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Mindset Archives - Page 3 of 21 - How to be Awesome at Your Job

Nov 30
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919: How to Find Fulfillment, Drive Engagement, and Unlock Your Greatness with Sean Patton

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Sean Patton reveals his warrior mindset to help maximize your potential and performance.

You’ll Learn:

  1. How to get better at feeling grateful
  2. The root of every workplace failure–and how to overcome it
  3. The coaching approach that really works

About Sean

Sean Patton’s mission is to transform modern leadership into a driver of fulfillment, abundance, and freedom. He applied these principles while growing his own companies and now helps others unlock greatness through Stronger Leaders Stronger Profits, a leadership coaching and consulting company. Sean’s leadership foundation was forged as a US Army Airborne Ranger and Special Forces Green Beret Commander, where he earned the respect of his men and chain of command while operating in hostile and politically sensitive environments.

Resources Mentioned

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Sean Patton Interview Transcript

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

Sean Patton
Hey, Pete, I’m excited to be here, man.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, I’m excited to be chatting. Boy, you have such a rich body of experiences that I might classify as hardcore. Is that fair to say, Sean?

Sean Patton
Yeah, we can put it in that. We’ll put it in that section of the library if you want.

Pete Mockaitis
Army Ranger, Special Force, Green Beret, a Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu World Champion. That’s awesome. First, let’s talk about jiu-jitsu. That’s how Nick connected us, and Nick is quite the jiu-jitsu fan. He raves about it. Tell us, what do you love about it? And how does one get to be a champion?

Sean Patton
Well, there’s so many things I love about it. It’s interesting, jiu-jitsu is addictive. I tell people it takes about 90 days. In 90 days, you’re either going to hate it and never come back or you’re going to be in for life. And I think that jiu-jitsu actually fills a role that we don’t get filled in modern society, that’s very natural to us. We’re tribal creatures.

We’re designed to be in a group of like-minded people, with a common set of values, and a common purpose, and elders that teach us things, then we teach the people below us things, and we all believe the same things, we’re all going towards the same sort of mission, and we all have the same mindset. Like, that’s the environment we’re supposed to be in, and that’s obviously very different than the modern world we live in. It’s very individualistic and there’s conflict everywhere.

And so, in jiu-jitsu, everything in life is a filter. Jiu-jitsu is a good filter of people who want to come in and are willing to put themselves through hard things and be uncomfortable because they want to better themselves. And so, now everyone can call us around that, and it really becomes, like, a family and part of your identity. And, ultimately, because it’s so hard, it makes the rest of life easier.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes. Well, I do want to talk about hardness. So, tell us, we mission hardcore, that theme, like, yeah, each of those experiences – Army Ranger, Special Force, Green Beret commander, Jiu-Jitsu – sure do involve some discomfort physically and on other domains. Tell us, how do you and your compatriots endure this discomfort and pain regularly?

Sean Patton
I think it comes down to mindset and, more specifically, purpose. Like, I was a Special Forces combat diver so my second command was an underwater infiltration team of Green Berets, and I had to be in cold water, like, all the time. It was brutal. And there’s nothing worse in life than having to be wet and cold, and I had to be wet and cold so much.

So, that being said, I’m a complete baby now. I scuba dive. If it’s below 70 degrees, I’m not going in the water. If it’s the Pacific, count me out. I’ll hang on the beach. I’m a baby because there’s no purpose behind it. And when people struggle to, I think, overcome challenges, overcome apathy, overcome any sort of wear or friction it is in their lives, oftentimes it’s because they haven’t created enough value and the purpose and the reason behind it.

You might say, if you take, like, the mother with her kids, like, “Well, she wouldn’t harm a fly. She’s the nicest thing in the world.” Well, what if someone was after your kids? Well, then she’d be this big mama bear, she’d be crazy. So, we all are capable of greatness, we’re all capable of growth, we’re all capable of being these amazing individuals, and it’s just up to us to decide how we want to express that and what matters to us. Like, what’s worth suffering for and what’s not?

Pete Mockaitis
Can you tell us a story of you going through an experience, maybe it’s a training, maybe it’s a mission, in which you did have a whole lot of suffering but also a whole lot of purpose, and it worked out for you to persist?

Sean Patton
So, when I was in Afghanistan, we’re in the Afghan-Pakistan border, and we had in a bunch of nurses who had flown in to this rural area because, well, there’s no female doctors in Afghanistan because they can’t go to med school, like there are barely even midwives, and so there’s no medical training, and men can’t touch women. So, what that means is women have zero healthcare. There’s no one to serve them.

And so, just coming in and doing sort of routine medical care and treatment can be a huge boost for our mission there for the community. So, we flew them in and did a whole female-women’s seminar, health seminar. And then, as they were flying out, we were in an area that had a group called Haqqani, which Haqqani is like the extreme, the guys who are too extreme for the Taliban they go to Haqqani, and they were in our area, and they didn’t like the fact that we were helping women get healthcare.

And so, they had a recoilless rifle, and they tried to shoot down, almost did shoot down this helicopter full of all the nurses. And as soon as that went off, obviously, we have to respond. So, we immediately hit everyone out, and before they could break down their positions and drove out there, they were up on the mountains, we’re at between 8,000 and 10,000 feet above sea level with all our gear on. We ran up to the side of the mountain, and then we get into a firefight around between six and 900 meters. It’s a pretty far engagement but we were under consistent fire.

It was a tough firefight but the weapon they had used to almost shoot down the helicopter, we know we had to destroy. Like, we had to destroy that weapon, that recoilless rifle, because that’s something that can kill one of our tanks, that can take down a helicopter. We couldn’t let them break this thing down and take it back to Pakistan.

And so, we got in this firefight. I remember one of the crazier stories is as we’re shooting and they’re shooting back, and we have these grenades that go in grenade launchers, and we needed to, I needed to get those to the people that could shoot them. So, I’m running up and down the line, grabbing grenades from certain people and giving them to people who can shoot them. And as I’m running, I keep getting in the face with these evergreen trees, like the branches keep smacking me, smacking me in the face.

And I remember thinking, like, “What a time to be a klutz! Like, what a time. Like, come on, Sean, get it together. I know this is crazy. Things went fast. Like, you keep running into trees.” And then when I jumped behind a rock, and bullets were going around, and I realized, as I was next to one of my guys, that that was actually machine guy fire cutting down branches around me, and the branches were falling on top of me as I ran from position to position.

But that being said, we still had to get these grenades to other people, and we had to stay there until we could get air support and drop a bomb, and we couldn’t let them go. So, we were in this thing, the firefight, for four or five hours, and we had to keep them engaged so that they couldn’t withdraw. And, eventually, we were able to call in air support and drop bombs and take care of that.

But that was a mentally and physically exhausting mission that lasted almost a full day, but you get through it because, almost to come back to this, the purpose was so great. That’s the thing about the military. Is the juice worth the squeeze? Well, when it comes to defending a helicopter full of nurses trying to do their job in area where people are trying to stop them, and people trying to kill your friends and your compatriots, then you’re willing to do about anything.

Pete Mockaitis
Absolutely. Well, that’s powerful. Thank you. And so then, let’s make it a little bit more mundane, I suppose.

Sean Patton
Less hardcore. Down the hardcore.

Pete Mockaitis
But in the world of jiu-jitsu, so there’s discomfort there. So, what’s your purpose there that keeps you persisting to the point of becoming a champion?

Sean Patton
A few things. One, I was one of the owners of a jiu-jitsu gym and one of the instructors at the time we started up. So, there’s a leadership aspect, a leadership by example aspect that went into play, especially when I was training up for world. And I had this drive, I had gone through a really hard time. My first business had failed. I had gone from Green Beret commander, to having my first business fail and going through a bankruptcy three years later, to finding new partners and standing up, and growing a company.

And when I was specifically training for those tournaments, I feel like I had to get back to being my sort of warrior self, like I needed to prove it to myself, I needed to also set the example that it wasn’t about going out and actually winning, though that was the goal, but it was about showing the other members of the team and creating a culture where we work hard and we put ourselves out there in difficult situations, we put ourselves into stressful situations because we want to be the best, because we want to prove something to ourselves, because we want to do it for our team.

And so, that was a big driver for me during that time frame because, again, it was a hard time from a personal standpoint of my life. And so, I really dedicated all the time and effort, and said, “You don’t control outcome in life.” We don’t control whether we win, whether we lose. All we control is our process and our preparation. And so, I just try to do all those things right and lead by example, and it worked out.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Beautiful. Well, so, yeah, let’s hear about this Warrior’s Mindset, that’s the name of your book. What’s the mindset and what’s the big message in the book?

Sean Patton
Absolutely. So, I went with the Warrior’s Mindset, which is maybe a little, I don’t know, off-putting, it’s a little hardcore. You said hardcore. It’s a little intense for some people but how I define a warrior is a warrior is someone who fights for a noble cause greater than himself, and I don’t mean just physically fight. It’s, like, pursues, persists for a noble cause greater than himself.

And when you define it that way, then it becomes binary, so you either have a noble purpose, a noble cause, something that’s bigger than yourself that you’re working towards, that you’re fighting for, that you believe in, or you don’t. It’s one or the other. And if you don’t, which is if we’re not intentional with our lives and we don’t set purpose, if we don’t get to know ourselves, we’re just going through the motions, and you will consciously and subconsciously make decisions that are based on, “What is going to cause me the least discomfort in the moment?”

It’s going to be a very shortsighted decision-making. It’s going to be about comfort. It’s going to be about apathy. It’s going to be, like, “Well, that feels stressful.” But, again, if you don’t have that purpose behind it, you will turn it down. And I just think that, of those two, having that warrior’s mindset and having a noble purpose, aligns with our genetic purpose and aligns with who we are as human beings, and is the path to fulfillment.

And I think the other way is a path to misery, anxiety, depression, and everything else because you lack that noble purpose. So, that’s why I use the term A Warrior’s Mindset and what I ended up doing was researching and taking my own experiences, research, there’s over 300 citations in this book, everything from neuroscience, psychology, sociology, to history, to whittle down, and say, “How small can I make the framework to achieve that?”

Because it’s one thing to say, “Have a warrior’s mindset. Go fight for a noble cause. Do all these great things,” and then they ask the question, “Awesome. How?” And so, I really set out to create as simple a framework as I could but not miss anything critical to have a system, a framework that you could work through for your own mindset that really maximize your greatness. And so, I came up with a guide called Six Keys to Greatness.

Pete Mockaitis
And could you give us some examples of noble purposes that folks can really seem to connect and engage with in their work lives?

Sean Patton
Yeah, absolutely. So, I work with a lot of companies as a leadership coach and consultant, and I’m a firm believer in a leadership culture creating fulfillment. And so, I believe in purpose alignment. Managers are worried about financial incentive alignment, which is important. I’m not saying it’s not important but money is a satisfier, it’s not a driver. And if you can get yourself and getting people on your team aligned with, “What is the larger goal of this company?” your company should exist to provide some sort of effect to better people’s lives in the world.

And so, if you can really align that purpose in your work life, you can say, “Well, personally, here’s my beliefs. I think people should, in any industry, have better access to information, and we should support mothers doing home school. And I believe that we shouldn’t censor information to help that growth,” or something like that, as an example.

Well, if that aligns with your values and your purpose, now you can find a reason outside of the transactional paycheck to work every day, and how much better. I believe everyone should – this sounds crazy in some people’s corporate worlds – you should look forward to one-on-ones with your manager, like you should look forward to having performance evaluations and counseling sessions with the people that you work for and people that you work with.

I feel like we spend so much time at work in our work lives, more and more people are, and the pandemic just accelerated this mindset of, “We want purpose in the work we do. We want fulfillment in the work we do.” And I think if you do leadership the right way, I’m a true believer that you can create both fulfillment and profitability. Those things are not mutually exclusive.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Cool. Could you, while we’re on the topic, give us a few more examples of folks you’ve seen they’ve got a purpose that’s aligning with their work, job, career, purpose, and then fireworks are happening?

Sean Patton
Yeah, absolutely. So, I’m trying to think which client example. So, I have one client I’m working with currently who had a successful company, it was a title company, he had 29 employees, doing very well for himself, but there was no passion behind it. He was just going through the motions and didn’t feel like he was living up to his potential, feel like he had sort of plateaued out for himself. And what he really wanted to do was create a vertically integrated real estate company.

And so, we sat down and we looked at, “Well, why do you want to do that?” “Well, I want to have freedom. I’ve got kids that are going to go to college. I want to be able to travel. My wife and I finally can go out and travel on our own, so I want to be able to have freedom of movement. I want to be challenged. I want to grow.”

And he also had this noble purpose of, a firm believer that for most people, especially people, normal middle-class folks that home ownership was a path to financial stability in life, and he really believed that. And so, he wanted to set up a company, everything from property management of rentals to construction, to real estate selling and title work with the idea of getting people who wanted to own a home but didn’t have the credit or do the background to do it, and then setting them up with rental situations that were stable so that they could stay there longer and then help them get to a point where they could buy their first home, and then they could hopefully buy it from him.

So, it was both profit and purpose together, and we came up with that plan slightly over a year ago, and I’m excited to see what he’s doing now. He’s got all four stood up, they’re all bringing in revenue, and he’s already got a team underneath him. And you can just see the drive and the excitement in the work he’s doing because he believes in it and he’s challenging himself.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s awesome. All right. Well, working through The Warrior’s Mindset, you’ve got six keys to greatness. Can you lay it on us what are each of the keys? And any pro tips for getting them unlocking stuff for us?

Sean Patton
Absolutely. So, the six keys are perspective and gratitude, is number one; internal locus of control is number two; north star purpose is three; self-discipline; perseverance; and leadership. So, I’ll give you the brief overview of each, and it has to start with the perspective of yourself. Do you have this warrior’s mindset or not? Are you trying to maximize your experience of life, maximize your impact on others or not? What are your values? So, what’s your perspective around that?

And then, hopefully from that, it becomes gratitude. I see gratitude as the eternal fuel source for everything else. Like, if I’m getting frustrated, if I’m feeling confused of my life, from having relationships, whatever that can be that’s going in my life that I’m struggling with mentally, I can always come back to expanding my aperture and show gratitude for, like, how lucky we are, how lucky are we to be in this country, how lucky are we to be at this time.

Like, there’s never been a time in the history of mankind of probably trillions, billions and billions of humans that have ever existed over the last few hundred thousand years, how many have had air conditioning. Like, how many have been in some sort of democracy where they had basic rights and freedoms? How many had a car that can drive them wherever they want to go and talk to people, like we’re talking now, across spans of time, and have information at their fingertips? Like, almost none of them. Basically, none of them.

The life we have, if you really think about it, should fill you with so much gratitude that it can get you over humps and drive you when you’re feeling. So, gratitude is the baseline for everything, I think, and that really takes work. And you can do gratitude journaling, you can do mindset work, you can do meditation. You can do a lot of things. But if someone’s listening to this podcast right now, I guarantee you, you’re in the 10% wealthiest people on the planet. Like, if you’re listening to this podcast, you are.

You are in the top 10%. And let’s embrace and celebrate that, not get apathetic to it, but use it as fuel to achieve our true greatness.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes, that is powerful – gratitude, eternal fuel. I’m intrigued. It is true, objectively speaking, we’re super blessed. When you zoom out, I like that notion, the wide aperture. We zoom out in terms of time and place, it is just a fact that we are exceptionally blessed and lucky, and yet it often doesn’t feel that way. And so, I like what you said, we should feel grateful, and it takes work. Can you expand on that? It seems like we humans have a knack for having our expectations rise so fast.

One of my favorite stories here is I remember, once I was coordinating a conference. This was back in college. I was coordinating a conference, and I thought, “You know what, I’m really going to delight.” I had a team of maybe 58, I still remember this. It was on my resume for a long time. I had a team of 58 people on my staff volunteering, my fellow students. And so, I thought, “You know what, I’m going to treat them. I’m going to,” to their surprise, this hadn’t been done in years past, I thought, “Right. We’re doing great, the budget is cool, so I’m going to get everyone a nice little spread of bagels and cream cheeses from Panera one morning.”

And so, I did, and they were thrilled, like, “Oh, this is so cool. Thanks. Awesome. I was hungry, I didn’t know what I was going to do,” and I thought, “Oh, yes.” And so, it felt good to be liked and appreciated, and that it was a hit, a surprise accomplished. And so then, it was a very hectic day, we were taking care of a lot of things.

I was tired, and I was thinking, “Oh, wow, we’ve got a bunch of bagels leftover. Okay, that’s fine. I guess we’ll be all set for tomorrow. Great. I don’t have to do anything because I want to go to bed now. it’s been a crazy long day.” And so, the next day, they said, “So, Pete, are there bagels this morning?” And I said, “Oh, yeah, actually we’ve got a ton leftover. They’re just right over there.” They said, “But they’re not fresh.” And I just loved it.

I was like, “In all the years past, we’ve done this event, there were not bagels. Yesterday was the coolest thing ever. Today we still have those bagels, and they’re almost as good. They’re not, like, two-week old bagels. Like, one day.” I’m no connoisseur, Sean.

Sean Patton
You’re no bagel connoisseur?

Pete Mockaitis
I’m not too picky with my food but I was like, “Okay, I know one-day old bagels aren’t as great as super fresh bagels, but that’s still not bad.” And so, it was just like one day is all it took from, “This is so grand” to “Aargh, they’re not fresh, and I’m disappointed.” And I think that that is representative of me and many of us in terms of something cool happens, we feel so blessed, so grateful, “Oh, my gosh, this is awesome. I got a big promotion, big jump in income. Cool, cool, cool.”

And it’s like, “Oh, now, what do you know? It’s so hard to make ends meet. How did that happen?” It’s sort of like our lifestyle, or our wants, or perceived needs, expectations grow such that we don’t feel the gratitude associated with, “Oh, wow, what I have is oh-so-abundant.” So, Sean, I want to throw that to you. You said we should feel grateful, and it takes some work. What’s going on with this human nature? And what can we do about it?

Sean Patton
Well, Buddhism says that being human is to suffer, and the real suffering comes from, I think you said it, expectation. And so, when there’s an incongruence or a difference between what our life is and what we may want, that wanting is what’s covering, is what’s causing the suffering. It’s not external. It’s inside our own heads.

Pete Mockaitis
Dukkha.

Sean Patton
Right, dukkha. Exactly, yeah. And we don’t have to go all spiritual on this, but I think that’s part of human nature as you get accustomed to that. I have this story, another story, it’s when I just got back from Iraq, I’ve been gone for 14 months in southwest Baghdad. And I get back, I was young, I was 25, and I was excited I got to go to Starbucks. I was super stoked, like, “Oh, my gosh. I go to Starbucks.”

I get in line, and I’m waiting there, and there’s just two girls in front of me, and they’re having this conversation. Somebody said something about…Oh, no, what it was it was the fall, it was October and they ran out of pumpkin spice.

Pete Mockaitis
“I need my PSL, Sean. I totes need it.”

Sean Patton
They needed it, and they lost their minds. And one was like, “This is the worst day ever.” And I just had to cover my head and walk out after I’m like, again, objectively, you should feel grateful but they had this expectation and this quality of life. And to kind of go back to our earlier conversation about jiu-jitsu, we’re about just doing hard things, like, it’s easy. To be comfortable in America, like, let’s be honest, is it the perfect place? We have a lot of things we need to change, absolutely.

But to be comfortable? Like, it’s not that hard. You don’t have to do much. And because of all that comfort and the reward, and whether it’s social media, we feed that machine of getting gratification, of getting pleasure without putting in work, and then that becomes an expectation. And that’s a dopamine cycle that is at the root of all addiction. And we get addicted to the easy dopamine and that easy win.

And so, yeah, we have to do that work. And that’s why you have to be intentional about that gratitude. Are you going to be perfect? No. I do it all the time. It’s not, like, I’m walking around floating on a cloud with fairies over my head, and just like rainbows everywhere. Like, that’s not the case. I go through hard times, and everyone does, but it’s doing work so that when you have enough self-awareness to see yourself going down that path, and you can redirect and pull yourself out with intentionality.

And I think that’s really what it comes down to, is living intentionally. Because if you let yourself, again, that’s really the definition of a warrior’s mindset, living with intention toward this bigger goal, as opposed to being reactive to your environment, and just like, “Well, I feel awful, therefore, everything is awful.” Like, does it or do you just feel awful because you wanted your PSL, and now you can’t, and, really, you could get something else and be fine? Like, that’s a matter of perspective but that takes intentionality.

Pete Mockaitis
And so, these practices, can you share with us, let’s say, in the moment? Because I’ve done some gratitude journals, and sometimes when I write down the thing that I’m grateful for, it’s like, “Yeah, that really was so amazing, and I feel in my heart a grand sense of gratitude.” And other times, it’s like, “Yup, that was good, and that was good, and that was good,” but I don’t feel much of anything, and I’m just objectively, “Yes, that was a good thing. I am pleased that that occurred,” but my heartfelt gratitude is not ignited. What do I do with that?

Sean Patton
Yeah, I know, you’re totally right. And I think it really also comes down to, like, present-ness and sort of being in the now of it, which is part of internal locus of control, which is like an attribution of control, “Is it external or is it internal?” And so, that comes into play here, like saying, “Well, ultimately, how you feel is up to you. It’s inside you. You own this.”

And so, when you are working through that gratitude, if you can be present and not thinking about, “Well, the things I don’t have or where I want to be, or what’s going to happen in 10 minutes,” but, like, “But are you okay right now?” Breath. Slow down. And it sounds super cliché, but you don’t have to do a formal journal. Like, count your blessings. Like, how good is it right now for you compared to how bad it is other places? And I would just say do more research about what’s going on in the world.

If you want to feel lucky, like go read the news for a day, and you’ll be like, “Oh, my God, my life isn’t anything like these.” It’s almost like I hear people talk about they watch trashy reality or something because it makes them feel better about their own lives because it’s so crazy and dramatic. And so, whatever it takes, I don’t know, I guess if it’s “Real Housewives” or if it’s breath work or gratitude journaling, whatever it takes for you to get to that place.

And, again, you’re going to get off-kilter, you’re going to feel bad, and it’s okay to feel bad in the moment, that’s fine. We’re not worried about the acute feelings of, like, sadness and happiness in the moment. We’re worried about the underlying mental state that you’re carrying around.

Pete Mockaitis
So, your advice then is if I’m doing a gratitude journal, but, one, if it never does it for me, just maybe try something else. But if I am doing it, and it sometimes works for me, I’m seeking to double down on experiencing the feeling of gratitude. Is that accurate?

Sean Patton
Yes, double down on the experiencing gratitude. I’m a meditator. I actually don’t journal. There’s always different techniques, and some things work for some people, some things work for others. For me, meditation has been huge for me in my own mindset shifts and even the transition in the military, and everything.

And a simple gratitude meditation of if you’re really starting to go off the deep end, like sitting down, following your breath, and then just picture in your head things that – your family, or your friends, or the things you have, or the house you have, or the job you have, or the security you have – and reflecting on that, and experiencing that gratitude in the moment, because as soon as we ruminate on the future, that creates anxiety. Why? Because you can’t control the future.

And if we reflect on the past too much, if we ruminate on the past, it creates depression and regret because you can’t change the past. But, luckily for us, neither one of those things are real. The only thing that’s real is the moment. And so, working on your perspective and gratitude, internal locus of control, and doing things that bring you in this moment, my guess is you’re doing pretty good compared to others. That doesn’t mean you have to feel great awful things happen to people.

You should feel emotion. But, again, we’re not worried about, “This thing is happening so I feel bad.” That’s okay. But it’s about living unconsciously and not even being aware that you’re doing it.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s good. Thank you. Well, tell us then, your organization Stronger Leaders, Stronger Profits, you do leadership coaching and consulting. We talked, we had a quick overview of the keys, and then a deeper dive into gratitude. Can you share with us, when we look at a whole team or organization level, how do you see things shake out in terms of being the primary drivers of, say, poor versus amazing engagement?

Sean Patton
That’s a great question. The two things, the two Cs, if you will, if you had to say, “What’s the quickest win?” or, “What’s the one thing?” If I had to say, “You’ve got a snapshot, two minutes to look over this company, and figure out how are things going,” I would look at two things – communication and counselling.

How are your communication systems? Are they clear? Is it accurately spreading information down? Is there a system to get feedback to come up? When someone gives feedback, do they get a response? Like, how is your communication? And I think looking at that system first, that fixes so much. Most of your listeners, I’m sure, can, when I think about how to be awesome at your job, and when their job is awesome and when it’s not awesome.

When your job is not awesome, or something goes wrong, communication, or a lack thereof, or a misaligned expectation because of communication, communication is either the primary cause or a strong contributor to almost every business failure. There’s very rarely where I say, “Hey, Pete, here’s a task. I need you to finish this project by the end of the week,” and you get to Thursday, and you’re like, “Eh, screw Sean. Like, whatever. Screw that, I don’t really care,” and you just fail on purpose. I’m not saying it doesn’t happen, but those are pretty easy to identify if that’s happened.

So, if that’s not the case, if you were going to assume good intent, that you’re trying to do the right thing, well, then we must’ve had misaligned expectations. What you thought was done and good is not what I thought was done and good. And so, I do have one sort of framework around effective communication when you want to ask someone to do something, or give someone a task, or whatever, without missing anything. And I call it the Five Bravo.

So, it’s task, what do you want done; purpose, why do you want it done, how does it affect other people; intent, and that’s the how, like if there’s a certain way I want you to do it, is there a resource I’m going to give you, like are you going to have a team to do this, what’s your intent behind it; and then timeline, when do you need this done by, what are your for dates and end state. So, when you’re done, you come back, and you say, “Hey, Sean, I did that report for you. Here it is,” what’s that look like to me, what’s my expectation?

So, if you just go through that task, purpose, intent, timeline, end state, if you just cover all five of those when ask someone to do something or put something in an email, and then the B for bravo is back brief. So, especially if I gave that to you, “What questions do you have?” and I say, “All right. So, Pete, I probably missed something, like that’s a lot of information. What do you have? What did you hear from me?” And then you repeat it back to me.

Seventy percent of the time, you’re going to be missing something, and that may be because you missed it or maybe because I thought I said it because it was in my head but I didn’t actually say it, like all those things happen but it can be cleared up with a simple framework of the Five Bravo. And I’ve had clients take their project request forms between divisions and actually change their forms to be that layout.

Because if you communicate effectively that way, then when someone doesn’t meet expectation, well, the decision is binary. It’s binary. Then you have, which is only one of two things, it’s either they’re not capable of doing this yet, so they need more training, or they have had the training and they’re uncapable, unwilling to perform what you need them to perform, in which case, they need to do a different role and leave the organization. You can start making that determination.

But what happens most often in organizations is there was a fault on poor communication from the person giving or asking that to be done, there was misaligned expectations of what their expectation coming back was, and there’s a blame on the person for not executing the way, and not having the end state that they desired, but it was due to a poor communication.

So, this happens companies, too. If something goes wrong, the first thing I do before is think, “Did I give them the Five Bravo? Did I give them all five?” And if I didn’t, that’s on me. I can’t hold them accountable for that. It’s my responsibility to get better at communicating. But if I did, now I can take action. And so, communication is so important. And the second thing is counselling, which we can talk about in a second if you want.

Pete Mockaitis
And so then, I think we know it when a communication failure went down in the moment. How do you assess the overall health of communication in a team or an organization?

Sean Patton
So, there are several ways. One, doing a good assessment and coming in and hearing from people how they feel about the communication. Are they heard? Do they have the means to give feedback? Do they understand the why behind what they’re doing? Do they understand where the company is headed and what they do? Is the mission and values and vision communicated all the way to the bottom? Do people know?

You can simply ask, “What’s your role here? What do you do?” They should be able to walk that all the way up to how the company executes its strategic initiatives. And if they can’t, you know there’s a lack of communication. But your question actually brings me to a huge part, which they’re intertwined, is counseling, which is the second thing.

And I see almost no one does this as well as they should, and it’s the number one thing that would improve the culture of any organization and team. And it also facilitates this type of communication, where instead of doing performance evaluations, that’s very transactional, again, that’s management. Like, “You had these tasks. Did you do them or not? How did you do them? Did you do them okay? Where are you at in this?”

That’s fine. I’m not saying not to do that. But if that’s all you do, you’re really setting yourself up for failure, especially in the modern workplace, especially if they’re remote and hybrid workers. If you take a developmental counseling approach, where we meet monthly, quarterly, and we’re talking about we’re not just managing the position but we’re leading the person.

We’re talking to the person, “Personally, what are your goals this quarter? Did you accomplish them? Did I do everything I said I would do to support you? What’s your goals in the future? How can I help you get there? What are your professional goals? What are your team goals? And what are those objectives? And how can I support you do that? And what are you struggling with? And here’s where I see you going? Here’s your career progression.”

Like, that’s a coaching mentality and that leader mentality of creating new human potential by changing the way people think about themselves, the organization and the world, versus management, which is efficiency of a system. And so, when you shift to a leadership culture and you shift to communication and development of human beings, being a core competency of your business, that’ll turn around almost any company.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And so, in most organizations, are these conversations just not happening very often? Or, what’s the piece that’s lacking?

Sean Patton
Yeah, there’s no formal construct to have this type of leader conversations, and so you have some people that are having them, and others that are checking the box. I guess we don’t want to piss off too many people the way they do things, but I see a lot of companies where we’ll go in, and, say, HR sends you a performance eval for your annual performance eval, you fill it out of how you think you did, that gets sent to somewhere or something, and then somebody talks to you about it, and maybe they talk about how that affects your bonus or where you’re looking to go next, and that’s about the end of it, “Do better here. Don’t do this.”

Like, that is such a different mentality than saying, “Hey, Pete, here’s the role, the function you play here. Why are you here? Like, why are you doing this job? Are you money-motivated? Cool, let’s talk about that.” Sometimes you talk to, like, a seller, this actually happened at my wife’s company. She was having some issues with one of her sellers. She’s a senior sales manager. And when she talked to him, yes, he’s money-motivated but this wasn’t his passion. His goal was to open up his own business. And in order to do that, he had figured out that he would need $200,000. Okay.

So, instead of her assuming that he wants to hit goal to make money, to move up in the sales organization, instead of that being the expectation, he was very clear, like, “No, my goal is to actually leave the organization and do my own thing. I see 200K.” “Cool. Well, let’s align your purpose with company purpose. How fast can we get you to 200K? How do I need to support you?” And now that person is motivated, even though they’re doing the same job they were doing before. But before, they hadn’t framed it as, “Let’s get you out of this company as soon as possible and onto the next thing.”

And so, having a formal system to have leadership conversations at a regular interval that is written out, that people are accountable for, is huge. When I was counseled in the military, we do counseling like this in the military, and it’s a big part of the leadership equation, and I can’t tell you, I had hundreds of counseling sessions. I can tell you a handful of specific moments or things that I still remember that’s still impactful.

But I can definitely tell the commanders that took the time out to actually do it and the ones who skipped over it and penciled with it, like cared enough to develop me and have that conversation about how they could support me, and where I wanted to go, and give me honest feedback on that as a human being, not just in, “Here’s your performance metrics and KPIs,” and that human component is really where we get from management to leadership.

And with the way the world is heading with our workforce, people don’t want to just be managed. And it used to be if I had a bad manager at my job, it’s like, “Well, yeah, Bob kind of sucks but I got another job offer, but I got to move the house, and the kids are in soccer, and the change cost is so high.” But with remote hybrid workers now, the only thing that changes if I changed jobs is, “What software do I log in tomorrow?” So, that’s a different set of conditions, work conditions that companies are not adapting to. They’re not realizing that 75% of the reason people leave jobs is because of bad bosses, not bad jobs.

And so, if you get this right, it increases retention, internal hires, employee engagement, all those things. And we’re right back to your company can create fulfillment and profitability together.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. That’s good. So, counseling frequently. Is there a magic frequency – weekly, monthly? What’s the vibe?

Sean Patton
Depending on the position, whether you need to do weekly one-on-ones or not, some positions, I think, you do, some you don’t. Lower-level people generally need more weekly one-on-ones and check-ins and handholding right, like more entry-level folks as oppose to more senior folks don’t need that as much. But I think the magic sauce, what we espouse and we help our clients with, is that we do a written form every quarter that lays out the next three months, and then you adapt off that same form and you meet monthly. So, monthly counseling but you’re filling out a full new form on goals and objectives once every quarter.

Pete Mockaitis
Fun. All right. Well, now, could you tell me a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Sean Patton
My favorite quote is actually by George Bernard Shaw, it’s the unreasonable man quote, and it’s that “The reasonable man sees the world the way it is and adapts himself to it, and the unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to him, and, therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”

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

Sean Patton
The quintessential one for me, it’s funny, because of all the different research and stuff I looked at is still the Harvard happiness study. An 80-year study that started in the 1930s that tried to determine what are the variables that affect joy and fulfillment in life, and they’re on the second generations. So, they did it with their first subject all the way through their deathbed, then the second generation. And they, recently, just last year, revised their latest findings.

And it’s just clear that it’s not socioeconomic status, it’s not race, sex, any things that really are universally responsible for fulfillment and joy in life, and it’s absolutely the quality of your close relationships. And I think that is a really powerful thing because if you talk about motivators for different people, to get over those hard challenges like we talked about at the beginning of this episode, my nightmare is being in older age and having regret about something in my life, about something I didn’t do, and not having the time or energy to do anything about it.

And there’s actually studies that have been done that show that 70-75% of all seniors live with the regret because they lived the way someone else thought they should, or because of societal norms, or because they thought it was just the right thing to do, and they didn’t go live their life the way they wanted to, and they didn’t maintain the quality close relationships. So, that’s my worst nightmare. That’s what drives me at the end of the day, is I think that when I’m one day laying in my bed, getting ready to close my eyes for the last time, I can look back at my life, and be like, “I freaking did it, and it was awesome.”

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful. And a favorite book?

Sean Patton
My favorite book right now is an older book but it’s The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership and I’m really getting more and more into conscious leadership right now, and some of the practices around that, and how I can implement that in my systems. Yeah, so that’s one that I’m a huge proponent of. But before that, I read Life of Joy it’s with the Dalai Lama and Desmond Tutu who talked about how you create joy in life. I would say those two books in the last year have been two that really hit me hard.

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

Sean Patton
Another great question. I know this is the hot topic of the day, but I use a paid service called Jasper for my AI. And it sped up our workflows in so many ways because I’ve been able to come up with my original concept or framework. So, you can put your own original thought in but you can just put in bullet format and it can write you an 80% solution, and it can create captions. So, I’m fully in on using AI, generative AI, in our day-to-day to make our jobs more productive and easier.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite habit?

Sean Patton
My favorite habit is, I’m going to sound so boring though, I’m going to sound boring to say this, but that’s fine, but I am all about my nighttime routine and the same times, going to bed at the same times and waking up at the same times. And so, one thing my wife and I do is, like, she’s even more into the sleep stuff than I am. She’s like Spy Kids, she’s got like a Whoop on one arm and an Apple Watch on the other, she’s like all the bio data she can get.

But we have half our lights in our house set so that at 8:00 p.m. we only have red lights from down all the way to our bedrooms to our bathroom. So, we take away all that light exposure, and that habit, that itself, whether it’s the blue light or whether it’s just a Pavlovian response to the fact of the red light, but as soon as the red lights come on, I get sleepy and I have a great rest. So, I’m really big on my night routine and going to bed at the same time and waking up at the same time.

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

Sean Patton
I think one thing I often say is that there’s an obligation of greatness. If I truly believe that, again, we are living at such an amazing time, we’re in this country, we have so much potential to do so much good, to be great. Almost everyone that’s listening, like you have the potential to be great in however you define that in your life, you have greatness inside you, and your potential for that, and the opportunity for it.

But I’m a firm believer that, with the potential for greatness, comes an inherent obligation to achieve it. So, now that’s a chip on your shoulder because, otherwise, that’s the unmet potential is not being grateful for the opportunities you’ve been given.

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

Sean Patton
So, I’m SeanPattonSpeaks on Instagram. I’m on LinkedIn. Those are my primary social tools. And then our website is StrongerLeadersStrongerProfits.com.

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

Sean Patton
I think it’s to evaluate inside of their company whether they are managing the position or whether they’re leading the person, and lean into leading the person and leading the person with intentionality. And I think you’ll see some great results not just in the company’s success but in quality of life.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Sean, this has been a treat. I wish you much fun and warrior mindset goodness.

Sean Patton
Thanks, Pete. This has been awesome. I appreciate it, man. You do great work here.

Oct 30
0

911: Making Uncertainty your Friend with Maggie Jackson

By | Podcasts | No Comments

 

Maggie Jackson talks about the power of uncertainty and how to harness it.

You’ll Learn:

  1. How uncertainty enhances learning
  2. How to manage the fear of uncertainty
  3. How routine can hold us back

About Maggie

Maggie Jackson is an award-winning author and journalist. Her new book, Uncertain: The Wisdom and Wonder of Being Unsure (Nov. 2023) explores why we should paradoxically seek not-knowing in times of flux. The book’s been nominated for a National Book Award, Uncertain is a Next Big Idea Club “must read.” Jackson’s prior book, Distracted (2nd ed., 2018), sparked a global conversation on the steep costs of fragmenting our attention and won the 2020 Dorothy Lee Award. A former Boston Globe columnist, Jackson has written for the New York Times and other publications worldwide. Her work has been covered extensively in the global press.

Resources Mentioned

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Maggie Jackson Interview Transcript

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

Maggie Jackson
Oh, wonderful to be with you, Pete.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m excited to hear about your wisdom you’ve put forth in your book, Uncertain: The Wisdom and Wonder of Being Unsure. But first, I need to hear about you swimming in the Atlantic Ocean almost every day. What’s the story here?

Maggie Jackson
Well, it’s a pandemic story. I used to be a pool swimmer, and I’ve increasingly loved swimming the older I’ve gotten. And then I moved out to the countryside in Rhode Island from New York City during the pandemic, and got kind of really into swimming all the time in the ocean, increasingly in the fall, and then all winter, and spring. I absolutely love it. Being there at dawn, it’s beautiful and feels a whole exercise you can’t beat.

But then it’s sort of interesting because it also offers a great deal, kind of a daily dose of uncertainty. So, I finally began to realize that part of the joy and the daunting nature of what I’m doing is that swimming is never the same twice. When you’re open water, four seasons swimming, it’s never the same twice. So, it’s a great little lesson in uncertainty.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s cool. That’s cool. And I have recently been getting into cold water immersion. Fun things. And I’m thinking, wow, fall and winter, you’re getting that in spades. You know what the temperature in the water is like during these times?

Maggie Jackson
Oh, yes. Yes, we all keep track of the temperature quite carefully because I do wear some gear, so I adjust my gear. But the temperature is about the low is 36 Fahrenheit.

Pete Mockaitis
All right.

Maggie Jackson
And a lot depends on it could be 20 Fahrenheit in air, and it can be the wind, and then you can be in the snow. It’s all really beautiful and it’s just so much fun. And they’re now doing studies, trying to augment people’s kind of understanding or capability with uncertainty in order to boost resilience. So, we could talk about that. But that, I feel as though, I’ve gained resilience by doing this.

Pete Mockaitis
And so, is it your experience, as it is mine, that just the sheer cold alone is invigorating and mood-boosting over the long term?

Maggie Jackson
Exactly. I find that the colder it is, the more joyful it is. The deep dark winter when my little band of swimmers is going at it, we’re actually laughing out loud and sort of hooting and hollering, and I find that the summer is beautiful, it’s relaxing, it’s wonderful, but it’s not quite as exhilarating. So, it completely represents what we might call good stress.

Pete Mockaitis
Lovely. Well, now let’s hear a little bit about uncertainty in your book Uncertain: The Wisdom and Wonder of Being Unsure. Have you encountered any particularly surprising, or extra-fascinating, or counterintuitive discoveries about us humans and uncertainty while putting this together?

Maggie Jackson
Sure. A long list of surprising discoveries related to uncertainty. We mostly think of uncertainty as being, what psychologists call aversive. We don’t like it. Humans don’t like it. And there’s a reason for that. We’re naturally made to survive by getting answers. Like, we can’t exist in the state of not knowing. However, it’s really interesting because when humans encounter something new, it might be your first day at the job, it might be a six-month roadblock on your highway and you got to adjust, you actually undergo all of these kinds of stress changes in your body.

You might sweat a little, your heart might race, but at the same time, there are changes in the brain that are extremely beneficial when you are in this uncertain, this unsettling state of uncertainty. Actually, your working memory is bolstered, your focus broadens, the brain is more receptive to new information, so you’re basically on your toes. So, what seems unsettling and sort of this uncertainty that we dislike is actually priming us to be able to learn.

So, as one neuroscientist told me, “When you’re in that moment of so-called arousal due to uncertainty, the brain is telling itself there’s something to be learned here.” And so, I think it’s really important on the job, or on the restive life, not to squander that moment. Move forward into uncertainty. Don’t run from it or deny it or hide it. I think it’s really important that we don’t cut short that opportunity to learn that uncertainty offers.

Pete Mockaitis
So, we are more able to learn with these sorts of emotional stress response things going on, and that just sort of fits. It makes sense because, well, yes, there’s something that needs learning here because, by definition, it’s uncertain what’s going on.

Maggie Jackson
Yup, you walk into the meeting and there’s a surprise, or your boss hands you a project you didn’t really think you’re going to have to do. And it’s not emotion, really. It’s cognition. So, your brain is actually going on alert. It’s being aroused, as scientists say. And that puts you in a state where you can take advantage of that.

And so, I think the myth-busting one we have to do first about uncertainty is to realize that uncertainty is unsettling, yes, but that is its precise gift. It bumps us off the routine. It’s telling us. When you’re uncertain, that’s basically your brain telling you that you have to stop your automatic behavior. The status quo doesn’t work anymore. You’ve got to be ready to update your understanding of the world.

Pete Mockaitis
And what’s interesting is you say that we tend to not like uncertainty, and yet there are some contexts where we, humans, proactively go for it. We want to play card games, or videogames, or go to the casino, and that’s the whole draw of these things, is we don’t quite know how things are going to turn out. There’s an element of chance.

Maggie Jackson
Oh, I think that’s a very, very good point. It’s sort of uncertainty by another name. We might call it suspense, or just the kind of not knowing that’s playful or entertainment form that, I think, as uncertainty has grown, or I would say unpredictability in the world has grown, and, really, studies do show that economics, business world, climate, etc., there are a lot of aspects of the life that are more volatile. Uncertainty has become kind of a lament. You see it in the headlines. You hear people talk about it.

People just equate uncertainty with something bad. And that’s not moving us forward. That’s actually keeping us. Uncertainty is not the paralysis that we think. The human uncertainty, the unsureness, the not knowing, it’s not that all, as research shows. It’s actually something that’s highly dynamic and active, and something that moves us forward. Uncertainty is a lot more than we know.

And, actually, for decades and decades, this state of mind, it’s a mindset, basically, wasn’t studied. It wasn’t studied even in psychology because the onus and the emphasis was on what the human can do, what’s the task that you accomplish. It’s not sort of in between time when people are pausing and unsure, or they don’t know what to do. The scientists wanted to study what they could get accomplished.

And so, I think this puts human thinking, and even what it means to know what it means to be successful, it puts it in a whole new plane because if we can add not knowing to our skillset, as well as knowing, well, we’re suddenly really opening up to the world in ways that we weren’t.

Pete Mockaitis
Intriguing. So, not knowing as a skillset that benefits us. Could you perhaps give us a story, an example, of someone who upgraded that skill and saw cool results as a result?

Maggie Jackson
Yeah, I’ll give you a couple of stories, but one little story came from a friend of mine who was calling me up, and saying, “Oh, there’s a merger and acquisition at my pharmaceutical company,” and she’s a scientist, and she was moaning and groaning. And in the next breath, she was talking about how she’s brushing up her resume, and she’s looking around for an internal job.

And I was sort of amused inside, having been steeped in uncertainty research, so I realized that she was actually doing precisely what, through her uncertainty, she was actually taking hold of the situation, and she was propelled to investigate further. And you can see this in many, many great figures. Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech was basically borne of uncertainty. He was a leader who was very humble. He wasn’t opposed to saying, “I don’t know,” and he really led the movement through conviction but also with adaptability.

And when it came to that incredibly important speech that day in 1963, The March on Washington, first of all, he had asked for opinions from many, many advisers. The night of the speech, he didn’t know quite what he would say. He had elements but he didn’t really know. He was actually still working on the speech right up on the podium that day.

And what that shows is that he was in tuned with a very divisive, very difficult moment in history. He was wakeful to all the different influences and patterns and sort of things that were going on in that moment, and he, of course, pulled off one of the greatest speeches of all time.

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful. Let’s have another example.

Maggie Jackson
Well, I would say a more modern example is I’ve been studying the work style of the new Nobel Prize winner in medicine, the co-winner, Kati Kariko, who was originally from Hungary, and she worked for decades on mRNA, which, of course, was the sort of her work on mRNA led to the breakthrough that gave us the COVID vaccines and saved hundreds of millions of lives perhaps.

And she was incredibly dogged and incredibly persistent, and she saw the capacity of this aspect of biology when no one else was. She was terminated from UPenn, but this is not just a story of persistence. As she puts it in one Nobel Prize interview, one of her coworkers said, “Oh, Kati, you’re always zigzagging.” In other words, she didn’t always work in a straight line. And she said, “By zigzagging, I learned so much.”

And this is what it means to inhabit uncertainty. You’re not shutting down on that space of possibility that uncertainty is. And one of the most interesting things about curiosity is that scientists have been finally studying this topic, too, and they’re beginning to kind of understand that one of the most key components of curiosity, of the curious disposition, is the ability to work with or tolerate the stress of inhabiting the unknown.

So, when you’re curious about something, anything, painting or what you’re curious about, something you’re doing at work, or curious about what this Nobel Prize winner did, you are actually having to kind of understand, or withstand, or kind of leverage that uncertainty in order to get to the answer. And that she really represents that. She really does. She spent so much energy on doing things that were denigrated, devalued in every sense of the word. She kept going and she basically exemplifies the willingness to stay in that liminal space, which is to not know, to not know in order to get the better answer.

If she had raced to the first answer, well, she might’ve discovered something but she never would’ve put the pieces together. She had to go down a lot of dead ends, and that, to me, is that entirely what uncertainty is about, productive uncertainty.

Pete Mockaitis
And could you elaborate on the distinction between working in a zigzag fashion versus linear fashion? What are those different modes look, sound, feel like by contrast?

Maggie Jackson
Well, I would say that the linear fashion         of working would be to work from one logical point to another, to be focused on outcome. Outcome orientation is a really hot topic in business circles today. Whereas, a zigzag, a nonlinear, that is something that Leonardo da Vinci was famous for. “Confusion rouses the mind to invention,” he once said.

And the zigzagging that she was referring to would be the dead ends. Many times, mRNA was actually toxic to the body when introduced in mice, etc. It didn’t do them any good. And so, basically, she could’ve quit there but instead she zagged, or zigged, over to a different type of thing. So, that’s what I mean.

Eighty percent of strategic business decisions are made after considering just one option. And, yet, if people actually go to the root of the problem and consider multiple reasons for the problem, multiple roots of the problem, then they’re actually four times more likely to have a successful decision.

So, again and again, we hear that we should widen our options but the other point of that is what I call widening and deepening, and that is testing and evaluating. So, again, that’s where you’re leveraging uncertainty. This is leveraging what Kahneman calls the slow mind. It’s what I also call take two. Rather than just leap to a solution, or go to what’s obvious, or try to shoot for that outcome, you’re willing to explore many avenues, and not forever.

Sometimes this can happen just in a few minutes in the operating room with a surgeon in crisis. They just take a minute to do take two, or to dwell in uncertainty, and then they find the better answer, or the hidden answer. And so, that’s what I mean by zigzag.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Thank you. And so, if folks do have this attitude or fear of uncertainty, do you have any recommended first steps in terms of, “Hey, if that’s where you’re at right now, here’s what I recommend you do or think about”?

Maggie Jackson
Yes, that’s a great question. And it’s really important, and I get asked that all the time now, “How can I get better at dealing with uncertainty?” And, actually, I’ll talk a little bit about what I found, but also there’s some new research on this, a great deal of research. There are scientists now planning a new study, an intervention, in Columbus, Ohio, to help stressed high schoolers gain resilience by teaching them how to better tolerate, which is not such a great word, but to manage uncertainty, to actually, it means lean into uncertainty. That’s the term I prefer.

And how are they doing that? Well, scientists, clinical psychologists, and others were developing these interventions, are now, they’re basically importing some lessons from exposure to therapy, so that makes sense. If you are fearful of uncertainty, if you’re the type who’s intolerant of surprises, you need to overprepare for the presentation, you need to pack not just your bag for the family vacation but the entire family’s bag because you don’t trust them to do it, those are kind of signs that you might be a little bit intolerant of uncertainty.

And so, trying new things, trying to, in effect, seek a little bit of surprise in your life, will show you not that it’s always the perfect solution. You might delegate at work, and it might not actually work out better every single time. But, at the same time, if you never delegate at work, you will never know the other possibilities that that person, that the hidden talents of that person shows. The person who works for you might show hidden talents when you allow them to work on that project a little more than before.

So, what you’re doing is expanding your perspectives, expanding your range of experience, and one of the ways in which clinical psychologists are now teaching people, especially people with anxiety, to get better at handling uncertainty, to stop denying and avoiding it, are tiny little things like, for instance, “Answer your cellphone without caller ID.” And that seems so simple but, at the same time, it’s just injecting a little bit of mystery.

And some scientists actually surmised that phones, because they provide instant answers all the time, and we’re checking 150 times a day, that’s what they call certainty-seeking behavior. So, some part of this is just sort of lifting up your head and kind of contending with what’s happening, not trying to control every little bit.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s fun. This reminds me of a recent camping trip in which we were…I don’t even remember what we’re talking about but it was some sort of factual question that could be readily Googled, and we weren’t sure, it’s like, “Oh, I think it’s this way.” “Well, no, I think it might be this because what about that?” And it was funny, we’re like, “Huh, here we are all not being quite sure about this thing,” which, on ordinary circumstances, when we had cellphone reception, someone would’ve Googled it within about five seconds, and then that would be that.

Maggie Jackson
Right. And, actually, what you were doing, by collectively or individually kind of cogitating, you were reaching into your memory, which is not something we do when we’re turned to the phone all the time. You’re actually reaching deep into your memory. And even if you don’t come up with the answer, it strengthens your brain to do so.

It’s really quite amazing but just searching around in your memory, something that we just don’t do today, is actually great for the brain. And why is that? Because, say, you’re trying to think of a painter. I’m trying madly to think of Degas, and all I can think of is Monet. And, really, if you’re looking around in your brain, internally searching, in other words, you’re looking through different knowledge networks because our minds and our experiences, they’re varied associations. They’re networked. They say they’re branching trees of knowledge.

And what you’re doing is going along those paths, and you’re saying, “Oh, well, maybe an impressionist, or I guess French,” so you’re strengthening by utilizing those synapses, you’re strengthening other areas of the brain, and that’s really great for greater wisdom. Our minds are not computers, information is not downloadable and upload-able. It’s really sort of an organic shifting thing. And that’s another reason why not knowing is really important because it kind of blows away that idea that our minds are computers.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, these are fun practices. Tell me, Maggie, anymore?

Maggie Jackson
Yes. Well, I would say one very, very important practice is it involves teamwork. So, uncertainty has a social side to it. And the upshot is that, basically, one of the best fuels of collaboration is conflict, and I mean judicious, mild, respectful conflict. But study after study shows that teams and groups that have mutual criticism, conflict, dissent are better performing. They actually have deeper discussions, they’re more creative, they surface hidden information that isn’t usually discussed, etc. Now, why is that?

Well, a lot of people think that, basically, when you have a disagreement or even when you just have diversity on a team, diversity of opinions, that diverse or dissenting opinion is just giving you the right answer, but that’s not true because a dissenting opinion, even if wrong, also bolsters performance. Why is it? It’s because uncertainty has rousted you from that kind of complacency of being in agreement. And the neuroscience on that is pretty amazing. The brain in agreement is a really lazy animal, believe me.

So, basically, if you can keep cultivating disagreement, then you get on what I call uncommon ground. It’s really important to be uncertain, and then you can do a whole host of things. You’re basically finding out what the team doesn’t know, which is really important for growth. You basically deepen and intensify the discussion. Now, studies have shown this in supreme courts, in the Supreme Courts, in juries, in financial trading, even on Mount Everest.

They did studies where teams that were very diverse, had a lot of different kinds of knowledge on climbing Mount Everest, but who emphasized all for one kind of mentality, so a kind of collective mentality, actually were more likely to have a depth on the team, and that’s really serious business. So, one flexible work consultant told me a wonderful story to illustrate this.

Cali Williams Yost was at a law firm where she was helping the firm institute flexible work for the legal team. I’m sorry, it was the legal team of an energy company. So, the legal team was all set to go, the bosses were on board, they were going to work remotely part time, etc. Well, one executive stood up and said he was completely opposed, at a meeting, and there was going to be a lot of knowledge left on the table because people weren’t meeting in the morning to coffee clap, etc.

Well, the bosses were angry, and everyone was shocked, they were all set. And what Cali Williams Yost wisely told me is that, basically, he was wrong to oppose flexible work but he was right, something was missing. And so, his dissent actually sparked a younger person in the room to, later in the afternoon, stand up, and say, “Well, I can create a virtual knowledge platform, and we can go remote and still have that time to coffee clap, so to speak.” So, that’s a perfect example of how dissent threw everyone into uncertainty, and then they were able to actually kind of find a third way to meet the problem.

Pete Mockaitis
It’s funny how, as I imagine that scene, the emotional reaction is just as you’ve described, it’s like folks are annoyed, like, “Oh, come on, man. Just, like, shut up and get in line. We’re almost done. Why you gotta be difficult and cause problems, and not be a team player?” Like, all of these negative associations. And yet, it really is an asset to have folks who have unique perspective and the courage to share it and go against the grain, it really does enrich the whole team, and yet so rarely do we say, “Thank you, dear colleague, for disagreeing with all of us. This is very helpful.”

Maggie Jackson
Oh, you’re so right. And you put it so well, and I’m so glad you used that word courage because I was just thinking of a quote by William James, a great psychology philosopher in the 19th century, who talked about the courage of a maybe. He basically talked about how no human achievement can be created without the “courage of a maybe.” And that’s exactly what’s happening.

I think one tip for people who want to try this, and I would advise, throw in a no, a gentle no, or maybe just a maybe. And what you’re doing with the word maybe is actually using something called hedge words. And so, those are really, really important. Hedge words are maybe, sometimes, those sorts of words, as opposed to more…there’s no alternative word for hedge words, but anyhow, non-hedge words, which are, “You’re wrong,” or, “Therefore.” Those are not hedge words.

And what hedge words do is signal your receptiveness to another opinion. They also signal that there’s something that’s not known. So, if you say, “Maybe we should consider something,” or, “Maybe we haven’t thought of…” etc., you’re actually smoothing the way for others to pick up on that. And it’s a wonderful kind of linguistic flag that you’re waving, saying, “Hey, maybe we shouldn’t be so sure,” and that’s where then the disagreement can be fueled, and the uncertainty. And then people can be in the space of uncommon ground, and then go deeper and explore multiple perspectives.

Another study I really loved, which brings this all to life, was basically a CEO who’s in Europe, a few years ago when the European Union was being widely expanded, so quite a bit of Eastern Europe was being inducted into the EU. And so, it was a time of great unknowns for business leaders on that continent. And so, two professors, one in Germany, one in the US, went and studied German CEOs for an entire year, and they asked them whether they’re for this expansion or were they against it, and what would happen, was it good for their company or was it bad for their company.

Well, when they got the results back, they found this third group. To their surprise, 25% or more of the CEOs were ambivalent, they didn’t really know, “Well, we’re not really sure this is going to expand the markets. Is it going to take our customers away? We’re not sure.” And it’s amazing to me that the professors were surprised.

Well, a year later, fast forward, the result was the people who were sure that it would be either good for their company or bad for their company, basically didn’t do very much. Those who were ambivalent were more resourceful, they came up with more products, they opened new factories, they actually were more inclusive, they asked for different opinions. They weren’t sure so that propelled them to do more.

And I think there was an award-winning study, and it just perfectly underscores not just what we’re talking about, about dissent, but also about the power of uncertainty. And it certainly is an overlooked unsung power.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I like that a lot. They’re not sure and, thusly, they do more. They’re not sure, so it was like, “Uh-oh, I don’t know so I better hustle. I better figure it out and do the research, do the work, do the investigation, talk to people, and get the info.” And this reminds me of, I don’t know if this has been coined somewhere before, but I might’ve made this up. I call it second time syndrome.

Like, the second time you do something, you might get worse results than the first time because you’re more confident, like, “Oh, I know how this goes,” versus the first time, you’re like, “Oh, boy, I’m a little scared, a little intimidated, a little overwhelmed. I better really hustle and figure this out.” Like, I remember, I was, at one point, a leadership seminar chair, or HOBY daddy for these HOBY, Hugh O’Brian Youth Leadership event, so there’s a bunch of folks assembled for a three-day thing, and I’m kind of like the guy in charge of everything.

And so, the first time, I was like, “Wow, this is intimidating. I really want to make sure I’m on top of everything,” and it went very well. And the second time, I thought, “Oh, we got this. It’s fine.” And it was still good but it was not as excellent as the first one. I could see this event now years later. And it’s because I was more certain and more comfortable and less effortful the second time around.

Maggie Jackson
I think that’s so true and that’s such a good point. Because uncertainty, and confronting something new, is actually putting you at the edge of your knowledge, and that’s exactly when we want to retreat. There’s a term called the routine expert. The routine expert is someone, we’ve seen it everywhere. We see it in medicine. We see it in accounting. We see it in reporting. I’m a journalist. But people who have accrued years of experience, they’re really good at what they do, but everything has become routine. They have this sort of honed automaticity, so the heuristic thinking, “Chest pain equals heart attack” that is predominant.

But when the routine expert hits something that’s really new, they just retreat into the same old solutions, and they’re then not doing well. They fail. Whereas, adaptive experts are the people who can utilize that uncertainty, to do the kind of deliberative work, and also to be flexible about using their knowledge. And so, adaptive experts are nimble. And that’s exactly what we want.

When something goes wrong in the operating room, I witnessed multiple operations up in Toronto while researching this book, and one of the senior surgeons who epitomizes our ideal of the expert, he was quick, he was sure, really sure, well, he then, in a moment, in a terrifying moment in the operating room, he thought he had done something nearly lethal to the patient during a liver operation. Everything fell silent, there was sweat on his cap.

Well, he was just too sure. He carried his certainty into that operation like a badge of honor. And then he was able to, “It was not a lethal error,” but, at the same time, he epitomizes what we loved in experts. And we really are venerating the wrong type of experts. What we want to really emulate and respect the people who ask the questions, the people who say, “I don’t know,” whether it’s medicine or not, and the leaders who are willing to pause and deliberate.

And other study shows that those leaders, who when confronting a new problem, actually, are deemed in experimental studies anyhow as being less influential. But we’ve got it all wrong. We’ve got it all wrong. We need to be really promoting people who ask questions, who don’t mind hesitating for productive uses, who don’t mind being unsure.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s beautiful. Indeed, we tend to favor, like, trust the confident-sounding voice but there are studies that reveal that there is almost no correlation between the confidence someone exerts and how right or good they are at the thing, so that’s dangerous and some ways it’s like we’d be better off if we trusted or valued more the nuanced person, it’s like, “Well, you know, under these circumstances, it’s probably best for A, but, however, given the variables X, Y, Z, I’m leaning towards B.”

Like, that doesn’t sound as commanding and inspiring, like, “Yes, you know what you’re doing. I’ll follow you unto death” That doesn’t give you the that emotional charge. And yet, it’s likely much closer to true, and there’s much higher probability, it seems, of finding great wisdom there worth following.

Maggie Jackson
Exactly. Adaptive wisdom, the kind of person who sees the world as it is, not as they wish it to be or assume it to be. And that takes time, it takes effort, it takes unease, etc. but it’s really important that we change our views on what a leader is, that we change our views on what a student or a pundit or a presidential candidate is, because the cost of our certainty are certainly rising, and we can see it everywhere in terms of the polarization, narrowmindedness, etc., the anxiety levels.

I see that uncertainty, if we begin to understand it, to study it, to learn how to use it skillfully, can really change humanity, and give me great hope. They’re even trying to, there’s a movement by leaders in AI today to instill uncertainty in models, in robots, that is to make AI unsure. Now, there is some uncertainty in a robot. It couldn’t traverse the factory floor without some degree of being open to what’s unpredictable in its environment.

But what they’re trying to do, and this is picking up steam, and it’s really quite important, is to make on a robot that’s unsure in its aims. So, say, you have a housekeeper robot, and it’s fetching your coffee, well, today’s AI is built to carry out a task because the rationalist’s definition of intelligence is fulfilling your goals no matter what. And, therefore, that’s both the danger and the wisdom of today’s AI.

Well, an unsure robot, and what I call the “I don’t know” robot, will actually ask you how you want your coffee, or which room across the kitchen, or, “Do you want something?” It’s teachable and it’s more honest. It’s not just doing what it was initially programmed to do. It’s more flexible. And in that very vision of “I don’t know” robot, we can see something a little bit that we should be striving for, too.

Pete Mockaitis
The quote that comes to mind thinking about these notions of certainty is this quote, I come back to it again and again, I just got to have him on the show. Robert Rubin said, “Some people are more certain of everything than I am of anything.” And I can totally relate, it’s like, “Are you sure?” And I think about all these scenarios when the experts tell me the opposite of each other, and they do so very confidently.

Like, roofers. You get multiple bids on a roof project, it’s like, “Wow, that guy said we had to tear it off, and the other guy said we could just put another layer on. And they were both very sure. And they’re the roof experts, and I’m not. What the heck am I supposed to do here?” And I think that if most of us took the time to solicit multiple perspectives from multiple angles, we would see a lot of that, “Wow, these people are very certain of the exact opposite thing. Well, now I have to do some hard thinking.”

Maggie Jackson
Exactly. And we think of uncertainty as being sort of lost, adrift, etc., some of the metaphors used with uncertainty or lostness and wandering, etc., but it’s a form of exploration. It’s kind of a wonderful way to buy time, in a sense, so that you can explore the possibilities and uncover the complexities that are already there.

You’re not creating complexities when you do a little bit more pondering. You’re actually uncovering what’s already there. And it’s not that it’s an endless kind of pursuit but it has its place, and we haven’t given enough due to being unsure.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, Maggie, tell me, any final things you want to share before we shift gears and hear about some of your favorite things?

Maggie Jackson
No, I think we covered a lot of great ground.

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

Maggie Jackson
Yeah, it’s actually a quote from my book, and there are many but I’ll start the quote, “’I know’ seems to describe a state of affairs which guarantees what is known, guarantees it as a fact. One always forgets the expression, ‘I thought I knew.’” That’s Ludwig Wittgenstein, the philosopher.

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

Maggie Jackson
Well, there are lots. Yeah, I’ll tell one little one. And you probably heard of the candle problem. This was a psychological experiment developed in the 1920s in which people were asked to tack a candle to the wall using just a box of matches, some thumbtacks, and then just the candle. Well, people made a real mess of it, and they tried to melt the candle, glue it to the wall, etc.

Well, the answer lies in making a platform out of the matchbox. But the point of this story is that people only see what an object is meant to do, not what it can do, because they’re so sure that matchboxes are there just to hold the matches. They cannot see any further. And what’s wonderful about this study is that if you take a bunch of five-year-olds and give them a similar study, but without the matches, with toys on a shelf, the five-year-olds don’t have any problem with this. Their knowledge doesn’t get in their way of their problem-solving.

Whereas, at age seven and up, they’re beginning to act like adults. They only see what it’s made to do. They don’t ask what it can do. And that’s a miniature example of the beauty of being unsure. And uncertainty is basically another word for open-mindedness.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite book?

Maggie Jackson
I would have to say Pride and Prejudice, kind of an old classic but it’s really about two people, Mr. Darcy, Elizabeth Bennet, whose certainty got in the way of their love. And, finally, when they were a little bit less sure, they were able to get together and understand one another despite their differences. I already loved that book before I became an uncertainty junkie, so to speak. But now I kind of see it through the prism of uncertainty.

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

Maggie Jackson
It definitely has to be just plain old paper pad. I’m completely adoring of the technology of paper. By writing, I don’t write everything in the longhand, but I do drafts of what I work on that I call sketches, literally, because I can draw arrows and make circles out of what it is. It’s all over the map. And I find that, by putting something immediately onto a computer, I’m forcing my thoughts onto the template of another person’s design. And so, I find that the legal pads, I go through so many, and they’ve been a huge help to me in my writing.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite habit?

Maggie Jackson
Well, in order to get in the focus that I need, there’s a kind of boundary-making, focuses literally a boundary-making, a type of attention that creates boundaries around what you want to be doing, I use alarm clocks and I use distance from my phone. So, if I really have to concentrate, I’ll put my phone on another level of my office, downstairs, basically. If I’m able to take a phone call, it’ll be nearer to me, but it changes how you think, etc. So, I really curate where the phone is.

I also use alarm clocks. So, if I have an appointment in an hour, I’ll put the alarm clock on, and then I don’t have to spend my mental resources thinking about when I have to do this. I then am able to drift off, inhabit the uncertainty, focus on what I need to do, and completely within the new you of what I need to think about.

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

Maggie Jackson
I’d say that the quote from my book that resonates most with people is “Uncertainty is unsettling, and that is its gift.”

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

Maggie Jackson
I would say my website would be a great one to stop and shop. I’m also on Twitter, LinkedIn, but the website is a great resource for my articles, my events, etc., what’s going on with my books.

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

Maggie Jackson
I think that if you realized that at any one moment you might not know, you’ll be giving yourself the power of an open mind.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Maggie, this has been a treat. Well, Maggie, thank you for this. I wish you much fun uncertainty in the years to come.

Maggie Jackson
Thank you, Pete. It’s been a pleasure. You, too.

Jun 22
0

876: How to Present Like the Pros with Michael J. Gelb

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Michael J. Gelb on the How to be Awesome at Your Job podcast

Michael J. Gelb shows you how to shape your message so that your audience—big or small, in person or virtual—will care about it.

You’ll Learn:

  1. The three questions you need to ask before every presentation.
  2. How to align your message with your body language.
  3. How to channel your anxiety into your performance.

About Michael

Michael J. Gelb is the world’s leading authority on the application of genius thinking to personal and organizational development.  He is the author of 17 books including How to Think Like Leonardo Da Vinci, Innovate Like Edison and Discover Your Genius.  Michael’s books have been translated into 25 languages and have sold more than one million copies. His new book is Mastering the Art of Public Speaking: 8 Secrets to Overcome Fear and Supercharge Your Career.

Resources Mentioned

Michael J. Gelb Interview Transcript

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

Michael J. Gelb
Thank you so much. Great to be with you.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m so excited to get into your wisdom about mastering the art of public speaking but, first, we got to hear about your juggling experience and performing with The Rolling Stones. What’s the scoop here?

Michael J. Gelb
Well, I worked my way through graduate school as a professional juggler. I used to do children’s parties, I would perform on the streets outside Harvard Square and in London Portobello Road. I worked at a few nightclubs as a juggler. And one day, I was in Hyde Park in London practicing with my juggling partner who used to be the head of Reuters. He was the science editor for Reuters for Europe.

And we were just minding our business juggling in Hyde Park, and a gentleman approached us, and he said, “I’m the tour manager for The Rolling Stones. Their concert tour theme is carnival. We need jugglers. We’ll pay you £50 each if you can come to Earls Court Theater tonight and juggle in between sets with Mick and the Stones.”

So, yeah, we did that and then that went well, so we got invited to the Knebworth Rock Festival where we juggled on a stage shaped like Mick Jagger’s mouth in front of an audience of more than 100,000 people.

Pete Mockaitis
Wow, that is cool. So, what I love about that is that when you’re juggling, your skills are on full display, like it’s clear, like, “Hey, we need you…”

Michael J. Gelb
Or your lack thereof, yes.

Pete Mockaitis
The Rolling Stones manager was like, “Hey, we need jugglers. I can clearly see they are capable of juggling, therefore, come on down.”

Michael J. Gelb
Right.

Pete Mockaitis
That is beautiful. Well, I’ve always had trouble with juggling. Any pro tips for folks getting started?

Michael J. Gelb
Yeah. So, I taught myself to juggle because my original teacher was a brilliant juggler but he didn’t know how to teach. So, he told me, “Take these three balls. Throw them up. Don’t let any of them drop.” So, unfortunately, many of us get turned off from all kinds of activities because we’re told, “Learn this but don’t make mistakes.” And that seemed crazy to me, so I said, “There has to be a better way.”

And I figured, “What if we just started with one ball and got comfortable tossing one ball? And then attempted two but let the balls drop so we could focus just on the throw. And then throw three, let them drop.” And once you get them flowing out of your hands in the right rhythm and pattern, it’s actually quite effortless. They start landing in your hands, and before you know it, you’re juggling. So, the secret is to focus on the throw, start with one ball, work your way up, and have fun.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Now, we know. See, that’s a freebie. We didn’t know we were covering that because we’re talking public speaking. So, you had an earlier version of a book on public speaking over 30 years ago. Tell us, what are some of the lessons that takes 30 years to learn about speaking that you can give us a shortcut for right now?

Michael J. Gelb
Well, they’re really actually pretty simple. The simplest one is to actually know what you’re talking about because people come up to me, and say, “Oh, I want to be a public speaker.” Well, what’s your message? What do you have to tell us? What interesting life experience have you had? What stories do you have to share? What wisdom have you gained and accrued that you will put forth in your presentation? So, we can’t emphasize enough the importance of having something valuable to say.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I think that sounds like, “Well, but of course.” But, really, though, I think that’s a powerful point that it’s easy to rush past, yet I think if we really stop and validate, there are many circumstances in which we don’t have something valuable to say, or, like, “Hey, there’s always a weekly staff meeting. That’s just what we do on the Mondays. Okay, and someone needs to present about this.”

So, I think that’s one context in which people speak without having something to say comes up. And I also think that sometimes speaking is not the best modality for conveying a thing, it’s like, “Hey, just write an email or send me a link to the cool TED Talk that does this better than you were going to say.” So, yeah, I think it’s worth lingering there a little bit. Tell us, how do we validate whether we got something worth saying and what might be some alternatives we should use instead?

Michael J. Gelb
Well, the key is to, then, marry what it is you think you have to say, what is your message, with an audience because, ultimately, the meaning of your communication is a function of the response you get from a given audience. So, who are you speaking to and why are you speaking to them? What is the purpose of your presentation? And I guide people before they give any kind of presentation.

And you’re right, it could be a staff meeting, it could be in an informal presentation, or it could be your big TED Talk, or a paid speech. Whatever it happens to be, I guide people to actually write down their objectives for each presentation in terms of, “What specifically do you want the audience to know? How do you want them to feel? And what do you want them to do as a result of your presentation?”

And the further guidance on the objectives, “know, feel, do” is, of course, to keep it simple, speaker. That’s my evolved version of KISS, the KISS principle, “Keep it simple, speaker.” So, simplify your message. Einstein said, “Things should be made as simple as possible, not simpler.” I call it optimal simplicity. Write down what do you want the audience to know, what do you want them to be able to remember.

So, for example, if this were a presentation on public speaking, one thing I want everybody on my presentation on public speaking to understand is, before your presentation, think about what you want the audience to know. Write it down. The second one is tricky. It’s how do you want them to feel. And this one is often lost in business presentations because we think it’s just about the facts or the ideas or the data, but people buy on emotion and they justify with fact.

So, it’s important to tune into the human quality in the interaction. It’s not just an exchange of data. If it was, you could just read it. It’s why we like live presentation with real human beings. It’s why people still, thank God, pay professional speakers to travel around the world and go give live speeches. You can watch what I say on video but people like it better when it’s spontaneous, real interaction, because of the emotional element. So, how do you want them to feel? And then, obviously, what do you want them to do?

Maybe it’s a sales presentation so you want them to buy something, for example. In a lot of staff meetings, maybe it’s just you want people to leave you alone, but you need to know specifically what’s your objective because when you know your message, when you know what you’re talking about, when you’ve done your homework, when you’ve done the preparation, you know who the audience is, you know what you want to tell them, you know why you want to tell it to them, how you want them to feel, what you want them to do as a result of the presentation, that organizes everything such that, well, one of my favorite sayings, “Everybody gets butterflies in the stomach before presenting,” but that’s how you get the butterflies to fly in formation.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, what do I want the audience to know, what do I want them to feel, and what do I want them to do. Can you give us an example of clear articulations of that? Because I think we can maybe be shallow, it’s like, “Oh, I want them to know my product is awesome, I want them to feel kind of excited about it, and I want them to buy it.” Is that detailed enough?

Michael J. Gelb
No. No.

Pete Mockaitis
Let’s hear it.

Michael J. Gelb
But you did a great imitation of a sort of generic, “Ooh, my product is awesome.” It would be good to have that degree of enthusiasm because one of the other huge points is people are always reading your energy, they’re reading your body language, they’re looking to see if there’s any discrepancy between what you’re saying, and your voice tonality, your facial expression, the way you look at them, your gestures. I call it body message synchrony, which is why it’s a really good idea to actually be aligned with and believe in whatever it is you are doing because it’s much easier to have that alignment happen naturally.

Pete Mockaitis
But to the point about synchrony, I think this evaluation that we’re doing, I agree that we’re doing it. I think, in my experience, I think we’re often doing it unconsciously or subconsciously and not so much, like, ticking the boxes with a close conscientious evaluation but rather you just get a vibe, like, “Eh, I’m kind of bored,” or, “Eh, there’s something a little off about this guy, and I don’t really care to dig in. And I don’t know if I trust him. I don’t think he would just straight up lie to me but something feels off here, and I’m just maybe going to tune out.”

Michael J. Gelb
Yes. Well, you’re exactly right. Most people just experience this without being aware of what it is specifically that is the discrepancy. Whereas, I can usually watch somebody and see what the discrepancy is. There’s an old Chinese saying, “Beware of the man whose belly does not move when he laughs.”

Pete Mockaitis
That is a creepy vibe, I will admit.

Michael J. Gelb
Yes, I’m good at that. But coming back to what you said earlier, so it’s not just good enough to say, “Well, gee, I want to tell them my product is awesome.” You probably want to think about what is your unique selling point, what is the specific advantage. Most importantly, what is the need that your product is going to meet that the audience actually has? And then, how can you help them feel that, oh, you’re here to help them?

I’m a big advocate of helping other people, that that’s how to have a successful happy life, that’s how to be a great presenter is, I’m genuinely interested. I want to help people. I’ve always made my living with that principle. There are plenty of people who find ways to make a living by doing other things, by focusing on pandering to people’s addictions and their fears and their anxieties. But if there’s an underlying ethical underpinning to how I teach presentation, it’s present something that will make the world a better place.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, we were in the example of selling something for what the knowing, feeling, and doing. It sounds like in a shallow version versus a bit more detailed. Can you give us another common case situation and what a robust articulation of what I want my audience to know, feel, and do sounds like?

Michael J. Gelb
Well, I’m working on a presentation right now, so rather than just telling you about something from the past. I’m working on a presentation for next week, and it’s a five-day seminar. And I am actually going through the whole week each day what I want the audience to know, feel, and do. And then I’m attempting to simplify the whole thing, and this is another point, a takeaway for people, which is I’m going to tell them, right up front on Monday morning at 9:00 o’clock, what it is they’re going to get through the course of the whole five days.

And I’ve been working on a way to codify it in a simple as possible and as memorable as possible a fashion, and I’m going to actually have them do a physical movement that represents each of the five essential things I want them to get in the course of the week. I’m going to introduce that right at the beginning of the week. I’m going to be reinforcing those five points throughout the course of the week. And guess what the last thing we’re going to do is? We’re going to review it again.

So, I’m confident that people will actually, not only understand what I teach them, and this is another critical point for presenting, because it’s easy for people to understand what you’re saying but will they remember it? And if you really want to be a great presenter, you not only get through to people, and they go, “Oh, yeah. Oh, wow, that’s cool. Oh, I didn’t see it that way,” but they also remember it, ideally, for many years to come.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. Well, that sounds swell. So, then, in your specific instance here with the five-day situation, could you give us your articulation of the knowing, feeling, and doing?

Michael J. Gelb
Well, it might take a little while because I have to explain to you, I’m teaching something that’s a little bit off the beaten path of everyday business discourse, and it may not immediately directly relate. This is a Tai Chi Qi Gong seminar.

Pete Mockaitis
We got a Tai Chi seminar, and what do I want them to know, what do I want them to feel, what do I want them to do?

Michael J. Gelb
Well, so I’m teaching something called the five animal frolics.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. It sounds like a good time.

Michael J. Gelb
It’s really cool. I’m going to start by asking people, “Do you like animals?” And they’re all going to say, “Yes.” I say, “Do you like to frolic?” And they’ll say, “Yes, we do.” And I say, “Well, you’ve come to the right place.” And actually, the truth is, because it’s not just a talk, it’s a seminar, there’s a very important element, which is that I’ve learned over years of practical experience, which is it’s always important to connect with the audience first before you try to influence them or get into what you want them to know, feel, and do.

What you want them to feel is comfortable and happy and filled with anticipation and excitement, and you want them to know that they came to the right place by paying money to sign up for your seminar or your presentation, whatever it happens to be. So, I came up with, I was just working on this today when I went for my walk, “What’s the perfect way to get people to feel comfortable, to open up and start to get to know each other, that fits in with the theme of the course? It’s the five animal frolics.”

So, the five animals are the bear, the crane, like the heron, the deer, the monkey, and the tiger. So, I’m going to put the five animals, and I’ve created fabulous graphics for this and images of all of them, and I have poetry associated with each one of them, and music, not to mention the actual movements from the ancient Chinese lineage.

But what I’m going to do is just put the five animals on the board and I’m going to say, “Rank choice voting, describe yourself in terms of these five animals which is most like you, which is second most like you, third, fourth. And then we’re going to talk to everybody and tell everybody, first, one-to-one, and then small groups, and then altogether, who you are in terms of your five-animal ranking of yourself.

So, it’s a disarming, fun, playful way that will engage people with the content of the course. Because what I want them to know at the end of the course is what are the energetic qualities of these five animals and how can you access them.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. That’s what we want them to know. And what do we want them to feel?

Michael J. Gelb
Well, what I want them to feel, I actually want them to feel the quality of the bear, and to feel the quality of the crane, and to feel the quality of the deer, the monkey, and the tiger.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, this sounds like a fun time. I kind of want to be there.

Michael J. Gelb
Oh, it’s going to be awesome.

Pete Mockaitis
And I guess what they’ll do is just the actual bodily motions that you’re describing.

Michael J. Gelb
What I want them to do though is actually practice it. I’m not trying to sell them something. I’m not trying to do this so that they’ll buy something from me or hire me. I just want to give them the best possible experience, but part of what will be the measure of that is people will actually practice the five animals. And a lot of these people are advanced Tai Chi practitioners, so I have another thought in mind for them in terms of what I want them to do, which is to see how the animals play into their Tai Chi form and how it can empower the practice of their Tai Chi form.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Beautiful. All right. So, there we go, knowing, feeling, doing in that context. There we go. Well, so there’s so much good stuff in the book. I’m curious to hear a bit about the mind maps helping us communicate better. I am not much of a mind mapper myself, so, please enlighten me.

Michael J. Gelb
Well, it’s just a whole brain way to generate your ideas for any presentation. And, most importantly, for many people, it helps you remember what you’re going to say. So, it’s one thing to creatively generate it using keywords and images. That’s the essence of a mind map, is you’re expressing your ideas in images and keywords, and you’re generating the ideas first before you organize them. So, initially, it’s kind of messy because most people slow themselves down and limit their creativity because they try to organize their ideas before they generate them.

So, somebody sitting down to give a presentation will say, “Oh, what should I do, say, first?” That’s not the way to start. Don’t worry about what to do first. Just what might you say? Who’s there? What do you know about this? What’s the topic? What stories do you have? So, just put it all out in a non-linear fashion to start with. Then the coolest thing happens when you do it first in this creative free-flowing non-linear way. You step back and then you say, “What would be a good order to present this in?” And it just becomes apparent. It organizes itself.

Then you redo your mind map so it’s in clockwise rotation, and then you make an image and a keyword to go with each branch of the map. And images and keywords are way easier to remember than outlines or paragraphs or sentences.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, it’s funny, as I was imagining, “Hey, I want to say a bunch of stuff.” So, one, I have poor handwriting and drawing skills, and type fast, so I tend to jump, which is lean digital in a lot of ways here. So, when you talked about just putting all the things out there in their natural organization, I was imagining using my shortcuts to move it up a line, down a line, but what you said toward the end is that, “Okay, we got the sequence of things.” But in having a circle rotation with the keyword and image, we have engaged the brain in such a way that it’s easier to remember the sequence of things we’re going to say.

Michael J. Gelb
That is correct.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. That’s cool. And so, I heard a tip, to rotate your portrait landscape piece of paper, landscape over your mind map.

Michael J. Gelb
Oh, landscape. So, mind map, the classical way to do it, which I still do myself and I recommend to all my students, is landscape not portrait because it’s easier to spread out and go in different directions. Start with an image in the center even if you think you can’t draw because it will engage the imaginative pictorial part of your mind. And then print keywords and other images as they arise, put them on lines. The reason to print them is so you can read your own writing because when you start to really get into this, the images and ideas start to flow, and it’s easy for it to get so messy that you can’t read it

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Cool. All right. So, we got a real thing to say, we got clarity on what I want the audience to know, feel, and do, we’ve got it nicely mind-mapped, so we’ve got a masterplan, and we’re not going to forget it. So, I’d love to get your perspective in terms of when you’re actually up in there with the audience, what are some of the best ways to really establish a connection so that you’re vibing together real time?

Michael J. Gelb
Yes. Well, it’s to genuinely care about your audience and care about your message. People sense if you’re genuine. So, that’s one really fundamental element. The other is to put in your time to prepare, to rehearse. A lot of people just go out and try to give their presentation for the first time in front of a live audience, so you’re not used to saying the words, you’re not used to telling the stories.

So, you met my wife, Debra, before, and whenever I’m getting ready to do a presentation, I give it to her multiple times. I tell her, “Wait.” We just went for a walk. I actually gave her the five-animal frolics presentation so that I can practice what it’s like to just say this to another person so it’s not happening for the first time.

And if you rehearse, your rehearsal is the time to make lots of mistakes and to anticipate the needs of the audience in terms of potentially awkward questions you might get. Whereas, if the first time you ever get the awkward question is live in front of the audience, it might throw you off. Now, having said that, there’s a lot of suggestions in the book, in Mastering the Art of Public Speaking on how to get your system aligned so that you won’t freak out if something unexpected happens but you have to practice those before you get up there, too.

If you’re not practicing the things that are in the book, and somebody blindsides you or just ask something that’s challenging, or difficult, or that you didn’t expect, or that you just don’t know, we’ve all seen people get embarrassed and have very difficult experiences, which is why public speaking is the number one fear of the American public.

Pete Mockaitis
And so, what is the procedure by which you prep for the unexpected? One thing that I’ve found does loads for my own confidence is just imagining worst-case scenarios and questions from hell that I really don’t want to get, and then just preparing for all those. And then I just feel like I can’t think of anything that was not going to work, so it’s like, “Oh, what if they don’t have…?”

I remember when I did a lot more keynotes, I would have a Mac, and I just love the look of terror in their eyes, like, when they would say, “Do you have the adaptor?” I was like, “Yes, I have the adaptor.”

Michael J. Gelb
I always make them bring their own computer, I say, “You provide the computer, you set it up. I will send you everything way in advance. You get it set up. I’ll come in the night before. I’ll go over the whole thing.”

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, that’s good. That’s good. I found that they have a hard time with my custom fonts, and then they’re like, “I can’t make them go,” or, “I have a different version of PowerPoint or Keynote, and then it didn’t translate.” It’s like they’re not up to it, they’re not up to the task of getting it on their computers successfully.

Michael J. Gelb
Well, speaking of computers and preparation rehearsal, I got to tell you, here’s another very recent real-life story about why it’s so important. So, a couple months ago, I was invited to speak at a conference in Trinidad, sponsored by the biggest company in Trinidad and their business school. And they also invited the co-author of my book The Healing Organization, Professor Raj Sisodia.

So, Raj was supposed to speak and I was supposed to speak on the same day. So, I said to Raj, “Let’s make sure we get there the afternoon before, and just go through our presentations together because I want to make sure that they’ve got it working,” and, as you know, the fonts sometimes come out differently because of their system or what, so you want to go through it, make sure the clicker works, check the light. You check everything well beforehand so you can make changes if you need to.

So, it turns out that they had basically said to Raj, “We want you to speak about The Healing Organization,” that’s the name of our book, and they said to me, “We want you to speak about The Healing Organization.” So, Raj and I had prepared pretty much the same presentation almost with the same slides. So, if we hadn’t met and reviewed this, now the truth is I would’ve been able to improvise. If he went first, and I suddenly saw he had done everything that I was going to do, I can improvise, this is a professional thing, is don’t be dependent on anything. If the audio/visuals fail, if your PowerPoint doesn’t work, you’re ready to rock and roll no matter what.

So, sure enough, we see we have the same slides, we were going to do a lot of the stuff in the same order, so, obviously, I said to Raj, “Let’s change this up. What would you most like to do about this?” So, he said what he wanted to do. I said, “Okay, you go first and do all that in the morning, and then, at the end of the day…” So, we changed places, we had to get the staff to buy into sending out a message explaining that they were changing the order of the speakers at the last moment.

We got them to buy in. And then Raj went first, he gave his presentation, I re-ordered all my slides, I referred back to how he started the day. That’s another thing when you’re presenting with other people. You always make them look good. You always highlight the brilliance of what they said. You share it again because we have a much happier, more beautiful world, plus Raj happens to be an incredibly brilliant guy, so it was easy for me to do that.

And then the audience goes, “Oh, yeah, I remember that this morning.” And so, they’re getting more depth of connection with what he said, and then I’m using that as a launching point for the next point that I want to tell them. And one of the things I wanted them to do is invite us back, which they already have.

Pete Mockaitis
There you go. Success.

Michael J. Gelb
Yeah.

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

Michael J. Gelb
Anything you want to know, it’s about you and the audience. I’m here to share anything you might want to know.

Pete Mockaitis
I guess, tell us, do you have any super tricks for overcoming the fear?

Michael J. Gelb
Yeah, the two most important ones, one is to actually be prepared and know what you’re talking about and know what your objectives are. When you know why you’re doing something and you have stories to tell, almost everybody speaks naturally and freely and openly. They don’t say uhm and ahh and you know if they’re telling a story. So, figure out what your story is, why you’re telling it, that will help tremendously.

The other thing is why do I teach all this Tai Chi and Qi Gong and Alexander technique, because your physical presence and your energy on the stage makes a huge difference to the audience but also to you. So, if you have done a preparatory energy-harmonizing practice, and there are lots of them in the book, the most effective ones that I have learned in 50 years of being a professional speaker, they’re in the book.

So, if you do any, find which ones works best for you. I try to give people options. One of the simplest ones, because you’re nervous, you’re anxious, the adrenaline is starting to flow, just do some exercise, do jumping jacks, just do some shadow boxing, do something that gets your energy moving rather than just sitting there, as people do, waiting for their turn to speak. It’s like waiting to go to the gallows for a lot of people.

So, their body, their energy is stuck. It’s the fear pattern of stress, and, “What happens if this goes wrong?” and all the adrenaline. And then they’re getting cotton mouth, and they feel like they’re having trouble breathing. I’m laughing only because it’s so easy to solve this. Don’t sit there and stew in your own stress hormones. Get up and move. And then I give all kinds of options. The most sophisticated, which comes from the Alexander technique and Tai Chi and Qi Gong.

Pete Mockaitis
And can you give us a tidbit from the Alexander technique?

Michael J. Gelb
Sure. So, Alexander was a professional presenter. He was a Shakespearean actor. And he probably was losing this voice in the middle of presentations, so he came up with a methodology to free himself from this pattern, became famous on the stage, and, ultimately, became even more famous for teaching this method to other actors and singers. It’s still taught today at The Juilliard School and the Royal Academy of Drama, the Royal Academy of Music. It’s like a trade secret of the theatrical profession.

And the simplest practice from the Alexander technique is to, you can do this, you can just stand in front of a mirror, and be as upright as you can be, and smile, and then let go of everything you don’t need to stand there, and stay standing.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Lovely. All right. Well, now could you share with us a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Michael J. Gelb
One of my favorite quotes is from the young Leonardo da Vinci who said, “I wish to work miracles.”

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

Michael J. Gelb
I tell you, my favorite study related to presenting is a study that was done with inmates at Rahway State Prison, and they asked muggers in the prison to look at videos of people walking down the street, and say who they would mug. And the muggers said that they would mug anybody who looked out of it, who wasn’t paying attention, who looked weak, they would attack.

Interestingly, anybody who looked kind of arrogant, they wanted to attack. People who looked balanced, poised, and present, the muggers said, “I just wouldn’t bother that person. There are too many easier targets.” And the lesson is when you walk on stage, don’t be mug-able.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Good lesson. And so, it didn’t have anything to do with them looking rich, like, “Ooh, they got the expensive sneakers, or they…”?

Michael J. Gelb
Well, the thing is if you’re rich and you’re not paying attention…

Pete Mockaitis
Double whammy, okay.

Michael J. Gelb
Right.

Pete Mockaitis
I got you. And a favorite book?

Michael J. Gelb
Favorite book. Well, there are lots of them but my seminal book that inspired me was, Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl.

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

Michael J. Gelb
Oh, my favorite tool is the juggling ball.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, do you squeeze it or what do you do with it when you’re just working?

Michael J. Gelb
Well, juggle it, and then I also, see, I juggle them. I have them everywhere. See, I have this one. Can you see what it says on it?

Pete Mockaitis
IBM.

Michael J. Gelb
Because I taught a thousand IBM engineers how to juggle.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, cool.

Michael J. Gelb
And so, I kept my IBM juggling ball. I have all sorts of corporate juggling balls all over my office. But actually, I juggle them as well as using them as wrist flexibility and strengthening gadgets.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And a favorite habit?

Michael J. Gelb
Favorite habit. Well, I suppose this is a habit, is walking. I go for a walk. Walking, obviously, I walked into my office to talk to you, but I made it pretty much, we could call it a ritual, maybe a habit to go for a walk in the beautiful around the ponds and through the trees. I’ve done two so far today. I may do one more, possibly two.

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

Michael J. Gelb
Well, what people quote back to me most often is that it’s really because they’ve read How to Think Like Leonardo da Vinci, which is my most well-known book, is that they quote back to me, and say, “Da Vinci was always my inspiration, and thank you for bringing him to life for me.”

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

Michael J. Gelb
MichaelGelb.com. G-E-L-B, MichaelGelb.com.

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

Michael J. Gelb
The call to action and the final thought is take every opportunity to present. You have to practice. So, think of yourself as a professional presenter. Even if you’re not going to do it for money, eventually, you’re going to keep your job, I think it’s actually the number one thing you can do beyond your technical expertise to strengthen your long-term career prospects and be awesome at your job.

Because if somebody else is technically competent, and you’re technically competent, the person who’s better able to speak to people and get a powerful message across is the one who’s going to be that much more awesome at their job, and have that much greater career prospect.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Michael, thank you. This has been a treat. I wish you much luck and fun amidst your animal frolicking.

Michael J. Gelb
Thanks so much. My pleasure.

Jun 19
0

875: How to Unapologetically Ask for What You Want with Jenny Wood

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Jenny Wood discusses how to overcome self-doubt and fear to confidently chase after what you want.

You’ll Learn:

  1. How to flip negativity into positivity with one word.
  2. How always aiming to be the best harms you.
  3. Where to find the courage to take more risks.

About Jenny

Jenny Wood is an executive at Google running a large operations team that helps drive tens of billions of revenue per year. She is also the founder of Own Your Career, one of the largest career development programs in Google’s history with tens of thousands of people benefitting.

Resources Mentioned

Jenny Wood Interview Transcript

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

Jenny Wood
Thanks so much. It’s great to be here, Pete.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m excited to hear about some of the wisdom you’ve gathered from your time rocking and rolling on your career program at Google and your upcoming book, The Chase: Unconventional, Uninhibited, and Unapologetic Guide to Getting What You Really Want in Life. That sounds pretty handy.

Jenny Wood
Well, I hope it will be handy. I think we over-apologize in life, right? We say, “Sorry. Sorry, I’m late,” instead of, “Thanks for your patience.” I’m not saying that we should never apologize but I think that sometimes we over-apologize when we really are just trying to get what we want in life.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s true. And you’ve got a cool story about meeting your husband, unapologetically. How did this go down?

Jenny Wood
Yeah. So, let me paint the picture here that I tend to have a bit of anxious tendencies. I tend to be pretty data-driven. And when I was single and dating in New York City, I now live in Boulder, but back in 2011, I was single and dating in New York City, and I was riding the subway home from work one day, and I saw an attractive guy standing about 30 feet away from me.

So, my natural somewhat anxious data-driven tendencies would have me sit there in my seat and say, “Well, there’s nothing to do about this. I’m not going to go up and strike up a conversation with him and have all these people look at me while I’m doing that.” But then as the doors were closing, when he got off the train, something took over me, something pushed me out of my subway seat and gave me the courage and the confidence to chase after him, hence the name of the book, The Chase.

And so, I caught up with him, I tapped him on the shoulder, I said, “Excuse me. I’m sorry to bother you,” and he said, “That’s okay. You seem nice.” I gave him my business card, and we went out on a date a week later, and the rest is history. He’s now my husband, my incredible partner, the father of my eight- and five-year-old son and daughter. And that was because I decided to simply ask for what I wanted that day.

I got a little bit curious about what might happen if I was bold, and I got over those anxious tendencies that were keeping me small. And the worst thing that could’ve happened that day was he could’ve said, “Sorry, I’m married.” And then I have my answer, which was better than not knowing to me, because living in uncertainty is so hard. And it’s win-win because then he gets to go home to his wife and kids, and be like, “I still got it, honey. I got hit on the subway.”

Pete Mockaitis
That is beautiful in terms of that’s still a benefit to both of you in terms of you can feel confident and proud of who you were in that moment, and rising and being courageous, and he can feel complimented. But I’d like to zoom in when you said, “Excuse me, I’m sorry to bother you,” what was, if you can recall, as much of the verbatim exchange as possible? Could you share that with us?

Jenny Wood
Yeah, and it’s a little ironic because I started off by saying part of my platform is stop apologizing and I did say, literally, “Excuse me, I’m sorry to bother you.” So, I guess that was before I had evolved into this thought leadership train that I now get so excited about. But he literally said, “That’s okay. You seem nice.” I was carrying flowers from an acapella rehearsal because Google has all sorts of fun activities and things you can participate in, in addition to your core job.

So, I was carrying flowers that were left over from this acapella rehearsal, and I was holding these white Gerber daisies, so he thought I was trying to sell him flowers. And then I said that I was interested in going on a date with him, and then that’s how it happened.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Lovely. That’s really cool. All right. Well, so you have an interesting vantage point. You’ve seen a lot of people chasing stuff and interested in things, working in career development and other fields, and putting together some of these tidbits in your book, The Chase. So, can you share with us, any particularly noteworthy or surprising or counterintuitive discoveries you’ve made about us humans when we’re chasing stuff?

Jenny Wood
Well, honestly, some of it is unsurprising, which is we could all use a little bit more confidence in life. I would even take this as far as finding your swagger, or maybe even being a little less shameful, which you might flip and call shameless, which has a very…

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, there’s the show, yeah.

Jenny Wood
Yeah, there’s a connotation there, right?

Pete Mockaitis
You don’t want to be that vibe.

Jenny Wood
Well, I think what we want to do is to get rid of all the shame that comes, that gets in the way with us going after what we really want. So, for example, oftentimes, we’ll be at, let’s say, a PTO meeting or at a meeting at work, and someone says, “Well, this is a shameless plug.” Actually, my job before Google, I was sitting in this meeting, and someone said, “This is a shameless plug,” and then they began to share a spreadsheet that was going to be so useful to the other 20 people in the room, and everybody said, “Wow, this is going to save me time. This is going to make me so much efficient.”

And so, rather than this person offering, as a lead, “And this is a shameless plug,” perhaps they could’ve said, “This is something that I created that might be useful and helpful to all of you.” So, what I find to be unsurprising is that a lot of us feel impostor syndrome. There was a study out of the University of Glasgow that said 75% of employees regularly feel a lack of confidence at work.

And you think of all the hard stuff that’s going on, we’re just coming out of the pandemic, there’s economic uncertainty, we have new ways of working, there’s headwinds in a lot of industries right now. And as we face all these headwinds, it’s unsurprising that we have additional impostor syndrome or a lack of confidence.

But by finding your swagger, by building your confidence, by asking for what you want, unapologetically, or offering a room of 20 people a useful tool that will save them time and make them more efficient is a way to find your swagger, is a way to increase your confidence, and to stem your impostor syndrome. And one way I think about this, one practical tool, is to know your superpowers, which I’m happy to go into, Pete, or we can take this another direction.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, knowing superpowers is awesome. That’s come up a couple of times. And as I’ve heard it described, some people will call it like a spike. It’s not just people skills or problem solving, but rather it tends to be much more specific and precise and nuanced. So, can you give us, first, some examples and then share with us, how do we uncover that?

Jenny Wood
Yeah, so my three superpowers are leadership, influencing people, and building things from startup to scale. And it took me narrowing down a number of things that I feel like I’m pretty good at, and narrowing it down to three, but it also took me expanding from zero on those days where I feel like everybody is smarter than I am, everybody is more talented than I am, everybody knows more about the industry, the product, the process than I do.

And by knowing my three and having them practiced, I have them ready to roll off my tongue in any situation. That could be a meeting with a perspective mentor. It could be a conversation with my manager. It could be a coffee chat with a new friend when I moved to a new city, which I did when I moved from Manhattan to Boulder in 2018.

So, I always say this about my second superpower, which is influencing people. At the end of the day, I feel like everything is influence or sales, frankly. Now, that could be influencing my VP to adopt my new insights program, or it could be convincing my husband, John, to order sushi versus Italian on a Saturday night. Everything is influencing people. Everything is sales.

But that takes practice, Pete. I can’t just roll out of bed one morning and have that roll off my tongue. I have to narrow it down to my three, and then I have to practice, essentially, what is my elevator pitch, which works in so many areas of life – personal, professional, friendships, relationships.

Pete Mockaitis
And so, how are you defining superpower here?

Jenny Wood
So, I define it, basically, as your strengths, your passions, the things that you are particularly good at, because in all areas of life, everyone has a personal brand, whether they like it or not. It’s what people, essentially, say about you behind closed doors. We all have a personal brand. But how we want to control that narrative of the brand is ultimately up to us, should we choose to lean into that.

Pete Mockaitis
And it’s funny, when you said superpower, I was imagining super precise tidbits, such as identifying the hidden implications of a fact presented that others may overlook. So, for example, that’s a lot of words. Now, leadership feels pretty broad, what do you specifically mean by leadership?

Jenny Wood
So, leadership, first of all, is earned not granted. To me, a manager is kind of managing to spec. That’s actually something that Seth Godin says. Seth Godin and I had a conversation yesterday about his new book that just came out, great book, The Song of Significance: A New Manifesto for Teams. And leadership to me is a state of mind. It is an earned opportunity. It is having empathy for your team. It is ending each one-on-one with, “How can I support you this week?” It is the humble two, using the humble two if you’re in a group meeting.

And I refer to the humble two as these two statements, “I don’t know,” and “I was wrong.” If a leader can use those two statements in a big group of people that are reporting to them, that’s pretty powerful because, of course, we want our leaders to be right most of the time, of course, we want our leaders to have answers often, but for a leader to have the humility to say, “I don’t know and I was wrong,” and then thoughtfully follow-up, get the data that’s needed, get back to that team, that’s powerful stuff. And that, to me, is the difference that makes a leader.

Pete Mockaitis
I like that humble two notion a lot in terms of, “I was wrong.” Another variant of that that I really like is when you’re just in a group of folks chatting about potential ideas, possibilities. This is more about me than leadership as a whole, but when folks say, “I like your way better,” like they prefer what someone else said to what they, themselves, said. I just really love that because I think it speaks volumes.

I don’t know, it seems like there’s a good segment of the population. I think it feels like they need to be right and the smart one in the room. And those humble statements of “I was wrong, I like your way better” and anything in that whole family or cluster, I think, goes a long way to show, “It sure is not about my ego, but it’s about the thing that we’re trying to do here together.”

Jenny Wood
Absolutely. And the best thing you can do as a leader is to lift your people up, to lift as you climb, and to amplify their good ideas, because, as a leader, you get 100% of credit. And this could be a leader, this could be a principal of a school, this could be a leader of a union, this could be a leader in a big corporation, you get 100% credit for everything your team does.

So, that means if they fail, you fail. But if they succeed, you succeed. So, whenever I see a leader giving credit to their team, or sending the email to their manager, thanking their team and CC-ing their team below them for the great work they did, and giving credit, like that’s the leader I want to work for. That’s the leader I want to work for.

Pete Mockaitis
And when it comes to chasing things and doing the influencing, do you have any particular pro tips there?

Jenny Wood
Influence is so much about communication, and I know you’ve had a lot of guests that talk about communication. I know you have some listeners who are early to mid-career who are always looking to up-level their skills in all areas of life. So, one I like a lot is called delete the octopus. And if you’re willing to do a little roleplay here with me, I would ask you to…

Pete Mockaitis
This is where your improv experience coming to bear.

Jenny Wood
This is my improve experience.

Pete Mockaitis
I took one improv course at Second City for three days, so let’s see what I got.

Jenny Wood
Whoa, we’re now going to give you your Second City report card X number of years later. All right. So, let’s say, in this hypothetical scene we’re setting, that we are in a meeting together, and someone, and your manager says, “What are the biggest challenges on your team right now?” So, I’ll actually have you give that to me instead, and say, “Jenny, what are the biggest challenges on your team right now?” And I will offer two ways to answer this question because I think this is key to influencing effectively.

The first way will be ramble-y and not very buttoned-up, and the second way will be much tighter-structured and more buttoned-up. So, again, I’ll ask you to give me two opportunities to answer this question with you as my manager, and me as one of the people in this room of, let’s say, ten people. And the question is, “Jenny, what are the biggest challenges on your team right now?”

Pete Mockaitis
“Jenny, what are the biggest challenges on your team right now?”

Jenny Wood
“Oh, so many challenges. I mean, we started this new team that’s essentially a startup within our real estate industry here at our pretend company. And I really think that the priorities are kind of we’re just not set on our priorities yet, we’ve got a bunch of different goals, and we haven’t really figured out how we’re going to track our goals or what our metrics should be.”

“We also have so many confusing things around our tools and our technology, and things we’re doing in spreadsheets that we should maybe be outsourcing for different tools, which also reminds me that what makes this even harder is all the different regions that we have. We’ve got people in America, we’ve got people in Europe, we’ve got people in Asia. In fact, the other day, I was traveling to Asia and met with the team, but then I took some vacation days. I went scuba diving. I saw this really cool purple octopus on this night dive.”

“But I digress. Going back to the global challenges, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.” All right. So, this tip is called delete the octopus, because I just gave a long ramble-y answer that made it really hard to influence you as my manager on what my biggest challenges are right now. So, now, I’m going to ask you to ask me that same question again, “Jenny, what are the biggest challenges on your team right now?” and I’ll answer in an upgraded way.

Pete Mockaitis
“Jenny, what are the biggest challenges on your team right now?”

Jenny Wood
“Our three biggest challenges right now are priorities, technology, and global alignment. Priorities because we’re a new team and we’re still figuring out what our goals and what our metrics are. Technology because we’re still doing things in offline spreadsheets that we should probably be using tools to solve instead. And, finally, global alignment because we have teams in America, in Europe, and in Asia, and if we were more coordinated, we could move faster and more efficiently. So, my three biggest challenges are priorities, technology, and global alignment.”

How much easier was that to understand?

Pete Mockaitis
Certainly, and especially in the context of management and influence that we’re talking about here. It’s, like, with the first, it’s sort of like, “Well, I don’t really know what to latch onto or what I might offer in terms of assistance in that world,” versus this, it’s like, “Oh, well, hey, we’re using this tool right now. It’s awesome. Does your team want access to it? Here it is.”

Jenny Wood
Exactly. Right. And this was all about influence, right? So, how do I influence you as my leader in any area of life. It could be a leader in a community center. It could be a leader in a social group. It could be a leader in any volunteer group. How do I influence you as my leader to help me with the things that I need to help me achieve my goals?

So, in this particular case, which is a professional example, my goal is to get more support from my manager on priorities, on technology, on global alignment. But if I give that long-winded ramble-y answer, there’s no way for you, as you said, to latch onto what I most need. And what is the specific tactic I used there?

The specific tactic I used was simply write down a list of seven to ten things that are problems, circle, let’s call it, two to three, and then when I start speaking, simply lead with those singular words. Just priorities, just technology, and just global alignment.

And that means that I also embrace the power of a pause, which people, early in their careers, sometimes think makes them seem less buttoned-up and not as smart or not as prepared, but it actually has a counterintuitive effect. It makes people seem smarter and more buttoned-up and more knowledgeable and prepared.

Pete Mockaitis
Absolutely. And on the receiving end of a pause, it’s funny, it just sort of galvanizes attention and builds a little bit of suspense. I remember my Uncle Topper, which was one of my first people I look to for speaking wisdom, episode 100, he would do that frequently in his speeches, and I was like, “Well, what’s he going to say next? Well, what is that?”

And so, it builds the suspense and gravity and attention all the more, which is great, which is what you want, people paying attention to you. As well as it actually saves time in terms of, “Ooh, I don’t know if I want to ‘waste’ the one minute of silence to gather it.” But, really, that one minute often will save ten minutes of ramble not gone down.

Jenny Wood
Yeah, exactly. And think of all the ways, areas in our life where you ramble – relationships, friendships. It’s also a way to show that you respect somebody else by slowing down and pausing and giving them a moment to speak, especially for those of us. Very hard for me early in my career, still hard for me on some days, I naturally speak to think. And I’ve had to retrain my brain, but it is retrainable, so that I can better think to speak, which is exactly what delete the octopus helps encourage.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, when we’re chasing things, particularly in the career world, we got a clear understanding of your superpowers, and then some thoughts for how we communicate to be influential. Are there any other really top best practices/worst practices that you would highlight here?

Jenny Wood
Well, I would offer that a success mindset comes before success itself. And since I already talked impostor syndrome and all the inner gremlins we can have, let’s take a statement that we might say to ourselves that starts with “I” and has something negative after it. For example, “I don’t have my dream job yet,” “I haven’t met the partner I want to spend the rest of my life with,” “I don’t spend enough time with my daughter.”

So, I already kind of pre-leaked it in that first example by adding a very specific simple word, which is just the word yet. If you take any negative sentiment and you add the word yet to it, so let’s take the second to where I did not add it. So, the second one was, “I have not met the partner I want to spend the rest of my life with,” that’s an inner gremlin, then you add the word yet, “I have not met the partner I want to spend the rest of my life with yet.”
Or, let’s say I’m struggling with work-life balance, and I say, “I don’t spend enough time with my daughter.” Very negative, very down on myself. But if I add the word yet, “I don’t spend enough time with my daughter yet,” I have not yet figured out the right way to mix my professional and my home life in a way that serves me.

So, a success mindset comes before success itself, and adding that word yet can help with that growth mindset. Thank you, Carol Dweck and all your great work on growth mindset. It can help you overcome the negative speak, those barriers we put up in front of ourselves that prevent us from even starting something.

If I said on the subway that day, “Well, I haven’t met my partner, and it’s just all feudal,” well, that’s not the mindset you need to chase what you want. But if I sat there, saying to myself, “That guy is attractive. I am interested. I haven’t met him yet,” well, that’s the inspiration I need to get pushed out of my subway seat by some force that’s helping me chase what I want and achieve it.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, inner gremlins, we add the yet. What else do you recommend?

Jenny Wood
I have a number of ways that I also like to encourage people to pump themselves up when they’re feeling like the work they produced that week is not as good as their peers, or the email they sent to their friend group was not as helpful as maybe they would want it to be, and that is this concept of “Meh.”

Not everything we do every week can be a ten out of ten, nor should it be because that’s bad prioritization. So, if you embrace the fact that some of the work you do every week, the emails you write, the texts you send to friends, the conversations you have with your partner, the slides you work on for your presentation, that some of them are going to be meh, then that helps you be a little bit more strategic with where you want to be above average and where you want to be below average because, by definition of how math works, 50% of everything you do this week will be below average.

Pete Mockaitis
Below your average.

Jenny Wood
Below your average, right. Exactly. So, if you look at the 800 or something podcasts episodes you’ve produced, 50% are below average of your average podcasts.

Pete Mockaitis
How dare you, Jenny?

Jenny Wood
How dare I? It’s radical. It’s radical. But it’s true because it’s just math, and being a data lover and an econ major in college, I can’t not share this because I think it’s so freeing. I think it is so freeing to recognize on those nights when you’re having trouble falling asleep because you feel like you didn’t nail the presentation, or those days that I didn’t pick up my daughter from school and I felt like a bad mom because I had a meeting that went too long.

On those days when we feel like we are not at our best, it’s actually quite freeing and helps us fall asleep at night to remember that you cannot be above average on every single task, every single day, every single week, every single year. And then when you do have that episode, and hopefully it’s not this one, Pete, but if it is, well, accept it because it’s just how math works. When you do have that episode that’s below average, you can simply shake it off, realize tomorrow is a new day, and say, “Not every single episode can be above average. Not every single episode can be in my top 10%.”

But some people really struggle with that and want everything to be the absolute best, the absolute superlative, but that gets in the way of trying things, taking risks, recording your next podcast episode, because if you were worried that every single podcast episode had to be the best you’d ever recorded, you probably wouldn’t do another one next week.

Pete Mockaitis
Absolutely. And that’s interesting when you talked about taking risks, this reminds me of folks who only took the easy classes they knew they would do well in, in high school or college. And, yep, that will probably get you a higher grade-point average when you’re all done. True. But it’s such a bummer in terms of the discoveries and the adventures and the expansion that could’ve been had you tried some things out that were different, uncomfortable, and probably below average.

Jenny Wood
I love that. Discoveries, adventures, expansions, that’s exactly what we want in life. And we think about taking risks, and in the book, I call this actually being a little bit reckless. I’ve got these edgy words I’m going to use to be a little bit exciting with the language and to encourage people that, sure, there are ways you don’t want to be reckless if it’s harming yourself or harming anybody else, but to be a little bit reckless and go with your gut.

Move to Australia for that semester abroad even though it seems scary and uncertain and it’s far away and you don’t know anybody. Be a little bit reckless in that kind of decision. Sure, dot the Is and cross your Ts on your mortgage forms and your tax documents, but in areas where you can take a little bit of risks, rather than doing considerable analysis paralysis, and weighing every single pro and con, go with your gut.

Be a little reckless, take a little risk because that’s when you do get the adventure, the expansion, and so many new opportunities you wouldn’t even know that you had coming had you just taken the easy class.

Pete Mockaitis
And that little snippet you shared about having trouble falling asleep because you had a bad presentation, I imagine you’ve worked with a lot of overachievers in your day.

Jenny Wood
I’ve worked with a few, one or two.

Pete Mockaitis
And in so doing, there is a theme that happens often in this population, that one can put their whole identity, self-worth, sense of value, into their performance, whether it’s work or family or whatever. And so, that notion, a person who does that may very well have trouble falling asleep when they made a bad presentation.

And that reframe associated with, mathematically, it’s just a fact that 50% of your work will be below your average, and to try and find peace with that meh is handy, do you have any other bits of wisdom for this population that struggles with that interior emotional challenge?

Jenny Wood
Well, this is not my wisdom but wisdom from social psychological principles. It’s called the spotlight effect. And it essentially means that, let’s say, for example, I do a lot of speaking engagements, and sometimes they’re really good, and sometimes it’s not my best day.

So, if I were losing sleep that night, thinking, “Oh, my gosh, I did this keynote for this organization, and I messed up slide seven.” And I’m, like, replaying it over and over in my head, and I’m anxious, and I’m tossing and turning, and the inner gremlins are roaring. I have to remember the spotlight effect, which is that I have a spotlight on me right now, focused on how I’d bombed slide seven, but any audience member is worried about the presentation they gave to their customer that day where they maybe messed up slide 11.

So, I’ve got a spotlight on me about slide seven in my presentation, they’ve got a spotlight on them about how they delivered slide 11 in their customer presentation, and, therefore, we could all just live happier, more fulfilled, more at peace if we recognized that people are never as worried about our mistakes, our transgressions, our slip ups as we are ourselves because of this social psychological concept called the spotlight effect.

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

Jenny Wood
I’m so excited to talk about my favorite things. I think we covered it. It’s really all about asking for what you want unapologetically, and showing up each day in life and work and family and friendships unapologetically in a way that is about being bold.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I guess I was just going to follow-up with…when it comes to asking unapologetically, when folks are in the heat of the moment, and they think they do want to talk to that gentleman on the subway, or to make that request, and they’re just scared, emotions, in the moment, what do you recommend they do?

Jenny Wood
Well, there’s a very practical thing you can do, which is simply breathe. Breathe in, breathe out, and to recognize, at least for me, I really struggle with uncertainty. That’s when my anxiety kicks in the most. Uncertainty about where to live, uncertainty about which house to buy, “Is it the right house to buy?” Uncertainty about, “Is this the right life partner?” Uncertainty about what to talk to my colleague about that might be a challenging conversation versus not.

To me, the anxiety lives in the uncertainty. So, if you contrast that with when you’re bold and ask for what you want unapologetically, or make a courageous move unapologetically, you tend to get an answer one way or the other. The answer might be yes. The answer might be no. But I, frankly, would rather live with a no and feel less anxious than live in the uncertainty and feel more anxious.

So, that always encourages me to get out of my subway seat and take the bold move, do the hard thing because I personally feel, and I hear this from a lot of people that I partner with as well, that uncertainty is very disconcerting to them and very stressful, and they’d rather have the answer, too, but people have a hard time taking that first step.

So, it’s almost like zooming out and seeing that long view of, “On the other side of this, I’d rather have the answer, even if the answer is no,” because, as Wayne Gretzky taught us in hockey, you miss 100% of the shots you don’t take, but if you take a couple shots, or get off the subway a couple times, you might end up with a husband, or a great career, or a great family life, or a great passion of a hobby.

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

Jenny Wood
Yes, I love this quote, “Rationalization is a weapon so powerful it should require a background check.”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay.

Jenny Wood
That’s by Dan Pink. Because we rationalize not sending that email to that prospective mentor, or not having the tough conversation with a peer who’s maybe a little bit more challenging to work with. It keeps us small and it thwarts our full potential when we rationalize why we shouldn’t take a bold move, or when we rationalize why we shouldn’t take a bold action or chase something we truly want.

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

Jenny Wood
Well, I do a lot on LinkedIn, and I offered a poll that, I guess, this is first-party research here, this is my own research, but I asked a poll, “Do you have a 10-year plan? Do you have a five-year plan?” And I think there’s this misconception with people earlier to mid-career that all the leaders they worked with had some big grand 10-year plan or five-year plan, but the data actually is counterintuitive and suggests otherwise.

Eighty-one percent of people, that’s almost 2,000 people who answered, did not have a 10-year plan. I think it was about 56% of people did not even have a five-year plan. So, that’s why everything I’ve spoken about in this conversation so far has been to help you, listeners, do big small things – that’s actually the name of my newsletter, Big Small Things – to cast votes for the future person you want to be, to cast votes for the goals that you want to achieve because it’s not some big colossal 10-year plan. It’s really about the big small things you do every day to move one step closer to your goals that you’re chasing.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And a favorite book?

Jenny Wood
Build for Tomorrow by Jason Feiffer. He’s been a guest on the show, and he is just so wise and so smart. His four phases are panic, adaptation, new normal, and wouldn’t go back, which is a bit counterintuitive, that last one. Episode 848 on your show.

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

Jenny Wood
I like the four Ds. When you’re looking at your to-do list, the four Ds are do, delay, drop, and delegate because that really helps you structure. If you have 20 things on your to-do list, you don’t have to do them all today, you don’t have to do them all this morning. And my favorite one is delay because sometimes when you delay, something just falls off the to-do list because either it’s decided it doesn’t need to be done, or somebody else takes care of it, and then, poof, it goes away.

So, if you just write down delay next to a couple tasks, you feel like you’re in control of your to-do list, but you don’t have that feeling of overwhelm to get through every single item. So, the four Ds are do, delay, drop, and delegate.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite habit?

Jenny Wood
A favorite habit is using a checklist each day. So, I’m a pilot for fun, a private pilot, and the other day I was taking my kids up to fly, and my five-year-old daughter said…I was going through my checklist so I said, “Mixture reached. Avionics on. Flaps up,” as I went through the takeoff checklist. And she said, “Mommy, what are you talking about?” And I said, “I’m going through the checklist. This is to have a safe and effective flight.”

And I like to bring that concept to my day-to-day as well. So, rather than wake up in the morning, immediately check my work email, and start reactively responding, I have a checklist. Exercise for 30 minutes. Meditate for five minutes. Spend 60 minutes on the project that is most important but probably the one I’m going to procrastinate when my inbox takes over. So, by having that checklist – exercise, meditate, 60 minutes on the key project – that helps me set up my day, like a good pilot of my day, for a, I guess you could call it, safe and effective day, or productive and effective day.

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

Jenny Wood
“Serendipity isn’t found; it’s made.” And I made my own serendipity on the subway that day. The New York Times wrote about this story, and the title of the article was, “Serendipity one, spreadsheet zero” because I mentioned I do everything in spreadsheets. I even had the spreadsheet of all the people I was dating, I’m super organized, and kept track of it all.

And so, on that particular day, serendipity won out, but I made the serendipity. Luck is when preparation meets opportunity, we all know. So, that day, I made my own serendipity by making the bold move to chase what I wanted unapologetically.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, now I want to know, in the spreadsheet, one of the columns is the name.

Jenny Wood
Uh-oh, here we go. Here we go.

Pete Mockaitis
What are some of the other columns in that spreadsheet?

Jenny Wood
So, it wasn’t so much an evaluative spreadsheet. It was a spreadsheet so that I was prepared walking into date. So, it would be name, and this was like a lot of early days online dating, so it was mostly about anything we’d talked about online. It was probably logistics, too, where we were going, what time, whether we’d spoken on the phone, and then kind of key nuggets about what we’ve talked about so I walked in somewhat informed when I went into that conversation.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, yeah, and if you have a lot of online dating people, you might just straight up get mixed up, like, “Whoops, sorry about that. That was the other guy.”

Jenny Wood
Yeah, I was trying to be a good partner.

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

Jenny Wood
I post on LinkedIn almost every day, but I mentioned my newsletter, Big Small Things, which you can sign up for. It’s a super short nugget that you get, delivered right to your inbox, lots of things like we’ve talked about that are highly actionable to help you be successful and chase your goals. And that is at ItsJennyWood.com/newsletter. So, I-T-S-J-E-N-N-Y-W-O-O-D.com/newsletter.

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

Jenny Wood
Well, I think it’s just asking for what you want unapologetically. So, as I mentioned, it’s easy to not do it because it’s easy to not ask for something. Rationalization is a weapon so powerful it should require a background check. It’s easy to rationalize not asking for something, not sending back the lukewarm mashed potatoes at a restaurant because you rationalize that you don’t want to bother the server, or rationalizing not saying to your colleague, “Hey, I’d really love to take the lead on our client presentation next time because I want to grow that skill,” because, “Oh, I feel bad and it’s not really my place to the lead. That’s their responsibility.”

But the people you work with are not mind readers, the server at the restaurant is not a mind reader that the mashed potatoes are lukewarm, your manager is not a mind reader that you want to challenge yourself in a new way, so you have to have the confidence, that swagger, that agency to ask for what you want so that you can get what you want.

Because in any room that you’re in, nobody cares more about your goals than you do. So, it really is up to each of us to have that agency, to have that confidence, to find that swagger to go after what we want because there’s nothing wrong with having goals and chasing them.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Thank you. Jenny, I wish you lots of luck with all your chases.

Jenny Wood
Well, thank you so much. You, too, Pete.

May 18
0

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

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

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

You’ll Learn:

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

About Darleen

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

Resources Mentioned

Darleen Santore Interview Transcript

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Darleen “Coach Dar” Santore
Yes, absolutely.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And then what’s next?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, important clarification.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And what’s next?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite book?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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