190: Making Your Boss, Colleagues, and Clients Love You with Jodi Glickman

Pete Mockaitis
Jodi, thanks so much for joining us here on the How to be Awesome at Your Job podcast.

Jodi Glickman
Thank you for having me. I’m super excited to be here.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, I’m super excited to have you. And it seems like you walk your talk. I want to hear, first of all, a couple of tales that I learned about you. I understood that at one point within your career you got a summer internship at ExxonMobil without even having an interview. How does that happen?

Jodi Glickman
It happens in a very roundabout and happenstance way. I decided when I was in business school that I was going to be a management consultant or bust. And so I interviewed with Bain and McKinsey and everyone else, and I didn’t get the job. And so I was halfway through my first year in business school, it was March, everyone else with their offers are lined up, and it’s kind of that time when you start panicking.

And the treasurer of ExxonMobil was coming to campus to give a presentation, and he was interviewing candidates the next day. And I had actually worked for the Environmental Protection Agency before business school, so ExxonMobil was nowhere on my radar where I wanted to work when I grew up. But I went to go listen to the treasurer of ExxonMobil and it was a fascinating conversation. He was a great speaker and he talked all about global energy policy and the role of ExxonMobil in the world as it related to energy policy.

And so after the presentation I went up to him and I introduced myself, and I mentioned that I was very interested in global energy policy, I was passionate about the work they were doing, that I had been a peace corps volunteer before business school, and also worked for the Environmental Protection Agency. And the treasurer looked at me and he said, “Why aren’t you on my interview list tomorrow morning?”

And the truth is, Pete, I don’t remember what I said to him, but he called me the next morning and offered me the job which put the Career Services Center in a bit of a pickle because they had 10 students who did actually interview. But it just goes to show that through networking, through a really interesting and inspiring conversation, the treasurer thought to himself, “Wow, Jodi should come work for us.”

Pete Mockaitis
So intriguing and it’s a shame you don’t remember because that’s what I really want to know the most. But, I mean, you know yourself. If you were to speculate as to what you think you might have said, what would it be? It probably wasn’t, “Because I’m disgusted by everything that you stand for.”

Jodi Glickman
Correct. So here’s the thing. When I am talking to people and teaching them about networking and interviewing and pitching yourself, what I always say is, “You need to start with your destination. You need to look forward and tell me what you want to be when you grow up, what you’re doing now that’s really exciting, what you care about, and then you go to your backstory and tell me all the interesting things that you’ve done.”

And so I think that I’m sure where the conversation went was I talked about the fact that I was very interested in global energy policy. I was fascinated by what ExxonMobil was doing both on the traditional oil side of things, in the production and the exploration, but also in terms of alternative fuel technologies.

And so I started with the fact that I was looking forward, and then, when you express that level of interest and passion, that someone is automatically going to say, “Well, what did you do? Have you worked in the energy industry?” And I said, “Well, I actually worked on the other side. I worked as a regulator at the Environmental Protection Agency but I believe in the power of business and industry to solve big problems.”

And so that was, I’m sure, where the conversation went. I also do remember mentioning sort of cheeky, I said, “Listen, I drive a car and I use lights. I’m not anti-energy, right?” So as we talked it seemed like, “Why wouldn’t I go to ExxonMobil for the summer and learn about the energy industry from the other side?”

Pete Mockaitis
And I like that. And when you were talking about looking forward, you’re also naturally, at the same time, talking about this stuff that they already find interesting.

Jodi Glickman
Well, correct because, listen, when someone meets you, with all due respect, no one really cares about all the things you’ve done in your life and where you went to school and what you studied and how long you had an internship and how many jobs you’ve had. People want to know, “What are you doing now? What do you want to do next? What are you excited about? What keeps you energized? What’s the next problem you’re solving?” Like, as humans, we care about the future and what comes next. We tend to tune out when people tell us about how great they are and how great things they’ve done in the past.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, so now, I want to dig into some more of the how and the execution of this. So could you make a case for us here for, first of all, why the things we say, and the way that we say them, is really kind of among the most fundamental skills to being great on the job?

Jodi Glickman
Sure. Listen, I always say we’re living in an age of technology, and technology is amazing. It makes our life better in so many ways. But I ask you the question, Pete, have you ever closed a really important big deal on the phone without meeting someone in person?

Pete Mockaitis
You know, we’re in the process of buying a house as we speak, and so I’m thinking through all the main characters and I’ve met most of them in person. Although, I guess, none of the mortgage people have I met in person. But, yeah, a healthy majority for sure.

Jodi Glickman
That you’ve met in person, right?

Pete Mockaitis
Right.

Jodi Glickman
You wouldn’t hire your realtor after talking to them on the phone. Listen, you’re never getting promoted because of a brilliant email you sent. You’re never closing a deal with someone in business when you haven’t met them face to face. And so business is, and always will be, a personal thing. No matter how great technology makes our lives, it is all about that face-to-face live conversation and that real human meaningful connection you make with people

people in my life from social media and in work and in business who I get to know very well over the phone, and then you meet them in person and everything changes. So what we say and how we say it is the ability to have a live face-to-face conversation with someone, to look them in the eye, to be confident, to be able to persuade, to be able to disagree, to be able to share an idea or a vision, and do it in a way that you come across as smart and thoughtful.

And so for a generation of young people who are growing up with technology really as part of who they are, you know, texting and IM’ing and email messaging and Facebook, it’s not enough. You can’t walk into the business world and expect to be successful if you can’t have a live conversation with someone who is 20 years your senior, or who has a very different experience than you, or who is in charge of your organization. You just can’t.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. I’m sold. So now could you maybe open it up by sharing what are some of those kind of overall principles? Rather that you have a number of particular tools and tactics which I’m excited to dig into. But maybe even before we go there, can we zoom out and hear your take on what are some of the foundational principles that you think about, you rely upon time and time again to guide what to say and how to say it?

Jodi Glickman
Sure. So I think the first one I think about is generosity is at the core of everything that Great On The Job does. And you and I potentially are going to speak about that in a little bit. But one of the things I always think about is, “How do you make it easy on the person receiving information?” So how do you make it easy for your listener? If I send you a four and a half-page email, I promise you, Pete, you’re not going to read it. Is that true?

Pete Mockaitis
It’s so true, and it’s so funny with the pitches that are like it so many now which is what a blessing. I didn’t think I’d be there a year ago. But I’m just sort of like, “What exactly are you asking of me?” And it’s like, “In todays’ global competitive…” I was like, “Like, yeah, but what are you going to say and why are you good? Are you engaging?” Like that’s really what I want to know, “Are you relevant to my audience? Are you authoritative and are you engaging?”

And it just seems like folks are trying to kind of hop on, and like, “What is Uber’s scandal have to say about this?” It’s like, “I don’t care. Do you have something to say to sharpen the universal skills required to flourish at work? And are you authoritative and engaging in saying that?” So you got me ranting, Jodi, sorry. But, yeah, make it easy for me, please.

Jodi Glickman
Make it easy, right? I’m not going to send you a pitch that’s four and a half pages you’re not going to read, so make it easy on your listener and you need to leave with the punch line, you need to tell me right, front and center, what’s new, different or foreign, or what’s in it for me. Don’t bury the lead. Don’t give me four and a half pages of all the background work you’ve done, or how smart you are, or how qualified. But what do I need to know right now to make a decision?

So that, I think, people don’t think of generosity as a key skill in communicating. And in my mind, it’s one of the most important and I’m always asking myself that question, “How can I make it easy on the person receiving this message?”

Pete Mockaitis
And what I love about that notion that generosity is the word for this because fundamentally that means you are making a sacrifice. You are going to take more time, more energy, more attention to put the communication out there and it is for that person’s benefit, they’d say, “Oh, okay. This is clearly what you want and need, and you sort of gone through,” because it takes real time to do an extra level of pruning and thoughtful consideration there.

Jodi Glickman
Well, that’s exactly right, and that is Mark Twain’s statement click, “If I have more time I would’ve written a shorter letter.”

Pete Mockaitis
Right.

Jodi Glickman
You know, everyone, it’s time. It’s you’re taking the time to think about that message before you make someone else listen to you.

Pete Mockaitis
Alright. So generosity, key principle. Are there more?

Jodi Glickman
Yeah, so we can go into the GIFT of Great On The Job, they’re the backdrop of everything I do, everything I care about, everything I believe, and everything I teach. And the GIFT of Great On The Job, it is generosity, initiative, forward momentum and transparency. And so I argue that those are the backdrop of all successful communicators and all successful professionals.

And it’s interesting when you look at them through the lens of if someone doesn’t take initiative with me, it drives me batty, right? If you tell me an update on something or give me the status of a project, but then don’t tell me what’s coming next or what you’re doing to move the ball forward, I’m always left hanging like, “Okay, thanks for the update. Now what? What are you doing next? Right? How are we moving the ball forward?”

Pete Mockaitis
You know, Jodi, it’s funny. You’re talking about being all about the strategic consulting firms. I actually do a lot of case interview coaching for people currently.

Jodi Glickman
Sure. Totally.

Pete Mockaitis
Pursuing those opportunities, and that’s one of my common feedback points I say, it’s like, “Okay, you’ve ran a bunch of numbers and you’ve given me the final sum or product or quotients. Now tell me what it means.” And so I think that’s a common feedback point in terms of you think that once you’ve said the answer that you’re done, but you’re not quite done.

Jodi Glickman
No, you’re not. It makes me laugh because I was an investment banker and so early on in my career you’re valuing companies, and you’re doing a discounted cash flow, and you’re coming up with the stock price, this is the projected stock price. And I’ll never forget learning the lesson the hard way when I did my discounted cash flow, and I got to the answer, and I had my stock price, and then my senior banker looked at me and said, “Well, okay, Jodi, is it undervalued or overvalued?” And I thought, “Oh, I don’t know that answer. I just gave you a number,” right? And it was so the deer in the headlights.

No one cares about a number. It’s, “What’s the meaning of that number?” So, exactly to your point, “What does that mean? What does that analysis show you?” And, again, I can take that back to generosity, right? Don’t make me guess at what that number means, tell me. So that’s another thing I think about a universal truth, is have an opinion. Tell me what you think the right answer is. Tell me what you are working towards, right?

Don’t come to me at work and say, “Hey, Jodi, what should I do?” It’s like, “You’re smart. You’re talented. You’re capable. Tell me what you think the right course of action is and come to me and ask me for feedback.” “Am I moving in the right direction? Do you think I’m missing anything here? Are these the right key points to cover?”

Pete Mockaitis
I like that idea there, and it seems like the theme when you talk about initiative is, I guess, at its core, is you’re not just saying something and letting it lie. You’re always kind of leaning into just the next step or the next piece or the next implication. And whether that’s, “Here’s what I think is next, or here’s my proposed solution, or here’s what this means,” it’s sort of always just pushing it so that momentum is in the picture. It’s still there.

Jodi Glickman
Yeah, baked in. You’re absolutely right. You know, I always will ask, if I’m in front of a large audience, where I do a lot of corporate training for Fortune 100 firms and speaking at business schools, and I’ll say, “How many of you were sitting there one day and the phone rang, and someone offered you admission to Harvard Business School?” Everyone looks at you like you’re kind of a stranger, “Who here got an offer at Abbott Labs for this summer internship program and you didn’t apply for it?” You don’t work your tail off to get to be in this room.

We understand initiative intuitively when we’re trying to get something, we’re trying to get admission to university, or we’re trying to get a new job, but initiative is no less important when you’re on the job in an organization working as an entrepreneur. It’s always about what’s next. Like, “How am I working towards that next goal?”

So I always say that I am a social liberal and a workplace conservative. And what I mean by that is it is 100% your responsibility to make stuff happen. You raise your hand, you ask for those opportunities. You think about next steps. You are always moving the ball forward and taking initiative because no one’s going to do it for you.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Very nice. And then how about the next one? We have an F here, the forward momentum.

Jodi Glickman
Right. Well, that plays into just what we were speaking about. You said that it’s almost you take the ball and you run with it. The initiative is, “Okay, I’m going to do this.” And the forward momentum is, “I’m going to keep it going until the next step, or once we achieve the goal, I’m going to think about what comes next.”

And so I will always ask people, “You’re working on this big project, you’ve just done this creative brief for a new brand you’re launching, and you go take it to your CMO, and your CMO says, ‘Great job. Congratulations!” And then what does your CMO say, your Chief Marketing Officer? She says, “Okay. Great job. Congratulations! Take the day off?” No, she says, “Okay. Great job. Congratulations! What’s next? What is the next?”

And that’s the reason she’s in the chief role. Anyone who is running an organization, and I also think entrepreneurs, right? We understand intuitively it’s always about moving the ball forward. It is about, “How can I advance the cause for the organization or for myself individually?” You never rest on your laurels.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And now how about transparency?

Jodi Glickman
Transparency comes up in that I always say I’m not teaching a class on ethics and I’m teaching communication strategy. Let’s assume is a baseline that you don’t lie. Let’s just start there as the premise. I assume the best in everyone. But transparency is about taking it one step further. It’s about saying, “Okay, if I don’t know the answer to a question, I’m going to acknowledge that and then I’m going to go get the information for you.”

Or if I see a problem coming down the pipeline, I’m not going to hide from it and hope it goes away, right? Worst strategy ever. Instead I’m going to raise the issue early and focus on solving it. So transparency is about being proactive with information.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Noted. And so then we got the GIFT framework in place, which is nice. It’s like you’re giving a gift to people which is foundational generosity. I’m with you, that’s cool. And so now I want to zoom in on a little bit of the particulars. You have an intriguing titles in the books. So how does one master the hello and the goodbye?

Jodi Glickman
Okay. So, when was the last time, Pete, someone called you and that you picked up the phone, and I still talk on the phone and maybe you don’t?

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, yes, I do.

Jodi Glickman
So when was the last time someone called and you picked up the phone and they started talking and they just launched into whatever they wanted to talk about?
They said, “Hi, this is Jodi. I wanted to let you know that blah, blah, blah, we’re really excited about next weekend,” or, “I have a question for you.” Here’s the thing. What people often don’t do is they don’t start their conversation with the key question which is, “Hi, Pete. How are you? It’s Jodi Glickman calling. Do you have a few minutes to speak?”

Pete Mockaitis
Alright. The request of the few minutes.

Jodi Glickman
Yeah, people don’t ask you of your time or people stop by your cube all day long. For all your listeners who are sitting there in cube land right now. People drop by all the time to chat and they start talking and then they keep talking and they keep talking. And you think, “I’m busy. I have work to do. What are we talking about? Or why did you stop by? I didn’t invite you in to my pretend cube.”

And mastering hello and goodbye, it starts with acknowledging that everyone’s time is valuable and, again, that goes right back to generosity but it starts with the, “Do you have a moment to speak or am I catching you at a bad time?” That is the generous way to start a conversation, and you give someone an out if it’s not a good time to speak.

Pete Mockaitis
Now, I’m wondering, for any folks in sales who are listening right now, I think part of them will be raging against this, like, “Don’t give them any opportunity ever to escape if you catch them.” How do you think about that?

Jodi Glickman
Right. So it’s interesting and I will say that LinkedIn is a big client and longstanding client of mine, and they are a sales organization. And so when we talk about hello and goodbye at LinkedIn, I went to them before I started training all of their new hires for their sales organization, and we talked about this. And I said, “Listen, I live in the world of corporate America that is not sales. I grew up in investment banking, I’ve been in non-profit, I’ve been in government so I’ve never been in a sales role. What do you think about asking people if they have a moment to speak?” And LinkedIn said to me, “You know what? We’re about building relationships. We do not want to steamroll people. We want to build rapport and we actually think that’s the right thing to do.”

So I felt somewhat vindicated. I do think there are sales professionals that will say, “No way. Never going to happen. Not going to do it.” But what I would say is if you think about a time you’ve been ambushed by someone who called you and didn’t ask you if you had a minute to speak, and launches into a sales pitch, nine times out of ten you are hanging up the phone in disgust, thinking, “Ugh,” right? “Ick.” That was not the conversation that you wanted to have.

So I think that you get further when you are transparent and say to someone, “Hey, do you have a few minutes to speak? I want to talk to you about X, Y or Z.” And, truthfully, if your product is great or your service is great then you’re doing them a favor, right? They should want to talk to you.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And how about the goodbye?

Jodi Glickman
The goodbye is easy although I’ll tell you the goodbye came about because my husband, a decade and a half ago, when we were early on in our dating life, said to me one day, “Jodi, I have no idea how to get off the phone.” And I said, “What do you mean?” He said, “I don’t know. It’s so awkward. I’ll be on the phone with someone them and then I’m like, ‘Okay, goodbye,’ and I hang up.” And he looked at me really quizzically and I said, “No, it’s, ‘Goodbye. Thank you so much. It was nice speaking to you. I look forward to staying in touch.” And he was like, “Oh, really?” I said, “Or it’s, ‘Thanks so much for your help. It was great speaking to you. I’ll keep you posted on next steps.’”

And so what he didn’t understand intuitively and has had to learn, and good for him for having the awareness that he didn’t know this, the goodbye is thank you plus forward momentum. And you can always thank someone for their time if they weren’t helpful, right? Don’t say, “Thank you so much for your help,” if someone wasn’t helpful. But you can thank people for their time, and it’s always some form of forward momentum, “I look forward to staying in touch,” or, “Would it be alright if I followed up if I had a few question?” or, “I’ll keep you posted on how things go,” or, “I’ll touch base with you in a few months to see how things are going.”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Makes sense. Thank you. Well, so then, tell us now about when you’re doing a download, how do you do that in a foolproof way?

Jodi Glickman
In a foolproof way. So the foolproof download is really getting anyone to listen to you, right? Getting anyone and everyone, I say, to listen to you. And the way you do that, and you know this intuitively because you alluded to it earlier that you get pitches all the time, and people expect you to take all this time to read through what they’ve sent you which is the opposite of generosity.

And so the foolproof download is based on one key simple thing which is leading with the punch line. You have to start front and center with what’s new, what’s different, or what’s important. Those are the three questions to ask yourself: what’s new, what’s different, or what’s important. Truth be told, if you don’t have information that’s new, different or important, please don’t come by my office, please don’t call me on the phone. That’s your hurdle rate. You’re going to ask yourself a question, “Am I communicating information here that’s new, different or important?”

So that’s the test, and oftentimes what happens is if you think about someone who starts a conversation with you or comes in to speak with you at work, they start with the background, they tell you about all the work that they’ve done, or the research they’ve done, or where the project started. And what you really want to do as you’re just sitting there and thinking, “Just tell me where we are now. What do I need to know? What’s in it for me or what’s the action I have to take? Then if I want to get the additional information from you then I can ask about all the other stuff. I can get the key facts and supporting highlights.”

And so, again, to your point earlier, it’s not that you don’t do the work, it’s that you do more work before you start to talk to someone. You think about all of the information you have and you organize it so that you can lead with a punch line and you can keep the key facts and supporting highlights in your back pocket and bring them out as you need them.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes, very good. I’m all about the answer first there. Right on.

Jodi Glickman
Yeah, right.

Pete Mockaitis
And so that’s the download side of things. And then how about when it comes to managing expectations?

Jodi Glickman
So managing expectations I will contend that you can say no to your boss and still make them love you. You really can. Now, no one wants to be in a position where your manager drops by and asks you to do something and you say, “Oh, I’m really sorry. I got too much on my plate. I can’t do it.” No one wants to be in that position. Now, by the same token, if you say yes to everything and you don’t have capacity, there’s a good chance you are going to fall down and underperform, under-deliver, worst case scenario, right?

So pushing back is all about using transparency, using initiative and using generosity. And so the strategy that I always say is if someone comes by and asks you to do something, your answer is, “I’d love to help out with,” whatever crappy piece of work you need to do, “I’d love it. Sure, of course, Pete, I’d be happy to run that analysis for you. However, here’s what’s on my plate. I’ve got A, B, C, D and E, and here’s what I can do for you instead.”

And so you’re being transparent, showing what’s on your plate not in the way that you’re complaining, just saying, “Here’s what I’ve got on my plate,” and then coming up with a solution, “Here’s what I can do for you instead. If you have any flexibility in timing I can get this to you later in a week.” Or, “You know what, I can potentially see about shifting some of the other things on my plate around if you give me a few minutes to go check in with Kate and Larissa.” Or, “I don’t have capacity right now. Here’s what I’ve got on my plate. Why don’t I go check in with a few people and see if they have bandwidth or capacity.” So you sort of take it on yourself as, “I’m going to be part of the solution now and help you solve the problem.”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Very good. Thank you.

Jodi Glickman
Sure.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, before we hear about some of your favorite things, can you share any other key things you want to make sure to mention about making them love you at work?

Jodi Glickman
Let’s see. Well, one other quick strategy I’ll give is the answering a question you don’t know the answer to because that trips everyone up on a pretty regular basis. We’re always operating with imperfect information. And so when someone asks you a question that you don’t know the answer to, the strategy is it’s super easy, it’s foolproof, it’s, “Here’s what I know. Here’s what I don’t know. Here’s how I’ll figure it out.” Boom, boom, boom. “Here’s what I know. Here’s what I don’t know. Here’s how I’ll figure it out.”

And I want to go back to you mentioned making them love you, I don’t even know if we started at the top talking about making people love you, but the core, the point of GIFT, of generosity, initiative, forward momentum and transparency is making your boss love you, making your colleagues love you, making your clients love you, in a totally platonic, professional work appropriate, no one’s getting sued kind of way.

But if you think about it, if your boss, your clients, your colleagues love you, they will do anything and everything to help you succeed, and that’s the person you want to be at work. You want to be the person that everyone is rooting for, championing, mentoring, sponsoring, doing all that so that you can be successful no matter what your endeavor is.

Pete Mockaitis
Alright. Very good. Well, now, Jodi, can you start us off by sharing a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Jodi Glickman
Robert Goizueta, a former CEO of Coca-Cola, once said, “Communication is the only task you cannot delegate.” And I think about that all the time. I hire accountants and consultants, and you can hire someone to be your attorney or write a speech for you even, but you can’t outsource the daily one-on-one conversations that are so critical to success that are really going to make or break your career. So I like that one.

[Pete Mockaitis
Alright. And how about a favorite book?

Jodi Glickman
Fiction or non-fiction?

Pete Mockaitis
We’ll take both.

Jodi Glickman
Sure. Sure. Okay. So I’m a little behind the eight curve here but I just read Simon Sinek’s Start with Why. Have you read it?

Pete Mockaitis
You know, I saw the TED Talk but I haven’t read the book.

Jodi Glickman
Yeah, it’s amazing. The TED Talk is amazing and the book is even more powerful, and I would say I read a lot of business books. But this one really resonated with me in a deep way and made me make some changes pretty quickly. So that one was hugely impactful to me in 2017. So I’m going to go with Start With Why on the non-fiction.

And on the fiction side, I’m going to go with this. God, what have I read lately? The Nightingale.

It takes place in World War II and it is about a woman who helps her fellow countrymen escape from Nazi Germany through the Pyrenees like crossing the mountains through plains in Spain. It’s fiction but it was a phenomenal book. I like historical fiction, so you learn a lot about that time period and then there was a pretty amazing heroine or protagonist.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, very cool. And how about a favorite tool, something that helps you flourish at work?

Jodi Glickman
Dropbox saves my life. My whole team collaborates on Dropbox so I don’t know what we would without Dropbox

Pete Mockaitis
Alright. And how about a favorite habit, a personal practice of yours that’s effective?

Jodi Glickman
So I’m not the best at habits. Gretchen Rubin would probably be disappointed with me in terms of my willpower and doing things daily. But I will say that on a regular basis, I find myself, if I am stressed or feeling overwhelmed, I do have a really good sense of when I need to take it outside and get air. Like that’s the one thing that, for me, always really calms my nerves.

And so whether if it’s something really good and I’m really hyper, or really bad and I have a problem, I can pretty quickly turn it off and say, “You need to get outside for 30 minutes because nothing else will clear your head.” And so I go take a walk, or take a run, or even if I need a long bike at night. I’m really good about knowing that, for me, the only really reliever of stress is physical exertion.

Pete Mockaitis
Sure thing. And if folks want to learn more or get in touch with you, where would you point them?

Jodi Glickman
That one I can answer. It’s www.greatonthejob.com. You can go to our website. You can also follow me on Twitter, my handle is @greatonthejob. You can check us out on LinkedIn or on Facebook, Great On The Job, and we did also just launched, I’m thrilled to say, our first online product in partnership with Pearson Education which is one of the largest learning companies in the world. And we built a platform with all of the Great On The Job content that is mobile, bite-sized, social, visually stunning and can help you, can help companies really drive employee engagement, employee productivity immediately. So very excited and proud of that initiative.

Pete Mockaitis
Alright. Do you have a final call to action or challenge for folks seeking to be awesome at their jobs?

Jodi Glickman
You know, I always say try to do one thing. Take today with you tomorrow and say, “Okay, I’m going to focus on putting generosity into practice for a week, or I’m going to put initiative, or forward momentum.” One thing that you think would make a huge difference for you. And for everyone it’s different. There’s no right answer. We all have different strengths and weaknesses as you know, Pete.

So it’s about what resonates with you. What would change right now if you started being generous and leading with the punch line, or you started being generous and asking people if they had a moment to speak? What would change in the next week in your life? Or, for you, if it’s being more transparent, what would change if your manager tomorrow came to you, and instead of saying, “Yes, sure. I’ll do it,” you said, “Listen, I’d love to but here’s what’s on my plate and here’s what I could do instead”?

So I would say take one of those four key themes of GIFT, give yourself a week, put it into practice and see the impact that it has in your performance at work.

Pete Mockaitis
Alright. Well, Jodi, this has been so much fun. Thank you for sharing this good stuff and keep on making them love you.

Jodi Glickman
Thank you, Pete. Keep on making them awesome. This was so fun, Pete.