Ethical influence and behavior change with guest Josh from Valuegraphics

Josh is the VP of The Valuegraphics Research Company. Helping global brands like PayPal, lululemon, and Genesys to increase their ROI, reduce their risk and improve ESG by using a research-backed values approach.

By conducting custom research, The Valuegraphics Research Company is able to provide a unique experience for each of its clients, that uses data to remove the guesswork from their marketing and messaging.

The demographic models that marketers have used for centuries are no longer effective because people don’t fit the demographic stereotypes of days gone by. Around the world, companies are looking for an alternative that helps them find the intersection between profit and purpose and Valuegraphics is that answer.

This podcast episode is a must listen! Josh joins us from Value graphics to share his experience on values and the core values found in the U.S. and Canada and around the world, as well as discuss ethical influence.

In this podcast we discuss:

• Pre-frontal cortex and how it relates to our values
  
• Explaining demographics, psychographics and valuegraphics
  
• Values theory
  
• Competing values
  
• Sales, manipulation and connecting people’s values
  
• Recruitment, culture change and employee retention
  
• Top 10 values in the whole world
  

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Want a transcript? See below!

[00:00:00] Hello, and welcome to the communication solution podcast. Here at I F I O C we love to talk communication. We love to talk motivational interviewing, and we love talking about improving outcomes for individuals, organizations, and the communities that they serve today. We’ve got Casey Jackson on the line. John Gilbert and I’m Tammy.

John Gilbert: Welcome to the conversation. Hello again, everyone. We have a guest today that is going to get into something that if anyone has listened to our podcast on values, focus, mountain, all that good stuff. This will be familiar, but. You will also expand your mind in some really cool ways. I’ve got to hear our guest on various podcasts out there.

I suggest listening to his work. He has a book as well. He can tell us all about himself. It’s Joshua Dittmar and he, is [00:01:00] gonna tell us about value graphics and what that all means and how we can relate Motivational Interviewing to that and how he’s doing a lot of massive change at a large level. He’s the VP of value graphics research company, and he’s helping global brands be it PayPal, Lulu Laman Genesis their he’s using these value graphics to help with increasing.

ROI, reducing their risk and improve some of their outcomes with a researched, backed values based approach. So we’re gonna talk about that, how to do that with values and get into some aspects of how do we think about ethics in relation to discovering people’s values, how we’re influencing them.

And just some of the, some of the things around that from an Motivational Interviewing perspective, as well as Josh. Your perspective as well, more generally from everything you’ve learned. So anyhow, welcome Josh. And if you wouldn’t mind, I know you have some information you were thinking of sharing about what does this even mean with value graphics and how could people get attuned to [00:02:00] it?

Josh Dittmar: Amazing, good day guys. Thanks for having me on. And yeah, really looking forward to having a chat about values and a values driven approach with people who are already living and breathing this stuff. It’s always exciting to talk to like-minded folks. Yeah, this this amazing database that has originally been created by our founder, David Allison, and a team of researchers out of New Zealand has really given us some powerful tools to not just change businesses, but also, you know, change the world potentially and, you know, help us change the way that we look at each other and see each other from, a personal perspective through our values. And instead of just looking and, you know, taking in the world through a, with demographic stereotypes, so lots of fun on the business and profit side, but also being able to make a, you know, social impact as well is, is really helpful. So I’ll start off with a, a little bit of a story which will help to provide some context around this, you know, massive database that we have.

We’re accurate in 180, out of 185 countries. There’s over 750,000 survey responses that we’ve [00:03:00] collected. All anonymously. And we have 152 different languages that we’re, you know, able to translate into. And we’re super, super accurate, more accurate that you need for a PhD at any university in the world.

So for all the stats geeks out there like me, that’s We’re accurate to 3.5% with a 95% level of confidence. So that’s just super, super accurate with our research and but this, this whole idea was born out of the thought that every organization on the planet. Wants to engage and motivate a group of people, whether it’s, you know, us on this podcast, we wanna get people to come onto the podcast, whether you’re a Toyota wanting to sell people, cars, whether you’re a, you know, religious organization, you want donations.

Every organization wants to get a group of people to do a particular thing. And so, you know, we are all walking around with the questioquestion our heads, how do we get people to do things? How do we get people to do what we want to buy our products to, you know, come to our shows, come to our events, listen to our podcasts.

We always start off this, [00:04:00] this introduction with a story about three friends in an alley at midnight. So if you can imagine Covid’s ending, we haven’t seen our friends for a while. I’m from Australia, living in Canada. You can imagine if I get to see a bunch of Australians come over to Vancouver, Canada.

We’re gonna go out and we’re gonna have a good time. And we’re at the bar. And, you know, we haven’t seen each other for a long time. There’s a lot of, you know, punching in the shoulders, slapping each other, just really enjoying each other’s company. And it gets to about one or 2:00 AM and we’re like, okay, maybe it’s time we, we take the, you know, take the party elsewhere. The bar’s closing down and we’re gonna walk back to our apartment and you know, it’s you and, and you and two other friends and you start to walk back and you come across a dark ally. And the first person who’s driven by adventure sees this alley and they think, wow, cool.

Okay, let’s go down this alley. Come on guys. Like, I love you. This will be lots of fun. It’ll be a shortcut. We’ll be able to get there quicker. Super exciting. Second friend, friend, number two, who’s driven by safety is like, this is the worst idea ever. I love you [00:05:00] guys. We’re not going down his alley no matter what, that’s not happening.

Like I love you. Let’s go back to the bar, get an Uber. . Yeah,

we’re gonna go back to the bar. Let’s call an Uber. Like let’s go back to the apartment safely. That’s all it matters. Friend. Number three, who’s driven by friendship is like, guys, I don’t care what happens down the alley, back to the, you know, back to the bar, whatever happens as long as I’m with you guys.

I love you. I’m cool with whatever happens. So there’s three different people. We’re three different responses in an instant. It’s an instinctual response. It’s not like they had to sit their own process. Am I 26 to 35? Am I 35 to 46? Like, you know, you know, the numbers, you know, the, the demographic profiling that we have around everything, nobody sits there and goes am I a six foot, two white male?

Does that mean that’s okay for me to walk down this D dark alley like that? No, we have an instinctual reaction and the instinctual reaction comes from our values. Our values, determine everything we do. [00:06:00] And, you know, the, the way that we market and message and talk to people is through this demographic lens.

And it just, it doesn’t really make sense. It’s a little bit, it’s, it’s cracked, it’s broken, you know, it used to work for us in the past when we had to have certain, you know, back in the day, it was important that you fit at a certain role in society and you did a certain thing, but now the world’s changed, you know?

Institutions are still kind of back in this, this olden day way of looking at things, but people have changed, you know, we can go out and you can literally learn anything off your phone. You can become anything that you want, which is fantastic. And it’s a part of, you know, we’ve, we’ve really gotta start talking to people through this value based lens.

And so thankfully there’s people out there who, you know, figured this out way before we did, who are a lot smarter than we are. If you think of the science of neuroscience, you think of the prefrontal cortex of your brain. It’s like the CEO of your brain. And it has this filter, which decides, which decides what feels good and what feels bad.

 I move towards things that feel good. I move away from things that feel bad [00:07:00] and that filter is your values. If we look at things from a psychological perspective, which it sounds like where some of your question comes from an individual basis, it saying, okay, if I have a person. And I can understand their values.

I can, you know, maybe do a, my Briggs test or, you know, something like that, the engram, or all sorts of there’s all sorts of different ways that you can do it. And you lie on the couch and they’re understanding your values. And they’re going to coach you into getting back in alignment with your values to deliver happier life.

And then if we look at from a sociological perspective, Which is massive groups of people. Why did this group vote Republican? Why did this group vote Democrat? Why did this group move this way? Why did this group move the other way? They’re looking at the past. So they’re saying, okay, what caused people to do this?

And those three different, you know, groups of sciences, they don’t agree on too much. They bicker about all sorts of all sorts of things, but they all agree that our values determine everything we do. Our values are the determinant for our behaviors, our actions, and our emotions in our lives. And [00:08:00] so we, you know, we took a little bit from all of these sciences and looking at large groups of people, instead of looking at the past, we’re trying to use it as a predictive tool to determine what people will do in the future.

And so we’re able to go out and we’re able to survey people. We’re able to look at what drives their lives and use those tools to connect with people and help businesses connect with their customers. Instead of asking the question who are our people, you know, is often a question. We, I think, I think I know, you know, you might get, you might have seen a.

Sign in the front. You know, when you go into the office building, there’s a massive sign that says our values are safety, respect, and friendship, you know, and it’s like, you can kind of tell that someone sat in a boardroom with a box of donuts and made those three, made those three values up. And they’re like, these are our company values.

And it doesn’t really have anything to do. Who, how, who decides what that is, you know? And there’s this big. There’s a gap between, okay. We think this is how, you know, the information that we have. We have some demographic information, we have some psychographic information, which is really [00:09:00] useful, but how do we leap, make the leap between here and there to saying that it’s safety, you know, friendship and respect.

What we’re doing is we’re narrowing the gap so that there’s more information. So you can go, oh, like it’s really, it’s personal growth and it’s friendship. And it’s personal development, let’s say for example. And then once you understand that you can speak to the people in the organization and we we’re removing the guesswork is essentially what we’re doing.

John Gilbert: So on that real quick, that’s really interesting cuz you brought up psychographics and that’s where I was curious. How is this, how are value graphics different? Because you know, Casey you could chime in here at some point too, of, of how you develop the focus mountain that we train on of that there’s a finite amount of human cross-cultural values based off of values theory, at least.

And that. It’s harder to, to why a value, like why that, that why fulfillment? Well for quality of life, I guess you could always bring it back. You know, it’s like at [00:10:00] what point do you stop and call something of value versus being more of a psychographic. And I was just wondering how you determine the values and what, what is a value versus what is a preference or a desire?

 It seems to matter, cuz it seems to define everything. Totally, totally.

Josh Dittmar: So we think of demographics, psychographics and value graphics as a three-legged stool of audience insight. So demographics is a very simplified oversimplified definitions just to preframe my my next couple of sentences.

But demographics kind of define what people are. So, you know, certain age bracket, certain income, you know, where do they live? Those sort of things. Like what, what is this person doing? And you know, where are they in their life? Psychographics. We look at it as very simplified, like a record of what people have done in the past.

So if we, you know think about, I’m wanting to, you know, sell someone some green tea or sell someone red bull, and I know that they drink two cups of [00:11:00] coffee a day. That’s really useful information to know they’re already a caffeine consumer. You know, it’s great. They, they already consume it twice a day, every single day of their lives.

It’s really, really powerful information to know, but it doesn’t inform me how. Get them to take an action on switching to green tea or switching to the red bull that I’m trying to sell them. And the values are that, that driver behind behind it. So just to, you know, preframe the rest of what I’m gonna say is like we’ve got demographics, what people are psychographics is a record and value graphics is, the motivator or the driver in their lives. So essentially it sounds like what you’re asking is what makes a value, a value? Like how do you determine where we stop with all the other stuff that people talk about? You know, they say I really value work.

I really value money. And you’re like, well, those are things they’re not really, they’re not really values. So, I mean, part of this came out, you know, we have the, I think it’s the world values index is, is that says that there’s 40 values. And what we have after doing all these surveys all around the world, the research team have actually found [00:12:00] an extra 16.

So if you’re a stats geek, that’s like finding 16 new pyramids. You’re like, oh my goodness, this is crazy. 16 new ways of how people see and move through the world. And that can change from, you know, country to country or region to region is how they talk about something can be different. It’s not gonna be a very concrete answer for you like the stats it’s because we’ve done so many, so many surveys and people talk about things in the same way.

They start to group themselves in different ways. And so there’s a 2% margin for, you know, a group, being created or a segment being created in one way versus another. Let’s say for example, we have an audience called the workaholic investors. These people like they work and they work and they work. They self-report working 80 hours a week and they invest all of their money because they really care about status and they really care about building wealth.

Then we have another group called the life driven workers who work and work and work and they self-report 80 hours a [00:13:00] week, but they’re working for experiences. So one of their highest values is experiences. Now they’re like kind of similar groups. They’re kind of talking about the same thing, but they’re a little bit different.

There’s different things that drive their lives when they’re talking about. Status it’s to, you know, move up in the ranks and, and invest and you know, all that sort of stuff. It’s like a very work focused, but then the life driven people, they’re like really just working for experiences. So if you’re talking to them about anything in their life, talk to them about experiences rather than about status, you’re gonna talk to this group versus the other.

So they’re very, very close, but there’s like these slight differences. And so when we are looking at, when we do so many, so many, so many surveys over and over again, and have, you know, thousands and thousands of different codes of what separates people, it starts to bleed itself out. So it’s kind of like a mass like how many people we’ve done allows us to group them in this way.

It wasn’t as clear at the start and it’s become clearer and clear and clearer. Once we had a hit a mass critical number.

John Gilbert: So [00:14:00] then that’s to say that you’re, you are able to put ’em into, if you really wanted to overlapping or different, like 56 different values or something like that, that you could label. And then from that place, you have a sense of this bucket with these people, with these values, this bucket for this people, with these values.

And there might be some overlap in there, but there’s like a VIN diagram differentiation, depending on.

Josh Dittmar: Perfect. Yeah. We use Vinn diagrams, like all of the time as a perfect example. What’s really cool is when you see people, like exactly what you’re saying , and they’ll talk about something in a different way.

So like the I’m I’m family driven, I’m working for my family, or I’m working for status. There are 56 values, which, you know, is fantastic that we have this finite number of values makes it a lot simpler, but everyone talks about them in different ways. But the cool thing is, is we see the same types of people show up in different parts of the world.

John Gilbert: So where I’d be curious to transition is into [00:15:00] the influence part of it. But before we do, I just wanna highlight, like we get into especially in our advanced training for motivational interviewing that we do, we get into values based activities of trying to understand and discover someone’s values beyond the behavior such as drug use or something that someone might see as negative or antisocial and find the value the driver like you’re talking about behind it, or the, the other happier, healthier value.

That they want to be different in their life and reconnecting with their family or something, but the value being that sense of connection or contribution. So in that way, we get into that in our advanced training to help identify values and then help people align. And that’s where there seems to be an overlap here with us.

It’s helping people. We’re influencing people to help them align with their values. Now there is as Terry Moyers, Dr. Terry Moyers and other people would say, there’s an aspiration there that we’re trying to help them do something right. [00:16:00] It seems like maybe there could be something different, at least how I was interpreting what you were talking about that I’ve heard other people talk about.

We’re always in sales, we’re always trying to get people to do something we want. It does seem that there could be a difference of influence in that in Motivational Interviewing we’re trying to, as ethically unbiasedly as possible, help them get to where they want to go in the cultural context of, you know, compliance if it’s antisocial and their sociopath or psychopath, but we’re trying to help them align their behaviors with their values is the, the desire versus get them to do this particular kind of a thing.

And so I’m wondering your thoughts when you’re thinking about values and helping them align their behaviors with their values. How have you thought about it in your own? That, okay. I’m being ethical about what I’m doing in the world, and I’m helping these companies do this in a way that might lead to these sales things.

But I know that for me, I’ve figured [00:17:00] out a way to, to navigate this ethically for myself and for how I’m helping people. I’m just wondering your thoughts on that.

Josh Dittmar: Yeah, totally great. Great question, man. And I think that it is an important question that we talk about all the time. And since we very first started like David and our head researcher, this is a thing for good, this isn’t, you know, because it can be used for bad.

If, once you understand people’s drivers, you can influence them to do things. You know, if you can spin a message in a way that, you know, influences them. for example, Cambridge Analytica, which also took people’s information. You know, I started talking about how we do things anonymously. Like we have no information about anybody that’s answered the surveys.

So we, you know, we have their demographics and we always get the right audiences and we have the right amount of people, but we don’t know where they live, what their contact details are or anything like that, which is, which is very important on for one part of it. But also just working with good companies, you know, we’ve been approached by a couple of companies that, and [00:18:00] government organizations and said, that’s not what we do.

We, we don’t dip into politics or anything like that. And it was important for us to sort of set the groundwork of how the business is gonna move forward. Cuz as far as we know, this is the first that has ever been created the first, you know, massive Library of people’s values around the world, which can be used as a tool for good, you know, amazing lots of, you know, finding the intersection between profit and purpose for businesses, which impacts people, you know, from inside the organization and outside, but also having a fine, a very firm line of these are the companies we don’t work with and staying outta politics was a good.

Tami Calais: I know, I didn’t even think politics. That’s such a good point. Not, not that yeah. I wanna share any opinions or anything, but yeah, that is such a good point that it could even be used for politics.

Josh Dittmar: And the, and the dream state would be, I mean, imagine, you know, we have the values for the United States and Canada and Australia, and it’s like, what if our politicians were [00:19:00] held to the standard of our country’s values?

And not by other things, you know, would be, would be amazing. And you know, what, if we were moving towards the things that cuz these things matter to us, you know, like, like belonging in the states is value number one, whereas family is value number one in Canada and belonging is second. And so, and you can kind of see there’s there’s like there slight differences is like belonging, belonging being in American is like really, really important.

And it’s like less so in Canada, it’s like, we’re like, yeah, everyone up here is like, yeah, family. And like way more, there’s, there’s a different feel to the country, you know? And as they, as they filter down, like those are just the top two example examples. But as they filter down, you can see the differences.

In the, in the countries. And you can see the differences in, you know, China, Afghanistan, France, Australia.

John Gilbert: Well, and, and this is interesting too, cuz when went through my mind is this paper that I came across when I was researching some stuff for partner, we were working [00:20:00] with that related to, kind of like some things that Casey you’ll talk about of like, if someone has 0.0 ambivalence Motivational Interviewing is not indicated it can’t work.

If there’s like 0.0 ambivalence, right. About whatever the topic is to inform that related to values is something called cultural constructivism. And so there’s a paper that talks about cultural, constructivism and motivational interviewing and how you can help people align with, with certain things.

If they come from a certain culture and it’s more easy to talk about like certain cultures that might be less prosocial, so that are more violent or something like that to then say, oh, well, if we help them in these ways, we might, be helping them perpetuate a certain belief system about, you know, sexism, racism, whatever it’s going to be.

So how does cultural constructivism fit in, you know, to that? And so I guess where I’m, I’m going with this for you, is that [00:21:00] at a certain point. Let’s say we have that ideal of, we have these value graphics and politicians are holding back on using that, to manipulate the masses in this hypothetical utopia we’re talking about.

And, and in that process, we’re gonna have some, again, VIN diagram overlaps and not. So I’m wondering is the, is the goal of this with companies and, and working with someone with friends to like focus on the strengths, overlap like a strengths finder or something where. Focus on the overlap. If you were gonna work with someone that doesn’t have the same values, you know, I’m thinking about it on an individual level too.

If you’re having a lot of triggers, as we call righting reflexes, where do you focus? If you’re noticing like values are different. But we share some of these. Do you focus on these or do you do anything with the separation of values and have discussion around that? It’s just some, some thoughts that I was thinking as you were talking about the different cultures.

Josh Dittmar: Yeah. Love it. I mean, you’re totally on our, on our [00:22:00] page. Like something that we do, one of the most common projects that we’ll do with a company is like, what do our people care about? What do our competitors care about? And what do the prospects care about? And then looking at what are the, you know, to be able to, at the same time as solidifying our own base, how do we steal market share from the competitors?

And also how do we get people who don’t know who aren’t using either? And then, like you said, you got this ven diagram piece in the middle. They’re the values that you talk to. And if you just wanted to do a program about prospects who don’t use either you or the competitors, then these are the values that make them unique.

The ones that are outside of the, the center of the VIN diagram, and this can be done from we did a, you know, massive survey on high performing call center workers versus low performing call center workers. And so we looked at this was a global study we did for Genesis. Every call, call center software, you can imagine gets, gets used by basically any company in the planet is like through Genesis.

So these guys are gigantic [00:23:00] and they wanted to do this like surveys. Like how do we talk to the high performers and how do we get more of them when we are doing hiring and recruitment and how do we engage them more? And we’re able to see the low performers, the average performers and the high performers.

What are the things that make them similar. And then what are the things that make the high performers different and how do we talk to them? So we can now change the culture subtly to engage those people more and get them, you know, and encourage more, to come on and stay longer and recruitment and all that sort of stuff.

So that three, you know, that VIN diagram image that you were thinking of can be split in so many different ways. And you can, you can look at it, like you said, from a central perspective, what makes them similar? How do we talk to everyone? and what makes them different? How do we just talk to this particular audience?

Hmm. You know, I started my career in sales and so as I learned about sales, it was a question that I was like, what am I doing here? You know, you’d read sales books and, you know, do all these course and stuff like that. There’s really [00:24:00] beautiful book by a guy called Chris Vos. It’s called never split the difference.

Oh man, that guy. Incredible. Just amazing. But he talks about like, he talks about it as like, people want to be spoken to like this. He’s like, when I get spoke, when I get like, when someone sells to me like this, not a pushy way, not a pressury way. Like he talks in this way, that makes you feel like you’re important.

And then you buy the product and you feel good about it. I used to teach, sales, and I used to say the only difference between a good sale and a bad sale or a good purchase and a bad purchase is how you feel about it. I might buy an amazing product like my, my new iPhone and my, you know, obviously this is a very, like, sometimes you buy a bad product.

That’s bad for you. It’s like, that’s a bad sale, but, you know, from a, from a very simplified perspective. I go and buy an iPhone that I buy every single year, cuz I’m getting an upgrade and it’s basically the same phone is like if I have a good experience with the person [00:25:00] at the checkout, I’m like, wow, I love it.

It sticks with me. I remember the phone. I remember the experience if I have a bad experience, even if the phone’s a little bit better, I’m like, man, screw these guys. Like I, I didn’t enjoy that experience. I didn’t have a good time and I wasn’t like I wasn’t in my sold well, and so. It’s a fine line. You know, maybe I was manipulated, maybe I was sold well, but it really comes down.

I think, you know, good product versus bad product. Are you doing good in the world or bad in the world? And there’s also like a line of being like, are you forcing something, you know, doing a classic, you know, stereotypical car salesman, salesman, manipulation tech tactic to sell someone a car, or are you selling them a car that they need in their lives?

It’s it’s, it’s a tricky question to answer. And I think it’s, it’s a, it’s a good moral discussion that we could talk about for like hours. I think with examples and I love the discussion. Cause I went through that same process, you know, as I got older and as I went further and further in sales, I was like, [00:26:00] what am I doing the right thing?

Like, what if I use you get taught a line, you know, to use? And you’re like, ah, it didn’t feel very good. Like I felt a bit greasy and. But what’s the outcome. Like, you know, sometimes I have my own biases when I’m being sold something but I want someone to overcome it. I don’t know how to overcome that myself and a good salesperson will overcome that and they’ll get the product in my hands and it will be for my benefit.

John Gilbert: So, wow. There’s, that’s really interesting for me, Josh, because it makes me think of therapy or counselors or people that learn Motivational Interviewing, like we will. And then all of a sudden they learn that people are using active listening and the awareness comes up. And then if you have a therapist, you now can understand some of what your therapist is doing and you can break it down.

And then it almost like that bias, like puts up a wall almost rather than makes it easier. So if they can overcome that with a sense of genuine, authentic, whatever, You wanna call that mm-hmm , there’s something there to break past bias. And I think it’s breaking past the [00:27:00] bias. We all have unconscious biases, implicit biases.

I have ’em right now. All that is happening, but how can you try to. Speak, I don’t know, to some sort of truth in the other person, you know, with trying to take your bias, your conflict of interest out of it, as much as possible. That’s to me, some sort of guiding light in there that be it a therapist and knowing another therapist is using therapy with them or a salesperson and another person that is selling to them.

How do you get through to the human underneath it?

Josh Dittmar: Mm-hmm totally. Yeah. I, I think like it’s, that’s a part of life. Is like, are we going, you know, doing good or, or doing bad and figuring out what that means from a, you know, these things are fashioned onto us from a cultural perspective. And if we move to a different culture, someone might say, what we’re doing that we think is good is bad.

And so it’s like really just trying to. It is, it’s really fun, moral conversation, isn’t it like I’ve, [00:28:00] you know, really feel like we could sit here for a long time and, and flesh it out because there’d be things that inside of each of us, as individuals we think is the right thing and the wrong thing. And I think that, yeah, yeah, I think that, you know, if we’re moving forward, generally, In a better, you know, people with less pain, happier people, you know, businesses are more aligned with people rather than just being profit focused.

You know, I talked about the, you know, businesses are trying to look for this place between the intersection between profit and purpose. And there seems to be this idea that you can only have one and not the other. And what we think is. The intersection between the two is a values driven path. And when we’re able to impact businesses, we’re able to impact cuz businesses influence everybody.

They impact everybody. You know, whether it’s the stuff we buy our Amazon, the computers in front of us, like we’re all purchasing. Everything was thought up by somebody in a room somewhere for it to be a particular way, you know, like [00:29:00] someone designed the microphone and the headphones. And I think if that.

If we change the thinking at that level to be more about what are the people care about that we’re building this for? I think that generally we are, we’re building a better world.

Tami Calais: This is interesting, it is such a challenging balance. But to your point, Josh, like I’m, I’m thinking about like one of our big Motivational Interviewing people that that is engaged with us is law enforcement. So there’s, people that are trying to make a really good difference out there and a really good impact. And so, like I was thinking of David, who is one of our main people in our MI plus membership that is engaged with us.

 He likes to, he uses motivational interviewing to help people understand hearing mm-hmm and how they can hear literally physically hear better. But people typically struggle with getting, for instance, hearing aids so they can hear conversations. Right. So, I mean, like again, value graphics in that sense, [00:30:00] like, oh my gosh, you, you were helping people be more engaged in the world by being able to hear better.

So. It is tricky navigating this because yeah, that would, I’d say that would be an ethical influence. That would be really good to help people be able to hear better mm-hmm or get the medical needs that they need.

Josh Dittmar: Yeah, it’s really, it’s really fascinating. Like in, in never split the difference. Chris Vos talks about this example of where This doctor was like, he would just have patients like leave and they, he they’re like, this is he’s like, this is your last chance.

Like, you basically have cancer, you’re gonna die. If you don’t change your lifestyle. And then they go out and they’re like, yo, here you, oh my God, I’m gonna change my lifestyle. And they go out and they don’t change their lifestyle. And it’s like, there’s him in his way is being like, there is, is explaining essentially when they’re saying this, they’re not talking, to what matters for the patient. They just say the same stuff. And the patient’s like, yeah, absolutely. I’ll change my life. This is so scary, but they’re not talking about what drives their life, you know? And so it’s like from an individual perspective, like you were talking about with the [00:31:00] hearing aid example, it’s like, how do we influence people to go and, you know, make these changes?

Cause sometimes it can be a do or situation and they don’t do it, you know? We’re not getting to the core of what matters and drives their lives.

John Gilbert: This, Josh was something that I wanted to bring of before we wrap up with our time. And I know we’re coming closer to the end of it, but is this sense of competing values?

And I’m wondering if you’ve dug into this at the massive scale you have. I know for ways that we have talked about it in our training, it could be like a value like Tammy brought up of my independence and, and having my sense of independence and not being dependent on some sort of device or something external, or could be a medication.

In the case of, you know, the, the physician type example or healthcare example. I don’t wanna be dependent on this thing. I’m independent, right? A very Western, especially American. Focus like value in this way. And so [00:32:00] then that can compete with this sense of, you could say more transcendently quality of life or Tammy, you were saying engagement or connection with others.

And so there are these competing values of independence, maybe there sense of connection, and they’re now competing. To make a decision just like we all do, especially with the example you gave of consuming a toxin of alcohol and lubricating and having a good time socially, you know, but it not being healthy, but we make those, those negotiations of life and absolutely, you know, different people have to make different ones depending on your socioeconomic status and the opportunities that aren’t equal all everyone’s making these negotiations of sorts of values.

So I was just wondering about how much, you’ve focused on that. Your, your just thoughts on that, on, on how people have competing values and maybe all you’re doing is just identifying them. I shouldn’t say just, maybe you’re identifying them and that’s it. Or then what do you do if you are gonna do something with competing values, from the [00:33:00] values graphics perspective when you’re helping people?

Josh Dittmar: That that is such a good question. I I’ll talk from a personal ex experience, and then I’ll, I’ll share a little bit from a larger scale. So I belong to. A segment or an audience called the personal growth junkies, which is like, we’ve got different names for all the different segments and audiences that come up when you do my value graphics profile.

Like I’m like personal growth and experiences at the top of my list. Everything else is like personal growth experiences, health and wellbeing. And there’s, there’s environmentalism and some stuff, you know, just below that. But those two things just drive everything in my life. And so. Sometimes I’ll be having a moral conversation with David about being like, man, like what about the planet?

You know? Cause I, I do like organized cleanups on our local mountains and all this sort of stuff. And I’m like, but this doesn’t seem to like be making the biggest difference. I’m like, am I, should I be just focusing a hundred percent of my energy on value graphics because we can actually change the world, but then there’s trash on my local mountain and I need to go and do this thing.

And so there’s two [00:34:00] values that are just like. Just crashing together. I’m like, okay. Do I just, and they both give me personal growth. They both give me an experience. And so I’m wrestling and what, you know, David has done is he just talks with me about it and he manages to sell me essentially or explain in a way and help me understand my own.

Which one is going to meet my values the most, essentially, because in that moment, I don’t have an understanding of what’s gonna make the biggest difference. I’m like, is it the environment and this thing in the moment, or is it the investment? And, you know, I feel like I’m giving up on one of my experiences.

So I’m wrestling between these two values. And a part of that from a larger scale is if we see two values, like experiences and personal growth at the top, how do we talk to both of those values at the same time with a message, because we all probably have those moments in our lives where we’re like, do I go left?

Do I go right? Oh my God. They [00:35:00] both feel so good, but they both, like, I’m gonna feel like I’m missing out. If I go one way and not the other. And it, it seems to come down to. How we’re, how it’s explained and how we perceive it. And sometimes that can take some time.

Casey Jackson: What you just articulated there is what motivational Interviewing is.

Is to help people work through those, to dilemma that, that right there is. I mean that if we just took that exert and you put it on a wall for people that are trained in motivational interviewing, they’re like, oh yeah, that’s what we do in motivational interviewing is help people work through that. Yeah.

Because there’s not a right or a wrong, it really is. How do you help people? They resolve their ambivalence based on their own value set. And that’s where they’re gonna find the sense of peace or settlement from that.

Josh Dittmar: Yeah. Yeah. And going and going back to that, you know, person who leaves the hospital and, takes an action or doesn’t is like, how did they see that moment? How did they perceive that moment? You know? And that’s like, you’re saying it’s through our values. How are we receiving this information? How is the story being told to us? Cause we’re being told stories every day and we’re telling stories to other people, you know, when [00:36:00] we talk to them and it’s like, are we five out of the six keys match up or only three out of the six?

And it just didn’t really land. Mm.

John Gilbert: Yes, we’re, we’re coming to an, in, it reminds me of like a Stanford model of behavior change too. It’s one of the four quadrants. And unfortunately, I can’t remember the researchers or the name of the model, so it’s a bit ridiculous to even mention it in that way. But I remember motivational interviewing sticking in one of the quadrants of this.

One-on-one kind of like you’re talking about with this physician interaction. and then, you know, Casey that you brought up from years ago, that book that talked about extra therapeutic factors and just how many things outside of that interaction affect change. And so I appreciate what you’re, you’re doing in the world.

And, and talking to that point of us having these, you know, laptops and these things of that are gonna influence us around, products and things that businesses are going to remain. So how are they influencing us consciously or unconsciously? And I think there’s something important to be aware of in, in [00:37:00] culture and get more and more seen values in companies, in people and in so doing you can, you know, from all the biases I have and what I’ve learned with Casey.

Digging into this, you can transcend some of the behaviors to see the humanity in what’s going on. And it seems like there’s a, there, there that if we work towards that together, there’s gonna be some disagreements and there’s gonna be some stuff that might be like, I would choose this over that, but if we can keep working towards.

Something like that. It seems like it would bring us together in some sort of a way. And there’s, there’s, there’s a, there, there that I don’t know, cause it’s gonna be perceived differently by different cultures, but whatever that is, it seems worthwhile. And that’s what I appreciate what that value graphics is doing.

And then I, of course, in this. Utopia see Motivational Intervieiwng coming in to help people once there is that sense of it. I also see, you know, cultural constructivism and that coming into schools to help inform at a [00:38:00] young age, I see emotional intelligence coming into that picture to help with perception of other emotions. And I see this, this foray of just, all these things coming into like schools mm-hmm and this amazing society that could be values driven that could have this information to make a decision. But it doesn’t mean that we always are gonna make this decision of choosing values, graphics over cleaning your local hill. And that’s where I think that, conflict of interest, we all have to check inside ourselves our own bias to be like, well, I think you should do the values, graphic things cuz of these things, but you’re thinking the things. So how do I sell you and explain this to you in a way to get you, to make the decision I want you to make in this Josh.

I think that’s what we gotta check. As we move forward with all this. And that’s what we, you know, call the righting reflex in motivational interviewing, getting out of equal position. You know, we have podcasts that talk about how do you maintain equipoise, but still influence.

But I think [00:39:00] that’s the key check for me. When I think of the ethics of all this, how do we try to check that, but still work in this future direction together with being value based. So those are just some ending thoughts I have is I don’t know for Josh Casey, Tammy, anything else that you wanted to, to throw in with or add?

Casey Jackson: When you said that, go ahead, Josh. No, you go, you go for it. What I was thinking about my, my aha moment, it’s fun for me in the podcast to have aha moments. With this is I I’ll admit, I came into this podcast with some, I was braced, I was braced and ready for, I’m not sure where this is gonna go, how much, you know, because I’m so anti manipulation, it’s just, you know, I just don’t like to be played.

And I don’t like people being played and you know, that’s my social worker side of myself, but the thing that I can deeply appreciate it was my aha moment actually, in working with Tammy’s company, when Tammy wasn’t with us on the sales side of things, is what struck me so profoundly. And I think this is where I, my brain really [00:40:00] understands the potential with value graphics is what I realized from a social worker perspective.

Looking through a sales lens was that if you have an exceptional product, you really don’t need a sales department. You really need a good marketing depart. If you have an exceptional product. And I think that’s where I see value graphics, like, oh, this makes sense to me because if we just market it, well, we just have people standing by to collect the orders that because good marketing will help them resolve their ambivalence based on their own value set, which is different than cold calling and try to sell stuff to people that they may or may not want.

And I, think that’s probably too rudimentary and oversimplified. But for me, I think that’s what was helpful through this conversation is it really reinforces my belief that if it’s an exceptional product who wouldn’t want it, like if that fits their values and it fits their lifestyle, I just want, I want exceptional products, but I just don’t wanna be sold anything.

And I think that’s what helps me in this dialogue. Listening to what [00:41:00] you talked about Josh, is that that helps delineate between the sales side and the marketing side from the, sales perspective when you step back looking from the value side of it’s like, well, you’re helping people that really would find the product, you know, value added in their life, get access to that in a way their brain can, you know, comprehend it in a way that lines up with their own value set.

So that, that, I just, this, I really appreciate this, cuz it helped make clear about certain things that still were a little fuzzy in my, my brain. Just in the way that I look at how I communicate and talk and about what we do as well too.

Josh Dittmar: Yeah, totally. Totally. Mm-hmm . If we can change the way like this is bigger than, you know, us, it’s bigger than if we can change the way that we look at each other, instead of we’re programmed to look demographically, we’re programmed to see someone look a certain way on the, in the desert and be like, okay, that person’s gonna kill me.

I’m gonna run away. And you know, we just don’t, we don’t live in that, in that world very much anymore. We still do to some extent. What we’re [00:42:00] really, what we’re really doing is we’re trying to, you know, we’re not gonna cure racism, homophobia, ageism, and all these things. But if we can turn the dial down from where it’s at right now, what it seems like is an 11 outta 10.

If we can help to turn the dial down to a seven or an eight, hopefully even lower. I think that that’s, that’s building a better world. You know, if we can start to look at each other through a values, value, graphic lens and say, you know, like these people are more like me than they look. Then we can really start to, you know, create a more cohesive and a better, better world.

And it comes from changing the way that we look at each other. And that’s, that’s really the core of what, you know, besides better businesses intersection between profit and purpose and all that stuff. Like that’s really what we’re driving for and what we are hoping for. And, and it sounds like you guys are, are doing the same as well.

So. Hundred percent, a hundred percent.

Casey Jackson: And that’s, yeah, it’s, it’s fun to listen to other people out there in that charge, you know, with that mission.

John Gilbert: With the level of massive impact you’re having thank you for what you do and, and [00:43:00] yeah. It’s like obviously leading a lot of helpful things at a massive level.

We’re gonna, you know, keep as individual and organizational change as our Institute is called. Keep. Keep that going. Mm-hmm and I’ll just point to some degree of motivational Interviewing, being a way to, to help with this, for anyone that hasn’t gone through that I just want to throw that out there for intro advanced training or whatever it would be be it with us or otherwise we have our own resources we provide, but I just wanna mention that because it’s a way of discovering someone it and co discovering things within them. But more importantly, to your point, Josh, I perceive it as a way of seeing and treating another human and in seeing them in a different light. I now can see the humanity and, and transcend the demographics more.

And the values are one way to do that. And hopefully in that process, given we’re in a capitalistic culture currently, that will relate to more, not [00:44:00] just conscious capitalism, but compassionate capitalism, that yes is values driven with a place of compassion, which I think is what we can all, kind of attune to that, bringing it together from what bill Dr.

Bill Miller and Steven Rollick put in the, the third edition of motivational interviewing is that place of compassion and coming from that place. So I think as long as we got that as our, our guiding light we’re, we’re gonna end up somewhere. Good. So, Josh, I can’t thank you enough. I know that we had talked beforehand if people are interested in your work or reaching out to you, where can they find you?

What is some information related to that?

Josh Dittmar: Yeah. If you just search value graphics we are everywhere possible where you can find value graphics on Google, LinkedIn, Facebook, all the stuff. And then if you, yeah, wanna shoot me a line. It’s just josh@valuegraphics.com. You’ll hear from our assistant Abigail and she can she can guide you wherever you wanna go.

John Gilbert: Wonderful. Wonderful. Well, is there anything sounds good else that you’d like to add or anything for closing thoughts or anyone else that I’d like to add before we wrap up? Yeah. I just [00:45:00] think like looking at your own life and seeing how different the peopleare, that are in it, you know, and just, just looking at your own life and be like, wow, I’m already living a values driven life because the people around me are around me.

Not because they look, sound and smell exactly like me they’re around me because we talk about the same things and we care about the same things in our lives. You can look around in your life and appreciate how. I think things sound worse than they are. If we listen to the media and you, you know, if you’re on the social media or, or whatever, like things sound worse than they are.

And I think that people are really coming together and we are moving forward in a beautiful way that is more conducive to, you know, peace and, togetherness togetherness is, you know, the togetherness values. There’s five of them, family relationships, friendship, community, and love. [00:46:00] And those five values are what, you know, they show up in a different way.

Everywhere around the world in the top 10. So sometimes it’s community and relationships, sometimes it’s friendship, you know, but they show up at the top 10 everywhere in the world in some different variation. And these are the things that make us human human beings love being together. And if you just look around in your life, you can see that you’re already living in values, driven life.

Casey Jackson: Love that. Hmm. Thank you for sharing that again. Thanks for being on here. This was, this was wonderful. Hope we get a chance to talk again. Yes. All right.

John Gilbert: Well, hopefully you all got to enjoy that are listening to this and you know where to find Josh, you know where to find us at IFIOC.com and all sorts of resources.

If you want to see people from this light, we are one way to do that. And another way is through value graphic. So hopefully it’s been well, Josh powerful closing comments. Thank you. And take care of everyone. See you next time. Thank you for listening to the communication solution podcast as always, this podcast is all [00:47:00] about you.

So if you have questions, thoughts, topic, suggestions, ideas, please send them our way at casey@ifioc.com. That’s casey@ifioc.com for more resources, feel free to check out, IFIOC.com. We also have a public Facebook group called motivational interviewing every day. We have an amazing blog. And we have lots of communication tips on our website.

In addition to all these amazing resources we do offer online public courses on our website on motivational interviewing and effective communication strategies. Thanks for listening to the communication solution by I F I O C.