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Why Being Human at Work Isn't Optional Anymore · Not All Business

• 0:00
  Why do toxic leaders keep getting promoted when everyone
• 0:03
  knows they're toxic? Why do we treat being human at
• 0:07
  work like it's optional? Today, we're talking to Heather
• 0:09
  Conklin. That's right, another Heather.
• 0:12
  This Heather is CEO of Torch and a former SVP and general manager
• 0:17
  at Salesforce. You're going to hear from
• 0:18
  Heather why the part of you that people see at work is just the
• 0:22
  tip of the iceberg and why understanding what's beneath the
• 0:26
  surface changes everything. We also talk about that paradox.
• 0:30
  Toxic leaders get promoted at the exact same rate as good
• 0:33
  leaders. Why?
• 0:35
  And she introduces us to fail salad.
• 0:38
  It's a thing, and it might just change how your team operates.
• 0:41
  So listen in today if you're tired of choosing between
• 0:44
  getting results and treating people like humans.
• 0:47
  Oh, and we also debate Uranus versus Uranus and get hooked on
• 0:52
  Sonics lessons because that's just the kind of thing we do on
• 0:56
  the show. So let's get to it.
• 0:58
  Welcome to Heather's I mean Not All Business, a podcast by two
• 1:03
  former CEO's who went from competitors to friends.
• 1:06
  I'm Blakely Graham and my Co host is Heather Cooper and we're
• 1:09
  joined by our producer Clay Cornell.
• 1:12
  Let's get down to business. Blakely, we are officially in
• 1:23
  2026. Are you doing the thing where
• 1:25
  you keep writing 2025 or? See you we.
• 1:29
  Don't really do that anymore, do we?
• 1:31
  Remember in the days when you used to write out checks?
• 1:33
  Are you that only for checks checks or remember in school you
• 1:37
  had to write like December 1st 2025 like on the top of your
• 1:42
  papers? Kids don't even put their names
• 1:44
  on their papers anymore. Like it's like slop is accepted.
• 1:47
  It's all a joke. So I don't think people write
• 1:49
  here. Are they even writing papers
• 1:52
  with papers and like pencils? No, no, they, my kids don't know
• 1:56
  how to write. They don't even teach.
• 1:59
  They don't teach cursive. They don't really even barely
• 2:02
  teach print. They don't teach phonics.
• 2:05
  They do not teach you how to spell.
• 2:07
  It's all gone. Did.
• 2:08
  You ever have to do Hooked on Phonics when you were a kid?
• 2:10
  Do you remember that Hooked On Phonics worked for me, did you?
• 2:15
  Oh, I don't. I don't remember the slogan.
• 2:17
  I do. I don't know why I didn't have
• 2:19
  to do it, but it was pretty. It was pretty cool.
• 2:22
  The. Commercials made it look so
• 2:24
  cool. Like, even if you were like, I'm
• 2:25
  pretty good at this stuff, but I kind of still want it.
• 2:28
  I know. I kind of.
• 2:29
  I don't know what a past participle is.
• 2:31
  Yeah, they didn't. Teach that to us, right?
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  I thought it was like, here's the letter O, here's the letter
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  U together. It's oh, what is it is that?
• 2:43
  Somebody get her hooked on phonics right now.
• 2:47
  Out. It depends.
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  Cloud or cloud? Ow, Yeah.
• 2:52
  So I think it's OU is loud. Ow, ow, there we go.
• 2:56
  O with you is loud. Yes, but but what about, uh, for
• 3:02
  Boo or no Boo boogie BOU, oh, oh boogie like you look so bougie
• 3:10
  today in your. Diamond, that's just that, you.
• 3:12
  Want You don't say I'm bougie, you say you're bougie.
• 3:17
  We all need phonics. Oh my gosh, this is what's wrong
• 3:19
  with us. It started with our generation.
• 3:21
  Even though it's supposed to be like snowing outside, Nick and I
• 3:24
  were outside in the backyard looking at the stars because it
• 3:26
  was like 70° out. And it's ridiculous.
• 3:31
  He was kept saying Uranus for the for the planet because we
• 3:35
  were talking about which ones you can see with the naked eye.
• 3:38
  And I'm like, why are you saying Uranus?
• 3:40
  He goes because every time I say Uranus, everyone makes a joke.
• 3:44
  I'm like. Yeah, now he's talking about the
• 3:46
  urine. But now you're saying Uranus and
• 3:48
  people think you're an idiot, that you don't know how to say
• 3:51
  Uranus and it was this whole thing.
• 3:53
  About. But it's not like anus is a
• 3:57
  worse word than urine, you know what I mean?
• 4:01
  I didn't even think about that. That's a really good argument.
• 4:03
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 4:05
  Anyway, I'll let him know you said that.
• 4:07
  Yeah, that's good. Another point blankly.
• 4:11
  Why do we say your name so much on the podcast?
• 4:13
  That 2025 recap was hilarious. Blakely.
• 4:16
  Blakely, Blakely, it was great. It was great.
• 4:19
  I'm going to stop saying it. I'm going to win.
• 4:21
  Yeah, my name the most word. I thought, though, you were
• 4:25
  going to take it as like, oh, we say her name so much because
• 4:28
  we're always like, making fun of her or she's always in trouble,
• 4:32
  you know? Like, you get scolded Blakely,
• 4:35
  you know? But right, Well, you don't have
• 4:37
  too much because you love me. That could have been that this
• 4:40
  year it's going to be all about Heather, Heather, Heather,
• 4:43
  Heather and we're actually at second episode of the year.
• 4:46
  In order to to secure that, I actually decided to invite a
• 4:50
  guest on with the name Heather as we.
• 4:53
  Know so we have an episode of Heather's.
• 4:55
  Constantly. Heather's.
• 4:57
  Yeah. Did you ever see that movie?
• 4:58
  Heather's. Oh yeah, we saw that movie.
• 5:01
  We all saw that movie. Clay, have you seen that movie?
• 5:04
  No, there's a movie called Heather's.
• 5:06
  Yeah, it was about. Oh.
• 5:08
  It's mean were. They word classic.
• 5:11
  Yeah, they end up well, I think. Didn't Winona Ryder end up We
• 5:15
  might we Should we just bring Heather on to talk about
• 5:18
  Heather's because she probably knows Heather's as well?
• 5:22
  She but she might have some opinions.
• 5:24
  Yeah, we'll see in a minute. But also I have another question
• 5:27
  for you. I think that we should do some
• 5:30
  lives this year where we do a movie night where we will do
• 5:34
  like we'll go live and like you and I will watch a movie because
• 5:38
  we are always talking about all of these things for fun and then
• 5:40
  people can join and like watch it with us.
• 5:43
  Do you hate this idea? Seen people do this where you go
• 5:47
  on live like Instagram live or whatever, watch a movie.
• 5:49
  We'll either tear it apart or we'll be like we'll watch
• 5:51
  Working Girl bottle of wine like this is we can.
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  Watch Working Girls. Yeah, like didn't.
• 5:57
  Stand on the chat and you can bring people on.
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  We can do that right here on this recording platform.
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  We can go live and invite people to come in.
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  That would be so fun, wouldn't it?
• 6:04
  Yeah. Yeah, I kind of thought you were
• 6:07
  talking about, like, live shows where, you know, we're
• 6:11
  podcasting live and you want to watch a movie.
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  I just. Watch I make fun of my basement,
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  You know, your kids watch the Twitch TV of like people playing
• 6:23
  Minecraft like but they won't play Minecraft.
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  It's a discord. Yeah.
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  Oh my gosh. They're talking to each other on
• 6:32
  the discord. Clay.
• 6:34
  What? What?
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  Why are you laughing? Oh, just because it was like I
• 6:38
  felt like we were about to stumble into like it's a twitch,
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  it's a discord. The Tik Tok's been Instagramming
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  my been Instagramming my reddits.
• 6:48
  He's worried about geriatric social media syndrome.
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  Yeah, we have that. And you know what I learned over
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  the holiday break is that millennials, like worst fear is
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  being seen. Trying like that is our deepest
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  fear as a generation is not that we would fail, it's that we
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  would be seen trying. And so when I see other people.
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  Like a try hard. Like don't be such a try hard
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  kind. Of thing.
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  No, just like, just like, like authentically trying something
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  and like. Like you're a know it all, like
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  you were supposed to have known it already.
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  So you don't want to be vulnerable and try stuff in
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  front of other people? Yeah.
• 7:30
  So, and I'll get back to why Heather triggered that or her
• 7:35
  action triggered that, but. Why did Heather trigger it?
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  Tell me what Heather did. Well, so the idea is you were
• 7:41
  stumbling into what it felt like to me was like you said, it's
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  not a twitch, it's a discord. And I was like, Oh my gosh, like
• 7:48
  we're about to get into like what a Discord is, what a Twitch
• 7:52
  is, what a what all of that is where is like you're not active
• 7:56
  on those sites. I can guarantee you're not
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  active on Twitch and you're not active in a.
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  Display my son was he was like 1 of he was like one of the top
• 8:05
  Fortnite. Twitchers.
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  He went to worlds, he did not went to Fortnite.
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  Like watching other people play Fortnite.
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  No, he was like. He was in it.
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  But he was letting people watch him play Fortnite.
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  We put it on at the office and we would get into which I know
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  we we need to get to Heather because she's the expert on
• 8:28
  this, but that is part of getting to other people.
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  Human. Well, I don't know if she's a
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  gamer. We're going to find out.
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  But what she does is she cares about her people who work with
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  her getting to know them as humans, getting to know their
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  skills, their interests, who are the whole of them bringing to
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  work. We should we should just spring
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  around this is this is getting ridiculous degrees.
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  Or dance, not a. Chastising you'd like to do?
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  I'm not chastising anyone. It's a new year.
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  I'm good. Happy new Year, Blakely.
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  Happy new year, Blakeers. Heads, do you really want to go
• 9:02
  there? No, as I get back, I'll never
• 9:04
  say it again. You cannot call me HEAD.
• 9:07
  Or you cannot call me Blakers. It's a pact.
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  All right, it's a deal. Let's bring her on.
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  Heather. Heather Conklin, welcome to the
• 9:14
  show. Everyone is looking for an
• 9:20
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• 9:24
  fun format. Well, there's one podcast I want
• 9:27
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• 9:30
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• 9:32
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• 9:36
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• 9:40
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• 9:43
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• 9:46
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• 9:51
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• 9:54
  ecosystems that position you as the authority in your space and
• 9:58
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• 10:01
  Real frameworks, real ROI Clay, that's return on investment.
• 10:06
  So if you're leading a business and you want to grow, go
• 10:09
  subscribe to Your Audience's Waiting wherever you listen to
• 10:13
  podcasts. Welcome to not All Business.
• 10:19
  Thank you. I'm so excited.
• 10:21
  To be here with you both. Oh, we're excited to have you.
• 10:24
  Quick clarification, since we're going to name this episode
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  Heathers. Did you watch the movie
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  Heathers? I, I feel embarrassed to say
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  that I have not. And I, I feel I just need to do
• 10:37
  that this weekend because my name's Heather and I've never
• 10:39
  watched that movie. It's probably because you're
• 10:41
  younger, You you missed it by like 10 years or something.
• 10:45
  She was probably in the womb when we were.
• 10:47
  Watching it, wow. I did identify what Play said,
• 10:50
  like, don't want to show anyone that I'm trying something that
• 10:54
  that resonates, but unfortunately I have not seen
• 10:57
  Heather's. OK, I'm in trouble already.
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  I'm in trouble already, yeah. Exactly.
• 11:02
  OK, I want to hear, I want to hear more about why you
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  resonated with what Clay said about the try not wanting to be
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  seen trying what how did that Oh.
• 11:10
  Yeah. What does that mean?
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  I don't, I don't like being new at anything.
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  Like I don't want to ever be like like fumbly and weird at
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  something. And so I will try to make sure
• 11:23
  I'm going to be good at it before I do it.
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  Like I remember when I first started dating my husband, I, he
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  went to the gym and you know, this was before I had kids and I
• 11:32
  had time to go to the gym, but he he was like, why don't you go
• 11:34
  to the gym and work out? And I was like, because I have
• 11:36
  no idea what to do there. Like I don't know what the
• 11:38
  things are. I don't know how to use them and
• 11:40
  I'm all like an idiot. So I'm just like gonna go.
• 11:43
  And he's like, why do you think people are even looking at you?
• 11:46
  Like no one's looking. At you at the gym.
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  No, that's not true. Because you're hot and
• 11:50
  everyone's looking at you. So that's.
• 11:52
  I disagree with him. You have to listen to our
• 11:54
  episode with Nicole Christensen because we talked about that
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  deeply. Exactly that.
• 11:59
  Yeah. Like a click and how we need to
• 12:02
  overcome that. But how it's a very real thing.
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  Like you are not alone. I would never go anywhere near
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  the weights because I would just feel so foolish.
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  So, but I think your husband wasn't wrong either.
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  I remember one of my close girlfriends gave me this advice
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  when I was feeling super self-conscious, like after baby
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  getting in a bathing suit. We were going on a sailing trip
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  and she's like built like a supermodel like Athena goddess
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  type person. And she just looks at me and she
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  goes. No one cares.
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  Everyone is way too busy looking at themselves.
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  Way too busy. They really aren't looking at
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  you and I Heather one I agree that which.
• 12:43
  Ones one do. You want to call.
• 12:45
  Just kidding. Blonde Heather No, there's no no
• 12:52
  how about host host Heather, you're just to get.
• 12:55
  My screen host, Heather, I also agree with you that people are
• 13:01
  going to look, but they're only going to look if like they're on
• 13:02
  the prowl, right? Mostly people just care about
• 13:05
  their own vanity and we should just not worry about it.
• 13:07
  And so get in that gym. Heather Conklin host guest
• 13:10
  Heather Owen will never get that right.
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  Also, if you don't want to, that's totally cool too.
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  But I will say I look at other women all the time, all the
• 13:19
  time, all the time, and I am always.
• 13:22
  Judging one. I guess you are, but I I'm doing
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  it in a comparison. And by the way, let me tell you,
• 13:32
  I'm not winning. The comparison.
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  Don't compare yourself, you know what I mean.
• 13:36
  It's a it's a thing. It just it, it will happen where
• 13:39
  it's like, OK, I'm looking at someone at the gym, not out of
• 13:42
  lust and God, I would never look at guys in their gym.
• 13:45
  They're disgusting and. They're gross.
• 13:47
  Right. But for a woman, I'm like, oh,
• 13:49
  she's got really nice. Triceps.
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  Or how flat her stomach is. It's always out of a not a
• 13:56
  desire out of a, out of a jealousy or out of a comparison.
• 14:00
  And that's not just physical either, by the way, like I, I
• 14:03
  think women, I think we compete with each other more than we
• 14:06
  would like to admit. I obviously part of this.
• 14:08
  Podcast we do. Help us help each other and
• 14:11
  collaborate and get away from the competition.
• 14:14
  But my gut thing is to be like, am I?
• 14:16
  Am I as good as that as am I as successful as her?
• 14:19
  Am I not? And I'm usually comparing on the
• 14:22
  downside if I'm honest. Yeah, I'm with you.
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  I'm with you. Yeah, it's a Heather.
• 14:27
  Issue I have this problem as well.
• 14:30
  It's actually why I'm not doing any sort of like social media or
• 14:33
  anything anymore. Like I shut off everything.
• 14:36
  When did you shut everything off?
• 14:38
  That's a good question. I shut off Instagram and what
• 14:42
  would have been Twitter and Facebook like a few years ago,
• 14:45
  like I just realized I was like, it's not doing anything good for
• 14:48
  me. I'm not going to do it anymore.
• 14:49
  And so I don't go on. I, I lie, I go on once in a
• 14:52
  while on Instagram for two reasons.
• 14:54
  I go on to look up people who are in Love is Blind because.
• 14:58
  That is where you. That is where you get the best
• 15:00
  info on them. And then I go on to like look at
• 15:04
  this. I don't know if you know Shay
• 15:05
  McGee, but she has nice clothes and she posts a lot about what
• 15:08
  clothes she buys and it's a good place to find some clothes
• 15:11
  inspo. So I go on for those two reasons
• 15:13
  alone. But anyway, I for all other
• 15:17
  scrolling, I stopped. I went to LinkedIn instead,
• 15:19
  mostly for work. And I realized recently, like I
• 15:22
  do the same comparison thing you were just talking about, just
• 15:25
  like with work, you know? And so I was like, well, I took
• 15:28
  that off my phone too. I just I can't have anything
• 15:30
  nice because I just use it to compare to myself.
• 15:33
  To hurt yourself emotionally, yeah.
• 15:35
  That's so. Wise and I love that you say
• 15:38
  love is blind too. It's not like you're shutting
• 15:39
  your yourself off from entertainment or you're just
• 15:43
  choosing how and recognizing what is is entertaining and
• 15:46
  helpful to you. Like what's bringing you joy,
• 15:47
  laughter, you know, connection versus what's kind of slowly
• 15:52
  little cutting at you. And that's brave.
• 15:57
  That's super brave because you're also kind of rejecting
• 16:01
  any like, especially with the LinkedIn, it's like the the
• 16:05
  balance there of positive versus negative.
• 16:08
  How did you come to recognize the negative, especially on
• 16:12
  LinkedIn? Well, it's like when I took all
• 16:15
  those other ones off of my phone.
• 16:17
  I directed all that scrolling energy at LinkedIn.
• 16:22
  And it's just like anything. You can always find somebody
• 16:25
  who's doing better, has more, whatever.
• 16:28
  Yeah. And it was just like in the work
• 16:29
  realm. And LinkedIn too, is it?
• 16:32
  It's like, so you can make something look so much bigger, I
• 16:35
  guess with anything you can. But with LinkedIn, like the most
• 16:37
  annoying thing is that you can make yourself really successful.
• 16:40
  But it's like no one was actually at that conference and
• 16:42
  you did the shot where there's like you, you're speaking and
• 16:45
  it's like, wow, hundreds of people.
• 16:47
  And really there's 20, right? You know, I mean, you can always
• 16:49
  play with that. So it's all artificial anyway.
• 16:51
  I was about to say that LinkedIn to me is the worst offender of
• 16:56
  artificial content. Like right, like you leaders
• 16:59
  have their platforms and they write out their content and it's
• 17:02
  so AI heavy that it's and it was, I mean, don't get me wrong,
• 17:08
  like I'm not always the best writer.
• 17:10
  And so when that AI was just coming on the scene, I was using
• 17:14
  it to kind of proof things a little bit and and I thought I
• 17:18
  sounded smarter. And now it's like, you know, in
• 17:20
  an instant in LinkedIn, like, OK, that went through Claude,
• 17:24
  that went through ChatGPT. So it's just getting kind of
• 17:28
  less real as well. And it's very beneficial for
• 17:31
  work, but you still have to wade through all the shit.
• 17:34
  So I don't know what do you do? Takes a lot of curation.
• 17:39
  Yeah, I mean, I do think it is important to like I I do use it
• 17:43
  still on my desktop. I just took it away from myself
• 17:45
  on my phone so I can't mindlessly scroll that thing.
• 17:49
  Yeah, no, that's that's huge. I like this.
• 17:53
  You're right about the drafting Blakely, because it went from
• 17:56
  being kind of a shortcut and helping brainstorm to very
• 17:59
  quickly being a crutch. And so I have very rarely
• 18:05
  actually I will say I don't and this is true.
• 18:07
  I do not use it to create a writing anymore because I think
• 18:14
  2 reasons. One, I think people can see
• 18:16
  right through it just like you said.
• 18:18
  And two, I'm really afraid of losing the skill.
• 18:21
  It's, it's the skill to sit there and brainstorm and force
• 18:23
  yourself to push through a thought.
• 18:25
  It helps because I'm also writing right now on the side as
• 18:27
  well. But like if you, if you're not
• 18:30
  exercising that muscle, you can lose it pretty quickly.
• 18:33
  Heather, what would you say about that?
• 18:34
  I know you're. Yeah.
• 18:36
  Looking at that balance between human and AI and figuring that
• 18:41
  out, like, what's your take on using AI for drafting?
• 18:44
  Yeah, I I agree. I I try to use it as like a
• 18:47
  proofreader or like, what would you change about this or, you
• 18:50
  know, poke holes in it kind of thing.
• 18:52
  But I, I also won't like actually, that's not true.
• 18:56
  The only other place I use it for drafting is if I have a lot
• 18:58
  of different like ideas in my brain.
• 19:00
  I love Claude and I just sit and talk, you know, unless you
• 19:03
  record like a huge like voice ramble.
• 19:06
  So I record something like that and I'm like, can you just turn
• 19:08
  that into some sort of like a doc or an outline or something
• 19:12
  that I can at least like get started from and it makes good
• 19:15
  connections and things like that.
• 19:16
  So I use that. But then I I agree and I love
• 19:19
  like I I love writing and but then a lot.
• 19:22
  Even with that, you are still starting with your voice.
• 19:25
  I think that's the difference, right?
• 19:26
  Like going there and saying hey, how do I feel about this?
• 19:30
  And like, say, say something, give me an opinion on the
• 19:34
  current state of affairs, you know, and DEI, that's so
• 19:40
  different than me talking to it, putting it in and inputting my
• 19:43
  ideas and saying, help me refine this, capture this.
• 19:45
  Like I don't want to ever lose my voice because I haven't
• 19:50
  tended to it. Enough, yes, yeah, I agree.
• 19:54
  The original thoughts and your your original voice are super
• 19:57
  important. Yeah.
• 19:58
  And it can get fuzzy in my experience, Like you're like,
• 20:01
  did I come up with that? Did I start thinking about that?
• 20:03
  And then you can kind of lose it.
• 20:06
  That way. Although don't you wish certain
• 20:08
  people at your work were using it more in terms of, like, nasty
• 20:14
  emails or, you know, people that don't already communicate well,
• 20:17
  like kind of a shitty manager? Like, wouldn't you, Shouldn't
• 20:21
  there be like a shitty manager filter through Claude and then
• 20:24
  all of a sudden they're like a good manager, Right.
• 20:26
  Because yeah. This person all.
• 20:28
  Of a sudden shitty manager. Saying thank you, Yeah.
• 20:31
  Yeah. They don't usually like, oh,
• 20:33
  that could be a good outcome, yeah.
• 20:35
  No, you made me think of it in Gmail.
• 20:37
  Now it'll be like, I'll write this e-mail for you.
• 20:39
  And I was like, I mean, that would be convenient, but I
• 20:41
  actually was like, no, like I, I need to use my own brain.
• 20:45
  Like get out of here. Like I went and turned that
• 20:47
  feature off 'cause I was like, I don't need you writing
• 20:49
  everything that I say. It is creepy.
• 20:53
  It's creepy. I, I agree completely.
• 20:56
  What are you, I mean, you've, and I'd love to hear a little
• 21:00
  bit about your, your company and, and why you started it and
• 21:03
  what you do. We've done a little bit of
• 21:05
  background conversation before this got started.
• 21:08
  And one thing that you said that really struck me was the
• 21:13
  importance of people and humans being seen and valued and heard
• 21:18
  and how that can translate into a healthy work environment.
• 21:23
  So tell us a little bit more about what you're doing and and
• 21:26
  speak to that if you would. Yeah.
• 21:29
  Well, let me tell you, I guess where that like concept like
• 21:32
  came from for me and like where it really hit me.
• 21:35
  So I was at Salesforce for 10 years prior to going to Torch.
• 21:39
  And in my time there, I got this opportunity to start our what
• 21:44
  was called our associate product manager program.
• 21:47
  It was like all about bringing these people out of undergrad,
• 21:49
  teaching them to be great product managers and at the
• 21:51
  company. And I went into it thinking, OK,
• 21:53
  I'm going to teach them all the hard skills and like how to do,
• 21:56
  you know, product work. And when I got like a group of,
• 22:01
  you know, 12, like 22 year olds in the room, I was like, oh,
• 22:04
  man, like they are struggling with a lot of things.
• 22:06
  But it is not like it is not actually, you know, about the
• 22:10
  hard skills. Like in in retrospect, the hard
• 22:13
  skills are really easy to teach and for them to learn.
• 22:15
  But they were struggling with a lot of like, imposter syndrome
• 22:18
  and like going into these teams where they were so new and they
• 22:22
  didn't know how to, like, talk to these people who are so much
• 22:25
  more experienced and than them. They couldn't like, find their
• 22:28
  voice. And the whole point of the
• 22:29
  program was that we were trying to instill like, new behaviors
• 22:33
  and new ways of doing things on our teams.
• 22:35
  And so it was actually really critically important that they
• 22:37
  could go in and exercise that like voice and confidence and
• 22:40
  everything. And so that was what was like
• 22:43
  going on in my like, work life. But like personally for myself,
• 22:47
  at the time, I was having the same experience.
• 22:50
  I was like a new VP, I was a new mom.
• 22:52
  I was leading this program. I had no idea what I was doing.
• 22:55
  I was getting a lot of like really good, like recognition
• 22:59
  from running the program. But like inside I was like, holy
• 23:02
  shit, I'm freaking out and I don't know what I'm doing.
• 23:05
  And so I actually started working with a coach.
• 23:07
  And at the time, my coach just really helped me to, I don't
• 23:11
  know, just like shift my perspectives on all these things
• 23:13
  and what was happening for me personally in my coaching.
• 23:16
  I was like, wow, what if I take some of these concepts and these
• 23:20
  ways of thinking and doing things and I teach it to these
• 23:23
  22 year olds before they learn all these bad habits and you
• 23:26
  know, like model after some of the not so great like leaders
• 23:30
  that they could have modeled after.
• 23:32
  And so it brought these concepts to them and just really saw how
• 23:35
  much focusing on like who they really are as people and their
• 23:38
  self-awareness and like thinking about how do they relate to the
• 23:43
  people around them just completely change things.
• 23:46
  And of course, it changed things at work, but it actually started
• 23:49
  to change things in their personal lives too.
• 23:51
  And so I would say I just got bit by this bug of like, what
• 23:54
  does it mean then to really feel like you can show up more
• 23:58
  authentically and understand who you are and what your strengths
• 24:01
  and flaws are and, and operate from that kind of more like
• 24:04
  grounded place versus the typical, you know, more like
• 24:08
  showy nature of, of how people are at work, I think most of the
• 24:12
  time. How did you do that in practice?
• 24:15
  You said you you taught some things that you learn from your
• 24:18
  coach. Does it it's like, hey, be
• 24:21
  vulnerable now? Or was it emotional intelligent
• 24:24
  tests that we all take and learning how to interact with
• 24:27
  each other? Or is it a skill at a time?
• 24:29
  Like what did that look like? Or give me a story example.
• 24:33
  Basically what I ended up doing, I had my second daughter like
• 24:37
  during the early parts of that program and so I went on mat
• 24:40
  leave for like 6 months and I was like avidly reading Brené
• 24:44
  Brown books and all this stuff. Like I was like, I'm really like
• 24:48
  I'm all in on these ideas in this concept.
• 24:50
  And so I just like went kind of on my own, you know, personal
• 24:54
  journey with all of that during mat leave.
• 24:56
  And by the time I came back, that's when I realized how much
• 24:59
  they were all struggling and I was just like, oh man, I need to
• 25:02
  like bring some of those ideas and some of the like personal
• 25:05
  things that I've like gone through and coaching like to to
• 25:08
  them. So I literally like created a
• 25:10
  PowerPoint deck about like Brené Brown concepts, you know, things
• 25:15
  like vulnerability and empathy and like courage and connection
• 25:19
  and all these things. And I they like sat them all
• 25:21
  down and I was like, they're going to think like I went on
• 25:24
  Matt leave and like lost my mind.
• 25:26
  You know, they all are, really. People do sometimes maternity
• 25:31
  leave just for those of you that don't know what Matt, leave is
• 25:33
  maternity leave, yeah. Thank you.
• 25:37
  So so yeah, I went and I like we, we had like a, we did like
• 25:41
  half days every month with them. And so we had like half day and
• 25:45
  I was like, I'm going to like take a huge risk here and teach
• 25:47
  you about these concepts. And now luckily, you know, Fast
• 25:50
  forward however many years, like 7 years, eight years, they're,
• 25:55
  these things are talked about a lot more I think at work now
• 25:57
  than they were back. Yeah, I was going to say, you
• 26:00
  were really early. You were so early.
• 26:02
  I'm very progressive. It was like, no one has ever
• 26:05
  heard the word like empathy at work or like, you know, talk
• 26:09
  about like courage at work and things like that.
• 26:12
  But I just like felt really like passionate that it could really
• 26:15
  change things for them. And so we did that and then we
• 26:19
  did an activity of sharing. And I've sensed on this activity
• 26:22
  with like every team that I've LED and it it's so it's just eye
• 26:27
  opening, but it's just a prompt where you say, tell us something
• 26:31
  about tell us something about you that helps us understand
• 26:36
  like the leader you are today, Like something about like
• 26:39
  connecting who they are and how they like, you know, came to
• 26:42
  being who they are with how they show up at work and how they
• 26:44
  lead at work. And I think you have to have
• 26:48
  some base level of like connection and trust to do this
• 26:50
  activity. You can't just like walk into a
• 26:53
  random room of people and, and do this well, but with some
• 26:56
  baseline, you know, it takes somebody kind of like
• 26:59
  courageously going first and sharing a more personal, you
• 27:03
  know, part of themselves. But, but man, you like, you
• 27:07
  start to learn about where did people really come from and
• 27:10
  where are their weird quirks, you know, like tied to different
• 27:13
  things in their past or what are they really like proud of or
• 27:16
  scared of and, and all these things.
• 27:18
  And I feel like then you really get to see like a pretty
• 27:21
  different version of of like who they are and, and they're like a
• 27:24
  deeper level of their story. And then you can just appreciate
• 27:28
  them And, and I think even like, I'll say, tolerate them, you
• 27:31
  know, better in different circumstances because, you know,
• 27:34
  they're not just like overbearing.
• 27:35
  It's like something tied to, you know, The Who they were or how
• 27:39
  they grew up or how they were parented or anything else.
• 27:41
  And, and I don't know, I've seen it be where people go real, real
• 27:45
  far and, and we'll say a lot of things.
• 27:47
  And I've seen ones where it's like a little less, but but
• 27:50
  either way, like you learn something about who, how they
• 27:53
  like identify and who they are. And it really does help you like
• 27:57
  just relate to them on a different level going forward.
• 28:00
  So as the leader, how did you createspace and permission for
• 28:03
  them to share? Usually I go first, so it's a
• 28:09
  bit about like sharing stuff about how I grew up or like who
• 28:13
  I am and how that impacts like who I am at work.
• 28:17
  Like, I don't know, like part of my thing is, is like prior to
• 28:22
  all this work that I did during that time of like coaching and
• 28:24
  the Brigade Brown stuff and everything, like I was, I
• 28:27
  personally, I'm a very good, I used to call myself a chameleon.
• 28:32
  Like I, I grew up with like divorced parents and I went like
• 28:35
  back and forth between my parents houses.
• 28:37
  And in doing that, I got really good at like reading the room.
• 28:41
  Like I could go in and be like, OK, what's going on here this
• 28:43
  week? And what do I need to do?
• 28:46
  Who do I need to be and where I could just like show up.
• 28:48
  Yeah, which is like it's a superpower skill of mine, but it
• 28:53
  also has, you know, as everything has a dark side.
• 28:56
  And so I like share that. But you know, you go into more
• 28:59
  detail, you tell a little bit more of like what it was like
• 29:01
  and how you use it for good and for bad.
• 29:03
  And but just like how that show how that shows up in my
• 29:07
  day-to-day leadership. And you know, again, like if you
• 29:10
  if you have a baseline of trust and you heard a story like that,
• 29:13
  then the next person who goes typically will share something
• 29:16
  that's like, you know, not just, you know, something kind of
• 29:18
  check the box sort of answer response either.
• 29:22
  Yeah, and I bet it made it really come alive.
• 29:24
  I mean, I think the power of story is is huge.
• 29:29
  And I mean, we see it all over the place just from the early
• 29:31
  days of reality TV to now like the 10 second Instagram real.
• 29:35
  There's everyone's telling a story and looking to relate to
• 29:38
  people through that. And when as a leader you can set
• 29:44
  that standard and say, OK, here I'm willing to share.
• 29:48
  I think that is is brave of you because who knows, you know what
• 29:52
  they could be saying behind your back if you disclose whatever.
• 29:55
  But also you're saying it's part of me.
• 29:57
  And if you can, if I'm going to trust you with that, then they
• 30:01
  can in turn expect that from each other and from the team.
• 30:07
  And that's really, really powerful.
• 30:10
  Yeah, and I don't think you have to go like, that far either.
• 30:12
  Like, if you're hearing this and cringing and being like, oh,
• 30:14
  God, you know, Heather's crazy guest.
• 30:18
  Heather is crazy, then. Thanks for the clarification.
• 30:21
  You're welcome. There's.
• 30:24
  Simple ways you can bring this in too, like if you aren't at a,
• 30:28
  if you aren't leading A-Team through sensitivity or trust or
• 30:33
  sharing. Like the way my husband of all
• 30:37
  people like comes in and thinks about it is like, are you not
• 30:41
  that that's wrong? Like he's very smart, man.
• 30:44
  I don't mean to like. My husband.
• 30:46
  No. No, no.
• 30:48
  But he always challenges like what if you can just operate
• 30:52
  through a lens of giving the benefit of the doubt?
• 30:55
  And it really is, if you see something that you didn't like,
• 30:59
  are you, you know, your son skips school, right?
• 31:04
  This is, I don't know how I'm taking it to parenting because
• 31:06
  that's where I sit right now. But OK, I could be like, oh,
• 31:09
  he's just up to no good. He's doing this, he's doing
• 31:12
  this. But what if I just operate
• 31:13
  through the benefit of doubt? And so it just is like a trigger
• 31:16
  to be like that empathy, like where they're coming from.
• 31:19
  What is their perspective? OK, maybe he was helping a
• 31:24
  friend, you know, whose car broken down on the side of the
• 31:27
  road. And so you get curious, you ask
• 31:29
  your questions, and it just kind of stops you from judging or,
• 31:36
  you know, going straight to this person's not competent, right?
• 31:41
  Or they're me or whatever. So it's like, yeah, it's like
• 31:44
  knowing where they're coming from or just not assuming that
• 31:49
  they're doing wrong on purpose. No one wants to do wrong on
• 31:52
  purpose, right? Intent is another like, you
• 31:54
  know, like phrase. But I do think it's a curiosity
• 31:58
  thing. Like you have to actually like,
• 32:01
  I don't know, like I, you know, we talked a bit about how I, I
• 32:04
  just really believe that like more human based leadership
• 32:07
  could I just think it could change a lot of things like both
• 32:10
  at work and life everywhere. But I think it like, it kind of
• 32:14
  starts from just like you have to like you have to care enough
• 32:17
  about the other person and believe that that other person
• 32:20
  like has, has their own, you know, shit going on and they
• 32:24
  have, you know, their own life and like a whole world that you
• 32:27
  don't understand. And I don't know if you've
• 32:31
  you've seen the term Sonder, this is not like the bad
• 32:34
  Marriott acquisition Sonder that happened lately, but actually
• 32:38
  like, I don't know, I first saw it from Adam Grant on, on
• 32:41
  LinkedIn. But you know, it was like this.
• 32:44
  It's the concept that like everyone you meet has this, this
• 32:47
  like rich story of, you know, like heartbreak and wonderful
• 32:51
  things and all this in their life that you can't possibly
• 32:54
  understand. And so if you just, like, give
• 32:57
  people that benefit of the doubt and assume, you know, that they
• 33:00
  have a whole world that you don't understand and that you
• 33:03
  care enough about that as like a fellow human being, like a lot
• 33:07
  could go a lot better. You know, not just assuming that
• 33:11
  people are just, you know, like failing or out to get you or
• 33:14
  anything else. Like, you know, like, get
• 33:16
  curious. And that's where I think a lot
• 33:18
  of like really good stuff can start to happen.
• 33:20
  Yeah, because if you don't do that, then you're creating a
• 33:22
  fear culture, right? Like, I think so many leaders
• 33:26
  are afraid to open up and blur this kind of personal
• 33:30
  professional line because one, they don't want to get taken
• 33:34
  advantage of. They don't want to say, oh, OK,
• 33:36
  if I'm going to Care now that so and so is this.
• 33:38
  And they're going to show up every week and ask for an
• 33:40
  excuse. And, you know, where does that
• 33:41
  go? Like, how do we keep this in
• 33:43
  check? But the the thing they're
• 33:46
  missing is that people who feel seen, heard, cared, valued,
• 33:51
  actually do want to do well. As humans, we have an innate
• 33:55
  desire to do well, to succeed, to please.
• 33:59
  And if they're being confronted with someone who doesn't value
• 34:04
  them, then it it really is just a job.
• 34:06
  They've got 1 foot out the door. They're always looking for
• 34:08
  something better. There's not a loyalty there
• 34:11
  because you're not giving them anything in return.
• 34:13
  You're not valuing them as a human.
• 34:14
  So why the hell are they going to value you?
• 34:16
  The second somebody else can come along with a better offer,
• 34:19
  they're going to take it. And that's and, and that is such
• 34:22
  an oversight that so many leaders make by just, if you
• 34:24
  stop to care and pause and be valued, they actually might work
• 34:27
  better for you. Well, I'm going to challenge
• 34:31
  that. Yeah, but there there's a reason
• 34:33
  that paradox exists, and it is. Let's give the example of taking
• 34:40
  advantage of it. As a leader, you have such
• 34:43
  urgency to deliver something, right, to deliver to a goal.
• 34:47
  And that urgency gets like knocked out when you get
• 34:51
  blindsided by someone sick. Someone else is going on mat
• 34:54
  leave. Oh my gosh, someone else is not
• 34:55
  going, you know, pregnant. And Oh my gosh, I, I've been
• 34:59
  late every day. I don't know why they're late
• 35:01
  every day, but this person's late every day.
• 35:02
  And like, you feel this urgency and you know you're not going to
• 35:06
  hit the goal. And so you act, you can act
• 35:10
  horribly and not human and not be patient.
• 35:13
  Like to me, that's like this weird crux.
• 35:15
  You get put in as leader and yet there is study after study that
• 35:20
  shows if you can get above that and work through that and still
• 35:25
  keep your humanity in it, humanity in it, you actually run
• 35:29
  a much more efficient organization over time.
• 35:32
  But but I don't know. I mean, how do you handle that
• 35:35
  as a leader in the moment when you're faced with all those
• 35:37
  blows? And I do want to be human and.
• 35:40
  I kind of make my goal. You know what I mean?
• 35:42
  But. It's hard, yeah.
• 35:44
  You have to hold both things as true, right?
• 35:47
  Like it's it's like the performance element and the
• 35:50
  people, which is really hard. Like, but it's a spectrum and
• 35:52
  you don't always have to be, I think at like, you know, one
• 35:55
  place on that spectrum. But it's funny because whenever
• 35:58
  I go and talk about any of this with people, you know, you hear
• 36:00
  quickly, like, OK, well, if we just we all focus on people,
• 36:04
  then, you know, like our performance will suffer or
• 36:07
  people love to name companies where like they were not really
• 36:11
  a human companies, but they clearly did great business.
• 36:14
  So it must not matter, you know, you can still get the results.
• 36:16
  And I'm like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 36:18
  But like, you know, can we just like hold both of these things
• 36:21
  as being true? Like one of my like mantras
• 36:23
  about leadership is like I care just as much about what you do
• 36:28
  is how you do it. Like you could be the best
• 36:31
  whatever you know, CEO, see whatever, like any title in the
• 36:35
  world, like you could be the best at that job, but if you're
• 36:37
  shitty to people and make, you know, like a.
• 36:39
  Yeah, like, Amen. Leave.
• 36:41
  Awake in your path then like it doesn't it doesn't matter, it
• 36:44
  does not impress you and likewise you can't be like the
• 36:47
  nicest leader ever who cares about the people and says like,
• 36:50
  Yep, OK, it's fine, it's fine it's fine.
• 36:52
  Then not hold a bar for yeah, you can't hold.
• 36:54
  If you don't hold a bar for performance, then that's a
• 36:57
  problem too. You know, and, and I've, I've
• 36:59
  actually seen both like ends of that spectrum very much.
• 37:02
  But but it's a hard like balance to, to strike.
• 37:07
  But I think that's where I'd like the magical kind of like
• 37:10
  real, real performance can come from.
• 37:13
  So the balance that you just mentioned, Heather is, is so
• 37:17
  key. And I remember being at cloud
• 37:20
  coach and that's the company I wouldn't Blakely and I were
• 37:24
  competitors of. So Salesforce had that V2 mom
• 37:29
  thing. The goals we're familiar with
• 37:31
  that Clay. Please don't ask me the the
• 37:33
  acronym. It's like.
• 37:34
  How do you know? What is it?
• 37:38
  Yeah. What is it?
• 37:38
  It is. Oh gosh no, I feel pressure.
• 37:41
  OK, vision, values, methods, obstacles and metrics.
• 37:47
  That's right. Obstacles, metrics.
• 37:48
  So I tried to institute it. I went and did a thing with, you
• 37:53
  know, the people there and I got all inspired, came back to the
• 37:56
  team and it was so complicated and the app didn't really work
• 37:59
  very well. It was just very clunky.
• 38:01
  And so it kind of failed the first year and then I was like,
• 38:04
  you know what, we just need something simple.
• 38:06
  And what I didn't like about the V2 moment was just company
• 38:09
  focused. I'm like, I want to create from
• 38:12
  chop down a value of personal and professional.
• 38:15
  So we made C two goals. Same kind of.
• 38:18
  Idea. Could you explain the acronym?
• 38:22
  Sure. Well, it was Cloud Coach C 20.
• 38:26
  You're so jealous. You're so jealous.
• 38:28
  You're. Relaxing.
• 38:28
  Everyone's jealous. Got to have their special take
• 38:32
  the eye. Interesting.
• 38:33
  There's no delay when the jealousy hits.
• 38:35
  It's just amazing. The universe loves this, loves
• 38:40
  this content, OK? C2 goals.
• 38:44
  Right. So it was every person needed to
• 38:47
  meet with their people and have had to come up with one
• 38:50
  professional goal and one personal goal.
• 38:53
  And then when we would do our reviews and our kind of monthly
• 38:56
  check insurance and quarterly check insurance, it was how are
• 38:59
  you progressing on your personal goal and how are you progressing
• 39:01
  on your professional goal? And we would contribute X number
• 39:04
  of dollars toward both each year.
• 39:07
  And it was this great way of saying, it's like, OK, someone's
• 39:09
  saying I'm going to run a marathon or I'm going to read 12
• 39:13
  books or, and then the professional side, I'm going to
• 39:15
  get my Salesforce Dev 2 certification or, you know,
• 39:18
  whatever those two things were going to be.
• 39:20
  So the conversation always LED into how are you doing on both
• 39:25
  sides because one without the other isn't communicating.
• 39:29
  To your point, Heather, the values are off regardless.
• 39:33
  If it's focused fully on personal, then you're going to
• 39:35
  get walked over. And that's it's isn't a
• 39:37
  nonprofit that we're running here and then a professional,
• 39:40
  then you're missing that whole human content.
• 39:42
  So it worked pretty well. I mean, it wasn't perfect, but
• 39:44
  it worked pretty well. Yeah, yeah, I like that.
• 39:47
  I mean, I think, I think the thing that I get worried about
• 39:51
  right now is when like, you know, we did, I'd have done
• 39:54
  similar types of things on on different teams in the past.
• 39:57
  But I feel like over the last couple of years, like the tides
• 40:00
  have turned in a pretty big way at work.
• 40:02
  And like, like, I don't know, just in a lot of cases is like
• 40:05
  there's no space for that anymore.
• 40:07
  You know, like there's been so many.
• 40:10
  Layoffs, like everybody's doing like 4 jobs, you know, the
• 40:13
  pressure is so high. Everybody's now like freaking
• 40:16
  out about AI and so the space to be human and actually like care
• 40:21
  about who people are and how they are outside of work or, you
• 40:24
  know, what their personal goals are.
• 40:26
  Like, I don't know. I always like, I've been like,
• 40:29
  it's kind of sad, but I'm just like, like the idea of just like
• 40:32
  caring about our people has, has really, you know, not, not
• 40:36
  across the board, but in a lot of companies has really gotten
• 40:39
  pushed way down the priority list.
• 40:41
  And I think like, that's where it might deliver results in the
• 40:45
  near term. Like I was saying, like
• 40:46
  companies, you know, can deliver results in the near term and you
• 40:49
  can lead in a fear based way. But eventually I do think that
• 40:53
  catches up and, and I feel like we're like, we're on, I feel
• 40:57
  like we're getting on the brink of, of watching that catch up to
• 41:00
  people. Like, I don't know if you guys
• 41:02
  see this, but so many people I talked to friends and you know,
• 41:06
  it's different like contacts that I have or like, like work
• 41:10
  is really like hard for people right now.
• 41:14
  And I think it's a lot of because it is missing that
• 41:17
  connection. Like if you don't have it, it
• 41:19
  sucks. Like, let's be honest, you know,
• 41:21
  like that's that when you think back to your favorite job you've
• 41:23
  ever had or team you've ever worked on, like you probably
• 41:26
  aren't really thinking about the the work you did as much as
• 41:30
  you're thinking about like the team fun you had with the team
• 41:33
  or, you know, like going through something hard with other
• 41:34
  people. And, and like, and when we just
• 41:37
  push all that aside and kind of like try to like automate
• 41:40
  everything away or, you know, just like stay very productive
• 41:43
  all the time. Like we're, we're like, you
• 41:47
  know, we're all feeling that right now.
• 41:48
  I really do to see it. 'Cause people will stay through
• 41:51
  the hard times if it's if they care.
• 41:55
  Yes, that's. The issue, yeah.
• 41:57
  They will. I was reading, I'm trying to I
• 42:00
  think it was a Sloan publication, but they were
• 42:05
  saying that I'm trying to get my I never get my quotes right.
• 42:08
  I read and they go out. But it was something like you
• 42:12
  have like a 10X better predictor of attrition.
• 42:15
  If it's like a healthy, non-toxic workplace
• 42:18
  overcompensation, which is just showing, yeah, investment in
• 42:25
  people is and creating that safe environment Trump's.
• 42:29
  Now I'll say that bottom line, people care about getting paid.
• 42:33
  So we could also address the CEO ratio pay gap.
• 42:37
  Everyone on here that's listening, like let's address
• 42:40
  that too because money talks. But you are right.
• 42:44
  Like when it comes to attrition, you know, people leave bad
• 42:47
  bosses, people leave bad environments.
• 42:49
  And 10X is a big jump of an indicator.
• 42:53
  I was really surprised by that number.
• 42:56
  OK, So what was it again? The 10X attrition.
• 42:59
  So like it's, it's a better predictor, a 10 times better
• 43:05
  predictor of people that are going to leave the how toxic
• 43:09
  your environment is versus like compensation, how much people
• 43:13
  are making. So like, culture matters over
• 43:17
  money essentially, right? I believe that.
• 43:20
  Yeah, me. Too me too.
• 43:22
  I mean, I think like toxic leaders, you know, like I, I
• 43:28
  haven't worked for very toxic leaders in the past.
• 43:31
  And and it does become like it consumes your whole life, like
• 43:37
  it knocks your confidence, you know, like you get thinking
• 43:40
  about it, you lose sleep. Like at some point, no matter
• 43:43
  how much they're paying you, it's not worth it's not worth
• 43:45
  that. So how would you describe toxic
• 43:48
  leaders like Blakely, Heather, whoever?
• 43:50
  Like how? What characteristics would you
• 43:52
  guys say would represent a toxic leader?
• 43:55
  But I think there's a lot of probably flavors of them, but
• 44:00
  one that quickly comes to mind is like that they just, they
• 44:03
  really are out for themselves and themselves only.
• 44:07
  And it is very evident from what they are doing that they're
• 44:10
  like, they don't really care about you or anyone else around.
• 44:14
  Like, you know, it's a it is all about them at the end of the
• 44:18
  day, and they're willing to do pretty much whatever it takes
• 44:22
  to, you know, to succeed. And I think that's like, I don't
• 44:25
  know, to me that that's one of the the clear signals.
• 44:28
  And I don't, it goes back to what you were saying earlier
• 44:30
  about people like feeling cared for and seeing and all that,
• 44:33
  like you, you, you can tell when somebody doesn't care about you
• 44:36
  at all. And and when they're really like
• 44:38
  it out for themselves, they might fool you for like a little
• 44:41
  bit, but eventually you can, you can see it.
• 44:43
  But I don't know, it's that it's like the political like
• 44:46
  backstabbing and gaslighting and all the, you know, all the, the
• 44:50
  big terms I think that we throw out there.
• 44:53
  But but I do think at the core of it, it's like they just, they
• 44:56
  actually are like really out for themselves.
• 45:00
  I would. Guess that 9 out of 10 is
• 45:03
  exactly what you said. It's like narcissism alpha
• 45:06
  themselves. I remember I had one like my
• 45:09
  most toxic leader. It's interesting.
• 45:12
  I actually have a lot of empathy for him now, but he was
• 45:14
  absolutely the most toxic leader I ever had.
• 45:17
  And his pattern, it was the control pattern.
• 45:20
  And he would berate and abuse you and tell you you were a
• 45:24
  piece of shit. And then 30 seconds later he'd
• 45:28
  be like, I'm going to give you a promotion.
• 45:30
  You're my favorite person. You're doing such a great job.
• 45:33
  And it was like being in an abused like marriage, right?
• 45:36
  Like just like a domestic violence situation.
• 45:38
  And come to find out, that's how he was raised.
• 45:41
  He was raised exactly. So you have a tremendous
• 45:44
  empathy. Once you know his story and kind
• 45:46
  of understand it didn't make it OK at all.
• 45:49
  But at least he wasn't like a narcissist because that to me,
• 45:53
  I'm like, I can't, I can't work with that.
• 45:55
  I don't know how you did it for so long.
• 45:58
  I. Mean, I know we use that word so
• 46:01
  much, but it's like the inability to look at yourself
• 46:04
  when we're talking about narcissists.
• 46:06
  Like they blame other people. They don't look at themselves.
• 46:09
  They always want to be right. Is that I am would like Clay to
• 46:14
  give us the definition of narcissism because I misuse the
• 46:18
  term all the time and so Heather thank you for calling that out
• 46:21
  post Heather like just genuinely.
• 46:23
  Asking. I generally just say it whenever
• 46:26
  I hear things like guest Heather is like when someone is just in
• 46:30
  it for themselves. They could.
• 46:32
  Roll over. Everyone on their team, as long
• 46:34
  as they get the credit and they get the promotion right and the
• 46:37
  accolades. The definition just straight out
• 46:41
  of the dictionary narcissism, excessive interest in or
• 46:45
  admiration of oneself and one's physical appearance.
• 46:50
  The psychology definition is selfishness involving a sense of
• 46:54
  entitlement, a lack of empathy, and a need for admiration as
• 46:58
  characterizing a personality type so.
• 47:02
  OK. Yeah.
• 47:03
  So we're right. That's that's that makes sense.
• 47:06
  I mean, we're obviously right. We are super hot.
• 47:08
  I mean, if I'm thinking about it like if I look at a straight.
• 47:10
  Now like we're we're. Really good looking.
• 47:12
  We're always right. I mean, I just.
• 47:15
  Yeah. So now I'm glad we know.
• 47:17
  What? Narcissists.
• 47:18
  Look like. Sorry, go ahead.
• 47:21
  What are you guys? Going to say I.
• 47:24
  Love it. By the way, that Sloan article I
• 47:26
  read, I was going to say that one that had the 10X predictor
• 47:29
  on culture over money. The flip side of that article,
• 47:33
  which I thought was really interesting, was that they were
• 47:36
  doing this whole measurement on toxic managers and they were
• 47:40
  saying we know that there's this 10X indicator, yet toxic
• 47:45
  managers are being promoted at the same rate as non-toxic
• 47:49
  managers. That doesn't make any sense.
• 47:51
  And so sometimes I'm like, OK, we know who the toxic managers
• 47:57
  are. We know what they're doing to
• 47:59
  the culture. We know that they can't see the
• 48:02
  people. They're not creating the safe
• 48:03
  space. And yet we promote.
• 48:05
  Them what the? Fuck, why are we promoting them?
• 48:10
  Because they deliver results. Like we're deciding it's a
• 48:13
  paradox choice. Like it's a choice that
• 48:16
  companies are making that results are more important than
• 48:19
  the like the behaviour. But like, I mean with my toxic
• 48:23
  leaders, like people knew, people knew, I told people, like
• 48:26
  HR knew, you know, it's like people know.
• 48:29
  But it's, it's like crazy to me how often companies make that
• 48:34
  choice that you're saying just to like, Oh well, but they
• 48:37
  delivered. And and so we keep promoting
• 48:39
  them and like you don't, you don't see it in the moment, but
• 48:42
  how much it it just signals to everybody at the company like
• 48:45
  this is what's OK here. Like and and if you do those
• 48:50
  things, yeah, like. I mean, let's call it what it
• 48:53
  is. It's corporate greed.
• 48:55
  And that should be another episode for another time because
• 48:58
  it's a different layer of the problem.
• 49:00
  But it's a real, I think it's a real problem driving a lot of
• 49:05
  this behavior. So if we're, and I know we've
• 49:08
  got to start winding up soon, but I I'd really love for people
• 49:13
  listening, I'd love to hit two different demographics here, not
• 49:19
  age wise, because just on a human level in a role level.
• 49:25
  So first, if we look at leaders, what would you say to a leader
• 49:32
  to get them to understand how valuing their employees as
• 49:38
  humans can actually impact the bottom line in a positive way or
• 49:44
  shift the mindset from it being a detractor from productivity or
• 49:50
  profitability into more of an enhancement?
• 49:53
  And what type of advice or things would you have them look
• 49:57
  at to consider the way they're thinking about these quote soft
• 50:01
  skills in the workplace? Yeah, I mean, I think we have to
• 50:05
  stop calling them soft skills. And I really hope that that is
• 50:08
  like happening now. Like I've seen people call it
• 50:11
  human skills. I've seen people start to say
• 50:13
  they're higher order skills, but like those skills are what
• 50:16
  really matter. And I think that paired with
• 50:21
  again, like, actually just like truly caring about these people
• 50:24
  as as people before you care about them as like professionals
• 50:28
  or like resources or, you know, whatever, all the other like
• 50:31
  languages that we use around it. Like the combo of that I think
• 50:35
  is, is again, that's that's where I like feeling valued
• 50:39
  comes from. And, and I agree with what you
• 50:41
  said, Heather before about like the more I felt like somebody
• 50:45
  cared about me, like the more I was willing to do.
• 50:49
  Like, you know, when I worked with people who I really thought
• 50:51
  they cared and like they, you know, they were going to have my
• 50:55
  back and all that. Like I would run through a wall
• 50:57
  for those people, you know, I would work my ass off And like,
• 51:01
  that's what everybody wants. But the way we're doing it is
• 51:04
  just to like returned to office mandates and you know, like 996
• 51:08
  culture of working all the time and all.
• 51:11
  This 996 culture. Can I, I I looked it up.
• 51:14
  Yes. It's 9:00 AM to 9:00 PM six days
• 51:16
  a week. That's what it is, yeah.
• 51:19
  Like come on, 12 hour. Days, six days a week, yes,
• 51:22
  Yeah. OK, OK.
• 51:24
  That's not how that's sustainable and people and
• 51:27
  bodies work actually. And you're only gonna again, you
• 51:31
  can get results that way for a while, but at some point it is
• 51:35
  gonna fall apart. And so anyway, I say all that
• 51:38
  because I think if you, if you demonstrate like actually caring
• 51:42
  about people, you listen, you know, you do demonstrate some
• 51:46
  levels of vulnerability. And I always tell people like,
• 51:48
  it can start with really simple stuff like saying, I don't
• 51:51
  really know, like, I don't know what exactly is going to happen
• 51:54
  next. And they're like, you know, but
• 51:56
  we're all going to work together to like figure it out.
• 51:59
  And you know, like revealing some, it doesn't have to be like
• 52:02
  your, your deep stories about your childhood, but it can be
• 52:05
  just little things about who you really are and what you actually
• 52:08
  think. And that's why I love like this
• 52:09
  podcast because it's like the more you're just real and say
• 52:12
  what we're all like feeling and thinking like that in and of
• 52:15
  itself connects people to you and makes you not feel alone
• 52:19
  and, and all that stuff. So anyway, you have to model how
• 52:22
  you want people to behave And, and I think that when you do all
• 52:27
  that, you know, people start to just like naturally, like mimic
• 52:33
  what what they're seeing happening.
• 52:35
  And you know, we talked about a bad example earlier, but this is
• 52:38
  ways that it can happen in good ways or people can say, oh,
• 52:40
  that's what great looks like. And now I'm going to do more of
• 52:43
  that. And so then from an employee
• 52:48
  perspective, then if we shift it and so now we're speaking to the
• 52:52
  employees, listening, what is the line?
• 52:55
  So let's say you do, you do, you do have, you're very lucky and
• 52:59
  you have an employer that's willing to look at you as a
• 53:02
  human. What is that human professional
• 53:06
  line in an ideal space? Because I, I kind of agree with
• 53:10
  Blakely where it's like, OK, there is, there's some level of
• 53:12
  here. It's like we still need to be
• 53:13
  productive. We can't all be crying in each
• 53:16
  other's offices for too long in a day, right?
• 53:19
  Like we need to, we do actually need to get the job done.
• 53:22
  And so speak to an employee and say what, what is that boundary?
• 53:26
  What, how much do you share and, and what do you save for home or
• 53:30
  your therapist? What does that look like?
• 53:32
  Well, I feel like, you know, I feel like the idea of being your
• 53:35
  whole self at work is like gotten kind of a bad rap where
• 53:38
  people are, you know, I don't need to know everything about
• 53:40
  you. And I totally agree.
• 53:42
  Like, you know, I know I've given more like personal
• 53:44
  examples and even in this podcast, but like, but I don't
• 53:48
  think you have to tell everybody everything about you.
• 53:50
  Like that's not actually what vulnerability means.
• 53:53
  I don't think it's what is really intended, but it's like
• 53:57
  being willing to to say what's real, what is true.
• 54:01
  Like, not just, you know, I don't know, it could be as it
• 54:05
  could be as simple as things like you notice bad behavior of
• 54:09
  somebody. Like don't just be like, oh,
• 54:10
  God, you know, host Heather always does that.
• 54:13
  And then like, it's, you know, I hate that.
• 54:15
  And I guess I'm gonna go like, talk about her over here.
• 54:18
  Like, yeah, say something, you know, like, yeah, be brave.
• 54:21
  Be brave enough to like have a real conversation with somebody
• 54:24
  or like, you know, I, I was actually talking to my husband
• 54:30
  about this today too. Or it's like when you observe
• 54:33
  things, even at like senior leader levels, I think it can be
• 54:35
  really hard when you observe something that is not working
• 54:38
  and, and feeling like, well, when do I tell somebody that I
• 54:43
  think this or I have observed that?
• 54:45
  And like you've, you don't really know it, I think until
• 54:48
  you get into those like really senior leadership positions.
• 54:51
  But like, you know, as YouTube CE OS like, didn't you actually
• 54:54
  really appreciate it when somebody would come to you and
• 54:56
  be like, hey, like, you can't see this anymore, but like, this
• 55:00
  is what's really happening here. Or here's a flaw we have in the
• 55:03
  business and it goes back to like the modeling, right?
• 55:06
  As a leader, you have to be willing to be like, hey, like I
• 55:10
  screwed up this thing or you know, like I made this decision
• 55:13
  actually wasn't the right one and now we're going to do this
• 55:15
  other thing instead. But the more again that you like
• 55:17
  model that like, I don't know, back at Salesforce on one of my
• 55:20
  teams, we created this thing where every month we had, you
• 55:24
  know, the all hands and we shared a failure.
• 55:27
  We called it fail salad. Like a failing solid, but a fail
• 55:31
  salad. No, Fail salad.
• 55:34
  Yeah, great. And so we did fail salad.
• 55:37
  That's another merch, that's another T-shirt we got to.
• 55:39
  Do fail. Salad that's.
• 55:41
  Good. And so we came like somebody
• 55:43
  would come on and again, like the leadership of the team has
• 55:46
  to go first because nobody's going to do this if they're not
• 55:48
  talking. But like you talk through like
• 55:51
  a, a thing where you failed and you screwed something up and
• 55:53
  what did you learn from it? And what are you going to do
• 55:55
  different now going forward because of it?
• 55:57
  And these little like, you know, little like rituals and things
• 56:01
  like that can just start to build more of that, you know,
• 56:04
  like the transparent, honest, trustworthy, vulnerable, you
• 56:08
  know, courageous kind of culture.
• 56:10
  Because like, again, if companies really want more
• 56:13
  innovation and results and all that, then you have like, if you
• 56:16
  don't have a culture where people are able to like take
• 56:19
  risks and say the hard thing, then you're only going to get a
• 56:22
  fraction of what you would have gotten otherwise from them.
• 56:26
  It's basically the antidote to imposter syndrome,
• 56:29
  perfectionism, like all these things that have been built into
• 56:33
  us, like we're just creating the antidote for it.
• 56:35
  And it's much more balanced and thoughtful it.
• 56:38
  Is. But it's hard.
• 56:41
  I mean, the reality of it is hard.
• 56:43
  It's very scary. It's very large, long.
• 56:46
  Yes, yeah, yes, it is a practice.
• 56:49
  It is like a practice. Yeah, Heather, thank you so
• 56:52
  much. This was incredible.
• 56:53
  I feel very empowered on all sides to lean into the humanity
• 56:59
  piece of work and show up as my full self.
• 57:03
  And just, you know, what's the worst that can happen really?
• 57:06
  If that, if that. What I hear you saying is if
• 57:09
  that person is rejected, then you're really in the wrong spot
• 57:12
  anyway. And we need to find a place
• 57:14
  where we can be ourselves and continue to grow.
• 57:18
  And so we need to continue to seek it and employers need to be
• 57:24
  more open to it to see the benefits that can come instead
• 57:28
  of being afraid of. So it's beautiful.
• 57:31
  Thank you so much. We've learned so much.
• 57:33
  Before we let you go, we do ask one quick question.
• 57:36
  We ask all of our guests and we do answer it ourselves, which is
• 57:39
  what brought a smile to your face this week.
• 57:43
  My smile this week has been with my 9 year old daughter.
• 57:48
  I have started reading Harry Potter with her.
• 57:51
  Right. So I've never read Harry Potter.
• 57:54
  I've never watched any of the movies.
• 57:56
  Yeah. I haven't either.
• 57:57
  I haven't. I have just like waited for her
• 57:59
  and here she is and we're reading it now.
• 58:01
  And so I'm two chapters into the first Harry Potter book and it's
• 58:04
  been really fun to read that with her and kind of like start
• 58:07
  to see what everybody's all jazzed about.
• 58:09
  That's. Awesome.
• 58:10
  Oh, that's exciting. That's fun.
• 58:13
  Clay, Clay, I'm. Going to go last.
• 58:16
  OK, fun. I I Gmail says you can only
• 58:22
  have, what is it 15 gigabytes? So I had to go through and
• 58:26
  delete a bunch of stuff in order to keep my free account.
• 58:31
  That is. Anyway, I had to go delete stuff
• 58:34
  and I went through my emails and I found an old demo of a song
• 58:38
  that the I was in a band years ago and the lead singer.
• 58:42
  Class Land. Different.
• 58:45
  Different band. Oh.
• 58:46
  We can't say that that band never.
• 58:49
  Mind. You can't say the name of the
• 58:50
  band it was. The band was called Flint.
• 58:52
  Eastwood. The Fleetwood Flint.
• 58:53
  Eastwood. Yep.
• 58:55
  And we had kind of made a demo and I got to hear like an old
• 58:59
  recording and it hearing my friend Jax, her voice.
• 59:06
  And it was amazing to be transported in an instant
• 59:09
  because I completely forgot about the song and it never got
• 59:13
  released, never got published. And I got to hear it and I just,
• 59:16
  I listened to it like 3 or 4 times and I was just like like I
• 59:20
  had tears because I was so happy to find it, you know, that's.
• 59:24
  So sweet, will you sing a little bit for us?
• 59:26
  No, Hell no. What the?
• 59:28
  Hell, Boo Boo, why not? You have a great voice.
• 59:34
  OK, OK. I wasn't.
• 59:37
  How do I explain? Heather Guest back me up.
• 59:39
  This would be like the ultimate cringe moment like you just sent
• 59:42
  me. Up.
• 59:42
  Yeah, you Can't Sing. Singing on a podcast.
• 59:45
  I can't think of anything more. Cringe empathy again.
• 59:49
  Will you at least link to it so we can see it?
• 59:51
  Can you release it now? No, because I don't own the
• 59:55
  intellectual property for it all.
• 59:57
  Right. Well, we'll just have to take
• 59:58
  your word for it that it was good then.
• 1:00:00
  It was really good, Yeah, but it.
• 1:00:03
  But regardless what other people think, I had a moment and I
• 1:00:06
  loved it and that was my smile. That's awesome.
• 1:00:09
  Yeah. Heather the monks all day long.
• 1:00:13
  I just I can't get enough of the monks walking their peace walk
• 1:00:16
  and just having so much fun watching.
• 1:00:18
  What is this? Wait, what's the?
• 1:00:21
  Monks. Gosh, you got to watch the
• 1:00:23
  monks. The monks are walking from Fort
• 1:00:25
  Worth, TX to DC and it's a it's a walk for peace and so there's
• 1:00:31
  I'm not sure which what. What is it called Clay?
• 1:00:35
  Is it a group with? A clan that denomination.
• 1:00:40
  Oh, you mean that? Clay, you should know this.
• 1:00:42
  You mean like a there? So I don't know anything about
• 1:00:45
  it other than I saw what they're wearing and so it looks like
• 1:00:47
  they're. No, no, no, no, no.
• 1:00:48
  I mean the type of monks, like is it a?
• 1:00:51
  It's not a clan of monks, it's a it's a group of monks.
• 1:00:56
  An order. Thank you.
• 1:00:57
  An order like cuz they all have their different orders, right.
• 1:01:00
  So an order of monks is walking and they are inspiring everyone.
• 1:01:04
  They're just walking for peace to remind people to be peaceful
• 1:01:07
  and to love each other and people.
• 1:01:09
  It's so fun. They have a dog with them.
• 1:01:11
  The dog has his own Instagram page.
• 1:01:13
  It's the whole thing. It's it's really you got to
• 1:01:16
  check. I love it.
• 1:01:16
  Wow, that's cool. Walk for pigs.
• 1:01:19
  Yep. OK, do you guys remember my
• 1:01:22
  story of Mr. Bruce who would, like, slip us the $100 bills so
• 1:01:27
  we could buy Christmas lights and light the tree?
• 1:01:30
  Yeah, and he like, he came out with his Walker and like, watch
• 1:01:36
  them when the scissor lift to the cherry picker and like, put
• 1:01:39
  the lights on. And we see him every night with
• 1:01:42
  the light on at his dining room table just looking at the
• 1:01:44
  lights. And I wasn't going to bring this
• 1:01:47
  up on the show because it doesn't feel like a smile, a
• 1:01:49
  little bittersweet. But Mr. Bruce passed this week.
• 1:01:53
  I know. And it's super big hole in my
• 1:01:56
  heart. But it is a smile.
• 1:01:58
  And it is a smile because I just, I brought it up because of
• 1:02:01
  Heather, guessed Heather. Mr. Bruce lived his life without
• 1:02:06
  a cell phone, without a computer.
• 1:02:09
  He had rabbit ears on his TV that went out sometime last
• 1:02:14
  year. And he's like, I don't need to
• 1:02:15
  fix it because he lived his life in a library and he read books.
• 1:02:20
  He when his grandson was born, he wrote letters to his
• 1:02:25
  daughter-in-law for 19 years. They wrote back and forth.
• 1:02:30
  He was the very definition of like human curiosity, human
• 1:02:35
  connection. And I think that the smile for
• 1:02:41
  me is that I want Mr. Bruce to be like rebirthed into like
• 1:02:50
  generated Shin Beta, you know, and just in terms of like a new
• 1:02:54
  kind of human connection because we're going to need it a little
• 1:02:57
  bit more. And anyway, I just needed you
• 1:03:01
  guys to know. But we're so glad we made that
• 1:03:03
  Christmas tree happen for him. That's my other smile.
• 1:03:06
  That's amazing. I know he was an amazing guy,
• 1:03:10
  Miss Mr. Bruce. Anyway, cheers to Mr. Bruce,
• 1:03:13
  cheers to Mr. Bruce, and cheers to you, Heather, for everything
• 1:03:16
  you are doing and just bringing a little more human and humanity
• 1:03:20
  to the workplace. It's really appreciated.
• 1:03:23
  Thank you both. Thank you all very much for
• 1:03:25
  having me today. It's been really fun.
• 1:03:27
  And thank you guys, because I actually think like you're
• 1:03:29
  demonstrating a lot of the things that we talked about here
• 1:03:32
  on this too, like say what's real and let people know that
• 1:03:35
  they're not crazy or alone. Like that's not alone.
• 1:03:38
  That will change a lot of things too.
• 1:03:40
  Yeah, I hope so. All right.
• 1:03:43
  OK, before we let you go, sorry Heather.
• 1:03:44
  Where can we people find you? Stay connected with you.
• 1:03:49
  I will LinkedIn. I will only respond when I'm on
• 1:03:52
  my. Desktop, but I am on.
• 1:03:53
  LinkedIn and you can find me there, or if you want to look up
• 1:03:59
  Torch and learn a little bit more about what we do at Torch,
• 1:04:01
  then we're at torch dot IO. Great, we'll have all that in
• 1:04:04
  the show notes. Awesome.
• 1:04:06
  Thank you so much for being with us, Hunter.