Greg McKeown:
Welcome. I’m your host, Greg McKeown. I’m the author of a couple of New York Times bestsellers, Effortless and Essentialism. And I’m here with you on this journey to learn how to understand each other.
Greg McKeown:
Have you ever felt stuck in a relationship? It could be at work, could be at home, where the more you push, the worse it gets. The harder you try to escape, the tougher it is to actually make progress. On the last episode, I began and introduce you to my guest again today, professor C. Terry Warner. He is the genius behind the Arbinger Institute. In part one, he shared the story of unlocking one of the great mysteries of psychology. If you’ve missed it, go back and listen to it now. This is part two of two. In this episode, we will discuss how to apply that surprising insight through some personal stories, some counterintuitive learnings, and some actionable advice. By the end of this episode, you will be able to begin the actual journey of breaking through the most intractable relationships of your life. Let’s begin.
Greg McKeown:
Remember to share the ideas in this podcast episode to someone else within the next 24 to 48 hours. Let me just ask you one question. I mean, one of the challenges effectively in this book I’m writing is in this research, it’s this combination of, in fact, it’s a non-trivial problem for me to just know even how to lay the book out exactly. Because in one sense, I love the idea that the process is, well begin by trying to understand the other person, kind of a seek first to understand. But it’s more than that, but it’s helping someone else to feel deeply understood, which is a subtle difference. And then, okay, it’s important to be vulnerable enough, to be able to share how you are feeling, where you are coming from as well. So that seems like step two, but then there’s this other step as you well know, and articulated as well, like, yeah, understanding yourself, knowing what you are doing, seeing how you are playing a part in this.
Greg McKeown:
And I don’t even, I can’t quite work out where to even put it. In a sense, you have to start with it. But on the other hand, if you start with it, what I’ve learned about books is that people never read past the first, like, you know, a lot of people never read past the first three, four chapters, maybe. So, if you mean to get to a subject at some point, and you didn’t get to it there, then they didn’t get to it. Then as far as they’re concerned, the book isn’t about it. So it’s a funny interrelated thing, right? To how to prioritize, understanding yourself as it relates to other people. I mean, that’s part of your great contribution is that you cannot divide these. This is a fools errand to try to divide, to try to understand what’s going on in somebody else without seeing what you’re doing to yourself in this self deception.
Greg McKeown:
Like, if you miss the self deception, you get everything else wrong. Even if you’re kind of quite sincerely trying to see the other side in other people’s behavior and actions. I’ve had a situation of, I would say, not a small level of conflict with former people I’d worked with. And I have, you know, I mean, the Lord knows, I have tried in my heart to make amends and to find a way forward and apologize and to try, you know, to all of these kinds of things. And yet it has remained me until maybe a couple of months ago. I was giving a talk in church about following the promptings you receive basically, but using language from Lauren Dalton, who talks about following the first Bing. He says, there’s a first Bing, there’s a second Bing.
Greg McKeown:
The first Bing is God. The second Bing is the devil. Like that’s the idea. The simplified version. And you’ve just got to trust the first Bing that you are receiving promptings. And I’ve been trying to follow that adventure. And it has taken me all over. Amazing. And as I was about to give the talk, I have this prompting to reach out to one of these former business associates and ask them to be a bridge to the other person who I’m trying to reach. And the falling out, I mean, the falling let’s say is both of them for different reasons. And they ended up working together. So it’s like, in a sense, it’s my nightmare because it’s like, I just want to make it all right. And I have forever, but I cannot seem to do it. So this prompting comes and I even feel like I’m supposed to just leave right before my talk and call them.
Greg McKeown:
And I just, it was one step beyond what I could do. So I didn’t do that, but I did call them later and then called emailed them later after that a couple of weeks later because I hadn’t heard back from them, you know? And after the phone call, I thought, well, I’ve, I’ve done my part. You know, this is as awkward as it could be. And they’re bound to judge me for doing this and see me as being manipulative and whatever else. But then I felt like that wasn’t enough. And so I emailed them and I, we ended up having a couple of conversations with the first business associate. The person I was asking to be a bridge. And it was so healing. It is absolutely remarkable to me because of course I can take no credit for the idea.
Greg McKeown:
Because I certainly had never had it myself. And I would never have done it myself. You know, like there’s a million reasons why it would never have been mine. But it’s like the master stroke, truly, from the master. Because all of the sudden one person who feels animosity towards me and hurt by me that I can’t seem to, is now the voice to the other person. I mean, who would have even thought such a thing. So it’s a slightly midway story. Anyway, I don’t know why I’m even telling that part.
C. Terry Warner:
No, it’s a very powerful story. My son and another guy run Arbinger now. I’m long since out of it. And they’re much my superiors as business people and they’re doing a terrific job, but one of the things they did was to take this whole idea that’s reflected in profit and capability productivity and so on. And it’s reflected in a lot of other ways. And they do a lot of business consulting and they do a lot of work with police departments and prisons and so on. And they’ve really expanded the business. They’re worldwide. But they did something very interesting. They produced against the constant background of the kind of thing we’ve been talking about. They produced an evaluation scheme and you only evaluate employees on three dimensions.
C. Terry Warner:
One is skill, one is effort and one is impact. Now impact is not a very good word because it means that you’re impacting somebody else. But what is the impact of your being positioned, where you are with other people and how are they being facilitated or hindered by the way you do your work? So on those three dimensions, they one, two or three. And I think some of them have experimented with having other people evaluate them and so on because in a company it’s not this 360 view of the CEO that tells the truth about the operations of that company. It’s the views of every of the CEO of everybody on the part of everybody else that tells the truth and their views of one another. This thing gets so complex that you can’t formalize it once.
C. Terry Warner:
And for all, as a matter of fact, a well operating company is transforming itself all of the time. And all of the, all of the bulbs are on all of the engines are going. It’s not just that one person is smarter than everybody else and is overriding people in operating out of his commander nest, but rather that everybody is doing something of high creativity to enable the work of other people. And just as you enlisting that one associate of yours to represent the whole thing that has such a powerful impact. And if it’s done manipulatively, this is the truth. People can read it, will read it that way. Maybe not at first, but usually at first they may be a little skeptical that they wonder if you’ve changed, but it doesn’t take very long before they read who you really are and what you really care about. And then they blossom, and that’s when all the assets of the company are growing, you know, like mad. It’s a wonderful thing to see.
Greg McKeown:
Well, listen, you’ve been very generous with your time and I appreciate everything you’ve said. I’ve been taking notes and reflecting on all of it. And it’s somehow even more valuable to me because of the window that you are speaking from in life. Arthur Brooks, who’s a friend of mine and Harvard professor now, and he spoke at BYU convocation or something. And he’s written a new book now. And it’s about strength from strength or strength is it’s being happy in the second, we’re near the second half of our life. And he just points out that in the first half, we have a certain kind of intelligence, but in the second half, we move into crystallized intelligence. He’s like the chances are that we won’t write our best book. We won’t do our breakthrough thinking in that second half, but we can do things we couldn’t do in the first half in making sense of the world and in understanding meaning, and being able to share our ideas with others and pass them on. It’s like a different level of intelligence. And so I just value so much your perspective at this point. It is especially valuable to me. Thank you so much today, brother Warner.
C. Terry Warner:
Okay.
Greg McKeown:
Bye.
Greg McKeown:
Well, thank you. Really. Thank you for listening. If you have found value in this episode, please write a review on Apple Podcasts. The first five people to write a review of this episode, we’ll receive year long access to the Essentialism Academy. That’s a $300 value. Just send a photo of your review along with your name and address to info@gregmckeown.com. Make it easier on yourself to receive these podcasts. They come out on Tuesdays and Thursdays. And if you subscribe once all of that, you don’t have to remember again. It just flows to you. If you feel stuck in a relationship. If you have been in a relationship that matters to you, but you find it more and more difficult to make progress in it. Remember the insights from these episodes. It’s the most liberating relationship insight. I know they are not the monster. You are not the monster. There is no monster. All of that is a phantom. As you come to the truth about you, even about them, you’ll know how to proceed. You’ll understand how to act. And that is a game changer. I look forward to continuing this conversation with you in a couple of days.
