Stop Shouting! Collaboration Through Candid Conversation

[Music] amazing game designers so psyched you decided to show up even though this is just about as later than GDC as you can get I am honored by your presence and attention thank you welcome to stop shouting collaboration through candid conversation you all know how challenging it is to lead in video game development you're leading multidisciplinary teams of people that maybe enjoy games more than they enjoy other people occasionally it's not an easy role that you have for those who are not at my talk the other day long story short I have been a producer and leader in game development and made many games so I like to think I know what I'm talking about when I say video leading vo game development is hard problem we're here to focus on this our is the difficult conversations make it harder quick definition of difficult conversations people disagree and

emotions run high I'm gonna talk throughout this workshop as if it's two people disagreeing for simplicity but of course it may be a group involved non rhetorical question I'm hoping you will shout out answers loud enough for my drumming and trumpet damaged ears to hear why do you care if you're good at difficult conversations you want to make them easier yes and you want to make decisions absolutely and they're usually really important yes that is fundamentally why I started paying more attention to this these are the moments where you fire the person or you don't you hire the person or you don't you get the publishing deal or you don't the feature you love gets in the game or it doesn't often these difficult moments are the most important moments of our careers if not our lives so that's why I

like you want to be better at these fortunately data and experience tell us why and how we can do a better job of collaborating as always I'm trying to give you as little of my opinion as possible I typically try to ground what I'm presenting in as much science as possible some of these are quite scientific sources couple of journals on the bottom Crucial Conversations and emotional intelligence based on good science but I want to be completely candid with you all there are also books here that are not as science-based creativity ink upper right for example is edy Kat Mel's book for those who don't know he runs Pixar and Disney Animation and knows something about helping creative technical teams produce greatness candor is a central theme of his book and that's why it's included among my sources what does all that data and experience tell us that it is possible to more intelligently conduct candid conversations and in order to

reach collaboration through those difficult conversations a lot to do if you want to achieve that so breaking down into three sections for today first examine your beliefs and if you don't already value conflicts see if you can take the next step in understanding the value in conflict and maybe embracing it a bit more that should set you up to better collaborate through that conflict if you're going to collaborate you need to be thinking win-win you need to bring all of your cooperation and then all of your assertion to reach collaboration that is roughly 1 gazillion times easier said than done which is why the third and final section is boost emotional intelligence to boost success I I hear is emotional intelligence we're gonna walk through each of those sections I will ask you to participate with me and various things that science say will help you learn and remember and act on this long term I do have a handout for

you here's how you can get it if you have a you ace us-based phone you can text happy brain with no spaces to 41444 to this texting system probably won't work for you in which case you could email me I am Scott at happy brain science comm or if you want the handout but you don't want to get on my mailing list email me and say don't add me to your list you spamming jerk just give me the handout I will show you this information again at the end of the talk if you're not sure whether or not you want the handout yet lots more detail in the handout then we'll have time to go over today so intelligently conducting candid conversations in order to collaborate begins by examining your beliefs and

perhaps taking the next step in learning to value conflict so here is where I would like you to talk to each other ideally in pairs but I don't want anybody to be left out so let's not leave anyone out unless they want to be left out so groups of three are just fine but ideally pairs for the next two minutes you are talking about two questions first one is how do you personally feel about conflict when someone says Greg I need to talk to you later in my office do you go who you or Oh God well how do you personally relate to conflict and then the second question I want you to discuss is how does your studio relate to conflict or whatever organization you're with what's the culture of conflict in your organization please pair and share discuss for the next two minutes those two questions that's my way of letting you all know it's time to stop talking please and come back to one group conversation

thanks so much for for choosing to participate regardless how you feel about conflict science says it is coming your way this is the Tuchman model of team building first published in an academic journal in the 60s and has had a number of supporting studies published since then this is a model I learned a quote recently I think it's by George box the quote is all models are flawed some models are useful LUP quote what it means is anytime you're dealing with a model you're dealing with an imperfect representation of reality does Team Dynamics always work this way no of course not but it's a useful model it helps us understand some of what's happening to us in game development teams this science has stood the test of time everybody's starting at Intel at least when I started there Oh 10 years ago or so we're all trained in the

Tuchman model because it's so useful Tuchman model says when you get together a game development team in the first place you are forming forming means you are very polite to each other it is very pleasant and it is not very real nor is it very productive if someone hurts you or says something you think is stupid in a meeting you're likely to go so that's that's forming that's polite but not terribly real once you get to know each other a little more you start storming this is the conflict stage of team building that's not your job that's my job hey you don't tell me what to do yes I do we don't do it that way around here well you should do it that way around here conflict comes in storming it's not bad it's inevitable if you want to move through it you cannot skip over it according to this model and all of my

game development and other team experiences have confirmed this model for me it is impossible to go from forming to norming you have to go through storming to get to norming in norming you're starting to know what to expect from each other oh yeah that's your your job to do that part of the codebase not mine oh yeah that's how Kevin works you know Stephanie you need to ask her ahead of time because she likes lots of warnings you're getting used to each other you're working better together but you're still not a well-oiled machine there's effort in working better together if you stay together long enough without a reorg by the way anytime a new team member comes or some significant change comes you go back to forming and it's called reforming and then you can more quickly move through these stages but it's only when you through move through all these stages you get to the promised land performing if you've ever been on a team where everything is clicking everybody knows who's gonna do what and how and the baton passes smoothly without a lot

of effort it is a dream come true especially in game development you only get there by working through the conflict if you're willing I would like to ask you to stand up to show me which stage you think you and your colleagues are at now those who saw my talk the other day forgive the repetition why am I asking you to stand up and not just raise your hands because science suggests when your body's active your brain produces more of what scientists call BDNF brain-derived neurotropic factor which long scientific story short you can think of as learning aid so what you do is up to you you can raise your hand or nod your head or whatever you want but if you're willing please on your feet if you are currently forming in your game development thank you few of you thank you if you are currently storming on your feet please I would expect a high number of people given the topic of this session thank you you can sit down who has

reached norming the storming is starting to die down you're doing pretty well good good on you well done thank you you can sit down and I'm guessing the few the proud the performing teams all of you yes good job people awesome thank you you can sit down if you stood up during forming or storming go talk to those performing people and ask them how they got there what the science suggests is you get there by working through conflict not skipping it not playing inning in but working through it which is what this session is about so when that inevitable conflict comes you will react I want you to imagine for a minute that you are not at your best somebody didn't tell you in a very skillful polite way that your design sucked let's say they told you in a really rude way that triggered you if you're not at your

best you tend to bring one of these styles these Styles very roughly correspond with the fight-or-flight response fight or flight response is our built-in innate fast much faster than our logical brains our limbic system and brain stem respond with fight-or-flight it's not a switch it's a continuum you can be a little stressed out or full-on panicked and when you're towards fight-or-flight your brain figuratively shrinks so that your limbic system and brain stem the parts of your brain that look very much like the brains of all other mammals come to the front burner and they say hey I've got the answers the answer is our fight run or although you hear about it less because it doesn't rhyme your third option is just freeze because if you shut up and stay still the mountain lion might not see you and you might get away that way awesome for dealing with mountain lions and not so helpful for dealing with each other and problems in game development so very roughly those correspond to fighting some people get

very aggressive oh yeah well I'll tell you what to do in your stupid feedback right and some people get super cooperative essentially running I'll give you whatever you I hate you dude whatever that's fine we could do it your way and some of us just want to avoid a contact conflict altogether these are very natural human responses conflict only until very recent well still to present-day really if I think about it in a depressing way conflict can be dangerous or deadly for human beings so you're wired to survive and so a natural this fight-or-flight response is a natural way to stay alive and avoid conflict because you tend not to win conflicts with mountain lions but in the studio you're not dealing with mountain lions but your brain is wired to deal with mountain lions if you're willing I know I'm putting these nasty labels and you would never describe yourself as aggressive or acquiescing but if you're

willing to map yourself to one of these three let's do a quick second round of standing up if you want to fight when conflict comes on your feet please the aggressors again you're not at your best you're being pushed into this Thank You fighters you can sit I said sit down fighter sorry bad joke if you acquiesce hey dude whatever you want that's fine I'll adjust the schedule I'll do the feature your way on your feet please all the fighters are like can I hire that guy thank you you can sit down and if you're just like I'm running I'm avoiding I'm not talking to you I got to go home if you're if you just tend to avoid conflict please on your feet and see how we have different styles and part of your job as a leader is to understand your own natural style your teammates natural style and how to work with it there are better versions of these responses right aggression can

just be asserting how do you get calmer and more logical so you can bring a more constructive response you'll learn to value conflict as not being so threatening I hope you'll all forgive me for doing what I virtually never do putting a ton of text on screen I think it's terrible in presentations but I wanted to be sure to get this quote right because it's from a person who's way smarter than I am who published this article the conflict positive organization it depends on us in the Journal of organizational behavior Dean says as you can see by developing cooperative relationships and the skills to discuss diverse views open-mindedly organizations can empower managers and employees to use conflict to probe problems create innovative solutions learn from their experience and enliven their relationships it does indeed depend on us and if we can embrace conflict a bit more as a useful tool we might respond a bit

better to it and not be so fight-or-flight e about conflict conflict makes the unseen visible your job as a leader in game development is to find and fix problems and make things better right that is impossible if you don't know a problem exists when conflict arises you know there's a problem there anyone had conflict bring an issue to their attention that they did not know was there before the conflict see all the hands so this is one of them any values in conflict asthma it makes the unseen visible I apologize I don't have much time for stories today but edie cat mills book is filled with great stories creativity Inc if you want inspiration and stories around some of these key points I'm making here on valuing conflict conflict can also solve those problems that they raise and bring balance right you might have a pair of people that's way out of balance

John what John feels fantastic he thinks the projects going great and Julie thinks why is John such a all in making my life miserable all the time at work conflict can actually make that a little more balanced for people conflict is part of the creative process it's how you make great games given the short amount of time we have I will leave it there now beliefs don't change with a snap of a fingers right but maybe just maybe your brain has heard something that made us made sense and beliefs are starting to shift for you so I invite and encourage you to take a minute or so in silence and think what have you heard so far what's relevant for you and what if anything is starting to shift in your beliefs around conflict please think or write for a minute of silence wrap up please we have time for

maybe one quick question ideally at one of these mics but if you're trapped in the middle of a row just shout it out to me please tell me what questions you have so far you should know I'll spare you my little lecture if I ask you four questions and you don't give me an I assume it means you've completely understood and agreed with everything I've said sir I heard you except for the very few first few words so for the recording and those who couldn't hear how can you define conflict in a way that it stays away from toxicity and damage I don't actually I think conflict is conflict and it runs this full spectrum from incredibly damaging I mean who here is still really pissed off at someone that they have been

pissed off at for over a year because of something that happened over a year ago in game development right I mean a ton of us are by the way quick aside science of happiness says those who forgive end up happier happier brains fundamentally work better so not my topic but if you can find your way to forgiveness you'll be happier and work better now but it is the full spectrum right and I've had people shouting at me and I have not been at my best and I have damaged relationships when I'm down here and I've also gone into a disagreement thinking oh god this is gonna suck so much and come out literally crying tears of joy because we had the most amazing breakthrough and our relationship is much better now my job in this hour is to try to move you up that line as far as we can together fair enough does that answer the question awesome thank you alright so quick repetition cuz science service says repetition causes learning repetition causes learning repetition causes learning so I'm telling you again even though you smart people just heard this to consider examining your beliefs

and seeing if you can take the next step in valuing conflict know yourself and your style when you're not at your best and when you are at your best know how your team tends to respond to conflict and relate to conflict and see if you can take the next step in seeing at least the potential for value in conflict even collaboration through conflict so that you can show up at your best and not like examine your beliefs and learn to value conflict then to collaborate in a difficult conversation you have to be thinking win-win you're going to get there by cooperating and asserting if you comment conflict with a positive frame of mind you might achieve one of these nicer labels right aggression turns to assertion assertiveness is good right acquiescing to somebody all the time turns into just being cooperative right and avoiding things means you let some

stuff go these are the more positive versions of all this and there are upsides to all of these right let's take a let it go as one example if I don't like the way you style your hair it is literally none of my goddamn business I should let it go and not talk to you about it in game development so there are advantages to all these things styles but the science and the evidence suggests that none of these styles by themselves go to collaboration you don't get to collaboration if you're just awesome at asserting nor do you get to collaboration if you're just awesome at cooperating you get there by being awesome at both and bringing all of both bring all of your assertiveness and all of your cooperation and then you're combining ideas which is largely how creativity and innovation happen how do you do that well you gotta be thinking win-win hi I don't have time for a full story but I'll tell you a story of a colleague who was going in to have a

discussion with somebody else and I said I hope it goes well and she said it's gonna go well she just needs to apologize that is not a win-win mindset and I would have bet multiple years of salary that conversation went badly and it did wasn't my role to alter it or stop it by the way you might be thinking dude you're up here talking about that why didn't you tell her what wasn't my role to tell her what to do but you got to be thinking win-win so see if you can think that way before you're in the confrontation with somebody else what's an ideal outcome for both of you then cooperate first because cooperation earns your ability to assert and earns cooperation from the other side some quick ideas about cooperating starts by seeking first to understand them be understood who's read the seven Habits of Highly Effective People tastic book decades old but a classic with millions of copies sold because it is so useful one of the seven Habits is

simply this seek first to understand then to be understood you should be able to state your opponents position if I can use that phrase for quick clarity I should be able to state my opponents vicious position to his or her satisfaction you should be able to say what the other person believes until they say yep that's it how many of us have gone into a conversation thinking boy this is gonna really suck and then realize there was a misunderstanding and things weren't so bad it happens all the time but we still forget to do this right we go in and say you know when you rip me a new one in a code review and make it it's it's oh that wasn't what you were trying to do you were trying to point out the code could be much better I'm sorry maybe I was a little oversensitive so seek first to understand tell the other person their position to their satisfaction with feeling show them you understand get

them to feel that you understand there's something known as the vast food rule actually comes from a doctor who wrote a parenting book of all things but parenting books and and books for managing teams in game development surprising amount of overlap the Fast Food Rules comes from the fact that when you go to a fast-food restaurant you drive up to the drive-through and you're like I'll take a hamburger a veggie burger and some fries and what do they do immediately you want a hamburger veggie burger and some fries is that right that's what you should do in a difficult conversation as well somebody tells you now you got to be careful about this because if you exactly pair it back what somebody says the way a fast-food person would you might feel irritated and annoyed like you're mocking me you a-hole right this can go very badly very quickly but if you paraphrase back to people and let some emotion come into it at about two-thirds of their emotional intensity it's amazing how well this

works so if somebody comes at you and they just seem really frustrated nine out of ten frustrated again you don't want to tell people how you want to feel but you want to show them that you get it you sound really frustrated I can hear how frustrated you are and I can understand how frustrated you are if I were dealing with a really buggy animation tool I'd be frustrated too you're just trying to say I feel ya feelin felt is a primary human need according to psychologists and so what many of us do I don't want to indict the whole gender at once but many of us want to go directly to fixing the problem oh you don't need to be frustrated because I've got Julian read a tree architect the AMS says you don't need to feel skipper right past the validation that validation is cooperation and it opens the door for the other person hearing what else you have to say when you start not with fixing the problem but validating what you've heard and how

they feel they will relax oh you get it you get my frustration now I'm receptive to hearing what you have to say so particle operation is reflecting back what you've heard stating or the other person's position and showing that you feel it you get their emotions in this con context be willing to change your mind one of the favorite quotes I have learned in my multiple decades of career is this one it's better to be effective than right we get hung up on being right it's better to be effective if you're not willing to change your mind you're not willing to collaborate and you shouldn't be in that difficult conversation with someone that they are those are a few tips for cooperating only after you've exhibited some cooperation and after you've seen the

other person's shoulders drop or brow on furrow or jaw relax a little bit and that is your window to bring some assertion how do I want you to assert if you're willing and able and you want to participate please on your feet and pose like a superhero gonna ask you to hold this for two minutes so take a pose you can hold for two minutes you just need to take up a wide amount of physical space awesome power posing thank you now hand up if you've seen Amy Cuddy's TED talk Ted as a conference produces videos Amy Cuddy is a Harvard professor with the number one TED talk in the world that basically says this you're all Harvard students now congratulations I knew I had a room full of smart looking people now you're all randomly divided into your each asked to spit into a vial before this begins sorry that's a little gross but we need to measure a couple things in your bloodstream testosterone present in women and men and associated with assertiveness and cortisol which is

a hormone that indicates you're stressed out and reactive to stress and then half of you are told without any language about power or superheroes or anything else half of you are told would you please take a wide-body posture for a couple of minutes the other half of you please don't do this are told get small fold up on yourself maybe touch your neck and in just two minutes your testosterone assertiveness goes down and your cortisol stress reactivity goes up and the opposite happens over here testosterone assertiveness comes up cortisol stress reactivity goes down if you want to be calm and assertive stand like this for two minutes before you go in to have that difficult conversation now science is not perfect science is a conversation and some studies are not finding as strongly those physical effects but there are a number of studies here and they consistently are showing some psychological effects we feel better when we take up more space Amy Cuddy's further studies have actually found we are least assertive on

our smartphones see where my hands are more assertive on our tablets and most assertive on our pcs no lie tricky so I love science it's so awesome so if you have to give someone some difficult feedback and you're in Chicago and they're in Florida and it's midnight and you got to do it over email get one of those ergonomic keyboards where you can spread the half Zout and be like hi Kevin I would like to discuss this with you by the way works for games if you like strategy games like I do and enemy troops are coming at your base book your keyboard way over hearing a mouse way over here and you're like it's cool I got walls I got troops everything's fine okay thank you superheroes you can sit down if you adopt that wide posture before or during a conflict your body seems your brain seems to follow what your body is doing and you stay calmer and more assertive to begin this

conversation you want to ask permission and then address directly privately and respectfully very quickly let me go over those permission I'm trained as an executive coach and coaches are trained to ask lots of questions including may I ask you a question I know I just did but we're trained to say may I ask you a question may I provide some feedback is it okay if I reflect back what I'm hearing what does that permission do it gets buy-in from the other side you are gonna get somewhere if you have permission now this might feel silly well who's gonna say no to that try it and see how often you get no I swear this has made me a better manager a better father a better husband because often I start a conversation thinking oh my wife really needs some a pep talk right now and I say honey can I can I can I share a few thoughts with you and she's like not yet I'm still processing it's like oh I wouldn't have asked that a year ago and this conversation would have gone a lot worse get permission before you have a difficult conversation

and if I say hey do you have a few minutes I want to talk to you about the animation pipeline and you're like mmm not a good time right now go away don't set yourself up for failure some of us run hangry you know this word if you're not from the US you might hungry and angry I try to be a nice guy if it's for 40 and I'm hungry I will be an old to you so please if you come and say hey I gotta talk to you when I say low blood sugar could you please come back later do yourself a favor and come back later that's permission then address directly when I do coaching and when I manage people often I hear Joe is such a jerk man Joe is so unprofessional Joe repeatedly does these insulting things in meetings Joe does this Joe never does that he's supposed to do this he's not doing it me have you talked to Joe no okay let's go directly to the source of the problem now some of us think issues

through by talking with a trusted friend who's going to keep it confidential that might be okay but please don't be the person who talks to everybody in your studio except the person you have the issue with please go directly to the person you have the issue with then address them privately with nobody watching if at all possible and bring as much respect as possible respect is the key to getting collaboration and it's a difficult conversation challenge behaviors and ideas not people I know this sounds basic and easy but most of us screw this up on a regular basis so much so that psychology has a phrase for it fundamental attribution error the fundamental attribution error is whenever we see ourselves behaving badly we know it's because of circumstances when we see other people people though when we see other people behaving badly it's because of their character that is

if I cut off on i-5 it's because my wife's in the hospital and premature later labor and I really need to get there quickly if you cut me off on i-5 it's cuz you are a jerk that's the fundamental attribution error I invite you to stop making it by stop assuming that people's behavior is because of their character it's almost never due to their character and almost always due to their circumstances they're under pressure you don't know it but their manager has told them they're on probation because there performance isn't great or you don't know it but their mom is sick with some horrible disease I'm not trying to get all depressing on people I'm trying to say we all need a break let's give each other a break and address behavior and ideas not people's character if you do that you're in a healthy pack path towards calm assertion and you're on a path towards collaborating through cooperation than assertion if you have a

question please go to a Michael take them in a minute a minute of small group discussion pairs or threes what are you hearing how can you use this in your jobs please discuss thank you wrap up please time for one question sir you are on hi I was just curious how much of what you've said depends on the cultural values of the people in the conflict what a fantastic question I know almost nothing about it is a great question and I apologize for my ignorance I should have a spy mean I asked in my first session please stand up if you didn't grow up speaking English and over the half the room stood up so that's a fantastic question and and really I'm embarrassed I don't have more information about cult culture here I think briefly from the ignorance standpoint culture matters know the

culture if it's not your culture it's especially important to know the culture lots of resources out there on cultural training and cultural sensitivity just not me sorry fair enough dodge of the question I can't really answer it it's a great question though you're you're gonna get me to go learn more about that so I can answer that better next time thank you for a great question sorry I couldn't answer it anyone here able to answer that question better smart people in the room no all right well ask people what their culture is right certain I know certain cultures thrive on disagreement much more than others so certainly factor that in quick repetition for the sake of learning to collaborate you need to bring all of your assertion and all of your cooperation but not in order cooperate first define the win-win go in with a win-win mindset then cooperate first seek first to understand that listen be willing to give or flex or change your mind then you're in a

position to assert early calmly and with compelling communication sounds easy and if you all know it is not easy which is why third and final section is on boosting emotional intelligence in order to boost success emotional intelligence is real effectiveness we have a very male industry I'm guessing I'm preaching to the choir here but sometimes our very male industry mocks the soft skills and things like emotional intelligence ooh emotional intelligence is power and effectiveness and if you think you don't need it you should not be leading in game development emotional intelligence is the ability to understand other people's emotions and your own and work effectively in that context of emotions quick tour of emotional intelligence starts by being aware of other people's emotions I never ever go outside of my

slides except for this moment in this workshop because I love this emotional intelligence quiz so much this resource is in the handout this is from a greater good science center at Berkeley they have this wonderful emotional intelligence quiz I am just going to whet your appetite with it this woman is one embarrassed to afraid a three sad or four surprised I don't want you to influence each other so I'm gonna say one two three throw and then I want you to put up a number of fingers if you think she's embarrassed show me one finger if you show me one finger I'd appreciate it if it's this one up to fear three sadness four surprise anyone not clear what I'm asking you to do one two three throw show me fingers now first look around the room many of you are wrong because you don't have to write the same number up right non-scientific survey says oh it's kind of a toss-up between one and two I will

go with one she's embarrassed wrong if you showed one not trying to make you feel bad but trying to get you to recognize how difficult it is to recognize emotions part of what I love about this quiz it doesn't just tell you you're wrong but exactly how you're wrong and how you could be right next time so they tell you that she has a fearful face and they show you what happens when somebody is afraid in their face well let's do at least one more because it's just fun this guy is one flirting with you two interested three happy for polite one finger for flirting two for interested three for happy four for polite one two three show please lots of fours some threes I may have primed you by being the chief happiness officer of happy brain science oh you said four polite sorry three I thought I primed you for the right answer I guess

I didn't the difference between politeness and happiness is whether the eyes are smiling and his eyes are smiling so he is really happy fun right you'd like to do all of them right great that's an exercise for you after this workshop by the way if you get good at that one I encourage you to find you there's a pointer to it from the handout if you want the handout New York Times has emotional intelligence quiz where you get this much of the face it is awesome you can understand a lot of somebody's emotional state just by seeing their eyes if you are ever in a difficult conversation make lots of eye contact it depends on your culture of course how much eye contact is appropriate and if you overdo eye contact it can feel threatening so please be human and normal about it but if you're not sometimes making eye contact you're missing an opportunity to understand how the other person is feeling that's emotional intelligence of

other people's emotions a next step is to be more aware of your own emotions and a psychologist say name it entertainment why do they say name it to tame it because the part of your brain that has access to language and can label your emotions is different than that limbic system that's that's in the driver's seat when you're feeling emotions so just saying what's the word for this shifts some of your brain activity to a calmer more logical more uniquely human part of the brain more glucose oxygen etc go to your prefrontal cortex on other more logical parts of your brain when you think what is this that I'm feeling feelings are really feelings in your body if you practice what is called a body scan meditation you get better at recognizing your own emotions hands up please if you have

ever meditated in your life according to surveys it's about half of us looks like more than that here coincidence that you all who ended up as leaders practice meditation I think not science suggests not not here to talk about mindfulness but growing mountain of evidence says it does awesome things for us including boosts self-awareness self-control quality of relationships and happiness so if you choose to practice mindfulness you'll get better at those things and probably be a better leader so body scan meditation all you're doing is focusing your attention on how one part of your body at a time feels for emotional intelligence you're typically working with this part of the body right as my forehead all furrowed up or not am i clenching my teeth or not or my shoulders up or not is my chest feel tight or not as they're a pit in my stomach or not practice makes progress and more quickly recognizing and more

accurately labeling those feelings in your body those emotions that you have then when you go to label that emotion what many of us do is we go with the big three the big three are I'm mad I'm sad I'm afraid those are the big three because they're very common but part of emotional intelligence is boosting ability to accurately label your emotions and there are hundreds of different words that describe emotion in addition to mad sad and afraid let's see how many of them we can get in about 15 seconds don't raise your hands just shout out any emotion any word that describes a human emotion disgust and frustration and terror and embarrassment I'm gonna say I heard eight words at once so I made up my own what else good I'm glad you're saying words I can't hear them I play a lot of drums and trumpet what else yeah awesome good I'm

sure you were saying smart things sorry I couldn't hear you better keep practicing with that right if if you're actually humiliated don't say Matt might be a mix of anger with the humiliation but see if you can refine your vocabulary and then again try this with other people too but don't tell them how they're feeling nobody wants to be told how they're feeling right it's not you're clearly embarrassed right it's not that it's I'm getting the sense that maybe you've got some embarrassment around what I did is that accurate test your assumptions on people let them tell you how they're feeling more to the point on this slide be self-aware and name it to tame it when you know what your discussion partner's emotional state is and your emotional state is it is then your job to use emotional intelligence to help yourself and others feel safe in conflict you all know Google down the road does lots and lots

of data gathering about what makes teams work and not work and the reading that I've done recently suggests that of the many factors that Google has found they believe that psychological safety is at the top of the list anyone here from Google by chance just want to give you a chance to correct me if I've got this wrong but I believe that Google's data is suggesting psychological safety leads to thriving teams more than any other factor they've found what does that mean it means you can be yourself bring your emotions bring your ideas bring your thoughts you're not gonna be treated mainly right you're gonna be treated with respect doesn't mean everyone's gonna love your idea but they're gonna treat you in a respectful way you need to keep yourself and your discussion partner feeling safe at all times if you're in disagreement and if either one of you is moving towards fight-or-flight it is immediately stop timeout both get back to psychological safety or

you cannot be constructive right if I go to give you your performance review and I start off with well your performance has been horrible and you go and blood starts pumping all over your face and you're sweating and I go let me explain the reasons that we are giving you it's like no you're not gonna hear me anymore right I have to get you back to some sort of psychological safety before you can hear me we might even need to call a timeout and say you know what I'm tired I'm hungry I can't do this right now I know we need to work this through let's pick up tomorrow at 10:30 is that cool you even if you need to take a timeout you need to take that timeout because it's only when you and your discussion partner or partners are feeling psychologically safe that you can be constructive about it and not just damaging about it so be aware of motions use that information to keep yourself and others feeling safe in conflict one way to keep the other person feeling

safer is to move past blame might sound obvious but again you're wired to blame because it's a defense mechanism and we're wired to defend ourselves against threats right it's not my fault it's the stupid coding standards that made that code will end up ugly right or it's Julie's fault or Jose's fall when you're pointing the blame at somebody else you are giving away all of your power right if it's all Mike's fault then there's nothing you can do about it so you just made yourself powerless not a very emotionally intelligent thing to do there's a guy out there named Christopher Avery who has a program called the leadership gift that's all about moving from blame and other defensive stages toward true responsibility highly recommended if you want to check it out for the moment you just want to keep in mind part of being emotional and motion aliy intelligent is not making the foolish state mistake of just casting blame

everywhere else it's almost always a system it's no one particular person's fault it's the circumstances you're in it's the deadline you're under it's the fact that the engine is buggy there's other factors at play here move past blame so that you can get to real responsibility that is boosting emotional intelligence to boost success again a quick minute or two of conversation and then questions at the mics but let's first start with 30 seconds of testing yourself why cuz testing causes learning it signals your brain that information is going to get used therefore should be retained so question is what have you heard and how can you apply it first 30 seconds of silence please

thank you so much now I would encourage you to find a new discussion partner why because I can't do it here but every time I pass out feedback forms and ask for suggestions for improvement lots of people always write if I don't suggest new partners lots of people right should add us pick a new partner so I'm gonna recommend that you pick a new partner I'm also gonna recommend that you get up and walk around while you do this but what you do is up to you of course discuss for the next couple of minutes and pairs or small groups what have you heard how can you apply this please wrap up those conversations and I would love it if you had a question or a comment at the mics starting right there please sir so something you said that stood out for me a lot was that you should try to match their intensity it like a 2/3 yep and something and this is more outside

of work but just like sometimes with somebody that they they'll be angry and I'll be calm and I take kind of pride in staying in a very calm state but they'll be mad at me for being calm exact getting angry exactly yeah how do you find that and then the two thirds things interesting but if you could speak today yeah essentially it boils down to this a bunch of communication at the emotional level is nonverbal right in fact there are studies that suggest we can understand each other's emotional state better through sounds than words so let's just try it as an experiment I'm going to say 1 2 3 and then I want you to make a sound that just represents how you're feeling might be tired might be psyched might be whatever if you're willing here comes I'm gonna say 1 2 3 just make a noise ready 1 2 3 you're psyched I'm tired alright good so anyway

a bunch of emotional communication is that a nonverbal level right so if somebody comes at you 9 out of 10 angry and you stay 0 out of 10 angry I can see how upset you are they might think well this is they might logically think it's good he's staying calm but it emotionally is like god dammit you don't get it this is a really big problem I understand it's a really big problem I want you to stay calm emotionally they know you get it when you say now you don't have to be angry right but you want to feed a representation of their emotion back to them in an emotional way so instead of saying you know goddamn it this is so much that's them and you say I can see that you are really upset I'm not doing that I didn't do anything I know I cringed when you cringe we feel emotionally synchronous now right so if they come at you nine out of ten like god dammit this is so bad and you stay

calm but you say oh I can really hear that you are upset see if you don't see their shoulders drop we need to feel felt right we need to know that our message got through here's another analogy if you will imagine going to your executive producer and saying hey dude I think the animation and audio systems are really badly passing massing messages to each other lots of bugs coming out in there and they're like get out they don't respond at all what do you do like dude I don't think you've heard me like there's a real problem and how the messages are getting back you speak up until you've been heard right that's what they want to hear is that you get it and emotionally getting it may be more important in a difficult conversation than a logical one does that make sense thanks for a great question over here please are there are there situations where unfortunately the the best ultimate resolution is to is to no longer work together yes and and how

do you get to that resolution in the least painful way did you see me try to dodge the rest of that question how do you get to that resolution in the least painful way so so first of all I what you what you're getting at in a way is don't you need somebody cooperative on the other side and heck yeah you do one of my favorite jokes how many psychologists does it take to change a light bulb one but the light bulb has to want to change how many discussion partners does it take to collaborate through candid conversation one but they have to want to work it through with you and if they just don't want to talk to you you will not succeed at anything I have shared with you today sorry we're still dealing with human beings human beings are hard it is often the right solution to just end the relationship I say often because I think most of us hold on to people too long hands up if you should have fired somebody sooner than you did hands up if you fired somebody too soon okay we have

two hands compared to like 50 right because we tend to hold on to people too long I'm almost out of time so I can't tell you a great story but maybe afterwards I have a fantastic story about trying not to fire someone out of taking care of them and when we finally fired him he vaulted to an awesome job at a different game come he was just a bad fit I want to take more questions but I should not I so apologize because you've been in line for a while I will be right here I've got cards down here and a couple cards back by the camera I'm happy to take the question bow over email or right afterwards sorry thank you for understanding quick repetition boost emotional intelligence to boost success means recognizing emotions and others and yourself to moving past blame communicating in a way that keeps both people feeling safe and respected even when you disagree intelligently conduct candid conversations in order to

collaborate how will you apply what you have learned if you don't apply this this hour has largely been a waste of your time so I hope you will think about this get very specific in your answers the handout has a place for you to get very specific say when and where you're going to handle it and you're going to follow through and you're more likely to follow through quick summary and we will wrap up difficult conversations make your hard work harder these difficult conversations are often where that part project gets back on track or really goes off the rails so I want you to draw on data and experience to better handle these difficult conversations and reach collaboration all recommended reading recommended reading starts here continues in the handout full recommended reading list on my site happy brain science comm what does all that data and experience tell us it is possible to intelligently conduct kannberg candid conversations in

order to reach true collaboration even through difficulty easier said than done so examine your beliefs see if you can keep learning to see the value in conflict so that you can be a bit better state for that conflict than to reach collaboration bring all of your cooperation then all of your assertion to reach collaboration and breakthrough ideas continue to boost your emotional intelligence in order to boost success and here again is how to get the handout if you'd like a lot more detail thank you so much for your time and attention you