Auto Care ON AIR
"Auto Care ON AIR" is a candid podcast dedicated to exploring the most relevant topics within the auto care industry. Each episode features insightful discussions with leading experts and prominent industry figures. Our content is thoughtfully divided into four distinct shows to cover four different categories of topics, ensuring collective professional growth and a comprehensive understanding of the auto care industry.
The Driver's Seat: Navigating Business and the Journey of Leadership
To understand organizations, you need to understand their operators. Join Behzad Rassuli, as he sits down for in-depth, one-on-one conversations with leaders that are shaping the future. This show is a "must listen" for how top executives navigate growth, success, and setbacks that come with the terrain of business.
Carpool Conversations: Collaborative Reflections on the Road to Success
Hosted by Jacki Lutz, this series invites a vibrant and strategic mix of guests to debate and discuss the power skills that define success today. Each episode is an entertaining, multi-voice view of a professional development topic and a platform for our members to learn about our industry's most promising professionals.
Indicators: Discussing Data that Drives Business
This show explores data relevant to the automotive aftermarket. Join Mike Chung as he engages with thought leaders in identifying data that will help you monitor and forecast industry performance. Whether global economic data, industry indicators, or new data sources, listen in as we push the envelope in identifying and shaping the metrics that matter.
Traction Control: Reacting with Precision to the Road Ahead
Every single day, events happen, technologies are introduced, and the base assumptions to our best laid plans can change. Join Stacey Miller for a show focused on recent news from the global to the local level and what it may mean for auto care industry businesses. Get hot takes on current events, stay in the know with timely discussions and hear from guests on the frontlines of these developments.
Auto Care ON AIR
Critical Thinking in the Workplace
Curious about transforming decision-making and critical thinking in your workplace? This episode promises to equip you with essential tools to enhance your professional life. Join our enlightening conversation with host Jacki Lutz and her guests Behzad Rassuli, SVP of Strategic Development at the Auto Care Association, and Richard Beirne, Senior Advisor at Automotive Parts Headquarters, who share their unique insights on how asking the right questions can elevate your work and reputation. We'll explore how mentors can be pivotal in honing your critical thinking skills and why balancing adherence to instructions with independent thinking is crucial for innovation.
The world of business decisions can be daunting, but our discussion aims to demystify it. We dive into the challenges of marketing decision-making, confidence in one's vision, and the importance of understanding the "why" behind every choice. Listen as we stress the importance of embracing fresh perspectives, particularly those from younger team members, to cultivate a culture of creativity and avoid groupthink.
Unpacking the power of empathy and perspective-taking, we share how these skills can transcend personal biases and enhance communication. Through personal stories, we illustrate how shedding one's ego and appreciating diverse viewpoints can lead to better decision-making. The episode also touches on fostering a psychologically safe environment that encourages open dialogue and ideation. Join us as we reflect on the indispensable skills and mindsets necessary to thrive both personally and professionally, leaving you inspired to apply these insights in your own life.
To learn more about the Auto Care Association visit autocare.org.
To learn more about our show and suggest future topics and guests, visit autocare.org/podcast
One thing Erin Andrews said that you missed which was a very common piece of advice is. You know, or Ashley said this, you know, beg for forgiveness, Don't ask for permission. So beg for forgiveness. Yeah, like no one will want to work with you, so I don't know, if the end result is good, then people will be like, oh OK, never mind. I'm glad I gave her the space, but if you also F up, then I'm glad her show worked out yeah gave her the space, but if you also F up then.
Jacki Lutz:Yeah, I'm glad her show worked out. Welcome to Auto Care On Air, a candid podcast for a curious industry. I'm Jacki Lutz, content Director at the Auto Care Association, and this is Carpool Conversations, where we collaborate on today's most relevant power skills. We're all headed in the same direction, so let's get there together. Hi everybody, thanks for joining.
Jacki Lutz:Today we're talking about critical thinking, and I love this subject.
Jacki Lutz:It was brought up to us to do a couple times and I love this subject because in any area of your life and also throughout your entire career, critical thinking is something you might not always specifically think that you're doing or not doing, until you make mistakes and then you learn from them and you eventually grow.
Jacki Lutz:And I have with me two different guests with, in my opinion, two different views of critical thinking, because there's a way that you can. You can develop better critical thinking skills just through time and experience and failures, making mistakes and then learning from those. And then learning like, ok, I need to be a better critical thinker so that these mistakes don't happen again, and it all comes through experience. And then there's also a kind of critical thinker that is almost more born with it, or it comes very naturally and they just ask very inquisitive questions and they're a little bit more deep thinking in general. So I grabbed two people who kind of fall in line with both of those in my opinion. I have Behzad Rassuli he is our SVP of strategic development at the Auto Care Association who I think is more of that natural deep thinker.
Behzad Rassuli:I wasn't sure who was who, so thanks for clarifying.
Jacki Lutz:Yeah, so thank you for joining. And then I also have Richard Beirne, who has been a face in the industry forever and very respected throughout the industry and I wanted to get him on the podcast and when this subject came up I thought this would be a really good one for him. But more on the experience side just how critical thinking has affected his career and how he's gotten better with it at time and any advice that he has. So thank you for joining.
Richard Beirne:Oh, glad to be here. It's interesting. I've enjoyed the podcasts that you've done so far. I think those have caused me to think about things and I think that's what life is like. You go down the road, you come to a fork in the road, you make a right decision or a wrong decision. Hopefully you make a lot more right ones than you do wrong ones. But I think life experience does help you, shape you, helps you think better. It's always interesting to hang around with people that know what they're doing and have a lot of confidence and try to learn from those.
Jacki Lutz:Yeah, and what like when I always think of young Jackie, sweet little young Jackie starting her career. You know, you just want to be taken seriously, you just want to people to think you know what you're doing. And a lot of times that just it turns out to be like somebody tells you to jump and you say, okay, how high, but you're not asking like the right questions, right, and you, you, you don't even know to do that. You're just you think you're doing the right thing because you know they tell you to do something and then you're just going to go turn around and do it and return it. But you could probably have asked better questions and given them a better product and probably made yourself look even better as you just thought about it a little bit more critically, asked more questions so that you have a good 360 degree view of the problem that you're solving and helping them do things better. And that's kind of the area, dick, that you kind of talk about, where that develops with time and experience.
Richard Beirne:For sure I think you know you. If you're lucky, you'll have a good mentor or two that you find along the way. But I guess I've never been the kind of person that likes to take directions without understanding what I'm doing or where I'm going, and so usually there's a lot of thought that goes into somebody tells me to do something. Usually there's a lot of thought that goes into somebody tells me to do something. I like to know why and where we're going, and maybe I don't want to do it the same way that they're suggesting, and I tried to be that way as a boss. I tried to communicate where we needed to go, but I did enjoy people bringing their own methods to the table, their own way of doing things. But a lot of times you'll find employees that you tell them what to do and they just want to do it. They don't want to think about it, and I think that usually gives you bad results.
Jacki Lutz:Yeah, and do you think that everybody appreciates that in an employee, an employee that asks a lot of those more inquisitive questions and kind of like why do we do it this way and things like that? Or do you think that's a development skill for managers?
Richard Beirne:Yeah, I think there's somewhat of a balance. You know, if you have a relatively simple task and a goal, maybe you don't want to drill down to a long conversation about it. Let's just get this done. But I always enjoyed people that ask questions and or they spent time figuring out what we were trying to do and came up with maybe a unique solution that I hadn't thought of or a unique way of doing it.
Jacki Lutz:These are. You encourage that a lot on your team.
Behzad Rassuli:The which side of that?
Jacki Lutz:asking a lot of questions.
Behzad Rassuli:Yeah, I think you maybe you you alluded to it and Dick kind of mentioned to it. You know he mentioned that he had good mentors. You know some of the good mentors you reference maybe taught you about what it's like to see a good leader. I think one of the qualities of a leader that are essential to encourage what your question is based on was basically young Jackie just wanting to get the right answer, but not sure if she's allowed to ask questions or what questions to ask.
Behzad Rassuli:I think it's incumbent on a manager to identify that first, to recognize where your team member is psychologically. Are they, do they look motivated to just yep, yep, I'm going to come get an answer for you right away? Or are they? Do they look like they have a question? But you as a manager have to create the environment and psychological safety for that person to ask those questions. So a method I use sometimes is I'll have a meeting with somebody and we'll talk about an idea that I have or something that the organization needs to get accomplished, and if that person gets up from that meeting and they say OK, I usually stop them and I say what questions do you have? And I don't stop there.
Behzad Rassuli:I conclude, I finish I follow through with you have to have questions because and this is the psychological safety part there is no way that what I said is a complete project with full description and definition and all the detail that you're going to run into and all the hurdles you're going to have to jump over.
Behzad Rassuli:So what I'm doing there is I'm offering that the instructions you have are incomplete. You're missing pages, you're missing tools and I don't know what they are. So I'm acknowledging that and I'm giving you the space to tell me that I gave you incomplete instructions. So I'm encouraging you to ask questions, and I don't know where that came from, but I know that a lot of my development is through observation over the years, and I always resented when somebody told me to do something and didn't give me the opportunity, their permission or the space to ask questions. Right, the expectation was you will just get this done, and so I tried to personally resolve that with my team members by creating a space for them to want to ask questions or encourage them, even lead them into the types of questions that get them to feel comfortable to have a more complete answer.
Jacki Lutz:So what do you think? So if we were to have to kind of get practical and give some examples of times where maybe we should have, like you know, we made mistakes or did a project where critical thinking should have been a part of that process and maybe it wasn't, it was a bit of a learning experience because of it. Is there any examples that we can give the audience, that they can?
Richard Beirne:I think for myself. Of course, I have done a lot of different things in the aftermarket. Being a business owner means you wear a lot of hats. But when I first started doing the marketing for the company and the people that deliver the message the radio stations, the TV people they come in with a lot of suggestions and sometimes you are flattered by the suggestions they bring in, like they want you to do a radio commercial and you don't think maybe you don't sound that good on the radio or they have an idea that really is not sending the message you want to send. And it took me a while to learn that I really had need to have a lot more control over that and that I had a good feel for what our message should be and I didn't want to get distracted from that by by somebody else that's maybe doesn't understand our business as well.
Jacki Lutz:I had a very similar one with social media right when that started becoming. It was so it was kind of near the time that I got out of college just with my master's and it was just starting to becoming more of a thing for B2B businesses and I really wanted to do more of it. But most and especially in our industry, nobody really saw it yet. Like how, how could personal social medias, where does the business to business message fit into that? Like, how does that work? And I remember thinking that I disagreed with not putting more to that, but I really did. I just assume they know better than me.
Jacki Lutz:Though Like I deep down I disagreed. But like they say it's not right, okay, it's not right, they know the industry better than me, they know our product better than me. So like maybe, maybe they're right, you know, and didn't never pushed back on it as kind of something very similar knowing when to do that and when to like be a little bit more assertive and come to the table with some credit, like some thought, like real thoughts, like in in a base, out. In our pre-meeting one of our many we talked about changing people's minds and like the path to do that and how, how you can. So if there is something like the situation that Dick talked about or that I talked about, where you really do feel like the company's going in a direction that isn't correct for some reason and you're kind of sitting there thinking about it, what are some things that you can do or ways you can think about it to help make your point and bring your point across?
Behzad Rassuli:Well, picking up on your example about thinking that the company should be doing social media and you felt it deeply and you felt like the company didn't want to do it and they were wrong about it. To be fair, sometimes your management team is right and the missing link there is that you're missing the why behind your idea and let's just move away from the social media concept. But just in general, I remember I've been on both sides now right. So I've been in a leadership role and I remember being a junior employee and I remember sometimes feeling like this is really just a dumb idea. I don't know why we're doing this. Why isn't anybody thinking of this idea? I have a really good idea and not feeling like you know the audience would be receptive to my idea and the reality is sometimes you're just missing information as a junior employee, okay, and the management team is not good at giving the why to everyone. Maybe they don't know that everyone needs a why. Maybe they weren't even thinking of social media and they didn't think to give you the why not on social media. The way I would recommend filling that gap in when you don't have a why and you have an idea and you feel really good about it is to ensure that you're not missing anything, and you can take that upon yourself to go around to every other person in the company that may be adjacent to your role, appear to your role, completely unrelated to your role, and ask them everything you can about the company and the application of what you're thinking of. Is there a reason? Would you use this? Is there a reason we don't do this? Is there a reason we should do this? How would you use this? What if I did this for you? And when you build that complete perspective, then you can determine whether or not, first of all, your idea is actually something, that it stands up the way you thought it would, and if it does, let's assume it does.
Behzad Rassuli:In this scenario, you have a much more colorful and complete mosaic around your idea. With that entire landscape or this mosaic, you can go to your manager or the person who you thought would not be receptive to the idea and start with the question is there any reason we don't do this? What am I missing? Because they're the person you have not spoken to about this. Right, you now have all the other reasons from everybody else why we would or wouldn't do it, and you still think your idea is good, you can approach that person and say can you tell me about this? What do you think about this? Lead with questions. Lead with questions because, remember, you have incomplete information at this point as to why the decision you think is going to be against your idea. When you have all of your questions answered and you can now complete your picture, if you believe they are missing information, then you can present them with information that you've collected and with your own original idea to fill in.
Behzad Rassuli:Okay, I understand why you think this wouldn't work, but let me present to you something that I found in my investigation earlier and show you an example. You know, at the end of it, a picture is worth a thousand words to really show somebody. So a good, a good way to get a picture when you don't actually have like a visual, is a comparative analogy, right. You can think of some reason that they're saying that this wouldn't work. You have the answer to it and you can show them another company or another product that has this exact answer and say this is how they have taken what you think is something that wouldn't work for us and made that a really, really successful and advantageous competitive advantage for them and use that.
Behzad Rassuli:That's how I would do it personally. I know that sounds maybe a little bit too complex or or a long winded of an answer, but that's how I would do it. I'd really think of like I want to ensure that I'm not missing anything first. Right, I want to have all of the. I want to ensure that I'm not missing anything first. Right, I want to have all of the answers and then ensure that first of all, my idea is right or wrong?
Jacki Lutz:Yeah, and kind of be open to the idea that you could be wrong. Oh yeah, on both sides.
Behzad Rassuli:Yeah, I lead with I'm wrong. I lead with I'm wrong you lead with.
Jacki Lutz:you're wrong yeah.
Behzad Rassuli:You should. I would encourage that because if you lead with you're right and nobody else understands everything, you're more than likely going to find out the hard way that you were wrong for a really easy reason Right, right. It's so much easier to just find out where you're wrong and and then and then just make ensure that you're safe on those little speed bumps, right. It's like leaving the house and being like you know I'm gonna go run a mile like and I can, I can run my mile right, did I? Did I even tie my shoes right like, did I? Did I? Just do make sure you have the little things crossed off first, like I can be really wrong in these things to make to what that would stop me from being successful in my actual objective. Yeah that makes sense.
Richard Beirne:Well, you certainly think about. You know everyone in a company is busy. Your boss is busy, the next person up the line is busy. They don't want to waste time on things that they're not going to do. And if you come in absolutely certain that you're right, with as little information as you have, that's not going to be productive. They're going to get their hackles up pretty quickly. I like your approach of finding out what's going on and you know before you deliver the message. You pretty well know what the answer is going to be.
Behzad Rassuli:That's right and it's not. And and you um, you don't just avoid being wrong Uh, it's you kind of lose. You lose a little bit of confidence and maybe a little bit of credibility when you just offer an idea and the person on your way to your manager's office had the answer to that why we're not doing that as a company. And so then you're set back a little bit, even more on your next idea. Right On both sides of the equation, you have a little bit less more in your next idea. Right On both sides of the equation, you, you have a little bit less confidence. Your manager has a little bit less confidence in you.
Behzad Rassuli:And so you know, you, you learn a couple of those lessons as you grow up, and I think it's it's critical you know, dick mentioned this in the in the beginning you have to have people that mentor you and teach you these things in advance. That's, that's a really good way to accelerate, to have a good coach and a good mentor to help you learn these things. So you don't have to make all these mistakes by yourself, but as you make mistakes, really absorb them, really internalize them and say, okay, great, I made a mistake, I'm going to move on. But I'm not going to make that mistake again and really, really ensure that you go through the hard work and the discomfort that stopped you the first time and you just you face that discomfort the second time. You're like, okay, I have another good idea. This time I will go ask people, even though I don't want to.
Jacki Lutz:Yeah, and it kind of goes along with the episode we just recorded about building trust and how so many managers feel like you know, when you do ask questions and you don't, I hear all the time like it almost comes off as ignorant sometimes when, like younger people, it comes off like they know everything or they think they know everything but they don't.
Jacki Lutz:Like if people come into this industry, it can be kind of a complicated industry. There's a lot of things you know, nuances and things that are just come with time. So if you walk in there and you, you know, display your idea and you haven't done all that homework and you haven't talked to people and like gotten their ideas and their thoughts and put that whole thought together, that's where you start to get that, um, that reputation, I guess, of like being a know-it-all or thinking you know everything and being a little bit ignorant. And then you don't build that trust with your manager or your superiors, knowing that you've done all the work and you have all the information you need to actually take action versus just going in like a wrecking ball.
Richard Beirne:I think sometimes you know managers, like I said, they're busy, they don't necessarily take time to entertain new ideas, but I think for them to do their job well, they should also keep an open mind. Young people may have different experiences and maybe they're it's raw and not refined yet, but maybe they have ideas that can be put to work to make everything better. And I don't think you should sit around all day and necessarily listen to people that are new, but I think you do need to listen to people, mental models of the world and sometimes the more tenure we have in a role or in an organization or doing a discipline in a field, you really start reinforcing that mental model and you have a really, really hard time changing your mind or incorporating incremental information.
Behzad Rassuli:And so there is the reality that sometimes you know the junior employee who may have even done all that collection. The challenge of changing the manager's perspective or reframing their mental model is a much taller order task than it would be for somebody who's open-minded. So that's really good advice, dick, for managers, to make sure that when somebody is approaching you with an idea, for you to just kind of drop your ego and drop your mental model and say let me pretend this person is right, let me pretend they're right and absorb all of their information as correct and then reapply it to my daily thinking, versus assuming I'm right and they're wrong as they walk in the door and then proving them wrong in the meeting.
Jacki Lutz:Something that I really like that you do is you actually say out loud to the person okay, let's pretend you're right. So you're not like saying that they're right, You're coming off of your idea too, but you're like, okay, let's get into their brain a little bit, and they know that you're doing that. So it's kind of teaches them also to be a critical thinker at the same time.
Behzad Rassuli:I wasn't aware that I do that, but good to know.
Jacki Lutz:Or you also, a thing that you say is good to know. Are you also a?
Behzad Rassuli:thing that you say is um, let's think about all the ways that this could fail. Oh, yeah, that's uh. I mean failure avoidance is, uh, I think, probably the easiest tactic, uh, and the most important tactic for thinking, problem solving, product creation, influence anything. And, dick, you and I were talking about investing. Charlie Munger is famous for saying just tell me where I'm going to die, so I don't go there. And what he's saying is he's speaking about the tactic of inverting a problem. Right, you start with the end of the problem, the conclusion. So I guess, when you say that, I say, let's pretend you're right. What I'm doing is I'm saying okay, we are at your answer, we are at your answer, but let us live in the world where your answer is the answer we go with. Let's think of all of the implications of that right.
Behzad Rassuli:So a version of that that I do personally when I do any project, is there is the linear way to solve a problem, which is like from the start towards the end, that's a hard way to go. It, that's a hard way to go. It really is a hard way to go. You know like, okay, uh, I'm gonna, I'm gonna run the mile, let's, let's stick on that analogy I'm going to run the mile, I need to tie my shoes, I need to get the bib, I need to make sure I have water Right To work your way up to your goal of running that mile and then, at a certain time, that's a really, really hard way to go.
Behzad Rassuli:The way I try to do is I start with the conclusion I'm like okay, first of all, what are the ways that I'm going to die running this mile? Right, like you don't eat, okay, I'm going to eat something. What are the like, what are the ways that I don't finish this mile? And then you can like work, you can sort out all the ways you possibly fail. You eliminate those, right, you make sure you eliminate those. Then you have easy answers and then you can set a goal there. I want to, I want to run a mile in seven minutes or eight minutes, okay, then you can work back your training schedule. You know you check your times on the way, but if you start with just avoiding all the ways you possibly could test, you have a catastrophic failure. Uh, I think that you solve a ton of the problems and a lot. You find that a lot of the it didn't matter which knot you did to get there. It didn't matter which shoes you wore.
Richard Beirne:You avoided a bunch of the huge failure areas in the first place and you think about when you see a marketing program that just flops, or you think about a business concept that, geez, I didn't think of a hundred ways this wasn't going to work, you have to ask yourself did this thing get rolling? And just everybody kind of got on board and they nodded their heads even though they weren't sure. And then they arrive at a place that's a failure. And by doing what you do, you look at, you know what's going to happen out on the end of this thing, and sometimes that stops you from doing really foolish things.
Behzad Rassuli:Yeah, what you're describing is one of the hardest challenges I find in the workplace and in life in general is, you know, premature consensus and group think, because you're not, you don't have the opportunity in that moment to go do your research and really challenge your idea. There's just this social momentum behind everyone agreeing. You know we're social creatures and we in general, you know, want to make sure we stay with the herd, so to speak. So when there starts to you know there's a momentum or coalescing around agreeing on an idea, it's, then it becomes really hard in that moment to challenge. So that's a different art form, I think, to be able to challenge, you know, a premature consensus idea that you know, through your you know, know your, your framework of, of critical thinking is probably going to fail. You have to probably approach it a different way than you would your. You're presenting an idea in the first place. A lot of it is, you know, timing at that point, that's a good point.
Jacki Lutz:What are some other? What are some other tactics that you guys have like? Do you have any other? Any more of those? Like questions like that, like what are all the ways that this could fail? Or let's pretend that you're right like are there any other ones that come to mind?
Behzad Rassuli:I have one, but I'm. I wouldn't recommend people use this. There's a better way to say this. You work with me, jackie, so you know that I can be curt and uh and direct, and so the spirit that let's. Let's just make sure we walk away with the spirit of this idea, not the actual wording of it.
Behzad Rassuli:But sometimes I ask people for their input on an idea. Right, I want to do something and I'm not sure I'm thinking about it correctly. Right, I know how it's going to and I want someone's input on the idea and I'll do this with, like, I'll get as much input as I possibly can. But when I approach them, I ask it in a way I say, hey, what do you think about this? Before you answer, I have no obligation to use your input and please do not be wedded to your answer. Ok, put, and please do not be wedded to your answer.
Behzad Rassuli:Okay, and what I'm doing there is I'm trying to strip away the ego of the person, right? Because so often when we have an idea or input or thought or someone's asking us for something, we attach our actual idea and our knowledge and our thought to our identity. You know, this idea is coming, this person is going to think I'm smart, they're going to give me credit, I'm going to get you know, or they're going to think I'm an idiot, you know. And when, like the computer that has our brain press, passes through our you know prefrontal cortex that you know, houses our personality and our ego and has to pass through that filter, it changes what we actually say and it distorts or stops us from actually sharing ideas freely. So what I try and do is I say listen, don't even think I'm going to use this and don't attach any of your value to your idea. I just want your, the computer of your brain, to spit out thoughts. Okay, and after people get over the insult and the, you know the, the, the curtness of that, that is that introduction.
Jacki Lutz:They usually come if they get over it.
Behzad Rassuli:No, you know, they often don't. I get I get criticized for that quite a bit Um, you get a lot of free-flowing good ideas. I don't know you could try this. I don't. They know they don't think you're going to use their ideas. I don't know you could try this, try this, try this. Three of those are fantastic ideas, you know. But it gives me the opportunity in that exchange to just kind of discard that's no, that's not going to work. That's not going to work. That's not going to work. They, you know, they're okay with it because they knew I wasn't. I already, you know, prefaced it. So someone more articulate than me and more, you know, with higher EQ, we'll find a better way to phrase that. I'm really excited to learn about how to do that exchange differently, but I really have found that to work.
Jacki Lutz:I can see that, because if I wanted to give my opinion on something and I was given permission to not be wedded to it, I'd probably throw out more ideas.
Behzad Rassuli:Yeah.
Jacki Lutz:Even if they're bad.
Behzad Rassuli:That's what I find. And uh, you know you, you can describe this to people and they don't believe it. But then when you do it, you know it's almost like after the insult you're like, well, he doesn't care what I think anyway. So here are like 50 ideas and I got 50 ideas rather than the one that you thought was going to make you look good and you hope that I use and I'm going to give you credit for later and all those things. And if I don't use your idea, then you get a little insulted and you don't want to. He doesn't listen to me anyway. This doesn't take my idea. So I just remove that future scenario entirely.
Behzad Rassuli:And you know, for me it's worked out. It's worked out better. It's worked out better for my team members. They ultimately get the credit in the end. You know they get there, they recognize their idea was used. You know they feel smart. But to get to that idea was it has, you know it takes a little bit of a setup your other critical thinking tactics in that one, how do you mean?
Jacki Lutz:Like all the ways that this could fail, so you remove that possibility of failure from asking the question by saying, first, don't be wedded to your idea, yeah, yeah, because it might not exist.
Behzad Rassuli:When this fails, don't be upset.
Jacki Lutz:Yeah.
Behzad Rassuli:So let's just get through a lot of failures and get to a good one.
Jacki Lutz:Yeah, yeah.
Behzad Rassuli:But I know I listen, I I'm I'm comfortable with directness and you know, being told no and like that's stupid and all this stuff and that's personal right. So I don't, I don't know where everyone comes from. Uh, you know, emotionally or psychologically when I'm talking to them. So I sometimes I've used a lot of words. I'm obviously talking a lot right now, but sometimes I use a lot of words to try to like really meet them where I'm intending to get to right. I'm trying to create a safe space for them to understand me, because the reality is I'm so focused on solving a problem. I'm so focused on solving a problem and I really, really need their valuable input. Their brain sees the world differently than I do. They have so much, so much in there and so many good ideas and I really want to get to them and I can look in their eyes and see they're holding so much back. So I try to figure out the way to strip out all those barriers for them.
Jacki Lutz:I imagine that comes in handy in a lot of areas of your life for them.
Richard Beirne:I imagine that comes in handy in a lot of areas of your life. Yeah, I think you know we probably most humans like to find answers that agree with what they think. I think that's one of the problems. Here we are on election day. You think of all the people that watch the television stations that produce the information they want to hear, not argue with that, and I think that's sort of a human trait. And making sure that we listen to people that maybe we don't agree with is important, and oftentimes there's more than one way to do something and maybe the other way is better.
Jacki Lutz:I can imagine like that would be wild to me if that became a bigger practice. When you mentioned politics, I would love for somebody because it's just such an emotional topic or like religion If somebody was literally like just would sit down with someone who they disagree with and be like, yeah, let's pretend you're right. I want to like sit in your seat for a second and like see the world from your point of view.
Behzad Rassuli:Have you ever tried it?
Jacki Lutz:I mean, I think naturally I do try to see people's points of view, but I don't think I've dug that deep. You know like I'll listen to him and I'll be like, yeah, I can see your point. There's other reasons I might be thinking like that I could contradict that. But I'm like, okay, I can see, I can see the point. You know, I try to. I try to do that, but I don't do it as deeply as we're talking.
Behzad Rassuli:But what you just said in that answer is so critical that you can see their point, meaning you understand more deeply their logic flow that got them to that conclusion which takes you back to my first point is understanding why that person came to that conclusion in the first place. Right, and if you have input or the answer to a question that they're missing or a question that they're missing, then you have the opportunity to understand their point and then add your detail to it. But also, if you understand their point and you're like, oh, now I see why you said that and you're missing that detail, you just got smarter, right.
Behzad Rassuli:So, that experience of putting yourself in somebody else's shoes and just saying, you know, you're right, I'm going to be in your world, right? Or, to your point, I don't like. You know. I don't want to bring up politics or religion or anything like that, but if you put yourself in their shoes, sometimes you're just as comfortable in their seat as you are in your own seat. And it's all because you reframed psychologically how you're going to react to their position and you just removed your ego and you said, okay, you're right, we're both in the same seat. Now it's the same thing with companies. It's amazing If you take, if you, you know, or team members, right, like, athletes are amazing at this.
Behzad Rassuli:You might be like a we're just listening to Aaron Andrews on stage. You might be like a the Packers by. You've been there for 10 years. You're like bleeding. You know green and yellow, and then you get traded. Yeah, bleeding, you know green and yellow, and then you get traded. Yeah, what happens? You just like you. Suddenly, you don't know how to play football anymore. You, uh, you know you're, you're emotionally destroyed for the rest of your life. Or do you just say, okay, like I'm gonna put myself in somebody else's shoes now, now I'm a chief right like that. Think about that dynamic and try to apply it in your day to day. Say like OK, like today I work for this company, tomorrow I could work for this company today I have this opinion. What if I? Right now I have your opinion Right. And it's amazing how quickly you actually can just completely change your mind if you just allow yourself to forget that you are attached emotionally and psychologically to your position and put yourself in somebody else's shoes.
Richard Beirne:Well, I grew up in a big family and we were encouraged to debate and discuss and to argue and things like that, and it's always interesting. You know your brothers and sisters better than anyone and it's a lot easier for you to walk in their shoes than maybe somebody you meet on the street. So you know, sometimes they will argue in a way that does do just what you said. It changes the way you look at things and you say you know, I think we agree on this.
Jacki Lutz:Yeah, have you ever talked to somebody about like a subject and they're just asking you about your opinion and then when you leave that conversation you don't actually know what their opinion was, because they were so neutral in their thinking and just asked questions and they didn't really input their opinion at all. That's happened to me before.
Richard Beirne:I think that's impressive yeah, there are people like that and, uh, I mean, after you've had that experience a few times with them, you realize they're probably are going to play close to the vest and not tip their hand. But they do draw out of you sometimes more honest answers.
Behzad Rassuli:I think I'm curious. You said you grew up in a family that was encouraged to debate. As you were going through your career, you find it um challenging to meet people where you had grown up like comfort wise, you know, you're comfortable with debate. And then you get into an office place and there's a you know an idea exchange or discussion and you're like let's debate this and you like throw out your ideas. You disagree with somebody and you're like that's a stupid idea, like this and that. And some people are just like frozen or shell-shocked because they didn't have your experience.
Richard Beirne:Well, I had nine brothers and sisters. I'm number five. Wow, so I was the guy in the middle. The older kids had maybe a 40s, 50s view of the world, the younger kids born later. I always thought it's been very helpful in my life to be that guy in the middle, because you realize that there's polar ends of a question sometimes and you don't need to be out on one of the poles, you can be in the center of it.
Behzad Rassuli:That's really well put.
Jacki Lutz:Nine kids. How did you guys drive around? Well, I was curious, how many you guys drive around? Well, I'm just curious, how many cars do you?
Richard Beirne:have my dad had one 55 Ford four-door sedan and going to church on Sunday it would stack us too high. We could all get in the car. Maybe somebody would have to lay in the back window.
Jacki Lutz:That was okay back then.
Richard Beirne:Yeah, maybe somebody would have to lay in the back window. That was okay back then. Yeah, but the idea of somebody with 10 kids going on vacation probably wasn't going to happen anyway, so we didn't do any of that.
Jacki Lutz:That gives me so much anxiety.
Behzad Rassuli:But I do want to acknowledge what you said, though and I love what you said there, though that you don't need to be the guy or the person on the polls. The poll is usually an answer or a decision, but to get there if you start on the pole, you're probably to get to the other pole is the furthest possible path. To stay in the middle and hear both sides that the way you put that was so good, and I'm going to use that going forward to ensure you know, ensure that visually in my head, I'm going to ask myself am I in the middle of this argument as we're collecting information? Because that puts you in both camps.
Richard Beirne:You know, yeah, great point, and I think if you're lucky in life, you'll be in that center more often than you will be on the poles. I mean, you will be the kind of person that can listen to either side and maybe move based on what you hear.
Behzad Rassuli:Yeah, it's so much easier to move from the middle than it is to move from a pole.
Richard Beirne:Exactly.
Behzad Rassuli:Yeah, take one step to the right or the left and you're suddenly, like you know, on a side.
Jacki Lutz:You gave a visual exercise. Was it a visual exercise? Yeah, that we talked about where you, you, you said like, okay, there's a picture of me and there's a picture of you oh, that's how to do that.
Behzad Rassuli:Yeah, that's um, that's going to be difficult to do over a, an audio podcast, but I was. I was talking about, uh, I try to encourage people to acknowledge their mental models, right, and I don't know if a lot of people know what a mental model is, but I'm going to use an extreme example. We all our brains are incredibly lazy, like we're generally lazy as human beings, and this is not a knock on people, but our brains are efficiency machines, right, like we use some by some estimates, 25% of our calories just processing, thought and processing. You know, emotion every day. A mental model is basically your construction of the world around you through all of the interactions that you've had with the world around you that help you get through your day without relearning absolutely every single thing a day. Here's an extreme example If you woke up in the morning in Las Vegas and you did not have a mental model, like, let's say that those connections or those synapses in your brain were disconnected to relearn, what is this carpet?
Behzad Rassuli:What happens if I touch this water? Can I put it on my face or can I put it in my mouth? Is this light up here going to burn me, you don't need to relearn all of those things a day, right? Your brain has already constructed this is safe, all this is normal, et cetera. But our brain does it to an extreme, right? Here's the view of the extreme. Often, when we meet people, we don't take them as them, right? It's not like oh, you are Jackie, let me learn Jackie from all of her attributes and her personality and everything. My first inclination is to fit you into a mental model, because it's the fastest for me. I'll say you remind me of my friend Jennifer, and we all do that because we already have five or six or 10 friends, or 20 friends, and rather than learn the 21st friend, it's so much easier to say you know initially oh, you remind me of the one that I already have, right like I'll treat you like I treat them.
Behzad Rassuli:Yeah, right actually like they treat them. Or you see a brand new tree and you don't take it in for its detail as a beautiful its own. You know species of tree. You're like that's a tree, like that's a tree and that's a tree and that's a tree. They're all trees, but they're all individual trees, right. So to reprocess all this information is really difficult. So if you can acknowledge that as a person that you have, it's really important to do such a hard exercise. But if you acknowledge you walk around with a mental model every day that is constructed. It's a, it's a cognitive structure that bounds your processing of the world around you. It helps you understand why you process a new piece of information, the way you do. This is in the field of metacognition and, if anyone's interested into it, there are a lot of approachable books on neuroscience and metacognition, which is like thinking about thinking. But if you can acknowledge that every new input you're getting is being processed through your current mental model, you can start addressing your mental models.
Jacki Lutz:Is it a form of bias?
Behzad Rassuli:Absolutely, it's a cognitive bias. Yeah, I mean like, well, the mental model, your mental model, is layered with cognitive biases. Right, there are a whole bunch of shortcuts like confirmation bias, et cetera, and uh, those are all shortcuts, they're just ways that you walk around the world and uh, you just don't have to make a brand new decision every time. You've already predetermined something.
Behzad Rassuli:So, like such, a huge part of critical thinking is really trying to understand the other person where they're coming from, and in order to do that, you also need to know where you're coming from and have an idea of your own mental models yeah, but I, I will caution everybody that it's challenging, right, because to go through, like the exercise of metacognition, and think of yourself and just like, objectively think of why you think a certain way, you have to pass through your ego, your values, your definition of who you are, because so much of your thoughts are attached to your sense of self and so sometimes you can challenge your mental model or the way you think about the world and say, okay, I'm going to disagree with myself, and then you might spiral out of, well, I don't, who am I? I don't know. Let's say like let's say you use football, right. You're like I'm a Lions fan, detroit fan, right. Let's say you give yourself football fan, you're like, I'm a Lions fan, detroit fan.
Behzad Rassuli:Let's say you give yourself the safety and the space to say am I actually a Lions fan? Why am I a Lions fan? Why do I like the Detroit Lions? Honestly? And then you'll probably think, well, I've always liked them. Why have I always liked them? Well, I sat on my dad's lap and I watch their games, right and OK. But that doesn't mean that, doesn't that I like my dad. Why do I like the Lions? Right, you might even get to a point where you're like I don't even like football, but all these years I've been, I've been rooting for the Lions. Who am I? I'm not if I'm not a.
Jacki Lutz:Lions fan. If I don't even like football, who am I? You know.
Behzad Rassuli:So it's uncomfortable. So you can see why people don't go through that exercise. It is laborious, it's uncomfortable and sometimes it's unnerving.
Jacki Lutz:You do this.
Behzad Rassuli:At every turn.
Jacki Lutz:Really.
Behzad Rassuli:At every turn. It's like no-transcript. Close the dishwasher. And I went to close the dishwasher, I was like it doesn't work. And he was like I was like it's broken. He said, okay, we'll fix it. And I said, well, how? He's like I don't know, you're the one at the dishwasher, fix it. And I said, well, what if I break it? He said it's already broken, you can't fix it, you can't break it. And so I don't know why that stuck with me. But it was kind of like oh, like it's okay to just tinker and mess around and like you know, like, uh, whatever, if I mess up, I mess up. So sometimes in today I'm like, okay, I could be wrong, you could be totally right. Let's just pretend you're right, let's, let's, let's play out your idea instead of my idea.
Richard Beirne:You know, you know I think about, you know some real practical applications of that. Uh, you know, we, as humans, we have biases. You see some fat person. They're lazy. You see some people without any teeth. You think, yeah, you know, they're hopeless, or whatever. And I think about hiring employees over the years and how I had some of those biases sitting across the table from somebody that probably ate a little bit too much. But what I discovered is that has nothing to do with how good of an employee you can be, how smart you are, and so go ahead and hire that kid with the tattoos. He's probably a really good employee and he'll take good care of customers. The tattoos don't have anything to do with it. And the same thing with somebody that weighs too much or somebody that's too short. You know, uh, there are people that can overcome anything, but, uh, they need an opportunity and they need, they need to uh, be allowed to succeed.
Behzad Rassuli:So I'll tell you what I, what I just went through, as as Dick was giving that example. But sitting across from some of the tattoos, and you know, you have to first catch yourself and saying, like I wouldn't hire them because they have all those tattoos, like they're probably not good at their job, like, but what does tattoos have to do with their job? Right? And then I'd say, why do I think, why do I associate tattoos with not being someone good at their job? And then you get to the point, like, why don't I have tattoos? Like, what stopped me from getting tattoos? What? And then, like you know, you just you kind of go through that exercise and that it's just you start doing it all the time to where you at least acknowledge that what you started with was a bias and it doesn't even it's, it's a completely unrelated and unassociated with absolutely anything you're doing in that moment. Right, and tattoos is not, like you know, let's not use that as the, as the, the exact example of this, but you can do it in anything like any reason.
Behzad Rassuli:You start from somewhere. It's a good opportunity. If you ask, why am I even starting here, right? Unless you have like personal practical experience with something you'd be like oh my gosh, I've done that. That's a terrible idea. Let me tell you why. Yeah.
Richard Beirne:It's like going to New York City for the first time. Your assumption is everybody's rude and they're in a hurry and they're going to be short with you, and I can think about. That was my perception. We walked out of the hotel into a little place that made bagel sandwiches for breakfast, and they didn't speak good English or anything. The guy was waiting on 100 people. I mean, it was just chaos in there. And finally I got up to the counter and the guy says breakfast is over, and I thought, okay, so I turn around. And just then the cook in the back says what over? And I thought, okay, so I turn around. And just then the cook in the back says what do you want? I'll make it. You know, it's like just immediately my opinion of new york city changed.
Behzad Rassuli:It's like these people are nice people too, just like everybody else and if you lived in new york for a year, you'd be running around hustling, bustling, wonder why all the tourists are going so slow that's funny.
Jacki Lutz:Um, it's just what came to my mind with that example is there's a lot of times where you know I'll, someone will ask where I'm from and I'll say Michigan or Midwest, whatever, and they'll be like, oh, midwest people are so mean and I'm like really I have never thought at all but of course I live in it and that's my lens right Like maybe our natural nice is other people's mean and it could just be.
Behzad Rassuli:Yeah, I went to school in North Carolina. I remember my first day on campus. I was just passing somebody and she waved and said hi, and you know she was from D, from dc. I was from the city. I was what do they want? What you know, and it was so uncomfortable for me. I was you know, they're my personal space, they're addressing me. And then you know, you spent four years in college. You come home you're like why is everyone here so mean?
Richard Beirne:why, does anyone wave to each other hello hello I always say hi to people walking on the sidewalk that I meet that don't know me, and I'm thinking they probably are wondering what's that crazy guy saying hi to people for but I I enjoy it when someone else does it back to me.
Jacki Lutz:So yeah, why is he so happy?
Behzad Rassuli:that's one of the things that I love about this industry is we travel so much. You know, um, you get to get out and just see so many different parts. At least that I love about this job. You can see so many different parts of the country and you're you know we're going to stick on your geographic story about. You know, like some impressions of people from Michigan. That happens with absolutely everywhere and everything right, any impression you have somewhere. Then you go there and you're like, oh, it makes now like this. The context makes so much more sense. You know so, like if you're talking to somebody and they're like electric vehicles, like who the hell would drive an electric vehicle? But you live in, like you know, san Francisco or New York, you're like, uh, everyone drives an electric vehicle.
Richard Beirne:Like what, what are?
Behzad Rassuli:you talking about. And then you go to their house and they live in Kansas and you're like, oh yeah, where would you charge? And like how, how would you? You would be out of battery all the time, right, and there's absolutely no application for electric vehicle out here. And so that kind of like experience, if you do that enough becomes muscle memory and you apply it everywhere. You're like you know what, like let me go put myself in their shoes once again and like see where they're coming from and they might be right. You realize like collectively, one, you have a lot of biases, but two, you're missing a whole bunch of information.
Jacki Lutz:Yeah. You know, yeah, I think that's the point.
Richard Beirne:I think you, early on, you know made that point, that you know there's shortcuts to things and when we meet somebody we tend to say they remind me of somebody else. And I think that's what we do all the time and I think you know pushing that away from us, trying to not think that way, is important.
Behzad Rassuli:Jackie, I want to acknowledge something you said earlier. You said you know, do I do that? And I said, yeah, I do it all the time. I'm also really I'm faulted for overthinking things.
Behzad Rassuli:You know I'm okay, you didn't have to say that so aggressively, but uh, so there's a downside to it. Right, and I admire people who um, I've come to learn over the years, you know gut feels a real thing and, if I had to like describe it, it is actual deep experience and knowledge. Without fully articulating it is just saying, you know, I think this is the right way, without it yeah, but without.
Behzad Rassuli:There is a lot of actual evidence behind it and but they just don't put it into words. You know, and so I really admire sometimes, you know, you learn to acknowledge that that sometimes the right, the first answer or the reaction is the right answer. Um, and so you know, I I'm not. I don't want to encourage people to think, uh, you know ad nauseum and never come to an answer, because that is a real risk of like overthinking things and I and I do that and sometimes people have to pull me out of the pull me out of the weeds and say like let's just get to an answer.
Jacki Lutz:You know, yeah, yeah. So as we wrap up, I usually like to go around and just get like the key takeaway, like if we wanted our audience each of you wanted our audience to walk away with one thing, what would it be?
Richard Beirne:Well, if I see a really smart guy that asks a lot of questions, it's going to remind me of Bazod.
Jacki Lutz:Oh God, oh gosh.
Behzad Rassuli:Yeah, I'm with you on that one, jackie Key. Takeaways Maybe two One for managers and one for employees. You know, I think, um, I think for managers, uh, both of them are going to include shedding your ego, really really shedding your ego, and you might hear that a lot. You know, like leave your, you check your ego at the door, but I want to acknowledge that is a really hard ask for some people. You know, like, leave your, you check your ego at the door, but I want to acknowledge that is a really hard ask for some people. You know, because it is your literal, psychological protective barrier. Yeah, that is who you are. It's attached to your value and just know that nothing actually changes about you or the world. If somebody else is right, you know it's okay, right. So feel psychologically safe to let go of your ego and assume somebody else is right so you can allow them to present you information, you can absorb information and then create that same. Once you're comfortable doing that for yourself, it's much easier to create that same kind of safety for somebody else to say, hey, it's like this is a safe space.
Behzad Rassuli:I was talking to Brad Beckham, ceo of O'Reilly, yesterday, and he said the advice he got or the mentoring he got was hey, there are very few ways you can fail at this job, right, but here's the one way you can. So that kind of inverted thinking was you know, don't do this, do this, do this, do this, this. It was just like just don't do this one thing, Do everything else and we'll figure it out from there. Right. So that's for managers and for you know, entry level employees or junior employees, I would say, perspective. You know, because probably the rush to getting an answer or appeasing somebody or, you know, getting to an answer really quickly comes, uh, the hurry to feel like you actually have to. You know the world is on your shoulders. They hired you and they asked you this question. You got to do it and otherwise you're going to be a failure. You know the reality is like everyone around you I mean humans have been around for how long you know we've been like there are five million people in this industry.
Behzad Rassuli:Everyone has been in that spot before you know you'll survive it like it's okay. People have gotten it wrong, people have gotten it right. You still progress, you'll. You'll get more perspective, it's okay, and so do as best you can to try to learn from the people who've done it before. Learn all the failures so you avoid them. But just know also that, like the world is not on your shoulders, that somebody hired you for a reason. They hired you because you have that brain inside of your head and they want your brain to process this problem. They're not looking for a computer. They would replace you with a computer who would spit out the answer really quickly. They want you to process it, they want you to use your critical thinking skills and they want you to present them with the best possible answer as you see it. And you can get it right, you can get it wrong.
Jacki Lutz:Just try again and it's okay yeah.
Richard Beirne:And it just adds a lot of value like extra value. Yeah, I think keeping an open mind for both parties. You know the manager that's got all that experience and probably has to think quickly and move quickly. It's a harder challenge to keep an open mind, but it's very important because people can teach you things every single day of the week.
Jacki Lutz:Well said yeah, I think my takeaway would be something um, I learned a little bit late, but um, just not to take opinions as facts you know when, and to try to decipher the difference. Make sure you do Um cause, like you know those, those opinions shouldn't automatically make you veer off into a different direction just because somebody did it very confidently you know?
Behzad Rassuli:do you have an example of that, or how you?
Jacki Lutz:uh, how you came how you came to that realization right well, I mean, even, just like you know, earlier we mentioned the social media piece. You know, like I kind of took I think that was more opinion and it was people who didn't engage in social media themselves, so like they didn't have an appreciation for what it could do for businesses. So instead of me thinking critically like that and thinking about who that person is and the dynamics and their lens and where they're coming from, instead I was like okay, so it's not big in this industry, let's go a different route.
Behzad Rassuli:So on that, that point, I should asterisk absolutely everything I said today as opinion. None of this was for. This is just my opinion, okay so no facts yeah no facts.
Behzad Rassuli:My brother's really quick to say what I'm not, you know, he's really like. As soon as I started talking like a doctor, he's like you know you're not a doctor. Right, I started like doing like you know investing. He's like you know you're not a like a wealth manager. Right, I started like doing like you know investing. He's like you know you're not like a wealth manager. So yeah, all opinions, they're not facts. Yeah.
Jacki Lutz:And with that, thank you guys so much for being here. This was fun.
Richard Beirne:Thank you for inviting me. I feel I love the podcast so far and I hope this one makes it out of the cutting room.
Jacki Lutz:Everyone's always scared. There's nothing going to air.
Behzad Rassuli:This is great. Thanks, Jackie.
Jacki Lutz:Yeah, thank you guys. Thanks for tuning in to another episode of Auto Care On Air. Make sure to subscribe to our podcast so that you never miss an episode, and don't forget to leave us a rating and review. It helps others discover our show. Auto Care On Air is proud to be a production of the AutoCare Association, dedicated to advancing the auto care industry and supporting professionals like you. To learn more about the association and its initiatives, visit autocareorg.
