You can improve almost any working relationship...really! It just takes time, effort and some good conversations. Michael Bungay Stanier joins host Brett Hendrie to talk about how to approach a sometimes difficult question: Can our working relationship be better? It's a must listen for anyone looking to create a better connection with, well, anyone.
You can improve almost any working relationship...really! It just takes time, effort and some good conversations. Michael Bungay Stanier joins host Brett Hendrie to talk about how to approach a sometimes difficult question: Can our working relationship be better? It's a must listen for anyone looking to create a better connection with, well, anyone.
BH: Born four days apart in 1951, Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield were childhood friends. After high school, Jerry pursued medical school, while Ben was trying to become a potter. They shared with each other that they were both miserable, and they bonded over their love of food.
In 1977, they decided to spend $5 on a correspondence course and ice cream making, and next year, they opened Ben and Jerry's Homemade Ice Cream Parlor in Burlington, Vermont. The rest is history.
In interviews the famous founders have openly shared the secret of their success.
It wasn't just delicious ingredients was that their best ideas came through collaboration and open communication.
Ben and Jerry's bond was formed over decades of friendship, which began in the most formative years. But for most of us, it's rare to work with someone we know and trust so well.
We spend an average of 9,000 hours of our lifetime at work. And unless you're a true solo operator, chances are you have to regularly interact with bosses, colleagues, business partners and clients.
That's a lot of time spent with people who aren't friends and family. Having a good working relationship is crucial not just to our happiness, but to our professional success. And as celebrated author Michael Bungay Stanier sees it. There's no point in leaving positive relationships to chance. He believes it's possible to work with almost anyone, and he's on a mission to start a movement to improve working relationships everywhere.
Welcome to Visiting Experts, a Rotman School podcast, bringing you backstage conversations on business and society with the influential scholars, thinkers and leaders featured in our acclaimed Speaker Series. I'm your host, Brett Hendrie.
Michael or MBS joins me today to talk about his new book, How to Work With Almost Anyone: Five Questions for Building the Best Possible Relationships.
It's a highly actionable look at how any working relationship can be improved. Whether you're a leader looking to connect more deeply with a team and employee trying to repair a fractured relationship, or a colleague looking to build stronger friendships in the office.
Michael is a Rhodes Scholar, founder of the behavioral change consultancy Box of Crayons, author of the best-selling book, The Coaching Habit, a regular guest speaker here at Rotman School and as I understand an amateur ukulele player, Welcome, Michael.
MBS: Brett it's really good to be here. Although it's a terrible start to this talking about ice cream, because you've got people's hopes up. They're like, Oh, I love Ben and Jerry's ice cream, and it's probably downhill from there. But I'm gonna do my best to replicate the kind of Ben and Jerry's extravagant experience.
BH: Well, if you're listening at home, we recommend go to the corner store, get a tub of Ben and Jerry's and enjoy the rest of the interview.
MBS: Or if you're in Toronto, because I know some of you are, Honey’s does an amazing vegan ice cream, vegan Rocky Road. Fantastic.
BH: Perfect, perfect. Michael, let's talk about the mission that you're on, you open the book with a very bold vision statement. And that is that you want to start a movement to improve 10 million working relationship. Why is that mission so urgent and vital for you?
MBS: Well, our success and our happiness at work depends on the working relationships we have. We get work done through people. And when you pause for a moment, and you think when you've been in a really great working relationship and the impact that had on you. And you've been on a really terrible working relationship and the impact that had on you, you realize just how significant your quality of your working relationships are. But we tend to just cross our fingers and hope for the best and hope this current one won't be as bad as that last one. And I would love to shift the way we work with people so that we feel we're in relationships that are safe and vital and repairable.
And then the other reason I set this as a mission for myself is when you get a new book out, it's a bit miserable, trying to sell books, it's hard to write a book, it's even harder to get people to buy it and read it. And I wanted a mission for me that wasn't just about can I sell books, I wanted to have something a bigger calling for me. So me and the team said, “Look, our goal is to have people read the books, but the impact we want is to improve 10 million working relationships.”
BH: That makes so much sense. And it really speaks to you, and I think how people know you as a really mission driven person. And I've read the book, and I really loved it and I think you'll have no problem selling it. But let's talk about the book and you as an author and your mission. And the through line through your career. Obviously, you have a very large following that really blossomed with The Coaching Habit. Where does this book fall in the arc of your mission and the other books that you've read and what's the through line?
MBS: I appreciate that question. I think my books tend to grow from the same soil and I think it's good that you're pointing to that. I want us to be more human at work. And I think organizations have a way of nudging us away from the humanity of the people that we're working with to the OKRs, and the KPIs and all the stuff that needs to get done. And I want people to be working on stuff that matters, but I want them to be keeping their humanity and in fact, becoming more human in the work that they do. So the Coaching Habit, which is a book that in many ways, just kind of unweirds coaching, so normal people can go off, if that's what coaching is, I could probably do that. That is a lot about finding a way of sharing power, giving the person you're coaching the ability to figure stuff out, keep responsibility, assume responsibility, become smarter, become more competent, more confident, more autonomous, all those are acts of humanity. But one of the very first questions in the Coaching Habit book is, what's the real challenge here for you? It's a question about the work, what are we going to figure out? What are we going to solve? What are we going to fix? And I realized that, actually, we need to take a step back and go look, before we get into the work, let's have a conversation about how we work together. So that when we're doing the work, we have the best possible chance of bringing out the best in each other, and not bringing out the worst in each other.
BH: And I think, you know, when people hear the title of the book, How To Work With Almost Anyone, it conjures an image of working with that person who's very disagreeable and problematic. But the book is really broader than that. And it's focused on those relationships that are problematic, but also those that could be better. Can you share with us? What are the outcomes that you're hoping people have in their relationships through the strategies that you suggest in the book?
MBS: First of all, it would have been over promised to say how to work with anyone, I'm like, I don't think I can guarantee that. And when we came up with the title, How To Work With Almost Anyone, everybody laughed, because everybody imagines the “almost” person right away. But part of why it's not called How To Work With Anyone is because we're not trying to build perfect relationships. I wonder if people think back on the working relationships they've had, it's probably a bit of a bell curve, you've got some that are just wonderful at one end of the bell curve, you have some that are pretty not wonderful at the other end of the bell curve, they may not even be a terrible person, they just couldn't work it out. And most of them are somewhere in the middle. And I think every working relationship can be improved. So you're trying to make the bad ones bearable. You're trying to make the bad ones good enough. You're trying to keep the brilliant ones brilliant for longer, so they sparkle for longer. And you're trying to add a little bit of magic to the everyday one. So they go from being pretty good to having some real moments of glory.
BH: And that's this idea that you presented the book as the as the BPR, the best possible relationship. Can you share with us maybe an example from your own life or a client that you've worked with? Of how to get to that state of having that that best possible relationship?
MBS: Yeah, well, it's a lesson and a practice I've been working on for about 20 years. And I've discovered it boils down to starting with a conversation about how should we work together, rather than plunging into what should be working on? So with almost everybody that I'm working with, certainly all the key working relationships I have, I keep having that conversation, how should we work together so that we get to do the work the best way we can. So one specific example in my life, I started the company Box of Crayons about three or four years ago, I stepped away from being the CEO of that company, because honestly, I'm a terrible CEO. I'm good at writing books, but running companies, I'm just not that interested. And I'm not that good at it.
And I there was a person on the team who was perfect, I thought for this. But is a big step up for her. You know, she'd never been a CEO before I'd never hired a CEO before. I'd never walked away from a company I'd spent 20 years building before. She'd never stepped into the big shoes of a founder. And founder transitions are notoriously difficult, because founders are complicated diva-like people have their fingerprints all over there.
BH: They don't want to let go.
MBS: They want to let go of 95 per cent of everything. But they really want a medal on that last 5 per cent. And it gets complicated. They've got a lot of stuff entangled in the companies that they start. So Shannon, I worked really hard to build the best possible relationship in terms of how we worked as me as the founder and ex CEO. And she as the new CEO, right. So, of course, she spent time thinking about the strategy and the values and the culture of boxes of crayons, and I was there to support her in that role as well. But most of our time was spent going “how are we doing together?” Am I supporting you in the right way? Are you leading in the right way? Are we a strong working relationship together?
BH: It's not what we're doing, but it's how we're doing it. And in the book, you actually give a framework to have those conversations. Can you share with our audience what that framework is?
MBS: I called it the Keystone conversation. Because a keystone works well as a metaphor in two ways, first of all, is the architectural metaphor that probably came to mind for most people, you know, that big stone in the middle of an arch where the two sides of the arch come together, and it creates stability and structure and strength in that arch. And well, that's a perfect metaphor. We've got two people and they come together and they connect in their strength and stability.
But a keystone species is in biology, a species that dictates the health of an ecosystem. The best version, the best story is introducing wolves into Yellowstone National Park. You know, the wolves had been hunted out, and the park was overrun by elk and the elk were eating everything, and the whole national park was a bit denuded. When they reintroduced wolves in the ‘80s, started eating the elk that meant less trees being eaten. That meant more birds, more birds meant better rivers, healthier rivers meant more beavers more fish, the whole ecosystem thrived.
So I called it the Keystone conversation, because whether you like the buildings or whether you like the outdoors, there's a way that a keystone adds stability, creates the ability to withstand stress and allows it to flourish.
Now in the Keystone conversation broadly, you're just talking about how should we work together, rather than what to be working on? And in the book, I suggest there might be five good questions that you can use around that.
There's the amplify question, which is what your best, like who are you when you shine a new flow? What does that look like?
The second one is a steady question, which is what are your practices and processes and preferences? We've all got these ways of showing up and doing the work? Let's talk about the logistics that each of us have, so that we can understand where we might fit and where we might clash?
The third, and the fourth questions are kind of like sister questions. One is the bad day question, which is what can we learn from past frustrating working relationships? And then the good day question, what can we learn from successful past working relationships? Because the patterns of the past will surely repeat again in the future.
And then the fifth and final question is the repair question, which is, how will we fix it when things go wrong? And what you're doing in those five questions is you're sharing your best you're sharing what might be your worst, and you're having a conversation about, you know what it will go off the rails because every working relationship does, what will we do when that happens?
BH: They're such powerful and insightful questions. And they're great, not just because they allow us to learn about the person that we work with, but they also force us to reflect on ourselves. Yeah,
MBS: This is like cunning self help sneaking it in, like spinach in the spaghetti sauce, which is like, there's exercises in the book that help you deepen your own self-awareness so that you can be more articulate and more nuanced and more to the point about who you are at your best.
BH: And it's powerful because it speaks to not just what people are good at, but what they value about themselves.
MBS: Well that’s right, because one of the exercises in the book is to tease apart the difference between what you're good at and what you're fulfilled by. Because there is the curse of competence. Or maybe we could just call it the curse of old age, like when you've been around long enough, you've just done a lot, you get good enough at a bunch of stuff. And there are things that you have become competent at where you're like, you know, I can do this. But I really don't want to do this anymore. But what happens is when we see somebody who is competent at something, we just assume that that's the thing that they should be doing, because they're good at it. So it's really powerful when you're having this Keystone conversation to say, Look, let me tell you something, I am great at doing accounts. And it's deeply unfulfilling for me, because I've been doing them for 20 years, and I just get no joy from them. So consider me a backup to the team for the accounts or insert whatever you want there. But it'd be great if you didn't just assume that I'm the person to be doing that work, just because I've done it before.
BH: Let's talk about what it takes to actually enter into that conversation. And I'm thinking about professionals who maybe don't have a totally candid or great relationship with some of their colleagues, or they don't feel comfortable opening up with their boss, it takes a lot of courage to get to the point that you can say, I want to have this very structured conversation, or even semi structured conversation about values and beliefs and what motivates me and what I'm good at. How do people find that courage? And what's your advice in terms of how to navigate that challenge?
MBS: Yeah, I think there are two things to say here. The first is that the depth you go to in this conversation is dependent on all sorts of things, who you are, who the other person is, what the context is, what your history might have been. So there are some times where you're like, we're not going to go through all these questions. And I'm not going to open up my heart and kind of reveal everything. But the bigger place to go is, when you're sitting there thinking, do I do this? Or do I not do it? Know that every choice you make as prizes and punishments. So if you choose not to have this conversation, there are prizes and punishments to that choice. There are advantages to avoiding it and skipping it.
But there's a price you pay and they pay if you don't have that possibility, for instance, that this working relationship can get stronger. And if you choose to try and bring this up, like if you're somebody in your life, I'm going to ask my boss, which is an act of courage to do that, because there aren't going to be many bosses who have had somebody do that. praises and punishments, there could be something amazing happen. I know, as a boss myself, if somebody comes up to me and says, I'd like us to talk about how we can work better together, so I can be brilliant with you. I am stoked when that happens. I'm thrilled when that happens. It is somebody who's stepping up who's wanting to build an adult to adult relationship with me. But there's risk as well, the risk is your boss may go well, I don't want to have that conversation with you. Or what is this about? Or are you saying I'm a bad boss? So there is some risk involved in that.
BH: So for that junior employee who maybe has some trait in their boss that is frustrating the work, maybe they're a micromanager or they're not giving them enough guidance or resources? Is this a more accessible way for them to actually have that dialogue with their boss, instead of it being critical feedback? It's about opening up the table in terms of what they need to succeed.
MBS: I think it could be. And part of the power of it is that it is a give and take. It's not just I'm going to tell you what I want. And it's not stuff that they're going to ask you about what you want. It's actually an exchange. So it's actually helpful for that junior person to go look at where I shine, I hear that what's the best relationships when I have a and I have B and I have C. But it'd be great for them to understand. So, boss, when you've got somebody who's working on your team, and it's the best it can be, What happened? I mean, what did they do? And what did they say? And what did they not do? And what did they not say? And what about you? Well, how did you behave when you had somebody great on your team. And that is just a really powerful exchange.
BH: And as you develop this model and started working on it with folks and including it in your own life, what have your observations been in terms of when is the optimal time to have that dialogue?
MBS: There’s that saying the best time to plant an acorn is 20 years ago, the second best time is to plant it today. So there's a way that this fits really nicely at the start of a working relationship. For instance, a Box of Crayons, we've just hired somebody in a senior role, and we're really excited about it. And Shannon, the CEO was talking about earlier, she is having a keystone conversation with Margo to say how will we work together? How is this going to look like? So that fits really nicely into the onboarding. If you're a manager who is bringing on a new graduate in September, you know, when there's that kind of hiring wave that happens. That might be a really great conversation to sit down and go let's talk about how we work together. The graduate’s going to be panicking because they're like, oh my first job, I'm being a grown up, I have to prove myself with the work, and what a gift is leadership to say to them, the work is important, but working relationship is really important as well. So let's talk about how we might work well together.
But most people who are listening here, like, that's great when I start working relationship, I've also got 15 key working relationships right now, what do I do with those? And I would say, pick one, pick one and go look, it sounds something like this. Hey, Brett. Love the project that we're working on. This is exciting. Before we jump into the agenda today, can we just take 10 minutes, I just love to check in with you and go, How are we doing? And is there anything else we can do differently that might make this an even better working relationship?
You can send them the questions beforehand, maybe give them a heads up that that might be happening. And here's the real power of the first conversation. It gives you permission to keep having the conversation. So for the people who I work with, I'm constantly checking in go, Hey, how are we doing? You know, we had a keystone conversation way back when, but let's talk about it. I mean, are we bringing out the best in each other. What do we need to do differently? What should we stop doing? We get to keep talking about the health of the working relationship and then proves to be really powerful.
BH: That makes so much sense. And I think for teams, they will feel empowered and heard to have that intentionality in their in their leader.
MBS: But my hope, Brett is people listening and people reading the book are brave enough to start. You know, I heard the other day, a saying which I love. Nobody likes to be the first person to say hello, everybody loves to be greeted. So there's this moment, say if you're the person who starts this, you're offering a great gift to the people with whom you're having those conversations, and a great gift to yourself as well.
BH: Before we turned on the microphones, we were chatting a little bit about how the last time you were here at Rotman was March 2020, just before the world locked down. And since that time, so much has changed in terms of how we work together. And professionals who were used to sharing offices or all the time now are communicating through zoom calls, Slack messages were more connected through electronics than ever before. And when I was reading your book, I was thinking about how important that intentionality is to our relationships, because all of the nonverbal communication that we used to have is lost or partially lost through electronic means. How did that idea factor into the development of your model, and what of your observations been about how this model can be useful in a hybrid work scenario,
MBS: I think you've hit the nail on the head. Because when you get together on a zoom call now, it's with a purpose. We're here for a transaction. You should be having meetings to solve a problem, or to celebrate. So we're here to do something. So there's less of the accidental, casual, ongoing background hum of relationship building that happens when you're bumping into each other people in a building.
But honestly, even in a building, you know, people spend a lot of time in a cubicle in an office. So there's no doubt that the pandemic was part of me thinking about how working relationships work, because it just feels present to try and figure that out.
But it's not just that, you know, I saw some research the other day saying 70 per cent of Gen Z leave their first job within a year. Like that is pretty dismal in terms of I'm trying to recruit young people to come and join my organization. And we've all heard that saying people join an organization, but they leave a manager. And it is hard to be a manager, there's a lot expected of you. You have to be all knowing or compassionate, strategic, tactical, you know, on top of everything, there's a lot going on. And I wanted to make this part of the work easier for managers and leaders who are going look, I know, I need to build better relationships with people. How do I do it when I've got other responsibilities when I'm busy? When people are coming through zoom? When I've never met half my team? How does that happen?
BH: Well it makes so much sense to really be deliberate, especially when we're working through zoom or teams. And I think it's a way for leaders and employees to get together and understand where each other is coming from. A real through line in the book that I appreciated was the focus on curiosity and introspection. And you make a point at one point in the book about how these are lumped together as soft skills that aren't really valued as much as technical or domain expertise. You talk about the power of curiosity, and why and how we should value it more in everything we do.
MBS: There are two forms of curiosity. And the form that gets most often talked about an organizational life is the curiosity, to close the knowing-doing gap, you're like, I don't understand this. And you try and figure stuff out so you can get informed.
The curiosity that is rarer, and more powerful in our organizations is getting curious about the other person. So when you're in a coaching conversation with somebody, you are trying to figure out stuff about the work, but you're also being curious about that other person? What's the real challenge here for you? What's hard about this for you? What do you want? What do you know, now that you didn't know before, those are all questions from the Coaching Habit, it's all about you. I'm like, I'm trying to get you to know you. And I'm trying to get me to know you.
And I think the same work is here, which is like the curiosity is here. For you to stay curious about this amazing, complicated, messy, confusing, irrational, brilliant person with whom you're working, because you've got all of those characteristics as well. And curiosity is one of those ways that we stay human with each other. You know, there's a philosopher who talks about two types of relationships, I-it relationships, and I-thou relationships, I-it are the ones that are a bit more transactional. And I thou, this is Martin Buber’s work – I thou are those more human to human conversations. And the relationships I'm hoping flourish in organizations are I-thou relationships, and curiosity is the beating heart behind that.
BH: That's such a powerful insight. As we wrap up here today, I want to think about where we can leave our audience and what advice we have for them, building relationships is a journey, I think we all understand and appreciate that we all want to have better working relationships with all of our colleagues. But people need to take a first step would you say to inspire? Or suggest to people that they can do is their first step in improving their working relationships?
MBS: Well, I'd sit with a moment and think, do I actually believe Michael. And if you think about the impact of the really good working relationships you've had, and the impact the really bad ones you've had, I hope you go, Oh, yeah, actually, this really does make a difference isn't just a casual side thing. This is at the heart of my happiness and my success about how well is it working.
And then the challenge is to say, so you're going to do something about it, or you're going to just kind of keep hoping. And you know, the saying hope is not a strategy. So you're like, Okay, you're going to just give yourself over and just go, Well, maybe the gods will be friendly, and I have good people to work with.
I hope you go, let me test this out. You don't have to do this for all your key working relationships pick one of the questions and go, when you see how this goes. You could pick a relationship that is already pretty solid, feels really safe. Like because, you know, if it doesn't work, it's unlikely to get damaged, because it's already a trusting relationship. You could pick a relationship that is important, but doesn't matter that much to you. Maybe like a vendor, you're like, let me try it out with a vendor. Because if it goes south, it's okay. We'll figure that out. You could pick somebody who's like this working relationship is disastrous. I mean, it can't get much worse. And you're like, Okay, nothing left to lose. I could give it a go with that person as well. But pick a person and say, What have you are the person who said hello. Or if you were the person who said, Hey, let's have a conversation about how we work together so we can do it even better.
BH: That's such great, such great advice, Michael. And we really appreciate you being here today and for joining us for our event and for this podcast and for bringing all of your insights and experience to the table here at Visiting Experts
MBS: Brett Thank you.
BH: Where can people go to find out more about your work?
MBS: If you're interested in the book, best possible relationship.com And there's downloads and free things you can actually get a video of me conducting a keystone conversation if that's interesting. If you're an looking for access to some of my other books and other resources MBS dot works is the website for that. And then you've heard me talk about Box of Crayons, a training company. That's at box of crayons.com.
BH: Wonderful. Michael again, thank you so much, folks. Thanks for tuning in. This has been Rotman Visiting Experts backstage discussions with world class thinkers and researchers from our acclaimed speaker series. To find out about upcoming speakers and events visiting us here at Canada's leading business school, please visit rotman.utoronto.ca/events.
This episode was produced by Megan Haynes, recorded by Dan Mazzotta and edited by Damien Kearns.
For more innovative thinking head over to the Rotman Insights Hub, and please subscribe to this podcast on Spotify, Apple or Google podcasts.
Thanks for tuning in.