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

Your content goes here. Edit or remove this text inline or in the module Content settings. You can also style every aspect of this content in the module Design settings and even apply custom CSS to this text in the module Advanced settings.

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.

Hey folks – this week I want to cover another one of those “skills for the new economy” that breaks things down a bit differently than normal leadership development. This time – it’s about believability.

I’m seeing a significantly higher desire from individuals to be recognized for their influence or authority, and in an effort to drive this perception, they are building up their “answers” to big challenges, support with facts and limited research.

While this may have worked in the past, the challenge is now elevated. For others to recognize this influence, we have a new level of focus, and that’s believability. Believability, as I dive into the podcast, is a pairing of influence, authority, credibility, reputation, trust and more. For those looking to move ahead at the workplace, it’s a game changer.

There is no shortage of information out there; facts that we can pull out at random times to seem like we know what we are talking about. But what we are learning is that facts require context, and understanding the implication of these facts in a broader context is a step too often not taken far enough.

Trust in our opinions and commentary is something that is earned over time, and we can take tangible steps in order to build this reputation and become more believable, and thus more valuable, to those around us.

We need to elevate our learning, understand our belief systems, ask really good questions and teach those around us the process of coming to a solution.

It’s no longer possible to just be an “idea person.” We have to become thinkers that elevate the group. Rather than just talking about what’s possible, we need to challenge ourselves and others to think philosophically and tangibly at the same time … it’s where the real value lies.

Good luck, and be believable!

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Welcome to bellwether. Thank you for being here today. Today on this episode, 105, I think 105. Yes, 105. Today. We’re gonna talk about believability, believability. I want to cover it, what it is, why it’s important. I’m going to tell you that believability is one of those skills that is not developed, but is going to need to be in the new economy. Uh, I had a client who was very big on believability, dove in deep into believability. How do you actually become believable as a human being? And he wanted it more for the people who are speaking up in the organization. How do you just build this credibility? Not even, but credibility is one aspect of it, but it’s not all of it. Uh, we’re gonna talk about all these, you know, authority and, and, and influence and credibility and, and all of these types of things that fall around to it.But the ability to be believable as an individual is becoming more and more important, uh, as we look to become valid members of the executive suite and, and bring real value to organizations. So if we think about broader, you know, you’ll hear me talk all the time on, on this podcast about what are the, what are the skills for the new economy, right? This isn’t 1990s, PowerPoint presentation, crap. What is the stuff that you actually should be focusing on that they’re not teaching you at work? They’re not investing on you in work. These are the things that are, that are actually valid, uh, and different things to get you to think about your capability, your influence, your credibility, your reputation, whatever it is in a different type of way. And believability is one of them. Uh, I’ve talked before about self-efficacy, that’s a huge one.Um, and there’s more and more and more ability to communicate, et cetera, etcetera, this falls under that, that kind of category. So I want to talk to you about believability, how to become believable and what does believability actually mean? And I wanna right at the front say, this is not about making a fact more believable. Okay. Um, or a story more believable or your belief more believable because that’s not you, it’s about making you more believable as an individual. Uh, and, and part of that obviously is there’s going to have to be an accuracy aspect. You can’t just kind of make crap up in order to just be believable because then it will eventually blow up in your face. But how do we make you believable as you sit around the senior leadership table, where people are saying, all right, what that person’s saying is valid, right.I don’t have to take it. You know, I could just take it as, as, as valid. There is this weird conundrum that we have, you know, we have this desire for things like authority and influence. And, and when we think about our development and our success and where we make it to in, in terms of our organization and our company and our business, and, and it’s why we want promotions, right? It’s this external validation that we’re all looking for, but our desire for these things versus what the organization organization sees. There’s a disconnect generally. And, and this disconnect presents challenges for some people. Okay. So our desire for authority and influence, but whether or not the organization sees it are to two things that need to be, to be married in some kind of way. And so more and more, this, this ability to have influence.Uh, and we see this, um, we, we think we need the answers for, for us to have influence. We think we need to go find out all this knowledge and spit back facts and, and do kind of, um, you know, it’s okay, I’m an authority. I know what this is because I watched TikTok video and, and stayed in the holiday in last night. And, and we think this gives us some kind of influence, um, or authority. And, and the challenge you have with that is that, uh, we’re constantly fighting misinformation on, on all sides, right? No matter who you want to go to. So, so if you sit and watch a TikTok video from authority, um, it’s wrong, right? And, and it’s constant half information where people take facts, but then it turns into misguided information. And, uh, for some, their hearts are in the right place, right.They just, they’re really trying really hard and they wanna be valid and they wanna, you know, they they’re looking for this influence and they want to do it. Um, others are just trying to get TikTok views, um, or Instagram views or, or whatever. Uh, but at the end of the day, information is now flying at us faster than we could process, which we know. Uh, and one of the things we’re going to have to develop is our reputation as a believable, incredible individual, to help other people’s filters, as they’re filtering information, how do you become the one that they say, you know what? I could ignore this stuff because this individual is giving me trustworthy and accurate information. And I believe that, uh, that, that, that you are who, who you, you say you’re going to be. And so that’s why it’s not about making a fact more believable because the facts are out there.And we can, we can find that it’s about making you more believable, um, as an individual. So in, in order to do that, we have to elevate our education and we have to elevate our learning and our interpretation of data. And, and it needs to evolve with the time. So it was this great video I saw on TikTok . Um, but I like the way the guy framed it out. And it was, you know, it was long, it was, um, longer than it should have been for a TikTok video. But basically his argument was we have information at our fingertips, um, and it’s easier than ever to know facts, right? So facts are everywhere. Pull up your phone, right? When was Tom petty born? You got it done, right? Whatever. Um, but the development of why they are relevant, these facts, why we need to be aware of them, uh, why, whatever we ignore the context that informs the fact, because we’re just repeating a fact.And when the context change, it makes the facts inaccurate. And it’s a problem with statistics. Whenever somebody starts quoting statistics, I instantly put them into the mode, like bucket. Um, because they’re, if you’re using statistics to D defend it, I’m instantly thinking that you’re being selective in the information that you’re choosing to do, um, or to use. So anyone can repeat facts. Uh, what I want you to do as an individual is, is wisdom goes far beyond just repeating facts, right? We know theory, um, but not reality. Uh, how do we, how do we translate these facts or ideas or beliefs or whatever it is into some kind of competence or action, uh, or steps to get something done. And when we think about the new economy providing value, uh, the transactional world of you give someone your time to create something for the business and the business pays you.It’s no longer enough to be an idea person. It’s no longer enough to just think stuff up. You have to understand the steps in order to get there. And that’s where real value comes in. And that’s where believability self-efficacy. These are the things that really go hand in hand. Um, and I, I see it very often. Maybe I’m overly sensitive to it, especially in the coaching world. Um, these people come out and said, oh, I took classes in leadership. So now I can lead a team. And you say, you’re not really a good leader until you actually lead people. You can’t be a, a leadership coach unless you’ve actually led a team, right. Because there’s a reality to it. How are you gonna be a business coach if you’ve never worked in a business? Okay. So we could talk about the theory all of the time, but we know that reality is, is a very different, very different puzzle to crack.Um, believability comes with expertise and expertise comes from experience and experience comes from not taking a class of reading a book or watching a TikTok video or anything else. It comes from actually exploring, asking questions and answering the questions that you could be purely curious about and figuring that out and figuring out your, your own typical types of solutions. It comes from learning in the moment comes from harsh, harsh lessons from making mistakes, owning up to them. Uh, a lot of the time I’m working with clients and they want their people to do something different. They want to change behavior. They want to do whatever. Um, and, and the harshest lessons are the best ones. If you have someone who has to own up to the fact that they made a mistake, they will not make that mistake again, if they have to articulate the mistake that they made, right?Because it’s extremely uncomfortable, right? There’s consequence for our actions and our own understanding that we missed. The mark is a life lesson. And when we’ve missed the mark before suddenly our credibility and believability go significantly up in the future, because we’ve actually experienced whatever the other people are trying to experience. Um, so believability, I mean, when we talk about that, what is it? Um, we talk about credibility is one of those words, um, influence authority. Trust is a big one. Uh, reputation is a big one. So all of these words really fill up, um, to do that. And, and what I would say is if I could wrap what it is before we talk about how to do it, how to build your believability, um, we have to create a reputation that we have a desire to find the right solution and not just be right.And there’s nuance in that. And that’s, um, easier said than done, of course, but we have to have a curiosity mindset where we’re asking questions and on wrapping it, and we could talk about all different sides of whatever it is that we’re looking to solve. So how do we do this? How do we become more believable? Uh, we have to be open to changing our thinking, okay. Which easier said than done. Right. And that doesn’t really mean anything, but it means something to me. So , I’ll do that. Uh, and, and I wanna give you some notes on beliefs. I’ve spoken before on belief systems. And I did a full episode on belief systems. What do you actually believe? I say, it’s one of the three pillars of your mental health, um, mental health. We talk about self love, right? Loving yourself, self care, take care of yourself, but then what do you actually believe?And the reason I put that into mental health, um, is because it’s part of our self exploration and understanding, and we don’t have to defend things because we understand things at that point. It’s this kind of constant curiosity as to what we believe in questioning ourselves. And, uh, you go into a lot of rabbit holes and it’s a lot of fun and it’s unnerving, but the more you do it, the more comfortable you get with it. And it’s, it’s really exciting. So we tend to in life, we just repeat things. We’ve been told things our entire lives. Um, and the question is, do you actually believe them? And are they just ingrained assumptions that you’re operating on and, and using those and just repeating back, and you can’t really defend it. And we find ourselves trying to defend something we don’t actually believe. And then all of a sudden your believability is shot because you just start shouting and you get defensive and whatever.Um, when we start to explore why we do or do not believe anything, and this could be anything, um, it could be as big as do you believe in God, to what’s the best way to parent to, um, who’s the greatest baseball player of all time. It doesn’t matter. Uh, but when we think about that from what do you actually believe we learn, um, that in order to truly believe something, we have to fully understand the other side. And when you fully understand the other side, you’re having a very different type of conversation, because now you’re just curious about why people believe certain things. And it’s, um, more about exploring an idea rather than just telling people what’s right or wrong. Um, and if you think about the old stoic and, and all of that, they never came to solutions. They just, you know, talked about what if and why, and, and, and all that stuff.So, um, when you’re able to speak objectively about your beliefs, um, and expect and objectively express how you’ve heard the other side, you just have a whole different level of, of conversation. Um, and that’s great, but it goes beyond just what you believe. That’s just one step. It’s a process of figuring out what you believe, just like being, becoming believable as a process and figuring out whatever it is. You’re trying to be an authority on. Okay. Repeating facts does not make you an authority understanding why those facts exist, uh, makes you more believable and makes you more of an authority in understanding that. So, um, and so that’s it. So we want people to, to, to trust the process for influence authority, authority, credibility, whatever it is, believability, we can elevate our status within the organization by becoming more believable by becoming, having a reputation as a believable individual.And we do that by asking really, really good questions. We do this by elevating the group around us to become more philosophical. It it, uh, by elevating people’s thought process, by challenging the way that people think in a really productive way to come to solutions is, uh, a complete game changer in, in the new economy, complete game changer. And so, like I said, just a minute ago, it’s not enough to be an idea person. Um, it might be enough to be a thinker who can elevate the thinking of the group, uh, and rather than just talking about, what’s possible, we have to talk about how do we do this and what if we challenge things and what if we did it in this way, and what are those steps and what does that look like? And having those types of conversations, um, in both a philosophical and a tangible way, there is real, real value in that. And as we think about moving up in a development standpoint from an individual contributor to managing a team, to getting to the C-suite where it’s very philosophical, enterprisewide, let’s talk about theory. There is this full range of reality and theory that we have to mesh together and believability is, is one of those big key components that’s gonna help you get there. I hope that was helpful. It was quick, it’s more just kind of a ramble today. Um, but I’ve been wanting to talk about believabilityFor a while and, and I’m exploring it myself. And it’s something that’s helpful. I think, uh, I’m learning a lot and I hope you learned a lot too. So I would encourage you to think about what makes you believable. And it’s not just repeating , it’s not just repeating TikTok videos, uh, as much as I love it, and talk’s a thing, but it’s Facebook posts, whatever social media is one, um, where you get your information is very, very important, um, and do it and explore and learn. And, and that’s tons of fun. So have fun, be believable challenge thinking, think about yourself and do well. And with that, I hope everyone has a wonderful week and I’ll talk to everyone soon. Thanks.

There has been a lot of discussion going around about the similarities between now and 2007. This conversation is happening in the marketplace, but I’ve also been involved in similar discussions with leadership teams throughout a fair number of industries. Despite organizational differences, the conversations are strikingly similar.

While we can name similarities (marketplace pressures, expected downside to the economy and organizational distress), I’m more focused today on what tactical steps individuals can take in order to be in a better position when whatever challenges come. 

There are two aspects that are relevant. First, and I’ve said this many times before, I believe that organizations have an absolute obligation to help their employees prepare for the market downturn and correction that experts are calling for. Secondly, that while that’s nice in theory, the reality is that the responsibility for preparing still comes down to you, the individual. 

My time working in Executive Communications, Public Relations and Investor Relations during the financial crisis gave me a unique perspective and strong lessons in what good leadership and effective communication looked like during times of difficulty. It’s where I earned my “chops,” and these lessons inform my work today. 

This week’s podcast outlines what executives did and did not do well during that difficult time. The successful executives were able to name and understand their multiple audiences; articulate value in a contextual way, and maintain a larger perspective that allowed them to make short-term decisions towards a longer-term vision. It was a tall order, and those who couldn’t do it well became, what I call, “victims of a down economy.” 

Today, we see similar stresses, especially for individuals in corporate who are “feeling” the difficulty around the corner. They can read the news, yet are unsure or feel overwhelmed on where to begin. 

While we can’t control when or how the next crash is coming, we know that one is guaranteed. And our focus shouldn’t be on when or how it comes, but rather stacking our deck so that we are in a better position than the masses when needed. This means taking the time to strengthen our network today, before the rest of the industry scrambles to do so. It means taking a short time to go through the exercise of understanding and being able to articulate our value in a meaningful way, and also understanding who our audiences are going to be. 

More details on the podcast, and I encourage you to begin the work. Those who get started sooner will have a much easier transition through the next few years.

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Welcome to bellwether. We’re gonna talk about similarities and processes and cyclical stuff. It’s all kind of fun, but it’s very, very relevant. What I wanna talk about today and what I’m going to talk about today. I wanna talk about similarities between now and 2007, which I’ve talked a little bit about in the past. I’m gonna talk about it again because it’s extremely relevant and every single one, every single one of my clients, I’m having a conversation in some way about this and this isn’t just relevant today. It’s gonna be relevant later. Everything is cyclical. We know about that, but I wanna chat about, uh, similarities between now and 2007. And when I say 2007, for those who may not, um, who may, it may not trigger particular memories, the same memories that I have 2007 was the lead up to the financial crisis and, and the downturn and, and all of that negative, uh, difficult time that, that people reference.Um, now I don’t wanna talk about similarities today in terms of investing, because that’s where most of it goes. When we talk about economy, we talk about how people can invest in different ways and prepare for it that way. I don’t wanna talk about that because this isn’t the form for that. What I, I do wanna talk about similarities between now and then I want to talk about what I learned back then, because what you may not know about me and my corporate career, I was working in executive communications, PR investor relations, business strategy, all that stuff in the financial industry during the financial crash. So I had a lot of exposure to executives who did things well and not. So I’m gonna talk about that, what they did well, and didn’t, and then I wanna talk about you as an individual, how you can set yourself up for, um, whatever it is that’s coming.So I will say two things right at the right at the top. Well, maybe three things, one, um, we know that business is cyclical. We know that it’s a process. So when we look at challenges that are coming, we could find similarities to the past and we make good decisions based on that data. That’s what we do. We take examples from what happened before, what happened? How is that relevant today? Let’s reflect, okay. How do we make decisions going forward? That informs our decisions today. Some of these cycles are extremely long. Like if you read the Ray Dalio books, he’s looking at ’em over centuries and, and everything else, some of them are much shorter, like market corrections and everything are every what, 10 years or so give or take 10 to 15 years. And that’s where we’re looking at ourselves now. Um, so that’s that two, I don’t wanna talk again.I don’t want to get into, um, investing right now because that’s, I just don’t want to do that. Right? Whatever, invest how you wanna invest. I’m not gonna tell you what’s right or wrong, but I want to talk about how you’re getting yourself ready personally, individually for this, because there’s a bigger picture than just how you’re investing, um, and trying to time the market. I’m not looking to time the market. That’s also stupid. Number three, I will say you as an individual. Well, you know, before I get to you as an individual, I wanna start everything right at the top. I have a belief. This is my number three. I have a belief that I’m all organizations have an absolute I’ve said this before. I’m gonna keep saying it. They have an absolute obligation to prepare their people for whatever change is coming. I’m talking to boardrooms right now.And these conversations are happening in, in every executive team is discussing it. This isn’t filtering down to the people in your organization. Yet they hear the experts talking about what’s coming. It is just, it’s not expensive to do this. It’s about telling them, you know, giving them insight into the decisions that are being made, but also giving them the skillset or ability to prepare for this on an individual basis. Um, one is the right thing to do. Uh, and two, it, it, it will build a loyalty, um, and is revamping your people strategy. And it’s setting yourself up for success later. So I won’t dive into that, but that is a firm belief of mine. If you are running an organization and you have not been doing this call me because I can, this is I have the plan. And the, the thing that we could structure this out, it’s a cascade.Every client is talking about this, but let’s get into number four because this is what I want to talk about today. You as an individual, right? It’s nice to think that the organization would have this obligation and do those things for you and, and take care of you and do all that stuff. Um, but ultimately most of them aren’t gonna do it. And that’s, that’s just a reality, right? We could, we could talk about the organization is supposed to be preparing you for all kinds of stuff and two-way loyalty and all kind of nonsense. Right? It’s great. In theory, it doesn’t happen. In reality, you, as an individual are solely responsible for preparing yourself for whatever happens in the next 12 to 24 months. Okay. You could blame people for what happened. You can blame people for whatever, but ultimately it’s up to you. And I’m gonna talk to you about that today.So we’re gonna talk first about similarities between now and 2007. I’m gonna tell you what the executives did well, and didn’t do well in 2007. And then I’m gonna wrap this up by what can you, as an individual take responsibility for what steps can you take to set yourself up? Uh, so that relatively against your peers and everybody else, you’re in a, a much better position to, to execute on whatever it is. You have to execute when, when things go haywire. So, um, we don’t know when, so let’s talk about similarities, um, between now and 2007. Um, I won’t get into to how it happens, but, but if we were to take just a big picture, look at now versus then the cycle, okay. We’re, we’re looking at the, the economic cycle without getting to very broad strokes. Um, there’s a debt bubble. Okay. We got it.Housing crisis back then. It’s credit today. Um, when we take a look at the buy now pay later stuff and, and all of that. And amongst the other things, money is cheap. There’s tons of money out there. Um, firms are taking hits, significant hits the economy. Like people are pulling back, they’re starting to feel it. They’re not spending money. It was financial back then. We’re seeing it’s already in technology. Technology firms have already been laying people off. Um, so there’s a lot of organizational distress that’s happening. Um, that a lot of employees are talking to me about. We feel it. We don’t know what’s gonna happen. I’m nervous. Am I still gonna have a job? Right. It’s it’s. And on top of that, do I have to go back to the office and all kinds of other stress? It’s, it’s crazy. Um, there’s a false confidence in people’s money, and they’re starting to realize it, uh, because they don’t fully understand how it works.So before it was in, in buying houses for like crazy mortgage stuff that, that blew up and then investing in things with mortgages that didn’t, they didn’t fully understand the tech, the financial firms didn’t fully understand it. Now we see it with, um, especially with crypto, um, people don’t fully get it, and there’s gonna be a lot of people holding the bag, uh, and it’s gonna be empty. So there’s a, there’s a significant, and we’ve been saying this for a while. Um, it hasn’t happened yet. That’s fine. This isn’t about timing it. We just know most people will recognize there’s going to be a crash. Okay. Um, we don’t know when it’s gonna happen.We just know it is going to happen. And relatively soon, anybody who tells you exactly when is gonna happen is, is wrong, right. Or at least, you know, broker clock is right. Twice type of deal. Right. They can guess. Um, but it’s nothing more than a guess. And that’s why I’m not telling you about investments in how to invest. So, um, but we know it’s a guarantee that the market’s going to crash at some point how much it is. Nobody knows. Um, but as it collapses firms will collapse with it. They will stop spending money. They’re gonna lay off people and it’s the swift correction and layoffs, whether it’s the next 12 months, 24 months, who knows. Um, but it’s going to happen. So that’s the similarities between now and 2007 and the feeling you have, the uncertainty you have, there’s volatility. Things are getting a little crazy markets down a little bit.You’re looking around at your friends who might be getting laid off and you see the LinkedIn things more and more putting open to work. And, um, there’s just disruption everywhere. And so you just, you know, kind of like your, your spidey senses are up. So, um, it happened before in 2007, it happened before in 2000, it happened before, you know, we can look back in all of these shorter cycles, right? 10 to 15 years. We know it’s happened before, what can we learn from it? So what did I learn back in 2007? Um, here’s what I learnedIn 2007. Well, you don’t probably don’t know about me. I don’t talk much about my career, my corporate career. So I’m gonna talk about it just for a minute. The majority of my corporate career, 20 years, whatever, um, was spent in the financial industry doing before the financial industry, I did a lot of international training and, and corporate training and stuff like that. But I evolved into executive communications, public relations, investor relations, business strategy, like those four kind of things. And it, it evolved into different, different things. Um, whether it was preparing for earnings calls to writing speeches, to let’s put together the strategic plan for the next six months, 12 months, five years, like those were the, that was the type of work I was doing in 2007. I was doing public relations, investor relations, communications, work, executive communications work in the financial industry during the financial crisis.It was, it’s where I earn my chops, uh, burn myself out. Um, worst possible job at the worst possible time you could probably have. And fortunately for me, I was at a firm that had a very strong executive leadership team, and we were in a relatively good position compared to other financial organizations. So, um, that being said, it was a ho it wasn’t a horrible job, right? It was, it was a stressful, difficult job. Right. I worked with great people. They were wonderful people. Um, but, but my, my fortunate aspect of this, when I look back and think about it is that I, I learned so much from good executives, these men and women who were able to navigate it in such a good way, that it impacted everything else that I continu to continue to do in, in my career. So, um, I learned a lot, there were executives who did it well and executives who didn’t and the ones who did it well survived.Um, and the ones who didn’t, I mean, they’re still alive. They survived, but , but they became victims. I call it victims of a down economy, right. They weren’t working there anymore. And, um, and that’s what I want to talk about today. Let’s talk about what those executives did well, because there’s a big difference between today and 2007. And the difference today with the next downturn is that companies have invested in technology. That’s going to backfill gaps. So it’s going to be a little more abrupt. Normally, when you got laid off, you just landed at another company within the same industry and doing the same kind of job, but whatever, right. Small industry, small world, whatever technology is not, not going to allow for that anymore. So let’s talk about what the executives did well, who survived. And this is translatable to any industry, has nothing to do, um, with your industry.It has nothing to do with your organization. It has nothing to do with any of those. It has to do with the individual as an executive C-suite MD, I would say director and above. These are the people who did extremely, extremely well. And if you’re below director level, right, middle management, and below translate this to articulate your value in the moment. We’re gonna talk about that in, in a, in a second, because it’s going to become survival time. And that survival time comes from starting now. So here’s what, what the executives did. Well, number one, uh, they understood their message and their audience, and the message was different by executive. But we had three audiences when we were talking during the financial crisis, we were talking to employees of the organization that, yes, we’re strong enough. You’re gonna be okay. We had clients, your money safe here.And we had investors. So, and, you know, please continue investing us. We’re we’re solid and everything else, same message, but nuanced based on the audience, now you can translate that. That was for just finance. You could translate into retail, you can translate that into, um, consumer goods. You could translate that into law. You could translate that into anything based on who your three audiences are. Okay. And I’m, I’m talking about it from an executive standpoint, but even a little bit below, right? Are your clients, people within the organization, are the people working for you? The people you’re reporting to like all of these are different types of audiences, what’s your message in terms of value in what you’re doing, uh, which leads me to number two, those executives understood their value, not on the work they did, but where they fit into the bigger picture.So there were two aspects. Yeah, you’re doing work day to day, but where do you fit into the bigger picture? And that’s what they, they were able to articulate that extremely, extremely well. In addition to that, they understood a larger cyclical vision and understood where they were in the context of the world with this smart kind of this two shall pass, right? They’re thinking ahead for five years, the world will be better. In five years, we have to make short term decisions to get us to there. So they were able to do this efficacy exercise, put their value on top of it, and then communicate it to three different audiences. That’s what they did. Well, those executives who were able to do that skyrocketed throughout the organization, throughout the industry and, and continue to be successful today. And I’m gonna talk about how you can, how you can translate that into yourself.But when we think about what you can do today and what those executives did, it really fundamentally comes down to what’s the big picture and having perspective, understanding where you fit in that bigger perspective, and then communicating to who it matters to communicate it to in a way that they will pick it up, understand and embrace honest and, and of course truthful and, and doing it, um, with sincerity and authenticity and all of that good stuff. Um, so that’s what the executives did. Well, the ones who survived any kind of, of down economy. So let’s talk about you, let’s talk, let’s talk about you as you sit on your run or riding in your car, as you listen to this and sit in traffic and play this in the background while you do work in multitask, um, let’s, let’s make it real. How can you prepare for the downturn so that it’s not as impactful to you as anybody else?And, and there’s a larger program, I suppose you could call it that I do a corporate that we can, it’s like a full day thing that we can get people really ready, but I’m gonna give you kind of a shortened version. I want you to, to do, um, three things and these are not difficult or, um, it’s just not difficult. Okay. It just takes a little bit of time. These are maybe, um, two 15 minute exercises and then a longer bigger one, but we’ll, we’ll talk about that. The longer, bigger one, I’m gonna start with first network. Um, we want to set ourselves up for success when that downturn happens. And that happens today. Okay. Oftentimes when the market crashes and there’s a downturn and people get laid off, everybody scrambles into the networking world to try and find a job and start networking. And it’s too little too late.The point of a network is for people to share their network with you when you need it. But you have to be tapped into that network already. Nobody’s gonna give it to anybody fly by night. Um, we don’t hit up our networks for sales or jobs or anything like that. Those people who already have meaningful relationships are then able to use their network for meaningful introductions that will put them at the head of the pack. So that is step number one, pull out the Rolodex and get in front of people today with no agenda, other than building a relationship. It’s a, a relationship economic thing that you can start today. Every day, pick three people or, or every week, pick three people, whatever, like it’s not, or every day, just send out one note, find one person, send a day, Hey, checking in. Hope you’re doing well.How about, uh, zoom call just to catch up or let’s grab coffee. I’m gonna be in your neighborhood, whatever it is it’s, it’s going to be, it’s, it’s a task item that you’re gonna have to do. And I highly recommend you do it immediately because your network is going to get stressed. There’s gonna be a stress test on your network as well. It’s not gonna be as strong as you think it is when the market collapses. So you need to really invest in that today. That’s number one, that’s gonna be the most amount of work that you’re gonna have to do, but you can do it, have fun with it, right? It’s not, you’re not selling anything. It’s literally checking in with people and saying, hello, number two, and meeting new people right there. There are ways to meet new people. Uh, number two, articulate your value.This is one of the 15 minute exercises, right? You could sit it down. We gotta talk about your message. And I’m not talking about a message in terms of your elevator pitch, it’s gonna be scripted and blah, blah, blah. You know, you’re gonna say it. Nobody really listens to it. And, and you know, we’ve completely bastardized, um, how we amp ourselves up for networking and, and everything else. Let’s just talk about what value you bring. It could be bullet points, but sit and do it so that you can articulate and think about what value you actually bring and recognize it. So you could talk about it in just a matter of fact, way, not a recitation of stuff that you do, but value and curiosity into to why you can bring value to your organization, because you may not be doing that right now. You may be able to articulate or bring a value that you are not doing based on the way that your job has evolved.So think through the value that you can actually bring and then think about how to message it, right? Not as a script, but it’s just, this is what I do. Well, this is what I enjoy doing. This is, you know, oh, this is whatever, right. Remember when I did this, as you’re talking about reviews, getting credit, taking, you know, taking credit for the value that you bring is going to be a very important aspect to, to the downturn. And you wanna be prepared to do that. You’re able to do that when you understand what value you bring, and then finally, number three, who’s your audience? Think about who your audience is, who do you need to be in front of 15 minute exercise? And when I think about not just individuals categorize them, right? I talked before in finance, we had shareholders and, um, uh, and employees and clients.What are your three buckets? And how does your message, the value that you’re articulating? What nuance goes in based on those three audiences. And that’s another quick 15 minute exercise. And once it’s done, you literally sit down. It’s 15 minutes. It can evolve over time. As you think about it, go for a run, think about it. You know what? Yeah, scratch that. I don’t wanna do it again. You’re going to have it and dust it off when you need it. It’s a one time, 15 minute exercise that could be dusted off later. It will put you miles ahead of any everybody who’s scrambling. When something happens in the next, I don’t know, 6, 12, 24 months, whenever it’, who knows when it’s gonna happen. Right. But it’s gonna be done. Do it this weekend. Why waste your time?You know what I mean? Why, wait, why, wait, why? Wait until it’s too late. That’s what I say. Um, so that’s it. Lot of similarities, sorry. This went longer than I thought it would. 20 minutes. Um, a lot of similarities. I’m seeing it. I’m talking to clients, I’m talking to leadership teams. I’m talking to all of these people about how to save the business, but nobody’s, you know, well, some of them are right. We’re actually putting together people strategy items, and what’s the program that we can teach their people. And, um, how do we set them up for, you know, a three, four kind of session thing, just to get people thinking about what it is that’s coming and how are they preparing themselves in this type of work. And there’s, you know, plenty more that we could do. But, um, so organizations are, are talking about this, your responsibility, however, is going to be taking care of yourself.And so I encourage you to do that. I hope this was helpful. I hope you enjoy it. And good luck with everything as the world, as the world turns and evolves. I hope, uh, I hope this is meaningful and helpful and, and sets you up for much, much, much success. As we continue to navigate this crazy world as always I’m here. If I could be helpful, feel free to reach out. I look forward to seeing everybody at one of our events. We have some events coming up in person, virtually check out the website, bellweather hub.com for more and as always, I look forward to seeing you out there. Thanks.

Today we are talking about culture and how it relates to what I call the “soft words” of corporate. I’ve touched on some of these before, but I’m coming at it from this angle because it continues to be relevant, clients are still talking about it on the daily, and, also, because I love this stuff.

I also find it amusing that I speak so much on these topics given my background in finance, where “love” or “vulnerability” were replaced with F bombs.

We’ve all heard that culture eats strategy for breakfast. And it appears to be a nugget that many organizations continue to struggle with addressing. There is a breakdown from a macro, values-driven charter in an organization and the micro, individual interactions that people have in their day to day work.

I’ll be direct – I recognize that at first blush, many often interpret soft words and terms like Forgiveness, Love, Vulnerability, Psychological Safety as weak. I get it – I see it in my client’s faces when I discuss it with them. However, after speaking through this with them, they very quickly see the strength and power that comes from adopting them.

Our insecurities, on an individual level, convince us that other people will see us as weak if we are vulnerable, if we forgive, or share some kind of “work-appropriate” emotional component at the office. We feel it would be a crack in our power armor, and one that impacts our ability to succeed.

However, when I think of leaders who are effective; those who impress me and I wish to emulate there is a consistent theme. It isn’t based on perceived power – it’s the fact that they appear comfortable in their shoes and are comfortable with themselves.

I often talk about my time in finance, especially working in communications during the financial crisis of 2007 (stress, anyone?). I see a lot of similarities then to what we are beginning to experience now. Those executives I worked with fifteen years ago that were most successful, and survived the “down economy” were the ones who had this figured out.

Why it matters

We spend crazy dollars to bring in expertise, and yet we don’t invest the same money and effort in creating and driving an environment in which they can be themselves. We don’t want to hire insecure people, yet there is some aspect of insecurity in all we do. I know it – because I’ve both dealt with it myself and have constant conversations about it with clients.

Recognizing that insecurity is a cost of doing business, we as leaders need to be the example in helping people learn how to articulate their challenges (many of which are emotional) and work through them in a logical and productive way.

How it manifests

You may have heard me drive home the “macro change requires a focus on micro you.” This is the same – there is a personal component. Since these words are driven by insecurity – we must teach individuals to address it.

In manifesting these words, philosophies and behaviors, we have to make them our own. We need to articulate what they mean to us, internalize and then test new behaviors that are authentic to us. And this is where most change management programs fail – we speak about the general values we want our employees to espouse, yet stop short of welcoming the testing phase of how people can make it about them.

This is an incredibly uncomfortable exercise and risk for us to take; after all, we are dealing with our personal insecurities. But the only way to differentiate and evolve is to address them head on. Pick your word, explore it, test it, practice it. You will appreciate it and it will pay dividends.

And that is ultimately what we are looking to teach and manifest in our employees. We want people who are secure in their decisions, abilities and questions. We all have challenges and problems; but if we want to teach people how to survive the new economy, “leaning into” individual security is where our focus, learning and development should lie.

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Welcome to bellwether. Thank you for joining this week. We, um, we’re gonna talk about soft words today. The soft words that every culture, an organization and individual says we need to have yet, nobody actually wants it to manifest in a realistic way. Uh, and it’s, um, it’s high time. We did it. It’s high time. We, we chatted about it. I’ve talked a little bit about previously on the podcast, psychological safety and how, when I mention it to clients, they roll their eyes and they say, that’s the weakest sounding thing in the face of the planet. But when you explain what it is, they say, well, yeah, of course that’s, that’s the culture we want. Of course we want that, uh, two weeks ago, three weeks ago, um, we had the people from the forgiving app talking about the word forgiveness and how they’re bringing forgiveness into the workplace, which is such also a soft word I asked ’em about that.It sounds like such a soft word. And, and they talked about how it’s such a strong word and how the people who can own it are the ones that are really the most productive and the strongest, uh, among us. So, uh, it was a really good perspective on that. I encourage you to listen to it. So I feel a little funny talking through this one, but these topics need to be said, these soft words, like forgiveness, love this love vulnerability, psychological safety. I’m having these conversations a lot right now with clients on an individual, on an individual basis, right? People aren’t really talking about it from a culture wide. They’re talking about what we need to do, but not how it manifests. The conversations I’m having are with individuals on how they can make it real for themselves. They don’t want to be perceived as weak.That’s the first response. When we talk about any of these words, I don’t want to be perceived as being weak. I’m giving up, uh, people are gonna walk all over me, right? The culture doesn’t allow for that. But what I, when I explain it to them and we talk through it, they realize that there’s a lot of power that comes with controlling these words and taking ownership of these words. Um, humility always comes through for some reason, humility. It’s okay for people to say humility. And, you know, I’m, I’m humble and trying to be humble, but I, I feel like that’s insecurity coming through where they’re just, it’s a roundabout way of saying I’m just too confident and I need to remain humble in some kind of BS, whatever, trying to, you know, it’s like one of those humble brags about how amazing and confident you are, and you’re just trying to temper yourself.So I don’t really include humility in this, even though though people say it, but the, the words and the reason I’m talking to people about this and the, and when we talk about culture, we talk about an organization. We talk about how they want to foster these cultures that have, and embrace these words. And I’m gonna talk about why they’re important and, and how to manifest it. But, um, these individual individuals have to make it real. Okay. And that’s one of the difficult macro micro things about organizational culture is, you know, when we talk about these,These philosophies that we want, and, and this is the culture that we want, and these are the values we have and all of these things, but it has to manifest on a micro individual way, right? An individual has to make it real. And why that’s the case is because these words, vulnerability, forgiveness, uh, love, right? All of these are the ones that are just top of mind right now, but there are so many others they’re driven by. And the reason people don’t embrace them is it’s insecurity, right? We’re afraid that people are going to perceive us as weak. It’s this imposter syndrome. We are not up to the task. We’re not an authoritative leader. Uh, we’re not dictating what it is. And, and there’s this, you know, manifest or, or this, just this bundle of, of garbage that comes around all of these words. And I attribute it to we’re being told what leadership is all of the time we’re being told what people are supposed to do.We’re being told all of these things on what a leader is. They’re authoritative they’re decision making. They lead people follow. Um, and that’s not right. It’s just not, you know, it’s, it, it doesn’t, it doesn’t, it doesn’t work. it just doesn’t work. Now, these words, when I was talking to the forgiving people, um, these words I told ’em the story about when I was becoming a coach and I was studying to be a coach at Columbia, um, and great program top tiered individuals. Uh, and when I say top tier, like heads of HR and, and businesses at major brands, like these were people who in from Brazil, Australia, like it was, it was legit. It was a, a legit group of people. And I was learning just as much from them as I was from, from the actual program, but the word love was being thrown around so much.And I come from finance. Okay. You don’t use words like that. Like you use the F word in finance, that’s it like, that’s you, you drop the F bomb to accentuate what you’re trying to say, and you dictate and everybody goes and does what they’re supposed to do. So it was, it was a little odd, you know, I’m looking around like, you know, people using these words, but I, I started to embrace it throughout the few weeks that I was in this where it, it actually had real meaning. And what I had learned was, you know, my interpretation of these words and the way I thought other people would interpret it was wrong. Right. And it was amazing how productive the room was when people just matter of faculty use these terms. Like it was, you know, the love of each other and humankind and forgiveness and vulnerability.And what does that actually mean? And, um, when I think of leaders, the ones that I wish to emulate, the ones that I see are incredibly effective. Um, the ones that impress me, the consistent theme, isn’t power. I don’t see them as you know, I wouldn’t describe them as powerful because they don’t exude that crazy kind of, you know, misinterpretation of power, right? The way we think about power. Um, the thing that makes me admire good leaders and the, and these are the best leaders, they appear to be comfortable with themselves. They appear to be comfortable in their own shoes. And when we think about using these words, that’s what we’re talking about. They’re secure in their decisions. They’re secure in their abilities. They, they have challenges. They have problems, just like all of us. Uh, they recognize that nobody has their together at all.Like nobody’s got it. And so if you have to lean into something, lean into yourself and your capability and what you’re aware of and embracing the fact that you don’t have it, you leverage the people around you. If there’s something you don’t have somebody else does, and you partner with them to accomplish whatever it is that you need to do once you hit a certain level in an organization and people don’t tell you this. So I’ll tell it to you. It’s the ex your expertise gets you up to a certain point. But once you hit a certain level, it’s not about the expertise that you as an individual bring, it’s the expertise that the people around you bring and that you can leverage. And it’s what those people bring to the table. It’s your cohort that, that it’s the people you can get to rally.And we do this by recognizing our own limitations and then pushing through it in a unique way. So when we think about vulnerability love, and, and we’ll talk about the culture stuff, why they’re important, because there’s this internal, external thing on, you have to be secure enough with yourself to embrace those words and do those words and, and, um, recognize what vulnerability is, what forgiveness actually is. But then there’s also, how do you drive that culture in other people and get them to see it and recognize it for the powerful self control that it is the powerful, you know, you’ve explored yourself and you’re comfortable with who you are. You’re comfortable with being wrong. You’re comfortable with all of these things because you recognize your own individual value. So when we think about the soft words of corporate culture, it starts at the top comes all the way down, but how do you get people comfortable with embracing those types of words?So let’s talk a little bit about why they’re important. We spend in organizations, crazy amount of dollars to bring in expertise. You are paying so much money to bring in these people who are supposed to be experts. Uh, we want them, we want their perspectives. When we talk about diversity inclusion, all of these things, we want those perspectives. That’s the value of diversity and inclusion and equity in all of these things. It’s the right perspectives at the right decision making level to make your organization better, to make more robust decisions. That’s what people are talking about. It’s not a numbers game on how many people of this and how many people of that and everything else. It’s not, that’s not what it is. It’s often misinterpreted that way, but that’s not what it is when we bring in those people though, we get that perspective.And so we’re spending all of this money bringing in the expertise, but if we haven’t given them the opportunity, opportunity to voice that perspective, the opportunity to say they don’t know. I’m curious about that as well. That’s a great question rather than, you know, you have to be the expert and tell us, and if you’re not doing it, you know, that’s one of the big challenges that corporations have is we’re spending so much money. These people aren’t executing because we haven’t given them the opportunity to execute. We haven’t created this environment where they can express their new ideas, their thoughts, they have to follow whatever your particular format is. And it doesn’t necessarily always fit. And that’s a challenge. And, and a lot of people are aware of this. This isn’t a new idea. A lot of leaders are aware of it. A lot of HR programs are aware of it, learning and development is aware of it, but they’re kind of following the old script.They haven’t quite ripped the bandaid on this new economy, new way that we have to create a culture and learning and development in particular like learning and development, talent development is, needs to be completely reinvented. Okay. Call me by the way, call me, cuz I’ll tell you how to do it. Um, it’s not PowerPoint presentations. Um, it’s God, it’s not PowerPoint presentations. It’s not compliance training. It’s not this old way that, you know, but anyway, that’s a different topic for a different day. Um, but people follow example and they follow it at the top. And when I think about robust leaders, it’s not about sharing everything, right? It’s not about being vulnerable and, and all that. It’s about teaching people to find a way to express their feelings in a productive work way. Okay. So when we think about work, you got logic and emotion.We as individuals align our self worth with our work product. So when you attack our work product, because something wasn’t up to snuff or whatever we get defensive, right. Uh, and, and how do you get them to articulate? It’s not me that you’re attacking. It’s, it’s, you’re attacking the work and that’s great and I can make it better. And how do you make this a productive environment? So I can talk about whatever we have to train people, how to have these difficult conversations, where they’re comfortable with themselves, but separating themselves from the issue at hand.I don’t wanna hire someone who’s insecure. Okay. That’s it. I mean, that’s, when I think about the criteria of who I’m gonna hire in my organization insecurity, I could find that really quickly in my interviews. I could find that incredibly, incredibly quickly. And if you look back on some of my clients, I’ve blown up, uh, certain processes and, and things just because it just can’t. For some reason, I draw this out. People I draw in security, out of people and they get very defensive and uncomfortable, which is not always a good thing, but it’s very good for the business. Um, but I want them to be able to articulate those insecurities and challenges and work through them in a logical way. Okay. And I’ll work with people on that. People I hire, I will work with them on that a hundred percent. Right. Recognize it for what it is now.I’m not gonna sit there and call ’em insecure and everything, but we, we know it. So a lot of organizations are trying to embrace this thing called radical transparency. We want everyone to be open to say all of these things and that’s good. Uh, but it’s misinterpreted. It’s not really set up the right way in a lot of ways, uh, because there’s a civility and manners component that people don’t quite have people promoting radical transparency are a little too blunt. Um, they don’t quite have the civility aspect down to make that really productive. But when, when we think about why it’s important and, and creating this environment for people to articulate separate and articulate those emotions from logic, from how to talk through and giving them an avenue to talk through it and not in this like whiny way, but in a productive work way.So that people say, oh yeah, I dealt with that too. And here’s how I did it. And maybe here are a couple of ideas and, and making it okay to talk about these soft words, your organizational productivity is going to skyrocket it. Your cost of hiring new people will plummet because these people have figured out a way to work in your cultural environment. You’re not gonna have to, you’re not gonna have this turnover that always happens. So how do we manifest it? This is why it’s important is you don’t, you know, you want to, you’re investing in these people. People is an, it’s an expense, right? It’s an expense and you’re paying them for their time for some value out of that. Okay. And how do we create, uh, an environment to do that? And how does it manifest? And of course I said before, it starts at the top, uh, but it’s a macro challenge that has to focus on individuals.There’s a personal component because it’s driven by insecurity. So words like vulnerability love, um, you know, feelings, people just don’t even use the word feelings. Mental health is becoming this, you know, thing of just whatever it is. It’s not actually being dealt with in an appropriate way, because there’s an emotional component to it. So a leader in their own skin who’s comfortable in their own skin can do it. And so how are you taking your leadership team to learn how to articulate things like vulnerability and forgiveness and everything else, by the way, I have a program on that, call me . But when people see you double down on your insecurities, they see how fragile you crack that already fragile vision, right? So when you, you’re, you’re driven by insur and you’re vulner. You’re not really embracing the vulnerability. And, and you’re trying to hide it by being loud, boisterous, whatever it is, we’ve got these stress mechanisms and, and we can identify them.We know what they are, and we, once people know what your insecure defense mechanisms are, your cracked window shatters, right. You’ve lost your authority. And so, um, and, and this is, this is a male and female problem. Okay. I want, I wanna know this. It’s not, you know, I, I talk about this macho BS, right. And people think about men right away and doing it. And it’s a real male problem, but it’s very much a female problem as well. So it’s both, um, when we think about these soft words, it’s funny, you think about the soft words and people have an image of women, which is crazy, right? Because they’re the strongest ones in the office. Typically, when we think about the macho BS that comes with, and, you know, not embracing your feelings, you’re like, oh, it’s the men, but it’s the same issue.We just have different visions based on the words that we use on who they are, it’s everybody. Okay. So in order to, to get it to manifest within your organization and to embrace it, you as a male, female, whatever, we have to define these words, we have to make them their own, our own. And then we have to teach people how to have conversations about it so they can make it their own. They have to put their personal stamps on it. So vulnerability, we’re defining it, not about sharing your, your home problems from the weekend, but, and, and all your weaknesses and everything else. But it’s about being open to the idea that you may be wrong. That’s how I define vulnerability. Okay. And how does that, how does that sit with you and how do you do that? And that’s a lot of the work we do as coaches is talking through these so that you can make it real for yourself.Love is love, right? And it’s okay to use that word. It’s about respect. Um, not in a creepy way. You don’t wanna use love in a creepy way. Of course, it’s a workplace, but you know, love for a fellow human type of work. Right. And it’s okay to say that. It’s okay to say that at work, you know, I have love for the people in this room and everything else. I would never have said that 15 years ago in finance, it sounds ridiculous. But when you say, and you open up that door, there is a human connection that we’re talking about. Forgiveness is power, recognizing what you can control and taking control of it, psychological safety, it’s this major focus for organizations defining what that is from an organization where people can talk and be open and give ideas without fear of repercussion or embarrassment or humility or humiliation, whatever it is.That’s the culture that you want when you understand what psychological safety really is. So in manifesting these, we have to take a little bit of risk as leaders, right? We have to test it out and it’s uncomfortable and it’s uncomfortable because we’re dealing with our own insecurities. But the only way to do it is to practice it. The only way to get past it is to practice it so that you’re comfortable with it. It’s the same with public speaking. It’s the same with anything else. So pick your word, vulnerability, love, whatever it is that test it and see how it is. See how it goes. If you’re leading a team, say you want to test it and have other people try it. You’ll appreciate it. It’ll pay dividends. So that’s how your soft words will pay dividends. If you start to embrace it, it takes a little bit of work. I encourage you to try it. Good luck. You want help on it? You need help on it. You want me to talk you through it? Gimme a buzz. I love this stuff. It’s uh, it’s a lot of fun, so good luck. Enjoy your week. And I’ll see everyone out there soon. Thanks.CSS to this text in the module Advanced settings.

This week marks 6 years since my last official day in corporate. I remember the day well – I turned in my badge, walked to the water, looked out over the Hudson river and took a deep breath. It’s been a wild, fun and challenging ride – and I must say I’m a much better person for it.

That said, I feel it’s a good time to revisit why I left corporate, considering the amount of people looking to make the jump today, and also the many who made the jump and are thinking about going back. But it’s also a good time to chat about what I’ve learned since, and why I could consider going back to the cubicle, office and hallway world of bad free coffee and awkward “waiting for elevator” smirk/smiles.

Why I Left Corporate 

I always say I hated corporate – which isn’t exactly accurate. At the time, I couldn’t put my finger on exactly what I disliked about it, but ultimately I had no drive or desire to do more than what was required.

I did good work – but stopped when the work was done. In an Office Space kind of way, I didn’t think I had any incentive to go beyond the minimum expected. Leadership respected me and saw more in me than I did myself, but the idea of creating work and driving something bigger than myself forward just never occurred to me.

It sounds ridiculous, but I didn’t know *how* to work in a corporate setting. Yes, I was professional, my work was pristine, and I did what was expected of me. But when we talk about purpose, passion, etc. – it wasn’t there, and that’s what brings me to what I’ve learned.

What I’ve Learned

First and foremost – I learned that my issues with corporate were my own doing. I had more control over my work product and satisfaction than I allowed myself. It was easier to point fingers at culture or bosses or lack of feedback for reasons as to why I wasn’t getting to where I wanted to go. All of those are red herrings – we ultimately control our own development and next steps.

Many entrepreneurs will tell you that the passion, drive and more that they were looking for doesn’t necessarily come from the product that they deliver – it comes from the creation of something and the risk and reward that comes from it. This entrepreneurial mindset and psychology will do wonders in a corporate environment – we ultimately want to create something that we can own and be proud of. That can be done inside a company or outside – where it is will be up to you.

Why I Could Go Back

I have a different perspective today, and recognizing that there is an entrepreneurial aspect to navigating a corporation is a bit of a game changer for my clients. From accountability to efficacy – there is a merging of personal capability with business goals and culture that needs to happen. And we, as individuals, have more control over that than many of us give ourselves credit for.

Especially today, with the discussion on culture, hybrid work and going back into the office – it’s the people who understand this bigger picture who are making significant strides in embracing it and making it their own. Yes, flexibility has its place, but ultimately there is a larger picture than ourselves, and one we need to explore and make an impact on.

More on the podcast – but those are my thoughts today. Hope it’s helpful – and I’m always here to chat!

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 welcome to bellwether episode 102. And I’m gonna talk about something very topical today. I’m gonna talk to you all about why I left corporate, uh, it’s top of mind for many, many people right now, whether it’s their thinking about the great resignation or I’m. So I hate my job more than anything. And the world is, you know, continually changing. We talk about that all the time work is making me come back to the office and I hate it. Do I actually leave now, do I take this time? Uh, a lot of people have moved, uh, out of corporate and are now looking to get back. They weren’t quite ready for the movie, even though they thought they were, and this week is a milestone for me because I’m recording this on a Wednesday. But this Friday of this week is my anniversary. Seven sixth year anniversary of the day I left corporate officially May 20th, 2016 was my last day within a corporate building with a badge with one of those little badge things.Um, so what I wanna talk about today, why I left, I’ve learned so much since you know, why as to why I left. I’ve learned so much about it just in my industry, what I do as a coach, working with people. And so I understand more of why I actually left corporate and what was going through my mind, even though I couldn’t articulate it at that time. I’ll talk to you a little bit about what I’ve learned since, and then I’ll, you know, I’ll tease it a little bit. Would I actually go back? Maybe I will, maybe I won’t cliff hanger to, to get you to stick around till the end, or you can just pass forward. It doesn’t matter. Um, whatever works, but that’s what I wanna talk about today because I know it’s top of mind, I’m gonna keep this probably under 15 minutes.We’re all busy. We don’t have time for this. So I’m gonna tell you why I left corporate what I was thinking, what I’ve learned and, and why I would, or wouldn’t go back. So why I left? I tell people quickly why, when they ask me why I left corporate, I automatically, my response is I hated corporate and that’s not fully true. Um, I hated my position within corporate and it’s mostly because I didn’t feel like I fit in, in corporate. And you know, this’ bleed into a little bit of what I’ve learned is what I realize now is that I didn’t fully know how to operate in the corporate environment. Now I was very good in the corporate environment. So Ty put me in front of any group. It wasn’t, it wasn’t about the manners or anything. It was about dictating what it was that I wanted to do, finding that desire to do work and all of that type of work.So I love the people. I love the people I worked with. Um, but I can never put my finger on what exactly it was. I disliked at the time becoming a coach, taught me more, uh, which I’ll talk about, but, um, I had no drive. I had no desire to do more than the bare minimum. Um, you know, I could do my work very, very well. I could do it in a very short amount of time and that was good enough. And I had no inkling or inclination or, or desire to really create work, do more and whatever it was more you tell me what to do, I’ll do it fine. Just leave me alone. And that’s it. And I, I think if I were still in corporate during the pandemic with people trying to call me back, I’d probably fight going back to the office because I could probably mail it in.I was mailing it in back then. I was making, you know, six figures, good money. Um, and I was good enough to do that. And I probably would’ve, well, I not probably, I definitely would’ve made a lot more money if I put in the effort and everything else, I fully understood more if I had some kind of mentor or anything, you know, I could blame others, but I also just didn’t really wanna pay attention at that point. So going back would be, would be very different. What I also, um, learned is that I’m very hostile to authority. Um, and I learned that in, in becoming a coach and, and, you know, we give assessments to people and if you’re gonna give assessments, you have to take them yourselves. And the person who gave you my assessments, like you really hate authority. And that was kind of, uh, a good learning, uh, thing for me.So, so everything I didn’t like about corporate, what I’ve learned actually came from me yet. I was always look looking externally at who I can blame whether it was my boss or somebody else or, or whatever. I always had a really good view from leadership leadership respected me, peers respected me. They knew my value. Um, they saw it more than I did. I remember the president in one business coming to me and said, you have to tell me what you want to do. If you wanna run any business within this company, I will get you to run that business. And I just looked at him and said, okay, whatever. And, and it wasn’t, you know, it sounds so ridiculous, but I didn’t know how to articulate what it was I wanted to do where I wanted to fit in. And I didn’t really understand the value of good partnerships within the office.It was more about, you know, whatever. Um, none of the work was particularly challenging, which is nice. Uh, but I think that’s probably part of my problem and why, you know, I didn’t look for anything that was necessarily difficult and I didn’t really take any risk and I didn’t do any of that stuff. So that’s, you know, when I think about why I left, it’s really comes down to didn’t care, uh, which is my own fault. Uh, didn’t want to do more than the bare minimum, which is my own fault, but I also, you know, it’s my own fault because I didn’t understand. And I didn’t look to understand on what working in corporate actually entails and working in corporate and creating work and doing all of these things. We’re never taught that we just, you show up to the office, the boss tells you what to do and that’s it.And when you learn as you evolve and what the good, what the go getters learn and what the really good people in corporate learn is that they’re not just there to do work. You’re there to create work and create value for the organization. And that’s ultimately what they’re paying for. And as a business owner now completely changed my mentality. You know, before I went in and said, look, you gimme money. I’ll give you work. But if you flip it just a little bit and give it a little nuance, I’ll give you money. If you give me value, okay. And I’ll give you more money. If you give me more value and everything else. And that’s, that’s great. And, and so a lot of phone calls and now coming in from, from media and I’m, I’m doing these interviews on, you know, how do I quit my job and follow my path and my passion and my yada yada nonsense.Um, ultimately it comes down to, you know, your job could be your passion. If you just figured out how to do your work. I mean, that’s, that’s ultimately, you know, it sounds a little harsh. It’s a little too kind of pro corporate because I’m not pro corporate in that kind of way. So there’s this balance between what an individual understands on what they can bring and what they can do and how they can push the, the envelope in their way. Right? I mean, when we create something, we feel ownership and that’s, we have that responsibility to ourselves, not necessarily to the company, but to ourselves. That’s where our, our real value comes in. And now, by the way, this is how I’m getting into what I’ve learned. Corporate obviously wants you to do that because it’s good for their bottom line. And what’s fair and what’s not in terms of payment and everything else is, is to be hashed out.But you know what I see with now with people wanting to go back to the office, not wanting to go back to the office. Um, what I see is the people who are go-geters who understand what it means to work in corporate, the, the value of good relationships in person, the value of not just my work, but pushing the business forward. Those are the people that are excited to go back to the office because they recognize the value of being in the office. And there’s this entrepreneurial mindset that I’m trying to push. We’re not trying to push, but I’m, I’m talking to clients about pushing, because I think this is the future of, of, of work. Um, um, is if you put an entrepreneur in an office with a bunch of other people, that entrepreneur is going to be networking the hell outta that office, that entrepreneur is going to be creating work, coming up with ideas.They’re gonna be very energetic while they’re in front of people. They’re going to make that people time valuable. Whereas back my old corporate time, I would’ve gone in, plugged in the headphones, complained about having to get on a zoom call while I was at the office. And then I would’ve taken off as soon as possible. So when we think about going back to the office, there has to be value for you and going back into corporate and everything else. I never had that bigger view of me pushing the whole business forward until now. Um, or until, you know, the past couple years, this philosophical view of something bigger than myself, my team, right? We it’s, it was always about me and what I did and my little work and, you know, I can get my work done just fine and work it from home, whatever it is.Um, I hear that a lot and that’s great. Maybe you can, but just because you are getting your little bit of work done, there is a bigger picture. We need perspective. Are you pushing a business forward? And, and I was talking to one, uh, colleague of mine, who’s so happy to be back then office. He said, yeah, just ran into this other guy in the office. If I didn’t even run into him, we wouldn’t have come up with it. They created some new insurance product and they were doing all this stuff. And now it’s, you know, it’s blasting forward. He would not have gone down that path if he hadn’t seen that person in, in, in the office. So I understand why corporate wants people back in the office, at least some of the time it’s pushing the business forward, not necessarily just getting work done.And, and when we think about remote work, we think about leaving corporate, the desire of, you know, the frustration of the individual versus the business, kind of this meta philosophical, you know, I will give you what I want to give you and pay me money. And, you know, you can go into the whole labor discussion and, and theory and everything else. Some companies are set up really, really well for remote work most aren’t, but some really are, and that’s fine. Good for you. That’s great. They can make it work. There there’s a cultural aspect to it. There are communicating expectations of it. There are, you know, there are ways that it can work, but you as an individual have to fit into that, you have to create the work and do the work that’s going to align with that kind of work, virtual workforce and, and, and everything else.Um, otherwise there’s a social wellness aspect, right? I hate the term family, right? Companies of family, we’re family, yada yada, yada, uh, it’s a bunch of BS, but there is a, a social aspect to being in the office that should not be overlooked. There’s validity to that. Now, again, you have to understand how to use the network, how to use the social and all that, but that entrepreneurial mindset, that time of creating value, not just for the business, but for you. This is ultimately for you. When we think about creating value, it’s good for the business. That’s nice. And the people excited about going back into the office are positioning themselves to grow in that company and do more. Okay. But creating work, taking effort, ownership of risk, taking a risk and having it work out. This is when we talk about passion, when we talk about what I want, and I want this, you know, thing, and I want, you know, I want to know where I fit and I want this passion.I want this drive. I want, you know, whatever I’m looking for, something, I don’t find it here. It’s ultimately up to you to do that. And it’s not outside of the company because what’s gonna happen. You’re gonna leave that company. You’re gonna go, I’m gonna go leave corporate and go work for like a non-profit. And you’re gonna do the same amount of work for less money. And that’s great. Good for you. But you’re still gonna be frustrated because you’re not tapping into the risk effort, risk reward type of thing, in terms of creating something, right. Passion is about, you know, creating something. I wanna follow my passion, passion to be a musician, go ahead and be a musician, have your job fulfill whatever it is that you wanna do, it’s gonna pay for that. Okay. So you can do both. Uh, but ultimately when we talk about this passion, nonsense and everything else, it’s, I mean, it’s not nonsense.It’s about, what’s gonna get you outta bed in the morning. You’re creating something. And I, I miss that. And that’s what I’ve learned. I’ve learned that being an entrepreneur, being outside of corporate is, you know, if I were to go back to corporate today, I’d be creating the hell outta work, right? Not just doing a job, we’re creating work. We want something that we could be proud of. When we think about mentors that we had and the leadership of previous companies, those people created something. And the question I would leave you with today is, is what are you creating? And I’ve asked that a few times is, you know, the creation of work is, is ultimately what passion comes from and, and quitting corporate is we’re not creating something in corporate. Now we could blame others. We could blame my boss. Doesn’t give the visibility.I don’t get the feedback I need. I don’t get, you know, yada, yada, yada, whatever excuse you have, then get feedback another way, help your boss, give you the feedback that you want, articulate, where you want to go. I want, uh, a promotion in two years. Am I on that path? What do I need to change today? What do I need to change in, in two quarters, open up that conversation. Yes, your boss has an obligation to do more for you and to get you to where you want to go. But they’re also busy and they’re thinking about themselves, all right, you can’t blame your boss or your office or your culture for ultimately what you are responsible for, which is your development, your career, your growth, and everything else. It’s a tug, a pull, a push pull tug of war between the two that you have to be very involved in.Okay. So that’s what I did not know. And what I do know now about being in corporate about taking ownership, accountability, understanding, um, what it was I needed to do to, to get that passion, drive desire, to get the promotions, to get the recognition, to get all of those things that I claimed I wanted, but I didn’t want to do the work to get it. And work is, work. Work is hard. All right. To get those types of things. Now, the question, what would I go back to corporate? Corporate’s easy. Um, and so I always do this whole debate. Do I go back to corporate? Do I not go back to corporate? Do I go back to corporate? Do I not go back to corporate corporate? I can mail it in and it’s easy money. Um, but not anymore because now I have to create work.Am, am I actually going to get that value out of it? Corporate is easy, but it’s also frustrating, right? I’m hostile to authority. Apparently, according to my personality assessment, uh, am I going to fit in well with a boss and that’s gonna be difficult? Um, but there is a, a creativity, if I, I would consider going back knowing now what I know, but I, I would dictate what it was that I wanted to create. And it’s this understanding of, you know, how do you teach your teams to become philosophical? How do you teach them to think about the bigger picture of creating work of some kind of, you know, whatever it is that, that, you know, they, they can bring you’re hired for a reason at your company. And you hired these people on your team for a reason. And we say, we want to give them the, um, autonomy and the freedom to make these decisions and do that.This is, you know, it’s part, culture, it’s part boss, but it’s very much the individual. And are they able to, to do that? And are you giving them the, the capability to do that in your organization? So, yeah, I’d consider going back to corporate, if it were the right fit. Um, knowing now what I know, I really like the flexibility of having my own business. So I probably wouldn’t do it, but I’d consider it. I’d be open to it if the right thing came up, um, you never know, man, look, the world is, the world is evolving. But understanding if you’re thinking about leaving corporate, recognize that, you know, if you’re thinking about going the entrepreneurial route, it’s a lot of work that you have to create. You’re selling your business, you’re creating the business, you’re doing product for the business, whatever it is, whether it’s a service business or an actual product, you’re networking the hell out of everybody.You have to raise visibility, nobody’s paying attention, all of this stuff, you have to do it all. Okay. Very difficult. It’s fun. It’s rewarding, but it’s rewarding because you’re creating something. That’s why entrepreneurs love what they do. What are you creating in corporate? Right? It’s almost, you know, when we think about, I could be an entrepreneur today and I could run my business and put up my shingle and do all that stuff, which I do, or I could take it and be an entrepreneur within the confines of an organization, right. Where I get the computer system and the structure and everything else where it’s slightly different, but it’s within the context of something else. It’s the same mindset that we have to do. When I think about financial advisors, the way financial advisors work, they usually work for like a big company and I’ll use that example.Cause I used to work at finance, but financial advisors jump around and they pay whatever you pay a financial advisor, a portion that goes back to their company, right? So they pay like 40% of whatever they make to Morgan Stanley, UBS, JP Morgan, whatever it is, um, because advertising and everything else. And, and you’re part of that structure, right? So you’re giving up a percentage to go to that. Sometimes they go out independently and they take on all of those expenses and it’s slightly different. It’s a very different kind of model. It’s the same with you. You’re giving up, I don’t know, 40% of your freedom, X percent of your freedom to work within those confines, but you get additional structure, right? You get the, um, the days off that maybe you need, because you can’t really take a day off as an entrepreneur, cause people are gonna forget you.And, um, you know, do you get the leverage of a team and can you build something bigger? And it’s just a very different environment that you can, that you can work in. And what I encourage everyone to do is start thinking in that entrepreneur mindset of you are ultimately responsible and accountable for all of the work that you can create. And that’s why I, I quit corporate because I didn’t understand that. And now I do. And, uh, I hope that’s helpful for you as you’re thinking about what you are going to do over the next few years, with all the change in the world and everything that’sHappening. And, um, it’s certainly an exciting time. It’s crazy time. Um, but we have to recognize where our, our place is within, within the bigger confines of, of an organization or, you know, whatever it is. So, um, with that, that’s why I left corporate. That’s what I think about now. I hope that was helpful. I hope you have a fantastic week. Um, yeah, I’ll talk to you later. Have fun. Enjoy bye.