October 18, 2025 • 22 mins
A single question from a colleague—“Can you look at this?”—set off a chain of events that reshaped our host Jay Johnson's career.
In this episode, he walks through the moment misaligned expectations between faculty and international students became visible, how listening and clear onboarding turned conflict into engagement, and why that experience pushed him toward a practical approach to behavior change that goes beyond feel-good ideas.
Jay shares the personal detours that mattered: early math anxiety, a third-grade comment that stuck, and the realization that his brain processes emotion and decisions a bit differently. Debate and theater gave Jay a stage, but research gave him a mission: help people explain what they see, predict what will likely happen, influence with integrity, and manage themselves under pressure.
This story isn’t about perfection or hacks; it’s about building culture through patterns you can actually change. When teams learn to see repeatable loops—meetings that kill debate, feedback that arrives only in a crisis, calendars that glorify burnout—they earn the power to intervene early and ethically. Knowledge becomes action when we pair it with timing, structure, and accountability. If you’re curious about turning awareness into habits that stick, or you want a roadmap you can use tomorrow, you’ll find it here—straight talk, field-tested tools, and a clear path to more trust, better performance, and calmer conflict.
Enjoyed this solo mission? Follow the show, share it with someone who needs a reset, and leave a review.
Meet the Host
Jay Johnson works with people and organizations to empower teams, grow profits, and elevate leadership. He is a Co-Founder of Behavioral Elements®, a two-time TEDx speaker, and a designated Master Trainer by the Association for Talent Development. With a focus on behavioral intelligence, Jay has delivered transformational workshops to accelerate high-performance teams and cultures in more than 30 countries across four continents. For inquiries, contact jay@behavioralelements.com or connect below!
LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jayjohnsonccg/
Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/jayjohnsonccg/
Speaker Website - https://jayjohnsonspeaks.com
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Jay Johnson (00:01):
Welcome to this episode of the Talent Forge,
where together we are shapingworkforce behaviors.
My name's Jay Johnson, and I'mthe special guest today.
In fact, this is a solomission.
So, what I wanted to do is I'masked a lot, and I find it
really interesting to share thiswhenever I'm having
conversations with other peoplein the talent development world
(00:22):
or the speaking world.
Jay, how did you get into thisspace?
And uh those the story ispretty consistent with a lot of
people that end up findingthemselves doing what I do by
accident, to be perfectlyhonest.
Uh, when I was a researcher atWayne State University, I was
actually hired right out of uhright out of school, out of my
(00:42):
bachelor's, and uh I didn't evenfinish my bachelor's yet.
That's kind of a funny storythat comes later, but I had just
gotten out of school andessentially was looking for an
opportunity for a job.
And I was hired by theIndustrial and Systems
Engineering Department at WayneState University.
So awesome place to work.
I really enjoyed it, learned alot through that experience.
(01:04):
But, you know, one of thethings that uh, and this is
where the story is kind offunny, I was terrified of
mathematics.
I was so afraid to take themath proficiency exam that I
deferred my graduation.
Now, this this does go back toa long time ago.
I think I was in third gradewhen a teacher had said, Jay,
(01:26):
maybe mathematics isn't yourthing.
Now, I later on, you know, 40years later, I understand that
I'm actually quite good atmathematics.
Uh, when I did end up takingthe math exam at Wayne State
University, I ended up passingabout four levels higher than I
was than I needed to.
So it's really moderatelyentertaining just how much I
(01:46):
avoided it.
But uh the the good news is Itook a whole lot of extra
communication, interpersonalrelationship, and psychology
courses uh and ended upgraduating with a ton of extra
credit hours.
Um it wasn't all that bad.
And it did help shape me.
But, anyways, so I was at WayneState University and I'm
(02:07):
studying these things, and wehad a little bit of an issue
with some expectations, not formyself, but we were a very, very
populated graduate studentdestination.
So we had a lot of studentsthat were coming from overseas
and joining into our programs,which is pretty common in the
university space.
(02:28):
Well, the students on paper,they looked like they were going
to be all-stars.
And that wasn't really liningup with what the outcomes were
once they were here and in theclassroom.
So I had one of the facultymembers actually ask me and say,
Jay, you know, you studybehavior, you study these
organizational things.
(02:48):
Would you mind taking a lookand maybe seeing if you could
figure out some of the reasonsthat this could be occurring?
I said, Yeah, sure.
So I did what any uh, you know,fresh communication
behavioralist starts to do is Iput together some surveys and uh
I scheduled some time to speakwith faculty, scheduled some
time to speak with the students.
I even sat in on a class or twoto get a better understanding
(03:11):
of what the dynamic was.
And it was pretty apparentpretty quickly.
And uh I think that this isreally why I ended up following
this pathway, amongst otherthings.
But it was apparent to me veryquickly that the expectations
from the faculty and thestudents were completely
misaligned.
(03:31):
And uh, you know, theinternational students, a lot of
them had come from cultureswhere the expectations were you
just sit in the classroom, youkeep your mouth shut, you put
your head down, you take notes,and that's how you show up.
That's that's how you be astudent uh in the classroom.
Well, a lot of the Americanfaculty expected engagement,
interaction.
(03:52):
They wanted uh, you know,questions, they wanted debate,
discussion, et cetera.
And that just wasn't occurring.
So, well, what happens when wehave a story that we're telling
ourselves?
If I'm a faculty and I'mstanding up there and that
people aren't engaging or askingquestions, I might get the
impression that maybe they'renot interested.
Maybe they are uh, you know,maybe they didn't finish the
(04:15):
reading assignments, maybethey're distracted, maybe this
isn't, you know, maybe they'renot wanting uh, you know, to
engage because they just, youknow, don't like the degree or
don't like me or whatever it is.
Well, when we think somethingor when we start to tell
ourselves a story, we generallybehave towards that story.
So now you've got a little bitof animosity that's brewing.
(04:37):
Well, the students who thinkthey're doing exactly what they
should be doing start to feelsome of that sort of vitriol,
start to feel some of that, youknow, pressure, start to feel
you know the faculty, you know,digging into them just a little
bit.
And they're not reallyunderstanding, so they start to
generate some animosity.
(04:57):
And as we all know, in any kindof conflict situation,
behaviors build upon behaviors.
So now all of a sudden you'vegot this uh animosity-based
relationship, lack of trusthappening.
And it's really because theyweren't seeing each other's
cultural identities and theexpectations that were created
(05:19):
were essentially creating theconditions for failed system.
So I was asked to put togethera little bit of an onboarding
program.
So I did that to help theinternational students acclimate
more effectively to theAmerican classroom, helping them
better understand what theexpectations were.
But I also created anothertraining program to I was able
(05:40):
to deliver to the faculty andgive to the faculty that helped
them better understand what thegap was and how to really bring
out the engagement that theywere looking for.
This was almost the very, verybeginning of the
train-to-trainer type program.
So fast forward, uh, theprogram's really successful, and
(06:01):
we ultimately end up seeing theresults of the students
starting to achieve the expectedoutcomes that we had from the
very beginning.
And I had a faculty member comeup to me and tap me on the
shoulder and say, Hey, you did areally nice job with this.
You're pretty good at it.
You should do this for aliving.
And that was really all ittook.
That was uh, that was uh, I waslike, maybe I will.
(06:21):
Now, when I when I firststarted training and speaking
and everything else like that, Ihad a background from debate.
I was uh I was one of thecompetitive debaters at Wayne
State University.
Uh, it started off really,really not good and ended up
being somewhat good.
I'm not gonna say uh the bestor anything, but I learned a lot
(06:43):
from that experience and Iloved speaking, I loved
performing.
Uh, I also did some acting whenI was in high school and with a
couple of different theatertroops.
So I really enjoyed that stagepresence.
And when I first started, itwas, you know, it was a side
hustle.
It was, I would uh I would goand it was like, do you have
(07:03):
food?
All right, I'll speak for, youknow, I'll speak for dinner and
uh maybe a cocktail.
I never really anticipated thatthat would be the direction of
my future career.
So, you know, fast forward totoday, and I've had some of the
most amazing experiences andbeen able to meet and work with
some of the most amazing peoplethroughout my journey.
(07:26):
And it really all started withthat one day of hey, can you
look at this for us?
I got so much satisfaction outof helping those students who
were really frustrated and alsohelping the faculty navigate
what they were looking at.
But that behavioral stringnever left me.
And part of the reason that Iwas studying behavioral and
(07:49):
behavior in the first place wasto get a better understanding of
myself.
You know, throughout my uhyouth, throughout my college
days, there were just decisions.
And, you know, every adolescentor every, you know, young
person makes decisions, and butI was very reflective on my
decisions.
I noticed that the way that Ithought about things or the way
(08:09):
that I saw things was a littlebit different.
And that's what helped meunderstand that maybe I don't
have the same uh neurotypicalway of approaching things like
emotions or decision making oranything else.
Now, I didn't know what thatword was, but I just knew that
there was something different.
And my study into behavior wasreally to help me better
(08:32):
understand myself.
What became, you know, aresearch is me search approach
and really trying to get abetter handle on, well, how can
I hack into this or what can Ido differently, or how can I
shift this?
You know, that self-improvementapproach.
When I realized a lot of thesethings could be behaviorally
(08:53):
orchestrated, it really made mewonder is this something that
could work for other people?
You know, other people thatmight be struggling with things
like conflict or frustration orburnout or anger or any of those
other emotions that might popup that lead to a certain set of
behaviors that maybe we regretlater, or potentially it's, you
(09:15):
know, something that umpotentially something that
creates a barrier or slows usdown in our progress, our
journey.
And when I first started givingtalks about some of the
different things, like evenmanaging fear, managing anxiety
in public speaking, or beingable to maintain control over
our reactions and emotions in adebate, in an argumentative
(09:41):
context.
Giving some of those talks, itreally did help me better
understand, wow, the way thatI'm approaching this is a little
bit different.
And I think very early on,after attending a number of
different trainings, that Ireally felt like, okay, awesome.
Now what?
You know, what are we going todo with that?
How do I operationalize it?
It seems like great ideas thatwere shared, but I don't know
(10:03):
where to go with this.
So from a very early on stagein my training and speaking
career, I always wanted to beable to offer the audience a
tactical roadmap to being ableto change and shift a behavior.
And that really is wherebehavioral intelligence started,
you know, starting to betterunderstand.
(10:24):
Can I explain these behaviors?
The behaviors that I see eachand every day, what do they
mean?
Where do they come from?
What's the stimulus?
Is it culture?
Is it environment?
Is it emotions?
Is it personality?
Is it all of the above?
And the answer is yes, it's allof the above.
But the reality is, is we canidentify different patterns of
(10:44):
behaviors.
And we've all heard the wordtriggers.
We have them.
Um certain things trigger us.
Like I'll give you a quickexample of mine.
Send me a text message thatjust has the letter K.
That is a trigger.
I'm gonna immediately react tothat and not in a in a positive
way.
But once I can explain, well,what is it about that?
Okay, well, maybe it's uh maybeit's I'm feeling disrespected.
(11:07):
Maybe it's I'm feeling, maybethe person's just doing this
because it's expedient.
Maybe they're doing it becausethey are, you know, pushing you
off or blowing you off, whateverthat is.
Being able to explain thebehavior gives us the ability to
name it.
If we can name it and weunderstand that behaviors are
patternistic, well, then we canstart predicting them.
(11:30):
So explaining is the first partof behavioral intelligence.
Then taking that, understandingthe patterns, we can then
predict those patterns.
If we can predict it, well,then we can intervene.
And that is such a powerful uhinspirational aspect to me
because if I know how I'm goingto react to a trigger, well,
(11:52):
what if I could put anintervention in there that would
help me control my ownbehavior?
Uh, you know, maybe it's uhmaybe it's something simple like
pausing for two seconds ortaking a deep breath, whatever
the tactic is to be able tointervene and keep myself in
control.
Well, I can't control otherpeople.
So if I can predict theirpatterns, maybe I could
(12:13):
influence them.
If I know what's meaningful tothem or what lays beneath the
surface, how they look atthings, how they understand
things, how they emotionallyconnect to things, well, that
gives me the superpower to beinfluential.
And I can align theirmotivations alongside of my own.
And I do that in a very ethicalway, right?
(12:33):
We don't want to influence, wedon't want to manipulate
somebody into something that'snot going to be helpful to them.
Influence and manipulation,very, very different.
And that's one of the thingsthat we definitely teach is how
do we maintain influence andbuild trust and create
connections without crossingthat line into unethical
persuasion or manipulation.
(12:54):
But those are the four tenetsof behavioral intelligence,
explaining existing behaviors,predicting future behaviors,
influencing other people'sbehaviors, and then managing and
controlling our own behaviors.
One of the things that I havesaid from the very beginning is
behavior's a choice, and how wechoose to behave will determine
(13:15):
our success and failure.
You've probably at some pointin time had an emotion, a
reaction.
Um, somebody may have wrongedyou in some kind of way, and a
thought could have occurred ofhow you're gonna react or
respond to that.
And maybe you acted it out.
Maybe you didn't, maybe youheld back.
Ultimately, behavioralintelligence is our ability to
(13:38):
take those stimuli, slow itdown, and make a decision that
we're not gonna regret later.
I mean, think of how manydifferent moments in our lives
that we regretted sayingsomething and going, oh gosh,
that's gonna cost me later.
Or maybe we didn't saysomething and we go, I really
(13:59):
wish I would have spoken up inthat moment.
That's where behavioralintelligence comes into play.
We want people to be able tomore quickly, more effectively,
and more accurately predictbehaviors so that way they can
put the right intervention intoplace and in the right time.
Part of the way that we do thattoo is teaching very, very
(14:21):
simple behavioral science-basedtactics, something as simple as
the two-second pause, as Imentioned earlier.
You know, if you look atliterature, there's such a
powerful set of studies thathave been done about how people
uh say answer standardizedquestions on a test.
And, you know, they take groupA and they have group A answer
questions and they just say,just give us your gut reaction.
(14:43):
And they take group B and theysay, okay, we want you to pause
for two seconds, reflect on thequestion, and then give the
answer.
Well, in those studies, whatends up happening is the groups
that take that moment to reflectultimately end up producing
higher level results over andover again.
And part of that is that weinitially may have some kind of
(15:06):
uh visceral or cognitivereaction to something.
But if we give ourselves justthat moment of time to slow
down, adrenaline, cortisol maynot be the chemicals that are
pushing the action forward.
We can actually take a morecalculated approach.
So, this is really thefoundations of what I like to
(15:27):
focus on and to help.
And like I said, research wasme search.
This was about helping menavigate some of those different
things.
And it's still a journey.
I mean, there's still alwaysthings to learn and grow.
It's not like being becoming abehavioral scientist, all of a
sudden all the bad behaviors goaway.
We're all human.
And that's part of the beautyof the journey is really getting
(15:48):
a better understanding of how Iwas today and how can I be just
a little bit better tomorrow.
So when we take that mindsetand walk into our training
spaces or walk into ourorganizations and really start
helping them better explain andpredict the behaviors, they
start to see the patterns thatultimately create culture, the
(16:10):
patterns of things that maybehave stopped them from achieving
their goals in the past, thepatterns that have created
difficulties in some of theirrelationships.
When they see those, you can'tunsee them.
That's where the interventionsand the behavioral tactics
really come into play.
So very, very early on in mytraining career, I knew I didn't
(16:33):
want to just be somebody thatgot up there and inspired
people.
That's great.
I love when somebody's inspiredto go out and take action.
But if we don't provide anopportunity for them to actually
change the habit, change thebehavior, change the pattern,
then we know a lot of things.
But it doesn't mean that we'regoing to act on them.
(16:54):
I mean, think about this.
I make this joke all the timewhen I'm speaking to talent
development people.
Uh, how many of you, how manyof you get 30 minutes of
exercise every single day?
No miss.
How many of you get seven and ahalf hours of sleep every
single night?
No miss.
How many of you eat whole foodsand uh healthy choices every
(17:16):
single meal?
No miss.
How many of you go to yourpreventative appointments every
single time without missing?
How many of you do all of theabove?
And if you say yes to that, Iyou're super, you're you're a
super person.
There's, you know, I've yet tofind somebody that's like, oh, I
do all of those.
All right.
We try, but just because weknow something doesn't mean that
(17:40):
we're going to act upon it.
Okay.
Behavior is not just aboutknowing.
I know that I should not snapat my boss.
That doesn't mean that thatdoesn't happen.
Part of that is understandingthe patterns and the stimulus.
So I wanted to give you just alittle bit about how I got
started, maybe a little of theorigin story of Jay Johnson, the
(18:04):
trainer, the speaker, theconsultant.
Uh, I think it's important.
I don't often talk about itwhen I have guests on.
I'm much more focused onunderstanding their stories and
what their insights are.
I always find that to bevaluable.
But I wanted to share it withyou, audience, and give you a
little bit of background of howdid I get here?
What's important to me andwhat's valuable.
(18:24):
I think that that is somethingthat each of us can take some
time to really understand ourown origin story.
How did you get to where you'reat?
I'd love to hear your comments.
So if you want to check thisout, whether you're checking it
out on Apple, Spotify, orYouTube, leave me a comment.
Tell me a little bit about yourorigin story because I'd like
to hear it and uh I'll respond.
(18:45):
So thank you for joining thisepisode of the Talent Forge,
speaking, uh featuring specialguest Jay Johnson and a little
bit of the origin story.
I'm gonna be doing some ofthese solo missions as we
navigate forward.
So, one of the things that afew audience members have said
is Jay, we really want to hear alittle bit more about your
story and some of yourperspectives.
(19:06):
So I'm gonna be covering awhole host of different
workforce behaviors.
We'll label these solomissions, or we'll we'll
definitely put a label on it sothat way if it's something that
you want a quick hit andunderstanding, okay, what are
the behaviors related to meetingculture?
What are some of the behaviorsthat we see in burnout,
behaviors that we see inmotivation, drive, leadership,
(19:29):
management, feedback,delegation?
We're gonna dig into all ofthose different things that
occur in the workplace.
So you can watch for those solomissions as they come.
If there's a topic that youwould love to learn more about,
let us know.
I'll be happy to do someresearch, find out what the
science is behind it.
It's always something that Ilove the exploration process.
(19:51):
So if that's something that'sinteresting to you, by all
means, give me a shout and uhleave a comment.
We'll be happy to explore itand put that into it.
And if I can find an amazingguest, I'll be happy to bring
them into the space too.
So, on behalf of myself and uhthe entire talent forge team, I
just want to say thank you fortuning in.
Thank you for learning a littlebit more about us, and we will
(20:13):
look forward to shapingworkforce behaviors together.
Until then, be well.
Welcome to this episode of the Talent Forge,
where together we are shapingworkforce behaviors.
My name's Jay Johnson, and I'mthe special guest today.
In fact, this is a solomission.
So, what I wanted to do is I'masked a lot, and I find it
really interesting to share thiswhenever I'm having
conversations with other peoplein the talent development world
(00:22):
or the speaking world.
Jay, how did you get into thisspace?
And uh those the story ispretty consistent with a lot of
people that end up findingthemselves doing what I do by
accident, to be perfectlyhonest.
Uh, when I was a researcher atWayne State University, I was
actually hired right out of uhright out of school, out of my
(00:42):
bachelor's, and uh I didn't evenfinish my bachelor's yet.
That's kind of a funny storythat comes later, but I had just
gotten out of school andessentially was looking for an
opportunity for a job.
And I was hired by theIndustrial and Systems
Engineering Department at WayneState University.
So awesome place to work.
I really enjoyed it, learned alot through that experience.
(01:04):
But, you know, one of thethings that uh, and this is
where the story is kind offunny, I was terrified of
mathematics.
I was so afraid to take themath proficiency exam that I
deferred my graduation.
Now, this this does go back toa long time ago.
I think I was in third gradewhen a teacher had said, Jay,
(01:26):
maybe mathematics isn't yourthing.
Now, I later on, you know, 40years later, I understand that
I'm actually quite good atmathematics.
Uh, when I did end up takingthe math exam at Wayne State
University, I ended up passingabout four levels higher than I
was than I needed to.
So it's really moderatelyentertaining just how much I
(01:46):
avoided it.
But uh the the good news is Itook a whole lot of extra
communication, interpersonalrelationship, and psychology
courses uh and ended upgraduating with a ton of extra
credit hours.
Um it wasn't all that bad.
And it did help shape me.
But, anyways, so I was at WayneState University and I'm
(02:07):
studying these things, and wehad a little bit of an issue
with some expectations, not formyself, but we were a very, very
populated graduate studentdestination.
So we had a lot of studentsthat were coming from overseas
and joining into our programs,which is pretty common in the
university space.
(02:28):
Well, the students on paper,they looked like they were going
to be all-stars.
And that wasn't really liningup with what the outcomes were
once they were here and in theclassroom.
So I had one of the facultymembers actually ask me and say,
Jay, you know, you studybehavior, you study these
organizational things.
(02:48):
Would you mind taking a lookand maybe seeing if you could
figure out some of the reasonsthat this could be occurring?
I said, Yeah, sure.
So I did what any uh, you know,fresh communication
behavioralist starts to do is Iput together some surveys and uh
I scheduled some time to speakwith faculty, scheduled some
time to speak with the students.
I even sat in on a class or twoto get a better understanding
(03:11):
of what the dynamic was.
And it was pretty apparentpretty quickly.
And uh I think that this isreally why I ended up following
this pathway, amongst otherthings.
But it was apparent to me veryquickly that the expectations
from the faculty and thestudents were completely
misaligned.
(03:31):
And uh, you know, theinternational students, a lot of
them had come from cultureswhere the expectations were you
just sit in the classroom, youkeep your mouth shut, you put
your head down, you take notes,and that's how you show up.
That's that's how you be astudent uh in the classroom.
Well, a lot of the Americanfaculty expected engagement,
interaction.
(03:52):
They wanted uh, you know,questions, they wanted debate,
discussion, et cetera.
And that just wasn't occurring.
So, well, what happens when wehave a story that we're telling
ourselves?
If I'm a faculty and I'mstanding up there and that
people aren't engaging or askingquestions, I might get the
impression that maybe they'renot interested.
Maybe they are uh, you know,maybe they didn't finish the
(04:15):
reading assignments, maybethey're distracted, maybe this
isn't, you know, maybe they'renot wanting uh, you know, to
engage because they just, youknow, don't like the degree or
don't like me or whatever it is.
Well, when we think somethingor when we start to tell
ourselves a story, we generallybehave towards that story.
So now you've got a little bitof animosity that's brewing.
(04:37):
Well, the students who thinkthey're doing exactly what they
should be doing start to feelsome of that sort of vitriol,
start to feel some of that, youknow, pressure, start to feel
you know the faculty, you know,digging into them just a little
bit.
And they're not reallyunderstanding, so they start to
generate some animosity.
(04:57):
And as we all know, in any kindof conflict situation,
behaviors build upon behaviors.
So now all of a sudden you'vegot this uh animosity-based
relationship, lack of trusthappening.
And it's really because theyweren't seeing each other's
cultural identities and theexpectations that were created
(05:19):
were essentially creating theconditions for failed system.
So I was asked to put togethera little bit of an onboarding
program.
So I did that to help theinternational students acclimate
more effectively to theAmerican classroom, helping them
better understand what theexpectations were.
But I also created anothertraining program to I was able
(05:40):
to deliver to the faculty andgive to the faculty that helped
them better understand what thegap was and how to really bring
out the engagement that theywere looking for.
This was almost the very, verybeginning of the
train-to-trainer type program.
So fast forward, uh, theprogram's really successful, and
(06:01):
we ultimately end up seeing theresults of the students
starting to achieve the expectedoutcomes that we had from the
very beginning.
And I had a faculty member comeup to me and tap me on the
shoulder and say, Hey, you did areally nice job with this.
You're pretty good at it.
You should do this for aliving.
And that was really all ittook.
That was uh, that was uh, I waslike, maybe I will.
(06:21):
Now, when I when I firststarted training and speaking
and everything else like that, Ihad a background from debate.
I was uh I was one of thecompetitive debaters at Wayne
State University.
Uh, it started off really,really not good and ended up
being somewhat good.
I'm not gonna say uh the bestor anything, but I learned a lot
(06:43):
from that experience and Iloved speaking, I loved
performing.
Uh, I also did some acting whenI was in high school and with a
couple of different theatertroops.
So I really enjoyed that stagepresence.
And when I first started, itwas, you know, it was a side
hustle.
It was, I would uh I would goand it was like, do you have
(07:03):
food?
All right, I'll speak for, youknow, I'll speak for dinner and
uh maybe a cocktail.
I never really anticipated thatthat would be the direction of
my future career.
So, you know, fast forward totoday, and I've had some of the
most amazing experiences andbeen able to meet and work with
some of the most amazing peoplethroughout my journey.
(07:26):
And it really all started withthat one day of hey, can you
look at this for us?
I got so much satisfaction outof helping those students who
were really frustrated and alsohelping the faculty navigate
what they were looking at.
But that behavioral stringnever left me.
And part of the reason that Iwas studying behavioral and
(07:49):
behavior in the first place wasto get a better understanding of
myself.
You know, throughout my uhyouth, throughout my college
days, there were just decisions.
And, you know, every adolescentor every, you know, young
person makes decisions, and butI was very reflective on my
decisions.
I noticed that the way that Ithought about things or the way
(08:09):
that I saw things was a littlebit different.
And that's what helped meunderstand that maybe I don't
have the same uh neurotypicalway of approaching things like
emotions or decision making oranything else.
Now, I didn't know what thatword was, but I just knew that
there was something different.
And my study into behavior wasreally to help me better
(08:32):
understand myself.
What became, you know, aresearch is me search approach
and really trying to get abetter handle on, well, how can
I hack into this or what can Ido differently, or how can I
shift this?
You know, that self-improvementapproach.
When I realized a lot of thesethings could be behaviorally
(08:53):
orchestrated, it really made mewonder is this something that
could work for other people?
You know, other people thatmight be struggling with things
like conflict or frustration orburnout or anger or any of those
other emotions that might popup that lead to a certain set of
behaviors that maybe we regretlater, or potentially it's, you
(09:15):
know, something that umpotentially something that
creates a barrier or slows usdown in our progress, our
journey.
And when I first started givingtalks about some of the
different things, like evenmanaging fear, managing anxiety
in public speaking, or beingable to maintain control over
our reactions and emotions in adebate, in an argumentative
(09:41):
context.
Giving some of those talks, itreally did help me better
understand, wow, the way thatI'm approaching this is a little
bit different.
And I think very early on,after attending a number of
different trainings, that Ireally felt like, okay, awesome.
Now what?
You know, what are we going todo with that?
How do I operationalize it?
It seems like great ideas thatwere shared, but I don't know
(10:03):
where to go with this.
So from a very early on stagein my training and speaking
career, I always wanted to beable to offer the audience a
tactical roadmap to being ableto change and shift a behavior.
And that really is wherebehavioral intelligence started,
you know, starting to betterunderstand.
(10:24):
Can I explain these behaviors?
The behaviors that I see eachand every day, what do they
mean?
Where do they come from?
What's the stimulus?
Is it culture?
Is it environment?
Is it emotions?
Is it personality?
Is it all of the above?
And the answer is yes, it's allof the above.
But the reality is, is we canidentify different patterns of
(10:44):
behaviors.
And we've all heard the wordtriggers.
We have them.
Um certain things trigger us.
Like I'll give you a quickexample of mine.
Send me a text message thatjust has the letter K.
That is a trigger.
I'm gonna immediately react tothat and not in a in a positive
way.
But once I can explain, well,what is it about that?
Okay, well, maybe it's uh maybeit's I'm feeling disrespected.
(11:07):
Maybe it's I'm feeling, maybethe person's just doing this
because it's expedient.
Maybe they're doing it becausethey are, you know, pushing you
off or blowing you off, whateverthat is.
Being able to explain thebehavior gives us the ability to
name it.
If we can name it and weunderstand that behaviors are
patternistic, well, then we canstart predicting them.
(11:30):
So explaining is the first partof behavioral intelligence.
Then taking that, understandingthe patterns, we can then
predict those patterns.
If we can predict it, well,then we can intervene.
And that is such a powerful uhinspirational aspect to me
because if I know how I'm goingto react to a trigger, well,
(11:52):
what if I could put anintervention in there that would
help me control my ownbehavior?
Uh, you know, maybe it's uhmaybe it's something simple like
pausing for two seconds ortaking a deep breath, whatever
the tactic is to be able tointervene and keep myself in
control.
Well, I can't control otherpeople.
So if I can predict theirpatterns, maybe I could
(12:13):
influence them.
If I know what's meaningful tothem or what lays beneath the
surface, how they look atthings, how they understand
things, how they emotionallyconnect to things, well, that
gives me the superpower to beinfluential.
And I can align theirmotivations alongside of my own.
And I do that in a very ethicalway, right?
(12:33):
We don't want to influence, wedon't want to manipulate
somebody into something that'snot going to be helpful to them.
Influence and manipulation,very, very different.
And that's one of the thingsthat we definitely teach is how
do we maintain influence andbuild trust and create
connections without crossingthat line into unethical
persuasion or manipulation.
(12:54):
But those are the four tenetsof behavioral intelligence,
explaining existing behaviors,predicting future behaviors,
influencing other people'sbehaviors, and then managing and
controlling our own behaviors.
One of the things that I havesaid from the very beginning is
behavior's a choice, and how wechoose to behave will determine
(13:15):
our success and failure.
You've probably at some pointin time had an emotion, a
reaction.
Um, somebody may have wrongedyou in some kind of way, and a
thought could have occurred ofhow you're gonna react or
respond to that.
And maybe you acted it out.
Maybe you didn't, maybe youheld back.
Ultimately, behavioralintelligence is our ability to
(13:38):
take those stimuli, slow itdown, and make a decision that
we're not gonna regret later.
I mean, think of how manydifferent moments in our lives
that we regretted sayingsomething and going, oh gosh,
that's gonna cost me later.
Or maybe we didn't saysomething and we go, I really
(13:59):
wish I would have spoken up inthat moment.
That's where behavioralintelligence comes into play.
We want people to be able tomore quickly, more effectively,
and more accurately predictbehaviors so that way they can
put the right intervention intoplace and in the right time.
Part of the way that we do thattoo is teaching very, very
(14:21):
simple behavioral science-basedtactics, something as simple as
the two-second pause, as Imentioned earlier.
You know, if you look atliterature, there's such a
powerful set of studies thathave been done about how people
uh say answer standardizedquestions on a test.
And, you know, they take groupA and they have group A answer
questions and they just say,just give us your gut reaction.
(14:43):
And they take group B and theysay, okay, we want you to pause
for two seconds, reflect on thequestion, and then give the
answer.
Well, in those studies, whatends up happening is the groups
that take that moment to reflectultimately end up producing
higher level results over andover again.
And part of that is that weinitially may have some kind of
(15:06):
uh visceral or cognitivereaction to something.
But if we give ourselves justthat moment of time to slow
down, adrenaline, cortisol maynot be the chemicals that are
pushing the action forward.
We can actually take a morecalculated approach.
So, this is really thefoundations of what I like to
(15:27):
focus on and to help.
And like I said, research wasme search.
This was about helping menavigate some of those different
things.
And it's still a journey.
I mean, there's still alwaysthings to learn and grow.
It's not like being becoming abehavioral scientist, all of a
sudden all the bad behaviors goaway.
We're all human.
And that's part of the beautyof the journey is really getting
(15:48):
a better understanding of how Iwas today and how can I be just
a little bit better tomorrow.
So when we take that mindsetand walk into our training
spaces or walk into ourorganizations and really start
helping them better explain andpredict the behaviors, they
start to see the patterns thatultimately create culture, the
(16:10):
patterns of things that maybehave stopped them from achieving
their goals in the past, thepatterns that have created
difficulties in some of theirrelationships.
When they see those, you can'tunsee them.
That's where the interventionsand the behavioral tactics
really come into play.
So very, very early on in mytraining career, I knew I didn't
(16:33):
want to just be somebody thatgot up there and inspired
people.
That's great.
I love when somebody's inspiredto go out and take action.
But if we don't provide anopportunity for them to actually
change the habit, change thebehavior, change the pattern,
then we know a lot of things.
But it doesn't mean that we'regoing to act on them.
(16:54):
I mean, think about this.
I make this joke all the timewhen I'm speaking to talent
development people.
Uh, how many of you, how manyof you get 30 minutes of
exercise every single day?
No miss.
How many of you get seven and ahalf hours of sleep every
single night?
No miss.
How many of you eat whole foodsand uh healthy choices every
(17:16):
single meal?
No miss.
How many of you go to yourpreventative appointments every
single time without missing?
How many of you do all of theabove?
And if you say yes to that, Iyou're super, you're you're a
super person.
There's, you know, I've yet tofind somebody that's like, oh, I
do all of those.
All right.
We try, but just because weknow something doesn't mean that
(17:40):
we're going to act upon it.
Okay.
Behavior is not just aboutknowing.
I know that I should not snapat my boss.
That doesn't mean that thatdoesn't happen.
Part of that is understandingthe patterns and the stimulus.
So I wanted to give you just alittle bit about how I got
started, maybe a little of theorigin story of Jay Johnson, the
(18:04):
trainer, the speaker, theconsultant.
Uh, I think it's important.
I don't often talk about itwhen I have guests on.
I'm much more focused onunderstanding their stories and
what their insights are.
I always find that to bevaluable.
But I wanted to share it withyou, audience, and give you a
little bit of background of howdid I get here?
What's important to me andwhat's valuable.
(18:24):
I think that that is somethingthat each of us can take some
time to really understand ourown origin story.
How did you get to where you'reat?
I'd love to hear your comments.
So if you want to check thisout, whether you're checking it
out on Apple, Spotify, orYouTube, leave me a comment.
Tell me a little bit about yourorigin story because I'd like
to hear it and uh I'll respond.
(18:45):
So thank you for joining thisepisode of the Talent Forge,
speaking, uh featuring specialguest Jay Johnson and a little
bit of the origin story.
I'm gonna be doing some ofthese solo missions as we
navigate forward.
So, one of the things that afew audience members have said
is Jay, we really want to hear alittle bit more about your
story and some of yourperspectives.
(19:06):
So I'm gonna be covering awhole host of different
workforce behaviors.
We'll label these solomissions, or we'll we'll
definitely put a label on it sothat way if it's something that
you want a quick hit andunderstanding, okay, what are
the behaviors related to meetingculture?
What are some of the behaviorsthat we see in burnout,
behaviors that we see inmotivation, drive, leadership,
(19:29):
management, feedback,delegation?
We're gonna dig into all ofthose different things that
occur in the workplace.
So you can watch for those solomissions as they come.
If there's a topic that youwould love to learn more about,
let us know.
I'll be happy to do someresearch, find out what the
science is behind it.
It's always something that Ilove the exploration process.
(19:51):
So if that's something that'sinteresting to you, by all
means, give me a shout and uhleave a comment.
We'll be happy to explore itand put that into it.
And if I can find an amazingguest, I'll be happy to bring
them into the space too.
So, on behalf of myself and uhthe entire talent forge team, I
just want to say thank you fortuning in.
Thank you for learning a littlebit more about us, and we will
(20:13):
look forward to shapingworkforce behaviors together.
Until then, be well.
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