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k3nd477 (00:00) Hello, I’m Kendall. My pronouns are he, him, and this is So Many Questions. today on the show, we have author and designer, Joshua Graves.
His book, We Need to Talk, A Survival Guide for Tough Conversations is available from Rosenfeld and we’ll add some links to that so you can get your hands on it.
We talked today about his book, how he arrived at his book why he thinks we need this conversation about hard conversations.
Before we get to the interview, I would love it if you would take a moment to subscribe, share, the podcast. This is an opportunity for you to continue to get all the latest from So Many Questions.
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With all that housekeeping out of the way, let’s get into our conversation with Joshua Graves. I have so many questions.
k3nd477 (01:13) Joshua, thank you for coming on the show. Welcome.
Joshua Graves (01:15) Thank you. It’s really good to be here.
k3nd477 (01:17) If you can talk me or walk us through kind of the arc of your life to this point, as it relates to design and how you think about that and you’re coming from and where that has come from in your life.
Joshua Graves (01:30) Yeah, I’ve always been really interested in visuals. Like I got my deep interest in this from looking at records. Like my dad would work on jukeboxes. And so he would bring home jukeboxes to work on and I would just get to look through all of this wild album art that just was really visually inspiring. And I realized it was just a really nice frame for the music. And I was always a very musical person. That grew into me becoming a super nerdy kid who had allergies and spent a lot of his time inside. And so I would be listening to music and I started to learn how to use Photoshop being a teenager thinking,
sure, can do whatever I put my mind to. Let me reach out to my favorite bands and see if I can do their record packages. And no one was gonna let me do that. I wasn’t even close to being good at it. But ⁓ I did get a couple of bites that was like, hey, our manager said that we need to put up a website. Do you know anything about that? And so that’s how I got my start doing.
I started designing websites or bands and that grew and I’ve always had this visual ⁓ bent towards the way that I design and think about design. But that grew into me doing apps and websites and designing software and becoming the nerd that you see before you.
k3nd477 (03:02) Let’s go back. Jukeboxes? Tell me more about the you said your dad would bring them home to repair them or something like that? Like what’s the story there?
Joshua Graves (03:12) Yeah.
Yeah, my dad worked on jukeboxes and arcade games, and so we have those and pinball games that he would be fixing. ⁓ Addams Family is obviously my favorite pinball game of all time, followed second by Godzilla.
k3nd477 (03:30) Okay, got it.
Joshua Graves (03:32) This is important information I think you would want to know.
k3nd477 (03:33) It really is, it really is.
I’m glad that we circled back to do you, in your work now, like have you been able to work with other musicians in a similar fashion now that you’re further along in your career? Have you gone a different path?
Joshua Graves (03:50) I still take on the occasional visual project. Sometimes it’s for a musician, sometimes it’s for like a small coffee shop that wants something very cool and visual. But my life has kind of taken me down a different path. you know, design systems and websites and software and things like that. But I still always tinker. I still always make things on the side. I have a little spook shop where some of the artwork that I make you can buy.
if that’s what you like.
k3nd477 (04:21) maybe move to a little bit about the book that you wrote. The book that you wrote is called, We Need to Talk. And it’s about having difficult conversations. How did that come about? What are the things that in your life that led you to saying, hey, this book needs to be written. I want to be the person who writes it.
Joshua Graves (04:42) Yeah, so we’re gonna go way back. So I grew up in the South and the South is a very nice place. And you didn’t really have conflict with folks. The most that I could say as a kid was yes ma’am or yes sir, or I could handle things like I did on the playground, but you know, we don’t really want to do that as adults. ⁓
So I didn’t really have much of a model for that and found myself in these situations where I’m trying to navigate these really high stakes things. And I was just shrinking up into a corner. I was just really nervous. My stomach was in knots and I’m like, I have got to do, I have got to fix this because the situation I found myself in was I was working on a healthcare app and it was a really high stakes situation for, for patients.
and we needed to do something and we needed to do it the right way. But everyone was on their own page, doing their own thing, singing their own song. to pull everyone together, unsuccessfully, wildly unsuccessfully. I realized like, I really got to sort this out because I’m a wreck. Like I’m not sleeping at night. My stomach’s in knots. It just feels awful. And so I started to look into
negotiation and conflict resolution. And I started to apply some of those principles to the situation I was in. And I was able to like start to pull people together. Like, I’m not going to say it was perfect the first time, but it was a huge sea change for me when I started to sit with these folks and understand where they’re coming from, what their agenda is, what they’re trying to achieve. And then
sort of trying to harmonize everyone and pull them in. So that led to me doing these talks with other people, doing more mentorship. I gave workshops. got to go to Portugal to speak about this. ⁓ It was just a really cool experience to see it grow and see that this is something that other people deal with. Like it’s really hard to have these hard conversations because like we want to be nice. We don’t want to rock the boat. But I started to think about like
what is the benefit of being nice? And it’s not much. It’s a candy coating on something. What I’m really trying to get at is like, how do we be kind? What is the right thing to do? And I found that that is most often not correlated with being nice.
k3nd477 (07:10) me kind of back up a little bit, I guess, what kind of environment has created those types of, like you mentioned growing up in the South, I did not grow up in the South and I also have, you know, a similar experience of, something nice, don’t say anything at all.
You know, it’s definitely something that I grew up with and, ⁓ you know, I’ve been on my own learning path to how to have the conversations that I need to have, how to be direct in a way that isn’t rude, isn’t, you know, unkind, but also actually communicates what I’m trying to communicate. What do you think is there, do you find that there’s an underlying cultural
familial societal dynamic
fosters that kind of niceness.
Joshua Graves (08:01) I do. There’s there’s been a lot of really interesting research about this, and I’m a voracious reader. I found this guy who did some research back in the 50s, and I don’t typically think a lot of research from that far back would hold up very well today. But this one stood out to me. It’s it’s by a gentleman named Gert Hofstede, and he sort of mapped out the dimensions of identity. And so like your question.
Like, is there a societal aspect to this? Like, yes, hard, yes. ⁓ It’s how we relate to power. And so there is something about sort of like how you see yourself in relation to folks in power. ⁓ Where I’m from, it’s you really don’t want to do anything that could upset the person in power. It’s disrespectful.
you just take your lumps because the person in power knows because the person is in power. It’s a very circular thing, but it’s not unique to folks like me where I grew up. In his research, he cites that a lot of Eastern cultures have a very similar relationship to folks in power. Some folks in Western Europe have a very different relationship to it. And broadly in the United States, I think that we have
more close knit relationship with folks in power, so it’s easier for lot of folks to speak to their manager and say, hey, I don’t really see this is going well. I don’t really want to do this. It’s going to have these effects. building off of that, I gave me a little context to see, like, ⁓ perhaps like the
society that I grew up in and the way that I grew up really shaped how I approach things like this.
k3nd477 (09:49) and the power dynamic that we’re talking about here.
Have you noticed or experienced a change in I’ve been in the workforce. I mean, and this isn’t just workforce related, I guess, but I’ve been in the workforce for 20 a lot years, 28 years, I guess, I don’t know. 20 a lot, I don’t But it’s very different now.
Joshua Graves (10:14) lot. like
k3nd477 (10:19) in my experience and maybe it’s ⁓ a difference because I am in more positions of power professionally than I was when I was 22 years old or whatever. But I’ve had people who are my direct reports tell me things that I would never have said to my manager or my boss. Like things like, I just don’t want to do that
And so like, I guess my question is probably going back to how things shift in society, whether it’s generational, I don’t love the generational kind of separation, those types of things, but it does feel like people of a younger age less afraid to talk with their manager or people in I was, than I am even still.
Like, is that something that you have noticed or is supported by research or it could just be anecdotally my experience.
Joshua Graves (11:21) is definitely something that I’ve noticed. And I think it’s still OK to frame things generationally, if only because it’s just a foothold for us as we’re figuring out this conversation together. Folks have different worldviews, different upbringings, and different lived experiences. And it just so happens that a lot of folks who are older than us,
they tend to, you know, march to a different drum than folks who are like us or folks who are younger than us. Folks who are young have had a chance to do a lot more of that self-actualization work. And so they’re much more in tune with who they are, what they want, what they don’t want. And
Some of the things that they say would come across as inappropriate to folks who are our age and older. think about it, for most of my life, certainly most of my parents’ generation’s life, work was your identity. And you treat that very, very differently when work is only a dimension.
of your identity. so folks who are younger, and I don’t necessarily want to say like Gen Z or Gen Alpha or things like that, but because there’s just a lot of overlap. But folks who are a little bit younger work as a much smaller part of of who they are. It’s how how lot of folks tend to make money. You know, we’ve we’ve heard for a long time this idea of like, don’t live to work, I work to live. think that has sort of like gotten into the water supply.
k3nd477 (12:55) Mm-hmm.
Joshua Graves (12:56) And
a lot of folks have grown up on that notion. And it can be due to a lot of factors, like environmental instability. Look at all the wild layoffs we’ve had. It’s really difficult for someone to make work a part of their identity if it can be taken away from them that easily.
k3nd477 (13:16) Yeah, it’s interesting because when I experienced that, I was like, did that person just say this to me? And I was also like, man, good for them. yeah, like, you know, you know exactly what you want. You know exactly what you need. That doesn’t work for you. Good for you. And also like, yeah, but I like, kind of need you to do that thing, you know, even if you don’t really want to do it, like I kind of need you to do it. And so there’s definitely both, both of those pieces.
Joshua Graves (13:26) Exactly.
k3nd477 (13:44) for me even just in the moment of experiencing that where I was like, wait, you can’t say that to me. And then also like, wait, good for you. That’s awesome. That was a very interesting experience for me.
Joshua Graves (13:56) Yeah, well, that’s like where this this whole notion of like where like what drove me to to write this book came from. You have this expectation ⁓ and someone says something that’s a little shocking or jarring to you and you’re like, actually, that’s good for you for saying it. But your work now is to say like, OK, well, I hear where you’re coming from. We still need to do this thing. Let’s figure it out.
k3nd477 (14:21) Yeah, maybe let’s use this as an, let’s workshop this a little bit maybe. Like, so this person comes to me and I say, I need you to do ⁓ this report. I was making stuff up. I need you to do this report and I need it by next Tuesday.
Yeah, so I hear you like that you need this report by next Tuesday, but that is not a part of work that I enjoy. So I don’t want to do that.
Joshua Graves (14:50) Okay. I how would I approach this? I would. Okay. Let’s frame this just for half a second. The thing that you were telling me that you don’t want to do is a part of your normal day to day work. And. So it’s not something that’s out of scope. It’s not a big favor that I’m asking for. This is just like I don’t want to do the thing that I’m supposed to be doing.
k3nd477 (15:18) is in my job description, but it doesn’t give me energy. It’s not something I like about my job.
Joshua Graves (15:25) Yeah. Well, one of the things I would start to ask about is what is beneath this request? Because like on the surface, this is something that’s like normal course of business for us. So something changed. Is it something in your life? Is it something in work life? Like what what’s going on? I would ask you, hey, you know, this is a normal part of what we do. This is something you’ve been doing for a while. What changed? Let’s talk about it.
In that conversation, I may find that something has shifted at home. Maybe you’re taking care of someone who’s sick. Maybe you’re dealing with something that’s just really deeply personally draining. And it could just as easily be like, I haven’t had a snack today. And, you know, I’m not here to parent the people that ⁓ report to me, but just being observant.
about those things can really be helpful in understanding like what’s driving what someone is saying. And if I can if I can probe a little and find out like hey is this like a thing like you’ve got something wrong at home maybe you don’t want to tell me about it. If you don’t want to tell me about it I definitely don’t want to know about it. ⁓ But maybe there’s something going on at work. Maybe there’s an interpersonal conflict that you’re having. ⁓ Maybe that’s like a signal for me to jump in and say hey well OK. Is is there something else that’s preventing this.
where did this come from? And just you and I would be going back and forth to figure that out. But I could pull the manager card and say that I’m really sorry that’s happened to you, but we still need to do it. So you need to figure out how to do it. You know, that may be the only option that you have at the end of the day, but probing to find out like, where is this coming from?
what am I not seeing? What is contributing to this? Because there’s always an environmental factor. And so I would probe to find it like, hey, what’s going on? Why is it like this? And then we could figure it out from there.
k3nd477 (17:30) Yeah, you talk a lot about listening your work. What’s a what’s a way like that probing certainly feels like a ⁓ active listening technique and trying to understand better. But is there like, do you have a framework or a way to think about a way to listen in those types of conversations that you employ or that you recommend folks employ
Joshua Graves (17:54) my book starts with this framework and you we can we talk more about that in a little bit but really a lot of this listening is it starts with building these muscles for yourself. So checking in with yourself like thinking about what am I feeling, what am I going through right now, ⁓ what stories am I telling myself about these things, and generally doing your best to separate the facts from the stories that we tell ourselves about them. And like the gap between those two things
is just like it’s milliseconds. So if if I see you do something immediately, my brain is processing it into a story so that I can remember it. I don’t necessarily want to brand everything as mindfulness. I do think that mindfulness gets sort of a weird rap because you think of like yogis chilling out in the middle of a field.
sitting quietly meditating and like, mindfulness is not really that. it’s that those things I just mentioned are part of it, but it’s much bigger. It’s just about being aware and being present with things. So start with yourself, but also you can start to apply that to other people. And it’s just really about trying to get outside of your own lens and like your own way of seeing things. And so there are questions of like, ⁓ how are you seeing it?
What am I missing? It sounds like you’re going through this. And like all of these things are questions that aren’t laden with assumptions. There are no value judgments with this. one of my favorite techniques to ask myself is like, why would a reasonable, rational person do this? And it’s based off of Hanlon's razor. And if you’re unfamiliar, it’s this concept that’s very similar to Occam’s razor.
And it says like, don’t attribute to malice what you can attribute to oversight or ignorance. And that really changes the game because you’re taking this conversation you’re having with someone about an event and you’re stopping yourself from saying, I know exactly what this is. They suck. They’re the worst person in the world. They’re being really lazy. And you’re just like, tell me more about where this came from. What’s going on here? And
It really helps get on the same page and build sort of a shared pool of meaning that you can swim in together.
k3nd477 (20:23) I have a friend who kind of calls that like the responding in the most generous way possible, which is like, okay, really trying to it’s not even just like, ⁓ putting like trying to find the, the positive it’s more just like, okay, I’m hearing this and there’s something else there and being generous in that.
Joshua Graves (20:31) That’s good.
k3nd477 (20:51) versus being like, well, it’s probably, you know, they suck or it’s probably this or that or something else about them that is causing my feelings to be some kind of way about it. And that, like my friend sharing that with me has been really formative for me to be like, yeah, cause I do, I wanna be generous when I’m talking to somebody and listening and trying to interact with them.
You mentioned, like conflict resolution and different things like that as, part of the impetus for you moving in this direction was there, have there been any like resources books that you, like you mentioned that you have read a lot about, but that it brought you to a point where you understand, how to communicate.
better because of like I’ve read some like non-violence books, non-violent communication books and things like that. Are there any in particular that you look to as ⁓ formative for you and how you view communication?
Joshua Graves (21:54) Yeah, so you mentioned nonviolent communication and that is foundational for me. And once I started to put those things in play, it really just made all of this so much better. But yeah, nonviolent communication by Dr. Marshall Rosenberg is really good. I find myself reading a lot about trauma and psychology and
Those things help give me a lens into how people may be processing things and how they show up at work. there’s a few books that come to mind that I found really helpful along my path. Like one of them was What It Takes to Heal by an author named Prentice Hemphill. They do a lot of really interesting somatic work, trauma-informed things. I’ve also read
You know, I’ve read the hits. I’ve read Radical Candor. I’ve read Crucial Conversations. I’ve that while those do have some helpful things inside of them, they didn’t quite feel authentic for me. And if you’ve read those books and they’ve given you something like that’s amazing and I love that for you. But I, you know, I wrote the book the way that I did because
k3nd477 (22:59) Mm-hmm.
Joshua Graves (23:11) I found a lot of things out there were too prescriptive or too inauthentic and I wanted something that was a little bit more tactical and practical. So like the book is kind of like a breezy read, but really like what I want is like, I want people to be able to like pick this book up when they need it, get the tool they need and like get on with their life and in a way that is authentic for them because it’s really easy to follow a script and say like,
Hey, if I do things A, B and C, I’m going to get outcomes one, two and three. That’s what the book says. And so that’s what I’m going to do. It never works like that. And so I’ve I found it more helpful to focus on like just having a really nice toolbox of tools that I can just like pull out when when the moment calls for it.
k3nd477 (24:00) Yeah, I remember when you were writing the book, or when I heard that you were writing the book, I guess, like there was a lot of, it sounded like you took a lot of hands-on conversations to help inform you in a, like, was it research? What were those conversations that you had?
Joshua Graves (24:19) A lot of I did a lot of interviews for this book in part because I’m a designer by trade and research is a really core part of how I make sure that I’m doing something that’s going to give people something worth it for them, you know, I could have made all these stories up myself.
And, you know, they would have been really contrived and silly, but I just wanted people to sit and like, tell me their stories. when I started doing these interviews, I realized something that like people will just tell me the most random things, almost unprompted. And when I started doing interviews for this book and asking people to tell me like, hey, ⁓ do you have any examples about.
you know, when people keep pushing your boundaries or people gaslight you, ⁓ the responses that I had were just wild. like I didn’t include half the stories that people shared with me. Like there’s a lot that ended up on the cutting room floor. But it was it was a lot of interviewing and making sure that like I’m listening to people and being able to like apply that framework a little bit and seeing seeing what we might need to tweak
Also, if I wrote this book just wholesale of my own opinion, ⁓ I recognize that I have one lived experience in life. I’m a white dude in tech. There are a lot of folks who are white dudes in tech, but there are also a lot of folks who aren’t. And the advice and the framework needs to be authentic and flexible for all of them.
Did I hit you? I like I’m rambled a little bit.
k3nd477 (26:00) No, I think it did.
I think it did. I think that
What’s coming up for this research that you
It seems like in some ways, and I think you might’ve just said this, but I think in some ways you’re kind of applying some of the techniques that you’re talking about in the research for the book.
it feels like there’s ⁓ some application of your own, of the results in the process. And does that, I don’t know if that makes sense, but it feels like that kind of maybe informed things.
Joshua Graves (26:39) it’s very bidirectional. So, you know, I had my hypothesis that, hey, this framework that I’m working on can apply to almost every situation that someone has at work. And the conversations that I would have from with folks would say would show me like, yes, this actually is still applicable. It’s still broad enough and covers all of all the right topics. But it also allowed for nuance.
And so there was nuance in what happens when you’re being gaslit, what happens when someone is yelling at you, what happens when you can’t agree with someone, like how the heck do you like, how do you do mediation? Those kind of things.
k3nd477 (27:22) your career, where have you experienced, cause you wrote that, when did this book come out? A couple of years ago, a few years ago?
Joshua Graves (27:31) No, this year. They came out in April. About seven months ago?
k3nd477 (27:33) No kidding.
When did you start writing it?
Joshua Graves (27:41) Well, officially I started writing drafts of it in 2019 and 2020. The pandemic hit and life hit and so I was sporadically writing it throughout like 2022, 2023 and wrapped everything in 2024.
k3nd477 (28:03) Okay, huh.
Joshua Graves (28:03) I’ve been
researching it for a long time, and if you want to on fun side story, ⁓ a mutual friend of ours introduced me to one of the books that got me into this back in 2007, and I kept trying to read it and was like, this is this is not what I need right now in my life. Like I can’t I can’t make sense of it, and
k3nd477 (28:07) Yeah, okay.
Okay.
Joshua Graves (28:33) About 10 years ago is when like that book resurfaced for me and I was like, all right, this idea of like getting better at conflict resolution, like that idea’s time has come. functionally, I guess you could say I started writing it about 10 years ago, but it wasn’t until I started paragraphs together, that was about 2019, 2020.
k3nd477 (28:55) Okay, interesting. ⁓ Well, time means different things all the time, but that’s awesome. So it came out in April. All right. ⁓ Well, congratulations. That’s more recent than I thought it was.
So some of the things you’re talking about very much feel like therapy kind of words and kind of thinking. Like that’s coming up for me a lot as you’re talking through this. you mentioned looking into like trauma-informed…
conflict resolution and things like that. Is there…
Like, I guess the reason that I’m curious about this is the proliferation of these kinds of thinking and it being part of culture and society to be more ⁓ in tune and those types of things, which we talked about a little bit earlier, but the language and the
how we talk about ourselves and other people has evolved in such a way that this seems like it would make sense to people. The things that you’re talking about, there’s enough ⁓ fertile soil for that to land. Whereas like 10 years ago, 20 years ago, I wonder if it would land in the same way because like you’re talking about earlier, this is like there have been books, like you mentioned, Crucial Conversations, Radical Candor, all of those types of things, which again,
are great, but it’s less.
you use the word authentic, know, personable, like personal, those books are less that way. And so maybe that ties into some of the authenticity that you were mentioning, does feel like there’s that fertile soil for the types of showing up authentically, but also showing up authentically in a way to have a conversation that might be difficult or that might be hard.
How do you now, like if you’re going into a difficult conversation, what are ways that you prepare yourself? Maybe on both sides of it, you know that you’re gonna be having a conversation, let’s say with somebody in authority or power, and you know that this may go in ways that aren’t necessarily comfortable. But then also, as you are someone who is talking to somebody who,
there is a difference in status there. ⁓ How do you approach those two sides of the same coin differently or the same?
Joshua Graves (31:34) Yeah, well, briefly, I wanted to respond to something you said about, you know, using therapy words. Yeah, those are those are things that you would hear in therapy. But if I wrote this book 10 or 15 years ago, the concepts have still been around for a long time. Like these are just methods of seeing and listening and being You know, I may have written it in terms of like a personal trainer, like understanding what someone’s injuries are and how we can work around it to get them to
you know, deadlift 500 pounds. Like you were just trying to be about it. And these concepts been around for a while. If we’re talking about having a hard conversation with like your boss or something, how would I approach it? Well, I, you know, in trying to be authentic about it, I would probably hate it. I would probably be a little anxious about it because that’s just how I am sometimes. But I know
that that’s just my my body being like, are you sure you want to do this? The stakes could be a little high because if I’m talking to my boss, it could affect my livelihood. So I’d want to tread carefully, understandably so. But. If I am going to have these conversations, know, one is, again, Checking in with myself.
have always been in the business of dealing in trade-offs. And it’s helped me both detach from the situation, but also at the same time, be able to give it my best. And if I’m having a conversation with my boss or someone who’s in leadership who has a lot more sway over things than I do, I am going to frame it like, hey, you’ve got your expertise.
You you sit at 30,000 feet. I’m down here on on the ground trying to trying to make sense of some of these things. So like I’m framing it in terms of my experience. Here’s what I’ve seen. Here’s what the impacts I’m seeing are. What am I missing? How how can we how can we figure this out? you know, the conversation may may be about ultimately like
having to lay some folks off. It may be about like.
Cautioning them about a choice that they have that’s gonna have some pretty big repercussions Because I am a little detached from it Even if it personally affects me I’ve been able to separate myself from the situation as best I can and just try and be as objective as possible But it doesn’t mean that you act without emotion. I I tend to get a lot of these things as Like you’re going through a haunted house
And, you know, some of the little rooms that you walk in can be a little scary, but. it’s just it’s just a haunted house, it’s it’s not it’s not anything that is real, so to speak. ⁓ You’re just going to go, you’re going to observe, you’re going to do the best you can, and you’re just going to go to the next room and. Working working it from that angle has has helped me.
get a little bit more clarity and security and sure flooding
k3nd477 (34:57) Yeah, can
you say more about that? Because I think that that’s like an interesting perspective that is really hard to actually harness because the stakes can be so high. But the idea that the person you’re talking to is a person, they’re not your boss. I mean, they are your boss, but they’re not your boss. They’re just Frank or Suzy or whatever. And they have whatever they have going on in their life.
Joshua Graves (35:14) Yeah.
k3nd477 (35:26) ⁓ But I think that that’s a hard thing to learn that the person that you’re interacting with isn’t the power that you’re interacting with. And I think that maybe that’s a distinction, but can you say more about that? Sorry, I just rambled after I asked you to say more.
Joshua Graves (35:46) Yeah, well, let’s extend the metaphor a little bit. So if we’re thinking of these hard conversations similar to a haunted house, like I’m going into this haunted house. I’m me. I’m in this room. know, Frank, Susie, whatever name that we want to use there in there as well. And maybe they’ve got the big scary mask on. But at the same time, we know that
It’s still a person on the other end of it. And we’re both going to exit this haunted house at some point and continue to be human. And the situation that we find ourselves in, the room that we find ourselves in, can be a little scary. And we’re just going to do our best to figure out what we can do within the constraints that we have. And then we’re just going to move on. There’s a there’s a similar metaphor that I heard from ⁓ a comedian, Bill Hicks, ⁓ who
said like, hey, it’s just a ride. We’re just on this roller coaster together. Some people think it’s really real. Some people are really invested in it. But where he takes this is really interesting because he just has this like very compassionate detachment to the way that he approaches that bit. And it’s really interesting way of viewing life and.
k3nd477 (37:03) Mm-hmm.
Joshua Graves (37:08) For me, I was able to extend that for myself and think about like, it’s kind of like a haunted house. ⁓ It may feel real. It can be a little scary. But at the same time, know, humans go into this and humans are to come out on the other side. And like our experience is much bigger than what’s happening in this room.
k3nd477 (37:25) yeah, I learned that. So I used to do a baseball podcast years and years ago, and I was fortunate to be able to talk with people who were like leaders in industry and like people that I never would have expected to talk to. And I realized after that was exactly what we’re talking about. It’s like, ⁓ these people that everybody knows their name, they’re just people. They’re just like, and.
They’re insecure just as much as I’m insecure when I’m trying to like interview them or talk to them. And that to me was formational in terms of how to approach people and how to approach conversations. And honestly, it probably sometimes bites me in the ass because I approach things in a way that is not necessarily like, you’re the boss and like, I’m just going to try and shoot straight with you and have a conversation with you. And some people don’t like that.
but, ⁓ yeah, that was, that was a way for me to see that and like to actually live that out and experience it. And, I think it totally fits in with your, your illustration of a haunted house that, that we’re all going to exit at some point and take the masks off and they’re going to go sit in their car and drive home and lay their head on the pillow. Just like I am. It’s a very, that humanization of people.
maybe makes it easier to have those conversations with those people who are in authority or in power in your life to be able to be like, yeah, they’re human beings too. I don’t know. Is that something that you found as like that humanization of folks is something that’s helpful to have a better conversation or be able to get to that communication in a more healthy way or helpful way?
Joshua Graves (39:18) It is. It’s like I try really hard to make sure that I don’t dehumanize someone. So instead of calling someone a liar or a dirtbag or I probably have several other choice words, which would be hilarious to say, but probably inappropriate to be on a podcast context. ⁓ Sure, I I don’t label them just as that. like they’re.
They’re a person who is not telling the truth because they have something to They’re a person who is being pushy because they’re scared. don’t know why I see things the way that I do. I just know that, you know, my lived experience, the things I’ve gone through, they’ve just helped me to see folks in that light.
know, there’ve been situations in my life where I have, I’ve been faced with things that were so adverse that I couldn’t really do a lot of that just because it was so hard for me. But in those moments, I’m just doing the best I can and trying to move on with my life.
k3nd477 (40:34) giving grace in those ways, both to other people in the way to say like, you got stuff going on. And then also I think being able to, to look back when we’re in those situations that like you were just talking about where stuff becomes too much or more than we can do without having, you know, without reacting in a way that we, as we look back, we wouldn’t necessarily like, but being able to have that compassion for ourselves as well.
I guess is really important.
Joshua Graves (41:05) on the idea of trying to assume positive intent, but realizing that that concept has limits. And I still think that’s a very human thing to do. And knowing that there are limits to what you are willing to assume can be really freeing.
k3nd477 (41:26) I want to more about that.
Joshua Graves (41:29) Well, so if I if I kept saying like, ⁓ I’m only going to assume positive intent, you if you wanted to be a really bad actor, you could just like run roughshod over me. You could take advantage of me. You could gaslight me. You could be like doing the worst things. And it’s like, sorry, I totally did not mean to do that. ⁓ Oops. And you could just skate on on on me and my goodness.
I guess like a really extreme example would be, I’m not going to assume positive intent if you decided to just come up to me and punch me in the That’s entirely different because like you were hurting me personally, physically. But in general, I try to say like, okay, this person is probably going through something like let’s try
and figure out where they’re coming from, what’s going on. And it doesn’t at all excuse the impact of what they did. Because like, you know, if I stepped on your foot as I passed you, I may not have meant to do that, but if I’m wearing some really heavy steel-toed shoes, it’s still gonna hurt and I’m still gonna have to deal with that and have to reckon with it. But I’m, you know.
I didn’t mean to do it, but I’m still going to reckon with what I did.
k3nd477 (42:55) what you’re talking about feels to me a lot like boundaries and having those boundaries of like, yeah, like I’m absolutely going to attribute positive intent. But when you punch me in the face, like that’s the boundary, like that that’s not OK. And ⁓ that feels to me like. Really healthy, I guess, but ⁓ other than that, just like a
of between being generous in spirit, being like attributing positive intent, those types of things to, like you said, letting somebody just totally walk all over you. knowing and having those boundaries is a way to keep the, ⁓ keep yourself safe, keep the relationship safe, keep the, all of those types of things. think that ⁓ that’s an important piece.
Joshua Graves (43:50) it is making sure that you hold those boundaries is really important and like knowing when to set them and the difference between a boundary and a rule is also important like boundaries are meant to just protect you it’s not punishing someone else it’s it’s very it helps it helps engender more autonomy on my side on your side on everyone’s side
And it’s just like, you can be pretty much who you want to be. But if you’re going to hurt me or harm my safety or endanger my safety, I’m going to remove myself. ⁓ And a rule could be like, if you decide that you really want to disrespect my boundaries and you want to, again, like using that metaphor earlier of like,
coming and punching me in the face, like I might have a rule that you might get sucker punched in the nose. I don’t know.
k3nd477 (44:57) Yeah. And I think even bringing another layer into that of the difference between a boundary and a request, like I, like if you, like a request would be like, please stop doing X. Great. Okay. But then the boundary might be, if you continue to do X, like you said, like I’m going to remove myself from the situation because that’s not okay with me. And I think a lot of people,
conflate those two things specifically, like because you said, yeah, I like, will you not do that? Like, yes, I want to respect that. But like at the same time, if that does happen, like that’s not a boundary, that’s just a request and better communication might be thinking about your boundaries and being able to communicate them transparently, I think is an important piece too.
as we’re looking at ⁓ some of the work that you’ve done that we’ve been talking about, what are you still learning about yourself through this work of conversation, dialogue,
Joshua Graves (46:04) So that’s, that is a really deep question. ⁓ and I’m finding myself thinking about how I hold space for other people and just trying to not unnecessarily inject my own story into things. So like the longer that I sit with these topics, the longer I coach people through these conversations, whether or not it’s, it’s me having them or me like walking someone through something and helping them prep for it.
It’s really like being able to just sit with something that is uncomfortable. And I have a personal practice of mindfulness and it’s not necessarily that I sit and meditate quietly. Like I’ll do things and still be mindful and still be fully present. And it helps me stay in those moments where things can be a little tense and
still be able to bring that generosity and kindness whenever possible.
k3nd477 (47:05) What like when you’re talking about that holding space, like that’s definitely a phrase and experience that I’m familiar with and that like, but I think it might mean different things to different people. Like for me, holding space is kind of like what you mentioned, like being able to sit in that, in that feeling, either within myself or with, with somebody else.
Are there other aspects of that for you when you talk about holding space?
Joshua Graves (47:37) Yeah, it’s just being able to sit down and let someone else tell their story. And that works in conflict and in so many other parts of life. It’s you sit and listen. And that doesn’t mean that you don’t have opinions. It doesn’t mean that you don’t have sometimes an emotional response to it, because these conversations and these moments we find ourselves in can be really high stakes. ⁓ And I would never want to
cut emotion out of the equation. yeah, just being able to hold space is sitting and listening even if it’s uncomfortable.
k3nd477 (48:16) Yeah, I think when you were just talking, like the aspect of kind of non-judgment or, and this maybe goes back to what you were talking about with not inserting yourself into that conversation. for me, my, like from my experience, the…
part that is actually the holding of the spaces, I’m sitting here with you and it’s not about me. It’s about you in this moment. So I’m listening to you or I’m taking in your experience or whatever. And it’s not even about my experience. And, but then I think there’s also a piece of when those big feelings, those emotional responses coming up, come up at the right time, being able to say, I’m really feeling.
Like overwhelmed by this or, I’m feeling like I’m, I’m feeling angry because of the story that you’re telling or whatever, not responding in the, in that emotion, but being able to, to transparently share that and be able to have that be a part of the dialogue too, because I, and I say that, I don’t think that’s always applicable. don’t think that’s always like the right way to go because sometimes that would be making it about you and not holding space, but.
I think generally speaking, as the conversation continues and correct me if you it differently, I would be interested to have that. ⁓ I guess just being transparent and authentic in how you engage. I guess what I’m actually trying to say is that engagement
isn’t necessarily or doesn’t have to be passive and you’re gone. Like that you don’t exist. I think that the part of it that is beautiful. And again, please speak up if you have different or other perspectives on this, but I think that the part for me that is beautiful in that is I am having all of these feelings, these emotions that are coming up when you’re talking about something.
And I’m also, there’s space for you to have your experience and yours. And then there’s also space for me to have the experience that I’m having and it doesn’t take over and all of those things. But, but I think being able to be transparent about that and bring both of those things to the table is important. Interesting. I don’t know. You wrote the book. you tell me is that.
Joshua Graves (50:46) Yeah, so.
Well, there’s nuance here. And like I am I’m going to validate what you said, because if I am coming to you and like we’re having some conflict about a goal that we’re trying to reach, you know, whether it’s trying to launch something, trying to build something and you have your experiences, I’m telling you what’s going on and you’re like, yeah, I’m I’m feeling I’m feeling angry.
right now about that. that is appropriate. ⁓ And also if you just need to take some time and you realize that you’re feeling angry and you might not be thinking clearly because like anger really does cut off some blood flow to your brain, ⁓ you can take you can take a step back and see like I just I just need a couple of minutes to process this. You know, let’s slow down. that’s great. That’s very healthy. But if I am coming to you
and you’ve done something to hurt me and I start telling you about it and you’re like, I’m feeling really angry. That’s not appropriate. And like, I don’t think that’s what you were saying, but it’s important to just call out that that nuance of like, now you’re actually making it about yourself. And that’s, that’s when you should be like, ⁓ I’m making this about myself. I need to shut up for a minute or I need to remove myself conversation for a second. Yeah.
k3nd477 (51:59) Right. It’s not. Yeah. Yeah.
Right. Yeah. Or I need to step away. Yeah, totally.
Joshua Graves (52:18) Yeah, so that’s just sort of like a, it’s a deflection from what the other person is saying. there are, know, everything exists on a spectrum. And like the first part of what we talked about was like the healthy end of the spectrum. And the stuff that we just mentioned about like, you making it about yourself, like that’s the unhealthy part that we don’t want to get to.
k3nd477 (52:40) maybe let me tease this out a little bit. What’s how do we get from because I think that’s such a natural, response or it has been for me in my life, to deflect in that same way. Like that’s a, that is very natural and it’s something that I’ve worked on for sure. But like, do.
in your experience or in the people that you’ve talked to getting from a point where you’re in the conversation and you are deflecting and you are actively being like responding in ways that are are unhealthy or unhelpful at the very least getting from there to a place where you can that the conversation goes the right way. Like, and maybe this is just to read the book.
point but like is there is there a way that you’ve seen in your work that people get from point A to point B?
Joshua Graves (53:36) Yeah, practice awareness. You, you are not going to be perfect at this when you start it. Like you’re still going to do silly things like making it about yourself, but being able to be self reflective. And so like, Ooh, I put a little too much myself into this conversation when I should have been listening. ⁓ those things take time and
k3nd477 (53:38) Love it.
Joshua Graves (54:05) Part of what I’ve done for myself is I’ve tried to put a lot of these things in practice in really small stakes situations. Whether it is like if I’m finding that I’m getting really annoyed or angry and like I might want to say something that ⁓ if it tumbled out of my mouth would be kind of detrimental to the situation. ⁓ I’ve practiced having
this phrase that I can just say if I just need to like pull back for a second, like, I need, I just need a second to process ⁓ or, you know, if you just need to remove yourself from a conversation, if something just gets really tense, ⁓ having those practiced and ready can be really helpful. Like I’m not available for that kind of conversation right now. I don’t participate in conversations where people speak to me like that. And you can just
pull yourself back, but what really makes it is like, if you’re like, need a minute because I’m angry, pull yourself out, but like go back in, figure it out together. ⁓ But yeah, practice, like there’s no way that you’re gonna come off perfect in all of this. like, I don’t think I would wanna take that lesson away from anyone either, because that’s how you become better at things.
You screw up. You screw up in some high-stakes situations and scars teach us things, you know?
k3nd477 (55:40) Yeah, I do know. I do know.
Joshua Graves (55:44) I had a feeling that you
did. ⁓
k3nd477 (55:48) Yeah, that definitely resonates with me.
In the context of what we’re talking about, but I think more broadly too, the moment that we’re in in the world, what gives you hope?
Joshua Graves (56:04) The Unexpected. There is an author that I love, Octavia Butler. She’s written some really, really incredible fiction. ⁓ After she died, we got a glimpse into some of her research process about how she wrote, how she cataloged things. It was really fascinating to kind of get a glimpse into her brain.
She ended up writing this trilogy of books about like what might happen in a near future scenario where there are climate issues, where there are other political issues that are coming up. And, you know, I don’t want to spoil anything about that story. But. When she was doing an interview with people who were feeling a little scared or pessimistic about the world. And I confess that, I have my own pessimisms about things and, you know, I’m I still have some some hope. someone asked her, you know, why? Why would you like what would you do? How do we fix this? And they were just a little bit more despondent, I think.
And her response was really about like, the future is not written in stone. Like all kinds of unexpected things can happen. And knowing that there is not a fixed path, even if everything in our brain is telling us this is what’s going to happen, you really never know. And as a person who really loves figuring out a problem,
and trying to get certainty, the response both infuriates and gives me peace because it’s like, I can’t know, I can’t figure it out. ⁓ But yeah, you never know what’s gonna happen.
k3nd477 (58:09) I love that. And that was an unexpected answer, I that’s, I love it. Like that’s such a, think too, it’s like such a creative ⁓ response, meaning. That unexpectedness don’t know is born out of creativity or is a result of the fact that there is creativity in the world that unexpected things can happen. So I think that that’s pretty neat.
Alright Joshua we’ve come to the point in the show where you have the opportunity to ask a question of me or of our listeners or anything like that.
What is your question for today?
Joshua Graves (58:59) I think part of what I would like to ask is like… Would you just give yourself some fucking grace? We just go so hard and we we’re so hard on ourselves. What would it look like? If we were just a little kinder to ourselves.
k3nd477 (59:17) I think that would be revolutionary ⁓ for myself and for everyone else in the world. I think that that is…
k3nd477 (59:29) not being able to or seeing the value in giving ourselves grace and compassion is the cause of so much hurt and pain in the world. Because if we aren’t compassionate and giving ourselves grace, we then play out the ramifications of that in all of the different
relationships and activities of our life. And so I think for me, as I’ve tried to learn how to do that, which is obviously still a process, ⁓ it’s really helped. Like it’s really helped me not be so angry and being able to actually reflect on my own self instead of projecting or instead of ⁓
externalizing different things, being able to admit and own the ways that I mess up has only been available because of giving myself grace, ⁓ because it was too scary before that. It was too risky, I think, to do that ⁓ until I was able to actually
give myself grace and see that it was okay to make those mistakes or to show up in ways that weren’t necessarily in line with my values all the time. ⁓ So I think it would change the world. Like it has changed my world. And I think that if other people, if the whole entirety of humanity was able to capture even some of that, I think it would change a lot of things for the better.
Joshua Graves (1:01:21) Wow, appreciate that insight. ⁓ I didn’t know that that was going to be my question coming into it, but it definitely is something that I think we could all stand to do more of, myself included. So thank you, I appreciate it.
k3nd477 (1:01:39) Yeah, yeah,
yeah, of course. And I think other folks, if you have thoughts on this, leave it in the comments. Joshua, thank you so much for coming on the show. I really appreciate it. Really appreciate your time. And we’ll definitely link up your book in other spots show notes. But thanks for coming on.
Joshua Graves (1:02:01) ⁓ This was so much fun. I really really appreciate it.
k3nd477 (1:02:05) Joshua Graves for coming on the show today. really appreciate his time and his question of the week. So please take a minute and answer the comments, on social media. Any of those things would be great. Please go get his book, We Need to Talk.
a survival guide for tough conversations. You will be better off for it. So please go ahead and get those. I will link that up as well. Thank you so much for listening, and I really appreciate you coming along for the ride here. Please reach out if you have any thoughts, questions, so many questions show at gmail.com would love to hear from you. Also, feel free to reach out on social media on
Instagram, the handle is so many questions dot show threads. Same. So many questions that show and on blue sky also so many questions I show. So if you’re on any of those platforms, please reach out, ⁓ follow the show and ask any questions or comments or anything like that. would really appreciate it. Thank you all so much. Take care.
[Note: This has been edited for clarity]