Claire Hughes Johnson: recommendation

Transcript context

…Do you have any tactical advice for someone that is not good at this for how to actually say something uncomfortable? I think the main thing is, and Fred Kaufman has this in his book, Conscious Business, this concept of a left hand... He calls it the left hand column, which is you're in a dialogue with me or you're watching a meeting happen, and you've got a running commentary in your head. And honestly, some of that stuff is pretty harsh, right? You do not want to open your mouth and just say that thing. But what Fred says is, learn how to detoxify the left-hand column. I would say think about a way to say that thing that you think you can't say. You've filtered yourself out, which I don't like. And I want you to think, okay, can I? And I think that the... Here are the tricks, a couple of them. One is, ask a question.Right? A question is not threatening. By the way, the question could even be, is there something we're not talking about? It feels like to me... And then you own. So the next trick is you own it. This is your observation, this is your perception. This is not a judgment. I am not saying, "Lenny, I think you really botched that interview." That's not useful. If I said, "Lenny, you know what? I wonder if you missed an opportunity in that interview. Did you feel like you missed an area that..." And then you're kind of curious. You're like, "What do you mean?" And I'm like, "Well, I'm kind of looking at this with you, and I'm standing next to you and I'm observing it." Right? That's less threatening. So one, ask a question. Two, make an observation that you own. So if I said, "I feel like there's something we're not talking about, and I wonder..." Oh, I own it. "I wonder if it's the fact that these two teams both seem to have the exact same project." I talk in the book about a meeting I was in where it was very clear that we had two teams in conflict, and no one was saying the thing that was really pretty bad. I was like, this is pretty bad. We have two teams that seem like they both own a piece of work and are in conflict with one another. But I would say if you do those two things, ask a question, own the observation yourself, don't pass a judgment, you will get way farther than you would've ever thought sharing. And by the way, that sharing, one, there's probably other people who just haven't, can't get it out of their head, and you have ar opened up a door that a lot of others can probably walk through. You're not alone. You have this framework, I think you call it being explorer, not a lecturer. Is that what you just described? Is that how you describe it?…

Stored transcript either side of the excerpt. The highlighted words are the published quote; the surrounding text is unedited source, never generated.