Topaz Adizes, an Emmy Award-winning writer, director, author, experience design architect, and founder of The Skin Deep, explains why the mind is built to protect you but heart is built to connect you and how the quality of your life is correlated with the quality of your relationships, why not sleeping in your kitchen is important and why not to confuse comfort with safety, shares the importance of his first kiss and on focusing on questions over answers, dives into his new book, and tackles the question of what IS humanity?

Okay, just so, you know, I am so hyped to talk

to you.

Definitely, let's do it, how you doing?

Oh, awesome. How are you?

Good, very happy to be here.

Yeah, we're happy to have you. I'm super

excited.

Where are you at? Are you in? Where are you at?

What is that behind you?

Nashville, Tennessee.

I left my heart in Nashville. My high school

girlfriend played soccer at Vanderbilt. Summer love

freshman year, went there. Broke my heart.

We're sorry.

That's my that's my memory of Vander... of

Nashville, Tennessee, which I hear is an amazing city.

Come back, bring your family. It's an incredible

town.

Super cool.

Okay, so I have so many questions. I have a

pretty decent human curiosity slash fascination with

psychology of humans, and one of my favorite ways to engage is

just asking questions. I'm just curious. That's going to be my

thing, my epitaph, I'm just curious. And your background

this phrase illuminating humanity. Where does that come

from? For you?

Yeah, good question. Um, what is humanity?

I ask that a lot, and I also ask if, if it's humanity I love, or

is it humans I love? Frankly, I'm not sure. I like humans, but

I love humanity. But what is humanity? I think humanity is

not something that's in us. I think it's what's between us,

it's that incredible conversation you have with a

stranger in the taxi that we used to have before we had

phones, or in the elevator on the plane flight, where you just

share about life, and you find this resonant connection with

someone or your shared reflection, even though you have

two disparate souls that will never meet again, and you have

that moment of like, ah, or you have a big fight with your best

friend or your partner or your sibling, and you go through it,

and then afterwards, you can look at each other in the eye,

and you just feel a sense of connection, of understanding,

right? Or you're on that sports team where you or a work team

where you have a common goal, and you work through the long

hours a night, or challenges and and you accomplish that goal.

You successfully do it together, and you look each other, you

have a high five, or you have that shared goal, and there's a

sense of like coherence with each other. For a moment, you

don't feel lonely. You've shared something, you've accomplished

something, you've gone through a test, you come out together and

you feel connected with someone that, to me, is humanity. So the

question is, how do you cultivate it? And that's what

I've been exploring for the last 11 years, and you're asking,

Where does it come from? Well, it comes from a deep wound.

Look, my kid, my parents got divorced when I was four, and I

was the oldest sibling. I have a siblings 15 months younger. And

you know, when you're four years old, you look up these parents

that you have, and they're not parents. They're gods. I mean,

when you're that young, your parents are incredible beings,

right? When the gods are going at war, you start going, what's

this about my parents? Great parents have great relationships

with them. Now. Them, getting divorced was a great thing for

them. And frankly, as painful as it was for me, it was good for

me too. Why? Because it created a hunger for connection and

intimacy. And so first, it started as a wound that turned

into a hunger that became a gift. You know, I went into

filmmaking as a young person, you know, my 20s and 30s, and I

found that the camera was a great bridge. It was a door

opener. It was entering in people's world, and I could

record them, I could talk to them, I could ask questions. And

so I've used that gift of filmmaking to create this

project called the and, and I think it's a wonderful archive

of human relationships, but that ultimately comes from a deep

wound as a child of witnessing divorce and seeing a lack of

connection.

So then, do you remember the first time you had

a consciousness, an awareness of, hey, this is real human

connection?

My first kiss, my first kiss, which was late in

life. I was 17. It was end of my junior year of high school, and

I remember intentionally. I know this is probably not what

anybody's expecting to hear on this podcast, but you asked the

question, and I remember, as a young person, I said, I don't

want to, I know I'm a very passionate person, and if I

start engaging like physically with someone kissing, I'm going

to be very emotionally passionate, and I'm going to

want to go far, so I need to wait until I'm mature enough to

do that. I don't want to do that when I'm 13 or 14. So I anyways,

end of junior year, and I remember looking the eyes of

this, you know, young woman who's in my class, who are both

juniors, and I just remember my heart exploding, looking into

her eyes. I saw the. Whole universe in her eyes, and I felt

the whole universe in my heart. And that's the moment when I

felt like connection. That's what I've been yearning for and

looking for, and that was, I guess, the first time I really

felt that.

So the physical connection was the kiss.

It's not the kiss, it's looking in the other person

in the eye and having this strong emotion for them. It

wasn't, you know, just the act of the kiss, the kiss was

followed that but it was looking into some other person's Deep

Black Onyx of the eye. You know, we often forget that if you look

at any animal and any human, regardless of what it is and

what color eye it is, at the center, it's always the same

color. It's a Black Onyx. And isn't that interesting? I mean,

I don't care if it's a snake, a shark or a human. The center is

a Black Onyx, and we look in the depth of a Black Onyx of another

human being. There's a journey there to be had.

So then we fast forward, and you go, Okay, I

want to spend a lot of my time in craft, seeking that, sharing

it with others.

Well, you know, it's funny, when you and I look

back, I can find this undercurrents of what shaped me,

what did life sculpt into me? What experience does it give me

such that I was in a position to receive this beautiful format

that then we're applying and sharing with the world? On the

top line, it's, you know, I was a filmmaker. I had films that

went to Sundance, and then I had a film at Cannes, and things

were not taking off. You know, I had films set up, and it was it.

But just I was my friends were doing really well. And even

though I had done really successfully, you know, two at

Sundance and one at Canada, which is the biggest film

festival in the world, it wasn't picking up. And by accident, I

put the film on Vimeo without a password, and it got picked up

as short of the week. And in one week, I had 400 500,000 views in

one week, and that was a big Hey, wait a second, what game Am

I playing? What game Am I playing? And I just want to

share with the audience, if you're going to take anything

away from this conversation, it's that we need to focus on

the questions we ask ourselves and our team members, not on the

answers. And so that question of, hey, what game Am I playing?

Because, until that point, I was playing the game of being a film

director, right? But then I just got half a million people,

400,000 people in one week to watch my film. Well, how much

time, money and energy would that take me to do that in this

other route? What game Am I playing? Am I playing the game

of film director? You know, modern day, popular culture

meditations, what I saw cinema as, or I want to play that game

of injecting ideas into the mainstream, of offering new

perspectives to the mainstream. And if that's the game I want to

play, don't play it in theaters. Play in the digital platforms,

because it spreads us much faster. It was 2011 Well, if we

move the digital field, what, what's worthwhile talking about,

what's personal to me, and at that time, I was living in

Brooklyn, New York, and I have a brother who's 16 years younger

than I, and we were both single, and I saw how we were both

dating completely differently because of our relationships to

technology. I remember one time I was writing a script, and I

was in Sun Valley, Idaho, and I would been dating a woman in New

York and and I sent her a text saying, Hey, thank you love or

something. And she goes Topaz. When you write love in your text

message, do you mean that, like an English person just saying

love is some kind of passing vernacular, or do you really

mean love? I said, Oh, wait, wait, wait, I gotta call this

person. So I called her up and we have a 45 minute talk. And at

the end of the talk, she said, You know what? Thank you so much

for calling me. Because in all the past relationships I've been

having last few years, every time we talk about something

intimate, it's over text. And I really appreciate you calling

me. And I remember thinking that's not what shocked me. What

shocked me was that she was only five years younger than I and

yet the generational gap was, of course, I'm going to call you

when I have a conversation. And yet in the people she was dating

five years younger, it was actually more normal to text.

And what I realized is, and that, along with my brother and

how he was dating differently than I was, was that, how is the

emotional experience of being human? How we relate to each

other? How do we articulate our emotions? How do we feel our

emotions changing in lieu of all this technology that's coming to

our lives? And that set me off on the journey of like, okay, I

want to explore that theme, because that's incredible. And

I'm going to do on the digital platforms. I'm going to inject

ideas in the mainstream, inject questions in the mainstream via

digital platforms, because that's the quickest way, most

engaging way to do it. But the subject I want to explore is the

emotional experience of being human. How is that shifting in

the landscape of all this technology that's coming up, and

thus launched the skin deep, which is an experience design

studio. And then under that, we have a bunch of different

experiences and products, of which the and is the most

famous, we have questions and card games and videos, and

that's that's where we're at today.

So one of the things we hear a lot about is,

because of the age of technology that we're in, we're more

connected than we've ever been, and yet we're less connected

than we've ever been. So I can see two schools of thought on

this book, 12 questions for love, a guide to intimate

conversations and deeper relationships. I can see some

folks going, Oh, my God, I don't need to be. Told I'm a terrible

partner and I'm terrible at all these things. No, thank you. And

then, of course, I see a natural audience. They go, Oh my gosh.

I've been seeking these things show me and tell me how to do

this. For the naysayers, why is this worth their time?

Totally. Great question. Who do you know has

sat through and watched over 1200 pairs of people in

intimate, real, courageous conversations? Maybe a

therapist. But then who's asking the questions when you go to

couples therapy, therapist is who are the couples looking at

when they're talking about the answers? They're looking at the

therapist. They're not looking at each other. What we've done

and what my team and I have had the privilege and honor is for

the last 11 years in 10 countries, over 1200 pairs to

bring them into a room. And I'm not just talking about talking

about partners who are married or dating. I'm talking about

grandparents with their children, best friends, siblings

bring them. They sit down and for an hour and an hour and 20

minutes, they're facing each other, and the space is theirs.

We've laid down questions for them to ask each other, and they

go off and literally, we're just sitting there watching them.

I've been doing that for the last 11 years. That data set is

gigantic, so that, to me, has been a privilege, because I've

been able to witness, how do you create the space to have these

cathartic conversations? And that's something that we don't

get taught. We taught that by modeling our family or maybe our

friends group. And in the case of work, the companies you work

at, you model it, but you're not necessarily taught it, because

no one's tested it out over time so many times. And so that's

what's worthwhile in the book, is that look, here are 12

questions to have a cathartic conversation. But what's most

important is teaching you how is you need to create the space,

and two, how to construct great questions. These are tools that

you can bring into your toolkit, that you can apply to your

relationship with your friends, family and co workers, anyone in

your life.

So what I'm hearing you say, because I want

to be really intentional about this message getting out. This

isn't about, hey, how to be a better boyfriend or be a better

husband or spouse or whatever. This is about how to connect at

what I call a real level with another human, in a way that, if

I'm hearing you right, both parties walk away saying that

was a good use of my time, and with the hope of a deeper, more

meaningful connection to another human.

100%. Absolutely, part of creating this space is

that you need to come at it without An agenda. And what I

mean by agenda is not bullet points. What we're talking

about, I'm talking about agenda of where we're going to end up.

You have to come with an intention. But the point is, the

bottom line is, how do we create the space with well constructed

questions? What's the result? Is, I want to have a

conversation. We don't have a conversation where we're

exploring our relationship. Here's the formula. Esther

Perel, you know, the famous, uh, author and therapist in that

field, she says, look, the quality of your life is

commensurate to the quality of your relationships. All right,

if I buy that great well, then how do I have quality

relationships? One way to do it is have quality conversations.

We're blessed with the ability to communicate our ideas and

stories. What makes us so successful as humans. We can

communicate ideas and emotions, stories and beliefs and have

conversations, right? Okay, how do we have good conversations?

That's where I come in. So if you create the space and you ask

well constructed questions, you can have incredible

conversations. Guess what? If you have incredible

conversations, you have incredible relationships. If you

have incredible relationships, you'd have incredible life. Why?

Cuz your relationships reflect your experience of what it means

to be human and to be alive. That's the formula.

Okay, even at the end of the day, if you

ultimately don't share someone's opinion, you disagree with them,

you part ways and decide, hey, I don't want to be in a

relationship, whether it's work or whatever the case may be, I

think so much is doing it in a healthy way that even if

something ends both people go, Hey, that was still worth my

time. That was still meaningful like so with that, talk to me

about what are the things people do wrong when they are

attempting to create space? And what are some things to keep in

mind?

What things to keep in mind and what people do

wrong. You don't sleep in the kitchen and you don't cook in

the bedroom. You do certain things in certain spaces. So are

we articulating the rooms we're in, in the house of our

relationship, talking about work, right? What kind of

meeting are we having right now? Do we tell the people to do

that? Do we tell people what kind of meeting we're having?

We're doing a brain story meeting team. The reason you

tell them about the space you're in is that you're articulating

what is permissible, what's acceptable, what is what we were

suggesting. This is the behavior that we want. Ah, this is the

game we're playing in the kitchen. You know, you're

cooking, you're not going to sleep in the kitchen. And in the

bedroom, you're sleeping. You're not cooking in there. So the

expectations or permissions are clear in our relationships. Are

we doing the same? So the work world is like, Okay, if we call

a meeting, what kind of meeting is this? What's the phase we're

in now? Are we brainstorming? Because how many times are you

in a brainstorming meeting where everyone's brainstorming at the

end, there's no decisions made? People are upset. Wait, hold on,

this was a brainstorming meeting, so don't expect us to

end up with a decision or vice versa. It is a decision making

meeting. You're not interested in new ideas. We need to decide

who's doing what by when and how. Now people are like, wait.

They're never asking for ideas, and I know we got to be clear

about what kind of meeting this is, and that's part of the

space, so that's one thing too. Let's not confuse comfort and

safety, or let's not confuse discomfort with being unsafe.

Let's not confound them. Safety is imperative, but discomfort is

great. If I wanted to go bungee jumping, in theory, I should be

safe, because these guys have done it all the time. The rope

is tested. You know, I'm like, the 5000 person doing this, and

okay, so in theory, I'm safe because they've checked

everything. They know the bunch is good. But am I uncomfortable?

Absolutely I'm uncomfortable. But that doesn't mean I'm not

safe. Now, in your conversations at work or with relationships.

Are you safe? How do we create that safety? Well, part of it is

articulating, hey, what's the room we're in? What are the

rules? What are the boundaries here, what is expected? And then

to say, okay, in that space now we can ask these construct, well

constructed questions that put us in discomfort. And we can

actually be uncomfortable because we know we're safe, but

just because you're uncomfortable does not meet

You're not safe. And vice versa, just because you're still

comfortable does not actually mean you're safe. So making that

distinction is good, and not shying away from discomfort and

actually leaning into it, but making sure that the space is

created, that you feel safe and then you can ask questions in a

way that reinforce that safety or not, there's a lot of power

in the questions. And we're always so focused on the

answers, and we don't realize how, by shaping the question,

you are shaping the answer. This is huge. So let me just give a

very simple example. It's 738 o'clock, and you go to your kids

and you say, Hey, do you want to go to sleep? What do you think

the answer is? We all know it's no. You ask the question, do you

want to go to sleep? It's like, yes or no. I mean, okay, but if

you go and say, Hey kids, you want to sleep on the couch or in

the bed, you've already saved the answer. The answer is, bed

or the couch, the question has shaped the answer the options.

Oftentimes we're so good at finding answers, but oftentimes

we find the right answers to the wrong questions. Put more

emphasis on the questions. Why did this campaign fail? Why did

this candidate not work out? What about saying? Let me change

that question. What can we learn from this campaign that we could

take to the next what was the failure of this candidate that

started the company and didn't work out? What could we do to

improve to ensure that the next one doesn't have the same

failure? So you're asking questions that are giving you

answers that are constructive, that you can actually have

agency from, versus saying, why did this campaign not work? Oh,

here's 1000 reasons. Why not shift the question such that the

answers you get are going to be constructive to your life, to

your business? Let's just take a very simple question, because

power dynamics are really important in the workplace, and

you're trying to create a safe space where you can share your

opinion, but you also don't want to get fired or pissed off the

boss or the politics of the culture. So you're in a meeting.

It's a group of you, and whoever's running the meeting

with the parades, let's say they are, the executive who's running

the meeting has responsibility for some decisions, or the unit

leading the team, and they ask a question. First of all, the fact

that they're asking a question is already a power play, because

they get to ask the question, and everyone the team is going

wait, why are they asking that question? But here comes that

question. You're in the meeting, and the boss goes, Stephanie,

why did our marketing campaign fail? Why did the product fail,

or whatever? Why did the product succeed? That question shapes

that your answer is going to give an objective truth about

reality. It failed because this and this, and this, this, now

everyone else in the room is going, that's not why it failed.

No, wait, that doesn't wait, found and now we have some type

of conflict, because the question has actually invited

you to give an objective truth which everyone else has

different opinions about. If you just add the words, why do you

think, or why do you feel? You see how that preamps any kind of

conflict going forward, because this is your subjective opinion.

I can't disagree with your subjective opinion. And by

asking that in the especially in the power dynamic space, it's

like inviting you in to give your opinion. And this is

inviting you step in in this way that's safe, because we can't

really argue with your subjective experience. So you

can say, from my point of view.dot.if, the boss says, Why

did the product fail, your response can start just say,

from my point of view, but a better question as a leader is

to say, Why do you think, why do you feel that's her experience?

That's her POV. Thank you for your POV. What's your POV?

Jimmy, and from that, we're inviting different POVs to

illuminate all the opportunities for challenge. And then we could

discuss, from that, what do we think is objectively true or

not, but just by adding Why do you think? Why do you feel, is

already shaping an answer that's less confrontational, less

conflict, and there's a lot of little semantic tools we can use

in constructing questions to invite sharing while still

keeping it safe, albeit uncomfortable.

These are things that are not often talked about

on leadership as it should be. I do think leadership is a

privilege, and a lot of what we've talked about through this

podcast is stepping into leadership is not what it was

back, probably when our parents were in business, it was

management. We're not doing that anymore.

Which I think is really important for a leader.

When you talk about leader, I love the fact you said it's a

privilege. I think these days, I think if you. See leadership as

a privilege and a responsibility. I think that's a

wonderful way to see that, because you you do have the

power dynamics. So how are you utilizing that to make a more

coherent team? Why? So that we could be more successful

together? Why? So that we can earn the financial income and

resources by providing value to our clients, or whoever it is,

to our market, such that we could support our the passions

of ourselves and the well being of our family and the loved ones

and our community. You know you could cut off a friend if you

disagree, you could do that. Family members much more

difficult. But co workers. Only way to cut someone off is one of

you has to get fired. One of you has to quit. And so sometimes

you really have to face conflict with the people you work with,

because otherwise your livelihood is at stake. So the

stakes of being able to work coherently together are even

more important. And so the leadership, you say, privilege,

I think that's a great way, and part of that is how to create

the space and acknowledge the power dynamic in the room. We

often don't do it, but by doing it, it's actually calling the

elephant in the room, by articulating your intention, not

your agenda. And the intention could be what I mean by that is

not the bullet points. Agenda. I'm talking about agenda is

where we end up. Oftentimes, you go to your team and you're like,

you've already made a decision. You just want to convince

everyone on your point of view, and everyone knows it, and

there's a power dynamic. So they don't really want to push back.

So they're just, we're just playing politics here. But

instead, as a leader, if you really want to get their

feedback, because they can see things that you can't. Maybe

they could see the potential weaknesses or the benefits that

you don't, or they can reinforce how good the idea is or not. How

do you invite that is by stating your intention, which is like,

hey, my intention in the meeting is like, I have an idea. Yes, I

do. And yeah, I'd like to get there, but I know that I might

be wrong, and I want to have a meeting now to explore it. So

you're not saying I want to get here, and you, I have to

convince you. You're saying that's my intention, is to get

there. But I know I'm right. So my actual intention is to

explore that possible answer and see if there's a better one. You

see how that's much more inviting, because often we don't

do that. We say the agenda is we're going to talk about this,

this, this, this, and get to here. And in the back of your

mind what I really mean, the intentions, we know where we're

ending up, and the whole team knows that's where you're ending

up, and maybe they don't want to end want to end up there, but

they're not really going to push back. But if you suggest an

intention and get the space open, then you can get more from

your team, get more opinions, and then ultimately, you'll make

the decision if you're the leader, right, but you'll do

with much clearer viewpoint of where everyone's at. With more

information.

Let me segueway and draw into your experience

over the last 11 years. So I would imagine there are some

folks that sat down and just couldn't wait to engage, and

they were just game players from the get go. Those are the easy

folks and fun folks to work with, because they're easy and

fun. What are just a couple of things? How do you get when

you're fighting that resistance? You know, as a leader, you're

doing, you're saying things, you're being thoughtful. But

human nature is there the skeptics. There are the negative

nancies. There are the uh huh. I know what they're doing here.

I'm not going to let them manipulate me, and I'm going to

stay shut down and guarded. Anything that you can shed some

light on those to get through to those folks.

Okay, wow, this is a big one. So usually there's

one person who's amped, and usually one that's reticent. You

know one, usually it's one person who's dragged the other

person over. And then there's an interesting dynamic that happens

and shifts. If you want to have this conversation with someone

in your life, you have to offer it as a gift, as an offering,

not again. It's like you're not ending. You don't want to have

an agenda that they're going to open up and cry and tell you

they love you, but you have an intention of exploring it, and

you have to be open to seeing where it goes. If your partner

comes to you and asks you a complicated question, out of the

blue, you're not wondering about the answer. You're wondering,

Where is this coming from? And so you're you're not engaging

with the heart, if you will. You're engaging with your mind

to protect you, right? Because the mind is built to protect

you, while the heart's built to connect you. So how do you

connect to the heart? That's the question. So in the workplace,

it's a little more challenging, right? Because, yeah, we want

you to tell your opinions, but we're also protecting ourselves

because our livelihoods and the power dynamics, because the

leader, how do you create the space that invites conflict

discomfort so that you can harness that conflict to make

better decisions, find opportunities, but do it in a

way that's constructive. It's all about creating the space and

asking well constructed questions that reinforce that

space right of safety, albeit discomfort. So look, in a

relationship, you ask a question if your partner doesn't want to

answer it, they don't have to answer it, nor should they, but

you do have to ask every question you know, and you don't

have to answer it. Maybe don't answer now, that's totally fine.

You should, as a part, you should allow your partner to be

who they are if they don't want to answer it. Now, that's fine.

And if they don't emotionally articulate their emotions in the

same way, I call it emotion articulation, in the same way

that you do. You know you have to let go. You have to accept

them for who they are, where they're at in the workplace, you

bring an idea to the table. You do want people's input, right?

You want everyone to participate, so you get that

information in a time efficient manner, and you have to create a

space where you're inviting maybe the introverts out, or the

ones who you know need the memo before, so they can give time to

understanding, so understanding who's in the room and how maybe

some of them don't want to prep, because that's not their best

off the cuff. Yes, and other people, they need the memo

before to read, think about it over the weekend, and then when

they come in, they have thoughts. We process think

differently, which is an advantage, by the way, but it

makes differences, which makes leadership more difficult. How

do you create the space which are facilitating everyone to

perform the best way they can, and the coherence of the team to

do it in a way that's integrated so that we get we can find the

magic between us. You can find the magic in the spaces between

of the different points of view that we have. And so that has to

do, again, with the space and creating a vibe. We're like, you

don't have to perform a certain way, but I do want you to

perform in your best way. That's huge, right? It's not like we

don't want everyone being effusive and talking No, no, no,

but I want you to fully show up as you, and I want them to fully

show up as them, and we accept it, and we trust that we're all

going to the same spot, the same goal, and we respect that we all

have different points of views and ways of taking information

in and then sharing and articulating that information,

you create that kind of space, right? And those kind of and we

facilitate that with Will the constructions that reinforce

that and the behavior of how we listen to each other and

respond. But as a leader, you gotta know, how can I create the

space for each of my team members to really show up? I

mean, I think if anything I've said here is helpful for people.

I think the value offering is, yes, there's a book, and yes, we

have, like, 15 editions of card games that you could use with

relationship but the newest one is called team building, and we

have a team building deck that you can play with. We have that

and a co worker's deck. The co workers is really focused on the

organization and what you're doing together. Team Building is

for any team and how we operate together. They can find it on

our store, on Amazon.

This has been huge. Thank you so much.

Thank you. Thank you, Stephanie, my pleasure.