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💥 Ignite your company culture with the Build a Vibrant Culture podcast!
We bring together incredible leaders, trailblazing entrepreneurs, and expert visionaries to share the secrets to their success, explore real-world challenges, and reveal what it truly takes to lead with energy, passion, and purpose as a 🌟VIBRANT🌟 Leader.
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[00:00:00] Announcer: This is the Build A Vibrant Culture Podcast, your source for the strategies, systems, and smarts you need to turn possibility into purpose. Every week we dive into dynamic conversations as our host, Nicole Greer, interviews leadership and business experts. They're here to shed light on practical solutions to the challenges of personal and professional development. Now, here's your host, a professional speaker, coach and consultant, Nicole Greer.
[00:00:36] Nicole Greer: Welcome everybody to the Build A Vibrant Culture podcast. My name is Nicole Greer and they call me The Vibrant Coach. And I am here today with Bill. Let me read his bio and tell you all about him. There he is. He is waving to you. Go to the YouTube and watch this. So Bill Shander is an author, educator, and information designer helping clients turn their data into compelling visual, and often interactive, experiences. He teaches data storytelling, information design, and data visualization on LinkedIn learning. He has 2 million+ learners that he has reached and in his workshops around the world, he's doing all of this stuff. He is a keynote speaker and has lectured for graduate and undergraduate students and staff at Harvard, Northeastern, Stanford, and more. And his first book, which I have in my hot little hands, and if you're looking on the YouTube, it has all of these sticky notes hanging out of it. It's really awesome. It's an awesome book. Was published by Wiley earlier this year. So, Bill, welcome to the show. I'm so glad you're here! What would you add to your bio?
[00:01:35] Bill Shander: Thank you very much, first of all for having me, Nicole. I'm very excited to be here and let's see, what would I add to my bio? You know, I have to say I started my career doing web design and development, and then I started doing the data visualization as part of that, and then I started teaching. It's sort of been this evolution of my career. It kind of happened to me. It's not like I had a strategic plan for it all. But I love what I do. I'm also in the middle right now of a big move. I moved from Boston to New Mexico and
[00:02:01] Nicole Greer: Whoa.
[00:02:01] Bill Shander: our new house is gonna be done in like two weeks. So like, there's all kinds of craziness happening in life and on top of everything else. So yeah, it's been an interesting year or two, writing the book, publishing the book, and big moves and all the rest of it. So
[00:02:13] Nicole Greer: Okay, well, gosh, what? What city in New Mexico did you say?
[00:02:17] Bill Shander: Between Albuquerque and Santa Fe. It's a little town called Placetas.
[00:02:21] Nicole Greer: Oh my gosh, don't you love it? Ah, so good. So good! That will be a big change for you. But I love both your towns, Boston and I had an aunt that lived in Albuquerque and we visited her and we had this thing called posole
[00:02:36] Bill Shander: Oh yes. Posole is very, very yummy.
[00:02:40] Nicole Greer: Yeah, that's right. That's right. Well, I, congratulations on the book. It's a big deal to get your thoughts on paper and published, especially by Wiley. It's so good. And, and the name of it is fantastic. It's called _Stakeholder Whispering_. So first thing you actually define it in the book, but you know, just for people listening, will you define what a stakeholder is? Like, set a nice foundation for us.
[00:03:03] Bill Shander: Yeah, and if you don't mind, I'll even add that I really hate the word stakeholder.
[00:03:07] Nicole Greer: Ok, sure!
[00:03:09] Bill Shander: And I almost didn't title the book with that word because it's a word that depending on where you're coming from, it means different things. Like, you know, PR people think of stakeholders as the public that's going to yell at them when they're trying to put some project in their backyard that they don't want. In work a stakeholder is your boss, your project manager, whatever. There's all, and everyone has a different perspective what that word means and, but there's no better word. And so I used it.
[00:03:33] But yeah, the basic idea of what a stakeholder is-- and this was defined by a professor at the University of Virginia who came up with this whole idea of stakeholder management. The basic idea is the stakeholder is anyone who can affect or is affected by whatever it is you're working on. So can affect or is affected by, so you know, like a boss, a client, someone who can affect change. Make you do it in this way is a stakeholder, but also people who are affected by, like the public who might be affected by that giant mine you want to dig in their backyard.
[00:04:07] Nicole Greer: Oh Lord.
[00:04:08] Bill Shander: So it's a very broad term, but you know, the way I'm usually referring to it, I'm thinking about things like bosses, clients, investors, people who are sort of asking you to do things because you're working for them in some capacity. That's sort of like my, you know, main sort of focus when I talk about stakeholders.
[00:04:25] Nicole Greer: Okay. That's fantastic. And it's in his introduction he defines it lays it really beautifully out for you what a stakeholder is, and you've defined it here. And then also what do you mean by whispering and why do I need to whisper to my stakeholders? Can you connect those two things for me?
[00:04:40] Bill Shander: Sure. Yeah. You know, the basic idea, if, I'm sure a lot of people have seen the movie or I think there was a book before the movie, _The Horse Whisperer_. And the basic gist of it, way back in the late 18th century was the first quote unquote horse whisperer, and it was somebody who, rather than like beating a horse into submission to train them, would just whisper in its ear and then the horse would magically be tamed and do what they were supposed to do. And this stakeholder whispering is not taming our boss, taming our stakeholders, but it's essentially, you know, speaking to them in a different way than we might otherwise in order to figure out what they really need from us before we do it. But the idea of horse whisperer, it's that magical way of engaging with another being, whether it's a horse or a stakeholder, in order to communicate effectively with them.
[00:05:30] Nicole Greer: Right. And so when we say that we're gonna be a stakeholder whisperer, we're gonna do stakeholder whispering, what we're trying to do is _uncover what people need before doing what they ask_. That's the subtitle of the book, right? So uncovering what people need and I think people are gonna really relate to this because I know a lot of times a leader will have an idea and it's not fully baked. And so you're sitting there holding it, okay, he wants me to do this. What should I do? You should be a stakeholder whisperer to figure out what this person really wants. Do I have that right?
[00:06:04] Bill Shander: 100%. And I love that you used that I, that phrase not fully baked. Yesterday I had my regular weekly LinkedIn live session where I bring on guests to talk about this idea of stakeholder whispering. And my guest yesterday said, and she's a boss, she is a senior leader, and she says, yes, sometimes I ask my people to do something and I ask them for a cake. And I give them the recipe, meaning she asks them for some sort of an outcome, but also tells them how to do it. She said, but she's not interested in them following her recipe necessarily. She wants them to just get her a cake, and maybe that means finding a new recipe. So yes, not fully baked. She knows her ideas aren't always fully baked as no ones are.
[00:06:44] And she needs her people to figure out what's really needed. And the thing is, you know, the human condition is full of this idea that our subconscious is driving the bus at all times. We don't really know what we need most of the time we, in our personal lives and in our work lives. So I know I'm trying to accomplish something and I'm gonna phrase it and articulate it poorly, but you know, I'm hoping that the people who work for me will sort of figure out what I really need or help me figure it out for myself.
[00:07:14] And then eventually we'll get to actually executing on the right project, the right task.
[00:07:18] Nicole Greer: Yeah, absolutely. And I love this book so much because it's about slowing down to go fast, but you talk about fast thinking and slow thinking in the book. So I have a brother who was in the military and he was like, you know, you've got these little jets up in the air and they're flying around going really fast, but they send up a tanker full of fuel. The, the jet has to slow down to get up with the tanker and it has to fill up with fuel and then they go out. And I think that the stakeholder whispering is a little bit like that, right? Like you've got this boss who's like, we need to get this done and this done and this done and this done. It's really fast, but it's like, okay, but I need to make sure we've got fuel. I know, I understand what we're doing to get this whole thing done. So it's a lot about the pace of our thinking as well. So will you talk about fast thinking, slow thinking? Will you talk about that for a minute?
[00:08:08] Bill Shander: Yeah, sure. So you know, if people have ever heard that term, that phrase, fast thinking, slow thinking. They may, may recognize it. It comes from a book that came out in 2011, I think. _Thinking Fast and Slow_ by Daniel Kahneman, a Nobel Prize winner, and he, he's not even, I don't think if it's all his research or some of it's his, but some of it's others, it goes back for decades.
[00:08:29] The basic idea is that humans think in two ways. There's fast thinking, which is the instinctive, intuitive response. I'm walking through the forest, I hear rustling in the grass, and I run, you know, like I instinctively run because otherwise I might get eaten by a tiger. Right? Even though 99% of the time it's just, just a mouse.
[00:08:49] Right. I'll be okay. That's how I pass down my genes. 'cause I'll survive even when it is a tiger. And the instinctive response works really well in that circumstance. But there's also what we call slow thinking, which is when we, to your point, we slow it down, we pause and we try to reason, we try to think that, okay, well I hear rustling in the grass, but you know, it could be a mouse. It could be a tiger. It could also be a dog, it could be my own footsteps. Maybe there's an echo, like, and we sort of process and imagine and analyze. And the thing about fast and slow thinking, you know, fast thinking is it just happens instantaneously. It's subconscious and slow thinking requires intention and reasoning, et cetera.
[00:09:34] It turns out we're not very good at slow thinking according to Kahneman and others. Our slow thinking brain as he referred to it is lazy. So we'll essentially. We'll slow things down and try to reason through, through things, but we kind of don't really do it very well. We essentially substitute easier questions to answer rather than the, the one that our fast brain is gonna answer sort of automatically. And there's all kinds of other ways that our slow thinking fails us. The long story short, at work, when your boss is going, boom, boom, boom, we need this, this, this, this. That is fast thinking and they're just doing things in the usual way. You know, we're launching a new product, we need a brochure, we launch a new product, we need a brochure. Maybe we don't need a brochure. If we slow it down and we really think that through, or maybe we need a brochure, but maybe it should be a big giant poster size instead of a little, little trifold. Like rethink what you really need by slowing it down, which is hard to do.
[00:10:31] Nicole Greer: Yeah, I love that. And in your book you actually have icons. It's, it's got kind of a flavor of a book for dummies in terms of it's got like little things in the margin. And I love Books for Dummies if y'all know what I mean. The series, you know Cooking for Dummies, you know, I.T. for dummies, whatever the thing may be. You've got little icons in here and so you've even got an icon that says you know, as you're reading this book, slow down. I think a lot people are skimmers, don't you?
[00:10:57] Bill Shander: 100%. I know I do that, like I'll read a book and I'll get to the end of the book and I'll say, I like that book. And do, do you remember anything in it? Um, yeah. Maybe one or two things, you know, so yeah, I, I really, because the entire, the, the entire idea of stakeholder whispering is about stopping the intuitive automated response.
[00:11:17] Like if I had to sum it up in like one sentence, it's like, stop doing things in the normal way and just think about it and then then approach it, you know, more strategically. And so yeah, I really wanted people to like slow it down and, and stop at this moment in the book. And there are a bunch of places in the book where I literally say, okay, now put the book down and walk away for an hour.
[00:11:34] 'Cause I want you to really percolate, you know, allow the, the ideas to percolate. 'Cause it's so easy to skim it and just skip past it.
[00:11:42] Nicole Greer: Yeah, absolutely. And then you go on to say there's two more things that you need to do while you're reading the book. Is think about a state of puzzlement or the Greek word aporia. Am I saying it right? Okay. Yeah. So, so talk about puzzlement.
[00:11:57] Bill Shander: Yeah. So, you know, the, the primary technique that I am describing to use in the book, in order to uncover what people need before doing what they ask, is the Socratic method. And, you know, the basic idea of the Socratic method, you know, a lot of people remember hearing about that in school, maybe at some point in their lives. And everybody tends to, if you do remember it, we tend to remember that, oh, it's something to do with asking questions. Right? And the Socratic method is definitely asking questions. What most people forget is that the Socratic method specifically is not asking questions to learn something yourself. I don't ask my boss what they meant by that request in order to learn the answer.
[00:12:42] That will also happen, but it's actually the other way around. The Socratic method is asking somebody questions to help them learn. The direction is going that way. And so the basic idea is, my stakeholder asks me to do something that may or may not be what they actually need. I ask them questions so that they can figure it out, so they can discover, oh yeah, I really, I meant for you to do X instead of Y. Then I'll do that. Now to your question. Aporia is a Greek word that means puzzlement. And Socrates defined the Socratic method. Not that he called it that, but he said that what he was doing is he was asking questions of his students to teach them, and the goal was to push his students into a state of Aporia. So he was literally peppering his students with questions to confuse them. And eventually they'd be so confused and, and they'd have to sort of slow it down, stop and think. From their confusion, their puzzlement, they could emerge with the insight. So it's part of the learning process. And so when we're dealing with our stakeholders, we need to ask them questions with the intention, not just to learn ourselves, but to help them discover for themselves what they actually need from us.
[00:14:00] And there will be a moment in a perfect scenario, when, when, when there is a deeper idea to be found where yes, they may, they may get slightly puzzled, they may say, oh wait. You know, I didn't think about that way before. You're right, we don't need a brochure. What we need is a new website or, you know, whatever the actual ask could have been, rather than the, you know, automated instantaneous response that they came up with.
[00:14:23] Nicole Greer: Right, right. Yeah. And you talk about the Socratic method. It's actually on page 48. I had that written down as something I wanted to ask you about. Well, the book is broken up into parts. Right. And so the, the first part of the book, what you talk about there is the what and the why and, and your first chapter's called nothing is as it seems.
[00:14:43] I love that perspective because I have a mentor, her name's Ann Sterett, and like, I'll tell her something like, I'll be like, da da da, this, this is what I think. And she'll, she'll look at me and she'll go, well, we, we don't really know. You know? Or you've got to figure it out. You can't just assume. Right? Is that a little bit about what we're talking there?
[00:15:02] Bill Shander: That's it.
[00:15:03] Nicole Greer: Okay. The what and the why. So will you talk about the what and the why of being a stakeholder whisperer.
[00:15:10] Bill Shander: Yeah, I mean, you know, the, the first and most important idea is exactly what you just said. Nothing should be taken for granted. There is, you know, I don't wanna say that there is no truth. There is no reality. But it, it's kind of almost that, right?
[00:15:24] Nicole Greer: It's fuzzy in this life,
[00:15:26] Bill Shander: Everything is fuzzy. Everything is gray area, and you know, in the context of work, okay, you know, your boss says do X. Mm. I don't know. Maybe X isn't the best thing. Maybe you don't actually know what you really need. I'm sure you're, you have a strategy, you're, you have somewhere you're trying to get to, but maybe we should figure out what the fully baked idea is. And I think that, you know, the, one of the most important ideas about stakeholder whispering about the why and the what is accepting that the base condition, the first idea, the, the fast thinking, all of it is a starting point. And it doesn't mean it's worthless. It's not all nonsense to be thrown out. It's, that's the starting point. Everything requires a little bit of investigation before you move on and start working on things.
[00:16:20] Nicole Greer: Yeah, absolutely. And in chapter two, you use a great reference to the Rolling Stones, who I absolutely adore, right? That's my generation. We need more Rolling Stones and less Coldplay. And so the famous line is you get what you need, right? So, will you talk a little bit about that for us? Like asking for what? Asking for things.
[00:16:41] Bill Shander: Yeah. So, you know, the, I started off with the Coldplay quote, which comes from one of their songs, and I'm gonna butcher the quote now 'cause I don't have it in front of me. But the basic idea of the quote is maybe you have it in front of you, maybe you can read it if, if you have it quickly accessible because I don't, I don't wanna get it wrong.
[00:16:56] Nicole Greer: Yeah, let me see if I can find it. Hold on. We don't have to be fast. We don't have to be quick thinkers right now. We can be messy.
[00:17:03] Bill Shander: Alright.
[00:17:04] Nicole Greer: I got it. I got it. I got it. Okay. Coldplay expressed the idea perfectly "When you try your best, but you don't succeed; When you get what you want, but not what you need."
[00:17:16] Bill Shander: So that's the lyric from their song. I think it's from Fix You. Yeah. You get what you want, but not what you need. And bosses tend to get what they want, what they ask for. But it's not what they need sometimes. And to your point, the Rolling Stones said the very similar idea, but the exact opposite. They said, you can't always get what you want, but if you try, sometimes you just might find you get what you need.
[00:17:44] And so, yeah, I want us to find a place where we can live a little bit more in the Rolling Stones mode where, yeah, maybe you can't get what you want, boss. You may not get that cake that you asked for, but we're gonna get you what you need. We're gonna give you a different type of cake that's really delivering on what you actually need, which is more important than what you thought you wanted.
[00:18:03] Nicole Greer: Yeah. And you know, as I read the book and as I'm listening to you, you know, I talk to people at the mid-level of management and they're listening to the folks in the C-suite and oftentimes they're closer to the problem. They're closer to the customer stakeholder, you know.
[00:18:19] And I think this is a, a, a great book to read in order to lead up. Like the stakeholder whispering, that old fashioned thing we called leading up. And so I think it's fantastic and giving you the, the tips and techniques to do that, I think. I think it's really great.
[00:18:34] Bill Shander: And by the way, that brings up a hugely important point, which is that there's, there's always multiple stakeholders, right? So you just said it, your customer is a stakeholder, right? They are the ones using your product, your service, whatever. Your boss is also your stakeholder. They're asking you to do stuff, but your boss needs reminding the customer stakeholder is who it's all for. Now, you may need reminding from your boss that, well, your investors are also a stakeholder or you know, whoever, whoever. And so prioritize. List all your stakeholders, prioritize them, and figure out you know what to do for each of them as best you can.
[00:19:11] Nicole Greer: Yeah. And, and back to what you said, which is chapter six in the book is about asking questions and I'm a coach. And when you're talking about the Socratic method and asking what I would call powerful questions, I just get all excited because that's what we do in coaching, right? Is we ask these questions to get the other person to learn or get them to have a new connection in their neural passage ways or whatever, right?
[00:19:32] We're really trying to help this person out. I think this is, is really powerful to learn how to do these things. Okay. All right. So we gotta help people get what they need. It may not be what they think they want. Okay. That's where I'm landing. Do I have that right, Bill? Am I good? Okay. All right, good.
[00:19:49] All right. So then you talk about everything is UX, UX standing for user experience. So will you share with us kind of how this foundationally fits in with the what and the why of, uh, stakeholder whispering?
[00:20:02] Bill Shander: Yeah. You know, it's something that, you know, I, I used to do web design development years ago. And in the world of design, we talk about user experience, especially interactive design all the time. It's been, it's, it's part of like the language of what we do. We recognize that we have people who use the things we create, websites, apps, whatever.
[00:20:19] And we're trying to create an experience for them that works, that's easy to use, accomplishes the tasks that are going for, et cetera. Outside of that world of design and interactive experience, that phrase, that term, that idea of user experience is sort of a new idea. Although there are similar ideas like customer experience that some industries are starting to talk about, but when you wrap your head around the idea that every single thing that you do is creating an experience for somebody else. I don't care like what you're doing. You know, Starbucks doesn't sell coffee. They create an experience around the joy of drinking a cup of coffee in a nice space with, you know, your laptop out, et cetera. You know, banks don't lend you money. They create an experience with that money because you have to like, call them on the phone. And that's a horrible experience that the phone tree and you go into the bank and, you know, waiting in line for an hour is a horrible experience. And like, so there can be good experiences, they can be bad experiences.
[00:21:17] So whether it's a B2B or B2C, whether you're selling services or products, it's all an experience. And the reason I think it's important to look at it that way, is that an experience. Reminds you, I'm not selling widgets. I am dealing with humans. And to your point, you just made a moment ago, that's my customer stakeholder. And when you reorient your mind to thinking about that, you remember Yeah, I have to think about what does that person need from me. And yes, my boss, I'm creating an experience when I'm working with them, what do they need from me? And so it just allows you to sort of rethink how you approach everything when you remember that it's all about experience. And I'm not the first person to say this, you know there there's a very famous school of design called Design Thinking, which is all about creating an experience when you're designing anything. And design is not just making pretty pictures, it's creating these experiences for users.
[00:22:13] Nicole Greer: Ah, that's so good. And you know, the word culture pops off the page because, you know, that's what I'm trying to talk about on my end of things. And so you say on page 30 "We finally broadly believe in user experience as culture. Businesses generally understand that asking customers to tell them what to do isn't the answer. We know that we need a more nuanced approach to creating solutions to real challenges, whether in product design, HR policy, supply chain reporting, or any of the endless tasks. That's why we call it user experience or customer development or design thinking or anything else. It's people and purpose." So I, I love that in there, that culture is also the user experience.
[00:22:53] What I was thinking, when I was reading this is like, oh my gosh, I gotta get up with Bill. How do we get this in the DNA of an organization where everybody has like a stakeholder whisperer mindset, right? So that the culture is very concerned about making sure people get what they need, not just what they want. We're not just. You know, offering up whatever it is that's being asked for and we're really doing great work. I think, I think it would shift a culture. Do you have an experience or a thought about a company that's put this in place and, and what they're experiencing? From a culture standpoint?
[00:23:30] Bill Shander: Yeah, I mean, I can tell you this, that, you know, I've spoken to a lot of companies since the book came out. One, one client of mine is a consulting firm and their HR group essentially got the book, gave the book to, you know, a a bunch of their staff. I did a little talk where I sort of introduced the ideas of the book, and then they had like a, like, almost like a book group session afterwards and like some, they did some role playing and some exercises. And I spoke with her recently and you know, the CHRO and she said that the, they're still talking about the book, that the ideas are percolating and, you know, it's really good. And, and so it's starting to seep into the culture within the HR department, which is of course very good because from HR that's where culture might expand. 'Cause they may, they might be bleed out into training programs or whatever else. But you know, the fact that they, they recognized that this is something that they need to do, not just the leadership, but the, the other people, the mid-level people were like, yeah, we need to do this. We know we need to do it, and we're not good at it. We don't know how to do it.
[00:24:38] Which brings up a really good question that, that I get all the time where people say, and you mentioned the idea of managing up before. It's hard to do. It's hard to push your boss and say, well, okay, you, you said you want X, but I think maybe you might need Y. And how to conduct those conversations is difficult. And when you have a culture to your point that accepts that this must occur, then those conversations are much more comfortable and much easier to have.
[00:25:04] Nicole Greer: Yeah. And the other thing that just popped in my head just this moment is, you know, uh, I talk a lot when I'm talking about people, about how to build a vibrant culture. The first question I ask the individuals in my training is I say, what is it like to experience you? Back to user experience. And a lot of, a lot of people are like, huh, I've never really thought about that before. And I'm like, well, it's high time you did, you know, because the experience of Bill and the experience of Nicole is the experience around this person, which creates the culture of the work environment that people are working in.
[00:25:37] And I think what I love so much about your book is that it's, it's helping you to do what you need to do to maybe remove a little bit of ego that might be at play.
[00:25:49] Bill Shander: And it's hard because you're, you're hoping that your boss's ego will be removed too. So the boss is reading this. Hopefully they'll, they'll be introspective and realize they need to remove their ego a little bit. And then, yeah, for the rest of us who are managing up it's hard to do, you have to do it with humility. You have to do it with, you know, and I have a chapter on curiosity. Right? So, you know, you have to be authentically, genuinely serious. And when you're authentically curious and you authentically, genuinely want to do the best you can for your company, sometimes that includes, yes, saying, Hey boss, you know. I get the strategy, I get, the direction I get, what you're trying to accomplish. Did you ever think about maybe doing it this way a and to help them really get what they need. And when you do it with a genuine authenticity and a goal of collective goodness, then it's gonna be better received. But I love that idea. You know, what is the experience of you? That's a great question.
[00:26:43] Nicole Greer: Oh, I and I and, and it stuns people because it's kind of like this whole thing. Like they think that, you know, the world is the problem or the world is dangerous. And they're not dangerous. It's like, you know, we all have a lot of work to do.
[00:26:57] You mentioned the HR department. I'm just having another thought. You're gonna have to write a second book probably Bill, and it's like, stakeholder whispering. So it'll be like employee, employee whispering, which is the same thing, I think. But like from an HR perspective, I'm an old HR gal and a, a lot of HR people listen to this podcast. We have so many one-on-one conversations with employees, you know, and if we could remove ego and help them see the, the lesson and why they're in the HR office or whatever, I think it would be super helpful. So this is for all HR. Okay.
[00:27:27] Announcer: Are you ready to build your vibrant culture? Bring Nicole Greer to speak to your leadership team, conference or organization to help them with their strategies, systems, and smarts to increase clarity, accountability, energy, and results. Your organization will get lit from within! Email her at nicole@vibrantculture.com and be sure to check out Nicole's TEDx talk at vibrantculture.com.
[00:27:59] Nicole Greer: All right. So the second part of the book, second part of the book the first part's "What and why." And the second part is "How Ideas." So now you're gonna give us some ideas on actually how to do this thing, right? So will you kind of jump into how do you do stakeholder whispering?
[00:28:15] Bill Shander: Yeah. And so, you know, I can't remember not not having the book in front of me, you know, the exact, like, I may mention some things that come even in the later section. 'cause as you're, I know you're gonna talk about the third section is like the how hands-on specific techniques. But the how, how big ideas are things like curiosity that I just mentioned, right? You have to be curious and genuinely wanting to improve the state of your organization and accomplish real, you know, strategic tasks. Um, and actually I keep using the word strategic for a reason, you
[00:28:47] Nicole Greer: Yeah, I love that word.
[00:28:48] Bill Shander: Talked about it that much in the book. Okay. Yeah. It's so important. It's like, you know, I think that any success I've had in my career is because I never looked at what I did as a bunch of tasks. I need to design this program that created an interactive experience, X, Y, Z. It was always like, why, like why are we doing this to accomplish a goal? And when you have that strategic viewpoint, you're gonna do better work and you're gonna be more valued in your organization 'cause people recognize you as somebody who actually wants to achieve things that are for the, you know, the, the greater good of the organization. So curiosity is super important. Empathy. Empathy is also really important. You know, you have to be empathetic to your boss, right? Like essentially you have to understand where they're coming from, why they might be suggesting X, Y, or Z. And I keep saying boss, but you know, any stakeholder, client, investor, whoever, why they're asking you for it and why they're asking for it in this way and the best way that you can engage with them and speak with them in order to help them discover the true underlying need that they're going for. So there's a lot of ideas like that, you know, like what are sort of the, the attributes that will help you be a better stakeholder whisperer. Before we move on to start talking about the specific tasks related to that, uh,
[00:30:03] Nicole Greer: Okay, fantastic. So the how is more like how, how do I need to be before when I use these, these tools? Right? Like how do I need to be like, okay. All right. I think that's
[00:30:13] Bill Shander: And one of them, by the way, is to remember that I don't care whether you're day one, junior employee, mid-level manager, or C-Suite, because even the C-Suite has stakeholders, right? They're talking to the board or the CEO or whoever. We all have stakeholders and I don't care where you on that chain, you have a right and a responsibility to do this. You know, if you're day one junior person just entered your job, yeah, you're not gonna do it quite as aggressively as a C-suite person. But you know what, you still should be asking clarifying questions before you jump in and start doing stuff. And again, maybe it's a little bit less, it's a little bit toned back. Maybe it's like one question to start it off, but we all belong where we are in our work and have, and have a responsibility to try to get to the strategic goals before we jump in and do tasks.
[00:31:02] Nicole Greer: Yeah. And you know, I think really when you're talking about that junior person, you know, asking the questions of like the, their, their mid-level manager I think at the end of the day the mid-level manager is so grateful that that person is asking questions. So I think that's such a good encouragement you gave there. I often say this in one of my programs. I teach how to have good meetings and I think this has everything to do with having a good meeting stakeholder whispering where I just think it has everything to do with a good meeting. But you know how leaders are at the end of the meeting, they'll be like, does anybody have any questions? I mean, that's like the last thing they say. And I tell my leaders, knock it off. Stop saying that at the end of your meeting. Instead say, I need five questions before we get outta here. So we have clarity.
[00:31:46] Bill Shander: Yeah.
[00:31:47] Nicole Greer: And and then I make the joke that, you know, if you don't get any questions, because everybody's like, no, I'm just ready to get outta this meeting. Then people have what I call the meeting after the meeting,
[00:31:56] Bill Shander: Right.
[00:31:57] Nicole Greer: And they're standing around going, I have a lot of questions about this project. And it's like the leader asked you if you had any questions, but if you became a stakeholder whisperer, you would see like, you know, you need to ask the questions, right. So you can, you can give this person what they need.
[00:32:16] Bill Shander: And by the way, you know, like one of the other, how big ideas is active listening, right? Which is a really interesting topic. Yeah. And, and you know, you have to listen really closely and really intently, which means you're not formulating your follow up or your, your defensive response or your next question while you're listening. You're really listening and engaging. You know, your, your brain. Now, you may have to be taking notes, you may have to be doing things like that, but that does not mean even though you're actively listening, you can't help it. You're gonna formulate questions, things that you're not quite sure about. Oh, I'm not, I don't don't even know what this means. So you circle it. Then at the end of the meeting when the boss says, gimme five questions, you probably should have some. You know, so listening doesn't mean not also engaging your brain, but it does mean like trying your best to sort of disengage your intuitive response to what you're hearing. You know, it's really, really, you know, listening thoughtfully without reacting too much.
[00:33:19] Nicole Greer: Right, right. Yeah. So that just is such a coaching moment right there. So, you know, Bill, I got my first little coaching certificate back in 2007 and it changed me.
[00:33:28] Bill Shander: Yeah.
[00:33:28] Nicole Greer: I, I, I was supposed to get coaching so I could help other people, but really, I, I had a huge shift in who I was because we practiced on each other and they told us the very thing that you just said. They said there's three levels of listening. The first level of listening is I'm just listening to respond. I'm calculating, I'm judging. I'm doing all my fast thinking that you're talking about. Level two is like really listening for what's between the words and the values and the concepts and the needs of this other person in level three is like watching body language and just all these things. So active listening. Don't ask a bunch of questions if you're not ready to listen. I just, very good. Made happy, talking about listening. Alright. Okay. Now I wanna talk about chapter seven for a second. It's still in the how and this is the how of how I need to be in order to go do the how of the whispering. But it's called useful paranoia, which I just, I, that's a great chapter title. Talk about useful paranoia. I love that.
[00:34:30] Bill Shander: Yeah. Yeah. So useful paranoia. Another way of saying it, it's critical thinking. But I didn't wanna use that term because critical thinking. It's too loaded in a lot of different ways. Yeah. And it's boring. Useful paranoia. I just love thinking about it that way because the basic idea is, you know, if we go back to the very beginning of the book, nothing is as it seems. Okay. If nothing is as it seems, then I should be essentially paranoid at all times that there's a horrible mistake about to happen. Something's going wrong. This is a wrong idea. There must be something else going on here. But of course, complete paranoia is destabilizing and not really good for your mental health, et cetera. So you don't wanna be completely paranoid and that's where useful, the word useful comes into play. So, useful paranoia, like I, I question everything. I do it in a thoughtful way. And so yeah, you have to have that state of mind. Nothing is as it seems, therefore everything should be investigated. And eventually I'll get past it. Eventually the paranoia goes away and I'm like, okay, I think I found what I'm supposed to be doing and I can move on. But you know, you have to have that sort of frame of mind, I think.
[00:35:35] Nicole Greer: Absolutely. Another thing just kind of bubbled up when you were talking. You know, we've got our stakeholders around, or our boss as we're talking about, is asking us for something and we make assumptions about what the boss, you know, like why is he asking me to do this? Why, why, why doesn't he give this to her to do? She's better at this than me, you know, or you know, I thought he was gonna giving me higher level things to do and he is giving me this lower level thing to do. So I think even before we start to think about how to do the task we've been given is like there's a lot of other paranoia that comes up inside of people, but to understand that you're jumping to conclusions and maybe it's a little bit of emotional intelligence too that needs to kind of seep in there. Yeah. Like it's not personal.
[00:36:19] Bill Shander: That's definitely true. Yeah,
[00:36:21] Nicole Greer: Okay. All right. So we have the what and the why, and then we have the how ideas, which is like, how do I need to be while I'm doing my stakeholder whispering? And now we're gonna go to How: Hands On, which is part three of the book. And so chapter 12 is also funny. Let me just say Bill is a funny person. Like when you read his book it's like he's talking to you. Okay. Which I absolutely adore. It's not like researchy, although he has tons of quotes and I think science is all up in this book. Backwords and forwards and bookmarked and all the things.
[00:36:50] Alright, so chapter 12 says How to run a therapy session, which I think is great because work sometimes feels like that. So you talk again about the Socratic method in there and you talk about asking questions again, but will you talk a little bit about how to actually run the inquiry, the whispering.
[00:37:09] Bill Shander: Yeah. Well, you know, it's funny you mentioned it before and I was gonna, I was gonna follow up then, but I'm glad that we have an opportunity to, now, you said that when you started doing coaching first of all, it helped you, but you also said that in coaching you ask questions to help them, you know, your, your mentee or coachee, figure out what they should be doing. And it sounds a lot like therapy, doesn't it? Right. And I've always joked, yeah. I've always joked in my world of design as an example. It's always like therapy. You know, when like when a client comes and says, oh, we need a new logo. Well, what do you want the logo to be about? Well, we want it to be look like this and do that, and blah, blah, blah. You know? Well, tell me more about like the, the, the bones of this organization. Tell me more about the, like, the, what is this company really about? And it's very much like a therapeutic session. It's like you get to like the, the heart of the matter about the culture and all kinds of other things in design conversations.
[00:38:01] Long story short. Therapy is the best metaphor because therapy specifically uses the Socratic method. Therapy is all about, you know, a patient comes in, they, they've suffered some sort of trauma, or they wanna work through whatever issues they're trying to work through. The therapist doesn't say, okay, go do 10 pushups and you'll be all better. Right? Or, go write in your journal for an hour. They say, how did that make you feel? They ask you questions and they ask you more questions. They said, well, you know, when, when did this happen? How old were you? And you know, tell me more about that day. And you know, how did you feel afterwards and did you talk to anybody? It's all questions. And so the way you know therapists run a therapy session I thought would be instructive. And so I read some books and articles about how that works. And it was exactly like I keep saying it's the Socratic method. Digging into someone's psyche, but they're doing the digging. You're not doing the digging.
[00:38:57] You're not telling them what to do. You're not even like, you know, trying to probe them to get the answer. You're trying to trigger in them the introspection to find the answer themselves. And so that's the whole idea here. You're like, your boss wants you to do Task X and you're gonna question it, not to be a pain in the butt, but be, you know, 'cause you wanna make sure you're doing the right thing. And when you ask those questions, they're gonna be introspective, they're gonna think about what are they really trying to accomplish. So it, it is, it's therapy. I mean, it's, it's truly what the process is like.
[00:39:28] Nicole Greer: Oh, that's fantastic. Yeah. And, and then the next thing you talk about is, is practicing empathy. Right. And and I'll say another thing that I've noticed, you know, in all my years of doing HR and investigations and things is like an employee will look up to the boss, you know, and that's their stakeholder, but they will have disdain for their leader because they think their leader's not that bright, or their leader doesn't understand, or their leader can't see something. Right? And so we judge it. He can't even see what's going on. You know, like there's this attitude of judging, but like, oh my gosh, he doesn't understand what's going on. You know, like there's a difference between those two things. There's like this judgy part and there's this like, I better help him see what's going on. And that's so much better for everybody. If you can help the leaders see by empathizing that he's got a blindfold on, right.
[00:40:22] Bill Shander: It's so true. And like, you know, this book in particular could easily be read from their perspective of, oh, bosses are clueless. We'll help 'em figure it out, and then we'll do the right thing. Yeah. I, I try to say again and again and again in the book, yeah. That's not what we're here to do. We're not here to like, you know, laugh at them. We're not here to put them down. We're not here to just say anything bad
[00:40:41] Nicole Greer: Right. To be condescending. Right, right.
[00:40:44] Bill Shander: Yeah, it, it's all about empathy. Like I get it, like bosses are busy, bosses have 1200 other people they're trying to deal with to get them to do tasks. They've got a million things going on, and so they're gonna be fast thinking and assigning tasks, and it, it's inevitable. And by the way, it's the human condition. You and I and all of us are also doing the exact same thing. And so yeah, we have to have empathy for them. We have to you know, as best we can understand where they're coming from, why these things might be missed, and, and just acknowledging that everybody does it and therefore we can try to help them get there by asking good questions.
[00:41:19] But empathy is, is absolutely critical. Otherwise, yes, to your point, you know, you're gonna have disdain, you're gonna feel superior, and that's not what it's about.
[00:41:26] Nicole Greer: Not at all. Not at all. Yeah. And here's the thing. If you think about it, if you are the person helping the leader see you'll, you'll turn into this thing that I often tell you know, employees when I'm, I'm going into counseling with them, I'm like you're gonna end up being their wing man. You know, which is, I think the number two position is a very good position to be in. You know what I mean? You're the internal trusted advisor. And so if you can practice these, uh, hands-on how things, I think it's really important.
[00:41:53] Now, I love LEAN and Six Sigma stuff. And you have the five whys in here on page 110. So, it's in the chapter called Starting Broad and Digging Deep. So we're in the therapy session. We're having empathy for our leader, and we're gonna start broad and then dig deep. We talk a little bit about doing that and the five why's. 'cause I think that's a wonderful tool.
[00:42:17] Bill Shander: Yeah, the basic idea is, we're doing the Socratic method, we're asking them questions, and you know, the five why's is just an amazing technique to get to the true underlying issue at hand. And so for those of you who haven't heard of the five why's. The story that I've always heard to describe it comes from Toyota, Mr. Toyota himself, you know, launched Toyota Motor Company goes to the factory one day. And by the way, this story is actually not true. I've since discovered it because when Mr. Toyota, the grandfather, whatever was actually involved, it wasn't even a car company yet. So, you know, take it all with a grain of salt. But the lesson is so good. He goes to the factory. The, the line is down and there's no cars coming off the line. And he says, why is the line down? That's the first why, right? And somebody says, oh, the, you know, the, the, the machine broke. Oh. Why did the machine break? Well, you know, one of the gears snapped off because something got stuck in the machine. Why did something get stuck in the machine? Somebody bumped into the machine and knocked something off. They, okay. Why did somebody bump into the machine? Well, there was water on the floor. Why was there water on the floor? Because the custodian was out sick. So you finally figured out that the issue isn't like a manufacturing quality issue. It's not a, not a maintenance issue for the machinery, et cetera, et cetera. But the real problem was, was a staffing issue with the custodial staff. So you have to ask multiple why's before you finally discover the true underlying issue at hand. And that's the basic idea here. We start broad. We may ask big questions, you know, why is this happening? Why do you really think you need X, Y, or Z? But you dig deeper and deeper and deeper and more and more detailed, and eventually discover what really needs to be done.
[00:43:53] Nicole Greer: Hmm. So good. All right. And then on page 111, which is still in chapter 14, starting broad and digging deep you've got the, the gist of powerful questions. You say the dance of the six Ws, the who, what, when, where, how, why. So will you talk a little bit about asking questions that begin with those starter words.
[00:44:12] Bill Shander: Yeah. And you know, I was a journalist, trained as a journalist, and we learned that you gotta include those questions or answers to those questions in every article you write. And as close to the beginning as as possible. Who, what, when, where, why, and that's good advice for, you know, an article. But the reason the questions are very powerful is those are part of all the questions you're gonna want to ask anyways.
[00:44:32] Why are we creating this thing? Who is it for? When is it due, et cetera. But the key to the dance of the six Ws is the dancing around part. 'cause if you remember the Socratic method, we're trying to get our audience or our, our respondent into a state of Aporia, that that moment where they see things in a different way.
[00:44:53] And we we're jumping from a wet to a why to a win, to a how to a win, to a how to a why. Slight imbalance it gets, especially when we realize that some of those questions are what's called divergent questions. Why? There's an endless answer to why. And some of them are convergent questions. When? Due next Thursday, right?
[00:45:15] And when you have divergent and convergent questions together and you're bouncing in between the two. There's this, first of all, comfort discomfort that happens because some people are more comfortable with one type of question than the other. And broad open-ended questions are expansive, and I can go on and on about them.
[00:45:35] And then the short convergent questions are boom, boom, boom. And this imbalance naturally will occur. And again, you're not trying to confuse your stakeholders like actually was doing, but the result will be this moment of, ooh. Wait. Yeah, hold on. I never saw it that way. And that's the moment where your stakeholders find and be like, yeah, I don't need what I said I needed. Maybe I need this. And so it's just the opportunity for that insight to occur.
[00:46:06] Nicole Greer: So good, so good. I, I hadn't thought about the convergent in, uh, I think that's so good. You just taught me something. That's why I do this, everybody. Great. Uh, and I hope you, you listeners listening to this are like, oh my gosh, we love Bill. He's the best. He's teaching us all about this thing. Stakeholder whispering. I love it. All right, so let's talk about one more kind of how to you say chapter 23. Let's talk about bias, baby. So, boy, that word bias is out there everywhere. And we have them. Yeah. We have little lenses and glasses we have on. So will you talk about how bias might enter into our stakeholder whispering.
[00:46:43] Bill Shander: Yeah. I mean it goes back to the very beginning of the book. Nothing is as it seems. And because we are flawed humans. Mm-hmm. Every single experience you have is filtered through a bias of one kind or another. And we're not talking about like, you know, social biases. Right? Although that's also a thing, right.
[00:47:02] Nicole Greer: That's out there too.. Mm-hmm.
[00:47:04] Bill Shander: Yeah. But you know, here it's just basic subconscious psychological bias. And I give a few examples in the book and like, you know, a simple one just to, for people to relate to is you know, there's a very, very famous like math problem called the bat and the ball problem. And if I said to you, all right, you know, a bat costs a dollar more than a ball and it threw together costs a dollar and 10, how much is the ball and how much is the bat? The instinctive fast thinking response is, you know, one number and, but the correct response is a slightly different number, and if you slow things down, think it through, you might get to the correct answer versus the instinctive automated response.
[00:47:48] That's actually also part of a psychological bias. There's a, that play in why we think a certain way. You know, we anchor things. So in that case, it's a dollar and it's a dollar. 10, one's a dollar, and the other it must be a dollar and 10 cents, right? No, no, no. You anchor it on a number. That's a, a psychological bias versus thinking if you're slowing things down.
[00:48:06] There are a million and one of these biases. There's actually a great graphic out there and I can't remember what it's called, long story short. It's a, it's a, it's like a, a wheel and around the wheel is the list of every single psychological bias, and there's literally dozens of 'em. There's like a hundred of these things.
[00:48:23] Nicole Greer: Oh, we're goog things mad. Everybody's googling like mad right now, Bill.
[00:48:25] Bill Shander: Yeah. Yeah. And I list a whole bunch of them in the book that sort of talk about how these particular biases play in different ways and how we approach these things. But long story short. Our brains do all kinds of weird things and, and every time there's an opportunity for you to be thinking A, when really the answer is B, but A is the way your brain is gonna just by default.
[00:48:45] So it's also tied to the fast thinking, slow thinking. We gotta, we gotta assume useful paranoia at all times That. Our first response might not be correct, so probe it and then maybe we'll discover the correct answer.
[00:48:58] Nicole Greer: That's right. And, and he does have a list of biases in the book on page 175, 176, and 177. So really, really good. So the, the very last part of the book is kind of like your final thoughts and it's Now What? All right. So we've talked about the what and the why. We've talked about how I need to be, I need to be a great, active listener. I need to ask these powerful questions. I need to have empathy. I need to take a good look at my listening or my biases, right? And so you've given us some tools. So, so now if somebody read this book, what do they do? What are your instructions? What should we do next? How do we get this going?
[00:49:34] Bill Shander: Yeah. I mean, you know, the first piece of advice is "Do it." You know, like literally the next time you sit down, your boss says, go do X, and especially if you're a junior, right? Even if you just start off by asking one question, and it's the most important question to start off with almost always anyways. All right, boss, you want me to do X? I heard you. How are we gonna measure success when I accomplish x? That's like the opening question to start to figure out what really needs to happen. Because if they say, you know, if they say, all right, we need a new brochure for the new, how are we gonna measure success? Well, you know, they're gonna be we're gonna have an article in the New York Times about it. How's a brochure gonna do that? Oh yeah, you're right. If we want an article, maybe a brochure isn't the right thing. Literally, that question alone can start to get you down the pathway. That's right. So yeah, just start by doing it.
[00:50:31] And, you know, related to that is acknowledging something that we sort of alluded to earlier. You know, managing is not always so easy. And part of this is also recognizing that not all of our stakeholders are whisperable. There's gonna be stakeholders who are more amenable to this, where the culture is more oriented towards this, et cetera. And there's gonna be some, you know. Don't tell anybody, but some bosses.
[00:50:57] Nicole Greer: Everybody listen up.
[00:50:58] Bill Shander: Yeah. Some bosses are jerks. You know, and,
[00:51:01] Nicole Greer: They are.
[00:51:02] Bill Shander: Don't want you to bug them. They're just, do what I said, but, you know, so your job is to find a new boss if you're stuck with a boss like that.
[00:51:10] Nicole Greer: Oh, amen. Get your resume together. Mm-hmm.
[00:51:13] Bill Shander: Yeah. But when you find that that company, that organization where the culture has percolated out and your boss is open to these conversations as they should be 'cause better work will will happen when we do it. Then you know, it, it, it starts with you actually, you know, being usefully paranoid, engaging in these Socratic dialogues with your, your stakeholders and, you know, better stuff will happen. I, I guarantee it.
[00:51:36] Nicole Greer: Yeah, I think so too. I absolutely love this book. All right, everybody, all my friends out there, you know, I want you to go out and get this book. It's _Stakeholder Whispering_ by Bill Shander. There it is. Uncover what people need before doing what they ask. I think this could be a game changer for you.
[00:51:53] And you know it's gonna build trust. Well, we didn't talk about that, but that was the other thing I thought I wrote in the margins at one point. I'm like, this is gonna build a lot of trust.
[00:52:01] Bill Shander: Yeah, yeah.
[00:52:02] Nicole Greer: Between stakeholders, if they slow down and spend some quality time doing all this together. So good. So good. Bill, if people wanna get ahold of you, I know that you're on the LinkedIn where else could they get ahold of you? What, what do you wanna give us so we can call you and we can talk to you about your, your book and your, all your work.
[00:52:19] Bill Shander: Sure, yeah. You can always find me at my website, which is just my name, billshander.com. And or on LinkedIn. So good.
[00:52:27] Nicole Greer: Okay. And if you go to billshander.com you can also get a free ebook preview. Do I have that right?
[00:52:33] Bill Shander: That is correct.
[00:52:34] Nicole Greer: Okay. All right. Very good. We would love for y'all to go do that, and also, if you enjoyed picking up all these nuggets from Bill today, would you go down just for a hot second and click, you know, the thumbs up. It only takes a hot second. And if you really did enjoy it and you got a nugget, why don't you share with Bill the big takeaway that you got from this? And of course I always appreciate all of you listening to the Build A Vibrant Culture podcast. Bill, thank you so much. And do you have all of your things packed? He said that he's moving to New Mexico. Are you packed? Are you ready to go? Are the pictures padded up? Ready to get in the U-Haul?
[00:53:07] Bill Shander: What's funny is we sold our place like eight months ago and we've, we've been sourced, oh no. Traveling around and now the new house is almost done being built. So yeah, all that stuff is in storage to be unpacked soon. Thank you.
[00:53:20] Nicole Greer: Oh, very good. All right everybody, thanks again for listening to the Build A Vibrant Culture podcast. Have a great rest of your day.
[00:53:28] Bill Shander: Thank you so much.
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