The language of intent: What separates good leaders from great ones

Mike Courian: Chad, welcome to the podcast.

Chad Littlefield: We're live. We're live, Mike, we're live.

Mike Courian: We're live. It's great to be with you.

Chad Littlefield: It's very good to be with you.

Can I can I do the like a reverse podcast thing? So you asked if I would come on and be interviewed by you. Can I ask you in your research, you kind of said and over email as we met that you kind of did a little bit of a mini deep dive into my work, and I'm I'm curious what struck you about all of that?

Mike Courian: Love that. I have not had that curveball thrown at me before. So let's see how I go.

The word I used was magical. I think what you do is magical. And I think that because when I see somebody able to bring other people to life, wake them up, ignite like their imagination and curiosity, it's one of my favorite things in the world. And so that's what I'm calling magic.

And the other thing I noticed, Chad, was you do it both with a lot of enthusiasm, which I think can help wake people up, that there's more going on and that things can be better.

And the other reason why it struck me so much, Chad, is because it is just exceedingly genuine how you go about it. And I know, and my hunch is, that that is pivotal to forming great connections with people.

And so it was all of that packaged up. You've got a way with people and a way of leading people to engage groups that I think is unique and stands out, and so I was very excited to dive into all those things today with you.

So how's that?

Chad Littlefield: Awesome. That is lovely. I'm going to send my mom a copy of this recording. That's very generous, Mike.

I I think part of part of my intention in asking that too, and I don't always destroy the format of a typical podcast and and ask questions, but I found myself curious this time because like whatever You're a smart cat

Chad Littlefield: And so whatever struck you is likely to strike anybody else listening, and potentially be, like, something you can steal right at the front of the front end of the podcast. And so this idea that what stuck out to you was in all the work of gathering, and all the things that I've shared, the gigantic YouTube library, the resource, all of this stuff, what actually stuck out was me. And And when I say that, uh, the opposite of egocentrically is that, and I've actually I've tried, as much as possible, to strip down all performative elements that don't feel genuine. And I would attach, like, maybe one other word of, like, whatever the work that you're doing, but in in particular, if it's group work, if you've got a group gathered asynchronously or synchronously, especially in a learning context, and you have some intention that affects them, if we don't clue people into what that intention is, I would argue that that is manipulation.

So you want to get a group to do a certain thing, you want to achieve these learning outcomes, unless we clue them into that you have that intention for them,

Mike Courian: Yes.

Chad Littlefield: it's going to feel like you're pushing, cajoling, and nudging them. And so if I can add a nuance to it, part of the authenticity or genuineness that you point out is, like, a ruthless commitment to being clear about my intention. And that is a very practical way that someone can steal and become more genuine. And so it's like, at the, you know, imagine if every calendar invite we created, before you were even allowed to send a calendar invite to somebody, it popped up and said, "What is your intention for this meeting?" And you type that in, and then it said, "And how does that encompass the needs of the other people in this meeting, not your own needs?" Right? So, it's an intention is not, like, a selfish outcome that you're trying to get for you, like, how does this benefit everyone in the room? And it And as soon as you can clearly articulate that, everything gets a little bit less manipulative, a little bit more clear, and a little bit more effective, which is really good. So, uh

Chad Littlefield: I appreciate that you noticed that, and I appreciate hearing like the way that that uh that came out.

Mike Courian: You named a dichotomy that I think is really interesting, and it's harsh, but I think it's fair, which is manipulation in contrast to genuine. And I just hadn't seen that as kind of the the shadow side of genuine is like if you're not being genuine, you've there's an agenda. And and how do you If you And even, this is the thing that I find most interesting, if you can put your cards out on the table, even if you have an agenda, you've already taken all the sting out of having an agenda because you were transparent.

Chad Littlefield: Yep.

Mike Courian: Because you, you know, and so and it's people are disarmed by transparency and upfrontness. And you can be really direct and still hold trust.

Chad Littlefield: And, so let's uh let's go even deeper. The wisdom is in the nuance of something. So, if you have an intention that it's like uh we connected before uh hitting record. We both have young kids, right?

Mike Courian: Yes.

Chad Littlefield: So let's say we want uh one of our kids to clean the room. It's going to be the youngest. It's not going to be the oldest. So we want the youngest kid to clean the room, cuz it's absolute chaos and a mess.

Um I want them to clean your room their room because like it's stressing me out. I want to raise somebody who's like, you know, somewhat organized in their life, whatever. I want to like set the value. These are things that I care about. These are actually selfish intentions.

The Latin root of the word intention, intendere, means to stretch. So I think about like stretching A good intention stretches like a rubber band to include the needs of everyone. So my youngest, Ellie, if I want Ellie to clean her room, I can be clear about my intention at level one of like, "Hey, I really uh you know, Ellie, would you go clean your room because we really want to have clean rooms

Chad Littlefield: in this family, and Ellie's 4 years old, so Ellie is like, "Nah. Like I'm out. Uninterested," right?

Two magical words to stretch any intention. You add to any intention the words "so that" to the end of it, and then right after the "so that," you include a currency that they care about.

So, you know, Ellie's young enough that, admittedly, I don't really ask her to clean her room that much, but my oldest, Otto, um is old enough. I want him to be cleaning his room uh and like, you know, maintaining a a bit of a sense of order. And so, if I say, "Hey Otto, can you go clean your room?" "Eh, nah." If I say, "Hey Otto, can you go clean your room so that tonight at bedtime, we have maximum space to do ninja moves?" Like that's something that is in his currency. That's what he cares about. All of a sudden, kid is running up to clean his room. This is so so valuable in a group, in a learning context. If you It's And so, it's not about being direct with what you want. It's actually about being empathetic enough about what other people want so that you can be clear and direct

Mike Courian: Mm.

Chad Littlefield: in a way that includes everyone's needs, not just your own. And this is very We could stop the podcast right here, and you could just re-listen to this little segment over and over again, and it would transform somebody's leadership. I think it actually fundamentally is what separates um good leaders from phenomenal, world-class expert facilitators and phenomenal, world-class expert leaders, is they master the second language of the the language of intent.

That leads me to maybe to a natural question um of like putting this into practice and putting you on the spot one more time. I think this will be the last time I put you on the spot. Um

Mike Courian: Go.

Chad Littlefield: If you were to establish a really clear, other-centric intention for this podcast and anybody listening,

Mike Courian: Yeah.

Chad Littlefield: what is your intent for our conversation today?

Mike Courian: Don't tell my co-

Mike Courian: founders? Cuz my intention for these conversations is to make a friend, to connect so much that we've seen and heard each other and had a wonderful hour or ish time. So that's actually my secret intent. And so when the whole thing that you're devoting your time to right now is towards connection, I'm like, yes! That's like literally what this podcast is secretly about. Yeah, we talk about learning and development, and the brain, and how people learn and change and transform. But I guess I'm betting on the same hunch as you, which is that it really all starts with connection.

Chad Littlefield: So I You know, preaching to the choir. You know, I'm like shaking my head yes to connection. My entire The mission of We and Me, the company that I started, is to make connection easy. And so the the Whether it's the card decks or the books, like it's all, how do I make connection easier? Sometimes, you have to go to a hard place to do that. So I'm going to challenge you a little bit, but so I guess like putting you on the spot again. So your intention is to make a friend, and that is beautiful for you.

Mike Courian: Yeah.

Chad Littlefield: Can you add "so that" to the end of it and include what What stretches that intention to include something that I care about and maybe even something that a listener might care about? Which, to be fair, it's like fun to witness somebody make a friend.

Mike Courian: Yeah, but it sounds trite, and it's not quite what I mean.

Chad Littlefield: Mhm.

Mike Courian: I want to make a friend so that they discover something about themselves through this conversation that's a different angle, that's a new take, or or that you will feel heard and seen in a unique way by a stranger, and that will be a delight.

Chad Littlefield: Do you see how transformational that sentence is compared to, "I want to make a friend"?

Mike Courian: So much better. But it's interesting because this is where people need to realize that a word that can be meaningful for them, and they're like, "Oh, I nailed it. That's the word," can mean an entirely different thing to the recipient, and and then the wider audience listening. And so it's so interesting for me, because as soon as I said, I was like, that's not communicating clearly. I was like, I know why I used that word, because that's how I do friendship. But that might not mean what other people's experience of friendship is at all.

Chad Littlefield: And it's uh yeah, it's like that we have we all have the curse of knowledge. And this is this is why I say the language of intent, uh luckily, unlike Mandarin or or uh Spanish, you only need to learn two words: so that. Because uh when you learn "so that", and you fill it fill in the end of that sentence with something that the other person really cares about, um it takes the implicit communication, the assumptions that you have in your head, the context about the word "friend", all of that, and makes it really salient and clear and visible to the other person, so that you do not miscommunicate.

It also um seeking Like when you share that intention, uh you've implicitly sought my consent to participate in your intention. And so when you s- say that, it's like, you know, I'm I'm happy to make um uh to to be an additional friend, uh but being in the role that I'm in, like I happen to meet a lot of people.

Mike Courian: Yeah.

Chad Littlefield: And I try to be as absolutely profoundly deeply present and connected with all of those people. But, uh to be somewhat blunt or crass, I don't probably need another friend, necessarily.

Mike Courian: No. No, you don't.

Chad Littlefield: But when you talk about like learning a different like hear you know learning something about myself from a different angle, um I'm like, I'm so bought into that intention. All of my body and being is is here right now. Um,

Mike Courian: Yeah. Yeah.

Chad Littlefield: and it's like just those two words, so that, this little tweak, and it's like, boom. So, um, I I hope

Chad Littlefield: that the next episodes of the podcast that I dig into, like, start kicking off with so that intentions, and I think you'll see shifts happen, because like intentions, they can get plopped everywhere. It's like, a so that intention gets plopped in a meeting invite, a so that intention gets plopped in an email out to somebody, it gets plopped in the beginning of a video before you share whatever you're going to share. It's like, it makes a really profound difference. Okay, anyway, you probably have an agenda for this conversation, so I am relinquishing all facilitation curiosity over to you, Mike. What do you got, man? Where are we going?

Mike Courian: It's all right, Chad. I secretly knew this was somehow going to happen, so I'm glad I was right.

Okay, I'm going to jump us back to where I like to begin because there are things about Chad that I may never ask, find out, go to because we're new. And so I want to know in three different words, how would you describe yourself to us? Who are you? Who is Chad?

Chad Littlefield: Mm. One of my favorite, I don't know if I actually have it here. I don't think so. Let me Let me look. No. One of the my favorite We! Connect Cards questions, it's not this one, but it's, how would your closest friend describe you in three words?

Mike Courian: Ooh.

Chad Littlefield: So I'm gonna I'm going to try to play with that. Um everyone who meets me and really knows me deeply would use the word energy when they describe me in in one word. And and usually it's followed by a curiosity of like, "How do you have so much energy?" Um and it's like the I think it's the difference between, when you mentioned enthusiasm at the beginning of our conversation, there's a very obvious difference between manufactured enthusiasm because you know like, you know, to be charismatic and interesting, like I should crank up the enthusiasm about this thing. There's a very big difference between that and actually giving a damn about something, and just having enthusiasm kind of eke out from it. Because there's somebody, you know, somebody who's very not charismatic, when they're really enthusiastic

Chad Littlefield: about something, you can see it and feel it, even if they're talking in a totally monotone voice and they don't use any hand gestures. Because they're like eyes widen a little bit.

A couple of years ago, I got really frustrated. I went to an event. They gave me the, uh, "Hello, my name is," name tags, and it was like, "Hello, my name is Chad." And I was just having the thought, like, there's no possible way that that is the best entry point. Like you knowing my first name, me knowing your Mike, like, tells me nothing about you other than your first name.

And so, uh, I reinvented the nametag. Called them We! Connect Cards name tags. There's lovely, lovely little, uh, stickers that just have prompts like, uh, "I really like talking about {blank}," or "I'm curious about {blank}." And you just fill it in with one or two words. That's my directions that I give to people.

I walked up to this guy in an event I was facilitating, and I didn't even see his name. There was a space for his name underneath. I didn't even see that. I just saw the word, "Jeeps," written really big on the name tag. And so, I walked over to him and just said literally read his name tag. I just said, "Jeeps?" And then tilted my head sideways, as if I was asking a question. Like, "Jeeps?"

And this guy's eyes lit up. The The guy looked like before I walked up to him, it it looked like he was held captive. I said, "Jeeps," and turned my head sideways, and he like lit up. This energy filled And so, for me, I I think that energy, I have like a very deep passion for making connection easy. And when I talk about a silly thing, like reinventing nametags like that, that lights me up, and so I'm very energetic. So, that'll be one.

The second one, I I think I I like humor a lot. One of my favorite quotes is, "Laughter is nervousness leaving the body." A mentor said that to me once, Jeff Hayes. And, uh,

And so, I I I'd like to think I'm a little bit funny, Mike.

Mike Courian: Even hijacking this flight right at the beginning. I love it. It was exactly that. And I think it It asked something of other people. You're like, are you going to come on an adventure with me, or are we just going to play the game?

Chad Littlefield: I read a a book on comedy once, which, if you ever want to just

Chad Littlefield: take the magic away from comedy, read a book on comedy. And so, it it actually they in the it was like The Science of Comedy, and I I don't remember what the book was titled, this was a long time ago. And there was a they included a graph. This is what humor is, and it was literally a gra- it looked like a graph out of a peer-reviewed paper. And the graph had this line that was going up and to the right. And then it diverted and went down and to the right. And there was this kind of this dotted line still going up and to the right. I don't know how easy that is to picture.

And basically, they were saying humor is right here. You ex- when you see a line going up into the right, you expect that the next few points on it will also go up and to the right. And humor is when it diverts from that. Anytime that it diverts from the expected, and so from a a group facilitation, learning, uh you know, it's not about being uh Dave Chappelle, or Shane Gillis, or some comedian that you admire, um it's it's actually about diverting from the norm. When you divert from people's expectations, things get a little bit more interesting, and people tune in and lean in a bit more interesting. I think that's one of the reasons we love stories so much is they're they're told in a cadence that you're like, "What happens next? And what happens next?"

Whereas if you're like overviewing a model, like, you know, me and Will's uh book, Ask Powerful Questions, is like the chapters are structured in a model. No, if I'm like giving a keynote, if I wish to like roll out the model of like the five levels of asking powerful questions, this would not keep anybody on their at the edge of their seat. And so, I just tell stories over and over again that illustrate uh these uh these ideas.

Anyway, I don't third word, I think maybe a fitting third word after that whole rant would be talkative. How's that? Energetic, funny, and talkative.

Mike Courian: That's great. Um I heard recently some feedback on your work. And somebody said, "You've restored my hope in humanity."

Mike Courian: Chad, what do you do for a job?

Chad Littlefield: Um Every presentation that you've sat through, including like the astronomy lecture you took freshman year that you remember only 0.1% of the content of, like every presentation you've ever sat through in your life, I've gotten really good at deleting those and turning presentations into really dynamic, convers- interactive conversations and experiences for people. And so, I love taking content into one side of my head and popping it out the other as an experience. So, that's at uh one big level.

At the like if you YouTube Chad Littlefield's, uh you'll find videos and many of them have the word like icebreaker or team building in them. And that's partially because what people are searching for. Their boss asked them to lead an icebreaker at work that doesn't suck. And so, they go to the internet. And they're like, "Wow, a lot of these suck." And then, they land on my video and then and so they they came looking for an icebreaker that didn't suck, but I think people stick around because I taught them that they know never needed an icebreaker in the first place.

Maybe what they needed instead was to build this culture of connection before content. Maybe what they needed was uh to realize that when we connect with others, that that is half the work. But if it's not tied to the purpose of why you're there, it will immediately build resentment. And so, when you have everybody go around in a circle and introduce yourself and share your favorite color M&M, half the group has already checked out because they're wondering why they have to come up with their favorite candy bar or their favorite color M&M

Mike Courian: Yes.

Chad Littlefield: um instead of being like, you know, "This is like a a quarterly finance overview. Why are we doing this icebreaker?" It's like, "No, what if we eradicated the word 'icebreaker', replaced it with 'connection before content'?" which, for me, is the deliberate practice of prioritizing the fact that there's human beings in the

Chad Littlefield: room, not just human humanoid robots or human doings, right? There's human beings in the room that have lives and kids and families and aging parents and dynamics and bills and all the rest.

And to acknowledge that and invite a piece of who they are, not all of who they are, a piece of who they are into the room in a way that's connected to purpose. And so the quarterly finance meeting, man, if that starts off with a question like uh "What is one of your favorite stories about fraud that you've come across or heard of in your career?"

Mike Courian: Yes.

Chad Littlefield: That is awesome connection before content for people at an accounting firm. Because it might be con- it connect it invites someone to share a piece of who they are, authentically, genuinely, to share a piece of their truth, but also ties into the reason of like, "Okay, cool. The rest of this meeting is kind of actually to prevent fraud. Here we go." Right?

Mike Courian: So, well, what do you do, let's imagine that group of people, not everyone can tell their fraud story. So like it might take most of the meeting. So how do you get people to feel like they've connected even though the person facilitating might not have been able to individually do all the work with them?

Chad Littlefield: I would pay you to be in all my groups and ask that exact question uh over again. Because one of my mentors, Peter Block, a favorite quote of his is "Small groups are the units of transformation."

Mike Courian: Yes.

Chad Littlefield: So, I was working with Google—

Mike Courian: How small does it need to be? Sorry, just so we know.

Chad Littlefield: Three people. Three people.

Mike Courian: Okay.

Chad Littlefield: I want groups of three people. A pair is uh if you like pair up with somebody who had a bad day and is a grump, then you also just only get infected by them. In a trio, there's like the social accountability to not totally be a grump. There will still be curmudgeons in the group. That's all good. They're welcome anyway. In fact, I like to make a point before I split people out into small groups to say, "I assume that some of you might not want to split out in a small groups right now and you'd

Chad Littlefield: rather get down to it.

Mike Courian: Please stay.

Chad Littlefield: Yes, please stay and be willing to see what happens in the next 10 minutes as an experiment. It might actually be an interesting conversation that makes you just like 2% smarter.

Mike Courian: Mm.

Chad Littlefield: There's a little bit of like almost a so that intention even just for splitting up into small groups. It's like go into a group, share a piece of your truth, something that you noticed, and come back with two other perspectives, a little bit smarter, right?

Mike Courian: Mm, yeah.

Chad Littlefield: 1% from each of them.

So, I was consulting with Google. They were they were coordinating a I was working with a whole team of chiefs of staffs at Google, and they're integral in designing these big all-staffs. They're getting all their executives together, they're all going to be on stage speaking, the content, 1,000-plus people at this meeting at Google. The transformation happens not in that gathering where all the execs are talking at people. It happens as soon as they end, and people pair off in groups of three to four colleagues that they know, and they start gossiping about what they thought about all the changes that are rolling out. That's where change either happens or doesn't, or just like it's stunted in that way.

So, facilitation-wise, it's like always break people out into small groups. If you're having a meeting of four or more people, as connection before content, split up those groups into If you got four people, into pairs. If you got six people, two groups of three. You have a conversation for five 5 to 10 minutes, you come back and ask you, what struck you about that conversation?

The practice of connection before content does not cost time, even though I told you it just costs 5 to 10 minutes in a meeting. It saves hundreds of hours over the course of year because you actually trust people,

Mike Courian: Yes.

Chad Littlefield: and it creates an immense amount of communication shortcuts. It allows you over time in a sustainable way to like learn people's preferences and styles and what they care about, which allows you to share so that intentions and curate experiences, and a

Chad Littlefield: deliver content in a way that's relevant to them and it allows you to personalize learning.

And it's actually quite time-saving because you split people out to have a 5-minute conversation. If if I have a meeting of 30 people and I split them out into 10 small groups of three, that is I just 10Xed the amount of content being exchanged in that room. Because there's literally, the average person speaks at about 150 to 175 words a minute. If I've split out 10 separate groups, then it's 10 times the amount of words being exchanged. Now, that doesn't mean 10 times productivity because words doesn't mean productivity, but it certainly means 10 times the amount of connection. It certainly means 10 times the amount of information exchanged that's happening. There's all of this like much more personalized benefit.

And over time, when teams who just make a deliberate practice of weaving in connection before content in small and big ways in their organizations, in their communities, over time, they weave this tapestry of connection that leads to way lower burnout, way higher retention, higher support, better communication, more trust, more commitment to whatever it is the mission that they're on, because your connection before content is connected to the purpose of why they're there. And so, there's like this constant draw back to like, "Why are we even doing this in the first place?"

Yes, I have protest posters for Connection Before Content in my garage, Mike. I know that was your second question.

Mike Courian: I love that. You've reignited my imagination for props. When I see you have like big big cards or little cards and you're showing us, it's why is there something behind all that? Cuz I can tell it's intentional, but I haven't quite clicked on what it does or what it is.

Chad Littlefield: So, what you're referring to, for everybody who doesn't notice this, is I have not used a PowerPoint slide in the last decade, not a single one. And I do not intend to use a PowerPoint slide in the next decade.

So,

Chad Littlefield: Just that alone, right? This method that I teach folks once a year called the Contribution Method is like my way of designing any gathering. It's five very particular ingredients that map to the timeline of a gathering. They're locations where you can invite active, intentional contribution and connection, so that it really cuts your effort and time to prep in half, but doubles the impact and engagement that happens as a result of that thing you're delivering.

And I only came up with that promise because everybody who I've ever taught the method to has like signed off and said, "Yes, that's true for me and then some." And so cut prep time in half, double impact or engagement.

So the not using PowerPoint slides, a core part of the Contribution Method for me is that the amount of intellect and wisdom in the room, even if I hold some subject matter expertise, the amount of wisdom in the room is actually very heavily distributed on the audience side of the podium. On the audience side of the microphone.

And so, if I've got 100 people in a room and they've all been alive for more than 40 years, that's 4,000 years of experience. I've just been alive for about 40 years. That's it, right? I can't compete with 4,000 years of collective wisdom expertise. And so this is actually a way that I'll often frame is like just do a collaborative calculator of how much wisdom is on this side of the microphone. Cool. That's why when I ask you to participate, when I ask you to jump into a conversation, when I ask for your feedback, your opinion, your thoughts on the content I'm presenting,

I'm just selfishly trying to tap into that 4,000 years the best way that I know how. And so, your expertise is required in this session. And your expertise means you've been alive for x amount of time, you've seen a bunch of stuff I haven't seen, and I'm curious about it.

And so for me, the not using a PowerPoint slide, there are some things that I want to show people, but I'm committed to never using a PowerPoint slide. So if I really want to show something to someone, I just print it out really giant

Mike Courian: So let's imagine we're in a setting, you've got people talking, you've broken the ice, they're connecting.

Inevitably, the most I find the most transformative moments I'm a part of, there's an vulnerability is always part of it.

Chad Littlefield: Yeah.

Mike Courian: But I'm not sure, I'm not convinced, as I imagine this group of people talking about their fraud stories, people not haven't necessarily had to be vulnerable yet. How do you bring vulnerability to the table for a group?

Chad Littlefield: I think, I'm open to being proven wrong about this, but I think there are only two dials that a facilitator has access to, to dial up or down in terms of influence over whether a group participates and how they participate.

Mike Courian: Right.

Chad Littlefield: The first dial is risk. I can either dial up the amount of risk required uh or dial down the amount of risk. So, two examples on each continuum of connection before content. So, um a bunch of accountants walk into a room and uh they've never met each other, and they don't know this was going to be interactive. It's like, "Hey everybody, just, you know, as you come in, can you just complete the sentence in the chat in one word?

Um one thing right now that I'm noticing about our industry is {dot, dot, dot}."

Mike Courian: Mm.

Chad Littlefield: So, they're just like sharing an observation. It's industry. It's like very work-related, but it is something they're noticing and seeing.

The answers to all those questions, all those prompts are very interesting because you can't find them on ChatGPT. So, I'm I'm I'm asking for 30 human perspectives on like, what do you see, what are you noticing?

Risk is low. Value is the second dial. Value is quite high.

Mike Courian: Mhm.

Chad Littlefield: So, I want experiences that are low risk and high value.

So, you can dial up the risk by

Chad Littlefield: artificially by saying, "Hey, accountants, welcome. Can everybody type in quite a bit of detail a secret from their childhood that they've never told anybody?" And it's like, I wouldn't recommend that doing that with any group, right? Because the risk is high, but the value of sharing it is next to zero.

Mike Courian: Yeah.

Chad Littlefield: And so, one way that you can change the risk, even if the prompt is the exact same, is by just offering a bit of framing of like, "Hey, as you share a story about fraud, I'm going to encourage you to share a story that you were like, maybe uncomfortably close to, something that you experienced where you were like, 'Ooh, like I bumped up against like', you know, I was like, 'I had an insurance agent over my house, and like there was a hailstorm, but it only damaged one shingle, but they want to give me a whole new roof.' And it was like, 'Uh, do I take the roof? I don't know. He's saying it he's saying I can have it right here, right?'"

Mike Courian: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Chad Littlefield: And so, sharing that like more personal, closer- so that's how I raise the risk, is by sharing, you know, sharing something that's really close to you. If I want to lower the risk, I share something a little bit more uh distant. The other way that I share it, and this is this is really awesome one to steal, one of my favorite features of questions is that every single question gives the answerer 100% choice and autonomy at what level of depth they answer. And I will remind people of exactly that when I ask or prompt a group into a question. It's like, "Hey, just so you know, as you're coming in, you can answer with like something that's very real and very present for you, or if I say like, you know, 'What is life teaching you right now?' as an open question, you can also say like, 'The room's kind of cold, and I wish I wore a jacket, but I didn't. And so, life's teaching me to dress better.' And that is true..."

Mike Courian: Yes.

Chad Littlefield: "...but at a very different level of risk and depth as anything else."

Mike Courian: Let's imagine you're speaking with more the context that our software lives in, large organizations, and they come to Chad

Mike Courian: and they say, "How do we get more people doing this?" I think somebody hearing this can go, "You're amazing at this, Chad. You've got it dialed. It's intrinsic in you. I've got a lot of people that are early on this journey. I can teach them "so that," but I'm not sure how well they're going to do it. I'm I'm scared. How do I scale this across my thousand leaders?"

Chad Littlefield: Yeah.

I had a co-founder and co-author, Will Wise, who passed away a few years ago, and he used to say that efficiency is the enemy of connection. So when I hear the word "scale," I hear someone in a large corporate context stuck between a rock and a hard place, where they need to roll out something really deep, thoughtful, and intentional across a bunch of people who will apply it to varying degrees. Some people are going to roll their eyes and be like, "What is this 'so that' and I don't understand it." And I don't get they're not going to give it the presence or time of day, because they're too busy and stressed out with their family life, or their workload, or whatever else.

So, I would not try to scale this out to 1,000 people. I would reorient myself around spreading change around one word, which is invitation. I would invite people. I would invite all 1,000 people to a 30-minute live call, and I would title that call, "Something that blew my mind that I would love to share with you, because I think it might make your job easier." And I'm I'm playfully titling that, but like you can write that kind of in an email, and honestly, a little bit of humor like you can send somebody a calendar invite that says, "Something that blew my mind that's going to make your job a little bit easier. It should only take 15 minutes. I'm blocking 30 so you can apply it."

Chad Littlefield: Yeah. Like and when I when I say reorient around invitation, if someone received an invitation like that, it's so much more novel and interesting and other-centered and so that-y than uh mandatory training, everyone must come. And so even if I only have 300 out of 1,000 people that show up to my weird calendar invite, the spread of that idea and the culture around my invitations that that will build will far outweigh a mandatory training where you're trying to scale something to 1,000 people.

And so I would just reorient it, invite people to reorient around a culture of invitation, but really weaving in for themselves, just practicing so that intentions in their invitations. And then I'll take it one step further. I think I gave a pretty solid example there of like a funky novel invitation that might catch somebody's attention. But I want you to think about two different types of invites.

I text you, "Hey Mike, I'm in New Zealand. Want to get the kids together?" That's an invite. That's cool. That's like a text invite. That's cool. But if I sent you like a wedding invitation that was like in five different envelopes, pre-stamped with an RSVP thing, and had gold foil on it and whatnot, and it was like, "Dear Mike, I'm going to be in New Zealand. My family and I are staying in Auckland. I don't know how far you are from there, but I'd love to spend some intentional time together and perhaps share a meal with our families. Would you be willing to host us? Please RSVP below."

It's like the difference in those invitations is palpable. When you get invited to a wedding, people move stuff out of the way to say yes because of the invitation, the intention, the connotation, everything about it. And so if you're make- aspire to make your invitations if they're actually valuable enough. So first make sure like the thing's actually useful.

Chad Littlefield: But if it's actually valuable and meaningful enough, consider making your invitations as palpable and profound as an invitation to a wedding, and then you won't have to make things mandatory. People will want to come. People will choose to show up, and when they choose to show up, the outcome and the retention of learnings and all of that doubles, triples, etc.

Yeah.

By the way, as we're talking about New Zealand, I don't know if have I showed you this?

Mike Courian: No! That is a pounamu, everyone, which is, um, a precious stone in New Zealand. And, uh, precious things, we call them taonga, or a treasure. So that's cool. Who gave that to you?

Chad Littlefield: I was going to say, yeah, my understanding is that you can only be gifted it. Kerri Price, who's a brilliant facilitator in New Zealand, uh, runs The Facilitators Network. You should interview her, actually, on the podcast if you haven't already.

Mike Courian: Okay.

Chad Littlefield: Um, I mentored her for a year, and she sent me just the nicest letter, and I first got it, and I opened it, and before I had any meaning, I was like, "Ooh, I don't know if I can wear, I don't know if I can pull this off." And then I read the letter, and I was like, "I'm going to put it on, and I'm never going to take it off."

Mike Courian: Yeah. Oh, cool.

Chad Littlefield: It was a very In other you know, in some way, right? It was, not to not to over be a teacher and find the teachable moment, but it was an invitation. She didn't say, "Wear this necklace, it's mandatory."

Mike Courian: Yes.

Chad Littlefield: She gave me the most compelling possible reason on Earth to put it on.

Mike Courian: Yeah. I love it. Can I ask you one more thing before I let you go?

Chad Littlefield: Yeah.

Mike Courian: We have not even scratched the surface of what I said at the start was the magical work you do.

Chad Littlefield: Yeah.

Mike Courian: And that's okay, because these things are finite. And I think what you showed me through this conversation, Chad, particularly with your recent answer, is if we don't accept those limitations, we're going to lose something far more important. If we naively

Mike Courian: try and do the big thing, we're not even going to achieve the little thing. And so, I think there's something really interesting there. But what I want to ask you is you've seen it all, that's I'm just going to say, maybe not at all, but you've seen a lot of things. You've seen a lot of companies. You've seen, you've met a lot of people.

And I guess what I want to know is if you were to say one thing to our audience that you think is the most important thing for them to hear or change or do, and I think maybe you've already said it, so you're welcome to go back and reiterate something, but if there's something else that that question strikes for you, is like what do you what do you want people to know?

Chad Littlefield: Oh man, this is uh I'm going to give you an answer that I've never shared publicly ever, but it's like so clearly the answer right now in this moment.

I just finished, have you ever heard of this book Theo of Golden?

Mike Courian: No, but I've seen the cover.

Chad Littlefield: It's a fiction, let's see, it's the author, Allen Levi's, first book. It's like got 180,000 reviews on Amazon, it's like a half a million reviews on Goodreads, and it was published officially like 3 months ago. Uh it's like just absolutely taking off.

I don't want to spoil any of the book, I think I I'd actually have made a lifelong habit of not recommending books. I only recommend the back cover of books and then let you decide.

That said, I'm going to break that right now for this book and recommend that everybody on Earth pick up and read at least the first few chapters of Theo of Golden.

I don't think this is a spoiler alert, the part of the theme of the book is to view the saintliness in every other human being on Earth. To sit down with someone, and for me to be here with you, Mike, and just see the absolute saintliness, religious or not, to see you as if you are Mother Teresa before she was named Mother Teresa, like to see you as an absolute saint who's uh just a beam of light here

Chad Littlefield: or to offer some gifts to the planet? That view is so far from reality in a big enterprise corporate culture? Yes, but I think that it just might be core to everything.

I'll share with you one if if that's if that was too uh spiritual for you, I'll give you a more practical hardcore lens. I was keynoting this big conference of uh 800 different CEOs of kind of conscious-minded businesses. The CEO John Mackey, who started this huge grocery store chain in the US called Whole Foods, was bought by Amazon.

I was having lunch with him, and he said something to me I'll never forget. He said, "I want you to walk through the rest of your life and imagine that every single other person on Earth is enlightened except for you. So the person who cuts you off on the highway is they're the enlightened one, and they know that right now you need to learn a lesson in patience."

And so they were placed there right in that moment to learn that. And if it whether that's true or not is actually irrelevant. If you actually proceed through life as if everyone except for you is enlightened. Um, and I think that's connected to the way that Theo sees everyone he interacts with in the book, as if they are a saint they hasn't met yet. So very off-kilter from my typical answer to that question, but I feel like it's the truest, deepest, realest, most honest core answer that I could possibly give.

Mike Courian: Well, thank you for giving us the truest, realest, most core answer, Chad, because we are grateful for you. We're grateful for your time, and I hope everyone listening can go on the wild ping-ponging journey we just went on. And the thing you need to know at the end of all this is go check out more of Chad's work, because he is doing something magical, and you need to go find out why it's magical. So please go and do that. Thank you, Chad. This has been a real treat.

Chad Littlefield: Thank you. Mike.