Eric Mulvin: 00:00
Welcome to the Unfinished Business Podcast. I’m your host, Eric Mulvin, and this is the show where we sit down with CEOs, leaders, visionaries, and creatives who are out changing the world, who are out making the world a better place through their business, through their organization, through their leadership, or through their creativity. Because it doesn’t matter who you are or what you’ve accomplished. Even someone like Dean Williams still has something he’d like to get accomplished in his career, in his life. And so we explore those stories here on Unfinished Business with Eric Mulvin.

Eric Mulvin: 00:53
All right, this episode of Unfinished Business is brought to you by Pac Biz Outsourcing. At Pac Biz, we help NEMT, software, e-commerce, and taxi companies outsource their customer support, dispatching, and back office tasks with a dedicated team in the Philippines. For example, one client of ours cut out over $600,000 a year in payroll costs by switching key support roles like dispatch to Pac Biz teams. So if you’re trying to lower costs, scale support, please make sure to visit pac-biz.com to learn more, or you can give us a call Monday through Friday during business hours at 480-771-3009. All right. Today I’m excited to introduce you guys to our next guest. He helps people and teams improve their performance by treating dialogue as a discipline. His unique work is outlined in his best-selling book, Conversational Capacity: The Secret to Building Successful Teams That Perform When Pressure Is On. And a sequel, Influence in Action, How to Build Your Conversational Capacity, Do Meaningful Work, and Make a Powerful Difference. He’s on a mission to help leaders build more healthy, engaged, and adaptive organizations. To do this, he provides more than just good ideas, he provides practical skills for putting those ideas to work. EngageLead.com named him one of the global top 100 human resource influencers of 2021. He’s a member of the advisory board for the Masters of Leadership and Organizational Change program at Weatherhead School of Management at Case Western Reserve, and a Vistage Speaker for over 27 years. He has received the prestigious Vista International Speaker of the Year Award, the Vistage Lifetime Achievement Award, the TEC Vista Canada Speaker of the Year Award, and a Vistage Top Performer Award. Ladies and gentlemen, please help me welcome Craig Weber.

Craig Weber: 02:48
Thank you, Eric. That was very generous.

Eric Mulvin: 02:51
Yeah, thanks for taking some time to be on the show. Really appreciate it.

Craig Weber: 02:54
Hey, glad to be here. Thanks for the invitation.

Eric Mulvin: 02:57
Yeah, absolutely. He is a lot of accolades from Vistage, and so that’s how uh Craig and I got a chance to meet is he came to my uh group and uh love what he shared with our group. And so uh I wanted to bring that to our listeners here and let you guys know about this the amazing uh work that Craig has put together here to teach people about how to work together better, about this conversational capacity. Uh so um we talked a little bit about your background, but uh tell me uh tell me more in your own words here. Uh what is it that you do now today?

Craig Weber: 03:33
Yeah, yeah, appreciate that. Um so as you mentioned in the intro, I kind of help people and teams improve their performance by treating dialogue as a discipline. And there’s sort of an assumption built into a lot of the work we do in our teams and organizations, whether it’s in running meetings, making decisions, navigating or orchestrating change, implementing strategy, giving and receiving feedback, that people know how to talk to each other effectively under pressure. And it turns out they don’t. And a lot of research on this, they really struggle. And so a lot of my work helps address that problem. How do we build people’s ability, their capacity, you could say, to engage with each other in a constructive, learning-focused way, even in circumstances that conspire against it? So when someone’s trying to make your life difficult, there’s a lot of pressure, time constraints, people with really strong opinions and really big brains don’t see things the same way. How do you orchestrate conversations that produce more learning than defensiveness when it’s not easy to do? So that’s kind of at a at a high level of kind of the work I do and how I help people and teams improve how they work together, how they operate, how they perform.

Eric Mulvin: 04:38
I love it. And it’s such a it’s such a simple concept, actually. You know, if you think about it, like when when you’re under pressure, you know, how do you communicate? And we’re never practicing that. I I think about uh my uh oldest daughter, helped her with schoolwork, she gets a little fidgety, and I’m like, look, you gotta focus here when you’re doing your homework because when you’re in class, that’s that’s when you’re on the court, you’re you’re playing the game. And if you’re practicing being distracted here, you’re gonna be distracted at school. And I feel like same thing. We never are practicing this, you know, like these tough conversations. In fact, I think if anything, we go out of our way to avoid them.

Craig Weber: 05:20
Yeah, it’s funny you mentioned that, bring that up. I was just working with an executive team up in Northern California here recently. And as we were going around after the workshop talking about the takeaways, he said, Yeah, exactly what you said. We this is a really foundational set of skills, uh, how we communicate, but we’re not putting in much practice. And under pressure, your performance tends to drop to the level of practice you’ve invested in. And so if you really want your performance to improve under pressure, you got to put in the practice, or else when things get tricky, you’re gonna drop down to a place where you probably don’t want to be in terms of how you’re carrying yourself in a conversation. So putting in the practice is really key, but that requires rigorous frameworks for what that practice even looks like, or what do you practice on? So I kind of help people come up with both a personal plan and an application plan when they’re doing work with me. So that thinking about what is the practice I need to invest in, so when it really matters, I’m able to carry myself in a way I’m proud of. And what is the work we need to invest in, a team or a business or a project? So when the you know what hits the fan, we’re able to really work together really effectively when it counts.

Eric Mulvin: 06:25
Yeah. And I think for the people listening there, they’re probably going back through their minds on some of the tough conversations they might have had. And they’re like, Yeah, I probably could have done that better. I’m guessing there’s probably like zero. The number of people that say, Yeah, I have no problem in this space, it has got to be close to zero. And the ones that don’t have it are just lying.

Craig Weber: 06:47
Right. Yeah, either lying or delusional. Yeah, just unaware, right? So, no, I have no problem with this. I’m pretty good at conversation no matter the circumstances. I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone say that. Not that there isn’t someone who probably thought it, but uh yeah, they’re either just they’re not paying attention to their own behavior, their level of awareness is low, or their ego is so big they won’t admit it.

Eric Mulvin: 07:08
So, with this being a problem, I don’t know, everywhere, and with the world, really. I mean, yeah, there’s business, there’s life too, but especially in business, since you know that’s who we’re talking to here with uh business leaders listening. Um why why is this happening? Why are so many people just completely oblivious to the fact that this is something that you’d see great improvement in your organization if you worked on this?

Craig Weber: 07:34
Yeah, I think we again we kind of make the faulty assumption that, hey, it’s communication, it’s a pretty basic skill. We learn to talk to each other when we’re young. So what’s the big deal? We don’t realize that when it comes to really good conversations, really good interactions with others in challenging circumstances, we’re sort of wired to go sideways. So, you know, we’ve got some emotional programming and some cognitive issues that kind of make it difficult to work to eat with each other really effectively under pressure. And so learning to recognize, you know, what is the emotional discipline I need to cultivate if I want to carry myself where? What’s what sort of cognitive focus do I need to develop? So I’ve got a navigational beacon. So even in the confusing fog of a high-pressure conversation or meeting, I’m able to lock in on what matters and really keep things on course. And then lastly, what are the behavioral skills I need to acquire? What’s the behavioral acumen I need to cultivate? So I’m able to align my mouth with my good intentions when it really matters. And if you’re not investing, practice again. We’re back to that subject, in your emotional discipline, your cognitive focus, and your behavioral acumen. It’s gonna be really hard to perform as effectively as you’d like in high pressure, challenging circumstances. And so that’s kind of the work I do is not just talk to people about why conversations matter, where do you particularly struggle, but help them put together a systematic plan for how to build their ability to work more effectively with others when it really counts. And like you said, I tend to focus on organizations. My background is in organizational development and organizational psychology, but I liked it. It’ll make you a better manager, it’ll better leader, it’ll make you a better teammate or colleague. It’ll also make you a better parent. It’ll make you a better spouse or significant other, it’ll make you a better community member and friend. And so it’s a kind of a foundational skit set of skills that are really important for anyone who wants to live a good life. Being emotionally undisciplined is not a great way to trip through life. Having a lack of clarity in terms of what matters in this particular situation is awkward, and lacking the ability to align your mouth with your good intentions is a really painful way to go as well. So I think it’s a baseline set of skills that serve us well in a variety of contexts, even though I tend to focus more narrowly on using these in the workplace.

Eric Mulvin: 09:52
Yeah, and in the workplace, you know, there’s lots of those challenges going on. I’m thinking about as you’re talking, I’m like, man, my company, we’re going through it right now, and I’m like, uh, I’ve actually been really trying to apply a lot of what uh you shared and got some really interesting um immediate responses uh out of that too, which has been pretty cool because I’m we’re running meeting like right now, we’re in a major expansion mode. Um, we hired like 50 people just in the last month alone, and we’re bursting at the seams, we’ve got new leaders in place, people that you don’t necessarily trust uh yet. They’re still yet to prove it, and still learning the culture, still learning everything, and so yeah, it’s uh last night I had a meeting with my team, and it was all kinds of issues going on. So I was really able to these last couple weeks, just applying some of these concepts because we are having crazy tough conversations. Like I love that, extremely tough. So uh I don’t know if my team has recognized it yet that uh that I’ve been applying some of these into the the meetings, but I love it.

Craig Weber: 11:03
Well, that’s a really good example of something we talked about, I know, when I worked with you and your fellow executives in the uh vestige group, and that is if this is a uh discipline, you know, and I describe it as a conversational martial art. And there’s a risk in framing it that way. I don’t want people thinking it’s a martial art where you use it against other people. In this conversational martial art, your opponent isn’t other people, the issue or the context, it’s your ego. And we’ve got to be more purpose-driven than ego-driven under pressure. But if this is a conversational martial art, treat your workplace like a dojo. Every meeting, every decision, every person who may be difficult to work with, every change, every time you’ve got to give or receive feedback, that is just another opportunity to practice and build your conversational capacity.

Eric Mulvin: 11:48
Yeah, exactly. Uh and I think you you had uh introduced the framework the min or win, right? Right. Yeah, that’s the thing that’s been really helpful. It’s such the that I’ve been I’ve been looking at every conversation with that aspect. I’m like, oh, what are they trying to do here? Are they trying to minimize? So for the people who are probably like, what are you talking about? Explain this a little bit to the audience here.

Craig Weber: 12:11
Yeah, okay, perfect. So I describe, and we’ll start maybe with a couple definitions, right? So I describe conversational capacity in more than one way, but one is what I call the dictionary definition, and that is the ability of an individual or a team. So it’s a unique framework out there, and that it’s both an individual and a collective competence. You can say, what’s this manager’s conversational capacity? But you can also ask, what’s the conversational capacity of my team? So it’s an individual and collective, but it’s the ability to have constructive, learning-focused dialogue about difficult subjects in challenging circumstances, and across tough boundaries. So a team with high conversational capacity can put a terribly difficult issue on the table and really do good work. A team with low capacity, you’ll see their performance completely derailed by a minor difference of opinion. So sort of a foundational competence, you could say, that breathes life into every activity that requires people to communicate and collaborate for its effectiveness. But it’s this baseline competence we’re often not paying much attention to. Partly because, as we’ve talked about, we just lack good rigorous constructs for even making sense of it. So I’m working to change that.

Eric Mulvin: 13:20
Yeah. Um, and you know, you’re talking let’s talk about your work for a moment because I really love the approach that you bring to this. And one of the reasons why I I love the people I get to meet through vestige, because uh you guys don’t just like say, hey, I I figured something out in the real world, and here’s a framework. You’re bringing science, you’re bringing a a lot of um data research to the table here, right?

Craig Weber: 13:49
Right. Yeah, this isn’t just uh something I made up, right? There’s a lot of that in my field, organizational development. People just come up with an idea and pedal it as the latest and greatest breakthrough, but it’s not a lot of rigor or discipline behind it. But the conversational capacity framework’s built on a lot of rigorous research from uh a lot of it from Harvard and MIT, Chris Argyris and Don Schoen and their research. Uh, but cognitive neuroscience, emotional intelligence research, mindfulness research, so a big part of that. So also management and leadership studies. So there’s a lot of interesting research kind of embedded in this framework. And so I talk about, you know, it’s it’s it’s a simple framework, but it’s simplicity on the other side of complexity. There’s a lot behind it if you really pulled it apart and detail looked at it in detail.

Eric Mulvin: 14:32
Yeah, no, I love it. I mean, then the I feel like the best stuff looks simple on the outside, and then that’s that’s the beauty of it, is and and the hard work. You could make something so simple, but it’s really complex, because this is a it it does sound simple, but what you’re what you’re looking at is a lot of different factors in these conversations, and you’re able to put that into a framework, which like I said, it’s been uh really helpful because I think if they’re a business leader listening, um you come across these tough conversations, whether it’s an employee, a vendor, uh whoever, your you know, people on your team, your COO, uh other C-suite members that you’re trying to help build this uh this plan for your company to grow. And there’s so much conflict that happens. And I I feel like most companies, they just sweep it under the rug, and it’s like, oh well, that’s that’s what you got to deal with. And what suffers when this isn’t addressed? What would you say, Craig?

Craig Weber: 15:32
Great question. I mean, just about everything if you think about it. Uh so I mean, performance drops like crazy, and that’s individual and collective performance. We tend to see huge hits in things like trust, psychological safety when conversational capacity is low. Uh, our ability to navigate and orchestrate change effectively is hampered. Implementing strategy can be severely impacted when conversational capacity isn’t where it needs to be. So, again, any activity that requires people to communicate and collaborate will be adversely effective if conversational capacity is too low relative to the difficulty. So I talk about another way to think about conversational capacity is imagine if you have a team of people and they were thinking about 2027, and they put together a list of the really important issues they were gonna be grappling with next year. And so that and then they prioritized it. So at the bottom of this list is the most, it’s important, but the easiest issue. At the top of the list is something important and the most difficult. Well, this one’s gonna be tough for us to address. Somewhere in that list, for every team, there’s a line and it represents the conversational capacity of the group. It’s the ability to engage each other in a learning-focused, constructive way. And below the line, where the conversational capacity is sufficient, you can do good work. Doesn’t mean there aren’t strongly differing points of view, different personalities, big egos. It means despite that, you’ve got the conversational wherewithal to work together effectively. It is above the line where conversational capacity is insufficient, we start to see trouble start. And so I think what I try to get managers and executives thinking about is where’s the line in your organization’s list of issues? Where is your team going to struggle to do good work? Not because their intentions aren’t good, not because they don’t see the problem, but they lack the conversational capacity to engage the issues well. And as I talk about in my first book, there are two primary symptoms that kind of signal in a team or an organization where that line is. One would be undiscussable issues in the group, those issues that are far more likely to come up in the hallway than in the meeting. The other unproductively discussable issues. Yeah, the issue comes up, but the conversations that follow spark more heat than light. There’s arguing, there’s bickering, there’s headbutting, which means one of two things tends to happen. One, the issue just boomerangs around to next week’s meeting. So you see those perennial issues that never get addressed because we’re not engaging them constructively. Or very often that issue gets reassigned to the undiscussable list. I’m not bringing that up again. I’m not stupid. And so the question here, you know, your listeners can think about is where’s that line in my list of issues personally? Where do I tend my fit find myself slipping? And where’s that line in my team? Where are we struggling to do good work? Again, not because we don’t have smart people or good intentions, but the conversational capacity is too low, and we’re we’re we’re we’re we’re dropping the ball right when we need to be working together really well.

Eric Mulvin: 18:24
Awesome. So with with everything here that uh you know you’ve been sharing, um, what are some examples of businesses that I mean, because I feel like I’m thinking about like my experience using this, and I’m like, I don’t know if I would have ever come up with any of these ideas, like I would have never been able to address what’s happening in my organization right now properly without this framework. And I probably would have been well, I I know how I would have responded. I would respond the way I always have, which isn’t the best. Yeah, and so um I’m curious, like, what are some of the responses from companies that’s then and teams that start going through this? Because you’re right, like there’s that unspoken list, right? That of things, and we all have that of like, okay, we just don’t bring that up because it’s gonna cause problems. Yeah, we all know eventually that’s gonna come back up and it’s probably gonna be a bigger problem, but I’ll deal with it when it comes. Yeah. So fixing these issues that companies have been maybe dealing with for sometimes years that haven’t been addressed, and all of a sudden you come in and instant, maybe not overnight, but what probably feels like overnight after it’s been years of challenging, um, working with those challenges. So, what’s some of the responses from these companies when they go through that?

Craig Weber: 19:42
Yeah, it’s been, I mean, incredibly positive through the years, right? So, a lot of people describe, you know, kind of a before and after effect in the team. Because, like you see, there’s two things you said that I like. One, the conversational capacity framework gives you a diagnostic tool. Why is this meeting not working? What’s going on here? What’s missing? So you’re able to see things you weren’t able to see before, which means there are choices available for how to move forward that never previously existed. But two, it gives you a set of skills for making the changes. Okay, here’s what’s missing, and here’s how we do it. So we’ve got a really nice, agreeable meeting, but people aren’t being as open as they need to be. Here’s a set of behaviors we can start to employ to create more openness. Or there’s lots of openness in our meetings, but people are arguing, butting heads, and just, you know, fighting with each other. We need a lot, we need more of these skills to kind of bring a little more balance. So it gives you an operational framework for both diagnosing what’s not working and for giving you some ideas about how to improve it. So, yeah, a lot of really good feedback from everything from big, big companies. I mean, big companies all over the globe are using this. Wells Fargo, Microsoft, Sony Pictures, you know, Boeing, et cetera. But a lot of smaller vintage-level organizations, nonprofit organizations, government agencies, you name it. So that’s I think one thing that’s been real why the popularity of these ideas is growing fairly rapidly, is it works.

Eric Mulvin: 21:00
Yeah. Uh any example, specific example you could share of like uh, because I would imagine if a company’s stuck and all of a sudden they finally break through and they’re able to start moving the company forward, that could that could change every like change the trajectory of the whole business. And so Yeah, a lot of examples.

Craig Weber: 21:18
I got a great one in my book that I like where uh team an organization in Silicon Valley, I will not name, uh, really nice, agreeable culture. The founders were really pleasant people that kind of built a culture that was very family-oriented, everyone’s in this together. Really nice. Um, their marketing VP said what I like about this team is there aren’t any you know jerks on it. Didn’t use the word jerks, he used a more colorful term, but we’ll leave it there. And um he said, here’s the problem we’re growing in leaps and bounds. We’ve got a you know, a great product, we’ve got one of the biggest IPOs in Silicon Valley history coming up, and no one is putting some of the tougher issues on the table because no one wants to become the team’s first jerk. Right? And so the barrier to openness, what restricted their ability to do the Work they needed to be doing together wasn’t the fact that they didn’t get along, it was the fact that they did. And so, by working with them to improve their conversational capacity, we’re able to bring a level of openness, more discussion, get some of these harder issues on the table in a way that helped them navigate the change they were dealing with in a far more sophisticated way. So, a very simple example of where the ideas helped a group of people who the way they worked together and how they needed to be working together were not aligned, and they’re able to use the conversational capacity word to create a greater fit, right? We’re we’re now working together in a far more sophisticated way because we’re able to align what we’re working together with why we’re working together more effectively. So a lot of examples like that. And some so the the other thing we talked about, you brought up men and win, right?

Eric Mulvin: 22:44
Mm-hmm.

Craig Weber: 22:45
I talk about a place in a conversation, and you know this called the sweet spot. And the sweet spot’s that place in a meeting or a conversation. It could be two people or a whole group of people, where things are open, they’re balanced, they’re constructive, they’re learning focused. That’s a good place to operate. And what holds us in that sweet spot is this balance between these two things. On the one hand, it’s candor. Right? People are being very honest, open, forthright, and direct. So you’re not wondering what people are thinking about an issue that’s being addressed when the conversational capacity is high because the candor is quite robust. But unhinged, unfettered candor is not a good thing. So in the sweet spot, it’s balanced with lots of curiosity. And so we can define conversational capacity as the ability to stay in the sweet spot, both candid and curious under pressure. Personal work, what’s the work I need to invest in if I want to be better at staying in this balanced state, even in circumstances that make it difficult? And then the application plan or the teamwork, where can we build our ability to work together in this more constructive way? So the example I just gave at this company in Silicon Valley, they were out of the sweet spot. They weren’t as candid as they need to be. And so I helped them develop some candor skills to help them have better, more rigorous, more balanced dialogue where it counts. Other teams I work with have no problem with the candor, but every minor dis of agreement turns into a firestorm. So they need to ratchet up the com this the curiosity to get back toward that sweet spot. So both the individual and the collective level, we talk about paying more attention to where am I in the conversation right now so I can make choices about how to get myself back to the sweet spot and help other people move toward the sweet spot, even if they don’t know there’s a sweet spot. This isn’t dependent on everyone in the room knowing the skills. Like your example, you’re the only person that’s been exposed to this in your company, but you’re using the model to help you shape conversations in a more constructive direction.

Eric Mulvin: 24:38
Yep. Yeah, exactly. And even if I’m uh I’m just kind of sitting back behind the scenes, I’m still watching it like, oh, we’re not in a sweet spot right now. In fact, we’re way out of the sweet spot. I need to pull this back in. Let me throw in a question or two or redirect the group. Love that. Um, which is nice to be able to sit back and uh and do that quarterbacking without being uh you know in the middle of it, but still, like I I think it’s a it’s such a powerful skill for uh a leader to be able to put into their playbook.

Craig Weber: 25:08
I love that. And a way to think about it too goes back to the line. We’ve talked about where’s that line in your team’s list of issues. Someone with high conversational capacity is always putting upward pressure on the line, just by virtue of how they’re carrying themselves, how they’re engaging with others, the kind of questions they’re asking, how they’re making the undiscussable issue discussable in a productive way. And so there’s actually higher capacity because they’re in the room. So one thing I talk about is a person with high conversational capacity literally makes every conversation or meeting smarter because they’re in the room. And it’s not because they’re walking in with their Albert Einstein intellect and illuminating the room with their brilliance. It’s because the way they’re participating in the conversations, getting their idea on the table in a way that opens up the conversation. And then they are inviting and encouraging others to get their views on the table in a way that expands the amount of learning that’s available. So someone with high conversational capacity is always facilitating a two-way street of conversation with a goal of learning, not agreement, but learning, helping whoever’s responsible for making a decision make the best decision possible. So I love that you’re doing that, kind of working in your organization to put upward pressure on the line. So your team’s working together more effectively if you weren’t making these conversational interventions, you could say.

Eric Mulvin: 26:25
Yep. And uh it’s been super helpful in personal life too. I’ve had uh, you know, conversations with my wife or the kids, and definitely there’s a there’s moments where they’re trying to win, and uh, I could recognize it before I try to win too. You know, we’re going battling, and now I’m like backing off, like, okay, let’s let’s approach it differently. So amazing the the the changes that you’re able to do, and uh it as long as you can keep practicing it there.

Craig Weber: 26:52
So yeah, some of the best feedback I get from Vistage members is we went home and talked about this as a family, or this has changed my relationship with my teenage daughter, or a CEO in a group in San Antonio recently uh reached out to me on LinkedIn and says, I think you saved my marriage. Wow, okay. That’s not my area of expertise, but I love the idea that if you’re strengthening again your emotional discipline, your cognitive focus, your behavioral acumen in the workplace and treating every meeting, every decision as a practice space, you’re not leaving those skills in the you know at in the workplace when you go home at night.

Eric Mulvin: 27:24
Yep. Likewise, the uh bad habits that you pick up at work, you’re also not leaving them at work, you’re bringing those home too. So you might as well bring some good stuff home too.

Craig Weber: 27:33
Well said. Yeah, you’re bringing home the stress, the anxiety, the worry. You might as well bring some other stuff home too that’s more productive. Yeah, well said.

Eric Mulvin: 27:42
So uh now you’re mentioning Silicon Valley a little bit. We’re before we hit record, uh, we were talking a little bit about um AI. And uh I I I really like one of the things here, like I’ve I’ve been thinking a lot as we get deeper and deeper into this AI world that we’re in, uh, about like what makes humans what what sets us apart from computers, right? Like when a computer can do all these trillions of calculations in seconds, and we’re still here barely writing our our name on the paper, uh, you know, where do we fit in in the world? And I think stuff like what you’re teaching is the future because when you take away all the work, all of the you know, busyness that we have to deal with in the world, but then it comes down to just relationships and people, yeah. And you’re teaching the skill that you know you can’t I I I do believe AI can possibly help in these situations and maybe some of the conversations, but ultimately it’s a skill that you need to be able to pick up as a human to communicate better. Yeah, even more, even more.

Craig Weber: 28:51
I think that’s a really interesting point. Yeah, I was talking to someone recently said, wow, this would be a really interesting app. What if you had a conversational capacity app that like did a lot of the work for you, right? So it says, you need to do this here, you need to do this here, here’s what’s happening right now, here’s a good and I said that’s exactly the wrong idea here. This is muscle building. That’s like saying, what if we built an app that would go to the gym for you? It won’t work. So conversational capacity is a discipline, it requires practice, and you can’t outsource the practice to build your conversational capacity any more than you can hire someone to go to the gym and work out for you. And so it makes no sense. And so I think you’re right. This is a fundamentally human thing: emotional discipline, cognitive focus, behavioral acumen. And so you’re not going to replace that with AI. Not that AI might not find, we might not find a way to augment it, you know, the practice, but I think you’re absolutely right. So I think the other thing I think about AI is it’s sparking a lot of conversation right now. As we were talking before the break, you know, Anthropic CEO just came out and says there’s a good chance it’ll kill us all. When the CEO of the company developing the technology is making that claim, uh, that’s gonna get people talking. And so as we figure this out together, I think constructive learning-focused dialogue is gonna be really important to the AI space. We need people learning together, figuring this out, trying to figure out what to do about it. What are the smart choices? What are the bad choices? How do we navigate it? So I think it’s a great example where conversational capacity is going to need to be much higher if we’re gonna manage this new technology in a constructive way. My fear is it’s gonna go down. So that’s so I think it’s a it’s both an opportunity to build our collective conversational capacity, and it may be one of the reasons we don’t do that work.

Eric Mulvin: 30:29
Yeah, well, it’s an interesting concept because you know, with AI, we’re losing some of the skills that we used to have that would now outsource to AI. You know, maybe some of the critical thinking, some of the I used to have to read this 20-page document and decipher it, and now it’s like, hey AI, chay chat GPT, give me the summary, and you’re not using those skills anymore. And so there’s a deteriorating. Um, and so the the interesting challenge we have is not just uh that I mean it’s it’s how do we maintain our human skills when you could use AI to kind of fake replace it? It doesn’t really do the same thing, but right.

Craig Weber: 31:10
Well said, yeah, fake replace it, right? You’re not really replacing it. You’re it’s like a workaround. And it’s like muscles. If you don’t use it, it’s gonna atrophy. So MIT’s done some research and some interesting research out of MIT showing people who use a lot of chat GPT and other AI tools, they get dumber. I mean, literally, their brains aren’t as rigorous as they get. They can’t make, you know, they do crossword puzzles less effectively. So the brain tends to atrophy a little bit because you’re not using it, you’re outsourcing a lot of your reasoning. I’m writing a book right now, my third book, and I’ve I’ve always I don’t have a ghostwriter. I’ve written both my books, I’m working on book number three, and the act of writing actually changes your relationship to your ideas. You so I feel like you come up with an idea, you just write the book. That’s not how it works. If you’re doing it properly, the writing itself changes the ideas you’re writing about. So there’s this dance back and forth. If you just outsource the writing of the book to uh AI, you’re gonna miss out on all that learning. Your your relationship to your own ideas isn’t gonna evolve because again, you’re just you’re paying someone else to go to the gym.

Eric Mulvin: 32:10
Yeah. Yeah, that’s a great good analogy to keep bringing up is that you you’re how are you going to benefit from this if someone else is going for you?

Craig Weber: 32:19
Yeah, right. You’re letting this technology do your thinking for you. That’s not gonna be that doesn’t bode well for your ability to think.

Eric Mulvin: 32:26
Yeah. Well, since your work is in this, you know, brain thinking, neuroscience type space, and this is this is directly related to that. What do you think? Where do you see like I I mean, where do you guess things might go from here with AI how they’ve been going? Yeah, with AI.

Craig Weber: 32:45
Really, I mean, I don’t know. I think it’s we’re in uncharted territory here, and that’s kind of why people are so nervous. I think we’re this is gonna be, I think one of those technologies is gonna change the way we live our lives forever. We’re not going back. How it’s gonna change it, probably some really good things. I think we talked about medical research, for example, cancer research, astronomy, mathematics, some really powerful tools that’ll help us make sense of the world in a much more effective way. There, there’s also a lot of malicious actors. You know, they just caught someone trying to use uh, you know, AI to uh create bioweapons, for example, and had to put a you know a stop to that. Uh so there’s a the hacking is gonna be a huge problem. I mean, the idea of cybersecurity may no longer even be a relevant concept fairly soon because the ability to tap into anything and break any code is gonna go up and up and up and up.

Eric Mulvin: 33:33
Yeah.

Craig Weber: 33:33
So yeah, I think it’s a mixed bag like any new technology. I think our ability to engage with each other in a constructive, learning-focused way is gonna become the big variable here. How good are we at kind of sitting down and talking? In fact, just as just uh I was just at a um a meeting with a group of people who speak and in and work with executives, and we had a whole two-hour uh kind of workshop on AI with an expert. And there were people who were like full on, let’s go, this is awesome. There’s almost no downside to it. And there were other people who were like, we’re this is gonna kill us all. So it’s really interesting seeing the dichotomy in the perspectives, and that’s a good example where we need to be engaging each other in the sweet spot. And it’s probably a little of both. A lot of upside, we should be excited, and a lot of scary downsides, we should be really nervous. And it’s dialogue between those two camps, I think, that’s necessary, and I think perhaps I’m not sure yet. I’m not really involved in that space, but my guess is it’s lacking.

Eric Mulvin: 34:30
Yeah, yeah, definitely. Well, and you you’d mentioned the CEOs of these companies and what they’re talking about publicly is not is not very reassuring to the public.

Craig Weber: 34:41
Yeah, yeah. You get some outside experts saying this could kill us all. You’re like, well, okay, maybe that maybe, but when the CEO of the company’s saying it, you’re like, okay, maybe we ought to pay attention.

Eric Mulvin: 34:50
Yeah, it’s crazy.

Craig Weber: 34:52
It’s kind of nuts. The fact that we’re even entertaining the idea that we’ve developed a technology that might actually kill everybody is kind of like, what?

Eric Mulvin: 35:01
And there’s no stopping it.

Craig Weber: 35:02
Yeah, it’s exactly right. That’s the cat is out of the bag.

Eric Mulvin: 35:06
Yeah, and yeah, and I keep thinking about man, could could we? But no, there’s like it’s just there’s no turning back. I mean, as you can’t turn back technology, right? But you can focus on people, you know, and uh for me, that’s my life’s work with uh you know my business that I run, and obviously, you know, with you here. Um, so what got you into this field? I’m curious. Like, uh, how did you get in interested in this space?

Craig Weber: 35:32
Yeah, um, so you know, I didn’t know what I wanted to do with myself when I was younger, so I was a really poor high school student. Um, never expected to go to college. So, but I you know, I got involved to make a long story short, a colleague, and we started a large-scale landscape construction business and did work, and I started reading books way back in the day. Ironically, one minute manager, you know, etc., just to kind of become a you know better at managing people. I got so interested in the field, I sold out, went back to school, and studied organizational development, organizational psychology, and started my own practice. So, ironically enough, it was being a fairly terrible manager that got me interested in the field, just because I I didn’t realize anything like organizational development, corporate education, you know, existed. And so once I figured that out, I was like, that is whatever that is, I want to do it. So that’s kind of how I got into this work. And then the funny thing is, One Minute Manager was a book my my older partner gave me to read, and we talked about it. Years later, after I developed the Conversation Pastor Framework, Ken Blanchard, who wrote the One Minute Manager, his organization reached out and said, We’d love to license this and build a course with you, we can deliver. So now it’s part of their, you know, one of the most popular programs they deliver around the globe. So kind of came full circle from reading the book to having the organization of the author reach out and sign me up. So kind of a strange story, I guess, in a way, for me at least.

Eric Mulvin: 36:52
No, that’s that is crazy how the world works and how uh that comes together like that. But uh it is interesting, yeah, because you’re reading that book and then that’s what inspired the the thinking behind it, and then they’re like, yeah, this looks really good. Yeah, makes sense that it’s complementary to what they’re doing there.

Craig Weber: 37:09
I take off on a little journey and kind of learn about uh this field and develop a new set of ideas that don’t exist, and then they reach out and say, hey, we like this. Now I think even earlier than that, and I talk about this in the introduction to my first book. My father worked for the post office, and I remember as a kid sitting around the dinner table and he would come home and talk about dumb decisions in the workplace, colleagues who were jerks, managers who managed really poorly. I remember just thinking, man, why would you ever want to get a job? It looks like a miserable way to spend time. And then of course you grow up and realize, oh man, you have to get a job, right? You got to put food on the table. And so that I was really afraid of going to work, right? That just like, I can’t imagine 40 hours a week in some job I don’t like. And so that I think was a seed that when I got exposed to the idea of corporate education, learning and development, organizational development, I kind of went, oh, okay, this is something I’m interested in.

Eric Mulvin: 38:00
Yeah. Yeah, I I could relate to that. I mean, that was my inspiration for starting my own company. I was working for a big oh, I was working for JP Morgan Chase, a big band.

Eric Mulvin: 38:10
Yeah.

Eric Mulvin: 38:11
And uh, yeah, then I got to experience the slow corporate grind of like, oh, I had these great ideas. I was a f it’s interesting. I uh running a call center now with hundreds of folks. I never was I I never was more than a frontline employee at all the different call centers I worked at, from Chase to Yelp. Um and that was where I saw like I don’t like how this is run. I want to run things differently. But it I had great managers actually there, they they were amazing people, but the organization, yeah. I mean, I think it’s just a symptom of a big organization. I mean, could a company you mentioned you’re you’re working with big, big uh organizations. So is there any challenge to applying this to a big organization versus a little one? Is it the same thing?

Craig Weber: 38:57
Yeah, great question, actually. That’s one reason I like Vistage companies. They tend to be a little smaller. So I can work with a big institution, but they’re big, right? And so, you know, one person with high conversational capacity is gonna have a harder time making a difference in a big, big company than one person with high conversational capacity in a small organization. And so I think it’s more about you so I think the biggest difference is how much difference can you make in a short amount of time? So it takes a lot longer to steer a big ship, right? To turn a big ship. And so if you got a big company like Boeing or something, that’s a really hard business to uh steer in a different direction. Whereas a small vintage company with 30 or 40 employees, it’s a lot easier to make a difference in a fairly short amount of time. So that’s the biggest difference. The level of investment required to make a change, to move the ship.

Eric Mulvin: 39:45
Yeah. Yeah, that that makes uh sense. That a lot more work, a lot more people. Yeah, yeah. And you probably got to train a lot bigger group of people, and uh so yeah.

Craig Weber: 39:55
I find too, with a lot of vestiges, they’re they’re owners, right? So you get the CEO started the company, so there’s a level of personal investment. I really want this organization to work. It’s kind of a reflection of me and who I am. I’ve built this thing. So they’re often way more motivated when they see an idea that will help to really push that idea and make it, you know, to apply it to what they’re dealing with. So I think I’ve seen that too. The level of commitment sometimes can be a lot higher. They’re personally invested in building the conversational capacity themselves and their business simply because they care so much more about their business than someone who’s just kind of has a more transactional relationship with the organization, you could say. Not that there aren’t a lot of really committed people in big companies. There are. I love them. But I think in it, you know, so that’s one you know there, but there’s a lot of people in big organizations who are just kind of there for the the paycheck, right? They’re transactional.

Eric Mulvin: 40:44
Yep. Yeah. So in the intro, we mentioned uh, you know, because you talk about working with the small businesses through Vistage, which I should give a shout out to Fred, uh our the chair for my group, and so uh who brought you in. So thanks to Fred. Um, but you’ve been in Vista as a speaker for quite a long time. I think I if I do the math, I was 14 years old when you started speaking in Vista.

Craig Weber: 41:10
That makes me feel old, yeah.

Eric Mulvin: 41:12
Sorry, didn’t mean to do that. No, that’s all right.

Craig Weber: 41:14
Thanks for that. Yeah, but uh, I’ll shed a tear a little later. Um so yeah, uh March, next March it’ll be 28 years. Wow.

Eric Mulvin: 41:22
So how did you get involved with the speaking world? I mean, was that initially your thought of how to get this out to the world? Because you got these amazing ideas, and the whole world out there that not knowing it, trying to connect those two is a big challenge.

Craig Weber: 41:37
Yeah, when I first started, I was doing work in a lot of work in Silicon Valley, as I mentioned, with a lot of different firms there. This is in the heyday before the collapse. And so uh someone uh knew of my work and said, Hey, there’s this uh Vistage chair who I know. I think you guys really hit it off. Can you sit in one of your workshops and kind of you know say, Yeah, bring him in? So make a long story short, the chair came in, sat in the workshop. It was a two-day workshop, and said, Can you do something like this in half a day to a group of CEOs? And I said, Uh, I can try. And this was in 1999, March of 1999. So I did it, and um it went well. And so boom, kind of got sucked into the system. So I’ve done, you know, I think I figured the other day I’ve done well over I’ve done I put over 10,000 CEOs through a uh three-hour conversational capacity workshop, which is kind of mind-blowing.

Eric Mulvin: 42:30
Yeah, that’s and it they’re they’re not big groups, right? Like, I mean 15, maybe 20 people.

Craig Weber: 42:35
Yeah, 15 to 18, 12, between 12 and 18 people, right? Small groups. So yeah.

Eric Mulvin: 42:40
It’s a lot of conversations.

Craig Weber: 42:42
It’s a lot of workshops, yeah, yeah. But uh again, what’s great about Vistage and doing the work repeatedly, like I’ve done for so many years, is I kind of look at it like a learning laboratory. These are really smart people who sign up to get challenged by the chair, by each other, and by speakers. So this is a group of self-selected high learners. And so if you’re a speaker and you’re in there running a workshop, you’re gonna get lots of really interesting feedback. The questions they ask, the pushback you get, the stories they share help you evolve or kind of shape your own idea. So it’s a really productive learning laboratory. And so that’s why, even though I’m very busy doing a lot of work with other things, I’ll always speak to Vistage groups at some level because it’s such a valuable thing for me.

Eric Mulvin: 43:23
So almost like a stand-up comedian uh doing stand-up out there in like a small little venue to work on their material before you bring it out to the world.

Craig Weber: 43:34
Yeah, and you get with it with an even better audience, right? Because you know, the the Vistage groups are like really sharp people, right? So and they’re professional critics. They hear speakers every month. And so you know, you get scored one to five on content and delivery. You’re gonna ratchet up your uh performance and your ability to convey your ideas and the ideas themselves pretty rapidly if you’re willing to put yourself into that uh environment on a regular basis.

Eric Mulvin: 43:58
Yeah, definitely. Uh that that’s really fascinating because uh I mean so I pr we’re probably uh part of your learning lab for uh your the new book you’re working on. Right. Uh and uh with I mean it it looks like you’re nowhere close to retirement here. Do you think you got more books in you after this one?

Craig Weber: 44:19
Yeah, I do actually. I’ve got uh another book in mind after this one, probably a little shorter. Um, and then I’m actually working on a book for my two granddaughters. So uh Allie and Maisie are seven and nine years old, so I got a little time here, no rush. But you know, throughout my career, I’ve always kind of loved it when I come across an idea, a concept, you could say, that changes how you look at the world. Like you could never go back and look at the world the same way because this concept just fundamentally gives you a lens now where you see things differently. So I’m writing a book.

Eric Mulvin: 44:49
I got you to think for that now from the last talk.

Craig Weber: 44:52
So yeah. And so I’m writing a book where every chapter for my two granddaughters is one of these ideas. So I’m gonna talk a little bit about how I got exposed to the idea, what’s the idea, and why I think it’s a useful lens through which to look at life. So that’s been a fun project. I’ve got a lot going on. So I’m kind of working on that in slow mo while I’m writing these uh the the other two books that’ll come out before it. So I know I’ve got at least three more books in me.

Eric Mulvin: 45:16
Okay. And uh I’m I got some daughters that are about the same age as your uh grandkids. Uh, is there anything that you’ve kind of discovered, uncovered, just interacting with them or maybe your own kids um on the work that you’ve done? Uh I don’t know if if there’s something like maybe they’re still a little young, but I don’t know, nine. Um I think of my oldest out of ten, you know, that I’m applying some of this stuff already.

Craig Weber: 45:41
So yeah, it’s interesting. And um I mean, I’ve always kind of you know tried to use these skills at home, but I think where I’m seeing the biggest interesting difference is my brother Randy, who’s now a Vintage speaker as well, uh, really doing well. But he is a retired public school teacher. He taught sixth grade for years here in Southern California in the Los Angeles area, and he would embed what you learned in the Conversation Festival workshop into a sixth-grade curriculum. So he was teaching this stuff to sixth graders, and my first thought when he said he was going to do it is ah, they might be too young. He says, No, trust me. And I was so wrong. They’re better at it than adults. And so what he’s been doing is doing a lot of interesting work with school districts around the U.S., helping, you know, everything from superintendents and school boards to principals and teachers use these skills in the in it’s in in the educational environment. We’re also looking at ways of making making it more accessible to kids. I wish I’d have learned some of these basic ideas when I was in sixth grade. And so that’s one thing we’re talking about is how might we come up with some curricula that will help you know, teachers help kids learn to carry themselves in conversations more productively.

Eric Mulvin: 46:45
Man, you gave me some interesting ideas that just popped into my head because I’m thinking not to take the the conversation in a whole other tangent, but yeah, I do remember you talking about your brother and the the story dealt with the principal and the crazy parent. Right, right.

Craig Weber: 46:58
The parent-teacher conference, yeah.

Eric Mulvin: 47:00
Yeah. Um, but thinking about education, you know, education is changing so much. I don’t know if you’ve had any conversations with your brother about this. Like what about what about the future of education? Because some of the things we’re teaching kids that AI can do in seconds, that I don’t know if we’re gonna keep teaching kids some of these things. And then there’s things like what you and I are talking about here, these people skills that we lack so much that would we would all benefit from having some of those. Not to say that you know, we don’t need to learn algebra or something, right? But still, how do we bring some of these in?

Craig Weber: 47:35
Great question. Not my area of expertise, so I don’t have a good answer for that, but I think that’s an interesting point. How might AI change how we think about what education should require, right? If if we can outsource a lot of stuff that now, you know, do we still need to learn it? I think we do. And I think I saw an interview with someone recently who said, uh, you know, having a broad-based education is more important than ever because it improves the quality of the questions you’re able to ask. And so it goes back to this idea that education should be more about teaching you to think, not necessarily learning a skill. The skills, you know, balancing a spreadsheet or uh you know, in designing a bridge, AI can do a lot of that. But that ability to reason, to think in a creative way, to uh ask novel questions, I think having a really broad-based education is going to be more, not less important. And we should be studying things. More liberal arts education may be the answer. I don’t know. But you have everything from history and literature, science, you know, mathematics, or really broad education can help us answer qu ask questions we wouldn’t normally be able to ask. So I don’t know. That’s just that’s just me thinking out loud here based on your observation. It’s not my area of expertise, but that would be my guess. Education will be maybe more important, not less important, but the kind of education we need may be different.

Eric Mulvin: 48:53
Yeah, and you do bring up a good point that I think about a lot with AI, that you know, yeah, you can get yourself doing things that you’ve never done before. And uh, like like I could sit here and try to design a bridge on uh Chat GPT, and maybe it’ll give me some plans and might come up with a whole giant like set of 500 documents saying, Oh, I could I can go hand this off a developer. Yeah, but that wide knowledge, you know, you’re not asking the AI the questions about the issues that you had on the last build for the bridge.

Craig Weber: 49:26
Right.

Eric Mulvin: 49:26
You know, or you’re building this bridge in California that’s earthquake prone and you know, Chat GPT is looking at the whole US. And so it doesn’t there’s so many angles that that broad knowledge that I think you know that we kind of gotten away from and really like it’s all like at least for me growing up through college, everything’s about you gotta specialize, you gotta be an expert at all these things. Yeah, and now it’s like, oh no, actually, you gotta know a lot about everything so that you you know how to handle all these different situations. So yeah, yeah.

Craig Weber: 49:57
So and I think to your point too, the the human skills are gonna become probably more important. If we can outsource a lot of the technical stuff, our ability to engage and work with each other in a productive way are gonna become more and more and more valuable. And so, you know, the human skills, social skills, emotional intelligence, conversational capacity, you know, critical thinking, I think those are gonna become increasingly important skills. Systemic thinking. Um, I talked to you before we recorded about my friends Chris Soderquist, who does work around what he calls SysQ or systemic intelligence, that kind of look for high leverage in a problem. Where’s the place we can intervene that for the least amount of intervention will produce the biggest change in the system? Those sort of skills are gonna become incredibly powerful.

Eric Mulvin: 50:39
Yeah. Yep, I could see that for sure. Have you seen any increased interest in your work now, like because of AI, and now where people are maybe beginning to realize, like, oh, we need to pick up these people’s skills more.

Craig Weber: 50:54
Not so much AI, but I am seeing a big pickup in the work because of the degree of uncertainty in the world. How do I build a team that can learn together under pressure? People are recognizing that as a set of skills that are going to become incredibly important in the world we’re moving into. Everything from climate change to economic uncertainty, political chaos, people are really kind of getting worried about where the world’s going and building a team that can work together in highly uh fluid, unstructured, chaotic circumstances is a set of skills they’re increasingly seem interested in. So seeing a big uptick in work focused on that.

Eric Mulvin: 51:29
That makes a lot of sense because I think about my team. The core of my team has been around since COVID, or through they’ve been with me since before COVID. And so I feel like, yeah, we went that was that was a perfect example of that uncertainty. Uh, although it was like compressed into a very short amount of time. Like sure was. This is more like a slow-moving freight train that that we’re all dealing with right now.

Craig Weber: 51:51
But yeah, we’ve got El Nino right now, where the weather effects are massive and we’re seeing incredible uh weather patterns emerge. We’ve got AI, which people are getting increasingly concerned about and its impact on the world around us. We’ve got a lot of political uncertainty and instability around the globe. You know, we’ve got a massive fuel crisis brewing. So there’s a lot going on and there’s no clear, easy way forward. It’s not obvious how we’re going to dig ourselves out of the mess we’ve we’re in. So building a team that can really perform well in messy, chaotic, complex, uncertain circumstances really requires a team with high conversational capacity, really constructive, learning-focused dialogue about difficult subjects and challenging circumstances and across tough boundaries.

Eric Mulvin: 52:34
Yep. And now is the time to work on that. Don’t wait until the crite you’re in the middle of the crisis and you’re like, oh crap, we got to figure this out. That’s right. Now’s the time to get those skills in place before uh before it really hits the fans.

Craig Weber: 52:48
That’s a really good point. You know, I people I I stress this a lot, but uh, you know, the worst time to build your conversational capacity is when you’re in the throes of a crisis, right? That’s when you need the capacity, but it’s the worst time to build it. And so we need people who are proactively capacity building. I think a really interesting way to think about leadership is you’re proactively building your team’s ability to work together in the circumstances you’re likely to face. You’re not waiting for the you know what to hit the fan. You recognize at some point it’s gonna hit the fan. I better build a team that can perform well under pressure.

unknown: 53:19
Yep.

Craig Weber: 53:20
So that’s sort of the, as you mentioned at the outset, that’s the title of my first book, you know, Conversational Capacity, The Secret to Building Successful Teams That Perform When the Pressure is On. But to your point, the worst time to build it is when the pressure is on.

Eric Mulvin: 53:34
Yep. You can’t uh you can’t be practicing your three-point shot in the finals game seven. You need to be practicing that, you know, in the off season before the season in the end.

Craig Weber: 53:46
Yeah, the best time to the best time to change your diet and your exercise regimen to avoid cancer is not when you’ve just been diagnosed with cancer.

Eric Mulvin: 53:53
Yep.

Craig Weber: 53:54
Right.

Eric Mulvin: 53:55
Yeah, very true. So um and I’m curious, you know, because you get to have these interactions with business leaders all over the country and all different kinds of industries, what kind of stuff are you hearing from them right now with the business environment the way it is?

Craig Weber: 54:09
I think it goes back to the conversation we just had. The level of uncertainty uh is like uh it’s redlining, right? People are really, really nervous. Because A, you know, it it they can’t really predict where things are going because there’s so much uncertainty in the system. And two, a lot of the trends don’t look positive, right? So I think there’s a lot of nervousness, a lot of uh whether you’re running a government agency or whether you’re running a business, big or small, or whether you’re running a nonprofit, everyone’s kind of really concerned about the level of uncertainty now. Things are really chaotic. The the world as it’s existed for a long time seems to be kind of going away to some degree. And so I’m not sure how to operate in this new context. So I think that’s what I see. I don’t know what your experience is, but that’s kind of what I’m hearing.

Eric Mulvin: 54:52
Yeah, that there’s a lot of that, you know, and how do we well uh the the AI fear or just and the fear not necessarily of AI, but just the fear of being left behind. Right. Because I mean, again, I going back to Vistage, you know, the it’s definitely gotten beat into our heads that you know you either are adapt or you fall behind. And um, you know, you had mentioned your time when you first started, you started, it sounded like at a very interesting time in Silicon Valley. You mentioned in 1999, and if I remember, not to reference my age again, but uh that was like the dot-com boom. Yeah, that was it. Yeah, that’s what I mean. Bust and boom and bust. So you got to experience a little bit. I mean, it’s not like the exact scenario we’re going through, but huge technological change, everyone trying to adapt, money being poured into websites and to web development of the internet without even a thought of like is this sustainable? Do we really need you know, a hundred billion dollars worth of data centers all over, you know, built in the next 12 months? You know, like we’re I feel like we’re repeating some of the same cycle. You lived through it, you were you were working in that space. Are you seeing any re-emerging patterns here that maybe we there’s uncertainty, but there are some things that we could see, some patterns of of where to predict.

Craig Weber: 56:14
I think it’s very different. I think there it was more just techno pure technological change. You know, we were moving into an age where personal computers and the internet were starting to emerge. You know, I worked with U.S. Robotics and we, you know, they built modems, palm computing had the first palm pilot, you know. So, you know, now it’s I think the level of uncertainty, the level of change, it makes that look like you know, almost cartoonish by nature, right? So we’re in a whole different ballgame. So I got involved in Silicon Valley around 96, 97, did work until the crash, and then I thought, okay, my career’s over, all my work’s here. What happened is people left and went to other organizations and brought me in, so my work actually expanded. But uh I think that was more local, technical, internet, you know, tech computer technology rapidly evolving, and that changed the world, no doubt. I think the the combination of issues we’re dealing with now are far grander, far bigger, you know, in some ways more scary. Like climate change, AI is a great example, political uncertainty around the globe is a little scary, right? So the the world order seems to be changing in fundamental ways, which is nerve-wracking. So there’s a lot more going on now than back then. The overall system was fairly stable, but there was a change taking place more at a micro level. Now the macro change, I think, is far greater. So that’s a far greater degree of instability, uncertainty, and uh, you know, probably some messiness move we’re gonna be moving into.

Eric Mulvin: 57:35
Yep. All the more reason to practice these conversational skills.

Craig Weber: 57:39
Yeah, build a team that can really work together when it counts, right? Because you’re gonna need to learn together, you know, really rapidly and really effectively in the world we’re moving into, I think.

Eric Mulvin: 57:50
Yeah, for sure. Um, and it in the intro, uh I I had uh pulled up a name that you had mentioned for uh for someone who has unfinished business, Dean Williams. Yeah so tell talk to me about him. What’s the significance of Dean Williams?

Craig Weber: 58:05
So Dean has been like a big mentor for me. He’s a huge inspiration. He was an early professor of mine, got me interested in some of the underlying research. Uh, he became a boss of mine. We become colleagues and friends. He’s written two books, uh Real Leadership and Leadership for a Fractured World. Uh, professor at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, Australian, great guy. And he’s retired from Harvard now and is doing work around the globe, kind of exactly what we’re talking about. He’s an expert in what we’ll call adaptive leadership, where we’re dealing with circumstances that are more adaptive in nature. There’s no odd there’s no clear way forward. It’s messy. We’re kind of, they’re conflicts embedded and there’s not sure how to deal with the conflicts. He’s really working to help people all around the globe work together more effectively by diagnosing the adaptive work they need to be doing and then helping them build the capacity to engage in that adaptive learning. So conversational capacity fits into that really nicely. But uh, I love the fact that he’s, you know, most people retire from Harvard and they, you know, go live uh on an island somewhere and uh drink a Mai Thai. He’s out there doing more work than ever, trying to change the world around him. So his unfinished business, I think, is helping people all around the globe recognize what’s the adaptive work you’re facing and how do you build a team that can do that adaptive work really well.

Eric Mulvin: 59:17
Yeah, I love it. All these skills that we need that uh are you guys are helping bring them out to the world and uh helping people apply it.

Craig Weber: 59:26
Yeah, he’s got a great YouTube channel, by the way, for your listeners if they want to learn more about Dean. Uh leadership for a crazy world. So go Google Dean Williams on in YouTube and his channel should come up. But uh a lot of good content there talking about uh his ideas and how he’s using them to kind of improve how people work together in the very circumstances we’re seem to be moving into in the world.

Eric Mulvin: 59:46
I love it. And I love this. Uh it this is one of the things I really try to tell everyone that I that I come across that they don’t realize that there’s so much of this science-backed uh, you know, frameworks and thinking that that we could be applying to our lives, and it’s almost like you know, we get all excited about a a new app, a new iPhone model, a new whatever, and no one’s talking about these things like that. I feel like we should be. Yeah, right.

Craig Weber: 01:00:15
So I think you’re right. I think you’re talking about, you know, everyone’s down on the dance floor dealing with stuff day in, day out, but I think we need to spend a little more time up on the balcony looking at the big picture and thinking about some of the big questions. How do I build a team or an organization that can perform well in the world we’re moving into? And I think people like Dean are doing exactly that. I mentioned Chris Oderquist, systemics thinking or systemic intelligence. That’s another body of work I think that’s going to become increasingly important. And one other person I’d mentioned that I really love and I’ve done a lot of work with over the last couple of decades is Frank Barrett. So Frank’s an interesting guy. He’s a PhD in organizational behavior, taught at the Naval Postgraduate School for years as a professor. He’s at Case Western Reserve now, taught at Harvard. But he wrote a book but came out about the same time mine did, called Yes to the Mess: Surprising Leadership Lessons from Jazz. And he really talks a really interesting set of ideas about how do you build a team that can work in a really agile, fluid, learning-focused way. And what can we learn from jazz musicians about what that requires? And I think in terms of unfinished business, he’s got, I think his ideas need a lot more attention than they than they’re even getting now. So great book, Yes to the Mess, Harvard Business Review Press. That I think is a set of ideas that are going to become increasingly relevant in the world we’re now moving into as well. So you look at Chris’s work, systemic intelligence, Frank’s work, yes to the mess, conversational capacity, engaging each other in a constructive, learning-focused way. And then sort of an umbrella concept would be Dean Williams and the ideas around adaptive leadership. That’s a really interesting set of ideas for how you build a team that can really perform well in a really complex, messy, changing set of circumstances.

Eric Mulvin: 01:01:55
Awesome. Well, I love how you package that all up because I know there’s people that everyone is having anxiety about AI, about where the world is headed, and a lot of people just feel like there’s no control, there’s nothing I could do. Well, there is some things you can do. Well, you know, control what you can control. We hear that a lot in business. And what you can control is this, you know, picking up these skills, going out and finding these uh these researchers and uh these experts to learn these skills for yourself because that’s something you can control.

Craig Weber: 01:02:27
And I think that that there’s some soft, there’s some comfort in that, right? I can focus on what I can focus on, right? You look at Nick Sabin, right? So uh the whole idea of the process, right? Focus on what’s in front of you right now and what can I do, right? So you know, we spend too much time worrying about the big picture or moaning and groaning about the past, but right now, what can I do? What can I productively engage in to build my ability to move into the future in a better way? And so I think that idea of the process. And so, how do I build my personal conversational capacity? So when things get difficult, I’m able to carry myself in a way I’m proud of and then align with my good intentions. And then if you’re a business leader, how do I build a team? How do I build a business that will outperform other organizations in this messy environment because we know how to learn together, think together, and collaborate more effectively under pressure. So I think that’s right. That’s work we can start doing now, and it gives you something proactive to focus on.

Eric Mulvin: 01:03:21
Yep. And uh, this is a concept I’ve talked about a few times on the show. We all have access to pretty much the same AI tools, right? And it’s just really how you use it. So the big differentiating factor going like into the future is going to be these skills. Like if company A, company B are doing the same exact thing, but company A has the better people skills, right? I can imagine they’re gonna run circles around the other company B.

Craig Weber: 01:03:46
Yeah, I often say I’d rather have a team that has high conversational capacity and a poor strategy than a team that has a great strategy and poor conversational capacity. Because the team with high conversational capacity can kind of detect and correct the problems with their implementation and adjust on the fly, and they’re gonna move toward a better strategy. Or a team that’s got a great strategy and low conversational capacity is in trouble before they even start. So I think that’s right. So I think uh, you know, the the the competitive advantage, if you will, is not gonna be so much in you know AI, because everyone’s got access to it. It’s gonna be in the team’s ability to learn together, navigate complex circumstances, pivot, you know, so agility is gonna be a big thing, which again comes back to learning. I think innovation and creativity are gonna be important new skills, right? So that again comes back to learning together. So I think that suite of skills I just mentioned, not just conversational capacity, but systemic intelligence, yes to the mess, and the idea of adaptive leadership are gonna be really important differentiators for organizations moving forward.

Eric Mulvin: 01:04:45
Oh, yeah, I agree. Yeah, that’s great. Um so getting close to the end of the show here, and uh uh, but I I wanted to ask a little bit about like what it’s like working with you. Uh, if there’s some people listening today and they’re like, man, this is incredible. I’d love to have him come talk to my organization, or how can we learn more to work with him? What what do you do to help uh businesses like that if someone reaches out?

Craig Weber: 01:05:11
Yeah, I do a lot of workshops for organizations. So uh, you know, working with a lot of different organizations, running conversational capacity and adaptive learning workshops, uh, collaborate with people like Frank and Chris and Dean on various projects. Uh so Chris Oderquist, the systemic intelligence expert, and I are do actually working with the government of Somalia, for example, which is interesting. We’ve done work at the CDC at Boeing and elsewhere. So, yeah, do everything from keynote addresses and speak into conferences or events to workshops for teams, either proactively as part of their leadership development program. Sometimes I’ll do remedial work for a team that isn’t doing so well. Um my work’s become increasingly popular, and I don’t want to run a big consulting firm. So I’ve actually partnered with Blanchard, as I mentioned, and they’ve got a conversational capacity course they deliver all over the world. That’s been really popular, award winning program, really. Well received. So a lot of different ways to get access to the ideas. And of course, there’s a you know books out there as well on the subject.

Eric Mulvin: 01:06:07
Yeah, yeah. We’ll get links to everything in the show notes so that people can find uh find those easily here. Uh so with every show, we end with the the last question here, um, which is what’s your unfinished business? And you’ve written a lot of books, you’ve done a lot of research and have spoken to thousands and thousands of business leaders getting these uh ideas out, and you got more on the way. But with everything we talked about today, I’m I’m really curious. What is your unfinished business? What’s the thing that you’re still looking to get out there in your lifetime for your career?

Craig Weber: 01:06:39
Yeah, I think um the books I mentioned, I’m really excited about. So I think right now that’s my really unfinished business. This next book is gonna be a bit of a game changer, a really new set of ideas about what it means to build an organization that really performs well under pressure. And so this idea of how do we build our collective conversational capacity and not just understand the idea, but really practical ways to do the work. So that I’m really excited about. Uh mentioned we’re gonna be setting up a YouTube channel around conversational capacity designed to help people who are already familiar with the concepts learn more, answer common questions. We’re gonna bring in thought leaders like those I just mentioned, Chris Soderquis, Dean Williams, Frank Bear to be the first people being interviewed and talked to on that. So that’s kind of fun. Um and then the book for my granddaughters, kind of excited about that, some unfinished business there, which I’ll write for them but share with the broader world. But those concepts that have fundamentally changed how I think about the world, you just can’t go back to seeing things the same way. Kind of excited about that. And then just I’m working with the family too to do that. So my wife Renee, who I was with for 40 years, she passed away two years ago next week, actually. So I would not be doing the work I’m doing it if it wasn’t for my relationship with her phenomenal life partner, we really adventurous, taking off to school with me with two young babies, building a business together. So I think um doing this work as sort of uh an homage to her is kind of something important to me as well, right? I want to make sure that the ideas I generated because I was in a relationship with Renee for 40 years, really make a difference and help make the world a better place. And she did. She was fantastic. Everyone loved her, she lit up a room, and it was as I said in her celebration of life here a couple years ago, she left the world a better place than she found it. And I think that’s something I want to try to do. How do I leave the world a better place than I found it?

Eric Mulvin: 01:08:26
All right, Craig. Well, that’s a beautiful answer. Uh, appreciate you sharing that with us here. And uh yeah, then that’s incredible to know that you know some of the stuff I’ve been learning and applying to my family, my business, uh helped was inspired and brought about from uh your wife. So thanks for sharing that.

Craig Weber: 01:08:42
My pleasure. Thank you. Yeah, she was amazing. I won the lottery.

Eric Mulvin: 01:08:46
Oh, yeah. I could really, I I say that all the time too. So we’re we’re some of the lucky ones out there. Yeah. Um, well, uh Craig, thank you so much for being on the show here, for sharing all the ideas that you had. Uh, and I really hope I think, you know, even though this wasn’t an episode about AI necessarily, I think in a way it’s like the anti-AI episode. Like, hey, these are the skills that you need for the future. Like, start start getting ready. Uh so well, thank you. Thank you for uh going through that.

Craig Weber: 01:09:15
Yeah, I think AI is uh it’s a big part of where we’re moving in the future, and so having conversations about it, uh, I think really important, and even more important, having good, constructive, learning focus conversations is gonna be essential. So that was really that was fun focus too, very different than uh you know other uh podcasts I’ve been on. So I really enjoyed that actually.

Eric Mulvin: 01:09:35
Awesome. I love it. Well, trying to do something unique here, and uh yeah, the world is changing, and that’s why we’re doing a show, is uh leaders are looking for answers, looking for what are other people doing. And so again, appreciate you sharing that with uh everyone here today. For those of you guys listening, if you love what you heard today uh and you want to um make sure to subscribe to the podcast here. Uh you can follow us at unfinished business uh with Eric Mulvin on any podcast platform @bizwitheric on social media, and uh we’ll get links to connect with Craig and Craig. If if they people do want to connect with you, what’s the best way for them to get in touch or maybe learn more about the the workshops and the books?

Craig Weber: 01:10:18
Yeah. Uh conversationalcapacity.com, great way to find the website. Uh Ping me on LinkedIn. I’m posting content there all the time about this concept, so that’s a great way to connect. And then uh conversational capacity on YouTube. That’ll be launched here very shortly. So watch out for that. It’s already up. You can you can subscribe to it, but there’s not a lot of content. There’s no content there yet. But that’s going to be launching very soon with a lot of work around this kind of talk. It might be fun to have you on there at some point and have a you know repeat the conversation again in a different way on the YouTube channel, or at least take some clips from this and start including them. So that’ll be coming up. So LinkedIn, conversationpasty.com, uh, and then the YouTube channel be great ways to stay connected.

Eric Mulvin: 01:10:58
Awesome. All right. Well, thanks again, uh, Craig, and thanks to everyone listening today. Uh, and until next time, catch you guys on the next episode. See y’all later.

Craig Weber: 01:11:07
Thanks so much, Eric.