Summary
Joe and Brett explore impartiality — the “I” in the VIEW framework (Vulnerability, Impartiality, Empathy, Wonder). Impartiality means not having an agenda for another person in conversation: trusting that they know what’s best for themselves rather than trying to fix, advise, or steer them. Joe explains it simply as saying “I trust you — you know what’s best” and following the other person’s lead.
The episode distinguishes impartiality from apathy or indifference. True impartiality doesn’t mean abandoning your wants — it means owning them clearly while not imposing them on others. The subtle message behind partiality is that you think you’re smarter than the other person, which reinforces the myth of “not good enough.” When you speak to the wise part of someone, that’s the part that shows up in conversation.
Joe explores how impartiality applies across domains: hiring (finding people who genuinely want the role rather than convincing talented people), sales (getting to a “no” is just as valuable as getting to a “yes”), management (trusting employees rather than micromanaging), and intimate relationships. The conversation includes a powerful story about Joe learning impartiality during a fight with his wife — realizing he could love her just as she was, without needing her to stop being angry — and the freedom that created. The key insight is that owning your wants openly is vulnerable and empowering, while hidden partiality is a subtle form of lying.
Key Concepts
- Impartiality means trusting the other person knows what’s best
- Partiality reinforces the myth of not being good enough
- Own your wants clearly without imposing them on others
- “I don’t care” means “I care but it hurts too much”
- Impartiality transforms hiring and sales
- Hidden partiality is a subtle form of lying
- Fear of outcomes is really fear of the emotions we’d have to feel
- Short-term partiality is fear-based; long-term partiality is principles-based
Key Quotes
“Impartiality is saying: I trust you, you know what’s best. I’m going to follow your lead. I think you know what you need better than anybody else could know what you need.”
“The subtle message behind partiality is that you think that you’re smarter than the other person — and that’s basically agreeing with the essential myth that so many of us live with: that we’re not good enough.”
“Shame is kind of like the locks that keep the chains of bad habits in place.”
“If you are impartial, you may stop a conversation right in the middle of it and say that it doesn’t hold any juice for you.”
“The fear is all in the emotion. Going through the situation in your mind and feeling all the emotions can really free you of the fear, because all of the emotions can be enjoyed, can be welcomed, can be loved.”
“I don’t have to curb myself. I can be me here. I can be me in the face of this. I can love her just as she is no matter what’s happening.”
Transcript
that’s right and going with it rather than trying to get it to be your version of right is the practice of impartiality in business and it’s incredibly incredibly useful welcome to the art of accomplishment where we explore how deepening connection with ourselves and others leads to creating the life we want with enjoyment and ease my name is Brett Kistler I’m an adventurer entrepreneur and a self-exploration Enthusiast I’m here with my co-host Joe Hudson Joe is a business coach who spent decades working with some of the world’s top Executives and teams developing a unique model of human patterns that underpin how we operate with ourselves each other and the world a good entry point into this model is a mindset called view vulnerability impartiality empathy and wonder through understanding and cultivation we learn to easefully drop into the view State of Mind deepening self-awareness and increasing our connection with the world around us to learn more about this podcast or courses visit art of accomplishment.com in today’s society we have this archetype of the successful leader as a commander someone who knows what they want and bends the world to their will in order to get it so many of us end up elbowing our way into loneliness or controlling Our Lives into a place we later realize we don’t want to be how can we have clear goals and desires while staying in flow with reality what if accepting the outcomes we’re avoiding makes our desired outcomes more likely on today’s episode we’ll be discussing impartiality the eye in view so Joe describe what you mean by impartiality uh yeah my 11 year old girl yesterday asked me that question it was cool because it gave me a very different answer explaining it to an 11 year old the answer that I normally give is it’s to not have an agenda for another person at least in The View modality it means that when you’re having a conversation you’re not trying to get the other person anywhere so that’s what it means in that way but the the way I explained it to my daughter um was it’s saying I trust you you know what’s best and when you’re talking to somebody else right so you’re saying I trust you you know what’s best I’m gonna follow your lead I think you know what you need better than anybody else could know what you need you have more information and data um to know what you need and I want to explore that with you that’s impartiality um but what most of our conversations are are very partial and it would be things like I know what you need let me give you advice I want you to be better I want you to be healed I want you to be different I want you to feel like I’m valuable in this conversation so that that’s the partiality instead of the impartiality so so that’s what I mean particularly in these kind of conversations there’s a other ways to think of impartiality generally and that are really important in one’s journey and we may or may not get into that but for the for the for the context of a view conversation that’s what it means and and the reason on some level that this is so important is because the subtle message behind partiality is that you think that you’re smarter than the other person I know it’s best for you if I can give you advice you think know what you you know you think you know what’s up and and that’s basically agreeing with the essential myth that so many of us live with and it’s essential myth that we’re not good enough and so if you’re telling somebody that you’re you’re also making that true for them whereas if you if you are looking at them and in the conversation you see them as wise you speak to the wise part of them the part of them that knows then that’s the part that’s going to come out and meet you and that’s what you get in that conversation instead of the helpless person you get on the other side of the conversation somebody who’s wise because that’s the part that you’re asking to talk to and that you’re talking to let’s let’s dig into that not good enough part a little bit more and what is what is impartial about that yeah so so there’s this correlation between thinking that you’re not good enough and let’s call that shame and that there’s actions that prevent you from being happy right so it’s like um you think you’re not good enough because you haven’t worked out you think you’re not good enough because you still get angry you think you’re not good enough because women don’t like you and you think that if you do all that stuff if you work out enough and and if women like you or enough men like you or whatever it is then you’re not going to have shame and then you’re going to be happy but the causation is is actually the opposite of what people think it’s far more that shame causes the action than it is that the actions are what cause the shame meaning if you remove the shame then it’s very easy for the working out to happen and for people to want to be with you and all that stuff it’s the shame of Shame is kind of like the locks that keep the chains of bad habits in place I think I think there’s a guy Adi Ashanti who said that and um and that’s what I mean it’s like it’s the shame that holds the bad actions in place or I don’t want to call them bad but the actions that prevent us I like this uh this like dual direction of causation I I think it would be interesting to see it sort of as a loop as well our actions and the consequences to our actions can create shame and they can also heal us um but if we’re waiting for the for the impact of the world to do that to us then that’s sort of disempowered when we could actually work on the other side of that Loop which is seeing our own goodness seeing that we’re good enough as we are and letting that shame dissolve which then changes our actions to be less less producing of consequences that would lead to shame yeah it’s absolutely a dance it’s absolutely a dance they definitely um can feed off one another but what I notice in the um the mind of most people they’re not saying maybe I should stop being so shame oriented I should stop shaming myself and so I think that’s a most important part to call attention to but yes absolutely a dance yeah so uh so what is the benefit of being impartial it’s like um CEO asking the CFO what’s the benefit of Revenue um uh yeah so many benefits um you don’t shame people for one um you’re teaching people how to fish not not feeding them fish you’re empowering the people in your organization um you’re empowering your husband wife kids you don’t have to save anybody anymore you don’t need to be valuable anymore people are more likely to trust you because you’re not trying to fix them that you’re just being with them deeper levels of connection you know I mean you just keep on going there’s so many benefits from it and there’s only one kind of perceived loss that people think they’re going to have it’s like if I’m if I stop being partial then I’m not going to get what I want which is hilarious because if they were paying attention to some degree they would realize they’ve been partial their whole life and they’re still not getting what they want um in many arenas right I would say that there’s not a obviously you’re going to get what you want and not get what you want with partiality um but what I would say is that look for a causation even look for correlation there’s not um I find people get what they want far more when they are being impartial and owning their wants yeah it’s fascinating I think I think it’s intuitive to us that being partial often like being overly partial it gets us doesn’t end up getting us what we want and so we learn to we learn some weird form of impartiality which is really just like we use it as a way to be non-threatening in a conversation um but if we were to turn the partiality all the way down to zero our Behavior would approach random chance and we wouldn’t be going in any particular direction at all and so how does how does being impartial help you have productive conversations and Achieve goals and get what you want yeah yeah great uh yeah so there’s no way I think any mammal but definitely humans can be completely impartial um you know it’s asymptotic meaning that you can like dissolve more and more of your partiality but you there’s always some partiality um you see this in acting you know a lot of the great directors the way they direct actors is they just ask them what do you want in this sentence or the scene or this moment it’s how we do it and if you really want to take it apart every single sentence you have has some want underneath it has some desire and it’s like a great exercise too every sentence then say what it is you wanted to achieve in that sentence so so there’s no way to get rid of partiality it’s as human as breathing or having emotions or so I think that’s a really important part but the so I don’t think there’s any fear that like we’ll walk around aimless I’ve never seen that in a person I’ve seen people stuck which is different but that’s not partiality that everybody that I know who’s really walking around what looks aimless but is really stuck they have they’re very partial about trying to get unstuck and the other thing is that goals are fine and wants are fine that’s not what we’re saying we’re saying that in the conversation with somebody you let them have their wants and goals and you have yours and you don’t try to influence theirs it’s kind of like saying like it’s like looking at a river and if you’re having a conversation with one person and you’re looking at the river one way then you’re like I want to bend the river to the left it’s a lot of effort and it’s a lot of work and it’s probably not going to work or it’s only going to work temporarily whereas if the other one is like where does the river naturally want to go and how does that work with me or how is it important to me not to work with that is is the other way to look at that conversation and being impartial is far more like that what are a few more examples of that like or is that a metaphor in real life hiring people so earlier in my career um I would hire people and I’d be like oh they’re talented I want to try to get them on board or I had a vision for somebody and I’d be like okay you know and now it’s just like and I I think I took it to the other extreme for a while which was like I would just ask people what they want to do and if it wasn’t exactly what I wanted then I wouldn’t hire them it’s like I would far rather work with somebody who is wanting exactly the role that I have to offer so that’s an it’s another way of looking at the impartiality is I’m not trying to convince anybody who’s talented to come and work for me I’m just saying this is what is my reality this is my world do you want in is this something that’s that inspires you um and then I know I have them I don’t have something I’ve convinced you know to show up so also say no in sales is another another great example you know the best salesman will challenge ask difficult questions well even you know look at a pipeline and try to get to know as quickly as possible um for instance I I worked um with this artist who was having a hard time selling his stuff and I said look your job is to go and get 50 rejections I need you to in the next six months get 50 rejections and after the 10th call that he made he was in three galleries because as soon as he could drop the partiality of trying to convince them then he was successful at being himself which is what they wanted especially particularly from an artist um but if anybody who’s done a good sales program they know that um getting to a no is just as important as getting to a yes for time and effort and energy and also here’s another way to think about it think of your best bosses think of the people or clients if you if you’ve never had a boss like who are the people who who have kind of been responsible for your paycheck and have been the best to work with and and you’ll notice what they are is they’re incredibly clear what their wants this is what I want but they’re not self-serving what do you mean by that it means that they’re not they’re being impartial they’re saying this is what I want and they’re letting you have the autonomy to do the thing they’re not cajoling you or manipulating you or being partial about how you do it right or even partial about what you do they’re far more like this is what we need to do if you don’t want to do it then maybe you shouldn’t be here and maybe we can get someone else to do it but if you think about those bosses you just don’t feel them as self-serving and and what happens in partiality is that you when you’re not being impartial the thing that comes up is you look often political and you definitely feel self-serving to the people around you whereas if you just own your wants clearly and and the way this works in say a view conversation is you can just own your partiality in the middle of a conversation and it’s a very vulnerable thing to do and say oh I noticed that I’m trying to fix you and I’m so sorry um and and if you think about it even crazier than that imagine if you’re in the middle of a conversation you notice someone’s trying to give you advice trying to get you somewhere and they say to you wow I noticed that I’m giving you advice I’m trying to fix you how do you feel about that you think about that for a second most people most of the time are going to say yeah please don’t yeah and yet we’re freaking doing it all the time and so that that’s how it builds trust and connection yeah yeah speaking of like being political I mean people all the time um like all of us do it we manipulate by hiding our true intentions and subtly nudging a situation in the direction that we want it to go and this could sometimes be confused with impartiality but I don’t think that that’s what you’re getting at what’s the what’s the difference between actually being impartial and just acting the part in order to manipulate and how do we tell in the moment if that’s what we’re doing yeah you’re correct they’re not the same thing and and it’s true that there’s a there’s a body Sensation that goes with each one of them and and impartiality like view is is really a state of mind state of being you know it when you feel it more than you know it if you’re doing it um intellectually but I would say it’s the same difference as hitting somebody in the face and or hitting them in the back while they’re not looking right if you’re subtly nudging or trying to and you’re not owning your partiality if you’re not owning your wants in that situation then you’re you’re not being straightforward with them it’s a subtle form of lying and and the other thing is that most people know when you’re doing it right most people you know when someone’s doing that most of the time we kind of have this social contract that says yeah everyone kind of does that so I’m going to put up with it but none of us like it and and none of us like doing it I mean that’s one of the other things is that if you want to know how it is in your body it’s it’s uncomfortable it’s it’s uncomfortable and you know people can feel it and you can feel it in others and of course there’s some folks who are intentionally uh duplicitous it’s definitely not the majority of people which I think is a misunderstanding I think a lot of people who see someone who’s duplicitous they feel like of course it’s intentional I find that often it’s not it’s like a a blind spot of narcissism and other things lack of awareness but when yeah exactly but it’s like the only time we really believe those people is when we want to when we’re trying to fool ourselves anyways so that’s the other thing is like the thing that you notice about people who are duplicitous intentionally it always blows up in their face and it you know sometimes it takes five years but it hardly ever takes more than five years to do that whether you see this on a large economic scale or relationships it eventually blows up on you which is interesting because you can see people who are like not scrupulous right you can see people who are like maybe morally do morally questionable things but they’re straightforward about it and they can actually do it for a long time when they’re not being straightforward about it it almost always blows up which is a really particularly interesting phenomenon yeah as far as how it is in the body it’s different for other people each person kind of their body registers things a little bit differently but all you have to do is feel like you can do a feel right now go into a memory of when you were kind of being subtly manipulative or not subtly manipulative and feel how that felt in your body and then feel how it is when you’re being straightforward with your wants even if it’s scary you can feel it then that’s gonna inform you your body will know it much quicker than your mind will I feel like a lot of times that I’ve done that in the past it’s been more just like a like an avoidance of even recognizing that that’s something that’s in my awareness but there is a part that’s aware of it and it gets filtered out because it’s inconvenient for my ego yeah that’s beautifully put that’s yeah it’s exactly it’s like even if we don’t make the ego the enemy but there’s something that we um that we’d have to feel or look at if we admit that to ourselves which is I think typically the case when we’re being manipulative we have a want that we don’t even that we’re oftentimes we have a want that we’re ashamed of having and so we’re you know trying to get our wants met without having to admit that we have them yeah I think that that points to this this whole practice being a state of being because if if you’re doing this logically and you’re trying to meet the endpoint of oh I should be impartial impartial will get me a better sales will give me better relationships and then you’re constantly filtering for whether or not you look like you’re partial or impartial uh that ends up coming from a completely different place than if it’s the state of being right yeah if you want them to see you as impartial then that you’re definitely being partial right and it’s going to be seen um absolutely which makes this you know like begs the question if if true impartiality actually requires this state of mind that is actually impartial and that meaning okay with any outcome then what can we do to cultivate that true impartiality when we are are actually in reality afraid of so many things and so many outcomes I’ve been just focusing on this a lot this question of like fear of outcomes so here’s my new approach at thinking about this which is I don’t believe in outcomes like the only way you can believe in an outcome is if you believe time stops hmm but what about like a snapshot like believing in an outcome being a you know some lossy snapshot of the future but that’s exactly the point is it that it had to stop like reality has to stop for there to be an outcome right it’s like this age-old problem of you know hey I wanted to see what my future is and someone shows you your future and you’re like happy and have a lot of money and then like you get there in like two days later you’re broke miserable and you know like so where’s your future is it the moment where you’re happy is it the moment that you were sad like what’s happening there so so I don’t believe in outcomes because outcomes is the idea that there’s some end State and there isn’t um but but with that said I understand we have our fear and our fear creates the idea of outcomes um and so what do you do there is the question um what if what if you’re afraid of being in an eternal process of misery yeah exactly that continues it’s not a snapshot yeah yeah even that is a snapshot because it’s like Eternal like what is there like is it you’ve just hit zero Baseline there’s no movement ever but anyway um yeah so so one is the kind of this there’s a tradition that’s like the stoic tradition and the Tibetan Buddhists have it Samurai had it which is you know visualizing your own death over and over again to undo the fear of death you can do this with anything right so if you’re scared of getting fired go visualize yourself getting fired over and over again every step of it before during after feel everything that you would have to feel if you got fired because our fear really isn’t about the thing happening the fear is how what we will have to feel if the thing happens right if someone’s like you’re gonna get fired but you’re gonna be absolutely blissed out the entire time you’re gonna you’re gonna find out it’s like an absolute joy and pleasure and and then you’re not gonna have enough money but that’s okay because it’s not going to even dawn on you that you don’t have enough money you’re just gonna be in this place of absolute um loving the situation as it is and then money’s gonna come and you’re going to be not attached to keeping it that’s like oh I don’t I don’t have any fear of the future the fear is all in the emotion so going through the situation in your mind and feeling all the emotions can really free you of the fear um because all of the emotions can be enjoyed um can be welcomed can be loved that brings up something uh really interesting and in my experience bass jumping often like before jumping off of a cliff it you know you visualize the jump and I frequently found myself visualizing all the ways I could die on the jump visualizing and pushing off in the wrong way and the thing that I ended up like actually visualizing was the moment of Terror when I realized I’d messed up and you know had gone past a point of no return out of control and by doing that visualizing and encountering that point of Terror where I’d messed up yeah it made it so that if something went off Axis or off of the plan that I didn’t have to feel the terror when that happened I’d be like oh like this is actually much less off the plan than all of my visualizations were so this is still salvageable let’s work with this yeah it’s a beautiful metaphor one of the principles that I work with often is that the thing that we fear is often something that we are um unknowingly subconsciously inviting into our world because the things that we do to avoid the thing that we fear are often the things that bring them to us and so what you’re describing there is that you visualize the worst possible thing happening so you’re not scared that it’s gonna happen right like if I think about two people who are about to base jump and one is like petrified that they’re going to screw up in one is okay if they screw up and they jump off I I can tell you which one my experience is going to have the higher chance of messing up yeah likewise right with a lot of experience in that Realm yeah which I’m I’m sorry for because I know the consequence of that um but yeah that’s exactly how it works but it works with getting fired too it works with um you know every every aspect of our fear and so that’s the other thing you can do is just grieve the loss which is another way of feeling the pain in advance the other thing you can do is just call yourself out for being partial like somehow or another just saying oh this is the outcome that I want can relieve you of that want for the outcome how does that happen it’s like I’m sorry I notice that I uh really want to be valuable to you and that’s not the best way that I can respect you or this conversation I apologize for that another thing that happens a lot um like all of us we’ve been in some kind of tense discussion or a negotiation um where somebody just throws up their hands and they say okay whatever I don’t care um which is sort of the opposite of the thing you were just getting at which is like own like like owning a want and then letting letting the partiality for that want dissolve it is like completely disowning the want and it’s a way of disconnecting what’s what’s the difference between uh impartiality and this sort of impartial apathy or avoidance I’m holding back my laughter so I don’t interrupt your question as soon as you ask that question it it hit me I remember um my daughter I think she was like eight or nine years old and you know at that time like kids are always like I don’t care I don’t care I don’t care and she comes home she goes Dad I think I know what I don’t care means and I’m like really what does it mean she says it means I care I just laughed I’m like yeah yeah that’s kind of that’s my experience of it too is that when people are saying I don’t care they’re saying I do care but it’s hurting so much that I don’t want to care yeah I don’t want to feel this I don’t want to feel this yeah so so I don’t care to me it’s just a strategy um you’d see their strategy to get what you want like to say I don’t care so that someone chases you or to get out of the responsibility or the feeling but it doesn’t that kind of apathy isn’t really we call it apathy but it’s not the kind of apathy which is like if a stranger came to me and said like you know should I get a BLT or should I get a veggie sandwich today that would really be like you know like they’re being there would be no desire for me to have that end up one way or another and but I wouldn’t be apathetic about it um so apathy is really just about people not wanting to be hurt for wanting for having a want if you are impartial you may stop a conversation right in the middle of it and say that it doesn’t hold any juice for you you know that would be a thing you know so which isn’t particularly apathy either it’s just saying oh wow I noticed that this isn’t this isn’t inspiring me how is it for you imagine receiving that and if you’re if you’re trying to sell to somebody and the customer just does that and they’re like here’s the information about what I’m actually interested in all of that presentation you were just doing I don’t yeah there’s a story there’s um a guy named Mikey Siegel who uh has said this so it’s on the internet and um you know in our first meeting he was pitching me something when I was an investor and um we were just having a nice connection time and then all of a sudden he got it got into pitch mode and after about a sentence I looked at him and I said I noticed my entire body is getting tense right now okay that’s just owning where I am having no idea what he’s going to say or the consequences are you going to be mad at me or and it just created such a deep level of connection between us and our friendship lasted lasts you know but has been um years of close relationship I’ve seen him tell that story and the like the recreation of the mind blow on his face yeah hearing that from you know an investor and like just realizing like whoa I actually am really really trying to get something right now and it’s obvious and and it when it went away then we could actually connect and the benefits that came out of our relationship are far beyond whatever the hell he could have gotten that he was after for me and for him I hope for him right apparently that seems to be the case so so we’ve we’ve worked through a lot of what impartiality is and what it is not um what are some of the benefits to practicing impartiality with intention well it is a much deeper peace of mind you’re more likely to be in flow with a person um and hitting that flow state is something we all want so that creates deeper connection you also find out that if you don’t want to be with somebody sooner so you don’t kind of get stuck in a bad relationship as easily or for as long um you usually come up with better Solutions this is the thing that you have to talk to a lot of managers about because they’re like wait a second hold on I’m getting paid good money to have a really strong agenda for my entire um but basically what you’re it’s the same thing what you’re saying is that the organization doesn’t want to do the right thing and if that’s the case fire them fire them if they don’t want to do the right thing what the hell are you hiring why are you paying them what the hell is going on there are people out there who want to do the right thing for your company so then then if if you assume that if you assume that everybody who’s working for you actually wants to do the right thing then it’s just a matter of whether they’re capable of it or whether they can see it and you don’t particularly need to be partial to educate folks you can just educate you can just say this is my vision and also you’re missing something guaranteed I don’t care if you’re Steve Jobs I don’t care if you’re Elon Musk you’re missing something that the great leaders know they’re missing something so they want to be around really smart people they want people in the room smarter than them and the only way you’re going to find out what you’re missing is if you let go of your agenda for a minute right it doesn’t mean you let go of your goals it doesn’t mean you let go your wants but like if you’re sitting in a conversation you’re just trying to push people into a particular kind of action you know more micromanagement level or even macro Management on that kind of thing what you’re doing is you’re not getting the best ideas and so I’m constantly um seen when Executives get this idea of like oh right if we all have agreed on the goal so I don’t have to manage anybody to an outcome if we’ve all agreed on that really truly agreed on that then everybody can work together to come up with the best solution and my way is never the best way it is a part of the best solution also you’re following data more you know you know people when they’re partial don’t look at data the same way they don’t run the experiments the same way so you get to see what’s real which is a far better way to build a business or a relationship with what’s real rather than what you want I think the other thing is that you won’t you won’t have the same conversation with the same person 10 times you know right we all have we all have that relationship or have had that relationship where it says I’m talking to this person about their bad marriage again right and I guarantee you if you’re in that it’s because you want them to be different because if you if you were impartial that conversation wouldn’t come back over and over again yeah it’s like the only thing that could keep you in a stable Loop in that way would be that you have some partiality that is creating a confirmation bias filtering your information to fit a certain story yeah that’s really interesting so how do our how do our personal lives and our our professional lives change as we as we practice impartiality what what happens to us internally and what happens around us you’re going to find yourself surrounded by a lot less people stuck and victim scenarios in their mind you’re going to learn a lot more and therefore have better ideas because you’ll spend that time that you were trying to you know manage people and learning instead of in management you will have to draw more boundaries you know that’s a really important thing like one of the reasons people are so partial is because they’re not drawing the boundaries that they want or or not explaining the vulnerable want that’s in their system what’s a good example of that oh it’s easier to try to fix um your friend who’s dating the same guy with a different name 10 times in a row than it is to say I don’t want to hear this story anymore another example is um I have you know let’s say I have an employee and um they’re consistently not doing the things that they’ve said they’re gonna do and I just have to hold a boundary instead of trying to manage them out of it and have partial conversations I just have to say if this isn’t happening then I have to assume you don’t want to work here because if you wanted to you’d do it or you’re not capable you’re not capable please let me know right so you have a far you’re far more likely to have to draw a boundary and to say what you want directly you know imagine a manager who like sits around the table and tries to get everybody aligned and another manager who starts off saying what I really want what I really really want is for us all to be aligned growing in the same direction with a common set of goals how do we do that I have some ideas this is my ideas what do you guys think but as compared to I don’t want to have to ask for that I don’t want to have to draw that boundary so I’m going to really want it to happen but I’m not going to be outright forthright with it and then I’m going to be partial in every conversation to try to make it occur which is a lot of managers um reminds me in a relationship of like when when somebody gets angry about not receiving not not having something done for them that they didn’t ask for waiting for somebody to notice what they want and do it exactly right because they don’t have to want to be vulnerable in that want or vulnerable and in the boundary that’s right that’s exactly right um so that happens a lot less that kind of thing will happen a lot less in your in your story another good story that I have around this is that I was doing this Workshop in Boston and Cambridge I think it was and um and there was a man he was an older man and been successful um entrepreneur had a lot of depression you know life but he was older and somewhere in the like the close to the second day of the thing he he just looked at me and started crying he goes I don’t think I’ve ever had an impartial conversation in my whole life because he had just had one he just had his first impartial conversation in his whole life and he was crying and it was it was an amazing moment and um and he kind of looked at me and he goes I had no idea the level of connection that I was missing and I think that’s the big thing is that like if you think about the people who always have an agenda for you when you talk how close do you feel to them how much do you want to be around them how defended do you feel and I mean just and if you’re a parent especially of an adult child if they don’t want to be around you I guarantee you have an agenda for them I guarantee it you want them to be safe you want them to be a doctor or whatever the heck it is they might be around you but they don’t want to be and you feel it and you feel unloved because of it we’ve talked a lot about how this applies to relationships with others and what does it look like to be impartial with ourselves or in relation to something more abstract like uh like our businesses or to a professional career with the view all we’re focused on is being impartial with others so I just say when if you’re in the conversations doing the the course using the framework really just focus on being impartial about the outcome for the other person where they end up um but yeah it’s a deeply um beautiful and Powerful practice to be impartial with yourself if you think about meditation um there’s a saying that goes most people who are meditating are managing themselves which isn’t meditation it’s torture meditation when you’re not managing your experience when you’re happy with whatever experience is occurring that then it’s just Bliss it’s just Joy so learning to not manage yourself in moments is incredibly useful because what it is is it’s basically saying I trust my inherent goodness I trust my my impulse the impulse of life that moves through me so that’s kind of the big benefit because that is the path that leads you to deep self-recognition but you know we all have expectations of ourselves that we cling to and they’re painful and we’re constantly revising them and we’re constantly trying to um you know get ourselves somewhere and it causes us a tremendous amount of pain we had this voice in our head that’s just often quite violent and abusive and a practice of impartiality with yourself is really useful the impartiality with business is it’s again that really subtle thing about it’s clear it’s good to have wants it’s good to have goals how you get there that is where the the impartiality can be incredibly useful again with the film things that when you’re a director working with actors if you tell the actor this is exactly how I want it you’re not going to get it but if you can give them Direction and then recognize Something Beautiful when it comes you can get that easily and all day recognizing something that’s right useful you like I’ve been in so many businesses and everybody can relate to this it’s like there’s this business that especially happens in big businesses you get the big business and they say I want to do it this way but I have to check with this person who has and then another person has to be checked in is like six different things and everybody’s because everybody’s trying to get to some perfect solution where nobody’s going to be mad at them and they’re going to be successful and it’s like an ungodly amount of time and energy that would have been so much more useful to do something get some advice make a couple mistakes it would have been a lot less painful and often a far better result if you can allow that level of impartiality and not try to have to make everything perfect there seems to be a um maybe a scale or a spectrum of like short-term partiality and long-term partiality like when we’re in a fear State we’re just trying to get what we want right now and in longer term partialities like we’re willing to be more patient and that allows for more slack and flexibility in the how and the exactly what it ends up becoming yeah that’s right I think short-term partiality is far more fear-based than long-term partiality I think long-term partiality is far more principles based it’s like how do I want to be and what’s the world that I want to be in and what’s my vision for the world you’re watching for how the world wants to provide that for you and taking advantage of those moments rather than trying to force the world to succumb to your will which is if it works it’s a lot more effort and a lot less happiness in it and so I think that most of the time you can tell the difference because when people are thinking about long-term stuff they’re they’re really not moving from a place of fear or or even the same kind of intense fear yeah they’re willing to go through a little bit of the difficulty to get to a more Global Optimum that’s right yeah yeah they’re not less likely to avoid stuff yeah one there’s a CEO that I worked with and he um he used to say he had this thing called the kitchen drawer Theory which is basically there’s that kitchen drawer that nobody wants to look at because they want to they’re like oh that’s a mess I don’t want to have to fix that he’s like my job as a CEO is to find all the kitchen drawers and and go look in them you know if that’s your partiality if your partiality is to do that it’s a very different um thing because it’s not driven by this like uh fear that the short-term partiality has it’s more principled it’s more of a principle I have a principle of embracing intensity going into the mess because I know that that makes the life that I want so as as you practice this and let’s say you’re in like a high pressure sales culture or some other environment where partiality is encouraged and accepted as a norm what’s likely to happen when when one person in that group starts to relax their partiality as a result of this practice and what challenges are they likely to face and what tends to happen in in those kinds of teams sales teams are the best for this because a lot of them are that way if it’s a not a short-term sales cycle if there’s any kind of relationship that can be built the person who lets go the partiality gets better results typically because the person who if there’s space for the long-term partiality in the relationship that’s part of it part of it is if you’re trying to convince somebody of something they can feel it based on their mirror neurons and it’s like being attacked on a cell level so their brain turns off curiosity they stop wanting to learn we have all sorts of evidence that people when they’re in fear or feeling attacked they don’t learn as well so you you can’t educate them on your product as easily if people see that you really care for them and want them to make a best decision for them and you’re following their wisdom then eventually you’re going to make a lot more sales than the short term thinking but there’s there’s obviously some sales organizations where that doesn’t work because it’s like a phone bank you just call people and so aggressive works because there’s some people who will do what you say when you’re aggressive with them you know that that’s their personality and in the long term that might not actually be what’s best for your company because you attract a certain type of customer and then your product gets fit to a certain type of a market yeah and somebody else could do a better job of serving the customer in a more long-term way and then wipe you out that’s actually happening right now in all of all places there’s a company that’s doing something like this um in credit in buying bad debt and there’s a company out there I can’t remember the name um but bad debt basically it’s the same thing where most of the debt is like I will intimidate you until you pay me and these guys come in and they’re like I want to work with you about this and most people want to also relieve their debt and they get a much better result and it’s just a perfect example of how that happens and if you have a phone bank it’s all a numbers game like make 100 calls so that you can get three or four to work and then aggression can work but at long term it’s a bad business model like I said lasts generally about five years at most also if you start doing it in the team if it’s a really aggressive culture the team will turn against you because they don’t want to feel what you’re making them feel the person who does it often leaves gets a better job does something better in their life it becomes you’re referring to the person who does the does the impartiality yeah yeah they typically get out of that situation find something that’s actually life-affirming instead of um you know some people get off on the power of you know of that kind of like intensity like it makes them feel powerful and they really need to feel that power because they felt so disempowered in their life and so if they start learning their impartiality they just get out of those circumstances and find real empowerment instead of just the short-term power and occasionally you have a great team that has that kind of intensity and then they realize like the whole team realizes it but that usually you need a really great leader to see that how can how can this go wrong or be taken too far like in in what situations if any would too little partiality be dangerous or counterproductive or or if somebody’s working on the working on their impartiality in a team like that is there a way that it could be distorted in a way that’s destructive If you deny your wants yes if you try to pretend that you don’t have wants then yeah you could it’s not good um so you gotta own your wants you gotta own your boundaries own your wants um so if you’re trying to be so impartial that you don’t have any wants and you’re above your Humanity um you start disassociating all is Bliss and that kind of thing which is true it is all Bliss but if you’re denying that your own wants and your own Humanity it’ll sap all the joy out of your life so that’s the one way it can go too far and it can seem like it goes too far sometimes when you know you stop being partial and then the Savior or the bully has at like the the a person playing the different roles around you might say like oh I don’t want this relationship anymore often times when people say oh wow I’m not going to try to fix my friends or make them happier try to be valuable to them anymore those friendships some of those friendships don’t last and some of them get transformed into something far more beautiful let’s get a little bit more into the difference between wants and partiality so the main thing the main difference is that wants are owned and partiality is not owned so to own your wants outright in a conversation is quite vulnerable it allows you to feel exposed it and you’re you’re telling people your actual truth and and so there’s a vulnerability to it and being partial you can hide all that stuff on some degree and and not take a look at it and so it becomes implied and I think that that’s the main difference between the wants and the partiality the other thing is that when you own your wants completely um ownership can actually make the want less intense and allow you to see what the world is like especially if you add to an apology with it which is like oh I want for you to be different than you are and I apologize for that it can really relieve you from that pull of trying to make them different and it puts you in yourself it makes you feel empowered because you’re saying you realize it you want them to be different so you can feel safer that you can feel loved or whatever that is whereas partiality is all kind of under the covers so that that’s the main thing between the two and so the other thing is that the wants because they’re owned outright and you can see them it becomes really apparent how your wants their wants can work together and you can find something that works best for everybody um the partiality is often not owned so it can’t really be seen as the thing that it might become which is something that can actually work for everybody so for instance if I’m partial that you have a breakthrough while we’re having that’s really all about me it’s under the covers it’s um not the thing that’s and if I see you as knowing whether you want a breakthrough or not it’s a far more beneficial thing for everybody so to summarize all of what we’ve been talking about for for us to practice the impartiality in our view conversations what are what are some some bullet points uh some do’s and don’ts yeah as far as partiality it’s easier to Define them as don’ts so it’d be don’t try to fix people don’t try to get them to a conclusion don’t try to be valuable or have them see you as valuable don’t want them to be different don’t try to get them to be different don’t look to convince don’t try to lead them to a solution don’t want them to see things your way those are the big ones what is an example of a time that you really felt yourself wanting to be partial or being partial worked your way through it noted it recognized it and ended up showing up with impartiality and impartiality in a way you hadn’t before and what was the result yeah it was it was pretty early in my relationship with my wife I think it was in year four or five she had invited me to come and do something with her that was really important to her I had not seen how important it was to her also didn’t want to go and she came back and she was pissed I remember she was all dressed up for it so she was like incredibly beautiful at that moment and pissed she was like yelling and you know we used to yell at each other a lot back in those days and um so she was just yelling and I really really wanted her to not punish me I really really wanted her to see me for the loving person that I was I really really wanted her to um know that I loved her I really really wanted her to stop being angry which was kind of typical in those fights and I and there’s something just clicked to me and I was just like it’s okay for her to be just the way she is and she just got angry and let it out it lasted maybe like three or four minutes and then she got angry at me for not reacting and that lasted for like a minute and then kind of wore off with her she needed some alone time it wasn’t like this quick fix or anything like that but for me it was like Freedom it was like oh oh oh oh I don’t have to curb myself I can be me here I can be me in the face of this I can love her and it was love it was like I can love her just as she is no matter what’s happening and the freedom in that was outstanding such a peaceful place to be in as a beautiful story thank you for it and thank you for another great episode yeah but total pleasure thanks for making the time thanks for listening to the art of accomplishment if you enjoyed what you heard today please subscribe and rate us in your podcast app we’d love your feedback so feel free to send us questions or comments you can reach out to us join our newsletter or check out our courses at Art of accomplishment.com thank you