everyone, this is Sally ft.

And this is heating

shop. And in today's episode, we're going to talk about control.

You like talking

about more than your sales and market. We just want a bullshit and chat about business and life. And hopefully, while we're doing that, provide a lot of value to be for people trying to get shit done way. Don't want to give you feedback. That's bullshit. You want you to do your best. That's a pretty powerful topic. And most entrepreneurs, most startups, almost humans trying to reach control over many areas of their lives, obviously. But today we really want to focus on a specific kind of control and lack there off, which is the control off other

people, you know. And let's not be better on the Bush like we want to control everything around us as human beings. Yeah, right, Like that's that's the truth. And so, yeah, we do want a zero, and I'm sure they'll be other topics that we come up out of this. But we want to zero in on this idea that, you know, as you're trying to, like, lead the team, work in a company or even just be a human. There's this, like, Dr or pursuit of controlling other people.

So and I think we have a pretty clear stance on the fact that that is a bad idea, because yeah, okay. You can't really control what other people do.

No, you can only control yourself.

Let's talk about that. So some people will disagree. I think with this instantly, because they're like, Well, wait a second. If I start a business, I do that because I want to be in charge of my faith. I don't want to have a boss anymore. When I hire people off course, I do have control over them. I can tell them what to do, what to work on. I can me let them go fire them if they don't do what I want them to do. The whole purpose of being in business for yourself is to have more control over yourself and the people that you work with you can pick and choose. So you're gonna work with you can pick and choose what they need to work on. So how is it possible that you that I don't have control of other people?

Well, I mean, people have free will. Yeah, yeah, everything. Very well. They have a choice. They have to have a choice of whether they work with you or not. You have to have a choice of you know what they do with their lives and their in their in their time. You know, even if it is time that you think you've bought or borrowed from them by, you know, them being team members or, as most people say, employees. And it's actually one of the reasons I don't like the

word employees, employees

and play implies employment, which at the end of the day is a form of servitude, slavery, things like that. If you really want to take it to a really, really deep place, and I don't think anybody I mean at the end of the day, if you ask human beings, do you like being controlled? What's the answer you're going to get every

time? No,

no. So why would we want to think that we can control other people even in our minds, right, Like it's It's like, honestly, it's at this In this day and age, it's a concept that shouldn't be in our mind like Maybe it maybe in some countries that are Dictatorships. It's about power and control of these kind of things. But the end of the day, like we're in a world today, we're like There is so much free will, so much free will, especially if you go all the way to like wanting to talk about millennials and generation after etcetera. It's not Ah, like, I mean, even on the Internet,

we control what we see, right, like we get to pick like and even with the two television before with radio and television, it was programmed. They called it programming for a reason. Right? They were trying to control you. Control what you watch and when you watch it Well, guess what. At this point, we binge watch and Netflix controls us because of that, but not because they're programmed.

Yeah, so there's There's a lot of powerful stuff in here, but but I think to take it philosophically for a second, I think that trying to control other people's probably one of the number one source is for suffering on this planet, right? I

think that that's powerful and highly powerful.

I think that that a lot of the reasons why people struggle and they build ups. Internal suffering and resentment and anger and stress is they're trying to control other people and failing at it in big or small ways. But it is trying to make other people do. Would you want them to do the way you want them to do it? And that's a pursuit that you know you can. You can at times may be forced people to do that. You can at times, maybe even inspire people to act the way you want, exactly the way you want them. But over a long enough time line, you're gonna fail it. This pursuit and it's gonna create suffering for both ends, right both for the person that's trying to exercise control of others and for the people that are trying to be controlled, right and control and forced upon them. I love that you don't like saying the word employees. I hate saying that word. It is team members is people that work with me.

It's my colleagues. We all work together on building this company. It's not. You are not my you not my anything for almost You're your own thing. You're your own big, right?

Yes, please.

And way talked about this about Children in an episode where was always wondering if I'm gonna be, like, overly ambitious with our Children in the sense that I'm gonna feel ownership over them. And I'm happy that up until this point, I never had that feeling. Always felt their own. Their their own move. Human beings. They're not my human beings, right? I am so in agreement with you on this and so on the same page. Now, let's talk about the first. Why? If you you shouldn't invest energy and time and trying to control others, what should you do instead? And how the thing that we're trying to do instead is which flying to influence other human beings, Right?

I love the word. I mean, it was in my mind. I think control and influence influences a great reframing of, you know, control. Control. Yeah, And when you think of it as influence so So here's the way I would I would share the difference. Just still, like start off that way. Yeah. If you're trying to control somebody, you're literally trying to control them. You're trying to figure it, figure out how to make them do what you want them to do. Yeah, If you're trying to influence them, you're actually trying to help them do something that's aligned with what you want to do in a way that they

want to do it. Yeah. So I feel like influence Influence includes an opting in from the other person like, yeah, right. It is a dance between the two of us. I'm gonna I have an agenda, right? And I don't think that's a bad thing. I want us to do something. I want you to agree to something. I want you to help me with something. I have an urgent I'm trying to get to somewhere. And I want I want to convince you of that. But even saying the word convincing influencing implies that you have free will that you can exercise. You can either agree or not. You can either,

you know, say yes or no influence includes the option of you. You know, allowing that to happen or not. Control takes that power away from you. Control means I don't want you to have free will. And I don't want you to have an option to not agree with me on this or not. Do this. I want to enforce it on you right independently. If it's good for your independent. If you want to agree with me, I want to enforce it and think forces a big part of control versus influence. Is Mawr voluntary? Voluntary? Right. I I wanna I want you to agree with something with me. I want you to do something, but I need your agreement

on it. Yeah. I mean, it's about getting alignment. We're getting word in a lot of ways, right? It's like you don't want control. You want alignment because if you have alignment, you don't even think about control that Z actually like, I just I'm just thinking about this in my head now and like for my businesses and my relationships, my partnerships, my friendships like I'm always just, you know, looking for that alignment. And I'm not really interested in control because what I what I realized a long time ago is like in trying to control people, is like a temporary solution to a misalignment.

At the end of the day, I'm love that. Say that again.

Trying to control people is is basically a sign of misalignment.

Yep. It Z the needful force. Correct means that the things that this is very physical things aren't alliance. I need toe. It was that forced them to align, but it But because I need force for them to align the moment I let go for their misaligned again. Right? So it requires It requires never ending force and energy in the moment I let go of it and missile lines at and get back to square one.

And this is why I brought up slavery. Yeah, it's ah. It's a classic form of human control that it's existed for thousands of years still exists in certain areas. Unfortunately, indentured servitude, similar concept. Right then these things are essentially the The idea of slavery is the fact that your misaligned hey, you know, because their slave to you, Yeah, and and And yes, in some cultures, that kind of like indentured servitude and all that exists. But at the end of the day, there's still in alignment. Right?

You come here, you work with me for me, whatever way you want to call it probably for me in that case. And there's a barter right and that barter works out for everybody. If the societal norms exist like that and there's a caste system and things like that, so I but I don't think anyone's controlling anybody. There's just a system and there is alignment with that system now. With slavery, there was not alignment. People were literally forced to do things that they didn't want to do. And that's really the sign when you have misalignment and control is that people are doing things they don't want to do. So if you want to take it to an extreme and take it to liken organization in a business, if you look around your company or think about your company, think about the people and think about if they're doing anything that they don't want to do, you're probably trying to control them in ways that is not aligned with what they it might be aligned with what you want, but you're controlling them because they're doing things they don't want to do,

and I know there's a fine line in all of this, but at the end of the day, I would actually do a reversal here and say that if you're a founder, CEO leader in a company. There are a lot of things you're going to need to do that you don't want to do, like at the first blush. But that's not control. That's you realizing you have responsibility and that's different. But if a team member in your company is sitting there doing these things and they don't want to dio, they're not gonna be doing for much longer with you, it's just the reality because they have choices, they're not slaves. And so alignment is where I think we could go from control to seeking alignment instead of control and then using our influence as a tool to get alignment.

I love that there's an episode. It's very one of the most important ones that we've made, which is episode number 76 of the startup. Check where we talk about team alignment and that word alignment, and I know that you love it and use a lot, and we learned that from you. We just before starting this recording at a team meeting this morning, and we use that word multiple times so it's served as it calls are really, really well. It's been a pretty powerful tool for us to understand when things aren't going well to kind of investigate. Does this mean we have misalignment here and let's make sure we get to that first before we try to subscribe any strategy or tactic gonna have to solve a problem. So I think we were in were in total agreement with, you know, control being a illusion that leads to suffering and stress and sub optimal results and kind of influence in alignment being much better routes to go when you ultimately are trying to accomplish in golden life. I I think that one thing that I'd like to talk a little bit about in this context is, you know, reverse engineering on realizing When am I trying to control people?

Because I think that a lot of times people might try to exercise control without even realizing it. They might. They might think that they're trying to influence somebody. Oh, coach somebody or manage someone. And they would not say I'm trying to enforce or control another human being. But I think that one way of realizing areas you're trying to utilize control as a tactic is frustration, right. Frustration with other humans. A big portion often when you feel frustrated about somebody you're working with. But that is working for you on to you, and you're frustrated that they're not doing what you want them to do it. They're not generating the results. You want them to. A lot of times, if you're truly frustrated,

it points to. Usually it points to the fact that you're trying to enforce control or you're trying to control them, and they're not doing what you want them to do versus I find that when you try to influence people, when you try to align with people and their you know and they're not performing the way you want to, usually the reaction to that is much more. One off two Riaz ity of like, Why isn't this working? You know why I was not able to help this person? Why wasn't I able to influence that person in the right direction? What is the core issue here that we need to fix versus a. Why is this person not doing

what they need to do? Yeah, I love that. I mean, I think, Ah, by the way, I love that you decided to talk about like basically what I would call signs that you're trying to control people in China P and the one of like being frustrated with an individual on your team. It's again cause they're doing something most likely that you don't want them to be doing. And frustration comes from the fact that you're probably misaligned instead of the fact that you need to control them. And so I know already talked about a lineman and the fact that's probably some of the a good framework for solutions to some of this. So let's go deeper like, let's say, you know, you're frustrated with someone because they're not doing something. You you tried telling them five or six times, you know they should do this. But every time they either do it wrong, forget to do it or what have you, because it sounds like that's a scenario. It's kind of most one of the common ones.

What do you do? Stelly. Well, I think that at that point, I think there's two options you have. It's trying to understand, can we? It's asking yourself, Can we change something to create alignment and to make this person all this working relationship work or can't we

and and I think you're focused on

change. Yes, something needs

to change. Okay, Something needs to change. So when you're frustrated with somebody, it's repetitive. Something needs to change.

Something needs to change. And I think that the reason why we often will tend to just repeat what we've done already and get more more irritated or frustrated that we're not getting the results we want is that we are afraid of change. Because change means two things usually leads down the path of two things have been very generic terms. Either I'm going to have to change myself in some way because I'm part of the problem, right? It's very rare that if I work with you and I'm frustrated about the results, I can just influence you in you changing and I can say the same way and do the same things. And boom, We have great results now.

Yeah, very

unlike, very unlikely. Most likely. I'm going to have to change the way I do things as well. And people don't want that.

I had the minimum change the way you think about

yes, at the moon, who changed the way I think about you. I think about the situation, I think exactly right So and most people me included, they don't want. I don't want to change. I just

change. Change is hard and, like even changing your perspective slightly is hard. It's hard, it's hard, right? So it's uncomfortable, uncomfortable.

So I don't want a either do that or admit that this is a relationship that doesn't have a future because we cannot. We were fundamentally misaligned and that there's no thing that we can change about this in the short term. That will get us alignment in a in a healthy way, right? And both of these auctions, either changing things or deciding to part waste, are both very uncomfortable. Thinks that people there, their roads that people don't want to go, not people, everyone. Most humans don't want to do this. So it's much easier to just stick and and hold on to the way I've been thinking and the way I've been acting before and get frustrated with you for not magically creating the results of the behaviors that I was looking for

in the first ones. Yeah, I mean the way I would say this change is unavoidable and as you said, uncomfortable and so and so breaking down the fact

that you're

looking for control when you really should be seeking change, right? And then thinking through what do we need to change in this situation? I mean, one of the things that I'm thinking of is like, it's really great to what I have found as a really great track tactic when I'm frustrated with somebody is open up to them and help them understand What are the facts behind my frustration? And I cant do that unless I understand those fax first, right? And if you start with fax, then you can start employing a tactic. Are not even attacked it. But you can start employing influence, right? Just by saying Look, you know, we've tried to do this like three or four times, and it just isn't working because every time we try to do it,

this this and this happens and then I get frustrated and then you admit to the frustration and then you talk about like so let's talk about what we both can change. I can change the way I think about it that I could do, and I need you to change something as well, Which is Maybe we stopped trying to get you to do that thing right? Cause obviously it's not really aligned, so you know, it's a way to open up a discussion. I would say if you could just wear that frustration and say, Hey, I'm frustrated about this because of these fax And now, like we can have a discussion, we should have a discussion about what we what we need to change.

I love that you said something that will lead me into my tip of the episode, which is you are looking for control when you should be looking for change. I think that's so powerful. So here's my tip for the episode in my little action item for people that are listening, take a piece of paper and write down What are things that I'm currently trying to control? The important thing is trying in control, which, which implies you're struggling with this and then you know, right next to it, write the word what needs to change and think about the things you're trying and attempting to exercise control over right now in your life that might you might be struggling and might be feeling difficult. It's it takes a lot of effort. Then ask yourself if I'm honest with this. What needs to change? Because what I'm what's currently happening isn't

really working. I really like that, and it's it's really tactical. And, you know, it's easy to list out all those things they're trying to control. I think for most people, it doesn't take more than two seconds. And it's like one of those things that we just naturally I like. I wanna control everything. Okay, great. What are the things you try to control right now? Ah, and then So what I would say is this and it's a very it's very simple. So don't do this when you're writing down what you're trying to control. But when you decide,

I'm riffing on yours for a tip. But when you decide that you want to write about, you know what needs to change next to each thing that you said you wanted control. Before you write what you want to change, take a few deep breaths. Just just inhale a lot of oxygen. Exhale it, get it all up in your lungs before you exhale it, Get it in those places that, like you know, you don't and exhale as you think about this control you have, and you'll probably come up with better change. And the reason I say that is like you need to reset yourself. You need to find a way to get out of your head that this is a control problem and get into your head that this is a change problem. This is something that needs to change, and a good way to do that is just taking that deep breath or a few of them. And and and it'll just help you like relax because it's hard to relax when you can't

breathe so powerful. I love it. I think that's it from us five.