676: How to Change People’s Minds, with Michael McQueen

Dave Stachowiak [00:00:00]:
There’s a lot of evidence that our minds would rather feel right than be right. How then do you influence someone when they’re really convinced of their position? In this episode, the initial steps that help in changing people’s minds. This is coaching for leaders episode 676.Production Credit: Produced by Innovate Learning, maximizing human potential.

Dave Stachowiak [00:00:29]:
Greetings to you from Orange County, California. This is Coaching for Leaders, and I’m your host, Dave Stachowiak. Leaders aren’t born, they’re made. And this weekly show helps you discover leadership wisdom through insightful conversations. You know, one of the challenges that we all have as leaders is influencing others. It’s a constant challenge that we have, of course, as leaders also just in our personal lives too. And how do we approach situations where maybe we’re trying to get someone to change their mind on something? That is always a really tough conversation.

Dave Stachowiak [00:01:08]:
One that brings doubt in so many of our minds and something I think most of us struggle with in some way. Today, I’m glad to have an expert with us who’s gonna help us to think about this a little differently and enter into a place where we can come to a conversation, a dialogue that helps both parties move forward. I’m so pleased to introduce Michael McQueen. He has spent the past 2 decades helping organizations and leaders win the battle for relevance. He specializes in helping clients navigate uncertainty and stay one step ahead of change. Michael is a best selling author of 9 books and a familiar face on the international conference circuit, having shared the stage with Bill Gates, John Maxwell, and Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak. Having formally been named Australia’s keynote speaker of the year, he has been inducted into the Professional Speakers Hall of Fame. He is the author of Mind Stuck: Mastering the Art of Changing Minds.

Dave Stachowiak [00:02:06]:
Michael, what a pleasure to have you here.

Michael McQueen [00:02:09]:
Likewise. Wonderful to spend some time.

Dave Stachowiak [00:02:11]:
You and I are both fans of Dale Carnegie’s work, and I couldn’t help but notice what you quoted from him. You write “As Dale Carnegie famously observed in his iconic bestseller How to Win Friends and Influence People, a person convinced against their will is of the same opinion still” and yet we do try to convince people all the time, don’t we?

Michael McQueen [00:02:37]:
Because there is that sense that if if I present you with really great logic and you just raise the white flag of surrender, it’s like, okay. I’m just gonna say what you want me to say. And we think, okay. We’ve won. But, actually, if you if they leave the conversation and don’t feel they’ve had agency or some degree of control over the process of changing their minds, if it’s been done against their will, they it’s entirely unlikely their mind has not changed at all. The moment you turn your back, the moment you’re not watching, they’ll just go back to doing whatever they were doing or thinking whatever they were thinking. And so as leaders, the question then is, how do you actually influence change in a way that sticks? Because otherwise, if the change only lasts as long as you’re incentivizing it or there’s a fear of consequences involved, the change is not a sustainable change. And so a lot of what I look at in the book is, I guess, this question of how do you preserve people’s dignity and agency? And a lot of that is through giving them choice.

Michael McQueen [00:03:28]:
Sheena Lyenga, who’s a professor at Columbia University in the psychology faculty, says that she’s so right. She says that our brains basically equate choice with control. If we don’t feel that we’ve got a choice in the process of change, we will dig our heels in, even if deep down, what what’s being said to us, what’s being suggested to us is something that we think is probably right and actually a helpful thing and useful for us. We we will become stubborn and resist it just because we feel like we’ve been told that it’s something we have to do. That’s just so often a part of human nature. And I guess persuasion that is about, how do you work with human nature rather than try and fight against it or just pretend that it doesn’t exist?

Dave Stachowiak [00:04:06]:
Yeah. And as you were saying that I was thinking, in our tendency to, like, try and convince someone and show them facts, and yet, I don’t think it’s ever happened to me where I’ve gone down that route and someone has said, oh, well, thank you so much for sharing the facts with me. Now I’ve completely changed my mind. I mean, it sounds so ridiculous. Say that out loud. And yet we try to do that. And so I really was struck also by something you wrote in the book. Just one example of this.

Dave Stachowiak [00:04:33]:
You write “when people who were hesitant to take the flu vaccine were shown irrefutable evidence that the immunization does not give you the flu, their degree of willingness to get vaccinated dropped by half. In other words, vaccine skeptics were so entrenched in their belief that immunizations are bad that even if one reason for this belief was allayed, other assumptions immediately swung into action to reinforce the originally held ideology.” And I think about that, like, how we see this play out in our personal lives, in the media, in the news, that when you try to force and push and convince, and even when the evidence is there, people will often entrench their they don’t go the way that we want them to go, do they?

Michael McQueen [00:05:20]:
That’s right. And because we have this assumption, this it’d be a nice assumption if it were true that typically when people don’t see reason or change their mind, it’s because of a knowledge or an information or an education gap. And so, you know, if you could just see the evidence, if you could just understand the effects, if I could just present to you the data, then you would see the light and change your thinking. And yet, what we see is that so many of the other forces at play that stop people from being able to not just consider change or consider different opinions or ideas, but so much that they’re unable to hear it. It is too confronting to take on board. And I think one of the things is that the human mind would actually rather feel right than be right. And so we’ve got to bear in mind that one of the things that when you try and suggest to someone they change their perspective, it’s actually it’s a big ask. Because it’s not just about adopting a new viewpoint or a new idea or a new way of doing things, It’s about abandoning an old one.

Michael McQueen [00:06:14]:
And for human beings, that is a frightening prospect. And as humans, we tend to cling to certainty because certainty gives us a sense of safety. And so we’ve got to be always mindful of when we’re asking people to change. It’s not just a case of adding to the ledger of information in a past. It’s magical threshold. Well, I’ve got enough information. I will now change my view. There are so much more.

Michael McQueen [00:06:34]:
There are so many fears that are involved in the process of change that we’d be naive to not take those into account.

Dave Stachowiak [00:06:41]:
And it really invites us to look at, yes, of course, the logic, but also the other side of this too, the emotion of humanity in this. And, yes, of course, there are just people who are trying to be difficult in the world. But, actually, most of the situations I can think of where I’ve tried to come in someone’s mind or or someone’s been trying to convince me. I think that most of the time people are not trying to be difficult. This is just how we tend to respond as human beings when someone pushes us on something. And you make the distinction in the book between the inquiring mind and the instinctive mind, which I think speaks to this. Could you share a bit of that distinction and how you think about this in the context of changing minds?

Michael McQueen [00:07:28]:
Yeah. So, yeah, we often use that phrase that I’m in 2 minds or above 2 minds about a certain decision. And we use that to describe being indecisive, but there’s actually something profoundly true about that. You know, as humans, we spend our lives always into minds, so that the first mind that we use in any given moment on any give any given day is what I refer to as our inquiring mind and the inquiring mind in terms of geography in the brain and our cognitive hardware lives in the frontal lobe. And it’s a part of our brain that is the from an evolutionary biology standpoint, the latest to develop in human beings. But it’s also it takes a lot of energy, a lot of self discipline to use, but it’s very methodical and logical and reasonable and rational, all the things that we’d like to think we’re really good at doing as humans, we can do, But it’s only a part of our brain that does this well. Now, the challenge is we tend to only use our inquiring mind, look at this, 5 percent to 10 percent of our decision making and perception formation. And yet most of our appeals to people in an effort to change their view appeal to the inquiring mind.

Michael McQueen [00:08:29]:
That’s not where the decision making is happening. When most of our thinking happens is in what I refer to as the instinctive mind, and this is near the top of the brain stem often in the part of our brain that’s grouped together as something called the limbic system. And this is the part of our brain that’s really good at emotion regulation, processing of emotion, where our tribal instincts live. One of the big parts of this brain is the amygdala, and the amygdala is what regulates our fight and flight functions, those protection mechanisms. And the challenge is this, our instinctive mind responds to psychological threats the same way it does to physical ones. And this part of our brain has kept us alive and safe for millennia because if a tiger jumps out, we react fast, which is great. The challenge is when we’re confronted with an idea or a piece of information or a perspective, it is also a little bit threatening to who we are and the way we’ve always thought. Our instinctive mind responds the same way as if it was that physical threat. And so, we instantly go in, we go into defensive mode, or we just go into denial.

Michael McQueen [00:09:29]:
It’s like we just don’t want to hear it. It’s too confronting for us to hear. And so, the reality is, and Jonathan Swift, the 17th century essayist, put it well, he said, You can’t reason someone out of a position they never arrived at via reason. And so, as giving evidence and logic appealing to the inquiring mind does little when it’s actually the instinctive mind you’ve got to change, and that’s often where stubbornness tends to reside. And so a lot of the book looks at, firstly, what what is it that causes their instinctive mind to get very stubborn, to feel threatened, and to lash out, and to react? But also, then how do you speak to that mind in particular? And a lot of what we’ve discovered, even in the last few years from a neuroscience perspective, is a bit counterintuitive because it goes against what we’ve thought really since the early days of the Enlightenment, the things that are effective in persuading humans, we’ve discovered a lot of them actually, they are not true and the fact that the opposite is true. The harder you push, the more evidence you give, the more you try and appeal to the inquiring mind, the more the instinctive mind closes down, shuts down, or locks down, and is unwilling to think or consider.

Dave Stachowiak [00:10:30]:
Yeah. And it’s like we were just talking about a moment ago, whether it’s the vaccine or it’s something else. It’s Mhmm. As soon as you push back on facts and and dig in on that, people are very likely to push back and, in fact, dig in further. And so and it how interesting that we’ve known this since 17th century. Right? That that doesn’t work, and yet we all have experience trying to do this and trying to, like speak to people’s logical senses. And so the invitation you make really clearly in the book is speak to the instinctive mind first.

Dave Stachowiak [00:11:06]:
Mhmm. Yep. What does that sound like?

Michael McQueen [00:11:09]:
Well, that sounds like essentially allowing for and recognizing the things that cause that defensive reflex to kick off, the things that mean that we’re not thinking reasonably or calmly or openly. Often, this is where, again, if you if you encroach on people’s agency, if there’s a sense that their dignity will be at risk if they change their mind, that’s when so much like they just can’t afford to hear what it is you’re suggesting because the cost of consideration is just too high. One of the themes I talk about in the book is this idea of the unraveling effect. This idea that when you ask them to change their mind, there’s almost that that concept of taking a thread, a key thread out of a garment. If I change my mind about this one thing, what else have I assumed is true that’s actually not true? And so bear in mind that that that’s a real fear that often for the instinctive mind, that’s that’s the unsettling notion that I might have to rethink a whole lot of things if I consider this one new idea. One of the things I look at is this notion of psychological sunk cost. And this is really key for the instinctive mind because we know about the economic sunk cost, that idea that you’ll stick with a course of action, something you’ve chosen to do, even if you know it’s not gonna end well, it’s not going the way you would hope. And in fact, a better offer, a better option has come along.

Michael McQueen [00:12:21]:
You’ll stick with the original bad option because you’ve already spent so much money and so much time and so much energy on it. You’ll see it through even though that’s gonna be to your detriment. We do the same thing psychologically, and so we’ll have beliefs and assumptions, worldviews, mindsets that that, you know, even though a better idea, new updated information come along and changing, our mind would actually benefit us if we did it. We’ll stick with that original belief or mindset because we’ve spent so much of our self, so much of our money, so much of our time, so much of our ego, our reputation. Maybe you have been an advocate publicly for this particular view. And so, now, for me to change that view, there’s a cost, a sunk cost involved that you need to factor in when you are asking people to reconsider that. So that’s self and instinctive mind. That’s where those points of stubbornness lie.

Michael McQueen [00:13:06]:
It’s around fear, ego, even tribalism, that idea of if you’re asking me to change my mind in a way that is not lockstep with the people who I see who are like me in my tribe, that’s instinctively scary because we, as humans, love to do things that mean we’re going to be safe and protected and accepted by our tribe. If I adopt a view that people like me don’t have, that sends an error signal neurologically that you’re not safe now. You may be ejected from the tribe. So these are all the things we need to factor in that, again, just giving people logic and evidence isn’t gonna touch those things. It’s not gonna be enough.

Dave Stachowiak [00:13:40]:
Everything you’ve said makes me think, wow. It makes so much sense, and yet our tendency is not to do that when we get into these conversations and the emotions there. And you’ve said the word dignity already a couple of times in this conversation, and I sense there’s a lot there that a big part of this is how do I, in the pursuit of maybe trying to influence, maybe trying to shift someone’s opinion or mind on something, that I better, as the other party, be thinking about how do I maintain the other person’s dignity, help them save face. That’s key in this, isn’t it?

Michael McQueen [00:14:20]:
Oh, yeah. And one of the simplest ways we can do that and it’s so obvious when you hear it. And, yeah, it’s the thing that most leaders, when they’re honest, don’t do enough of, and that is listening. Like, do you actually listen the act of listening to someone dignifies them. It’s I’m gonna create space and time. I’m not gonna jump in. I’m not going to be listening with the intent to reply as Stephen Covey warned us. But I’m gonna actually listen with the intent to understand and validate you even if your your view, for instance, is something that I can’t relate to.

Michael McQueen [00:14:49]:
I think it’s utterly ludicrous. I’m gonna listen to you. I wanna hear you out. And I love that insight from Oscar Trimboli in his book around the value of of good listening, active listening. And I’ve never thought of this before. I thought it’s so true. He said, never overlook the fact that the word listen and silent are made up of the same letters. I’m like, that’s profound.

Michael McQueen [00:15:08]:
And it’s so true. Like, do we actually create enough silence to let people speak? And there’s something not just about dignity that comes with that, but when you really listen to someone, you actually might learn something. You might learn that, actually, you’re sort of on the same page, that you’re just using different language to describe the same issue. And so you’re wandering into an argument or something that’s fractious or difficult needlessly because, actually, there’s a lot you share in common. And until you listen to them and understand the terms of reference they use and the way they understand the issue, and then suddenly, okay. There’s a lot we have in common here. Let’s start there as opposed to going and making assumptions about what the other person’s thinking or what their worldview is. So there’s a lot you can learn, but also listening because it gives dignity to the other person.

Michael McQueen [00:15:49]:
The reality is that people are listened to are more likely to listen. And so, just creating that space is such an essential part of persuasion. And yet, many of us go into high stakes conversations with our really well worded arguments. And if they say this, I’ll say this, and we’ve got it all mapped out. And so, have you actually taken the time to have a posture of humility and curiosity to genuinely understand?

Dave Stachowiak [00:16:11]:
And there’s a beautiful invitation in the book right along with that to lessen the loss that someone might be feeling if they are going to change their mind. And you write, contrary to conventional wisdom, we are not actually afraid of change. It is not change, but loss that we fear the most. This is an enormous implications for the process of persuasion. As American writer and political activist Upton Sinclair observed it is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it

Michael McQueen [00:16:44]:
Yes, yep.

Dave Stachowiak [00:16:45]:
It’s a great quote from Sinclair and it’s so true isn’t it if there’s if me shifting my mind means I lose something, prestige, power, my job, my salary, my influence, even if we know that it may be right, we’re so likely to push against it even subconsciously, aren’t we?

Michael McQueen [00:17:09]:
Yes. And this this is what’s interesting is I think for years and many of us have operated with the assumption. I know. I certainly have. I’ve written about this in books, and I’ll speak about it from stage, this idea that humans are just afraid of change. And we’ve said that so often for so long, we just assume that it’s true. And yet the last few years from a neuroscience standpoint, what we’ve discovered is that it’s not actually the case. People, they’re not afraid of change, they are afraid of loss.

Michael McQueen [00:17:31]:
And the 3 losses, the big ones are status, power, and certainty. The moment we feel like we’ve got to step into uncharted water, uncertain water, that, again, is where we get those error signals in our instinctive mind that we are not safe. And so, rather than trying to upsell the benefits of change, how do you try and lessen that loss, make people feel safe in the process of change? And so, sometimes, this can be as simple as showing that the change you’re trying to get them to make is something that realigns with what their values are, what they think is important, or even stuff they’ve done in the past. If you can frame the change in terms of how it’s an extension on what they’ve already been doing as opposed to something that’s a complete shift away from what they’ve been doing. It’s amazing how that allays that fear of uncertainty. And so, you know, think about examples of this. One of the ones that I I love in the book that I shared is this notion that when James Watt in the 18th century, I mean, the development of mechanical steam turbine engines talked about their horsepower output, that was genius because, of course, people were, naturally, going to be skeptical or suspicious of these new machines. And so, if we’re going to try and get people to embrace this new machinery equipment, how do we put it in terms I understand everyone knew what horsepower was? So, if we use that as a common reference point, even that language meant that people were more open.

Michael McQueen [00:18:45]:
They couldn’t make sense of it, and, therefore, someone embrace it. And I think we need to do the same thing when we’re asking people in the workplace to change. How do you use language from the past, symbols from the past, things that feel familiar so that it’s not like a completely new thing, but rather, again, an extension on the past. But then also that that loss of dignity is critical. And I think sometimes we we unfortunately or unconsciously even back people into a corner and, basically, leave them with no option but to have to say they were an idiot in order to say they’ve changed their mind. And, of course, no one wants to do that. Do we give people that ability to, as you say, save face? And sometimes, it’s almost that you’ve got to give them the narrative, the narrative of I thought this, but now I’ve learned this, and now I think something different. And so, now, it’s not that I was wrong in the past, it’s that I’ve learned something new.

Michael McQueen [00:19:33]:
And so, sometimes, you need to give people that space to sort of have that narrative in their own mind, be able to share that narrative with others. Therefore, it’s not a case of weakness. Like, I was wrong, and now I’ve seen the error of my ways, and I’ve repented. Psychologically, I’m now out of difference. I don’t know. I’ve I’ve grown. I’ve seen something new. I’ve seen something different.

Michael McQueen [00:19:51]:
And I was the one in charge of that. Again, if people feel like it was their idea or something they came up with or a process they were in charge of, and at the end they changed, that’s a narrative that allows them to save face. So these are all simple things we can do to lessen that loss. And if people don’t feel they’re losing so much in the process. They’re far more willing to consider change.

Dave Stachowiak [00:20:11]:
Yeah. There’s a couple of questions that you invite us to ask as well too. And I’ve been thinking about them a bunch, and one of them is ask a question that allows the other person to listen to themselves, which is not normally when we think of when we ask questions. Tell me about what that is and what’s important about it.

Michael McQueen [00:20:34]:
Yes. I mean, I think the example of this sort of one of these famed examples that you read about in many textbooks around perspective communication was back in 1980, that famous debate, the election debate between Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan, where Reagan said, just all you need to do is ask yourself, are you better off today than you were 4 years ago? And this was a televised debate. It was an inherently rhetorical question because there was no ability for people to actually answer it. They were on this on the television screen. But in that moment, people answered themselves. And even if it wasn’t out loud, once the question was posed, people were forced to go, well, am I or not? And the very way they answered that question, that was the primer that meant that they were open to thinking, actually, maybe change is necessary. Maybe a shift in precedent is required. Like, it’s the asking of the question gets people to a point where they they get curious.

Michael McQueen [00:21:24]:
They step back from the status quo. They don’t just operate on instinct or autopilot, but step back and go, that’s interesting. I hadn’t thought of it that way before. And so, asking questions that allow people to reconsider is half the battle when it comes to persuasion. And I think one of the best tools that I’ve come across, and I I refer to it briefly in the book, is this notion called motivational interviewing. And so motivational interviewing as an approach to asking questions is actually about asking 2 very different questions, in a specific order. And if you look at the research that underpins this, it’s being looked at by probably researchers, you know, hundreds of different researchers have been tracked over the last 2 or 3 decades. It’s the most scientifically reliable behavior change approach there is.

Michael McQueen [00:22:05]:
And so the way it works is these 2 questions. First question is you ask someone, hey, so on a from a scale of 1 to 10, how likely or willing are you to and then fill in the blanks. And so you ask them, let’s say, whatever the issue is, you’re trying to get them to consider a new way of thinking, a new way of doing things. You’re asking to write from 1 to 2 how likely or willing or open are you to that. And typically, if you’re dealing with someone who is stubborn and this is where you can speak to that instinctive mind, you’re giving the instinctive mind the ability to feel it’s got agency and dignity here. So I’m not being railroaded here. I can give you a low number. So if they’re stubborn, they will.

Michael McQueen [00:22:38]:
They’ll say like a 2 or a 3 or 4 out of 10. And so sometimes you get someone say a 1 out of 10 because it’s being incredibly difficult, then there’s a whole different approach that works. But let’s say they give a 2, 3, or 4 out of 10. The next question then in this technique is the key one. Because then you say, hey, that’s interesting. How come you didn’t give a lower number? Like, if you get over 3, how come you didn’t give a lower number? And the framing shifts now, like, well, what there must be a part of you that thinks this is a good idea. Let’s start there. Let’s look at what your inherent motivation, what your openness to change might be Mhmm.

Michael McQueen [00:23:09]:
Rather than focusing on the 7 out of 10 reasons why you wouldn’t wanna change and why you don’t wanna change. Do you think this is a dumb idea and all the rest of it? And, honestly, I’ve seen this I’ve used this myself numerous times to say this played out. And in that moment, the entire posture, the conversation changes, the tone shifts, because now it’s not defensiveness. It’s not me thinking of all the reasons I don’t want to starting with okay, well, okay, it’s not a completely dumb idea. I suppose there are some things that are worth considering and almost the other person starts selling the perspective back to you. So these are simple ways to use questions that allow people to pause and reflect and see things from a different perspective.

Dave Stachowiak [00:23:44]:
It’s them listening to themselves versus you telling them what’s the truth or the logical or getting back to, like, what were talking about earlier, the inquiring mind. Right? It’s it’s leaning in on that instinct of mind.

Michael McQueen [00:23:59]:
Yeah. Definitely. And the other thing you can do with questions, I think this is important, is look at how do you clarify why there might be resistance already in the other person’s mind? And now, for instance, if someone stubbornly resist into what you’re suggesting, it’s it’s gonna be too expensive or it’s gonna take too long or whatever it is. You say, you might be right. That could be true. Just like what what do you think would be a reasonable price to pay? Like, how long do you think this should actually take this particular project? And interestingly, by then getting people to then speak out loud themselves what their unconscious expectations were, sometimes, honestly, they’ll go, well, I don’t know. I don’t know how much I imagine it would cost, actually. Or they’ll say, you know, it really should have cost this, and they’ll really lowball the number.

Michael McQueen [00:24:39]:
And even as they say they realize what they’re suggesting is really unreasonable. And in that moment, what you do is you open their minds a little bit to considering that maybe something they’ve never said out loud, a deeply held assumption isn’t actually realistic. And just by getting them to speak that out loud, it just it softens the ground. It makes them more willing and open to consider a different view rather than just, again, bombarding consistently with all the logical good reasons why what you’re suggesting is a great idea and they should get on board.

Dave Stachowiak [00:25:05]:
Yeah. And so the distinction I’m hearing there is versus coming in and, addressing or maybe refuting points they’ve made. You’re actually, getting back to what you said, Oscar Trimboli’s invitation for us listening, deep listening. Right? And Yeah. You’re actually listening to their arguments, the points that they’re making, and you’re asking a question that clarifies that a bit. And maybe you’re even asking, like, how they came to that conclusion and where where does that come from and and clarifying that. By doing that, then you’re giving them agency and dignity like we were talking about.

Michael McQueen [00:25:41]:
Yep. And all of this is about your tone as well. One of the things I encourage in the book is this is and this, again, this is counterintuitive. We we tend to think that, yeah, you should put you put your best foot forward when you’re engaging with other people. If you wanna be credible and compelling, you gotta have the, you know, speak well, you’ve got to put your arguments forward in a coherent way. And interestingly, what the research has showed in the last few years is actually sometimes the opposite is more effective, which is self deprecation, self disclosure, just being really vulnerable, almost putting your worst foot forward. And so when you’re approaching a conversation with someone to approach that sort of tone of, you know, not like this is this is how I think we should do things.

Michael McQueen [00:26:19]:
And here’s all the reasons why I think it’s a good idea, you approach it with I might be way off here, but or look, my my sense is or, you know, I I could be wrong. Well, feel free to ignore this. Yeah. And what you do is you preface it with that sense of openness that means the other person feels like they don’t have to adopt the opposite position unconsciously and argue against what you’re suggesting because you’ve you’ve approached it with openness. And, interestingly, there was some great research done by Kip Williams, who’s a social psychologist, and he looked at across the border, meta analysis of court cases and the key moments where juries favored one side’s arguments versus another in a court case. And I thought this research was fascinating. What he found is that, in any situation, the solicitor of the attorney who brings to the table, brings to the jury information that works against their own case, that may actually disadvantage their case, as long as you bring that to the table first and bring it into the light before the opposing side has a chance to do so, instantly, that makes you more trustworthy in the eyes of the jury. And typically, statistically, the verdicts were given in favor of the party who bought that unhelpful information, the information that might discredit their own case to the table first, because what it is is it disarmed the listener because now, I wasn’t here listening, thinking, Okay, you are saying all this, but what’s the other side? What’s the other element of the argument you are not telling me? So that part of their instinctive mind is looking for, perhaps, the areas where I’m not being shown something or I should look for the loophole.

Michael McQueen [00:27:49]:
That gets neutralized. Now I’m actually almost unconsciously arguing your argument for you because you’ve you’ve been open. You’ve been honest. And so when we’re approaching people, even when we’re asking some of those very questions, the tone with which we do it can make all the difference. And vulnerability, authenticity, transparency, self deprecation, These things all go a really long way.

Dave Stachowiak [00:28:09]:
There’s a line in the book, “Speak like you’re right, listen like you’re wrong.” What does that look like?

Michael McQueen [00:28:17]:
I think at the core of it, it’s it’s a sense of of openness. That idea that you if you go into every situation assuming that you’re right, but you don’t couple that with that humility of listening like you’re wrong, firstly, you won’t learn anything. And it also does set up that posture where people will fight back just because they don’t feel heard. And this is not to say you should just be open about everything and not have any convictions. I think convictions are necessary. And I was chatting with a colleague recently, and the way she described it was so, I think, so apt. She said, It’s almost like having a spine. You know, if you don’t have a spine and things that you know are true, that you build your life and your ideology and your values on, without a spine, you’re going to be a wobbly mess.

Michael McQueen [00:28:59]:
So you need to have a spine to give you structure and to give you support and strength, but you can’t be so strong to the point where you’re rigid, and, you know, your spine is about flexing moving, and it doesn’t. If you’re too rigid and unwilling to listen or change, that sense of rigidity actually makes you incredibly fragile. That’s when you break. And so, how do you have things that you’re sure about? Speak like you’ve got certainty and know a few things, but also have that posture of curiosity that you’re always willing to learn? Because the old saying is true, the moment you think you’ve made it, you’ve passed it. Now, we can never approach life and work, even if you’re incredibly experienced. Like you’ve got it all figured out, partly because that means you’re not in a learning posture, which is dangerous for any leader, but it also means those around you, in many cases will will challenge you just because they feel like there’s that sense of unyielding, unwilling openness in you. There’s often that illicit stubbornness from people around you. And so I think the other thing about this is going into any interaction or engagement with a willingness to listen and to engage and to learn from the other person rather than to beast them.

Michael McQueen [00:30:01]:
We often have this notion that argument or debate is about conquering and victory. And the challenge is, Andy Stanley, who’s a a great leadership author and and expert there in the States, he puts it beautifully. He said, in any relationship, and this can be a married relationship, a parent child relationship, a boss worker relationship, whatever it is, in any relationship, when one party wins, the relationship loses. And I reckon that is so fundamentally true. You know, do we go into every interaction with the explicit goal that I am going to walk out of this the winner? Because if I do, if that’s the if that’s the posture of the approach, if there’s not the, speak off, I’m like, I’m right, coupled with a listen like, I’m on that curiosity, I’m open and willing to listen, then, typically, people feel railroaded. Firstly, they’ll be stubborn and circling right back to where we started. If they’re convinced against their will, they probably haven’t changed their mind at all. They’re just saying what they think you want to hear.

Dave Stachowiak [00:30:52]:
I am struck by how often I’ll have a conversation with Bonnie or one of our kids or a session in our academy talking through a problem or situation. And my first instinctual belief that I’m right is almost always wrong. Like, the more confident I feel that I’m right on something, I’m almost always, like, substantially either I’m wrong or I’ve missed a key point of it. Like, whenever I get too caught up in that emotional piece. And then but the opposite is also true. Like, when I approach with more humility and listen, more often, like, I get to we get to some shared agreement or next path or something way faster. And it’s counterintuitive, but, boy, it is it’s so consistent in so many interactions.

Michael McQueen [00:31:48]:
Yeah. I can relate to that 100%.

Dave Stachowiak [00:31:52]:
So this is a book about changing minds. You know, I ask people all the time what they’ve changed their minds on. So I’m curious as you wrote this book. I mean, the research you did for this book is incredible. I mean, as you get into it, I mean, you’re looking at, like, centuries of information. It’s really, really fascinating.

Michael McQueen [00:32:08]:
Thank you.

Dave Stachowiak [00:32:09]:
As you got into this, as you’ve now been out talking about the book, speaking about it, coaching people on this, I’m curious, what’s something you’ve changed your mind on?

Michael McQueen [00:32:20]:
I’ve always been a fairly laissez faire, don’t lock the doors, she’ll be right, very Australian approach to life, really. I didn’t grow up in a big city. I grew up in a country area where no one ever locked their cars or their doors at home at night. And so I don’t adopt that as an identity. I’m not someone who locks the door at night. I don’t live in fear, you know, that whole sort of thing. And I had a conversation a few weeks ago with a friend who’s a police officer, and he grew up 5 streets from where we now live in Sydney. So he knows the area, knows the suburb, he knows the crimes that go on here, which I don’t know.

Michael McQueen [00:32:49]:
And he said when I told him we don’t lock our doors, his face, he was like, are you serious? What do you mean? And I said, well, yeah. I just I sort of feel that now we’re in a pretty safe area, and I like to live life in a in a trusting sort of way. He said, okay. So here’s some of the stuff that’s happened in the last few months in your area. And he started to go through a few of the things that had gone on, and, like, he’s also not someone who’s super safety conscious. He’s a fairly relaxed sort of guy. So I’m like, I’ve had so many people over the years say, You really should lock your doors at night, and I never listened. I changed my mind after this conversation and there so much about it, it was just different because of who said it, how they said it, the way they approached it, the stories they told stories speak to the instinctive mind.

Michael McQueen [00:33:25]:
And I’m like, every night, I’m a locking the door person now, which is just something that 4 months ago, I would never have imagined doing. So even little things like that, I notice what it is that happens in my own mind. And when I do change, why I change, and then what are those points of resistance where I push back, and then I try and ask more questions, get curious about those.

Dave Stachowiak [00:33:44]:
And how interesting as an example of just what we were talking about, like, his ability to speak to your instinctive mind versus just saying, oh, you should do something, changed your opinion on it almost immediately after years of other people trying to who didn’t.

Michael McQueen [00:34:01]:
Yep. Yep. It’s exactly it’s I think all of us, we can be stubborn, and some of us by temperament are more stubborn. I’m probably quite a stubborn person. And for me, one of the tells that I have that my instinctive mind is in the driver’s seat in a way that’s unhealthy. And I don’t know everyone has their tells. Some people get flushed around their cheeks or their or their neck. For me, the the hairs on the back of my neck stand up when I start to get in that defensive mode.

Michael McQueen [00:34:24]:
And I’ve just learned over the years when that happens, stop, take a breath, take a beat, and just step back from the emotion because often that is our instinctive mind going into battle mode or wanna go into defensive mode. And that’s when you’re never making very smart choices.

Dave Stachowiak [00:34:39]:
Michael McQueen is the author of Mind Stuck: Mastering the Art of Changing Minds. Michael, thank you so much for your work.

Michael McQueen [00:34:47]:
My pleasure. Thank you.

Dave Stachowiak [00:34:54]:
If this conversation was helpful, 3 related episodes I’d recommend to you. One is episode 450, the way to influence executives. Nancy Duarte was my guest on that episode, and we talked about the reality that almost all of us need to do, which is to influence executives in our own organization, whether they be peers or people we report to, and often also influencing executives at other organizations. There is absolutely a right and wrong way to approach that, and Nancy has a ton of experience on how to do that, not only herself, but if teaching leaders how to present well and influence executives and, yes, be able to change minds. Episode 450 for a road map on that. Also, you heard echoes of the importance of listening in this conversation. Our resident expert on listening who’s been on the show many times over the years, Oscar Trimboli, author of the book deep listening and how to listen. Episode 500, we talk about the 4 habits that derail listening.

Dave Stachowiak [00:35:49]:
When you listen to that episode, for sure, you’re gonna hear at least one of those 4 habits and traps that you’ll likely fall into. I know there’s one for me, and Oscar and I talk about that in that episode and highlight some of the common traps we fall into so that we can all do better. Again, that’s episode 500.And then finally, I’d recommend the work of William Ury, episode 669. Three practices for thriving in negotiations. William, just a expert at negotiation for many decades, has done a ton of work both as a practitioner and as a researcher, tons of books, getting to yes for the best well known. And William and I had a conversation that winds up so well with this conversation, which is, of course, when you’re negotiating, oftentimes you are trying to influence the other party, sometimes change minds a bit, find a resolution that works well for both parties, some key principles in episode 669 that will help you out there. All of those episodes, you can find on the coachingforleaders.com website.

Dave Stachowiak [00:36:44]:
And if you haven’t already, I’d invite you to set up your free membership so that you can search for exactly what you need by topic. All of the podcast episodes I’ve aired since 2011 are freely available on all the apps and all the directories, but the apps and the directories don’t give you an easy way to be able to search by topic. So we’ve made the website your portal to be able to do that so you can find exactly what you need right now. The entry point for that is our free membership. Go over to coachingforleaders.com. Set up your free membership. You’ll be able to search by topic, plus have access to all the other benefits of free membership, including my book and interview notes. I’ve highlighted a bunch of key quotes from Michael’s book.

Dave Stachowiak [00:37:25]:
I’ve detailed out the notes that I used when I was talking with him today. All of that’s available to you as well as all the resources from many of the past interviews as well inside of the free membership. It’s just one of the benefits there. And if you’re looking for a bit more perspective, one of the regular practices that we have here in our community is inviting guests who’ve been on the podcast into conversations with our members and listeners directly. Once a month, I make an invitation to one of our past guests to come and join in with us live. And most recently, that was Cujo Teschner, a former US Air Force fighter pilot, also oversaw debriefing for the US Air Force program and was taught us a few months ago on the podcast how we can do a better job at debriefing in our organization so we don’t make the same mistakes twice and we learn from our mistakes. So few organizations do that well. And recently, I invited Cujo to sit down with our members and have a conversation with them directly.

Dave Stachowiak [00:38:26]:
We record those conversations every single month, and they’re available to all of our members inside of Coaching for Leaders Plus. If you would like to get access to that recording, in addition to all the other recordings in the last 3 to 4 years of guest experts talking with our members directly, It’s one of the key benefits inside of Coaching for Leaders Plus. For more, go over to coachingforleaders.plus. Coaching for leaders is edited by Andrew Kroger. Production support is provided by Sierra Priest. I will be back with you next Monday for our next conversation. Have a great week, and see you back then.