Episode 199: Leaning Into Uncomfortable Conversations: Curiosity Over Conflict [featuring Michael Ashford]

Show Notes

Patrick Casale and Michael Ashford, the director of marketing for The Receptionist for iPad, a TEDx speaker and communications coach, a TEDx speaker himself, and an author, talk about a topic that couldn’t be more relevant in today’s climate. They discuss how curiosity, open conversation, and a willingness to step outside our bubbles are essential, not just for healthy workplaces, but for thriving as business owners and humans.

3 key takeaways:

1. Lean Into Discomfort for Growth: There’s power in having uncomfortable conversations—whether with colleagues, clients, or even those we disagree with. Real progress and understanding often begin with a willingness to engage rather than retreat to our echo chambers.

2. ASK-then-SEE Approach: Michael shared a tangible framework for communication:

   • ASK: Assume positive intent. Set aside your ego. Know you can’t know everything.

   • SEE: Search yourself (reflect on your own beliefs and biases). Explore other perspectives. Exchange curiosity—talk to people from different backgrounds and viewpoints.

3. Expand Your World—Even Locally: You don’t need to travel internationally to break out of your echo chamber. Engage with new communities close to home. Curiosity and openness to new perspectives enrich us both personally and professionally.

Whether you’re in private practice, leading a team, or just navigating a divided world, embracing curiosity and respectful dialogue is a game-changer.

More about Michael:

Michael Ashford is a communications explorer and a tireless optimist. He has spent years researching leadership, conflict communications, and how to overcome political and social polarization in an effort to chart a path to help us bridge divides, communicate well, and find more common ground. Michael is the Director of Marketing at a Denver-based software company, The Receptionist, as well as a podcaster, a two-time TEDx speaker, and what he calls an "independent journalist" as a shoutout to his former career as a newspaper editor.

• Website: michaelashford.com

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Transcript

PATRICK CASALE: Hey, everyone. Welcome back to the All Things Private Practice podcast, joined today, again by Michael Ashford for, I don't know if it's a second or third time, but repeat guest here on the podcast, the Director of Marketing for The Receptionist for iPad, a speaker, TEDx speaker, and communications coach, a TEDx speaker himself and an author. So, welcome back to the show.

MICHAEL ASHFORD: Appreciate it, man. Always good to spend time with you. I think this is number three, but I don't know.

PATRICK CASALE: Yeah, I told Gabrielle Juliano-Villani, who's coming on after you, like, she is now in the lead, being the fourth time she'll be coming on here. But you and a couple of other people are close behind.

MICHAEL ASHFORD: We're in a race.

PATRICK CASALE: You can have this conversation in Scotland next month when you're speaking at my summit. So, we were going back and forth on topics, and you let me know you just did a talk for Spruce Health, who we love on the show, and it was a topic called, like, You Want Me to Talk to Them.

MICHAEL ASHFORD: That's right.

PATRICK CASALE: Tell me more about that.

MICHAEL ASHFORD: That's right. You know, I think everybody knows the general feeling of angst that we're feeling right now here in, at least, the United States, for those of us listening here. And it's leading to a lot of uncomfortable situations, uncomfortable feelings, uncomfortable conversations, where what I see is a lot of us tend to withdraw into our own bubbles, echo chambers, and say, "Nah, I'm not engaging with those people. I'm good posting about them on social media, and I'm not actually going to go into the conversation."

And my whole presentation with Spruce and a lot of the work that I do, my TEDx talks, which you referenced earlier, are all about how you lean into those uncomfortable conversations and have productive dialog with people, even when you perhaps vehemently disagree.

PATRICK CASALE: Sure.

MICHAEL ASHFORD: And the positive outcomes that can come out of that.

PATRICK CASALE: Yeah. So, I think it's a crucial topic. And I'm already, like, thinking of questions in my mind where I'm like, "But…" So, I, like, want to unpack this and to give context for those of you listening who maybe don't know, Michael, you were a journalism major in college. Is that correct?

MICHAEL ASHFORD: That's correct. And a professional journalist for several years out of college, yes.

PATRICK CASALE: And you know, from our conversations and you have your own podcast, you're really all about curiosity, and conversation, and trying to hear all sorts of perspective to try as hard as you can, I would say, to try to have some neutrality, or at least the ability to hear every single take and perspective.

MICHAEL ASHFORD: Yeah, yeah. And, you know, you use that word neutrality, and I'm not sure that's where I come from. I have opinions [CROSSTALK 00:03:51]-

PATRICK CASALE: [CROSSTALK 00:03:51] for sure.

MICHAEL ASHFORD: Yeah, I have thoughts. I have my own opinions and my own way of viewing the world. What strikes me is I'm driven by this question, two questions, actually, what could I be missing? And what's my goal? And do my actions align with my goal? And if I could be missing something that could help my goal, wouldn't I want to know it? Even if that is something that I hear that's uncomfortable, that challenges me, that is someone else's truth that doesn't align with my truth, not capital T truth, right? So, and you know, people argue about that, but it is.

A lot of the work that I do, and I do a lot of this work for myself, because I needed this too, is how do we lean into those situations that challenge us, maybe morally feel uncomfortable or wrong even, based on our own lived experience and perspective of the world, but that it leads to outcomes that actually help us accomplish our goals, whatever those goals are.

PATRICK CASALE: Sure, yeah. And I bet a lot of people listening right now are like, "How do we do this?" Because you know as well as I do, right, right? Like, there's so much division, there's so much hatred, viscerally, there's extremism on both sides of the coin. So, how do we lean into any of that in terms of, can I be curious? Can I have conversation and dialogue? Especially, for people who might be saying, like, you know, there are a lot of people openly stating they want me to not exist anymore.

MICHAEL ASHFORD: Yeah, yep. And I always have to caveat, I am not asking people to walk into dangerous situations where their physical safety, their emotional safety, their spiritual safety, is at risk. And you have to make that determination for yourself. I am asking for us to lean into uncomfortable situations.

And I characterize this by two people who challenged me on this. One, her name is Robin Steinberg. She spent years, decades as a public defender in the New York City judicial system. And she wrote a book that deeply challenged me, where that phrase that you just brought up earlier, Patrick, but what about her whole premise is, even when someone has done something heinous, even to the point of murder, in her instance, where she's tasked with defending that person, there's still a human being worthy of value and respect, not discounting the fact that there is still a need for accountability, because they've broken laws, rules, societal norms.

Accountability is not the same as respect. Because I came at it with my own what about. I said, what about somebody who consistently knows they've done wrong? My wife before, she left her career when we had our second child, she worked as an advocate for survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault, right? And a lot of the women, in particular, obviously, it's a majority women are affected by this, a lot of the perpetrators did so knowingly over and over and over again. And I have a hard time saying, "Yeah, okay, I'm going to look at them with dignity and respect." She challenged me on that a lot. And she's been on my podcast, and I got to interview her. Wonderfully, wonderfully challenging conversation.

A second man who challenged me on this is a man named Daryl Davis. Do you know Daryl?

PATRICK CASALE: Mn-mm (negative).

MICHAEL ASHFORD: So, Darryl is a black man who, for years, has gone to KKK rallies-

PATRICK CASALE: Oh [CROSSTALK 00:07:56]-

MICHAEL ASHFORD: And engaged with white supremacist groups, doing exactly what I'm outlining here, which is leading with curiosity, all to answer this question that he has in his own mind, "How can you hate me if you don't even know me?"

PATRICK CASALE: Absolutely.

MICHAEL ASHFORD: And what has actually happened out of his conversations? And there's a lot to it. But what has happened is he's been the impetus, the driver, the reason why over 200 people have left those organizations.

PATRICK CASALE: It's amazing.

MICHAEL ASHFORD: Now, he didn't come at them wanting to punch him in the face, wanting to say, how can you do this? You know, pointing the finger, and saying, "You're wrong." He just said, and when it was driven by that question, "How can you hate me if you don't even know me?"

And man, when I think about those two questions that I talked about earlier, what's my goal and what could I be missing? Man, Darrell is the epitome of that. He's going actually into sometimes very dangerous situations, sitting down across the table from a Grand Wizard with two-armed bodyguards hovering over his shoulder. That's a really tense, dangerous situation. And he challenged me on if a black man like him can walk into that situation, what is stopping any of us from doing the same?

PATRICK CASALE: Absolutely, that's powerful.

MICHAEL ASHFORD: Yeah.

PATRICK CASALE: And now that you've mentioned the work, I'm like, okay, I'm definitely very aware of what he was doing, because I've seen some of those interviews before.

MICHAEL ASHFORD: It's incredible.

PATRICK CASALE: And it's just unbelievably powerful, and how unbelievably courageous to go into an environment like that, where you are experiencing that level of hatred, racism, misogyny, bigotry, and just asking that very…

MICHAEL ASHFORD: And, you know, he puts it like this, you know, all growing up, he had heard the phrases like it is what it is. You can't change people. They are who they always will be. You know, you can't do anything about it.

And he uses the phrase, you know, a tiger can't change its stripes, a leopard can't change its spots. And he said, "No, wait a minute. Hold on. The tiger and leopard can't change because they were born with their stripes and spots. A racist, a bigot, a misogynist, all those things they're not born with that as a trait. That is instilled, that is taught, that is learned, and what can be taught, learned, and instilled can be untaught and unlearned." And that is a driver for him. But you have to go about it in ways that actually drive towards your goals, drive towards actual production of positive outcomes.

And you asked me, Patrick, how do we do this? Well, I write about this in my book. I talk a lot about it on my podcast. I came up with what's called the Ask then See approach to conflict, communication. And ASK and SEE are both acronyms.

Ask is assume positive intent. That's probably the hardest thing for us to do. Set aside your ego and know that you can't know everything. That's A-S-K. Then once you get into that mindset, SEE. Search yourself, ask questions of yourself to understand what it is you truly believe and how your lived experience informed your perspective of the world, then the first E in SEE is, explore other perspectives. Stay in your mind, but just ask the question, "Hey, Michael, as a guy who grew up in rural, red state, Kansas, how might I have experienced the world, and grown up, and gotten a view of the world that's different from a black girl who grew up in inner city, Detroit?"

PATRICK CASALE: Sure.

MICHAEL ASHFORD: Right? And all you got to do is just say, how might that inform our perspectives of the world? So, you explore other perspectives. If you're still doing it within the safety of your mind, but you're at least opening up yourself to that knowledge of, what do I not know? What could I be missing? Then the third E is, exchange your curiosity with others. Go and ask questions of others, using curiosity not as a weapon, but as a true driver for understanding, knowing that you don't know everything to achieve the outcomes and the goals that you want.

If you follow that, if you keep that methodology in mind that has been repeated over and over again. Unconsciously, that's what Darryl Davis was doing. Unconsciously, that was what Martin Luther King was doing. And if you don't have anyone in your network, Patrick, where you can do that last E, exchange your curiosity with someone, your network is too small, your bubble is too insulated.

PATRICK CASALE: Absolutely, yeah.

Yeah. And one, I love both of those acronyms. I love breaking it down that way for everyone. Do you have any? I mean, I know you have your book. We'll link it in the show notes, but that's a great, like, deliverable of like those, those specific acronyms with the steps and the explanations.

If your bubble is too insulated and it's too small, right? And we have to grow outside of that. And most of you listening are business owners, mental health professionals, you know, people who are maybe entrepreneurs in general, like being curious, being open really allows us to expand, right? Not only as humans, but in our businesses too, how we interact with the world, how we kind of view the people that we're supporting or serving. That's why I think travel is so important too, right? Because so many people have either not had the privilege nor the desire to leave that insulated bubble in community, and if that's all you know, then that is all you know. And it's really hard to be curious about other perspectives and ways of life and cultures, if that's how you've experienced the majority of your life.

MICHAEL ASHFORD: And you know, I think a lot of people's minds go to international travel when you talk about that, Patrick, but I can think of people in my own hometown, small town, Bonner Springs, Kansas, roughly 7000 people who have never left but have a judgment of places like…

PATRICK CASALE: California.

MICHAEL ASHFORD: California, New York, Texas. Like, you have these judgments, and you've never been, and you've never explored outside of, you know, the Kansas City Metro Area, right?

PATRICK CASALE: [CROSSTALK 00:16:32] No, absolutely.

MICHAEL ASHFORD: You don't have to go to Ghana or India, or Japan, or Australia, to understand different cultures and to get out of that bubble. Man, go across the state line for a little bit.

PATRICK CASALE: [CROSSTALK 00:16:50].

MICHAEL ASHFORD: Or make that venture into that cafe in the inner city, or vice versa, go to that cafe in that small town. Gosh, you don't know what you don't know, but it does a disservice when you form an opinion about it anyway.

PATRICK CASALE: A fish only grows as big as its tank, right? Like, it's-

MICHAEL ASHFORD: Right.

PATRICK CASALE: So, like, the ability to be uncomfortable with, or be comfortable with the uncomfortable, to put yourself in situations. Like, if you're the only white face in the room and you feel uncomfortable, that's probably a good thing, because so many people of color experience that on a daily basis.

And this insulated, like, implicit bias that we have, and this understanding of not only like our surroundings, but of the world, is often shaped by what we're learning in our, like, families and our in our ancestry, in our community, and if our community stays really insulated, it's really hard for that curiosity to grow.

And I know for myself, like, growing up in Northern New York being a part of some fairly racist environments, if I'm being honest, as a child, and a teenager, and a young adult, it took getting out of that and having to explore that, not only in college, but after college, to really get a view of the world that felt so much more interesting, so much more curiosity. And some of that implicit bias starts to fade away as you start to meet people from other cultures and other backgrounds. And I think that is so necessary. That's why I love Anthony Bourdain so much. You see a picture behind me-

MICHAEL ASHFORD: Yeah.

PATRICK CASALE: [CROSSTALK 00:18:30] shirt right now. He made the world feel less small or more small, more safe, and the reality of people from all different walks of life, all different cultures, all different countries, we all want the same thing, connection, community, understanding. Like, that's a universal truth. And I felt like that was so important in the work that he did.

MICHAEL ASHFORD: I agree, man and he had such a brilliant way to introduce the world to us through food, which is another one of those core human staples that we have to have and that we enjoy.

And, you know, I forget who said it, but I love the phrase, "It's hard to hate people up close." There's a girl who's been on my podcast a couple times and has a wonderful TEDx talk. Her name is Monica Guzman. She said that people who are underrepresented in your life will be over represented in your mind. And getting outside of those bubbles, extending yourself into those uncomfortable situations gives yourself a chance to tell your body and your nervous system, "Hey, it's not as bad as you think." You create these scenarios in your head.

And yeah, you're right, whether it's Anthony Bourdain, whether it's Daryl Davis, who spent years as a kid. His dad traveled around to different embassies, did a lot of work in embassies around the world. That's the perspective he gained is like this racism that I experience here, it doesn't happen over here and it doesn't happen here. So, it has to be a learned behavior. It's not the shared human experience.

And Patrick, here's something that makes people really uncomfortable, there's studies that show, actually, all of us have the same moral mind at its core, at its basic core, which is to see ourselves and those that we love safe.

Now, our scenarios, our situations, our experiences we go through life, our interactions with other people outside of that initial tribe, begin to shape that definition of morality, differently.

But here's how warped it can be. There was a study done in England several years ago where college students at a university were, there were two sets. One was primed to think about themselves within the global schema of college students. Think about all the shared experiences that college students around the world experience. The other was primed to think about themselves as students of that university, that particular university that they were at. They were then given a smelly, sweaty, disgusting t-shirt of the rival university. It had been worn for a week by different, they had worked out in it, and it was in this plastic bag.

And these two groups, they took turns smelling the disgusting t-shirt. The people who were primed to think about themselves globally said that the t-shirt, reported that the t-shirt smelled better than the ones who were primed to think about themselves as that in that university.

So, literally, when we're primed, when we are in a environment where we just feed upon our biases and our beliefs, we literally think someone smells worse than they actually do. Now, extend that out to not just a t-shirt, but somebody who votes differently than you, somebody who has a different religion than you. Like, we can get into some really dark and we all know the dark places that we've gone to, even in this country and here in the United States, the dark places people can go to when we prime ourselves to think about me, myself, and my little tribe, versus us as humans.

PATRICK CASALE: Yeah.

MICHAEL ASHFORD: That's how powerful these biases can enter our systems and feel right, feel like we're correct. Go back to is the dress gold or is the dress blue? Is it Yanni or is it Laurel? Like, nobody's wrong, how you see that. But it's all informed by your perspective and what you want to see and what you want to believe. Man, we're trippy creatures. We are trippy.

PATRICK CASALE: We are. [CROSSTALK 00:23:06] nuance here too. And it just sucks where there's so much entrenchment, in a lot of ways, like, on belief systems and things that we, especially, in this country are starting to really feel that massive division in.

And, you know, I hear so many people like, if we want change and we want to see things shift in the next couple of years, we have to understand the other side. We have to be able to have conversation. And so many people would say, "There is no understanding. There is no, like, ability to have conversation." And I think that sucks for a lot of reasons, because I think a lot of this division was very intentionally done in so many arenas.

MICHAEL ASHFORD: There's a lot of people who make a lot of money off of dividing us.

PATRICK CASALE: Yep, yep. I don't remember if we talked about the study that the person who created the YouTube algorithm went to the YouTube creators and directors, was like, "This is scary. Like, this algorithm is designed to eventually divide."

MICHAEL ASHFORD: Yeah.

PATRICK CASALE: And they fired him.

MICHAEL ASHFORD: Yeah. When the people creating the systems that we're using every day don't let their kids use it and don't use it themselves, that should tell you something.

PATRICK CASALE: Yes, and I think that's why it's so important to, like, try as hard as you humanly can to, like, zoom out from it, from being like, in it all the time. Because you have to look at some of this stuff to say, like, what is the purpose here? Like, what is the desired outcome of some of the things that are happening? And a lot of people just believe things because they're told to believe things, or this is how they grew up. And I do think your examples really help frame the ability to have just even 1% more curiosity in terms of how to have conversations with people who you might not agree with. And we don't have to talk about extreme beliefs here, because a lot of you might say there's no curiosity for the other side, but just people [CROSSTALK 00:25:07].

MICHAEL ASHFORD: It happens at work. It happens at work, man.

PATRICK CASALE: Exactly.

MICHAEL ASHFORD: This method of curiosity and leading into uncomfortable conversations, it can happen with a disagreement over a co-worker, or disagreement at work with a coworker. It doesn't have to be some big societal moral issue.

PATRICK CASALE: Right. And that's, yeah, framing it down to that, you know, in everyday life of like disagreement with a co-worker, a sibling, a spouse, a partner, a friend. Having that curiosity to just see the other side of the coin and to understand the other perspective is unbelievably important. It's unbelievably important when we talk about rupture and repair. You really can't repair a rupture without curiosity about why the rupture was created or how it got to that point. And I think that's also important for all of you who are thinking about it as therapists, business owners. You might have people you own a business with together, and the ability to see both sides of that perspective and coin is really crucial.

MICHAEL ASHFORD: And I would leave the listeners with this. You know, the S in SEE is search yourself. That in and of itself can be deeply uncomfortable.

PATRICK CASALE: Absolutely.

MICHAEL ASHFORD: That's why my podcast is called Rethinking Communication, and I want you to ask questions of yourself that you have to take some time to figure out. And one of those questions can be, what's something that I have rethought lately? What's something that I have changed my mind about recently? And if you haven't, start asking yourself why?

PATRICK CASALE: I like that. I think that's a really like tangible exercise, too, for those of you listening. So, I appreciate that final thought. I also like that we both like understand the dynamics of podcasting, as you can tell we're wrapping up, you're like, "All right, I'm going to leave us with a final thought." It's always [CROSSTALK 00:26:52].

MICHAEL ASHFORD: We've been doing this for a while, right?

PATRICK CASALE: [CROSSTALK 00:26:55]. Yeah. So, very good final thought. Always good to have you on, man. I'm excited to see you in Scotland next month and-

MICHAEL ASHFORD: Can't wait.

PATRICK CASALE: Tell everyone where they can find what you've got going on.

MICHAEL ASHFORD: Yeah. So, as you said, I'm the Director of Marketing at The Receptionist. We're a supporter of this show, and have been for several years, and we absolutely love this community. Go to thereceptionist.com if you want to check out our visitor check in system and see if that makes sense for you and your office.

And then, my personal website is michaelashford.com. You can go there check out my speaking and leadership coaching stuff, my podcast, masterclass, all that good stuff.

PATRICK CASALE: Love it. And Michael was actually my TEDx speaker coach, and was unbelievably instrumental in that process. So, I want to just thank you for that, making me the most uncomfortable I've ever been on a speaking stage. Thanks for that experience, but in all seriousness-

MICHAEL ASHFORD: And you crushed, you crushed. So, good job, man.

PATRICK CASALE: [CROSSTALK 00:27:51] behind the scenes that were stressing me out so badly that it was all I could think about when I got on stage. I was just like, "Wait, what is my talk again?"

MICHAEL ASHFORD: You were good.

PATRICK CASALE: But, yeah, seriously, instrumental, invaluable, and really a wonderful mentor in that way.

MICHAEL ASHFORD: Thanks man.

PATRICK CASALE: And then, as everyone knows, The Receptionist for iPad has sponsored this podcast for three years in a row as the exclusive sponsor. And if you have a visiting check-in system or you are interested, go check them out. I mean, really, really care about the work that we're doing as mental health providers, as small business owners, as medical providers, like really deeply care. And I can't say that enough, because I don't think we would be sitting here having this three-year relationship if either side felt the other way. So, really appreciate all the support as well. All of that is in the show notes. And to everyone still listening, doubt yourself, do it anyway. We will see you next week. Thanks, Michael.

MICHAEL ASHFORD: Thank you.