Michael Bungay Stanier On Self-Management

Tommy: It's The Daily Talk Show, Episode 649, and we've got a guest with us who is jumping the gun on our Friday night drinks. Michael Bungay Stanier, how are you, mate?

Michael: I am awesomely well, thank you. Thanks for having me back.

Tommy: Well, technically it's Wednesday where you are, so that's right. If you just keep drinking into the wee hours of the morning, you'll be able to join us.

Michael: Another 36 hours and I'll join you for Friday night drinks. So that sounds it sounds like it's an unsustainable goal, but I'm prepared for anything.

Tommy: Well, we're sticking to the rules of 1.5 meters. You're about 10,000 miles away from us right now. How's it going over in Canada, buddy?

Michael: Oh, you know, it's our own different version of a zombie apocalypse. So it's— I mean, in all seriousness, it's terrible. I think we're a little ahead of Australia in terms of thinking about how we manage it because there's a— my parents 4 days ago wrote an email going, okay, we're gonna take this self-isolating thing seriously, so we're only going to have picnics with our friends on the lake and we're gonna drive the kids to school and we're going to— and I was like, okay, on the email with my mum and dad going, actually, let me explain what self-isolation really means. It doesn't mean driving the kids to school. That's like the worst possible thing. So it feels that, I mean, this thing is moving so fast and governments must be scrambling to try and find the appropriate level of response. But it feels like Canada is perhaps like 48 hours ahead of Australia a little bit in terms of making decisions about the next thing we need to shut down or the next kind of draconian piece of legislation we need to introduce.

Josh: Michael, I've got to say that the workshop that we did with you. I know I probably mentioned this when we last had you on, but it has been like the— had the biggest impact on my life in regards to things that I've done in the last 10 years. And even especially in this time where it's so easy to fall into that sort of triggered mode of giving advice or telling people what they need to be doing and evangelizing. Where does coaching fit in a crisis?

Michael: That's a huge and perfectly phrased question, so thanks, Josh. So I just think that it's useful to understand what your brain is doing in a crisis, which is give me certainty. That's what your little lizard brain is going, is like, it's all going to hell. The thing that I want The comfort I'm looking for is certainty. And it means that you feel better when you're giving advice and you feel better when you're getting advice. So there's just that rush to— look, the advice might be terrible, it might be wrong, it might be inappropriate, but I'm still hungry for it. It's that kind of— it's why strong leaders show up in a time of crisis, because one thing they show is they go, "I am— let me be absolutely clear." And as soon as they say, "Let me be absolutely clear," everybody goes, "Oh, this is great. I don't know what you're going to say, but I already feel better because you're going to be absolutely clear about it." And there is absolutely a place for clarity of direction and certainty. You know, if you, if you go back to Dan Goleman's article in the Harvard Business Review in the year 2000, he says, "Leadership that gets results." And he says, "Here's the deal." There are actually 6 different leadership styles and they all have their moments. They all have a time where they're the appropriate ones to be used. Some are more directive, some are more democratic, some are more coach-like, some are more, you know, there's a range of different ways you can show up and lead people. Great leaders know how to use all 6 at the right, you know, at the appropriate time. Because every choice you make has prizes and punishments. Typical leaders, average leaders use 1 or 2 or maybe 3 of those 6 leadership styles. So if you're a leader right now, or if you're— and by leader I mean a human being who interacts with other human beings, so you don't have to have a formal leadership position, it's just are you showing up with people— what I think you want to be asking yourself is, what's the right mix for me around giving clarity, around giving direction, and around staying curious. Because, you know, Josh and Tommy and Mr. 97, as we talk about all of this stuff and I go, here's what I'm trying to teach, in the end what I'm trying to teach is, can you stay curious a little bit longer? And I just think there is a place for curiosity and space to allow people to show up and try and figure out what's going on for themselves.

Tommy: I mean, some of the most used questions in our office now are, what else? What's the biggest challenge? What's the biggest problem? Is there any questions that you were dropping out of your repertoire based on the current situation?

Michael: You know, I think there are— I would say there are questions I find myself wanting to ask more. So one of the questions I would ask is, what do I know to be true? Because one of the things that happens at the moment is there's so much speculation going on that we can get caught into the swirl of all of that and it can make us really anxious. We're like, okay, I've heard this. Well, I've heard that. Well, I've heard this. And you know, I've heard it 3 times now, so it must be true. And what I would say is that, that question around what do I know to be true helps move you towards shifting out data from speculation and judgement and opinion and kind of interpretations of data. And we're in a difficult place because actually nobody's quite sure of the data because that's moving so fast. So, You know, what you heard from scientists 2 days ago might be different 48 hours later. You know, we don't yet know, at least in Canada we don't know, I don't think it's true in the US, and I suspect this is true in Australia, we don't really know how many people have died. We don't really know how many people are infected. We don't really know how many people are now unemployed. And that's data that we're hungry for and we're trying to make up. But I do find that question, what do I need, what do I know to be true, is a really important one. And then the other question that I'm trying to ask myself and asking my team is, what's, what's the most important thing to focus on? Because, you know, there is, there's this hunger to go, I'll just try and do, I'll just try and chase after everything and run after everything because It's anxiety, you know, it's a natural response. And as I look at, for instance, how Shannon, who's the CEO of Box of Crayons, is leading Box of Crayons, she's like, the most important thing is that we make that transition completely to a company who can deliver distributed and virtual training. That's it. That's priority number one. There actually isn't a priority number two. It's that, you know, I've reassured you around what I can tell you to be true, which is you have your jobs and you're safe for another 6 months or longer. But that's, that's the priority. And for the little company that I've spun off and is now the thing I focus on outside Box of Crayons, which is mbs.works, you know, Ainsley and I are asking ourselves, okay, what's the most important thing? Because there's a bunch of things we could do. But it feels now more than ever, you've got to focus on the critical few and not get seduced into the trivial many. And that's perhaps a useful question to keep asking yourself and your team and your family around what needs to happen here.

Josh: I feel like I've definitely struggled with being coach-like to the point where Tommy will, in a conversation, say, "I'm just going to ask myself what the biggest challenge is here," and he'll self-coach. Do you have any mechanisms in this specific time where people are spending more time on their own, or there might be leaders that are needing to make big decisions where they don't have their regular people around them? How can you approach self-coaching?

Michael: Well, I think that even though we're self-isolating, physically isolating, it doesn't mean you have to socially isolate. I mean, this is a perfect example of connection. You know, you guys reached out 2 or 3 days ago and said, hey, can we do this? I'm like, for sure. And the thing I did before this was, I'm calling it the Cocktails and Questions Saloon. So I have a, I have a broad network of what I would call weak ties. Weak ties are a social science psychology phenomenon, which is you have, you have strong ties, which are the people in your close network, people you know, you hang out with, you kind of, you're friends with them. And then there are weak ties where you know them a little bit. Like I would say that the three of you are weak ties with me. We know each other a little bit. We've, we've done something together in the past, but you're not going to invite me to your wedding. Or a family birthday.

Josh: Can't have weddings at the moment.

Michael: Exactly. Also a reason you won't invite me to your wedding because there are no weddings. But weak ties are often an indicator of a strength of a network because it's actually through your weak ties that you find a path to another job or to a resource you're looking for or whatever it might be. So I have a bunch of weak ties and it means people who don't know each other. So every day, or 3 days a week, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday evenings, 5 PM, I invite people to come and hang out with me on Zoom. So it's 7, no more than 7 people. And often, and I just have 7 slots available and I put it out to my network and people sign up. So I don't entirely know who's going to be there. So it's serendipity as to who shows up and Often people will know one or two people, but they won't know all the people. And what I do is I just host a conversation. I'm like, bring a cocktail. It can be a real cocktail or it can be water or a cup of tea, whatever you want. And we do a little check-in. So who are you? Where are you based? What are you drinking? And what's one thing you're grateful for for a moment? Then each person has 5 minutes on a question that I will pose for them. So everybody's got the same question. The one for March has been, what crossroad are you at? And then we do a quick checkout, which is in a minute or less, you know, what, what are you taking away from this conversation? And I think what you'll find is actually in, in many ways, there's all sorts of opportunities for you to build your tribe. So if you are feeling isolated, The thing to do is go, what needs to be true for me to be less isolated? And rather than go, yeah, it's, I'm isolated. I have no friends. I'm lonely. Nobody loves me. I'm on this by myself. I need to solve this by myself. So what needs to be true for you to feel the level of connection that you need to? And you're like, Find people, reach out to people, be the host, be the gatherer, be the connector. There's a way that you can absolutely do that in a way that serves you but will also serve the other people around you.

Tommy: I think we're seeing a greater level of vulnerability that has been sort of thrusted upon us. And it's kind of like, I'm not even purposefully trying to be vulnerable, which became quite the thing. Put yourself out there, be vulnerable. But I think we're all in a vulnerable situation. I find me recently, I've like gone on negative spirals, just more frequent than what I have in the past. Yeah, people are going on negative spirals. Is there something you'd suggest in a pattern breaker or, you know, some sort of process to sort of put ourselves through when we aren't able to jump on a coaching call or speaking with community.

Michael: Yeah, good question, Tommy. How do you, how do you manage yourself when you, I mean, you're, you're aware enough to notice yourself occasionally finding yourself in those spirals. And when you, when you notice that, how do you pull yourself out of it? How do you break your own pattern?

Tommy: I mean, what I've noticed, like, you know, yesterday, uh, Ty got a puncture on the highway, you know, and it's already, I'm in that midst of feeling like, come on, insult injury, that, and then I get a cold sore in the morning. I'm like, oh God, seriously? And I just, I almost had a moment where I kind of laughed at like the spiral. And so I don't know. I mean, I think it's the meditation work I've been doing that's allowed me to even laugh at myself. At this spiral, but I'm still trying to go— I haven't written down, I haven't, you know, asked myself a bunch of questions and taken action on getting it out of my head. So I'm at this— it's like I'm in the middle of it right now, and I'm just like, what is that sort of step? Do I write? Do I— what works?

Michael: Yeah, so I've got a thought. I'll tell you what it is in a minute, but Josh, what— I mean, for you, how do you How do you self-manage when you find yourself getting into a funk? Because that's the natural thing to do. If you're not occasionally sitting there going, Jesus, what the hell? You may not understand what's actually happening. So it's a natural place to be. But how do you self-manage, Josh?

Josh: I think it's finding focus. So I'll find one specific thing that I need to problem solve, and I allow all the other problems to remain problems. So at the moment it's been nailing down the technical side of it. And so there's probably, there's a bunch of— I'm not seeking balance. I'm just seeking to be able to— if I focus on too many things, if I multitask, that's where I become paralysed and it becomes unproductive. So yeah, for me it's, it's just been about I'm giving myself a task. I'm going to solve that's— and that specific thing.

Michael: Mr. 97, what do you reckon? Yeah, it's, it's probably a little of what Josh said around focusing on a specific thing, um, but I've also found like really delving into sort of like focusing on my workouts and I guess the sort of technique part of it, that's sort of one thing that's helped, you know, pull me out or, or escape from whatever I'm thinking about? So I love, I love all of these answers. I think there's truth in all of them. One of the things that I'd point to what all of you are saying is step number one is to notice it. As soon as you notice you're in a funk, you're already pulling yourself out of the funk. So there might be a way where you go, I'm just going to take my emotional temperature every now and then. It's like, how am I doing right now? You know, there are 5 core emotions: mad, sad, glad, ashamed, afraid.

Tommy: How annoying is it that the last 2 don't rhyme?

Michael: I know, it's really annoying. It's like so close to the Seven Dwarfs, right? You're like happy, sneezy, burpy, farty, whatever they all are. Um, so yeah, mad, sad, glad, ashamed, and afraid. And I'm like, how you doing? Because there's a certainty that you'll have a cocktail of all of those going on at the moment and sitting with and just acknowledging the feeling helps. It actually helps. Um, and then there's something to say around, so experiment because there's a different solution for different people. There are some proven stuff. I mean, part of it is physical. Your body leads your brain. So whether it's Mr. 97 going, look, I'm not just working out, but I'm like, I'm, I'm really working on my form. So when I hold a kettlebell, I'm, I'm not just pulling away. I'm like creating a perfect kettlebell swing or a deadlift or whatever it might be. Um, if you're in a yoga class, it's like, I'm going to do downward dog and I'm going to really do a downward dog, not just half-ass it, but just kind of I guess full arc, yeah, arc as well. Yeah, so the physicality makes a difference. I mean, simply stretching and breathing and lifting your hands up, it makes a difference. That will shift your mood. You'll be in a better mood by going like this, even though you look ridiculous in the moment when you're on a video. But exactly, and breathing, just taking breath.

Josh: I'm day 10 of not wearing deodorant, so it's an absolute disaster.

Michael: We can see that, we can smell that. Even if it's even the Zoom distance. So there's something around that. And then there's, you know, pieces around, uh, tactics around tapping into gratitude. So different things work for different people. Some people love to journal, right? They have a gratitude journal. They're like, I'm going to write it in the morning. I'm going to write it in the evening. You know, with my team, 4:40 PM, we cheque in for 5 minutes. And Ainslie and I go, we tell each other one good thing that's happened that day.

Josh: That's it.

Michael: It's like, for her, it was, I got, she's a divorced parent, so she got, she and her partner are negotiating how they look after their 6-year-old. So she got her daughter back today. And at 4:40, she was actually going for a run. So she's like, I found a deserted oval, so I'm running around the oval. Her kid was painting on the grass. She's like, that's what I'm celebrating, that I'm out running. I've got a physical movement going on. I'm like, fantastic. I'm celebrating, I'm trying to launch a new podcast and I had 3 really good interviews today around the podcast. But we built in a deliberate structure that allows us to acknowledge what's good. And I think there's just a third piece which is don't, don't, don't do double time. And by what that I mean, there's a way you can go, oh, I'm in a funk. Oh, what's wrong with me? You know, why don't I know better than to get down around this and get depressed around it? And now you kind of like, okay, now you're kicking yourself when you're down. Like, so there's a way to hold compassion for yourself, just to say it is absolutely natural that this is a roller coaster. And there are times where you're like, I'm feeling okay. And there's other times where you're like, this is, this is hard. This is really hard right now. And, um, there, there is something about a trouble shared is a trouble halved, I think is the saying. And you know, when, when this Cocktails and Questions that I just checked in, you know, one of the people was, is a CEO and she just laid off a third of her workforce today, 20 people. So it's a $20 million company. And she's like, it's the human connection that helps me be resilient through this. Cause if I'm just doing that and I'm alone in that, that's a very hard place to be.

Josh: Michael, what is our responsibility, do you think, for the emotional states of other people?

Michael: You can't be responsible for emotional states of other people. You can— your job is to control what you can control. I mean, this is ancient, ancient wisdom. This is not me making this up. It's just know thyself and control what you focus on, what you can control, which is you and how you show up and how you start each day and how you finish each day. And in that, you get to not control exactly, but you get to influence the world around you. But you can show up with a big heart and a good attitude and compassion and generosity and all of that. And there can be some people who are like 'Thank you, that's helped.' And there are some people like, 'You're— this is— I hate you.' It was like, I mean, I just put out a TEDx talk 3 weeks ago, which I'm super excited about. And of course, it also means that I'm seeing the comments that people are putting there. And some of them are just mean. And you know, they're like, There's this one person, "I can't watch this, his pants are too tight." I'm like, "Well, thank you, I think.

Tommy: Well, maybe not." I don't know. I personally wanted them tighter.

Michael: Exactly. And so the talk is called How to Tame Your Advice Monster. And the most recent one made me laugh, which is like, "Here's some advice, get a comb." And I'm like, "Okay." So part of it was like, okay, do I want to take responsibility for how those people are showing up? No. Do I want to hold my own boundaries around how their mood, you know, rude comments or whatever else affects me? Yes, you do. So your, your job is a part of self-care is to have boundaries and to know how to look after yourself and protect yourself from that. You're not responsible for other people's moods, nor are you obliged to be the butt of somebody's whatever bad attitude towards you. You get to protect yourself around that.

Tommy: We had Shanna Kennedy on recently. She's a coach based in Melbourne. We talked about ambition and where it sits in the current climate when we have such uncertainty about the future. What are you seeing with the people in your space over in Canada? I mean, you're dealing with people around the world when it comes to looking at what ambition means and career progression and all these things in this moment.

Michael: Well, I think career progression is really hard to talk about now because it's— I mean, if you're going to anybody going, "Is this the time to talk about a promotion?" You're probably not going to get promoted. You probably disqualified yourself immediately by asking that question. So, but ambition is a bigger, slippery, um, more present thing. So a juicier topic to talk about. Um, here's how I'm thinking about it. I'm trying to figure out the best way to walk the line between the shadow and the light. Because they are both present. And if you go too far one way or the other, you kind of damage yourself and you damage others. If you're too far into the 'we're doomed, it's all going bad, we can't resolve this, it's, it's worse than the Great Depression, it's the zombie apocalypse,' It's not only disheartening for you, it's disheartening for everybody around you. It's also not based on enough data for you to know what you're talking about. But equally, if you go to the, oh, this is amazing, like I'm pivoting my business and look at all the opportunities that are opening up and this will, you know, clear the field so I'll have a great run and I'm going to be better at it or whatever, then you're tone deaf. And you're cold-hearted and you're inappropriate. I think it's probably different for everybody as to what it means to walk the line between the shadow and the light. I think you've got to find your own path there, but it's about going— you can't not acknowledge the pain and the dislocation and the anxiety that is real and present and awful for lots of people. But you also, if you have that luxury, want to be able to go, what are, what are the possibilities here? You know, how do you reinvent this podcast? How do you claim a stake as a thought leader and a beacon of hope in, in this place? There's an opportunity for that. And you don't, not want to acknowledge that and go and ask that question. And then you're just in that place to go, you know, I mean, there's a lot of action online right now as a lot of people go, hey, I'm pivoting my business, I'm now an online trainer. And, you know, there's a lot of chat, there's a lot of shrill shouting online, which to me feels noisy and brittle. And honestly, like, there are some people who are damaging a brand that they've spent some years and money and time and equity trying to build up in this world. So I think it's a really important question to ask: what— how will you show up, and what will you do and what will you not do in a way that leaves you better placed after this rather than worse off.

Josh: You just launched your new book, The Advice Trap. Yes. Obviously something like this affects things like how we approach sales or how we approach launches. What's been the monologue in your mind or even the dialogue with your team around how you approach something like a launch and what's going on?

Michael: So the launch has been— so here's the starting point that we were saying for the launch. A week before the book came out, Ainslie and I, because it's Ainslie and me who are the core team at mbs.works, we're like, we've already won. We've already won because we have a book and it's going to come out on February 29th. And we've got a bunch of people who bought early copies of it. And we have a website that works and we're offering people assorted online free courses as part of it. So we've got those up and running well enough. So we've already won. So that's the first piece, which is to set a condition of satisfaction that allows you to celebrate. I think, you know, for book launches, mostly they set people up to feel a bit sad about how unsuccessful their book launch was. Because you're like, do I make it? Am I a New York Times bestseller? Well, obviously no, because nobody is unless they're, you know, Michelle Obama or, um, or they're somebody famous or they've spent a quarter of a million bucks to manipulate the system to make it work. The other piece for me, and this is just a kind of a general philosophy that I hold and it might be true, be useful for other people as well, is I'm interested in the long game. The long game is, is the game to play. So for me, I go, this book launch coming out on February 29th, it's not the finish line, it's the start line. So I've got a— I'm holding myself to say I've got a year to do a book launch.

Josh: So The Coaching Habit took like a long— like it was a long tail of sales, right? It wasn't all in one week.

Michael: No, I mean, with with The Coaching Habit, I committed to going, I'm going to market this for a year. And of all the things I— it was one of the key decisions in the success of that book, which is like, I'm not going to sweat the launch. I'm going to try and launch it. So, you know, people notice it, but I know that I don't have a big enough mailing list to get it to be a bestseller. So it's about getting it out into the world and then trying to get the flywheel spinning. And same with The Advice Trap, which is like, okay, I'm going to do it for a year. What I'm holding is— and of course, the world changes, you know, 3 days after the book launches. So, okay, so now what am I doing? So I'll tell you exactly what I'm doing. Just give me 2 seconds. I'm going to grab something on my other desk over here. Great.

Josh: Thank you everyone for joining us in the live YouTube.

Tommy: Thanks to Mr. 97 for just being a great bloke, and thanks, Michael Bungay Stanier, for being here. Welcome back.

Michael: My pleasure. So I've, um, there's a, there's a Colombian author who I love, a guy called Gabriel García Márquez. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in, I think, 1982 for I'm getting old, I forgot the name of his book, but one of these other books is called Love in the Time of Cholera, and it's a beautiful love story. He writes magic realism, so there's this blend of the incredible and the factual, and it's kind of— he's a wonderful author. So I had this idea this morning going, okay, what does book marketing in the time of cholera sound like or look like? So I'm like, okay, here's what I'm going to do. 12 months. I'm going to experiment for 12 months to try and be provocative and think differently around book launches. I'm going to run at least 12 experiments on how to do launches differently. Um, and I'm going to see which ones work and which ones are fun and which ones break the mould because it's just going to be fun. I mean, even if none of these work, I'm going to have fun over the next 12 months trying to do stuff. And do you guys know the name Brian Eno at all? Does that mean anything to you?

Josh: No.

Tommy: No.

Michael: Oh, you guys are so cute and adorable and young. Anyway, he's a classic. He's a musician. He's a producer. I heard the other day that 25% of the top 100 albums produced in the '70s were produced by Brian Eno. He did a lot of work with Talking Heads. Phil Collins. He's an icon. And he invented something called oblique strategies. So oblique strategies—

Josh: Like a box? Like, is it like a box? It's a box. Okay.

Michael: It's a box. And it's a box of cards. He produced a lot of David Bowie's work as well. And he used these as a way of trying to get people out of their groove. So musicians would be playing along and he'd go, right, I'm going to throw a card at you. And the card would have a challenge. So I'm just randomly picking a card here. So let me hold this up. Here we go. There's the card.

Tommy: The most important thing is the thing most easily forgotten. The most important thing is to have a shower at the moment.

Michael: The most important thing is the thing most easily forgotten. So how does that make you think differently about book launches? Okay, so where do I go with that? What's the thing that's most easily forgotten? I think the thing that's most easily forgotten is most people, if they buy a book, they only read the first chapter and then they give up. So how do I launch a campaign that's called Chapter 2? And Chapter 2 is a, let me show you how to get to the second chapter of The Advice Trap. And it's a series of short educational videos that go in. I'm going to tease you with how Chapter 1 finishes. I'm going to tease you with what gets exposed in Chapter 2. I'm going to build, I'm going to build a marketing campaign based around the teachings of Chapter 2. I'm going to make that compelling and extraordinary and exciting. So that people go, what is that? I need to find out about that. So this is me making stuff up right in the moment, but I'm like, okay, I'm going to use these oblique strategies as a way of generating and testing out marketing ideas. And then I was like, and you know what, I could, I could then build a course around this. I could teach people how to run marketing campaigns that are not just, here are some tactics, but also here are some principles by which you can generate your own ideas around how to do bookmarketing.

Tommy: Do you sort of see yourself as a creative person?

Michael: I do. I am a creative person. I'm good at that.

Tommy: Do you think— I mean, this question has been asked a lot of— can you teach creativity or are you born with it? I just had a moment seeing you sort of reel off an idea prompted from a question. Which sort of gave me, you know, encouragement for Mr. 97 who thinks he's not creative to be able to access some creativity through prompting through questions or cards. Is that fair to say?

Michael: I personally would write Mr. 97 off. I mean, I don't think you've got any—

Josh: You've nailed that, I think.

Michael: You know, you can only put so much lipstick on a pig. So obviously I'm teasing at this stage. So here's what I know. This is what the science will tell you about creativity, which is there's a spectrum. Some people are just wired to think more laterally than other people. And everybody has the capacity to think creatively. And the more you do it, the better you get at it. And if there's a— I'm just— this is— I can't— I can't— there's research in my brain. I can't tell you exactly the source of it. But I do remember there being quite a big survey around, all right, what are the characteristics of, of the creative people? And they looked at all the, all the differentiators they could think of. Is it male, female, right-handed, left-handed, Australian, Canadian, blonde, brunette, brown eyes, blue eyes, big ears, not big ears? I mean, kind of the whole enchilada. Sagittarius, Aquarius, you know, and they did find one thing that seemed to differentiate the people who are creative and the people who were not creative. Any guesses what, what that one thing was?

Josh: Maybe attitude. I don't know. Confidence.

Michael: It's actually self-belief. If you think you are creative, You are creative. If you think you are not creative, you are not creative. It just is a self-fulfilling prophecy. So Mr. 97, the one way for you to shift your attitude around, I mean, creative is like to go, you know what, I am creative. And I would, I, and the tiny, tiny, tiny bit I know from you is like the act, for instance, of going when I work out, "Here's how I work out. I work out with this discipline, with this deliberation, with this focus on form." Those are the statements and the structure of a creative person, which is like, I've got a deliberate choice as to how I'm showing up and how I'm delivering about that, because that's what creativity starts with, which is a deliberate choice about how you see the thing in front of you.

Tommy: The hard thing is we've got a sign on the wall in the office that says, "Mason's not creative." So we'll take that.

Josh: But he's not at the office anymore.

Tommy: Look at your plants in the background, Seb. It's like, I think that's creative how you've laid them out. Trying to just give you some compliment here.

Michael: You've not killed them. You're a natural. Not dead yet.

Josh: MBS, where has your mind gone during this time? What have you learned about yourself?

Michael: So I've just literally today finished 14 days of self-isolation because I was in the UK and got back and it was like, okay, I've been traveling, I've been speaking to crowds, I need to self-isolate. So one interesting thing was actually how I didn't really miss going out as much as I thought. I'm like, okay, that's— maybe I should be worried about that. I do think that this plays well to some elements of my leadership style, which is I'm mostly an encouraging, optimistic person who sees possibilities. So there's a place for me in this world. But what I'm also noticing is that it's helpful for me to have people around me who are also good at going, and here's also the thing we need to focus on and worry about and get sorted out and get and move this across the finish line. So whether it's Shannon running Box of Crayons or Ainslie carrying the workload at mbs.works, there's a combination of how I work with other people which is energising and seems to be a good partnership for us right now.

Tommy: I mean, there's a few words and phrases that have been really sort of slammed around draconian being one, pivot as we talked about, unprecedented. One that I'm familiar with and I've sort of listened to people talk about, future of work, and it's probably never more timely than now to sort of explore what the future of work looks like. How do you see the future of work?

Michael: I am I don't feel like I have a whole bunch of real expertise to answer that question. So this is the ramblings of an amateur rather than somebody who knows what he's talking about.

Tommy: God, imagine our ramblings, what they're classified as.

Michael: So here's what I would notice. I'd notice that We see the price of the gig economy pretty starkly now because the gig economy works well when the economy is working well. But when the economy crashes and the gigs aren't available, that suddenly makes a lot of people really vulnerable. I heard something on the radio in the last 48 hours that says Australia has the most gig-oriented economy in the world, or the most part-time or contracty economy in the world. I don't know if that's— if you've heard that or too as well, but I was like, okay, that's, you know, I'm thinking about my nieces and nephews in Australia who are not, you know, they're in their teens, so they're not really yet out of school, but they're close. I'm like, what does that mean for them and how they're showing up? I feel like a lot of what happens in terms of working remotely, this is just an acceleration, a little acceleration of what was already there. Like most— lots of people already did Zoom meetings and worked remotely and did that. It's just kind of— it's like, oh, I've— it's like getting an unexpected upgrade to business class on an aeroplane. You're like, I wasn't expecting that, but oh, here I am. Oh, that was fast. This is good. So there's a degree of pain involved in that, but that doesn't feel like it's a radical shift for me. I think the bigger thing that I'm curious about to see is like, how does this play out in terms of the world economy and what it means for who has jobs? Because if you take some of the grim predictions around 30% unemployment, what's The question shouldn't be how good are we at now working from home because, you know, it's like, it's a minor detail really. The real question is how do we create a society that enables those 30% of people to get back down to 3 to 5% or whatever the kind of the regular unemployment rate is. How do we care for those people between now and then? How do we, not just with money, but compassionately and in a society that allows that struggle to play out with as much compassion as possible?

Josh: What's your media consumption like at the moment?

Michael: It's pretty minimal. You know, I have a group of people with whom I cheque in 2 days a week, let's say. And some of the people there are quite connected into higher channels in the US government. So when I cheque in, I feel like I get a 48-hour heads up around what's about to appear in the media. But, you know, all that is on the media is conversations around COVID-19. I'm like, What's useful here for me? And there are some useful things like in Canada, as in Australia, governments are throwing a tonne of money at this to go, we're just trying to rescue the economy and people. But most of it is not that useful. Most of it just makes me anxious if I listen to, over-listen to it. So, I'm trying to listen to it less rather than more.

Tommy: I coached Hamish Blake. Not sure if you know Hamish. Started with a very powerful question, how you going? And then I went to one of your go-tos, what's your biggest challenge? So I want to throw that over to you. What is your biggest challenge at the moment, MBS? I've stumped him.

Josh: I wasn't expecting it.

Michael: Well, biggest challenge. This is the power of that question, which is like, not what's our challenge, but what's the biggest challenge? I, um, I, here's what comes to mind right now. So I'm, I'm less anxious. Than some of the people I work with. And so really part of my job as a leader at the moment is to give them the right amount of space to acknowledge their anxiety and their worries and their concerns and their sadness and also to hold the right tone around optimism as well. It's that walking the line between the light and the dark. So I think that's actually my biggest challenge, which is like, this is the hard thing to do, is to keep moving forward, staying optimistic, planning for the future, and also acknowledge the hardship that is there at the same time.

Josh: What would the brave thing to do— what's the brave thing to do?

Michael: I feel like I'm being worked over by my own questions here.

Josh: Yeah, you are.

Michael: Um, you know, the brave thing to do— it's not that brave, but the, the call is to meet people with an open heart. You know, there's— there— and an open heart means that your optimism isn't trivial or blasé, but it's like, it's just You know, there's a model, there's a really powerful, simple, but profound model by a philosopher called Martin Buber who says, look, we have two types of relationships in this world: I-it relationships and I-thou relationships. And I-it relationships are where you've objectified the other person in the moment and you see them as a cog in a machine or a small part of something. And I-thou relationships are when you show up and you see them fully for who they are and kind of in their full glorious messy humanity. And I think with an I-Thou relationship, you also have to have that with yourself. You have to be able to show up as fully human and present as you can. And so I think that's part of the call for me anyway, and maybe for others as well, which is like, how do you keep showing up wholeheartedly, compassionately, optimistically, realistically, like you want to be a realistic optimist and keep holding that space and you need to keep coming back to that, I think.

Tommy: How do you be a thought leader in this time when a lot of us, you know, are feeling or trembling at the likelihood of the future?

Michael: I think That's a really good question. There's one woman who I think is doing a fantastic job, and her name is Whitney Johnson. She runs a morning, a kind of a, a kind of New York-Toronto time zone morning, uh, LinkedIn Live. She's a LinkedIn influencer, so she has like a million followers or more on LinkedIn. And she has just found the right tone to be a beacon of guidance and support. I think the name of her series is called Calm in the Chaos or something like that. And, you know, I look at a lot of thought leaders and I'm like, you're kind of damaging your brand at the moment because you're selling me something or you're a bit of an ambulance chaser. Or you're self-serving. And I think Whitney has found a way of showing up that only makes her look good but is absolutely not why she's showing up. She's showing up to support the people in her community.

Josh: That's great. And, um, MBS, in this time, from a content perspective, where are you sort of putting your time? Where are you serving at the moment?

Michael: Yeah, so I'm continuing to put out a thing on LinkedIn called My Best Question, and I just have a little video that I— it's like a minute or two every day, and I, I just pick one and put it out and post it on there. So there's an ongoing thing there. I'm working on a new podcast. So the new podcast is called We Will Get Through This, and it's a podcast that is centred in around resilience and how to be more resilient. And so, you know, we're kind of hustling on that. So we're hoping that the first episodes will drop the week of April 6th, and then there's about 20 episodes in the first season, and they will all drop before the end of April. So we'll drop, I think, 3 in the first week, 3 in the second week, and then the remainder in the final week. And it's a really interesting mix of different people with different skills and with different focuses. So some are about individual resilience, some are about team resilience, some are about organisational resilience.

Tommy: What have you learned about resilience from the episodes you've recorded so far that you didn't once think about or focus on?

Michael: Yeah, no, it so often comes back to stuff I've been interested all the time. It's the same stuff, it's just a slightly different context, which is self-knowledge, compassion, care for yourself, see the other person as human, don't other them, routine. You know, there's a lot of high-level stuff that was familiar. But part of what I like about the people I'm talking to is they've all got their own quirks on it. You know, there's, um, a resilience expert I spoke to whose background is in dance, and she says we all have our own resilience profile, and what we require for us to kind of top up our resilience is different. Some people want something that's more physical, some people more intellectual, some people more spiritual, and it's like a mixing board. Everybody's got their own best mix. I'm like, okay, that's really helpful. You know, she's like, I'm really physical, I need to swim every day. I'm like, well, I'm really intellectual, I need to connect and think every day. If I don't do that, that lessens my energy.

Josh: The LinkedIn series that you do, My Best Question, I love it. I loved especially the one with the asking for 2 double espressos, different times, big blow-up at the café. I love a good café blow-up.

Michael: I know, it's hilarious.

Josh: What's your question for today, if you were to give a question to the audience? And you can wrap it up in maybe your classic storey based on your day.

Michael: Yeah, so I would— when I'm creating these videos, I'm trying to be inspired by what's in front of me. So, so here's how I would react to this conversation. So first of all, thank you for having me. Um, now I'm, I'm 52 or 51, 52, I think. Yeah. How old are you guys? How old are you, Josh?

Josh: I'm 29.

Michael: 29. Tommy?

Tommy: 31.

Michael: 31. And Mr. 97?

Tommy: 20.

Michael: 20.

Tommy: Perfect.

Michael: So you guys are like at least 2 decades younger than me. So the question I would ask is this. You know, in a time like this, it's really easy for us to look to people who we think of as our seniors, as our leaders, as our olders and our betters to go, "Will you lead me here?" You know, "Will you tell me what's going on? You're the person with the suit and the grey hair and the experience." But in this time, Wisdom can be found anywhere. So when you look to the people who are younger than you, what can you learn from the young people in your life? Love it.

Josh: Michael, thanks for coming on the show.

Michael: Yeah, my pleasure. Thanks for having me.

Josh: For having a wine. Are you feeling a bit tipsy? What does one wine do for you? It was a big glass.

Michael: One wine, one wine. I'm okay. I did have a wine for dinner before I got on the thing.

Tommy: And a cocktail.

Michael: And the thing before that was cocktails and questions. So I had a little bit of bourbon there as well. So I'm holding it together, but I don't know where I'm going to go from here. He's blottoed. Yeah, exactly.

Josh: Awesome. Thanks so much, Michael, for coming on the show. It's The Daily Talk Show. If you want to send us an email, you can send that to hi@thedailytalkshow.com. And we are also live streaming every episode now, which you can watch at youtube.com/dailytalkshow. Otherwise, thank you, Michael, and see you tomorrow.

Tommy: See you guys.