Fred Dust | How to Have the Most Challenging Conversations of Your Life

Srini Rao: Fred, welcome to the Unmistakable Creative. Thanks so much for taking the time to join us.

Fred Dust: I'm delighted to be here. Thanks for having me.

Srini Rao: Yeah, it is my pleasure to have you here. So I found out about your book by way of your publicist making conversation, which in the time we're living in, obviously is a subject of tremendous interest to me and of tremendous importance.

But before we get into all of that, I want to start asking what I think is a very fitting question given the nature of your work. And that is what social group were you a part of in high school and what impact did that end up having on the choices that you've

Fred Dust: made with your life and your career? That, but first of all, that's a great question because it's one that I often ask to warm people up is I'll often ask them who were they when they were 12?

Because I think it's a way to really begin to see a different side of a person. But so I'll give you a really straight up honest answer. So I was a gay Kid. My father was the headmaster of my school. And I had to live a fairly closeted existence. So I dated the cheerleader played soccer.

I also did theater at the same time. And I had to run away basically. I did a structured running away to, in, from France. In France to to come out. And so I came out for a year and then went back to school and, came back to school and then went back in the closet. And what's interesting about that is that it was I thought that I was like the weirdo, not popular kid.

When I went back to my 25th anniversary, everyone was like, you were the one that held everybody together. Like you were the one who was always crossing cultures between different kinds of people. So it was an interesting, like retro perspective, which I didn't have at that time.

Does that answer the question? Yeah,

Srini Rao: absolutely. Obviously it raises more questions, but how old were you when you realized you were gay? And what is that experience like when you're going through adolescence in contrast to being an adult where you're completely open about it and out of the

Fred Dust: closet?

I have a sense now, I have a sense that I actually knew I was gay since I was very young. Like I think my first crush was Fred from Scooby-Doo which you don't even know who he is, but it's like that he was like this cartoon character. And but I don't think I think I came to various levels of acceptance.

Finally what happened is that when my father left the school and my mom had this kind of severe stroke. I realized that I could, I no longer had the pressure to be the perfect child because I was also the oldest son and so I, I did this funny thing, which is that I I spent a day pretending that I was gay.

I basically tried on the idea that I was gay, and I spent a whole day walking around San Francisco going to gay bookstores talking to people. And it came out of it feeling just so emboldened and so strong by it that I actually it's it just I was like, I'm gay and it's time for me to come out.

And so I did that. That's actually, by the way, the reason I ended up being, I think I told you I was homeless for a while because like my then, partner kicked me out of the house because she was so furious for good reason. And I I now tell people. When they're going through really hard things, like I have a friend who recently was like, she's a CEO of a company, but she's being, I would say, frankly, bullied.

And that basically was like, tries pretending for a day that you're not there and that you're not the CEO of the company and see how you feel. And she did that and it allowed her to basically say, yeah, I'm quitting. So that's a long way. I will also say being gay. It politicized me so as I worked with act up not for none of very satisfying way, but politics has always been embedded in the notion of my existence just because during the eighties, I was pretty sure even though I was closeted that I would never probably ever sleep with a man because of my fear of AIDS.

And remember, we thought of that as genocide at the time that's the way we characterize the disease. So it's affected me in probably every aspect of my being.

Srini Rao: I've asked this people to, this question to people who have been on the show are also gay. Like when you come out, particularly to your closest friends and more importantly to your family what is that experience like and is it one of acceptance because I I just had this guy, Stephen Goldstein here, who was actually our episode that we aired on Monday of this week, and he as a political consultant, he actually wrote this amazing book called the turn on how the most powerful people from Washington to Wall Street to Hollywood make us like them.

And his experience was like quite traumatic. Like he never had any sort of reconciliation with his family, which I just, I found so sad. But at the same time, I know that's reality. Like I think particularly with Indian parents, if you told them you were gay, that would definitely create a rift in the family.

So what does that experience like, or has it, was it like for

Fred Dust: you? Also my mom, my mother was quite accepting. I never really told my father it's I I wasn't that close to my father. So I I just, I never could. My mom found out because a picture of me kissing my boyfriend fell out of my book, and so she was like, moms do what they do, like I always knew.

This is what was, this is what the case was. And but, so that wasn't hard. If I were to be completely honest coming out to my partner who, frankly we were married. It's it was like, it was like, was the hardest thing. I felt like I really hurt her.

We're now quite close, but that was a really hard thing. And I had been sleeping with men during that time. So ironically, liberal Berkeley daughter of therapists, really open to sexual experimentation. But she was livid and for good reason. It's so like that, that, that's, that, that's part of what got us to, to married in general.

But then I will say that, and it's part of this notion of making conversation. I have carried it openly for the rest of my life, so I would be in the South, in a very kind of radically religious organization that I would be working with, and I would talk about being gay openly at dinner, and what I find is that if you're kind, and warm, and reasonably smart, and you talk about things you want, like children, or whatever, people start to identify regardless, and so I believe that there really is a need to be having the openness in the conversation.

It's a brave thing to do. And I've certainly been in situations where people have threatened me. And yet at the same time, I'm like, it is my responsibility to, to make sure, make it clear that I'm a gay man. Yeah. It's

Srini Rao: Crazy. Cause the roommate I live with now after six years of being married found out his wife was gay.

And I remember when he came over to tell me, I was like, Holy shit. How do you even process that? It was he's incredibly self aware and I think self actualized enough that he's done remarkably well with processing it. After six years, like it's still, it is something that definitely shakes you because I think that particularly if you're married your entire future

Fred Dust: gets erased.

Yeah, no that's exactly right. And you, you you believe that you'll it's one of those classic things and it's actually even as we live post election, it's one of these things where it's like you feel like you'll never gonna, you're never gonna get past something, right?

And then you do get past it. And then it's and the next thing that you think you'll never get past, and yet you do get past it. And so it's really this kind of that's what life is. It's just like always somehow. Figuring out a way to keep going.

And so it's and one of the things that about making conversation is that it helps us do that. Speaking of getting past things, there were two things that I wanted to ask you about. I know that you at one point lost your brother and then your mother had this awful stroke. Like, how do you find Resilience in moments like that to keep going because I think to me the thought of losing a parent or a sibling, like in my mind, those are probably the most tragic things that I will experience in my life.

Yeah a younger sibling, 10 years younger than me, who also we had a very troubled relationship. So it was even stranger. And he died in a fairly vicious and spectacular car accident. I will say that at 24, when my mother, I was 24, when my mother had her kind of debilitating stroke it really, I, there's a couple of interesting things that happened.

I had to, at that point, to make, to decide, was I going to be by her side for the rest of her life to help her? Or was I going to be independent and live, live a life that was somewhat free, even though she was in, she was suffering. And that was a hard decision to make. And a lot of people don't make the same decision I made, right?

Some people decide that they buy it, but I felt like to be utterly honest, my parents had not really raised me. When I was a child, like I, I, for my first 10 years, I was raised by my great grandmother, which was very impactful for me. At various points I was farmed out to a really lovely Indian family.

India from India. Like it's who raised me. So like they didn't have much of a role in my childhood. And so I felt so that's one thing. But then knowing that my mom had a stroke and that her daughter, her father had a stroke at 30 and died. It puts a time limit on your life. So you basically are like, I better take the best advantage.

of this life as I possibly can. And what's interesting about that is you would think it definitely led me to be driven and ambitious, and I'm definitely that. But more importantly, it led me to be like, I need to talk to everyone. I need to get to know every human that I can, because that's the best way to know, to understand this world.

So that was a really powerful thing for me. And then the second piece about my brother, I will say is That was, in fact, the hardest thing I've ever gone through. He called me on my birthday. He was in a car accident within hours afterwards. He it wasn't my birthday because my family could never get my birthday right.

So they always thought my birthday was two days before. So I had to get to the, my parents were like, we can't identify his body. We were so unhappy. We're like, we they were so destroyed. So I had to fly there, drive through an ice storm. It took us two days. And in the morning of my birthday, I had to go identify his body.

And then this is probably too graphic for you. Sorry. It's no, basically pry open the door of his car and and and find his bloody phone. So I could actually get in contact with his people. And so that I thought I wouldn't get through. However, I have a friend who's like deeply, her parents died at a very young age.

And her name is Deb and she she happens to be also one of my publicists, but she she she got, she walked me through it step by step, like everything to be like from here's how you can get his eyes donated. Here's how you can do whatever to. Here's how you're going to feel the next day, to here's, and what happened at that point is that it triggered this thing in me where my husband and I had been living in different cities.

He'd been in Los Angeles, I'd been in San Francisco, but I'd been mostly in Washington because I was working with the Obama administration a lot. And we were like, this is stupid why are we living separately? So we moved within a couple months, we moved to New York because we were like, I couldn't work in LA, he didn't like San Francisco.

And so I was like, okay, then let's go to New York. That's how we ended up on the East Coast. Walk me through what led to writing a book about this, of all the things you could write a book

about. It's the only book that, that I could write about. Although that's actually not true.

I have an idea for another book, which which is making my agent crazy right now. She's just focus on the book you've got. But but it's there's a couple of things. One was, Right after 2016 elections, I was working with the Surgeon General, the then Surgeon General Vivek Murthy and he was about to issue a epidemic of anxiety and loneliness in America, which I think would have been groundbreaking.

I've read his book, it's phenomenal. Yeah, together, it's it's, so he wrote the proposal for that book at the same time I wrote the proposal for my book because I was working with Vivek. On how to make town halls more cathartic. So literally, Vivek Shankaravendam, I think you might know who does Hidden Brain, and I did a conversation, and then a Creative Tensions, which is a form of dialogue that I do at NBC sorry, at NPR Studio One, like maybe a month or two after the, or a month, during the inauguration, and it had about 500 people from all kinds of, Political backgrounds range or whatever and we designed it so that well, we actually originally designed it as a dating game, but it ended up being much more cathartic than that.

We designed it so that it felt like the whole room went through a giant catharsis. And that was what we were going to roll out as part of his town halls, is instead of just doing town halls, we wanted these cathartic community building moments. And so I gave a lecture on the degradation of dialogue in America, because as you know from reading the book, I believe that we go back to the 40s, 1940s, is when we really saw the dialogue start to degrade.

And my agent called me and was like, I think your book is, this is your book. So here's the last funny story about that. So I wrote the book, which was phenomenal but when they, when the book sold, my publisher was like, Oh, your book right now is all about the degradation of dialogue in America. The book you have to write is, has to be an entirely optimistic account of how we can have the hardest conversations of our life using creativity.

That's a different book. Than what I thought. And so having to get to optimism took me three years of work. So it's and I'll be honest, I am relentlessly still optimistic, which I know you might be hard to believe given the moment we're in. Because I've seen people get through the hardest conversations of their lives by just giving it a little bit of thinking and a little bit of I,

Srini Rao: I think I love that cause I think you, you've just given me the title for our episode, but let's get into these seven essential elements. I know that in each element, there's also obviously these sub elements and it would take us like an entire day to go through all of them, but you talk about commitment and you say conversations, first belief, second, what do you mean by

Fred Dust: that? That's a tricky one because I'll be honest.

I'm more of I'm not really a writer This is the first book I've written and I had a story coach who was instrumental in helping me do it Like he would be was basically a therapist and then he would say okay write that in 800 words, you know it's and then and so but Pardon me. I would give a lecture for Aspen about the book Before it was written like as I was trying to work through some of the kind of structures, and one of the questions that got thrown at me at the end, which of course should have come at me at the beginning was, yeah, but how do you talk to people who hate you or just disagree with you or don't want to talk to you?

And I was like, ah. And so I basically, I was like, I made this up. I was like, you need to just commit to the conversations and the people who are in the conversations first and hold your beliefs. Second. And it turns out that's that's a hard thing to ask someone to do, but you can do it. And as in the book I went and looked at a bunch of organizations and places where people have committed to people who are wildly divergent beliefs from them.

So there's I think one of my favorite stories in the book was the Dewey Academy, which is the story of the addicted teens. I don't know if you remember that story, but these are teenagers now who are addicted to. cutting. Boys are addicted to gaming and porn and the girls are addicted to cutting.

And it's it's very intense. And but what's interesting about this Dewey Academy is that it's doors are unlocked. The kids can leave at any moment. This is very unlike most other schools for addicted youth. And the only thing you have to do is say you're committed to being in the conversation and that you're committing to stay and watching these.

14, 15 year old kids struggling with these huge issues from all walks of life, sitting in a room together, and committing to helping each other constantly, watching their parents. who were from even more divergent perspectives. So first generation Chinese parents who basically were like you can't be addicted.

Like it's whatever it's but suddenly those families coming together and committing to each other was a remarkable experience. And so that's, by the way, that's not the same as having a conversation about politics, but it takes the same skills. Which is like it takes commitment and it takes saying like we can be in this conversation together and we are going to be committed to you and even if we disagree, like I'm still there for you.

And that's really the kind of core component of what commitment is all about is doing that. And then as because the book is like this, it's Commit until you can't so my other point on that is if you can't commit, then don't. And the conversation will be better off for it.

It's I have like far too many organizations where people are like, Oh, I hate the organization, but it's important that I'm on their board because I'm the one who's continuously challenging every new idea. And I'm like, yeah, no, maybe get off the board. It's cause, cause you're actually making it a lot harder for the rest of us who are really committed to this organization.

So I, and it's the same thing, like if you, I had a young black woman who works in HR at a giant investing firm, and she was really asking me about triggering she's I noticed that there are certain things that trigger me, and how do I stay committed in conversation where I've been triggered?

And I told her the story that's in the book on, in the chapter on commitment of moving to New York. My husband wasn't there yet. We were on the fifth floor walk up of a loft in Tribeca. I had I'd literally had people just like calling furniture at the stairs all day long. Moving is really emotional.

Like I'm in New York. It's I'm like standing in the living room about to cry anyway. And someone comes pounding on the door and is screaming through the door. And I open the door, and it's this little I would say five foot four woman, and she's just screaming. She's you've broken every rule of our building I've had to listen to your movers all day long, it's and just the noise of you walking around up here is making me crazy, and I've lived in this building for 25 years, I'm gonna have you like, sued.

And I just felt rage, like I was like, I could feel I was like, the trigger for me was like, she I'm a wuss from California, and I'm going to just capitulate to her and just say I'm so sorry, because that's what that would be my first gut and then but I was so mad that I met this kind of quintessential nasty New York neighbor.

And I was like, I'm being triggered. Like I just I was like, I just took a breath. And I was like, this is a trigger. And I turned to her and I said, Transcribed Is this the conversation you really want to have? And she stopped. And she said, no, this is not the conversation that I want to have. And so we had this lovely conversation where we talked about the neighborhood, we talked about things, and we became friends from then on out.

She saved my life, no joke, during Hurricane Sandy. And came and sat and drank wine with us for the whole night. So I think there's real value. And so that was a great example where. I realized the trigger. I could have like easily ended the friendship that never would have never began a friendship by just like lashing back out and we would have been at war for a long time.

But by pausing, realizing I was being triggered asking in essence for the conversation I wanted to have, which was a nice conversation, we were able to get there. Even places where you feel like you can't commit, you can if you're good if you just try.

So

Srini Rao: speaking of triggers I think it makes a perfect segue to this idea of courage and conversation, but the trigger in particular, I knew I wanted to ask you about this based on the content of your book. I think any one of us who has ever been in a relationship with a significant other, the moment you hear the words, we need to talk, you're like, fuck.

That I know where this is going this is going to be over and I don't want it to be like, I literally every time in my mind, I've always said next time a woman sends me a text that says we need to talk. I'm like, no, can you just finish the breakup now? So we don't have to talk about this.

So that to me, that's the example that I think of, like in a situation, like basically how do I stop being triggered by that?

Fred Dust: Yeah. So here's a funny thing. So it's like my husband and I had an agreement that That when gay marriage became legal around all, everywhere in America, that we would get married.

So that happened. I was, happened to be an Aspen. This is just a little funny aside. I happened to be an Aspen. I had my whole team working with me. They were like, I was like, let's get the Tiffany's, let's get an engagement ring. It's I want to be able to like, ask him to marry me when I get back on July 4th.

Like on the pier of our farm upstate. And so I have all this work going and then my husband texts me and he's Hey, I guess we should get married. And so I started texting back being like, we need to talk and literally the woman who was sitting next to me one of my, my, my media people.

Grabbed my phone and was like, let me take care of this. You are not texting. We need to talk. I went it's because it's like, because he's going to misread that. And so they took care of all my communications with my husband after that. So we have to be really, so one of the things we have to be careful is is first of all don't text that.

It's so it's just just right off the bat, as you go into agreements with people who you're having relationships with just ask them. Just, if they're not going to, if they're going to text it, just call, or just or just, or don't it's that's the first thing that's a bit, it's an act of aggression, to be honest it might seem like it's it's it's an act of great communication, but it's not.

So that's the first thing you can do is you can ask the people you're involved with and your friends and whatever to just like to if they ever want to talk to you just to call and say, Can we talk, I will also say that there are in my world, I have a rule that when you say something like, I have feedback, or I need to talk to you, or I need to give you some stuff.

I have to tell you how I feel about something you've done. Once I do that, I always, and you probably might remember this from the book, I always then hand the power over to the person who I'm doing that to and say, what are the things that you feel like you just can't hear from me today? Or what are the things you just can't talk about?

And so in a situation like that, like you could say, I can deal with anything. I just in the wake of the elections, I just can't hear you're going to break up with me today. It's it's but that takes, that again, takes you and your partner, you and the person you're working with, establishing the rules that basically say if I'm going to give you feedback, I first hand you the rules to tell me what I can't give you feedback on.

And I have a question. Does Every time someone says, do we need to talk, are they, is it because they want to break up with you? Hey

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Well, historically, yes. It's usually and luckily it hasn't been via text, but still the moment I hear those words, I'm like in my mind, I like, literally, I can just feel my heart start to race I breathe and get shallower like everything that you experienced when you know that, oh, okay.

The weird thing is yeah. I think for the most part, I've been the one to end all of the relationships that I've been in. And the ones that I didn't want to have end were obviously those situations. But I think that in my mind, I think I formed the association of those words and a bad a bad outcome.

Fred Dust: Yeah. And recognize. The word, the words themselves are right. We need to talk like, it's that's, there's nothing wrong with the words, it's just it's where they're placed is the problem. And so like I would say full on. Embrace the fact that we all need to talk, but that's not the that's not the intent of what those words in that circumstance.

How have you had? Here's the other thing to do, which is that I talk about brave. And I think I told you are in the book. You probably realize that it's like I had the word brave tattooed over my heart when my brother died because historically chefs, he was a chef that they're overly tattooed.

He was very much into tattoos. So as I was trying to think about something I could do that would Pay tribute to him. So I put brave over my heart and that was to remind me not to be brave, go climb a mountain or fly solo over the ocean, like what I call like Amelia Earhart brave, but to be brave don't be afraid to stand up to things when you see them happen and I have a I have a friend who really believes the opposite marriage and Tilly, who has this incredible book called giving voice to values.

And she, her belief is that people don't identify as courageous. And I think that's probably true. And that's why I I qualify it as everyday bravery. It's like the small acts of bravery. What's the worst that happens? You hear some bad stuff it's and like I said, it'll go, it'll get, you'll get past it and it's you'll make your life.

It's and I don't know, I have a history where everyone I've ever fired, this isn't exactly true with everyone I've ever broken up with. It's mostly true, but it's but or been broken up with by but everyone I've fired. We're still really good friends, like it's and so it's so I think the testimony to the idea that like, even if I'm like saying you have to go, I'm still saying to you, but I'm committed to you.

It's I'm going to be there. Or I have people who. Who I fired, but they convinced me to let them come back for a week and were changed people and are, like, I was just on the phone with one who's now genius, working at YouTube, doing super amazing things, but it's but she was basically my, my understudy at IDEO, and and but When she left, I was like devastated, but I was like, awesome.

It's like you, you go be the most amazing thing you can be. I would just say it's there's this notion of being a benevolent force in the world and just trying to help, which I think is embedded in this making conversation. It's, last thing I'll say is, I was really surprised when Adam Grant put it on his 30 books.

To read in the fall, but that's only because I've known Adam Grant when he wrote given get, because I think I texted him and I was like, Hey, I really love this book. And so I didn't realize that Adam Grant was famous. Yeah.

Srini Rao: Adam is so nice.

Fred Dust: Yeah. And so literally I'm like, I basically I like, I think I'm texting Adam at during this thing being like, Hey, I think it's to your credit that I had no idea that you had this kind of fame.

And he's I think you're complimenting me. And I was like, yes, I'm complimenting you. Yeah. I just thought he was like some nice guy who just was doing lots of nice things but yeah.

Srini Rao: Let's let's get into the other elements. Talk to me about the concept of creative

Fred Dust: listening.

Yeah. There's a lot in that. I will say that there's a, originally this came out of work I was doing at IDEO and then. It's a hybrid of that. And frankly, my great grandmother is like other things that and my mother that inspired me. So just to give you a sense originally just came out of the work with idea where I felt like teams weren't listening anymore, like they were just typing.

And I was like, you cannot be in a situation like this where you're not like paying attention to the social cues of what someone's saying to you, not just writing down everything they're saying. And by the way, it's okay to take notes. It's okay to do doodle. It's okay to knit. It's okay to do a bunch of different things while you're listening to somebody.

Those make you better listeners. Typing doesn't make you a better listener. And and then there's scientific evidence around that. So I was like trying to get my teams to stop listening. And I basically was like, Oh, my mom was a really good listener. So I was like, my first thought was like, Hey, listen, like my mother or listen, like your mother.

And what I realized is that everyone has mothers don't listen the same way. My mother listened, like my mother was a tremendous listener. But that's because she was born in a family raised by a, her brother was deaf. It was mostly silent in that family because they wanted to respect the brother.

And so she just became this phenomenal listener, who then of course, ironically, when she had her stroke, became aphasic, which made listening incredibly hard to do. And so that wasn't going to work. And so I feel like I had to find more scientific methodologies or reasons why, so I went and looked at Quaker methodologies.

I looked at and of listening to yourself and listening to the other person at the same time, which is, that's why Quakerism lets women preach and always has is because the idea is like that if God's been speaking to you, he's been speaking to you always. And so it's, this is it's allows for the notion of.

You have some judgment in a conversation. So not just that you're agreeing with somebody when you're listening, I looked at the practice of secrets and how short something can be. And I'll give you an example of that in a moment. And basically. I mostly was looking at this as saying by the way, active listening, which is what's most frequently taught, the kind of huh, go on, that kind of listening, which has been adopted by HR all around the world, basically.

really sucks. Like active listening. Apologies, you're having to listen to me more, but in this case, it's like an interviews. Otherwise we'd be more in conversation. But but active listening comes out of Rogerian therapy, which was invented in like the fifties by this guy named Carl Rogers.

Kind of a genius. He invented multiple therapeutic tools. This being one of them and his belief was psychoanalysis. And Freudian and Jungian therapies assume that there's only one solution to somebody's problems. Whereas he felt like there were a myriad solutions and only the individual could unlock what the, Rogerian therapy began active listening.

It was it would be like, are you unhappy? Or tell me how you're feeling. And then someone say I'm feeling unhappy and they're like why are you unhappy? And they're like I'm feeling unfulfilled. And they're like what makes you unfulfilled? And they would say my job.

And they're like why are you in your job? And so it's that's the that would be it. That was active listening. And even that you can tell is just more that's more sophisticated than saying, huh, go on listening. But when we started pulling that into the business context where it was really an excuse for employers.

Not to have to listen to their employees or you not to have to listen to me. Or me not to have to listen to my husband. That's where it got really problematic. And and it's funny, I'm doing a lot of podcasts with a lot of people who are coaches and facilitators, and they're all so surprised by my rejection of active listening.

And I'm just like it's like it wasn't meant for this. It was meant for something. Yeah. And The book's pretty anti methodology. It's just make up your own way of doing it. It's that's the smart way to think about it.

Srini Rao: It's funny you say that.

Cause I think about how I interview people and it's not it's almost the opposite of that as opposed to active listening. It's just, okay, I'm following a thread of where you're taking this, but building questions as we go. And yeah. In the interest of time, I want to cover all the other stuff here too.

But we got to figure out a way to do it using constraints ironically, but you get into clarity. And I think that the correct me if I'm wrong, but the summary in my mind of clarity was don't use jargon to describe things because in every context you gave the example of a hospital.

And I think about my sister is you have this sort of language that you speak. And I know this because when I speak to authors or people who are in this field. We almost have this lexicon that to the outside world sounds like absolute nonsense. It's what are you talking about?

Fred Dust: Yeah and ironically, clarity was publishers love. Cs, like seven Cs. So originally Clarity was actually called Talk Normal, because it was like, I was like, what's the best way to say, and originally the book was called Talk Normal. And it's but my most embarrassing edit, the thing that my editor didn't catch is that if you notice in that first chap, that first paragraph of Clarity, I think I used the word obfuscates in that, and I was just like, I was like, oh, great.

So start a chapter on clarity and then you use the word obfuscate like in the first thing. But yeah you're getting exactly right. But however, I want to be, I want to do a caveat. When your sister is talking to other healthcare workers about the safety and life of a patient, your sister should use any jargon or scientific language she needs to be able to communicate efficiently and fast.

To, to that person. So that, that, that's so what you don't want is a bunch of doctors who are like, get the heart circle pumper thing. You don't. It's like you, you want them to like say the word that everybody else is gonna understand. That's it's don't stumble over, like how to say something in a paragraph.

So it's clear to clear to them. However when a physician or an MD or somebody is talking to you as a patient, they have to like. undo that kind of that specialized language and really build a kind of speak in the most common language. So that is where you would say, again, I don't think it's as simple.

It has to be as simple as it's not like trying to get to using the hundred most common words, which is a kind of funny little game you can play, but it's like, it can be like this stethoscope is going to let me hear your heartbeat a little better it's just explain what the language is.

And then what is that. Hardcore, like I'm going to go see a friend of mine who has she's been, had suffered from cancer for four years and she knows this inside and out, like she knows the language by now she knows, so it's so she's taught herself it but there's some people who are the same thing who never learn it.

So we just, we have to amend ourselves based on, on, on how willing we are to go there. Yes, so the point here is. Really strive for clarity. Don't do it, but if you need it, if you need specialized language to if you're like an oceanographer talking to an oceanographer, a climatologist talking to a climatologist, a pandemicist talking to a pandemicist you do you.

That's fine. But if you're a pandemicist talking to the movement for Black Lives. Or if you're an oceanographer talking to your grandmother it's then tone it down, if you can, is basically the idea there. And then, the last thing I'd say is and then acronyms those aren't words.

So don't just dump on . It's okay.

Srini Rao: Let's talk about context. I think that to me it's always interesting to talk to people particularly those who worked at ideo. When you, you think about space, 'cause I've read all the IDEO books, I've read the design thinking book, the creative confidence theme book.

And I am obsessive about the environments that I live and work in because they affect the way that I work so much. But I think that looking at it through the context of conversation I remember, we had Wallace Nichols, a guy who wrote a book called Blue Mine, and we're talking about water because we're both avid surfers.

And he was explaining to me that if you go near a body of water, it changes the context of the conversation. And so I was like, good to know every time I have a date from now on, I'll try to make sure it's near a body of water. And so I think the thing that really struck me most and, if you can give us like a quick summary of this, because there's a couple other things I want to get to before we have to wrap things up.

You talk about circles, reclining, standing up and getting grounded. And I, it's funny because I'd heard the circle thing before from an architect that we had here who came to talk to us about designing creative spaces. But can you expand on the whole idea of

Fred Dust: context? Yeah, I definitely can. And I will say actually when you, what you should do with the, on a first date or whoever is you should actually go look at puppies because puppies trigger oxytocin.

Good

Srini Rao: to know. I will keep that in mind. It's funny because my my one of my partners, Milena, she was like, you pretty much only do things you use people's advice to Apply to your own life for your own personal gain. I'm like,

Fred Dust: yes, of course. Yeah, no so like a great space example is that in New York.

In fact, I'm writing a piece on this now in New York. There's a place called the Petite Puppy and what's really funny about the Petite Puppy is that you can go and watch all these women or gay men typically who are going to look at the puppies because the puppies are so cute and then you can watch all the women or gay or the men or gay men.

Or women who are there to like just to pick up the people looking at the puppies because what if you're like looking at a puppy and then you look up, you're basically looking at the love of your life because the puppies trigger a doxytocin and then there's a bench that's there to like for people who just want to watch people picking up people who are looking at puppies.

And so what's funny about that story is that's a space story. Actually, it's like it's you've got a little unseen ecosystem. You think it's just cute puppies. But it's way more sophisticated than that. And that's I love that. You only see that if it's if you spend 10 minutes watching it, you'll be like, wait a second, there's something entirely different.

And the owners know this. That's why they face this bench there. So people can watch this happening. So basically my perspective on space, I'm an architect by training is that. Spaces have set the script already, you can go to court and it's going to be pretty hard to reset the script of the way the courtroom functions, right?

It's it's been established for certain kinds of conversations. You can take the trial out of the courtroom and you can have a completely different outcome, but the courtroom itself establishes the parameters of the way it works. And that's true, that's obviously a really kind of obvious example.

But that's true of boardrooms, that's true of AA meetings, that's true of Your own kitchen table. I too am an adamant believer in space. I also, I love space as a way into these conversations because everybody has them or everyone's been in them. And it's like people might not understand that products are designed.

I had no idea that people design products. I thought they just fell off trees. When I moved to idea but I was, but people inherently know, Like space, and they may not design the space the way you want their space to be designed, but they're designing the space the way that they want it to be designed.

So they're just like, really, as I talk about in the book, space sets the script. And what you don't want to do is unwittingly play to someone else's script that you don't want to. Because the other interesting thing about space, and we'll get to circles in a second, is that this is a great segue into circles, is that mnemonics use space to make memories.

So our brain associates a space with certain memories. That's why I can say, where were you on 9 11? And you'll remember. And it's why, for instance, if you were in bed. Waking up, you may not want to have conversations with your lover or partner at the same time in bed, even now, because it's like that space might be haunted by the mnemonics of what happened during 9 11. So like just out of curiosity where were you 9 11, can you remember? I

Srini Rao: very distinctly remember I was on the 101 freeway driving from San Francisco to Milpitas to go to the job that I hated

Fred Dust: with a passion. I was in a. I was in the Mission Safeway parking lot going to Pete's.

I was about to go on Drive Time Radio, which I was like, sickened by. And I was like, I wish anything would happen so that I didn't have to go on Drive Time Radio. And I walked out and everyone was crying in the parking lot. And I was like, what's going on? And I got a call from my publicist being like, they don't want you on Drive Time Radio this morning.

And so it's but that's it. The mnemonic element is like, the space is is tied to it really rigorously. And what you want to do is make sure that you're resetting the mnemonics or establishing new mnemonics. That's why I suggest have hard conversations over breakfast or go for a walk or do things like that.

But it's also I'll say really honestly, in the COVID era, you'd think this doesn't matter, but it really does. My husband and I, for instance, at the end of the day, I insist that we make the table, set the table together. And it makes him crazy, but I'm like all your cables, he's an AI artist, and like all these little robots and gadgets and whatever, get them off the table.

It's take the computers off, take the phones off, we're going to put down a tablecloth, we're going to sit down, we're going to set it. And he's just this is ridiculous. I'm like, no, we're setting the table for the conversation we want to have. And even now, there's basic things about the ways that you're establishing it like the spaces that really matter.

Yeah, let's actually.

Srini Rao: Yeah, sorry. Go on. Yeah. In the interest of time there's one other area that I wanted to cover, and I'm hoping that we can talk about constraints and change in the context of this principles for conversations in a virtual world. And I thought the best way to do this would be with an actual practical example.

So every week or I think every two or three weeks we host office hours for our events. community of prime members basically, which is our paid membership program for people who want to make ideas happen. And I was thinking about this cause we do this zoom meeting. And so I was like, okay, wait a minute, you have expertise on this.

So how would we incorporate change and constraints into that? And also the principles you talk about for conversations of virtual world, which I realized I'm asking you like six questions in one. That's

Fred Dust: cool. Tell me how many people are coming to those conversations.

Srini Rao: It ranges from 10 to 15.

So they're not massive, but they're not tiny either. And so I'll tell you right now what the structure is. It's hot seat where everybody tells us what they're working on, what their challenges are. And then my community manager and Emily and I offer feedback and whatever we know to be able to help

Fred Dust: them get past that.

It's like that, that, that sounds pretty good. So it's like you're starting from a good place. As so what's interesting about the four little principles for the, how to have the, it's really like how to have the hardest conversations over zoom during a pandemic, which I had to write in an afternoon.

Because I've been I've written these principles March one when my team went on when I knew we were going to go online and that chapter is a recap of the entire book. It's like I think it's like a it's like a film trailer because it's like it doesn't give away the whole book. I love it.

By the way, we have that as an excerpt that we can send to you and all your listeners. So if it's okay, it's just four pages. So it's I think it's pretty useful. So let's just go through what those four are. And then I'll tell you how that. So so basically. It's commit or don't, which should sound familiar and it's basically like now the best time in the world.

If you can't help a conversation go forward, then step out of the conversation and make more time in your life. That's totally cool. And so it's if you had gotten on and we're like, I don't have time for this. I'd be like, fine. Like we'll do it sometime or we'll never do it. Except if you're the only voice of difference.

And so I think if you're like, you're the only black woman at this big financial organization, like you have to figure out how you can stay in. Except for when you can't, like if it feels really unsafe, then step out. So you know, that's the nuance is like everybody's just give us the one tip or trick.

And I'm like here's the tip or trick, but only until it's no longer applicable and it's the opposite. I just I don't want to, I don't want you to hurt yourself in any way, right? It's like conversations are amazing, but they can also be dangerous places. So it's that and right now, I think with my teams, I was like, Day one, there's wildcard days.

You guys have a bad day. Like I said, I'm like, I thought nobody would want to do anything. And everybody's no. I'm doing life hacker after this. And they're like, we want to talk more than ever today. It's so what's interesting is that so that's the first one.

The second one is break the rules, all the rules. So that goes to the constraints. So the constraints was always about breaking the rules or writing or setting and resetting the rules. And my, my, my first premise was like, These aren't like normal conversations, you can break every rule, right? So it's it doesn't really matter.

It's okay. And so it's a good moment to be experimenting with the rules that you have. The third one is asynchronous is okay. So I talked about the fact that like being in a Google Doc with somebody can feel like you're in a conversation with them. Like my editor. And I are so comfortable in Google Docs that like, he'll be like, Hey there's something wrong with your brain.

And I think that's hysterical. And it's as though I was just sitting and talking to him. And then the last one is get real about designing the human in. And so one of the things we lose through these mediums is our humanity. And you might have to purposely design that human in.

And so for instance, when I do lectures right now, like I did a lecture for. a big organization in Berlin, or I'm doing one for Creative Mornings which is Tina Roth Eisenberg's thing. I'll have my husband just drop in and say he loves hey, tell Creative Mornings that you love them.

And David says, hi, I love you. And and that's pre planned. It's me like purposely designing the human in and which is something that I think you need to do in all cases. So I, I think. I think that's those things can be helpful for you. I think with what you're doing, it sounds like it's almost a kind of therapeutic practice in the way that you're going at which, which I think is a really nice thing.

I think. Let's go to the change thing, which is that what might be really good is as you know from reading the book of the chapter on change is that change only works if you notice when it's happened, right? So it's so it's like when you see somebody shift their perspective, or if you're giving somebody a piece of advice and like you see them actually take that piece of advice in.

And so what you might do is consider having one of the people who works with you. Just sit and watch the screen and see if watch for people who it looks like they've they've taken that something in and they're like, Oh, wait, there's something there. And so that's like a witnessing.

And then call out like, Oh, Susan, it looks like you experienced a kind of a realization as I was saying, do you want to talk about what you, what just happened? And that's a really important thing for us to do right now, because it's like, unless it's explicit, it's always hard to spot change when it happens.

But now in a zoom context, unless you're like really looking for it, you need to ask for it. So that's one thing that I might consider thinking about whether or not you might add a role or add a tool or add a rule that basically saying, like, when I feel changed, I'm going to call it out.

Or if I feel like you're changing I'm going to, I'm going to see if that's true. And the reason that's important is that it's that change that allows the group to then activate to go to the next step, which ultimately is creation, which is as the last chapter is really like it just make and actually the short line of the chapter, the last chapter, is if you can't talk, then just make.

There's a lot of other things in that, but the reality is, let's say you can't talk to your Trump or Biden voting relatives, then don't just make together, or I have one person who listened to one of my lectures who's been telling me that she asked her father in law to teach her how to play golf, even though she doesn't want to learn how to play golf, but it's a way for them to connect and communicate now, Just something to bear in mind given the weeks and months we have ahead which, which is going to be, it can continue to be as challenging as we can imagine.

Srini Rao: This has been absolutely fascinating. I have so enjoyed talking to you. So I have one final question for you, which is how we finish all of our interviews at the unmistakable creative. What do you think it is that makes somebody or something unmistakable?

Fred Dust: What is it? What do I think it is that makes someone, somebody or something unmistakable? Is that right? Unmistakable. Yes. So I am going to, I'm going to tell you a little story because we have a couple of minutes, like three minutes or something. Am I right? I'm going to just tell you.

I'm going to tell you my favorite story, which is my great grandmother's story. My great grandmother used to, she was a steel worker by night and a farmer by day. And she used to come home in the mornings and then have to feed all her field hands and then actually go from there.

And she told me the story while we were sitting on a little bench or a little swing in the backyard. And she basically said, One night, I was, I came home in the morning, and I was walking up the long drive, and I could gradually see this blue thing hovering in the air above me, and it was getting closer and closer, and I remember thinking, I have no strength to go on I'm probably gonna have to wait lay down the weary load, which is the kind of thing my grandmother would say, great grandmother.

And then, it, I realized it was Jesus, and he winked at me, and I was able to go on. So that, to me, is an example of a perfect story because it is, it tells you everything you need to know about her, and yet it tells you nothing, and it leaves you with a complete surprise, and a complete, it's it's the best cliffhanger ever, right?

And it's it's got the twist that we like from Black Mirror it's but it also tells you about her values. And it tells her that tells you that she's a religious woman and that's how she persisted. And then if I add to that the fact that she called me Hollywood all through my top my, my 10, like my nine, my, my eight through 10 years.

And she did that, I think, because she knew I was gay. And for her, Hollywood was a way to acknowledge my gayness. So what I would say is, that kind of elemental, pure human story is unmistakable. You can see my grandmother's soul in that story. You can see who she was in that. So I really ask you to start to practice those stories.

Tell a, 30 second story. I did it. I did a lecture for the Media Lab that was supposed to be like 55 minutes, and I was like, hey, I'm going to give you 50 minutes, and I'm just going to tell you how to teach you how to tell like a short story. I did it in five minutes. And gave him back the hour, which was like, I have to say a complete and utter stunt, but it was pretty awesome.

It's so it's but anyway,

Srini Rao: I can't thank you enough for taking the time to join us and share your story and your wisdom and insights with our listeners. Where can people find out more about you your book,

Fred Dust: your work and everything else that you're up to? I think the easiest way to go is go to making conversations. com obviously by the book.

And then obviously subscribe because we're actually we're coming up with a little WhatsApp curriculum. It's going to be like 30 seconds of video that prompts you to do something every day. And I think it's gonna be really fun and easy. And and then there's all kinds of other information about me, about my work and about my team is not up there yet, but I've got a genius team behind me that's making this so much more fun.

Amazing. And for everybody listening, we will wrap the show with that.