Think Again: Series Kickoff

Robert Greiner 0:05

Okay, yeah, Episode 25. That's a milestone.

Tiffany Lentz 0:08

That's a big milestone. Yeah. Exciting,

Robert Greiner 0:10

super exciting.

Tiffany Lentz 0:12

Kind of amazing that we've been at this for quite so long, but that's fantastic.

Robert Greiner 0:17

Yes, definitely. And with episode 25 We're kicking off a new series.

Tiffany Lentz 0:22

Oh, yes. I know. This is a first for us. I think doing a book series a book

Robert Greiner 0:26

series. Yeah, yep. Yeah. Which I think you suggested.

Tiffany Lentz 0:31

I don't know, I think it was your suggestion. Again, either way. Well, the book. Well, haha, yeah, I think again, it wasn't me. No. The book was my suggestion. The idea was yours. So perfect. Teamwork.

Robert Greiner 0:43

Perfect. Teamwork. Yes. So new series, which we've done series before. But yes, not over a book. And I'm really excited. I'm really excited about this one.

Tiffany Lentz 0:52

Yeah, me too. I like it. It's it. There are some I've felt like, when I was reading through it, I actually haven't finished it yet. But when I was reading through it, and audible Ling myself audible. Is that a word? Audible in my it is now I felt like it was almost so simple that I just kept having these like, like, rather than aha moments, I kept having these like, Duh moments, like, yes, of course. But it's often things like that, that are beautiful in their simplicity, and easy to absorb, at least for me. So,

Robert Greiner 1:26

yes, I had a similar simplicity, similar idea where I've gotten feedback in our career where as soon as you hear it, you just kind of know that it's true. And you are unconsciously operating one way, and then when this sort of new nugget of information is put on your radar presented to you, it's like really obvious. And so, because it's obvious, like, I think it makes it easier to act on sort of like a shock. There's the catalyst. And so I think that's been really helpful. There are pieces in this book that fall under that area, for sure. But the other thing we have to watch out for is, you know, what, if you get that same quality of feedback full of wisdom has the potential to be life-changing, but something inside you disagrees like immediately, then what right you I think that's probably more of the common scenario. And so I think this book, Think Again, by Adam Grant, helps address sort of that idea.

Tiffany Lentz 2:22

I think, even, I'm going very meta here. But even the idea that we would have a visceral reaction, or an instant, negative reaction to a piece of information, probably should be a trigger, that we should listen, we should force ourselves to hear what's being said.

Robert Greiner 2:41

Yes, yes, definitely.

Tiffany Lentz 2:44

It certainly doesn't mean that every piece of feedback that's being given is valid. I often think of it as how believable is the person giving the feedback? You know, are they believable in that area believable in their observation? Do they have kind of the authority, if you will, to, to say what they're saying. But I also tend to check if I have a very knee-jerk reaction to what they're saying that it's probably worth me rethinking? Or thinking again, thanks, Adam, to see if there's something I really need to hear there. Because for one reason or another, I didn't like what I heard.

Robert Greiner 3:28

Yeah. Which the book argues is a skill set. I think on the in the prologue, it says, it's really about adopting the mental flexibility to adapt to the complexities of the world, and be more effective in which will help be more effective in our personal professional lives. Right. And then it goes one step further, which I think is really interesting, and really why I think the book will dovetail so nicely into what we're trying to do is to that he wants to help encourage the same mental agility and others, which is a very tall order. And so I think it's there's a personal aspect, which we've covered a little bit too, but then it's that in encouraging others to do the same thing. Build this skill set, which were biologically predisposed to do the opposite.

Tiffany Lentz 4:12

Yeah, I think this book probably couldn't be more timely. The just the general turbulence that we're all facing, just thinking about coming up on the Labor Day holiday, and how many people I know who are work at companies that were mandating a return to work. This is one it's just one example, mandating return to work right after Labor Day and now have rescinded that. So how much how disruptive is it to put make something definitive, based on a variable set of facts that you refuse to acknowledge as variable to then turn to put people through the turmoil of preparing for that after having worked from home and had different personal lives in different physical locations and childcare situations you name it, not to mention how they feel about going into work vaccinated, not vaccinated being around lots of other people, only to then say, oops, just kidding. And kind of jerked the rug out from under them. Like, it's just it's literal, physical, mental, emotional turmoil.

Robert Greiner 5:22

Yeah, that the impending date that this is, this thing is coming, this decision is coming creates a lot of mental stress and pressure on an organization. And then just to unwind it so abruptly is you kind of let the pressure build for days and weeks and maybe months, and then you just pull it out in the span of a day. Like that's pretty tough.

Tiffany Lentz 5:42

Right? We had some similar situations. I don't know what Texas has been like, in PA, we've had some similar situations with schools just dragging their feet and every district was doing something different. And then you had charter schools and private schools and, you know, depending on what they were going to offer kids and was it going to where they're going to be required vaccinations, are they going to require masks for everyone? Was it parents choice, you know, just all of this chaos, until really, truly just a handful of days before school was supposed to start. Most schools were did open, but they pushed back their start their opening day, even by one day to get ready for some additional changes. Just this isn't even about, you know, is it right or wrong to go back? This is just levels of turmoil for individuals, certainly for kids, and for families. Very, very chaotic.

Robert Greiner 6:38

Yeah, we cover some of this in our I was just looking Episode 22, about returning to work and some of the pitfalls there and in ways to be optimally flexible and things like that. So if you're listening, you should check that one out.

Tiffany Lentz 6:52

That was

a good plug thing, thank you.

Robert Greiner 6:54

Thank you.

Tiffany Lentz 6:55

But when I was looking at just thinking about this book, and thinking about the ways of learning to rethink, relearn, and be more and more responsive, and turbulence, which is such a good word for right now, I just, these examples are everywhere. And they have nothing to do with business success at all. They're just the human aspects. So how does a leader manage people, when that leader is going through so much likely going through so much of this themselves? And then also needing to bring their team or their company along in a healthy way?

Robert Greiner 7:36

Yeah. And

it's also so important, as a leader to be decisive. And the thing that really, again, a lot of my, the internal questions I have when I start to read a book, or is this going to be applicable to me is this interesting, like almost all of that was answered in the prologue, which I'm super excited about. And so I'm through chapter one. Also, which we won't get into today, we'll just kind of kick off this series, but he says, act like you're right, but listen, like you're wrong. And I think that's a really cool way to think about the root of this book. And then also, you know, we still need decisiveness, maybe now more than ever, but it just, it looks different. It's not rigidity, but the ability to make informed, intelligent decisions in the face of a lack of context and information and a heightened level of uncertainties. This is more important than ever.

Tiffany Lentz 8:28

Yep. Yep. So this will be really interesting. Is there anything in particular that you're specifically excited about? As you were looking through reading through the prologue?

Robert Greiner 8:39

dberg, you know, This guy has: 1000

Tiffany Lentz: 10:07

I'm most interested, I think in the section around interpersonal interactions and rethinking the idea of opening other people's minds and I think to a degree, that's what this podcast is all about is helping people see things differently, helping leaders be better leaders, helping them understand the value of trust, build trust, etc. Now, we've talked before about different, less traditional styles of negotiation, not just contract negotiation, but basic interpersonal interactions that involve helping someone move from point A to point B, so much of consulting even is the art of convincing a client to do something differently, and also letting them believe it was their idea when it works out. So I'm very interested in that section in the book around helping other people go on the journey with you.

Robert Greiner: 11:03

Yeah, that's great. So in the prologue, kind of, first of all, that their thing with a frog in the boiling water Did you know, did you know that that was completely wrong?

Tiffany Lentz: 11:13

I did not until I read the prologue,

Robert Greiner: 11:15

oh, my gosh, that completely

just derailed me. But yeah, so if you ever read the book, part of an example of a thing that you should rethink, it's something that you probably can't even remember, remember, when you learned it, you, you feel like you've done it forever, is the sort of analogy of you put a frog in lukewarm water, you start to heat up the water, that's how you cook a frog, right, the frog won't jump out, the water will get warm around it, and eventually, it'll die. And it turns out, that's not true. When the water becomes uncomfortably warm, it just hops out, like obvious like that, that seems like it should be so obvious. And then this is kind of morbid, but if you throw a frog in boiling water, like there's a really high chance that I'll get hurt, and just get stuck in there. And so this is it's, again, one of those examples where this thing that you thought was true, you know, you laugh at people who still use Windows 95. But you still have these, like, really hard core beliefs you've held on to since then, you know, so that maybe they're outdated. And the idea is to just sort of rethink and, again, going back to really the level of intentionality of it's okay to believe something even with that, even if you don't have all the facts, and you're just choosing to believe something, but you should be like intentional about that, and not sort of suckered into it, or just doing it by default, or that's why you've always done it.

Tiffany Lentz: 12:28

Yeah, yeah, I found the frog analogy, kind of the myth-busting, if you will, and I completely forgot about that until you mentioned it in it. That was pretty eye-opening to me, as well, because we use the example all the time, but I guess that is it. I don't know, is it comforting to know that that's how the frog would behave because that would be smarter for the frog. But that's also how we behave, we just, we say in, we say somewhere until something becomes uncomfortable. And then we leave when, I don't know, moving away from the analogy at this point, that discomfort is where growth comes.

Robert Greiner: 13:06

Yeah. But then on the other note, they have a lot, or there's a theme in the book around these firefighters and some of them died fighting fires, and it goes into like the beliefs of not even wanting to throw your tools to the ground when it's time to run because they're like a part of you. And there's it's, you're facing an existential threat, when you have to do something like that. And, you know, that maps to professional life, like giving up a belief is like, you know, can be an existential threat at times. And then Adam Grant takes it one step further. And it's like, yeah, but a lot of these firefighters were even coming in and fighting a fire that didn't need to be fought, right? Like there was no one's life was at risk, it was in some remote area. And so you can even sort of think about, you're playing this game, and you're rethinking decisions within the game. But then you can even go up and question one level higher, like, are we even playing the right game, those kind of things. And so I'm kind of excited about trying to have the presence of mind to help get some tools out of the presence of mind to like, elevate above, like a certain level of decisioning because I can tend to get kind of, you know, laser-focused. And so it'll be cool to see if I can broaden that out a little bit.

Tiffany Lentz: 14:15

Awesome. Awesome. Hope we can.

Robert Greiner: 14:18

Yeah.

And then also, like you said, the scale here is not the ability to think and learn which is what we traditionally view as intelligence, right? But it's the ability to rethink and unlearn which I think's more a learnable skill, right? Your, IQ can only be so high, you can only grasp such a certain level of information, or it's going to be hard to, to go down a certain path of understanding. But I think the cognitive skill of rethinking unlearning, that can be more learned. I think that's less intelligence dependent. I don't know what do you think?

Tiffany Lentz: 14:50

I, I would agree. I would agree. It's, it's different, it's a different cue, or it's not EQ or IQ. It's something else that allows one to, we almost need a different one. There's something else that allows one to be open-minded and set aside one's ego or opinions or even just suspend disbelief for a minute to hear something different. So I don't know what, I don't know what that represents, necessarily. But I do agree.

Robert Greiner: 15:22

Yeah. Yeah. suspending disbelief is interesting, too. You know, we do that when we watch science fiction, right. But then it's kind of funny, because we get really worked up as an audience when, you know, we're fine suspending disbelief. And then the world that gets created that we're choosing to opt into those laws of physics or, or rules get violated, and then it's like really frustrating, like a pothole or something like that. And so I think there's some analogues there to, to real life as well. Yep.

Tiffany Lentz: 15:53

Good. This will be I'm, I'm really looking forward to this. It's gonna give me a reason to go back and reread some of those earlier chapters, too. And I always enjoy hearing your opinions on them, too.

Robert Greiner: 16:07

Yeah, same. There. I think we'll take one chapter per episode.

Tiffany Lentz: 16:10

Yep. Sounds great. I do recall he had at least two that I can I can't remember exactly what they were called, will jog. My memory will be jogged pretty quickly here, though. He had even introduced a couple of new frameworks, ones I hadn't used before thought about. So we'll leave that as a little, a little teaser to people for tuning into the next 12 episodes. Yeah.

Robert Greiner: 16:31

Yeah, I do think so. And sometimes he mentions them very quickly, but trying to keep track of the frameworks that are outlined and expand on those a little bit. Because there were two in the prologue, also first instinct fallacy and cognitive laziness, which I think we've all sort of heard of right. First sensing fallacy is the whatever you sort of think first you believe is correct. Like, I thought this, so it must be true. And there has been study after study showing that when people change their answers on tests or rethink an idea, a lot of times they change into something into the right answer. And part of that is it's so hard for us to be willing to rethink something or change your answer to begin with that there's usually a little bit more of heightened, maybe we would want to be more sure about it before we did. But also, the act of considering another alternative actually helps solidify your knowledge and understanding or confirming that something's correct. So like, I think the value here is in the questioning of is this right? Let me think about it for a second, do I need to change my answer? Like that's, that's where the value lies, not so much in the changing of the answer.

Tiffany Lentz: 17:41

And yet, we've been taught and taught and taught that your first instinct is right, I mean, there are entire books written about following your Blink reaction, your gut reaction, your first reaction, you know, grabbing a hold of that not overthinking or not over-analyzing the second-guessing yourself. And the truth is that so much of that data is incorrect. There is value in reconsidering

Robert Greiner: 18:04

Well, yeah, don't they cite experts. So maybe it wasn't a Malcolm Gladwell book, this is I'm really jogging my memory here, where maybe it's in Blink,

Tiffany Lentz: 18:13

I was gonna say it's blink.

Robert Greiner: 18:14

Yeah, they have these, these like art experts that can that look at a piece of counterfeit art and get a visceral reaction. And they know it's like a fake. And it they're like better than computers to a degree. And there's like, I remember what the example that sticks out in my head is like one of the artists or art critics or art experts, was saying the fingernails on this are just like they're not quite right. And I think that counts that works if you're an expert. And if the I mean, that's a relatively fix. It's that's not a complex problem, like, is this thing real or fake? Right. And so I think when we're in this sort of, uncertain, ambiguous environment, where humans are involved, and it's the interactions between them in your in a time that's not it, that has a lot of complexity in it as well, that first instinct fallacy can hurt you. If you have expertise in an area, it may it may be worth listening to. But it also, in this case may be worth rethinking. And that's the whole point, right? Like, you might still be right, it doesn't mean you're wrong. Because you have an opinion or a first instinct. It just means you have to short circuit the, the hardwiring that makes you feel like you're unequivocably. Right and related to the other framework. We'll use that term kind of loosely, that was talked about in the prologue, which is cognitive laziness. And this is related, right? We just prefer the ease of hanging on to our views, over the difficulty of grappling with new ones that's what it says and I think that's totally right. It's just so much easier to keep believing what you've already been built.

Tiffany Lentz: 19:48

Yeah, it's

pretty it is it's interesting how many things there's another expression for the set policies I can't remember but something like deep identity beliefs, like they're, they're, you know, they're obviously a set of things that are that are core to who we are. And we, we, when those are threatened, we don't budge on them. Because we mean faith is just one example. But the laziness for me comes in when we allow that gradient to seep into other things like the windows 95 example, or even a particular process one has for doing work or completing tasks, or, I mean, so many, so many I can't get him to come up with, with a great example today. But there, there will always be those things that we can't budge on, and we won't, or we actually will lose a part of ourselves, and we'll compromise on something that is pure, but otherwise, almost everything should be up for grabs. You know, we should be open to learning to relearning something being exposed to a new set of facts.

Robert Greiner: 20:51

Yeah, I can see where the existential threat comes in, though. Definitely. I mean, that's some. I think part of the point of the book too, though, is you could even get a long way, by not treating the mundane things that you have an opinion about, as if they are existential, there's probably you have, you have maybe five, like truly existential beliefs where if you if they were threatened, or broken, it would cause cognitive stress, like to the level that you would have to like go and repair, you know what I mean, mentally. Most, most everything else, though, and maybe those aren't off limits of the book 80 to 90% of that feeling, though, I think is really misplaced. And it's not really existential, it just it feels that way. And so I think breaking those down, there's a lot of low hanging fruit here, that you don't even have to get to the hard stuff. Like if you're not looking to, you know, redefine your, your politics or faith beliefs like that. I don't think you're prohibited from reading the book, I think there's plenty of stuff even in it, even if you just think of it professionally. And you think about the organization that you work in and that you're, you're leading and there's there's plenty of goodness here for that as well.

Tiffany Lentz: 22:04

Absolutely.

Yeah, I think the, as the as you, as you rightly said, there, outside of these, these kind of five core things. Most of the things in life, we should learn to be learn to be flexible about and not be cognitively lazy when we're confronted with them.

Robert Greiner: 22:20

Which is, which is the what Adam Grant would say, is a hallmark of wisdom, right, knowing when it's time to abandon some of your most treasured tools that aren't serving you well.

Tiffany Lentz: 22:30

yeah. It's gonna be good. I'm excited.

Robert Greiner: 22:33

I'm excited too. Alright, so anything else on the prologue on the kickoff?

Tiffany Lentz: 22:38

I don't think so.

Robert Greiner: 22:39

Great. All right. Cool. So we're gonna go through the whole book, probably be 13 episodes, maybe more, depending on how we want to break down each chapter. Because we might want to do like a debrief on each section, because they're sort of what is it individual, then group,

Tiffany Lentz: 22:54

individual group and then lifelong learner? Yeah. Lifelong. creating, creating communities. Yeah,

Robert Greiner: 22:59

individual rethinking, updating our own views, interpersonal thinking that's opening other people's minds that's going to, I'm really, I'm excited about that. Just like you, I'm like, how is that gonna? How does that work even? And then creating communities of lifelong learners collectively thinking? And so just depending on how applicable each of those sections are, then yeah, maybe we'll, we'll break those out as well.

Tiffany Lentz: 23:21

Cool.

Robert Greiner: 23:22

Okay,

Tiffany Lentz: 23:23

cool.

Robert Greiner: 23:23

Yep. Looking forward to it.

Tiffany Lentz: 23:24

Cool. All right.

Robert Greiner: 23:25

Well, if you're listening, you want to be part of the discussion. Feel free to email us [email protected], and you can join read along with us. We're just going to start chapter one. And we'll talk about it each week. I hope you enjoyed the series. Hope it helps you be better at your craft of leadership and your ability to build trust with those around you. You good I got the thumbs up. Alright. Cool. Well, then I will talk to you next week.

Tiffany Lentz: 23:52

Awesome.

Robert Greiner: 23:52

Have a good one

Tiffany Lentz: 23:53

Thanks,

you too.

Robert Greiner: 23:54

Bye.