Work Positive

By Dr. Joey FaucetteBusiness Management

Work Positive episodes

August 16Why the Soft Stuff Is the Hard Stuff | Scott McInnes
Scott McInnes founded Inspiring Change in Dublin and hosts Building Better Cultures. He joins Dr. Joey on why your brain files the unfamiliar as negative, why culture is a vehicle for strategy, and why values hold weight only as behaviors.
The Hook
Seven out of ten people choose a job based on culture when everything else is equal. So why do most organizations still leave theirs to chance?
Scott McInnes helps leadership teams answer that question. He founded Inspiring Change, an organizational culture and internal communications consultancy in Dublin, hosts the Building Better Cultures podcast, and authored original research on the culture gaps holding organizations back today. His clients include the Football Association of Ireland, the Police Service of Northern Ireland, and Enterprise Ireland.
He tells us why the soft stuff is, without question, the hard stuff.
Key Insights
Your brain guards the familiar by design. Scott traces the resistance to the campfire. Our ancestors plant where crops always grew and walk the path with no sabertooth tiger on it. That circuitry still runs your team. In his words, "The unfamiliar gets labeled as negative and gets cast out of our brains pretty quickly because there's just no existing folder for it."

The resisters deserve a hearing. The people the change curve labels laggards "often get a bad rap," Scott observes, when what they actually say is that they remain unconvinced this will work. Sometimes they are right. The enthusiasts run toward the cliff edge with jazz hands while the laggard asks about the parachute. "We really need to keep the resistors close and listen to them, because they make us slow down a little bit and think."

Culture earns its budget as a business instrument. Scott dissolves the fluffy-and-amorphous objection in one move. Culture is processes, systems, values, and behaviors lined up so everyone rows behind them. He says culture "is a vehicle for corporate strategy." Anyone selling a culture initiative internally opens with what it does to the bottom line.

Six months of strategy, ten minutes of telling. Scott sees senior leadership teams spend six months creating the strategy, ten minutes telling the organization on a webinar, and then grow angry as the organization struggles to understand it.

Momentum is the thing people love. We resist change and yet we love moving forward. Which makes the story of progress something told continually rather than announced once. Scott's test: did JFK name the moon and then drop the subject until the landing? Helmets, suits, rockets. Every bit of it got told.

The strategy arrives in the wrong language. His firm boils client strategies down to five or six hundred words people actually use, because the corporate original fails to travel.

Middle managers carry the strategy or bury it. The layer unfairly nicknamed the permafrost and the flabby middle lacks the training, tools, and confidence to translate a high-altitude plan into the three sections that matter to their team. "These people are the most important people in your organization."

The fix respects the calendar. Rather than a three-hour values workshop dropped onto teams, Scott creates five 20-minute team talks a manager folds into meetings already on the books.

Values hold weight only as behaviors. Two people describe respect and produce mint chocolate chip and chocolate. Close yet different. So the organization defines what the behavior looks like here, then embeds it in performance management, where Scott says "the rubber hits the road with values." Absent that definition, "you were disrespectful" invites a fair question back: what does respect mean here, and what did I do?

Prove your culture to a skeptic by naming consequences. Showcase the stories of values lived well, and explain what follows when someone fails to live them. A high performer hears that and understands the values carry weight.

Hybrid needs a better conversation than where. Scott declines the nuclear button of five days back in the office. One client calls the alternative smart working, a phrase he prefers. A senior HR leader complains that deep thinking is impossible at an office desk, and Scott inverts the premise: do the thinking at home, and spend office days connecting with other human beings.

Three legs hold that stool up. The organization sets policy and frameworks. The people manager asks what the team needs to accomplish this week, this month, this quarter, and how. The employee protects the core days. Add four generations at work, maybe five once apprentices arrive at sixteen, and one size fits all becomes, in Scott's word, dangerous.

Busyness blocks connection. Scott's research with chief people officers found work rose during the pandemic and stayed at a million miles an hour, with shoulders still against the wheel.

Do One Thing
Scott's Do One Thing for the Work Positive community:
"Be very clear in your ambition about where you want everyone else to be."
He recalls Alice at the fork in the road. She looks up at the Cheshire Cat and admits she has no idea which way to go. The cat asks where she is going. She has no answer. So the cat tells her to take any road, because they all go there.
"We need to be a lot more intentional about where we're going when it comes to culture, so that everybody can follow along behind us." That intentionality creates the familiarity the brain looks for, which becomes the security and the psychological safety people need in order to follow you anywhere.
Connect with Scott McInnes
Scott created a page for the Work Positive community: inspiringchange.ie/workpositive. You will find the company overview, his connection research, his podcast, and a calendar link to reach him directly.
Send him a DM on LinkedIn. He loves to chat.
Catch every episode of Building Better Cultures.
Your Next Step
Culture left to chance still produces a culture. Just rarely the one you want.
Discover the one you have today. Take the free Work Positive Culture Assessment at workpositive.today.
Grow Culture, Grow People, Grow Profits

Connect with Dr. Joey & Work Positive
Work Positive Podcast: workpositive.today/podcasts
Free Work Positive Newsletter: workpositive.today/newsletter
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@workpositive7529
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/drjoeyfaucette/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/WorkPositiveToday/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/workpositive.today/
Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@dr.joeyfaucette

Enjoying the show?
Leave a rating and a review on Apple Podcasts so more people leaders discover the Work Positive Podcast. It takes a minute and helps the whole community.
Know a leader who would be a great guest? Send your recommendation to [email protected].
33 min
August 09Curiosity IS the Strategy | Julian Lighton
Episode 199: Curiosity IS the Strategy

Do you ever wonder what's next? Sure you do for the company you work with and your team, but what about for yourself?
Julian Lighton spent more than 30 years watching companies decide whether to develop people or rent them. He advised them at McKinsey. He operated inside them at Cisco and Hitachi. He convened them as Chief Strategy Officer at four billion-dollar public companies. Now he coaches the people leaders inside them.
His verdict on the last fifteen years is direct. Companies traded the family metaphor for the sports team, and something essential left with it.
His prescription is smaller than you expect, and it starts with a question you ask another human being.
Key Insights
The plan is 10 percent. The people are 90 percent.
Technology companies traded the family metaphor for the sports team. Coaching for this season replaced development for a career.
Managing and leading are taught skills rather than innate ones, which makes teaching them somebody's job.
A woolly mammoth takes a team. Whatever is worth doing at work exceeds what one person carries alone.
Every ask has two halves: Know why is the logic. Care why is what the person receives.
People learn more through failure than through success. Most talent metrics measure success alone.
Attraction runs in four moves: competency, context, culture, mindset.
Academy companies once told candidates what they would learn. Now the conversation covers only what they will do.
Values decide the room. People resonate or fail to resonate inside the first three minutes.
Retention starts as you map reality: who holds the crucial control points, and what each person does well.
Relationship with a manager multiplies iterations. Iterations grow engagement. Engagement grows loyalty.
Curiosity opens a relationship. Kindness decides which kind.
Do One Thing
Julian's one thing for the Work Positive community, starting today:
Go back to curiosity.
Be curious about somebody else, and you ask questions. Ask questions, and you find yourself in a form of relationship with them. Ask those questions with kindness, and you find yourself in the right kind of relationship.
Rather than regarding people as economic units, job codes, or candidates, ask them some questions about them.
Connect with Julian Lighton
Get Julian's Amazon best-seller, Navigating Your Next: Discover the Career You Want and the Path to Get There. Two QR codes live inside it. The one at the front opens a resource library for managing your career: resume formats, cover letter formats, ways to articulate your value, how to network, how to run your campaign. The one at the back opens a hidden page on his site with links to everything he drew on while writing, including forty-plus books and a stack of lectures.
Then visit julianlighton.com for his webinars and resources.
Then send him a direct message on LinkedIn. Julian welcomes the conversation.
Your Next Step
Julian describes a talent conversation most companies stopped having. Curiosity about the person in front of you, asked with kindness, is where it restarts.
Your culture is already answering that question for every person on your team. Find out what it says.
Take the free Work Positive Culture Assessment. A few minutes, no cost, and you receive personalized strategies to grow culture, grow people, and grow profits.

Connect with Dr. Joey & Work Positive
Work Positive Podcast: workpositive.today/podcasts
Free Work Positive Newsletter: workpositive.today/newsletter
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@workpositive7529
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/drjoeyfaucette/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/WorkPositiveToday/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/workpositive.today/
Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@dr.joeyfaucette

Enjoying the show?
Leave a rating and a review on Apple Podcasts so more people leaders discover the Work Positive Podcast. It takes a minute and helps the whole community.
Know a leader who would be a great guest? Send your recommendation to [email protected].
39 min
August 02What's Actually Going Wrong With Your Workforce | Dustin Snyder
Episode 198: Dustin Snyder on What's Actually Going Wrong With Your Workforce
Most leaders diagnose their people challenges alone, behind a closed door, with a spreadsheet. Dustin Snyder does the opposite. As founder of Wayforward, he goes into companies at major turning points and maps what is actually happening inside the workforce, using a method he created and named Strategic Workforce Insight Mapping or SWIM, for short. He wrote the book on it, Sink or SWIM.
He comes to this work with the scars to back it. Before Wayforward, Dustin served as president of a 600-person manufacturing division that he led back to profitability. Earlier in his career he founded an axe-throwing company that was acquired. Outside of work he competes in strongman, trains muay thai, and is working toward the tallest peak on all seven continents.
Key Insights
Behavior at scale is a rational outcome. A company that suspects it hired twenty percent bad apples has a math problem rather than a character problem. Widespread behavior is an adaptation to conditions, and it maps and predicts from the variables in the environment.
People change behavior as the environment changes. Told to change while the conditions hold, their own brain overrides the instruction as a survival risk, because that behavior is what the environment taught them survival requires.
The map starts at the top. Dustin opens every SWIM engagement with senior leadership to learn the strategy and the pain point, then moves to a representative sample of the organization and traces the behavior back to the root cause.
Intervention design reduces to one question: how do we make the right thing the easy thing? Change the variables until the behavior you want becomes the rational one.
Empathy operates as an objective discipline rather than a feeling. Stand in their boots. Learn what the day is actually like and what makes it harder than it needs to be.
People leave because they fail to feel successful in the conditions around them. Pay is the trench they retreat to when something more important is lacking.
Blind spots come with the seat rather than with the leader. Executives watch the market, the customers, and the long strategy, which is their job, and that vantage point can only see so far into the field.
The fixes are usually small. Dustin's clients rarely need a capital budget. They need a clarification that has yet to reach the front line.
Do One Thing
This week, notice one behavior showing up across your team rather than in one person.
Then ask yourself Dustin's question: "What if this behavior was rational?"
What if this is an adaptation your people make to the conditions around them? What if you would do the same thing standing in their boots?
If the behavior was rational, what would be driving it?
Ask that, and you start solving the root cause instead of managing the symptom one more time.
Connect With Dustin
Find Dustin on LinkedIn, at Wayforward, and get his book,Sink or SWIM: The Human Systems Theory Approach to Business Performance.
Your Next Step
Dustin maps what's going wrong for companies at a turning point. You can start that map yourself this week. Take the free Work Positive Culture Assessment and find out what your culture is telling you.

Connect with Dr. Joey & Work Positive
Work Positive Podcast: workpositive.today/podcasts
Free Work Positive Newsletter: workpositive.today/newsletter
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@workpositive7529
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/drjoeyfaucette/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/WorkPositiveToday/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/workpositive.today/
Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@dr.joeyfaucette

Enjoying the show?
Leave a rating and a review on Apple Podcasts so more people leaders discover the Work Positive Podcast. It takes a minute and helps the whole community.
Know a leader who would be a great guest? Send your recommendation to [email protected].
38 min
July 26Five Lenses That Transform How People Leaders Cultivate | Dr. Joey Faucette
EP 197 | Five Lenses That Transform How People Leaders Cultivate | Dr. Joey Faucette

Key Insights
Bad events carry roughly four times the psychological weight of good events of equal magnitude, according to Roy Baumeister's research at Florida State University. One piece of negative feedback drowns out about four pieces of positive feedback.
Negativity bias kept your ancestors alive. It costs your team its engagement today.
Gallup's 2025 global engagement research puts the cost of disengagement in the trillions of dollars annually, with the people leader as the variable that explains most of that variance.
F: Focus the Team's Attention. Vultures and hummingbirds fly over the same desert and find two entirely different meals. Your team finds what you train them to look for.
R: Reframe the Unfamiliar. Four horses moved from a 100-foot paddock to a five-acre pasture and used four square feet of it for twenty-one days. Your team escapes the physical prison long before it escapes the mental one.
A: Affirm What's Working. High-performing teams run a positivity ratio near three to one. Affirmation that lands is specific, named, and in the moment.
M: Mow the Mental Broom Straw. Sigal Barsade's research at Wharton demonstrates that emotion transfers through a team below conscious awareness. Your team consumes what you fail to filter.
E: Establish Rituals That Stick. James Clear frames it plainly: you fall to the level of your systems. Practice creates the perception.
Martin Seligman's Three Good Things practice raised happiness and lowered depressive symptoms after one week, with effects measurable six months later.
The lens you cultivate at work follows you home. Maya's teenage son installed Three Good Things at the family dinner table without her ever mentioning it.
Do One Thing
Choose one ritual from this episode and commit to it for twenty-one days. The morning three minutes in the car. The Friday three good things. The evening gratitude diary. The Sunday team observations.
One ritual. Twenty-one days. If you miss a day, restart at day one, because the brain rewires through unbroken repetition.
Resources
Get F.R.A.M.E. @ Work: Five Lenses That Transform How People Leaders Cultivate Their Team: workpositive.today/frame-at-work
Read this week's blog, Establish Rituals That Stick
Take the free Work Positive Culture Assessment: workpositive.today
Connect with Dr. Joey on LinkedIn for the free digital copy offer mentioned in the episode
Your Next Best Step
Your culture already does one of these five lenses well. Discover which one, and discover the lens with the most room to transform how your team perceives work. The free Work Positive Culture Assessment gives you both answers in a few minutes at workpositive.today.
Connect with Dr. Joey & Work Positive
Work Positive Podcast: workpositive.today/podcasts
Free Work Positive Newsletter: workpositive.today/newsletter
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@workpositive7529
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/drjoeyfaucette/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/WorkPositiveToday/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/workpositive.today/
Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@dr.joeyfaucette

Enjoying the show?
Leave a rating and a review on Apple Podcasts so more people leaders discover the Work Positive Podcast. It takes a minute and helps the whole community.
Know a leader who would be a great guest? Send your recommendation to [email protected].
1 hr 3 min
July 19Own It. Then Watch Your Team Trust You With It. | Parker Mccumber
Episode 196 | Own It. Then Watch Your Team Trust You With It. | Parker Mccumber

Everyone needs to be needed. How needed do you need to be?
When your team waits on your opinion for every decision, they feel supervised instead of trusted, and you finish the day exhausted. Parker McCumber offers a different route, one he found while flat on his back in an Afghan cesspool.
Parker McCumber brings a rare combination of military leadership, entrepreneurship, and real-world business execution. As a commissioned officer in the Utah Army National Guard and a successful online entrepreneur since 2017, Parker offers practical insights on discipline, leadership, scaling businesses, accountability, wealth-building, and mission-driven success. He holds an MBA, is a 2-Comma Club and 2-Comma Club X award recipient, and hosts the podcast "Based Business."
Key Insights
Ownership replaces victim mentality, and it covers your responsibilities and your outcomes as much as your assets.
Hire for trustworthiness and culture fit. Skills are teachable. Integrity arrives with the person.
Systematized communication sets expectations early, so feedback lands as expected rather than as ambush.
The military rhythm of mission brief, left and right limits, and after action review transfers directly to your company.
Relationship-based leadership gives you the knowledge to coach each person the way that person receives coaching.
Trust is the currency, and one careless task dump overdraws the account.
Your business grows to the size of your leadership, so your personal development and your company development advance together.
Do One Thing
Invest in yourself, and watch the ripple. You arrive at work as a better version of you, which makes you a better team player, a better people leader, a better coach for the people around you. You carry that version home to your family and out into your community. The world transforms as you transform.
Connect with Parker McCumber
Website: https://parkermccumber.com
Book, How the Hell Are You Doing This
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/parker-mccumber/
Mission Ready Mastermind, live event July 23 and 24: linked at https://parkermccumber.com
Parker welcomes direct messages on LinkedIn.
Your Next Step
Your culture already tells you where trust stands. Take the free Work Positive Culture Assessment and find out what it says: https://www.workpositive.today
37 min
July 12On It and In It: How to Create a Team That Stays Brave | Mickey Wilson & Dr. Chris Endersby
Episode 195 · On It and In It: How to Create a Team That Stays Brave | Mickey Wilson & Dr. Chris Endersby
Rate the team you lead on a scale of 1 to 10 for alignment and unity. Not just within the team, but between the team and the company. What is your score?
Alignment and unity are two of the loudest indicators of engagement, and engagement is the prime meridian of growing people and profits.
This week Dr. Joey welcomes Mickey Wilson and Dr Chris Endersby, co-founders of FIRESTARTER, a brand agency that fuses psychology and creativity to transform how leaders and companies show up authentically. Mickey brings 30+ years of branding and creative leadership from household names like Tesco, Samsung, and Ocado. Chris combines dual registration in coaching psychology and psychotherapy with corporate change expertise at JP Morgan, KPMG, and UBS. Together they created Firestarter's proprietary DARE Formula: Differentiation, Authenticity, Resonance, and Expression at every touchpoint.
What follows is a conversation about fire. Not the kind you put out. The kind you start.
Key Insights
Attract the right top talent rather than all the talent.
Name what you do well and what you are still learning. Candor is the pitch.
Hire for two words: on it and in it.
Ownership retains people. Incentives only rent them.
Create the secure base first, then ask your team to be brave.
In the strongest cultures, a celebration and an encouragement look the same.
The wins carry the applause. The near misses carry the feedback.
Culture stays alive. Tend it rather than laminate it.
Originality creates job security in an AI world.
The Insights, Unpacked
Attract the right top talent rather than all the talent. Mickey reframes the whole hiring conversation. The question is not who could possibly do this job. The question is who you are as an organization, what genuinely makes you different, and who fits that. Cast the widest net and you land the wrong people.
Candor is the pitch. Here is what we do well. Here is what we are still learning, and here is how we are working on it. Mickey makes the case that this kind of honesty strengthens the pitch rather than weakening it. Younger candidates in particular see straight through polish, and they respect a leader who sets it aside.
On it and in it. Firestarter reduces the hiring criteria from a long list to two words. On it means the person is genuinely good at the work. In it means the person believes in where the company goes next. You hold that filter in your head through an entire interview, and it tells you more than a scorecard does.
Ownership retains people. Mickey makes the case that people stay when they own their chance to make a difference. Not a financial stake. A real sense that their part of the work matters and that you trust them with it. Give a person ownership and the person invests.
Create the secure base, then ask for bravery. This is Chris's contribution and it may be the most important thing said on the episode. Ask your team for courage, originality, and honest risk, and you owe them a corresponding measure of security. People find courage when they know the job survives the month. Courage is a condition you create, not a trait you hire.
A celebration and an encouragement look the same. Chris describes the mark of a culture that has arrived: from the outside you see the same thing, whether the team gathers to celebrate the biggest win of the year or gathers to lift each other after the biggest loss. Both look the same. Both matter the same. And as Chris points out, the wins carry the applause while the near misses, the pitches you lose, and the mistakes you rectify carry the feedback.
Culture stays alive. Chris on the fluidity of a growing company: as soon as the paint dries on the culture statement, the circumstances change. Culture grows organically. It asks for daily tending rather than framing.
Originality creates job security. Mickey and Chris light up describing 100originals.com, a community they create to celebrate the companies and the people who stay original. In a world of automation, playbooks, and AI, originality makes a person and a company irreplaceable.
Do One Thing (DOT)
Mickey: Be real. Say it as it is, about what you do well and what you do not, and you attract exactly the right people.
Chris: Put the support in place that your team needs to be themselves, and then ask them to be brave.
Connect with Mickey and Chris
Website: firestarter.live Chris on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/drchrisendersby/ FIRESTARTER on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/firestarter-collective-llp/
Originality community: 100originals.com
Their book, Brand Fire, releases before the end of 2026.
Your Next Step
You scored your team on alignment and unity at the top of this episode. Now find out what that score costs you.
The free Work Positive Culture Assessment gives you a clear read in about three minutes. Thirteen questions, and you know your stage, your strengths, and your next best steps.
Take it here: workpositive.today
Connect with Dr. Joey & Work Positive
Work Positive Podcast: workpositive.today/podcasts
Free Work Positive Newsletter: workpositive.today/newsletter
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@workpositive7529
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/drjoeyfaucette/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/WorkPositiveToday/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/workpositive.today/
Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@dr.joeyfaucette

Enjoying the show?
Leave a rating and a review on Apple Podcasts so more people leaders discover the Work Positive Podcast. It takes a minute and helps the whole community.
Know a leader who would be a great guest? Send your recommendation to [email protected].
35 min
July 05People Leave Feelings Instead of Jobs (Season 4 First-Half Wrap)
Episode 194 · People Leave Feelings Instead of Jobs (Season 4 First-Half Wrap)
Twenty-plus guests. One truth. Across the first half of Season 4, every conversation kept circling the same finding: people leave feelings instead of jobs. In this solo wrap, Dr. Joey Faucette looks back across episodes 168 through 192, with D.R.E.A.M. (193) as the capstone, and pulls the whole season into a single word every people leader can act on. Seen.
Dr. Bob Johansen named the world we lead in now: BANI, brittle, anxious, nonlinear, and incomprehensible. Anne Grady reminded us it is not the tech that spins the revolving door, it is people feeling disengaged, overwhelmed, unsupported, and unappreciated. And Stephen de Groot promised that when people know they matter, half your challenges simply go away.
The episode moves in three movements.
Movement one: see them, hear them, value them. Meredith Jones on accountability as a two-way street. Ruth Kent on weaving well-being through the whole culture. Barbie Brown on being a relationship builder rather than a recruiter. Tom Lawrence on listening to understand rather than to reply. Margarita Ramos on trust growing in the light. Emily Berliner on recognition as the underrated tool that costs nothing. Tim Elmore on A.L.E.G. and the line from David Augsburger that being heard is so close to being loved the two are hard to tell apart. Dr. Jamie Hardy on making a well-being culture visible before depletion seeps through. George Pesansky on studying what went right. And Dr. Domonique Revere on curiosity as the fuel in the Work Positive engine.
Movement two: your roots. You can only give what you have grown within yourself. Nick Jonsson on executive loneliness and going first. Mark Divine on calm as an outcome of training and stillness as the master skill. Will Steel on being yourself as the most powerful you there is. Brad Englert on telling the truth, putting family first, and going home for supper.
Movement three: six frameworks, one conviction. T.R.A.N.S.F.O.R.M., R.E.T.A.I.N., L.E.A.R.N., Leader Soul, T.H.R.I.V.E., and the D.R.E.A.M. Team, with Dave Sanderson, Rob Volpe, Steve Cadigan, Allison Jones, and Tom Oxley threading the same truth through each. Michael Walsh, Bala Muthiah, Bob Johansen, and Sharon McLaughlin close the loop: structures serve people, give before you take, choose how you are augmented, and have the real conversations you have been avoiding.
Your Do One Thing this week: Choose one person on your team. Sit down one to one, with no agenda but the person in front of you. Tell them one thing you see in them that they have yet to see in themselves. Then ask one question: where do you want to go from here? Then close your mouth and listen to understand.
Where do you stand in your own culture? Take the free Work Positive Culture Assessment at workpositive.today. Thirteen questions, about three minutes, and you will know your stage, your strengths, and your next best steps.
Connect with Dr. Joey
Visit workpositive.today, subscribe to the free Work Positive Newsletter, and browse every episode at the Work Positive Podcast archive.
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@dr.joeyfaucette
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@workpositive7529
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/drjoeyfaucette/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/WorkPositiveToday/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/workpositive.today/
#WorkPositive #CultureEatsStrategyForBreakfast #ChangeManagement #ChangeFatigue #Leadership #PeopleFirst #HR

Enjoying the show? Please leave a rating and review on Apple Podcasts . It helps more people leaders find the Work Positive Podcast and grow culture, grow people and grow profits
Know a leader who would be a great guest? Send your recommendation to [email protected].
19 min
June 28Cultivate the Teams You D.R.E.A.M. About | Dr. Joey Faucette
Episode 193 | Cultivate the Teams You D.R.E.A.M. About | Dr. Joey Faucette

Episode summary
How do you cultivate a Work Positive team culture when nearly 4 out of 5 people on your team are somewhere between going through the motions and actively working against you? How do you create a team so strong that people line up to join it, refuse to leave it, and do their best work inside it? Dr. Joey Faucette unveils his groundbreaking D.R.E.A.M. Teams framework for cultivating the teams you dream about leading. You discover how to define your culture on purpose, place the right people in the right seats, elevate courage, attend to each person, and magnify their strengths.
Listen as Dr. Joey explores:
☀️ Why managers account for 70% of the variance in team engagement and why that variance costs the global economy $438 billion in lost productivity annually
☀️ How a single misaligned leader, operating without self-awareness, can poison an entire culture one drop at a time and how a single intentional leader can transform it
☀️ Why top talent are the best evaluators in the room and why they often choose to work for a different company than yours
☀️ How fear paralyzes teams in communication, career progression, and innovation and how courage is the antidote that unlocks potential
☀️ Why people who felt seen, heard, and led suddenly felt none of those things when leaders stopped checking in during the pandemic

Dr. Joey transforms how you think about team culture by proving that as you apply the D.R.E.A.M. framework, you create a culture where people feel clearly led, rightly placed, bravely heard, personally seen, and genuinely celebrated.

Key Insight
"The organizations that grow people and profits today do so in that order. They start with people. And the profits pour in." Sharon McLaughlin

Your DOT (Do One Thing)
Choose ONE element of the D.R.E.A.M. framework to implement this week based on where your team can learn and do better:
Define: Ask one team member "What is one thing I can improve in leading our team?"
Right People: Write down three reasons why the perfect candidate gets excited to join your team before your next hire
Elevate: Share one thing you're uncertain about in your next team meeting and ask for your team's thinking
Attend: Have a vision conversation with one team member, telling them one thing you see in them that they have yet to fully see in themselves
Magnify: Catch three people doing something well this week, share it specifically, out loud, and in the moment

The D.R.E.A.M. Teams @ Work Framework
Define Your Culture on Purpose
Right People, Right Seats
Elevate Courage
Attend to Each Person
Magnify Their Strengths
Featured Work Positive Podcast Guests
Sean Lemson (executive coach, author of "One Drop of Poison")
Dr. Will Sparks (leadership culture expert)
Jon McGavin (Area General Manager for Ritz-Carlton and JW Marriott, Grand Lakes Orlando)
Jennifer McClure (executive search veteran, leadership advisor)
Ashley Rudolph (talent acquisition expert)
Glenn Akramoff (interim leadership specialist)
Jill Schulman (former Marine, author of "The Bravery Effect")
Lisa Cummings (CEO of Lead Through Strengths)
Connect with Dr. Joey & Work Positive
Visit workpositive.today, subscribe to the free Work Positive Newsletter, and browse every episode at the Work Positive Podcast archive.
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@dr.joeyfaucette
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@workpositive7529
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/drjoeyfaucette/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/WorkPositiveToday/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/workpositive.today/
Enjoying the show?
Leave a rating and a review on Apple Podcasts so more people leaders discover the Work Positive Podcast. It takes a minute and helps the whole community.
Know a leader who would be a great guest? Send your recommendation to [email protected].

#WorkPositive #CultureEatsStrategyForBreakfast #DREAMTeams #Leadership #Engagement #Attraction #Courage #CareerGrowth
1 hr 1 min
June 21Lead Change Without Losing Your People | Sharon McLaughlin
Episode 192 | Lead Change Without Losing Your People | Sharon McLaughlin
Episode summary
Disruption is the norm now, and wave after wave of it leaves people leaders worn down in body, mind, and heart. Sharon McLaughlin shows you how to guide change so it transforms your culture rather than batters your people. You care for yourself first, then you care for the team you lead, and you trade more strategy for the real conversations that keep your culture people-first.
Listen as Sharon McLaughlin explores:
☀️ How to guide change without losing yourself or the people you lead
☀️ Why change fatigue and change saturation drain organizations today
☀️ How to care for yourself first as a people leader, then care for your team
☀️ What the silence in a room tells you about your culture
☀️ How real conversations, rather than more strategy, keep your culture people-first
Key Insight
“That’s the real measure of culture: what’s not being said, or what’s being avoided.”
Sharon McLaughlin

Sharon’s Do One Thing (DOT)
“Get out of the strategy and have some real conversations about how the change is being received or perceived, and how the team is managing it. Sometimes leaders avoid those conversations because they don’t want to hear the answer. They just want it implemented. They’ve invested a lot of money. So those conversations you’re avoiding, have them. What you hear may surprise you, and your team will appreciate it.”
Sharon McLaughlin

About Sharon McLaughlin
Sharon McLaughlin is an executive coach and change leadership advisor with more than 30 years of experience helping people and organizations navigate complex transitions. She is the founder of Change Clarity, where she helps leaders guide change without losing themselves or their people in the process. She serves as president of the Ontario chapter of the Change Management Association and belongs to a global community of change management professionals.
Connect with Sharon
Website: sharonmclaughlin.ca
LinkedIn: Sharon McLaughlin on LinkedIn
Connect with Dr. Joey
Visit workpositive.today, subscribe to the free Work Positive Newsletter, and browse every episode at the Work Positive Podcast archive.
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@dr.joeyfaucette
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@workpositive7529
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/drjoeyfaucette/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/WorkPositiveToday/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/workpositive.today/
#WorkPositive #CultureEatsStrategyForBreakfast #ChangeManagement #ChangeFatigue #Leadership #PeopleFirst #HR

Enjoying the show? Please leave a rating and review on Apple Podcasts . It helps more people leaders find the Work Positive Podcast and grow culture, grow people and grow profits
Know a leader who would be a great guest? Send your recommendation to [email protected].
32 min
June 14Make People Matter, and Watch Challenges Shrink | Stephen de Groot
Episode 191 | Make People Matter, and Watch Challenges Shrink | Stephen de Groot
Episode Overview
“Take the values off the wall. Paint over them.” Stephen de Groot once showed up to a consulting engagement with a roller and a paint can, and nearly got fired for it. His point lands hard and simple: your values stay just words until your actions give them meaning.
As you live the values you say you believe, your culture transforms from a poster in the lobby into a place where your people feel safe, seen, and ready to grow.
Listen as Stephen explores with Dr. Joey:
☀️ Why values painted on a wall mean nothing until your daily actions give them meaning.
☀️ The three great states that help your people feel safe and capable.
☀️ What “nuked” change is and why you are created for it.
☀️ How hiring for values and filtering for competencies shrinks most discipline challenges.
☀️ The one thing you can do today to grow your own resilience by knowing your values.
Key Insight
“Ensure that your people feel like they matter, and what they do matters, and half your problems will go away.”
Stephen de Groot
Your DOT (Do One Thing)
Know yourself. Know your own values. As Stephen says, the one thing you can do is “know ourselves, know our own values,” because understanding what matters to you grows your resilience and points you toward the environments that align with your values, where fulfillment and meaning grow.
Connect with Stephen de Groot
Get a copy of his books:
Getting To Better: A New Model for Elevating Human Potential at Work and in Life
Responsive Leadership in Social Services: A Practical Approach for Optimizing Engagement and Performance

Brivia Consulting: https://www.briviaconsulting.com/
Getting to Better (free tools + overview): https://gettingtobetter.com/
LinkedIn: Stephen de Groot
Connect with Dr. Joey
Visit workpositive.today, subscribe to the free Work Positive Newsletter, and browse every episode at the Work Positive Podcast archive.
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@dr.joeyfaucette
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@workpositive7529
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/drjoeyfaucette/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/WorkPositiveToday/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/workpositive.today/
#WorkPositive #CultureEatsStrategyForBreakfast #Leadership #HumanPotential #EmployeeEngagement #CompanyValues

Enjoying the show? Please leave a rating and review on Apple Podcasts . It helps more people leaders find the Work Positive Podcast and grow culture, grow people and grow profits
36 min

About Work Positive

From the publisher's feed

Work Positive podcast guests share strategies and tactics, real-life stories, and case studies that focus on how you can attract top talent and reduce team turnover. The host of the Work Positive…

Share Work Positive

Sign up to save your podcasts

Work Positive

Work Positive episodes

About Work Positive