Latest / Humanity Working / Bonus Episode: Decoding Your Instinct to Perform, Featuring Amy Bruske

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Bonus Episode: Decoding Your Instinct to Perform, Featuring Amy Bruske · Humanity Working

• 0:11
  SPEAKER_05: Hey, welcome to Humanity Working.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_05: Now we've been on a bit of a theme lately in some of our interviews.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_05: If you listen to the episode we did with Shannon Plum, she talked about the idea that work, the idea that work should be a grind is something that we don't have to accept, right?
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_05: And she really kind of pushed us to think about how you go about making work more effortless.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_05: So if you're interested in that, go back and listen to that episode.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_05: And then with Michaeli Volpey, he talked about finding careers that are a strong fit between you and the work that results in work being easier.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_05: And I think people love the theory of all this, but sometimes they struggle to put it into practice.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_05: But there are ways to put it into practice.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_05: And my guest today, Amy Brusk, is an expert on exactly that.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_05: So welcome to the podcast, Amy.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_02: Happy to be here.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_05: Now, Amy is the co-author of a USA Today bestseller on this.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_05: It's called Do More More Naturally.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_05: I realized my attention to detail wasn't too great, Amy, because every time I read it, I kept reading it as do more naturally and realized I was missing one of the mores in there.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_05: But it is do more more naturally.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_05: And today we're going to talk about how anyone can do more, comma, more naturally.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_05: And not only are we going to talk about this, but Amy is president of uh Colby Corp, which measures the attributes of how people do work, and they've assessed me.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_05: So we're going to talk about my results a little bit and what it should, what it means I should be doing if I want to do more more naturally.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_05: Man, I've I've promoted your book about five times there, haven't I?
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_05: But anyway, so we'll get into all of that as we go along.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_05: But I want to start a little bit actually with your own story, which is part of the early early piece of the book.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_05: It's rather interesting because it kind of delves into what it takes to feel and be successful.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_05: So I wonder if you could sort of take us back to that early part of your career and when you started to have a little bit of a realization that your assessment of what it was to be successful might have been a bit off.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_01: And I think a lot of people can relate to this.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_01: I had no idea how many people probably have experienced this in their career until I started sharing it in my 50s.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_01: But early in my career, I found myself getting promoted over and over again into these fabulous roles that I thought were my dream job.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_01: And then you get to the point where you're actually getting those positions, and work is absolutely tedious and a grind, and it's you're succeeding, but uh it's so painful and so difficult.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_01: And I had no idea how much of that was true for me until Kathy Colby had kind of asked me a question once that I had never thought of, and she said, How do you define success?
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_01: And I said, Well, I think I am successful.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_01: I'm I've been moving up, I've gotten five promotions in five years, and I'm on this path.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_01: And um, I'd kind of been taught that you join a corporation and you work hard and you take on more responsibility and eventually you have more freedom.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_01: But she said, Well, I define success as the freedom to be myself.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_01: And I thought, I don't even know what that means.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_01: But there was this light bulb moment when I started thinking back to times when I had just been in the zone and work felt effortless.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_01: And there were these glimpses of that within my role, and I thought that's what freedom to be myself looks like.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_01: And I started making different decisions.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_01: From that point on, I thought, is this possible to still have a career?
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_01: Do it in a way that's more natural for me.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_01: And I went on this journey of discovery around that.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_01: And I think one of the reasons this was hard for me is I come from an incredibly smart family and parents who had advanced degrees from Stanford and from Berkeley and you know, had these amazing careers.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_01: So I was just on that path.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_01: But I realized I can still get to some of those same levels, but just doing it in a completely different way.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_05: Hmm.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, I think that based on people I've worked with as well, I think that is a common story.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_05: Even in cases where it doesn't involve like multiple layers of promotion, people's journey, their path, is often governed by a whole series of factors that have got very little to do with what they're naturally good at.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_05: So, for example, I think in you know, my my own story, I wanted to be a doctor from when I was about five years old.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_05: And I got as far as I was very dedicated to towards that idea, and I got into med school.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_05: And um in my early years of med school, a couple of different things happened that basically meant that I had to change majors related to you know financial and security and stuff like that.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_05: Um and but at the same time, uh it became very clear to me that even though I had enough skills to get me into medical school, I was never gonna be a good surgeon.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_05: And my friends that actually did go all the way through and came out the other side, as I watched them work and I saw more closely what they did, um, it was clear that I I didn't have the skills necessary to do it.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_05: And it would have been extremely difficult for me to be uh to be successful in it.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_05: And so that I mean, ostensibly that was driven by me.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_05: But we've encountered many people for whom their career paths are driven by what their parents did, or their career paths are driven by the expectations that were set on them in school.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_05: So, for example, I've encountered many people that are in finance, whereby it's like, oh, well, I was good at math, and so a teacher said I should do finance, and I and so I went in this in this direction.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_05: But so little attention was is paid to that idea of are you actually good at it?
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_05: And if you're good at it, as you point out, that's sort of a prerequisite for it being effortless and fun, right?
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, does it come naturally to you as different than I'm very skilled at it?
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_01: So we're so focused on intelligence and capabilities, and you can be good in math and go into so many different career paths.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_01: So I wouldn't say if you love law, if if law just fascinates you and you love it, think about what kind of lawyer you could be.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_01: Because there's a huge difference between being a trial lawyer versus someone who's truly writing these in-depth briefs, from someone who's a patent lawyer.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, we just see so many different things.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_01: Some people are journalists that write about law.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_01: So um, it really is about understanding this nuance and how you most naturally execute and adding that to this what do you already know about yourself with intelligence and personality?
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_01: So it's just this missing piece that you need to understand it.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, so that bit, that sort of bit that helps you do it, do it effortlessly.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_05: Let's get in into that.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_05: You talk in the book about three dimensions of the um of the mind cognition, affect, and conation.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_05: So can you explain just briefly what those uh what those are so that we can kind of use that as a framework for the rest of the discussion?
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_01: And this framework has been around for a very long time.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_01: Ancient philosophers talked about this.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_01: Aristotle and Plato wrote about this.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_01: So there are these three dimensions of the mind that has long been agreed upon.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_01: One is the cognitive, or think of it as skills, intelligence, reason, capabilities.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_01: This is the what you can do.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_01: Second part of the mind being the affect, as you said, or what we think of as your personality, motivation, drive.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_01: What do you value and what do you want to do?
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_01: So think about what are you passionate about, what motivates you.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_01: And then the whole in are you more of an introvert, an extrovert?
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_01: So affective part of the mind is measured in a lot of assessments that we've all taken in our career, like Myers Briggs or DISC or Clifton Strengths, predictive index.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_01: Any of you in the workplace who've experienced those, those fall under the affective part.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_01: So think of it as the cognitive being, the what you can do, affect being what you want to do.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_01: Well, there's this third dimension called the cognitive, spelled C-O-N-A-T-I-V E.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_01: And the cognitive part of the mind is how you execute.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_01: So it's really thinking, feeling, and this is the doing part.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_01: So you have an instinctive way of naturally solving problems, making decisions, and executing.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_01: And this is a very stable trait in all of our research, and we always have third-party university researchers help us with kind of test, retest studies.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_01: We find that you have an innate way that you get things done that has been with you since you were young.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_01: So this is that doing part exclusively.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_01: And what is wonderful about knowing this is you can put all of those pieces together.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_01: You can put and just make sure you're in a role that doesn't ignore this third component.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_01: Because what has happened is we've learned there's one right way to do things.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_01: There is one right way to organize ourselves, there is a right way to do research.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_01: And by the way, this starts with well-meaning parents and teachers very early on sometimes.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_01: And then you get this fabulous mentor or boss in the workplace who also has this is the way that we approach problem solving.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_01: And so we find that if you can get really clear on what is that to you, and and by the way, all everyone listening, you know, think back to a day where where you really were in a zone or in flow or just time flew by.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_01: What kinds of tasks are those?
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_01: Because oftentimes we don't value those things.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_01: Because they come so easily, it seems like you know, they're not that important, and yet there's some gold in there.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_01: You have to get really clear on what those cognitive strengths are and then build on that.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_01: So that's what we're uniquely focused on is the getting things done.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_01: And as leaders, here's why this matters to us because we don't want to just focus on intelligence.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_01: I'm sure you all know someone who's really smart who doesn't get a lot done.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_01: There is a missing component when it comes to performance and productivity that we know if someone's in a role where they're aligned with their most natural way of executing, they're in the zone, work feels effortless.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_01: But I think most important for an organization is they can sustain those high levels of performance.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_01: Because what we hear about people who are fully capable of working against those strengths is it's okay, but eventually there's burnout, there's turnover.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_01: You just can't sustain it.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_01: So we want people who are all aligned with their strengths individually, and then we want to see what happens when you add all that together for teams as well.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_01: And those of you that are listening as parents, this is really critical because we don't find any genetic ties to how your kids execute.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, here's the good news: this is a stable trait and this is predictive.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_01: Here's the bad news, you're not gonna change your partner, right?
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_01: So quit trying to change your significant other.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_01: And your kids are kind of hardwired from birth.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_01: If they are crammers and do things at the last minute, you got to help them work with that and figure out how to capitalize on that burst of energy they get toward the end.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_01: They're gonna be fabulous, successful adults.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_01: They just have to figure that out, right?
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, we'll get into what this means in the workplace a little bit later on.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_05: But for those of you that are watching on video, I'm just popping up to the screen a little graphic that is in your book, which I think is very, very interesting.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_05: And for those of you on audio, I'll briefly describe it.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_05: This is where they're kind of like the do more and the more naturally bits come together.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_05: Um and so what you point out, which I think is really interesting, is that if you're pushing against uh those you shouldn't even call them weaknesses, but if you're pushing against the way in which you would would naturally do work, you can get stuff done to your point, but you wind up being burned out.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_05: If you focus almost entirely on just like going with the flow and being and doing what comes naturally to you, but without any effort to do more, then you might feel alright in the short term, but you're not going to be terribly productive.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_05: And there's the and then there's this sweet spot that you point out of sustainable performance where you're you're doing what comes naturally, but you're doing a bunch of it, as it were.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_05: And then at that point, that's when you get that that sustainable performance.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_05: I really like that as a as a graphic, and I think it will resonate a lot with people who who listen to this this podcast regularly.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_05: Um because it is that it's what we've historically referred to as personal effectiveness versus pure productivity, that idea of being sustainably effective over time.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_01: And what you know already in all of your work is it's regenerative.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_01: Because the more it really is about managing mental energy.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_01: You have this mental energy available to you to execute and get things done.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_01: And the more you can stay in the zone, you're freeing up more energy in order to do even more.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_01: But yeah, as the model shows, believe it or not, there is so much, there is such a thing as too much freedom to be yourself.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_01: If you're not applying those strengths toward something that matters and is going to get you results and are the most important things to do, that's a challenge too.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_01: And by the way, any of you that work with entrepreneurs and founders of companies, that's what I find is eventually they get to the point where they have all this freedom to do things their way, but not enough uh of a good opportunity to apply it in a way that matters most.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_01: So they keep coming back into their existing organization and messing up what's already working, right?
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_01: So that model really shows the balance.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_05: Now you talked a little bit about Myers Briggs and uh disc and things of that nature that focus on one of these three dimensions of the mind.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_05: Why do you think it is that there's been so much focus on that particular aspect versus the work that you do?
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I think it's been an evolution.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_01: So the founder of the company that now I am an owner in was Kathy Colby.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_01: Her father uh was E.F.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_01: Wonderlich.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_01: So any of you listening who've heard of the Wonderlich personnel test, it's still used in the workplace.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_01: He's often been called the founder of personnel testing.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_01: So he was the first person that took a test out of the school system and put it into the workplace.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_01: Well, the Wonderlich is a cognitive test.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_01: So very early on, we could measure intelligence and we were very focused on that.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_01: In about the 1950s and 60s, personality tests became very popular because people started realizing how useful it was to understand more about what makes someone tick, what motivates them.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_01: Because if you understand what people care enough about to act on, you can tap into that.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_01: And frankly, personality traits are sometimes what really gets people in the workplace not aligned on values.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_01: So what we know as leaders is I do want to know enough about your personality in order to understand how you might respond to certain things, um, what kind of situations to put you in, uh, that will where you're really going to thrive.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_01: So I listen, I love affective tests.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_01: We certainly use them at our organization, but I think they just became another piece of the puzzle in addition to looking at intelligence and skills.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_01: And so that became very, very trendy and popular, and people still like it.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_01: What I hear from people in the workplace who use those assessments is, but I can't use this to get down to the task level.
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_01: So what we're trying to just add is one more piece to that.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_01: And to me, it's just an evolution.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, Kathy Colby came from a testing background and she was working with kids in Gifted Ed.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_01: She had the largest business in the world for materials for gifted education.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_01: And as she worked with kids, she started saying, What is this behavior that I'm seeing that is so uniquely a child where if you give them total freedom to solve problems, there's a pattern to how they'll start.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_01: And so that's when she went down the road of starting to research what are we missing in this, you know, in this whole really formula.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_01: And that's the conate of peace.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, I think um, I think there's a practicality to this that kind of created a bit of a light bulb moment for me as I was learning more about it.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_05: Because I go back to my days I worked for a decade at Microsoft and I and I and we did disc there as many people at Microsoft did.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_05: And I distinctly remember A, thinking and then B being told by multiple other people, yeah, but your disc profile doesn't tell me if you do anything, you know, and or your disc profile doesn't tell me actually how to work with you.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_05: It might tell me how to have a conversation with you, it might tell me how to connect with you in some way.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_05: And of course, that is a very important aspect of being able to collaborate effectively.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_05: But what I really need to know in a very practical sense is how you get work done.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_05: And that is that's the heart of what you guys do.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_05: I've got a question for you though, related to one other, I guess, in vogue thing of the last decade or so, and that's growth mindset.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_05: So um I'm curious as to what your take is on growth mindset.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_05: We have a slightly controversial take on it here.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_05: But uh, but I'm I'm curious as to what your your take is on growth mindset and whether it's helpful, not helpful, something in between.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_01: Uh well, one of our four core values is always improving.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_01: So what we find is that people who are aligned with a mindset around growth, as long as it's realistic and practical and not growth at all costs, right?
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_01: Of every anything can go too far.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_01: But for us, we find that people that work in our environment very much do have a growth mindset.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_01: And I think some of that can be learned, but it is it's a value system as well, right?
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_01: So I would love to hear what you think about that, but uh it it depends on how far it goes and what you do with that.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_01: But at the very core of a growth mindset, I feel like it's incredibly valuable, certainly for us.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_01: And you can have any cognitive strengths or instinctive ways of executing and still have a growth mindset.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_01: Now, we can talk about specifics in a minute.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_01: Every once in a while I hear people talking a lot more about innovation and change.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_01: So if we're talking about innovation and change, we can talk about how people most naturally handle change and how can we make sure that no matter where you are and the degree to which you'll take risks and innovate and change, um, how you can still have a growth mindset.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_01: So would love to hear you add to that.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, I mean, basically our take on this is that there's the idea of a of a human being able to learn and grow and adapt, and we think that that is absolutely critical.
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_05: In fact, I believe that the number one attribute that is going to be needed in the future of work at a human level is adaptability.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_05: So I think that's enormously important.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_05: But there's a difference between that and the concept which was in Carol Dwarck's initial work around just being a peep people being able to have a growth mindset fully across the board.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_05: She herself went back and revisited that and basically said, look, there are aspects of our lives where we have a growth mindset, and there are aspects of our lives where we have to be fixed, and that's okay, and that's normal.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_05: And there are parts and there are times where it's actually very helpful to have aspects of a fixed mindset, but still be somebody who is adaptable and grow overall.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_05: And then there's this other aspect, which we've seen in corporations particularly that have lent into this very heavily, whereby a very, very simplified version of what the original research was about is thrown into a corporate context and becomes almost a weapon, right?
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_05: Managers talking to employees who are rightly resisting something or pushing back against something and dismissing them as not having a growth as not having a growth mindset.
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_05: Or versions of growth mindset being used exclusively as means of promoting people or not promoting people and things like that.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_05: So it's a it's a great concept and framework to describe something that's super important, which is being able to adapt, but it's something that can be, like anything, can be weaponized in the wrong way when it's deployed in a not very thoughtful way at scale.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_01: I completely agree with you.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_01: And I think um inherent in some of that sometimes is this is the way I'm approaching getting things done or this big problem.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_01: And if you're doing it differently, that's a problem and you don't have a growth mindset.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_01: And I completely disagree with that because what we find is the teams with diversity of how we approach a problem are actually most successful.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_01: So there's there should be a natural pushback and push and pull in a really successful team.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_05: So yeah, thanks for calls that fake growth mindset or false growth mindset or something like that, where effectively you're sort of faking it.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_05: It's like my way is the growth mindset way, and your way is not.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_05: Um, the other thing that you brought up early on as well that I I want to touch on is as we're getting into these sort of fixed approaches and these approaches towards productivity, you mentioned it at school.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_05: setting but of course there's like hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of uh traditional productivity books I've probably got a few of them behind me on my on my shelf here that themselves propose productivity becomes equated to do X in Y way and unsurprisingly because we're all different and we're all word different ways X doesn't always work.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_05: My favorite go-to example which doesn't directly uh apply to the way that you measure people but my favorite example is the 5 a.m club and and if you read that book it basically says get up early I mean I'm sorry I'm taking a full book and and putting it in a sentence but it basically says really successful people get up very early in the morning.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_05: If you do that too you can be super successful.
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_05: And we did an experiment on that uh where we got a bunch of people uh and who agreed to get up uh at super early in the morning and very unsurprisingly we found that like the night owls were basically just tired at three o'clock in the afternoon.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_05: I mean it was and so this kind of idea this thing that we do where it's like a productivity book is do this and you will be awesome sells books, but it doesn't really change anything, right?
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_01: That's right.
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_01: You know one of the questions I ask a lot of teams that I work with is, you know, have you ever either read a book or listened to a speech or listened to some productivity expert and they had really good well-meaning advice you know how much of that are you still doing?
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_01: And people can really relate to that.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_01: It's like this sounded really good but I'm not doing it.
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_01: Which means that for you it was not sustainable.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_01: And what a great example you gave because you know I started wearing an aura ring one of these you know tracking biometrics.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_01: Physiology shows us or biology, you know, that we are actually some people have a completely different you know chronotype as far as when are you most productive and how does your body operate.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_01: So there's a lot of advice like that that sounds good on the surface.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_01: People try and apply it then they tell me how guilty they feel that they're not organized in this way and every New Year's resolution you have is the same.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_01: I'm going to change myself in some way and do it differently.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_01: So one of the things that I think getting clarity about your way of your strengths and the way you get things done is all of a sudden you see things through a different lens.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_01: It's like putting on I remember putting on glasses for the very first time when I was really young.
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_01: You will start being able to like filter out some of this advice that is not going to work for you, but also take some of it and apply it in a way that will, right?
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_01: So what are the foundations of this 5 a.m club?
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_01: What is it that you're doing at 5 a.m that is so useful well could you do that also at seven or eight or whatever it is, whatever those factors are, there might still be a really good nugget in there for you, but not with such strict guidelines around it.
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_01: Like I think we're missing we're constantly focused on the how we're going to get there versus the end result sometimes.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that is leaders too.
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_05: If we can keep saying here's the end result and there's lots of freedom to get there's probably some nugget in that book that really would work for you but not at 5 a.m I I believe having spoken to uh to a few clinical psychologists about this I believe that this is sort of part of human nature right why don't you why don't you do as I do right pattern your life after mine I do it this way and if you do it this way too you too can be successful.
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_05: And in the book you highlight situations where there's one example that I really love where it's a father and a son and they go into business together um and the father has a particular way of approaching work the son has a different way of approaching work rather beautifully they're inverted to what you would expect the father to be like and the son to be like in terms of how they they approach work um but those two methods they could complement each other in certain circumstances and we'll get onto that later but in this case they clash to such an extent that it almost creates an inability for the for them to work successfully together.
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah and we see that all the time the potential for conflict when you approach problem solving in a totally different way with someone that you're working with is huge.
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_01: So if you can just have this understanding know where you're coming from you should be able to capitalize on that instead.
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_01: But anytime you have a a leader subordinate relationship, a parent-child relationship, even business partners we see that a lot it is really hard.
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_01: Because it is well-meaning like you said it's human nature it is absolutely well-meaning advice for a parent to say here's how I did well in school this is what you need to do you know down to the you need to study in the exact same place every day and not have any distractions or noise and you know that works for some people and for other people they need the music on.
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_01: They need to switch it up they need to be out in nature and they'll actually learn better.
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_01: So the examples are endless uh from our personal lives but man do they play out at work like you're talking about and we work with a lot of family businesses any of you who work with family or maybe even the next generation that you're mentoring really be aware of how your own bias maybe on how you get things done affect others.
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_05: All right so I think we've established hopefully that we're not only are we all different in terms of our sort of innate personalities and so on but that also there are a lot of differences in how we naturally approach what we do this cognitive aspect that we've been talking about.
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_05: So let's put that into into practice we'll we'll look at mine.
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_05: I'm nervous now I don't know what you're gonna tell I don't know what you're gonna tell me uh but I'm a eight three five three and I know because I can see it on my screen in front of me that you are a 3583 that almost sounds like an exact almost like an exact mirror I don't know but uh but anyway so I'm an eight three five three that's not gonna mean anything to anybody that's not really familiar with uh with the work that you do so I wonder if you could just sort of talk through the dimensions that you think about and uh and and what it means uh for something like me.
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 28:35
  SPEAKER_01: Um well first of all and some of the descriptions I give you all may sound a little familiar when we start talking about structure or things like that but remember that if you're taking it on a personality test, it's telling you what do you value what do you want.
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_01: So I may really value and want to be super structured but this is all about what do you actually do?
• 28:55
  SPEAKER_01: So here's the deal it's it there's really just four different dimensions that we're looking at and these think of them as a continuum.
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_01: So whether or not you ever take a Colby assessment which is what Paul actually completed an assessment to get his result I think you're gonna be able to relate to to the ends of the continuum here for all of you.
• 29:14
  SPEAKER_01: So think it through as I'm saying it.
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_01: So the first one is what do you do with information?
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_01: So we call fact finder kind of like how do you handle information?
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_01: How do you get information how do you give it and it really is a continuum from someone who's gonna be very detailed and naturally dig and go deep on one topic versus someone on the opposite end of the continuum on a scale of one to 10 who will simplify and bottom line things.
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_01: And of course then there's people in the middle too right so Paul if totally free to be yourself you will get the opportunity to kind of dig in, do some research build on past experience say how has this worked in other cases you know that is your natural way of doing things.
• 29:54
  SPEAKER_01: And I know if I work a bunch of books.
• 29:56
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah really bunch of books and I know if I'm working with you let's say we're we're partners together and I ask you a question off the top of your head if you answer me in a way that is absolute I don't have to guess that you I I know you didn't guess.
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_01: If you give me a a an absolute answer it's because you strive to be an expert in something.
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_01: So opposite end of the continuum I happen to be on the opposite end I'm a three on a scale of one to ten.
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_01: I am naturally bottom lined and I will put things into bullet points naturally.
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_01: So if we were running a marketing team together you might go do a lot of the marketing research take all the data and then I'm gonna take it and I'm gonna simplify it for our clients and I have an example of that just this week that I got from someone at a major pharma company and she's head of research for one of their most important drugs a cancer drug and she's a two on a scale of one to ten I said tell me about how you're the researcher and she said I find so much joy in taking all this complex data and putting it in a way that consumers can understand and they're never going to have to know all of what we did to get there, right?
• 31:04
  SPEAKER_01: So what do you do with information is is the first one.
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_01: And it's not that I'm not capable of being detailed and research and going in depth and that I didn't do that in school.
• 31:14
  SPEAKER_01: It's that if I'm doing that all the time, that's when I have stress and that's what happened early in my career.
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_01: I kept getting myself into more and more data analyst type positions.
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_01: I love math I'm good at numbers.
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_01: I affectively value data very much people on my team know do not bring me a decision like we want to spend$10,000 on this thing if you have not done your due diligence, if you haven't gotten all this research.
• 31:41
  SPEAKER_01: So the fact that I want it is not the same as but if free to be myself what would I do?
• 31:45
  SPEAKER_01: I would be skimming stuff.
• 31:47
  SPEAKER_01: So I need people around me like you in that case Paul.
• 31:50
  SPEAKER_01: So that's that's the first one.
• 31:51
  SPEAKER_05: So factfinder what do you do just before we leave that because I think that is so important and I know you've alluded to it a couple of times now but I think this is really important when people think about this exact thing.
• 32:00
  SPEAKER_05: You can value something highly really highly but still feel that can be different from you the human being the person who is best equipped to do it.
• 32:13
  SPEAKER_05: And I think that really can be a problem for solopreneurs or for small startups or small businesses where basically you're the person who values it so naturally because you're the person who values it you tend to be the person who does it and that's what exhausts you.
• 32:32
  SPEAKER_05: So getting creative about figuring out how you can collaborate in such a way so that people who who aren't who don't just value it but actually are naturals at doing it are the people that are doing it can make so much of a difference in terms of overall success, right?
• 32:48
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, you nailed it we the things we value are sometimes the things that we keep taking on because somebody's got to do it.
• 32:55
  SPEAKER_01: I know I need this part done versus really figuring out that I need to surround myself with some other people that do that.
• 33:03
  SPEAKER_01: The other thing that people do is they surround themselves with people who are just like them because the opposite end of the continuum might drive them crazy, right?
• 33:10
  SPEAKER_01: So you you may be sharing lots of details with me about a decision you made and my eyes kind of start glazing over and or in a meeting maybe you're asking a lot of detailed questions and justifications.
• 33:22
  SPEAKER_01: I need to say this is great.
• 33:23
  SPEAKER_01: I need more of Paul in my life and yet human nature is let's get to the bottom line Paul right so you need to understand that value.
• 33:31
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah thank you for that little nuance there because people take personality tests and say Paul is someone who values or Amy is someone who values data and then they're going to put me in that kind of role and that's not that's not the zone for me.
• 33:44
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah.
• 33:45
  SPEAKER_01: So there's what do you do with information?
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_01: There is what do you do with structure?
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_01: So the next one is what we call follow through to what degree do you naturally organize and structure something versus you're very adaptable and more random in the way you get things done.
• 34:00
  SPEAKER_01: We need both ends of the continuum.
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_01: I need people who are going to put things into a traditional structure strive for closure on a project put together the true plan or the project plan and really be someone who is energized by keeping things in order keeping lists crossing them off those kinds of things but I need the opposite end of the continuum and that's where you fall Paul that when things aren't going according to plan I'm gonna go to you because you are naturally someone who is adaptable and people those of you on that opposite end of the continuum you were probably told in school you know you got to do your outline before you start your research and you would say I can't give you an outline until I get all my data first right like so our we have data on thousands of teachers and we know that they fall on the end of the continuum toward the seven through 10 and follow through.
• 34:50
  SPEAKER_01: And so everything there is a lesson plan and we're gonna stick to this this order and we're gonna finish this one thing before we move on to the next but some people really thrive when they're holding many different balls up in the air.
• 35:03
  SPEAKER_01: So they'll start one thing switch gears go to something else come back around to something and that actually energizes them.
• 35:10
  SPEAKER_01: So on a team I need people who are going to create processes and plans but I need people who push back when that gets too far or we up bureaucracy right so so both ends.
• 35:21
  SPEAKER_01: And I happen to fall right in the middle I'm a five which means I'm accommodating as needed I I tend to strive to find some kind of a structure that works for me and then I'll tweak it a little bit.
• 35:31
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah so for creative writers would that be the type of creative writer that sort of frames out every aspect of their book would they be like the higher scorers versus the creative writer that is just like okay blank page let's see what happens let's just start getting this and then their editor goes this is just a mess.
• 35:52
  SPEAKER_03: It's jumping around and someone else has to clean it up a little bit.
• 35:55
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah absolutely cool all right next so next one is what do you do with change?
• 36:00
  SPEAKER_01: How do you handle risk and uncertainty?
• 36:02
  SPEAKER_01: So we're we're we call it quick start mode where there are people who just naturally jump in and innovate and experiment and just they're gonna try things along the way.
• 36:13
  SPEAKER_01: Other end of the continuum is someone who's naturally going to make sure that we don't get to take on too much risk.
• 36:20
  SPEAKER_01: And their strength is to make sure that we have stability in our organization.
• 36:25
  SPEAKER_01: And I can't tell you how many entrepreneurs I've seen who go and hire a bunch of people who are on the seven through ten part of this continuum who naturally are just experimenting all the time.
• 36:35
  SPEAKER_01: Next thing you know you have no real product.
• 36:37
  SPEAKER_01: I mean in software this is vaporware right you ask a client a client says I'll buy this if you add this bell and this whistle and we're so negotiable that we just keep messing with it and you don't have anyone on the other end saying wait a second we need to pick a version put this out and then we'll do what comes next.
• 36:53
  SPEAKER_01: So there is a certain degree to which we need to drive some risk and change to keep ahead of the competition.
• 36:59
  SPEAKER_01: We need to keep growing and evolving but we need people who aren't gonna you know throw the baby out with the bathwater and change everything that's working.
• 37:08
  SPEAKER_01: So the one twos and threes say why are we changing what's already working?
• 37:13
  SPEAKER_01: And that natural push and pull is really important so that we have manageable innovation and change.
• 37:21
  SPEAKER_01: And then you need lots of people in the middle too like you the beauty of what you bring to the table Paul is you're very accommodating.
• 37:28
  SPEAKER_01: You will say okay what's already worked with innovation let me take innovation that's already there and adjust it and adapt it and move it and move it forward.
• 37:36
  SPEAKER_01: So I find that organizations deal with this part of the Colby result quite a bit because you either have a leader that's like risk at all, change at all cost, you know, innovation is everything but then there's organizations that also pay lip service to innovation but everything better work.
• 37:56
  SPEAKER_01: Now you really mean that you want innovation and turn this thing on its head then you better be willing to know that only one out of 10 ideas that are so out there are going to work right and so think about how you most naturally handle change when you're making decisions.
• 38:14
  SPEAKER_01: Now the people who drive innovation doesn't mean they like all change.
• 38:17
  SPEAKER_01: They like the change they created right so if you're saying well no I hate change I don't want to handle change really think about how do you start I'm an eight and quick start I just start by having a brainstorm I can brainstorm 20 different ways to approach something.
• 38:33
  SPEAKER_01: I need people around me who are going to say but let's let's maintain this.
• 38:37
  SPEAKER_05: So that push and pull is really critical in critical yeah this is the one that surprised me a little bit in terms of my own results because I think of the roles that I've had where I've really thrived I've three times in my career I've run what they call intrapreneurship functions you know so innovation in innovation functions within organizations.
• 38:59
  SPEAKER_05: Love that work love the um kind of like the ambiguous nature of it but also I would tell people when we were recruiting for our teams I would tell you them you sort of I believe anyway you have to kind of like simultaneously be fine with an absence of I don't know structure if you like um and fine with living in ambiguity but you need to be always wanting to get rid of ambiguity in places where it is needless, right?
• 39:33
  SPEAKER_05: Where it doesn't need to exist.
• 39:34
  SPEAKER_05: So you have to kind of like simultaneously hold those two things in your head.
• 39:39
  SPEAKER_01: Is that why I'm a five yeah I think that you you are such a fabulous bridge with we need to just start fresh and do something that's never done before and hey we need to manage it so it doesn't totally go off the rails.
• 39:52
  SPEAKER_01: So you will take innovation you'll take some stuff that's already worked and really push change forward based on what's worked in the past with bringing in the new like that is ideal for you.
• 40:03
  SPEAKER_01: Yes absolutely whereas you could do a startup like completely from scratch but some of that's more painful for you than taking something that's a little more established and continuing to grow and build on that.
• 40:14
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 40:15
  SPEAKER_01: So some entrepreneurs thrive in startup and then they're done I mean two years in they're like this is boring now even though it's not even off the ground and they'll move to next and the next yeah so yeah all right so last one.
• 40:29
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah last is implementer implementers what do you do with the three dimensional world so this is all about to what degree are you going to build a solution do hands-on hand crafts.
• 40:38
  SPEAKER_01: So seven through ten is an implementer in medicine there are surgeons they are literally taking saws and hammers and performing medicine other end of the continuum is someone who doesn't have to see it to believe it.
• 40:50
  SPEAKER_01: They deal very much more in the abstract and they're not necessarily using tangible solutions and building an actual result.
• 40:58
  SPEAKER_01: So you see the difference between someone in financial services we see a lot of one, twos and threes in more construction, manufacturing, you know all those kinds of things but in medicine there's a hands-on component versus an internal medicine doctor might never lay hands on you.
• 41:14
  SPEAKER_01: They tend to fall in that one two or three but a surgeon performing surgery for five six eight hours with tools we find on that other end of the continuum.
• 41:25
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely and you're someone who can just deal in the abstract software would have been great for you versus hardware right so hardware yeah versus being hands-on wanted to be a surgeon ended up doing doing a pure mathematics degree and then and spent 10 years at the world's largest software company so I don't know there it is maybe there's maybe maybe there's something there.
• 41:49
  SPEAKER_05: Maybe there's something to this Amy I don't know this person would have been fine and you would have been able to do it but man hands-on surgery would not have been fun for you long term yeah yeah yeah wow fascinating stuff so I guess if we take all of this stuff together and we think about all uh all of these elements together as we've kind of alluded this is this is sort of a description a practical description of if you like that that the how of work um given that it is uh kind of practical I know you said that we've had an e an evolution of how of how these assessments are are being performed but I guess my question would be something super simple which is that this feels like something that to many organizations would be as important as anything.
• 42:42
  SPEAKER_05: And yet to this day most managers are not talking to their employees in these terms most teachers are not talking to their students in these terms most parents are not talking to their kids in these terms and most spouses are not talking to each other in these terms.
• 43:04
  SPEAKER_05: So why do you think that is I mean we all have a concept that there's like a how people do things, right?
• 43:09
  SPEAKER_05: We kind of understand that conceptually so why do you think it is that we're not in general having conversations like the conversation that you and I have been having for the last 40 uh 45 minutes.
• 43:21
  SPEAKER_01: I really think the main reason is we have been told that you know you can do anything.
• 43:28
  SPEAKER_01: I mean this is the deal we are just a society that is you can do anything.
• 43:32
  SPEAKER_01: And sure you can you might be capable but should you is a totally different thought process.
• 43:38
  SPEAKER_01: So in our minds number one it's simple to say there's one right way to get things done sometimes it's a little complex and messy to say everyone's different in the way they approach things.
• 43:48
  SPEAKER_01: I mean that's gonna as a leader man you're adding one more thing to my pile that I have to figure out about my people that's I've already got a lot going on right yeah so that's one thing.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_01: But then I do think we just have a mindset that you can do anything.
• 44:03
  SPEAKER_01: Well, sure, Paul, you could have the most structured every single day the same, take on some of that follow-through kind of work for your company, but man, would they be missing out on your real, on your real strengths?
• 44:16
  SPEAKER_01: So you could, but that's not a good fit for you long term.
• 44:20
  SPEAKER_05: So that kind of almost leads us back to one of the offshoots of growth mindset that we were talking about before, because that again, part of this growth mindset discussion is centered around the idea of all you've got to do is kind of like think about all this differently, and then you can accomplish X, Y, and C, which can absolutely have some benefits, right?
• 44:39
  SPEAKER_05: I mean, if the limiting factor is that you feel you're constantly being told how bad you are at something, if that's the limiting factor, if you take that factor away, then you can dramatically improve performance.
• 44:51
  SPEAKER_05: But you say in the book, I can't remember the exact quote, you might be able to correct me on it, but it was something along the lines of you know, if all you do is work on your weaknesses, you end up with basically a bunch of slightly stronger weaknesses, right?
• 45:06
  SPEAKER_05: That's right.
• 45:07
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 45:07
  SPEAKER_01: It's not worth the time.
• 45:09
  SPEAKER_01: And unfortunately, maybe early in your career, listen, I've got, you know, kids younger in their career.
• 45:14
  SPEAKER_01: I um, you probably should work against your natural strengths for a while because it develops a level of resilience.
• 45:19
  SPEAKER_01: Frankly, it develops a little bit of empathy for people who are in a job where they're working against their grain, and you you figure out some really good strategies.
• 45:27
  SPEAKER_01: Because it high in the sky is we'd be in the zone 100% of the time.
• 45:31
  SPEAKER_01: That's not reality.
• 45:32
  SPEAKER_01: I do have to work against my grain.
• 45:34
  SPEAKER_01: There's stuff, there's detailed stuff no one else can do.
• 45:36
  SPEAKER_01: I got to read a 20-page contract and only I can do it.
• 45:39
  SPEAKER_01: That's on me, right?
• 45:41
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but for the most part, the more we do that, what we've done is we've put ourselves in a position to keep trying to improve our weaknesses versus what are we spending energy on?
• 45:52
  SPEAKER_01: If you can get to the same end result in a totally different way, and again, you're not off the hook for this excellent end result, by the way.
• 45:59
  SPEAKER_01: That that I want to make sure we all understand this is not a cop-out for getting something done.
• 46:04
  SPEAKER_01: It's that it just may look very different for every person.
• 46:08
  SPEAKER_01: And that's our goal is to help people understand that it doesn't have to be just one way of doing things.
• 46:14
  SPEAKER_01: You've got to figure that out for yourself, get some clarity, and then start assigning this amazing mental energy that you have, this gift in a way that is gonna work for you so that you can sustain this long term.
• 46:27
  SPEAKER_01: And then, of course, the last thing is you gotta surround yourself with a team.
• 46:30
  SPEAKER_01: You gotta figure out the team part of all of this.
• 46:33
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, and actually that's the that's the last question I got for you, is actually about the team dynamics.
• 46:38
  SPEAKER_05: That's the part I think that I've that I found probably the most fascinating, um, which is this idea of how do you go about assembling a team.
• 46:47
  SPEAKER_05: So we we talk about the idea of team amplifiers as being one example of a uh of an archetype in the work in the workplace, but you look at the this this concept of of a group of pulling a group of these people together and show that it's not one size fits all.
• 47:07
  SPEAKER_05: It's not as simple as we got a bunch of people that have these attributes, and therefore we need a bunch of people that have completely different attributes until we even everything out.
• 47:16
  SPEAKER_05: In some cases, you do want similar profiles, and in some cases you want quite different profiles.
• 47:22
  SPEAKER_05: So can you talk briefly about that and how that actually translates to assembling a team that is going to be greater than the sum of the pods?
• 47:30
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 47:31
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, let's start in the simplest form is there's you as an independent producer, and you got to know when do I need a clone of me and when do I need someone who has more complimentary strengths.
• 47:40
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so that that's the starting point is I'm lucky enough to have an assistant.
• 47:45
  SPEAKER_01: She is very different than I am, and that's great because I can delegate a bunch of stuff to her.
• 47:49
  SPEAKER_01: But I know if I need a brainstorming partner, I need someone who's just like me, not someone who's gonna say, wait a second, that's not gonna work, wait, we're already doing all these things.
• 47:58
  SPEAKER_01: So you need to understand who to surround yourself with for your own productivity, when to work by yourself, and when to work with others.
• 48:05
  SPEAKER_01: I think collaboration is very overrated.
• 48:07
  SPEAKER_01: There is a lot of everybody has to get in the room for all the decisions and all the work.
• 48:11
  SPEAKER_01: So that's number one is be strategic.
• 48:14
  SPEAKER_01: But if we really look at an entire team, what you can think about is the insights on people's strengths help you figure out where is this team going to get stuck.
• 48:26
  SPEAKER_01: Because there we really need a diversity of strengths.
• 48:29
  SPEAKER_01: So I know we all say, wouldn't it be great if everyone was just like me?
• 48:32
  SPEAKER_01: That might sound great, but we have some amazing research done by Stanford MBA program, by University of Arizona Engineering School that looks at why teams need diversity and teams that were given a very specific pass-fail kind of a thing, um, you know, had some level of differences in problem solving.
• 48:52
  SPEAKER_01: But guess what?
• 48:53
  SPEAKER_01: That is not always fun.
• 48:55
  SPEAKER_01: Having levels of diversity and how we get things done, there's this natural push and pull that's healthy, but you gotta understand where are we gonna get stuck.
• 49:04
  SPEAKER_01: And so a team with a lot of people just like you, Paul, you're brilliant when it comes to the details and the research and all that.
• 49:11
  SPEAKER_01: But if I put 10 out of 10 people on a team with your strengths in Fact Finder, they tend to get into analysis paralysis.
• 49:18
  SPEAKER_01: So they need someone like me on the team to say and give me the blessing to speak up when we've gotten too deep in the weeds, when we're problem solving together, to go, hey guys, we are, man, are we stuck in the weeds?
• 49:30
  SPEAKER_01: Let me try and get this down to a few key points, whatever it might be.
• 49:34
  SPEAKER_01: So the first thing is understand what you have on board.
• 49:36
  SPEAKER_01: But if you actually have the flexibility to put a team together from scratch, let's say for just a specific project, like a specific specialized project, I want to pick and choose some people who are each gonna play a role.
• 49:49
  SPEAKER_01: They're there for a reason, they know why they're there.
• 49:52
  SPEAKER_01: It speeds us up, it leads to better trust, we know who to count on for what, and everyone, there's a sense of this kind of um, you know, security and being able to push back and it being okay because that's my role in this, and we know that's helpful.
• 50:08
  SPEAKER_01: So just understanding strengths like that is really useful.
• 50:11
  SPEAKER_01: Listen, I always give team leaders, do this little activity with your team, and just at your next meeting, go around the room, and an activity you can say is what's one tip for working with you?
• 50:22
  SPEAKER_01: The more that you can get really in touch, and I'm responsible for saying, Hey, here's when I do my best work.
• 50:28
  SPEAKER_01: This is one tip for working with me, and understanding that about everyone, we can have more of a strength-based organization and culture where we value differences and we understand each other a little bit better.
• 50:39
  SPEAKER_01: And watch the way that that speeds things up and you get more done.
• 50:44
  SPEAKER_05: Really, really fascinating.
• 50:46
  SPEAKER_05: The whole team dynamic aspect of this is probably another one to two hour discussion in its own right.
• 50:51
  SPEAKER_05: So thank you for sharing just a little bit, a little peek uh into that, Amy.
• 50:55
  SPEAKER_05: We're gonna have to call it good for today, though.
• 50:58
  SPEAKER_05: Maybe we can have you back someday and you can talk a little bit more about the uh about the team aspect of it as well.
• 51:03
  SPEAKER_05: Um, but for now, uh, thank you so much for joining us today, Amy.
• 51:08
  SPEAKER_05: Really appreciate it.
• 51:09
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you so much.
• 51:10
  SPEAKER_01: This was this was so much fun.
• 51:14
  SPEAKER_00: Humanity Working is produced by Matt Neal.
• 51:18
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• 51:24
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• 51:27
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• 51:34
  SPEAKER_00: See you next time.