Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Tucker, welcome aboard to the show. So happy to have you on today.
[00:00:04] Speaker B: Thank you. Good to be here.
[00:00:06] Speaker A: I'm so excited to talk to you. There's no way. The first time we've had a lawyer, or I should say, and this cracked me up, I almost fell off the chair. You call yourself a recovering attorney.
[00:00:17] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:00:18] Speaker A: You gotta explain that. We can't start without going through that.
[00:00:22] Speaker B: Okay. Well, I started out as a trial attorney and I did it until I just didn't think I could do it any longer. And one of the factors was I also married another trial attorney, and the two of us were trying to figure out how can we create a life that we really want to have and how do we have a family? So we kept our credential. I continue to be a member of the Bar association here in Washington state, where I live and largely work from, and my husband has kept his membership as well. But both of us went on to have the careers in law that nobody told us existed when we went to law school. So it's always in the blood. It's always in the way of thinking. And I love lawyers. I'm married to a lawyer. They're really a lot of fun, despite what everyone thinks and despite all the jokes out there, many of which my mom tells.
But I have found a career that fits me better.
[00:01:19] Speaker A: I love that.
Give us a taste of what it means to be a trial lawyer. What's the good, the bad and the ugly?
[00:01:27] Speaker B: You know, that is a really good question because my husband and I were just talking about.
We think law practice has probably changed quite a bit from when we were there. And so this is 30 plus years when I was practicing law 30 plus years ago. And it was long hours, irregular hours, high pressure, high stress.
I was always on the defense side of it, so you could prepare for where the argument might go, but you always had to be responding to where it just went. So it was an interesting process. You couldn't be very well scripted, but in the end, that worked really well for me. I was able to go in and speak spontaneously but accurately, and I learned a lot through that experience.
[00:02:17] Speaker A: Did you plan out decision trees before going into trial?
[00:02:21] Speaker B: I used to imagine a visual of like a neighborhood. Like if I was the paper courier back in the day when people got newspapers and I knew which houses I would want to hit, I wouldn't necessarily know which direction I was going to go at any one time, but I had my checklist, so to speak. But I like to imagine it as a map. We would say a Mind map now. And I knew where I was going to put those arguments. I had the arguments ready. I just didn't necessarily know how they were going to come up or when.
[00:02:56] Speaker A: Yeah, it's such, I think that that tool, Right. Mind map, which is, which is really a decision tree. It's right how you go from one point and all the ways that it can go, all the questions that can happen if you get to that point, what are all the things that can happen? Right. It's such an important tool both in, you know, law and, but also in science and technology and I would even say negotiations and business. So that's one that I feel lawyers use a lot, but the rest of us kind of underappreciate. Unless you're a computer science, like I am, geek, you decided to make a change a long time ago. What did that lead to?
[00:03:32] Speaker B: Well, it led to the first of many changes. And someone was just asking me the other day about, well, how in the world did you map out this career that you had? And I said it was one. Yes and one willingness to try something new over and over again.
And it was that experience of throwing myself into something new, a new challenge that got me closer and closer to what I can now look back and understand I was looking for. But at the time I didn't necessarily know what it was. I reacted a lot to. Well, I don't like this, so what's the next thing? And I don't like this part of it. So what's the next thing? How do I keep optimizing? But when I look back, it was really clear to me that I kept optimizing in a direction that, that took me to the impact and the story that was one person big, usually not a huge environmental defense fund, not a huge super fund case, not a class action lawsuit, not even a large corporate contract situation. There were things to be learned in all of that, but it was. How can I get a little bit closer to the heart of the story as opposed to the circumstances of the story?
[00:04:49] Speaker A: That is incredibly delightful, but I want to dig into that, give us more of a sense of what you mean by one person big.
[00:04:57] Speaker B: I'm going to take you back to when I was still practicing law and I had this leather briefcase and I had my suit on and it was time to leave at the end of the day. And I hopped in the elevator and I had my junior lawyer case here. That was leather and nice and very hard to handle because it hadn't been broken in. And then the senior trial attorney hopped in with me. And he had the same case I did, except his was broken in and cool, and it was about three times as big as mine.
And I stood there looking at him, and I thought, if that's what success looks like here, it's just three times bigger in a worn briefcase. I think I'm in the wrong spot. So, you know, that got me thinking. I spend so much time going over documents, going over arguments, going over, you know, difficult negotiations and whatnot. And I thought, there's people behind each one of these stories.
And ultimately, I was asked, as I was kind of exploring options, there were a lot of places I could go. But I decided to stay in the corporate environment that I was in and just, you know, adjust one dial at a time. So it wasn't necessarily that everything I was doing was wrong. So I stayed in the company, took another opportunity, worked in risk management, took another opportunity that took me to human resources. And that's where I really found my people, because they were coming saying, I'm suffering in this way. I've been treated this way. I'm challenged with this. I've got a performance issue. And you could sit down and just talk with people about how can we optimize your situation now was part of optimizing mine.
[00:06:53] Speaker A: And in this journey, the lessons that you learned from the legal arena, negotiating, understanding the person of one. You wrote a book, and it's called Onward Leadership.
[00:07:05] Speaker B: Actually, my website is Onward Leadership, and my book is called the First Four Words.
[00:07:10] Speaker A: The First Four Words, that's right. Yes, that's correct. Tell us about what brought you to write a book. I've been told by now, probably by a dozen people, that I need to write my book, which terrifies me, the idea. But how did you do that? What was the. When did you make that decision and how did you make. And this is incredibly selfish of me to ask, how did you decide the topic and what you truly can write about?
[00:07:38] Speaker B: I had a feeling there was a hidden agenda there, except you brought it out into the light, so no worries. That's good. You know, it was a lifelong dream. It was a bucket list thing that I just thought, someday I'd like to. Someday. But I never really had the idea. And it was actually during the. The pandemic, and I was working a lot with clients and walking a lot throughout my neighborhood while we were in lockdown. And I had a lot of time to really mull over a very consistent challenge that I saw time and time again with my clients. And I started to think, oh, my Gosh, I've been waiting for you idea for all these years. I think you just arrived and I'm going to run with it. So the challenge that I saw with my clients was we'd be talking and they'd have a challenge or they needed to talk to somebody and they weren't sure what to do. And so we would strategize. Do you think it would be good to have this conversation? Yes.
Are you concerned in any way? No. Do you have a game plan and a schedule for when you'll have this conversation? Yes. You know, it was always so simple conceptually.
[00:08:49] Speaker A: So.
[00:08:49] Speaker B: So then they would come back and they would. And I work.
[00:08:52] Speaker A: I feel like the butt is coming now.
[00:08:54] Speaker B: Yes, but exactly. And I work with high performing senior leaders. So these are people who are not lacking vocabulary in any way. In fact, may have more than they need. And when I would meet with them to say, so how did the conversation go? You know, so we can keep moving forward, they say, it didn't happen. And I'd say, why?
You'd agree? Do you accept it? I didn't know what to say. Time and time again, I kept hearing the same thing. I didn't know what to say. Which is code for I was really anxious. I didn't know how it would turn out. Someone told me I didn't have time for the conflict that I knew would ensue. I just didn't. I didn't want to have it. And the biggest challenge people had was not that they didn't know the words to say, whereas that they were avoiding too many conversations that they knew in their heart of hearts they needed to say and should say. And they covered up all of their shame and the stigma about it by saying, I just didn't know what to say. Even if we practiced it, they'd come back with that. So as I was hiking around, I thought, there's gotta be a way to get past that resistance. So the first four words, very frequently people will say, what are they? Like, there's a magic.
There's like a magic set of four words. I hate to disappoint your listeners, Ari, but there is no magic script. However, it is a strategy that gets people thinking about the conversation in a different way. And what I found is when people would come to me and say, I didn't know what to say. So I didn't have the conversation.
I said, if you could have started that conversation in as few as four words, what would you say? And this takes. The idea came to me when I was thinking about this problem, how to break down resistance and make it fun or turn it into a game. I remembered that game named that tune. And there was a part in that game show where contestants would kind of go back and forth saying, well, I could name that tune in eight notes and someone else would say, six. And at some point they go, name that tune. Well, that's. The first four words came directly out of that. That somehow, if we could move ourselves into thinking about the possibility of what might happen, we also want to find out if we're right. That was the hook. So if I could start it in as few as four words, let's have a conversation. In fact, I had one guy who say, I just don't think that would work. Give me an example. I said, let's have a conversation. And it was wild. He sat back and he thought. He goes, you know, I think that really would work. That would help me. I go, it's that simple. So let's go try it and find out what happens. Then you get the dopamine hit and you get some market research of what kind of phrase is working for you or not. But that seemed to be the key to get people to move off of the fear and the resistance, to just open up to the possibility of something new and better happening. And for leaders, it meant talking about issues that were really critical to drive success.
[00:12:22] Speaker A: Let me back you up here with social psychology research.
What we know is that beginnings and endings are salient. Now, what does that mean? That means is that we remember the beginning, we remember the ending. The middle is kind of fuzzy to us. That's how our brain works. That's how psychology works. So. So, you know, that first impression, that four first words, it really does set up the tune for the whole conversation. And not only that what it sets up, it's what you're going to remember from the conversation in retrospect. And there's abundance of research proving, you know, proving how our brains actually work and all of our psychological biases.
It's important. Let's play a game. You ready for this?
[00:13:08] Speaker B: Okay.
And what will happen? We'll start counting on our fingers here. I can already sense where this is going.
[00:13:18] Speaker A: Possibly we're both going to play. I'm going to give you a scenario. You need to give the first four words. You need to give me a scenario. I'm going to give the first four words. You want to go first or me?
[00:13:30] Speaker B: You can go first.
[00:13:31] Speaker A: Okay.
Somebody fucked up and they made a big mistake.
[00:13:37] Speaker B: We're cutting to the chase here. Okay.
[00:13:39] Speaker A: All right, we're cutting to the chase here. You need, like, there is a. There is a mess that just happened. You need to help to get this person back on track. Not. Not no firing, nothing like that.
[00:13:54] Speaker B: Right.
[00:13:54] Speaker A: But back on track. First four words.
[00:13:58] Speaker B: Let's work on this. We can solve this. Let's refocus now. Yeah, that's a good one.
We just came off of the Thanksgiving holiday here in the States, and one of the things is all the things that come up at the Thanksgiving table that push everybody's hot buttons. So let's just say someone shows up at Thanksgiving having very different political views than the rest of the family. And just to provoke a reaction.
[00:14:36] Speaker A: Just a hypothetical.
[00:14:38] Speaker B: Yeah, that's all I'm saying.
Just to provoke a reaction.
Has a T shirt emblazoned with some phrase, and I won't say one, even though one might come to mind, but a phrase that is intended to instigate disruption. Not even a conversation. Your turn.
[00:15:01] Speaker A: I love your shirt. Tell me why you decided to wear that. What do you deeply care about? What are you passionate about?
I think curiosity is the antidote to a lot of the evils in this world.
[00:15:15] Speaker B: I do, too. I often encourage people to say, please help me understand forwards. Yeah, Help me understand this.
And then it's not accusatory, but you could have said, as many people do, please pass the potatoes and just ignore it.
Who. Who made the pie?
[00:15:41] Speaker A: You know, you talked about something, and I love it. You segued into this. And so I'm just going to. I'm going to smash this high ball. I'm a ping pong guy.
Conflict is important. We avoid conflict.
How do we create what I call constructive or creative or productive conflict? And should we really be afraid of conflict?
[00:16:06] Speaker B: So I'm all for conflict, especially conflict that has a purpose. So in the example that I gave you, what is the purpose really? Is it just to stir everybody up on a family holiday? Um, I might choose very deliberately not to play along. And I think, you know, what's the goal of the conflict? Is it innovation? Understanding growth? Because discomfort is the currency of growth. We're all going to be in some level of conflict. Yeah. And it's just the first thing that has to happen, I think, in a productive conversation is that there's some. Agreed.
We use the word safety a lot, but I think there's some pretty tense conversations that can still be very productive and might feel a little bit risky, but there's some structure or curbing around it that when it escalates to this point, we're going to take a pause because it needs to stay directional about the content or the context of what we're talking about. But when it breaks down to personality and ideology, that's. That's where we're gonna kind of get lost in it.
[00:17:21] Speaker A: I love that I have to quote this. This is brilliant. Discomfort is the currency of growth. That is so true.
I mean, that's why we don't want to create conflict. Right. We're avoiding this discomfort.
[00:17:39] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:17:39] Speaker A: Don't want to be there.
[00:17:41] Speaker B: Yep. And it's actually, it's why we avoid the conversation too, because we make up in our minds. If I really state my truth, I might be attacked. If I state my truth, somebody might object to it. If I state what I really think about a situation, am I putting myself more at risk? Is there going to be more conflict in a way that I can't really handle? Might I mess it up? Will people get mad? All those things are the things that get in the way. That kind of discomfort does justify not showing up, but it doesn't take us to the level of growth. If you want to lean into growth, you're going to commit to having the conversation.
[00:18:24] Speaker A: Here's my argument. I don't know if it's the number one, but it's up there.
The reason, one of the reasons why executives are failing is because they do not have an environment to get honest and genuine feedback from their team, because what their team is thinking to themselves. If I give this feedback, this criticism, maybe will it negatively impact my career, me, my perceptions? Because we don't have a culture.
[00:18:56] Speaker B: Right.
[00:18:57] Speaker A: Being honest, and we're going to sugarcoat the shit out of it until our message is completely lost.
[00:19:05] Speaker B: Yeah, Yeah, I think that is true. And it also suggests that it's because of the individual leader behaving that way. But I like that you use the word culture and it even goes beyond the organizational culture. So right now, with so much economic and political disrespect, any kind of stepping out that would put me at risk is going to be causing a response where I might not want to risk it. So you've got layoffs happening. People don't want to be necessarily visible at a time when there are a lot of layoffs. And so it's not even the individual manager that's creating that. There's circumstances well beyond what we can control. However, those are times where there is a call to action for leaders to acknowledge there are a lot of things going on in the world that we can't control. So let me share with you and start talking with you about the things that we can control and how I'm here for you. That it's almost a call for leaders to over communicate their assurances to people to the extent that they can.
[00:20:24] Speaker A: That is so delightful. I feel that it's not practiced enough. I mean, if I had to give one piece of advice on this topic to executives is when you go into the office tomorrow, you know, or your next, you know, all hands meeting, admit to making a mistake, share what the mistake was, what were the decisions or reasonings that caused that mistake, and then explain what is the process that you are changing forward future in order to avoid that mistake. Again, if you show that kind of leadership, every single one of your employees will copy it and that's what you want.
[00:20:59] Speaker B: So I have a story. I know you like stories, so I have a story about exactly that. May I share it?
[00:21:04] Speaker A: It's right in the name stories.
[00:21:05] Speaker B: Yeah, there you go. So I was working with a team and we were talking around these topics very similar to this. And the leader said, I want to share something with the group. And he said, I was getting a lot of feedback that my language was inappropriate. So he was using a lot of superlatives and all kinds of things, swear words and stuff, and for a professional work environment, while nobody at work was complaining about it, there was one person who was complaining a lot about the language he was using and it was his wife because they started to hear their two year old mimicking the dad. And he said, it is very important to me, my marriage and my family that I start improving the way I talk. And because how I talk at home is so informed by all the talking I do here, I'm enlisting, I'm enrolling, begging, pleading everybody on the team to be a part of my solution. And he had this big, it was a big glass jar of some sort. And he says, every time somebody hears me use an inappropriate word, I want the feedback on it. And I'm putting a dollar in here every time. And then when this is filled up, we're having a party.
And the first couple weeks, nobody, nobody said anything because this was a pretty big change. And he kind of reminded them and coached them. And he goes, oh, I heard myself say it, I'm going to put a dollar in myself. And then what he saw, oh, we're really doing this, you know, One brave person said, well, I think I heard one. And he said, you're right. And he put a dollar in. And then everyone Started to like get in on it. And the interesting thing was they did get to a point where it was all filled up. They had a party and then they started to reflect on things. How's it going on at home? And he said, it's great. My wife's thrilled. My daughter doesn't sound like a sailor anymore. And he stepped back and he said, the other thing I've noticed is nobody on the team is talking that way anymore either.
That when I made the change, everything else changed. And it was really powerful because what he may not have understood at the time is how that little ripple effect had a profound impact, but it had an impact on those individual team members as well. Because this particular group was recognized to be a little bit raunchy. And once they upped their professionalism, they came on the radar for other people within the organization as someone that might have talent for their team. It really had a cascading effect far bigger. And it started with 12 year old who swore like a sailor was great.
[00:24:04] Speaker A: But here's the brilliance.
Here's the brilliance. Right. The thing that you kind of skipped over is that he really exemplified asking for help.
[00:24:16] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:24:18] Speaker A: Like that's not an easy thing to do. Right. There's just so many things that are beautiful about that story that I. That I absolutely love.
[00:24:26] Speaker B: Yeah. He asked for help and he really demonstrated in very specific ways that he was serious about it and there would be no reprisal. And that's what people feared a lot. Yeah.
[00:24:40] Speaker A: Beautiful. Just beautiful. There is only one question that is scripted on this show and it's a hard one.
If you had to go back to 20 something year old Tucker, what would your advice be to her?
[00:24:54] Speaker B: That is a hard one. There's so many pieces of advice, but I'm now raising those people, those 20 year olds, myself. And I think the thing that keeps, don't take it so seriously. It's all going to turn out okay.
You can't script it, but you can be there for it.
[00:25:16] Speaker A: Yes.
My mom used to say this too shall pass.
[00:25:21] Speaker B: Yeah, that's good. And Winston Churchill. Keep calm and carry on. That'll take you far.
[00:25:27] Speaker A: Yes, that's right. That's right. Tucker, thank you so much for your time today.
[00:25:32] Speaker B: Thank you.
[00:25:33] Speaker A: So much fun.
