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Feb 01
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638: How to Build Unhackable Focus with Kary Oberbrunner

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Kary Oberbrunner says: "The victor, the one that is unhackable, says, 'I happen to the world.'"

Kary Oberbrunner shares expert strategies for bringing your attention back to what matters most.

You’ll Learn:

  1. The wrong and right ways of dealing with task overload 
  2. The three components of deliberate magnetic focus 
  3. The two triggers of flow state

About Kary

Kary Oberbrunner is CEO of Igniting Souls. Through his writing, speaking, and coaching, he helps individuals and organizations clarify who they are, why they’re here, and where they should invest their time and energy.  

Kary struggled to find his own distinct voice and passion. As a young man, he suffered from severe stuttering, depression, and self-injury. Today a transformed man, Kary equips people to experience Unhackability in work and life and share their message with the world. He believes the most powerful weapon on earth is the human soul on fire. His vision is to ignite 100 million souls by 2030. 

Kary lives in Ohio with his wife, Kelly, and three children: Keegan, Isabel, and Addison. 

Resources mentioned in the show:

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Kary Oberbrunner Interview Transcript

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

Kary Oberbrunner
It’s great to be here, Pete.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I‘m excited to dig into so much of what you’ve got to say. First of all, though, I want to hear about your connection to the Shawshank Redemption movie.

Kary Oberbrunner
Oh, yes, that is a fun tip. So, I was in a day job for a long time and it felt like a prison, and I remember watching Shawshank one evening, thinking, “Oh, my gosh, I relate to that.” So, quick story, basically, I was writing on the side and I finally did get out of that day job, and I said, “You know what, lots of people are asking me, “How?” so I’m going to write a book called Day Job to Dream Job. And the Shawshank prison is the day job. Zihuatanejo, where eventually, Andy goes at the end of the movie is the dream job, and I’m going to write the book.

And so, I started Googling where the heck was Shawshank prison. And I’m not from Ohio originally but it was The Ohio State Reformatory, and I said, “Man, I’m driving 90 minutes up to nowhere.” I found it and, basically, told the workers what I was doing and that I wanted to write a book in Andy’s prison cell on Day Job to Dream Job, and they’re like, “Sweet! Here’s the wi-fi password.”

And so, I ended up writing a good amount of the book in Shawshank prison. And then, a year later when we launched it, they heard about the story, the celebrities came back, and, sure enough, the warden, Bob Gunton, we launched Day Job to Dream Job at Shawshank prison together.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s wild. Well, so…

Kary Oberbrunner
It’s pretty crazy.

Pete Mockaitis
“So, I want to work out of a prison cell,” and they’re like, “Yeah, you got it.” So, there’s no fees or protocols. It’s just like, “Yeah, sure thing,” but…

Kary Oberbrunner
Exactly. Well, it’s no longer like a functioning prison. It’s more of a museum now but, evidently, they trusted me. And now I actually train their board of directors once a year on leadership, so it’s a crazy full circle.

Pete Mockaitis
That is wild. Well, I’m excited to talk about one of your latest works, Unhackable. Great title. What would you say is perhaps the most surprising and fascinating discovery you made about us, humans, and how we pay attention these days when putting together the book?

Kary Oberbrunner
I’ll tell you what, I wrote a fiction book called the Elixir Project in 2016 about a future society where people’s brains get hacked, and that was my first stab at fiction. And when the book came out, people said, “Man, this is not just a fiction book. Like, this is happening.”

And so, they kind of said, “Turn this into a nonfiction book for people in the workforce, in business.” And so, basically, I did a ton of research and found out that a hack is basically when someone or something gains unauthorized access to a system or a computer. And think back to biology class, and sure enough, we were made up of pulmonary, circulatory, respiratory system so our bodies are like systems and our brains are like supercomputers. So, in a real way, humans are getting hacked anytime we get distracted from our ultimate destiny, our dream. And the distractions are crazy big these days, and I’m sure we’ll get into it. It’s a pretty fun topic.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, yeah, unauthorized access, that’s sticking with me here.

Kary Oberbrunner
Yes.

Pete Mockaitis
So, that almost implies a hacker or a…Actually, I love the podcast the Darknet Diaries, it’s all about hackers.

Kary Oberbrunner
Sweet.

Pete Mockaitis
And so, what do they call it, a threat actor, I think is the term they use a lot, whether that’s a nation or a company or an individual, kid in the basement. A threat actor is kind of getting unauthorized access into our heads, but sometimes it’s us.

Kary Oberbrunner
Oh, yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
So, what’s a universe of threat actors that are kind of the big culprits of hacking our systems?

Kary Oberbrunner
It can be a lot of things. Unsexy hacks are just laziness or Netflix or these types of things, but, in a real way, the human species is now wired to crave distractions. We know from all the psychology that distractions produce a break from stress, and we know that smartphones create dopamine and addictions. So, I’m all for technology; I love technology.

However, human knowledge, once doubled every thousand years, so think about that. It took, essentially, from the years zero to 1500 to double human knowledge. And then the next time was 250 years, and it kept going and going. And, now, we live in a world today where every 12 hours human knowledge is doubling, and so we can no longer keep up.

Our ancestors made a handful of decisions a day back not too long ago. Today, we make 35,000 decisions. And so, we literally wake up with this limited attention, and throughout the day we dip into that and we create what’s called decision fatigue so that, at the end of the day, we’re saying things like, “I’m burnt out. I’m running on fumes. I’m on empty.” And, in a real way, we can no longer keep up with the amount of stress and distractions that are in front of us today.

Pete Mockaitis
When we talk about human knowledge doubling, is that kind of like the printing press or like unique content published? Is that what you mean by knowledge?

Kary Oberbrunner
Everyone has become a publisher. Everyone has become a content creator. We used to have gatekeepers where you would try to get a record out, you would try to get your thoughts out and be printed in the paper. We now have YouTube. We all are our own TV station, press release system, newspaper. We’re literally producing mountains and mountains of information not to mention computing, AI, I mean, you name it. It’s just an exponential curve.

And our brains haven’t upgraded. So, technology has upgraded but our brains have not. And not only that, Pete, but we now have new terms. Digiphrenia. So, schizophrenia was multiple personalities, this type of thing. Well, digiphrenia is a legit term that basically means that we exist in multiple places at once in the digital space.

So, most people have a Twitter, TikTok, YouTube, LinkedIn, and so now, not only am I existing right now, Pete, but online I have a persona that’s existing that may be getting tweets and maybe getting comments. Not only that but you have the stress of trying to be consistent on all platforms at once. And so, there’s a tearing of the mind that happens. It’s literally a stress.

And not only that, the average person touch, clicks, taps, swipes their smartphone 2600 times a day according to dscout. We now have five hours a day but this is on screens, but it’s in 30-second bursts, so, not to mention COVID and kids now doing online school. Again, technology is not the enemy, but I’m saying technology used to be a tool that we used. Now, we’re the tool that technology is using.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, that’s heavy stuff.

Kary Oberbrunner
It is heavy. It’s kind of like The Matrix, only real.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, so you mentioned psychological research. Could you share some striking stories or studies or evidence, bits, that kind of lay out – well, you dropped the numbers already, which is intriguing – in terms of like the state of play right now? And then what’s really possible if we take on some practices to become unhackable?

Kary Oberbrunner
Absolutely. So, right now, we have so many things going at us that a lot of us have adapted the lie of multitasking. And people get confused about multitasking, they say, “Surely, I can mow the lawn and listen to an audiobook. See, that’s multitasking.” Multitasking, we’re actually talking about doing two cognitive things at the same time. And so, therefore, it’d be like me trying to do a podcast with you right now and checking email and check my Instagram. When we do that, it’s not multitasking; it’s switch-tasking, our IQ drops 40 points, so it’s literally like being stoned.

And so, most of us, throughout the day, let’s be honest, we walk through the day stoned. And we do what’s called attention residue where part of my brain is still on the Instagram, part of my brain is on the email, part of my brain is with you. And not only is that productivity destruction but it’s relationship destruction. There’s a new term now called fobbing, not snobbing, where you’re trying to talk to me and I’m blowing you off or whatever, you’re blowing me off.

Now, when we’re talking with people, we’re looking at our smartphones. And this presence of relationship is now a thing of the past, and you can tell. I’ve got to do business on Zoom. You can tell when someone is watching or you can tell when someone is checking something else and something else, and it’s literally redefining the way we do relationships.

Kary Oberbrunner
But there is good news. There is good news.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, tell us then, sort of, ultimately, how do we become unhackable?

Kary Oberbrunner
How do we become unhackable? I love it. So, here’s the thing, in the book, I break down unhackability into three things. I’ll give you the three easy-to-remember words and then we’ll bump it out a little bit. But it’s literally idea, focus, and flow. That’s what unhackability is: idea, focus, and flow. Notice it’s knowing, being, and doing.

So, to stress that a little bit more, it’s flawless idea anatomy, so we talk about, “How do you create flawless ideas?” and there’s four components. Then we go into deliberate magnetic focus, and there’s three focus filters. We’ll get into that. And then optimal human performance – flow. And so, certainly people will have read books or heard books on just flow, like Steven Kotler is kind of the grandfather of flow; Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, a Hungarian psychologist. There’s been books on flow, there’s been books on focus, and then there’s been books on ideas, but, truly, an unhackable person is one who leverages all three.

And I’ll tell you why this is so important, because, as kids, we grow up saying a weird word; we said, “Abracadabra” anytime we wanted something magical to happen. We didn’t know what the word meant but we said it. The word actually means “I create as I speak.” I create as I speak. People who have faith, very interesting, it even gets crazier. It’s made up of three Hebrew words. Abba, which is father, and so it’s Father-Son-Spirit, Abracadabra. Really crazy interesting stuff.

In the faith tradition, it says that “God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light.” In other words, Abracadabra. I believe that we’ve been created to dream and do, ideate and implement, and that is our divine destiny. And when we’re doing that, we’re actually living out our calling. But, unfortunately, most of us dream, then we get hacked. We ideate, and then we get hacked; we don’t implement.

So, to your point, let’s talk about focus filters. Yeah, focus filters is one component of how to become unhackable. I, basically, break down focus filters into three of them: urgency, agency, and energy. So, most people, your great listeners, they probably have a dream, they probably have a desire, but, unfortunately, we always get hacked until we apply those focus filters: urgency, agency, and energy.

So, just to give you an example, it’s a beach example. If I go out to the beach, I got a bald head, I can burn in about three hours, or I can burn in about three minutes. What’s the difference? A magnifying glass.

Pete Mockaitis
Ah, sunscreen.

Kary Oberbrunner
Yeah, that’s right. A magnifying glass. So, same sun, same skin, but a magnifying glass, or what I call a focus filter, it amplifies the energy. So, it takes all that energy from the sun and puts it into a laser beam where you burn a whole into your skin. Or, in the metaphor we’re using, you burn a whole into your dream. You take that dream that you have where you keep getting hacked, and you, essentially, narrow your focus.
Urgency is that focus filter. So, what I mean by that is we need a deadline. Every dream needs a deadline. And think back to school days, Pete, remember when the professor assigned something on day one? When did most people actually do the assignment?

Pete Mockaitis
The night before.

Kary Oberbrunner
The night, Pete, you nailed it. A deadline amplified the energy. In other words, it said, “We’re going to get so focused. We’re going to get laser-focused.” Why? Because there’s a cost. If you don’t complete the assignment you get a bad grade. Well, what I’ve realized is that urgency is one of these amazing things, just like physical healthcare, what makes it super important? You put the word urgent in front of it. Urgent care. Now, all of a sudden, you get rushed, you get seen fast. Why? Because there’s a cost. Most of us do not have a cost attached to our dream, or a deadline. Those two components – deadlines and costs – make urgency work for us and become unhackable.

Pete Mockaitis
And so, I’m intrigued then, I think of deadlines, they are often associated with other people in terms of it’s like closing a house or whatever. It’s sort of like the lawyers, the realtor, the somebody said, “This is when this has to be in.” And so, when you think about our own dreams, how do we effectively harness a deadline so that there does seem like there’s a real cost? Like, if I do some work on a project tomorrow, I could do it the next day or the day after. How do I get urgency to be real and the cost to be real?

Kary Oberbrunner
Just to give you some client examples, I had one client who kept blowing off his weight dream, like, “I want to get down to a certain weight. I want to get down to a certain weight,” and he just struggled and struggled and struggled. Finally, he said, “Okay, I’m going to put a real cost behind this.” And I won’t tell you which political party he hates but he hates a certain political party so much that he said, “I will write out a check right now for $1,000 to the political party that I hate. I will put it in an envelope, I will put a stamp on it, and it will sit on my desk, and if I do not lose…” and this guy was a pretty big dude, “…if I did not lose 50 pounds by this day, that check is in the mail.”

I’ll tell you what, first time in his life he ever did it. He lost the weight because it, suddenly, was a real cost, which not just was a $1,000 but a “$1,000 to a political system that I do not like,” it was big enough. And I don’t know what people’s cost is but it needs to hurt. In other words, Pete, it needs to hurt so much that doing the dream is easier than paying the cost.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s good. There’s an episode of Nathan For You, it’s a comedy show, it’s kind of ridiculous that kind of explored this concept. You might enjoy that episode if you haven’t seen it.

Kary Oberbrunner
I might. I might, after you quote that.

Pete Mockaitis
And so, that’s intriguing. And I wonder if people are like, “Oh, I wouldn’t trust myself to actually do it.” I mean, you could sort of entrust that with a friend who happens to have the opposite political party affiliation.

Kary Oberbrunner
He did. He did. He told me.

Pete Mockaitis
And they’ll be eager to give it to that side. But then, also, they’re your friend so they’re not going to just sort of make a $1,000 of yours disappear without your consent.

Kary Oberbrunner
Exactly. Exactly. But that’s one example. But here’s another thing, Pete, it really becomes a mindset change. Unhackable people are victors, and hacked people are victims. And this is not my own but I love it, it’s a great illustration. Victims say, “The world happens to me.” Now, I’m not talking about victims of trauma or this type of thing, but I’m saying a victim mindset. So, a victim says, “The world happens to me.” And what happens is they often lie in bed – blame, excuses, and denial.

The victor, the one who’s unhackable, says, “I happen to the world.” These are people that put their quote “Oar in the water,” O-A-R, ownership, accountability, and responsibility. So, they literally take accountability for their lives. They literally are responsible. They take ownership. It’s not just a nice acronym. This is the difference between Capt. Sully on the flight. He didn’t ask the Canada geese to hit the propeller, but when Jeff, his copilot, was flying the plane, Sully said the magic words, “My plane.” And Jeff said, “Your plane.”

In other words, he took ownership, accountability, and responsibility. He took over that bird strike because he was unhackable.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, so that’s one way to make a deadline real. Let’s hit the agency and the energy. How do we crank that up?

Kary Oberbrunner
Yeah. Agency, I’ll give you an example. When I get my oil changed at the dealer, I suddenly walk into their agency. Let me explain.

Chairs, magazines, Donahue is on the TV, or something crazy. In other words, I walk into their space and it’s their agency. Many people have that reality. In other words, no judgment, but when I fly on an airplane and look to the person next to me, they’re bored as heck, they’re flipping through the magazine, they’re busting out their phone.

Listen, if you got a dream, you’re not chilling like that. And I’m not saying you always got to be working, but I’m saying that, in the book we talk about what’s called your boon. Your boon is your deepest desire, your greatest ache, your truest longing. It comes from Joseph Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Luke Skywalker, Neo, Katniss Everdeen, Hunger Games, Star Wars, you name it, Matrix. The hero’s journey is all about leaving the ordinary world, meeting a mentor, refusing the call, going into this special world, facing the giant, we think it’s external, it’s really ourselves or the ones who hack ourselves most of the time. But then, after we defeat the giant, we essentially get the boon. The boon is the holy grail. The boon is the elixir.

Let me say this, Pete. We don’t care if we get hacked until we know our boon. So, in other words, when I don’t know my boon, I’m like, “Hey, come on, Netflix, come on, XBOX, come on, all distractions in the world. What’s going on, on TV?” In other words, I actually purposely try to distract myself because it gives me this pseudo-purpose. But a someone who knows their boon, man, they are fighting for that. And that’s what really kicks us into unhackability, is knowing our boon.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, so how do you recommend we get some clarity and specificity on our boon, our deepest desire and calling and such?

Kary Oberbrunner
Well, I do have a free download, no email opt-in required. It’s at UnhackableBook.com, and if they click Resources, there’s 83 questions that gets you started, and these questions are fun. One question is, “What’s one thing you would regret not doing before you die?” It’s deep questions. It’s questions that you don’t just address every single day, but these are deep questions.

And what we begin to see is this melody line. It often doesn’t come just in one lightning bolt. It often comes with, I say, dream recovery, not dream discovery. In other words, your show is great and it probably talks about how we need to recover our dream. In other words, if you ask most kids, I’ve never met a young kid who said, when you ask them, “What do you want to be when you get older?” “Oh, I don’t know. I have no clue.”

I think we are born with this innate sense, maybe not exactly, but in the ballpark. Like, some people just say, “I know I was born to be on the stage.” Now, they might’ve thought the stage was one thing. Or, “I was born to always care for animals.” We lose sight of who we are along the way because we start listening to the voices of others. In other words, other people’s advice hacks us, “Pete, you won’t make money out of that,” or, “That’s not a well-paying job,” or, “That’s not a respectable job.” And, suddenly, we start listening, and that’s another way that we allow other people to gain unauthorized access to us.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, 83 questions, we can do some exploration, reflection, rediscovery there. And then how about energy?

Kary Oberbrunner
I think clarity…

Pete Mockaitis
What was that?

Kary Oberbrunner
Oh, yeah, yeah. I was just going to say clarity comes with action. I think that we don’t just sit in a room and wait for the clarity to come. A lot of times we have to work it out, we have to try, we have to experiment. But back to your phrase about energy. Energy is that last focus filter. And energy is super cool, super exciting.

Are you familiar with Twenty One Pilots? Have you ever heard of them? A band?

Pete Mockaitis
I don’t know.

Kary Oberbrunner
Okay. So, it’s a band, and there’s tons of bands out there so I don’t expect you to know, but the Twenty One Pilots are a band, and I’m just going to use…I like to tell stories to make a point. They come from my hometown Columbus, and they won a Grammy. But, well before they won a Grammy, nobody knew about them. And what’s interesting is you can actually go on YouTube and you can find one of their very first concerts, and it’s pitiful. There’s 12 people and it’s in a basement.

And the craziest thing in the world is that the lead singer is so enthusiastic. Oh, my gosh, like the guy is on fire, and you’re kind of like, “What the heck, man? There’s 12 people in the basement.” He had what’s called an enthusiasm. Enthusiasm is the word entheos, God within. This is part of becoming unhackable.

What gets you on a bigger stage is enthusiasm. Most people say to the universe, they say, “Once I’m on a bigger stage…” “Once I have a big platform…” “Once I have a big show…” “Once I have a big business, then I’ll be enthusiastic.” No, no, no, you have enthusiasm, and that’s what gets you on the bigger stage. So, just like you, Pete, just like me, I mean, you’re successful, I’m successful. Why? Because we treated those first five listeners like rock stars. We didn’t say, “Hey, I’m going to overlook those first five listeners. And, some day, when I have a big tribe, a big showing…” No, no, no, this is what unhackable takes. It takes that energy where energy is E-motion. Energy in motion.

Like passion. I love the word passion. I’m into words. I’m a word nerd. But the word passion, very interesting. The ancients define passion not by how much love you had, but by how much you’re willing to suffer. So, that’s why I never understood, “Why was it called ‘The Passion of the Christ’? and there was talk about a cross? What the heck?” It’s because He was willing to suffer for it.

And so, I just want to challenge your listeners. Your boon is something you’re willing to suffer for. I mean, you look at any great person, they had to suffer for their dream and it had a cost. And so, energy is that focus filter where that’s what really helps us become unhackable when we focus urgency, energy, and agency.

Pete Mockaitis
So, the energy is comparable to passion and the willingness to suffer? Is that the key there? And then, I suppose, we get that by successfully tapping into the boon.

Kary Oberbrunner
Absolutely. It comes with clarity. Like, Rosa Parks, she was unhackable, man. Like, you look at her, she says, “I’m not getting up off this seat. Like, I’m not going to,” and she suffered for it. There’s people all throughout history that suffered for their dream. And being unhackable, let’s face it, choosing not to binge on Netflix every day when it’s in front of you, that takes some suffering. Whatever your dream is, we can go through the list, but whether it’s physical, spiritual, mental, relational, this type of unhackability does require a suffering.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, so in your book you talk about a 30-day elixir. And so, we’ve talked about a number of things that are important along the way. So, can you maybe share what are some particular real practices or interventions that help us get to, let’s say, the superhuman focus?

Kary Oberbrunner
Yeah. So, here’s an example for Day 17. So, right now, there’s a lot of open loops inside your brain and mine. These could be open loops, like, right now, mine is, “Call the plumber because we got a leak upstairs.” It could be, “Mulch the yard.” It could be, “Mail the letter.” It could be, “Buy the birthday gift.” In other words, most of us have this subconscious program that’s running all the time in the background.

Now, we don’t think about it but just like your computer has multiple tabs on it, the more programs, the more browsers, the more tabs, the more time and energy sucked, the RAM goes down. Actually, the available RAM goes down because the RAM you’re using, it goes up. And what I’m saying is that any open loop, any indecision that you and I have, is grinding on our productivity.

So, one of the exercises I have people do, my clients, I say, “Grab a stack of Post-it notes and, literally, write down one per, one task, one open loop, per Post-it note.” And so, what people do is they begin to lay out all these Post-it notes on their desk everything that we just talked about, all the open loops, all the undecided things, because it’s literally leaking their lifeforce, it’s leaking their energy. They’re getting hacked by it.

These are the things we get up in the middle of the night and say, “Oh, my gosh, I forgot to get the dog immunized,” or whatever. Then what we do is we write on a piece of paper, “Do, delegate, and dump.” So, I encourage people to do this, like, literally in their house – do, delegate, and dump. You don’t put delay. Delay is what we always think about, “Ah, I’ll just delay it. I’ll just delay it.” Do means you’re going to do it, delegate means someone else is going to do it, and dump means no one is going to do it.

And what we do is we do this on purpose, this exercise, because what it does is it clears the mind. It literally frees up your RAM. In the book, we talk about the unhackable impact equation. And, sure enough, when you go through this exercise, you begin to free up your brain, and you allow it to have more usefulness for what you’re boon is rather than chewing up all these open loops. Does that make sense?

Pete Mockaitis
And so, it’s the act of categorizing these that unleashes it or do we actually have to get them all done?

Kary Oberbrunner
First of all, by seeing them written down automatically takes them from being internal to external. I don’t know about you, but sometimes I feel overwhelmed and I don’t even know why I feel overwhelmed. I’m just like, “Oh, my gosh, there’s a lot to do.” And if you actually slow down and say, “Well, what are those things to do?” this is the exercise. We stop, we slow down, and we allow ourselves to unload this, first of all. It goes from internal to external. Now, I’m looking at it.

The moment something is external, now I can make a decision. The word decide is a Latin word caedere. It has the same suffix as suicide, pesticide, insecticide, genocide, homicide. Decide means to cut off and kill. And so, what does a gardener do to a tree that’s unhealthy with sap going into all of its branches? He cuts them off. He prunes them. In other words, that’s what we’re doing. We’re deciding that, “I’m going to do it.” Or, we’re deciding that someone else is going to do it, delegation. Or, we’re deciding that no one is going to do it, dumping. And you, literally, open up your subconscious mind to focus on your boon. It’s a very cleansing process.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that is nice and I’ve done variants of it and it sure does feel great. Let’s hear a piece about flow.

Kary Oberbrunner
Oh, yes.

Pete Mockaitis
How do you recommend or what are the sort of your top perspectives on how to get more flow flowing?

Kary Oberbrunner
Flow is amazing. Flow is the optimal state of human performance. It’s the place we all must be in to win a gold medal, but not only that. For those of us who aren’t athletes, it’s where productivity skyrockets up to 500%. It’s where we begin to see pattern recognition. It’s called lateral thinking. So, how do we get into flow? There are flow triggers.

One of the flow triggers, believe it or not, is a deadline. Another flow trigger is novelty. Interesting, novelty. So, what that means is that when we are stuck in a rut, we go through the same route every single day, with the same menu, and the same restaurant, and we sit in the same table. What happens is we begin to go on autopilot. And when we’re on autopilot, the brain is an energy hog and it wants to essentially map out everything through our day so it can conserve energy.

When you are on autopilot, you don’t experience flow. So, how do you interrupt the autopilot? By novelty, by doing things, by going places, by having experiences that you’ve never had before, because the brain has to engage, because there’s an element of surprise, there’s an element of unpredictability. And so, many times people feel in flow when they go travel somewhere.

And so, Pete, to get really philosophical here, we’re in a pandemic. There’s a lot of people that haven’t been able to travel. They’re not experiencing novelty. What’s the result? They’re getting hacked. And then what else is happening? Not to be a downer, but mental health. And in Japan, a few months ago, more people died of suicide than all of COVID the whole year in one month. Why? Because all of this relates.

In other words, unhackable people are people who have flawless idea anatomy, deliberate magnetic focus, optimal human performance. And one of the byproducts is that we get neurochemicals. And so, the neurochemicals are endorphins and norepinephrine and anandamide. All these neurochemicals that are supposed to be happening in our brain don’t happen when we’re not in flow, and that’s why depression is on the rise.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, noted and, yet, there are some simple thing that we can do to fix that.

Kary Oberbrunner
Exercise, yeah, all kinds of good stuff.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, yeah, why don’t you give us the quick bulleted list here? Exercise. What else?

Kary Oberbrunner
So, exercise, sleep, okay? When we starve our brains of sleep, I mean, I get it, but we’re actually not allowing, just like back in the day, all day, I’m older than you, a long time ago, but defragging your computer. Literally, the brain repairs itself in sleep. Margin, where you’re not just blowing out your adrenal glands and cortisol. Eating the right way. Think about it. We call it carb crashes, sugar rushes, caffeine fixes. All of these are essentially altering the chemistry to create a certain type of feeling. Well, we can do that naturally. Community. Having good discussions where time seems to go by like that. Why? Because you’re in flow. And when you’re in flow, there is a time dilation that occurs where it either slows down or speeds up.

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

Kary Oberbrunner
I’ll tell you what, I mean, I think people’s eyes are open now. More and more my clients are saying, “Man, I got hacked last weekend.” And people who don’t know the vocab, they’re like, “What? What do you mean you got hacked?” They’re now aware of it. So, awareness is really the first step. Just, for all the listeners to realize, like, “When did you get hacked? When did you just blow through five hours and you don’t even remember what you did? But you scrolled, these types of things.” And we do have an unhackability assessment. Again, all my stuff to help is free in this area because I just have a passion. I believe that when we are living our calling, when we’re fully alive, that’s our greatest contribution.

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

Kary Oberbrunner
Carl Jung said, “What’s the most damaging thing in the life of a child? it’s the unlived life of the parent.” And that’s a negative, but I view that as a very inspirational quote because it makes me want to live the lived life not the unlived life.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite book?

Kary Oberbrunner
The current one that I’m digging is, believe it or not, The Psychology of Money. I just finished that. I like it. It reframes the way we think of money.

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

Kary Oberbrunner
Audiobooks, man. I love them.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite habit?

Kary Oberbrunner
My Peloton.

Pete Mockaitis
Alrighty. And is there a key nugget you share that seems to connect and resonate and folks quote back to you frequently?

Kary Oberbrunner
“Show up filled up.” It basically means that you are doing the work internally before you ever step foot into the world every single day, and you attract people, you get clients. Why? Because they’re like, “Something is different about this person.” You show up filled up.

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

Kary Oberbrunner
I would say go to UnhackableBook.com.

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

Kary Oberbrunner
I’d say, look, even if you’re not in the right job, your ultimate calling, don’t waste the time. Back to our original thing with Shawshank and Andy, that dude didn’t just sit in prison. He was very resourceful, digging a hole on the side of the prison. So, I just want to encourage people, like, whether you’re in the right job or the wrong job, be all there because it matters.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Kary, thanks for sharing the good word. I wish you many, many fun unhackable adventures.

Kary Oberbrunner
Thanks for the amazing interview, Pete.

Jan 28
0

637: How to Have a Happier Work Week with Nic Marks

By | Podcasts | No Comments

 

 

Nic Marks says: "Feelings are data. What I'm feeling is data."

Nic Marks shares the research and best practices for more happiness at work.

You’ll Learn:

  1. The five elements of a happy work life 
  2. How to draw the boundary between work and life 
  3. How to boost motivation and engagement in 5 minutes 

About Nic

Nic Marks was once described as a “statistician with a soul” due to his unusual combination of ‘hard’ statistical skills and ‘soft’ people skills.

He has been working in the field of happiness, wellbeing and quality of life over 25 years with a particular emphasis on measurement and how to create positive change. He is the founder of Friday Pulse and has worked with over a 1,000 organizations and teams measuring and improving their happiness at work.

Resources mentioned in the show:

Thank you Sponsors!

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Nic Marks Interview Transcript

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

Nic Marks
Thank you, Pete. Good to be here.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, yeah. Well, I’m so excited to dig into your wisdom. You have been called a statistician with a soul, which is a nice little moniker. Maybe could you start us off with a statistic or two that stirs your soul? Is there a number you find yourself coming back to again and again and you’re like, “You know what, I find that hopeful or I find that troubling, but I think of this number a lot”?

Nic Marks
Well, I think there’s a really nice number, well, it’s two numbers, 5 and 15, about 350. They’re called Dunbar numbers and they are basically our circle of friends and that most of us tend to have an intimate circle of five friends who we are really close to, roughly, I’m talking. And then a next circle of 15, and then sort of a 150 is our tribe.

And, particularly during COVID, I think, and the fact that we’ve all got sort of restricted lives, I think it’s quite good to identify the 5 and the 15 and to make sure you’re really maintaining those relationships, and kind of let the 150 go for the moment, and you can pick it up when this is all over. So, I think those are really nice numbers I like at the moment, 5 and 15 and 150.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Thank you. Well, could you give us an overview orientation before we dig into… What is Friday Pulse and your work there?

Nic Marks
So, yeah, I’m a statistician and I’ve been very interested in measuring people’s experience of life for quite some time now. I’ve sort of started doing quality of life statistics and then moved into more wellbeing and happiness lately. And Friday Pulse is sort of a merger between two different strands of my life, and that kind of is the statistician and the soul bit in that it’s about how people enjoy their jobs.

And so, every week we ask people, “How have you felt at work this week?” and we’re basically looking to try and support organizations to create more good weeks for people. Yeah, that’s basically what Friday Pulse is.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, so happiness, hey, that’s great. We all like some more of it and it’s a good in and of itself. Nonetheless, on How to be Awesome at Your Job, I’m going to need to hear a bit about the connection associated between happiness and performance, at being awesome at your job, be it for individuals or teams or organizations. Can you draw that linkage there for us?

Nic Marks
Yeah, very explicitly in some ways. So, when we are enjoying our jobs…So, firstly, happiness is a sort of multifaceted sort of idea in that we can think about being happy at a music concert or festival or something, and I’m not talking about that type of happiness at work. I’m talking about happiness that comes from enjoying your work or liking the people that you work with, being curious, being inspired. And in that sense, we know very well that people who enjoy their work are much more productive, and that’s both in terms of the quantity of work they do if it’s more sort of piecemeal work and also the quality of the work that they do particularly links into innovation and creativity.

We’re not creative when we’re feeling…when we’re unhappy, we’re not creative when we’re not getting on with the people we’re working with, we’re not creative if we don’t care about our work. So, creativity and innovation is hugely, hugely linked to enjoying our work and enjoying collaborating with the people we’re working with. So, it’s very, very linked to productivity and creativity, and then, also, to other good things for organizations, like staff retention, reductions in conflicts, things like that are much better as well.

I can give you very specific stats if you want me to.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, actually I was going to go there, and we don’t have to go with every one of them, but maybe some of them that are the most eye-popping, like, “Holy smokes, happy folks stay at their jobs five times longer,” or kind of whatever is really striking.

Nic Marks
So, on the staying in their jobs longer, so we measure people’s experience every week. So, we can look at in quarter one how happy people were and did they leave in quarter two. And we know that people, who were unhappy in quarter one, are twice as likely to leave the very next quarter as other people. I mean, it’s not the only reason leave people leave, unhappiness. They leave for other reasons too, but it’s a major reason and it’s one that’s actually really deal-able with for organizations, so that’s very precisely, so.

And I think the fact that sometimes we think of it not in terms of just, it’s called as ratios. We can also think of it in terms of scales. So, we have a one to five scale, a five-point scale, and if a team moves half a point up, then that’s associated with 18% lower staff turnover next quarter. It’s also associated with a 7.5% increase in productivity, so they’re very tangible and very quick, some of these indicators in how much they translate into real bottom line stuff.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, so then let’s talk about it in terms of the measurement. I understand there are five ways to happiness at work. Or, how would you begin chunking this up in terms of us being able to get our arms around happiness?

Nic Marks
Well, there are certain things. There’s the outcome that we’re thinking about which is we define very clearly as, “Have you had a good week?” basically. And we do it as a week because work experience ebbs and flows, it goes up and down very quickly. Weeks are really convenient length of time to do it over, so that’s our outcome. And then it’s like, “What drives increases in that?” and we know that there are particularly five main factors that increase that. We call them the five ways to happiness at work.

And they are connect, which is relationships are really critical; be fair, which is if a system isn’t fair, people, they get angry pretty quick; to empower people, so basically it’s about autonomy, delegating, using their strengths; to challenge people. It’s a total misnomer to think people are going to be happy if they’re not working. You’re bored, you’re not happy then. And, actually, we like a bit of stretch in learning. And then the fifth one is to inspire them. It’s about meaning, purpose, accomplishment. So, those are the five big things: connect, be fair, empower, challenge, inspire.

And if teams and organizations get those right, then people are much more likely to be happy at those workplaces.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, that sounds right. I’m sure, yeah, I know, we’ve been finetuning it for a long time with many, many people.

Nic Marks
But it’s not exactly new science. You can see Maslow in there. You can see any theory you know. I mean, if you happen to follow something like Daniel Pink’s Drive, then his trio there, autonomy, mastery, and purpose, or Seligman in Positive Psychology his PERMA, they’re not dissimilar. The think that we do a bit different is we frame them in terms of positive actions to make them easy to act on, so we change it around a bit.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, so then in terms of the “Have you had a good week?” you’ve got a number of tools you work through from like 110 questions and 15 questions. And so, with that Friday check-in, kind of what are we asking? Is it just the one, “Have you had a good week?”

Nic Marks
So, the Friday check-in, so we do two main sort of pulse surveys, if you like. We do the weekly one, and the weekly one has to be really short. You’ve got maybe two minutes of people’s time on a Friday to capture a bit of data. So, we ask them how they felt at work this week, from unhappy to very happy. And then we ask them, actually, sort of text-based data which are things like, “What is a success for you this week?” “Do you want to thank anybody in your team?” “Have you got any frustrations?” And basically we’re trying to capture things that can be acted on, on a local team level, to improve their work in a weekly flow way.

And then once a quarter, we do what we call a culture profile which is 15 questions based on those five ways to happiness at work. And that’s a more in-depth, more like an orthodox style survey, shorter quarterly instead of annually or bi-annually, more actionable but it’s still a similar thing in the asking 15 questions. And then you’re basically trying to get into more of a planning cycle there or three months sprint about an organization doing some changes. Whereas, the weekly one is more like a sort of tech retrospective conversation about “How was last week? How can this week be better?”

Pete Mockaitis
And with the five ways and the 15 questions, I guess I’m curious, is there a particular question or two or three that seems to have a disproportionate amount of explanatory power or a correlation to the happiness? Like, “Hey, all 15 are important, all five ways are key. But, by golly, these one or two things sure do go a long way.”

Nic Marks
Well, as you briefly said earlier, I know I started off with 100 questions and I went down to 80 to 40 to 15, and you’re always choosing those on the power of their ability, not only to individually predict good outcomes but when you have the 15 together, that collectively, they create a good broad breadth as well.

So, you’re trying to do two things which are slightly contradictory in some ways, which is the sort of the biggest impact then have the widest impact, so they’re sort of carefully selected for that. Well, it depends what you mean. The fastest-acting is probably when relationships go wrong. So, if your team relationships go wrong, you become unhappy very quickly, but other ones are more slow-burning. So, if you haven’t got a sense of sort of your work is worthwhile, that’s more of a slow-burner.

We see differences between different sectors but, generally speaking, if you’re proud to work for the organization that you work for, if you’re using your strengths at work, and you’ve got good work-life balance, that’s a good start. Yeah, good start.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s great. You know, I’m thinking about my team right now. Hi, guys. They’ll be working on this episode. And sometimes, I think, man, I am probably too hands-off in terms of I’d love to do more of the regular check-in and coaching and feedback and guidance and motivating and inspiring, and then I don’t for any number of reasons but that’s not the topic for this episode.

Nic Marks
In some ways, it is. I think it’s an interesting point in that I think we can sometimes…I’m a very hands-off leader, I think, as well, and I think sometimes people want a bit from me than I realize that they do. And one of the things you try to do is really encourage team leaders to have a conversation each week but just a short one, 15 minutes. So, our data is all fed back to the team, and the team leader on a Monday, and they talk about what was a success, who they want to thank, or any frustrations. And, actually, it’s doing enough.

Your coach, when I was young, I trained as a therapist, and you’d learn from that process, that actual regular sort of ritual really helps.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And so, well, I guess what I was driving at then is that’s encouraging, is that I think that my team seems very happy and I think we are probably nailing it on this. I’m going to chat with them afterwards to make sure I’m not assuming things in terms of being proud of what we’re doing and the impact we’re making from the show, using their strengths and having the flexibility and the work-life balance associated with which hours they work and how many hours they choose to work in a given week just to kind of scale up or down. In most weeks, we’ve got some good flexibility there. So, that’s encouraging and food for thought in terms of, hey, where to start.

And that’s really what I want to zoom in now. I think we’ve built a great why here and really established that we have a rich, rich set of evidence underneath this. So, Nic, lay it on us, what are the top actions we can take to make a world of difference in our happiness at work and start seeing some of these benefits?

Nic Marks
Well, particularly now, in this really weird time of all of us having lived under restrictions for a very long period of time now, a lot of us are working from home, I think that work-life balance is one of the critical ones. As people got rid of the commute by working from home, and not everybody has but a lot of people have, structure of work, I think, has really got disrupted.

We used to use that commute or going to the office as a way of separating our parts of ourselves. So, we got our home self and we got our work self, and we have a sort of way of moving between that. And I think that a lot of people, absolutely myself included, have slightly struggled with the lack of separation between work and life that, we now, a lot of us are living with.

And so, I think that one of the top tips really for 2021 is to introduce a bit of structure to our lives that actually helps us demarcate work and work in the rest of our lives so we got a boundary there again. And I think that’s certainly one of the ways to be happy at work and in life.

Pete Mockaitis
So, yeah, let’s hear it. When it comes to the structure and the boundary, what are some of the great practices and things that you’ve seen is really handy for folks right now?

Nic Marks
So, rituals, I think, are good, and the commute, in some ways, was a ritual. And I think it’s about how you recreate those rituals. So, some of that might be that when you finish work, you turn off your computer. I know lots they’re going to watch Netflix again on the same machine. But, basically, “How do you separate that?” So, do you turn it off? Do you then go for a walk for 10 minutes around your neighborhood? Do you do something which really, before you go back into the family situation or the domestic situation that you’re in, that actually allows you to leave that behind? And, also, really strive to leave it behind.

There’s so much stuff about not taking your phone to bed, not checking emails late in the evening, and I’m as guilty as anybody else of doing that. But I do think those things are exceptionally healthy and introducing just some light rituals that work for you. It can be changing your shoes. It can be as simple as that. Just doing something, like changing your shirt. Doing something that actually says, “Right, I’m now not working.” And organizations need to respect that.

Actually, I moved my organization to a four-day week during last summer because I think everybody was struggling so much and everything was bleeding into every other day. I said, “Look, give me four good days, and then have another day off.” And, actually, it’s worked really well. We haven’t seen any dip in productivity, people have done really interesting things with their extra day, volunteering, or some of my coders are doing sort of open-source work. Obviously, some are doing child care and things like that.

But I think it’s about organizations and the employee having a new contract around that, and a new understanding about it that we’re all human beings and we’ve all got things to juggle. But boundaries, I think about finding rituals to mark the boundaries is a really good way.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I love that. And I’d like it if we could hang out there for a little bit longer in terms of, are there ideas coming to mind or you’ve heard from folks in terms of changing the shirt, changing the shoes? I was talking to my buddy Brad about how it’s been weird for him shifting to working from home, even pre-pandemic, in his role, and he’s like, “I’ve tried things like should I just hop in the car and drive around the block a couple of times since I don’t have a commute anymore?” So, yeah, think some people really are struggling with this to the extent that you’ve heard of more rituals that are working for people. Lay it on us.

Nic Marks
Well, I know some people, they’ve marked the boundary with their run of the day. I’ve never ran. I’m not a creature of speed but a walk is good, a run, a mediate, a yoga, a mindfulness, whatever, so you can break it with something else but it’s really leaving it behind. And, of course, for leaving behind at the end of the day, a list is very good, isn’t it?

Your write out the things that are still on your mind. Take five minutes at the end of the day, don’t just stop at the last task. You actually then just take five minutes, “Okay, this is what I’ve done today. This is what’s still open I must pick up in the morning. This is just another random thought.” Put them down, shut the notebook, and then it’s out of your head. I mean, it’s getting stuff out of your head. Because what happens, our minds, they don’t just sort of stop. They’re still processing lots of stuff so just set them in the book and do that, and leave them behind.

Bizarrely, the thing with creativity is that sleep works so well for creativity. So, actually leaving yourself an open question, which is a nice open question, you might dream about it, you might wake up in the morning with a new idea. There are all sorts of weird ways the mind works.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that’s an interesting little distinction there in terms of, on the one hand, writing it down, having it out of your brain, is a relief, and it lets you kind of be at peace and move on. On the other hand, having something in the background to noodle on does unleash some creative goodies. I guess maybe to have the best of both worlds, you want it to be sort of a fun, happy, positive thing to noodle on as opposed to, “What is his deal?”

Nic Marks
I guess so and I’m sure I’m contradicting myself there, and also because I’m slightly obsessed with my work, I never quite totally want to leave it behind, but I think it depends what type of work you do. Like, often one of the books I’ve got on the go, I tend to have two or three on the go at one time, is a sort of business-y book or book I’m trying to read for that. So, sometimes I’m doing that in the evening anyway. But it’s really the thing, it’s leaving behind the things particularly that are stressing you and getting them down or task or stuff.

People will find their own way. There’s not one way. It’s just a multitude of ways of doing but it is about how does it help you feel good in the evening? How does it help you be a good husband, father, wife, mother, lover, friend, whatever it is? Because relationships outside of work are more important than work, dare I say, but they probably are. Not many people go to their graves thinking they worked harder. There’s lots and lots of people who go there who wished they’d loved their family more or whatever. So, you do need to give time and attention to these people that are the cornerstones of your life. And if you’re always thinking about your work, you’re not going to do that.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, so let’s hear some other key practices, things that make a world of difference in boosting our happiness at work.

Nic Marks
So, I’m very interested in the team. We’re very social creatures. In fact, it would be my criticism of Daniel Pink when you look at his Drive. He’s very individualistic and he doesn’t think about the social environment very much. There’s a little bit about meaning and purpose which can connect to the contribution but I think our relationships are really, really important for our happiness at work. And I think that teams, the reason that we work together in teams is because one plus one equals more than two.

We have two minds and we get something more synergetic that comes out of it. And I think that teams are a really good way of us resolving any tensions that are around and building better collaboration. So, always, all of our interventions I try and build are around conversations. I am a statistician and I even like decimal places which I know makes me weird, but it isn’t the numbers that changes organizations. It’s the relationships, it’s the conversations, it’s the reflection process.

And so, encouraging teams to talk more about how their experience at work is going is one of the key things, and it’s sort of a problem shared, it’s a problem halved. And, actually, you’ll find unexpected sources of support or people with skills you didn’t know about if you ask people about stuff. And even if it’s something that only you can work on, just knowing other people have got your back and they’re asking you how you’re doing, if you’re in a particularly stressful part of work, you’re the only person that seems who can do that job, others might take other tasks off you.

I used to run a team in a think tank about 10, 15 years ago. If someone was working on a particularly time-deadline project, others will take other tasks off them so they could have more time for that. That’s teamwork. And I think that teamwork is really where awesome work happens. It’s unusual, it’s not impossible but it’s unusual if it’s all down to one person. It’s normally relationships between people and collaboration that makes work awesome.

Pete Mockaitis
And so, those team conversations, I think I’m hearing one point is just that you’re having them as opposed to, “No, it’s all on me. I’m just going to do it. I’m not going to whine about it. They don’t want to be brought down and hear my complaining.” But rather, being able to, and engaging, and, “Oh, boy, this is tricky. I don’t quite know. It’s so confusing. It’s ambiguous,” just to be able to share and to have some listening ear and some validation as well maybe some ideas, solutions, taking work off your plate. So, it sounds like just having those conversations is the thing to do as opposed to saying anything in particular in those team conversations. Or are there some key specific conversations you really recommend folks be having?

Nic Marks
So, there are some key specific things I think to be having, and there is also the general effect. I think the two things are there. And the key things, I think, are In the modern workplace which is so fast moving, we’re really poor at celebrating successes and we tend to move straight on to the next challenge, “Done that. Moving to the next challenge.” And I think we should take a little bit more time.

And I’m not talking much. About 5 to 10 minutes a week to just go through about, “This went well, this went well. This person did a good job,” and actually appreciating some people call it catching people doing things right, recognizing that. That’s micro recognition. It’s not employee of the month sort of recognition. It’s just like, “Thanks, that’s good.” That humanness about it. That makes a huge difference and it gives people confidence in a sense that there’s this basic thing that if we get positive feedback, we feel good with positive emotions and actually we build resources for the future, we build our confidence, our ability to take risks. So, that’s all important.

And, in fact, our ability to take risks is really important. People call it psychological safety or dare to fail, or whatever they want to call it. But if you’re going to be an innovative team, not every time it’s going to work, and you’ve got to try them out. But that support to try and to pick each other up when something doesn’t quite work is very, very important too. So, there are some specific things like that.

And I think one of the things we can do, particularly about people’s experiences, is that we too often just accept people’s first answer. And if you go, “Are you alright?” “Yeah,” and if you ask them, “Are you really alright?” you might get a different answer. And I think, particularly, during these difficult times, we have to ask a little bit deeper. And it’s about asking, as a leader, people leaders asking a deepening question. You’re a coach, and you lead like a coach, it’s about noticing that a little door is open and just opening a little bit more, and just say, “Oh, what do you mean by that?” or “Give me an example of that.”

Just ask those deepening questions rather than come and charging in with advice or try to fix it for them. Open it out a little bit and let them explain the context of their challenge more or whatever it is because they’d have information you just don’t have. So, helping them to solve it with you rather than you doing it for them is a much better way of doing it.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that rings true. Can we hear maybe one more practice that makes a boatload of difference in terms of being happy at work?

Nic Marks
Yes, I’m sure we can do. I think of happiness, and I’m going to find one that science talks about it, as a two-way street. There is about what we receive, that’s what’s nourishing and satisfying to us and supports us, and it’s also about what we contribute. And so, I think that a happy awesome employee is someone that gives as well as receives, so they’re not looking for what they need for them. It’s actually them reaching out to other people and supporting them.

And that can be your clients, it can be your supply chain, it can be people in your team, people in other teams, you can be a mentor to somebody, you can be a reverse mentor to someone higher up in the organization, but those conversations that you can have with people about their work and what you can offer to them. So, I think thinking about what you can give is a really good way to feel happy at work and in life actually. So, yeah, what you can contribute.

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

Nic Marks
I think that when I was designing Friday Pulse, I’m a statistician but I wanted to have a measurement tool and so you had to define a rhythm to that measurement. But what actually makes the changes are the rituals you build around that rhythm. So, if you’re doing something quarterly, make sure you do a quarterly ritual. If you’re doing it daily, make sure you have a daily ritual that can discuss it and process it. And if we go for weekly, ask people weekly, and we suggest you have a weekly start of the week team meeting.

So, you have the rhythm and the measurement and the ritual, and I think that’s the biggest design thing that we do with the tool and the statistics is all there that’s all fancy and there’s a bit of algorithms that processes them for you. But, actually, it’s the team meeting. If you do the team meeting every week, that’s when people really thrive and actually start creating better teams and experience for people.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, we should probably give that a moment of time. So, the weekly team meetings, what are some of the most critical things that need to get covered there?

Nic Marks
Yeah, I think what we tried to help with the weekly team meeting is, I don’t know if you’ve ever used something like HelloFresh where they deliver a box of food to you each week, and it’s got the menus, it’s the got recipes, and all the ingredients. You don’t have to go shopping.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, they’re sponsoring us today. They’ve sponsored us before but sponsors eat it up when they come up naturally in the interview.

Nic Marks
Oh, well. Okay. Anyway, I think of what we do for team meetings is the same, is that often team meetings are a little bit, “Oh, we should have a team meeting,” and nothing very much happens, and it sort of feels good because you see other people. Now it’s obviously on Zoom, but whatever, but it’s like I think sometimes there’s not enough structure to them.

And so, basically, we present and we sort of give a PowerPoint thing is actually online but you go through and it says, “This is how people felt last week. These are their successes. These are the people that are being thanked. These are people’s frustrations,” and you go through them in order. And so, in a team meeting I think it’s very good to just, firstly, start with something fun. And people often think that we should have, “We’ll have a team meeting and we’ll have cookies at the end or we’ll have fruit or whatever,” depending on how healthy you are. Have it at the beginning because if people are in a positive mood, they have a better meeting.

So, if you’re going to do something fun in the meeting, do it to begin with as an icebreaker. Don’t do it as a reward at the end. Give it to them at the beginning, then you’ll get a better meeting. So, that’s one thing. And the next thing is making sure that everyone speaks. That’s a really obvious thing to say. But if someone is an extrovert, like I am, I can dominate a meeting quite easily. And it’s like, actually, extroverts like me need to learn to be quieter, and we need to learn to draw things out with the people that are more introverted. They very often hold a truth that you don’t know about, and if you don’t try and help them contribute, you wouldn’t understand that bit of critical data to you as a team.

So, that sort of facilitative style of making sure that, sure, the experts can be heard, but they should have their proportionate time, and the introverts, try and draw them out more. Try and get people to, without bullying people, but encourage them all the time and, also, being sensitive. We’re exquisitely sensitive at picking up signals. Maybe less so through Zoom but when we’re in a room with people, we pick up tensions, we feel them in our bodies that there’s something going on well before we understand what it is. Don’t ignore those signals.

I often say that feelings are data. What I’m feeling is data. It doesn’t mean it’s the truth. It could be a bit of data from 10 years ago from a fear I had. That’s when we get into problems and we probably should go put ourselves in therapy to sort things out. But it could be a bit of data that’s right here in the room. And so, how do you work with that? And how do you draw that out? And how do you find out more about it?

And I think being curious and sensitive and compassionate as a team leader, as a group leader, is a good way to get a lot out of your team whilst also needing to hold boundaries sometimes. You can’t let people run over you. You can’t. You’ve obviously got deliverables as a team that has to be met. This is work. This is not a support group. But it’s how you move towards together there.

A work team, a good work team, is a brilliant experience. It can be one of the top experiences of your life. A good marriage is good, a good family is good, a good sports team is good, but a good team at work is right out there because you spend so much time with them. And so, it’s worth investing in because it’s just a hell of a lot better when you enjoy working with your colleagues. It’s so much better.

Pete Mockaitis
Amen. Well-said. Well, now, could you share with us a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Nic Marks
Victor Frankl, “The space between stimulus and response is where our growth is.” That’s not quite an exact quote but it’s something like that. I love the idea that we’ve got this ability that if something happens, we have a choice how we respond. It’s how I think about emotions and cognition interacting. Emotion, the feeling comes. We can apply our intelligence to actually decide how we act. And it’s that space which is the maturation process.

A signal comes into us, how do we choose to respond? So, something might make us angry but we don’t have to hit the person, particularly if they’re your boss, but we can respond perhaps in a different way. And that’s how we learn and we grow. In a sense, emotional intelligence for me is about having access to your emotional signals but using your intelligence in order to how to actually react to them. So, I think that’s a really nice one.

There’s an Aristotle one, which I’m not going to get exactly right, but it’s something about how we learn by repeatedly doing. We don’t suddenly learn from a book or whatever. It is actually by the doing that we really learn. Excellence is acquired by repeatedly doing things. And I think that if you want to be a good team leader, if you want to be a good colleague, it’s about what we do in the world. It’s a show-not-tell world. What we do, the piece we do, how well we do it is actually how we learn. And that’s probably why we should risk because if you don’t try, you don’t learn.

Pete Mockaitis
Those are good. Those are good. And how about a favorite study or experiment or bit of research?

Nic Marks
Well, probably the study that most changed my way of thinking about how to measure experience was a 2004 study by the stellarly brilliant Daniel Kahneman. So, Kahneman was starting to work on wellbeing in the early 2000s, actually about the same time that I was. I started about 2001. So, I was really interested when he entered the field because he already had a reputation in economics. And he produced something which came to be called The Day Reconstruction Methodology where he asked a thousand women, was the first study, about what they did yesterday.

And there’s a strong tradition in social science to do diary so they just asked people how they spent their time. The difference was he said, “How much did you enjoy the activity?” And by putting an emotional tone into the research, he made the data come alive in a way I just hadn’t seen. Most people are doing happiness research, wellbeing, quality of life research, we’re asking questions like, “How satisfied are you with your family life? How satisfied are you with your overall life?” And they’re perfectly good questions but they’re a bit dull.

And he suddenly asked, “What did you do? How much did you enjoy it?” And so, what he found out was that the activity they did most on the last day they were working, it was work, it was 6.9 hours or something, the activity that they enjoyed most was what he very delicately called intimate relationships but it was only 12 minutes.

And what he found was that if he asked people how much they enjoyed their work, he came second bottom. The bottom was the commute. And so, you had the activities that they did the most were people enjoying the least. And in that moment, I thought, “Sometime I want to work on work.” And it was another eight years before I did do. But in that moment, I thought, “It’s interesting. That’s where adults spend a lot of time. So, if I’m genuinely interested,” which I say I am, “in making the world a happier place, work is a really good intervention to think about, about how to do that because people spend so much time there.” So, that’s probably my favorite study, yeah.

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

Nic Marks
Oh, I’ve just read a beautiful book. I’m always into the last book I just read. I don’t know about you. And it’s called The Reality of Time, and it’s by Carlo Rovelli, and he’s a physicist. And it’s about how time doesn’t really exist, and it really blew my mind. I did physics at school. I loved science books. They take me out of my comfort zone. But I thought what probably the most amazing thing was that he had this whole sort of treatise of what time is, what constant time is, what thermal time is, and all this stuff.

I didn’t know that apparently time goes slower if you’re on top of a mountain than if you’re at the bottom of a valley because time is affected by gravity. I didn’t know that. I did know that black holes, you couldn’t get in them and out of them so time didn’t move through them. And I knew time was relative in the universe but I didn’t know that. And then but what I really loved is when he started talking about death, which is, I think, should be, is a favorite topic of mine and should be a topic of all us. And he goes, he summarizes Epicurus, and he goes, “When I am here, death is not here. When death is here, I am not here, so there’s nothing to be frightened of death.” He basically said, “Death is the end of the experience of time for us. And as there will be no time in death, there’s nothing to worry about after death.” That was lovely.

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

Nic Marks
Well, I really do like Slack actually. I think being in that instant messaging into the workplace has been really brilliant. We used another one called HipChat for a while and then we moved over to Slack. I think they’re really good tools. And I have come to love my CRM system as well because it just saves so much time. We use HubSpot. So, those are tools that I use at work for productivity. Of course, my favorite tool is Friday Pulse, but I’m not going to say that really.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite habit?

Nic Marks
Oh, for me, walking. Walking serves a lot of purposes for me. I’m an overweight middle-aged man. I’m not ever going to be very fast. It’s my one exercise I really enjoy. Swimming I do as well but it has to be warm. I’m not very good at cold-water swimming. But walking because it’s my meditation as well, it’s my thinking time, my creative time. It’s my exercise. It’s time on your own. I do like walking with my wife but every other walk, not every walk, yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
And is there a particular nugget you share that seems to connect and resonate with folks and you have it quoted back to you frequently?

Nic Marks
One of my mantras is I really encourage people to take their happiness seriously and the happiness of other people seriously. It’s something to teach. It’s not a light frivolous topic. It’s a serious topic. I don’t know if that’s what you mean.

Pete Mockaitis
No, it’s good. Yeah. Thank you.

Nic Marks
But, certainly, sometimes people go to me, “Oh, yeah, I don’t about that.” I think people don’t think about their happiness enough, in my opinion.

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

Nic Marks
Yes. So, FridayPulse.com is our website. I have a personal website which is NicMarks.org. LinkedIn, if you like what I’m saying, then connect with me on LinkedIn. I love connections on LinkedIn. And we’ve also just created a sort of free personal reflection tool for people to think about their happiness at work and it’s a bit like one of those sort 16 personalities questionnaires but I would say it’s more actionable because it’s basically talking about the work you do now and what you can do to improve your work.

And you can just get to that, it’s just FridayOne.com, so it’s one because it’s one person. It’s one snapshot in time. But it’s FridayOne.com and you take the test and it will give you what I think is a rather cute report back with insights and reflection pieces in it.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, that sounds also like a call to action so we’ll take it. Nic, this has been a treat. Thank you and I wish you much happiness.

Nic Marks
Thank you. And you, Pete, keep awesome.

Jan 25
0

636: How to Advance Your Most Important Priorities with Eric Papp

By | Podcasts | No Comments

 

 

Eric Papp says: "Preparation begets confidence."

Eric Papp shares foundational perspectives on saving time and prioritizing effectively.

You’ll Learn:

  1. The one question that cuts your tasks in half 
  2. The strategy that makes plans stick 
  3. The key to starting off your week right 

About Eric

Eric Papp has a successful history of delivering proven strategies to increase productivity and performance in a complex world. 

Before becoming the success he is today, Eric earned his B.A. from the University of Notre Dame. He founded Agape leadership, LLC, an intellectual capital firm focusing on leadership and sales for business performance, with the sole purpose of driving leaders and their teams to success.

As a successful author and public speaker since 2010, he has worked with thousands of managers to aid teams toward success.

Eric Papp has been evaluated as one of the top management trainers in North America for his expertise in leadership effectiveness. His books Leadership By Choice and 3 Values of Being An Effective Person — published by John Wiley and Sons — are both top sellers and recognized for their unique impact in the business world.

Eric now lives in Tampa, FL with his wife Brieann and their daughter Elliana. In his spare time, Eric frequents his local church, engages the community, and practices the kettlebell.

Resources mentioned in the show:

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Eric Papp Interview Transcript

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

Eric Papp
Hey, Pete, thanks for having me.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I am excited to dig into your wisdom and I know one thing you’re excited about is the Kettlebell. I like your shirt. Could you read it for the audience who’s listening?

Eric Papp
Oh, man. It says, “I’ve got a fever and the only prescription is more Kettlebell,” which, of course, is a play on the SNL skit with Will Ferrell where he’s talking about more cowbell.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s right. That’s right. And what do you love about the Kettlebell and what should we know if we’re at home and not going into the gym, thinking about workouts?

Eric Papp
Oh, man. It combines all three: strength, endurance, and flexibility. And it is probably one of the most effective pieces of equipment, bar none. Kettlebell swings to build endurance and flexibility, Turkish get-ups to build overall strength, and it’s incredible in terms of you do a 10, 20 minutes and the return on it on time is phenomenal.

Pete Mockaitis
Ooh, now you got my attention. The return in terms of energy, in terms of strength, they’re feeling amazing. What kind of return are we talking about?

Eric Papp
Yeah, all of the above in terms of returning. And they’ve done some studies, like when someone is doing a Kettlebell swing based upon your metabolic rate and all that stuff, it’s like equivalent to running like a six-minute mile.

And then one of the great things, obviously, in the situation that we’re in now is you can do it from the comforts of your own home. And that’s also, by the time it takes you to go in your car and go to the gym and come back, you can already be done with your training.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, I like effective, I like returns, and we’re talking about just that productivity, and “Better Thinking vs. More Effort” is a title of one of your keynotes. That sounds right up our alley. So, tell us, what’s the big idea there?

Eric Papp
Yeah, better thinking versus more effort. You know, I think so often than not, as knowledge workers, and especially being here in America, there’s always a pressure to do more, get in there early, stay later, climb the ladder. And that is good in a sense, and even for companies too, “I’ll take on more projects. Let’s do more initiatives. Let’s get more joint ventures going.” And that can be good to some degree but then also, it breathes a lot of complexity, it breathes a lot of, “Okay, we got our hand in a lot of different things. What are we really focused on? Where are we really moving the needle?”

And better thinking is really thinking about taking a step back and identifying the two or three projects that we can really move the mile as opposed to trying to move a hundred things an inch. And that’s really where it comes down to, is to be able to subtract and to simplify and then get to a higher level of performance or productivity.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that sounds great. And so, by doing better thinking, you’re able to exert less effort and get similar or superior results. Could you paint a picture of that for us, maybe the case of a particular person or client or study? Like, just how much is possible if we could go down this route?

Eric Papp
So, on a macro level, on a company personal level that everybody knows, Apple, Steve Jobs, right? Listeners out there, probably 70% or 80% of your listeners have some form of Apple product whether it’s an iPhone or MacBook Pro, whatever it is. Steve Jobs, in a sense, was forced out of his own company that he creates. He comes back right around 1996-1997. In that timeframe, Apple is just on the ropes. And, once again, they were trying to do too much. They had their hand in everything: scanners, printers, you name it.

And he comes back, and a family friend asked him, they said, “Steve, what desktop computer should we buy? You’ve got 17 of them that Apple offers.” And he says, “Shoot, I don’t even know.” So, he cut down all the desktop computers and only did one. He says, “Okay, we’re going to cut everything out, all the desktops, and we’re just going to produce one.”

He really did a great example of better thinking versus more effort, and it requires that ability to take a to step back to really do the hard thinking, and that’s a lot of times what we don’t want to do because we want the quick fix, and then we want to just kind of stay busy, and then that kind of consumes us, consumes our time. And then look what happened to Apple. If you had stock, if you bought Apple stock in the early 2000s or even late 1990s, it’s incredible. My father-in law had Apple stock, he still does, and it’s just mind boggling the return he’s made on that. And then a large part comes from Steve Jobs coming back, applying better thinking versus more effort.

Pete Mockaitis
And that does resonate in terms of whether it’s a business with their products or an individual with the to-do list, just what you can accomplish there.

Eric Papp
Oh, yeah, I was going to say, on a micro level, so a colleague of ours, James Clear, he wrote the book Atomic Habits.

Eric Papp
He started off 2011-2012 just writing a newsletter. Would write one on Monday, I think, would write it on Thursday. From the first year, he had, I want to say, around 100,000 subscribers, and then that’s all he did. And I think he had a day job at the same time and just kept building on that, building on that, then writes a book. And then his newsletter just went over one million subscribers, and it’s absolutely mind boggling, right? So, that’s a great testament to, okay, sticking with the one thing and really getting good at that and staying the course.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, so I’m into that. And tell us then, with this better thinking, are there some key questions in terms of identifying what is the stuff that makes the impact and what is the stuff that we should cut?

Eric Papp
First thing I look at is subtraction, right? One of the questions we ask ourselves is, “Hey, if I stop doing this, would anything happen? Would anybody notice?” because a lot of times we do things out of obligation or we do things because, “Oh, that’s what the person did before me,” or, “Oh, that’s what I’ve always done.” So, that’s the great question to ask ourselves, “If I stop doing this, or these activities, what’s the impact?”

And a lot of times there’s not an impact. And so, that’s a great way because we want to start to allow ourselves that room, that space. It’s kind of like I think it was Claude Bristol who said, “It’s the space between the notes that creates the music.” And I think we really need more of that, that ability to not fill our day up with everything and anything because we really need…things are going to come up as they naturally do, but also we need that time to just going for a walk, let that thinking time to take a step back.

And by not filling our calendar up with everything, it allows that room for us to really start to process and analyze, “Okay, these projects, are they really important? Are we really making progress or are we just kind of going through the motions?” So, the first part I would say is to subtract. The second part would be really good to look at is to simplify and to see, “Okay, of all the complexity, how can we make this simpler? How can we make this easier? How can we reduce the friction to get the result that we want?”

Pete Mockaitis
Yes, I love that. And that’s intriguing in terms of, “Would anybody notice if I stopped doing this?” I guess, how do you get to the answer to that? One, you could just try it, try to stop doing it and see if anyone reaches out to you. Other ways you’d recommend in terms of, I think if you’re in organizations and collaborating with folks, there can be some resistance in terms of, “Well, that’s just what we do. This is what we’ve always done,” or, “This is how this works. That is the process”? So, any thoughts on how when there’s other stakeholders and people in the mix, you interact with them to get things moving?

Eric Papp
I use a couple tools that I created. One the effectiveness process. Another tool called organizing, clarify your thinking to really get the goal, impact and focus down, because a lot of times in organizations, people just launch into projects and they don’t know what’s the desired outcome. They don’t know what success looks like. They don’t know what’s the time involved, “Who else can we collaborate with?” things that you think that are basic. And then the person gets tasked with something, and then they’re not fully doing it, and then the manager gets upset or the director gets upset. That’s where we get back to, like I was saying earlier, moving a hundred things an inch.

So, I think right from the start of it, it’s just for all of us to spend more time in the asking ourselves a question, “Okay, what’s my desired outcome? What does success look like? What’s the impact if I do this? What’s the impact if I don’t do this? And then, do I have the bandwidth right now to carry this out? What level of a priority is this for me? Is this a top three or is this just a good idea?” Because the key thing we always have to remember as human beings is we will always generate more ideas than there is the ability and our capacity to execute them.

And that is where I see kind of the downfall. Even as entrepreneurs, managers, it doesn’t matter if you’re an entrepreneur or it doesn’t matter if you’re inside of a company, but we’ll always have good ideas. But always remember that our capacity to execute all of them, we don’t have that. And so, we really have to be diligent of selecting just a few and then really going deep with what we’ve selected.

Pete Mockaitis
And so then, we’ve zeroed in on what to eliminate. And then I’d like to get some indicators then on, let’s just imagine, okay, we had a hundred ideas or there’s a hundred things vying for our attention. And, hey, great job, we successfully eliminated half of them, which is cool. And so, we are twice as clear as we were before. Nonetheless, how do you recommend that we zero in from, I guess, the semi-finalists to those top three?

Eric Papp
Yeah, great question. And it goes with what is our desired future. What’s the future that we’re living into? At any point in our lives, we’re always thinking, we’re either in three different mindsets. We’re in the past, we’re like, “Oh, man, 2019 was such a great year, and we were gathering and we did this, and our company I did this,” or we are in the present, “Okay, what am I doing right now? What’s important right now?” That acronym WIN, “What’s important now?” Or, we’re in the future, we’re thinking about. “Hey, where do I want to be?”

And sometimes we have to be very mindful of how we’re thinking because sometimes we’re dominated by the past, we’re, “Oh, my gosh, this is so bad. I can’t. I wish it was this time. I wish it was…” And so, asking ourselves, “Okay, what’s the desired future that I want?” and then just backtracking it. It’s, “Okay, what’s the desired future? And then now what are the projects that I think will get us there?” And a lot of times we overestimate what we can do in a day but yet we underestimate what we can do in a year.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, I think that’s true. And, well, talking about those timeline horizons with the day and the year, you’ve got something you’ve created called the Weekly Strategy Sheet. Tell us, how do we think about that and use it to plan priorities?

Eric Papp
Yeah. So often than not, where this kind of came from, Pete, is when you ask people, you would say, like, “Hey, what did you do last week?” “Oh,” they’d look at you and it’s kind of like, “Oh,” they really couldn’t give a definitive answer, it’s like, “Oh, I got a lot of emails done. I was in a lot of meetings.” And so, this is really to give people a high-level overview, a high-level strategy of, “Okay, what’s most important this week?”

First of all, there’s three parts. There’s past, present, and future. And the idea is, okay, we celebrate our past, we connect with our present here, and then we commit to the future. And so, the idea is, over time, as we’re planning our week, is to see some synergy between the past, present, and future. And we identify, so in the past, celebrate the past, “Okay, great. What are the top three or five accomplishments I accomplished last week that were very meaningful to me in my business or in my role? Okay, great. I’m going to list them down,” because that’s going to give us confidence.

Our confidence comes from seeing the progress and what matters most to us, and whether that’s personal or professional. So, great, we can see that. When you write it down, it helps us keep moving forward. But a lot of times, in our culture, we don’t. We focus on where we are and where we want to go. And I call that, you got to be careful because that’s kind of frustrationville, right? That’s comparison, that’s, “Oh, man, well, I see this person on social media. Oh, I see this.” So, I get people to take a look back and to see all the progress that they’re making and have this on a weekly basis.

And the middle part then is we’re looking to really kind of connect with the present, “Okay, what are my top three weekly priorities this week? If everything goes to H-E Double Hockey Sticks, what’s the three most important things I want to get done, I want to accomplish?” and then the future. And I need to future-plan it, I use the OKR Method, Objective and Key Results, “What do you want accomplished and how you’re going to get it done?”

And, like I said, the whole idea of using the Weekly Strategy Sheet, it takes under 20 minutes to plan it out but it’s so important because a lot of times, as knowledge workers, we don’t plan our weeks. We just go from one week to the next, and we kind of kid ourselves that, “Oh, something will be different,” or, “Oh, this will turn around.” But if we don’t really get a handle on the planning aspect, then the execution kind of falls short.

Pete Mockaitis
And so, I’m curious, so we got the Weekly Strategy Sheet, and so then you can reference it at the end of the week. It’s written, it’s there, you see, “Hey, this is what I accomplished. That’s cool.” And you zero in on those top three priorities. How do you think about it in terms of, I guess, scheduling or calendaring or putting time against those things within the week?

Eric Papp
Well, you got to have a day where you actually spend time to plan. Having a planning day, I like to do mine on a Friday. Sometimes I do it on a Thursday late afternoon. But when you have that time to really devote to the planning, and you’re not trying to fill up your week either. You’re not trying to. You’re just saying, “Okay, what are the three most important things?” And, also, too, those three most important things, you might get those done in two days, and that might very well be, and that’s okay. But it’s really to give you a better sense of clarity and organization.

Pete Mockaitis
So, within that planning time, and so it sounds like this isn’t a 10-minute operation but it’s a bit more in-depth. What are you doing with that planning time?

Eric Papp
Yeah, you’re going from left to right: past, present, and future. So, I’ve got my Weekly Strategy Sheet, it’s sitting right here on my desktop, and this is the week of January 4th or the 8th, and, boom, okay, I celebrate the past, I write down my top five accomplishments, and I make some personal or two personals in there as well, and then I check in with the present, “What are my top three weekly priorities? And then, what’s for the future, my objective and key results?” And that can change as well.

But you’ll see when you ask people, “Hey, do you plan your week?” A lot of people don’t and then some people that do kind of quickly plan their week. The more that we spend time planning our week and really being diligent about that, and we’ll get better. A, you’ll get better at it, and, B, you’ll be able to get your priorities done and things done with a lot greater intention. And that’s kind of the cool thing and you’ll actually have more time. You’ll be accomplishing more and you’ll have more time when things come up that you’ll be more able to more flexible.

I think one of the things it gives people is it helps relieve some of this, the pressure of time that a lot of people are faced with nowadays.

Pete Mockaitis
So, you maybe do an hour with the Weekly Strategy Sheet planning process? Or, roughly how long are you doing there?

Eric Papp
Yeah, I’d say it’s about an hour. Sometimes I’ll go…what I’ll do is I’ll take two cracks at it. I’ll look at it Friday, and then I might look at it again on Monday and just make some adjustments just to make sure that, okay, I’m on track for this week. But it really gives me that structure and it really gives me that guidance. Because the other thing too is, as knowledge workers, our confidence, we have to protect that, right?

And so, if we know, as human beings, if I’m making progress, that I’m feeling good about myself, and so that’s so important. And knowing that I’m progressing towards where I want to go. And so, by doing this, it really helps us with that. So, yeah, it’s about an hour or some people have done it under an hour. I’m typically around that dependent upon how detail I get with it.

Pete Mockaitis
And so, you’re saying that that hour you spend there ends up saving significantly more than one hour during the course of executing the week.

Eric Papp
Tremendously, yeah. And I don’t remember who said it or where I read it, but it was something like, “For every minute you spend planning, it gives you 10 additional minutes,” or you save 10 additional minutes, or something like that, so, yeah, it’s kind of like that 10-to-1 ratio, yeah. And so, that’s why the planning is so important. And you get better at it too as you go on.

A lot of times we just start our day very reactive, right? When I say reactive, we just start our day, we watch the news, listen to the news, or we start our day reading emails, checking emails. And so, we’re not really proactive. We’re just responding to whatever is in our inbox, whatever is most pressing. And often what’s a priority gets masked with a hundred different other things.

Pete Mockaitis
And if folks have a hard time letting go, because I think what could be perhaps a mistake, and you tell me about the biggest mistakes you see when folks are trying to manage their time, is you say, “Okay, these are the really critical priorities, and so we kind of go after those.” But we don’t really subtract, we don’t really let go of the other things, and then we’re just sort of get stressed because it’s like, “Well, no, I really identified and I’m totally clear that these things are critical but I’m still doing everything else.” So, if there’s an emotional hurdle or a hump or resistance, how do you recommend we get through that?

Eric Papp
You’re spot on, Pete. It’s absolutely right because I’ll see people are like, “Oh, I need more time,” or, “Oh, yeah.” Like, I’ll recommend or something, and they’re like, “Oh, I don’t have time to read this now.” It’s like, “You’re not planning, you’re not prioritizing, that’s what it really comes down to because you’re trying to do everything, and you’re regarding everything has the same level of importance when it doesn’t. So, then you can’t multiply your output and you can’t leverage what you’re doing.”

So, one of the things I share with people is come at it with like a spirit of experimentation, experiment of like trial and error. A lot of times we want certainty as human beings, we want to know, “Hey, if I do this, is it going to give me this? Or, if I don’t do this, this will alleviate this problem.” And so, it’s like, “Hey, just test it out.”

And then, also, I share too the idea of when you give yourself less time, we tend to be more productive. A little story, a little sidenote on this, is when Franklin Delano Roosevelt, when he was President, he had an advisor, Harry Hopkins. And Harry, due to some health issues and such, could only work three to four hours a day. However, he was one of the most effective advisors for FDR. Winston Churchill went so far to call him like Lord Heart of the Matter. And the reason why is, hey, he only had three, four hours, so then, therefore, it really caused him to think deliberately about, “Okay, what am I going to do in the time that I do have?”

Because there’s that whole Parkinson’s Law, right? And work expands to fill the time necessary for its completion. So, if we give ourselves eight hours a day, we’re going to fill it with eight hours. If we give ourselves 10 hours, then we’re going to fill it with 10 hours, and so that’s a very interesting thing. And you’ll see this not only from a time standpoint but you’ll also see this from like a storage standpoint. Like, when somebody has a house, they went from like, let’s say, a thousand square foot house, or 2,000 square foot house. Well, over time, they’re going to fill that house up with stuff. Why? Because they’re just going to fill it up with stuff.

So, it takes a deliberate level of discipline and just mindfulness, too, of, “Okay, hey, we don’t want to be over cluttered. I don’t want to be overwhelmed. Just because I have the capacity doesn’t mean I need to buy more stuff.” So, that’s kind of the idea on that. But yet, somehow, we end up shooting ourselves in the foot by adding more and doing more.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Thank you. And I know you’ve also zeroed in on some key habits of super achievers. Can you tell us what are they and how do we go about developing them?

Eric Papp
Yeah, I’d say some of the habits of super achievers, number one, is to get a real clear sense, and we’ve talked about this a little bit earlier, of what your future is. Knowing what it is that you want in your future, that’s a key thing. The second thing I would say is knowing what are some of your unique talents. Super achievers are very good at knowing what their unique talents are, and then spending time working on those talents.

And then, after a while, people take a step back and, “Wow, that’s a master at work. Wow, that person, they’re at the top of their field.” So, that’s a big thing. Knowing what you want and then knowing your talents, what you’re good at or what you like to do, and then really spending time learning more every day, and getting better. Just getting 1% better, reading more, talking to people. And then when you take a step back, then you see, then you’re kind of regarded as a super achiever. People are like, “Wow, that person, look at the gains they’ve made.”

And it’s not anything that they’re extraordinary. In some cases, talent is there already but other cases it’s the talent that has been cultivated over and over. It’s kind of like water dropping on a stone. It’s just that over and over and over, that repetitive nature, eventually it changes the stone and it forms the stone into something unique.

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

Eric Papp
No, I think we’re right on track. We’re doing great.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, could you share a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Eric Papp
Well, one of them I already mentioned, and it’s a quote that’s just been top of mind. Our capacity to generate ideas will always be greater than our ability to execute.

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

Eric Papp
A lot of what I’m saying is in alignment with Richard Koch, his idea on The 80/20 Principle. And what I’m talking about is kind of from Pareto and going back and looking at that. So, a lot of that is if somebody wants to explore more or go deeper into being able to identify priorities and such, that’d be good to look at.

Pete Mockaitis
That is a great one and I think a lot of people have heard about the 80/20 rule, but he’s just like, “You’re not taking it nearly far enough.” Like, that’s the theme that hits it over and over again at each chapter. It’s like, “All right, man. You got it.” And how about a favorite tool, something you use to be awesome at your job?

Eric Papp
I would say a notebook that I have. I’ve got the Priority Planner that I use. It’s something that I created. It’s in its third edition. And this keeps me focused because it’s the way I’ve created it. It’s three wins from yesterday so it causes me every day to write down what are my accomplishments from the exact day before. So, this helps keep my confidence high, and that’s one of the top things I need to protect as a knowledge worker.

And then it says three priorities for today. So, it’s asking me, “Okay, what are my three priorities?” And sometimes I just only identify one or two, and then in that way I feel great about accomplishing that. And the next part I have, “Stay curious, stay creative.” I ask questions throughout the day. I think that’s important, too, is write down questions.

When questions come up, just write them down if you don’t know the answer to them because a lot of times we get stuck with, “I don’t know how to figure that out.” And it’s very easy to kind of throw up our hands or say, “Oh, that’s somebody else’s responsibility. That’s somebody else’s department.” But just write down the question because there’s a great chance that you just kind of sit with it, you’ll get the idea, it will come to you later on.

Pete Mockaitis
And any other favorite habits for you personally?

Eric Papp
Spending time, taking care of yourself physically, whether it’s going for a walk. I go for occasional morning walks. I also cycle. I’ve got the Peloton here, so cycling. And that’s great because it’s low impact on the knees. And then, obviously, the Kettlebell, so alternating between cardio and strength. So, exercise is such an important part. And not so much just from like a vanity standpoint but so much from it clears your mind.

I can’t tell you, Pete, how many times where I‘ve just gone for a walk or I’ve gone on a bike ride, and then I’ll come back with like three great ideas that I’ll write down just of different things, or an email to ask somebody or a question. And then spending time in scripture with the Bible, just reading some of the New Testament. I do a little thing called Lectio Divina, and I’ll read a little small passage of the New Testament, and then just kind of ask questions, just journal from there.

And then, also, every day in the morning, I usually just start to write. I just kind of start typing or writing just to kind of empty, purge all the stuff in my head, whatever it is. It might be questions, it might be concerns, it might be what I’m excited about, just whatever it is, because I find that to be a wonderful clearing process so I can start my day be in the present moment.

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

Eric Papp
Well, I would say preparation begets confidence. And that comes from planning your day, right? When you’re prepared, when you’re planning your day, kind of know where you want to go, then when things do come up, then you have the flexibility to adapt. Oh, here’s something that I say, “Blessed are the flexible for they shall never be bent out of shape.”

Pete Mockaitis
All right.

Eric Papp
And I think 2020 was a great reminder that we all had to have flexibility. It teaches us a lesson, flexibility. And, also, a lesson in resiliency. I think resiliency is such a wonderful, wonderful quality to have whether an entrepreneur or manager. The capacity to overcome difficulties quickly because there a lot of challenges that we experience and there’s a lot of challenges that we’re going to continue to experience as well.

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

Eric Papp
My website EricPapp.com. I’ve got some videos on there, the Weekly Strategy Sheet is on there so they can download that for free, and they’ll get the PDF version of that. And that’s just E-R-I-C-P-A-P-P.com.

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

Eric Papp
Hey, we’re starting off the year here in January. Ask yourself, how is this year going to be different for you? Not just from what are you going to do that’s going to be different? How are you going to get to your goals? How is it going to be different? And then, when you’ve got that planned, work it and get your outcome that you want.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Eric, this has been a treat. I wish you lots of luck and success in your productivity and adventures and priorities, and keep on rocking.

Eric Papp
Hey, thanks, Pete. It’s been great, man. And thank you for doing what you do. Having this, doing over, what is this, episode 600 and something. Yeah, that’s incredible, man.

Pete Mockaitis
Thank you. I appreciate it.

Eric Papp
Yeah, that’s a lot. So, that’s great. We need more of this in the world.

Jan 21
0

635: Shifting Your Team from Survival to Performance through Psychological Safety with Dr. Timothy Clark

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Timothy Clark says: "It doesn't matter what your role is, you are an architect of the culture."

Dr. Timothy Clark discusses the specific benefits and behaviors associated with high-performing, psychologically safe teams.

You’ll Learn:

  1. How to combat the culture of fear 
  2. Why to encourage intellectual friction
  3. Tips that boost your credibility at work 

 

About Tim

Tim is founder and CEO of LeaderFactor and is based in Salt Lake City, Utah. 

Tim ranks as a global authority in the fields of senior executive development, strategy acceleration, and organizational change. He is the author of five books and more than 150 articles on leadership, change, strategy, human capital, culture, and employee engagement. He is a highly sought-after advisor, coach, and facilitator to CEOs and senior leadership teams. He has worked with leading organizations around the world. 

Resources mentioned in the show:

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Timothy Clark Interview Transcript

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

Timothy Clark
Thanks, Pete. Thanks for having me.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m so excited to dig into your wisdom. First, could you tell us about your experience growing up with the Navajo. That’s kind of interesting.

Timothy Clark
It’s kind of a unique thing, isn’t it? Yeah, so I spent my early boyhood in southern Colorado, kind of in the Durango area, and the reason that we were there is that my dad, out of college, he took a job as a teacher among the Navajo, and so I kind of grew up with them, which is, you may know, or some of your listeners may know, it’s a big tribe. It’s the second largest tribe next to the Cherokee. And, yet, as a child, I mean, that was pretty natural, normal environment for me. I didn’t know anything different. But it turned out that that became kind of a defining experience in my life as it relates to differences and inclusion and things like that.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, we’re going to talk about some of that when it comes to psychology safety. First, can you define that term and tell us why it matters?

Timothy Clark
Sure. So, psychological safety, I can define in five words. It means an environment of rewarded vulnerability.

Pete Mockaitis
Well done.

Timothy Clark
So, think about that. You’re in any social environment, social collective, organization, do you feel that, if you’re vulnerable in some way, that that’s going to be rewarded or punished? That’s the difference. That’s really what we’re talking about.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, so that sounds like a pleasant thing to have. Can you share some of the hardest-hitting research that really shows that that’s important for teams? Like, what do we have to gain or lose when we have it or don’t have it? And if you could put some numbers to it, that’d be awesome.

Timothy Clark
Yes. So, the difference between having it, Pete, and not having it is profound. Think about it as if you’re a player on a team, you’re playing offense or defense. If you’re playing defense, then what that means is that you’re managing personal risks, you’re in a mode of loss prevention, self-preservation, and so you’re taking a certain amount of your productive capacity and you’re using it to protect yourself.

So, that means that you’re going to offer a survival response instead of a performance response. If the psychological safety is there, if you feel safe in that environment, then you’re going to offer performance response, which is a very, very different thing. So, the difference is profound and what that translates into is productivity, it translates into innovation, it translates into business impact. So, that’s kind of a short way of describing the difference.

Pete Mockaitis
And I suppose there’s a whole continuum associated with, it’s not just binary, “Yup, psychologically safe,” or, “No, not psychologically safe.” But I imagine there’s kind of like tiers, levels, or a gradient there. And so, I guess one story that comes to mind for me is I remember one of my first jobs, I was an intern, and my buddy Dan and I, we kept writing emails that somehow seem to like tick people off or offend them accidentally without us intending to.

And so, we would spend a fair bit of time doing what we joked around, we call it PCS, political consulting solutions, and we’re just like, “Hey, could you read this email and see every way that you could conceivably take it the wrong way, and help me change my words so that I don’t do that?” And so, we spent a fair bit of time doing this. And I guess we’re kind of newer to the professional workforce, and maybe some of that is a skill you need. But there’s a part of me thought, “You know, maybe if we could all just chill and assume positive intention on the other part, we could skip a lot of this time that’s not really productive.”

Timothy Clark
Well, that’s true and so we have to think of it on a continuum. As you said, psychological safety is not binary; it’s a matter of degree. And as we enjoy more psychological safety, we are able to engage in different acts of vulnerability and we’re able to climb a ladder of vulnerability. So, let me explain that a little bit, and we know this is based on a global survey research that we’ve done.

If you come into a new social setting, a new team, new organization, the first thing that most people are concerned about, and when I say most, I mean 92% because this is what the survey research says. What people are most concerned about is, “Do I belong?” That’s the question they’re asking, “Do I belong?” And that’s the first question in the natural sequence.

And then we go to the second question. The second question is, “Am I growing?” And in order to answer that question, you have to be able to learn in that environment. The psychological safety has to be sufficient that you’re able to ask questions, give and receive feedback, make mistakes, experiment, so, that’s the second question, “Am I growing?”

The third question is, “Am I contributing?” So, that takes you to the third level or stage of psychological safety. And to contribute is also, really, a very basic human instinct to want to make a difference, to be able to participate in that value-creation process.

Then we go to the very highest rung on the ladder of vulnerability. And that highest rung allows us to challenge the status quo. So, the fourth question is, “Can I challenge the status quo?” What does that mean? Without retaliation, without retribution, without jeopardizing my personal standing or reputation.

So, out of the research, what we were able to excavate is that there’s this natural progression of stages of psychological safety. So, stage one is inclusion safety, stage two is learner safety, stage three is contributor safety, and then, as I said, stage four is challenger safety. Can you challenge the status quo? And what we find is that when we go from social setting to social setting, wherever we are, it’s not the same. Sometimes the psychological safety is very low, sometimes it’s kind of in the middle, sometimes it can be quite high which can allow us to do some pretty astonishing things as individuals.

So, that’s what I’ve been up to with the research, Pete.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, I love it. And when we say astonishing things, can you give us a story, an illustration?

Timothy Clark
Yeah. So, actually, we keep doing case studies of this, but to preface my response, let me go back to Google’s Aristotle project, which I think they kicked off in about 2013, and they studied 180 of their own teams to try to figure out, “Well, what are the defining characteristics of our most high-performing team, because we have all these teams? And the teams are filled with highly intelligent, very talented people, but they don’t perform at the same level. Some really have a hard time getting off the ground. Others are soaring and they’re innovating and they’re doing some pretty incredible things.”

So, for example, we were just working with a client that’s in the construction business, and they put together several teams to try to figure out how they could innovate. And some of the best innovations came from some of their least, at least this is the way they said it, their least talented teams, where these are the people that you would pick last to be on your team.

And so, what we’re learning is that psychological safety becomes this incredibly important enabling condition that allows people…it gives people respect, and it gives them permission to jump in, dive in, lean in, and they have peak engagement experiences. They have career best experiences. They do things that they didn’t think they could do. And we’re seeing this over and over again.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, I love that. Now, we’re going to talk about how to get there, although I think some maybe hard-nose folks would perhaps suggest, “Oh, Tim, I mean, come on, don’t we just need to have a thick skin and just put it out there and make it happen?” I imagine it’s not so simple.

Timothy Clark
No, it’s not. In fact, Pete, one of the case studies that I give in the book that illustrates this point is that, in the United States at least, a student drops out of high school every 26 seconds. Now, that’s a tragedy but what is even more illuminating about it is that the research shows that most of these students, the vast majority of these students, barring some legitimate learning disability, they can do the work. The reason they drop out of school is because they didn’t have the support, they didn’t have the encouragement, they lost confidence, and they called it quits.

So, what we know about learning is that it is both intellectual and emotional. You cannot separate those two tracks. And so, if you just say, “Oh, you just need to have a thick skin,” well, do you think that that is really all that different in adults, in professionals who are in the workplace? They learn very, very quickly that if they challenge the status quo and they get their heads chopped off, they’re not going to do it anymore. They will retreat and recoil into a mode of personal risk management because what happens is that if the psychological safety is not there, if you’re in fear-based organization, or fear-based team, the fear triggers what we call the self-censoring instinct, and we all have one.

If that self-censoring instinct is triggered or activated by the behavior of other people, we catch on pretty quickly. And so then, we self-censor; we do not contribute all that we are capable of contributing. And that is a universal pattern across demographics, across cultures, across nations. So, does it matter? Oh, it matters. Think about the unintended consequences of how it matters when it relates to productivity, innovation, overall performance. Yeah, it matters.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And maybe if you could clear a misconception, I have heard or internalized somewhere that psychological safety may alternatively be defined as something like the ability to express what you really think without fear of reprisal. And I see a Venn’s diagram in my mind’s eye. There’s a good overlap with your definition but, also, it’s different. So, could you lay it on there, is there a distinction there? And I imagine there’s some form kind of ground rules, like, “Well, you can’t say anything.” But I don’t know, is it like 97% of things are acceptable, barring, which is wildly inappropriate, offensive, aggressive? How do you think about that?

Timothy Clark
Yeah. So, the way that I think about that is that, first of all, let’s go back to psychological safety is a function of two things. It’s a function of respect and permission. And so, we have to maintain, in order to maintain high levels of psychological safety, we have to maintain high levels of respect and permission.

So, what that means is that we patrol the boundaries of respect when we are engaged in dialogue and discussion. So, what that means is, as a practical matter, if you’re a member of a team and we are debating issues and we’re trying to solve problems, and we’re trying to figure out solutions, we do need a high level of intellectual friction. We do need creative abrasion and constructive dissent. We do need hard-hitting dialogue.

The only way you’re going to maintain that, however, is that you have to manage the social friction down. So, the intellectual friction has to go very high but the social friction has to stay very low. The only way you can do that is by maintaining respect interpersonally. So, what does that mean? That means personal attacks are off limits, and we’re going to be careful about what we’re saying. Now, we’re not going to coddle each other, right? We need a high tolerance for candor and we need to debate issues on their merits but we’re not going to attack people personally. We’re not going to demean or belittle or marginalize or embarrass.

If we move into that kind of behavior, then it shuts down our intellectual friction and we’re not able to make the breakthroughs that we need. So, we have to manage the respect and the civility in that dialogue.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, so let’s zoom into maybe some particular interactions and how they can be conducted optimally. I’m thinking, let’s just say someone says something that you find frustrating in the sense of, I don’t know, for any number of reasons, I don’t know, “We’ve been over this a dozen times before,” fill in the blank. So, I mean, what you laid out there in terms of things that are out of bounds, I could see, like, you’re not going to demean or shout or whatever, but I think it’s quite possible that we could have some nonverbal cues that can be tricky in terms of our vocal inflection or like a sigh. How do we play that game? You’ve got emotional reactions to stuff people say and they can pick up on those and not feel so safe afterwards. What do we do?

Timothy Clark
Well, I think that’s true, and so it’s not just verbal. As you say, it’s the nonverbal. Take, for example, think about all of us who are working virtually during the pandemic, we’re working with a distributed workforce, we’re on some kind of virtual platform. And so, our interactions, so I see from the shoulders up, and what am I relying on? I’m relying on some gestures. I’m relying on your facial expressions. I’m relying on your vocal characteristics.

It’s okay to be frustrated. It’s okay to be human that way because that communicates some very important things but it crosses a line when it becomes disparaging, when I’m rolling my eyes, when I’m being dismissive of what you’re saying. So, there’s a line there of respect and of acknowledgement for what you’re saying. Even though I may vehemently disagree, and we need to be able to have that discussion on the merits, but, again, I still think the whole key is that you’re maintaining the civility and the respect, and you’re having marvelous disagreements at the same time.

Can you do that? Yeah, you can do it but it takes practice. It takes practice.

Pete Mockaitis
Marvelous disagreements is a great turn of phrase. Thank you. And then how do we do that practice? Like, what does that look like when we are trying to build those skills?

Timothy Clark
Yeah, that’s a great question, Pete. So, what we did is we, our team, our research team, we put together what we call a behavioral guide, and we identified very concrete behaviors that are associated with each of the four stages of psychological safety. Let me give you some very concrete examples.

So, for example, with stage one, inclusion safety, it’s very important that you learn people’s names, you learn how to pronounce them, and you use people’s names. Now, that’s very, very simple. Here’s another one, and this one is backed up by research that’s come out of the MIT Human Dynamics Lab. When you are speaking with someone, even virtually, face them with your entire body. Don’t swivel. Don’t look at them from an angle but face them with your entire body because it communicates a different level of acknowledgement and interest and attention to what they are saying. Those are just a couple of examples.

We’ve put together about 35 specific concrete behaviors for each of the four stages of psychological safety. And so, what it comes down to is practicing those behaviors. So, for example, if you want to elevate inclusion safety, stage one, then you need to engage in behaviors that invite, that share, that solicit feedback and input, and you’re acknowledging other people. So, there are examples, there are behaviors that do that very naturally. Those have to be practiced over and over and over again in order to shift the prevailing norms of a team.  Yes, it can be done but you got to practice.

Pete Mockaitis
Tim, this is so much gold. Tell me, first of all, how do we get this behavioral guide?

Timothy Clark
Oh, this behavioral guide, you can just go to our website and it’s a free download. And I can also send you a link, Pete, so that you can have it available on your site.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, yeah. We’ll totally put that in the show notes. And so, okay, 35 for each of the four, or a 140 total.

Timothy Clark
A hundred-forty total.

Pete Mockaitis
I’m going to play 80/20 with you here. Can you give me the top three? And I’m going to say top in terms of it’s high impact, and it’s maybe frequently overlooked, and it’s relatively easy to make the shift. For example, I think that names is awesome, and facing with your entire body is great. Like, I can do that right now. Can you give us maybe another one for the belonging or inclusion, and then maybe the top three for the other three stages?

Timothy Clark
Okay. I don’t have them in rank order but I’ll take a shot. So, let’s go to stage two, first of all, to learner safety. So, for learner safety, one of the concrete behaviors that’s in the behavioral guide is that you need to publicly share mistakes that you’ve made. Okay, that’s one. A second one is to ask for help from someone of lower status than you. So, that’s another one. Another one for learner safety is to acknowledge when you don’t know something and do that very publicly.

Now, let me build on that because we can keep going. I’m going to skip for just a minute all the way to challenger safety, stage four, because this is the toughest one. So, here’s one, number one, weigh in last. If you have positional power, absolutely never speak first, give your opinion or your point of view first. You weigh in last. Another one is to publicly change your opinion so the people can hear that you’ve been influenced and that you’re changing your opinion or your point of view on something. Here’s another one. Formally assign dissent.

So, for example, say, we’re debating an issue or, say, we’re thinking about taking a course of action. Then what I would say is I would say, “Okay, you, you, and you, we’re assigning you to be our loyal opposition. We’re assigning you to dissent. So, as we go through this discussion, we want you to tell us what’s wrong with our point of view, what’s wrong with this proposed course of action, where are the flaws, shoot holes in it, and we’re giving you this as an assignment.”

The reason this works so well, Pete, is because if we assign dissent, we are trading your personal risks for public permission. And as soon as I give you public permission, you don’t have to use your personal risk, you’re going to be much more likely to do it. It changes the entire dynamic of the team. So, I kind of bounced around a little bit but let me give you another one. It goes back to inclusion safety. This just came to mind. It’s called hop-on hop-off  interviews.

Have you ever been to a city where you’re a tourist and they have these hop-on hop-off buses and you go around the city and you hop off, and you look at particular tourist attraction, then you get back on the bus and you keep going? It’s a similar concept. If someone comes in, a new member comes in, you assign that member an escort and a guide.

And that escort takes you around to the other team members, and you have very brief hop-on hop-off interviews of 5, 10 minutes each where you literally make the introduction to each person on the team, you say, “I’d like you to meet Pete. He’s a new member of our team.” Then you tee up a few questions and you accelerate the normal pace of social integration.

So, this happened to me, Pete. Let me give you an example. So, in college, in graduate school, I spent some time at Seoul National University in Korea, and they gave me a place in what was called the Social Science Research Center. As soon as I got there, the director, he introduced himself to me, and he said, “We’re so happy to have you here. I’m assigning two graduate students to be your guides, so here they are, and they’re going to take you around, and you’re going to meet every single member of the center, every faculty member, every graduate student.” So, they did that exact thing and then they took me to lunch.

Can you imagine how I felt? In the first day, we accomplished as much social integration as you would accomplish maybe in a month. I don’t know, maybe longer. So, what we’re saying is that there are these very concrete behaviors that accelerate and they elevate the psychological safety, and they absolutely work. Those are just some examples.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s so good. Now, let’s see. Did we get some for the contributor safety?

Timothy Clark
Contributor safety, okay. Contributor safety, let’s go back to what that means. Contributor safety means that you feel free and able to contribute as a full member of the team, to make a difference using your talents and skills and experience and knowledge. So, for contributor safety, I would cite, let me see, one example is that what you do, if you’re the leader of the team, you talk about the things that you have tried that did not work.

So, you talk about mistakes very openly because what happens is, and we know this from research, is that when we’re contributing, we’re very tentative, especially if we’re new, we don’t have the informal permission rights that we would want to have. And, usually, a team grants those slowly over time. Well, we don’t have time to wait for that.

And so, if, as a leader, you can say, “You know what, I tried this and it didn’t work out that well. I tried this and it was okay. We had a little bit of ,” but you’re very forthcoming with trying to solicit contribution from the person so the person is not standing on the sideline very tentative, very reluctant to dive in. And so, you model that, number one. And then, number two, you protect that person in the process.

So, let me give you another one that is a pattern that we see very clearly. So, that pattern is, for contribution, that you invite contribution but you provide autonomy with guidance. And the reason is that the more autonomy that I have, the more likely that I’m going to take ownership for something. Then if something goes wrong, you’re going to protect me in that process. So, there’s got to be some reassurance that if I’m venturing out and I’m going to try some things and I’m going to contribute, that I’m going to receive some level of protection in that process.

Pete Mockaitis
And when you say protection, can you give us a couple examples of what that means in practice?

Timothy Clark
Yeah. So, for example, there is interpersonal protection. Interpersonal protection means that you’re protecting me from embarrassment, you’re protecting me from demeaning or belittling or that I might feel humiliated. I’ll give you an example.

So, early in my career, I was in manufacturing and I would have ideas about performance improvement, for example, for a process but I didn’t want to say anything because I was a rookie and I didn’t have permission rights, the informal socio-cultural permission rights. But I had a manager that could tell, he could just read my body language, and he would say, “Tim, I think you’ve got something to say. I think you’ve got an idea.”

And he would coax it out of me, and then I would give the idea. And it may have been a foolish idea, a silly idea, but he would protect me in that process so that nobody else around the table, nobody else on the team, would ridicule that idea even though I was a rookie. So, he gave me protection, interpersonal protection within, in the context of the group dynamics, so that I would do it again because he wanted me to do it again and again and again. If you get shot down, you’re not going to do it again.

Pete Mockaitis
And so, how would he verbalize that, or would he speak to other teammates, or just continue leading the meeting with an affirmation, or like what kind of verbiage was unfolding here?

Timothy Clark
Yeah, it was pretty subtle. He would just say, “Yeah, I could see where you’re coming from. That may have some merit. What do the rest of you guys think about that?” So, just subtle cues both verbal and nonverbal.

Pete Mockaitis
Got you. Thank you. Well, now I’m curious. If, let’s say, an individual contributor is in an environment that they say, “Wow, I want that and I don’t have that psychological safety,” what can they do? I mean, I guess they could quit and try to find a better environment. But are there any tools in terms of how we run our own brain or how we might try to advocate, instigate for getting a healthier environment?

Timothy Clark
Yeah. What I would say in response to that question, Pete, would be that if you’re an individual contributor, and contributor, you, by definition, probably don’t have  power and so you feel at a disadvantage. You may feel that you have no ability to influence. What I would say is build your credibility, build your platform of credibility, based on your competence, little by little so that people will listen to you because, then, if you keep doing that, little by little, you’ll be able to influence your peers and then your boss.

So, it’s kind of, this is the opposite of top-down. You don’t have positional power so you’ve got to create a beachhead of influence. And the way that you do that is, first of all, do your job and do it extremely well. Be very, very good at what you do. If you’re not good at what you do, people are not going to take what you say seriously. You don’t have credibility. So, you’ve got to get good at what you do.

You need to become good at asking good questions. Even though you may be new, even though you may be inexperienced, if you ask some thoughtful, reflective, good questions, you can build credibility in the questions that you ask even though you don’t know the answers because people can see that you’re being reflective. So, I think there are several ways to come at it but you’ve got to start with your own credibility. That’s what I would say.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And any tips for insulating our brains from the barbs that might be coming our way?

Timothy Clark
Yeah. I would say that it really is worth your while to try to not take things personally even when they are meant to be offensive or people are taking shots at you. I think it only works to your advantage if you are patient with the egos and the insecurities of the people around you. I’ll give you an example.

So, I did a kind of a roundtable discussion with a whole group of women of color the other day. It was absolutely fascinating. And the one insight that I gained from them that was bigger than anything else is they said, “You know what, this is what we do. We have learned to take some shots, to take some insults, to absorb those but then to focus on building our own credibility.”

Now, there are, of course, times when it goes too far. I mean, if we’re talking about bullying or harassment or public shaming or outright manipulation, that’s completely out of bounds. But they would absorb a certain amount of, I guess, rude or just impolite behavior. They wouldn’t worry about it too much and they would work on their own credibility in terms of their ability to contribute, in terms of their ability to collaborate. And they said that was an accelerator for them, and I thought that was so interesting because they said, “Look, we have barriers to overcome and we’ve learned.”

Now, of course, we have a ways to go in many of our organizations but I thought that was a particularly important insight. Don’t get tipped over by little things that people say or do even when they, perhaps, were not done with the best intent. Be forgiving and just show how  you are in your response patterns, and you will earn trust and credibility that much faster.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s good. And I think when you are in that place where you’re doing some forgiveness and that sort of fuels determination in terms of, I guess, the term killing them with kindness comes to mind, it’s like, “I’m going to take this masterfully.” And in so doing, you stick it to them.

Timothy Clark
That’s right. That’s right.

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

Timothy Clark
Well, I would just say that every team is on a journey of psychological safety. Psychological safety is dynamic, it is delicate, and the job is never done. So, even if you’re not a leader, now, this is something that I think we really need to clarify. It’s not just the leader’s job. Now, does the leader set the tone? Sure. And is the leader’s modelling behavior perhaps the most important factor? Yes, that’s probably true.

But every member of the team has a role as an architect of the culture. All of the individual contributors, it doesn’t matter what your role is, you are an architect of the culture. You are radiating influence every single day, there is no off switch, you can’t turn that off. You cannot turn off the influence that you’re radiating, so keep that in mind. So, you’re either leading the way towards higher levels of psychological safety or you’re getting in the way, but you’re not a neutral party.

So, regardless of your role, regardless of whether you have positional power or not, please understand that you are an architect of the culture.

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

Timothy Clark
Well, I’m going to go real simple, Pete, with you on this one, and that is that, “The best synonym for leadership in the English language is influence.”

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Thank you. And a favorite book?

Timothy Clark
I’m going to go with an oldie but a goodie, The Effective Executive by Peter Drucker. It was published many years ago, still extremely timely and relevant.

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

Timothy Clark
Yeah, what I do, Pete, is I have a habit of writing down concepts, thoughts, ideas, insights. This is something that I’ve done for years and years and years, and it’s one of my favorite habits, and it’s the return on investment for that habit has been enormous. So, I used to use a pad of paper and pencil. Now I just use my phone but I am constantly just trying to capture insights and thoughts and observations. And I put them in no particular order, I call it my gristmill file. It’s just filled with stuff. And then I just go back through it and I make connections. That’s been, well, it’s one of my favorite habits.

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

Timothy Clark
Yeah, honestly, lately, it really is the five-word definition of psychological safety – an environment of rewarded vulnerability. That seems to be resonating massively with people.

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

Timothy Clark
Sure, yeah. Just come to our website LeaderFactor.com. We’d love to see you. And you can certainly follow me on Twitter or visit me on LinkedIn, Timothy R. Clark.

Pete Mockaitis
And at Leader Factor, we could find those 140 behaviors?

Timothy Clark
Absolutely. Yeah, downloadable, fantastic resource, and absolutely free.

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

Timothy Clark
Yeah, I would say try to do a baseline, ask yourself this question with your team or the environment in which you work, “Do you belong? Are you growing? Are you contributing? Do you feel free and able to challenge the status quo?” Ask those four questions to baseline the level of psychological safety on your team.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Tim, this has been a treat. Thank you so much and I wish you many psychologically safe adventures.

Timothy Clark
Thanks, Pete. it’s been a pleasure to be with you.

Jan 18
0

634: How to Get Ahead in Your Career by Developing Your Professional Value with Don Miller

By | Podcasts | One Comment

 

 

Don Miller says: "The only way you make money is you make somebody else more money."

Don Miller shares how to advance your career even without the need for a fancy title or degree.

You’ll Learn:

  1. The critical skills an MBA doesn’t teach you 
  2. The harsh truth every professional must accept to succeed 
  3. How to craft a compelling business case 

About Don

Donald Miller is the CEO of Business Made Simple (BusinessMadeSimple.com), an online platform that teaches business professionals everything they need to know to grow a business and enhance their personal value on the open market. He is the host of the Business Made Simple Podcast and is the author of several books including the bestseller Building a StoryBrand. He lives and works in Nashville, Tennessee with his wife Elizabeth. 

Resources mentioned in the show:

Thank you Sponsors!

Don Miller Interview Transcript

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

Don Miller
I’m so glad to be here.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I am excited to talk about your latest work Business Made Simple. And one of your theses is that we don’t so much need a college degree or a bachelor’s or MBA for career success, and that’s actually your own story personally. Could you tell us a bit about that?

Don Miller
Yeah, perhaps I have a chip on my shoulder but I grew up really poor and mom wasn’t home till about 7:00 p.m. and so I just learned bad habits and didn’t pay much attention in school. So, it wasn’t until, gosh, I think I was 25 or 26 that I even discovered that I wanted a career. I sort of felt sorry for myself with my friends off to college, and thought, “Well, I have to go back to college and figure this out.”

But a guy happened to give me a job in the warehouse of a publishing company, and I was just going to wait a year and then go to school because I had moved state and was going to get residency. Within four years, I was president of the publishing company and just discovered that I had a knack for business like some people do. And it happened to be a publishing company and so I was interacting with authors, and so I just thought I want to write my own book. And wrote a book, and that book ended up being on the New York Times’ bestseller’s list for about a year.

So, I left the publishing company and started just being a memoirist for a long time. And then about the time they wanted me to write my 8th memoir, I realized that if you write your 8th memoir, you’re a clinical narcissist. And so, I just wanted to be a regular narcissist, not a clinical narcissist so I switched gears and actually wrote a business book, because in order to be an author, I had to start my own little private enterprise, and I had ran a publishing company so I wrote a book about storytelling and how to clarify your business’ story. And that book ended up selling half a million copies.

And, suddenly, I had 30 employees and we scaled this business to, we’ll do about 20 million this year. We did that about five years. And I realized that the whole time, and I think your listeners will really understand this, the whole time I was scaling the business, it was just chaos. It was just organized chaos. And the more people I met who had business degrees and the more people I hired who had business degrees, none of them knew how to fix it.

And what I realized now is that from zero to 10 million, it’s basically chaos anyway. You have to just sort of lead and guide the chaos. So, I wrote Business Made Simple as almost the blue-collar version, almost the trade school version of business school. Where in a business school, you’d go and you’d read a whitepaper on trade with China, you’d study a Volkswagen ad from 1973 and how to reach suburban housewives five decades ago, and none of that, none of it, you use when you actually get a job in the business world.

In fact, business degrees, I’m convinced, really just get you an interview and to the bottom rung of the ladder. At least they get you on the ladder, which is great. But then you have to figure out how to climb the ladder. And what we found was the hidden staircase. We found that there was a certain order of skills that you had to develop as your company got bigger.

And I turned around and started explaining those to people in short five-minute videos. A 100,000 people signed up for those videos, and realized, “You know what, if I took a year and really organized this well, it could be better than a business degree.”

And so, the book now, it comes out January 19th and it’s called Business Made Simple. It’s 60 daily entries. You pour a cup of coffee, you read the daily entry, and then you get a video that day in your email box. And it will literally teach you how to negotiate a contract, how to sell, how to give a speech, how to manage a group of people, how to run an execution framework. It’ll teach you how to clarify a message, how to create a marketing sales funnel, how to create mission statement and guiding principles.

My favorite is the first 10 entries, are just the character of a value-driven professional, what characteristics do people have who tend to climb the corporate ladder very, very quickly and make a lot of money. So, I love this book. It’s the book that I wish I had when I was 22 years old, right when I realized I should’ve gotten to college like my friends. And now I hand it out to college grads, saying, “Here’s what you should’ve learned when you paid all that money for school.”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Boy, there’s so much I want to dig into. So, the hidden staircase is a particular set of skills. Is that fair?

Don Miller
It is, yeah. I think it is.

Pete Mockaitis
Like Liam Neeson.

Don Miller
That’s right. Less deadly. Less people are dead at the end of it. More people have more money at the end of it. But, yeah, I really think it is. And it’s actually amazing to me that in MBA programs, they’re not teaching this. They’re not teaching mission statement and guiding principles. So, how do you actually align a team? How do you get a team to say, “We’re going to align around a mission here”? They don’t teach you to clarify a message unless you go to Vanderbilt University because they actually teach my framework in the Vanderbilt MBA program on how to clarify a message.

I teach an execution framework. Every company that passes about maybe $3 million, they need an execution framework. You need a series of meetings that you have at the same time on the same day, sometimes every day, sometimes once a week, and sometimes once a month, with a worksheet that you fill out and usually stand for these meetings. And at the end of that meeting, usually in the morning, everybody has complete clarity about what their five priorities are for the day, and they are kept accountable to meet those priorities.

And then, in the fourth quarter, you assess how you did, and your compensation package is actually tied to that. You install that execution framework that I talk about in this book into your company, and some companies will double in productivity.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Excellent. And so then, it’s just a matter of doing it and ensuring then that the right things are getting executed and the focus remains where it needs to go, eh?

Don Miller
That’s where it is. I really think that the majority of succeeding in business is focus and intensity. Focusing on the right things, letting go of things that you don’t need to focus on. And then intensity, intentionally blocking out the hours to get those things done. But it’s easier said than done. You literally have to have your entire team on the same page aligned around a mission. It sounds easy but most people can’t get it done.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, to that end, I’d love it if maybe you could share an inspiring story of someone who dug in and learned the stuff and saw some cool results from it.

Don Miller
Well, the most inspiring story is just our team and what we’ve done. I’ve got PhDs on my team. I’ve got people without a degree. I never ask in the interview whether you have a degree. I ask really one question, “How can you make us money? What problems can you solve? If I bring you on this team, how would you make us money?”

And you should see the looks on, especially the college grads’ faces or whatever. They’ve never been asked the question, and yet the whole point of me hiring you is to give you a paycheck that is an investment that you would give me a return on.

The very first entry in the book is about, it starts the 10 characteristics of what I call a value-driven professional. And the first characteristic is this: they see themselves as an economic product on the open market. And, Pete, that sounds probably really coarse and really harsh.

Pete Mockaitis
Dehumanizing.

Don Miller
Dehumanizing, yeah. And I would agree with that, it is dehumanizing. But in the reality, God doesn’t see you as somebody with an economic price tag on your head, your spouse doesn’t see you that way, your kids don’t see you that way, I don’t see you that way. Donald Miller doesn’t see you that way. The market, 100%, absolutely sees you that way. It’s just a fact.

If your skillset involves being able to cut up a potato, put it into a metal basket and dip it into oil for three minutes and pull it up, if that’s what you’re capable of doing, you’ve got a $15 an hour number above your head. That’s what you are worth, and that’s a terrible thing to say except when you realize that that same person is in control of what that number is.

So, if they say, “Okay. Well, I know how to deep-fry some potatoes. I’m going to learn how to unify a team around a mission statement and guiding principles so that we’re all aligned. And then I’m also going to learn a business strategy, how to keep cashflow strong, how to keep overhead light, how to keep products profitable, how to get your marketing engine going, your sales engine going, and how to look at cashflow so that we don’t run out of it. And I’m going to master that.”

You, all of a sudden, have gone from 15, to 25, to 45. And if you can do what I just said, at the end of that year, you’re capable of being a CEO with a little bit of practice, so now you’re at $150 an hour. You’re actually in control of that. So, it’s only an offensive statement to say you’re an economic product on the open market if you don’t have control of the number. And what’s amazing is most people don’t realize they have control of the number.

So, when you actually realize that, you start learning the skillsets that allow you to be a good investment. Well, how do people actually get rich? Well, the way people get rich is they’re a great investment. Our company has gone to about $20 million. We did that in five years. No venture capital, no private equity, no bank loans. We’ve gone to $20 million. How did we do that? We did that by making other people $200 million. That’s the only way you make money is you make somebody else more money.

Or, you solve somebody’s problem, or you increase the amount of time that they have. You decrease their frustration. You increase their status. Whatever it is somebody is paying you for, if you just promise yourself, “If somebody gives me 100 bucks an hour, I’m going to make them a thousand bucks an hour.” If you have that mentality, you will be wealthy.

One time an acquaintance, came up to me after a speaking he gave me, he said, “You know, you and I live in the same town. Why don’t you fly home with me?” And I said, “Well, what flight are you on?” And he said, “Well, no, I have an airplane.” The next morning, I get on this $50 million jet with this guy, and I’m asking what he does. He’s a hedge fund manager and blah, blah, blah, and I said, “Well, this is the life, man. I can’t imagine ever living like this.”

And then he said something about, “I was flying one of my clients around and they kind of like this drink and we didn’t have that drink on the plane so we had to stop and get some,” or whatever. He was just telling a story. And I realized, “Oh, he actually has this 50-million private jet because people pay him and he makes them even more money. So, now there’s a guy with some jumbo jet who’s the king of Dubai, or whatever, who actually has even more money.” And you start realizing, “That’s the key.” The key is to be a great investment so you’re giving people a strong return.

And so, when I wrote this book, what I wanted was you start at whatever you’re at, some of you listening are worth $30 an hour, some of you are worth $50 an hour, some of you are worth $12 an hour, you read the first one and you become worth about $5 more. And you read the second one and you become worth about $5 more. You read the third one you become worth about $5 more if you execute it and actually practice these skills in your professional career.

And what I wanted was you start this book being worth $15 an hour, you end it worth being $150 an hour if you actually execute the skills that you learn in the book. I wanted to make people worth more money. But the first thing you got to do, if you want to do that, is admit you’re actually an economic product. If people see themselves that way, they tend to make a ton of money on the open market.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, let’s zoom into a few of these particular skills. Let’s say our audience are professionals. If we want to get quantitative, I mean, incomes vary wildly, but let’s just call it 75 grand a year, and maybe a few years out of their bachelor’s, so just to paint a picture, maybe half have direct reports and half do not. I know it’s a wide audience. But zero in a little bit for us in terms of what is a skill that professionals generally need and is highly valued, and what can we do to get better at it right now?

Don Miller
Well, one of the things you need to do, if you have a boss, let’s just talk to the folks who have a boss, what you want to do is you go to your boss with an idea, and you say, “I want to do this.” What you really need to do is go to your boss with a business case. And my team members know this. Don’t come to me without a business case.

And so, instead of coming to me, and saying, “Don, we really want to launch a new podcast.” Well, they would come to me and say, “Don, we want to launch a new podcast. It’s going to hit this demographic. On that podcast, we’re going to focus on these three products and only these three products. If people buy these three products, we’ll have their email address and we’ll upsell them to these other two products. If the podcast does what our last podcast did, we would anticipate that 2% of the people listening to the podcast would buy these three entry-level items and 5% of those would buy the upsells. So, we’re talking about 6.2 million. We think that that’s going to cost about a million dollars to produce so we should see a profit of about 5.2 million pre-overhead.”

You start talking like that to your boss and they’re going to promote you because almost nobody talks that way. They just go, “I think this is a good idea. Let’s throw spaghetti at the wall and see if it turns into art.” And people who understand business get a little bit tired of that. And so, that’s the sort of thing that this book teaches you to do.

If I just flip open this book and just put my finger down, so I just did it, put my finger down, there’s five pages, this is number 3 on negotiation. Here’s a skill that if you don’t have a boss, or if you do have a boss, it doesn’t matter, almost nobody has taken a course on how to negotiate a contract or negotiate a deal.

So, let me just give you one thing. The page that I turned to is that you need to understand that there’s always something “below the line.” So, you’re negotiating, it’s a package deal, there’s this bestselling author that you want to speak at your conference, they’re $50,000 to take the stage, there is something that that author wants more than money. And if you actually do a little due diligence, you’ll figure it out.

For instance, I’ve done this. I’ve told a bestselling author that I couldn’t afford to bring to one of my conferences, I said, “Look, I’ve written a lot of bestselling books. Would you want to spend about four hours together, just talking about whatever your next book is about? We can maybe outline some chapters of it or we can talk about a marketing plan. I can’t afford to pay you the $125,000 that you are to take the stage, but I would be able to give you four hours, and I think it’d be worth your time.” The person did it for $25,000.

It even gets more fun than that. My buddy runs a poetry week in San Diego, California at Point Loma University. He wanted Billy Collins to come. Now, Billy Collins is my favorite poet. I’m that geeky that I actually have a favorite poet. He’s really funny and he’s brilliant but he’s probably a hundred grand to come speak. He is like a rock star in the poetry world. He was the poet laureate. He’s a professor at NYU. He doesn’t do very many speaking engagements.

So, my buddy started Googling around on the internet because he’s not going to be able to pay $125,000 to have Billy Collins come. He found that Billy Collins is an avid golfer. So, he goes over at Torrey Pines, he can’t get on at Torrey Pines, it’s very hard, and he says, “I want to get Billy Collins to come speak at my thing. How much would it cost for me to get a round of golf to Billy Collins?” “This guy sounds like a rock star. We’d give it to him for free.” He said, “Great.” So, he calls Billy Collins, he said, “Look, I’ll give you $40,000 and a round at Torrey Pines.” And he comes and he does it, and they raised a ton of money.

There’s almost always something below the line in a negotiation. We think we’re having a financial negotiation but we’re human beings. There’s something that people want and value even more than money. And if you can find it, you can negotiate really, really great contracts. So, you go back and you tell your boss you did that, you’re going to get another promotion and another raise. When it’s time to get a raise, they’re going to give you the biggest possible raise. And why? Because you are such a good investment that, “When we give you a paycheck, we get so much more in return.”

We all do this. If you buy stocks, you buy more stocks that are making you more money, and you divest of stocks that are losing you money. And in the open market, people are like stocks. They don’t want to be but they are. And the real pros, not the amateurs, but the pros, they really like that. They actually want to be an investment because they know how to get you a return.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes. Thank you. Well, now, I want to hear a lot of things but let’s go with this. Now, what you’re putting forward here totally makes sense to me as a business owner, and I’m thinking about there’s an unfortunate reality in many workplaces that meritocracy, for whatever reasons, is broken or limited or slow, such that let’s say I’ve got a boss and then they do a performance review, and they say, “Wow, Pete, you are just so amazing. This initiative saved us all this money. This other product launch was so successful and profitable. You are just crushing it.” I say, “Well, thank you very much, boss. I appreciate that.” And they say, “And here is your 4% raise for your great performance this year.”

And so, I’m thinking, “Well, as compared to the value I gave you last year, it is miles beyond 4% more,” and then maybe you have the conversation, like, “Hey, it seems like I’m doing these things and I’m making this impact, it would seem appropriate to increase the compensation.” They go, “Oh, you know, Pete, you’re making some sense here, bud, but, unfortunately, with COVID or,” insert excuse, “there’s a hiring freeze or a budget freeze or a pay increase freeze.” So, there’s some kind of a policy something that’s getting in the way of the beauty of value created and compensation for that value created to flow as it should.

How do we deal with that?

Don Miller
Well, that’s a tough thing but when you have the skills to make people money, there’s just one thing you need to do. You need to actually make a business case for yourself. So, you’re not going in and asking for a raise or begging for a raise. If you’re doing that, the person that you’re talking to, the company that you work for, has the leverage. And so, what you really want is you don’t want to compete for the job. You want them to compete for you. And so, if they’re going to keep you and keep making this money, they’re going to have to give you more money.

And if they don’t, if you really are that good, everybody here is an economic product on the open market so you take your skills elsewhere and you charge what you think that you are worth. We have reviews at the end of every year and people get a bonus based on their performance. There are some performers that they’re great, we love them, we give them the most percent, that will be a 5% raise plus they get a bonus based on whether or not we hit our goals as a company. And that’s it.

There are other performers though, for instance my marketing director, we called my marketing director in four months before the end of the year, and said, “Look, we want to give you a 20% raise right now, and at the end of the year we’re going to give you your bonus which is a percentage of your salary as though you would have that 20% all year long.” And he was baffled, he loved it, and he said, “Don, thanks.” Two of my team members called me and said the same. They said, “Thank. This is so generous.”

And I said, “Listen, I hope I’m a generous guy but I want you to understand something. You are so good at making this company money, I have to compete to keep you. I know that some people can come in and get you, and I want you to know that. I want you to know you’re a rock star and if I pay you more, maybe you won’t leave.”

Now, there’s always somebody, some billionaire, who’s going to come in and say, “I’ll pay you some obscene amount of money because I don’t care about the money.” I can’t compete with that person but I can compete in other ways. You like your job, you get great time off, nobody here works really after 5:00 unless they want to. It’s a great environment so I compete in other ways besides money too.

But that’s where you want to get your boss. And let’s say your boss isn’t like that. Well, now you’ve got a resume. You’re going to write your resume completely differently, and the resume is going to be, “If you invest in me, here’s the ways that I can make you money.” And not every company needs the ways that you can make them money, but you’re going to find the ones that you can.

Andrew Grove, who ran Intel for so many years, says that, “Don’t be confused. Every single human being is a company. And you sell your services to other companies in exchange for pay.” Now, I got to tell you also this. We’ve had plenty of these conversations where somebody comes in and they say that to us, they say, “I think I’m worth this. I’ve made the company this much money.”

And in turn we say, “We think you’re worth a 5% raise. We don’t think you’re worth, as an economic investment, you’re two years out of college, you don’t know how to do this, you don’t know how to do that, we’re training you, you’re becoming more valuable but I think you have an inflated idea of the economic value you’re actually worth. If you stay here for two or three more years, I think you’ll learn a lot more. You’ll have more value on the open market.”

We had one person once who got pretty huffy about that and they were pretty upset about it, and they said, “Well, I disagree with you and we’re going to have to have further conversation.” Great. In the next conversation, we said, “Listen, we’re not letting you go, you have two months, we you to find another job. We’re not kidding. We actually think that if we’re going to pay you what you want to be paid, we can get somebody better with more experience on the open market.”

And that person said, “Wait, wait, wait. Hold on. I want to keep my job. I really like it here.” And we said, “Listen, if you come back and you turned in a two weeks’ notice, we’re going to be ticked. If you want to stay here for a couple more years, we will train you, you will get some experience that will make you worth more on the open market.” And that’s what this person decided to do and that is, indeed, what actually happened.

So, you’re going to have disagreements. Almost every employee thinks they’re worth more than their company does, and almost every company is paying somebody more than what they think the person is worth. They think they’re being generous. That tension always exists. But here’s how I want you to see yourself. Always see yourself as an NBA player and negotiating a salary to stay on the basketball team. And you also need to learn what it is that actually makes the basketball team money.

I love the example of JJ Watt, he’s a football player, of course, for the Houston Texas. This is a losing team. They won four games this year. JJ Watt is paid $100 million to play football. And when you watch him, he has negotiated, so during the game they play a certain song and he dances during the game before the snap on this one particular play. Well, why did he negotiate that? Because it gets the crowd riled up and they start chanting JJ Watt, it puts butts in seats, it sells JJ Watt jerseys, it makes the football team money. So, not only is he great as a defensive player, by the way, he’s a defensive player making $100 million.

He figured out how he can make the football team money. He also negotiated that nobody on the sidelines can wear a red baseball cap except for him. So, when he comes off the field, he takes his helmet off, he puts a red baseball cap on. You know why he does that?

Pete Mockaitis
Well, then people can pick him out, like, “Oh, that’s him. That’s JJ.”

Don Miller
Exactly it, so the camera can find him. He has figured it out. Now HEB is a grocery store in the Houston, Texas area that paid him another $100 million to be their spokesperson. So, he’s saying, “Buy your eggs at HEB.” Now, what’s he doing? He figured out how to make Houston Texas money, and he figured out how to make a grocery store money, and he’s worth $200 million. That is called a value-driven professional.

Now, if the team doesn’t want to keep him, he can go to the Pittsburgh Steelers, and say, “Look, this is how much money I make at Houston Texas in jersey sales, when I show up on NFL commercials, when I agree to do at least one interview after the game. This is how much money. It’s not just about football.”

And so, as a value-driven professional, if you’re on the marketing team, you’re going to say, “Listen, I built a sales funnel that it looks like it made $4 million that didn’t exist before I got here. I also do a segment on the company’s podcast that goes on every other episode. The leads from that has turned into another $4 million, so that’s $8 million. You guys paid me $45,000 last year. I made you $8 million in value. I think I’m an $85,000 a year person. But before you say no, let me give you three more ideas that I want to implement that I think will make you another $4 million.” That’s how you negotiate.

Don’t come in and say, “Look, I show up on time, I don’t smell bad, I comb my hair, I make sure I pull my old lunch out of the fridge so it doesn’t rot. I think you owe me 5%.” Nobody is interested in that conversation.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Thank you. Well, let’s shift gears a smidge away from…so we had that core economic value delivery principle there. You said that your first several installments, videos and pieces of the book, are all about character. Lay it on us.

Don Miller
Well, I kind of wondered, I read these books about character and it’s talked about things like integrity, it talks about things like work ethic. Not that I don’t think that stuff isn’t important. Integrity is incredibly important. But, in my opinion, integrity is a core value of being a human being not of just being a professional. We have places for people who don’t have integrity. We call them prison.

So, you can’t work here unless you have integrity. You can’t work here unless you tell the truth. So, I started thinking, “Hey, what are the ways that real value-driven professionals, people like JJ Watt, what are the ways that they see themselves?” And, amazingly, I got to meet Barack Obama when I was on a White House taskforce. I got to spend time with Michelle Obama, I got to spend time with members of the judiciary, lawmakers, NFL coaches, professional athletes, professional musicians at the highest level. And I was looking for, “What do these people have in common?”

And the 10 core characteristics are very interesting. The first we’ve talked about at length, and that is they really do see themselves as an economic product on the open market. The second is that they see themselves as heroes not victims, so they identify as the hero in the story not the victim in the story, and that’s really critical. At no point will any of these people start feeling sorry for themselves. Heroes don’t feel sorry for themselves. They may not like their challenges but they take their challenges on. And those challenges transform the hero into a better version of themselves.

Victims suck a lot of the energy out of the room. And there are actual real victims in the world. I don’t mean to victim-shame anybody but most of us see ourselves as victims when we’re in fact not. My friend Henry Cloud defines victims as somebody who has no way out. And most of the time in my life where I’ve seen myself as a victim, I actually had plenty of ways out. I was just too discouraged to actually take them. So, we have to make that transformation from victim mindset to a hero mindset.

The third is they know how to deescalate drama. Drama in the workplace costs people a lot of money. And the reason it cost people a lot of money is because it sucks all the energy into the dramatic employee, and it’s that energy they can’t use to make a product or serve a customer. So, people who know how to deescalate drama, they’re actually worth a lot more.

Another one is that they accept feedback as a gift. We just interviewed Mathew McConaughey the other day. He loves criticism. He loves it because it makes him a better actor. Number five is they know the right way to engage conflict. The more you rise as a leader, the more conflict you have to deal with. In fact, the more power you actually have in a company, the more time you spend only dealing with problems. And so, if you understand how to engage conflict and resolve conflict and the ways to do that, you are going to rise because people hire you to solve problems. And the more problems you can solve, the more money they pay you, and the more promotions you get.

Another one, day six, this was on tough for me because I felt it a lot. It was they long to be trusted and respected more than they want to be liked. And leaders who want to be liked, or people and companies who want to be liked, they compromise, they don’t tell the truth. But people who want to be trusted and respected, they tell the truth, they set very clear expectations, and they give people encouragement when they hit those expectations. A lot of people don’t like their coach but they trust and respect that coach to make them a better player. And, in my opinion, that’s an even stronger bond.

Day seven is they have a bias toward action. I’m just going to say it really bluntly, I’ve met a lot of really dumb people who are not very intelligent who are billionaires. And the difference is they take action when other people are still thinking about it. So, a bias towards action is a fantastic competitive advantage.

Day eight is they do not choose to be confused. And this is something my business coach taught me years ago. I was thinking about a problem employee, and I was going over my problems with him and how I wanted to deal with it. And my coach said to me, he said, “Don, you are choosing to be confused.” I said, “What do you mean choosing to be confused?” He said, “Step outside yourself and look at the situation and clearly articulate what you need to do.” And, immediately, I said, “I need to fire him.” He said, “Don, you knew it the whole time. You were choosing to be confused because there’s something you don’t want to do. It’s obvious what you need to do. Stop choosing to be confused.” Isn’t that fantastic?

Pete Mockaitis
Well, yeah, I’m going to sit with that. Thank you.

Don Miller
I’ll tell you what, I choose to be very confused about whether a cup of ice cream is good before dinner. I mean, before breakfast. I mean, before going to bed. I choose to be confused about that all the time. The truth is it’s not, right?

So, day nine is be relentlessly optimistic. People who are relentlessly optimistic, they tend to try harder things and not give up when the challenge is greater than they expected. So, optimism actually means you fail more than the average person because you try harder things, but you get so delusional about the fact that you can do it that you keep trying and trying and trying, and you accomplish more than people who don’t try.

Day ten is from Carol Dweck, a professor at Stanford. And she says to us to have a growth mindset rather than a fixed mindset. And that is believe that you are a human being, always changing, transforming and getting better rather than somebody who is fixed. So, never say anything like, “I’m bad at math.” Really, the way you want to word that is, “I’ve not chosen to study math enough to get very good at it. But, of course, I’m capable of being good at math. I just haven’t chosen to study math.” That’s a fixed mindset, “I’m bad at math,” versus a growth mindset that says, “I’m perfectly capable of being great at math. I just haven’t chosen to study that very much.”

When somebody sees themselves through the growth lens, they tend to escalate in their skillsets much, much quicker than those who feel stuck like they were born bad at math. And she wrote a whole book on that, and it’s fascinating. It’s a fascinating study. In fact, I brought in a teacher for an entire day for my company just to teach everybody in the company a growth mindset. And we’d constantly say, “We don’t know how to do this but let’s all have a growth mindset.” And it’s led to an enormous success for us.

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

Don Miller
There was a guy, well, two guys, who delivered a bed to our house today. And they were in their early 20s, one of them had served in the military. As we talked to each other and I was helping with the bed, and we started telling each other stories and those kinds of things.

I said, “Hey, before you leave, can I just give you a copy of this book Business Made Simple?” And I said, “Listen, I don’t know your story about college, but I didn’t go to college. What I discovered though was a way of making money and being a value-driven professional that allowed me to go around the college system. And I wrote it all down in this book. In 60 days, you can be, whether you went to college or not, so much more valuable than almost anybody around you if you just understand and apply these principles.”

And they looked at me, and said, “Dude, this is amazing because we’ve just been approached by somebody who wants us to start a business with them by buying a warehouse and we would be delivery people and so on and so on.” I said, “That’s a great opportunity. Read this book. Take that opportunity. But let me tell you something. Learn that for about three or four years and then go buy your own warehouse because you need to own the business. That’s the key. And this book will teach you how to run that business, run your friend’s business, and run your own business someday.”

And I almost got choked up with tears in my eyes walking away because that was me. My first job was Popeyes Fried Chicken, my second job was delivering Chinese food, my third job was Kmart, my fourth job was Radio Shack. This is talking about somebody without a degree. And then somebody gave me a shot at a publishing company and I end up running that company and starting my own company.

If somebody would’ve handed me at Popeyes Fried Chicken, this book, I think it might’ve ignited my entrepreneurial imagination and maybe saved me about 15 years of running around not advancing in my career. It really is the hidden staircase. We’re all trying to climb the ladder but there’s a hidden staircase, and I think I’ve written it down in this book.

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

Don Miller
It’s from Victor Frankl. Are you familiar with Victor Frankl?

Pete Mockaitis
Mm-hmm.

Don Miller
He saved my life many years ago. About 12 years ago, I read Man’s Search for Meaning, and he saved my life. I’ve been working on a new project that won’t be out till later this year called “Hero on a Mission,” and my brain is stuck in that right now.

But what I love about Viktor Frankl is, and Sigmund Freud at the time Frankl was alive, was going around saying, “The dominant desire of men is to pursue pleasure.” And about the same time, Alfred Adler was going around, more or less interpreting Nietzsche, saying, “The dominant pursuit of men is the pursuit of power.” And Viktor Frankl came along and said, “In my opinion, you’re both wrong. I think the dominant pursuit of men is the pursuit of meaning. Women and men want to experience a deep sense of meaning. And when they can’t find meaning, they numb themselves with power and pleasure.” And I just thought, “That explains our culture.” We don’t have meaning and so we eat ice cream and watch Netflix and entertain ourselves and distract ourselves with social media because we don’t have meaning.

But what I love about Viktor Frankl is he actually gave us a prescription to experience meaning, and it’s existential. You don’t find it in a philosophy book. In fact, he says you can’t find meaning in a book. What you can find is a recipe that if you enact that recipe, that formula, it will give you meaning. And the first was find a product or a project that you can build, something that demands action, that takes your time. Find a community of people who care about you or also spend time in nature. In other words, become involved in something outside yourself, that attracts you and brings you out of yourself and into a reality that you’re not the only person on the planet.

And then the third was find a redemptive perspective for your suffering. And what he meant by that is no matter what sort of painful thing you go through, find something in that pain that’s actually benefiting you. So, maybe it’s humbling you, or maybe it’s making you more empathetic, or maybe it’s building muscle, emotional muscle or physical muscle, whatever it is. And if you do those three things, you’ll experience a deep sense of meaning.

And, lo and behold, about 12 years ago I read that book and started applying what he called logotherapy, a therapy of meaning to my life, and, truly, I have not woken up a single day without experiencing a deep sense of meaning. I’ve woken up really sad, I’ve woken up really tired, I’ve woken up really angry or frustrated, but never ever without a deep sense of meaning. And I am so grateful for his book. It’s been the most eye-opening helpful discovery in my life.

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful. Thank you. Now, could you share a favorite tool, something you use to be awesome at your job?

Don Miller
I actually created my own day planner, and you can get it for free. It’s at HeroOnAMission.com. And I fill up this planner every day and it helps me organize my mind and my time. It’s actually a reflective meditative exercise. I fill it every morning. And that has been the key to my productivity.

Another thing that I found unbelievably helpful was studying story and story structure. My favorite book on story structure, now it’s a 600-page book, typeface smaller than your Bible, is Christopher Booker’s The Seven Basic Plots. But, really, when you study story, you’re studying life, you’re studying what matters in life, and you’re asking yourself all sorts of questions about what kind of story, not what I want to write but what I want to actually live. And with Viktor Frankl, the study and the understanding of story structure has been a fantastic tool that helped me experience more meaning.

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

Don Miller
If you go to BusinessMadeSimple.com, you can read all about what we’re up to. And if you’re interested, go on Amazon and buy Business Made Simple. We’re not sure what they’re charging for it now but it should be about 20 bucks. You get the 60 videos, but if you forward your receipt from Amazon to this address, book@businessmadesimple.com, I’ll send you a free mini course that I created called Zero to Ten. And it’s five videos on how I took my company from zero to 10 million. It’s not as hard as you might think it is to do that but it’s really, really messy. And so, I hope you kind of make your way through the mess in that course. So, you just forward your receipt to book@businessmadesimple.com you get that free mini course.

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

Don Miller
There are four characters in a story normally. Four kinds of characters: hero, victim, villain, and guide. The hero wants something and overcomes challenges; the victim is helpless and exists in the story only to make the hero look good and the villain look bad, the victim doesn’t play any other part in the story; the villain is seeking vengeance; and the guide is the wise sage helping the hero win.

Now, here’s the challenge. Every day, those four characters exist in story because those four characters exist in you, and all four exist at the exact same time. On any given day, you can catch me playing the hero, the victim, the villain, or the guide. I am convinced that the more we identify as the hero or the guide, the better our life goes. And the more we identify as the victim or villain, the worse our life goes. So, if you want to control how your story ends up, spend more time being the hero, more time being the guide, less time being the victim, and less time being the villain, and things are going to go okay. So, the challenge is notice which character you are playing from hour to hour throughout the day.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Don, this has been a treat. I wish you lots of luck in business that you’re making simple, and life, and keep on rocking.

Don Miller
Well, thanks so much for the time. It really is an honor.