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(subdued music) (bright music) (bright music continues) - Welcome to "Business Forward."

I'm your host, Matt George.

Joining me tonight, good friend of mine, Dean Heffta.

Author, leader entrepreneur, consultant, just an all around great guy.

Dean has a new book out called "How We Connect" and we'll take a deep dive into that.

But really what we're gonna talk about is how we connect and then what that means as we transition into business leadership and development of our teams.

But welcome, Dean.

- Great to be here, Matt.

- Man, I love it.

So first of all, question about the book.

How did you get involved with this?

'Cause you know, we've talked about many things in the past, but I think this was kind of a hidden little project you were working on and then all of a sudden you're an author and it is cool.

I read the book.

It's awesome.

- Thanks, man.

Well, like a lot of things, it's the things that we have in our life come from relationships.

And a few years ago I met my co-author, he's based out of Paris.

He's my French co-author.

We actually have this book in French as well.

And he said to me, he was one of my trainers and has been a great friend and mentor, and he said, "We need to write a book together and I want you to be my co-author."

And so we began this journey to really dive into bringing the insights of Process Communication Model to people in a way that is both helpful if they've been exposed to it before, but also an introduction to the insights to help them understand themselves better first, I think that's the beginning of communication is self-awareness and then introduce the model to help us build better connections with the people in our lives.

- How do you describe the model?

- Well, the origin really came out of work in the 1970s.

Dr. Taibi Kahler, who was a therapist in the 1970s, found there were these distinct patterns of language that people used that helped him to better understand their needs and their motivations.

And he validated that.

And then NASA heard about it and they wanted to understand what he understood.

And so they spent millions in research helping with the validation of creating this model.

And they used it in their shuttle program to help improve communication among their teams and among the entire organization.

And then in the '90s really got released into the broader world.

And people would've experienced, if they've ever watched a Pixar movie, they've experienced the application of the insights of PCM in how the characters are created and how they communicate and how the whole storyline flows.

- I find that fascinating.

The Pixar thing is really fascinating, but for NASA to sit here and understand, I mean it tells you how deep and how really, how smart they are, to be honest with you.

Because they're identifying that the most important thing within their business is probably safety and then that communication piece of how.

- Well, and they learned it the hard way because what they had seen in the Apollo programs, in the Skylab programs, was some really bad communication.

We'd call it miscommunication or distress.

That can create definitely some major issues if you're strapped onto a rocket with a couple other people and you're not communicating well.

- That's unbelievable.

So, I mean, you've coached and helped people at all levels of business but how does this really help hone in on those communication styles?

Like... - So think about it like this.

Each of us experience the world differently.

I think we would agree that you put 10, 20, 30 people in one room or one experience at the same time they're all gonna take different things away from it.

And part of what's informing that is what we call perceptions.

And so we have six different perceptions.

We all have these different perceptions in us but one of them is gonna be the easiest for us to use to understand what's going on around us, for us to grab information from the world.

And then that begins the storytelling process internally.

And if we're not aware of the perceptions that we're using and the stories we're telling ourself, so it's a self-awareness, then it makes it a lot harder for us to be able to make connections and to really understand where somebody else is coming from.

Because we start applying ourselves to them and then all of a sudden their behavior seems odd to us.

We don't understand it.

So that's the foundation, for me, is self-awareness by understanding how we're experiencing the world in this moment.

- You know, I really wasn't gonna go here, but I'm going to.

You actually helped me understand this process as a coach.

And I remember sitting down with you and we were talking about certain people that I was, you know, that I was associated with, working with.

And really it is, even for a CEO, to sit back and to understand, because you know this, you work with a lot of business owners but you also work a lot with a lot of president, CEOs.

And in those leadership positions, it's not arrogance but there is a confidence in a lot of people that you sit there and you think you should have the answer all the time.

And I think in talking to you over probably a year period I realized that not only did I not have all the answers, I don't even think I was searching for 'em correctly.

And I think that was like the most impactful thing for me.

So it doesn't surprise me that you came out with a book like this.

'Cause as I read the book, I'm sitting here going, "Well, I mean this, we talked about this."

And we talked about that miscommunication or lack of communication that you and I have discussed many times.

I think that's, if you can identify that and at least own that, I think as a leader, don't you think that you could become a better leader by being, I don't know what the word is, but humbled?

- Well, yeah, you've hit on something that's really important, right?

So we think about, what does it take to rise to some level of authority or success or accomplishment?

And the things that end up getting us to that point we believe we need to do more of that.

And so maybe we were a great problem solver and we had a lot of answers as a technical person and as we transition into a role as a leader, we may not pick up on the fact that our job is no longer to be the primary problem solver or to be the primary person that has the answers.

The responsibility and what success is has changed, and we might not be aware of that.

So you hit on something that's very important is I have to have confidence in myself and my abilities to take on a task like that.

And then the flip side is, or the paradox is, I have to have the humility to acknowledge to myself that I probably don't have all the answers.

So I have to have the confidence to act as if I do and the awareness to admit that I don't.

And that's the beginning of being able to be, you know, an effective connected leader by being able to say, "I might not know."

- Yeah, and it's funny because I don't think it has anything to do with age or experience either, because I think we're always growing.

But I think you nailed it.

It's that, how do you grow self-awareness?

- Mm.

Yeah.

- Am I right?

- Sure.

For sure.

- So when you look at other clients that you've had, I mean that probably is an avenue that you could talk about just about with everything in your coaching.

Is that one of the things that you focus on?

- It's foundational.

- Foundational.

Okay.

- So I even, you know, in sessions where I'm doing training and we're working on leadership development, one of the questions that I'll ask people is, "Have you ever worked for a leader that is not self-aware?"

And many hands go up.

And so what I want them to do is say, you know, "What is it I observe in that other person when they're behaving in a way where to me it seems like they're not self-aware and what's the consequence of that?"

So business leadership, especially when we get to the high levels of the organization, requires us to be able to be emotionally aware and healthy.

Otherwise all of our distress and our misconceptions and our, maybe, bad behaviors end up getting exported into the entire organization.

So you think about it like an organization is not gonna be healthier than its leader.

It's not going to magically be a better-communicating organization than the CEO is to their executive team.

It doesn't get better as you go out in the organization, it degrades.

And so we have a responsibility as leaders to, A, be very self-aware of the things I'm good at, of the responsibilities that I have to fulfill, and some of the things that I'm not great at.

And to be able to continually be curious enough to seek my blind spots and to seek that feedback without believing that necessarily that's the truth.

But I have to be looking for that zone of growth, which is the unknown.

- Hmm.

You know, you can get the book on Amazon.

And you know, one of the things that I really loved about the book is that there was a chapter, and I can't remember which one but it was early on, I think it was chapter three or four, there's exercises that help you, you know, you're sitting there thinking to yourself, "Wait a minute, I'm back as a CEO now."

I'm reading this as a CEO.

And I think that's what's interesting about it, it's 'cause you know how it is with any book, you go back and I go, "I really like that chapter," or something, you reread it or something.

But here it's a thinking-person's book because you sit there and you start, everything to me became situational.

Like, I started thinking, "Well, I remember when this happened."

- And you can apply it with your family, right?

And all of these situations that we find ourselves in.

So I wanna take what you said there about putting myself in that position as a CEO.

I would say that every person watching today can put themselves into the role of CEO because anybody who's in charge of anything, - Including their family.

- Including their family.

Whatever position we find ourself in we have moments where we're in an executive role.

What does an executive do?

An executive has the authority to make things happen.

That's not exclusive domain of A CEO.

I might be in charge of a sales team I might be in charge of a service team.

I might be in charge of a volunteer group at my church.

Wherever it is, there are these executive responsibilities.

And part of that is I have to be self-aware enough to know how am I interacting with all of my key connections.

- Kevin Harrington and Mark Tim wrote a book, "Mentor to Millions," and it was a "Wall Street Journal" number one and Mark Tim, you know, Kevin was a shark on "Shark Tank" but Mark Tim said, "I finally became a better businessman when I realized I needed to be the CEO of my family first."

And once he became the CEO of his family first, then his business skyrocketed.

And I wasn't even gonna say that today but it just came to my mind.

It's perfect.

- So here's the word that I think of when you say that, and that is congruence.

- Congruence.

- How can we operate at an exceptional level in one part of our life over the course of time and not also work on the other parts of our lives?

There has to be this congruence about how all of these places that I need to be great in that I'm showing up consistently as a healthy individual.

And so that's what I hear when you share that story is he found this linkage of all of these different parts of our lives.

- You know, and another thing too is like, how do you sit here and make the most out of, not only every situation, but every conversation, you know?

Like when you're sitting here and we're talking, how do you get the most out of that conversation?

And I actually thought that every time I was going to meet with you, I thought, "I've gotta make this hour," which always turned into an hour and 15, but, "how do you make this hour the the best hour without having that filler?"

- Mm-hmm.

- I think that's tough.

- Well, I think there's a handful of things for any of us in every situation.

If I said there's three components to it, I'd say one of them is focus, right?

Call it presence, whatever you want.

And, you know, we've never lived in a more distracted world.

We have these weapons of mass distraction that we carry around in our pockets.

- I like that.

- And so how do we manage that and say for this next, whoever I'm with, my spouse, my team, whoever it is, can I be present?

And what do I have to do to get present?

What do I have to do to be here right now?

I think the second thing is when you're meeting with your team, with a coach, everybody should have a coach with anybody that you're having that presence with, it's like, "What's the problem that we can solve?"

Value comes from solving problems.

It doesn't mean we're gonna look for problems.

It means there's always some problem that we can solve.

And I think the third thing then is an orientation towards curiosity.

You know, when we're in that curious place.

It's exploring what's possible.

It's saying that I don't have a corner on the truth and I can go seeking different perspectives through a lens of curiosity.

And what I've seen from hundreds of people is the people that they appreciate working for, the leaders they appreciate, are the ones that are humble, as you mentioned earlier.

And a part of that is curiosity.

There's this curiosity and that helps us to grow, that helps us to serve our teams because leadership is really a service role to our team.

- You know what, I'm gonna mix some of those words.

It's the curiosity to help also find solutions.

- [Dean] For sure.

- I love that.

I love that.

So gimme an example of how you would apply this communication model to a Fortune 500 company.

- Sure.

So, you know, I'm thinking about a team that I've done some work with on their leadership level.

And one of the things that they were struggling with was the ability to get the rest of the organization to adopt their initiatives, to really implement.

So there's this gap often between what we roll out and what actually gets implemented.

And that's a big gap of frustration for organizations.

It's a big gap of inefficiency.

And one of the challenges that they were having is how they were communicating the initiative to the organization.

And so what happens is, if we're not aware of it, we tend to give other people what we want.

- And with PCM, so Process Communication Model, gives us these ways of understanding who's our primary audience and how are they most easily perceiving or what's the perception they're using to understand what I'm bringing out to them.

And so what this team did is they, you could say, slowed down and said, "Okay, we are convinced that this is why everybody should do this but there's five more why's."

And so they begin enhancing the communication and how they were interacting with the key decision makers so that they could connect through that perception to create greater understanding.

Now, the second piece of that is that self-awareness piece of it is, I have to make sure that I, as the person going to the rest of my organization, I'm not in distress.

If I'm in distress, people aren't going to be able to hear me and I'll start resorting to different forms of manipulation.

You know, blaming, attacking, you know, looking sad.

There's things that I do when I'm in distress.

And if I'm in a leader, or I'm trying to be influential to others and I'm in distress, there's no influence that's happening.

I'm gonna have to resort only to power or manipulation to get what I want.

And that's not a long-term strategy in any relationship, especially, in a complex organization.

- But if you're, let's say body language is something, a piece of that, does the word authenticity of the leader, is that what you're talking about?

Because if they're authentic, I mean, let's say you're having a tough day and you can't have your head up at all times, even though you try.

- Sure.

- But at the same time, you are aware, that self-awareness piece, like I'll give you an example.

I never walked down the hallway texting because people wanted me to say hi to them.

- Make eye contact, interact.

Yeah.

- Use their name.

- Yeah.

- I mean, it's important.

And I would say that all the time.

And I said, you know, one of my biggest goals was to always try to remember everyone's names, including all of the kids, the 1700 kids that flowed through Children's Home each month.

So I would sit there and I never could do it, right?

But I would have that goal to do it because it's the importance of feeling like, I know you, Dean, and it's important to that person, right?

And it still is today, but I guess it's hard sometimes to be a leader.

- It's hard many times.

- All the times.

- Right?

- Yeah.

- So you hit on a couple of things that are really important.

One is, I don't advocate for people to pretend to be something like, to pretend to be this- - That's what I was getting at.

- Pollyanna optimist.

- Right.

That's what I was getting at.

- Let's deal with reality, right?

We can deal with reality.

So there's a few components to it.

A, I need to know, how do I set up my routine and my system to make sure I'm keeping my battery charged?

When my battery's not charged, I can convince myself that working 80 hours a week and being this martyr as a leader is a good thing.

But I'm actually not being the leader my team needs if my battery's empty.

So, A, I have to give myself permission and understand, how do I keep my battery charge so I can be there for people?

That's a big deal.

And then the second piece of it is, do I give myself permission to be able to acknowledge an emotional state that I'm in?

It's okay for me to say, you know, "Following that conversation this morning, I felt angry and I wanted to come back and visit about some of the things that happened in that so that we could get on the same page."

- I like it.

- Now, that's a different way of interacting than what we're used to seeing when people talk about being angry.

Right, when I'm expressing that, I'm acknowledging this is how I was feeling, and I don't want that to come between us.

Let's talk.

- What do you do personally to stay above the fray, stay sharp, be be there for your family first?

What do you do?

- So each person, you could say there's six different pathways to keeping your battery charged.

For me, sleep is really important.

So there's a physical aspect to it and a psychological aspect to it.

So for me, making sure that I'm sleeping well and well rested.

That's like the first thing.

Then I can be more resilient.

The second thing is, for me personally, making sure that I'm making progress on things that I find valuable.

Doing the things and making progress in those areas charges my battery.

So I don't get, you know, discharged by doing work.

I get charged as long as it's work that I find valuable and helpful and so then I can be present.

The third piece of it for me is just being aware of the stories that I'm telling myself.

Everything about understanding our reality is a story that we're telling ourselves.

So I have to be aware of, what's the story I'm telling myself right now and how do I know that's true?

- Yeah.

Because you could lie to yourself.

- Of course we do.

- Yeah.

Yeah.

And I just had a guest on and the conversation was storytelling and I think the importance of storytelling but I was talking about storytelling to the masses but you're also talking about being real and authentic to yourself because how are how am I gonna be authentic to my wife if I'm faking me?

- Right.

Right, right.

- Or my kids.

- That's where it begins.

How does it get more real than my ability to understand my story?

How do I tell a great story until I can tell myself a great story?

- That's awesome.

So you mentioned everybody needs a coach.

I think that's easier said than done for most people because how many times have you gotten the question, "How do I get a mentor?"

I get it all the time.

And because I talk about the power of mentorship, the power of coaching, and I think it's important.

Like I was even talking to somebody, you know, I have my own personal board, I have people around me, and they didn't even, they had no clue what I was talking about.

And I said, "Yeah, I have a stable of people that have me in their best interest at all times.

So they'll push on me and I won't take offense to it."

But mentors are like that too.

Have you always been in that mindset of... Because you're a calm leader.

I've always looked at you as a very calm, strategic-thinking leader.

Do you have mentors and coaches yourself?

- So your question is an important one for people because we read and we hear things about things we should have and things we should be doing, right?

And my encouragement for people is don't over formalize it.

It can seem or sound like I need to hire a coach or I need to have this formal engagement with somebody that I respect.

Like, you know, "Would you be my mentor?"

You know, "O, wise one, would you do that for me?"

And so for each of us saying, okay, let's let's back off on the pressure we're putting on ourselves for coaches and mentors and let's think about a couple things.

Whom am I wanting to become?

You know, all of us are becoming something, hopefully.

And if we're not thinking about that then we're maybe not becoming whom we hope we become.

And then I can go out and I can look for people that they are whom I'd like to be more of or they're doing the things that I'd like to be doing more of.

And people are very receptive when you are sincere about your curiosity and your desire to grow and your desire to learn and your desire to contribute.

I would bet for you with your board, this is not a one-way relationship, it's a mutual relationship.

- [Matt] Right, right.

- It's a co-thinking relationship that's, you're challenging them and they're challenging you.

So I think of mentoring and coaching, when you look at it from an informal basis for the person on the street is, "Who am I spending time with where those conversations are helping me be a better person over time?"

- Interesting.

I love it.

You know, one thing I was gonna tell you, and I've always thought about you and I truly mean this, is as a coach, mentor, however you wanna look at it, you have a style that is unique and I think that plays to most people.

And my style doesn't necessarily play to all people.

And I try to be, I feel like I'm empathetic, but you have a style that, to me, plays to all people.

And I think that's your superpower is you just have a calmness and a style that's cool.

So Dean, I appreciate you coming on.

Your book, "How We Connect" is out "Using Process Communication Model to Build Healthy Relationships."

Dean, thank you for coming on.

- Thanks for having me, Matt.

- My name's Matt George and this is another episode of "Business Forward."

(bright music) (bright music continues) (bright music continues) (bright music continues) (bright music fades) - Thanks for tuning in to "Business Forward," brought to you by PNC.

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