Fierce Thought Leadership | Susan Scott

Peter Winick

Learning to have fierce conversations to build trust and relationships.

An interview with Susan Scott about what it means to have fierce conversations and be fierce as a leader.

Today’s guest is Susan Scott, the founder of Fierce, a TedX speaker, and author of best-selling books Fierce Conversations and Fierce Leadership.

Most people understand the importance of having good conversations but most are unaware of how lousy they actually are at having them. Susan talks about how her system to have fierce conversations facilitates increased productivity, problem solving, and builds relationships and trust.

Susan shares how she codified her content to make it teachable. She discusses why the content must have consistent outcomes regardless whether it’s taught by an internal or external facilitator.

During the pandemic, Susan has achieved unprecedented digital innovation! Then, she explains how her team developed a client facing app. Her team has also created realistic 3d simulations that can be customized to specific scenarios. Soon, a digital version of the training will be available that does not require a facilitator.

If you struggle to have real conversations and productive meetings this episode might be the eye opener you need.

Three Key Takeaways from the Interview

Thought Leaders need to ensure their conversations are impactful. The topic, the manner it is discussed, and who is invited to the conversation can all affect the outcome for better or worse.
When creating thought leadership, consider that organizations might want you to train their trainers and not have you send in a facilitator.
Being able to scale your thought leadership to a digital platform is a must.

If you need a strategy to bring your thought leadership to market, Thought Leadership Leverage can assist you! Contact us for more information. We can help you implement marketing, research, sales and other aspects so you can devote yourself to what you do best.

Transcript

Peter Winick And welcome, welcome, welcome. This is Peter Winick. I’m the founder and CEO of Thought Leadership Leverage. And you’re joining us on the podcast today, which is Leveraging Thought Leadership. Today I am super excited, like giddy excited, if that’s a word to introduce to you my guest today, which is Susan Scott. Susan is the founder of Fierce. And she founded that company in 2001 after being in the think tank world for a long, long time. And she had more than 10,000 hours of conversations with senior executives. She’s done Ted Talks. Her award-winning books. If you haven’t read them, you know, pause this. Hit Pause. Go to Amazon, buy the book, read it, and then listen to this, because they’re great books. So it’s fierce conversations and fierce leadership. And I know she’s got new books coming out and all sorts of other cool stuff. So we’ll dive into that. So let’s have maybe we have a fierce conversation or just a conversation. Here’s how we get to it.

Susan Scott Well, you know, the simplest definition of a fierce conversation is one in which we come out from behind ourselves and make it real. So from my point of view, all of my conversations are fierce. They’re real.

Peter Winick There we go. Yeah, no, I agree with that. You get the definition out there, so let’s go backwards. So if we were to go back in time 25, 30 years, say we would look at your past ago. Well, of course you wound up here. Or maybe not. Right? So we the pretty typical roller coaster of a career ride for most thought leaders today. So how did this happen? How did you get your cup?

Susan Scott Very strange. Very strange. Because I was an English major. I began my career in teaching English, migrated at one point to the headhunting world, which was a lot of fun and my first serious introduction to business. And eventually I was asked to chair two groups of non-competing CEOs in Seattle where I live, and went into that. Honestly, Peter so humble because I thought, How in the world am I going to add value? Because I was supposed to spend two hours with each one of them once a month and there were a total of 30 of them. That’s a lot of 1 to 1. A lot of patience. Yeah. And then each of these groups, these two groups spent one full day together every month to advise one another on their most pressing issues. And I had to decide what issues are going to be on the agenda and then conduct those meetings, those conversations. So it was a long.

Peter Winick Format, though. So I just want to make sure it sounds like similar vintage format, but you didn’t have control over the format. This is the structure. We’ve got to do these one on ones and then we’ve got to get it together. But you have control over the quality, the quantity, the intensity of the conversations.

Susan Scott Absolutely. And you know, you mentioned vintage and vintage chairs all over the world, asked me to come and teach them how I was growing, what I was because I was getting really, really good results. So, yeah, it was all about the how to I think most of us understand the conversations are pretty darn important, but most of us don’t realize that we’re kind of lousy at it.

Peter Winick We don’t know.

Susan Scott How you know, we know we need to have conversations. We just need to get better at it. And we know we need to have meetings that accomplish great things, tackle tough challenges and interrogate reality and provoke learning. But we don’t know how to do that either. So that’s really why. I founded the company and I wrote the book because everybody kept saying, please write this down, write this down, write this down.

Peter Winick So I’m going to push on that because I want to push on that story for a moment because there’s lots of things when you offer to develop a capability in a leader, in a manager and a sales professional, etc., they go, Sure, give me that. I need to get stronger at that. Influencing negotiations, resilience, Innovation. But conversations, it seems like, you know, to your point, people’s reactions are like, you know, I’ve been conversing for 50 years. I don’t need you to tell me how to do that. You know, and I’m pretty damn good at it because I don’t let anybody else get a word in. But it is an art and a science and a definition of what it is a fierce conversation. Because to your point, I think one of the things that you observed before sort of moving into this space is. Yeah, there’s a lot of talking. What are the impactful these conversations? You know, what does that look like? So talk about sort of the problems that fear solves.

Susan Scott Well, I was just you know, I went to our Web site right before this just to refresh my memory. And I was looking at some of the problems that we’ve solved for some of our clients. Comcast, for example. Yep. They wanted to teach them to use practical methods for fostering diverse perspectives, how to gain more innovation and how to give feedback that absolutely got results. T Rowe Price partnered with us to train their senior leaders how to be more effective, how to create an inclusive culture. Hormel wanted to spark innovation. They wanted to train their retail division sales managers on how to tap into this increasingly diverse background knowledge experience of its evolving workforce. Christa’s health and culture of Nice. They were so nice. There was a fatal characteristic. They were so careful in their conversations that there was a lot that was being swept under the rug. And in the last one I’ll mention is Costco. We’ve done a lot of work with Costco to share their change. Whole new level of collaboration. And they chose us to be an integral part. So a lot of people don’t even realize that conversations are workhorses of the organizations. What gets talked about in a company, how it gets talked about, who’s invited to the conversation absolutely determines what’s going to happen and what is not going to happen. Right?

Peter Winick Yes. Yes, by and large. We spend very little time, energy, effort, etc., learning how to have impactful conversations because it sounded like the list of problems that you gave me were pretty much the list of things that keep most business leaders up at night. In your world, the root cause or the starting point or the domain expertise is, wait a minute, you conversations are a big piece of this equation, right? And then how many thousands of them are happening every day in your company.

Susan Scott And how many thousands of them are ineffective? In fact, we partnered with we did a study with Broadcom. And it turns out these skills are really rare. Only 36% of the people felt that two sided conversations that build relationships and trust were frequent or fairly common. Only 33% said that overall employee communication was good or excellent. Just 32% said leaders are good or excellent at having productive conversations. 22% managers are good or excellent having difficult conversations, and 85% said that listening skills were highly important. And yet 22% said that those skills are common in their organization. I could go on. I won’t. But it’s just.

Peter Winick So there’s a big gap. So why should we, if we intellectually know they are important but pragmatically go and we’re pretty horrible at it around here?

Susan Scott Well, we think we’re pretty good. I remember I remember one time when a leader attended one of our trainings with his direct reports and he was sitting right in the very front of the classroom and I was talking about the importance of really not shutting people down. As soon as they challenge you, give an alternative perspective. Don’t say, Yeah, I hear you, but no, I’m really, really good at that. And behind him, Peter, everybody was shaking their heads like. He isn’t good at that. He’s not good at that. But he he thought he was. So he’s not a bad guy.

Peter Winick I love it. Yeah.

Susan Scott He’s just unconscious. About what? He’s just.

Peter Winick Oblivious.

Susan Scott And.

Peter Winick A nice, oblivious man versus very.

Susan Scott Nice. Oblivious.

Peter Winick They’re probably nasty, oblivious people. Which are the worst types if you put them in a matrix of nice and oblivious. So I want to pivot because the content is I mean, like I said, when I were chatting a week or two ago, getting ready for today, you know, your books been on my shelf since probably the week it came out, right? And I probably sent out 20 or 50 copies of that over the years to friends and colleagues. But it’s so it’s just so not basic, but foundational is probably I mean it’s one of those books that you really go, wow, I got to change a bunch of stuff that I do and whatever I want to, I want to switch the conversation a little bit. So once you sort of tapped into this, so it sounds like you sort of learned this or saw this as an opportunity from your SEO groups and developed a better mousetrap. How did you then decide and then maybe it’s probably evolved and changed, inhibited over the years, Like there is a business here because in our work, working with folks like you, there’s lots of great content out there. There’s the percentage of thought leaders are able to take that to a viable, sustainable business that isn’t dependent on them. Yeah, but a small percentage of that. And I was one of the few that have killed.

Susan Scott I know, and I’m really proud of that, I have to admit. But so it was only me for a while. I remember one year I had I gave 52 different talks all over the world. That’s basically one a week. I mean, I was one tired puppy and I had a family and I had dogs that didn’t even recognize me. And but every so what happened was when I would when I would talk with the CEOs and give them a sort of a taste of here’s how to conduct a kickass meeting, they would say, my God, you’ve got to come and teach my direct reports. They don’t do that. So I go into their companies, teach their direct reports, and the direct reports would say, my gosh, we need this throughout the company. And it just it just got bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger.

Peter Winick And so let me let me pause you there for a minute, because there’s a bunch of things there that I want to unpack because this is a pretty typical path, like, hey, I’m out there keynoting. And for those of you that don’t remember keynotes, Google it, we did a lot of them from 2019 and way back. They were they’re pretty good. They’re pretty profitable. A lot of people enjoyed them. But the keynote piece of this is can you come in and do you know, an hour in front of this group, make them aware of the concepts, be engaging, be entertaining. But the promise wasn’t capabilities development from a learning perspective. So oftentimes what happens is exactly what you playing. They see you speak and they go ahead, That’s great. Come to my team. And many thought leaders go, well, they want me to teach that. So that’s 3 or 4 hours or a half day or a day or whatever. That’s sort of like a long keynote, but it’s not. So how did you and I want to sort of dissect this move from a keynote, which is all about you being entertaining and smart and witty and charming to, Geez, I got to blow this up to four hours that people actually walk away. Federal habeas corpus.

Susan Scott I blew it up for two days. I blew it. Okay. And the thing is, I started. Remember? I started life as a teacher. I am a teacher. And I look teaching because a teacher tends to learn the most. Right? Whatever anybody is espousing writing about, they then the students of it. And so I was learning, learning, learning, learning. So the keynotes, the keynotes get people’s attention. They are the why. Why is this important? Well, because our careers and our companies and our relationships, our lives are succeeding or failing one conversation at a time. And by the way, the conversation is the relationship that you have with anybody and what gets talked about, how it gets talked about who’s involved is going to determine what happens. So the keynotes are about the why were you can’t you don’t want to just leave people all excited about something and not give them any how so.

Peter Winick And from a business standpoint, even though keynotes are sexy and engaging and all that, there is far more money in the how, pushing that out to the masses where it’s not dependent on you. You know, if you were doing 50 to 1 year and you’re exhausted, maybe you could have gone to 70 another year, you could have done 700. So there’s a finite amount of people.

Susan Scott I think if I did that, you should always. Yeah, but the thing is. Here’s the thing, Peter. There was such a heart felt response to what I was doing, and people were moved. They weren’t just sitting around thinking, this is interesting. You know, I should probably add this to my list of thing. They were some of the more I was saying, my God, I think I understand how I managed to lose an 18 year marriage. I was not prepared to lose. My gosh. I think I understand why we lost that customer that counted for 25% of our net profit. My goodness. I understand why. My team.

Peter Winick I love it. I love for these people. Stay there for me. My man. We could talk for days. This is awesome for a minute because it is my belief and I don’t have the data. I have enough data underneath that. I don’t have hard data yet to support it, but there’s sort of two types of content or thought leadership or whatever that folks get exposed to in the workplace. One is it stays in the workplace Six Sigma supply chain, logistics, technology, etc.. And then there’s what you just talked about where you go. You go home and you say to your partner, Hey, honey, I just did this thing here. And, you know, whether it’s emotional intelligence, listening skills, communication, conversation skills, and you want to try it out on your friends and your loved one, your kids and all that sort of stuff, you clearly fell in that bucket because and you don’t even need to direct people like, Hey, there is a cost of you being really bad at this, being a marriage, being related, you beat or whatever. And yeah, why don’t you go try this out at home. And once people.

Susan Scott I don’t even have to say that I didn’t even have to say that.

Peter Winick I’m saying you didn’t have to say Yeah.

Susan Scott In the book. I did say, do try this at home. I mean, really do try this. And people did. And so for the last many years, I get emails almost every day from at least 1 or 2 people who say, thank you for writing fierce conversations and fierce leadership. I love them. They’re very helpful. And I want you to know that this saved my marriage. Or I just had this conversation with my partner that we’ve ever had. And so and then they want more, which is why I’m writing the third and final book in the fierce trilogy, which is Fierce Love. And that’s about the conversations for two people up close and personal when things are going well and things are going so well. So because, you know, in the other books it’s all focused primarily on business issues and there are a lot of true stories in there that are amazing. But now it’s okay. People have taken this of the conversations translate directly to personal relationships.

Peter Winick But you’re going from fierce, fierce at work to fierce at home in shorthand there. So that’s really interesting.

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Peter Winick I want to touch on making a bunch of notes here and another point that you skipped over because you’re a teacher, so it comes natural to you. Many folks struggle with, Hey, I wrote the book. I’m the thought leader. Get me in front of a group and I just do my thing. Right? But they can’t replicate it in a consistent way that is teachable. So to make something teachable, you have to almost break it down to the Lego pieces, to the molecular level, and sequence it out in such a way. And you have to have models, methodologies and frameworks. It’s not just, well, Susan, get out of bed today and was watching and so, so that’ll be what I talk about. How do you how did you codify it? So it is consistency of a predictable outcome with the students, with the learners, right?

Susan Scott Well, I designed a two day training in the specific different kinds of conversations. So first, let’s talk about why and then that’s going to help. How do you have an awesome meeting? How do you have a great 1 to 1 conversation with your direct reports? How do you get feedback? How do you confront How do you do this? How do you do that? And then I invited facilitators that I knew who were just awesome people who wanted to be a part of this. They all came to my home because I was I started the company in my home and I trained them and I thought, well, that’s what it’s going to be, because these stable of A-plus facilitators are going to go out there in the world and share this with companies. And then I was told by my staff, as I added a few people, companies don’t want that. They want you to train their internal facilitators to do this. They don’t want to have to pay to.

Peter Winick Train the trainer. Right, right, right, right, right.

Susan Scott And I remember I said the first time somebody told me this, I said, over my dead body, they would never be they’d never be good enough. And finally that person came back to me and said, I don’t think you get it. We’re not going to be able to continue with these huge companies if they think they have to have one of our people fly from wherever they are to wherever the company is, it’s just not going to work. And so I realized that he was right about that. And we started training the trainer and our trainer is scary. Difficult. It is real hard.

Peter Winick Good.

Susan Scott You don’t get that because you go through it. You know, you got to you got to find your body parts when you’re delivering this training because people will push back on it. It’s very threatening to some people to think, You mean I have to really disclose what I’m thinking and feeling. Honestly, I really have to do that well.

Peter Winick And to facilitate this type of work versus other type of work. You are whoever is doing it, whether it’s an internal corporate train, the trainer or one of your facilitators, they have to walk the walk, right? If they see sigma. I mean, I have to understand it. I have to be fluent in the context. But they’re not necessarily asking me for personal experiences where I, you know, taking the inefficiencies out of whatever or whatever.

Susan Scott And whoever is leading this has to model it. But here’s the fabulous thing, Peter, that the internal facilitators that work for the our clients, they’re awesome. They’re fantastic. They love this and they are huge advocates and keep expanding our work within their organizations because they can see the results. I think that they’re doing a better job than an outside facilitator would do because they speak the language. They understand.

Peter Winick Contextually, they understand that, Yeah, yeah. So what, if anything, are you doing or have done from a digital scaling perspective? So it sounds like whether it’s your facilitators or an internal corporate facilitator is still one to some people. But what about the digital scalable?

Susan Scott We have had a blast during this pandemic innovating like mad. So we have a way for we have an app that you can use to sustain. It’s a sustainability tool. It’s sexy, it’s beautiful, it’s fabulous. It’s I need to have this conversation. How did that go again? Quick reminder, what are the tips? You know, I mean, it’s right there. We have three day simulations. A lot of our clients are like, we need to know how to talk about some of these things that are really difficult and dicey. And we have three D simulations that are very, very real that anybody can watch anywhere, any time. Yeah, we’re offering we’re about to put out the door to digital versions of our trainings that do not require a facilitator. So the word is asynchronous. That means yeah, any time, any place, wherever they are with no facilitator and learn. And so we’re now we’re now to the point where we have that because we I mean there are a lot of our clients, for example, Chris’s health, they said we want, we want our nurses to learn how to have conversations with doctors that are sometimes really doctors can be kind of egotistic and.

Peter Winick What Yeah, yeah.

Susan Scott And we can’t haul out all our nurses into some kind of a classroom. We cannot do that.

Peter Winick Right? You’re working and you’ve got chefs and you’ve got all you’ve.

Susan Scott Got to do the same thing with retail clients. How do you get out and see people on the floor? Well.

Peter Winick The other big trend, though, is there are less and less two and three day experiences happening. Forget Covid for a minute. Even in these little bites.

Susan Scott Little bites.

Peter Winick Yeah. So Microlearning is you right now give me you know whether that’s an attention span issue or generation or whatever I want something little that I can develop and think about learn and then build on it and build on it. And the other thing is, is the difference between push and pull. You know, you and I grew up in a world that was mostly push learning, right? So we had the pretest. On Monday, I got a couple of words wrong and then study, study, study probably did better. Now it’s poll. Now it’s like, I need to give you. Like, I am that nervous and need to have a conversation with Dr. Jones tomorrow. Let me pull down some refresher because it increases the relevance in the Molina And so all that’s changing, which is really, really cool.

Susan Scott It is cool. And I actually love it. I mean, I love technology. I have so many gadgets. It’s ridiculous. I don’t use most of them, but I have them and I love them. And so our clients do too. I mean, like T-Mobile, for example, they say, how do we what do we handle? How do we handle it? If somebody comes into one of our stores without a mask on and says they wear a mask because they think this whole thing is a hoax, we handle that, you know, So we’ve got a little 3-D things about that that anybody can watch any time. And in the courses that anybody can take are very like size so that, you know, you think, well, maybe I can I can spare ten minutes here and that’s it. Well, okay, you.

Peter Winick Know, even like that mask thing that you came up with. So that wasn’t on anybody’s radar a year ago. I know. You can take the whole models framework or whatever and ask yourself, how would we do that in a fierce way?

Susan Scott Right. Well, that’s what our clients are calling and asking us for specific customized 3D simulations.

Peter Winick And scenario based.

Susan Scott Right? Yeah. And we’re producing them to fit exact. We can even make it look like the inside of a T mobile or whatever. I mean, it is very real and very short and very clear.

Peter Winick So weird. I love it.

Susan Scott I love it too. I love it too. Because this the whole thing is how do we equip our clients with the skill that they need? And I mean, the reason why we’re so uncomfortable about having some of these conversations is because we don’t know how. But once we know how the courage will come because we try it, nobody died. It was really a good keepsake.

Peter Winick And I and I would I would say not only do we not know how, but we either don’t know that we don’t know or embarrassed to ask because it seems like what I’ve been everybody’s having conversations all the time. So again, I mean, going back to my point earlier, if there is a framework or if there’s a new piece of software that comes out, you go, I don’t know how to use this, and everybody does. Of course you don’t. It just came out yesterday. Let me show you. Let me teach you. But has it become more or are people more transparent to say, yes, I need a little help? Because it just you know, I just think there’s like certain areas of content, charisma, trust. And I know I know how to build trust. I’m a trustworthy person. Well, maybe. But let me show you a framework that may help you do it better, faster, quicker, etc.. I think that’s a big question.

Susan Scott I wish I knew for sure how to answer that question. I’d have to talk with our people who work direct clients to find out what is the truth out there? Do people still think that they’re really great at this stuff and don’t really need it? Or are they saying, No, I need it, I need it, I want it, Give it to me right now, you know? I know. Yeah, sure. I’d like to think that they were and I’d say, I mean, given this, I was just watching MSNBC right before we came on check and all this stuff, and we were, you know, I was thinking about this character, Marjorie Taylor Greene, for example. I would love to or I would like to just ask her what is in it for you to believe what you believe? What are you winning? What is you know, when you say these things, these wild things, what are you gaining when you say these things? And flipside, what’s at stake for you to lose when you say these things? I mean, there’s something to gain or lose. What is it? And that’s. The comment I’ve often asked leaders when they say this is what I. This is a belief I hold. I believe this. And I say, okay, what’s the win in holding belief.

Peter Winick And what’s the call to others that you’re not aware of? Yeah.

Susan Scott You know, in the movie The Wizard of Oz, towards the end, Toto, the little dog, he goes and pulls the curtain back and hears this.

Peter Winick Yep, yep.

Susan Scott Pulling all these levers. And he says, Don’t pay any attention to the little man behind the curtain. We all have a little man behind our curtain who’s running the show. That’s our system. So that’s one of the things we get at in our training is what beliefs do you hold? Are they helping you or hindering you? Let’s really get to that.

Peter Winick Yeah. It’s that belief system that, you know, it’s one thing to teach people a skill. Right. So if you gave me a puppy or a Frisbee and a pocketful of treats, I can eventually, if I’m patient, love, teach the puppy to catch the Frisbee if I get reward them, right? Yeah, but there’s no mindset involved, right? I’m not teaching that puppy to think Frisbees are scarce or abundant. Right. Right. People are kind of messed up that way. If it was easy is a gimme, gimme some treats and cookies. You have to get people to say, you know, what are you gaining by behaving in this way? Are you willing to try another way, which might be scary, might be different with, might be whatever, and realize that you might have more to gain that way. So we call that mindset. What about what are the mindsets that are that are baked into the thought leadership that are really engaging and or scary? And to me, the stuff that’s the most engaging is also the most frightening and the most rewarding. I know. Anyway.

Susan Scott I know what that would be. And when I’m not afraid of death, I just don’t want to be in the room when it happens.

Peter Winick Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

Susan Scott So on that note. These conversations and yet these conversation, a fierce conversation has for objectives interrogate reality because no plan survives.

Peter Winick Yeah.

Susan Scott Provoke learning for everybody, including the leader tackle of challenges and enrich relationships. Because relationships are our most valuable currency.

Peter Winick And it’s the last piece that holds it all together because I can do the first three and tank a relationship and feel like I got my point across. Well, if you don’t like it, well, damn well if.

Susan Scott That happens, it wasn’t a fierce conversation because they’re meant to enrich relationships because that is so important.

Peter Winick Yeah, well, like most great conversations, this one is going a bit longer than we normally do. So that has been awesome. Thank you. Thank you for spending time with us today and I appreciate your work and your candor and your fierceness. So thank you for coming on board today.

Susan Scott Thank you, Peter. I really enjoyed this conversation with you.

Peter Winick Thank you. To learn more about Thought Leadership Leverage, please visit our website at ThoughtLeadershipLeverage.com. To reach me directly. Feel free to email me at Peter at ThoughtLeadershipLeverage.com. And please subscribe to Leveraging Thought Leadership on iTunes or your favorite podcast app to get your weekly episode automatically.