Lab Notes x ConoVision Podcast Mix Oct. 25.24
Russ Hamilton: [00:00:00] Hello. Welcome to the show. This is Lab Notes. I am your host, Russ Hamilton, and I am excited about the show today. I hope you are well and thriving. Quite the times we're living in. I know. Quite the state of flux. I know. Lots of noise. Let's take a breath. And slow down for a second. Relax the shoulders, relax the jaw.
Just create some space in the body and in the room. That's what I'm trying to practice. I'm trying to do good things, but not take it all so seriously. Okay. What's top of mind? What are the headlines? Connection Lab is getting into social work. Yeah. We've been working with some immigration and newcomer programs here in Western Canada.
And the impact is amazing. Immigration, of course, is a growing issue around the world. And [00:01:00] Connection Lab is taking the lead in helping locals and newcomers collaborate. And help each other to prosper. My favorite line from a recent newcomer workshop is you can do the writing exercise in Farsi if you want.
Amazing. Next headline. We have a prototype for the new Connection Lab app. Are you kidding me? One of our superstars. Carolyn Sevos has been developing an app on Airtable that will enable participants to practice with the Six Box and stay connected to their cohort. It won't be available to the public to download this app, but it will be available for participants and program graduates who want to stay connected through practice and build feelings seen and heard and being curious and If participants choose, they can share their experience with other cohorts too.
This way, [00:02:00] organizations can get a heat map around how folks are showing up under stress and matching people who have the bandwidth to support others with those who could use a little backup. You know what I mean? You can contact us for more information through the website. Okay. The last headline before we dive into the episode.
It's less of a headline and more of an episode disclaimer. The person being interviewed for this episode is me. My friend Jim Conrad is launching his own media platform called ConoVision, and as one of his first guests, he invited me to answer some questions about Connection Lab, like, what the hell is Connection Lab?
It's a fair question, and it's always useful to simplify our offer for folks who are discovering it for the first time. I listened to the episode, I thought it was great, I asked if I could borrow it for Lab Notes, and here we are. So off the top, I just want to say that Connection Lab is a communication practice that [00:03:00] combines the principles of the performing arts with the principles of ontological coaching.
Those are the raw materials for the Six Box model and the six modules of Connection Lab. So the conversation kind of wanders in and out, a few different subjects. But this is a road game for Lab Notes. How fun is that? A crossover episode. So thank you to Six Box. Take it away, Jim. I am Jim Conrad, joined by Russ Hamilton.
Jim Conrad: Hello, Russ.
Russ Hamilton: Hello, Jim.
Jim Conrad: Russ, you have a company called Connection Lab. I do. Give me a thumbnail sketch of what Connection Lab does.
Russ Hamilton: Connection Lab provides workshops and executive coaching for organizations, individuals that want to get better at communication, presentation, and leadership development. It is a methodology that can save your business, it can save your community, and it can save the world.
Jim Conrad: How important in business is [00:04:00] communication.
Russ Hamilton: What's the scale?
Jim Conrad: I'd have to answer that question by asking you the same question.
Russ Hamilton: Yeah. So if we say 1 to 10, How important is communication in helping a business fulfill its potential?
Jim Conrad: Thrive.
Russ Hamilton: Thrive. I would say 9. 8, so a lot, before it's a business crisis, before it's a healthcare crisis, before it's a climate crisis, it's a communication crisis.
Jim Conrad: So companies that recognize this. Yeah. Try to then embody or teach these skills to their workers, but is that relationship changing between employer and employee?
Yeah. In the new technological marketplace.
Russ Hamilton: Constantly. First of all, it's a new technological marketplace every 15 minutes. That's right. So, it's constantly changing. We joke in our workshops and say, Well, at least that's the last change. Oh, thank goodness. Change. No more [00:05:00] changes. That's the la Oh, hang on.
I'm getting a text. Oh, there's a new change. Oh, crap. It's constantly changing.
Jim Conrad: And that's stressful.
Russ Hamilton: Totally. Very stressful. Again, on a scale. Some companies are very good at adapting. So they're very good at self diagnosis. They're very, you know, but those are very small companies. Big ones really struggle with adaptation and flexibility.
They struggle with, uh, you know, adopting new technologies. They struggle with adopting new cultures. You know, mergers and acquisitions. There's a new company that we're bringing in that's bringing a whole new culture. And while we want all the benefits of that organization, we're also bringing their cultural baggage and sometimes that can infect a whole part of our organization or like most of it.
So it's extremely dangerous for some companies to have poor self awareness and have poor self diagnosis skills and to kind of reject that we're in a river that's constantly changing every few minutes. Because there are companies that would prefer just to reject that that's true. [00:06:00] Yes. And just focus on what we control and what we're good at. And those companies are short lived and struggle.
Jim Conrad: What is the spark in a CEO's brain when he decides, or what, what is the information that he gets? Is it from a consultant? Is it from internal diagnostics to say, Okay, we need to hire Russ Hamilton, and bring him in with his Connection Lab methodology.
Because we're obviously not communicating. And how does that manifest itself in, let's say, the day to day operations of any company?
Russ Hamilton: A company that doesn't communicate well often has a very toxic culture, very protective, very siloed, very internally competitive. Dominant personalities tend to suppress introverts and quieter personalities.
Dominant personalities identify if the company is safe or not. The loudest person in the room gets to determine if the company is safe to communicate in. Right. Of course it's safe. Why wouldn't you think it's safe? Who doesn't think it's safe? And of course, everybody who's an introvert and doesn't feel safe [00:07:00] is gonna sit on their hands and not gonna communicate.
Cause they don't feel safe. So, we want to be careful not to generalize CEOs because they are as varied as any other kinds of human beings. So this idea that a CEO is suddenly, you know, its own unique thing, I want to be careful not to generalize.
Jim Conrad: Because some of those CEOs are brought in from other countries. Companies with other cultures. Yep. And now they either try to force their culture, what they've learned, upon this new organization that they're running. And they can do that because they're the CEO. Yeah. Uh, or they They have to try to adapt to whatever the culture that exists in that company. Now, usually if they're brought in, that company isn't, as a new CEO, that company isn't doing well. And so they have to try to turn things around, quote unquote.
Russ Hamilton: That's one story. Another story is the company has grown out of the founder. That, in fact, it's been very, very successful and the founder has helped it go from four [00:08:00] employees to a thousand, which is overwhelming for this person who is great at a technology or a service and has no experience organizing a board, organizing funding, organizing a variety of finance.
Organizing shareholders, IPO, um, I mean, this person has no experience with that, and so the existing board says, Look, you've done great, and we're gonna find a role for you, but you are not qualified to bring this organization to the next level. Right. Would you like to see it fulfill its potential? And that CEO, that man or that woman is inevitably, you know, gonna say yes, because this is great, but it's also very hard to let go. Yeah, I've seen a lot of varied experiences in the C suite.
Jim Conrad: Sometimes people Don't know if they built, especially if they built a company, they don't want to let go because it's so intrinsically tied to who they are. Their identity. Yeah.
Russ Hamilton: It can be an excruciating process to convince or otherwise remove a founder because they are now harming their company.
[00:09:00] And sometimes the founder is right when they put on the brakes and say, we don't want another CEO here, we don't want another C suite, because it is a culture based organization, and I am the magnet for that culture. And they can be right. Getting a new CEO is extremely dangerous. Have you seen I forget the film.
The name of it, but it's basically the story of Apple, Steve Jobs and the CEO and you know, they bring in the Pepsi guy, the CEO of Pepsi to come and take over Apple and he doesn't understand the product. He's trying to take all the money from the older computer and put it in all these new products and they don't want to invest in the thing that's making them the most money.
And jobs gets removed. And of course, that's, that's a pretty delicate story, but so are all these stories are enormously sophisticated and packed with nuance. And to your earlier question, the problem is usually communication, which can take a while to unpack. What does that mean, communication, because it is a galaxy of definitions and predispositions.
I've been [00:10:00] studying epistemology and linguistics as part of a requirement to really understand what's going on. And did you know that there were 6, 000 languages in human history? There have been 6, 000 languages recorded in human history. And of those 6, 000 languages, 5, 000 of them are impenetrable to the other.
Jim Conrad: We can't understand the other language. That's right. And there's no way of learning. Impenetrable. Wow.
Russ Hamilton: I've been caught in a winter storm in Magadan, Russia. Northeastern Russia. And man, there's no Spanish there. There's no, like, Latin based languages. There's no Scandinavian Germanic English. You are looking at You have no idea what they mean.
Jim Conrad: Only the locals know.
Russ Hamilton: And they look at you like, why are you standing in eight feet of snow? And it's like, well, we're trying to find a restaurant. But you can't have that conversation because nothing I'm saying is penetrable to the people hearing it. [00:11:00]
Jim Conrad: And, but when you said those languages were impenetrable, meaning, Even if someone tried to understand them, they couldn't?
Russ Hamilton: Oh, no. What I mean is there's no crossover between languages. If you get a teacher and somebody who's teaching you how to write and how to, do the alphabet and so on, I'm sure it's teachable.
Jim Conrad: Now, that speaks to what's happening today where the universal language is Quickly becoming our mother tongue, English.
Russ Hamilton: Yeah. It's still a dominant business language. It's still the language that pilots use in pretty much every commercial airline in the world. They use English. It's the language most often in finance, but language is also used to separate people. Think of twins in the house. Kids that are born together, they suddenly come up with their own language, right?
They can whisper and hum and talk and use hand signals, and the rest of the family has no idea what they're talking about, and they are pretty good with that. They're pretty good with the fact that nobody can understand it. So language becomes A way to separate [00:12:00] ourselves from people, and isolate, and in a way, elevate.
We're better than you. And now we're into a territory that is worth exploring to say, How is this an impediment to people around the world communicating?
Jim Conrad: How is language and tribalism? Is language part of tribalism?
Russ Hamilton: I feel like that's what we're describing. Yeah. I think language is self developed. It's interesting.
There's a couple of schools of thought around how lang because we don't know. Communication is one of the great mysteries of science. We don't know who was the first person to actually use language. We don't, we've seen artwork on the walls in France and Africa, but we don't know how it began.
There's the Noam Chomsky argument that says one day one person woke up and could do it. There's also the more anthropological background which is Over time Over time it was developed. Our guttural grunts and squawks and squeaks started to have Take meaning. Different meanings if we link them together in some way.
That's right. And Anthropologically, we would kind of as [00:13:00] chimpanzees kind of walk on all fours. And then we started to walk upright. We left our hands free to communicate, which was a whole new thing when we started to stand upright. And then when we weren't working as hard to do things, our facial expressions started to get involved.
And so the grunts with facial and with hands started to offer a communication source. So there's that school of thought. Those are the two primary schools of thought that it developed over time. Or one person woke up one day and started teaching everybody.
Jim Conrad: And we are, as human beings, we are symbol identifying, meaning seeking creatures, aren't we?
Tie that back into, in one of your seminars on leadership development, is meaning seeking. And value a part of the equation?
Russ Hamilton: Yeah. Well, what that, that question makes me think of is the distinction between autonomy and community.
Jim Conrad: Autonomy and community.
Russ Hamilton: Because everybody has their own definitions of value.
Everybody has their own definitions of who they are and what they are and what's happening. Often those definitions are [00:14:00] informed by the, what they're fed and what narratives they're consuming and media they're consuming. But the difference between autonomy and community, if you think of a teeter totter, and on each end of the teeter totter, one end is autonomy, the other end is community.
Where do I put myself at any given moment between auton Do I, am I, like, more on the autonomy side? What does autonomy mean? Autonomy means my, how I define my right to self govern, self determine. My autonomy, my experience, my senses. My sense of smell, touch, taste, sound, all these things. My personal experience in this world.
My right to determine who I am, to self govern, and to self identify. That's autonomy. Community is you and I in a room together. With some friends in the booth out there. And we're a little community doing a recording right now. On what we assume is a common mission to create some interesting content for Six Box.
Both things exist simultaneously. So in a way, this is our approach to duality. The particle and the [00:15:00] wave, that light itself is both a particle and a wave. Communication is both autonomy and community. Both have to exist simultaneously for a successful communication to take place. And we live in a society that tends to want us to choose, pick a side.
Do you want to be heavy autonomy and see the world as a threat to your autonomy or as a benefit to it? Or do you want to live in a community and see the world as a threat to the community or as a benefit to it? The Call to action is to embrace autonomy and community as two opposite things that are existing in the same place at the same time, duality.
Jim Conrad: When you're doing your seminars and explaining that concept, Yeah. Another part of your practice and methodology is to make people aware How they react under stress. Yeah. Because we react differently when we're relaxed and we have minimal stress. We can have certain ideals, certain ways and practices that we do things.
But then when we are under stress, all [00:16:00] manner of things begin to occur. Including, Reflexive thinking. Thinking that's been buried back in there for a long time, but as soon as we become stressed out, boom. It shows its strange, slithering, ugly head. Right. And we can all picture it's seen an alien. Right, right.
And that, that, that's, I mean, that's a physical embodiment of stress. Yeah. Bursting out. And now all of a sudden, you know, a boss who was a kindly, considerate, wonderful boss, and then all of a sudden the deadline hits. Yeah. He gets pressure from above. Yeah. And now he's throwing office chairs across the room.
Right. So, your methodology is to identify that? Identify when you're in a stressful situation, but more importantly, look at yourself and see how you react under stress.
Russ Hamilton: Yes, how do I show up under stress is the first primary question out of three primary questions in our Six [00:17:00] Box model. We have a Six Box model, three primary questions, three primary relationships.
The questions we use as lenses to look through at the three primary relationships, and they can be applied to everything. The first question in the Six Box model is, how do I show up under stress? And of course, as soon as I introduce that question in, A workshop, people kind of glaze over and start thinking about how they show up under stress.
And it's like, the answer's not great, right? So I can see their faces starting to change and they're like, Uh, you know, am I really supposed to? And I'm like, no, that's not the purpose of the question. The purpose of the question is a lens to look through at our three primary relationships, self content and audience.
If you want to check this out, you can do this on the Connection Laboratory website. We have our Six Box loud and proud there. And that's the framework that we step through into all of our work.
Jim Conrad: So the lens looks at self. Content. Audience. And the audience.
Russ Hamilton: Right. Those are our three primary relationships. How do I show up under stress is our first lens. And instead of going, oh, let me tell you about how I show up under stress, [00:18:00] that's not the purpose of the question in this context. Instead, people will say, well, what do you mean by stress, Russ? Because what's stressful for you might be different than what's stressful for me.
And I'm like, fantastic, let's have that conversation. And then the next follow up question might be Which of my skills and abilities disappear first under stress that I have an abundance when I'm chill and relaxed, which is a point you were making earlier. What a lovely thing to explore. The next follow up question is, can I notice how I show up under stress without judgment or correction?
Or do I automatically lay the boots into myself for being such a jerk under stress? What a bag of fertilizer. I showed up that way. I'm supposed to be a protagonist. professional, but here I am, right, and now I'm supposed to be the model for all of you, and no, no, arf, right? Can I notice how I show up under stress without judgment or correction?
And the target phrase, anytime I notice how I'm showing up under stress, the target phrase is, isn't that bad? Interesting. Because that one phrase means it's not right, it's not wrong, it's not good, [00:19:00] it's not bad, it's just how I'm showing up under stress.
You're listening to Lab Notes, the Connection Lab podcast.
Podcast Break: I'm Russ Hamilton, and I am being interviewed by my friend Jim Conrad at Six Box. Connection Lab is a communication practice that combines the principles of the performing arts with ontological coaching. It's very cool. It really works. And for more information about it all, our workshops, our coaching programs, you can visit our website at connectionlaboratory.com
Russ Hamilton: Another follow up question we ask is, does my audience know more about how I show up under stress than I do?
Jim Conrad: And the audience could be anybody.
Russ Hamilton: Could be anybody in front of you, could be one person, could be the person across from you on the bus.
Jim Conrad: And that speaks to relationship. That's right. You have to be, you have to be in relationship in order to have an audience.
Russ Hamilton: But if I have like a tick that I don't know about and the person sitting across from me on the bus is like, Oh, I hope they're okay. That person knows more about how I'm showing up under stress than I do, right?
Jim Conrad: Because of our innate [00:20:00] inability to see ourselves.
Russ Hamilton: I can't have your experience of me. I can't have your experience of me. I can only have, I'm busy in here trying to manage what's going on, and the same for you, man. So, this question, how do I show up under stress, is a place that we can just spend the rest of our lives, and people do. In our case, we use that question, and it pivots into the next question, which, the next primary question, which is, how do I want to show up under stress?
If I could choose, I can't, end stress in my life. And the fact is, I quite like some forms of stress. I show up really well under it. I like deadlines and things. I show up well in game time situations. I kind of love that excitement. Other people are like, Oh, some kinds of stress are just absolutely debilitating.
But how do I want to, if I could choose? I want to honor the stress that I'm under and still find a way, develop my relationship to stress to such a point where I can choose how I show up in this moment instead of my stress choosing for me That's what usually happens. There's a moment where I just [00:21:00] shrug and I step away from the wheel and my stress takes over and the next thing you know, I'm throwing furniture across the room and I'm going to have to rebuild relationships or find a new job or a new spouse or who knows what, because I show up poorly under stress.
Jim Conrad: Sometimes that reaction is a reflexive reaction. response from something deep inside you. So, what you're doing essentially is kind of business therapy?
Russ Hamilton: Yeah. I mean, if that's language that's comfortable for you, I'm not sure I would use that language, but I'm not attached to it. I'm not attached to outcomes so much.
What I'm interested in is introducing these questions and this methodology, and then helping people use it. So if they start attaching their own language to it, fantastic. If that's, if it's business therapy, fantastic. Use that.
Jim Conrad: So how does stress then influence through with the lens onto content?
Russ Hamilton: Yeah, so if we finish the Six Box, how do I show up under stress, question one, how do I want to show up under stress, question two, question three is what do I want to get better at, right?
If I'm noticing how I'm showing up under stress, if there's a [00:22:00] gap between how I'm showing up under stress and how I would choose to, what do I want to get better at? What competencies do I want to get better at? So I can start choosing how I show up under stress instead of my stress choosing for me. And people will say, Well, Russ, can I put anything on that list that I'm trying to get better at?
And the answer is yes. Can I put my golf swing on the list? Yes, if that's what you want to get. Like making Thai food? Yes, if that's what you want to get better at. But if you find yourself in a team lead situation, if you find yourself, leading a team of people or an organization or a community center or a family, you might want to start identifying competencies.
That will help you and your team fulfill your potential and I say it like it's easy identifying the outcome is easy But identifying the competency that's gonna lead to that outcome. Oh, that's a good question What is the competency and when I say competency, what's the thing I can practice right but like piano Or a saxophone, or whatever.
So those are our three primary questions. How do I show up under stress? How do I want to show up under stress? What do I want to get [00:23:00] better at? Our three primary relationships are self, content, and audience. My relationship to myself. How's my breathing? How's my hydration? How's my fitness? How's my sleep?
How's my nutrition? People dedicate their lives to this relationship and it's a perfectly noble way to spend your life. To your point, What is my content? That's our second primary relationship. What am I good at? How did I get good? What do I make every day? What artifacts do I create every day? And what if I don't make artifacts?
What if I just have conversations? Does that count? What value am I bringing to these conversations? What experience or ambition? That's our second primary relationship is relationship to content. Over there in the right hand corner is relationship to audience. And this is a big one. I mean, not that all of them are big, but does my audience feel seen by me?
Right? Well, first of all, who's watching me? At any given moment, and can I see them? But does my audience feel seen? And almost more importantly, who decides if my audience feels seen? And this is a lovely moment in the workshop where people, make the thinking face, and who decides if my [00:24:00] audience feels seen by me?
And people will guess, but usually it funnels down to, don't I decide if I feel seen? If you're the presenter and I'm the audience? Yes, if you're the audience, you decide if you feel seen. We all decide if we feel seen. This is part of autonomy.
Jim Conrad: And how do we know if we feel seen by the presenter?
Russ Hamilton: Well, that's a great question.
Yes. What is the, and notice the word, the operative word is feel. feel. Yeah. So it's a sensation of feeling seen. And usually it has to do with, actually, well, you people know when they feel seen. They feel seen by their pets. They feel seen by toddlers. They feel seen by members of their family who kind of accidentally connect with each other.
There's no methodology involved. We're just natural connected people where we're naturally connected to each other but we are increasingly in a world where that connection is marginalized. And. Things that happen out of relationship are emphasized and amplified. But does my audience feel seen?
Does my audience feel heard? Does [00:25:00] my audience feel necessary for this presentation? Does my audience feel invited to inform my process and my content? What is my feedback process? What's it really in service of? All of these questions under the relationship of audience imply a set of competencies that I can practice or not in service of that relationship.
So now we have three primary questions and three primary relationships. How do I show up under stress? How do I want to show up under stress? What do I want to get better at? Self, Content, Audience Each of these relationships have their own set of competencies. It's like playing three instruments at the same time.
Saxophone, piano, and drums. Which is why people don't want to give the presentation. They don't want to stand up in front of the group.
Jim Conrad: Most people's worst fear is standing up in front of an audience and giving a speech. Yeah. Public speaking. Yeah. Now, why is that, do you think?
Russ Hamilton: So, I think there's a few reasons for it.
One is because you're playing three instruments at the same time. Yes. And the likelihood of failure is high. Yes. With at least one of the relationships. And people hate failing, they are terrified. One of their greatest fears is looking [00:26:00] stupid, looking foolish.
Jim Conrad: It's not the doing, it's how I will feel When I fail.
Russ Hamilton: When I fail. Not if, when. Yeah, when I fail. And what that, what's that gonna look like? Yeah. We have nightmares about it. We have nightmares, you know, the actor's nightmare of walking out on stage and not knowing your lines. Yeah. It's, it's an enormous primal fear. What we do in our workshops is we hold up and we say, isn't that interesting?
And then we actually practice. That in fact, you can play all three instruments at the same time. You can, you can breathe, all you have to do is slow down and in fact prioritize the relationship with the audience. Because once the audience feels seen and heard and necessary and invited, now you are no longer carrying the burden of a perfect presentation.
You're collaborating in the room, you're carrying this exchange with everybody who feels seen and heard. It's a collaborative effort.
Jim Conrad: So the operative phrase then would be The audience. Becomes [00:27:00] the content.
Russ Hamilton: I would say the audience co-create the content with you. You have your slide deck, you have your offer, but you've built it in such a way where you invite the audience to constantly inform it.
And if the audience feels seen and heard, they will even in silence, they'll lean forward. They will give, offer you their energy and their attention.
Jim Conrad: 'cause the mistake a lot of people do, make in presentation is if they have enough technology and fancy gimmicks, and slides, and whatnot. They can somehow perform an amazing, presentation that will wow everybody.
Russ Hamilton: Yet, people glaze over. Yeah. Because they're being talked at. That's right. They're not being talked to. It's a different instrument. If we go back to our Six Box, people try to improve their relationship with the audience by investing in their relationship with the content. Right. It doesn't work. If I change the content on slide 61 of a 90 slide deck, That's [00:28:00] really gonna get him.
Yeah, it's not. It's not gonna get him. It's a different instrument. Your piano playing is not gonna get better when you practice the saxophone. Right. Your saxophone playing is gonna get better. Yeah. Which is a priority. It's a primary relationship. You need good content, but it's different than your relationship with your audience.
Relationship with the audience is curiosity. What color are their eyes? What color are their eyebrows? What shapes do you see? We actually practice this in our workshops. And people start raising their hand when they feel seen. Because we get better as audience members and presenters. And we take turns being both.
And the more we practice, the easier it gets. What was I so afraid of? Are you kidding me? And people who were convinced that they were introverts and terrible presenters and terrible creators and just awful as a contributor, suddenly have to re identify themselves and go, what if I'm actually good at this?
Cause I just got a bunch of feedback from an audience, most of whom I didn't know, or maybe I work with consistently telling me that I'm the best presenter they've ever seen. And now. Their world [00:29:00] starts to wobble and shift because their whole world, their whole identity is rocked. I am not a good communicator.
I've grown up my whole life knowing I'm not a good communicator. I've always felt that I had things to say, but I, this. Never la I've never had the tools, I've never had the methodology that's gonna help me close that gap and make it possible, make it collaborative. And the moment it becomes collaborative and they get feedback from the audience saying, I can't wait to see every presentation you do, you are so good at this.
That messes people up.
Jim Conrad: And that can be life changing
Russ Hamilton: Repeatedly. That's why I had the best job in the world.
Jim Conrad: If you were to give me an example of someone who had a breakthrough Hmm. In your personal experience over many years of doing this, what would it be?
Russ Hamilton: So I have many to choose from. The person I'm thinking of Is probably 2016, 2017. I'm in Boulder, Colorado. I've been working with an [00:30:00] organization for six years. We're doing module two of Connection Lab, Demand a Call to Action. We have eight people in the workshop. One woman gets up on stage. I put her in her late fifties, maybe. She's well dressed. She looks great, she's standing on stage, she's breathing, she's confident, and it's amazing.
And so she's gonna, she's gonna do her presentation, whatever that is, and very quietly she says, you don't remember me, do you? And I said, let's assume I don't. Ha ha ha ha ha! I have a lot of participants in the world, can you remind me how we know each other? And she said, you were here just about three years ago doing module, doing a bunch of module work with Connection Lab. And she said, I looked very different in that workshop. And I said, okay. And she said, I don't know if you remember me, but I was wearing dark, gray, black clothes. I was wearing a smock. I tried to hide in the world all [00:31:00] the time. I had gray, long hair, and I hid behind it.
And I said, I do remember you. And she said, I did module one of your workshop and I wept like a child because I was facing my worst fears and you helped me see that there were really nothing to be afraid of and the more I practiced and the more I took a breath and just filled my lungs from the bottom up and sought the answer in relationship with my audience because I felt so alone and so But when I started to practice confronting what I thought was my worst fear, actually connecting with people, it wasn't so bad.
People were kind of rooting for me. And I kind of had this breakthrough moment. And you asked me to tie my hair back, and so I did. I pulled it into a ponytail so people could see me. And I did my presentation, and I did it with, you know, watery eyes and smile, snotty nose, and, but you gave me tissues and I cleaned up and I shared with the group what I want my leadership legacy to be.
And I got a round of feedback that I'd never heard in my [00:32:00] life. And she said I was so deeply moved by the first experience. And I took pages of notes and I stayed in touch with my cohort, the people I did the training with. And, four months later, my communication got so much better. I got promoted. I was suddenly on a team lead.
I'm leading 12 people, in our marketing department. And she said, I'd never been promoted like that in my life. And she said, I felt like, I was, I didn't belong there and it wasn't appropriate. But the more I did it and I, I became a communications leader on the team. Then, a year and a half later, I got promoted again.
And she said, as you see me today, I'm in charge of 35 people. And when I say in charge, I just model the practice of communication and people feel seen and heard and invited. And when I saw that you were coming back for module two, I was the first one to sign up. And I said, you have come a beautiful long way.
And she said, I really appreciate all the things you've introduced me to. And without your help, I would never be here. So I just, I [00:33:00] just want to say thanks.
Jim Conrad: That's a great story. Yeah. That's a great story, Russ. Thank you for being here. Give us a plug again for Connection Lab.
Russ Hamilton: Connection Lab is connectionlaboratory.com. That's our website. We have the podcast, Lab Notes, and yeah, we talk to participants all over the world who've been through the workshop and talk about their practice with the Six Box model and the six modules. So I encourage people to check out the website, check out I'm on LinkedIn and social media.
We're developing the app, which I'm very excited about. We're developing the board game, which I'm very excited about. And I'm finally writing the book.
Jim Conrad: Thank you, Russ.
Russ Hamilton: Thank you, Jim. Yay! That is our episode of Lab Notes. Thank you again to ConoVision and to Jim Conrad for this episode. For more information about Connection Lab, our workshops, our coaching programs, visit our website at connectionlaboratory.com go team!
Russ Hamilton: [00:00:00] Hello. Welcome to the show. This is Lab Notes. I am your host, Russ Hamilton, and I am excited about the show today. I hope you are well and thriving. Quite the times we're living in. I know. Quite the state of flux. I know. Lots of noise. Let's take a breath. And slow down for a second. Relax the shoulders, relax the jaw.
Just create some space in the body and in the room. That's what I'm trying to practice. I'm trying to do good things, but not take it all so seriously. Okay. What's top of mind? What are the headlines? Connection Lab is getting into social work. Yeah. We've been working with some immigration and newcomer programs here in Western Canada.
And the impact is amazing. Immigration, of course, is a growing issue around the world. And [00:01:00] Connection Lab is taking the lead in helping locals and newcomers collaborate. And help each other to prosper. My favorite line from a recent newcomer workshop is you can do the writing exercise in Farsi if you want.
Amazing. Next headline. We have a prototype for the new Connection Lab app. Are you kidding me? One of our superstars. Carolyn Sevos has been developing an app on Airtable that will enable participants to practice with the Six Box and stay connected to their cohort. It won't be available to the public to download this app, but it will be available for participants and program graduates who want to stay connected through practice and build feelings seen and heard and being curious and If participants choose, they can share their experience with other cohorts too.
This way, [00:02:00] organizations can get a heat map around how folks are showing up under stress and matching people who have the bandwidth to support others with those who could use a little backup. You know what I mean? You can contact us for more information through the website. Okay. The last headline before we dive into the episode.
It's less of a headline and more of an episode disclaimer. The person being interviewed for this episode is me. My friend Jim Conrad is launching his own media platform called ConoVision, and as one of his first guests, he invited me to answer some questions about Connection Lab, like, what the hell is Connection Lab?
It's a fair question, and it's always useful to simplify our offer for folks who are discovering it for the first time. I listened to the episode, I thought it was great, I asked if I could borrow it for Lab Notes, and here we are. So off the top, I just want to say that Connection Lab is a communication practice that [00:03:00] combines the principles of the performing arts with the principles of ontological coaching.
Those are the raw materials for the Six Box model and the six modules of Connection Lab. So the conversation kind of wanders in and out, a few different subjects. But this is a road game for Lab Notes. How fun is that? A crossover episode. So thank you to Six Box. Take it away, Jim. I am Jim Conrad, joined by Russ Hamilton.
Jim Conrad: Hello, Russ.
Russ Hamilton: Hello, Jim.
Jim Conrad: Russ, you have a company called Connection Lab. I do. Give me a thumbnail sketch of what Connection Lab does.
Russ Hamilton: Connection Lab provides workshops and executive coaching for organizations, individuals that want to get better at communication, presentation, and leadership development. It is a methodology that can save your business, it can save your community, and it can save the world.
Jim Conrad: How important in business is [00:04:00] communication.
Russ Hamilton: What's the scale?
Jim Conrad: I'd have to answer that question by asking you the same question.
Russ Hamilton: Yeah. So if we say 1 to 10, How important is communication in helping a business fulfill its potential?
Jim Conrad: Thrive.
Russ Hamilton: Thrive. I would say 9. 8, so a lot, before it's a business crisis, before it's a healthcare crisis, before it's a climate crisis, it's a communication crisis.
Jim Conrad: So companies that recognize this. Yeah. Try to then embody or teach these skills to their workers, but is that relationship changing between employer and employee?
Yeah. In the new technological marketplace.
Russ Hamilton: Constantly. First of all, it's a new technological marketplace every 15 minutes. That's right. So, it's constantly changing. We joke in our workshops and say, Well, at least that's the last change. Oh, thank goodness. Change. No more [00:05:00] changes. That's the la Oh, hang on.
I'm getting a text. Oh, there's a new change. Oh, crap. It's constantly changing.
Jim Conrad: And that's stressful.
Russ Hamilton: Totally. Very stressful. Again, on a scale. Some companies are very good at adapting. So they're very good at self diagnosis. They're very, you know, but those are very small companies. Big ones really struggle with adaptation and flexibility.
They struggle with, uh, you know, adopting new technologies. They struggle with adopting new cultures. You know, mergers and acquisitions. There's a new company that we're bringing in that's bringing a whole new culture. And while we want all the benefits of that organization, we're also bringing their cultural baggage and sometimes that can infect a whole part of our organization or like most of it.
So it's extremely dangerous for some companies to have poor self awareness and have poor self diagnosis skills and to kind of reject that we're in a river that's constantly changing every few minutes. Because there are companies that would prefer just to reject that that's true. [00:06:00] Yes. And just focus on what we control and what we're good at. And those companies are short lived and struggle.
Jim Conrad: What is the spark in a CEO's brain when he decides, or what, what is the information that he gets? Is it from a consultant? Is it from internal diagnostics to say, Okay, we need to hire Russ Hamilton, and bring him in with his Connection Lab methodology.
Because we're obviously not communicating. And how does that manifest itself in, let's say, the day to day operations of any company?
Russ Hamilton: A company that doesn't communicate well often has a very toxic culture, very protective, very siloed, very internally competitive. Dominant personalities tend to suppress introverts and quieter personalities.
Dominant personalities identify if the company is safe or not. The loudest person in the room gets to determine if the company is safe to communicate in. Right. Of course it's safe. Why wouldn't you think it's safe? Who doesn't think it's safe? And of course, everybody who's an introvert and doesn't feel safe [00:07:00] is gonna sit on their hands and not gonna communicate.
Cause they don't feel safe. So, we want to be careful not to generalize CEOs because they are as varied as any other kinds of human beings. So this idea that a CEO is suddenly, you know, its own unique thing, I want to be careful not to generalize.
Jim Conrad: Because some of those CEOs are brought in from other countries. Companies with other cultures. Yep. And now they either try to force their culture, what they've learned, upon this new organization that they're running. And they can do that because they're the CEO. Yeah. Uh, or they They have to try to adapt to whatever the culture that exists in that company. Now, usually if they're brought in, that company isn't, as a new CEO, that company isn't doing well. And so they have to try to turn things around, quote unquote.
Russ Hamilton: That's one story. Another story is the company has grown out of the founder. That, in fact, it's been very, very successful and the founder has helped it go from four [00:08:00] employees to a thousand, which is overwhelming for this person who is great at a technology or a service and has no experience organizing a board, organizing funding, organizing a variety of finance.
Organizing shareholders, IPO, um, I mean, this person has no experience with that, and so the existing board says, Look, you've done great, and we're gonna find a role for you, but you are not qualified to bring this organization to the next level. Right. Would you like to see it fulfill its potential? And that CEO, that man or that woman is inevitably, you know, gonna say yes, because this is great, but it's also very hard to let go. Yeah, I've seen a lot of varied experiences in the C suite.
Jim Conrad: Sometimes people Don't know if they built, especially if they built a company, they don't want to let go because it's so intrinsically tied to who they are. Their identity. Yeah.
Russ Hamilton: It can be an excruciating process to convince or otherwise remove a founder because they are now harming their company.
[00:09:00] And sometimes the founder is right when they put on the brakes and say, we don't want another CEO here, we don't want another C suite, because it is a culture based organization, and I am the magnet for that culture. And they can be right. Getting a new CEO is extremely dangerous. Have you seen I forget the film.
The name of it, but it's basically the story of Apple, Steve Jobs and the CEO and you know, they bring in the Pepsi guy, the CEO of Pepsi to come and take over Apple and he doesn't understand the product. He's trying to take all the money from the older computer and put it in all these new products and they don't want to invest in the thing that's making them the most money.
And jobs gets removed. And of course, that's, that's a pretty delicate story, but so are all these stories are enormously sophisticated and packed with nuance. And to your earlier question, the problem is usually communication, which can take a while to unpack. What does that mean, communication, because it is a galaxy of definitions and predispositions.
I've been [00:10:00] studying epistemology and linguistics as part of a requirement to really understand what's going on. And did you know that there were 6, 000 languages in human history? There have been 6, 000 languages recorded in human history. And of those 6, 000 languages, 5, 000 of them are impenetrable to the other.
Jim Conrad: We can't understand the other language. That's right. And there's no way of learning. Impenetrable. Wow.
Russ Hamilton: I've been caught in a winter storm in Magadan, Russia. Northeastern Russia. And man, there's no Spanish there. There's no, like, Latin based languages. There's no Scandinavian Germanic English. You are looking at You have no idea what they mean.
Jim Conrad: Only the locals know.
Russ Hamilton: And they look at you like, why are you standing in eight feet of snow? And it's like, well, we're trying to find a restaurant. But you can't have that conversation because nothing I'm saying is penetrable to the people hearing it. [00:11:00]
Jim Conrad: And, but when you said those languages were impenetrable, meaning, Even if someone tried to understand them, they couldn't?
Russ Hamilton: Oh, no. What I mean is there's no crossover between languages. If you get a teacher and somebody who's teaching you how to write and how to, do the alphabet and so on, I'm sure it's teachable.
Jim Conrad: Now, that speaks to what's happening today where the universal language is Quickly becoming our mother tongue, English.
Russ Hamilton: Yeah. It's still a dominant business language. It's still the language that pilots use in pretty much every commercial airline in the world. They use English. It's the language most often in finance, but language is also used to separate people. Think of twins in the house. Kids that are born together, they suddenly come up with their own language, right?
They can whisper and hum and talk and use hand signals, and the rest of the family has no idea what they're talking about, and they are pretty good with that. They're pretty good with the fact that nobody can understand it. So language becomes A way to separate [00:12:00] ourselves from people, and isolate, and in a way, elevate.
We're better than you. And now we're into a territory that is worth exploring to say, How is this an impediment to people around the world communicating?
Jim Conrad: How is language and tribalism? Is language part of tribalism?
Russ Hamilton: I feel like that's what we're describing. Yeah. I think language is self developed. It's interesting.
There's a couple of schools of thought around how lang because we don't know. Communication is one of the great mysteries of science. We don't know who was the first person to actually use language. We don't, we've seen artwork on the walls in France and Africa, but we don't know how it began.
There's the Noam Chomsky argument that says one day one person woke up and could do it. There's also the more anthropological background which is Over time Over time it was developed. Our guttural grunts and squawks and squeaks started to have Take meaning. Different meanings if we link them together in some way.
That's right. And Anthropologically, we would kind of as [00:13:00] chimpanzees kind of walk on all fours. And then we started to walk upright. We left our hands free to communicate, which was a whole new thing when we started to stand upright. And then when we weren't working as hard to do things, our facial expressions started to get involved.
And so the grunts with facial and with hands started to offer a communication source. So there's that school of thought. Those are the two primary schools of thought that it developed over time. Or one person woke up one day and started teaching everybody.
Jim Conrad: And we are, as human beings, we are symbol identifying, meaning seeking creatures, aren't we?
Tie that back into, in one of your seminars on leadership development, is meaning seeking. And value a part of the equation?
Russ Hamilton: Yeah. Well, what that, that question makes me think of is the distinction between autonomy and community.
Jim Conrad: Autonomy and community.
Russ Hamilton: Because everybody has their own definitions of value.
Everybody has their own definitions of who they are and what they are and what's happening. Often those definitions are [00:14:00] informed by the, what they're fed and what narratives they're consuming and media they're consuming. But the difference between autonomy and community, if you think of a teeter totter, and on each end of the teeter totter, one end is autonomy, the other end is community.
Where do I put myself at any given moment between auton Do I, am I, like, more on the autonomy side? What does autonomy mean? Autonomy means my, how I define my right to self govern, self determine. My autonomy, my experience, my senses. My sense of smell, touch, taste, sound, all these things. My personal experience in this world.
My right to determine who I am, to self govern, and to self identify. That's autonomy. Community is you and I in a room together. With some friends in the booth out there. And we're a little community doing a recording right now. On what we assume is a common mission to create some interesting content for Six Box.
Both things exist simultaneously. So in a way, this is our approach to duality. The particle and the [00:15:00] wave, that light itself is both a particle and a wave. Communication is both autonomy and community. Both have to exist simultaneously for a successful communication to take place. And we live in a society that tends to want us to choose, pick a side.
Do you want to be heavy autonomy and see the world as a threat to your autonomy or as a benefit to it? Or do you want to live in a community and see the world as a threat to the community or as a benefit to it? The Call to action is to embrace autonomy and community as two opposite things that are existing in the same place at the same time, duality.
Jim Conrad: When you're doing your seminars and explaining that concept, Yeah. Another part of your practice and methodology is to make people aware How they react under stress. Yeah. Because we react differently when we're relaxed and we have minimal stress. We can have certain ideals, certain ways and practices that we do things.
But then when we are under stress, all [00:16:00] manner of things begin to occur. Including, Reflexive thinking. Thinking that's been buried back in there for a long time, but as soon as we become stressed out, boom. It shows its strange, slithering, ugly head. Right. And we can all picture it's seen an alien. Right, right.
And that, that, that's, I mean, that's a physical embodiment of stress. Yeah. Bursting out. And now all of a sudden, you know, a boss who was a kindly, considerate, wonderful boss, and then all of a sudden the deadline hits. Yeah. He gets pressure from above. Yeah. And now he's throwing office chairs across the room.
Right. So, your methodology is to identify that? Identify when you're in a stressful situation, but more importantly, look at yourself and see how you react under stress.
Russ Hamilton: Yes, how do I show up under stress is the first primary question out of three primary questions in our Six [00:17:00] Box model. We have a Six Box model, three primary questions, three primary relationships.
The questions we use as lenses to look through at the three primary relationships, and they can be applied to everything. The first question in the Six Box model is, how do I show up under stress? And of course, as soon as I introduce that question in, A workshop, people kind of glaze over and start thinking about how they show up under stress.
And it's like, the answer's not great, right? So I can see their faces starting to change and they're like, Uh, you know, am I really supposed to? And I'm like, no, that's not the purpose of the question. The purpose of the question is a lens to look through at our three primary relationships, self content and audience.
If you want to check this out, you can do this on the Connection Laboratory website. We have our Six Box loud and proud there. And that's the framework that we step through into all of our work.
Jim Conrad: So the lens looks at self. Content. Audience. And the audience.
Russ Hamilton: Right. Those are our three primary relationships. How do I show up under stress is our first lens. And instead of going, oh, let me tell you about how I show up under stress, [00:18:00] that's not the purpose of the question in this context. Instead, people will say, well, what do you mean by stress, Russ? Because what's stressful for you might be different than what's stressful for me.
And I'm like, fantastic, let's have that conversation. And then the next follow up question might be Which of my skills and abilities disappear first under stress that I have an abundance when I'm chill and relaxed, which is a point you were making earlier. What a lovely thing to explore. The next follow up question is, can I notice how I show up under stress without judgment or correction?
Or do I automatically lay the boots into myself for being such a jerk under stress? What a bag of fertilizer. I showed up that way. I'm supposed to be a protagonist. professional, but here I am, right, and now I'm supposed to be the model for all of you, and no, no, arf, right? Can I notice how I show up under stress without judgment or correction?
And the target phrase, anytime I notice how I'm showing up under stress, the target phrase is, isn't that bad? Interesting. Because that one phrase means it's not right, it's not wrong, it's not good, [00:19:00] it's not bad, it's just how I'm showing up under stress.
You're listening to Lab Notes, the Connection Lab podcast.
Podcast Break: I'm Russ Hamilton, and I am being interviewed by my friend Jim Conrad at Six Box. Connection Lab is a communication practice that combines the principles of the performing arts with ontological coaching. It's very cool. It really works. And for more information about it all, our workshops, our coaching programs, you can visit our website at connectionlaboratory.com
Russ Hamilton: Another follow up question we ask is, does my audience know more about how I show up under stress than I do?
Jim Conrad: And the audience could be anybody.
Russ Hamilton: Could be anybody in front of you, could be one person, could be the person across from you on the bus.
Jim Conrad: And that speaks to relationship. That's right. You have to be, you have to be in relationship in order to have an audience.
Russ Hamilton: But if I have like a tick that I don't know about and the person sitting across from me on the bus is like, Oh, I hope they're okay. That person knows more about how I'm showing up under stress than I do, right?
Jim Conrad: Because of our innate [00:20:00] inability to see ourselves.
Russ Hamilton: I can't have your experience of me. I can't have your experience of me. I can only have, I'm busy in here trying to manage what's going on, and the same for you, man. So, this question, how do I show up under stress, is a place that we can just spend the rest of our lives, and people do. In our case, we use that question, and it pivots into the next question, which, the next primary question, which is, how do I want to show up under stress?
If I could choose, I can't, end stress in my life. And the fact is, I quite like some forms of stress. I show up really well under it. I like deadlines and things. I show up well in game time situations. I kind of love that excitement. Other people are like, Oh, some kinds of stress are just absolutely debilitating.
But how do I want to, if I could choose? I want to honor the stress that I'm under and still find a way, develop my relationship to stress to such a point where I can choose how I show up in this moment instead of my stress choosing for me That's what usually happens. There's a moment where I just [00:21:00] shrug and I step away from the wheel and my stress takes over and the next thing you know, I'm throwing furniture across the room and I'm going to have to rebuild relationships or find a new job or a new spouse or who knows what, because I show up poorly under stress.
Jim Conrad: Sometimes that reaction is a reflexive reaction. response from something deep inside you. So, what you're doing essentially is kind of business therapy?
Russ Hamilton: Yeah. I mean, if that's language that's comfortable for you, I'm not sure I would use that language, but I'm not attached to it. I'm not attached to outcomes so much.
What I'm interested in is introducing these questions and this methodology, and then helping people use it. So if they start attaching their own language to it, fantastic. If that's, if it's business therapy, fantastic. Use that.
Jim Conrad: So how does stress then influence through with the lens onto content?
Russ Hamilton: Yeah, so if we finish the Six Box, how do I show up under stress, question one, how do I want to show up under stress, question two, question three is what do I want to get better at, right?
If I'm noticing how I'm showing up under stress, if there's a [00:22:00] gap between how I'm showing up under stress and how I would choose to, what do I want to get better at? What competencies do I want to get better at? So I can start choosing how I show up under stress instead of my stress choosing for me. And people will say, Well, Russ, can I put anything on that list that I'm trying to get better at?
And the answer is yes. Can I put my golf swing on the list? Yes, if that's what you want to get. Like making Thai food? Yes, if that's what you want to get better at. But if you find yourself in a team lead situation, if you find yourself, leading a team of people or an organization or a community center or a family, you might want to start identifying competencies.
That will help you and your team fulfill your potential and I say it like it's easy identifying the outcome is easy But identifying the competency that's gonna lead to that outcome. Oh, that's a good question What is the competency and when I say competency, what's the thing I can practice right but like piano Or a saxophone, or whatever.
So those are our three primary questions. How do I show up under stress? How do I want to show up under stress? What do I want to get [00:23:00] better at? Our three primary relationships are self, content, and audience. My relationship to myself. How's my breathing? How's my hydration? How's my fitness? How's my sleep?
How's my nutrition? People dedicate their lives to this relationship and it's a perfectly noble way to spend your life. To your point, What is my content? That's our second primary relationship. What am I good at? How did I get good? What do I make every day? What artifacts do I create every day? And what if I don't make artifacts?
What if I just have conversations? Does that count? What value am I bringing to these conversations? What experience or ambition? That's our second primary relationship is relationship to content. Over there in the right hand corner is relationship to audience. And this is a big one. I mean, not that all of them are big, but does my audience feel seen by me?
Right? Well, first of all, who's watching me? At any given moment, and can I see them? But does my audience feel seen? And almost more importantly, who decides if my audience feels seen? And this is a lovely moment in the workshop where people, make the thinking face, and who decides if my [00:24:00] audience feels seen by me?
And people will guess, but usually it funnels down to, don't I decide if I feel seen? If you're the presenter and I'm the audience? Yes, if you're the audience, you decide if you feel seen. We all decide if we feel seen. This is part of autonomy.
Jim Conrad: And how do we know if we feel seen by the presenter?
Russ Hamilton: Well, that's a great question.
Yes. What is the, and notice the word, the operative word is feel. feel. Yeah. So it's a sensation of feeling seen. And usually it has to do with, actually, well, you people know when they feel seen. They feel seen by their pets. They feel seen by toddlers. They feel seen by members of their family who kind of accidentally connect with each other.
There's no methodology involved. We're just natural connected people where we're naturally connected to each other but we are increasingly in a world where that connection is marginalized. And. Things that happen out of relationship are emphasized and amplified. But does my audience feel seen?
Does my audience feel heard? Does [00:25:00] my audience feel necessary for this presentation? Does my audience feel invited to inform my process and my content? What is my feedback process? What's it really in service of? All of these questions under the relationship of audience imply a set of competencies that I can practice or not in service of that relationship.
So now we have three primary questions and three primary relationships. How do I show up under stress? How do I want to show up under stress? What do I want to get better at? Self, Content, Audience Each of these relationships have their own set of competencies. It's like playing three instruments at the same time.
Saxophone, piano, and drums. Which is why people don't want to give the presentation. They don't want to stand up in front of the group.
Jim Conrad: Most people's worst fear is standing up in front of an audience and giving a speech. Yeah. Public speaking. Yeah. Now, why is that, do you think?
Russ Hamilton: So, I think there's a few reasons for it.
One is because you're playing three instruments at the same time. Yes. And the likelihood of failure is high. Yes. With at least one of the relationships. And people hate failing, they are terrified. One of their greatest fears is looking [00:26:00] stupid, looking foolish.
Jim Conrad: It's not the doing, it's how I will feel When I fail.
Russ Hamilton: When I fail. Not if, when. Yeah, when I fail. And what that, what's that gonna look like? Yeah. We have nightmares about it. We have nightmares, you know, the actor's nightmare of walking out on stage and not knowing your lines. Yeah. It's, it's an enormous primal fear. What we do in our workshops is we hold up and we say, isn't that interesting?
And then we actually practice. That in fact, you can play all three instruments at the same time. You can, you can breathe, all you have to do is slow down and in fact prioritize the relationship with the audience. Because once the audience feels seen and heard and necessary and invited, now you are no longer carrying the burden of a perfect presentation.
You're collaborating in the room, you're carrying this exchange with everybody who feels seen and heard. It's a collaborative effort.
Jim Conrad: So the operative phrase then would be The audience. Becomes [00:27:00] the content.
Russ Hamilton: I would say the audience co-create the content with you. You have your slide deck, you have your offer, but you've built it in such a way where you invite the audience to constantly inform it.
And if the audience feels seen and heard, they will even in silence, they'll lean forward. They will give, offer you their energy and their attention.
Jim Conrad: 'cause the mistake a lot of people do, make in presentation is if they have enough technology and fancy gimmicks, and slides, and whatnot. They can somehow perform an amazing, presentation that will wow everybody.
Russ Hamilton: Yet, people glaze over. Yeah. Because they're being talked at. That's right. They're not being talked to. It's a different instrument. If we go back to our Six Box, people try to improve their relationship with the audience by investing in their relationship with the content. Right. It doesn't work. If I change the content on slide 61 of a 90 slide deck, That's [00:28:00] really gonna get him.
Yeah, it's not. It's not gonna get him. It's a different instrument. Your piano playing is not gonna get better when you practice the saxophone. Right. Your saxophone playing is gonna get better. Yeah. Which is a priority. It's a primary relationship. You need good content, but it's different than your relationship with your audience.
Relationship with the audience is curiosity. What color are their eyes? What color are their eyebrows? What shapes do you see? We actually practice this in our workshops. And people start raising their hand when they feel seen. Because we get better as audience members and presenters. And we take turns being both.
And the more we practice, the easier it gets. What was I so afraid of? Are you kidding me? And people who were convinced that they were introverts and terrible presenters and terrible creators and just awful as a contributor, suddenly have to re identify themselves and go, what if I'm actually good at this?
Cause I just got a bunch of feedback from an audience, most of whom I didn't know, or maybe I work with consistently telling me that I'm the best presenter they've ever seen. And now. Their world [00:29:00] starts to wobble and shift because their whole world, their whole identity is rocked. I am not a good communicator.
I've grown up my whole life knowing I'm not a good communicator. I've always felt that I had things to say, but I, this. Never la I've never had the tools, I've never had the methodology that's gonna help me close that gap and make it possible, make it collaborative. And the moment it becomes collaborative and they get feedback from the audience saying, I can't wait to see every presentation you do, you are so good at this.
That messes people up.
Jim Conrad: And that can be life changing
Russ Hamilton: Repeatedly. That's why I had the best job in the world.
Jim Conrad: If you were to give me an example of someone who had a breakthrough Hmm. In your personal experience over many years of doing this, what would it be?
Russ Hamilton: So I have many to choose from. The person I'm thinking of Is probably 2016, 2017. I'm in Boulder, Colorado. I've been working with an [00:30:00] organization for six years. We're doing module two of Connection Lab, Demand a Call to Action. We have eight people in the workshop. One woman gets up on stage. I put her in her late fifties, maybe. She's well dressed. She looks great, she's standing on stage, she's breathing, she's confident, and it's amazing.
And so she's gonna, she's gonna do her presentation, whatever that is, and very quietly she says, you don't remember me, do you? And I said, let's assume I don't. Ha ha ha ha ha! I have a lot of participants in the world, can you remind me how we know each other? And she said, you were here just about three years ago doing module, doing a bunch of module work with Connection Lab. And she said, I looked very different in that workshop. And I said, okay. And she said, I don't know if you remember me, but I was wearing dark, gray, black clothes. I was wearing a smock. I tried to hide in the world all [00:31:00] the time. I had gray, long hair, and I hid behind it.
And I said, I do remember you. And she said, I did module one of your workshop and I wept like a child because I was facing my worst fears and you helped me see that there were really nothing to be afraid of and the more I practiced and the more I took a breath and just filled my lungs from the bottom up and sought the answer in relationship with my audience because I felt so alone and so But when I started to practice confronting what I thought was my worst fear, actually connecting with people, it wasn't so bad.
People were kind of rooting for me. And I kind of had this breakthrough moment. And you asked me to tie my hair back, and so I did. I pulled it into a ponytail so people could see me. And I did my presentation, and I did it with, you know, watery eyes and smile, snotty nose, and, but you gave me tissues and I cleaned up and I shared with the group what I want my leadership legacy to be.
And I got a round of feedback that I'd never heard in my [00:32:00] life. And she said I was so deeply moved by the first experience. And I took pages of notes and I stayed in touch with my cohort, the people I did the training with. And, four months later, my communication got so much better. I got promoted. I was suddenly on a team lead.
I'm leading 12 people, in our marketing department. And she said, I'd never been promoted like that in my life. And she said, I felt like, I was, I didn't belong there and it wasn't appropriate. But the more I did it and I, I became a communications leader on the team. Then, a year and a half later, I got promoted again.
And she said, as you see me today, I'm in charge of 35 people. And when I say in charge, I just model the practice of communication and people feel seen and heard and invited. And when I saw that you were coming back for module two, I was the first one to sign up. And I said, you have come a beautiful long way.
And she said, I really appreciate all the things you've introduced me to. And without your help, I would never be here. So I just, I [00:33:00] just want to say thanks.
Jim Conrad: That's a great story. Yeah. That's a great story, Russ. Thank you for being here. Give us a plug again for Connection Lab.
Russ Hamilton: Connection Lab is connectionlaboratory.com. That's our website. We have the podcast, Lab Notes, and yeah, we talk to participants all over the world who've been through the workshop and talk about their practice with the Six Box model and the six modules. So I encourage people to check out the website, check out I'm on LinkedIn and social media.
We're developing the app, which I'm very excited about. We're developing the board game, which I'm very excited about. And I'm finally writing the book.
Jim Conrad: Thank you, Russ.
Russ Hamilton: Thank you, Jim. Yay! That is our episode of Lab Notes. Thank you again to ConoVision and to Jim Conrad for this episode. For more information about Connection Lab, our workshops, our coaching programs, visit our website at connectionlaboratory.com go team!
