The Long and The Short Of It

Episode 374 - Competent or Complacent?

Transcript:

Pete: Hey, Jen.

Jen: Hello, Pete.

Pete: So I pulled up my notes on possible podcast topics for us to talk about earlier today, and I guess I was in a particular mood on one particular day. This is from months ago, I've posed a bunch of questions, I guess to myself, in this podcast document. And so, I feel like maybe I should pose them to you and we could unpack them as an episode. So the question that I posed to myself is: What's the difference between going through the motions and being highly competent? How do you know if you're bored of your own ideas because you've repeated them so often, versus you've gotten complacent and haven't challenged your own ideas recently?

Jen: Woah. Yes, someone was in an existential moment that we will now enter together. This is The Long and The Short Of It.

Jen: Wow.

Pete: I know. Honestly, I'm trying to remember. I'm guessing it was a few months ago when I was running a very large, really cool, honestly, on reflection (clearly in the moment I was having some challenges), leadership development program that touched like a hundred and twenty people. And because it touched so many people, I broke them into cohorts of twenty. So I was doing six cohorts of twenty, once a month for six months. So I suspect what I was feeling was, "I've just said the same thing," or, "I've run a version of the same workshop six times. Am I getting complacent? Do I need each one to be fresh? Am I just sick of my own ideas because I've just run the same workshop six times? Is this because I am competent or going through the motions?" Cue existential crisis. "I'll put this in the document. Maybe one day I'll talk to Jen about it." And here we are.

Jen: Well, it's interesting, Pete, because you're talking about leadership development workshops. And I run into some version of this question very frequently with my clients, who, many of them are in shows, you know, that are doing the same show eight times a week. Or when they're not in a show and they're in an audition season, some of them are presenting the same audition material day in, day out.

Pete: Yeah, that's wild. I don't know if this is the right distinction. I don't know if I actually said this in my questions. But it's almost like that...oh gosh, I'm going to butcher it. You could probably help me fill in the gap. That framework on mastery or unconscious competence. You know that framework?

Jen: Mmm-hmm.

Pete: Is the feeling of, "Oh, I just went through the motions," the same as, "I'm just unconsciously competent?"

Jen: Well, so let's back up for a second and say to the listeners who are like, "What the hell are you talking about?"

Pete: Sorry, listeners.

Jen: This is the four stages of learning. Unconscious Incompetence: You don't know what you don't know. Then, Conscious Incompetence: You know what you don't know. Then, Conscious Competence: I know what I know. And then, Unconscious Competence: Mastery.

Pete: Right. Yes. So, the question I think I was trying to pose to myself is...I mean, "mastery" feels like such a overly confident word to use for my workshop. But for the sake of this conversation, it's like, "Is it because you've mastered this workshop because you've done it so many times, or are you now being complacent because you've done this so many times?" Because it didn't feel...and maybe I'm coaching myself in this moment. Because by the sixth time and the fifth time, it doesn't really feel effortful. It feels like, "Oh, I know what I'm doing. I know how this goes. I'll ask these questions. The responses will be different, which is the energizing part, but I know what I'm doing." And so, there's probably a separate learning here / takeaway for me on how things don't have to feel effortful in order for them to be effective.

Jen: Mmm.

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

Jen: Right? So I literally was just writing down, "Does something have to be difficult in order for you to be doing it well?" And I don't think the answer to that is yes. I don't think things have to be difficult. Some things will remain difficult always. But sometimes, things can get easier.

Pete: Yeah. I'm sure we mentioned this on an episode, hundreds of episodes ago. I'm going to dig it up and put it in the Box O' Goodies, and find the original source. I think it was Priya Parker, who I heard say that her coach said to her, "The thing that feels easy for you should be the thing you charge the most for." Does that sound familiar?

Jen: Yep.

Pete: I think I need to remind myself of that. I think that's the experience or a version of the experience I was bumping up against when I posed this, and I know it is clearly very common. I mean, Priya Parker talks about it a lot, is, because it doesn't feel hard for us, we start to question whether it's worthwhile or whether it's good or whether it's effective. I don't know why or where that comes from, but I feel like that's a pretty common experience.

Jen: I would agree with you. And here's one potential way to look at this. In your scenario and in the scenario I'm talking about with my clients, you are already at the stage of the delivery. So, this is not the creation process. This is the thing that you've created is being delivered, so what effective and meaningful is in that context is very different than the creation process. So if you're bored in the creating and you're like, "Wow, as I'm making something, I'm just repeating myself over and over," that is one scenario. But you've made the thing and now your commitment is to deliver this thing you've made over and over again. And so, going back to my example of clients with audition material, I have people come to me all the time and say, "I'm adding this new song to my audition repertoire because I'm so bored with my audition book." And so, my first question will be, "Is the song you're replacing currently getting new callbacks?" And if they say yes, then I have to say, "Then, I don't think it matters if you're bored or not." Because what is it for? It's not for your entertainment.

Pete: In my context, "Is the workshop you're delivering still effective, still delivering the change that you promise, still helping people be more curious or better coaches or more empathetic or better communicators?" If the answer is, "Yes," you've kind of got to keep delivering it in the same way or in a version of the same way. Now, there are ways to play around with this. I remember coaching a very successful and well-known keynote speaker in the States, actually. And one of the things that she was saying is, she's fed up with telling the same stories with the same structure in her keynote. And I was like, "You can keep the same structure, deliver the same outcome, but alternate stories. You could have five stories that all help you make the same point. And you could change it every single time, so that it feels like a different keynote every single time." So, there are things you can do to keep it fresh. But if it's delivering the outcome you want to deliver, your being bored with it is almost irrelevant.

Jen: Right. And I have clients in long-running shows who talk about this experience too. And what I will often encourage them to do is grab an old acting textbook and randomly open up to a page, read what's on the page, and incorporate it that night in their performance. Focus on a different part of your technique. And actually, I heard an interview with Taylor Swift's guitarist, and he was talking about being on The Eras Tour. And the goal on The Eras Tour is not to make the music sound different every night. It's to deliver the best version of the music the audience wants to hear. And that, he would give himself a similar exercise, where it's like, "I'm really going to focus on this part of my technique tonight. I'm going to really focus part of my expression tonight." So, it allowed him to get better at his craft while still delivering for the audience.

Pete: Yeah, I love that. I'm reminded of my swim coach, who I'm seeing tomorrow. That's why it's top of mind. And we talked about some of the ideas she shared with me in an episode that we'll also put in the Box O' Goodies. But it was a version of the same thing, around deliberate practice. And so, some of the things she says is, "If you're going to go for a swim, I want you to pick three things to focus on. And that's all. And focus on one at a time. And alternate. And one of them might be literally moving your fingernails away from your feet." That's actually one of the things. And it's like, what? "And in doing so, all of these things happen in your stroke, and you're more effective, and you're still swimming." You're still playing the music, like Taylor Swift's guitarist. But you are doing so in a way that is intellectually stimulating, because you're focusing on a particular thing. And hopefully, as a result, you're giving the best expression of that swimming, in the best possible way that you can.

Jen: Right. You know, once I was talking to a friend of mine, who's written a lot of books, about my frustration with myself for not getting a single book idea across the finish line. And I was like, "I just have too many ideas. And what should I write about?" And he was like, "Write about the thing you'd be happy to talk about for the next ten years." And I was like, "Woah." And he was like, "Because that's what happens. If the book does well, you're going to talk about that thing for the next ten years. So, it's got to be something you want to talk about for that long."

Pete: That feels overwhelming.

Jen: Right? I was like, "Dang."

Pete: Ten years is so long.

Jen: But I guess the point is that it's not about, "Am I still entertaining myself?" It is, "Can I deliver on this promise I'm making to this audience that I'm giving this information to?"

Pete: That's a really qualifying question. It's like, "Am I still adding value? Is this still delivering? Is this still serving the people I wanted to serve?"

Jen: But then, the other side of this is a word that just like, oof, it grates on me. I don't like this word: "complacency". Which, to me...like, I don't know what other people think this means. But in this context, I'm like, "Well, it's not as good as it could be, but it's good enough." That's what complacency sort of feels like, in the context of this conversation. And I'm like, if we are getting complacent and we're like, "It might not be great, but it's good enough," what are the tools that we have to reinvigorate ourselves around whatever the work is that we're doing?

Pete: Yes. And when is good enough okay? I think that's something I also grapple with. Because I recognize not every workshop, not every keynote, not every coaching session is going to be perfect. And that is for so many reasons. For example, what happened to you in the morning before you did this? Or what's been on your mind the day before? Or did Ollie sleep last night? All of these things impact the performance or the way something goes. So sometimes, I personally grapple with, "Was that good enough?" And how do you determine if that was good enough?

Jen: Well, here's my thought about that, Pete.

Pete: Oh, please.

Jen: We've talked about this on previous episodes, and I continue to do this at the beginning of literally every single coaching I do. I ask the client, "This session will be a success if fill-in-the-blank." And so, we name a specific intention. And based on the context of the day, it might be like, "This session will be a success if I get through it without falling apart." And on a different day, it's like, "This session will be a success if I am able to create a 99% excellent product."

Pete: Right. So, this somehow reminds me of Oprah.

Jen: I'll take it. Because, you know, I love Oprah. I love her.

Pete: Can I just casually throw Oprah into the conversation? Yeah. Yeah, we can do that.

Jen: Please.

Pete: I just, I feel like I remember...I'll butcher this, so I'll do my best to find the interview where she mentions this. And I'm sure she's said it multiple times. I feel like something that she has shared or reflected on is how one of the biggest learnings she had from running The Oprah Winfrey Show and interviewing thousands (I'm guessing) of very very high-profile people across decades, was that in almost every case, after the interview was finished, they would look across the table and say to Oprah, "Was that okay? Or how was that?" They were looking for validation and confirmation that they did a good job. And she talks about, I think, a couple of people who didn't. They felt self-assured enough to go, "I delivered what I wanted to deliver. I feel like I was successful because I said so, because maybe I answered that question in my head and I delivered. And I don't need the affirmation of someone else to tell me that." And she talks about that as being kind of, for her, the pinnacle, the goal, of like, "I choose myself. I show up for myself. And I recognize when I've done something well enough. I don't need to have it affirmed by someone else, because I feel confident enough that I delivered the thing I wanted to deliver." Very aspirational, from my perspective, but I just feel like it's worth saying that out loud.

Jen: Oprah, you're the best. If you're listening, Oprah, we love you.

Pete: Shout out, Oprah. Feel free to share this podcast with your hundreds of millions of friends.

Jen: Yeah, please. Please. And there's one other element of your deep line of questioning that strikes me, that's just been coming up a lot in my world as well, which is, "How do I know if I'm competent at what I'm doing?" And I don't know if this is true in your world, Pete, but in my world, so many things have lost their interpersonal synchronous elements. There's a lot of working in a vacuum, like not being able to read on other people how something is landing. And so, what I've found with my own clients is sometimes they're just like...I say this with so much love in my heart for the toughness of this scenario...they're just making shit up. Like they're making up a metric, and the metric has no usage in the context. So I don't know what the answer is, except to say that sometimes you've got to outsource the question of, "Am I competent," to a coach, to a colleague, to a friend, someone who is able to help you assess and evaluate your own work.

Pete: Yeah. I think that's critical, because we are often very poor judges of our own work.

Jen: Right.

Pete: Well, I guess that's the takeaway for me, too. Maybe part of the reason I spiraled was I didn't have Jen Waldman in the room during those six workshops to provide that feedback, to be the Oprah across the table from me, to say, "Yeah, that was great, and here's why," or, "That was terrible, and here's why." But ultimately, what I think about is coming back to, "What is this for? Who am I trying to serve? And what does success look like?" And if I can get clear on that, then I should be able to get clear on whether I've done that. And that should be enough, regardless of how I felt on that day and whether I got bored.

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