Rachel Losser: Hi, I'm Rachel Losser, founder and managing partner of Losser Consulting Solutions, and you're listening to Big Project Energy, the podcast where we talk about controlling chaos, managing teams, and driving real project success. I am so excited to have a guest here, Dave Thompson. Dave has a really cool background, and I'm really super excited to chat. Dave and I know each other kind of as acquaintances through some of our circles and I've been really excited to sit down and talk to him. He is the CEO of Wicklander-Zulawski (or WZ) and Associates and has trained over 15,000 leaders, is a certified forensic interviewer, which I think is we'll we'll dive into that. That's very cool. And is the host of the Truth Be Told Podcast. So Dave, thank you, thank you so much for agreeing to do this.
Dave Thompson, CFI: No, I'm super excited. I I've been walking around with Big Project Energy ever since I listened to your kickoff episode. So I'm all all excited about this.
Rachel Losser: You're too kind.
Dave Thompson, CFI: Yeah. Should we tell people that we first met with bourbon involved or should we avoid okay.
Rachel Losser: no, yeah, I'm all for that. if anyone is even within a little bit of a vicinity of me, they will hear me talk nonstop about our our little business bourbon crew that we've got going on. So Dave's Dave's in the crew and it's great.
Dave Thompson, CFI: No, it's awesome. I'm excited to join you and excited to talk about how our two worlds collide here when it comes to leadership and Project Management.
Rachel Losser: Yes, thank you. So I I right away was so intrigued when we started talking about the forensic, interviewing and please tell me a little bit about your work and for somebody who might not necessarily know about that world, just give me give me some spark notes.
Dave Thompson, CFI: Yeah, it's not what you see on TV, right? A lot of people think investigative interviewing or interrogation, which is the easier way people identify it. But our training firm has been around for 44 years. It was started by Doug Wicklander and Dave Zulawski. And really the concept was how do you sit down and have difficult conversations with people to try to get actionable, reliable, truthful information? And so in a short form, we conduct training across the globe for some of our law enforcement partners, federal agencies, and then also in the corporate world, right? Whether it's talking to fraud investigators, human resources, or just business leaders on how to handle difficult conversations, which as you know happens every day.
Rachel Losser: All the time. Well, that's that's very interesting. And when we were kind of talking about doing this, it there is such an overlap in what you're talking about and then some of the concepts we've at least started to explore in terms of managing projects and leadership and having some of those hard conversations. What what are some of the parallels you see when it comes to applying those concepts in the business world?
Dave Thompson, CFI: Yeah, there's so much we can talk about here. I the one of the first things that sticks out, you know, when you think about a Project Manager, and you can obviously speak a lot a lot more to this, but you're often trying to influence without maybe direct authority sometimes. And when I think about an investigative interview, you're sitting across from somebody who may have information. It could be a witness to a crime, it could be somebody who's a person of interest who did something wrong. It could be maybe a victim or a complainant. That has information that you would love to have that would help further your investigation, but they're not obligated to give it to you, right? You're not, you can't force somebody to give you that information or that cooperation. And if you do try to force it, you're probably gonna get more resistance, maybe false information. you're gonna get compliance instead of cooperation, which is not an effective way to get actionable details or to achieve the end goal of a project. And so I think there's a lot we can talk about here, but to me, the one of the more basic parallels is how do you sit with a team or with a person and try to gain cooperation when they don't necessarily report directly to you or they're not obligated to do so. And that comes down to just effective communication strategies and leadership and management of the of the conversation itself.
Rachel Losser: That is something that, you know, I deal with a lot. We're we're actually working on a large ERP implementation, and it's actually the ERP and all of the auxiliary systems. And in in those types of situations, especially like kind of that M&A world, the Difficult conversations are are so difficult in the sense that, you know, if you wanted to be the best change manager ever and get everyone's buy-in and sit down and talk about it all, like there are cases like that where you don't really get buy-in from the team. You just need them to kind of fall in line, which is such a such a difficult place. In a situation like that where you're just not in a position to sort of do it the right way, if you will, and get input from the team. W where does one even begin, kind of based on some of your training?
Dave Thompson, CFI: You begin with curiosity and being humble and trying to understand everybody sits at the table, what they're bringing to the conversation. I I can give an example of change management that I I went through. So, you know, as I mentioned, we've been around for four decades, which means when you're training something based off of social science, how to try to Get somebody to access their memory the right way, how to get reliable information, how to develop rapport and project empathy. There's so much research has changed over the last several decades. And so we went through a major transformation to our curriculum. What what do we teach? What do we support? what do we believe in? And when you go out there, and as you mentioned some of these numbers before, we're training tens of thousands of investigators. And we've done so for a long time, which means when you train something a certain way. And then all of a sudden recognize, wait a second, the research has changed, the science has changed, or or at least informed us. We got to change how we're training. And so we went through a pretty major overhaul of our curriculum, which not only meant changing the perspective of our clients, our external audience of here's the right way to do something versus what maybe you've been taught in the past. The other part was making sure that our own team was trained and bought into that change. And so I've got. Our team is just an incredible group of support staff and instructors that have been doing this job for a long time. And so when you ask people to change is different than telling them to change. And when your people are a part of the change, the decision making process is a lot different as well. And so I know I learned a lot in this process of how to do it right. I also learned through some failures I made along the way. And The one thing I'll leave that that with and we can explore it further. But I was so focused on what does this change look like externally? How does this gonna impact law enforcement? How's this gonna impact investigators? And we did a really great job of educating the public on why evidence-based interviewing is so important. What I think I had a gap on personally is I just assumed all of our instructors, all of our staff would just fall in line. It's obvious why we need to change. And my first step should have been. Let's let's work on this internally as a team first and make sure we're all aligned before we communicate to the external group and get their buy-in. And thankfully we've come a long way and I'm super proud of where we're at today, but probably could have done that more efficiently and more supportive from the beginning.
Rachel Losser: I actually I find I find this happens quite a bit. That when as a leader, I've been involved in planning the change. I've been involved in understanding the reasoning myself. And I've been living and breathing it so much that oftentimes I think folks even forget that there are people who this is gonna be their first time talking about this topic or you know, they don't have all that context that you do. Can you tell me a little bit more about how did you realize that you had done it wrong? And then what actually did you do to be able to take a step back and kind of bring everybody back together?
Dave Thompson, CFI: Yeah, it's a good point. I think one thing I've recognized, I had I I forget who. So I'm somebody that's listening, I'm not giving you credit, but I am in my head. I just don't remember who shared this with me. But they talked about having the curse of knowledge, which is what you just shared. And it's this, you know, when I think about when we changed our curriculum, I had done so much research and with a with a few other people on our team, but so much research and reading and understanding and conversations before I ever got to the decision or we got to the decision of making this change. And sometimes you assume everybody else is in your head, right? You assume I've done all of this legwork before I got to this point. So when we decide this, of course, everybody it makes sense to everybody else without recognizing that you got to catch people up a little bit to the work that the work work that you've been doing. And so I've seen that even in a training program as a really simple practical takeaway. Is you know, we'll have a training course, you got 40 people in the room, really experienced, incredible. investigators, right? Detectives maybe. And I've been in a class where I've given an assignment. So, you know, we've got like a group project. You guys are going to work on a role play or whatever it is. And I start walking around the room to kind of moderate how the project is going or how the, you know, the group exercise is going and realize everybody's doing it wrong. And it takes a minute and a little bit of vulnerability to recognize if everybody else is doing it wrong, that I'm probably the common denominator here. And so maybe when I gave direction in my head, everybody knew what I was thinking, but I didn't communicate it clearly enough. And so back to this example of, you know, we we focused a lot on again what the external audience was, what their perspective was when we made a big change. We measured responses from our email marketing. We measured any kind of customer, whether it was a complaint or support, what that looked like. We looked at evaluations from the class, really focused on. measuring that type of response. Internally, it took a little while and it started to become when I saw inconsistency in the training. And it was not by intent from instructors, it was by lack of support from my end of if if I was starting to see I've got five different instructors all maybe trying to teach the same thing in different ways, back to the other example, I'm the problem, right? The source is the problem. And so what we've done since then And just so proud of this instructor team, we now have a monthly continued education call that's all focused on instructor knowledge and they're bringing ideas to the table. instructors are leading those conversations. So they're out there doing their own research for change and for impact, bringing that to the table, and we're sharing that collectively as a group. And so what I learned from there is if you're going to make a change. Sometimes, like you said, you you just need people to fall in line, right? There's something that happened. There might be an immediate change you have to direct. But if you want more organic, intentional movement, you need to do it as a team. and that's super proud of where we're at today. And now I believe everybody in our team feels that same responsibility to grow. And now when we grow, we're doing it together.
Rachel Losser: I love that. You know what really strikes me about your mindset, which I I think should not be taken for granted, is your high degree of accountability as a leader. I think in a lot of the clients that we've worked with and just folks that we work with, that's so often that I've heard someone say as a leader, Well, I told them at this meeting one time and they're not doing it. My team sucks. They're the problem. And I'm like, so much to unpack there, buddy. So much to unpack, right? and so I really like that approach in terms of, hey, I'm the one that identified the problem, I'm the one who's taking accountability for the problem, and I'm empowered to solve this problem. I think it's it's crazy to think, but even just that trifecta is actually very rare.
Dave Thompson, CFI: And if you have people on your team, whether it's a project you're leading or you're leading an organization, if they're not coming forward to tell you that they're going to be late on a project or late on a deadline or whatever, maybe it's a performance issue, but it may also be you haven't created an environment where people are comfortable to share that with you. And so, you know, that's why I hopefully my team and if they're listening, they feel this way. But I think in and when you're in a leadership role, when you take accountability You're open to being wrong, you're curious about how you can be better, that it allows your team to feel comfortable to make mistakes too and to learn from them and own it. And it just creates a much more vulnerable atmosphere, which I think people are more engaged and more likely to communicate. And so, I mean, you know, when you're leading a project, the last thing you want is a surprise. And so if if something's not going well, I'd rather want to know ahead of time so we can diagnose it versus it's two days after the deadline. I'm wondering why nobody wanted to share that with me.
Rachel Losser: A hundred percent, a hundred percent. And just to kind of expand on your role as CEO and you know, kind of same on my end as as kind of leading the organization and the buck stops with you, how does your experience in sort of the interrogation, like how does that make you show up differently as a CEO than maybe somebody else might?
Dave Thompson, CFI: I think the one mistake a lot of leaders make is they're afraid to make a decision. and it's a difficult thing, right? You don't you don't want to make a decision that goes sideways and that disappoints people. You don't want to make a decision that, you know, causes the business to go go south or causes employees to feel disengaged. But not making a decision is going to do all of those things. and I know I I kind of played around in that area for a little while of all right, let me think about this, let me chew on it, let me get back to you. And then over time, you know, that's that's really disengaging for your team. They need clarity, they need confidence. and so when I say don't be afraid to make a decision doesn't mean that you have to have all the answers either. And so I think I learned both of those things is, you know, even though the buck stops, stops here, it doesn't mean all the knowledge comes from here. And so leveraging your team and other resources. And I am perfectly comfortable when we have, you know, when my my senior ops manager comes to me and asks for advice or approval on something, most of that conversation is asking her, well, what does she think? How does it work best from her perspective? Like I don't know the process as well as you do. So you you let me know and I'll just help guide guide the decision making process. So yeah, I think that's probably the you know, two of the biggest things is don't don't be afraid to make the decision. but don't feel like you have to have all the knowledge either. You do you have to have the confidence to give your team the ability to get to that answer.
Rachel Losser: That is hands down probably the the best way to articulate that. That's such a challenge with leaders is just getting to that decision point, getting all the information that you need, right? Don't fall into analysis, paralysis, but you need in some information to be able to make the call and are you the right level to make the decision at? Do you sometimes want to push the decision making down to your team? Th I think there's so so much there, so much there.
Dave Thompson, CFI: Not easy to do. Like, I mean it's you know, you if you're if you haven't made a bad decision, then you probably aren't making enough is what is what I've learned. I mean
Rachel Losser: I I know I think I actually think that's that's a good gauge. That's a good gauge.
Dave Thompson, CFI: Yeah. I mean, you have to. It's kind of like it's like getting rejected, right? Whether it's for a, you know, you put a proposal out to get business somewhere or you try to go on a date and everything in between. Like if if you're not getting rejected, you're probably not asking enough questions or you're not putting yourself or your business out there enough. And I think the same comes to decision making. but that can be a really uncomfortable process to put yourself in a position of vulnerability where maybe you got it wrong. but I think the team And partners you work with respect that, right? As hey, at least if I know I come to to Dave or to Rachel, I'm gonna get clarity, I'm gonna get direction and we're gonna we're gonna run with it. and if we screw it up, it they're not gonna freak out, we're gonna figure it out. And so I think that's an important aftermath as well.
Rachel Losser: Yeah, yeah. And like you're saying, it's such a tough balance to strike, to be able to give everyone the support they need, make the decisions quickly. Sometimes timing is everything, you know, so if you take too long, you miss the moment. I you know, I'm thinking a lot about, you know, some of the skills in building rapport. In the work that we do, we're actually meeting with a client and in many cases having to build rapport very quickly, and like I'll give an example, but you know, I get brought in kind of through the angle of the CIO from a tech perspective. And then I need to go sort of win over a lot of the rest of the executive leadership team. and having the right level of rapport and the right level of trust. is so important for many reasons at that level and across all levels. Can you speak to a couple of ways that you build rapport and maybe how some of your teachings and training kind of builds into that? Cause that's a huge part of sort of the interrogation process.
Dave Thompson, CFI: I be a human first. I think I'll start with that. So many people go to sales classes, leadership classes, negotiation training, whatever it might be. And it's all there's a lot of great stuff out there. But they come away with these, you know, tips and tricks. And it's like saying somebody's name, which of course is important and you want to be personalize a conversation. But God, the amount of sales pitches that I've had coming at me where somebody says Dave every five seconds, I'm like, okay. I've been to that class too. Please let's settle, let's settle down. Is that how you talk if you were sitting at dinner with a bunch of friends? So I think number one is be a human first. Sometimes we're so robotic when you get into this, like this initial discovery call or sales pitch or whatever it might be. And when we think about in in our space, specific to this kind of investigative interview and interrogation role, I mean you're talking with people who are obviously already skeptical of you. And so when you walk in and just go through this like checklist of rapport, which is let's talk about what that means. Let's talk about rapport for a second, because I'm I get a little frustrated when people think rapport is just like you have something in common or being nice. And sure that's helpful. But everybody right now that's listening that has probably gotten on a Microsoft Teams or Zoom or whatever software call and they're on the first three minutes as people are hopping on the call. And everybody's just talking about the weather in their location. They're all that's every single time. And that sounds fine. That's great. It's like an icebreaker, but that's not truly rapport. Like, do you trust somebody more because they talked about how terrible the weather was last night or they talked about the baseball game? And so when we when we try to operationalize what rapport looks like from a leadership standpoint, when you're trying to pitch your business and you're trying to get discovery, or from sitting across from somebody who's maybe committed a crime and you want them to talk to you about it, It's a little bit more strategic and definitive. It's more about are you giving them autonomy and empowering them to make decisions in this conversation and be themselves? are you being transparent about your role or what's coming next or what's gonna happen or what the conversation's gonna look like? Are you showing and projecting empathy? I know you've you've spoken a lot and written a lot about empathies. We can talk about that. and are you adaptable? Like I I can think of really just simple example. a this was more of a sale negotiation conversation that there was a person this a few years ago on the team who was pitching to one of our clients about a new product that we had and they had a whole you know slide deck I've been told you got to call it a slide deck now because if you say PowerPoint you're old so I'm trying to change my vernacular. Yeah, it's all about the deck. So
Rachel Losser: It's all about the deck. I'll send over the deck.
Dave Thompson, CFI: yes. So they had a whole slide deck put together a whole presentation to say, hey, here's this new really cool simulation interview product that we have. And they're they're getting into their groove of the of the pitch and it's in front of a bunch of high level executives. And one of the executives said, Hey, can you just get to the pricing? Cause we, you know, we've got somewhere to be. And something like that. And the person didn't know they froze. They didn't really know how to adapt and adjust based on the room because they were so they're on slide three, right? So their next step is slide four, not slide 18. And so I think part of rapport, and we can explore all these areas I mentioned, but part of it is being adaptable. to the environment. Some people want to sit and talk about the game last night and the weather. Other people, they're they want you to get right to the point and how do you help service the problem that I have. And so I think it's being aware of the room that you're in and being aware of who in the room is who you're actually talking to. Cause it may not be the person you think you're there to to speak with.
Rachel Losser: That is we could go we could go all just into that. I mean really understanding who the stakeholders are and who has the like social capital in the room. That's absolutely key.
Dave Thompson, CFI: Yeah. The social capital, you know, if you're talking about tech projects that you're going in, maybe the CIO brought you in, but you know, maybe they're the quietest person in the room and they've got their real their operator, their real tech guru is sitting in that conversation. They're the one that's going to work with you hand in hand. So maybe they're looking for them for acknowledgement. Like there might be a different person that you're actually pitching to than you think.
Rachel Losser: Yeah. And and you might not even realize those dynamics walking into it. something struck me in kind of what you were saying, about like so you kind of said autonomy, empathy, being adaptable. I'm curious if you have I because these are like my favorite kind of stories. We've done a lot of sort of SOS or I sort of pride myself on getting results where maybe like no one else could. Do you have any like stories you can share or anything that comes to mind where someone's had a go and they maybe didn't quite have the secret sauce of this combo of tools and you were able to get results someone else could? And what was the factor that kind of made you successful?
Dave Thompson, CFI: Yeah, that's a that's a good question. oftentimes some of these investigations, people come in with overconfidence with ego, with arrogance, with authority. And so now the first thing out of your mouth is it did denial and it's resistance. And instead, our approach is to more create a an environment where you are more comfortable and sharing truthful information. And so one of the things that sticks in my head is maybe not be directly what you asked, but just the first thing that popped up. Is I had a chance to sit down and interview somebody who had been committing several crimes. but the kind of the core denominator of crime was installing credit card skimming devices on like Bluetooth on gas station pumps across multiple jurisdictions across the country. So after he was already convicted and it was leading into sentencing, and he was willing to share his story And so I had a chance to sit with him. We talked for probably about two hours about not did he do it, but how did he feel being interviewed? how did he feel about the police? Yeah. What, you know, what advice would you give to investigators going forward? And the amount of information that came out, vulnerable information that he shared, was just so powerful to me. And he on the way out, I remember he was kind of emotional on. He was talking about his, you know, his childhood and some of the difficulties he dealt with and why he got involved in this in the first place. And he got emotional, he just shared with me. I mean, if other people just cared about about me the way you did in that conversation, like I can't believe how much information I just I just shared with you. And as he's sharing some of these kind of personal details, if my goal was purely investigative, like your whole goal is to get actionable, reliable intelligence to move it forward. Even To translate to a lot of your listeners, if you're selling a product, a service, or trying to do discovery, you want more information so you can do that the right way. And you don't want a client to hide some of the skeletons in their closet. And so by doing that, or the way that I did that was genuine rapport, empowering him. If But I was allowing him to feel understood about how uncomfortable the conversation could be. And then I was adaptable. If you create a comfortable environment for people where they don't feel judged, they don't feel interrogated, but they feel like you genuinely care about what happened or why it happened, they're more likely to share it, share it with you.
Rachel Losser: I'm so curious. Is there any nugget you can give from that conversation or any like big aha moments that came out of that?
Dave Thompson, CFI: Yeah, I I know I've said this term a lot, but this whole concept of of being curious was a big one, right? We walk in with so many assumptions of all right, this person, bad guy, criminal activity, been doing this for years. But when you actually talk to him, he was a he's a good person. Like he he dealt with some really Difficult stuff in his life. He felt like this was a victimless crime. It's just the banks that have to pay the money back for these frauds. It's not really impacting anybody. that was one thing just from a like an empathy rapport standpoint. The other nugget that stuck out, that stuck out to me, is I asked him about the types of questions that he was asked during an interview and what would have maybe screwed them up a little bit, would have made it difficult. He shared, he goes, well, if I would have got asked that question, I, that would have tripped me up. I'm not sure how would have answered it. And so I think it was two things. It was the the soft skill type piece, if we want to call it that with the rapport and empathy and then the tactical takeaway of what were better ways to actually have conducted the conversation.
Rachel Losser: That is, yeah, that's so interesting. what struck me was the be curious concept. because I I really feel like that applies to so much more than just the interrogation. So I'll I'll just share from my end. but when I first started my career, I was a real spitfire of a Project Manager. And like really led a lot by hammer. and not to say that I couldn't kind of tailor my approach or or be adaptable. but I mean I was so headstrong on like, is this done? If so if not, why the hell not? And I was the first person to march in your office and you know, kind of be like, are you done yet? and I found through actually through through coaching from a from like an internship or something that I had done somebody pulled me aside and just said, Hey, like before you just go in and just assume that someone's a deadbeat or like didn't do something, you know, or just sucks at their job, why don't you go in with a curiosity and, you know, maybe see if they're okay first or whatever. And I I've definitely heard others kind of speak about it. But even just from that standpoint, you know, just changing that little bit and if somebody didn't get something done, I I you know, first thing now I would do is walk over and be like, Hey, hey Dave, are are you are you good? Are you okay? And and if you're like, yeah, why? And I'll be like, okay, well, it's like so unlike you to miss deadlines and you're supposed to give me that thing on Friday. So I was just worried about you. Like, think about that interaction as a person, even if I'm still checking my box of following up, but how they're how they're taking that versus me just marching in all presumptive, like, what the hell? Why isn't this done?
Dave Thompson, CFI: And I think that's yeah, that's a good observation. Cause I think then what that results in is people are then more proactive to share with you if they've identified they're gonna be late on a project, right? So if if you built this, you because I've been there too, and that same if I relate that to an investigative interview, it's like if your goal is just to get the I did it, the confession, right? People are resistant right away versus understanding. And so if you've built this culture of like, I'm late on the deadline. Hopefully Rachel don't come knocking on my door or I don't see her name pop up on Teams versus if you are curious. And then people will start to, I think, proactively identify, okay, I know I'm gonna be late on this deadline. I know Rachel will at least want to hear why. Let me give her a heads up beforehand. Let me let her know what's going on. And I think that, you know, there's as you talk about that, it doesn't mean we don't have boundaries or expectations or hold people accountable, but it's just the exchange of information is gonna be so much more clear. You're gonna more data to work with that way, I think.
Rachel Losser: A hundred percent. And it I think it takes some experience and some time doing this to say it is not just about the outcome, but the the path to getting to the outcome means so much for what the future is gonna look like. And so if you're if you're looking forward in an organization or p you know, kind of playing this out in a longer in a longer way. those things are gonna matter a lot. And it's it's really interesting, but even when I say play it out in a longer way, even within the context of like a just a couple of touch points in an interrogation, right, I'm sure like that's that rapport still matters from that first moment.
Dave Thompson, CFI: Rapport matters, yeah. Yeah. Rapport can be built before you ever walk in the room. Like people are gonna, you know, people are gonna make reference to you or your prior interaction. In the in the you know, law enforcement space, it might be somebody's prior interaction with a cop that has nothing to do with you or your department, but before you ever walk in the room, they already got a persona of who you are. And so it's it starts before you walk in the room, it continues throughout that conversation. And you may interact with that person again in a different, you know, they may be a victim at some point and want. Do you want them to feel comfortable to come come to you? So yeah, that that lasts for a long time. I think the other thing that's interesting you when you just said, especially from a project manager's standpoint, is when you do you're talking about from a leadership standpoint of somebody missing a deadline. I think sometimes what happens too is in a leadership role or in when you're responsible for a project, sometimes we agree to deadlines too quickly. Right. We say yes too quickly, or we make an assumption that, yep, okay, somebody needs this project done by August first. Got it. I'll do it. Well, internally you're thinking there is no way in hell unless I work, you know, 24 hours a day that I'm gonna get this done in that time. And so I think knowing I've been on both ends of that conversation from a leadership role is ins if you need it, if you need to make a deadline, make it, right? Here's the date, I need this done. But when you can collaboratively decide on that deadline, often you have a more A better chance of hitting that target. And what what I mean is if I have somebody who needs to come up with a new marketing needs to, you know, come up with new collateral for something, instead of just saying, I need this by August first, it's having that conversation and saying, This is this is the end date of when I would like this done. But what's what does your timeline look like? What else do you have on your plate? What kind of steps are needed to be taken to get to this endpoint? And when you both agree on a timeline with more information, you're more likely to hit it. So I just know I've worked with a lot of either project managers or vendors that like to promise everything without and then afterwards they're probably slapping themselves thinking, Well, that was that's unrealistic.
Rachel Losser: That's yeah, yes, that is such a common occurrence. And on our end, we talk about it a lot from a just a standpoint of what needs to be true to make something successful. So I often think about and actually this is really interesting. I've talked about this before, but like a newer Project Manager will be asked to make a timeline and they'll say, Hey, write up the timeline and shoot for like an August one go live. And they will sit down and tell me w as they're building the timeline, I feel like I'm lying. I feel like I'm lying. this seems so unrealistic. Everybody's saying it's not realistic. And I always try to kind of flip it in their mind and say, no, you're helping the organization understand what has to be true in order to make that. So in that example of like that marketing thing, it's like, okay, they need that by Aug August first. So now to the person who's delivering that or the team that's delivering that, what are the things that have to be true? Well, this might have to go on the back burner. We might need to bring on another person. If if that's the case, you've totally derailed my world and I need to stop working on everything else. This is the only thing I can focus on now, right? But if you create an environment where you can actually have that conversation and everyone was involved and you get that buy in, your odds of actually meeting that date now exponentially rise.
Dave Thompson, CFI: makes you a much more informed leader. I mean, I've got countless times where somebody's walked me through, okay, if you want this done, like you just said, by by August one, here's what I have to put to the side, or here's the support I need, or here are the steps. You know, sometimes in our head, if it, if you're not the expert on that area, that category, like tech is not my expertise. So if you were to do a tech project for us and I think, all right, we need an we're replacing our server, we're we're going no server anymore. We're gonna go completely cloud-based. We're gonna do this, this, and this instead. You know, in my head, it's like, all right, this is easy. Just ship this old server out, hit a button on the computer, everything's gone to the cloud. When instead, right,
Rachel Losser: It's in the cloud now. Yeah.
Dave Thompson, CFI: it's in the cloud. But there's so many other things, of course, that have to take place. And so you become much a much more informed leader when you rely on the experts to share with you here are the steps. And maybe that results in, okay, maybe I do need to hire somebody else, or maybe we do need to outsource this or this priority needs to change. And so yeah, otherwise I think you you deal with missed deadlines, disengage, frustrated people. And you deal with leadership then that is completely removed from what happens day to day. And I've I don't ever want to become that person. So I think that that process helps helps you to stay part of the team.
Rachel Losser: Amazing. Amazing. So I'm thinking about i in terms of just kind of switching gears on you a little bit, in terms of some of the skills that you teach, because I all of this is so nuanced. That's what's on my mind right now, is that it's such a like how do you really know, you know, the right thing to say or the right thing to do or you know, to kind of gauge it. It's such a skill and muscle that develops over time. Do you have like one nugget or one kind of little teeny tiny piece of training that someone could leave with that hey, if you would were to just kinda take this one thing, at least you'd be a little bit better off than you were when we started this conversation.
Dave Thompson, CFI: This well, let me give you two
Rachel Losser: Okay.
Dave Thompson, CFI: two things. And you know, of course, would love to expand on this over like a five day course because there's so much to go to it. But the two two primary things is number one, understanding what your goal is for the conversation. You know, sometimes in the in the like in the interrogation world, if we've we've been trying to change minds that the goal is not to get a confession, it's to get as much reliable information as possible. And when you change the goal. You've now changed the mindset and the process and how you get there, right? If the goal, and I'll translate this to Project Management, but if the goal is to get a confession, somebody walks in and they're gonna, did you do it? No, I didn't. Yes, you did. Right, they're gonna get frustrated not achieving that goal. Also, by the way, maybe they didn't do it. Maybe we have an innocent person, or maybe they did it, but they also did five other things. And when your goal is so singular, you're actually ignoring any other contradictory evidence. If my goal is to get as much information as possible, who knows where that conversation might go? If I'm if I'm leading a team and I want to try to sell a product to somebody or sell my service, if my goal is I'm gonna go meet this prospect and my goal is to get the the deal closed, and you don't get the deal closed today, but you're gonna get frustrated, you may get overly pushy. The the recipient might be like, Okay, I'm over this. Rachel keeps emailing me about pricing, like I'm not gonna deal with her again or whatever it might be. But if your goal is I just want to establish a relationship, I really want to understand what their problems are. And if that comes across in the conversation, even if they don't close a deal with you today, that's a person that's going to come back to you when they're ready for it, when the budget accepts it or when they have other projects. So I think one the one takeaway is identify your goal and understand if you're going to get to that end game, what does that process look like? The second thing that's really simple, silence is so powerful and so difficult. I mean, even I can't stop talking on this, you know, we go in for 40 minutes. I just want to keep filling in for information. As a leader, as an interviewer, as somebody doing a discovery call, whatever it might be, allowing the other person to fully vet their thought process, get out a response, not even even give them a couple seconds after a response, because people like to fill in silence. it also prevents you from interrupting, which changes their course of direction of what they're about to say. And it forces you to do something that we are so bad at, and that's to actually listen to somebody else's perspective. So silence is huge. You're going into that conversation to learn information, not just to give it. So you got to give them the space.
Rachel Losser: The the the silence thing I could I I mean I could talk for many episodes just about that. And I again I think that's one of those things that comes with experience. I was the first one to ask a question and then answer it for everybody right right in the meeting, right? Again, such a spitfire. Project Manager when I first started. so I see that all the time, all the time that someone will say, well, anything else? Well, 'cause like I'm just wondering, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Dave Thompson, CFI: Right.
Rachel Losser: And it's like you've like taken away even the opportunity to receive an answer.
Dave Thompson, CFI: Yeah, or you're you're telling the team what type of answer that you want. You know, what one of the easiest questions to ask is just, hey, tell me more about that. Right. It it's almost a way to just kind of continue the silence a little bit. So if somebody's giving you an answer, you know, maybe we'll go back to like Project Management or you're talking to a a prospect and you know, maybe they're sharing frustration about one of the vendors they're working with, right? Well, this vendor's terrible. They're always late. And so of course they're not gonna make this deadline. They're super expensive too. You could just take that and run with it. Or you could just say, Hey, tell me more about your experience with that vendor. What do you mean? Tell me more. And when you just when you allow tell me more, it creates the opportunity for a person to fully elaborate. It gives them the permission in their mind to have that space. And it also allows you to really focus on what they're saying versus be so focused on what your next question is. Right. You you'll you can never run out of saying, Tell me more about that or explain that further for me or describe what you're feeling. Like That T E D TED, like tell, explain, describe, are some of the just easiest ways to keep a conversation going that require very little effort on your part.
Rachel Losser: Yeah. And even sometimes, you know, that has been really helpful because I take what someone said as an assumption and sort of assume that I know what they're talking about. And in fact, the tell me more went down a completely different path that I wasn't even I wasn't even thinking of or wasn't even planning to go down. And there's some kind of big unlock at the end of that road that, you know,
Dave Thompson, CFI: Right.
Rachel Losser: informs something else. So yeah, that's that's very helpful.
Dave Thompson, CFI: Well, you think how makes you feel? Like if you know, we've all been on the other side of that where you're trying to share with somebody frustration or you make a comment hoping they pick up on it because you want to share more. But if they don't pick up on it and they're just like, okay, next question, you're like, well, but if somebody actually is listening to you and they hear you say something about your frustration with a project or a coworker or a partner or whatever, you say, Hey, tell me more about what's going on. I mean, think of how how good that feels as the as the person sharing information like, okay, Rachel, she actually wants to ex explore this a little bit. Maybe she's here to. help. And so I think it it really is a productive way to have that conversation.
Rachel Losser: And you know what, that ties, I think, really nicely back to change management because many times, even if I don't go with what someone said, the fact that I took the time to hear them out and they feel like they've said their piece and they can get behind, okay, this isn't what I wanted, but my viewpoint got told and my viewpoint got heard and I can get behind this for another reason, like there's no shortcut to that. It just takes the time to hear them out.
Dave Thompson, CFI: People want to be heard. I know I mentioned a little bit, I've I've done a lot of work in the wrongful conviction space for people who've been, you know, wrongly convicted of a crime and have served sometimes years or decades for something they didn't do. One of the most common things I hear is that just they just need to be heard. People, their lawyer didn't believe them, the court didn't believe them, the police didn't believe them, the media didn't believe them. And even sometimes when they get exonerated and they're freed, people still don't believe them. And they just want somebody to hear their story. And so I think it just applies. so much across the board is people people wanna be heard. And so as a leader, that's your responsibility.
Rachel Losser: That and I think that goes well beyond business, you know, that goes well beyond that's just I think part of our human experience. People wanna be heard.
Dave Thompson, CFI: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. And not always want to be corrected either. I've learned. Right. This applies to personal life and relationships too. Sometimes people... I have learned that whether it's a friend, significant others, whoever it might be, coworkers, sometimes people want to complain because they just need to. They need to vent. Sometimes they want advice. but I have absolutely learned to almost ask that question every time of like, Do you do you want me just to listen? Or do you want me to give you feedback? Because sometimes people don't want the feedback in that moment. So no knowing the content of the or the context about that conversation I think is usually important.
Rachel Losser: That is I think every person's relationship would be improved
Dave Thompson, CFI: Right.
Rachel Losser: if everybody's like, wait a second, do you want feedback or do you just want me to listen and and throw in some like what the hells, you know, you know, with it?
Dave Thompson, CFI: Right. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Exactly. Because I'm happy to tell you that you're wrong, but maybe that's not the right time or place right now. Yeah.
Rachel Losser: Dave, thank you so much for agreeing to do this. This has been just awesome. And I I think we're gonna have to have you back because I feel like we barely scratched the surface of things to talk about.
Dave Thompson, CFI: No, this was great. I it's it's really cool that there's just so much, you know. I learned early on, we're not really teaching interview interrogation, we're teaching communication and understanding. And and I think that relates so much to what what you do and what Project Management really is about and leadership's about. So it's it's cool to exchange those ideas and we'll have to get you over on the Truth Be Told podcast as well. So we can get you in front of our our audience. Yeah. Absolutely.
Rachel Losser: Can't wait. Can't wait. Thank you so much for joining us, Dave. If people wanna learn more about you or W-Z being a CFI or being on your podcast, where's the best place for folks to get in touch with you?
Dave Thompson, CFI: me. easy is just W-Z.com, our website. And the other is probably all over LinkedIn. So if you're on LinkedIn, look up Dave Thompson. There's a million Dave Thompsons, put CFI after it and you'll find the guy with the beard and that one's me.
Rachel Losser: perfect. Thank you so much. And we'll we'll include all your details in the show notes and everything too. So thank you to everyone for listening to Big Project Energy. if you prefer if you prefer a video version of the podcast, we're also on YouTube. So make sure to follow us, rate us five stars. Please feel free to add on your thoughts or engage in the conversation because I'm having a lot of fun of folks that have come in and said, you know, any any thoughts about things. So jump in and we'll engage and then check out our show notes to get in touch with guests. So thank you so much, Dave.
Dave Thompson, CFI: Awesome. Thanks for having me. Appreciate it.
Rachel Losser: I think clear.
Dave Thompson, CFI: And I smiled the whole time.
Dave Thompson, CFI: No, I'm super excited. I I've been walking around with Big Project Energy ever since I listened to your kickoff episode. So I'm all all excited about this.
Rachel Losser: You're too kind.
Dave Thompson, CFI: Yeah. Should we tell people that we first met with bourbon involved or should we avoid okay.
Rachel Losser: no, yeah, I'm all for that. if anyone is even within a little bit of a vicinity of me, they will hear me talk nonstop about our our little business bourbon crew that we've got going on. So Dave's Dave's in the crew and it's great.
Dave Thompson, CFI: No, it's awesome. I'm excited to join you and excited to talk about how our two worlds collide here when it comes to leadership and Project Management.
Rachel Losser: Yes, thank you. So I I right away was so intrigued when we started talking about the forensic, interviewing and please tell me a little bit about your work and for somebody who might not necessarily know about that world, just give me give me some spark notes.
Dave Thompson, CFI: Yeah, it's not what you see on TV, right? A lot of people think investigative interviewing or interrogation, which is the easier way people identify it. But our training firm has been around for 44 years. It was started by Doug Wicklander and Dave Zulawski. And really the concept was how do you sit down and have difficult conversations with people to try to get actionable, reliable, truthful information? And so in a short form, we conduct training across the globe for some of our law enforcement partners, federal agencies, and then also in the corporate world, right? Whether it's talking to fraud investigators, human resources, or just business leaders on how to handle difficult conversations, which as you know happens every day.
Rachel Losser: All the time. Well, that's that's very interesting. And when we were kind of talking about doing this, it there is such an overlap in what you're talking about and then some of the concepts we've at least started to explore in terms of managing projects and leadership and having some of those hard conversations. What what are some of the parallels you see when it comes to applying those concepts in the business world?
Dave Thompson, CFI: Yeah, there's so much we can talk about here. I the one of the first things that sticks out, you know, when you think about a Project Manager, and you can obviously speak a lot a lot more to this, but you're often trying to influence without maybe direct authority sometimes. And when I think about an investigative interview, you're sitting across from somebody who may have information. It could be a witness to a crime, it could be somebody who's a person of interest who did something wrong. It could be maybe a victim or a complainant. That has information that you would love to have that would help further your investigation, but they're not obligated to give it to you, right? You're not, you can't force somebody to give you that information or that cooperation. And if you do try to force it, you're probably gonna get more resistance, maybe false information. you're gonna get compliance instead of cooperation, which is not an effective way to get actionable details or to achieve the end goal of a project. And so I think there's a lot we can talk about here, but to me, the one of the more basic parallels is how do you sit with a team or with a person and try to gain cooperation when they don't necessarily report directly to you or they're not obligated to do so. And that comes down to just effective communication strategies and leadership and management of the of the conversation itself.
Rachel Losser: That is something that, you know, I deal with a lot. We're we're actually working on a large ERP implementation, and it's actually the ERP and all of the auxiliary systems. And in in those types of situations, especially like kind of that M&A world, the Difficult conversations are are so difficult in the sense that, you know, if you wanted to be the best change manager ever and get everyone's buy-in and sit down and talk about it all, like there are cases like that where you don't really get buy-in from the team. You just need them to kind of fall in line, which is such a such a difficult place. In a situation like that where you're just not in a position to sort of do it the right way, if you will, and get input from the team. W where does one even begin, kind of based on some of your training?
Dave Thompson, CFI: You begin with curiosity and being humble and trying to understand everybody sits at the table, what they're bringing to the conversation. I I can give an example of change management that I I went through. So, you know, as I mentioned, we've been around for four decades, which means when you're training something based off of social science, how to try to Get somebody to access their memory the right way, how to get reliable information, how to develop rapport and project empathy. There's so much research has changed over the last several decades. And so we went through a major transformation to our curriculum. What what do we teach? What do we support? what do we believe in? And when you go out there, and as you mentioned some of these numbers before, we're training tens of thousands of investigators. And we've done so for a long time, which means when you train something a certain way. And then all of a sudden recognize, wait a second, the research has changed, the science has changed, or or at least informed us. We got to change how we're training. And so we went through a pretty major overhaul of our curriculum, which not only meant changing the perspective of our clients, our external audience of here's the right way to do something versus what maybe you've been taught in the past. The other part was making sure that our own team was trained and bought into that change. And so I've got. Our team is just an incredible group of support staff and instructors that have been doing this job for a long time. And so when you ask people to change is different than telling them to change. And when your people are a part of the change, the decision making process is a lot different as well. And so I know I learned a lot in this process of how to do it right. I also learned through some failures I made along the way. And The one thing I'll leave that that with and we can explore it further. But I was so focused on what does this change look like externally? How does this gonna impact law enforcement? How's this gonna impact investigators? And we did a really great job of educating the public on why evidence-based interviewing is so important. What I think I had a gap on personally is I just assumed all of our instructors, all of our staff would just fall in line. It's obvious why we need to change. And my first step should have been. Let's let's work on this internally as a team first and make sure we're all aligned before we communicate to the external group and get their buy-in. And thankfully we've come a long way and I'm super proud of where we're at today, but probably could have done that more efficiently and more supportive from the beginning.
Rachel Losser: I actually I find I find this happens quite a bit. That when as a leader, I've been involved in planning the change. I've been involved in understanding the reasoning myself. And I've been living and breathing it so much that oftentimes I think folks even forget that there are people who this is gonna be their first time talking about this topic or you know, they don't have all that context that you do. Can you tell me a little bit more about how did you realize that you had done it wrong? And then what actually did you do to be able to take a step back and kind of bring everybody back together?
Dave Thompson, CFI: Yeah, it's a good point. I think one thing I've recognized, I had I I forget who. So I'm somebody that's listening, I'm not giving you credit, but I am in my head. I just don't remember who shared this with me. But they talked about having the curse of knowledge, which is what you just shared. And it's this, you know, when I think about when we changed our curriculum, I had done so much research and with a with a few other people on our team, but so much research and reading and understanding and conversations before I ever got to the decision or we got to the decision of making this change. And sometimes you assume everybody else is in your head, right? You assume I've done all of this legwork before I got to this point. So when we decide this, of course, everybody it makes sense to everybody else without recognizing that you got to catch people up a little bit to the work that the work work that you've been doing. And so I've seen that even in a training program as a really simple practical takeaway. Is you know, we'll have a training course, you got 40 people in the room, really experienced, incredible. investigators, right? Detectives maybe. And I've been in a class where I've given an assignment. So, you know, we've got like a group project. You guys are going to work on a role play or whatever it is. And I start walking around the room to kind of moderate how the project is going or how the, you know, the group exercise is going and realize everybody's doing it wrong. And it takes a minute and a little bit of vulnerability to recognize if everybody else is doing it wrong, that I'm probably the common denominator here. And so maybe when I gave direction in my head, everybody knew what I was thinking, but I didn't communicate it clearly enough. And so back to this example of, you know, we we focused a lot on again what the external audience was, what their perspective was when we made a big change. We measured responses from our email marketing. We measured any kind of customer, whether it was a complaint or support, what that looked like. We looked at evaluations from the class, really focused on. measuring that type of response. Internally, it took a little while and it started to become when I saw inconsistency in the training. And it was not by intent from instructors, it was by lack of support from my end of if if I was starting to see I've got five different instructors all maybe trying to teach the same thing in different ways, back to the other example, I'm the problem, right? The source is the problem. And so what we've done since then And just so proud of this instructor team, we now have a monthly continued education call that's all focused on instructor knowledge and they're bringing ideas to the table. instructors are leading those conversations. So they're out there doing their own research for change and for impact, bringing that to the table, and we're sharing that collectively as a group. And so what I learned from there is if you're going to make a change. Sometimes, like you said, you you just need people to fall in line, right? There's something that happened. There might be an immediate change you have to direct. But if you want more organic, intentional movement, you need to do it as a team. and that's super proud of where we're at today. And now I believe everybody in our team feels that same responsibility to grow. And now when we grow, we're doing it together.
Rachel Losser: I love that. You know what really strikes me about your mindset, which I I think should not be taken for granted, is your high degree of accountability as a leader. I think in a lot of the clients that we've worked with and just folks that we work with, that's so often that I've heard someone say as a leader, Well, I told them at this meeting one time and they're not doing it. My team sucks. They're the problem. And I'm like, so much to unpack there, buddy. So much to unpack, right? and so I really like that approach in terms of, hey, I'm the one that identified the problem, I'm the one who's taking accountability for the problem, and I'm empowered to solve this problem. I think it's it's crazy to think, but even just that trifecta is actually very rare.
Dave Thompson, CFI: And if you have people on your team, whether it's a project you're leading or you're leading an organization, if they're not coming forward to tell you that they're going to be late on a project or late on a deadline or whatever, maybe it's a performance issue, but it may also be you haven't created an environment where people are comfortable to share that with you. And so, you know, that's why I hopefully my team and if they're listening, they feel this way. But I think in and when you're in a leadership role, when you take accountability You're open to being wrong, you're curious about how you can be better, that it allows your team to feel comfortable to make mistakes too and to learn from them and own it. And it just creates a much more vulnerable atmosphere, which I think people are more engaged and more likely to communicate. And so, I mean, you know, when you're leading a project, the last thing you want is a surprise. And so if if something's not going well, I'd rather want to know ahead of time so we can diagnose it versus it's two days after the deadline. I'm wondering why nobody wanted to share that with me.
Rachel Losser: A hundred percent, a hundred percent. And just to kind of expand on your role as CEO and you know, kind of same on my end as as kind of leading the organization and the buck stops with you, how does your experience in sort of the interrogation, like how does that make you show up differently as a CEO than maybe somebody else might?
Dave Thompson, CFI: I think the one mistake a lot of leaders make is they're afraid to make a decision. and it's a difficult thing, right? You don't you don't want to make a decision that goes sideways and that disappoints people. You don't want to make a decision that, you know, causes the business to go go south or causes employees to feel disengaged. But not making a decision is going to do all of those things. and I know I I kind of played around in that area for a little while of all right, let me think about this, let me chew on it, let me get back to you. And then over time, you know, that's that's really disengaging for your team. They need clarity, they need confidence. and so when I say don't be afraid to make a decision doesn't mean that you have to have all the answers either. And so I think I learned both of those things is, you know, even though the buck stops, stops here, it doesn't mean all the knowledge comes from here. And so leveraging your team and other resources. And I am perfectly comfortable when we have, you know, when my my senior ops manager comes to me and asks for advice or approval on something, most of that conversation is asking her, well, what does she think? How does it work best from her perspective? Like I don't know the process as well as you do. So you you let me know and I'll just help guide guide the decision making process. So yeah, I think that's probably the you know, two of the biggest things is don't don't be afraid to make the decision. but don't feel like you have to have all the knowledge either. You do you have to have the confidence to give your team the ability to get to that answer.
Rachel Losser: That is hands down probably the the best way to articulate that. That's such a challenge with leaders is just getting to that decision point, getting all the information that you need, right? Don't fall into analysis, paralysis, but you need in some information to be able to make the call and are you the right level to make the decision at? Do you sometimes want to push the decision making down to your team? Th I think there's so so much there, so much there.
Dave Thompson, CFI: Not easy to do. Like, I mean it's you know, you if you're if you haven't made a bad decision, then you probably aren't making enough is what is what I've learned. I mean
Rachel Losser: I I know I think I actually think that's that's a good gauge. That's a good gauge.
Dave Thompson, CFI: Yeah. I mean, you have to. It's kind of like it's like getting rejected, right? Whether it's for a, you know, you put a proposal out to get business somewhere or you try to go on a date and everything in between. Like if if you're not getting rejected, you're probably not asking enough questions or you're not putting yourself or your business out there enough. And I think the same comes to decision making. but that can be a really uncomfortable process to put yourself in a position of vulnerability where maybe you got it wrong. but I think the team And partners you work with respect that, right? As hey, at least if I know I come to to Dave or to Rachel, I'm gonna get clarity, I'm gonna get direction and we're gonna we're gonna run with it. and if we screw it up, it they're not gonna freak out, we're gonna figure it out. And so I think that's an important aftermath as well.
Rachel Losser: Yeah, yeah. And like you're saying, it's such a tough balance to strike, to be able to give everyone the support they need, make the decisions quickly. Sometimes timing is everything, you know, so if you take too long, you miss the moment. I you know, I'm thinking a lot about, you know, some of the skills in building rapport. In the work that we do, we're actually meeting with a client and in many cases having to build rapport very quickly, and like I'll give an example, but you know, I get brought in kind of through the angle of the CIO from a tech perspective. And then I need to go sort of win over a lot of the rest of the executive leadership team. and having the right level of rapport and the right level of trust. is so important for many reasons at that level and across all levels. Can you speak to a couple of ways that you build rapport and maybe how some of your teachings and training kind of builds into that? Cause that's a huge part of sort of the interrogation process.
Dave Thompson, CFI: I be a human first. I think I'll start with that. So many people go to sales classes, leadership classes, negotiation training, whatever it might be. And it's all there's a lot of great stuff out there. But they come away with these, you know, tips and tricks. And it's like saying somebody's name, which of course is important and you want to be personalize a conversation. But God, the amount of sales pitches that I've had coming at me where somebody says Dave every five seconds, I'm like, okay. I've been to that class too. Please let's settle, let's settle down. Is that how you talk if you were sitting at dinner with a bunch of friends? So I think number one is be a human first. Sometimes we're so robotic when you get into this, like this initial discovery call or sales pitch or whatever it might be. And when we think about in in our space, specific to this kind of investigative interview and interrogation role, I mean you're talking with people who are obviously already skeptical of you. And so when you walk in and just go through this like checklist of rapport, which is let's talk about what that means. Let's talk about rapport for a second, because I'm I get a little frustrated when people think rapport is just like you have something in common or being nice. And sure that's helpful. But everybody right now that's listening that has probably gotten on a Microsoft Teams or Zoom or whatever software call and they're on the first three minutes as people are hopping on the call. And everybody's just talking about the weather in their location. They're all that's every single time. And that sounds fine. That's great. It's like an icebreaker, but that's not truly rapport. Like, do you trust somebody more because they talked about how terrible the weather was last night or they talked about the baseball game? And so when we when we try to operationalize what rapport looks like from a leadership standpoint, when you're trying to pitch your business and you're trying to get discovery, or from sitting across from somebody who's maybe committed a crime and you want them to talk to you about it, It's a little bit more strategic and definitive. It's more about are you giving them autonomy and empowering them to make decisions in this conversation and be themselves? are you being transparent about your role or what's coming next or what's gonna happen or what the conversation's gonna look like? Are you showing and projecting empathy? I know you've you've spoken a lot and written a lot about empathies. We can talk about that. and are you adaptable? Like I I can think of really just simple example. a this was more of a sale negotiation conversation that there was a person this a few years ago on the team who was pitching to one of our clients about a new product that we had and they had a whole you know slide deck I've been told you got to call it a slide deck now because if you say PowerPoint you're old so I'm trying to change my vernacular. Yeah, it's all about the deck. So
Rachel Losser: It's all about the deck. I'll send over the deck.
Dave Thompson, CFI: yes. So they had a whole slide deck put together a whole presentation to say, hey, here's this new really cool simulation interview product that we have. And they're they're getting into their groove of the of the pitch and it's in front of a bunch of high level executives. And one of the executives said, Hey, can you just get to the pricing? Cause we, you know, we've got somewhere to be. And something like that. And the person didn't know they froze. They didn't really know how to adapt and adjust based on the room because they were so they're on slide three, right? So their next step is slide four, not slide 18. And so I think part of rapport, and we can explore all these areas I mentioned, but part of it is being adaptable. to the environment. Some people want to sit and talk about the game last night and the weather. Other people, they're they want you to get right to the point and how do you help service the problem that I have. And so I think it's being aware of the room that you're in and being aware of who in the room is who you're actually talking to. Cause it may not be the person you think you're there to to speak with.
Rachel Losser: That is we could go we could go all just into that. I mean really understanding who the stakeholders are and who has the like social capital in the room. That's absolutely key.
Dave Thompson, CFI: Yeah. The social capital, you know, if you're talking about tech projects that you're going in, maybe the CIO brought you in, but you know, maybe they're the quietest person in the room and they've got their real their operator, their real tech guru is sitting in that conversation. They're the one that's going to work with you hand in hand. So maybe they're looking for them for acknowledgement. Like there might be a different person that you're actually pitching to than you think.
Rachel Losser: Yeah. And and you might not even realize those dynamics walking into it. something struck me in kind of what you were saying, about like so you kind of said autonomy, empathy, being adaptable. I'm curious if you have I because these are like my favorite kind of stories. We've done a lot of sort of SOS or I sort of pride myself on getting results where maybe like no one else could. Do you have any like stories you can share or anything that comes to mind where someone's had a go and they maybe didn't quite have the secret sauce of this combo of tools and you were able to get results someone else could? And what was the factor that kind of made you successful?
Dave Thompson, CFI: Yeah, that's a that's a good question. oftentimes some of these investigations, people come in with overconfidence with ego, with arrogance, with authority. And so now the first thing out of your mouth is it did denial and it's resistance. And instead, our approach is to more create a an environment where you are more comfortable and sharing truthful information. And so one of the things that sticks in my head is maybe not be directly what you asked, but just the first thing that popped up. Is I had a chance to sit down and interview somebody who had been committing several crimes. but the kind of the core denominator of crime was installing credit card skimming devices on like Bluetooth on gas station pumps across multiple jurisdictions across the country. So after he was already convicted and it was leading into sentencing, and he was willing to share his story And so I had a chance to sit with him. We talked for probably about two hours about not did he do it, but how did he feel being interviewed? how did he feel about the police? Yeah. What, you know, what advice would you give to investigators going forward? And the amount of information that came out, vulnerable information that he shared, was just so powerful to me. And he on the way out, I remember he was kind of emotional on. He was talking about his, you know, his childhood and some of the difficulties he dealt with and why he got involved in this in the first place. And he got emotional, he just shared with me. I mean, if other people just cared about about me the way you did in that conversation, like I can't believe how much information I just I just shared with you. And as he's sharing some of these kind of personal details, if my goal was purely investigative, like your whole goal is to get actionable, reliable intelligence to move it forward. Even To translate to a lot of your listeners, if you're selling a product, a service, or trying to do discovery, you want more information so you can do that the right way. And you don't want a client to hide some of the skeletons in their closet. And so by doing that, or the way that I did that was genuine rapport, empowering him. If But I was allowing him to feel understood about how uncomfortable the conversation could be. And then I was adaptable. If you create a comfortable environment for people where they don't feel judged, they don't feel interrogated, but they feel like you genuinely care about what happened or why it happened, they're more likely to share it, share it with you.
Rachel Losser: I'm so curious. Is there any nugget you can give from that conversation or any like big aha moments that came out of that?
Dave Thompson, CFI: Yeah, I I know I've said this term a lot, but this whole concept of of being curious was a big one, right? We walk in with so many assumptions of all right, this person, bad guy, criminal activity, been doing this for years. But when you actually talk to him, he was a he's a good person. Like he he dealt with some really Difficult stuff in his life. He felt like this was a victimless crime. It's just the banks that have to pay the money back for these frauds. It's not really impacting anybody. that was one thing just from a like an empathy rapport standpoint. The other nugget that stuck out, that stuck out to me, is I asked him about the types of questions that he was asked during an interview and what would have maybe screwed them up a little bit, would have made it difficult. He shared, he goes, well, if I would have got asked that question, I, that would have tripped me up. I'm not sure how would have answered it. And so I think it was two things. It was the the soft skill type piece, if we want to call it that with the rapport and empathy and then the tactical takeaway of what were better ways to actually have conducted the conversation.
Rachel Losser: That is, yeah, that's so interesting. what struck me was the be curious concept. because I I really feel like that applies to so much more than just the interrogation. So I'll I'll just share from my end. but when I first started my career, I was a real spitfire of a Project Manager. And like really led a lot by hammer. and not to say that I couldn't kind of tailor my approach or or be adaptable. but I mean I was so headstrong on like, is this done? If so if not, why the hell not? And I was the first person to march in your office and you know, kind of be like, are you done yet? and I found through actually through through coaching from a from like an internship or something that I had done somebody pulled me aside and just said, Hey, like before you just go in and just assume that someone's a deadbeat or like didn't do something, you know, or just sucks at their job, why don't you go in with a curiosity and, you know, maybe see if they're okay first or whatever. And I I've definitely heard others kind of speak about it. But even just from that standpoint, you know, just changing that little bit and if somebody didn't get something done, I I you know, first thing now I would do is walk over and be like, Hey, hey Dave, are are you are you good? Are you okay? And and if you're like, yeah, why? And I'll be like, okay, well, it's like so unlike you to miss deadlines and you're supposed to give me that thing on Friday. So I was just worried about you. Like, think about that interaction as a person, even if I'm still checking my box of following up, but how they're how they're taking that versus me just marching in all presumptive, like, what the hell? Why isn't this done?
Dave Thompson, CFI: And I think that's yeah, that's a good observation. Cause I think then what that results in is people are then more proactive to share with you if they've identified they're gonna be late on a project, right? So if if you built this, you because I've been there too, and that same if I relate that to an investigative interview, it's like if your goal is just to get the I did it, the confession, right? People are resistant right away versus understanding. And so if you've built this culture of like, I'm late on the deadline. Hopefully Rachel don't come knocking on my door or I don't see her name pop up on Teams versus if you are curious. And then people will start to, I think, proactively identify, okay, I know I'm gonna be late on this deadline. I know Rachel will at least want to hear why. Let me give her a heads up beforehand. Let me let her know what's going on. And I think that, you know, there's as you talk about that, it doesn't mean we don't have boundaries or expectations or hold people accountable, but it's just the exchange of information is gonna be so much more clear. You're gonna more data to work with that way, I think.
Rachel Losser: A hundred percent. And it I think it takes some experience and some time doing this to say it is not just about the outcome, but the the path to getting to the outcome means so much for what the future is gonna look like. And so if you're if you're looking forward in an organization or p you know, kind of playing this out in a longer in a longer way. those things are gonna matter a lot. And it's it's really interesting, but even when I say play it out in a longer way, even within the context of like a just a couple of touch points in an interrogation, right, I'm sure like that's that rapport still matters from that first moment.
Dave Thompson, CFI: Rapport matters, yeah. Yeah. Rapport can be built before you ever walk in the room. Like people are gonna, you know, people are gonna make reference to you or your prior interaction. In the in the you know, law enforcement space, it might be somebody's prior interaction with a cop that has nothing to do with you or your department, but before you ever walk in the room, they already got a persona of who you are. And so it's it starts before you walk in the room, it continues throughout that conversation. And you may interact with that person again in a different, you know, they may be a victim at some point and want. Do you want them to feel comfortable to come come to you? So yeah, that that lasts for a long time. I think the other thing that's interesting you when you just said, especially from a project manager's standpoint, is when you do you're talking about from a leadership standpoint of somebody missing a deadline. I think sometimes what happens too is in a leadership role or in when you're responsible for a project, sometimes we agree to deadlines too quickly. Right. We say yes too quickly, or we make an assumption that, yep, okay, somebody needs this project done by August first. Got it. I'll do it. Well, internally you're thinking there is no way in hell unless I work, you know, 24 hours a day that I'm gonna get this done in that time. And so I think knowing I've been on both ends of that conversation from a leadership role is ins if you need it, if you need to make a deadline, make it, right? Here's the date, I need this done. But when you can collaboratively decide on that deadline, often you have a more A better chance of hitting that target. And what what I mean is if I have somebody who needs to come up with a new marketing needs to, you know, come up with new collateral for something, instead of just saying, I need this by August first, it's having that conversation and saying, This is this is the end date of when I would like this done. But what's what does your timeline look like? What else do you have on your plate? What kind of steps are needed to be taken to get to this endpoint? And when you both agree on a timeline with more information, you're more likely to hit it. So I just know I've worked with a lot of either project managers or vendors that like to promise everything without and then afterwards they're probably slapping themselves thinking, Well, that was that's unrealistic.
Rachel Losser: That's yeah, yes, that is such a common occurrence. And on our end, we talk about it a lot from a just a standpoint of what needs to be true to make something successful. So I often think about and actually this is really interesting. I've talked about this before, but like a newer Project Manager will be asked to make a timeline and they'll say, Hey, write up the timeline and shoot for like an August one go live. And they will sit down and tell me w as they're building the timeline, I feel like I'm lying. I feel like I'm lying. this seems so unrealistic. Everybody's saying it's not realistic. And I always try to kind of flip it in their mind and say, no, you're helping the organization understand what has to be true in order to make that. So in that example of like that marketing thing, it's like, okay, they need that by Aug August first. So now to the person who's delivering that or the team that's delivering that, what are the things that have to be true? Well, this might have to go on the back burner. We might need to bring on another person. If if that's the case, you've totally derailed my world and I need to stop working on everything else. This is the only thing I can focus on now, right? But if you create an environment where you can actually have that conversation and everyone was involved and you get that buy in, your odds of actually meeting that date now exponentially rise.
Dave Thompson, CFI: makes you a much more informed leader. I mean, I've got countless times where somebody's walked me through, okay, if you want this done, like you just said, by by August one, here's what I have to put to the side, or here's the support I need, or here are the steps. You know, sometimes in our head, if it, if you're not the expert on that area, that category, like tech is not my expertise. So if you were to do a tech project for us and I think, all right, we need an we're replacing our server, we're we're going no server anymore. We're gonna go completely cloud-based. We're gonna do this, this, and this instead. You know, in my head, it's like, all right, this is easy. Just ship this old server out, hit a button on the computer, everything's gone to the cloud. When instead, right,
Rachel Losser: It's in the cloud now. Yeah.
Dave Thompson, CFI: it's in the cloud. But there's so many other things, of course, that have to take place. And so you become much a much more informed leader when you rely on the experts to share with you here are the steps. And maybe that results in, okay, maybe I do need to hire somebody else, or maybe we do need to outsource this or this priority needs to change. And so yeah, otherwise I think you you deal with missed deadlines, disengage, frustrated people. And you deal with leadership then that is completely removed from what happens day to day. And I've I don't ever want to become that person. So I think that that process helps helps you to stay part of the team.
Rachel Losser: Amazing. Amazing. So I'm thinking about i in terms of just kind of switching gears on you a little bit, in terms of some of the skills that you teach, because I all of this is so nuanced. That's what's on my mind right now, is that it's such a like how do you really know, you know, the right thing to say or the right thing to do or you know, to kind of gauge it. It's such a skill and muscle that develops over time. Do you have like one nugget or one kind of little teeny tiny piece of training that someone could leave with that hey, if you would were to just kinda take this one thing, at least you'd be a little bit better off than you were when we started this conversation.
Dave Thompson, CFI: This well, let me give you two
Rachel Losser: Okay.
Dave Thompson, CFI: two things. And you know, of course, would love to expand on this over like a five day course because there's so much to go to it. But the two two primary things is number one, understanding what your goal is for the conversation. You know, sometimes in the in the like in the interrogation world, if we've we've been trying to change minds that the goal is not to get a confession, it's to get as much reliable information as possible. And when you change the goal. You've now changed the mindset and the process and how you get there, right? If the goal, and I'll translate this to Project Management, but if the goal is to get a confession, somebody walks in and they're gonna, did you do it? No, I didn't. Yes, you did. Right, they're gonna get frustrated not achieving that goal. Also, by the way, maybe they didn't do it. Maybe we have an innocent person, or maybe they did it, but they also did five other things. And when your goal is so singular, you're actually ignoring any other contradictory evidence. If my goal is to get as much information as possible, who knows where that conversation might go? If I'm if I'm leading a team and I want to try to sell a product to somebody or sell my service, if my goal is I'm gonna go meet this prospect and my goal is to get the the deal closed, and you don't get the deal closed today, but you're gonna get frustrated, you may get overly pushy. The the recipient might be like, Okay, I'm over this. Rachel keeps emailing me about pricing, like I'm not gonna deal with her again or whatever it might be. But if your goal is I just want to establish a relationship, I really want to understand what their problems are. And if that comes across in the conversation, even if they don't close a deal with you today, that's a person that's going to come back to you when they're ready for it, when the budget accepts it or when they have other projects. So I think one the one takeaway is identify your goal and understand if you're going to get to that end game, what does that process look like? The second thing that's really simple, silence is so powerful and so difficult. I mean, even I can't stop talking on this, you know, we go in for 40 minutes. I just want to keep filling in for information. As a leader, as an interviewer, as somebody doing a discovery call, whatever it might be, allowing the other person to fully vet their thought process, get out a response, not even even give them a couple seconds after a response, because people like to fill in silence. it also prevents you from interrupting, which changes their course of direction of what they're about to say. And it forces you to do something that we are so bad at, and that's to actually listen to somebody else's perspective. So silence is huge. You're going into that conversation to learn information, not just to give it. So you got to give them the space.
Rachel Losser: The the the silence thing I could I I mean I could talk for many episodes just about that. And I again I think that's one of those things that comes with experience. I was the first one to ask a question and then answer it for everybody right right in the meeting, right? Again, such a spitfire. Project Manager when I first started. so I see that all the time, all the time that someone will say, well, anything else? Well, 'cause like I'm just wondering, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Dave Thompson, CFI: Right.
Rachel Losser: And it's like you've like taken away even the opportunity to receive an answer.
Dave Thompson, CFI: Yeah, or you're you're telling the team what type of answer that you want. You know, what one of the easiest questions to ask is just, hey, tell me more about that. Right. It it's almost a way to just kind of continue the silence a little bit. So if somebody's giving you an answer, you know, maybe we'll go back to like Project Management or you're talking to a a prospect and you know, maybe they're sharing frustration about one of the vendors they're working with, right? Well, this vendor's terrible. They're always late. And so of course they're not gonna make this deadline. They're super expensive too. You could just take that and run with it. Or you could just say, Hey, tell me more about your experience with that vendor. What do you mean? Tell me more. And when you just when you allow tell me more, it creates the opportunity for a person to fully elaborate. It gives them the permission in their mind to have that space. And it also allows you to really focus on what they're saying versus be so focused on what your next question is. Right. You you'll you can never run out of saying, Tell me more about that or explain that further for me or describe what you're feeling. Like That T E D TED, like tell, explain, describe, are some of the just easiest ways to keep a conversation going that require very little effort on your part.
Rachel Losser: Yeah. And even sometimes, you know, that has been really helpful because I take what someone said as an assumption and sort of assume that I know what they're talking about. And in fact, the tell me more went down a completely different path that I wasn't even I wasn't even thinking of or wasn't even planning to go down. And there's some kind of big unlock at the end of that road that, you know,
Dave Thompson, CFI: Right.
Rachel Losser: informs something else. So yeah, that's that's very helpful.
Dave Thompson, CFI: Well, you think how makes you feel? Like if you know, we've all been on the other side of that where you're trying to share with somebody frustration or you make a comment hoping they pick up on it because you want to share more. But if they don't pick up on it and they're just like, okay, next question, you're like, well, but if somebody actually is listening to you and they hear you say something about your frustration with a project or a coworker or a partner or whatever, you say, Hey, tell me more about what's going on. I mean, think of how how good that feels as the as the person sharing information like, okay, Rachel, she actually wants to ex explore this a little bit. Maybe she's here to. help. And so I think it it really is a productive way to have that conversation.
Rachel Losser: And you know what, that ties, I think, really nicely back to change management because many times, even if I don't go with what someone said, the fact that I took the time to hear them out and they feel like they've said their piece and they can get behind, okay, this isn't what I wanted, but my viewpoint got told and my viewpoint got heard and I can get behind this for another reason, like there's no shortcut to that. It just takes the time to hear them out.
Dave Thompson, CFI: People want to be heard. I know I mentioned a little bit, I've I've done a lot of work in the wrongful conviction space for people who've been, you know, wrongly convicted of a crime and have served sometimes years or decades for something they didn't do. One of the most common things I hear is that just they just need to be heard. People, their lawyer didn't believe them, the court didn't believe them, the police didn't believe them, the media didn't believe them. And even sometimes when they get exonerated and they're freed, people still don't believe them. And they just want somebody to hear their story. And so I think it just applies. so much across the board is people people wanna be heard. And so as a leader, that's your responsibility.
Rachel Losser: That and I think that goes well beyond business, you know, that goes well beyond that's just I think part of our human experience. People wanna be heard.
Dave Thompson, CFI: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. And not always want to be corrected either. I've learned. Right. This applies to personal life and relationships too. Sometimes people... I have learned that whether it's a friend, significant others, whoever it might be, coworkers, sometimes people want to complain because they just need to. They need to vent. Sometimes they want advice. but I have absolutely learned to almost ask that question every time of like, Do you do you want me just to listen? Or do you want me to give you feedback? Because sometimes people don't want the feedback in that moment. So no knowing the content of the or the context about that conversation I think is usually important.
Rachel Losser: That is I think every person's relationship would be improved
Dave Thompson, CFI: Right.
Rachel Losser: if everybody's like, wait a second, do you want feedback or do you just want me to listen and and throw in some like what the hells, you know, you know, with it?
Dave Thompson, CFI: Right. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Exactly. Because I'm happy to tell you that you're wrong, but maybe that's not the right time or place right now. Yeah.
Rachel Losser: Dave, thank you so much for agreeing to do this. This has been just awesome. And I I think we're gonna have to have you back because I feel like we barely scratched the surface of things to talk about.
Dave Thompson, CFI: No, this was great. I it's it's really cool that there's just so much, you know. I learned early on, we're not really teaching interview interrogation, we're teaching communication and understanding. And and I think that relates so much to what what you do and what Project Management really is about and leadership's about. So it's it's cool to exchange those ideas and we'll have to get you over on the Truth Be Told podcast as well. So we can get you in front of our our audience. Yeah. Absolutely.
Rachel Losser: Can't wait. Can't wait. Thank you so much for joining us, Dave. If people wanna learn more about you or W-Z being a CFI or being on your podcast, where's the best place for folks to get in touch with you?
Dave Thompson, CFI: me. easy is just W-Z.com, our website. And the other is probably all over LinkedIn. So if you're on LinkedIn, look up Dave Thompson. There's a million Dave Thompsons, put CFI after it and you'll find the guy with the beard and that one's me.
Rachel Losser: perfect. Thank you so much. And we'll we'll include all your details in the show notes and everything too. So thank you to everyone for listening to Big Project Energy. if you prefer if you prefer a video version of the podcast, we're also on YouTube. So make sure to follow us, rate us five stars. Please feel free to add on your thoughts or engage in the conversation because I'm having a lot of fun of folks that have come in and said, you know, any any thoughts about things. So jump in and we'll engage and then check out our show notes to get in touch with guests. So thank you so much, Dave.
Dave Thompson, CFI: Awesome. Thanks for having me. Appreciate it.
Rachel Losser: I think clear.
Dave Thompson, CFI: And I smiled the whole time.
