Speak Easy

Grace Gavin
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​[00:00:00]

Tyler Sellhorn: Hello everyone. My name is Tyler Sellhorn and welcome to another episode of Speak Easy, the podcast where we discuss communication, productivity systems, capturing our thoughts, and how we share those thoughts with our future selves and others. We believe that managing our brains is core to 21st century work, and we're here to learn how to do it better than we did yesterday.

Thanks so much for listening. Speak Easy is brought to you by Cleft. The easiest way to collect your thoughts with our cross platform applications, you can simply speak your mind and capture your ideas wherever you are and paste them where they belong later. Today, we are blessed to be learning out loud with Grace Gavin.

Grace is a catalyst for open and honest communication and effective leadership. As co founder of Know Honesty, she empowers leaders to simplify communication and eliminate organizational gaps. With a diverse background that extends from farm life to [00:01:00] executive roles, She brings a wealth of experience to her current role as Chief of Staff.

Grace is passionate about inclusivity and the transformative power of openness and honesty, and she strives to create workplaces where every individual's voice is valued. Grace, thanks so much for giving us a chance to capture your thoughts today. We're curious what you think. How do we simplify communication?

How do we create workplaces where everyone's voice is valued?

Grace Gavin: Oh, thanks so much for having me, Tyler. I'm excited for this conversation. It hit a little bit in my bio, but I want to get it clear here. Simplifying communication comes down to two things, and that is open, honest. And so I want to give you the definitions cause it's really important. A lot of times when we say the phrase open and honest, we kind of just mash them together and we make it about ourselves, but that doesn't work when we're living in a shared world with people.

So given that. Honesty is being truly and freely yourself, speaking into what you want and how you [00:02:00] feel. It's really important. That's your half of the conversation where the spotlight is on you, if you will. But then, because again, there's somebody else in the conversation, we got to have openness to go along with it.

And openness is listening without reservation, putting your needs and wants on pause for someone else. And that's it. That's the two pieces of communication we need to focus on and strengthen as leaders and as individuals out in our world. We don't need to make it this huge, big, complex theories and processes.

It's those two things. Come back to that every single time. Am I being honest? Am I being open?

Tyler Sellhorn: I love that we are staying simple and we're staying in the space where it's not layers upon layers of things. We're staying right there to individuals. Are having a conversation or maybe it's more people. Right. But you mentioned this idea that we need to listen. [00:03:00] What does it mean to listen without reservation?

Grace Gavin: I think about it in terms of the idea between listening to respond versus listening to understand. And so are we really being fully present with the person? Am I completely focused on you, Tyler, when you're speaking, putting aside all of the things that run across my brain, trying to pre populate a response?

Because a lot of times as human beings, we walk into conversations with a lot of, you Reservations set another way. That's preconceived notions or judgments. We judge somebody within the first seven seconds of seeing them a lot of times before they've even opened their mouth, just by the way that they look or the way that they're dressed, their mannerisms, whatever it might be.

And what that does is blocks us from really hearing what they have to say, because I'm going to make some assumptions about you, Tyler, as you present. And then I'm going to feed those assumptions through what you're saying. So I'm not really hearing what you're [00:04:00] saying if I have that going on. So what we're talking about is putting those reservations aside, putting those judgments aside, putting those preconceived notions aside.

Let me be fully present with you here and focus on what it is that you're saying without trying to put any layers on top of that of what I think you're trying to say or what somebody like you might say and just hear what you. Tyler as an individual are saying.

Tyler Sellhorn: I appreciate that invitation to be thinking about how to understand someone else, rather than how to respond to someone else. I appreciate that invitation to let go of judgments. Maybe we still have them, right? Um, if we're honest with ourselves, right, we're going to have those preconceived notions of others, right?

That's how our brain is wired. Okay, so tell us more about how we let go of those assumptions that we make. When we meet someone new and lean into that understanding that curiosity [00:05:00] instead of judgment.

Grace Gavin: Yeah. I think something you said there is really important about the respond part of that, because first we got to recognize when that's happening, because as human beings, we cannot multitask. There's been studies of on studies that tell us that, and I still to this day, try to multitask knowing that it's not really possible.

And so if I am sitting here. I'm listening to you, but then I'm pre populating my response. Well now I'm multitasking and I'm not really listening to you because what's taking priority for me is my response. And so we got to figure out how to put that aside and to really be focused. And if there's a pause, if there's a little bit of a gap between when you're finished speaking and when I start, that's okay.

That's me. That's my brain processing what you said fully and then having a response back to that, which also helps me be more honest than if I. Only listened to half of what you were saying and then was focused on myself. So that's the important part there to recognize [00:06:00] and understanding that we're not going to get it perfect all the time, but we do continually work on the skills and work towards it and recognizing that this is not until now, not something that's really been taught in schools, in businesses, in classrooms, when you go to your first job.

Not about how to really listen to somebody, but about how to get your point across. And so we're just, we're trying to swing that pendulum back the other way and let's be in conversation with each other truly.

Tyler Sellhorn: I'm also thinking about we are in conversation right now with one another, right? We are trying to be open. We are trying to be honest. We are trying to have a communication that's going to be worthy for one another and for future listeners. I think this idea that we're going to have these pauses is really useful, especially like if you're going to really lean into the metaphor of a podcast, right?

Listeners out there there's going to be pauses that I clip out of the final edited version of this podcast. [00:07:00] And I guess maybe that's one of the things that we want to. Say in this moment is if we're going to be truly open and honest, if we really going to communicate with one another, we need to take the time to think about responding after we've listened and understood that other person, right?

To say, okay, I'm going to listen to your complete thought and then respond. Respond, right? And I'm going to take the time to, to download and, think inside of my own mind before I reply this is me doing that same thing as I'm listening to you, give us those instructions that maybe we didn't get at school.

And I guess maybe that's something that I want to think about more is like the conversation that we're having right now is a lot about like when we are face to face or at least screen to screen, right? As we are right now audio listeners Grace and I are looking at each other inside of a browser application that gives us a chance to look at each other.

But at the same time we're going to publish this. With some promotional things that are, is on video, and we're going to have the audio [00:08:00] podcast that's published, to out to the RSS feeds, et cetera, et cetera. Like when we like did all of our like pre work there's a short little time that we spent together.

But then like you sent me some writing and sent me things to, to look at. And that's how I created the great bio read that we had to start off the top. And I guess maybe help us think about communication in writing form. We're going to transcribe this podcast. It's going to become, something that you could read instead of listen, how do we think about that multimodal kind of space that we're in now, especially in digital workplaces where so much more is written or it's recorded or it's a whole spectrum of things.

Cause it's a really important piece of information. How do we communicate well in that multimodal space?

Grace Gavin: That is such a great question. I think it comes back to again, simply those two things, but specifically when you're writing, are you being honest and are you being as clear as you possibly can? That's really important. And then when you're getting communication from somebody and you're reading it, being [00:09:00] open to it again, fully.

It's not the person on the other side. It's their writing, but being fully focused on reading and processing what it is they're saying, trying again, not to put in all of your reservations and judgments there. But before you even get to that point, I think it's really important that you've established a relationship between the two of you and whatever that might mean for you if you're jumping on a quick phone call or we're Doing a zoom or a face to face, whatever it is.

So you have that human connection there, even if you're not able to be in person to establish that this isn't just some email username on the other side of this response that I'm sending, but it's again, it's a human being, because I think with all the gifts that technology has given us, it has taken that one away from us.

There's our ability to really connect with another human being. And quite simply the way that I recommend doing that is starting out every relationship you have with somebody with what we call the agreement. And it's one of our six practices we help clients through to, to get these concepts of open and honest into their teams and [00:10:00] their organizations.

Cause even if we make it as simple as possible, there's still a little bit of heady concepts there. So we use the agreement. And it's a simple proven script that we use in our own team with our clients, like I said, with our vendors and the huge difference that it makes when you start out a relationship this way, you are already starting at a level far above than if you had not.

And so quite simply, here's the agreement for the listeners. And I'll use you, Tyler, as an example, so they know, Tyler, will you agree with me on how we're going to

Tyler Sellhorn: course.

Grace Gavin: I want you to be a,

Tyler Sellhorn: Oh,

Grace Gavin: okay, let me tell you what I mean by that. Yeah. I want you to be a hundred percent honest again, meaning be truly and freely yourself.

Speaking into what you want and how you feel, and I promise I will be a hundred percent open to it. I will listen without reservation. I will put my needs and wants on pause for you. And in return, I will be honest with you and I ask that you be completely open to it. That's the whole agreement. If we have that in place, you and I, the first time we meet the first conversation that we have, and then [00:11:00] we're using zoom or we're using email or we're sending Slack messages, whatever type of communication goes forward from that, we have this agreement in place together.

So I know. What you're sending me, what's in writing, whether it's an email again or the slack or you're sending me a voicemail. We have this agreement and I know what you're saying is 100 percent honest and you're trusting that I'm going to be 100 percent open to it. And I think that is how we get back to that over and over again and understanding that this is how we're going to communicate across all the different modalities.

Tyler Sellhorn: boy I really, I'm hopeful. I'm optimistic. I'm wishing for those kinds of workplaces to be the norm. But I also have real life experiences, Grace, that my, some of the self and the ideas and the things that might be there for me. I mean, we, I know you a little bit, Grace, right? We were connected, online and there's a [00:12:00] certain amount of trust that comes from just finding one another in the long tail of the internet.

But I'm not so sure that I'm ready to be open and honest with you. You said 100% help me like for myself, I want to like, like just in terms of what's safe for me is I think there's going to be some part of like my thoughts and feelings that are going to be just for me and not revealed to everyone or even just to you.

Yeah, help me think about like why I should choose 100%.

Grace Gavin: Well, let's be clear, 100 percent is the goal and knowing that as human beings, we will fall short of that. No one will be 100%, 100 percent of the time. So if you and I were starting a new relationship, the goal is 100 percent to get there. And starting with the agreement, we're already starting. We're not starting from zero then.

We're already way above that if we have that in place together and working towards a hundred percent over and over again. We're not going to experience it every single time. We might walk [00:13:00] into a relationship where the other person doesn't want to be in the agreement or they don't quite understand it.

Or uh, Maybe it's a longstanding relationship, somebody we've been working with for years, and it's going to take time to kind of chip away at the old ways of communicating and getting to here, but it's about accelerating that process and getting there. And then it's building that trust over time, right?

Because if I'm not living into that, if I'm not being a hundred percent open to the best of my absolute ability. Then it's going to make it a lot harder for you to be 100 percent honest, to really trust that I'm going to hear what you have to say and building that over time and understanding that we're going to get to that point and we're going to build trust a lot faster when we have this understanding, when this is the expectation, the boundaries around our relationship rather than just letting it being, well, I don't know, I know Tyler, this guy, and he's, he's cool, but whatever, we're going to have a deeper relationship if we have that in place.

Tyler Sellhorn: Okay, I think maybe I can roll with like having a goal towards that. Maybe [00:14:00] I'll have to think on that some more for myself and see if I really want to lean into 100 percent being the goal, but I'll try it for now. I will agree. For this moment to try to be 100 percent honest, I guess maybe I'm curious to learn a little more about these six behaviors that you referenced the, the agreement being one of them, I guess maybe I'm also curious of when you're engaging with a new client that's working on open and honest communication, how do you think about and capture your thoughts to be able to start a new relationship with somebody.

You're probably by yourself before you have this engagement with a client. How do you think about and how do you gather ideas around being successful with those people?

Grace Gavin: Yeah, we start out with the very first of the six practices is the assessment and it's the pursuit of honesty assessment and that's where we're starting to get the numbers around the team and the individual's ability to be [00:15:00] open and honest. We created this to create some data and to help people understand from a numeric standpoint of where am I at right now and where are the opportunities to grow.

And so we take it a step further and we break it down into your personal life and your work life. And so for listeners, it's free on our website. I highly encourage you to go take it and check it out. And our website is nohonesty. com. And just to be clear for the audio only listeners, that's K N O W. So a little bit of a play on words there.

We're talking about no honesty and then knowing it, the difference there. So nohonesty. com, K N O W. But starting that, having those numbers, To then have a jumping off point for the team to say, here are the gaps we have, and here's the ability we have to make gains in our communication. And starting it from there, getting some data on that, thinking about those thoughts.

And then walking through, where are we struggling as a team, where are we doing well, and what can we do to improve upon both of those items.[00:16:00]

Tyler Sellhorn: Okay. Where do we make the transition from thinking about what is working and what isn't working and getting to the point where, okay, this is a prescription. This is a decision. This is how we're going to go forward. How do we You know, help ourselves like reflect on, as you said, you know, the assessment is meant to tell us what is or isn't working.

And, maybe we even have some anecdata on top of that of like just replying and thinking about what the data is telling us, how do we get from, this is what the situation is currently to what it is going to be in the future? How do we get started? What is the process for building in a system or getting the seed of ideas into something that's like a document or a process or, you know, how do we get from that beginning stage? Or how do we even just get the beginning stage captured?

Grace Gavin: You're speaking to my process heart right there. Everything that we [00:17:00] do is centered around helping communication be simple, tangible, and implementable is really important because that's how we're going to make improvements for people. And so what we're looking at are, uh, Like I said before, what's getting in the way and that's two of our practices.

So I'm going to, I want to share those with you and then walk through how we help clients think about it. So the first one is fake you, and that's the facade we project rather than being a hundred percent honest. So when clients are in the room with me, we're looking at fake you from a very high meta level, if you will, of where is this happening out in the world?

Okay. And then let's take it a step further in where is this happening in this organization and then taking it a step further in. And saying, where does this happen for me? And having that self awareness, that self reflection of where is fake you happening? Cause we're all, like we were talking about before Tyler, never going to be a hundred percent, a hundred percent of the time.

So fake you is happening. It's about how do we recognize it faster and get rid of it quicker? So we can return to being a [00:18:00] hundred percent honest in our relationships, in our conversations. So Looking at that, we're very analog doing this all on paper with clients, but they're writing it down.

They're thinking about it, processing it that way. So that's on the honesty side of things. Then the next one is the wall and that's the divide we put between ourselves and others rather than being a hundred percent open. And it happens to us all the time. I see it happening across leadership teams, across organizations.

Most people and most leaders struggle more to be open than they do to be honest. And so if you want to picture the wall, quite literally a brick wall, if I put that between you and I, Tyler, what happens to our communication? It's just gone. It's done. There's no way that I'm going to hear you be open to anything that you have to say. And this is happening to us all the time. And sometimes we do it consciously, but a lot of times it's become, Pattern over time and we're doing it subconsciously. And so again, same idea there.

We're looking at it from a very [00:19:00] high metal level. Then we're looking at it at an organizational level. Then at an individual level, where is this happening and where can I bring down that wall to really hear what somebody has to say? And I want to make a really key point here is that. When you bring down the wall, it doesn't mean that you're agreeing with the other person.

You are simply hearing what they're saying and you don't have to agree. You don't have to like what they're saying, but you do have to listen and to help them be heard and understood because that's what we want on the other side. We want people to hear us. We want people to understand us. And so if we want that for ourselves, we got to do it for others too.

And so then that's, what's getting in the way. And then looking at how do we systematize this into the organization? How do we start every meeting with the agreement? How do we have everybody go through the assessment? So we know our numbers. How are we having conversations about what's getting in the way?

Is it a particular leader? Is it a particular process that really blocks us from having open and honest conversations with clients? What is it? How do we systematize that a little bit more? And help [00:20:00] people build that awareness and build their ability to communicate and become a masterful communicator.

Tyler Sellhorn: I'm finding myself agreeing, even though we said, I don't have to agree. Finding myself feeling one of the ways that we can help. So I'm mapping what you've learned with you and your clients onto, you know, like what we're doing at cleft, cause cleft, we're trying to help you to just be able to speak your mind, to be open and honest with yourself, first, right. In the attempt to be understood by others better. Right. And I think that, there might be some of those people that are like less righty downy in those sessions that like maybe they need to take a second for themselves and just talk out loud to cleft and they'll get back some texts that they can write down on their workbooks and things with you all.

But I think that invitation. To seek to understand and to be understood as the first and primary part of communication and be able to respond. It's not [00:21:00] either or of understanding versus responding, it's understanding and then respond, right? Am I understanding you

Grace Gavin: Yeah. Yeah. That is exactly right. It's the give and the take. So we, like, imagine a very, very simple math equation, okay? Where it's open plus honest equals real communication. And that's what we want, is real communication. But there's two halves to it. So again, you have that opportunity, the spotlight's on you.

But if you want the spotlight on you and your ability to speak what it is that you want, And then it's got to be an equal give and take there, and you also have to do that for the person on the other side. Otherwise, is that really a fair expectation? If I want you to be completely present with me, Tyler, but I'm not going to do that for you.

That doesn't make sense. That's never going to work.

Tyler Sellhorn: Well, you are speaking my language as a former secondary mathematics teacher doing the math of real communication, right? Putting those things together and also wanting there to be some equivalence. On either side of a [00:22:00] relationship that, we, as leaders, we're not going to be able to expect others to, to come with openness and honesty, unless we are demonstrating that as our mode, as the way that we're showing up.

We're faced with fake us, right? We're faced with the wall that we have maybe constructed. Can you share a story maybe of someone, this can be anonymous person or somebody that's given permission to talk about themselves, right? Help us deconstruct the wall.

Maybe conclude with that honesty, that that optimism that hopeful kind of story that, yeah, it's possible to have less of fake you around and to, Break down the wall and be able to have that kind of open and honest conversation that we're hoping to have.

Grace Gavin: Yeah. I'll give you an example of myself because again I'm an open and honest expert, which means I will be the first to tell you when I don't get it right, because that's a really important part of me being honest and acknowledging that. So my business partner, Ken [00:23:00] is a fantastic gentleman. I've worked with him for over six years now, and he likes to call me.

At 7 30 in the morning before he starts working with a client. I'm not necessarily a morning person and I'm thinking through, what am I going to get for the day? I got my coffee, all of those things. He is on fire in the morning and he's got a million ideas before 8 AM. And so he will give me a call.

And if, depending on the head, the headspace that I'm in, I'm either like, Oh, Ken's calling. Awesome. Or Oh, Ken's calling. What ideas are you going to give me now? Okay. And we have the agreement in place with each other and we've had it for years now. And so he will call me and I have to, in that moment, say, am I being open before I answer this phone call?

Am I ready to listen to what he has to say? Because a lot of times I've already got a full plate. He's got a full plate too, and he's got a great idea, but if I'm not open to it, I'm And he's not being heard. We're not going to take that idea anywhere. And it could be something [00:24:00] transformational for our organization, or it could be something that, we're not going to touch for three years, but if I'm not able to be open and lower down that wall, then he's going to stop bringing ideas to me.

And so what he's really great about, and what we're both really great about is using the agreement and making it an active part of it. And so if he calls and he can sense that I'm not open, or I'm just shutting him down completely, he'll say, Hey, can you be open? I feel like he got a wall up here. Just listen.

And just that little shift, having that language there for me, yes. He is right. I am not open to this right now. I'm thinking ahead. I am not present. I'm on step 37 of this, where he just wants to think. Think about this great idea and we'll get there. And so that's where the agreement becomes active because you come back to it over and over again.

I can say, Hey, Tyler, I feel like you're not being honest with me. What's going on? Or I can say, I'm sorry. I wasn't listening. I had the wall up there. Can you repeat it? And I will fully be present with you now and having that in [00:25:00] place, because again, we're never going to get it right a hundred percent of the time, let's be human here and recognize that, but it's about doing better each and every single day, each and every single conversation, every relationship that we're having to be able to do that, because there's 30 AM phone calls.

But if I'm not open to listening to them, we miss out. And I see organizations doing that. All the time. One of the things we talk about is when we have more openness, we have more transformational ideas happening. And it's not that those ideas weren't there before they were, but we were not open to hearing them.

We were stuck in protecting ourselves or. The way that we've always done things and we've missed out on that idea. And so we got to recognize where is that happening? And I'm just as guilty of it and I'm working on it each and every single day.

Tyler Sellhorn: Well, thank you for being someone who is open and honest about their own struggles with openness and honesty as that is your primary work. I'm grateful for [00:26:00] the invitation to get into this work ourselves and be invitational to one another. And to invite more openness and honesty. I also want to invite Ken to give Cleft a try when Grace isn't ready to listen to the seven 30 call.

Cause you know, there might be an opportunity for him to get something. Recorded and saved and easily shared with you later. Shout out to cleft bean for those verbal processors that, that need somebody else to receive the information. I, here I am right, right now. I talk too much and have cool ideas that I want to share.

Yeah. Thank you very much, Grace. We appreciate you learning out loud with us today.

Grace Gavin: Yeah. I think that's a great idea. Go give Cleft a try when you've got nobody around you who's willing to be open, Cleft will be

Tyler Sellhorn: Awesome. Thanks, Grace.