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May 25
0

868: Fostering the Sense of Community at Work with Christine Porath

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Christine Porath says: "Too many people don’t feel any sense of community."

Christine Porath discusses why community is critical to well-being and shares powerful examples of how to build it in the workplace.

You’ll Learn:

  1. The astounding benefits of a sense of community
  2. The one thing to avoid with community-building activities
  3. How vulnerability leads to richer communities

About Christine

Christine Porath is a tenured professor at Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business. She’s the author of Mastering Civility: A Manifesto for the Workplace and co-author of The Cost of Bad Behavior. Christine is a frequent contributor to the Harvard Business Review, and has written articles for New York Times, Wall Street Journal, McKinsey Quarterly, and Washington Post. She frequently delivers talks and has taught in various Executive programs at Harvard, Georgetown, and USC. Prior to her position at Georgetown, she was a faculty member at University of Southern California’s Marshall School of Business.

Christine’s work has been featured worldwide in over 1500 television, radio and print outlets. It has appeared on 20/20, Today, FoxNews, CNN, BBC, NBC, msnbc, CBS, ABC, and NPR. It has also been included in Time, the Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, Fortune, Forbes, NY Times, The Washington Post, and L.A. Times.

Resources Mentioned

Christine Porath Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Christine, welcome to How to be Awesome at Your Job.

Christine Porath
Thanks for having me.

Pete Mockaitis
I’m excited to dig into your wisdom and hear some juicy tidbits from your latest Mastering Community: The Surprising Ways Coming Together Moves Us from Surviving to Thriving. So, for starters, could you maybe share with us a really cool story that has some nifty surprises that illustrates what’s up with community, like what’s at stake and what’s possible and what’s the goodness that we might want to be able to tap into?

Christine Porath
Sure. So, it really was inspired by my brother and sister-in-law’s story. So, in 2008, my brother, Mike, and his wife, Sarah, had a truly terrible life changing day. In the morning, a doctor informed them that their unborn child was missing a kidney, and possibly other organs. And then in the afternoon, they returned home and there was even more devastating news. They had learned from their doctor that their two-year-old daughter, Annabelle, had a rare chromosome disorder, Dup15q, and her mind would probably not develop beyond that of a five-year-old.

And so, feeling lost and scared, my brother turned to Google to try to learn more about this diagnosis, and most of the guidance he found online wasn’t that helpful, but he clicked an old PDF file containing six stories from parents whose children experienced similar disabilities. And the stories contained joy and humor, and they offered reason for hope. And if these parents could cope with these disabilities and even find some joy in the process, maybe Mike and his wife figured they could, too.

And after conquering another parenting challenge with Annabelle, just a couple of months later, Mike realized that solutions could be simple because he had, again, posted online to try to get answers, and that’s where he found them. There was a woman who posted how to teach a child a pincer grasp, how to pick up food, which Annabelle was struggling with. And what Mike realized after trying what she suggested, which was cutting two holes, a sock for her forefinger, a sock for her thumb, and putting Annabelle’s favorite food in the tray, that it didn’t take very long, less than a month, for Annabelle to master that.

And so, through those instances, Mike realized that, oftentimes, lived experience rather than professional expertise can go a long way. And wasn’t it wonderful that communities, in this case of parents suffering with similar disabilities or diagnoses, were helping each other? And so, in 2014, Mike and Sarah bootstrapped a new venture called The Mighty, which is a digital media company connecting people facing disease, disabilities, disorders.

And since then, The Mighty has grown from just a tiny tribe of people to several million people that connect online to help each other, lift each other up. And one of the things that I learned from Mike was that, while groups under The Mighty work created to address specific needs, beyond that they were really solving for the problem of isolation and loneliness.

And I think too many people, I realized, even in the workplace, feel like Mike did, alone or disconnected and suffering, and it was just really inspiring to me to see how they were able to build community from the ground up, and how it’s helped so many people. And since I study stuff in the workplace and I got a frontline seat to see how that evolved, I just was seeing data saying too many people don’t feel any sense of community, about 65%, at work. And this was all pre-pandemic, of course.

And so, I just felt like we could and should do better. And what could we learn from The Mighty and other places like it?

Pete Mockaitis
Well, so a couple quick clarifiers, 65% don’t feel any sense of community anywhere or at work?

Christine Porath
At work.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Got you. And this pincer grasp, not that it’s a parenting podcast but I got to know. So, I get a sock and I cut two holes in it, and then that’s the trick, it’s like we got two fingers to work with?

Christine Porath
That’s the trick. And you put a sock on the other hand so there’s no cheating involved, and then you have at it. You put favorite food in a tray and, apparently, that’s the way to get at this. So, it was pretty interesting given that so many physicians and experts and others were trying to help them and nothing was working. And so, it was one of those things where maybe some parents that were facing similar situations knew best.

Pete Mockaitis
I really like that a lot, and I guess I’m discovering that nowadays that when it comes to doing research, what turns up when you ask a friend versus Reddit, versus a Facebook group, versus Google, versus ChatGPT, are quite different. And sometimes with the search engines, I don’t know how to articulate it, but it seems like the top results are often the ones that have put a lot of effort into becoming the top results in terms of their budgets and their search engine optimizers and all that stuff. And the sock pincer insight is not all that monetizable, and so there’s a good chance it’ll not find its way onto the front page of search engine results.

Christine Porath
Yeah. And so, I think one of the things that they learned was just how helpful community can be around similar issues or struggles or that kind of thing. And so, I think we could learn the same from workplace situations as well. What if we had other people to lean on and glean information from who cared about us or cared about our situation?

Pete Mockaitis
And so then in workplaces, how does that often materialize? Is it within one workplace, like the employer, like Microsoft or Google? Or is it sort of a community, like an association across many employers? How do you see those things working?

Christine Porath
Well, I think it could be either but, really, I was looking to try within organizations, try to build communities. So, at a Microsoft, or at a Motley Fool, or at a small company that people might be able to really feel a sense of belonging and feel like they matter, that they cared, that others around them cared about them, and how that could make a real difference on things like engagement. So, there was incentives for leaders to pay attention to were they building communities where people feel connected also?

Pete Mockaitis
So, let’s talk about some of these metrics. Any particularly eye-popping statistics or findings from research? Like, what is the difference that having a great community versus not so much of a community really makes at work?

Christine Porath
Well, we found, when people feel connected with their colleagues, they’re 74% more engaged and 81% more likely to stay with the organization. They’re also far more likely to thrive at work, which we know is connected to performance and things like that. And this was data from over 20,000 people that Tony Schwartz and I collected. So, it ranged across different organizations, across different industries, it was global, so fairly generalizable.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, Tony Schwartz from The Power of Full Engagement?

Christine Porath
Yes, exactly.

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful.

Christine Porath
Yeah, and The Energy Project where he founded that.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, we’ve had him on and he’s swell. Okay. So, then could you paint a picture for us, inside a work context, do we have a nice illustration of what a great community story looks, sounds, and feels like in practice?

Christine Porath
Well, I think one that is from a smaller organization that I’m pretty familiar with now is Motley Fool, and they’re a best place to work. And one of the things that they do, they have lots of fitness challenges, which are fun, and that kind of thing, but they organize a lot of events where they show up for each other. One of the things that they did, I know, through the pandemic was they realized that people liked to actually teach one another things that they care about, like hobbies.

And so, even on Zoom, they might sign up for something that they felt like they could teach people about. And it ranged anywhere from how to knit, to butchery-type stuff, to all different sorts of things. And what they found is that it really created a sense of community, both the person teaching as well as the person learning. And so, it was a way to increase engagement driven solely by people and what they wanted to connect with others about. So, I like that because it was, really, doesn’t require a lot of resources, and both the learner and teacher benefit. So, that was one that popped.

Pete Mockaitis
That is fun. Can you share another example?

Christine Porath
Sure. The book is full of examples. I think one that comes to mind is Marriott has a TakeCare program, and they’re global. After their merger, they have over 700,000 employees, and yet on the ground, locally, they have what are called TakeCare ambassadors. And those folks in a particular location, let’s say Thailand, on the beach there, they would organize activities that they felt like would contribute to the wellbeing of their employees but also the wellbeing of the community.

So, they might do something around protection of sea turtles, or cleaning up the beach, or painting schools that needed that kind of care. But the idea was that they were often doing something for the local community or that would benefit people. They would have painting bike helmets for kids, and so host these events for local citizens and things like that.

So, I think I’ve seen a lot of doing good for the outside community, which generates a sense of thriving and pride and feeling connected to their coworkers and their organization in a meaningful way.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Now, I’m curious, in practice, when leaders, either very senior or mid level in terms of managing a team, hear this stuff, and think, “Ooh, that’s cool. We should do that,” what are some of the key differentiators that make community-building efforts meaningful and enriching and impactful in the ways we’re going for versus some that kind of miss the mark or feel fake or off?

Christine Porath
Well, I think one that’s gone over well is at Traeger, eating together or cooking together, and they really looked to, with a new headquarters, they cook together six days a week. And I think it’s different from, necessarily, having food on site to try to keep people there for a lot of hours and things like that. But it’s, literally, they’ll make breakfast, I believe, it’s on Monday, and then lunches all the other days together.

And so, from all data and anecdotes shared, that’s a really nice value that they benefit from and enjoy each other’s company. And there’s research behind the fact that cooking together and eating together is a way to form collaboration, get to know each other better, and ends up helping things like performance and so forth. And some of that research was done with firefighters but I think I’ve really seen it take root in different organizations in meaningful ways.

One differentiator at Traeger might also be the fact that the leaders, including the CEO, Jeremy Andrus, participates and is involved in the Monday meetings that they have, which incorporate a lot of peer awards for living the values and things like that. So, I think that that can make a difference, like leaders not only encouraging certain aspects of, let’s say, sustainability or things like that, sustainable work practices, but role-model it as well.

And so, I think that with Tony Schwartz, that was another finding that we had among that large dataset was it’s really important when leaders not only encourage these practices but live them as well, setting the tone for it.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And then do you have some examples of attempts at community gone wrong where this wasn’t landing with folks, like, “Yeah, this is kind of lame, or awkward, or uncomfortable, or unnatural, and we don’t like this”?

Christine Porath
I think, generally speaking, it’s when they’re forced and mandatory.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, “We’re all having fun now.”

Christine Porath
Yeah, exactly. That you have to participate, that these are after-hour events that you feel like if you’re not there, it’s punishable kind of thing, but those are the ones that come to mind. It’s almost like the forced workplace, you have to do work from the office versus having some flexibility. So, similarly, I think around community events, like, ideally, people have some choice around them.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, I remember one time at work, we went golfing, and so I made it very clear that I, straight up, don’t know how to play golf, and that when I’ve attempted, it went very poorly in terms of, like, divots everywhere, so, like, “Just so we’re clear.” And so then, they’re like, “Oh, you’ll be fine.” I was like, “Well, okay, if you say so. I’ve told you sort of what’s going to happen.”

And then I did it and then they were very frustrated with me, and then they’re like, “We’ve got to let them play through. You’re slowing us down.” I was like, “Well, I kind of told you that was how this was going to go.” And so, I found that very uncomfortable and unpleasant in terms of that experience, as opposed to, I don’t know, either choosing a different activity that everyone likes, or just say, “Okay. Well, hey, check this out. Well, you can hang out on the golf cart and goof around and have some drinks, I don’t know, whatever, and enjoy things that way even if the actual swinging of the club isn’t in the cards for the day.”

So, yeah, that’s a good point. So, there’s a choice, it’s not mandatory. And it seems like with the cooking example, and it’s come up before. It’s like folks are doing stuff collaboratively, and so I think there’s probably some magic there. I’m thinking now about Bob Cialdini and his stuff about singing and/or dancing in unison does cool stuff. That might be harder, I don’t know, depending on the vibe of your workplace. Folks might be really into that or not at all.

And so, I guess that’s maybe one of the themes, is that this will be very individualistic for individuals and teams based on what vibes for them.

Christine Porath
Yeah, I think I really like your example of having some choice around different activities, for example. I’ve seen that go over really well. Or, even if you plan an event, like I attended one at a major league baseball park that they rented out the area where you can eat together and so forth, then you could tour the field. This was an evening activity. The batting cages were open so it was really fun for those of us that wanted to take a crack at swinging against some pitchers, but you didn’t have to.

You could hang out and eat or drink with others. You could walk around and tour the facilities. So, it could be a number of different things that you could do even though there was a large room together where people could hang out. So, it provided a little bit of choose your own path depending on your interests and your abilities and so forth that seem to go over really well as far as most people being happy with the choices and that kind of things.

So, I think that that choice element that you highlighted is really key, if possible. And I know for offsites, oftentimes what they’ll do is just people can choose out of three, four, five activities. And I think that’s a really nice way to promote inclusivity as well, the idea that, depending on your capabilities, cultural differences, interests, those kinds of things, you’re providing a number of different paths for people.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, beyond the activities or the outings, are there any other key ingredients in the mix for having great communities at work?

Christine Porath
I think anytime that you can promote healthier living and provide some sense of, whether it’s recovery or rejuvenation or things like that, those are wins as well. I think of Kelly McGonigal’s The Joy of Movement and the idea of that that’s a nice thing for people that are interested in that, but they’re amplifiers, like doing it together, doing it nature, doing it to music, things like that.

And so, one of the examples that I shared was a woman who actually started a program at Dell at the time around just because people were gaining a lot of weight, they weren’t feeling very good, she started covering them for working out an hour each day. And it ended up becoming, Thrive was the program, but people couldn’t wait to be a part of it.

And I think that part of it was it also broke down barriers, she said, of you might have a leader running next to someone that was in the call center, and it tended to break down silos in the organization, and build, cultivate relationships among people that might not have, otherwise, known each other or gotten to meet one another, and so that was a real positive as well as people became far healthier in terms of practices and things like that.

So, that was a nice example that I liked a lot. It doesn’t work for everyone but I think it, overall, had a lot of positive effects for various individuals, and team performance shot up and things like that. So, even though that they were working less or had the capability to work less, given time off to take a break, to work out, things like that, then, overall, it was a real win for the organization.

Pete Mockaitis
And you also mentioned radical candor. We had Kim Scott on the show, and she was swell. But what role does that play in building community? And could you give us some examples?

Christine Porath
Yeah, I love Kim Scott’s work on radical candor, and some of the examples that I share in the book actually tie to Kelly Leonard, who’s at Second City. And he and Kim partnered to teach people radical candor through improvisation and the idea that we’re all a work in progress. But I think radical candor, when people know that you care personally, there’s more liberty to challenge directly.

And I think that that’s a positive as far as we want people sharing feedback, we want people, basically, coaching each other up, like helping people improve. And a great way to do that is through radical candor, given how negative feedback is often awkward for a lot of us. And so, if you can develop a spirit of radical candor, it really helps quite a bit.

And one of the examples that I liked in the book came from Christa Quarles, who, at the time, was CEO of OpenTable. And one of the things that she shared was she learned she had to give it to get it. In other words, she had to be vulnerable and share when she has messed up or needed feedback, and that kind of broke down some of the barriers, such that people were able to see, “Okay, she can handle that kind of criticism or direct feedback. And what happens if we use it?”

But I think she also had to encourage it along the way, suggesting that, “Listen, failure is okay. Like, through failure, we will learn. So, some of that criticism is actually welcome because it’s going to get us to a better place more quickly.” And so, I thought she handled things really well. And if folks were not comfortable speaking up, one of the things that she did was pulled them aside.

Like, this very talented woman who just was reluctant to speak up in a group, and she coached her effectively, and she just let her know, “Listen, if I need to, I’ll tee you up for this, but we need you. We need your voice. We need you involved,” and it really went a long way to developing her but, more importantly at the time, also what the team and the organization needed.

And so, I thought it was an excellent example of leaders as a coach, and getting involved to kind of get the ball rolling for people to be radically candid in ways that maybe didn’t come naturally, but they needed to break out of what Christa Quarles called ruinous empathy, or this idea of not speaking up because you don’t want to hurt someone, which is the most common mistake. And I think Kim says that about 85% of the mistakes are in that arena.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And speaking of mistakes, we talked about not having the forced fun. Is there any other top do’s and don’ts you’d highlight if folks are thinking, “Yeah, I would like to kick up some community at work”? What do you recommend as being some of the very first things they do do and they don’t do?

Christine Porath
Well, I think the idea of uniting people and providing a safe space for people to communicate is huge, and leaders can set the tone for that by being vulnerable, admitting mistakes, admitting failures, things like that. But one of the examples that I used at the beginning of the book is just an example of Phil Jackson, who, you may know, coaching the Chicago Bulls for all those years and winning so many championships.

But Steve Kerr talked about one of the things that brought them to be such a tight knit team was the idea that every day they met in Phil’s kind of film room, so to speak, but they wouldn’t talk about basketball or the X’s and O’s. It was all about connecting. And so, I think that idea of, “Are you providing a safe space where people are communicating and getting to know each other in different ways?”

That could be around activities. It could be around cooking like we talked about. There are so many different ideas behind that, but I think bringing people together and trying to create a place where people can be vulnerable is really huge. So, I liked that example for the idea that just get people talking, sharing information, and that kind of thing.

Another example that I liked was Chuck Robbins at Cisco, and the idea of having a conscious culture. And one of the things that they did, again, well before the pandemic, was they had a program called Love and Load. And the idea was that people would be providing how they were doing, so just a quick full survey, and the leader would get that data and could really quickly address it.

So, if someone was kind of struggling or not having a good week, a leader could check in really quickly around that. And so, I think it’s helping to create touchpoints between leaders and their direct reports, or even peers for that matter, but the idea of being, I think, people need those kinds of little lifts. And so, the more that the leader can create these touchpoints through the day, which Doug Conant talks about quite a bit and has a book on touchpoints, and really turned an organization, Campbell Soup, around with touchpoints. That would be a really good mode to kind of jumpstart things.

It doesn’t take a lot of time. These were moments that Doug talked about in the hallways, in meetings, in the cafeteria, and it was all about connecting with people, and you listen attentively. He would often try to leverage his expertise and then close with, “How can I help?” And those kinds of moments really made a difference.

Another one that Doug talked about, which I love, was he ended up sending 30,000 thank you notes while CEO of Campbell’s. And I think that’s something that, especially nowadays where people may be feeling a little beat down, or a little negative, or just struggling coming off of the pandemic, well, even before that, this was important, but the point is that these thank you notes made a huge difference in making people feel valued.

And so, those small things can make a huge difference in employees’ lives, and get them engaged, get them, retain them in organizations. And it was kind of fun. I had a friend that a few months ago was traveling on a plane and sat behind a gentleman who was raving about where he worked, at Campbell’s, and the fact that 15 years ago, a CEO had written this lowly salesperson a thank you note.

And so, again, 15 years later, someone is still talking about this, still proud of the company, the connections, the sense of community that he felt because of this action. So, I think that small actions can make a huge difference, and you don’t have to be a leader for that to happen.

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

Christine Porath
I think the idea of ubuntu, and, “I am who I am because of who we all are.” I like that idea a lot. And as you may be able to tell, I like sports examples a lot. So, I shared an example of Doc Rivers turning around the Boston Celtics at the time with this rallying cry. But I also love the example, and it was actually the woman, Carla Peñarosa Blatt, who I shared the Dell story about, who found that by taking time out and traveling with her family, not wired into technology and things like that, she and her family really felt a much greater sense of connectedness.

And I think, for her, it was kind of putting away the technology even for short periods of time and really trying to connect with people. And, again, it could be short, over coffee, over a meal. It could be in the backyard, over campfire, what have you. But the point being that the importance of maybe disconnecting from all of our tasks, the technology, so that we can connect better and feel a sense of community.

So, again, I think that that’s something that doesn’t necessarily require huge resources but is an action that could make a big difference in our lives as far as the quality of connection and community that we feel.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Thank you. Well, now could you share a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Christine Porath
I have one quote at the beginning of the book that I like a lot that’s actually from Brene Brown, and it’s just the idea of unlocking our potential. So, I believe it is, “You can’t unlock potential if you cannot unlock people.” So, she’s written about this, which I love.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And a favorite study or experiment or bit of research?

Christine Porath
I think you hit all on the radical candor part that I talk a lot about with respect to respect. The other bit is just how rudeness or incivility is contagious. And so, I often cite that but the good news is civility is contagious as well. And so, again, kind of pointing to small actions and how, for better or worse, they have a lot of different ripple effects and can change how our communities feel. So, I hope that’s empowering for people.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite book?

Christine Porath
Man’s Search for Meaning.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite tool?

Christine Porath
I like Tony Schwartz’s Energy Audit, or, more generally, just checking in to see how you feel throughout the day, and making adjustments accordingly.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite habit?

Christine Porath
For me, it’s probably working out, ideally, in the morning to get a jumpstart and feeling good.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And is there a key nugget you share that really seems to connect and resonate with folks; they quote it back to you often?

Christine Porath
I use an example of the 10-5 way which was if people were within 10 feet, they smiled and made eye contact. If they were within five feet, they said hello. And what OSHA healthcare system found is that people felt a stronger sense of civility but also patient satisfaction scores rose as did patient referrals. And so, I just like the idea that it kinda shows how contagion happens even outside of the organization in ways that really help people within and outside organizations to kind of lift them up.

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

Christine Porath
Probably LinkedIn, so just Christine Porath. And I’m on Twitter @PorathC.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And do you have a final challenge or call to action for folks looking to be awesome at their jobs?

Christine Porath
I think the idea of think about, “Who do you want to be in different moments?” and just what can we do to lift others up throughout our day.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Christine, this has been a treat. Thank you. I wish you much luck and good community.

Christine Porath
Thank you. I appreciate the opportunity to be on your show.

May 22
0

867: How to Stop Being Busy and Start Being Strategic with Richard Medcalf

By | Podcasts | No Comments

 

Richard Medcalf says: "The most important project is the one that no one else is asking for."

Richard Medcalf reveals how to free up time for the strategic activities that will advance your career.

You’ll Learn:

  1. Why productivity won’t solve busy-ness
  2. The crucial question that makes you more strategic
  3. The powerful reframe that slashes busywork

About Richard

Richard Medcalf describes himself as “what you get if you were to put a McKinsey consultant, a slightly unorthodox pastor and an entrepreneur into a blender”.

He is the founder of Xquadrant, which helps elite leaders reinvent their ‘success formula’ and multiply their impact. His personal clients include CEOs of billion-dollar corporations, successful serial entrepreneurs, and the founders of tech ‘unicorns’.

Richard has advised the C-Suite for over 25 years. After a Masters at Oxford University, where he came top in his year, he joined a premier strategy consultancy and later became the youngest-ever Partner. He then spent 11 years at tech giant Cisco in an elite team reporting to the CEO.

Richard is bi-national English/French, lives near Paris, and is happily married and the proud father of two. He has an insatiable love for spicy food and the electric guitar.

Resources Mentioned

Richard Medcalf Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Richard, welcome back to How to be Awesome at Your Job.

Richard Medcalf
Pete, it’s a pleasure to be back. Thank you for inviting me on the show again.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m excited to get into your wisdom and your book Making TIME for Strategy: How to be less busy and more successful. I’d love to hear your take. It’s been three years, and what a three-years it’s been since we last spoke, any particular discoveries that have really struck you in this time?

Richard Medcalf
Yeah, actually, one thing that’s really struck me is this whole shift of virtual work, which, obviously, blah, blah, blah, everyone’s talked about time and time again, too much now perhaps, but it has exacerbated the problem that I saw everybody was having before, which is being overloaded and being overwhelmed because the barriers have really gone down for so many people.

They’re at home, they’re at work, or they’re everywhere, and there’s more and more stuff coming, and more and more pressures at any one time. It’s the Zoom call phenomenon. You’re on a call one minute, your baby is crying the next minute, everything else. So, I think people have felt a lot of pressure to deliver a lot of things.

Pete Mockaitis
Absolutely. And so, in your book Making TIME for Strategy, I’d love to hear any novel insights you’ve picked up along the way as you’re researching and assembling this?

Richard Medcalf
Yeah. So, one of the studies that I talk about there, this sense, especially over the last two, three years, there’s just so much coming at us all the time from every direction. I realized this is something which almost every leader and every individual contributor, frankly, is feeling these days because the boundaries aren’t there. I call it the infinity trap because we have an infinity of things, Pete, now.

You want to chat with somebody? You’ve got infinite social media opportunities to go and speak to somebody. You want to consume content? You’ve got an infinite amount of videos, podcasts, books to read, blogs to consume, you name it, movies to stream. You’ve got an infinite number of messages coming into your inbox, tasks from your manager, from your colleagues, from clients, or from anybody who wants to get an email into your inbox or message into your Slack or Microsoft Teams, so, it never stops.

We think we can just kind of plow through it but you can’t beat infinity, and I think that’s what people have been suffering from, and why I see everybody around me is crazy busy these days.

Pete Mockaitis
Infinity trap. Well-said. I think it was Matthew Kelly, in one of his books or talks, said, long and ago and it hit me, he’s like, “You’ll never…” and he’s Australian so he’s got a charming accent, and he’s like, “There’ll never be a moment in your life…” and he’s like, “All right, I’m all caught up now. All the things that are on my list are now off of it. Like, that just will never happen, and it’s good to just see…”

Richard Medcalf
But we say this, though.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, hear it, say it.

Richard Medcalf
Yeah, we say this all the time. We don’t say it quite like that. We say, “It’ll be quieter next quarter.” A number of people say that, “Oh, Richard, I’m really crazy busy right now, so busy. Yeah, it’s a bit difficult time but next quarter, I’ve got some time opening up in my diary.” I’m like, “Of course, you’ve got time. It’s 12 weeks away. Of course, it’s not full up yet,” and we just keep telling ourselves that, somehow, it’s just a bit busy right now, and it’s going to get better. And does it ever get better, really?

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s a really good reality check right there in terms of “Is now really especially busy?” And I guess, I think sometimes that feels true in terms of cyclical industries like, I’m thinking, accountants in the US near April. All right. Fair enough. It really is a particularly crazy busy time. And you know it, and you’ll feel it. But in more of a typical workflow world, it’s sort of just always true that many stakeholders are requesting many things from you, and that’s just every day of the year.

Richard Medcalf
And when you least expect it, you get, even your accountants or your finance team that you’re talking about, they get past the yearend, and then, “Oh, no, there’s an M&A going on. Now there’s an order.” Who knows? So, I agree there’s a cyclical part to business but, actually, when we’re on the down cycle, there’s always other projects that come in. So, yeah, I think we have this.

And I talk about the perfect day. We often say, “It’s not the perfect day right now to get started on whatever. So, you know what, I’ve got more important things I need to get to. I know that but today is not a great day because I’ve got my year end, because I’ve got this project going on, because COVID has just hit, because there’s a macroeconomic shakedown happening somewhere in the world.”

So, we kind of keep waiting often, we say, “Well, I’m really busy right now but I can’t quite sort out that busyness. It’s just happening to me, but give me next week, it will be better, or next month, it will be better, or next quarter, it will be better, and then we’ll get there.” But that’s like me, I’m going on a diet. I struggle to do these things, take on new habits sometimes because I’m waiting for the perfect day, like, “Well, now is not a good day to lose a few pounds because there’s a massive chocolate cake in front of me.”

“Now is not a good day because it’s the weekend,” “Now is not a good day because I’m in a restaurant,” “Now is not a good day because it’s your birthday,” or it’s my birthday, or the weather is nice, or whatever. We keep creating excuses sometimes for not dealing with some of the issues in our life, and it’s a myth. It’s a mirage that we put up. So, when it comes to this subject of busyness, I think we often put off dealing with it because we’re so busy we haven’t got the bandwidth.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s just true. And it’s really kind of potentially vicious cycle there in terms of to do wise prioritization, for me at least, it feels like, emotionally, I need some, I guess I’d call it space, in terms of my brain. Like, there’s the mental-emotional state of being besieged by lots of stuff, it’s kind of like a stress, a narrowing, a tightening vibe. And then there’s the opposite, which is like, “Oh, hey, we’re on a retreat, and we’ve got wide open views and whiteboards or something.”

It’s like, “Ahh, here I can dream and think big, and zero in on what really matters.” And it’s tricky because when you need it most is when you have too much stuff to do, and yet that’s when it’s hardest to execute that kind of thinking.

Richard Medcalf
Yeah, I think that’s right. I talk about war time and peace time. We often think, “Yeah, I’ll do all that stuff in peace time when I haven’t got all this stuff,” just as you said, “when I’m on a desert island and I can just kick back and muse.” The reality is most of our lives is lived in that high stress, high pressure busy environment and we have to make it work there. I think that’s really important.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, in your book Making TIME for Strategy, first of all, how are we defining strategy or strategic time here?

Richard Medcalf
Yeah. So, strategy doesn’t have to be corporate strategy, so this is something that we can apply at any level in the organization. We might be the CEO, and I worked with some of the most incredible CEOs on the planet, and it does apply for them doing corporate strategy, but it also applies to the individual contributor and anywhere in between.

And the reason is I’m talking about this strategic, “So, what’s going to move the needle for you?” Let me give you an example. Most of our days, we spend basically doing the same old thing, we do the same thing every week, or every month, or every time we get a new client or a new project.

And so, we get caught into the operational, keeping the lights on, turning the machine. And the strategic is going to be what breaks you out of that pattern, build a new capability, creates a new relationship, basically changes the game for you so that things become easier in the future.

I like to say that this idea of strategic time, it’s actually your number one KPI for your future success. It’s your key performance indicator. If you want to know how successful you will be in the next three years, or one year, three years, five years, then you need to look at how much time you’re investing in your future success, and that has to be looked at week on week, “This week, how much time did I spend, did I invest in making the future better? Or, did I just use all my time on all the day-to-day stuff?” I think that’s the big shift that we need to focus on.

Pete Mockaitis
I love that so much, investing to make the future better or make things easier. And this brings me back to one of my all-time favorite books that we had one of the authors on the show, Jay Papasan, The ONE Thing, that magical question, “What’s the one thing I can do, such that by doing it, everything else becomes easier or unnecessary?”

And so, here though, you’re really making me think of, I don’t know, compound interests, finance, planting acorns, getting huge trees kinds of things. So, another way to conceptualize it, so that’s really cool.

Richard Medcalf
Yeah, that’s right. I like to say, imagine that you’re a business, and, basically, you’re making zero profit, you’re bumbling along month by month, and you’re spending everything that you make, and you don’t have any money left, any margin, to invest in the future. Well, that business is a very precarious business. It can’t really respond to shocks. It’s not really going to get much better because it can’t invest in growth. Growth takes capital.

And so, a business that has no profit isn’t going to be a very successful business. It’s going to keep going very incrementally. Now, compare it with a business that can generate enough extra margin that it can invest in its future, build out new factories, do marketing, do customer acquisition, create new technology platforms, whatever you want. That business is going to go places.

And it’s like, individually, we’re that business. Often, we have no spare margin of time in a week, so how can we invest making the future better? We can’t. Which is why, in the book, I say, you’ve got to start small but you’ve got to start to find a little bit of time that you can reinvest in the future.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Could you share with us a particularly inspiring story of a professional who found themselves enmeshed in any number of infinity traps, too busy, and then made some changes, invested, put some time into strategy and saw some cool results?

Richard Medcalf
Well, I’ll give you an example, actually, from my own career, at the very start of my career. I started my career as an analyst in a strategy consulting company, and we were working long hours, like, building basically Excel financial models for our clients, and this is how we got successful, which was bill all sorts of hours to clients, made the company money, and deliver some good piece of analysis.

What I realized after a few months, “You know what, every time we get a new client, we build one of these models, and they’re always different but they’re always kind of similar, and yet we’re building them from scratch each time. They take a long time, there’s lots of potential errors or bugs.”

Pete Mockaitis
I made those errors before, Richard. Flashbacks for review.

Richard Medcalf
Yeah, this thing can happen. It also takes a lot of time building out a model from scratch.

So, what I realized is I needed to actually invest in building myself a framework, a template that allowed me to build these models quicker than before. So, when my colleagues were doing all their billed hours, I took some time off customer billing to work late at night sometimes on building my own template. My colleagues thought I was geeking out, that I was just have lost the plot, “Richard, what are you doing? That’s not how you’re going to be successful in our company. You’ve got to bill to clients.” Well, fast-forward two weeks, I’d built a model which would suddenly allow me to do in a morning what they were taking a week to do.

Pete Mockaitis
No kidding?

Richard Medcalf
And it was more beautiful, it was less error-prone, it had all the charts built in, it’s more flexible, we could do analyses and scenarios, all the rest of it at the fracture of the time. With that time that I’d freed up, I was then able to invest it in project management, learning how to do business development, sell projects, generally use this time on the next level of activity because I’d already got the base level nailed and systematized.

Now, it wasn’t just because of this, but I ended up becoming the youngest ever partner in that strategy consulting company. I had a great trajectory because I’d figured out, “This is stuff which I shouldn’t be spending my whole life doing. It’s not going to get me to the next level. No one ever gets made partner because they’re spending all their time building the basic Excel models.” And so, it’s that kind of shift, I invested a bit of time, a couple of weeks, and then it freed me up forever after then.

I had another client I was working with on one of my programs recently in finance. He was a finance manager, kind of mid-level, and when he came to me, he said, “I’m just overloaded. I can’t do anything. I’m completely overwhelmed.” And then when we started to get into it and we looked at his time, we found 30% of his time was doing all the finance processes every month – payroll, and sales commissions, and these things, and it was incredibly complicated in his business.

He’d become successful because he had nailed those, he’d mastered it, he’d actually figured out the whole mess, and was able to process it and do it all well. So, he’d become successful because of that but it was now holding him back. So, I said to him, “You’re not going to be made CFO because of your ability to do the monthly payroll.” And he realized this was a gamechanger for him, and he had to shift, otherwise, he was going to get stuck.

So, 30% of his time, where that’s, I think, almost two days a week, a day and a half a week was being stuck on all this stuff. So, we figured out a plan, he didn’t think it was going to be possible to start with, he didn’t think his had what it took, everything else. But within about two months, two or three months, he was able to go to his manager, and say, “Hey, what else shall I take on? I’ve a bit of a spare end here. I’ve got some time.” And he took on extra responsibility in the commercial part of the organization. He got this promotion.

He couldn’t believe at how much he managed to free himself up. It’s because he thought it was just a question of a few tactics that he had to sort, but it wasn’t just a question of tactics. He had to address his mindset, he had to address his influence with his team. These are the deeper-level issues that keep us held back.

So, after we think we can’t do anything else, because we’d looked at the productivity, we’ve applied our Gmail filters, we’ve got a good to-do list, and we think we’re doing all we can, but there’s a whole level of other things that we need to be working on if we’re going to actually free ourselves up.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s really cool. Thank you. And I would like to see this miracle model template, as the former consultant dork in me would just like to see what that looks like in practice. So, that’s cool. Well, yeah, let’s hear about some of these deeper mindset belief stuff before we get into some tactics associated with shortcut keys or email filters. What’s going on internally that we should really address?

Richard Medcalf
Yeah. So, when you’re really busy, you haven’t got much time, by definition, so you have to work on the number one limiting factor holding you back right now. And that’s really how I structured the book, because the first part of the book actually talks about “What do you actually want to put your time on?” Most people, they don’t actually know what they want to do if they had a free hour, or a free morning, or a free week. They’re not really clear.

And so, when faced with a vague, ambiguous idea of being more strategic versus concrete, specific, and rewarding actions like getting an email off your list, or taking some low-level easy activity done, we’re going to gravitate to the latter. So, the first thing is to really get clear on what is your strategic agenda, what are the questions you want to be asking yourself, the projects you want to do if only you had time.

So, once we figure out what we want to actually focus on, then we have to figure out what’s stopping us from focusing on them, and naturally we tend to go to tactics. We tend to say, “I need to get a better workflow,” and there’s a lot there that we should do but we can never beat infinity with increased productivity. We can’t. It doesn’t work. As I said, infinity is the realm of the gods, and productivity is a mortal’s weapon, a sort. You can’t defeat it, and so we need a different strategy.

And so, actually, in the book, I focus on these four areas, and I was very impressed with myself, I must say, when I realized that they spelt the work TIME. So, there you go, four easy strategies to focus on. The first is tactics, and so there are things we need to focus on there. And perhaps some leaders do it very well, other people, you know what, they do need to kind of get a bit sharpen up on how they deal with meetings, how they deal with incoming tasks, how they deal with incoming messages, what their workflows are.

And, also, whatever you are, if you are over-busy, you do need a tactical plan to extract yourself from all of this in a very short space of time. It’s, like, if your business is losing money, you can’t wait too long. You have to make big changes now so that you become profitable and you can start to grow again. So, the first is tactic.

The second is influence, because if you want to go on a diet, the people that are going to stop you tend to be your family by waving the chocolate cake under your nose, or offering you the alcohol, or whatever it is you’re trying to stop, because the people around us have a certain stake in how we operate. So, at home, if you want to eat differently, well, your family, well, their share their meals with you so it affects them, or they feel guilty if you’re not eating something that they want to eat, if you’re not opening the bottle of wine if they want to a drink or whatever it is.

And so, in the work situation, it’s the same. We have all these stakeholders and no matter what our plan is for being more strategic, we have to face the reality that all around us, we have our boss, our peers in the organization, perhaps our team, who require and expect things from us and have a certain way of relating to us, so we need to better influence and renegotiate their expectations. We need to say, “You know what, you’ve been getting this from me but, actually, it’s not my highest use of my time. To have a bigger impact in the organization, I need to do something differently, so let’s talk about that and figure out a way forward.” So, influence is a big issue.

And then there’s mindset, which is what we believe and think. I can give you a story about mindset, but perhaps one from the framework first. Mindset is clearly important because, often, we just don’t believe we can, or we believe we’re optimum in some ways. Mindset is basically so important because what we believe is necessarily possible or desirable is what governs our behavior. So, if we think that what we’re doing is basically necessarily, basically the only thing we’ve got, the only choice we have, and it’s also kind of desirable in some way, we won’t actually change our behavior.

And then the final part is environment, because if we have a team, then we owe it to ourselves not just to work ourselves but to free our team up so that if we want to delegate, they can actually receive our delegation, or if they’re getting pulled left to right by busy work in the organization that they get to free themselves up and work on their high-value activities. So, environment is all about shaping a culture across the broader organization and being a force of change in the wider business.

So, you have these four areas – tactics, influence, mindset, and environment – and the point I made before is really important. You have to focus on the right one to start with, otherwise you just get frustrated because nothing is changing. If you’ve got the wrong mindset, then all your tactics aren’t going to really make a big difference because you can be locked into the wrong way of working. Or, we haven’t got enough influence, then you might have the best plan possible but you fail to implement the plan because you get pushback from people around you.

Pete Mockaitis
And so, when you talk about the number one limiting factor, it seems like that rule applies here as well in terms of, “Okay, is it the tactics, the influence, or the mindset, or the environment, that is the number one limiting factor at the moment?” and then you can dig in.

Richard Medcalf
You’re right, really figuring out what the number one limiting factor is really important. So, I’ve actually built a little assessment, I’ll probably link to it later on as we think about it. But what we actually have is about 20 questions, you give a sense of your score on the journey, and you actually can then choose, you’ll actually find out, which score you have into these four areas, and then you can go, “Oh, look, it’s actually mindset. I need to start on mindset.”

And so, the book is actually written to be nonlinear. Now, if you want t o jump straight into mindset, go there if that’s what’s going to be more important. Or, it’s actually, you’ve got the tactics sorted out but influence is holding you back, then perhaps open the book at that chapter and jump in there. So, I think I felt it’s really important because I don’t want to give people another big book to read when they’re very busy. I wanted people to be able to jump in and get pretty quick results.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I guess this sort of feels like mindset, and it kind of feels like tactics, but I’m thinking of a scenario in which, sure, we’re overwhelmed by requests and firefighting and all of that, and yet, at the same time, I think, often, speaking at least for myself, there’s a thing going on where it’s like maybe it’s kind of energy levels are maybe on the mid to low side, motivation levels or focus levels also on the lower side. It’s like, “You know, I could do that thing but I kind of don’t want to, and there’s something else that’s more interesting at the moment,” even though that thing may well be the most strategically valuable. So, how do you think about this challenge here?

Because I think, in a way, most of us, if we’re really honest with ourselves, we could probably say, “All right, with a little bit of hustle, or staying a little later, or pushing back wisely and diplomatically on a couple of things, we could find that hour to do the thing that’s high, that’s leveraged.” But then it’s hard to actually do it, it’s like, “Ooh, I found an hour, I just want to sleep or relax.”

Maybe this is me talking with three young kids at home. So, how do we think about that vibe in the world of mindset, motivation, energy, focus, just the ability to summon our personal power to go forth and crush it?

Richard Medcalf
Well, probably, if you leave it to the end of your day, it’s probably not going to be a good point because you’re going to go, “Oh, I’m tired.” So, I think you do need to know when you’re energized and make your success early. So, if you figure out what’s that high-leveraged activity, get it in your diary before all the operational tactics come, all the operational issues come.

If you can say, “I’m just going to not even be on the radar, not even be on communications activities for the first hour of my day,” imagine what you could do if you did an hour a day, that’d be five hours a week, on this activity that’s going to move the needle. So, I think respecting energy, I think that’s one place because then, actually, the things which fall off the, “Ahh, I need to go home now,” or, “I’m too tired,” they’ll happen later on in the day, and, hopefully, those will then be the lower-value activities that you end up pushing back or procrastinating on.

But I think, Pete, to your point, the first thing I would ask in that situation isn’t so much when in the day you’re doing it, though I think it is important for the reasons I mentioned, it’s more, “Are you really sold on the value of doing it? Are you really sold on the value?” because the first sale is always to our self. One of the things I say in the book is the most important project is the one that no one else is asking for.

No one asked me to build that financial model in my consulting company. Nobody was asking that finance manager I mentioned to actually delegate the payroll activities and the sales commissions activities. He was doing them fine, but that was his pathway to more impact as it was mine. And so, if we’re going to do that, we really have to sell ourselves because no one is going to make us do it. That’s almost the definition of the strategic, is no one is asking us to do it. We are taking the initiative.

So, we really have to go, “Is this really important? And what’s the picture of success? If I don’t do this, what’s my trajectory going to be like? If do do this, what becomes possible?” We need to really understand the stakes. And if it doesn’t inspire us, it probably is the wrong project in some ways.

So, I always start by inspiring ourselves.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes, that notion, the most important project is the one no one is asking for, that’s heavy. It seems often true. I guess, occasionally, the most important project might be something someone happens to be asking for. That’s my intuition. You can challenge me on that, Richard, if you like. But for the most part, yeah, that really seems to track.

Richard Medcalf
Yeah, I’m sure there are examples you could come up with, of course, but I think, often, it’s we’re being asked for one thing but, often, what we need to think about is, “How am I getting better at getting better? How am I getting more of this in the future? Or, how am I going to do this without burning out, or whatever?” So, there’s normally something that isn’t being asked in the direct request to us very often.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s good. And so then, when it comes to mindset, any other kind of critical beliefs that you think we need to face head on and readjust?

Richard Medcalf
Well, there’s so many, there’s a bunch of them, and I talk about different ones in the book. It’s personal. Some of us, the people-pleasers, if we’re people-pleasers, we find it hard to say no, but, actually, that’s because we got a tunnel vision. We’re just looking at the person in front of us and what they’re looking for, and we don’t realize that every time we say yes to them, we’re saying no to somebody else.

If I have an idea of serving stakeholders and not pleasing people, pleasing people means I’m just going to say whatever makes you feel good in the moment, or helps the person opposite. So, I think stakeholders means thinking about the bigger picture, “What’s the highest contribution that I can bring?” I’m a big fan of this, contribution rather than fear, rather than anything else, really. If we figure out how we maximize our contribution, make an impact, I think everything else flows from that.

But when we get stuck into perfectionism, people-pleasing, over-responsiveness, sometimes people get over-responsive, they feel they need to be responding to anything that comes their way, but I’d like to say, “Well, you’re an important person, and if I was reaching out to some other important person, like the president or the CEO, well, I wouldn’t even expect them to drop everything and respond within seconds.” In fact, you’d be worried if they did that. You wouldn’t respect them more; you’d respect them less. And so, why do we think that people will respect us more if we respond immediately to everything?

Actually, we should be focused. Strategic leaders working on big projects, making big things happen, they’re not just waiting around for people to be sending us messages. Now, again, this requires influence. Even with your boss, you can change this but you have to perhaps go, and say, “Look, I’m working on some big projects that we’ve agreed are key for our success. To do that, I need some focused time. And to do that, I need to ask your permission to not reply to all your messages that you’re sending me on Slack on a Monday morning between 9:00 and 11:00. Is that okay?”

And either they’ll say, “Yeah, fine. I’m glad you’re really focusing. That’s great,” or they’ll say, “No, no, no, I can’t live without you.” If they say that, then you might say, “Okay. Well, what else could work so that I can differentiate the urgent from the not quite so urgent?” because you perhaps agreed, like, “Pick up the phone and call me on a Monday morning if you need me, and I’ll leave you on my VIP list. But if you send me a message, I’ll get back to you at 11:00 o’clock.”

So, you can start to create agreements with the people around you in order to address these things. But, for me, the focus is always on contribution. If you put contribution first, then that provides a lens through which to evaluate all the different activities we’re doing. So, mindset, it does really, yeah, some of us we’re addicted to the thrill of action and doing things, some us are people-pleasers, perfectionist, all these different things. But I think we need to really be honest with ourselves about what are the stories that we’re telling ourselves.

I’ll give you an example. One of my clients got pledges from the C-suite of his company, very big role, and we’re working together on some transformational projects that he wanted to roll out. I was helping him onboard, really, onto the C-suite and be a more strategic transformational leader. A few weeks into our engagement, he said, “Richard, you’ve been coaching me for a while now, and this has been great. I’ve got a problem. I’m stuck in my email too much.”

And I said, “Well, okay, how do you want me to help?” “Richard, just give me some tips.” And I said, “Well, you’re paying me too much money as a coach to give you some tips but you can Google those. But tell me what you really need?” And so, he decided to talk, and I said, “Okay, so why are you feeling the need to deal with all these emails coming in your way and so quickly and they’re taking so much of your time?” And he says, “Well, I want to be trustworthy, reliable, and a team player.”

I said, “Well, that makes sense, so I can’t help you.” “What do you mean you can’t help me?” “Well, you just said you want to be reliable, a team player, and you want to be trustworthy. If I tell you not to do your emails so often and not answer them all, then you’re going to be unreliable, not trustworthy, not a team player, right? That’s your value, that’s your mindset, I can’t help you.”

He said, “Well, we’re stuck then?” I said, “Well, just answer me this. If your CEO was in the room, what would he be asking you for?” “Oh, he wants those transformational projects.” “If your investors were in the room, what would they be saying?” “Oh, yeah, they’d be the one that brought in my benefits. It’s going to be big.” “What about if the team were in the room?” “Oh, the employees, they’re so desperate for more modern workforce experience.” “Okay, and what about customers?” “Well, our customers won’t really know. It’s an internal transformation but it will free up the team to spend more time with customers. That’s the whole objective, so I guess the customers will be for that as well.”

So, I said, “Okay, so what you’re telling me is if you’ve been paid the big bucks as a C-level executive to roll out these transformational projects, and everyone wants you to do those, so I’m going to predict to you that you’re going to be untrustworthy, unreliable, and not a team player when you’re in your inbox doing the emails.” And in that moment, he got it, he had the aha moment, his mindset shifted, “Oh, yeah, I’ve a different role here. Being trustworthy and reliable is about me doing the big stuff and not all this little stuff.”

And so, when you get a mindset shift, it’s like that, then your possibilities open up. You see what’s desirable, necessary, impossible has just changed for him in that moment. He didn’t need a tip on how to filter his emails, more of the important thing.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s right. That’s good. And I think that’s super helpful when you get deep down into the core values of a thing and see, well, really, which pattern of activity best serves those. And it could conceivably be possible that, in the certain seasons of the work life cycle, yeah, those emails are going to be critical to ensuring these transformational projects unfold.

I found out, it’s like, “Hey, we’re launching a thing, there’s a lot of people with a lot of questions. Oops, something broke and we got to get it fixed really quick.” And in so doing, that is what enables this transformational project to happen. But most days, I find that the emails are mostly not all that transformational, in my experience.

Richard Medcalf
Yeah, so it’s back to “What you’re trying to achieve? Do you really know what this breakthrough success is going to look like, or what’s this breakthrough project?” And we know that it’s quite easy to maintain things in an incremental fashion and get a bit better, and a bit better, and a bit better, to live a week in, week out, and culture in and culture out. There’s always new stuff that’s going on. There are always things to address.

So, for me, as I help people, I really help people in two areas. One is from going from being an operational leader to being a strategic leader, which I find happens at the kind of mid to senior levels of an organization where people want to make that shift. And then, actually, with some of my top clients, they want to move from being more of a strategic leader to being an impact-centric leader, which is actually having a systemic impact beyond the company.

But if we look at these shifts, then I think it does start with an understanding that we have to play a different game as a leader. So, when you’re really good at operations, it’s putting many people are, then they know that they’re in a safe pair of hands, that they’re an expert, that they are reliable, that they basically don’t mess it up. That’s why they got where they are.

And, actually, when we become strategic, we have to start focusing on building the new, building new capabilities, forging relationships wider across the organization where we don’t have direct control. And that starts to become a bit more risky for people because it’s like, “Oh, this is a new game I’m playing. I might not be able to win it the same way.” And so, that’s like a big shift for people, and the mindset shift they have to really go, “Okay, to be strategic, I’m going to have to be a different sort of leader,” and that’s a big shift for people.

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

Richard Medcalf
Well, I’ll just say that if people are interested in this topic, the place I would start is by understanding which of the four pillars you need to focus on first – tactics, influence, mindset, and environment. To do this the best way would be to go to my website, you can take the test there, it’s about 20 questions, and it will give you a score in those four areas. And the best way to get there is to go to XQuadrant.com/awesomeatyourjob, and that will give you all the resources for this.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, thank you. Cool. Well, now could you share a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Richard Medcalf
Yeah. What inspires me is this quote, “You don’t get what you want. You get who you are.” It reminds me that work is always on ourselves, who we are being in any moment and not what are we doing.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And could you share a favorite study or experiment or bit of research?

Richard Medcalf
I think my favorite piece of research is the one that Marshall Goldsmith did many years ago where he asked, I think it was 80,000 professionals where they rank themselves in terms of competency. And, basically, it was like 90% of professionals rated themselves in the top 50%, and 50% of professionals rated themselves in the top 10% in terms of competency levels and performance levels. So, we have to realize that we have a huge capacity for self-delusion and to think we’re doing better than we are, which, for me, is always a great reminder to try and get data points in how we’re doing.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And a favorite book?

Richard Medcalf
Yeah, recently, one of the books I’ve really enjoyed, actually, is a book called Unreasonable Hospitality. It tells a story of a Madison Square place in New York and how they went above and beyond normal restaurant levels of service, becoming going from basically a three-star mediocre restaurant to the number one restaurant in the world by obsessing on customer experience, by doing absolutely crazy things, very unique one-off based on individual guests coming in.

They’d Google their guests before they arrive. They would listen in. They’d try to find things that would surprise and delight. It’s something which I try to integrate into my business. It’s an ongoing journey but I find that’s very inspiring, a very inspiring story.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite tool, something you use to be awesome at your job?

Richard Medcalf
Yeah, I run pretty much most of my business these days on ClickUp, which I have found to have taken out a lot of the complexity and chaos in my business, so I must admit that’s a tool which I use all the time.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And a favorite habit, something you do that helps you be awesome at your job?

Richard Medcalf
I guess my favorite habit is probably meditation at this point. I’ve struggled with that for years on and off. I’ve found just getting the Headspace app and just doing 10 to 15 minutes a day at the start of my day has really helped me become calmer and more focused as I head into each day.

Pete Mockaitis
And is there a key nugget you share that really seems to connect and resonate with folks; they quote it back to you often?

Richard Medcalf
Yeah. Well, I actually have a little snail on my desk, a little pewter snail because my favorite quote is “You got to slow down to speed up,” or as the racing car world would say, “You got to go slow to go smooth, and smooth to go fast.” And what that means for me is when we slow down our thinking to think about what’s really important in this moment, then we put our focus on more important things than when we’re rushing along just to get through our to-do list.

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

Richard Medcalf
So, find me on LinkedIn. I try to write a daily post there, a value-added post around impact leadership and being strategic. My website is XQuadrant.com, and, as I said, if you go to XQuadrant.com/awesomeatyourjob, you’ll find a link to the book “Making TIME for Strategy” and all the details of that, you’ll find a link to the assessment I mentioned before as one of the few other goodies there.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Richard, it’s been a treat. I wish you much luck and time for strategy.

Richard Medcalf
Thanks, Pete.

May 18
0

866: How to Bounce Back, Find Your Flow, and Thrive in Adversity with Darleen Santore (“Coach Dar”)

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Darleen Santore says: "Don’t run from the adversity. Learn from it because the more you learn from it, the more you’re going to be able to use it."

Darleen Santore (AKA “Coach Dar”) coaches us on how to reframe setbacks and face adversity head on.

You’ll Learn:

  1. How to bounce back from setbacks faster
  2. Why willpower isn’t enough
  3. How to reframe any setback

About Darleen

Darleen Santore, best known as Coach Dar, is author, Occupational Therapist, motivational speaker, and the former Mental Skills Coach for the Phoenix Suns who works with professional athletes and CEO’s around the world. As a therapist, executive advisor and mental edge coach, Coach Dar blends a knowledge of science, psychology and leadership with her personal passion for life. Her first book was just released, The Art of Bouncing Back: Find Your Flow to Thrive at Work and in Life – Anytime You’re off your Game.

Resources Mentioned

Darleen Santore Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Coach Dar, welcome to How to be Awesome at Your Job.

Darleen “Coach Dar” Santore
Thank you so much for having me.

Pete Mockaitis
I’m excited to dig into your wisdom that you’ve captured some of that in your book The Art of Bouncing Back: Find Your Flow to Thrive at Work and in Life ― Any Time You’re Off Your Game. And you know a lot about bouncing back in your professional world and your personal world. Boy, can you tell us the story of three strokes and how you bounced back there?

Darleen “Coach Dar” Santore
I wish I could tell you it’s just one or none, but it was three. And I think that’s part of the reason is you get what you’re going through in life so that you could teach from it. And this was something, ironically, I am an occupational therapist, I was a therapist on the stroke and brain injury floor, and I was 25 years old, and I had just gone to go see a chiropractor because I had sciatica, and they worked on my neck, manipulated my neck.

And a few days later, I was at work, and, all of a sudden, I’m walking and the floor flips upside down, and the floor is the ceiling, and the ceiling is the floor, and I cannot see. And I thought, “What is going on?” And the irony is I didn’t even know it was a stroke but it was. What had happened was when they manipulated the neck, they ripped the vertebral artery and so it bled to the brain, and it was a slow bleed until it occluded blood to the back side of my brain, and that’s when I started to have all these symptoms.

But they would come and go because the blood flow would put pressure and then it would take it off a little bit till finally it had occluded all blood supply to the brain, and that’s when I had all the symptoms of a stroke. And the good news and the bad news of that was that scar tissue, eventually, enveloped the blood clot but it could dislodge any day as it was on its way to developing scar tissue, and I could die in any day is what they told me.

And I thought, “Wait a minute, I’m the therapist that takes care of patients like this. I’m not supposed to be receiving this information, especially at 25 years old.” But I did, and it was part of the journey, and I worked through it, and I thought I was on my way, making my way through life in this scenario, and then about six years ago, I had my second, and about three or four years ago, I had my third, which was my worst one.

Pete Mockaitis
My goodness. And so, tell us how did you go about bouncing back?

Darleen “Coach Dar” Santore
I will tell you, when this first happened, I was not as prepared. You’re 25 years old, you don’t have all the tools. Whereas, by the one I just had three, four years ago, I’m now 47, I have been helping over 100,000 people with their mindset, mental state, how they bounce back, so I was able to use all the tools, and it truly did help.

And that’s why during this time of writing this book, I could truly say that these principles are the principles that I used to not only help professional athletes, CEOs, but myself. And it works because when you work on your mental fitness, you truly do get stronger. But like anything, if you don’t put time into it, it’s not going to be there, it’s not going to be as strong. So, I am very much encouraging people, you don’t have to wait for adversity to come to start working on your mental foundation. You could start working on it now.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, I’d love to get into the how-to of working on one’s mental fitness, mental foundation. Can you first share with us just what kind of impact that makes if these sorts of practices are faithfully engaged in versus neglected?

Darleen “Coach Dar” Santore
Well, you know where to pull from, so if you don’t have these tools, and it happens, it’s just a harder learning curve because you’re trying to learn in the middle of the valley, which you can. You absolutely can. It’s just going to take longer. So, I’ll say to people, when you’re working on your mental fitness, and you could do this right now without having anything like I just shared catastrophic or lifechanging, you could work on it.

So, the day doesn’t go so well, you’re trying to do something, it doesn’t work. You have tech glitches. You are stuck in traffic. Your child is going through something. It could be something even like you’re getting laid off from a job right now. If you have the tools, and you’ve been taught this, it doesn’t mean it’s going to take away the pain. You know how to embrace it. You know how to go back to what your hardwiring is. You know how to reframe the setback, so you have the tools right there to set you up so you come back faster.

It’s equivalent to someone who’s physically in shape, gets injured, goes into the hospital, their muscle fibers and strength are there to help them to get back faster because they have more muscle mass, they have more strength. So, when they’re trying to get back, they’re not atrophying from something that’s already atrophied. It’s the same with our mental muscles. If you’re building them and they’re strong, they’re going to be there to support you when something happens. And right when it happens, you’re able to stay agile, which is the key to success.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, it sounds like any number of setbacks, frustrations, disappointments, heartbreaks, traumas, this mental fitness stuff can help us bounce back from any and all of these better?

Darleen “Coach Dar” Santore
Yes, absolutely.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, please, Coach Dar, lay it out for us, how do we get better at bouncing back and build that mental fitness?

Darleen “Coach Dar” Santore
Well, you start, for whoever is listening, whatever has been the hardest thing you’ve been through or whatever you’re challenged with right now that’s adversity, you have to embrace it. The first principle is, embrace the suck. And the reason I start with that is because you can’t go to positive Pollyanna, “Don’t worry about it. Try to shake it off.” You have to embrace, “What are we dealing with?”

So, say, someone just got laid off from their job, we have to embrace it what it is. We have to embrace the emotions of it because if we don’t deal with things, they will surface in another way. So, you embrace it, you figure it out. Just like the military would when they’re in the middle of battle, “What is the situation we’re dealing with so we could accept it and create a plan?”

That’s where we want to be at step one, we want to embrace it, for accepting it for what it is, good, bad, and different, fair, not fair, it doesn’t matter. What are we dealing with so then we could create a plan to move forward from it? Because if we don’t create clarity in the chaos, we cannot create a plan, necessarily.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And so, when you embrace it, that’s sort of not saying, “Why me? This is bull crap.” Or, what does embracing mean and not mean?

Darleen “Coach Dar” Santore
It just means we’re accepting the reality of what is. So, I’m going to give something even a little bit more challenging of that, which is I’ve lost both my parents recently. When I lost my father, of course I’m grieving, of course I’m hurting, but I had to, at some point, accept I can’t bring my father back. I have to embrace it. I have to. It’s not “I can’t change it, so what do I need to do about it?” I could grieve it. I could work through it. I could start to shift from grieving at some point to celebrating his life.

When I had my stroke, I can’t change the fact that I had it. It doesn’t matter whether it’s fair or unfair. At some point, I have to say, “This is what happened. I could call someone and I could say, ‘I am sad about this.’” “Great. Let’s talk about it.” But I’m still embracing talking about it. I’m not waking up in a delusional state, saying, “I don’t want to deal with this.” Whether I do or I don’t, it’s what happened. So, we face reality head on, and we work through our emotions on it, and then we create a plan from it.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, let’s talk about the next steps then.

Darleen “Coach Dar” Santore
So, the next step would be understanding our hardwiring. When you understand how you are hardwired, which is your strength, your talents, this creates what I call a confidence card. So, when I had my stroke, while certain things were taken away from me, my knowledge of how to bounce back, my knowledge as a therapist did not go away. My abilities to still communicate with people, it was different but it didn’t go away altogether.

I had trouble saying words but I still was able to speak where some lose all of their speech. I might not have been able to move as well but I was not completely paralyzed. But my point was/is I still had who I am, fundamentally, within me. If you get laid off from a job, your job was taken away, but your gifts are not taken away, so you just have to reestablish, “Where can you use your gifts and talents somewhere else? How else do you need to get up and get back up?”

So, oftentimes, we feel like we have no control, and I try to bring you back to this principle. You have full control of your hardwiring, and your hardwiring is your confidence code. I work on professional sports, our athletes all have scouting cards, it’s kind of their stats. I help them create their scouting card, their confidence card, so when things go bad, a bad game, I could go back and say, “Don’t forget you still are talented in this, this, this, and this area. It was a bad game. It doesn’t mean your gifts went away.”

Because they’ll often say, like, “What happened?” I’ll say, “No one took away your talent. Your talent is still there. The game just didn’t flow. Let’s get you back into flow but just remember you still have your gifts and talents.” And when you do that, that’s where confidence comes back even in the middle of lull.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And in the remembering, is there a particular practice or key steps to bring back that from?

Darleen “Coach Dar” Santore
That’s why we’re writing it down. Yup, you write it down. So, right now, it would be good if, people are listening, to do step two. Every principle in this book, you, literally, could journal it through like it’s your own playbook. If you can’t even remember what you’re good at, for some reason you’re in a lull, ask people, “Hey, what are the things that you would say I’m really good at?”

If you could do self-inventory, write it down, and then you put it somewhere, put it in your phone, put it on your desk, put it somewhere that you get to go back and read this. Because what happens is when we get in the middle of struggle, we start to doubt, we start to lose faith, we start to forget, and this is your visual to bring you back neurologically, to say, “No, this is what is true. What you’re telling yourself right now is false. But this is truth.” And so, this is your reset for you.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And then what’s next?

Darleen “Coach Dar” Santore
You then take these and you start to understand that you have to find why power. I take you through a couple chapters of seeking, applying feedback, to then moving into why power.

You want to seek feedback, and then you want to apply your why power. Why power over willpower. Because when you understand why you’re getting up, literally, “Why should you get up when it’s so hard?” Well, because, one, you still have a reason to be here. Two, when you write your why statement, you find your anthem for the year. You know where to get back to.

And example of this is I had a player who got injured, and I said, “Okay, you might not be able to inspire greatness…” which is what his mission statement is, what his why is, “…on the court, but you could still do it to your teammates. You could still do it in your community.” So, when we were able to get back to, “Why should you still get up every day when you’re not playing in the middle of an injury?” Well, because you still can go and help others around you until you get back into play. And by doing your rehab and getting up, you will, eventually, get to inspire greatness on the court.

I have a CEO. His why is, “Dar, I just want to be able to add value every day.” Well, he can’t add value if he sits in his house and never leaves. So, when he went through a hard time, I said, “Okay, what are other ways you could add value? Maybe you can’t get into the office right now with this challenge that you’re doing but you can make phone calls, you could, literally, to your family, could still add value.”

And he said, “Every day, I want to be able to wake up and know that I matter, whether I’m a CEO or not. So, through my conversations with my wife, am I adding value with her, with my kids, with my community?” He has purpose beyond just his position, and that’s important for people, to have purpose beyond their position, and your why gives you that. It’s not tied to a role. It’s tied to a bigger purpose. And in the book, I have people, literally, break it down on how to come up with the why.

Pete Mockaitis
Do tell. How do we come to the why?

Darleen “Coach Dar” Santore
You get to go and you get to look at, “What were all core values?” Look at core value words. You have words, core value words that something is going to pull at your heart, and you’re going to say, “Okay, if my life is being played out right now, and this was the anthem for my life, truly this was what was being played back, this was what people knew me for, would I be proud of that?”

And you are, literally, the person who’s writing the masterpiece, writing the script of your story, writing the theme of your life theme. And if you could choose one word of what that would be, what would be that anthem? What’s one core value you’d like to stand on? So, the player was greatness, the other person was value, mine is greatness, another person is integrity. They want to lead a life of integrity. They want to help people lead a life of integrity.

So, you have to pick a word that works for you, and then that becomes your anthem. And it, literally, starts to drive you. This is something that we could talk an hour just on, I’m breaking it down, but that’s just to get you started in understanding there’s power in why. Because if you just will yourself consistently, “I’m going to will myself,” you’re going to lose willpower.

But why lights a power within you. Willpower just lights a fire underneath your feet for a little bit. Why power lights a fire within you. It’s a reason for getting up. It’s bigger than you.

Pete Mockaitis
Now, when you say anthem, are you quite, literally, referring to music?

Darleen “Coach Dar” Santore
Oh, well, I do tie music to the anthem. So, mine is awaken in greatness. And so I took awaken in greatness as my life anthem, and then I actually made a yearly, I make a yearly anthem that goes with it. So, in order to awaken greatness, I then have, I put my word this year as next level. I want my conversations, my connections, my ability to touch people to be just at another level.

So, my music theme is Superman. When my alarm goes off, I actually set my alarm to the theme. So, when I wake up, I don’t wake up to an annoying alarm. I wake up to an anthem so it starts my day, so I’m already reminded of it. Neurologically, it’s a neuro hack.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, now I’m curious, if you start at the very beginning with the buildup swells from the planet Krypton song or is it right into the “Pa, para, rah”?

Darleen “Coach Dar” Santore
It’s right into it.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, important clarification.

Darleen “Coach Dar” Santore
But maybe I will go back and start it from the beginning just because it’ll slowly build as I slowly wake up.

Pete Mockaitis
As a youngster, I watched the Christopher Reeve “Superman” movie on VHS repeatedly. So, it’s very special.

Darleen “Coach Dar” Santore
So, you can appreciate this. It’s one of my favorites.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, we got the why and the anthem. What’s next?

Darleen “Coach Dar” Santore
So, we’ll move to, then after that, it’s also increasing emotional intelligence. I want people to be able to increase their emotional intelligence, their awareness, how they show up to scenarios. So, again, this is mental fitness. If you’ve been in a situation, you want to have some emotional awareness of what got you into that situation, what are some of the things that you could change. If you do not have EQ of how or what, then it’s hard for you to make adjustments.

Also, emotional awareness and EQ allows you, so when you show up to a space, you could read the room. You know how to inflect, when to interject, how to speak. And so, often if we don’t have EQ, it’s hard for us to, which we’d move to next, would be reframing things, because we don’t even understand what the problem is.

Sometimes we have to bounce back from things that we created the problem. Maybe it was something we said, how we said it, what we did. So, if we don’t have EQ, emotional intelligence, how the situation came about, it’s going to be hard for us to reset, to reignite, to reframe it. And so, I really, really work with a lot of people, honestly, most of coaching is getting people to have emotional intelligence on themselves in a situation.

Because, while I can’t control someone else, I can certainly control myself. I can control how I deliver a message, I can control how I say things, and I can control my level of acknowledgement so that I could have some compassion for the scenario. But if we don’t have awareness, it’s really hard for us to change.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And so, can you share with us what might be an exercise or a reflection that brings about an upgraded emotional intelligence?

Darleen “Coach Dar” Santore
Having people often go and say to someone, “Hey, when I was in the meeting with you, how was it? How did you feel? What was the conversation like for you?” because you want to get some feedback. That’s why one of the principles is seeking and applying feedback. You want to get feedback from people to know how you can adjust.

Again, working in pro sports, we have to get feedback all the time. The players, literally, are getting feedback right there. They have to know how to seek and apply the feedback, and then have awareness of how their energy, their state, their emotions are contributing or hurting the team, and then make adjustments in real time. And they have people telling them right there that they have to make adjustments.

And I often laugh because, in the corporate world, working with some of my clients in the corporate world, they might get a 360 review once a year, or maybe quarterly, and they wait a whole quarter to seek and apply feedback or have awareness, EQ, to what’s going on. That’s why coaching is so effective because it keeps you accountable consistently and teaches you how to create self-accountability.

And so, I had an executive that I was working with, and I said, “This issue keeps coming up. I would love for you to do your own 360 at this point to seek feedback, to also ask, ‘What is it like when I’m in the room? What is it like when I’m leaving the meeting? How does everyone feel?’” By doing this, they will start to have awareness of how their tone, their behavior, their mannerisms were affecting everyone.

I had an executive, smart, talented, but every time they were in a meeting, they kept tapping their pen, tapping their pen, and tapping their pen on the table, shaking their foot, looking everywhere else. So, what did everyone start to feel? Like, they needed to get what they needed to be said quick because they only had a few minutes, which doesn’t allow people to have a stroke of genius, or want to share openly. They feel rushed and they feel like they don’t matter.

And that’s not how the executive is. It’s just her presence what’s creating this state for people, that they were never able to fully be them in the rooms. She was not getting the best of her team, and not because the team wasn’t good but because of how she was showing up. So, once we shifted that, which, really, I just gave her a paperclip to rub on, she had energy she had to get out. So, she didn’t even know she was conveying it that way, but that was her seeking and applying feedback, and then having some emotional intelligence and awareness of knowing how to change that.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And what’s next?

Darleen “Coach Dar” Santore
So, once you go from this, you can then start cultivating grit. Cultivating grit is I want people to understand that adversity is something that could absolutely advance you. And this is where we start talking about getting comfortable with being uncomfortable. And we hear this a lot but we tune it out. But I challenge people at a time of day-to-day, are you just allowing your day to be average? Are you allowing your day to just go by?

Are you putting yourself in situations that are going to help challenge you, grow you? How about having the conversation that you need to have with someone? How about doing something that you always want to do but you were afraid to, pushing yourself a little bit? It could be something that I have go people go into the cold plunge, one, because there’s physical benefits to it, but, also, when you put yourself in a situation you do not want to be in but you know it’s going to help make you better, you started to cultivate some grit.

And then when people are going through challenges, I’ll say, “Don’t run from the adversity. Learn from it because the more you learn from it, the more you’re going to be able to use it.” Listen, after three strokes, I could tell you by the third one, while I was definitely upset and it was my worst one, I had built so much grit, so much resiliency that I knew how to lean into it versus run from it. I knew what I needed to do for my therapy. This was not my first rodeo.

So, imagine now you’re in a relationship, and every time you keep running from conversations, it doesn’t help. But now you’re going to lean in, and say, “Let’s have this difficult conversation. Let’s talk this through.” You just developed depth. Grit is almost like depth. You created some depth within the relationship, so now it’s not as hard the next time.

And what I want to say is grit actually creates flow, which creates freedom because you know how to handle hard. And, oftentimes, people don’t know how to handle hard and they just run from it, so you can’t develop resiliency, and all of this is building muscle. You can’t develop muscle unless you’ve been put in the pressure of a situation, that’s why when lifting weights, you have to lift heavier in order to keep building. Well, you can’t develop mental strength unless you’re willing to put yourself in some tough situations. So, running from adversity will never build up, but leaning into it will.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I dig that reframe there, and I’m curious if there are any others that you and clients have found super powerful and useful?

Darleen “Coach Dar” Santore
So, reframing setbacks is a whole separate chapter, too, and I want to just say I remember a player that came off of playing, and he said to me, “Dar, I suck. I’m horrible. I can’t. I don’t even know why I’m playing,” and all of this negative talk. And I said to him, “Hold on one second. You are in the one percent. You are a professional athlete. So, you get to say this for about 30 more seconds and then we’re moving on.”

The reframe from this is “The game was not bad. You’re not bad, okay? The game may not have been great but you still are great. Going back to principle two, let’s go back to your hardwiring. Are you still good at this, this, this, and this?” He said, “Yeah.” I said, “So, if you are, the reframe is that game might not have been bad, but I’m not bad.”

Now, take it to the business world. A project doesn’t go well. You lose a proposal. Something shifts in it that you don’t have control of, and you don’t just stop and say, “Well, we should shut down the whole business.” You reframe it to say, “That didn’t go well but we still have the ability to make this great. We are still a talented group, we just have to reframe this and reset this to see it for what it is, what is truth, what is false, what are we dealing with.”

But when you get people to continue to reframe, then they show up better because they don’t look at every obstacle as catastrophe. They look at it as, “This is an obstacle that could fuel us if we’re willing to learn from it, but it’s hard.” And I keep going back to people want to just coast. They just want to idle. They don’t want to push themselves. You can’t row to be great if you’re just going to idle. So, you want to lean into this, and the reframing is, “This is a bad day, not a bad life.”

“This was a bad project, it didn’t go well, but that doesn’t mean we’re bad.” Does that mean everyone in the company is horrible? Absolutely not. So, when you could reframe situations, you could then move forward from them again. You could see them from what is truth and what is false. And when I had my third stroke, I reframed it to say, “Well, I’m still able to walk. I may not walk well but I could walk. At least I’m not in a wheelchair at this moment.”

That’s a reframe because what that does is it gives me hope and it gives me reality of where I really am because I could look at it as the victim role, and I could look at it as, “This is awful,” which it’s hard, but there could be worse things. So, when you reframe it, you could see it for what it is to go forward.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, tell me, Coach Dar, anything else you want to make sure to mention before we hear about some of your favorite things?

Darleen “Coach Dar” Santore
I think the last thing I would say is, in this, once you go through this, you learn how to the last principle, how to turn the page. And when you learn how to turn the page, which is, like I said, you don’t brush it off but you accept it, you acknowledge it, you learn from it, you deal with it, you build the grit you need, the muscle, you could turn the page on the pain that’s been holding you back so you could write a new chapter, so you could start to lean into purpose.

So, turn the page on what’s been holding you back. Let it go. Learn from it. Let it go. Release it. And then let’s move forward so you could write your new chapter so you could step into what’s ahead of you. It really will help you so that adversity will advance you.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Now, could you share with us a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Darleen “Coach Dar” Santore
Well, I have a couple but one is Coach Monty Williams of Phoenix Suns says, “Everything is on the other side of hard, because once you get through what’s challenging, you’ve grown from it.” And we can’t get better if we don’t go through the hard things.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite study or experiment or bit of research?

Darleen “Coach Dar” Santore
A favorite study. I’m not sure what comes to mind but I will say that I love about the ability, and we know the research of Atomic Habits, stacking habits, and how when you stack habits, you’re much likely to succeed in the journey that you’re on. So, if there’s habits, the research they’ve shown, if you stack them, put them next to another thing you do every day, you’re more likely to win in a goal that you have set. So, Atomic Habits and stacking habits, it’s great research.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite book?

Darleen “Coach Dar” Santore
Atomic Habits other than what I just wrote.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite tool, something you use to be awesome at your job?

Darleen “Coach Dar” Santore
Well, a favorite tool that I have is this thing called BrainTap, and it’s a way to do almost passive mental fitness and meditation, so it’s not as hard, and it really does show great results for people to be able to decrease anxiety, increase creativity and innovation.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And that’s an app, BrainTap?

Darleen “Coach Dar” Santore
BrainTap, it’s a headset and an app that you can get.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And is there a key nugget you share that really seems to connect and resonate with folks; they quote it back to you often?

Darleen “Coach Dar” Santore
They always quote me and say, “Dar is always reminding me to raise the bar, which is not to do more but just to do what I do really well, and life gets better.” So, level up the standard of your life, your mindset, and stay on it, don’t give up because every day, it’s worth the fight. And that greatness is open to all but earned by few.

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

Darleen “Coach Dar” Santore
CoachDar.com is a great place for people to go, and also on social media, you could find me on LinkedIn, Darleen Santore, or on Instagram, it’s thecoachdar. And I put a lot of inspirational things, mental fuel, tips, biohacks to help you with your brain health, so follow along. And you can get the book on Amazon, and Barnes & Noble stores, or you can go to CoachDar.com, all the information is there.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And do you have a final challenge or call to action for folks looking to be awesome at their jobs?

Darleen “Coach Dar” Santore
I would encourage you to lean into raising the bar of excellence. Be intentional when you do something. You do it to the highest level. Working in pro sports, everyone is expected to bring their best game, and then I was at Apple, working with them at their headquarters. And when you walk in there, they’re told, “This is where you’ll do the best work of your life.” You don’t have to work at Apple to have that standard. Make that your standard for your life.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Coach Dar, this has been a treat. I wish you and the book lots of luck.

Darleen “Coach Dar” Santore
Thank you so much. I appreciate you.

May 15
0

865: The Universal Principles of Successful People with Dave Crenshaw

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Dave Crenshaw says: "Fail early."

Dave Crenshaw shares valuable insights on how people succeed, gleaned from his guests on The Dave Crenshaw Success Project podcast.

You’ll Learn:

  1. One thing every professional should learn
  2. The trick to multiplying your career opportunities
  3. Why to take that risk now—not later

About Dave

Dave Crenshaw develops productive leaders in Fortune 500 companies, universities, and organizations of every size. He has appeared in Time magazine, USA Today, FastCompany, and the BBC News. His courses on LinkedIn Learning have been viewed tens of millions of times. His five books have been published in eight languages, the most popular of which is The Myth of Multitasking—a time management bestseller. As an author, speaker, and online instructor, Dave has transformed the lives and careers of hundreds of thousands around the world.

Resources Mentioned

Dave Crenshaw Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Dave, welcome back to the How to be Awesome at Your Job podcast.

Dave Crenshaw
Hey, Pete, I really appreciate it. It’s very generous of you to have me come back again. What is this, the third time?

Pete Mockaitis
I think so. I think third time is the charm, so the first two that we botched, we’ll, hopefully, redeem ourselves.

Dave Crenshaw
Yeah, exactly.

Pete Mockaitis
So, Dave, I’m intrigued, you are up to a whole new project, and, in fact, your name is on it, and I hope it’s successful. It’s called The Dave Crenshaw Success Project, a podcast. And we talked about this back when you were just conceiving it, and it’s fun that it’s up and out in the world. So, I first wanted to hear a little bit of the story. You pursued this project not with the goal of advancing your empire as an expert, speaker, course creator, dude but something else. What’s the scoop here?

Dave Crenshaw
Yeah. Well, so those who aren’t familiar, I’ve written books and I’ve got courses, over 30 courses on LinkedIn Learning. I know you’ve got, gosh, a lot more than that and you’ve been very popular on that platform. And I do speaking as well, but what I wanted was something that inspired me and scratched the itch that wasn’t required by making a lot of money.

And I had a lot of different versions, and I think you and I had some conversations about different things that I could pursue but what really moved me, the thing that got me going was the idea that I want to create something for my kids. So, I have three children. My son is 17, I have a daughter who’s 13, and another daughter who is 10, my youngest, and I thought, “I want to leave a legacy to them. What could something that I can create to help them be successful but, at the same time, other people will benefit from?”

And that’s where this idea of The Success Project came from, and if I were to sum it up in a sentence, it’s that I am getting the stories of others, and you’re one of those people, we did an interview, to learn universal principles of balanced success. So, I know a lot of times in a podcast interview you bring someone on who has a book, they have a course, and you’re going to discuss that, and I think that’s great.

My goal is a little bit different. I bring someone on and I want to hear their story, and in their story, I want to figure out “What are the things that would make any person successful? And how can we apply that to ourselves? How can I apply that to my kids?”

Pete Mockaitis
Well, hey, I’m all about universal principles, so, indeed, this is a great fit here. And so, I’m intrigued then, your kids, they also play a role in the production, I understand.

Dave Crenshaw
Yeah, the first and the most fun one is my daughter Darcy, who’s 10. She reads the outro. It’s the cutest thing you’ve ever heard in your life. It’s completely unfair for me to put that at the end because you are powerless to resist it. And my son, he does the editing, which is wonderful because now I can pay him as an editor, which helps him prepare for college.

But the fun thing that I’ve also started doing, I don’t think I had started this when you and I did the interview, Pete, is we’re doing bonus episodes where we’ll sit down and have a conversation about a principle that we learned. So, for instance, one person I interviewed was Tahani Aburaneh, and she was a refugee in Jordan, and she went from that situation to being a millionaire in real estate. And she talked about how gratitude was so essential for her success, and how her mom taught her to be grateful even when they were in these really, really difficult conditions in a refugee camp.

And so, I sat down with my kids and said, “Let’s talk about gratitude. Let’s talk about how we can be more grateful and some ways we can implement it.” So, I’ve got the regular episodes that we release where we’re hearing these stories, but then I’ve decided to have a little fun with some bonus episodes with my kids. And that’s sort of why I chose the title that I did because The Success Project is open-ended enough that it gives me a lot of latitude to try a lot of different things that will help the listener be successful and help my kids be successful.

Pete Mockaitis
Alrighty. Well, so lay it on us, Dave, what are some principles that have really already popped off the page? Let’s hear, how many interviews have you done, first of all?

Dave Crenshaw
I’m around the 20-interview mark. So, gosh, what do you have, 2,000?

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, shucks, 860-ish.

Dave Crenshaw
Yeah, okay. So, I’m an infant learning to crawl at this point, but I’ve started to see some really interesting threads, and I’ll start with one that I did not expect at all but it makes sense when I say it, is the importance of studying business. It is amazing to me how many people I’ve interviewed who maybe do something that is different than business.

For example, Angie Ford is one person. She owns several music schools and daycares. She studied piano, that’s what she wanted to be, was a concert pianist but, for some reason, she was interested in business and got a minor in it. And because she did that, that enabled her to be successful as an entrepreneur. And I have seen that one thing repeated over and over, whether or not that was their primary interest, someone took the time to study the principles of business and accounting and marketing and sales.

And so, I’ve told my kids, and right now, it’s kind of funny. Right now, every single one of them wants to be a writer. I did not expect that either. And so, I tell them, “Hey, study whatever you want in college, but the one requirement that I’m going to make of you is that you have to at least minor in business.”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, the business skills are handy in terms of there’s just a business side to everything. No matter what you’re doing, whether you’re a baker or doing music or daycare, there is a business side. And whether you’re the owner or somewhere lower within the hierarchy of things, having that understanding is common and handy.

Dave Crenshaw
Right. Even if you’re a middle manager in a Fortune 500 company, and you’re hired to do one specific thing, let’s say communications, understanding how the company operates, and understanding cashflow and the things that determine a stock price and all of these things, they make you more savvy and more able to understand and read the tea leaves, so to speak, about what is going to be coming in the future.

And I think that you don’t have to go to college to study it. I think that, I mean, certainly listening to this podcast, someone who’s made the commitment to do that, already that says a lot about their character and their desire to learn. I think that you could start reading books. I think that there are certainly courses on LinkedIn Learning that will help you learn these skills. I would carve out part of your schedule each week, each month, to give it some attention.

Pete Mockaitis
And I’m curious about some of your favorite resources, like learning business. Business is quite an umbrella that… is it fair to say that you’re saying a general survey understanding of management, accounting, finance, marketing, strategy? Is that what you mean by learn business?

Dave Crenshaw
Correct, yeah. Whether you took that in college, whether you’re getting it on your own, you’re saying, “Hey, I want to get a good understanding.” I know one thing that’s been really helpful for me in my career is economics. I’m turning and looking at my shelf right now. I’ve got a couple of books about economics, one called Basic Economics.

And sometimes we’re always looking for the next new title that’s going to give us some cool principle, and that’s great. I built my career on books like that but I think there’s something to be said for digging down into the fundamentals. And I recommend taking the time to drill down on some of just the fundamentals because those will influence how you perceive things that are happening in your career.

Pete Mockaitis
I dig that. Is that Basic Economics by Thomas Sowell?

Dave Crenshaw
Yes, it is.

Pete Mockaitis
I have that book. It’s a little thick. I haven’t finished it but I loved one of his points, which was to evaluate policies not based upon their intentions, because they’re all good, all policies have good intentions, but rather upon the economic incentives that they create for the different players and stakeholders.

And that made a whole lot of sense when I read that, like, “Oh, yeah, I can see how sometimes, when things don’t quite work out,” I think rent control was an example he used. It’s really helpful to put yourself in the shoes of each of the players there, like, for example, the landlords and see, “Huh, given this legislation, what might they be more or less inclined to do because they’re going to be affected by these new set of rules?” And that was a big lightbulb for me, actually.

Dave Crenshaw
Yes. And see, that’s beautiful, and that says a lot about you, the fact that you would remember that principle from reading that book. And just understanding that, if you’re in a managerial situation, now you’re going to say, “Oh, if I change something, what’s the effect on the individuals that are following me?”

And that nugget of knowledge is so basic and it’s so fundamental but it’s so useful in the same way that water is useful to our physical survival. It’s a basic, it’s a fundamental, and we want to at least spend a little time consuming those things. My career, The Myth of Multitasking, a big influence that economics had for me was the idea of microeconomics and switching costs. That’s my love of economics, and learning it is what led me to help people with time management.

And someone listening to this might have that same experience with accounting, and they enjoy that concept of first in, first out, or whatever the principles are that they’re reading, and they can make that a part of being a bricklayer. That’s a terrible example, but they can make that, those principles a part of any career that they have.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, and it can help you get an understanding of all sorts of mysteries. You mentioned brick laying, one of my great mysteries, Dave, is why home renovation professionals, whether the electricians or plumbers or masons or whomever, it seems like historically I’ve had a heck of a time finding someone who would actually show up and do things. And then when you do find a winner, you’re like, “Oh, my gosh, you are my plumber for life,” “You’re my electrician for life.”

But I think the principles of economics can help illustrate that. My leading theory right now is, “Hey, Pete, you are a small fry with a small job, and it takes me lots of time to get over to you and to the hardware store, etc. to get a small amount of revenue versus there are people with much bigger jobs, which take me the same amount of time and to get there and get the materials, and yet produce a whole lot more moolah for me and the team to take care of business.” That’s my current theory, at least.

But without an understanding of economics, I might just be…well, I guess I’m still frustrated because I don’t have a plumber or whatever showing up, but at least that demystifies that or inspire some ideas, like, “Huh, maybe I can work with a contractor and bundle a lot of stuff at once so I would be a more appealing customer in a world in which they could be pretty choosy when there’s not as many home renovations pros as there is a demand for their services.”

Dave Crenshaw
Yeah, that’s a great example. And to kind of put a bow on this, I think what we want to do is say, “How does this apply to me?” I think the tendency of most people, and I’ve seen this in my coaching and training, the tendency of most people is to listen to new knowledge and say, “That doesn’t apply to me. Well, I’m going to ignore that part of what I just read because that doesn’t apply to me.”

The question we want to ask ourselves is, “How does this apply to me? How can I make this principle of accounting apply in my job in HR?” And if you just take the time to drill down and think about it and pause for a second, you’ll find applications.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s cool, and I like that taking the time to actively think. And when you’re drawing a blank, I’ll tell you what, I have been playing around a lot with this, with AI and ChatGPT. I did it a year ago and thought that was kind of some cool tricks, but now with the upgraded powers, it’s pretty cool. Like, that’s the kind of a prompt that can really spark some ideas going. It’s like, “Hey, I am in this business and I just learned this concept, how is this at all applicable to me? And then give me 10 ideas.” And then it does, it’s like, “Oh, okay.”

And then that’s what I found to be most useful for. Its final product, headlines, and teasers, and copy is inadequate in my opinion, but as a little brainstormer thought partner, I’m finding all kinds of fun little uses there.

Dave Crenshaw
Yeah, I love it.

Pete Mockaitis
And then that might be another subject associated with learning stuff that’s a principle, like learn business. We mentioned basic economics and basic principles of business. Are there any other resources that you found just absolutely killer?

Dave Crenshaw
Well, one common thread that I’ve seen so far in the interviews that I’ve done, I’ve seen this also with people that I’ve coached through the years, is taking advantage of bonus opportunities. And what I mean by that is…well, I’ll give you an example. So, I interviewed Kwame Christian. You know Kwame, right? Have you had him on your show?

Pete Mockaitis
Indeed.

Dave Crenshaw
So, one of the things that he mentioned was that he took advantage of debate club as he was going to school. And he participated in that, and that participation opened up his eyes to the idea of negotiation and how to have difficult conversations. And I’ve seen that several times where someone is, they’re going to school, they’re participating in something, and there’s this ancillary opportunity that isn’t really going to show up on a resume for a job application, and they go participate in it, and that participation leads them to something new.

And it goes back to that idea of people think there’s one path to success. The path is you pick a career, you go to school and study that career, you get your grades then you go and work somewhere. But the reality is it’s the little opportunities that you might take for granted, the things that are going to help you figure out what you really want to do, and they’re going to help you grow in your career.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s cool. And I believe you highlighted that as a theme in my interview when you had me in terms of, “Oh, that stuff you were doing in college, in high school, in terms of giving that speech. You’re like, ‘Oh, speaking is awesome. And it’s interesting that other people are terrified of this, and yet I’m super jazzed about it. Hmm, there’s a lesson there.’”

Dave Crenshaw
Yes, and it also highlights the idea that go where your strengths are. And I was just reviewing the interview that I had with Kwame, he said, “Go where your curiosity is.” And it’s not so much about your passion. Your passion can be useful but I was passionate about playing music and being a rock star, not necessarily a very usable career for me.

But I was curious about entrepreneurship, I was curious about time management. I would go to the extra lectures where I went to school, and listen to entrepreneurs talk about their experience. Those things that I was curious about are the things that became most influential in my career. So, someone listening to this, you can ask yourself, “What am I most interested in that maybe isn’t a part of my career at the moment? Am I giving myself opportunities to immerse myself in those things?” and do a little bit of it even if it’s outside of the everyday work that you do.

And when you do that, you’re opening your mind, you’re opening your time, you’re opening your opportunities to probably what is going to lead to the most success in your career.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s really cool. And something that’s come up in my podcast a number of times is folks to actually look back at what you were super interested in when you were younger can have some real clues for you. Like, before you were obligated, mandated, directed, desperate for cash, any number of pressures entered your world, what was just kind of interesting to you that you were curious about, that you dug into.

And you may very well not become a professional baseball player or a rock star or a magician, kind of whatever that might’ve been, but there’s something under the surface there in terms of, “Oh, with the magic tricks, it was delighting an audience,” or with rock roll, it’s kind of learning a thing and just getting immersed, or a sense of mastery, and sort of see just kind of “What’s the thing underneath the thing if you’re not going to be a pro sports guy or a rock and roll person?”

Dave Crenshaw
Yeah, what are the principles, what did I gain from this experience? And whether or not you’re in that career, what you learned in it will help you the most. That’s something I see with my wife who is a high school swim coach. And the reality is most of the kids that she coaches won’t be swimming past high school. Most aren’t even going to get a college scholarship. So, what are the moments within that extracurricular activity that give them an opportunity to grow and learn life skills about hard work, and persistence, and working with team members?

Pete Mockaitis
That’s good. That’s good. I’d also love to hear you, Dave, tell me, did you see any conventional wisdom get skewered along the way in terms of maybe there are some tropes or standard-issue truth, wisdom, guidance, that is bellied about that your guests have actually revealed, “No, actually, it turns out that’s wrong, and here’s a better way”?

Dave Crenshaw
Yeah, that’s a really interesting question, Pete, and I’m going to tread delicately here with it.

Pete Mockaitis
Can’t wait.

Dave Crenshaw
But I think it’s important to be said that I think there is a concept out there that having a family holds you back, that your kids are going to slow you down and keep you from being successful if you choose to have kids. Or, even, “I need to wait later in my life to get married because marriage to my spouse is going to hold me back.”

And I have found that in both of those cases, the opposite is true. Let’s talk about children for just a second. Or, even if you choose to be a caretaker of someone else. What that does is it enforces limitations in your day. First, just setting aside all the wonderful benefits of being a parent, which there are, just from a structural standpoint in your career, it forces you to not work crazy hours.

And if you love your children, you’re going to want to say, “How can I spend time with them? And if I have to spend time with them, that means that I won’t be able to wake up at 6:00 o’clock in the morning and work all the way to 9:00 p.m. I’m going to have to find breaks.” And that relationship creates a boundary that forces you to figure out how to be more productive.

It’s really sloppy productivity to allow yourself to work long hours. You’re just masking a bunch of inefficiencies in your day when you allow yourself to work those hours. But if you say, “I’m not going to go past 5:00 p.m.” and I call this principle the finish line. You define what your finish line is in the day, “I’m not going to cross that.” Well, if you have to stop working by 5:00 p.m. because your kids are going to be coming home, you’re going to have to figure out, “How can I get everything done?”

And if you have to figure that out, now I got to say, “How can I do a better job at delegation? How can I do a better job of automation? How can I do a better job of focusing on what’s most valuable?” So, that’s one of the first themes that I’ve heard come up several times. And the other one is the value of a great partner.

And, however you structure that partnership with another human being, whether that’s through marriage or just through a long-term committed relationship, the idea is that person creates a ground and a balance to what you’re doing. And, of course, this is assuming you’ve made a great choice, or at least a good choice, but having that person in your life creates stability, creates confidence, and you can divide the labor between the two of you in a way that’s useful, and that will help you grow in your career.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s cool. And I’ve also heard stories that once folks become aware, “Oh, we’re pregnant. Baby is on the way,” suddenly, the motivation…

Dave Crenshaw
Oh, that’s my story.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, the motivation, the seriousness really gets kicked up a notch, it’s like, “Okay, no, for real, I’m going to make this thing work.”

Dave Crenshaw
Yeah. When I give my speeches about The Myth of Multitasking, that’s one of the first things that I bring up. The two words that changed everything in my life, and changed my career, were, “I’m pregnant.” And when I heard those, I thought, “My gosh, I need to start getting more focused, and there’s this life coming in this world,” and that caused me to make that transition from maybe just pursuing my passion to pursuing a passion that was profitable. And that led me to returning to my work as a business coach and preparing how to be an author. That story still colors everything I do to this day.

Pete Mockaitis
So, we’ve covered some things that are great to do. What are some things you really recommend that we not do?

Dave Crenshaw
Yes, I would say don’t be afraid to fail. A lot of people are so concerned that something isn’t going to work out, that they stop from making any kind of attempt. And I would say do not allow that to prevent you from taking risks. And, especially, don’t allow yourself to say, “In the future, at some point, I’m going to take this risk.”

The earlier you take that risk, the less costly it will be. So, if you’re listening to this right now and you’re just starting your career, and you’re not married, and you’re just coming out of college, whatever, now is the best time to take that sort of risk, so don’t hold back. And even if you say, “Well, I’m married and I’m a little bit further down my career,” now is a better time to take that risk than five years from now, or ten. Fail early.

And that will create more opportunities. And if you fail, great, but you can recover from it. And I wasn’t afraid to fail early in my career, and I did, and it took a while to recover from it, but that was also an opportunity to learn and to grow. And that is often just as, if not more educational than an official college degree.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s a really cool perspective there, to take the risk earlier gives you more opportunities to recover, or to pivot, or to take advantage of the things that you’ve learned, the relationships you’ve built, the discoveries that you’ve made, as opposed to if you wait ten years, or however long, you will just have less time to pivot, sort it out, make good things from the pieces and the ashes that have emerged from that failure. That’s really cool.

Dave Crenshaw
Yeah, I know someone who just began their journey as an entrepreneur and owning their own business, and that’s great that they’re pursuing it, but the sad thing is they’re on the downward side of middle age, and for 30 or more years, he’s always wanted to own his own business. That’s a long time to hold on to that regret. Whereas, if he pursued it earlier, either he would have succeeded or he would not have that anymore, and say, “You know what, I took a try at that, I don’t have to think about it anymore.”

It’s funny, that’s part of the narrative that my wife and I have around my attempting to be a rock star. I had a band, I wrote songs, and sang keys, and I was doing that in my mid to late 20s. Now I can look back and say, “Wow, I’m glad I’m not doing that anymore. That was crazy.” And we’ll go somewhere and I’ll see a band setting up or something, and I’m, “Oh, my gosh, I’m so glad I’m not doing that.”

But if I had never done it, where would I be right now? “Oh, I could’ve done it.” I’m like Uncle Rico in Napoleon Dynamite talking about how I could throw the football over those mountains. Give it a shot. Even if you do it part time in conjunction with the job that you’ve got, give it a try now and then you can confidently move on with your life, or something amazing will happen because of your hard work and because of the risks that you took.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s cool, to get a real sense of what is the reality associated with this dream. And I think folks have found it really does go both ways in terms of, “Hmm, professional music or being a lawyer or whatever, is just the coolest or is, wow, not for me. Good to know early and reorient from there.”

Dave Crenshaw
Indeed, yeah. That’s it, do it now. Give it a try now and you’ve still got time to learn from it and to do something else if it doesn’t work out.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, Dave, tell me, anything else you want to make sure to mention before we hear about some of your favorite things?

Dave Crenshaw
Well, one thing that I really thought about and, as you mentioned at the beginning, you’ve done 800 episodes, another principle and a pattern of success is consistency over years, and I’ve seen this in my work with entrepreneurs. They’ll get started, they’ll start a business, they’ll go for a year, maybe two, and then they start getting bored, and they start doing something else.

And sometimes, well, you’ve seen this, Pete, let’s just talk about podcasting for a second. You go online, and how many podcasts do you see listed that have one to three episodes, right? There are 8 million podcasts but how many of them really go beyond the first five or so episodes? Not most. Most are less than that. And it illustrates the idea that when we start something, we’ve got to stick at it for a while. We got to keep going at it for a while.

And I’ve seen this with my own career, for instance, my courses with LinkedIn Learning. I started out in 2011 when it was Lynda.com, and it was my first course. There’s so much value in being a part of that and having a partnership with someone, like in my case, LinkedIn Learning, and your case as well, for 12 years. When you’re in the pipeline that long, more people have an opportunity to learn about you.

And if you think about something that you’re passionate about, I’m talking to the listener now, if you think about something you’re passionate about and you want to pursue, make a commitment to do it for a good long while. And just the principle of longevity and consistently doing it will lead to paying off. I like to say that impatience is the enemy of success. And the reason why it’s the enemy of success is it causes us to pull up roots too early.

And I use pulling up roots because I’m thinking of, like, a farming metaphor. We plant the seeds, we put water on them, and then we go away for a little bit, and then maybe we come back a little bit later, and we look at it, and go, “Oh, well, it hasn’t grown anything.” A lot of people in that situation go, “Well, this was terrible. I’m not doing this anymore,” and they just rip everything up, when we’ve got to give it time, we’ve got to keep nurturing it, we’ve got to keep feeding it, and then, after a while, you’ll start to see the fruits of your labor.

So, I recognize that what you’ve accomplished, Pete, in your podcast, a lot of it is talent, a lot of it is the hard work, but a lot of it, too, is just the fact that you have just kept at it for 800 episodes.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, it’s true. Things do pay off with consistency over time. Not always. Sometimes it’s like, “Hey, entrepreneur, that concept just isn’t hitting the mark for people.” And so, I think it’s a matter of saying…

Dave Crenshaw
But you’ve got to give it enough time to really figure that out.

Pete Mockaitis
Exactly. And so, I think about it from a hypothesis-driven thinking in terms of, “Okay, what do we need to learn? What are testing?” And I think, “Hmm, I’m kind of bored. I want to do something else,” is not a great reason as opposed to… I think about my failed businesses, it’s like, “Hmm, not a single person ever bought this thing. It seems they don’t actually want it after all.” So, then you could just say, “Well, maybe let’s pivot, adjust the offer.” Or if there’s no good adjustments to be made, it’s like, “Okay. Well, it’s time to say goodbye and move on and collect the learnings.

Dave Crenshaw
Yeah, and I’m aware of the paradox of what we just talked about because, just before this, we were talking about failing and failing early. And now I’m saying, “Keep at it for a good long while.” So, the question is, “How can you tell the difference between the two?” If you don’t mind, Pete, I’m going to turn that on you for a second. How do you personally tell the difference between when you’ve failed and when you just need to stay consistent?

Pete Mockaitis
I think it’s really a matter of looking at the evidence and, ideally, thinking about sort of tests, experiments, hypotheses, like, “What would need to be true for this thing to be successful?” and to see if there are some indicators. Like, I think in this business world, if it’s like, “Hey, you know what, we have successfully gotten 20 clients who are just love, love, love what we’re doing here, but we haven’t quite managed to get to a breakeven positive cashflow point.”

Well, I think that says you got something. I would not walk away from that lightly or if you’re bored. I would say, “Well, let’s figure out what are the remaining challenges we have to solve, and then solve them,” versus, “We’ve tried a dozen different marketing channels and not a single person has opted to part with their money for this thing we thought was so cool. Maybe this thing isn’t really resonating.”

And then you might choose to say, “Exit entirely,” or say, “Well, maybe it needs to be tweaked to make it more appealing, or maybe there’s a different segment that would really be into it. Maybe we were trying to go broad but, at the end of the day, this is really going to appeal to roofers, and we’d go all in on roofers,” or kind of whatever the segment is. So, I guess that’s how I would think about distinguishing it, is, “What evidence and signals have we collected to indicate this thing could be a winner versus not?”

Dave Crenshaw
Yeah, I completely agree with what you said. And so, if I were to put my own spin on it, I would say break it into milestones. So, it’s so easy when we engage in an experiment to think only long term, “Five years from now, this is where I’m going to be and I’m going to cash out of my business and own a private island.”

But the real question is, “What is the experiment of this month? What’s the milestone that we’re trying to accomplish this month? Were we successful in accomplishing that? Was I able to get this many customers because I was able to get this many people to listen?” whatever it is. And then you move from that milestone to the next one that’s maybe a little bit bigger.

So, you want to create a pattern of success but also set the milestones of success at more realistic and reasonable things in the beginning, so then you just go from success to success, bigger and bigger, as you go along. Or, you have a string of months where you’re not hitting any of the milestones and you stop, and say, “Okay, maybe there’s something wrong with this experiment that I’m engaging in.”

Pete Mockaitis
That sounds good. Well, now could you share a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Dave Crenshaw
Yeah, my favorite one, and someone who really inspires me is Bob Ross. And I know Bob Ross has almost become a meme these days but the reality is, as an educator and his ability to reach people, he had a gift that not many people possess. So, as someone who teaches people, I look at the way he does it.

Obviously, my personality is not quite the same but his love, his passion inspires me. And so, one of my favorite quotes, and I got a big custom poster made, it’s framed on my wall, and the quote is, “Every time you devote time to practice, you haven’t lost. You’re always a winner.” And if I’m reinterpreting that phrase, I’m saying, “Everything that you do is practice. Everything that you attempt is useful. Even if you fail, if you can learn from it, then you didn’t fail at all. You’re still winning.”

And, boy, Pete, do I refer back to this mentally when I engage in those experiments that don’t work out.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite study or experiment or bit of research?

Dave Crenshaw
I’ll answer this in an indirect way, probably not what you’re expecting. But as a coach and as an educator, I’m a big believer in the experiment of one. And what I mean by that is sometimes we’ll read a study, and it will say, “Seventy percent of people found that taking a break at work makes them more productive, it makes them more effective.” And that’s something that I teach. But what I want to, instead, say is don’t rely on the experiment of others because you might be in the 30%.

Don’t take my word for it. Try it yourself. Give yourself time to try something that you’ve heard for the first time, and experiment it. I like two-week experiments. Really give it a try for two weeks, and then, at the end of that, assess, “What did your experiment of one give you? Did it work for you? Are there any adjustments that you’d make?” Then, that way, and you keep referring back to it, now you’re becoming the scientist of your own life rather than depending on other people to tell you what you should do based on some study.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite book?

Dave Crenshaw
Actually, I’m going to mention something that is really off the beaten path but something I’m passionate about, and it’s Hustle 2.0 has a series of books. And I would encourage anyone to look it up. Hustle 2.0 is a program that teaches people who are incarcerated, how to turn their lives around.

And so, the books, they’ve got three of them, teach people who have been through trauma, and teach people who have been through some really rough life experiences, how to overcome it, how to be stronger on the other side. And the curriculum is written by people who have been incarcerated. And the reason why this is top of mind is I just recently went to the Utah State Correctional Facility and met a lot of people who have used this book, and I’ve read it, and I’ve even talked about it with my kids.

And it’s so powerful to see how a book written by someone who has been in that situation can completely change their lives. So, yeah, it’s a hard one to get but you can find it at Hustle20.com.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite tool, something you use to be awesome at your job?

Dave Crenshaw
Everyone likes to ask me, “This is a time management guy, what’s your favorite tool?” And my favorite tool is the one that everybody already has, they just don’t use it properly, and that’s your calendar. I just use that for everything. Even if I’m scheduling time to take time off, I’m scheduling everything in the calendar and I’d wager to guess that everyone listening to this could do a little bit better job of using their calendar to help them be productive.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And a favorite habit?

Dave Crenshaw
I’ll share one that I didn’t do for a long time. I’ve done a much better job recently of taking care of my physical health. And if we’re talking about the podcast, too, one of the things that I want to do is interview people who have balanced success. And I’ve learned through the wrong way that not being healthy ruins everything.

It doesn’t matter what you’ve accomplished in your career, in your life, if you’re feeling physically miserable. It’s not much of a success at all. So, I’ve done a much better job of the habit of exercising regularly. I try to do it at least five times a week with both cardio and some lifting. And, boy, it’s made everything a lot better for me.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And is there a key quote you’re famous for, Dave?

Dave Crenshaw
Well, one that pops to the top of my mind is “Whenever you say yes to one thing, you’re saying no to something else.”

Pete Mockaitis
That sounds like an opportunity cost.

Dave Crenshaw
There you go, exactly. There’s that economics influencing things. And it works in a microeconomic situation, a nano economic situation. When you’re making choices in your day to say yes to something, something has to give. It’s always a tradeoff. So, say yes to the most valuable things, and say no to things that are less valuable.

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

Dave Crenshaw
The easiest place is DaveCrenshaw.com. Crenshaw is C-R-E-N-S-H-A-W. And you can find my podcast there, you can subscribe to it there, all sorts of stuff. And, of course, if you’re on LinkedIn, please look me up and follow me on LinkedIn as well.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And do you have a final challenge or call to action for folks looking to be awesome at their jobs?

Dave Crenshaw
Well, it didn’t come up during our conversation, or I had mentioned it just briefly, be grateful. That’s another principle of people who are successful. Every day, look for something that’s going well, and express gratitude for it. And what that will do is it will make you more open to the things that make you happy, and make everything you do for work more enriching and rewarding.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Dave, this has been a treat. I wish you much fun and success with your Success Project.

Dave Crenshaw
Thank you very much, Pete. Really generous of you to have me on. Thank you.

May 11
0

864: How to Design a Career Portfolio that Beats Burnout, Navigates Disruption, and Future-Proofs Your Career with Christina Wallace

By | Podcasts | No Comments

 

Christina Wallace discusses the benefits of having a diverse work portfolio that will help you weather any storm.

You’ll Learn:

  1. How to diversify your work
  2. How to lessen friction and hit your flow
  3. The three questions that surface your hidden needs 

About Christina 

Christina Wallace is a human Venn diagram with a career at the intersection of business, technology and the arts. A writer, podcaster, serial entrepreneur, and erstwhile theater producer, Christina spent a decade building businesses in New York City. She is currently a Senior Lecturer at Harvard Business School, an active startup mentor, and angel investor. Christina holds undergraduate degrees in mathematics and theater studies from Emory University and an MBA from Harvard. In her free time she likes to sing in choirs, climb mountains, and run marathons (slowly). She lives in Cambridge with her husband and their two energetic children. 

Resources Mentioned

Christina Wallace Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis

Christina, welcome to How to be Awesome at Your Job.

Christina Wallace

Thanks for having me. I’m excited to be here.

Pete Mockaitis

I’m excited, too. We’re talking about The Portfolio Life: How to Future-Proof Your Career, Avoid Burnout, and Build a Life Bigger than Your Business Card. That sounds pretty cool.

Christina Wallace

It’s a lot of promise, right?

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, but no pressure, Christina, but we’re going to hold you to every one of these. Could you kick us off by sharing any really surprising, fascinating, counterintuitive discoveries you’ve made while doing the research and putting together this book?

Christina Wallace

So, one of my favorite little tidbits from this, I am someone who is not great at taking time off. Like many type A overachievers, I sort of aspire to be the sort of person who rests, who relaxes. I’m not great at it. And a little part of me has always been, like, slightly, you know, felt some superiority over that, like I work so hard.

And part of the research, when I got into some operations management and some research into sabbaticals and all of this, it was a little bit humbling, where it points out just how important rest and planned downtime is for not just productivity but for happiness, for the ability to not burn out. It seems fairly obvious, you got to have some time to recharge.

But I found some really fantastic research, particularly borrowing from the world in operations management of manufacturing, where the top-performing manufacturing lines only ever schedule 85% of their capacity. They always leave downtime for planned maintenance, for do-overs, for surges. They don’t start from the point of 100%, and then say, “Well, we’ll just do 110% if we have to.”

And I thought that was a good reminder with some great science behind it of why this notion of, like, “Hey, let’s have everyone give 110% all the time” is not realistic. And that’s why we are all in a constant state of burnout.

Pete Mockaitis

Well, Christina, that’s intriguing right there, and you’re bringing me back to fond memories of one time I had a consulting project at one of the world’s largest cookie factories. All day long you could smell that chocolate in the air.

Christina Wallace

Oh, man.

Pete Mockaitis

And so, 85% is a top-performing manufacturing line. I’m curious, what do we know about top-performing humans? So, some sabbatical is good, some vacation is good, some rest is good. Do we know – there’s probably a range based on different temperaments, etc. – what’s optimal for us?

Christina Wallace

Certainly, there’s an expectation of having some downtime every day, every week. You have to have it as part of your practice but I found some research from The Sabbatical Project, DJ DiDonna, one of my colleagues here at HBS has done, that really emphasizes the value of taking a meaningful sabbatical every, call it, ten years or so. And by meaningful, they mean really in the realm of, like, three to six months off, taking a significant intentional break where you have a moment to step back, reflect, and really consider, “What do I want to do for the next chapter?”

And sometimes people come back feeling refreshed and renewed energy to keep doing what they were doing. And sometimes people come back, and say, “Okay, I actually needed that space to realize I want to go off in a different direction or I want to make a major life choice.” But I thought there was an interesting reflection of sort of six months every ten years. Like, that doesn’t seem unreasonable to have, call it three or four sabbaticals over the course of your career. That’s not that much time off.

And, yet, without the intentionality behind it, ten years pops up, and you’re like, “Oh, I can’t take six months off. That feels impossible.” So, it was a nice reminder that with a little bit of planning and strategy, these breaks are absolutely doable.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. And so then, that’s on the sabbatical side of things. I’m curious in terms of a workweek side of things. I’ve seen some studies that suggest a certain number of hours. After that, you’re actually negatively productive. What have you found there?

Christina Wallace

Yes. So, what’s interesting about a portfolio approach is that there’s some research that shows being able to toggle between different activities, different types of working, different types of thinking and interacting, like, collectively helps actually recharge, renew the way that you are working, the energy that you bring to the table.

And so, it’s not sort of just additive. It’s not saying, obviously, there’s research that says 10, 12, 14 hours, at a certain point, there’s diminishing returns if you’re doing the same thing hour after hour. But if you are complementing, say, a day job with a moonlighting gig, a side hustle, or a serious hobby, or something you really love that works a completely different part of you and that offers you a different way of thinking, and of creating, and of interacting, that doesn’t feel like you just pulled a 12- or a 14-hour day. It can actually help you feel rejuvenated.

So, I don’t want you to work 20 hours a day between your side hustle and your day job. There is a breaking point but I think this notion of your total load across your portfolio is a lot more flexible than you might think, depending on what’s in your portfolio.

Pete Mockaitis

And when you talk about a different type of work, sometimes it’s like how we define different is really kind of fluid. Because, in some ways, it’s like, well, I’ve got two companies. One is in the world of training and people development, and the other is in the world of outsourcing and media production. And so, in some ways, it’s saying, because we’re dealing with words and thinking about words and making words good.

Christina Wallace

Sure. And you’re still writing emails and trying to make the numbers balanced, and maybe making a slide or two. Like, I can see how that could feel like the very same work but managing a different project. When I think about maybe a different ways of working, I think about some of the folks in my book where one person, by day, is a teacher, and then her moonlighting project is writing novels for middle grade readers.

And so, by day, she was dealing with 4th graders, and their sticky hands, and how to teach them math, and how to teach them emotional maturity, and all of these things. And then, by night, she’s inventing these stories and sort of just going deep into this continuous creativity in these worlds that she’s building. That’s a very different way. Like, one allows her to recharge after she’s been giving and giving and giving all day long to her students.

So, you’re absolutely right, that really can come down to, like, “What is that mix? And do they complement each other? Or, are you just doing the same thing but in a different context?”

Pete Mockaitis

And when it comes to recharging-ness, is there a means by which you recommend people reflect, or assess, or gauge that?

Christina Wallace

So, one of the tactics that I recommend for putting together your portfolio is an assessment of two things. One is what do you need to be your best self? And everyone’s needs are going to be a little different. Your needs are going to be a little different depending on the chapter or season of life you’re in but you will likely have some combination of financial needs, growth needs, community needs. There could be other elements of security that you have needs, that need to be met.

And then, in addition to your needs, you’re going to have a set of wants, or, as I like to call them, your wishes. What are the big things that you care about doing, seeing, experiencing, leaving behind by the end of your life? We’re talking this could be minor, “I want to run a marathon.” These could be major, “I want to, I don’t know, walk on the moon,” so whatever. Putting together this kind of list of wishes for your life.

And as you’re assembling your portfolio, you want to be thoughtful of, like, “Are the different things that I do over the course of my day, or my week, or my month, collectively, are my needs being met?” We got to start there, “Are my needs being met?” If you’re doing two or three or four things that all maybe make you money, but they’re all solo projects, you have no colleagues, you’re not being given this community or this opportunity to just have conversations with other humans, you’re over-indexing on one need and your under-indexing on another.

And so, as you think about recharging and rebalancing, it’s, like, “Am I getting my needs met across my day, my week? And am I having a good balance across these things?” The wishes piece is relevant, too, “Am I doing all of this work and all of it only goes toward one or two or a handful of things that I care about? Or, do I have a nice breadth across what I’m doing that maybe this thing gets me closer to this professional goal, and that work gets me closer to this crazy artistic goal that maybe I even felt weird about writing down because it seems so out of this world but I kind of really do want to do before I die?”

Pete Mockaitis

All right. And I imagine it’s a common experience for people to not even be aware that they have a need of a particular flavor or stripe. Any suggestions on how to surface those?

Christina Wallace

I think part of this is the reflection or the delving into stories, into your past experiences, and having that opportunity to say, like, “When have I been my best self? And when have I haven’t? Like, what are those moments where I found myself crying at work or doing less than I thought I could or should be able to?” I’ll give you an example, one of my needs is an office with a door that closes.

I do not do well in open office plans. And I have so many examples of working in startups and other organizations where I loved the work, I was a good fit for my role, I had great relationships, everything felt like it should be clicking, but I was in an open office plan where I couldn’t focus. I have high sensitivity to sounds. I couldn’t focus. I was always being interrupted. I couldn’t get into a flow, ever. And that friction wore at me every day to the point where I couldn’t do what I was there to do.

So, I made that on my checklist, of like, “When I’m at my best is when I’m able to shut the door and be able to focus.” And so, in some ways, if you’re just starting out, you might not have a good sense of your needs yet, and that’s okay. But if you’ve been at this a while, or if you have that opportunity to look back and reflect, whether it’s in school or in your jobs, where are you at your best? And where did you find sort of constant friction that you’re like, “Ugh, it doesn’t have to be this way”? That’s a great place to start to surface your needs.

Pete Mockaitis

Well, Christina, now I’m thinking about the notion of friction and some philosophies saying, “Well, hey, if it doesn’t kill you, it makes you stronger. And if you can endure that, you’re going to grow and get tougher. And we’ve got it so easy in the 21st century with all of our luxuries and conveniences and comforts, and maybe we need a little friction to toughen us up.” What do you think about this perspective, Christina?

Christina Wallace

So, I hear you, a little bit of friction, not necessarily a bad thing but here’s maybe my counterpoint to that. Many of us, I might argue all of us, are what I would call weirdly shaped puzzle pieces. We all have a different set of skills, and communication styles, and interests, and personality quirks, and all of these things that we bring to the table when we show up over the course of our lives. And there are rooms that have a space that is shaped like your puzzle piece, and then there are rooms that don’t.

And if you try to shove your strangely shaped puzzle piece into what is a nice, square, neat opening, maybe it’s the last piece we’re waiting to put in this puzzle, and you don’t fit, if you try to shove yourself in there, you’re going to have to carve off a meaningful amount of yourself in order to even approximate what they’re looking for.

And I think there are lots of folks who feel this on a daily basis, whether it’s code switching, or whether it’s just the adjustments they make to who they are in order to feel acceptable on a team, at a company. And you realize that, on any given day, it’s not that big of a deal, but every day for years on end, you’re literally using some percentage of your energy, your mental capacity just to show up and be able to do your job, which leaves so much less to do the job itself.

And I think one of the biggest learnings I had through my 20s was that I would rather find the rooms that wanted what I had to offer than try to squeeze myself into a box that didn’t fit me, or into a hole in the puzzle that didn’t fit me. And part of that work was really uncovering what the shape of my puzzle piece was, what do I show with, what do I have to offer, and why is that actually awesome. And so, the people who do want me really do want me.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s good. And I’m thinking right now just about an experience I had recently. So, nowadays, with three young kiddos, I find I’m spending most of my mornings hanging out with them, watching them, taking care of things.

Christina Wallace

How old are they?

Pete Mockaitis

They are five, four, and six months.

Christina Wallace

I’ve got a three and a one-year-old.

Pete Mockaitis

Yeah. And then some things happen in terms of travel where I have the opportunity to just wake up and start doing some work at 7:00 a.m., and it felt absolutely amazing. It’s like, “Wow, I didn’t even know.” I thought, “Oh, I guess I used to do this a lot. I don’t think I even remembered that that was a thing I did that worked really well for me, and I have been not doing that, and I miss it.”

And so, in a way that’s kind of tricky, it’s like, “Well, what’s to be done?” There’s probably some clever things to happen there but I guess, Christina, where you’re nudging me here is one response to that internally is, “Oh, hey, man, that’s just the stage of life we’re in, you know. We got to take care of the kids in the morning. That’s where it’s at.”

But I’m thinking, with your puzzle piece analogy, perhaps you might advocate it’s worth putting some serious thought and effort into thinking, “Is there an arrangement by which this creative morning, productive, energized groove can be deployed in that direction because it’s worthwhile to do so?”

Christina Wallace
Yeah, I think your example is perfect on two dimensions. One is you get to see sort of the difference between what is it like to have that friction versus just to hit your flow. And I think, from like a metaphorically standpoint, that’s exactly the difference between being in a room that wants you and being in a room that doesn’t.

Or, a version of you, if you would, like, soften these things and change that thing, and don’t use too many exclamation points in your emails. But in the same way, I think that’s a perfect example of, you are at a stage of life where your mornings, for the most part, look a certain way. And so, the question is, “Is there an opportunity to either create a version of this that gives you that creative morning, maybe some sort of an arrangement with your partner, or figuring out how you set up your morning differently?”

And if you were working at a company or somewhere else where you had a manager or a boss, there might be a situation where you say, like, “Hey, can I adjust my hours? Can I think about maybe working from home in the mornings so I can get the kids out, and then I can have a couple of hours before I have to sit in traffic, or a couple of days from home?” Like, there’s a way to be thoughtful about, “How can I construct the context of how I do my work to maybe lower some of that friction and give me that opportunity to hit flow better?”

So, I am now a professor. For this stage of my life with young children, this is what fit me better than running a startup. And, as part of what I need, I have the same morning experience, getting my kids out the door, off to daycare, all these things. I can’t teach before 9:30, like it just doesn’t work, and I’m in the position to say that, and to proactively design my day to fit the needs that I have for this stage.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. Thank you. All right. Well, we just jumped into a lot of specific things because you kept fascinating me, Christina. And now, maybe I’ll zoom out a little bit. So, this book The Portfolio Life seems like we’ve got some taste for what it’s about. But could you articulate the core big idea or thesis here for us?

Christina Wallace

Sure. So, this idea, everyone is likely familiar with a portfolio from a financial standpoint, you build your financial portfolio with a mix allocation across stocks, bonds, real estate, whatever these assets are that fits the stage of life you’re in, that matches the risks and the returns that you need. And then, as your life changes, you rebalance that portfolio to rematch what you need at that stage. And this is taking that exact approach but applying it to not just your career but your life. I think career is a huge part of many of our lives but it is in the context of your life.

And so, what does that look like? It means that you are assembling work, hobbies, relationships, family time, community time, rest, you’re designing an allocation of your time across these different pieces in a way that meets your needs and moves you forward toward your goals. And what that can look like is several sources of income. It can look like a meaningful sort of hobby or growth opportunity, a project, something you want to learn more about, that you’re going to dive into, that then sets you up for your next professional zigzag.

It could mean keeping your hands in a lot of different buckets, a lot of different communities and networks, you say, “Well, I came from this world, I’m now in this world, I care a lot about that world, and I’m going to stay connected to all of them.” And the reason I advocate for this approach, one, it actually matches much better the full sort of three-dimensional version of who you are as a person. Very few people, from the day they’re born to the day they die, say, “You know, I really am, and I only am, a marketing manager in a pharmaceutical company. Like, that’s who I am. That’s it.” Like, we all have these different aspects.

And so, it’s a way to reflect on and mimic this three-dimensional version of you rather than having your identity be formed by your job. But, secondly, it sets you up with diversification and flexibility to better weather this constant state of disruption that we are now in. This world, whether it is bank collapses, or ecological disasters, or technological advancements, like AI that are going to massively change the face of white-collar work in the next five years. Whatever these things are, they’re coming at us, lifechanging disruptions every three, five, seven years. This is a pace of change the previous generations never had to deal with.

And so, thinking about your career and your life through a portfolio that helps you diversify and build some flexibility against that disruption is truly the only way you’re going to navigate this without having the rug pulled out from under you, like many folks have had in the last few months.

Pete Mockaitis

So, can you share with us perhaps a story that brings that to bear? Like, “Ooh, here’s someone who did not have a portfolio, and, uh-oh, look how that went down,” versus someone who did, and, “Oh, what a softer landing and what it provided for them.”

Christina Wallace

Sure. I have a great example of this. Heading into the pandemic, I come from an artistic background. I went to a boarding school for the arts, I trained as a classical musician, and I majored in theater among other things, and so I know a lot of folks in the arts. And I used a lot of case studies in the book of folks that have a creative pursuit as part of their portfolio.

Going into the pandemic, I have a lot of friends who were actors, directors, designers on Broadway who went from being gainfully employed at the top of their industry to having, literally, no income for two years while live performances were shut down. And many of them had sort of a backup job as a waiter or a bartender. That’s how a lot of actors make their work between gigs but a lot of those jobs got shut down, too. So, there were a huge number of artists in New York who just, literally, had no income for up to two years, minus whatever unemployment checks they were able to collect. And it was devastating. Many of them are still digging out from under that.

But I have one friend, Carla Stickler, who, in addition to being an actress, she was the understudy for Elphaba in Wicked for many, many years, a fantastic Broadway actress, in addition to that, she started learning to code. Many years ago, she took a bootcamp through the Flatiron School. She wasn’t really sure what she wanted to do with it but it interested her, and she decided to learn more.

And so, between gigs, backstage, when she wasn’t in a scene, she was working on code, building projects, writing apps. And when the pandemic came, she’s like, “Well, I didn’t think I was ready to leave Broadway, but I think Broadway is ready to leave me, so it’s time to pivot.” And she took her coding resume, and went out and got a job as an engineer at a startup, and was able to seamlessly move into the world of tech startups, and has a thriving career now as an engineer in Chicago, and was able to navigate that unexpected disruption so much better than her peers.

And what I think is fascinating about Carla, I’m sort of giving away the ending here, but it’s not like she walked away from performing altogether. She kept teaching a little bit. She had a private voice studio. She stayed in touch with folks. And when Broadway came back, this is right around the time that, like, the Omicron surged, it became problematic, they reopened, they started performing again, and then there was this big variant that took out, it was devastating.

It took out a lot of performers really quickly, and Broadway started going through their list of understudies, and backup understudies, and swings, and backup, backup swings. And they got to the point where they needed an Elphaba, they had no one else to perform. They, literally, called Carla in Chicago, she got on a plane to New York, had one rehearsal, and went on stage, painted green, flying 40 feet over the stage, singing, literally, the hardest role on Broadway. And then she got off stage and, two days later, went back to her coding job in Chicago.

So, I think that is a great example of how you can have a mix of skills and interests and networks that maybe you’re not monetizing just yet but can position you to have optionality and flexibility when the time comes.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. Cool. And so, as we think about this design process, you mentioned doing reflection associated with seeing when have you been at your best and when have you been at your worst. Are there any other ways to help surface that which is going to help keep us feeling alive and flourishing as well as surfacing cool opportunities to get after those things?

Christina Wallace

So, one of my favorite tools, I developed this short list of questions after my first startup failed. I had built this company, we had raised the money, we thought it was going to be amazing, spoiler, it was not. And I had this moment of complete and total sort of paralyzation. I was like, “I don’t know who I am. I don’t know what I have to offer. I don’t know why anyone would want to hire me,” and tried to be reflective, tried to journal and figure out what I brought to the table, and I was coming up with a blank piece of paper.

And so, I went out and had coffee, a lot of coffee, with basically everyone in my network. I did, like, 70 coffee chats in 30 days. That was overkill. You don’t have to do that many. But I went out and asked the folks who had known me the longest and some who’ve actually only known me a few months. I asked them three questions.

Number one, “When have you seen me happiest?” Number two, “What do you come to me for? Like, what is that moment where you go, ‘Oh, I should see what Christina thinks about this.’?” And then, number three, “Where do I stand out against my peers?” Because one of the things that I recognize was there might be, like, a superpower that I bring that is easy for me and so I don’t even realize how valuable it is elsewhere.

And having those same three questions kind of across all these conversations helped pull out some themes that really gave me an insight into where I should go next. And then, once I had something more specific of, like, “I’m looking for this type of a role, in this type of an industry, with this type of a job title or an opportunity,” then my network could surface those opportunities because I was being really specific.

I wasn’t saying, like, “Hey, do you know anyone who’s hiring?” I was like, “Do you know anyone who’s hiring a general manager role for a company, not based in New York, that wants to expand to New York, and who’s at a seed or series A stage of financing in the startup world?” Like, super specific. And I landed that job in a couple of days.

So, part of this is, like, you can do some self-reflection, and there are great exercises in the book to do that but you can also go and ask the people who know you what they see when they look at you. And you might be surprised that some parts of you that you don’t even realize are that exciting or valuable really stand out to other people.

Pete Mockaitis

And could you share with us a couple things you heard when you had these 70 conversations that surprised you, like, “Huh, how about that?”

Christina Wallace

So, one of the interesting things when I asked them when they had seen me happiest, the consensus was when I was in charge of my own calendar, meaning I’m not afraid of working hard. I work hard. I work a lot. But I want to do it on my own terms. And for a while, I had been at a consulting firm for one of these big national consulting, international consulting firms. And in client services, you jump when the client says jump, and I didn’t have control over my calendar, and I wasn’t able to slot in the things I cared about or show up for the people that I wanted to show up for. And it really made me miserable.

So, I came out of that realizing, like, “Okay, me and client services, like not a good fit. What do they come to me for?” They come to me to help find the story. So, whether it’s their resume, or it’s a product they want to launch, or it’s just connecting the dots of, like, “I did this thing and that thing and the other thing,” and I’m like, “I don’t see how they connect but I’m sure they do.” I can give them the language. I can help them find the story and frame it in such a way. It’s sort of a communication skill.

And then, “Where do I stand out against my peers?” I thrive in moments of uncertainty. I’m really good at the zero to two stage of company-building, or a project generation, or launching a play, whatever that thing is. Going from an idea to a thing, and getting other people excited by it, onboard with it, and all driving in the same direction, is where I excel.

I’m less great at the 10- to 100-stage, where you’re optimizing something that already exists. And so, I thought that was really helpful to be, like, “You know what, I should stay in early-stage startups or in creative projects, like producing theater, where going from nothing to something is what’s on the table.

Pete Mockaitis

Cool. All right. That’s very clear. And I could see how, in your world, it’s just like, well, yes, it’s kind of, “Isn’t everybody good with that?” how strings can be hidden in that kind of a way. Okay. Well, then can you share, so that’s sort of the insight, personal, wisdom gathering there. And then what are your top tips in terms of surfacing cool opportunities and things to put into your portfolio?

Christina Wallace

A lot of this comes down to your network. There’s some great research I referenced in the book that a lot of the opportunities don’t come from the people you know but the people they know, second-generation networks. And part of helping that one level-removed network surface things that might be interesting requires you to be really specific on what you’re looking for.

And so, that is sort of a two-pronged approach. One part is having the language to talk about who you are, what you’re looking for, and how someone might be able to help you. That was what I needed after I did all these coffee chats, coming up with the specific asks. And then the second thing was keeping in touch with those networks so they know that you’re looking for help, that you want something to surface up.

And this can be a challenge if you sit in multiple worlds, as I do, I have built a career at the intersection of business, technology, and the arts. Those are somewhat overlapping but, in many ways, distinct communities. To stay connected to them takes effort, it takes relationship-building over time not just sort of networking where I show up with a business card and throw it in everyone’s hands. But doing that allows me to stay top of mind, and having a very clear ask allows them to surface things that might be really interesting.

Because a lot of what people love, can get excited about, is really these opportunistic things rather than the, “What’s your five-year plan?” The five-year plan thing hardly worked for our parents. I don’t think it can work for any of us because there are so much that is changing and there are so much that’s unknown. So, having much more of an emergent strategy rather than a deliberate strategy is what’s going to be effective here. And to do that, you have to stay connected.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. Well, Christina, tell me, anything else you want to make sure to mention before we shift gears and  hear about some of your favorite things?

Christina Wallace

I think that’s it.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. Could you tell us a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Christina Wallace

Madeleine Albright, “There is a special place in hell for women who don’t help other women.”

Pete Mockaitis

All right. And a favorite study or experiment or bit of research?

Christina Wallace

Clay Christensen and his team, when they were writing The Innovator’s DNA, interviewed and studied hundreds of the most creative innovative people, and they identified these five traits that make up the DNA, that make up kind of how these people worked. And at the core of these five traits, the backbone that the other four sort of rotate around, like the double helix of DNA, is the power of associating.

That’s the ability to connect seemingly unconnected ideas, or networks, or industries. That is what made people the most innovative. So, it doesn’t require you to have a net new idea, a cutting-edge technology. It often can come from just being connected and translating something you’ve seen in one world into another.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. And a favorite book?

Christina Wallace

Oh, man, I think it’s probably an upcoming book. I can still call it a favorite because I got to read an advanced copy. It’s called The Anxious Achiever by Morra Aarons-Mele.

Pete Mockaitis

Oh, Morra. She’s on the show.

Christina Wallace

Yeah, it is just I feel like it was written for me and, like, all of my friends.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. And a favorite tool?

Christina Wallace

Trello. I live and die by Trello. I’ve probably been using this Trello board for, like, 12 years.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. And a favorite habit?

Christina Wallace

Putting my phone away an hour before I go to bed.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. And a key nugget you share that really seems to connect and resonate with folks; they quote it back to you often?

Christina Wallace

Honestly, it comes from one of the pieces of my book, “There’s no such thing as a left-brained or a right-brained person.” This is fake science that was misinterpreted from a real study back in the 1960s. And so, this notion that we are one or the other, logical or creative, it’s not true. You are both.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. And if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Christina Wallace

PortfolioLife.com or you can follow me on LinkedIn or Instagram.

Pete Mockaitis

And do you have a final challenge or call to action for folks looking to be awesome at their jobs?

Christina Wallace

Honestly, I would go and talk to your boss, talk to your manager about the thing that you want to try, or learn more about, or explore this year that has nothing to do with your current job description, and see if there’s a way to get a stretch assignment, or a rotation, or a zigzag promotion that allows you to sort of expand that portfolio even in the context of your day job.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. Christina, this has been a treat. I wish you much luck and fun in your portfolio.

Christina Wallace

Thank you so much.