The Power of Openness and Honesty with Ken Bogard and Grace Gavin
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
“Openness is listening without reservation. Putting your needs and wants on pause for someone else”
–Grace Gavin
Ken Bogart: Founder of Know Honesty, dedicated to improving professional lives and meeting true organizational needs.
Grace Gavin: Co-founder, focused on promoting open and honest communication and leadership.
Together, they are driving a movement aimed at enhancing leadership, communication, and collaboration across organizations.
Defining Leadership Characteristics
Openness: Defined by Grace as the ability to listen without reservation and put personal needs on pause for collaboration.
Honesty: Ken emphasizes real communication, where both openness and honesty coexist. The missing element in many teams is openness.
The Know Honesty Movement
Mission: To change how the world communicates, one person and team at a time.
Approach: They invite individuals to engage in truly open and honest communication, creating a movement that empowers personal freedom and genuine connection.
Openness vs. Honesty
Honesty: Being your true self, expressing how you feel and what you want. It's about vulnerability and transparency.
Openness: Listening without judgment, putting others' needs ahead temporarily. It’s about being receptive to others.
Goal: Striving for 100% openness and honesty, although no one can be perfect all the time. The pursuit is to increase moments of full honesty and openness.
Remote Work and Communication
Impact of Remote Work: Remote and hybrid work environments strip away human connection unless intentional efforts are made to foster it. Solutions include facilitating informal meetings or checking in before and after scheduled meetings.
Assessment and Improvement
Pursuit of Honesty Assessment: A tool designed to measure how honest and open individuals are, allowing for rich conversations in leadership teams about barriers to being 100% open and honest.
Improvement Plan: Leadership teams use the assessment results to discuss what stands between them and full openness or honesty.
Six Practices of Know Honesty
Assessment: Measuring levels of openness and honesty through the Pursuit of Honesty Assessment.
Fake You: Recognizing and eliminating the facade you present to others instead of being your true self.
The Wall: Identifying and breaking down the barriers we put up that prevent us from being fully open with others.
The Agreement: Establishing a mutual understanding to be 100% honest and open with each other.
The Still: A reflective practice done every six months to check in with personal contentment and discontent, which impacts leadership.
Your Pursuit: Identifying what you truly want and taking actionable steps to achieve it, often through open and honest conversations.
Business Model and Implementation
Three Key Offerings:
The Book: "Know Honesty: Eliminate the Divide, Become a Masterful Communicator, and Connect with Anyone."
The Assessment: Available on their website for individuals and teams to measure their progress in openness and honesty.
Workshops: Leadership workshops that focus on embedding the principles of openness and honesty into teams. These include day 1, day 30, and day 180 check-ins.
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Mike Goldman: Ken Bogart is the founder of Know Honesty. He's dedicated to enhancing professionals lives and delivering on the organization's truest needs and wants.
Grace Gavin is the co founder of Know Honesty. She's a catalyst for open and honest communication and effective leadership. Together, they're know honesty approach is enhancing the lives of hundreds of professionals, delivering significant financial gains for companies, improving leadership, collaboration, and creating a movement.
Welcome to the show.
Grace Gavin: Thanks for having us. Mike.
Mike Goldman: Yeah, I'm excited about this. so before we dive in to you guys and about this idea of honesty, which I'll just start off saying, I don't agree with honesty at all. I think it's a horrible idea, but we'll dive in and see what you guys think about it. but let me ask, and maybe Grace, I'll start with you.
What do you believe is the one most important characteristic of a great leadership team?
Grace Gavin: This is a tough question, Mike. I think for me, it might surprise you with our company being called No Honesty, but I think the one most important thing for leadership teams to develop and cultivate is openness. And I'll give you the definition really quick because we often get it wrong, but openness is listening without reservation.
Putting your needs and wants on pause for someone else. To me, that's what it means to be in a team is to put my needs, my wants on pause, at least for a moment so that we can collaborate together. And it's not just always me trying to get what I want for my team or for my department, whatever it might be.
We're here together, I said, a team. So we have to be able to be open to each other. And actually in the clients that we're working with, this is, this is the often the deficit when we look at what are the skills of the teams need versus openness. We often struggle a lot more just as human beings in general, but especially in teams with openness.
So that's my thoughts.
Mike Goldman: Excellent. And I'm gonna di definitely want to talk a little bit more about the difference between openness and honesty. and by the way, I took your assessment, so I'm also gonna get you to debrief me and tell me how I did. but Ken, what do you think, what's the one most important characteristic of a great leadership team?
Ken Bogard: she took it right out of my mouth. But if I were to cheat, I'm going to say real communication is taking place on that leadership team, which is both openness and honesty taking place. So that's why it's cheating. I just think honesty is like, yeah, everybody's ready to do that. And they understand the importance. But I think the big piece we're missing is this openness side of things. And yeah, A and type D people have been trained to be decisive, have the answers, command the room, but when you've got to work collaboratively as a team, man, sometimes openness just goes out the window and we're not even listening to each other. so we can't build upon and help each other out with better ideas and pushing and pressure testing certain things that we've responded to one another. And so I think honest, honesty exists to a degree. I think it's openness. We've got to work on more. But the two combined give us real communication, and that's what we're after.
Mike Goldman: Beautiful.
in your intro, one of the things I said is that you're creating a movement.what is this movement?
Grace Gavin: It's the no honesty movement to put it plainly, but. Our mission, Mike, is to change how the world communicates. the way that you do that is person by person, team by team, educating them, talking with clients like we do, taking them through our process. But that's how you do it. That's how you create a movement.
It's person by person, bringing them in, agreeing this is the better way. This is how we should communicate. This is the way that we want our relationships to be. Ken, what else would you add?
Ken Bogard: Yeah, I would just add that I can feel the movement, Mike. So, are we there yet? No. The snowball's moving, though. can feel it collecting people. And,when I sit down one on one and I talk with somebody about it, and I'm like, Mike, just imagine you and I, for the first time, we're gonna go have coffee. And, I'm like, Mike, hey, I know I'm just meeting you, and this might sound a little crazy, but what I'm hoping you'll do with me is that you'll just be honest. You'll be truly and freely yourself. You'll speak into what you want and how you feel. And I'm going to be totally open to it, man. Let your freak flag fly.
You can say the craziest stuff to me, but I promise you, I'm going to be open to whatever you say. It doesn't mean I agree with you, but I'll listen to it. But then here's the deal, Mike, I'm going to be honest right back at you. And I hope that you're open to me. And if you and I can have that conversation, my gosh, we can accomplish anything together. And every time I sit down with somebody in that kind of setting and I share that They want it. They're begging for it. it's a sort of freedom for them and it just doesn't exist like it should. And so we can feel this thing snowballing, the books launching. I mean, this thing's about ready to go and the snowball is not going to stop
Mike Goldman: Now, by the time this comes out, I think it's going to be out there ready to go. So, so that's great. and we'll talk about the book later and where people should go to get it, which is great.
But so, so again, I want to keep talking about this movement and we've talked about openness and we've talked about honesty and grace, you've started to define them, but help me out again, tell, help us with what is the difference.
Between openness and honesty and is our goal shooting for 100 percent of both.
Grace Gavin: I'll give you the definitions, Mike, and then I'll let Ken jump in on the, what we're shooting for with our teams and with the world in general. So think about open and honest, just as a phrase. We've heard people say it, All the time. We want people to be open and honest with us, but we often don't stop and consider what we actually mean by that.
So we default to thinking it means transparency, authenticity, all of those things, which is fantastic. We're not knocking that by any means, but we're missing the open part of it, which I gave you the definition of prior, but I'll start with honesty this time. So honesty is being truly and freely yourself speaking into what you want. and how you feel. So when you talk about transparency, authenticity, vulnerability, that's all wrapped up into honesty. We're just simplifying it. We're calling that honesty. That's what it is. That's really important. But if we want that from everybody and we want that for ourselves, what we need to continue to cultivate and to work on alongside that is our openness.
And that's the one that we often get wrong. And we label as, you know, being an open book, transparent, which is again, just about ourselves. And that's honesty. Openness is listening without reservation. Putting your needs and wants on pause for someone else, and that is really hard to do, but that's what we're helping people cultivate and making it easier to do so.
Mike Goldman: So, so honesty, so, so honesty, if I'm gonna, I'm gonna summarize it, maybe a too high level, but honesty is more about us.
Grace Gavin: exactly.
Mike Goldman: It's letting our free, it's letting our freak flags fly. It's being vulnerable. Honesty is about us, but openness is about our openness to others, not our openness about ourselves, openness to others.
Grace Gavin: That's exactly right. That's actually, we have three essentials for each of them, Mike, and The third one for honesty is about you and the third one for openness is about others because it's got to be that give and take. It can't just be about me in a conversation the entire time. Otherwise I'm not actually in a conversation with you.
We're not actually exchanging. It's just me the whole time. And that's kind of what we've been conditioned to do, unfortunately.
Mike Goldman: And is the goal 100 percent all the time? 100 percent open, 100 percent honest, or are there? Well, don't be honest here. Come on. Let's not be honest here, but let's not be honest. Like, what's the goal?
Ken Bogard: It may be a nuance to say it this way, but the goal is to pursue 100 percent honesty and pursue a hundred percent openness.and we have an assessment called the pursuit of honesty assessment and which you took, and I can't wait to talk about that if we get to it, but the. There is no person who is 100 percent honest and 100 percent open 100 percent of the time, so forget that. But every human being has been, at least one point in their life, 100 percent honest, at least for a moment, or 100 percent open for just moment that exists. It's about upping that frequency. So in every relationship that we have in our life that we've cultivated that around us, we're surrounded by people who are pursuing and well on their way to be 100 percent honest and 100 percent open.
We'll never attain 100 percent of the time. There's just too many circumstances where it can be really damaging or hurtful, and we don't really want to teach that. Because I don't want to teach people exceptions, because then they run away with the exceptions. But what everybody should be focused on is like, look, if I'm 65 percent of the time, I'm honest, 35 percent of the time you're being fake you. And who wants to be fake you? Some other version of yourself that's not even real? Signing the core of who you are, and we know how that feels when we're being fake and nobody wants that. Let's shed that skin and let's slowly get towards a hundred percent. And so we want people to click off at 5%, 10% improvement every six months or so until it starts getting to that up or quadrant, which we'll talk about later, where you're becoming both more 100% honest and more 100% open.
Mike Goldman: Got it, but what we're what it sounds like we're not saying like there are times one of the things I so I work with leadership teams and at the end of most of my quarterly sessions with my leadership teams. We do an exercise called cascading communication. And in that exercise, I've got a yes column and a no column.
And the yes column says from all the work we did together over the last day or two days, here are the things we should be proactively communicating out to our team. And then there's a no column. The no column is here are the things that need to stay. Between us, the things that we are not going to go and tell people about.
And if people ask us about it, we're not sharing what we talked about here. Is that okay? Is that, so I want to like, like, where's that distinction between pursuing honesty and being honest all the time? Is it okay to say, Hey, the leadership team is making certain decisions. We don't have to be honest with everyone right now about what we've decided if it doesn't serve them and it doesn't serve the company.
Ken Bogard: Yeah. The goal will to be pursuing as much honesty and as much openness as possible. And so push that line. So Mike, I'm picturing your exercise and I'm like, can some of those things in the no category, can we stretch a little and maybe push a couple things into the yes category, because what I see a lot of times is the. The more we're hiding things, the more we're not exposing the true condition people can't help, can't do anything with that. Now, there are certainly things that are legal issues how we live in the U S and HR issues that cannot be exposed. Okay. There's going to be exceptions like that. there's also teams and organizations that aren't ready for that kind of transparency. So I have teams. So behind me are a list of some of my clients that have worked with in the past. And I will tell you, there's a huge spectrum of philosophies in my clients. the ones way over here that are ready to be totally transparent. They're just going to open up that book with their teams and help them engage in the honest conversations. And then I got the ones over here that are like, Ooh, we, for the last a hundred years of being in business, we haven't shared this. We're not comfortable sharing it. the ones that are less transparent tend to move slower. The ones that are more transparent tend to move faster. And that's just a tendency. It's not right for every single organization. I got another organization that lives in a very tight knit community and they can't share things because it goes out to their employees and those employees, let it get to the competitors. Okay. And that scenario, I get it. Like we have to pay attention to that stuff, but I just don't make it the goal or the focal point.
Grace Gavin: Yeah, and I think the other important thing to add there is just this little way of framing it and thinking about it is be as honest as you can be as soon as you can be.that's the framework as honest as you can be as soon as you can be.
Mike Goldman: What I love about that, and I hit this with my clients, this is so relevant, is that, you know, I was with a client just last month and there was some information. some of the numbers that they typically didn't share with the organization, they thought it was very important to share with these two leaders, not folks on the leadership team, but one level down.
And while that made a lot of sense, Four other people in the room said, well, wait a minute. If you share the information with them, these 10 other people are going to want to know that information too, and I'm not sure they can handle it. So let's not share it with these people. And what I realized and what I challenged them on is the idea that they were kind of dumbing down the organization to some degree, not to cater to their highest performers, but catering to their lowest performers.
They were going to hurt their ability to share information with their highest performers. Something's wrong there.
Ken Bogard: Yeah,
Mike Goldman: the kind of thing. I agree with both of you. That's the kind of thing we need to challenge.
Grace Gavin: Yeah. and then it's goes both ways. Mike, if you, the more honest you are with your team and your organization as a whole, the more likely they are to be honest with you because they're seeing you model it as a leader. And they say, Oh. I can do that too. and here's the things that I need to be honest about, because I see it happening all the time with the levels below leadership.
And can I really say that, Ooh, can I really say this? I was in, in a workshop with a client and they were like, leadership signs, my paychecks, right? So how do I tell them this? How do I give them this feedback? And you have to be able, luckily their leadership had gone through training with us and I said, Hey, look. They are, they went through this exact same training that you did. They know what it means to be honest. They know what it means to be open. So then they can take that step and go have that conversation with them, knowing that, and I said, they're not always going to get it right. And it's not always going to go exactly your way.
And we have to recognize that, but their ability to be honest is going to help your employees also be honest with you. So if you want it, if you want it from them, you got to model it for them too.
Mike Goldman: How has the whole nature of work today, remote hybrid has that Helped us be more open and honest with each other. Has that hurt or is it just the same? We're doing it through a screen versus doing it in person. how has that impacted this whole movement and where we're going
Grace Gavin: I think we need to be. More intentional in the ways that we connect with each other and communicate at work. what I mean by that is whether you're doing it in person, whether you're fully. Remote or you're some type of hybrid. have to figure out where are you communicating with your team? Where are you connecting?
And so you can have a fully in person team if we're talking specifically about those options. But if all their office doors are closed all day long, they're not communicating. There's no collaboration going on. They might as well be remote. And then vice versa. I've seen fully remote teams that collaborate all the time.
they're hopping on zoom calls. They're. Collaborating, they're having that communication. So think it's the intentionality of it that's really important.
Mike Goldman: here? Here's the coaching I need. So I'm going to, that's what I love about this podcast. Like I'm steal a bunch of stuff from you guys and then share it with my clients. so the coaching I need from you is. You know, I'll give you a specific example. So one of my clients went remote when everybody else went remote there, of course they're hybrid now, but what they had four years ago, five years ago, I can't even keep track of when COVID was at this point, but what they had prehistoric times when we were all together is a lot of their important conversations happened.
In the hallway before the meeting in the hallway after the meeting. And I'm thinking about this one particular client because in addition to the conversations, they had one gentleman who was in his seventies, who was basically the company historian. He had been around forever. He's since retired, but he'd been around forever.
He frankly didn't have. A truly important role in executing anything at this point, but man, he was the guy you talk to and you didn't schedule a meeting to talk to him. you literally saw him at the water cooler or you saw him before the meeting or after the meeting, and he was such a fountain of amazing information and you could share with him.
And so that, that idea of sharing information, that open and honesty, which may happen before the meeting or after the meeting, how do you. And by the way, I don't mean the meeting after the meeting where you say, could you believe what that guy said? Like, that means the meeting's not going right. But I mean, even
Ken Bogard: clarity.
Mike Goldman: yeah.
Right. So, so that's important because that's the opposite of honesty as you're not sharing that in the meeting. But even if you are being both open and honest in meeting, Before the meeting, after the meeting is where some of the relationships are built. Some of the more casual conversations happen.
How do we replace that or do we need to replace that?
Grace Gavin: Yeah. I'll let Ken jump in on this one first.
Ken Bogard: I think the, let's just be real. A human element is stripped from our life at work by being remote and more hybrid. That's it. Stripped. I mean, it's obvious. There's just less connection taking place all over. Right. I'm not meeting with you next to the coffee machine, which sometimes there's a thing I don't just jump over to your desk to slide you something.
And there's some efficiencies and things, but there is a human element that is gone, can't be replaced. Culture will suffer from that yet. Remote is here to stay. And so we have to figure out how to implement more human moments or human elements.and I don't think we have to create some set of like 10 rules to get more human elements into our company. But I think this alone is a great conversation for any client to have. So how do we get more human elements added in, before and after our meetings? And. about starting your meeting, or at least your zoom camera and microphone on 10 minutes early and just anybody wants to pop in that can pop in or 10 minutes after, and I'll hang out here as a facilitator. mean, some way, some shape or form trying to add some sort of human element to it or a check in. That allows us to be a little more human as well. I know an EOS check in personal and professional best from the last week or the last quarter. I think that's great. And so knowing that remote's not going anywhere, I think need to talk about those tactics to implement more of them.
Mike Goldman: Is there, so, so with this goal in mind of being more open, more honest, is there a process? Follow these five steps to be more open and honest. how should we be thinking
About improving in this area.
And do we, I assume we start with ourselves versus saying, how do I get my damn team to be more open and more honest, but what do we do?
How do we get started?
Grace Gavin: Yeah. Well, the first way to get started is our pursuit of honesty assessment, Mike. So as we were writing the book, people were, you know, they were excited. We were writing book like, wow, that's so cool. But then when we started to tell them we were developing an assessment to put numbers to it, Ken can attest to this a lot too.
There, I started to light up because humans love to measure things. I want to put some numbers to it. I want to track my, improvements and things like that. So, the pursuit of honesty assessment, which is available on our website, and that is one of our six practices. So when you talk about how do I do this, right?
Open and honest, they. They're skills to develop, but they're what are often called soft skills. And don't get me on that tangent, because I could go forever on how they're not really soft skills. We need them to be able to do anything in our lives. but we looked at this field of communication and said, how do we make it simple, tangible and implementable for people?
So the six practices are how we figured out how to do that. And the first one starting off is the assessment.
Mike Goldman: Excellent. And by the way, I took the assessment, so I may as well mention it here. So you guys tell me if I, and by the way, well, actually, let me ask a question about the assessment first. Pursuit of honesty assessment. If I'm dishonest, I'm not going to give, Honest answers, right? Is it, if the more dishonest you are, is it the more inaccurate the results or is there some magic that makes the results accurate anyway?
Ken Bogard: There is a little bit of secret magic in there,
Mike Goldman: oh.
Ken Bogard: but we can't tell you about it. The. That is true for any assessment. I mean, there are ways around that and you can get really creative with it. And I mean, you can't, there's not much you can do when somebody is going to lie like crazy, on an assessment.
Mike Goldman: hopefully they're doing it to improve themselves so they may as well be honest or how is it going to help them, right?
Ken Bogard: Right. And what are they going to do on the openness side? I mean, the assessment is a really good start, Mike. It gives you some numbers. And, you know, we can evaluate those numbers and look into those numbers. and we have different statistics for different things that we're seeing, based on age and how much you make. So we have these kinds of things, but the real value in it. Is this is take that assessment, Mike, have your leadership teams take that assessment, and then you've got to talk about it. thats the value is
Talking about
that assessment and what it means. And so you take it and some person named Bob took it and he's like, I'm 80 percent honest. And then Mike says, well, what stands between you and 100% And then that's the conversation and that thing's going to be rich. Can you imagine what's coming out of your leadership team members mouths when they're talking about what stands between them and being a hundred percent honest um, and it's a thousand different things, but at least we're putting it on the table. then you look at openness, which is typically for most leadership team members, a bit lower than their honesty scores typically. And so we struggle in this department. And so, okay, Bob, you're 60 percent open. So you're 40 percent the wall, right? You've closed yourself off to many different topics in your life. So Bob, what stands between you and a hundred percent open? And then the richness comes from that conversation too. So I've just equipped you with two questions to ask after everybody takes that assessment, but that's the beautiful thing. And then facilitate that and go back and forth and be honest and open.
And Bob might say some of the craziest bat, insert bad word, bat, crazy stuff ever, got to be open to it and create the safest space possible. Just hear Bob out and let's be open to it. And then we're open to it. We'll move to be honest back at Bob and we'll say, okay, Bob, here's some honesty from my end. And then you let the conversation ensue that way.
Mike Goldman: And then when he leaves we call the proper authorities and inform them. And by the way.
Ken Bogard: So my scores, I got a 68 percent openness, which to me looks pretty low for a coach. Like I got to work on that 68 percent openness and 88 percent honesty. So I don't know if that means I'm batshit crazy or,or, you know,
you're normal.
Mike Goldman: Oh,
Ken Bogard: it means. You're just normal.
Mike Goldman: ew.
Ken Bogard: it, no, you're higher than average on the honesty scale. And I would tell you, hallelujah. If I had you in my life, because who I want to be surrounded with are honest individuals. I don't want fakeness. I don't want you to skirt the truth on me on a regular basis. I want you to tell me how it is. 88 percent is way up there. And so maybe you aren't that normal. Maybe I'm more so on the side of openness. Collectively society is hovering around that you're a little bit higher than average, by the way. And so you got 12 percent the way to go in your pursuit of honesty on that side.
And then you got 32 percent the way to go on your openness which is great. Like, look what we're diagnosing here and how specific we get to get with you, Mike. And it's like, let's take a look at your openness. Now you don't have to answer this, but where are you at? And your personal life versus your professional life on the openness
Mike Goldman: Yeah. I was 70 percent work life, 65 percent personal life. So that's kind of interesting.
Ken Bogard: And that's common.
Mike Goldman: And yet I've been married for 33 years. So something's going right.
Ken Bogard: It sounds like you got to do a little, workshop between you and your wife. You know, let's explore
Mike Goldman: if it ain't broken, I'm not fixing it anyway. So, so the first step of the six is the assessment. What's the second step
Grace Gavin: The second one
Mike Goldman: or a second practice? I mean,
Grace Gavin: Yeah.
The second practice is what we've been talking about is fake you. So that's the facade you project rather than being a hundred percent honest. And we all know what that feels like for me when I recognized it was happening is when I first started going to networking events in my professional career, I'd never been to them before.
So I didn't know really what I was walking into, but you know, wearing the uncomfortable blazer and shoes and following the script and all those types of things. I'm like, I don't really know what I'm doing, but I hate this. And it's exhausting because. I realized was happening, Mike, is I was being fake that entire time. And I didn't realize that's what was making me exhausted, causing all that loss of energy because I'm there to try to connect with people. Right. But what they're really connecting with, what they're hitting is that fake you, that fake version of me rather than actually connecting with me. So is it any kind of surprise that I didn't enjoy those events, didn't make any necessarily deep connections out of that?
So that's the second of the six
Mike Goldman: so that, so this second practice of fake you, is it understanding when you're being fake? Is that what it means?
Grace Gavin: Yes. Understanding. And then the next step is ridding yourself of it. So it's not enough to just have that awareness piece. That's really, it's key to recognize when that's happening. Cause we walk our clients through that and say, when is this happening? Sometimes it's a pattern. Sometimes it's with a specific person, whatever it might be, but then recognizing when it's happening in the moment and ridding yourself of fake you.
So I was at a funny enough, another networking event, but I actually really enjoyed them now. Cause now I'm showing up as a hundred percent honest. but anyways, one of my friends and business colleagues asked me, how are you doing? And immediately I said, good. and then I had to stop and pause and say, hang on, let me take that back.
Actually, let me tell you how I'm actually doing. Cause that's what you asked. And I, and we have that relationship of real communication, that open and honest exchange going back. And I said, I just. I said that because that's what everybody always says, but here's how I'm actually doing. It's been kind of a crazy day.
I'm running all around, but I'm really glad to be here and I'm glad to see you and how much better of a response that is and also a true reflection of where I was at.
Mike Goldman: Got it. So the second practice is the second practice both recognizing fake you and ridding yourself from fake you or is ridding yourself from it. We're getting down to the third practice. I want to make sure I got my numbers right.
Grace Gavin: you right
Mike Goldman: That's all fake you. Okay. So, so first practice is the assessment.
Second is fake you. What's the third one?
Grace Gavin: The third one is the wall, and that is the divide we create between ourselves and others rather than being a hundred percent open, and it's happening all the time to us.
Mike Goldman: So the second one is more about honesty and the third practice is more about openness.
Grace Gavin: Yeah, you got that exactly right.
Mike Goldman: Okay. And then what's number four?
Grace Gavin: four is called the agreement, and so Ken kind of teased it to you a little bit, so I'm going to toss it back over to him to talk about the agreement.
Ken Bogard: the agreement, if you don't mind, I want to backslide to the wall cause we, we loved honesty and we talked about that one for a little bit and fake you. And then the wall was just kind of quick.
Mike Goldman: Well, hold on, you know, I'm look, my score and openness was only 68 percent compared. So notice how quickly I went through the wall. So maybe I'm protecting myself. So, so go ahead. Let's dig. Let's dig in.
Grace Gavin: That's exactly it Mike. It's about starting to recognize that those numbers are giving you some indication. So anyways, yes, let's go back to the wall
Ken Bogard: wall. So on the honesty side of things, think about society in the last 15 years, power of vulnerability by Brene Brown. true you, delegate and elevate to your unique ability. Dan Solman, all these things to promote you and your individuality and who you are, and it just piles on and piles on.
And everybody loves it. They love working on themselves. it's. Where's room for anybody else? You know, openness, if we called our organization, no openness, I don't think we'd sell as many books or create a movement. It's just not as sexy as honesty. And it's because it's not about you. It's about others and openness. It's the key. It is the key to getting our leadership teams. And our people to the life that they want, because what happens is we put up this wall so just picture all these walls. We're putting up Mike in our life. Like, I don't like somebody in a different political party sharing their opinions.
Wall shutting them down. I don't like somebody else's idea. Look at, I run sales. You don't, I don't like your idea. Wall don't want to hear it. I'm going to check out and look at my device while you're talking and doing this presentation. Like we do everything we can to run from everything else and build this house around us with only us in it. I will tell you, it's an extremely lonely place. And so we're trying to flip that script. And we're trying to get people to eliminate their walls and just listen. And I'm not saying agree with everybody, so don't get me wrong there. I mean, please have your disagreements. That's as prevalent as oxygen.
So get used to disagreement. That's fine. I'd argue, get comfortable with disagreement, put your wall down, hear the disagreements out, and then go ahead and give your honesty. But that is the bigger hill to climb for most teams and society in general, in my opinion.
Mike Goldman: Yeah. One of the things I talked to my, I don't know if you guys ever read a book called, conversational capacity. And if you haven't very, I think very well relevant to, The openness side of things. So check it out. But one of the things I share with my clients from that book is most, and I'm going to talk about leaders here.
Most leaders, when they're engaging in debate and debates critical at a client, say to me, if we have six people in the room and we all agree, we have five, too many people in the room. So I told him I would steal that from him. And I have, But when you're engaging in debate, most leaders are on one of two extremes.
One extreme is called minimizing and minimizing says you're not sharing how you really feel or your opinions. Cause you don't think it's that important. Or you might even say things like, this is probably unimportant, but, or you guys know this better than I do, but you're minimizing your opinion because you don't want to rock the boat or you don't want to look stupid.
That's one extreme, not very helpful in a debate. The other extreme, which I think probably in a stronger way hits the idea of openness right between the eyes is you're debating to win. And when you're debating to win, you're not listening, you're waiting to talk. It's all about you doing everything you can to win the argument, where the author, and I forget his name, but in conversational capacity, talks about being in that middle ground between minimizing and winning, which is, you know, you are arguing and it might get emotional and that may be okay, but you are debating in order to gather the information necessary to make the best decision you could make at that point.
So even if you're arguing really strongly for one thing, it's then stepping back and going, Hey everybody, I know I feel real strongly about this, but I also know we've got a bunch of smart people around the table that disagree with me. What am I missing? Help me out here. Being open to the way other people are feeling.
And I think that's learning that kind of technique and maybe more importantly having that attitude of not having to win all the time, I would imagine is one important element of being open.
Ken Bogard: You, you saying the words learning to me, learning that I think is great because it's, we don't, know, when's the last time you were taught how important openness was. It wasn't in grade school. It wasn't in high school. It wasn't at the last 10 jobs I've had. Right. They just, it's not taught. And so you're in a unique position, Mike, where you have a huge influence on these leadership team members.
Right. Where you can teach them this skill and when they learn to do it, when they quit debating to win they're really debating to find the best solution and they're really open to what everybody's saying, will tell you, you will become a less stressed individual, the more open you become. You quit trying to be the control maniac because nobody's doing it the way you want them to do it. share this planet with 8 billion people quit trying to design it for one. It'll never happen. It'll just cause you pain and suffering the rest of your life. Cause it'll never turn out that way.
Grace Gavin: Yeah,
Mike Goldman: that.
Grace Gavin: to add on to that, people will be more honest with you when they know that you're open or that you're trying to be open to them. You're developing those skills. I have conversations with people all the time where they're like, let me be honest with you. Great.
Because they know that I'm open to it, which actually leads perfectly into of the six practices, the agreement, which is you start out that conversation. Ken, you want to jump in?
Ken Bogard: that
Grace Gavin: Yes, I do. I do.
Ken Bogard: The agreement. I love the agreement. So use this all the time, Mike, and it's what we did. If we go back a few minutes, it's what we did in the coffee shop together, meeting each other for the first time, but what you're trying to do in order to push people up.
And if you could picture quadrants into higher honesty and higher openness you're simply inviting them in to agree to communicate a certain way. And here's the agreement. Mike if we could agree on this, I think we're going to do really well together, but I'm asking you to be a hundred percent honest with me. Truly and freely yourself, speaking of what you want and how you feel. I'll be a hundred percent open to you. I'll listen to you without reservation. I'll put my needs and wants on pause for you, but then I'm going to be honest back at you and I ask that you be totally open to me, but if we do that, we're going to be all right here for the next hour or so, but I also do that for the leadership teams I work with and the teams Grace works with, that's how we start off the day and we're like, we're to be this and almost regardless of the agenda. We're going to have an awesome day because we're putting a whole bunch of truth on the table and everyone's hearing it. That's powerful stuff. And it's missing from almost every single conversation that exists. And we're just trying to bring it back to open and honest. And that's the agreement. Oh,
Mike Goldman: One, one of the things I especially like about that is, is one of the things that I've seen lacking in leaders and most never get trained on this, is most leaders have a,do not have a powerful ability to coach their team members, and they don't really understand the difference between. Holding somebody accountable and giving feedback or having a difficult conversation and coaching.
Coaching is a very different animal. Coaching is more about asking questions and listen and being open to what they're saying and be honest. You know, all the, what you just mentioned, that agreement is. One of the ways that, and I never realized I was doing this, but it's the way I open up most coaching conversations with my clients or the way I open up a coaching relationship.
And I think if more leaders could have that kind of relationship with their team members, with their direct reports, it will, it'll help them to take a pretty major leap in becoming better coaches as well.
Grace Gavin: Yeah. And I think the important part there too, in the coaching part of it, Mike, is when you have that agreement in place, it's a tool and it's a practice to point back to also say, Hey, we have the, we agreed to this at the beginning of this conversation, I feel like you're not being honest with me, or not being open to what you're saying.
Let me. Let me put down my wall and please will you say that again? So I will be open to it it's a reference point to back to that because again, these are skills We're developing helping people do that. You have something to point back to us. So it's not just saying Mike Why aren't you being honest with me?
It's no Mike. We agreed to this at the beginning of this conversation This is how we're gonna have a better relationship together. So let's get back to that
Mike Goldman: Beautiful. What's the fifth practice?
Grace Gavin: it is the still and What this still does is it helps you uncover and become aware of? Your current version of yourself today, because we are, we're wildly busy people, right? There's always something more coming at us. Our calendars are full. We're getting busier and busier. so what often happens, especially with leaders, when they have all of these responsibilities on their plate, they often don't take the time to pause and reflect on where they're really at right now.
And so with the still, we're looking at all these different categories of life and we add more specifically for teams and for leadership, but it's answering the question. Are you content or discontent and why? Because I will tell you if there is content in your life, that's showing up in how you lead, which is fantastic. But if there's discontent in your life, that's also showing up in how you lead and you have to, be aware of that and uncover that and start working towards more content in your life to help become a better leader, but also just understanding where you're at in your life.
Mike Goldman: So is that a, you know, Hey, once a month or once a quarter, understand where you're at in your life. Or is that more of, you know, every day take five minutes and understand where you're at or is it somewhere in between?
Grace Gavin: I think reflection is really important for leaders in general, but the still specifically as a practice we recommend doing every six months, six months to get that pulse check on where you're at.
Mike Goldman: And how does that, but that's different than the assessment.
Grace Gavin: Yes. Yep. So it's one of our reflective practices and I'll tell you why it's important. One of our very first clients that we were working with, this guy's name is Tim. And so we have them fill out the still, we give them the directions and we say, all right, you got 10 minutes, go fill this out. And so they all go fill it out in our, in our space. And then after about 10 minutes, they come filing back into the room. And I see Tim walking back in. He's also the leader of this leadership team. I see him kind of wiping away tears. I'm like, okay, we're going to get into, we're going to get into a conversation there. So the team's going around and sharing. And then we get to Tim and he said. I'll never forget what he said. He said, I realized where the source of my discontent is coming from, because as he was filling it out on the page, he was seeing all this, he was marking discontent in his friendships. He was marking discontent in his family, in his relationships. And he, what he said is, I realized that the source of the discontent is coming from the culture in this business because what you need to know about Tim is that he was a leader of this business, but he had also recently started another business. So you want to talk about time and all the things that takes on top of being a father and a husband and was taking away from it. And what he realizes he was discontent with a culture in that business because he had inherited from his dad. And that was the culture that was still persisting today. So he felt like he was still living in his dad's shadow. said, that's what drove me to go start this other business. And what's driving all this other discontent.
And he had 10 minutes before, didn't realize that. And so that's the power of getting really clear on where you're at right now, accessing your true condition, where are you content and discontent.
Mike Goldman: Beautiful. And what's the sixth practice?
Grace Gavin: Yeah, the last one, I'm going to let Ken take,
Ken Bogard: Well, you're doing great. I mean, why stop now? I'm going to mess it up at this point. Take it away.
Grace Gavin: okay, the last one, which is really exciting is your pursuit. And what your pursuit really is, Mike, is it's answering the question. What do you really want? What do you really want? Because a lot of times. We're just kinda, we're kind of going after things, not really sure, not clear on what it is that we're actually after and how much of our actions are driven by what it is that we really want is the question.
So if you really want, a team that feels like they're cared about, that they want to do good work, well, you have to be aware of that and what are the actions that you're going to take to do that and what we know is that the more you develop your skills and ability to be open and to be honest, The quicker you move towards getting what you really want, because I'm in the session room with clients going through this in the workshop, It's fascinating to see, and this is not directed by any means, but I'll say probably 80 percent of the time, once they uncover what it is they really want, we have them identify what are the next steps to get that 80 percent of the time is a rough number there, but it's a conversation that they got have to go have with somebody.
Whether it's a conversation with another leadership team member, or if it's in their personal life, or it's one of their direct reports, there's a conversation that they have to be able to get what they really want.
Mike Goldman: I love this. and I think there may be some, you know, you may listen to this and say, Hey, Okay. You know, what do I really want? How hard is that to figure out? But what I have found is in myself, and I see this with clients all the time, is we are much, much better describing what we don't want. I'm on with leaders all the time.
We're like, everybody's leaving at five o'clock and no one cares and no one's accountable. And I say, I, well, I get it. that sucks. I, you know, I get your frustration. What do you want? And there's silence. Like I've just asked them to remember Pythagorean's theorem. Like they can't, but it's such a powerful question because you get what you focus on and the more you focus on what you don't want, the more you're going to see that stuff.
So it sounds like a simple question, but it's so empowering and it's not always as simple as we think.
Grace Gavin: that's exactly right. Because a lot of times, I mean, we've been talking about the me, myself, and I culture that's been developed in our society. So when we, Initially ask somebody, what do you really want? They either they're giving you blank stares like you're experiencing Mike or whatever the selfish things bubble to the top because they don't ask themselves that question.
So that's what comes up first. But I find that when people have the time to sit and to reflect, even if it's just five minutes, 10 minutes, but what do I really want? And they go deeper. It tends to be about others or making their life better so that they are better impacting others, especially when it comes to leaders.
Ken Bogard: When I hear, when I hear, so I get phone calls throughout the week and usually it's a pretty tough conversation around misaligned expectations, or I'm pissed off about this or that, or somebody is just ready to dump something. And it's great. And I love those phone calls. I really do. I think that makes me a crazy person, but I want to help them. But I cannot help them if I don't know what they want out of that situation.and so I asked that question probably 10 times a week, because a lot of times they just haven't taken the time to think through what it is. then I'm like, okay, so you're frustrated with him for what he did. what do you want out of that situation?
What do you want? And then they'll reflect and they'll think, well, I want him to own it. Oh, on the mistake. Okay, this is good. We're getting so you want him to and we just unpack it through that questioning, which is just what do you want? And then it's like, Okay, well, what step will you make to make sure that he is going to own it? Well, I think I'm going to go to him and I'm going to tell him exactly how I feel. Be honest. Hoping that he's going to be open, I'll use the agreement to make sure he really hears me and is open to it and then tells me back what he thinks. And then, so, what happens by saying what you want is it's kind of like putting it out to the universe and now it's got a chance of happening. Because nobody can help you if you don't tell them what you want. And so we do to a degree need people to be a little more selfish with their requests and what it is. like, God forbid in our relationship, if Grace ever started hiding what she wants, she will never be able to design the life she wants with me in it. You know, I just can't help you, Grace. you're hiding things or holding them here, but when it comes out good, bad, or ugly, it doesn't matter. We can now solve it. Let's go. And so people have to start expressing what they want and this just gives them permission to do it. So it's a really great tool for that.
It's very simple.
Mike Goldman: This stuff is so relevant to, I know whoever's listening to this, incredibly relevant to the leadership teams that I work with.
You've alluded to it a couple of times, training workshops, but tell me a little bit more of how you, how do you work with clients to implement this? Is it all training programs?
Is it ongoing coaching? Is it, do you do keynotes? Like what, how do you get out there and help people? What's your business model?
Ken Bogard: I'll take it. There's three major ways. The book, it's this close. So the book, and we wanted to give it to the world and not try to hold on to it and keep it as our own little workshop that we do. And so the book's one Avenue. then. There's the assessment and you can go take the assessment and learn about it.
And Mike, you're about to get a series of emails coming at you that'll help walk you through the six practices.so there's that way. And then you can hire us professionally as open and honest experts to come in and work with their leadership team to start. And we put you through, workshops we have three major workshops and you can work with us through the rest of the, of time.
So day one, day 30, and then day 180. 180, 180 until you want to get rid of us and this thing is in your life real well. And so we have workshops that we do for the leadership team, and then we slowly push it down to the next level. So we gotta get it right and tight at the top, and then we can push it a little bit further down.
So you got the book, the Assessment and workshops.
Mike Goldman: Beautiful. And where should people go? This will all be in the show notes, but where should people go if they want to find out more and let's start, let's go. So for the book, is it just go? and by the way that give it, give us the full name of the book.
Ken Bogard: No honesty. Eliminate the Divide, become a masterful communicator and connect with anyone.
Mike Goldman: And
honesty and I gotta be clear, K N O W. And it's by design, Mike. yeah, I thinking about that earlier. I'm like, if you spell it wrong, it totally screws up everything. you're the opposite, but so, and I imagine that are just people find that on Amazon. Is that the best place for people to go? Or wherever they buy their books.
Grace Gavin: Yeah. Wherever. Wherever you buy your books, but if you want to look specifically, it'll be
and again, that's K N O W. So very clearly on that. So you're not going to the wrong spot, but slash book. And then there'll be the links to wherever you want to purchase the book. and it's available in all the formats, ebook, audio book, hardcover, softcover.
So, you know, pick your pleasure there on that one. And then, the assessment also on our website, knowhonesty.com/assessment
we're trying to keep it as simple as possible. Again, simple, tangible, implementable is what we're doing here. and then the best ways to connect with Ken and I, because, I'll speak for myself, but I know this is true for Ken.
I love to have conversations about what does it mean to be open and honest? How do we do this in teams? How do we do this in our lives? And so the best way to do that is to reach out via LinkedIn to us. and we would love to connect and continue the conversation.
Mike Goldman: Beautiful. The way I know I loved an episode is when, again, I learned a ton of stuff. I'm like, Oh my God, I got to take that back to my clients. Oh my God, I've got to take that back to my clients. And I need to talk to you guys about some clients. I think you can help, but this has been phenomenal. I really want to thank, you know, both of you Ken and Grace.
This has been great. And I always say, if you want a great company, you need a great leadership team. Thank you so much to both of you for helping us get there today.
Ken Bogard: Thank you, Mike.
Grace Gavin: Thanks, Mike.