I'll get a team. It's you project, it's it's too mad. It's one and a half meter Tiff, and it's one point seven eight meter fatty ups. Let's start with We'll start with the lady, Oh do you like gay? To Peter straight to Bee. I was waiting for it. I was waiting for that. That was too easy. Yeah, and then we'll get to Tiff. No, you couldn't even have to say it, Tiff, could you just not that the
world needs to know? But fuck it? But could you just, I mean, feel free to have the microphone for thirty seconds? And I was going to say sixty. I retracted that as it was coming out of my gob But I spoke to you before, and you'd thrown the glow mesh in the share pile. You'd thrown the dummy in the bloody fire pit because you've got an event coming up and you've got to wear cocktail, and you didn't know exactly what that meant. So we had to chat gpt it.
Yeah, And then I hung up the phone and I thought, tiffany Cook of all people in the whole fucking world to ring and consult about this cocktail dressed Lemma, why did you choose Harps.
Well that's because you didn't. One, you didn't ring for that. You you were just venting, I was you didn't you didn't ring for fashion advice?
Well, just I don't understand why I have to wait till twenty four hours out from leaving for Queensland to be like, I wonder what we're supposed to wear and look for the details.
Well you don't have to. You choose to. I mean, that's that's on you, dude, So don't don't fucking look out look within bros.
Why I called Harps Pete, That's why I called Harps.
That makes more sense than I called him to ask for fashion advice.
Or Two. Did I give you sound advice or not?
I think so?
I think so. I said you've got to either completely frock up and go nuts, or you just got to go don't give a fuck and just turn up in goes. You know what Pete and I would do. So, although I reckon Pete probably owns more suits than me. How many suits do you own? Champ oh two or three? Probably two or three more than you? Is that right?
Well?
Now I own one pretty much. Yeah. The Melbourne Museum has wrung me they want it an artifact. They put it next to Chromagnum and Astrolopithecus robust in the paleontology section. That's you know, that's like early humans, tiff the evolutionary timeline. I look confused. So anyway, what did you before we actually do a podcast? What did you decide?
Well? I did duck out to DFO. I come out with donuts, but I did get a couple of nice pairs of shoes with to wear with the nothing that I have to wear, and the only dresses I do have in my wardrobe are a minimum of a decade old, and I don't want to wear them. They're a little bit too short.
Look, I'm no fashionistic, but when I'm thinking of high level kind of impressed dress to impress cocktail party, DFO doesn't spring to mind.
Oh well, I'm sure wasn't going to fucking Chadstin again that nearly gave after that.
Hey, don't get angry at me. Just fucking temper yourself, will you.
If anyone wants to submit a resume to be my new girly friend to help me with shopping, I need someone in this area of my life.
I'll tell you what you truly do you do? And who you need to find? Someone? A girl who lady slasher, female advisor, or it could be a dude who knows how to make you look like a million dollars for one hundred.
You know what I mean exactly, That's what I'm after. I've got some nice red heels. Though I do love a pair of red heels, I don't want to.
I love I love the fact that you were pumped about your shoes, but nothing else has been purchased.
This is great. Well, if there's one thing we can count on everybody, it's there will be one and a half million photos on TIFFs social media probably about Saturday, so stand by because she's not shy of photos. Wow, that's enough about that. Peete Shepherd, welcome back to the You Project. I'm sorry for that distraction. How are you?
I'd be sorry. That's why I'm here. I'm here for these interactions between you and Tiff and to play the role of fly on the wall to let you to air your dirty laundry.
It's good to be here. That's pretty much just a it's a thinly disguised excuse this podcast for tift event. That's all it is. Hey, what's going on on plannet? You? What day is today? It's Tuesday? Right? Why are you not Why you're not out talking of fat blokes in suits? Why are you not doing that Tuesday?
For me?
This week? Is it day at home? Right?
To set the week up and work on a few things. I've got to Actually, there's a talk that maybe maybe I could workshop it with you in person. You mentioned chat GPT earlier, and so I'm sure that's something that you're noodling on at the moment. But I'm doing a talk in a week I think it is next week down on the Gold Coast around leadership and AI, which is obviously a topic that is a little bit buzzy and a little bit over it's going to become oversaturated.
But it's a topic that I've been asked to speak on and I have a bunch of thoughts on it, and I'm noodling around how we should think about it, if we should think about.
It at all? Well, definitely think, I think whether or not we want to think about it, it's proven that we do, do you know what I mean? It's like, well, I think like there's a difference between being obsessed with it and thinking it's it's the best thing ever, and also it's the worst thing ever. I mean, the practical real world reality is that AI is tir it's not going away. And literally, somebody said to them, said to me the other day, I'm never going to use that.
I'm I go, You're absolutely going to use it because you won't have a choice, you know, and because it's going to become more and more plugged into our day to day, and you won't have the option even when
it's there might be something like shopping or whatever. But yeah, look, I just think that you know that the hysteria and the world's going to end, and we're all going to be overtaken, and they're about two and a half weeks away from being sentient and then now becoming self preserving and autonomous, and they're going to fucking kill us and we all need to move to a farm with solar panels.
Probably a little bit of an overreaction, I agree, I do, but I do think, you know, for me, it's just I might change my mind on this, but right now where I sit, especially somebody doing a lot of research and a lot of reading and a lot of writing, and a lot of you know, prepping, and it's a fun,
an amazing resource. It's a tool, and it's like anything like I use social media for good and for me, social media has been a pretty good impact in my world, in my business, in my income, and in my capacity to reach people and help people and serve people. So all round, I'd say, on Planet Craig a good thing, but on other and Planet John it might be a terrible thing, depending on the relationship that he or she
whoever that is, has with that thing. So yeah, I just think it depends on how we use it and how we interact with it.
Mate, what about you? Yeah, I mean I have a bunch of thoughts.
One is.
I like what you described as almost instead of AI being artificial intelligence, it's almost like amplifying intention. It's like,
what's your what's your intention? Is it to research? Then how can you use this as a tool to really amplify that to do a shit more research in a short period of time than you would have if you were walking into a library and looking at barcodes as we used to back in the day on old computers, or even a Google search, you can you can really amplify that intention of wanting to do thorough research in a way that is way quicker and not perfect, by
the way, like humans, and like any other form of research, not perfect, but still pretty freaking useful and pretty amazing at what it can do if used for the right thing. I tend to agree. I tend to agree. And part of my rant next week that I'm working on is how do you help leaders see it as a tool
to make them even more human centered? And like, what's the how do we think of these tools as less about artificial and more about like, if I use this to help me build empathy with the person that I'm about to have a hard conversation with, is that not a tool that's actually enabling humanity in some way and enabling me to be a more connected, more royal, rounded, human centered leader than thinking about it as a way to help you solve math problems, which is less about
being human said it more just about like hard and fast facts.
So that's kind of my.
Two cents at the moment, which will become probably forty five cents by the end of this.
Yeah, I know, I love that. I love that. I mean, ultimately it is, you know, it's something that we can use to help us get things done better if we use it the right way. You know, I heard this quote earlier today and I thought that can't be true. That can't be true, and I had to go and look it up. So here's the quote. Now, this was from They don't know the year, but I think it was just before ninth so maybe ninety eight forty nine, pre nine fifty. So this is what Albert Einstein said.
It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity. Imagine what you think now. Thank god, that's wild. That was seventy five plus years ago. That's wild. It's become appalling obvious that our technology has succeeded our humanity. I'm like, dude, you should see what's going on now. Bro, you've been rolling in your bloody virtual grave. Yeah you know, hey,
what about this? Mate? This is funny speaking about how it's like humans have a really natural tendency to anthropomorphize things, you know, dogs and cats and animals. But also like my mum, every one of my mum's cars since I was a kid, has a name, right, she she names her cars.
This is something my wife would do.
Yeah, yeah, and so like and she names dad's cars. So Dad's car as Max and Mum's car as Emma. Right, And so she doesn't say, are we going to take you know the nis and or the whatever the bloody toyota. She's like, will we take you know Max? Or will we take Emma? Right? So, my, but chat GPT is now building relationships or in gen or more broadly AI. People are building relationships with with AI, and I put relationships in air quotes, right, But people are for what
from the outside looking in? Okay, So they trust it, they tell it things, they ask it for insight and feedback. They allow it to make them feel good and praise them. It's eliciting emotional responses, right. This is not fucking far from two humans interacting. It's kind of like pursuant to that, your honor. So the other night, which was Saturday night, I thought I might post something on install and I thought, I don't know what is Saturday night? A shit night?
The posters is a good night. So I jumped on old mate and I said, what's the best time to post tonight on Instagram? And so chat GPT now, remember this is Saturday night, chat GP said to me, for tonight Friday night in Australia, the best time to post is and then it went on right, so it fucked up the night and I said, it's Saturday in Australia. Have you been drinking? With a laughing emoji and then it goes to Shay Craig with a laughing face. No
booze here, just a rogue temporal lobe. I'm like, are you me? Motherfucker like? And then it goes on to answer my question relevant or relative to sat it. I mean that the level of and I know it's all programming. I know it's not a human we all get that, but the sense of humanity is fucking terrifying. And personalization, I think in particular, it's like reusing your own kind of language based on your interactions that you had with it so far. So then for me, I think about it, so,
how do you harness the good of that? Like, how do I take the fact that this thing could personalize feedback or ideas or god forbid, provide me coaching that is actually personalized to me based on what it knows about me. And so the way I'm thinking about this is, I mean I think about it in so many ways. Well, one of the ways I think about it, this is giving before the interaction I have, giving it a role
to take on. And so the most common role that I encourage leads to use not to talk myself out of a job, because I think there'll always be a role at the moment.
TOUCH would for human interaction and human coaching, but I think of I tell leaders all the time, say to your chat TPT or Gemina, take on the role of world class leadership coach. Here is a situation I find myself in, or here's the conversation I need to have, or here's where I'm stuck. What do you think I
should do? And the questions and the responses that it will get give you are like super impressive based on the context that you've already given it in other interactions and the fact that it has a corpus of data from every single article that's ever been written about leadership coaching or insert whatever you want coaching, and you can then respond to the questions it asks you, and then it asks you another question, and on and on it goes, and you end up having this like dialogue with like
you mentioned, a bot that is actually pretty conducive to a pretty good coaching conversation. The thing I like about it is you you would know this more than anyone. Coaching doesn't scale necessarily one on one, and so in the context of leadership coaching, all of a sudden, it democratizes access to useful development and helpful personal reflection to maybe an entire organization twenty four to seven that is tailored to them. Now that's just one narrow example of
leadership coaching. Then you go down the path of like what if it helps you with you know, as your communications expert take on the role of world class comms consultants, review the transcript of this meeting that I just facilitated. What feedback do you have for me? How can I facilitate better? Who did too much of the talking and why?
Or I did that?
I mean, I'm trying to do this as a live example, which I'll share in my talk. Here's the first draft of this talk I have to give the keynote next week. Here's the audience take on the role of world class speaking coach. How we make it better? What am I missing? What am I not doing? And I'm going to say the feedback is crazy impressive, Like it's really impressive. Sometimes it's just I'll do a voice memo of me just talking shit and say this is a ramble. I'm thinking
it could be a keynote. Help me structure that, and it would be like, all right, here's what I think you said, here's how you could actually structure it. Here's a story you should use, here's your punchline. He's do a Q and A here, and like gives you a pretty good basis.
Now.
I think the thing about the outputs that we get that I think a lot about is our level of discernment is just as if not more critical, because to your point, it will tell you the wrong date, it will tell you something that is not true from time to time, and so if you don't have any level of discernment or critical thinking, you're going to end up taking a bunch of what it says to be true that's not true. And that I think is the risk, yes, one of the risks.
Yeah.
So I'm trying to use it every day in all sorts of capacities and that there are a couple like you.
Yeah, And I think that that knowing it's kind of like owning a Formula one car, and all I know how to do is sit in it and back it out of the drive at the moment. Do you know what I'm saying, It's like this incredible thing that can do all this crazy shit and I can just you know, reverse at twelve feet. That's like, but it's got so much capacity and ability that me compared to it depending
on the measure of intelligence that we're talking about. But if we're talking about knowledge base, well I'm a fucking eggplant compared to chat JPT. Right, I'm a fucking moccasin with a stinky foot in it. Right. So, but it's trying to trying to know how how do I even ask the question like what is the Because the quality of the output is dependent on the quality of the prompt and the question. So you ask dumb fucking questions, you're wasting. You know, you're backing the f one out
of the garage and driving it back in. You're not going around Albert Park at three hundred k's with your fucking wind in your hair in the wind. You know. It's like it's that, yeah, how do I And so I think we need to train ourselves to know how to optimize this, you know, and in this conversation, I don't know the difference between you and Tiff. But if tif's are seven out of ten in tech, I'm a two. But then if we compare me and my dad, well I'm an eleven and he's a one. Right, So it's
all context dependent. But I think being scared of AI and being scared of advancing resources and evolving resources is one understandable, but two not healthy because it ain't going away. Now, that doesn't mean your life's got to revolve around it or you've got to be dependent on it. But so pursuant to this conversation, the other day, Melissa goes, I'm just going to send you something, tell me what you think, and she sent me an audio file and it was
twenty six minutes or something. Tiff, I, I told you this about my lit review. No, No, so one of the papers that I'm doing for my PhD. So I'm writing three papers that hopefully will be published in academic journals. I've done mine, I've finished, it's been sent off. I've finished the second one, but it's in the kind of final draft state, right, still fucking round with it. The
third ones underway, and anyway, it doesn't matter. But so what Melissa did was she put my lit review, which is, by the way, I don't know, thirty thousand words, seventy
five pages. It's a systematic literature view where I started with eleven hundred give or take studies research papers and did a review and whittled it down to one hundred and thirteen papers that my paper focused on basically the output and the findings of all of these papers, looking at how meta accuracy, in other words, how accurately you can understand how others see you, how this has been evaluated and researched across different domains, and all of these things. Right,
it's two years of work this one paper. So she plugs in this paper that we've written. So it's a collaborative effort because you have three or four people working on the paper. I'm the lead researcher because I'm the student, but you know, other people look at it. But anyway, so plugged in this paper, and she sends me a twenty six minute podcast which took three minutes to produce of this Lady and man, I use that in you know, into Commas, having a conversation about this new paper that's
just come out. Yeah, it's fucking it. Almost made me cry. It's like, I mean, it's fucking amazing, So all I've got to do is and I may or may not. I was thinking about putting it up as an episode I spoke the other day. I riffed a little bit about my research in some detail, just to try to explain it to people. But honestly, they do a better job than I do, because it's just so much right in terms of like disseminating a lot of work and a lot of jargon and a lot of academic theory
and language. These two people in inverted commas, a lady and a guy are just having this conversation about this new research paper, this new systematic literature review and the findings, and it's a podcast about my paper, and honestly, it's you would not know. It literally sounds like two real
people having a chat. Yeah, it's mine. And that took and not only that, it distilled seventy pages of content and produced a twenty six minute podcast in minutes, in minutes, and it's all right, it's all fucking I don't even It just blows my mind. Yeah.
I think your point around the quality of the input determines the quality the output is such a profound one. One of the things I think about terms of the back to this, how do we help humans see that this can enable us to be more human or more effective as humans? Is like that is true when you have a conversation with a person, I mean you two would know this. When you're coaching someone, the quality of the question that you ask the person will determine the
quality of the response they give you. And sometimes you'll ask your question and you'll get a response in a coaching conversation and you'll be like, huh, that's not quite I didn't quite nail that question. Let me try a different question, or yes, that's not exactly what I think you mean. Tell me more about what you mean by that. Like, people who are spending most of their days focused on asking great questions of humans, I think are uniquely set
up to succeed in their interactions with these technologies. And conversely, if you want to get better at coaching people or asking questions, it's a pretty good way to practice is to ask ai for to take on the role of like coach client and practice asking questions on it and just see what happens. Because you, like you said, the quality of your question one center termine the quality of your output.
And let's let's add another layer to what you're saying. Let's add a metaperception layer to this, because the right question for Tiff might be the wrong question for the next forty two year old chick, you know what I mean, And the question that will totally make sense to Tiff will be psychobabble to someone else. Yeah, so it's not not even just the right question, but the right language and the right energy for that energy is the wrong word,
the right language, the right approach for that person. Yeah, I agree. You know. It's like when someone goes to me, how does that make you feel? I want to punch him in the face? Wrong question for me? Right for me? I'm like, fucking now, how does that make you feel? Fuck off?
You know?
By the way, I wouldn't punch anyone in the face. Let me say anymore, but I just feel like it, you know. But it's like it's even for me. Sometimes I roll my eyes. I'm like, oh my god, ask me a better question. Please ask me a better question, you.
Know, And because you want to provide a better output, but you kind of can't unless you get the better question. So it's I think there's a parallel here too, Like people, I feel like in conversations I hear with people talking about AI, people are really grappling and understanding with like, Oh I get it. The better question I ask, all, the more context I give, the better response I get,
and I feel like going. You know, the same is true with humans, Like are you aware that when you walk into a meeting and give no context and talk at people without asking any questions, of course they don't understand what you're talking about because your input is terrible quality. Think about the quality of the input. Yeah, And then
a sidebar. I think this relates to the one of the slightly creepy but really awesome prompts I've seen us and I've done this myself is when you say something like, based on everything you know about me, yeah, give me some feedback on what I might be really good at and what some of my blind spots might be, or you know, to go down one of your rabbit holes of like, what would the you experience be of me
based on all of our interactions? And the response it can give you is fucking wild, Like how accurate it called me out of my blind spots and I was like, holy shit, how did you get that just based on our interactions?
That's kind of creepy. Yeah. Yeah, but again, it's all to help you to be more self aware. I think. Well, there's a very famous saying that you've heard, everyone's heard, I think, but it's by an author who I've quoted ten times over the years. Her name's a Naas Nin and she said, we don't see things as they are, We see things as we are. Right, that's good, which speaks to this whole subjective version of my life. It's like, there's what's going on, and then there's my version of
what's going on, and they ain't the same. There's my world, and there's Pete's world and tips world, and then there's the world. You know, objective, subjective. But the problem is that a lot of people think their subjective experience is an objective reality. And that's when the shit hits the fan. So true, so true. You don't even recognize that you have a lens through which you look. Yeah, you just think that's the world. That's not the world, dude, No,
that's your version of the world. Yeah, ergo, you know, three of us in the same conversation, none of us in the same reality.
That's pretty Yeah. It reminds me of when you run a workshop and you get you know, someone in the feedback form afterwards will be like, that was the best workshop I've ever been a part of, and then someone else who are into the very same session and be like, eh, bit of a waste of my time. To be honest, we were in the same room talking about the same thing, but these two people just have like a totally opposite experience of it based on their own reality.
Correct correct or even you know, like on because I'm very sweary and I push the button a bit in all the envelope or or at least on Instagram, and the same thing that I know if I write you know, something with bad words in it, which I did last night, I put up a post and it gets a bigger than normal response, probably two, three, four, ten x, depending on what. But I'll always get an email from someone basically saying I thought you were more intelligent than that.
I'm so disappointed in you. I'm going to unfollow you, like I respected you all this stuff, and I'm like, I get it, I get it. But the disparity between someone going oh mate, you're hilarious, that's great, and someone else going, you're disgusting. You need to go to some mirrors from the same stimulus. And by the way, I'm not saying that the person who's negative, I'm not saying
they're right. I'm just saying I'm fascinated by the divergence of responses and how both of those people, both of those responders think they're right unequiped.
Right in their own head. They're right in their own head. Because no one wakes up in the morning going I'm going to behave like an irrational idiot today. I'm just going to get offended at everything, and I'm going to just walk through the world and piss everyone off. Everyone wakes up and wants to believe they're acting rationally with thought and that their perception of the world is the same as everyone else's. That's fascinating.
So there's two things I want to ask you. I'm going to put on. The first one is so as much or as little as you want to divulge, you know this is not at all a vulnerability test. What what was the feedback from AI that told you you need to do better? Like what to go? Hey, look, you're good at this, but you suck at that? What was that?
The paraphrase was you are constantly seeking more insight and examples and clarification for the things that you're interested in rather than going to do so. Kind of like stop asking me how to make this keynote better and just go and do the keynote. That was kind of how I interpreted it. And I was like, I mean, firstly, good point, chats empty, good point, fair enough, I'll take that on the gin. But also also, isn't that why
you're here? For me to clarify things and ask you things and for you to help me make them better. So I was a bit like I was actually not annoyed, but I was very like.
You were definitely annoyed because it's true because it's you know, like I don't know there would have been an example in there of my toddler has a small rash on his right knee, Like what should I be doing about that?
It's like constant seeking validation that I was doing the right thing, or being the right dad, or thinking about
my keynote in the right way. And I think this goes to honestly, it goes to something that I'm aware of in my self, which is that I have this tendency to always be looking for the A because at school, I was really freaking good at finding the A, figuring out how to get an A, and getting the A. Yeah, And it served me at school because I got a bunch of a's, But it doesn't serve me in many ways now because I'm constantly looking for someone to go, yeah, man, you got the A, to the point where my my
chat GPT is like, stop asking me for the A, dude.
Oh that is so good. That is And isn't it funny? How like where we get our sense of self worth or self esteem or you know, positive reinforcements or you know, for me, because I wasn't you. I wasn't getting the a's. For me. It was always about my biceps or how well I could do whatever, right, yes, yeah, and then yeah, and you just keep going back there. It's like, have you seen my veins? Like before we started, you said you look fucking skinny, and a little bit of me went, huh.
I met it as a compliment that I totally and I said to you, well, I've spent most of the last ten years at eighty five and right now I'm at eighty one, so you're actually right, I am. I am skinnier, Pete skinny. Yeah, don't tell whole bodybuilders. They look skinny, vascular, looking very vascular. It was definitely the winner.
Yeah, TIFF's got the chief. I did not get the A this time around. I did not get the A.
But it is funny how we do that, and it is funny how we carry that that childhood stuff. But I want to go just momentarily and then we can go wherever you like. Back to the question thing, Like we're talking about what's the you know, what's the best question for Tiff versus Don versus John versus Brian and Brian. But then there's the what's the best question? What's the question I should ask myself? Like, what's that's the question
I should ask me that I'm not asking me? I mean, the hard, uncomfortable, the fucking I don't want to ask this question because I know the answer. So I'm just going to stay up here in my denial and my avoidance and my fuck off. I'm too busy. I'll get to that later. And now I'm sixty boom. You know,
it's like, what's that question? Why? Why? Do I And this I've had this many times with people about lots of things, but one that a lot of people will identify, so their relationship with food, Like a lot of people just do and there's no judgment in this. This is
just my experience. This is my anecdotal evidence everyone. But just the amount of people who simultaneously say to me, I want to be fitter and healthier and a bit leaner, while on the same day putting shit in their body consciously, I'm like, let's I'm not hating on you, I'm not judging you, but let's leave into that. As Pete Shepherd would say, let's lean into that with some curiosity and go tell me about that, because you're not dumb, you're
you're pretty highly intelligent. And by the way, there's no wagon, and you didn't fall off it. There's no wagon to fall off, so fuck your metaphors. You made a decision, so let's just call it what it is. You didn't accidentally eat the cake or do all those things. And by the way, I wouldn't care, but you brought it up. You came to me and said, I do not look like sorry, I do not like how I look or how I feel or how my body works, and I went cool, I'm an exercise scientist. I can help. And
then you went, all right, here are my issues. And then on the way home you stopped at McDonald's. Let's chat about that. You know. So, I think those questions that we ask ourselves are the scary ones, but potentially the transformational ones. Totally agree.
I mean, I love that as a prompt not to just put everything back into that how do we ask that? But be fascinated if I asked it, what's the question you think I'm avoiding? I wonder what response I'd get. That'd be fascinating.
Yeah, basically, think right, exactly what's.
The question I should ask myself?
I don't know.
I don't know if you wanted to answer. The one that came to mind was I guess for me? Off the back of what we just said, there's probably a question like there's probably a question like how do you give yourself an a for me?
Rather than relying or expecting external validation for the thing that you're doing and waiting for it's okay because someone else said it was, or it's good enough because someone said it was. What does it look like to give that to yourself and how do you do that? More and more I could see myself having a little spiral and a midlife crissis off the back of that question. Yeah, are you a person? I don't know if this is true.
This is curiosity not assumption. Are you a person that you I feel like you really like being like knowing what's coming, being in control, being very prepped, cross your t's dot your eyes, like leave nothing to chance? Is that you not?
Really?
Probably?
But it looks different than I think what most people think of when they think that, Like, I'll walk into you and I have talked about this before, but I'll walk into a workshop or a keynote, for example, with a few ideas in my head on what I want to talk about, not like here's my script that I'm going to recite and replicate. So I want to say no, because I'm like, I'm quite comfortable in the ambiguity of
where's this thing going to go. However, you could argue that, well, you know, you're only comfortable doing that because you have a pretty good idea of where things are going, and you're prepped enough in your skilled facilitation. If you want to call it that, that you're confident that you'll go, you'll be able to handle whatever gets thrown your way.
So not to like dodge your question, because I kind of feel like I am, but I guess there is a preparation there, but it doesn't look and feel like what I think of when I think of preparation. If that makes any sense whatsoever.
We're diverging a little bit. No, that makes sense, and I think, like with you, for example, we were chatting about nothing to do with what we're chatting about now before we started recording, and I went, hey, I've got a meeting. We should start. Literally twelve seconds later we started with nobody even said what are we going to talk about? Like we did not We did not share one word about what the content of this might be
or what we might do. But like back to this thing of like just turning up to feel free to edit any of this or chuck it out if I say anything that I shouldn't say. But am I allowed to say that you've been doing a course, which is part of you know, all you're presenting stuff? Is that okay? So so Tiff and I have been chatting about this course that she's doing where it's helping her because she's now she's in the space, she's speaking to companies and teams,
and she's doing the thing right. And I think part of the challenge for her, for example, is she's going into this environment where there's like, well there's a bit of a process and there's a model, and it's not cookie cutter, but like it's almost like there's a template and in this period of time we do this. So it's somewhat formulaic, which is not bad because I think
formulas or formulae more correctly have a place. But then at the same time, she's a metaphoric dog with three dicks, right, she just goes where she goes, and she's a bit freestyle and a bit loosey goosey, and a little bit just relies on instinct intuition and with a lot of things make stuff up, not as in you know, not as in lying. But and I do a lot of the same, and I think you do a lot of
the same. What's the balance between like, when you want to get somewhere being strategic or you want to produce a good outcome, whether or not that's to be a world class speaker or a build a business or whatever it is, like how much strategy and structure and how much intuition and instinct. I don't know that there's an answer to that, but maybe if you could just talk about it for.
Sure if you things come to mind for me. One is I guess it depends on what your definition of success is. If part of your definition of success is to have a packaged up, highly replicable and repeatable keynote that you can go on a speaking tour and do the same thing and heap of money doing, then maybe the templated approach is right for you, because we know plenty of people that do do that and us very
successful of that. Versus if it's too I don't know, to create change within a room based on where people are at all the challenges they have for you, then that will look very different. Like I think back to what I ultimately think you to do really well and I try and do is meet people where they're at.
And I think the only way to do that well, not the only, but one of the best ways to do that is to have permission and flexibility in your approach so that you can get a sense of where people are at and then go and meet them there.
If you come in with your pre written script or your absolute scripted formula, that you do not deviate from what I promise you'll find is there's somewhere sometime there'll be an audience that is like, you are completely misreading this room and what we need right now.
And so.
I guess it's a philosophy that I think about a lot which is within structure their lives freedom. And so I think you can give yourself a structure, which is often for me time or a loose structure of Okay, well, using time, we say we've got two hours, I want to do roughly four thirty minute sections. And at the end of each of those thirty minutes actions, maybe there'll be a breakout or an interaction. Okay, cool, And so the ordering of those four might differ. The story I
tell to articulate. The point of the third one might differ depending on what's in the room. So I've given myself a structure, and I have some clarity in what I'm trying to do or what I hope will happen. But I guess the freedom is in the how. It's the how you get there, and in my experience, the best way, the how is to get a sense of what again, where the audience is at and try and
meet them there. Like ultimately we're talking about empathy. What's important to this person in the room or these people in the room, and how do I help them get from where they are right now to where they want to go? I think that's I think that's the the secret source of what you two do really well.
Tiff, how does that go with you? How did you like? How are you? How are you kind of going with this freestyle you spontaneous, organic you and the the you know, learning this or being in the part of this kind of program.
I feel like as I as I go through it, there's a lot of it is that feel similar to how I already structure and do that loose planning and chunking. But then there's all of these other processes of getting there that we're implementing. And then there's a bunch of learning that I'm doing, which is what I wanted was what might I learn about the stuff I don't even
know that I don't know yet? So I love that stuff, but I am super frustrated by the way of thinking that I'm not used to and the places it takes my brain that I don't want to have to go, and then I want to throw in the bloody towel and tell them all to get stuff and go I'm not doing it your way.
I'm doing it my way.
And then I'm like, well, this is the whole point of it was to learn, so just go through the process and take what you need. But it's good, it's hard, it's frustrating, it's exciting. At times, I get defensive about it because I'm like, no.
I've never done.
Of course I've done, and I've never had you know, I've never had a bad experience, and so I shouldn't have to do it this way. And it's like, well, you chose to do this, so shut up and knew the course.
That's such an awesome attitude, by the way of like the fact that you're putting yourself in that situation to get annoyed when you have every right to keep doing what you're doing because it was working. And yeah, I mean I find that inspiring to go. I mean, even thinking back to my response like yeah, but have you ever you know, I don't know, gone to a workshop where they teach you the best scripted way to write a keynote. No, I haven't because I haven't necessarily thought
that that's my style. But maybe I'm avoiding learning something that I might learn if I did that.
Yeah, I love I love being in a room and watching speakers that I've never heard speak like good at what they do, but I've never I don't know their content, I don't know their style. I don't know them, or maybe I know of them, but I've never heard them. And especially I mean, obviously it's more importantly when they're good. Even if somebody ruggles or somebody's not landing, you can still learn a lot, right, And just I take away stuff from that where I go, oh, that was so good.
I never even thought of talking about that that way, or the way that they have a particular skill at this, or just the way that they walk to the edge of the stage and stand still and look and don't say anything for like ten seconds. It's like she's saying nothing and she's saying a million things. How is this possible? Is she fucking magic? You know? It's just like there's I'm like, oh that you would not think that doing
nothing can be so powerful. But depending on what's going on in the moment, sometimes that nothing is exactly what the whole room needs and who would even think of that?
Yeah, I'm back to that up, but back to that idea of like, how do you meet the audience where they're at the right pause at the right time from the right person could be just what they need. I also have that experience of you know, you might be going, oh, interesting, I don't know if I would have used a story like that or framed something that way, And then you like look around and everyone is just on the edge of the seat, like loving the way that they told
that story. I go, Okay, check your bias is Pete, maybe you should be telling stories in that way because everyone's loving it. So like, what are you missing that you're blocking out because of your own preferences?
Yeah? Yeah, And I mean this all kind of just this talking to an audience that extrapolates like it could be an audience of five hundred at Crown, or it could be an audience of one at the dinner table, right, it could be one person. It's like, how do I talk to my kid about this thing versus my other kid who's real different to this kid? Well, how do I talk to my mom? Like if I want to get something across to my mum versus my dad. It's like two different species. It's like a cat and a dog.
It's like they're so different, you know. And the way that I need to communicate to my dad to create connection yes and ah, I don't know real kind of any kind of breakthrough is totally different to my mum, and they basically joined at the hip, you know.
Yeah, I mean I think of that as practical empathy. And sometimes when I'm working with corporates and you start talking about okay, so let's think about how we could empathize with the people we're working with or the people we're coaching or whatever, you get people that rotherise and go,
oh yeah, empathy. We've all heard about empathy before. But I think if you look at it practically, people inherently know that you talk to your mum differently than you talk to your dad, or you talk to your toddler
Pete far differently than you talk to your wife. And the reason we know that is because we have enough empathy to go, oh, I know what that person needs right now, and they need me to frame things in a certain way or explain it in a certain way or use a particular story, and that insight is to your point, that's how you connect with people one on one, but it's actually also how you connect with audio, like what does this room need right now? And how do I meet them there?
And there's a lot of high level guessing in that, right because, of course, because you've got fifty different personalities and fifty different backgrounds and brains and minds and experiences and windows through which they're observing, judging and interpreting you. And as you said, someone's sitting there going, he's a fucking dickhead, and someone else is like, where's this guy been all my life? He's a genius. I wonder if he's written a book? And can I have a photo?
And can I have a hug? And I have people that want to punch me in the face and other people that want to hug me at the same event, I'm like to both at once. One person hugs me while the other.
I think it was Seth Godin who said to me one day, when you're doing a talk like that, find your allies and speak to them and like, literally look the person in the eye that looks like they're the person that wants to hug you most for a little longer than you think necessary, engage them in eye contact, and just channel your energy to them, and that all of a sudden, other people will pick up on the fact that there's like a really cool human, authentic connection happening,
and they'll start to lean into that rather than kind of spraying and praying where you're just kind of scanning the room the whole one hundred and fifty people at
a time. If you look someone in the eye that's leaning in and nodding and smiling, and you're like, oh, that's one of my allies right there, and you talk to them, it's almost like other people pick up on that, And I think about it all the time, versus staring at the guy that's sitting there with his arms cross, going look at this there with like what a wanker. I can't believe I'm sitting here awayte my time with this guy. There's no point channeling any energy towards that person.
And how good is it when you feel a little bit like you're spinning your wheels and there's just you know, you sphink, there's just closed a bit, you know, and you look out and you see one persons why. There's always why. One person's like, yeah, that makes sense, yeah, and they're nodding, and then I'm like, think, fuck for you exactly, that that person. It's just like a bit of a godsend where it's like, oh, my little angel, my little self esteem builder in the moment, thank you.
They're giving me the A. They're giving me the A. That's what I'm looking for one And it's not because I'm doing a good job. It's because they're just a really nice impact exactly. They feel sorry for me, and they're trying to compensate for all the other motherfuckers that are glaring at me like I'm a bor on. So they're overdoing and on the smiling and the nodding. But I'm buying in anyway.
There's a people pleaser in the crowd, and I'm buying into what they're putting.
Now. I love it. Oh yeah yeah. And people that the same person that laughs at all your stupid shit. Hey mate, we love talking to you. You're a gun. Tell people how they can enjoy more of the Pea Shepherd experience.
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I'm happy to chat. Giddy up, but a cup tiff On behalf of the Pete night. We wish you well for tomorrow night's good luck outing. We hope you find a prospective partner because we know you've said yourself, the clock's ticking and you know, no pressure. But and at this stage if you're going tomorrow night. By the way, she's not fussy, so that's a joke. Everyone, don't send me an email and make sure you compliment her on the red shoes. Make sure she may well be the
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