Fantasized Talent: How Remote Work Changes Self-Perception with Jim Frawley

00;00;08;06 - 00;00;43;24
Wayne Turmel
Hello. Hello, everybody. Welcome to another episode of Long Distance Worklife, the podcast where we try to help you thrive, survive, generally keep the weasels at bay in this crazy world of remote and hybrid. And whatever your work situation Sean is. my name is Wayne Tremmel. I am with Kevin Eikenberry Group, my regular co-host. Marissa. I can Barry is not with us today, which means it's an interview episode and we have a really good one for you today.

00;00;44;00 - 00;01;05;29
Wayne Turmel
I think you're going to enjoy this conversation. So before I run over my intro and get all redundant on you, I am going to call in Jim Frawley. Jim is, the author of Fantasized Talent. And Jim, who are you? What should we know about you? And then we'll jump in.

00;01;06;01 - 00;01;30;07
Jim Frawley
Sure. My name is Jim Frawley. I run an organization called bellwether, and we do executive development. We're based in New York, and we, really do executive development from the top, straight on down throughout the organization. My background was in executive communications, mostly in the financial industry. So that's where I really earned my chops. And as we take a look, our real sweet spot is how do you get people to prepare for change when they don't know what change is coming?

00;01;30;10 - 00;01;39;11
Jim Frawley
And part of that is the remote work that we saw with with Covid and everything else, and the way that the workplace has changed over time. So we really help people adapt to that.

00;01;39;14 - 00;01;58;12
Wayne Turmel
Now there is a cool phrase which you have adopted called fantasize talent, which sounds extremely consultancy and and gimmicky, but there's an actual really, really excellent point here that I would love you to kind of define for us and tell us what we're in for.

00;01;58;15 - 00;02;18;24
Jim Frawley
Yeah, it, so the term fantasized talent and it came up, I was giving a presentation in Vegas at an HR conference, and someone asked if, imposter syndrome was getting increased with all this work from home. And what I've actually seen as I thought about it was this idea of fantasize talent, fantasize talent comes. There's an assessment.

00;02;18;26 - 00;02;51;06
Jim Frawley
It's a great assessment called The Hogan. It's a leadership assessment that has all kind of full gamut of how are you when you're at your best? What do people see when you're at your worst? then there's another report you can get on your values, your motivations of I mean, it really covers the whole kind of circle. And one of the areas to look out for, for some people, is this idea of fantasized talent, which is believing that you either are born for greatness or you have this really, original, inventive, unique.

00;02;51;06 - 00;03;12;20
Jim Frawley
You are special. and it can be perceived as a very arrogant, attribute of you when we're really under stress. Sometimes this can, if this is one of your your noted components of a Hogan, this can be seen when you're under stress. It's one of those negative behaviors that people can see because you think that you're destined for this greatness that can push other people down.

00;03;12;20 - 00;03;27;28
Jim Frawley
And, and we are seeing I'm, I'm seeing anyway, this increase in this idea, I love the term of fantasize talent that we're better than we are, because we're not getting the real feedback that we need to really fit into. a bigger picture.

00;03;28;01 - 00;03;50;10
Wayne Turmel
Now, there's two things that you just said there which fascinate me. One is this is kind of the flip side of impostor syndrome. Imposter syndrome is I suck. They're going to find out any minute. I'm going to be busted. You know, I I'm I'm a big fat fraud. The flip side of this is I'm a genius. And the sooner they realize that, the better.

00;03;50;10 - 00;04;12;04
Wayne Turmel
So that's kind of the first thing. And the second thing, which is super important, is that we get that sense of reality, right. Whether I'm as good as I am or I'm a horrible, awful human being. Based on feedback and without feedback, you're left with the voices in your head making that decision.

00;04;12;06 - 00;04;31;13
Jim Frawley
Yeah, it's you know what? It's the flipped. I could say it's the flip side of imposter syndrome, but they're from they're on the same coin. They're both forms of insecurity. I would say, you know, you're not really imposter syndrome. You're not really tapping into reality of what other people are actually seeing. If you get this promotion, if you do this work, there's a reason for it.

00;04;31;15 - 00;04;47;16
Jim Frawley
And we always have the self-doubt and everything. That's a healthy self-doubt. So when we're dealing with imposter syndrome, it's what are people actually seeing? There's a reason I'm here. Am I living up to those expectations? And there's this fear to drive us to kind of continually be better on the same side. This fantasized talent is you're not getting the feedback you need.

00;04;47;16 - 00;05;04;27
Jim Frawley
You're not matching reality. You're not really seeing you think you're doing a great job, but you're not necessarily picking up what what really leverage you have. And so when we're working remotely and feedback comes in so many different forms, we want this feedback. We want to be told how we are, but we don't necessarily believe the words that we're told.

00;05;05;00 - 00;05;24;14
Jim Frawley
And so when we think about feedback, you know, I could tell you ten different ways how great you're doing. We still don't necessarily believe it. And feedback comes in so many different forms with, social cues, verbal cues, the the way that people look at you, the little shrugs, the facial expressions that people make when you're in a room with other people.

00;05;24;17 - 00;05;46;22
Jim Frawley
And so feedback comes in so many different forms that have been removed when working remotely. We're going through the screen now. We don't get the rest of the room as you're talking one on one with someone or in the hallway or something else. How's that idea really picked up? And so it is kind of the same coin in terms of how are we actually landing on other people to remain relevant as the workplace changes.

00;05;46;24 - 00;05;57;22
Wayne Turmel
And of course, the challenge here is the same as it is with everything having to do with remote work, which is it's not like we were great at this when we were all together.

00;05;57;24 - 00;06;18;10
Jim Frawley
No. Yeah, right. Most people, nobody likes to give negative feedback. Nobody likes to tell you how to to improve. it's the biggest complaint that people have in so many when I'm working one on one with coaches or with teams, I don't get the feedback that I need is something I always hear, but the first question I ask them is, how are you going to get your feedback?

00;06;18;10 - 00;06;35;16
Jim Frawley
How are you asking for feedback? How are you giving context? Feedback is not just this extrinsic, external kind of give it to me. I'm waiting for you to come to me. You have to meet them halfway. It's not just, how am I doing? Oh, you're doing fine. It's. Hey, look, I want to become a chief marketing officer or a chief operating officer.

00;06;35;16 - 00;06;51;15
Jim Frawley
Do you think I'm taking the right kind of steps? It's a very different type of question. We can say, oh, now that I know where you want to go, I can give you feedback relevant to where you actually want to go. So there is this, there is this accountability also on the individual to get the actual feedback that you want.

00;06;51;15 - 00;07;08;18
Jim Frawley
And when we're not in person, you know, when you give a presentation to a senior group of people and you look around the room and you're just asking your boss later, how did that go? But you know how it went because you know how people are sitting and changing and leaning into your questions and asking questions and are really interested in what you're presenting.

00;07;08;23 - 00;07;14;23
Jim Frawley
It's a very different, way to communicate that. We seem to have lost when we're working remotely.

00;07;14;25 - 00;07;44;07
Wayne Turmel
Yeah. And it seems like I mean, everything is based on the question you ask, right? How did it go is a wide open question. It's you're really asking, did they like it or are they going to take action? Did I do my job? Did you know there are a whole bunch of micro questions inside that seemingly innocent enough question.

00;07;44;10 - 00;08;03;08
Jim Frawley
And and one of the things I love to talk to groups about is do you understand the definition of a question? And most people don't. Most people cannot define what a question is and the way I define it. And I've pulled this from a couple of different places. It's a request for information where you legitimately do not know the answer.

00;08;03;10 - 00;08;22;18
Jim Frawley
And so when you're requesting information where you say, how am I doing? It's not really giving the framework to get something that's really tangible for you to do, right? You're asking for something from a different person's perspective. You have to line them up and guide them to get the actual information that you want and ask a really meaningful question.

00;08;22;20 - 00;08;36;06
Jim Frawley
that and ask ourselves the same types of questions where there's no judgment involved in terms of the way we ask our question. It has to be purely a request for answer where we are, a request for an answer where we do not know what that answer is going to be.

00;08;36;08 - 00;09;01;26
Wayne Turmel
Wow. That is that is big. Because so often when we hear the answer, we're putting it through that filter of do I think I'm a genius or do I think I'm a big fat liar? And we're going to hear because human beings do this, right, it's rationalization 101. We hear what confirms our bias is to start with.

00;09;01;29 - 00;09;19;01
Jim Frawley
And also what confirms our biases because we think we know. I mean, so many people will go and give a pitch, you know, for a new product and they come out and say, that went horribly. And then they find out that everybody loved it or vice versa. That was amazing. And then they do it. What we do, though, is there's so much we don't know, because we don't know everybody else's perspectives.

00;09;19;01 - 00;09;38;01
Jim Frawley
And the way that they interpret things. I mean, the 5 million people listening to this podcast, some are going to say, this is really insightful. Other people are going to say this was a waste of time because they may have already known, based on their perspective or whatever it is. And so we have to lose judgment. We fill in the gaps where we don't know what other people's perspectives are.

00;09;38;07 - 00;09;55;26
Jim Frawley
We fill in gaps. If you if you ask me, how am I doing? I'm filling in the gaps of what the context is. On why you're asking. If you want to give me feedback, you're filling in the gaps based on your perspective of where you are, where you wish to go, and everything else where we have to line people up to say, these are my expectations.

00;09;55;26 - 00;10;02;14
Jim Frawley
These are my intentions. This is what I want so that we can kind of fill in those gaps for them so we can get the feedback that we actually need.

00;10;02;17 - 00;10;20;18
Wayne Turmel
Yeah, I think the number one challenge with remote work is that there is so much white space around us, and in fact, you know, in lieu of real evidence, we tend to make up what fills that white space, whether that's positive or negative. Delusional.

00;10;20;21 - 00;10;20;27
Jim Frawley
Yeah.

00;10;20;28 - 00;10;29;19
Wayne Turmel
Whatever that is. Right. We're creating unless we're unless we're proven otherwise, we're going to fill that up with our own assumptions and biases.

00;10;29;24 - 00;10;45;29
Jim Frawley
And and working from home. We're doing an amazing job, right? If you're sitting there digging a tunnel and you say, I'm working really hard and I'm working extra hours and I'm digging this tunnel, but then from left field, somebody says, what are you building a tunnel for? You need a bridge. You say, I'm completely out of, you know, I've done the completely wrong thing.

00;10;45;29 - 00;11;08;24
Jim Frawley
I'm in the completely wrong place. And I've spoken to many people, have lost their jobs over the last few years because it's happening a lot. And I've heard this from multiple people. I had no idea how out of touch I really was. I had no idea how irrelevant I really was, how I was becoming so further away from the mark because they weren't asking questions, they weren't inserting themselves, they weren't getting in front of the right types of people.

00;11;08;27 - 00;11;23;16
Jim Frawley
And then they wake up one day, there's a massive layoff, and they say, I was working so hard. I was doing crazy hours, I was doing good work. And so this part of the business is no longer relevant. We're cutting it out. You're gone. And so we have to ask these types of questions on remaining relevant. And that's really the hard part.

00;11;23;16 - 00;11;30;21
Jim Frawley
When you're working remotely, how do you remain relevant and make people aware of you. And we have to do this by asking really good questions.

00;11;30;23 - 00;11;40;03
Wayne Turmel
Yeah, I call those wily coyote moments where you're running and you're off the cliff and you're way off the cliff, and you don't know it until you look down. You do a.

00;11;40;03 - 00;11;41;21
Jim Frawley
Couple blinks and you're stuck.

00;11;41;21 - 00;12;12;18
Wayne Turmel
Exactly. I just everybody should be issued a little sign that says, yikes. okay, so there are two things that kind of came to mind, as you were saying, that, and one is from the leader's side and one is from the employee's side. So clearly we need the feedback. Let's start with the individual. Right. How do we consciously, intentionally get the feedback that we require.

00;12;12;18 - 00;12;21;00
Wayne Turmel
And this applies no matter how or where you work. But it is particularly important in remote environment.

00;12;21;02 - 00;12;41;12
Jim Frawley
So the first thing we have to recognize is that feedback is a social exercise. And so we have to surround ourselves with the people who can give us the good, honest feedback that we need. And this is a social exercise. It helps to be in person, but if it's not a person, then we can do it remotely. Obviously, your direct manager, you want to get it from them.

00;12;41;18 - 00;13;01;21
Jim Frawley
You've got peers, you've got other allies within the organization. You've got people that you naturally trust. Ideally, you've had people throughout your career. Even if you're young in your career, you've got people who have had a major impact on you becoming the type of executive or worker that brings out the best in you. These are people that you want to surround yourself with completely.

00;13;01;21 - 00;13;16;24
Jim Frawley
And when you surround yourself with these types of people, we then have to teach them how to give us feedback. We have to give them the context on where we wish to go, what we wish to do. What are you really asking for? Are you asking for feedback? Why? Because you want a promotion. Because you want to raise?

00;13;16;27 - 00;13;35;14
Jim Frawley
Because you want to make sure you're doing a good job. Because you're afraid of being laid off. Whatever the context is driving your request for feedback, you need to have a solid answer on why. And one of the exercises you can do, it's almost like this, root cause analysis that you'll see in work is I always tell people S5 was, how am I doing?

00;13;35;14 - 00;13;52;12
Jim Frawley
Why are you asking that question? Because I want to find out how I'm doing. Why? Because I want to see if I can get a promotion. Why? Because I want to. You know, and if you go through five questions, five whys, eventually you're going to get to some kind of root cause as to why you want this type of feedback.

00;13;52;12 - 00;14;09;00
Jim Frawley
And what's driving your question. Then suddenly you have a context that you can give most people when we're communicating, we don't give context. And this goes to leaders or individuals. We don't give kind of, why did you do that? It's not a question. That's a judgment. You want to kind of cue them up so that you can cut them down.

00;14;09;07 - 00;14;23;07
Jim Frawley
So how can you ask? Tell Me More allows you to get some context so that you can give the proper answer that that people are actually looking for. So we have to give context to why we're asking for feedback, so that people can give you the feedback that you really, really want.

00;14;23;10 - 00;14;48;10
Wayne Turmel
You said something really important. I mean, setting context is critical, but you said something important that kind of got glided over, and I want to make sure that our listeners pay attention to that which is feedback comes from all kinds of places. When we hear feedback, we assume many people assume that that's my boss giving me performance evaluation feedback.

00;14;48;15 - 00;15;06;08
Wayne Turmel
I'm doing a good job, I'm doing a bad job. But in fact, feedback takes all kinds of forms from all kinds of places. And very often we don't give feedback to our peers, to our colleagues, to whatever, because that's not our place, right?

00;15;06;08 - 00;15;26;29
Jim Frawley
Yeah. We don't want to over summer bounds. We love to, pass judgment. We're thinking about how other people are doing, but we never want to tell them. but also, you know, depending on who your audience is for feedback and getting feedback, I mean, whether it's a senior person, your direct boss, people who report to you, people who are peers, the type of feedback can be different.

00;15;26;29 - 00;15;43;20
Jim Frawley
It's not just, how am I doing, right? You're not going to ask a person reporting to you, I want to be a chief marketing officer. How do you think I'm doing? feedback comes in many different types of questions. So you can get these, you know, did we, tackle what we wanted to achieve in that meeting? How do you think that went?

00;15;43;22 - 00;16;03;01
Jim Frawley
how would you have done it differently? What what do you think that meaning means for us today? And is there something that you saw in that meeting that maybe I didn't? All of this is feedback, that it's data that we can absorb to say, wow, this person saw something that I did not even think about, that I should probably incorporate into my presentation next time or into my meeting next time, or something like that.

00;16;03;06 - 00;16;25;04
Jim Frawley
So the types of questions we ask run the full gamut, but we want honest feedback, and we need to lay the groundwork where people can be honest with us. And it's not this personal kind of, you were good or you were bad or you were this. Ask them for their interpretation of it, because then suddenly, if you give the context and ask for their interpretation, people will talk your ear off because they love to talk about the way they think about things.

00;16;25;04 - 00;16;47;16
Jim Frawley
So why did they approach things and these different perspectives? That's feedback. That's the social kind of network that you want around you to give that valuable perspective, to challenge your belief systems, to challenge your assumptions. Every assumption you have is probably wrong. And so how do you take these assumptions and get the feedback? You need to challenge it so that you can be better in the next, the next round.

00;16;47;19 - 00;17;10;20
Wayne Turmel
So as an individual, it's about create contact. When you're seeking feedback, create context for it. I'm pretty sure I know the answer to this, but let's put the shoe on the other foot. I'm the manager, right? I'm the leader. Whatever. And I need to give feedback. What do I need to be aware of? Watch out for.

00;17;10;23 - 00;17;29;08
Jim Frawley
First two things I would say. One is you have to create the expectation, right? If you want an expectation of brilliance, you need to say, I expect brilliance, and I'm going to cut every string so that you can be as brilliant as you are, but recognize when you don't hit this, I'm going to come out and I'm going to tell you that you didn't hit it right.

00;17;29;08 - 00;17;55;02
Jim Frawley
So if you properly set it up at the beginning to say, these are my expectations, then it's easier to have the conversation later. That's one. But then secondly, you have to create an environment and someone call this psychological safety. Some would call it other things where your teaching people. If you're a manager, you want to teach your people to be asking legitimate questions of themselves because you want them to be asking themselves.

00;17;55;02 - 00;18;16;27
Jim Frawley
These questions before you ask the question of them. And so after every meaning, they should be saying, what, could I have done better in that meeting? Or what went really well in that meeting? They should be asking this on a constant developmental, spin. And I have some clients who start every meeting now with three simple questions or five simple questions.

00;18;16;27 - 00;18;45;05
Jim Frawley
What did you learn this week? what challenges are you working on this week? what's your biggest challenge this week? And how can anybody help? Right. And if you start facilitating these types of questions where people know that that's what's expected of them, no judgment, just pure questions. A real question has no judgment where your perspective is given, suddenly people are more open to answering these types of questions and asking more questions and saying, I have this idea, and how about this?

00;18;45;12 - 00;18;50;19
Jim Frawley
So you're facilitating a type of discussion where people can ask really, really good questions.

00;18;50;22 - 00;18;55;04
Wayne Turmel
Jim, we could go on for ages. This topic is fascinating.

00;18;55;05 - 00;18;55;25
Jim Frawley
I love this stuff.

00;18;55;27 - 00;19;23;04
Wayne Turmel
And we're geeks about this stuff. And we can talk about this for much longer than anybody wants to listen to it. But thank you so much. the whole concept of fantasized talent and, you know, what we believe about ourselves should be evidence based. And are we getting feedback that supports or doesn't is such a, uniquely phrased thing which we don't hear very often in this business.

00;19;23;04 - 00;19;28;24
Wayne Turmel
So thank you for creating that easily stolen concept. we we like that.

00;19;28;27 - 00;19;38;02
Jim Frawley
Yes. It's good. I'll give credit to Hogan, but I love it. I love the term right. Fantasize that it's so relevant right now. It's it's because we just don't know.

00;19;38;04 - 00;20;06;20
Wayne Turmel
Indeed. ladies and gentlemen, if you have enjoyed this conversation, and I can't believe you didn't please, listen to other episodes, like, and subscribe if you want to take another look at this. If you want links to Jim's business bellwether, to Jim himself, all of that good stuff, check out long distance work life.com. That's where we keep our transcripts, past episodes, all of that good stuff.

00;20;06;23 - 00;20;31;08
Wayne Turmel
If you have an idea for a show, if you have a comment, you know, if you have feedback for us, whether that's legit feedback or vicious personal attacks, which may be legit, we're good with it. reach out to either myself or Marissa Wayne at Kevin Eikenberry. Marissa at Kevin Eikenberry, find us on LinkedIn. We love to interact with our listeners.

00;20;31;10 - 00;21;01;07
Wayne Turmel
Pet peeves, future topics, future guests. We want to hear from you. And if you want to learn more about delivering feedback, you can certainly talk to Jim. Not for nothing. At the Kevin Eikenberry Group, we have our longest leadership series that's available in-house for our clients or as an open enrollment program. If you want to learn the nuts and bolts of being a good leader in a remote and hybrid environment, check us out.

00;21;01;09 - 00;21;14;29
Wayne Turmel
links are also on the show notes. Jim, thank you for being with us. We really appreciate your time, man. And for everybody else, thank you for listening. Don't let the weasels get you down. Hey.