The Long and The Short Of It

Episode 98 - Unscripted

Transcript:

Pete: Hey, Jen.

Jen: Hi, Pete.

Pete: I have a question for you that I feel like you may have been asked, that I have been asked quite a lot as it relates to this podcast.

Jen: Okay.

Pete: And the question is, "Do you guys script the podcast?".

Jen: [laughter] Clearly from my reaction, the answer is no, we don't.

Pete: [laughter] But have you been asked that question before?

Jen: Yes, I have.

Pete: I feel like there's something worth unpacking in this. So I thought we could get meta and unpack us unpacking the podcast.

Jen: Okay, let's do it. This is The Long and The Short Of It.

Pete: So, I've been thinking a little bit about this recently, and trying to ask myself, "What's the question behind the question? What is it about these conversations, but also people's expectations on what a conversation or a podcast should sound like, that makes it feel like it should be scripted, or it is scripted? Or, why isn't it?". So I'm like looking for the nugget of, "What's the question behind the question?". And, in fact, maybe before I try and explore that a little bit, do you have an idea of what the question behind the question might be?

Jen: [laughter] Oh, sorry I'm laughing. I'm just-

Pete: [laughter] Very scripted.

Jen: I'm sorry. Once in a while, we have to do a pre-intro for the show where we have to say something specific before the episode like, "The Learning Lab is coming up, you could sign up.". It takes us so long to record one scripted sentence, and then we just record the episodes in a single take. So, that's just hilarious to me. I'm just laughing at that.

Pete: So true.

Jen: The question behind the question is probably like, "How do you have so much to talk about?". Or like...I don't know, I just went to like a cynical question behind the question, which would be like, "You don't actually like each other that much, do you?". [laughter]

Pete: That is a cynical take. I feel like your first point...there's something in that. "How do you know what you're going to say? How do you know what Jen's going to say? And how can you respond to something that you don't know is coming?" I feel like there's a question or a curiosity that people have with that. And I am so curious about it because I think, like, human beings, everyone who asks this question, can sit and have a conversation with a friend, and conversations aren't scripted.

Jen: Right.

Pete: And so, it always takes me by surprise that people are surprised that there is a degree of...in fact, not a degree of, there is an entire posture of spontaneity to this whole thing. So that has been in my mind, as I've been (I feel like I've mentioned this in a few episodes) nerding out a lot on improv at the moment.

Jen: Yeah.

Pete: Improvised comedy.

Jen: Yes, and...

Pete: Yes, and. [laughter] I see what you did there, I see what you did there. But I feel like there's this moment I've been having of...I think about my work, for example. In all of my work, it strikes me as having a similar posture to improvised comedy or improv. Which is, I have absolutely no idea what the inputs are going to be that other people are going to throw at me, in terms of a situation they might find themselves in. And as a coach, I have to ask them questions, and be curious, and try and understand their world. And I don't know what they're going to say. Or if you're doing a Q&A at the end of a keynote, for example, and I know you've done this, you have absolutely no idea what the questions are going to be. And so, it pays to be able to respond to the inputs in a certain way. And I think conversation is improv in a way, because again, you don't know what people are going to say. And so underneath that, I feel like everyone has the ability to do this. Right? Everyone has the ability to have an unscripted conversation. And in the same way that you and I have unscripted conversations all the time, I wonder what it is about it that feels different to folks.

Jen: I have a few reactions to this. So one is, to be fair to the listeners who are asking this question, we don't release every conversation that gets recorded. Some of them are truly terrible, and should never be heard by human ears ever.

Pete: That's true.

Jen: So, we do have that safety net of the cutting room floor.

Pete: Hmm.

Jen: If we were doing every episode live, my guess is we would at least tell each other what the topics were before we hit, "Go live.". But because we know that we don't have to release it, we don't do any prep work with each other.

Pete: Yeah.

Jen: Although once in a while, you know, we'll come to the table with something and say, "Is it cool if I talk about x?". But, I don't know, there's like some some safety net there.

Pete: Yeah, you're right.

Jen: But the other thing is, you know, we're coming up on Episode 100 pretty soon. And what might be interesting to unpack for this episode is actually what allows the conversation to move forward.

Pete: Yeah.

Jen: Because I've noticed that we have implemented practices with each other, even though we haven't like laid them down on paper to say, "This is how we have conversations.". But I think we do sort of have a framework for how we have conversations and like what are our rules of engagement with each other.

Pete: Mmm. I think there's, yeah, there's a transferable learning in here for our wonderful listeners, and for everyone, I think. Which is, it's how do you continue to show up and create new ideas, or explore new ideas? Like, what's our process that enables us to keep coming up with ideas, thoughts, questions, noodles? What's the posture that you bring to these conversations? What's the posture that I bring that might actually be helpful, transferable, and applicable to a bunch of our listeners, as opposed to them just listening to us get super meta?

Jen: Okay, well, here. I'm going to...I'm literally pulling these out of, well, not nowhere, but out of not discussing them with you ahead of time. [laughter] Improv. So one is we do our best (although we're not perfect), but we do our best to let each other get to the end of a thought before we respond. So, we're like listening for the last word in the sentence before we formulate a response.

Pete: Mm-hmm.

Jen: Second, we genuinely care.

Pete: Mmm.

Jen: So about each other, about you, the listeners, and about the things that we're talking about. We're not experts on the things that we're talking about, but we care about them. And I would say the third piece is we have become incredibly comfortable with silence. That we don't pressure each other to say something. We just sit in the silence until someone has something to say. Now, again, to be fair to the listeners, if the silence is too long, we'll edit it out. But it is something that we practice, is experiencing the silence.

Pete: Yeah. I would add to this just the idea of curiosity. Which is something, actually, that I just happened to have bookmarked in this book that I've been reading. It's called Impro by Keith Johnstone, I'll link to it in the Box O' Goodies. And there's this line that I'm looking at that says, "If an improviser is stuck for an idea, she shouldn't search for one. She should trigger her partner's ability to give unthought answers.". And then goes on to say, "So if you don't know what to do in a scene, just say something like, 'Oh my God, what is that?'". And I think there's such a rich insight here in terms of how I think about our podcast, and how I think about our conversations, and how I think others can do the same, which is approach things with curiosity. So if I don't know what to say, if you've delivered a mic drop moment and I have absolutely no idea how to possibly follow it up, often I'll ask you a question. And I will follow my curiosity. Or if I don't quite understand something you've said, because you're so brilliant and I'm like trying to keep up, I might say something like, "Could you say that again? Or, could you tell me more about what you mean by that?". And so, there's this layer of curiosity that I think is very much part of our conversations, where we don't pretend like we know what we're talking about. If we don't know what we're talking about, we will genuinely try and understand. "Okay, so tell me more about that. What does this mean? Or, what do you mean by that?" So I feel like that particular skill of curiosity, of asking questions is so transferable to so many things.

Jen: Mm-hmm.

Pete: I mean, we've talked about it as being fundamental to empathy. We've talked about it as being fundamental to creating change, delivering marketing, and selling products, services, whatever, is like understanding what it might be like to be the other person. And in order to do so, asking them questions so that you can fill the gaps that you might have.

Jen: Yes, yes, yes. I feel like I want to swing this in a totally like different direction and go back to pre-Episode One, because we're almost at Episode 100-

Pete: Swing it.

Jen: -and how we even got here. Because if the question behind the question of, "You don't script this, do you? Or, this has got to be scripted," or whatever it is, if the question behind the question is, "How do I find a friend like that, who I want to have these kind of conversations with?". ...Well, first of all, just do bad math and accidentally end up in a room with Pete Shepherd. [laughter] But that's, that's beside the point. You and I had a practice of scheduling conversation time into our calendar without knowing what we were going to talk about.

Pete: Hmm.

Jen: So we were meeting with each other maybe twice or three times a week, at that point. Just to like, get on a Zoom call and talk about things that were interesting to us.

Pete: Mm-hmm.

Jen: And then, it eventually occurred to us that we should record those conversations. But the idea (sort of similar to an argument you were making in our recent Inspiration episode, or the recent...I can't remember if we called it Inspiration or Inspire), but that episode is, if you wait until inspiration to strike to start engaging in conversation, the conversation is going to be so sporadic. But if there is someone you care about who you like exchanging ideas with, just get them in your calendar and keep the date even if you don't know what you're going to say. Because the relationship deepens, the conversation deepens. It gets layered. You suddenly start talking like each other, finishing each other's sentences. But if we waited until inspiration struck, we would never be at Episode 100.

Pete: Yeah. Such a good call out. Yeah, there's a bunch of pre-work, if you like, that went in. And we have some truly horrendous recordings from pre-Episode One, like the time Jen saw a double-rainbow as we were recording. One of my favorite moments, I still have that saved somewhere. [laughter]

Jen: Oh my gosh, maybe we should put it in the Box O' Goodies. [laughter] I'm so embarrassed, but it is such an amazing recording.

Pete: Listeners, we were mid-conversation and Jen started screaming that she could see a double rainbow. I think you might have been driving at the time we were practicing. [laughter]

Jen: I was driving, and I believe that audio clip will need to be bleeped.

Pete: Yes, most definitely it will. I think, this is so funny. I think the other thing that is coming to me is in these conversations, it's like...the listeners never hear this. Every single time we go to record...literally, I think there's probably been less than five examples where this hasn't happened. Where you will say, or I will say, "I don't know if this is going to be an episode, but here we go.".

Jen: [laughter] I'm laughing because it's so true. It's literally every time. We go, "Do you have something?" "I don't know. Do you have something?" "I don't know. My idea's half baked." "Mine's less than half baked."

Pete: It's always half baked. It's always half baked. But I think there's something in that which is, again, if I'm to reference this improv book that I've been reading...I just read this passage to you before we hopped on this call, actually. Which was that, "The improviser has to be like a man walking backwards. He sees where he has been, but he pays no attention to the future.". And I actually think that's sort of how we structure these episodes. We have a topic in mind (a half baked idea), but we literally have no idea where it's going to go. And we try and remember what we've said, and the journey we've taken to get to this point in time, and reference it back. But we don't necessarily have an end goal, an outcome, a nice bow that we're going to tie on it in our mind. That kind of, we trust that that will come if it feels like it's going to come and that's an episode worth sharing. So there's something in being unattached to what the finished product looks like, other than the constraint of at about the twenty minute mark, we'll just wrap it up.

Jen: Yeah, that's right. [laughter] I'm just laughing now because I'm thinking we could do an episode called "Sorry, Sarah". [laughter] Sarah is the person who edits the podcast. And whenever we fumble, and we like lose the thread of what we're trying to talk about, we pause, and then we'll say something like, "Did that make any sense? Like, what was that? Or, was that an ending? Should I have finished? Sorry, Sarah.".

Pete: [laughter] "Sorry, Sarah."

Jen: And then we keep going.

Pete: I love the idea of a bonus episode called "Sorry, Sarah".

Jen: So to bring it back around, we do not script the podcast. And if you also want to engage in unscripted conversations with people whose ideas you like to hear, consider scheduling a conversation date, putting it on the calendar, saying, "Hey, there's something I'd love to noodle on with you," and off you go.

Pete: And I think one final thing I want to add is, selfishly, it's so much more enjoyable, it's so much more transferable, it's more of a challenge that I enjoy to have an unscripted conversation.

Jen: Mm-hmm.

Pete: Because that thrill of it being spontaneous and not knowing what's going happen means when we have an aha moment on the episode, we're literally having an aha moment on the episode. And I think that's A. more enjoyable for the listener, but selfishly, it's helpful and beneficial and enjoyable for us. And you mentioned at some point during this episode, that part of the framework (that we don't realize as a framework) is that we care so much. I think we care about learning, and we care about having these conversations. And so, it's just more enjoyable and more fun for us to do it if it's unscripted. So, I think there's an element of that that one might bring into their creative projects. It's almost like the question could be, "How can I make this fun?". Or, "What if this was fun?". And I dare say the answer is going to be...if it's a podcast, for example, I dare say the answer will probably not be something like, "Oh, we should script it.". I think the answer will likely be, "How can we create something that is creative, spontaneous in the moment, leveraging our unique skill set?".

Jen: My friend Jasper grant always says, "Leave room for serendipity.".

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