August 12, 2025 • 51 mins
A single success can be powerful, but great leaders know how to turn that spark into a surge that carries a team forward. Momentum isn’t accidental—it’s created through intentional preparation, the right structures, and a culture that celebrates progress while keeping eyes on the future. In this episode, Don Yaeger and Bernard Banks share proven strategies for sustaining momentum so it becomes a self-fueling force for resilience, focus, and performance.
Working on Purpose is broadcast live Tuesdays at 6PM ET and Music on W4CY Radio (www.w4cy.com) part of Talk 4 Radio (www.talk4radio.com) on the Talk 4 Media Network (www.talk4media.com). Working on Purpose is viewed on Talk 4 TV (www.talk4tv.com).
Working on Purpose Podcast is also available on Talk 4 Media (www.talk4media.com), Talk 4 Podcasting (www.talk4podcasting.com), iHeartRadio, Amazon Music, Pandora, Spotify, Audible, and over 100 other podcast outlets.
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/working-on-purpose--2643411/support.
Working on Purpose is broadcast live Tuesdays at 6PM ET and Music on W4CY Radio (www.w4cy.com) part of Talk 4 Radio (www.talk4radio.com) on the Talk 4 Media Network (www.talk4media.com). Working on Purpose is viewed on Talk 4 TV (www.talk4tv.com).
Working on Purpose Podcast is also available on Talk 4 Media (www.talk4media.com), Talk 4 Podcasting (www.talk4podcasting.com), iHeartRadio, Amazon Music, Pandora, Spotify, Audible, and over 100 other podcast outlets.
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/working-on-purpose--2643411/support.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
The topics and opinions expressed in the following show are
solely those of the hosts and their guests and not
those of W FOURCY Radio. It's employees are affiliates. We
make no recommendations or endorsements for radio show programs, services,
or products mentioned on air or on our web. No
liability explicit or implies shall be extended to W four
CY Radio or its employees are affiliates. Any questions or
comments should be directed to those show hosts. Thank you
(00:20):
for choosing W FOURCY Radio.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
What's working on Purpose? Anyway? Each week we ponder the
answer to this question. People ache for meaning and purpose
at work, to contribute their talents passionately and know their
lives really matter. They crave being part of an organization
that inspires them and helps them grow into realizing their
highest potential. Business can be such a force for good
in the world, elevating humanity. In our program, we provide
(00:51):
guidance and inspiration to help usher in this world we
all want working on Purpose. Now, here's your host, doctor
Elise Cortez.
Speaker 3 (01:04):
Welcome back to the Working and Purpose Program, which has
been brought to you with passion and pride since February
twenty fifteen. Thanks for tuning in this week. Great to
have you. I'm your host, doctor Relise Cortes. If we've
not met before and you don't know me, I'm a
workforce advisor, organizational psychologist, management consultant, logo therapist, speaker and author.
My team and I at gusta Now help companies to
enliven and fortify their operations by building a dynamic, high
(01:26):
performance culture, inspirational leadership, and nurturing managers activated by meaning
and purpose. Many organizations are not aware of how critical
it is to invest in developing their leaders and managers
not just for their own effectiveness, but also to avoid
burnout and keep them fulfilled so that they can and
that they can also measure and monitor the experience of
purpose in the organization to keep it working as an
(01:47):
operational imperative. So much opportunity there. You can learn more
about us and how we can work together at gustodashnow
dot com or my personal site, Atliscortes dot com. Getting
into today's program we have with us today, the author
of the New Science and Momentum how the best coaches
and leaders build a fire from a single spark, which
is the focus of our conversation. We have Don Yeager.
(02:09):
He's a twelve time New York Times bestselling author, longtime
associate editor for Sports Illustrated, and one of the most
in demand public speakers on the corporate circuit. He is
the host of the highly rated Corporate Competitor podcast. Also
with US Today is retired General Bernie Banks, who now
serves as the director of Rice University's Door Institute for
(02:29):
New leaders and is a professor in the practice of
leadership within the university's jesse A. Jones Graduate School of Business.
Bernie retired from the United States Army in twenty sixteen
as a Brigadier general after having successfully led West Points
Department of Behavioral Sciences and Leadership. In his final assignment.
He has led military units ranging insights from ten to
(02:51):
three thousand plus people. Additionally, he has engaged with organizations
around the globe regard in their leadership development efforts. In
other words, have two amazing powerhouse houses with US Today.
Don joins US Today from Tallahassee, Florida, and General Banks
from Houston, Texas. Gentlemen, he hearty, welcome to Working on Purpose.
Speaker 4 (03:10):
Thank Thank you so much, Elise, Thank you It's wonderful
to be here.
Speaker 5 (03:13):
Isn't it great to be on the other side of
the mic on?
Speaker 2 (03:15):
You know?
Speaker 3 (03:15):
It's just fun? Right?
Speaker 4 (03:16):
Oh? Great?
Speaker 3 (03:17):
Right, well, let's kick this thing off by celebrating this
beautiful book you put into the world. I absolutely loved it,
as I told you before we got on air. Huge fan,
I want to dive into it.
Speaker 5 (03:27):
I was really intrigued.
Speaker 3 (03:29):
By how you talk about in the book, even just
the spark for the book, how it came to be.
I think that that's a really fun thing to kick
off with. So one of you tell us about how
this book came into to be present for us.
Speaker 4 (03:42):
I'll jump in. Yeah, many of many of you, many
of your listeners might remember that there was a Super
Bowl played a few years ago in which the favored
New England Patriots had fallen behind the Atlanta Falcons twenty
eight to three. In fact, midway through the third quarter,
(04:02):
the odds makers gave New England a point six percent
chance of winning the game. At that stage, you know,
Atlanta was a ninety nine point four percent the odds
of winning. And then suddenly little things started to happen,
things that hadn't happened previous in the game, Tom Brady,
the least mobile quarterback in the NFL, suddenly ran for
(04:22):
a first down and little things started to pile up.
And what happened was that the Patriots began to change
the momentum of the organ of the game. And before
it was over, someone will remember the greatest comeback in
the history of the Super Bowl. No team had ever
come back from more than fourteen points down, and the
(04:43):
Patriots came back to win in overtime. And the very
next day I came in to my office, opened up
the whiteboard where all the creative team were gathered in
the conference room, and just wrote the words, how does
a moment turn into momentum? How does that happen? How
do you?
Speaker 6 (05:00):
How do you?
Speaker 4 (05:00):
How did what? How can we explain what happened last night?
If people are trying to understand, could that happen to
us in our organization? Could we be the Atlanta Falcons
and maybe give up a great lead? And over the
course of the next eight years, I partnered with General Banks,
one of my great friends for many years, and we
(05:22):
began interviewing the most amazing leaders in the planet. We
began going into the field and polling Americans adults on
what they believe about momentum, because we wanted to explain
what we could about the about you know, the dynamic
that that allows that to happen in organizations. And what
(05:45):
we found was some really incredible detail. And I know
we'll get into that with you a lease, but but
it's it's it's a It was an amazing journey. I
think both Bernie and I we were sad we had
to cut it short. We would have gone five more
years interviewing people because we were so into it. But
you have to stop at some stage and right, and
I'm grateful that you enjoyed it.
Speaker 3 (06:06):
I do understand that, and I absolutely love that. I
wish I would have been there in your back pockets
for the whole trip. I would have been.
Speaker 5 (06:12):
Cheering you on and ask this too.
Speaker 3 (06:17):
Okay, So one of the things that I think I
really gravitated to that I think is pretty core to
what you write about for Momentum, which we'll get into next.
But I think I want to situate first role of
mirror neurons and of course the concept of flow. If
you can situate and kind of explain how mirror neurons work,
why they're important, and of course white flow is related
(06:39):
to momentum.
Speaker 4 (06:43):
Yeah you want me to take it? Yes, okay, good,
So I'll tell you. One of the first things we
started thinking about was, you know, there was some pretty
famous work done about thirty years ago by a researcher
in Santa Clara, doctor named me Hi, and his last
name was so long I couldn't pronounce it.
Speaker 3 (07:05):
I've always said it chisholm Ahley, but I'm sure that's
not right.
Speaker 4 (07:07):
It's something close, probably as close to that. He told
me to call him doctor c. Yeah, I got it worked,
Doug great, which is what Mike Krzyzewski does to coach
k but the uh. But me Hi actually agreed kind
of in the early stages of our research to sit
down with me, and it turned out to be one
of the very last interviews he got a chance to
(07:29):
do before he passed away a few years back. But
in that dinner with he and his wife, I proposed
to him that flow as as he defined it, which
is the ability to believe I'm in I'm in flow. Right.
We've heard that phrase used before where suddenly you look
up and you don't realize that that it's it's quitting
(07:51):
time because you've been so engaged in your work, you
love what you're doing so much that you don't see
the clock. You're writing and suddenly it's two in the
morning and you have no idea. That's flow. But what
we wanted to propose was that when a group of
people get in flow, that's when you create momentum. Right,
(08:13):
it's group flow, which is different than what he studied,
And by the time dinner was over, he was fully engaged,
he was excited, he was cheering us on, encouraging that.
This was exactly the extension of his work from thirty
years earlier and couldn't have been happier to offer us
(08:33):
advice and counsel. So flow is that ability for an
individual to be moving towards something special. Momentum is when
a group of people are doing exactly that, when a team,
an organization, a company are moving together in a lockstep.
(08:55):
And so with that, the next thing that really kind
of came out was this idea about mirror neurons. One
of the ways that doctor c encouraged me to look
at this concept was that there's a fair amount of
research done right now on mirror neurons, which is the
ability for two people to feel something similar even though
(09:17):
only one of them actually experienced it. Right, I'll just
put it really simply. It's like if you and I
work at the same place a lease, and you complete
a masterful sale, something really big. Instead of being jealous
that you were the one to complete it, I actually
(09:40):
I'm as happy for you as if I had completed
it myself. And that's and that is when mirror neurons
are flowing in very simple ways. Some people talk about
it like when you go into a room and somebody
yawns and suddenly other people start yawning. That's that's the
action of mirror neurons actually taking and physiologically playing itself out,
(10:05):
even though neurologically it was me who yawned, and then
suddenly you feel the need to. And so mirror neurons
are when that group of people moving in flow together
are actually capable of celebrating each other as opposed to
finding jealousy amongst one or the other, because you are
(10:30):
going to get credit for this moment as opposed to me.
And so those two elements of the project were ultimately
very important in our understanding and our description for others
of how momentum can become a collective.
Speaker 5 (10:50):
Effort beautifully explain. Yeah, that's okay.
Speaker 3 (10:54):
It's a really important concept I think for listeners and
viewers to get as we go along here, very very powerful.
And by the way, I'm proud to tell you that
in the ten and a half years that I've hosted
the show, not one says my guest yawned on the show.
So therefore I didn't yon either. Don't even start, don
(11:14):
You're not going to be the first one.
Speaker 5 (11:16):
Okay.
Speaker 3 (11:17):
So now we've done all that, let's talk about what
is momentum? Why should we care about this?
Speaker 2 (11:23):
Yeah?
Speaker 6 (11:23):
I think the build off of what Dodge has shared,
I like to think of it as a belief with
respect to do we think things are working for us
or against us? Quite simply, you know, going back to
this notion of flow, is the flow head in the
right direction? Is the flow head in the wrong direction?
Do we feel like we're swimming with the current or
(11:44):
against the tide? You know? And so it is a belief,
it's a mindset, it's a mindset, and that mindset, it's
important for leaders to be intentional about how they shape
the mindset and beliefs of their other teams. And so
in the research that we conducted and the interviews that
(12:04):
we were privileged to take part in, we examined how
leaders across four different verticals, business, sports, politics, and the
military went about creating momentum throughout their careers. And the
stories they shared were fascinating.
Speaker 3 (12:21):
All right, love just some of the descriptors you have
in your book, and there's just so many great things.
I ran out of the ink when I was highlighting
your book. But I like how that momentum has been
described as a competitive energy tsunami. That sounds good to me,
a great exaggerator, which is what John Maxwell said, and
a force multiplier. I mean, doesn't that sound pretty good
If you're trying to get a team to a win,
(12:43):
and you're trying to do something in turn a company around,
or you're performing a military operation, that all sounds pretty
good to me.
Speaker 4 (12:50):
We should all want that, would we? I mean, would
that wouldn't wouldn't the opportunities for us to be successful
be greater if any one of those things things were
true within our team?
Speaker 2 (13:03):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (13:04):
And I like what you also said when we talk
aboutmentum you say in your book and I quote you say,
we start with the premise that momentum exists and can
be manipulated by intentional types of preparation and organizational structure,
and we give the following definition. Momentum is a synergistic
force that influences the progress, resilience, and focus of a team,
and its impact on the mindset of a team positively
(13:26):
or negatively can be manipulated or extended. Now that ought
to be ladies and gentlemen, both exciting and terrifying you
if you're a leader, I.
Speaker 6 (13:35):
Hope it should be exciting. You know, when we were
thinking about this book, I was having a conversation with
one of my friends who runs the private equity practice
for a very large financial service. Is Concerned, and these
folks invest billions of dollars in organizations in the hopes
that they can unlock dormant potential create value. And when
(13:59):
I was talking to about this concept, he said, creating
momentum is my job. Hm hmm, plain and simple. My
job is not to make money. My job is to
find opportunities where, through our company's intervention, we can create
positive momentum, unlock an investment thesis, and ultimately return money
(14:23):
to those who had the courage to invest in us
because they thought that our acumen with respect to generating
momentum was worth taking a risk on.
Speaker 3 (14:33):
That is terribly exciting, Bernie, Oh my goodness, very exciting.
Speaker 4 (14:36):
But at least I want I want to I want
to be the negative. I'm going to be the negative
Nelly here, but I'm gonna be negative. I love's answer there.
But one other thing that stood out to us was
in the early stages of the work on this. We
went into the field with a nationally recognized polling firm
and and and reach out to four thousand Americans adult
(15:00):
right and asked them a series of questions about momentum.
Number one. The first thing that stood out was that
ninety plus percent of them believed in momentum. That number
rose to one hundred percent if you only included in
the answers those who had played sports, had either led
an organization, or served in the military. You do one
(15:21):
of those three things, and your one hundred percent convinced
momentum exists. But while most of them do believe it
can be manipulated, only twenty five percent of them had
ever worked in an organization where the con the construct
the idea of manipulating momentum had actually ever been raised,
where you know, what can we do, how can we
(15:43):
create something? How can we take advantage of this moment?
Only twenty five percent, But the last number which really
stood out was that seventy two percent of them said
if they were working someplace where they perceived momentum had
shifted to a competitor where they were on the losing
end of the they were coming up from behind in
(16:08):
con in this idea, they would consider looking for other work. Now.
So while it's it's in Bernie's example, it's that guy's
job right to create momentum, for all the rest of us,
it's our job too, because if we're not number one,
not only are we we do we risk giving ground
(16:30):
to our competitors. We also risk losing our very best employees,
who they may not say it, but they know it, right.
They know when it's a mindset, right, it's a belief system,
and they know when they believe that they're behind and
losing ground. And nobody wants to ride out on a
(16:53):
sinking ship.
Speaker 3 (16:55):
And this is why, of course, right we both of
all three of us know how important leadership and culture is.
Why We're going to talk about that next after we
take our first break, so let's do that. I'm your host,
doctor Leis Cortez. We've been on the air with retired
General Bernie Banks, who now serves as the director of
Rice University's Door University for New leaders and is a
(17:16):
professor in the practice of leadership within the university's jesse
Ah Jones Graduate School of Business. We also have Don Yeager,
a best selling author, associate editor for Sports Illustrated, and
host of the highly rated Corporate Competitor podcast. We've been
talking about where their book Momentum came from, what is momentum,
why it's important. After the break, we are going to
talk a little bit about their model, but then we're
(17:37):
also going to talk about how momentum can be can
be stewarded by leaders and within culture. We'll be right back.
Speaker 2 (18:00):
Doctor Elise Cortes is a management consultant specializing in meaning
and purpose. An inspirational speaker and author. She helps companies
visioneer for greater purpose among stakeholders and develop purpose inspired
leadership and meaning infused cultures that elevate fulfillment, performance, and
commitment within the workforce. To learn more or to invite
Elise to speak to your organization. Please visit her at
(18:22):
elisecortes dot com. Let's talk about how to get your
employees working on purpose. This is working on Purpose with
doctor Elise Cortes. To reach our program today or to
open a conversation with Elise, send an email to Alise
A Lise at elisecortes dot com. Now back to working
(18:46):
on Purpose.
Speaker 3 (18:52):
Thanksteresting with us, and welcome back to working on Purpose.
I'm your host, doctor Elise Cortes. As I'm dedicated to
helping create a world where organizations thrive because they're people
thrive and they're led by inspirational leaders that help them
find and contribute their greatness, and we do business that
betters the world. I keep researching and writing my own books,
so one of my latest came out. It's called The
Great Revitalization. How activating meaning and purpose can radically enliven
(19:14):
your business. And I wrote it to help leaders understand
today's diverse and discerning workforce. What do they want and
need from you from their work experience, and then I
offer twenty two best practices that you can cand equip
you for you to be able to put that into
your culture and provide that for them. You can find
my books on Amazon or my personal site at least
quretest dot com if you are just now joining us.
(19:35):
My guests are Don Jeger and Bernie Banks that are
the authors of the new Science of Momentum, How the
best coaches and leaders build a fire from a single spark,
which of course I loved. So before we get into
talking about leadership and culture and how we can really
presence and nurture the idea of momentum, let's talk about
your model. It's pretty hefty, it's pretty strong and robust.
(19:58):
So can one of you take us through your momentum model?
Speaker 6 (20:01):
Yeah, I'm happy to do that. So, when thinking about
how we would distill the insights glean from talking to
leaders across the four sectors, nine things came to the fore.
One it all starts with leadership. Leadership is the X factor,
It's what makes organizations and momentum go. And so the
(20:23):
model starts with leadership. How do you foster effective leadership,
create clear alignment around what direction are we headed? How
do we galvanize people's willingness to work in a coordinated
manner and then sustain the effort required to achieve our
desired aims. From there, it's a leader's responsibility to foster
the right culture. So what are those norms, values, beliefs
(20:45):
that you're going to put in place that are going
to serve as the daily expectations of those you are
in a relationship with. Then it's important to get the
right people on your team. Recruitment matters. You don't get
to recruit every single member of your team, but you
have to recruit key players, what you know, Coach k
referred to as glue guys. You know, the right A players,
(21:06):
Get the right people in place in those critical roles,
and from there you start to think about what are
we going to have to do in order to prepare
ourselves to put ourselves in a position where we can
seize a moment or a set of activities. And so
this preparation component, people highlighted how they had gone about
that over time. Once those things transpire, when the moment happens,
(21:32):
we call that the spark, and it doesn't have to
be one thing. It can be a set of things
that transpire within a certain timeframe. But then it's important
for leaders to be able to recognize the spark and
then help others to recognize it as well, and so
communications became important. Leader communications, how do you communicate effectively
to help people put the spark into context and galvanize
(21:54):
their willingness to continue the effort going forward. From there,
you have to maintain a positive climate on your team.
Climate is a short term reaction to the environment. Culture
is pervasive. So how do you have a team where hey,
guess what, Yes, we are continuing to foster just belief that, yes,
we can do this. We were built for this, which
(22:14):
leads into the importance of never taking mindset and belief
for granted, fostering that all which leads to outcomes which
then tie into feedback and so it's an iterative process.
But those nine things stood out time and time again
in our conversations with leaders across all those fields of endeavor.
Speaker 3 (22:37):
Beautifully explained Bernie, think you might be a professor, and
so listeners and viewers, that's the meat there. What Bernie
just really explained of how that all ties together. And
what they've done is they've got a chapter on each
one of those pieces so you can really dive deep
into it. But that was beautifully explained. Okay, so now
what I want to do is I want to talk
(22:57):
about how this shows up and some of the examples
having your book in terms of leadership, in terms of culture,
so our listeners and viewers can now connect the concept.
I am not a sports fan or really big into sports.
I'm lucky if I know what sport is being played
in the season, So don't hold that against me, guys,
But I am very, very fascinating with the Golden State Warriors,
(23:17):
and so I want to talk about how this this
notion here of you've got a chapter on the culture
and what coach care if that's why I'm saying, is
saying Kerr Kerr is doing to shape their shape theirs,
their culture and then set them up for such strong
performance and success and even the purchase, could you just
kind of situate, you know, you talk about the purchase
(23:38):
of the Warriors, let's start with that. That's pretty fascinating.
Speaker 4 (23:41):
Well, I'll jump in there. You know, the Warriors were
a pretty you know, we're kind of trending upwards as seemingly,
but they but they though they were trending, they seemed
to be underperforming against the talent that the ownership that
bought the team believed them to be capable of, and
(24:01):
so they chose to make a leadership change. They brought
in a new coach and and ironically, the coach that
brought in had never been a head coach before in
the NBA, so he's a he's brand new to his role,
but he had been he'd been around and been a
been a participant in many championship teams. So he understood
that what what he believed was the most important thing
(24:23):
was the reshaping of the culture. He didn't need to
change players, he didn't need to change leaders. What he
needed was to reshape the culture. And he uh and
made a point that there were there were several elements
of the culture that really stood out to him, but
the number one piece. He believed the culture was built
on four core values joy, competition, compassion, and mindfulness. I'm
(24:50):
going to get to joy last, but but the idea
of competition. He believed that the players need needed not
to believe that anything was given to them, that they
had to continuously be ready to be their very best
in order to get playing time. So competition was extraordinarily
important as a cultural value that he wanted players to understand,
(25:13):
don't expect anything come prepared to compete. Compassion was equally
important because the one thing he said is, you know
we're in a failure sport, right. Nobody wins every game,
Nobody hits every shot. Even Michael Jordan's most famous quote
is about the number of shots he missed. And so
(25:34):
the idea of compassion was in his cultural ethos was
that we had to be forgiving of each other because
you're going to fail, and I can't be mad at
you for failing because tomorrow I might fail and I
need you to be supportive of me. So show compassion
to each other. Mindfulness was just simply the idea of
(25:55):
constantly being connected. He was looking for connection, and that
really led to his concept of joy, which he said
is the most important in building any great team culture.
And joy for him was looking at what makes it
we're going to be better at our work if we're
if we're happier at our work, right, And so how
(26:18):
do I build joy? And one of the things he
discovered was that the previous coach didn't agree that music
should be played during practice. Very simple thing, but the
players love music. The players want to dance as they're practicing,
and so he very simply added music to the atmosphere,
(26:39):
and it changed the way people felt about being in
the workplace. He started looking at it and saying, you know,
the other thing we need is to know each other better.
So he started inviting player families to travel with the
team on charters as they were heading to away games,
and he would invite those families to join the team
for dinners because he wanted everybody to get to know
(27:02):
each other better. He wanted a better sense of joy.
And that didn't just manifest itself, it did so in
explosive ways. Just three years after he became the head coach,
Golden State, you know, delivered the greatest season in NBA history.
(27:23):
They won more games than any team ever had. Forget
Michael Jordan's Bulls. They delivered more wins than anybody in history.
Based on he would argue this concept of joy.
Speaker 3 (27:38):
I thought that was so compelling, that whole bit that
she wrote about that, and I think the idea of
situating and making joy a central part of your culture,
and then talk about those those mirror neurons, of course,
being able to see how people respond to that music
and increase their energy and their and their happiness. And
then I did really appreciate the idea that in terms
(27:59):
of encouraging the compassion, so that when when the other
players knew what was happening in their personal life, so
what were they dealing with what was important to them?
Who is their family? I just think that is really,
really something special to celebrate, and I really wanted to
make sure that we showcase that. So gorgeous share. Thank you, Don.
Speaker 5 (28:19):
I also think it's important.
Speaker 4 (28:20):
Bernie, she said, gorgeous share it to me, not.
Speaker 5 (28:27):
If I can find it. Bernie, I'll say the same
thing for you, but only if you earn it.
Speaker 3 (28:32):
Ners.
Speaker 6 (28:33):
I'm happy for Don to have gotten a gorgeous share.
So here's gorgeous share. Is my gorgeous share. We're like,
we're winning.
Speaker 2 (28:40):
You see.
Speaker 3 (28:40):
It's so easy to you know, make someone's stay right.
We should just do more of it.
Speaker 5 (28:44):
But you know, here's where it gets really.
Speaker 3 (28:49):
Fun for me, as somebody who's been trafficking and meaning
and purpose and all these kinds of things for some time.
Now we can talk about the numbers of how this stuff,
you know, translates. If you you talked about in the
book how the Golden State Wars top the Forbes Annual
Valuation list for NBA teams for the first time in
their history in twenty twenty two, and then top the
list again in twenty twenty three with a value of
(29:10):
seven point seven billion dollars. I mean, there's so many
things we could say about that, but I think it's
important that listeners and viewers can connect this to the
bottom line as well. It's not just feally good stuff.
These are real results.
Speaker 4 (29:24):
Yeah, and I think that's an important piece of this
entire discussion. Right, Nothing about this journey for Bernie or
myself has been about looking for some really fun thing
to do. Now, we want people to be more successful, right,
and momentum allows you to become more successful.
Speaker 3 (29:45):
Just fun all the way around. And you guys are
both fun.
Speaker 5 (29:48):
What a delight.
Speaker 3 (29:48):
I didn't know what I was going to expect, and
look at you, I might not want to give you back.
So let's just we'll see. Okay, Well, let's talk about
this spark. You have a whole chapter around the spark,
and this is kind of of where things kind of
where you say where the spark is the place where
belief systems begin to shift. Let's talk about it.
Speaker 6 (30:08):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (30:09):
Yeah, So.
Speaker 6 (30:11):
When thinking about how do you recognize momentum. This was
something that immediately came to mind for me because of
the time I spent in the military. In the military,
we spend countless hours preparing to develop capabilities that should
something transpire in the world that requires our services, we're
(30:32):
able to recognize those moments, tailor our activities to create
positive momentum so that we can prevail and secure our
nation and do to things we do in the military.
And so in the military we call that seizing the initiative,
And so how do you recognize when the moments occur
that now present an opportunity for you to seize the
(30:53):
initiative to go on the offense. In the military, when
you're on defense, you're doing defense the entire time with
the intent of getting back on the offense. It's always
about having offensive efforts that you are orchestrating. And so
teaching young leaders throughout the military how to recognize when
(31:16):
critical things transpire and then to build upon those in
a very thoughtful way was something we actually taught people
how to do well. And so I was very curious,
how are others doing this? And one of the conversations
we had was with a very successful basketball coach Buzz Williams,
(31:36):
who at the time was the Texas A and M
basketball coach, and he was talking to us about how
we prepare his players to recognize the importance of certain
critical moments within a game, and he was just so
creative the way he went about it. Conversely, when we
talked to one of the co founders of Nvidia about
(31:57):
how are you going to recognize the spart he went
back to, Hey, we didn't stumble upon the importance of GPUs.
We knew that one day there would become a need
to have computational power that could do several things at once,
foster parallel processing, conduct matrix operations, and nobody was there yet,
and nobody could really anticipate how fast do we have
(32:19):
to get there? But they knew at some point in
the future that's going to become important. And then boom,
some things transpired and they had the best capability and
suddenly they just skyrocket. But it wasn't the first time
they had done that. They had also done it for gaming.
They had also done it. So they're in the business
of constant reinvention in order to create positive momentum for
(32:43):
their organization and to change the game inside the technology space.
And so you saw it in the military, you saw
it in industry, you saw it in sports, we saw
it in politics. In our conversation with James Carbill and
how we would prepare candidates, it was fascinating, say, at
some point in this campaign, something's going to transpire, and
(33:03):
in that moment, we have to be prepared to seize
it and to build upon it. And he ran us
through some scenarios and they talked about how you would
create dialogue around that in the moment, and he rattled
off a fictional scenario where he gave an impassioned speech
and you were like, oh, you had to have that already,
(33:25):
you know, that's something you memories. He's like, no, them
made it up in the moment. But it was unbelievable.
But you know, with all this notion that they were
all able to recognize when do a set of discrete
activities gain outsized importance, how can you communicate that to
others and then build upon it.
Speaker 4 (33:47):
Yeah, and in video, I mean, I think one of
the things that stood out. One of the co founders
sat down with us and it was fantastic to learn.
I mean, you know, you know, them to be currently
the first four trillion dollars come company in history. But
that company back in twenty sixteen was kind of in
(34:09):
the was in the the It was about one hundred
and twenty two billion dollars in value, so it was
a decent sized company, but not anywhere near what it
is today. But they began then investing in this computational
power that others were not investing in, so that when
the moment that chat GPT is announced to the world,
(34:31):
suddenly becomes a phenomenon, right, it becomes the spark the
next very next day, and Vidio was worth thirty two
billion dollars more than they were the day before. Why
because they were ready for the spark.
Speaker 6 (34:46):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (34:46):
Yeah, this is so exciting, gentlemen, And it's just a
shame that either one of you are very passionate about
this either about this at all.
Speaker 5 (34:53):
I know.
Speaker 3 (34:54):
So we're going to take our next break here.
Speaker 5 (34:56):
But what were I love.
Speaker 3 (34:57):
What I want to situate for our listeners and viewers
is the I the opportunity that you can teach people
in your organization to recognize this bark. So let's have
them thinking about that when we go on to break,
because after the break, I want to situate a little
bit about leader communication and the power in the world
of storytelling in relation to that. As you kind of
started to allude to, Bernie, I'm your host, Doctor Elise Cortez.
(35:17):
We've been on the air with Brigadier General retired Brigadier
General Bernie Banks, who now serves as the director of
Rice University Stewart Institute for New leaders and is also
a professor in the practice of leadership within the university's
Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Business. And we also
have Don Yeager. He's the best selling author, associate editor
for Sports Illustrated, and the host of the Corporate Competitor podcast.
(35:42):
We've been talking about some of the aspects relative to
their model of the momentum. After the break, we're going
to talk about that what I mentioned, the leader communication
and how compelling you can situate yourself to really steward
momentum in your organization. We'll be right back.
Speaker 2 (36:12):
Doctor Elise Cortes is a management consultant specializing in meaning
and purpose. An inspirational speaker and author, she helps companies
visioneer for greater purpose among stakeholders and develop purpose inspired
leadership and meaning infused cultures that elevate fulfillment, performance and
commitment within the workforce. To learn more or to invite
a lease to speak to your organization, please visit her
(36:33):
at elisecortes dot com. Let's talk about how to get
your employees working on purpose. This is Working on Purpose
with doctor Elise Cortes. To reach our program today or
to open a conversation with Elise, send an email to
Alise A Lisee at elisecortes dot com. Now back to
(36:57):
Working on Purpose.
Speaker 3 (37:03):
Thanks for staying with us, and welcome back to Working
on Purpose. I'm your host, doctor, Relyse Cortez. As you
know by now, this program is dedicated to empowering and
inspiring you along your journey to realize more of your potential.
If you want to learn more about how we can
work together and learn about the Gusto Now Academy for
leaders and individuals on various journeys alike, make your way
to gustodesh now dot com and then navigate to the
(37:24):
training tap where you can find the academy. Love to
have you join us if you are just coming onto
the episode with us. My guests today are Don Jeger
and Bernie Banks. They're the authors of the New Science
and momentum, how the best coaches and leaders build of
fire from a single spark. So I have to celebrate
this notion. Of course, you have a chapter on leader communications,
(37:46):
and of course I am a champion for helping leaders
to develop really being effective strong storytellers. So let's situate
how that plays into being able to nurture momentum.
Speaker 6 (38:01):
We're both being gracious, Doun's like, absolutely, and so one
of the things that highly effective leaders do is that
they use stories to establish context and to positively influence
the things that are transpiring around them. And so learning
(38:23):
how to tell an effective story was absolutely essential as
we looked at this and we saw how people sought
to put very complex things into terms that people could understand, right,
And so learning how to communicate, learning how to tell stories,
leveraging facts, not making things up, but highlighting things that
(38:47):
were tangible and saying, Okay, here's why this matters, here's
how it's going to positively influence this other thing. So
earlier you were talking about facts and figures, and you
gave some of those stats from the Golden State, whereas well,
we were talking to David Petraeus about his activities when
he was leading US forces in Iraq during what was
(39:07):
later called the Surge, and it was a turnaround effort.
Prior to his arrival, things weren't going really well, and
so he came up with a four pronged strategy for
how he was going to dress stuff. But one of
the elements of that really hinged on telling the story
in a factual way and then putting those facts into
(39:28):
contexts don't end up in the spin room, which is
what a lot of people try to do. And so
using facts and figures, telling compelling stories, making your communications
easy to understand, plain language, you don't become too verbose.
All of those things play a significant role in helping
(39:52):
people to understand here's the moment, here's why it matters,
here's what we have to do going forward if we're
to take advantage of it.
Speaker 5 (40:03):
Well.
Speaker 3 (40:03):
And keep in mind, gentlemen, that I'm all about developing
inspirational leaders and so being able to share share a
critical message in a way that connects your team members
to what it is that you're out to do and
encourages them in the process, lifts them in the process.
It's just so compelling and so much of what I
teach as well, So that whole chapter just really excited me.
(40:26):
And then under that that I want to get to
next is this idea of how you can champion belief
in mindset. I think you said something earlier down about this,
and let's see, I already said that you gave a
gorgeous response.
Speaker 5 (40:40):
Bernie, so did you.
Speaker 3 (40:41):
Just to make sure we both get our kudos in here,
But I do want to situate more of that because
I think there's so much that organizations are missing in
terms of opportunity, in terms of how they really steward,
nurture and support belief and mindset, especially relative to momentum.
If one of you can.
Speaker 4 (40:58):
Take that, I think I think one of the things
that stands out, you know, to the point Bernie was
making about, you know, how to how do leaders communicate?
And and one way to look at the way we
built this model is it's almost like if you're if
you're a camper, if you go out camping, and the
very first thing you have to do if you're going
(41:19):
to build a fire, right is you have to you
have to assemble the fire together. You get to put
the wood together in the right way so that there's
air that can feel, that can fuel it, and you
want to make sure it's stacked right, there's kindling in there.
Speaker 6 (41:32):
And then at.
Speaker 4 (41:33):
Some stage, so that's all the pre work, that's the recruiting,
that's the culture, that's the that's putting together the team
that's ready for the moment. Then the spark occurs, right,
and the fire starts to grow. But now comes our
responsibility as leaders to fan the flames, to make that
fire as as dominant as possible, to let it, let
(41:57):
it take hold. And one of the things that really
matters in that in that fanning the flames window is
is how we encourage. As you said, right, it's how
we how we change and we take the belief in mindset.
They already believe we're going to be successful. Now the
moment has occurred. Now it's our job to remind them
(42:18):
all that work we did beforehand, all that preparation we
did for this moment, it's ours. It's here, let's go right.
And if I can encourage you to bring the best
possible mindset to the workplace, if I can get you
to believe with me that unbelievable things are head, the
(42:41):
fire is going to be magnificent. You're going to if
you trust me, if you believe me, and you are
now witnessing this fire taking hold, you're going to jump
on board, and the people who jump on board are
going to help you through leader communications continue to fuel
the mindset of their fellow teammates. Right again, mirror neurons.
(43:06):
As belief systems grow, belief systems.
Speaker 5 (43:10):
Grow, it's so powerful.
Speaker 3 (43:13):
And as a leader, your capacity, ladies and gentlemen, to
steward that, to nurture that, to guide that is just
so powerful. And think about the impact that you can
have in your organization when you learn to do that. Well,
so exciting. Okay, so we talked about those mirror neurons,
and of course I situate then how important it is
to be able to steward that positive emotional contagion. I
(43:36):
want to be able to share with you have several
practices in your book or approaches for leveraging emotional contagent
to build momentum in teams.
Speaker 5 (43:44):
Let's talk about at.
Speaker 3 (43:45):
Least a few of those to be able to equip
our listeners and viewers with some other material as they
walk away from our podcast.
Speaker 6 (43:54):
Yeah, so there are several things that we would recommend
in that regard. One this notion of setting positive xptations
and establishing a positive vision. Effective leaders set high standards.
They don't set the bar low. They set the bar high,
and they say, guess what, here's how we're going to
go about clearing that height. So setting positive expectations, establishing
(44:15):
a positive and then turning that into clear goals, smart goals, specific, measurable, attainable, relevant,
time bounded, and then tapping into people's why the purpose
piece you've already highlighted the importance of that. Another thing
is having a growth mindset, based on the work of
Carol Dweck. So how do you promote curiosity, how do
(44:36):
you think about empathy? And how do you leverage the
two so that you can learn along the way it's
been set for the most agile organizations are the ones
that learn most effectively, and taking time to engage in
introspection and exploration matters. A third is to think about
(44:56):
how do you foster a reflective mindset, really get people
to be mindful, to engage in mediation, so to find
that calm space that can unlock new insights. And there
are a variety of others around understanding the neurofeedback you're receiving, right,
So there are a number of ways in which you
can go about applying these things in service of enhancing
(45:21):
the likelihood that you achieve positive momentum.
Speaker 3 (45:24):
It's so exciting to element. It's so exciting when you
see this stuff in motion. You know, when I go
into organizations, I can tell immediately there's this idea called
limbic resonance. Right, It's probably related to what you're doing
with the mirror neurons, but I can tell if an
organization is gelled or not. I can feel that energy.
I know if they feel demoralized, disconnected, or if they
(45:45):
feel congealed and together and on fire. And I love
how we're talking about equipping leaders and organizations to create
more of that momentum. So this is so exciting for me.
All Right, we have time really to cover just a
little bit about the idea of outcomes and feed that us.
You're bringing your last chapters. It's the finale, so let's
just talk a little bit about that. We have maybe
(46:06):
two minutes to discuss that.
Speaker 4 (46:08):
I'll be quick, but I do know that one of
the things when we looked at outcomes and feedback, one
of the one of the places we turned for uh
for for great learning was the Blue Angels, Right, the
Navy's unbelievable team of pilots.
Speaker 6 (46:24):
If someone in the Navy can be unbelievable, they're they're
the ones.
Speaker 4 (46:27):
This is what happens to an army guy.
Speaker 5 (46:30):
An army yes, says it.
Speaker 2 (46:31):
Army guy. Yeah?
Speaker 4 (46:33):
Can you mute the army guy? So that's my mirror
neuron talking to you, Bernie. But yeah, the Navy, the
Blue Angels are fantastic. But one of the things that
stood out to us is here's this organization that performs
at the highest level, but because of turnover. Right, they
have turnover every year, they have forced turnover. They bring
(46:54):
in new pilots every year. Their goal is to build
momentum throughout the season so that they're best show is
their last show. Right, They want to get better every show,
and so one of the things that they do in
the process of that is they do they do unbelievable
feedback loops in which when they walk into the room
(47:15):
after a practice or show, everyone takes from their arm
their rank. Right, their ranks come off because this is
no longer about you having a position as general and
I'm just a journalist. This is the opportunity for us
to speak truth to each other. Great feedback. We have
(47:36):
this phrase in the book. Feedback is the breakfast of champions,
and those who can actually eat breakfast do well. So
go to work, build feedback into your organization, which will
allow you then to grow, prepare, start the loop again.
That's the beauty of this model as we drafted it.
(47:57):
It's actually a continuous loop. And while while the momentum
will slow at some stage, your goal is to restart
the model, keep it moving, keep it growing, and make
momentum yours.
Speaker 3 (48:11):
Oh so good, guys, so so good. Okay, So I
want to give you a chance each just to say
a little something in closing, say maybe fifteen or twenty seconds.
The show is listening to by people around the world.
They care about elevating their own leadership, stewarding their organizations,
or more meaningfully plugging into their own work. What would
you each like to leave them with?
Speaker 6 (48:32):
Don you want to start?
Speaker 4 (48:33):
Sure? You know I would tell you. I think the
beauty of a project like this is that it starts
with a crazy moment and an idea, and next thing
you know, you get a chance to learn from the
very best. I think that you know, we believe success
leaves clues, and that's what we went out to do.
We chased success, sought its clues, and put it here
(48:54):
for others to hopefully grow from.
Speaker 6 (48:58):
I would just like to build upon that and say
you need not have experienced something personally to make it
an experience that you can leverage personally, learn from the
wisdom of others. It will accelerate your ability to be
effective in your role. Minding these stories has been an
(49:19):
honor for both of us, and we're just excited to
share these stories with others and the hope that it
can lead to people positively impacting other people's lives around
the globe.
Speaker 3 (49:30):
Bernie and Don, it is an absolute delight and pleasure
to know you both, to have learned from you, be
inspired by you. I'm so grateful that I found you,
that you came on the show. Thank you for being
on working on purpose.
Speaker 6 (49:41):
Thank you Eric.
Speaker 3 (49:43):
Listeners and viewers, you're going to want to learn more
about these two amazing gentlemen and their book. There's a
couple of places you can go. You can go to
the Harpercollinsfocus dot com website to find their book, but
I would also recommend that you go to LinkedIn and
find each of them individually and connect with them that way.
That would be one of the best and easiest ways
to do that. Last week, if you missed the live show,
(50:04):
you can always catch a bee recorded podcast. We were
on air with Isaac Perlatinsky talking about his book How
People Matter, Why it affects health, happiness, love, work, and society.
He's passionate about mattering, well being, and fairness, and we
talked about how when these are satisfied in people, families, communities, organizations,
and even nations altogether thrive. Next week will be on
(50:27):
the air with Ken Banta talking about his new book
Seeing Around Corners c Suite wisdom from America's most insightful leaders.
See you then, and together, let's lean in and learn
together how to make workplaces that work for everyone and
find wasted business in a way that betters the world.
Let's work on Purpose.
Speaker 2 (50:47):
We hope you've enjoyed this week's program. Be sure to
tune into Working on Purpose featuring your host, doctor Elise Cortes,
each week on W four C. Why Together, We'll create
a world where business operates conscientiously leadership and fires and passion.
Performance and employees are fulfilled in work that provides the
meaning and purpose. They crave see you there. Let's work
(51:07):
on purpose.
The topics and opinions expressed in the following show are
solely those of the hosts and their guests and not
those of W FOURCY Radio. It's employees are affiliates. We
make no recommendations or endorsements for radio show programs, services,
or products mentioned on air or on our web. No
liability explicit or implies shall be extended to W four
CY Radio or its employees are affiliates. Any questions or
comments should be directed to those show hosts. Thank you
(00:20):
for choosing W FOURCY Radio.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
What's working on Purpose? Anyway? Each week we ponder the
answer to this question. People ache for meaning and purpose
at work, to contribute their talents passionately and know their
lives really matter. They crave being part of an organization
that inspires them and helps them grow into realizing their
highest potential. Business can be such a force for good
in the world, elevating humanity. In our program, we provide
(00:51):
guidance and inspiration to help usher in this world we
all want working on Purpose. Now, here's your host, doctor
Elise Cortez.
Speaker 3 (01:04):
Welcome back to the Working and Purpose Program, which has
been brought to you with passion and pride since February
twenty fifteen. Thanks for tuning in this week. Great to
have you. I'm your host, doctor Relise Cortes. If we've
not met before and you don't know me, I'm a
workforce advisor, organizational psychologist, management consultant, logo therapist, speaker and author.
My team and I at gusta Now help companies to
enliven and fortify their operations by building a dynamic, high
(01:26):
performance culture, inspirational leadership, and nurturing managers activated by meaning
and purpose. Many organizations are not aware of how critical
it is to invest in developing their leaders and managers
not just for their own effectiveness, but also to avoid
burnout and keep them fulfilled so that they can and
that they can also measure and monitor the experience of
purpose in the organization to keep it working as an
(01:47):
operational imperative. So much opportunity there. You can learn more
about us and how we can work together at gustodashnow
dot com or my personal site, Atliscortes dot com. Getting
into today's program we have with us today, the author
of the New Science and Momentum how the best coaches
and leaders build a fire from a single spark, which
is the focus of our conversation. We have Don Yeager.
(02:09):
He's a twelve time New York Times bestselling author, longtime
associate editor for Sports Illustrated, and one of the most
in demand public speakers on the corporate circuit. He is
the host of the highly rated Corporate Competitor podcast. Also
with US Today is retired General Bernie Banks, who now
serves as the director of Rice University's Door Institute for
(02:29):
New leaders and is a professor in the practice of
leadership within the university's jesse A. Jones Graduate School of Business.
Bernie retired from the United States Army in twenty sixteen
as a Brigadier general after having successfully led West Points
Department of Behavioral Sciences and Leadership. In his final assignment.
He has led military units ranging insights from ten to
(02:51):
three thousand plus people. Additionally, he has engaged with organizations
around the globe regard in their leadership development efforts. In
other words, have two amazing powerhouse houses with US Today.
Don joins US Today from Tallahassee, Florida, and General Banks
from Houston, Texas. Gentlemen, he hearty, welcome to Working on Purpose.
Speaker 4 (03:10):
Thank Thank you so much, Elise, Thank you It's wonderful
to be here.
Speaker 5 (03:13):
Isn't it great to be on the other side of
the mic on?
Speaker 2 (03:15):
You know?
Speaker 3 (03:15):
It's just fun? Right?
Speaker 4 (03:16):
Oh? Great?
Speaker 3 (03:17):
Right, well, let's kick this thing off by celebrating this
beautiful book you put into the world. I absolutely loved it,
as I told you before we got on air. Huge fan,
I want to dive into it.
Speaker 5 (03:27):
I was really intrigued.
Speaker 3 (03:29):
By how you talk about in the book, even just
the spark for the book, how it came to be.
I think that that's a really fun thing to kick
off with. So one of you tell us about how
this book came into to be present for us.
Speaker 4 (03:42):
I'll jump in. Yeah, many of many of you, many
of your listeners might remember that there was a Super
Bowl played a few years ago in which the favored
New England Patriots had fallen behind the Atlanta Falcons twenty
eight to three. In fact, midway through the third quarter,
(04:02):
the odds makers gave New England a point six percent
chance of winning the game. At that stage, you know,
Atlanta was a ninety nine point four percent the odds
of winning. And then suddenly little things started to happen,
things that hadn't happened previous in the game, Tom Brady,
the least mobile quarterback in the NFL, suddenly ran for
(04:22):
a first down and little things started to pile up.
And what happened was that the Patriots began to change
the momentum of the organ of the game. And before
it was over, someone will remember the greatest comeback in
the history of the Super Bowl. No team had ever
come back from more than fourteen points down, and the
(04:43):
Patriots came back to win in overtime. And the very
next day I came in to my office, opened up
the whiteboard where all the creative team were gathered in
the conference room, and just wrote the words, how does
a moment turn into momentum? How does that happen? How
do you?
Speaker 6 (05:00):
How do you?
Speaker 4 (05:00):
How did what? How can we explain what happened last night?
If people are trying to understand, could that happen to
us in our organization? Could we be the Atlanta Falcons
and maybe give up a great lead? And over the
course of the next eight years, I partnered with General Banks,
one of my great friends for many years, and we
(05:22):
began interviewing the most amazing leaders in the planet. We
began going into the field and polling Americans adults on
what they believe about momentum, because we wanted to explain
what we could about the about you know, the dynamic
that that allows that to happen in organizations. And what
(05:45):
we found was some really incredible detail. And I know
we'll get into that with you a lease, but but
it's it's it's a It was an amazing journey. I
think both Bernie and I we were sad we had
to cut it short. We would have gone five more
years interviewing people because we were so into it. But
you have to stop at some stage and right, and
I'm grateful that you enjoyed it.
Speaker 3 (06:06):
I do understand that, and I absolutely love that. I
wish I would have been there in your back pockets
for the whole trip. I would have been.
Speaker 5 (06:12):
Cheering you on and ask this too.
Speaker 3 (06:17):
Okay, So one of the things that I think I
really gravitated to that I think is pretty core to
what you write about for Momentum, which we'll get into next.
But I think I want to situate first role of
mirror neurons and of course the concept of flow. If
you can situate and kind of explain how mirror neurons work,
why they're important, and of course white flow is related
(06:39):
to momentum.
Speaker 4 (06:43):
Yeah you want me to take it? Yes, okay, good,
So I'll tell you. One of the first things we
started thinking about was, you know, there was some pretty
famous work done about thirty years ago by a researcher
in Santa Clara, doctor named me Hi, and his last
name was so long I couldn't pronounce it.
Speaker 3 (07:05):
I've always said it chisholm Ahley, but I'm sure that's
not right.
Speaker 4 (07:07):
It's something close, probably as close to that. He told
me to call him doctor c. Yeah, I got it worked,
Doug great, which is what Mike Krzyzewski does to coach
k but the uh. But me Hi actually agreed kind
of in the early stages of our research to sit
down with me, and it turned out to be one
of the very last interviews he got a chance to
(07:29):
do before he passed away a few years back. But
in that dinner with he and his wife, I proposed
to him that flow as as he defined it, which
is the ability to believe I'm in I'm in flow. Right.
We've heard that phrase used before where suddenly you look
up and you don't realize that that it's it's quitting
(07:51):
time because you've been so engaged in your work, you
love what you're doing so much that you don't see
the clock. You're writing and suddenly it's two in the
morning and you have no idea. That's flow. But what
we wanted to propose was that when a group of
people get in flow, that's when you create momentum. Right,
(08:13):
it's group flow, which is different than what he studied,
And by the time dinner was over, he was fully engaged,
he was excited, he was cheering us on, encouraging that.
This was exactly the extension of his work from thirty
years earlier and couldn't have been happier to offer us
(08:33):
advice and counsel. So flow is that ability for an
individual to be moving towards something special. Momentum is when
a group of people are doing exactly that, when a team,
an organization, a company are moving together in a lockstep.
(08:55):
And so with that, the next thing that really kind
of came out was this idea about mirror neurons. One
of the ways that doctor c encouraged me to look
at this concept was that there's a fair amount of
research done right now on mirror neurons, which is the
ability for two people to feel something similar even though
(09:17):
only one of them actually experienced it. Right, I'll just
put it really simply. It's like if you and I
work at the same place a lease, and you complete
a masterful sale, something really big. Instead of being jealous
that you were the one to complete it, I actually
(09:40):
I'm as happy for you as if I had completed
it myself. And that's and that is when mirror neurons
are flowing in very simple ways. Some people talk about
it like when you go into a room and somebody
yawns and suddenly other people start yawning. That's that's the
action of mirror neurons actually taking and physiologically playing itself out,
(10:05):
even though neurologically it was me who yawned, and then
suddenly you feel the need to. And so mirror neurons
are when that group of people moving in flow together
are actually capable of celebrating each other as opposed to
finding jealousy amongst one or the other, because you are
(10:30):
going to get credit for this moment as opposed to me.
And so those two elements of the project were ultimately
very important in our understanding and our description for others
of how momentum can become a collective.
Speaker 5 (10:50):
Effort beautifully explain. Yeah, that's okay.
Speaker 3 (10:54):
It's a really important concept I think for listeners and
viewers to get as we go along here, very very powerful.
And by the way, I'm proud to tell you that
in the ten and a half years that I've hosted
the show, not one says my guest yawned on the show.
So therefore I didn't yon either. Don't even start, don
(11:14):
You're not going to be the first one.
Speaker 5 (11:16):
Okay.
Speaker 3 (11:17):
So now we've done all that, let's talk about what
is momentum? Why should we care about this?
Speaker 2 (11:23):
Yeah?
Speaker 6 (11:23):
I think the build off of what Dodge has shared,
I like to think of it as a belief with
respect to do we think things are working for us
or against us? Quite simply, you know, going back to
this notion of flow, is the flow head in the
right direction? Is the flow head in the wrong direction?
Do we feel like we're swimming with the current or
(11:44):
against the tide? You know? And so it is a belief,
it's a mindset, it's a mindset, and that mindset, it's
important for leaders to be intentional about how they shape
the mindset and beliefs of their other teams. And so
in the research that we conducted and the interviews that
(12:04):
we were privileged to take part in, we examined how
leaders across four different verticals, business, sports, politics, and the
military went about creating momentum throughout their careers. And the
stories they shared were fascinating.
Speaker 3 (12:21):
All right, love just some of the descriptors you have
in your book, and there's just so many great things.
I ran out of the ink when I was highlighting
your book. But I like how that momentum has been
described as a competitive energy tsunami. That sounds good to me,
a great exaggerator, which is what John Maxwell said, and
a force multiplier. I mean, doesn't that sound pretty good
If you're trying to get a team to a win,
(12:43):
and you're trying to do something in turn a company around,
or you're performing a military operation, that all sounds pretty
good to me.
Speaker 4 (12:50):
We should all want that, would we? I mean, would
that wouldn't wouldn't the opportunities for us to be successful
be greater if any one of those things things were
true within our team?
Speaker 2 (13:03):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (13:04):
And I like what you also said when we talk
aboutmentum you say in your book and I quote you say,
we start with the premise that momentum exists and can
be manipulated by intentional types of preparation and organizational structure,
and we give the following definition. Momentum is a synergistic
force that influences the progress, resilience, and focus of a team,
and its impact on the mindset of a team positively
(13:26):
or negatively can be manipulated or extended. Now that ought
to be ladies and gentlemen, both exciting and terrifying you
if you're a leader, I.
Speaker 6 (13:35):
Hope it should be exciting. You know, when we were
thinking about this book, I was having a conversation with
one of my friends who runs the private equity practice
for a very large financial service. Is Concerned, and these
folks invest billions of dollars in organizations in the hopes
that they can unlock dormant potential create value. And when
(13:59):
I was talking to about this concept, he said, creating
momentum is my job. Hm hmm, plain and simple. My
job is not to make money. My job is to
find opportunities where, through our company's intervention, we can create
positive momentum, unlock an investment thesis, and ultimately return money
(14:23):
to those who had the courage to invest in us
because they thought that our acumen with respect to generating
momentum was worth taking a risk on.
Speaker 3 (14:33):
That is terribly exciting, Bernie, Oh my goodness, very exciting.
Speaker 4 (14:36):
But at least I want I want to I want
to be the negative. I'm going to be the negative
Nelly here, but I'm gonna be negative. I love's answer there.
But one other thing that stood out to us was
in the early stages of the work on this. We
went into the field with a nationally recognized polling firm
and and and reach out to four thousand Americans adult
(15:00):
right and asked them a series of questions about momentum.
Number one. The first thing that stood out was that
ninety plus percent of them believed in momentum. That number
rose to one hundred percent if you only included in
the answers those who had played sports, had either led
an organization, or served in the military. You do one
(15:21):
of those three things, and your one hundred percent convinced
momentum exists. But while most of them do believe it
can be manipulated, only twenty five percent of them had
ever worked in an organization where the con the construct
the idea of manipulating momentum had actually ever been raised,
where you know, what can we do, how can we
(15:43):
create something? How can we take advantage of this moment?
Only twenty five percent, But the last number which really
stood out was that seventy two percent of them said
if they were working someplace where they perceived momentum had
shifted to a competitor where they were on the losing
end of the they were coming up from behind in
(16:08):
con in this idea, they would consider looking for other work. Now.
So while it's it's in Bernie's example, it's that guy's
job right to create momentum, for all the rest of us,
it's our job too, because if we're not number one,
not only are we we do we risk giving ground
(16:30):
to our competitors. We also risk losing our very best employees,
who they may not say it, but they know it, right.
They know when it's a mindset, right, it's a belief system,
and they know when they believe that they're behind and
losing ground. And nobody wants to ride out on a
(16:53):
sinking ship.
Speaker 3 (16:55):
And this is why, of course, right we both of
all three of us know how important leadership and culture is.
Why We're going to talk about that next after we
take our first break, so let's do that. I'm your host,
doctor Leis Cortez. We've been on the air with retired
General Bernie Banks, who now serves as the director of
Rice University's Door University for New leaders and is a
(17:16):
professor in the practice of leadership within the university's jesse
Ah Jones Graduate School of Business. We also have Don Yeager,
a best selling author, associate editor for Sports Illustrated, and
host of the highly rated Corporate Competitor podcast. We've been
talking about where their book Momentum came from, what is momentum,
why it's important. After the break, we are going to
talk a little bit about their model, but then we're
(17:37):
also going to talk about how momentum can be can
be stewarded by leaders and within culture. We'll be right back.
Speaker 2 (18:00):
Doctor Elise Cortes is a management consultant specializing in meaning
and purpose. An inspirational speaker and author. She helps companies
visioneer for greater purpose among stakeholders and develop purpose inspired
leadership and meaning infused cultures that elevate fulfillment, performance, and
commitment within the workforce. To learn more or to invite
Elise to speak to your organization. Please visit her at
(18:22):
elisecortes dot com. Let's talk about how to get your
employees working on purpose. This is working on Purpose with
doctor Elise Cortes. To reach our program today or to
open a conversation with Elise, send an email to Alise
A Lise at elisecortes dot com. Now back to working
(18:46):
on Purpose.
Speaker 3 (18:52):
Thanksteresting with us, and welcome back to working on Purpose.
I'm your host, doctor Elise Cortes. As I'm dedicated to
helping create a world where organizations thrive because they're people
thrive and they're led by inspirational leaders that help them
find and contribute their greatness, and we do business that
betters the world. I keep researching and writing my own books,
so one of my latest came out. It's called The
Great Revitalization. How activating meaning and purpose can radically enliven
(19:14):
your business. And I wrote it to help leaders understand
today's diverse and discerning workforce. What do they want and
need from you from their work experience, and then I
offer twenty two best practices that you can cand equip
you for you to be able to put that into
your culture and provide that for them. You can find
my books on Amazon or my personal site at least
quretest dot com if you are just now joining us.
(19:35):
My guests are Don Jeger and Bernie Banks that are
the authors of the new Science of Momentum, How the
best coaches and leaders build a fire from a single spark,
which of course I loved. So before we get into
talking about leadership and culture and how we can really
presence and nurture the idea of momentum, let's talk about
your model. It's pretty hefty, it's pretty strong and robust.
(19:58):
So can one of you take us through your momentum model?
Speaker 6 (20:01):
Yeah, I'm happy to do that. So, when thinking about
how we would distill the insights glean from talking to
leaders across the four sectors, nine things came to the fore.
One it all starts with leadership. Leadership is the X factor,
It's what makes organizations and momentum go. And so the
(20:23):
model starts with leadership. How do you foster effective leadership,
create clear alignment around what direction are we headed? How
do we galvanize people's willingness to work in a coordinated
manner and then sustain the effort required to achieve our
desired aims. From there, it's a leader's responsibility to foster
the right culture. So what are those norms, values, beliefs
(20:45):
that you're going to put in place that are going
to serve as the daily expectations of those you are
in a relationship with. Then it's important to get the
right people on your team. Recruitment matters. You don't get
to recruit every single member of your team, but you
have to recruit key players, what you know, Coach k
referred to as glue guys. You know, the right A players,
(21:06):
Get the right people in place in those critical roles,
and from there you start to think about what are
we going to have to do in order to prepare
ourselves to put ourselves in a position where we can
seize a moment or a set of activities. And so
this preparation component, people highlighted how they had gone about
that over time. Once those things transpire, when the moment happens,
(21:32):
we call that the spark, and it doesn't have to
be one thing. It can be a set of things
that transpire within a certain timeframe. But then it's important
for leaders to be able to recognize the spark and
then help others to recognize it as well, and so
communications became important. Leader communications, how do you communicate effectively
to help people put the spark into context and galvanize
(21:54):
their willingness to continue the effort going forward. From there,
you have to maintain a positive climate on your team.
Climate is a short term reaction to the environment. Culture
is pervasive. So how do you have a team where hey,
guess what, Yes, we are continuing to foster just belief that, yes,
we can do this. We were built for this, which
(22:14):
leads into the importance of never taking mindset and belief
for granted, fostering that all which leads to outcomes which
then tie into feedback and so it's an iterative process.
But those nine things stood out time and time again
in our conversations with leaders across all those fields of endeavor.
Speaker 3 (22:37):
Beautifully explained Bernie, think you might be a professor, and
so listeners and viewers, that's the meat there. What Bernie
just really explained of how that all ties together. And
what they've done is they've got a chapter on each
one of those pieces so you can really dive deep
into it. But that was beautifully explained. Okay, so now
what I want to do is I want to talk
(22:57):
about how this shows up and some of the examples
having your book in terms of leadership, in terms of culture,
so our listeners and viewers can now connect the concept.
I am not a sports fan or really big into sports.
I'm lucky if I know what sport is being played
in the season, So don't hold that against me, guys,
But I am very, very fascinating with the Golden State Warriors,
(23:17):
and so I want to talk about how this this
notion here of you've got a chapter on the culture
and what coach care if that's why I'm saying, is
saying Kerr Kerr is doing to shape their shape theirs,
their culture and then set them up for such strong
performance and success and even the purchase, could you just
kind of situate, you know, you talk about the purchase
(23:38):
of the Warriors, let's start with that. That's pretty fascinating.
Speaker 4 (23:41):
Well, I'll jump in there. You know, the Warriors were
a pretty you know, we're kind of trending upwards as seemingly,
but they but they though they were trending, they seemed
to be underperforming against the talent that the ownership that
bought the team believed them to be capable of, and
(24:01):
so they chose to make a leadership change. They brought
in a new coach and and ironically, the coach that
brought in had never been a head coach before in
the NBA, so he's a he's brand new to his role,
but he had been he'd been around and been a
been a participant in many championship teams. So he understood
that what what he believed was the most important thing
(24:23):
was the reshaping of the culture. He didn't need to
change players, he didn't need to change leaders. What he
needed was to reshape the culture. And he uh and
made a point that there were there were several elements
of the culture that really stood out to him, but
the number one piece. He believed the culture was built
on four core values joy, competition, compassion, and mindfulness. I'm
(24:50):
going to get to joy last, but but the idea
of competition. He believed that the players need needed not
to believe that anything was given to them, that they
had to continuously be ready to be their very best
in order to get playing time. So competition was extraordinarily
important as a cultural value that he wanted players to understand,
(25:13):
don't expect anything come prepared to compete. Compassion was equally
important because the one thing he said is, you know
we're in a failure sport, right. Nobody wins every game,
Nobody hits every shot. Even Michael Jordan's most famous quote
is about the number of shots he missed. And so
(25:34):
the idea of compassion was in his cultural ethos was
that we had to be forgiving of each other because
you're going to fail, and I can't be mad at
you for failing because tomorrow I might fail and I
need you to be supportive of me. So show compassion
to each other. Mindfulness was just simply the idea of
(25:55):
constantly being connected. He was looking for connection, and that
really led to his concept of joy, which he said
is the most important in building any great team culture.
And joy for him was looking at what makes it
we're going to be better at our work if we're
if we're happier at our work, right, And so how
(26:18):
do I build joy? And one of the things he
discovered was that the previous coach didn't agree that music
should be played during practice. Very simple thing, but the
players love music. The players want to dance as they're practicing,
and so he very simply added music to the atmosphere,
(26:39):
and it changed the way people felt about being in
the workplace. He started looking at it and saying, you know,
the other thing we need is to know each other better.
So he started inviting player families to travel with the
team on charters as they were heading to away games,
and he would invite those families to join the team
for dinners because he wanted everybody to get to know
(27:02):
each other better. He wanted a better sense of joy.
And that didn't just manifest itself, it did so in
explosive ways. Just three years after he became the head coach,
Golden State, you know, delivered the greatest season in NBA history.
(27:23):
They won more games than any team ever had. Forget
Michael Jordan's Bulls. They delivered more wins than anybody in history.
Based on he would argue this concept of joy.
Speaker 3 (27:38):
I thought that was so compelling, that whole bit that
she wrote about that, and I think the idea of
situating and making joy a central part of your culture,
and then talk about those those mirror neurons, of course,
being able to see how people respond to that music
and increase their energy and their and their happiness. And
then I did really appreciate the idea that in terms
(27:59):
of encouraging the compassion, so that when when the other
players knew what was happening in their personal life, so
what were they dealing with what was important to them?
Who is their family? I just think that is really,
really something special to celebrate, and I really wanted to
make sure that we showcase that. So gorgeous share. Thank you, Don.
Speaker 5 (28:19):
I also think it's important.
Speaker 4 (28:20):
Bernie, she said, gorgeous share it to me, not.
Speaker 5 (28:27):
If I can find it. Bernie, I'll say the same
thing for you, but only if you earn it.
Speaker 3 (28:32):
Ners.
Speaker 6 (28:33):
I'm happy for Don to have gotten a gorgeous share.
So here's gorgeous share. Is my gorgeous share. We're like,
we're winning.
Speaker 2 (28:40):
You see.
Speaker 3 (28:40):
It's so easy to you know, make someone's stay right.
We should just do more of it.
Speaker 5 (28:44):
But you know, here's where it gets really.
Speaker 3 (28:49):
Fun for me, as somebody who's been trafficking and meaning
and purpose and all these kinds of things for some time.
Now we can talk about the numbers of how this stuff,
you know, translates. If you you talked about in the
book how the Golden State Wars top the Forbes Annual
Valuation list for NBA teams for the first time in
their history in twenty twenty two, and then top the
list again in twenty twenty three with a value of
(29:10):
seven point seven billion dollars. I mean, there's so many
things we could say about that, but I think it's
important that listeners and viewers can connect this to the
bottom line as well. It's not just feally good stuff.
These are real results.
Speaker 4 (29:24):
Yeah, and I think that's an important piece of this
entire discussion. Right, Nothing about this journey for Bernie or
myself has been about looking for some really fun thing
to do. Now, we want people to be more successful, right,
and momentum allows you to become more successful.
Speaker 3 (29:45):
Just fun all the way around. And you guys are
both fun.
Speaker 5 (29:48):
What a delight.
Speaker 3 (29:48):
I didn't know what I was going to expect, and
look at you, I might not want to give you back.
So let's just we'll see. Okay, Well, let's talk about
this spark. You have a whole chapter around the spark,
and this is kind of of where things kind of
where you say where the spark is the place where
belief systems begin to shift. Let's talk about it.
Speaker 6 (30:08):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (30:09):
Yeah, So.
Speaker 6 (30:11):
When thinking about how do you recognize momentum. This was
something that immediately came to mind for me because of
the time I spent in the military. In the military,
we spend countless hours preparing to develop capabilities that should
something transpire in the world that requires our services, we're
(30:32):
able to recognize those moments, tailor our activities to create
positive momentum so that we can prevail and secure our
nation and do to things we do in the military.
And so in the military we call that seizing the initiative,
And so how do you recognize when the moments occur
that now present an opportunity for you to seize the
(30:53):
initiative to go on the offense. In the military, when
you're on defense, you're doing defense the entire time with
the intent of getting back on the offense. It's always
about having offensive efforts that you are orchestrating. And so
teaching young leaders throughout the military how to recognize when
(31:16):
critical things transpire and then to build upon those in
a very thoughtful way was something we actually taught people
how to do well. And so I was very curious,
how are others doing this? And one of the conversations
we had was with a very successful basketball coach Buzz Williams,
(31:36):
who at the time was the Texas A and M
basketball coach, and he was talking to us about how
we prepare his players to recognize the importance of certain
critical moments within a game, and he was just so
creative the way he went about it. Conversely, when we
talked to one of the co founders of Nvidia about
(31:57):
how are you going to recognize the spart he went
back to, Hey, we didn't stumble upon the importance of GPUs.
We knew that one day there would become a need
to have computational power that could do several things at once,
foster parallel processing, conduct matrix operations, and nobody was there yet,
and nobody could really anticipate how fast do we have
(32:19):
to get there? But they knew at some point in
the future that's going to become important. And then boom,
some things transpired and they had the best capability and
suddenly they just skyrocket. But it wasn't the first time
they had done that. They had also done it for gaming.
They had also done it. So they're in the business
of constant reinvention in order to create positive momentum for
(32:43):
their organization and to change the game inside the technology space.
And so you saw it in the military, you saw
it in industry, you saw it in sports, we saw
it in politics. In our conversation with James Carbill and
how we would prepare candidates, it was fascinating, say, at
some point in this campaign, something's going to transpire, and
(33:03):
in that moment, we have to be prepared to seize
it and to build upon it. And he ran us
through some scenarios and they talked about how you would
create dialogue around that in the moment, and he rattled
off a fictional scenario where he gave an impassioned speech
and you were like, oh, you had to have that already,
(33:25):
you know, that's something you memories. He's like, no, them
made it up in the moment. But it was unbelievable.
But you know, with all this notion that they were
all able to recognize when do a set of discrete
activities gain outsized importance, how can you communicate that to
others and then build upon it.
Speaker 4 (33:47):
Yeah, and in video, I mean, I think one of
the things that stood out. One of the co founders
sat down with us and it was fantastic to learn.
I mean, you know, you know, them to be currently
the first four trillion dollars come company in history. But
that company back in twenty sixteen was kind of in
(34:09):
the was in the the It was about one hundred
and twenty two billion dollars in value, so it was
a decent sized company, but not anywhere near what it
is today. But they began then investing in this computational
power that others were not investing in, so that when
the moment that chat GPT is announced to the world,
(34:31):
suddenly becomes a phenomenon, right, it becomes the spark the
next very next day, and Vidio was worth thirty two
billion dollars more than they were the day before. Why
because they were ready for the spark.
Speaker 6 (34:46):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (34:46):
Yeah, this is so exciting, gentlemen, And it's just a
shame that either one of you are very passionate about
this either about this at all.
Speaker 5 (34:53):
I know.
Speaker 3 (34:54):
So we're going to take our next break here.
Speaker 5 (34:56):
But what were I love.
Speaker 3 (34:57):
What I want to situate for our listeners and viewers
is the I the opportunity that you can teach people
in your organization to recognize this bark. So let's have
them thinking about that when we go on to break,
because after the break, I want to situate a little
bit about leader communication and the power in the world
of storytelling in relation to that. As you kind of
started to allude to, Bernie, I'm your host, Doctor Elise Cortez.
(35:17):
We've been on the air with Brigadier General retired Brigadier
General Bernie Banks, who now serves as the director of
Rice University Stewart Institute for New leaders and is also
a professor in the practice of leadership within the university's
Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Business. And we also
have Don Yeager. He's the best selling author, associate editor
for Sports Illustrated, and the host of the Corporate Competitor podcast.
(35:42):
We've been talking about some of the aspects relative to
their model of the momentum. After the break, we're going
to talk about that what I mentioned, the leader communication
and how compelling you can situate yourself to really steward
momentum in your organization. We'll be right back.
Speaker 2 (36:12):
Doctor Elise Cortes is a management consultant specializing in meaning
and purpose. An inspirational speaker and author, she helps companies
visioneer for greater purpose among stakeholders and develop purpose inspired
leadership and meaning infused cultures that elevate fulfillment, performance and
commitment within the workforce. To learn more or to invite
a lease to speak to your organization, please visit her
(36:33):
at elisecortes dot com. Let's talk about how to get
your employees working on purpose. This is Working on Purpose
with doctor Elise Cortes. To reach our program today or
to open a conversation with Elise, send an email to
Alise A Lisee at elisecortes dot com. Now back to
(36:57):
Working on Purpose.
Speaker 3 (37:03):
Thanks for staying with us, and welcome back to Working
on Purpose. I'm your host, doctor, Relyse Cortez. As you
know by now, this program is dedicated to empowering and
inspiring you along your journey to realize more of your potential.
If you want to learn more about how we can
work together and learn about the Gusto Now Academy for
leaders and individuals on various journeys alike, make your way
to gustodesh now dot com and then navigate to the
(37:24):
training tap where you can find the academy. Love to
have you join us if you are just coming onto
the episode with us. My guests today are Don Jeger
and Bernie Banks. They're the authors of the New Science
and momentum, how the best coaches and leaders build of
fire from a single spark. So I have to celebrate
this notion. Of course, you have a chapter on leader communications,
(37:46):
and of course I am a champion for helping leaders
to develop really being effective strong storytellers. So let's situate
how that plays into being able to nurture momentum.
Speaker 6 (38:01):
We're both being gracious, Doun's like, absolutely, and so one
of the things that highly effective leaders do is that
they use stories to establish context and to positively influence
the things that are transpiring around them. And so learning
(38:23):
how to tell an effective story was absolutely essential as
we looked at this and we saw how people sought
to put very complex things into terms that people could understand, right,
And so learning how to communicate, learning how to tell stories,
leveraging facts, not making things up, but highlighting things that
(38:47):
were tangible and saying, Okay, here's why this matters, here's
how it's going to positively influence this other thing. So
earlier you were talking about facts and figures, and you
gave some of those stats from the Golden State, whereas well,
we were talking to David Petraeus about his activities when
he was leading US forces in Iraq during what was
(39:07):
later called the Surge, and it was a turnaround effort.
Prior to his arrival, things weren't going really well, and
so he came up with a four pronged strategy for
how he was going to dress stuff. But one of
the elements of that really hinged on telling the story
in a factual way and then putting those facts into
(39:28):
contexts don't end up in the spin room, which is
what a lot of people try to do. And so
using facts and figures, telling compelling stories, making your communications
easy to understand, plain language, you don't become too verbose.
All of those things play a significant role in helping
(39:52):
people to understand here's the moment, here's why it matters,
here's what we have to do going forward if we're
to take advantage of it.
Speaker 5 (40:03):
Well.
Speaker 3 (40:03):
And keep in mind, gentlemen, that I'm all about developing
inspirational leaders and so being able to share share a
critical message in a way that connects your team members
to what it is that you're out to do and
encourages them in the process, lifts them in the process.
It's just so compelling and so much of what I
teach as well, So that whole chapter just really excited me.
(40:26):
And then under that that I want to get to
next is this idea of how you can champion belief
in mindset. I think you said something earlier down about this,
and let's see, I already said that you gave a
gorgeous response.
Speaker 5 (40:40):
Bernie, so did you.
Speaker 3 (40:41):
Just to make sure we both get our kudos in here,
But I do want to situate more of that because
I think there's so much that organizations are missing in
terms of opportunity, in terms of how they really steward,
nurture and support belief and mindset, especially relative to momentum.
If one of you can.
Speaker 4 (40:58):
Take that, I think I think one of the things
that stands out, you know, to the point Bernie was
making about, you know, how to how do leaders communicate?
And and one way to look at the way we
built this model is it's almost like if you're if
you're a camper, if you go out camping, and the
very first thing you have to do if you're going
(41:19):
to build a fire, right is you have to you
have to assemble the fire together. You get to put
the wood together in the right way so that there's
air that can feel, that can fuel it, and you
want to make sure it's stacked right, there's kindling in there.
Speaker 6 (41:32):
And then at.
Speaker 4 (41:33):
Some stage, so that's all the pre work, that's the recruiting,
that's the culture, that's the that's putting together the team
that's ready for the moment. Then the spark occurs, right,
and the fire starts to grow. But now comes our
responsibility as leaders to fan the flames, to make that
fire as as dominant as possible, to let it, let
(41:57):
it take hold. And one of the things that really
matters in that in that fanning the flames window is
is how we encourage. As you said, right, it's how
we how we change and we take the belief in mindset.
They already believe we're going to be successful. Now the
moment has occurred. Now it's our job to remind them
(42:18):
all that work we did beforehand, all that preparation we
did for this moment, it's ours. It's here, let's go right.
And if I can encourage you to bring the best
possible mindset to the workplace, if I can get you
to believe with me that unbelievable things are head, the
(42:41):
fire is going to be magnificent. You're going to if
you trust me, if you believe me, and you are
now witnessing this fire taking hold, you're going to jump
on board, and the people who jump on board are
going to help you through leader communications continue to fuel
the mindset of their fellow teammates. Right again, mirror neurons.
(43:06):
As belief systems grow, belief systems.
Speaker 5 (43:10):
Grow, it's so powerful.
Speaker 3 (43:13):
And as a leader, your capacity, ladies and gentlemen, to
steward that, to nurture that, to guide that is just
so powerful. And think about the impact that you can
have in your organization when you learn to do that. Well,
so exciting. Okay, so we talked about those mirror neurons,
and of course I situate then how important it is
to be able to steward that positive emotional contagion. I
(43:36):
want to be able to share with you have several
practices in your book or approaches for leveraging emotional contagent
to build momentum in teams.
Speaker 5 (43:44):
Let's talk about at.
Speaker 3 (43:45):
Least a few of those to be able to equip
our listeners and viewers with some other material as they
walk away from our podcast.
Speaker 6 (43:54):
Yeah, so there are several things that we would recommend
in that regard. One this notion of setting positive xptations
and establishing a positive vision. Effective leaders set high standards.
They don't set the bar low. They set the bar high,
and they say, guess what, here's how we're going to
go about clearing that height. So setting positive expectations, establishing
(44:15):
a positive and then turning that into clear goals, smart goals, specific, measurable, attainable, relevant,
time bounded, and then tapping into people's why the purpose
piece you've already highlighted the importance of that. Another thing
is having a growth mindset, based on the work of
Carol Dweck. So how do you promote curiosity, how do
(44:36):
you think about empathy? And how do you leverage the
two so that you can learn along the way it's
been set for the most agile organizations are the ones
that learn most effectively, and taking time to engage in
introspection and exploration matters. A third is to think about
(44:56):
how do you foster a reflective mindset, really get people
to be mindful, to engage in mediation, so to find
that calm space that can unlock new insights. And there
are a variety of others around understanding the neurofeedback you're receiving, right,
So there are a number of ways in which you
can go about applying these things in service of enhancing
(45:21):
the likelihood that you achieve positive momentum.
Speaker 3 (45:24):
It's so exciting to element. It's so exciting when you
see this stuff in motion. You know, when I go
into organizations, I can tell immediately there's this idea called
limbic resonance. Right, It's probably related to what you're doing
with the mirror neurons, but I can tell if an
organization is gelled or not. I can feel that energy.
I know if they feel demoralized, disconnected, or if they
(45:45):
feel congealed and together and on fire. And I love
how we're talking about equipping leaders and organizations to create
more of that momentum. So this is so exciting for me.
All Right, we have time really to cover just a
little bit about the idea of outcomes and feed that us.
You're bringing your last chapters. It's the finale, so let's
just talk a little bit about that. We have maybe
(46:06):
two minutes to discuss that.
Speaker 4 (46:08):
I'll be quick, but I do know that one of
the things when we looked at outcomes and feedback, one
of the one of the places we turned for uh
for for great learning was the Blue Angels, Right, the
Navy's unbelievable team of pilots.
Speaker 6 (46:24):
If someone in the Navy can be unbelievable, they're they're
the ones.
Speaker 4 (46:27):
This is what happens to an army guy.
Speaker 5 (46:30):
An army yes, says it.
Speaker 2 (46:31):
Army guy. Yeah?
Speaker 4 (46:33):
Can you mute the army guy? So that's my mirror
neuron talking to you, Bernie. But yeah, the Navy, the
Blue Angels are fantastic. But one of the things that
stood out to us is here's this organization that performs
at the highest level, but because of turnover. Right, they
have turnover every year, they have forced turnover. They bring
(46:54):
in new pilots every year. Their goal is to build
momentum throughout the season so that they're best show is
their last show. Right, They want to get better every show,
and so one of the things that they do in
the process of that is they do they do unbelievable
feedback loops in which when they walk into the room
(47:15):
after a practice or show, everyone takes from their arm
their rank. Right, their ranks come off because this is
no longer about you having a position as general and
I'm just a journalist. This is the opportunity for us
to speak truth to each other. Great feedback. We have
(47:36):
this phrase in the book. Feedback is the breakfast of champions,
and those who can actually eat breakfast do well. So
go to work, build feedback into your organization, which will
allow you then to grow, prepare, start the loop again.
That's the beauty of this model as we drafted it.
(47:57):
It's actually a continuous loop. And while while the momentum
will slow at some stage, your goal is to restart
the model, keep it moving, keep it growing, and make
momentum yours.
Speaker 3 (48:11):
Oh so good, guys, so so good. Okay, So I
want to give you a chance each just to say
a little something in closing, say maybe fifteen or twenty seconds.
The show is listening to by people around the world.
They care about elevating their own leadership, stewarding their organizations,
or more meaningfully plugging into their own work. What would
you each like to leave them with?
Speaker 6 (48:32):
Don you want to start?
Speaker 4 (48:33):
Sure? You know I would tell you. I think the
beauty of a project like this is that it starts
with a crazy moment and an idea, and next thing
you know, you get a chance to learn from the
very best. I think that you know, we believe success
leaves clues, and that's what we went out to do.
We chased success, sought its clues, and put it here
(48:54):
for others to hopefully grow from.
Speaker 6 (48:58):
I would just like to build upon that and say
you need not have experienced something personally to make it
an experience that you can leverage personally, learn from the
wisdom of others. It will accelerate your ability to be
effective in your role. Minding these stories has been an
(49:19):
honor for both of us, and we're just excited to
share these stories with others and the hope that it
can lead to people positively impacting other people's lives around
the globe.
Speaker 3 (49:30):
Bernie and Don, it is an absolute delight and pleasure
to know you both, to have learned from you, be
inspired by you. I'm so grateful that I found you,
that you came on the show. Thank you for being
on working on purpose.
Speaker 6 (49:41):
Thank you Eric.
Speaker 3 (49:43):
Listeners and viewers, you're going to want to learn more
about these two amazing gentlemen and their book. There's a
couple of places you can go. You can go to
the Harpercollinsfocus dot com website to find their book, but
I would also recommend that you go to LinkedIn and
find each of them individually and connect with them that way.
That would be one of the best and easiest ways
to do that. Last week, if you missed the live show,
(50:04):
you can always catch a bee recorded podcast. We were
on air with Isaac Perlatinsky talking about his book How
People Matter, Why it affects health, happiness, love, work, and society.
He's passionate about mattering, well being, and fairness, and we
talked about how when these are satisfied in people, families, communities, organizations,
and even nations altogether thrive. Next week will be on
(50:27):
the air with Ken Banta talking about his new book
Seeing Around Corners c Suite wisdom from America's most insightful leaders.
See you then, and together, let's lean in and learn
together how to make workplaces that work for everyone and
find wasted business in a way that betters the world.
Let's work on Purpose.
Speaker 2 (50:47):
We hope you've enjoyed this week's program. Be sure to
tune into Working on Purpose featuring your host, doctor Elise Cortes,
each week on W four C. Why Together, We'll create
a world where business operates conscientiously leadership and fires and passion.
Performance and employees are fulfilled in work that provides the
meaning and purpose. They crave see you there. Let's work
(51:07):
on purpose.
Popular Podcasts
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Law & Order: Criminal Justice System - Season 1 & Season 2
Season Two Out Now! Law & Order: Criminal Justice System tells the real stories behind the landmark cases that have shaped how the most dangerous and influential criminals in America are prosecuted. In its second season, the series tackles the threat of terrorism in the United States. From the rise of extremist political groups in the 60s to domestic lone wolves in the modern day, we explore how organizations like the FBI and Joint Terrorism Take Force have evolved to fight back against a multitude of terrorist threats.