Better Humans, Better Performance: Leadership Lessons from Peter Rea

In this insightful conversation, Peter Rea, founder of Better Humans, Better Performance, explains how virtue-based leadership drives measurable results. Drawing from his experience at Parker Hannifin, he shares research showing that 75% of performance variance comes from character, not cognitive ability. Peter explores the seven classical virtues and their application in leadership, highlighting gratitude as a key driver of engagement and performance. He also offers practical advice for parents and educators on focusing on character development. This conversation provides actionable tools for creating lasting positive change through virtue.

Highlights from the episode:

• The seven classical virtues (trust, compassion, courage, justice, wisdom, temperance, and hope) are universal across cultures and throughout history
• When implementing virtues at Parker Hannifin, teams saw engagement increases of 10-20% annually
• Gratitude practices showed the strongest impact on employee engagement and resilience
• Character issues account for 89% of employee terminations, while competence issues only account for 11%
• Neuroplasticity research confirms that "what we pay attention to and practice is who we become"
• Focusing on character and process rather than outcomes reduces anxiety and improves performance
• Better Humans, Better Performance nonprofit, offers resources and training for character-based leadership
• For children and teams, asking three questions promotes virtue: Were you brave? Were you kind? Did you learn from your mistakes?
• Practicing virtue with humility acknowledges that no one has earned the right to measure others

Peter Rea's Bio

Peter Rea is the founder of Better Humans. Better Performance, a nonprofit dedicated to helping individuals and teams thrive under pressure while guided by character and integrity. Peter brings a wealth of experience as the former Vice President of Integrity and Ethics at Parker Hannifin, and as a professor of business at Baldwin Wallace University. He has authored multiple influential publications, including Better Humans. Better Performance and Leading with Integrity. His career spans over two decades, combining leadership, ethics, and entrepreneurial insight, and he is passionate about creating lasting social and economic value through virtuous leadership. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of Akron, an M.A. from Bowling Green State University, and a B.S. from Ohio University. He has completed postdoctoral studies in international marketing and business, marketing strategy, and entrepreneurship at the University of South Carolina, Memphis University, Carnegie Mellon, Duke, and MIT.

• Better Humans. Better Performance. https://7vs.org/
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/peterjreaphd/ 

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Episode Transcript

Todd Bertsch (00:10):
Welcome back to the Bolt Podcast.
I'm Todd Bertsch and I'mthrilled to be your guide on
this inspiring journey ofpersonal growth and leadership.
Together with my guests, we'lldive into transformational
stories, uncovering how small,intentional changes can create
massive positive results in yourlife.
From overcoming challenges andsetting impactful goals to

(00:31):
building lasting habits andliving with confidence, health
and positivity.
We'll explore it all, and ifyou're ready to embrace a growth
mindset and unlock the bestversion of yourself, then let's
spark that transformation today.
Today on the Bolt Podcast, I'mexcited to welcome Peter Rea,
the founder of Better Humans,Better Performance, a nonprofit

(00:54):
dedicated to helping individualsand teams thrive under pressure
, while guided by character andintegrity.
Peter brings a wealth ofexperience as the former vice
president of integrity andethics at Parker Hannifin and as
a professor of business atBaldwin Wallace University.
He has authored multipleinfluential publications,

(01:17):
including Better Humans, BetterPerformance, and Leading with
Integrity.
His career spans over twodecades, combining leadership,
ethics, and entrepreneurialinsight, and he is passionate
about creating lasting socialand economic value through
virtuous leadership.
He holds a PhD from theUniversity of Akron, an MA from

(01:38):
Bowling Green State University,and a BS from Ohio University.
He has completed postdoctoralstudies in international
marketing and business,marketing strategy and
entrepreneurship at theUniversity of South Carolina,
Memphis University, CarnegieMellon, Duke, and MIT.
Listeners, get ready for aneducational episode on virtues

(01:58):
and leadership, and get out yournotepads, Peter.
Welcome to the Bold Podcast, myfriend.

Peter Rea (02:04):
Thanks for the invitation, todd, looking
forward to the conversation.

Todd Bertsch (02:07):
Yes, thank you for giving us a little bit of your
time today.
I do want to give a shout outto our mutual friend, Scott J.
Allen.
Thank you, Scott, for makingthe introduction.
Scott's such a great guy, youknow, Peter, the introduction
that's quite an introduction andto be honest, I had a heck of a
time paring this down.
Chat GPT wanted to cut a lot ofthat out and you know I wanted

(02:31):
to give you the respect of thislong history that you've had
decades of experience inleadership and your educational
background.
So I wanted our audience toreally get a sense of your
background and who you are andwhat you've accomplished.
So I have a lot of respect foryou and what you're doing and

(02:52):
I'm excited about thisconversation today.
Me too.
So I want to start off by thisone phrase that you mentioned in
your book when we get better atwho we are, we get better at
what we do, and that has beenyour life's work in some ways.
Is that correct?

Peter Rea (03:14):
Yeah, it is.
You know.
I think that what's interestingand I don't think I understood
this until I started digginginto the research and then
applying it in companies.
But I think what getsunderstated is character defined
by virtue is a huge performanceamplifier.
So that gets at that first partof the statement, when we get

(03:35):
better at who we are bypracticing virtue and the word
virtue means excellence and it'snot a virtue until I act.
So that's the amplifier towhatever competency I'm trying
to develop, Right.

Todd Bertsch (03:49):
Yeah, and this is perfect because you know my
personal mission and the missionof this podcast, the Bolt, is
to help people reimagine howthey live, lead and work and to
become the best version ofthemselves.
I've been on a personal missionand I continue to do the work,
and you're a lifelong learner aswell, and I assume you're

(04:12):
continuing to do that work.
We're all just trying to get 1%better every day, right?
Yeah, exactly.
So the theme of this episode isreally better humans, better
performance, simply put, andyou've had a really long,
impressive career, and we talkedabout your time with 12 years
as vice president of integrityand ethics at Parker Hannafin,

(04:35):
and this is a large corporation,fortune 250, publicly owned,
annual sales of north of 20billion and 65,000 employees in
50 different countries.
I mean, we're talking about alot of humans right to be
responsible for.
So I'm really curious when Isaw your title this Vice

(05:00):
President of Integrity andEthics.
Is this something that iscommon in these very large
corporations?
And when you came into thisrole, was this role already
there or was this created foryou, and what was the impetus of
creating this role?
That's what I'd like to justlearn a little bit more about.

Peter Rea (05:22):
Yeah, so it had not been created before.
Okay, and I think the way Iwould put it and it's not common
.
I wish that it was common, butit's not Okay.
It's more common, actually inthe military Okay Than you would
find in corporations, which isodd, because it's got a huge
performance benefit.

(05:42):
Hmm, because it's got a hugeperformance benefit.
So the catalyst for this that Ithink is still relevant is the
then chief financial officer atParker was in an executive MBA
class that I was teaching and Iwas always wondering why do
organizations limit theirdefinition of ethics to
compliance, which means a set ofrules, and you need rules.

(06:09):
You can debate whether you gottoo many or too few, but zero is
not the right answer.
And not thinking about ethicsas virtue, which is at least
3,000 years old and it's got allkinds of performance benefits.
So the CFO I think this isstill true today he went to the
CEO and said I'm not sure morerules are going to keep us safer
and while we keep laying onmore and more rules, we're

(06:31):
burdening the 99% of people whocome to work every day and do
their job properly and we're notexpressing appropriate
gratitude to them and zero isnot the right answer on rules,
and you do need some form ofcompliance.
Just so I'm being clear.
And if you're in a publiclyowned company, you don't have
any choice.
Anyway You're required to do it.

(06:53):
But you know, if you've got anethical culture defined by
virtue, at least trying topractice that, you both mitigate
the risk of something going offthe rails and you accelerate
performance.
So, in brief, that was thecatalyst for it.

Todd Bertsch (07:10):
Okay, interesting.
So how did that benefit Parkerwhen COVID came?
So you had already implementedthis several years before COVID,
one of arguably one of thetoughest times that we've all
faced.

Peter Rea (07:28):
Yeah, it's a really good question.
So here's the context is, wheneverybody traveled a lot at
Parker.
I mean, I traveled all over theworld and that was normal.
We spent at the time $160million a month on travel.
To give you a sense of this,and we're in 50 countries and

(07:52):
350 locations, so it's kind of amassive organization, right.
So you go a dead stop from allthis travel to now you're going
to try to run a Fortune 250remote, and so I pivoted fast
with Zoom and this answer isbetter to be lucky than good

(08:15):
that I had taken the BetterHumans, better Performance book
and started to create e-learningmodules and that went live in
April of 2020, right when COVIDhit.
So it became a vehicle to pumpin the practice of virtue into

(08:35):
operations and it enabled scalein ways that I couldn't achieve
by traveling.
Right, and I had done a lot ofwork around resilience of how do
people become more resilient?
What's the science behind that?
And PhD stands for permanenthead damage that you look at pre
post control treatment,randomization, right.

(08:58):
So these aren't personalopinions, it's kind of it's
what's the research say.

Todd Bertsch (09:03):
Right.

Peter Rea (09:04):
So there's a lot of really interesting research on
resilience, because the wordgets used a lot but becomes kind
of a tagline rather than ascience-based approach to how is
it learned Right?
So it wouldn't come as asurprise that that became.
I mean, I must.
I've done thousands of sessionson resilience.

(09:24):
Well, thousands of people istending to resilience, and I'll
just I'll stop with one story,that when the Ukraine war broke
out so that was not too farafter COVID I got contacted by

(09:44):
our Eastern European colleagues,and especially Poland that I
don't know, that it's widelyknown that Poland's population
is about 40 million.
10 million Ukrainians becamerefugees in Poland.
So imagine the percentageincrease in your population
overnight.
And so the question was how dothe Poles, how do the Czechs,
how do other Eastern Europeancountries become more resilient?

(10:09):
And it was very humblingbecause I made it very clear.
I'm sitting 6,000 miles fromwhere you sit.
I'm not on the border of a war,I've never experienced war, I
don't know what you're goingthrough.
The best I can offer is here'sthe science behind this, and
then you tell me whether it'sworth, it's useful and relevant.
So it was a powerful experienceon me what I learned from

(10:33):
people that I thought were rockstars, that I was going through
what they're going through.
I might be in a cornersomewhere in a fetal position.
So you learn a lot from othersas you do it.
And that became kind of thepunchline around how do you
perform well despite uncertainty, despite pressure, despite

(10:54):
stress?
What's the science behind that?
And it does come down tocharacter, relationships and
purpose.

Todd Bertsch (11:01):
Wow, and so you?
You did not intend the timingof you launching that.
What that was already there,right it?
wasn't like you said, oh gosh,that was the dumb luck.
Okay, Wow.
Well, good for you.
I mean, that's, that's awesomeand wow.
So in your, in your role atParker's or any, what types of

(11:24):
challenges did you guys did youface that you're able to talk
about?
You know, is there one inparticular where this research
and your model really came intoplay and you were able to put it
in place and you're able toovercome some major obstacles?

Peter Rea (11:42):
Yeah, I'll offer two stories that perhaps answer your
question.
The first is, when I gotstarted, the endowed chair I
held at Baldwin Wallace was inentrepreneurship, so I
approached it like an internalstartup that was funded.
So I had spent six monthsinterviewing hundreds of leaders

(12:02):
about what their pain point was, and what came out of it at a
high level was all right.
Why are we doing this?
Why is Parker going to makethis investment into not only
character but virtue?
And so I worked with the CFO.
This is a financial argument.

(12:23):
This was not an HR initiative,and it was protect the balance
sheet, that our reputation andculture were the most important
asset that we had, and so, likeany asset, you need a
non-purpose plan.
That's the why.
So people, ok, that makes sense.
So what does this mean?
Well, there's these sevenclassical virtues trust,

(12:45):
compassion, courage, justice,wisdom, temperance and hope.
And they're classical, whichmeans they cut across time, they
cut across borders.
So we're in 50 countries.
We can't be US centric, it'sgot to be universal.
So I said, okay, I get that.
So how are you going to do it?
So it very much got into how,very fast, of how do you scale

(13:08):
this?
And so now I'll fast forward.
This is the reason for writing acouple of books when I was
there, so there was content thatcould be scaled and so I'm
going to fast forward to rightafter COVID, I worked with our
Asia Pacific team every month.
This is the operationsleadership team, all the folks
that have P&L responsibility.
As you can imagine, it's amassive footprint.

(13:30):
It's India, china, japan,indonesia, australia, you name
it and once a month we wouldkeep kind of putting in virtue
science of high performance.
That's the intersection thatthe science of high performance
is really about the socialaspects of it, and the most

(13:50):
pro-social technology everinvented by humans is virtues.
So to have an option to scalethe virtues into such a big
footprint, that was a big deal.
And I created self-pacedcourses, which is still part of
the nonprofit, where teams couldlearn about leadership or

(14:13):
teamwork or coaching.
It's a hybrid, so that you startwith the team all together,
then there's modules they workon, then they come back together
, modules they work on, then youcheck with the end, and so the
punchline on this that we saw, Iran multiple studies when I was
at Parker.

(14:33):
So in between that start thealpha and the omega that I
described we did experimentaldesigns where you have a control
group, you do nothing with atreatment group, that you
integrate the virtues into theirdaily operations.
That's a really important point.
It's integrated to what you'realready going to do and did pre
and post tests and what wediscovered is that we got jumps

(14:57):
in engagement of 10 to 20% yearover year.
That it's not going to get afast, quick change, but over 12
months and it varied by.
If it was a really strong team,they actually got the biggest
jumps.
If it was a dysfunctional team,it took longer but they did get
the jumps and a lot of that wastied to the quality of

(15:19):
leadership.
So that's long answered yourquestion, but hopefully that
starts to get at it.

Todd Bertsch (15:24):
Yeah, that's amazing.
Did the dysfunctional group seethe same amount, same
percentage, amount of increase?
They did, but it was slower.
It was just slower, okay so ayear and a half.
Yeah, you got it, you nailed it.
It was 18 months, but stillseeing the growth.
Wow, that's interesting.

(15:45):
Wow, this, that's interesting.
Wow, this is much more than abook.

Peter Rea (15:49):
Yeah, I think that this is the piece, the business
case for this is a layup, andI'm just surprised by how few
businesses in particular aregetting it.
Military gets it Right, but youthink most there's lots of
organizations that understandthe importance of engagement and
there's two decades of researchthat shows big surprise, the

(16:12):
more engaged your people are,you get the kind of outcomes
we're all interested in, whetherthat's business growth,
customer satisfaction,operational excellence, turnover
rates, all those kinds ofoutcomes, right.
So you say, all right, well,what's engagement?
Well, engagement isdiscretionary effort that you've
got people that look around,they see what needs to be done,

(16:32):
who do they need to work with,and they own it Okay.
Well then, how does that happen?
Well, it's largely aboutpro-social behavior.
So engagement's not aboutextrinsic changes where if I
just pay you more, I get you towork harder.
There's no evidence that thatworks.
And that doesn't mean weshouldn't pay people fairly.
It just doesn't mean I can getyou to work harder.

(16:52):
It's the pro-social behaviorthat gets me to work harder,
that when virtue is beingpracticed, I feel like I belong,
I feel like I matter, I feellike I make a difference.
And those three levers arewhich are all the soft stuff are
the things that get you thekind of performance we're all

(17:13):
interested in yeah, absolutely.

Todd Bertsch (17:14):
Wow, this is good stuff, peter.
So I just want to let ourlisteners know like this is what
we're talking about herePeter's book Better Humans um,
incredible book, peter.
I have not made it all the waythrough for a couple of reasons.
One, I'm a slow reader and two,I'm a slow reader because I

(17:36):
take a lot of notes.
I treat this as a researchproject.
I used to really burn throughbooks.
I tried to get through them andcheck it off and say, oh man, I
got through another one andthen I realized less is more and
I really want to immerse myselfin the book and not blowing
smoke here because you're on theshow.
This is a really incredible book.

(17:57):
I have pages and pages of notesand excited to get all the way
through it.
I would arguably say I'd putthis on the top of books that
need to be read by every leader,with Stephen Covey and John
Maxwell and James Clear, atleast in my opinion.

(18:19):
You know those staple books andI'm going to get a copy of this
for all of my leadership teamand I would encourage our
listeners to at least read aboutthe book and consider buying
the book.
So let's just dig into thisbook.
Even I feel like that's whatwe've been talking about.
But although, as you said, thisis much more than a book and in

(18:40):
fact, I think what you're welltrying to do, or what you've
done and what you're trying tobuild on, is a movement, and
it's funny because it's goingback to very simple principles,
right?

Peter Rea (18:55):
Exactly yeah.

Todd Bertsch (18:57):
And it's interesting, Peter, what I found
in my coaching and my speakingand what I talk about, which is
mainly focused on the power ofpositivity and cultivating a
growth mindset.
There are so many techniquesthat are very basic and most

(19:17):
people just don't practice thembecause they are so obvious,
Right and they're free.
They take literally three tofive minutes to start to build a
habit, so oftentimes we justneed a reminder to get back to
the basics, Almost like I don'tknow if you remember, Peter,

(19:39):
back in the day, where theywould have those PSA School of
Rock.
Do you know what I'm talkingabout?

Peter Rea (19:47):
Yeah, me too.

Todd Bertsch (19:48):
Yeah, and I think we just kind of need that in our
company newsletters.
If you will, let's just getback to the basics.
So yeah, incredible book and Iwant to dig into it.
Let's start with this, Peter.
So I'm going through this and Iread this quote from the poet
Rumi A jackass attached to angelwings.

(20:12):
You about.
You mentioned this quite a fewtimes in the book, so obviously
this had some influence on youand it resonated with you.
Why did you include this andjust tell our audience about it?
This was new to me, so Ithought it was pretty
interesting.

Peter Rea (20:29):
Yeah, I'll start with the quote, then I'll give some
context for it.
So Rumi's take?
He's a 12th century Sufi poetand his description of humans is
their jackasses attached toangel wings.
So the point is, there's ajackass in every one of us.
We'd like to make it a littlebit smaller, but you're not
going to go to zero.

(20:50):
So these virtues areaspirational.
It's not possible to be perfect.
So these virtues areaspirational.
It's not possible to be perfect.
But we are capable of beinggood and we tip most humans tip
towards trying to do the rightthing for the right reasons in
the right way.
But the hard part is making ita habit and so the practice.
I think Rumi's takeaway is youpractice these virtues with

(21:10):
humility, because no one'searned the right to break out
their moral yardstick and startmeasuring other people, and we
tend to be better at seeingother people's flaws and not as
good about seeing our own flaws.
Yes, so the humility piece isreally really important.
How virtue is practiced is asimportant as what it means, and

(21:33):
that ultimately, it's abouthabits, and that's the part
that's hard.
So you know, if you go to yourphysician and you want to become
more fit, move more, eat less,more green, less grease.
Do you have any questions?
It's not a knowledge thing, butit turns out.
It's hard to get fit, fit andto exercise, and it's not that

(21:55):
you don't know it.
The hard part is making it ahabit, and especially when we
put you under pressure andstress.
So if you take go from Rumi toall the service academies so
I've been to West Point and theAir Force Academy, naval Academy
so their number one mission isbetter leaders for the nation

(22:16):
and the military.
So how do they define betterleaders Virtue?
So why would the militarypractice virtue?
It's about, again, making it ahabit.
Well, one reason is theperformance benefit.
So there's a guy named MikeMatthews at West Point looked at
100 years of research.

(22:37):
The dependent variable wasacademic and job performance,
and 25% of the variance inperformance could be explained
by cognitive skills, things likeIQ.
75% of the variance isnon-cognitive, it's character.
That's the part that I thinkmost businesses are missing.

(22:58):
It's why the military is usingit Now.
On the other hand, it increasesreliability under pressure,
which is why the military doesit.
So if I don't even know whatexcellence means and again,
that's what virtue means and Idon't have a framework seven
virtues, then under pressure,the variance is going to be
pretty high.

(23:18):
If at least people know whatvirtue is and they're trying to
practice it imperfectly, they goback to Rumi.
The banded behavior is going tobe tighter.
It's not perfect, but it'sgoing to be a little bit tighter
, and that it's a skill.
So virtue is a skill and it canbe learned like any skill,
slowly over time, making it ahabit.

(23:38):
So what used to be hard andtake a lot of effort becomes
effortless.
That's what a habit is thatyou've internalized it but you
can't push it on people.
It's got to be a pull, not push.
Now people want to do it, butyou've got to figure out ways to
get at it.
So one more point that Rumi is,you're right, he kind of got me

(24:02):
rolling on this.
So one more data point DanielKahneman you're probably quite
familiar with.
He argued that the single youknow, if people don't know who
he is the only psychologist towin a Nobel Prize in economics.
And he argued that the singlegreatest contribution of
psychology to humankind is KurtLewin's idea of restraining

(24:25):
forces.
Lewin's research is 80 yearsold, so I like stuff that's old,
that's been around for a longtime and proven and what Lewin's
stuff demonstrated.
This is kind of a fundamentalpiece to what I continue to do.
You have driving forces pushingyou this way and restraining
forces putting you this way.
So let's take virtue.

(24:47):
I mean, who in the worldwouldn't want to be on a team
where people trust each other,they care about each other,
they're fair and they're hopeful?
On a team where people trusteach other, they care about each
other, they're fair and they'rehopeful, and who the heck wants
to be on a team where peopleare distrustful, ruthless,
cowards and they're full ofdespair?
So it's kind of a no-brainer.
That's what you want.
But the driving force to wantto practice virtue.

(25:09):
You have restraints, thepressure to perform, time
limitations, a grouchy boss andnone of those things.
You can't eliminate them, butyou can weaken their restraints.
So if I do nothing, I'm stuck.
I can't change my behavior.
If I can define and weaken myrestraints, I start to tip it.

(25:31):
That's a really key piece thattakes you all the way from Rumi
to Kurt Lohan 80 years ago.
That still works today.

Todd Bertsch (25:40):
That's interesting .
I assume you're familiar withCarol Dweck's work.

Peter Rea (25:44):
Yes, very much.

Todd Bertsch (25:46):
It reminds me of that, talking about that kind of
continuum of being in a fixedmindset over to an an open and
growth mindset.
I talk a lot about that on theshow and it's it's a big part of
my talk and my message is beingable to shift, or educate

(26:06):
people on how to shift, or thethe idea that you can shift, and
I think that is the.
What I'm most interested in isthat peace, those people who are
in the mud, in the rock, andthey feel like they can't change
.
But we've been, you know, we'vebeen built for change and we

(26:28):
can, and it just takes time,like you said, and it takes
effort and we just need to startsmall and make those small
shifts so that we can build ahabit right and I assume you're
a fan of James Clear and hiswork.
You know small shifts, atomichabits, and then you start to
build and compound, get thatcompounding interest right, and

(26:51):
then you celebrate those winsand then you can start seeing,
you know, the change take place,but anyhow.
So yeah, thank you Peter forthat.
That was a great setup.
And I do want to show and we'llinclude this for those of you
who are listening and notwatching this on YouTube, this

(27:13):
illustration here.
Peter, if we can kind of talkthrough this Greek architecture,
because this is the model forthis book, kind of take us
through the top with Arute.
Did I pronounce that correctly?
Arate, arate Itte it meansexcellence, right.

(27:35):
So that's the, uh, the goddessof virtue, right, and that's the
, the pediments in this kind ofdork order of of greek
architecture.
So if just imagine somebody'slistening and kind of take us,
because I think that's to me,albeit simple, but in seeing

(27:58):
that illustration in that Greekarchitecture, I was really able
to internalize that Right, youused a key word there
internalize.

Peter Rea (28:08):
I mean.
That's why you can't push thisstuff.
It's more caught than taught.
So those virtues are known asthe seven classical virtues.
The word classical means thesevirtues cut across time and cut
across borders back 10,000 years.
So if you looked at what'sinteresting when I did a lot of

(28:29):
work in Asia, confucius andAristotle were born about the
same period of time.
There's no evidence that theyknew each other and yet the
virtues were virtually identicaland all the work I would do in

(28:49):
Asia that were around the world.
That's what was so fascinatingis that these virtues are truly
kind of part of every culture.
They get expressed differently.
So are there culturaldifferences?
Of course, and that's beendocumented, not just with going
back, you know, 2,500 years, butthere was a group of 55

(29:10):
scientists who did a thoroughreview of all the virtues and
how universal they were.
So there's science that backsup the philosophy.
That's high level.
To drop into the details.
What's really important is,unless people know what
excellence means, defined byseven virtues, and until they're
using common language, it'spretty hard to move the culture.

(29:31):
So we all know that culture ismore powerful than strategy.
I say that as a strategist Ifyour culture is screwy, it won't
matter how good your strategyis, you can't get it off the
ground.
And if the strategy is not badbut the culture is strong,
you'll be able to make movement.
So the seven one way toremember these seven virtues is

(29:56):
by catchphrases, because I can'tremember paragraphs but I can
remember a catchphrase.
So I'm going to just go throughall seven very briefly.

Todd Bertsch (30:04):
That's what I was hoping Excellent.

Peter Rea (30:08):
So for trust, the catchphrase is trust is
efficient.
We've all been on teams whenthey may be really smart people,
they don't trust each other.
They're going to cost you a lotof money.
It's going to take a long timeto get stuff done.
When teams trust each other,they move really quick.
They'll save you money.
Second virtue compassion.
Service before self, servicebefore self.

(30:31):
So the more collaborative ateam is, there's overwhelming
evidence that relationships needto come first and performance
follows and the order matters,so that trust and compassion are
kind of attached at the hip.
Courage is doing the hard rightrather than the easy wrong.

(30:52):
Do the hard right rather thanthe easy wrong.
Courage issues don't tend to becomplicated, but they come with
risk and I already kind of knowwhat I should be doing.
I just don't know if I want topay the price and it's hard for
any of us.
But again, it can become ahabit with practice.
Justice is lived by conviction.

(31:13):
Practice Justice is lived byconviction, not circumstances.
And justice is by far the mostcomplicated virtue because
there's not an objectivestandard.
But if at least I'm clear aboutwho I want to be guided by
these virtues, independent ofcircumstances, I'm clear.
Here's how I want to show up,and wisdom is strive to

(31:34):
understand rather than beunderstood.
There's overwhelming evidencethat if someone doesn't feel
heard and understood, good lucktrying to change behavior.
They still may not change.
But you don't have a chanceuntil they feel heard and
understood.
And temperance is.
Calm is contagious, calm iscontagious.
This is a tagline from the NavySEALs that when the leader is

(31:58):
calm, the team is calm.
When the leader is ruthless,the team is ruthless.
Leaders confused, teamsconfused.
And hope is better, not bitter,bitter.
So we all go through toughtimes.
It's not a competition of howhard my blows are compared to

(32:19):
somebody else, and so theoutcome is does it make me
better or does it make me better?

Todd Bertsch (32:22):
Yeah, yeah, I love these and in the book you have
these and the key takeaways andI love that aspect of the book
being able to go through thechapters and just kind of have
that, that nice little takeawayat the end.
I want to talk about a coupleof these.
Peter, trust, share thatshipwreck story with us.
I really enjoyed that and itjust allowed me to visualize it

(32:46):
a little bit.
Obviously I know what trust is,but I think it was just a great
little story yeah.

Peter Rea (32:52):
So there was a school in England in 1930 that their
tagline is they wanted graduateswho were adequate at a dance
and invaluable in a shipwreck.
And it turns out that's notjust a clever tagline that there
was a study done on shipwrecksbetween 1500 and 1800.

(33:16):
And they actually had reallygood records of how many sailors
died or lived and they hadtheir journals so you could look
at the journals to see whethervirtue was present or it was
absent.
And the outcome of the study iswhen virtue was present, high
probability all or most sailorswould live.
When virtue was absent, highprobability everyone would die

(33:40):
or most people would die.
And you know that's 1500 to1800.
But again you can swing thisstuff back arguably 10,000 years
.
That Darwin kind of he wonderedwhy are people moral, why would
you do that?
And that kind of whole survivalof the fittest.

(34:01):
He never said that there's aguy named Henry Spencer who did
so.
What Darwin argued for is thatmorality was the solution to
cooperation.
Morality was the solution tocooperation and evolutionary
biology is about competition ofwhat conduct would lead to

(34:21):
sustainability.
And so when he looked at tribesother people have done the same
the tribes that cared abouteach other and cooperated well,
net-net, not always out-competedtribes who were ruthless and
didn't give a flip about eachother.
So that's a way of stringingthat school from 1930, 1500 to

(34:43):
1800, back to evolutionarybiology.
This is how we're built tocooperate.
And you can't cooperate unlesspeople are moral.
The root word of morale ismoral.
That's the piece that I thinkkind of can get missed, right.

Todd Bertsch (35:00):
Absolutely so.
I do wonder you mentioned thisand I was curious as I went
through this list.
I'm like where's gratitude?
And you do say that gratitudeis by far the greatest virtue of
all time.
Where does that fall into thisseven classical virtues?

Peter Rea (35:21):
Yeah, it's a good question.
It falls under hope.
And here's the story behind itis, if you would have asked me
when I started at Parker whichkind of practice had the biggest
impact on engagement, I promisemy answer was not gratitude.
I look, I'm not againstgratitude, but I thought it just

(35:42):
seems a little bit fluffy.
You know where's the evidence.
I mean, you know it's a goodthing to be gracious, but you
know, at my core I look atresearch and at one level
gratitude's all this dirt.
So the root word of gratitudeis grace that you've been given
a gift that you didn'tnecessarily deserve.

(36:04):
What's new is now you bolt onsocial science research.
That started kind of in the late90s and the initial study was
was three groups.
One group would write downthree things they were grateful
for for 21 days.
The second group would writedown three things that ticked
them off for 21 days, and thelast group, the control group.

(36:27):
We didn't do anything with themand a study came out with
clarity that the grateful groupwas more grateful day 22 than
day zero.
The miserable group was moremiserable day 22 than day zero
and the control group there wasno difference.
So I'm going to give that as abackdrop is when I was looking

(36:47):
at the research on the impact ongratitude was so powerful in
terms of resiliencerelationships.
It just went on and on and onengagement.
So there were two researchersthat had done most of the work
in this field, or at least werethe ones that started it so I
jumped on a plane, met with bothof them and say just show me

(37:10):
your data.
I'm not going to do somethingat Parker without some
confidence it would be effectiveand the data was really
compelling.
So that drove me back to Parker.
And now if you ask me, as allthe years I was at Parker, which
of the practices had thebiggest impact on engagement?
It was gratitude.

(37:31):
Right, and then it becomes okaywhat are different ways to
practice gratitude, as a team,as an individual and you want to
get into that.
I can share some details.
But really, what if you cut tothe chase with gratitude?
I'm looking at what I haveversus what I don't have, and
it's a mind and it's got apowerful impact on us,

(37:54):
absolutely.

Todd Bertsch (37:55):
I'm all about gratitude.
We talk a lot about it on theshow.
It's infused into everyspeaking engagement and in my
coaching work it is, bar none,in my opinion, the easiest and
simplest thing to integrate intoyour life.
That will have the mostprofound impact.

(38:15):
I think you're right, todd.
Three minutes a day, whetherthat's you could bookend it,
start and end which I think hasthe most impact, or one or the
other.
For me, it's the morning.
I love to start my day withprayer, infused with gratitude,
infused with meditation, for 5,10, 15 minutes, whatever I'm

(38:37):
feeling for that particular day,and then I'm set for the day.
It really sets the tone andit's a beautiful thing.
And I've seen it personally,peter, in my business, albeit
very, very small compared towhat you're accustomed to, but
we're still dealing with humanbeings, Right.

(39:00):
And we see it in our NPS surveys, year after year after year,
even with very different groupsof people.
I think we've been through andyou've probably seen this too.
Every five years I feel likethere's just kind of a change in
culture or people, but that hasbeen tried and true.
Feedback from employees isgiving them the time and space

(39:24):
to speak and listen to them sothat they have a voice, caring,
leading with empathy and givingthem feeling value.
That's one of the top questionsDo you feel valued in this
organization?
And we really take that toheart.
So, yeah and hell, we couldprobably do a whole show on

(39:46):
gratitude, peter, and maybe wedo.
And I feel like this is thebiggest struggle with this
conversation was I just want to.
You are like.
You have so much greatinformation, all backed by
research, and I would love tojust talk for hours.
Honestly, I just want to talk alittle bit about.
You talk a lot about and youreference a lot in the book

(40:07):
about the neuroscience behindall this, and I'm a big fan of
that.
I don't know if you're familiarwith positive intelligence High
level, high level, high level.
Okay, good, I highly recommendI think you would really enjoy
Shirzad Shamim's book PositiveIntelligence.
It's a New York Times bestseller.
I'm actually a positiveintelligence coach and I'm

(40:31):
actually a client.
So I've been through theprogram.
I'm almost at mastery level.
Five years I've rewired mybrain.
You will see it on an MRI.
I've definitely built that graymatter.
It's a beautiful thing to beable to do that.
So neuroscience is real andit's life-changing.
Tell us a little bit about justyour experience with

(40:54):
neuroscience and how you infusethis into the book briefly.

Peter Rea (40:59):
Yeah, so it's kind of neuroscience caught up with
Aristotle is how I would put it.
And to keep it brief, you knowthe term neuroplasticity is
incredible.
We should be putting that inbillboards.
As you know, it means that mybrain changes from the time I'm

(41:20):
born to the time I croak.
So just knowing that is useful.
I think it's also useful tounderstand that this three pound
piece of meat on top of myshoulders is an energy hog and
it uses 20 percent of my energyand it uses 20% of my energy.
So my brain is actually notit's not ethically driven, it's

(41:50):
driven by how do I preserveenergy?
So my brain is just kind ofgoing to go where I want it to
go.
So if I'm emphasizing socialmedia and doing lots of clicks,
then my brain starts to shutdown on long-term thinking and
you get the attention span of anap.
And if, on the other hand, Iwant to practice virtue, I move
a little bit closer in thatdirection to your point.
You get a dendrite.
For us that you literallythat's what a habit is.

(42:11):
You've got this thick bushel ofneurons that have connected,
which is why it is easy for oneperson to do one thing and
another person do something else.
So if I cut to the chase, what Ipay attention to and what I
practice is who I become.
That, if you summarizedneuroscience, that's one way to

(42:33):
do it, that it's about where Iput my attention and what do I
practice, and then it becomeshabit.
And that line of thinking, thatlittle formula, is an alignment
with what Aristotle said 2,500years ago that habits are about
practicing excellence.
That I become more just bypracticing just acts.

(42:56):
I've become more courageous bypracticing courageous acts.
I'm not perfect at it.
It's a continuum, but maybe Imove a little bit closer over
time.

Todd Bertsch (43:08):
Love it Absolutely .
And it just again starts withsmall shifts.
I feel like people getoverwhelmed.
How am I going?
How am I going to achieve this?
Where do I start?
I can't begin.
I can't do this, I'm going tofail.
Just get started.

Peter Rea (43:24):
The research is there .

Todd Bertsch (43:26):
The proof is in the pudding you will see better
performance and you will havebetter relationships with
everybody in your life.
You will be able to serveeveryone in your life so much
better.
I absolutely love it.
You know there's I'll leave youwith this.
In terms of positiveintelligence, peter, there is
kind of one core component whichis called the sage perspective,

(43:49):
and it talks about, inchallenging situations, finding
the gift and opportunity inevery scenario, in every
situation, and to me, that isreally, really powerful, and I
saw and I see this in thevirtues, and I see this
throughout your book If we canjust come into every situation

(44:11):
with an open mind, an empty cupright, and be open to exploring
and not be judgmental, we'regoing to be held a lot better.
So, anyhow, I just wanted tosay that, peter, there's another
component that I really feltlike needed to be in this
conversation and I took ascreenshot of it and hell, I

(44:33):
might even frame frame it thefive enduring elements to
creating a world which we wantto live in.
That truly resonated with me,and we're talking about trust
here.
Can you take us, take usthrough that and make sure?

Peter Rea (44:49):
I'm kind of hitting on what you were and I'll kick
it off.

Todd Bertsch (44:53):
trust and practicing virtue, gotcha.

Peter Rea (44:58):
Trust and gratitude.
So see if I'm taking it towhere you were thinking, todd,
that it starts with the commonlanguage around the virtues.
If I don't even know whatexcellence is, good luck trying
to get there.
And one of the distinctions isbetween it's not uncommon that
organizations have values andpeople go off into the woods.

(45:22):
They think about what they'reinterested in, what they care
about.
It's not a bad exercise.
But unless you're Aristotle,it's probably not going to
result in the seven classicalvirtues.
So kind of starting with virtueis you've already defined
excellence.
Now we're struggling to figureout how to practice it.
It's really critical that it'spracticed intrinsically.

(45:45):
That's what I want to do, it'swho I want to be, it's how we're
trying to lead, it's how we'retrying to focus as a team.
But that's a key piece to this,which is again back to the pull
versus the push, beingstrength-based.
You know what do I do?
Well, how do I do more of it?
That is not about self-esteem.
So leveraging strengths doesn'tmean I ignore weakness.

(46:09):
In fact, this is an importantpoint Carol Dweck and others
have hit.
This piece is if you ask peopledo I have to have high
self-esteem in order to performthat?
The order is high self-esteem,then you get performance.
The answer is definitively no.
That what that gets you.
I feel great about my mathabilities, but I can't add two

(46:32):
and two together.
You get a narcissist who feelsgreat about themselves and they
can't do squat.
So the order was wrong is yougot to flip it.
You do something hard andimportant, and that's what
results in feeling a little bitbetter about who we are, at
least the progress that we'remaking.
But the humility is somethingthat I would really kind of

(46:54):
emphasize.
And the last piece is about theevidence-based.
So, rather than making toolsthat are just somebody's made
them up it's a personal opinionI like the scientific method of
pre post control, treatment,randomization, that you've
tipped things in your favor,that it's more likely to work.

(47:15):
It's not perfect.
The scientific method isn'tperfect, there's always more to
learn, but it's better than justmaking stuff up.
So I'm not sure if I hit whatyou were thinking about, but
that's one way to imagine thepractice of this.

Todd Bertsch (47:29):
Yeah, no, absolutely.
Thank you for sharing that.
And I just want to run throughthese and this is in the book
and I'll probably include thisas a graphic when we promote
this podcast, this episode.
But number one, trust inpracticing virtue.
Two, trust in gratitude.
Three, trust in reflection Slowdown.

(47:50):
I just did a post on this theother day that basically said
slow the hell down.
If we can just slow down andreflect and be present in the
moment, my gosh, what we can dois going to be incredible.
And trust in being engaged andenjoying the process.
I talk a lot about justembracing the journey.
Don't worry about the end game,don't worry about perfection.

(48:13):
This is an infinite game.
We're just trying to get better.
And then, lastly, trust increating a meaningful life,
which almost always meansserving others.
So that was that piece.
Peter man, I'm like this is thetype of thing you put up on the
wall in your frame and you justlook at it every day, where you
have this as a page in yourjournal.

(48:34):
So it was just very powerfuland it resonated with me.
So I wanted to mention that inthe show.

Peter Rea (48:43):
There's something you said that I think it's worth
just putting a finer point on.
It is reflection.
There's overwhelming evidencethat disciplined reflection
increases performance, and if Idon't reflect, I stagnate.
And that's applying it toreflection increases performance
, and if I don't reflect, Istagnate.
And that's applying it toathletics and performance.
So I'm just going to give oneconcrete example of what this

(49:04):
can look like If you have kidsor a kid you care about either
one niece, nephew.
What's fascinating is these areglobal studies.
They ask parents okay, you gotto choose.
Do you want a kid of highcharacter or a high achiever?
You got to pick.
Which one would you go?
90% will say I want a kid ofcharacter.

(49:24):
It's global study, all right.
And then you ask the kid whatdo your parents want?
Do they want you to be a highachiever?
Do they want you to be a kid ofcharacter?
90% of the kids say they wantme to be an achiever.
So why the disconnect?
Because obviously a kid caresdeeply about what their parents

(49:46):
view, and that's where you getthe kid that's full of anxiety
and pressure and all of that.
So and it's not that theparents don't mean well, it's a
matter of not having tools.
So here's the toolkit that themessage to the kid is look this
unconditional love stuff.
You're good to go, you didn'thave to do anything to earn it
and you're not going to lose it.
And the point of school is notto come back as starting

(50:08):
quarterback, first chair,violinist, valedictorian.
That's not the point of school.
Your job is to ask threequestions every day.
Your job is to ask threequestions every day.
Were you brave?
Were you kind?
Did?
you learn from your mistakes,and so, typically at a dinner
table, you ask a kid what didyou do today?
Nothing.
What did you learn today?
Nothing.

(50:28):
Those three questions start tochange.
You'll get an eye rollinitially.

Todd Bertsch (50:33):
But it's fascinating.

Peter Rea (50:36):
You can ask a three-year-old these questions
and it's back to these virtuesare in us, they have to be
cultivated.
And, from a performance pointof view, when the kid is
focusing and this is true forall of us when you focus on what
you can't control high gradeswhat's going to happen is your
anxiety is going to go up andyour performance will decline.
When you look at, can I bebrave, kind, learn from my

(51:00):
mistakes, you flip it thatyou're not going to drive
anxiety to zero, but you'regoing to up performance.
There's a notion in sports thatamateurs focus on outcomes,
professionals focus on processand character.
So those three questions arethe process and character, and
that's what drives higher levelsof performance, because I can

(51:21):
control that stuff.
And that's really a key piecein performance is tell me what
you can control, or you can atleast influence.
You can't control whetheryou're going to become
valedictorian or startingquarterback Doesn't mean that
isn't your aspiration, butthat's the byproduct.
The thing you control ischaracter and process.

Todd Bertsch (51:40):
Yeah, yeah, wow, I love that, peter.
Some good parenting tips there.
I have a 13-year-old daughter,so it can be challenging.
Ask the question How's your day, sweetie?
Fine, fine, fine, copy paste,fine.
All right, I'm going to takesome some Peter Ray questions to

(52:04):
her today.
Let's see.
See what my answers are.

Peter Rea (52:08):
Yeah, at some point she's going to start asking you,
so you tell me when you werekind, you were brave.

Todd Bertsch (52:14):
Yeah, all day long .
I'm happy to have thatconversation.
No, I love that.
I love that.
All right, peter, so we'regoing to put this book away for
minutes and we have to talkabout this nonprofit.
So you retired recently.
Congratulations andcongratulations on starting this

(52:35):
amazing nonprofit, which willhave a link in the show notes
Better humans, betterperformance, your life's work.
Tell us about this new venture,why you established it, what
you hope the outcome will be.

Peter Rea (52:50):
Yeah, I think the goal is you know, it's evidence
based work that elite performerswhether it's a NASA or it's
evidence-based work that eliteperformers whether it's a NASA
or it's an athletic is that theSpurs games last night.
The Spurs do some.
I've done some work with theSpurs.
They do some remarkable stuff.
So the elite organizations aretaking the ideas in the

(53:11):
nonprofit and applying thembecause they're constantly
trying to get better.
But most people are unaware ofwhat these skills are, how they
can be learned.
That both frustrates me andmakes me want to get this stuff
more democratized.
So that's the overall objective.
The punchline is how do youhelp people deal with stress,

(53:34):
pressure, adversity and stillperform well by practicing what
you with stress, pressure,adversity and still perform well
by practicing what you cancontrol character and
relationships, teamwork andpurpose.
It's a nonprofit because thegoal is to make money to give it
away.
So the focus is onfirst-generation college student
scholarships.
There may be other things I'llinvest in, but that's kind of

(53:57):
the thrust right now.
And Parker was wonderful to me.
They provided, gave me freedomto take the IP from Parker, take
out the Parker piece of itthat's obviously a proprietary
issue but offer it as somethingthat could be available to
anybody.
So, if you break it down, it'swhat you're.

(54:18):
If you've got folks on thispodcast who are interested, you
can do a seven day trial to roamaround the cabin and see what
it looks like on the virtues andplaybooks.
And there's over a hundredshort articles.
By short I mean a page or twoactivities and videos.
And then if somebody wants tosay this they think it might be

(54:42):
useful for their team, then theycan get a subscription for it.
So they've got access to thatcontent.
And again, what I afterexpenses, I'll use that money to
uh for scholarships.
I've got a donor fund at theCleveland foundation, so that's
how I swing money to that.
Awesome.
They're short courses.
One's defined as weekly wisdom.

(55:02):
By short I mean it takes about30 minutes.
It's just a one pager, twopages tops where you get an
overview of a content area andsome activities to practice
individually or as a team.
And there's another group ofcourses that are self-paced.
So New York Presbyterian is abig academic medical center in

(55:25):
New York City, so I'm doing workwith them right now using
self-paced courses.
So I'll just give an example tothis.
So we've got we started with 90physicians and it's trying to
improve teamwork.
What's the science of teamwork.
So there's six modules andthey'll complete those six
modules from march I think westarted march 8, it'll conclude

(55:48):
about june 8 and the whole goalis take these ideas and plug
them into what they're going todo anyway, so that we can see if
we can up the quality.
And it's a very good team, butthey're committed to continuous
improvement.
They keep looking for ways toimprove the patient experience,
reduce medical errors, all thosekinds of outcomes that we're

(56:09):
all interested in.
So those self-paced courses areavailable as well.
On leadership, there's one oncoaching, one on teamwork, and I
plan to keep fleshing all thoseout so that the menu keeps
growing.
Wow that's awesome.

Todd Bertsch (56:23):
Are you going to be doing some consulting as well
?

Peter Rea (56:27):
Yeah, that's what I'm doing with New York
Presbyterian right now andthere's work I've done.
There's a group in California,liminal Collective, so I'm part
of their team.
We do work with San AntonioSpurs, the Air Force, so I'll
continue to do that kind of workaround and see if it's for you.

(56:53):
That's the seven days, and then, if you want to have a short
course, that's the weekly wisdom.
If you want a self-paced course, which is a bigger time
commitment, you've got that.
And then, yes, where it makessense for some degree of
consulting.
So, new York Presbyterian,what's attractive about that?
I love their mission.
I think the people are terrific, it's huge.

(57:16):
So I like big, hard problems,just like Parker.
How do you reach 50,000 peoplein 11 hospitals throughout New
York City and look for ways tokind of keep integrating that
content to them?

Todd Bertsch (57:31):
Now that's incredible and I love that
you're giving back.
Obviously, you've had a passionfor helping kind of build these
young leaders.
You're 29 plus years at BaldwinWallace as a professor, so this
is great that you're able tocontinue on with this mission

(57:52):
and this message and this work,but also be able to give back in
this message and this work, butalso be able to give back.
That's something that I aspireto as well, so it's a great
example for us in terms ofleaving a legacy of work.
You know that's going tocontinue well beyond your years,
right.

Peter Rea (58:10):
Yeah, that's where a shout out to Parker is.
It's a fantastic company.
I learned a great deal.
They gave me remarkable supportand freedom.
I couldn't be doing this workat a lot of different levels
without Parker.
I was treated very generously,so it's Parker that made it
possible to start the nonprofit.

Todd Bertsch (58:31):
Yeah, gratitude, that's right.
All right, peter, this has beenjust a great, great show.
Lots of wisdom here.
So just in kind of ending theshow here, with your extensive
background in academia and thecorporate world, you know, what

(58:53):
do you see as the future ofleadership?
I mean there's a know.
What do you see as the futureof leadership?
I mean there's a lot going onright now.
Right, how can individuals andleaders prepare themselves for
the challenges that are ahead?

Peter Rea (59:06):
Yeah, you won't be surprised by the answer.
That would start with character.
I think there's a number ofreasons to start with character.
One is how do I deal withuncertainty?
I can't control all thecraziness in the planet, but I
can control how I want to showup.
And I won't show up perfectly,I'm going to screw up, I'm going
to make mistakes, but at leastI'm clear about who I want to be

(59:28):
.
Then it's a lifelong journey toget there.
So that's one.
The second reason for characteris the mercenary side, that
25-75 rule that I cited.
A guy named James Heckman was aneconomist at University of
Chicago, not known as a warm andfuzzy place.
He won a Nobel Prizedemonstrating that non-cognitive

(59:49):
things like character werebetter predictors of personal
success, professional success,academic success, than things
like standardized test scores.
And then the flip side is whenyou don't practice virtue, what
happens?
So one study that looked at20,000 people over an 18-month

(01:00:10):
period.
Here's what's interesting 46%of them didn't stay with the
organization.
89% were let go because ofreasons of character, not
competence.
You think of all the cost oflosing somebody, tangible costs

(01:00:30):
of what you got to pay to gorecruit somebody, the costs of
what they do to a team and losttime.
Typically, when you losesomebody, the cost to replace
them is at least a third oftheir salary.
That's concrete costs.
You protect yourself on theupside by practicing virtue and

(01:00:52):
you protect yourself on thedownside by hiring for character
and training for competence.
And that's not a tagline.
There's a specific way thatthat can be done.
That's the missing piece, in myview.
That we're.
Don't get me wrong.
You got to know what you'redoing.
So competence matters just soI'm being very clear on this.
And you have to have thresholdcompetence.

(01:01:13):
You know, just because you're anice person, we're not going to
put you in a surgical team, soyou got to know what the heck
you're doing.
But the big differentiator isgoing to be character.
That's the performanceamplifier.
That, to me, is a hugeopportunity for any organization
that wants to get better.

Todd Bertsch (01:01:30):
Yeah, yeah, I wholeheartedly agree, peter.
And what's interesting, witheverything that you said in your
book, I've experienced all ofit as a small business owner.
The first half of my 16 yeartenure as president owner of my

(01:01:51):
company not always felt likeI've had good character and I've
always been a very caringindividual.
But when you get into a roleand you have those
responsibilities, it can easilyfall off the rails, right.
So I guess what I'm saying is,when I didn't really uphold

(01:02:11):
these virtues to the best of myability you know I made many
failures and that was veryevident in the evidence of the
company and not growing and notbeing able to retain employees
and once that flip, once thatswitch flipped and really

(01:02:35):
focused on all of these, I saw atremendous difference and my
company is in the best positionit's ever been.
And I do wholeheartedly believethat it goes back to the
virtues and sticking to, we say,our core values.
But essentially those are thesevirtues, just maybe outlined
and worded a little bitdifferently, and they're not

(01:02:55):
just, you know, some fancygraphic on a wall.
Every decision we make is basedoff those and it makes things
very easy, right in that matter.
So all that to say, I've seenit, I've lived it and it's a
beautiful place to be in.
You know when you, when you canactually see these virtues in

(01:03:15):
place by each and every one ofyour employees.

Peter Rea (01:03:19):
So it works.
Yeah, I'd.
Here's a kind of a simple tooland a quote from Aristotle that
I can make brief.
So do this routinely.
That what I'm this exercise I'mgoing to describe is in the
courses that I designed.
I'm going to describe is in thecourses that I designed.
You start with a group of peopleor individually.

(01:03:40):
Tell me a story when virtue waspresent or absent and how did
it impact performance.
And you just put thosecatchphrases up there that I
went through.
People get it fast, so theyalready know that when it was
absent, all kinds of bad crapoccurred.
When they were present.
Boy, the outcomes are reallyfavorable.
That's piece one.

(01:04:00):
The second part is tell mehabits you want to use more and
habits that you want to use less, and that kind of puts you on a
track to at least I'm clearabout who I'm trying to become
realizing I'm never going toaspire to this stuff.
The last piece that might beuseful is a quote from Aristotle

(01:04:25):
that he wanted to lead a happylife.
Well, who the heck's againstthat?
But his definition of happinessis a little bit different than
the way we tend to use it.
That happiness is a byproductof doing what is worthy, and to
do what is worthy is to be aperson of character, and to be a
person of character is to bevirtuous.
Here's the punchline.
To be virtuous is about habitsand discipline available to us

(01:04:49):
all.

Todd Bertsch (01:04:50):
That's it.
We'll just end there.
I could continue to go on,peter, but I don't want to take
away from that.
That was beautiful.
We didn't plan this, but thatwas a perfect ending.
Peter, this has been amazing.
I have so much respect for youand what you're doing and I'm
grateful that you allowed us tohave some of your time today and

(01:05:14):
I'm sure my listeners are goingto feel the same some of your
time today, and I'm sure mylisteners are going to feel the
same.
I hope we continue to haveconversations.
I'm going to follow, read moreof your publications and
articles.
I love that you have thisintense focus on the research
and the neuroscience which I'mvery much interested in.
So just thank you again foryour time today.

(01:05:36):
We'll have links to your booksand your nonprofits in the show
notes and I'm just I'm excitedfor you in this new venture and
look forward to seeing wherethis goes.

Peter Rea (01:05:51):
Well, I appreciate the invitation, Todd.
This is a fun discussion.
You're a thoughtful person andyou've obviously thought about
these questions pretty deeply,so thanks for having me be part
of your podcast.
Appreciate it Absolutely.

Todd Bertsch (01:06:06):
Thank you for listening to this episode of the
Bolt Podcast.
You're on an inspiring journeyof growth, transformation and
joy, and I'm honored to be apart of it.
If you found this episodevaluable, please like share it
with your friends and considerleaving a review.
It means the world to us Forshow notes, resources and to
subscribe to the weeklyMotivational Monday newsletter.

(01:06:28):
Please visit toddbertsch.
com and don't forget to followus on social media at the Bolt
with Todd B for more inspiration.
Remember, real change doesn'thappen overnight.
Folks, start small, stayconsistent, and watch as your
growth unfolds.
See you next time.