Wake Up Eager Workforce 
Episode 116 Transcript

Suzie Price: Today, I'm talking with Bobby Powers. You're going to want to tune in if you want to improve your ability to share what you know. If you love to read or even like to read books, learn new information and you enjoy getting to know interesting people because Bobby Powers is very interesting. We're so glad to have him on the podcast. I know you'll get benefit from this episode. I can't wait to share it with you. Michael. Hit it!

[00:00:26] Intro/Outro: Welcome to the Wake Up Eager Workforce podcast, a show designed for leaders, trainers and consultants who are responsible for employee selection and professional development. Each episode is packed full with insider tips, best practices, expert interviews and inspiration. Please welcome the host to his helping leaders, trainers and consultants everywhere Suzie Price.

Suzie Price: Hi there. My name is Suzie Price and I am the producer of the Wake-Up Eager Workforce podcast and the founder of my company, Priceless Professional Development. And you're listening to the Wake Up Eager Workforce podcast, where we cover everything related to helping you and the employees in your organization build a high commitment, low drama, wake up eager workforce. Bottom line we help leaders and organizations make good decisions about their people. We are all about building, creating, keeping your workforce eager and eager means, hey, I wake up, I'm ready to go to my role and do my work. I want to be there. I'm engaged, I'm enthused. I'm involved. I have a good relationship with my teammates. I have a good relationship and connection with my leader. I know what's expected of me. I know what is happening for my future. I know who I am, I'm a good fit for my role. And by the way, those are all the things we focus on and we teach and we care about, and they're all the things that help make a wake up, eager workforce. So that is what we do. And that's what we talk about today. And I'm excited about this episode. It's episode number 116, and the title is The Love and Curse of Knowledge, the tracker link. So you can see the show notes where we'll have a transcript and links to some of the things we talk about today is the tracker link or to go to the show notes is priceless.

Suzie Price: Professional.com/bobby Powers b o b b y p o w e r s priceless professional.com/bobby Powers. That's where you'll have the show notes. And we put timestamps and all of the that good stuff on there. Here's what we're going to cover today. Bobby's going to talk to us about overcoming the curse of knowledge. We're also going to talk about the curse of the Ivory Tower and leadership lessons about that. Bobby is a amazing reader and even better tracker of everything he's learned and and a great sharer of what he's learning. He's great to follow. He has an amazing website, and he does great reviews and shares great insights. So he's going to talk a little bit about his reading journey. And he gives some really good tips around retaining the insights from the books because I always find, okay, how do I organize all this that I want to remember or use in the future? And the last thing is we talk a little bit about the stoic philosophy for more satisfaction and less stress. So lots of good insight. Let me tell you a little bit about Bobby. He has spent the last decade managing teams and training managers. He's built onboarding and management training programs from scratch at multiple startups and small and midsize businesses. He's led teams through hyper growth as well as layoffs, and he's facilitated thousands of meetings and trained over 100 managers and executives.

Suzie Price: He's currently the director of leadership development at Jitasa. And in his free time, he's a total book nerd. And we talk about that. He reads get this 70 books a year. His articles about leadership, personal development and communication have a published and over a dozen publications, as well as his blog. And his blog is BobbyPowers.net, where you'll find all of his writing. I looked him up on LinkedIn. I found him on LinkedIn because of some of his articles. And then when I went and looked at his web page, he had written a review or an overview of one of the books I was reading. It was super helpful. And so then I of course, when I looked at LinkedIn, I saw he had a bunch of recommendations. And he has, you know, we all enjoy having good recommendations on our LinkedIn, and I appreciate every single one that I have. But boy, has he got some great recommendations from people that are very sincere. And he really impacts people's lives. And so I'm going to read you little snippets of some about how he's an expert. One is talking about how much of an expert he is and then they share, he shared. I personally appreciate that Bobby is able to deliver thoughtful and candid feedback on more than one occasion, he gave me feedback that made me a better professional and colleague.

Suzie Price: I couldn't recommend him more highly. And then here's another one talking about how how many strengths he has, from sales enablement to manager and leadership development, to effective boarding and internal training. There's nothing I asked Bobby to do that he couldn't deliver on. That is quite a statement. No task was too big or too small. He leans in where he's needed. Bobby is the definition of a force multiplier and an A player. He cares deeply about the people that surround him. He's honest while being empathetic. And I'm a better people ops professional thanks to him. And then here's another one that I grabbed. There were more, but I'm just going to share the ones that I grabbed not long after meeting Bobby. You'll learn he is an avid reader and a writer with a wealth of knowledge and experience to draw upon for everything he does. I leave with this because it informs everything else about Bobby learning, teaching, mentoring is in his DNA. And then he talks about how he changed the game for their employee experience and development. He talks about the onboarding process. And then again, another I personally benefited from working with him and how much he learned from him. So we're talking to a very interesting, very humble, very informative guest today and I'm so glad he's here. Let's go to that episode now. I know you're going to enjoy it. All right, Bobby, thank you for being here.

[00:06:18] Bobby Powers: Thanks for having me, Suzie. I'm really excited for this.

Suzie Price: Yes. I appreciate all your work and all the great thought you put out into the world. And we're going to just jump in with one of my questions, which is a favorite article, because it really points to something I'm always working on is and your headline for the article is, you'll never become a strong communicator if you don't overcome your expertise. So you do great headlines, by the way, but even better. And, um, talk a little bit about this. Overcoming your expertise.

Bobby Powers: Yeah, you bet. So it comes from the idea of a phrase called the curse of knowledge that some of your readers may be familiar with, and it's something that I first read about in a book years ago. The book, made to stick by Chip and Dan Heath and Made to Stick, is all about how to make your ideas sticky in the mind of an audience and it's all about how to tell stories and how to simplify ideas. And they talk a lot about this concept of the curse of knowledge. And it's the first time I had ever read that. This was years ago, when I read the book the first time. I've since read it multiple times thereafter because it's been so impactful for me. But I thought about that idea of the curse of knowledge, and I thought for a podcast host like you, or for a learning and development expert like me, or for any trainers or teachers or politicians or marketers or whoever, you have to overcome your own expertise. Which means that the more you learn about something, the harder it is to remember what it was first like to learn that thing. We forget our ignorance when we didn't know that. And so we use jargon, we use acronyms, we use all these complex ideas, and we start to talk really philosophically about something.

Bobby Powers: But at the end of the day, somebody that's learning something the first time they need it explained in baby steps. And so I go back to even back a few years ago, I had just started a job working for an investment accounting company. Day one. They were trying to teach me about bond amortization, which is like this extremely complex topic in accounting. And so I got sat down with the trainer, James, and James was going through all this stuff about bond amortization, and he was the expert in the for the firm at amortization. And I left that hour with him feeling like an idiot because I didn't understand it. And I felt like I need to leave this job because I'm clearly way too dumb for this. But thankfully, there was another trainer, a guy named Ted, that I asked Ted afterward, hey Ted, can you explain this to me? I'm really struggling, and Ted broke it down for me in small chunks. He simplified it. He told me stories. Ted overcame the curse of knowledge. He was every bit as knowledgeable and experienced as James, but he knew how to overcome it. And I will be forever grateful to Ted and the other Ted's of the world that simplify complexity for all of us.

Suzie Price: Yes, it is a challenge. And when? I read that article. You give five tips. Yeah, I actually, you know, I mean, it's much material, as we all get. And I am also a big learner and love knowledge. So, you know, you're always taking in things. But I don't always stop and print an article and put it on my desk and read it and then read it again and then check myself against it, because I have some complex topics that I'm trying to teach to organizations so they can do do the work within, you know, coach of coaches type thing. And I'm like, okay, yep, I'm doing that one. Nope. I can do better on that one. So talk a little bit about some of those tips. I've got the article here to highlight and underlined. And it just it's super. But talk a little bit about some of the tips.

[00:09:50] Bobby Powers: Yeah for sure. So one of the biggest ones is to use analogies. So if you're explaining anything to somebody that doesn't know about it you start with what they do know. And you baby step them there and you slice the content into really manageable chunks. So another story that comes to mind is I think about the curse of Knowledge is my wife and I were vacationing in Hawaii and our hotel had ukulele lessons. I've never played the ukulele. I'm a complete beginner at ukulele. So it was my wife and the ukulele instructor was this world renowned expert at ukulele, a guy named Derek Sebastian that has helped create music for Disney movies knows a ton about the ukulele and expert.

Suzie Price: We're talking expert.

Bobby Powers: Expert? Yeah. And he starts out the class and he says, you know what? Any class out there, they're going to teach you all this stuff that you'll never remember. I'm going to spend the next 45 minutes teaching you one strum pattern that you can use for 80% of the songs that you play. And we literally just use the same strum pattern. And we learned it so deeply that I felt like a mini ukulele expert by the end of the hour, you know? Yeah. And so for any of us that are trying to teach information, if we can chunk it in those small, impactful ways and we can say, hey, I'm going to take this complex idea and I'm going to give you one morsel today and I'll give you a second morsel tomorrow. It really helps people out.

Suzie Price: Yes, yes. And you know, that requires okay, so the analogies I use a car analogy and everything I do and that seems to help. And then chunking it is helpful. And you've also got here refuse to use jargon. Yeah. So not using jargon start at 30,000ft then dive bomb closer and check for understanding. So I'll put a link to this article in the show notes. But it is really challenging. And I think, I think what has helped me over the years, I didn't have your list, but one thing that helped me kind of find some of the answers was I got super focused on what it is they want. Sometimes if you're the expert, you get all caught up in the fact that you're the expert and you kind of like that. Yeah. You know, right, your top driver and then but you know not to be ego, but you feel good about knowing what you know. If you can move beyond that and say, okay, I need them to know what they need to know. That really helped me get to some of these answers, but not not to quite the level that you talk about here.

Bobby Powers: Yeah. Adam Grant has this great quote. He says good communicators make themselves sound smart, great communicators make their audiences feel smart. And I think that's what great communication really looks like, is it's not lifting ourselves up on a pedestal. It's helping share something in a way that actually helps out those listeners. And the only way to do that is to overcome this expertise, to not like, throw out all the jargon that makes us sound smart, but to really simplify it down and do it in a way that the other person can truly understand.

Suzie Price: Yeah, I've made all the mistakes and I know I'm in the moment. Like, you know, at least I'm aware enough to know. It's like, oh yeah, mess that up. And the other thing that I think, and I see it in other people that, um, helping or just colleagues is when I'm learning it, when we're still learning it and we're not quite the expert. We also want to share too much. We get too, in the jargon. And we don't we're not, you know, like when you really become an expert, you're able to. Make it simple. Do you think. Do you see that?

[00:13:11] Bobby Powers: Yeah, I think there's almost like a bell curve with this where it, you know, when you have enough knowledge about something to be dangerous, then you start to forget what it's like to first have known that thing. But if you can pierce through that point and you become knowledgeable enough to know where people struggle, now, you can actually simplify it down again. And another, another quote that comes to mind all the time for me is Albert Einstein said, if you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough. And I think that's what we're talking about is like a little bit of knowledge is kind of dangerous, a lot of knowledge. You can overcome your little bit of knowledge.

[00:13:47] Suzie Price: Yes, yes. So I guess we could say to everyone to encourage it's a journey. Yeah. You know, and the always put, put the, put the what the participants need first, you know, and let them be the ones saying what they're learning because we, we remember what we say, not what other people say. Um, yeah. And make it simple. And we're going to put a link to this wonderful article. So the curse of knowledge is the bane of every leader. You say every leader, teacher, salesperson, subject matter expert, public speaker, and writer. Yes. It's the idea that all of us forget what it's like to first learn something. As our knowledge grows and we become more familiar with the nuances of a topic, it becomes harder to communicate the concepts simply.

Bobby Powers: Yeah. And just to reiterate, one of the points that you had mentioned, that fifth bullet point in the article is check for understanding. And I think that's such a basic thing for all of us to remember to do is anytime I finish giving a training in my company, I always stop and I say, who has questions? And if they don't have questions, I don't assume that my message stuck. I assume that they're so confused that they don't even know a good question to ask. So that that's on me, you know? So in general, I think any time that we have shared something that we feel is complex, you got to pause. You have to check for understanding and that that Q and A that back and forth that you have with an audience is so integral for you. Also learning the the meta takeaways of how to improve as a communicator for next time.

Suzie Price: Yeah. And sometimes if they're not saying anything you can do like little quizzes, little mini quizzes. And so the percentage would be and if nobody knows it and you've gone over it a bunch, like, okay, the way I went over it really didn't help them help it stick, right. So we'll revisit it. And I think the other thing that always helps me, that makes me get better is at the end of every I tell them at the beginning, I'm going to ask for your feedback at the end, and I want to know your top takeaways. And so at the end, hearing about what what their top takeaways are, what went well, and then what could go better is, uh, I mean, that's helped me grow exponentially, you know, getting that feedback, not only checking for understanding, but along with that saying, okay, what went well, what could go better? Because what they remember is like, okay, something about that I did. Right. And what they, what they don't talk about that you thought was really important and they don't even mention I'm like, okay, gotta work on that piece, you know?

Bobby Powers: And I'm guessing your experience is similar to mine, where sometimes the takeaways are very different than you thought their takeaways would be.

Suzie Price: Yeah, very different. And sometimes the takeaways, they're totally different from each person. Yeah. Right. Like oh I remember this and I'm really going to use that. I'm like wow. So if anybody's listening and you're a facilitator trainer, teacher, leader and you're not asking those questions at the end, you're missing out because that is gold. Yeah, that's gold. And I always ask, you know, tell me, tell me what went well. And then I say what I thought went well at the end. And then, then say tell me what went wrong. And then I say, here's what I think could have gone not wrong, but could have gone better. And if I share something, well, you know, this part could have been better. Then they start to tell me what could be good better. And it's like, oh, feedback. And they tell me things that I had no thought about. Like even like how I sent the email like, oh, I never thought that that was confusing from their perspective. Right. You know.

Bobby Powers: And I love that idea of leading by giving yourself feedback because that makes it safe. That makes it safe for everybody else. That okay, she's okay saying.

Suzie Price: Herself, you know. Yeah.

Bobby Powers: Exactly.

Suzie Price: On this page. And I could've done better on this part, I think I think I rushed this part or whatever. I'll be you know, I'll have thought about it so that I can share something very rich and real, because I want to know, you know. Right. But that only gets more comfortable when you're a little bit more comfortable when you're brand new. It's a little tender to ask for, for that kind of feedback. But if you can do it, do it.

Bobby Powers: If you could do it, do it. It's extremely important.

[00:17:40] Suzie Price: It helps. It helps talk. Here's another article that I really liked. Um, your headlines again are just fantastic. You're so creative. The best decisions are never made for the comfort of the ivory tower. So talk a little bit about that and the problems with this approach. What that means. Yeah.

Bobby Powers: So just to define the term, if anyone's unfamiliar, ivory tower is oftentimes used to describe academia or any field that is removed from professional experience. And so one of my friends. Is a guy named Josh that I worked with before. When I had gotten a promotion to director, he always joked me that, oh, you're up in that ivory tower looking down on all of us people. And I think in business, a lot of the time, that's what it feels like, is you have these executives and the directors and the VP's that are making decisions from this tower, and they're looking down at the battlefield of all the people that are actually engaging in the day to day work. And I think that that's a horrible way. If we actually lead like that, leading from the top of a tower, disconnected from our troops, it is one of the worst ways to lead a team because it's a recipe for disaster in all kinds of fronts. So one example of that is I was working with a sales team at a past company that all of the sales leaders realized that all of our marketing materials was really outdated. We had to refresh all of this. The slide decks, the emails, the pitches, everything about our sales process had to change. And so their process of going about that and I willingly joined along, making the mistake of of doing this is we had our chief revenue officer and our VP of sales and all of our sales leaders designed the new slide decks, designed the new pitches, and then they started to roll that out to the sales team.

Bobby Powers: And if any of you have done something like this, you might know where this story is headed, where it ended up not working. The pitches that we had created were really stilted. They sounded robotic. They didn't actually work with talking to clients. We hadn't ground tested. We hadn't battle tested these ideas. We came up with them from this ivory tower. We came up with them disconnected from reality of what our teams were going through. And so I've seen this kind of thing play out dozens of different times in dozens of different organizations that you make decisions in a way that you're not actually touching base with the people that know best and who knows best, generally the people doing the actual work. So the people that are on the phone with the client, the people that are sending the emails to the sales prospect, yes, the the people doing that work. And so they have to be involved in the process. So they either need to be a making that decision or be involved in the decision in some capacity that we have them as a fail safe to make sure that we don't make big mistakes. So, yeah, it's just been a lesson I've had to learn and relearn a few times. And every time I experience something that it's a good reminder that we we raise up people into these leadership roles. But the responsibility of being a leader is not to make all of the decisions. It's to make informed decisions with your people.

Suzie Price: Yes, yes. And one, one way to do that. So, so in that particular situation, I'm sure the leadership team was thinking, oh, we're just being helpful. We'll just knock it out. We know what it should be, you know? So I think efficiency gets in the way and maybe it's a little bit of that expertise thing, you know, that we were just talking about, you know, like we know it. So you know what's an efficient way. Because I know that that can be you know, what's an efficient way. Like, I know we do organizational surveys, but like when you're doing a project like that to gather data and maybe you have to turn down the time frame and not think of efficiency as the top priority. Talk about how you do that so it doesn't get bogged down. That's the other piece that people are frustrated with, I think.

Bobby Powers: Yeah. Well, a related topic that I think is important for the audience to understand is that I've recently been realizing that it's important to be efficient with processes and effective with people. Yeah. So when we're talking about our process, we have to be really efficient. The speed matters and the quantitative approach to something matters, but quantitative goes out the window or should go out the window when we talk about people. So people we shouldn't be optimizing for efficiency. We should be optimizing for effectiveness, doing it the right way, not doing it the fastest way. And so if you're doing something like revising sales pitch decks and the entire sales deck in general, I would say a good way to go about that is to have a bunch of feedback loops in the process. So maybe the first draft is handled by the exec team, and then they share it with people on the ground and give them immediate feedback. And then you revise together and then you have a second draft and then you test it again. But it's not the idea of you put in two months of work and then you say, here's the final draft and go and start doing this.

Suzie Price: Yeah. Iterative process.

Bobby Powers: Yeah, 100%. Yeah yeah.

[00:22:31] Suzie Price: Yeah. That's great. That's great talk. You are your website Bobby Powers dot net is amazing. I've got it pulled up here. And you've got so many things about your favorite books and you got all kinds of categories, you know, how did all this start. And then talk a little bit about what you're reading right now or what you're loving right now?

[00:22:50] Bobby Powers: Yes. My biggest passion in the world is reading. I absolutely, absolutely love to read. And so I've been reading over 70 books a year for the past decade, and so it's my biggest hobby. I'm not even a fast reader. I just spend a lot of time doing it because I think it's important. But back when I was in grad school studying for my MBA, I was reading all the. Different business and personal development books, and my friends knew that I was a reader, so it always come to me with recommendations, and I felt like I kept giving out the same recommendations over and over. So eventually I thought, okay, well, I could probably make this process a little bit better. I might just start a book blog. So I started a website. The name of the site has changed a few times throughout the years, but now it's Bobby Powers dot net, and I just started to publish the books that I was reading, what I gleaned from those books, and then my list of favorite books. And so overall, with my writing, I try to write for anyone who's trying to become a better leader, learner or communicator. So everything I write on my website is about leading, learning and communicating. So it's everything from book recommendations to leadership tips to mistakes that I made some time when I was trying to communicate a tough message. And as you know, Susie, I'm sure a lot of the best lessons that we learn are from past things that we botched at some point in time. So a lot of it is me just working out my own struggles, you know?

Suzie Price: Do you pick books sometimes based on whatever you're trying to master at that moment, or are you picking up whatever best seller, what's kind of your process?

Bobby Powers: Yeah, so generally my process is I'm dealing with or struggling with something in life. And then I go and I try to attack that with a bunch of different books. So early in my management career, I was struggling with trying to give feedback. It's one of the tough things for brand new leaders to try to get down. And so I went and read a bunch of books about feedback. And so generally, the course of my reading life is Bobby has a problem. Bobby goes and reads a bunch of books, Bobby writes about what he learned and then moves on to the next problem. So it's been a lot of that. And recently this year, I decided that there was so much stuff I wanted to read. I wanted to try to figure out a way of theming my reading. So I've been trying.

Suzie Price: To read system. I need a system. That's why I'm asking so many things like, oh, that's interesting. Oh that's interesting. It's so.

Bobby Powers: Hard. Yeah. So, so this year I decided my theme would be I want to read about the past and the future. So I'm reading a lot of books about history, I'm reading a lot of biographies, and I'm reading books about AI and future technologies that will impact us in the coming years. So very big, broad theme, you know, it's a theme that you could put a lot of stuff under. But for me, it essentially means I'm reading a lot of books by authors like Erik Larson, Walter Isaacson, the biographer, Ron Chernow, the biographer. So all these different authors that are writing historical stories generally about leaders, learners and communicators, you know, the same passion areas of mine that I can learn from these past people that have gone before. And I can hopefully avoid some of the mistakes they made and steal some of their successes into my arsenal.

Suzie Price: Do you take notes along the way? Are you doing it on audible? And kind of. I know Tim Ferriss has a whole process that he does around saving notes and audible and something. Do you do anything like that, or. Because I know you write articles on them and the articles are very a very good summary of different things. In fact, that's how I first found you, was I was looking for a summary on a book, and I'm like, who is this guy? Yeah. Is this Bobby Powers? I go figure him out. He seems pretty cool. But anyway, how do you track?

Bobby Powers: Yeah, I write copious notes in every book, so I use them in the book itself, which I know to some of your listeners. Sounds sacrilegious. So I realized that some of you, it's like nails on a chalkboard. I promise if you give it a shot, you will never go back. So essentially what it is, is the back cover of every book I use is my one page summary of the book, and I've written plenty of articles about this. I can actually share an article maybe you can include in the show notes later, but yeah, but yeah. So in the back cover of the book, I'll list the page number and what I took away from any of my main takeaways from the book, so I can crack open that book three years later, and I can find my 20 biggest takeaways, along with the page number where I can go and read more. I can find the my favorite quotes from that book, and then I usually have a section of what are the other books that author recommended? Because I've realized over all this reading through the years that some of the best books come from recommendations from my favorite authors. So then I have a section in the back cover of all of their suggested reading that. Then I'll go and I'll try to chip away on those books. But yeah, my process is really twofold is one is reading physical books and taking physical notes and physical books, which I swear by. And then the second process is I use a note taking app called obsidian, and I put a lot of my notes into obsidian, and I'll tag them and I'll use them for articles later. So essentially that's a way for me to weaponizing all of that content later for my own writing.

Suzie Price: Yes. Yeah. So I feel like I've got to get a better system because I have all these ideas and I'll remember pretty much where it is, but it's a little bit of a search sometimes.

Bobby Powers: It can be tough, especially if you're reading a lot. It's it's hard to keep all that stuff straight. So I found just putting the notes in the physical book itself is so helpful because then you have that one page summary in the back cover.

Suzie Price: Well, I always learn better by writing. I did that in college and do it today. I mean, if I write, write it out, it sticks better.

Bobby Powers: A lot of research backs that up too. So I think that there's a power in physical books too. I might be in the minority saying this, but I can't do e-readers. I don't even do a lot of audible or audiobooks. I enjoy those types of things. But I've just found from testing it on myself, my reading comprehension is not the same. I don't have that physical, tangible interaction with the text. Well, you're.

Suzie Price: Reading it, you can mouth it, you can write, then you're writing your your, you know, the key touch points. Yeah. Which keeps you grounded in the book. I know there's a lot of probably more fancy research to say that, but I physically and mentally, I could see that. That's great.

[00:29:03] Bobby Powers: So for any of your listeners that want to start baby stepping toward the approach of writing in books, there's a simple three step process. You can use star, underline, back cover S.U.B is the acronym I try to remember. So star the passages that jump out to you in the margins. Star that section, underline the sentences that really jump out so you can quickly find them later. And then those areas that you've starred in underlined as the most impactful ones. Write notes in the back cover of the book with the page number, and then you can go and find all the details and that author's exact quotes.

Suzie Price: Oh, I'm smiling. That really is really great. Thank you for sharing that.

Bobby Powers: You bet. It's been really helpful.

Suzie Price: Powerful. Powerful. Because that, you know, sometimes when I read stuff, I have such a pressure on myself to remember it and use it and find it, that then it causes a level of stress. Yeah. Right. One of the things I gotta know and it's like, oh my goodness, how do I, how do I. Yeah. So that's fantastic. Okay, great. Um, so we're going to dive into more about you and your influences. And, and one thing that is probably a good place to segue is talking about your Wake Up Eager strengths. We always do this segment when our people were interviewing or willing to complete the assessment and you did complete it. So thank you for doing that. So Talent Insights assessment and it lists what according to the assessment your most motivated by and how you like to communicate and the motivation. We use a car analogy. The motivation is a measurement of what puts gas in your tank. So you know you can have a beautiful vehicle. Um, and it has no gas. It's not going anywhere. So this is according to the assessment what motivates you? And drum roll please. Um, what the assessment said most motivates Bobby Powers is theoretical knowledge. So this is being an expert. Ding ding ding ding ding ding ding. Knowing things, being an expert. Learning can't pass by a bookstore without maybe wanting to get a book.

Bobby Powers: I laughed when I read that in the insights. Yeah.

Suzie Price: And yeah. And you score passionate so and so. No, there's no wrong answer on this. You know, wherever anybody scores is a perfect one. But it's according to the assessment what we want to spend our time doing. We can do the other things, but we want to spend our time five days a week doing this. And if we can get to do that, we're going to be more motivated and inspired. The second one was individualistic, political, which is and you score passionate in this. And according to the assessment, it says that you you want to be in charge of your own destiny and you'll also be in charge of others destinies, too, you know, and this idea of advancing, bringing a level of charisma, pointing the way, here's how we move forward. So according to the assessment, I'm going to take knowledge and I'm going to use it to lead and help others.

Bobby Powers: And I would say it nailed me. It nailed you. Yeah.

Suzie Price: You said you called a friend of yours or something. Yes.

Bobby Powers: Specifically when I was reading through the insights packet and I got to the part about knowledge and some of the exact lines and takeaways about, like, the bookstore thing that you shared or. Yeah, motivated by the idea of pursuing knowledge for Knowledge's own sake. I took a screenshot of that and I sent it to my best buddy Chris, and I said, hey, this this came out of this assessment that I just took. What do you think? And he just laughed back and he said, boy, they just really nailed you. So I'm the kind of person that I've dragged my wife into hundreds of bookstores through the years that, you know, there's no bookstore in our area she hasn't seen because we'll be walking past something. It's like, okay, let's just pop in here for, you know, just a minute, just a minute. So we do that even when we pass the little Free Libraries and neighborhoods that they'll have, like little book books out front, we'll go stop at those and check out what's in those. So yeah, extremely, extremely passionate about knowledge and just like anything of an insights or personality packet like this, I think it's important to know what are the pros that come with that and what are the cons that come with this. Yes, yes. And one of the cons that comes from my style is the idea that, you know, pursuing knowledge at the abandonment of action at times is that for me, it's really fascinating to just learn new things. I'm so insanely curious to learn about everything, but I have to find ways to make those ideas more practical. And so even when I'm leading trainings, I have to work really hard to make sure that I'm not just sharing this conceptual framework that I found interesting. I'm sharing the nitty gritty details of how to use it, how to apply it in your life today.

Suzie Price: Yes. And your third highest was utilitarian, which is a drive to apply things, you know, efficiency and that type of thing. And how bright of you to realize, okay, here's my strength and everything has an overdue because we're so good at the strength that we could overdo it at times. And so with awareness, we can manage it. That's why it's really smart to know your strengths. So how cool is that? To know that that you, you know, figure out ways to apply it. And it ties exactly back to my personal struggle with the expertise, you know, and and, you know, that comes also with the desire to really be of service to the people I'm speaking with or working with. So, yeah, it's a constant, constant battle of, oh, let me tell you everything about this. And no, let me just tell you what you want to know about this and in a way that you want to know it. Uh huh. And that's definitely a journey.

Bobby Powers: Oh for sure. Yeah. And it impacts even the way that you show up as someone listening to those around you. As I'm giving a training on listening later on today. So it's been top of mind for me. Oh, I love it. Okay. And one of one of the things we're talking about in that training is that each one of us has different mechanisms for how we steal stories from other people. And one of the reasons that I sometimes steal or like story tap or steal stories from people and like, take the spotlight on me is. I want to share knowledge. And so someone shares something, it's like, oh, I just read a book about that. Let me tell you about the book. And so I'll jump in and interrupt in a way that is not a good listener way to do it, but it's because I'm so excited about this knowledge that I want to share, and I want to help the person out. So I think every one of our strengths, just like you talked about, it, has these dark sides to it. The have to be aware of that. It's a good motivation to want to share knowledge 100%. That's a great positive thing. But the way in which we do that, we have to be really mindful of.

Suzie Price: Yes, and it does create to me what I like about this particular tool is it very quickly helps you see, without judgment where you are and where other people are. So whatever you score, number six, you're not that interested in because this is like your personal interest, which turned into workplace motivators. So you might not be interested in it, but somebody else is. So I've gotten to where I really enjoy opposites, you know. So like my number six is and somebody else has that, I go, oh goody, you know I love that. Or let's say the theoretical is there number six. I'm like, cool. Because you know what? They're going to take the same information that we're learning and they're going to synthesize it a lot quicker. And how they explain it, they're already at the just give you a headline on it, you know, and I'm all deep in the, in my head and, you know, trying to be all philosophical about it like, oh my gosh I just learned so much, you know? So it takes a judgment out of a team and takes a judgment from yourself and enjoyment of other people a lot, a lot goes into that. What do you think shaped your theoretical? It's usually nature nurture and your individualistic. Where there are people in your life that might have either they were they were positive examples or anti examples growing up that brought you to have this passion because you scored passionate in both of your top two. Yeah. Strong.

Bobby Powers: Yeah. You know that's a question I've gotten a lot from friends when they, they get to know me on a deep level and they see how much I read and how much I love learning, they'll ask, where did that come from? I've introspected on it a lot, Susie, and I honestly don't really know. Which is so weird and frustrating. Yeah, um, the best answer I have for you is as a little kid, I absolutely loved reading, so I did. If anyone's familiar with the Pizza Hut Book It program, it was a program Pizza Hut ran years ago that kids could read books and earn pizza or free concert tickets or whatever other things kids are interested in. So I used to do that program and I won all these, like, tickets to baseball games. Oh yeah, free pizza and all this stuff. And like, I got super into it. And I loved reading back then. But then in junior high and high school, I feel like I had the love of reading bashed out of me by reading comprehension quizzes and school. And everything was for a grade on an assignment or a test. And so the idea of reading for fun completely went out the window in my head. I never did any reading for fun junior high, high school, and most of college. And then the best answer I can give for what brought it back is Malcolm Gladwell, the writer, Malcolm Gladwell. I picked up his book blink. Yes. And I was.

Suzie Price: Fantastic.

Bobby Powers: Fantastic book. Still love that book to this day. I read it my senior year of college, and it was the first time in a long time I had read a book for fun, and it was the first time, I think ever that I realized you can enjoy reading nonfiction. I didn't really even realize that, oh, people read nonfiction and have a good time doing it, but I had just read this nonfiction book, blink, and I loved it. And so that book specifically taught me, okay, well, I can enjoy this. And I started to notice that in conversations with friends, topics were coming up that I had just read about in blink or in Tipping Point, or in these other books I had been reading, and it felt really fun to be able to share with people. Oh, hey, I actually just read some research about that. Here's what you should know. And so it really made my conversations that much more robust and rich. And after I had that kind of intrinsic motivation and reapplication of what I was learning in those cool ways, it just pushed me toward reading even more. So it really was just this self-fulfilling loop that the more I read, the more I got out of it. And so I read more.

Suzie Price: Yeah, well, there you go. So it wasn't it wasn't. Pizza Hut was the start. They were your big influencer.

Bobby Powers: Pizza hut was the start. All credit to Pizza Hut early on.

Suzie Price: Pizza Hut go Pizza Hut. Are they still around? I don't know, but I remember we used to get the $5 deep dish something. Lunch or something. Yeah. Which I would never eat today because I'm kind of a health nut now. But anyway, that's interesting. Okay.

Bobby Powers: That's great. So yeah, there's the answer to your question. Pizza Hut and Malcolm Gladwell.

Suzie Price: Malcolm Gladwell.

Bobby Powers: Yeah. Two, two very weird answers.

Suzie Price: And how often would you put them in the same sentence? I know.

Bobby Powers: Right. This might be the first time ever.

Suzie Price: Yes, yes. And you're making quite an impact. And I read at the opening a bit about your recommendation recommendations that people have given you on your LinkedIn. And everyone heard that, that they weren't light recommendations. They were very rich. And. Deep recommendations. And I think to myself, okay, so a lot of that has to do with how he's showing up and what how he's showing up. Are these 70 books he's reading, I mean, who you are as a human, but the depth of your knowledge, it seems like you're making a big impact everywhere you go.

Bobby Powers: Yeah, well thank you, thank you. That's definitely my goal is I feel like if what we're reading, what we're learning only serves us, we're really missing out on the majority of the equation. And so I, I almost look at it like breathing is like breathe in, breathe out. I'm breathing in information. I want to breathe it out and try to help other people. Nice. And so that constant breathe in and breathe out process, I think all of us should do in different ways with our jobs is you learn something, you teach something, you learn something else, you teach something else.

[00:40:28] Suzie Price: Yeah, leave the world a better place based on some insight that you've gained and you and really, the idea that really helps me too, is I don't have to serve the world. I serve the person that's in front of me. Yeah, I love that. Yeah. That makes it's like, so that might be my neighbor or it might be my nephews, or it might be the current client that I'm in front of, or the group that I'm in front of, and just stay super focused on that. And the world will take care of itself. And the, the universal kind of put the right people in front of you because you have that intention. I think it feels like, yeah.

Bobby Powers: Yeah, it attracts it's like a magnet that you bring in more opportunities.

Suzie Price: Yeah, to just serve. And if your intention is to serve and share, I love I love your whole perspective. So what are you reading now?

[00:41:16] Bobby Powers: Yeah, so I've been on a kick recently reading some biographies, like I mentioned specifically biographies by Robert Caro. So yeah. So Robert Caro is an author I only became familiar with about a year or two ago. He he's written about two subjects ever in book form. One is a guy named Robert Moses, who was the architect of most of New York City, built a lot of the public works, the parkways, the highways, the buildings that made New York City what it is today. And Robert Caro wrote about Moses. And in that process of writing about this guy, Robert Moses, the book is called The Power Broker. The Power Broker about Robert Moses in the process, about learning of of Moses's life. Moses was a political power maker more than almost anyone else in history. He's kind of a kingmaker in New York City politics. And so Caro, the biographer, became fascinated by the idea of political power in America. And specifically learning through this guy Moses. And he figured out like, well, who are other political figures that are interesting that have used and abused power in the US? And so he set his sights on Lyndon B Johnson next. Oh, wow. And he wrote a five book series on Lyndon B Johnson's life, the most robust biography series you will ever find.

Bobby Powers: Um, my buddy and I are reading through it together and we're about to start book two. So we're very early in the journey of learning about LBJ. But book one, about LBJ's life, was a fascinating portrayal of how LBJ, even as a college student, fixed elections in in his college in Texas so he would win political office and his friends would win political office, and then he would use the political office oftentimes for good things, like he was using the power for good and for bad. But Caro, the biographer, was fascinated in these public figures that were accruing power. And then how did they use that power? So Caro specifically has spent 50, 60 years of his life researching and writing about how power is used in America. So I just fell in love with that idea. I think it sounds fascinating. I'm reading about, you know, LBJ, reading about Robert Moses, and to me it's a little like time capsule of history, but it's also a warning message for all of us of what we need to be careful with leaders that we elect and with things that we even find in ourselves for personality traits like ambition.

Suzie Price: Yes, and caro is spelled.

Bobby Powers: C-A-R-O.

Suzie Price: Okay. Yeah, that is the way you describe that. That is fascinating. And it actually it's interesting that you brought that up at this point because individualistic political is the motivator that is this a willingness to lead, willing to be out front, want to be in charge of your own destiny? You see it in entrepreneurs. You see it. I mean, you see it in in organizations. A lot of times on executive teams, a lot of the people on the executive team have individualistic political. And so, you know, if you ever have, like any challenge on an executive team, it's like, no, I'm in charge. No, I'm in charge. No, I'm in charge. I'm in charge because they all bring that strength, like you were talking about earlier, that overdo that we might do, you know. But the goodness is, is that they're willing to be out front, you know, so if somebody isn't willing to be out front and somebody who scores it as their lowest interest, like, man, don't put the spotlight on me, I don't want the spotlight. So, you know, so interesting this to read that right now and especially with a presidential election. And yeah, that's interesting. We'll put a link to that in the show notes.

Bobby Powers: Yeah. It's been fascinating to read about. And I'm still very early in this journey of, you know, reading more about history and reading specifically about political power. But it's just been so fascinating because it starts to teach you a little bit about how the world works and in good ways, and also some dark ways. Yeah. And I feel like it's been really interesting, too, because I had read about LBJ in multiple other books. He's come up and half the books referenced him as this political savior. Half the books referenced him as a horrible human and I, I was so confused by that, you know, it didn't make any sense. I know people are gray area and not black and white, but I was really confused. So now reading this biography, I realized that he was a complex person. He had a lot of great outcomes. My cousins that live in Texas love the guy because he did so much for the state of Texas and so much for our country. But also the way he achieved that power was sometimes a little suspect. So you get to read both sides of it and you get to make up your own mind.

Suzie Price: Yeah. And we always think that wherever it's happening now is like, oh, it's never been as bad as this. Or, you know, it's like, well, yeah, not really. Everything old is right again or something like that. What is it? I don't know. So it's interesting the fixed elections and the power and the polarization of who he is. Love him. Don't love them. You know that. That's pretty present right now. We maybe feel like it's bigger because of social media and all that. Maybe it is bigger. I don't know, but.

Bobby Powers: I think it's at least more noticeable now. So back in LBJ's era, we didn't all have a microphone in our pockets, so we could instantly broadcast messages and we could instantly tweet about it. And so that has really changed the dynamic around not only American politics, but around everything that everybody can have an opinion. And not only do you have an opinion, you can actually broadcast that opinion. And that broadcasting ability is so fundamentally different than 50 years ago.

 Suzie Price: And it's interesting who the influencers are. You know, depending on your ability to influence you can, you know, really be incorrect and influence a lot. Right. Right. You know, so it's it's interesting. So talk a little bit about who the word successful and who first comes to mind for you in your life. Who who around you do you see as most successful. What would you say.

[00:47:06] Bobby Powers: Yeah. So one of the people I benchmark myself against is an author named Ryan Holiday. Um, one of my favorite authors. Yeah, I love reading a lot of his stuff. He writes a lot about marketing and business and stoic philosophy. So he is one of the foremost figures who has brought stoicism into a modern day light. And if you're unfamiliar with stoicism, there's a lot of articles and books about it, but basically like a quick tweet version for your your audience here is it's the idea that you have all these winds that blow against you every day in life. All this frustrating stuff that you go through. And a stoic mindset focuses on what you can control and separates that from what you can't control. And so as I've become more endeared to this idea of stoicism, every situation I go through in life, I try to figure out what can I control about that? I'm going to try to focus on that and put my energy and enthusiasm toward that. And what can I not control about that? And I will try to actively forget about those things because it's not on my it's not on me. It's not on Bobby. That's a world thing to try to figure that out. So one way I wrestle with that personally is the idea that, you know, I write online sometimes you write an article that makes a big splash, sometimes you write an article that doesn't. And all I can control is the effort that I put in to writing that article.

Bobby Powers: I can't control the reception later on. So yeah, this author, Ryan Holiday, has been really a big moving presence for me, not just from a literary perspective, but just a life philosophy perspective of taking all these ancient ideas from Marcus Aurelius and Seneca and Epictetus and all these ancient philosophers, and reminding people that those philosophical ideas, they're not for 2000 years ago, and they're not for some stodgy old textbook. They're actually for how to live a better life today. So, yeah, Ryan Holiday is the big one I would point to. And one of the things he actually mentions to you about success is that he views the biggest successful person is the person that you maybe have never even heard of. That is they're going about their day and they're living a life that is making them content, making them personally satisfied, and we don't have to know about them. And so that's been a good reminder for me too, is that sometimes success for many of us, it should not look like headlines in Newsweek or Wall Street Journal. It should look like, do you love your family? Do you? When you pass away, will you have people at your deathbed that are there holding your hand? And what what will be written on your tombstone someday? Like that's what really matters. And that to me is what success is all about is who we are, not what we do.

 Suzie Price: Yeah, I think about I've got to know these this elderly group that's part of the Hartman Institute. And I've had a lot of them on the podcast, and each one of them is living such a successful life. You know, they studied Hartman, which is part of the work we do. And they lived his principles. And you probably never heard of him? No, but I haven't, you know, you know, when these different people, you hear them talk about their lives and the richness of their lives. And I'm not talking about money is powerful, you know, it's just it's just it almost gets me emotional to think about it. So it's such a good example. So I'll put a link to those. They're some of those episodes in the podcast, I mean in the show notes. But and I love the idea of if you're struggling with anything, stop and say, what can I control? And your struggle will just drop on the floor. Yeah.

Bobby Powers: Yeah. It's really amazing how much of a focusing question that can be. And I've used it in so many different situations where, you know, I just finished a big work project and my boss is dissatisfied with some aspect of that, like a past company I worked at and, and I was just really stewing in that for a long time. I was frustrated and I was like, doubting myself. And I was thinking about this was, you know, back a number of years ago, and I was just wracking my head and I thought, you know what? I put in my my best work on that. I feel really good about the quality of the effort that I put in. I think I controlled all the variables I could. It turns out there were some things I wasn't aware of, and that's okay. I've learned that lesson. But in general I. I can't control how someone reacts to something, but I can control how I did on that thing for me. And so I think that we can use as a focusing question, even on a daily basis, with any time you get an upset client email or you know, you have something that doesn't quite go your way and some work opportunity, that's okay. Reflect on what you can take away from it and ask yourself, did you control what you could control?

Suzie Price: Yeah, switch the focus. It's immediate. It can be immediate. Switch if we practice it. I could talk to you all day, but you have other work to do. So I'm going to do the last couple questions. But you are just an amazing person and all the insight the way you share it is very enjoyable. So last three questions. What advice would you give your 25 year old self?

Bobby Powers: Yeah, I would tell young Bobby, you know, trying to figure out his way in his career. Run toward the fire. That was advice I got back a number of years ago that has stuck with me ever since. And when I say run toward the fire, I mean, if you see something that looks like a gnarly problem rather than running the other way, run toward it. And those are the types of challenges that will teach you the most. Those are the types of challenges that will show you even who you are as a person. And Elon Musk, who's another very controversial figure you can learn much good and much bad from Elon Musk.

Suzie Price: I'm listening to his book right now about his biography. He's crazy in a great way, but golly.

Bobby Powers: Fascinating book, the Walter Isaacson one that just came out. Yeah. Fascinating book. Um, so Elon Musk at one point said, if you solve the toughest challenges, you will earn yourself more tough challenges, but you'll also be rewarded. And that's what I found is like, basically, you solve a tough challenge for a company. They'll pass another one on to your desk, and you'll get the tougher and tougher and tougher things. But along the way, you're accruing all kinds of rewards in terms of what you're learning and even sure, salary comes with that, and job promotions come from that, and you end up becoming known as the person that's the go to for tough problems. So I would say, you know, 25 year old Bobby runs for the fire. Try to find more ways to do that. And if you see something that looks really scary, take that as a sign, like, use that fear as your compass and go that direction.

Suzie Price: Yeah. And the satisfaction when you get to the other side is indescribable. You're talking about building your inner worth, you know, in, like, your, your own stability within yourself. Conquer some of those challenges. Yeah.

Bobby Powers: Oh, it helps out so much for the next one because then you can look back and say, oh, I have all this proof that I've been able to do hard things. I bet I can do this one too.

Suzie Price: That's awesome, I love that I have not heard that before, so I love that. Okay, so now I'm really interested in what you're going to say on this next one. If you could put a billboard anywhere maybe to influence others, what message would you share and is there a specific place you'd put it?

Bobby Powers: Yeah, as far as where to put it, I would probably put it in the, you know, highest traffic place imaginable. So maybe right along the one of the main freeways in LA or something. But I would probably just put the phrase we talked about before of control what you can control, forget about everything else. And I feel like if I was driving into work on one of the main freeways in LA and saw that every day, it would be a really good reminder to me of, oh yeah, there's probably a lot of stuff going on that I'm just letting spill around my brain and really dilute my thinking ability, and I just need to drop all that kind of stuff. I have to flush that mental toilet and get rid of it and focus on the things that I actually need to control. So I think for me, that would be a good reminder. I think for everybody else that would be a good reminder. So I'd probably pick that one.

Suzie Price: That's a good one. Yeah. We have to remind ourselves because we tend to want to pick up other things. You know, it's like, oh, let me worry about this for a bit. You know, like, no, no, no. Focus on what you can control. It goes much better. It goes much better. So last bit of wisdom is something else that you think can think about that you want every leader or coach take away from this discussion. What would you share.

Bobby Powers: Yeah. So it would be in a piece of advice from John Wooden. So one of my favorite books of all time is Wooden on Leadership, written by old UCLA basketball coach John Wooden. And what impacted me most about that book is it felt like half the book was not talking about how to manage processes and like, get more out of people. It was about how to love your people, it was about how to care for your people. And I was reminded of this yesterday. I was talking to a guy on the leadership team with me at work. So I work at a company called Jitasa. We do accounting for nonprofit organizations. So I was talking to my buddy Aaron, and I was asking him about his past football experience, and he was saying that his favorite coach ever was someone who started every meeting with a life lesson for the team. It wasn't anything football related. It was about, here's how to be a better human today. Here's, you know, a way to love on people a little bit more today. And that jumped out to Aaron the same way that reading about this book from John Wooden, it jumped out to all his players, is that if you go and you interview players that played for John Wooden, they don't tell you, oh man, fantastic basketball coach. They tell you incredible leader of people. He cared for people, he loved people. And that love is what spilled over to the scoreboard. It did impact the scoreboard. It helped him win. I think it was seven national championships in a row or whatever the crazy number was, and that was the outcome. But that wasn't his main focus. His main focus was loving the team.

Suzie Price: Yeah, people first, people before ideas before doing people first. That's fantastic. And it made me think of Ted Lasso. Did you watch that series?

Bobby Powers: I did, I loved it.

Suzie Price: So that probably the idea might have spun off from wooden because that's really what he does is love them. Yeah. You know.

Bobby Powers: Yeah. It seems like a lot of parts of Ted Lasso's character were probably modeled after that kind of idea.

Suzie Price: Probably influenced by. So do you do speaking for other people or other organizations? Because I think you're doing that today.

[00:57:29] Bobby Powers: I do, yeah. So I do public speaking for companies so you can find information about that on my website BobbyPowers.net. Yeah. Happy to do speaking opportunities really any time I can help people out with any of this stuff, whether it's writing or speaking or whatever, I just love trying to find ways to help people be better leaders, learners, and communicators like we had talked about before. So yes, so awesome.

Suzie Price: So we'll link to your website. We'll link to your LinkedIn. And if you're not following Bobby, go follow him and check out all of his wonderful articles. And just thank you for all the good work you do and all the goodness that you're spreading to people like me and all the listeners here today and all all the people you touch. So thanks for being you and thanks for participating on this today.

Bobby Powers: Yeah. Thank you so much, Susie, I appreciate it.

[00:58:13] Suzie Price: I hope you enjoyed the episode in our conversation, and I know you realize that all of those recommendations were sincere, and you saw evidence of that in our conversation. I have links in the show notes to his contact information on LinkedIn, to his web page, and to the articles that we talked about, some of the information we talked about. I loved what we talked about when the overdues of expertise and I actually have the article The Curse of Knowledge article, because that is really one of my challenges, is to be able to go to what I do with a beginner's mind and see it from others perspective and not gloss over things, or get too excited about something and go too deep when it's not necessary. And you know, I love what he shared about the things he's done to overcome his expertise. And then from the article, I was just going to read the five items as just a reminder and the curse of Knowledge. I'll just read from his article a little bit. The curse of knowledge is the bane of every leader, teacher, salesperson, subject matter expert, public speaker, and writer. It's the idea that all of us forget what it's like to first learn something. As our knowledge grows, we become more familiar with the nuances of a topic. It becomes harder to communicate the concepts simply. And he uses the example of an Excel wizard. And it's hard to explain a spreadsheet to newbies because they're just you're such an expert at it. Or if you're a professional musician, you may struggle to know where to begin. When you're teaching a ten year old how to play guitar.

Suzie Price: And I loved his example about he and his wife being on vacation and learning the ukulele. And they just learned a few things to strum, and they felt great about it. And so I think as leaders and communicators and presenters, always going back to the basics and using his tips, because with knowledge comes a distance and his distance, as he says, I'm reading from his article from our beginner's mind and to remind you of the five things. And as I read these, I checked them off to make sure I was doing them. And I continued to work at this. But use analogies. The second thing is slice difficult concepts into manageable chunks. Riff used to use jargon, which is great. That's been helpful, and I've been working on that and making sure I don't introduce the jargon too quick, you know, before they're even ready or interested to know the additional information and then start at 30,000ft, then dive bomb closer. So start really broad and then continually check for understanding. This is a quote I've used so much every time I do like a conflict resolution or a, you know, two people aren't really maybe they're not so much in conflict, but they're not communicating very well. And we do a triad type call. It's a quote from George Bernard Shaw that I use, and I love these guys here. The single biggest problem with communication is an illusion that it has taken place. So sometimes we've communicated well. I've told them, you know, it's like, yeah, that's illusion. Did they hear it? And did they hear what you really meant to say? And so check for understanding.

Suzie Price: So we've got some great tips and we can overcome this formidable foe of the curse of knowledge and make sure that we're communicating complex ideas simply. There are so many things I've enjoyed about this conversation. I have remembered the sub, you know, on the back of the book star things that I read that I want to remember, underline things that I think are really important and in the back of the book, capture anything that has stars and underline so great content and information from Bobby. I appreciate him taking time to be on the podcast. Appreciate you being a wake up, eager workforce listener. Thank you for being part of our network and we look forward to future conversations. Just remember, if you did get something from this episode or other episodes, we'd love to have a review that helps people find us. If you do give a review, send me a note. Let me know that you did it, and then we will send you a complimentary report so we could give you the Talent Insights Report or maybe the Motivators Report. We've got tools that can help you debrief it, and it's just kind of fun information to learn about yourself. And it can be really helpful in your learning. And so it's a little bit of the wake up eager strengths that we talk about on every episode. So thank you for tuning in. If you have any comments, thoughts or recommendations, please reach out if I can help you in any way. Take care, be safe, be good, be happy and we'll see you on the next episode. Take care.

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