May 13, 2025 • 23 mins
In this episode of the "HR Mixtape," host Shari Simpson welcomes Dr. Joey Faucette, an executive coach and culture architect at Work Positive. They dive into the concept of "dream teams" in today's hybrid work environment, emphasizing the importance of positivity and active listening in fostering a successful workplace culture. Dr. Faucette shares practical strategies for leaders to cultivate a strengths-based approach, highlighting the significance of gratitude and collaboration.
Key Takeaways:
- Active Listening: Learn how to enhance team dynamics by truly listening to your colleagues, especially in a hybrid setting.
- Positivity vs. Toxic Positivity: Understand the difference and how to maintain a realistic yet optimistic workplace culture.
- Empowering Teams: Discover how to shift from providing answers to asking powerful questions that encourage team collaboration and innovation.
Tune in for insights that can transform your leadership style and workplace culture! Guest(s): Dr. Joey Faucette, Founder & President, Work Positive
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:02):
You're listening to the HR Mixtape. Your podcast with
the perfect mix of practical advice, thought-provoking interviews, and
stories that just hit different so that work doesn't have to feel,
well, like work. Now, your host,
Joining me today is Dr. Joey Faucette, executive coach and
culture architect at Work Positive. A best-selling author and
(00:24):
podcast host himself, he helps leaders transform workplace culture
to drive success by leaning into strengths and positive workplace approaches.
Shari, I am so delighted to be here. We're going to mix it up, right?
Yes, we absolutely are. And I, as an eternal optimist,
(00:46):
am very excited about our topic today. We are talking about
dream teams and positivity. So I'm going to start
with maybe a tough one, maybe not. And when I think about today's hybrid
environment and our ever changing workplaces, what does
Oh man, great question. I think we're all struggling with that and we're
(01:07):
seeing return to work, or as my military friends would
say, the RTB, return to base, kind of calls going
out all over the place. What does it look like to have a dream team? First of
all, you have to work your butt off more today to create a
dream team that I think you did when it was one singularity. Whether
it was all distributed or all in person, today we
(01:28):
have a mix mash of it. What
do you do? First of all, of course, you can get
a free copy of my book, Work Positive Team Edition. Glad
to send it to you. Just reach out to me on LinkedIn and you'll get all the
five qualities of dream teams. But the number one quality
for a work positive dream team is listen actively.
(01:50):
And the challenge today is that, well, just
like you and I are virtual here, I'm watching your body language and looking at
your facial expressions. I'm reading you as I'm
speaking. So really, I'm listening while I'm talking. And
I think that's a skill set that many people find quite
challenging. Not that I've got it all captured, Shari, but just
(02:10):
consciously saying to yourself, I need to slow down
to speed up. I need to listen carefully to intonation.
I need to more proactively watch body language. Now the cool thing
is when you can do that in a virtual environment like we're here on Riverside, you can
do it even better in person. So I would
say that first one, actively listen, is supremely
(02:32):
important in creating a dream team in a mixed
And you add in the complexity of maybe somebody who's neurodivergent. So
they kind of have all that chatter going on in their head all the time anyway. So it
Right, absolutely. So you really lean into this concept of
(02:55):
positivity for teams. And I know
positivity doesn't mean going in like pie in the sky, white
picket fence, everything's perfect. It's a different view of
what that means. How do you define that and how do you talk about that with
Yeah, thanks so much for asking that, because there's this whole thing about toxic
positivity and things like that now. So I like to
(03:17):
keep it real, Shari. And keeping it real helps
you be positive. So what you're doing is, first of all, you're training your brain. And
that's the first core practice of a work positive culture framework, by the
way. You're training your brain to focus on the positive and
filter out the negative. Now, it's not some Jedi ninja mind
trick or something. It's just saying to yourself, you
(03:37):
know, I could give my mental energy too, talking
about how things suck around here, you know, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah, whatever
it is, the very specific details of
why things suck around here. However, there are always
bright spots. And so training my brain to find those bright spots, to
focus on those bright spots. That's the perceived core practice and
(03:58):
then the fifth core practice is received and that's where I'm expressing gratitude
I'm saying man Shari. Those were some great questions you
asked during our podcast interview where'd you come up with those? Tell me how you
got this that kind of thing So I'm being very specific as opposed
to a soap bubble compliment, which is like Shari. You're an amazing interviewer
I'm very I'm giving velcro Compliments then right and
(04:20):
I'm grateful for that Shari the way you ask those questions and you
hear the distinction there. So it's not Pollyanna,
it's keeping it real and dealing in the current realities as
opposed to the imagined realities, which for most human beings, seven and
Had an interesting conversation with somebody the other day
(04:41):
that I was interviewing for the podcast, and she talked about
a concept that she uses with her teams called victim, villain,
victor. And what she does, and it's the first time I've heard
those, like, kind of those three V's put together like that. And so
as she's having these conversations with her team, she's saying, you know, OK, I
hear you're coming at this conversation like you're the victim. What if
(05:02):
you retold the story and you were the villain? What if you retold the
story and you were the victor? And it was so fascinating to
hear her talk about how people come to a different understanding
of the scenario, potentially by sitting in those different
roles, which I think it lines very well with what you're saying is
if you can come to it from a strengths-based view instead
(05:23):
of all the things we don't have, you're going to be more positive.
Absolutely, and the coupling of that with gratitude, as you just indicated, is
so strong. Yeah, what your friend and I are both doing
is encouraging people to take the movie that's constantly
playing in their minds. Ramit Sethi would talk about it as our invisible
scripts. So to take that movie, the reticular activating system,
(05:46):
the RAS that's in the brain, and just rewriting that,
reproducing that, redirecting that. In fact, most
of these scripts, as Ramit talks about, and other people who are
capturing neuroscience, there's some kind of movie
playing in our heads constantly, and most of them are from childhood. You
can choose which one plays. Now, I'm not a Freudian
(06:07):
psychologist or anything like that, but you can choose which
one you play. In fact, there are a couple that I switch between
in my mind, and when I catch myself being negative sharing, I say,
wait a minute, you're at the baseball game. But instead, you
know, I flip it and I go, wait a minute, you're sitting in a small group
as a middle schooler. And so I just consciously flip back and forth between
(06:28):
those. You have a choice. You're empowered. You
How do you start training yourself to do
that mentally as a leader? Is there daily habits
Yeah, and again, I talk about these in the work
positive team edition book that I'll give you daily habits. I think of
(06:51):
them as morning and evening at a baseline. I'll
start with the evening. I can't even tell you
how many years I've been doing it, but I have a gratitude diary and every
evening, and this is not a novel concept anymore. When I first began teaching
it years ago, it was somewhat then,
but just cause I'm bald doesn't mean I've been around forever,
(07:11):
right? It's a silver hair, right? So
you just write down three positive experiences you had for the day and again, make
it Velcro instead of soap bubble. You know, I enjoyed lunch today. Well,
what was it you enjoyed about lunch? You know, you had a chef come in and prepare your
favorite dish or something like that. Just be as specific as possible. And
what you're doing there, Shari, is literally seeding your brain.
(07:33):
specifically your unconscious mind, with something positive.
So you will go to sleep with those positive ideas.
And if it can be the last thing you do before you drift off to sleep, that's the best time
because that's your last conscious thought. So your subconscious works
all night long anyway. So you're just giving it something positive, or
as I like to say, seeding it something positive. I promise you'll wake
(07:55):
up more refreshed in the morning. If you ever wake up as tired in
the morning as you went to sleep, it's because... Yes, more often
than not. Yeah, well, your brain is just working out
the problems that you couldn't do during the day. And oh, by the way, those nightmares come
from that same place. So the morning habit that I really like
to do is to fill my mind. Breakfast is the
(08:16):
most important meal of the day. Any nutritionist worth their salt
or sugar would tell you. And because you're setting your metabolic set
point at that time, that's how your body is going to burn calories and
burn the fat. That's what you want to do mentally as
well. You want to fill your mind or flood your mind, if you will.
However you best consume positive content, man, YouTube
(08:38):
is just such a treasure trove of great people. I mean, listen
to Ed Milet or somebody who's just like a behemoth. I
mean, he's big physically, but he's a behemoth in terms of being an
influencer. Listen to someone like that. I like to
listen to Ed, but find somebody that you can listen to like
that. It's just going to flood your brain. If you're a reader, read
(08:58):
something positive, you know, read at least a chapter, a book a day. It's a
habit that I have. I love music to all
kinds of music. And so I got my jams on in the morning and
I am, I'm turning it up. In fact, sometimes if I get
up too early, like four 30 or something, my wife says, you know, could
you keep the music down tomorrow morning? So I'm
(09:20):
jamming, just really flooding my mind with something positive. And
then a final thing I like to do in the mornings and as a great
habit is visualization of my calendar for that day. Like
this morning, I looked and I said, hey, I'm going to be talking to Shari Simpson today at
2.30 Eastern Time. Can't wait for that. Hey, what are some positive outcomes
that, you know, the best possible outcomes that I want to see
(09:41):
from that podcast interview with Shari? And again, it's
called predictive encoding. I'm already visualizing those
positive results. Will it turn out exactly like I did? No, because life
is life, right? But I'm much more likely to get closer
to those positive results as I encode those in
my brain and predict the positive outcomes. By the way, Shari, your
(10:02):
mind is either going to imagine or worry, and
it's going to worry will be the negative consequences, you know, the
worst possible outcome for my interview with Shari. imagination,
hey, who knows, we may reach a million views of
this podcast, right? So just go ahead and imagine the best as
(10:24):
What do you say to those leaders who, and I'm really inspired
by what you're saying. I know there's a lot of neuroscience to
back it up. So that being said, I can tell you, I have
definitely coached many a leader over the years who's like, that
sounds too woo woo. That's too
nice. What do you say to those people when you're like, no, really there's data
(10:46):
to support it. But we know that data only works if you have that
relationship and you can kind of tie into that person's why
Yeah, that is so true. Yeah, I used to get woo-woo a
lot. Fortunately, with a Southern accent, nobody ever accused me of being
from California, so that was nice. But back when I first started
this, it was woo-woo. I like the word squishy now. Yeah, yeah.
(11:07):
A lot of times you wind up with a CEO or CFO who
is just driven by the numbers and is less, shall
we say, conversant in people skills. My friend Lindsay
Dowd says we shouldn't refer to them as soft skills. We should refer
to them as power skills. One of my other friends, Larry
Levine, who is from California, selling from the heart is his thing.
(11:29):
He says, soft skills drive hard
dollars. And there's a lot of truth in that. So what
I would say is, at the end of the day, particularly
with the rise of augmented intelligence now, human
beings have an immense capacity to achieve. They
achieve immensely in the midst of adversity. But
(11:51):
the brain drives all that and focusing, learning to
focus that limitless capacity of the human mind
for creativity and innovation. Therein lies your
competitive advantage. That's how you're going to remain not
only competitive, but you're going to stop the competition on a global scale
when you can unleash the power that lies within.
(12:12):
And I think it's a power to work positive and you can
create a culture that supports that growth
of human beings. And so, you know, there's all kinds of things, belonging at work,
becoming all those kinds of things that we don't have time to talk about today, but
just really helps humans develop to be the, This
is trite now, but to be the best version of themselves so
(12:34):
that their work takes on meaning and purpose and satisfaction, that's
when you're getting the most out of people. AI can handle repetitive tasks.
We don't need people to do that anymore. In fact, AI can do it better
and faster. Although it does, my Claude does hallucinate
from time to time. So we just have to slip him something in
his walk, in his electrons to clear up the hallucination. But
(12:56):
I mean, Claude can handle most repetitive tasks quite well. The
joie de vivre really comes from the innovation and
How do you help those on your team who
come to you with a problem and they're looking at it from kind of the
(13:17):
sky is falling perspective? But
it's a real problem, right? It's probably, you know, maybe they
have a sky is falling mentality, but maybe it's, hey, you know what? It's gonna be
something bad that's gonna hit the press and it's gonna impact our organization. Or, hey,
we've been watching the stocks and we're a tech company and the tech market
is having a hard time right now. We know it's gonna impact our organization. How
(13:37):
do you help them work through some of those really challenging, highly
emotional situations, but from that positive, strengths-based
Yeah, great question. I really appreciate you asking it in that
way because what you did was you tapped into a couple of things there. You tapped
into their IQ and their EQ, the intellectual quotient
(13:59):
being, you know, what solutions could I come up with
because I'm brilliant intellectually, but also there's that EQ side,
which is it's hard to stay focused or to
emotionally differentiate myself. in the midst of this. First
of all, I want to invite a leader to take her
or himself down from the throne and come alongside that
(14:20):
person. And as my friend Joshua Friedman talks about, empathy is
just, I mean, it's the currency of change today and of growth for
companies and individuals. So you can empathize, but now understand
that's not sympathizing. I'm so sorry. You know, friendship or
empathy to the point of you get lost in the malaise
with them or you take on their anxiety about the
(14:42):
situation or the mental block that's keeping them from doing it. And
I'm an executive coach. I see I've certified have been for a number of years
now. So we like to ask powerful questions instead
of answering questions. So the most impactful thing
you can do is to say, well, Shari, What have
you thought about that we can do to address this
(15:03):
issue? And therein lies empathy and
collaboration and all the good kind of stuff because I am constantly
amazed by the number of people who, when they come with a problem,
they've been thinking about it for a week or a month or
they've seen it coming. So they've already gone through a laundry list
in their mind of things we could do, probably sorted
(15:23):
and prioritized them. But for whatever reason they lack the courage
or resilience or something, they're just reluctant to share that with
me. So I ask, well, Shari, what have you thought about
that we can do? What have you heard, Shari, that
someone else has done in a similar situation? Who do you know that succeeded in
a situation like this? Shari, what previous experiences have you
(15:45):
had when you faced a similar adversity that you could bring
to bear on this particular issue. So in
that way, then we begin to work together on it. That's
why I say the leader's got to take her or himself down from the throne.
rather than assuming you've got to have all the answers as a bit of leadership. No,
you're you're shuffling the cards, you're distributing the cards, and
(16:11):
So my leader right now is going through that same certification and she
is brilliant. She has a wealth of knowledge. And it's
funny because I've noticed in our one on ones her the way she
talks to me has changed. And I asked her, I was like, is this from this coaching you're going through? And
she's like, She's like, yes, yes, it is. She's like, it's taking everything
in me not to provide answers or solutions to the problem. She's
(16:33):
like, it's good. I mean, we're both kind of learning through it
because there are sometimes I'm like, can you just give me the answer? Like, we got to get through this meeting. I
need to move on with my life. But it's such a great
It's not only a tactic, it's as your leaders discovering it's a huge mindset
shift. What it does is in taking yourself down from
the throne, you're literally tapping into the collective wisdom
(16:55):
and energy of Shari and the rest of the team. Now,
we have typically rewarded short-term brilliance,
right? It's quarterly, you know, profits up for the quarter, therefore our
stock prices are going up for, I'm able to rattle off
answers. Those days are gone. Claude can do that. I
can ask Claude and Claude can give me all these
(17:17):
answers much faster than my leader can. It reminds me
when Google first came out, my brother's daughter, she came, I happened
to be in Huntington, West Virginia with them when she came home from school
and she was like 14 years old or something like that, you know, maybe just entering
high school. I said, well, how did, how did your first day of high school
go? Well, I don't know how this is going to work because I had one teacher
(17:38):
who kept asking us questions and she could have just Googled them for herself. I
love that. That's kind of where we are today, right? Claude
can answer all those questions that we used to
reward somebody in the C-suite for being the smartest
or just having an editic memory, right? Claude's got an editic
(17:58):
memory. Granted, he hallucinates from time to time. But what
if I can tap into Shari's wisdom and John's
wisdom and Caroline's wisdom and Jeff's wisdom? and
bring all that together in a collaborative spirit. How's that going to engage people?
Where's the innovation and creativity in that? Claude can't really innovate
(18:19):
or create. He's really good at rote, but
just like the CEO used to be or my leaders used to be. Now
we just want to, I don't mean to be repetitive, but the joy, the fever, that
joy of life. We want to tap into that, give work a
new meaning, purpose, and bring satisfaction to
people's lives. Because when you do that as a leader and you're able to create
(18:40):
that kind of collaborative environment, people, your team will
What do you see variabilities in generations with
this approach? I know that's kind of a weird question because I
think in some places there's a lot and some places
there isn't. And, you know, even those that are in the research space
(19:01):
They do. They do. They do. They do. Well, I'm a
boomer. OK. And man, my generation's really
blown it. We really have, in trying to understand the
complexity and diversity and yet the supreme
opportunity we have. Frankly, we've never had five
generations of people in a workspace before. I
(19:23):
used to just say four, but my friend, Marisa Andrada, who was CHRO
at Chipotle, said, hey, Dr. Joey, I had five,
right? And so I'm like, jeez, I can't imagine that before. What
we see happening are, yes, it's distinct. Yes, we approach
it differently. I have two millennial daughters. I got
(19:43):
into their headspace early when they were like in
middle school, and middle school was just a lot different than junior high school. So
that was my first inkling. That was over 20 years ago. But
just being able to not only mentor, create
mentoring relationships, but Shari, I really want to challenge, particularly
people my age, to think about reverse mentoring. I
(20:05):
read an article today, and this is not a political statement, but I read an article
today about the Department of Government Efficiency that's
currently on board. I mean, there's a 19-year-old who's
doing software engineering for that. And I know there's some guys my
age like, What the heck does he know about creating efficiencies?
I said, they probably weren't that generous, but it's still wet behind the ears. No,
(20:28):
no, no, no, no, no, no. Let's respect each
other and let's truly remove ageism. Whether it's somebody my
age on Medicare or whether it's somebody who's 19 doing software
engineering, let's just remove that. Respect each other as
people who are highly gifted. So, identify those
roadblocks, those mental barriers that will keep you
(20:50):
from learning from someone else. If you will, as Patrick
Lincellani talked about, be humble, hungry, and smart. If
you'll just come with a baseline of humility that I can learn
something from Shari Simpson today. And I can't
wait to learn that from Shari Simpson. And then if Shari Simpson
wants to learn something from me, that's awesome too, man. Let's talk
(21:11):
What a great perspective. OK, one last question, a little bit
tactical. If you are talking to an organization and
they're like, yeah, this sounds fantastic. We get it. How do I
Great question. And, you know, when I first became an
executive coach, I see a certifying all like that. There
was this aura of coaching for the sake of coaching, almost
(21:33):
like art, right? We have
discovered ways of tagging coaching
to, really even more than tagging, but directly tying it to certain
ROIs. So the easy answer is, how are
you measuring ROI now? What are your metrics? By
the way, I'm constantly confounded by the people who don't know the answer to
(21:55):
that question. And then in our case, in my case
as a positive culture architect, what I like to help companies do is to establish culture
KPIs. Here are the things we know from, again,
not just neuroscience, but other sociological studies and things like
that. Here are the things that create more innovation and creativity,
a competitive advantage for you and a company. Here are the things, as I
(22:17):
like to say, Shari, that grow people and profits. and we
tie those two together and so when you start talking about a 19% increase
in operating income, a 28% increase in revenue
growth when you create a positive work culture, customer satisfaction goes
up 450% when you start using, 450% when
you start using coaching to help train your customer service
(22:40):
reps. I mean, these are demonstrable data points
that are gonna put more money in your pocket. But the more money in
your pocket is one metric. There are other metrics that we've talked
about today, too, that I think are the pathway. So
you can grow people and profits. It's not an either or.
So the easy, fast way to do it is how are you measuring ROI now?
(23:03):
Begin making your efforts today to create a work positive culture
How encouraging is that? Well, Dr. Joy, this was a wonderful conversation.
You're listening to the HR Mixtape. Your podcast with
the perfect mix of practical advice, thought-provoking interviews, and
stories that just hit different so that work doesn't have to feel,
well, like work. Now, your host,
Joining me today is Dr. Joey Faucette, executive coach and
culture architect at Work Positive. A best-selling author and
(00:24):
podcast host himself, he helps leaders transform workplace culture
to drive success by leaning into strengths and positive workplace approaches.
Shari, I am so delighted to be here. We're going to mix it up, right?
Yes, we absolutely are. And I, as an eternal optimist,
(00:46):
am very excited about our topic today. We are talking about
dream teams and positivity. So I'm going to start
with maybe a tough one, maybe not. And when I think about today's hybrid
environment and our ever changing workplaces, what does
Oh man, great question. I think we're all struggling with that and we're
(01:07):
seeing return to work, or as my military friends would
say, the RTB, return to base, kind of calls going
out all over the place. What does it look like to have a dream team? First of
all, you have to work your butt off more today to create a
dream team that I think you did when it was one singularity. Whether
it was all distributed or all in person, today we
(01:28):
have a mix mash of it. What
do you do? First of all, of course, you can get
a free copy of my book, Work Positive Team Edition. Glad
to send it to you. Just reach out to me on LinkedIn and you'll get all the
five qualities of dream teams. But the number one quality
for a work positive dream team is listen actively.
(01:50):
And the challenge today is that, well, just
like you and I are virtual here, I'm watching your body language and looking at
your facial expressions. I'm reading you as I'm
speaking. So really, I'm listening while I'm talking. And
I think that's a skill set that many people find quite
challenging. Not that I've got it all captured, Shari, but just
(02:10):
consciously saying to yourself, I need to slow down
to speed up. I need to listen carefully to intonation.
I need to more proactively watch body language. Now the cool thing
is when you can do that in a virtual environment like we're here on Riverside, you can
do it even better in person. So I would
say that first one, actively listen, is supremely
(02:32):
important in creating a dream team in a mixed
And you add in the complexity of maybe somebody who's neurodivergent. So
they kind of have all that chatter going on in their head all the time anyway. So it
Right, absolutely. So you really lean into this concept of
(02:55):
positivity for teams. And I know
positivity doesn't mean going in like pie in the sky, white
picket fence, everything's perfect. It's a different view of
what that means. How do you define that and how do you talk about that with
Yeah, thanks so much for asking that, because there's this whole thing about toxic
positivity and things like that now. So I like to
(03:17):
keep it real, Shari. And keeping it real helps
you be positive. So what you're doing is, first of all, you're training your brain. And
that's the first core practice of a work positive culture framework, by the
way. You're training your brain to focus on the positive and
filter out the negative. Now, it's not some Jedi ninja mind
trick or something. It's just saying to yourself, you
(03:37):
know, I could give my mental energy too, talking
about how things suck around here, you know, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah, whatever
it is, the very specific details of
why things suck around here. However, there are always
bright spots. And so training my brain to find those bright spots, to
focus on those bright spots. That's the perceived core practice and
(03:58):
then the fifth core practice is received and that's where I'm expressing gratitude
I'm saying man Shari. Those were some great questions you
asked during our podcast interview where'd you come up with those? Tell me how you
got this that kind of thing So I'm being very specific as opposed
to a soap bubble compliment, which is like Shari. You're an amazing interviewer
I'm very I'm giving velcro Compliments then right and
(04:20):
I'm grateful for that Shari the way you ask those questions and you
hear the distinction there. So it's not Pollyanna,
it's keeping it real and dealing in the current realities as
opposed to the imagined realities, which for most human beings, seven and
Had an interesting conversation with somebody the other day
(04:41):
that I was interviewing for the podcast, and she talked about
a concept that she uses with her teams called victim, villain,
victor. And what she does, and it's the first time I've heard
those, like, kind of those three V's put together like that. And so
as she's having these conversations with her team, she's saying, you know, OK, I
hear you're coming at this conversation like you're the victim. What if
(05:02):
you retold the story and you were the villain? What if you retold the
story and you were the victor? And it was so fascinating to
hear her talk about how people come to a different understanding
of the scenario, potentially by sitting in those different
roles, which I think it lines very well with what you're saying is
if you can come to it from a strengths-based view instead
(05:23):
of all the things we don't have, you're going to be more positive.
Absolutely, and the coupling of that with gratitude, as you just indicated, is
so strong. Yeah, what your friend and I are both doing
is encouraging people to take the movie that's constantly
playing in their minds. Ramit Sethi would talk about it as our invisible
scripts. So to take that movie, the reticular activating system,
(05:46):
the RAS that's in the brain, and just rewriting that,
reproducing that, redirecting that. In fact, most
of these scripts, as Ramit talks about, and other people who are
capturing neuroscience, there's some kind of movie
playing in our heads constantly, and most of them are from childhood. You
can choose which one plays. Now, I'm not a Freudian
(06:07):
psychologist or anything like that, but you can choose which
one you play. In fact, there are a couple that I switch between
in my mind, and when I catch myself being negative sharing, I say,
wait a minute, you're at the baseball game. But instead, you
know, I flip it and I go, wait a minute, you're sitting in a small group
as a middle schooler. And so I just consciously flip back and forth between
(06:28):
those. You have a choice. You're empowered. You
How do you start training yourself to do
that mentally as a leader? Is there daily habits
Yeah, and again, I talk about these in the work
positive team edition book that I'll give you daily habits. I think of
(06:51):
them as morning and evening at a baseline. I'll
start with the evening. I can't even tell you
how many years I've been doing it, but I have a gratitude diary and every
evening, and this is not a novel concept anymore. When I first began teaching
it years ago, it was somewhat then,
but just cause I'm bald doesn't mean I've been around forever,
(07:11):
right? It's a silver hair, right? So
you just write down three positive experiences you had for the day and again, make
it Velcro instead of soap bubble. You know, I enjoyed lunch today. Well,
what was it you enjoyed about lunch? You know, you had a chef come in and prepare your
favorite dish or something like that. Just be as specific as possible. And
what you're doing there, Shari, is literally seeding your brain.
(07:33):
specifically your unconscious mind, with something positive.
So you will go to sleep with those positive ideas.
And if it can be the last thing you do before you drift off to sleep, that's the best time
because that's your last conscious thought. So your subconscious works
all night long anyway. So you're just giving it something positive, or
as I like to say, seeding it something positive. I promise you'll wake
(07:55):
up more refreshed in the morning. If you ever wake up as tired in
the morning as you went to sleep, it's because... Yes, more often
than not. Yeah, well, your brain is just working out
the problems that you couldn't do during the day. And oh, by the way, those nightmares come
from that same place. So the morning habit that I really like
to do is to fill my mind. Breakfast is the
(08:16):
most important meal of the day. Any nutritionist worth their salt
or sugar would tell you. And because you're setting your metabolic set
point at that time, that's how your body is going to burn calories and
burn the fat. That's what you want to do mentally as
well. You want to fill your mind or flood your mind, if you will.
However you best consume positive content, man, YouTube
(08:38):
is just such a treasure trove of great people. I mean, listen
to Ed Milet or somebody who's just like a behemoth. I
mean, he's big physically, but he's a behemoth in terms of being an
influencer. Listen to someone like that. I like to
listen to Ed, but find somebody that you can listen to like
that. It's just going to flood your brain. If you're a reader, read
(08:58):
something positive, you know, read at least a chapter, a book a day. It's a
habit that I have. I love music to all
kinds of music. And so I got my jams on in the morning and
I am, I'm turning it up. In fact, sometimes if I get
up too early, like four 30 or something, my wife says, you know, could
you keep the music down tomorrow morning? So I'm
(09:20):
jamming, just really flooding my mind with something positive. And
then a final thing I like to do in the mornings and as a great
habit is visualization of my calendar for that day. Like
this morning, I looked and I said, hey, I'm going to be talking to Shari Simpson today at
2.30 Eastern Time. Can't wait for that. Hey, what are some positive outcomes
that, you know, the best possible outcomes that I want to see
(09:41):
from that podcast interview with Shari? And again, it's
called predictive encoding. I'm already visualizing those
positive results. Will it turn out exactly like I did? No, because life
is life, right? But I'm much more likely to get closer
to those positive results as I encode those in
my brain and predict the positive outcomes. By the way, Shari, your
(10:02):
mind is either going to imagine or worry, and
it's going to worry will be the negative consequences, you know, the
worst possible outcome for my interview with Shari. imagination,
hey, who knows, we may reach a million views of
this podcast, right? So just go ahead and imagine the best as
(10:24):
What do you say to those leaders who, and I'm really inspired
by what you're saying. I know there's a lot of neuroscience to
back it up. So that being said, I can tell you, I have
definitely coached many a leader over the years who's like, that
sounds too woo woo. That's too
nice. What do you say to those people when you're like, no, really there's data
(10:46):
to support it. But we know that data only works if you have that
relationship and you can kind of tie into that person's why
Yeah, that is so true. Yeah, I used to get woo-woo a
lot. Fortunately, with a Southern accent, nobody ever accused me of being
from California, so that was nice. But back when I first started
this, it was woo-woo. I like the word squishy now. Yeah, yeah.
(11:07):
A lot of times you wind up with a CEO or CFO who
is just driven by the numbers and is less, shall
we say, conversant in people skills. My friend Lindsay
Dowd says we shouldn't refer to them as soft skills. We should refer
to them as power skills. One of my other friends, Larry
Levine, who is from California, selling from the heart is his thing.
(11:29):
He says, soft skills drive hard
dollars. And there's a lot of truth in that. So what
I would say is, at the end of the day, particularly
with the rise of augmented intelligence now, human
beings have an immense capacity to achieve. They
achieve immensely in the midst of adversity. But
(11:51):
the brain drives all that and focusing, learning to
focus that limitless capacity of the human mind
for creativity and innovation. Therein lies your
competitive advantage. That's how you're going to remain not
only competitive, but you're going to stop the competition on a global scale
when you can unleash the power that lies within.
(12:12):
And I think it's a power to work positive and you can
create a culture that supports that growth
of human beings. And so, you know, there's all kinds of things, belonging at work,
becoming all those kinds of things that we don't have time to talk about today, but
just really helps humans develop to be the, This
is trite now, but to be the best version of themselves so
(12:34):
that their work takes on meaning and purpose and satisfaction, that's
when you're getting the most out of people. AI can handle repetitive tasks.
We don't need people to do that anymore. In fact, AI can do it better
and faster. Although it does, my Claude does hallucinate
from time to time. So we just have to slip him something in
his walk, in his electrons to clear up the hallucination. But
(12:56):
I mean, Claude can handle most repetitive tasks quite well. The
joie de vivre really comes from the innovation and
How do you help those on your team who
come to you with a problem and they're looking at it from kind of the
(13:17):
sky is falling perspective? But
it's a real problem, right? It's probably, you know, maybe they
have a sky is falling mentality, but maybe it's, hey, you know what? It's gonna be
something bad that's gonna hit the press and it's gonna impact our organization. Or, hey,
we've been watching the stocks and we're a tech company and the tech market
is having a hard time right now. We know it's gonna impact our organization. How
(13:37):
do you help them work through some of those really challenging, highly
emotional situations, but from that positive, strengths-based
Yeah, great question. I really appreciate you asking it in that
way because what you did was you tapped into a couple of things there. You tapped
into their IQ and their EQ, the intellectual quotient
(13:59):
being, you know, what solutions could I come up with
because I'm brilliant intellectually, but also there's that EQ side,
which is it's hard to stay focused or to
emotionally differentiate myself. in the midst of this. First
of all, I want to invite a leader to take her
or himself down from the throne and come alongside that
(14:20):
person. And as my friend Joshua Friedman talks about, empathy is
just, I mean, it's the currency of change today and of growth for
companies and individuals. So you can empathize, but now understand
that's not sympathizing. I'm so sorry. You know, friendship or
empathy to the point of you get lost in the malaise
with them or you take on their anxiety about the
(14:42):
situation or the mental block that's keeping them from doing it. And
I'm an executive coach. I see I've certified have been for a number of years
now. So we like to ask powerful questions instead
of answering questions. So the most impactful thing
you can do is to say, well, Shari, What have
you thought about that we can do to address this
(15:03):
issue? And therein lies empathy and
collaboration and all the good kind of stuff because I am constantly
amazed by the number of people who, when they come with a problem,
they've been thinking about it for a week or a month or
they've seen it coming. So they've already gone through a laundry list
in their mind of things we could do, probably sorted
(15:23):
and prioritized them. But for whatever reason they lack the courage
or resilience or something, they're just reluctant to share that with
me. So I ask, well, Shari, what have you thought about
that we can do? What have you heard, Shari, that
someone else has done in a similar situation? Who do you know that succeeded in
a situation like this? Shari, what previous experiences have you
(15:45):
had when you faced a similar adversity that you could bring
to bear on this particular issue. So in
that way, then we begin to work together on it. That's
why I say the leader's got to take her or himself down from the throne.
rather than assuming you've got to have all the answers as a bit of leadership. No,
you're you're shuffling the cards, you're distributing the cards, and
(16:11):
So my leader right now is going through that same certification and she
is brilliant. She has a wealth of knowledge. And it's
funny because I've noticed in our one on ones her the way she
talks to me has changed. And I asked her, I was like, is this from this coaching you're going through? And
she's like, She's like, yes, yes, it is. She's like, it's taking everything
in me not to provide answers or solutions to the problem. She's
(16:33):
like, it's good. I mean, we're both kind of learning through it
because there are sometimes I'm like, can you just give me the answer? Like, we got to get through this meeting. I
need to move on with my life. But it's such a great
It's not only a tactic, it's as your leaders discovering it's a huge mindset
shift. What it does is in taking yourself down from
the throne, you're literally tapping into the collective wisdom
(16:55):
and energy of Shari and the rest of the team. Now,
we have typically rewarded short-term brilliance,
right? It's quarterly, you know, profits up for the quarter, therefore our
stock prices are going up for, I'm able to rattle off
answers. Those days are gone. Claude can do that. I
can ask Claude and Claude can give me all these
(17:17):
answers much faster than my leader can. It reminds me
when Google first came out, my brother's daughter, she came, I happened
to be in Huntington, West Virginia with them when she came home from school
and she was like 14 years old or something like that, you know, maybe just entering
high school. I said, well, how did, how did your first day of high school
go? Well, I don't know how this is going to work because I had one teacher
(17:38):
who kept asking us questions and she could have just Googled them for herself. I
love that. That's kind of where we are today, right? Claude
can answer all those questions that we used to
reward somebody in the C-suite for being the smartest
or just having an editic memory, right? Claude's got an editic
(17:58):
memory. Granted, he hallucinates from time to time. But what
if I can tap into Shari's wisdom and John's
wisdom and Caroline's wisdom and Jeff's wisdom? and
bring all that together in a collaborative spirit. How's that going to engage people?
Where's the innovation and creativity in that? Claude can't really innovate
(18:19):
or create. He's really good at rote, but
just like the CEO used to be or my leaders used to be. Now
we just want to, I don't mean to be repetitive, but the joy, the fever, that
joy of life. We want to tap into that, give work a
new meaning, purpose, and bring satisfaction to
people's lives. Because when you do that as a leader and you're able to create
(18:40):
that kind of collaborative environment, people, your team will
What do you see variabilities in generations with
this approach? I know that's kind of a weird question because I
think in some places there's a lot and some places
there isn't. And, you know, even those that are in the research space
(19:01):
They do. They do. They do. They do. Well, I'm a
boomer. OK. And man, my generation's really
blown it. We really have, in trying to understand the
complexity and diversity and yet the supreme
opportunity we have. Frankly, we've never had five
generations of people in a workspace before. I
(19:23):
used to just say four, but my friend, Marisa Andrada, who was CHRO
at Chipotle, said, hey, Dr. Joey, I had five,
right? And so I'm like, jeez, I can't imagine that before. What
we see happening are, yes, it's distinct. Yes, we approach
it differently. I have two millennial daughters. I got
(19:43):
into their headspace early when they were like in
middle school, and middle school was just a lot different than junior high school. So
that was my first inkling. That was over 20 years ago. But
just being able to not only mentor, create
mentoring relationships, but Shari, I really want to challenge, particularly
people my age, to think about reverse mentoring. I
(20:05):
read an article today, and this is not a political statement, but I read an article
today about the Department of Government Efficiency that's
currently on board. I mean, there's a 19-year-old who's
doing software engineering for that. And I know there's some guys my
age like, What the heck does he know about creating efficiencies?
I said, they probably weren't that generous, but it's still wet behind the ears. No,
(20:28):
no, no, no, no, no, no. Let's respect each
other and let's truly remove ageism. Whether it's somebody my
age on Medicare or whether it's somebody who's 19 doing software
engineering, let's just remove that. Respect each other as
people who are highly gifted. So, identify those
roadblocks, those mental barriers that will keep you
(20:50):
from learning from someone else. If you will, as Patrick
Lincellani talked about, be humble, hungry, and smart. If
you'll just come with a baseline of humility that I can learn
something from Shari Simpson today. And I can't
wait to learn that from Shari Simpson. And then if Shari Simpson
wants to learn something from me, that's awesome too, man. Let's talk
(21:11):
What a great perspective. OK, one last question, a little bit
tactical. If you are talking to an organization and
they're like, yeah, this sounds fantastic. We get it. How do I
Great question. And, you know, when I first became an
executive coach, I see a certifying all like that. There
was this aura of coaching for the sake of coaching, almost
(21:33):
like art, right? We have
discovered ways of tagging coaching
to, really even more than tagging, but directly tying it to certain
ROIs. So the easy answer is, how are
you measuring ROI now? What are your metrics? By
the way, I'm constantly confounded by the people who don't know the answer to
(21:55):
that question. And then in our case, in my case
as a positive culture architect, what I like to help companies do is to establish culture
KPIs. Here are the things we know from, again,
not just neuroscience, but other sociological studies and things like
that. Here are the things that create more innovation and creativity,
a competitive advantage for you and a company. Here are the things, as I
(22:17):
like to say, Shari, that grow people and profits. and we
tie those two together and so when you start talking about a 19% increase
in operating income, a 28% increase in revenue
growth when you create a positive work culture, customer satisfaction goes
up 450% when you start using, 450% when
you start using coaching to help train your customer service
(22:40):
reps. I mean, these are demonstrable data points
that are gonna put more money in your pocket. But the more money in
your pocket is one metric. There are other metrics that we've talked
about today, too, that I think are the pathway. So
you can grow people and profits. It's not an either or.
So the easy, fast way to do it is how are you measuring ROI now?
(23:03):
Begin making your efforts today to create a work positive culture
How encouraging is that? Well, Dr. Joy, this was a wonderful conversation.
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