Scaling With People
Tired of spinning your startup wheels but never gaining traction? Buckle up, founders and CEOs, because this podcast is your rocket fuel to profitability! Every week, we ignite explosive conversations with bold-faced founders, brainy experts, and even a few out-of-this-world vendors. Get ready to crack the code on growth, master employee engagement, and blast through your scaling goals. We’re talking real-world strategies, actionable tips, and perspectives that’ll make your business do a cosmic dance. So, strap in and prepare for lift-off!
Scaling With People
Mastering Genuine Communication: Grace Gavin on Building Honest Relationships and Effective Team Dynamics
What happens when we focus too much on self-expression and not enough on truly listening? Join me and Grace Gavin, co-founder of KnowHonesty, as we dissect this modern communication pitfall and navigate the nuances of building genuine business relationships. Drawing from Grace's compelling encounter with a tech vendor, we examine the crucial difference between knowing what we want versus what we need, and how honest dialogue can pave the way for shared success. If you've ever wondered how to strike the delicate balance between honesty and openness while fostering effective team dynamics, this episode offers a treasure trove of insights.
We dive into the art of setting clear communication expectations through the concept of "the agreement," ensuring everyone is on the same page from the get-go. This isn't just about avoiding misunderstandings—it's about crafting a strong foundation for long-term collaboration. Explore practical tools to sharpen your communication skills, including the transformative power of "tell me more" and shedding the "fake you" facade. Our conversation emphasizes the importance of pausing to genuinely engage with others, promising to reshape how you interact in both personal and professional spheres.
Welcome everyone to today's Scaling with People podcast. I'm Guinevere Currie, your host and founder and CEO of Guide to HR. Today, we're going to be talking about building your business on success through communication. I'm happy to have Grace Gavin with me today to talk about it. Grace, welcome and tell us a little about yourself.
Speaker 2:Thanks so much for having me, Guinevere, yeah, I am the co-founder of KnowHonesty and for those who are just listening, that's K-N-O-W, not N-O A little bit of play on words there on purpose but we're really focused on helping teams communicate better and doing that in a way that's simple, tangible and effective, and so we focus on helping teams be open and be honest, because that's what we found is the simplest way to distill down communication, and I've been with the business for over six years myself and my business partner co-founder Ken Bogard, out there working with teams, helping them communicate day in and day out.
Speaker 1:Awesome, great. So my first question you know I'm an analytical girl. I love learning about trends. What are you seeing is going on in the space of communication within your clients and other experienced conversations? What's going on out there? What's happening?
Speaker 2:Yeah, there's a lot of focus on ourselves. You know, when you think about the conversation around authentic self, self-care, how do we show up for ourselves? I think that's fantastic, but we've swung so far on the pendulum side to that that we've kind of lost the focus on others. So when we talk about open and honest I just want to give you the definition. So we're starting off on a good spot and hopefully this is how our entire conversation goes. But honesty is being truly and freely yourself, speaking into what you want and how you feel. So when we're talking about that, that's ourselves, that's about us right there. That's really important, but that's only half of the equation.
Speaker 2:The other half that we often get wrong and that I'm seeing people get wrong all the time when we're talking about this as a trend is openness, and openness is listening without reservation, putting your needs and wants on pause for someone else. It's really about others and there's a lack of focus on that right now and it's hurting us. When it comes to when we're thinking about working with a team or if we're a solopreneur. If we working with a team or if we're, if we're a solopreneur, if we're working with vendors or if we're working with different partners. What does that look like? It can't just be about ourselves the whole time. We have to make it, so we all live in out of that and we all have the space to be heard yeah, that is really key because you know openness.
Speaker 1:sometimes you're gonna go like well, yeah, I'm telling them everything I think they should know. I'm very open about it, but what you just described is no, you are open to what is being told to you, or? Being open to listening to what is being shared with you. I think that's a great definition to start with. So you know communication. I find even myself there are times that you just struggle. There's obviously knowing your audience. Sometimes you just can't have happen. You missed the bar because of the way you communicated it.
Speaker 2:I think it happens all the time and I see it sometimes happening with clients, between the leadership level and then the management level Gosh 110%, yes, yes. That we have this grand, big idea and then we go to talk about it and we're kind of like, well, we're doing this little thing here and then you're not getting people excited about it. You're not being honest in that way. So I see it happening with that. And then for us we're a smaller team and I see it happening sometimes when we're in conversations with our vendors. If we are not 100% honest with them on what we want and what we think is the best way to move forward, we're not going to get what we want out of that, which doesn't make any kind of sense, right? They're a third-party vendor in some cases, but also I think it's just as important on the other side. If that vendor's not able to be a hundred percent honest with us and they're just kind of saying yes to us and doing what we want to do, we're not going to get the kind of results that we're expecting and then the relationship just kind of falls apart.
Speaker 2:We maybe may move on to a new vendor, which we had happen when we were building our assessment we're not tech people first, so we didn't know what it would look like to build this online assessment, all of these tech things that were happening, and so we worked with a company. There wasn't full honesty coming our way and I think that, to no fault of their own, they just kind of wanted to make what happened, what we wanted, but we didn't know exactly what we were doing. We didn't know how these things in the background run, and so they did what we wanted and I'll give them credit for that Absolutely. But it ballooned out into a bigger invoice than we were expecting, having way more horsepower behind it than what we needed at the time, and then, to nobody's surprise, we ended up parting ways and we found a different vendor who could help us with it, and that all could have been avoided if we had that honesty and that openness going back and forth.
Speaker 1:You know what I got out of? That is, there are a lot of times where we think we know what we want, but it's not what we need. Yeah, yes.
Speaker 1:And that's such a big difference. I had the same conversation with my web developer this morning, right, like I'm like I don't know how to even ask this because I'm not even sure what I'm asking for. But here's the situation Like, what do we do here? What do you recommend? Right, and having that honesty and openness, like it's so refreshing, because then we're not something that are experts on everything Nobody can be and so being able to have those conversations with the something that are experts, giving them the honest information about what you're trying to execute, what is what are you trying? What's your end game?
Speaker 1:And not actually prescribing. I'm going to, you know, I'm going to drive from California to New York on Road 80. Like, okay, that doesn't make sense. I'm in Southern California, not Northern California, right? So it's like probably not a great analogy for those that don't understand the US geography, but he used to say it's like no, maybe it's better to fly, maybe the train is better, or whatever it might be. So, working with your people and communicating in a way where it's like here's where we're trying to get to, and then having the openness to hear of other ideas and other things beyond what you thought you were going to do.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's exactly right, because we have this picture in our mind and we don't always translate it well to other people, so they're trying to fit it in there. But having a discussion talking about our new web dev team when we were going to design 2.0 of the assessment, we're telling them here's what we want, here's what we think. And I remember very distinctly in the meeting we had the agreement in place with them, which is a great tool. I'll give that to your audience in just a second Guinevere. But we said this is what we want, so whatever. And he's like actually, you don't want that. And here's why Because that's not going to be nearly as effective. I understand what you're trying to go for, so that's not what we want to do. We want to do it this way. It's going to be a better experience, better UX. What would happen if they just nodded their head and said, yep, and then? And then the meeting ends and they're like, well, they don't know anything, but I guess we'll make this happen.
Speaker 1:That's not helpful.
Speaker 2:That's not helpful. And so the agreement this is. This is a great takeaway for any business owner, whether you've got a hundred employees or it's just you. We teach the agreement to all of our clients and it's quite simply how to begin a conversation. So this is perfect when you're beginning those third-party relationships or you're bringing on a person for the first time into your team, whatever that might be.
Speaker 2:And, quite simply, the agreement is this Will you agree with me on how we're going to communicate? I want you to be 100% honest, meaning be truly and freely yourself, speaking into what you want and how you feel, and I promise that I will be 100% open to it. I will listen without reservation, I will put my needs and wants on pause for you and in return, I'll be honest with you and I ask that you be completely open to it. Can you imagine how much better relationship you're going to have starting it that way than just kind of assuming? Because there's some, there's expectations, there's dynamics at play when we first meet somebody, and if we don't bring those up, if we don't make clear what our expectations are, using the agreement, we're just kind of going to fall into not the best ways to communicate. And so if we state up front what our expectations are, you're starting that relationship already having the expectation of real communication.
Speaker 1:But I think the key there, along with that, is the definition piece. It's not making the assumption that we are understanding and using honest and openness the same way, just as you started this podcast and explain what those two were. I think that is key because we do make assumptions and I know part of you know part of my downfall I guess you can say is my setback is that I have a lot of intuition, and so to me it's like well, yeah, doesn't everybody know that?
Speaker 1:And my friends and family are like no, but I'm like you know, over the years, years, I finally have realized okay, no, I need to be more clear about this or I need to explain this point of view or definition in this example. So, yeah, I think that's that's just like let's start from scratch, here's the definition, here's the expectation. Can we agree? And then let's move on and work really well together because of that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you're exactly right for that. It's why we have a business, because people aren't educated on what this means. We kind of hear open and honest and we make some assumptions about that, but it means something different to everybody. So let's get clear on what we mean by that, what the expectations are for our relationship moving forward. And I've had clients push back like that's kind of clunky, that's a lot to say with the definitions in there, but you're absolutely right, it has to be in there, so it's crystal clear. These are the expectations. This is how I want to agree to communicating. Do you agree with that? Then you could say yes or you can say no. Hopefully you say yes and then we have a relationship going forward. But even if you say no, okay, great, now I have some more information about this relationship.
Speaker 1:Yeah exactly, and you can understand how to manage it and move forward. Have you ever experienced anyone say no, or have you heard any of your clients get a no with that?
Speaker 2:Well, I have some that'll joke and will say no, it's like fair enough. So I've not seen that experience of anybody saying no genuinely because I really think this is what we want out of our relationships, but we're afraid to ask for it sometimes, maybe we think we don't deserve it out of our relationships, and maybe it feels weird because we're in a professional space and I don't know nobody else is doing this yet Well, they're doing it out here with us, with our clients. So it's happening. You're not alone in doing that. But the magical part of that is it's not just a one-time thing, it's a living agreement.
Speaker 2:So if you and I get into a heated discussion, guinevere, we can point back to that and we can say, oh, we're not being open here, or we're not being honest here, or that was not honest of me.
Speaker 2:Let me try that again, guinevere, because I know we have this agreement in place and so let me come back to that. And so it's a great kind of guardrails or boundaries around the relationship too, because there are going to be times where I'm tired and I'm just going to say, yep, doing good's fine, but if you really care about me, you really want to know how I'm doing, you're going to prod a little bit deeper. Or if I say, yep, project's on track, it's great. Okay, what do you mean by that? And can we go a little bit deeper on that? Or if I'm bringing an idea to you and you're shut me down and it's like I need you to be open here. I need you to just at least listen to what I'm saying. You don't have to agree with me by any means, but I feel like you're not even hearing me right now, and so can you be open.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love that.
Speaker 1:One of my favorite follow-up questions or statements, I guess, is tell me more. For the audience that might be watching all my podcasts, we've heard that before but tell me more. I think that's such a simple, easy statement that can fit pretty much anything and that helps you kind of prod If you don't know. Sometimes it's like how do I ask a prodding question? How do I form it? What should be the specifics of the question? It's just really easy Tell me more. You don't have to even think about it, right? I find that sometimes too, when we're talking to people, we're also not listening, because our brain is processing what we're going to say next or how we're going to respond to the first part of what they said. So this tell me more thing is just like it's in the back of your brain, the muscle that you just pull out. You don't have to worry about trying to articulate a question. That is specifically to what the situation is.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and you made such a good point that I want to go back to that, because, as human beings, there's been studies about how we suck at multitasking and it's really upsetting because I think I'm really good at multitasking but I'm not. And so you're absolutely right when we start to pre-populate our response in the back of our mind, guess what drops away Our ability to be open to somebody else, our ability to actually listen to them, to hear what they're saying. The difference between listening to respond versus listening to understand. So if there's that pause right there where you got to process and then you think of your response, that's okay and I think that's even better shows the person you're actually thinking about what they're saying and formulating a better response for it. You have a clearer conversation because you're not just passing each other with your communication, you're actually connecting.
Speaker 1:I love that. That's so great, yeah. So tell me what I know. You guys just created this book. Tell me a little bit about your book and what's come in it. What are some of the fun tidbits that you can share with the audience? If they were to read it, they'd get out of the book.
Speaker 2:Well, I think I said it before, but everything we've done and created is specifically designed to be simple, tangible and implementable. Because when it comes to the field of communication, there are so many theories and studies and it gets complex, right, but when you're starting a company or you're a business owner, you need things to be as simple as possible, right, we were talking about that before. I need to simplify things, and so you're not going to remember a 10-step conversation process. You're going to remember those two things open and honest. If we're lucky, you remember open more than you remember honest, because that's what people struggle with more. But you're going to remember those two things and so, keeping it simple there and on the implementable side of things and tangible, we created what is called the six practices. So the agreement is one of the six practices, but we have those in there.
Speaker 2:So it's not just a book that you read and you're like, oh, that was nice thoughts. No, there's actually things in there for you to implement in your life and to consider where is this happening for me? Where is it not happening? How can I bring more of it in there to really make this skill building tangible for people? Because communication is labeled as a soft skill, which I will argue till I'm blue in the face. How can it, how can we call it a soft skill when it's literally how we get anything done as human beings? We spend 88 of our weeks communicating, so it's kind of a necessary skill we have to have, um so, so we get all into that in the book I love that.
Speaker 1:That's awesome, so tell me like for our listeners if they're thinking about how this is resonating.
Speaker 1:I think you've already kind of given them a couple of tools to use, but any any other kind of tool or tip in regards to, I guess actually let me rephrase that you start. You said, hey, when you have a new person starting or a new vendor you're working with, start with this set up of how we're going to communicate. But we all have people that have been in our lives for months, years, decades. How do you recommend going about? Hey, you know, I know we know each other forever. I will work with each other forever, blah, blah, blah, whatever the situation might be. But I want to reset here and use that tool you gave us earlier on the call, but with relationships that have already been established, and how does that work in regards to changing behaviors can be very challenging.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you are exactly right and the agreement still applies. So you want to talk about longstanding relationships? I used it with my mom, actually, and was very nervous about it, because my mom, we had a decent relationship, right, but it wasn't deep by any means and we didn't get to talk about as many of the real things that I wanted to. So using the agreement with her and then bringing it back to that all the time, like I was talking before. But when it talks about coming to changing behavior, there's two practices that we have to go alongside open and honest. So the first one is fake you. You can probably imagine what that's about, but fake you is the facade we project rather than being 100% honest. So if you can imagine a facade or a mask coming over your face, something like that, imagine what the physicality is for you, because that usually helps people too and start to look around in your life. Where is fake you happening? Because wherever fake you is, there's a lack of honesty. And is that happening in this relationship? Is that happening in this team? Is that happening within my life in general? Where is that happening? And how do you, number one, recognize it? Because awareness is the first step. But then how do you get rid of it? How do you return back to honesty? And you got to have that feeling of it coming over. You Like, I had a conversation, I was at a networking event with a friend and I love this friend and she came up to me.
Speaker 2:She's like, hey, how you doing? I'm like, ah, good, it's fine, whatever, whatever. And then I realized that was not a hundred percent honest. Like, was I doing good? Yeah, sure, but she is a friend and she actually wanted to know how I was doing. So I said, hang on, let me play that back, because we have the agreement in place with each other. It's a really hectic day. I feel like I'm running all over the place, but I'm excited to be at this event and I'm so glad to see you. And how much better does that make our relationship? Because I'm not being fake with her. And then she could actually tell me about how her day was going. And then there's another person in the conversation and she got to tell us about how her day was actually going.
Speaker 2:We have this moment of connection that I don't think we get a lot of times, so that's fake. You Figure out where that's happening and get rid of it, because it is hurting our ability to connect. It's hurting your ability to connect, my ability to connect our world in general, and with 8 billion people. We got to figure that out. And then the other thing that limits us from connecting with others is called the wall, and the wall is the divide we put between ourselves and others rather than being 100% open. So imagine a brick wall just shooting up Anytime somebody says something that you don't agree with.
Speaker 2:They bring a project to you that you don't understand. They have a new idea, and their last idea was terrible, so you're not willing to listen to what they have to say. This time we put up all these walls around us and then, if you think about it, we look and all of a sudden we're surrounded by brick walls and we're alone. Then, if you think about it, we look and all of a sudden we're surrounded by brick walls and we're alone, and loneliness has become a public health epidemic. The US Surgeon General declared so, and it's happening to us all the time because we put up the wall and so again, same thing there. Where is it happening? Let's build that awareness. What does it feel like physically for you?
Speaker 2:Picture a brick wall in your mind, because when we're in conversations, our mind kind of just loses words and all we have left is images. And where is that happening and how can you get rid of it? How do you return back to that conversation and say hang on, I was not open to what you said, let me put this wall down. You could quite literally do the hand motions like I just did Now. I'm ready to listen. You know, if you're running around crazy, everything is happening. You're busy, you're not really listening to people. Let me actually pause. Hang on, okay, I'm ready to listen to what you have to say. So those are another of the two of the six practices.
Speaker 1:I love that.
Speaker 1:It's fine when you do that too, you actually gain so much more trust and respect because we're all human and we all are going to do that. We're all going to be like going from meeting to meeting, frantic, frantic, you know, just because the kids have just dropped them off but the dog is causing chaos. Or, you know, something happened right, like we all we have. I think that's kind of a positive thing that came out of covid, although it's horrible and we never want that to ever happen again. But like the positive thing was that we realized that people don't stop being people the moment they walk through the business door, like they, they're still carrying all that baggage and everything that comes with it and now being in our homes.
Speaker 1:You know, for those that are a remote or hybrid, like there, there are things that happen like I was on a call earlier today and, um, the community gardener decided it would be the perfect time to make as much noise as possible and it was so distracting I had to move to a different room and I was like, please hold on, I want to hear what you guys are saying. I need to move to a different room because this is so distracting. And you know, like everyone respects that right Because, like you're taking a moment to say, hold on, I want to. I want to really, truly know what you're, what you're sharing with me, and I'm not in a space right now in this moment the second to hear it and be open.
Speaker 1:Like you said, let me create that space for myself and for us. Um yeah, that's really powerful.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and how refreshing is that? Because when do people ever say that to us? I go let me actually listen to you, let me be present with you, because we live in the age of distraction. Now Everybody has a cell phone in their pocket, everybody's got their emails pinging, we're on their wrist right. That drives me crazy. And, yeah, I specifically don't have any smart tech for that reason, because I know myself, I know I would get easily distracted by that, but it's pulling us away from the present moment, it's pulling us away from the person in front of us, from that connection, and, to a certain extent, I think there's a lack of respect that happens there when the phone buzzes and even if you don't check it, it's like oh, I am not the most important one in the room right now.
Speaker 2:There's that feeling, that kind of happens. And if that's happening when you're in meetings and you're trying to get things across the table, everything we do is with people. So we got to be focused on the people.
Speaker 1:So powerful. Well, there was so many amazing tidbits right there in the last 20, 25 minutes. I hope the listeners really enjoyed the conversation. I know I did and I look forward to getting your book and reading more and learning more from you and your partner, and thank you so much for joining us today and, as we wrap up, any last I mean, I feel like.
Speaker 1:I don't even want to ask this question. You've given us so many good things, but any last thoughts, but I'll put it that way any last thoughts that you would like to share with the audience.
Speaker 2:Oh, my word, I cannot believe it's already been 25 minutes. First, because this has been such a wonderful conversation. So thank you for that. And, you know, I would just encourage people, if you are intrigued by this, to pick up the book it's called no Honesty Again, that's K-N-O-W and have that conversation. But more than anything, that really matters to me is I love talking about this. So if there's something I said that you don't agree with or you think about it differently, let's have that conversation. Reach out to me, because I want to understand, even if we don't agree, even if we are going to always see things in a completely different way. I want to hear that from you. And I say that because take that into your own life too, into the other people that you have relationships with. Have conversations with them. You don't have to agree, but you do have to figure out how to work together, because we share this planet 100% Well.
Speaker 1:thanks, grace, so much for your time and for the audience. Thanks for listening and stay tuned in next week's podcast. We look forward to having you join us. Thanks so much. Thanks for watching.
