Greg Voisen
Well, welcome back to Inside Personal Growth! For another amazing episode of Inside Personal Growth, with Jeff Wetzler and Jeff is joining us from Upstate New York. Is that right, Jeff?

Jeff Wetzler
Hudson Valley, New York. Yes.

Greg Voisen
Hudson Valley. Well, Hudson Valley. I've been watching his show about remodels, I told him, and if you guys get a chance to watch that show, I don't know the name, but just look it up on HGTV these two girls do remodel Hudson Valley is the most beautiful spot that I'd seen in a long time. This is the book though, we're going to ask about Hudson Valley. The book is called Ask, tap into the hidden wisdom of the people around you for unexpected breakthroughs in leadership and life. Well, you've been doing this for a long time, Jeff, and you understand this exceptionally well better than anybody. And I want to let my listeners know that the actual website that you want to go to. To learn more about this is Ask approach.com Ask approach.com. There you can order the book. But we're also going to have a link to Amazon which seems to be the preferred place where most people go to get books these days. And is this also an audit audible book too?

Jeff Wetzler
It is also an audible book and Kindle as well.

Greg Voisen
Okay, so it's an audible book, but I'm gonna let the listeners know a tad bit about you, Jeff. Jeff Wetzler has been in a quarter century quest to transform learning opportunities and unblock human potential, blending a unique set of leadership experiences in the field of business and education. He's pursued this quest as an international management consultant to executives in Fortune 500 corporations, as a chief learning officer at Tech for America and currently, as the CO CEO of transcend a nationally recognized innovation organization, Jeff earned a doctorate in Adult Learning and Leadership from Columbia University and a bachelor's in psychology from Brown University. He is an aspen Global Leadership Fellow, and an Edmund Hillary fellow. And he lives in New York with his wife and two children. And don't forget the most important thing, puppies. So again, go to askapproach.com. It's the little things in life like the puppy, Jeff, that make a difference. Here's the book, folks. And believe me, the puppies do make a difference.

Jeff Wetzler
The copy was my reading companion the entire time when I wrote the book, you know, late nights on the couch early mornings weekend. That's who was sitting side by side with me.

Greg Voisen
Yeah. And you were probably asking the dog questions, and you are getting answers. So, what inspired you to write, ask and how did your own experiences shaped kind of the concepts in the book, Jeff? Yeah.

Jeff Wetzler
So, I would say What inspired me was two things. One is, the problem that the book is dealing with, is a problem that I think is pervasive. And it's a problem that I have faced many times in my own life as a leader, and as a just as a person. And also, I've been very fortunate in my life and career to have a set of mentors and teachers who have shared with me various tools, and ideas for overcoming this problem. And those tools and ideas have been so powerful in my own leadership, and have been the very first thing I go to when I develop the people around me that at a certain point a few years ago, I said, I think it's time to pay it forward. I want to I want to pass this on to more people, so they can benefit from the gifts that I've been given to.

Greg Voisen
Well, you really have and I think the when you say the unexpected breakthroughs and leadership in life, asking questions is an art and a science. And it's also this, as I mentioned to you before we actually came on the air, it's this kind of feeling what your heart feels right as a podcaster. Every day, I kind of have to look through the screen of zoom, and try and feel what the person on the other end is now, in the distance like this. It's not as easy as you and I were sitting in a studio. That's when I could and I could see Jeff, but in your book, you talk about the phenomenon of the unspoken. Yeah. Can you share an example from your career where something unspoken had significant consequences? Because this is one that you know, you try to get from people even on a podcast, what's the unspoken?

Jeff Wetzler
Yeah, and you know, when I was saying my two reasons for writing the book, the first one was the problem that's pervasive and that problem is the unspoken. The problem is that the people around us in our lives, that could be our coworkers or bosses people we manage friends club As investors, or heads, our was our partner, our spouse, our partners, anyone, they have ideas and insights and perspectives and observations that are so valuable. But the problem is that too often we don't find out what they are, or we don't find out some of the most important things that they are thinking and feeling. If we could find them out, we would make better decisions, we would save time, we would avoid mistakes, we innovate better, we'd have closer relationships, but we just don't find it out. And so to your question, in my own an example of my own life and career, when I was early in as a, an operating leader, was managing a few 100 people, we were overseeing major events, major training events, and these were very high cost, high stakes, high visibility, hundreds of people being trained, that would affect you know, 1000s and 1000s, more, and one of them was about to implode, right before it was gonna launch. And we spent a year, you know, preparing each one of these things, and one of them was literally just not not going to work out in a pretty spectacularly, you know, public visible way. And I discovered that, you know, just just as a very last second, almost too late, thankfully, you know, a leader on my team stepped up and did a heroic job to get it back on track. But all throughout the year, I was checking in with a team, I was saying to the team, how's it going? Everything, you know, everything on track what's going on, you know, what can I help with? And all I would get back was, you know, yeah, a few few little bumps, but we got it, you know, and I'm thinking, okay, all right, they got it, you know, and what was really going on is the whole thing was falling apart. They knew it. But they didn't want to tell me. And some of it was I wasn't asking the right questions, like a question, for example, like everything on track is not a good question to be asking your team if you really want to find out what's going on. And some of it was that they didn't feel safe to tell me the answers. I you know, even though I genuinely in my heart, I was curious. And I wanted to know, they were worried that if they told me how bad things were, they would look bad, I would be upset, I might fire them, I might punish them. And really, at the end of the day, it was on me as a leader, because I didn't create the context of psychological safety for them to actually tell me what the target challenges were, which is too bad because I could help them and I want to help them. And I wouldn't have just said, Oh, you're terrible. I would have actually gotten in there, roll up my sleeves and tried to figure out what to do. But I didn't find out until too late.

Greg Voisen
Well, the interesting thing you say there, Jeff, is that, you know, frequently as a as a leader, you have to learn how to reframe questions. You know, it's how you actually paraphrase the question that actually begets the result that you need. Now, you talked about this barriers to sharing, right? It's like, okay, if I'm gonna ask this question, are you going to be willing to share, and you identify several barriers that prevent people from sharing, like, in your case, that was a great example. Which barrier do you find the most challenging to overcome? And why? As a barrier to sharing? Yeah,

Jeff Wetzler
so maybe just to quickly go through some of the barriers that I can say which ones? I mean, one of the biggest barriers is fear. People are afraid just like I shared my story, people are afraid that they're gonna look bad, you're gonna get upset, you're gonna take it out on them? Or maybe it's going to create tension in your relationship. I think that's a prompt, that's my answer probably would be that would be the biggest barrier. I'm happy to share the other ones if you want. But But this barrier of fear, fear of the impact of saying something is, is very, very strong and people. And

Greg Voisen
So, if you're a leader, and you feel that this is the biggest one, I mean, people can read the book and get the others. But let's address this big one, right? Fear. Fear has always been said false expectation appearing real. And it's because they believe there's some kind of retribution as a result of being able to share something that might be negative. What would you tell our management people out there today that are working in teams are working as leaders to remove that, what I want to call aura or umbrella of having fear? I know, you know, I'll share a story with you from an author many moons ago. But the reality is, it was true. In hospitals, nurses didn't want to share doctors didn't used to want to share when bad things happened. So they had a hard time doing improvement. Right? We're talking about process improvement and improving things, because they were afraid from the management of the liability associated with a mistake that might have been made with a patient. Okay. Imagine the barrier to actually being truthful, was huge in that example, because someone's life was on the line. Oh, I forgot to put in the IV tube so the person died, right? It's like, and we know that happened. And hospitals were able to overcome that huge fear. Now I tell that story because it's probably a really, really good example in group settings, where you have doctors, nurses, everybody trying to come together to overcome something, share with us how you might help people actually approach that. Yeah.

Jeff Wetzler
And so this is this is part of the Ask approach that I talked about, called make it safe. And this is really about making it feel more comfortable, easier, safer, more appealing for people to tell you their truth, especially if it's a hard truth. And there's a couple things that leaders can do to make it safe. First is creating connection. And I like to say is the time to create connection with somebody is not right, when you need to learn from them, the time to create connection with them is days, weeks, months, years in advance, you got to dig your well before you're thirsty, but to the extent that people have a real relationship with you, and they see your humanity, and they know that you can see their humanity and you feel a level of connectedness with people, that alone creates a level of safety, because they because a lot of times the people make up stories about a leader in their head, they say, Oh, this leader, you know, only cares about this, they would never care about you or whatever. But if they know you that they know you in your full glory, including all your warts, and all your own struggles, and all the things that are important to share when you're trying to create connection with someone. So that's a piece of it. The other part about creating connection is even just the time and place and space of the connection, if you know, if you're creating trying to try to have a conversation and connect with them, that there's only five minutes to go. Or if it's an event, you know, it's in a public place, and they're not comfortable sort of really opening up in that public place, or if they're just not comfortable is very intimidating place, you're gonna like it's gonna feel less safe for them. So creating, the thing about creating connection is to do it on their turf, and on their terms, not where you want to feel comfortable, but when they're gonna feel more comfortable. So that's all one bundle of things. I say, it's,

Greg Voisen
it's great advice. And I would say, you know, I would ask you this, this is a compound question to the first one while you're still answering it. But I think it's valuable. You know, we live in a society today. And it doesn't matter if it's just the United States or Mexico or its, its European countries, it's Germany, it's the kind of the Great Divide, we have so many leaders that don't want to tell the truth. Okay. Now, I don't expect you to have an answer to this. But you just said connection. If Donald Trump if you're listening, you know, let's, you know, let's open up the connection and tell the truth. I think the truth is so much more. Engaging. In it, it's something that allows you to clear the energy, which is heavy in a room. Right? to actually do that. Now, I know lawyers defend people who don't tell the truth all the time. That's what they get paid to do. Right? It's their job. It's unfortunate, but it is. So, I know, I kind of digressed a bit. But I digress for an important reason. The important reason is we have listeners out there that know this is happening, it's happening inside their companies. It's happening wherever, what from your expertise, would you say to break through to actually be able to get the truth out of people? Yeah,

Jeff Wetzler
I think that you're pointing to a really important phenomenon, which is that the lack of feeling of safety goes in both directions. Oftentimes, you know, we were just talking about how leaders and myself as a manager, can create the feeling of unsafety among their followers. But what doesn't get talked about enough, I think, is that often leaders themselves don't feel safe to say their truth to their teams, to their organizations, to their stakeholders. So if you want a leader to tell the truth, a leader in your life, you need to also ask the question, how do you demonstrate to that leader that it's safe to tell the truth with you? And of course, you know, leaders should tell the truth no matter what, but they're humans too. And so the safer they feel to tell the truth, the more likely they're going to they're going to do that.

Greg Voisen
That's, and I love what you said, because that is probably the most I think that the people that are at the top feel unsafe as well. And they that I mean, I think if people can get that, we can bridge this huge divide that has occurred as a result of it. And on that and a little compassion, even if the truth hurts. I would love to see hash and if the truth hurts,

Jeff Wetzler
exactly, and I would love to see more leaders, whether political leaders or organizational leaders say to their followers, let me tell you the dilemma I'm facing right now. I know you want to hear this from me. If I do this, here's what I'm here's what's going to happen. And if I do this, here's what I'm where it's gonna happen. And here's how I'm caught. And let me tell you how navigating it. And so here's where I'm coming down on this issue. But you need to see the ways in which it's complex for me to, I think those kinds of moves on the part of a leader are ways to tell the truth that generate empathy on the part of followers, and can make it easier for leaders to to navigate those tough situations. Yeah,

Greg Voisen
I, I really know this for truth. No matter if somebody is elevated through the ranks to a leader or not elected as a leader, whatever they did to become a leader, there's a lot of power and trust that goes into that. The way to keep that trust is to inform all the constituents that are around you have the issues, just like you said, and if you can feel safe doing that, you should, simply because it's the way that you will harmonize the rest of the work you're doing. Now you say curiosity, mindset, how would you foster a culture of curiosity in their organizations? And what are tangible benefits of doing so? Because this is one of the areas where asking questions requires curiosity, asking the right questions. If you're not curious, you're basically dead in the water. I totally agree. Yeah, the reason my show is what it is, is because I don't think you could find a more curious person than I am to try and find I wouldn't say find solutions all the time, but get in engaging dialogue and conversations that lead to possible solutions. And

Jeff Wetzler
that's what it comes down to. I mean, I think that the you know, the you mentioned earlier, that if you have the curiosity in your heart, the questions will come naturally. And I think you know, that when I when I learned the Latin root of the word curious, I don't know if you know it or not, but it's care. And so curiosity really is about caring about someone else, and caring for someone else, to which I think, which I think does come from the heart. And I'm talking about a particular kind of curiosity in this book, which is not not necessarily the kind of curiosity of like, I'm curious to know, the history of Russia, or how does AI work or though you know, why the trees grow the way they do? It's called connective curiosity. It's I'm curious to know about you, and what you think and what you feel and what experiences you have and what your stories are, and how you're experiencing our relationship with that. And that kind of curiosity, is a curiosity that connects us to each other as well. I think it's good to kind of carry on. So

Greg Voisen
I think that's a statement, Jeff. Sorry, yeah. People don't care how much you know, unless they know how much you care. But that may sound silly, and we've all heard it. But the reality to that statement is so true in all of life, I don't care if it's the waiter or waitress that's waiting on you at the table, it's how you treat them, that makes a difference. It's whether you recognize their name, and you use their name in a sentence, you know, they say our name is the most, one of the most beautiful things where we'd love to hear. So the point is, is whatever you can do, to shift the energy and move it to a commonality, versus a superior over and inferior. Okay, I don't care if you bag my groceries, you're, I'm not superior over you. I don't care if you sweep my floors. I'm not superior over you. We're human beings, we put our pants on the same way in the morning, we do the same things we've had to do every day. Absolutely.

Jeff Wetzler
And I think that, you know, I believe that there is something important and interesting that we can learn from every single person, no matter who they are, no matter what role they're in, no matter whether we are on the quote, same side of some issue, or not from them. And I think that that's an expression of the care that we have I care enough that I really want to learn from you. So back to your question of how do we cultivate that kind of curiosity? Part of it is we cultivate it in ourselves. And I talked about that this kind of curiosity is a choice we can make. It's not just a trait that some people have and other people don't have. It's not just a state of mind that I happen to be waking up feeling curious or not curious. It is a decision that I believe is always available to us. And when we make the decision to choose curiosity, we're really centering in our minds one question in our hearts. What can I learn from this person? And when we send her that question, what can I learn from this person? I find that it pushes out other questions, it pushes out questions like, What can I tell this person? Or how can I show them on right? Or how can I look smart? Or how can I get them to do what I want them to do? Or how can I get out of here, all that stuff starts to fade away? When we're really centered on the intention of what can I learn from this person? And then all of a sudden other interesting questions start to fill up. Like what do they know what experiences have they had? What's their life been like? What do they see that I don't see? How are they experiencing us? In a relationship with me, and so all kinds of things just start to naturally come to mind. To your point about once you have that question centered, lots and lots of questions sprang forth from it. Now, you also,

Greg Voisen
in essence, this is kind of a think tank, right? You know, this is my think tank over the internet, through zoom calls with Yes. And I think, you know, when a think tank, it's really the quality of the questions. So in your case, could you share some examples of high impact questions that can unlock the hidden wisdom within a team or an organization? Because if this is our think tank, right here, Jeff, you and I, then why not share with every 1000s of listeners that come to this show? What you and I could create in this think tank and the quality questions that we could tell them, or at least impart their wisdom on that might work?

Jeff Wetzler
Absolutely. And you are, I think modeling that right now, because you're eliciting from me, something to offer to your listeners as well. And that's basically the point of asking questions, which is how do we elicit the insights from other people? So I distinguish between quality questions and crummy questions. And my definition of a quality question is simply a question that helps us learn something important from the other person from someone else. And it's deceptively simple. Because a lot of the things that we think are questions I would call crummy questions. Some of them are just clumsy, you know, for example, sometimes people will say, here's what I think blah, blah, blah, isn't that right? Or they just say right at the end? And technically, that's a question. They might even be interested in knowing, does the other person agree, but it's very difficult for the other person to say anything other than nod their head and say, Yeah, that's right. You'd have to kind of be an idiot to say no to something that's, you know, obviously, right. So there's, you know, there's questions like that they're sneaky questions where we're really trying to sort of manipulate people to get to do something people weaponize questions and use them as a tax. So all of those are crummy questions, quality questions, just let us learn something. So I'll give you a couple examples. If you want of quality questions, one of my favorite ones, is just a strategy that I call request reactions. And what that means is, I tell you what I think or I tell you my point of view, or I, you know, give you some feedback or give you some direction. And then I pause for a second and I just simply say, Hey, Greg, what's your reaction to that? How does that strike you? How does that sit with you? How does that land with you? What does that make you think? What might I be overlooking? Any version of that is essentially a question that is inviting you to share with me your reaction, your opinion, your thinking on my own thinking. And I think we often don't ask that question. Because we assume that if somebody has a reaction, they're going to tell us. But for all the reasons we talked about earlier, in terms of the lack of safety, if someone disagrees with us, or just doesn't quite resonate, or they have solid intuition that that plan we just talked about isn't going to work. We stand a far greater chance of hearing that if we actually explicitly pause and invite their reactions. I'll pause for a second. And but your reaction to that? Yeah. Well,

Greg Voisen
again, for someone who asks a lot of questions, and that's my rule, is to facilitate a dialogue with an individual, there are important pauses that allow one to take in the information, and then either transform it or not just waiting to ask the next question that I don't believe is so right. But I do sometimes catch myself there. What I attempt to do is stop when I do realize that I'm there and reframe the question, based upon the data that I think I heard. So frequently, I don't always hear it right. But sometimes in never in a podcast interview, but in other places, I want to say, this is what I heard you say? Yes. Now, I know that. In our case with this interview today, it isn't about me repeating me saying I think this is what I heard you say, although maybe I should start using it more, you brought it up. And it might be a great way to have you reframe it. So my list if I didn't hear it, right. Maybe my listeners didn't hear it right either. Right? So I call that strategy,

Jeff Wetzler
paraphrase and test. And it is, you know, it is one of the most powerful and simple things that we can do. Sometimes people say to me, you know, if someone could take away one thing from this interview, or from your book or whatever, it's just one simple thing. I would say, paraphrase and test, when when someone is talking to you just say to them, let me just check. Here's what I think I heard you say, right, did I get that right? Or what did I miss? And it has so many benefits. I mean, I'll tell you when I say that, when I do write that strategy, at least 50% of the time, someone will come back and say, Oh, you didn't quite get it right. Or you missed this important nuance, or Yeah, you got it right. But now that you're saying it back to me, there's something else I want to tell you You're too. And so it makes sure that we hear what's most important from the other person that we heard it right. But it does two other things that I think have a magical benefit as well. One is it just slows down the conversation. Yeah. And so especially if you're in the heat of the moment, you're ping ponging back and forth as a point counterpoint when they make their next point, instead of just coming back at them, if we go back to them and say, Wait, I just want to check that I get that right. It changes everything about the energy, the tone, the the speed of the conversation. And those are the moments when we do need to slow down, when we do need to actually take a beat. And so it just, it's a very natural way to do that.

Greg Voisen
I concur with you. What I would also say is that, you know, in the design of a podcast, you know, there are people like Joe Rogan, that just riff for two hours, yeah, they'll just riff, it's just like, it's just, that's all you're doing, versus a podcast show like this. And my listeners know, I try to get in in the 45 minutes, pretty good summation of one's book, so that the people could say, well, this is something I could use or not use. So in my case, I'm not making an excuse for why don't riff. But I don't riff a lot on this show, meaning like, hey, just definitely are just gonna go off on some crazy tangents somewhere. Although I will say, in a business environment, sometimes it's really good to just riff. But you never know where that's gonna lead. You never know where that's gonna go. But I think for my listeners, they understand. So look, you've discussed the importance of listening and truly understanding and then reframing the question like I just did, is that what I heard you say? I think that was awesome. I think if people if that's all they took away from this, it'd be great. how can listeners or how can leaders ensure that the insights kind of gained from asking the right questions are effectively turned into actionable strategies? Now, here's Justin as important one, right? It's like, okay, you get all these great questions. But then you don't take any action after you finish this hour long meeting. And I don't know, if you're like me, meetings constitute most of your day, right? It's like, oh, my god, can I do another meeting? And then when you look at what gets transcribed for you, and otter AI, and it says, Well, here's the action steps, and you go, Holy shit, if I did all those action steps. So you get where I'm coming from? Right?

Jeff Wetzler
I totally do it once. Once we've posed once we've posed the question and heard the answer, that doesn't guarantee we're gonna learn or change anything. And this is where the final part of the Ask approach comes in. I call it reflect and reconnect. And reflection is really what allows us to convert experience into insight and insight into actions. That's how we actually squeezed.

Greg Voisen
Kindly repeat that, I want you to repeat it for listeners.

Jeff Wetzler
Yeah, reflection is what allows us to convert experiences into insight and insights into action. Okay, we don't always reflect I think sometimes reflection gets a bad rap. People think I don't have time to reflect, right, I gotta go on some kind of meditation retreat on a mountain to reflect. But reflection can be simple, it can be practical, it can be fast. And so I introduced a method for reflection, that I that I call sifted and turn it so sifted is just to say, alright, you know, there, maybe there were 30 things that got discussed in the meeting. Maybe someone told me 30 things, what are the three most important things? Let me sift out the other things, and just zero in that could be looking over the transcript, that could be looking over our notes that could be just thinking through and sort of saying, really, what was the most important thing that I that I was told in this conversation. Sometimes I encourage people to get a friend or colleague or coach to help them sift it. Because sometimes we don't want to, we don't accidentally sift out the wrong stuff. But if we can get it down to like, here are the three nuggets that I got from somebody three most important things, then we turn it and turn, it just means turning it over in our minds in a structured way, three times. So the first turn, is what I call turning it over for our story or story level reflection. And that's basically saying, what what did i How did what I hear helped me update my story about this person, about this situation about myself, you know, my beliefs about this particular situation or issue or getting to update it. The second one is steps. So based on that revised story, what steps should I take? Maybe I should invest further here. Maybe I should apologize. Maybe I should take a left turn, but really naming what steps we should take. And then the last one is the deepest one. And it's called stuff. It's reflecting on our stuff. What did I hear? That might give me a little insight into a bias that I have, or a way of being that I have or how I show up in the world or a deeply held assumption that is That is a deeper, sometimes more painful kind of insight to get. But that's the most important insight to get because we bring our stuff to every single situation. And so if we can reflect and say, Oh, I learned something here, about about assumption I'm making, that is some of the most enduring learning that we can do. So just to sum it up, it's the sifted and turn it make those three turns stories, step stuff, and then I call this reflect and reconnect, because this is not just about a one way extraction of learning for ourselves. This is mutual, which means this is about closing the loop with the other person, it's about going back to the other person and saying, Thank you for sharing that with me. Thank you for taking a risk, if that felt hard to share. And I want to tell you what I'm learning from you. Here's how, here's how what you have shared with me is changing me, I'm growing from you. And here's how I'm gonna do about it. That's the reconnect part. And I think it is very rare in organizations and in our society. For someone to get that kind of reconnection for someone to actually feel like, wow, I made a difference, such a difference that they really acknowledged before and told me what they learned from me. And you can go further and say, by the way, is there anything more you were hoping I would learn from you, or anything more you think I could be taking away from our conversation. And that gives the other person a chance to also help revise what you're taking away. And it has profound impact on the other person, it lets the other person know they didn't waste their time. It shows them how powerful they are, how much you value them, I think it really also increases the chance that they're going to share in the future as well, because they know how much it meant to you.

Greg Voisen
And what comes up for me is, you know, you've created a dialogue, not a conversation, and I can define the differences. But that's where inclusion has been brought into the picture. Where when people say, Well, we're going to make this decision. Well, we didn't actually include some of the team members in the decision making process. And then we wonder why that project, like you just said, didn't get done. One was because there wasn't trust and to possibly because there wasn't an the kind of inclusion that needed to be in that. For someone to say, Well, I had a say, so no, Jeff just told me this is what we're supposed to do. Well, I don't agree that this is what we're supposed to do. So it's now going to go all the way down on the list of priority of things that need to be accomplished. So you can look at this as a heartfelt inclusion, where people are listening with a heartfelt approach, applying their compassion and understanding to each other, and then blossoming into something that is a line together to move there. I know that's a lot of words. But when you really look at it's pretty simple. It's like I tell people, when they listen to one of my podcasts, when I'm attempting to create is this is if you and I, Jeff, we're sitting in a movie, watching a movie, and I was sitting next to you with a bag of popcorn and you had your favorite drink or whatever. And I turned to you and I said, Jeff, what do you think of the movie. And you and I had a conversation, dialogue, whatever you want to call it a minute calls conversation, but heartfelt about, ah, that's the best movie I ever saw, dude, I've really appreciated it. So I try and create this atmosphere that allows people the freedom, where you're a best friend, where Jeff is the best friend, Jeff is the one in the movie theater that we're asking the questions of. And Jeff is going, Yes, here it is. And I think if I can convey that through one of my podcasts, I have more listeners, I have people that will hang in there.

Jeff Wetzler
It's beautiful, it resonates. And I feel that on my end of it. And I think that that is a good way of looking at the situation that we want to try to create in as many relationships as possible, the more that leaders can create that sense of comfort and safety for the people around them, the more likely are they're gonna have a good conversation. It's gonna be interesting, and both people are going to learn from it. And

Greg Voisen
I would and I would say to leaders who are listening, you know, I know you're all busy. And I know you've got an agenda and a schedule. And I know you have a hard time taking this time because you're living in a linear world, if you'd remove yourself from the linear world and open up to the the possibilities of being here. Now. I have this little thing on my desk. Right? And I actually have a clock that I would show you.

Jeff Wetzler
Yes, be here now. Right?

Greg Voisen
So the key is, is to be present with people. So with that being said, what, Jeff for this organizational superpower, I know that mastering these techniques has had a huge impact on your personal and professional growth, which is how you've grown your business and your consulting business and become a leader in written a book and all the things you run. But what does it look like when an entire organization adopts the Ask approach? And can you provide an example of a company that you either successfully have worked with that's adopted this in? And there's been a shift?

Jeff Wetzler
Yeah. When a company or any kind of organization really builds this as a team and organization level superpower, what happens is the collective genius, in and around that organization emerges. All of a sudden, the ideas, the insights, the feedback come from all directions. It's not just the leaders who are who have the answers and who know what's best. But really, that insight is springing forth from all over the place. And you know, in the book, I talk about various different examples. There's organizations like glossier, which is a cosmetics organization that is, is well known for harnessing the insights of its own customers. And so they do a lot of asking and listening to customers all the way to the point where customers help to co develop new products, and customers or even on their own internal slack and messaging channels, having dialogues about what do we think about this product? I mean, talk about really harnessing that. There's also examples. From the book, I also interviewed people at Google, who are often building products, even for their own employees, and are doing incredibly thoughtful ethnographic kind of listening, observing, researching, asking their own people, what's working, what's not working, and really building that in a very fast like a way back into the products in the transcend the organization that I co lead. We have a thing where we do two by twos, so every few months, people who work with each other, say to each other, what's two things I can do? Well, what's two things I can do better, all of a sudden, incredible ideas of learning come out of that, that if you'd had not asked those questions might just be like building up cobwebs in the closet. But because we clear that out every every few months, where people are contributing to each other's growth and development all over the place.

Greg Voisen
It's very well said, Jeff, and I think we're living in a world right now where the trajectory of our growth as a society, to assimilate information, and assimilate knowledge and create wisdom from that knowledge is a really interesting trajectory. And I'm going to ask you about this because with the rise of AI, and other technologies, not just AI, robotics, AI, whatever. How do you see the role of the human connection and the ask, approach evolving in the future? Because I've been to recent shows where there's a robot there and you ask her a question or him, and you get to hear an answer from Ai from what they did. And it's fascinating. The first one that ever did that, that I saw on the internet on YouTube was Tony Robbins, there was a girl that he did a full on interview with, who had been programmed, right. So where do you think this is headed? And how can AI not be? How can it be our companion? Yes, versus it being any kind of resistance to it. Because to me, I believe it's a huge companion.

Jeff Wetzler
I totally agree. And I think for many skills that human beings are currently being paid for, it's not only a companion, it's a competitor. And it will take away I mean, just take take computer coding, as one example. We used to think that if you know if kids could could learn how to code, they would be on a path to a middle class wage. Well, that is, you know, Chachi Beatty and other AI bots can do most of their coding, right, and they can find bugs faster, and fix those bugs fascinating. Also, it will compete with a lot of things that humans can do. But one thing I think it will never compete with, is our ability to really connect with one another, to really learn from each other to really understand what one another's experiences are. But I have found that it can be an amazing companion for that. And so for example, if you if you put into whatever your favorite AI bot is, if you put in something you feel really worked up about really righteous, maybe it's about a political candidate, you say, why would anyone ever vote for this person and elect them? How could they? And then you finish by saying, what might I be missing? You just put that phrase in at the end. All of a sudden, it can help you become more curious. It can help you see actually here five or six things you might be missing. And here's why the people who vote for that person might actually not be crazy. And here's what that you might not be thinking about. And so it can actually be a companion that helps us to choose curiosity. Similarly, you can then say, you know, I've done this in disputes that I've had with someone at work with my wife, I say, here's the situation. What are six questions I could be asking the other A person, all of a sudden generates a whole set of questions. Maybe not all six are perfect, but via four or five of them are things I never thought of that before. So all of a sudden, it can actually help us to pose better questions, if we put it to work for that. And then sometimes it can help us listen better. So I have fed a transcript of a conversation back into AI. And I've said, you know, what are the most important points you hear this person making? What are the most important emotions you hear them expressing? What are the most important actions you see them taking? And all of a sudden, fascinating things come up?

Greg Voisen
And it's, you know, what's curious about what you just said, is the fact if you think about the prompt that you just asked, meaning Jeff wetzler, you say, you asked the AI to give you the most important points based on its learning, not your learning. Yeah. And it actually helped you to really see something that you may not have seen in this book is going to help people see what they haven't seen the unseen. I call it the tip of the iceberg. Let's go under the iceberg. It's really about asking questions. And it's about getting at the ask approach. Jeff, you've been it's been an honor having you on inside personal growth, and sharing your wisdom and experience from years of not only your background in psychology, but your background in business, how you've applied that and put that together, to help people better work together in teams and leadership, and to become better at what they do. It's really an honor to have you on my show.

Jeff Wetzler
Thank you. Great. I've learned a lot from this conversation. Just really, really fun to be in dialogue with you. So thanks for having me.

Greg Voisen
Jeff Wetzler, thanks so much for being on Inside Personal Growth. Go out and get the book, we'll have a link. It's called Ask and the subtitle is Tap Into the Hidden Wisdom of People Around You for Unexpected Breakthroughs in Leadership and Life.

Jeff Wetzler
Pleasure. Great to be with you Greg.