Obtaining Everyday Confessions That Drive Nonprofit Success

• Allow their mission to guide them as they enhance their observation and persuasion skills to further how they serve their communities.

Michael Reddington is a Certified Forensic Interviewer, executive resource, author of The Disciplined Listening Method, and President of InQuasive, Inc. Organizations seek out Michael to teach their senior leaders, negotiators and interviewers how to obtain the everyday confessions that drive their businesses. Michael has facilitated over 1,500 sessions and educated participants from over 50 countries.

More information at – https://michaelreddington.com/

 

The Interview Transcript

Hugh Ballou:
Welcome to the Nonprofit Exchange. This is Hugh Ballou, the host of the Nonprofit Exchange and founder and president of SynerVision Leadership Foundation. Center Vision is a contraction of Synergy and Vision, and as a musical conductor, we create ensemble. That’s the synergy. So leaders are very clear with their vision, and we build the ensemble. That’s the synergy that’s so important to our work. Today’s guest is Michael Reddington. He’s a certified forensic interviewer and the founder of the Disciplined Listening Method. Michael has taken the highly specialized skills of forensic interviewing and adapted them for business and leadership. And this is how professionals learn how to listen with purpose and identify hidden value and transform resistance into commitment. His work empowers leaders to engage more deeply, build trust, and achieve better results in every conversation. Michael, I made that up about you. Tell us a little bit more about you and what’s behind this? Why do you do this work, your passion for this work?

Michael reddington:
Well, I appreciate that. You can make up any positive things you want to say about me elsewhere. They’re true. And we can keep it rolling. But really, for me, what drives me is the fact that as human beings, in many of our conversations, we leave so much on the table. And I don’t necessarily mean that from a negotiation standpoint. You could have gotten more. from understanding each other from making connections from building bridges to achieving things together. We leave so much on the table because of either the baggage we bring into the conversation or the distractions that we have in the conversations or what we focus on. So, I was very fortunate to be, I say this kind of jokingly, but dragged into an unexpected career where my teammates and I were required to speak with people who wanted nothing to do with speaking with us and learning the skills necessary to build unexpected bonds with those people to encourage them to commit to sharing sensitive information under vulnerable circumstances in the face of consequences really lays the groundwork for, as human beings, how we can connect with other people in all of our high-value conversations in order to drive all the things that you mentioned. The stronger relationships, the better outcomes and beyond.

Hugh Ballou:
Conversations is a two-way street. So, talk about both sides. How do we deliver the message accurately so that other person can understand it? And then, how can we become, be a better active engaged listener.

Michael reddington:
Great question, and I like to flip it. I like to talk about being a better listener first, and then we’ll get to being a more effective communicator second. I had a conversation with a new friend of mine from Scotland this morning, and I’m gonna steal a quote from him, when he said that people ask him, he’s retired law enforcement, and he’s in cognitive behavior therapy, and he does a lot of things in his career. But he said to me that people ask him all the time, well, you’re talking to me about how to listen, but what should I say? And he laughs and says, well, I shouldn’t need to tell you what to say if you do a good enough job listening. And I think that’s a great way to approach it. Often if we do a really good job really connecting and observing with the people we’re talking to then we don’t need to be so well conditioned on what to say. Now yeah there’s best practices and good things and helpful things and things we should avoid of course, but his point is very, very accurate and one, I guess, last segue from my career, from my former teammates and I, we almost never, extremely rarely, got called into investigations where they had evidence and knew who did it. The overwhelming majority of the time, there were multiple suspects, no evidence, everybody had already been interviewed, nobody had told the truth, it was several months ago and now we’re coming in. So in those scenarios, we had to listen to people long enough to figure out how they want to be communicated with that day. then deliver that to them. So they would feel comfortable opening up and being honest with us. So from my perspective, yeah, it’s a two sided coin, you have the strategic observation on one side and the persuasive communication on the other. But we really need to work from observation to the persuasive communication, not the reverse. And when it comes to really opening our eyes, our ears, our senses, to observing everything that’s being presented to us, one of the things that we have to do, and you and I were talking a little bit off air before we hit record, is stay out of the entitlement trap. All too often as leaders, either in title or in figure, whether it’s family leaders, church leaders, community leaders, organization leaders, business leaders, we walk into some of these conversations and assuming, well, because I’m the leader, I’m entitled to this information. So I can ask for to any which way and time that’s convenient for me, and you owe it to me so you’re going to give it to me. And then if you don’t, you’re disrespecting me which now upsets me, and I’m going to react in kind, where in reality, we need to earn the right to ask people questions. We need to earn the right and build the foundation where people are comfortable sharing sensitive information with us. And one of the reasons why we went with the title that we did, Everyday Confession, is that if I’m interviewing somebody who is suspected of some sort of wrongdoing, a regretful decision that they made in their life, really for them to quote unquote confess, all they’re doing, all like it’s easy, all they’re choosing to do is share sensitive information under vulnerable circumstances in the face of consequences. Well, as leaders in our life, anytime you’re asking somebody a question, you’re essentially asking them to share information that they could be perceived as sensitive in a vulnerable situation, because you’re the leader, and in the face of consequences, because as the leader, you can hand out consequences anytime you want. So it’s literally the same mental jumping jacks, and we don’t often stop to consider that. Another friend of mine I recently had a conversation with said that, I want to make sure I quote her right, that leaders often think about what they’ll say, but the very best leaders think about how it will land. As communicators, our job is to create the communication experience our counterparts require. so that way we can create the connection necessary to achieve our goals. And when we look at classifying high impact conversations, that’s due to the combination of relationship and outcome. So I might be having a conversation with somebody that I got no real relationship with, but the outcome is important to me. That’s high value. I might be having a conversation with my little boy about the most ridiculous thing in the world, whatever cartoon he’s watching. Well, the topic’s not important, but he’s very important, so it’s a high-impact conversation. And when we engage in those high-impact conversations to finally circle back and start directly answering your questions, I have to be very careful not to allow any negative predictions or expectations or assumptions to skew my observations. I want to make sure that I try to maintain my outcome focus, what’s the most important for this relationship, for this achievement. I want to observe the totality of everything that’s being either displayed or said to me, evaluate it within the context of the situation. So I avoid making judgments that are going to derail what I say next and their reactions. And then as I gather this all, now I can start to consider, OK, As it’s my turn to communicate and continue this conversation, how do I help this person save face and protect their self-image? Above all else, if I can help them save face and protect their self-image while they start to say or do whatever it is I would really like them to, now they’re more likely to accept this level of vulnerability and participate in the conversation. And I know I took a couple left and right turns there as I answered the question. So I’m happy to step back and clarify any way that you would like.

Hugh Ballou:
Well, I want to tell people who are watching or listening to this episode sometime in history, that if you didn’t catch all that, you didn’t get all those wonderful tips and sound bites, there’s a transcript at vthenonprofitexchange.org. and look for this session with Michael Reddington. There’ll be all of these in the transcript so you haven’t missed out. You can go back and you can push replay on your device. So Michael, I spent 40 years as a musical conductor listening for what’s really there is important. I spent a lot of time training as a coach, and so 90% of coaching is listening. So it’s how we listen, and are we listening, and we’re picking up things that other people miss. And so there’s multiple parts to this question. A, how can we As a leader, listen with our ears and our eyes. How do we listen for, you know, not to respond, but to understand? And then you mentioned our own biases. We have our own filters. So how do we digest that and then how do we frame a response? Because sometimes when people ask me something and I respond differently than they want, they say, you’re not listening to me, which is not really what they meant. I have listened, but I’m not agreeing with you. So, you know, any of that, does any of that frame into a question you’d like to address?

Michael reddington:
Yeah, all of it for sure. So I can’t play an instrument, let alone lead an orchestra. But I imagine throughout your career, you developed not only a level of expertise with multiple instruments, I’m sure. and with teaching, but also with leading a group of musicians and being able to pick up on very small details that the average person sitting behind you in the audience would have no idea. Somebody might be a little off beat, a little off key, a little off rhythm, whatever it might be. So keeping everybody in line and managing all of that at once. that likely took 100% of your available cognitive resources to stay locked in and manage all of that, even given your high level of expertise. When we are engaging with another person in a conversation, I think there’s a real strong analogy to be made there. Oftentimes, we are not talking to somebody in a sterile, quiet, distraction-free environment. There could be other people in the room. There could be other noises around us, cars, TVs, radio, whatever it might be. Even if we’re in a private one-on-one conversation, is somebody’s phone going off? Is the computer on next to them? And little email alerts are dinging. Are people walking down the hall? So, as you were leading the orchestra, you developed, listen to me make all these assumptions about your expertise and what you did, but you developed a fine tuned level of contextual awareness that allowed you to pick up on all these things in real time and make decisions. As communicators, it’s important that we develop this contextual awareness as well. All too often, and we’ll talk about kind of our biases and assumptions that you brought up in just a second, but all too often, you know, somebody crosses their arms. They’re upset. No, they’re cold. No, they’re vulnerable. No, they’re hungry. Like somebody crossed their arms, that could mean any number of different things, but we see that and we react and we make a judgment and we draw a conclusion. So the more we can, observe by maintaining that contextual awareness. Who’s around? How many times have we all been in a conversation where somebody deals with us differently one-on-one than they do when they’re in front of an audience? Well, now they have an audience. It’s a performance opportunity. And I’m also willing to bet that if you really paid attention to that audience, there’s one or two people in that audience that they’re actually performing for. And if those two people weren’t in the room, then this conversation would be handled differently. So one of the things that we talk about, which is so important, but it sounds kind of trite, is maintaining an outcome-focused mentality. Real observation, real communication is an outcome-driven endeavor. The people who do it extremely well are the ones who can take a step back and say, what are the outcomes that I’m truly looking to achieve here? Not just right now today, how am I looking to feel? What do I want them to go do? But long term as well, what are the real outcomes that I’m trying to create in this relationship, in this community, especially for nonprofit leaders? As we’re building these relationships in our community, we’re doing that because we’re helping people. So if the long term goal is to help the people that are nonprofit supports. Well then, less long term or more mid range goal could be developed the relationships in the community necessary that provide us the access the assets and the opportunity to make that happen. So now if I’m trying to always do things that are helping the people are nonprofit supports develop the relationships that are going to unlock the doors to make that happen. If those are my long term strategic outcomes, then every high impact conversation I go to should be framed around that. And now I’m observing differently. As I pick up on the emotional cues of the words that they use, yeah, hopefully some of their nonverbal behavior gives reliable indication of their comfort and discomfort levels. Maybe some of the suggestions they make or questions that they ask will give us an indication of their goals, their fears, their motivations along the way. But the only way that we can really get value from that is if we have an outcome to tie it to. It’s like having a destination if we went sailing. No one’s going to get on the ocean in a boat and say let’s just see where this lands. We’re going to have a destination in mind before we set sail. Same thing with conversations. So to quickly wrap this back up, you talked about those expectations, whether we call them predictions, expectations, assumptions, biases. All often, excuse me, they serve as our first filter. So you and I connect for a conversation. And this is not true at all. But just to use it as an example, I think to myself, I’m going to be talking with you and he’s the host of his show. So he’s probably going to want to let me know really early that this is his conversation, not mine. That wasn’t my expectation. And this never happened for the record. So then now when you come in and you say, well, hello, Michael, welcome to my show, this is how it goes. I take that as, there he is, he’s laying down the law, this is his show. But what you really mean that as, welcome to my internet home, I wanna make you welcome and make sure you’re clear as to how this goes. If you have any questions, you can ask me. So my expectation served as the filter that I interpreted your actions and gave them meaning, which then developed, which created an emotional response for me, which could derail my attachment. So again, to get, or not attachment, response. So again, if we can focus on the outcome, now I can do a better job staying neutral in my observations and saying, okay, really what to steal a theme from improvisational comedy, which again, I have no expertise or experience in, how you communicate with me is the offer. You’re giving me an offer to interpret this, react to this, and tie it into a better outcome that I’m trying to achieve. So now it’s almost like your move, my move, your move, my move, hopefully in a more collaborative way, not a competitive way, but by focusing on the outcome, we can limit the destructive power of those predictions and expectations.

Hugh Ballou:
That is so good. Thank you for the affirmation, by the way. In your introduction, I spoke about the disciplined listening method. That’s a method, but it’s also a book, is it not?

Michael reddington:
Yes, sir. Happens to be this yellow one right here. And I appreciate you asking. So talk about what that is. So the discipline listening method is the result of a couple of decades of not only career but research as well. And honestly, a lot of conversations like this. So once upon a time I was a school teacher and then I was in customer service and then I was in interview and interrogation. have people from all different careers and families and backgrounds asking, how do we apply certain techniques in different conversations? So really what this is, is it is the integration of the world’s leading non-confrontational interview and interrogation techniques with business communication, research, and best practices, backed by a myriad of scientific studies from a wide ranging view of perspectives and disciplines filtered in with stories and real life examples as well, really to teach people, like the cover says, how to uncover hidden value in every conversation. Because if we’re engaging with somebody, we’re doing it for a reason. And we should do so in a way that maximizes the value of the relationship throughout the process. Say more about hidden value. All too often, when we get into any conversation, whether we realize it or not, we have the check the box mentality. How many times have we gone to the doctor’s office and they’re asking us questions while they’re checking the box on their computer and they don’t even look at us? If you’re sarcastic like me, you start giving them wild answers to see if they’re really paying attention or not. But the same thing happens even in our daily observations. Maybe I’m an executive with a nonprofit and I’m going on a fundraising campaign. So I’m gonna go out into the community and I’m gonna ask people questions to see if they might be in a position in order to donate money. Well, if I am just asking questions in order to gauge are they in a position to make a financial contribution, I’m checking that box. And if all I’m doing is checking that box to either get myself to or away from a preordained destination, I could be missing that there’s other things that motivate them or another time would be better or they have other relationships or maybe other events I can piggyback on or ways to tie what we do together. So when we talk about listening for hidden value, it’s taking that goal oriented approach to our high impact conversations, allowing the conversation to unfold in front of us you know time is the enemy of empathy if we really want to understand somebody we want to let that conversation breathe. Be patient, let the conversation come to us and gather that intelligence to really understand where is somebody emotionally, where are their goals and motivations, so we can get to what’s underneath maybe their rote or quick answers that they’re giving us to make surprising connections.

Hugh Ballou:
That’s a lot of good stuff. So I want to remind the viewers, listeners, that there is a transcript on the page on the nonprofitexchange.org. So let’s get to the title, unpacking the title a little bit. You chose the title, Obtaining Everyday Confessions That Drive Nonprofit Success. Unpack that a little bit, please.

Michael reddington:
Certainly. So when we think about everyday confessions, It might be a biased term if I’m being honest. But really what we’re talking about is the information that people are willing to share with us if we approach them the way they need to be approached. Again, oftentimes people hear the word confession, they think about crime. But if we think about it from a psychological standpoint, somebody confesses to a crime, they’re sharing sensitive information under vulnerable circumstances in the face of consequences. Well, we all ask people to share sensitive information under vulnerable circumstances in the face of consequences, dozens, if not hundreds of times a day, depending on where we are and who we’re speaking with. So if we look at the everyday confession, really what we’re looking at is the valuable intelligence that people have. And if we can encourage them to commit to sharing with us, we can create much stronger relationships and achieve vastly different outcomes together. But we can’t just wake up and ask them in a way that’s convenient to us to get back to the first question that you asked to start the conversation. The communication process really has to be built around what does the other person need to experience so they will open up and share the information we need. In the nonprofit world, is it fundraising? Is it technology support? Is it marketing support? Is it access to other support programs for whatever community that we’re supporting? Is it some of the everyday resources that it takes there’s a nonprofit here that I’ve been working with for years, and one of their delivery trucks broke down. So I just happened to be having a conversation with their executive director and she’s talking about how one of their programs is kind of stuck in the mud, because they don’t have anybody to fix this delivery truck. While I’ve been to their facility a bunch of times I was like, is that the old Chevy? Yes, let me make a couple phone calls, and I was able to get somebody over there not playing the hero the conversations about her not me, I was able to get somebody over there to help fix the truck so they could get back underway. So as a nonprofit some of these little things that other people be like, there’s a truck broken down so what you got three more well in our world. That could be a really big problem. So when we think about everyday confessions, it’s really about how do we encourage people to share the information that maybe wasn’t top of mind, or maybe they didn’t think was valuable, or maybe they were too nervous to share, and that information, in turn, helps us serve our communities better. And I’ve made probably too many assumptions for one conversation already, but to make another, often nonprofits are in place to support people in communities that don’t already have the resources that they need and likely are facing multiple challenges. And sometimes in order to help those people the best, we need to encourage them to open up and tell us what they’re truly experiencing and what they truly need. And depending on what they’ve experienced and where they come from, that can be some of the hardest conversations that we lead.

Hugh Ballou:
Amen, I don’t see you as assumptions. I think you as a good observer and framing your observations in a profound way and I did When I heard confession, I didn’t think of law enforcement. I thought of the priest Counselor that therapist so there’s many contexts all of which are sensitive. Mm-hmm. And so we in conversations of people as a musician I listen to the details and in the words we choose. We throw people a curve. We use filler words that have no meaning in it, and so forth, if you will. We also use triangling words. Oh, Johnny bless his heart. and then things that are unexpected. Oh, by the way, wait a minute, what’s coming now? And then I love this one. I’m going to be perfectly honest with you, which I’m wondering, were you lying before? What are some ways that we set up problems when we’re talking to people as leaders?

Michael reddington:
Yeah, those are all great examples. Another one of my favorites is no offense, but. So there’s really many things that come into that. One of which is just lack of preparation, which in fairness, we don’t have two hours to prepare for every conversation that we’re going to engage in. As human beings, when we find ourselves in stressful situations, even if we don’t want to admit that they’re stressful, it can be harder to find the right words, the right phrase, the exact thing we want to say. Sometimes even in a conversation that we feel like we planned or were prepared for, we can feel ambushed by a reaction or a question or a challenge. And then we kind of start stumbling as we sort of circle back to work around to the best answer that we have. So the filler words, I wouldn’t necessarily worry about so much from a leadership perspective. Yeah, they mean nothing. But I think oftentimes people recognize them for what they are. Or, well, you know, I’m trying to find the right words. And if you sit there for another three seconds, hopefully I get there. So those I wouldn’t worry about so much. Some of those other setup statements Yeah, just even the word but alone, you know, Hugh, I’ve been listening to your show and generally I think you’re a pretty good interviewer, but now here it comes, right? Let’s just go to whatever the feedback was after the but instead of setting you up to knock you down before that. So when we look for ways to really help people save face and keep them engaged in the conversation, I wouldn’t say just go super direct. Sometimes you’ve got a relationship and that’s warranted. Sometimes a situation might be critical and we don’t have time. So I’m gonna be very direct with you now, but then I’m gonna create the time to follow up later. Like I can use my son as an example. There’s times where I need to correct him right now. I would love to explain it to him, but I don’t want him to land on his head. So I’m gonna correct him right now. And maybe he gets upset with how I corrected him, but once we’re safe, now I can go sit down next to him And I can say, hey, buddy, please allow me a moment to explain to you why I reacted the way that I did. And so now we still have the teaching moment because the direct feedback without the teaching moment is just dad was mad at me or my boss was mad at me or Mike was mad at me. I wasn’t mad at him. Actually, I give you credit for crying, trying crazy stuff. I think that’s awesome. I want you to live to tell the tale. So I want you to stop it now, we’ll talk about it after, and that way you’re willing to go push yourself at another time, another way. So really finding teaching moments, helping people save face. Don’t worry about necessarily having the perfect words, because that can be paralyzing. I don’t know the right thing to say, so I’ll say nothing, or I’ll say screw it and just flame the whole thing. But if I can focus on finding ways to help people save face, keep my intentions aligned with my actions, and really work around shared goals and outcomes, we should be more successful.

Hugh Ballou:
A couple of things. You mentioned real early in this conversation something about how people want to be communicated with. We’re sensitive knowing that person. But on top of that, if you just, we’re almost the end, but I want to work these in, you know, how do we know their style? Because some people want to be direct, some people don’t. But in light of that, looking at mannerisms and the facial part of this, how does all of that play into the discipline method that you teach?

Michael reddington:
I appreciate you asking. So a couple of super quick answers. For most people listening right now, I’d imagine that the majority of people they talk to, they talk to more than once. So start creating patterns of behavior and communication for the people you interact with. Pay attention to that over a period of time, as you learn how they like to communicate, be communicated with, how they prefer to make decisions, fit within their preferred pattern, things will typically go much easier and be more successful for you. So if you have that opportunity. The other to your point is pay attention as conversations unfold. I wish we had a couple of hours to talk about kind of the non verbals and those types of things, because behaviors can mean multiple things. So if you and I are having a conversation on a street corner, and you look down at your watch. Is that because you’re wondering if that’s the 330 bus that’s coming? Are you wearing an Apple Watch and somebody just called you? Am I boring you and you’re looking for a way to get out of this conversation? So that contextual awareness becomes very important. Behaviors that we think have to mean one thing only can mean many, many, many different things based on the context of the situation. So the one thing that I would say for the minute that we have left is when a behavior changes is far more important than what behavior changes. All too often we get ourselves in trouble because we assume behavior X means thought or emotion Y. While that might sometimes be true, a lot of times it’s probably not. But if I’m talking with you and I say something like, hey, I know you have a meeting after this, I wanna make sure we leave enough time to talk through what was important to you. And you look down at your watch, Well, you’re not looking down at your watch because I’m wasting your time. You’re looking down at your watch to see how much time you have before your next meeting. So that type of contextual awareness is of critical importance. And honestly, it’s something that most people miss most of the time, and it gets us in trouble.

Hugh Ballou:
Oh, absolutely. So michaelreddington.com is your website. When people go there, they’re going to find out a lot of stuff, including your book at the bottom. But what will they find when they go there?

Michael reddington:
I appreciate you asking. There’s a ton of extra content there. So interviews, articles, videos, content that we speak about, all that will be there. Up at the top, discipline listening. We’ll take you to the discipline listening book page where they can learn everything about the book. Inquasive is the company page where they can learn more about the programs that we teach for our clients around the world. Contact is where they can shoot me a note. I would love to hear from them. Happy to continue the conversation and engage in any conversation they would like.

Hugh Ballou:
So Michael, we might have to do part two of this interview in a few months. So don’t be surprised if I’m putting you on the spot, I’ll send you an invitation. So what closing thought would you like to leave people with?

Michael reddington:
Oh man, there’s so many, but I think We mentioned it already, but if we can go, I’m gonna package a couple real quick. If we can have a couple of guidelines going into a conversation, if it’s a real critical conversation, please keep in mind that most people are gonna be more motivated to withhold information than to share it. That doesn’t make them wrong or dishonest, that makes them human beings who want to protect themselves. Okay, so if people that we speak with wanna protect themselves or their self images, what do we need to do? We need to remain outcome focused. We need to help people save face and protect their self image. And we need to focus on solutions, not problems. We like to say that life is a series of solvable problems. We can choose to focus on the problem or we can choose to focus on the solution. And our mantra is focus on the issue, not the person, focus on the resolution, not the consequences.

Hugh Ballou:
Thanks listeners and viewers for being with us. Remember, good leadership starts with disciplined listening. Michael Reddington, thank you for being our guest today on the Nonprofit Exchange. Thank you so much.