Building Your Conversational Competency with Chalmers Brothers
Watch/Listen here or on Apple Podcast, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your podcasts“I believe as the leadership team goes, so goes the rest of the company. So if you don't have that consistent and significant sustainable growth, you've got some work to do.” — Mike Goldman
Chalmers Brothers is a best-selling author, executive coach, and speaker with over 38 years of experience. He focuses on self-awareness, the role of conversations in leadership, and understanding language's impact on life and work. Chalmers has authored "Language and the Pursuit of Leadership Excellence" and "Language and the Pursuit of Happiness" (translated into Spanish, Japanese, and soon Korean and Mandarin).
Conversational Competency in Leadership
Leadership teams thrive on having few, if any, missing conversations.
Carefrontation: A concept blending care and confrontation. It means caring enough about the person or team to initiate tough conversations for progress.
Conversations rooted in integrity (alignment of internal thoughts and external actions) and authenticity foster strong leadership and relationships.
The Role of Language
Language does more than describe; it creates possibilities, shapes context, and influences emotions and physical states.
Leaders are "conversational architects" who create outcomes through effective discussions.
Common Leadership Challenges
Avoiding difficult conversations due to fear of conflict or discomfort.
Ruinous Empathy (coined by Kim Scott): Caring for someone but failing to provide critical feedback, ultimately harming the individual and the team.
Missing conversations lead to poor results, reduced innovation, and weaker relationships.
Personal Growth and Ontological Coaching
Ontological coaching focuses on one’s "way of being," addressing internal narratives, emotions, and physicality.
Growth happens when leaders embrace humility, question assumptions, and recognize they are unique observers of reality.
Shifting from a "right vs. wrong" mindset to "effective vs. ineffective" improves decision-making and fosters healthier interpretations of events.
Practical Tools and Models
SOAR Program
SOAR: Success Through Observer Action Results.
A six-month program focusing on developing conversational, relational, and emotional competencies.
Builds skills necessary for leadership, culture building, and trust.
Observer-Action-Results (OAR) Model
Results stem from actions, which are influenced by one's perspective (observer).
Encourages leaders to adjust their internal narratives, emotions, and physical state to achieve desired outcomes.
Peer Accountability Exercise
Feedback structure where team members share:
One positive contribution.
One area for improvement.
Leaders model this by thanking feedback providers and fostering openness and trust.
Vulnerability and Peer Accountability Exercise Podcast episode
Takeaways for Leaders
Create environments that encourage upward feedback.
Explicitly invite team members to share their observations and concerns.
Separate personal identity from public identity—leaders need to know how they’re perceived without letting it define them.
Contact Information
Website: chalmersbrothers.com
Email: info@chalmersbrothers.com
Starting a YouTube channel in 2025 with short, impactful videos.
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Mike Goldman: Chalmers Brothers is a best selling author, certified executive coach and professional speaker, and long time provider of leadership and personal development programs within organizations around the world. His 38 year career is focused on self awareness, the centrality of conversations for leadership and organizational success, and a new and powerful way of understanding language and its role in our lives.
We're certainly gonna Dig into that. He's written two books, Language and the Pursuit of Leadership Excellence and Language and the Pursuit of Happiness. They've been translated into Spanish and Japanese with Korean and Mandarin translation scheduled for 2025. My books are barely in English, so that's pretty impressive.
So we're going to dive deep into, how to have powerful conversations.
First, we both have a very similar background, Chalmers and I, both started our [00:01:00] career at what's now called Accenture, but I think both of us are so old that it was Anderson Consulting. And at least when I started, it was actually not even Anderson Consulting.
it was a consulting arm of Arthur Anderson and company.
Chalmers Brothers: When I joined, it was M. I. C. D. The management information consulting division of Arthur Anderson. This you're right. So we were both pre Anderson Consulting even.
Mike Goldman: Yeah. and if you're like me, I always, whenever I say, you know, the consulting division of Arthur Anderson, I always have to say, not the guys that got in trouble.
I know. But you know what? Most people don't even remember that at this point. So they say that and they're like. What are you talking about?
Chalmers Brothers: I
Mike Goldman: get it.
Chalmers Brothers: You're right.
Mike Goldman: so we, but we both have that Accenture Anderson Consulting, Arthur Anderson, whatever you want, MICD, whatever you want to call it in our background.
and we both, have spent a lot of time, speaking on the, Vistage Circuit, which is a great organization of CEOs and beautiful mastermind groups. so we both have that background. Anyway, as I always do, I'm going to [00:02:00] start with, with a really important question, given the, the title of the show and the audience of the show, and that's Chalmers, from all of your, you know, 38 or so years of experience, what do you believe is the number one characteristic of a great leadership team?
Chalmers Brothers: You know, my mind immediately goes to very few missing conversations. Very few, if any, missing conversations. I believe this, Mike. Leaders get paid to have effective conversations. Leaders are conversational architects and conversational engines. Right? So when I think about a leadership team, the ability to have conversations that matter, The ability to have very few missing conversations and there's a term I learned.
I didn't learn this in my coaching world. I learned it in Vistage. I've been fortunate enough, this is my 28th year speaking on the Vistage Network.
And the term, Mike, is carefrontation. [00:03:00] The term is carefrontation. To me, solid, powerful leadership teams are characterized by carefrontation. I care enough about you.
I care enough about us to initiate a conversation that in this very moment, I'm not 100 percent sure how it's going to go. But I care about, I care more about what we're up to. I care more about our movement in the market. I care more about your career trajectory than I do about my hands, not sweating.
And it's this combination, right, of care and the willingness to be direct and confront with what needs to be talked about. And when I think about it, what for me separates, at least one thing that separates carefrontation from confrontation. In care frontation, I speak into my concerns, Mike. I have a concern, man, that the way I want to say something may come out wrong.
I care about you. I care about us, but I need to have a conversation with you. I'm not exactly sure how to have it.
And Mike, when I say very few missing [00:04:00] conversations, and I say care frontation, I also want to say that these leadership teams. are characterized by integrity and integrity to me.
One of my favorite definitions is the inner is the outer. They're integrated. Are you with me? So if I have an inner concern, a care that I have inside and I speak it outside, just like it is inside, you feel it. I mean, this to me, can't be faked. Right. It can't be faked. And whether we use the words authenticity or vulnerability or integrity or sincerity, to me, it's the quality of conversations that separate great leadership teams from others.
And Mike, I think, man, I think it's the quality of these conversations that separate great relationships from okay relationships, great parenting from okay parenting.
Mike Goldman: I love when you said it can't be faked because one of the things that I see, and more importantly for me [00:05:00] personally, one of the things I struggled with earlier in my career, when I say earlier in my career, when I was in my 40s versus 60, so not a kid, but I would read the books that said things like, don't dictate, ask your team questions that talked about how to have the difficult conversation that talked about being open and honest, but to me for a good time, those were techniques.
Chalmers Brothers: Yep.
Mike Goldman: So it wasn't really who I was. I was just using the techniques versus truly, you know, I found until I changed my attitude. That stuff wasn't real and it didn't come across as real.
Chalmers Brothers: No, you know, that reminds me when I was in my mid twenties. Now again, I'm going way back when I was in my mid twenties.
I was rock solid certain that if you didn't see things like I did, you were stupid. And it's amazing how nobody [00:06:00] ever taught me that right. That was simply part of how I grew up and it wasn't explicitly taught. But I was convinced that the way I saw things was authentic. And it took me years, Mike, to get comfortable enough in my own skin to say, I don't know.
I mean, number one, I really thought I was objective. I thought the way I saw the world was the way the world was. And a giant piece of learning in my ontological coaching background is this claim that we are each unique observers. By definition, it's not just a snowflake is different. no, everything in nature is different.
No two trees are the same. No two camels are the same. No two grains of sand are the same. Not really. No two stars are the same. Nothing in nature is the same. So nature apparently doesn't replicate, it creates. And we're part of nature. So the thing I did not see in my mid twenties was that everybody, myself included, has a particular perspective on objective [00:07:00] reality.
But nobody has access to the way it is. And that's starting point. was my starting point to begin to acknowledge that I don't know and being comfortable enough in my own skin to say I don't know. And really one of the worst experiences I ever had in my professional life. I won't say who the client was, but it was early and it was an educational institution.
And I was the only person in the room pretty much that did not have a PhD. Now, I got challenged on some things and I wanted to be right. And it tailstunned into a horrible, terrible event. And as I, and that I learned from, that I learned from, that I'm in the business of sharing distinctions, helping people see some things, but I don't have the one way.
And it reminds me of Jim Collins's, right, Level 5 leaders, right, this incredible combination of tremendous commitment and [00:08:00] motivation and purpose and humility. And it took me from probably 25 to 35 to get an appropriate dose of humility to be comfortable enough in what I did know to not be threatened by what I didn't know.
Mike Goldman: You learned it quicker than I did. I was at my forties, but, and I do want, I want to get back to this idea of ontological coaching partially because as a. Kid growing up in the Bronx, I don't, I tend to not understand five syllable words, delicatessen. I get that one. I do want to get back to that, but before I do, especially because we both started out with that similar background back in the management consulting days, how did you go from that?
To writing and speaking and coaching and where your focus is today,
Chalmers Brothers: you know, like a lot of things, it's hard to connect the dots looking forward, but looking back, we kind of can. Right? And so I have a [00:09:00] engineering background and an MBA and right. I went to Anderson consulting out of grad school doing fine there.
in 1987, Mike, one year into my marriage, I've been married 38 years. And I know in my heart the body of learning that is the basis of both of my books that body of learning is a giant reason I have a 38 year marriage and not a one year marriage. I know that in my heart.
No doubt about it. And so long story short, my wife and I, some friends of ours, we were in New Orleans. Some friends of ours went to a workshop in Baton Rouge and would not be quiet. They simply would not be quiet. You guys got to go. You guys got to go. You guys got to go. Mike in my head. I was this number one.
I'm not really sure what a workshop is. Number two. I'm pretty sure I don't need one. And number three, I was so arrogant. Number three, if I haven't heard of this already, how good can it be? And they finally said, look, we will pay for you to go, both of you. It's not for couples, but we went as a couple. We [00:10:00] think y'all would do great too.
And if you don't think it's worth it, don't pay us back. So that got my attention. My wife and I went, Mike, and it was, and again, I don't use this term as I'm introducing a lot of my work, but it was my introduction to something called ontological coaching. Now that term is a mouthful. An ontological coaching, literally translated.
That means coaching people in their way of being. Ontology has to do with how things are, but the being of things. So one implication is there's more than one way to be. And I have to say, I was sitting there as a one year, you know, maybe my second year consultant at Anderson Consulting. My wife was in medical school, I think, at the time still.
And I, I just, I had an epiphany. It was like, I was so certain about many things. When I walked in and Mike about midday Saturday, I wasn't certain about a lot of stuff. I was in like a free fall about, I was completely certain, for example, that my relationship with my wife was a [00:11:00] 9.5 outta 10 at that point in our marriage, right?
We were copacetic, cognitively, emotionally, same sense of humor, all that stuff. I realized it's a 9.5 if ten's right here. But what if 10's in the clouds? What if I had artificially limited the single most important relationship in my life, and here's the kicker, and had been utterly unaware I was doing that?
That cost me an hour in my head. Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. I had, it was a giant wake up call. and a lot of it was, it jarred me out of my terminal certainty. I was so certain how certain things were and after a weekend, I was not certain, but I had this incredible combination of emotions after that first workshop, I had an incredible right side by side, regret and ambition, right side by side, regret for, you know, look at how I've been being, look at how I've been treating my wife, look at how I've [00:12:00] been treating my mom and dad, look at how I was, how arrogant.
I was in so many areas and the ambition was okay. I got a whole new toolkit. I got a whole new body of learning that aims me in this direction.
And one of the new things, the new tools, the new distinctions was this notion that language creates and generates. Language is not simply a passive tool for describing how things are.
Yes, we describe with language, but that's not all that we do. We open and close possibilities, right? We create context. We influence our moods and emotions. We influence our physical bodies. It was the first time I'd ever heard that. Right? I never heard that. And there were three aspects to our way of being that were introduced in that very first workshop and are still central in my life.
Imagine three circles that are interconnected. One is language, internal and external narratives. The other is moods and emotions. And [00:13:00] the other is body and biology. And think about it. These are connected and congruent in you, in me, in all human beings. This is why, for example, we feel better, which is mood, after we exercise, which is body.
That's kind of why we do it. And when you exercise and feel better, now we're up to language, now do you not interpret the same flat tire or offhand comment a bit differently? Yes. There's a coherency, and that coherency wants to be coherent. And so that means you can shift how you walk and shift your mood.
You can shift your mood through music and you shift how you walk. You can think differently and you'll walk differently or breathe differently. And so it was this introduction to wait. I've got three avenues for intervening on the coherency that is me. And the notion is, in some ways, that we're not human beings, we're human becomeings.
We're in an [00:14:00] ongoing process of becoming a unique, a new observer. So that combination, that unique combination that's you right now, that combination that's me right now, one question I ask in my workshops is, okay, let's acknowledge we are each unique observers, right? If we took a tour of this building, And we stayed together and we came back and the tour guide said, what did you notice?
How many different answers is the tour guide going to get? He's going to get, or she's going to get, how many people went on the tour? Happens all the time. So we're unique observers. The next question is, are you, however, the same observer now than you were when you were 17? No. And how did that change this?
Was it one morning in 2020, we woke up and whoosh, the world had changed. No. It's every moment. And this is why I genuinely, Mike, I think we are not human beings. We are human becomings and part of my work. And I bet yours too, if you looked at it [00:15:00] this way, part of our work, I think has to do with help people become more powerful and more competent observers of themselves, helping them see what they didn't see before so they can do what they couldn't do before.
Have what they couldn't have before and be what they couldn't be before.
Mike Goldman: let's take this and relate it to the leader. That's a part of a team or the leader that has a team.
And one of the things I know when I was researching some of your materials, you say leadership and management are primarily conversational competencies.
Let's take what you're talking about on this way of being and the three different areas of that relate that to what does that mean that leadership and management are primarily conversational competencies.
Chalmers Brothers: This is wonderful. One of the things I do. In all of my workshops. like, I have a longer program, but I also have a half day [00:16:00] program.
I have more than that on the Vistage circuit, but my main program on Vistage, right? It's called leadership, conversations and results. so one of the activities I do right out of the gate. With my Vistage clients and my corporate clients, and they're all in a room.
I have on a piece of paper, I say, look, okay, as a leader. What do you get paid to do? What do you get paid to do And I said, look, everybody here does 10,000 things of the 10,000 things you currently do right now as your job, as a leader, at whatever level you are, what would you say right now are the most important one or two or three things right now that you say you get paid to do as a leader?
And Mike, you've been around a long time as I have, we know the answers are going to be things like. To set the example, to lead by example, to steward a powerful culture, to drive continuous process improvement, to foster an environment of innovation, to coach, to mentor, to guide, to facilitate, and all these are spot on.
My next question is always, [00:17:00] okay, let's pretend I have infiltrated your office and I'm sneaking around watching you do all the things you just said you get paid to do. I'm watching you steward a powerful culture. I'm watching you coach and mentor and guide. I'm watching you foster an environment of powerful innovation.
I'm watching you be the face of the organization. The question is, what would a camera see as it sees you doing that? I'm watching you with my eyes do all those things. What do I actually see you doing? And with a little reflection, then, well, I would see you engaging with humans. And I write the word in big letters on the flip chart, conversations.
You get paid to have effective conversations. You get paid to have conversations, the outcome of which is something and not something else. And this is so close, we don't see it. This is so obvious, we can miss it. Leaders are conversational architects [00:18:00] and conversational engines. Because the question is, can you be a strong leader?
Strong. Without the ability to lift a hundred pounds over your head. Yes. It's a metaphor, right? You could be a powerful leader from a wheelchair and we have historical examples all over the place. So it's this notion that when we actually look at what leadership is Leaders don't get paid to hang sheetrock to lay bricks to fly helicopters to install landscaping to take people fishing. No, leaders get paid to mentor, coach, guide, lead, manage, facilitate, all of which happens in language, all of which happens in language.
so when we think about these conversations. What are some of the mistakes you see in how leaders engage in these conversations or prepare for these conversations?
There's a couple of things [00:19:00] that at a larger level in terms of mistakes or preparation, I like to frame it with this claim or with this tee up a pretend you're a consultant and you're brought in to diagnose performance inside a company.
And you do you spend a month there learning and interviewing and all this stuff and you come and you have a final report for senior leaders and what you tell them is, you know what? I have discovered that there are tons of missing conversations in your company, tons of conversations that people in their heart know they should be having, but they're not having them make a prediction on results.
What would you predict? For the quantitative and qualitative results that company is producing, if you find tons of conversations that should be happening but are not. Almost always the results are bad. The results are bad in terms of quality, in terms of innovation, in terms of mid course corrections, [00:20:00] all of that.
what prevents us from having these sorts of conversations? One of the mistakes, I think, Mike, and maybe it's not a mistake, it's just an area that they haven't, that they haven't been exposed to, maybe, or haven't learned very much, is the ability to have difficult conversations, well, meaning, most of these conversations that you would categorize, I would categorize as missing, well, they're conversations that people are avoiding because they're holding them as difficult or challenging.
Anybody can have an easy conversation. That separates nobody from nothing. That differentiates nothing. These are the conversations that are meaningful. And one of the best things I ever learned about one of the things that language creates context. Language creates context. Not content.
Context. For difficult conversations. The ability to have a difficult conversation well, I believe, has much more to do With you and I creating a powerful and supportive context than it does on us [00:21:00] delivering impeccable content. And let me share an example that I mean, that was real for me at Anderson Consulting in New Orleans.
I was there one year, a friend of mine was my age, but he was four years ahead of me and we were good friends. We played on the same softball team. We drank beer together. Our wives were good friends, right? We were very social. I'm one year in. He's a five year guy. I just spent my first year on his project.
So my good friend was a project manager one day. And now my public identity, Mike, how well I was doing. I thought it was doing pretty well in the company. He comes up and said, Chalmers buddy, I need to have a conversation with you. I'm not really sure how to have it. I have a concern that you may overreact.
To some feedback I'm going to give you and you may think our friendships in jeopardy Let me say this our friendship will never be in jeopardy, but there are some blind spots in your work My friend he also said look you're telling me at softball that you want [00:22:00] a long career in the New Orleans office My concern is if nothing changes on your part pretty quick.
It's not going to happen for youman, I don't know the best way to have this conversation. What I know, we have to have this conversation and Mike, what he did, he spoke into his concerns. I have a concern that a conversation I know we need to have may go sideways. I have a concern that what you want in your career may not happen for you.
I have a concern that you have some blind spots. Meaning areas that you're, you know, there's a great expression, intention is not equal impact. Intention is not equal impact. And he said, buddy, there's some things, there's some impacts you're making that you're not intending to make. And I don't think, I don't see you working on them.
So I'm kind of concluding that you don't see them, but we have to have this conversation. And Mike, all of that, he hadn't even gotten to the content of that conversation. That's context. And that was the first time in my life. That was [00:23:00] the first time in my life. I was ever on the receiving end of that kind of context, creating.
That's that genuinely shaped my receptivity to the message of content when it finally came.
Mike Goldman: I'm so glad that's the example you brought up because as we're talking. What's coming into my head that I want to dive a little deeper on, and we have now just started is not only how do you have the difficult conversations, but very specifically the difficult conversations that I see people not have.
And I also like the mistake. It's not the mistake was not so much having the conversation in the wrong way. The bigger mistake is not having the conversation. I think so. Where and where I see that. That is one of the things I do with my clients every quarter is I sit with the leadership team and we assess the performance of their direct reports and in doing that, we, of course, [00:24:00] come up with every quarter one or two or five people that are underperforming.
Very often when I ask, okay, what are we going to do? Can we coach this person up or is this someone we need to think about coaching out?
Chalmers Brothers: Right.
Mike Goldman: When I hear, I think we can coach up, which is a wonderful answer. Everybody deserves coaching. One of the painful things that I hear that I think is leadership malpractice is very often these problems have been going on for six months, nine months, two years.
And when I say, okay, wow, it's going on two years and yet you still think you can coach them, help me understand what's going on there. They say, well, I haven't really talked to them about it yet. what is it that holds those folks back?
Chalmers Brothers: You know, there's a couple of things come up.
Number one, I've been in the Vistage community, right? these are CEOs. that are executives, business owners. And [00:25:00] I tell my wife, there's a very low jerk quotient in Vistage, very few jerks. They self select out, right? The big egos do not make it. They self select out.
That means we do not like firing people, right? They do not like they do not like letting people go. One of my Vistage mentors said something to me early. He said, you know, bad news doesn't age well. Bad news doesn't age well, and as soon as I was introduced to the term carefrontation, right, in my work and began using it, I had some people say, you know what, you have to look at a lady named Kim Scott.
Kim Scott has some stuff out there and she has a term called radical candor. Right, which is the same thing, but Mike in her grid, right? She has a 4 quadrant grid. That on the vertical axis is how much do you care about the person. Right. That you're talking to on the horizontal axis is how willing are you right to confront them directly [00:26:00] and those for where those intersect you for very different conversational spaces.
The example you just talked about was for me on her grid, an example of, I have a lot of care. I care for the person. I care about you as a person, and I'm not willing to confront you directly. About A, B, or C. So it's not that we're not talking. It's that we're not talking directly enough. Because you're not getting the message.
One question I ask is, What happens to good performers when you leave bad performers in place long enough? Bad things start to happen, including them leaving. Now Mike, I'm a power of language guy. Right?
My first book is Language in the Pursuit of Happiness. My second book is Language and the Pursuit of Leadership Excellence.
Kim Scott coined a term that for me is the most bitingly excellent encapsulation of what you described I have ever encountered. She introduced me to the term called ruinous empathy. [00:27:00] Ruinous empathy. And I mean, I have not found a close second.
When I talk about care frontation, I share this with my clients, this notion ruinous empathy because we're not doing anybody any good.
And in fact, in the Vistage world, and again, I've been 28 years with this is groups. I talk about this and these conversations. And Mike, I've had people and I bet you may have to given how long you've been doing your work. I've had people say Chalmers. I have to say this.
I had a direct report. A man on my team. He was not doing well over time.
I've been avoiding these conversations with him. I finally did have what I thought was and what I look back and still think was a very healthy carefrontation conversation. I spoke authentically. I spoke into my concerns genuine, right? and I ended up firing ended up letting him go. I saw him six months ago at a charity event and he thanked me.[00:28:00]
You know what he said? Mike, you're the only person, man, who cared enough about me to have this conversation. I wasn't happy. I wasn't doing well. I knew I wasn't doing well. You weren't the only one. I found it better. I found something else. Right? But you know what? Think about that. That's powerful. That's, we are not serving anybody, right?
And I know it's the last resort to let people go, but sometimes it's the right choice. Again, one of the other expressions I learned is sometimes it's easier to change people than it is to change people. Say that
Mike Goldman: one more time . Sometimes
Chalmers Brothers: it's easier to change people than it is to change people. Ah, right?
Because I have some basic claims, Mike, that I start my workshops with. I start with a big eye in the sky looking at a stick person. You taking a look at you self-awareness, right? So ultimately, all of the stuff I do ultimately. What I want to do is [00:29:00] help you become a more powerful and a more competent observer of yourself.
Because basic claim number one, you can't change another human being, right? You can change yourself, but you can't change what you don't notice. You can't change what you don't see.
Another of my basic claims is we are always at choice. We human beings, we always have choices, no matter what. And we're constantly choosing every moment of our lives.
And in these situations where we ultimately change people, I like to view it this way. Because I've had someone say, look man, what happens if you genuinely have a problem, a direct report, who's not performing well, an excellent carefrontation conversation, fully authentic, fully vulnerable, and the person doesn't make the adjustments that we're talking about.
What do you do? And what initially comes to mind is, are we clear that person is at choice about how they [00:30:00] respond to you? Now, they may not feel like they're at choice. They may not be self aware enough to recognize. But they are choosing how they respond to your conversation. Well, then you get to choose how you respond to their response.
And it may not be the right fit. It ultimately just may not be the right fit. But that's not where we start, as you were saying, right? That's not where we start. but to not have that as an option that's on the table, I don't think is very prudent either. Right? It's not a starting point, but at some point, it is a round peg in a square hole.
At some point, there are choices being made about, do you not want to be on this team with this culture? With these values and these behavioral norms and I think, you know, one of the things that I heard, I think, from Kim Scott was, it's your moral obligation to give people guidance. It is your moral obligation to give people guidance, as a leader.
Mike Goldman: I want to flip this on its head a little bit. so when [00:31:00] we think about difficult conversations, and it's not always about somebody underperforming, it may be a lot of things that it may be business or it may be personal, but we often think, how do we enter into those conversations and I love the term care frontation, and I love the term ruinous empathy is what you're doing.
if you're missing that conversation, not having that conversation, but when I say I want to turn it on its head, I also want to see if we could dive into something that may help leaders help to ensure that people are willing to have the difficult conversation with them, that if I am a CEO. And there's someone on my senior leadership team that sees me doing something that's hurting the team.
Or there's someone on my leadership team that disagrees with the decision that I've made. I've seen leaders that through their attitude and through their behavior are [00:32:00] very easy to confront on those things. And therefore their team confronts them. And I've seen leaders where people are scared to death to confront them.
Chalmers Brothers: Yep.
Mike Goldman: What advice can we give a leader so that people are more open to having to give? That's wonderful. That's difficult conversations with them. Wonderful.
Chalmers Brothers: My wonderful. My initial immediate reaction is explicit is better than implicit almost all the people that I've known in positions of leadership in organizations have some history of understanding that upward feedback to leaders can be dangerous in some way, shape or form that either you heard a story, you had it yourself, you experienced it with your dad.
It doesn't matter. Right? I mean, this goes way back. To authority in our lives and our personal lives at work.
number 1, if leaders want. To hear from their direct reports. My experience [00:33:00] is almost 100 percent of the time. They're going to have to explicitly say this, they're going to have to explicitly request this feedback because almost never by them saying nothing is the unspoken assumption going to be.
It's okay that they want it. number 1, number 2, There's a great expression. There's a term out there that I think is very helpful and it's called public identity, right? Again, one of my other basic claims that I use with the big eyeball is we are not hermits. We are already interdependent. We already live and work with and through communities of other human beings already at work and our families in my rotary club, church, and civic, we are not hermits.
So the term is public identity, meaning. How you show up for other people, how other people perceive you, right? So the claim is this the world. One [00:34:00] question is it possible that the way you see you is not exactly the way others see you? Yes. In fact, it's virtually guaranteed. It's not right. It's not wrong.
It's not good. It's not bad. It just is. So now we get to ask another couple of questions. Number one. Do you know as a leader how you're being perceived by the most important, in this case, professional constituencies in your life, and is that what you want? Because Mike, the claim is this, the world does not interact with who you think you are.
The world does not interact with your personal private conversation about yourself. The world interacts with what it sees, and you can be aware of that or not. And so now we have a term called blind spot, and we have a term called bull in a china shop. So the bull in china shop, going through my day, going through my life as a leader, [00:35:00] leaving behind a wake of upset people, diminished opportunities, closed doors, and, oh, I sleep gloriously well at night, blissfully unaware of the damage I've done.
Gloriously unaware. With the relationships I've shut down, the communication channels that are now turned off, the opportunities that are now diminished. And yet, I wonder why nobody wants to sit by me on the couch. Right, and this notion, public identity, you know, one of my teachers said, Chalmers, if you want to know something about yourself, ask somebody else.
Ask somebody else. And y'all, this, Mike, with this kind of feedback, a powerful distinction rides to the rescue. Being truthful with a little tea is not the same as claiming to have the truth with a big T. This is crucial. Being truthful with a little T is not the same as claiming to have the truth with a big T.[00:36:00]
So one vistage example, right? You and I speak to these vistage groups. Is it possible that you and I Do a Vistage program and everybody in the group is truthful with the feedback that we get and we get 20 different feedbacks. Is that possible?
Mike Goldman: Absolutely.
Chalmers Brothers: Absolutely. Happens all the time. By the
Mike Goldman: way, for me, it's 20 different ways of saying how wonderful I am.
I agree. I like that.
Chalmers Brothers: I like that. I like that. and so what's going on is everybody in the room is being honest, is being truthful. With how they perceive you, right? Being truthful, based on what? Based on their standards. Based on their values. Based on their mood at the time. Based on their life experiences, right?
And y'all, like, what I say is this, look, I give you permission to tell me how I show up for you. Right? I give you permission, because I need that. My public identity is at stake. But with respect, I do not give you permission to tell me how I am. [00:37:00] Because you don't know how I am, but you do know how I show up for you.
And Mike, this distinction between giving people permission to tell us how they perceive us, is not giving them permission to define who we are. And that separation, right, that has helped me greatly in receiving and giving feedback. Because one more caveat. Just because a leader's direct reports feedback about them, right?
Just because if they're truthful, and they give the leader, this is how they are perceived. Just because that feedback isn't the truth with a capital T, doesn't mean it may not be useful. So it's not the truth, but if 18 out of 20 say I'm rude, I need to pay attention to that, because my public identity is at stake.
And those are the conversations. I think that having some new distinctions, right? The distinction public identity can help here. The distinction truthful is not the same as the [00:38:00] truth can help here in these conversations.
Mike Goldman: It reminds me of something I do.
There's an exercise I do with leaders called the peer accountability exercise.
Where they go around and give each other feedback. Here's something you do that helps the team that I want to thank you for. Here's something you do that I really wish you'd work on because it's a nice team. And one of the things I teach leaders, and I start with the CEO, getting feedback. Cause I want the CEO to model it for the rest of the group is when they get feedback, they could ask a question if they don't understand it, but if they understand it, not agree with it, if they understand it, their only response.
Thank you.
Chalmers Brothers: Yeah, perfect.
Mike Goldman: And I say, look, you're not thanking the other person because you agree with them or even that you're going to act on what they're telling you. You're thanking them for being open and honest. You're thanking them for caring enough. You're thanking them for being passionate enough about, about the business and about you for telling you.
[00:39:00] what they're observing.
Chalmers Brothers: What do you call that? I love that.
Mike Goldman: I call it the peer accountability exercise.
Chalmers Brothers: That's fantastic. I've heard of something very similar called start, stop, continue. And it sounds right. It sounds because what's key is like a level. You said, just because I get the feedback from you.
Number one, I don't have to agree with it to thank you for it. And number two, I'm not agreeing right now to do anything about it in this moment. But I am agreeing to talk about it. I am agreeing to have a conversation about it, but I, because I don't know what your feedback is going to be. So I'm not agreeing ahead of time to implement, but I love that, and think about and this, I think is so consistent with again, the way Jim Collins calls a level 5 leader, right?
I'm comfortable enough in my own skin to know what I know. But I also am okay not knowing. I mean, there are, there, there are aspects of obviously no human being knows everything. We don't know how we're being [00:40:00] perceived. We don't know how other people see us. and I really like the term blind spot. I think blind spots do exist.
And I think most of the coaching, right? when we think about the coaching leaders give to their director. Reports and their teams and their peers, you know, for that matter, I think a lot of that coaching is to help people address blind spots, things that they just don't see, right?
Intention is not equal impact because I believe there's people. Most people don't wake up in the morning. Oh, let's see. How can I self sabotage and limit my career today? We don't, right? We get up in the morning and we do the best we can based on the observer. We are right based on what we see. And how we see it.
But these conversations, what you've pointed to, right? Having the peer accountability conversation. Think how different it would be to not have those conversations. Leaders are conversational architects. They created that, right? Let's create a [00:41:00] conversational space where we have this kind of interaction.
And it's yet another way that language creates, right? It creates a new awareness. It creates new energy for action.
Mike Goldman: And what you're helping me to realize is, you know, it's one of my favorite exercises that I do with leadership teams and you're helping me. And thinking about the value it adds,I'm, I know the value it adds.
That's why I love the exercise, but the value it's adding, and I just never thought about it this way is if you think about your kind of premise that, a lot of organizations that they have some number of missing conversations and the more missing conversations you have. The worse your results are going to be the peer accountability exercise that I do is a way to make sure that we're having more of I'm forcing more of those conversations.
Yes. And that's such a powerful way to think about it.
Chalmers Brothers: I love that. Mike, I love that. And as you said, that 1 question I like to ask in this [00:42:00] context is okay. Everybody has a public identity. Who is responsible for your public identity?
If not you, who? But how can you take responsibility for something if you've got no data? How can you take responsibility for something if you have no information? And that is a powerful thing to have enough people in your life that you've created enough trust that they are actually willing to share with you how they perceive you.
That is a beautiful, if you have some of those in your professional and personal life. Fortunately for me, being married 38 years, I have a wonderful at home spouse who is absolutely comfortable sharing with me how she sees me, how I show up for her. Especially in cases where I might need to make a mid course adjustment or two.
Right? But to have somebody in your life, that's a valuable thing. To have somebody professionally and personally, or more than 1 [00:43:00] person at work. Right. But I like what you said, I think if leaders are going to do that, they have to model it. They have to do it. They have to be the example.
Mike Goldman: Yeah, I also want to ask you, you have a methodology if methodology is the right word called soar.
S.O.A.R. What is that? How does that fit into what we're talking?
Chalmers Brothers: Yep, soar is my. In house, outsourced, comprehensive leadership and personal development program for organizations not big enough to have their own internal leadership development program.in a nutshell, I believe this, Mike, there are five core competencies required for success in organizations.
Functional, technical, conversational, relational, and emotional. Maybe there's four, maybe there's six, but something like this is going on. My experience is in many organizations, certainly that are vistage size, right? [00:44:00] So we're not talking General Motors, Coca Cola, but the vistage size, hundreds of million dollars of revenue, tens of million dollars of revenue.
That many of them, number one, people get promoted into positions of leadership because they demonstrate excellence in functional and technical competencies right? Now, in my experience, functional and technical competencies, number one, have become threshold competencies, meaning many organizations say this is the cost of admission, right?
This is what gets most people hired, right? You can't play the game without functional and technical competencies. But when we think about leadership and management, those are not the competencies most required for success as a leader. Now we're talking here about conversational, relational, and emotional competencies.
SOAR, my program, is about conversational, relational, and emotional competency building. Because these are the competencies needed, I believe, for effective leadership, management, teamwork. And think about this. These are [00:45:00] the competencies needed for culture building. To build a culture, you don't need a hammer and nails.
These are the competencies needed for trust building. For customer service. Right.
And so it's a six month, six module program that stands for Success Through Observer Action Results. So this model, Observer Action Results, I think was invented back in the 60s, maybe. Chris Argyris and Robert Putnam, these guys from systems think, you know, systems thinking going way back into the post TQM.
Literature came up with this notion, and one of the initial words for it was single and double loop learning. So the notion is, again think observer, action, results. Number one, the results we produce in our lives are based on the actions we take or don't take. This is obvious. And, many of the actions leaders take are not physical, like chopping down a tree.
No, they're conversations! So [00:46:00] actions equals conversations and results equals quantitative and qualitative outcomes. A quantitative result called execution and productivity, and a qualitative result called culture, right, levels of trust and cohesion. The notion is we take action and produce results.
Sometimes we produce positive results, in which case, hooray, head on down the road, we're going to do these actions again because they worked. Sometimes we produce negative results, of course, in which case single loop learning or first order learning, you draw an arrow from results back to actions, which means take another action and do it again.
Take another action and do it again. So what's the definition of a crazy person
Mike Goldman: doing
Chalmers Brothers: the same thing over and over again, expecting a different first order learning is you don't do that. You take another action. Now, where the model gets interesting, and why I like it for my SOAR program, is if you take all the actions you see as possible, and you run out of bullets, [00:47:00] right, you're done.
You don't know what else to do. It's possible another person shows up, and in five minutes you're like, I didn't see it that way. The notion is a new observer has showed up. So in this model, Mike, in addition to, if you don't like the results you're producing, first order learning is an arrow back to actions.
Second order learning is an arrow back to the observer. And in the observer are those three circles. Language, Moods, and Body. And this says this. If you don't like the results you're producing, you can take a look at how you look at things. You can bring the observer you are into the equation and look at your beliefs, not just through them.
Look at your presuppositions, not just through them. Look at your moods and emotions and how they're coloring your narratives. Look at how you carry yourself physically and how that's impacting your moods. We can become a more powerful observer of the observer that we are. And that model [00:48:00] for me was a game changer, right?
And that's why I, because in my SOAR program, I don't think you can have leadership development without personal development.I think they are the same, Mike, they're the same and my little subtitle for SOAR is inner growth, outer growth, real results. But a lot of the growth that we need is inner growth.
It's inner growth. It's becoming a more powerful observer of myself. It's taking responsibility for my internal narratives. And Mike, one of the shifts that I found to be giantly, and it was huge in my life, and it's now an integral part of my SOAR program, is to help people move past the right wrong orientation toward interpretations and explanations, and adopt the powerful unpowerful or effective ineffective orientation.
Because here's a claim. And again, it's all based on looking at language this way, right? The [00:49:00] claim is that we live in language, you and me and everybody, which means the little voice is rarely silent, right? Because the little voice is rarely silent, what we do, we're confronted with events at home and at work, events everywhere, and what we do as humans, we make up stories about these events, we hold these stories to be the truth, and we forget that we made them up.
And when we use the word story in this context, it doesn't mean fib or fabrication. It's not a purposeful manipulation. And Mike, it's not a self deception. It's simply an interpretation, an explanation. So a fantastically powerful distinction for us to have is event is not equal explanation. Event. is not equal explanation.
And the reason this is so important is this. Is it the events of your life or your explanations about those events that are more influential as to the [00:50:00] actual actions you take in the world? Which is it? The explanation. And out of the actual actions you take, observer, action, result, you produce results.
Quantitative and qualitative results. And the key separation is event is not equal explanation. I believe this vistage groups, high functioning leadership peer groups. Every member already understood that before they met me because they regularly bring their explanations to the table in issue processing and invite their colleagues to poke holes in them.
It's one of the reasons
Mike Goldman: why one of the key questions. When I'm sane enough to remember one of the key questions I asked myself, one of the key questions I asked during my coaching sessions, getting to the, you know, it's the story we're telling is to ask yourself the question when there's a situation that's frustrating you, or you can't figure it [00:51:00] out, or how could this person do that is to ask the question, what else could this mean?
Chalmers Brothers: Perfect
Mike Goldman: because we give it meaning and we think it's, we think it's your words. We think it's the capital T true when no, it's just our truth in the moment based on the story we're telling. So this is beautiful stuff.
so people, Chalmers, if people want to find out more about your SOAR program or anything else you do to help leaders and help your clients, where should they go?
Chalmers Brothers: Wonderful. Thank you for asking. My website is my name,chalmersbrothers.com. My email address is info@ chalmers brothers. I can be reached there. I'm starting a YouTube. I'm starting to be more active as of this month on a YouTube channel. I'm going to have very short videos and Mike. I'm going to ask.
I may send you a link. If you'll help me kind of spread the word on that. It'll be my I've had the channel for years, but have done very little with it. Almost nothing with it. So I'm now making a new commitment in 25 to be more active. In short videos, and, I would love [00:52:00] to work with organizations of all sizes.
I mean, it's my, this isn't just my job. This is my particular passion in life. I believe our organizations need this body of learning. I believe our families need this. I believe. Our societies need this, right? this notion of, being aware that we are each unique observers necessarily seeing and interpreting based on all the things that make us who we are.
And that's the starting point, hopefully for living and working together well.
Mike Goldman: Beautiful. Well, Chalmers, I always say, if you want a great company, you need a great leadership team. Thanks so much for helping us get there today.
Chalmers Brothers: It's a giant pleasure. Thanks for the opportunity. It's been great to know you.
Mike Goldman: Same here.