Dr. Julie Gurner (Part 2): Caring Deeply, Challenging Directly

On the second of two special episodes, acclaimed executive performance coach and doctor of psychology Dr. Julie Gurner goes in-depth on a variety of strategies and actionable advice that will help you perform up to your potential. During this portion of her interview, Dr. Gurner discusses the standards we set for ourselves and others, cognitive ruts, curating friends and relationships, fighting up front, what success means, and much more. Dr. Gurner has spent the past 14 years working with top percentile executives, talent, and teams operating in fast-paced, competitive environments. She specializes in improving personal productivity, focus, and decision-making strategies, as well as developing high performance cultures, teams, and executives emphasizing ownership and leadership. Check out Part 1 of this interview in the same feed where you’re listening to this episode, or on the Farnam Street Blog. -- Want even more? Members get early access, hand-edited transcripts, member-only episodes, and so much more. Learn more here: https://fs.blog/membership/ Every Sunday our Brain Food newsletter shares timeless insights and ideas that you can use at work and home. Add it to your inbox: https://fs.blog/newsletter/ Follow Shane on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/ShaneAParrish Our Sponsors: MetaLab: Helping the world’s top companies design, build, and ship amazing products and services. https://www.metalab.com Aeropress: Press your perfect cup, every time. https://aeropress.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

  You know, the notion of fighting upfront is if you do it right, it shouldn't be a fight, right? It should be something that you address early, as quickly as possible, in a way that can help to resolve whatever it is that you see as the threat. Having the conversations early, having the collaborations rather than conflict early, addressing problems early in your business, in your life, in your relationships, whatever, saves you so much on the backend that you can never predict.

• 0:45Shane Parrish?

  Welcome to The Knowledge Project, a podcast about mastering the best of what other people have already figured out so you can apply their insights into your life. I'm your host, Shane Parrish. If you're listening to this, you're missing out. If you'd like access to the podcast before public release, special episodes that don't appear anywhere else, hand-edited transcripts, or you just want to support the show you love, you can join at fs.blog/membership. Check out the show notes for a link. Today, my guest is Dr. Julie Gerner. Dr. Gerner is a performance coach for exceptional people. If you're like me, you constantly think about the delta between how you're performing and the potential for your performance. I worry about getting complacent, that I've

• 1:30Shane Parrish?

  plateaued or hit a wall, that I'm performing at a level less than the best I can do. This episode is full of actionable advice to unlock your peak performance. In fact, our recording had so much useful and practical insights that we decided to break it into two episodes so you can get the most out of each listen. This is the second episode, and we focus on the standards we set for ourselves and others, cognitive ruts, curating friends and relationships, fighting upfront, what success means, and so much more. It's time to listen and learn.

• 2:16Shane Parrish?

  I want to come back to something we said earlier about standards. And so one pattern that I've seen in outliers or highly successful people is that they tend to have higher standards than other people. But their standards for how they spend their time, standards for the work that they accept or expect out of themselves and others for relationships, sort of for everything. It's like the bar is raised and this can cause problems when they expect it from other people too, because I think they tend to expect it from themselves. And then because they expect it from themselves, they expect it from other people. I mean, what's your take on the standards and bars that people set for excellence?

• 2:57Speaker 00

  I think that it is a primary pain point for a lot of the people that I work with, that they are frustrated endlessly that people do not, in their companies, hold the same standards that they do. They put it as a point of culture. They have, you know, KPIs and other types of things that should be measuring it. But there's always this kind of deep brewing frustration that they're not as engaged, as obsessed as any of those things as they are. And the truth of it is, they're not going to be, most of the time. But can they hit a bar that is 80% of what your expectation might be? And is that going to be enough? And I think for some people, they're just still going to carry that frustration.

• 3:39Speaker 00

  And for other people, they're going to recognize that, hey, if people can give to the certain extent, it takes it off my plate. It takes, it still pushes the business forward and it will, it is productive because most people won't even meet that bar. Right? The standard you hold for yourself is high and it is why you are sitting in your seat. And other people, if they held that exact same standard, would not be in their seat. They would be somewhere else. So you have to think about, you know, the people that you're hiring, the mission that you're on, where other people are at and be able to consider that. I do think it's really important to hold that high bar, however. And I think it's important not to, not to lower your standards. You know, a lot of people say, you know, if you want to be happy, don't have expectations.

• 4:23Speaker 00

  And I think that's a really good way to be unhappy for the rest of your life. Because people, if you don't have expectations, you will just put up with everything. Right?

• 4:33Speaker 00

  You don't expect anything for yourself with high expectations with kind of enforceability around that. You're not going to put up with a bad relationship, a bad work environment, a bad employee, a bad, you know, all of these types of things and you hold that bar. And I think that's really beneficial for you, your company, for example, for modeling to others, for kids. I think that having a high bar is important. How that's translated can sometimes be important too, like especially if you're a parent and if you're a CEO, like how you bring people to the standard that you expect is incredibly important. You don't want to do it through like kind of fear and intimidation.

• 5:13Speaker 00

  You want to do it through a way where people feel inspired to rise and to hit their own potential because you are their, the person that they believe sees something in them that they do not see. And that can pull people to operate at higher levels too. They want to please you. They want to perform for you and you know, they want to be on a winning team. So, you know, to use a sports analogy, you know, Tom Brady tends to elevate the people around him because they get to play with Tom Brady, even if there's a lot of people out there who hate Tom Brady. But nonetheless, he does tend to do that and people step up their game because they want to perform, they want to be his receiver, they want to score a touchdown with Tom Brady.

• 5:54Speaker 00

  You know, like if you're great, you have the ability to elevate people around you too and to not just see it as like, I hold this bar and you're not meeting it and you know, in a very punitive way, you can actually kind of bring people with you and just have this winning team that you just happen to be leading.

• 6:11Shane Parrish?

  I think everybody has high standards when they care enough.

• 6:16Speaker 00

  Agreed, agreed. That's a great insight.

• 6:19Shane Parrish?

  Because when we care about something, no matter if it's the restaurant we're picking, the work that we're doing, and we really care about it, like deeply care about it, then we, we hold ourselves naturally. We're not thinking about a high standard. We just naturally hold ourselves to a, a higher standard of, you know, the people scrolling Instagram, looking at photos of food before they pick a restaurant rather than just looking at the reviews, right? Like there's a higher threshold for, because they care about food and they care about that thing. So I find it interesting and then the, I guess the follow on to that would be. It's also an unintentional signal you're sending at work.

• 6:59Shane Parrish?

  If your your standards are not above average, let's say, then you're signaling to people sort of unconsciously that this is a job for you and not a career. And therefore, I would expect, and I don't know if this is true or not, you get treated more transactionally at work. Because if you're going to take it as a job, and I care a lot and I'm fully invested and I'm all in, and this is a job to you, and you're sending this unconscious signal to me that this is a job to you, well, then I'm going to treat it as a job to you. But if you're in the boat, you're rowing with me and you're all in, then I'm going to treat you differently and you're going to get different opportunities than if it's a job to you.

• 7:37Speaker 00

  Yeah, absolutely. I think that that's 100% true, and I think it should be true, right? I mean, if you are looking for a partner to build with, you're going to look for different traits and qualities than somebody who just kind of like clocks in and clocks out. And there's nothing wrong with people who clock in and clock out if they're able to like perform their task and do what they need to do, but they are only going to reach a certain level with that type of mentality. And that's okay, as long as they're okay being at that level.

• 8:04Shane Parrish?

  So one of the byproducts of this that I want to get into, and you have a great sort of analogy for this, in terms of the driver, not the car, is when you care deeply, you can also become attached to things and take things personally. So how do we get out of that?

• 8:20Speaker 02

  At Edward Jones, we believe rich means opening yourself to new possibilities. That's why your dedicated financial advisor meets you where you are, helping you move forward with confidence. Let's find your rich. Edward Jones, member SIPC.

• 8:35Speaker 03

  Bonjour, compadre. It's the

• 8:38Speaker 04

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• 8:39Speaker 03

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• 9:06Speaker 00

  I think that it's very useful to see business or things that you care deeply about are the things that you do, not who you are. And I think it actually gives you an increased level of competence when you're able to do that because you're able to, when you're emotionally too attached to things, it skews your decision making. It skews how you invest in it. And I, and your investments you make with it, right? Like you're, you're more tender in some ways with things that are precious to you. And not that you don't want it to be precious, but if it's too close to you, it's going to change how you operate and it's not going to give you the greatest objectivity that you're going to need to make the best decisions.

• 9:50Speaker 00

  So I see it as, you know, that detachment is actually very essential to making optimum decisions around that element. Otherwise, you know, you start, you do start getting too precious about, you know, the business and people, how people talk about the business. If there's like, maybe there's genuine criticisms of your business that are pretty valid and it can shield you from seeing some of those things. You could be taking it personally and when it's really about an operational issue with the company that you run, you could be missing problems because you refuse to see it, things in a certain way. So there are, I think that there are secondary impacts that people don't see when they make themselves the business that cripple the business itself and put it at risk.

• 10:36Shane Parrish?

  Talk to me a little bit about those blind spots. Like, how do we learn to see our blind spots? How do we learn to see reality better, given the backdrop of sort of like being obsessed with what you're doing and all in and then the tendency to associate yourself with the business or instead of you as a person?

• 10:55Speaker 00

  Yeah, I think that you have to go outside of yourself sometimes and be open. So sometimes I'll do things like three sixties for people where, you know, they'll trust me to speak with eight to 10 of their employees. Usually I'll, I'll do mostly direct reports, some skip levels, some people who have never worked with them at all so that I, I hear what people kind of whisper network is and what their reputation is, sometimes board members. So I want to know people who are above them, below them, various people in their ecosystem. And I guarantee them anonymity, right? Like, no one's going to get this feedback. I'm going to ask you a bunch of questions about this person, how they communicate, how they lead, where their areas are. And the amount of information you get with anonymity is it's amazing, right? Like, I mean, the reports are like thirteen pages long.

• 11:40Speaker 00

  It's incredible because, you know, for the first time, they feel like they're free to give absolutely. And, you know, and I ask the person to make sure you set the stage where you want honest feedback and all that stuff.

• 11:55Speaker 00

  But, you know, for the first time, they're really able to say, well, this is where I see that like we could be so much better. Or this is where I see that like, oh, we're really missing the boat because, you know, we change course too often. Like, you know, the CEO really has shiny object syndrome. Like, you know, people talk about crypto, they're doing something crypto, they talk about AI, they're doing something there. Like, we gotta focus, right? Like, so there are, there's some brilliant feedback that comes from people around you. And then to have to sit with someone and say, hey, this is what other people have seen, right? Like, the good, the bad, the ugly. And, you know, sometimes people initially will dismiss things out of hand. And it comes back around that, you know, sometimes this is not always the thing that they should have been dismissing.

• 12:36Speaker 00

  But I love when people give some pushback around that because, you know, if you have someone who comes to you and say, you know, I'm gonna talk about everything but product. We could talk about everything but product. That's to me is a signal like, we need to talk about product, right? Like, that's the the flag. So a lot of times when I get these out of hand dismissals, like, oh, we don't talk about that, that's that's not important. I'm like, oh, that's interesting, right? Like, that's very important, and so we'll circle back around. But you do with blind spots, oftentimes you have to get outside of your own, your own vision. And consider it, if you're a leader, you don't have 2020 vision on your own performance. But other people likely can add to your framework to get you there. You just have to be able to be open, ask questions, receive feedback.

• 13:19Speaker 00

  And when you're giving other people feedback on their performance, on, you know, performance review, perhaps there are ways in which you should be having others reviewing your performance as well. People say that and they do it, and sometimes they do it in very limited ways. Like, you know, answer this, like, you know, one through five, am I effective communicator? Well, you don't really get any information there. Like, you know, so like, these are things that. You have to make sure that you want real feedback around and create systems where you're getting real feedback around it so that you can genuinely improve and increase your scope of vision.

• 13:52Shane Parrish?

  And then you take this information and then you have tough, I would imagine somewhat tough conversations with some of these people. And you talk about caring deeply and challenging directly. And what does that mean? And how does it relate to hard conversations?

• 14:09Speaker 00

  Yeah, in the basis of Radical Candor, a book that's often taken pretty out of context because they're like, you know, I'm being candid, I'm being radically candid. But that you really do have to, the basis of it is you have to care deeply to be able to challenge directly. And that somebody has to know that you care deeply about who they are in their role, that you care about their performance, that this is coming from a place that's meant to make them better. Right? And if it's not coming from that place, and it's coming from a place of punishing or shaming, or, you know, humiliating or dominating, it's not a really effective thing to do. It's a counterproductive thing to do that will work against you. But people can take hard feedback from people that they know are in their corner.

• 14:52Speaker 00

  And so, you know, it's kind of like, and it's this really silly analogy, but I'll use it anyway. But it's like, if you went to go try on jeans, you don't want the friend who tells you you look great in every pair of jeans. You want the person who's like, wow, you definitely should not buy those. Right? Like, and you trust them and you don't get angry at them because you know that they're actually looking out for the fact that you should look, they want you to look good. And the same is true for feedback in executives or anyone else. Like, I'm going to give you some really hard feedback and it's going to hurt. One of the questions that I always ask CEOs and others, like, hey, you know, what's a question that you'd want me to ask? And one guy said, and I thought it was a really nice question, he goes, I want them to say, what does he think he's great at that he's not?

• 15:36Speaker 00

  I want them to tell me, like, what I really think I'm good at, but I'm not. You got some really hard feedback on that. And I think that it can hurt, you know, you go out there, you're very confident and you're very excited, especially on things you think you're good at. And then people tell you, like, this is a, you're really not that good at this. It stings, and I think you have to be able to sit with people and understand that like, no matter what levels people reach, they're people. And like, some of these things are gonna hurt. And so being able to present things in ways that are hard, but getting through sometimes some of the the other characteristics that prevent feedback like this. Um, you gotta push a little bit. And sometimes the conversations are pretty, they can be somewhat contentious, right?

• 16:20Speaker 00

  Like, I can say, hey, this is just what I found. And you get a lot of like, pushback or defensiveness. And that's okay. You know, I can take that. It's, it's not a big deal. But I think that also you have to have a great relationship for someone to feel comfortable being able to be kind of not their best self with you, right? To be able to give you some hard responses, to be able to be a little brusque with you. Um, and I can take that. And it, to me, that's a signal of trust, right? You can talk to me a certain way if you want to, but we're still gonna have this conversation. It's not gonna impact our relationship, and we're gonna continue moving forward. Um, but obviously, it's still in a respectful framework. It's just sometimes people respond in ways that aren't optimal, and there's no facade I'm expecting from them.

• 17:02Shane Parrish?

  I wonder if your feedback is more receptive. Going back to what we said earlier about working a job versus being all in. You're all in with the people you're working with. And so giving feedback is a very different place from somebody who's all in versus somebody who's working a job. So that would create a little bit of contention at work, too. Where, you know, if I perceive you as working a job and you're giving me feedback, uh, then I'm gonna take that very differently than your friend who's telling you, hey, I got your best interests at heart here. Those genes don't work for you. Uh, and it's interesting how we receive that information.

• 17:39Speaker 00

  I think also, you know, they're hiring me to give them feedback that they're not getting elsewhere.

• 17:43Shane Parrish?

  Right.

• 17:43Speaker 00

  And they're hiring me because they want to be operating at their best. And deep down, they know this is a problem that needs to be solved. So if you want to get to, a lot of times, people will bring me aboard because, you know, if you have an issue with, you know, engineering not functioning optimally, you bring in an engineer. And I guess, you know, I my background is in psychology and I'm the person they're going to bring in to figure out them so that they're able to move to the next level. And whatever that means, I think that at the end of the day, they're ambitious enough, they're engaged enough that they want that to work. And so, you know, they're bringing in someone who can get them to that place. And I think they understand that. And I try to set the table, you know, before meeting, I always say, look, this is going to be tough and some of our moments are going to be challenging, but everything I do is

• 18:28Speaker 00

  because I want you to win. I want you to be better. I want you to get to where you want to go. I have them set goals prior to our engagement. Like, what are the two or three things you want to see out of us working together? And so, everything I'm doing is really around those goals because I measure myself to those. You know, like, I don't like to lose. So, I want to see these things move and I'm invested in them not in them not remaining the same. So, I mean, there's a, we are both tied in to making sure these goals happen and I'm incredibly invested. Every person walking around I see is my calling card, so, and my piece of work in some ways. So, I don't, I want to have a great product out there, too.

• 19:08Shane Parrish?

  Do you rehearse these conversations in your head before you have them? What's your process like leading into a conversation that you know is going to be contentious or difficult? Not only for you, but ensuring that you get the right messages across?

• 19:20Speaker 00

  So, that's a really good question. I do always think with intention about how I'm going to present certain information because I know the capacity it has to either, like, I don't want to, I don't want to kick someone around where they're going to be harmed by it. I don't want to impact them in any negative way if I can help it. I want them to see it as an opportunity or a challenge. And so, how I position things is always very intentional and the language I use is always very intentional. So, I don't want, you'll, I guess, I was going to say you'll notice in my notes, but you don't receive my notes. So, if you were to ever read my notes, I always take notes during the meetings so people can fully engage.

• 20:01Speaker 00

  But if you were to ever read the notes that I send to clients, you know, after we meet, I always send them notes afterward for them to review because there are always things that they're working on. And how I position things and language are always going to be from a place of strength. They're never going to be like, you know, The words that I choose are going to be very deliberate. And the reason why is because I think that like if you're if peppered throughout your feedback is, you know, weak, falling down, ineffective, this, that, and the other. You're kind of setting them in a framework that is not only feels very disempowering,

• 20:44Speaker 00

  but also for a lot of these folks is not going to feel engaging. So I try to frame things always as, you know, opportunities, challenges, ways in which people can, you know, level up or improve in some fashion. The next kind of level of operation, rather than, you know, you're operating below par. There is a next level of operation, right? So there's there's different ways that I think about framing it. But I don't want to, my job is always to have them seeing things as, look, this is the a way of skipping levels, getting better, being better. And it's going to be hard to get there. But hard is something that most of these folks take on willingly.

• 21:28Speaker 00

  And even if they don't like it at first, they'll they'll consider it and they'll come back to it and we'll work together. And I've seen that more often than, you know, you can imagine that people will take, there's some really hard feedback and they're not going to like it. And then the next time we meet, they're like, you know, I really reviewed our notes and I thought about it. And like, I'm in, let's do this, like, let's let's make this happen, let's master this, right? Like, let's engage with this. And I think that that is an incredibly good position, rather than talking to someone in a way that is just kind of a, puts them in a weak position. I'm not going to do that to people, even when it is incredibly hard feedback. It's the difference between victim and survivor, right? Like, you want people who are always in survivor mindset, not in victim mindset.

• 22:13Speaker 00

  And even I think about that all the time.

• 22:16Shane Parrish?

  Aside from being intentional and maybe about the words you're using and the place you're coming from, right? The place of pulling people forward and being better. What are the other tips that you could give people for preparing for hard conversations in advance? To put themselves in a position to have the most effective conversation possible?

• 22:38Speaker 00

  Sure. I think that one of the best frameworks people can use, and I think people don't have hard conversations because they see them as being a conflict. Right? It's going to be me versus you, and it's going to be a conflict. So what I try to do is to say, rather than, let's just say Ted is, the marketing department is missing its numbers. I don't want to say when Ted comes in, "Ted, you're missing your numbers," right? Like, what's going on? I want us to, instead of being me versus you, I want to pull him to my side and be like, "Hey, this is us versus a problem. You can do this at home, you could do it at work, you could do it anywhere." And to be able to say, "Hey Ted, I noticed that, you know, our numbers are, we're kind

• 23:23Speaker 00

  of missing here in the marketing department. Can we, like, let's do some problem solving around how we can really pull these up." So it's a "we," you know, you're intentionally pulling someone to your side, you're forming a collaboration against the problem. So rather than me and then you are the problem, it is, I'm pulling you to my side of the table, and it's us together versus this problem that we're going to talk about. And it is, it's incredibly effective because it reduces defensiveness, it creates openness, it makes you more approachable, and you can have really hard conversations in that way. And I can do that with people in leadership positions as well. It's how I help them to

• 24:04Speaker 00

  have conversations earlier, because a lot of times we avoid that stuff because we anticipate conflict. And while there still may be some challenges in those conversations within us versus the problem, versus me versus you, you're going to really take the, kind of, temperature down quite a bit by approaching it that way.

• 24:23Shane Parrish?

  I like the idea of collaboration against the problem. I think that's very powerful. Then it doesn't become about you or your behaviors, it becomes about what can we do together to solve this problem? We all, we all have off days, right? Like where we're bad, you know, like, things aren't going right, we're angry, we're upset, we have negative emotions. How do we learn to overcome those negative emotions so that we can be productive in the day? You're driving in traffic, right? You mentioned earlier, you get to work, you're really upset, you're late, not your fault, you're still upset because you're 30 minutes late, you're behind, you've missed, and then you have to sort of like have the ability to reset. And go in, how do we learn how to do that?

• 25:07Speaker 00

  I think that there's a few things. One is that, you know, you have to make a decision whether like, was this a bad 10 minutes? Or was it a bad hour? Or is it going to be a bad day? Right? Like, I think that having a bad, we all have bad moments, bad minutes, bad hours, but we don't have to have bad days. And it's how do we, you know, you make a decision at some point that things are going to bleed into the rest of your day. And I think you have to make, again, it's with intentionality, you have to make a decision of like, alright, I'm really ticked off about X and, you know, I'm here to do X, Y. You kind of, you reset in a very intentional way.

• 25:46Shane Parrish?

  Right.

• 25:47Speaker 00

  And I think that for me, it's about how am I thinking about coming into this day, this meeting? I try to help people think about their intention going into things. How do I want people to feel? Do I want them to feel my frustration? Or do I want them to feel like, you know, they're engaged in a company moving forward? Do I want them to be influenced by my bad, you know, fight with somebody or car problems? Or do I want to make sure that they feel like excited and motivated to take on the things ahead?

• 26:18Speaker 02

  At Edward Jones, we believe rich isn't about having life all figured out. It's opening yourself to all the possibilities. That's why your dedicated financial advisor provides long-term planning built around you, meeting you where you are, and helping you get closer to where you want to be. So no matter where you're starting from, you can move forward with confidence. The key to being rich is knowing what counts. Let's find your rich. Edward Jones. Member SIPC.

• 27:06Speaker 03

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• 27:18Speaker 00

  So you have to be intentional about how you want other people to feel and kind of what the outcomes are that you want. And be really honest about whether you're creating those or you're really blocking them. Because oftentimes, if you're bringing your bad mood to the table, you're blocking the very outcomes that you want. So if you're able to tell yourself, like, how do I want to make people feel when I come in here? Well, if I want them to feel frustrated, afraid to approach me, and all of these other things, I'm probably just going to be the bad mood that I'm walking in here with. But at some point, as a leader, and this is a, I think it's kind of controversial to say, but like, you step into a role. Right? They call it a role for a reason. You, you are stepping into a part you are expected to play to be effective in this organization.

• 28:02Speaker 00

  And if you can't do that, you're not being very good at what you do. Right? You're, you're kind of drawing away from the effectiveness that you could have. And sometimes stepping into that role means that you leave a lot of other things on the side. It means that you don't bring your full self to work. Nobody cares, nobody wants that. And like, you bring your best work self to work and you lead from the front and you do what you have to do. So I think about it like that, too. Like, your expectation for yourself needs to be that you step into the role and you do what you need to do to be, have the best results you're going to get.

• 28:36Shane Parrish?

  I want to switch gears a little bit. I think we're both big believers in curating your circle, the people you hang around with. I get questions all the time about how to end. I'm going to say toxic, but sort of like friendships that no longer work for you anymore, or relationships that aren't productive or serving you and that are pulling you, pulling you down. How do we go about ending those relationships?

• 29:01Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, that's tough. It's like friendship breakup of sorts, right?

• 29:04Shane Parrish?

  Yeah.

• 29:05Speaker 00

  I think that you end up, most people, if they end up phasing these people out of their lives by just not engaging, and eventually people stop asking, you know, like, they get the hint.

• 29:16Shane Parrish?

  Ghosting.

• 29:17Speaker 00

  Or there comes that moment, right? I mean, like, or they respond and they go, oh, you know, I'm too busy, or I'm doing X, or I'm doing Y. And so I'm a, I guess that I'm a fan of being somewhat upfront, like, you know, I'm really busy focusing on X right now, and so I'm really not going to have the time to be doing, you know, X, Y, and Z. Or I'm at a place right now where I'm really busy with my business, and so I'm really not able to, you know, kind of go out on Fridays. You might want to like unsubscribe me from that chain because I'm never going to be able to go out on Friday nights. I'm just, I know I sound boring. I'm just gonna need to lock in here and do what I need to do. And eventually, those people will kind of go on their merry way. But it's being direct with them about, you know, what you're able

• 30:01Speaker 00

  to do, what you're not. You know, if someone's calling you or texting you all the time, being like, hey, I'm sorry, I'm not responding to all your texts, but I really don't have the bandwidth, if I'm being honest, to be able to respond all the time. And so I'll get back to, like, being able to be candid about some of those things is really important. And usually, people are pretty okay taking that hint. And they, you know, fade away a bit, and then eventually, this thing kind of falls off. If you want to have a more direct break, because people are actively toxic, that's another thing, and obviously requires like kind of a conversation. But, you know, most people avoid those kinds of hard conversations when they can, sadly.

• 30:39Shane Parrish?

  I, I think it's sort of easy to see the extremes, right? When somebody is in your life and, you know, it shouldn't be there. But what are the sort of like the red flags to look for as a lead up before it gets to that point that you see in relationships, be it with friends, or, or family, or even, you know, a partner or spouse?

• 31:03Speaker 00

  I think people who violate the boundaries that you set are a big one, right? Like, hey, I really need to work on this project tonight. And you tell that to your friends, or you tell that to others, and they're like, hey, do you want to go out? Do you want to do this? Oh, can you wait? Can the project be pushed back? Can they do this or that? You know, that to me is a flag. People who don't respect what you set up to begin with. People who are not actively, who are not supportive are sometimes a flag. You know, it's one thing to ask smart questions. It's another thing to kind of reduce you in any way. But I think one of the biggest ways that I think about it is how do you feel after your interactions with them? Do you feel energized? Do you feel engaged? Do you feel motivated? Or do you feel beaten down? Do you feel uncertain?

• 31:48Speaker 00

  Do you feel insecure? Do you feel like any of those negative things? So I think your energy is probably the best flag, and it isn't always about something specific. So if you leave those interactions and you find yourself not feeling great, to me, that's always the first flag. And then do you notice there's a pattern that like every time you talk to this person, you have that same sap of energy? And it's like a vampire of sorts? And you don't feel energized and positive and optimistic and whatever? I mean, everyone goes through hard times. So maybe your friend's going through a divorce and you want to be there for them. But if it's a persistent pattern where you're walking away feeling negative or kind of not engaged or not energized,

• 32:33Speaker 00

  and they're kind of taking from you, I think that's a really big sign.

• 32:38Shane Parrish?

  One of the things that we talked about earlier that I said we'd come back to is fighting up front. What does it mean to fight up front? And how do we do it?

• 32:47Speaker 00

  So when I first was in grad school, my area of specialization was adult psychopathology and forensics. So I worked a long time in forensics, whether it was a bit in forensics, I should say, whether it was in maximum security setting or evaluating people for mental state at the time of the offense to set up the insanity defense or mental state at the time of the crime, setting up for the insanity defense. So one of the things in forensics that they tell you, just a good rule of thumb, is that, hey, if you're ever walking along and somebody tries to kidnap you, pull you into a van or a truck or a car or whatever, your best chance is if you fight up front. Like, this is the chance you have.

• 33:31Speaker 00

  Because once you go into that vehicle, wherever you are taken, wherever that secondary location is, you don't know what's going to happen, and it will be worse. It will be worse. You can't predict it. You don't know it. It's a bad thing. So you want to do everything you can to not get in that vehicle. And if it ends your life, if it has a tragic outcome, so be it. But it is going to be more pleasant and better for you than ever getting in that car. And I really thought about that a lot because having the conversations early, having the collaborations rather than conflict early, addressing problems early in your business, in your life, in your relationships, whatever,

• 34:15Speaker 00

  saves you so much on the backend that you can never predict. If you're able to address an issue with an employee that like, all of a sudden you have this gut feel, man, this guy's not going to work out. This woman's not going to work out. And a lot of times, okay, I'm going to monitor them, right? You want to give them benefit of the doubt. So you monitor, things aren't going well. You put it off, now they're on a PIP or some kind of plan. Put it off. And before you know it, you have this person on your team, and it could be a very high level employee, like maybe it's a CMO or somebody who's like really could influence your bottom line. And now you have six months. Your metrics suck, your brand is doing worse, your profits are down, and it's because you didn't, you couldn't have that hard conversation earlier

• 35:00Speaker 00

  that would have saved you all of these detrimental places that this person has taken you. And in relationships, it's often, honestly, it's probably worse, right? Like, you're dating someone, you kind of have a red flag, but you're like, oh, I don't want to be too judgmental. And you let it go, and now we're six months down the road, and it's terrible, and you're trying to find a way out desperately. And it's going to be a real challenge as your lives are further mingled together. So, you know, the notion of fighting upfront is if you do it right, it shouldn't be a fight, right? It should be something that you address early, as quickly as possible, in a way that can help to resolve whatever it is that you see as the threat.

• 35:44Speaker 00

  And so you just, you know, intervene early. It's just kind of the basic, I guess, point of that because it's true. Like, once you kind of agree to go on that ride, that secondary location is unknown, and it will be worse.

• 35:58Shane Parrish?

  The longer we wait, the bigger the price tag to sort of like fight.

• 36:01Speaker 00

  Absolutely, absolutely. So you don't want to go there and it's a it's a place you want to avoid at all costs.

• 36:08Shane Parrish?

  Let's talk about the notion of cognitive ruts. People sort of get ingrained into thinking and responding and seeing the world a certain way. It's often shaped and reinforced by years of patterns and this can hold them back. How do we recognize that we're thinking this way and we're in a rut and overcome that?

• 36:25Speaker 00

  Sure. I think that people will start bumping up against themselves because they are the greatest. Like if you are the greatest driver of where you end up, you're the greatest kind of engine to your business, in your world and in your relationships. Then you also are also you are also the greatest limiter, right? So if you start, whether it's with these imaginary rules or with how you think about things or how you think about yourself. You know, people get into, you know, years and years of thinking about things in the same way. They'll think about, you know, what they're capable of, what they can do, whether they're able to have these hard conversations.

• 37:09Speaker 00

  They'll just over and over and over again, they tell themselves the same message. And so I think about it almost like a rut because they can't see any other way. Like they literally can't see any other way of operating. And so they're just they're in this tunnel, they're in this rut and they're just going to think about things the same way. And at a high level, people do this too, right? Like at a very high level of operation. People don't see any other way of operating, but how the style that they use today. And so, you know, the goal really is if you feel yourself bumping against yourself and you say, hey, like, I don't understand like why X person is doing something and I'm not, or why they're taking risks and I'm not, or why this is happening and I'm not. Look at how you think because you're probably in a tunnel somewhere.

• 37:53Speaker 00

  And so what you want to start to do is to expand yourself into places where. You're going to get some movement there, right? Like, you don't get out of the tunnel right away. You kind of go up on the wall a little bit, then you go back into it. You get up on the wall and you see a little hope, maybe, sometimes outside of it. And then you get back into it. And then eventually, you're going to kind of pop out of that. But the way in which people start kind of getting on the wall, at least get out of that rut a little bit, is start to think about how you operate. Because what I've noticed, and if you look for it, and, you know, people have built industries on this, right? Like, let's say you're a marketer, and, okay, you're a marketer on Twitter. And you're a marketer, you have marketing friends, you go to marketing conferences, you

• 38:36Speaker 00

  go to marketing forums, you read marketing books, and you wonder why you're not an exceptional marketer. And it's because, like, you're in a rut. You know, you're, all you see is this certain content in the certain tunnel. And what you'll notice is that people who are exceptional are pulling in, like, you know, Steve Jobs used fonts from a calligraphy course, right? That he took. That, like, people who are great will find ways of pulling in exceptional things from outside of their fields, outside of their way of thinking, outside of tradition, outside of, you know, what is common. And some ways, we have to do that for ourselves, right? But we also have to do that for our professions, our businesses, how we think about our life,

• 39:21Speaker 00

  and begin to look at non-traditional ways of doing it. And sometimes those non-traditional ways end up blowing up. Uh, like, for example, the FIRE movement, right? Like, the financial, financial independent retire early group, you know, had a different way of looking at finances. But, you know, some people like them, some people don't. But I think that what's so cool about it is, it's a different way of looking about retirement. How cool is that? And then you have people who think about, uh, you know, other elements of pulling in art into what they do. And we see things with, like, you know, Web 3, and we see things with, you know, some other areas where they pull in, even with crypto, pulls in some elements of traditional finance to make its, itself bigger and more, uh, powerful.

• 40:02Speaker 00

  So it's these collaborations that, and using things in unique ways, that make us really exceptional and can really push us past our boundaries. Whether that's us as a person and thinking about new things. You know, Tim Ferriss and his four-hour work week made people think a lot differently about work and how they allocate time and outsourcing. So we can all find different ways and different, you know, hacking ways to be able to think. We're all great hackers if we are forced into it. That's one thing that was really great about having some insight into prisons is how great people can be when they, I mean, it's kind of a bad situation, right? But like, it forces creativity. It absolutely forces creativity.

• 40:46Speaker 00

  So if you want something, you figure out a way. And, you know, in our comfortable lives, there's nothing that forces us to figure it out. So we're really comfortable and we have some mastery in like, you know, marketing. And we feel very competent and very capable and we go to all those conferences. But really great marketers are stealing from artists. They're stealing from like affiliate marketers. They're stealing from all of these other places and they're pulling things in and making them exceptional. And so these cognitive ruts we get in, sometimes we have to really think like, are we reinforcing our own rut? And how can we begin to expand outside of it?

• 41:27Speaker 00

  And, you know, what I try to do personally is that I try to make sure that like everything I'm reading isn't just about like performance or psychology. You know, I'll read like autobiographies and biographies about people and how they thought about things. But also, I definitely follow and read artists. And I definitely follow and read people who are in other fields and philosophy and other things because I need, I need to see and be challenged all the time in what I'm pulling in so that I can think of something new and novel or put things together in new and novel ways so that I can be great at what I do. And I hope that people are always challenging themselves because it seems like, you know,

• 42:08Speaker 00

  not to criticize LinkedIn, but the content of it can be really rote and boring. And You can see how these ruts happen, right? When we criticize these big corporations, sometimes we can see how it happens because you look at the, maybe conferences are upcoming or things that are happening and you look at the list and you're like, oh my God, this could have happened like five years ago and been exactly the same. What's challenging things? What's pushing people out of that rut? What is kind of challenging them personally, professionally? And how can they think about this more effectively?

• 42:43Shane Parrish?

  I want to ask, in all of your work, what have you learned from people that you've applied in your life that's made a difference to the quality of your life?

• 42:52Speaker 00

  Of the clients, I think that they challenge me always to think bigger than I do. I think that there's always a different level that I'm unaware exists. And so it, it opens, I mean, it certainly opens my range and how I think about things when every single day, you know, I don't have, I have two or three clients I'll meet with every day and then I'll have like corporations and do some corporate contracts. But, you know, when you work with people who are operating at a certain level, you know, some of my clients are working, you know, a couple hundred thousand dollars, you know, they're making, some are running billion dollar companies and some have built, you know, companies that are worth quite a bit. And you see kind of like, you know, how they live their lives and how they think about

• 43:36Speaker 00

  their work and how they think about their business and how they think about risk. And it certainly makes me think like, you know, I need to continue to expand and challenge myself so that I'm, you know, bigger, able to reach more, able to do more and continuing to, you know, expand and grow and challenge myself. It's exciting. I'd love to hear kind of how they think about some of these elements while I'm helping them on other, specific other elements. Because it's a, you know, I think our exposure is important.

• 44:11Shane Parrish?

  One of the common themes that has

• 44:16Shane Parrish?

  Come up over and over again through our conversation, but we've never actually hit on the right word is perspective, right? So when you talk about cognitive roots, it's you're gaining a different perspective from other sort of areas of wisdom that you can apply to a certain area. When you talk about being challenged or seeing a next level, you're shifting your perspective from what you see. It's really hard to understand a system that you're a part of when all you see is that system. And so it's really interesting. Blind spots again, right? How do we get rid of blind spots? We change our perspective, we change our lens into the situation. Now all of a sudden, we can see things that we couldn't see before. I think that's a really interesting sort of way to wind that up. And we always sort of end, or I try to end each episode by asking the same question,

• 45:00Shane Parrish?

  which is, and I'm super curious for you, which is what is success for you?

• 45:05Speaker 00

  I think success for me, it's a really interesting question. Give me a moment here because I think that my tendency is always to answer very quickly because that's how I like my brain is thinking. So I think my mouth should be running sometimes. But I think that for me, success is having enough to never think about, to never think about needing it, right? Like, and to be able to, like monetarily anyway, and to be able to have the optionality that I wish for across various areas of life. And, you know, the

• 45:49Speaker 00

  thing for me is that money provides some optionality. But success means that you have optionality in a range of things, time, you have optionality in your future and what you choose, where you live, where you, how you help others, the kinds of help you can offer to others, the scale at which you can offer help to others. And so I guess I would look at it as being assured that I, there is nothing that I would need to have the kind of optionality that I would want. And that would, I guess, be my measure of success. It's a good question.

• 46:34Shane Parrish?

  Thank you very much, and thank you so much for a wonderful conversation today.

• 46:39Speaker 00

  Thank you so much for having me. You know, we've circled around each other quite a few times, and you're a really thoughtful, wonderful man, so thank you for engaging with me today.

• 46:49Shane Parrish?

  Oh, thank you.

• 46:57Shane Parrish?

  Thanks for listening and learning with us. For a complete list of episodes, show notes, transcripts, and more, go to fs.blog/podcast, or just Google The Knowledge Project. Until next time.