The High Cost of Hiding Yourself

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Recently I was asked to be a guest speaker at an event designed for executives of a big technology company. I wore a black suit. The very next day I spoke at a marketing group event of a Silicon Valley gaming company. Unsure of what to wear I asked, and they said, “jeans and chucks.” And then, like an idiot I asked, “What are chucks?”

This is a pretty benign example of what the The Deloitte Leadership Center for Inclusion calls “appearance covering.” We do it all the time when we accept a dinner invitation or go to the beach. We try to wear the right thing to fit in, not stand out, or maybe just not stand out too much. We practice this kind of social covering so much so that in their study 82% of workers stated that covering for appearance was “somewhat” to “extremely” important for professional advancement.

Dressing to fit in can make us often feel even more committed to the team and the mission. But we also often “cover” other aspects of our authentic identities. We hide not only our political opinions, but also truths that deeply define us, such as our cultural histories, sexual orientations, socio-economic backgrounds, or even our age and any disabilities we might have. Comments from those who participated in the study include:

  • Covering family obligations: “I was coached to not mention family commitments (including daycare pickup, for which I leave half an hour early, but check in remotely at night) in conversations with executive management, because the individual frowns on flexible work arrangements.”
  • Covering socio-economic background: “I didn’t always volunteer the information that I grew up very poor and that I was the first to go to college. It seemed like I wouldn’t be accepted because I always assumed everyone I worked with grew up middle or upper class.”
  • Covering ethnicity:“I don’t want people to define me as an Asian, so I’ve been hesitant to participate in activities geared toward the Asian community.”
  • Covering physical health: “I don’t associate with cancer groups, because I don’t want to draw attention to my medical status, disability, or flexible arrangements. People tend to look at me like I’m dying when they find out I have cancer…”

However, as their study uncovered (pun intended), when we feel like we can be more authentically ourselves, we care more about our work, and hold stronger commitment to our company. When we feel that we cannot express ourselves authentically in identity, we feel inhibited in our ability to give our commitment fully to our work efforts.

As one respondent put it, “I understand that my opportunities to advance at my current company are restricted by the fact that I do not fit the ‘mold’ of their executive leadership. If I had the opportunity to do the kind of work I do at another firm with similar compensation, but could be more authentic without limiting my job security or chances for advancement, I’d switch in a heartbeat.”

Remember that partitioning our lives and identities is a trap. When we segment and partition our lives into work life, home life, sporting life, community-service life, etc., we deny a truth that often our greatest strength comes from integrating all the different and diverse network interactions, and ideas into a unified and integrated whole. After all, the etymology of Integrity is from the Latin integer, meaning wholeness, or the unit of one.

“A single story creates stereotypes, and the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete. When we stereotype others, we reduce them. We imprison them in our own small view, a dark and tiny place with no light and no room for growth.”

novelist Chimamanda Adichie

Building cultures of leadership, trust and innovation starts one small act at a time. Try our course Small Acts of Leadership to move the needle a little in your workplace.

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Our company Mindscaling, is busy building powerful human and digital learning experiences for companies of all sizes. My new book Small Acts of Leadership, is a Washington Post bestseller! You can grab a copy now. Have a meeting coming up? I love to work with groups large and small. Let’s talk. Last summer, my son and I bicycled across America with two other dads and their teenagers. We published a new book about it called Chasing Dawn. I co-authored the book with my cycling companion, the artist, photographer, and wonderful human jon holloway. Grab a copy. I’ll sign it and send it to your doorstep.

You don’t have to choose between creative and valuable

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creative_designAndy Cohen was a marketing ad agency guy back in the day when Direct Response TV ads were considered tawdry, cheap ways of marketing. The kind of TV advertising that kept asking you to CALL NOW! It was the domain of late night used car and vacuum salesmen. Brand businesses wouldn’t touch it.

Andy helped change all that. He and his colleagues wrote award-winning ads for Clorox, Chase Bank, Club Med, Time Warner, American Express, among many other marquee name brands. Their mantra was never compromise direct response volume for the sake of creativity, and never compromise creativity for the sake of direct response revenue. In their mind, both had to be elevated together in tandem. In their mind, they believed they could build brand integrity while simultaneously elevating ad impact and revenue. They demanded innovation of each other in pursuit of excellence.

Andy had an idea for a short Direct Response TV spot. It goes like this: Man wearing a suit in a city somewhere. Closeup on smiling face. Voice of God narration: “Why are you so happy? Did you recently find a high margin, low cost investment offer? And you’re excited about how hard your money is working for you? You must have discovered the new bond offer? No? Oh, it’s trading at $5 and returning 13.5%. its not too late…you can still get on board…”

Meanwhile the viewer watches the individual’s face start proud, smug and happy, and gradually go to sad and appalled that he was missing out, and then back to a sense of urgency and opportunity. Only at the very end the viewer hears a voice say, “Hello, Merrill Lynch. How can I help you?” Andy’s design of the ad spot relied on the notion that the man’s facial gestures convey more urgent emotion than dialogue.

Andy showed this ad design to his boss who said it was crap, terrible – a waste of thought, and told Andy to go make something valuable. Andy didn’t throw the idea in the trash. He kept tweaking it to make it better.

Lesson 1: Believe in the power and novelty of your ideas.

Meanwhile their client, Merrill Lynch, was in a pinch. They had purchased a billion dollars worth of bonds from the government and needed to move them, fast. They were sitting on a billion dollars worth of uninvested static assets. So at the next advertising meeting with Merrill Lynch, Andy pitched his idea.

The Chief Marketing Officer listened quietly and then declared he didn’t like it. So of course to agree with the client, everyone in the room said, “OK no problem. We have other ideas.” Not Andy.

Andy asked “Why? Why don’t you like it?” He persisted to find the real reason why the CMO didn’t like the ad idea.
CMO replies, “Well the tie is ridiculous. No one would wear such a ridiculous tie.”
Andy grabbed the sketch artist in the room and asked him to redraw the face. “How about now?” Andy asked.

Lesson 2: Persist until you understand the real reason.

The biggest misconception is that communication happened. If your audience immediately dismisses your idea, don’t assume they think it’s crap. People say No to great ideas for reasons that often have nothing to do with the idea itself. People often say No to ideas that have personal triggers. The key to identify the root assumptions behind decisions.

Merrill funded the ad, and they moved 750 million dollars worth of bonds in 9 weeks using that ad. And incidentally it was the first DRTV commercial to ever win a CLIO award, and many other creative advertising awards.

Yes, You Will Succeed: Three Keys to Building Persistence.

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“Amateurs sit and wait for inspiration. The rest of us just get up and go to work.”
– Stephen King

Back in the early 90s we used to go to a club in Charlottesville VA to see Dave Matthews and his band play. It was free to get in. One time we drove there and the doorman asked for $5, and we were like, “What!? What a ripoff, it’s just Dave.” During that same time period, I found myself president of the Student Activities Union at my college in North Carolina, a job which mostly required throwing parties and sometimes managing intramural leagues. I discovered if your job is to throw parties, people often recommend bands to you. A friend recommended some band from Columbia SC I had never heard of, but he assured me they would rock the house. So I called up Darius Rucker and asked if his Hootie and The Blowfish band would come play at our school. He asked for a keg of beer to play.

It seems like I blinked, but once I picked my head up to pay attention to popular music a couple years later, Dave Matthews and that Hootie band were playing stadiums at $200 a seat, and touring the world.

But here’s the thing: All of those blockbuster songs like Ants Marching, One Sweet World, Only Wanna Be With You, Hold My Hand, and so on, they were playing those same songs in little bar clubs for fourteen people back in the day. And had been playing them for years. They didn’t get famous and then write hit songs. They wrote hit songs and the world didn’t know it, until after they had played and played them again and again.

This is the myth of “suddenly” becoming famous. We don’t become successful overnight. We become successful as a result of showing up every day and putting in the hours, developing deep expertise and finding our tribe over time. Or as Aristotle so wisely put it, “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not an act but a habit.”

The standout word of the day is Grit. We implore our kids to persevere, to stay in the game, to try new ways of solving a problem. We encourage our colleagues to “fail faster” in expectation of finally arriving at an innovative breakthrough. We all just need to be a bit more gritty. One parent in California has a Kickstarter campaign to develop a line of dolls action figures for boys called Generation Grit.

But how do we instill a sense of stick-to-itiveness in our kids, and our colleagues? There are a few clues in recent studies from Brigham Young University in which researchers followed 325 families over a period of four years, examining the behavior of the families with kids between the ages of 11 and 14. After examining parenting styles, family attitudes and subsequent goals attained by the kids, the researchers concluded that three key ingredients consistently created higher levels of persistence:

  • supportive and loving environment
  • high degree of autonomy in decision-making
  • high degree of accountability for outcomes

There it is again – that word autonomy. From previous research by Teresa Amabile and others, we have known for some time that high levels of autonomy lead to more creative outcomes. But here we also see that high levels of autonomy also build greater persistence.

According to Paul Miller, associate professor of psychology at Arizona State University, “When held accountable in a supportive way, mistakes do not become a mark against their self-esteem, but a source for learning what to do differently. Consequently, children are less afraid of making mistakes, are more inclined to try to make better choices in order to demonstrate that they can accomplish and live up to the expectations they share with their parent(s).”

Give the Gift of Time

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If only HP knew what HP knows, we’d be three times more productive.
—Lew Platt, former CEO of Hewlett-Packard

Everyone is so busy these days, overwhelmed by complexity and uncertainty, that it’s hard to know what to do or who to talk to in order to accomplish daring, and unexpectedly awesome initiatives. And so we create structure, process and teams to solve specific tasks or projects. But team composition, proximity, and facilitation matter a great deal in terms of how productive they eventually become.

London Business School conducted an interesting study in which they asked 1,543 people to answer a bunch of questions about the composition and behavior of the teams they worked on. It turns out that some of the very characteristics that define modern professional teams, are the same characteristics that undermine their success. These trending characteristics include:

Bigger teams: Teams are swelling in size to be (or appear to be) more inclusive, gain greater stakeholder buy-in and leverage more expertise. Teams of 20 people or more is increasingly common, and technology is enabling a good part of swelling headcount. But research from Bob Sutton on scaling excellence demonstrates that honest and engaged collaboration decreases after team size exceeds about 8 people.

Diverse teams: Again, technology enabled, globally dispersed diverse teams are growing rapidly. And with good reason since the ability to leverage expertise throughout the globe is increasingly a powerful component of competitive advantage. But deeply engaged, open collaboration starts with trust. And trust starts with the personal understanding that comes from cultural and emotional fluency. We might get technically proficient collaboration across cultural boundaries, but richer collaboration requires the bedrock of trust. I once met a guy named Marcus who was based in Germany and ran an IT services group, which was based in Silicon Valley. Several times a year Marcus would fly to California for no other reason than to spend time with his team, chatting, having meals, talking about work, but also interacting on a human and personal level. He calls these trips “The Flying Handshake.”

Educated teams: According to the study, teams are increasingly comprised of people with higher and higher education levels. And it turns out, the higher the education among the team members, the more likely the team may devolve into petty arguments. One key to overcoming this obstacle is to require teams to have not only task goals, but also relationship-oriented goals.

The study cites some constructive interventions to help boost the effectiveness and ingenuity of teams, as well as to eradicate “fault lines” within teams, but one leadership trait in particular has a powerful effect in scaling excellence: giving the gift of time.

Company cultures in which leaders regularly give their time to listen to emerging problems, and advise team members of who they might talk to within the company to accelerate solutions is a defining characteristic of successful cultures. Specifically, the study cites Nokia’s cultural tendency for leaders to sit with individual team members and point them in the direction of people throughout the organization which they believe will accelerate results and strengthen inter-departmental collaboration.

Five Traits of Leaders Working at Scale

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sweepersIt’s not a glorious job. And would likely be completely forgettable, if not for the frantic brushing down the ice. It’s distracting until you figure out that they are actually making the stone go faster by polishing the ice in front of the sliding stone. Sometimes I wonder if they accidentally bump into the other stones on the ice. I’ve never seen it happen. But it’s the role of the sweeper that can often make the biggest difference in the outcome in a game of curling.

Effective leaders who create excellence, at scale, in the companies and communities in which we work, have this skill of clearing the way ahead, along with several other key traits. These unique people operating at the highest levels of leadership can divest their ego from the end goal. They have accountability when things go awry but not granular responsibility over individual elements, because the journey toward a shared audacious goal must be emotionally owned by the entire organization to create scale.

Those leaders who can create innovation and excellence at scale possess these five traits:

Sweep away barriers: In order for excellence to grow rapidly and unimpeded, the clutter of antiquated bureaucracy and organizational roadblocks needs to be mitigated or removed entirely. This is the job of the best managers – not to create work that distracts, but instead identify obstacles and have the power and political clout to remove them. Jack Welch likes to use the analogy of the sweepers in a curling match, whose job is to clean the ice in front of the oncoming stone.

Mine the organization for expertise: Lou Platt, the former CEO of HP once said, “If only HP knew what HP knows, we’d be three times more productive.” By that he meant that there was redundancy and untapped capability within their own organization. The best leader creates environments and communication patterns to recognize untapped potential and surface latent expertise. Sir Howard Stringer of Sony, once hosted an international gathering of their engineers just so they could meet and talk, and discover the great capabilities Sony already possessed. Many later thanked Howard, saying they had no idea the depth of skill and knowledge within their own organization.

Build an ownership culture: One of the strongest and fastest ways to build a culture of ownership is to facilitate the building of shared language. When leaders create the circumstances and opportunities for the people around them to define the language use to build projects and collaborate, it creates a higher sense of ownership because suddenly each team member has a vested interest in the eventual outcome. When you have the team name the project, or the outcome, it becomes more about how “we” play the game. This is a stepping stone to building signature solutions. A signature solution is a process or result that has the character, the personality, of it’s contributors baked in to the finished result.

Give credit: A hallmark of a great leader is one who doesn’t want the credit. Or more specifically, doesn’t need the credit. These leaders who can scale excellence recognize that by giving credit, they allow those around them to step to the front – to become leaders themselves. In this way, remarkable leaders are more inclined toward starting something with a greater purpose, and then allowing those more capable people around them to execute on the details and drive scale.

Emphasize process over results: I once had an interview with the Dean of Melbourne Business School, Zeger Degraeve, who has a strong passion for understanding how people make decisions, and create excellence at scale. In our discussion, he strongly reinforced the power of process-driven cultures in eradicating blame tendencies among managers and peers. When individuals and teams are punished on the basis of poor outcomes, despite strong collaboration and decision making, it sends a signal to the rest of the organization that failure is dangerous, and therefore risk should be avoided. Yet inversely, rewards-centered cultures create disincentives for people to make mistakes at a time when making mistakes is the most reliable way of figuring out what works.

Most organizations today create bonus and reward structures that focus on and reward results. If we want an outcome to be repeatable, we instead need to focus on the process that created the result and reward for that. To truly connect with people in our organizations, we should spend more of our time and energy as leaders asking them to examine more closely how they perform their tasks and collaborate as teams, and how the organization, as a whole, operates.

The Importance of Showing Up

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ridebikeFrom the kitchen window Christopher could see his wife was getting frustrated. Over and over again, Dana was running awkwardly, hunched over, down the driveway while holding on to the back to Will’s bicycle. At the time, six year old Will was still terrified of riding without his training wheels, or without his Mom holding him up. Christopher watched as his wife and son repeated the same failed routine again.

Finally, Dana came inside exhausted and frustrated. Christopher Reeve said to his wife, “Let me try.” He rolled his wheelchair gently down the ramp outside and onto the driveway where his son was wiping away tears. Christopher spoke to his son slowly. Since the accident his voice had become soft and measured. He told Will to place both hands on the handlebars and hold them steady. He explained by doing this the bike wouldn’t shake as much. He told Will to look up, far ahead, to where he was going and not down at the pedals or the front wheel. He told his son to first place his right foot on the pedal and his left foot on the ground, prepared and poised to push hard.

Will froze. Then Christopher reminded his son that he would never let him do anything too scary or dangerous – that riding a bike was something he knew Will could do. He told Will he was going to count to three, and on three, it was time to go. Christopher counted slowly and when he reached three, Will pushed off hard and rode down and around the driveway. The first time he circled back, his face was a mask of concentration and focus, and the second time around his face only reflected joy.

In his book, Nothing is Impossible, Christopher Reeve writes that before the accident that left him paralyzed he was a whirlwind of activity. He constantly took his family sailing, horseback riding, traveling, hiking and adventuring around the world. He writes that he never really asked if they wanted to go, he just took them. And after the accident he learned to listen. He learned to speak to them where they were, at their level, with a deep sense of empathy.

Christopher writes that prior to his accident he would not have believed that he could teach his son to ride a bike simply by talking to him. Teaching was about showing, demonstrating, and leading the way. But during his recovery process, he learned the power of conversations, words, intention and meeting people at an intersection of where they are ready to learn. Because each day the physicians and care-takers around him would introduce an idea or an activity that he was ready to tackle, or else it would fall unnoticed. It’s all about introducing learning opportunities when people are ready to learn.

An important nuance of excellent leaders is that they have the capacity to recognize when someone else is ready to go to the next level – ready to take on a new challenge. And instead of doing it for them, encourage their heart and prepare them to make that leap. And it starts by simply showing up and being willing to share your skills and experience.

Your Decisions Become Your Possessions

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If I make a decision it is a possession, I take pride in it, I tend to defend it and not listen to those who question it. A decision is something you polish.
– Paul Gleason, wildland firefighter

In 1994, 14 heroic firefighters perished in the South Canyon fire in Colorado. Although they had been instructed to drop their gear when fleeing the advancing fire, none did. One body was found only 250 feet from the safety of top of the ridge still wearing his heavy pack and carrying a chainsaw. After the event, experts calculated that less than .5 mile per hour of faster speed would have saved them. Average humans, unencumbered, can run about 12-14mph for short distances. Carrying their gear the firefighters might have been half as fast. Perhaps they were disoriented in the smoke and fire. Perhaps the act of dropping gear would be to admit failure. Perhaps in the moment, and in spite of their training, they didn’t hear the order and simply never thought of it.

We also overvalue our possessions. In the 1949 wildfire disaster at Mann-Gulch, crew foreman Wag Dodge clearly ordered everyone to drop their gear and run from the advancing fire. Walter Rumsey testified that even though he was running for his life, he saw his partner Eldon Diettert was carrying a shovel. Rumsey grabbed it from him to lessen his load, but then searched around for a tree so that he could carefully lean the shovel against it.

Foolish consistencies aren’t only the domain of individual judgment. The final report of the Columbia shuttle disaster investigation stated that NASA “management was not able to recognize that in unprecedented conditions, when lives are on the line, flexibility and democratic process should take priority over bureaucratic response.” They simply couldn’t see beyond standard operating procedure in the face of changing circumstances and evidence.

Conviction can be a good thing. Conviction bolsters confidence and spurs action. But failing to abandon past practices and habits can also be catastrophic. We can become so enamored with our possessions that we self-identify with carrying them. To carry a Pulaski fireman’s axe is a badge of honor, just as carrying our habits and opinions with us everywhere we go affirms who we are.

So how can we identify those fixations that are holding us back and weighing us down, versus reaffirming those closely held convictions which empower and propel us? Taking a tip from Harvard medical researcher Jenny Rudolph, the best advice is to say what you are thinking out loud, in the presence of those whom you trust and who will hold you accountable.

In her research she found that once medical students made incorrect diagnoses, they would often persist in ineffective treatments long after it had become obvious that the treatments were not helping. They were simply unable, or unwilling, to revisit their original diagnosis. They became stuck – fixated – on their original decision.

Dr. Rudolph found that by doing three simple things, the medical students were often able to change their opinion quickly and effectively treat an accurate diagnosis.

  • Say out loud an expanded list of the symptoms identified
  • Say out loud an expanded list of the possible diagnoses that would fit the symptoms identified
  • Say out loud a plan to eliminate each diagnosis one by one

By simply saying out loud what we are thinking in the face of changing circumstances and evidence, we force ourselves to consider our opinions and biases. We not only hold ourselves more accountable, but implicitly ask those around us to also check our judgment.

After all, remember what Justice Louis Brandeis famously said, “Sunlight is the best disinfectant.”

Make the Comfortable Uncomfortable

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I coach lacrosse with my friend Pete. Coach Pete, who played Division I lacrosse back in the day, certainly looks the part. Big, fast, strong, and possessing a booming voice, one would think the new kids on the team would be intimidated by him, and only the seasoned players would be the ones who would dare to push his buttons, or have the audacity to slack off during drills.

It’s just the opposite. The new kids find him approachable, inviting and encouraging as a coach. Yet the kids who have been playing with Coach Pete for a few years find him sometimes demanding and expecting excellence. He pushes those experienced players the hardest.

Pete has a coaching philosophy worth borrowing. “Make the comfortable uncomfortable, and the uncomfortable comfortable.” What he means is that the new kids are already moderately intimidated by trying a new sport, developing new skills, immersing themselves in a fast, and often chaotic game. They are already on edge, and perhaps even a bit past the positive learning state that creates excellence. When the challenge and chaos of the game exceeds their skill and ability to deal with it, they feel overwhelmed, and move from a state of thriving and learning to a state of retreat. They close down. They drop a pass, take a hit going to a ground ball, and can’t figure out the strange offside rule. The game suddenly isn’t fun.

Inversely, the kids who have played the game for a few years have their posse, their attitude, and their predictable set of moves. These are the ones who need to try new things, who need to cradle and shoot with their non-dominant hand, play a new position, and work on the face-offs that start the game. They need to get out of their comfort zone. They will learn to see more of the game and become better players.

These are emotionally fluent leaders – those who can read people at their current comfort level and present just the right amount of challenge to let their skills and capabilities evolve. Sometimes to accelerate excellence, circumstances need to be chaotic by design – intentionally unstable.

Working in a world of constant change is half the fun of it. Deadlines shift, goalposts move, budgets shrink, markets evolve, new competition emerges, perceptions alter, stakeholders clash, and just when you are ready to deliver, your product is antiquated. After all, it takes a storm to make a rainbow.

The Power of the Humility Effect

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“The X-factor of great leadership is not personality, it’s humility.”
– Jim Collins

I’ll be honest. He wasn’t my first pick. Near the top yes, but he didn’t have my vote. Our small selection committee was trying to choose a keynote speaker for a big event and General Stanley McCrystal was on the short list. I think my gut instinct was that while he was indeed a highly decorated and remarkable leader in his own right, he might not connect in a human and honest way with our audience. I was concerned he would be aloof, imperious, unapproachable.

I got it all wrong. From the moment he arrived, General “call me Stan” McCrystal was gracious, funny, insightful, and willing to share his expertise with humility. Backstage before his presentation, he was generous with his ideas and time, and onstage at the beginning of his presentation he made several amusing self-deprecating jokes about his own professional blunders. Immediately, everyone liked and appreciated his presentation. He was polished, but not distant. Provocative, yet not condescending.

Every time I open up Adam Grant’s book Give and Take, I find some new intriguing piece of research and insight. Most recently, I was captivated by Grant’s description of a study called The Joy of Talking. In this case, now I understand the background behind one of the reasons why General McCrystal is so effective. It’s called the pratfall effect. It was a study conducted by Elliot Aronson at the University of California back in 1966. Basically what he discovered is that highly competent, often superior performing people become more likable when they have a social mishap befall them. It makes them more human, more likable.

Which led me to another study about how people make a positive impression in a more common workplace experience such as a professional interview or sales proposal. As Joanne Silvester and her colleagues confirmed, interview candidates who accept personal responsibility for past mistakes are regarded as stronger candidates than those who instead point to external circumstances beyond their control.

Saying, “I didn’t get the deal because I didn’t prepare well enough” will receive a much more favorable impression on others than saying, “I didn’t get the deal because the competitor’s proposal was stronger” or, “I didn’t get the deal because the requirements changed.”

When we accept personal accountability, with a recognition that we have the ability to make a positive influence on events, relationships and circumstances, we are more likely to leave a positive impression on others. We also develop and reinforce the belief and habit that our actions matter. And when we believe our actions matter, we are more likely to make positive, constructive decisions.

Beware the Joy of Talking

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Several years ago, a young professor named James Pennebaker at the University of Virginia conducted a series of experiments with his new classes. He would divide them up into groups for just 15 minutes, and ask them to talk about anything they liked. These groups were comprised of students who didn’t know one another, so as you might imagine they talked about their home towns, how they got to the university, what they were studying, and so on. After the group broke up he would ask them to estimate how much talking each person did in the group, how much they enjoyed their group, and how much they learned from others in the group.

Consistently, those who did most of the talking claimed to have learned the most, and liked their peers the most. It seemed the more they talked, the happier they were about the people around them. In fact, as he repeated the experiment he discovered that the larger the group, the greater the effect and the more the biggest talker liked the group. And the effect diminished as the group got smaller, to the point that in a one-to-one conversation, if someone dominated the conversation they both reported disliking it.

Which leads us to an idea Charles Derber coined as “conversational narcissism.” It’s the kind of conversational trap in which we tend to lead the conversation toward our own interests, ideas and concerns. Someone says their child is playing the trombone, and the narcissist says, “Oh, I used to play the trombone. Let me tell you about it.” And off you go for half of an hour lost in memories of their middle school band.

To leave a conversation with both yourself and other people energized, enthused, and even provoked, use supportive assertions and supportive questions. A supportive assertion could be an evaluation such as “That’s awesome!”, or a comment such as “You should check out this article on that.” But even better is something Derber calls the supportive question, which shows active interested engagement in the conversation. A supportive question encourages and deepens the conversation. So the next time someone mentions their child plays the trombone, try saying, “Wow, that’s a difficult instrument. How did she develop an interest in that?”

(You might also enjoy this in-depth article on Charles Derber’s work)