that’s one way.

Aoife O’Brien [00:28:47]:

Yeah. No, I love that. And it just, the simple things, like, I mean, some, something kind of random, but thinking about it as you’re talking that, uh, so I, I’m on TikTok, but I don’t use it that often. Like I post clips from, from the podcast there, but a friend of mine, our, our kind of mode of communication is sending TikTok videos to each other. So she’ll send me a TikTok video. I’ll open up TikTok and I’ll see a video and I’ll, And I just assume that what I see in my feed is what she sees in hers. And I’ll send a video and think, oh, maybe she sent this to me already, but she didn’t. So clearly her feed is very different to my feed.

Aoife O’Brien [00:29:22]:

Yes,

Jeff Wetzler [00:29:23]:

I love

Aoife O’Brien [00:29:23]:

that. And it’s just interesting, but I’m seeing, you know, these funny videos that she’s sending me or whatever. And yeah, it’s just, I mean, I suppose on a couple of different levels, on the mode of communication that we’re using in this day and age to kind of stay in touch, but also just the fact that she’s seeing very different things than what are what’s popping up in my feed as well and just being open to that.

Jeff Wetzler [00:29:45]:

And that alone can provoke curiosity. That’s interesting. Why might she have a different feed than I have? And what’s in her feed and all that.

Aoife O’Brien [00:29:50]:

Yeah. What’s she liking or what’s she watching? That’s kind of not coming up in mine. Brilliant. So the next step then in the ASK process—

Jeff Wetzler [00:30:01]:

Is called listen to learn. So that’s step 4 of the ASK approach. And this basically says that once you ask the question, everything comes down to, do you actually really hear the answer? And so many of us think we’re better at listening than we really are. And, you know, listening to learn is not the same as listening to say our next thing or prove our point or look smart or get them to do what we want or look like we’re listening. I mean, it’s a very particular thing to try to truly take in the essence of what every, you know, what the other person is saying and also not saying. Um, you know, like, like the, the, the, the, the essence of their message. Um, and, uh, I think, um, one of my mentors, David Kanter, talked about different channels of communication. Um, content, emotion.

Aoife O’Brien [00:30:54]:

Oh yes. Yeah. Yeah.

Jeff Wetzler [00:30:55]:

And many of us, I think, gravitate towards one, one channel versus another and may not even realize there’s other channels out there.

Aoife O’Brien [00:31:03]:

Yes. Yeah.

Jeff Wetzler [00:31:03]:

Yeah. what that helped me to do is to really stretch my listening to say, yeah, you know, I tend to gravitate first towards content. So let me also train myself to be listening for the emotion that is being expressed or displayed. Yeah. But also to notice there’s actions as well. What’s the person doing nonverbally? What are they saying or not saying through the actions that they’re taking? Yeah. And by listening through all 3 channels, I think we can like triple the amount of information that we take in almost the same way that, you know, a, you know, a really great music aficionado can listen for the vocals and the percussion, you know, and the guitar and any number of different things and just have a much more robust appreciation of what they’re hearing compared to the rest of us. I think the same thing, we can train ourselves to, you know, to really listen that closely to other human beings as well.

Aoife O’Brien [00:31:55]:

Yeah, yeah. And I think Dare I say, but some of that might be lost with the way we communicate with people these days, that it’s very much text-based. It’s very compressed.

Jeff Wetzler [00:32:05]:

Yes.

Aoife O’Brien [00:32:05]:

Yeah. Yeah. That we’re not necessarily getting the tone of voice or we’re not looking someone in the eye and being able to have that honest conversation and not therefore being able to read the emotion. What I took from the action piece was like understanding someone’s intention, like what’s behind the words that they’re using and what are they going to do because they’re sharing these words, or what do we interpret their intention behind the words to be? And again, hopefully separating that from the story that we have built up about them and built up about ourselves as well. But yeah, I thought that was really interesting. And absolutely, I think we’re in, in a very similar way that we all think that we’re much more self-aware than we are. I think we all think we are much better listeners than we actually are.

Jeff Wetzler [00:32:54]:

So true.

Aoife O’Brien [00:32:55]:

And we can all get much better at doing those things, I think.

Jeff Wetzler [00:33:00]:

Yes, I remember in the book I interviewed an award-winning journalist, Jenny Anderson, and she used to say when she would record her interview with someone that she was like, you know, a subject of her journalism, she would then go back and listen and she would hear so much more the second time.

Aoife O’Brien [00:33:16]:

Yeah.

Jeff Wetzler [00:33:16]:

And then she’d listen again and hear new things the third time and so on.

Aoife O’Brien [00:33:19]:

Yeah.

Jeff Wetzler [00:33:20]:

And I thought to myself, she’s a professional listener. That’s all she does is she interviews people and listens to them. And if she misses things the first time and the second time and the third time, how much more What’s the rest of us be missing as well? But so few of us actually will take the time to go back and listen again and listen again. But I, I think that’s a great, that can be a great way to train our listening ear as well.

Aoife O’Brien [00:33:41]:

Yeah. Yeah. And since, well, you know, this is a podcast and people will either be watching on YouTube or they’ll be listening on podcast platform of their choice. But I do that sometimes. I don’t always do it, but when I have the time, I do listen back to the interview because obviously In this day and age, we have AI to, to have the transcript of the recording and pull out what the key points are. But I think, and I’ve found this before with other things, I think if, if you read something yourself or if you listen to something yourself, the connections that you’re making in your mind. And another part of the book I loved is like we have 400-something thoughts per minute, but we can only speak at a lower number. Yes.

Aoife O’Brien [00:34:25]:

So we’ve way more thoughts And our brain fires up much more than we can actually speak or write in that time.

Jeff Wetzler [00:34:30]:

Exactly.

Aoife O’Brien [00:34:31]:

But the connections that we make as humans because of all of the experiences that we have, that obviously AI doesn’t have those human experiences or that past, but we can make those connections ourselves more readily than a machine can. And so when I do listen back to the podcast and I pick up on things that maybe I missed the first time around, it’s just, it’s really interesting the way my brain fires when I’m not You know, trying to have that conversation at the same time. If

Jeff Wetzler [00:34:58]:

you could start noticing patterns of what are the common things that I tend to pick up on or not pick up on, you can start to then bring that awareness into your listening as well.

Aoife O’Brien [00:35:06]:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I did actually, slight side note here, but I have the transcripts from all the past podcast episodes, so 300+ podcast episodes. And I did ask AI, fed it into AI to say, have you noticed how my interviewing style has has evolved over time. So that’s another interesting—

Jeff Wetzler [00:35:25]:

I love that. What did you discover?

Aoife O’Brien [00:35:27]:

Yeah, that sometimes I do exactly what you said is kind of almost give the answer in the question. So it doesn’t give the person an opportunity to share what they really think, because I’m kind of framing it from my own viewpoint already. I was like, oh, that’s an interesting observation. So Yeah. And I think over time, it’s just saying how the thinking has evolved as well. So very much going from individual, like an individual’s experience of work, to how do we influence the system and looking at different layers. So the individual, the leader, the team, and the organization. So yeah, it’s been an interesting project for sure to work on that.

Aoife O’Brien [00:36:12]:

But Jeff, we’ve covered so much in today’s episode. Is there anything that you feel that we haven’t necessarily touched on that you’d like to get across to the audience?

Jeff Wetzler [00:36:21]:

Well, I’ll just very quickly round out the final step of the Ask Approach, step 5, which is called Reflect and Reconnect. Oh yeah, it’s my favorite step.

Aoife O’Brien [00:36:28]:

Yes, I was gonna say that’s— yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jeff Wetzler [00:36:30]:

That is how we squeeze the learning out of a conversation is by asking ourselves, you know, what did I take away from this? You know, what does it make me think differently? How does it make me more aware of my stuff? As you’ve said, what do I want to do about it? That’s all the reflecting. It doesn’t have to take long. But it’s a couple of moments just to capture what did I really take away and sift out what’s most important. And the reconnect is going back to the other person and saying, here’s what I learned. And thank you for the time and the risk. And by the way, is there something more you were hoping I would learn? And that’s the difference I think between people being willing to continue to share with their leaders versus people getting cynical and thinking, ah, they didn’t really care. Yeah. And so I always encourage leaders to just do that final step of reflect and then close the loop by reconnecting with the other person.

Aoife O’Brien [00:37:15]:

And I think one of the things that really came across, and I talk about this a lot in my work as well, is that reconnect piece where if we ask, whether it’s in an engagement survey, in a pulse survey, or whatever, if we ask people for feedback, they give us feedback. Maybe it’s not feedback we wanted to hear, but if we don’t then communicate back to people to say, here’s what we heard, here’s what we’re going to do differently, or here’s why we can’t make the changes that you’re looking for, then that’s when I think they become really cynical about providing that feedback. Yes, totally. kind of feedback because it’s not going to go anywhere. Yeah, you know, I gave feedback the last time and nothing happened.

Jeff Wetzler [00:37:52]:

Exactly. And they don’t expect necessarily that you’re going to do everything they said. Yeah, that’s not, that’s not the bar. But I think that they do rightly expect that you’re going to let them know how did you think about it. And even if you don’t take their advice, to say here’s why, or here’s when we can do that, or here’s what makes it hard, or what— here’s, you know, any number of those things. Yeah, that’s enough as part of the reconnection.

Aoife O’Brien [00:38:11]:

Yeah, you had one example, I can’t remember the exact words, but one was radar, where it’s like we’re gonna basically act on something now, and then radar is Like, we heard you, it’s on our radar, but we’re not going to do anything immediately. And then there was a third one where it was like—

Jeff Wetzler [00:38:25]:

There was like, out of our hands.

Aoife O’Brien [00:38:27]:

Totally out of our hands. Yeah. But I think like that works at the organizational level, but I think even at individual conversation levels, thank you so much for sharing what you shared and here’s what I learned and here’s what I’m going to do differently. I think, dare I say, we’re all guilty of not doing those kinds of of closing the loop and saying, I heard you and here’s what I’m going to do about it.

Jeff Wetzler [00:38:50]:

Yes, exactly. Exactly.

Aoife O’Brien [00:38:51]:

Jeff, I’ve absolutely loved this conversation today.

Jeff Wetzler [00:38:55]:

Likewise.

Aoife O’Brien [00:38:56]:

Likewise. One of the questions I ask on all of the episodes is, what does being happier at work mean to you?

Jeff Wetzler [00:39:04]:

Well, so for me, the answer was very quick to my mind, which is learning. Yeah. You know, I believe learning is just to me one of the most exciting and fulfilling things that we get to do as human beings. Yeah. And I always encourage people, when people ask me for career advice, I always say, what’s, you know, go where you’re going to learn a lot.

Aoife O’Brien [00:39:22]:

Yes.

Jeff Wetzler [00:39:22]:

Where there’s going to be people who invest in you and you’re learning. But I think learning goes in every direction. And so I am happy when I’m just learning.

Aoife O’Brien [00:39:31]:

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think that is amazing career advice. And I think sometimes, and this was me early in my career, you’re so invested in rising to the top really quickly that you forget that if you have a breadth of experience, actually, it may serve you better as you are progressing your career rather than trying to kind of go narrowly up what we call the ladder, you know, really quickly and neglect to look around you and see, well, what are the other areas that I could potentially be interested

Jeff Wetzler [00:39:59]:

in?

Aoife O’Brien [00:40:00]:

Jeff, if people want to connect with you, if they want to find out more about the book, what is the best way they can do that?

Jeff Wetzler [00:40:06]:

Yeah, I love to personally connect with people on LinkedIn. So feel free to LinkedIn connect me, Jeff Wetzler. And also we have a website called askapproach.com. So askapproach.com. And we have all kinds of resources and these ideas and newsletter, all kinds of things. So we’d love to see you there too.

Aoife O’Brien [00:40:25]:

Brilliant. Thank you so much for your time today. Really, really enjoyed this conversation. And I think listeners are gonna take a lot from it. So appreciate it.

Jeff Wetzler [00:40:33]:

Amazing. Thanks for inviting me.

Aoife O’Brien [00:40:35]:

That was Jeff Wetzler sharing insights from his book, Ask. I really hope you enjoyed today’s episode. And definitely go and check out the book. It’s so interesting. It’s so insightful and so practical and lots of personal stories and business stories in it as well. So definitely go and check that out. But I would love to know what’s one thing, just one thing that you’re gonna do differently after today’s episode.