The Long and The Short Of It

Episode 359 - Building Skills

Transcript:

Pete: Hey, Jen.

Jen: Hey, Pete.

Pete: I'm coming at you today with a question or an idea that I feel like I probably should know the answer to, that you probably know the answer to, but that I, for some reason, find myself revisiting.

Jen: ...okay.

Pete: I don't know, that was the most cryptic introduction ever. And that is, what are the most effective ways for us to build skills?

Jen: Oh, wow. This feels very huge. This is The Long and The Short Of It.

Jen: I mean, isn't this the question life has to offer?

Pete: Ooh, true. I hadn't actually even thought about it, the zoomed-out macro, yeah. But also, can you understand why I'm like, I feel like maybe every episode of this podcast is us attempting to answer this question?

Jen: Yeah.

Pete: And I feel like all day, every day, I'm working with leaders, with some assertions about the answer to this question. But I found myself in Sydney yesterday, having some meetings with some incredibly smart, very senior people, in very large organizations. And a few of the conversations forced me to, I don't know, challenge the way, or rethink the way, or question the way I think about helping leaders build skills. And it got me thinking that I must, I mean, I know I have an answer to this question that is probably an answer I came up with years ago, and that I built structure and workshops and learning modules around, to help leaders. But when's the last time I went like right back to, you know, with a beginner's mind and went, "What are some of the most effective ways that we're trying to help, in my context, leaders build skills, in your context, help artists build skills?" And I think you're right, that this could get really big and really large. And this is like life's great question. But also, I guess specifically, I'm thinking about in the context of being a coach, a facilitator, a speaker, someone who's trying to help leaders, in your context, trying to help leaders in the arts. How do we think about, I guess, first of all, helping people build skills? I mean, I feel like a fraud and an imposter even asking that question, because I feel like I should be like, "Shouldn't you know the answer to that question, Pete?"

Jen: Well, I have some thoughts about this. But I kind of want to hear, what were the challenges to your way of thinking that brought you to asking this question in the first place?

Pete: You know, the thing that struck me...I don't know if it was just the way it was asked, or just the fact that someone hasn't asked me such a simple, elegant question in such a long time. So, I was talking with a senior executive in the C-suite. And because they were someone in the C-suite that I really respect and admire, I was asking them some questions about how they're thinking about developing and growing their team. And they put forward a pretty cool idea, I thought, for like, "Oh, this is how I'm thinking about developing my team. I have different people with different skills and different capabilities, but I kind of think we need a universal bingo card as a team, to look at and go, 'Can I tick off all these skills and capabilities that I want my leaders to have?' And so, someone might have different things crossed off to start with. But the idea is that we, as a team, are working on trying to fill out the same bingo card, i.e. build a similar set of skills." And we talked about what those could be. And he was saying, "What do you think of that? What do other companies do? How do you think about helping people fill their bingo card?" And just that question, I was like, "Well, I do have some thoughts, and this is what they are." But in the moment, I was like, "When's the last time I stress-tested these thoughts?" I guess that was the idea. And so, that was why I thought maybe you could help me stress-test, or go back to basics, or rethink, or maybe just reaffirm the way I think about this.

Jen: Okay. As you know, I'm a Questioner. So of course, I want to answer your question, first, with a question. Which is, what kind of skills are we talking about? Because we've got technical skills, that are more universally applicable. "If you want to hit a baseball without dislocating your shoulder, this technique will help you do that." And then, we've got the real human skills of, "If you want to cultivate the courage to step up to the plate," this might not be a universally or a more broadly applicable approach, because each person is coming with their own experience, fears, hopes, dreams, etcetera.

Pete: Love it. Absolutely brilliant. I feel like you almost asked me that question of, which skill are we talking about? But I actually think that, as a starting point, is the question to consider. The question isn't necessarily, how do we build skills in people? It's like, okay, well, in order to answer that, we need to know, what skills are we trying to build here? What are we talking about? Are we talking about subject matter expertise, where there might be a right answer or a proven way to avoid dislocating your shoulder? Or are we talking about more relational human-centered skills, where there's no one-size-fits-all answer that's going to fit perfectly with everyone?

Jen: Yes. And as the person responsible for facilitating the skill building...so I sit in this role, you sit in this role, my guess is the person who was asking you these questions also sits in this kind of a role.

Pete: Mmm-hmm.

Jen: We, the facilitators, actually need so many ways. And many of those ways don't work for us personally, but do work for the people we're working with. And that is something I feel like life has tried to teach me over and over and over and over again, is, "Well, that didn't work for me, so it doesn't work," is not true.

Pete: Right.

Jen: "That didn't work for me, but it worked for someone."

Pete: Right.

Jen: "Therefore, it might be worth trying again with someone else, and they'll let me know if that worked for them or it didn't."

Pete: Right. And the opposite is also true, which is what came up in the conversation. This is kind of what sparked the conversation, which is, “A way of building skill that I really like or have seen work doesn't mean it's going to work for everybody.”

Jen: Right.

Pete: So, we were laughing because...this leader has been in workshops that I've run before. It's how we know each other. And he was saying like, "You know, I really get and I really understand why, in some of the workshops we've done, you've put us into pairs and had us sort of coach each other." And he's like, "I really see the value in it, but I don't like it."

Jen: Yeah.

Pete: And I was like, "Oh, interesting." And so, that was kind of what sparked the conversation, is like, "So why is it that that's the thing you do? How are you thinking about that as a useful way to build skill? Because I don't necessarily love it, even though I get the intent of it." And part of my answer was, I actually think it's because, in the context of the group we were talking about, he was actually the one that was most coach-like. And so, it probably felt like, "Oh, this is something I do all day, every day. I know how to do this. Why are we spending time on this?" Whereas there were other people, I know, in the room that were like, "Oh my god. Like, coaching people is about asking questions. And you can just spend five minutes asking people questions. This is amazing."

Jen: Yeah.

Pete: So it's, I mean, I feel like this is the theme of a lot of our episodes recently. It's context dependent of the individual.

Jen: Right.

Pete: So there's, what type of skill am I trying to develop? And then, there's also, how established is my skill set already, in this particular realm? Like, am I already actually a pretty good thrower of the baseball, to build on your analogy? And in which case, it's just a couple of tweaks I need to make. Or have I never thrown? Am I Pete Shepherd, who hasn't thrown a baseball since he was five years old, because baseball isn't really a sport over here? In which case, you'd need to go through a whole different series of skill-building ideas and exercises.

Jen: Okay, Pete, I'm now focusing on the bingo card, for a second.

Pete: Do you like the bingo card by the way? I told him I really liked it.

Jen: Well, we're about to find out.

Pete: Let's find out. Let's challenge it.

Jen: I have feelings on both sides of the fence here. On the one hand, it's really helpful sometimes to say to someone, "This is what we're working toward. And the thing I want you to get out of this is, for example, empathy. The skill of being able to empathize." So that would be beginning with the end in mind, or as Brené Brown says, "Paint done." And sometimes if you tell someone what you're working on, they will actually experience a lot more resistance to learning it. So, it depends on the person. The bingo card may work for some, but it may not work for others.

Pete: That's such a good point.

Jen: Oh my gosh, Pete, have I ever told this on this podcast? So sometimes when I go into a workshop in a corporate space, and there's a lot of conversation about, "How do we get our teams to engage more? How do we get our teams to take more risks? How do we get our teams to not worry about making mistakes," I will ask everyone to get up on their feet. And then, I'll say, "We're going to do the hokey-pokey.”

Pete: Oh my god, I've heard you say this before. And I'm cringing already. Because if I was someone in the room that was forced to do that, I'd be like, "Oh my god."

Jen: Right? And they all look at me like I have twelve heads. And then, I say, "You put our right arm in, you put your right arm out..." And I make them do it. And they are like, "What the hell are we doing? Why are we doing this?" And I go through right arm, left arm, right foot, left foot.

Pete: I love it.

Jen: And then, I say, "You put your whole self in, you put your whole self out..." And I make them do that. And again, they're like being tortured by me. And then, at the end, you know, the big aha is like, "You're asking your teams to put their whole self in, and you aren't even willing to put your right hand in."

Pete: Yeah, so good.

Jen: And that's what it's all about.

Pete: That is a great metaphor. And that is what it's all about. It's like, "I want my team to do this, to put their whole selves in, to commit this much time, energy, resources, skill into this one thing. But am I willing to do the same? Am I willing to do a quarter of that, which is my hand?" Oh, that's brilliant.

Jen: And so, if I said to them, "I want to right now teach you the skill of empathizing with your team. Let's get up and do the hokey-pokey," it wouldn't have had the same impact.

Pete: I totally agree. So this is, I think of this as Trojan horsing.

Jen: Yep.

Pete: And the context that this often comes up for me is someone will contact me and say, "Pete, we need your help with this leadership team. We really need to increase psychological safety." I hear this all the time. And I say to them, "I'm not going to come in and write up on the whiteboard 'psychological safety', and do a workshop on how we're going to improve it." Because just like that example you shared, to say we're going to start building empathy before we do the hokey-pokey is going to ruin the punchline. And so I'm like, "Okay, so we need to Trojan horse psychological safety."

Jen: Right.

Pete: "That's like the hidden punchline that happens as a result of the thing that we do or the conversation that we have." And so, how could we do that? Well, we could start by talking about, this is why I often talk about the idea of humility being a skill. Because people can wrap their arms around, "Oh, humility, okay. So if we can talk about where I've got blind spots and where I have strengths or superpowers, as I often refer to them as, they're questions I can answer. And if everyone can answer them, all of a sudden, I can start to understand that, "Oh my god, my peer, Jen, also has blind spots, and she's a little bit aware of them and self-conscious of them. And that's wild." And all of a sudden, I start to humanize everyone else in the room. And lo and behold, psychological safety gets improved and increased as a result of it.

Jen: Right.

Pete: So, that's fascinating. Because I know that and I agree with that, and I also liked the idea and still do kind of like the idea of the bingo card. But it's, how do you create the bingo card in a way that doesn't give away the punchline, such that people don't get value out of the thing you're trying to do?

Jen: Right. And by the way, I use bingo cards in my Career Collective fairly frequently. And people love a bingo card. They love it.

Pete: Right. Right, right, right. I also, in the context of the conversation I was having, the reason I liked it was (I wonder if this is true in your world) so much of what happens if you're a leader climbing the ranks and ambitiously trying to do more, be more, achieve more, create more change in an organization, you want to know, "What's the gap I need to fill, in order for me to get from here to where I want to go?" So, maybe I'm a General Manager and I want to get into the C-suite. Well, what the hell is the difference between who I am now and who that person would be? What are the skills required, and how do I build the skill or the capability to close that gap? So I like the concept of the bingo card from the perspective of going, "These are the things that you can and should and will benefit from working on, to help you get where you want to go." It doesn't guarantee it, but it gives you some sort of map.

Jen: Yeah. Yeah. And I'm realizing right now, I'm thinking back on my own bingo cards I've created. And there's a lot of personal agency in how people design what each square means. And it's very obvious when you've done it.

Pete: Hmm.

Jen: So if we were making a bingo card and it lists a bunch of real human skills, like curiosity, leadership, etc., my question would be, who is measuring this? And at what point do I actually earn...?

Pete: Cross it off, yeah.

Jen: Right. So how can you turn this into something actionable, so that a person knows when they can cross off the square?

Pete: That's such a great point, yeah. How do you know when you can cross off the square? Is it like, "Oh, I don't know, I did a half-day workshop with Pete on coaching as a leader. Does that mean I now cross it off? Or is that just, I now have the starting place to now try and coach people for three months as a leader, and then, I cross it off?" What are the conditions? What does done look like? (To go back to what you said about Brené.)

Jen: Right. Yeah. And maybe skill building of the human kind, the real human skill kind is an infinite pursuit.

Pete: Yeah.

Jen: So, okay. I'm thinking about one of my most successful bingo cards, and maybe this will help us.

Pete: Jen's most successful bingo card.

Jen: Suddenly, this has become an episode about bingo.

Pete: Bingo.

Jen: So I do a bingo card for the month where we focus on reaching out, so in each one of the squares, I will list a method of communication or a category of person. So it'll say something like "a person you haven't spoken to in more than a year", "a colleague whose work you admire", "as an email", "as a DM", "in-person", so it'll just give these things where it's so obvious. But the skill is embedded in the card, and that is the courage to connect.

Pete: Nice.

Jen: Courage and connection are really the skill, the real human skill. And of course, as a technical skill, of being a more efficient communicator.

Pete: Right.

Jen: But I'm wondering if, again, like embedding it, Trojan horsing it is the way to go.

Pete: Yeah. "Asking three questions in your next meeting", "asking a question in an email", "asking a question", like how do you embed curiosity? It's like, encouraging and prompting people to ask questions. Which, as a result, if they do it right, builds empathy and increases psychological safety and all those things, if done well. Yeah, how do you make it tactical and practical? I like that.

Jen: You know, it would be interesting is to say, "This is the empathy bingo card. Design it."

Pete: Yeah.

Jen: What do people think needs to go on the empathy bingo card? Like, what are the actions a person could take?

Pete: Right. Because, I mean, in a meta way, it would be empathetic of you to realize that everyone's going to write something different on that.

Jen: And I'm realizing that this episode has become very much about building the real human skills. And maybe in a future episode, we can talk about how we help people build technical (I'm putting this in big air quotes) "practical" skills.

Pete: Yeah. I mean, I wrote down...I don't even know if this is how to think about them. But you just sparked this idea of, we hear people talk about infinite games and finite games. And more than one person have written great books on this. Simon Sinek being one. I think James Carse being the other. And that is, in short, this idea that there are games that have an endpoint, like a game of basketball. And then, there are games that don't have an endpoint that are infinite, like business. And I'm like now wondering, are there infinite skills and finite skills?

Jen: Mmm-hmm.

Pete: Are technical skills, finite skills? Like, "I need to learn how to write code in Python," for example, which is a technical skill that I think, at some point, or, "I need to learn Spanish," at some point, you could probably cross off the fact that you have. It is a little finite. (Although, language is probably a little more infinite than I realize.) Whereas cultivating empathy and self-awareness, and having humility, and communicating effectively, and giving people feedback, I feel like these are infinite skills that you never quite master, but you constantly and consistently try and get better at...which doesn't quite fit the bingo card. The infinite bingo card that you never cross it all off.

Jen: The goal is to keep all the boxes uncovered.

Pete: Uncovered forever, yeah.

Jen: Well, I've actually been doing a lot of thinking about technical skill recently, because I'm in the middle of my summer career coaching program and technical skill comes up a lot. And I'm thinking of this in the context of, these are actors who are sharing their skill set, sometimes in the very basic form of a resume. So like, how do you claim that you have a skill? And like, when is it appropriate to claim that you have this skill? And my recent thinking about this is that when you can execute it on demand, you have the skill. And part of what we're trying to do is get better and better and better and better at that skill. So I might be able to, for example, as a singer, sing a high C. So, I possess that skill. (I used to possess it, don't possess it anymore.) And I want that high C to become freer. I want to be able to adapt the tone, add warmth, add darkness. I want to be able to get better and better at singing it. But I do have that skill. Just like you want to get faster and faster at typing, and safer and safer at driving.

Pete: Right, right. But you can still do the baseline, yeah. Gosh, I could talk about this with you for hours. And maybe we need future episodes. But the thing it's making me reflect on is the benefit of revisiting such basic fundamental questions with the thing that you do. I literally, all day, every day, I'm trying to help people build skills. And I haven't necessarily zoomed out to ponder, "How am I actually doing it?" I feel like it's become so instinctual and baked in to what I do, that I haven't necessarily challenged it. And so, I quite like that we are, and I am. So thanks, Michael, for the nudge.

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