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Sep 14
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345: The Simple Solution to Disengagement with Dr. Bob Nelson

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Dr. Bob Nelson says: "Every employee's got a $50,000 idea if you can find a way to get it out."

Dr. Bob Nelson reveals the drivers behind disengagement–and what to do about them.

 

You’ll Learn:

  1. Just how critical recognition is
  2. Key reasons managers don’t give more encouragement
  3. Five ways to reward employees at low or no cost

About Bob

Dr. Bob Nelson is a leading advocate for employee recognition and engagement worldwide and the only person who has done a PhD dissertation related to the topic. He has consulted for 80 percent of the Fortune 500 as well as presented on six continents.  He has sold 5 million books, including 1001 Ways to Reward Employees of which 1001 Ways to ENGAGE Employees is his latest. Dr. Bob has been featured extensively in the national and international media including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, CBS 60 Minutes, MSNBC, ABC, PBS and NPR about how best to motivate today’s employees.

Items Mentioned in this Show:

Dr. Bob Nelson Interview Transcript

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

Dr. Bob Nelson
Pete, thanks for having me.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m so excited to dig into this chat in many ways, maybe 1,001 ways or reasons why I’m excited. First, not to be too self-serving, but I’m so curious, you have quite a sentence in your bio: 80% of the Fortune 500 has been one of your consulting clients. Wow. What’s the secret behind this?

Dr. Bob Nelson
Yeah. Have good services, good outreach and keep at it. I’ve been doing this 25 years. Along the way people see what you’re up to and they say, “We need help with that,” or “We want your message to go to all our leaders,” or some version of that.

It’s a lot of fun. I really love it, to be able to help someone, a company that maybe can’t see the forest for the trees and they’re in the middle of it and they’re being hammered by different vendors and they’re not sure – they lose their focus and I can help them get their bearings and go through the sea of choices and end up with really what they’re after.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s cool. That’s cool. Not to turn this into a marketing podcast, but tell me about the consistent outreach part.

Dr. Bob Nelson
Oh, I think anyone knows that you have to keep at it for – regardless of how successful your business or your book or whatever you’re doing. I’m constantly promoting. Every time you speak, you’re promoting. Every time you’re consulting, you’re promoting. If you lose sight of that, then you’re going to hit a dry spot.

You hear about people, they’ve got a big consulting project for AT&T for three years and then that runs out and they’ve got no business. You’ve got to be constantly putting out lines. I believe that.

Another thing I believe that as a small business owner, I’ve got kind of a cottage industry in employee motivation and engagement, but within that there’s different strategies that you have to – you can’t just do one thing. You’ve got to be doing different things. I’m not sure – any given year I’ll do five or six major strategies. I’m not sure which ones will hit better, but two or three of them will and it will be – it will keep me busy and provide adequate funding.

I’m a believer in you’ve got to be promoting and you’ve got to be trying different things. You’ve got to be innovating because the market changes, tools change, technology changes. Now we have a whole new generation coming up, so they may not know the things that could help that – from people before them, from research that’s come before them. There’s a lot of – it doesn’t stay static. That’s makes it go a little bit exciting.

Pete Mockaitis
That is exciting. What I appreciate about that, and thanks for going there, is for our listeners who are not small business owners or marketing professionals, I was kind of inspired by what you said there in terms of you try five or six things a year, two or three of them hit. In other words, the minority or less than 50% by a slight margin. That’s just sort of encouraging in terms of trying stuff. Even super rock stars might miss more often than they hit.

Dr. Bob Nelson
Yeah. You talk to anyone that’s had success and there’s a certain element of luck in there, but as Mark Twain said, “The harder I work, the luckier I get.”

I think that for any artist, for a record producer, a song producer, a book producer, you take your bestselling product – or for any company, if any – I was just talking with Garry Ridge, CEO of WD-40. They’ve got a fantastic product. It’s a 500 million dollar company. They’re in 300 countries.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s all of them just about. That is more than is represented in the UN I believe. Impressive.

Dr. Bob Nelson
Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You’re right on that, but there’s – that was a – but they’re all over the globe. They – talking to them, they’re not resting on their laurels. They constantly, “What are we going to do new this year? What are we going to do-“ They’re using their tax refund to do more on social media.

It’s just you’re constantly refocusing. You’re constantly trying to maximize because we all have limited time, limited resources, limited marketing budgets, so what’s the best position. Because no matter what you do, you’ve got to be doing a little bit of experimenting all the time to test the waters for the next idea.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh cool. Thank you. Now I want to dig in a little bit. Your company is Nelson Motivation. You’ve got a book called 1,001 Ways to Engage Employees.

Dr. Bob Nelson
Yes.

Pete Mockaitis
That is a lot of ways.

Dr. Bob Nelson
It is.

Pete Mockaitis
What’s kind of the main idea behind the book?

Dr. Bob Nelson
The main idea of 1,001 Ways to Engage Employees is the fact that we’re in a time where we need people engaged more than ever before, yet it’s at an all-time low. Since the field has come around in the last 20 years, essentially started by Gallup and their longitudinal research came up with what was called the Q12, 12, a dozen key variables that differentiate high performing companies from their average competitors.

Wow, great idea. They’re excellent at measuring engagement. This is the state of the field now that we have a good bead on it. We don’t have enough of it. We need more of it. It’s currently costing our country, our economy 420 billion dollars a year. Wow, bring it on. Although they’re good at measuring, they’re not so good at impacting it, at creating greater engagement.

I kind of looked at that and said, well, I don’t know much, but I know if 20 years into it we have the same number of engaged employees as 20 years ago, the same number of disengaged and actively disengaged employees, give or take one percent, then whatever we’re trying to do isn’t doing it.

I’m trying to bring a practical hands-on approach saying stop measuring and start doing it. Start focusing on the behaviors that gets you the results. This book is about-

Pete Mockaitis
…. Sorry, go ahead.

Dr. Bob Nelson
This book is about doing that. I took the research-based top ten variables, factors, if you will, that most impact employee engagement and systematically with each one of them I show the reader what it looks like through examples and practices currently being done by successful companies.

It’s just a book of practical positive wisdom that can help move the needle for your organization, whether you manage one person, a group, or have responsibility for the whole organization, you can start heading in the right direction where you can get better and better to have a more highly engaged workforce.

Pete Mockaitis
I’d love to dig into first the data piece for a moment. I – we talked about engagement a few times on the show. I’ve received more than 100 pitches from PR folk pointing to the crisis of low engagement.

Dr. Bob Nelson
There you go.

Pete Mockaitis
And how so-and-so would be a great person to talk to. You made it in though. You passed the gauntlet. But what you point out, which is kind of interesting from a historical context perspective, is you say, “Hold up now. Gallup’s been tracking this thing for 20 years and it’s been just about the same for all 20 years.”

Dr. Bob Nelson
Correct.

Pete Mockaitis
So this is not a new crisis that we are thinking about. It’s just sort of like the state of work for two decades.

Dr. Bob Nelson
Yeah. Well, it’s a little bit the emperor’s not wearing clothes. It’s sort of like, if you want to measure it again this year and compare it to last year and look at each other and say, “Well, it really hasn’t changed that much,” and flip the page and look at the next variable, then do it for the next ten years.

But if you really want to change what’s going on in your organization, where you start to impact the behaviors of your leaders that impact how employees feel about working there, you’ll start getting different results, a different buzz, a different excitement that will be contagious.

Let’s go down that path and do that. Do that for a year or two and then measure. You won’t need to measure. You’re be able to feel the difference of what’s happening.

My book is intent on trying to make that connection. Less talk, less measurement, more here’s what is working now for people trying to make it happen. Here’s the results they got. You can probably do this one too. Give it a try. Not every idea in the book is going to work for you, but if that one doesn’t, flip the page, here’s another one.

The book just came out and I just saw someone yesterday, a head of HR for a large high-tech Fortune 500 company. She just got the book. It was like five days ago. I saw her copy. It had dozens of Post-Its, and tabs, and paper clipped, and folded ears. I’m going, “Yes.”

Pete Mockaitis
There you go.

Dr. Bob Nelson
Yes. She’s in it. That’s – I write books that are meant to be used.

You can – I have managers that say, “Hey, I took your book I passed it around to my workgroup. I had people initial ideas they like in the margin. It doesn’t mean I have to do any of them, but if I want to do something to thank them, to engage them, to tap into their ideas – wow, here’s something that they checked themselves. I can make the connection a little bit easier.”

Pete Mockaitis
Oh yeah, that is handy. Kind of outsource a little bit of that decision making. Get that flowing.

Dr. Bob Nelson
Well, the best management is what you do with people, not what you do to them. I’m trying to share the techniques that you can be doing, not as a force people, not to surprise or trick them to working harder, but to say, “Hey, how would it feel around here if we – who feels we need to have more recognition?” If everyone says, “Oh no, we’re fine,” then forget about it, but I haven’t seen that happen yet.

Actually, if you’ve got any credibility with them, someone’s going to raise their hand and say, “Well, boss, I’ve just had it up to here with you telling me how good I am.” That’s not going to happen.

You’re going to find out about, “You’re quick to find mistakes. You’re kind of, truth be known, a little bit of a micromanager. You actually – through your behaviors you show that you don’t trust us. That’s why you get us very defensive trying to minimize our commitment, so we’re not the person that you find fault with.”

We’re spending more time KYA and protecting ourselves and emails to show that wasn’t our decision and stuff like that instead of tapping into improving processes and serving the clients and ideas for saving money.

It’s all around us. Which way – where do you want people focused? Well, if you want to lead the charge, you’ve got to start getting in front of them and catching them doing things right that are in line with the goals of your group, and the organization. That will naturally bring out more of that behavior.

The greatest management principle in the world is you get what you reward, what you thank someone for, what you inspect, what you acknowledge, what you incentivize-

Pete Mockaitis
Measure.

Dr. Bob Nelson
Which is the best way of telling them on the front end what you’ll do for them on the back end if you get the results you wanted. You do any form of that, you’re going to get more of that behavior. Not just from that person, but from other people that saw you do it or heard about it.

As you systematically send the message, “This is the type of thing that gets noticed around here. This is the type of thing that we’re talking about. The excitement about how Tony achieved the goals that we were after or the core value so important our company’s success.”

Pete Mockaitis
That’s cool. That’s a great lay of the land there. I’m curious in your example there, you sort of spoke from the vantage point of sort of an individual employee sort of sharing with manager, “Hey, here’s actually what’s up and what’s going awry.”

I’d love to get your take to speak to that person first. If we’re talking about an individual contributor, who’s feeling disengaged at work right now, what do you think that one individual should do when they find themselves surrounded by a vibe that is not so engaging?

Dr. Bob Nelson
Yes. Well, that’s a great question. It’s very on point because the forward for my book is done by Dr. Marshall Goldsmith, who’s the – considered the number one coach in the world. What he wrote about was who owns engagement.

It was fantastic because the way we have it – and again, going back to Gallup, if you ask people, “Are you getting enough recognition? Do you – are we giving you the skills you need? Do you have adequate authority? Are we doing the right things?” It’s very, very easy to say, “Mm, yeah, not really. Why don’t you work on that?”

You do some things. You come back. “Eh, it’s a little better, but work on it more. I’d like more money too.” They’re off the hook. Engagement needs to be owned by every employee.

If you’re not getting the recognition you feel you deserve, bring that up to your boss. Have a discussion in your group. Bring an idea for how we can start sharing praises to start our staff meeting.

I worked with ESPN and they had a manager that said, “Whenever we start a staff meeting we always start the same way. We start with listing, as a group, five things that are going well. Usually it’s pretty easy, but sometimes it’s not. We’re kind of struggling on some stuff. We still don’t skip that step until we name five things as a group because that’s our touchstone. That’s our homeroom that allows us to take on the next challenge.”

Or I worked last fall with NASA Johnson Space Systems in Houston, which is ranked the number one best place to work in federal government, by the way. Didn’t surprise me in the least because you could feel it walking into the place. You could see it on the walls, how people talked to each other. You could feel a culture that’s positive and people are engaged.

One of the things that they do that I loved is that whenever they have a manger meeting, here’s 20 managers and they always save, as is their custom, 10 minutes at the end of the meeting to go around the room and ask everyone to share something they’ve done to recognize someone on their team since we last have been together. Wow, ten minutes. They said you could just feel the energy and pride of the group rise.

They said they noticed something else that their leaders will take notes on each other’s ideas. “That’s a great one, Tony. I’m going to try that.” They’re constantly becoming better and better. They’re becoming – they’re a self-learning organization on the concepts that made them great to begin with. I love it. I love it.

There’s so many organizations that are kind of stuck in the mud and the problem is somewhere else’s and not theirs and everyone is pointing fingers at each other. It’s more of a blame game. You’ve got to get out of that – you’ve got to get out of that hole and start looking at the power of positive consequences and how to systematically bring them to bear in whatever you’re trying to achieve.

I’m talking a lot about what actually turns out to be, from the research, the number one variable that most impacts engaged employees: recognition. 56% of what causes engagement comes from people feeling valued, praised, thanked from their manager, from those they work with, from upper management, privately, publically, in writing, in emails, whatever.

It’s a constant. It’s a constant. It’s not something once at the end of the year at the Christmas party. It’s not, “Hey, I’ll praise you when I start seeing something worthy of it. Just assume that you’re doing a good job unless you do otherwise because I’m going to be all over you when you make a mistake.” That’s the natural tendency by management.

In fact, I worked with Ken Blanchard, who wrote The One-Minute Manager, for ten years. He used to say the leading style of management in America is – he called it ‘leave alone, zap.” We leave people. We don’t give them great direction or tools or support, but we let them have it when they make a mistake. We zap them and then we keep going back. We hardly ever use the tools that most drive, most pull the performance and those are the positive consequences, which are all around us every day.

I like opening people’s eyes to that. In my original 1,001 Ways book, 1,001 Ways to Reward Employees, I just had this epiphany that said this is the most proven principle of management. It’s easy to do the best forms of it. They have no cost.

I actually did my doctoral dissertation on a simple question: why don’t managers do this? I did a three-year study to try to … common sense notion, but common sense isn’t often common practice. As Voltaire said in the 17th century, so is the case today that the things that sound like common sense –

A lot of times I’ll talk to a group and I’ll say “The things I’m going to share with you, I know you can do. I’m not here to see – I already know that. That’s a given. I’m here to say, ‘Will you do them? How will you hold yourself accountable as an individual, as a member of the team, as an organization to this standard?’”

Now I worked with Disney organization for 15 years. To work there, they had a standard for leadership. They didn’t care how you were managed where you came from, what you bring with you in your own suitcase. “Yeah, yeah, that’s nice. Here’s how we manage here. If you want to be a manger, you’ve got to do these things.” Then they hire for it. They train for it. Then they evaluate leaders for it.

If someone doesn’t do it, they’ll call them out and say, “Hey, maybe you thought we were kidding about this or we’re just going through the motions, but we’re serious. You need to do these things. You need to be a visionary. You need to be supportive. You need to be a cheerleader. You need to be a career developer. Your job as a leader is to help other people be successful.”

Peter Drucker, my professor, defined the role of management as getting the work done through others, not doing – being a super worker and doing it yourself, not running yourself ragged, not chewing people out until they do it right, but getting the work done through them, which means helping them, which means showing them, which means encouraging them, counseling them, whatever it takes.

If we’re really stuck and we’re up against it, I’m going to take off my jacket and roll up my sleeves and dig in with you. We’re in this together. It’s wherever people are at, showing them what it looks like to get in the game.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s awesome. There’s so much I want to dig into there.

Dr. Bob Nelson
I know, you can ask me one question, I’ll talk for an hour.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Let’s-

Dr. Bob Nelson
I’ll try to keep it short.

Pete Mockaitis
I want to talk about – so recognition is the biggie.

Dr. Bob Nelson
Yes. ….

Pete Mockaitis
You spent three years studying why don’t managers do it. I want to hit that on from two angles. One, in fact why don’t managers do it? And two, again, if you are that individual contributor and you’re not getting it, how can you have that conversation? What’s sort of like the best practice or script or means of asking for it well so you don’t seem like, “Oh my gosh, what a whiney, needy, whatever person,” so to avoid that kind of reaction.

Dr. Bob Nelson
Okay. Well the 20-second survey on my three-year study is why managers don’t do it. Number one, they weren’t sure how to do it well. Number two they really didn’t believe it was that important as the research indicates. Number three, they didn’t feel they had time. Who has time to do things they don’t believe are important to begin with?

They didn’t feel anyone did it for them, so when they start getting it, they’ll start giving it. They’re afraid of leaving people out. They didn’t feel the organization supported it. The list kind of goes on, a whole list of really excuses where, “It’s not my job; it’s HR’s job or the CEO’s job or corporate’s, any of them but me.” That’s – there’s a lot of people, that can’t. No.

For those leaders that use recognition, there’s just one thing going on and that is to a person, the common denominator, they internalize the importance of doing recognition. They felt that as a leader of a group that they’re in charge of the motivational environment for the people that work for them, not the CEO, not HR, not corporate, but them. It’s their baby. They believe that they have to impact that.

Their beliefs they started – our behaviors follow our beliefs. Their beliefs are not “This is a waste of time. I’ve got better things to do.” They go, “This is the most important thing I need to do.” To be a leader, you are a person that is inspiring others. Everything else is mechanical. Anyone can do that. Not everyone could be a leader.

They believe that to the point where it impacted their behavior. They actively looked for opportunities to recognize people when they did a good job. Not just be nice, but contingent. When they did a good job, displayed the proper behavior, the core values, got the results, finished the project, whatever it is.

They’re constantly in their day scanning for that, when they’re reading, when they’re talking to people, when they’re in meetings, when they’re in the hallway.

Then when they hear or see something about a good job that was done, they act on that thought. They don’t make a mental note, “Oh Jerry did it again. He’s one of my best people.” They actually say something to Jerry or bring it up at the meeting or jot him a note or an email. They do something to connect back with the person that did the performance.

There you go. That’s the long and short of it. They try to do that every day. Not every person every day, but every day someone. That becomes part of their behavior – they’re behavioral repertoire, I like to say, of how they manage. They’re constantly on the lookout and acting to make the connection.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, cool. I like that notion that hey, every day there’s going to be some act of recognition. Your other book 1,501 Ways to Reward Employees, you’ve got many in mind. Can you share what have you found to be some of the most powerful and simple means of doing that, such as maybe the biggest bang for your buck recognition practices?

Dr. Bob Nelson
Sure, yes. Well, let me tell you and you’re going to love this because the most powerful forms of recognition and engagement for that matter, tend to be the things that have little or no cost.

When someone says, “We don’t have the money to motivate people here,” they’re assuming we’ve got to pay them more, we’ve got to throw a big party. Last year it was a buffet, so this year it’s got to be sit-down. They’re chasing this dream. Whatever they’re doing, they’re spending more and more money. Years of service awards. They’ll start doing stuff around people’s birthdays.

It’s like, no, that’s not where it’s at at all. Where it’s at is behavior. You’ve got to show people that they’re important to you through your actions and the things you say and do.

Number one on the list is a simple thank you, a simple praise. Be a leader that is quick to catch someone doing something right and to call them out for it in a positive way, one-on-one in front of others even when they’re not around, knowing that word will get back to them, etcetera.

Jot a note, send an email, text them on their cell phone, do a company announcement, call their mother and tell them what a great job their kid’s doing and thanks for bringing them up right. I know managers that have done that.

Let me tell you, there’s a lot of stuff like that “Oh, that sounds silly.” It’s not silly to the mother that got that call. The next conversation she had with her son or daughter, it wasn’t silly to him either. It made their month. It’s like, wow, what a cool thing to do. It’s not hard to tap into it. That whole recognition is a starting point.

Of course you can spend money. If you’re doing something, you can do something more. You can – a simple gift. I work with a company called Snappy Gifts that has just wonderful, unique products all under 20 bucks. You can’t get one and not be delighted by it because it’s just fun and it’s a celebration. On up to point programs and gift cards. A lot of companies do trips for top salespeople. That type of stuff.

There’s no lack of places where you can spend the money, but again, there isn’t – I haven’t found the correlation between the amount of money that is spent and the amount of motivation and engagement that’s going on.

My advice is to start the foundation be the behaviors that are most critical and then you can layer on other stuff as someone really goes above and beyond. That’s number one.

The other things that are truly engaging, again, all no cost, ask people for their ideas and opinions. If they’ve got a good one, give them permission to pursue it. It’s called autonomy. Give them the resources to make it. See if you can help them do it. See if anyone else wants to help them do it.

Having two-way communication is a big one, talked about in the book extensively. If you’re making a decision, involve the people that work for you in that decision, especially those that are going to be impacted by it.

Again, feels like common sense, but a lot of managers, “Oh, I’m the person in charge. I’m the decision maker here.” Yeah, yeah, yeah. Even say that, “You’ve got to make the final decision. That’s your responsibility. But you know what would be a better decision, if you get impact from your team. That’s why you wanted to ask”

In that simple action of doing it, you’re showing trust and respect. You’re being open. Wow, that’s the type of person everyone wants to work for, that is walking the talk of treating them as a partner on the team, not as a replaceable body.

If someone makes a mistake, already said the natural tendency is for people to jump all over them, embarrass them in front of their peers, prove that you’re the smartest person in the room. Bravo, bravo. They’re getting their resume ready because they can’t take it anymore.

But try this instead. The next time someone makes a mistake, take a breath, take a step back and say, “I don’t think I would have done the same thing, but what did you learn from that? That could be the best training we had for you all year. I’m glad you made that mistake.” Wow.

That manager through his actions is saying there’s something more important going on than something that happened in the last ten minutes or the last day. We have a long-term relationship. You’re important to me. I’m important to you and I hope that’s going to be true for years to come. I’m not going to dump all over you here because you did something wrong. I make mistakes too. Everyone does.

In fact, if you’re not making enough mistakes, you’re not pushing the fold enough. You’re not – it’s a little bit too safe. You’ve got to stretch. You’ve got to try things new. You’ve got to experiment. You’ve got to do something you’ve never done before.

Sometimes that idea can come from the newest person on the team, the person that isn’t biased by all the policies we have and how we’ve been doing it for years and “I’m just wondering, why don’t we try this?” Well, you take that person, new person, any person and you say, “Well, Sally, let me tell you why we don’t do that. We tried it two years ago. It didn’t work. It won’t work now.” “Oh, okay, I’m sorry. Sorry for – it won’t happen again.”

Pete Mockaitis
Don’t you worry. I won’t speak after sharing the ideas.

Dr. Bob Nelson
Right. We’re done. Now she’s going to check her brains at the door. How about saying, “Well Sally, that’s an interesting idea. Why don’t you check into that and see what you come up with?” What did that cost you?

Now because who’s got more energy for an idea than the person who came up with it to begin with. Now Sally may come at it differently than the last person that tried it two years ago. She might do an internet search. She might check with a dozen friends at other companies, “How do you guys handle this?” Who knows what she’s going to do? But she might come back and from her energy and her research do something that does work.

I was working with Johnsonville Food, the maker of great brats up in Wisconsin. They’re CEO, Ralph Stayer, told me that he had his admin once say, “Mr. Stayer” this was back a few years ago. She said, “We have such a great products. I’ve always wondered why we don’t market those more online.”

He said, his inclination to say, “Well, Betty, that’s why upper management is paid the big money. We make those decisions,” but he didn’t say that. He caught himself and said, “Betty, check into that. See what you come up with.”

Fast-forward 18 months later, now Betty, formerly an admin, is now running a new division on online sales, one and a half million dollar product line and growing much larger since then because she had the wherewithal and the support to make it happen.

Every company has that possibility. Every employee, I go so far as to say, every employee’s got a 50,000 dollar idea if you can find a way to get it out. It’s not by shutting them down. It’s not by saying, “Well, that’s not – that’s only a 10 dollar idea. We’re looking for the 50,000 dollar idea.”

Well to get that one or the five million dollar idea, you’ve got to develop a process, which means you’ve got to look for any ideas and acknowledge people for submitting those even if it’s not one we’re going to do or can do. But “I like the way you think. I’m looking for more from you.” Game on because they’re going to come up with them.

Let’s help them. Let’s help everyone on this. Someone in accounting, do a bag lunch next Tuesday, talk about cost-benefit analysis. Whoever wants to learn more about sizing up their ideas, come to the cafeteria. We’re doing a brown bag lunch. Give them the support and tools along the way.

I worked at a company in Connecticut, Boardroom Inc. They have five of the six largest newsletters in the country. They do these large books, hardcover books. They do a thing called ‘I power,’ where they ask every employee, every employee, to turn in two ideas every week.

Well, I talked to …. “Could you do that with your employees, your team, your …?” “Well, of course you can.” “How about next week? Can you do it again?” “Yeah, maybe.” “How about the week after that?” Well, how many ideas can someone have?

This company’s been doing this for 17 years. They ask every employee to turn in two new ideas every week about how can we be better, how can we improve process, how we can save money, how we can delight the customer, how we can get new business. It’s all around us every day. Allow people to grab on and run with it. That’s just one example.

I was there. They got a recent idea they got from the one guy, a shipping clerk, hourly paid employee, one of his two ideas one week was that he said, “Next time, this book we got, this big book that we ship, next time we get it printed by the printer, if we can trim the page size,” he calculated a 16th of an inch, “you’ll fall under the next postal rate. I think we’ll save some money in shipping.”

The CEO said well they looked at. He’s right. They cut up a book and he’s right. They made that one simple change, in the first year alone they saved a half million dollars in shipping costs because of that idea. Their chairman-

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. The 13 ounce threshold, I know it well. It makes a world of difference.

Dr. Bob Nelson
There you go. There you go. The CEO, Marty Edelston, he told me, he said, “Bob, I’ve worked in direct mail for 27 years. I didn’t even know there was a fourth-class postal rate.” But to the kid that’s looking at the chart day in and day out, he knew it. If we could tap into what he sees and what ideas he has, that’s the power.

Doing that simple thing. These are simple concepts, but doing it well. They had a couple false starts and they kept at it. They were able to increase their revenues fivefold in three years just by tapping into the power of ideas from their own employees. There you go.

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

Dr. Bob Nelson
Lay it on me.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. How about a favorite quote?

Dr. Bob Nelson
Favorite quote. One of my favorite – I’ve got a lot of favorite quotes. One of them is from Bill Hewlett, cofounder of Hewlett Packer, he said “Men and women want to do a good job, a creative job and if they provided the right environment, they will do so.”

I love that quote because just in one sentence it says where we’ve come from, where we are, where we’re headed today. For the longest time managing in our country was basically telling people what to do. My way or the highway. I’m the person in charge. You take orders; I give them. We don’t need any creative thinking here. We don’t need your – that doesn’t work today.

Today we need everyone in the game because things are changing, environments are changing, competition is changing. Your competitors now might be from Thailand or from a different state. You’ve got to be on the game, which means everyone on it. That’s a keeper.

I want to go back to the other question. I think you’ve asked me twice and I haven’t answered. That is what can an individual employee do if these things – if they’re in a place where these things aren’t happening. My advice on that is to bring it up to your immediate manager and to make the case for it. Even if it’s like recognition that might sound like “I want my own horn tooted.”

I’ve had people tell me that they’ve talked to their boss said, “We’re doing a lot. I love working here. I love working for you. I’d be able to do it better and do more for you if you could tell me when I especially did something well because then I’ll know what to do more of and then – yeah, I could do that boss,” and start doing that. Sure enough, her performance rose accordingly.

It’s – tell them we’re in it together. You can be the employee that shares this with your boss or with the team. Say “I heard this interview, I read this book. It sounded like something that could resonate with us. Could we try some of these things?”

That’s how you get in the game and have the – all work – that same … in Ralph Stayer. He had a quote. He said basically all we’ve got is conversations. Let’s start to impact those conversations. Let’s start having different conversations and not ones where we’re complaining and griping about management and politicking.

Let’s talk about things that are working, and things that we’re excited to be a part of, and what’s in store for us for the future, and how much fun we’re going to have getting there. That all becomes very contagious.

If you’re working in a place where it’s very cynical and it’s negative and everyone’s kind of dragging into work and waiting for Friday and fortunately the commute isn’t too bad, you can shake it up. Anyone can shake it up. I’ve worked with companies that one person, not the CEO, grabbing hold, was able to change a culture.

True story. I was speaking in Seattle to 800 people. Five weeks later I was back and I look at the crowd I go – this woman in the first row I go, “You look really familiar.” She goes, “Yeah, yeah. I heard you speak five weeks ago. I wanted to come back and tell you what happened.” I was like, “Well, what happened?” She goes, “Well-“ she described what she did and it was fun because I said, “Well, what did you-“

She said, “I started using the stuff you talked about. I started doing more recognition with my group.” Oh, she said, “I left with seven pages of notes and one intention. I said I’m not going back and asking permission. I’m going back and doing this.” That’s what she did. She did it in her workgroup.

I go, “Well, like what? What did you do?” She said, “Well, we’re in downtown Seattle. We did a picnic up on the roof. That was kind of fun to celebrate something. We did a barter for meeting space for the company on the next block that had a limo company that didn’t have any meeting space. We let them use our meeting space and they gave us free limo rides that we give people for different things.”

Just on and on and on. Just went for it. As a result, she said a noticeable difference in her group: energized, fun, excited, to the point where other managers are saying, “Hey, what are you doing over there. You people are-“ “Well, hey, come to the next meeting. We’re not trying to hide anything. We’re making stuff happen.”

Literally, this one leader made it happen first in her group and then in her facility and then the company tapped into it. She helped to make it happen across the country to all their facilities. 18 months later, from the first time she heard me speak, they entered the list of best places to work in America, number 23, Perkins Coie, a law firm. It was really through the efforts of one person.

People say, “Well you can change a culture. It takes eight years. It’s got to start at the top,” and this and that. Well, it can do that, but you can also have – one person can change a culture, one determined, focused person.

I have examples – I use examples in my books where that’s done from the bottom, from the middle, from – there’s a lot of ways to get there. That’s kind of the fun of it too. You can create your own journey to being excellent.

Pete Mockaitis
Awesome. Thank you. How about a favorite book?

Dr. Bob Nelson
I’ve been very influenced by, well, some people I’ve mentioned. Marshall Goldsmith wrote What Got You Here, Won’t Get You There. Brilliant book. Ken Blanchard, The One-Minute Manager. Peter Drucker, Concept of the Corporation. He’s – and on and on.

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

Dr. Bob Nelson
I’ve got a website. That’s probably a good place to start. www.DrBobNelson.com. Go figure, right? That’s DrBobNelson.com.

You can find out – I’ve got a lot of resources and articles posted for free. I’ve got all my books there at discounted prices. I’ve got information about all of my presentations, consulting, etcetera, etcetera, and my contact information, so you can call me, you can send me an email. I try to help everyone that comes my way, if it’s just answering a question or if it’s doing something further.

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

Dr. Bob Nelson
Yeah, I would say, again, as an employee if you want to be awesome, start – do some things different. Start asking your boss what you can do to help them. I probably have managed 30 – 35 employees in my career. I only remember one doing that. It was a breath of fresh air to say –

And something else she was good at too because I would come in and I would be all excited about stuff I’d need to have done and “Katie, can you do this?” She would listen and she goes, “Bob, I’d be delighted to do that. Let me show you what I’m working on now. You let me know which you prefer to have me do.” Then she would – I kind of, “Hm, okay.” Then she’d show me. Every time I’d say, “Oh, keep doing what you’re doing. This can wait until tomorrow or next week,” because she was on it.

That was – basically I’m making the point that whoever your manager is, they’re trainable. You can be the person that trains them. If it’s not working for you, start trying to do something different, starting with talking to that person and give them some input for how they can help you be more effective. More times than not, I think you’ll see a positive response to that.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s awesome. Well, Dr. Bob, thank you so much for taking this time and sharing the goods.

Dr. Bob Nelson
It goes so quick, doesn’t it?

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. I hope that there’s lot of engagement and rewarding going on for you and your employees and clients and everybody.

Dr. Bob Nelson
Yeah, well anytime you want me back, I’d be glad to continue the conversation in all its different forms.

Aug 31
0

340: How to Be a Chief Even without a Title with Rick Miller

By | Podcasts | No Comments

 

Rick Miller says: "Real power is clarity. Real power is confidence."

Rick Miller outlines what power really means and the five components needed to build it.

You’ll Learn:

  1. Where true power comes from
  2. Five ways to create insight and energy
  3. Why supporting other people’s success grows your influence

About Rick

Rick Miller is an unconventional turnaround specialist, a servant leader, and a go-to Chief. He is also an experienced and trusted confidant, an author (Be Chief: It’s a Choice, Not a Title, September 4, Motivational Press), a sought-after speaker, and an expert at driving sustainable growth. For over 30 years, Rick served as a successful business executive in roles including President and/or CEO in a Fortune 10, a Fortune 30, a startup, and a nonprofit. Rick earned a bachelor’s degree from Bentley University and an MBA from Columbia. He currently lives in Morristown, NJ.

Items Mentioned in this Show:

Rick Miller Interview Transcript

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

Rick Miller
Great to be with you Pete.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I think there are many things that I’m excited to discuss with you. One of them that is chief among them – get it – is your—

Rick Miller
Well done.

Pete Mockaitis
Is your experience training at a professional wrestling school. What is this about?

Rick Miller
Well, you asked for something that was a little different. Back in the early ‘80s when WrestleMania I came out – showing a little date here – it was a couple of wrestlers: Mr. T and Hulk Hogan. I was running a sales organization at the time and I wanted to do something fun for our sales kickoff, so I went to Killer Kowalski’s Wrestling School in Boston, Massachusetts.

Now Killer Kowalski’s at the time was still the famed six foot six inch 325 pound monster that he was years earlier. Let’s just say, Pete, that the 325 had settled differently in his body.

I went with a couple of other folks. We learned to throw each other around and worked with Killer and a professional midget wrestler and were there for a couple of weeks and put on one heck of a kickoff for our sales team, one they didn’t expect.

But at the time WrestleMania was all the discussion. Again, I know they’ve had a bunch since, but back in the day it was fresh and it was new. No I didn’t garner the tights, but it was interesting to be thrown against turnbuckles and coming off ropes and things like that. I have a real respect for learning how to fall the right way.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh yeah. So you went through all of this to put on a show for the sales team?

Rick Miller
I did. I did. Yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s amazing.

Rick Miller
Oh yeah. I mean listen, you’re trying to get people motivated and have some fun and frankly show kind of a fun side of yourself. You’re going to spend the rest of the year trying to work with the team to perform miracles in terms of generating numbers that you’re trying to build up. But at the front end of most sales years is a fun kickoff and we thought that year that was the way to go.

Pete Mockaitis
Who were you wrestling in your exhibition?

Rick Miller
I was wrestling Killer Kowalski. I had a-

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, the Killer himself. Okay.

Rick Miller
Yeah, I was – yeah, yeah. It was great because it was funny. You grabbed them by the hand and a little tug and of course he launched himself into the air as if you did it. I got to tell you, the sounds of 300 and some-odd pounds landing the way it did, I can’t even express to you.

But the real fun was the way the skit was set up is that I was going after Killer and I was beating him for a while, but then he threw me once and I stayed down. The way the skit was set up, I reached up and said just loud enough for the audience to say, I said, “I need help from headquarters,” and in came his partner, a professional midget.

The size difference between the midget and Killer and then obviously the midget who was the headquarters, at the time it was the computer company I was working for, and he had our logo emblazoned to the midget on his chest.

He starts throwing Killer Kowalski around in a well-choreographed dance, if you will, that they had done many times. At the end, the midget holds my hand up and we’re standing on Killer Kowalski’s chest and the crowd is going crazy because obviously with headquarters’ help you can defeat – I think at the time we had Killer Kowalski with an IBM shirt on. It was really sappy, but I tell you what, it really had the sales force pumped up.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh my gosh. That is so fun. Wow. Thank you for sharing and really painting a picture there. That’s really cool. Well now I want to hear a little about your company. It’s called Being Chief LLC. What’s this organization about?

Rick Miller
It’s the organization that I set up when I left the last big company job that I had ten years ago to give me a platform to do what I like to do, which is I do some speaking, I do some writing, and I work really as a confidant, an advisor, to business leaders who want to work together on personally and professionally being more powerful.

That’s the umbrella term. I’ve long since lost the need to run large organizations. At one point I had 10,000 people when I was at AT&T that were under my direct kind of area of responsibility. I’ve really enjoyed over the last ten years having an employee base of one. It’s working out just fine for me, Pete.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s cool. Yeah. I dig it. You have articulated many of your kind of core beliefs or messages there at Being Chief in the book, Be Chief: It’s a Choice, Not a Title. What are kind of the main pieces of this?

Rick Miller
Well, the central element of the book is about power. I was fortunate enough to do a TED talk a number of years ago. The line – I thought later on about the book – but the line in the TED talk that got the most resonance was people have an awful lot of interest in the term “chief,” but they frankly have a lot more interest in the power associated with the word “chief.”

Back in the day when I got out of business school, there was a chain of titles that you tried to move up. You become a vice president to a senior vice president to an executive vice president to a president to a CEO. That was the path that many of us took. Now, the term of the day is “chief” as in chief fill-in-the-blank officer. There are chiefs everywhere.

But the reason that the term “chief” is being thrown around is because people want the power associated with the word “chief.” The book – a central element of the book, again, the subtitle is It’s a Choice, Not a Title because I believe that power, as some people define it, conventionally is kind of yesterday’s newspaper to be honest.

Power, in many people’s minds, still if they’re thinking in an old paradigm, is about authority and control that comes from a title or a position or some element of superiority. That’s an old way of thinking about power.

The book offers that real power is energy. Real power is clarity. Real power is confidence. With those, that anyone can have independent of where they are in any organization, that’s where they can have influence and that’s where they can make a real impact.

The book is all about redefining power, giving you a way to measure your power, to increase your power, and then have your power spread to other people, other parts of your organization.

Because as an unconventional turnaround specialist, which is the label that I sometimes get – although my favorite label, honestly Pete, is professional nudge – but the turnaround thing is about walking into tough organizations and organizations having a tough time and putting a plan in place not only to turnaround performance and develop growth, but to sustain it.

I think the key to sustainable growth, and this is the net of the book, the big idea is that people and the way that you deal with the power that is in a workforce has everything to do with your ability to sustain growth.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, got you. In terms of the definition of power, it seems like you’re still thinking about it in terms of influence or the capacity to do work, which is sort of the same as the old or not? Could you correct me there?

Rick Miller
Yeah. Influence no question.

Pete Mockaitis
Sure.

Rick Miller
Power is about influence. The question is who has it and how do you get it because in the old world you needed to wait for someone else to give you the promotion. You needed to wait for somebody else to say it’s time for that next rung in the ladder. As you went up in an organization, you got more powerful.

The key change is that power doesn’t come from the outside, it comes from the inside. Allowing people to find their power their way, we’re all different, and to make sure that you can become the fullest version of who you are, certainly increases your engagement. That’s one of the business topics that’s out there these days. According to Gallup, only three out of ten people are all in or fully engaged at work.

Well, some companies say well the managers aren’t doing their jobs. Blame it on the managers. Eh, you probably want to take a look at the people who you’re hiring and creating environments with them to allow them to be the best versions of themselves. That’s what I focus on.

Pete Mockaitis
I hear you. Now we talk about energy and clarity and confidence being sort of the core underlying forces from within that turn into this power.

Rick Miller
Yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
Can you tell us a little bit, you say you measure it and you increase it. How does that work?

Rick Miller
Well, there’s a – this is the best part. We’re happy to talk a little bit about the book that’s coming out where all proceeds are going to charity. We’ll talk about that later. But the best thing I have to share with your listeners is there is on my site right now, BeChief.com, a free assessment tool.

Take you five minutes. And allow you to answer some very simple questions and get a baseline of how powerful are you defined in those terms, Pete, that we just talked about. How clear are you? How confident are you? How energized are you? What is your influence score and what is your impact score?

From the way you answer those questions, you have an opportunity to say “How do I feel about the choices that I’m currently making and make those tweaks?”

I find that the language of business is numbers. The language of business is numbers. We can talk – my dad is a human resource professional. I used to call them personnel guys back in the day. But I’ve always believed that human capital is the area that we need to focus on. The challenge is the metrics aren’t there. You can’t measure it by zip code, by shoe size, by time of day, which you can financial capital.

I designed this tool, this very simple tool, to give people a quick snapshot of their power and that obviously opens them up to choices to what they choose to do about.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, I’d love to dig into a bit of each of these in terms of how are your defining energy, clarity, confidence, influence, impact and then what are some of your sort of best practice pro tips for boosting each of them?

Rick Miller
Sure. Where do you want to start?

Pete Mockaitis
Let’s go with energy.

Rick Miller
Okay. Energy is – we talk about power comes from the inside not the out – the core of this thing is inside actually because being chief, I’ll give you another way of looking at it, kind of pull these together.

Being chief, being the most powerful person you can be is connecting what you do to who you are, connecting what you do to who you are. If you think about who you are, who are you, really requires you to develop some insight, insight into – self-understanding and insight to me are synonyms. That’s where I think energy comes from.

Talk about five different ways that you can build insight and create energy. I suggest that part of it is being present, being focused on the moment at hand. You’ll see Pete, that many of these things are well-discussed in many different ways in many different forms by other people. My focus is not to supply you with a new piece of information, it’s to help you apply it. Supply and apply.

I’m a business guy; it’s got to be simple. I’ve got to be able to retain it. I’ve got to be able to use it. When it gets to energy and insight, first off, be present. Learn how to focus.

Second, be still. Learn how to develop your own voice. All the voices that are yapping at you from the media to a well-intentioned spouse, to your kids, to your neighbors, everybody around, everybody’s got a voice that’s in your ear. How can you develop the energy that comes from hearing your own voice and knowing it well?

Third one is being accepting. Don’t fight what is. You want to fight for the future, that’s fine, but conserve your energy. Don’t needlessly waste energy by fighting a current truth. Accept what is. The energy that comes from being generous and the energy that comes from being grateful.

I offer that there are five ways to actually measure how present are you, how still are you, how accepting are you, how generous are you, and how grateful are you. These are all your own self views, but my observation is the more you are any one of these, you can absolutely increase your level of self-understanding, your insight, and the benefit to you is the energy of knowing more who you are.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, that’s a great sort of subset there being present, being still, being accepting, being generous and being grateful. Do you have any thoughts in terms of a particular action step one can take that really takes you far in terms of being more of one or more of these things?

Rick Miller
Well, the question is how much are you doing it? Let’s take being present. I know that many people take great benefit from the time they’re being present, but even the most accomplished, enlightened, even people who are very much focusing on the mindfulness movement, which you’ve very familiar with I’m sure, would say that there’s a percentage of their day that they aren’t present. We’re human beings.

The objective is always to can you – if you are present every once in a while, can you be present more often. Then can you be present consistently. It’s all in the small tweaks.

If someone is never present and they’re always scattered, are they going to take a step from being scatterbrained and all over the place to mindful all the time? Of course not. I’m not advocating that anybody try and skip steps, but just try to move a little bit on the scale of one to ten.

If you’re a five on a one to ten in terms of being present, what benefit, what power, what energy could you get if you became a little more present than you have been. That’s the advocacy. The advocacy is don’t ask people to do what they can’t do, ask them to make slight tweaks in what they can do.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, so you’re not suggesting a particular regiment or series of exercise to boost presence, so much as you’re just saying, “Hey, get some awareness and some focus and do more of it.”

Rick Miller
Exactly. Exactly. Again, there are wonderful places to go. I view Be Chief, Pete, as an integrated piece. I’m not trying to go – there are volumes and volumes and volumes on how to be present. I’m not trying to outdo the present movement, the mindful movement. Go study Jon Kabat-Zinn. There’s plenty of places to go.

My – as I work with executives and leaders at all levels, chiefs at all levels, the idea is how do you integrate all of the stuff that’s out there to make it actionable. You can go in any particular vein, but the idea of connecting what you do to who you are is the central premise.

I’ll take the next step with you. One real powerful practice that I’ve used with a lot of my clients, and, again, it’s on the free survey, is my belief that values, understanding your values, are the key to confidence.

Here’s why I say that. When I work with great groups of people, I will generally put up a list of – or talk about a list of 30 or 40 values that are all very positive things. I’ll say to a group, I’ll say, if you had to pick four – because you can’t stand for 50 things. You can’t take a stand for 50 things.

But in the compass, which I use, north, south, east, west, if you were to choose four and you were very conscious about those four, you spoke about them, you wrote about them, you took actions that were very consistent with them, not that you’d ignore the other 46, but the observation I make is that confidence comes when you can take a stand. Once you figure out what you stand for, you can take one.

For me, I’ve done a lot of work on this as you might imagine, my four are truth, service, equality, and connection.

Those – the test that I use and I advocate this, if you think you stand for something right now, ask the ten people who know you most, know you best, family, friends and say, “What do you think I stand for?” You might be surprised, maybe four – five, three, four, five answers, you might be surprised that there might not be any commonality. You may be okay with that. You may be okay with the fact that the ten people who know you best would describe your values differently.

The only question I would ask is if the ten people who knew you the best described your values in a consistent way, does that in fact make you more powerful? I would advocate that it does.

Yeah, there might be a difference between – I mean if someone says you’re kind and someone says you’re empathetic, okay that may be a difference without a distinction. But if you got a wildly different set of things, they could be all positive, but it’s like it is the same topic of focus.

If you know what you stand for, you can take one and then I think those people around you resonate with the confidence that you have that you stand for something. As just an example, but as we talk about connecting what you do to who you are, the two parts of the compass that are who you are, are your insight, which we talked about the five ways you can build that, and your values.

Insight and values and the study of those or the thinking about those gives you more clarity about who you are. When you take actions knowing who you are, you’re taking actions that are yours, on your voice and your values, not on Uncle Sam’s or Aunt Sally’s or a cousin or a boss or something else. I do believe it makes you more powerful.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, it sounds like then we’ve got clarity and confidence there or is that – or are you distinguishing clarity in a different way?

Rick Miller
I am distinguishing. The confidence is there. The clarity I believe in having studied it and worked it in business situations from a start up to a multi-national, I link very much the topic of clarity to the topic of discipline. I believe that clarity, again, when you think about who you are, which is insight and values, then what you do has to do with discipline and support.

Discipline I link to clarity because I believe that if you plan the work and work the plan, if you have a vision and a strategy and tactics and you adjust, the more you reinforce where you’re going, that clarity comes through to the people around you and also reinforces it to you as well.

I think the vision and the strategy, which you identify, followed by planning tactics and implementing and adjusting, those all lead to clarity. Again, that clarity with discipline if it’s built off your insight and your values, it gets stronger.

Pete Mockaitis
Can you give us an example or story of the clarity and discipline piece coming alive for somebody?

Rick Miller
Sure. Well, I’ll give you for an organization. When I have had the opportunity to walk into an organizations as a turnaround guy that things are pretty muddy. I walked into – I’ll give you an example. I was the first outsider in AT&T’s 100 year history to be recruited from the outside to come in and run a piece of a major division back in the day. First one, 100 years.

I walked into AT&T, great company, but they had all kinds of messages, all kinds of, all kinds of high potential programs or leadership attributes. You couldn’t crystalize any – it was all good, but there was too much of it.

I came into an organization, this is the one that had 10,000 people in it, and I said “Guys, we’re going to focus on one thing.” Forget everything else. Forget everything else. We’re going to focus on something I used a symbol to encapsulate it called R3, R to the power of 3, R to the third power. We had symbols made. It was on hats. It was – that’s our focus. Forget everything else. The discipline was—

Pete Mockaitis
What’s R to the three mean?

Rick Miller
It’s results for three important groups of people: customers, employees, and share owners. That’s the what, but the how was about teamwork, innovation and speed. It wasn’t R times 3; it was R to the power of 3.

It was taking – again, AT&T, back in the day, Pete, there was a rule in the consulting industry about AT&T, which means if you did – at the time, if you didn’t have a consulting contract with AT&T, it just meant that you weren’t trying hard enough because it was consultant’s galore, everybody with a different – all good stuff, by the way, but no focus, no clarity because it was all over the place.

I came in, 10,000 people all around the world, and I said, “Guys, this is the focus. The discipline that we’re going to have around this clarity.” We developed strategy and plans and implemented systems and took measurements and adjusted based on that’s all we’re focused on: results for three important grounds of people, focusing on three attributes: teamwork, innovation, and speed.

At the time we were growing at 5%. The market was supposedly growing at 10%. We tripled the growth rate and held on to that growth rate for three years before we changed organizations. I – it was a lot of things we did, a lot of things we did at AT&T that turned around that situation, but the focus on clarity and discipline to stay focused on an area was a big part of the success.

Pete Mockaitis
When you says discipline, you mean it’s about saying no to some things. What are some of the things that you said no to because it doesn’t quite fit into exactly what we’re focused on here?

Rick Miller
Well, a great definition of strategy, as you know, is defining what you’re not going to do. The best story I remember about how that strategic element came in an organization, where I was running a government unit and we wanted to go at all parts of the government: the civilian, the defense, all parts of it, but we didn’t have the resources.

Our strategy was to optimize one part of the government, so we actually said no. We actually pulled back selling to the civilian portion of the government unit at that time because we just didn’t have the resources. Strategy at that time was to focus on Department of Defense.

By the way, in that particular situation, different company, once again we tripled the growth rate. You’re right, strategy is key and often strategy is saying no. Couldn’t say it better.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, very cool. All right, then let’s talk a little bit about influence and impact.

Rick Miller
Yeah. Influence to me it comes from the word support. Influence comes when you support other people. People say, “Isn’t influence when you have kind of an influence over others?” No, it comes the other way. The more you support other people, the more you make choices to support other people, that’s when your influence grows.

If you are able to listen and enable someone else’s success, your influence grows. If you’re able to model the way you’d like things to be, your influence grows. If you’re able to question people about what they’re doing and how they’re doing it and help them think through it if they need it, that helps your influence grow. You can inspire them by what you do and how you do it.

There’s also this – a good friend of mine, Chester Elton, wrote The Carrot Principle. You just can’t recognize people enough. It’s such a – the word is encourage. Reinforcing what other people do, whether it’s a formal program or an informal, “Hey, well done,” encouraging other people, it’s just an incredibly powerful way to build influence by supporting other people.

Pete Mockaitis
Now, when you say that the supporting of other people results in you having more influence, is it because these individuals are like, “Wow, Rick has been just so awesomely good to me, I will follow him to the moon,” or, “I’ve got his back and I will help him in any way can,” kind of sort of like a reciprocity instinct or kind of what’s the pathway or mechanism by which that support turns into influence?

Rick Miller
Great question. But it starts with listening. People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care. The point is if I’m listening to you, if you are my boss, Pete, and you’re going to invest time with me to say, “Okay, I want to enable your success. I want to support you,” the first thing you’re going to do is ask me what do I need. You’re going to invest some time.

The benefit of truly listening – all people want to do is to be heard. You know that. If you take the time to really find out, not to come in with the “I’ve decided this is what the answer is,” and you come in with a plunger and you’re trying to ram it through an organization.

I can tell you when I joined AT&T as the first outsider, first thing I did was ask a lot of questions. Ask a lot of questions. Don’t think – ask questions. You don’t know. More often than not, the higher you go in an organization, the less you know about the subject matter which is critical to your success. It’s an inverted pyramid. Taking the time to ask questions, to learn from the people who know it best, create a bond of influence that can be incredibly powerful.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, very cool. Let’s talk now finally about that fifth element when it comes to impact.

Rick Miller
See this is where it comes together. Think about where we’ve been. Think about who you are: insight and values, what you do: discipline and support. It comes together with an ability to be creative.

Now when I say creativity, I’m not talking about some artistic ability to put colors together and be creative on a canvas. When I say creativity, I’m talking about an ability to manifest the future. That’s my definition of creativity. If you’re going to create the future, you’ve got to understand a couple of things.

First off, there’s something called internal creativity. That’s how you feel and how you think. You are in fact creating when you start thinking. That’s how the whole thing starts. People are very familiar with external creativity in terms of how you act, less so how you speak and how you write.

But if you understand that there is internal creativity, you understand there’s external creativity, and the power comes when you align all five. You’re feeling something, you’re thinking it, your actions and the way you write, and the way you speak are all aligned.

We all know the quickest way to lose credibility is to say one thing and do a different something else. We just lose all credibility. You lose all power. But your ability to understand that your thoughts lead to your actions, it should be your thoughts lead to your words. Your words to your actions. Your actions lead to your habits. Some would say your habits lead to your character and your character leads to your destiny to steal from Gandhi.

There’s a power in the alignment and the way those things flow. If you’re fully creating, again, connecting what you do to who are, I’ll tell you what, it doesn’t matter what title you have, you are powerful. The organizations that do incredibly well with turnarounds have more and more people operating in what I call an all-in way of being.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s awesome. We’ve got one more point I want to dig into in the book. You talk about the wisdom of letting go. What exactly does that mean and how does one pull it off?

Rick Miller
It’s interesting. In our culture we have taken a good idea and kind of taken it to extremes. We’re all familiar with terms like ‘whatever it takes,’ ‘nothing’s going to stop me.’ We’ve got these ideas that you work through adversity all the time. That’s not a bad idea. The problem is we don’t know when to stop.

There’s economic law called the Law of Diminishing Returns, which means from a pure logic standpoint at some point, ‘throwing good money after bad’ is certainly a phrase that we’re familiar with.

But I find that many of the great leaders that I have the privilege of working with understand the first part of it, which is okay, never give up. Drive, drive, drive. But sometimes there’s a time when you are best served, your organization is best served, to let go of an objective that may have made sense 6 months ago or 12 months ago but now no longer makes sense.

The ability to, and some would say discipline, to adjust. But some people, and you know them, are manically focused, “I’m going to do this just get out of my way.” At some point diminishing return sets in.

The idea of letting go is a very important topic and one that doesn’t get as much traction I don’t think in our culture as it needs to because I find an awful lot of people are burning themselves out going after an objective that has shifted.

I talk in the book about examples and how to do it and the focus is on first recognizing it, accepting what’s going on, investigating new opportunities to do it, and not identifying yourself with the objective. Many times this is ego driven. I am not the person I want to be if I can’t sell that next contract or can’t achieve this goal.

Separating the person from the goal, I find with otherwise very high performing individuals, it’s really important you are not that quota. You are not that objective. You are who you are. The wisdom to understand when it does make the most sense to let go of an objective that isn’t serving you is really important.

Pete Mockaitis
Awesome. Thank you. Well, Rick, tell me any final points you’d like to mention before we shift gears and hear about some of your favorite things?

Rick Miller
No, no. I think, again, we’ll go to favorite things, but if – if I could I would just like to mention that BeChief.com is the website. BeChief.com is where you can find about the book where all profits, author profits, are going to charity. We’ve got a wonderful charity partner down in Austin, Texas called Sammy’s House, which is an educational and a rehabilitation opportunity facilitate for kids with severe special needs. All author proceeds are going there.

They can learn about Sammy’s House. They can learn about the book. They can also, by the way, take the free quiz. This is what I’d ask everyone to take a look at. The book – I’d love to sell as many books as possible because all the money would go to the kids, that would be great, but for your audience that wants to be more powerful, the compass, the survey, if you will, is a free tool on BeChief.com.

You can also read a chapter of the book and see it floats your boat, but most importantly, take a baseline, measure your power, understand how you feel about it and how you can help others. That’s the most important thing that I’d like to share.

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful, thank you. Now can you share with us a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Rick Miller
No, the one I like, it might not surprise you, but “Power is never given; it’s only taken.” That’s one that I live by because I did spend 20 years of my career waiting to be given power. I’ve been okay. I moved up the corporate ladder pretty well. But I was waiting. For people who want to take power, I just think it’s a wonderful quote because it encapsulates everything I believe.

Pete Mockaitis
Awesome thank you. How about a favorite study or experiment or bit of research?

Rick Miller
Well, the research, actually I’m going to go back to the book. There’s some wonderful research done by a researcher named Segal Barsotti out of Yale. Segal’s work builds on the work done by Christakis and Fowler on the happiness effect.

Now the happiness effect is a well-known study that talks about the impact of introducing a happy person into a group. The surprising – a 20-year study by the way – talks about the a fact that if you introduce a happy person, not only is a next door neighbor likely to be more happy, but the next door’s neighbor’s friend and friend’s friend, it’s like two or three degrees of separation, will statistically be more happy.

Christakis and Fowler did a wonderful piece of well-reported research on the happiness effect. What Barsotti did was take that great work and bring it into the workforce and proved that introducing a person with positive emotions into a workplace, affects the productivity of all workers in that work place.

That’s really the fundamental element that we talk about in the book. I use the term viral engagement. It’s great when you try to do things to enable the engagement of someone who’s working for you, but viral engagement is when you’re constantly taking a look at the impact that everybody can have, that really anyone can influence everyone. Once you understand that, the opportunity for growth is great.

By the way, that makes sense intellectually, but Barsotti did the research that proved it.

Pete Mockaitis
Awesome, thank you. How about a favorite book?

Rick Miller
Right now I’m reading When by Daniel Pink. I love When. I’m a big Dan Pink fan. But I’m reading When right now and I love it because it talks about how to bring out your peak performance when it matters most.

I’m an avid reader. I’m fascinated by this one because, again, well-researched, as Daniel’s stuff always is, but the idea of professional athletes, professional musicians, what are the tips, simple tips. I won’t go any further because it’s Daniel’s book and you want to read it. You don’t want to listen to me give you the tips, but it’s a really good read.

Pete Mockaitis
Thank you. How about a favorite tool?

Rick Miller
A tool. I would tell you the tool – the app that I’m having a lot of fun with now and I’ve got lots of company, so I’ll just add my log to the fire, which is the Calm app. I’m a big meditator and have been blessed with the ability to meditate, but even when things get going so quickly that it’s a little harder to slow down a little bit, the Calm app does a wonderful job. I know there’s many fans, so I’ll just add my log to the fire.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh sure. How about a favorite habit?

Rick Miller
The habits – I am amongst other challenges, I’m a type one diabetic, so for 40 years I’ve been giving myself four shots a day. I think this habit has probably come out of the necessity to manage blood sugars and health and numbers and things like that, but actually my favorite habit is a combination of sometimes I do the meditation in the morning, followed by some really rigorous exercise, sometimes I’ll flip it.

But my morning routine, getting up and starting the day with a combination of exercise, getting the blood flowing and mediation. It seems like gear yourself up and calm yourself down, that little kind of sweet and sour, if you will, first thing in the morning works really well for me.

Pete Mockaitis
Is there a particular nugget you share that really seems to connect and resonate with folks, gets them retweeting, etcetera?

Rick Miller
I don’t – not so much honestly because, again, I do draw a distinction between wonderful people who supply those kind of nuggets and those who apply them. I’m an applier. I’m a business guy. I work in organizations and I’m on the front lines.

I don’t probably generate the kind of quips and thoughtful little musings that are on the tips of people’s tongues much like most of this book is taking and always giving credit for the great stuff that’s out there, but my focus is on how you simplify and – first you have to retain it if you’re going to apply it.

I rely on others for those inspirational moments. I just try to help the people I work with apply them so that they can have a great day.

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

Rick Miller
I would point them to BeChief.com. Whatever you can find there, whether they connect with the power compass, if you will, or develop your own. But there’s lots of stuff on the website and wherever it takes you. If it takes you to the book and you can see fit to make that purchase, know the money is going to Sammy’s House and that’s terrific. But whatever you find there, I hope it’s helpful.

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

Rick Miller
I think it’s about power. Really think about who you think has it, who really has it. More often than not, the powerful people in your life, the most powerful, the most influential, are probably a family member who doesn’t have a title. It’s somebody in the community who doesn’t have a title, but they make choices that consistently show you who they are. You can’t get enough of them because they’re the people you admire.

I think that’s what power means to me. I think the more people open themselves up to that definition of power and make the choices to be the best version of themselves, it spreads and the world’s a better place.

Pete Mockaitis
Awesome. Well, Rick, thank you for all you’re doing to make the world a better place. This has been a whole lot of fun. I wish you and Be Chief tons of luck, massive sales and massive impact.

Rick Miller
Appreciate it Pete. Thanks so much for the time.

Aug 27
0

338: Keeping Your Networks in Good Working Order with Glenna Crooks

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Glenna Crooks says: "Reaching out for help is not just for you, it's for everybody else who's going to benefit from that as well."

Glenna Crooks illustrates the eight different kinds of networks everyone has and why you should make sure these work for you while you work for them.

You’ll Learn:

  1. The eight different kinds of networks in your life
  2. A method for successfully pruning your network
  3. The maximum number of connections each person can sustain

About Glenna

Glenna Crooks is a strategist, innovator and trusted counsel to leaders globally.  She was a Reagan appointee, global vice-president of Merck’s Vaccine Business and founder of a global strategy firm solving tough health care problems. She is active in academia, on boards, writes books and blogs, is a sought-after speaker and was recently named A Disruptive Woman to Watch. She is also a Zen artist and donates her paintings to support children with special needs.

Items Mentioned in this Show:

Glenna Crooks Interview Transcript

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

Glenna Crooks
It is such a pleasure to join you. I love the thoughtfulness that you bring to the questions in these interviews.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, well thank you. I appreciate that. Well, I’m excited to get into it. I think you’ve got a lot of great stuff to share. The first thing I want to hear you share is a tale of when you were five years old and you organized over 50 kids to create a circus in your backyard. What is this story here?

Glenna Crooks
First of all, I have to say I was a boomer, so on my block there were 50 kids. We were all about the same age. I can’t imagine a better sort of social life that I could have grown up with.

Now, why I decided to organize this circus, I don’t know, but it’s a credit to my mother’s patience that I’m here to tell the tale because I never told her, so she didn’t know until the day came. She was in the basement doing the laundry and saw all of these legs and people flocking into our backyard.

We had – some kids had dogs and so we had acts. We made costumes for the pets. We sold treats. I lived to tell the tale.  …

Pete Mockaitis
That is amazing.

Glenna Crooks
I think I’ve been organizing chaos ever since.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s so good. So many follow-ups here. First, how big is your backyard?

Glenna Crooks
You probably could have put a two car garage in it and maybe a little space besides that. We didn’t have a garage at the time so that gives you kind of an idea of the size.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh yes, so these kids were pretty packed in there.

Glenna Crooks
Yeah. We had adults – we invited our parents too. I just forgot to invite my own.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, were you punished or how did that go?

Glenna Crooks
No, not at all. My mom, when she tells me stories like this, she just sort of rolls her eyes and says, “I think they gave me the wrong baby at the hospital.”

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that’s impressive. I’m looking at my backyard right now and just imagining 50 kids in it because it sounds like it’s in the same ballpark of what you described. That’s wild. That would be a sight to see. Cool.

Yes, organizing chaos at a young age, putting together networks and making it happen for some cool results. You’ve got a book out called The Networksage. To what extent is it similar to circus organization for five-year-olds versus different or what’s the big idea here?

Glenna Crooks
Well, I have to give credit where credit is due and that’s to Robert Downey Junior. I happen to like action flicks and superheroes, so in 2007, after the first Iron Man trailer was released, I noticed an interview that he did in a fashion magazine.

In it he talked about how he had a pit crew of people helping him out: yoga teachers, sensei, a psychiatrist, his wife. But he said, “But I need a pit crew because after all I’m not a Model T; I’m a Ferrari.” He said, “And it takes more of a pit crew to keep us on the road.” Well, I must have been in a snarky mood that day because I thought to myself, “You know what? If you’re a Ferrari, I’m at least a Maserati.”

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, there you go.

Glenna Crooks
But you know what, you’re also right. It does take a put crew. Who’s mine? And how are they doing?

Then after a while I thought, “Uh-oh, I’m in other people’s pit crews. How am I doing?” Now I never actually had the courage to ask anyone, by the way, but I do know there were times I didn’t do it well enough. What a lot of those times had in common is that my pit crews let me down and because of that I let other people down.

The big idea here is that you have a pit crew; let them help. It was hiding in plain sight for me. Now I see that one of the most valuable assets we have is human capital, our own and that of the other people in our life, which is why the subtitle of the book is Realize Your Network’s Superpower because that pit crew that we have, that’s a real superpower for us.

Pete Mockaitis
It is. It is absolutely. I want to dig into that but first I want to just comment on how Robert Downey Junior made quite the physique transformation for that movie, Iron Man. It was amazing. He was just muscles on muscles, so I can imagine that would take numerous professionals in the area of nutrition or training in the gym. That must have been a brutal few months getting ready for that role.

Glenna Crooks
Right.

Pete Mockaitis
Which is why actors I guess get paid the big bucks. Well, that’s cool.

The pit crew notion, we’ve all got one. We’re all part of one and it’s a huge asset that is going on in our lives. We’re maybe sort of overlooking the value and importance of it. Understood.

Then, now you’ve actually gone ahead and categorized or segmented eight different network groups or types of pit crews that provide support in living life. Let’s see, could you maybe give us your one minute version or less explanation/definition/description of each of these eight types of pit crews.

Glenna Crooks
Sure. You want to hear all eight in one minute or-?

Pete Mockaitis
Let’s do it. One minute each. Eight minutes total.

Glenna Crooks
Okay. Eight minutes total. I’ll do it in less than that.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, you got it.

Glenna Crooks
In all I’ve categorized eight different networks. Now five of them I call birthright networks because we are born into them. Our parents create them for us. If you have kids, you’ve created them for your kids. This is going to make total sense. Remember said I said it was hiding in plain sight.

First, a family network. Second, a health and vitality network. Third an education and enrichment network. Fourth, a spiritual network. Fifth, a social and community network. Makes sense, right?
Now from the time that you’re quite young, you start shaping and changing those networks to suit yourself, but you will never outgrow what those networks provide for you.

Now then you mature into three other networks. The first one is a career network, which is how we usually think about networks and networking. The second is a home and personal affairs network. Personal affairs being things like your lawyer, your accountant, your car dealer, your banker, people like that.

Then there’s a final network I call ghost. Now, I didn’t set out to find ghost, but I’ve been doing research now with hundreds of people ranging in age from 7 to 87 for the last ten years, looking deeply into their lives and the people in it and ghosts started showing up.

Now ghost are people who used to be in your life who are no longer, either they’ve passed away, they’ve moved away, your paths diverged. Let me just think about it. Your third grade best friend, are you still in touch? A lot of us have lost touch with our college roommates, for goodness sakes.

Now, it’s important to know about ghost because there’s at least two or three really important types. One I call friendly. These are the people who loved you and you knew it. If you think about them, they warm your heart. They’re the people you should think about when you’re having a bad day.

Then you have another group I call hungry. These are the ones that left you with a bruise and a hole in your heart. Now, I call them hungry because you couldn’t satisfy them and you can’t satisfy them now, but guess what? You’re still trying. Not with them of course, because they’re not around anymore, but with people or in situations who remind you of them.

For me, instead of thinking about my grandfather, who was a friendly ghost, for me, when I’m having a bad day, it’s those hungry ghosts who come out and they pitch a tent in my office. They sort of scream at me all day and undermine what I’m trying to accomplish.

Understanding that even people who are not really present in your life today are still having an impact on you, is important for trying to be awesome in your job.

Just like your health and vitality network serves a really important role, not just because of your health but in that network is where I place the people who help you look good. One of the things we know is that attractive people make a quarter of a million dollars more over the course of their lifetime than unattractive people.

Pete Mockaitis
Now you mean literally physically looking good, like your pores are tight, your body fat is low and you’re muscles are toned and you’re glowing with your flesh, that kind of looking good?

Glenna Crooks
Well, there are certain characteristics that contribute to attractiveness that are just plain genetic, but grooming, having a good haircut and wearing good clothes and looking good that way also goes a long way. People who do, sell more products. They have a kind of a halo effect that they wear that really translates into hardcore income dollars for them.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Let’s dig into a little bit more detail here. Family networks, I get it. You’re right, that’s your aunts, uncles, mom, dad, brothers, sister, nieces, nephews, et cetera. Health and vitality you laid out, helping you look good physically in terms of the grooming and appearance and what not. What do you mean by education and enrichment networks?

Glenna Crooks
I mean education that prepares you for your job. Whatever it takes for you, whatever degree is required. Then enrichment, things like museums and the arts are part of enrichment.

In your spiritual network you may be a member of a religious congregation, but then you may also have connections with other people outside of a congregation for experiences you consider spiritual. For some people that’s reading poetry, tor other people, it’s walking in the woods, as examples.

Your social and community networks, the people in your neighborhood. Then of course as you get older and you can move around the city on your own and take mass transit or drive your car, being able to get out and around, the community organizations that you volunteer would be examples there.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, understood. Then let’s talk about the career then.

Glenna Crooks
Well, the career network is really interesting from my perspective. There’s four different groups that I place in this career network.

The first one is your workplace or where your job is. You have an official org chart for example. You have a job. You work within a hierarchy of a boss or a supervisor. You may have direct reports and then you’ve got people in a company who support you: HR, finance, so on.

There’s also another group and that’s your career networking group. Now this could be a professional society that you’re a part of or some sort of affinity group. Maybe you’re in marketing and you’re part of a marketing organization that meets from time to time. Or perhaps you’re part of a group that supports women in business or minorities in business for networking and career growth purposes.

The third group within the career network is your career education network. Now lots of companies today are providing educational opportunities for employees within a company, but then some employees decide they really want to do their own thing outside.

Maybe go for an advanced degree or maybe there’s a skill set that they want to build and they prefer to do that own their own than do it within a company or maybe the company doesn’t offer it. They take courses or do independent study on their own as part of that group.

Then finally you have a group that helps you with career transitions. If you are – have lost a job or if you are thinking about changing a job, there are networks that you can reach out to to help in that regard.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Understood. That’s a nice line up there in terms of segmenting the universe of pit crews and then having some sub-segments there.

I’m intrigued though, once you kind of go through this list, I think you’ll sort of notice some things that are strong and wonderful and some things that are lacking. Maybe right now we’re looking for a good carpet provider. I guess that shows up in home and personal affairs. What do you do then if you find that you’re lacking or you’ve got a hole or two in some key networks? How do you go about filling that hole?

Glenna Crooks
My comment about that is most people first of all don’t even know who’s in these networks. We haven’t had a structure for thinking about it. We think maybe this is data available in our Outlook contact database or maybe we can connect through LinkedIn or we can go on Facebook or Angie’s List or whatever, but because we haven’t had a comprehensive way or a framework to look at these things, the kind of find me a fill-in-the-blank-type person, tends to be hit or miss.

In addition to that, my research shows that a lot of our networks are way overloaded. I’m a gardener for example, before I plant, I weed. That’s what most people need to do in their networks. There’s lots of books out there and tools out there to help you network, like LinkedIn or like an Angie’s group to find the carpet supplier you would like. You can also get referrals from your friends.

What I have found is people know how to solve that problem. What they don’t know how to do is to look at all of their networks and decide how to prune and cut back so that they free up the bandwidth they need to go on and do more and better things and have the sort of life that they want to have.

To help do that, I’ve categorized or defined three different types of people within your network. Some I call primary.

Those who are primary are the ones who are closest into your heart. If they passed away, if they cut off the connection with you, you would be devastated, so a spouse, a child, a boss, your best clients, and even yourself. You’ve got to have yourself on that list. Those people are primary. Why I put you on this list will be important when I get to the next type. I call those support.

For everybody who is primary for you, you have certain intentions. You want your children to grow up to be healthy and well-educated and acculturated in your traditions. You want your boss to successful. You want your direct reports to have the resources that they need in order to do their jobs. You want your clients to be served well with the products or the services that you provide them.

Now, so for every one of those people who are primary and the intentions that you have, some people are supporting you to do that. It’s important to understand that’s their role. Their role is to be a support.

Everybody else is transactional, which doesn’t mean they’re not a human being who deserves dignity and kindness and all of that. It just means that if – you’re not going to have a special outreach to them if they get sick or you’re not going to worry if they decide that they’re going to move on to some other job or location.

The first thing people need to do is understand that distinction, once they know who’s in their life in all their networks. Then what they need to do is be very strategic about what they want to ask for. They need to know what they need.

Just telling me that you are looking for somebody to carpet your home doesn’t necessarily tell me enough. I want to know if it’s important to you that it – is price an issue for you? Is service quality? Is a warranty? Is the convenience of them showing up at a particular date? Will they move the furniture out of the room first or do you have to do that?

Pete Mockaitis
Is it CRI green label plus certified?

Glenna Crooks
Yes. Those are the – when you ask yourself those questions and you have clarity, then when you go out to get the referral, you know with much greater specificity what to ask for. Then – what I can tell you from my research, by the way, is that there are patterns in terms of what people lack in these networks. I know, for example, that if I am talking to a young man, he probably doesn’t have a physician.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s so funny. I was just chatting with a couple young men about this exact topic yesterday. One of them was like, “I know I’ve got to find a primary care physical.” And the other one, well he recently had a health scare, so now he has one. This is coming up just yesterday. It was quite common. It was interesting.

Glenna Crooks
Well, and I know if I’m talking to couples with young children, they don’t have custodial arrangements for the kids in the event of their death. I also know that lots of people must not have an attorney because 70% of adult Americans don’t have an up-to-date will.

There are some sort of hot spots within our networks. I think within a career network it’s so common today now to talk about finding a mentor and a sponsor that it will be obvious to people right away when they’ve made their list if there’s a mentor or a sponsor who’s missing.

Then with the clarity of knowing what it is they’re looking for. Do they want a mentor to help them change careers into a different field or do they want a mentor to help them go up the ladder within their own company? With that sort of clarity they’ll then know how to reach out to others and find that right mentor.

Pete Mockaitis
I love it. Just having that clear set of – I’m thinking about needs, I’m thinking about network categories and sub-categories and the specific match-up associated with them sort of highlight some needs and some people to fill in there. I want to talk a little bit about the pruning element. How – what are some indicators that someone should be pruned and how does one go about doing that?

Glenna Crooks
It’s probably one of the biggest surprises when people hear about this when they ask me that question. I say, I don’t really have to talk about this with people because once they see all of the people in their networks, they instantly see changes that they want to make. Even just making the list, people start to – they write somebody’s name down and they say, “Ew, I wish they weren’t around.”

Now, some people can never leave your network. If you’ve got a problem with your sister-in-law, you kind of can’t – you can’t un-sister-in-law yourself.

But what I – the other pattern that I have found is that the people who are the most successful at doing this pruning start with the transactional connections they have, again, that’s the – those are the least important. They are the most easily replaced. Then they move on to the support connections.

For example, I’ll use myself and a story about me. I have a – if I make an appointment, if somebody requires I have an appointment, like a doctor or a hairdresser or a manicurist, I’m willing to wait, but not long. I had people in those categories who always kept me waiting. Once I almost missed a flight because of it. Now I replace them just because I could see it. I could be very clear about what I wanted and then I could seek out someone who was better.

Here’s the other data from my research. Very frequently people think they have a problem in a primary relationship, a primary connection, with a spouse, with a boss. Those are the two biggest complaints I get: my spouse and my boss. What people find is when they have pruned and then replaced with better services, those people who are support and transactional, the problems with the boss and the spouse go away. That wasn’t the problem.

So much of what was happening was people were in the workforce, they were giving the best of themselves away all day, they went home and they had nothing left for the one they loved the most. Or conversely, the rest of their networks were such a mess— they had unreliable childcare or they were also caring for a pet who was then sick or they had an older relative they were helping out and a neighborhood that was not terribly supportive.

You put all of those things together and it was difficult to go to work with a clear head. I now realize myself doing my networks that the biggest career setbacks that I encountered came from being a homeowner.

Pete Mockaitis
Really?

Glenna Crooks
Well, I’m single and everybody talked to me, my financial advisors and so on about the money. “Could I afford the down payment,” and the upkeep and so on? Nobody said, “Do you have the bandwidth to manage 20 people,” because that’s what it takes.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes, it does.

Glenna Crooks
If you get up in the morning and find a leak in the roof or under the kitchen sink, you don’t exactly go off to work with a clear head. Or in my case since I travel globally, get on a plane and fly to Singapore and be fully present on the job. That was an insight that I didn’t have until Robert Downey Junior came along.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. That’s good stuff. So then when it comes to the pruning, I guess I’m having a little bit of a hard time as I think about my own collection of people who I don’t really want there. Maybe I’m not thinking hard enough or maybe I’ve already pruned.

I guess there have been no dramatic exchanges like, “I am terminating our relationship.” Like that never – that conversation hasn’t ever happened I guess explicitly. I guess I’m wondering, am I missing something or do you think maybe I just pruned. Are some people, are they already pruned by the time they get to you and they’re chatting?

Glenna Crooks
No. Everybody prunes. Everybody. Everybody downsizes something. People who entertain in their home decide they’re not going to do that anymore. It’s too much effort to clean the house and take care of the kids and prepare the meal. They take other people out for dinner instead or they only have potlucks and it’s in the backyard and people don’t come into the house. They make those kinds of changes.

Now I have seen in my research people who do make a coffee date with a support connection like a friend and say, “You know what? This relationship has been all take and me giving and you taking. It’s not been balanced. And so, this is not the kind of relationship that I want.”

I say much to the credit of the other person, they have said, “You know what? You’re right. I want to be a better friend. Tell me how to do that,” which I think is another part of this having clarity and telling people what you want.

And for anyone that you support as a part of their pit crew, if they haven’t told you what they want, we both know you’re not a mind reader, ask them. “What’s your definition of quality? What is it that you want from me? Let’s see if I can deliver that or not. Or maybe I can but not every day.”

Pete Mockaitis
Well, yes, that’s exactly where I want to go next is thinking about this giving and taking. What are some pro tips to making sure that we don’t fall on either side of that to be almost always the giver and sort of left void or almost always the taker and to be kind of a selfish person who’s burning some bridges along the way?

Glenna Crooks
The people that I have seen who have been the most successful at this are the people who’ve really looked at their own lives first and all of their networks, and then they’ve started by – and they’ve done a bit of pruning and they’ve created some bandwidth and time and energy for themselves because of that – and then what they’ve done is reached out to important people, shared that information and asked them to do the same because what that does is start to give you insights into each other’s lives.

This, by the way, happens best in the most intimate relationships, between spouses for example.

Couples divide workload. One person in the couple knows something that the other person does not. If one dies, the other loses more than half their heart, they lose all their information that their partner had. In my data are couples where a young woman died and left her husband without such basic information as the name of the children’s pediatrician.

Or – and many people now are moving into a stage of life where they’re not only caring for – they not only have a job, but they’re caring for children and they’re anticipating perhaps caring for older relatives.

I had my own experience of that. My mom his retired to Florida and she got sick. I navigated from 1,000 miles away with a telephone number for only one neighbor. That’s been corrected. I now know everyone in my mom’s life, so if it ever happens again I’ll be better able to step in.

For those of us who are in the workforce and want to move on and move ahead and do better at what we’re doing, having the rest of our lives in that kind of order, frees up our minds to actually show up and be fully present when we’re on the job.

Part of our problem with work/life balance and the whole discussion is we’re balancing one network, the career network, against seven others. The numbers in each case are really quite high and there’s a limit to what we can do cognitively.

Sir Robin Dunbar says we can only manage about 150 connections well. Now children hit that in first grade. The average working parent with three kids has got at least 600 people in the networks that they’re managing.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s a lot. Cool. We talked about how to sort of balance the give and take in terms of sharing what you need and asking what – how can you be helpful, which is great. I’d love to get your thoughts on how and when does one ask for help and how does one do that well?

Glenna Crooks
Well, first of all, we should ask for help more often than we do. Again, in my – in the sample of people that I’ve been working with, they’re tending to do too much, too fast and trying to do it too alone.

The recipe is what I’ve said before, I’m feeling a little like a broken record. It’s knowing who’s around you, being really clear about what it is you want and need, and not just out of selfishness, but because you’re really an important person. You’re absolutely unique.

You have access to more resources than any generation in history and vast human capital, which means you can create a terrific life for yourself, your family and do good things in your career. Reaching out for help is not just for you, it’s for everybody else who’s going to benefit from that as well.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s great. Okay. That’s a nice case for doing it. Don’t hold back. Then when you actually make the request any pro tips for doing that well?

Glenna Crooks
Yeah, it’s just knowing exactly what it is you want, knowing who’s around you that you can ask. If there isn’t somebody who’s right around you who you can ask for that sort of help, chances are someone you know does know someone who will have that information.

We now know, for example, from research that friends of friends are the best source of information about jobs and mates. You and your friends tend to share the same information, so your friends’ friends, who you don’t even know, have different information. You might have to go through your friends and ask them to reach out to their friends you don’t know. Then ask that question best to them.

I will say this. I’m on the receiving end of this a lot because of the career that I’ve had, because I do guest lecture at so many places including at universities, I often have people reaching out to me for assistance. The easiest people to help and the most satisfying type of help and assistance to give is when somebody has a very clear request.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. Totally, ‘cause then you know you nailed it.

Glenna Crooks
Yeah. Instead of “Gee, I’m not sure what I should do next?” It’s much easier if you say – if they say, “I am thinking about this or that career path,” or “this or that next career move,” or “I’ve got this or that job offer, I want some help to know how to make this choice best,” or “I want to know if you’ve ever faced a situation like this and what you did.”

The more specific that request is, the more targeted the help is that I can do. Doing your homework first by gaining that clarity is really important.

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

Glenna Crooks
I would just say this. We are hardwired to be social and to connect with other people because we can’t survive alone. So as we’re connecting, what you need to know is that every network has a center of gravity. If you’re below that center of gravity, it will pull you up.

Now, that’s why if you want to be awesome at your job, identify something you want to do better and friend up. It’s like the active side of just asking for help, actually create the connection with somebody and hang around because when you’re around smarter, more experienced, more skilled people, you will do better. It applies to just about anything. It happens to my tennis game. I play with a better player, my game is better.

[33:00]

Now unfortunately, the opposite is also true. If you are above a center of gravity in a network, it is going to pull you back. In subtle ways it can hold you back. If you’re so awesome in your job that you’re getting bigger or better jobs or opportunities to shine in bigger ways in your company, as you transition from one network to another, the people in the old network are not going to be happy about it.

Unconsciously, they’re going to be fearing that if you’re leaving the group behind, what happens to them? Are they going to service? They may use social pressures to draw you back so that you need to know that.

Then finally, when it comes to your career, the strengths and the weaknesses of every other network will show up in force. If you don’t have a good plumber and you find a leak, it’s going to affect your day. If you do have good childcare if you’re a working parent, that’s going to allow you to go to work with a clear head. If your family had connections in your field, that’s going to give you a head start.

While you should always focus, of course, on your career network, it’s important to also take a look at all of the others.

Pete Mockaitis
Understood. Thank you. Now can you share with us a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Glenna Crooks
Yeah, it’s an African proverb. “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” I actually think you can do both, go fast and far, if you’ve done some of the things we’ve talked about today and focus on all your networks.

Pete Mockaitis
Thank you. How about a favorite study or experiment or a bit of research?

Glenna Crooks
Anything done by Nicholas Christakis. He has TED talks too. The difference between Nicholas Christakis and me is that he helicopters above a network and shows how everybody is connected. I help people stand in the middle of all of their networks and see it from that perspective. Both perspectives are worthwhile. He’s done some terrific research. He’s a great speaker too. You’d love his TED talk.

Pete Mockaitis
Thank you. How about a favorite book?

Glenna Crooks
Sherry Turkle. She’s been chronicling technology for a long time. She’s always been an optimist until her last book, which is called Alone Together: Why We Expect More of Technology and Less of Each Other. I think that’s part of why I like what I’m doing in Networksage is it’s reminding us that we need to have quality connections with one another. We just can’t connect through technology.

Pete Mockaitis
That is such a killer subtitle.

Glenna Crooks
Yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
Because I think I find it so true in the sense of, it’s like, “Why do I have to push six buttons to get what I want from this app? This is absurd.” That’s a pretty high expectation I have of this technology versus it’s like, “Oh, this carpet person isn’t going to call me back, well, they’re dead to me. I’m moving on to the next one. I don’t expect much from them.” Wow, that’s worth chewing on the subtitle alone. Thank you.

All right. How about a favorite tool, something that helps you be awesome at your job?

Glenna Crooks
I work on three computer monitors. Multiple monitors have been shown to increase productivity by up to 40%. If I had room on my desk, I’d have a fourth.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh my gosh, well tell me how are these arranged and what you do with them.

Glenna Crooks
I do so much writing and so much research that I can keep a document open but then go on another screen and search the web, then watch emails, and Skype with somebody all kind of seamlessly without having to open and close apps.

Especially when you’re working on PowerPoint or Excels and moving data from place to place, it makes it – so I have a mouse that seamlessly moves between them. Then one of them is a TV set, so in case I want to multitask and watch something that’s – binge on Netflix while I’m doing something light, I can do that too.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s so good. This reminds me of one of my favorite Onion articles, which is – I’ll paraphrase to keep our clean rating and to not be censored in India – but it says “Coworker with two computer screens not forking around.” Well, like that, and they showed – it’s like, “Sources confirmed it was like watching Minority Report or something.”

Okay, cool. Well, that’s you. How about a favorite habit?

Glenna Crooks
I work a lot with Europeans, so I get up at 4:30 in the morning to call them earlier in their day while they’re still fresh and they’re rested. Boy, it’s won me a lot of points with my clients, but it’s also helped me to be productive.

There’s no other temptations. The phone’s not ringing. Emails aren’t sailing in to interrupt me. I get three or four hours of uninterrupted work time before most people start their commute. That’s really been – so even when I’m not committed to a European client, I’ve continued that. I’ve just really found it very valuable.

Pete Mockaitis
Tell me, is there a particular nugget you share that really seems to connect and resonate with folks and gets shared frequently?

Glenna Crooks
Actually I just realized that I already said it, that when it comes to your career, the strengths and the weaknesses of every other network will show up in force.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes, thank you. How about if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Glenna Crooks
My website is GlennaCrooks.com. You can also Google me at Glenna Crooks. I am blogging on this topic. You can sign up for my blog if you’d like. I will have booking speeches now. I’m doing some coaching.

I’ve developed an app to make all of this much easier. It’s designed now. It just has to be coded. I’ve formed a collaboration with somebody to bring this into the workforce and into companies to improve productivity.

Pete Mockaitis
What’s the app called and how do we get it?

Glenna Crooks
The name of the company is Coaching Sage QI. The app – this app – part of the app is probably going to be called SageMyLife. It’s not available yet. It’s designed. It’s not coded. Through my website, my blogs and so on, we’ll clearly be announcing when it’s available.

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

Glenna Crooks
I do. I want to hear from anybody who tries it. Take a look at the org chart that defines where you sit in the company because I don’t think it’s accurate. Create your own.

Take a look at what is it that you have to do, who’s primary for you in the company, who’s support for you across all the cross-functional teams, perhaps outside the company if you engage with customers, government regulators, the press, or other stakeholders, and design a real org chart that is meaningful for you. When you do that, what do you learn?

Just recently did this with nurses. For the first time they realized that a floor nurse was connecting with 125 different types of people, not numbers, types of people, like a patient is a type, a doctor is a type, a pharmacist is a type. Since they had more than one patient, they’re dealing with more than one patient family member or clergy member or so on, so maybe 300 people, none of whom report to the nurse. She didn’t hire them and she can’t fire them.

For the first time it was clear that a nurse’s job was not just clinical, it was management and the toughest management there is because, like I said, the team doesn’t report to her. I think most of your listeners will find that that’s true with them too. It will give them an appreciation for the real challenge they have on the job every day.

Pete Mockaitis
Awesome. Well Glenna, thank you so much for sharing this good stuff. I wish you and the book, The Networksage, tons of luck in all you’re up to.

Glenna Crooks
You’re very welcome and the same to you and your continuing series.

Aug 22
0

336: Building the Mind of a Leader with Jacqueline Carter

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Jacqueline Carter says: "All we have is our mind... That's how we perceive the world; that's how we do great things."

Jacqueline Carter reveals the three qualities of a good leader’s mind and how to build good foundations for those qualities in yourself.

You’ll Learn:

  1. What the American workforce looks for in a career and leader
  2. How to avoid power corrupting you as you rise
  3. The distinction between compassion and empathy–and which one is more helpful

About Jacqueline

With a Master of Science in Organizational Behavior and over 20 years of experience supporting organizations through large scale change, Jacqueline has held a wide range of leadership and consulting roles across a range of industries including transportation, oil and gas, insurance and government. Jacqueline has many years of personal experience with mind training and over the past 10 years has focused on embedding mindfulness practices into daily corporate life.

Items Mentioned in this Show:

Jacqueline Carter Interview Transcript

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

Jacqueline Carter
Thank you so much, Pete. Great to be here.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’d love to get oriented a little bit to what you’re doing. The Potential Project is a really cool name. What’s it all about and what do you do there?

Jacqueline Carter
Yeah, thanks so much. So, The Potential Project is a global organization and our passion is helping leaders and organoizations enhance performance and creativity and resilience through understanding and training the mind.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, that sounds awesome. So then, what do you do in there?

Jacqueline Carter
I am a partner with the organization. So as I said it’s a global organization and I work internationally, as well as oversee our operations in North America.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, we’re talking about the mind – your latest book is called The Mind of the Leader. What’s the big idea here?

Jacqueline Carter
So, Potential Project – we’ve been in operations for over a decade, and we’ve been very much focused on helping organizations, as I said, enhance performance. And specifically a lot of our work has been on training mindfulness. And I can define what that means, but just really simply it’s training the mind to be able to be more here, now. Less distracted and more focused.
And what we found about two and half years ago is that we were seeing with a lot of the leaders that we were working with that mindfulness training alone wasn’t enough. And we were just seeing that so many leaders we were working with were experiencing such a degree of pressure, they were feeling overwhelmed, there just weren’t enough hours in the day for them to be able to be successful.
And in addition to that, as many of your listeners know, and as I’m sure you know and you’ve had other speakers talk about – but the changing nature of the workforce today. And what we really saw is what we came to call a “leadership crisis”. And we wanted to put our research hats and get into it and try to understand more about what are the challenges that are facing leaders today, and what do they need to be able to be successful, to create more healthy, happy, productive organizations? So that’s the big idea behind the book.

Pete Mockaitis
I’m intrigued. So the mindfulness trainings weren’t quite getting the job done. And what was the root behind that? You said there’s just the sheer volume of stressors, or what wasn’t clicking and connecting for folks?

Jacqueline Carter
So the mindfulness training – and for those of you who don’t know, as I said, I can define it just to make sure that we have a common language – but it really is about training the mind to be able to be present. So it’s about being here, now. And what we found was that was critical. If you I aren’t both here, then we might as well not be having this conversation. So, mindfulness is really table stakes, especially for any leader. And certainly for any employee – if you want to be effective you have to be able to be present.
But what we found was certainly with the changing nature of the workforce today is that workers today were looking for more meaning and for more purpose. They were looking for a place where they felt more connected. And when we started looking at the engagement scores, only 13% of the global workforce is engaged, 24% actively disengaged. There was a survey that said that 65% of employees would forgo a pay raise to see their leader fired. And we looked at things like that.
Another survey – a McKinsey study – looked at, 77% of leaders thought they were doing a great job as leaders, but 82% of their employees, not so much. So what we saw was that more than just mindfulness, leaders also needed to look at qualities of being more selfless, and I can also define that, and also brining more compassion into their leadership.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes, so that’s intriguing, some of those figures there. So 65% – almost two thirds of people would not take their 2%, 3%, 4%, 5% annual bonus if they could have their leader fired.

Jacqueline Carter
Yes. I’m sure nobody listening was part of that study. But it’s very depressing.

Pete Mockaitis
Is it their immediate boss or the CEO?

Jacqueline Carter
Their immediate boss actually, which is really interesting. But when you talk about CEOs, that’s the other thing that we looked at. The trust index shows consistently that our faith in leaders, and specifically in CEOs, has gone significantly down over the past years. So it’s combining all these things and saying, “What’s going on? What’s happening?” And that’s really what we wanted to find out and that was what our research was all about.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So you’ve identified these three forces there – mindfulness, selflessness, and compassion. So let’s discuss a little bit, in terms of, how does one develop each of these, and what are the benefits and results of deploying them?

Jacqueline Carter
Yeah, absolutely. And maybe just for a little bit of context in terms of our research, just to give it some weight, as it’s not just me and us folks at Potential Project with some great ideas. We interviewed over 250 C-Suite executives, we surveyed over 35,000 leaders from 72 countries, we engaged with leading researchers and did field work with companies including Accenture and Marriott and Cisco. So I just wanted to give it a little bit of context before I dug into it, because some of these concepts may seem soft or flaky, they may not seem like hardcore business. But what we were really inspired by is how the leaders that we spoke to saw these as being absolutely critical to being successful as a leader today. So is that a good enough backdrop?

Pete Mockaitis
Yes, thank you.

Jacqueline Carter
Okay. So, to start off, as I said, with mindfulness. Maybe just one other backdrop – you said how can they cultivate these? So I think the other starting place to look at that is what we know about the brain. And so we’re very much interested in looking at things from a scientific perspective. And what we know about our brain is that it is plastic, so we can actually develop new skills, because of something called neuroplasticity. And so I think that’s the really exciting thing. What we know is that for example even though we may feel distracted all the time, or we may feel stressed or overwhelmed, we can train ourselves to be able to be more relaxed, to be able to be more focused, to be able to be more calm. And there are specific training tools. And that’s really the starting point; that’s what mindfulness is about. And mindfulness training is training the mind to be able to manage your attention.
So one of the things that science tells us is that our mind basically wanders 47% of our waking hours. So what that looks like, just to make it practical for anybody that’s listening – during the time that Pete and I have already been talking, you might have found that you started thinking about what might happen next, or a meeting that you were just in. And basically that’s normal, that’s the way our mind naturally works.
And the key thing about mindfulness training is whether we can be aware that our mind has gone off on a little journey, and whether we have the mental fitness or attentional muscle to be able to say, “No, I really want to listen to this podcast. I’m going to manage my own attention. I’m going to be here, now.” So that’s mindfulness. It sounds simple. For anybody who’s practiced it, it’s simple. It’s not necessarily easy, but it’s training the mind to be able to be more here, now.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And so then, what are some of the best practices for building that muscle?

Jacqueline Carter
So you can go to the mental gyms, and that’s a lot of what we do at Potential Project, is we introduce 10 minutes of daily mindfulness training. Just like you would go to a physical gym to be able to develop better, strong physical muscles, you can go to the mental gym to be able to develop basically better attentional muscles. And 10 minutes a day has been shown from a research perspective to significantly help in terms of overcoming the mind’s natural tendency to wander.

Pete Mockaitis
So when we go to the mental gym, what does that consist of?

Jacqueline Carter
Well, in our work, the way we introduce mindfulness training is we like to keep it very, very, very simple and stripped down, because we know that most of us already have enough complexity in our lives. So actually our method is called ABCD – just as simple as you can get. And the A is basically to be able to look at your anatomy and make sure that you’re as relaxed as you can be. The B is about simply focusing on your breath. And again, that sounds simple but it’s not always easy. The C – we invite people to count. So they count their breaths 1 to 10, and then count backwards, 10 back down to 1. And the D is for distractions, and we know that our mind naturally wanders. And in mindfulness training when your mind wanders, it’s actually a good thing because it gives you the opportunity to flex that attentional muscle, to bring your mind back to the breath, and then just simply start counting from 1 again.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, cool. And so, with that counting to 10 and then back – is that synchronized with breathing, in terms of one’s on the inhale, one’s on the exhale, or how does that go?

Jacqueline Carter
No. It’s simply you breathe in, you breathe out, count one; breathe in, out, two. Up to 10, and then count backwards. And one of the things that’s really key about the counting is, it’s not about… People, especially high potential, high achievers feel like, “I want to get to 10 and back down to 1”, and become almost competitive or put themselves under pressure. The key thing is the counting is just a way to make sure that your mind just isn’t wandering as you’re sitting there focusing on your breath and you start to daydream. But it doesn’t matter if you don’t get to 10.
They key thing is, how many times can you notice that your mind has wandered, and bring it back. Every time you do that, that’s really when you’re flexing your attentional muscle. And the cool thing about that is then when you’re sitting in that meeting and your mind starts to wander, because it does, you can bring it back, because you’ve got a stronger mental muscle. And so that’s the other thing that we look at, is not just the practice of mindfulness on its own and going to the mental gym, but how to apply it to practical things like being in a meeting and being effective, or apply it to emails, or apply it to priorities or to being more creative.

Pete Mockaitis
So, how might we apply it to email?

Jacqueline Carter
So, a couple of things. One of the things – such a simple tip, is to turn off all email notifications. And the reason for that is that we know that every time we get a pop-up on our computer or a pop-up on our device, it’s a distraction to us. And basically we know that from an efficiency perspective when we get distracted, it can take between a couple of seconds to a couple of minutes for us to bring our attention back to whatever we were doing. So we think that it’s helping us keep track of what’s going on in our day, and it’s really just losing you time, because you’re basically distracted throughout the day. So it’s such a simple little technique, but it can actually save you minutes, and those minutes add up. It can actually save you even an hour each day to just turn off those notifications. And only do emails when you want to do emails, as opposed to just being always on with them.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, cool. So then, where does the “selflessness” piece come in?

Jacqueline Carter
Yeah, absolutely. So, selflessness – a simple definition is basically not letting our natural egoistic tendencies to get in the way of us being the best leader we can be, or even the best human we can be. And a fundamental way to look at it is that one of the things that we know is that – again, from a neurological perspective – we have a natural tendency to be self-referential. Everything that we are experiencing, we experience in terms of how I experience it. And that’s natural – like, “I am doing this right now” or, “I like this. I don’t like that.” And that is natural and normal.
But as a leader, if it’s all about me, it’s actually not very effective, it’s not very helpful. So, leadership is really about making sure that we’re looking at others and what is important to the team, and how can we actually support all of us be more successful? And it really is critically important. It’s trainable as well, but especially in leadership, and this goes back to what we found in the research. What was so important about cultivating selflessness is a lot of the research shows that as we rise in the ranks of leadership, our chances of becoming more rude, becoming more unkind, become more unethical, actually increase.

Pete Mockaitis
Intriguing.

Jacqueline Carter
Yeah, exactly. It’s intriguing, and frightening. But it’s really interesting when you think about it. I’ll even say from my own personal experience – I do a lot of talks and presentations and I’m standing up in front of crowds of maybe hundreds of people. And I can feel that natural tendency of my ego wanting to say, “Jacqueline, aren’t you special?” And I need to constantly remind myself, no. I mean I’m not not special, but it’s not all about me. And so it’s just that natural tendency for us to start to get a big head as we rise in the ranks of power. And it’s so critical to bring that selflessness into our leadership.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And so, now I’m just so intrigued. I guess we could spend hours talking about the “Why”. But what do you think it is? Is it just because they are accustomed to being treated well, and then it’s like you think that you’re special and you deserve it maybe? It’s sort of natural pattern-putting together there?

Jacqueline Carter
Well, it can be that, but it’s also how people start to treat us. One of the great stories that we just loved… We had so many great stories from the interviews that we did, but one of the CEOs explained it to us like this. He said, “When I became CEO, what I noticed is that people started to laugh more at my jokes.” He said, “I don’t think I’m any funnier. I can assure you, I don’t think I’m any funnier.” But we are social beings, and we look at how’s in charge, who’s the leader, and we treat them differently. And especially the research on power and how power corrupts us as we rise up the ranks. But it’s even simple things, like a leader is more likely to not clean up after themselves when they’re leaving a room. It’s simple things like that, but they can really end up… And you think, “That’s okay. They don’t have time. They’re busy.” But it’s about, are we out for ourselves? And of course it can lead to the ultimate, which is real corrupt behaviors, which we saw a lot in the research.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, it’s funny. I remember back in the day, when I was in high school we had our congressman, our U.S. House of Representatives. I don’t want to name names, but you can do the research if you want to, from Danville, Illinois, back when I was in high school. He visited, and I don’t know I was sort of fascinated, like, “Okay, let’s take a close look at this guy. How is he operating? What’s his deal? What was the key to his rise to success and fame or whatever?”
And I remember he requested tea. Why do I remember this? He requested a tea, and he had a teabag and some hot water and a cup, and he was steeping while the conversations were happening. And there was a napkin right next to the cup, and I noticed he did not place the teabag onto the napkin, but rather onto directly the table. And I was like, “Why would you do that? Someone’s got to clean the table now. You’ve got a barrier between the table and the teabag inches away that you could’ve easily utilized and you opted not to.” [laugh] I guess it made an impression. So, there you go – rising to power and not cleaning up after yourself.

Jacqueline Carter
It’s a great story. But what was so interesting about the research, and I did not know this until we got into this research – is that it can happen without you being aware of it. So that leader may not have even been aware that that’s a power play. That’s like, “You know what? I’m so important, I can put garbage on the table. But this is the thing – it was that it may not be intentional. And I think that that’s the space of where looking at you may become a jerk and you don’t even mean to. That’s I think a key message that we found from the studies.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, so you can get sloppier and not even notice that it’s happening to you as you rise to power. So, what are some best practices for cultivating selflessness?

Jacqueline Carter
I think the first thing, and that’s one of the things we did try to do with the book is to create awareness. I think all of us should know that power can corrupt our minds. I think that’s just critical for all of us to know. And once we know that, we have to make a choice. What kind of leader do we want to be? And one of the simple ways to overcome it is to really practice humility and gratitude. At the end of each day, just think about all of the people that helped you be successful today. And one of the key things that we encourage is to look for the people that are unseen. So it could be the things that didn’t go wrong because there was a team of people that helped make sure that you didn’t even notice that nothing went wrong.
So look for those and really make sure that you have that sense of gratitude and appreciation. And a simple thing, and it’s a great thing, and actually the neuroscience around this says that a simple gratitude practice of every day thinking of, is there one person you could send a little note to say, “Hey, thanks. I really appreciate whatever you did.” It’s actually self-serving, because not only it’s great for them, but it actually helps us to cultivate a more selfless mind. So there’s great benefit in it.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, cool. So let’s talk about compassion then, and how would you distinguish and define selflessness from compassion?

Jacqueline Carter
Yeah, absolutely. So compassion then is the intention to be of benefit to others. And this was also really exciting, and maybe just to give a context – when we originally set out to write the book, we talked to our publisher, who we love – Harvard Business Review Press – fantastic organization to work with. Originally it was just going to be on mindful leadership. And so I want to say one of the things that was really exciting to us is, through the journey of our research, it was really through that that we kept on hearing leaders talk about the importance of selflessness, talk about bringing more humility and gratitude, and also talking about compassion. And that was really exciting to us, because for years we had always known that compassion was beneficial and important, but often times you don’t hear a lot of leaders talking about it. Especially in hardcore, tough business-minded people compassion is often seen as soft.
And what we really saw and what we heard and what we experienced, and then we again pulled back the research on, was compassion isn’t about being nice to everyone. It’s really about bringing a true intention to be of benefit to others. So just to give you a story of what that looks like, let’s say you and I were colleagues and I walked into your office and I saw that you had a heap of paper and you were just drowning because you had so much. Or a help of emails; maybe most people don’t have paper anywhere. But just like you were really under a lot of pressure.
And if I was just being empathetic, I might sit down and be miserable right alongside of you. That wouldn’t be helpful to you and it wouldn’t be helpful to me. But a compassionate approach is, what can I actually do to help you? And there are a couple of things. What I could actually do to help you might be nothing at all, because you’ve got to figure this out for yourself, and that’s going to be the best way to help you. Or it could be to help you look at your priorities. Or maybe if I was in a leadership role, maybe it would be to make sure that I haven’t been creating too much stress and overload for you.
So it’s really having an ability to step back, look at the person, look at the situation, and ask that question: “How can I be of best benefit?”, and doing it with wisdom. So it includes things like giving really tough feedback, which can be challenging, but really beneficial. Or even letting somebody go, because they’re just not performing, they’re not a good fit for whatever reason. But doing it with compassion, doing it with a great deal of care.

Pete Mockaitis
Got it, thank you. Could you maybe share a story or a case study that kind of ties it all together, in terms of an organization that had not a whole lot of the mindfulness, not a whole lot of the selflessness, not a whole lot of compassion, and then things got turned around in a cool way?

Jacqueline Carter
I would love to say that there was one organization that brought it all together, and I can’t say that. I can certainly say that what we’ve really seen and the experience that we’ve had, organizations that focus on these qualities, really enables them to be more effective, more kind, and actually lead to bottom line success. So, just maybe to name a couple out – Accenture is an organization that has really embraced mindfulness; it’s become core to their leadership development and they’ve got a whole program that’s around helping them be more focused.
Organizations that we really admire in terms of selflessness – LinkedIn is a great example, where it’s really not about “me”, but really about, “How can we bring more of a global perspective?” And you can see that in some of the things that they do. An organization that we love working with around compassion is Marriott. They have a very simple business philosophy that they’ve had since they were a nine-stool pop shop in 1927. And that business philosophy is, “If we take care of our people, they will take care of our guests, and business will take care of itself.” And that’s been their model since the early days. Now they’re the largest hotel chain in the world, over 700,000 people worldwide. And when we spoke with CEO Arne Sorenson and CHRO David Rodriguez they said that whole idea of taking care of their people, bringing compassion, is still the cornerstone of their philosophy, which is great.

Pete Mockaitis
Lovely. And we talked about a few things that we should start doing, in terms of going to the mental gym and putting yourself in other people’s shoes and seeing how we can best be of service to them. But are there some things that we should stop doing right away in order to excel on these fronts?

Jacqueline Carter
Yeah. I think that one of the things you should stop doing is stop multitasking. It’s just a really bad idea; it’s kind of the mother of all evil, in terms of being effective and having good relationships and being kind to others. There is just a ton of research and studies that shows it’s just a really bad idea. Another thing to stop doing is working late at night. One of things that we know is that most of us simply do not get enough sleep, and so we should all put a greater value on making sure that we get a good night’s sleep. And again, there’s lots of great research on that. I could go on, but I’ll let you see if those are good tips.

Pete Mockaitis
Good, thank you, yes. Anything else you want to make sure to mention before we shift gears and hear about some of your favorite things?

Jacqueline Carter
I think maybe one other thing that we found really inspiring and it was really important to us is just an idea of creating more people-centric cultures. It just came up again and again in our work, this idea of bringing more humanity, brining more of our true selves and being more authentic. So I think maybe one of the things that I would say is that a lot of these qualities are accessible to all of us; in some ways they just make good inherent sense. And what we’re really hoping and what we’re seeing is organizations and leaders that embrace them. It’s actually nice to be present with people; it’s nice for it all to not be about “me”; it’s nice to be able to bring more kindness and compassion into organization. And guess what? It also leads to better results. So yeah, that’s just the other thing I’d like to add.

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

Jacqueline Carter
One of probably my favorite quotes is by His Holiness the Dalai Lama. He says, “Compassion is my religion.” I think that’s a good universal one for me.

Pete Mockaitis
Alright. And how about a favorite study or experiment or a bit of research?

Jacqueline Carter
Yeah. One of my favorite ones, because it was just so shocking – literally shocking – was research where they gave people a little electric shock and they said, “Does that hurt?” And people would say, “Yes, that hurts.” And then they put them in a room with no stimuli whatsoever – no phone, no technology, nothing – just white walls. And the only thing that they had in that room was that same little electric shock.
And what they were looking for was whether people were so uncomfortable being alone and so unable to just sit with themselves that they would actually shock themselves to entertain themselves. And they actually asked people, “Would you actually shock yourself on purpose?” People said, “No way.” Well, it turned out 67% of men and 25% of women would shock themselves, rather than just sitting there and being still and being alone. One guy shocked himself 190 times. That was really interesting and a little bit frightening about human behavior.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s wild. How long were they in there?

Jacqueline Carter
I can’t remember exactly. It was about five minutes, so it wasn’t a long period of time. Yeah, it’s really fascinating. One of the other things that I find so interesting is that all we have is our mind, basically. That’s how we perceive the world, that’s how we do great things. And if we’re that uncomfortable with sitting and just being alone with our thoughts that we would actually electrocute ourselves… I could look at it positively – there’s a lot of good work that we could do about making us more comfortable being alone with our own mind.

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

Jacqueline Carter
That is such a tough question. There are so many that I love. I think from a business perspective one of the books that I really, really enjoyed was Great By Choice by Jim Collins and Morten Hanson. Just wonderful stories, great practical examples, and just very inspiring form an organizational and leadership perspective.

Pete Mockaitis
And how about a favorite tool?

Jacqueline Carter
Well, one … that I love is actually something that we introduced as part of helping people to remember to be more mindful in their communications. And it’s basically when you’re about to engage with somebody, just … and STOP, standing for – S is just to be silent, because you want to make sure that you listen. And not only not talking, but actually try to silence your mind so that you’re not playing over too many things in your mind. The T standing for tune in. The O standing for being open to really listen and to try to hear what the other person is saying. And then to be present. And then when you do speak we use the word ACT as an acronym. And to make sure that it is appropriate, the C is for compassionate, and that it’s well-timed – you don’t say too much or too little, and it’s at the right time. So those are tools that I love to use in all of my communication.

Pete Mockaitis
Thank you. And how about a favorite habit?

Jacqueline Carter
Well, that is easy. It’s my daily mindfulness practice. I would not start my day with anything else.

Pete Mockaitis
And is that using those ABCDs, or you do something different?

Jacqueline Carter
Yeah, I do something different. I sit for longer than 10 minutes, but I do find that basic practice, I do basic breath awareness practices, focusing on my breath. But I also do specific practices around selflessness and compassion, which are also extremely beneficial, and again, just usually require taking a little bit longer time.

Pete Mockaitis
And as you think through your writing and speaking and working with folks, is there a particular nugget you share that really seems to connect and resonate with folks and they repeat it back to you frequently?

Jacqueline Carter
I think that probably the resonant nugget is around being more truly human. And this was one of the quotes from one of the leaders, senior executive with Audi-Volkswagen. He said that leadership today is about unlearning management and relearning being human. And I thought, “That’s a good nugget.”

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

Jacqueline Carter
So our website is www.PotentialProject.com. And you can find not only information about us and our work, but also we have information on the book. And as part of that as well we actually are creating a global leadership network. So if you’re at all interested in these practices of mindfulness, selflessness and compassion and brining them into your day-to-day work, your day-to-day leadership, there’s more information that you can find on the website.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, thank you. And do you have a final challenge or call to action for those seeking to be awesome at their jobs?

Jacqueline Carter
Yeah, I think it really is. Let’s all start a movement of being more present with each other, being less about us and being more kind. I think the world today needs it desperately and I think that not only will it help us be more awesome at our job, but I think we’ll be more awesome in our societies and have a more awesome world. So, that would be my call to action.

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful, thank you. Well, Jacqueline, this has been so much fun. I wish you tons of luck with The Mind of the Leader book and all that you’re up to!

Jacqueline Carter
Thank you so much. It was really great to talk to you today.

Aug 06
0

329: Asking Courageous Questions with Dusty Staub

By | Podcasts | No Comments

 

 

Dusty Staub says: "When we don't give people honest, direct feedback... we really failed them. Being nice is definitely not nice."

Dusty Staub shares seven acts of courage and how to apply them wisely to your work.

You’ll Learn:

  1. The three biggest lacks of courage in the workplace
  2. The problem with being nice
  3. Finding and liberating others’ purpose, passion, and power

 

About Dusty

Robert “Dusty” Staub has worked for over 30 years with executives, families, and communities as well as with private and public companies. He has trained and coached executives and teams in creating high performance outcomes. Dusty has been a pioneer in the process of creating systemic accountability by aligning leadership and group behaviors with strategy to produce bottom-line results.

Items Mentioned in this Show:

Dusty Staub Interview Transcript

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

Dusty Staub
Pete, it’s my pleasure.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, could you give us first and foremost orientation to this Dusty nickname? Where did it come from and how has it stuck?

Dusty Staub
Well, my father was Robert Earl Staub. He was a – had a full scholarship to Notre Dame playing football in 1942 out of Canton High School. He didn’t go. He went and fought in World War II. His nickname in high school was Blood and Guts Staub. Working as a paratrooper for 26 years in the military, he became even tougher.

When I was born, there was only one Bob Staub and that was him, but I was named Robert Earl Staub II. Staub is a German word that means dust, so when I was one day old, my dad didn’t want me to be called Little Bobby, so he nicknamed me Dusty.

I’ve been known by Dusty, except by the nuns in parochial school who refused because there’s no saint Dusty. When they called me Robert I wouldn’t respond, so I had more than one ruler cracked across my knuckles over the years.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh gracious. I’m wondering, surely there’s a saint somewhere that – of the dusty roads or travels or hospitality for cleaning people’s feet. I don’t know. Somewhere I wonder, but who knows, they may or may not have been receptive to your counteroffer at the time.

Well that’s cool. I’m also curious, did your dad want you to have the family name, but also differentiation in the household is that he’s trying to have his cake and eat it too?

Dusty Staub
Yes, he did. He named me after himself. He didn’t like junior either, so he made it the second because he didn’t like junior. He wanted me to be different than he was and unfortunately, for both of us, I was very different. He and I had – like two rams crashing heads with each other for the first 28 years of my life until I had an awakening and transformed the relationship by changing the way I dealt with him.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that’s intriguing. Does this have to do with courage or is this a whole other area of expertise of yours?

Dusty Staub
Well, no, that’s actually where – I was working at the VA hospital. I did a TEDx talk on this called Developing the Cardiovascular System of Your Soul. I was working with a veteran and his family as this veteran was declining. I worked with him for about six weeks. I was at his bedside when he took his last breath. I was providing a psychological consult.

When he died, I realized that if that was my father in that bed, because he was the same age, that I could not have said to that man what the daughter said to her father. I realized that at some point my dad was going to die or I was going to die and we were in a hellish position for each other.

That’s where the acts of courage were born, the courage to look in the mirror and see the way I was acting, the courage to dream of a different way of being, the courage to be confronted by my father, and the courage to confront myself, and the courage to be more vulnerable and open, etcetera.

Seven different acts of courage were required for me to transform myself. In the nine months of work I was free. Then two years later my father changed. He became the dad I always wanted. Somehow in changing myself and my way of relating to him, it changed his way of responding and relating to me. It’s not funny when you think about system dynamics, but it was a revelation to me at the time.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s beautiful and powerful and so we’re hearing courage being transformational in personal relationships. I’d also like to hear how this is powerful in the work environment.

Dusty Staub
Well, yeah, because most of my work in the past 35 years has been in corporations, for profit, not for profit, across all segments of US industry. I keep seeing in organizations where a lack of courage at senior leadership levels, as well as down through the ranks, but speaking of senior leaders where it leads to problems.

Two of the biggest lacks of courage occurs most often in corporate America is a lack of the courage to be confronted, number one, so people get antsy, they shut people down.

When somebody comes to give you bad feedback or give you criticism, Pete, in your organization, they’re inviting you to join a conversation that’s been going on for a while. If you shut them down, they just go back underground behind your back and it redoubles and then you get blindsided, which is never good.

Then the second lack of courage is the courage to confront to tell truth to power, to a colleague, to a powerful subordinate, to a superior. People don’t tell their truths. People don’t understand what’s going on because they lack the courage to be confronted and there’s a lot of issues there. Those are the two big ones.

I guess the third one I see is often a lack of the courage to be vulnerable, to be open, to admit I don’t know, to raise my hand and say I need help. Those three acts of courage are really critical if you want to be a good leader and if you want to have a sustainable performance in your organization.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, well, yeah, that’s clear. That’s big. I love that perspective in terms of it’s the conversations going on underground and then you’re sort of being invited to participate in it is what’s really going on there, which is a beautiful reframe in terms of instead of being defensive, to embrace it.

We had Kim Scott, who wrote the book Radical Candor, on the show earlier talk about how she sort of had an ah-ha moment when she had to fire somebody and he was like, “How come nobody ever told me this?” She’s like, “Oh yeah, we weren’t doing him any favors at all, were we, by trying to be too nice and polite and dancing around the issue at hand that needed to be addressed.”

Dusty Staub
Yeah, what I would say is people get addicted to being nice and being pleasant. They’re not protecting the other person; they’re protecting themselves from the emotional reaction, from feeling like a bad guy or a bad gal. When we don’t give people honest, direct feedback, corrective feedback, as well as encouragement, we really failed them. Being nice is definitely not nice.

I live in the South and down in the South – in New York if someone doesn’t like you, it’s a nice big FU. Down in the South it’s bless your little heart. Add the little into the heart and that’s an FU in the South.

It’s a – I do a lot of work internationally and my German clients tell me, they say, “Americans, you can’t trust them.” They said, “They’re not reliable.” I said, “What do you mean?” “Well, they say what they think you want to hear and they will say yes when they haven’t really committed and then they don’t follow through.”

I think that’s, again, we want to be pleasant, we want to be liked, we’re saying yes, but we’re not really thinking it through. We’re not saying, “You know? I can’t say yes to that. Here’s why. Let’s talk it through further.” Instead of going deeper or being more honest in our dialogue and conversations, we are polite and nice and we therefore fail the individual, the team, the organization, and it really damages careers. It really damages performance.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, so we’re talking about courage a lot. I’d love it if maybe you could share some of the disguises or packaging or lies or excuses or rationalizations we use when we’re really just frankly, not courageous and that’s really what’s going on. It like we’re really scared, but it gets dressed up or rationalized in some prettier terms that we use to ourselves.

Dusty Staub
One of the biggest rationalizations – but the way, rationalize is a rational lie.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, Tweet it.

Dusty Staub
When we rationally lie to ourselves – and there are psychological mechanisms. I talk about this in my second book, The Seven Acts of Courage. I talk about the defensive mechanisms of denial, of projection, of blame, of rationalization.

We rationalize, “I don’t want to hurt Dusty’s feelings.” “I don’t want to rock the boat. Things are okay.” “I can work around this. We can just work around this person. This person has been with me a long time. Yeah, it’s in over their head, but we can carry them.” There’s all kinds of rational lies that people tell themselves. They’ll even say, “You know what? Well, that person’s just mad at me. That’s not really true.”

We do 360 feedback. We gather data from multiple sources, 8, 9, 10, 12 people around an individual. People are shocked sometimes at the themes around the critical things they need to change. It’s because they’ve been hearing it from one or two people, but when they see it as a theme from five or six people all at once, it’s inescapable and then it hurts their feelings.

One of the things, Pete, I believe is that – my father said this to me. I came home from graduate school and my dad had left the military and started his own business. He said, “Son, these damn civilians.” I said, “Dad, what did the damn civilians do now?”

He said, “Son, if they were in the military, we’d shoot them. They don’t tell you the truth. They talk behind your back. When you give them a chance to tell you what’s going on, they won’t tell you. When you try to tell them, they get defensive.” He said, “They let their emotions run them.”

I said, “Well, dad, that’s – you’re calling that amateur. What’s a professional?” He says, “Son, a professional is somebody who does what’s required and necessary, not what’s most comfortable, habitual or routine.”

Pete, what I see in so many of the clients we work with and so much when I read the news is people do what’s habitual, what’s routine. They do the personality. Integrity, doing the right thing when things are easy, is not integrity. Doing the right thing when it’s hard, when it’s painful, that’s integrity.

We talk about a lack of integrity in corporate America, lack of integrity in politics right now, well, until people start showing the courage to be confronted, until people start having the courage to tell the truth without laying down judgments. I mean I can tell the truth to somebody in a way where they thank me or I can tell the truth in a way where the person feels judged, belittled and put down.

When I say the courage to confront, it’s the courage to confront with respect and compassion. When you get angry and you think you’re telling your truth, you’re vomiting on somebody, you’re dumping on somebody. That’s not respectful. That’s not respectful confrontation. That’s not the courage to confront.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, got it. Well, so you lay out seven acts of courage progressively, could you walk us through a little bit of sort of each one and how it looks in practice.

Dusty Staub
Sure and interrupt me if I get going too long here. The first act of courage, which I discovered, was the courage to dream and to put forth a dream.

I had a dream that I could have a better relationship with my father, that when I stood at his graveside, there would be no guilt, there would be no shame, there would be no resentment and anger, that I would be at peace with my dad. That was a dream and that was not where we were.

It takes courage to put that dream out there because the world is full of cynics. We have internet trolls. You put a dream out there on the internet, you’re going to have all kinds of people telling you can’t do it, and why you can’t do it, and what’s wrong with you. But there’s never been a statue or a tribute created for a critic. It’s for the creators of the world.

The courage to dream and put the dream out there is the courage to say, “I’d like this.” You might fall flat on your face. I had the dream – I’ve had many dreams and until I put it out there, until I begin to express it and tell other people what I want to create, it doesn’t really become real. I can’t keep it a secret. That’s a big one.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, so when it comes to the courage to dream, in a way, dreaming seems easy. It’s like, “Hey, you’re just sort of thinking about something.” But what kind of stops that from happening in the first place?

Dusty Staub
Well, there are many people who tell themselves they can’t have it. There’s a wonderful book by Robert Fritz called The Path of Least Resistance. He talks about the creative mindset. In there he lays out stuff that I found to be very true, which is we want something, but we tell ourselves we can’t have it. We listen to that voice and we give up on the dream. The dream is just a pipedream.

But when I say – so I’ll give you an example. When I decided I wanted to change my relationship with my father, I’d always dreamed of a better relationship. I realized that I needed to tell my mom. I needed to tell my friends. I needed to tell my dad I wanted to have a different kind of relationship with him.

I knew my dad was going to laugh at me and be critical. I knew that my mom would be sympathetic. I knew some of my friends were mad at their dads, would think I was just caving in and some of them would be supportive.

But when I put it together and said, “I believe I can create a better relationship. I don’t expect him to change. He won’t change one bit. What I will do is change how I respond and what I do. I’m going to stop being critical. I’m going to stop finding fault. I’m going to stop complaining about him. I’m going to stop yelling at him when he yells at me. I’m going to start working on showing some appreciation for what he’s been through.”

He went through two wars, World War II, Korea. He grew up in the Depression, etcetera, etcetera. By beginning to express that dream and put it out there and make it concrete, until you make it more concrete and you give some scope to it, and you begin to express it, it’s just a pipedream. But that’s – and it takes courage to do that because there’s a big part of us that says, we can never do it.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, got you. Then the second act is to – the courage to see current reality. How does that play out?

Dusty Staub
Yeah, and the reason I have that as the second act is you first need to know where you want to go and start to claim it. Then the second is you have to have the courage to see what’s working for you and working against you.

Again, using my dad and I as an example, just sticking with that image, I had to look in the mirror and see the nasty way I had of reacting to him. I totally justified my behavior based on his behavior.

There’s no justification for bad behavior. I don’t care. The other person can engage in egregious behavior, my behavior is not tied to that. Otherwise I say that I’m just a reactive machine. They push this button, I react. They push that button, I react.  … my father was going to do what he was going to do and I could choose how I was going to respond.

Seeing the current reality is claiming my strengths, claiming my weaknesses, what’s working for me, what’s working against me. Not having a pipedream, somehow my dad is going to be different, but seeing the way it is and seeing how I’m interacting and what’s problematic in the way I interact and seeing that current reality and claiming it.

Some people, Pete, will not claim their strengths because then they’d have to do something with them. Some people lack the courage to claim their weaknesses. They gloss over them because then they would have to own up that there’s something they’re responsible for and they have to do different.

The courage to see current reality is sometimes the courage to see our strengths, but for some people it’s the courage to admit and see weaknesses or gaps.

Pete Mockaitis
Got you. Okay. Next up, the courage to confront. How does that go?

Dusty Staub
I’ll put it this way. Imagine you have the courage to dream. That’s your guiding star. That’s what you’re going after. The courage to create reality is the ground you stand on. If you don’t know the ground you stand on, you’re not going to be able to move. But to go from current reality to the dream, requires five different acts of courage.

The first act is the courage to confront, the courage to speak your truth, to tell other people what you see, to tell other people what you like and don’t like. It’s finding your voice and finding the power to express your voice without being judgmental or critical or negative. Just saying, “Hey, this is what I see. This is the reality I have. What do you see?” We engage in a dialogue rather than a one-way conversation.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Then likewise, there’s the courage to be confronted by the other.

Dusty Staub
Yeah. That’s the fourth act of courage is the courage to be confronted. Some people will dish it out. There are people who have the courage to confront.

Right now I think of our president of the United States. He will put it out there. He doesn’t do it nicely, but he puts it out there. But he lacks the courage to be confronted. If you’re not willing to hear confrontation or differences of opinion, it means you’re going to create extra resistance, you’re going to create more negativity, and you’re going to guarantee you’re going to get blindsided because people will just go underground with it if you have a lot of power or they lack the courage to continue to tell their truth.

The courage to be confronted means I don’t want to be blindsided. It’s like going – crossing the street, a big highway, busy highway, a thoroughfare in New York City, by putting blinders on that are about three feet out. You’re going to get hurt, maybe killed. You want to take the blinders off.

You want to have the courage to be confronted. You want to have the courage to let people tell you things, maybe not always in the nicest way, but from that at least you have more perspective and more information with which to work.

Pete Mockaitis
In this kind of conversational dynamic, you talked about not unloading with anger and what are some other sort of pro tips for engaging in a way that is positive and constructive when you’re going to the difficult territory?

Dusty Staub
Yeah, one of the major tools – we teach two major tools of the ten we teach. One is what we call power questions. Power questions are questions that are Pareto based, the 80/20 rule. Twenty percent of the information gives you eighty percent of the value.

They’re also designed to go for root cause. To be most effective in your work, to add value, to grow in your position, to grow in your power as a leader, you want to be able to do root cause analysis and you want to ask value-added questions that are powerful.

For example, you’d say this is an example of “Do you like working here?” Terrible question. Yes or no? “What do you like about working here?” Better question, but still not very valuable. A power question, “What’s the one thing you like most about working here?”

If I’m an employee I go to my boss and I say, “Hey boss, what’s the one thing I’m doing you most appreciate, want to make sure I keep on doing? Now what’s the one thing I could change that would make the biggest positive difference in my performance in this team?” Then a bonus power question, “Boss, what’s the one thing I can do to either take something off your plate or to help you and this team be more successful?”

By asking those three powerful questions, you gather information from your supervisor, from your peers, from your … – if you’re really brave, go home and ask your spouse, “Hey sweetheart, what’s the one thing I’m doing you most appreciate in our marriage that you want me to make sure I keep on doing? What’s the one thing I could change that would make the biggest difference? What could I do to help you feel more loved and supported in this relationship?”

Then ask follow up questions to uncover and go for a root cause. You hit a root cause, you take care of a dozen symptoms. Poor employee morale, dropping profits, angry customers, poor quality, lack of performance, slow decision making, those are symptoms, they’re not root cause. Poor teamwork, those are symptoms. What’s the root cause? Being able to ask powerful questions.

Then the second tool that goes with that is highly interactive listening, where you follow up on what you’ve heard. You ask follow-up questions. You reflect to show that the person – that you’ve heard them. You check to make sure you really heard them well.

There’s a wonderful quote. I can’t remember who it’s from but I love it. It’s like, “The biggest problem with communication is the perception that it has occurred,” because we all hear what we want to hear.

That courage to be confronted is the courage to listen very carefully, interactively and ask powerful questions. Those two skills alone can transform your perception of you in the workplace because many people are not open to feedback, especially corrective feedback. Many people don’t ask for it.

When you show that you’re willing to ask for the good as well as the not so good, you’re willing to ask for how you can step up and be better and you show that you’re listening and you get into an interactive conversation, your value added, the perception of you as a value added employee, as a value added leader, just really goes up tremendously.

Pete Mockaitis
Now, you talked about the power questions that sort of really hit the 80/20 goodness and surface it, then what do some of those follow ups sound like to get to root cause?

Dusty Staub
Yeah. Let’s say I say to you, “Pete, what’s the one thing I could do to make the biggest positive difference in our working relationship?”

You say, “Well, Dusty, if you would start being more proactive. Instead of waiting for me to give you an assignment, look and see what you think needs to happen with our key customers and come to me with some ideas. Don’t wait for me to tell you.”

I’d say, “Okay. Can you give me an example of a time you saw me waiting to be told when you think I could have been proactive?”

You go, “Yeah, two weeks ago with Mr. Jones. When he called in and there was an issue. You’d gotten an email three weeks before that, but I got on the call and I talked to him and as I talked to him I realized there were some things we could do to solve it. When I came to you to ask about it, you had several good ideas. Why didn’t you get on the phone and call him three weeks before after that email to have the conversation with him and come up with the ideas.”

I go, “Oh yeah, okay. That’s great. What would be a question that I could ask of him if I get another email or I see emails like that, what would be some of the questions that you’d want to see me ask? If I could ask only two questions, what would be the best questions from your perspective, from a strategic perspective, Pete?”

“The one question I want you to ask is ‘What’s the one thing we’re doing that makes us most value added to you and what’s the one thing we could add or do different that would make us even more value added, dear customer?’” “Those are great questions. Yeah.”

“I’d like you to start asking those of all of our key customers. I’d like you to start asking that of your teammates. I’d like you to start recording that and about once every four or five weeks, Dusty, I’d really like it if you come in and you give me a down-low on what you’re hearing and what the themes are. That’s where you start being more strategic and proactive.” I go, “Oh, that’s great, Pete. Thank you.”

Right there, you did some coaching and guidance, but I initiated it by asking the follow up questions and being willing to listen and ask for more guidance.

Pete Mockaitis
Excellent, thank you.

Dusty Staub
You’re welcome.

Pete Mockaitis
Well next up you’ve got the courage to learn and grow. How does this go?

Dusty Staub
Well, that’s a big one. Chris Argyris, a Yale University psychologist, wrote a little book, which talked why is that really smart, successful people start to fail. It’s because they become blinded by their past success. They become – they begin to suffer from something my old boss, Dr. James Noble Farr, called hardening of the categories. The categories get harder as they experience success and they get blinded by that success and they stop learning and growing.

The courage to learn and grow is the willingness to step into ambiguity and the unknown. Most people don’t like ambiguity. They don’t like uncertainty. Yet, when you start something new, when you’re really going down into new territory, it’s going to be uncertain, it’s going to be ambiguous. There’s going to be a lot of fog. You have to be willing to navigate through the fog. That’s one part.

The second piece is – and this is true for a lot of very successful people who start to limit themselves – is you have to give up the addiction to being right. There are two pieces to the courage to learn and grow. The one is to step into ambiguity, the unknown, move through the fear. The second is to give up any addiction or need to be right.

I would rather win. I’d rather find a better way than insist on being right because being right means I’m locked into a cognitive trap. I’m trapped in my old ways and patterns of thinking. It’s what my dad would call being an amateur leader as opposed to a real pro.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, thank you. Then next up we’ve got the courage to be vulnerable.

Dusty Staub
Yup. And I actually add the words to love. I got the courage to put that in there my – the publisher of the book, the hardback cover of Seven Acts of Courage, was Executive Excellence. My publisher wanted me to take out the courage to be vulnerable. He said, “Executives won’t want that. That’s not good.” But I insisted.

In 1998 the hardcover of Seven Acts came out and … I had the courage to be vulnerable to love. It’s turned out to be one of the most powerful concepts.

In fact Brene Brown did a TED talk that’s gone viral and has millions of views now. She’s talking about vulnerability and the power of vulnerability. Well, I’ve been talking about it since 1998.

For me, the courage to be vulnerable is the willingness to be open. I actually got that term from Max Depree. He wrote a little book called Leadership is An Art. He was the chairman and CEO of the Herman Miller Corporation for 20 years. There were 456th in total sales in the Fortune 500, but number 12 in total return to investors.

In his book he said, “First and foremost the leader must be willing to be vulnerable to the strengths, talents and wild ideas of the people around him.” I was so inspired by that and I realized that that’s exactly what I had to do with my dad to transform myself.

It’s one of the few things that we Americans are really taught. We’re taught to be tough and strong and independent and being vulnerable is weak. Well, being vulnerable takes real strength. It means being open, to raise my hand and say, “I don’t know,” to ask for help, to be willing to be open to new ideas and inputs.

In fact, there can be no real innovation and true passion and creativity until there is the courage to be vulnerable in the corporate ranks and the C-suites, and in the teams and organizations.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, all right. When you say to love, what does that really mean in that context?

Dusty Staub
In a business context it means the courage to really care, the courage to really care.

I worked for a boss who was very opinionated, very stubborn. He was the first founder of the Center for Creative Leadership, Dr. James Noble Farr. He was the head of graduate studies at Columbia University. Brilliant man. A pioneer in leadership thinking.

He was always right, meant all of us were always wrong. Had – being vulnerable and open to him was to admit that I really cared about him. I didn’t like him sometimes, but I really did care about him. I cared very much about our customers. I would call that love, but in business I think it’s showing that you care, that you respect, that you really value other people.

The funny thing is, Pete, I find that – I was … in family therapist many, many years ago. In private practice I found that many, many, men and more than a few women have a fear of being vulnerable, of being hurt and so they block the love. They create the very thing they fear most, which is feeling lonely, isolated and ultimately leaving or being left.

The courage to be vulnerable, to love is vitally important in a relationship. It’s vitally important in business. It’s around that respect, that caring, that sense of letting people know “I need you. I can’t get it done without you.”

Pete Mockaitis
I’m curious to hear, how did that story evolve with you – what was his name, the founder of the Center for Creative Leadership?

Dusty Staub
That was James Noble Farr, Dr. Farr. Well, after being there for two years, he made me Director of Leadership Development. I worked as Director of Leadership Development for three years, created all kinds of programs, and finally I realized I wanted to go off and create my own business.

I want to Jim and I said, “Jim, you and I struggle all the time. Every time a client wants something new and I’m creating something new, you and I fight and argue. I’m actually tired. I think I can go out and do my own thing. I want to give you plenty of notice to leave.”

He appreciated that. I was also the top biller and the top creator of product at the time. He said, “All right, give me two months.” I said, “All right.” Then a week later he came and said, “No, no, go ahead and go, go ahead and go,” because he was afraid other people might want to leave with me I guess.

But I had a three year non-compete, so I couldn’t work with any of the clients, but fortunately AT&T picked us up and a few other clients came in very quickly. It was a real risk. It was really scary, but I tripled my income within the first 15 months and was able to create things the way our clients were asking us rather than trying to always filter it through the thinking of a 70-year-old guy who had things his way.

But Jim and I – I brought him out here to the farm. We did a Christmas party and we gave him a plaque and thanked him because he helped launch this business. I couldn’t be where I am or couldn’t have had all the success without him and his teaching.

He said something really nice to me. He said, “You know Dusty?” He said, “Of all the consultants I’ve worked with over the years, you’ve done more and taken my work further than anybody else and I really appreciate that.” He and I were planning to do some things and then he died from heat stroke at the age of – he was in his early 80s.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh man.

Dusty Staub
But it was always that sense of respect and caring even when I needed to leave to start my own business. You can do things like that if you treat others with respect and dignity and you have that willingness to be vulnerable and open.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s huge. Thank you.

Dusty Staub
You’re welcome.

Pete Mockaitis
The final piece there is the courage to act. What’s behind this?

Dusty Staub
The courage to act is where it all comes together. It’s the seventh act for a reason.

One of the things that I think that you do in this podcast is you help people to really be awesome in their jobs, to really step up and play their game at a higher level.

For me, wisdom and acting, there are people who have the courage to act, but they do it without really thinking. They don’t do good critical thinking. They’re not strategic, so they’re very tactical. There’s lots of activities and they’re acting on lots of activities, but not their highest and best use.

The courage to act without the dream, seeing current reality, confronting and being confronted, learning and growing, and being vulnerable is not going to have as much wisdom or guidance to it. If I act informed by those prior six acts of courage, then I can act with greater wisdom and greater strategic guidance. I might be doing less, but I’m having a far greater impact.

There is a book out now called Essentialism.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, we had Greg on the show.

Dusty Staub
Yeah. I love Essentialism. Greg’s brilliant. I love it because he – I like him and Daniel Pink, Drive because – and Brene Brown and Simon Sinek because these guys are all talking about stuff I’ve been doing since 1998 in business. They just keep validating me, which is wonderful.

What I love about that is I was asking ‘what’s my highest and best use.’ Looking at all of the things on your plate, all of the things you can say yes to, all of the things you’re being asked to do, the vast majority of them offer minimal value. There’s some that offer tremendous value.

Being able to act informed by those prior six acts of courage, allows you to act in more of an essentialist way saying, “What’s my highest and best use? What’s tied to my dream, tied to my strengths, tied to what I’m willing to address, tied to the information I’m getting from listening to other people carefully and to criticism, to be being vulnerable and open, to learning and growing and stepping into the unknown? What are the things I can do?”

Then reorder your priorities. Reorder your goals and let some of the goals go.” What is it I should stop doing?” is a great question. “What is it I need to start saying no to?” because every no is a strategic yes to something else and every yes is a strategic no to something important like time with my spouse, time with my kids, time to recharge my batteries, time to write my book that I’ve been talking about for 15 years, etcetera, etcetera.

Greg’s concept and his way of looking at things I think is a great gift. It’s a key question. How can I be more strategic and offer greater value. Instead of being hypnotized by activity and being a good guy and always saying yes, I need to be able to say no politely, respectfully because I’m saying yes to something more important.

Pete Mockaitis
Do you have any thoughts when it comes to – this courage stuff, it’s inspiring. It gets you going, like, “Yeah, bring it on.” At least that’s how I feel, so thank you. It’s fun. Do you have any tips for bringing in wisdom and prudence to ensure that you are applying this well and not in a way that could be overzealous or problematic.

Dusty Staub
Oh yeah. That’s a great question, by the way. It’s possible somebody could take one or more of the acts of courage and go rushing off thinking, “Oh, this is great,” but they haven’t really thought through the implications. Again, it’s like pick your battle.

The courage to confront means being able to tell your truth, but it doesn’t mean you tell your truth all the time to all people in every situation. You need to say, “All right, is this the right situation?”

An employee who confronts the senior leader in a town hall in front of other people is never going to get a good response. Even if the guy or gal is a great leader, they’re going to feel some defensiveness. The better confrontation or conversation is a one-on-one and done politely and respectfully. Yet some people don’t get the courage up until they can attack somebody in a public setting.

I think being prudently aware of timing, of what am I trying to accomplish. Because you can win a battle, but lose the war. I want to think long-term, what do I want to create, how I want to be seen as value added, what are the ways I need to begin to offer my truth.

And let me stage it because I might not be able to tell all my truth all at once, but what’s the first phase, what’s the next phase, how do I see if people are willing to really hear me, how can I position this. Then also in listening.

People might have three or four things they’re critical of. I might – I’d say, “Pete, of these three or four things that you’re talking about, what’s the one thing – if I could only do one of these – what would make the biggest positive difference?” You’d say, “Well, this one,” because you know. Then I know what I need to work on.

Then I can ask follow-up questions about that one and why it matters and what difference it would make, how we would know, how you would know, how I would know that was actually making a difference. That then unpacks it. That’s that interactive listening with power questions built in.

That means I’m being prudent, I’m doing it with wisdom and information. Because to act without information, to act without guidance, to act without a plan, to act without asking for input and insight and corrective feedback is usually a recipe for disaster.

Pete Mockaitis
Got you. Thank you.

Dusty Staub
You’re welcome.

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

Dusty Staub
Gosh, I would just say this that I love the idea of helping people be really terrific in their work place, being awesome at their jobs, which really drew me to you, Pete.

What I would say is that I think the essence of it is how do we help liberate the purpose, the passion, and the power of those around us. If I can help people focus on their fundamental why, going to Simon Sinek’s talk, we can focus on the purpose here, the why. If we then then look at how the why informs what we do and how we do it, we’re going to be much more effective.

Now, we focus on purpose. What is it that really turns you on? What is it that really is going to excite you? What’s really going to make a difference? Where are you most passionate? Now, together, focus in a purposeful way on our why or what in doing that which gives us a greatest lift, we’re going to really liberate our power collectively.

There’s a term that I coined a number of years ago. I call it the effective intelligence of an organization. One of the things we focus on is multiplying the effective intelligence of an organization by getting people to focus on these fundamentals and then giving them tools to help them move forward in a more powerful way.

I would say wherever you are, whatever you’re doing, if you can focus on the purpose, if you can then find where the passion lies and how to begin to liberate that – my dad had a great quote, he said, “Son, any damn fool can tell you you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink. The trick is to get the horse thirsty, then you can’t stop it from drinking.”

What makes someone thirsty? Do you know? What kind of questions do you need to ask to figure that out? Then how can we work together in the most powerful way? Liberating purpose, passion, and power I think is a key.

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful. Thank you.

Dusty Staub
You’re welcome.

Pete Mockaitis
Now can you share with us a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Dusty Staub
Oh, my favorite quote right now is one by Einstein, Albert Einstein. It goes like this, he says, “There are two kinds of people in the world: those who believe everything is a miracle and those who believe nothing is.”

I’m the kind of person, Pete, who believes everything is a miracle: the fact that we exist, that we’re alive, the fact that we can see and we can hear, the fact that I can have this conversation with you in this mysterious technology, my children, the love of my life, my family, beautiful trees here in the forest around me. Everything is a miracle.

I think that when we believe everything is a miracle, we’re open to possibility, we’re open to finding our best self. We’re able to find more and more and continue to grow and discover. If I believe nothing is a miracle, it’s all transactional. It’s all just a series of transactions. You live, you work, you die. I think it’s – the real issue is how deeply have you loved, how fully have you lived, how completely have you been your best self?

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful, thank you.

Dusty Staub
Oh, you’re welcome.

Pete Mockaitis
How about a favorite study or experiment or bit of research?

Dusty Staub
Oh gosh, well, Google just released its research on teams. Google hired really smart, bright people. They put these teams together. They had some teams that were outperforming other teams consistently and they were trying to figure out what the difference was. They looked at over 200 factors.

Finally, – this is on the Google site. It’s been listed in several other sites too. Apple News had it. But basically they discovered that when they started looking at the research there were five factors that make for great teams, but the number one factor that outweighed everything else was a sense of psychological safety.

If you think about it in Good to Great they’re talking about the organizations that went from good to great engaged in vigorous intellectual debate that was not personalized, where you have the type five leader, who’s not egotistical, but really looks out at the world in terms of what he or she can contribute to the world and how he or she can engage others as opposed to how everything can make him or her look better.

Vigorous intellectual debate requires a sense of psychological safety. If I feel that I’m going to be ridiculed, made fun of, punished for offering a crazy idea or offering a criticism or putting an idea out there or putting something half-baked or exploring something I’m not so sure of, I’m not going to do it.

You have people holding back, not sharing ideas, people not engaging in vigorous intellectual debate, so you don’t come up what the best answers. You don’t come up – that sense of psychological safety and then structure, and then a sense of effectiveness and feeling valued, those all come in, but the number one factor is psychological safety. I really love that study.

Years ago Becky Langford, who worked at AT&T in PR, told me, she said, “Dusty, you should let everybody know that you create a sense of safe space for people.” I said, “Eh, it’s too touchy feely. It’s going to scare people.” This was back in 1990 but actually I think if I’d done that, the business would probably be ten times bigger because that’s really the key.

When we walk in to do a training, when we walk in to do consulting or coaching, if we can’t create psychological safety, we’re wasting our time. If you don’t have psychological safety on your team, in your organization, you’re never going to be great. You might be good, but you’ll never be great.

Pete Mockaitis
How about a favorite book?

Dusty Staub
Oh, well, I love – I would say Daniel Pink’s Drive. Daniel Pink really when I was reading his book, I had tears in my eyes because he was talking about all the research. He did – looking at the last 30 years of research.

He said, “Look, most managers and leaders in corporations are still using understanding of the 1940s and 1950s. They haven’t caught up to modern research. They’re still using extrinsic motivators, the carrot and the stick. Do this, you get this reward. Don’t do this, you get punished.” That only works if you’re making widgets. But when you need complex intellectual task and innovation, you need to have intrinsic motivators.

He identified the three big intrinsic motivators in the first half of the book. The second half is how to actually use them, which is a sense of purpose, being part of something greater which I get to contribute to, that’s intrinsically motivating; a sense of autonomy, some say so in my work week, in my work month, my work years, so I have some say so and some … in there; and a sense of personal mastery that working here I get to grow and develop.

I love that. It just gave more intellectual fire power to the work we do. It also just made sense in terms of what I felt and known since 1990 in writing my own books and my own material.

Then the other book I really like is The Heart’s Code by Dr. Paul Pearsall. Pearsall is a psychologist who works with heart transplant surgeons and cardiologists.

He said that in all of his research, in all of his work, what he’s come to realize that the heart actually carries memories. In heart transplant cases, people’s personalities change. Some of the characteristics of the heart giver, the donor, shows up in the recipient. He tells about five or six amazing stories in the book.

I was in tears throughout that book because I’ve always said look, the essence of being a great leader is that it comes from the tone and quality of your heart. He just really brought that to bear when he talked about that from his own experience and from his own work as a – working with physicians in heart transplants, heart transplant recipients.

Those are two books I really recommend: The Heart’s Code, Dr. Paul Pearsall and Drive by Daniel Pink.

Pete Mockaitis
Thank you. How about a favorite habit?

Dusty Staub
Oh, put first things first. Steven Covey’s 7 Habits. I love put first things first. Know what matters most and make sure you do that first, make sure you put that first. What I see so many people do is we will put first things last. We let the trivial few overwhelm us – the trivial many overwhelm us and the important few get lost.

That goes back to Greg’s book on essentialism. Let’s focus on what really matters most, put first things first. Let’s focus on the essentials.

Pete Mockaitis
Is there a particular nugget you share that really seems to connect and resonate and get quoted back to you frequently?

Dusty Staub
Yeah. When I was a young psychotherapist I came to a realization after about three years of private practice that have really carried over into the consulting work in our organization. It’s simply this, no one can do it for you and you can’t do it alone.

No one can do it for you. You’ve got to have the courage to step up and have the dream. See the current reality and confront or be confronted. Learn and grown and be vulnerable and open and to then take action.

No one can do that for you and you can’t do it by yourself. You can’t go off in a cave and make everything right. It’s through interaction. It’s through learning. It’s through listening. It’s through help. It’s through conflict and confrontation, through criticism, through appreciation, through recognition. It’s the interactive nature of us human beings with each other at our best and knowing that the intent is to help us be our best. That really helps.

I would say this, Pete, no one can do it for you and you can’t do it by yourself.

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

Dusty Staub
We actually have two websites. The business-to-business website for corporations and senior leaders and so forth is StaubLeadership.com, www.Staub – S-T-A-U-BLeadership.com. That links to a YouTube channel. There are like 30 YouTube videos of me. There is a – there’s a list of the books and materials, and also the team that works with me is listed all there.

The new website we started last year is for the general public. It’s for teachers, students. It’s for everybody. It’s called www.TheActsOfCourage.com. TheActsOfCourage.com. There are short videos explaining each act of courage with a story about each act. There are interviews with executives and psychologists and business leaders, and entrepreneurs. There are many articles on there. I’ve written articles, interviews I’ve had with people.

I’d recommend people take a look at both of those websites. Then of course I have a TED talk, a TEDx talk, Developing Cardiovascular System of the Soul, which there’s – also people can pick up.

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

Dusty Staub
Yeah. I would say the final challenge I would say is do you have the courage to be your best self, to claim your deepest dream and to face the thing you least want to face because it’s the act of courage that you’ve least developed that will be your Achilles heel, that will keep you limping through life.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Dusty, thank you so much for going deep into this good stuff. It’s been inspiring and a lot of fun. I just wish you all the best in all you’re up to.

Dusty Staub
Thank you Pete and thank you for the great work you’re doing. If I can ever be of any help as you work on helping people be awesome at work, just let me know.

Pete Mockaitis
Thanks a lot.

Dusty Staub
It was a great interview. Thank you.