Courageous Conversations: Forward Talk with Gustavo Razzetti

0:00People are the most consequential and dangerous forces on Earth. Well, personality psychology is about the nature of human nature. It's about people. And wouldn't that be useful to know? I can't think of a more important problem.

0:19You're listening to the Science of Personality podcast, brought to you by Hogan Assessments, the global leader in personality and leadership. Guided by your hosts, Hogan Chief Science Officer and world-renowned personality psychologist, Dr. Ryan Sherman, alongside Hogan's PR manager and resident storyteller, Blake Lepp. This podcast explores the impact of personality on life, leadership, and the nature of human nature.

0:48Hello, everybody, and welcome to the Science of Personality podcast. I'm your host, Ryan Sherman, along with my co-host, as always, Blake Lepp. Say hello, Blake. Hello, everybody, and welcome back to the Science of Personality podcast, episode 149. Today, Ryan and I are joined by author Gustavo Rossetti, who has written multiple best-selling books, including Remote, Not Distant, Design a Company Culture to Thrive in the Hybrid Workplace, Stretch for Change, How to Improve Your Change Fitness and Thrive in Life, and his latest book,

1:20Forward Talk, The Bold New Method for Getting Teams Unstuck, which hits shelves in online stores today on May 5th, which is actually not the day we're recording this, but is the day that this will be published. So, in this episode, we are going to talk with Gustavo about courageous conversations people must have in the workplace to avoid team derailment and to help teams thrive through productive conflict. This is at the core of his new book, and we're thrilled to have him on the podcast to discuss this very important topic. But, before we get to our conversation with Gustavo,

1:53if you wish to give us any ideas for upcoming episodes, or you want to ask Ryan or me a question, shoot us an email at hello at thescienceofpersonality.com, or follow the Science of Personality on LinkedIn. Now, let's get to it. Gustavo, welcome to the podcast. Is there anything you'd like to share with our audience before we get started? Yeah, sure. First of all, thank you for hosting me. I was thinking that something you didn't mention is that I like to cook, and one thing that I like to do is when I visit people to say, hey, what do you have on your fridge, and create something

2:27with ingredients they provide. And that's exactly how I would like to work with teams. I ask them, what are you bringing to the conversation? What are the ingredients you're sharing? And they were going to make something out of it. Well, I will also just add that we didn't mention in the intro that Gustavo is also a very successful consultant and the CEO and founder of Fearless Culture, which has helped organizations all over the world, including many Fortune 500 companies, design better company

2:57cultures, creating the Culture Design Canvas, which is a framework that he and his colleagues have used, or thousands of teams and organizations have used around the world to assess and design better cultures. And so he's really an expert on how to change culture, how to change organizations. I'm really interested in talking about some of the work you've done around remote workplaces as well. But of course, today, we're super excited to talk about Forward Talk, your latest book, and some of the

3:28big ideas that are coming forward in that book. So thanks, Gustavo, for joining us today. Absolutely. Well, Gustavo, okay, I, you know, we're going to step outside of the questions that I plan to ask you and not because now I've got to know, what are you cooking for dinner tonight? I haven't thought about it. I need to check my fridge.

3:50All right, well, it's steak night at my house. So it's that's, that's what's happening tonight. But well, okay, I had to ask. So hopefully, hopefully, you come up with something and maybe you can just use the ingredients that you have. But, you know, Gustavo, we, we typically kick things off in the same manner. And this episode will be no different. So what got you interested in the topic of courageous conversations in the first place?

4:13Two things. I mean, if I look back when I was a child, I mean, I have a six siblings, so we're a team of seven siblings. So you need to learn how to talk and how to drive conversation when there's a lot of people with different personalities that want to get the spotlight. But jokes aside, like in the line of work, as you mentioned earlier, I've been working a lot with teams on improving their culture. And I realized that the most important factor basically is the conversations, whether the ones

4:47that we avoid, or the ones that people don't really manage with the right skills. So I always tell clients, if you want to change your culture, you need to start by changing your conversations.

5:02Well, that's such a great line. If you want to change your culture, you have to change your conversations. But let's talk about, you know, and I know we're going to get into a little bit today, Gustavo, you know, about what you mean by forward talk. And I know we're going to probably have some examples of these, but can you give us an example with a client where you've said, hey, this is how you're currently having a conversation. This is what needs to happen. Instead, this is the conversation you need to have. I'd love to start with, you know, a real client that you've seen

5:34change by changing their conversation.

5:39Yeah. Recently, we're working with a financial service institution. Of course, everyone's trying to push an AI first agenda. And they were pushing a lot their employees to experiment to start developing and testing AI agents. And when I talked to the leaders, they were frustrated because they felt that the teams weren't working. They weren't really taking the challenge. So then we had conversations with the team members. And what we saw is people were experimenting. And actually,

6:11they were doing much more work than their leaders thought in that direction. But they weren't sharing their progress with the leaders because they feared that they say, hey, look at this AI agent that I created to be more efficient, to do my job faster, that their leaders would fire them. So people were working on the same directions, but they weren't having the conversations once because the pressure from leaders was all about productivity. And for a team member, that means, oh, efficiency, then people

6:44are going to get fired. And people were experimenting, embracing leadership's challenge, but they weren't sharing that with their leaders.

6:54Well, that's fascinating. I mean, I can kind of see why there would be some hesitancy of these people, whatever they do, create these agents that are maybe, you know, doing a lot of the work that's maybe making their job easier, taking less time, but also maybe not willing to stand up and say, hey, you know, I'm actually not having to work quite as hard because I figured this thing out. Is that something that you're encountering? Absolutely. And because instead of discussing how can we integrate AI to make a better job or to free

7:26ourselves from day-to-day mundane tasks so we can focus on more meaningful work, the message is about efficiency. And you know what happens when we talk about efficiency? Someone has to go.

7:41Well, you know, Gustavo, we mentioned your new book, Forward Talk, in the intro. So now I'm curious, you know, can you define Forward Talk for our audience? Yeah. I like to say that sometimes the best way to explain something, it's about telling what it's not. So let's start with what the problem is. The problem is teams getting stuck because the conversations they have or they avoid are not really helping them move forward. They get stuck in the past. So Forward Talk is based on a two-by-two matrix that has, of course, four quadrants,

8:16right? One of the axes is, are we focusing on the future? So moving forward, what are we focusing in the past? And the other axis, are we addressing the issue or are we avoiding it? So these give us four patterns. One pattern is blame. When teams get stuck into finger pointing, finding who to blame, not only who, but maybe another department, maybe the client. So we get stuck in that conversation, rehashing past issues, and we cannot move forward. Avoidance is when we don't want to talk about

8:54issues. And of course, that get us stuck because we cannot, we can only fix the things that we talk about. And lastly, this is very interesting, groupthink. It looks like we're moving forward. It looks like progress, but actually it's dilution of progress. So groupthink comes when people agree too quickly, when people decide to move on, not because they are on the same page, but actually because they don't want to talk about something. So the leader says, hey, this is the new priorities,

9:25this is a new project, this is the revised timeline, and people say, okay, let's do it. But deep inside them, they don't agree. And actually, we're going to see that that's going to create a lot of issues along the way. So forward talk is about conversations that matter, that address the issue, and the intent, and the focus is into the future, not the past. Yeah, so Gustavo, if I understand this correctly here, then there's really three, sort of three ways teams can go wrong in these conversations, right? One way is by being stuck in the past, even if they're

10:02trying to address the core issue, right? They're having a conversation that they need to have, but it's focused on the past and not, you know, what they need to do going forward. Another way would be to be stuck in the past, but not even really talking about the issue, talking, you're still avoiding the issue, which seems really counterproductive. And then the final way they can make, they can go wrong would be to sort of feel like we're having that moving forward conversation. We're addressing the issue. But at some level, we're sorry, we're not addressing the we're trying to we're talking about

10:32the future, right? So we're trying to move forward. But we are avoiding the key conversation that we need to have that last one that you just talked about there. So does that mean that about 75% of the time we go wrong? Or what's your sense of the base rate? How often do teams go wrong in these conversations? Is it higher than that? That's a good point. I mean, we have three patterns that are wrong. I don't know exactly how much time people spend there, but I would say that at least 75%, right? And some teams even more. And once again,

11:05I'm not expecting teams to be always playing on the forward top quadrant, but at least most of the time we should be working there. I mean, we can blame our team members from time to time. We're humans, right? But when that's the default pattern, that's our behavior every day, or most of our days, that then that's where your team has a problem.

11:31And we I'm, we might end up getting into this, but I'm, I'm already thinking about it. So I mean, if there are these members on a team, maybe they have been avoiding these conversations, you know, they're not wanting to have these conversations that have been kind of boiling up. And the more that this happens, do you find that it just builds resentment in these individuals on the teams? And maybe that even makes it more, more difficult and a little bit more toxic for the team in general? Yes, absolutely. Because I talk about the concept

12:03of conversational debt. So the things that we don't fix, they don't go away. And there's some magical thinking that people have, because that's how we are wired, that most people don't want to have these tough conversations, because they're afraid or different reasons. I'm going to explain that later. But in the end, the magic thinking is, if I don't address the issue, the issue is going to fix itself, or it's going to disappear. But actually, it's like not opening your credit card statement, right?

12:35You still owe the money, even if you don't look at it, you still have a debt to pay. And the same happens with conflict or unresolved issues, or misalignment issues. We might not talk about them, but they're still there. And the more we procrastinate, the more we avoid it, the worse it's going to become. Yeah, that's such a great way to put it about the credit card balance. Whatever you said, conversational debt, I was trying to kind of visualize it, or like, you know, come up with some kind of example. But that's a great one that you did. And you saved my brain from

13:08having to do too much work. You know, you argue that most teams avoid these conversations that really matter most. And so, you know, can we get to the core of as to why you think that's the case? What's going on there? Sure. One of the reasons that usually people talk about why team members don't engage in conversations, why they don't share their opinions or perspectives, or they keep certain questions to themselves or their closest colleagues is fear, right? We are afraid

13:44of what people would think about us. We fear that there will be some kind of retaliation, or maybe we're going to look like stupids, because we're the only ones who ask that question. So the study I conducted, I tried to go beyond that fear, because of course, there's some fear, but there's something deeper. So I asked people, why do you think others don't engage in those conversations? And of course, the most given reason was, oh, my colleagues are afraid, for whatever reason. But when I asked them,

14:20why is it that you yourself, why isn't that you don't participate? Why is it that you stay silent? People said, because nothing's going to change. And this for me is really critical, because it's not that people don't want to do something. It's for example, many organizations have employee engagement surveys once a year, twice a year, even every quarter. And often what I hear from employees is they share their concerns, they share ideas for improvement, but then nothing changes. So at some point, people say,

14:55hey, what's the point of speaking up, if no one's going to care, if nothing's going to change. So people basically stay silent, or they detach from those conversations.

15:08So Gustavo, in your consulting work, I wonder, you know, what kinds of things do you implement into organizations to try to reduce that fear? I mean, do you talk with these groups separately and then bring people together or, you know, without trying to give away any secret consulting sauce you might have? I mean, how can we get these groups and these teams to overcome that fear to have these conversations that they need to have? Yeah, my approach, it's the same way, if we don't fix something together,

15:39we need to fix it together. So it's like working on a couple's therapy and not having both parties together. You're never going to solve the issue, right? Because it's a relationship that needs to be fixed. The same happens with teams. My approach is to have everyone in the same room, because we need to coach and train people to have the conversation with the people. I mean, there are a lot of team members, even leaders that are consulting ChatGPT or Claude to deal with issues they have with their

16:11team members while actually they need to talk to the person at hand, not with someone else, right? So one of the tricks to your point is to start reading the room better. What are the patterns that you observe? For example, if you are a leader and you ask a question and people look to the floor, they look to each other, or they look at you like asking for permission when they're giving an answer, that's a sign of some of the symptoms that might be affecting your team. We talk about the patterns,

16:46we talk about blame, we talk about avoidance, we talk about grouping. Well, when you understand the key questions to ask to really see what's happening, you start observing those patterns. So the next time, I can assure you, you get into a team meeting and you start seeing the conversations through those lenses, you're going to start observing which patterns are the ones that are driving the conversation. And then you can start saying, okay, guys, maybe we need to stop avoiding the topic. Maybe we need to stop rushing alignment. Maybe, no, you start getting into that

17:18reflection before you start fixing the issue. Yeah. Now I imagine, Gustavo, that some of these sessions you do with teams must bring a lot of emotions in them. You know, I just, I'm sort of curious if you have any stories about outbursts of emotion, whether, you know, sort of whether that might be anger or sadness or, or what kinds of things have you seen happen in these sessions? I see a lot of that, but less than most people think. And I see more relief as an emotion because

17:55people have an expectation that things are going to go really wrong. And actually, when they engage in this type of conversations, they usually go much better than most people think. Actually, there's a lot of research, not only mine, that shows that when people engage in a genuine, authentic conversation, even if it was really tough, in the end, people feel, oh, it didn't go that bad. It actually went much, much better than I envisioned. So I was working with a, with a team of executives.

18:30And one of the things they asked me to help them with is start difficult conversations when it comes to employee performance, right? So they say, hey, I need to talk to this person. They're not doing a great job. I don't know how to do it. I've been avoiding this for many months and so on and so forth, which is a very typical scenario, right? And one thing I told the guys is, you know what, the other party, the employee at hand knows that you're not happy. They can tell that there's

19:01something missing, that there's a conversation that needs to happen. And probably, if they're really having a bad moment or they're not delivering, they're aware. They really know. So they're waiting for you to take the lead. So actually, it's going to be relieving for them to have that conversation because then they're going to see, hey, am I going to get fired? Is there any room for improvement? And are they going to move me to another team? So the fear that we have is usually much bigger than the actual experience of going through that

19:36conversation.

19:39You know, Gustavo, I would have to imagine that, you know, it's probably, I mean, so I'm thinking of you as the facilitator. This has to be, I mean, kind of an eye-opening experience, but also I'm thinking at it through the lens, like, would these teams be able to figure this out on their own? Because it sounds like, and I'd love to be a fly on the wall in one of your sessions, but it sounds like... I could invite you, no problem. It would be really, really neat to see this. But, you know, part of me has to think that I wonder how many of these teams that actually figure all this out on their own, because it

20:13seems like you're really the one who kind of cracks the code for these teams. I mean, how would you, how would you, what's your thought on that? Yeah, I don't want to think that I have a special superpower. So I think it's a combination of both. You need some kind of catalyst to spark that first attempt of a conversation. But also in my practice, one thing that I'm really aware of, I want to build capacity, not dependency. So I don't want teams to say, hey, we need to bring Gustavo or one of his team members or someone else. So yeah,

20:49to get it, to get started, to break that silence, to learn how to observe the patterns, to learn how to improve the conversations, you need help. But in the end, the team needs to walk on their own without having someone to assist them. Yeah. You're there to teach them how to fish, not to give them a fish so that they can feed themselves. Yeah. And then I cook the fish. Yeah. Yeah. Whatever's in their fridge. Okay. All right. Well, okay. Let's, let's get into the,

21:20the personality side of things, because in your experience, you know, are there any personality behaviors or characteristics that are common among those who typically avoid these tough conversations? And Ryan, I'm also going to be curious to get your thoughts on this as well. Yeah. I talked to, be able with Ryan when I was writing the book, right? So he can maybe explain this before more than me, but there are three things that, you know, usually people talk about psychological safety. So how the context affects conversations. So if a context is safe, people

21:54are going to speak more than if it's not. However, I, my research shows that there are three types of groups and some are immune or two of those three groups are actually immune to the context. Let me explain this. There are some participants that are more sensitive, more influenced by the environment, right? So depending on the signals they get, they're more willing to speak up in a more safe culture or

22:24team environment. And the opposite, if the team feels aggressive, even toxic. However, there are people, because of their personality that regardless of how safe the environment feels, they're always going to speak up. And I can bring an analogy, what happened recently here in the US with the current administration having some issues with law firms and many law firms cave and say, you know what? Yeah,

22:56sure. We're going to do what the government wants. And then other law firms pushing back and say, no, no, no, we're going to stand our ground. And what happened, no? So the context wasn't safe enough, but certain law firms decided to push back. As a result, many clients shift from one to the other because they want their law firms to stand up and represent and defend them when there's some kind of aggressive kind of behaviors. So we have these two groups. And the third one is a group that I call the

23:30natural avoiders. There are people that even in the safest space, they're never going to speak up because they don't want to because of their personality, or maybe they are checked out and they simply happen to be there, right? So I'm going to invite Ryan because he talked a lot about the different personalities. I mean, there are some people, there are some traits in which people are more willing to question others, challenge authority. So I let the expert channel here.

24:02Yeah. Well, I mean, certainly I think from a Hogan standpoint, you know, based on your descriptions, Gustavo, something like a high cautious would certainly describe that last group, right? This is a group who is afraid of making a mistake in public, right? Afraid of potential public embarrassment. You said that you mentioned earlier, the potential for saying something or asking a question that would be potentially embarrassing. People who are fearful for,

24:33you know, they're just more fearful for things like, you know, their job retention as well, right? So certainly high cautious individuals are going to be more reluctant to speak up. I do think sort of on the opposite end, obviously low cautious individuals would be more likely to speak up, but at the same time, I also think low dutiful individuals, right? This is one, again, one of those HDS derailers, people who are really low. And I like talking about the low end in this case, because a lot of times people don't want to interpret the low end, but the low end has real

25:06interpretive information and a low score on dutiful would indicate that someone is likely to buck the trend, to go against the authority, to challenge what people might be said, and to take some risk and to not be so worried about towing the line. People who I think are low on dutiful are going to be less susceptible to groupthink. People high on dutiful are far more susceptible to groupthink. So I think there's a number of personality characteristics that would play into this. I'm

25:37sort of curious though, Gustavo, about the role of the leader. I wonder if in these group settings, the leader and the leader's personality has an outsized impact on what people are willing to share and willing to say.

25:51Totally. I think that to your point, there's the personality of the participants or the team members that we're not going to change who they are. There's the context. And then to your point, the personality of the leader plays a very important factor. It amplifies, but we know that some team members don't cave or don't adapt to their leaders and some are basically more reactive to their leaders' approach. Once again, we cannot change who people are. And that's one thing I learned

26:22many, many years ago. So what we teach is how can we make people work better based on who they are. So it's about, we know that leaders, because of their role, they tend to dominate conversations. What we help them is to, how can you facilitate conversations? So you are not the one who should be providing the answer. You should be curating the answers from your team, getting the best out of people, but then you need to make sense out of those different personalities, different information,

26:55in order to inform your decision. Gustavo, I want to go back to the first group that you talked about, these three groups. Can you break that one down for me just real quickly again? The three groups or the first one? Just the first one. The first one is people that basically their personality, they speak regardless of who they are or where they are, regardless of the environment. Okay. Okay. I was just trying to get clear on that. Because I don't know, Ryan, for me,

27:32some of these were, I was feeling like a little bit of like, almost like the clusters on the HDS, like moving away, moving toward and moving against type of thing, because you would think that these courageous conversations in themselves are already causing some stress that may cause people's derailers to surface. So I don't know, I don't know if you want, if I'm, if I'm even getting close here. No, no, I think so, Blake. So I think that moving away from are the ones that you're going to see where people are really struggling to speak up really, you know, sort of, you know, just sort of

28:09fearful, right? For, you know, not wanting to speak up out of fear, the moving against cluster, that's where you're going to see people speaking up, but out of challenge, right? Sort of like, I know, I want to challenge this idea. And I think it's important that I challenge these ideas, right? Like the law firm part, he said. What's that? Like the law firm's example that he used? Yeah, exactly. That's right. Yeah, that's right. Lots of self-confidence. Yeah, for sure. Okay. Okay. Yeah. And then the last, you know, to your point about moving, uh, moving towards as

28:40well, Blake, I mean, that's where you're more likely to see that group think that's not out of fear. It's not a fear for being in trouble. It's just about wanting to get everyone to get along. Like, Hey, it's, it's just really important that we get along. It's not that I'm afraid if I speak up, I'll be in trouble or I'll be outcast. It's just, uh, I'm afraid if I'm, if I speak up, there'll be some disagreement and that'll make people uncomfortable. And I don't want to make people uncomfortable. I want everyone to get along. And so more likely to go along. Okay. All right. All right. I, this, I think this is all starting to click for me a little bit.

29:12Um, I'm not the personality psychologist here, so I've, I've, I've just kind of, uh, I'm, I'm, I'm learning as I go, but, uh, Gustavo, you know, in your book, you talk about getting teams quote unstuck. So what are some of the signs that a team might be stuck? Even let's say when performance metrics look perfectly fine.

29:35Yeah, that's a great question because usually when we think about getting stuck to your point, we associated with a, we're not getting any positive outcome. And this is something I observe with many organizations, teams that seem to be performing well. And then all of a sudden, we start seeing all those metrics to suffer. Why? Because sooner or later, if you're having issues, if you're not addressing the real, uh, topics, that's going to hurt the team.

30:05Unstuck, rather than getting to explanations, people can read the book. I can, I better focus on where the key behaviors that people are going to relate to. Think about a team. You join a meeting because we need to make a decision. And how's, how does that meeting end with another meeting? Because we weren't able to agree on something. Or we make a decision and two weeks after people are

30:36re-litigating it, they're opening again, we are complaining about it. It was, we haven't even tested and we are still saying that it's not going to work. So those are behaviors of getting team stack that we continue to rehash the same conversation over and over. Or we talk about blame, you know, when we keep blaming, uh, whoever hired that employee, that was a disaster or somewhat that really did a mess when it came to estimate the budget for a project and numbers went

31:08totally over that. And we couldn't fund the whole project. We have to stop halfway. So those conversations in which we keep rehashing things, that would be the, the, the experience, whether it's decisions, whether it's, uh, directions that we took, or even the decisions that never actually come to fruition.

31:33Gustavo, I'm sort of interested on the performance side itself, thinking about when teams get stuck. Um, how does that affect performance? I mean, uh, you know, to Blake's point earlier, I think to sometimes a team can be stuck, but performance metrics can still look okay, but it's sort of masking some underlying issue. But I also think at some point, if we stay stuck for too long, it is going to have an impact on performance. So, you know, just how much, or, or, you know, what, what is your experience tell you in terms of how much does getting teams stuck impact performance?

32:09As I mentioned, if, if you're not able to commit to a decision or agree on what you want to implement, that's going to hurt the team. It's going to hurt performance, going to hurt, uh, results. No, let me see if I can, uh, if any example comes to mind this moment. Well, uh, I was, uh, working with a team that the, um, CEO was, uh, leaving the organization after many, many years and the team were stuck in

32:46the conversation. Like some of the team members, the direct reports were thinking, Hey, I'm going to be the next one. I'm going to be a, I'm going to take over. I'm going to be promoted to become the new CEO. There were other team members that wishing that the CEO never quit. So, Hey, hopefully he's able to stay for one year or two years more, because we still have to, uh, finish with our new strategy, whatever the case was. Right? So this dynamic, imagine the senior executive, a firm of a large

33:20global packaging, uh, woods, basically how can they move forward when the people, instead of doing their job, they're speculating about this kind of team dynamics. Some people want the leader to stay. Some are thinking I'm going to be promoted. I'm going to become the leader. And all these people are going to report to me, for example. Right. You know, that really kind of hits on our previous guests that we had, Ryan, you know, um, Victoria Grady, who was talking about a similar scenario where the CEO was retiring and it was the way people respond to change Gustavo. That was what the,

33:54what the topic of the podcast was and that there were a lot of people who were, you know, that, that change upset them. Um, whenever there was, there was this outgoing CEO and a new one coming in. Um, so that, that makes a lot of sense to me now. Um, it's kind of nice to see that, that overlap, and this is all kind of gelling together, but you know, these, these, uh, courageous conversations, they seem to be obviously critical to team success, but you know, there's also some risk

34:24involved with this as well. So I'm curious, how can teams have these conversations and make them productive instead of destructive? Because I, I can see that this, this could go one of both of those, or one of both directions. Yeah. Like everything in life, I mean, it requires practice and training. So I'm not going to expect people to run a marathon if they haven't exercised for decades. Right. So developing the muscle of having these conversations requires starting small, starting with simpler

34:59topics until people start to learn the principles, the practices, and then become more confident and better at that. But also it's understanding the intent. So usually people are afraid because they think that things are going to go wrong, but it, it doesn't matter which kind of conversation you're having. If you start from a positive intent, so you're trying to fix the issue. That's what I'm saying. This is not about blaming someone. This is not about finding a culprit. This is about how can

35:33we solve the issue that we solve the issue that's affecting us as a team. When people see that, hey, we might have different opinions, we might have different experiences or perspectives, but we'll try to solve the same thing for the sake of the team, for the sake of our own health, no? So we don't keep to suffer from that dysfunction. That helps a lot. You know, Gustavo, it seems like a big part of this conversation or it strikes me that a big part of these conversations ultimately serve some purpose of building trust, right? So you said,

36:06you mentioned starting small. So if I start with some small techniques and building in this forward talk into our conversations, uh, building in having these kinds of courageous conversations with each other, that helps us establish and build more trust, which helps us have more of these conversations in the future. Do you think that's true? Do you think this is part of that building trust is a big part of this, how this all works? Um, or, or what's your sort of take on how trust has an impact on having

36:38these conversations? Trust, I mean, to your point, you're right. Trust is the glue that brings people together and trust is the foundation of effective conversations. And we, I coach people to start from a

36:55full, but I call it the, the trust battery, you know, with a full or semi-full battery. So assuming that trust should be there, even with people that you don't know, even with colleagues that maybe screw up a couple of times, because if you don't signal trust, then people are not going to reciprocate. However, trust also gets built through actions and interactions. So that's what's important, the repetition, building that practice in which people start trusting that the process itself is going to help the team get to where they want to go. Research shows that most people, after going

37:31through difficult conversations, not only they realized that it, that it were, they didn't go that bad as they expected, but actually they went much, much better than they thought. At least they got to understand each other. At least they got through the anxiety of, not because the conversations are happening inside our head. And when you're able to share it openly with someone else, you basically release that anxiety, that stress. And also when people start to listen to the different points of

38:02view, they realize that we're not that distant from where we thought we were. And it's the first step towards a healing, so to speak. Yeah. I like your point there, Gustavo, because that's one of the things that we found in some of our research with teams is in all, in pretty much every model of teams, whether, you know, whoever makes them, every consulting firm, a number of people have models for high performing teams or leadership teams. And almost all of those models include trust as a central principle of effective teams. But the problem with that is that trust, you can't just

38:39get a team together and say, okay, trust each other more, and then your team will be more successful. You have to build that trust over time. And so what I like about your point of view with these courageous conversations is that's a big part of what it seems to be about. It seems to be about, let's have these conversations so that we can build our trust so that we can be successful going forward, right? That trust is this outcome of this process of having these conversations that's going to take us to that next level. So for me, I really, I mean, that that's what I really see here is this is a way,

39:13way to go do that. So I guess I would just follow up by saying like, is that an outcome that you measure when you're working with these teams? Are you seeing improvements in trust at the end of your engagements? Yes, absolutely. And I think that my goal is to get people to talk about the things that they were withholding for many weeks, months, and even years, right? I was recently working with a senior leadership team from a company. And some people have been working together for

39:45for even a decade or over a decade. And we run an interesting exercise about conversations, asking each other to basically two simple questions. I trust you because, and I will trust you more if, right? So you start from the point that the moment you say, I trust you because I don't know how you dress or whatever, or because how you speak. So you need to give the other person something that signals a positive intent. So the other person immediately is going to open up and it's

40:15going to be more receptive. The second part of the question, I will trust you more. It doesn't say, I will trust you. It trusts you more, right? That's very important. It gives people an indication of what me as a team leader expect from them. I will trust you more if you show up to the meeting sometime, if you interrupt me less or whatever. So that creates very simple, yet a powerful conversation because people start getting cues from people about what they need to do, what irritates them. And

40:49there are usually little things, but those little things compounded are what drive a crisis. You know, Gustavo, I've got to ask now, because how did these engagements begin? You know, like who reaches out to you, like from your consulting practice or like in your consulting practice, who at these organizations is most likely to reach out to you to bring you in and facilitate a session or work with a team? Like where does that start? Who is saying, hey, I think we need to get

41:25Gustavo in. So they reach out to you. Who's usually your main point of contact? Is it like an HR person? Is it somebody in the C-suite? Is it a leader? Is it all of the above? Who are your customers? All of the above, I would say. The end customer usually is either the CEO or the team leader.

41:46Most of the conversations start with someone from HR, but also have many team leaders or CEOs reaching out directly because they're seeing the dysfunction and they want to do something about it. When HR calls, either it's because the CEO asks or because they want to put some kind of solution in front of the CEO. But also I've got many requests from team members that they're frustrated because this is the team. Change doesn't happen just from HR or from a team leadership standpoint. It also comes from the

42:22inside out. So our team members say, hey, we're struggling with this. We're having a huge issue. Can you help us and let me sell this to my boss? And then we can have an engagement all together. Perfect. Thank you for clearing that up. I wanted to visualize what this customer journey looked like on the on the other end and how they how they came to you and who was coming to you. So, you know, Gustavo, let's get down. Let's get into the leaders side of the thing, you know, leadership. So, you know, many leaders, you know, want to think that they're fostering a culture where there's

42:59open dialogue, but their teams still might stay quiet. What are some of the blind spots leaders have when it comes to creating like this real conversational courage?

43:13We always say that we need to model the behavior we want to see in others, right? And first of all, I think that leaders need to be authentic. Sometimes leaders go through a training or a coaching or whatever, and they start applying techniques to try to create conversations and they really are not buying into the process. So that comes like an authentic, right? So that's for me, one of the biggest watch outs. The second one is, we always think of leaders as they need to go last.

43:44So we don't want leaders to dominate the conversation. We want them to ask a question and let people

43:52chime in. However, there's a caveat when it comes to a basically modeling courage. We want leaders to go first. So if you want, for example, for people to reflect on their mistakes, on their screw ups, and what they learned about it, the one who has to start sharing their mistake is the leader, right? So that's where things change. Lastly, one thing that's important is to show that you don't have all the answers. Most leaders ask, as I mentioned earlier, they ask people for input,

44:27but then they dismiss it. So you do it once, you do it twice, and that's the end of the conversation. So it's great to ask, of course, great questions, but also it's important that you stay silent, that you recognize when you don't know. So don't ask a question if you have the answer yourself. Or if you ask a question, don't try to compete with your team members to who have the best answer. Because once again, people are going to say, sure, you always win. So boom, move on. You won't hear from me again.

45:01Yeah, I think that's a really interesting one, particularly to your point there about leaders. And, you know, I think showing that sort of vulnerability or showing that they don't have all of the answers is really critical because otherwise, I don't know, I suppose for me, it would be frustrating to be on a team where I felt like if the leader was just going to decide whatever they wanted to do, no matter what, then sort of what's the point of having the team?

45:31What's the point of us getting together? What's the point of having the meeting? Do you ever see situations like that with your clients, Gustavo? And how do you remediate that?

45:46I've seen, I mean, maybe I'm lucky, but I think that many leaders can change. Sometimes they're not aware. So I think that helping them understand what they're missing is the first step. Of course, there are some leaders that are really clueless and maybe they're never going to change. And I try to filter which if the leader has the potential or they're not really interested, right? Some people are not, they don't care. And that's a reality. And maybe if you're an employee and you're working with a leader that you feel that it's not that they don't get it, but they don't want to get

46:19it, well, at some point you need to do something about it, right? There's not much change there. One question that really helps is for leaders to challenge others and invite them to a commercial. For example, like they can say, if I'm leaving the company in two or three months from now, what would be the first thing that you would tell the new leader when they arrive and take over, right? So that's a great trick to get people to share with the leader things that they are not sharing,

46:51for example. Steve Jobs had a great question, a set of questions. He said, what's working, what's not working? So when he joined Pixar as the CEO, every time he hosted a town hall, no one gave him any feedback. So he said, guys, any questions, any feedback and crickets. And he was Steve Jobs, of course. He had a huge personality, but Pixar was a very creative, very open environment and still people wouldn't speak up. And one day he said, say, hey guys,

47:22what's working at Pixar and what's not working at Pixar? It's a very simple question. But basically, he was saying, hey, we have good things going on. Let's acknowledge those. But also, I understand that we're not perfect and I'm giving you permission to share what are the things that I can work on. So that duality of both recognition and, hey, opening the door for we can improve and things started to change. Well, Gustavo, this has been an awesome conversation. I do have one last question

47:55before we let you go. And that is, what advice would you give to our listeners who might have difficulties having these courageous conversations themselves? You know, what would you recommend to them? What's the key advice you would give them? In the end, you're part of the problem so you can be part of the solution. So if you don't share and sell your ideas, if you don't ask the questions, you need answers to do a better job. In the end, you're going to pay the price, right? So I'm not

48:28putting the blame on you, but we need to regain what I call conversational agency. We'll play a part on the conversations. And if other people are not participating or not playing ball, that's not an excuse for you to not do so. So my advice in that regard would be people don't regret the risk they took in life. They don't regret the conversations they had, even if they went south. People regret

49:00the conversations that we never had. I had a broken relationship with a friend and I always wanted to reach out, but I never did. That's the kind of things that we're going to regret. I wanted to tell my boss that he was being dismissive. That's the conversation we're going to regret first because we didn't have it. So it was our call not to have it. But most importantly, we never will know if things will have improved because we were having the conversation inside our head with ourselves and

49:30not with the right person, the right team. Yeah. I mean, I think that's amazing advice. And I just want to remind our listeners that they can get a copy of your book, Gustavo Forward Talk. They can pre-order a copy. Well, at least the day that this comes out, I think will be the official day that they can order a copy for themselves. And I want to say thanks, Gustavo, for joining us today. This has been a fantastic conversation, which of course, as we learned today, is really the most important thing

50:05you've got to have. If you want to get your teams unstuck, you've got to have those conversations. So thanks for being here with us. Really appreciate having you on.

50:14Absolutely. Thank you guys for hosting me. It was great to have this conversation, the three of us. Yeah, really appreciate it, Gustavo. And for our listeners out there interested in getting the book, I will also make sure that you can just go look at the show notes and we will have a link there for you if you're interested in buying Gustavo's book. So Gustavo, thank you so much for your time. We enjoyed this conversation and we look forward to seeing where all of this goes and can't wait to read the book. Thank you. Thank you.

50:45And that does it for the Science of Personality podcast, episode 149. Be sure to join us in two weeks for another fun and informative episode. Cheers, everybody.

50:56This has been the Science of Personality podcast brought to you by Hogan Assessments. You can access all episodes on our website, thescienceofpersonality.com or on the streaming service of your choice. See you next time.