Ideas in the Wild: Author Kevin McCarney Aims To Show Us How to Take Back Control of Our Communication

In a world where anything we text, post, or blurt out can go viral instantly, having control over our words is critical to our success. Whenever we’re frustrated, angry, or under stress, those negative influences try to control what we’ll say next. When we give in to them, they get more powerful, controlling our tone and our words, and ultimately having a negative impact on us.

Fortunately, there’s a way for us to take charge. Kevin McCarney’s new book Big Brain Little Brain distills all communication into simple and accessible tools all of us can use immediately.

I recently caught up with Kevin for a wide-ranging discussion about the book: how it came together, what his experience has been like sharing its ideas with the world, and how he’s learned to apply what he talks about in the book to his own life.

What happened that made you decide to write the book? What was the exact moment when you realized these ideas needed to get out there?

I have seen too many times when in the pressure of the moment, people will over-react and create long lasting problems for themselves. In customer service we see this all the time. Even in our personal lives if we are not aware of how our responses or reactions affect others it can have long lasting consequences for us.

A day after one of our Big Brain Little Brain training sessions for our co-workers the Enchilada story in Chapter 5 took place. A customer was completely overreacting to a situation and the manager was able to get to Neutral, not take the comments being made personal, and work with the customer to create a great outcome. The positive impact of that moment illustrated how much the power of our responses can bring even the most negative of moments to a positive conclusion. Ultimately the guest apologized and explained it was a situation in her personal life that was the cause of the outburst.

At our regular meetings we asked everyone to share a Big Brain or Little Brain moment from the past week. The stories were so effective in teaching us how Little Brain can show up everyday in so many situations and how to deal with it when it does. When I became a father I realized I would have to up my game when it came to understanding how I needed to communicate as a dad. I learned so much from my two girls and there are a few stories in the book that illustrate what they taught me and how they responded in pressure situations.

What’s the biggest lesson you’ve learned going through the journey you share in the book?

That everyone wants to learn how to communicate better and they truly appreciate the tools to help them. In the presentations to a wide variety of groups, Business groups, High School students, Parent groups and government organizations I noticed they all are the same. They were all seeking ways to improve the culture of their organizations. They realized that the everyday communication within the group has an immediate impact on that culture.

As I gave presentations after my first book in 2011. It quickly became clear that some people felt stuck and were not confident they could easily get to Big Brain when they needed. Many spoke of the fight or flight response. Some felt more comfortable with flight and others were more comfortable with fight. It became clear I had to give them a place to go, if even for a few seconds, to ponder their response and once there give them tools to use.

That is when I introduced Neutral. That little bit of time you have in pressure situations to choose the right response. Neutral was an immediate hit.

After a presentation to a business group on Neutral a person from the group sent me a quote and information on Viktor Frankl. He was a neurologist, psychiatrist and holocaust survivor. His ideas about response under pressure were in alignment with the Neutral concept. He called it “the space between” the space (time) between the stimulus of something happening and the time you respond or react.

In the pressure of the moment, the ability to pause in Neutral and use the tools in the book and maybe even adding some of your own, will strengthen your communication at work, at home and in life. I am asked to give the Big Brain Little Brain presentation to many groups but one of the most satisfying was a group that was training people coming out of prison and homelessness in a 14 week culinary skills program to be able to get an entry level job at a restaurant. I was asked to teach the participants about how to handle the pressure of the kitchen, especially when things go wrong and if you know anything about commercial kitchens things will go wrong.

A few months after one of the presentations I was there to meet a new group. From across the kitchen I heard “Hey Neutral!” A student from a previous presentation could not wait to tell me something. Running up he paused, almost out of breath, and said “I wish I had known about Neutral a long time ago. It has made such a difference in my life.” Neutral is easy to grasp and easy to access.

How will you apply this lesson in your life moving forward?

Take control of your time. Pressure of the moment situations will arrive more often than we would like and much of what is happening is because the world wants to go faster and we are given less and less time to handle situations.

The world seems focused on speed. We need to get from here to there faster. Cars need to go faster. Planes need to go faster. Trains need to go faster. We need to squeeze as much as we can into our day, and get to work faster and home faster. We need to return emails and text faster.

This leaves less time to think and creates less time to genuinely communicate. Less time to just be. With all this speed we are leaving something behind. We are leaving behind the quality of our conversations with each other and it is diminishing the quality of our relationships.

We do though, have the power to choose. Choose to step out of the frenzy and take control, whether stopping in Neutral or just giving ourselves more time in our schedules to prevent pressure situations. We need to give ourselves more space to simply think. If we don’t, the frantic gallop being developed around us will begin to takes its toll on our professional and personal lives. We will say things we wish we had not or do things we wish we had not.

We have a choice. We may not be able to change the pace of the outside world but we can choose to control the pace on our own.