How To Read The Room, See What Others Miss, and Be Right More Often | Kirstin Ferguson

Your blindspots and biases block your success and happiness. Here's how to navigate that. Dr Kirstin Ferguson https://www.kirstinferguson.com/ AM is an award-winning leadership expert, author and columnist, ranked among the top 50 management thinkers in the world. Her career began in the Royal Australian Air Force and includes roles as CEO of a global consultancy and Acting Chair of the ABC. She holds a PhD in leadership and culture, writes the popular 'Got a Minute?' column in The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, and is a Member of the Order of Australia. In this episode we talk about: The concept of blindspotting – what it is and how to do it The power of intellectual humility and how to practice it The difference between seekers and knowers – and when each mindset is useful The three major thinking traps How to disentangle ego from identity, manage defensiveness, and turn feedback into growth The role of curiosity in finding truth, building psychological safety, and leading more effectively How to "read the room" in workplaces, relationships, and global contexts The key to good leadership The importance of modeling uncertainty as a leader Get the 10% with Dan Harris app here https://app.danharris.com/membership Sign up for Dan's free newsletter here http://www.danharris.com/ Follow Dan on social: Instagram https://bit.ly/3tGigG5, TikTok https://bit.ly/3FOA84J Subscribe to our YouTube Channel https://bit.ly/3FybRzD To advertise on the show, contact [email protected] or visit https://advertising.libsyn.com/10HappierwithDanHarris Thanks to our sponsors: AT&T:   Happy Holidays from AT&T http://www.att.com/. Connecting changes everything. Function:  Visit www.functionhealth.com/Happier http://www.functionhealth.com/Happier or use the gift code Happier25 for a $25 credit towards your membership.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:34Dan Harris?

  This is the 10% Happier Podcast. I'm Dan Harris.

• 0:49Dan Harris?

  Hello, my fellow suffering beings. How we doing? Today, we're going to talk about how to make fewer dumb decisions. The truth is, we live in a world of constant flux. We may not like that, but it's the truth. Everything's changing all the time. So, the question then becomes, how do you want to engage with this unpredictable, often chaotic world? Do you want to be brittle and breakable, or subtle and sophisticated? If, like me, you would rather choose the latter, one of the key moves is to confront and work around your blind spots, your biases, the stories you tell yourself often subconsciously about the world, about yourself, about other people. These stories can really limit your growth and block your happiness and your success.

• 1:33Dan Harris?

  The Buddha himself talked a lot about the importance of not being attached to your views and opinions. He talked about the value of being an analyst, not a dogmatist. In fact, one of my favorite Buddha quotes goes something like this, I might be mangling it, but it's something like this. "Those who cling to views and opinions wander the world annoying people." I love that. I've been that guy, so I really love it. All of this brings me to my guest today, Dr. Kirsten Ferguson. She's a leadership expert and author. She was introduced to me by our mutual friend, Adam Grant, who's been on this show many times. Kirsten's got a new book. It's called Blind Spotting. In this conversation, we talk about the concept of blind spotting, what it is, how to do it, the power of intellectual humility and how to practice it in your actual life,

• 2:19Dan Harris?

  the difference between seekers and knowers, and when each of those mindsets is useful, the three major thinking traps that we often fall into, how to disentangle ego from identity, manage defensiveness, which has been a big problem for me, and turn feedback into growth. Feedback is often very annoying, but often also very valuable. We also talk about the role of curiosity, building psychological safety on your teams, which can be your family, your friend group, but psychological safety, and you'll hear her discuss this, is just the secret sauce to well-functioning organizations or groups of people. And finally, we talk about how to read the room in workplaces, in relationships,

• 3:00Dan Harris?

  in global contexts, and really why the ability to read the room is such a key to good leadership. Before we dive in, I want to do a quick plug here for the new 10% app. So cool to be able to say those words. The app has just gone live. We will be doing a free New Year's meditation challenge in early January, seven days with Joseph Goldstein, the great meditation teacher. He has cooked up something incredibly cool for you. It's a kind of masterclass and extraordinary and accessible on-ramp to Buddhist meditation. This seven-day course that he's crafted is good for beginners. It's also good for experienced meditators. I was in the room meditating right alongside him as he recorded these sessions,

• 3:45Dan Harris?

  and I've been hanging out with him for years, and I still got a ton out of these meditations. In fact, I'm going to be doing them again, right alongside you, from January 5th through the 11th. If you want to do this free challenge, you can sign up at danharris.com. Not only is the challenge free, there's also a 30-day free trial for the app if you want to try before you buy. One last note, I promise this is the last thing I'm going to say before we toss the break and get to the conversation, but one last note, we will not be holding our weekly live meditation on Tuesday, December 30th, since I and many of you will be on vacation. I will however, be live and with you three times during the New Year's challenge, the regular live meditation and Q and A session at four o'clock on Tuesday, the 6th of January,

• 4:28Dan Harris?

  but we'll do those again at four Eastern on the 8th and the 11th. Okay, enough promotion from me. We'll get started with Kirsten Ferguson right after this.

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• 5:37Dan Harris?

  Kirsten Ferguson, welcome to the show.

• 5:39Speaker 04

  Thank you for having me.

• 5:40Dan Harris?

  Pleasure. All right, well, very basic question to start here. What is blind spotting?

• 5:45Speaker 04

  Well, you know, we all know we've got blind spots. I mean, that's evident. We're very aware of that, but I really wanted to think of a verb, basically, like what could we do about it? And so for me, blind spotting is this idea of having the mindsets around being honest about what we do and don't know, being curious to find out more, and then being flexible enough to change our minds. So it's actually based on some theories, but let's just keep it basic. It's about being honest, being curious, and being flexible.

• 6:15Dan Harris?

  So being honest, being curious, and being flexible. So that's the top tier list, but in the book, there's a lot of instruction about how to achieve this.

• 6:26Speaker 04

  I wanted to start us off easy, Dan. We'll ease into it. As you can tell from my accent, I'm in Australia, where it's 6am. So I have to start off easy and then we can build into it. But yeah, the idea, and you and I have spoken before about intellectual humility, and really that's the foundation of what blind spotting is all about. It's this idea of accepting our intellectual limits. So being okay with not knowing everything. And everything around blind spotting is based on this premise. And for me, it's the power of four words, not three, being able to say, I don't know yet. And so if you're engaged in blind spotting, you're aware and you're confident that you don't know everything, but you're also confident you're going to be able to find out.

• 7:10Speaker 04

  As you said in the book, there's a lot of detail about the practices we can do. So being honest is actually about accepting our intellectual limits, as I just said, disentangling our ego. Now, that's one of the hardest things to do. But if you're wrapped up in how you define what you do, then it's much harder to accept what you don't know. And then hunting for our biases and things like that. And I'm not talking about biases like ethnicity or age or sexuality or gender. This is our thinking biases. So that's what it sort of means to be honest.

• 7:43Dan Harris?

  How do you sell this to people? Like, I know a lot of people are looking to be less anxious. I know people are looking to be less stressed. I know people are looking to be kinder to themselves. But I don't hear a lot of people talking about, God, I really need to work on my intellectual humility. I would like it if other people did.

• 8:02Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 8:02Dan Harris?

  So what's the reason to do this work?

• 8:05Speaker 04

  What's the hook? Well, all I need to ask you, Dan, is when's the last time you made a decision? And afterwards you thought, what the fuck was I thinking? That is the hook. And I reckon you would have had something yesterday. I mean, I have something every day where I think, oh, yeah, I know what I'm doing. And then I think, perhaps I should have thought that through a bit more. So it's all about accepting that we have all of these things in our brain that are telling us, yeah, I've done it this way 100 times before and it's worked perfectly. So of course I'm going to get it right the 101st time. And we don't. Planning that I'm only gonna be in, I don't know, what's your Home Depot for five minutes? And it takes five hours because our planning fallacy is pretty crap. Like, it doesn't matter what the thing is.

• 8:50Speaker 04

  But what I say to people is if we wanna be able to make decisions. And I mean, I'm using really facetious, simple examples, but clearly in the world, we are so polarized right now that if we were able to say to people, you know, you believe so fervently in position X. What if, just imagine, what if there's a different position? And what if perhaps what you believe isn't entirely correct? Because you haven't taken in another perspective. How would that influence the decisions that we're making every day? So it's not about trying to sell anything, and I'm not into that anyway. I don't use the terms intellectual humility because I think that carries its own baggage.

• 9:33Speaker 04

  And, you know, it's very hard to say, yeah, I'm really humble. I'm really good at my intellectual humility, you know, just ask me. So this is all about, you know, how can we make better decisions?

• 9:44Dan Harris?

  That makes complete sense. So in the book, you talk about the difference between seekers and knowers. Can you unpack that?

• 9:52Speaker 04

  Yeah, well, you would have experienced where you go into a meeting or you're with someone and they're just genuinely really curious about a challenge you try to face. You know, it's like, I have no idea how we're gonna solve this. I know we will, but I've got no idea right now. I haven't seen this before. What do you think? You know, Dan, what's your experience been in this before? They're really comfortable with not knowing how it's gonna be solved. And they're genuinely just wanting to collaborate. So they're what I call seekers. The opposite is, and we can be both of these at any point in time, are the knowers where, you know, they don't come in and ask any questions. Because why would you ask a question when you've already got all the answers? You know, they're unaware of their bias that they're coming in believing they've already got it sorted. They don't ask questions.

• 10:37Speaker 04

  Or if they do, they're really skilled at backing us into a corner where in the end you just sort of give up and go, yeah, whatever, we'll just do it your way. And they need Definitive answers. So knowers do not like ambiguity. Now, they're the two sort of approaches we can take and we all take it at different points in time. But I don't want to set it up as one being good, one being bad, because there are times we need knowers. And I've certainly had to lead in crises, everyone has at different points. And you want a leader that's not standing at the front going, oh, look, I don't know how we're going to solve this. But yeah, let's all brainstorm and we'll work it out. You need to know what you're going to do. And if I'm getting my appendix out, I'd like to know that my surgeon has done it at least once before.

• 11:21Speaker 04

  You know, we've got to be able to read a room. What do you need? But that's the real fundamental difference between knowers and seekers.

• 11:27Dan Harris?

  Another concept in the book is you have a list of three thinking traps, pitfalls in our thinking process, the curse of expertise, the pull of hubris and the illusion of knowledge. Can you walk us through these? And by the way, if you can't remember all three of them and just want to do one at a time, that's also fine.

• 11:46Speaker 04

  Good. Well, let's focus on the curse of expertise because I actually think that's the one that applies to most of us all of the time. And, you know, everyone listening will have heard of the Dunning Kruger effect. And we always have a good giggle because it's the idea where someone who doesn't know very much at all thinks that they know a lot. We've also all fell victim to that. But this is the opposite where what the research shows is those of us who are experts in any field, and that is all of us, we're all an expert at something. We're really good at knowing when we're right. So we're really good at knowing when we know what we know, but we are crap at knowing when we should doubt.

• 12:28Speaker 04

  So we are really poor at questioning ourselves as to when perhaps we should be getting some extra information or perhaps our knowledge is out of date or perhaps whatever it might be. And that's this curse of expertise where we are so wrapped up in believing what we know and how we invest in our sense of self is on what I know, that it's much harder to question ourselves. And that's pretty dangerous, especially when you look around the world at the moment. People who are so confident, so confident that they are right. And yet there's others who would just like a little bit of doubt would, you know, be pretty helpful and healthy.

• 13:09Dan Harris?

  Yes, I heard this expression from one of the guests on the show and I can't remember who, but there are so many people who are confidently wrong.

• 13:17Speaker 04

  Yeah, I know. I would love them to calibrate their confidence. Wouldn't that be nice? Just to, you know, work out whether or not perhaps, just perhaps, and you know, you look around the world now and equally, we can be just as adamant in observing other people and think, you know, you are so wrong, you know, and perhaps we're not right either, but all of us, if we were able to calibrate our confidence a bit more, we're going to be able to bring those two poles together much more easily.

• 13:48Dan Harris?

  Let's just touch on the other two so-called thinking traps. One of the others is the pole of hubris. Can you say more about that one?

• 13:54Speaker 04

  Well, this is where generally, let's say for any of us hypothetically, we've been really successful in what we've done in the past. It's worked a thousand times. Of course it's going to work again. You know, of course I know what I'm doing because I've solved this problem however many times. I've sat on company boards for a long time in my career and, you know, you see hubris in operation in boardrooms because the people in those rooms generally are successful. They've been successful in whatever they do. They believe that success will continue. And they find it much, much harder to think, well, perhaps in this situation, the context has changed. I mean, the world has changed far more quickly and is changing more quickly than I think any of us have experienced before.

• 14:39Speaker 04

  If we're not constantly questioning, you know, am I being honest with myself about how much I know and am I being curious to learn more? And then flexible enough to change our mind, then the world has changed around us and that hubris is going to catch us out.

• 14:54Dan Harris?

  I agree with all of this. I'm nodding either visibly or invisibly. I am nodding along. I. Well, I just bump on one aspect of human nature, which is that we, many of us, hate not knowing. We like certainty.

• 15:10Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 15:11Dan Harris?

  It's a bulwark against a world that often seems out of control. So I think a lot of people will like what you're saying, but in practice, may find some aversion arising.

• 15:21Speaker 04

  Me too. Me too. Like, I've written the book and I completely agree. Especially when we're stressed and when the world is changing so quickly, we cling to certainty. That's absolutely human nature, but is it always working for us? So all I'm suggesting is, yes, we know that that's where our default is. But if you're still making decisions every day where you're thinking the next day, what the fuck was I thinking? Then perhaps we need to do something a little bit different. And I'm just encouraging that we recognize the reality. So there's nothing wrong with wanting certainty. Like, that's obviously where we're at. Yet, the world isn't certain.

• 16:04Speaker 04

  So like, we can continue to cling to certainty with the world changing around us and us making perhaps decisions and forming opinions and views that are inflexible. Or we can accept the world's going to keep changing. And what are some ways I can get comfortable with that uncertainty? And if you're a seeker, as we talked about before, you know that your knowledge is always changing. So if you accept you don't know everything. And so I'm going to talk from personal example. I know I don't know. I don't know everything about what we're talking about right now. And because of that, I'm uncertain about what I'm going to learn tomorrow that I don't know today that'll change my mind, and I'm okay with that.

• 16:45Speaker 04

  So there's topics that I'm really comfortable with not knowing a lot about. There's other topics where I'm far less comfortable. It feels like, I don't know, if I think about my kids. If someone was to say to me as a parent, you don't know everything, you know, that's going on with your children and so you may not be able to make the best decision. That sort of gets right at my sense of self. But it's recognizing both of those. And all I'm suggesting is... Is that people really pay attention to what they're basing their decisions on? And whether they're basing it on how they've always done things or that need for certainty, or that feeling that they're an expert and they're not prepared to open their mind to a different way of doing things. If all of that's going on for you, which it is for all of us,

• 17:30Speaker 04

  then this is purely a suggestion about some practical ways you can think about it differently.

• 17:36Dan Harris?

  Yes, and we're gonna get very practical soon, but just to build on what you're saying, it's like, yeah, it sucks to be uncertain sometimes, uh, it can be uncomfortable. But how do you wanna navigate a world that's in constant flux? Do you wanna be brittle and breakable, or do you wanna be supple and, you know, sophisticated?

• 17:52Speaker 04

  That is a very neat way of putting it. I'm Australian as well. We're very blunt with the truth. Like, the world's changing, it is ambiguous, so you can either like get on board with that and figure out how to deal with that uncertainty and feel a bit more comfortable, or continue to have fixed views, which I think are not serving any of us.

• 18:11Dan Harris?

  Okay, the third thinking trap is the illusion of knowledge. Say more.

• 18:16Speaker 04

  We're probably of a similar vintage and, you know, I started working thirty odd years ago. And I accumulated knowledge, so whether it was going to university or new jobs, new experiences, and you kind of, it's like you're carrying around this big pile of books to every new job, to every new experience, every new crisis, and I'd sort of bring it with me. I look back now and all of that knowledge is pretty much out of date. I certainly don't lead the way I led thirty years ago, so that's not helpful. I certainly don't, the technology I was using thirty years ago isn't relevant. It's that illusion that the bigger your pile of books that you can haul around,

• 18:57Speaker 04

  the more you actually are able and capable and learning in the world. Now, none of this is black and white, obviously, none of this is binary. And of course, all of those experiences and failures I've had over thirty years have got me to this point. But if we think because we've done this job ten times already, or we've read a thousand books, or we've listened to a hundred podcasts, or whatever, somehow that's going to see us through the challenges of today, then that's where I'm saying that's an illusion. We have to keep learning and I need to keep understanding more and, and understanding which of those books to throw out.

• 19:34Dan Harris?

  Just not mine or yours.

• 19:36Speaker 04

  Yeah. But I mean, I'm realistic enough to say perhaps in a few years, there'll be a better way and that's okay, too.

• 19:44Dan Harris?

  You're a better person than I am. We've been talking at a pretty high level and let's get practical. In your book, you say there are these three blind spotting mindsets. And the first is to be honest, which I think is deceptively simple in that it's not that simple. But can you say a little bit more about what you mean by be honest and then how to actually do that?

• 20:05Speaker 04

  Yeah, and it's absolutely simplified to it's, you know, as we're talking about, it's based on an entire theory of intellectual humility and it's not easy. But I think there are ways that we can think about ourselves and our thinking that helps it. So three practices, I touched on them very briefly before. The first, being able to accept our intellectual limits. And I think about our knowledge on a spectrum. So you've got intellectual arrogance on one end and then sort of complete anxious lack of knowledge on the other on topics. And I move between any of those points. Neither of them are helpful, obviously, being someone who thinks they know everything and someone who can't even make a decision because they fear they don't know anything.

• 20:49Speaker 04

  Blind spotting is the sweet spot in the middle where, as I said earlier, you're very aware that you don't know everything, but you're confident you'll find out the answer. So the first sort of step in blind spotting is really being able to accept that. And not everyone can. We can't all the time either. It is really hard. The second being around our ego, and I sort of touched on that earlier around if you define yourself as, I don't know, let's pick on lawyers. If you define yourself as a lawyer or an attorney and that is everything about how you define yourself and see yourself and, you know, you just, your whole sense of self is wrapped up in giving out your business card that you're this great attorney, then

• 21:31Speaker 04

  if someone gives you feedback or says, actually, you don't know everything about being an attorney or, you know, you didn't do that case very well, it completely cuts into our sense of who we are. And so my suggestion, and this is incredibly difficult, but it's disentangling our ego from whatever it is we do. And thinking of ourselves by how we contribute to others or being of service or what we know. But it just means that we're able to accept we don't know everything a bit more easily. And then the third is around hunting our biases and that's really thinking about those thinking biases. We touched on around hubris and confirmation bias. And, you know, when my husband's telling me how to pack the dishwasher, I'm absolutely susceptible to Googling

• 22:16Speaker 04

  and finding every proof point that he's wrong and I'm right. And that is confirmation bias at work, because I exclude all of the information that might say that he's right. But more seriously, when we look at political challenges and people who are just poles apart. Obviously, we know we can be in our bubbles and we're not looking to understand where others are coming from. So that can be a real challenge. So they're sort of the three practices that help us to be honest.

• 22:44Dan Harris?

  I would love to learn more about how to do each of these. So let's just go in reverse order. In terms of hunting your biases and, you know, not being so owned by something like confirmation bias, which is latching on to the information that confirms our priors, this goes against all of our wiring.

• 23:02Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah. I love the question, you know, what am I missing? So if you're leading a team, let's say, if you've created a team environment where you're genuinely interested in others' contributions and they feel safe to speak up, then I would be asking them, what are you seeing that I'm not seeing? What is it clear that I don't know about this situation? Because we've got these incredibly attuned bullshit meters. We can tell when someone else is bullshitting, but for whatever reason, we've got a bias that we believe no one knows when we're bullshitting. And so that is just this massive blind spot in and of itself. And so when I'm speaking to leaders, like they all acknowledge they don't know everything. So no one's got a problem doing that.

• 23:47Speaker 04

  And I'm like, well, why do you feel you, no one's going to realise that? So this idea about how we can be honest, the more we can be accepting that that's okay, accepting that if I ask my team, what are you seeing? What am I missing? What biases have I got that I'm not even aware of? That is how we can start to open our mind and build trust with the people that we're leading. So, so many people feel that saying, I don't know yet, is like a career killer. If I say that, I'll lose my job. My view on that is if you're in an environment where you can't say that, then you've got way bigger problems than a lack of intellectual humility

• 24:29Speaker 04

  in the organisation. You know, you're in such a toxic environment that there's bigger issues to play. Because I know, having been a leader for so many years, I want people telling me when they don't know. I don't want them bullshitting me.

• 24:43Dan Harris?

  One of the ways in which I've attempted to deal with my biases is to really start broadening my media diet, so that I see when, just to be honest about where I am politically, I think I'm close to the centre. I've spent much of my life being a journalist. I'm not particularly ideological. And so I think I'm just sort of wired for curiosity and some degree of openness. But, you know, Trump has been hard for me. And so I really do try to listen across the spectrum. I'm not putting myself through Steve Bannon's podcast or Tucker Carlson, but I do listen to folks on the centre-right who are either, if not pro-Trump, they're at least a little bit more open than most of the mainstream media

• 25:28Dan Harris?

  is. And of course, I listen on the people who are way to the left of me. And I have found this is a pretty good way to, if I'm on my game, I can catch both confirmation bias and also what's called attribution error, where if somebody you don't like does something, it's an aberration. If somebody you do like does something, it's proof of their fundamental goodness. And so I don't know if there's data on any of this, if I'm an outlier, but what say you?

• 25:56Speaker 04

  I agree completely. And in fact, in the book, I talk about how opening our mind and being curious, so we haven't sort of got to being curious yet, but pursuing different perspectives is incredibly important. And, you know, I had a real lesson here. I'm probably very similar to you politically, centre. More to the left than current, you know, if we're looking at far right. But we had a referendum in Australia recently and I voted uh yes to recognise our Indigenous First Nations people in our constitution. That was the referendum. And it was obviously people towards the left voted yes and those who didn't want to see that voted no.

• 26:36Speaker 04

  And the outcome was an overwhelming no vote and by something like sixty or seventy percent. So I was a minority with other people on the left who voted they wanted to see First Nations people recognised. For me, I wouldn't change my vote if I did it again tomorrow. So I'm still very much of that view that we should recognise our First Nations people. But to your point, it made me realise I had not gone and sought to understand what turns out to be the majority of my fellow citizens were believing or why they were believing it. And it's a real gap, not that we're expected to change our mind, but as you do, I read very widely now.

• 27:21Speaker 04

  And I don't go down to the far right or the far left, but different perspectives of conservative media that perhaps don't cause me to change my mind on issues that are fundamentally important to me. So someone who's anti-marriage equality, on pro-marriage equality, they could talk till the cows come home. I'm never going to change my mind on that. But I like to understand why other people feel the way they do. Because it's helpful to calibrate our confidence in issues. And I can then recognise that, yes, I'm holding firm to a view I have, but I'm doing that on a values-based perspective or I'm doing that for whatever reason.

• 28:03Speaker 04

  It's not that I haven't pursued to understand the facts of what are involved or something like that. So I don't know if that helps explain, but I'm totally with you that if we don't read widely and if we don't listen to others with different perspectives, you get caught out like I did, being literally shocked that most of my fellow citizens had a very different view than I did.

• 28:27Dan Harris?

  Yeah, that all makes complete sense.

• 28:33Dan Harris?

  Coming up, we talk about how to work with defensiveness, turning feedback into growth, easier said than done, and how curiosity and psychological safety help us stay open and honest.

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• 29:22Dan Harris?

  You also mentioned earlier this idea of disentangling your ego. You use the example of a lawyer. I'd be curious to hear a little bit more on the how of that because identity, from a Buddhist perspective, and I come from a Buddhist perspective, identity is a total trap. But it's a seductive one. And we all walk around with, I am a mom. I am a dad. I am Australian. I'm an American. Whatever. We've got this whole list of things that we identify as. That's even in the common parlance now. I identify as, fill in the blank. And obviously, to a certain extent, it's natural and healthy. And when I talk about the Buddhists saying it's a trap, that's on a deep level when these beliefs become really self-limiting.

• 30:05Dan Harris?

  But this is a long way of just getting to, what do you recommend for disentangling our ego, which of course can lead to better decisions. If every time somebody questions my expertise, I'm bringing to bear all of my identities. I'm a journalist. Oh, I'm X, Y, and Z. I then become really brittle. But that sounds easier said than done.

• 30:27Speaker 04

  Yeah, all of this is easier said than done, Dan. Like, there's no doubt, writing a book about blind spotting is a lot easier than engaging in blind spotting. And if I didn't recognise that, then that would be a massive blind spot on my part. So I think the way that I try and do it, and I feel, I'm not a Buddhist, so I'm sure you're far better at this than I am. But I know that if I can recognise my triggers or that what's going on in my body when I'm getting defensive. So if I can feel I'm becoming defensive, if I catch it, and I don't always, but if I catch it, then I know, okay, my ego has been triggered, something I'm either feeling shame, embarrassment,

• 31:10Speaker 04

  something is being activated in me that is probably going to lead to me getting frustrated and angry and defensive, and it's not going to be helpful. So firstly, I try to catch what's going on for me. I also then try and reflect on if I'm going to go into a difficult discussion. If I know that is a topic that is likely to trigger me, then that helps to be able to just plan for that and stay present. So if I know I'm going to have to sit down with some people who are, I don't know, have a really strong view on something that I don't agree with, then at least I know, okay, this is what's going to happen, this is how I'm going to feel.

• 31:50Speaker 04

  So let's plan how I'm going to actually avoid becoming defensive and then just losing all my ability to have a reasonable conversation. And so I think in some of these tense conversations, if you've got someone else there who's able to observe you afterwards, that's always helpful because they'll tell you what they saw going on. It's more for me a physical thing, but I'd actually love to know from you, what do you do? We all get defensive, that happens. Do you feel something coming on?

• 32:23Dan Harris?

  Well, for sure, I like that suggestion. You said you're not a Buddhist, but from a meditation or mindfulness standpoint, knowing that defensiveness is going to show up as a certain set of sensations, often before you're even registering it consciously, it's a great alarm bell. Like, oh, okay, I'm getting triggered here. Let me take a few deep breaths. Let me call a pause to the meeting. Let me just retire to greener patches in my own mind for a second and get my shit together.

• 32:50Speaker 04

  Let me get the hell out of here.

• 32:52Dan Harris?

  Or even just without, you know, without actually leaving the room, you can just retreat for a second. So all of that makes complete sense to me. There's a concept that I have found really helpful. It comes from a writer and this person has become a friend of mine after being on the show a couple of times. Her name is Dolly Chug. She's at NYU and she's written a few really good books. I actually was texting with her today about a dinner that we're gonna have. And she has this concept that's called good-ish-ness.

• 33:20Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 33:20Dan Harris?

  So for me, I often get defensive around if somebody's criticizing me in a way in which I read it as they're calling me a bad person, because it's triggering my ancient storylines about being a wretch, which are really go far back for me. If I can just, and I've really worked on this over time, switch my self-conception from, from either bad or good, both of which are brittle, to good-ish, well, then when somebody gives me feedback, I can take it on board in a much easier way because I'm not reading it as I'm a horrible person. I'm reading it as, oh, I'm good-ish, but I've made a mistake. So therefore I can learn from it and grow.

• 34:00Speaker 04

  I love that. In a similar vein, I know I have three triggers when someone's giving me feedback. So because I know them, I then, as I'm listening to the feedback, sort of distance myself a bit going, oh, that's that trigger. This is that one. So the first one is, I'm thinking, you're wrong. So it doesn't matter what the feedback is. I can feel myself starting to formulate an argument as to why I'm gonna say, yeah, but you didn't know about X, Y, Z. And so that's going on. And now, when that happens, I recognize and I just name it and go, oh, okay, that's me being triggered that they're wrong. Let's park that. The second trigger is that you're an idiot. So I'm so caught up in the nature of the relationship

• 34:43Speaker 04

  that I have with the person. So whether I think they're a dickhead and like you've got the audacity of giving me feedback, man, you can't even look after your own shit. Why are you giving me feedback like this? So I name that, okay, I've just been triggered by the fact that I think you're a dickhead. There are dinosaurs and dickheads all over the earth at the moment. So there's a few of them, including us. We've got to put the mirror up. So the first two triggers, the third trigger, though, is when I can sense it has triggered my ego. So I am feeling shame or embarrassed or that I have done the wrong thing. You know, I genuinely feel that's my big, yours is about being good or bad. Mine is if I have done the wrong thing. And I can feel just that immediate

• 35:28Speaker 04

  sensation of adrenaline and oh my gosh. And just naming those, even if it's like, oh yeah, I think this guy's an idiot. It takes the power away from me anyway. And let's be just then, okay, let's just listen to whatever is being said, either withdraw from the situation or take a pause or whatever. So I think any combination of these help. It just helps.

• 35:53Dan Harris?

  Yes. And again, we're talking about deep wiring in the human animal and it's not going to be undone overnight. So just to reset, we're talking about the three blind spotting mindsets. We've been talking about honesty. The second one, and we've talked about this a little bit already, but it's worth naming and diving into. The second one is curiosity. Can you hold forth on the value of the whys and wherefore's of this?

• 36:17Speaker 04

  Well, we talked at the beginning about the three mindsets, being honest, being curious, being flexible. What I should have said is they're really not helpful unless you do all three together. So if you can be honest, that's great. But like, just because I'm honest with myself and go, yeah, I don't know everything about a topic and then go back to my merry way and continue on. That's not great. So you have to then be curious to find out. So if I've been honest that I don't know everything, now I've got to be curious and we'll talk about what that is. But of course, once I learn that there's more data involved or something I'm not aware of and I learn what it is, I've then got to be flexible to actually change my mind. So you can see, you have to do all three of these or else you're just continuing on.

• 37:02Speaker 04

  So the curiosity piece is I've now accepted I don't know everything, great. I've got to now search for the truth and it blows my mind that the truth is contested these days. Cause of course there is an objective truth and that's what I'm talking about. I'm not talking about your truth or my truth and Truth Social or whatever bloody truths are out there. This is the objective truth that is measurable and verifiable. Not everything is, I I understand that. You know, I love flat earthers. I'm sure there's no flat earthers listening to your podcast, but just in case they are, I'm going to Antarctica in two days. I'm off for a month. And flat earthers, I went down this rabbit hole of flat earthers because they're easy to pick on.

• 37:45Speaker 04

  But they believe that the CIA man's a big wall in Antarctica to stop us all falling over the edge. Now I am going down there. I'm, if I see that wall, I promise I will loudly and proudly share photos and say, good on you, flat earthers, you were right. But I'm just gonna hazard a guess that there's no wall down there. So that's an example where there is an objective truth that the world is not flat. We've got plenty of science to tell us that and that's what we've really got to seize on to. After we're searching for the objective truth, I spoke earlier about pursuing different perspectives. Now, this is finding people who perhaps definitely don't agree with us and

• 38:29Speaker 04

  Again, it's not saying we've got to go and sit in Steve Bannon's podcast and have our minds changed because that's not what I wanna do. I don't wanna spend my time doing that and I'm not proposing that we need to. But again, if I take it back to a more everyday situation, as mentioned, I sat on boards, we would do acquisitions, M and A and take over different companies and all of those sorts of decisions that you make in a corporate environment. I don't ever remember, you know, after we've ticked all the boxes and said we've looked at all the risks and rewards and done our due diligence, I don't ever recall actually going and seeking out someone who vehemently disagreed with what we're about to do and saying, what do you see that I don't see? Doesn't mean I'd have to change my mind, but

• 39:13Speaker 04

  literally saying, you really think this is a bad idea? Why? What am I seeing? What am I not seeing and that you are? So that's the idea of pursuing different perspectives. Doesn't mean you have to change your mind, but you do need to sort of take it on board. And then finally, being able to question for insight. And this is the idea of using questions to learn and not to win. So I said before, we can all be clever enough to ask, I could ask you enough questions right now, Dan, where I could put you into a corner and you would just throw your arms up because it's exhausting. I don't wanna have to keep arguing with you about something with someone who just keeps asking me questions to prove

• 39:55Speaker 04

  their point. Questioning for insight is the opposite, where I'm genuinely interested in your answer and I'm genuinely prepared to take what I learn from you on board in what I'm understanding. And so that means we can be curious.

• 40:10Dan Harris?

  What kind of questions would that include? You've listed some like, what am I missing? Or what are you seeing that I'm not seeing? But are there, are there great questions to get in the habit of asking?

• 40:19Speaker 04

  Yeah, I think, you know, what would you do differently than what we're about to do if we could? If this idea was off the table, what would we be doing? Or what will it look like if we get this wrong? What's something that you have seen we've done in the past that we've missed and that we could be missing again today? It's really just

• 40:43Speaker 04

  Asking ourselves, you know, if I was an outsider looking in at our process here, what would they observe? What would they see that we're not seeing? I think any of these questions, the what ifs, will lead to other questions. And you're also building trust with your team that you genuinely respect what they've got to contribute. And by being a leader who can say, look, I don't know all the answers. I need you, Dan, to fill here this gap and, you know, someone else to fill another gap. If you can do that, we're building trust and respect and showing them that their contributions are actually needed. They're not just people to do whatever it is we want them to do. We're actually interested in what they can contribute and collaborate and all of those ideas.

• 41:28Dan Harris?

  I think that's known as psychological safety.

• 41:31Speaker 04

  Yeah, that is the goal. So how we get there is one of the ways, I think, is being able to ask and accept whatever answers come your way.

• 41:42Dan Harris?

  Just to say a little bit more about what psychological safety is, and a lot of what we're talking about here is within a workplace setting. And that's great. But, you know, see, you can have psychological safety within your marriage and with your children and in your friend groups, in all of your relationships. And it basically is creating an atmosphere where people are comfortable speaking their mind, even if they're way lower on you and whatever hierarchy is operational in the moment. And there's a lot of data to show that this is the secret sauce, the secret sauce behind successful organizations. I have failed historically, quite miserably at this. I've done a lot of work in recent years to get better at it, but it's definitely a work in process. So yeah, is there anything

• 42:24Dan Harris?

  further to say on this subject of psychological safety and how to create it?

• 42:29Speaker 04

  Well, I love that you got us away from the work setting. I find in a work setting, I'm more conscious of Asking the right questions, doing it in a way that everyone feels that they're being involved and collaborative, because you kind of go in with that mindset. I have found then when I'm in friendship groups where we start to talk about something contentious, I'm far less in that mindset of, oh, you know, I want to make sure I'm hearing your view, Dan. You know, we're sitting over dinner, having a few drinks and arguing about something. A lot of that technique can go out the window because you're more relaxed and you're sort of taking for granted that you can say things. It's like we sometimes treat those we love the worst. We're terrific with people we don't know very well and yet we can, as I said,

• 43:14Speaker 04

  my husband might suggest a different way to do something and I'm like, no way. That is just wrong. Now, I would never say that to someone I don't know very well. So I think it's something we should and could be practicing a lot more in all aspects of our life, not just thinking of it as a work idea. And I know that's something I need to get better at as well.

• 43:35Dan Harris?

  So again, we're talking about the three blind spotting mindsets. We talked about honesty. We talked about curiosity. You made the point that all three work together. They're important to them simultaneously. The third is flexibility. Can you hold forth on that one?

• 43:50Speaker 04

  Yeah. So, okay, now we've been honest. We don't know everything. I've been curious. I've actually gone and found out that whatever it is, the earth is a steroid. It's not flash. So now I have to be flexible with that. So if I've gone and discovered that what I thought was true isn't true, then it follows that we need to be able to adjust our thinking. We have to have an open mind. Now, I want to say at the outset, blind spotting is not about not having a view or not having fixed views. Again, it's this sweet spot. I'm not expecting us to flip flop. And I've already said, there's views on things like marriage equality. I'm never going to change my mind on it. It doesn't matter what I hear, all

• 44:30Speaker 04

  the arguments for and against. Right now, that is a view I hold firm. But there's other positions I've taken on things. Working from home has been a great example. When COVID happened and everyone went working from home, I'm 52, I was like cheering, thinking, yes, I hope I never have to go anywhere ever again. And I never put shoes on it. I'm going to work from home forever. And I was a real zealot and I write a weekly column here in our national papers. And I was like, yep, everyone who can should be able to work from home. I've had to really adjust my thinking on that because I observed my daughters who are in their twenties who really were missing out on opportunities by not being around those they learned from, from listening to the perspectives of others who had seen

• 45:14Speaker 04

  the culture of their teams really disintegrate, or just those who had a whole different lived experience to my own. So it doesn't mean I've changed my mind. I'm still, you know, if you can do it, great and make it work. But I have had to calibrate my confidence, that was the term, that I was right. You know, I've really had to calibrate. Actually, I got that a little bit wrong. I do tend to get overly excited about things anyway, and then sort of ratchet it back. But what being flexible about then is reading the room. So really being able to understand the room we're in and how it's changing and the context and the signals and, you know, all of that sense-making that we do. Being able to embrace ambiguity, we've said how hard that is. But if I can be flexible,

• 45:58Speaker 04

  it means I'm happy to not be hard and fast in what I believe. I'm prepared to change my mind. And then keeping our mind open, obviously. And all of that is really important for us to avoid those decisions we make where later on we think, what the fuck was I thinking? You know, it's doing these things that will help us avoid that.

• 46:23Dan Harris?

  Coming up, we talk about the supreme importance of flexibility, how to change your mind, how to lead with humility, and how to build cultures, both in the workplace and in your personal life, where it's safe to say, I don't know.

• 46:44Speaker 05

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• 47:13Dan Harris?

  So I thought of another great little phrase that might be helpful with all of these. I'm recording this right now from the kitchen of a cottage on the grounds of the Insight Meditation Society, which is a Buddhist retreat center cofounded by my longtime friend and teacher, Joseph Goldstein. I'm here because I'm recording some content with him over these days. And he has an expression which really pops in my mind at opportune moments, which is certainty is not an indication of truth.

• 47:43Speaker 04

  Yeah. Well, I'm sure he's learnt that the hard way, too, as we all have, you know? We can be as sure as shit that we're right. And we'll very quickly find out we're not. So, I mean, when you asked me at the beginning, how do you sell this idea? I mean, it's stuff like this. It doesn't matter where you sit on the political spectrum. Every single person has had a real confidence in their belief be upended, for whatever. It could be something simple, or it can be something really major. And it's just being aware that that is human nature, as much as holding on to certainty is. So, given that's the case, what are some really practical things we can do to just help? It's not a golden bullet, it's a silver

• 48:27Speaker 04

  bullet. It's not going to make sure we never make bad decisions again, but it's going to help.

• 48:32Dan Harris?

  I would add another benefit beyond improved decision making, which I certainly agree with. The world is much more interesting when you're not stuck in your certainty. So I think it was Graham Greene who said, when we're not sure, we're alive.

• 48:47Speaker 04

  Yeah. You and I both obviously read more widely than things I might agree with, but I find it fascinating just literally reading what people believe. You know, when I went down my rabbit hole of flat-earthers, I was able to look at it from just a perspective of that must be fascinating thinking this way. What is it that leads people to think this? And how is it you get in a situation? I'm gonna, I feel like, I hope we've got no flat-earthers listening, please don't email me. But how do you get to that position when there's so much evidence to show that you're wrong? I think we can look at things from an intellectual perspective, but only when you look widely.

• 49:30Speaker 04

  And you know, that's just a really trite example because it's easy, but there's so many more subtle ways that our thinking can be influenced. And so I find it fascinating to read widely to see what people believe and why.

• 49:44Dan Harris?

  Anything more to say about how to take these three mindsets, honesty, curiosity and flexibility and have them all work together in the moments when we need them to?

• 49:56Speaker 04

  Yeah, well, I think it is difficult, but it's not impossible. And the more you can create people around you that feel this way as well, so the more you can be saying to your kids, you know, it's okay to not know. I mean, we're pretty good at doing that with young kids. I don't know that we're that good with our adult children to really reaffirming. When I think of, I've mentioned, I've got daughters, they're twenty five and twenty three. And so I've been watching them go through the start of their careers. And of course, for them to say to their bosses right now, I don't know, is terrifying. I think you and I have more confidence. The more senior you become, the more you sometimes feel able to say, you know, you've built enough credit in the bank

• 50:42Speaker 04

  to be able to say, look, I don't know how to do this yet, but I know I'll figure it out. When we've got younger people, we do the opposite because when they truly don't know, we have this expectation that they do. So I think the way that we can be making this easier for all of us is making it okay to not know. And having that as just a fundamental part of our families, our schooling, you know, schools and universities go completely against everything we're talking about because you're doing exams, you're getting tested on knowledge. And if you don't know, you don't do as well and you get a lesser score. And so I don't have a solution for that, but I know that that ingrains in us this sense of

• 51:26Speaker 04

  saying, I don't know, becomes so much harder. So I think we do need to find ways that being uncertain and unsure is perfectly okay.

• 51:38Dan Harris?

  That's particularly hard in a, in the middle of a pandemic of perfectionism. I mean, it's literally on the rise, perfectionism.

• 51:44Speaker 04

  Yeah, well, and I mean, as a victim of perfectionism, as a recovering perfectionist who's trying to be happy enough with average, I totally understand that, but it is liberating once you get there because perfectionism, being perfect and getting everything right is unattainable because even if you get something right now, you know, the next thing won't be right. So, I mean, again, it's another reality that we can either keep trying to go for it and encouraging our kids to go for it, or we can accept that it's just not attainable.

• 52:18Dan Harris?

  So what do you recommend in terms of building a culture where it's okay to admit you don't know? Just tactically, what do you recommend? I mean, what comes to mind for me is, in my limited experience as a leader, is to model it. I often talk about how the fish rots from the head and the head of the fish. And so when there are problems, my instinct is to look inward first before lashing out. Sometimes I fuck up and lash out first, but generally when I'm on my game, it's to look inward. And so I guess if I wanted to take seriously your injunction here to create an atmosphere where it's okay to admit you don't know, I would want to start modeling that from the top.

• 53:01Speaker 04

  That's absolutely critical. And I think building these cultures of seekers, going back to, is what we want and we role model that. So I, it's what we spoke about before, being able to even say to ourselves, let alone other people, that you don't know everything. You know, I don't know yet, but I'm confident, team, we're going to figure this out. It's if someone else in your team says they don't know, truly thanking them for that honesty and saying terrific. I mean, I don't either, Dan, so let's figure this out together. It's being able to accept that it's normal in a team not to have all the answers and that what we want is to stay curious and open to learning. These gaps in our knowledge

• 53:43Speaker 04

  is just completely understandable. But gosh, look at the opportunity it gives us to explore something we haven't even thought of yet. So it's about framing to our team. And this is all about psychological safety as well, that not knowing isn't a weakness. In our team, not knowing is a realistic certainty. If we want to be certain about something is that we're not going to know all the answers. And so how are we going to sort that together? That's that real confidence. But again, to remind people who are listening, saying, well, we've got some drama. We're dealing with a crisis that's just not going to fly. I agree. There are times when this is not an appropriate way to proceed. If there is a crisis, if a decision needs to be made straight away.

• 54:28Speaker 04

  If your team is struggling and they are looking to you for guidance. You may need to just lead from the front. And with all that expertise and experience, say, this is what I believe we're going to do. This is how I'm going to go forward. Call me out if I'm missing something, but otherwise let's go. So you have to be able to read the room as well.

• 54:47Dan Harris?

  Yes, that makes complete sense. Just staying on this theme of building a culture where people are seekers and whatnot. What about hiring? How can you? And by the way, just taking this beyond the workplace. I mean, when you hire a new friend, you know, when you.

• 55:05Speaker 04

  How much do you pay them, Dan?

• 55:07Dan Harris?

  When you curate your social life and, you know, decide who you're going to surround yourself with. How do we build cultures of psychological safety and seeking in whatever orbit we happen to move through?

• 55:19Speaker 04

  Nvidia, which who we all know as a company, they sort of open in my book. And I write about the culture they've created because they're one of the few companies that I could find in the Fortune 500 that have intellectual honesty as a corporate value. And they truly have built a culture of seekers. And Jensen Huang writes, and again, it's in the book about how he recruits. And he'll get someone to tell him something they know a lot about, you know, explain how. Buddhism works to me, Dan, and I'll let you explain it. But then he deliberately will say, yeah, how, but you know, and challenge you. I don't think that makes sense or, you know, why would that be? And he watches to see how they react.

• 56:04Speaker 04

  So on something that's, you know, really important to you, how do you respond when I'm challenging a view that you have? And if there's someone who is prepared to go, that's really interesting. Actually, I hadn't thought of that perspective, you know, I'll go away and think about it. Obviously, it's an interview, it doesn't really matter what the topic is. Then that's someone who's more likely to become a seeker in your team. If it's obviously a person who's got a very fixed view, it's going to be much more difficult. So I think we can be recruiting for these skills where we're open to learning. And we're open to not having all the answers, even on something that we feel an expert in. And that brings us back to that, you know, curse of expertise. You're really trying to see how flexible people are in their thinking.

• 56:47Speaker 04

  And in friendships, it's similar, you know, we all sort of, as we first get to know someone, we're tentatively like, are you a crazy whack job? You know, really extreme views or can I just, you know, I'm just going to test where you stand on some issues that are important to me. And, you know, I can sense in five seconds whether or not we're going to get on. And if we feel we can, then I'll be really curious to see over time, does that hold on a whole range of different topics? And again, likewise, I'm sure they're weighing me up as well. And so perhaps I'm the crazy whack job in some people's minds, but I think we're all just trying to find our fellow crazies.

• 57:28Dan Harris?

  Amen. Okay. Another question that's on my list here is, I believe you recommend to people thinking like a journalist.

• 57:37Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, that is true. Because journalists, I think, are good at checking out their source. So this is all part of uh trying to find the truth in things. So often you've got, you know, your crazy uncle Fred, who says, have you heard? Uh, cause I read on Facebook and you just know whatever is about to follow is complete rot. And, you know, that he hasn't checked the source, he hasn't thought critically about what he's reading, he has just believed whatever he's said. I think where the idea of what journalists do is good. We're talking about really robust journalists that are very committed to their craft. They will go and seek multiple perspectives. They will try and get to the truth of a situation.

• 58:21Speaker 04

  They will question where that information's coming from, what biases might be driving, you know, my view on a topic that I've given you an answer to, what vested interests are at play. All of that kind of thing makes us better at critical thinking. And critical thinking is obviously behind everything we're talking about. This idea of questioning what we know and what we believe we know and how we can move forward. So that's what I mean about journalists, but I'm very conscious now. There's a lot of citizen journalists and others that perhaps don't tick all of those boxes. So I should have had an asterisk in the book just to qualify that.

• 59:01Dan Harris?

  Yes, thinking like a real journalist.

• 59:02Speaker 04

  Yes, one of those old school journalists that actually, you know, did the hard yards.

• 59:07Dan Harris?

  I am one of those old school journalists, not only in that I've been doing it for a long time, but also in that I'm old. It's really helpful, especially in a time like we're in right now where it's so polarised. Just having these habits of mine that allow me to sort of calmly interact with difference. It just reduces my hysteria level.

• 59:32Speaker 04

  That's always a good thing. It just means you're questioning, you know, journalists are really good at questioning what they know, what they think they know, the people they're speaking to, the truths, they're good at questioning power, you know, shining a light in dark places, all of those things we know about journalists. I think they're qualities that we can bring to our everyday relationships and the way we think about things. And I mentioned earlier the referendum that I really got wrong. I was not thinking like a journalist. I did not go and seek different perspectives. I did not try to understand what I'm missing. I didn't understand what my vested interests were, you know, I didn't understand my biases, all of those things. And so when the result came out, unsurprisingly, I got it wrong

• 1:00:17Speaker 04

  and really had to question myself and look in the mirror about what I'd missed.

• 1:00:22Dan Harris?

  There was a phrase you used earlier that I felt like it might make sense to come back to, calibrating confidence. Can you say more about what that means and how to do it?

• 1:00:31Speaker 04

  It's asking myself, look, what don't I know about this situation? Or what evidence is really going to make me change my mind? So if I am got a firm view on something and I think, um, I'm just trying to think, what's something you've got a firm view on? It doesn't have to be a serious thing, but anything.

• 1:00:52Dan Harris?

  Well, uh, what I'm thinking about as you ask that is the difference between values and opinions. You've said before that you're not going to change your mind on marriage equality. So that's a value of equality, whereas you might have opinions on any number of issues in the culture, but those, I think it's healthy to be open to overturning. And so for me, I have core values that I'm not willing to, you know, I'm pro kindness, pro fairness, all of those things. So what is something where I have like a really fixed view?

• 1:01:25Speaker 04

  Go ahead. You've just hit on something though, that's really, really important that we haven't touched on. So let's not use marriage equality, but let's say, ah, the environment. Okay. So everyone, if I say to you, do you care about the environment? I would hope, it's such a broad question, yes. But as we narrow down the issues within it, then they'll start to be somewhere you're going to have strong opinions, perhaps against it. So, you know, we might get right down to your local community. Yes, I'm pro the environment, but am I supportive of being fined a thousand dollars if I put a bit of plastic in my bin? Well, no, actually, hypothetically, that's, you know, not a thing.

• 1:02:09Speaker 04

  I care about the environment, but I don't care enough to pay a thousand dollars if I get a bit of plastic wrong. So the narrower you get, the more challenging it becomes to have these conversations. So it's easy for me to say, yes, I'm pro marriage equality because it's a value, but there'll be issues within that. Am I supportive of, you know, some aspect within it? I don't know, I can't even think of something that it might be. And perhaps I'm not. So it's also, you said, how can we calibrate our confidence? Trying to be conscious of, are we talking big picture? Am I just, you know, having a pretty bland conversation with you about the environment? Or are we really going to have a conversation about the nitty gritty?

• 1:02:51Speaker 04

  If we're in the nitty gritty, it's more likely to be heated because it's more likely that we're going to have a firm view on that. Does that make sense?

• 1:02:59Dan Harris?

  It does. So I see what you're saying about how the nitty gritty is where you might be less confident. And so what you're saying is the drilling down is where the calibration is happening.

• 1:03:12Speaker 04

  And it's as you're getting there. So when Uncle Joe says, well, he was Fred, I think, Uncle Fred, tells you that the world's flat, and you go, that's rubbish, but why do you think that way? And you discover that he doesn't trust the government. And then you go, well, why? And then it's because he got sent electricity bills that we, I don't know, this is all just hypothetical. The more you get into the nitty gritty, the more you can actually start to have a conversation about, okay, what happened when that happened? How did you feel when you got your bill that was wrong? And yeah, I can imagine, not quite sure how you get to the leap that the world's flat. But anyway, good for you, Uncle Fred. But you know, it's really being aware in your teams and with the people that you're

• 1:03:56Speaker 04

  talking to, where am I sitting in the conversation, in the issue? What is it that we're trying to resolve?

• 1:04:04Dan Harris?

  Where for you does imposter syndrome fit into all of this?

• 1:04:08Speaker 04

  Obviously, all of us have it. It's that need to pretend that we know. So I think when I felt the biggest imposter, it's when I haven't been able to say, I don't quite know what I'm doing. Like, I feel it, but I don't feel confident to say it. And the more I've thrown into my confidence to be able to sit in a boardroom and go, I don't know the best way to proceed here, you know, I need much more information, teach me, the more that helped me overcome being an imposter, feeling like an imposter at the start of my board career, where I felt I had to have the answers. So at the very beginning, when

• 1:04:51Speaker 04

  I was very young, I joined my first corporate board at thirty five, and first public company board at thirty eight. I mean, looking back now, I was just feeling I had to talk on every single agenda item and add no value at all. And I noticed the people around me, the really experienced directors hardly said anything, but what they did say was gold. And I coined an idea back then, which I still use called the word to wisdom ratio, just what I was trying to get to. And I was using a huge amount of words for not much wisdom. Likewise, you would know people hardly any words, but every single bit of it is wise. So this word to wisdom ratio is how I was calibrating. Whether or not I perhaps needed to sit back and learn a bit more and calibrate my confidence.

• 1:05:36Speaker 04

  And I think if we are going into situations and we're doing all the talking and we're doing all the answers as well. You know, you love those people that ask a question and answer it for you too. Then their word to wisdom ratio is crap. And so I think we all need to be calibrating confidence through that.

• 1:05:55Dan Harris?

  You mentioned before that you got two daughters in their early twenties and it's harder for them to admit they don't know in the workplace than it is for you. Given that you've got some, as you said, credit in the bank. So what do you advise them to do?

• 1:06:09Speaker 04

  Well, it, so managing up as a topic is really difficult. As I said, there are dinosaurs and dickheads roaming the earth. And if you have a boss that is a dinosaur or a dick or both, then trying to create a way to feel safe around that is really hard. So there are times where you will just need to find somewhere else to work, which is awful. And sometimes very difficult for people to be able to do. But if you are in an environment where you feel your boss is actually going to be receptive to you saying, I don't know. Then I would be absolutely going to them and testing that and saying, hey, look, I know you've asked me to do this. But I just wanted to share with you, I'm not a hundred percent sure that I understand.

• 1:06:54Speaker 04

  A, what you've asked me to do, or B, how to do it, or how to best get the outcome you're looking for. Is it okay if you just spend some time to help me understand a bit more now? You'll very quickly know how safe or not safe it is to be able to do that. And I think it's a pretty poor boss that responds poorly to that. And if it does, it's your sign to get the hell out of there.

• 1:07:18Dan Harris?

  So this in some ways comes back to a phrase you've used several times in this conversation, which is reading the room.

• 1:07:24Speaker 04

  Yeah, so reading the room was all sort of central to my research of my last book called Head and Heart. And to me, it's a skill we do not focus on or think about or teach nearly enough. And I do want to mention, though, I got great feedback after I wrote my last book from about head, reading the room from people who are neurodivergent. So I'm neurotypical. I wrote the book in a neurotypical way. And to me, I find it hard to even tell you how to read a room because it's intuitive. Like I just, you would probably find the same. It's hard to say what you're doing. And obviously, we're not talking about a room. Could be your team, organization, industry, whatever. People who are neurodivergent wrote to me and said, I don't even know what you're talking about.

• 1:08:07Speaker 04

  Like this skill is just completely foreign to me. What is it? And so I need to be aware as a neurotypical leader that A, not everyone understands what we're talking about right now. And B, if I'm neurodivergent myself as a leader, then I need to be doing different things.

• 1:08:27Dan Harris?

  I'm just curious about that prior book. Are there any just little nuggets of wisdom you can share with us? And again, they may be only operationalizable for the neurotypical about how to read a room.

• 1:08:39Speaker 04

  Yeah, so Head and Heart was this whole idea and research done around the idea that obviously we need to be able to understand what is needed and when. And that we all have these attributes of leading with the head, which is around reading a room and curiosity, which we've talked about and capability and, you know, all of those kinds of tangible things. And we've got to balance that with empathy and self-awareness and courage to speak up for what we believe in. Reading the room, firstly, it's going into any situation and asking ourselves.

• 1:09:14Speaker 04

  Who's in the room, but most importantly, who's missing from the room? Or who's in the room but not speaking? And it's like an orchestra. Am I only hearing the drums? But we've got all the violins over here, I can't hear them at all. Or the bassoons. I've never used this analogy before. I don't know where bassoons came from, but the bassoons aren't even in the room. And, you know, the tubas are just refusing to come in the room. Okay, I'm gonna leave that whole analogy now. But it's really this idea of observing what's going on around us. And it's not just body, it's body language to me is minor. This is what are our competitors doing? What changes are going on in the world around us that are going to influence where we need to go?

• 1:09:59Speaker 04

  You know, what steps and decisions do I need to take now that are going to benefit us in the future? And I wrote that book straight after Covid. And I use the example of your MBA commissioner, who shut down the MBA season right at the start of Covid, at a time when the then President Trump was saying, you know, Covid's fine. It's just drink bleach or whatever. You know, he certainly had to make a decision to shut down an entire season of football at a time when that was not being recommended more broadly. But it was the right decision. And so how did he do that? How did he read the room? And I think it's really sort of an example some of your listeners might remember.

• 1:10:43Dan Harris?

  Yeah, yes, I remember when the, when the NBA shut down, that kind of signaled the beginning of the pandemic. But so when you say read the room, it's not just, and I think you made this clear, but I'm just further clarifying it. It's not just when you walk into a room, what are the atmospherics? It's also like situational awareness globally in your decision making.

• 1:11:04Speaker 04

  It's like when you start a new job. And how you're observing what the culture is. So for those first few weeks, months, you know, you're just kind of picking up, okay, this is how they do things around here. This is what happens in our meetings. This is who comes. This is who doesn't come. Now, that's again, a pretty minor way of doing it in a contained environment, but reading the room can happen globally. We're reading the room as to what's going on with the far right in different countries at the moment and different elections. We're reading the room about what's happening in different industries, what's happening with AI. That's why I say body language is kind of, you and I have been reading the room through this podcast, reading how you react to things. I'm sort of observing, you're observing how I react.

• 1:11:48Speaker 04

  And we're making the conversation more effective by sort of playing off each other. That's how the two of us are doing it in this context. But if we were now to be in a room of a thousand people, I'd be doing something slightly different, you know, observing the audience in a different way. I'd be observing what they laugh at, what they don't laugh at, what felt like a pancake when I swore. And that has happened.

• 1:12:10Dan Harris?

  Is there one hack or skill or strategy that you would recommend that could improve our ability? Again, this may be only for the neurotypical, but that would improve our ability to read the room, either in an actual room or as we're looking at

• 1:12:26Speaker 04

  Whatever the room is.

• 1:12:27Dan Harris?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:28Speaker 04

  Yes, it's being aware it's a practice that we need to do. So again, it's like everything, once you name it, it becomes more tangible in our minds. And so there will be times where I need to make a big decision on something and I'll think, have I read the room on this? And what is the right room? And which room am I in? Often I'm in the wrong room. And if I'm in a room which is pretty small and everyone agrees with me, I know I'm going to make the wrong decision. I need to be in a room where there's people who have really quite different views to me and I've acknowledged them, I've understood them, I've perhaps adjusted my position if I feel I need to, and then I go forward.

• 1:13:10Dan Harris?

  Two questions I ask habitually at the end of an episode. First is, is there something you were hoping to get to that we didn't?

• 1:13:16Speaker 04

  No, I think we covered, yeah, everything that I would imagine and probably a bit more. So, thanks.

• 1:13:21Dan Harris?

  Great. And finally, can you just remind everybody of the name of your new book, your old book? Anything else you want us to know about?

• 1:13:27Speaker 04

  Yeah, my new book is called Blind Spotting: How to See What Others Miss. And I built a scale or a survey with one of the universities here. Anyone can go and do that for free and find out how they go with all of these blind spotting mindsets and it's blindsputting.com.au.

• 1:13:45Dan Harris?

  Kirsten, thank you very much. Great job.

• 1:13:48Speaker 04

  Thank you. Thanks for the great conversation.

• 1:13:55Dan Harris?

  Thanks again to Kirsten Ferguson. Great to talk to her. Don't forget to go sign up at danharris.com if you want to participate in our free New Year's Meditation Challenge, which will be running from January 5th through the 11th. Joseph Goldstein will be our teacher. He has crafted an amazing series of seven guided meditations that really are a kind of masterclass and on-ramp to Buddhist meditation. Great for beginners, great for people who've been meditating for a long time. If you join us, I'll be doing the challenge right alongside you. I'll be doing a bunch of live sessions to complement the challenge, video sessions where you can come meditate a little bit more with me and then ask me some questions.

• 1:14:36Dan Harris?

  It's going to be amazing and it will be run through our new 10% app, which I can't believe I get to say, I can't believe I get to have an app again. If you want to sign up for the challenge and for the app, go to danharris.com. The challenge is totally free and there's also a free 30-day trial for the app if you want to try it before you buy it. Yeah, super excited about this. Finally, thank you to everybody who worked so hard on this show. Our producers are Tara Anderson and Eleanor Vasili. Our recording and engineering is handled by the great folks over at Pod People. Lauren Smith is our managing producer. Marissa Schneiderman is our senior producer. DJ Kashmir is our executive producer and Nick Thorburn of the band Islands wrote our theme.

• 1:15:29Speaker 06

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