Topaz Adizes, Founder of The Skin Deep, on The Five-Act Framework for Transformative Leadership Conversations

Transcript

Topaz, welcome to the show.

Topaz Adizes 00:02:45

Hey. And good to be here.

Aydin Mirzaee 00:02:47

Yeah. Really excited to do this. I’ve been checking out your videos, your social Presence. You have millions of followers, millions of views. Lots of people know you as one of the foremost experts on really building deep relationships and getting people to really know each other and work well together and have productive relationships in general. And so maybe a good way for us to start is to start at the beginning. How did you get into this line of work? What is your background?

Topaz Adizes 00:03:17

Background would be study philosophy at Berkeley and Oxford and then was always interested in inquiry questions because, frankly, I didn’t know what I want to do with my life. And I figured I’d start learning how to better think before I applied the thinking to something. And that thinking became filmmaking. I love to travel and love to talk to people, and I realized that the camera was a wonderful bridge into other people’s Worlds. And for 20 years, and live in New York, I was making films. And then I had this experience where I realized I asked myself a different question. What game am I playing? And the game I wanted to play was injecting ideas into the mainstream. You know, I was a filmmaker for many years.

Topaz Adizes 00:03:52

I had films at Sundance, at Cannes.

Aydin Mirzaee 00:03:54

What kind of films were you making? I’m very curious.

Topaz Adizes 00:03:57

I was making short films that were really the social reflection. It was about humans, kind of how politics comes down to two people in a taxicab or over dinner having a conversation and just taking these wider ideas, these social factors involved, and bringing it down to where the rubber meets, meets the road between people. And those films did well, you know, critically, I mean, for the films, and. But I realized that I wanted to play a different game. I was on the path of being a film director in cinema, but I was interested in a different game. I asked myself a different question, which was, with media coming out and your ability to engage with people in a totally different way, there was another opportunity here. And it was, you know, basically, I had a film that went to Sundance. I had things lined up.

Topaz Adizes 00:04:41

Nothing really happened. And by accident, my film went on Vimeo without a password. And the Vimeo picked up the short of the week. And in a week, I had half a million views, which really catalyzed the question, what game am I playing? Am I playing the game of trying to be a film director, putting films into theaters? Or what about injecting ideas into the mainstream? Because look at how quickly this film spread in a week, and how much time, money, energy did it take me? And so then I wanted to apply my skill set as a filmmaker into the digital realm of asking, how’s the emotional experience of being human shifting in lieu of technology? This was 2014 and really focused on that question. How’s, how’s the emotional experience of being human shifting in lieu of all this technology that’s coming about? And so we created the Skin Deep, which is a creative experience design studio and our leading experience that’s won the Emmy for a new approach to the documentary and is in our 11th year now. And it was really. The substance of the book is basically, it’s called the and. And the and is where we bring two people into a room where they’re facing each other, we give them questions to ask each other, and they basically have a conversation they would never have otherwise.

Topaz Adizes 00:05:47

That has put me in a really unique position because I’ve either directly been in the room watching these conversations or watching the edits of these conversations where I’m seeing over 1200 different pairs have incredible cathartic conversations. And what I’ve learned from that, and I’ve distilled in the book is that it takes two things to have an incredible conversation, a cathartic conversation, one that deepens your relationship, that makes it more resilient, more fulfilling, and that is creating the space and well constructed questions. Now, we’re here on A, on a work entrepreneurial podcast. Why is it important? Because frankly, the relationships you have with the people you work with are a, you spend a lot of time at work. A lot of time. And B, the success of those relationships dictates, you know, your livelihood. If you don’t execute well, if the company doesn’t do well, you have to find another job or the company dies. So those relationships are essential.

Topaz Adizes 00:06:38

And I think we’re offering, I think I know we’re offering the tools of what we learned to the workplace.

Aydin Mirzaee 00:06:43

Yeah. And so let’s talk about this a little bit. So the. And maybe let’s start with. And by the way, this is talked about a lot in the media, Right. How many questions are there in the typical. Because I think like maybe one of the ones that I heard a lot about in the news and the media was around. If you ask these set of questions, it’ll mean an amazing relationship or like you’ll, you’ll be able to get to know a person in a way that you haven’t before.

Aydin Mirzaee 00:07:08

How does it work? And how many questions are there? And what was the first version of these? Was it around interpersonal relationship?

Topaz Adizes 00:07:15

Oh, we have thousands of questions in the book. I’ve broken down. What are the 12 questions? What are the meat and potatoes? Because the editor had been a fan of our work for years and she called me up one day and she said, topaz, if you choose, what are the meat and potato questions that are really going to create incredible conversation? And that’s what I’m offering in the book. But more importantly is why those questions work and in what sequence and how to construct them. The one I think you’re referring to is 36 questions by Arthur Aaron. And that was made famous by when Daniel Jones at New York Times with the. Was when people wrote about. Was that when they write about their love stories? He published that out as part of a love story.

Topaz Adizes 00:07:51

And it just went viral and they kind of brought attention back to it. And yeah, I think they’re helpful. But I think what we’ve cracked into is the construction of questions. How do you construct really qualitative questions that deepen your relationship and create the space for you to find something new? And why is that important for the workplace is simply because in the space between us where there is kind of different interpretations, different versions, different perceptions, different ideas, that’s where the opportunities lie. That’s where the magic lies. Because, frankly, if you don’t, you could basically, in the future can just use AI to do anything you need to execute anything to implement anything. You could, you will be able to use AI. It could be much more effective, much cheaper.

Topaz Adizes 00:08:30

The question is, what is left for humans? And what is left for humans is the space between us where we see things differently. And in that space, that’s where the opportunities lie.

Aydin Mirzaee 00:08:41

So where does the name the and come from?

Topaz Adizes 00:08:44

Because a relationship is not you or I, us or them. It’s you and I, us and them. It’s the. And that’s the conjunction. It’s the end that is the space between. And what we’ve been doing through our format with the three cameras and everything we put on our social media is we illuminate the space between so that you see both people’s faces at the same time in our content so that you can get a sense of what is really going on between them. And that’s the end. The end is a space between.

Aydin Mirzaee 00:09:13

Yeah, so it’s super interesting. You know, I was just checking on Amazon, so you have. And I’m sure you have it on your website as well. But so there’s a bunch of different formats for these cards. And so what are the different sets of questions? Because like you said, it applies to many sort of situations. And so what are some of the ones that people should know about?

Topaz Adizes 00:09:36

We have, I think we have, what, 15 additions in the case of this one we have a co workers one. We have a team building one.

Aydin Mirzaee 00:09:41

Coworkers one.

Topaz Adizes 00:09:42

Yeah. Which is great. I mean, one of my favorite co workers, you know, is, you know, what’s a value we did not share with our clients? And why? How much does earning money cost us?

Aydin Mirzaee 00:09:52

These are good questions.

Topaz Adizes 00:09:54

What is a favorite lie we love telling ourselves?

Aydin Mirzaee 00:09:57

Hmm.

Topaz Adizes 00:09:58

What is not part of our culture that should be? What is part of our culture that we should never change?

Aydin Mirzaee 00:10:03

I like these.

Topaz Adizes 00:10:04

Yeah.

Aydin Mirzaee 00:10:04

And I’m also impressed at how you have them ready to go.

Topaz Adizes 00:10:09

Well, I mean, we have them right here. If you want, we could choose a random one and see it. And I think, look, I’m trying to give value to your listeners right now. And you’re a manager. You’re wondering how to better lead your team. Okay. You come up with a question in a meeting simply by asking the question. The people around you are wondering, where is this question coming from? Now, simply by creating the space where you pull out a deck of random cards and you randomly choose a question, all of a sudden that changes the space you’re in to answer them.

Topaz Adizes 00:10:35

Because it’s not something that Aydin, the CEO, is asking us because he might want to know where we stand on something. There is a space of like, oh, we’re exploring this. This was a random question. And it gives a little bit more permission to explore. And obviously, sometimes you want a question that you want to ask directly to your team members. But I’m saying in creating the space of intention, you can kind of deactivate a sense of politics that comes up and the power play that comes up in the workspace of trying to give the right answer versus exploring a question.

Aydin Mirzaee 00:11:02

Yeah, I mean, I really like this especially. I mean, we’ve talked a lot about on the show how, especially for remote organizations, hybrid organizations, you know, the way that companies work and function has really changed over the course of time. There’s maybe less opportunity for us to connect in some of the ways that we used to. And so this is in general, like an exercise that many of the guests have talked about, which is, you know, inserting this. This period for questions. You know, some people call them icebreakers. There’s this other exercise that we once talked about on the show where, for example, everybody goes around and says, if you really knew me, would know that, and then talk about something very deep. But these sorts of things really start to help people understand what’s going on behind the facade, the basics of maybe what you portray, and really builds a lot of empathy in these cases.

Aydin Mirzaee 00:11:58

One of the things that we talked about even before we hit record was the questions are important, but then there’s also a, an order to the questions or a logic to the questions. And I guess your book also talks about why these questions, like you said, there’s thousands that you have in all the different series, but you can also break them down to understand how to construct these things. So maybe we can talk a little bit about how you think about constructing these and the order of the questions.

Topaz Adizes 00:12:28

So you’re saying about the sequence of the questions?

Aydin Mirzaee 00:12:30

Yeah, sequence of the questions.

Topaz Adizes 00:12:32

Well, we have a five act structure that we do now when you buy the card games, it’s random. And there’s a beauty of that because it’s almost like a tarot card. It just pulls out thing that needs to be discussed and just random. Right. But if you’re structuring a conversation like we do when we film an ad, the and we structure it in a five act structure. And the first act is. So in this case there’s 12 questions. So the first act is the first three questions which harks back to the past.

Topaz Adizes 00:12:58

It harks back to what’s the basis of our relationship? Right. And in the past it reminds you of the good times, if you will, and what is the unique experiences we’ve had by virtue of our synergy. Right. In Act 2, we start leaning into a little bit of discomfort and conflict. How do we handle it? And each question is just questions 4, 5 and 6 are slowly leaning into the conflict in a way that makes it manageable in the sense of the level of discomfort. Right. We’re kind of like it’s like any type of exercise regimen or something. You don’t start out in the sprint.

Topaz Adizes 00:13:31

You warm up, you stretch and you then work out to your peak moment, this training or whatnot, and then you do a recovery. Right. So we’re working our way up in the conflict of discussing it. So example of that would be like, what are you hesitant to tell me? Or what do you think I’m hesitant to ask you? What are you hesitant to ask me? Right to what do you think is our biggest conflict right now and what do you think it’s teaching us? We can also double click on the construction of the questions, which has a lot which is also very helpful. But in terms of sequence, act two is starting to lead into the conflict. Act three is the peak in the case of the book or an intimate relationship, it’s what’s the pain in me you wish you could heal? And why? That’s Question number eight. Number nine or seven? Number eight. You know, where still the peak is? What’s one experience you wish we never had and why then now? So we kind of peak.

Topaz Adizes 00:14:17

We’re in the climax. We’ve built the architecture of trust and respect and reminded people of where they’re coming from and what’s unique about the relationship. We’ve started leaning into the conflict and now we’re in the climax where we’re talking about the most vulnerable things. Then we start landing the plane by acknowledging in gratitude like, okay, this is what we’re learning from it. Regardless of the storm that we may be in, we’re there together. Right? And then the last two questions are the questions that are most profound about things that in this case, you know, if we never meet again, what’s one thing you never want me to forget? You know, question 12 is why do you love me now? Obviously none of these questions are well suited for the workplace. However, the structure remains. You work into the climax and then you resolve it.

Topaz Adizes 00:14:57

You don’t want to leave it hanging because you build that vulnerability and people are courageous to step into it and really share from a space. Now we have to land the plans like, what have we learned from this and what are we excited about for the future? Where can we take the learnings from this conversation and apply them to the dreams we have of the future? So that’s generally the structure.

Aydin Mirzaee 00:15:15

So one of the things that we’ve talked about here is using one on one meetings between manager and direct report or skip level meetings or these sorts of meetings in general to build rapport, build trust. How would you go about doing that if you were parachuted into an organization, you have a brand new team that you didn’t hire, but they’re now yours, how would you go about building trust? Building, I guess like this arc that you sort of narrated right now with the team over a bunch of conversations.

Topaz Adizes 00:15:51

Yeah, great. I mean, what comes up for me you’re talking about? What I see you’re talking about is you landed to a team, you’re new there and obviously what you want to do is learn before you even execute anything is figure out what, what’s happening here, what are the blind spots, what are the opportunities, what are the challenges? Right. You’re asking what’s the best way to do that? I think number one is coming back to the two things that I was creating the space and well constructed questions. So creating the spaces, I would. What’s helpful, I think is to take the people out of the space. They’re in into a new space so that they behave differently. So don’t have the meeting in the boardroom. Don’t have the meeting in the same place they normally are.

Topaz Adizes 00:16:24

Take them to outside in the park. Take them to a slightly different place because, okay, what is a permissible behavior in this space? And then you articulate your intention. It’s different than your agenda. And I don’t mean agenda. The benchmarks of the meeting we’re going to do talk about this. Then this agenda, I mean, is where you end up. Instead, articulate intention, which is where you begin. I’m here, I’m new.

Topaz Adizes 00:16:45

I really want to learn about what you see happening in the company and what your experiences are. So you’re articulating your intention. And that’s also the questions now that you ask really are helpful if they’re rooted in curiosity. And what I mean by that is that you can feel when someone is curious versus someone who’s just trying to see the answer and actually get you to say the answer that they think that you want to hear from them. Right. You could feel that sometimes. And the thing that we can’t avoid is that there are power dynamics at work. So the question is, how do you create the space so that you can invite people into a conversation so that they don’t.

Topaz Adizes 00:17:17

They feel safe, albeit uncomfortable. So we shouldn’t confirm safety with comfort. You can be uncomfortable and yet be safe. And that’s what I important. And that’s what I mean by creating the space. If you create the space by saying, hey, here’s my intention, and by articulate intention, you’re basically telling them what kind of behavior is allowed here. I’m here. I want to hear from you.

Topaz Adizes 00:17:36

I want to share from you. I’m going to ask you questions that are rooted in curiosity and they can sense that so that they don’t feel like they have to answer in a certain way to get your approval to keep their job, for you to like them so that they get the raise. Because how are you going to really learn something there if they’re not really telling you what they see from their pov?

Aydin Mirzaee 00:17:54

Yeah, that makes sense. One of the questions I was going to ask you is how do you create the space? And it sounds like what you’re saying when you’re saying create the space is to set the intentions and articulate the intention, right? Yeah. So to create that environment where they can maybe talk about things in a way that they wouldn’t have otherwise done. So create the space for them to Go outside of the norm of the things that maybe you expected them to say.

Topaz Adizes 00:18:23

I mean like a really nice way to remember this is like you don’t sleep in the kitchen and you don’t cook in the bedroom. You do certain things in certain spaces. So what are the spaces in your workspace? Even if it’s on zoom, what are the spaces in your workspace and are you aware of them and are you paying attention to them and are you creating the right environment for them so that people understand what this environment is, what the correct behavior is for that environment? You’re giving permission.

Aydin Mirzaee 00:18:49

Yeah. So it sounds like that, you know, the first thing that you would do, parachute into this organization is meet with people separately, possibly in a new environment, give them the space and then, and then asking questions.

Topaz Adizes 00:19:01

And then I would also at the end of every which, what we do in our team is we play either the team building deck or the co workers deck. There’s certain addition. Sometimes we even play the self edition, which is amazing. So wonderful. And it’s random questions that people choose and they’re answering. So there’s not like the boss has like, this is the question I want to talk about and then wonders why does he want to talk about that question? What is the kind of answer he’s looking for? No, there are random questions that coming out and what’s beautiful here, especially with the team building, is that people are asking about the way they collaborate, the way they work, and then they’re also kind of saying, you know what I heard when you said this was this. And so what happens is that I’m also able to see how people are communicating amongst themselves. How are they hearing each other, how are they listening to each other? That’s also really important.

Topaz Adizes 00:19:47

So it’s not just about seeing people one on like alone. It’s seeing them as a group and seeing how they process and share information. Sometimes you pull a question and you know it’s the elephant in the room. And so you’re wondering, does this team talk about the elephants in the room or do they put shoe it aside? Oh, interesting. They shoot aside. I wonder how many elephants they shoe aside and they don’t really deal with because there’s concern about conflict or they have this, the skillset or the tools to deal with questions that create conflict or issues that have conflict in them or oh my God, they talk about it directly. Okay, interesting. So you know what you’re, what is a culture? What is a space and how does the team handle challenges? So it’s also important to see a collective unit conversation.

Aydin Mirzaee 00:20:28

Yeah. So it’s interesting. It’s not just about the content of the answers, but it’s almost the meta environment. And there’s a lot of learnings that you can have as a leader when doing this. One of the things which. Which is interesting about the idea of pulling a random card for each person is that you kind of alleviate this thing that might happen where instead of listening to the other person, you’re kind of preparing what you would say to that question. But if you know it’s random, then you can actually, like focus on the responses. So I like that idea of everyone answers a different question versus the same question.

Topaz Adizes 00:21:01

Yeah, it’s great. And also what’s interesting is that when they pull out the question, there’s actually three conversations happening. You’re wondering what are they going to say? You’re wondering what you would say if you’re in that position. And then you get to hear what they actually say. And sometimes it’s three different totally answers. Right. What you think is they’re going to say is different than what you would say, and it’s actually different than what they actually say. And that’s interesting because then you see the spaces here.

Topaz Adizes 00:21:26

What are the things we’re not talking about? What the things we are talking about? What are the different possibilities? Yeah.

Aydin Mirzaee 00:21:30

Topaz, what do you think about the.

Aydin Mirzaee 00:21:32

Idea of starting meetings? On a positive note, some people like to start conversations or team meetings with things like good news, and everybody has to come in with something that is good or manufacture something that is good. What do you think about that? Is that something you would do or you think it’s a bad idea?

Topaz Adizes 00:21:50

Oh, good question. So first I’d say, where are we in a physical space or are we on the zoom room? Because it’s different.

Aydin Mirzaee 00:21:57

Why is it different?

Topaz Adizes 00:21:58

Oh, because, okay, let’s say we’re in a physical space and the room. And how many people in the meeting? 15, 10.

Aydin Mirzaee 00:22:05

Let’s say eight. Like, okay, we’re eight people.

Topaz Adizes 00:22:08

We’re sitting around a big table. Okay. In physical reality. So the person to my right, the person to my left, I see them as close as I see you now on the camera. A medium close up right here. But the person across the room, I see them as a full body shot. I don’t have a closeup on their face. I can’t read the micro gestures in the same way I can when I have eight people in a zoom room.

Topaz Adizes 00:22:27

What’s beautiful about the zoom room, which is interesting, is that everybody is in the same frame for the most part. And if they’re not, we should be. Which you get the physical impossibility of seeing everyone close, which you don’t get in physical reality. The other thing is that in physical reality there’s a warmup. There’s a natural warmup that happens because people are walking into the room and they leave the room, which is the defreeze at the end. Right. So there is a warming up naturally. But on the Zoom Room, it doesn’t happen, it just starts.

Topaz Adizes 00:22:54

You jump into a slack huddle, it just starts. So therefore you have to, in the Zoom Room, if you’re in the space, that space, create the warm up, create the defreeze. Now, in terms of the be positive, if that’s in the culture. And you’re like, if your culture is. We’re always looking for the positive. We’re looking positive. Sure. If your culture is, we also, we always say it how it is.

Topaz Adizes 00:23:14

Then instead of saying, tell me something positive, say what do you come into the room with? And that’s a maybe, you know. So it’s like, what is the culture that you are developing and cultivating? And have questions that do that. Because the last thing you want is you also don’t want to just have, okay, everyone be positive, great. But is that connected to the culture? If it is, wonderful. If it’s not, then we’re just being fake being telling you what’s positive and people are just scrambling and then you have kind of a double face. Everyone gives a face of being called positive, but yet they’re not feeling it. So we’re not dealing with the elephants in the room. So for me then my bottom line is I would say the questions, if they can reaffirm and reinforce the values of the culture, that’s helpful.

AD 00:23:58

Does this sound familiar? You wake up, take a look at your calendar and see it’s filled with meetings, project meetings, stand ups, weekly check ins, one on ones, town halls, and those are just the internal ones. Some are productive, but some are a total waste of time. How often have you thought about the time your organization is wasting in unnecessary meetings? I bet a bunch. Now consider that in the US there are 55 million meetings happening each day and 85 to 90% have no agenda. Fellow is on a mission to solve the meeting problem by offering the only meeting management tool that optimizes every part of your team’s meeting workflow. With 500 meeting templates, integrated action items, collaborative meeting notes, and AI recording and transcription, Fellow helps teams and organizations get more done with less, go to fellow.app to start your free trial and start having fewer, more effective meetings today.

Aydin Mirzaee 00:24:58

So another topic that you briefly touched on for a second was this idea of AI kind of emerging in the workspace. More and more AI will do a lot of our tasks, a lot of the things that we’ve been used to doing, and maybe we liked, some of which we didn’t like. And it’s really starting to make a big change, even from a communication standpoint. You know, people are getting AI to write emails to each other and, you know, to fix all the nuances. And so, yeah, I’m just wondering, like, what are your thoughts around how AI is going to transform the workplace or how we should think about it and what it’s going to do to the human condition in general?

Topaz Adizes 00:25:40

I think we’re confronted with the question of who we are and what’s our value offering. And before AI came in, you needed humans to do things for you because you only had 24 hours in the day. But if I could pay you Now I got 48 hours in the day because I got, or you know what I’m saying, I have you to do. And so you’re doing, you’re executing cognitive functions that I need to do that because I can’t do it. And you have a whole team that are executing things because you only have a limited time a day. You’re paying other people to do it, and frankly, you just need them to do it. And so some level of caring for their emotions, caring for their wellbeing is less important because you just need it to get done. But now, when you can hire robots, now, it’s not there yet, but in the future, you’re going to be able to hire robots for a lot of executions.

Topaz Adizes 00:26:22

You’re able to ask Cloud and ChatGPT for answers and to write emails and have virtual assistants that are AI assistants to take care and you don’t have to care about an AI’s emotions. And they’ll get it done. So then what is the left for us humans and the way we communicate? And the difference is, as you know, the AI nodes, when one node learns something, the whole system learns it instantaneously. That’s why they’re learning so fast, right? That’s why this is changing so fast. Because when one learns, no learn something, the whole system learns. And we humans are not built like that at all. We learn at different rates. We have different perceptions of what reality is, what’s happening, different opinions.

Topaz Adizes 00:27:02

And so we need to learn, lean into those differences. We all change at different rates. We have different rates of adjusting, of learning, of seeing, of interpreting, of communicating. And while that does create conflict and makes things slower, it also creates the magic. And what I mean by the magic is the opportunities. You see something, I see something. And in us conversing, we see an opportunity that would not happen if we’re all AI nodes learning the same thing at the same moment. So that really begs the question, what is our place in it? And our place in it is our ability to respect and acknowledge each other’s differences and look for the magic.

Topaz Adizes 00:27:40

And that’s why these conversations of how do you have better conversations, how do you develop better relationships is ever more important. Because everything else, getting stuff done, getting answers, getting analysis, you don’t need humans for that anymore. You’re not going to need that in the next five years and five years, for three years time. I mean, it’s scary what people are saying. So that’s why I feel that we have a great offering which is how to cultivate more cohesive relationships with other humans. Because this is something we don’t really learn. We don’t really learn how to do that. We don’t really learn how to communicate, how to create the space for really incredible conversations, how to construct really well constructive questions to reinforce and explore those relationships.

Aydin Mirzaee 00:28:22

Yeah, you know, it’s interesting, one of the, and I, I forget who to attribute this to, but this idea that computers are not that smart, they only know the answers and a lot of the hard stuff actually comes in asking the right questions. And so yeah, totally, I definitely do agree with that. And it is true. It is very interesting that the opportunity can arise in almost like the diversity of the conversations. Right? Like the things that aren’t scripted and the ideas and things that one can uncover in the more randomness of those sorts of conversations. And so yeah, that’ll I think, be a big part of it. Do you think that when you think about this idea of interacting with AIs, a lot of it does come down to, even when communicating with the AIs, to be able to ask and prompt the right things, you start to notice that like when you ask different prompts, you get different answers. And so I feel like a lot of it also applies in like the way that we’re going to end up prompting and working with these AI assistants.

Aydin Mirzaee 00:29:21

So being able to communicate well, ask the right questions, understand those sorts of outputs, it’s obviously important for human relationships, but still going to be important when interacting with AIs.

Topaz Adizes 00:29:32

I couldn’t agree more. I mean, I think that also is going to be a very interesting journey of how to query the AI system to get you the best result. But you ask about examples. I remember driving to direct a Play. This is 10 years ago and this is not AI, but it’s still the same. We’re driving and we were talking about some subject and something. And so it was me, I was directing and the writer was driving and an actor, a senior actor was. And then there was a young kid, he was like 10 in the back and there was a question about something like we had to go to Wikipedia, we had to Google it.

Topaz Adizes 00:30:08

Not an easy Google, but somehow we could find it. Right. The 10 year old found it best, quickest, because he knew how to prompt the Google search, which is going to be the same thing with the AI. Learning how to communicate with the AI system and how to prompt it to get the result that you’re looking for is going to be like the key future. What I’m saying is that when we’re speaking to each other, another human being, to find out the question that we want to ask the AI as a team, how do we do that?

Aydin Mirzaee 00:30:35

Yeah, I mean, there’s a lot to learn there and there’s a lot of parallels. Right? You asked the wrong question from the AI, you get a wrong answer and it’s the same thing from a human context. I’ve learned.

Topaz Adizes 00:30:47

Yeah, tell me.

Aydin Mirzaee 00:30:47

Yeah, I’ve basically learned, you know, just in, in terms of like human interaction, it’s being able to ask questions like what if we were able to. So there’s always an objection, let’s go do this. Oh, but we could never do that because of this reason. Okay, for a second, let’s assume that that reason wasn’t there. Like then could we do it? Oh no, we still couldn’t do it because. And so you kind of learn these sorts of. I mean, they’re prompting techniques, right? And they’re conversational techniques, but they really allow you to explore what a team or what a group of people is actually capable of. Which also brings me to this topic of one thing we haven’t yet chatted about is this idea of organizational or team dynamics.

Aydin Mirzaee 00:31:26

And one of the things that starts to become important, it is an ever changing world. It is moving very, very fast. And so part of it is what can we do to harness the creativity of the teams that we work with and really allow them to, you know, innovate at a pace to allow us to, you know, basically not get disrupted. I think every Organization today is at a risk of getting disrupted and so creativity becomes ever more important. Have you seen things, you know, with, with organizations that you’ve worked with or with teams that really do a good job of like harnessing that creativity and that basically the power of the group dynamic.

Topaz Adizes 00:32:05

That’s a great question and I don’t know if I have a great answer for you. What comes up for me right now is that it’s not just about the creativity. It’s about the clear movement from the creativity stage into execution stage and not getting stuck only in the creativity. Because I, in the creative circles I’ve been, there’s tons of creative ideas all the time. But who executes them and how do they execute well and what do you learn from that execution? If they’re good or not. And then how do you then loop that back into the creativity? And I think if we spend all our time in creativity, which I love, but then we never get executed to see how it works in the marketplace. And I think for me is going back to the thing about what space are you in and making clear demarcation. We’re in the creative space now.

Topaz Adizes 00:32:47

Great. Now we’re in the execution phase. Great. And we’re doing that. It’s a different behavior, you know, when the creative space it’s yes and yes and yes. And that’s why with my team we have different kinds of meetings and my team will say what kind of meeting is this? Or within the meeting itself is like, okay, what part of the meeting? So we have a one hour meeting. As the leader, I’m like, okay, we’re going to spend the next 25 minutes in the brainstorm meeting. And that energy is yes and yes and yes and yes.

Topaz Adizes 00:33:10

And there’s no bad idea creativity in your right, you’re giving permission for everything to come out that cool. Now a clear demarcation team. We’re going to move now to the execution meeting which is we’re going to make a decision from the we’ve just brainstormed. We’re now going to decide what decision we’re going to make, who’s going to do it by when, how, why, right. What they’re going to do. Great. And we’re clearly don’t bring in new ideas now. Now is the time for discuss how we’re going to get this done, who’s doing it right.

Topaz Adizes 00:33:39

And now let’s go execute and we’re not going to talk about it until it’s executed and we can analyze it and see how it’s resulted and then we’re going to bring it back into. Okay, now let’s analyze the problem. So now it’s an analysis meeting. Don’t bring me new ideas in analysis, meaning we’re analyzing what were the things that happened. Okay, great. Now let’s brainstorm about the questions we want to query about that, what we learned from that, or what do we want to do next? But my point is, what I think is really helpful is to be very clear about the space we’re in and very. What kind of meeting is this? Or what is the stage of the meeting we’re currently in so people understand. Because last thing you want is to have a meeting where everyone’s having ideas, ideas, ideas.

Topaz Adizes 00:34:16

Nothing gets done. You know, just a brainstorming meeting. But your team doesn’t and they start losing energy because, like, why are we just talking about ideas, never getting them done? Or why are we just talking about what we do and not actually take the time to tap into my creativity?

Aydin Mirzaee 00:34:28

Yeah, I was going to say it makes sense. And it actually ties back to what we started talking about, which was this idea of creating space. We were talking about it in terms of creating the space for people to be comfortable talking about, I guess, their feelings and emotions and really some of the things that maybe they wouldn’t otherwise say. But in this case, you’re creating the space to talk about, you know, specific topics. And so I feel like it’s the same concept being very clear, creating the space so that the right type of activity can happen. And I can definitely relate to this idea that, you know, in the analysis meeting, don’t come up with the brand new ideas. Right. And a lot of times I will say that it can be the leader that forgets that that is.

Topaz Adizes 00:35:10

Oh, totally.

Aydin Mirzaee 00:35:11

That what you shouldn’t do. It’s usually, it might not be the team, it might be the leader the last second. I’ve been guilty of that. You know, we have these, you know, we build software at our company. And so I’ve been guilty of this where it’s like the last stage, like the product’s already built and it’s all the way at the end. And I’m like, what if we did this other thing?

Topaz Adizes 00:35:30

Right?

Aydin Mirzaee 00:35:30

No, no, no, you’re not allowed to do that. That should have happened three weeks ago or four weeks ago when I showed you the designs and it was all mockups and everything.

Topaz Adizes 00:35:38

But what’s good there is. Right. Jot that down, put that little in your envelope, put that in the drawer, and the next time you have the brainstorming meeting or the next time you had that conversation with like, let’s bring everything up, bring that thing back. So it’s not like you don’t write it down. It’s just that you understand that we’re not going to put energy into inviting in new ideas right now because we’re not in that mode of the meeting right now. But that doesn’t mean you push it aside. Just means, like, put that in the ice box right now, and we’ll pull it out of the ice box when it’s time for be in the next phase.

Aydin Mirzaee 00:36:06

Ice box, parking lot. All of these things are. Yeah, 100% agree. Like, the terminology is actually super effective. Just having common terminology to talk about this stuff.

Topaz Adizes 00:36:15

Right.

Aydin Mirzaee 00:36:16

So, Topaz, this has been an awesome conversation. We’ve talked about a variety of different topics. How to build more meaningful relationships. What do you do if you’re a new leader into a team and you really need to build trust and understand what’s going on very quickly? We’ve talked about AI and group dynamics and so much more. The question we always like to end on is for all the managers and leaders constantly looking to get better at their craft. Are there any final tips, tricks, or words of wisdom that you would leave them with?

Topaz Adizes 00:36:46

I leave them with two. One is what I learned from all the interviews I did as a documentary filmmaker was I really learned that the interviewee reflects the interviewer. So if I’m interviewing you and I’m anxious and nervous, you’re going to be anxious and nervous if I’m right. So the person you’re speaking to is reflecting you. If you want them to shift, don’t tell them to be calm. Right? You be calm. That’s why sometimes it’s helpful to drop. Maybe if they’re comfortable with it and you know it’s going to.

Topaz Adizes 00:37:18

If you want an informal meeting, maybe use informal language. If you want to be a vulnerable meeting, then you be vulnerable because you’re priming the space, especially with the power dynamics of work. So as a leader, be aware that your behavior primes the space. So if you want vulnerability, you be vulnerable. Right? You prime the space. If you want open communication, you do the same. The second thing is, everything I’ve learned from watching this is that. And this might be antithetical in the workspace because we’re always looking for what are the answers? What are the answers?

Topaz Adizes 00:37:49

But putting the emphasis on the answer is not where we should put our energy, because the question is where all the power lies. We may be rushing for the right answer to the wrong question and what’s the value in that? And the more you focus on the question, the easier the answer appears and is much clearer. So don’t rush for the answer. Sit in the discomfort of the question and make sure you’re asking really interesting questions.

Aydin Mirzaee 00:38:15

That’s great advice and a great place to end it. Topaz, thank you so much for doing this.

Topaz Adizes 00:38:19

Oh thanks Aydin. Thanks for having me.

Aydin Mirzaee 00:38:21And that’s it for today. Thank you so much for tuning into this episode of the Supermanagers podcast. You can find the show notes and transcript at www.Fellow.app/Supermanagers. If you like the content, be sure to rate, review and subscribe so you can get notified when we post the next episode. And please tell your friends and fellow managers about it. It’d be awesome if you could help us spread the word about the show. See you next time.