of

the things I really watched is how much the truth could be easily misunderstood.

And from that experience, early childhood trauma, I've just kind of gone, yeah, so like a whole bunch of things that are happening in the room are not actually as perceived.

And so I'm usually the one that goes, huh, who's benefiting from this conversation being this conversation or what is being left outside the frame? And I tend to be the person who just looks outside the frame just a little bit to be like, hmm, you know, kind of thing.

So I'll be sitting at TED and, you know, the conference TED.

And I went from early days and I would be sitting there and like tilt my head and go, huh, yeah, that doesn't play, you know, kind of thing, like within a couple seconds.

And people who would be sitting around me would hear me say it out loud.

When you, when you did take that time out, which did give him more attention, did you make some changes to the system? Did you try to change the system as opposed to just taking, taking that feedback and being like, okay, well I, cause obviously you made a change, right? You left something in order to spend more time with him, but also there's this kind of systemic change, which is obviously much harder.

This requires patience though, right? You know, so in the orange theory they can say, "Yes, it's gonna take 90 seconds," but a leader, you know, might not know how long it's gonna take, and the team members might think to themselves, "But I have all these deliverables that I need to sort of get going on and still perform." So how do organizations, how do teams sort of find that right balance?

So I've done this kind of change management work inside companies.

So let's just kind of describe a, an ordinary scenario.

It's when teams normally try to solve things themselves first, then they often hire a big firm, um, you know, one of the big three, to come in and help them and get that PowerPoint slide.

And then they're still stuck because they still haven't figured it out.

And at that point they're, they are more desperate than ever, and typically that was when I was hired.

You know, my team and I were hired.

So sort of in practice, do you have an example of a company that you've worked with that has, has managed to sort of corral that kind of change management that you're talking about, you know, sort of bottom-up change?

When you talk about in this book, Our Best Work: Breaking Free from 24 Invisible Norms, what was it about trust that made the cut?

Oh, such a good question.

Well, I don't know about you, but I often get told, um, by people I'm working with, "Trust me." And I, I often find myself nodding along.

Like, "Of course I'm gonna trust you." Like Cindy, if you walked up to me and said, "Trust me," my first instinct is to affirm you, is to say, "Sure, of course, I trust you." And what I notice when that's happening, though, is I'm not actually, uh, deciding what it is I'm trusting you on.

And so when we get asked, our instinct is to say yes, because we're w- we wanna stay in relationship with this person, and work is so much about relationships.

But we're not putting in the pause, um, in the process to actually go, "What is it I'm actually making this decision on?" 'Cause sometimes I could trust you for one thing and then have it scope creep to another thing, and then n- realize that actually maybe, you know, you don't have capabilities in this other area, but I'm granting you more access, more rights than you've earned.

Not you specifically, of course, 'cause you're amazing.

Mm-mm.

Would you share her story?

Sure.

So this is a very dear friend, and the way I ended up learning about the story is she was like, "Can I come over?" And she was walking around my kitchen just venting like you couldn't believe, and what she was sharing was this.

Her boss had told her that good ideas will get stolen all the time, and so don't worry about it.

And I don't know if this has ever happened to you, but of course, so many of us who are innovators and idea generators and change agents and leaders, right, who are just coming up with stuff, we end up working really hard on things, and then somebody else will come along and try to take credit for it.

And, and then this boss was basically saying, "Sure, go ahead.

Like, that's fine." And this one particular thing that was happening, Alex had worked on for over six months.

What's the cost of, of not addressing it?

Well, and we also have to hear this Marie golf story.

So I was working at Apple in my 20s, and one day one of the people that I worked with said, "You know, doesn't it feel to you like the meetings are perfunctory, like the decision's already been made?" And I said, "You know, that's funny, I was thinking that too." Like, every single thing I say, I feel like it's just, you know, hitting a wall and kind of sliding down.

And I keep thinking it's me, like it's a communication issue, I need to learn how to pitch this better or whatever.

And she goes, "No, I have this other feeling that something else is going on." And so we took that conversation to a couple other people down the hall, and everyone was like, "Yeah.

Actually, that's it.

That's exactly what it feels like is the decision's being made somewhere else." So we ended up thinking, well, how would we suss that out? And a couple of us knew the admin, so we said, "Are they having a pre-meeting, like the morning of or something, that's causing us to kind of go into meetings that are already decided?" And they said, "No, there's no pre-meeting, but they are playing golf the day before.

They have an off-site every Thursday before the Friday meeting." So we said, "Oh, who's invited?" You know, just, like out of curiosity we're like, "Oh, who's coming?" And it was basically every decision-maker in the room was going to the golf game.

... additional information from which to decide, should I find another workplace? Should I challenge this in a fresh way?

Right.

W- and then it's like, okay, let's understand what this thing is.

Let's explore it.

Let's turn it around.

Let's ex- you know, let's open it up and see what's in here and stuff.

And then you go, "Oh, oh!" And the research says that people with power get that automatically.

So the, the person who brings up a sort of unbaked idea, someone in the room will say, "Oh, you know, so-and-so is also working on it, so I wanna introduce you," or, "I see that part, but it's kind of rough.

Uh, but typically, it's just to say, "Oh, it's the workload is the problem," but how much do you think comes from feeling like you're unheard or that, like, sideline or not being able to be acknowledged, like the not participating in those office politics? Like, if s- if people can kind of step up and that organization sees them in a different light, you can actually have this really beautiful workspace that just helps everyone do their best work.