379: The Four Steps to Creating Chemistry with Others with Barney Feinberg

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

Barney Feinberg
Thank you for inviting me Pete.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m excited to dig into some of your perspectives when it comes to chemistry, but I want to maybe go back in time first. You at one point worked as a tennis instructor. What’s the story behind this?

Barney Feinberg
Wow. Well, tennis ran in my family. Since I was a little kid a tennis racket was put in my hand. Everyone in my family played. And it’s interesting that you bring up tennis because it happens to be something that really when looking back and writing my book, there was a peak moment that really exemplifies what I’m sharing with people. If you’d like me to share that story, I’d be happy to.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I can’t resist. Let’s hear about a peak moment.

Barney Feinberg
Okay. Well, as I mentioned, tennis was everything. I mean I was in high school playing on the tennis team. My big ambition outside of that when I went to college was to make the team at college.

It’s my freshman year, first week at school and we’re having tryouts. What I find myself doing is I’m playing not to lose, which inevitably, last day of practice the coach came to me and said, “I’m sorry, you didn’t make the team,” which frankly was really embarrassing and devastating. I was like, I didn’t know what to do with myself.

I had all this free time on my hands, so I joined a concert committee, grew my hair down to my shoulders, got a beard and a moustache, digging on groups that came to college, which were like Springsteen, some really good groups, Arlo Guthrie. Anyway, here I am overcoming this major defeat.

Sophomore year rolls around and I show up for practice to try out again and the coach looks at me and says, “You’re late. You can’t try out this year.” Again, a blow. But I’m having a good time. I never had so much time on my hands to really enjoy myself and get into the music.

When my junior year came around, it was my last chance. I wasn’t really nervous about it. I started playing my game. I was playing really, really well, fully expecting to make the team.

The last day of practice the coach comes up to me and one of the other players that had been on the team for two years, he was also a junior, looks at both of us and says, “You’re going to play one set. The winner is going to make the team and the loser is not going to make the team.”

Pete Mockaitis
Oh wow.

Barney Feinberg
Yeah. Here I was suddenly wondering what happened because I had played this guy earlier and beat him. It’s beginning to dawn on me as we’re walking to the court, the coach says to him, “Go out and beat him.” I’m like, “Oh man, this guy doesn’t want me on the team.” Then it dawns on me, well, he’s ex-Navy. He’s got a crew cut. I’m wearing long hair and a moustache at this point.

I walk on the court again playing not to lose. Inevitably it’s 5 – 3. He’s leading. Triple match point on his serve. This is a big guy. He’s ex-football player. As I’m going to the Ad court expecting to lose, suddenly out of nowhere, across the quad, one of my favorite Grateful Dead songs comes on, China Cat Sunflower, which has this real upbeat rhythm.

As I’m walking to the Ad court, I transform. Suddenly, I’m relaxed. Suddenly, I’m smiling and I’m having fun. He hits his first serve and I bang it down the line. I get a winner. He hits the next first serve and I do it again. Next one he double faults. He starts playing not to lose and I make the team.

Here’s the interesting thing, what happened was, the circumstance changed. The song shifted who I was in the moment from being disconnected from confidence to being totally connected to it because I shifted to having fun.

Now that happened by just pure luck. I swear I think it was angels above looking over me, but when I looked at it again as I was writing this book, I realized that I value shifted. I shifted from what was disconnecting me to something that purely connected me. The results were inevitable. Obviously it worked. By the way, good news, the guy I played against, he stayed on the team.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, yeah, I was wondering.

Barney Feinberg
Yeah, he stayed on the team.

Pete Mockaitis
After two years it’s kind of intense to say, “Yeah, you’re out if this one match doesn’t go your way.” Well, that’s really intriguing on many dimensions. I want to kind of dig into your phrase; you said you were playing not to lose.

Barney Feinberg
Yes.

Pete Mockaitis
Then later you said you were having fun. What do you mean by playing not to lose versus playing to have fun? What are the alternatives along that spectrum?

Barney Feinberg
Here’s the deal. Playing not to lose is living in the expectation of winning. Some famous person once said that expectations are the mother of frustration. When you look at work, how many times are we working with expectations in our mind?

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. Got you. As opposed to-

Barney Feinberg
As opposed to actually empowering your values. Expectations take us off the game. Expectations put us in the finish line before we start the race.

My daughter’s a runner. If she’s thinking about the finish line before the gun goes off, she’s not going to run very well. It’s going to seem like it’s taking her forever to get there. But if she’s thinking of the moment, if she’s empowering say the value of confidence and she’s not looking at the future or the past, but in the moment, she’s going to run a much better race.

It’s kind of like do you ever get directions to go someplace and it seems like it’s taking you longer than it should?

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah.

Barney Feinberg
Yeah. When you go back the same way, it seems to go a little shorter because now you know how to get there. Does that make sense?

Pete Mockaitis
Mm-hm. Okay. Then-

Barney Feinberg
Go ahead.

Pete Mockaitis
So playing not to lose mean you’re thinking about the outcome, the end, the finish line, the expectation as opposed to the moment, the having fun, the what’s immediately in front of you right now.

Barney Feinberg
Whatever value you choose to empower. It just so happened that fun came up when I was playing that tennis match with that song. It just brought me into that jovial place, which took away anything about winning or losing away and just playing the game.

Pete Mockaitis
Now, you’ve used the phrase a couple of times, ‘the value that you empower,’ what do you mean by that?

Barney Feinberg
Well, it’s a practice. Most of the time we have a lot of values and what I call DNA values. DNA values are values that are ingrained in us that we’re brought up with, that create our success formulas. They more likely control us than we control them. When circumstances come about that disconnect us from a value that we find is important, life becomes hard, difficult. However, we have the ability to empower.

What is empower? It’s the difference between being in love and thinking of being in love. It’s story. That’s really what I focus on. When you look back in time, the communications that were most important in the tribe before there was the written word was from the storyteller. The storyteller would tell us stories that would empower or emphasize values that were important to us.

You watch movies now. I can watch a movie and there’s a scene that just catches me. It’s empowering a value. We have our own stories in life that empower values that are important to us. Imagine instead of allowing the circumstances dictate who we are, we get to choose who we want to be by allowing that story to take us to that value in that moment. Does that make sense?

Pete Mockaitis
So you say that we’re choosing it as opposed to hey, the song comes on and there you go. Maybe could you walk us through a couple of examples in practice in terms of you’re kind of living and experiencing one thing and you make a choice to empower a value through story and then things are transformed?

Barney Feinberg
Okay, I can give you a story of someone that I coached. Does that work?

Pete Mockaitis
Oh sure, yeah.

Barney Feinberg
Okay, good. I have two professions, really three, but we’ll talk two: coaching and recruiting. I’ve been in executive placement for 25 years. As an executive recruiter I was talking to one of my clients who was looking for a new job.

She’d only been with the company that she was with for six months. I said, “What happened? What makes you want to leave?” She said, “Well, I took this job. I was really excited. Then I got this new boss three months into the job. This boss is just a micromanager, driving me crazy.” I’m like, “Wow, yeah.”

We talked about it. I started coaching her for a while. What was showing up were certain values that were just disconnecting her. This happens to us all the time at work. We just get numb to it. We just think that’s just the way work is.

But values such as independence, she didn’t have any. She felt, “Oh my God, this woman is not giving me any independence.” Very, very frustrating. She felt she wasn’t trusted. She felt efficiency wasn’t being honored. All of these things were really making it difficult for her to be effective and productive.

We talked about trust. She came up with a story after some coaching about where trust was everything for her. It happened to be with her husband down a ski slope going down a black and how much she trusted him to help her get down. It all worked brilliantly. Every time she thought about that moment, trust was empowered.

I challenged her. I said, “Start empowering the value of trust with your manager.” It wasn’t easy. It took her some time, but it took her some time because you can’t just do it on a dime sometimes. It takes practice. She got better and better at it. Suddenly, the manager was trusting her because she was authentically trusting him and that made a world of difference.

Micromanagers drive themselves crazy more than anybody else. They overextend themselves because they have to check everything twice. When they can trust somebody to do the work, boy, it takes a lot of relief. Suddenly life became a lot better for her. She got promoted rather quickly because not everybody was able to deal with this person as she was.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, so then the key then was, she reconnected to an experience, which sort of trust became all the more real and felt and lived and experienced, kind of like when you said thinking about being in love versus actually being in love.

Barney Feinberg
Yes.

Pete Mockaitis
So she got there. Then as a result she was able to bring that kind of an attitude to the manager and treat her in a way as though she trusted the manager even though she wasn’t maybe as naturally inclined to do so. She kind of summoned that up from within her to-

Barney Feinberg
When you empower a value, that is your rule of conduct. Values are our rules of conduct. They characterize your sense of self and are elemental in the actions you take. You can’t fake it.

But here’s the deal. What was happening before she did that was she was making the manager wrong. Even if she wasn’t saying it outwardly, inwardly it is felt. The circumstance was dictating who she was.

She was having these values that are on automatic pilot with her, which I said before, control her more than they control – she controls them. They were coming up and saying, “Warning, warning.” Frustration, anger, misunderstanding, boredom, whatever it may be, they were putting her off the game and the manager will feel that.

But when you’re truly authentically connecting with somebody, the world changes. It changes 100%. By the way, I became really good friends with the guy that I played against. He knew what was going on too. But it’s something that is just permeates.

Thank God it’s Friday was invented because we get disconnected from our values throughout the course of the week. We don’t even realize it’s happening. We’re numb to it. We’re so used to it. But when we start learning how to empower our values consciously, the world changes. Suddenly, we can start looking at the values we have in common with people and choose to connect to those rather than the ones that disconnect us.

Pete Mockaitis
Intriguing. We use the example of trust, so then can we dig into some more in terms of-

Barney Feinberg
I’d be happy to dig into one with you. How do you like that?

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, sure thing.

Barney Feinberg
Oh good. Okay, great. Talking to you, I would imagine that collaboration is a good value for you.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s true. I do enjoy a good collaboration. It’s fun. It’s exciting. It’s energizing.

Barney Feinberg
Great. I want you to imagine that that’s the value that you’re holding important right now. That’s the one that you are connecting to.

Pete Mockaitis
All right.

Barney Feinberg
Now, I want you to imagine that I’m connecting to independence. I want nothing to do with collaboration. How do you feel?

Pete Mockaitis
Well, it’s just a little sad. It’s sort of like, “Oh, Barney, we were going to have a fun time creating this thing together, but I guess we’re not. Okay.” It’s disappointing.

Barney Feinberg
Right. That’s what happens. We get frustrated, angry, disappointed. Whenever you’re honoring a value that’s not being honored in return – we put up a brave face. I’ve seen a lot of people who will smile on the outside and turn on the inside. In fact they get so used to it, they don’t even realize they’re doing it. But then they wonder why they’re so tired and they need the weekend to recover. It’s because of that.

But it begins with knowing yourself. Imagine now you’re collaborating. That’s what it’s all about. I am too. I love collaboration in case you didn’t realize it. How do you feel now?

Pete Mockaitis
Well, yeah, it’s a lot of fun I guess. But what I’m thinking about though is, how do we make the leap? How do we bridge the gap?

Barney Feinberg
Well, it’s really a four-step process the way I show it in my book.

Pete Mockaitis
Do tell.

Barney Feinberg
The first step is to better know yourself.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay.

Barney Feinberg
How many values do you think you have?

Pete Mockaitis
Brene Brown says two.

Barney Feinberg
God bless her.

Pete Mockaitis
I mean I don’t know. In a way you could – I don’t know. We’ll say two to nine in that range.

Barney Feinberg
All right, I’m going to say this to you, most people will tell me two or three. Those that are really self-aware maybe will be able to tell me ten. But those that are self-aware when they say ten, how long do you think it takes for them to actually be able to articulate that?

Pete Mockaitis
Maybe a lifetime.

Barney Feinberg
It takes a while. Trust me. It takes a while. We are very clueless to the values that we have. I’m going to tell you, you have tens, you have hundreds of values. But what we tend to do for convenience sake, is we mesh them into a giant value, like the value of integrity.

You look at most companies that have these are our values, many of them will say integrity. I’ll applaud. I’ll say integrity is a great value. Then I’ll ask how many values do you believe there are in integrity.

Pete Mockaitis
I mean we can subdivide it infinite ways.

Barney Feinberg
Yeah, exactly.

Pete Mockaitis
It covers everything from not stealing to not being late.

Barney Feinberg
Well, yes, exactly. Exactly. You’re 100% right. Yet, here’s the thing, there may be, let’s just use an arbitrary number, 30 values in integrity. Maybe 29 of them you have in common with the person you’re working with, but you’re connecting to the one that disconnects you. Crazy.

Pete Mockaitis
Now you say I’m connecting with. What does that phrase mean?

Barney Feinberg
You are noticing the timeliness, as an example, is not being honored.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, I’m connecting with – as I’m noticing it isn’t there and it’s ticking me off.

Barney Feinberg
Yeah, …. Yeah. Then you go to other values that affect it, like my efficiency is being drawn down or I’m bored because I’m not getting anything done. All of these things show up, but it’s all about timeliness.

What happens? We get into a rut. Suddenly, say you’re working – look I work with advertising, public relations, media services. Those are my forte industries. Say you’re working with a creative who consistently is late. Well, if every time you set up an appointment that’s in the back of your mind, you’re already disconnecting from that value.

You may be smiling, “Oh, you’ll be there on time, won’t you?” but in the back of your mind, you’re like, “They’re going to be late again.” Because of it, they’re going to be late again.

Pete Mockaitis
You say, because of it, they’re going to be late again. Can you say more about that?

Barney Feinberg
Sure. You’re making them wrong.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. As a result of me making them wrong, they respond in a-

Barney Feinberg
… by either being late again or they’ll do something else because nobody likes to be made wrong. Nobody. That’s probably the biggest disease we have in business, is being made wrong. People were taught to do that. That’s how we were brought up.

We were brought up in what I call a test society. I think they’ll look back a thousand years from now and say, “Oh my God, these people were giving and taking tests every day of their life.” Hey, not only were we taking tests, but we were taught to learn what we got wrong, so we wouldn’t repeat it, so we’re always looking for what’s wrong.

A lot of us are really like that, not all of us, but a lot of people are always looking for what we could do better and what someone else could do better. It creates a lot of wrong and people don’t like being wrong.

Pete Mockaitis
You’re saying that if someone’s late, I value timeliness and I make them wrong, whether I verbally express it or not, they are picking up that I’m not too pleased with something about them and then they react in way that is unfavorable, kind of like a vicious cycle.

Barney Feinberg
Well, it gets to be. Einstein gave the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. That’s kind of what we are on automatic pilot. We’re on automatic pilot with people.

Some people we just don’t trust. There may have been something that happened years ago that they did that made us lose trust in them. Ever since then we always question trust. Maybe we’ll get over it. Maybe we don’t. Trust is important, but it ain’t everything. Sometimes because we’re not trusting somebody, they’re not trusting us. It just happens that way.

If you can connect with someone with a value authentically – you can’t fake empowering a value – but if you’re authentically connecting to someone with a value that you’re empowering and they are empowering it at the same time, believe it or not, suddenly you start trusting each other again.

Pete Mockaitis
In the realm of the timeliness example, what would we do there?

Barney Feinberg
With timeliness?

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, so someone’s late-

Barney Feinberg
It all depends on where …. Connect with that person. You could go to sense of humor. You could go to so many different values. We have so many to choose from. Maybe they appreciate honesty. Maybe there’s something about the situation that calls for empathy. I don’t know.

But the point is there are four steps. We’re jumping the gun. First step is to know yourself better. I challenge people to have at least 20 or 30 values that they can empower consciously.

Because if the person is late and you’re thrown to them being late and making them wrong, you’re allowing the circumstance to dictate who you are just like when I was told you have one set and the winner take all, I sensed he didn’t want me to make the team, I went automatically to playing not to lose, being upset, all of that. We do that all the time. We do that all the time.

Pete Mockaitis
We’ve got your 20 values that you can empower. It’s sort of like, let’s say gratitude. I’ve got a-

Barney Feinberg
I love that.

Pete Mockaitis
-a story, an experience of gratitude raring to go. It’s sort of like it’s in my repertoire to summon it. Then if I can pick up on – I guess we’re jumping the gun again – if I can pick up on the notion that this annoying late person also values gratitude, then I can kind of change the focus such that we’re vibing on this shared gratitude value thing and thusly have more of a positive rapport and less of an I’m irritated with this tardy person.

Barney Feinberg
There’s no such thing as perfection. We’ll all have values that disconnect us from each other. We’ll all have values that connect us. We’re just really good at noticing what’s missing. Business teaches us to be that way. We do that in relationships.

I’m a believer that the biggest asset any company has are the people they have in it and the talent. If you know how to help people connect with each other, you’re going to have much better productivity, much more satisfaction, much more innovation. When people disconnect with each other, we tend to listen more to ourselves than to the people we’re talking to.

You ever notice that when you’re angry or upset? Imagine you’re in a meeting. You’re in a meeting and the value of I call it full expression, you have something to say in this meeting, but you’re basically being told to keep quiet. You want to say it. How do you feel?

Pete Mockaitis
I hear what you’re saying there with regard to talking to yourself. You’re sort of muttering, like, “Oh, this is bull crap. They never appreciate anything I have to offer.” All that kind of stuff.

Barney Feinberg
Yeah, but we’re so numb to that. We hear those voices, we don’t even realize we’re talking to ourselves. We just think we’re hearing the truth. I lost my train of thought there. You got me off a bit.

Pete Mockaitis
We had four steps.

Barney Feinberg
All right, the second step, once you have say listed 20 values, the second step is to learn how to empower them. That takes step-by-step process.

What I do is I have people free write. I tell them to free write a peak moment in their life. If you looked at my book, you’d see what I did with it. You free write a couple of paragraphs of a peak moment and I can promise you you’ll learn at least 20 or 30 values from that one story if you go through it a number of times. You’ll see so many different values that pop up.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s cool.

Barney Feinberg
Once you list the number of stories – I actually break it down. I mentioned DNA values; they’re values that are on automatic pilot, that just show up all the time. Then there are other values we never even bring to work that could be brilliant if we realized that we could actually use them, but we don’t. We just go with what’s on automatic pilot usually.

The next step is to find the story that empowers that value. It’s your story. If you can’t find it, you can find a story that you’ve read about or a scene in a movie, something that every time you think about it, it just lifts your soul.

I’ll tell you, once I realized songs helped me out in tennis, I was listening to the Rocky theme song a lot when we were going to matches. It really pumped you up. You know what that’s like. That’s what people – song is great. I use song as a trigger to empower values.

Once I have the value defined as to what my definition is, and it’s mine, it’s nobody else’s. I could have a definition of a value that’s different from your definition and we could disconnect or your value of A and my value of B are the same, but we have different names for it. It’s really to get to know who you are. Once you have a better sense of who you are, ah, now it’s easier to understand where you connect with others because now you understand it better.

It’s like if I go to Alaska and I look at the snow, which you were just talking about, I’d see three kinds. I’d see wet, dry and icy because that’s what I shovel. But if I spoke to an Alaskan, they’d say 50 kinds that you can drink from, that you can walk on, that you can camp on, that you’re going to fall through. They have names for them.

Once you start being able to better articulate your values, it’s much easier to understand the ones that are connecting with you. I mean, “Oh, he’s out of integrity.” Okay, maybe you’ll call it late. Maybe it’s something else, but we generalize. We generalize. I think it’s much more powerful to let them free, to really get to understand them better so that you know exactly where you’re disconnecting and where you’re not.

I’ll say this, in every sentence there are multiple values, multiple. If you listen for them, you’ll hear them. You’re not going to get them all in the beginning. It takes time, but all you have to do is find a couple. …-

Pete Mockaitis
So I’m listening for them-

Barney Feinberg
-really works with him and I or with her and her whoever. I mean, wow. Suddenly, you’ve got the ability not to allow that circumstance to dictate who you are.

Pete Mockaitis
I guess with the listening am I looking out for strong emotion, like, “Whoa, that person is mad about that,” or “Oh, that person is passionate about this thing,” or “That person really seems to be quite disappointed by this.” What am I listening for to zero in the values?

Barney Feinberg
I’ll give you – one of the things I help people do is learn how to listen for values in the interview process. I say the most important factor in taking a job or hiring is the chemistry you’re going to have with people. I have them listen for values. I’m going to give you one sentence that I use. I use a number, but I’ll use this just one to give you as an example.

I have people ask what makes you and your company successful. Usually when I’m talking to people about that, they’ve already listed 20 or 30 values in the conversation we’ve had. I say just look at the values you have in front of you. Aren’t they what make you a success? Generally speaking they will agree. Absolutely.

With that in front of them, I give them a couple of sentences to understand how many values can be in one. I’ll give you one. What makes me and my company successful? “Gee, that’s a good question. What makes us successful? Well, we’re always looking for better ways to accomplish the job and we do a brilliant job.” Now, I’m going to ask you, what values did you hear in that?

Pete Mockaitis
I’d say innovation, execution, maybe praise or celebration.

Barney Feinberg
Awesome. Okay. Let me tell you what was intended. “Gee, that’s a good question.” I just acknowledged you. Acknowledgement is a value some people really appreciate.

Pete Mockaitis
… a good time to think.

Barney Feinberg
Well, no, no, no, no, no, but you’re not going to get – look, I don’t want to be unfair. It’s four steps. The first step is to know yourself better. It doesn’t happen that quickly. It takes time, but if you do it step-by-step, it’s a practice. It’s not a one and done situation. But it’s for people that really want to have a better way of connecting with each other. I think the better you connect, the more successful you’re going to be.

But just to go through that sentence quickly, I’ll just throw a couple out there. Acknowledgement, full expression. I said, “That’s a good question.” I’m maybe someone who encourages other questions. “What makes us successful?” I find reflective thinking an important value. I just repeated the question, so maybe I’m a reflective thinker.

Then “We’re always looking for better ways,” strategic thinking, efficiency. “We do a brilliant job,” dedication to excellence. Then what’s peppered in there are three us and we’s, which could indicate collaboration, team play, whatever the value is you choose to name it, but you can see, oh my goodness, how many values ….

What usually happens in a good conversation is people have a gut feeling. Gut feelings are great, but they’re coming from your stomach. They’re not coming from your head. When you can actually understand what’s causing it and it’s these values that are actually being – showing up in the conversation, it gives you a lot more wisdom to make decisions and a lot more wisdom to know how to connect with people.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s interesting how you said maybe there a couple times. It’s sort of like you are generating hypotheses and then sort of finding further reinforcement with subsequent sentences. It’s like, “Oh, well, you know what? That collaborative thing only showed up once, but then the other showed up again, and again, and again, and again. Maybe the collaboration was more of a fluke or a lesser value from that one sentence.

Barney Feinberg
Maybe I misheard it. Maybe I was listening for what I wanted to hear and it wasn’t there because a lot of times we go in on what I term a test mentality. If it’s an interview, we’re trying to pass the test. When we’re testing, we’re absolutely listening more to ourselves than the people we’re talking to. It’s when we’re – I shifted.

To listen for values, you want to be using what I term a field trip mentality. When you’re on a field trip, there’s much better chance you’re in curiosity, open mind, and discovery, three values that I find really important. What I do with everyone that I talk to and you can do this right now, think of a moment when you were on a field trip or a vacation that was just amazing. Tell me when you get it.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh yeah, got it.

Barney Feinberg
Yeah. How did that feel?

Pete Mockaitis
Well, it was-

Barney Feinberg
Thinking about that vacation.

Pete Mockaitis
It was cozy. There was just great people just enjoying each other. We didn’t actually do a whole lot. We mostly stayed inside. It was very snowy out and it was a pretty remote location, but it was just great times together, whether we were talking or playing video games or cooking or eating. It was just great fun.

Barney Feinberg
Imagine going into an RFP feeling that way rather than trying to pass a test. Imagine going on a blind date that way rather than that test mentality that generally shows up in a blind date conversation.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, I see there. So we use the vacation prompt to get us to a place of hey, feeling good and enjoying in a relaxed way.

Barney Feinberg
Yes, here’s the deal. If you’re talking to someone and you’re in that mentality and you’re not feeling that way, I suggest it’s probably disconnection from the person you’re talking to. What is it that’s disconnecting?

If it’s an interview, it’s a good chance maybe that’s not a person you want to work with every day. But if it’s someone you’re working with every day, what is it that’s throwing us off? What are the values that are disconnecting us and what are the values I’m hearing that would?

Pete Mockaitis
Once you’ve sort of identified, “Okay, I think this person values this and I’ve got that within me as well, so I’m going to try to bring it forth,” I guess that’s with either the music or the story or the memory. Then you’re just kind of showing up and interacting with that person with that kind of in the background of what’s going on for you.

Barney Feinberg
But …. You’re being that. If you’re truly empowering a value, it is dictating who you are. It clarifies your voice. It focuses your mind. It aligns your visions. It’s who you are. Some people will say to me, “Gee Barney, how come I have to change? Why should I be the one that changes?”

Pete Mockaitis
I just think that’s so funny because we just talked about making other people wrong. It’s like-

Barney Feinberg
Yeah, but people do this. They say, “Well, I’m right. They’re wrong.” A lot of people like being right. Being right is fine, but when you’re making others wrong because of it, it doesn’t help you that much. It doesn’t. It certainly is not going to build a relationship.

What I say to people that say this to me is you’re being yourself. You’re just choosing to connect rather than disconnect. I’m not asking you to be a value that doesn’t – isn’t who you are. I’m suggesting you try something that really will connect you and build bridges of connection to knock down the walls of disconnection that might have been there for a long time.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s cool. Thank you. Well, Barney tell me, anything else you want to make sure to mention before we shift gears and hear about some of your favorite things?

Barney Feinberg
Well, I would say one other thing we didn’t get to discuss. There are three types of relationships. One is dysfunctional, one is stagnant, and one is on the rise. Dysfunctional we know. We’ve probably had them. But on the rise is what I call out for everyone.

However, unfortunately, most of us settle for stagnant, which means, yeah, we are connecting. We are connecting. We have values that work, Barney, and we’ve been using them for years and years and years. I’m like, yeah, so if you were a business and you just kept doing it the same way over and over again for years and years and years, chances are you’re not going to be as successful.

I challenge people to look for new values that can connect them to people even the ones that they’re connected to because it can create a whole new opportunity for innovation and satisfaction. I use a quote from Michelangelo, who said “The greater danger for most of us is not that we aim to high and miss, but we aim to low and succeed.”

Pete Mockaitis
Got it. Thank you.

Barney Feinberg
You’re welcome.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, now could you share with us a favorite study or experiment or bit of research?

Barney Feinberg
A favorite – well, there was something that came out for 2017, SHRM, Society for Human Resource Management. They looked at the satisfaction levels of people in 2017 at work. They made an announcement that it was the best they’ve seen in five years. They said people that were very satisfied equaled 38% of the population.

I was like, 38%, very satisfied. That means the rest of us are either simply satisfied or not satisfied. I never – people that are looking to succeed are not looking just for satisfaction. I think that’s an optimistic thing because that means there’s a lot of opportunity to rise up.

Pete Mockaitis
How about a favorite book?

Barney Feinberg
Well, then I’m going to go way back. This is a book that really captured me when I was in high school, Siddhartha. Are you familiar with it?

Pete Mockaitis
I think I read it a while ago. Hermann Hesse?

Barney Feinberg
Hermann Hesse.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah.

Barney Feinberg
Yeah. We’re all on a journey for self-discovery. I just look at life that way. Had a big impact on me.

Pete Mockaitis
How about a favorite tool, something that helps you be awesome at your job?

Barney Feinberg
Every morning before I start officially working, I practice empowering my values. Then I get to choose which one I want to start my day with.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh cool. Is there a particular nugget you share that really seems to connect and resonate and folks repeat it back to you often?

Barney Feinberg
Well, one that really is a nugget that people really can relate to and appreciate, the better you know yourself, the easier it is to know what you want. The better you know what you want, the easier it is to achieve.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes, that sounds true. Yeah. And yet overlooked in terms of taking the time to get to know yourself better and then getting to know what you want better because what I like about that is it connects some very practical kind of results-generating utility effectiveness type thinking to maybe more fuzzy kind of feel good introspection thinking and say, no, no, in fact one is a pathway to more of the other.

Barney Feinberg
Buddha said this, “We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts, we make the world.” When your thoughts are empowered by your values, the world becomes a brilliant place to be. By the way, that was my ending. That was me at the end.

There’s one other – if you were asking me quotes, I could quote you all day. There’s so many quotes I love. Do you know the Gandhi quote about values?

Pete Mockaitis
I’m not sure.

Barney Feinberg
“Your beliefs become your thoughts, your thoughts become your words, your words become your actions, your actions become your habits, and your habits become your values. Your values are your destiny.” Then I paraphrase. When you’re empowering your values, reaching your destiny is easy and you can go beyond it. But when you’re disconnected from your values, it is a hard road and you’ll never reach it to the point you want to.

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

Barney Feinberg
Discover the wealth of values you have, rea  lly. Know them. They’re tools that you can use that you haven’t been using consciously most likely. Empower them and it will give you greater opportunity to authentically connect with people at work and in life. This works for everything, but I’m focusing it on business.

Pete Mockaitis
Certainly. If folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Barney Feinberg
Barney@TheChemistryFactor.com, www.TheChemistryFactor.com.

Pete Mockaitis
Perfect. Well, Barney, it’s been a whole lot of fun. I wish you lots of luck with The Chemistry Factor and all you’re doing.

Barney Feinberg
Pete, it’s been a pleasure talking with you. Thank you for your time.