Spicy headline? Yes. 

I will kick this off with this statement: diversity and inclusion in the workplace has become not only increasingly relevant in recent years, but increasingly important as well, and for good reason. A diverse and inclusive workplace not only benefits the employees who work there, but the organization as a whole. Research shows that diverse organizations are more profitable, resilient and successful than those that haven’t quite caught up to modern times.

That said, there is an undercurrent that is hushed and not spoken about in the open as much as it should, and that’s what’s to do with the white men in the office. Because traditionally, when we talk D&I, we aren’t talking about the white guys. 

Much more detail in the podcast, but there is an emotional challenge for men, who had expectations of promotions and ongoing success, that feel that they now have opportunities denied them. 

It’s a touchy subject to bring up, and while some would say, “yep, tough life,” others would say that there are better ways of going about it. 

It’s a perfect example of macro change inflicting specific challenges onto micro situations. But while we should encourage more Diversity and Inclusion programs, we should also encourage the dialogue to ensure that resentment doesn’t build within the organization. 

Stats, examples, details on the episode – would love your commentary – and look forward to chatting soon!

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Welcome to Bellwether. Thank you for being here. Episode 115, what are we gonna do with all the white guys in the office? Very hyperbolic, very spicy hyperbolic title. I know I’m gonna go with it. Apologize for the cold, please bear with me while I do it. Um, yes, spicy topic. There’s a lot of white guys in the office. This is not an attack on white guys. This is actually a serious thing that, uh, I’ve talked to a lot of clients about.

And this is, um, there’s this undercurrent that we need to address. Um, I’m gonna kick this off by saying diversity and inclusion programs are necessary. They are great. They’re not only increasingly relevant, but they’re increasingly important. And we’re learning a lot about what’s, you know, what can change in the office and what’s possible with a more diverse workforce. And, um, how much benefit a really diverse workforce brings. And, uh, companies and individuals working in diverse workforces are, are more productive.

They’re more profitable, they’re more, uh, culturally aligned. The culture’s more dynamic. The measurement is there, the science is there. It’s all very, very good. And I love the diversity and inclusion programs that are going on. That’s great. So research is there definitely worth it. Definitely important. We still have a lot of work to do. That said, there is an undercurrent, this little hush hush kind of not spoken about really in a certain type of way, as, as much as it should, is what are you doing with the white guys in the office?

Because when we’re talking about diversity and inclusion programs and diversifying leadership and diversifying the things that really matter, when we talk about diversity, the first thing that comes to your mind is generally not a white guy, . Um, and the the philosophy behind that is that, look, and I had a conversation a long time ago, Eileen Scully was on, she wrote a book, um, she wrote a book about the, uh, the workplace and, and women in the workplace.

And basically what she said on the, the, the podcast, which resonated with me, is everything about work was built by white men. Okay? And that doesn’t work for everybody. And now, as the world’s changing and catching up and doing all of these types of things, um, we need to, it’s not set up for women. It’s not set up for black people. It’s not set up, you know, it’s not just creating work.

There’s an environment within which we work. And so that’s evolving and that’s changing, and it’s very, very good. It needs to change. Um, workplace and leadership has traditionally been run by white guys, right? And there have been some, you know, and I I’m saying white guys, it’s mostly men. Uh, we’re seeing more, if you take a look at leadership teams, right? The head of HR is generally a woman. The head of legal is generally a woman, but exceptions, you know, obviously exist.

But if you take a look macro at the, the world, it’s, most CEOs are men and most COOs are men. And, um, and that’s CFOs are men. And that, that’s it, right? And it’s, it’s not that it’s been intentional, okay? I wanna make sure that that’s kind of Dr. It’s not this intentional kind of, well, this is the white guy club and you’re not allowed to be in it, even though it’s kind of presented that way.

If we take a look back over how these things just happened to evolve, right? Women weren’t in the workplace because they, we didn’t really have the technology to, you know, there was the kid thing and all of that. And women are taking control and changing their priorities on that. And, and either waiting later to have children or now there are more, you know, workplaces caught up starting to catch up in terms of allowing women to have children and do that balance thing.

And, you know, society is changing that type of way. Um, the black people coming into the workplace, that’s a whole different challenge. Um, which we still have more progress to do on that. Um, right? It’s just, I mean, that’s, they’ve always been left out, whether subconsciously or not, um, from golf clubs to work clubs, they’re just, you know, they haven’t been there. And so we’re making important inroads on that, and that’s good.

Um, so any diverse group, I guess it’s just kind of the way that it evolved. For right or wrong, some people did bad things, some people just were negligent and didn’t pay attention or just didn’t care, right? And, and that’s just the way it is. But let’s talk about today, um, because we’re making progress and that’s great. Um, and the situation we have today, we’re making inroads and that’s great. Here’s my challenge.

Well, it’s not my challenge because I have my own business, but the challenge I have with some of my clients, um, and they’ll remain nameless. Companies will remain nameless, but there is, um, I mean, if you take a look at my, the population of my clients, I’ve got the businesses and we’re doing good kind of future of people work and all of that stuff. We don’t really talk about diversity and inclusion.

I’m a white guy. Nobody wants to listen to a white guy talk about diversity and inclusion. Um, so I don’t even kind of go there, but we talk about how do you structure your people and all of that kind of, you know, beyond any of who those people are. Just let’s talk about in terms of, you know, logic and, and everything else. We could worry about that other stuff later. Then my individual coaching clients, you know, they’re working with me, they wanna get to the C-suite they’re doing, and they’re probably half men, half women.

Um, it’s really split down the middle. But then out of the guys, uh, actually out of all of them, it’s mostly white people because there’s mostly white people at work. And, you know, I do have different races that I work with and everything else, but when I think about the guys that I work with, it’s mostly white guys, and they’re looking to get up into the C-suite and do all of these things.

I mean, there there is this segment of middle management or upper middle management, whatever you wanna do it. Um, it’s white guys. They, they, um, they, they look at corporate leadership, they look at the change and they see what’s happening and they’re losing the motivation to go forward because they don’t see a future. And here’s my thesis statement. I’m gonna make the thesis statement now, then I’m gonna talk a little bit more.

Oh, I just lost my pen. Um, when you make inroads to diversity inclusion, which is good, these opportunities were never afforded people before, right? The women coming up through the workforce in the eighties and the nineties, um, dealt with some crazy bs, didn’t have the real opportunities afforded to them. You had to be like a vicious person in order to get there. And, um, and then that created new problems in terms of, you know, type of person you are and everything else.

Um, so the opportunities weren’t really there. They’re there now and that’s great, and they’re excited and that’s wonderful and they should be, and that’s fantastic. People of other races, right? Black people, everyone else, same thing. Opportunity wasn’t really there. We’re finally, you know, people are starting to pay attention. Probably say, Hey, you know what? Diversity is a good thing. This is all kind of stupid. The way that we’ve set it up.

Let’s move it forward. Opportunity is there that wasn’t there before. This is great. They’re excited, they’re doing it. There’s investment and there’s groups and there’s all kinds of stuff for women and, and for, uh, everybody. And that’s excellent. White men came up, and I don’t know if this is generational, uh, because it may be done by the time, like the millennials get through it. So it could only be like a short term challenge, uh, came up with the expectation assumption that they were going to keep working and working hard, and they would have promotions and they could work towards promotions and do all of that.

That’s been taken away in some instances. And I’ll give more kind of details on that in a little bit. And so it’s not, that opportunity hasn’t been there, it’s opportunity feels like on an emotional level, it’s being taken away. And this is on an individual basis, okay? So at a macro level, yes, we need more diversity, right? But simple math will tell you there’s only a set number of leadership positions. And so we gotta change the dynamic.

And so the conversation that’s happening is, um, I should have gotten that role. I can’t because they’re not gonna put a white guy in that role. Um, whether they should or shouldn’t perceive it that way, you know, we could talk about that and, and we’ll talk about that a little bit. I’ve been in meetings, here’s, you know, perfect example. I had a client who was up for a promotion, should have gotten it, was told by his boss, like, go in for this job.

We’re gonna be redoing things. Like, this is you, you’re the perfect guy for it. He was incredibly well suited for it. Um, and then they said, well, we have to open it up. So they opened it up and the HR person told him that he asked for an update on what the job thing was, um, that this is a quote, we didn’t get any women of color to apply for it, so we’re putting the job on hold.

And now this is a major role. They can’t really put this role on hold, but they’re putting it on hold. There are no in this industry and, and job type, I don’t know. I asked him, you know, are there women of color in this? Right? And he’s like, no, I don’t know anybody. Like this is not, it’s just not there, right? So it’s a misguided kind of attempt at just saying, we have to put a person in here and there’s a misinterpretation of the way that diversity’s supposed to work.

And so now he’s not getting the job, the job is being shelved. And, and, and that’s it. And so now he looked at me and he’s like, Jim, am I done? He goes, I think I’m finished. I’ve invested. I mean, he’s in his early fifties. I I’ve invested my time, I’ve done done all of this stuff. He said, if I can’t, like this was my natural next, this is where I was supposed to go.

And I guess I’m, I guess I’m finished. Um, now outside of the HR person, probably shouldn’t have said that, obviously. Uh, but I’ve been on calls where the execs said, there’s no way we’re putting a white guy in that, in that position. And the HR person goes, you can’t say it that way. You know, you gotta say it this way. Uh, , you say it like this. I remember sitting in, in finance, uh, person up there said, you know, our priority this year is to only promote women.

And every guy just basically pulled out their phone and said, who else is hiring? Right? Like, I guess I’m, I’m not getting a promotion this year. And so there’s this semantics of, right. They didn’t say it the way they should have said it, but like, we all know what it means. And the guys are like, well, what about me? Right? So macro, and here’s the funny thing, most white guys are for it.

Most guys are for the diversity and inclusion and everything, and they wanna mentor. And, um, and here’s the funny kicker about the one client he sponsored and started the diversity and inclusion thing at the workplace. Um, he was a white guy, but he said, this is really important and he championed it and everything else. And, and, uh, now he feels like it’s burning him. Um, now it’s emotional versus logic. And, and we’ve got all of these types of things and, and we have these assumptions.

And, um, and so, so we have to think about how this evolves and how do you at least engage these men in conversation to say, look, you still have value. There still is a future, right? The macro thing is very important, but on an individual micro level, people will say, well, what about me? Right? I agree with that. You know, it’s like, I, I want speed bumps in the neighborhood, but don’t put it in front of my house, right?

, and, you know, I don’t wanna listen to that. Um, I feel like, and I, I feel like this is short term, the more I think about this, right? It’s, it’s a generation X, not really baby boomers, they’re kind of done, they’re out of the office and they’re, they’re, um, just hoarding their money and doing whatever. But, uh, most boomers are kind of gone. We’re in the Gen X world now. It’s a Gen X challenge, it’s a millennial challenge after that, GenZ and all that other stuff, they’ve, they’re growing up in a different type of, um, a different type of world.

And so, um, I hate to present a problem and not have solutions, but this is a topic that I’m, I’m talking to a lot of people about, uh, just write an amazing book called Men Without Work. Apparently something like almost 20% of able-bodied men are out of the workforce, not even looking for job. They’re not even included in unemployment numbers. They’re out of the workforce and, um, not looking for a job, which is insane to me, right?

And so where are these people going? And I was looking through the data and reading the book, and they said, well, you know what, more women came into the workplace, which is good. So we don’t see that there’s less people and you know, this whole shift. But now we’ve got a societal issue where you have no motivation, no type of work. A lot of the research in terms of happiness surveys and everything, there was a, a, a male one that had happened years ago where what gives you energy?

All the women had answered it, you know, my family gives me energy. And, you know, all this above and beyond what gives you purpose and everything for men was my work. And if you take a look at suicide rates, the biggest suicide group are men over the age of 60. And a lot of people are tying them back to the fact that they don’t have work and they don’t have purpose. They’ve retired, they don’t know what to do with themselves.

They don’t, you know, there is this societal shift that’s happening and men have to figure it out. And when we take a look at, I have no future at this organization, you’re pushing the, the age limit. You know, what are the guys in their forties and fifties gonna do? Where, you know, when I’ve hit my ceiling, now I’ve got another 20 years in this role. I don’t wanna do that, right? Do I have to do a fundamental shift?

Do I have to do a fundamental change? I have to go to a new industry, like there’s, and look, life’s life sucks right there. There is this aspect to it. Welcome to life, it’s gonna hit you hard, wear a cup and move on. So there is kind of a little tough love that needs to happen. It’s not like we have to handhold all of these people. Um, but there is this psychological kind of thing.

And, and we know that men don’t like to talk about the stuff we don’t like, for a lot of reasons. Not because we can’t, but because we just don’t wanna burden other people with our problems. And, and we like to say, well, you should talk about it. Some guys just don’t want to. Um, but there are, by the way, if you are in this situation, you’re a guy listening to it, there are plenty of people who will talk to you about it and wanna talk to you about it, and we’ll help you articulate it.

And that’s, you know, there are challenges and opportunity and, but generally what we have to do is we kind of have to, we have to work through it, we have to articulate it, and we have to talk about it. Uh, so what can we do about this? This is, I’ll remind, um, and we could talk to leadership, we could talk to individuals, we could talk to anybody. But remember, this is an individual challenge.

It’s a weird one because it’s, the macro challenge is we don’t have enough diversity in the workplace, okay? And that’s a macro general look at the numbers. It’s true, it’s there. And so we have to fix that challenge. But on an individual level, uh, what’s my path and what does this mean for me? And the devil is in the details. And when we talk about macro change, we gotta talk about a micro individual.

Um, and some people in your ranks are getting very frustrated because they don’t feel like they have a path and they don’t know where they’re going to go. Um, when we take a look, last week I talked about ambition. Where’d the ambition go? Is we don’t know where we’re going, right? And this is kind of doubly true for, for the men. And so, um, I’m not saying it’s right or wrong, I’m saying it’s a challenge we have to deal with.

So first, I mean, the first thing I would say in terms of solutions, these probably aren’t the greatest solutions, but I’ll start the conversation, is number one, we have to recognize that this is a challenge, right? And you can’t just ignore it. When we’re putting together diversity and inclusion programs, we have to include white men in that, okay? Because it’s, there is this shift of what’s happening and, and they have value to bring it, and they’re very supportive of it.

But we have to recognize that this is an emotional challenge for men. Um, and we can’t coddle them and, and, you know, do it. There’s, there’s an appropriate way to do that, but we, we don’t, we gotta figure that out. So anyway, that’s one, I’ll just start my pen again. So that’s two pens. Um, number two, we have to foster dialogue if it’s possible, right? And, and this is a very difficult challenge to do.

I had a, um, , a friend of mine does workshops, and they went in and, and these women went to the manager and they said, Hey, we want for the women’s group, we want a leadership development. This person come in and do it. And then says, look, you can do it, but then you also gotta do one for the guys, right? Like, if you want to do that, we’re gonna be equitable and try and do the right thing.

They said, fine. So the women’s leadership one was mobbed, nobody showed up to the men’s one. And the women are like, look, we gave a men’s one, nobody showed up. Um, but it was called Why your toxic masculinity is ruining the Office, or something like that. And so they created it for the men, but it was very , right? So we have to be careful about the way that we’re accusing individuals, right?

We take this personally and we do this type of work. Um, so there is a right and wrong way to go about it. We have to be smart with the way that we, we talk about all of these things and, and we talk about it with, try to remove the emotion from it and just talk about the logical look. You’ve got a fruit salad that’s full of just, you know, cantaloupe. You gotta add strawberries and, and blueberries.

You might have to take some cantaloupe out of it, and that’s it. Then you have a good fruit salad. So that’s it. We want the flavor, we want the changes, we want diversity. And that’s, you know, it’s an important thing. And there’s still value that you can bring. And, and maybe we have to change the mentality of our people in terms of is it status, is it role title, is it, you know, do we change?

And, and this is the good work that we’re doing with, with the corporate clients, is we’re restructuring the way we think about people and the way we think about, um, accountability and agency and, and what people can do. And, um, so that will work itself out in the wash, but we still have to address it. Help them also as an idea to become agents of this change, to be involved with it.

Don’t just have this change thrust upon them, have them be active components of it. A lot of white guys are really into this and really wanna be helpful. And this is another way that we can, we can do, um, bring more value to diversity and inclusion programs, is that they do have a voice. And as we rethink the workplace, that can provide value as well. So, more to come on this and, and I have a lot more thoughts, and I’m gonna still articulate them.

I’m interested in yours. Um, but for leadership, recognize it’s a challenge. How we communicate it, how we share it, how we talk about it is incredibly important. It’s a delicate issue. Um, but most guys really can’t feel like they could talk about it. And so I’ll say for you, why not? Who cares? And let’s see what, let’s see what could come out of it. So, um, this is beyond talking points. It’s a big thing.

Good luck with it. I’m happy to talk more about it. I’m happy to talk about how we can accommodate them and bigger, um, and bigger types of discussions of people. And, and, uh, and as these diversity and inclusion programs do really, really good things, we can, we can figure out a solution for everybody. So good luck. Have a wonderful week and I’ll see you next week. Thanks.

It’s a hot topic, on multiple fronts: Where is the ambition? 

Organizations are working hard to “re-engage” their employees, based on the assumption that they should be excited to go “above and beyond.” Employees, and individuals in general, are fairly checked out – not sure where they should be focused or going on a personal level.

There are many obvious reasons for this: 

1. Burnout – on a major scale, beyond work. AI, society changes, and massive uncertainty have us constantly looking in the mirror trying to anticipate what’s coming. 

Yes, the onus is on us to dictate our next steps, but we must do so in the context of a bigger picture. With so much change and uncertainty, we should focus less on making hard decisions, and focus more on creating the environment where we can throw out hopes and desires and see what’s possible. 

This can be done at home, at work, in communities. More on the podcast – enjoy!

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Welcome to Bellwether episode 114. Where has all the ambition gone? Lots to talk about today. It’s a hot topic. It’s a hot topic everywhere. Organizations are talking about it. The news is talking about it. We’ve been talking about it for a long time. People are starting to talk about it. They’re catching up and kind of realizing that their ambition is gone and what does that mean for them and where are they going to go.

There are a lot of different angles I’m gonna take today, and I want to kind of peel back the onion a little bit in terms of how to solve it, if it’s solvable, , um, but then also what strategies people can employ to, to kind of get that little spark back and everything else. Um, I feel like it’s a Joan bias song where have all the ambitions gone. The, um, a couple of things I want to cover today just to kind of cue it up.

And then you could probably fast forward if you wanna fast forward or you could just listen to my musings throughout. I’m gonna chat about why. One, I think sentiment and priorities have changed. Two, um, people are realizing the work isn’t really what they thought it was going to be. Three, um, burnout of course we’re gonna cover today. And then four is this lack of direction. A lot of people have lost their assumptions and their, their lack of direction, their, they’re not quite sure where to go.

So I wanna talk about those in, in differing types of order. So, um, when we think about ambition, and this has been going on, you know, if you follow me on LinkedIn or any of the others, I’ve been sharing some of the articles. There was an article maybe a year ago, the Times had done it. Um, the Time Magazine wrote, uh, an article on it back in 2022. LinkedIn was just posting again about new studies about how self-reported ambition is just, you know, falling off a cliff.

Um, and it’s a difficult thing to measure, you know, how do we actually measure ambition? And, and a lot of it is just kind of this feeling. We’ve got this feeling that people aren’t really doing as much as they wanted to do, or, or pushing themselves in the same kind of way. It’s not the same as productive productivity, but it’s linked to productivity and some of the other statistics in terms of actual pro productive output.

What organizations and individuals and organizations are about to do. And I’ve covered this on a podcast, it’s going away. Productivity is gone and what’s actually happening, it’s not because people are working from home, although that might have something to do with it, but there are a lot of things going on in the different types of angles, uh, that, that we have to, that we have to cover. Burnout is one of them, of course.

Um, the pandemic has shown us what life is like without work being everything. And some of the questions, is this an American problem? Is this a global problem? I’m sure it covers both, but I’m gonna talk about it from the American perspective because hey, that’s where I am and that’s where most of my clients are. And that’s where a lot of, uh, a lot of other countries that I work with tend to look towards America towards this kind of work ethic, uh, philosophy because Americans are just known as, um,you know, the crazy people who work on weekends.

Um, the ambition question is coming up a lot from clients, and I’m gonna talk about this in two different ways. One is from an organizational perspective. One is from an individual perspective, from an organizational perspective, yes, productivity is down. Um, the idea of the pursuit of advancement and working hard in all of this, you know, how do we get employees engaged? We want to engage in employees so they can go above and beyond, and we could do all of these things.

Um, so a lot of organizations are feeling that pinch. They don’t know how to approach it. They’re trying to respond with, you know, do this webinar and do this training, and do this and do that. And they’re trying to just jam more things down the throne. It’s not the right approach, in my opinion. Um, and so how do you get them to do more than expected? Well, how do you create the desire to do more than expected from an individual perspective?

Why care , right? What are we working towards? What are we getting jazzed about? I mean, this goes back to fundamental purpose conversations that every, you know, Tom, Dick and Harry coach is talking about, find your purpose. It’s not that simple. And many individuals are just kind of saying, well, what am I working towards? You know, I’m 45 years old, I gotta do this for another 25 years. I don’t wanna do this for another 25 years.

What am I working towards? The, the assumptions have changed, the future has changed, and I don’t quite know or see where I actually fit in. So why am I working so hard in this pursuit of advancement and ambition when I don’t know what the, the end game is going to be? So that’s where, that’s where we go first and foremost. Um, and this is fundamental to, to everything is all of our assumptions.

This is beyond the ambition question. All of our assumptions are upside down. And the assumptions on what we can accomplish for work, the assumptions on what our goals should be for work. You know, when I talk to business owners, you know, what should our priorities be this year? Where, what’s our one year, three year, five year plan, 10 year plan? It’s all very murky, okay? And so any assumptions we have on the way people are supposed to operate, the way people are supposed to be, the way business is supposed to run is really out the window right now.

And much of my advice to people is, one, we have to raise our expectations of ourselves and the people around us. Yes, from an interpersonal kind of way, but we have to eliminate assumptions, throw them out the window because anything that worked in the past is really irrelevant at this point. We can use this to inform whatever it is that we want to do, but any assumptions we have on why people would wanna pursue advancement, why people would wanna be ambitious, what drives people, what motivates people, all of this work is really out the window right now.

And we have to rethink it, reengage and re-discuss with our employees, with our leadership teams, with everybody in terms of what really matters right now. The context has changed. The work environment, the home environment, the community environment, the news environment, everything has changed. So priorities have shifted, everything has shifted. So now we need to kind of rethink what assumptions are we making, right? Training doesn’t fix everything, right? The old way of training, I should say, the old way of training doesn’t fix anything.

How do we get people more, uh, experiential in their learning? How do we get them to take ownership of their learning? How do we teach people to think in a different type of way? These are the types of questions that we should be asking. So, um, starting with this pursuit of advancement, we grew up, at least I did, and a lot of my peers, you know, you look at anybody in their mid forties where you were told work hard and everyone’s gonna notice and you’re gonna get rewarded and it’s gonna be great.

And everybody has kind of realized that that’s just kind of bunk. And, um, going above and beyond wasn’t just in the pursuit of advancement. It’s what was expected was an obligation. You just had to work Saturdays, right? Think back to office space. I’m gonna need you to come in on Saturday and you didn’t really have a choice. And people are starting to have a choice. People are starting to say, well, hold up, like, I got family time on the weekends now and I get to dictate this.

And you know, the technology has allowed us to communicate with other people in this different type of way to say, if these people can get their work life balance and all this kind of philosophical, uh, bs that, that we’ve talked about, um, why can’t I have it? And a lot of people are saying, what about me right now? So people are putting their hands up. We’re aware of the fact that, you know, I just posted this on LinkedIn the other day, and, uh, an old colleague of mine, Mike, basically made the point, you know, we know that work is in a family, work likes to talk about, you know,oh,you know what, we’re all a family here.

But that family kind of throws you under the bus when it’s time to lay off half your people. Um, and it’s just an objective thing, right? That we expect the employees to give everything, but when things get difficult, the business really has the upper hand. And that ultimately is what pays the bills for right or wrong, right? It’s not a good thing or a bad thing, right? At the end of the day, businesses exist to make money and we need people to work hard and we need to pay them appropriately and we need to do all of that stuff.

But, um, when we think about keeping a business alive right now, the business environment, the market environments have changed so much that leadership of organizations have two kind of pulling philosophies. They’re going for. One is, how do we make this business sustainable? So it still exists. A businesses exist to make money, we have to make money, and that’s it. But we also have human beings working for us. And what’s that balance and how do we get the best human beings to bring them into the organization?

And how do we create that environment? I’ve said this before, I’ll say it again. I would say probably 90% of organizations could be successful with half of their employees. And everybody needs to hear that. And if you’re not in that top 50%, you need to start figuring out what it’s going to take to get you into that 50%, to creating value in all of that. Um, so there’s an, this obligation of work has an obligation to articulate what their vision is, to develop their people, to create an environment for people to be successful.

But we as employees have an obligation to create value within that context, to challenge the norms to do that type of work. So pursuit of advancement, and I’m gonna circle back to this at the end because we don’t know what we’re advancing towards, um, is is not really the norm that it used to be. We used to have this assumption on pursuit of advancement. It’s not the same assumption that we can continue into 2023 and beyond.

So that’s number one. Uh, and that’s a big one. That’s a big number one, right? Pursuit of advancement isn’t what it used to be. Number two, priorities have shifted. And this kind of goes into the pursuit of advancement and kind of creating boundaries for what’s acceptable and what’s not, not being taken advantage of, uh, taken advantage of in the workplace over the last four years. We got a little taste of what it was like to spend time with our families, to have our weekends back, to sleep in, to kind of go read a book, to go do whatever.

And people really like it. People really, really like it. And for those people, they’re, you know, there’s different types of people there. The people who create work and the entrepreneurs, they’re still working the way that they used to work, but they have ownership of what it is they’re working towards. So they love it. And that’s what really drives entrepreneurship and that’s why they do it. You’ve got the other people working in, uh, organization who see a path for themselves and they’re working hard and they’re trying to push things over.

It’s very difficult for them because they have to rally other people to do it. And then there’s people who wait for work to happen to them. And those are the people who really like to kinda unwind and check out and everything else. And, and they need it and they should have it, right? Everybody needs their time to check out. Everybody’s checking out is a little bit different. Um, but when we think about priorities of what’s important, you know, I think, and this is American perspective, you take a look at Europe, Europe gets their months of August off in a lot of countries.

Europe gets this time with families. They’re done at, you know, different types and not everyone of course, right? There’s different types of industries and companies and everything else, but the American culture doesn’t really allow for taking time for yourself and it doesn’t allow for this family time. And, and part of it is a financial discussion of course, but there are other ones too in terms of what’s expected of you, the obligations you have when you sign off for a job.

And, and the way that work culture has been set up, this hustle, hustle culture that’s been going on since the eighties, the nineties, it’s continued straight through and people are starting to dictate what it is that they want. And the ones who have real value are able to kind of find that balance, but also continue to do work and work smartly. But priorities have shifted. So that’s kind of changing the ambition question of, you know what, maybe I don’t need to be in the C-suite.

Maybe just being a VP is good enough and I get my family time and how do I kind of make this work? I remember, uh, I remember applying for a job. I got the job, but there was a woman who interviewed me, she was gonna be on my team. And she said, how do you feel? She asked me, how do you feel about someone who doesn’t want a promotion? And I said, what do you mean?

And she said, I’m done. I don’t want to pursue more. I don’t wanna advance more. I’m happy. I’ve got my family. I don’t, don’t wanna keep working towards something new. I’m being pushed to work towards a promotion when I don’t really want a promotion because I’ve got this balance and everything and this is good for me. And of course I told her, you know, that’s awesome, right? Of course, my philosophy was always get your work done and you know, we’ll talk about what you need and what you want and everything else and keep work interesting and everything else.

And I feel like she was ahead of her time almost. This was, I mean, this was at least a decade ago, maybe 15 years ago. I feel like she was ahead of her time in terms of that. And I think a lot more people are starting to think that way of, you know what, maybe this is good enough from a work perspective. Let me fill in these other areas of my life so that everything could kind of even out and put work in its place and find other things to kind of take my time.

So that’s a big priority shift there. Number three on why ambition is going away or why it’s fallen off is burnout. And I hate just saying burnout, um, but we’re burned out. Everybody is burned out and everybody is burned out. Everyone is exhausted. And it’s not from work. It’s not just from work. It’s, uh, we’re burned out and we’re afraid because massive levels of change are being thrust upon us on a massive scale.

And this goes beyond work. I mean, the big one right now is ai. All you hear about in terms of artificial intelligence is how it’s gonna disrupt everything. Your job is going away and the robots are gonna take over and let’s massive fear. And it’s very exciting. It’s a very exciting time and I love reading about it. But when we think about what about me, it, it, it’s stress. It’s a, an incredibly stressful time.

And, and how do we kind of do the work when I know my work is going to change? I see that your, my company’s laying off 10,000 people. Am I gonna be one of them? All my competitors have laid off 10,000 people. Are we next? Um, what’s going on in society? What are the kids doing? What are we doing? You know, every it, it compounds from so many different places that we are completely burned out.

You cannot turn it off where we actually need to completely check out for a week, unplug and, and kind of reset to, to where we are now. You always hear me say, um,you know, we don’t know what’s coming and we have to go inside, right? My big thing is macro change. And this is important when you’re talking about change management at work, is we’re talking about ambition and you want people to kind of change their philosophies.

Macro change requires a focus on the micro individual. That’s why training doesn’t work. Cuz you’re telling them what they’re supposed to think and it doesn’t work. We have to teach them to think about things in a different way, in their own particular way. Because any type of change, any type of structurally different anything requires an individual to internalize it and then re manifest it in their own particular way so that they can respond appropriately.

So the one constant through all change is the individual responding to change. That’s it. And that’s leading to burnout because we’re being told what change is coming and we have no say. And we’re so focused on the external change that it’s driving burnout. And so how do we slow it down? Um, go, I saw this awesome article the other day about a woman who was a teacher and God help our teachers cuz I wouldn’t be able to do it.

Um, mostly because of the parents, completely burned out because of parents, because of the way we were teaching throughout the pandemic and everything else. Like it was a, if you were a teacher, it was a horrible type of job. Quit her job, went to go work at Costco. Life is better, wouldn’t change anything. She’s making the same amount of money. She gets her weekends back, she gets all this kind of stuff back.

And you know, when we go back to thinking about assumptions and responding to burnout and what do we need as individuals, maybe the assumption goes away that you need to work this particular job for a long, particular time. I know people made some rash decisions in the pandemic, but maybe we do take a different kind of stake in terms of, well, you know what, maybe I just go work this way. What’s good enough?

Right? Is it okay to be good enough rather than this overachiever and have these types of things happen to you and it’s a heavy discussion needs to be had with your family. Lots of, you know, , there’s lots of fallout from these massive decisions, but ultimately you lie in the bed you make and we have to make these types of decisions and can you make it work? And a lot of people will be dismissive of it.

Oh, I can’t make it work because they haven’t looked at all of the details. I used to work with this guy at a bank. All he did was spreadsheets all day. Hated his job, hated his life. Like it was awful. Had a great family, loved his family. He was wonderful. Loved to tinker with the tools and I don’t know what he was making, but I was like, you could probably make the same at Home Depot and you could be around the tools, you could help people and it’ll be awesome.

He’s like, I can’t do that. I can’t work at Home Depot. And he said, why not? And it was all this kind of like, what would the neighbors say and everything else, but at the end of the day, he would’ve been so much happier if he had done it. Um, and it’s hard. These types of conversations are hard when we talk about responding to burnout, responding to change, responding to this lowering ambition.

It’s hard. But the thing is, nobody can do it for you because it’s ultimately your bed. Nobody can make your bed for you. I mean, maybe like,you know, billionaires, kids can make it for them, but that’s why all like family wealth goes away by the third generation because too many people are making their beds. So it’s hard. That’s okay. We’re faced with challenges and we have to overcome them. But when we overcome challenges, that’s your purpose.

That’s the feeling we’re trying to get to. And that’s what we’re really struggling with during burnout time right now is, you know, I don’t know where I’m going. I don’t know what I’m supposed to be doing. Let’s take a step back and what are these assumptions that are driving this burnout that we have to have? And what’s a feasible step, right? And it’s not just gonna be this, oh, I’m just gonna quit my job and go, you know, start a side hustle.

It’s not, it’s not that there are paths, but I think we’re blind to them because we aren’t really quite looking at them. So, um, so that’s number three. Burnout. So we talked about, um, we talked about one right at the top. We talked about going above and beyond pursuit of advancement. Assumptions need to go out the window and I’m gonna come back to that. Number two, we talked about how priorities have shifted.

And then number three, we talked about burnout. Let’s go back to this pursuit of advancement because this is the fourth one. Nobody knows what they’re working towards anymore. If you were to take burnout, there’s massive levels of change and priorities have shifted. And we take a look at this pursuit of advancement. So much change. We don’t know what the future’s going to look like in five years. We feel it, we know it.

Everybody’s talking about it. It’s no big secret, but we don’t know what we’re working towards. And I’m gonna talk about this. This is different based on gender, it’s different based on race, it’s different based on every individual. And, uh, and I’m gonna cover this next week on next week’s podcast. The podcast is gonna be what do you do with the men in your office? Um, because a lot of them had this assumption, I don’t want to tease it too much, but a lot of men had this assumption that they would just keep working and they would go up and become a VP and then a president do whatever.

Um, but the dynamics of the workplace have changed so much that something like 16 to 20% of able-bodied men are completely out of the workforce. Um, but nobody talks about it because, and this is necessary. Women have entered the workforce at large, right? And we’ve done a lot of work and a lot of good work has happened in terms of equality, making sure people are paid the same and right. This is an ongoing conversation, but there’s this group of, you know, 20% of able-bodied men are out of the workforce, not even unemployed out of the workforce.

It doesn’t account, uh, for unemployment numbers. So a lot of these things, what am I working towards? Um, and I’ll cover that in detail, um, for that. But what are we working towards? Our assumptions have changed in terms of, well, you know what, I thought I was going to go to a leadership position and organization, but there aren’t any for me and I don’t see myself getting a seat at that table.

And so if that’s cut out for me, then where do I go? I don’t know what I’m working towards. I don’t have intentionality in terms of dictating my next role. And it’s not a man problem. Well, it is a man problem, but it’s also a woman problem. It’s an everyone problem. But, you know, the future of work is quite murky and we think about it from a strategic stalemate, kind of what decisions do we make?

The organizations are thinking about this, but from an individual perspective of what am I working towards? Most people can’t answer that question. They don’t know where they want to go and they don’t know where they can go. So, you know, when we look for new jobs and we start thinking about new jobs, we think about, you know, what can I do? Right? And, and uh, I I think about this as a big moment in my career where I stopped looking at what I can do and I started thinking about what I wanted to do and that kind of changed what I was looking for in terms of new jobs because it would go through the cycle.

I’d start a new job and it was great. And then I got checked out and it was, you know, whatever. And, um, cycle continues every five years you find a new job and go through the same thing and it’s the same type of company and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And as you’re looking for that new job every five years, you’re like, well what can I do? Oh, I could do that.

Oh, I could do that, but you don’t really wanna do it, but you can do it. And you know, it’s always, grass is always greener on the other side and all of that kind of stuff. But now it’s, you know, the question of once you get up to a certain level, right? High middle management, it’s not necessarily what can you do because there’s a very limited aspect of where you can go.

And so people are very concerned about this and and they don’t know how to articulate it. They don’t know how to ask the questions. They don’t know how to have these conversations and they don’t know where is next. So a bunch of people made a jump during the pandemic that was great. They did it for money, they did it for other reasons, fantastic. Some of them regret it, some of them don’t.

But when we think about what’s next and where you’re gonna go, and I, I talk to, I mean my sweet spot for clients is 35 to 55. I’m dealing with a lot of these people and a lot of these conversations is, I don’t know what’s next. I don’t really have a future. I don’t really have, you know, we talk about development, we talk about how to bring these people up and give them a career path.

The onus is on the individual to articulate it. Yes. But organizations don’t even know how to articulate it to people to say, well this is what’s going to be available. Because the whole framework of how we structure an organization is changing. So there’s a lot of mystery around where do people go and what are you going to do? And everyone will be fine. We’re gonna find a job, we’re gonna do it, and that’s great, but is it what you wanna do?

And that’s a very deep difficult conversation for people to have with themselves and with other people. And so the onus is on us to define our roles and to solve all of this. When we talk about ambition and why, why am I doing this? And you know, I’m 35 to 55, I’m not gonna do this for another 20 years. Like if you were to look at this 20 years of doing what you’re doing today, right?

A lot of people just say, that’s miserable, right? I don’t want to do it. Ultimately you’re gonna have to make the decisions to say, you know, what, what’s possible, what can I do and how can I change it? And how do I prioritize what’s important to me and what do I really need? Um, because many of us don’t really know where to start, and it starts with a question of ourselves is what, you know, what do you want?

And, and how do you articulate it verbally? We can’t just think about it cuz we make these assumptions and we jump and we, we do all this other type of work, but a fun conversation. I do this with Gabby, my wife all the time, is what’s possible, what could we do? Um, we just had friends down a couple weeks ago. We were talking like, why don’t we just move to an island in Greece and just kind of raise the kids there and I dunno, teach ’em how to fish or some shit.

Who knows? Like , right? I always wanted to move to Panama and just sell hot dogs on the beach. And uh, it sounds great, it sounds great. My wife’s not on board. Um, but we need to be intentional and we need to advocate for ourselves. And when we think about ambition, we have to learn and we have to, you know, we talk about vulnerability and learning and all of this type of stuff.

You got 20 years or more or less, whatever, but you’ve got 20 years to kind of make your mark in terms of what it is you wanna do. It doesn’t have to be this exhausting, you know, do it today. So tomorrow can be brilliant and blah blah blah, blah, blah. We don’t have to put this kind of pressure on ourselves. You know, everything’s okay and everything’s gonna be okay. If we can be intentional with what it is that’s, that’s relevant for us today in the moment.

And as we figure ourselves out today, everything else in the future will kind of work itself out. The more conversations you have brings opportunities of what’s possible, we have to think about what’s possible. We often think about why we can’t do something because well, AI is gonna take that job so you can’t take it and, uh, self-driving cars. So you can’t, you know, become a truck driver because self-driving cars and, you know, 10 years is gonna be whatever.

We can always find a reason why we can’t do something. But we have to, you know, have these conversations with peers and managers with our teams, right? If you manage a team to engage your team, we have to create an environment where they could share their hopes, their dreams, their fears, where they can get honest feedback, trustworthy feedback. How do you as a manager, that’s our obligation as a leader, as a manager, how do we create the environment for people to create their ambition?

We can’t tell someone what they should be doing. I hate the word should, right? Should be removed from the English language other than the fact that I should do this. Um, we can dictate that for other people, but we can engage the discussion and we can start the discussion. What do you want to do? And most people aren’t really gonna share that right away, right? We’ve got these different lives, we’ve got the public, we’ve got the private, we’ve got the secret.

And how do we tap into some of those and how do we say it’s okay to want something that you don’t currently have and not from a consumer perspective, right? We don’t need stuff, right? The more stuff you get, the more you know, kind of, you get lost in your stuff. But when we think about ambition and what we want, be proud of what you want, right? And take those little safe kind of risks and try something.

And it doesn’t have to upend everything, but when we think about ambition, when we think about our teams organizationally, create the environment for people to articulate these hopes, desires and dreams about what’s possible within the confines of the work environment or not. And then also for an individual, engage the people you trust to say, oh, I was thinking about trying this, or I was thinking about trying that and find someone who believes in you.

Everybody can find someone who believes in them. And if you don’t have someone call me up. I believe I believe in you. I believe in you . Um, I do because it’s possible, right? There’s, we got 20 years of possibility, 30 years of possibility, 40, 50 years of possibility ahead of you. And the advice we give to young people is go enjoy life and do whatever. You’ve got plenty of time to build a career.

It’s the same for you in your thirties and forties and fifties. Yes, there’s more risk. You’ve got kids, you’ve got a home, maybe, you know, whatever. Um, but there are different ways that we could do it and we could change different dynamics based on the assumptions that we have. And so lots to think about in terms of ambition. I hope that’s helpful. I love talking about ambition, I love talking about this type of stuff.

I don’t wanna get a little too cheesy in terms of what, you know, you can do it. Um, but articulating ambition and articulating where you wish to go, not from a role perspective, but you as an individual is a great place to start. So think about that this week. I hope that’s helpful. Would love to talk to you about it more. Feel free to reach out. I love these types of conversations and as always, have a wonderful week and I’ll talk to you next week.

Thanks.

Happy 2023.

We are tripping into this year with a bit of anxiety: 2022 wasn’t great for most of us, we are still in year 4 of the pandemic, uncertainty on the horizon and ChatGPT ruining our memories of writing high school papers.

There are very few things that make me think that 2023 is going to be a “good year.” And that’s because most of the time I’m looking externally for things to be good. One of the biggest changes I foresee is that many of our expectations and assumptions, especially in the US, are going to be massively disrupted. 

Yet fear not! There are ways to cope and attack. The world changing isn’t a problem – it’s a circumstance to respond to. Therefore, I’ve come up with the “Four I’s” of 2023 to help you manage along. 

First, Identity. When we must make change – whether it’s a resolution or forced change, we must identify with it for us to manage it well. Our end game and result has to become core to who we are. If your resolution is to lose weight, we have to make “skinny people decisions.” If we want to get a promotion, the identity of that role has to be core to our personality. 

The reason is must become core to our being is for when things get crazy and stressful, we default to our basic level. This is why resolutions fail. Our default choice must become the one that changes. And this default is going to be especially necessary as we anchor ourselves for the technological change being thrust upon us. 

Second, Intentionality. Presence is a big word. And so is intentionality. Without it, we are aimless. With things like OpenAI arriving and finally, fundamentally, changing the way things get done, we need to be intentional about how we use this technology to better ourselves. We can’t shortcut things anymore – for AI to work, we have to think in new ways and get better results because of it. Ironically, this is different than how we operate today. 

Finally, three and four: “Inquisitive Intellectuality.” We need a new way to learn through questions. Yes, we are capable of great things, but it’s going to require us to think in very new ways, with specificity and providing parameters to elevate our way of being. AI will help us in 2023 get there. 

Looking ahead, there is a lot more on the horizon. The people who will do well will be those accountable to themselves; those who take ownership and responsibility for their actions and are willing to have the uncomfortable conversations with themselves. Lots of excitement is around the bend – so let’s embrace it and enjoy the ride!

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Does anyone remember the time where we didn’t know something and you had to be OK with it? 

Seems like ages ago, or maybe I’m feeling my age. But thanks to the advent and growth of technology, it’s easier than ever to obtain facts. The issue I have with this, is that we may be sacrificing wisdom for convenience. 

The more we know, ironically, drives anxiety. It lessens curiosity. It quashes our desire to learn. Quite frankly, it makes life boring. If we have all the facts available to us, what’s the point in asking questions? 

It’s one thing to know a fact. But you can get facts anywhere. What’s more important, I would argue, is how to think. Reasoning, logic, deduction, interpretation – these are the skill sets that will help us move past just repetition and boredom. 

It’s a focus that will translate well to the workplace. What I come across often in the coaching world is that most people have insecurity and anxiety, and many of them try to cover it by giving advice or spouting facts. But the fact of the matter is, those who embrace their insecurity, ask really good questions and learn to focus on their ability to continue to learn are the best leaders in an organization. 

Solutions will vary – but I’d say a good start is to begin by asking yourself questions, and going deeper beyond just the basic answer. Figuring out a belief system, why you believe things and understanding why others can believe the opposite, is a fun and productive philosophical exercise that will translate over into other areas of your life. 

It’s too strong to say facts are worthless, but without context and understanding, they don’t have multiple legs to stand on. It’s our understanding and interpretation that give facts meaning, and we only understand and interpret through questions. 

Happy week!

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I’m, I’m at the tail end of Gen X, but I identify with Gen X. I like my Gen X people. Gen X will remember this. Do you remember a time back where you just didn’t know the answer to something and you had to be okay with it? It was almost this freeing kind of . It was, it was so nice to just not know. And we’re, we’re living now in a place where we’re inundated with information.

We’re inundated with facts. Everybody’s got a fact. Everybody wants to tell you what they know, and they can find the study or statistic that shows it. But without context, the facts are irrelevant. And I’d argue that we’re, we’re sacrificing wisdom and intelligence for the, the idea of just knowing facts that anybody can find when they Google something. And I would argue that the need for reasoning, logic, understanding context, being able to think is far more important as we move forward in the society than it is to just no facts.

Cause anybody can get facts anywhere. And that’s what I’m gonna talk about today. I’m gonna talk about how knowing everything like we do today, having information on our fingertips is actually driving more anxiety. Anxiety, um, it lessens our curiosity, it impacts our ability to be leaders. I’ll talk about workplace impact and then maybe at the end of this, if I remember, and if I have time, um, and I’m so inclined, I’ll give you some, some tidbits maybe that can help us get thinking about, um, how to think, thinking about how to think rather than, uh, just knowing facts.

So, um, like I said, I think my gen gen Xers will appreciate this and older, there was that time where, you know, you’d think of something and, and you would just never know it. And the only, you had to take a trip to the library, go through the Dewey decimal system to find some kind of book or an atlas or an encyclopedia to find it out. You actually had to do research.

And most of the time you’re like, I just don’t care enough to do that. And so it just went away. And that was nice. It was nice. You could focus on more things, more pertinent things, more impressive things, more relationship things. And you just, you didn’t know when your friends were gonna show up. You didn’t know when, uh, you know, your parents were gonna pick you up from the movie theater or anything else.

You could talk about it in general, uh, in in general context. But we, you know, there was a mystery to it. And there, there was a lot of fun to that. Um, now granted, having information on our fingertips has its benefits. I will say that. But, um, I, I would say we, we have this fake knowledge now of knowing facts. And you could find any fact online. Any fact that you wanna find, you could find it.

And there’s true facts, and there’s fake facts, and there’s half true facts. And there are, there are facts that are only facts when included with the proper context and . So, so facts. The idea of a fact is, is almost subjective at this point. And so knowing facts, and, and you see this a lot in the coaching industry, um, people who try to present themselves as experts, everybody wants to be an expert.

Okay? We get this. Everybody wants to be an expert. Everybody wants to be wanted, everybody wants to be intelligent and seen as such. And that’s great. So they spit out knowledge to almost present themselves in this way that they are intelligent. But without context and understanding the context or making it real for people to know how to implement these facts, it’s almost irrelevant. The facts are pointless because it doesn’t change behavior or doesn’t drive home the message you’re trying to drive home.

It just, you know, it’s this false supporting of some BS statement so that we can present ourselves as experts in some particular type of way. And especially on, you know, you see this on TikTok all the time. I love the psychologists who come out and the psychiatrists and the neuroscientists who say, that’s not what that means, right? To, to correct all these people. Or just say, the hippocampus does this and you, that means you’re gonna do this.

And, um, it’s such a misinterpretation of, of knowledge, um, to the point where it’s damaging and it, it makes people change behavior in a very negative way. And, and you look ridiculous. I want you to know, you look ridiculous. . Um, there is, ironically, I think the more knowledge we have, the more anxiety we have. Um, ignorance is bliss. I do believe that to a certain extent, there is, uh, a certain bliss of ignorance.

It’s why when people turn off social media, it’s a cathartic experience. It’s why when people turn off the news, it’s cathartic. Not knowing what’s going on and not being a hermit. I’m not talking about being a hermit, but there’s, there’s a scale of knowledge and information. We’re being inundated with constant ads and information and facts on, on why you need this medication that you didn’t even know you needed. And, uh, let me come in with this article and why you’re doing things wrong.

You’re shoveling your driveway wrong, and you’re like, what the hell are you talking about? This is ridiculous. So, so the more facts were given, uh, I would say it is impacting us in a very negative way. Um, even right on down to the weather. Do we need to know that the storm’s coming in a week when you’re know, start, say, ruins your week, right? Well, it’s gonna, you know, nice day. Yeah, but it’s gonna rain this weekend, right?

We can’t enjoy the moment we’re in because we have so much knowledge as to what’s coming down the pike, that, that we actually can’t be present and we can’t enjoy the people that are around us. And it drives this, this type of anxiety. And at the same time, it lessens our curiosity. And we need a sense, you know, I’ve said this before, multiple times. The reason kids are happy is because they’re learning.

They have this sense of wonder. There are things that are new to them. When we have all these facts, we lose that sense of wonder. We have to have the facts, we have to have the answers. We have to do all this stuff. It drives more anxiety, and we care less. We’re less curious. The last time you got really lost in something, it’s probably because you were curious about it and learning, and you wanted to know a new answer.

And that’s why we read things, and that’s why we get into things. And that’s why we, you know, I, I speak to so many Gen Z people and say, well, what are you reading right now? They’re like, oh, I, I don’t read books. I don’t read books. Because they have all the facts that they need at their fingertips and what they’re sacrificing. And this isn’t a Gen Z, this isn’t everybody challenge, okay?

I’m not, I’m not bashing Gen Z. Um, they don’t have to read, right? Because they have all their information. There is a benefit to learning and reading and being curious, and that’s your developing the capacity to think. And that’s what’s so important. We have to develop a capacity for reason. We have to develop a capacity for logic. We can’t just repeat facts. You see this very much in politics, right? Let me tell you why this is so important and why you’re wrong.

Facts are all about giving somebody, uh, i I bucket facts into this category of just giving advice and for coaches to be good. Again, I’m going back to my coaching. We never give advice. Good coaches never give advice, because advice is just an exercise of feeling superior to somebody else. Telling facts is just this false sense of superiority that we wish to have. And it’s trying to mask our own insecurities and our ability to ask questions.

We don’t want to be known as someone who doesn’t know, but yet, ironically, the most secure people we know and the most effective leaders we know are those very people who could say, I don’t know the answer to that. Tell me more. Ask me. You know, can I ask more questions? This is really good. Let’s get curious. Let’s dig more. Let’s learn about the logic, the reasoning, the interpretation of this. What can we deduce from all of these facts that we find?

And how do we make that relevant today? The ability to do, you know, do that cognitive exercise, to do that thinking. That’s what we need to really embrace and drive and, and really look for. And we can only do that when we don’t know. We only have that, that desire to do that. When we don’t know the facts, we don’t know the answers. We don’t stop at just knowing this ridiculous fact here.

And we say, all right, well, we did our job. We just told everyone how smart we were, and then we can move on. We need to deduce and make things real. Things evolve over time. Facts change over time. Facts change with context, right? You can make the same statement in two separate places. One time it’s true, another time it’s not. And depending on interpretation, that’s one of those big muscles that we really have to learn and drive.

And, and if we wanna bring this to the workplace, uh, that’s gonna separate the, the adults from the children, your ability to deduce. That’s how you bring value, right? I, I’ve gone through this exercise at a few places, um, depending on the size of your company, right? But I was working at a company or working with a company, had about a thousand employees. I said, if you wanted to get rid of everyone, 200 employees, what would they be doing?

And they know that they could survive with, you know, one fifth of their employees. They’d be thinking very differently. They’d be doing very different type of work, much more cognitive. And they know those 200 people, they would keep those people who could think, right? That’s gonna be, we’re, we’re not moving to a knowledge economy, right? Or maybe that’s what we’ve got. We’ve got a knowledge economy. A knowledge economy is irrelevant, right?

We need a thinking economy that’s very, very different, right? You have all the information you could want at your finger fingertips, but what makes you uniquely human is the ability to deduce and think and interpret, right? AI is gonna blow you outta the water of just pulling facts. It’s got mountains amount of facts and can make decisions and do all of these things very quickly based on fact and trends and everything else.

But to be uniquely humanist, to think and to be cognitive. And that comes from not knowing. That’s where we need to focus. That’s learning mindset, that’s asking really good questions. When we think about our best leaders and the most productive individuals, the people who are creating new things, the people who are bringing value to work, the people who are, uh, creating new processes. And those are the thinkers. They’re not just repeating the way we’ve always done things.

They’re not repeating, well, this is how it works. This is fact. They can interpret deduce question, ask really good questions, and be really, really curious. If you’ve worked with me. You know, I always talk about the, the question, does anybody know what a real question is? And most people don’t know what a real question is. A question is a request for information where you legitimately do not know the answer, and you want the answer.

Very, very important to make that distinction of, I’m really curious. Otherwise, it’s just a judgemental statement. And when we’re trying to mask anxiety, when we’re trying to spit facts, when we’re trying to just tell people why they’re wrong, why we’re trying to tell people, uh, advice and say, this is what you should do, and I think you should do that, and this is blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It’s our own insecurity.

It’s, it’s trying to feel superior over other people. Everybody sat in a meeting where somebody asks someone for feedback, they’re very quick to say, well, we can’t do it because of X and we can’t do it because of y. Right? That’s their own insecurity. They never go first to Well, it’s possible, but right? They, they’re never open to that. That’s a stressor. They’re insecure. It’s the first thing that you notice about ineffective leadership is they always tell you why something can’t be done.

And so not knowing, um, is a blessing. It’s a blessing. I don’t fully appreciate, I I didn’t really fully appreciate the blessing until recently. And the more I’ve been talking about it with people, you know, I don’t watch television. Well, I do a little bit, but not, you know, in, in the other way. Um, it’s nice to not know what’s going on in general. You know, as a matter, I’m still engaged in my community.

I’ve got my people, I’ve got my clients, I’ve got my family. I, you know, I’m not a hermit, but I don’t need to know everything. Although I do love spitting facts. I do love the random facts. Everybody does. But the reason we love the random facts is because we’ve learned something, right? We say, oh, that’s shocking that I wouldn’t have thought of that. And oh, that’s very interesting. It’s a curiosity thing.

And we, we tap into our learning and that’s why, why we like to do it. So, um, a few episodes go, I would encourage you to do the believability episode. Listen to the believability episode. If you haven’t done it, that one resonated with a lot of people, because that’s a differentiator in the workplace as well. And that comes from not knowing believability. There’s an authenticity to believability. In order to be believable, you have to build this capacity to be believable.

It’s not just enough to be authentic, it’s not just enough to know things and how things work. We have to be believable. And we become believable by, by connecting with other people and asking really, really good questions. And then that gives us some credibility. It brings authenticity to say, oh, I don’t know everything, but I can deduce and bring more value to the fact that you actually know that’s real value. And that’s something that we should focus on.

So what are the solutions? How do we do this? How do we become a person who knows, but doesn’t know a person who is valuable, not knowing everything, but can ask really, really good questions. And that’s, you know, it’s odd. We, we wanna be curious. We wanna know facts are fun, right? I love spitting facts. I love it. Um, I should have prepared some random facts, right? But I’m not, uh, , I didn’t do that for this episode, so I’m sorry.

But the first one, the way to start is, you know, we have to learn to become philosophical. That’s the first. And we have to, to work on our questions. And so I had asked, you know, what’s the most interesting question you could come up with? And I’m not talking about, you know, does a straw have one or two holes? Um, although those are fun little conversations to have with your people. But what are really, really good questions you could ask yourself about anything that’s going on in your world where you legitimately don’t know the answer and you want to know the answer.

And if there’s nothing that you want to know the answer to, we have a lot of thinking to do, right? Asking why, why do we do the things we do? That’s part of self discovery, it’s part of personal development, it’s part of everything. And that’s ultimately the meaning of life. The aim of life is self development. Uh, who said that the aim of life is self development. Dorian Gray, Oscar Wild said that Oscar Wild said, I think he did.

The aim of life is self development. Um, but, but how do we exercise reasoning and logic, our belief system, pure curiosity, just for the purpose of being curious. That is how we become a, a, a proponent of not knowing, not to just get to the end answer. Cuz there are no end answers, right? But how do we continue to exercise this muscle of being curious and asking questions? That’s, we don’t want to be the one who just knows all the answers.

That’s boring. It’s so boring. Life gets so incredibly boring when you have all the answers. So let’s go find something to be curious about. That’s my advice for the weekend. my advice, I always give advice, um, which is the opposite of what you actually want to do. But that’s my thing when I go for a run, it’s always asking questions. My reasoning, my deducing, why do I think this? Well, if I think this, well what does that mean for this?

And if I think that, well, what does that mean for this? And what do I believe in all of these questions? It’s, it’s a very heavy exercise. It’s a very difficult one. Uh, but it’s a, it’s an awesome one. It makes life so, so interesting to not know. So let’s get a little exciting. Let’s get a little crazy. Let’s not know something this week and get a little curious. That’s just tons of fun.

So have a good week. I hope it was helpful. It’s my wistful kind of going back to the, um, I mean, I guess it was late eighties when I was just kind of running around with people and, um, just not knowing anything. Like mid, mid eighties, late eighties, just run around, doesn’t matter. Don’t know anything. Um, but you had a lot of fun and part of it was a maturity cause you’re a kid, right?

Um, but also it’s, there’s, there’s some credibility to it. So have a great week. Enjoy. Thank you for paying attention. Thank you for your time. And uh, with that, I’ll see you next week. Thanks.

Sometimes you meet a person and know they have a story that should be shared. And that’s what happened with me and Dan MacQueen.

I hesitated to put resiliency in the title because the word has been almost ruined due to the hyperbolic nature of our click-bait world. Organizations preach “resiliency,” but it’s more of a “barrel forward” rather than a “be strong and bounce back” type of resiliency. Dan has real resilience.

We THINK we work hard. We THINK we have problems. We THINK our challenges are insurmountable and frustrating. But sometimes, when we hear a story like Dan’s, we recognize that we have things pretty good.

Dan’s got gems. From his commentary on accountability to “post-traumatic growth;” from constructive optimism to screaming, “Can’t you see I’m learning here!?” – there is much to think about and translate to your world after hearing his story.

This is more than just a change in mindset. I’d say it’s a change in being. Hopefully, the lessons you can pull from this episode can make change without having to go through trauma like Dan’s.

More from Dan MacQueen

Web www.macqueendan.com

Instagram @macqueendan

Twitter  @macqueedan

LinkedIn Daniel MacQueen

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Um, they bother me because I don’t feel like they have the proper context and, um, they don’t really hit the mark in the way that they should. And so this week’s guest is going to teach us in a very real way what resiliency is. And I think it’s gonna be a fantastic level of perspective and a lot to learn. I’ve had a, a couple quick conversations with him. I’ve learned a lot already.

I’m very happy to have here today, Dan McQueen. Dan, welcome to the Bellwether Hub Podcast. Thank you so much for having me. So I want, Dan’s got a story, which is unlike stories you’ve heard before. So Dan, I want you to cue everything up. We’re gonna start with the story, share your story so that we can then pepper you with questions afterward. But we need that context because it’s, uh, it’s pretty wild ride.

So I’m gonna turn it over to you. Please tell your story. Thanks Jim. So, hello everyone. My name’s Dan McQueen. Uh, until recently I was living in London, Jolly old. I moved back in September, but the story kind of takes place in 2014. I was having these headaches that got worse over a few weeks. I went to Annie twice. For those of you don’t know, Annie is accident emergency in the uk.

You know, thinking these headaches were kind of serious. I should get them checked out. And I was told, Oh, no, no, they seem like they’re vertigo. We’ve gotten some tests, they don’t seem that serious. We’ll send you home. They gave me some pills and they sent me home for that. But they told me on the way out if my headaches continued to get them checked at an optometrist, she’s like, Okay, sure, whatever.

So the headaches persisted. They were getting real bad and I decided, You know what, I’m gonna get my eyes checked at an optometrist. Midway through the exam, he stopped it, which is not a casual move. He gave me a sealed envelope, also not a casual move, and told me to go directly to Morfield Hospital, which I did. Sort of, I stopped at home first to grab a book, Jack Richard book, actually by Lee Child.

Uh, my phone charger, some food I want somebody to eat and some supplies. But I was determinated to the bottom of what was happening with us. So Morefield Hospital turned into tear. Cross turned into, I was having brain surgery the next day because I had a non-cancerous cyst in my brain that needed to be operated on. So zero to 60 in, in a matter of hours, I’m deciding that I’m having brain tomorrow.

You know, I, I call my manager, message your friends, like, Hey, I’m having this tomorrow. Guess I won’t be in Monday. Messaged my mom and she just retired. So she was able to come to London. So on June 21st, 2014, I was on the operating table. My mom was in the air flying to London, Something went wrong and had a massive bleeding. The brain of brain hemorrhage. I think the cyst burst when they operated.

So my mom lands and finds them in critical condition. I was in a coma for four weeks. What was in and outta consciousness for months after that, when all was said and done, I was learning how to walk, talk, and smile again. So, needless to say, this kind of rocked my world and rocked my family’s world. Um, I remember waking up in the hospital with my brother, mom and dad around me, and, and I go, I can’t talk.

Cause I had a breathing tube removed and I couldn’t talk. And I go, Gimme a pen and paper. I write down, I point at my brother, I go, You point down. And I write down the pen and paper. I go, Get me out of here to my brother because I didn’t think I had any insurance for this stuff. And I was thinking, you know, he’ll bust me outta here. Let’s get outta here.

So needless to say he didn’t, and thank goodness he didn’t. Cause I was in the hospital for months after that. But that’s how things all kicked off for me, Jim, which is, so I could take this in many different directions. Um, one is the perspective on, obviously you didn’t plan for this and obviously this kind of jacked up whatever plans you had eight years ago, and that’s one, right? We never know when something like this could potentially happen.

But two is the recovery, right? I mean, uh, a bleeding in the brain, learning to walk, learning to talk, learning to smile again, and being able to then build a business, get back with your family, build a life, do all of these things after. I wanna talk about both of those. Um, where do you want , where do you wanna start? Talk to me first about the recovery, because if you’re sitting in the hospital for months, um, obviously this is a, so you’re in a coma for a month in and outta consciousness for months.

Recovery has to be intense. Talk to me a little bit about that. Yeah, for sure. So, you know, I was, my leg frozen at an angle in the icu, the intensive carry unit. So my left leg was essentially jacked up and I couldn’t use it. I couldn’t go ahead and walk. I was in a wheelchair, right? So getting in from the bed to the wheelchair took 30 minutes, then 25, then 20 and 15, then then 10, then seven and six and eight, then 10, then five.

Everything was difficult. Everything was hard. Earned wins. And it took forever to end that bloody wheelchair. But you keep chipping away at this. And then I was transferable to the Wilson Rehab Center. I remember telling my dad when this happened, you know, I made a few thoughts in my head, like strategies to how I’m gonna recover. And the first one was speed. And that was one that I identified earlier is like, this is crucial.

I need to go fast if I’m gonna go far. I told my dad, you know, you have to apply for these rehab centers. I go, Hey dad, make this happen. Thinking like, I don’t know, he’s gonna like grease the wheels. I make something happen. Like, get me in this rehab center asap. Cause I want to get after this rehab as clearly as I can. Now, I don’t think you did, but I got into Wilson Rehab Center, which is great.

Uh, but when I first got to Wilson Rehab Center, I couldn’t walk right? I know to walk in. So they were doing this experimental, I dunno if it’s experimental, but they were doing this, this rehab where they inject your, your muscle with Botox, like the stuff you put in your lips and face for women, it kinda relaxes the muscle and allow to stretch it back to normal. So they use this needle.

It was probably about, well it’s probably about this big to be honest, but it felt like it was a sword going in the back of your leg. And then they would give you this, um, I word this splint every night. Splint was like a cast, and now it was horrifically painful and I never whinged about anything in the hospital, but the splint, I would be like, Oh, this, this fucking splint. Um, I hated the splint because it was so bloody painful.

And I always say it’s painful. And everyone goes, Okay, sure dad. I’m like, No, no, no. You have no idea how painful this was. I’ll share a story with you now. Jim kind of talks about how painful the splint was. So the first time I wore the splint all the way through night, no issue, no stress, this will be easy. I thought this will be easy. I’m looking forward to, this will be great.

I’m stretching in the day and the nighttime, and then rehab during the day. The second night after 20 minutes, it was painful. After 30, it was dreadful. After 40 was unbearable, we took the splint off. But we decided to do one hour a night with the splint, because I wanted to walk, I wanted to get back to walking. And how I get back to walking was stretching the leg. So the third night they wrapped splint up, They gimme the clicker.

We set the time on the phone for one hour. Now the, the ward of the Wilson’s in L shape, so small on this side, long on this side, okay? And after 10 minutes, it’s painful. After 20, it’s dreadful. After 30, it’s unbearable. And I’m thinking, we’re doing this for an hour. This is insanity. What was I thinking? An hour. This is ridiculous. I start passing the clicker back and forth to distract myself from the pain.

Now I have double vision, which means I can’t see anything. I’m feeling this and I miss one of my tosses and it crashes on the floor. Shit. I look over the edge of the bed, I see the clicker on the floor, the solution to my problems on the floor. The only problem is I’m splinted up. I can’t move. And the floor is about three and a half feet on the ground. Help help by yell.

Wilson Rehab Centers, this and L Shape, they’re on the far side of the ward. They can’t hear me. No one’s coming. We’re 30 minutes on the board, which means they’re gonna come back and maybe, well, maybe 30, but maybe 40, maybe 50. They might have gone to heating for all I know, Jim, they might have gone forever. I don’t know where they’re gone. The solution to my problem’s right there. The only problem is it’s three and a half feet on the ground on the Oleum.

If I drop down under the bed, I, I, I did some quick mass in my mind, not my strong suit. I’ll be honest with you, Jim and I decided that it’s about a 50 50 chance, me breaking my arm, a 50 50 shot. So, but if I break my arm at least can click the clicker, get the splint off, and then they can fix my arm. If I don’t go for the clicker, I’m stuck here waiting for them to come back and hoping kinda like a metaphor for this whole thing.

You can’t wait for someone to come save you. So I decide to risk it and grab the clicker. I crash down in the heap, I flip the coin and the arm holds. I hammer the clicker click, expect them to come burst into the room to come to my rescue. Nay, they kind of strolled in five minutes later. What are you doing on the floor, Dan? Well, let’s not worry about that right now.

Let’s get the leg off, bleed the split off my leg and get me sorted out there. But I learned some lessons from this. Uh, the first being don’t pass the clicker back and forth with double vision. That’s a bad idea. That’s a good lesson, That’s a great lesson. Uh, I really recommend that. The second being do the splint up at the hip, not at the ankle so I could undo it. Should this happen again?

Luckily it never did. But like things like that, that you’re always kind of learning and iterating on this, just as in life, like you, you realize like, I failed at this process. Let’s do it better next time, better than yesterday is one thing that I always try to exhume or like to try and portray and like demonstrate. And this was a prime example of let’s, you know, let’s not make the same mistake twice or at least not three times, maybe twice sometimes.

But that’s to show you how painful display was. I was willing to risk breaking my arm, flipping a coin for the arm 50 50, shot a break of my arm to get the splint off my leg because it was so painful. But it was, it was very much a grueling rehab process. Like I moved from the splint to walking on the Zimmer frame, which is a four post thing that you kind of lurch forward on.

And every step you take, Jim, it reminds you you’re alive. I’ll tell you that much. I had a grim on my face. There’s a great photo I’ve got. I can pass it to your team afterwards. I’ve got this, like this, this scowl on my face where I’m just walking and trotting on. I moved up to the Ferrari, which is, um, a four wheeled walker that you kind of walk fast on, you can kind of waddle quickly on this.

And I moved up to Naked Walks. Now Naked Walk was walking without support, raids, just notice like gamification here. Like I’m kind of having fun while I’m doing this. And I kind of progressed the walking space, right? Like it was quite a, quite a progression there. But that should give us something to chat about there. Jim, is there anything that catches your eye? Well, yeah, it’s, so one, people forget about how long an hour is right.

An hour takes forever when you’re in an excruciating pain. And you know, I get annoyed when I have to sit and watch the kid for 10 minutes and they’re yelling. But this is, you know, this is kind of a different element. But what’s what I take away from that is, um, what you said, you can’t wait for someone else to help you, right? When you calculate, you have to know what you have to do there.

There’s a little bit about knowing what it’s gonna take to get what you need, but there is an efficacy and accountability aspect in terms of, you know, I’m ultimately responsible for my comfort or helping myself in this moment. I’m ultimately responsible for this and this is my current situation. And, and now it’s up to me to do this. Um, talk to me about how you’re almost going for, you know, it goes beyond that.

It goes beyond falling outta the bed. It goes into now up to the Ferrari kinda walker, and it goes into the naked walks. Ultimately, this is you and you had to gamify and come with it in your mind. Talk to me about your mind process a little bit. Yeah. So it’s not your fault, but it’s your responsibility. It’s not your fault, but it’s your responsibility. So it’s like, well, the drop from the record was probably my fault to be honest, but either way it’s my responsibility to fix the solution.

Like, I gotta kind of resolve this. And the mindset was so key because your mindset’s everything, right? Like, I’ll share another story with you, Jim, that I think you’re kind of, you’re, you’re teaming me up for. Here is something I call constructive optimism. And this is learning to walk and tune Broadway. This kinda goes to showcase the mindset that I’ve adopted this process soon to walk in tune Broadway, from the naked walks to the Zimmer frame, to the, to the naked walks, to walk in tune Broadway.

Now tuning Broadway, for those of you that don’t know is in South London who they call up and coming, which means it’s on the verge of like sketchiness. What kind of like sexing up that like developers can call it up and coming, which means like, like 10 years time will be popping, but it’s been up and coming for 10 years. So you never know. But needless to say, it’s a bit of a difficult place to learn to walk again.

I’m walking with a cane, I’m walking with an eye patch. I’m a unit out there while I’m Bambi Ice, to be honest, I turn the corner on Broadway the first time and get bumped and by someone pretty hard, stagger back and okay, cut off by someone else or someone bleeding on the sidewalk beside me. I’m like, this is wild place to how to walk. People kept bumping into me, crashing past me.

This is the worst place to learn to walk in the world. Can’t you see? I’m trying to learn here. Can you see, I’m trying to walk here like, gimme a freaking slack, man. I was so frustrated and dejected by this because I’m trying real hard here and you guys aren’t giving me any slack. But I was like, and I was like, this was days that I was dejecting, like,Oh, I gotta walk Broadway.

This place sucks. This is the worst place I’m gonna walk in the world. And then one day my perspective shifted. This isn’t the worst place to learn how to walk in the world. This is the best place. Because if I can walk here, I can walk anywhere, bumping me, crash past me, bring it on, I look forward to my walks, I look forward to that contact because that’s teaching me in the best place to how to walk in the world.

Now, tune Broadway didn’t change, right? It’s still tune Broadway, but it went from the worst to the best in my head. And my mood reflected that I began looking forward to my walks bumping into me, crash fasting, bringing on this is all I want. That’s like an example of like how my mindset adapted to this process. Like if I’m, if I think about it differently, the outcome will be different. And I knew that, like, I think how I came up with this mindset shift was how am I gonna think through this problem?

I’m frustrated by walking into Broadway. How can I make it less crap in my mind, this is the worst place started to walk in the world. I’m like, well, why is the worst? Cause it’s the most difficult. People bump into you, crash past you. Like, well, couldn’t that also be the best? Because that way you’re stress testing isn’t the best place to walk in the world. I was like, well, maybe it is.

And then I started bringing out that mindset. And when I did that, my whole world changed. Like I, I began looking forward to those walks and, and when you look forward to what you’re doing, it makes all the bloody difference. And I think that’s through this whole process, I began shifting my perspective on like, well is this the worst or is this the best? And like, don’t get me wrong, I’m not in delusions of this is like a good experience, but it’s the experience you’re in right now.

And like I said, it’s not your fault, but it’s your responsibility. So like I have the responsibility of learning to walk in and I can choose it for it to be the worst, or I can choose for it be the best, but I choose that and I want to choose it the best because then I can adapt this and take it on board. Hope that answers your question, Jim. Well it does.

Yeah. And it’s, you know, it goes back to the responsibility, right? It’s not your fault that you’re learning to walk there, but it’s your responsibility to do it. And you, I would say your mindset is part of that responsibility. We often talk about responsibility and accountability in terms of getting things done, but the way that we approach getting things done is also our responsibility as well. And you said something nice in there and you know, nobody would cut you slack.

And I also love where you say, Hey, I’m learning here, right? So if you were to take this out of the context and put it in anybody else’s context in terms of learning a new role or learning something new, it’s a vulnerable moment. It’s a difficult moment and say, Hey, I’m learning here. Nobody’s gonna cut you slack regardless. But it’s still your responsibility to learn. It’s still your responsibility to change that kind of mindset.

Do you have any, I mean, that sounds good. We hear people about positive mindset all the time and you just have to change the way you think. Um, any tips on what, you know, what made it easier for you to do that? Right? I like to give people the tangibles. Is it, you know, knowing that it’s gonna get easier or knowing that this is the hardest and you’re gonna find cooler places to go?

Or how do you find the way to enjoy something that you absolutely didn’t look forward to? Well, thank you Jim. That’s a great question. I think like I’m, I wouldn’t say I’m an like an academic at all, but like I do think about things quite a lot and quite in my own mind. And I thought about this like as I mentioned, like this is the worst. Well, why is it the worst?

Break it down for me. Why is this the worst place? And I mention those reasons, like, well, people bump into you, they crash past you, it’s crowded, it’s dirty, it’s busy, it’s hectic. I’m like, well, if you’re learning to walk again, wouldn’t you wanna learn to walk in the, in that kind of environment? Because that’s stress testing you in this difficult situation. You wanna be fed, spoon fed this stuff, You wanna be stress testing this in the worst environment in the world.

So in fact, it’s not the worst, it’s the best. I really made a conscious effort of thinking through this process and I knew that like, look, there’s been a number of peaks and valleys in this process, Jim. And, and I knew that like my mindset was gonna be so key for all this, the way I thought about it is so huge. Like, there’s a great quote from epics that I use quite a lot a through line in my talk.

As a matter of fact, it’s not what happens to you, but how you react to it in the matters. It’s not what happens to you, but how you react with the matters. And with the brain hemorrhage, that’s like a, a big blow. It’s like, okay, but it’s not a death blow. And how can you react? How can you learn from this? How can you like stress test yourself to like pick the stuff on board?

Um, I guess to answer your question, like how would you reframe this? Like when you’re lying in the hospital bed for hour than end and you got lots of time to think and I just thought about how can I beat this? How can I gamify this and make it more fun to, to accomplish these goals and walk? And like you mentioned, the Ferrari, the naked walks, like, I’m having fun here. Um, which is a big part of this process.

Like how can I make this fun to do? And I kind of reveling, like, I think like my friend introduced me to this, this concept of posttraumatic growth. I don’t mean to jump ahead here, but I’ll mention this briefly. And that’s like, you know, this posttraumatic stress, which is like when you are, let’s say you’re in Afghanistan or something, like a night like a bomb goes off and you’re, you carry that with you for years and, and it haunts you for years.

Posttraumatic growth kind when something bad happens, but you kind of raise up to the challenge and beyond that, so like now every time something bad happens, I raise up to it. So for instance, this past summer I got let go from my job at Hootsuite, which I was at for nine years. I got nothing but love for sweet, don’t get me wrong, but losing your job is never a good vibe. Right now the stages of grieving are like five stages.

I’ve managed to kind of condense this down to like feeling shitty acceptance. Went for a booie lunch that afternoon. I went to the Apple store, I got a new computer cuz the next day I was hammering the speaking gig. What a great opportunity is for me to get my speaking career, going to speak organizations and companies about my perspective and mindset, how you can use this to be better than yesterday. I gave myself a lunch to feel bad and down.

And then I was like, you know what? We’re getting afters tomorrow. We’re getting s today. Like I went to the Apple store that day and the stages agreed have been kind of been condensed to like feeling bad and acceptance is at the bottom. And I kind just fast forward to acceptance because you can wish something didn’t happen, but at the end of the day, it doesn’t move you forward. You can wish all you want, but wishings not gonna do anything.

Wishing the brain hemorrhage didn’t happen is not gonna do anything. Wishing the setback didn’t happen is not gonna do anything. Wishing the job loss isn’t gonna happen, isn’t gonna do anything. I could be wishing this for like a year and then at end of that year I’ll still be well at square one when I could have been taking steps to progress myself if you accept it and move forward, like everything’s, everything’s on me.

Everything’s my fault, or at least my responsibilities. I mentioned like, it’s not, my father lost my job, but it’s my responsibility to do something about it now and now I get to pursue my speaking career that afternoon. So it’s like the mindset’s so key for this because if you believe it in yourself and you believe it in your soul, like your body will follow. And I’m not saying this as like lip service of like, you should do this and you should have this positive mindset of great vibes.

Like no, it’s not, it’s not woo-hoo on you. It’s like this is how I live my life. This is how I progressed and navigated these situations. And they weren’t easy, but it was simple to kind of navigate it because once you made that mind up, it’s like, oh no, I’m not going right here. I’m going right around the corner. It’s right around the bend. You kinda understand the road, you can kind of see the map and showcase where you want to go.

That’s a rant and a half there, Jim. But I hope that gives you some context what I’m thinking about. No, it does and I love posttraumatic growth. It’s, um, and it almost goes hand in hand where it’s for anything, right? Whether it’s a new venture, whether it’s a job you hate, whether it’s going to a networking event, it’s how do I make this fun? How can I actually enjoy myself today? Because we’ve got to judge a mindset going into these things of misery and difficulty.

And, but logically it’s, you know, you are an individual that was before, now you are an individual that had a brain hemorrhage, so it doesn’t change anything. Um, but I almost feel like, you know, post-traumatic growth is almost like tolerance. The more you meet it, the more you’re able to handle and the more you do it, the more you’re able to, It’s part of growing and learning after it. Would you agree with something like that?

A hundred percent. And also it’s important to know the hardest thing you’ve ever been through is the hardest thing you’ve ever been through. So when I do my talk and it’s like, well, I’m not gonna have a brain hemorrhage, so like I don’t need to know your talk because that’s not it. It’s like, well sure, like a job loss and a brain hemorrhage is not the same thing, but the mindset you use to adapt to a brain hemorrhage can be used on someone who loses a job or loses a loved one or gets a diagnosis.

The adversity and resilience you need to fostering yourself to navigate this is the same, same steps. Like to understand what it is and to get that acceptance piece. Because the faster you can get to acceptance, the faster you can progress. Acceptance doesn’t mean it’s fair, doesn’t mean it’s even, doesn’t mean it is justified, but it means it is what it is. Don’t worry about what you can’t control. Control the controllables. It’s something that I always say.

And if you worry about stuff you can’t control, you’re not gonna get anywhere. You can just spin your tires forever and ever and ever. I just punt that if I can’t control it, I punt it. I give zero zero f’s about it. Like, I’m not worried about stuff I can’t control. Can I influence it? Yes. No. If no, zero zero f’s with that, if yes, then I worry about this and I and I take on more would I can do, um, I’ve lost track of your question now, Jim would hopefully that offers some perspective.

No, it does. Yeah. And it’s, you know, as, as we think about the responsibility you have, we’ve talked before this about, you know, feeling sorry for yourself, right? And I feel like that’s a step in between of situation happens. And then you’ve got the acceptance in between. There’s the feeling. Sorry. Do you eliminate that or how do you overcome that? I mean, it’s, it’s one thing to say, Oh, we’ll just have fun so I won’t feel sorry for myself, but people deal with, you know, traumatic events, which shouldn’t be skipped over.

I mean, what happened to you was a traumatic event and yet you’re not feeling sorry for yourself, right? You’re, you’re flipping this into an opportunity, so how do you, and that, that’s difficult. I guess everybody does it differently, but talk about feeling sorry for yourself I think would be something very relevant and you’d almost get the agency to do that where people would say, Yeah, I get it. Talk to me about, you know, feeling sorry for yourself.

Do you ever, and and how do you change that mindset? Well, I’ll give you like the example of the lowest I’ve ever been in my life, Jim, which is, so the setback happened, I got back to walk and got back to work, um, for two months and then I had a second setback that happened. I was found unconscious in my flap by my mom. The sh that’s in my brain had blocked leading to hydrocephalus or water on the brain.

It resulted in an ambulance ride, another bad haircut and a new medical alert bracelet. So I had traumatic brain surgery because the shunt blocked. And I woke up in the hospital for the second time here in the beeping of the, the, the heart rate monitors. Not the respirator this time, but the heart rate monitors is what, what happened? What happened? Like, well, Dan, you had a second setback, you need emergency brain surgeon.

Like what do you mean? He’s like, Well, you’re back in the hospital. This happened two days ago. You’re working on getting back to normal. Like, so this happened again. Yeah, it’s very rare. It happens less than 10% of case. And like, okay, and na was I low like all my progress, I just got back to work. And you’re telling me that’s ripped away from you. Like,like overnight I was, oh, talk about a pity party, man.

I was woes me for a couple days, couple of days of straw. Like, well this isn’t fair, this isn’t fair at all. Like, it’s not fair. You’re right. And where’s that thinking gonna get you? Like I could be woes me poopy pants the whole time or I could just, you know what, I know how to build back better. I know how to do this. I’ve done this once before, this time I can walk so I’m not in the same position I would before I can get back to work and progressively build back towards whatever I’m doing.

I already been through rehab, so I wasn’t entitled to go through rehab again, which is a big knock. I use all my own at home through like phone conferences or like in person meets at my home flat. Like that was tremendously low. And I gave myself a few days to feel bad and low, but I knew that at the end of the day, like I said, it’s not my fault, but it’s my responsibility.

No one, no one’s coming to save you. Like if you want to get outta this hole, you’re gonna have to chop wood carry water is what I say, which means like, get to work, like progressively get to work, chop wood, carry water, put the work in and get your perspective right to like build back up. Like it’s not, And that was like, that was pretty low, Jim, I’m not gonna lie to you.

That was like, everyone’s against me. Why is this, why is this happened to me? This isn’t fair. And that’s wrong, it’s not fair, but at the end of the day, it’s not gonna get you anywhere. I can say it’s not fair to the home. Right. Bless you. Doesn’t change anything. How about this, talk to me about, I didn’t know you before this, obviously. Yeah. Um, how has this entire experience, cha, I mean, we know it changed you, okay, Yes, obviously, but how does it change your belief system?

Has it solidified one in, in your mind? Do you feel like you have a new perspective on responsibility? I’m sure you do, but you know, would you say that you’re capable almost of more now than you were before based on mindset? Talk to me a little bit about your belief system and, and what’s changed over the last eight years now? Thanks Jim. That’s a good question. I think before this happened, I was really happy to go lucky guy.

I still am, but everything came easy to me, or at least I made it seem like it did. I kind of figured out a way to work things like with, with life, with work with girls. Like everything just kind of came easy to me. And then this brain hammer happenss and everything’s stripped away and nothing’s easy. You know, getting into a wheelchair takes 30 minutes and 25, then 20, then 15. Like, it’s like every ounce of me is going into this.

And like, I really made effort not to show that I was trying before this happened. And after it happened, I want show that I’m trying because I am trying, I’m trying my damage to make this happen. My perspective’s changed dramatically, Jim, it’s like everything on me now. I, I’ve read this book, um, Extreme Ownership by Jaco Will, I’m not sure if you’ve read that one. Essentially it goes everything on me. Everything’s my responsibility.

Everything’s my fault. Everything’s in my power to control and improve. And I’m kind of a self-help junkie. I, I love improving myself and, and finding little hacks to make things better and easier. So I’ve got a great morning routine. So I’ll, I’ll wake up early, go for exercise workout, go for a meditation, go for cold shower, like have these habits that I put in place to kind of make myself be better than yesterday.

So my perspective’s changed tremendously, Jim, and it’s been because of this experience, because I’ve had to navigate this, I’ve had to navigate this. If I didn’t, I would wouldn’t be here. I believe that I’m, I am where I am today because of the habits I put in place and I am where I am today because of the mindset I put in place to allow me those habits. Talk to me about your hacks.

Um, you talked a little bit about constructive optimism I think is probably a hack. You’ve got your morning routine and the habits, which is setting yourself up for success. Do you have any favorite hacks that you could share with people that you’d wanna, you know, is one of those your best or, or what would you wanna, what would you wanna share on that? I got one that I’ll share with you, Jim, and one that I mentioned earlier, I think, uh, is called ice icebreakers, icebreakers.

So when you’re walking with double vision and you’re like, fatigue is a big thing with me and I’m seeing two, like I see two of you right now, right? So my brain’s processing two and the mind the wheels are spinning. It’s a lot of bandwidth and energy to like do this. Any chance I can say bandwidth, I do that because it allows me to be better for longer. I say that like I’m walking around at 75% battery and I wake up every minute.

I wake up is like 74, 73, 72. When I get below 50, I’m a less pleasant. Below 30, I’m a bit of a prick. I need to meditate to recharge and refresh that. But icebreaker is one thing that I use to like walking in a busy city. So you’re from New York. I used to live in London. So the circuses in London are just out of bloody circus. Piccadilly Circus, Oxford Circus, Chaos. It’s madness.

I founded this hack called an icebreaker. So what you wanna do is find the fellow pedestrian walk in your direction and walk behind them in their slip stream. And they’re wake in their, in their ice break wake. If you would let them face the oncoming traffic and you walk behind them and that saves bandwidth because you’re not dealing with the frontal abrasive walking through, you’re getting the wake of their walking like an icebreaker would.

So like you just followed behind the icebreaker and this seems like a stupid hack and it is stupid, but like, it, it saves little bits of bandwidth and allows me to be better for longer. Because if I don’t do this, if I’m the guy breaking the ice, it just drains your battery more. And that battery’s so important to me now that I wanna protect it at all costs. And it’s a fun way of me to identify these when I’m walking through the surfaces in London, like a, um, a stroller or a pram, a great icebreaker because it takes a lot of space, like a couple walking root iceberg.

Think about space, you walk behind them and let them take the frontal impact. I’ve also got another one, Jim, that I’ll share with you is, um, timer on the phone. So, or alarm on the phone. Let’s say if you remember something you wanted to do, you set the alarm on your phone, let’s say, I don’t know, it’s 10 30 my time in Vancouver. So I set it for like three o’clock and writing on my phone saying, emailed Jim speaking assets.

That’s alarm three 30. And then I, when the alarm goes off at three 30, I check my phone to know that, oh, I gotta email Jim the speaking assets and I would’ve forgotten that otherwise, or timer on my phone if I’m, you know, scrolling Instagram or, or uh, YouTube at nighttime before bed. I’ll send my time for 10 minutes for 15 minutes when the timer goes off time to bed. Like I use the phone to help me be better and to remind me to keep on track.

So it’s a way that I’ve kind of hacked my life because I need those hacks now because things aren’t as easy as they used to be for me. A lot of work to keep this on the, on the tracks, right? And if I don’t do those things, things slip and I don’t wanna be slip. I’m trying to, trying to keep myself looking a certain way, presented a certain way, being a certain way.

Yeah, and it sounds, I mean if you were to take that metaphorically, it’s almost your icebreaker could be your social network, your, um, use of technology in a way to keep you focused rather than distract your focus. Um, and it’s just being intentional with all of the actions because right, we, everyone’s got a drain battery. Um, and it’s important to keep that focus and, and, and keep it at its max. What’s, um, so you said before speaking assets.

Talk to me a little bit about what’s next for you, How anything anyone could do to support you. I know you’re, you’re big on the speaking circuit now. Talk to me a little bit about that. Yeah, thanks Jim. Uh, I’m going into speaking full bo like I’m, I’m trying to make a difference and share my perspective and change your team’s perspective. Like I’ve got like a whole treasure tro full of assets and hacks and mindsets and perspective that I can impart on your team to help ’em shift their perspective and, and shift how they view things.

I’ve identified a few problems that I can really help address regards to retention, helping your team understand, you know, what they’ve got, their perspective where they’re at and help save you retention. Also culture. Uh, I really think I can impart someone into culture and understand what they’ve got and just how do they view things differently. That perspective of like the worst to the best help you impart that. In the last one, I think it really pairs the sales training.

Uh, we’ve spent a lot of money on sales training these days. See these big booms after the sales training, but after, after a few months, it reverts back to medium and it dips down. What’s missing is the perspective and the mindset. You wire the house properly. Let me show you how to turn on the switch. If I can give your team the tools, the assets, the perspective needed to be better than yesterday, maybe that stays higher, longer, above the median.

But my passion speaking, Jim and I really wanna share the lessons learned because it would be a shame to leave these lessons learned on the sidelines of life. I paid for these in blood, sweat, and tears and I’ve fallen down seven times to get up eight and I’m busting my ass to make this happen. And I’ve, I’ve paid for these price, I’ve paid steep price for these and I paid them by touching the stove Nova Hot.

And sometimes I forget that it’s hot and I touched it. Again. Let me tell your team that, uh, I want to, you know, I’m really driven to do this because I wanna make a difference and I wanna make, impart the lessons I’ve learned with your team. I think that’s something I’d love for your audience, you know, feel, please feel free to reach out to me as a speaker. I’ve done a lot of online and in person speaking opportunities.

Uh, as I mentioned, the job loss this summer was a knock but not a death blow and a good opportunity for me to get the speaking going on, on as a full-time gig now. So that’s the best way I can imagine Reju and that’s, you know, best done over LinkedIn or websites can be uphold the next week. And that’s queen dan.com. Perfect. Very good. So McQueen dan.com, find ’em on LinkedIn. We, we usually wrap these up, Dan, with book recommendations.

Uh, I got two for you man, and I got two questions for you afterwards, if you don’t mind. Of course, you can ask away. I know you told me that before we started recording and I’m very nervous about what your questions are going to be. So I had two books for you. One fiction, one non-fiction. The first is a nonfiction. You heard of this one No Spark. So it’s like a Myers Briggs test, but it’s like a more modified version.

Help you identify what lights you up in work. So for instance, my work sparko type is the sage or the advisors, the my type and the sage is my shadow. And the essentialist is my anti type, which means like I get drained by doing like admins, but I get, I get really fired up by offering advice or, or listening and offering some perspective on both elements of that. So that’s my nonfiction, which is good that you’re getting into speaking now, by the way.

Very good. Exactly. Yep, exactly. It’s a good fit, right? Yep. And my fiction is actually a book my dad wrote. Oh, nice. Called Hero Haters. This came out recently. It’s a, it’s a, it’s a thrill book based on, um, a gripping tale of uh, an author who gets, you know, part of the hero medals. They start disappearing. There’s a big mystery around, this is his first book. He was a journalist for his whole career and his first publish book.

He is getting a lot of good reviews on this. You can buy this on Amazon or Good Reads or Indigo in Canada, but it’s called Hero Haters. And I really recommend this. I haven’t finished it myself. I’m working my way through it, but it’s a great book. I will read it. That’s perfect. Uh, Jim, can I ask you a few questions? Do it. You ready for this? You’ve been ready. Um, so question one, if you could go back in time, you go back in time and ask your younger self or tell your younger self some hacks or truths about podcasting before you started this, what would they be?

From what you know now, um, truths about podcasting you’ve learned about podcasting With what I’ve learned about one, number one is just get started because nobody’s gonna listen to it at the beginning. So you can always make your practice ones that if you don’t like it, you can delete it. But as long as you take the effort to put it in and you get the practice down, eventually you’ll put it out.

That’s one too. When you do put it out and people do listen to it, nobody’s gonna give you the negative feedback you thought you were gonna get. Right. And people are incredibly supportive and that’s great. Um, and so I guess if I were to wrap that up is do it. Take that risk and don’t worry what other people are doing because it’s not a race. Build your own. That would be my advice.

That’s a good question. See a pretty easy question. Pretty easy question. Second one. Yeah. Um, you’ve spoken to a wide variety of guests around a wide variety of subject matters. What are some lessons you’ve learned yourself from these interviews that you like hold dear to your heart and you kind of take on board with your, in your everyday life? Um, everyone on the planet has something interesting to share and it’s, um,you know, if you look at my guests, the majority of my guests, uh, are normal people in extraordinary circumstances or with really good just things that we don’t really focus on, right?

All the way back to my first episode on, uh, a guy who does lean, he’s a good friend of mine in a bank, how he implemented lean processes into his house to keep the family organized. I thought it was super awesome. Um, friends who are public speaking coaches giving their advice, people like you who have had incredible things happen to them and how they’re resilient in a real resiliency way and have come back and could share their wisdom.

Um, everybody on the planet has something excellent to share would be my my one thing to say to that. Um, and that’s probably what I take away from all my guests. Jim, that’s fantastic. I hope I answered them okay. No, those was a very good question. Thank you. Very good answers. Thank you. I think they’re really good to know because you’ve had the experience of speaking with so many people. I was really curious to see what Latin with you and what was a big takeaway.

That’s good to know. Everyone’s got something interested to say. I like their laugh. They do. Yeah. It’s, you know, they just don’t know to say it. Um, or they don’t necessarily have the opportunity. But Dan, you had the opportunity today and I appreciate it. This is, um, this is, you know, it’s an incredible story and it’s an amazing lesson. And as things go so quickly, if anything it’ll make someone hear this reevaluate what’s important, reevaluate their own particular situation, get some good perspective on, you know, the difficulties that, that we could be facing and everything else.

If I made Jim, Yeah, life happens for you, not to you. Mm-hmm.. And I believe that with all my heart. Like, I get up every day and I’m like, I get to do this. And you know, stuff can happen to you that kind of sets you back and it’s like, you know what, You get to do this, you get to navigate through this difficult time. And now I feel not invincible cause that’s the wrong word, but like, what are you gonna come at me with, man?

Like, what, what is the world gonna throw me that’s gonna be so shocking and, and perplexing for me not to navigate? It’s like, well, I’m losing my job this summer. Like, well that was a, that was a blow for sure. That’s a heart blow. But like, compared to what I’ve been through, that’s like a very minor blip on my radar. And like when you start addressing this difficult stuff, you start dealing able to realize that you can navigate this in a better way.

One hack, one more hack I wanna share with your team here. Jim, is cold showering? Yes. Sounds off putting. Sounds gross. I know I was a bit of an apprehensive guy myself back in the day. Now I shower and I had cold every day for two to three minutes and I had hyperventilate and I forced myself to go into a stressful state. And I get outta that shower and you’re still warm from the shower, but you get little, little sleeve of cold on and you just feel invigorated and, and take on the day.

But you’re making yourself go into that hardship every day on purpose. That one you face in real life. You can navigate this in a much more pragmatic and thoughtful way. I’m telling you this, try the cold shower, Jim, have you tried this cold shower before? I I do a cold shower every morning. Absolutely. You start I started it during the pandemic, I start warm and then at the end I turn it to cold.

A month ago, I published an article on HR.com regarding how we measure the value of coaches and hold them accountable. 

It’s been an ongoing discussion in the tiny world of coaching – this challenge of showing value and ROI on what are typically “soft skills” and items difficult to measure. 

But what’s rarely discussed is how we hold coaches accountable for the promises of development that they make. 

We’ve seen the news recently of layoffs and changes happening across numerous industries. And what I’m seeing based on this is an increase in individuals looking to pay for coaches out of their own pockets – either they are looking to better position themselves amid layoffs within a company, or are looking for a career coach to help them land their next gig. 

If you happen to be in this camp, or, if you work with coaches or a coaching program in your organization, I would encourage you to move beyond just the ROI conversation (it’s still needed!) and move the discussion to accountability as well. For any coaching engagement to be truly successful, all three parties need to be accountable: coach, client and organization. 

Vulnerable people often look for a guru, and there is no shortage of those in the coaching world. However, when everyone claims to be an expert or offers a promise to the yellow brick road, they should be held accountable for what they can and can’t deliver. 

As always – happy to chat about how Bellwether approaches this philosophically and realistically – we guarantee success in our coaching engagements. 

Thanks and have a great week!

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And, um, and it’s an important topic because a lot of people need it. And it’s, it’s, you know, I’ll tell you why. Let me just tell you why the world is, is buckling and it’s a difficult place to be right now. And there are a lot of people, I’m having a lot of conversations from a developmental standpoint. Um, people are either looking to invest in themselves to paying outta pocket for coaches, uh, to make sure that they’re positioned well before layoffs happen.

It’s a little too late for that, but people are making that investment right now. How do I do it? Who do I talk to? I’m having a lot of, uh, conversations like that. They’re also people looking for career coaches who I don’t typically work with, but I, I’ll refer them if you’re looking for that. Um, who unfortunately were wrapped up in the layoffs, all kinds of layoffs. I get a lot of those phone calls as well.

Um, and so I, I recently wrote an article, um, I I, I called it Fire All the Coaches and they, they very prudently changed the name of it to questioning the ROI or, or something along those lines. Um, I’ll put a link to it under this on, on the Bellwether Hub site. Um, but basically it was the argument of, as we look at what everybody’s looking to do and needing a coach, and there are a lot of vulnerable people, and I’ve, I’ve harped on this a lot and I apologize, but it’s very important, and this aligns very much with the previous episode on advocating for yourself is, um, there are a lot of vulnerable people who are looking for gurus.

And we need to make sure that we’re holding these gurus accountable, right? For the promises of development that they’re making. There’s the old saying, if you can’t do something, you teach. And if you can’t teach, you coach. Um, and I remember when I first got started in coaching, people were like, Oh, really? You’re a coach? Okay.You know, my half idiot cousin, um, who didn’t graduate college became a coach. Uh, I’ve seen all kinds of coaches.

There’s, there’s career coaches, executive coaches, women’s empowerment coaches. I just saw a social security coach the other day, wellness coaches, retirement coaches. There is a coach for anything and everything that you could possibly need and that’s great . But, but, but, and I see this a lot in organizations and I get a lot of blank faces and I can’t believe it hasn’t hit them yet. Um, and I will drive this home for you.

If you are looking to spend money on you to invest in a coach, you’re actually, it’s not an investment in a coach. It’s an investment in you. And that coach needs to deliver you an ROI that’s acceptable to you, you that warrants the amount of money that you’re paying them. If you want to pay someone a hundred bucks an hour to listen to your problems, to give you advice, that’s fine, but you’re getting a hundred dollars an hour kind of advice, right?

Good coaches are a lot more expensive than that. Um, but anyway, so that’s what what spawned this conversation is I was talking to the head of field development at a bank and they’re spending buku bucks on coaches. And I, I knew this guy from when I worked in corporate, he was very gracious with his time. I just wanted to hear his perspective. I wasn’t pitching on anything. It was purely a, a friendly conversation.

And um, and he told me he was firing all their coaches, all the coaches that, that this, this company had, had hired to get their people all set up. And I said, Good, tell me more. That’s great. Awesome. Fire. All the coaches, um, basically everyone that was going through coaching was doing worse than everyone who wasn’t doing coaching. And I said, That’s a good reason to fire the coaches, right? Um, not only are you losing the productivity because they’re going off to sit in these coaching sessions, but they’re also now doing worse.

So they’re actually doing damage, right? Whoever these coaches were, then he told me how much he was paying for the coaches, and I almost choked. I laughed at him a little bit, um, cuz I didn’t think he was serious. And then I realized he was serious. And then I tried to back it back a little bit and I think I kind of pissed him off. Um, I couldn’t believe the amount of money they were spending on coaches.

Um, and ultimately I told them in a very nice way, it’s your own fault, right? They were holding, there was no accountability on the coaches that they were spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on for these coaches, for all these advisors and all these other people. Um, not one success metric was defined. Not one way that they knew that this was a good investment. And the only way they figured it out was that they decided to take a look and said, Oh, these people are actually doing worse.

Okay? There was no set goal for, for the engagement. And, and then it formed a lot for me as I was setting up my program, um, because I’ve had similar conversations over time. Is there are these promises of what we can do. And you say, Well, how do you measure and say, Oh, well you can’t really measure leadership. Well know when we see it. You know, they say all these things, but there is, you know, if we’re making an investment, especially individuals who are paying out of their own pocket right now, you are the one who’s responsible for dictating success and what you expect of the coach.

If you hire someone to fix your computer, you have an expectation that they’re going to fix your computer and you’re gonna know that it’s fixed and it’s very clearly defined. My computer now works. It’s a little more difficult when we’re dealing with these intangible types of things. And so you have to tie it to behavior and you have to tie it to all these different things. And there are ways to establish an ROI for these intangible things that you’re not able to really measure.

Um, so I put this out there for those in hr, those executives who are looking for coaches for their teams, those individuals looking for coaching for themselves. Um, I don’t take clients unless I know that you could be helped, that I can help you. Um, I have fired three clients because it didn’t work and I gave them the money back. Um, and, and again, this is, you know, we’re dealing with vulnerable people right now who need help.

And so I think it’s very important for you to go into any kind of coaching engagement. And this is an advocating conversation for you. And this is for beyond coaching, right? This is a metaphor. Everything I talk about could be a metaphor you can go into so many different things is you are spending money. How are you going to know that this was money well spent? And how are how are you going to measure this?

Coaching works? Coaching works, it works. Uh, and it’s very good and it’s necessary. Coaching is necessary right now because the world is changing so incredibly fast. Um, we need someone to push our boundaries. We need someone to challenge our thinking. We need someone to question our judgements. We need someone to teach us how to move up in an organization, how to communicate and behave at much senior level, uh, senior levels of the organization, how to think in more of an enterprise fashion versus the smaller teams that, that we’ve been working in.

Um, how to communicate at different levels. Uh, and so we need coaches, we need good coaches. And if you are thinking of getting a coach, if you are thinking of doing any other kind of investment in you, which I think more people are going to be doing, and I think people are gonna be smarter and a little more tighter with their purse strings. Um, we have to figure out a measurable way to know that your coach is good.

Uh, anybody could promise anything. And there are a lot of, of snake oil salesman out there. And so I would encourage you to ask for the guarantee, ask for them to guarantee success. Uh, we guarantee success. And if you don’t hit it, you get the money back. So what I told the guy at the bank who was so angry, I said, Here’s how you should have structured your, your coaching engagement. The organization’s paying the bill, so they’re being held accountable, The person being coached, you should hold accountable in some way because you’re investing in them to change some kind of behavior.

And the coach has to be held accountable. So what you do is you have the individual pay the coach half, and if the coaching individual can figure out and get to whatever they gotta do, then the organization comes in and pays them both back. That’s how you do it. Coach doesn’t get paid, uh, the full thing. If they don’t hit their goals, the individual gets their money back. So it actually is cost, it costs neutral to them, and then the bank gets the ROI because they’re changing the behaviors and getting the revenue and doing all that other stuff.

So, um, for those, I don’t wanna spend, I don’t wanna harp too much on that little philosophy, but if you are thinking about coaching and setting up a coaching program, I’m happy to go into a lot of details on that and the way that we structure our contracts and everything else. Um, but it’s the wild west out there and, and everyone’s capable of doing great things. We just need a little bit of push and hold people accountable for the promises of development that they’re making.

It’s the only thing I’m gonna say. And we, we need to hold everybody accountable for the things that they’re saying people aren’t really thinking. And, um,you know, if you’re gonna make a promise, you gotta deliver. And that’s what I’ll leave you with . It’s a quick episode today. I hope this thing doesn’t die again. Um, it’s a little zoom recorder, but uh, have a great week. Um, think about your coaching, think about your development, and think about ways that you can invest in you and get a really big roi, whether it’s for you or for your company, for anybody else.

And I’m, as always, I’m happy to talk about it. So have a great week. Enjoy. Thank you for listening to my little rant. And next week I’ve got an interview, uh, with a very incredible individual who’s overcome some incredible stuff. Uh, Dan McQueen will be on the episode, uh, The Bellwether Hub Podcast, so more on that and more blog posts and everything else on bellwetherhub.com. As always, I’ll talk to you soon.

Up this week: How to Advocate for Yourself. 

I recognize it’s not something we typically think about. We see change happening, we get frustrated, we look externally at what others have or have not done, we blame and move on. 

In addition, we are finding that more and more everything is done for us – technology makes everything easy. I speak to many groups who “defer to others,” i.e. wait for someone else to do things for us. 

The problem with this approach is multi-faceted – we can’t expect others to subscribe to our individual timelines and needs. Just because we find something important for us, others would see a different perspective more important to themselves. I think of people trying to buy houses today, frustrated that so many people have “bought the Airbnbs and jacked up the housing prices while lowering inventory.” 

It’s a problem vs. circumstance challenge: problems we can solve, circumstances we must respond to. And 99% of our “problems” are actually just circumstances. 

While there is a collective general sentiment and group need to accommodate a bigger picture, we still have an accountability to ourselves to ensure that we are doing what’s best for ourselves … and putting our best out there to get it. This requires us to be educated, be curious, do the work on what we believe, understand that beliefs don’t mean truths … and so much more. 

Advocating for yourself isn’t just screaming about what you want. It’s about asking good questions and making sure your questions are answered in a way that you can understand. We may not like the answers … but such is life. 

Lots to think about as we set ourselves up for success, but finding your voice is an important first step. 

Enjoy the week! 

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3,2, 1. Welcome to Bellwether, episode 109, The topic today, How to advocate for yourself. And it’s a big topic, very pressing today. I feel like, you know, big picture, I’ll just jump right into it. I’m just gonna jump right into it today. Big picture, everything is done for us, and I think that’s dangerous and we don’t have to work for anything anymore. And one of the big tenants that I realize a little too late, or you hear it and you don’t internalize it too much, is that we are accountable.

We are accountable, period. But we’re accountable to ourselves above all others. And we have a responsibility for ourselves above all others. And, you know, we talk about ethical philosophy, do what’s best for others, and, and you become good yourself, and yada yada yada, and all that stuff. And that’s true. But I like to flip that. And it’s kind of what I wrote the book on. It’s what I, what I had talked about other times, uh, a lot of other times is, you know, I would argue that ethical philosophy has a backwards, where you have an obligation to focus on yourself so that you can be in service to other people.

So they’re getting your best. And part of that, uh, is, is advocating for yourself and making sure you are getting what you need and getting what’s what’s appropriate. And too often we defer to others and expect others to be doing what’s in our best interests. Now, this can quickly go down into a rabbit hole of . What’s the appropriate limit of, uh, what’s best for me versus the, the bigger world? I’m looking at you anti-vaxxers.

Um, but, but we have to, we have to find that balance. We got a little spider here. Hello. Um, and so, you know, there are a few different angles to think about here. So when I think about everything’s being done for us and we expect things to be done for us, and I think that’s dangerous, and that gives us an expectation that things will be done for us in other types of, of scenarios, uh, to often we defer, Oh, that person’s an expert, so that’s okay.

Um, but we expect other people to subscribe to what we need, and we don’t necessarily question it. Um, oftentimes we’re told we’re supposed to be humble and just take what we’re given that’s wrong. Uh, which you’ve heard me talk about the humility. And, and I say it’s, it’s not wrong to be humble. I think a lot of people misinterpret humility and that causes them to have ineffective actions. Um, so it’s, I I would say it’s wrong to be a lot of these things.

So it requires us to, to just think differently, but it gives us an additional responsibility. And that’s what I want to talk about today. Um, because there is a, a much larger picture than ourselves. And so we can ask good questions. There’s an appropriate way to advocate for ourselves, but at the same time, we have a responsibility to the larger world around us. And how do we find that balance in a really appropriate way?

You know, the big news this week was this professor at Princeton who got fired, not at Princeton. He used to be at Princeton. Now he is at nyu. He retired from Princeton. Now he is a, a chemistry professor at nyu. And he got fired because there was a petition of about 80 kids in his organic chemistry class or something who said that the class was too hard. And he got fired. And there are two people on both sides of the camp.

And the people, you know, they advocated. They said, Look, people are getting zeros on these tests. It’s impossible to pass, and you’re ruining our medical careers valid, I suppose. But then there were the people who worked with the teachers saying, Look, we gave them all these resources. It’s more of a recent problem. It’s the same class that we’ve had before. These people never opened the resources that we gave them. And so, you know, they tried to make these adaptations that people didn’t adopt.

Other people were fine, who went through the extra stuff and did the extra work and, and kind of worked hard to do it. And so what’s that balance to advocate for this group? Uh, and making sure that people are getting what they needed to be successful. Um, so you have an obligation to do work. You have an obligation to adapt. You have an obligation to, to mold yourself into what a larger picture is doing.

But at the same time, you have to ask for help and do what you need in, in, in advocating for yourself. So first, what does that mean? Let’s, let’s talk about what advocating for ourselves really means. Because, um, advocating is a big word. It’s not just having, you know, complaining and having people do what you want. Um, it’s making sure that people are answering what you need and asking, answering your questions, asking really good questions to make sure that you’re getting what you, what you need.

This could be in the workplace, this could be medically, this could be, uh, educationally, it could be whatever, whatever you need. And when we, we talk about advocation, it’s not about dictating your will on other people. That’s not advocating for yourself, but it’s openly and publicly supporting ourselves, which is different, very, very different than just imposing your will on everyone else. Um, we need to speak up when something doesn’t jive and we can ask really good questions.

And, and we recognize there may be a general, general sentiment of what’s needed. May need a slight tweak for us. We need to make the tweak. That’s okay. Um, there is a betterment for the the bigger collective group, but we can’t assume that other people are thinking about us in the way that we think about us. So we have to advocate for ourselves within our structures. There are confines of the world that we live in.

Uh, we have a society and a responsibility to society within which we live a responsibility to the educational system within we, within which we live. That would be the NYU story. We have an allocation to, you know, have you just lowered the quality of education because this guy made it too hard, uh, and you fired him. Um, what are our own expectations of ourselves? And what are the expectations that we wanna hold for the people around us?

And these are questions we have to answer as individuals. Uh, when I think about it in the workplace, cause I always like to bring this to the workplace, to bring it to the workplace. Uh, when we think about we can’t assume what other people are thinking about us. We hear a lot of these things all the time. And I hear it, especially in coaching. You know, someone will notice if I work hard enough, work hard, put your head down and you’ll be rewarded.

Um, this person’s the team leader, so they must know what’s going on. Uh, we make a lot of these assumptions that are just wrong because we’ve heard these assumptions or we felt these assumptions over time. Maybe when we first got into the organization and we were young, we just assumed the manager knew what was going on, and we just did whatever it was. Uh, I was told since I was a little kid, work hard.

And people will notice. Um, yeah, they’ll notice, but you’re not gonna be rewarded for it. Uh, you’re gonna be taking advantage of. And so, or you could be taking advantage of, it’s not always true. You know, um, you know, you, you can work hard, but you also have to know how to navigate. It’s your responsibility to navigate. People aren’t necessarily taking advantage of you. You just haven’t navigated in the right kind of way.

And that was my problem. Um, do I, I certainly wouldn’t blame other people for that. Um, but it’s, it’s beyond the workplace as well. And when I think about, you know, how to take action, right? And this is ultimately what it comes down, we have an accountability to ourselves to take action in the best way for ourselves, right? So you can work really hard. Don’t wait for someone to tell you and recognize cuz people are busy thinking about themselves.

How do you speak up and ask questions? You know, am I on the right path? How do I get to that next job? This is the next thing that I want. And articulate that, articulate what’s best for you beyond work. I think a lot, and what really drove me to start thinking about this now that I’m like 10 minutes into the podcast is this constant discussion on housing. Um, nobody can buy a house right now for a lot of different reasons.

Uh, and so this is a big millennial problem, and I hate using the term millennial, but it’s true. They’re in their, you know, thirties and, and I guess they’re in their thirties. That’s the millennial age, the thirties. And this is when you buy houses, and this is when you start families and you do all that stuff. Pandemic hit everyone bought houses, prices weren’t skyrocketing. Now interest rates are crazy. Nobody can afford a house.

You’ve got hedge funds, uh, investing in houses as a safe kind of way to, to funnel money for a down economy. So they’re buying up all the, the houses. So the starter home is effectively gone. But the other thing, and you see people complaining about it, is a lot of millennials bought like seven houses and they’re using them for Airbnb and everything else. And, um, and people are saying, Look, this is why I can’t buy a house because you bought seven of ’em and you’re running out on Airbnb.

This is bullshit. But guess what? Life lesson, um, you waited too long. Or, um, or I mean, to be fair, there’s also people aren’t making what they used to make. So that’s, that’s kind of a different story as well. But, you know, there is a, an accountability aspect of I can’t buy a house because you should not be doing something and or you should be doing something or, you know, we’re pointing our fingers.

And I hate it when somebody says, you should or I can’t because you, um, and there are two, two things to think about. There are problems and there are circumstances and problems you could solve. 99% of our problems are not problems. They’re circumstances. Okay? So problems you could solve, you can’t solve the fact that other people are buying Airbnbs and trying to rent them out, okay? That’s a circumstance in which you have to respond to problems, you could solve circumstances you respond to.

And so we can’t dictate what other people need to do so we can do something we need to adapt. And, and when we say advocating for ourselves, it’s not just speaking up, it’s taking action for ourselves. And so this is the big, this is the big rub in terms of accountability and advocating in all of these things. All these a words is, uh, we need to think hard about what actions we could take.

We’re gonna have to take some risks in terms of getting to where it is, getting to the next level at the workplace. Buying that house is buying house even, you know, this is, this gets into the fun philosophical stuff. Do you even really need to buy a house? Um, and how do you do it in really funky ways? Um, and this goes back to, you know, when I talk about belief systems and what do you really believe?

And can we question everything? What assumptions do we make? And can we do, you know, is a 5 29 really the best way to save for your kids when you’ve got such a narrow way to invest? If I were to put all this money away from my in a 5 29 for my kid, what’s college gonna be like in 20 years? Right? Is it even gonna be a college? Why don’t I just put it into a brokerage account And when they grow up, say, Hey, here’s$500,000.

Start a business, right? Would that be a better way to, to set my kids up for success? Is college really setting your kids up for success? What assumptions are built into all of these frameworks that are around us? You need to think about what’s best for you and your family. And it may not be all of these things that were set up for a general, you know, let’s do this for the collective.

Good, that’s fine. But you may need some tweaks and you may need to thumb your nose at some of those things that, you know, we have these assumptions on, on what it should be. So we have to take action and responsibility for getting ourselves up to success. Now, I will agree with you, the housing market’s a bunch of, uh, bs right now. Thank God we bought a house so long ago. Um, and so I feel that pain, right?

It’s, I’m not saying it’s, you know, it’s not your fault that you can’t buy a house completely, um, or in some cases at all, right? I mean, I know these people who, who made decisions and they’re paying off all these crazy student loans and they’re, they’re raising kids and they’re doing all of these things. And, and there are some people would say, Well, you shouldn’t have had kids and you shouldn’t have gotten to college.

And, um, I think that’s bogus. Don’t say you should or shouldn’t have people made decisions and, and you know, it’s where they are today, okay? So don’t tell someone what they should or shouldn’t do. Um, but what I would say is, you know, it’s now a response mechanism is how are you responding to the circumstance within which you find yourself? That’s where accountability really lies. And that’s where advocating for yourself really lies is past this past, okay, we’ve learned, right?

It’s a life lesson. We find ourselves in this current situation. What decisions can we make today to advocate for ourselves for success tomorrow? And that’s when, when we think about that is it comes down to a lot of questions. We have to ensure understanding of where we are. And we can’t make all of the assumptions that other people are doing, uh, stuff for us. Uh, nobody can do it for us. You have to take control and you have to take action in order to make it.

So a little bit of a ramble today, but I think it’s an important reminder, um, that life is, life gets easy with all this technology and things are done for us. You know, we get all our news just hand fed to us in the morning. We get all of our, you know, our refrigerator tweets us, um, or texts us when, um, we’re low on carrots. Uh, you know, everything is done for us and we forget that we have a responsibility to take action and think for ourselves.

And so advocating for ourselves, thinking for ourselves, and making choices for ourselves are, uh, an incredibly important part of life. And that is true at home, in the workplace, um, and our financial decisions and everything else. So with that, I’m happy to help you think through it. I love thinking about the assumptions we make and, and just blowing them up and getting philosophical on those, you know, why, why do you need to own a car?

Why do you need, you know, to all do all of these types of things? Some of them you just have to, right? We get it. And you could think through it, you know, you could question it and still come to the same realization that the way it’s set up is fine. That’s okay. Uh, but it’s a’s a good exercise to think through it. So advocate, think, think, think, think, challenge the way you’re thinking, uh, as winning the pool would say, think, think, think.

And um, yeah. Good luck. Have a great week. Enjoy your week. I’ll talk to you soon. Thanks.

If you know my podcast and posts, you know I generally avoid politics. As a general rule, my mindset is around productive dialogue, and with divisiveness today, I’m not looking to stir up the crazies on either side, thinking they are on a mission from God to tell me how I’m wrong. 

This, similarly, has been the typical policy of organizations to follow this creed. Business was for work, not politics, and potentially alienating half of a staff or, worse, your client base, was not something most executives were interested in doing. 

Times are changing. With information moving so quickly, and higher expectations of employees for their organization to “have their back,” executives are stuck between a rock and a hard place to navigate what’s appropriate and best for the business, their people and the company’s values. 

We have typically thought of this in social impact areas. Companies that have been quite vocal about their values have often stood by them, living what they preach. The most recent example is Patagonia giving its company away in its mission to leave this planet better off. 

But other topics are dicier. From the Me-Too movement, to the race discussions following George Floyd, to Roe vs. Wade, executives are balancing a split employee base, and doing what they can to stand up for certain beliefs. And, often, these beliefs are personal, blurring the line between the company and it’s leader.

In addition, beyond the challenge of should or shouldn’t they, many executives are being pushed in a direction where silence is more damaging than picking a side. For larger, more visible companies, silence on bigger issues is met with a negative public perception.

There is a bigger challenge, as I see it, and I call it the “sizzle vs. substance.” Executives who are ready with the talking points are out and in front of the story, but when we look back over the past few months, little has changed. Is the benefit of marketing and PR talking points enough for employees and the public, or will they expect to see follow through? And who defines what follow through is acceptable? 

I think back to my time in corporate, working executive communications and putting together speaking points. That’s the easy work; but actually building a program that follows the sizzle is where the rubber meets the road. As we put together these “vocal stands,” part of the internal discussion now must include how far the company is willing to go in support of it.

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I’m Jim Frawley and this is Bellwether. Welcome to bellwether episode, 108. We’re gonna get into the 40 political stuff today. We’re normally I won’t normally, you know, when I have guests on the podcast, I always tell ’em leave politics out of it. Nobody wants to listen to anyone’s political views. We’re talking about productive things, how to set up businesses for, for success, how to do wonderful things. And so normally I, I leave the politics out on the side today.

0:59
The question is, should we leave politics on the side, the new politics of the C-suite and what we’re finding across the board are a lot of CEOs and other types of executives are taking political positions in very hot political topics and making corporate decisions based on that for their people. And the question is, should they, and I’ve got opinions on it, which I’m gonna tell you in a little bit, um, and these opinions have changed over time.

1:34
It’s interesting. It’s, it’s not a simple yes or no question when you really think about, you know, the, the struggles that come with being a senior executive, the challenges that come with being the leader of an organization, being in charge of so many people, being an example, all of the pressure that we put on our leaders. Now, all of a sudden, we take a look and say, well, maybe they should, or shouldn’t have that political political view.

2:02
It’s not new for businesses to get involved in politics. It’s not new. This has been around for a long time. Always. There’s always money from businesses going into influence politics. What is new is the very visible way in which they do it. And it’s, I’m gonna call it sizzle versus substance before the money would go to influence political decisions. Now it’s more about a branding challenge and, and a lot of companies have had very active political movements throughout the years.

2:34
And I think, you know, the first one you think about is Patagonia and their, their work to, you know, for climate change and, and preserving. And just recently, they gave the whole freaking company away to preserve a whole bunch of, uh, places. Um, and that’s fine. I it’s great, good for them. It’s a, it’s a wonderful thing. And I think it’s, um, a very noble decision and, and they’ve been, uh, living their ideals for a very long, a very long time since the beginning.

3:03
And I think this just aligns with who they are as a company. And I think it’s fantastic and it’s good for the world. And, and I think it’s a good example. Um, so when we think about social impact, we think about Patagonia and a company that’s living its ideals, and that’s great, but now we see a lot of organizations try to kinda have the social impact or the credit of the social impact without actually doing something about the social impact.

3:33
Um, because everyone’s got an opinion now and, and everyone’s able to, to talk about that opinion. And, um, if I think back over the last, I mean, we’ll say decade because that’s really the, this is when the new advent really started. It’s even less than it’s probably five years maybe. Um,you know, we think about the, the executives who spoke up around the me too movement inequality, right? Women’s equality in the workplace, I’ll say that women’s equality in the workplace, that’s one and they had opinions, valid opinions.

4:06
And then you’ve got all of the discussion that came after George Floyd when George Floyd was murdered. And that was the racial discussions at work. Everyone had an opinion on that. Uh, a lot of it was we have to be listeners and everything else for, for that, um, Roe versus Wade that overturned recently, that was a big, hot topic. And, uh, executives jumped up and, and said, we’re gonna, you know, we’re opposed to it.

4:34
And we’re gonna fly our people and give them whatever they need to go wherever they need. And, um, that’s when people started to say, Hey, you know, should you really be getting involved in this? And it’s a, it’s a very interesting dynamic of running a business and then also living the virtues and, and values that you espouse. And so, uh, I, I think it’s noble, it’s meant to be noble because you you’re in charge of a number of people.

5:06
Um, you have to do what’s best for your people. Um, and so, so the question I’m gonna ask today is twofold. It’s interesting. And two, one, should they, and two, I want to talk about the sizzle versus substance because we see a lot of people saying it, but there’s no real follow through. There’s a lot of talk after George Floyd. We didn’t see anything. There’s a lot of talk on the me too movement.

5:30
Uh, we did see some of it. We did see some of it, but how does that continue? And, and, and how does that go? Um, and what does that do? So, so let’s talk about, should they, traditionally, it’s been good practice to not wait into politics and that’s because social items generally weren’t necessarily good for business. And also there was, you know, we didn’t want to alienate people, a business doesn’t wanna alienate half the people.

5:58
If, if a business 10 years ago came out on Roe versus Wade or something like that, you’ve just lost half your customers. And we see it today. How many people are just trying to cancel a company because they did a vaccine mandate or something like that. Um, we saw that with, um,oh, what’s the, I guess Carhartt did a vaccine mandate. And then people went bananas and then other people were like, well, so did Ford.

6:20
You’re gonna get rid of your F-150. Um, and so it’s interesting how, since everyone has a voice, you can alienate an entire group of people. And then they’re gonna say, we’re boycotting your company. So there’s a risk, there’s real risk to taking a political stand, which even vaccinating your employees, isn’t really a political stand, but it became a political stand. Um, and so there’s a, so CEOs are kind of caught between this rock and a hard place on what do people expect from my company?

6:45
What do my employees expect from my company? They don’t always align what’s best for my company. What’s best for my employees that may not align with what they expect. And so how do you choose the right thing? Um, it was easy to ignore it a long time ago because ignorance was bliss and there was a lot we didn’t know, and not everyone had an opinion and a way to express it. And that’s great.

7:12
Um, sometimes that’s nice. Sometimes I pine for those days when, um, and I’m gonna do a podcast soon on the joy of not knowing and how ignorance was bliss. And, um, when we get these little bits of information today, suddenly everyone’s an expert with an opinion. And as the world and information flow changes today, many executives are finding an obligation to say things and put out statements from the organization. Silence is no longer allowed.

7:40
If you’re not vocal enough, I’ve seen executives get attacked for not being vocal enough and not doing enough. You get punished for being silent, uh, which is right or wrong. So what do people do and, and how to do it, you need the business, but you also need to live up to the values that you tell your employees to have, or not that you tell your employees you have, but that you wish the organization to espouse.

8:06
And when we think about people strategy, because now we’re talking about it also includes this kind of people strategy in terms of are people proud to be working for an organization because the worker perspective has changed in terms of how we think about employees and are the younger employees more interested in organizations that take a stand and have values and live up to those values and do that. And you know, when we think about people, um, my wife said it best a long time ago, and I keep saying it all the time.

8:37
People want an organization that has their back, and that’s beyond just saying, yes, you have a job and here’s your paycheck. They want to believe and align themselves with an organization. When we go to work, our work is part of our identity. And when an organization gets political, suddenly that organization’s politics becomes part of our identity for writer for wrong. And do you agree with those politics for right or for wrong?

9:08
And we, I talked a little bit about it with what was happening with Elon Musk. I don’t know if I did it on a podcast or was an interview, um, is basically when Elon Musk comes out and talks on SpaceX or anything else, those employees now have to answer for Elon Musk because it’s part of their identity. They work for that place. And now you have to answer all of these questions because Elon Musk runs his mouth on some crazy thing.

9:28
Or Jeff Bezos buys another yacht. So everyone on Amazon kind of has to answer, oh, you work in Amazon. How’s chip Bezos is, you know, it attacks your identity a little bit because you can ask anybody in their eighties, who are you as a person? One of the first things they’re gonna say is the work they used to do. Oh, I’m a teacher, or I’m an engineer or I’m whatever. And even though they’ve been retired for 20 years, it’s still part of your identity.

9:51
And so now you have employees who can work from anywhere can do anything, can articulate their value anywhere can pick where they wanna work. A CEO now has to run a business, but also accommodate people who want to align who they are as an individual. And recognize that work is now part of their personal brand people as an individual now have personal brands, which sounds ridiculous, but it’s true. And it becomes part of their identity.

10:21
And so should they is not this really? Yes or no. I shouldn’t. Because now CEOs as part of living up to the brand that we said, and I have aligned myself with your business, I expect you to be a champion of similar things that I do for right, or for wrong. Um, you have this idea of I’m gonna stand up for what I believe in. And, and, and when we go to psychological safety, people could talk about what they want and what they need in a very safe environment.

10:51
This is part of building trust with your employees. So I can see it working in certain insists, from a people strategy perspective, to Wade, into politics and have opinions on politics. I could see it working, however, um, for it to work there has to, you have to do it in an authentic and substantive substantive way. Is that substantive sub substance. That’s a hard word to say substantive way, um, because it will backfire very quickly if you don’t.

11:28
And so when I was talking to a few people about, should I talk about this? And you know, I wanna do a podcast on this. And, and as many CEOs who are listening to it, I I’ve got clients who are business owners and everything else. Um, as they sit through this and do this, um, and they decide whether or not they should, or shouldn’t the first thing I heard from people when I was saying I was gonna do a podcast on this was not so much whether or not they should, or shouldn’t what we’ve seen is we’ve seen a lot of people do it.

11:59
And then it disappears. They get the Instagram video, they put out a little statement, they get the sizzle and then they’re gone. And that was particularly relevant for a lot of people after George Floyd. Um, and we just call it about George Floyd, but the murder of George Floyd, um, a lot of people had opinions on we’re gonna change culture and we’re gonna do all of these things. And, um, it dies off because the work is really, really hard to change this.

12:27
And it’s also, sometimes the work is beyond what you can actually do in an organization. Sometimes the work is so pervasive in culture. How do you actually, you know, you can change different metrics and do different things inside your organization and, and start conversations and do these types of things. Uh, but after a while, where does it go and who do you champion to do this? And so diversity and inclusion is happening quite a bit in workplaces.

12:54
Some are doing a good job. Some are not. Um, but, but it’s like this marketing versus substance type of thing. It’s, you know, as you’re thinking about putting your name next to some of these causes in a noble way, okay, it’s noble, you’re standing up for what you believe in recognize that you now have a new obligation. Once you do that to follow through, and you can’t just take this marketing sizzle and then not deliver because people will notice the people are getting very hip to this whole kind of Instagram reality.

13:35
I’m seeing it’s more and more people aren’t buying it and for you to get credit for this. Cause that’s what a lot of people are looking for. They look for credit, you’re gonna have to follow through outside of the fact that it’s the right thing to do. Um, so it’s ultimately up to the individual, the executive are you living these all the time? I’ll, I’ll use Patagonia as an example. They live it.

13:59
Um, they live what they say, you know what you’re dealing with when you get Patagonia, you know, that that’s their, their culture. That’s what they, the owner, I don’t know what his name is, but he’s given up and he’s bought acres and acres hectares of, uh, rain forest and, and locked them up from any kind of development and char and giving them away to charity to make sure that we’re preserving stuff.

14:22
He, the guy lives everything about, you know, what he says and what his company’s values are. They live it. And he just did it again by giving away the company to charities and everything else gave the company away. It’s amazing. And so if you are going to do this many other companies don’t have that type of identity. Okay. And that’s okay. Right. I mean, an accounting firm, what are you gonna do in an accounting firm or, or right.

14:45
Like, okay, you can, you can pick whatever it is. Um, it’s tough to find a cause. And do you need to find a cause, but when you’ve got accounting firm, one tow in one tow out, it’s almost, what’s the point. Um, and so you have to figure out what that identity is and what you wish your people to rally behind. Because when you want to get these people to trust your organization and rally in your organization and do more for your organization to be a part of it and promote it and bring other good people into your organization, culture is an important part of that.

15:21
And what you stand for is an important part of it. Now I’m not saying, and this is probably a, a very good thing session and waited to the end, speak softly and carry a big stick is very important in my world, in my view. And so you can do these things without the marketing sizzle, you can do the diversity and inclusion. You can do the, you know, we want this cause, and this is very important to us without announcing it to the world.

15:50
Right. And I see that a lot with banks who give massive amounts of money to these different types of places. Um, I see it with other types of companies, um, who are doing really good work and not getting any credit for it. And I love that. I love it because that’s the stuff that makes a real difference. And so when you think about it, you know, internally they know internally the employees know, and they’re part of it and they believe in it and everything.

16:14
That’s great. Um, and so there there’s, again, the substance substantive substantive part, um, such a difficult word, the substance is, is what really matters. And that’s what your people will get behind. Not just the sizzle, not just marching in front of cameras when they show up, um, not calling them to say, I have an opinion, and I have this statement ready to go when, when this happens, because you have to, um, you have to follow up and you have to do it.

16:44
And so I guess that’s more of a, a life lesson too, in terms of, you know, beyond just the politics of the C-suite it’s, what do you really stand for and what do you really believe and are you willing to stand up for it? And so that’s that so good luck with your decisions. I probably didn’t solve it for you, but it’s, it’s, you know, me just kind of talking about all the things that you get to do and you get to think about, um, there are positives and negatives to both and making that decision is an important one.

17:12
And it’s a good one. And it’s very much a cultural one in terms of the way you wish to espouse these, these types of things and, and approach these types of things. So have a great week enjoy it. The politics, the new politics of the C-suite are no longer just the internal politics. It’s the external politics, tons of fun, such great things to think about, have a wonderful week, and I’ll see you next week.

17:37
Thanks. Thank you so much for listening. Now, do something for yourself. Bellwether is much more than just a podcast. Join [email protected], where you can read riveting articles, view upcoming events, and connect with other interesting people. I look forward to seeing you out there soon.

The buzz has been around for a bit this summer – first on quiet quitting, then on quiet firing, as if this were some new response to a dysfunctional working environment going through a difficult time. 

I need to catch myself on these things – and move away from my Gen X “get off my lawn this has been around forever watch Office Space” initial response (which is accurate) to a “this can be solved if we fully understood what we are talking about” more appropriate response. I explore both on the podcast.

As with most buzzwords, much of the commentary is driven by people who don’t understand it – either they have drunk too much of the corporate Kool Aid, are too elevated to understand the working person, or never worked in an office. 

But as a person who surely quiet quit in the late 90s and early 00s, I can tell you it’s real, it happens, and it’s also OK. 

We need to take an elevated look at what we want from our workers, and how to communicate those expectations. Yes, the individual has a responsibility to execute on what we pay them for. That said, the organization has an obligation to communicate expectations of those employees in an effective way, and treat them with the respect that would encourage them to accomplish it.

Much more detail on the podcast, and I’ll put the transcript below so you can read it – but we need to think beyond just doing tasks – it’s an elevated, philosophical view of what drives our workers, where they came from, and what gets them to the finish line. None of it is “wrong,” it just “is.” 

I hope you enjoy – lots more to be said – and I’ll chat with you soon!

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Welcome to bellwether I’m back after a nice short break over the summer episode, 107, we’re gonna cover quiet, quitting, the nice little buzz that’s going around on quiet, quitting, but then also, you know, there’s another aspect called quiet firing, which kind of is like the tail end of this little comment that, that flew across us in this lovely summer of 2022. I’m gonna give you my thoughts because everyone’s got an opinion on it.

Everyone’s an expert on it, just like every other buzzword. And when you don’t have context and you could tell how many people really either have drunk too much of the corporate Kool-Aid or have never worked in an office. giving lots of advice on quiet, quitting, and quiet firing. Um, number one, I, I wanna start with quiet quitting, uh, because it’s not new and everyone’s talking about gen Z doing quiet, quitting, and it’s whole new thing.

And, um, it’s not new. It’s been around forever. I was doing it back when I was in corporate. Plenty of other people did it when they were in corporate. There’s a whole movie on it from like 30 years ago called office space. If you haven’t seen it, watch it. It’s fantastic. Um, I forget the guy’s name, but it’s Jennifer Aniston. Everyone knows that, uh, everyone knows her. Um, and it’s a lot of, you know, the, the famous line outside of, you know, giving back my stapler and I’ll burn the place down was, uh, the guy basically looks at the consultants and says, look, I could push out 10 more TPS reports company makes a little more profit, but I don’t see another dime.

Where’s my motivation. And it’s true. It’s the big kind of elephant in the room of, you know, the, the line that comes from corporate that people are hip to is we’re family. And let’s do it for the company and we’re good together and let’s do more and we’re gonna go above and beyond. And we like it, but nobody really gets rewarded for it. It’s this kind of language that comes out this speech that comes out to people to say, we’re going to do this.

And then when they say, well, can I get a bonus? We’re like, ah, well, sorry down economy. And sorry, we’re laying off 30% of the workforce and sorry, we’re not doing this and sorry, you’re not getting a promotion and sorry. And so people are just, you know, they’re kind of fed up with it. And, um, and that’s just kind of why people just say, screw it. You know, you’re paying me to do a job, I’ll do the job, but don’t yell at me to, to do more than, than what’s expected.

And it’s an interesting, it’s an interesting argument. And I think it’s a fair argument. Um, I remember applying for a job at a big bank. I got the job, uh, and then they switched the job on me, but whatever. Uh, and I met someone who was gonna be reporting to me and she said, look, my only question for you is this. I don’t want a promotion. I don’t want to do anymore.

I’m happy where I am. I wanna spend time with my kids. I’ve got all. And this was, maybe this was 10 years ago, at least 10 years ago, maybe 15. I’m happy. I don’t wanna go above and beyond. I don’t wanna work here till eight o’clock at night. I want, I’m happy. I’m gonna do a good job in my role. Are you okay with that? And I said, absolutely, that’s perfect. You know, we’ll constantly talk about, you know, whatever it is that you want.

And if you want, if that changes, we’ll talk about it. We wanna make sure that we’re getting whatever you need. And I didn’t just say that cause I was interviewing, um, and it was relieving to her, right? Because we constantly say, well, what are you doing? What are your goals this year? How are you going to improve? And we’re force feeding this stuff down. People’s throat, you have to evolve and you have to get promotions.

But look, when you go up a promotion thing, it’s a pyramid. There’s only so many roles and a lot of people aren’t going to get it. And so why would they go above and beyond? They’re being told what to do. They’re doing work. They don’t want to do. And you expect them to spend extra hours at work, to do stuff, just to kind of move the needle along. Doesn’t really add up.

Um, it may not be a popular thing to say, but it’s reality. And let’s just cut the BS it’s reality. And, and you know, oh, who’s the shark. There’s one of the guys from the shark tank, the bald guy, um, he calls himself Mr. Lovely or happy or whatever it is. Um, he, he had some video where it was like a diatribe about how quiet quitters, they’re bad for culture and you’re bad for the business and everything else.

And, um, I, you think they care, right? I mean, telling quiet quitters that they’re bad for corporate culture is like telling heckler it’s bad for people trying to pay attention during a comedy show. Like they don’t care. Uh, and you’re yelling at the wrong people. And rather than yelling at people who are quiet, quitting, which by the way, isn’t a bad thing. It’s just a stupid conversation, right? What is quiet, quitting, they’re doing what you pay them to do.

And then stopping. That’s not a bad thing, right? It’s why do we expect people to do more than, than what’s expected for us, right. That’s bonus, that’s extra. Um, and, and the reality is nobody likes to be told what to do. That’s why I left corporate. Right. I did one of those little personality assessments, um, is when you become a coach and you’re, you’ve got, you need to have assessments in your arsenal.

So you gotta do what they, what you’re making other people do. I gotta pull myself through it and the guy’s reviewing it. And he says, wow, you’re pretty hostile to authority. And I said, oh, okay. That’s good to know. Right. I wish I knew that at the beginning of corporate , but people don’t, nobody wants to be told what to do. Nobody wants to be given a project and say, you do this.

Um, just nobody likes it. And I think there’s, there’s, there’s philosophical phases of workers. Okay. Because when, when I say you’ve got an employee, you’ve got a worker, you have something, you have an image in your mind of who that is and what you expect of them. And we never talk about what expectations are. I’m gonna talk about that in a minute. How do you communicate expectations? But philosophically, I feel like there are different, there are different phases of workers.

There’s this old mentality. And it still trickles through right. Pick yourself up by the bootstraps and work hard. And if you do hard, good honest work, you’ll get your raises and you’ll get rewarded. Yada, yada, yada, yada, yada. And guess what? That’s a load of bullshit. We know that’s bunk. We right. We know that we know that trickle down, economics doesn’t work. We know all of that stuff. Um, they get extra profit and if it comes into my business, you know, I may hire people, but if I don’t need to hire more people, I’m not gonna like, just give it out to people.

That’s my money. Right. We made profit that’s companies exist to create profit that’s okay. Um, but we know that, and everybody knows now, you know, doing hard work does not guarantee you anything. And people are realizing they have to take more control over that. And that that’s the, the quiet, quitting aspect is, you know what, I’m gonna do my limited time here, but I’m gonna do something else on my own so I can make my ends meet and I’m gonna do what’s best for me.

And that’s okay. Right. This whole fascinating, I, someone told me the other day, I’m trying to pay someone 20 bucks an hour and I can’t find a single person to do it. And what I wanted to say to them, I should have, would you do it for 20 bucks an hour? And of course the answer’s gonna be no, right? So you can’t pay someone, you know, anyway, whatever that’s going into a, a different thing.

But so look, you can work hard. Um, and you could be a hard worker. That’s great. But if you’re sitting there building, uh, uh, or digging a tunnel, right? Cause working hard is different philosophically, right? There’s, there’s different definitions of working hard. You can work lots of hours. You can do a very physical, hard physical work. The world has changed on what hard work really means. And you could work really hard digging a tunnel.

But if the expectations are, we need a bridge, then the fact that you worked really hard is fairly irrelevant because it’s not what people need. And so you could work hard, but you’re kind of shit outta luck. And so that’s this, this philosophical idea of hard work and everything that’s out the window. It’s not really relevant right now. And, and if you believe that either at the top of the chain, looking to hire people, doesn’t work that way.

Okay. And people realize you have to change the way you’re talking to your employees. If you’re looking for it and you’re stuck in this, I’m working hard. Guess what? Your promotion’s not really coming. Maybe in a government job where they give promotions to people who have been there for 30 years, but you know what, that’s why it’s such a bureaucratic mess, right? A bureaucratic mess. That’s not gonna get anything done because those people are just putting in time and it’s not really evolving.

Um, but then there’s a second phase. There’s another kind of group of people that would sit there. So I would say that’s the idea of old idea of people working hard. Then there’s another kind of group which I’m gonna call the group that needs a job. Right? And we’re talking about this in the context of quiet, quitting, those people who need a job, because I’m gonna go broke. If I don’t have it, or I don’t want to go back to whatever I came from.

Um, it’s, it’s very much an immigration mindset. And I think of, you know, the old Irish coming over, leaving poverty in the, the 18 hundreds and, and the disaster that Britain had had thrown on them and the, the famine and all of that stuff. We’re leaving political turmoil. We see that with a lot of migrants now where the poverty that’s in central America, we see those people coming up. Now, those people, I speak to people in HR, they say, I will hire those people 12 days out the week, cuz they will put in the extra time, cuz they’re setting up the next generation.

They don’t want to go back to what they had experienced. Right. There is a fear and a need driving that now to be fair, some of ’em get taken advantage of a lot of ’em get taken advantage of, but there is something ingrained in them based on their experience that there is no quiet quitting. They will do everything to make sure that they drive this home. And that’s fantastic. Right? It’s great.

Not great what they came from and everything else, but it’s true. And so they’ve experienced pain. They don’t wanna go back to that. Then you’ve got another group of people which are a few generations after and that’s where most of America is a few generations after. And I hear a lot of people telling me, well, my ancestors worked really hard to get, um, our family set up today and that’s great, but what are you doing today to work hard?

And this goes back to the working hard thing. Um, we think we work hard in many ways and in a lot of ways, we don’t in a lot of ways and this is just real talk. We have this inflated sense of, of what we can do, um, as individuals and, and, and what we’re entitled to and, and everything else. And the people screaming about entitlement are just as entitled as everybody else.

Um, this is not a, a, a right side left side or anything. Entitlement just kind of goes political, which I don’t like to do. But, um, the world has changed most of the us. Um, the ancestors did the hard work for us and we are reaping the benefits. And if you are working with these people, which is the majority of you, uh, you have to think about a different way to get them engaged at work.

There’s nothing wrong with it. Look, we’re lucky to have ancestors who did it and we’re sitting here and we’re, we’ve got the benefits of it and it is what it is. And we were born into it. And there’s nothing, it’s not a problem, right? It’s not our fault. Um, but the majority of people who grew up in a successful America need a different way to be engaged. And question is how do you get them to care?

How do you get them to want to do this type of work? And, and, and this isn’t new, it’s not a gen Z challenge, right? This is, you know, partly gen X challenge, a definitely a millennial challenge, partly you know, everything from, you know, we had major growth in the fifties and it’s been phenomenal. And after world war II, this country’s been the greatest place on the planet. And life has been relatively easy.

We’ve had our problems, of course, um, different groups and everything else, of course. But as a general, matter of fact, I don’t think I’d want to be anywhere besides the us over the last 50 years. And that’s, you know, it’s the way it is. So how do you get these people to be engaged and interested in, in creating something and, and the word there is create, okay, people who have grown up where they, they’re not forced to do certain types of work, need to, co-create a solution for your organization.

They need to have ownership of an idea or a project, not just be given a project and say you own it. They need to come up with the idea. And that’s what gets people engaged and interested in doing work. When we think about entrepreneurs, what entrepreneurs really love outside of not having a boss because we’re hostile to authority. , um, what entrepreneurs really love is their ability to create and create an idea and see it come to fruition.

And, and, um, when we see entrepreneurs who hire staff, who get to that point, oftentimes that philosophy doesn’t make it to staff. And I work with a lot of small business owners, uh, who are frustrated with what their staff does. They’re frustrated with the quiet quitting. They’re frustrated that the staff doesn’t go above and beyond. They’re frustrated with a lot of different things. And they’re frustrated with not coming up with new ideas and doing all these other things that, that, um, the entrepreneur just naturally does.

And the, the, the example I like to give them is the company failed tomorrow. What would you do? And the entrepreneur and the owner is generally like, I’d go starting a business, no question, no worry, right? Like whatever. I would just do it again. If you ask that same question to staff, their first answer or their, their, their worry would be, well, I’d have to find a job. I don’t know where I’d look, I’d have to go, you know, do all of these types of things.

So one, the entrepreneur makes the rules for themselves and will create something for themselves. Staff needs to find someone who can help them create, you know, whatever, or give them something to do. Both are okay. Not everyone could be just be like this big, you know, entrepreneur creator. Um, but what we wanna do is how do we teach people within our organizations to almost be entrepreneurs and residents. And that is a very difficult, you know, you could be an entrepreneur within the confines of an organization.

And I talked about this a few, um, episodes back on, if I would go back to corporate and I could, I could go back to corporate. Now that I know all that I’ve done, starting a business, launching a business, doing all of this, how do I almost become an entrepreneur within the confines of an organization? And that is your answer. If you’re looking for one to quiet, quitting is how do we get people to almost become learned to become an entrepreneur in residents, right?

You’re giving up your time for something for entrepreneurs. It might make sense to give up your time a little bit and some of your freedom so that you get the flexibility of an office. And you, you get all of these things that you had to pay for before the equipment and the printing and the people and the staff and all that other stuff, you can accomplish more with other people. So it’s not, it’s almost like you are creating your world.

You can do it within the confines of an organization, or you can do it outside and create your own business. Once people are creating something, once they have ownership of it, that’s gonna be a very different conversation in terms of how am I being successful and you know, whether or not you’re being successful. And that’s, that’s kind of an answer to, to quiet quitting is how are we communicating these expectations to our people?

But one more thing on this, because I also want to talk about quiet firing, which is the organization that basically goes silent on an individual we’ve given up on you. We’re just gonna make this place miserable until you go away. And that’s a real thing as well. Nobody’s talking about that as much. We love to talk about the worker and we’d love to complain about the worker. Um, but look, I used to be a worker and I hated it sucked.

Let’s be honest. Right? And, and, um, it’s such an arrogant thing. I’m giving you money. You do what I tell you to do. And that’s, , that’s not how it works. The, we have an obligation running an organization as well, um, to not do this quiet firing nonsense. Um, cause I would never tell someone not to quiet, quit, right? My philosophy, I quiet, quit. I did it and I do it again.

Um, but when we talk about quiet, quitting, philosophically, let’s just talk about in theory, you’re getting paid to do a job. I don’t care how many, and this is how I think about work. I don’t care how many hours it takes. If I’m paying you too much to get this one task done. That’s my problem. It’s my job to give you the right amount of task for the amount of money I’m given.

I don’t care when you do it, right? And this is, you know, I’m nimble, I’m small and whatever. It’s a little more difficult and a scaled bureaucratic organization. I get that, but we need to rethink the way we’re thinking about employees. And that’s kind of the big kind of quiet, quitting thing when they’re not meaning expectations. And we just want them to go away. Organizations do something called quiet firing, where they just make the place miserable until they actually go away.

Um, this is where Mr. Happy, wonderful pants, whatever from shark tank, this is where it’s very damaging to culture. And it’s more on the organization than on the quiet quitter individual. Um, so I’ll flip that on its head. It’s up to the company here, um, because it goes both ways. This is where an organization. And, you know, I would say an organization’s terribly, it becomes a virus in the office because what people see is not a miserable employee.

They see what behavior’s being tolerated and the way that a person’s being disrespected. And that becomes massively unproductive and becomes a virus in the organization. People see way more than we give them credit for. And when we see certain behaviors tolerated, why would I go above and beyond? Why would I go do more? Of course I’m gonna quiet, quit. Cause I see what other people are doing. And, and other people aren’t being rewarded and everything else.

Um, there was a study a long time ago. I gotta find it. I keep talking about it. I will find it, um, where they surveyed people who were fired from an organization and surveyed people who weren’t fired. The people who were fired, were treated with the utmost respect, upfront communication handheld through the entire thing. Um, did what they could to get them new jobs, treated them as human beings and everything else.

Those people who were fired, gave extremely high marks on their respect for the company and what they thought about the company and what they ever go back and what they do more for that company. The people who stayed and saw those people who got fired and were not treated with respect, gave like negative scores. I don’t respect the organization and those people are still working there. And that’s the problem is how are we treating our people with respect?

And this is a difficult challenge for organizations, especially as you get larger, because there are a lot of break points, a lot of ropes that can break, uh, a lot of chains that can break in terms of are we respecting our people? And it does have to go both ways. You can’t tell employees to treat your organization like a family, but then not treat them like a family member right back. And there is this theory.

We have theory versus reality. And I talk a lot about this when I’m on my little speaking circuits, um, there is a theory of what we expect and what we want. And there’s the reality of having the conversation. And one of the big skill sets we need right now is how to have difficult expectation conversations. One at the forefront. This is what I expect from you. Do you understand and spit back what my expectations of you are going to be and how you’re gonna execute.

It’s a dialogue when someone’s not meeting your expectations. How do we articulate those details? And how do we do that? If a person has to tell you, you know, when we’re clear on our intentions, when we’re clear on, you know, what we want people to do, people will know when they’re hitting it. And people will very much know when they’re not. And if there is any ambiguity in the conversation between someone’s meaning our expectations are not, um, that’s on you as the person in, in a position of authority and management, nothing is worse than telling someone when you didn’t hit their expectations.

But if someone doesn’t know that they’re not hitting your expectations, that’s on you. We can’t blame them for innocent ignorance. And when you have that conversation of you’re not meeting my expectations, that person’s gonna know if you set it up properly, I know this is what I was supposed to do. It’s just much easier to rip the bandaid. Okay? There’s no big surprise. There’s no difficult conversation. There’s no big blow up.

And it shows everyone else that you mean business and a really productive and, and effective way. And this is what I expected from you. You didn’t hit it, you get it. I get it. Maybe we just go our separate ways. That’s, it’s a logical kind of it happens. Right? And it’s very important going forward. As you talk about your people. And as you talk about your planning and your annual planning and everything else, how do you communicate your expectations of other people?

And this is beyond just the workplace. This is at home. This is your community and everything else. And so quiet, quitting, quiet, firing, not new, but I would say the onus is on the organization to kind of fix it. We can’t blame a person for being lazy, cuz that’s not what they’re actually doing. They’re just doing what you paid them to do. And if you are not setting your expectations well enough, sorry man, it’s on you.

Um, which kind of sucks. Right? And you could go looking for another one. It’s gonna go above and beyond. And that’s why we get this cycle of you go in and you’re raging to do good work and you get about two quarters in and you’re doing great. And then all of a sudden you burn out and you say, this kind of sucks. This is just like the last place. And after a year, year and a half, you’re gonna start looking around and saying, what else do I do?

Um, we haven’t set these people up for success and that’s what we have to do from an organizational perspective. So good luck with it. Um, a little theory, little reality, but I hope this was helpful as you think about your quiet quitting situations and your quiet firing and the way that we’re treating about people. It’s about respect. It’s about expectations and that’s just my opinion. I hope you like it. Have a wonderful week.

I’ll talk to you next week. Next week, we’re talking about politics of the C-suite. It’s gonna be interesting. Should CEOs get political? Oh, it’s I’ve got opinions. It’s gonna be good. I’ll see you next week. Thank you everyone. Talk to you soon.

We typically speak of generational differences in the context of work (Boomers vs. Millennials!), but the conversation needs to go significantly further than that. The differences have major impact on societal changes, political changes, community and home changes; and as we sit at major decision points, we have to be able to learn from different generations and incorporate the perspectives.

Here is why: context changes. The year 1985 was viewed very differently from people in their 20s, 40s and 60s. The same is true today.

Growing up at the tail end of Gen X, my perspective has been formed by the way we were treated by previous generations, as well as the context of our experiences and major events. Gen X was the “lazy generation,” and at a macro level, you can see that it’s left the generation as skeptical, yet capable, of doing important things.

Whether you find yourself in the Boomer set, Gen X, Millennial or Gen Z, we all have opinions on our own generation and others. But it’s important to remember that we each generation has validity of perspective; one that we can interpret and learn from, but those learnings and lessons must be adapted to today’s context.

The world will evolve in spite of each generation, and we will see each generation arc over to a struggle for relevance. It’s happened before and will continue to happen. No matter the decision you have to make – the learning mindset of approaching and understanding others will provide value and influence that is far bigger than the short term decision of today.

With that – have a good week, enjoy your learning.

“We look on past ages with condescension, as a mere preparation for us….but what if we are a mere after-glow of them?” – JG Farrell, The Siege of Krishnapur

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Welcome to bellwether. Thank you for joining again. This week episode, 106. We’re gonna talk about the different generations. Very topical right now. I like to do topical things and we’re talking in a topical sense about the difference. The generational differences between boomers X, me is X millennials, Z, um, Y ABC, and every other letter. Uh, and I’ve talked about this before. Typically we talk about differing generations in the context of work boomers and millennials. It was like the, the battle of the century, the right. They hate each other, um, the okay boomer and the, the ignorant millennials and the, you know, whatever it is that they want, but generationally, we there’s, there’s a lot of context by generation that really influences our, our worldview and our perspectives. And it’s kind of fascinating, the more you dive into it and the, the different generations that are out there and, and the way that they approach things.So this leads to beyond the workplace, things like societal changes, legal changes, political changes, uh, all very relevant today. And, and we can learn from these different generations as major decisions get made, or when we’re thinking about something relevant to ourselves. So for example, um, one time a while ago, I did a, uh, a podcast. I think I did a podcast on retirement and what baby boomers can learn from millennials in terms of the mindset of preparing the mentality of preparing for retirement. Now, we always talk about retirement in the context of financial decision, and do you have enough money to, to retire and go do whatever it is you want to do? Um, but there’s a psychological aspect too. And how do you approach it from an entrepreneurial standpoint to a keeping busy standpoint, to a side hustle standpoint, um, to a project based, you know, how do you keep yourself busy without doing the full grind kind of thing?And, uh, at the time, this was a few years ago, it was very, it was very topical from a millennial, uh, standpoint, um, point. Um, and just to be clear, uh, I’m not a millennial, I’m not a baby boomer, I’m at the tail end of generation X, which is the greatest generation. I will say that. Um, but I understand my wife’s a millennial and, and so I’m, I’m closer to that millennial so than I am to the boomers, but, um, but there was a time, you know, when the first baby boomer millennial kind of go at it, aspect of challenging each other, uh, I mean, it was probably at least a decade ago. Um, the millennials were probably what, late twenties, mid twenties. And so, um, you know, it was at that time when a generation was having fun, they should be having fun, um, and boomers resented it. And that kindOf led to the whole entire, um, difficulty, but, but the mindset and the way the millennials had approached work, thanks to the technology and context of everything that had happened was very different than the typical way that the boomers would’ve approached and even previous generations, because the world had changed completely. And, uh, you could kind of see the boomers resented the youth almost. And I mean, we and gen X dealt with it as well. We were the lazy generation, but, um, but so it’s interesting that generations hitting different times, you know, everyone’s gonna hate gen Z because they’re young , but, but their, their world view is gonna be very different. So where this all came up from and why I wanted to talk about it. Uh, and, and really the point of this podcast is to just to get you to think about it.It’s not like you wanna solve problems with this thing, but, uh, I have a, a young lady who works for me, her name’s Leah. She has all my social media, um, because I hate social media. Um, I just hate doing it and I don’t do it. And, and it’s almost table stakes. You have to do it if you have a business. And so I’ve got Leah to do it for me, and she gives me a list of things to do, and I’ll do a quick video for whatever she asks and I put it out and, or I send it to her and she puts it out. Um, and there you go. Right. Uh, great, good, good, good, good. She does good work and, and I like it, but we were talking about stuff, but she wanted to, um, she said, can I repost something from Gary V for those who don’t know Gary Vayner, Chuck, he runs Vayner media.He did wine.com. He’s kind of a forward thinker, very popular, lots of followers. And I, I kind of jumped on the fence on that one. Uh, and it led to a longer discussion on why generation X really doesn’t care for Gary V um, from my, from where I sit and I’m, I’m probably, it’s not that I don’t care for him, but I, I, you know, the value is questionable and I’ve kind of ebbed and flowed on, on Gary V. And, um, it just led to a longer conversation on, on generational differences and, and she loves Gary V, um, which is great. And there’s a generation who loves Gary V and, and I, I think, you know, my initial response to her was the reason we don’t really care for Gary V is that generation X, if you could give us a word to define our generation, it would probably be skeptical.Uh, generation X is known to be very skeptical of everything. Um, and, uh, I, I think it’s a great, obviously I think it’s a great way to be, um, we tend to dive into, or at least I do sometimes I go into cynicism a little too much, but, you know, skepticism is, is kind of relevant. So, um, the value of what people are putting out, which is, um, we’re skeptical of it. And, uh, and it’s just based on our experiences and the way that we were raised. And, and, you know, we were constantly told we were the worst generation and the lazy generation and, um, with all of our grunge music and, and good stuff from the late eighties and early nineties, um, it was the first time that, that we had almost that scale. We could share information and, and boomers could share information.And, um, we’ve gone through more changes than, than some of the other generations and the younger generations are going through even more than that. So, um, so much of the discussion that we had, uh, with Leah was, you know, a lot of the discussion normally is between boomers and millennials, but there’s a gen X and gen Z one that’s going to, to shake out. Um, and it’s going to be driven by, or, or it’s going to result in something very different because gen X’s skepticism is very different than, uh, I think if you used the word to describe boomers, not being a boomer, uh, I think the, the non boomers would probably describe them as selfish. The non gen X would probably come up with other words besides skeptical that wouldn’t necessarily be positive. Um, millennials would come up with very different words to describe themselves than the other generations, um, as well as, as gen Z, because, you know, we’re, we think of ourselves as each generation thinks of ourselves is fantastic.But, um, when we think about Gary V back to the story, uh, the reason we’re skeptical of it, and, and I’ll, I can only talk about my perspective on it is when he first started making, uh, a ruckus, I guess, online, I was fairly dismissive of it only because it was just speaking of platitudes, right. There was no real value in it. Um, and, uh, and I said, that’s great, but it doesn’t mean anything. And, and then I started to come around and say, all right, some people can get value out of it. It hits people at the right time. Find maybe somebody gets value out of it. Um, but you know, what’s the message. And, and what’s really the point. And then I kind of went back to, you know, this whole NFT stuff, and yes, it’s valid. It’s gonna change the world and everything else.But, um, again, what’s the value and, and people, I think my issue with Gary V now is people blindly follow without fully understanding. Um, and so while Gary V has value, I would say gen X looks at it from a slightly different perspective. You know, some of us could hustle in multiple ways. You know, the big thing about Gary V was about hustling and, and there’s, there’s validity to that. And I think a lot of millennials and younger generations really were able to hustle, take the weekends to go do the garage sales and flip it and do all those types of things. And you’ll see that now. And, and I would attribute all of the, the COVID hustling, the people buying up all the properties and trying to turn them into Airbnbs and doing all of the stuff that comes down to hustle and side income and everything else, um, which is okay.Uh, gen X, we’re probably a little too late for that. Um, we have a different context, you know, money’s tied up in mortgages and kids and, and everything else. Um, so we’re at a different time in our lives, millennials who maybe in their late twenties, early thirties, haven’t quite made that yet are able to use some of this extra income to, to do these side hustles. And that’s great. And so that’s, that’s probably relative. Um, but my, my issue is, um, we need to take things like Gary V and interpret it based on where we are in that current moment. And, and each generation is in a different place at that current moment. Um, and, and I think the challenges with, with generations, I feel like boomers probably got the, the, the thing in the fifties and the sixties, right? They hated the different types of music and the older generations hated them from the late 18 hundreds.You know, the, you know, these crazy kids and calling young kids snowflakes it’s been around forever. Um, but there is a validity to the young generations, like gen Z. There is an idealism that comes from less exposure. It’s part of it’s naive naivety. However you pronounce that naivety naivety, um, and more exposure impacts our worldview. Um, we suddenly become more right and less of a learner. Um, and, uh, you know, we always joked in gen Z about being the worst class ever. We were told the worst class, this, we were the worst class the school has ever been. And I feel like that’s probably every, every grade that comes up. Um, but when we think about the context of different generations, the boomers growing up in just massive growth, it’s the end of world war II. It was so not typical. Every like the us was at the top of the world.Um, they didn’t really have to work the way that other people have to work. Other countries had to work, um, and that impacts their worldview now, whereas the us is on a slight decline, if not a precipitous decline, um, their perspective on how easy it was previously is not necessarily relevant today. And, um, you know, me thinking about being gen X, I didn’t have my first email address until I was in college. I didn’t have my first cell phone until I think I was a senior in college. Um, you know, we grew up before nine 11. I remember coming off planes and my parents meeting me at the plane. Um, we didn’t carry around the phone. There was a lot, you didn’t know everything about gen X is we just didn’t know. And if you wanted to learn something, you had to go to the library and actually look it up.Um, and we didn’t care to know it, and it was okay. And, and we had to figure things out and you know, now we have, now you look at the next generations who are growing up in this context where all the information is at their fingertips. And I spoke last week in last week’s podcast. I think it was, um, in terms of believability where information is constantly at our fingertips now. And how do you become a believable individual? Because just having knowledge doesn’t really do anything for you, just knowing facts. Doesn’t do anything for you. It’s how do you turn that into wisdom and interpret it into a, a different type of thing. So thingsLike Gary V promoting all this hustle stuff and, and everything else is fine. If you know how to interpret it for your particular situation. Um, and we do that through learning and we can learn from different perspectives. So I think the main point of today is I’ve been rambling for like 15 minutes is we can learn from other generations, but we have to apply their learnings and lessons to today’s context. Today’s context is very different than anything that came before us making rules in the 1980s or making decisions in the 1980s are fundamentally different than the decisions we’d be making today. Um, I see it a lot in the coaching world, senior coaches, the gray-haired coaches who are coming out, who were Titans of business in the eighties and nineties, who are trying to talk about what Jack Welch did is completely irrelevant today. It’s so outdated.And we find now that a lot of the things that were, you know, law of the land, the rules of, of how business operated and, and everything else from the eighties and nineties are really early, two thousands are irrelevant 20, 30 years. Right now, I just saw something. When I, I remember the early nineties, this movie came out called dazed and confused, and I loved it. It was, I’ve watched it hundreds of times. Um, and it was about this one day at this one high school in the 1970s, it was like 1975 or 76 or something. Basically it was 17 years before the movie was made. And if that movie was made today in 2022, it would be about 2005. And when I watched the movie in the early 1990s, the 1970s was a completely different world. Yes, I was born in the seventies, but you didn’t really get the seventies.Right. You just heard about it from before. And when you watch this movie in the early nineties, which was, you know, we were listening to Pearl jam in Nirvana and, and we were doing cool things and we could use computers, but, um, it just looked like a completely foreign place. If you look back now from 2022 to 2005, it seems like it was yesterday. And, uh, it feels like it was yesterday. So, so generations and context change abruptly right before our very eyes. And we need to do our best to try and keep up, but our context and our value and our relevance changes very quickly too. And if I were to think about the boomers and the X and the millennial and the Z, we all have defining moments, uh, defining economies, defining experiences, um, whether it was the challenger nine 11 or, or, um, any of the wars or whatever. Um, but the world is, is going to continue to evolve without us. And while each perspective has validity, the interpretation for its relevance todayIs, is consistently up for, for discussion. And if you look at where the, the different generations stand now, I mean, the boomers in a work context, especially are struggling for relevance. They’re trying to hold onto power. Um, but they are less and less relevant in the workplace. Um, and beyond I would say, right, I mean, they’re, they, they still are a juggernaut and they’re gonna be very expensive for the rest of us to take care of them and, and everything. And that’s just a fact, um, but they feel it too. And, and they feel they’re relevant slipping away. And gen X is just kind of in, in between, right. Um, you know, the bigger millennial group’s gonna come up after. And, and so, you know, our relevance is, is minimal in, in between these two larger generations, gen zer kids, but their perspective has validity, of course.And so the real struggle and challenge, I think if I were to, to wrap it in a nice little bow is relevance between generations generational differences are, are all about relevance and who’s relevant today. And when you feel your relevance slipping away, that’s a very difficult pill to take. And so the context of your relevance and how you create relevance is different. You don’t force it in, it just changes and, and that’s that’s work for you to do so. I just read a book, um, called the siege of Chris Nur. Uh, it was a fictional account of how the Brits kind of force themselves into India and India rose up. Um, but it was based in some reality. And, uh, they put this line in the book, J Farrow, uh, said, we look on past ages with condescension condescension. Um, we look on past ages with condescension as a mere preparation for us, but what if we are a mere after glow of them?And it was something that made me think, especially as I was thinking about the generational differences and everything else is we’re so condescending to other generations because they’re not us, but their perspectives have validity. And the light may be dimming a little bit. Um, but it’s not necessarily the cause of particular generations because the context of the world changes and we have to embrace that and we have to be open to that. And, uh, we have to respond to that in an appropriate way, um, because time will time will move on. So, uh, with that, I hope everyone has a wonderful week, something to think about generational differences and, and the older and the younger among us. And, um, yeah, I hope you think. Well, and I hope you have a wonderful week and as always, I’m, I’m happy to talk, chat with you soon. Thanks.