205: Doing Big Things with Your Team with Craig Ross

Pete Mockaitis
Craig, thanks so much for joining us here on the How To Be Awesome At Your Job podcast.

Craig Ross
Pleasure joining you, Pete.  Thank you.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I learned a little bit about you, that you have a fondness for hiking.  I’d love to hear if you had any interesting, exciting stories or encounters, I don’t know, bears or death-defying moments, or just hilarity when in the outdoors.

Craig Ross
You’re striking to my passion.  I love the outdoors, and I’ve been to rivers lately of the West United States and had the opportunity to get to what are called “Class IV rapids”, which if you’re not careful will flip your boat.  And so, I’m happy to report I and the team came back in one piece with a dry boat, in other words we didn’t flip.  So, good fun for sure.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, that’s great to hear.  And those are some of my favorite times, when you just get to escape from the screens and the buzzes and the notifications for a couple of days.  So, I resonate right with you there, and it’s often a place where big ideas come about.  And could you share some of the big ideas behind your company, Verus Global, and then the book you co-authored, Do Big Things?

Craig Ross
You got it.  Verus Global, having been around for 25 years, we’ve had the opportunity to work with a lot of leaders and teams.  And over the years we found that they’re coming to us with increasing stress and pressures in their search for how do we equip ourselves to think and act in ways where we can accomplish these extraordinary objectives?

So, that’s our area of expertise, is bringing both through trainings, our consulting and advising, as well as the coaching that we do, in terms of equipping their leaders to move more effectively in a way that delivers the results but also – this is where I love your work, Pete – in a way that is also fulfilling and inspiring for those who are doing the work.  That combination really does create an epic impact.

Pete Mockaitis
Cool.  So tell me then – when you talk about epic impact or doing big things – that sounds just intrinsically exciting and energizing for me.  But could you maybe unpack it for others, or if there’s any research insights you have into why is doing big things important in the first place?

Craig Ross
That’s an important question because often times I think people hear the term “Do big things”, and as wonderful and perfect as it is… I can think of an organization we’re working with in Texas, supporting the team there – their big thing quite frankly was just to break even, to hit their targets.  And we’re talking about market share at this point.  And so, from the outside we could look at that and say, “That’s not very big.”

But when you think about that they’ve been losing market share for the last three years in a row consistently, they knew that they had to shift.  They had to approach the barriers and their thinking and actions so they could actually plug that dam, stop the bleeding, as some people say, regroup and then express their greatness in the ways that they knew they could.

And so, that’s a really important question, as it relates to what is technically “Do big things”.  I would add to that, Pete, as well, often times I find that we do partner and attract leaders who have a vision for greatness, and greatness includes mankind, it includes the human component.  They’re unwilling to deliver stellar business results without ensuring that the people doing the work are also fulfilled and inspired.  So, that’s who our work is for.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, I dig it.  Then tell us – what are some of the key ingredients or steps that teams need to fulfill in order to achieve some of these big things?

Craig Ross
You’re on it, and you actually use a perfect word – “ingredients”.  Unequivocally, as we study teams that do big things, we find that they actually already possess the ingredients.  What they’re looking for is the recipe.  And Pete, correct me if I’m wrong, but a lot of what’s out there, available – really, really solid work, solid material – it generally focuses on trust.  “We need to trust each other.”  It focuses on collaboration, it focuses on alignment – in other words the “What”.

And I’m going to sound like a little bit of a heretic here, and so I want to be careful.  Yet, what would happen if we didn’t make trust the focus, but instead focused on what causes trust to occur?  And that’s what these seven steps within the “Do big things” framework, which we build and deliver in everything we do, equips leaders and teams to do in their work.  It brings the ingredients together in a recipe that’s practical and quite frankly intuitive-based, in other words they can do it quickly and in a sustained fashion.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that sounds great.  So, causes of trust – I’d love it if you could unpack that a little bit there.  I guess there are a couple of things that come to mind, but I’m sure you’ve got more.  So lay it on us.

Craig Ross
You got it.  I’m thinking about a leader I was just speaking with probably a week and a half ago.  I’m going to go ahead and call her “Michelle” just for a placeholder.  So I’m having this discussion with Michelle, and she’s in the software industry, incredibly knowledgeable.  And as we’re talking, she’s using all the typical jargon; she’s talking a typical high-performing team sort of stuff.  But then as we’re speaking her voice cracks a little bit, Pete, and I unwrap that a little bit more through questions.

Turns out that Michelle’s working up to 70-80 hours a week, I’m not joking.  And here’s the scoop – then in the course of the discussion when I asked her, “Do you have confidence you’re going to hit your targets?”, she actually said with a short pause, “No.”  Then we’re going to find out the reality of the situation for Michelle.  She’s then going home and giving her family her leftovers, and this just doesn’t work.

And so, one of the steps that was really important to Michelle, and is there now in the process of equipping themselves to think and act in ways to deliver on their targets – the step that resonated the most for her was what we call the “Do big things” decisions.  Three very specific decisions that if you’d like I can unpack in examples, and she’s making those decisions, she’s showing up different as a teammate and therefore the team is performing at a higher level.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes, let’s hear the decisions.

Craig Ross
You got it.  First decision is what we call the “contributor decision”.  And it’s founded on a belief, Pete, that we don’t necessarily… In fact, I’m going to be bold here – I believe in our industry, we’re actually wasting time and resources by trying to teach Michelle and professionals what trust is.  Michelle already knows what trust is.  She actually already knows how to be trustworthy and trustful.  And so the contributor decision is Michelle making the decision to do this: “I choose to bring my best to the situation.”

Number two, the second decision is what we call the “activator decision” – this is Michelle’s favorite.  The activator decision is this: “I choose to bring out the best in the person I’m interacting with.”  Now here’s the really cool thing – when you talk to Michelle about what she does in her free time, on weekends, she’s volunteering, she’s very mission-oriented, so on her holidays she actually goes to other parts of the world and she’s giving of herself to activate humanity.  And to hear Michelle describe it, she says, “This decision enables me to bring out an act on my purpose more effectively in the workplace.”  And Pete, you and I know what happens as soon as Michelle makes that activator decision and other people start making the contributor decision.

Pete Mockaitis
Certainly.

Craig Ross
Third one then, and this one’s pretty big too.  Michelle’s boss – I happen to know who that is as well.  The third decision is what we call the “connector decision”.  And that is where now Michelle and her teammates are making the contributor decision, they’re making the activator decision, now together they make the connector, and that is this: “We choose to partner across the enterprise to deliver on our shared objectives.”  This is the silo breaker.  This is the enterprise thinking decision, and this is where of course she and her teammates begin to rebrand her function, as it relates to how they’re perceived within their organization.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay.  So, there’s three key decisions there, and each of them starts with “I choose” or “We choose”.  And so, I guess in practice when you make the decision, when you make that choice, what are you doing?  Is it just sort of a sentence in your head or that you say out loud, or what is the thing that you’re doing when you make it?  Because I guess in some ways it seems like, “Yeah, we should probably just kind of do that all the time.”  But what you’re driving at is, we don’t think of these as conscientious decisions.

Craig Ross
You got it.  I’m going to give you a perfect example and a tool that your listeners can take with them right now.  I want to set it up with some research.  This is out of University of Houston, and there’s a ton of other studies on this that reinforcing it, but right now 57% of the workforce is not bringing their best.  We already know about the engagement scores and where that’s at and they’re quite low, but literally half of the team members on each team are not making the contributor decision.

And so we can make this just 10% more.  So to your point, how do we do that?  One of the other steps in the “Do big things” framework is what we call “Energize around a shared reality”.  And a primary tool that we equip teams with, and I’d like to give your listeners this tool right now, is what we call “the energy map”.  I’m going to make this really straightforward so we can visualize it right now.  The energy map has three parts to it – it has a back side, a neutral part, and a front side.

And what’s happening, what we discovered – and this is built on Peter Senge’s work and his research along with Daniel Goleman and others – is that when teams can function from a greater shared reality, they’re able to function more effectively together.  And so Michelle and her team on the back side, now when they choose to talk about their frustrations, what they’re afraid of that can happen in the business, that’s a focus that will take our energy actually further away from our solutions.  Most teams don’t comprehend that sometimes that’s necessary to do, because as human beings we have those emotions.  And unless we’re able to bring that forward, it’s going to stop us in the future.

The second part is the neutral part, and this is where Shakespeare comes into play.  Shakespeare said, “Nothing is good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”  And so, information is inherently neutral.  This is where the data falls, this is where information falls right in the middle of this energy map.  And now Michelle is making the contributor decision, she can say, “Hey, I want to better understand the challenge we’re facing.”  So, she’s seeking information in the middle of the energy map and she’s setting people up for success instead of asking that age-old question, “Hey, I want to know what the problem here is, and why this happened?”, which is going to take energy backwards.

Pete Mockaitis
So, let’s cover that distinction a little bit.  So it’s not so much, “Why is this problem happening?”, but you’re getting an understanding of something slightly different there.

Craig Ross
You got it.  Einstein said it himself – I paraphrase, of course – “The issue is that all too often individuals and teams are trying to solve problems that they haven’t really identified what the true problem is.”  And so, this is where Michelle gets a chance to be her best self, make that contributor decision by saying, “Time out.  Let’s actually understand our issue even more.”  And she’s doing it in a neutral way so other people don’t have to get defensive.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay.  So you’re saying it’s not so much like the “Why”, which can sort of get you into a blame game, finger-pointing scenario, but more of, “Let’s just dig in and understand and learn what’s behind this, what’s behind this.”  So, I guess it’s a little bit tricky.  I think you’d fall into getting into more of the back place as opposed to the neutral place while you dig into that.  So any pro tips on how you pose the questions or facilitate those conversations?

Craig Ross
You got it.  And you’re speaking to somebody who’s really critical.  So the three enemies of fulfillment for a team… Teams that do small things actually succumb to the three enemies – distracted, they’re hopelessly stressed, and they’re disconnected from what matters most, and at the heart of that is our values.  So, I’ll give an example.

So we’re working with a client that was in a joint venture.  This is actually down in Florida, and this particular leader wasn’t a leader on this team – this collaborative cross-functional team – they were just a member of the team, and they knew this energy map that we’re talking about.  And so what this person did is they started with what we call a backward-focused question.  From the very beginning they said, “What’s the frustration that our customers are experiencing right now?”  And now they’re strategically taking focus on the back side energetically.

And of course there’s 100 people that wanted to speak up in that meeting, “Well, this is it, this is it, this is it.”  And then this person very strategically went to the middle part of the energy map by saying, “Alright, so what do we fully need to understand here?”  This is the neutral question.  “What do we need to understand before we solve this issue?”

And that’s really key, and notice that it wasn’t about, “I want to understand the problem”, because there’s people in the room on this person’s team who think that the problem is the person sitting next to them, it’s the person on the screen across the ocean.  That person’s the problem.  What we want to accomplish with the energy map is ensuring that we’re not positioning people as the problem, but the issue.  And then of course, that third part of the energy map – this teammate asked the forward-focused question by then saying, “Alright, how do we solve this?  How do we move this issue forward?”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, understood.  So now, with regard to the back side of the energy map, it seems like you’re suggesting we not spend much time there, and so, I want to get clear though, to what extent.  Does that have a place or should we just move on?

Craig Ross
You know what, Pete?  Your question is so important, and here’s why.  This is not an approach to being positive or negative.  This is an approach to delivering more positive outcomes.  And so the technical answer to your question is, we spend as much time on the back side of the energy map that the business requires us to.  And all too often teams that are doing small things – that means they’re not delivering on their objectives – are spending way too much time.  The business is asking them to move forward and they’re stuck in focusing on problems.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, understood.  So you’re saying that we should cover the bases as much as is required.  And so, maybe could you orient us a little bit, how much is too much and how much is just enough?

Craig Ross
Yeah.  Again, when we talk about epic impact, what an epic impact means is that we’re delivering phenomenal performance, we’re delivering on the objective we have in front of us, and we’re doing it in a way where the people doing the work are fulfilled and inspired.  That combination’s important.  And so, generally speaking from our 25 years of experience, we’re going to find that in a typical meeting those teams that are doing big things, they’re delivering high performance, are spending, I don’t know, 5 to 10% of their time on the back side of the energy map.  They’re doing that though strategically, they’re doing it early in their meetings and discussions.

They’re spending another 35 to 45% of the time in the middle of the energy map.  That means there’s neutral emotions.  People are passionate about outcomes, but they’re neutral as it related to the energy that they’re bringing to it.  And that’s really, really key.  And then they’re spending the remaining time on the forward-focused part.

And why this is key is because unless we care about each other as teammates, we can’t deliver on the business.  And what happens is if we’re spending too much time on the back side of the energy map, it actually drives wedges between us as people, and we know that people care less about each other and that’s the corrosion, that’s what breaks teams down and they can’t perform.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, understood.  Now I want to hear a little bit about the things that are holding us back, when it comes to being distracted and stressed and disconnected.  What are some of your go-to prescriptions for addressing some of these?

Craig Ross
So one of the things that’s really key to this methodology and why it works so well is, those three enemies of fulfillment that break down productivity – that distractedness that you talked about, the hopelessly stressed, and of course being disconnected – is often times because teams have not mobilized their hearts and their minds.  Changing our behaviors is not an intellectual exercise; it is the business of the heart.  And we have younger generations coming up now in the workforce that they’re actually adamant and non-negotiable in the fact that they want to be their best selves.  And we also have older generations that are tired of off course transactional workplaces, just checking the box.  In other words, people want to ensure there’s more meaning in their work.

So, the answer to that question, Pete, is ensuring that we’re actually leveraging that.  One of the things that we found is most effective in leveraging that is not rah-rah speeches, it’s not just the leader of the team modeling, but it’s every person on the team asking different questions.  And by that I mean questions that go beyond the boilerplate execution questions such as, “What do we need to do next?  What’s on the agenda?  What is the customer asking for?”

Teams that are really performing at high levels, team members are actually bringing the elevated questions such as, “Why is achieving this outcome important to us as individuals?  What does success look like for us as teammates, not just from a business standpoint, but for us personally?”  Here is another third question, “When you think about our purpose as a team, how is that consistent with our purpose as people?”

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, those are bigger questions for sure.

Craig Ross
And because they’re bigger questions, often times they’re not asked because a lot of cultures and companies, that’s not natural.  But I would submit, and our research supports the fact that human beings have this in them and it takes the courage of one or two team members just to begin that sort of thought process.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, I like that.  And I want to hear a little bit about that notion of, if you’re not the leader – no manager, director, VP, CEO, what not – how do you envision the role of the individual contributor showing up, in terms of asking these questions?  So it sounds like you’re saying anyone can and should ask them, and that’s great.  What else?

Craig Ross
There are three things that people can do in those situations.  Number one – if I’m on a team and I work for a leader who has high sense of competence, they’re self-assured, high self-esteem if you will, you could add emotionally intelligent, in the middle of a meeting we can give the leader credit if that’s necessary and say, “You just reminded me of something that I think might be important for us to discuss.”  And then I can ask that higher-level question.  That’s one method.

Second method – if I work for a leader who might be insecure… And I’m a leader of a team and there are moments when I’m insecure.  And so, my team will actually come up to me offline, one-on-one, and first of all acknowledge that I’m doing my best, acknowledge that I’m really trying, and then offer.  So, here’s something I found effective in other situations: “Here’s a question that I believe our team is eager to answer.”

Third approach is to find when the leader is actually asking these higher-level questions or is close to it, and then give the leader the feedback.  It could be as simple as this – at the end of the day I send him a quick text and simply say, “That question you asked right when we were walking out of the room – that rocked.  It’s so cool when you ask us those questions.  Thank you.  Here’s the difference it made for me.”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, I dig it.  So, a large part of this is all about the questions that you’re posing.  Are there any other sort of key actions that we should take to take advantage of these “Do big things” insights?

Craig Ross
Yeah, really critically… I was working with a dear friend of mine actually.  I’ll call him Mike ’cause that’s his name.  He is a former astronaut, he was on four different shuttle missions, captain of two of them, just an amazing man.  And he and I were having a discussion one time and it was kind of into that moment, Pete, and I asked him, “Come on, you’re flying in space.  Weren’t you ever nervous?  Weren’t you ever scared?  Come on, tell me the truth.”

And point-blank he looks at me and says, “No, and the reason why is because I trust the process.  Craig, we always had a process.  Anything that could happen, we had a process.”  We backed up, Pete, and we looked at it and the teams that are doing big things, and not only the teams but the people on teams that handle any situation, they know the thinking and actions that they’re going to default to.  And so I would submit to your listeners in identifying the stressful situations, have you articulated the specific type of thinking and actions that you want to model in those situations?  That’s key.

Pete Mockaitis
Alright, so you’re saying in advance you’ve covered, “If this goes down, what do we do?”

Craig Ross
Precisely.  I’m thinking about a leader – this is in R&D space within a medical device company – a  team member; so again, not the leader of the team – that’s really important.  And he found himself every single time he was not just presenting to senior leaders, but any time there was a senior leader in the room, this guy started falling apart.  His brilliance couldn’t get out of his mouth.

And so we kind of unpacked that, and of course in the spiriting of making a longer story short, ultimately landed on what’s the thinking and the actions?  And for him, it was what’s going to be his focus?  And quite frankly, the answer was he realized that when he was focusing on himself, he got nervous; when he was focusing on bringing value, his brilliance shined.  And so, his thinking is, “I’m going to think and focus on being of service to others.”  And he got the breakthrough he needed.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, that’s great.  Well, I also want to hear – you mentioned a concept called “the human imperative”.  What do you mean by that and how do we make it work for us?

Craig Ross
Yeah, I love to ask teams… They are always so passionate.  All of us are, aren’t we?  We’re passionate about delivering on our objectives.  And I love to ask teams, “Do you care enough about delivering excellence in your objectives or do you care more about each other?”  There’s a bit of an epidemic taking place right now, Pete, in the sense that there’s such emphasis on being customer-centric, which is a beautiful thing to design with the customer in mind.  It’s really important work.

Yet we’re seeing organizations and teams specifically that care more about the customer than they actually do each other as teammates.  And in some cases they care more about the customer than they do themselves.  And they’re putting in 70 hours a week bleeding for the customer, and guess what?  The customer might be happy; that person is going home to broken families, broken careers.  That’s just got to stop.  And so the human imperative, the heart of it, is caring.  And the human imperative means in everything we’re going to do, I’m going to model caring about myself, caring about my teammates and caring about those that we serve as a team.  And it’s fundamental to any team that wants to do anything significant.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, understood.  And when it comes to doing the caring, could you share in practice, what are some key steps, simple things that folks can do to care more?

Craig Ross
You got it.  So the HR teams, the organizational development, are folks that are doing really important work.  They likely have identified for all of us – and most organizations if they’ve done basic work and good work – they’ve identified their values as a company.  So that’s great.  What we encourage teams then to do is say, “Okay, those are our values.  What does that look like in action for us, as it relates to our current objective?”  This is really, really key, because as objectives change, how we express our values must also change.  The values don’t change, but how we express them must, if we’re going to not just keep pace with the market, but deliver ahead.  And so, that’s a step and an important question that every team should be discussing.

Pete Mockaitis
And could you share a couple of examples of how you have one consistent value that gets expressed differently across different projects or initiatives?
Craig Ross
Yeah, you got it.  So let’s talk about a company we work with.  This was a big one for them – alignment.  So, alignment was one of their values, and as they addressed that example of, “Okay, so what does alignment look like for us with the objective we have that we’re facing?”  And it was, again, a medical device that they wanted to deliver to the market.  What they discovered, Pete, in their discussion is that they were interpreting alignment as agreement – that “We all agree.”

And they realized, “Wait a minute.  If we’re going to spend time trying to agree, we’re going to be way too slow.  We’re never going to deliver on this objective.”  So it was through the course of that discussion that they unpacked their value and said, “In this particular case alignment simply means that we’re aligned on what has to happen by when, and why.  I don’t necessarily have to be in agreement, but I have to be in support, I’ve got to be all in.”  And course that team went on to blow it out of the water.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, that’s great.  So, in that particular instance it doesn’t mean that every person personally feels, “Yes, this is the optimal way forward”, but rather that they are just on board, like, “Okay, this is what we’re doing, and I fit into that.”
Craig Ross
Yeah.  So here’s another example.  Let’s use the common value that most organizations have – trust.  This is where I get to sound a little bit like a heretic, because no one’s suggesting that we don’t trust each other, but it’s getting below the cause.  This particular organization is actually in Germany, so we had, I’m going to say at least five other countries, so different cultural approaches within this session in Germany.  And we’re talking about trust, and as we again ask that question, the question came up on, “Why do we have the need then to see and inspect everybody’s work as it relates to delivering on our milestones?”

So they were approaching their gates and their deliverables and their projects, and there was this compelling need as it relates to how they were defining trust.  Up to that point it was that there was an inspection of work done.  We can all go and see what the corporation says about trust, but until we have that discussion… And this team said, “Actually trust means we meet certain principles that we’ve agreed upon in advance, as it relates to our project work, and then we’re free to deliver.  We come to the table with the expectation that everybody’s done their work.  There’s no need for all this extra work that was in place.”  Huge, huge breakthrough for that particular team.

Pete Mockaitis
That does sound like a huge breakthrough, which I guess makes it all the more real.  It’s like, “Oh, maybe we don’t trust each other, because maybe the work I see from you has a lot of edits and revisions that need to occur before it’s really ready for primetime.”  And so then, that sparks some other discussions.

Craig Ross
You got it.  Imagine that your team bakes bread.  We all pretty much know what you need in bread, right?  You’ve got the yeast, you’ve got the flour, blah blah blah.  And if you’re me, you might sneak a little sugar in there, more than you need to.  But anyway, until the team sits down and says, “What’s the kind of bread we’d like today?  The ingredients that are special to us.”

And I’m talking now about our thinking and actions that are important to us as a team.  Now it’s moving from simply reading a recipe card to watching one of those incredible chefs on the reality TV, where you’re in the kitchen with them and you’re seeing them get messy and that recipe comes to life.  That’s what teams who are succeeding today are doing – they’re starting first with their interpretation of what their values and action look like, and then they’re going out and doing the work.

Pete Mockaitis
And so then I imagine that you can sort of spell that out in some detail, in terms of, “Hey, what we call ‘good’ here for this recipe, whether it’s…”  I’m thinking like a proposal, “It is that it is free of factual errors and typos, and it works within the confines of the styleguide, and it uses active voice and speaks to the customers’ key needs and it tells our story as it relates to…”  So I imagine then you can spell that out with a fair bit of detail and then let people run with it.

Craig Ross
Yup, and I’m going to add to your list there, Pete.  You just nailed some big things, but I’m going to add to it though something that is really key – it’s the human component.  Because again, if I keep showing up for work day after day after day after day after day, and I don’t get to become a better human being, then I’m going to do exactly what the research is telling us is happening – I’m going to disengage, I’m going to stop making the contributor decision, I’m going to stop activating the best in others, and to heck with those people in the other functions.

And so, we have to ask ourselves as team members – am I a better person because I’m on this team?”  And if the answer to that is “I’m not sure”, then you can predict their performance is going to be marginal.  And so, this is about equipping teams with the ability to be real, be honest and say, “For us to be better people as a result of being on this team, how do we need to think and act with each other?”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay.  And then I’m imagining that you’re going to need to revisit this frequently and to kind of check in and observe behaviors and all that.  Any best practices for the ongoing execution?

Craig Ross
Yeah, I love that, because you know what’s so funny?  We as human beings, when we do big things, when we have big successes… I’ve asked hundreds of people this question: “How many great teams have you been on?”  Pete, I’ve never heard anybody say more than five.  The average is between two and three.  That’s an entire career, 30+ years.  That’s wrong.

And so what we found is that people can look in hindsight, they can say, “Yeah, I was on this one team and everybody had everybody’s backs.”  And then another team will say, “You know what?  We just were all in.”  And so what this is all about is saying, “Why wait until the end and cross our fingers to see if those human dynamics come to fruition?”  Let’s do that at the beginning.  Let’s actually say, “Hey, do we want to be a great team?”  And if so, let’s leverage the experience we had on others and simply say, “What existed there that we want to make sure we do from the start here?”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay.  Excellent, thank you.  Well Craig, tell me – anything else you want to make sure to mention before we shift gears and hear about some of your favorite things?

Craig Ross
Pete, I think that your message to the world is really, really important.  And I mean this, because there’s this connection – when I’m awesome at my job, I love my job.  And what I love about that is it goes both ways.  When I love my job, then I become more awesome at it.  It goes both ways.  And I’m telling you what – there is a movement afoot where that word… We’re working with a company in Minnesota.  I’m going to respect their confidentiality, but I’m telling you what – it’s one of the fastest-growing franchises around the world, and their corporate value is “love”.  This is about human beings being real.  And so, I just love what you’re doing, Pete, in the sense that, “Hey, let’s bring that energy.”  And it goes both ways – I’m going to bring my energy of caring, because then I’m going to show up differently, and vice versa.

Pete Mockaitis
Awesome, thank you.  Well now, Craig, tell me about a favorite quote, something you find inspiring.

Craig Ross
Well, I just did. [laugh] It’s your work.  Right now I’m studying and doing a lot of reading about the Stoics.  And I think about Seneca, I think about some of the early thinkers, and then I’m fascinated by their thought process, which is really deeply rooted in, “We own our response to everything that happens to us.”  And we talk about this in our “Do big things” framework – it’s the essence behind exercising your barrier-breaking authority.  And when we do that, we of course function more with our heart, and then that opens up the mind.  So, long answer, one of my favorite quotes is, “You open up the mind when you open up the heart.”  And that’s the Dalai Lama in action.

Pete Mockaitis
Alright, thank you.  And now how about a favorite book?

Craig Ross
I’ve got many, and I’ll deny my ego by answering any of our own books here.  I’m also reading a book that is along the lines of the Stoics, and I’m embarrassed because I’m going to forget his name.  Maybe my teammate can Google it real quick.  The Obstacle Is the Way…

Pete Mockaitis
I think that’s Ryan Holiday.

Craig Ross
Thank you.  Just wrapped up his book for the second time, and that’s a lot of the study of the Stoics and so forth.  That’s a fabulous book.  I’m a big fan of Daniel Goleman, and so his book Focus, which we actually cite a fair amount of his research in our work, really is profound and influencing how the brain is working and what we’re doing of course is, let’s make that super practical.  Sitting next to him, Daniel Kahneman, and his profoundly important book Thinking, Fast and Slow is really, really fascinating, because so often once we understand what the brain is doing, then we can manage it better and we can use it to our advantage versus our disadvantage.  And if you’ll indulge me, I’m also a fan of Peter Senge and some of his classic work like The Fifth Discipline and how much that brings in the human component.  It’s a beautiful work.  Thanks for asking that.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, thank you.  And how about a favorite tool?

Craig Ross
Well, now I am going to be biased.  We talked about on this episode the energy map, really has been profound, and there are 25 years of work.  Every place we’ve worked in around the world – that’s every continent, essentially, every industry – people overwhelmingly come back and say they love the energy map, because it allows them to do two things – identify where their focus is and where they need it to be in order to be more fulfilled and do bigger things in life and as a team.  So, the answer would be the energy map.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay.  And how about a favorite habit?

Craig Ross
That is probably right now for me is practicing mindfulness.  I practiced meditation throughout my adult life, but I don’t think I got really disciplined and I wanted to make it a habit in 2017.  And so, I think I’m just about there.  It’s a habit, I’m doing it at different points throughout the day, and again, when you study Daniel Goleman or other work that’s out there – there’s a lot of great work – the practice of mindfulness and being able to control our focus… I love that saying – and I’ve researched, I don’t know who said it originally, so maybe someone can help us – but, “Instead of thoughts having us, we’re having thoughts.”  So the habit of being more effective in that pursuit has been one I’m grateful for.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, thank you.  And how about a particular nugget or piece that you share that really gets people resonating, nodding their heads and taking notes?

Craig Ross
Yeah, it is this – that changing behaviors is not an intellectual exercise; it’s the business of the heart.  All too often while people want to live and lead from their heart, they’re tempted to change their behaviors and the behaviors of others by persuading them with statistics.  Stories are effective, but the stories that are effective are the ones that open the heart, they’re the ones that tap into a deeper emotion, that tap into and leverage and allow people to live from their values.  And so, it would be that, Pete – that changing behaviors is not an intellectual exercise; it’s the business of the heart.

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

Craig Ross
Yeah – verusglobal.com – that’s a fabulous resource and we’ve got plenty of not just written material but also a whole library of videos on different topics.  And of course our books and resources are there as well.  And you can also follow me on LinkedIn – Craig Ross; and Twitter and so forth.  And quite frankly, Pete, I invite everybody here – craig@verusglobal.com is an email address that they can communicate with me personally on, and I enjoy the discussion.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay.  And Craig, do you have a final challenge of call to action you’d issue to folks seeking to be awesome at their jobs?

Craig Ross
You got it.  Just 10% more.  It’s not about going out and doing something that you’ve never done before; it’s doing what you know is right, just 10% more as a teammate.  And that would be the closing remark, is what is your most important role on a team?  Your most important role is being the best teammate you could be.  We have a functional responsibility, but we have accountability to our team’s objective.  And that’s the call to action.

Pete Mockaitis
Alright.  Well, Craig, thank you so much for taking this time and sharing your perspectives.  So enriching and valuable.  And I just hope that you and Verus Global keep on doing what you’re doing – big things in big ways with more folks.  It’s great stuff.

Craig Ross
Pete, thank you, and thank you for your important work.