Carole Robin: evaluation

Transcript context

…Let's start with you can start admitting mistakes, especially when everybody knows you made one, you actually lose a lot more credibility by ignoring it. And you can start again 15% by experimenting with sharing what's going on for you, particularly with regard to feelings a little bit more often. So there's a recent course is called Touchy-Feely emphasis on the feely and not the touchy. And that's because so much of our ability to develop this competence comes down to the appropriate use of feelings. That's why a vocabulary of feelings, how sad is it? We had to develop a vocabulary feelings because that's how hard it is for people to even access what they're feeling. So there's a vocabulary feelings in the syllabus, in the course, in the appendix of the book. Every member, every person who ever goes through a leaders in tech program gets it. And it starts with allowing yourself to be known, not just in terms of facts and... Feelings give meaning to facts. Let me give you another example. If I tell you I went ziplining, well, that's interesting. Maybe you learned something about me. Maybe you start to make up all sorts of interesting stories about me. But if I tell you I went ziplining and I was terrified, but I went because I felt coerced by my family and I didn't want to be left alone back and then miss out. Well, you learned a lot more about me, didn't you? One of my most satisfying moments at the very first Leaders in Tech retreat we ever did was of a former student of mine who had taken Touchy Feely 15 years before, and who said, based on everything I learned 15 years ago from Carole, I couldn't imagine what I would learn if I came back. So I'm back. And he said, but Carole or no Carole, I will not sit around for four days talking about how we're all crushing it. I will leave. I was like, "Oh," I was so proud. And now there are times when a leader does have to stand up and say, yeah, we're crushing it. So another really, really important thing that people don't understand is that all of this is very nuanced and very context dependent, and most people unanswered Tell me what to do when X happens. Well, did X happen with this person or this person? What relationship do you have with them in the first place? Are there 20 people in the room of 250? Is this being recorded? There's just so many different things. Who's going to have access to it? There's so many things that you have to consider, and especially today, I know I'm old and this will sound predictable, but I am not a social media fan. I think it has done more to destroy strong relationships and to destroy people's ability to even learn or think about what it takes to have a great relationship. Anyway, we could do a whole podcast on that. I have a former Leaders in Tech fellow who sent me this fantastic, here's another great example, sent me an email and maybe he called me, I don't remember. It doesn't matter. a whole podcast on that. I have a former Leaders in Tech fellow who sent me this fantastic, here's another great example, sent me an email and maybe he called me, I don't remember. It doesn't matter. He said, "So I had my all-hands meetings are every Monday morning, on Friday, I found out we had missed a major deadline on a product release, and I spent the entire weekend just furious, pissed off, wanting to fire a lot of them," and he said, "And then on Sunday afternoon, I remembered part of what you taught us was that anger is often a secondary emotion and often under anger is either fear or hurt. And then I realized, oh yeah, I'm actually feeling pretty scared here, that nobody is as worried about this as I am. " And so he said, "So on Monday morning, instead of getting up and blasting them all as I was prepared to do, I got up and I said, so, gang, I am deeply worried and afraid that I'm the only person here who is as concerned about this missed deadline as I am and what it's going to mean to our customers." And he said, "I have never had my troops rally to fix something faster." So appropriate use of feelings is something most people don't know how to do. They don't even know how to access the feeling. I told this particular anecdote about anger being a secondary emotion at a very big workshop a number of months ago, and a woman walked up to me and said, "Wow, thank you so much. I've never understood that my husband Carries so much fear and so much hurt because he only ever leads with anger. It never even occurred to me something else might be going on." And anger is a distancing emotion, whereas hurt, fear, sadness, loneliness, happiness, joy are all connecting emotions. So those are kinds of things people learn when they come through our programs. Oh, man, you're blowing my mind already. I can see why marriages are saved by a lot of these things you teach. That's a really profound point you're just making there that anger is a secondary emotion. Really what's going on is you're afraid or you're hurt. Is there anything more you can add there because this feels very important?…

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