#18 - Conductors: The Big Picture People of the Workplace (Behavior Styles Part 4)

Hello, this is Michael Nash with Nash Consulting. And this is Ethan Nash. Okay, enough chit chat. We're gonna get down to business today because we are talking about the conductor behavior style and we really don't need to spend a lot of time just, you know, "Hi, how are you? Let's have some fun," et cetera, et cetera. Let's just get to work. Okay, let's get right down to business. All right. The fluffy stuff out. So, we're talking about behavior styles and you know what? We're not gonna waste your time because preview conductors do not like having their time wasted. So we're not gonna do any, let's talk about why we're doing this or here's what we've already learned or blah, blah, blah. Like look, if you want to know where we're at, go back and listen to the last three episodes, don't just start here. We don't have time to explain this to you. Right. And don't whine about it either. Just don't be all like, "Oh, well, I don't remember." Go back and listen to it. Take some responsibility. Wow, we are, I think we're giving off the wrong impression about conductors because they sure sound like a bunch of jerks to me. I love conductors. So conductor is my secondary style and I suspect it might be your secondary style as well, my son. Uh-oh. We got a team of conductors out here. We do. This sounds like a stupid question. Probably is because, yeah, go ahead. We're going to have a couple of managers, equals Hymeral, which equals all that cool stuff that you cannot pay for and you can't punish for. When you close off that feedback channel, you are not going to be able to hear the truth. In the first microseconds, your brain can't tell the difference between physical danger and what we call social danger. I mean, that's the stuff that you, me, specifically, are just because you're possible. These tend to get promoted until they reach their level of incompetence. Go forward and don't suck. Alright, well, let's jump into it. And again, really folks, we're not going to intro the topic much today. This really is a series that you need to listen to in order. So this is the fourth episode of probably five. We might fit in a six one there if you behave yourselves. But we are going to break down conductors. Top 10 once needs an expectation. And before we do that, let's give this one little bit of big picture. There's four behavior styles. And if you are visualizing the behavior style grid, I want to kind of give you sort of a visual for this. Analyzers were in the top left quadrant, which means that they are on the side of the behavior style grid that's processors. These are the folks that's the right to left x axis. They're processors as exposed to expedience, right? So conductors are right next to them on the top of the box, but they're on the right. So these guys are more expedient. So analyzers, processors, conductors, expedience. Now underneath conductors, we have our promoters. They're also on the expedient side. But they're on the bottom half of the box, which is about responsive, emotionally responsive, as opposed to on the top of the box, which is where the conductors and the analyzers reside, is more controlled, emotionally controlled. So put all that together. Conductors are expedient and they are emotionally controlled. Okay. And we'll talk a little bit about how a conductor might interact with your promoterness, right? Being your primary and secondary and with my analyzerness, secondary and secondary. But again, if you can visualize that grid that he painted, you being a conductor and a promoter, the way you show up emotionally, it's opposites. Promoters are on a more or less one end of the spectrum and conductors are on the other. So again, it's a construct here. Yeah, the spectrum one or the other. Right? And with you, it's the opposite of you on the other way. Analyzer, your primary is more process oriented. The conductor part of you is more expedient. So that's a bit of an opposite. Now, the style that we haven't mentioned today are the listeners who are literally opposite of conductors, right? They're the opposite quadrant of the lower left. Conductors and listeners tend to get together. They tend to get into relationships. They're attracted to one another, just like analyzers and promoters tend to be attracted to one another. And I know we've said this before, when trust and respect are high, those differences really tend to click and they work. And when trust and respect are low, they tend to repel. Right. So let's jump into this. All right. No more wasting time here. Conductors. Conductors will have these organizing principles. This is the way they show up. Not necessarily how they feel, but this is the way they show up to others around them. And the first one is results. Conductors are motivated by producing results. And so here's an obvious question for you. What are some of the benefits this person that is motivated by results brings to the workplace? They get bleep done. They just, they get stuff done. They get bleep done. These guys get things done. They go forward. They tend to move quickly. They get results. And what's really cool about conductors is they often get results in those tricky difficult situations. If you want something accomplished that seems impossible, that seems really difficult, give it to a conductor because one of the words that shows up a lot when you read about conductors is resourceful and another word is courageous. And you put resourceful and courageous together. You have people out there getting results. And that's obviously a good thing for results oriented workplace, which most workplaces are more or less. Now, what might be a negative that could come from someone that is really motivated by results? Let's just move on. We don't need to do the negatives for these guys. No, we probably should. Yeah. So it's not negatives. It's just growth opportunity. You know what, you're really, I'm glad you said that because we're not going to be beaten up on anybody here. We all have them, right? We all have these growth opportunities. And for conductors, it's the results thing. If they're not careful, it can get in the way of relationships. It can look to people. And this is not how conductors feel, although we maybe do sometimes feel this way. But in generally, if they're not careful, it can look like the results matter more than the person. So for example, let's say you came to me in the morning and said, "Hey, I'm really sorry, Mike. I didn't get this thing done that I was going to get done today because this thing happened last night with my car." And then this thing happened with my friend and I had to go help. And as you're telling me that, I'm going to be thinking, at least for the first couple seconds, what I'm thinking is you don't have the results. That bothers me for those first couple seconds because here's the thing with conductors. Anytime you block their forward progress, they get frustrated and that frustration can kind of show up. And so now it looks to you like I don't really care about the fact that you have this thing going on with your friend and your car. I'm just worried about results. And that can be a relationship problem right there. Right. For progress or blocking the for progress is a stress point for conductors. Yes. And it shows up. It shows up as, "I'm not very happy with you." You've blocked my forward progress. Initially. Exactly. And that's not how I feel, especially if I give myself a couple minutes to work past that. I realize, well, of course I care about what's happening for you. And that other thing they'll got in the way there temporarily. But unfortunately, you saw it, which can be a bit of an intimidation fact. And the other thing I would add here is just that one thing that drive conductors crazy, including myself, and I would imagine you as well, is the e-word. It excuses. It excuses. It excuses can drive conductors crazy. And the issue when looking through a conductor's lens here, of course, is what us conductors may call excuses. Other people would just call life. Real things. I think that we're actual impediments to getting things done. That's exactly right. I've had to talk with several of my clients who are conductors and help them understand that what you are labeling as an excuse, which has for you kind of this derogatory implication, is a real thing. That is a thing. And if you fail to add some empathy there, now, side note, preview, foreshadowing, when we get to listeners, right? If I came to you in the morning and you were a listener, and I said, "Oh, man, I'm so sorry, I don't have this because of my car and my friend," you'd go like, "Oh my gosh, how's your friend? How are you?" It'd be the easiest thing in the world for you to go to the empathy because that's part of what makes up the listener's style. For the conductor, I actually, in some cases, have to make myself go there. It doesn't mean I don't have empathy or it's not accessible to me, but in the moment, because the forward progress got blocked, I'm looking at what you're saying as an excuse as opposed to a real life thing. Cool. Again, conductors bring a lot of cool things. They get things done. They tend to rise up in organizations because of this, but a negative side, if they're not careful, is they could give the vibe that the relationships are not so important in getting stuff done is. This can be intimidating if you're a leader. It reminds me of what you just said to about rising up in organizations. It is true that you see more conductors in the higher positions, CEO, et cetera. There's lots of reasons for that, including the one you just mentioned, which is, you know, the things done get results. You've mentioned a couple times, Ethan, that we may have a sixth episode on the series. I'm thinking about that because what kind of jobs the track, different styles, how does gender play into this, how does, how does culture's play into this. So there might be some fodder for us to spend some time on those other questions. - I think there definitely is. There's some important things here that we're not able to cover in just the context that go in over each style. Anyways, the first one was results. The second one is decisiveness. - They are decisive and they wish you were too. - Hmm, all right. So this is probably one of the reasons why they may tend to get into leadership roles. - Another way. - Another way to do that kind of decision-making thing that's important to do in a leadership role. What could be the downside if conductors aren't careful with this one, be too decisive? - Yeah, a couple things. One would be deciding and then sticking to that decision regardless of new information, et cetera. They're a little bit likely to be somewhat stubborn around the decision they've made. - Since Stone now. - Yeah, well, I already made that decision so please don't waste my time with having to, you know, I don't want to second guess it. - However, that might be less if you're a conductor promoter, would you say so? - Yeah. - So you can promote it, you're kind of, you're willing to change, try new things. So just 'cause you've made a decision, doesn't mean you're gonna make a different decision on that same issue tomorrow or the next week, right? So that's a way the primary and secondary might interact. - Absolutely. In fact, what you're getting at right now is that we have to do a little side note on this because we are now for the first time in this series bringing in secondaries for the most part. Yes, there are such things, there are such people as analyzer promoters. You know, there are people that are primary promoters, secondary analyzers, but that's pretty rare because back to our chart, those are opposites. In fact, only 8% of the population total have opposite behavior styles as their primary secondary. So that would be listener conductor, conductor listeners, analyzer promoter, promoter analyzers. So that's pretty rare. But now listeners, you know, you first talk about analyzers, you first talk about promoters, the fact that we're now introducing conductors we're probably introducing to many of you now your secondary, right? Or your primary and your secondary have already covered. The secondary's are really really significant. As Ethan just said, if I'm a conductor analyzer and this issue of sort of decisiveness comes up, I'm probably to be a little bit seen as a bit more rigid because the conductor part of me doesn't want to change gears. And the analyzer part of me wants to, you know, process a lot longer before I make any changes because I like consistency. On the other hand, if I'm a secondary promoter, like you said, it's going to be a little more likely that I'm going to be able to flex. You asked about the downside, another downside for conductors and decisions is we might not take the time to survey the people in my life, to survey my employees, to find out what they're thinking. - Including other people's opinions. - Exactly. - They're expedient. - Yeah, yeah, I want to just take more time. I would block my progress. - I don't want to waste my time asking your opinion. Let me just decide. It gets things done quicker, right? - But it gets things done quicker 'cause in the immediate, yes, it may get things done quicker, but what are the residual results of that? - Yeah, in fact, can I use that as a segue into our third thing? I want to talk about efficiency. I really want to talk about efficiency right now because the third thing on the list here is efficiency. And Nathan, you just gave such a good example of that. One of the primary sort of organizing factors around conductors is this need for efficiency. And here's how it works. If I want to go from A to B as a conductor, I want to figure out the quickest way to get from A to B. And if I want to accomplish something, the quickest way to do that is to make a decision, right? It's going to take more time if I ask people's opinion, but what you're getting at, which is so important, I end up saving time in the short run, right? And then I end up costing myself a whole bunch of time later. In lots of ways, lots for lots of reasons. - Moral issues, right? People not feeling included, so now they're not bought into my decision. - Right, they're not doing their best work because of the morale that you've created. There's a lot of what conductors may describe as whiny conversations that they now have to have. - Yep. - Because they've heard their feelings or that they weren't included. I mean, it's really just kind of a long-term vision that you have to have with thinking about how you're going to adjust your style. - Yeah, we need to park a little bit on this efficiency thing because it really helps understand conductors. Let me tell you a game with you, buddy. Little buddy. All right, so in the spirit of efficiency, I want you to write me an email and you're just going to sort of pretend to write me this email. I want you to read it to me though right now. I want you to write me an email. Here's the point of your email. Remember, you're a conductor, so I want you to make this email efficient. Now, the point of your email is there is this proposal that you've asked me to put together for this client that is looking for a proposal. You would like me to have this proposal ready for you by, what day is this, is this Saturday? Next Wednesday, you'd like me to have this proposal ready for you by Wednesday. All right, so write me an email to that effect, but please be efficient. - So the most efficient way to write you an email to communicate that you need this proposal by next Wednesday? - Well, I need it. - Yeah, you want the proposal done from, by me, you want me to have it done by four o'clock next Wednesday. - Okay. - Write the email. - Need report four o'clock Wednesday. - Whoa, that was really good. That was four words. - Actually, not even Wednesday, just WED. - WED, what? - Yeah. - Report, do, four. - Not even do, report, dash, need, four p.m. - It's like code. - Wind. - It's like code. Okay, you went pretty extreme with that. Oh, and put that in the subject line. Don't even put it in the email, right? - Yeah, yeah, so yeah, I mean, a person who's not quite as extreme as you might say, report, do, Wednesday, at four or something, right? But so what they're thinking as they wrote this email, no, I take that back, they're not thinking this. This is really almost unconscious. There's this little bit of a hit, that this positive feeling they have inside of them of wow, that was efficient, right? I just saved four seconds. I saved six seconds by not having to put, I didn't write your name. I didn't say thank you. I didn't say please. I didn't put any animated kittens in there. I didn't do anything else except exactly what I needed. And it feels really good for me until, like you said, I have to have a whiny conversation with my employee because I was curt or I was way too direct or I was unkind or maybe it wasn't clear. And maybe it wasn't clear, exactly. - Yeah, no, I get it. - So this efficiency thing really does good on one hand, right? It really does allow us as conductors to get stuff done and to move forward, but it really does get in the way of relationships usually. That's usually where it costs us. - Now efficiency and action, we usually talk about as one, right, with conduct, I mean, you just said efficiency, but you can think of it as action as well. They're action oriented, they're efficient. - Yeah, in fact, let's contrast and compare, right? We talked about promoters. They also had the word action, which means, let's go forward, let's not spend a lot of time, let's move forward. Promoters had as their secondary word with that, which was a media C, right, which kind of gets them in trouble sometimes. For conductors, we have our secondary word there next to action, which is efficiency, which is what we've just described. Now, if you have a primary secondary style like I do, which is promoter and conductor, you know that we're going to be pretty expedient. We're going to be talking fast and making fast decisions and, you know, et cetera, et cetera. On the other hand, if my secondary like you was analyzer, that might pull back a little bit of that quick, that efficiency, it might temper that. - That makes sense. - The next one is to fix things. That system could work better, right? We can fix that. That process could work better. Let's fix that. There's something we can do to improve this, right? So in a lot of ways, conductors, they're very innovative. - Yeah, exactly. - They're specifically seeking ways to make things better. Now, the annoying thing is what they're trying to fix is you, right? - That could be frustrating, is that I think they're trying to fix is you trying to make you a better human being without your consent, right? You know, the good news here is, again, this is one of the reasons that these conductors rise up in organizations because they're looking for solutions. They're looking for, you know, like you said, they're being innovative, they're being creative, they're thinking outside the box, they're adding to their desired to fix things, the fair amount of courage, and let's do something kind of, even kind of radical, right? Let's do something that hasn't been done before. So it's really cool. I think they bring a fair amount of sort of fresh energy to an organization. The other thing that can be troubling with that, not just when they're trying to fix a person is, when they're trying to fix too much at all of once, you know, very efficiently, very quickly, you know, it's not even broken, let's fix it, right? It can lead to burnout. It can lead to change burnout. - Yeah. - The next one is to be challenged, right? They like a high bar when it comes to challenges. - Yeah, absolutely. - Which is pretty positive. We need people in the workplace that are willing to take on those big monster challenges. - Yeah, in fact, one study showed that conductors tend to get into jobs that are a little bit above their skill level, and they love it because they get in there and they get to stretch and then they do it. They stretch, they make it, now they're, getting bored and they're gonna stretch again. So yeah, they love to stay challenged. Even in sort of personal lives, you find that there's more conductors involved in sort of risky activities. You know, rock climbing and like, "You, my young son." But they, in professions, they tend to be a little bit more likely to be drawn toward dangerous professions, challenging, not physically dangerous, like being a policeman, police officer, maybe just emotionally challenging, like being a CEO. Right. Right. Huh. I never, I never had thought about the personal life aspect to that. I would just go as far as to say they just tend to do more challenging hobbies and activities. Yes, yes. And that could be physical for some people. And there's a lot of other hobbies that are quite challenging that a conductor might pick up that are necessarily physical. Oh, there's a dog that just entered the room. Hi, Micah. Hey, Micah. So we're actually recording today in my office at home. Ethan actually has been home for the week, hanging out over the holidays. And Micah just wandered in here. Let me go close this door. So the dog doesn't disturb us. All right. So while Ethan's taking care of the dog, yeah. So challenges, they love to fix things. If you really want to motivate a conductor, say something like, yeah, I don't think you're going to be able to fix that. And they're like, oh, yeah, let me show you. Watch me. There's a bit of competitiveness here. And I don't want to go so far as to say, you know, again, that, you know, this is the one competitive behavior style and the rest of them aren't. But they're really eyes of tendency for listeners to be less competitive and conductors to be more competitive. Sorry about that, folks. I think care of the dog situation. Where, where, where are we at? Let's move on. What we've covered so far is results and decisiveness and efficiency and to fix things and to be challenged. I want to add, and this is actually pretty key. Control. Control freak. No, no, no, no, no, before you like to put the devil's advocate here. Well, it can be that way. You're not, you're not wrong. It can show up as control freak. But I also want our listeners to think about air traffic controllers. Right. These are the people that see the big picture. And in fact, big picture is the next thing on the list. So let's do these together. Right. Control and big picture are number six, number six and seven conductors. They see the big picture. They're really good at looking at the world that way. And so because of their efficiency, hey, you know what, if we need this to get accomplished, I'm looking at the big picture. I need you to go do this and you to go do that. And don't waste my time by asking questions. Right. Just go do what I'm asking you to do. And everything's going to take care of itself. And all these cool things will be fixed. Right. Efficiently. You just got to trust me. Just trust me. Right. So I can look like control freak. It can look like, you know, you're taken over. And honestly, when, and something we can might talk about in our six episode of this series, we'll talk about stress and how each behavior style responds to stress. When conductors get stressed out, one of the reasons they're getting stressed is because of a lack of, they things feel out of control. Right. Things don't feel in control. So what are you going to do? If you're a conductor, you're going to take control. More control. Right. And everyone else is thinking back off. Things are fine. You're being a control freak. But the conductor is starting to feel better now because they're taking some control. So think of air traffic control or think of, this is where they got their name, the conductor, basically, right? Think of the conductor of the orchestra. Right. I see conductors of having a really good aerial view of things going on. Right. They're pictures again. Yeah. They're seeing the big picture and they're seeing multiple steps out. But again, you know, they just have to be careful. You know, they can't forget that people don't like to be treated like pieces on a chessboard. Yes. Right. Exactly. Right. And people need to understand the why behind decisions being made and why one piece has been moved here and not here. Yep. Not just trust me. And the reason conductors don't think to give that information is not because they don't care or because they're not a pathetic because it takes time. Right. It doesn't feel efficient. Right. At least in the immediate. Yes. Now, okay. So that was control and big picture. The next organizing principle for conductors are change and new ideas. And if you are following the plot line with this behavioral style series, you probably heard that one come up with another one of our styles. Yep. Which was with our promoters. Yeah. There's said variety and new ideas. This has changed a new idea. Yeah. Which is very similar with some small nuanced differences, which is, you know, conductors are let's try something else. Yeah. Let's not get bogged down and routine. Let's fix it in a creative and innovative way. Yeah. The promoters are that let's not get bogged down and routine. That's the variety thing. And conductors are the, you know, let there's a better way. Let's change it. Let's improve it. And as you can imagine, it's just so important in the workplace to have people that are willing to do this. Right. To let's try something else. And then again, like we talked about the promoters, if it's over done, we can wear everybody out. Change. What's the word for that? Change fatigue. I couldn't think of the word. It's change fatigue. Yeah. That's what promoters and conductors can produce. And as a primary secondary combination, which is what I have going on, it can, that's exactly what I can end up doing to folks is let's do something else. Let's, let's change it. Let's fix it. And people are not there yet. Now, this one is an interesting one for me because again, one of the organizing principles for conductors that we've mentioned is decisiveness. Right. Now with this one, they also like new ideas and change in a way. Right. So how can you both be decisive, but also like change? Don't need to kind of parse those two out. Well, okay. I mean, once I've decided, let's stick to that decision. Like, don't make me go back and revisit it because that's not efficient. But I'm going to make a lot of new decisions. I mean, a lot of decisions about lots of things. I'm not necessarily going to change course once I got the same thing. No, I'm going to stick with my decision, but I have lots of things to fix around here. There's lots of people that need to be fixed and lots of systems that need to be fixed. And so there's just going to be quite a few things that I'm going to want to fix and change and et cetera, et cetera. Makes sense. These are the last two. We're going to talk about them together because they're both, they're both around communication styles. We're going to number nine is conciseness, which I actually realize is a word that we just made up conciseness. I don't think conciseness is actually a word. Yeah, conciseness is a word. Are you sure? Are you going to look it up while we're talking? Please do. I think it's a made up word. Consisting is kind of what we're getting at here, but we I think we just made it into a word called conciseness. The second that why he's looking that up the 10th one is straight talk. So we're going to talk about these two things together. Conductors want conciseness and conductors want straight talk. What do you find in there, buddy? It may not be a real word. I didn't think so. I think I looked this up once before and it was a word that I just made up. Well, oh, yeah, here's it. Yeah, conciseness. The quality of being concise. Okay. All right. You realize we're wasting time right now? It's important. No, it wasn't that important. It was my fault. All right. Consisting straight talk. What do you, Ethan? What do you want from me if you want me to be concise? I want you to just tell me what I need to know and not all the extra fluff and things around the edges. Right? Just tell me exactly what I need to know. Yep. Don't waste time. Don't give me a big long story first. Right. We don't need you small talk beforehand. Come into my office. Right. Tell me what you need and then go away. Right. Exactly. I want I want this conciseness. I don't want a long email. I won't read it. Right. I don't want to hear your processing. I don't want to hear all the reasons that you're thinking of all the things you're thinking. I just get to the punch line. I want you to talk about one subject, not bounce around all these other subjects. Yep. Same time. Yeah. Yep. Yep. And again, I think you alluded to this earlier. We're making conductors. Maybe sound a little jerky. We're being a little hyperbolic here, but it is this tendency for us conductors to just say what you came here to say. Right. Right. So there's conciseness. What do you want from me, Ethan, if you want straight talk? When I hear straight talk, this to me is more around honesty. Yes. But honesty, I guess, in the lower case H, if that's a thing, right? It's not about not lying. It's about, it's about if you're feeling a certain way, tell me how it is. Right. If you, if you don't like a decision, I may tell me, right? Don't be around the bush. Right. Nothing like that. Don't fluff it up. Don't sugar coat. If you're mad at me, just tell me you're mad at me. Now, this one, this is ironic, right? Because, okay, on the one hand, yes, they want this and they actually tend to do this. In fact, both these two things, we just said, there's your conductor. They're going to get to the point quickly. That's conciseness. Right. And I will say, as a conductor, myself, this has gotten me in a fair amount of trouble throughout my life. Yeah. That's the downside. That's the downside. Yeah. Straight talk. Well, it's ironic for a couple of reasons, right? Conductors do talk directly. They, they're, they're, they're, they, you straight talk. They just say what's true for them. And they go through life without, if they're not careful, they can go through life saying things like, God, all I said was, right, right. I didn't mean to hurt her feelings. I, you know, that's probably a well repeated phrase among conductors. All I said was conductors. They talk in terms of your directness and they use straight talk. The irony here is that they want straight talk, right? They want you also to talk that way to them, but of the four styles, they're the hardest people to give straight talk to. Why might that match with that? Well, because they can be more combative people. They push back. So if you say, I say as a conductor, just tell me what you think of this. Tell me how you feel about this. They tell you, they're going to be the ones that push back and say, "Why? Why would you feel that way?" Right. Right. Let me try to convince you otherwise. Yeah. Let's roleplay this. Give me a passive aggressive answer here. Hey, Ethan, what do you think about going to the Chinese place tonight for dinner? You know, we could go there, I guess. Ethan, just tell me what you want. Do you want to go there or do you not want to go there? I did look up the reviews the other day, but no. Oh, you don't want to go there? Well, why not? But why not? It's awesome. Look at, they have Chalmein. All right. So, wow. Okay. I'm sold. Okay. What just happened there is real, actually, pre-typical. Like, I want you to just, conductors have a low tolerance for what feels like passive aggressive responses. Right? So if you just tell me what you want. Tell me what you think. But then when you do, I'm going to go into debate mode, maybe. Because conductors kind of like that. Let's go ahead to head. But there's only 20% of the population are conductors. So, you know, if I happen to be with a conductor, we can do that. We can go ahead to head. We can fight it out. We can debate. We can stop right there. Only 20% of the population are conductors. Right. I think it's important to point out, which is less than all the others. Than all the others. Yeah. There's fewer conductors than there are other styles. And so, conductors, because of that, can actually feel a little disenfranchised and misunderstood in the world. You get two conductors going head to head, debating, arguing, there's no hard feelings. There's no hurt feelings. They're going to go off and have a great time plan golf together. Right? It's fantastic that they had that conversation. But when the conductor approaches another behavior style with that approach, right? Like, well, tell me why you think that. No, let me prove you wrong. That's intimidating. It's intimidating and the other person may back down. And it can lead to some real. In fact, unfortunately, in relationship, listeners and conductors can have this dynamic, where years into the relationship, the listener says, you know what, I'm done. I haven't had a voice for 20 years. And the conductor is like, what are you talking about? I thought you always wanted to go to the restaurant. I wanted to go to. Yeah. It's just the different way people are viewing the world. And we have to be aware of this. Can I tell a quick story about that? So Christine, I were in San Francisco on vacation. I'm a primary promoter, secondary conductor. She is a primary analyzer, secondary listener. So we're in San Francisco and we're driving around. And we had been thinking about how we wanted to paint our house back home. And we came across this home that I thought was so cool. It was bright orange. The gables were red and the trim was yellow. And I thought it was the coolest looking thing. And I say, "Hey, Hen, Christie, let's paint our house that way." And she says, "I don't know." Now when the conductor hears, I don't know. Guess what he hears. Yes. Let's do it. We're just about all the way there. Conductor, we need hears. I don't know. He hears. I almost got it. I need to push harder. Now when a listener says, "I don't know." Guess what she means. Hell no. Hell no. No way. Right. And so we're at the paint store a month later looking at the colors. And I'm over there looking at the reds and the yellows. And she says, "What are you doing? We are not going to paint our house that color." And I said, "Honey, we talked about this." Right? So it's that sort of kind of pushing, straight-talk, decisiveness, control that can be a relationship issue if you're not careful. Yeah. So I think that's all 10, or a miscellaneous, straight-known. I think that wraps it up for the top 10 once needs and expectations of conductors. Let's go over them real quick. I'll just rattle them off. Conductors are motivated by results. They also are motivated by decisiveness. And they like to fix things. They like to be challenged. They lean towards action and efficiency. Control. They like to have some control. And they're very good at that. And they also see the big picture. And they like change and new ideas, conciseness, which we've determined is a word, and straight-talk. And for getting one, that was 10. That was 10. That was 10. So now let's talk about, we've done those with each of the other four, sorry, we've done two styles so far, right? We've done analyzer and promoter. We're on conductor. Let's talk about the way conductors show up emotionally. And we've described a spectrum in our recent episodes. The left side of the spectrum was less expressive in terms of physically showing emotions and also verbally talking about emotions. The right side of the spectrum was much more likely to show what they're feeling and talk about what they're feeling. And we've placed our two previous styles on the spectrum by putting the analyzers on the far left, less likely to talk and show the emotions and promoters on the far right, more likely to express and show their emotions. We're going to put conductors right next to the analyzers. They're going to still be on the less expressive side, but they're now toward the middle. So we're going to find that our conductors and our listeners are right next to the middle. They're a little bit more balanced in this area. They're a little bit more nuanced in when it comes to emotions. So balanced in nuance in the way they express emotions, the way they portray them physically and verbally, right? Yeah. Not how they're feeling. That's a different thing. We're not talking about how people are feeling. It's really how it's showing up, right? So conductors, you know, they're going to be a little more likely than analyzers to talk about their feelings and to show those. But it's still going to be relatively muted. If you compared conductors, expression of emotions to say listeners or especially promoters, you're going to find that your conductors are a lot more muted. You're going to see less facial expressions in general than you would for the other two styles for listeners and promoters. But here's where it gets a little bit tricky for conductors. It actually reminds me of something you said last episode we were talking about promoters. And you mentioned yourself and you said something about how sometimes you get read, right? You might have a feeling, you might have a frustration, right? And it shows up and you didn't mean for it to show up. Yeah. I show my emotions on my sleeve as I say. Yeah. Yes. I'm going to challenge you on that. Oh, yes. You're going to challenge me to do less of that? No, no, I'm going to challenge you on the way you're perceiving yourself. All right. Can we do that here? Is that safe? That's just safe. This is a safety zone. It's a safety zone. It's just you and me, but this is a safe space. So I don't see you as somebody who wears your feelings on your sleeve. That would fit with the fact that you're an analyzer primarily and a conductor secondary. Both of those are on the less expressive side. What does happen is, and this is true for conductors, the one emotion that does show up. And you might not be aware of it when it's happening, is going to be frustration. Anger, anything that's sort of in that I'm not happy with someone else, or I'm not happy with what's happening in the circumstance right now, that's the emotion that I think you will then show on your face. It's the negative emotion. It's the negative emotion or something else. Right. Usually, right. Usually, frustration or anger, it would be those two things. That's what I think happens with you. I don't think with you when you're feeling the other stuff, excited, happy, you know, even hurt feelings, I don't see those things showing up for you. A little more stoic in this. More stoic, right. More muted. I think that rings true because I even look back to the very, very start of my career right out of college and working in a corporate office situation. I had to go through, I guess I now look at it as I got to go through a lot of tough conversations with my boss and my director and then a little bit further down the road, you know, my direct reports of the way I was showing up physically. And it was, to me, it was like I did not know I was showing up that way. Like, I did not know that they could tell that I was angry or stressed at them or annoyed with them, right. But that just showed up. And so I think I, you know, expanded that to people can always see what I'm feeling, which now I'm realizing that's probably not the case. It is more of these negative feelings and emotions, especially anger, especially anger just to show us up, not in a way that it's yelling and shouting and, but it just, just on your face, just on the face. Yeah. - Here's the thing that happens with Ant with. with conductors throughout their lives. And this gets amped up if you have a secondary analyzer or you have an analyzer conductor combination. This actually gets amped up. - Yes, myself, which is you. An analyzer conductor and conductor analyzers get accused of being mad even when they're not. - Mm-hmm. That definitely rings true to me. - Well, okay, we'll start with that. They get accused of being mad when they're not. It could be stress. - Right. - That's all it is. I'm feeling some tension. I'm feeling some stress. It could be some frustration. It could be anything that's on the not pleasant side. It could even be hurt feelings. But that's not what shows up. What shows up is he's mad or he's annoyed. And that could be a relationship issue, right? If I'm in relationship with someone who seems mad at me, most people have a problem with other people's anger, right? Now, the other thing that makes us even sort of a double whammy is conductors do tend to get to anger a little bit quicker than the other three styles. - So, what do you think that is? - Anger is what's considered, there's actually one exception to this rule. There's one kind of anger that doesn't fit this pattern, but anger is a secondary emotion. It's not a primary emotion except for one kind of anger, which means that you are feeling actually another emotion first, but you skip over it, and you don't notice it, and you go right to the secondary. So, that thing you just said hurt my feelings. That's primary, but now I go to anger quickly. Conductors do that. A little bit more quickly than others, right? I'm frustrated because this isn't working, this thing isn't working. I might skip over that primary emotion and go right to anger, which is secondary. So, what conductors have to watch for is they will have a tendency to skip that primary emotion and go to anger, but they also will look like they're accessing anger when they're not even doing that. I had one friend one time who came to me, came home one time, she says, "I was at the store, this friend walks up to me," and she says, "Are you mad?" And she says, "I was just choosing soup." You know, did you think I was mad at the soup? I was just concentrating, and I looked mad. Now, why is that? Well, we talk about non-demonstrative on their face. Their face doesn't change as much. They furl their brows sometimes when they concentrate. They talk directly, they get right to the point. They kind of put a bunch of things together. It can look like anger if they're not careful. Now, to be clear, we're now kind of talking about two different things of why anger or being upset might show up. One is literally, you feel it, you're feeling stress or annoyance, and as a conductor, it might be easier for you to go to anger with that. And then the other thing that you're just mentioning is just the way you show up, whether upset or not, you just have this demeanor that may look a little bit more intense, a little bit more upset even when you're not. And now if you're interpreted that way. So now if you combine those two things, then you can see how there might be some relationship issues. But again, I really think the key here is just awareness. It wasn't 'til I was aware this was happening and aware how this was affecting my direct reports, especially them, then was I able to start changing. Now, quick question for you. For those that are maybe like myself and our conductors or just wanna kind of work on, maybe the angry parts of their life. Do you have any particular resources or books out there? I have won the mention that's really helped me. Again, I've always been a little bit of an angry, not overall, I'm an angry person, but it's easier for me to go to anger, just like we were talking about what happens with conductors often. A book that really helped me was Awareness. It's just called Awareness by Anthony D'Amelo. - I've not heard of that. Yeah, it's a short read. You can sit down and read it in a few hours. And it's not specifically about anger, but it's just about being aware of what you're experiencing in the moment and how you interpret what you're experiencing may not be reality. Now, Awareness, it sounds like a very hyperbolic title. It's like, okay, Awareness. But trust me, pick it up. I would say that after reading it, there is a long lasting effect that lasts for a few months of the way I'm just being more aware of my emotions. So that's one resource I had in mind. - That reminds me, and it's an excellent idea to read on that. On our sixth episode, where we talk about a lot of the other sort of dimensions of behavior styles, I'd like to talk again about mindfulness. You're talking right there about becoming more aware of what you're feeling, which is a direct result of the practice of mindfulness, which I think for every behavior style, practicing mindfulness will help us be aware of what's actually going on inside of us and gives us a better ability to read others. So I think that's gonna be key. - Yeah, I think we'll talk more about that, and I'm sure, and we'll also have separate episodes about mindfulness and mindfulness in the workplace, which we've both been on our own, quote unquote, journeys with that. So anything else that you wanna say here about conductors in the way they show up? - No, I think we got it. I think the key now is, let's maybe move into some growth opportunities. - Yeah, so again, at the end of each of these episodes that we're doing on the different behavioral styles, we're talking about three different growth opportunities. And these are the three opportunities that we often see this behavioral style choose to work on, or when we're coaching this behavioral style, these are the most likely that will work with them on improving. And I said this last episode, and probably the one before that, but we are not at all asking you to change your behavior style. We're talking about making a 10 to 20% adjustment to the way you're showing up, and that 10 to 20% adjustment may fall under one of these three categories. So what would be the first thing that you would have a conductor work on? This is their growth opportunities, folks. - Thank you for saying I'm gonna suggest for conductors is to really work on true listening skills. And we actually have an episode on this. I don't remember which episode it was. It was way back near the beginning when we were talking about adaptive skills. But I would say one of the most important things that a conductor can do to balance out their style and to be more effective is to practice active listening, which is the kind of listening where you didn't, not just that you heard what the other person said, but more importantly, the other person felt heard, right? So that's things like I'm not talking as much, asking questions, paraphrasing what you heard, some empathetic reflection, really creating a space where the other person feels super respected because they're feeling heard. And for a conductor that may mean, biting your tongue a little bit if they tend to be adding more information than you feel as necessary. - Get to the point. - Get to the point. - Right, that may be what you're thinking in your mind. Hold back that initial first reaction and just let them express themselves, listen, ask follow up questions. - And don't immediately fix, right? That would be a tendency for a conductor, which is opposite of good listening, which is, oh, here's the solution. - Right, here's what you should do. - Let's get right to it, we can fix this. - Right, yeah. - So really listening, active listening. - We've been, what's another one? What about the other one for conductors? And this is certainly one that I've spent a lot of time working on is take time to connect, right? People before tasks is how I like to look at this. I think you mentioned the 10 second rule or five second rule earlier in this episode, right? Or maybe it was last episode, it really doesn't matter. It often takes literally 10 extra seconds to connect and add that relational piece to your relationships and your connections and your interactions, right? - Even an email, just yeah, so I'm just talking about it. It could just be a few more words. Hey, hope you're well today. I need that report by 4 p.m. Wednesday. Please and thank you. Let me know if you have any questions. - Yeah, that's, I love that you said that because I've talked to conductors in the workplace who literally consciously resist what you just said. Because they say it's fluff, it's phony, it doesn't mean anything. What they're missing is really even the brain research on how people respond to being treated respectfully and to be treated with positive relationship. - Right, and talked about this last episode. It's also creating safety in your workplace. And I know that sounds to some people like just again, fluff and snowflakey stuff. No, you look at the research and groups that report feeling safe with their members are the most effective groups and cultures. So that relationship piece is just letting that person know repeatedly that there's a connection here and I value you as a person in our relationship and we're here to get stuff done together. - Yeah, and what's a good message to connectors is you don't have to walk around nor should you walk around every day saying things like I really value you. You're really important to me. I really care about what you have to say. No, you don't have to say any of that. You just have to demonstrate it by literally, hey, how you doing today? Or hey, thanks so much for that. Or hey, could you please think about, right? It's those extra words and those extra little connections that makes such a difference. And so this one here that you just mentioned even take time to connect, that's gonna go a long ways towards success for our conductors. Now what's the third and final one that you would have conducted? It would be when you're making a decision, ask other people's opinions. Another word for that, another phrase for that is to share control. Give people a chance to sound in on the problem, on the solution, on your decisions. Basically incorporate other people's opinions. That's great. I don't have anything else to say about that besides, I'm working on it. Yeah, me too. And here's the thing. I want to, just something that one of my clients noticed several years ago. Let me repeat those three things, those three growth opportunities. Really listening, active listening skills. Number two, take time to connect, which is putting people before the task. And number three, share control, incorporate others' opinions. When you put those three things together, there's actually an issue that's eaten. Those all have something in common. What do all those three things have in common? Well, they all involve the other person. Right. And here's what we're noticing. Because all those things have to do with the other person, conductors can be seen as not caring about people. And I wanted to spell that myth right now. Because you're right. All those three things, listening, incorporating other opinions, taking time to connect. They do have in common the other person. Because conductors struggle with those, it can look like they don't care about the other person. But that's not true. Because the other thing that those three things have in common is none of those things are efficient. Every one of those things takes more time. Right. Listening takes longer, sharing or incorporating people's opinions takes longer. Putting people before task takes longer. I keep repeating this though, in the immediate. I really believe that when, if you're looking at the long term game, adding these pieces are actually going to save you more time in the long run in so many different ways. Unfortunately, though, and you know, as, and I know, the way our brains work, we're in the immediate, we're in the moment. We're in the immediate gratification. In the immediate gratification. In the moment, it's frustrating to do something if you're a conductor that takes longer. So you end up not doing that thing. And then like, as you said, it costs me now later. But the key, the key here is awareness of this stuff. So we can begin to work against human biology and psychology and evolution. And evolution. I mean, it, yes. It's totally possible. We've seen it in our clients and ourselves. So take these three growth opportunities. And maybe they work for you as a conductor and maybe you'll have some other ones you want to work on. Just work on one of them per day or per week. I personally like per week. So this week, I am going to put a sticky note on my computer that says, take time to connect. So when I'm writing that email that says need report, wed, I'm going to stop. I'm going to take 10 extra seconds. And I'm in that relationship piece will be there. The following week, they will work on really listening, active, active listening, right? Narely focus on one thing at a time and you will see improvement. Not tomorrow, not in a week, not in a month, even. But throughout time, it will work. That's, that's so good. I got to, I had this client who was literally working on this. And his was people before task. So he decided he was going to make his emails a little bit more relational. So he created one of those automatic signatures that literally said, I think it said, thanks so much. Hope you're having a good day. Sincerely, you know, David, which was cool the first time I got the email because I thought, oh, that was nice. Right. But then every single email he sent me had that signature, which was very efficient. Right. So he kind of shot himself in the foot there, you know. That's hilarious. But the idea, the attempt was there. I was trying. I think that's all. That's all we have today for this third, no fourth, fourth installment of our behavioral style series. And we will pick it up in a few weeks with listeners. Yes, we'll talk listeners and closing today. I would like to just encourage you all to be thinking about how cool it could be for you and your workplace to have us come in and do some work with you guys on lots of things we could do. Right. We have management. We have leading managing with mind and heart the five day series. We've got lots of different seminars. We got lots of things we do. But we do this behavior styles thing, which is really fun. And I just got to tell you coming into a work group or a executive team and walking through behavior styles for a day. And we do a lot of really cool activities where you discover your primary and your secondary. And we talk a lot about how they interact and we chart it on the board. And you just come away with, I really believe that I've seen this happen over and over again with just a greater sense of trust and respect between the various people in that organization or in that work group. So Ethan, how would they get a hold of us if they wanted to do something like that? Yeah. And I'll just add to that before I give you the contact information that there's so much more that we're able to do with an actual work group talking about behavioral styles that we're able to do over you know a podcast. So go to our website. This is the best way to get in contact with us. That's just naschconsulting.com or shoot us over an email at contact@ naschconsulting.com. So make it a nice email like, hey, how you guys doing? Yeah, none of that expedient stuff right? Yeah, all right. Beautiful folks. That's all we have for you today. Until next time, goodbye.