The Long and The Short Of It

Episode 214 - Thought Partners

Transcript:

Pete: Hey, Jen.

Jen: Hey, Pete.

Pete: So I was at an event last week watching two leaders of industry have a, like a fireside chat, a conversation. And many of the things they talked about, we could turn into episodes. But one thing in particular, which was almost like a passing comment, was that they referred to themselves as thought partners. And that hyphenated word, or two words, has since appeared in my life like three other times in the last two weeks. And so I just feel like I need to bounce it off you, as a thought partner.

Jen: I don't know that I've actually ever heard anyone use this term, so color me curious. This is The Long and The Short Of It.

Pete: Neither had I...neither had I. So it was an event here in Melbourne, and it was put together by, like I said, two leaders of industry. So there's one gentleman by the name of Paul Kearney, who runs essentially like a financial and accounting business, and then another guy by the name of Dr. Jason Fox, who is a, I would say...I'm sure he could articulate it far better than me...but he's like a thought leader in the leadership workplace culture space, but also like a very intelligent intellectual in an academic sense. So like, two guys seemingly from complete other sides of the planet in terms of what they do for a living. And they, in the intro, shared they've struck up this friendship during COVID and have since found it incredibly beneficial to catch up once a week as what they call thought partners, to share ideas, check in with one another, have kind of higher level or deeper conversations other than, "Hey, how's the weather today?" You know, like really deep, thoughtful, intelligent, interesting, grappling with kind of conversations. And I just really, I started really like thinking about what a cool concept and idea, and one of the things they recommended was, "We suggest, try and find like four or five thought partners in your life." So naturally, I was like, "Oh, who do I have as thought partners?" And you came to mind, for one. And then like I mentioned, this word keeps coming up in the last few weeks, which I can get to, but that is kind of the context. Does that make sense?

Jen: Yeah. I really, I love it. Immediately, I'm able to identify some people in my life, who I'm like, "Oh. We already are thought partners, we've just never said that out loud to each other. And if we did, what would that do?" Like in a good way, what would that do?

Pete: That's exactly what I thought. I was like, "Oh, I have Jen Waldman. I have my friend Josh Jansen, we walk once a week and we, at times, have this great joyful conversation about all the awesome things that are happening, and sometimes one of us might be like in the dip and we're trying to like help each other out of the dip, or sometimes we might be talking about what's happening in the macro economics side of the world or global politics or like whatever, it's just someone to thrash with...

Jen: Yeah.

Pete: …I guess is how we've been thinking about it. And so, yeah, I've been thinking about you and my friend Josh, in particular in this context, and then a few others as well.

Jen: Maybe I'm getting too far ahead at this moment, but I'm realizing that sometimes in our work, especially with people who identify as thought leaders, as their coaches, what we're doing is giving them a thought partner to like ask their own questions, hold some space for them to be messy, because when they're public facing, the thoughts are so well organized. So I don't know if that has come up in your thinking around this, but that immediately struck me as like, "Oh, well, there's definitely a difference between being a thought leader and a thought partner."

Pete: I totally agree. I think what you describe is like, yeah, you're talking about things that are, not in a bad way, but like not ready for a public stage, in the sense that you're like grappling with, "Oh, I just read this thing this morning, and I'm trying to work out how to make sense of it." And to bounce that off someone, a thought partner, I think it'd be incredibly effective. I mean, we've essentially done over two hundred episodes of doing this. Right? It's like, "Here's the thing I'm struggling with, or here's the thing I heard at an event last week, help me make sense of it, thought partner." And well, I mean, we do it in, I guess in a public forum, but I also do it in a non-public forum where I'm just like grappling with things. And as a result, I think it helps shape the thoughts or the ideas or the things you end up do putting out into the public world. Especially, you know like you said, in the thought leader context, they need like a safe space to thrash. And often for you and I, that can sometimes be us because we're sometimes their coaches or friends. I think another aspect of a thought partner...like, I've been trying to work out what makes a good thought partnership. How might our listeners, or we, start to think more about how to create these? Like, I feel like there's some important criteria baked into, whether it's deliberate or not, say, our thought partnership, or my friend Josh's thought partnership in mind. Is like, it's almost like...like you and I've talked about this before, both of us feel like the lucky one...

Jen: Right.

Pete: ...in a way. You know, like I feel like I'm getting more from you than you're getting from me, and then I think you feel the same way about what you get from me. And so, it's mutually beneficial. There's no one person is giving more than the other. Although over time, or at times, someone maybe needs more support than the other one, or someone maybe needs to thrash something out more than the other one. So there's no, I don't know, like expectation or obligation. It's kind of just mutually beneficial. I don't even know how to put that into any other words, except for that.

Jen: I'm also realizing that some of my more successful reach outs to strangers, who I have heard speak on a particular topic, have been the result of me offering a thought partnership conversation. Instead of like, "I really like your work," I'll say something like, "I heard you on this thing. I am so fascinated by your work. The work that I do over here pings off of it in this interesting way you may not have considered." And usually, what I'm saying is like, "Have you thought about how this might show up in an artistic context? In a creative context? On Broadway? And I'd love to share with you the Venn diagram that I see around our ideas." And those tend to be my more successful reach outs to strangers, is to basically offer like, "Let's have a thought partnership conversation." And at that point, I'm not saying, "Let's enter into a long relationship with each other." It's just like, "Let's have one conversation."

Pete: Yeah. It feels a lot less transactional.

Jen: Right.

Pete: You know, often we can get hung up with a reach out or with meeting someone who may be able to assist our business or our career or our life, and want to get that ask or help, you know, get the piece of advice that we're really seeking out of someone. Which can feel, as a recipient, a little transactional. Like, "Oh, you just want me to help you do this."

Jen: Right.

Pete: Whereas offering a thought, or a place to thrash, or a conversation that is about a Venn diagram feels a lot less like, "I want something from you," or, "You want something from me," but more just, "What if we co-created some ideas based on a conversation? And like, who knows what will happen with them?" Like...I don't think she would mind me saying her name...Stacey Johnson is a friend of mine who I met through, actually, Seth Godin's altMBA, just like you and I met. And we have since gone on to collaborate and do some work together. She works at a big global company, and sometimes we have conversations about, how might I be able to assist some of their leaders? But a few weeks ago, we had a conversation which was just like thought partnering around, "What are you noticing in leadership and culture at the moment?" And there was no push, there was no pitch, there's no transaction. It was just like two thought partners, two humans having a curious conversation. And she actually said at the end, "I really appreciate you being a thought partner with me on this." And that was where that word, again, I was like, "Oh, Stacey knows about the word thought partner. How come I've never heard of this term before?"

Jen: Yeah. You know, the altMBA has produced, I think, many, many thought partnerships. That's just the makeup of the program because you get in a room and you talk about ideas with people, you get in a virtual room and you talk about ideas. And because of that, I know that my personal bonds with the people that I met during the altMBA were very deep, very fast.

Pete: Yeah.

Jen: And there are some people who I took the altMBA with...remember Winnie?

Pete: Oh, do I remember Winnie? Of course I remember her.

Jen: Oh Winnie, I don't know if you listen to this podcast...I frickin' love you. We had such amazing deep talks. And even though like we haven't spoken in, gosh, I don't know how long, if Winnie called me in the middle of the night, I would answer the phone and anything Winnie needed, I'm on it, because the bond around thinking deeply with someone is so intense.

Pete: Mmm. Yeah, it builds trust, is what I'm hearing. Like, there's a real trust building thing that happens during a thought partnership.

Jen: Okay, so maybe this is a little like too out there, but it's making me think about why some of my friends are so unhappy with the dating app experience.

Pete: Oh, wow. Tell me more.

Jen: Well, it's just, it does not lend itself to thought partnership. And I almost want them to like go dating at a library or something, where there's like a topic on the table and everyone's going to talk about the topic and let's see like, "How deep are we willing to go around challenging our own ideas, and challenging our assumptions, and opening ourselves to other ways of thinking about something," as opposed to on the dating app, presenting a finished product. And yeah, that's just really interesting to me.

Pete: Back to that idea of transactional, right? I hear those apps just feel incredibly transactional. Yeah.

Jen: Although, some people have found great success. I'm just specifically talking about some friends of mine who have recently shared their displeasure.

Pete: Some struggles. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Fascinating. Yeah. It's funny, the event I mentioned when I first heard this with Paul and Jason, the kind of meta idea that they shared was, "We're trying to, perhaps, cultivate your own thought partnerships in this room." So, they basically curated and invited a select group of people based on what they know they're interested in or who they think might be interested in grappling with some of the ideas they're grappling with. So they kind of like invited like-minded people along to their thought partnership, had the conversation on a stage which apparently is the same as the conversation they'll have in a coffee shop, and then, every now and then they'd say, "Spend five minutes talking to someone around you about some of these ideas." They did actually a really good job of like trying to cultivate...maybe people left there with a thought partnership. Like, I had a great conversation with this person next to me. And there's another one of these events coming up, if I see him there again, I'll definitely go up and we'll have a conversation and maybe throw some ideas around together. So it was like, like you said, you used the library almost as a funny example. But it's like, where are the spaces where we might be more likely to find other thought partners, if that's something we're interested in seeking? And like you mentioned, altMBA was a great place for us.

Jen: I just kind of want to circle back to the idea of your own existing Rolodex. Like, do people use Rolodexes anymore? Am I dating myself? But the idea that your friend group or colleagues or coworkers, within that group, there might already be someone who'd be a great thought partner. Like, obviously our entire relationship, you and I, is based on a thought partnership. But I also think about the person I work most closely with at the studio, Drew, who wrote our theme music for The Long and The Short Of It.

Pete: Hey, Drew.

Jen: I mean, we geek out pretty regularly, but we've never actually said like, "We're thought partners." And if I were to bring something to the table to geek out about, instead of us just sort of enjoying it in that moment, I wonder what would happen if I said, "Be my thought partner on this. Let's see how deep we can go." I feel like it would be a fun challenge for an already existing pretty cool friendship.

Pete: Yeah, I like that. It sounds like some homework for you and Drew.

Jen: I know. It's...I can't wait, actually. I'm pretty stoked.

Pete: Yeah. Yeah. And so, then the other thing that I really was quite taken by, like I mentioned as I teed this up, with the particular thought partnership that I was witnessing...and I think this is, I mean, this is true of us. It's kind of the meta reason for the name of our podcast, is like, what does it look like to have a thought partner that's seemingly from another planet? You know?

Jen: Right.

Pete: Like The Long and The Short Of It, like you and I, like on the height spectrum from other sides of the planet, literally from other sides of the planet, industries seemingly from other sides of the planet.

Jen: Right.

Pete: And we found so much joy in looking for the crossover in the Venn diagram. And so, I'm not saying all thought partnerships need to come from opposite sides of the spectrum, but I just think it's a really interesting and perhaps empathy-building, eye-opening, worldview-expanding way of thinking about thought partnership.

Jen: Yeah. What's interesting about our relationship, for example, as thought partners (because now I'm going to call us that), is, our Venn diagram overlap is so interesting. It takes us really deep, sometimes. We learn a lot from each other. And when we are not together, like...I can't speak for you, because I don't know what you're like when you're not with me. But when I'm not with you, the things that I've learned from you or the things that I've heard you say, do start to inform the way I'm approaching creativity or the way I'm approaching my acting coaching. So there are things from your world that start to sprinkle themselves into my world, even when you're not there.

Pete: That's cool. And likewise, that happens all the time. I feel like sometimes I'm a talking head of Jen Waldman.

Jen: So, can I just say that I just typed "thought partner" into Google, and there's a lot...

Pete: Everyone listening is probably like, "Obviously, this is something we're all familiar with. Why are you only just discovering this?"

Jen: But like, why had I not heard this until today? And there's like guidebooks for how to be good thought partner, articles on what makes a good thought partner, a Forbes article, "How thought partners add value to your business", a LinkedIn article about being a thought partner like, "How to be a good collaborator through thought partnership", there's even a website called thoughtpartnerships.org. So anyway, my point is that we might be behind the times in naming it, but my goodness, Mr. Shepherd, I'm so happy that you are my thought partner.

Pete: I agree. And it sounds like it's going to be a big, juicy Box O' Goodies, where we can put all of the resources that you just shared.

Jen: Well, I haven't read them yet...I don't know if they're actually includable. We do, in fact, look at everything that we put in the Box O' Goodies.

Pete: This is true. We'll find some resources we can stand behind and share them in the Box O' Goodies. But I agree, it's possible we're behind the eight ball. And yet, we probably wouldn't have known that, had we not had an opportunity to be thought partners in talking about thought partnership.

Jen: Whew, that was meta for you. And that is The Long and The Short Of It.