The Long and The Short Of It

Episode 290 - On Your Feet

Transcript:

Jen: Hello, Peter.

Pete: Hello, Jennifer.

Jen: Are you familiar with the singer, Gloria Estefan?

Pete: Ish...ish. I feel like I know the name, but I don't know anything about her.

Jen: Do you know this song? [singing] "Get on your feet. Get up and make it happen." Does that sound familiar?

Pete: Oh, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. Right at the end, there. I got it right at the end.

Jen: Okay, okay. That is the best I can sing right now, my allergies are horrendous. I'm like, "How low can I make this?"

Pete: I should have said, "No," so you had to keep singing. That would have been better.

Jen: Well, what I want to talk to you about today is how true the lyrics to that song are. "Get on your feet. Get up and make it happen. Stand up and take some action."

Pete: Alright, alright. We're taking lyrics and we're taking action. I'm on my feet, actually. I'm standing up for this recording. So, I feel like I'm ready to go. This is The Long and The Short Of It.

Pete: Alright, Jen, what do we got?

Jen: Okay, Pete. So I had an aha moment recently about my own creative process, when preparing something that starts in my head that has to become like a real thing that I deliver live, like a keynote, a workshop, a class, that kind of a thing.

Pete: Yeah, "I have to teach this thing, or introduce this thing, or share this thing in a workshop setting, and it's up in my head."

Jen: Exactly.

Pete: Sounds like my life. Sounds like my life.

Jen: So, I kind of accidentally learned that I can shorten my entire process by several days.

Pete: Oh my god, tell me more. Tell me more.

Jen: And maybe get from inception to final draft in like twenty-four hours.

Pete: Oh my god. I mean, I feel like I need this hack. Because I spend a lot of my time in my head, building workshops in my head and keynotes in my head. And then, you know, writing them down, saying them out loud to myself, or, you know, whiteboarding them. The process is messy, but it's a process.

Jen: Well, I do the same thing. And I recently was going to be delivering a workshop, and I had a very limited amount of time to do it. So what I did, because my week leading up to this workshop was so busy, I reached out to some people at my studio. I said, "Is anyone interested in coming in and taking this workshop with me? I need to work something out. Because I'm delivering this for realsies, and it would be helpful for me to do it on its feet. And hopefully, it'll be helpful for you, and you'll get something out of it." So, a bunch of people raised their hand. They came to the studio. I put together...you can't even call it a shitty first draft. It was a zero draft of an outline for this workshop. And then, I decided I was just going to deliver the zero draft outline. And I was in a shame spiral. I was like, "What kind of an unprepared asshole am I?"

Pete: Oh, yeah.

Jen: "That, I'm going to actually do this tomorrow for the people who are paying me for it. And then like, I'm asking people to come into the studio? Like, I don't know what I'm doing. What a waste of their time. Like, this is so disrespectful of me. And like, what am I doing?"

Pete: I feel like you're in my head.

Jen: A terrible feeling, terrible feeling. Because what I would typically do is whiteboard it out, do a first draft, talk to myself a little bit, do a second draft, talk to myself some more, do a third draft. And this would happen over several days. But what ended up happening, Pete, is, I explained to the people who were there, "I'm figuring this out in real time," and then, I just started in on the workshop. And it was a mess. It was a hot, steaming mess. But I was fixing it in real time. So as I'm delivering it, I'm saying like, "Oh, that actually doesn't make sense here. So when I do it tomorrow, I'll do it in this other order."

Pete: Were you literally saying that out loud? Or were you just clocking that?

Jen: Yes, I'm literally saying it out loud.

Pete: That's great.

Jen: And I'm writing on my thing...my thing being my agenda. And then, I'm saying, "You know, I would have asked this question. But now that I'm with you, I'm realizing you need me to ask this other question." So, it was messy for the people who are in this beta. But the next morning, I delivered it for realsies. And it was chef's kiss.

Pete: Alright.

Jen: Excellent. Amazing. And it took me less than twenty-four hours to put it together. And I realized, "Oh my gosh. This is such a better way to work, to do it on your feet instead of in your head. Work on your feet. It expedites everything. It expedites the aha moments. It expedites the edits." But it didn't feel like I was being "fair" to the process, to do it that way, like I was cheating somehow. But Pete, it was so much better.

Pete: Isn't that wild? So much better. Yeah, I can imagine it would be. I am obsessed with this. This idea of, instead of intellectualizing what an agenda might look like and convincing yourself that this is going to work perfectly, actually testing your own assumptions and ideas in the moment with real people. You know, you mentioned the word "beta test", and I think it's worth just like double-clicking on that for a second. Because beta testing is commonly used or referred to in software development, where someone will develop a piece of software to a point where they're like, "Oh, we think this is ready for some people to try and interact with. This is not us releasing it into the real-world commercial environment. This is literally us testing how people interact with our software, based on where we're at, at the moment." And I think what you just described is a really great version of beta testing a workshop or a keynote or a piece of content, which I don't think many people do. Because, I'm trying to think in this moment, I imagine part of it is maybe, "Oh, I don't have anyone to actually sit there and listen." But I would challenge that, because, you know, you probably have friends or family or a partner or a dog who will sit there and listen to you practice. And so, I think...I wonder if maybe it's to do with the fear of looking stupid in front of those people, of like, "I don't want to do that, to show how raw my process is in front of people, because they'll think I'm an idiot." At least, this is me purely talking from my own perspective. That would be my fear.

Jen: Well, you know, I have this intense need...it's gotten better over the years, but like to be taken very seriously with what I do. And so, it was bringing up all of these like, "Oh my god, people are going to think I don't take my work seriously. They're going to think like I'm a joke or like I'm not prepared. And here I am, always telling people be prepared."

Pete: Yeah.

Jen: "I'm not walking my talk." But on the other hand, I was totally walking my talk. Because when I think about acting class, I'm always encouraging people, "Show me the first pancake."

Pete: Totally. Yes, the first pancake...one of my favorite episodes that we've recorded. So, the parallel I have here...that I just, I'm so obsessed with. I'm thinking about, I guess, a couple parallels. One is this idea of, you know, Seth Godin and others have talked about the fact that, "There's no such thing as writer's block. You just need to do bad writing. And to do bad writing and share it in a way that people can help you make it better." And so, he talks a lot about like, "The beauty of writing your first book is that you'll then get to write your second book. And your second book will be so much better, because of the fact that you shipped your first book." And it feels like a version of that. Where, the thing that you did is share your writing or share your thinking on this thing, which then, by getting feedback, enabled you to make it better. So you did the bad writing in public, you did the bad workshopping in public, which fast-tracked your ability to make it better. The other parallel I was thinking about is, you know, I'm often asked by people looking to start a coaching practice or who already have a coaching business, like, "How did you get into coaching? And what's the qualification that you have?" And a little bit of my imposter gets triggered, because I don't have a formal qualification in executive coaching. There aren't that many. And I have not got one. But I have got practice of coaching literally thousands of leaders, at this point, from around the world. And my response, when people ask, "How do I get better at coaching," is usually, "To coach people."

Jen: Right.

Pete: That in order to get better at coaching, one should practice coaching people or asking coaching questions. And that doesn't mean they have to be high stakes people that are paying you, to your point. These could be people who are volunteering and willing to give you feedback on your process. But in doing the thing, you get better at the thing. It feels so obvious to say, but I'm realizing in this moment that when it comes to a workshop or a keynote, it's easy to not do the thing or to do a version of a thing where you like talk to yourself.

Jen: Right.

Pete: But you don't actually get any feedback. And so much of a workshop is the feedback you get from others. So...I don't know. There's just some like threads that came up for me.

Jen: So, a couple things to noodle on here. One is, I was teaching one of my classes today that involves some script analysis work. And I pull a lot of my script analysis techniques from this particular book. And the author, I'm paraphrasing, but he basically says, "You've got to do these things fast and dirty, because otherwise you'll sit there overanalyzing whether or not you're right. And as an actor, the best way to test your theories is to get up on your feet and act. So on the page, fast and dirty. Test it in rehearsal." Which, I just love so much. So, that's the first thing. But the second thing that came to mind is, am I brave enough?

Pete: Hmm.

Jen: You know, I have the benefit of being able to test my things out in a pretty safe space. Am I brave enough to test some of these things out in less safe spaces? For example, I really enjoyed being able to say to people, "Oh, if I could do that again, I would do this differently," or, "Let me ask a better question here."

Pete: Yeah.

Jen: Could I do that in a more high stakes conversation with someone? Can I do that in a more pressurized environment? That is something I actually want to take on as a challenge for myself, is like, how can I try to apply this do it in real time, on your feet learnings when the space is not quite as safe?

Pete: I love that. I think I've done that in my head, but I don't know if I've said it out loud. In that, I've asked a question of a group in a workshop, and in my head, I've gone, "That was not the right question, based on this conversation. Let me try a different question." But I haven't necessarily said out loud, "My apologies, I must have asked the wrong question. Let me try a different question." So, I don't know. I guess part of me is probably trying to protect myself from the fear of looking like I asked the wrong question. But internally, I've definitely gone, "Huh. No, that wasn't it. Let me try a different question." Yeah.

Jen: Yeah. Interesting.

Pete: So, I'm absolutely on board with that challenge as well. It's like, can you be brave enough to...you know, in my mind, it's like thinking out loud.

Jen: Yeah.

Pete: And I think one of the things I have done to get me even more comfortable with this process of thinking out loud, of having to make assertions, come up with ideas, ask questions on the fly without seven hours of prep and script writing and slide putting together (which is not necessarily my style), is having this podcast.

Jen: Mmm. Yeah.

Pete: I think often we are doing a version of this in this podcast, where we don't script it.

Jen: Nope.

Pete: We don't have an agenda for where we're going. We literally have an idea, and we kind of just test it with one another, in real time, in this conversation. And people often ask me, "What's been the best part or the benefit of having a podcast? Why do you keep doing it?" And my response is, "Even if no one listened, I would still do it. Because the process of us thinking out loud has so many benefits to the way I do my work and the way I live my life, that I think it's worth it, regardless of whether people listen." But the fact that we have listeners is amazing. Hey, listeners.

Jen: Hey, listeners.

Pete: In any case, the other thing I really wanted to say though, is, I agree with this challenge. And the thing that I think is just, I mean, obvious but like worth saying out loud, the reason a beta test works, the reason your process works is because the people in the room knew that it was a beta test.

Jen: Yes.

Pete: Or the people in the room knew they were seeing a rough version. And the reason I bring this up, is...I have this one example that is so clear in my mind. When I was working many moons ago in a company, my friend and I, Rich, he was the Director of Marketing, him and I used to get into these meeting rooms and just like go crazy on a whiteboard. We kind of shared that process of thinking on whiteboards. And anyway, we were coming up with this hair-brained idea to record this video that was going to describe the business transformation that this company was going on. And it was really cool...at least, we thought. And we were so clear in where we were going. We were going to make this video. We were going to bring in a video production company. It was going to look like this. It was going to be like this. We were going to bring in an app. And it was like, we kind of had it. And then, we attempted to sketch down, literally sketch down, like a minimum viable version of this, so that we could share it with the CEO. And that's what we did. We went and grabbed the CEO...like, I've just reflected now on how ridiculous. We just like marched out of the meeting room of the whiteboard session, and with no context, we said to the CEO (it was one of those companies where you had the ability to do this), "Hey, do you have five minutes?" He had five minutes, and we like showed him our sketch on a piece of A3 paper. And he was looking at it like, "What the hell is this? This is awful. Can you come back to me when you have something a little more polished? Like, this is a mess. What have you done?" And it was so funny. We left so dejected. And then like, you know, tails between legs, went back to our meeting room. And with time, we were kind of like, "I mean, of course that's what he would say. Because it was a mess. And we gave him no context that it was going to be a mess. We just excitedly tried to share our end state that was in our head. But actually, the reality was, it was this messy first draft." So all of that to say, based on experience, you want to be pretty sure that people know that this is a beta test or a rough version or a shitty first draft.

Jen: Yes. And you can really get some good buy-in when you share that. I'm thinking right now, like in the theater world, we have what we call the "preview" period. Where, you know, before a show opens, it needs an audience to know what's landing and what doesn't. But the audience knows that it's a preview.

Pete: Right.

Jen: And they know that if they come back after opening, what they've seen is going to be different. Or I'm an early adopter of like a lot of the platforms that I use, which is so interesting. And one of the platforms, which is called Heartbeat, that I use for my online studio, you know, I'm part of the beta. And because of that, I get a weekly email from them saying, "What feedback do you have for us? Like, what new features would you like to see? How can we make this better?" And it's so fun to be a part of the beta test.

Pete: Yeah. Certain people love to be part of that, and love to know, "Oh, this is the rough version. I want to help them make it better."

Jen: Yeah. It makes you feel kind of special.

Pete: For sure. Like an early adopter, like you said. So that, in my mind, is, that's the reframe for me on the fear of looking stupid. Is, you might, in your head, look stupid. But the people in the room aren't going to think you look stupid, because they know you're thinking out loud. They know you're asking them to point out the things that are wrong, because there's going to be things wrong. So it's like, it's a way of, in my mind, addressing the fear before it happens.

Jen: Yep.

Pete: So, I'm on board with this. I mean, I wish I had a like, you know, rent-a-crowd at my disposal. Maybe that's a business we could start. But I definitely...I feel like it's a cop out to say I couldn't get people in a room to help me workshop workshops.

Jen: Yeah, that's right. And I'm so curious, for the listeners out there who work in a different space and aren't necessarily like delivering workshops or keynotes, what are some of the applications that you see in your work, of actually bringing a messy first draft and trying something out on its feet, instead of just in your head?

Pete: Yeah. Trying things out on its feet, instead of in your head. Yep. Well, once again, I've been called out. And my action is to get out of my head and start trying things on my feet. So thank you, Gwen Stefani...was it Gwen Stefani? No, it wasn't Gwen Stefani.

Jen: No, it was Gloria Estefan. And that is The Long and The Short Of It.