Jeremy Weisz 19:41
Very helpful. And that’s kind of, you know, actually solidifies Why choose curiosity in the very beginning, because it really makes, you know, it basically urges people to ask those questions and be curious. How did it go? You help people because they have a mental head space around and baggage, maybe around having the answers being right and convincing them so that they could actually step into what you want people to do, which is, choose curiosity.
Jeff Wetzler 20:16
Yes. How did we help them choose curiosity? Yeah, great question. So I mean, first of all, I just want to reinforce what you’re saying, which is, there’s a very important reason why choose curiosity comes first, which is that if you just try to post questions, but you’re you’re not very curious, authentically, people will see right through that it will not work. And conversely, if you’re genuinely curious, even if you fumble with the right question, if that authentic intention of learning from someone comes through, they’re going to want to engage with you naturally. So the way that we helped people choose curiosity is to just to start by understanding how they got so certain in the first place. And so we used a tool that in the book I call the ladder of understanding, which, which comes from Chris Argyris, which basically says that whenever we walk into any kind of situation in life as human beings, we are surrounded by, I would say, thousands, if not millions, of data points. You know what? What’s this person doing? What’s the temperature in the room? What’s the color that’s happening here? What did this other person say? What’s the latest sales data?
Like, just, you know, gazillions of data points. And if we were to try to pay attention to all of those data points, we would go crazy. Just, just think about a toddler walking down the street who stops and looks at every single thing. I mean, they’re literally paying attention to every data point. And it’s, it’s cute, but you can’t get anywhere. And so if we want to get somewhere, we’ve got to select a very, very tiny slice of data points, and basically ignore the rest of us. And by the way, this happens in split seconds. We don’t even notice that we’re doing it then and then once we select those data points, we immediately start to infer things about them. We make it mean something. We tell ourselves a story about something. And in Chris Argyris language, this means we’re racing up the ladder of understanding. And so all of a sudden we get to a conclusion, which is a very certain conclusion, but it’s based on just the tiniest slice of data.
And incidentally, the choice we make about what data to select in the first place and how to interpret that data that’s also not random, that is colored by our pre existing biases and assumptions and worldviews and ways of being, etc. And so what we would do is literally map that out. We would say to the, you know, say to someone, all right, let’s go through your story. What was the data point that you selected? What did you make it mean? What conclusion did you reach? Etc. And then we would say, now, let’s just pause for a second and say, what other data points might have been out there? What other ways of interpreting those data points might there have been, and this is where it’s really helpful to do it in the context with a group of colleagues who are both challenging but also supportive.
And all of a sudden, what happens is you start to inject question marks. You say, wow, you know what? I never thought that maybe there was these other three things that were happening in the client organization that could have also been going on that I overlooked, or maybe a different way to interpret the fact that the you know, the sales data was slipping isn’t just that we should close the factories, but there’s some other cyclicality that I never thought of, or things like that. And the person you know, and the person who had that otherwise certain story all of a sudden has a lot of question marks in their story, and question marks to the point where they actually want to go find out and learn some things. Does that help?
Jeremy Weisz 23:25
Yeah. So for the latter, understanding, yeah, you want to go up the ladder fast, but not too fast, you will
Jeff Wetzler 23:31
Yes, I will. And in some ways, you can’t help it, because as a human being, you’re going to go up fast, but you want to go up in a conscious way. You want to be able to notice these are the steps that I took, and then also say to yourself, let me walk myself back down and realize, what if I selected a different data point? What might I not even realize at the data point? What is a different way to go?
Jeremy Weisz 23:51
Yeah, I love that, because I am very guilty of that. I was guilty of that yesterday, of just like making a snap conclusion when my co-founder made a suggestion, and it’s very easy, at least for me, just to go into the No, like I That doesn’t sound right type of thing, and we all ask questions and to, you know, get to something that may work out better in the end.
Jeff Wetzler 24:19
I was guilty of it yesterday myself. My wife said to me, she was telling me about a conversation she had with our son who’s trying to make some decisions about where to go to college and whether to take a gap year and all that kind of stuff. And I just said, That’s a terrible idea. He should never do that. And, you know, I
Jeremy Weisz 24:34
You’ve been Teach For America for 10 years in the education space for decades.
Jeff Wetzler 24:41
You know, I just jumped right to the top of my ladder for that split second. I was not curious, and my wife gently, but firmly reminded me, perhaps I should, you know, take a step back. Be a little more curious, be a little less controlling.
Jeremy Weisz 24:55
Have you read this book, exactly?
Jeff Wetzler 24:57
I mean, I honestly, I wrote the book as much for myself as a reminder, as for anybody else, because I say, I’m a student of this, not a, you know, not a not an expert who was perfect at it.
Jeremy Weisz 25:06
So choose curiosity. I could see that part, make it safe. I love that story. And the next is to pose quality questions. Yes, what are some thoughts and things that people can do, because I know that you want to help people uncover what’s most important to people exactly.
Jeff Wetzler 25:28
So my definition of a quality question is very simple. It’s a question that helps us learn something important from somebody else. And I distinguish quality questions from crummy questions, because there’s a lot of what passes as a question, which might be something that, you know, something that we say, that has a question mark at the end of it, that is not really a quality question. Those could be clumsy questions which are just like, you know, sometimes we ask seven questions in a row and then the other person doesn’t know which one to answer, or we don’t know which one they’re answering. It could be a sneaky question where we’re actually not really asking a question, but we’re trying to maneuver someone to, you know, to get to our answer, which usually leads people to feel manipulated. It could be an attack question that, you know, usually leads people to feel hurt. That is all.
Those are all crummy questions, quality questions I think about almost the same way that I imagine a surgeon might think about the, you know, their scalpel and all of the precision tools that they have depending on what it is that we’re trying to learn. We can, we can draw from particular questions. And so in the book, I introduce a taxonomy of different kinds of questions, especially questions that we may overlook, but are incredibly powerful. I’ll just give you a couple examples. Well, one we talked about earlier, which is to invite ideas out by saying to somebody else. You know, here’s my dilemma. Do you have any advice? How else might we try to do this? What might we do, what might be a way forward here? And just that’s, you know, that’s just really, you know, inviting other people to share how they would, how they think things could go, what ideas they have there. And oftentimes, people will not share those ideas unless we ask them, either because they think we don’t want them, or maybe they think their ideas are too crazy.
So inviting ideas is a really powerful one. I think one of the most overlooked ones is what I call request reactions. And so requesting reactions is simply to say to somebody, what’s your reaction to what I just said? How did that land with you? What does that make you think is there what might have been overlooked. And so often, whenever we state our opinion, we assume that if someone has a reaction to it, they’re going to tell us their reaction to it, and some people will, but a lot of people, especially if they’re not feeling 100% safe, are not going to tell us their reaction to it. And so you know, just to give you one one story, when I was early in my career, managing people, and had just learned this stuff I was managing someone, and I thought we had just had a great conversation where I had given him some guidance and direction for what he should do next. And I thought to myself, Hey, I just went through this training. They told me I should ask someone for their reactions.
So I’ll just say to him, Hey, what are your reactions? So what I just said, and he said to me, honestly, if you want my reaction, I’m totally demoralized by what you just told me, and I thought I had just been very helpful and given him a whole bunch of guidance. And by the and had I not asked that question, he would have just walked away feeling demoralized, probably not done a good job, probably not been motivated, but because I asked the question, we could get to the root of what was going on, which was just that we had a miscommunication. We were making different assumptions about what we were supposed to be doing, we cleared that up. We both felt good. We were able to move forward, but I would never have been able to do that had I not asked that question.
Jeremy Weisz 28:30
It’s amazing that two really smart people leave a conversation like that with totally opposite thoughts and how it went. It happens all the time, all the time, and if we don’t ask, we never know, what was it that you’re like? That was a great conversation. I gave him a lot of good advice, and the person felt demoralized. What was the kind of the background of, why do you think the person felt demoralized from the conversation?
Jeff Wetzler 29:00
Well, what I think, what he didn’t what he didn’t know, because I actually hadn’t told him at the time, but I thought I had told him that our client had been pushing back on us on a bunch of issues, and so he thought the client relationship was on track. And so why is Jeff saying we need to double back and go talk to the client about this and bring this extra data to the client, etc? Like I thought, I thought we were in good shape. I thought he knew that. Apparently I hadn’t communicated that clearly enough. Once he realized that this was the thing that we had to solve for. Then, of course, we were both on the same team, wanting it to go well.
Jeremy Weisz 29:31
So invite ideas, request reactions. Any others?
Jeff Wetzler 29:34
Yeah. I talk about a lot of times people either think they’ve told us what they really think, or just haven’t told us their true opinion about something. And so there’s a sequence of questions strategies that starts with what I call hear their headline, which is literally just saying to someone, what is your opinion on x? Where do you come down on this decision? What do you think about this? Just like, what is their true headline view of it? But not stopping there. Because their headline views come from somewhere. And so the next strategy is what I call dig deeper, which is a little bit what you were just starting to do in your questions with me as well. What led you to think that, where does that come from? Walk me through. How did you get to that?
Those are, so you know, what are some of the concerns or interests or values that are motivating your point of view on this? But then, but then, I would say, don’t stop at digging deeper. There’s a final one, which is what I call see what they see, which is kind of, get inside their head in terms of, what are some of the information, data points, examples, experiences, stories that have led them to actually think that way. And so those could be questions simply, like, you know, what’s an example of that? Or, can you tell me a story about how that played out for you that makes you concerned about that, et cetera. Sometimes people, if we ask them for data points, get intimidated, because they think, Well, I just have to have all my data buttoned up on a PowerPoint slide. Et cetera. But if you just say, what’s a story, everyone can tell a story.
Jeremy Weisz 30:58
Yeah, I could see a lot of great examples in business, where this is helpful, and I could also see a lot of great examples in personal life. And is there a parenting one that sticks out to you in this regard? You know, I’m sure there’s lots of interactions, you know, at least in my world, with my kids and other people and helping them dig deeper and understand like it really stuck out when you said, See what they see, right? Because people are reacting in their world based on their own viewpoints, their own experiences. So how have you used the quality question with your kids to help out?
Jeff Wetzler 31:39
Well, I mean, I have two teenagers now. I have a 15 year old and an 18 year old, and one of the things that I have started to appreciate, especially as they’ve gotten older, is that the best I can do is to be a coach to them. There’s, you know, there’s no telling them what to do. Probably there never should have been or was ever before. But like, really, we’re in the mode of coaching now, which means that there’s a lot of questions, so because I need to understand how they’re seeing the work. How they’re seeing the world, you know, if I take an example of my daughter, we can actually backtrack it one step to make it safe. First of all, because when she comes home from school, I’m very interested to know, like, how was your day? What happened? You know, all that kind of stuff. And if I ask her those questions, I get nothing. You know, it was fine to leave me alone. You know, that kind of thing. If I really want to have a conversation with her and understand what she’s thinking, what she’s going through, I need to do it on her terms, which means I need to stay up till 11pm when she’s done talking about her homework and talking to her friends. But at that point in time, she’s, you know, that’s when she wants to interact.
Jeremy Weisz 32:41
So she does certain things and at point in time you find that she specifically is open to interacting.
Jeff Wetzler 32:46
She’s open to interacting with me and that’s part of, you know, that’s part of the connection of making it safe. So once you know, then when I’m there, we can have a lot of conversations when, right now, we’re having conversations about what courses do I take next year in high school? And I have opinions about what I think would be good courses for her, and she has opinions. But if I, but once, once I once, I’m able to ask questions like, you know, tell me more about what, what leads you to be interested in that, and also what would lead you to not be interested in that. I started to get information from her like, well, here’s the reputation of the teacher of this course. And so now it’s not a question of the course, it’s a question of the teacher.
And all of a sudden I’m thinking to myself, actually, that’s a really good point, because if you have a good course, but a bad teacher, that’s not going to happen, you know, that’s not going to light you up. On the other hand, it’s a course that you don’t necessarily think you’re interested in, but the teacher has this reputation for being so passionate about making other kids. And so we can start to unpack what she sees, or, in this case, what she’s hearing from her friends, but also questions. Like, you know, I really like to have fun at school, too, and so there’s some courses that are just going to be really fun for me, and I get to ask questions. But what would make that fun? And I, you know, and and all of that is part of her thought process that I get to learn by asking these kinds of deeper questions.
Jeremy Weisz 34:02
It’s funny because, because you’re asking the questions, she’s giving you different data points and your ladder of understanding, you’re kind of slowing down. Maybe you have jumped to all that. Why would you take that course? Right? Yeah, exactly. Because I remember I took Scandinavian literature, one of the best courses I took at Wisconsin. And, you know, I feel like, why would you? It was because of that reason, like the teacher was just supposed to be amazing.
Jeff Wetzler 34:27
So, and I also, in those questions, I also get a view into her ladder of understanding as well. By I get to see what’s the what’s the information that she’s selecting, and how is she making meaning of that, what stories is she telling herself, and what and so when we when we kind of understand this concept of the ladder of understanding is not only helping us get more curious about our own but it’s literally a way to understand where someone else is coming from too.
Jeremy Weisz 34:50
So Jeff, we have chosen curiosity. Make it safe, pose quality questions. The next is listening to learn. Yes. What’s a favorite example? All from listening to learning. So you know this is like, I mean, arguably, I don’t know, not everyone is more important than the other. But like, if we’re asking questions and not listening, then that’s that’s a problem.
Jeff Wetzler 35:12
It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter how good our questions are, if we don’t actually listen, most of us think we are far better at listening than we actually are. I had a chance during this conversation, during the research for this book, to interview professional listeners. So I interview journalists who listen for, you know, listen for a living to the people that they write about. I remember one of them, Jenny Anderson, saying to me that she records her conversations as many journalists do. But what she then does is listen to them over and over and over again. And she would say, every time I listen to them, I literally hear something that I hadn’t heard before, something new and something important. And I think to myself, you know, very few of us actually record our conversations and listen over and over again. Think about how much we’re missing if we just hear it the first, you know, for the first time in the in the book I talk about, we need to listen through three channels, the content of what someone’s saying, the emotion of what they’re actually expressing, and the actions that they’re taking during the conversation.
And we talk through different strategies for how to do that to your question. I think one of the most interesting strategies comes from research and conversations I had with psychotherapists who talk about this thing called the doorknob moment, which is that oftentimes in a therapy session, and by the way, they also heard the same thing from executive coaches too. The most important thing that someone says happens on their way out the door, like, literally, when they’re touching the doorknob, that’s when they drop the bomb of, oh yeah, I’m thinking about leaving my wife, or, Oh, I’m being investigated by the government, or any number of things, and they’ve gone through this almost the whole hour not said this thing, even though they’ve answered a lot of questions, it’s just at the very last minute. And what that says to me is that oftentimes when we ask someone a question, we assume that the answer they give is the totality of their thoughts, but really it’s not the totality.
There’s more to it than what they might say. And in fact, the most important thing that they have to say is often not the first thing that they’re going to say when they answer a question. They might be holding that back for any number of reasons, including they might want to see how we react to the first thing that they said, or maybe they’re just still formulating their thoughts, or maybe they’re just working up the courage to say it, et cetera. And so this question strategy that I just call it, pulling the thread, which is just, you know, once they say something, just to say, say more, you know, is there? What else do you have to say? What other thought, you know, is there more to that? And just continuing to draw them out increases the chances that we’re going to actually get to the thing that they would have said when they’re on their way out the door, if they would have said it at all.
And, you know, in my own leadership, when I talk with team members who are either expressing concerns to me about something going on, you know, in our work or on the team, or who are sharing ideas with me, I will often say to them, that’s great. Thank you for sharing that. What else? What else is there more? And I sometimes I’ll literally say, by the way. And each time I say what else, they say something even more interesting or more important or more insightful. And sometimes I’ll say to them that, you know, that was really interesting, I’m just going to keep saying to you, what else, until you tell me I’m done. And I’ll say it three or four more times, and more stuff will come out. And finally, they’ll say, Okay, I think that’s all I got. But had I not asked all those additional What else do you got? What more, etc, I would have just probably had the least interesting thing that they would have had to say,
Jeremy Weisz 38:26
Yeah, and it’s, it’s some people including myself, like, Well, how do I do that and not be, you know, invasive, yes, or something like that. And so I love that strategy of just pulling the thread and just saying, Well, what else? What else? What else do you have to say about that? Because sometimes, if someone says something, I don’t know if I should, maybe it’s personal, right? I shouldn’t ask anything else on that topic.
Jeff Wetzler 38:51
And sometimes, when I sense that there might be some hesitation, I will also say, you know, I’m going to ask you what else? But at any point, just stop if you feel like that’s all there is to say, that’s all you want to share. And that’s completely fine too. Just to make it safer to be able to for people to regulate their boundaries as well.
Jeremy Weisz 39:05
Yeah, and you’re almost asking permission along the way, and you’re just being upfront, like, I’m gonna keep saying this. And because if you did it maybe, and didn’t say that, they’re like, Why does he keep repeating probing me? Yeah, and you know, you’re standing up front and giving them permission to say when you’re done, you’re done, or if you’re not comfortable, you’re not comfortable. So yeah, I love that. And the next is to reflect and reconnect. And there was a time where you were actually there, you’re growing quickly, and you got feedback from the team. I don’t know if you want to talk about this.
Jeff Wetzler 39:40
So reflect and reconnect is, I think, my favorite of the five steps, the five practices of the Ask approach, partly because I’m a I’m a nerd and junkie, just on learning and any kind of learning and reflect and reconnect is really how we squeeze the learning out of a conversation. You know, even if we ask a great question and we listen well, you. There’s a question of, like, are we going to do something with that? Are we going to make sense of it? And so reflecting, which I think sometimes gets a bad rap, sometimes people think, well, reflecting is just something that, you know, is very esoteric. I have to be on a meditation retreat to reflect. But what I talk about is that reflecting is very concrete and very practical.
First of all, it’s just sifting. What does someone say, you know, what’s the part of what they said that’s useful? What’s the part I could let go and then just turning it through a couple of questions to say, how does what they say affect my story? How does what they say affect the steps that I should take? Is there anything that I heard that kind of challenges or pushes my deeper stuff, my deeper assumptions about the world, etc? And you can just kind of concretely walk through these questions, whether you do it on your own in the shower, whether you do it in a journal, whether you do it with a coach, whether you do with a friend, there’s a bunch of different ways that you can make reflection, very simple and practical. And then the last part of that is to go back to the other person, reconnect, and say to them, here’s what I learned from what you shared, and thank you. And did I get it right? And that kind of closing the loop makes a huge difference, because it lets people know, a, they didn’t waste their time. B, you really value them. And C, it’s worth doing again in the future.
And so that reconnecting matters. And so the story that you were referencing is a story where my partner, Elon and I had received a bunch of feedback from the team one year, a couple years ago, about some pain that team members were experiencing, because we grew quickly and hadn’t put all of the systems and structures in place that one would need to be at the new scale that we were at, and this was coming out of covid and we hadn’t had a huge amount of demand from schools and systems to work with them, and we wanted to kind of like, meet that demand and support communities where they were at a very difficult time. And so we hired a bunch more people, we took on a bunch of projects to try to have that positive impact, which we did, but it came, it came at a cost to a bunch of team members. And so we had done a bunch of listening, and heard a bunch of feedback.
Elon and I reflected, and then at our annual retreat, you know, where we had 100 plus people together, Elon and I were kind of up on stage. We had our colleague, Janae Henry wood, who’s our chief learning officer, interview us, and she basically said, can you share with us? What did you learn? What mistakes did you make? And why did you make those mistakes? And then why did you do the thing that led to that, and really kind of took us pretty far back into our stuff, to the point where Elon was talking about his relationship with his mother, and I was talking about my dad, and how my dad influenced me to be thinking, what’s the problem, and always be paranoid, and just got to a very deep level of, I think, of honesty and vulnerability, with 100 people watching and listening, and I was just staring down thinking, why am I saying this?
And I can’t believe they’re gonna, you know, they’re gonna completely lose confidence in us as leaders, having now not only admitted that we made a mistake, but also talked about all of the vulnerabilities that led us to make that mistake. But instead, I looked up and people literally stood up and gave a standing ovation, and they said, Can we do this every year? Because this is so powerful to see leaders of an organization be willing to publicly reflect, particularly around something that’s hard, and it says to us, we can do that ourselves too. And so we then followed that with a session where we said to people, now, everyone, find a partner and have a similar conversation about something that you learned. And it just opened up a level of kind of openness and transparency that I think wouldn’t have happened had we not reconnected with people on what we had reflected
Jeremy Weisz 43:20
- It sounds like that session was almost taking people through the question mark, which was exactly, choose exactly, because all those things that you were sharing sound like it probably made them make it a safe environment, they pose the quality questions. And then you were reflecting and almost publicly, taking someone through the whole scenario, yeah,
Jeff Wetzler 43:40
yeah, and that’s exactly right. And I think it’s an example of how this work can operate, not just at a one on one conversation, but also at a team and organizational level, and the important role that leaders play in setting the tone that that’s important and possible to do.
Jeremy Weisz 44:00
What do you remember sharing that was uncomfortable there? Because I find, even with these sessions, some people will share something that makes them vulnerable, and those are usually the best things that people talk about, and that’s what people learn about. That’s what people remember. Yes, you remember, from the audience perspective there, what stuck out to them on what you said? I
Jeff Wetzler 44:30
I think it was two things. I think some of it was literally just naming them, that we made a mistake, and then saying, Here’s what led us to overlook the need to build those systems, even when some of you were telling us at the time that you need to build a system. So some of it was kind of personal ownership and accountability. But then some of it was also where Elon and I were able to reflect out loud around our relationship with each other and the dynamics of our relationship, and the ways in which, you know, my paranoia would potentially be too much that would lead him to sort of say, like, what. I mean, it’s gonna be okay. We don’t need to, you know, completely get patterned right about and so there was learning for Elon and I, in my in our relationship, that I think is very rare for people to talk about even just between the two of them, let alone to say publicly, let alone to say publicly to a group people that you’re supposedly leading. And I think people really, really responded to that.
Jeremy Weisz 45:21
They’re sharing your dynamic maybe they weren’t as familiar with, and that dynamic came from maybe deep seated stuff that came from growing up.
Jeff Wetzler 45:30
Yes and maybe they were, maybe it was even a dynamic that they had had kind of intuited or had a sense of themselves, but to actually hear us just talk openly about it felt, I think, unusual.
Jeremy Weisz 45:43
Yeah, and I sometimes learn the hard way and slowly, and so I really resonate with the reflect and connect, and even with clients from an email perspective, we’ve in the past, you know, thought we understood what The person wanted, and then we went off and did whatever we thought, and it was not correct. And so, like, we’ll do this via email now much better, and just reflecting back to here’s what we think you’re asking and all the things. And so it’s important. A lot of times it’s like, well, this is right, but this this, and this is not actually what we want, so that reflecting, Connect has been so critical for us to just remember to do it, even via email.
Jeff Wetzler 46:28
Yes, totally. And what you’re illustrating starts with a strategy that I have been listening to learn, which is paraphrase and test. Paraphrasing back. Here’s what I think I heard you say: Let me test. Did I get it right? And so often we don’t get it right the first time, and that’s okay, but if we give ourselves a chance to test it and then, and you know, then they can correct what we have to say. Not only do we avoid wasting time and we’re making mistakes to your point, but we also let them know that that sends a message to them, like it’s important to me to know what you have to say, and sometimes that leads them to say more that they hadn’t originally said.
Jeremy Weisz 47:04
I feel that. And I noticed this. Some of the best wait staff I’ve had do the same thing. Like I’m wondering, I gave you all these modifications. There’s no way they’re gonna remember it, but the ones that actually repeat it back, I’m like, Okay, I’m obviously confident. You know, totally with that.
Jeff Wetzler 47:21
Such a great example.
Jeremy Weisz 47:23
Yeah, talk about Wendy Kopp for a second. I know you worked at Teach For America for 10 years, and she wrote a glowing, you know, testimonial excerpt for your book. What are some things you learn from Wendy at Teach for America.
Jeff Wetzler 47:43
So Wendy was actually a client of mine when I was in consulting for five years before I joined Teach for America, and then she hired me to help run part of the organization. And I remember my very first day on the job, I went to her office, and I said to Wendy, you have seen a lot of people come and go here. You’ve seen some people be successful. You’ve seen some people not be successful. You know what makes the difference? What would your advice be to me, as I’m a new leader in the organization? And she said, Jeff, when people are not successful here, it’s because they think they have to put on an air or a veneer of having it all figured out, having it all together, but you’re going to struggle.
You’re going to have challenges. We’re doing really hard but important work, and that means it’s not going to always go well. And so my advice to you is don’t act like you have it all together when you feel like you don’t, and instead, tell people what you’re struggling with and ask for help, and ask questions when you don’t know the answer. And in many ways, I think that her advice is literally the heart of the book, which is to tap into the wisdom that other people can offer you. But that was the very first piece of advice she ever gave me, and it has always stuck with me.
Jeremy Weisz 48:56
Jeff, I’m going to share. It’s really, I mean, I encourage everyone to check out AskApproach.com to get the book. Check it out. There’s so many leaders that have written amazing praise about the book, and I’m wondering which one surprised you the most from who responded. I mean, these are busy people, and if you’re watching the video, you can see we have Kim Scott of radical candor. We have Adam Grant. You know, he’s so many books. Mine, give and take is one of my favorites of his. You know, we have so many people. Jim Collins of Good to Great, the CEO, former Sharon CEO, hoped to craft foods, which one of these surprised you when you got back a quote for the book.
Jeff Wetzler 49:44
Well, that’s, that’s, that’s a really interesting question. You could pause right there, because I’ll stop, I’ll speak. I’ll speak to Parker Palmer. I don’t know if everybody knows who Parker Palmer is, but he’s an incredible leader. He’s an activist. He’s a he’s an. Educator. He’s really transcended many different fields. And he ended his quote by saying, Here’s a book that points the way to a larger life. And I thought to myself, Wow, I never would have thought of this as pointing the way to a larger life, but when I sat with it, I thought about I thought to myself, you know, I think that’s right, because asking questions and tapping into other people’s wisdom essentially gives us visibility and into their worlds, and lets us kind of inhabit many, many other worlds that’s different than our own reality. And so that was a particularly meaningful part of his endorsement.
Jeremy Weisz 50:39
I love it. I want to just thank you, Jeff, for sharing your knowledge, your wisdom, and it takes a lot of time and energy to pour into a book. So thanks for creating that everyone could check out. AskApproach.com to learn more, and we’ll see everyone next time. Jeff, thanks so much.
Jeff Wetzler 50:59
Thank you, Jeremy, I really enjoyed the conversation.
