Steven Gaffney  
A real breakthrough for most people when they're communicating is that they have to take responsibility for their attitude and actions. Nobody's making us feel a certain way they do what they do. And we're human beings, we get upset, but we got to take ownership. So we got to lose the blame, and communicate effectively and if we communicate and ask better and turn it into questions that can help.

Jeff Ma  
Hello, and welcome to Love as a Business Strategy podcast that brings humanity to the workplace. We're here to talk about business, we want to tackle topics that most business leaders shy away from, we believe that humanity and love should be at the center of every successful business. I am your host, Jeff Ma. And as always, I want to have those conversations and hear those stories from real people about the real world in real businesses. And my guest today is dedicated to helping leaders teams and organizations create consistent rapid high achievement and over the last 25 years, he's applied this approach to a diverse group of clientele, including Lockheed Martin, Defense Logistics Agency and Marriott in that time, he's also authored six books and been featured as a key expert in the media quoted in news outlets such as The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, CBS, NBC and Fox. I am excited to pick his brain today. So I'd like to welcome to the show Steven Gaffney. Steven, how are you?

Steven Gaffney  
Great, great. And as I was saying, before, even jumped on is just I love Love as a Business Strategy, which I do think is the core to success.  I

Jeff Ma  
Oh, love it. I mean, you don't have to tell me twice. But I have to tell that we might have to tell the audience a little bit more. So before we before we dive in, and I'd love to just hear kind of the summary of your story. Where do you where's your journey that brought you to this point?

Steven Gaffney  
Well, it's interesting, because I come from the business side. So kind of the shorter version of the story you might say, is I was an agent for film and radio, commercial directors, photographers and whatnot. And I, the very first session I ever did seminar I did was for photographers, basically talking about communication and motivation. And I really love doing that. And at the time, as I said, I had this representation agency with a business partner. And ultimately, she wanted the business for herself. So I was doing the seminars on the side. And then when she wanted the business for herself, I decided this is really what I would love to do. So I just got into it. And you know, I struggled in the beginning, because I love doing it, but it was developing content. And then what happened is, one day somebody said to me, a buddy of mine said, you know, you're always teaching people and advocating about honest communication. And why don't you teach people how to do that. And I'm like, everybody knows how to do that. And he goes, nope, not really. So I developed a nine step formula for how to share and resolve any issue with anyone. And the formula worked. And so as another thing that a surprise, just saying it was surprising to people. And so that's really what launched my business. And then it took me into really, you know, was fortunate enough to have a lot of success with that. And then that etern, in turn, evolved into all the teamwork I do, which is all around how to make any team into a high achieving team essentially.

Jeff Ma  
Awesome. How do you define a high achieving team? Like, what are the sure surefire signs that you have a high achieving team?

Steven Gaffney  
Well, first of all, there's a reason why I say high achieving team and actually I call it consistently high achieving team a chat. And as opposed to high performing teams. And I'm specifically not advocating that and instead saying consistently high achieving teams, and the reason for that is the word performing can be confused with hard work. And nobody's paid in the work world to work hard. They're paid to produce results. And it's a big frequent issue for a lot of leaders, because they are frustrated with people and saying, Well, why don't we do this? And they said, What do you want me to do? I'm working hard. And of course, the problem isn't working hard. It's about achievement, what's it going to take to produce the result? This second thing that's missing is how to do that consistently. Hence, the terminology consistently high achieving team, and when we got that we ended up getting the trademark for it, and it resonated so much, and now that's a, you know, it's a core part of our business. So I say this, because one of the things is it's about achievement meeting results. And to the question, I think you're raising, there's many indicators of what makes a consistently high achieving team which we can get into but they're characteristics of that, but essentially, it's about producing results.

Jeff Ma  
I love that I agree. I think, you know, we use high performing quite a bit, but I guess we assume that that performance is more of an output and outcome related but definitely for many, many people performing is is a an efforts related piece that makes a lot of sense. 

Unknown Speaker  
I'm interrupting, but there's, it opens up with a key distinction. So one of the five characteristics of a consistently high achieving team I found is exceeds results with less effort. So teams that are consistently high achieving Excel, they don't want to just meet the goals, they want to smash the goals meet the goals. But in order to do that, you have to look at what's causing a lot of effort, and then tackling that otherwise, you can't just say more and more and more to people, right? Because you're gonna burn out. So most organizations are really lousy at looking at what's making this more harder to achieve. And they don't always talk about they talk about it, like, oh, we need to do things smarter and all that stuff. But not really, and we could talk about that. But one of the areas to get that rolling, is to look at how much is bogged down because of lack of open honest communication, which we can.

Jeff Ma  
No, I mean, I'm already on the same page. I think trust being one of our major pillars, is the underlying reason or lack of trust is often the underlying reason why we have to create burdensome bureaucracy, bureaucratic processes and tools that make the job so much harder just to verify each other. And I can't say enough about how much I believe trust removes so much of that barrier. What what is your approach to? I know, you talked about honesty and having honest conversations, but how do you build true and genuine trust amongst teams from your approach?

Steven Gaffney  
Well, one thing I want to say when you said about trust and bureaucracy, I think it's a brilliant point, which you're making, and people can easily like, just gloss over. But it's really important to underscore. And that is bureaucracy is a direct result of lack of trust. So when you have trust, and you have less bureaucracy, which is how why your firm is, does a lot of great work. And same with mine. It's all around, you know, if you build trust, you don't need to do that. We can talk more about that. But essentially, when it comes to honest communication, the the big problem is not what people say it's actually what they don't say to each other. And that's the domain that people don't really consider the user talk about ethics, right? Somebody's lying to us. And you know, they're being missed. But that's not really the biggest problem. The biggest problem is what people don't say, I mean, how often have you just thought if they had just told me that, that's what they wanted, we could have delivered that when you lose a great employee, and they walk out the door, and you found out the real reason why they walked out and go, we could have done something about that. Or about this, somebody gets mad at you. But they don't tell you they tell other people or events you hear about. And you're like, look at all this drama that was caused if we just had straight line communication, gotten this taken care of. So the big problem is not what people say it's what they don't say to each other. And so if we can get that unsaid set, which is not easy, but if you can get that unsaid said Most problems can be solved. And in fact, there was some research 10 years ago, where 80% of workplace problems. So eight out of every 10 is sourced back to lack of open, honest communication. So if we can get that open, honest communication, we can resolve most issues.

Jeff Ma  
So I'm on a team, and we're in a meeting, and you're on my team to Steven, and you say something that rubs me the wrong way. And I think and I think you're just a real jerk about it. Maybe that's not your intention, but that's what I got from it. How how do you coach someone like me, or the whole team, for that matter? Maybe everybody sensed the tension, which we often do, but nobody says anything, we kind of leave the room here be smile and say, okay, great meeting and we leave and go on our way. And of course, I'm gonna go and talk to my best work buddy and say, can you believe what Stephen said in his meetings? And then he goes, and so on and so forth? How do you build that team that will stop that meeting and say, Hey, can we address what just happened? Can we put air this out real quick? How do you build that, that culture within that team?

Steven Gaffney  
Well, there's obviously a lot of elements, but the first thing to consider is people are smart. And we're lousy actors and actresses. In other words, they can read us and so and in fact, I think it's good because, you know, if you look at the Star Track, like everybody's watched, even old, sorta or new, whatever, but you know, it's the people who are leading like, what, oh, years ago, Captain Kirk, it wasn't Spock, who was a leader was Captain Kirk. And when you look at a lot of things in life, emotions really do help as leaders. Now, the downside is emotions can be read on people's faces off. And so that can bog things down. So what do you do? Well, the first thing to your overall point is you got to bring it up, but then how do you bring it up effectively? So I was just coaching this executive where the big problem was, he spoke his mind but it often shut down other people and he said, If I don't speak my mind, they can read it all over my face. So what do I do? So there's a core distinction that's helped me in life and I share this with others, the distinction between What we noticed and what we imagine. So if you think about it, you can put your whole life into two buckets. Notice Facts, Imagine Everything Else. So you can notice somebody's looking at their watch, you imagine, oh, they must gotta go. But they might just be curious what time it is. They might it might be an Apple Watch, right? It's a reminder or, or it could be the meetings going so well, they, it's like, they want to make sure they don't miss the next meeting, because they're just on a roll or whatever it is. But it could mean a whole thing. But here's the thing, people make conclusions, and then they forget that their conclusions were their conclusions. So why am I bringing this up? The reason for that is, we can notice things, and then we make things up in our mind that gets us upset. So we noticed what somebody says in the meeting and we get upset, we get annoyed. But one of the keys to effective communication is to realize that we are responsible for our emotions, we added that they just did what they did. Somebody else might not get annoyed. So why are we getting annoyed? And then how do we effectively communicate that and one of the ways to do that is to think what am I making this mean? So the person goes, you know, I don't care, Jeff, we need to move forward in that project. And you think what an idiot, we've got to, you know, we got to deal with this situation. Alright, so why am I what am I making this mean? I'm making this mean that we're not going to get the job done. So why not turn that into a good question. And so somebody says, We need to work on this project. My response could be, well, okay, understand, but how are we going to get this job? How are we going to get this other project done? You know, I don't want to make this sound too scientific. But the point is, the real breakthrough for most people, when they're communicating is that they have to take responsibility for their attitude and actions. Nobody's making us feel a certain way. They do what they do. And we're human beings, we get upset, but we got to take ownership. So we got to lose the blame, and communicate effectively. And if we communicate, and ask better and turn it into questions that can help. I know, I'm probably going real fast. But but the key is to take responsibility. That's a good first step.

Jeff Ma  
I love that I, I couldn't agree more, first and foremost. But it's also you're lining up with what I do for a living as well. So I'm going to ask you that the questions I asked myself often that keep me up at night. That's a tall order. We're trying to change mindsets and attitudes. And this age old kind of dilemma as well, in the scenario I set up for you, you mentioned that we have to separate that emotional assumption versus the facts, or what could What else could be true? Yeah, how much of how much of that onus is on the mindset of the recipient, and how much of it is on the delivery because, for instance, a CEO in a room, he, there's a certain gravitas, there's a certain legitimate power that that this person carries. And they aren't always aware of the impacts, even with the best of intense, even with their intention is just to find out more, but the question feels like an interrogation, or they or they pry, and now the person feels like they're being yelled at or reprimanded. And there is an element of self awareness of that CEO to recognize that the psychological safety in the room has been sucked out, even if their intent isn't to do so. And at the same time, there's what you said, where the recipient has to understand that they are filling in some of the gaps of that story. So what's the balance? In your mind? How do we come to a place where everyone can come to the table and recognize both ends?

Steven Gaffney  
So the way I tackle this issue is, is whoever I'm talking to you, that's the person to focus on. And what I mean by that is, somebody might say, well, I don't like the way that person talks to me. Okay, so what are you going to do about it? Well, I wish they would share more, what are you going to do about it? Or what? They were upset? They should have told me? Yeah, but what are you going to do about it? So let's take the CEO, is, you know, are we creating that emotional people say psychological safety, like emotional safety only because it kind of hits us at a core, but the point obviously, being very similar. And that is, so if the way the CEO is behaving, the key is, is he getting the unsaid said. So this is what I often say to people. If you had only one trait to be successful, as a leader, it would be the ability to get the unsaid said, because if you think about this chat, if I'm the CEO, or you're the CEO, and we don't come across well, but we create an emotional safe environment, people are gonna say, hey, look, Jeff, Steve, what why did you say what you said? But if I create fear and people and it's not safe, nobody's going to tell me on things and therefore I've got to make every decision be the right decision. If I'm this, let's see, I'm not very good at creating a vision, not a clear vision. And I create fear. Nobody tells me but if I create this getting the unsaid said, then they're going to tell me. So a lot of things are cured by just creating that environment, because then you get that feedback. And then you become aware, my experience is this is a skill set. That is something that's kind of a lifelong journey. And we can always get better at, there's many tools we could talk about. But the key is being aware of how much is not getting said. And then developing that emotional safety. There's other things to consider, and to do. But that's the key thing, because as you said, it's about the awareness. If we're not aware, we can't change it.

Jeff Ma  
I love the way you frame that getting the unsaid, said and in a lot of you know, we don't frame it that way. And I might have to steal that from you. Because the way we we coach is essentially trying to accomplish the same thing. And that's so powerful to just simplify it to the to the priority of getting these unsaid things out there. When you look at a whole team that you mentioned, when you talk to one person, yes, of course, I agree. You can only change yourself, you can only really you can influence other beings only change yourself. But when you look at a an organization, a culture, if you will, if you look at a team, even the culture on a team, and this is the combination of everyone's behaviors with each other the interactions of how we treat each other on a daily basis, the nuances of that. What is your overarching approach? I guess, yes, each person can and should introspect work on themselves and prove their attitudes. But is there something holistically as a team that we should be aligning around?

Steven Gaffney  
Well, so that idea of taking responsibility is when I say to the entire team, so when I'm saying working with an individual, I mean, thinking about all the individuals on the team, so I'll say, then go through this. A really key attribute is our all everyone's ability to create that getting the unsaid said, so for example, I might say, so how are we delivering it? And then I'll also lean on the team as well, when you hear things are you speaking up? Let me give you a specific example. When sometimes people are pushed back on me on this principle, but it still comes true. Recently, I was doing a session when we do a lot of reboots. That's what we call our stuff where we're just working together with the team creating high achieving team. And this lady said to me, Well, I don't, you know, I don't think that's a problem with our team, we do get the unset set. And I said, Okay, well, what's going on? She said, The problem isn't us getting the unsaid said, etc. The problem is we don't resolve the issues once are out. And it just kind of drags on. And I said, Well, are you saying that? And she got kind of quiet. And I said that's what you're not saying. So you're saying part, and but not the other. I was doing a session for an organization and this other person she pushed back on me. She said, Well, sometimes you give people feedback. And they and again, getting into it said, but that's the problem. I gave feedback to this person, he appeared he was dropping the ball, etcetera, etcetera. They got upset. I said, Well, why did you say all that? And she goes, Well, I care about him. I care about the mission, I care about what we're trying to achieve. And I want us all to be successful. And I said, Did he say all of that? Of course, she got quiet as well. She said, Yeah, you're right. I didn't say that. And so I come back to my premise, because it really often does come the ability to get the unset set. So I always say to people, what are we not saying? And say that,

Jeff Ma  
and that's so indicative of where we see corporate culture, in this day and age where even the definition of what is unsaid is has pushed to this point where simple feedback is considered the unsaid because we're so we're so walled into our own, you know, rigid at work behaviors, that we don't even realize that when we say unsaid We mean no all like the really unsaid things the way the way you feel about something needs to be said as well.

Steven Gaffney  
And I'm wondering, you know, something you mentioned earlier about sometimes when we're like really upset and somebody might go well, I you know, if I said that that could get a spot myself fired or whatever. But, but we really have to look at now what is critical to get what unsaid is critical to say, I had somebody else in a session of mine, she goes I'm glad you're teaching honesty. I mean, I tell people like it is I said, Well, what what I said What do you mean she goes when when I think somebody's a jerk, I tell them and I said we're teaching honesty, not brutality. So name calling really isn't getting the unsaid set. That's just what makes us feel good and saying stuff. What's what's underneath that is, wow, I'm really scared. We're not going to get the job done. Or or I'm worried that I'm gonna have to work more hours to get this aspect on, or I'm worried that I walk on eggshells with you and I can't share things. That's really what it is. So anytime somebody does name calling, that's not really what we're talking about. And that's really it. That's ineffective communication. We're talking about getting the unsaid said, what's the core issue, what is really needs to get said, not the name, calling the superficial stuff that we often see on the news. And in our politics, that's not what we're talking about.

Jeff Ma  
So building trust is still at the center of what I'm curious about here, because we've talked about the value here, have said honesty, and by honesty, we mean being able to say all these things, yeah. But that requires, in my opinion, an immense amount of, of actual trust underlying in the relationship between however many people are in the room or one on one, whatever it is, if I don't trust you, if I don't have real, vulnerable trust with you, I'm going to be afraid that whatever my unsaid thing, the reason, the reason the reason it's unsaid to begin with is because I'm afraid of what it might do. So how do you overcome? How do you build that trust between people? And it's one thing to say, we just need to be honest and say those things, but how do you actually make it an environment between two people or more, that actually promotes that welcomes that accepts that and everybody can actually live in that space together?

Steven Gaffney  
Well, there's many things to consider one of the things that we do on a tactical basis when I'm with a group is there's a section in which I have them answer a series of questions where they get to know each other in a much more deeper connected level. And not necessarily in a spiritual level, but just more like getting to know each other. Because the more we feel connected, the more we build trust, right. That's one aspect. The other thing is there's certain behaviors that make people more willing to share one of them, since we've been talking about is emotional safety. You know, I the reason why use emotional safety just a little bit more on that psychological is my experience is that people need to feel like it's safe, they can think, Well, nothing's gonna happen, you know, Jeff will understand I could conceptually get it, I just need to feel that way. And so that's one aspect. But the other key behavior that needs to happen, which is often missing in the workplace, is rewarding honesty. So sometimes what happens is people start to share things, but the other person doesn't reward that. And I don't mean financial, I meant they might be, in fact, dismissive. Or they might say, Oh, how about this? Thank you for sharing? Well, what does that mean? Are you going to do something with it? You know, as opposed to me saying, Wow, that what you said, I didn't really think about that. And that's really helpful. Although I don't agree with everything. What I am going to do out of this is this, this is somehow rewarding, right? So I'm using that last example more of, even if there was something that's not a lot of what you always want to look for the goal, but the easy example to think about this is how many of us get these employee survey or, you know, surveys from companies and we don't fill them out. Why because we think I can share what I think but it's not gonna make a bit of difference. So the ability to recruit that emotional safety end, rewarding honesty is really one two combination, that has got to happen, it's fundamental. And that eventually will build things. One final thing on the emotional safety part, people want to tell us the truth, if we just give them the opportunity and fit, make them feel safe, and people go, that's not always true. But it is because it takes much more psychological energy to keep something inside than to let it out. So if I feel say it's going to, you know, we've all had that experience, where we share something, and it's shared effectively, and we feel so much better. So it takes effort to keep things inside. So I don't care how introverted extrovert, all of these are the terminology people like to use. The bottom line is if we make people feel safe, and reward, honestly, they will share. So that is where we need to plan and work at. 

Jeff Ma  
Yes, yes, absolutely. I love that framing. I want to know more about where vulnerability might fit into this. What do you what do you see from vulnerability, and how does that play into the equation?

Unknown Speaker  
So that's another key strategy and getting the unsaid said, so I work a lot with leaders. And I'll say, you know, look, first of all, you don't realize how intimidating you're just again, kind of what you were saying earlier, just by the sheer position, just by where you sit in an organization, you walk in the room, and you're intimidating, even if you don't mean it that way, but just by the position or whatever, not to everybody, but to a lot of people. And so we have to acknowledge that and one way to counteract that kind of way, so that people will share it share vulnerability. And so it's a world of difference. In fact, I was just talking to a client of mine this morning. And I was saying, you know, you're going to share your wisdom to your whole organ, President organization and share it he goes well, I don't want to be like So pretend he said other things not pretentious, but essentially wanted to come off wrong. I said, Well, look be vulnerable. So say, look, one of the leadership principles I've realized is being surrounded by people that think differently. And the reason for that is years ago, I was in, you know, in my career, I did this, and I messed up, I thought, you hire people who are like yourselves, and I didn't realize how easy that is to fall in the trap with. But I realized I surrounded myself by a whole bunch of people who think like me, and I didn't think about how often there's no, we're lacking debate, until one day, we ran into a major problem. And I It really hurt, it hurt what we were doing. And in my career, see, when people share vulnerability, then people go, Wait a minute, they're human beings to just think about the celebrities, we like the people we like that we watch, they're often the people that show a great amount of vulnerability. So vulnerability creates openness. So it's the key step that we can do to create this. And so it's like, you know, when I'm teaching, I shared, I may have messed up a lot in my career, and, you know, and made mistakes, where I just Oh, I had no idea. And I'll share that. And because when we become human, but one way is that vulnerability, and that does create that openness.

Jeff Ma  
I have one last connective tissue, I want to pick your brain around. And that is around the concept of forgiveness. So this is something that's less talked about in the workplace, that word isn't used in that sense. And I'm curious, your take on a your perspective. And what I mean by that is, anytime there's humans, there's going to be misunderstandings, conflict, arguments, all these things. And some of it is healthy, a lot of it's necessary, a lot of it's how we get to our outcomes. But as you mentioned before, a lot of the unsaid leaves room for interpretation and assumption. And so as humans, we behave accordingly to our unforgiveness, if you will, we have we hold on to things, we see people in lights that we've painted them based on what we what we see from them from our own perspective. And so a big tenet of what we try to help with is just this concept of forgiveness, that it actually has to have a place in an active actionable place in your team to actively forgive one another offer vulnerability, but also offer forgiveness. Yeah. What what do you I guess, open ended? What are your thoughts on that?

Steven Gaffney  
So I think you're spot on. In fact, one of the 12 essential elements we've been able to figure out and dissect around creating consistently high achieving teams is I call it the frozen principle, you know, the ability to let it go to move forward, right. And a key element is obviously, to let it go to move forward is forgiveness. So on a lot of ways to tackle this, and a lot of things directions we can go in? Are we talking about forgiving ourselves forgiving others or having somebody forgive us for what we might have made a mistake on? There's all different ways to tackle this.

Jeff Ma  
So we talk about all those as well, separately, but for the sake of this conversation, let's let's talk. Let's talk about forgiving others. Let's start there.

Steven Gaffney  
So I think a key question we have to ask ourselves is what's it going to take so we can move forward. Because beating somebody over the head, reminding them of all the past mistakes, even though let's say they messed up is that way and also getting our unsaid set. So sometimes what's in the way is we just need an apology. And you can ask for it. And somebody might say, well, if I have to ask for it, then it loses the emphasis. Well, yeah, but how's it working out? You got nothing to lose. But it starts in the direction. But I think the question that people don't really ask themselves, and even when we're you don't forgive our own selves, is what's it going to take for us to move forward? And just like, you know, when, when somebody does something, and and they're holding it against us a good question ask is, Look, I'm sorry, I do you think apologies are critical? And then say, you know, what's it going to take? So we can move forward? You're like, well, let's say we break through trust. Got it? I'm sorry, I messed up. I should have gotten that project in. I didn't let you know, etc, etc. I'm sorry. I messed up. And then, and then sometimes that's good enough. But if they keep bringing that up, a good question is, look, I did mess up. And obviously, I'm trying to improve things, what's it going to take so we can move forward? And because a lot of times people have been updated their opinion of somebody else. They had that label and they're got that label of how that person messed them up while ago and when I say to people as people are changing, and you know, people go people don't change. I go, Oh, really? Are you the same person? Are we the same people we were five years ago, 10 years ago. Hopefully we're all growing and changing but we We don't update our opinion. And we kind of box them in. That's all we see. It's a confirmation bias. So it's a really critical thing to ask ourselves. And when teams mess up, you know, what's it going to take and no hard on each other? What's it going to take? So we can move forward here? That's the question that needs to get answered and then implemented.

Jeff Ma  
Awesome. And it starts probably, with getting the unsaid said it does. Steven, I have so many more questions. But we'll definitely have to say that for another time. And I just want to thank you immensely for your perspective. I've really, really enjoyed how you frame some of these critical skills in the workplace. And I really appreciate you taking the time to share that with us today.

Steven Gaffney  
Thank you, and thank you so much for having me on your show. 

Jeff Ma  
Absolutely. And to our listeners, I hope you enjoy this conversation, Stephen as well. As much as I did. I want to thank you for your continued viewership or listening. Whatever the word for listening is with viewership. Check out our book, Love as a business strategy, check out check out one of Stephens six books that you can also find at Stephengaffney.com. I believe that correct, Steven?

Steven Gaffney  
Yeah, and the easy way to get to our website is justbehonest.com or either way.

Jeff Ma  
awesome. Justbehonest.com or redirects, I assume to Stevengaffney.com. And don't forget to subscribe and rate this podcast if you haven't. We really appreciate everybody and we'll see you all for another episode next week.