Thompson Barton has had great success helping teams of all kinds with his transformational workshops on accountability. In his book "Please Lie To Me" he describes how most adults live in fear of each other and how that fear holds us back in business. His Accountable Communication Technology workshops break down the fear and behaviors frame-by-frame to help teams overcome it for stunning results.
Topics:
- Accountable Communication Technology
- Please Lie To Me
- What drives our fear?
- What is the old agreement?
- What is the new agreement?
- How does fear apply to sales?
Thompson Barton
Accountable Communication Technology
Contact Thompson Barton
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Podcast Transcript
Edited for content and clarity.
Jonathan Stanis: Hello, everyone and welcome to inner sales podcast brought to you by 3YG. I am Jonathan Stanis. And I am joined per usual by my co host, Russ Salzer. How you doing Russ?
Russ Salzer: Hey, I'm good Jon. Thanks.
Jonathan Stanis: And we have a guest today. Hello, and everyone welcome Thompson Barton, author of "Please Lie To Me". say hello, Tommy.
Tommy Barton: Hey there, welcome. I'm just glad to be here. Thank you.
Jonathan Stanis: So Tommy, I'll give a little bit of background started in 1991, with a kind of Accountable Communication Technology. That's the name of your organization, I understand.
Tommy Barton: Yes. And it's also the name of the product actually. It's a technology and it's perfect for describing those words that countable communication. So as is actually what we call the process and the product itself.
Jonathan Stanis: Okay. And so you've got both the technology and then also a book. The main reason we wanted to have you on is this absolutely intriguing title of "Please Lie To Me", that you've written yourself along with Don White. Can you tell us a bit about Don White and how you met him and how you guys work together on this book?
Tommy Barton: Sure can. I was apprenticing with Will Shutts from whom my work is taken. My work has evolved from Will Shutts his work called The Human Element and that was in graduate school in the early 80s. And he was working also in industry with his technology called Pharaoh and The Human Element and I was so intrigued by that that I was apprenticing with him.
I was in the graduate school still, but I just was focused on what that man was doing and one of his clients was Procter and Gamble and so he had quite a bit of workshop work with him and I started with him with that work in around Baltimore, Maryland.
It was Don White who had discovered actually Will Shutts and gotten him to come into his particular plant in Baltimore Proctor and Gambel palnt. And so I met Don when I was apprenticing with Will to do this work during a week long workshop. Don was the manager and that's how I first met Don White that was in probably 81 or 82.
Jonathan Stanis: And so that's how you make Don, your co author. Also, you've known Russ for a long time. Can you tell us a bit about how you and Russ got together?
Tommy Barton: Yeah, I was living in Seattle at the time, this is 1991. I'm working for a company, a high performance training company called Sports Mind. I was a designer and also facilitator for them. And one of their clients was James River.
And so I was doing the work of sports mine which which is a lot of predicament training. The meaning you put groups of people into a situation or predicament, and then you watch what they do and then you talk about it afterword in the predicament designed to bring out various aspects of leadership management, communication, trust and so forth. So I was doing that work with them and assigned to Redmond plant, among other things. Redmening was a paperwork packaging plant in Redmond, Oregon.
Russ Salzer: Redmon, Washington
Tommy Barton: Washington and thank you and, and that work took off quickly. And they wanted what they took out of it what James ever took out of it, what they liked what the manager of that company liked the most was the business of the human element, which I was introducing at that time into the Sports Mind curriculum. That's one of the reasons they hired me.
The plant manager and the general manager decided they just wanted that and not to the actual physical activities and the high ropes and all that. I was about to talk about a time when I decided that what I wanted to do with my professional career, and the technology I wanted to use was that had been developed, by Will Shutts the human element. And so they asked me if I would come in and just do that kind of work with them. And I said yes.
I departed from Sports mind and began working with James River and it very quickly went to the top that is to say the CEO and his direct reports. And then from there, they wanted countable communication technology spread across their entire company, which was nationwide and a billion dollar company.
Well, I couldn't do that alone. So the one person that I had met that I thought was absolutely tops in terms of his facilitating capacity was Don White and I told you how I met him. And then I subsequently worked with White, by the way for several years, as an apprentice with Will. And so I had a good feel for him. And I called him up and say, Look, will you join me for this? This is more than I can do.
And furthermore, Don White's entire career at that point, 20 some odd years was in manufacturing. And I was working in manufacturing. That's what James River did their packaging, so it was a perfect fit. He came out from Baltimore and we did a week workshop and he loved it. They loved it. And he decided then he said, You know, I've done everything I could do with this and Procter and Gamble. I feel like it's got great traction.
I want to take this out to latter part of my life. I want to take this out to other companies. The whole nation should know about this kind of technology because it's made a completely transform our plant at Procter and Gamble. Don White has set records that have still never been touched into any production measurements you want to site, they just took it to a place that they'd never seen it before in Procter and Gamble. He was really skilled at it knew what he wanted to do and wanted to join me full time.
So he took early retirement, and we had so much of this work to do with James River. And that's how he and I began. And then I think in 91, or 92, we officially became partners and he quit Procter and Gamble, took early retirement, we were doing this night and day.
Russ Salzer: So I don't feel too slighted but. Jon had asked how we met so I'm going to share that. I had moved from Wisconsin to Portland, Oregon, and Tommy, as you mentioned was they were doing the Predicament Sports Mind thing. So I actually went to one of the trainings in 1991 called The Human Element training Tommy was there. And that was sort of what started the ball rolling with in James completely transformed my approach to work and life and a whole lot of ways. And so that's I've known Tommy since April of 91. Actually, to be specific.
Jonathan Stanis: If I remember correctly, The Human Element that's focused, and I remember this from the book around tennis, correct?
Tommy Barton: Tennis did you say?
Jonathan Stanis: I thought there was some call out there or is it something else?
Tommy Barton: Here's the deal. What do you have in mind right now is a call "The Inner Game of Tennis".
Jonathan Stanis: That's it. All right. You're bringing my memory back
Tommy Barton: Yah, written by Tim Gallwey, and he was in fact the reason I went to the graduate school I was teaching college and teaching sports psych up here in Bend Oregon at the college and I wanted to go ahead and make a career of it and so I need a masters and a PhD.
So, I went to the holistic studies program Will Shutts, his study program in 1979. In order to do what I said get a Masters. Well, I saw what he was doing was taking what I was doing with the inner game, which is the basis of all my work in sports psychology. He was taking that into the business world and that was it I like what how do you do this and it was intriguing to me. And then when I saw the application, beyond sports, because my focus in sports was the zone. How to get into the zone.
Jonathan Stanis: Right.
Tommy Barton: High performance is too general. I specifically was a specialist and how to how does a given athlete get into the zone as quickly as they can in their particular sport.
Then it extended to teams. Will Shutts extended it to teams way more than I had and business teams. Because, what he identified, probably a little too early in this podcast, but I will say in passing what he had identified as the inhibiting factor for, let's call it high performance and getting into the zone in business, and business meetings, and business relationships. This happens in relationships that doesn't happen with anything but other people. Teamwork.
What he had discovered there was the same thing that Gallwey discovered in sports, but they didn't know one another personally and knew of each other's work. So but I made that connection and I could see the connection and so I melded those two and that is that's the connection with Tim Gallwey who had a huge influence. So he's mentioned in my book and that's probably where you're getting that influence on me.
Jonathan Stanis: Yeah, have made that connection between the inner game and the human. element all that way that you get into A.C.T. Speaking of a accountable communication technology, can you define that for us? And why the word technology specifically? I mean, why does that need to be there as opposed to just saying accountable communication?
Tommy Barton: So we call it a technology for this reason, Jon. If you do these things that we take on this point of view, and this interactive way of being with other people, which means you're straight with other people, so there is no big complication here. So the word technology, we use it because anyone and we've got probably about 40 years now of I guess you'd call it case studies, but of work where if a person applies. what we have offered here.
In terms of do this, look at your situation this way, show up this way which is transparent to others. Not Blaming. You handle yourself at a level of what I call accountable consciousness. If you interact and deal with people that way, you will every time get these results. And that's what makes it a technology. Because if you do it, it works. And we can count on it. And that's why we refer to as a technology. Technologists and engineers don't like that, because the weight of it and how can this be a technology, but it's completely predictable. And it's completely repeatable.
Russ Salzer: Tommy talk about the title and why that came to be because it really is connected to kind of the businesses usual. What goes on today and most businesses today, that's where the title really came from. Right?
Thompson Barton: Well it is in fact. I came up with that title, "Please Lie To Me", as a summation, Jon, of an underlying assumption that people have not just any people. I'm going to go on record saying anybody. Unless they have gone out of their way become unusually self aware. Again, for our culture. That's how I'm using this word unusual, unusually self aware. That they actually know what they're feeling and thinking in the moment rather than it being driven by fear.
Most people most of the time are afraid of one another. I'm talking about adults now, by the way here. Just because I was we're isolating adults, and it certainly applies to children. But there's certain age that it doesn't apply to children because they have not developed the defense mechanisms yet, because they haven't been hurt or beat up enough, or had their reality distorted enough. They are wide open and they're unedited, but I'm talking about adults.
Most adults, and when I say most, I'm going to go to 99%. In other words, I'm saying a big number. And I don't want to be stuck with silly arguments about 100%. But I assume in my work, because it's what I see. Any two people are withholding from one another.
They're afraid of one another. They're not aware that they're afraid of another. I would say, "Are you afraid of another?" And even if they were most would deny it? Or they're actually are afraid and don't know they're afraid. What does that mean? It means that they're behaving in a way that is driven by an anxiety that takes them over. They don't have all of their faculties, working for them any given moment to give them complete perception of what's going on. And when I say all their faculties I'm referring to awareness, I'm not referring to IQ.
Russ Salzer: Tommy, one of the things I realized when I because I totally Obviously, we've been doing this stuff for a long time, and I'll often say what you just said, which is I think I say it a little bit more directly where I think generally speaking, most people are scared shitless of each other. And so the word fear like I'm not afraid of you, and thinking of it sort of in a very literal, like fear based, survival kind of thing.
But then when you probe deeper, and say, "Are you open?" "Do you withhold"? "Do you pretend to do this?" Then I think people start to get untangled from that. That definition of fear. Fear doesn't have to be something that's, in fact, it's way more prevalent when it's just non physical stuff?
Thompson Barton: When we begin to, again to Accountable Communication Technology. When we use that when we begin to unbundle relationships, and unbundling relationships.
I slow the thing down to frame by frame. Let's just think about most relationships go by two people are interacting, okay. And that's essentially for each of them a blur. It goes by so fast. Now, what am I talking about? What I'm talking about is as we begin this. Most people, Jon, are managing their fear constantly. By the time you're adult, you don't know it. It's it's too unconscious. Now if there's somebody, if the big big boss comes in, you know, you're anxious and you can say this, "I'm anxious about meeting this person". But not this co worker that I'm also anxious about, but I've been anxious about him since the day I met him, but I've kind of gotten used to it.
And so I'm not really that aware. So low level anxiety, sort of unconscious anxiety things. Which can be identified immediately with what Russ said. We have ways of teasing it apart. Slowing it down. Why "Please Lie To Me"? Again, it is because most people don't want other people to be open and honest with them. And particularly in business they say they don't want feedback. They say they want feedback, but they don't want feedback actually.
The common phrases we use are "sugar coated" and "watered down". You're familiar with those phrases. Why do those exist? Why do they exist? They exist because in that instance that person doesn't want to take whatever is going on whatever is true for them, or whatever they're proceeding is true of the other person or in the meeting, they do not want to say what they see. They don't want anybody else to say what they say. So when a meeting gets really weird, and you can tell two people are irritated with one another, or somebody is bullshitting someone or very political.
The reason it doesn't get mentioned, and the reason that people look down and look away and wish they were anywhere else but in that meeting, is because it's the potential for a truth to come out is huge. It's the proverbial elephant in the room. Everybody knows thats there, but everybody wants to lie about it's not there. Nobody wants to bring it up, and nobody wants to say it's there.
So that's a example. A group example of please lie to me. Nobody wants to be straight about that, about what's going on. So I just decided that it looks pretty obvious to me that most relationships, I like my 99% number, are driven by an element of anxiety. Some people are more anxious than other people. Some people are more forthcoming than other people. To be completely transparent, and that is the yardstick I'm using here, Jon. That's what's achievable. That's where the zone happens.
It only happens with people where they're completely transparent to themselves and to one another. Then and only then do you get people that are not being driven by some measure of fear. The way that fear shows up is they simply withhold, like Russ said. They don't say everything they see. They don't say everything they feel. They don't ask everything they want to ask. In fact, I've got a whole page in my book, what I call the usual agreement, and it's an entire page of lined out how exactly that looks. For instance, can I read a few of them or no?
Jonathan Stanis: Go ahead.
Thompson Barton: Okay. I'll just take it from the top. So this is the the usual agreement, which is please lie to me. That's the title of the book. But this is a breakdown of it. Okay, an example of where I'm going with it.
- I won't ask you what you are withholding if you won't ask me what I am withholding.
- I won't say what I see if you won't say what you see.
- I won't ask you what you see if you won't ask me what I see.
- I won't say what I'm thinking if you won't say what you're thinking.
- I won't ask you what you're really thinking if you won't ask me the second part.
It's important. It's a game. It's an agreement. So I'm not going to ask you. Put another way, the most common way. I will not make you uncomfortable if you won't make me uncomforatble. Okay, deal. We got this. That's job one. No matter what the subject is in a meeting no matter what we are meeting about or how many people there. We have this unconscious agreement, unspoken agreement we have with everybody.
Unless you have an evolved relationship, like we're talking about, where it becomes a accountable relationship. I won't make you uncomfortable if you won't make me uncomfortable. That's job one. That's job one. We are astonished. It's amazing how people's lives, I mean all day every day, are driven by job one. I love the phrase in our language, embarrassed to death. I totally love that phrase. It's like wait a minute, what is that for?
Jonathan Stanis: It's like my life.
Thompson Barton: You know? What's the deal? What do you mean embarrassed to death? Why do we have, I asked the word death in that sentence. We have it because we are so afraid of looking out of control, stupid, not on top of it, somehow unprepared, in some way. Most people's lives are about managing one thing regardless of what they tell you. Their survival and next to that and this is part of survival is about just getting through a day without being embarrassed.
The amount of stuff they will do not to be emberrased. By the time you're adult, you have no idea mostly your life is run by getting through the day looking good. Don't get embarrassed. Don't look like you don't know what's going on. You're not on top of it. Every day, that's what's most important. If you got two people and they're both do that's their strategy.
Can you imagine how bizarre the relationship will be? It's a pretend relationship. It's not real. So that's why I say please lie to me because that boils down Jon. What really goes on between most relationships as job one which is I won't embarrass you, you don't embarrass me. I won't make you feel uncomfortable. You don't make me feel uncomfortable.
There's so much language these days and business meetings about is everybody comfortable. I don't want you to be uncomfortable. Is everybody comfortable? Comfortable is the absolute antidote to performance among other things. That's where please lie to me came from. I just boil this thing down to people don't want the truth. They want to be told what they want to hear. I won't ruffle your feathers. You don't ruffle mine. Let's just keep it that way. Let's see if we can make a little progress here.
But always, always, always the criteria. But, by the way, don't go over that other box where somebody is going to get bent out of shape. Don't go there. Otherwise, everybody agrees, no, we wont go there. Now, let's get on with the meeting. So you can imagine how well I don't know that you could imagine that, but it's incredibly inefficient because people simply are not fully functioning on all cylinders. In fact, they're consciously and unconsciously holding back, withholding we call it, so that they don't get into this trouble about embarrassing themselves or someone else, or the elephant blows up in the room. I'll stop there.
Jonathan Stanis: I think you're going in a great direction. I'm really curious. Why is this fear so big so prevalent in our workplace in our culture's? What is driving that fear?
Thompson Barton Quite a question. You know it. There are a billion books written on it, and it's mostly intriguing, but it is not obscure. A billion books because it's intriguing. Why do we let this happen. Look at how this goes on. It's not obscure because it's easy to know. Will Shutt's work, that's what I use for that. I think his work is fine in answering that question. He said, "Look, there are three areas in which human beings really have preferences". In other words, it matters to human beings, what their experiences and these three areas.
The first is how much inclusion am I getting out there in the world with a given person in a meeting, at work? At home in the community. People have preference of how much inclusion, which is how much contact you and I have with one another? Do I get invited or not? Do I get given credit for being on this team? inclusion is let me and let me be a part of this. Don't keep me out. I want to be a part of this. It's a huge driver. If you see companies and they have all these tee shirts and everybody's wearing a hat. Then hopefully they get them to wear their T shirts and their hats.
Jonathan Stanis: I have one right now.
Yeah. And that's inclusion. I'm a part of this and we want to feel part of this. It comes to the old fear about being ostracized back in travel days. If you were ostracized you pretty much died. It's a basic orientation human beings have that, frequently, the desire to be included subconsciously. Now, this could change of course, when you become aware of it, speak of it, the openness changes everything as far as insecurities go.
When a person feels included, want to be included? They feel, okay. I'm not going to be thrown out, right? I'm part of this. I'm part of the team. I'm going to go along with them. They're going to take care of me. It's a very deep desire of human beings to be part of a tribe. And if I'm afraid I'm getting thrown out, I'm afraid I'm going to die. And that's still in our biology. It's mostly on conscience almost completely unconscious.
Madison Avenue is driven by this particular piece right here. All advertising pretty much based on look. People are going to want to be with you. They're going to take notice of you. They're going to want to include you if you drive this car, buy this thing. You get inclusion from it. So they're selling inclusion.
The second thing that Shutts pointed out was that there is a desire on our part as human beings all the time to feel competent. Like if you're a dad, well, like in my case, I didn't really feel competent become a dad until I was 47. So I didn't have children till then, because I didn't feel like I knew enough and even though there's no way to be a dad befor your dad.
Jonathan Stanis: Just to say, I was 23.
Thompson Barton: Yeah, no, that wasn't gonna happen for me. I was way too incompetent. So just being a dad, we choose to be a parent and then how do you deal with the fact that you've got this kid who seems you can't control him because you can't talk to him like an adult. And they want to do this and you want to do that and what do we do about this since they just blowe you off.
Suddenly you don't seem to have any power or anything and you're supposed to be taking care of this kid and furthermore, you have somewhere to be at four o'clock and hey, where's your shoe? Where's the sock? Irritation happens because this kid represents I'm out of control. I can't control my life. I'm supposed to. That's an example you can use.
In anywhere in your life, you want to feel competent. Riding a bicycle. We wanted to feel competent in our job. You want to feel confident. We noticed the people that are very competent get paid a lot of money generally. And so you want to be. You want to get a degree and so forth. You want to appear competent and whatever it is. Whatever degree that for you feels like okay, I am confident enough in whatever it is my role as a husband, as a father, as a manager, as a male, as a 45 year old athlete. You can do these things in a casual, recreational way.
So the second piece, it's important to us where we can become very insecure and closed down and not be real is in a meeting. I notice I don't know what the hell they're talking about. But I don't want to say that because what will people think. You don't follow that? There's an example in meetings, you don't want to appear like you're not on top of your stuff. That's where cover ups happen.
People are not straight about the status of their project and so forth. I suppose there afraid they will appear incompetent, they'll get fired, and then you die, by the way.
The third piece Will Shutts identified was that we have a desire to be lovable, or liked. Liked is probably a little more useful for this conversation. To some degree, everybody wants to be liked. There are some people for whom being liked is more important than being competent or being included. And that comes out of their childhood where they feel like they were not loved, and not lovable and forever being rejected.
Here you are in business, okay? You're going to go for job interview, okay? To pay any attention whatsoever to how you're going to appear in the first impression. Most people are hugely careful with their first impression so that you will like me, because I can't really convince you that I'm competent just by an impression. Because you're going to physically look at me. I want to look presentable. I want to look attractive. That means someone will like me, though, like kind of fit in here.
To be likable in an interview, I want the people interviewing to like me, and if they don't like me, they're not gonna hire me, right. That's how the mind works. Now, that's also pretty true, because I'm gonna have to deal with you. And I want somebody thats easy to deal with. That I like.
So being likable is really important. Any one of these is really important as and it's also basic. It's a basic fundamental desire we have. So therefore you say, Okay, what if you're not feeling like you're as likable as you want to be? What if you're feeling like you're not as confident as you want people to perceive you're in a given moment? And what about being included? What do you think you're not going to be? What's your fear about being not included in a given situation? And to the extent Jon that those fears I just made, begin to take hold, okay? And they run the person's behavior, then we say their behaviors being run by fear.
Specifically, any one of those three insecurities that I named. The extent to which I want to be included. The extent to which I want to be seen as competent in any given moment. The extent which I want to be liked, and specifically by you, or by that person, or by my boss. Everyone knows that happens.
By the way, there's a really interesting studies long, long ago, about second graders and asking them, what's the first thing that happened when you went to the first day as school. When the kids come home? What is the first thing they say their parents. It was a study done on this. And the first thing almost all of them reported about the first day of school was that their teacher liked them or not. And they liked their teacher. It didn't sound like yeah, she's really competent. I came off confident, I'm cool.
Russ Salzer: That still happens today. Even with Grace, she'll be like, "I like her". "I like her", and even though they don't have any direct experience, they just heard that from a classmate.
Thompson Barton: Now to take this to the extreme. Take a look at the Internet right now likes and dislikes. It's amazing. If you take a look at Facebook that is an entire phenomena playing on one of these three areas. There is a dimensions of behavior we call it with their desires.
Russ Salzer: I think it actually hits on all of them because a like means you think I'm significant enough for you looked at my stuff.
Thompson Barton: I was just gonna say, Facebook, listed or not. How many thousands of people you know. You're collecting people. So, the internet, in particular Facebook, I think, is a perfect example of these things a little bit less around competence because there are no consequences around your competence on the internet.
Russ Salzer: Yeah, yeah. So the thing I like about the work in the technology is it i'm not saying it's easy. Tommy, You certainly would say that but it really does provide a roadmap. Hey, if I know going into any organization in any work group, that these are there, it's almost like gravity. On some level people are going to be managing the fear around competency, significance, likability. Then you can do something about it for me, and the team, which is really what it's about. So that's what really I think resonated with me as providing a bit of a roadmap.
Thompson Barton: Yeah, Russ took that and distill that. Ryss was the was the first person, maybe the only person to, at scale, take this particular piece about fear, recognition about to the morning meetings we just distilled it down to that. Jon, the object is to reach an accountable organization, where the fear is not running the organization. I will tell you what my opinion is that unless an organization has consciously, that means a leadership team, they've decided the culture is an intentional culture that I have that is not run by fear. Then it will be run by fear and the work around it, we all work around it. We just have no clue how transformation is to free yourself from the fear.
Our technology brings up the fear which nobody wants to talk about, because what Russ says we actually can tease this sucker apart. I told you, we stop frames like one frame at a time. So you can actually notice the impact of the fear that they're experiencing has exactly on them, everybody in the room. The the culture is one that embraces awareness of being afraid rather than denial.
That's job one. By embracing these I'm not going to claim I'm not afraid right now. It's okay to be afraid. What is not okay is not to be open about that. Because that fear to, which we're not open about, and see this is where it connects perfectly for me with the inner game because Galoway figured out and Gallwey nailed it. It's like he just pointed out to the extent that you're anxious you're not present. With in his case tennis with exactly what has to happen to have to play your maximum game at any given moment. It's a series of moments. Seconds. And if you're anxious, then you're worried. You're being critical. You're being careful you're while you're trying to hit a tennis ball, and he just brilliantly pointed out how devastating that fear is.
And he had techniques to overcome them in tennis. I just took that whole model and dumped it and used Shutt's technology, which was the best I could see to helped me transfer from performance anxiety. Covers the whole thing's perfect.
Whether it's about liking. Wheather it's about significance. Wheather it's about competence, performance, anxiety. We just took that and translate it over into the work field and went "Okay, so what are you anxious about?" Well, for one thing, people don't talk about that. Athletes usually don't say but you don't talk about what you're afraid. That's not cool.
So we come in fact, we go to Please lie to me. You got this other drug, which is we're going to pretend that everything's cool. I'm on top of it. This meeting is useful. This meeting is interesting. You're interesting.
So you're left with pretending that fills in the gap between not being real. It's like a vacuum. We can point out exactly where the fear is alive. What exactly it looks like what exactly it's causing to happen. It's very scientfic. Once you begin to see this way, and secondly, you have the nerve to which results are added the nerve to bring it up.
Then you're on it because it's okay to be afraid. And it's not okay not to be open about it because we want that to change. Well I'm afraid, you know, you're pissed off at him. But I never check it out. Of course, I go as three other people.
Jonathan Stanis: Yeah
Thompson Barton: But since I think you are pissed off until further notice, I'm going to I'm going to assume you're pissed off, because that's in my head. That's a fear I have and so it becomes real. So now I start behaving in that way around you. Instead of just saying, Jon, I'm just wondering that what I said a minute ago, pissed you off. Something going across your face. Now nobody does that in a meeting.
For one thing that belief is it talks to, back to God knows you don't want to embarrae anybody. You can't. Somebody's going to be uncomfortable. Therefore, throw that out. If somebody is going to be uncomfortable, don't go there.
By the way, that's that phrase we had "Don't go there". If you follow that and someone says, "Don't go there". Well, why not. They will tell you this? Well, because it will cause all this problem. Okay, we all understand we don't go there. The earth is flat. We're not going to go there. And you get whole cultures, which you've heard the phrase again. "Yes men". What the hell is that? Why are people afraid to tell the boss something other than Yes? What is that? There it is. "Yes men" is not a phenomena that's isolated. In fact, until further notice, I just assumed people are withholding and I can prove it. Yeah. So there's that. Yes men.
Russ Salzer: I know enough about your background and to kind of distill it down, when you can think back to some of the organizations that you've worked in, where they don't come up to you and say, "Hey, don't don't approach the boss." You pick up on it.
When you walk in very quickly, you get pretty, you can pretty quickly train them what to what you can say and what you can say. If the boss is open. If the boss is not and so then you start to behave in that way. Which, when you look at the cumulative effect of that you have entire organization, whether you're two people or 2000 people, who are not giving of their discretionary energy, their opinion, all that stuff, they could contribute out of fear.
I mean, the consequences are incredible. Tommy, you talk about the cost of defensiveness and I can't quantify anything, but I would say probably one out of five are employed because we're just more defensive and not effective. That gets in the way. So you end up carrying people when people aren't contributing fully. You come across a stupid decision or a stupid design or whatever. Rejoining back in your engineering days, some people you'll tell that and some, you're just going to let them go forth.
Thompson Barton: So fear is the problem in high performance of the zone. That's that's the problem. The fear of being open about fear is probably it. There's a whole friggin belief system about which includes don't be uncomfortable because they could get mad they could get depressed.
So you don't even go there. That's why I make that large statement. We're pretty much run by fear all day long and every relationship you're in is based on fear until you consciously decide to be way more open, which means no withholding in that relationship at all whatsoever. That's the only way to begin to take back the huge amount of life energy that fear takes every day from almost all of us.
Russ Salzer: One of the things we didn't talk about is the word accountable. So openness if people hear it as "I'll be open," which is typically pretty brutal, nasty stuff, that's not what we're talking about here. What it is is owning my experience and disclosing my experience.
So now it's like, hey, Tommy, you're an asshole. But what is my experience being with I don't feel very heard, listen to whatever it might be. That's where the word accountable comes in. As opposed to what most organization thinks of the word accountable, which is more about ascribing blame.
Thompson Barton: That's terribly important. We use the word accountable. It is has nothing to do with blame in spite of that's how you'll see it used by every politician that you'll watch. Who's accountable. They're really saying who's to blame.
You get the usual scurrying around in hiding and it's not useful. The way in which, as Russ says, that we use accountability. It means just exactly. Jon, like an accountant? It's like your bank account. Okay?
So if you if you call up and ask or look online and want to see what's in there, nobody gives you a figure that's not in there. You get to see what's in there and what's not in there, right? Yeah. You look at that an accountant, you can ask him could you look this over. The account is going to look to see what's there. And that's how we use the word accountable. We use it strictly that way. What's there and not what's there. I'm wanting to know all the stuff that you're not saying to me. All your withholding. That's part of what's in there.
But typically that part of the bank statement is just not disclosed. Accountability means all that's in there. Russell's example is perfect. Instead of "You're an asshole." I'll just give you how this would play out. I'm in the meeting and I'm noticing I'm starting to feel judgmental about you. I noticed I'm starting to feel critical and I don't like these two or three things that you've said. Not even necessarily to me but two or three things. So in my mind I start feeling, Okay, I'm mad. I'm going to criticize this guy some way. And at some point, I might have said, you're being an asshole man. In the meeting, I would say that.
Russ Salzer: Actually happens first time Tommy is I think that but I don't say it. So saying it's actually progress.
Well, that's what I want to play this through. It's just thinking of it requires awareness that you're thinking that there are people that are not look, I'm not mad. I don't know why you will keep saying this to me. I am not pissed off. Because I think this is stupid. I'm not pissed off. Everyone in the room was looking at me like this is weird. But the act the person actually is unaware that they're angry, because anger for a lot of people picking their background and may have had a lot of angry parents. They don't want to know what's there. They want to know when they're angry. Everyone else can see it.
So there's this unaware piece that accountability requires awareness, accountability requires awareness, self awareness. So in order to see what's in there, okay, where were my model? Let me see how I'm feeling, actually unless I'm feeling really angry towards you gentlemen filler really critical of how you just met them.
Now, that's just the beginning of this thing. That tells me that I'm afraid. What I noticed is I'm afraid that you're going to get more attention from the manager and going to end up being the project lead for this thing that I really want. You're showing up in this meeting and the boss seems to be really liking you. I haven't come prepared with a bunch of stuff to draw attention toward me.
So I'm actually being threatened. Now thats at an unconscious level. Back to the insecurities. Oh my God. I've going to look incompetent. I might not be included in this thing. So accountability, Jon, would be for me to look inside at everything that is going on at the given moment for me. I noticed I'm pissed off at you and I would say I would say it out loud. This is important. Since we're breaking it down. I'm going to do this. I would say out loud "I notice I'm pissed off at you".
That, Jon, is different than me getting pissed off. Do you follow that? Okay, good. So that's the first step is me just to report on me like an anthropology. Rather than, in psychology is called, acting it out. If I were to act it out. "What the hell you mean, man? I mean, that's, that's a dumbest idea ever heard." Okay, that's acting it out. Taking me over and behaving in this defensive way. By criticizing you.
Accountability would mean, "Huh, I notice I'm angry with you". I noticed. I think about what what I'm afraid of. I just heard in my head. Well, John's going to get this I'm not, and that scares me. I don't like that. I want the assignment. When that happens. When I say all that like that, that's called transparency. It's complete accountability, because I just told you everything that was in there, instead of partial what was in there.
It takes two things, Jon. One, I must want to know what's in there. This is very important. Even if I want you to be aware, and I work hard on you. Salzer would die laughing at this. The number of people, he's worked hard on it at being a, I'm just saying he has experienced not that it's some unusual number. I want you to be aware, but you don't want to be aware.
So I can point out things that I'm seeing and you can deny them. Well, you look irritated. No, not. I don't think you really respect her. Yes, I do. What do you do with that? Game over. Well, no, I don't think you do. Well, yes, I do. Well, no, you don't. Well, yes, I do. That's the old mentality. Awareness and accountability requires Jon says to me, "Looks like you're irritated". I wonder what that's about. I don't know who asked you. What do you local pshcyhatrist or something? None of your business. All that shit.
That that doesn't go down like that. It's like, Whoa, let me just check in with that. Let me see what's true. Let me do a little accounting. Huh, yeah, you know, I am irritated. And Jon might even go so far to say, "Yeah, it looked to me like he got irritated when she said this to him when he said this to her a few minutes ago". Jon says, "I wonder why is that?" Then, since I got irritated, it came from somewhere.
So accountability would me look in here as well. I noticed that I see that go on a lot around here. I don't like it. What is it you don't like? So accountability is awareness. It must have awareness. The opposite is true. Without awareness, a human being cannot be accountable. Or, said a better way. One is only as accountable in their life in any given relationship, any given moment on a given subject to the extent they're willing to be aware of themselves.
I mean, let's talk on openness. That's me to me. Then the second job is am I going to tell Jon when I'm aware of. That's the second piece of openness. And we're not done till I'm open with you about that. Considering I don't know what's going on with me, but it's still a huge risk to be open about that because my ego could get all bent out of shape embarresed to death.
Accountability first is itself openness. Two, is the willingness to then be completely transparent with what I know. And there's a third piece to it. I'm sitting in a meeting there's six of us, okay? And I'm doing this drill with you. I'm kind of doing this role playing thing with you and so I've I've done what I said, I'm wondering who else noticed that about me and what are you picking up from me? I'm asking the whole group for feedback. That doesn't go on. I might catch you after meetings to look good.
The third piece of accountability is absolutely make it my job to seek feedback constantly .The reason for that is because you Jon and i and Russell, everyone else has this very, very well developed, by the time your an adult, capacity to kid yourself. You heard that phrase, look, I think your kidding yourself. Okay, so that's a problem. If what you want to businesses to know what's really going, on to get a solution that's really going to not have to be reworked, then we don't want anybody kidding anybody about this thing over here doesn't work. That person over there is not pulling their load. That person is not competent. Accountability requires constant feedback among all the people involved.
I gotta ask you. One of the basic ways to tell when I go into new potential new client meeting with a business owner that at least the senior person who can make a decision about the next step on this stuff.
I'll say, "How important is it for you that two people that report to you trust you?"
They usually will say, "Oh, it's a big deals. It's very important", so and so on?
I said, "Oh, yeah? And why is that?" They say why they think it is from efficiencies or whatever. I say "Well, your COO here. What does your COO not like about you?" They'll look back at me like they didn't get the question right or something. "So what is it? What does your COO most dislike about you?"
"I'm not sure. I mean, I think he likes me and I think she likes me."
"Yeah, but you don't know." You won't know boss until you go up to them look them in the eye and say tell me everything you don't let don't like about me. Until you can do that with every person on the team, you do not have trust. Trust means you're open with me. I may not like it. So if and where people of course don't go is this thing about liked? That's why it's such a good one. What do people know? I don't care what they like about you. I want to know what they don't like about you because that's where the problem is going to be. How will I know when you're angry with me? That's one of the things I asked a client potential client. How will I know when your angry with me?
Russ Salzer: That's my favorite interview question of a candidate. How do I know if you're mad at me?
Jonathan Stanis: You've never asked me that. Russ.
Russ Salzer: I didn't? I didn't interview you. You were there first.
Jonathan Stanis: Yeah. I didn't interview you either. I like that.
Thompson Barton: So you see, I go right at how weird that is. What does that person not like? And then with the CEO, the same role player. Then I'll go through every single one of their reports. What does this person not like about you? What does this person have to say? Why don't you know that? I said does it matter to you? Well, it does sort of it does.
Why does it? Okay, give me the business reason why it matters. Because that's how we leverage it. So I will go through every one of the reports and say, what does this person not like about you? Well, I'm not so sure. Why don't you know?
What I will get back is "Well. You know, I never asked them." Why not? Here's typically what is a good bet. It's a really good bet. I can make a whole living off of this bet. Well, I don't want them to feel embarrassed. I don't want to put them on the spot. What they don't say is "I don't think they'd be straight with me." "My boss asked me "What don't you like about me?"
Jonathan Stanis: I'm not going tell you.
Thompson Barton: So you see the problem. Please lie to me. We are back to Please lie to me, it all comes back to that phrase you asked me earlier. But there's an example of this is a whole different side of the game. I go right at in that first meeting. I never have another meeting. I go right at that stuff.
So well, I said to the people that work for you do they trust you.
"Well, yeah, I think they do."
Okay, well, I want to bring somebody in here right now and bring them in because I want to interview them. Let's just say that happen. So the first thing I asked that person, director marketing, what do you not like about Jon? Just watch, the person going to gun to right field.
Oh my God. All I'll do is I'll say to the CEO or the senior person manager, I say, just look at this reaction. That's all I want you to know. They're afraid of you. Do you want the people that report to you to be afraid of you? And I'm not kidding with this question. They are afraid of you. So you must want to be afraid of you because they are afraid if you.
"Oh, no I don't."
Well, then why aren't you doing something about this? Well, what would you do about this, by the way? Big blank. They don't have a clue what to do. It doesn't occur to them to go ask, because there's this block. Don't embarrass anybody. Don't put the poor things on the spot. So I know you're not being completely open with me and I'm not being completely open with you, and that's where we'll keep it.
Jonathan Stanis: To move past this, I know you have a whole section about the new agreements and how we will move on to what you want. It's not going to be fear based but more transparent. Can you describe that agreement how to move past this fear in a company?
Thompson Barton: Number one, describe this. Quite simply, it is the opposite of the usual agreement. And I am not oversimplifying this, I'm simply open instead of choosing to be closed. I'm simply look at what I'm doing or not doing to get the result I'm getting in this relationship or in my job, rather than not looking at what I'm doing rather than looking at what Jon's doing. The new agreement is I look over here to see what am I doing or not doing versus blame. Now, we haven't really gone into the blame part of it. To me it's obvious. All blaming has to stop and be replaced by accountability.
So, Russ is having a meeting, he's got five people and there's been a breakdown. He said, Okay, I want to hear from everybody. What do you think you did or didn't do to have this? Be where it is right now. Russ? Is that fair enough? Is that your experience? Am I representing you accurately?
Russ Salzer: Yeah, I think a lot that goes into that because I realized people I'm on some level unconscious and on some level as a manager, I may want people to be afraid of me. So I could open that up and I may or may not be able to get to the real root cause and try to fix it. But that's where you're really focused on. I might walk into that meeting with five people where there was a breakdown and just acknowledge the fact that I'm really upset about it, or whatever the cause and then we kind of take it from there.
He can even go so far as to say if this is what's true is his accounting is and you know what, I really don't want to go into this. Yeah, we're gonna go into whatever you want to go into it. See, that's being honest about it, rather than pretending. I'm feeling pretty vulnerable about this. I'm feeling incompetent. I don't like it. I'm just saying that to get it out there right now. I call this meeting to do which is we're going to find out what happened here and not who's to blame. Fair enough for us. Yeah. Okay, so Jon did he answer your first question which was what's the new agreement. How's it different than the old agreement?
Jonathan Stanis: Yes, it is very the the opposite of the first of closedness. It is making sure that you're being accountable to what is actually happening while not blaming others for what is happening.
Thompson Barton: Right. If I am feeling like blaming you, where I start in this is "Jon, I know I feel like blaming you". Because I don't want this to land over here. I just say that out loud. Who does that? Nobody does that. Hell, half the people don't even know. Now that's a throwaway number. Half the people don't even know if that's really true for that much less. So they're not self open. To be in touch with that much less be willing to say it in a meeting. And where Salzers got you and why you got asstonishing results and nobody's ever seen before is because he did all this stuff we're talking about. He went into this territory that no one will go into. "Don't go there." Well, he went there. And it turns out, my experience is that people are freaking starved for somebody, anybody to be real.
Russ Salzer: I think people are just completely drawn to it. Where I can be more of who I am. I don't have to pretend. It takes so much energy. A lot of what I did, I realized on a big level, was self serving. To live and work in that environment where you don't have to do that. Surround yourself with a team or a crew that's going to help me become more aware and develop. It completely goes both ways. This is not about the leadership developing their direct reports. It totally goes both ways. It's a very attractive environment to be in. I don't know, Jon, can you think of anything in your career where you've been in a situation with a work team, or anything where it just clicks. There's not a lot in the way. It just flows.
Jonathan Stanis: A few examples I can think of is usually under some kind of crunch situation. Honestly, it's where we all have this goal, we're all working towards that we all want to make sure it gets done. And we're going to make sure we help each other to get there. That's where I think I've seen the most flow in my experience. So here's the challenge. Here's the outcome that it's defined, and we know what each other can do and how to get to it. That's where I found it myself.
Russ Salzer: So why do you think that happens under those circumstances, which I would agree with you with on that. You could have a pretty close knit collaborative environment and then people come together to solve a real crisis efficiently.
Jonathan Stanis: Because it's got to happen. It's because you've eliminated all the other options. Maybe that's why that's what I'm thinking or is it because everybody has a common goal that's very clearly defined?
Russ Salzer: Yeah, I think it provides the means by which you just cut out all the nonsense. We're not going to stab each other, we're not going to not say anything, we're going to listen to each other. Everyone's got a role. We're more on par with each other. Let's just get this done. Go forth and work on it. And so I think the circumstances clear the way for a lot of the stuff that tends to be non productive and defensive and strategizing and not disclosing and not listening. It just kind of clears the way.
Jonathan Stanis: So when you do this new agreement, what do you see that transforms in a company? What areas of improvement do you see? I mean, obviously, I would think you'd see improved communication, but I think that there are probably areas that we don't even think of that improve, that you wouldn't think would improve.
Thompson Barton: That's true. In fact, I could answer that. Russ what comes to mind?
Russ Salzer: Well Jon, what I would say to that it's literally everything. All the work people are trying to do around culture, morale and surveys and on. It's about business results. And so it literally touches everything. I think, safety, every financial indicator, how well the sales team sells, can you drive top line revenue, everything. How well can you attract new hires? It's a big issue in the economy today. We can't get help. We can't get help.
If you've created this culture, which is going to be extremely attractive. Because the interview is going to be different. You're going to attract different people. They're going to stick around. You always hear the adage people don't quit their job, they quit their boss. This is what we're talking about here. So it literally touches on everything.
For me. Insurance costs and and well being. You always hear there's always health and wellness campaigns that companies have. You may have be part of one now, but what is healthier and better for our well being than having collaborative relationships where I can be less defensive and become more self aware. There's nothing better. And so it literally touches every possible indicator. Tommy has examples in the book around what it does and how quickly it does it.
It doesn't take decades to literally transform an organization. Once you move in that direction, to become more consciously accountable inspireed organization, it can literally transform something extremely quick.
Thompson Barton: Yeah it will actually will
Russ Salzer: That's why I was so drawn to the work being a business major I'm like we didn't talk about this stuff in business school you know but then I realized this is it in you become sort of a master at this you can work in any industry and which is why I've moved around from everything from manufacturing to internet to software to being part of running a utility. What the hell do I know about that? But what I know is this and that's the common denominator that's what makes work so difficult. It says that's this is it so if you can get to this and become a leader, you can transform anything even if your bosses in our as an on it. You can do it within your work team with your co workers.
Thompson Barton: It's still applicable to human beings. I call it peopling. I really like the word peopling. I like to title "Please Lie To Me", but peopling is a fun name for a book. How do you do people, man? Yeah, wherever you run across them. And I do people like this. I don't care who they are. I just had this house built. I figured how the people who worked on this house we're going to perceive the client carefully. And I made it my goal over the course of this nine months while this structure was being constructed to talk to every single person that was working in here and ask them just about what they were doing. Why they been doing this. What do you thought about this? I began because I wanted to develop a relationship because I've never had a house built before. Some friends of mine call this an art establishment.
Jonathan Stanis: Installation?
Thompson Barton: Exactly. Installation. And so as we went along with these guys. I would ask them questions. Do you think thats? Is it possible to put an arch in there? And what are the problems? If we put an arch in there? And what do you think it would look like? They look at me like "go ask the architect". That's not my job. What do you want to know that far.
The people that built this house Jon, it's a custom outfit. All he does are custom homes. He's been doing it for 50 years. He built this, just because he's a really dear friend of mine, and he wanted to build a house on this site. But otherwise, I'm not in the world that he's in in terms of kind of homes that the guy builds, you know, $4 and $5 million.
These guys are really expert. But nobody asked them. They don't want to know. And I developed my relationship with everyone on where they knew that I was not jerking around. I wanted to know. I wanted their opinion and their opinion mattered. And when they finally got that they could have an open conversation with me and I really wanted to know what they thought and I wasn't going to get bent out of shape and I wasn't just an incoming problem for them.
Boy, the ownership thing. We had a party when the thing was over. 60 of about 100 people that worked on this place showed up. People building custom homes are always telling us you can have a party. We don't have parties. The last party we had was like seven years. They don't really mean it. And I couldn't get these people to leave. Now there was a lot of beer a lot of barbecue but they just love walking around and hanging around.
I'd ask these guys these what do you think about these clouds on the ceiling? And I could tell what they thought by how long it took them to answer. So I would fill in. Do you think it makes it look like a little kids room or something. All the stuff that I was afraid of?
They got to where they would be straight with me about everything in this house. It mattered to me this house turned out the way I wanted it. So I want those relationship with the people that are building this sucker to own. Own it like I am.
Then, I probably should have not gone into it. But I mean, I have a new doctor and then I'm training her. She just said I've never had a patient like you. I know what she was saying. She was saying, Tommy's forthcoming. They're not as interested. They don't ask too much stuff. No not offers much stuff. So anyway, openness changes everything and not a little bit. That's why we really feel it's a legitimate use of the word to say transformation.
When we focus, hone in a little bit, because you talk about construction companies and doctors, but I really try to focus on sales. What specifics can sales reps and sales managers learn from this book in this process?
I can tell you what I've heard from others. What they tell me is I'm amazed that when I started just being as accountably open with a new potential clients. The difference that makes and how much easier it is for me to actually sell. To bring forth the data and information that they want to have. That will make a difference when I'm not so worried about what they're thinking about me the judge the perceptions and fears that I have about them about their company about making the sale. It transforms that as well. I have a lot of my colleagues asked, back in the day, how do you sell this stuff? How do you sell open? Come on? How do you sell accountability? Come on, it's not a behavior. It's not a behavioral package.
And so I created a workshop. A two day thing I think it was called "Selling Your Soul" and I spelled soul s o u l. That word salesman to them has a negative content and they never want to be seen as a salesman because they think it's disingenuous and here they are selling this product of openness and so forth. They're really they've all been very awkward about it because they have this bias that selling means you got to manipulate someone.
So this whole thing about selling your soul. The key her is what you're afraid of is you're going to sell out. You're going to compromise your integrity and all. That's what you're worried about. You worried that okay, well, I can be open and honest everywhere but not in sales meeting. There you would be crazy to be. You don't do that in sales.
Well, I said yes. Matter of fact, you do that in sales and so the workshop was about changing their mindset from the typical mindset of salesperson. Incomes a sales rep and I go, okay, they're going to try to jerking you around, and you're going to, quote, "try to sell me something" which means at all costs they are going to try to cut a deal. Try to make a deal. My job is to figure out what's really true about their products. But they're not going to be open about that. We'll have to find that out if I get that product.
Russ Salzer: Do you have anything to add to that russ? What have you seen in your teams with this process?
I think one of the reasons I got into the business of trying to help salespeople is my background. How do I bring it in. I actually think a bigger opportunity for salespeople is how do I become more conscious and willing to admit my concerns? Tommy mentioned judgments about salespeople, the very profession I'm in. I think their seedy, pushy, whatever. What is it like for me to pick up the phone and try to engage somebody in a conversation? How do I deal with the refresh?
I think its fraught with fear and all kinds of stuff. If your self concept is up for grabs selling probably isn't the profession because everything will be triggered very quickly, which is fun in a sadomasochistic way. Because it will be. It's not like taking a job and I go into an organization and I learned how to kind of survive. If you're put in a sales role, and your job is to engauge potential customers and have conversations with them and try to convince them that you can help them out and do something different and I'm trying to provide motivation for you to change.
Then you got the spectrum of opportunity in the pipeline for you to become more aware and deal with "Hey, they don't like me they don't think I'm significant." "I can't get a meeting." "They didn't show up on me." You know, you name it. It comes up in the field of selling day in and day out, day in and day out, in a very quick fashion. I think what a lot of sales people do is I can just deny it. I'll go focus on technology or focus on this or focused on that and not put myself in those positions where I'm susceptible to that. I don't want to. Who the hell wants to experience that.
Thompson Barton: Yeah, I think Russ is so adept that he has taken it to the big league, which is sales. That's because sales is the last bastion of, "Yeah, right". Sales people are not sincere. They're just going to act like they're interested in you. They like you because we actually want something from you. As soon as that's over, he won't see him again. The classic thing is salespeople are insincere, that's the classic start place. If you want to go to some place where you already are in the whole typically they don't trust you as a salesperson. They've already got a stereotype but it's a grand place to work from. I'm starting out I know you don't trust me.
Russ Salzer: But you don't have people who say I could never imagine being in sales. On some level. That's what's going on. I can't even picture myself, submitting myself to that. Oh my god. There salespeople who don't even say their salespeople. You know their account execs or their business you know, they redefine it so we don't have to say we're salespeople. Even avoiding the term. So it's just it's such a rich profession and yet so vitally important that all this stuff comes into play. And really a crash course.
Thompson Barton: And then so much fun, well for Russ it would be fun, but one of the things you have to have at sales meeting is "I'm wondering what you're thinking about me. Do you see me as slick? Do you see me as knowledgeable? Are you wanting out of this meeting?" Nobody goes there. You're going to ask directly because the chances of scoring are around nine point nine out of ten you're going to be right about some of it.
Another one is, okay, towards the end of the meeting is "So what do you think I'm withholding from you? What do you think I'm not talking about or what area? Am I avoiding talking?" Now who says that to a potential customer that you have no leverage? Who would do that? But then that person sitting there going "No salesperson has ever asked me that."
So right now you just got some space that's different. And then you pursue that. Now the word does not come up today. But what it does among another thing is the way people perceive one of the words we use for what I'm describing now as a role play is vulnerable. It stops being, "You're not open, being open and stupid and being vulnerable is even more stupid."
So why am I going to appear vulnerable to this potential client? By asking "What do you think that I'm not say? I just want to know because my hunch is you probably think that's true. And I want to do the absolute best I can, so that you don't wonder anything when I leave here about who I am, what I'm about what we can do, what our shortcomings are, what the upside is." Nobody does that. You just feed them.
It's a little bit like as my business partner says, take your best shot. I'm wide open. I want to hear it. And so that's memorable. That's In fact, now that it's up and one of the things that that's true for me has always been true for me that I put it into that sell your soul thing is when I go in for a sales meeting, if you will, to a potential client. I have one agenda really. That's not true.
My top thing that I want to get done no matter what is when I leave that meeting, I want that person to go I've never been in a meeting like that ever. Never have I run into have a meeting like this. I want it to be that different. I don't mean just to be different, but I this whole thing about openness to disclosure, the non defensiveness, the vulnerability to be so clear that they go "Man, that was really something. I mean, wow."
And the last one is I like to make their day by being that straight and that open with them and just bringing up their life energy, because they'll get stimulated by it. By "What is he doing? Wow, that's something." So they'll feel energized, they'll feel more enlightenment.
And at least I've done that if I never see them again. So that encounter with that person is not here is just someone I'm trying to sell to. But here's another human being who I know is got these fears. And if nothing else, nothing else. They're going to have an experience around openness that they've never had before. And if I've got any leg to stand on, that's going to be the one. Given my prize. My product looks good enough. They're going to go "Whoa. That right there. I want more of that."
Russ Salzer: Yeah, I think that's just a huge competitive advantage. Everyone's looking for an a competitive advantage and value and all this stuff. That, in and of itself can be the differentiator between moving forward with somebody. And that is how you show up. People pick up on that energy as Tommy said, it's attractive, and they want to be around that.
Jonathan Stanis: I'm sure we could keep talking about this subject. So obviously, you're both very passionate about it. Let's see, we've been here now for at least an hour 15. I think we just got to wrap it up here, unfortunately. I did want to ask one last thing. When people start rolling this out in a company, or better how do people start rolling this out in a company? How do people start moving with the new agreement? Is it like, let's all get together and read this book and then move forward with that? What's the best way to move forward on a new agreement situation?
Thompson Barton: If I'm following you, reading a book can be at least inspire and then to get from a culture that's based on the old agreement to a culture that is living the new agreement. Not that they think it's a good idea, I'm saying they're living it. It shows up, like Russ said, transforming every business indicator you've got. That's what we're talking about.
To get from exposure to having it in place in a culture. It's a cultural transformation. Typically takes a number of workshops where we go into, as I said, to you breaking it down frame by frame. That takes a workshop, because we're dealing with people's awareness. So the workshop we have all kinds of different things, Jon, that we do in the workshop to bring up their awareness of themselves, help them break through their distance from themselves, which is all filled by fear. Each person slowly begins to make progress in that way as a group, and groups have some exponential thing. I don't know what it is, but when you get a group of people doing what we're talking about, five people 15 people, a work team, a department project team. The beauty of being together to workshop kind of situation where we bear down on this is that it exponentially seems to get legs.
Russ Salzer: I mean, that's it. It's absolutely critical. I mean, the training Tommy's talking about is really the key leaders, managers, players in the business and started moving in that direction, in a very quick fashion. And literally, by the end of the workshop, you're probably more unified than you've ever been before, as an organization. So it's absolutely critical to do that work.
Thompson Barton: And then I just looked to see after I've worked with a group it becomes obviousl. Frequently they'll say, well, what kind of follow up do you do. I said, let's visit that after the these three or five days. Whatever workshop we're doing, because you're going to see where everybody is, and it will be obvious to me and I'm going to make a recommendation. Including coaching. But I'm going to look to see where this is where we need to move this along, we need to get this piece, this person, this group, this pair, we need to get them more open. We need to get them less defensive. It becomes easy to know where to go. But I do start at the top because we're dealing with human beings becoming less afraid you better get two people at the top, pretty much or like I said, you better have a really intact division or department that you can run without interference pretty much from the top.
Russ Salzer: I don't know who's who said this to me, if you did, or Jon, or somebody else, but the organization will just not evolve beyond the collective consciousness of leadership. In other words, somebody will keep it at bay, the boss who wants you to be afraid, yeah, keep it there. That's the ceiling. That's the glass ceiling, when it comes to this kind of stuff. It'ss what is that collective consciousness of that group? So you can work it in a division. You can work it in your work in tech work team, but on some level, that will be the limiting factor. How unconscious that is?
Thompson Barton: How frightened that person is or being transparent to the world. Yeah, quite simply. I never really think somebody is a problem if they begin to not become increasingly open at the rate at which it takes. This person's really afraid and then and I will tell them if it's a CSA Look, here's what I think you're afraid of. Here's how showing up to stop this from happening and where I'm on this. This is what it's going to take and if you don't want to do that, then I don't think that my being here is worth either one of our while. Just be straight about that. I'll be straight about I think that you're just too afraid right now. Call me when if you want to revisit this
Jonathan Stanis: Sounds good. So to call you when you are available, how can people find out more Tommy, about you and Please Lie to Me" and your training programs.
Thompson Barton: Our website is ACT.biz. I love talking about this. So my phone number here in Oregon is 541-840-3136.
Jonathan Stanis: Brave putting your phone number out there. Hopefully we don't overload it.
Russ Salzer: He doesn't get reception where he lives.
Jonathan Stanis: Oh Okay. That works!
Thompson Barton: What did you say Russ?
Russ Salzer: I said you don't have reception where you live. So that's why you don't mind give it as number one. No, I'm kidding.
Jonathan Stanis: How about us Russ? How do people get ahold of you?
Russ Salzer: So website is 3YG.us emails pretty easy russ@3yg.us.
Jonathan Stanis: Awesome. If you are interested in sending questions or contacting the podcast itself, you can reach us out to us at sales@3yg.us. Hit us up on Twitter at @inner underscore sales. We are also on LinkedIn, Instagram, and just about anywhere else you want to find us on social media. You can find show notes for this episode at 3yg.us/inner-sales just search for the episode on "Please Lie To Me".
If you're interested to help the show out a bit, please give us a review in iTunes. You can subscribe to this show on Apple podcasts. Now on Spotify as well and Google Play or anyplace else you can find podcasts we are just about everywhere. If there's any place that people find that we are not let us know and we will add it. Get our podcasts on there as soon as possible.
Our theme music is Smatzi kilokatsie by kilocats. And I want to thank everybody for listening. I want to thank Tommy for being here. Thanks, Tommy.
Thompson Barton: Yes, You're so welcome.
Jonathan Stanis: And thanks as usual Russ for being here with me too.
Russ Salzer: Yeah. Thanks, Jon.
Jonathan Stanis: We will see everybody else next time.
Thompson Barton: Bye bye