Waffling | Social Intelligence Briefing

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0:38Johnny:That's shopify.com slash charm. Go start something. You're sitting in the meeting ready to present your findings. Your analysis is thorough. You're the person who sees what others miss. But the moment someone challenges your recommendations, something shifts. That's right. You soften. You start to hedge. You start looking for the middle ground. And then nobody takes you seriously. Yeah, you think the problem is they're not listening. But the real problem is you stopped believing at what you just told them. And that's the trap. That's right. And it's not about being nice. It's about not standing.

1:25Johnny:Talk me through what you mean, Johnny. So check this out, Marcus, client data analyst at a midsize consulting firm. He's a smart guy and he does deep work and he pulls patterns that most people miss. So he's got the skills. Yeah, sits with data sets for hours. He builds solid recommendations and his analysis is genuinely good. So what's the problem? When the presentation time comes, he's in the room with the clients or leadership. He walks through his findings, clear, logical, and then somebody pushes back. And then he folds, softens the recommendation, starts hedging. Well, it could be this or it could be that.

2:06And suddenly his clear findings become a question mark. Why does he do that? Well, because he's afraid of the hassle of standing firm. It freaks him out. He thinks if he just softens it a bit, people will accept it easier. But the opposite happens. Nobody takes his suggestion seriously. So what does Marcus tell himself? This is the thing, right? His mind starts to tell him, well, nobody's listening to me. I just need to be clear in my presentation. Or if I soften my language, people will feel so defensive. All of those sound like he's trying to solve it. Right, but they're all rationalizations.

2:48He thinks the problem is external, that people don't listen to him, that he's not clear enough, or his language is too strong. The real problem is internal. What is it? The problem is he doesn't stand behind his own work. The moment somebody starts questioning it, starts asking him questions, pushes back just a little bit, he abandons it. And that's the real issue. So how does he take that? He pushes back. I'm not trying to be difficult. I'm trying to find the common ground. But that's exactly the problem. There's no common ground between this is what the data shows and maybe the data shows this.

3:27So what changes? Marcus comes to me. He's frustrated. Another presentation where his recommendation got dismissed. And I asked him one question. When they challenged you, did you actually understand why they disagreed? Uh-oh. What does he say? Well, he said no. And he got defensive. He heard your analysis is wrong and then got upset. And this is where your brain plays tricks on you. Because if there's a blind spot, a skill gap that you can't see, your brain makes up a story to fill it. What story? The story he told himself was that they weren't listening, that he wasn't clear enough, that they were threatened by his analysis.

4:17Anything but the actual truth. Which is? That he couldn't listen at depth. That was the blind spot. But his brain couldn't see that skill gap, so it made up stories to cover it. Stories that kept him stuck because they pointed everywhere but the real problem.

4:37Johnny:So he was living the story and not actually seeing the gap. Exactly. That's totally right. And as long as he believed those stories, he couldn't see what was actually happening. Because that's where transformation starts, when the old story dies because it can't explain what's happening anymore. There's a great distinction in the research on this too. Taking someone's perspective versus getting their perspective. Yeah, explain it. Taking is imagining what they must be thinking. Getting it is actually asking them. In a 2018 paper, Talial, Mary Stifle, and Nicholas Epley reported 25 different experiments examining whether imagining another person's perspective improved accuracy about that person's thoughts, feelings, and preferences.

5:23Johnny:Now, here's what's interesting. It did not consistently improve accuracy. Sometimes it increased confidence without improving accuracy. But in the final experiment, getting information directly through conversation is actually what improved accuracy, while merely imagining the other person's perspective did not. So across these 25 experiments, recent guests Nicholas Epley and team showed imagining someone else's perspective doesn't reliably make you more accurate. Instead, we have to actually talk to the person. Right. So Marcus didn't need a better theory about why they were pushing back. He needed a task.

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6:41Johnny:Get your new wireless plan for just$15 a month at mintmobile.com. That's mintmobile.com. Cut your wireless bill to$15 a month. Upfront payment of$45 for three months,$90 for six months, or$180 for 12 months required. $15 per month equivalent. Taxes and fees extra. Initial plan term only. Greater than 50 gigabytes may slow when the network is busy. Includes up to 20 gigabyte hotspot. Capable device required. Availability speed and coverage varies. See mittmobile.com. Here's something we learned building the art of charm. You cannot be the expert at everything. We found marketing support and dev talent on Upwork.

7:25Things we were not experts at. Taken off our blade by people who are.

7:30Johnny:We've shipped projects faster, gotten more traffic to our website, and even freed up our time for the work that only we can do. That's what Upwork does. It connects you with specialists, software development, marketing, design, AI implementation, whatever your business needs. Over 170 ,000 freelancers with five-star ratings. You browse profiles, review past work, and hire with confidence. There's no full-time commitment required. Post your job for free right now at Upwork.com. That's U-P-W-O-R-K.com. Go post your job. So in his next presentation, a client challenges his recommendation. And instead of getting defensive, Marcus stops and listens, really listens.

8:22And here's where the old story dies. What do you mean? The old story said they won't listen to you. But when he actually listens at depth, they do respond. They do engage. The old story can't explain what just happened. For what? For what's underneath. The client says, we're not sure this fits in our timeline. Marcus could hear that as your recommendation is wrong. But instead, he listens deeper. He now hears they're worried about the timeline risk. That's their actual concern.

8:59Johnny:Ah, so what does he do? Now he asks, what about the timeline worries you most? And then he checks. So your concern is whether we can execute this without missing the deadline? Am I getting that right? Ah, now that is very different. Absolutely. The story is now changing, right? It's completely different. He listened at a deeper level. So now he understands what he's actually addressing and he can hold his ground with confidence. Because he understood them. Don't replace their words with your made up theory. Ask them the question. Right. Because he understood them. He's not waffling. He's not softening.

9:44He's saying, here's what you're actually concerned about. Here's how my recommendation handles it. And now they have to actually engage with his substance. Wow. So what's changed for Marcus? He started practicing deep listening. In Theos, we go over the five levels and he's not just hearing their words now, but he's now listening for context. What's not being said, what they're actually worried about. And that changes things? Completely. Because the old story died. He used to believe that they wouldn't listen or that he's not being clear enough. But now when someone challenged him, he could zoom in on what actually mattered.

10:26He understood the landscape instead of just reacting. So that's the new story. Right. That's the new story. Listening at depth isn't weakness. It's intelligence. And it's the thing that gives him confidence to hold his positions.

10:43Johnny:And he's not being more aggressive. Yeah. And he's not being stressed out and upset all the time. He's being more grounded. Before, he was reacting to the challenge. Now he's standing on something solid because he actually understands what's being said underneath. Listening deeply gave him the intelligence to hold his position. I love that. That's integration. Right. That's integration. Most people think you either stand firm or you listen. But the analysis and the engineers, the consultants, the people doing the work, they need both. Listen at depth, understand what's really underneath, then hold your position with confidence.

11:27Johnny:So listening isn't weakness. No, listening isn't weakness. It's the thing that gives you the strength to hold your position. And when you do both, people trust you. And there's actual workplace research behind this. In two field studies, employees who received listening training reported less anxiety during difficult customer conversations and a stronger sense of competence. Guy Ichikoff studied listening training in two workplace field studies, one involving 61 customer service employees at a Fortune 500 company and another involving 33 employees at a nursing services company. The findings supported improvements in listening, lower anxiety during difficult customer conversations, and a greater sense of competence.

12:13That's right. Listening isn't something you do to make other people comfortable. Right. It's what you do to help you feel more capable too. And that's the shift with Marcus, not how do I sound more confident? And that's what everyone's looking for. But it's do I actually understand what I'm responding to? So what happens after that? Well, he stops waffling and not because he suddenly got all confident, but because listening gave him the intelligence to hold his ground. He starts using this in every meeting.

12:48Johnny:Okay, so he's just using this at work. Now he's using it everywhere, with his wife, with his friends, in every conversation where something matters. And people feel the difference. They trust him now because he's actually hearing them. I love it. It's not just a work skill. It never was. It's how you operate. And once you listen at all five levels, you can't unhear it. You hear what's underneath in every conversation. And what happens to his recommendations? His recommendations start getting taken seriously and not because he changed them. He didn't change anything. It's because he stopped abandoning them the minute somebody pushed back.

13:28He now listens. He understands. And now he can hold. And people feel that. And they trust him. Right? They trust him because he trusts himself now. He's filling that gap of what they need. He's got the answer. trusts himself because he actually understands what they're concerned about. These are not separate skills. It's not. It's one system. Read the room, understand the structure, listen to depth, frame the conversation, hold your position, move the outcome. That's what Fios is built to teach.

14:04Johnny:All right. So homework this week, you're in a presentation and someone challenges you. Yeah, don't get defensive, don't soften, listen. What are they actually worried about? Understand it, and then hold your position from that understanding. And see what happens. Yeah, because that's when you realize listening and standing firm are the same move. Theos is eight weeks. The skills you learn are designed to expose the blind spots you've been operating on. Not by reading about them, but by practicing them. As you practice, the story your brain has made up to cover the gaps becomes undeniable. The old story dies and you get a new story.

14:47That new story is the transformation. And once you see it, you can't unsee it. The applications are in the show notes. Link in the show notes. Apply. We'll talk about what comes next.

14:59Johnny:The Elite Operator System, or Theos. Eight weeks. By the end, you're not waffling. You're standing and people know it.