Transcript
Annalisa Holcombe (01:32):
This week, we are joined by Alana Dunagan. Alana is the Director of Higher Education and Workforce Policy at Western Governors University. Prior to that, she worked as a Senior Researcher at the Clayton Christensen Institute, a nonpartisan research organization dedicated to improving the world through Disruptive Innovation. She's also an entrepreneur and a communicator. Today, of course, we will be talking about communication.

Annalisa Holcombe (02:11):
So, if you remove all things that we'd normally talk about when we say, "This is who I am and what I do,"... So, don't count work, school, research, church activity, sports activity, any of those types of things. If you remove all of that, what are you most proud of about yourself? Or, what is your greatest accomplishment as a human being?

Alana Dunagan (02:36):
It kind of is hard to totally separate out what you do. Because, I think one of the things that I, for instance, am most proud of is who I am as a parent, but that's also very visibly something I do. I am proud of my kids. They're two and four, so you can already tell they're going to be great human beings. But I think, as a parent, there's just a way that you want to be. I am really happy with who I am as a parent and I have a lot of fun with it. So, I'm proud of that. I don't think I'm the best church member or performer of religious activities, but I am really proud of my faith and just the way that I push myself on that journey. Have you seen the movie WALL-E, where everyone just turns into a kind of blob? We're sort of at that point a little bit, where you have a choice about whether you have a physical life or not.

Alana Dunagan (03:50):
And, we're definitely at that point in terms of you have a choice as to whether you have a spiritual life or not, and whether you pursue these questions of meaning, and purpose, and depth. Clearly, we live in a society where not everyone... Even religious people. Not everyone pursues those questions of meaning, and purpose, and, "Who am I trying to be in the world?" I'm proud that I do and that I push myself there.

Alana Dunagan (04:25):
And then, I think the third thing I'm really proud of is learning how to be married. We're coming up on six years, which isn't 60 years. But, I'm sure there are people who say, "I do," and then are like, "Wow, I'm so good at this. I was born to do this." That wasn't our experience. We felt like it was really hard, and it's weird to have it be so hard to love the person that you loved enough to marry them, like, "Why is that so hard?" But for us, it was hard. I think figuring that out and being honest, and self-reflective, and learning to do things, and unlearning how to do other things, I'm really proud of that journey and we're still on it. I think those were the things.

Annalisa Holcombe (05:26):
Those are great things. Those are really important things. I hope that we could maybe reflect on those a little bit as we talk about communication today, because I think they're super important to how we communicate. And, I want to maybe put a pin in that part, because I hadn't even thought about talking about using the theme of communication as a way to talk about how we communicate with ourselves or how we communicate with our own spirituality. As you brought that up I thought I'm so deeply interested in deeper communication, really hearing, and listening, and seeking to understand. I feel like you just started this discussion with that, in terms of your relationship with your children, with your faith, and with your spouse. That whole how much work it is to really communicate to actually know whether it's them or yourself. You know what I mean?

Alana Dunagan (06:29):
Right.

Annalisa Holcombe (06:31):
We'll just dive into communication, we'll probably start with the stuff that is or is not easiest, which is that whole idea of communication as part of our work life. When you think about it, we always hear or talk about communication as one of the most important aspects of how we bring ourselves to work. It's one of those skills that every employer says that they need someone who's a communicator. So, how do we define it? What is effective communication?

Alana Dunagan (07:13):
Adam Grant has this anecdote in Originals where there's this study of... They ask people to tap songs like, "Happy birthday to you," and you tap it on the table. Everyone can do that. We're all really good tappers. But, they ask people, "How many people do you think can tell that you're tapping happy birthday?" And, we're really good tappers, so we're like, "I don't know, 100%? Maybe some people are dumb, 80%?" And the reality is, it's like 3%, because you're hearing the song in your head. And so, that's something that challenges me a lot and challenges our team a lot, that for whatever it is that we're communicating, we hear this song in our head. We don't necessarily think as much about what the other person is hearing. I think that's some of the problem with communication at work, some of the problem with professional communication for organizations.

Alana Dunagan (08:28):
But, I think it's a problem interpersonally as well. That we're tapping, and we hear this whole song, and the other person doesn't. One of the hardest things to do is to step out of what you know and put your self in the perspective of the other person and what they know and don't know.

Annalisa Holcombe (08:51):
What's the way to learn from that? Do you have an example of when you've been in a work environment in which you have witnessed effective communication? What did that look like?

Alana Dunagan (09:02):
Yeah, I feel like I see it all the time. In my mind, there's some basic... Let's call this some building blocks. I'm a huge fan of the delete key. I think it's the most important key on the keyboard, by far. To be a good communicator, you have to be respectful of people's attention span. We're almost always more interested in what we have to say than other people are. So, getting it all out there and then saying, "What is really necessary? Do I really need to go down all the rabbit trails I'm going down? Am I really punching up my main points and being as simple and clear as I can on what's not the main point?" So, I think that delete key and just concision, parsimony, shortness, brevity, "Can I be as redundant as possible in talking about this concept?" So, I think just to be crisp is part of being effective.

Alana Dunagan (10:16):
And then, I think there's also this idea of communicating to the other person. What is it that they need to hear to move forward in their decision making, in their understanding? Which, is oftentimes different than what it is we want to say. We communicate often to be known and to validate ourselves, which I think in relationships can be a really good, important thing to do. But, at work we're often trying to get something done, and that ego of, "I want you to know how hard I worked on this. I want you to know that this matters more than the other things on your desk. I want you to know how critical I am with this project." We sort of are often implicitly communicating those things as well and assuming a knowledge base that isn't there. And so, clearing all of that out and saying, "What am I really trying to achieve? How do I move that forward with this conversation, email, presentation?"

Alana Dunagan (11:16):
And then, I think the other thing that people forget is, and certainly I'm guilty of this more than most people, is that people pay attention to what's fun and to story. I think all of the data and statistics that we're awash in is a relatively new invention. But, human beings have been telling each other stories for millennia, at least, and I think that ability to have this shared imagination is what connects us as a species. And so, I think to be able to infuse story, and humor, and meaning into communication to be able to give people a memorable, "Why?" I think is so key. You know this in your work, where you can give people all the headline statistics in the world, but if you tell them a story of who it matters to and how it changes their life, it clicks for them in a different way.

Annalisa Holcombe (12:29):
That's the thing that sticks. You'll forget the numbers that somebody told you, but you'll remember the story that somebody told you about another human or about a situation.

Alana Dunagan (12:39):
Yeah.

Annalisa Holcombe (12:41):
You said something, and I find it almost a little bit heartbreaking but real, because you said something about how when we're communicating at work we are in some ways... I think it's not only in service of our own ego, but it's also in service of our own trying to show that we matter. We communicate more about, "Look, I'm important. Look, I'm necessary," as we communicate things. What does that mean? How do you see that? Because, are there a whole bunch of us out there? And in fact, yes, I do it too, "Do you see me? Do you think that I'm worthwhile in this role?" How can the leaders who hear that from the people that they work with, and probably even the leaders themselves who want their own team members who report to them, to know that they also are trying? How do we get to that humanity, in terms of our communication, or should we even?

Alana Dunagan (13:55):
There's two things that are intention. We have to keep in mind what other people don't know and approach communication that way. But, if we're speaking in a manner that says, "Look, this is complex and I understand it, and you don't," that feels really...

Annalisa Holcombe (14:19):
I would like to punch someone if they talked to me like that.

Alana Dunagan (14:21):
Right.

Annalisa Holcombe (14:25):
Even if it's true.

Alana Dunagan (14:27):
It's great for our egos, to feel like, "This is so complex and I'm the only person that can understand it." I think we feel a certain amount of power in being, "This is complex," but there's way more power in being able to say, "This is simple," and to cut through the jungle for people. Again, it's that effective communication is really powerful, but a lot of times what keeps us from going there is that we want to show people the jungle and how well we understand it, and not the path through it.

Annalisa Holcombe (15:06):
Awesome. One time you said something to me, and I mentioned this to you, about the communications profession could almost be in conflict with or antithetical to actual real communicating. So, can you expand on that a little bit? Tell me your thoughts about that. Or, was I wrong when I heard you that way?

Alana Dunagan (15:35):
When I think about myself in personal situations, I am very often not trying to move the ball forward. At work we're always trying to move the ball forward. There's that quote, "To be known and not loved is the worst thing in the world to be." Loved and not known is also very empty, and what we're all seeking is to be known and loved. And so, I think in interpersonal communication, that's hopefully what we're trying to do, is to understand the other person, to be known ourselves. Maybe we're talking with our spouse about who should pick up the kids, or the dishes, or what happened at a doctor's appointment, but a lot of that logistical communication is not about trying to get the other person to do something. If all of your communication with your spouse is like, "I want you to do this," that's really what's behind it all. It's not healthy. We communicate right in relationships so that we can be known.

Alana Dunagan (17:05):
As organizations though, we are trying to move the ball forward, and so we have messages and we stick to those messages. We are really great analysts of the conversation and the narrative so that we can insert ourselves in it and deploy our messages effectively and move the ball forward. Again, if that's how we're thinking about our relationships, we’re in trouble. But, I think there is this reality... Frankly, I think this is true on social media as well for individuals. But, as an organization, no one is really trying to understand you. You think of Instagram influencers with millions of followers, wouldn't it be so nice to be them? Because, so many people know them. But, if you actually look at their content, you realize nobody knows them. They recognize that people aren't coming to their site in order to know them. People are coming to their site because they want beauty tips or because they want travel pictures. And, the authenticity around that is always very curated.

Alana Dunagan (18:27):
And so, I think it gets tricky on social media for people because we go to it wanting to be known for ourselves, we put this stuff out there. And then, it feels like nobody cares because people don't go on social media and people aren't absorbing corporate communications in, "How do I know all of these other people?" It's like, "What's the one fact? What's the one dopamine hit that I can get that excites me enough and then I move on?" And, organizational communication, external communication, very much exists in that realm where people are thinking about their own lives, and the issues they care about, and what's going on in their world, and, "How do you get your soundbite in there so that you can make that instant connection with that person?" But, knowing that there's no appetite to know the truth of you as a corporate entity, unless it's in a negative way and people are trying to figure out your underbelly and what's underneath all the rocks, that kind of thing.

Annalisa Holcombe (19:41):
Tell me about that. I really am interested in that whole idea because I do see the importance of it, this whole we live in a soundbite society, we live in a certain number of characters. I personally write an email to my team every Sunday night, I call it last week tonight, and it summarizes the important things that happened. I now have a TLDR at the top of that email, just in case people aren't going to read the whole thing. And so, if that's who we are, what do you think about that in terms of... There's good parts it, I'm going to summarize, but then I'm also going to story tell later, in my own email communication to my team. What does that mean? If we have that, does it hamper our communication? Does it do that at work or in society? How do you feel about our Twitter lifestyle in how we communicate societally?

Alana Dunagan (20:48):
I think we all know what it's doing to our brains. We feel the difference when we read a long-form article or we read a book. We know how different that feels after you've been scrolling and swiping for an hour. We also know that the scrolling and swiping is addictive. There's pros and cons. We're able to take in so much more information, again, because people recognize our ADD, they make it concise, they make it digestible, they make it dopamine inducing. And, as organizational communicators, we've got to be able to exist in that world. We can put out all the long-form articles in the world, but those don't get as many eyeballs. Those are dream, from an organizational communication standpoint, when someone is willing to write this in-depth story. But, you've got to be able to do both in a...

Alana Dunagan (22:03):
Formally, I worked at a think tank, and so you're sort of this public intellectual, although I was a very minor figure. But, you're still playing this public intellectual game. So, you're putting out whitepapers, and you're placing articles in different places, and you're on social media, and you're trying to get your ideas out there, and you're speaking wherever you can. I can't tell you the number of times you put out a white paper, you get some sort of invites and media interest based on that. But you know what? You put out a tweet, you get the same thing. I can't tell you the number of times that people are like, "I saw your tweet on this, we'd love to have you do such and such." And so, it just feels so ironic when you're putting all of this effort into crafting this really beautiful, truly thought-out, well-researched, six months in the making long-form content, and then what gets people is the tweet. It just is crazy, but it's also how the world works. And so, I think, as organizations, you've got to be willing to play both games.

Annalisa Holcombe (23:19):
How do you see that moving us forward? Because, I think you say important things here, in terms of we've been storytelling for millennia, our storytelling is now... We can't have long-form articles. Our storytelling now is this big. What does that mean for us as humans? What will it look like for your children? What do you think?

Alana Dunagan (23:44):
I don't know. Again, I'm worried about what it's doing to our brains. I'm worried about what it's doing to my brain.

Annalisa Holcombe (23:51):
Me too. I stayed away from TikTok for so long, but then my daughter's sending me videos and so I went on, and 45 minutes was gone like that because I just scrolled.

Alana Dunagan (24:06):
I wonder if the true evolutionary story is that ants just scurrying around one thing after another are like human beings that spent too much time on social media.

Annalisa Holcombe (24:25):
If this conversation has caught your attention and you want to join in on conversations like this, check out our website at connectioncollaborative.com.

Annalisa Holcombe (24:33):
Welcome back. You are listening to 92,000 Hours, we are speaking with Alana Dunagan about communication.

Annalisa Holcombe (25:09):
I would love to hear your thoughts, in terms of communication, about the art of listening. I personally think that it is in particular such an important leadership skill, in terms of organizational leaders, societal leaders, how do we listen more? I think listening is super hard. I don't know that we give ourselves enough credit about how much work it is to actually listen. So, I wonder if you had personally any thoughts about that, about the art of listening, in terms of communication, as well as... For me, listening, really listening, has so much to do with empathy and the work of trying to put yourself in someone else's position while you are listening. Does that make sense to you?

Alana Dunagan (26:06):
Yeah. I'm going to come at it in probably the wrong way, more of a cerebral way. There was this economist in the 1930s, a famous microeconomist, Ronald Coase, and he looked at firm structure in the United States and in Soviet Russia. He was looking specifically at, "How does information flow through the organization?" What he found was that in the United States, at that time, there was much more bottom-up information flow. And, the idea that people who were doing the work had the information about that work, and they were willing to send it up the chain. In the more top-down command and control model, that wasn't true. Workers knew that inventory was piling up, or that this material wasn't working to make the product, but they didn't tell anyone. And so, that's not just an insight about capitalism is better than socialism, I think it gives us insight about power and how power influences communication. That's the challenge for leaders, is that no one wants to tell you things that you don't want to hear. And so, it's not enough to just sit there and listen. You really have to work quite hard at creating the psychological space where people are willing to talk.

Alana Dunagan (27:55):
If you're just taking the time to listen and you're not thinking about how you react to negative information, how you reward information, what you're willing to disclose in order to create vulnerability, you can spend a lot of time listening and hear nothing that you need to hear. Because, you're operating in this culture whereby people feel like their success is going to be driven, again, by keeping truth from you. I think we see that as parents too, frankly. We can parent in a way where kids feel comfortable sharing their truth with us, and we can parent in a way where kids don't. We've all been teenagers.

Alana Dunagan (28:45):
I think a lot of times we can be naïve, as leaders, and think, "I just need to sit here and take the time and have the skip levels, and be quiet for five minutes, and that's listening." There's so much more that goes into that. I think it's very easy as a leader to see yourself as a person and not as a person in power. The people who report to you see you as a person in power, and you communicate very differently with someone in power than with a peer.

Annalisa Holcombe (29:24):
I think that's so great, because even I see that. When you're saying this right now I'm picturing leaders that I report to, or leaders that I have reported to, and forget that I'm also a leader. And that, the people that work, "I'm seeing myself as a person." So, I think it exists all throughout different levels of organizations.

Alana Dunagan (29:44):
Yeah.

Annalisa Holcombe (29:45):
And also, when we lead from where we are, how are we doing that? What is our interpersonal power at work that people might see us having that we don't even realize they see us having it?

Alana Dunagan (29:54):
Right. The other key to that insight, going back to the microeconomics of it, is that you can't manage without information. I think one of the things that's tricky is that some of the things that make us a strong affective leader, not necessarily as an effective leader... Some of the things that make us a strong affective leader, in terms of poise, and presence, and confidence, and being so clear about what we're doing and what we want. Those things that make us a good affective leader can also make it difficult for us to be a strong effective leader, because we don't get the information that we need. Getting the information on what's working and what's not is, I think, just a critical and very underestimated task.

Annalisa Holcombe (30:52):
I love that so much and I think that I'm going to want to sit with that for a little while because... You just communicated that in this much time, but I'm going to need to sit with for a little while. I want to go back to the idea of listening, and active listening, and empathy with listening, and I wonder if you might allow yourself to think about what that look like, in terms of how you communicate with yourself or with... Here's why I thought about this, because, and I've talked about this before, but I was so moved... Once I saw Sister Helen Prejean, who wrote Dead Man Walking, speaking about one of the most important spiritual lessons she had learned throughout her life with her work with almost exclusively men on death row who were facing their death, was the almost religious experience of actually just sitting and listening to someone. The listening aspect, which I think is... We talk about being heard, but it's also being all the way seen too. It's kind of what you talked about before, that we want to be both known and loved, and how do you do that with regard to listening?

Annalisa Holcombe (32:21):
So, I'm interested in, having said all of that, how do you think about communication in terms of what you're proud about with working towards your faith, or thinking about spirituality, or that big picture, "We're all in this," the way that we are all together in this world?

Alana Dunagan (32:48):
That's an interesting question. I think I should start out by saying I am not a great listener. I talk a lot. I'm really in my own mind. And so, everything I'm saying, don't think for a minute that I'm good at it. If you believe in God, I think most of us probably approach God the same way, which is that we're coming to God with our problems, and with our experience, and with our hopes, and fears. What I believe is that it is hard for us to accept the truth about ourselves, which is that we are so imperfect, that we're never going to be perfect, that that whole race is kind of a trap, and yet that we are loved and good. Those two things, the idea that we're imperfect and that we're loved anyway. For me, spiritually, I think it takes a little bit of a pause to hear that, feel that, absorb it. I do have to stop talking and and quit with my own...

Annalisa Holcombe (34:21):
Stuff in your head.

Alana Dunagan (34:22):
... Stuff in my head to hear that. It feels like a very external message. I think part of faith and spirituality is that you are spending a lifetime to try to internalize truths that on the one hand you know are true, and on the other hand are just counter to how your brain works and to how maybe society works. And so, I think it is a studied stillness and listening to be able to absorb that. And frankly, I haven't absorbed those truths. But, people who absorb them more are happier.

Annalisa Holcombe (35:10):
Right? That's the whole Brené Brown stuff on shame, where she talks about people who are able to get through and over those things that so many of us struggle with, because they believe they're worthy and just have it. They're not struggling with that worthiness idea, they understand it better.

Alana Dunagan (35:30):
Right. I think it's tricky too, because I think there's people who are, and some of these people have been president... There are people who are not struggling with their worthiness.

Annalisa Holcombe (35:39):
Right.

Alana Dunagan (35:40):
But, they also perhaps haven't grasped their own imperfection.

Annalisa Holcombe (35:46):
It must be both.

Alana Dunagan (35:51):
Yeah.

Annalisa Holcombe (35:51):
That makes sense. I want to make sure I ask this question because I think that listeners would be interested in it, in terms of how the pandemic has affected our communication at work? Do you think that we are worse, better? What are the pros and cons of what this environment has done to us, in terms of how we communicate with each other?

Alana Dunagan (36:13):
I don't know. I have some theories. I had a job in the past where I mostly remote and then I would come into the office. And, on those days when I would come into the office, they were exhausting, because I would have back-to-back meetings and every meeting would start with, "I wanted to tell you this in person." Sometimes it would be feedback for me. Sometimes it would be something they were struggling with. Sometimes it would be this major conflict between two other people. But, I would come to the end of those days with all of this emotional information that we do exchange in person, that we don't tend to exchange over Zoom. Maybe the norms of that have changed now that we're on Zoom all the time and people are more comfortable with this as a path of communication. But, I think that part of what's happening is that we just don't communicate that information and that's why we feel a little bit more isolated. It's harder to feel like you have those best friends at work or that you have that safety to share things with people.

Alana Dunagan (37:33):
I do wonder if there are emotional burdens that we're not sharing, working remotely, and that's part of why I think there's just been a heaviness to the zeitgeist. I also wonder other things though. I think we pick up fewer non-verbals when we're not in person, when we're over video chat, and certainly the person who's checked out, just turned their camera off. I think I have a little bit of a theory that some of those non-verbals contribute to our bias of who we perceive to be a leader. I do wonder if remote work is a little bit leveling for that, if it offers the opportunity for people to emerge as leaders based off of what they can deliver, versus what it seems like they can deliver. So, I wonder about that, I wonder if that's maybe a positive of this environment.

Alana Dunagan (38:47):
I worked remotely for a long time before the pandemic, and so I feel like I felt very personally issues that I'm like, "Oh wow, I guess that was normal, everyone feels that way." Around, "On the one hand the flexibility of this is good, but on the other hand I don't just work from home, I live at the office, or I have these unreasonable expectations that I should be able to make a perfect sourdough bread while I'm doing work, or get the house clean, whatever it is." I think one of the trickiest things that probably we don't talk about enough is how remote work affects not just our work communication but our communication with our families. My husband and I both used to travel a lot, and so we'd be working late at night in a hotel room and that was never awkward because we're not home. But now, there are nights where we work late and it's like, "Sorry, I can't hang out with you, I'm going to work late." It's in our families and there are these more awkward trade-offs between home and work that I think are hard.

Annalisa Holcombe (40:08):
I agree with you. I want to make sure that we do talk about that before we end, the importance of how we communicate with the people we love, how we communicate with our spouses and our children. I'm interested in your thoughts about how the pandemic has affected that? And, what do you think we can do to have good communication with the people who we care about the most?

Alana Dunagan (40:35):
I'm still working on this. When I was first married one of my friends would tell me, "Don't worry, communication is a four-year degree," which was very comforting to me, until I'd been married for four years and then I was like, "Oh shoot, I should have it figured out now." At this point, I'm not sure I'm ever going to have it perfectly figured out. I think it's just hard in an environment that feels so much more anxious and unknown. The rules are changing all the time. If you are dealing with kids and childcare, that situation is changing all the time. We've opened enough to have Little League, but one person in Little League... The whole Little League got COVID, and so now the whole Little League is shut down. Everything just continues to still be influx for a lot of families, and so you're dealing with just this day-to-day grind of unpredictability and constant change. And so, I think we all just need grace and patience. I think it's easy to communicate when you want to be with someone. Maybe it's not totally easy, but it's easier to communicate, "I want to spend time with you," than it is to communicate, "I need space." And, when we're cooped up with our families for a year, there are moments where we need space. Maybe would have emerged naturally in our commutes, or when kids were at school, or when someone was getting together with their friends.

Annalisa Holcombe (42:26):
One of the reasons I tell people I had no idea how much I missed airplane time, nobody can contact me for work, I can just be alone with my thoughts for however long I'm on that airplane.

Alana Dunagan (42:41):
Yeah. You can be super productive or not, and no one knows.

Annalisa Holcombe (42:44):
Yeah, exactly.

Alana Dunagan (42:49):
I think realizing, "What was it that used to happen in my regular routine that I'm missing now that I need?" And then communicating that. I think it's hard, because it doesn't just require, "Here's how you phrase it," it's self-awareness. And so, I think sometimes in the absence of that self-awareness we don't know what we need. We're just frustrated with what the other person is doing.

Annalisa Holcombe (43:19):
That's hard, I bet everybody that listens to this goes, "Oh yeah, I know that feeling." I know that feeling. I'm often frustrated by the people around, and it's just because I'm not reflecting on what I need first so I could even communicate it to them. They're just existing, same way I am.

Alana Dunagan (43:35):
Yeah. I think we have felt like this past year is a conspiracy to make us crazy, which maybe it is. But, that's certainly not the intention of our families, of our loved ones. But, I think it is hard to articulate, "What is it that I need? How do I ask for that?" And, to even just get in that frame of mind versus, "Oh my gosh, everything is nails on a chalkboard right now." I don't have anything I'm used to.

Annalisa Holcombe (44:04):
I love that you talk about that, because I do think that the first step probably for effective communication, just in general, is our own self-reflection and understanding ourselves, not only in our personal relationships but all of them really.

Alana Dunagan (44:18):
Yeah. Earlier I said that we're not trying to move the ball forward in our personal relationships, but sometimes we are. Sometimes things aren't working, or we're frustrated, or we need something we don't have, and we are trying to move the ball forward. And so, then I think recognizing when you are in that mode... I think we're sometimes so used to just communicating to be known that it's like, "If you need to move the ball forward, you've got to switch into corporate mode here and identify, 'what is that ball', and 'how do you communicate that?'," and to be clear. I think it's to get into a more, "Okay, what is it that I really need?" Is hard when we're overwhelmed with all these emotions and we're so used to just being known. That it's like, "I'm frustrated because you're doing da-da-da-da-da." But, if we really want to solve the problem we've got to switch into that corporate mode and be like, "I think it would be better if things were more this way, so here's how I'm going to ask for that." People are usually pretty receptive to that. My husband is.

Annalisa Holcombe (45:31):
Yay. Have you had a mentor in your life, personal, professional, however, that affected you that you would want to honor some way by talking about, "Here's a mentor that meant something to me."

Alana Dunagan (45:45):
I had a boss in my 20s who had the courage to have hard conversations with me about, "This is how you're coming off to people," or, "This is how you need to pick your battles." I look at that and I wonder if I would have the courage... I wonder on a daily basis, "Do I have the courage to be that person, to help people face themselves and to help bring them along? Or, am I the person who's like, 'This isn't working.' Or, am I the person who just overlooks it and tries to muddle along?" It's easier as someones boss to try to muddle through it, try to work around it, not have the hard conversation, or to write the person off and, "You need improvement and I'm going to try to manage you out." It's harder to hang with someone and say, "Look, here are some things you're really not doing well," in a way that's actually building that person up. I feel like he was willing to tell the truth to me and to take chances on me. To say, "You did this wrong, I'm going to let you do it again." And, to really see me not as someone who has the skills to do X or Y, but he saw me as a learner. I hope that I see other people that way.

Alana Dunagan (47:23):
We're still in contact, he's retired now. When he retired I left that job because it just wasn't the same to work with someone else. That's part of why I went to business school, because I was like, "I want to learn to be that kind of leader." And hopefully one day I will be. I think I feel like my professional trajectory was so influenced by that honesty and care. We can make it a corporate word and call it feedback, but it was really truth and care and, again, just profoundly influenced my trajectory.

Annalisa Holcombe (48:08):
I love it. He communicated with you in that situation. Not by moving the ball forward, but by...

Alana Dunagan (48:15):
I think in a way he...

Annalisa Holcombe (48:19):
It does move it.

Alana Dunagan (48:21):
It was. I was the ball that he was trying to move forward. I think he saw me as someone who could get from point A to point B.

Annalisa Holcombe (48:31):
So, he believed in you.

Alana Dunagan (48:35):
Right. I think sometimes we view people as, "You just are who you are. You have the skills to do this or you don't." Again, he really saw me as someone who was a learner, who could have a trajectory. I think he saw, frankly, all people that way, as on a journey. I think it takes some courage to be willing to face someone else's early 20s defensiveness, and to have the hard conversations, and to tell people the truth so that they can change.

Annalisa Holcombe (49:16):
I love that. I hope that he'll get to hear this, or at least you get a chance to tell him that when you had a chance to talk about someone who had a profound influence on you as a mentor it was him that you thought of.

Alana Dunagan (49:28):
Yeah. I will say too, sometimes those people come in our lives at a time we're willing to be mentored, which isn't maybe all the time. One of the things he said was, "You're terrible at communicating with our Board." And so, there were some things I did to try to get better at that, in terms of directly how I spoke to our Board. But, I also got on a few Boards to understand, "What is it like to sit in that seat? I'm doing this on a volunteer basis, what do I need to understand and move the ball forward? How do I communicate with that Board?" Put myself in that perspective of, "What do they really need to know? What do they need to understand? What's their frame of mind?" At different points in my life I maybe would or wouldn't have had the emotional and time bandwidth to make that investment.

Alana Dunagan (50:26):
I do think having a mentor is not just, "This random person appeared in my life," but also, "I heard them." I always wonder at times where I'm like, "No one's mentoring me, or is someone trying to?"

Annalisa Holcombe (50:49):
"And I'm just not listening." That's such good advice. I'm going to think about that for myself right now because that could be happening. And, I say it all the time, "This is probably me being in my own head, right?" Where I'm like, "I wish I had a mentor." I have lots of mentors, I just have to give them the credit. And often, they are the people who are my colleagues, who are not officially my bosses, but who are taking the time to give me good advice and to give me great feedback. They're often the people that I'm officially the leader of, but they are terrific mentors to me as well.

Alana Dunagan (51:26):
Yeah, it's true.

Annalisa Holcombe (51:30):
Thank you so much for all of your time and for your great wisdom.

Annalisa Holcombe (51:34):
Thanks to Alana for such a fabulous discussion. If you're like me, you'll be thinking about her insights for weeks to come. You can learn more about Alana by following her on Twitter and LinkedIn. Next week, we will be joined by Laurel Smylie. Laurel is an Organizational Consultant and Executive Coach, and she is the first person I've met who received Dare to Lead training from Brené Brown herself. You won't want to miss it.

Annalisa Holcombe (52:34):
As always, thank you for listening to 92,000 Hours. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and leave us a review, we really appreciate your support. If you're interested in integrating the personal and professional through authentic conversation, just like you heard on our episode today, please check out our work at Connection Collaborative, at connectioncollaborative.com or send me an email at analisa@connectioncollaborative.com. Thank you, and see you next week on 92,000 hours.

Annalisa Holcombe (53:17):
92,000 is made possible by Connection Collaborative. This episode was produced and edited by Breanna Steggell. Lexie Banks is our Marketing Director. And, I'm your host, Annalisa Holcombe.