Inspired Action For Imperfect Humans – S2EP5: “Compassionate A$$holes”
“Compassionate A$$holes” Brief Summary of Show:
In this episode learn to take inspired action and we ask the question, “Where do I need to be extra kind?” Hosts Kyle and Christopher tell a story about a person who applied for a job in their company and called them “a$$holes” for sending a kindly worded rejection letter. The key message is that we all need to be a little more kind in our response to people during this difficult time.
Calls to Action:
Tell us your “inspired stories” stories by visiting www.InspiredActionPodcast.ca
Christopher Lawrence LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/career-life-coach-christopher-lawrence/
Kyle Kalloo LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kyle-kalloo/
Change My Life Coaching & Strategic Leader LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/6446498/admin/
Change My Life Coaching: https://changemylifecoaching.ca
Strategic Leader: https://strategicleader.ca
Resources:
https://mi-psych.com.au/your-brains-3-emotion-regulation-systems/
“Compassionate A$$holes” Transcript:
Because I’ve been there. I’ve been the guy, I’ve never done it, but I’ve been the guy that’s wanted to hit reply and say, . I’ve been that guy. And I know I’m not a bad person.
[Narrator] Is the thought of being imperfect keeping you from taking action? Welcome to Inspired Action for Imperfect Humans. Each week, we give you real life stories and thought provoking research that inspires your soul to live a more fulfilled life through your own actions. From the heart of Calgary, Canada here are your hosts, award winning coaches, Christopher Lawrence and Kyle Kalloo.
Hello Compassionate . Compassionate
Okay. Let’s just be clear, you’re not talking about me, right? And you’re not talking about us, are you? Kind of, sort of? Or is that about that story I mentioned to you about…
The , actually he’s not an . You were the to him. And this is what we’re talking about today.
Okay, so let me, let’s just jump right into it. Let’s just jump right in cause this is gonna be really interesting cause I feel
girl, I can’t wait. And I want to hear the feedback from our listeners.
Yeah, ’cause this I’m really really looking forward to. I mean, I want to know, did we do the right thing? What else is happening? Cause again, you know, these are opinion these are just kind of our experiences and you know, like I say to you all the time we can’t be the only one right? This can’t be exclusive to us and if it is, we have a problem. There’s a bigger problem here.
It is, Kyle, it’s just us. And it’s shocking. I know that our listeners are dying to know. But you got called an yesterday for doing the right thing.
Now of all the things, and I know people are saying okay, so what’s the surprise? ‘Cause again, maybe sometimes they may think I am but no, this is actually unwarranted from my perspective. So you know Christopher, we’ve been looking for a marketing person, that’s a whole another story but we are currently recruiting for a marketing person for something else that’s going on. Lots of different things that’s happening for us. So we just need to bring that stuff in the house. So, we, I’m primarily responsible to review the resumes and making sure there’s certain things, we have certain pre-questions on there you know, with indeed, that says hey, what is your years experience in the first area, what’s your year experience in the second area and also, are you located in the location we want you to be in, right? So we put that stuff out. We’ve gotten quite a few and we’re just kind of keeping it going. We’re contacting who we want and who we don’t, and so there’s quite a few number of people in the pile that we just feel you know, we don’t wanna continue.
But they don’t. I mean, they don’t miss the, they don’t meet the criteria. And this is the unfortunate thing.
So as you know, my primary job here at Change my Life Coaching, so the reason why most of my clients find me is for career coaching. And I, you know I take a very unique approach, it’s very holistic, I’ve coached over 2,000 people in one-on-one settings on their careers. And one of the things that we talk about is that the job search process is inhumane because you can send resumes out into a black hole and you might get nothing back. I’ve even had clients who have gotten to like, second stage and third stage interviews and they never hear back. So obviously, they never got the job but they didn’t even get an courtesy call. So I get it, like I get it.
Because some recruiters can say also, well can you imagine the amount of resumes I look at? Do you imagine how many things we do? And we’re not like, blaming you
No.
We’re just saying the whole process sometimes,
Yeah.
just how it’s set up
Yeah, have some compassion. But Kyle, like, let’s get into this story because you were sending a rejection, like you were sending rejection letters out right? And so the job
And the fact that, they call it that, like the fact that in indeed from the employers side, it actually says rejection. Like and I just…
Yeah and it’s tough. You don’t wanna reject, it feels gross but that’s a part of life.
Of course.
Like, we cannot hire every single person that’s applying.
Of course.
And we can’t give every single person a chance for an interview. That’s just not possible. So you didn’t like the way that they had, because there was a form rejection letter and you said I don’t like how they’ve written this, I want something a little bit softer. I want something a little bit more compassionate, just saying hey, stay positive, this is a tough time right now, while you’re not a fit for us, kind of keep looking, right? So you send this out yesterday, so I mean it’s probably the nicest rejection letter than anybody’s gonna get and actually-
Yeah, I actually I’d love to read it actually because just to kind of give a quick synopsis, right?
Sure and actually, you’ve got some feedback on it too didn’t you?
Absolutely.
You got some feedback. Like, one of the women that received that rejection letter was like, thank you so much for getting back to me, like, she had something really nice-
And reviewing my resume.
And review my resume, she was so polite.
She was very nice. And I’m, you know, she’s gonna keep it up-
Go ahead and read that letter.
So the letter, so we’re going through this, a few people that we just wanted to let them know. ‘Cause the posting actually is not gonna be closing for a period of time but we just still wanted to let people know that we’re not gonna move forward with, right? So they had a recommendation, like you were saying and we just kinda tweaked it a little bit ’cause I really wanted it to be-
So read the letter!
The human, the human experience. Okay.
The listeners want you, we’re five minutes in. The listeners want you to read the letter.
Okay, this is why I could use that A-word for you too. Anyway, so the letter says, “Hello Blank, thank you for your interest in this blank position with us at Change my Life Coaching. We have reviewed your application. Unfortunately, we will not be moving forward with your application for this position at this time.” And then I go on to say, I am sorry for the the disappointing news. Best of luck in your job search. And I also added, I’m confident that you will be successful in your job search efforts soon, stay hopeful. Sincerely, myself.
So that’s our rejection letter, folks. So one woman responded to that, as we talked about, said thank you. And you got one response within two minutes and it had one word, and the word was.
Assholes.
Like?
Yeah.
Like assholes has three S’s in it but oh, you could hear it come out of his mouth like a snake if he was in Hogwarts he would definitely be a slytherine with all those S’s. So, oh man. So hard to not react. So of course, initial reaction is like oh my God, like.
Especially when you think you’re doing a good thing. Like, regardless, even if your intentions are good doesn’t mean the person is gonna receive that right?
Nobody in their life has received a rejection letter that nice. Like, nobody in their whole life has a received a rejection letter that nice. And then you get a response, assholes. So this is a thing, a couple of episodes ago, a few episodes ago, I think it was episode two, season two, episode two, We did an episode called check your assumptions. So what was your first assumption cause I know you made a second assumption what was your first assumption Kyle?
Yah it was
In one minute or less.
Yah well that he was just like really? Like I really thought I was like he’s ungrateful and just unappreciative it’s kind of like I didn’t have to send you anything, right? So I just thought about that for a second and that was my first assumption. Is that he’s just an awful person who just I think you got muted there, I’m not to sure here I can’t really hear you.
Oh so there we go yep. I turned 41 in January so every ounce of technological knowledge I had has seeped out of my brain. I am now an old person. Actually you know the funny thing is that my grandmother and my mother know how to use tech better than I do. Like I’m not kidding I’m just like calling my mom, hey how do I do this? So, so that’s a first assumption and to be honest you know, like if we want to practice what we preach that’s our story. I mean its what he did was not professional in my opinion. It wasn’t kind in my opinion. But Kyle what was your second assumption and I just thought this was so cool. What was your second assumption?
Yeah the second assumption from me was okay, he obviously is frustrated, he’s obviously disappointed and I then I thought well is this because how many other rejection letters is he getting? How many you know applications he’s putting in there you know so he could’ve really just been like, great you know maybe that wasn’t for me. Maybe it was for the fifteen other people he got it for. Maybe it was for, actually I had no idea so because you know even a part of the first assumption I made I was going cause there was option cause obviously Indeed or the application we’re using to do this screening and recruiting. It actually picked up that there was a foul language and even said, do you want to report and ban this person? Right?
So that’s a thing right like you could’ve that one word could’ve had him banned and what with certainly I work with clients, but where every single client goes I don’t hear about other jobs search engines anymore. I only hear about Indeed. That’s where their all going. And, can you imagine if you had done that? He wouldn’t of been able to apply for jobs.
Yeah and it was the second assumption that stopped me from doing it.
That’s the point right? So we know we’re going to make an assumption so why do we default to worse possible scenario. Like if you knew his story, and just think about this for a second, the kind of person that receives a letter like that and the first thing that comes out of their mouth is , that person has had a hard life. Something has happened. Whether it was like when they were a kid or maybe it was just their rejections, right? So if you’re gonna make an assumption, just like when someone cuts you off in traffic.
Right
I mean it’s like when people cut you off in traffic like I have heard, I’ve been on the phone with somebody who I respect like, mentor to me. He was just pulling out of a parking spot and getting going out of the his park ade and we were just kind of chatting on his hands free and and a I heard him like, like I couldn’t believe it like I never heard the man swear before, nothing. Professional doctor always polished. And all of a sudden I heard, oh for sakes are you kidding me? Sir we don’t f-bomb on this do we? I can see it in your face. She is not happy with my f’ing. Meanwhile she’s f’ing anyways. So I mean like, like when we get into our cars we do this, but we automatically assume that it was deliberate, it was intentional, and it was malicious, and that’s what we assume when someone cuts us off in traffic. And so it’s like but why is that the first assumption? Like why not assume that you know maybe they like took a sip of coffee and burnt their mouth. Maybe they simply forgot. I have not met a single person who hasn’t made at least one mistake driving. Right?
Right
Like you know, like what it was just a simple mistake. What if, what if like their mom died that morning and they were going to the hospital to like ID her. Like why do we assume , and I’m not talking about making excuses for people, what I’m saying is if you’re gonna assume this, why not assume the second thing. Which is what you did. Right, you moved to the second thing very quickly and you replied to him.
Yeah and I just really quickly in the reply I said, listen it’s clear that you’re upset and I just want you to know that, you know, in a situation like that I had the option to get you banned from Indeed but that I’m sure is not gonna help what you’re trying to achieve. And so not sure how much of this you’re gonna hear but you need to be respectful for yourself if not for the other thing, right? And I also actually gave him some additional stuff and I said, you know, but think about the position you applied for. You actually don’t need that criteria. Like you deliberately said no to the three pre-screen questions that further qualifies it. Like you were a no to all three of those. And then there was no transferrable skills in this thing and here’s the thing on top of what you just said Christopher is that for him to still do that, to do that to call me that name or whoever he thought was on the other line that name. Because of course he doesn’t know me right and that’s where I had to keep that in check cause I was like he doesn’t know me. He didn’t wake up that morning and say I’m gonna go tell Kyle you know whatever. But I said you know I’m thinking to myself, like I have access to, you gave us everything. We have your name, your phone number, your address. Right, like what if I was on that persons like I also made the assumption that he’s a horrible person and I want to get him back and I want to be punitive. It’s all about retribution. I could’ve made that really difficult for him because he couldn’t of applied for anything else.
He couldn’t of applied, you could’ve went and spray painted on his house. Like, you know like there’s no you know you could’ve posted it on social media with his name. You could’ve gone to social media and made a comment like gosh you could’ve tagged him in something. Like just you know its unfortunate but, you chose the compassionate route. Although you were stern in your reply. You were stern. You chose the compassionate route. And so this is the challenge to the listeners, like you think about being in the workplace and it’s like that person is ticking you off, what assumptions are you making? What is the story that you are telling yourself? Right. About your employee, your employer, your peer. That kind of thing.
Right. And at this point, I’m actually kind of curious, Is there any research, I mean is there, cause you’re the guy we kind of go to research about.
Well, yeah so this is a thing so actually what I was kind of thinking for this is that I’d like to talk about something a little bit different. So in our psychology we actually, and I think this a relates to physiology too. So we have three systems. We have three systems. We have our drive system, so our drive system is like pursuing, striving, achievements. So this is our need for achievement, right. And some people spend more time in their drive system. We have our soothing system. So this is like safety, calm, cared for, nurtured. And then we have our threat system. And our threat system is like anger, anxiety, self criticism, criticism of others, that kind of thing. So we don’t have time to talk about all of these today but we’re going to at some point in time. So we’re gonna talk about the threat system today. And there’s a specific reason why, because that’s where he went. He went to the threat system. So just a couple of things for our listeners. If you are in your drive and threat system, you are in your sympathetic nervous system which means that you’re using dopamine freely, and that’s what leads to burnout if we don’t go into our self-soothing. So you have to go into your soothing system, your self-soothing system. To, for things to be helpful which is your parasympathetic nervous system. So, you want to make sure that, that’s the check for our listeners. But, lets talk about the threat system. So the threat system, the things that trigger this, and some people spend most of their lives here. Right. You know if,
People are accustomed to it.
That’s it. So if you think of these three systems, say one is the size of the moon, one is the size of the big beach ball, and one os the size of a marble. And so you kind of look at that and so you know we don’t know this guy maybe this was just you know maybe his threat system is the size of a marble, right? But this was you know, we were the the recipient of that moment. So think about it you know for our listeners, you’re in this, you know you’ve got your three systems, which one is the size of the moon for you? Which one is the size of the you know, big beach ball, and which one is the size of a marble? Certainly for me the drive system is the size of the moon. Like I’m so focused on achieving, right. And drive and that kind of thing. So maybe this guys moon is the threat system. So the threat system will sound fairly familiar to people, but this is also where people kind of miss a couple of things. So the threat system is our fight, flight, freeze response, right. So we’ll go into fight, we’ll flee, we’ll run away right, or we’ll freeze, right. And you can literally see this. I saw my dad go into freeze once, this is what freeze looks like. My dad’s car got broken into and I was with him. Got broken into, nothing was stolen. And he was just staring at it. And I said, oh, dad, like call your insurance company. And he just looks up at me. I don’t know what to do, I’m sorry Christopher I just don’t know what to do. I’m like, dad call your wife, who I know can get him moving, or call your insurance company. And he just looks at me he’s like, I’m just, I don’t know what to do. That’s what freeze looks like. Right. So like after 15 minutes it’s like give me your phone, right? So fight, flight, freeze, but also faint. So like you might see this on YouTube right where like some friends come in and they scare another friend and that friend passes out, right.
Right.
Is one of the things, you also see it on really intense rides that like slingshot, there’s lots of those.
Right.
Videos on YouTube where it’s like people
Or the roller coaster is yeah, there like oh
People pass out, yeah. Yeah.
Like that time when you made my brother’s soul leave his body.
Another story, yeah. Yeah oh that was Kyle’s brother sat on a roller coaster he’s like, my soul left my body at the beginning of this ride it was there to greet me when I got back. So then there’s the fifth one Kyle and the fifth one is fawn. So there’s fight, flight, freeze, faint, and fawn. And so what fawning is, is it’s appeasing. So some people, when they’re in that threat response they go immediately to appeasing everybody else and making sure that they’re okay. Right so, but a lot of people miss that in the threat system So what whatever there is something in that message, maybe it was just the receiving of that message, that guy went into his threat system and he decided it was gonna be a fight.
Yeah
And so one word, he got his justice, we’ll probably never hear from him again. Right, he’s probably not gonna reply to that, right. So then I think that the question is Kyle like if we recognize that this might be where people are in their lives is that and certainly if the last twelve months has shown us anything, it’s that people can go into that threat system really fast. So the question becomes, what would happen if people, if the imperfect inspired action that people took was to actually make an assumption that moved into soothing or self-soothing. Meaning, what if we actually looked at this inspired a perfect action. We looked at this with absolute compassion.
Love that.
I think about it I mean you and I sometimes go way out of our way and maybe awkwardly so, like I think sometimes we’re awkwardly kind. Like cause you and I have talked about it, it’s like well because we have this like name, address, and phone number, like I have it because because I’ve been there, I’ve been the guy I’ve never done it, but I’ve been the guy that’s want to hit reply and say . I’ve been that guy. And I know I’m not a bad person. I do stupid things sometimes.
people are hurting, it’s another way you see this, I mean how many times at a previous job we were at before IT banned it where they reply to the entire company to tell you their boss is an idiot and this place I mean people have had that type right cause that’s just what it is. And based on what you said as well I think people have to be mindful that even if you think, oh that would never happen to me, these people they don’t think that this would happen to, again we’re making some assumptions but this guy didn’t think that oh if I ever got a message like that I’m gonna reply .
No
Right so there’s times where depending what’s happening, you could jump into that right. And if I could just give an example of fleet for those people who were wondering. And you hear me say this sometimes too about, you know, you get a group of black people in a mall, start running we don’t need to worry why they’re running we just start running. There’s actually even Tik Toks that show it so I am I am validated when I say there’s times people
I’d like to see research on it like I wonder, do white people just sit there and stare and stare and go, what’s happening and do black people run like like a sort of feel like white people are like
Yeah we do
the lemurs right we’re like
We do. We just know if your running there’s a reason let’s just run.
Yeah lets just run.
We tap into fleet right away.
So, so your imperfect inspired action folks is what we call absolute compassion and this is what we want to do. And I think Kyle moving forward we are just gonna call ourselves the compassionate Cause we know what we did was compassionate. I wanted to come back to a point just real quick. I’d like our listeners to be back on this you’ll hear in the show notes how you can how you can reach out to us but, I We have this guys phone number, and one of the thoughts that I, Where I was going with this thing about being sometimes awkwardly kind. Where it’s like were so kind that sometimes people don’t know how to receive it. I want to know from our listeners, should we reach out to this guy and offer him some coaching? Like like pick up the phone, and call him and say listen, like this is your reply. We get it like for you to send that you have to have fallen on hard times. So, we are
Our assumptions right, yeah
We are going to, we are going to you know like should we reach out to him and say look we can’t give you a job, we can’t give you a job. We can’t give you a job, we can’t give you money, but we can offer you some coaching to help you, to help you with with moving forward with your life. So I want to hear from our listeners, like should we do that by the time this show airs? A couple of months will have passed from that time. So, so but for us it’s like we’re, you know, we’re brave enough to, you know, to reach out and and have a conversation so
So either we want to know what you say or we’ll update you if we did do it.
Yeah that’s right. Yeah. Sometimes
That’s awesome.
Sometimes people just need kindness Jesus.
I agree
Okay folks, here we go.
Compassionate . That’s you, that’s me.
[Narrator] It’s our goal to build a global community of inspired action takers and we can only do that with your help. So if you love Inspired Action, please leave a review on your favorite podcasting app and share us on your socials. You’ve heard from us, now we want to hear from you. Go to Inspiredactionpodcast.ca and tell us what is the inspired action you took this week. Next week on Inspired Action for Imperfect Humans,
You got hired, I’ll never forget the date. December eighth of 2008 and that was the beginning of the end of our relationship.
