Bookworm Transcripts

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All right. Welcome back to Bookworm. This is the first episode,

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Sans Joe. And that is very sad for me,

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but I am excited to have my guest today,

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Corey Hickson. Welcome to Bookworm, Corey.

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Thanks, Mike. It's good to be here.

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Yeah. So Corey and I got connected a while back.

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You had me on a podcast that you did called Talking to the Internet,

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which I don't even know how to describe this show.

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You talked to random people and I was honored to be on the list of people that

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you talked to. How would you describe it?

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I started the show really just trying to interview everybody that was on the

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relay FM network and like how many of those people could I get?

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And then I tried to expand it out and it didn't work.

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And then I had another kid and then all this other stuff happened.

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So that is now the defunct,

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but still archived on the internet somewhere talking to the internet.

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Cool. Well, we'll definitely put a link to that in the show notes.

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Not necessary, but sure. It's a good show. I like it.

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Listen, I liked it too. I liked it too.

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It's just a lot of admin in the background. So sure, sure.

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You also are really smart and a professor of engineering.

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So I know nothing about that, but that sounds impressive.

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So a PhD, just so you all know, it's really just, can you,

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can you exist long enough in the program to convince a small group of people

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that you should, you know, get out with this little title in front of your name.

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So engineering, engineering education is, is what I'm super passionate about for

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the day job. And it's how do we teach people well technically and then more and

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more I've been getting into the integration of faith and technology.

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So that's, that's the normal job side of work is how do we integrate Christian

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faith and technology. Awesome. And you also read books.

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I do. I listen to a lot of books when I'm running.

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I read a lot of books in the time when I'm not running.

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So I mean, you would think a lot of my job is just learning things and then

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figuring out how to package that in a way that I can teach it to students as well.

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So yeah, all over the place, whether it's technical engineering stuff or whether

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it's productivity things or whether it's faith based type, type thinking.

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I'm pretty much constantly have my nose in some kind of book or I'm listening to

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something or, you know, doing some kind of learning.

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Nice. I'm going to put you on the spot here.

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You got any favorite books? Give the audience a little bit of a taste of who

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you are, what you like. Okay. Fiction or nonfiction?

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Oh, I'm going to say nonfiction.

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Okay. Yeah. What's surprising? Oh my gosh, that's a, that's a shock.

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Just so you all know, I listened to bookworm and I have listened to bookworm for

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a very long time. So that's why that wasn't a shock.

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I would say the nonfiction books, I won't give you a specific one because I don't

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think I have one that's like, you know, well above all the other ones.

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But I like, I like books, the genre of books where there are good stories that

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like aren't artificial, if that makes sense, right?

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Like some books you read and you're like, man, you really reached hard for that

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story. And it kind of fits and it's okay.

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But ones where like they, they introduce a concept and then they actually give a

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good example story from that.

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And those are my favorite nonfiction books.

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So not surprisingly, you know, doing a bunch of research in grad school.

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I like books where they interview and they go out and talk to a lot of people

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and then they turn those into stories.

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So I like, you know, more interview based research books as well.

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I like those a lot.

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Cool. So yeah, the one that kind of stands out to me in that genre would be

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like, never split the difference by Chris Fosse where it's like high

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stakes negotiating, but he was actually a terrorist negotiator.

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Yeah. So he's got all sorts of crazy stories and that kind of book, that

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kind of things that we're talking about.

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Absolutely.

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Absolutely.

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Yeah. Or anything, you know, so a lot of the work I did in, in my grad work was

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was entrepreneurship.

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So any kind of like stories of founders and how they founded the company and why

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they founded the company and then what they went through because most people,

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if you've never done it, don't realize that a lot of founders of companies

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basically destroy the rest of their lives because they founded the company and

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they were, they were insanely successful.

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Like there is not a, I guess there's no, uh, there's no free meal ticket, if you

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will, you know, like, like something pays somewhere and a lot of your big,

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successful people.

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So I think those are interesting.

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Really interesting.

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Gotcha.

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So you got the, the background in the entrepreneur world, which makes sense, I

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guess then why you picked today's book.

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We had some back and forth.

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Normally when I have these, these guest shows, um, I typically, I'm like, Hey,

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I want to talk about this book.

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You want to talk about this with me, but you and I had some back and forth

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because you're also in the faith, Facebook activity community.

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You were part of the last life theme cohort that we just, my wife and I just

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did.

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So we had some back and forth there and you suggested this one.

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And, uh, when I first heard about it, um, I was a little bit surprised.

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Uh, this was not something that I typically would have, would have picked,

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but, um, I guess that's, that's bearing the lead a little bit, but before we

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get to today's book, I do want to just real quickly mention that.

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I've got a city university cohort coming up and, uh, if I wait till the

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next episode, by the time you hear that one, it will probably have already started.

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So if you want to find out more about that, you can go to obsidian university.com.

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Eventually I'll change the homepage to the cohort page, but slash cohort will

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get you to the, the place where you can, uh, find out more information about the

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cohort or if you're going there immediately after this drops, the page may not be

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activated yet.

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You can put in your email to be notified when it goes live.

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Uh, obsidian university, the cohort there, I've kind of revamped it and it's

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following this, uh, PKM stack that I've been talking about in the newsletter and

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it's YouTube videos on it.

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I'm talking about it on focus a little bit, but I really like this idea of like

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flipping the default life on its head where typically you just consume information

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and that determines the quantity and the quality of the ideas that you have and

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ultimately even the projects that you engage with.

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But if you start with like the philosophy is what I call it, and that's

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where the life theme stuff comes in.

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That can kind of act as a filter for everything else and you can plug in the

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right tools to help you lead a more intentional life.

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Um, and so that's kind of the basis of this.

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It's not just, uh, here's how you do everything in obsidian, but it's really

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how you use obsidian and things that connect to obsidian to have these

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intentional productivity and creativity workflows.

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So if that is of interest to you, uh, that is going to be kicking off on January

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22nd, and again, you can go to obsidian university.com/covert for more

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information this time around, I'm also including with that cohort, uh,

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voucher ticket coupon, whatever for the next life theme cohort or future

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life theme cohort.

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So if the next one doesn't work out, you can join a later one.

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But I realized that that philosophy, that vision of values piece that Rachel

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and I just got done talking about.

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Like there were quite a few people that came over from my previous obsidian

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university cohort, uh, because they were interested in that concept.

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So I'm actually just building that in because I feel like that can help you

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dial in the stuff that's going to, uh, give you the, the clarity that you need

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for, for everything else, create the, the momentum and motivation to follow

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through and the things that are important and the clarity to cut the things that

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aren't, which really is at the heart of, you know, personal knowledge management.

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We've got all this information, all this knowledge, right?

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What do we do with it?

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Uh, the other thing I'll mention with this one is that I've been building,

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and Corey, I don't know, are you a obsidian nut at all?

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So I got really deep into it in the summer.

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And then when the semester starts, everything, I mean, everything just goes

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off the wall.

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So, uh, yes, I started playing around plugins and basically I used your stuff.

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So I would find as much of your stuff as I could and I'd be like, okay,

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how did Mike do this?

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I thought they might do this and that find another couple of YouTube and be like,

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okay, I want to do this thing.

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I want to do this thing.

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Um, so yes off and on.

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I, I play around with it.

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Gotcha.

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Okay.

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Well, if you like using my stuff, then this cohort is for you because basically

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what I'm going to be doing is, uh, I have the bones of it, but I'm still

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building out the specifics.

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It's basically like a starter vault that has all of the stuff kind of

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pre populated.

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So like a canvas dashboard, which has the, the list that you can use with the

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obsidian task plugin.

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And then you just dump in your own tasks and they populate on those lists or

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like a life dash life, OS dashboard, which you can plug in your life

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theme and your core values.

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And then that stuff will, will show up there.

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So it's kind of like a, uh, uh, it's a starter kit, essentially.

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Um, you've got all the plugins, you've got all the settings.

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They're pre configured for you.

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You just dump your stuff in there.

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And obviously if you want to take pieces of it and transfer it to an existing

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vault, you can do that too.

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But basically it's, uh, it's all set up for you and you just kind of put your

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stuff in there and then you can start using it right away.

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I'm going to eventually sell that as a separate product because I think that's,

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that's pretty valuable, but I am, uh, it's not available for sale yet.

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If you want that, that's actually only going to be, uh, in this obsidian

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university cohort to start.

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So that the life theme cohort and then some of the other courses, like the

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personal retreat handbook, the digital journaling and obsidian, all that kind

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of stuff is, is, uh, included as well.

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Mike, can I, can I do two things?

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Yeah.

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Is that all right?

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So one, I want to make a plug and Mike did not ask me to do this.

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Right?

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I did not.

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I did, I did the life theme cohort.

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Um, well, I did as much of it as I could.

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I told him at the very beginning, I was like, Hey, I'm not going to be able

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to participate that much.

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It's the end of the semester, all that stuff.

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But what I can tell you is, um, from going to the ones I could go to and then

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watching the video, the cohort videos of the other ones, um, one, it, I mean,

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it's a great community to be part of and you learn a ton doing it.

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And then the more you can engage on your end, um, the more you get out of that in

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terms of actually doing the things that, um, Mike and Rachel push you to do, uh,

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during that.

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So that's my plug.

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Um, I highly recommend you give it a shot.

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If you're even on the edge of thinking about it, it's worth it.

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Do it.

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Give it a shot.

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Uh, that's life theme or I'm going to assume that the obsidian one is, is the

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exact same way because I haven't done the obsidian one.

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I have a question for you about the obsidian one though.

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Okay.

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So you're going to seed me with this vault, right?

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That's got some stuff and I can look around and all that stuff.

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Is there a session in there where then I can say, Hey, I would like this to do

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this and I can ask somebody who's more knowledgeable than me about whether

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that's possible or how one might do that almost like a, like, in many

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consultation session.

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Uh, yes.

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Yes, there is.

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That's the short answer.

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Um, so.

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When I did the first unit, uh, obsidian university cohort, the schedule was set

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up.

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There are sessions Monday, Wednesday, Friday.

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And for this cohort, again, it's going to be Monday, Wednesday, Friday, uh,

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Monday is typically like we're going to discuss the layer of the PKM stack.

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And then Wednesday is all the workflow stuff.

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Here's how you should set this up in obsidian and the Friday was like a Q and A call.

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Um, those Friday calls were awesome and everyone wanted to keep them going.

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So basically also with the obsidian university cohort, you get access to

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the university community.

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And every Friday, essentially, there's a few that we skip for like, uh, holidays

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and stuff, but almost every Friday we have a call and usually I'm talking about

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our workflow thing or people have questions.

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And it's not just me saying like this is how you do it.

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There's some really smart people in there.

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So people who are better at obsidian than me, I would wager to say.

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And, uh, they'll share their workflows and they'll help people out.

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So yeah, there's definitely a place to like get answers to your questions,

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but it's also a really cool place to get inspired by how other people are doing things.

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All right.

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Enough self promotion.

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Let's talk about today's book.

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Uh, today's book, as I mentioned, you picked this one out and, uh, at first,

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I was kind of like, well, why?

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But also those tend to be some of my favorite books.

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Um, so we kind of have this genre we've landed in over a hundred and

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eighty six episodes of bookworm, which is typically like the self help business type books.

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But most of those have this tone of like, uh, I don't know, this optimistic tone, let's say,

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where you can do anything and kind of inherent with that, not explicit, but a lot of the

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messages that we read in these books, because they want to keep people engaged and keep

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people turning pages, they don't really want to deal with the hard stuff.

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And this book is called difficult conversations.

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How to discuss what matters most.

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Uh, it's 370 pages about having difficult conversations.

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I didn't look at the page count when I started.

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I was like, man, that was a bad choice.

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Like that was a really bad choice.

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Uh, 370 some pages.

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Holy cow.

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Well, it's not the longest book we've covered for bookworm.

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I'll tell you that.

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I think the longest one we did was paid to think.

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And that was one that I picked.

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And again, I didn't look at the page count.

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So everyone I feel like this is part of the initiation.

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You pick a book, then you find out how long it is.

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And then you're like, Oh, I'm never going to do that again.

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Yep.

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Yep.

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So from now on, you know, my guess, I mean, this is not a requirement, but you will

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probably look at the Amazon page number listing and for the book page.

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And what I'm going to tell you is my gut feeling is around 200 to 250 pages is

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probably my max.

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Like I don't want to go above 250.

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I don't think.

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Yeah, that's probably pretty safe.

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But this, uh, so this is a long book, but that's that is neither here nor there in

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terms of the quality of the content here.

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I will say this book, it seems like has been around for a long time.

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This is the third edition fully updated and revised.

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It says on, on my cover by Douglas Stone.

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Bruce Patton and Sheila he, and most times when you've got multiple authors like this,

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there's one main author.

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That's the person who has their picture on the inside cover.

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Uh, when I looked this one up, all the pictures I found were the three of them

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standing together.

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I thought that was, was kind of cool.

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Uh, I am curious though, what, how did this book get on your radar and kind of

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what led you to pick this one?

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Yeah.

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So in the engineering education space and becoming a faculty member, um, you get

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into a lot of different conversations and you get into a lot of different

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personalities and I went to, uh, um, conference, a mini workshop kind of thing

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about making change in academia and trying to figure out how do you encourage

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change to go through?

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Well, you get into a ton of difficult conversations through trying to make

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change in a place where change is not really welcome.

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And when it does take, you know, like the, the, when it, when you try to do it,

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it's like turning the Titanic.

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I mean, it is insanely slow.

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So that's how this book got on my radar.

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And it sat on my shelf for, oh man, I don't even know at least five years.

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Cause, uh, he had said about it being the third revision.

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I mean, 1999 was the first one, 2010 and then 2023.

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They just updated it this year.

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And I kept thinking, I need to read that book.

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I mean, I really need to read that book.

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Cause I get into these conversations all the time and they're not difficult in

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terms of, um, aggressive or argumentative, if you will, but they're

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difficult in terms of, you don't see eye to eye to with the other person.

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So I said, well, okay, it's time.

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Like Mike's given me the opportunity.

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What do we think?

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Like, let's, let's see if we can knock this one out.

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And I'm glad we did.

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Um, I've got interesting thoughts on it, but I'm glad we, I'm glad we knocked it out.

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I am too.

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Uh, I will share, you know, when I read this, uh, I think I was probably about two

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thirds of the way through it.

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When I started feeling like, man, I wish I had read this a long time ago.

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So there's definitely some good stuff in here.

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Uh, an argument could be made.

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It doesn't need to be 370 pages, but let's just talk about the, the structure of

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this book, what's your number?

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Because I thought the exact same thing and I have a number in my head.

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What's your number for how many pages this could be?

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Oh, goodness.

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Mm.

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I think if you really condensed the core message, because there's, there's five

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parts, which we'll talk about in a second here.

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Um, but there, there's kind of like specific things in here that are key to

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the arguments that they're making.

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I feel it doesn't feel like there's a whole lot of fluff in this, but I feel

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like you could get it down to about a hundred and 75 pages.

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Okay.

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I was, I was at like two 25, um, is, is where I was.

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And it all just depends on the number of examples.

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So if you, if you read this book, you're going to, you're going to see, they

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give you a lot of examples of the conversations and how they could handle

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the conversation and what went well and what went poorly.

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And I just think that at times it was like, okay, I get the point, like you

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don't have to give me another, you know, page or half a page conversation about

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this as well.

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Yeah.

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I agree with that.

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And then the very last section is 10 questions about it.

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And it's basically like their rebuttals to complaints that people are going to

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have.

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And these are probably, this is the third edition complaints that they have

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actually heard.

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So I get why they included this, but a little bit unnecessary.

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If you're just trying to get the, uh, the core message and figure out how to

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apply it to, to your life.

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So we covered how to read a book a long time ago.

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And that's been influential for me.

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I hated that book when we read it, but it's, it definitely has,

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uh, has paid off, um, over the, over the years.

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And that one taught me that when we read these books, we engage with the author

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and we try to understand their arguments and then we figure out for ourselves,

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what we're going to do with it.

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And that whole section just seemed like justification for them to be like, nope,

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see, we were right.

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Just believe everything we say, uh, completely unnecessary, in my opinion.

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But well, and, and I think I think it fits more as an appendix than it does as

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an actual fifth part of the book, but again, we can get there.

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Um, we're, we're jumping the gun.

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So go ahead and get us into what we need to get into.

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Yeah.

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Okay.

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So the outline for the different parts of this book, there aren't actually

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numbers to the parts, but I assign them numbers so that we had a very clear,

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like this is how we're going through this.

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Uh, there's an introduction, which is about difficult conversations in general.

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Part one, the problem has a single chapter in it.

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Part two is a shift to a learning stance.

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And this is a pretty big part.

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There's a couple of sections underneath this, the, what happened conversation.

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And there's chapters inside there.

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And then the, uh, the feelings conversation.

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Um, and then the identity conversation, I guess I kind of broke that out as it's,

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it's so in part, maybe I should have broken out the feelings conversation as

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its own part, but again, that's just a single chapter.

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Really like weird structure to this book.

00:18:16

After that, there's the create a learning conversation.

00:18:19

Um, and then the last part here is the, uh, 10 questions people, uh, ask about

00:18:25

difficult conversations.

00:18:26

And I kind of based this off of in the table of contents, they have the, uh,

00:18:32

the, uh, like the major sections kind of left aligned, but then on the second page,

00:18:39

they're, they're, I don't know.

00:18:42

It's, it's, it's kind of weird, like it's hard to tell which ones are,

00:18:46

are where in the outline in my addition anyways.

00:18:49

I agree.

00:18:50

Cause there is no numbering.

00:18:51

Like this is the, the part one.

00:18:53

It kind of makes me, you know, I railed on it when we read it, but, uh,

00:18:56

clear thinking by Shane Parrish.

00:18:58

She's got like the 1.1, 1.2.

00:19:00

This was a book that I wish had that.

00:19:02

I agree.

00:19:03

I agree completely.

00:19:04

I, I did not like the hierarchical structure of this book at all.

00:19:09

Um, and even when you, you know, through the stuff in the outline, I was like, huh,

00:19:12

why did he call part three?

00:19:13

Like why do you make, why do you stand part three out?

00:19:15

And I intentionally didn't talk to you about it before, cause I wanted to talk

00:19:17

about it on the show.

00:19:18

It's like, I would not have broken this out the way you did, but that's okay.

00:19:23

And I think that shows the fact that I, there's room to maneuver in the way they've

00:19:29

broken this out.

00:19:30

Um, and I don't know if that's a good thing.

00:19:32

I actually lean towards the fact that I don't think it's a good thing.

00:19:34

I think they should have been more, more clear about that.

00:19:36

Well, as what often happens when we talk through books, um, my thinking on things

00:19:41

kind of changes and evolves.

00:19:43

And, uh, I realize already that I probably should have put the, uh, the

00:19:49

feelings conversation on its own, um, own wine here.

00:19:54

So I, I don't know, like maybe part two actually is like part two, one, the,

00:20:01

what happened conversation part two, two is the feelings conversation.

00:20:04

Part two, three is the identity conversation.

00:20:07

And that's probably where we'll put the chapter markers as we talk through this,

00:20:10

but.

00:20:11

And the thing that makes it hard.

00:20:12

So, so as you're thinking about reading this or as you're reading through it,

00:20:15

like the, what happened conversation, if you did that, the two dot one,

00:20:18

it's got three chapters in it.

00:20:19

Well then the next one only has one chapter in it.

00:20:22

And the next one only has one chapter in it.

00:20:23

So it's like it, it's not a consistent.

00:20:26

It almost feels like they're prioritizing certain things.

00:20:30

And then at the very end, they said, okay, how do we smush this into some sort of, uh,

00:20:33

of an outline or some sort of an argument for a table of contents?

00:20:36

Um, so it was confusing.

00:20:38

So I thought that was kind of confusing.

00:20:40

Yeah.

00:20:41

And that's kind of what through me is if you look at the, the mind map for this,

00:20:46

it's, it's kind of ridiculous.

00:20:48

Um, there's a couple of sections that are just enormous.

00:20:52

And then a couple that are like really tiny and, uh, yeah, I don't know.

00:20:56

But the, the big thing I think that they're trying to get across with this whole

00:21:01

book is, uh, the, the different parts of the, the learning stance, they call it.

00:21:08

Um, and then there's a whole section on kind of like how you actually implement

00:21:12

that and then the justification for why the book exists at the, the end.

00:21:17

Uh, let's maybe start here with the introduction, which, uh, as far as an

00:21:24

introduction goes, it's fine.

00:21:26

talks about what a difficult conversation is, which I like this definition.

00:21:30

It's anything that you find hard to talk about.

00:21:33

Uh, I feel like that definition, uh, immediately positions or frames the book

00:21:41

differently than if you were to pick this one up off the shelf, like it even says

00:21:46

on the front, uh, these are the three authors of the Harvard negotiation

00:21:50

project.

00:21:51

So it feels like a business ebook.

00:21:55

And that's probably why, you know, I've seen it before and just decided, not,

00:22:00

not going to read that one.

00:22:01

Uh, but when you talk, think about that definition, anything you find hard to

00:22:05

talk about, obviously that is very open ended.

00:22:09

That applies personally, that applies in your family.

00:22:11

That applies in volunteer organizations that applies in academic institutions.

00:22:17

Like these are skills that you really, uh, need to have because you're going to

00:22:22

be presented with these opportunities to have these difficult conversations.

00:22:25

And really your only choice is to have the conversation or avoid it.

00:22:30

And when you frame it that way, it's like, well, yeah, I guess, you know, I

00:22:34

better just have the conversation.

00:22:37

It's not even exactly that simple because I talk about how when you try to jump

00:22:41

into that, that's kind of where you can blow things up a little bit too quickly.

00:22:45

So there's kind of this, this balance here in terms of having the conversations.

00:22:49

But the big takeaway, I, in my opinion, from this introduction is essentially, uh,

00:22:53

stop avoiding it.

00:22:54

Yeah.

00:22:55

I don't know.

00:22:56

Um, is there another way that, that you could take that?

00:22:58

I guess, you know, let me just ask you this.

00:23:00

Do you find yourself tending to avoid difficult conversations?

00:23:05

Or do you find yourself being like, okay, no, let's talk about this right now.

00:23:08

Cause I probably lean more towards that end.

00:23:11

So it's kind of interesting to me that I still felt like the introduction was

00:23:16

basically positioned towards the people who try to, uh, avoid those conversations.

00:23:21

Like, no, you really need to have these.

00:23:22

Yeah.

00:23:23

I would agree.

00:23:24

I lean on the other side of this, right?

00:23:25

So I'm kind of the, I don't mind walking into that and like,

00:23:29

hashing it out because I have a very short memory.

00:23:32

So it's like you and I, Mike getting to an argument right now, it could last 25 minutes.

00:23:37

I mean, we're yelling at each other, everything, like we're, you know, we're going at it.

00:23:40

And a day from now, like I'll process it for the next day, but then a day from now, I don't,

00:23:45

I don't really worry about it.

00:23:46

Like it's, as long as we like resolved it and it didn't have like some long tail on it.

00:23:51

It's just like, okay, that thing happened and we're going to, we're going to move on.

00:23:54

Um, my, my wife and I are very different in this way where it's like, it's not that she holds onto it.

00:24:00

It's just, she processes it a lot longer and she's like, well, aren't you, and I'm like, no, I'm, I'm good.

00:24:05

Like we, we did it.

00:24:06

We had it, but I, that's how I grew up.

00:24:07

I grew up in a situation where, you know, my grandmother, my mother, I mean, not to say there were

00:24:12

confrontational in a bad way, but we didn't avoid confrontation from that.

00:24:16

But I agree with you.

00:24:17

I think what they're trying to say here is, Hey, it's happening.

00:24:20

You either are going to get into them or they're not and there are good ways to do it and there are

00:24:24

bad ways to do it.

00:24:25

The other one, and I can't remember, you might be able to help me out with it where this is.

00:24:28

It's either in the preference or the introduction, but they basically do a hand wave on, they say,

00:24:34

this comes from a bunch of research.

00:24:36

If you want to read the research, you know, like, you know what I mean?

00:24:38

Like it was clearly a book that like they, they wrote based on their many, many studies and many,

00:24:44

many years of research through the Harvard negotiation project and those type of things.

00:24:47

And then they condensed it down into, um, into a book, which, uh, if you, if you're not familiar

00:24:53

with the academic world, that's an interesting decision to make because academics.

00:24:58

There's a stigma with when you go and you start producing popular books as opposed to

00:25:02

producing things that go into the academic literature.

00:25:04

And they did this in 99, right?

00:25:07

Like, um, another book that was very famous for this was Carol Dweck's mindset book.

00:25:11

Um, she, like the whole like reputation of like, of that whole situation kind of got

00:25:16

muddied and was fuzzy because she said, well, okay, I've done all this research on mindset.

00:25:21

Now I'm going to write a popular book about it.

00:25:22

So I thought it was interesting that, that they preface that as they're telling you,

00:25:27

Hey, this is going to happen to you and we're trying to help you, help you work through this.

00:25:30

Yeah, I don't have a location for that.

00:25:33

Um, but yeah, it seems like a lot of the books that we've read recently and I don't

00:25:38

know if this is just my bias as my tastes change and evolve, but a lot of the books

00:25:46

that been reading recently seem to have a very heavy research, uh, basis.

00:25:53

However, it kind of drives me nuts when it's not explicitly called out in the books.

00:25:59

I mean, I never go back and read through all those bibliographies anyways, but I feel

00:26:05

like it's important to give credit where credit is due, even if it's a research

00:26:09

project that you led.

00:26:10

I mean, this is something like this is, this is going back, but I got in trouble for

00:26:15

this, my freshman year of, of college, because I was in a religious studies class.

00:26:21

And the teacher was teaching, it was religious studies at a Catholic college.

00:26:29

So.

00:26:30

They were talking about world religions, but there's obviously like a Christian basis to

00:26:37

most of the stuff that they're talking about.

00:26:40

Um, and I confronted my teacher in front of the class and shouldn't have done that, but

00:26:46

she got me because later on there was a book report that was worth a sixth of our

00:26:51

entire grade, a book report, right?

00:26:54

This is the book, read it and write a report on it.

00:26:57

So I did that.

00:26:58

And she said, I didn't cite the sources correctly.

00:27:02

Like, while you gave us the book, so whatever, uh, she said that she was going to, um,

00:27:08

to take me to academic court.

00:27:10

And I was like, you know, I didn't plagiarize and anything like that.

00:27:14

That, that.

00:27:14

And she's like, yeah, yeah, I guess you're right, but you still get a zero on the assignment.

00:27:18

So I learned that lesson, I, that you need to cite your sources.

00:27:22

Even if they seem to be obvious.

00:27:25

I don't want to go down this rabbit hole, but A.

00:27:27

I's changing that a lot, changing.

00:27:29

Um, large language models.

00:27:31

I mean, all of this stuff is getting crazy and I'm intrigued, Mike.

00:27:34

So this is a challenge for you.

00:27:35

I, I want you to figure out what the first book that's been written by AI, like, you

00:27:40

know what I mean?

00:27:40

Like it comes on a bookworm and you go, huh, this seems like it was written by a anyhow.

00:27:44

Let's move.

00:27:45

Let's let you.

00:27:45

All right.

00:27:47

Yeah.

00:27:47

Um, couple other things from the introduction here, you know, they talk about how there's,

00:27:52

there's this void or confront option, but the best choice is actually a learning

00:27:56

conversation.

00:27:57

Uh, they say that there is no such thing as a diplomatic hand grenade, which

00:28:03

essentially, uh, is saying that when you confront, you are going to be dealing with

00:28:10

feelings, people's, uh, feel feelings and emotions that they will feel hurt.

00:28:16

Uh, not that it has to be that way.

00:28:18

You want to minimize that as much as possible, but essentially like you've got

00:28:21

this explosive thing when you're having this difficult conversation.

00:28:25

So.

00:28:25

Recognize that it's not just all going to be fine.

00:28:29

Um, yeah.

00:28:31

And no matter how good you get difficult conversations are always going to challenge

00:28:35

you, uh, you can't eliminate the fear and anxiety that goes with them, but you

00:28:38

can't reduce it.

00:28:39

And that's really the goal here.

00:28:42

So then the next, a first official section is part one, uh, the problem.

00:28:49

And there's a single chapter here, which is sorting out the three conversations, uh,

00:28:54

three conversations they talk about.

00:28:56

This is kind of the basis for the rest of the book, are the, what happened

00:28:59

conversation, the feelings conversation and the identity conversation.

00:29:02

And, uh, these are really the, the, the framework for the better way that

00:29:08

they're explaining here, or they're going to be explaining in the, the rest of the

00:29:12

book, um, anything else you want to add around the, the three conversations and

00:29:16

the, the problem that they frame in this first chapter?

00:29:19

No, I mean, I, the, my biggest takeaway from this is I don't have a problem with

00:29:26

the three.

00:29:26

Um, so the, what happened conversation, the feelings conversation and the identity

00:29:30

conversation.

00:29:30

Um, and not having studied this and not having done a ton of research this

00:29:36

prior to reading the book.

00:29:37

I wonder if those are the right three and I wonder if there are other ones, like,

00:29:40

if you and I thought on this for a long time, would it be the, what happened?

00:29:43

Would it be the feelings and would it be the identity?

00:29:46

They seem to fit well.

00:29:48

I didn't have anything where it's like, Oh, that's, that's wrong.

00:29:50

That feels off.

00:29:51

But at the same time, I wonder if we would come up with more like, Oh, in this

00:29:55

difficult conversation, it actually wasn't, we were hashing out what happened.

00:29:59

It wasn't about the way I feel it wasn't about, or the way you feel.

00:30:01

And it wasn't about our identities in this.

00:30:03

It was something else.

00:30:03

It was something completely different.

00:30:05

Um, I would be intrigued to see if we would, we would come up with something

00:30:08

like that.

00:30:09

The other thing I wanted to note is, I mean, they hit you with examples right

00:30:12

away, right?

00:30:12

So, I mean, within the first pay two pages, three pages, something like that.

00:30:17

Uh, they start talking about Jack and Michael and a conversation.

00:30:20

Jack and Michael had, um, and, and what I want to kind of convey here is some of

00:30:26

the examples resonated more with me than others.

00:30:28

Um, some of the examples I thought were better than others.

00:30:30

And then some of the examples you're reading, like I, at least I was reading it.

00:30:34

And I was like, man, this is uncomfortable.

00:30:35

Like I don't like this conversation.

00:30:37

And then especially when we get, you know, not to, not to go the whole way to

00:30:41

chapter 12, but especially when we get to chapter 12, then there were the

00:30:43

conversations where I was like, Oh, okay, this feels good.

00:30:46

This feels right.

00:30:46

Like I'm happy about this happening.

00:30:48

So I mean, they, they come out right out of the gun or right out of the, um, out

00:30:52

of the shoot with, with giving you good examples of, um, at least things to think

00:30:56

about, which I like, I appreciate it about the book.

00:30:58

Yeah.

00:30:59

That Jack and Michael conversation, um, just for context for, uh, for readers,

00:31:05

because it'll probably come up, they used that specific example throughout the,

00:31:10

the course of the book, not every example is like that.

00:31:13

It's not like there's a unifying thread with all of these examples that they're

00:31:15

sharing, but that one in particular, uh, Jack and Michael are friends who happen

00:31:20

to work together.

00:31:22

I forget which one is which I think Michael is the one who's under pressure

00:31:25

from his day job and Jack is the freelancer who's helping them out with a

00:31:30

project and Jack misses a detail in one of the charts and Michael gets upset.

00:31:36

And, you know, over time you unpack this and there's a whole bunch of assumptions

00:31:40

here, but ultimately what happens is Michael's like, Hey, you got to fix this

00:31:44

right away and Jack's like, well, I already busted my butt and canceled dinner

00:31:47

with friends and family time to help you out with this.

00:31:51

And now you're just being a jerk about it.

00:31:54

So I feel like that, that, uh, situation I could relate to, not because

00:31:59

that exact same, that exact thing happened to me, but I feel like I could

00:32:04

see how I could be in that situation with a lot of the people that I work

00:32:09

with that I consider, consider to be friends.

00:32:12

So yep, they, they, the examples they used, you could tell came from the real

00:32:17

world.

00:32:18

Right.

00:32:18

Like I don't think they, they had to make up many of these.

00:32:21

They just had to take them from this other part of the world that they're

00:32:24

working in and change the names, you know, to hide the identities and then

00:32:27

pop them, pop them in the book.

00:32:29

So I thought, I thought they did a, I thought they did a fine job, um,

00:32:32

introing that.

00:32:32

And then one of the things that is a, is a general theme throughout the book

00:32:37

that they started again in this first chapter, um, right out of the, you know,

00:32:40

right off the gate is the use of tables and the use of like summary pages where

00:32:47

you'll get to a point and they've just talked about a bunch of stuff and then

00:32:49

they go, okay, boom, here's a table.

00:32:51

Like in it, and it basically it summarizes the entire last, what six, 10, 15 pages

00:32:56

or whatever it is.

00:32:56

So, um, I thought that was helpful for somebody who needs that reminder.

00:33:01

It may be even useful if you don't want to read all 370 something pages of this

00:33:05

book, you know, you read the first part and then you pop to the table and you go,

00:33:08

okay, do I need to go back and actually read all the, all the nuance detail, you

00:33:12

know, if you're time strapped or something.

00:33:13

That's what I thought too.

00:33:15

I thought the tables were interesting.

00:33:18

I actually didn't like them a whole lot, but that's just because it felt like

00:33:23

filler pages when I knew I had 370 pages to get through.

00:33:26

That's how I felt with some of the examples is I felt like they were filler pages,

00:33:31

but yes, I get your point.

00:33:32

I definitely think they're useful as like, if you're going to go back and revisit

00:33:37

the book, however, uh, I don't know if I like that or dislike that generally.

00:33:43

I, and that's just personally, I guess if you're the average person and you don't

00:33:47

take ridiculous mind map notes on the books that you read, that's probably

00:33:51

really helpful.

00:33:52

But when I think like, I want to go back and I want to review the notes I took on

00:33:55

a book, that's not what I'm looking for.

00:33:58

What I'm going to tell you, Mike, is I think you are the exception, not the rule.

00:34:02

Right.

00:34:02

Like, yeah, I understand that.

00:34:04

You are the exception of the rule for normals, like the rest of us, right?

00:34:08

These tables are very, very helpful in terms of, um, no, if, honestly, if I was

00:34:12

you, I'd go to your mind maps first before I would go, I would go to this one.

00:34:15

You made the mind map.

00:34:17

So it triggers different things and it helps you with your learning.

00:34:21

Um, but two, uh, it's, it's probably more detailed in an organized way as opposed

00:34:26

to these are one offs in the chapter that if you don't have the context of the

00:34:29

chapter, it can kind of, um, kind of flutter away.

00:34:32

But what, what they do here is, is a concept that I was taught at some point

00:34:36

in my life that I really love is, um, tell them what you're going to tell them,

00:34:40

tell them, and then tell them what you just told them, right?

00:34:43

And there's this three, this three steps.

00:34:44

So it's like, okay, here's what I'm going to tell you in this presentation.

00:34:47

Now I'm going to tell you the thing in the presentation.

00:34:49

And then here's what I just told you in the presentation and, and honestly,

00:34:51

I think it's a really effective way to communicate an idea.

00:34:55

Cause it helps most people take away the key points of it.

00:34:58

You're right.

00:35:00

Uh, that exact phrase that you used about the telling them what you're going to

00:35:03

tell them, then you tell them, tell them what you told them.

00:35:06

I have heard that exact advice from business mentors in the past.

00:35:10

And I hate it.

00:35:11

Why it's so good.

00:35:14

It's so effective.

00:35:15

It is so good.

00:35:16

It is so effective.

00:35:17

And that's why it's annoying.

00:35:18

It's like, why do I have to tell you three times, but I get why I understand.

00:35:22

Uh, and, and I, I probably even practice it.

00:35:25

Uh, but I kind of wish that wasn't the case.

00:35:28

Uh, I can't help you there, but yeah, I know, I know.

00:35:32

All right.

00:35:33

So let's, uh, tackle the, the next section here.

00:35:38

And I'm actually going to break this apart.

00:35:40

Uh, I had the next section kind of mislabeled.

00:35:42

I think at the, the beginning.

00:35:44

So the next official part is the, what happened conversation.

00:35:47

I'm sorry, not that what happened conversation.

00:35:48

Uh, let me grab my, my mind map here.

00:35:51

I was updating the outline as we, uh, we went here, uh, shift to a learning stance.

00:35:55

And then there's essentially like the three parts to here.

00:35:58

So the, what happened conversation, the feelings conversation and the identity

00:36:01

conversation.

00:36:02

Um, and I feel like we should just tackle each one of those piece by piece.

00:36:07

Now the, what happened conversation is by far the biggest section,

00:36:13

subsection of this, because that's the only one that has multiple chapters in it.

00:36:17

Uh, chapter two is stop arguing about who's right.

00:36:20

Chapter three.

00:36:20

Don't assume they mean it.

00:36:21

Chapter four abandoned blame.

00:36:24

I feel like we don't need to go deep into each one of these.

00:36:30

I think the big takeaway from the, what happened conversation can kind of be

00:36:35

summed up in that first chapter about stop arguing, arguing about who's right.

00:36:39

And, and I mean, the, the blame is kind of goes along with that.

00:36:44

I feel I agree completely.

00:36:46

I remember when I was at, uh, Asian efficiency, I was in charge of the, uh,

00:36:53

at the beginning, I was doing all the technical stuff for the productivity

00:36:57

show and Zach was the, the host and I would do all the edits and I would schedule

00:37:02

the, the, the podcast to go out.

00:37:05

And, um, so I, I've created helped create all those systems and there was a point

00:37:10

early on in the podcast, not like the first couple of months or anything like that,

00:37:14

but it was before the first year when all of a sudden an episode went out like

00:37:20

days ahead of time and I was freaking out because, uh, I mean, I think that one

00:37:26

actually was okay because all the show notes and things were there, but essentially

00:37:30

like the drafts are there.

00:37:31

That doesn't mean that the thing is, is done.

00:37:34

It's not polished and you can't recall a podcast episode.

00:37:38

If you hit publish, it goes out and people download it and that's, that's it.

00:37:43

So I was freaking out and I was trying to figure out like, who did this?

00:37:48

You know, it wasn't me.

00:37:49

I double checked everything.

00:37:50

I've got all my checklist.

00:37:52

And to this day, like I don't think it was something that I did, but also the,

00:37:56

I remember distinctly the lesson I learned was tan basically, like when we started

00:38:00

having a conversation, but it was like, it doesn't matter.

00:38:02

It doesn't matter.

00:38:03

Stop approaching it that way.

00:38:04

Uh, we're not going to point fingers and figure out who did this so we can punish

00:38:10

them.

00:38:10

We're going to figure out how we can create a system so that this doesn't

00:38:14

happen again.

00:38:15

Yes.

00:38:15

And I feel like that is this section in a nutshell.

00:38:18

Absolutely.

00:38:19

Right.

00:38:20

I mean, so the, the, what happened, you know, is, and this gets into the next

00:38:25

section.

00:38:25

So I don't want to, I don't want to go too early, but like they, they kind of

00:38:27

preview this and they kind of give you hints of this is what's the point of

00:38:30

figuring out what happened?

00:38:31

The point of figuring out what happened is to learn.

00:38:32

It's not to blame and it's not to, you know, um, if you will justify our

00:38:38

assumptions about, about something, which is, which are the next two sections,

00:38:41

right?

00:38:42

So the, what happened conversation leads into, Hey, stop blaming people,

00:38:45

blaming people doesn't help anything, especially in a difficult conversation.

00:38:48

All it does is make people defensive, right?

00:38:50

So then they, then they get their, you know, they get in their fight and stance

00:38:53

and they, and they want to fight you with not even caring.

00:38:56

They just are mad that you attack them.

00:38:58

And then why do we do that?

00:38:59

Well, we do that because it impacted us in a certain way or it's going to impact

00:39:03

us in a certain way.

00:39:04

And then we make assumptions around how all that, how all that stuff works.

00:39:07

So yeah, like I, you know, we're talking about structure of this book, right?

00:39:10

Like I would do shift to learning stance at what two dot one and then it would be

00:39:14

two dot one A, two dot one B.

00:39:15

Yeah, they would be smaller sections because, because they blend so well together.

00:39:19

Um, and you know, not to foreshadow the, the style and rating, but like, I think

00:39:23

that's a rub I have with this book is like it just, it just took too long to unpack

00:39:27

all that.

00:39:28

Like we could have unpacked that a lot faster and we didn't need all these

00:39:31

different subsections, um, to unpack that.

00:39:35

So, but I agree with you.

00:39:36

And like, and they do a really good job.

00:39:38

It, I think they do a really good job.

00:39:39

So there's a section here of like where they call out, like here are two common

00:39:42

mistakes.

00:39:43

So my, in whether this is right or wrong of me, my, my assumption under that, right,

00:39:48

is that these mistakes came out from their research.

00:39:50

So the two mistakes came out from the fact that you've done a bunch of research

00:39:54

and these were the two mistakes that emerged from, from that data, you know,

00:39:57

and, um, and I liked that about that.

00:39:59

So.

00:40:00

Yeah.

00:40:01

Another thing I really like about this section, this is in the next chapter,

00:40:05

but there's this experiment by Fritz Hider.

00:40:08

Uh, and I don't always jot down like all the details of these experiments or

00:40:16

stories that people tell in these books anymore, but this one I really liked.

00:40:19

So in 1946, there was an Austrian psychologist Fritz Hider who ran this

00:40:25

experiment where he had a short video of these two circles, a small one and a

00:40:29

larger, larger one moving across the screen.

00:40:31

And the smaller circle was in front.

00:40:35

And so they asked people who saw this to describe what they saw.

00:40:39

And most people had one of two variations.

00:40:41

They told themselves a story.

00:40:43

The big circle is chasing the little circle or the little circle is running away,

00:40:47

which is interesting because neither of those things are actually happening.

00:40:51

We're ascribing value and intention to what we are seeing.

00:40:56

And I feel like that is the, the key point with this.

00:41:00

Um, the, that, so that, that part of it was, was new, but I've understood this

00:41:06

concept for a long time because it goes back to something that I actually learned

00:41:10

in one of the, the church groups that I attended a while back that we tend to

00:41:15

judge other people by their actions, but ourselves by our intentions.

00:41:19

So essentially we give ourselves the benefit of the doubt because, oh, well,

00:41:22

they know I didn't mean that.

00:41:23

But then we just, we, uh, uh, ascribe intention to things that people do.

00:41:30

And oh, well, they know that I hate this.

00:41:31

So obviously they did it on purpose.

00:41:33

That sort of thing.

00:41:35

You have a bunch of children.

00:41:37

I have a bunch of children, right?

00:41:38

And like you see this with your kids all the time.

00:41:40

He's doing it on purpose.

00:41:42

And it's like, no, he's not.

00:41:43

He doesn't even care about you at all.

00:41:45

He's just doing a thing.

00:41:46

And then there are clearly the times where he's like actively doing it on purpose.

00:41:50

And you call him out and you're like, Hey, did you do that on purpose?

00:41:52

And he's like, yeah, I just wanted to make it mad.

00:41:54

But like the fact that we don't really know that, you know, going into a conversation.

00:41:59

And I think, you know, my gut would say more times than not, it's not in, it's not

00:42:04

on purpose or it's not intentional or they weren't trying to, it was like,

00:42:07

there was some other thing that they were thinking about that impacted, you

00:42:12

know, that decision that impacted you.

00:42:14

And you were just kind of caught in the, you know, in the, in the mix of the whole

00:42:18

situation.

00:42:19

And what I like about the book, we keep teasing this Jack and Michael story.

00:42:23

When they get to the end, they unpack that more and they see how that actually

00:42:27

happened, right?

00:42:27

Like that, that the really, they were both kind of running their own little

00:42:31

routes and it just happened that this conversation between the two of them

00:42:34

happened at the same time and, you know, problems, problems occurred, which we'll

00:42:38

get to when we get to chapter 12.

00:42:39

Well, that actually leads into another like tangential point I wanted to bring up

00:42:44

in this section because they talk about how the process for how we see the

00:42:48

world is dependent on the information that we have, our observations, our

00:42:52

interpretations and our conclusions.

00:42:54

I didn't really like that basis because I feel like Dave Gray did a much

00:42:58

better job of explaining it in liminal thinking where he's got this bubble of

00:43:02

belief, he's got a visual, which I'll try to describe.

00:43:04

Essentially, there's like everything that can be known and that is like

00:43:09

impossible to know all that stuff.

00:43:12

And then you've got your experience on top of that.

00:43:16

And then even in that experience, you've got like a tiny little record needle

00:43:20

size point where that's what you've actually paid attention to.

00:43:26

And that's the basis for all the things that they are outlining in this book.

00:43:30

And then on top of that, you build all of your beliefs, all of your judgments,

00:43:35

the way that you see the world.

00:43:37

And then on top of that, you've got the, the people that you tend to surround

00:43:40

yourself with that think and talk and look just like you.

00:43:44

And so there's like this, this self enforcing bubble of belief where it just

00:43:49

keeps all that other stuff out.

00:43:51

And I feel like you apply that to the, this section and it's way more powerful.

00:43:57

Yeah.

00:43:57

The three bullets that they give us just don't do it justice.

00:44:01

That's a good, that would be a good addition or update to, to what they're,

00:44:06

what they're talking about here.

00:44:08

Yeah, but I agree generally with what they're talking about.

00:44:11

And then the, the blame versus contribution.

00:44:13

I think this is probably another important idea where going back to my story at

00:44:18

Asian efficiency, you know, there was the intention to assign blame, which I

00:44:23

viewed as like accountability at the moment.

00:44:25

And I'm thankful to tan for helping me to see it differently.

00:44:28

But essentially what we want to do is instead of like attacking people, and I

00:44:32

don't think you necessarily even need to have the intention to attack.

00:44:35

That's how it can be interpreted.

00:44:37

So instead of the blame where you're judging and you're looking backwards

00:44:41

and you're asking like, who caused this problem and how should they be judged?

00:44:45

According to a standard of conduct, you've got contribution on the other end,

00:44:49

which is about understanding, looking forward.

00:44:50

And that is less threatening.

00:44:53

And it needs to be because you have to, when you are talking about

00:44:57

contribution, recognize that we've both contributed to this in some way, shape, or form.

00:45:02

Maybe I didn't mean to.

00:45:04

Maybe the majority of the blame is this person's just a jerk and they're

00:45:06

taking advantage of me.

00:45:08

But I still have a part in this.

00:45:11

So we're going to figure out what, what did we all contribute to this, this mess

00:45:17

of this conversation that we need to sort out?

00:45:19

And ultimately that's, I mean, it makes sense.

00:45:21

That's, you have to have that foundation if there's going to be any sort

00:45:24

of productive conversation after that.

00:45:25

Yeah.

00:45:26

And you said it at the, at the very end, right?

00:45:28

There is, it makes sense, right?

00:45:30

Like it really does.

00:45:32

I want to blame, right?

00:45:33

Why?

00:45:34

Because when I blame, I offload that on to you and I, I don't assume

00:45:38

contribution or as much contribution to, to the thing.

00:45:41

So it's like, what do I want to do?

00:45:42

I want that to be on you.

00:45:43

That way it's off of me.

00:45:44

And, and there's reasons for this later on in the book, but it's like what I, what

00:45:50

I really like is the reality or the, you know, the thing that makes sense is

00:45:54

actually, like you said, we're both part of this whole conversation.

00:45:57

We both had something to contribute here, whether any, either of us was intentional

00:46:01

in it.

00:46:02

We both had something to contribute here.

00:46:03

And we really need to talk about that, not just shooting daggers at people

00:46:07

and, or, you know, man, my, my metaphors are really bad right now.

00:46:10

But not just, you know, like, not just trying to blame the other person and, and

00:46:16

shock that responsibility or that accountability for it.

00:46:19

Yep.

00:46:20

All right.

00:46:21

So are we ready to move to feelings?

00:46:24

Yeah, let's do it.

00:46:26

Okay.

00:46:26

So now they get into what they call the heart of difficult conversations, right?

00:46:32

Like, so, so they see this as a, as a critical point.

00:46:35

Um, and, and what I think is interesting about this is, um, the unexpressed

00:46:41

feelings that, that we come out, right?

00:46:43

So, uh, what do we acknowledge?

00:46:45

You know, there are definitely feelings where I'm mad about this thing.

00:46:47

And like you can tell I'm mad and I can tell I'm mad, but what isn't expressed

00:46:51

or what I'm not naturally doing is I'm not actually telling you that I'm scared.

00:46:54

And I'm scared about this other thing that's happening on the back end, which when,

00:46:58

when we mess this thing up together, that fear of that other thing happening is

00:47:02

really driving the way I'm, I'm influencing this conversation.

00:47:06

What I really liked about this part of the, with a book, with this unexpressed idea

00:47:09

and how, you know, these feelings hide and these feelings sit down in there,

00:47:14

but they're really driving this conversation more than we think they are.

00:47:17

Yes, they are definitely driving the conversation.

00:47:22

And, uh, I don't think I really cared for this section because they try to talk about

00:47:30

hot, like the complexity of the, the feelings and the emotions, but you can't do it

00:47:37

in a single chapter in a section of a book.

00:47:41

I know.

00:47:41

Uh, I remember reading Atlas of the Heart by Brené Brown and that book is phenomenal.

00:47:48

And, uh, the whole gist of that book is there's like 87 different emotions

00:47:54

that Brené Brown talks about in that book.

00:47:57

But I forget there's like a set of four or five that we typically default to.

00:48:03

You know, I'm happy, I'm sad, I'm angry.

00:48:07

And, uh, it's much more complex than that, which, you know, if you think about

00:48:13

inside out that Pixar movie, yeah.

00:48:16

And kind of at the end of the movie, they talk about the core memories and they,

00:48:21

they both touch the core memories and they have like the combination of the different emotions.

00:48:26

Man, how brilliant was that visual?

00:48:29

Yeah, exactly.

00:48:31

Exactly.

00:48:32

But yeah, so like they're trying to talk about, about, uh, feelings here and I don't feel like they.

00:48:38

They took the wrong path because really what they should have done is like,

00:48:43

this is really complex and you need other resources for this.

00:48:46

Or this should have been much bigger and longer than it than it is.

00:48:50

I feel like there is a alternate universe where they make some different choices about

00:48:55

the contents of this book.

00:48:57

This is longer.

00:48:58

This section is longer, but the book is not any longer.

00:49:02

Yeah, I didn't think of it that way.

00:49:06

But like hearing you express that, that actually makes a ton of sense where there's a lot more to unpack here

00:49:12

than we do in however many chapter or however many pages this chapter is.

00:49:16

Um, yeah, I hadn't thought about that.

00:49:18

That's good.

00:49:19

But essentially the, the big thing here is you do need to talk about feelings.

00:49:25

And again, you know, maybe this is unfair to just say, well, this was a business book.

00:49:30

It comes from the business world, but I feel like the way they frame it and how like these are typically

00:49:36

things that you don't talk about in difficult conversations in the workplace.

00:49:39

They even call out like feelings shouldn't be in the workplace, right?

00:49:42

That's kind of the, the unspoken belief.

00:49:45

And they're, they're challenging that.

00:49:47

And they're saying, no, you really do need to do this because these emotions are affecting the conversation,

00:49:54

whether you talk about them or not.

00:49:56

Uh, unresolved emotions also have a knack for finding their way back into conversations and not very helpful ways.

00:50:03

So let's just figure out how to deal with it.

00:50:06

So I don't know if this is, um, good or bad for me personally, but here, here, I was going to tell you.

00:50:12

So there's a part where they say, you know, they talk about working feelings back into the problem and basically what you just like describing your, like,

00:50:19

I'm feeling upset right now or I'm feeling mad at you because of this, this thing.

00:50:24

And then in the examples, they do that, right?

00:50:26

They actually have the person, you know, say the emotion back in or the feeling back in.

00:50:30

And the whole time I'm sitting there thinking, Oh, that's awkward.

00:50:32

I don't like that.

00:50:32

Like, I really wouldn't want to do that.

00:50:34

Like, no, no, no, no, no, like this isn't, no, we just talk facts here.

00:50:37

And I don't know if it's like the engineer in my brain or if it's the fact that I just don't have the emotional

00:50:42

capacity to do certain things like that.

00:50:44

But I'm like, okay, we could have had that whole conversation and you could have gotten rid of that whole feelings part and everything would have been fine.

00:50:49

But what I, what I bet to be true or what I think is true is if, if I did that, it would actually make the conversation better.

00:50:57

My problem is the resistance that I have internally that it's like, am I ever going to do that?

00:51:03

Like, or, you know, you and I are having a fight.

00:51:04

We're having a disagreement.

00:51:05

And I, and I say, Mike, you're making me feel really insecure right now, right?

00:51:10

About, you know, what, blah, blah, blah, blah.

00:51:12

I don't think I'm ever going to say that.

00:51:13

I don't know if that's true or not, but my gut reaction says I'm probably not going to say that even though it would help.

00:51:19

Um, and then they doubled down on it and they talk about the full spectrum of my feelings.

00:51:24

Well, hold on.

00:51:25

Do I even know the whole spectrum of my feelings?

00:51:28

You know, like, so to your point, this could be unpacked a lot more possibly with, you know, psychologists and those

00:51:34

kinds of things like do I even know the full spectrum of my feelings?

00:51:36

And then am I going to randomly tell you the full spectrum of my feelings because we got into a disagreement, you know, about, you know,

00:51:42

something that happened between between the two of us?

00:51:44

Ah, I don't know.

00:51:45

I don't know.

00:51:45

But I do think feelings are important.

00:51:48

Yeah.

00:51:49

Yeah.

00:51:49

And this is definitely a needed section in the book I feel.

00:51:52

So like just to double click on something that they mentioned, because you just shared an example and you said, Mike, you're making me feel real

00:52:00

insecure right now.

00:52:01

This is one of, one of my action items from this book is sharing how I feel without applying judgment.

00:52:08

OK, so like I'm psychoanalyzing you now, but Mike, you're making me feel really insecure right now.

00:52:13

That's saying that the problem is on me, but an alternate way to share that and kind of how I took away, like my action item from this, it like reframing that would be.

00:52:24

I am feeling very insecure right now because of what is happening.

00:52:29

Yes.

00:52:30

Right.

00:52:30

And then that's hard.

00:52:32

Like, I don't do that.

00:52:33

I recognize the value in doing that after reading this section.

00:52:37

So I mean, that's definitely one gold nugget I need to take away from this.

00:52:42

And then kind of a, there is a couple other things from the section that I like, but the other big one for me was don't vent.

00:52:49

Yeah.

00:52:50

That, I mean, I still know exactly what to do with that.

00:52:54

I have struggled creating a mindfulness meditation habit.

00:52:57

I know that that will help.

00:52:59

I know that journaling helps, but I still find myself wanting to vent occasionally.

00:53:04

So I don't know.

00:53:06

I recognize that that's not healthy.

00:53:07

And I also think it's not healthy even in like something happens at work and you come home and you vent to your spouse.

00:53:14

Like I've also done that, but I recognize that all that really does is it now transfers the things that I am frustrated with to my spouse.

00:53:24

And they've got enough going on.

00:53:27

Like my, my wife just, as you record this, she just got got COVID right before Christmas.

00:53:33

So terrible timing, but I had to step in and be, be mom for a while in addition to everything else.

00:53:41

And I didn't have quite as much going on work wise that week.

00:53:44

So it was fine.

00:53:45

We had to cancel our Christmas plans.

00:53:46

I mean, it is what it is.

00:53:46

I'm not looking for sympathy.

00:53:48

A lot of good actually came from it, but I can tell you I have a much greater appreciation for everything my wife does because I had to do it for a little while.

00:53:56

And I didn't do it anywhere near to the quality that she did.

00:53:59

That she homeschools our five kids, takes them all the places like we didn't have to go anywhere.

00:54:04

And I was still like exhausted and like, okay, it's seven o'clock and you're all going to bed because I so tired.

00:54:10

Okay.

00:54:12

So let me ask you a question.

00:54:13

Do you think, and you may have said this and I may have missed it, do you think that venting is important in general?

00:54:20

I think processing the emotions is important.

00:54:24

And I feel like venting is a way that people try to do that myself included.

00:54:28

But I also think there are probably more productive ways to do that.

00:54:31

Okay.

00:54:32

So because I would say like, I think venting is important, right?

00:54:35

Like I think for me, for my personality, like I need to get that stuff out there.

00:54:39

I'm an external processor for the most part, right?

00:54:42

So I need to get it out there.

00:54:43

But what you said that I thought was really good and may turn into my action item or one of my action items is I shouldn't vent that necessarily to another human.

00:54:52

I need to vent that on a walk in my journal.

00:54:56

You know, like when I'm, you know, working out or like some place where like if I'm venting something I'm frustrated about, it goes into the ether.

00:55:03

I get it out.

00:55:04

I externally process it, but then no one else is impacted by that.

00:55:07

And I hadn't thought about that.

00:55:09

I'd always just been like, Oh, I can just vent to my trusted sources.

00:55:12

And it's like, well, but that still puts it on a necessary or an undue burden on them.

00:55:16

That that's not really fair.

00:55:17

That's actually a that's a really good action I hadn't thought about.

00:55:20

So that's awesome.

00:55:21

Well, it doesn't necessarily even need to be a burden, but I feel like with a spouse, it can be.

00:55:26

Because I'm frustrated with the way things happened at work.

00:55:30

You know, I can come back and I've worked for a family business.

00:55:33

This is where it really gets tricky.

00:55:34

It's like my boss did this is also my dad did this.

00:55:38

You know, now you have this negative feeling towards your father in law that you didn't need to have.

00:55:46

Yes.

00:55:47

Right.

00:55:47

So just because I felt like I needed to get it off my chest, I don't know.

00:55:53

So yeah, I want to figure out the best way to do that or best ways to do that.

00:56:00

Because I think that there is probably this is multifaceted this this approach.

00:56:05

And that doesn't mean that like I'm not sharing the things that I'm struggling with

00:56:10

or how I feel about stuff that happened.

00:56:12

But in the moment, like I tend to respond pretty strongly.

00:56:16

And if I can process that other ways and then have the conversation later,

00:56:22

I feel like that's really the sweet spot.

00:56:25

Because if you don't do anything with it, if all just sleep on it, that's not productive either.

00:56:30

Like those feelings are still there.

00:56:31

They're unprocessed.

00:56:32

And now that's just going to matter of time before it blows up.

00:56:35

But if I can journal about it, if I can deal with it in some way, you know, when it happens,

00:56:42

but then later deal with it other ways, I feel like that's the real formula for for fully

00:56:52

minimizing the impact of some of that stuff.

00:56:54

All right, let's go to the next section.

00:56:57

If you're, and we'll see if anything else you want to talk about feelings.

00:57:00

Nope, I'm good.

00:57:01

All right.

00:57:02

So the next part is the identity conversation.

00:57:06

And this again has just a single chapter in it.

00:57:09

And this is interesting because the identity conversation is like, how do you see yourself

00:57:18

and the story in the framing at the beginning is basically that we have these identities,

00:57:26

three core identities everybody has.

00:57:28

Am I a good person?

00:57:29

Am I competent?

00:57:29

Am I worthy of love?

00:57:30

And those identities can be challenged in kind of interesting ways, I'll say like it

00:57:38

doesn't have to be a full on assault on this.

00:57:42

Like we can take a little thing and feel like it's a really big challenge to one of these core

00:57:47

identities.

00:57:48

And what that does is it knocks us off our feet.

00:57:51

And when that happens, then we we tend to come out swinging.

00:57:57

My pastor has described it as little man syndrome.

00:58:01

And I don't know if that's like the right term, but my dad is is is short, but he's

00:58:06

a successful businessman.

00:58:07

And I've seen this at work in his life because in the old school business world,

00:58:12

you would go to places and you would miss out on business deals because people didn't

00:58:16

like your appearance.

00:58:17

You weren't dressed the right way.

00:58:18

You didn't look the right way.

00:58:19

So my dad is is five foot four.

00:58:23

He's not like really short, but he's shorter than the six foot two IBM guys with the red

00:58:28

suspenders, you know, and so he shows up and he loses some of these deals.

00:58:31

And the way my dad's wired, you know, challenge accepted at that point.

00:58:36

Like I'm going to show you.

00:58:37

Right.

00:58:38

So that's kind of the picture I get in with this, this whole identity conversation.

00:58:44

And maybe that's just because I can see that in myself a little bit too.

00:58:47

I'm wired the same way where it's like, Oh, you can tell me I can't do something?

00:58:51

Well, I'm going to I'm going to do something.

00:58:52

And like if I feel threatened, then the way that I respond is like, I go zero to 60 real fast.

00:58:59

I don't know that that's there's another way to take this.

00:59:04

I guess, you know, go and think about on emotional intelligence and a search

00:59:10

in versus deference is really like a spectrum here.

00:59:12

And people tend to be like really aggressive on that one end of the spectrum

00:59:16

and deferring on the other.

00:59:17

So I can see a world where, you know, if people feel challenged, they just kind of maybe shut down instead.

00:59:23

But that's definitely not me.

00:59:25

And it's hard for me to to relate to that.

00:59:27

Yeah, I I wasn't like this chapter got me in terms of the three core identities

00:59:33

because I don't think those are what I would call my three core identities.

00:59:39

And I think my three core identities exist in all situations, not just in

00:59:45

in difficult conversations, right?

00:59:46

So I can see how these are meaningful.

00:59:48

So the three are am I competent?

00:59:50

Am I good person?

00:59:50

Am I worthy of love?

00:59:51

Right.

00:59:52

And I can see how those manifest in in having a difficult conversation or why you have a difficult conversation.

00:59:57

But I really don't think that that is what I would say are my three core identities

01:00:02

and in what would drive that now.

01:00:04

I've not done what they would want me to do and they would want me to reflect back on and say like, OK,

01:00:09

like let's think about these three core identities and how they relate like your three core identities.

01:00:13

But that would be an interesting action item or an interesting discussion to go.

01:00:18

OK, I'm having I'm going to have this difficult conversation.

01:00:20

How do my what I believe my three core identities are impact this conversation?

01:00:25

Oh, well, I believe this.

01:00:26

So therefore I'm going to or not going to do the following things.

01:00:29

So that one.

01:00:30

How do I say this?

01:00:33

We can the foundation for this chapter for me from from the very start because I was like,

01:00:37

those are good, but those aren't mine.

01:00:40

And what is that?

01:00:40

What does that mean for me as I work through this?

01:00:43

I think one of the the things I did like about this chapter was the think about yourself five or 10 years from now.

01:00:51

Portion. So there there's a whole, you know, or sorry, it's three months or 10 years from now.

01:00:55

So I got that wrong.

01:00:56

But it's like, I really like that.

01:00:57

And the one I've used in in the past is like right to headline.

01:01:01

So I don't have you ever heard of that where where it's you're like, OK,

01:01:04

imagine that this thing happens and then you write the headline at the end of it.

01:01:07

Are you happy with that headline or are you unhappy with that headline?

01:01:11

And what does that what does that mean and why?

01:01:13

Why is that?

01:01:14

Right.

01:01:14

OK. But I think that helps me connect back to my identity.

01:01:17

And then I go, well, why?

01:01:18

Why am I happy with that headline?

01:01:19

Oh, that that headline did the following or, you know, it said this about my identity or it didn't say this about it.

01:01:25

So I think I think my foundation was shaken a little bit on the identity one from the disagreement with them.

01:01:31

But overall, it, you know, it was OK.

01:01:35

Didn't didn't sit too poorly with me.

01:01:37

So what do you think are your core identities?

01:01:41

I'm just curious, like what came to mind for you when you were thinking about that?

01:01:44

Yeah.

01:01:46

So do you do you ever do anything with or do you know, Dustin Sandlin smarter every day?

01:01:52

So they say he has a podcast, right?

01:01:54

And they call him JPM to Jesus per minute.

01:01:57

So so when they when they start talking about Jesus, they're like, OK, we're going to get into a high JPM here.

01:02:02

Right.

01:02:03

But I think, you know, the first one is, you know, chategaot, right?

01:02:06

Like so.

01:02:06

So my identity, one of the things that's part of my identity is is I'm.

01:02:11

I'm a chategaot and the things I do should glorify God.

01:02:14

So I go into this conversation and it's like right or wrong, blame, not blame, like all those other things we were talking about before.

01:02:20

Impact, not impact.

01:02:21

Am I going to handle this conversation in a way that glorifies God or am I going to handle this conversation in a way that glorifies me?

01:02:26

And honestly, like those are the two sides of the spectrum, I think.

01:02:30

And it's really hard to be in the middle of those two things.

01:02:32

Because even if I'm like defending someone else, really what I'm doing is I'm glorifying myself in my I had the ability to defend, you know,

01:02:40

my wife or my child or whatever it was.

01:02:42

And really what I want is I want people to walk away going like, okay, are you, you know, or like, I want my identity to be like, he is a person that in everything he does, you know, glorifies God.

01:02:50

Like that's what I want one of my identities to be.

01:02:52

One of the ones that I don't like about myself, but is I am a, how do I say it?

01:03:00

I'm somewhat of an emotionally reactive person.

01:03:05

So when that's good and positive and happy emotions, boom, like here I am, like I'm good and I'm positive and happy.

01:03:10

When it's frustrated and anger, like I wear my, I wear it on my sleeve.

01:03:13

So like that's something that is part of my emotion.

01:03:16

Now, does that get to any of those three?

01:03:18

I actually haven't done this.

01:03:19

So you're putting me on the spot here, which is good.

01:03:20

I am.

01:03:21

Well, so that's, that's kind of my, I baited you a bit with that question, I feel, because these three core identities that they're talking about this aligns for me with like Maslow's hierarchy of needs.

01:03:30

So those identities that you shared, I feel like if you were to dig deeper with a psychologist and I'm not a psychologist.

01:03:39

They would be able to ask you clarifying questions where at the root of that, essentially those identities are addressing the fact that you want to be a good person.

01:03:51

You want to be competent and you want to be worthy of love.

01:03:55

And those things are tied to the identities that you shared.

01:03:59

I'm projecting a little bit here, but I think that's probably the case.

01:04:02

So, so hold on.

01:04:03

Let me make sure I understand you.

01:04:04

Are you saying that the things that I see as my identity could be wrapped up in the three things they list here?

01:04:10

I think you're talking about the same core identities a little bit different way.

01:04:14

Okay.

01:04:15

And I can see that child of God and the emotional person.

01:04:18

You know, I want to be good emotions, not bad emotions.

01:04:21

Like just even in that, like the good emotions are the way that you're clarifying.

01:04:25

I'm a good person.

01:04:26

And I want to talk about things away.

01:04:28

The glorify God, not myself.

01:04:29

Like that's a version of am I competent?

01:04:31

Right.

01:04:34

I could see it.

01:04:35

We could we could argue about this or we could have a much longer conversation, which I actually would be a lot of fun.

01:04:39

But like that that was what shook me in terms of this chapter, I think is is I was like, I don't know if I agree with those.

01:04:46

Well, the other thing that related to this and the reason I asked you that the question, because I feel like the three core identities, maybe there's more maybe they're slightly different.

01:04:56

But I feel like for the most part, yeah, I can get on board with that's like the basis.

01:05:00

That's what as a human, what we really, really want.

01:05:03

But then I do think that you're right that we have these older identities.

01:05:07

They even talked it out.

01:05:07

We have multiple intersecting identities.

01:05:10

I am a podcaster.

01:05:11

I am a creator.

01:05:12

I am a husband.

01:05:13

I am a father.

01:05:14

All of these things.

01:05:15

And I think inherent in each one of those roles are these identity persons.

01:05:20

Am I a good father?

01:05:21

Am I a competent father?

01:05:22

OK, OK.

01:05:23

Right.

01:05:24

So I'm not.

01:05:25

But so kind of moving on from like the three core identities piece, though, those other identities are complicated and they're going to be intersecting and they're going to be

01:05:33

contradictory sometimes.

01:05:34

They're going to shuffle too, right?

01:05:38

Like so in one conversation, it's going to be these ones are going to emerge higher.

01:05:42

And then another one, these ones are going to emerge higher.

01:05:43

Exactly.

01:05:44

That was interesting.

01:05:45

I hadn't thought about.

01:05:46

Yeah, I like the way you worded that.

01:05:48

That was good.

01:05:49

Yeah, David Sparks, my cohost on focus talks about this a little bit with his RTA concept, like what's the best version of this role for my life?

01:05:58

And at any given moment, you're embracing one of those roles and putting those roles or those identities.

01:06:04

But that identity has a higher priority than the other ones.

01:06:09

And I feel like that's kind of the trick is figuring out which identity is the most important one in certain situations.

01:06:17

And to be honest, we're probably not very good at this as humans.

01:06:22

I feel like one of the things that can get us in trouble is kind of like the whole

01:06:25

work life balance idea is like trying to figure out these identities.

01:06:29

And well, I want to protect my identity as a good employee, but that means that my

01:06:34

identity as a father takes a hit because I'm asked to work late and I'm not going to make it to the basketball game.

01:06:41

And there's no like one right way to configure these things.

01:06:45

But this is why like the whole concept of the PKM stack and Obsidian University is so important to me is like, you have to make sense of this stuff.

01:06:54

There is no like work life balance.

01:06:56

There's your life.

01:06:57

You got to figure it out.

01:06:58

And the identities are a really big piece, I think, to figuring it out.

01:07:00

I mean, we, so we lead a workshop for academics to work through their different, basically, their different job priorities and their different identities as academics, you know, because they have their research job, they have their teaching job, they have their service job.

01:07:16

And then they have their life, you know, like, we just lump everything else into my life outside of work, which isn't, doesn't do it justice and isn't fair.

01:07:24

But like we see this at the same thing and it's, you know, the life theme cohort or, you know, finding your true north or whatever it is, you know, it's like, that's why those are so valuable because you can look at those and you can say, okay, yes, this one hits it directly.

01:07:39

This one doesn't hit it at all.

01:07:41

Well, should I even be doing that thing?

01:07:43

And like, and you get into the conversation, you know, going back to the difficult conversations thing.

01:07:47

It's like, all right, there's a reason this conversation is more difficult for me is because it hits this thing that's core to my identity.

01:07:53

Like, I really care about this thing.

01:07:55

Whereas this is a difficult conversation, but, you know, I'm not that worried about this other one because it may not hit one of those cores or in this context, it's not one of those things that I'm, I'm not worried about.

01:08:05

I'll give you a, you know, clear example.

01:08:06

People will tell me all the time about how terrible I am with email, right?

01:08:10

That it takes me so long to respond to email and I'm terrible with email.

01:08:12

And, and I just look at them and I go, okay, like, what do you want from me?

01:08:16

Like, I don't care, right?

01:08:18

Like, I don't care about email.

01:08:19

Now, what do I do?

01:08:20

I triage it.

01:08:21

Sure.

01:08:22

Like, I'm going to go in through, I'm going to triage it because if the right people email me that I know need a fast response for whatever reason or, and the right is probably the wrong way to say that.

01:08:31

But you know what I mean?

01:08:31

Like, in certain circumstances, but then there's a lot of stuff that just gets resolved on its own.

01:08:36

And I don't know if you said it or somebody, like somebody at some point in my podcasting, listening career said it.

01:08:41

It's like the only mechanism where somebody else can put something on your to do list and you feel the weight of that.

01:08:48

And it's like, no, like, so that's an example where.

01:08:51

My identity is not wrapped up at all in my response time to email.

01:08:55

My, like, I missed an email and it's six months later, like, not at all.

01:08:59

But if you came to me and you said, hey, you know, I think, I think from my perspective, you're really struggling to be a father.

01:09:05

Like, boom, that would hit me hard.

01:09:07

Like, it'd be like, or be a good father, I should say.

01:09:09

Right.

01:09:09

It's like, man, that would hit me really, really hard because that's a higher one on my, on my priority list.

01:09:14

Okay, I'll move us a little bit on to it.

01:09:16

I liked this section.

01:09:18

I told you, like, my foundation was kind of shaken from the beginning.

01:09:21

But what I liked about this section was there when they talk about their identity and the fact that I don't think a lot of times we on our side of the conversation think about the other person's identity.

01:09:32

And I think partially because that's too, too much we're wrapped up in our own identity.

01:09:36

Like, oh, yeah, we're just thinking about ourselves and we're too, we're too focused on that that I don't think about, like, oh, in this conversation, so and so might be thinking the thing.

01:09:46

Now, I think we have to be careful of this because I think we can make assumptions here and it can really be wrong.

01:09:52

But I don't think we even enter that conversation very often where we go, oh, what might they be thinking?

01:09:58

Oh, well, they might be thinking this and this and this and if this happens, then this is going to happen.

01:10:02

And what's that going to do for me as a, you know, XYZ, whatever, whatever their classifying themselves as.

01:10:07

So I really liked that part where they, where they talked about, like, essentially just think about the other person because you don't do it very often in a difficult conversation.

01:10:16

Yeah, it's a good way to put it.

01:10:18

And that was a challenging thing for me as well because I totally saw how I guess my experience and the examples that came to mind were very victim oriented, shall we say, where I could recall instances of people doing this to me, but could not initially, you know, it's a lot harder to think of the times when I've done this to other people.

01:10:43

But that's the balance here and ultimately the place, if you really want this stuff to start creating positive change in your life, that's where to start is not to go to people and be like, hey, so here's the problems with you and the way that you talk to me.

01:10:57

It's starting with yourself and trying to improve the way that you talk to other people.

01:11:01

And then they kind of talk about this later, how that's ultimately going to lead to it coming back to you.

01:11:06

But I don't know.

01:11:08

Maybe that's a good place to go into the next section.

01:11:10

What do you think?

01:11:11

Yes, sir.

01:11:11

OK, now I do have a caveat with this next section.

01:11:15

I feel like after chapter six, I could be done with the book.

01:11:20

That's where a lot of the good stuff came for me.

01:11:26

Now, in the next part, which is creating the learning conversation, there's a whole bunch of chapters here.

01:11:31

Chapter seven, what's your purpose?

01:11:33

Chapter eight, getting started, chapter nine, learning, chapter 10, expression, chapter 11, take the lead, chapter 12, putting it all together.

01:11:39

It's literally half of the book.

01:11:41

Right here.

01:11:42

But this is a lot of the practical, like, here's how to do this and the different structures that you can use.

01:11:50

So there's a lot of like tactics in here, but I don't know that there's anything specific in here that I really want to talk about.

01:11:58

Oh, like the me, me and I really am wanting to use this.

01:12:02

So I don't know what what do you want to talk about from this section?

01:12:06

OK, so here's what I would do.

01:12:08

And I don't think I could have worded it this way until we started having this conversation.

01:12:11

I think this is two books and I think there's chapter one through six and that's a book.

01:12:18

And you could even call it part one, difficult conversations, part one, the foundations or whatever you want to say, right?

01:12:22

And then there's difficult conversations, part two, like acting on those, right?

01:12:27

Like, or the practical nature of this.

01:12:28

And what you what you could easily do is in the first book, you could then have like one chapter at the end that's practically boom.

01:12:36

Like, here's some practical stuff to take away.

01:12:38

Or if you were in part two, you could say, here's a summary of book one.

01:12:42

And then here's all the practical.

01:12:43

And I think they would actually hit the differences in our audiences better or the difference in the audience better, potentially, because I personally liked the second half of the book better than the first half of the book.

01:12:55

Interesting.

01:12:56

It's funny, OK, it's funny that you say what you did.

01:12:58

It wasn't that the first the first six chapters were bad in my mind.

01:13:01

It was just like, I felt like we just kept treading over the same kind of stuff.

01:13:06

And I was like, OK, I get it.

01:13:07

Like, I get it, I get it, I get it, I get it, but we I got it for I don't even know how many pages, right?

01:13:12

I can't see it right now.

01:13:13

But we got it for like a hundred and something pages.

01:13:15

I mean, you know, 125 pages or something.

01:13:17

And I was like, OK, this just took too long.

01:13:20

And I was almost tired when we got to chapter chapter seven in terms of then figuring out how to act on it.

01:13:25

I think I'm a book two guy and you're a book one guy, you know, like where you'd like it a lot better with the front matter and then that one chapter.

01:13:35

So what like, so your question to me was directly like, what do I want to do with the second half of this book, right?

01:13:41

Like, what do I want to go?

01:13:43

Honestly, what I want to do with the second half of this book is I want to I want to jump to chapter 12, OK, because I don't I don't think there's good stuff in seven, eight, nine, 10, 11.

01:13:53

But I don't like I don't know that there's that much that like really jumped out at me that was like, oh, this is amazing.

01:13:59

And we really need to talk about that.

01:14:01

And we really need to like unpack a lot of that a lot of that stuff.

01:14:06

I like the putting it all together chapter.

01:14:08

Yeah.

01:14:09

So real real quick before you get to that, because the very first thing they do mention in chapter seven is that you can't have every difficult conversation you come across.

01:14:17

But then the rest of seven, eight, nine, 10, and 11 are basically all of the tactics for every single type of difficult conversation you may come across.

01:14:27

So I feel like that's an important caveat going into what you're about to mention with chapter 12, putting it all together.

01:14:34

So back to you.

01:14:35

I mean, like, just, just to do to do the audience justice, right?

01:14:39

Like that way we they don't feel like, wait a minute, they just, you know, completely, you know, forgot about that whole section.

01:14:45

I mean, you're you're talking about three kinds of conversations that don't make sense.

01:14:49

You're talking about letting go.

01:14:50

You're talking about should you even raise the thing?

01:14:53

And, you know, how how should you raise the conversation?

01:14:57

Opening.

01:14:58

So typical openings that don't help, you know, they talk about this third story, which I think I think the third story is interesting.

01:15:04

So you got a first story, which is kind of like your perspective.

01:15:09

You got a second story, which is the other person's perspective.

01:15:11

Then there's a third story and it's more like general like flat, if you will, like it's just the here are the details or the brass tax of it.

01:15:16

If I'm remembering correctly, I remember the definition they gave was the third stories of perspective and mediator would take.

01:15:22

Yes.

01:15:23

Okay.

01:15:23

Good.

01:15:23

Right.

01:15:24

So you have that which again, valuable, like I don't think any of this is wrong.

01:15:27

It's just I don't think we needed so much about it.

01:15:31

And then they get into listening, which listening was a okay, naturally, like, yes, like I've I think this is it makes sense.

01:15:40

It's common sense.

01:15:40

Like, what do we need to do more?

01:15:42

Listen, what have I been told since I was like four years old?

01:15:44

I need to listen more.

01:15:46

Like, yes, that just makes sense.

01:15:48

Okay.

01:15:48

So did I get there yet?

01:15:49

No.

01:15:50

Okay.

01:15:50

So we're still there.

01:15:51

You know, this expression.

01:15:52

Speak for yourself, you know, with clarity and power.

01:15:55

I wasn't a big fan of that of that section in terms of, but like maybe it's because of how I grew up that like I don't feel like I have to stay powerful in the conversation necessarily.

01:16:05

It's just like, I just want to speak truth.

01:16:06

I want to, you know, say things and say them in a way that's that's loving, but at the same time speak truth and that people understand.

01:16:12

Okay.

01:16:13

This section also talked about the fact that paraphrasing back, which it may just be because my wife has a counseling degree and like she's a she, you know, is a licensed

01:16:22

counselor that it's like, yeah, of course, that's what you do.

01:16:24

You listen, you paraphrase back and then you figure out where to go next with the conversation.

01:16:28

Like all of this just made sense to me.

01:16:30

So I know I'm, but like I'm summarizing a bunch of stuff really, really quickly.

01:16:34

So with the paraphrasing specifically, they addressed active listening because that's kind of what people are.

01:16:40

I'm sure are thinking of when they hear that description of paraphrasing and they basically say like, if you do this exact thing, people will respond.

01:16:48

Like, don't try that active listening stuff on which that was kind of funny.

01:16:52

Yeah, I thought that was, I thought that was awesome too.

01:16:56

But one of the things I liked about it was basically there's a section in there and I can't remember where it is right now, but like acknowledging the other person's feelings.

01:17:05

And that opens them up in the like it drops the defenses.

01:17:09

And I think, you know, one of the things you said earlier today that I'm that I'm tagging on is it makes sense.

01:17:14

Like a lot of this stuff, when you think through it, it makes sense.

01:17:16

But what I don't think we do in these conversations is we don't get out of our own way.

01:17:22

And take a step back and it's because we're emotionally charged, our identity feels like it's being attacked.

01:17:29

We're trying to blame the other person.

01:17:31

Like we won't get out of our own way to do the things we know we should do.

01:17:34

We should listen to other people.

01:17:36

We should actually try to make sure that we understand what they're saying.

01:17:38

We should actually try to make sure that they know that we understand what they're saying and what they're feeling.

01:17:42

Like, I think these things when you read about them, they're like, well, duh, like, yeah, like that's what that's what we should do.

01:17:49

And I think this might be why you and I split the book, you know, in half.

01:17:53

I like the actionable stuff more, not not surprising that I like to get the problem solving more because that's what I like to do.

01:18:01

What do I like to do? I like to get in, get it done.

01:18:04

Everybody walks away happy.

01:18:05

I don't want to stew around on this on this stuff for a very long time.

01:18:08

I just want to get in and get it done and then move on to the next productive thing that we can do.

01:18:13

And I don't know if you feel the same way or if you have a different perspective on that.

01:18:16

So I'll turn it to you.

01:18:17

Like, are you like, are you a problem solver, if you will?

01:18:20

I am a problem solver.

01:18:21

I think maybe the reason that I gravitate towards the first part of this book is maybe because of my work situation currently.

01:18:32

Like I said, I wish I would have read this a while ago because I can think of lots of situations that I'm not currently in where this would have been helpful.

01:18:43

If I was still in the day job, if I was still managing a team, like this stuff would be awesome.

01:18:49

And I might have the different perspective and be like, oh, this tactical stuff.

01:18:53

You know, there's lots of specific action items from this.

01:18:56

I'm going to start using in my weekly meetings with so and so next week.

01:19:02

But I had a real hard time picturing a place where I would actually use some of this stuff.

01:19:07

There's lots of good stuff in here.

01:19:08

There's lots of like tiny little lists.

01:19:11

Like there's three kinds of conversations that don't make sense for liberating assumptions, two guidelines for starting conversations.

01:19:18

Let's see.

01:19:20

The paraphrasing has to you mentioned that three guidelines for telling your story with clarity, ways that you can reframe things.

01:19:27

I mean, there's a year's worth of SEO optimized blog titles in this section.

01:19:38

Oh, Mike, you might be foreshadowing one of my knocks on this book when we get to silent.

01:19:43

Yes, you might be.

01:19:45

OK, so let's actually move the move to the problem solving side.

01:19:49

So, you know, they drive home a couple.

01:19:51

So this is chapter 11.

01:19:52

They drive home a couple big things reframe, reframe, reframe.

01:19:56

I like this because this reframe, reframe, reframe helps keep you level in the conversation.

01:20:05

I think that's the best way I can describe it, right?

01:20:07

So what's my point?

01:20:08

My point isn't to rebuttal what you said.

01:20:10

My point is to make sure we're talking about the right things.

01:20:13

Part of that reframing as you get later in the chapter is like, listen.

01:20:16

So in order for me to reframe, well, I have to listen and I have to use that paraphrasing technique.

01:20:20

It sounds like you're really upset about this.

01:20:23

Right.

01:20:23

I'd love to hear more about and then you get into the question thing where you start to actually ask some questions about, like, tell me more about whatever.

01:20:29

So like the way I think about this, right, is what's my point in a difficult conversation?

01:20:33

If I'm like summarizing all of this up, like the whole like first 10 chapters and trying to put in a package for a chapter 11, what am I trying to do?

01:20:40

In difficult conversations, I'm trying to die to myself, not do the thing that my inherent nature wants to do.

01:20:47

And that's rebuttal you and that's fight you.

01:20:49

And that's like, you know, stand up and tell you how right I am.

01:20:52

I'm trying to die to myself.

01:20:53

I'm trying to listen to you as much as I can because why that will open up the conversation to where we can actually get to a conversation that's two way to where we get to the very

01:21:03

next section of the thing that say we're beginning the problem solver.

01:21:07

What are we trying to do?

01:21:07

We're actually trying to agree upon what's true and what's not.

01:21:10

And we're trying to figure out how do we get to a resolution and how do we learn from this?

01:21:14

So it's like the reason why a chapter 11 made so much sense to me is because, oh, this is what we're actually trying to do.

01:21:22

So like the global learner in me says, ah, I now see in the problem solver, right?

01:21:28

But the global learning the problem solver in me says, ah, I actually see what we're trying to do now.

01:21:32

We're actually trying to get to a point where we have this difficult conversation in a way that doesn't let anybody hijack the conversation in a way that we both learn from this conversation in a way that we both actually listen to each other.

01:21:45

And then we we get something out of it in terms of moving forward.

01:21:49

That doesn't necessarily mean I always quote unquote win the conversation or that there is there even is a win in the conversation.

01:21:56

It just means productive results came from this difficult conversation.

01:22:02

And that's what I needed.

01:22:04

Like I needed that for the first 11 or 10 chapters.

01:22:07

And when we got to 11, I was like, yeah, OK, now now we're speaking my language.

01:22:12

Yeah, you can hit on something that is important for logical, analytical minds like ours to realize is that it's not just explaining the facts that's going to.

01:22:25

Amen.

01:22:27

Create the the agreement.

01:22:32

Too too many too many times I hold on.

01:22:34

This is very clear.

01:22:35

It's very black and white.

01:22:36

And I get into this issue with students all the time where, you know, like we start to do this and I pull out the spreadsheet and they're like, well, I don't want to talk about the spreadsheet.

01:22:42

I want to talk about what happened in my life this past week and I'm like, no, no, no, no.

01:22:45

You don't understand.

01:22:46

I just want to talk about the spreadsheet like like that.

01:22:48

That's what we're going to tell.

01:22:49

And it's not that I'm like overly that way because I will listen to the other other things.

01:22:53

But at the same time, when you get so many times that that's an excuse, you know what I mean?

01:22:58

And they want to they want to hinder on that when when you just kind of get, you know, it's different.

01:23:03

So yes, I agree.

01:23:04

You're right.

01:23:05

I need to think about just not the analytical.

01:23:07

Oh, me too.

01:23:11

It's a it's a constant struggle.

01:23:13

Anything else you want to talk about from part four?

01:23:17

OK, so what I mean very quickly here because I don't I don't have a lot here.

01:23:22

But very quickly, what I liked about this was in this situation, I liked the step one, step two, step three, step three, step four.

01:23:28

Step five, I thought it I thought it put up a nice bow on everything.

01:23:32

And then the way they did it, I thought was was great in terms of they introduced this coach.

01:23:38

And I'm I'm not mixing up chapters.

01:23:41

Am I this is where they introduced the coach, right?

01:23:43

I think so.

01:23:43

Yep.

01:23:44

Because they it's the fictional coach, essentially, who is helping Jack through the

01:23:50

conversation and kind of creating alternate scenarios and how it might have played out differently.

01:23:56

Yeah.

01:23:57

So so there's two reasons why I really like this one.

01:23:59

One is because of the steps.

01:24:00

I think the steps are actually very clear here and they're very tangible.

01:24:03

I can walk away with this, you know, and use this moving forward.

01:24:07

The second thing is I like the creative style that they did.

01:24:10

Like I think it was a little bit creative to say, OK, we've had this conversation.

01:24:13

You've been looking at these two dialogues, the entire book.

01:24:16

Well, now what we're going to do is we're going to basically like, you know, it's like the movies where like the actor can push pause.

01:24:21

They can narrate and like talk with you and then they can push, you know, unpause and they can they can start the movie back again.

01:24:26

And I liked that.

01:24:27

Like I thought that was very, very effective because it was that meta layer that explained, OK, well, hold on.

01:24:34

If you would approach it this way, you know, using step one, step two, step three, or step four, right?

01:24:39

Maybe the conversation would go better and then they'd replay the conversation in a way that it actually, like you saw that possible tangible impact on the conversation, which it's completely made up.

01:24:49

But it really resonated with my brain in terms of like, OK, I could see how all of this could come together.

01:24:55

I could see how this might this might make sense.

01:24:58

So I, you know, when I like the bow they put on the book, chapters 11 and chapter 12, I got, I got muddied out or washed out in that seven through 10 section.

01:25:09

Exactly.

01:25:10

Like you could have taken this last chapter and put it at the end of part, whatever the part two, I guess, the shift to a learning stance.

01:25:18

And that could be the end of the book.

01:25:23

That's not to diminish anything that's in chapters seven through through 10 or 11.

01:25:30

It's kind of kind of weird, like where that ends there.

01:25:33

But they talk about in those chapters kind of some specifics, like, here's how you handle someone who just attacks all the time and how you, you know, kind of stand up for yourself without being a jerk.

01:25:46

That kind of stuff.

01:25:49

And that's good, you know, for people in certain situations, that section alone is worth the effort that you put in to read up until that point.

01:25:58

But that's just not where I'm at.

01:26:00

Yeah.

01:26:02

And I think how do I say this?

01:26:05

I think the book almost tries to be too much.

01:26:09

Like it almost tries to do too much where had it had it focused a little more.

01:26:15

Or if it was structured in a way that guided people better than they could they could go.

01:26:20

It almost like a reference book where it's like, I walk in and I go, I'm having this issue with the difficult conversation and I knew where to go to get something on that issue.

01:26:28

I don't think it's structured well to do that right now, but I think it could.

01:26:32

And I think that would really have helped with seven through 11 ish.

01:26:35

Sure.

01:26:36

Those those chapters.

01:26:37

OK, you ready to move to part five?

01:26:39

Yeah, let's do it.

01:26:40

OK.

01:26:41

So we kind of already kind of already talked about this a little bit.

01:26:45

I referred to it as an appendix.

01:26:46

So they say in the beginning of the second edition that this was added, this wasn't in the first edition.

01:26:53

This was added in the second edition.

01:26:55

OK, and I'm trying to remember exactly why they said it.

01:26:59

In the second edition, we have chosen to leave the main text of the original intact.

01:27:05

We have, however, drawn from what we have learned from those that are using the book from our own experiences and coaching and consulting.

01:27:10

To, you know, commentary on a variety of different topics.

01:27:13

I think this is good.

01:27:14

I don't think it's good slapped onto the back of this book because like I just think it's just too much.

01:27:22

Like I don't know.

01:27:24

Like I just think it's too much.

01:27:25

And again, I would use this as a.

01:27:27

All right, does that question relate to my life right now?

01:27:31

And maybe that's what they intended it to be.

01:27:34

Like maybe they didn't intend you to read it or intend for you to read it right after you've read the book.

01:27:37

But I would use that as a.

01:27:40

Well, let's look at those 10 questions.

01:27:41

Am I dealing with any one of those right now?

01:27:43

And if I am, maybe this will help me.

01:27:45

Like maybe this will get something out of there.

01:27:47

So that's my take on the part five.

01:27:49

I think it could be an appendix that I could refer to later on.

01:27:53

The one thing that stood out to me specifically from this section was one of the questions.

01:27:58

What about conversations that aren't face to face?

01:28:00

Which I do differently if I am on the phone, text, email, video call or social media.

01:28:07

And this I call out because I feel like this highlights the problem with what they tried to do here.

01:28:14

There is a whole book that Joe and I read called Digital Body Language by Erica DeWann, which is a

01:28:21

phenomenal, an entire book about how to communicate effectively when you're not face to face.

01:28:28

And they're like, well, people were wondering about how this stuff applies to this other domain, which really

01:28:35

isn't what you're talking about.

01:28:37

And they're like, well, we'll just research some stuff and create a few bullet lists.

01:28:41

So here's what you do when you're reading.

01:28:42

Here's what you do when you're writing.

01:28:44

No.

01:28:45

And again, this is going back to like how to read a book.

01:28:50

And I understand now the value of reading all these different books in context.

01:28:54

So Mortimer Adler calls this in topical reading where you're applying pieces of this and pieces of that and

01:28:58

melding it all together.

01:29:00

It's impossible to address that concern without another resource like Digital Body Language, just like

01:29:09

it's impossible to tackle the feelings section without a deep dive like Brene Brown did in Atlas of the Heart.

01:29:15

There's so much more here, but it feels to me very much like, well, this person had this question and here is

01:29:24

unanswered.

01:29:25

So there we've dealt with it.

01:29:26

No, you didn't.

01:29:30

Yeah, I can very much see how those would those are come across.

01:29:34

And I almost think, you know, they'd be better served to say, here's our resources.

01:29:38

Right.

01:29:39

Like in terms of here's the here's a bunch of questions we've been getting asked.

01:29:43

Here's these 10 questions.

01:29:44

If you would like to learn more about this, here's a resource resource resource resource.

01:29:48

And and like you write a tiny little two sentence thing and then boom, here are here are resources.

01:29:53

I think that would have been more more valuable.

01:29:56

But, you know, I mean, I'm not an author and I'm not an editor.

01:29:59

So maybe they maybe somebody pushed them to.

01:30:02

Yeah, I don't know.

01:30:04

All that to say, I do agree with you that there's some useful stuff in here, but this is not the end of the conversation.

01:30:12

It's the beginning.

01:30:13

Hey, we did it.

01:30:16

Yeah, we did.

01:30:17

So that's that's the book.

01:30:18

I have one, I have one more question before we go to action items and stuff.

01:30:22

All right.

01:30:22

All right.

01:30:23

Do you have the paper copy or do you read the Kindle?

01:30:26

Come on.

01:30:26

What kind of question is that?

01:30:27

It's right here.

01:30:28

I know.

01:30:29

But I know.

01:30:30

It's the physical copy.

01:30:31

I always read physical books.

01:30:33

I think if I were to start now, I probably would lean a little bit more towards the digital, but reading physical books, grab one with me when I went to piano lessons with my kids and having something to read instead of pulling my smartphone.

01:30:45

That's the thing that got me reading books in the first place.

01:30:47

So OK, do you have a roadmap to difficult conversations at the back of your book?

01:30:52

Let's see.

01:30:54

So when when the 10 questions end, you know, they end with the words, good luck.

01:30:59

And then is there a roadmap to difficult conversations?

01:31:03

Nope.

01:31:04

There is in my third edition acknowledgments.

01:31:08

And then after that, there is notes on some relevant organizations.

01:31:14

OK, I didn't realize this.

01:31:17

So I have an old I have the second edition version of this book and then I bought the third edition as well.

01:31:23

I bought the third edition on Kindle and I was like, oh, well, maybe it's just a Kindle thing.

01:31:26

Like they just didn't put in the Kindle version of it.

01:31:27

In the second edition, they did a whole like roadmap section where basically it's a thorough outline of the entire book.

01:31:36

And it serves as what I wanted in like I want this reference section to where I can go back in here and I can say, oh, like I'm dealing with this thing and I can find it here.

01:31:47

You know, it's like, I mean, it's a roadmap, right?

01:31:50

It's a more it's a more detailed table of contents, if you will, which I actually think makes the book way more valuable long term.

01:32:00

It doesn't really help me in the immediate reading of it, but it helps me way more in the long term.

01:32:05

And I thought that was something they should have kept in for the third edition.

01:32:11

I completely agree.

01:32:12

Yeah, I didn't even know that was missing, but I can definitely see how that would be useful.

01:32:16

I wish the third edition had that for sure.

01:32:19

And I was thinking it was just a Kindle thing.

01:32:20

I was like, oh, you know, they just forgot that in the Kindle or they chose not to put it in the Kindle, but nope, you don't have in your in your print book either.

01:32:26

No, I don't.

01:32:27

All right.

01:32:29

Well, action items.

01:32:31

I've got one, which I mentioned previously and that is to share how I'm feeling without judgment.

01:32:40

I'm not sure that they're unless you go into it with a specific situation in mind that there is.

01:32:48

There is a whole lot of action items to be gleaned from this other than the ones that are kind of stereotypical for me, which is I'll just keep this in mind the next time you're having a difficult conversation.

01:32:58

That's kind of the running joke on bookworm is I have these aspirational, like someday, maybe action items, but this is good fodder for that.

01:33:07

That that I've only got that that one, which is next time that I am trying to be heard and share how I'm feeling.

01:33:17

Do it without saying, you know, you're making me feel, et cetera.

01:33:22

How about you?

01:33:23

You got any action items?

01:33:24

Yeah.

01:33:25

So the one I thought of coming into this was the next difficult conversation that I have planned, right?

01:33:32

So one that happens on the fly.

01:33:34

This won't work as well with, but next when I have planned, I want to revisit this before I go into that conversation.

01:33:39

And I want to say, okay, what should I do in this difficult conversation that's coming up?

01:33:44

Or are there any things I can glean or take away from this?

01:33:47

And I don't have anything specific that I definitely want to do in that conversation, but I want to see how my approach to that conversation might be filtered and or scaffolded or helped out by thinking through this material first and then going into that difficult conversation and see if it works.

01:34:07

And hopefully, if I would do that enough times, then it would show up in the conversations that aren't as planned and the ones that just randomly happen when you're walking down the hallway of wherever you're at.

01:34:19

So I think that's my big action.

01:34:21

Yeah, that's a good approach.

01:34:23

I like that one.

01:34:24

All right.

01:34:25

It's style and rating.

01:34:27

It's my book.

01:34:28

It's my book.

01:34:29

Do I go first?

01:34:29

Yeah.

01:34:31

I mean, I wasn't going to make you go first, but I'll go first.

01:34:34

The format.

01:34:35

So.

01:34:36

Okay, good.

01:34:39

This is an appropriate time for me to talk about something I said I was going to talk about later.

01:34:44

So I like the tables and charts.

01:34:45

Those are helpful for me.

01:34:46

I like a decent amount of step one, step two, thing one, thing two.

01:34:51

Look at this thing.

01:34:52

Look at that.

01:34:53

I think they went way too far with the number of point one, point two, this thing, that thing to where like I, I wasn't doing.

01:35:05

And as thorough a job as your mind map when I was working through this and at times I was like, wait, are we on point three of this thing or were you?

01:35:12

The last thing only have two points and this thing only have seven points and oh my gosh, like, how many points are we talking about here?

01:35:18

And I almost got tired of it, right?

01:35:20

Like, because it the book used smaller sections and like smaller chunks for their breakdown and their headings and things.

01:35:28

But I thought that muddied the water in this case.

01:35:31

Like it didn't help me pick out the pieces that I needed to pick out or like it didn't emphasize anything for me.

01:35:37

It actually caused me a problem in keeping track of everything because I wasn't doing something like the gigantic mind map.

01:35:44

I wasn't, you know, putting all those pieces down.

01:35:47

So so from that standpoint, like the tables and charts didn't like the way they actually broke it down.

01:35:52

We've already talked about the fact that there's a whole section here that possibly could be a second book.

01:35:57

So like, stylize, I wasn't a huge fan of the style of this book.

01:36:03

It definitely, even from other nonfiction books that I've read, it wasn't one that I got to the end of it.

01:36:08

And I was like, oh, yeah, like they did that well.

01:36:11

Like they packaged that well and it worked well.

01:36:13

So I wasn't a huge fan of it from a style standpoint.

01:36:16

I did like the fact that they brought in good examples.

01:36:20

I think they brought in too many good examples and but where they really won me over with the examples was that coaching thing at the end where they they would say, all right,

01:36:27

time out.

01:36:28

Here's the coach is going to talk to you and then we're going to go back into the conversation and see how it changes the conversation.

01:36:32

So I'd like that from a rating standpoint, I give this three out of five.

01:36:35

So this is definitely not one of the top tier books I've read.

01:36:39

I think there's good content in here.

01:36:41

I think getting to the good to the content actually takes some effort and actually trying to wrap your head around all the stuff that they've talked about.

01:36:49

And then I don't think I'd have said this until after our conversation, but I think I was thinking it in the background.

01:36:56

There are areas where they where they kind of just gloss over or they kind of just say like, OK, here's a little section on this thing, but there's a lot more.

01:37:04

And I think when you brought that up, I was like, Oh, yeah, that's exactly what they did.

01:37:07

And I think Mike's Mike spot on for that.

01:37:09

So three out of five is my rating.

01:37:10

All right.

01:37:12

Well, I think you nailed it for the rating.

01:37:14

I'm going to also give it three stars.

01:37:16

I think there's some really good stuff here and they tried to do too much.

01:37:25

And I'm reminded of this axiom that I heard and I don't even remember where I heard it, but if you're not known for something, you'll be known for nothing.

01:37:38

And what they did here is like difficult conversations, but then they kind of touched on a whole bunch of tangential things, which they, in my opinion, really shouldn't have done.

01:37:52

Like if I was coming at this from a content creator perspective, I would write the difficult conversations book, include chapters one through six and maybe 12.

01:38:06

And then all the other stuff, that's in the online course.

01:38:10

If you really want to dig deeper and that's an upsell.

01:38:15

It's a totally separate resource. And what happens by separating it that way is you can communicate your good message more effectively, more strongly, more clearly.

01:38:28

I guess, you know, the version of this book that I would have liked the most is one that anchors on the Jack and Michael story that they mentioned.

01:38:39

And they kind of do that because they have the coaching conversation at the end, but there are so many other conversations in the middle.

01:38:45

Let's just focus on those characters and let's dive a little bit deeper, maybe into those, to their story.

01:38:52

And let's use that to tell the message, but by grabbing a piece here and a piece there and there's these people over here and some people over there and bring it all together in the 370 page book.

01:39:04

The message loses some of its power that way, I think. But that's again, you know, this book has been around for a long time and they are successful Harvard negotiation projects.

01:39:17

Researchers who are better at this stuff than I am. So take that with a grain of salt, I guess. But yeah, I think from a bookworm perspective, this is a little bit different.

01:39:29

There's a whole lot of stuff here that ultimately you're going to have to kind of wade through, but there's some really, really good stuff in here.

01:39:38

And I am definitely glad that we read it, glad that you picked it, glad that you brought me along for this journey.

01:39:46

But yeah, not a not a great book, in my opinion, but it is a good one.

01:39:51

And I do think it's something that should belong on somebody's bookshelf, even if you don't need it right now, there'll probably be a point where you will and you'll be glad that you had it.

01:39:59

So Mike, not having your mind map, right? I think this is one where if I was going back to it, I have it on my shelf now.

01:40:12

So I was going, but if I was going back to it, it would almost be better off to go back to like the blinkest or the short form or the thing that summarizes it.

01:40:21

And does a decent job of summarizing it as opposed to trying to go back to the book, because I think there's really good stuff in there.

01:40:27

I just think it's packaged in a way that makes it difficult.

01:40:30

Yep, I agree with that.

01:40:32

I don't generally recommend blinkest for understanding or cracking the the ideas that are in these books because I believe that the effort that you put into actually synthesize it for yourself is what really makes it stick.

01:40:49

But this one is very specific, very tactical, is very clear places where you're going to want to use some of the stuff.

01:40:57

And you know when that is. And at that point, yeah, you just want the checklist.

01:41:03

Don't do this. Do this instead, sort of a thing. So.

01:41:08

All right, let's put difficult conversations on the shelf.

01:41:13

The next book that I am planning to cover is Feel Good Productivity by Ali Abdul.

01:41:21

I preordered this one a while back and I am curious about this one.

01:41:27

I think I might love it.

01:41:29

I think I might disagree with a lot of stuff.

01:41:32

So we will figure this one out.

01:41:36

And, Corey, you want to come back and talk to me about that one?

01:41:39

I'd love to, Mike. That's awesome.

01:41:43

All right, great. Well, we will be reading Feel Good Productivity by Ali Abdul next.

01:41:49

So if you're reading along, pick that one up and we'll talk to you in a couple of weeks.