The Long and The Short Of It

Episode 229 - Lowering the Bar

Transcript:

Pete: G'day, Jen.

Jen: G'day, mate.

Pete: I don't think I've ever started an episode with a "g'day". This feels new and different and fun.

Jen: Yes, I love it.

Pete: So you and I spend a lot of time on this podcast, but also like in our own separate worlds and also offline talking to each other, talking about raising the bar in our life in the way we work, in helping our clients hopefully raise the bar for the way they live their life and do their work. And in the last twenty-four hours, I've found myself noodling on whether there are times where actually what I need to do, me personally, is lower the bar. And I feel like you can help me untangle this web.

Jen: I'm very interested in hearing more about these noodles. This is The Long and The Short Of It.

Pete: So I guess, context...I did say last twenty-four hours. So a few things have happened in the last twenty-four hours. One is, I was in this great workshop yesterday with a bunch of other really, really amazing coaches here in Australia. And I was having this lovely conversation with one of the coaches, Jess. And she was kind of saying, like, "What are some of the struggles you're having?" We were kind of just whiteboarding and sharing, "Oh, isn't it funny when this happens? And isn't it funny when you have this challenge with a client, and you really want to...?" And I was sharing with her, one of the things I've started observing in myself, and I think this has been true for a while, being in a position of trying to help other people, right, like as a coach and as a speaker and a facilitator, I'm trying to help leaders and help other people, like we've talked about before and I mentioned in the intro, raise the bar in the way they work. And I sometimes catch myself putting too much expectation on the output or the outcome or what's going to happen within any given workshop, keynote, off-site, or one-on-one coaching session. And that actually, what sometimes happens (and I can get very specific on examples) is that if I lowered my bar for what success looks like, I would find that I achieve that version of success a lot easier, and that I wouldn't be beating myself up for not necessarily getting this like almighty achievement within one particular session. Does that make sense?

Jen: It does. So, I have...I have questions.

Pete: Please. Pepper me.

Jen: I know that one of your favorite things to do in a private coaching is (and I do this too) to ask the client, "If this hour is a success, what does that look like?" Is that something you do in your workshops as well? Curious to know if you co-name what the bar actually is.

Pete: Oh, that's a fascinating point. The answer is yes. Prior to the session even happening, I usually have a, you know, a conversation with the CEO or the person that's organizing the workshop or the keynote or whatever. And I'll ask them, "What does success look like for you in the session?" And they'll give me that definition. And that becomes really helpful and useful for me to measure whether or not I've done my job, essentially. Interestingly, though, where this comes up is, I guess now that you've said that, it comes up more so in the one-on-one coaching, perhaps because I haven't asked that question at the very start or prior to the session. And so where it often comes up is, I'll ask at the end of a coaching session, "What was most helpful for you today?" And the responses are always very different, but often they're like surprising to me. Like, often it might be, "You know what? It was really helpful to say this particular thing out loud." I was like, "Huh. Alright, well, I'm glad we got to the point where you were comfortable saying that out loud."

Jen: Yeah.

Pete: And then, you and I have joked and talked about like, is part of being a coach something where like I have some version of a savior complex or a desire to really help people, and get too hung up on like what that help looks like? And like, I've been talking about having this expectation of, "It's going to be this unbelievable game-changing conversation where they drop the mic, I drop the mic, there's mics drops everywhere, and like people's brains are exploding," and, you know, a bit like, honestly, like the first conversation we had, which kind of ended up being one of those moments, which was like, "Well, this changes everything." And so, I guess this is a very thrashy long-winded way of me saying, what happens when that becomes the definition of success, and actually, what's required is a lower definition of success?

Jen: I am having so many sparky thoughts. I'm going to try to share them. I'm going to do my best to try to share them all. So, the first is that I'm wondering if, "Lower the bar," is maybe not exactly what we're talking about but, "Adjust the bar," or, "Adjust your expectations based on the reality check of the moment that is actually existing." So like, in the case of your workshops, you and the event organizer co-name what success looks like. But let's say...actually, this literally happened to me, Pete. Oh my gosh, I've never told this story publicly ever.

Pete: Yes.

Jen: I went to do a two-day workshop, flew across the country to do a two-day workshop for an enormous tech company. And I got into the room...I had done multiple pre-engagement calls so I knew exactly what success looked like...I got into the room and the event organizer pulled me aside to tell me that they had all just received word that 40% of the people in the room are going to be laid off.

Pete: Oh my god.

Jen: And then, I had to do the workshop. So, that is such a stark example. But it just shows you that the reality check of the moment is what success was supposed to look like, and what it can look like, and what it wants to look like are different.

Pete: Oh, I like that. Okay, maybe you're articulating far better what I was trying to get at for the first five minutes of this podcast, and maybe this is the aha moment I needed to have. But it's like, yeah, the definition of success is relevant to any given moment, or any given client, or any given off-site or workshop or situation. And that actually, the other thing you made me think of was, you know, this idea of lowering the bar and raising the bar. I think you might be right, maybe that's the wrong verbiage. Maybe what is a high bar for me is a low bar for someone else, or what is a low bar for me is a high bar for someone else, and that everyone's version of what they need based on the moment, what success looks like is unique to them. And so, if someone says, "Oh, I just really need to say that out loud," for me, I might be like, "It feels like quite a low bar, just saying something out loud." But actually, for them, they're like, "Do you know how hard it was for me to say that? Like, that was actually a really high bar." So I guess if we're talking about the bar, maybe it's the reality that everyone's bar is different. But maybe, more specifically, it's about recognizing that success is almost moment by moment or situation by situation.

Jen: This is bringing me right back in...I have entered the perception paradox.

Pete: Yes.

Jen: Because this feels so similar to what we were talking about on the Perception Paradox episode where what I perceive as a low bar, someone else might perceive as a particularly high bar.

Pete: Yeah.

Jen: Mmm. And it requires a posture of empathy, curiosity, and sonder to understand what someone else might take as a win or a success.

Pete: Yeah. And I think what's funny (actually, this was part of the conversation I was having with Jess) is the thing that we might think, as the coach, at the end of the session when you ask that question of like, "So what was most helpful," sometimes I'm like, "I know what you're going to say. I know what was helpful," and it's never that thing. It's always something else.

Jen: Yeah. It's never that.

Pete: Yeah. Because of the reality of this perception paradox. Yeah, yeah yeah. That's so interesting.

Jen: Okay, here's the other thing that came to mind as soon as you were sharing this. At my studio, I offer a bunch of different classes. And almost all of them have, just baked into the name of the class, what the outcome is supposed to be. But I have one class called Studio Workshop, you have no idea what you're supposed to get out of Studio Workshop. It's just a creative playground where people explore the boundaries of their potential. So I didn't used to do this pre-pandemic, but post-pandemic...or mid-to-late pandemic, let's hope, knock on wood. What I do now is, at the beginning of the session, I ask people why they're there, like, "What made you sign up for this class?" And now, I'm so glad I do that. Because the first time I did it, one person said something like, "I'm ready to raise the bar in my career. I'm ready to challenge myself, take the biggest risks of my life creatively." And then, literally, the next person was like, "I'm just here to get a win. I'm just here to feel good while singing. I don't want to be pushed. I don't want to raise the bar in my career. Like, I just want to feel good while I'm singing. That's it."

Pete: Oh, interesting. Yeah. Interesting. And then, maybe there's someone else who's like, "I'm just here to be surrounded by community." You know?

Jen: Yes. So everybody's version of success, inside the same room, is different.

Pete: Yeah. Yeah, you're right. This is like Perception Paradox 2.0.

Jen: Yeah.

Pete: Interesting. So, I guess the other example this all brings to mind for me is, I was recently running a workshop with a bunch of incredible senior leaders at one of Australia's largest companies. And we were having a conversation actually around like empathetic leadership, that was pretty much the crux of the...it was a ninety-minute session, I would say we spent eighty-five minutes talking about how to lead with empathy, how to enroll others in change based on being a leader and a person of influence. And it was, I thought, a really great session. In the last five minutes, someone asked a question around, "How do you go about doing this when it's a really awkward or uncomfortable or difficult conversation that you have to have? Like, is there tools, techniques, frameworks for how we navigate difficult conversations?" And I said something like, "That's a great question. Why don't we focus the next session on that exact topic? For now, I'll offer a couple of ideas," which actually, you and I, I think, have talked about in the podcast a few times, "One is Brene Brown's idea of, 'What does it look like to frame things as a rumble?' And actually, to have some verbiage for these awkward conversations can actually kind of disarm them in a way, and becomes a little more playful and fun." Or "sparring" was another word we talked about. Like, "Maybe there's a rumble. Maybe there's a spar. And does that allow for a little more playfulness?" And so, it was like, that was it. That was literally all that happened. Anyway, I've been having one-on-one sessions with each of the senior leaders that were in this workshop, and I want to say 80% of them have said, "Oh, that last session that we did on rumbling and sparring was so helpful." And I'm like, "Oh, isn't that fascinating? That the thing they took away, their version of success for them, the one thing that they're thinking about, was the thing we touched on for five minutes right at the end."

Jen: Right?

Pete: Whereas my reflection on that was, "It was a great session because of the first eighty-five minutes, and then like, oh, we've got an idea for what we're going to focus on next week." And so again, perception paradox. Again, different levels of bars of success, and just not knowing which way it might go.

Jen: Mmm. That is so interesting, and also gives me a little chuckle. You worked so hard in the first fifty-five minutes.

Pete: I know. It was so good, the first part.

Jen: The other thing it's making me think of, Pete, is how we can be very inflexible with ourselves as we're making progress. You know, we experience that raising of the bar, we're like, "Okay, I'm ready now to expand my potential, to try to jump over this next hurdle. Okay, I made it. That's now the bar that I'm at." And I had this experience today with a client of mine, who always brings in material that she's lived in for a while before she brings it into class. So, she usually comes in with a certain amount of experience under her belt. And this was the first time she had brought a brand new piece. She had never heard it played on a piano before. It was like the first time, and I could feel her really struggling. And in that moment, the issue was her bar was set at a previous level that was appropriate for a previous experience, but for the work we were doing today, she needed to give herself permission to put the bar down at a level she could actually stretch enough to leap over without knocking it off.

Pete: Yeah, yeah. I like that. Okay, so you're making me think of...and maybe there's a rhyme here with like perfectionism, and the ways that we measure what's perfect for ourselves or what's good enough.

Jen: Mmm-hmm.

Pete: There's this idea I've actually come into contact recently, thanks to Margaret Atwood, where (I may have mentioned on a previous episode) I was facilitating an incredible workshop, actually, that Margaret Atwood helped run and create with a company called Disco. And what we did for eight weeks was guide and shepherd a group of some of the smartest people in the world around climate and sustainability, and their task was essentially to come up with a practical utopia. So, the course was called Practical Utopias.

Jen: Mmm.

Pete: And one of the things we anticipated would happen...well, I guess Margaret anticipated that would happen and she communicated to us, the facilitators...was, people are going to get stuck on designing the perfect utopia.

Jen: Mmm-hmm.

Pete: Right? Like, setting the bar so high that it has to be perfect, and then never making any progress because of that impossible to achieve bar. And she said, "The goal is better, not perfect."

Jen: Mmm.

Pete: And I've been hanging on to that a lot, because I feel like it's a really useful way to frame making change, a useful way to frame running a workshop, or useful way to frame having a coaching session, a useful way to frame, honestly, almost anything. Which is, the goal is to create better, not perfect.

Jen: Right.

Pete: And I wonder in that, you know, that example you gave of your client. It's like, "Can we lower the bar to better, not perfect based on what you used to be able to do?"

Jen: Right. Can we just sidebar for a second about how brilliant the term "practical utopia" is? Because, to your point, when you say, "Utopia", the first thing that comes to your mind is, "Perfect, without flaw".

Pete: Right.

Jen: But the idea of a practical utopia means that the utopia is useful in some way, like it's doing something other than just sitting in perfection. It feels like it could be actually applicable to something.

Pete: Right, it's realistic. It's like the two words almost contradict each other...

Jen: Yeah, it's so brilliant.

Pete: ...which I think is part of the brilliance. And this is no surprise, right? It was Margaret Atwood.

Jen: I want to riff on that. (I'll do that offline, I won't make the listeners listen to me doing it.) But I want to riff on that idea, and how to put "practical" in front of other words that feel like they live under the perfectionism umbrella, because it could be just so helpful.

Pete: Right. Like, "practical perfectionism".

Jen: Right. Right.

Pete: What does that mean, "practical perfectionism"? Huh. Interesting.

Jen: It feels like it means like, "Absolutely good enough. Not just good enough, but like absolutely good enough."

Pete: Right. Yeah. I think that could be helpful. "Practical perfectionism."

Jen: Yeah, I don't know, I just...I really like that. So, thanks for sharing.

Pete: It also feels like it speaks to...and maybe this is now me using some confirmation bias to apply what you just said to something you said earlier...but it makes me think of what you said earlier about, success is moment by moment. And that example of the tech company, in that moment, what success look like changed, which was practical. Right?

Jen: Right.

Pete: Like, what perfect looked like in that moment was practical.

Jen: Okay..."practical success"?

Pete: Yeah.

Jen: I don't know. I don't know.

Pete: Listener, if we've gone off the deep end, please let us know. Or if you have ideas for practical something, "practical perfectionism", "practical success"...

Jen: ...tell us at hello@thelongandtheshortpodcast.com. I think my most important takeaways here (I'm going to try to summarize them) are that the bar goes up and down, depending on the given circumstances, that everyone has a different definition of success, and that the only way to understand what someone else's definition of success might be is to embrace a posture of empathy, curiosity, and sonder.

Pete: And that is The Long and The Short Of It.