Transcript for:
Systems Thinking: Pillar Two - Communication

hello systems thinkers and welcome to lesson three this is going to be pillar two communication so before we dive in I just need to reiterate that um as systems thinkers so the systems thinking is the art of understanding and influencing systems and as I've mentioned in the first two lessons systems are first and foremost people systems and therefore communication is the best way to in understand and Influence People therefore it is the best way to understand and influence systems so let's let's Dive Right In now rather than just read the slide to you I'll give you a little bit of stories uh little bit of background story so as I was interviewing systems thinkers and as I was kind of noticing these patterns through throughout these interviews I realized that Not only was systems thinking first and foremost uh people people thinking but that communication was the primary tool this is the primary point of Leverage that all of the top systems thinkers use whether it is the ability to sit in an interview or to express thems digitally or verbally um or negotiate um in fact some of the best systems sers out there are not in stem some of them are in law some of them are in um contract negotiation and those sorts of things but because they approach everything systematically they approach everything looking at hey this business is a system this negotiation is a system it's a fundamentally different approach and so the reason that I wanted to spend a little bit of time addressing this is because I know that out there in the world there are a lot of systems thinkers who think that systems thinking is strictly a stem thing or strictly engineering um but what I've come to realize is that it's not systems thinking when you look at a survey of all systems thinkers um most systems thinkings jobs are not actually stem um that's actually a relatively small uh you know not insignificant I would say like 20 to 30% of of systems syers are in stem but the rest are in everything from law to education to to politics to government um those sorts of things so let's move right into the meat of this conversation on the on a very high level there are five overarching types of communication now this is not a total totalizing uh taxonomy of educ of Education of communication sorry um but most like 95 to 99% of communication can be put into one of these five categories so first is uh verbal communication such as what I'm doing right now written communication such as when you know you write a blog post or an email or a book uh non-verbal communication so that is using gestures uh body language how you dress um in order to present yourself um and also how you understand uh the nonverbal communication of others there's digital communication which is also part of what you're engaging with right now which is um making and using and distributing uh digital materials whether it's audio files video files uh Graphics um and those sorts of things things and then finally listening um listening is uh as defined here I really like this very succinct definition the act of receiving and comprehending information that's that's that's what listening is is signal signal received and understood so now what we're going to do for the rest of this video is we're going to unpack these five pillars and then um get into a loss in the weeds in a little bit so that you understand how to approach these forms of Ed of these gosh I keep saying education uh these forms of communication um and so that you are able to uh better round out your approach to these things and think about them systematically and it will all culminate in the homework so just be keeping in mind um your approach to all of these forms of communication um and then in the homework section which you'll be able to review with the attached PDF and the uh accompanying blog post we'll explain it in Greater detail okay so verbal communication is I think the single most important one and this is primarily just because of Evolution um throughout most of human history and even prehuman history uh verbal communication was the primary way to get information from one person to another um so you know you have Neanderthal man and they're you know hunting a lion or they're running away from a forest fire you know you point you grunt you scream you say fire right uh so uh that is basically up until very very recently verbal communication was the primary modality of communic ation um you know Master Apprentice relationships um even even getting uh politicians you know stumping like giving speeches in person negotiating in person it's only been in the last 100 to 200 years that we switched to print media and then other forms of digital media being uh the primary way that we we communicate as a species but on a day-to-day basis in your career in your relationships um verbal communication is Far and Away the most important so let the way that I break this down is into again these are not all five categories there are plenty of other categories that are missing but in terms of the skills that are most powerful the most impactful skills for systems thinkers um they generally fall into these five categories so first storytelling storytelling is basically the use of narrative in order to share uh not only objective information but to frame that objective information with emotional salience so you've got facts and emotions um that's basically the two things that narrative and storytelling um uh combine and this uh this bakes in a lot of other stuff such as what are the implications what is the emotional salience what do you do with this information what does the story mean um so storytelling is actually one of the top skills um and you don't have to be like the next you know uh uh um Robin Williams you know getting up on stage telling little short stories and making millions of people laugh um but understanding the rudiments of story storytelling is critical for systems thinkers next is public speaking so public speaking I know most people have stage fright I mean even I have stage fright um public speaking is not necessarily getting up on the Ted stage and delivering um you know a pissy talk in 20 minutes um that's going to change people's lives that's going to be you know viewed by 10,000 people live and then a million people on YouTube public speaking is as small as just leading leading meetings so you have a meeting of three people four people uh presenting ideas teaching um teaching is another form of public speaking so getting in front of a classroom of 10 to 20 or 30 people and teaching them something these are all forms of public speaking and again all of the best systems thinkers that I've interviewed are very comfortable in front of other people because again the best way to get your ideas out there and get the right ideas back is by getting in front of people um and this is such a rarified skill that even just having this skill will move you farther and faster in your career but then if you get into the higher e executive leadership or entrepreneurship this is absolutely critical um and one of the best ways to be a system Sinker is to launch a product or service or a book or something and that means getting in front of the camera that means getting in front of a crowd next is conflict navigation so conflict navigation is uh often you know cited in businesses like oh yeah like it it's it's sometimes considered like you look at articles on Forbes and stuff and they say oh like this is a master class in conflict navigation as if it's some rarified skill but really like conflict navigation should be taught from primary school onward um but it's not it's not really um not to the not not anywhere remotely near the level that it that it could be even with just an hour or two of instruction um per grade level um but the thing is what I've learned after learning all about relationships of all kinds from monogamous relationships to polyamorous relationships to business relationships to professional relationships to public relationship ship conflict navigation is the same at every level um and when we get into this uh in in much greater detail in a future lesson um you'll see what I mean but all conflict is is the same all relationships are the same it's just a matter of what kind of conflict um what kind of relationship it's happening to but the same rudiments are there which is basically power and rupture those are the two things and we'll talk about that briefly in a future slide negotiation is another thing so negotiation and conflict kind of two sides of the same coin where basically um there's some kind of asymmetry I want something from you you want something from me let's find a resolution that is a win-win and then finally elocution so elocution is just speaking clearly and articulately um whether or not you're in the state of Storytelling whether or not you are uh you know a presenter the ability to just speak clearly um to use words uh and get on get and get them out there in the the world that is just a baseline skill really all right written communication so the pen is mightier than the sword it is true um and written communication is how you change the world um because here's the thing is while verbal communication is first and foremost um you know you use it all day every day written communication is how you get exponential uh returns so that means writing good emails that means writing good tweets that means writing good blog posts and documentation um it also means writing books um some of the some of the most influential people in the world some of the people that have been remembered for centuries and centuries some of the Millennia are only remembered because they put pen to paper whether that's sunsu Lau you know the ancient Chinese um philosophers from 3,000 years ago they put pen to paper um likewise uh Adam Smith with Wealth of Nations um as an example of what 250 years ago put pen to paper still remember to the day so one of the best ways to have an outsized influence on systems is to write about them so that means writing really good books writing good articles writing uh blog posts those sorts of things um in order to have that outsized impact now again also some one one of the things that people get remembered for is writing fiction um fiction is a really great way of sending the emotional message showing the emotional salience of a thing without actually having um the the physical evidence or uh or that sort of thing so again the pen is definitely mightier than the sword which is why written communication is the in the number two place after only uh verbal communication next up is non-verbal communication so this one is often understated um and the reason is like you watch some TED Talks you watch some interviews with people that don't really have good grooming that don't really have good hygiene that don't really know how to dress themselves and there's basically a missed opportunity there now I know a lot of people uh you know that are like I don't care about such superficial traits you know like you might not know to recognize the dimple in the tie uh for instance um and also this was uh AI generated even though it looks like a stock photo you can tell because of his hand with four fingers um but even still my point here is that mid Journey got the dimple in the tie when I said you know attractive businessman you know influential leader or whatever um apparently he's also an alien and has only four fingers anyways getting back on topic non-verbal communication is more important than you think um by establishing presence you can get control of a conversation you can um you can change the Dynamics in a room um let's see couple stories so one story was um for a while I was hosting AI meetups here locally and just by understanding just the rudiments of non-verbal communication putting myself in the middle of the room um you know making sure that that I was visible making sure that my posture was good um so on and so forth I was like very clearly the leader even though some people were showing up that didn't know who I was um you know obviously as a famous YouTuber I put on a on a Meetup and people show up most people know knew who I was um but then like I was leading the conversation and people very clearly said like okay this person is the leader here and so I had to actually like get everyone to a point and then get them talking to each other and I ran really good meetups um I stopped doing it just because of social anxiety really and um and we moved um but so non-verbal communication very important there um and there's all different kinds of non-verbal communication how you project yourself posture eye contact UM reading these cues from other people as well um so the behavioral Arts is a is a YouTube channel that I watch that's Spidey so he's always breaking down like lie detection and stuff and another one is uh Charisma on command which they look at um celebrities uh usually celebrities and look at them like during interviews and other other things to look at like their behavior how they Pro power and Charisma and that sort of stuff so I definitely recommend both of those to get the rudiments of body language and how to be very deliberate about projecting what is going on and communicating that way because again you know they say uh what is it like 90% of communication isn't what is said but how it's said and so using um using those those uh different tactics um such as you know facial expression eye contact tone of voice everything like that speaking with your hands as I often do because I know that you know you know you're on camera um that is knowing all of this is part of what helped me build my platform is because I use all of this and I've practiced it to the point that it's unconscious um or mostly unconscious sometimes I do have to deliberately think about it um but it makes me more relatable and it it gets my message out and that is part of how I've built my platform as a systems thinker to influence other systems now digital communication so digital communication is going to be less and less of an issue for particularly younger people who are digal natives now one thing that I'll say that's very interesting is that um is that the youngest Generations don't know how to do basic things like setting up computers and installing apps and converting file types it's really weird because we've gotone full cycle where like they know how to use Tik Tok but they don't know how to use actual computers um they know they know how to use like mobile phones but they don't know how to use like laptops and and real computers and and those sorts of things so digital literacy is a thing that we're going to need to uh make sure that everyone practices so social media I know that there's a lot of people myself included that have gotten off of social media but I still understand it and I still use some of it namely YouTube is the biggest social media platform that I that I use I also use substack and patreon which are different kinds of social media um but it if you want to be a systems thinker and you want to influence systems um these are the tools at your disposal and it doesn't make any sense not to use the biggest tools at your disposal because then you're only hamstringing yourself um another one is multimedia price presentation so PowerPoint slide decks such as the one that you're looking at um this is a really great great way to con uh to convey information um a lot of information very succinctly um and it also helps to keep you organized so some people that have approached me they're like Dave how did you get so good at um presenting where you can just talk for 45 minutes straight at the camera and it's slide decks slide decks are for the presenter as much as it is for the audience um audio communication so again it's not just a matter of speaking it's what microphone do you use how do you use a microphone what kinds of headsets do you use so for instance there were a few um uh systems thinking interviews that I showed up on and even though I told the person you need to use headphones you need to use a good microphone they just showed up with their you know basic laptop microphone and it's like I can't I can't actually use this like this this interview is not worth conducting because the audio quality is too low and so it's not presentation quality and of course some some so-called systems thinkers don't really think that they're like oh that's superficial whatever what I have to say is so important it's going to be compelling but see that's not actually true because and here's an example when I first got started I was using just webcam microphones and guess what I didn't get that many views but then as I upgraded my equipment my camera you know now I have an insta 360 camera which is a 4K webcam and now I have a sure microphone guess what every time I increase the quality of my equipment my my reach expanded greatly and that's because it's one of those unconscious things where someone says H the audio quality isn't that great here so if this person really isn't going to invest much into the quality of their communication equipment they Pro their message probably isn't that valuable it's completely unconscious for some people it's conscious for others it's a thing it's a it's a decision that I make consciously so every now and then YouTube will serve me up a you a new channel um so it'll be like you know some girl like practicing guitar and like whatever and I'm like oh hey like she's talented but until she's got a good enough microphone it's really not going to catch on video communication again using using your phones using your webcams um these are all just tools and they're not that complicated and they don't take that long to learn now when you get into higher end cameras you know like the 2000 Sony T $2,000 Sony alphas and that sort of stuff those are tools that take lots of training to learn that's not what I'm talking about you can get as far as I have gotten just with a nice 4K webcam and a decent enough USB microphone um and then digital content creat of all kinds so whether that's editing tools um AI creation tools those are those are fast up and coming if you want to stay ahead of the curve use all the latest tools all the digital stuff as particularly the AI stuff um I started using it very quickly as well so for instance wise cut is a tool that I've used for um automated editing um but yeah so there's a lot in this domain um and that as a systems thinker the more skill points you invest in communication the bigger your reach will be and the more your influence will be be in terms of understanding systems and then also influencing those systems so just as a really quick example um most of my uh systems thinking interviews actually came from either Twitter or LinkedIn when I was still on both of those and by by have by building that following by building social media Savvy I was able to say hey I want to talk to worldclass systems thinkers and then two dozen of them came out of the woodwork ready to talk and then finally listening so listening is the Art and Science of absorbing information and understanding it um so first is active listening everyone has heard this um active listening is not necessarily taught really well because they say they they give you like boiler plate behaviors like you know repeat what you just heard and and those sorts of things which that is something that active listeners do um but what's actually going on with active listening is that you're you're fully engaged with what's being uh said and then you're also processing it and checking for your own understanding because really what you're doing you're not just parting something back to someone because I have I have worked with active listeners who are really good at parting things without actually meaning it or understanding it so really what you're doing with active listening is you're checking for your own understanding you're like wait let me make sure I understand you here is this what you meant because this is how I understood it um but again that's kind of lost in Nuance um and again understanding so to truly understand something is not just understanding the logic of it or even just the emotions of a thing what is what is poignant what is Salient about what's being said but also understanding the context of the speaker why is this person saying it why do they care about it and this all might sound rather Arcane or Byzantine but once you practice it like your mirror neurons and like your brain is actually finally calibrated to do this kind of thing and it as you practice it it's like for me the way that I described it it was like going from Radio to black and white TV to like HD color TV um you just get more and more Telemetry from people that you interact with as you as you uh practice these things it's almost like in a video game where it's like you choose a dialogue option and like you get the little like icons to tell you like how what impact it's going to have um like that's not entirely unrealistic um now okay so then what's next reading between the lines so uh active listening or effect effective listening is as much about hearing what isn't said as what is said um so what are what are the what are the missing notes and so by by really focusing on people when you're talking to them you have some things that you anticipate that they're going to say and if they say the things that you think that they're going to say in the way that they that you think that they're going to say them cool you have accurately modeled their mind and you know where they're coming from and your your brain waves actually synchronize um as you're as you're talking but if they say something unexpected or they go a different direction that you didn't expect there's something that you are missing um so then you say okay well what is what is Miss missing from my model of them as to why they went a different direction and then um if that's the case then you can also think about okay well I expected them to say XYZ but they said ABC instead so there's something else going on here and that's really what you're you kind of to be an active listener you have to be a detective um you're really trying to um like investigate the contents of someone's mind their life and and those sorts of things um empathy that's all part of that now what I really want to uh emphasize here is feedback loops is that because all systems are people systems feedback loops are predicated on good communication and that means two-way communication that means expressing yourself clearly but it also means listening um when you get that feedback now a lot of people have a lot of really odd beliefs around listening and feedback like some people are like I'm the boss um this idea is going away um but there are still people out there that are like I'm the boss therefore what I say goes and you don't get to second guess anything that I say again that that attitude is going the way of the dinosaurs uh fortunately but um what when we get to the networks and systems sections the pillar five of system singing um and also the measurements and outcomes so basically all the other rest of the pillars after communication um you'll understand that actually getting feedback um you making making a decision or making a choice and then measuring the impact it's not it it is often about measuring numbers you know did the you know temperature go up or down did money go up or down um did following go up or down but it's also about getting feedback from people because people will give you more um Insight I think it was Jeff bezo said like if the anecdote disagrees with the data trust the anecdote um which is like trust the people if someone tells you you made this change and it and it had this impact and here's why like if the data doesn't agree with that then the data is wrong or the data you're not interpreting the data correctly so getting that feedback from real humans is critical for making sense of the data for making sense of the numbers in your feedback in the systems and in the behaviors of uh large aggregate behaviors and emergent behaviors of systems and I know this is all really big and if you're new to systems thinking you're probably like wow I'm completely lost don't worry that's why I broke it down into um the five pillars of extroverted system syncing and then the trary of introverted system syncing we will get all through all of that and we will unpack it ly okay so storytelling as promised we're going to unpack and elaborate upon some of the most critical components of communication storytelling is first and foremost about emotional salience when you tell a story it's not like there might be what you feel is intellectually interesting which is true but in most cases there has to be an emotional through line and so emotional salience is is the first middle and last part of every story whether it's fictional whether you're relaying the events at a cocktail party or so on and so forth so when I say emotional salience and there's there's going to be some kind of tension so there's there's when we talk about tension in storytelling there is a problem and then there is the distance between that problem and the solution and so one of the one of the really basic formulas that a lot of Tik talkers have filled out or for figured out rather is they call it the butt so Loop you know I wanted to go to the store but it was raining so I needed to find my umbrella first and so this is a loop that they just keep telling and of course these are like younger people who are not necessarily the best storytellers but they end up with millions of followers on on Tik Tok because they have figured that out so that is an example of emotional salience or tension um in that respect now the punchline is or the climax is really kind of where the story ends and so here's a here's a perfect example that will kind of illustrate a lot of this so this is a go-to story that I use to tell people about my journey in AI all right so um years and years ago when I got access to gpt2 I uh immediately wanted to focus on alignment because this was the first AI tool that I realized had any capacity to reason um uh like with uh moral reasoning and ethical reasoning and I said wow cool like this is this is definitely the technology of the future we are on the path to AG GI so this is way back in gpt2 uh when they open sourced it when what was funny is uh when uh open AI first created gpt2 they thought that was too dangerous to release immediately so moving forward I created some training data sets around my hypothesis of reduce suffering so this was in uh inspired by Buddhism so this is the first core objective function which is reduce suffering and ultimately became reduced suffering in the universe um because that's the point of Buddhism suffering is real it's one of the it's the first Noble truth and the path to alleviate suffering is the no Noble eight-fold Path so I was like okay as as um someone who's familiar with Buddhism and I agreed with this this worldview I said why don't we try and encode this as an imperative I didn't have the word imperative I had an objective function so I said why don't we try and encode this imperative into gpt2 and see how it behaves and so I synthesized a whole bunch of training samples like um you if you see a cat stuck in a tree you should you know like get a ladder to help it down safely um you know if you burn your hand on a stove you should get some ice to alleviate the the pain you know those sorts of things and so then as I was as I was uh done training it in my first run I gave it a a sample from outside of the training distribution and so the the problem that I gave it I said there are 500 million people suffering from chronic pain in the world and so then it concluded by saying well we should euthanize people that are in chronic pain to reduce suffering in the world and I said okay we need to go back to the drawing board so that is an example of Storytelling and the punchline or the climax is the unexpected twist at the ending um and so the way that I always form that that story in my head is that is the climax that is the payoff that I'm working up towards and so I can tell that story any number of ways because there is only one single point that I'm trying to keep track of which is that unexpected result at the very end where I was like huh I have done something wrong and if we keep going this way we're going to have this sociopathic completely ice cold ruthless machine that's why we have three core objective functions anyways so but the point is is that is the emotionally Salient part that I'm building up to now whatever it is and even though that was talking about you know fine-tuning an old GPT model it was still emotionally Salient so that is a that is my personal best story that I use to illustrate how to tell how to go about telling stories negotiation so negotiation is primarily about uh well here I'll just read it reaching a common understanding between parties with different interests so generally speaking you have two or more parties that want something uh when you're negotiating I want that house you want my money um you know I want you to sign this contract so that we can you know trade and set up a vendor uh you know vendor agreement um um or you're negotiating between nations you know you want you want these file materials we want you not to build nukes those sorts of things so the idea is that the primary way to negotiate is first seek common understanding first and always regardless of if you're negotiating with your child or whether you're negotiating with Iran and North Korea it's always about saying okay I understand where you're coming from what is it that you really want now in negotiation um deception is also always part of it um because there might be hidden agendas there might be um there might be things that you want that you're not really that you're not going to say upfront and so there's all kinds of tricks and tactics that kind of go into this like you know what is it like your fallback demand or whatever um or but we don't need to get lost in the weeds we will get um we will unpack that in the future but at a very very high level you start with mutual understanding so that I know where you're coming from and you know where I'm coming from and then ideally you seek win-win Solutions um using creativity using good negotiation skills you can actually often find generative solutions that are not um that are not Zero Sum games now in some cases uh negotiation is zero some where you will have a winner you will have a loser but ideally the best system sers the best negotiators find sit find uh solutions that are better for all parties and basically means that okay it's not it's not a zero sum it's not a winner and a loser in this negotiation it is we find something that is actually better for everyone so that is the yes and um there's a really great book called The Power of a positive no which uh is basically the yes no yes model so you say yes to yourself and and your needs you say no to unreasonable demands but then you say yes to some kind of generative negotiated compromise that is actually better for everyone and like there are plenty of examples where this is played out in my own life since learning this model where basically someone wants to do a thing and I don't want to do it and I say well but here's what I am willing to do is this actually better for you and those are the ideal outcomes it's not always um you know but addressing that tension getting through that um that you know say Hey you want this I don't want that um that is part of part of negotiation but also being able and willing to walk away is uh is also part of negotiation because if you do not have the to walk away it is not a negotiation um that is that is one of the things that is definitional about a negotiation if you get into a part where you're just trying into a point where you're trying to to um navigate something where you don't have any power so this is why I said conflict is always partially about power um then it's not actually negotiation it is it is just conflict navigation and which we'll talk about in just a second um but negotiation has to be on equal footing consensus so consensus is uh a very useful tool I'm a big fan of consensus but the number one asterisk is that consensus is only appropriate when used between qualified peers and so a qualified peer means um the so let's unpack that first qualified someone has to be qualified in terms that they have to understand consensus they have to be um they have to be of of an appropriate um station in the company or the organization or the family or whatever to be participating in that they have to be the right stakeholder or subject matter expert and then they also have to be a peer and so peer means they have to be more or less of equal power um because if you use consensus where someone has all the power it's not really consensus except what I will say is if you use consensus appropriately even as the leader and you and and you let it be this the the solution of the group where in that container you even as the leader as the final decision maker give yourself equal power to O to all all else making that decision so that it has to be true collabor truly collaborative and that you um actually earn that buyin um but uh in the container of being qualified peers that is a requirement now um what does it mean if someone is not qualified someone is not qualified if they don't really if they truly do not have the group's best interest at heart um some people enter into consensus and environments um because they just want more attention this is actually the most common um uh problem that I have seen when I when I have either tried to use consensus or watch consensus is um consensus mechanisms are addictive to people with personality disorders and so what I mean by that is if someone is histrionic or or narcissistic um so cluster B personality disorders they love making it about themselves and and consensus gives them an opportunity to just Spam that button well I don't I haven't agreed yet I feel more important right now so those people are not qualified to participate in consensus um as as another example and one and and in a similar example is if someone does not have the commitment or the technical expertise or the or the stakeholder uh position to really belong at the table if they're just a you know fly on thewall they don't really belong in consensus just for the sake of being there um so here's an example of where consensus has worked really well uh back in my it career days there was a team of us it was about three or four of us were like the core members of the infrastructure team and so I used consensus at every meeting because these are guys one everyone that I worked with had been at the company longer than me but I brought in a new level of expertise and so we all had different strengths and weaknesses um but we were also bought into the system we were all responsible for the same servers the same data centers so we were qualified by virtue of experience and we were peers by virtue of the fact that we all had equal stake in um in getting the right outcome and so by using consensus and I was the only one trained in consensus in this group by using consensus I would say okay all right um you know I'm just going to use some some random names like Stephen Kevin um you know you we haven't heard from you like what do you think about this idea like is this worth pursuing is there something I'm missing and then we'd go around the room and make sure that everyone is heard and that everyone is adding to the collective you know metaphysical brain because there's this weird thing that happens when people get synchronized and use consensus in a small group it's almost like another brain gets created that is just the unique brain of those three four five six up to maybe a dozen people and that is a really cool experience and so then it's like okay cool I see where you're coming from you're right like this this path isn't going to work what if we try this instead and then you know someone will propose like do we need to even do that in the first place maybe we just let that lie you know until we replace it those sorts of things I know I'm being very vague um consensus is worth many many books um but the only book that you really need is consensus through conversations by Larry Dressler um it is a short book you read that you implement that it will make many meetings go much much better it is pretty much the only book that you need to know about meetings um particularly if you're trying to get stuff done conflict navigation so as promised conflict navigation is always about power um it is about power and so there's there's two primary kinds of Power there's power over and power under but then it's also about rupture and repair so um power over is like the relationship between a a boss and an employee or a parent and a child and power under is the opposite power under is the is the power that the child has over the parent um by by virtue of being an underling or that the employee has or that sort of thing now there are many other kinds of power dynamics there can be uh sexual and gender power dynamics such as men versus women there can be racial and ethnic uh power dynamics such as uh white versus black versus brown and Chinese and Japanese and you know skin color basically um there can be language or linguistic and religious uh power dynamics such as you know Protestant versus Catholic or english- speaking versus Spanish speaking um but by and large all of those power dynamics fall under the two buckets of power over versus power under so in the case of power over you have a dominant class and then power under you have um a non-dominant class so whether that's men in a patriarchal system have generally have power over women in a in a patriarchal system or the women have power under men so on and so forth now conflict happens when there's what's called a rupture so a rupture is where something happens an event or some kind of transgression occurs that harms the relationship that harms the equilibrium now in most cases conflict is going to happen between two individuals you're going to have one person and another person so you have person a person B you can also have rupture along uh larger groups where you have group a and Group B and you can also have bystanders um where you have you know a third person who is either a witness um or you might have a love triangle for instance where you have um you know there's a married couple and there's someone that they're cheating with um so then you have someone who is also involved on the largest possible stage you can have geopolitical conflicts where you have two Nations that are fighting and then a third nation that is supporting one side and not the other or trying to broker a peace deal those sorts of things so rupture is when something happens that basically gives the other side a legitimate grievance so legitimate grievance is a term of art that I use to basically say hey I have been wronged there is something here that is that is legitimately I have been mistreated there is some form of Injustice there is some form of harm so in the case of uh an interpersonal relationship using that love triangle example let's say you have a husband and a wife and the husband is cheating on the wife with a mistress so the wife can say I have been harmed you have you the rupture here is I can't trust you in the context of a relationship you have broken your vows etc etc and so then that that is the rupture and the case between nations at the largest scale you might say um Nation a has attacked Nation B um there's plenty of examples I'm not going to use any specific ones and you say Nation a attacked Nation B and then they might say well it's because Nation C is bullying us happens more often than not so those are examples of ruptures where it's like well I don't care what this other person is doing you've harmed us you've harmed me um and so then repair so repair is what is really what is required in the past there's this idea of like Truth and Reconciliation where you have truth courts and those sorts of things um now the the problem though is that repair is only possible if both sides want it so it's not always an option um and in that case then it's well that's a whole other can of worms um but let's say for instance in that married couple with the love triangle the repair would require probably you know cutting off the mistress um going to coup's therapy and working to restore equili equilibrium of that container um now in those cases many things are changed permanently um but you can get back to a new normal or a new equilibrium in many cases again sometimes the new equilibrium is separation um in the case of Nations you can't really divorce your neighboring Nation um you can build a wall but you have to live with them um and the people that are in that neighboring Nation um so repair is the opt is the optimal course of action where you say hey there have been wrongs here um what often is required for True repair is true change sometimes on both sides now I'm not I'm never ever going to say that like it always takes two you can have legitimate Grievances and be completely um 100% a victim um it when people say like oh it always takes two to tango it often does and and and often all parties had a role to play in creating that situation but a lot of people like to use that for victim blaming where it's like well this is your part of the of the deal too when you get to the point of repair and again I will unpack all of these in in future lessons because conflict navigation warrants an entire course unto itself let alone a slide in one presentation but the idea of repair is that both sides have to adapt and change in order to accommodate um the needs of everyone and basically transform themselves and arrive at a new equilibrium so that's a very very high level overview of conflict navigation follow-up questions so a little bit lighter topic what I have learned and I learned this with the help of my wife and now I have practiced it and honed into a fine art is the art of the follow-up question is the best way to navigate pretty much everything whether it is witty cocktail banter whether it's getting to know someone whether it's um you're at a meeting and you're trying to solve problem problems so this is why I say first first and foremost make it habit where you just ask follow-up questions um in any context and so then okay well how do you know what what follow-up question to ask this is Salient details so anytime someone expresses an emotion so someone says oh I hate that or oh I love that um that's an emotion if someone expresses an emotion push that button um if someone expresses an excuse me an opinion if someone says well I don't really like that or I don't think that's how it's going to go um anytime someone um espouses something personal so this is in in in social theory this is called self-disclosure so anytime there is any kind of self-disclosure where someone gives you um any content from inside their mind a preference a desire a memory um you know then then like follow that thread so here's an example of of where the last time that I used this um with a total stranger so I was selling my lawn tractor because I moved from the countryside where I had an acre of land and I needed a lawn tractor to now I have a postage stamp um on a rental property so I just pay someone else to do it because it's honestly cheaper and faster to have someone else mow my yard for me um so I was selling my my yard tractor and I'm selling it to an older gentleman and um it's a lovely older couple they have their own little small farm in the area they don't it's not a commercial Farm it's just their own garden um and so they're they're replacing their old broken riding tractor and so as we're as we're talking this guy he mentions growing up in New York and being abandoned on a rail station back in the 50s or whenever it was and I said well there's a story there and so just by just by by recognizing that pattern that he has just engaged in self-disclosure he gave me some something Salient about him and so then uh he was not really ready for this um so he told me bits and pieces of the story like something happened and he ended up changing his name for more spiritual reasons and I was like cool but that's the kind of thing that you wouldn't necessarily get from someone um and that you wouldn't know to ask and so that's the clue that's the primary signal that you pay attention to is whenever someone has any level of self-disclosure um past events emotions opinions facts about themselves that you didn't know follow that thread and by following that thread you will get more information now that is on an interpersonal level this also applies to negotiation it it applies to business it applies to everything so I've gotten really good at interviewing people um just by and I'm not going to call it cold reading because cold reading is like kind of handwavy um like that's what stage performers do but like for instance when I am and when I'm interviewing people um or trying to solve technical problems they'll say oh well you know blah blah blah so and so tried that I'm like hey hang on who tried that who did you just refer to when did this happened last time and you you'd be surprised by just asking the right questions people will connect dots in real time and so then they'll they'll recognize oh wait I actually knew that answer all along I mean you're just helping them get to it and again this is this is the importance of conversation because this is actually how our brains work um so yeah the follow-up question absolutely critical to uh communication skills now we have come at long last to the end of the introductory uh lesson on pillar two communication so what I want you to do is take a detailed inventory of all of these skills that we have talked about um note where you where you have strengths and where you have weaknesses try and be as objective as possible so evaluate your competence level just based on how much you use something or how comfortable you are so you can be objective and subjective I guess is kind of what I'm saying um try and figure out like okay how many emails per week do you read do do you read and write how many speeches per week do you give how many meetings do you conduct and so by identifying where you have strengths and weaknesses what I really want you to do is look at your weakest communication skills and deliberately focus on those so say for instance if you've got a meeting coming up um volunteer to lead the meeting or volunteer to make the the presentation for the meeting um by by adopting that growth mindset by saying hey I know that I'm not good at this but I'm here to practice by reframing everything as practice this one reduces social anxiety this is actually how I got over my social anxiety one of the books that I read it was I think it was how to be yourself is reframe all communication um whether it's going to a party whether it's going to a meeting it's just practice I'm just practicing it getting better um another thing is sing in the car or sing in the shower warming up your vocal cords one it it completely changes your your nervous system so that you're activated you're ready to engage but it also just gets your voice ready to talk um that's what I would do before going to any Meetup is I would either take a shower and sing in the shower before or sing in the car on the way so then you're ready to express yourself you're you're emotionally engaged because singing um activates pretty much your whole brain um but yeah focus on it as a level of practice but really try and dig into each of those five pillars and some of the subsections of each of those pillars of communication that I just talked about and be very deliberate and even if you don't have you don't really need to come up with a game plan um you don't need to like say okay I'm going to you know systematically practice all of these just be aware of them and as you're aware of of your communication strengths and weaknesses just practice them from here on out from the rest of your life for the rest of your career you won't regret it I promise all right thanks for watching see you next time on pillar uh three which is measurements so yeah have a good one