The Water Trough- We can't make you drink, but we will make you think!
The Water Trough- We can't make you drink, but we will make you think!
When Our Human Side Shows Up At Work
We like to think there’s a sharp dividing line between our personal lives and our professional lives, but we can’t escape that we are human beings dealing with other human beings at work. In this cast, I talk with Charles H. Green about how to deal with that fact in positive ways.
Charlie is now semi-retired, and shifting his focus a bit in his new LinkedIn Newsletter "Breaking Good: Tales of Overcoming and Inspiration.” He asks that you follow him on his LinkedIn newsletter Breaking Good, and on his website trustedadvisor.com.
Welcome to The Water Trough, where we can't make you drink, but we will make you think. My name is Ed Drozda, the Small Business Doctor, and I'm really excited you chose to join me here as we discuss topics that are important for small business folks just like you. If you're looking for ideas, inspiration, and possibility, you've come to the right place. Join us as we take steps to help you create the healthy business that you've always wanted. Welcome back to The Water Trough. This is Ed Drozda, the Small Business Doctor. I'm excited to be here today with my friend, Charlie Green.
Microphone (Yeti Stereo Microphone)-1:Known as Charles H. Green. Charlie is the co-author of the trusted advisor and two other books on trust.
Microphone (Yeti Stereo Microphone)-2:He's a former management consultant,
Microphone (Yeti Stereo Microphone)-1:Harvard business school graduate, and the founder of trusted advisor associates. Charlie is now semi retired and shifting his focus a bit. And his new LinkedIn newsletter. Breaking good tales of overcoming and inspiration.
Charlie, welcome. Thank you, Ed. Great to be here. Appreciate it. You know, Charlie, you have the distinction of being the first person on my podcast that has come back for a second time. Oh, that is a distinction. Thank you. I like that. I'm not sure if you should or shouldn't. I don't know what that means. I guess you got the first check, right? And so therefore you came back, right? I want to open this by saying that I have known Charlie for many, many years. And while he was always known as the trusted advisor, the trust guy, he continues to dazzle me. And I'm not trying to make you feel good, Charlie. Charlie is not only a prolific writer, but an amazing storyteller. And the amazing part about his storytelling is that he's able to make those stories readily digestible he just gives it to you in such a way that it's easy to insert yourself into his story. So Charlie, thank you so much for that. Thank you. And thank you so much for this breaking good newsletter. Tell us what led to the breaking good newsletter What happened? it's a good question and it's still fairly fresh in my mind but As you said i'm kind of semi retired in the last few years but I still find the occasional urge to write something but i've said almost everything I can think up to say about trust And, there were still some things bubbling around. And I realized that several decades of work on trust led me to a couple of conclusions. One of them is that the personal form of trust is more powerful than the institutional form. And in fact, is the right version. So all this trust stuff ended up being very personal. And if you think of overlapping Venn diagrams, some of the emotional states that go along with being a mature, trustworthy, uh, person. Open, sincere, transparent person, they rhyme with things like overcoming resentments, fear, anger, bloody mindedness, absent mindedness, lack of focus. and I thought, you know what, those are good subject matter topics in and of themselves. And they, overlap, like I said, with kind of the core stuff I've been doing anyway. So let's give it a shot. And I talked to a couple of friends and they helped me tune the format of it. Somebody said, Make it all about stories, because stories work. Well, I agree with you and I agree with them. Uh, to my mind, it was built around a collection of kind of one liner aphorisms that I've collected over the years. and I thought, let me make that the anchor and have each story reveal some of these one liners. And then. Another friend said, make sure you have a call to action. And I thought, eh, okay, why not? So I threw that in there too. I don't think that's the most important part of it. It is getting people to rethink basic stuff about, the relation of our left and our right brain. Or our hearts and our heads or our intellect and our emotional feelings. Those are all kind of the topics swimming around. And so far it's been going good. I got about another 10 stories lined up yet to write. So it should be a good little run. Hey, listen, I'm not one to quibble over things that you say, but I want to point out your call to action is quite evident. And that is asking people to reconsider. So I have to. disagree with you that it's not so important because you put it front and center. that is a call to action in my mind. Well, it is in mine too. So by that definition, totally agree with you. the little wisdom quips, they crack me up. they're so simplistic. And I think that's one of the most fascinating things. The old, saying it's not rocket science, you know, no ab in fact, there's something to be said for witty qui or something like that. Qui, I'm gonna have to remember that. that's aism a wit. Okay. I've got it. I expect to see that in the future, rendition of breaking good. just, just saying, see if I can remember it. Yeah, well, me too. I couldn't say it more than once, but, let me point something out here to those who are listening. This is a podcast designed for small business people, but it's long been my belief that business people are first and foremost. Just people. And so everything that we talk about here and that you talk about in Breaking Good, while it may be personal, whether they're in the business, a business owner, a business, affiliate, whatever their role might be. it's fundamentally the person first, and then we go on from there. So everything that you're talking about in these things can be applied to any individual, no matter what their role is. And that's important that we put that out there because I think a lot of people think, oh, well, if you're not talking business, then you're not talking my language. And that's just not the case. Yeah. Yeah. I could not agree more. And I totally share your perspective. Well, once again, the check is in the mail. So we're Great minds think alike and all other things. Yeah, I really love this relationship. You know, all I have to do is send the money to you and you'll say nice things about me. What more can I ask for? let's take a look at some of these wisdom quips that you put out there, There's a couple catchy ones, and I think one of the most recent was pain is inevitable, suffering is optional. Oh yeah, I love that one. Yeah. So let's go there. What is it? pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional. what that means to my mind is going through life, business, life in general, whatever stuff is gonna happen. And some of it's gonna hurt and some of it's bad and some of it's awful. And you can't avoid it. It's reality. It is what it is. However, you have a choice after having suffered that pain, and that is how long am I going to let this go on? Am I going to be a victim for life? Am I going to let this define the rest of my existence? How about the rest of the year? the story that I use that one in is a woman who I know whose husband was unfaithful to her. And she was able to process that and get through it and come out the other side in literally a week. And I was very skeptical when I had this conversation with her. I said, a week? Are you kidding? Are you serious? Come on. And she explained, you know, and she's a level headed, conscious, highly evolved, intelligent person. And she did, in fact, and I said, have you walled yourself off from the pain so it didn't hurt you? I don't know. It was the worst week of my life. It was horrible. And I said, and yet you got through it in a week. And she said, yep, yep. I think of it as anybody in that situation or any similar situation, the conflict, the tension with somebody you're close to a friend, whatever, a business person, you always got three choices. You can continue to live in the neurotic space of complaining and bitching and moaning and passive aggressive response. That's choice one, which is what most people choose. Choice two is get up and leave. Say, I'm not going to change this. I'm out of here. And choice three is you accept whatever it is in the other person that's causing it and just say that's who they are. They're not going to change. I can't change them, but I accept it. And, the only sensible options for life are two and three. You either leave or you accept reality and deal with it. pain's inevitable. It's going to happen, but you're suffering. That's on you. And I linked to a TED talk by Jewel Bolte Taylor, a fairly famous talk. She's a neuroscientist who underwent a stroke. So she was uniquely privileged to sort of see what was going on in her own brain, understand it, marvel at it, and explain it. And basically she said, the left brain is responsible for yesterday and tomorrow and all our critical thinking. The right brain is in the here and now. So if we respond to pain with our left brain, we're going to obsess over it forever, and think about it. but if you can tap into your right brain in the here and now, you just accept reality as it is and move along with your life. Anyway, I've said too much about that, but I'm delighted that that's one of your favorite one liners. It's one of mine too. I didn't say too much about it at all. In fact, you brought some other thoughts to mind. your friend here obviously is firmly, in touch with her right brain? Yes. And, you mentioned option two being the other option that would be. And personally would be appropriate. If one chooses option two, that is I'm out of here. Yeah. is it not likely that they'll continue to stew in the left brain consideration? It's up to them. whether you choose to stew in the left brain is up to you. Okay. It doesn't mean you don't stop living your life. It's going to continue. So the choice is if I choose to get out of here, I'm out of here. And that helps you not obsess over it. but there are two different things. So if getting away from it can legitimately be a way of cutting the cord. Then that's cool. But the question is, does one remain in that first position where despite the fact that I'm out of here, I can't let it go. Yeah, I should give credit that little idea, those three things come from a guy from New Orleans, a guy named David Schnarch, who's a family and sex therapist. And years ago, my wife and I went to one of his sessions. There were about 15, 20 couples in the room, and right after he gave the introductory thing, a woman at the front table raised her hand and said, Dr. Snarch, I have a problem, pointing to her husband sitting next to her. He doesn't listen to me. He just doesn't listen, and I don't know what to do. So Snarch said, well, let me ask you a question. He says, let's say you and your husband are driving down the highway, and it's a toll road, and you come up to the toll booth, and your husband's driving, and the toll booth operator says, definitely 2. 50, please. How much money does he give the toll booth lady? 2. And she says, well, 250. He says, good, we can rule out deafness. He can hear you, but he's choosing not to listen to you. And he says, the real question is not how to get him to change, the question is what are you going to do about it? Is you keep going to seminars like mine and bitching and moaning for another decade, you know, it's not going to change anything. Or you can divorce the guy and get out of here. Or you can accept that that's who he is and that's what's going on. Those are your choices and it's not about him, it's about you. And I thought, yeah, that's, that sounds pretty right. Really fascinating. at the end of the day, we are responsible for the choices that we make, we're given options and let's use these three and they sound like viable options to me, So, we're given three options and we do have a choice. Now, maybe as we evolve. I'm certainly younger me would have more difficulty with, two and three. Sure. as I've aged I, uh, acknowledge the fact that, okay, more self-aware, more self-assured that yes, I do have choices and I can explore them. I may not be able to rapidly say which one is appropriate, but at least I can explore them. I'm not simply impotent at the notion of the event. I'm able to go, okay, hold on. what's going on here? And, and sort things out. So in time. things do, change like that, but I think it's really important. I think you make a great point here that people have to look at things around them, things that they respond to in the context of themselves. I think that's really the bottom line, isn't it? Yeah, I think it, another way to put it would be, you can't control things that are going to happen to you, but you can control your reaction to those things. I mean, think rightly about it. You are responsible for your response, not for the initial cause of things, unless you did something, that's a different matter. But, Stuff happens. How you respond is what it's all about. Right, right. Well, you know, classic example are folks in business. Okay. Who are confronted with a environmental, consideration, something that is Outside their control, something that's happening in the neighborhood, in the industry, supply chain issues, so on and so forth, and how they respond to those things, it can make or break or can certainly denigrate a business considerably. If the attitude is, screw them, blah, blah, blah, look what they did it definitely can change the outcome considerably being able to step back and be. More objective, acknowledging the fact that I have feelings and that these things affect me, right? And I can't ignore that. Right, Charlie, they're going to hit me but if I can first accept the fact that I'm going to have them acknowledge that they exist, that they may be deleterious to the outcome, is a good starting place. Absolutely. Yep. So we have a lot of choices. Perhaps it's about putting a buffer in between the moment of impact and the moment of reasoning. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, a good rule of thumb is give yourself, you know, 10 minutes to react to anything. take a moment, gather your thoughts, gather your feelings. Like you said, be objective about them. Wow. That was upsetting. I'm really upset. Okay. What do I do with that? How many times have I been tempted to go to bed after having had a disagreement with Debbie? Okay. Yep. And. There are times I can't talk. Okay. but it's not enough to say I can't talk now. It's more important to say, I really need to think this through and I'm not being rude, but I'm more comfortable going to. bed, not angry, but just in a position of, I don't know what to say. I'm not sure what I'm thinking. And it's that latter thing. That makes all the difference in the world. It's still difficult for her and for me to not continue the conversation because there's that eagerness, that anxiousness to know what's going on. But there are times when there is no knowing what's going on, at least for the moment. Yeah, you're right. It takes time to settle and to sort things out. And some people never get there, and they never have that thought to question that, to try and how can I be objective here? How can I see what's going on? Anyway, I think it's a good rule, sleep on it, take 24 hours, take 10 minutes, whatever it is, and let the dust settle. Charlie, moving from trust to breaking good. I can't help but to think the trust has always been inherent in your philosophy. Yes. it's visceral to you. Okay. and I respect that. I'm sure you didn't just simply reinvent yourself without acknowledging that past. So what is the relationship between breaking good tales of overcoming and inspiration and trust? There's definitely a connection. I think of them as overlapping Venn diagram circles, and the way that I think about trust, is that it takes two parties to trust. There's a trustor and a trustee. And the defining characteristic of a trustor, the one who does the trusting, is that it's risk taking. You're taking a risk to trust somebody. If there's no risk, it's not trust. It's probabilities or something else. So, If you think about what it takes to trust somebody, it's how do I deal with risk? On the other side, the trustee, the essence of being a good trustee, is that you're trustworthy. You're worthy of trust. And as you know, we have this little model, the trust equation, that looks at four components of trustworthiness. Two of them are fairly clinical, abstract, there's a credibility, like, how much do you know, your credentials, how smart you are, all that stuff, and reliability, which is track record and so forth. But the other two components we call intimacy and low self orientation, those are hugely emotional and interior and internal. And, you can't avoid getting into areas like fear, And resentment for example, in the field of sales, the inherent mindset that people approach sales with most often is fear, domination, conflict, confrontation. Look at all the athletic metaphors we have associated with selling, hit a home run, blew one past him, all that stuff, and to rethink. What it means to sell, which is collaborative, helping the client as a focus, not winning the sale. A lot of that is interior. It's getting over your fears. It's being courageous enough to face reality in the front of a client to say something like, I don't know. Nobody in sales has ever been taught to say, I don't know, even if it's true. And I found a freeing thing for me was learning how to say, I don't know if I don't know the answer. And paradoxically, there's nothing more credible that you can say, then I don't know, who's going to doubt you on that one. Nobody. The admission of partial ignorance is a guarantee of greater credibility. Whether it's risk taking or overcoming your fears about being transparent and who you are and what you're doing, cleaning up your motives, all that stuff is very, very personal. And, our default negative, sides, we wallow in fear, resentment, anger. retribution or revenge, you know, Oh, if I'd only said this to him, then wow, imagine how it would be all that kind of stupid stuff that goes on in our monkey brains. we have to get over that in order to be free and clear, responsible, autonomous, fully developed human beings in business or not in business. So that to me is the connection. Again, I think of it as overlapping Venn diagrams. These very human topics are very present in business. a good friend of mine, Dave Brock said, make the tone of this newsletter positive. Because I've been leaning negative. I like looking at bad things and screw ups and failures. I think you learn more from them. But I took my friend's advice and he said, wrap it in a sugar pill of positive, hence the term breaking good, as opposed to breaking bad. and I think that was good advice. it's meant to be inspiring, but part of the inspiration is overcoming the crap that goes on in our brains., I think that's the, beauty of it. I agree that Breaking Good has a tremendous impact because if you said Breaking Bad, they'd say you're trying to copy the TV series. Although it's nice to use that, catch, but seriously, I hear where you're going and I think that, while you were advised to give it a positive spin, you are not shy at all about putting out there the reason why this is necessary because of the negativity and the difficulty that we face just by everyday thinking I guess you're turning the lemons into lemonade is what you're doing. Oh, that's a good way to put it. You have succeeded in delivering the message without hiding The seriousness behind it. Good. Good. I see the breaking good is emerging from a place of maybe indifference or maybe uncertainty or maybe ambiguity or whatever it might be. Breaking good is emerging from that space where I don't know what's going on here. Yeah, really. I don't know what it is. So I think that's really, cool. you use the term there and you're not going to get away with saying this without me asking you to expand upon it a little bit. Monkey brain. Oh, yes. What are you, what are you talking about? one of the recent posts, I forget which one, used that term. It's the opposite of being mindful, being in the present, being in the moment. It refers to when your mind goes crazy, I need to go in these squirrelly little places and get lost between your ears and all the negative craziness.. It's just your brain going nutso on you and indulging in stupid fantasies and daydreams and things that are disconnected from reality. That's all. So that's what I mean by monkey brain and the challenge is to get over it. Oh, what I'm hearing then is you have an issue with our friends, the monkeys. You're right. I'm using it pejoratively here, which is unfair to the monkeys. I'm sure they're probably not suffering from monkey brain. They're pretty in the moment. I've got stories about monkeys, but this is not the time, I should share them with you offline. So you can revisit the monkey brain with this because this I really got some funny stuff there. You know, our time is coming to an end, and I want to ask you before we part company if you have anything that you'd like to leave us with well, how about a teaser? I haven't used this one yet. It's one of my two or three favorite one liners, and I'm just trying to figure out the right story to hook it up with, but the one liner I'll share with your group here is, there is a God and you're not it. Whether you're an atheist or not, the first part of that sentence is not the important part. The second part is the important part. You are not God. And how often, nonetheless, do we act as if we were directing the play, we were in charge of the whole program, people should take our advice, they ought to do what we tell them to do. We're in charge of everything, yelling at the guy on route 95 ahead of you who's going below the speed limit in the left lane. You can yell at him, but what's that going to do? either accept it or move to the right lane or whatever. so, yeah, there is a God and you're not it. I think it's a great piece of wisdom. I'm just looking for the right story to hook it up to. And I'm sure you'll find the right story in no time at all. Charlie, it is a pleasure to speak with you today. And as always, I remain, grateful for your stories, for your, input, your guidance, as I've fallen back on things you've said before and they've returned to support me in many ways. And I appreciate that. That's great to hear. Right. Thank, thank you. And, I know that you get this stuff. You're, one of the people I know that I, I'm right. These things I'm thinking, I'm talking to Ed on this one., I surmise because of the nature in which you put it out there that many people will indeed get it. I don't see myself as being unique in that way because of the presentation of yours. I think that it is designed to be gotten, and I want to encourage folks to definitely, check out Charlie's newsletter on LinkedIn. I will be putting that in the. episode notes as well. I will make this one final comment And that is at the water trough, we can't make you drink, but we will make you think again, Charlie, we think very much the same in a lot of things. And that's exactly what you're doing. you're not telling people what to do. Right. You're giving them an opportunity to think and you're giving them inspiration through stories that they can then see. Do I fit in here? Do I not fit in here? that is really cool. So Charlie, thank you, sir. It's been a pleasure. Thank you very much. Thank you. This is Ed draws with a small business doctor until we meet again, I want to wish you a healthy business.