Episode 432: I Respectfully Disagree with Justin Jones-Fosu

Welcome to another episode of the Above the Business podcast. My name is Bradley Hamner, your host. On today's episode, we have Justin Jones, Fosu. I've wanted to have Justin on for quite some time. I've had a couple other guests that have come on the podcast that have highly recommended him. You're going to pick up immediately on his energy. He's the author of two books, Your Why Matters Now, and even more recently, I Respectfully Disagree: How to Have Difficult Conversations In a divided world. Now, this is not just around politics, but this is also, I think, applicable in business. How can we respectfully disagree with our partners or even with our team members? How can we even foster an opportunity for your team members to be able to respectfully disagree with you? There were so many different things that I took away from this episode. One is one of my very favorite core values I've ever heard. He shares that. We talk about the power of the third level in conversations. And one of the best, instead of maybe your open door policy, consider the out the door policy. That and many more topics we discuss in this podcast. Without further ado, here's my conversation with Justin Jones, Fosu. Justin Jones, Fosu, welcome to the Above the Business Podcast.

I am super stoked to be on here with you, Bradley.

Love to, uh, excited to have you as well. Love having people like yourself who bring just a super positive energy on the podcast. But before we get into kind of what you do today, tell us your background. Tell us your background and origin story and how did you get to where you are now.

Yeah, uh, wow. Um, so my background is I love long walks on the beach, and I'm joking, but a lot of my journey, it starts from my mom. Um, it's— my mom has been such an integral part of my development and growth. Because of her resilience. And, you know, we grew up, my parents divorced at 4. We had a stint of being unhoused and then we're on welfare. And my mom just worked her butt off and she would challenge us even when the lights got cut off to get the flashlight or the candles to still study. Like there was, we didn't have the excuse, all right, lights got cut off. But she would also take us to events that one, we didn't know a lot about and even ones we disagreed with. Which have been catalyst moments for me in writing I Respectfully Disagree and just doing this work. And I remember interviewing my mom for the last couple of books, and I was just like, Mama, where'd you get this whole philosophy from? Because I thought I was smart, Bradley, and I realized that I really did some deep work. It came from my mom. She was the seed planter in all this. And so my mom was one of the first Black female air traffic controllers in the Air Force. And she shared that there were some times she'd be stationed in Japan for 2 years and some soldiers in that same 2-year timeframe never left base. And so she was like, "Justin, I don't want you to be like that. I want you to leave your home base to be able to experience the beauty of people, cultures around you." And so that's been the journey of my life. I've been leaving home base of learning about people and industries and working with worked in corporate for a while for a top financial firm in global HR and corporate training. And that led me to see people come from the outside and like, I could do that. And so, um, going on 18 years, uh, of having the business and it's been, um, a great journey.

Tell us about, before we get into your latest book, I Respectfully Disagree, tell our audience if they're not familiar with some of your, your other work, um, your book your why matters now, and then how possibly that was a catalyst into your most recent book, I Respectfully Disagree.

Yeah, so the journey of it is we really started off just asking the question around action-based leadership. So when I first started the company, that was the focus. It dove deeper into just this purpose work, and I did my MBA really around purpose and why, and even before Simon Sinek made it really, really popular, decades of work on purpose and how do you integrate purpose within work, which has stemmed into where we are with meaningful work. And so that first book, Your Why Matters Now, was really about leaning into— everybody was talking about, I know my why, I know my why. Really, everybody was like, yeah, yeah, I know. But people weren't doing anything about it, Bradley. So it was like, OK, great, you know your why, but you're not putting it into action. And so that's where the now piece came in. And so Your Why Matters Now. And we found that there was two different types of people. There was why people who were like, yay, I know my why. But they were waiting for the 8th day of the week to do something. And then there was another group of people who were like the now people. They were like the David Allens getting things done, all that kind of stuff. But they were doing stuff in the wrong places and they might have confused activity for progress. And so it was how do we connect those two places and what we call the achieve more zone. And so that was your why matters now. That led into some of the work we were doing around the inclusive mindset. And part of that, I realized part of my why was to create a space for people could operate in society and in workplaces where they could bring their full and best selves to work because it allowed them to show up and to live out kind of their purpose within work, within the purpose guidelines of the organization. And so that stemmed an inclusive mindset, but I realized people were doing inclusivity wrong, right? It was about, you know, talking, wagging your finger at people rather than, you know, encouraging people, how do we grow right where we are about how can we be more inclusive with different people, personalities, belief systems, all these things. And I would make a statement in those presentations is that we can vehemently disagree with someone's ideology and still passionately pursue their humanity. And it was always like this audible, like, mm, right? And some people after some of the presentations would come up and be like, Justin, I love that quote. I love that quote. But how do we do it? Or they would say, what if, what if they believe this? And this became my response. Writing the book I Respectfully Disagree was my response to that question of how do we do it.

Wow, that's great. I have a question in the context for our listeners on your first book, and then we'll get into a few things, several questions actually have on Your most recent one. When you think about it from the business owner's context and the, a small business creating like why, why they do what they do, the creation of it. And then I think so well put the implementation of it because it's one thing to go and watch Simon Sinek's TEDx talk and then. Go to a team meeting and go, I'm going to let everybody— we're going to watch this 20-minute TED Talk and then we're going to talk about it, and then that's going to be the idea and the implementation of it, and it falls flat. Yeah, I've been the one that's done those kind of things. What are your thoughts for a business owner who have said, like, I do want us to be able to— to— sure, like, we've got to stay in business and make a profit. Okay, your business— my business says we have to be able to make a profit or we're going to be out of business. Sure, I get that. But we're also going to want to make sure we pursue things outside of a deeper why for what we do. What's the right way to craft it and what's the right way, what you've seen to be able to implement it in the businesses you've worked with?

Yeah, so especially for small business owners, it can be sometimes hard to identify and say, how does this fit into the work that we do, right? So say I'm, you know, selling widgets, right? I'm like, well, that's not a deep why. That's not like doing some magical work in Ukraine or doing some magical work in Jordan. It's like, how do we connect this? There's a couple of ways to approach it. Number 1 is asking a deeper question of not just with the widget you're providing, is there a level of quality of life that's changing whether for your customers and/or for yourselves? Give you a great example. There could be somebody who, I know one of my buddies who does some great work as a small business owner and they sell They have propane tanks and all these kind of things. Well, it's propane tanks, right? It's not a huge why, but they make sure that part of their big why is that they leave customers better than when they found them. And so they utilize their aspect of customer service as a differentiation about how they actually support people. So that yes, they're helping people in need and helping give warmth and all that kind of stuff. But their customer service is a way of really treating people in a way that's human. In a way that's vibrant. And that's part of the unique differentiation. So one thing could be an offset of like, what do you do that could be different in a way that's a larger why, right? Because you're selling propane, right? The second piece is, is there something else inside of what you do that can have a larger impact? Like for us as a company, we have a 5% pledge that 5% of our profits go towards educational initiatives in the country of Ghana and the country United States. For underserved communities. And so every book we sell, every presentation, there's a larger why that's built into the work that we do. And so there are ways to lean in to a why, even when it's not necessarily like, oh, we're in healthcare, which makes sense. But it's not just that. It's how do you now connect each employee's role to this larger why and continue to shape that for them? We had our year in review for our company. And I was intentional sharing like, here are some of the outcomes, here are some of the responses we've gotten back, and here's the impact that we've had as a company. Yes, Justin's the one on stage and the classroom learning experiences have a backend support team, but we're all doing this. And I'm letting them know, you all made this possible for us to get this level of impact, and this is the work that you do. So as leaders, we have to continually connect what people do and how they— how it shapes the larger why of the organization.

When you've gotten to a place that you've done the hard work and to be able to— I thought your, uh, your tanks as in propane tanks is a really good example of that. And then finding the way to be able to say, hey, we, we leave things better than what we found them, I think is, is awesome. Well, whatever that may be for the business, what are some of the things that, uh, you you do a cadence, I guess is what I'm looking for, to keep it alive.

Yes, I tell people at a minimum quarterly that you should be sharing the why and continue to come back to the why. One thing that we do in each of our meetings is we start off with our why, right? We do it in a weekly, weekly cadence of here's our why, here's our mission, here's the impact that we've had. Here's a story from someone. Here's how this Somebody said this impacted them in their organization. We do it on a weekly basis because what we do is inherently meaningful. We're helping people, individuals grow and develop. But for others, it may not be inherently meaningful, and so we tell people at a minimum quarterly cadence. But what can be really cool is like this monthly cadence of here's how the work that we do directly impacts the end user. And not only external, because sometimes we just focus externally, it's also internally. Here's how what you do, right? Right now I'm doing a tour with some Toyota manufacturing plants with the book, and a big thing that they talk about is safety, right? And so just really the safety culture about how do we help people to get back home safe? Yes, they're building engines and building Toyota Corollas and cars and power parts, but a large part of what that I found that they're, that's a part of their why is helping people get back to their homes and families in one piece. And that's one of the things that they consistently bring forward. So each organization is very different, but how we apply it is one of those things that can help in that cadence, whether it's quarterly at a minimum, but then also we found that that monthly cadence is one that works well unless you're in a business that's doing stuff that's inherently meaningfully meaningful. And then for us, a weekly cadence makes sense.

[Speaker:JASON] Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah. I get that. That's good. Because if you do it in one big push and an annual planning meeting, we're obviously coming up, right? Everybody's coming off of that. Like, sure, that's good to give it some initial lift, but that thing will fall out of the sky pretty quickly if you don't actually continue to breathe life into it.

I got a question. And that's— oh, sorry.

Go ahead. No, go ahead.

I was going to say, that's why I love the ADKAR change management model. It's one of those things that I've seen a lot of small businesses can be able to use. We've applied this work in some of our respectful disagreement work. Is that A, awareness, D, desire, K, knowledge, A, ability, but that R, reinforcement, is the one thing that they consistently find is missing. Is we have this really new initiative, big initiative, we're like, hey, this is why we need to do it. Hey, let me help you to cultivate the desire. Here's things you need to know to be able to do it. Here's the resources to do it, but then we never reinforce it, right? Whether compensation-wise or even just verbally, And so people revert back to old habits and old behaviors rather than continue to lean in. And that's why the cadence that you brought up is so important. It's that consistent reinforcement. ADKAR by Prosciutto. Great change management model. Good.

Yeah, I love that. All right. Have you read the book, uh, from Lencioni, uh, Five Dysfunctions of a Team?

Way back in the day.

Yeah.

Yeah. It was a while.

It was way back in the day for me too. So, uh, I'm not going to go through all 5 of them because I just want to hit on the first one because I think it leads into kind of what I'm thinking about here for your book. And, and the question I have is, uh, he talks about lack of trust as the very first part of the Five Dysfunctions. And one of the things he discusses in a workplace setting is when people, you know, a leader, manager, business owner brings people together, tries to get ideas, and then people don't share all of their ideas. They, they share a little bit, but they're always kind of positioning. I don't know if I should say that, that seems to disagree. And so then they're walking down the hallway and they're talking to somebody, kind shoulder to shoulder and they say what they really wanted to say.

Yeah, right. Yeah.

And it's the part of they don't feel trust that they can actually share, even if that means they disagree. And here's the key, maybe even at times disagree with you as the business owner. And so you're— there's so many different ways we could take it from the political landscape, etc. But I wanted to take this concept of I respectfully disagree to pull it down into a business setting and a scenario where we can actually create and cultivate a place to where our team members can oftentimes be able to share and disagree with us, even as the business owner, to say, I'm not so sure that's the direction we should go with this, and, and here's why. What are your thoughts there?

I think that's brilliant. Um, you know, that, you know, from a macro sense, that's psychological safety, that people feel a sense of I'm safe psychologically to be able to share Honestly how I really think and feel. And it's actually a central part of the book, right? So we call that, it's a category, because initially I just wanted to study, I was like, oh, how do we help people to move from disrespectful disagreement to respectful disagreement? And Bradley, we didn't realize until we dug deeper into the research, there's a whole nother category called disrespectful agreement. Let me tell you the two ways it shows up and how do we lean into that. One aspect is where I'm in the team meeting like you talked about, right? And we're like, hey, I'd love to get some feedback. And people are like, oh yeah, I think it's a great idea, Bradley. I think you're right on target. And then behind closed doors, they're like, what was Bradley thinking? I think that was a stupid idea. Bradley obviously doesn't do the work that we do. He's not in the front lines. He's just in the ivory tower, right? And so that happens because of some things like lack of trust, right? But the second piece of that, and this is, The part we sometimes miss is that I might have grown up in a culture, society, family, country that taught you that children should be seen and not heard. And so I bring that into the organization with me and I have a sense of deference. Same thing, I'm a dual citizen of Ghana, United States. We have some of our employees in Ghana and there's a sense of deference that's always like, I can't disagree with you because you are the leader, you are the elder, you are the this. And here are ways to confront both of those things, whether disrespectful disagreement or disrespectful agreement on either side. One is as leaders and small business owners, it's gonna sound very simple, but we don't do it enough, is to ask people to disagree with you in the meeting. Not just at the annual meeting, but in the meeting when you're talking about initiative or issue or you're trying to solve something or you have a new idea, ask them to disagree with you and tell them the why behind it. I need you all to disagree with me because it actually helps us to find the gray area or that sea that I talk a little bit about. The second piece is to reward them. I'm not talking about compensation, but verbal reward. So if you disagree, Bradley, you know what? Thank you so much for sharing that thought. It actually makes me think about something else, right? So I've now taken you, I have given you a small reward that other people are paying attention to. Oh, they actually do want our honest feedback and they're being rewarded for it. And then the last thing that we often forget, again, this is reinforcement. Did it lead to revenue generation? Did it lead to a new initiative, a new project, new thought? Come back to it a month, 2 months later. And state, you know what, Bradley, when you brought forward that disagreement, it actually elevated us to think about this. We would have never gotten here without that. I wanna say thank you. People are paying attention to what you say in the process and not just in training, right? So you could tell people all day long, I want you to disagree with me, but if you don't create the space where one, you're rewarding it, two, you're asking for it, and three, you're coming back to it to reinforce it, it's not gonna fuse its way into the culture. Those are some practical ways to lean in. I'm done with feedback surveys because people normally don't do anything with them. There are people, even the end of the year surveys, people are like, the engagement surveys. I was having honest conversations with people and they're like, yeah, they just do that because we're supposed to, but they don't really pay attention to it because we don't come back to it and reinforce or here are our changes based on what was said. Those are some ways I think as small business owners and leaders that we can do a better job. Of leaning into creating a culture of respectful disagreement.

I love the fact that you said that oftentimes the reward does not have to be monetary. You don't have to wave a dollar bill in front of people's faces for them to be seen, heard, valued, and appreciated.

Yes.

Um, Dude Perfect just came out with a video. My kids love Dude Perfect, and so they just came out with the— their DP3 headquarters video, like a tour basically, right? One of the things I love is above like the desk of all of their team members, which sounds like they have maybe 30 people that work at the company now. They have this confetti, and then they can hit a button for somebody to, to be appreciated. And what I love about that is this— it didn't say it's raining money, it's raining confetti. To be able to— and they do it in a fun way, but it's like, that's, that's— it doesn't always have to be money. Sure, if you got sales reps, you're gonna pay them a commission. Sure, of course, that's, that's part of it. Uh, but, but, but oftentimes it's a verbal recognition. So I love the ask, reward, and come back to it. Okay, now, now let me flip the same thing, and I'm going to be very honest and vulnerable with you and with the audience, is that years ago I absolutely was so prideful and arrogant in my own insecurity as a leader that I did not know what I was doing, that anytime I received pushback, okay, from people, like, my blood pressure would boil of like they were challenging my authority. And I, I look back on those times and some of those meetings and some of those people, you know, with honestly some shame, right, looking back on that and go, man, I handled those situations so poorly. I said I wanted their opinion. I didn't want their opinion. I just wanted their— I just wanted them just to do what I said to do. And it just came out of such, I mean, youthfulness in some respects and a lot of immaturity. So what is the work that we have to do as leaders to get to a place that when somebody does respectfully disagree, yeah, that, that I have done the work in me to not have that to be some sort of indictment on my— yeah, probably not my character, but on my intellect and my ability to learn. Yeah, those sort of things.

Yeah, you bring up a really good point. And thank you for, first of all, your vulnerability. That, that's actually a value of our company. We call it take the HOV lane. And for those that have never been in a place where HOV is done, it's the more people are in the car, you can go faster, right? So you have a separate lane for you. And for us, that's honesty, openness, and vulnerability is one of the things that we can go faster and longer when we are honest, open, and vulnerable. And one way that we can lean into this is actually our first pillar. We have our 5 pillars. This was the last pillar added, but we found is the most foundational to respectful disagreement. And it happens before any disagreement even occurs, Bradley. And it's simply this, to challenge your perspective. Now, challenge your perspective pillar 1 is, is before it occurs. And you may say, well, Justin, what does that mean? Right? So how do I challenge my perspective? What are you intentionally doing to put yourself in positions where your perspective, your way of thinking, your belief system is being challenged? It helps us because it builds those muscles. And so let me give you 2 practical ways to lean into that as leaders and small business owners. Number 1 is we do a thing called the Circles of Grace Challenge. And the Circles of Grace Challenge is something that I created because I was confining myself to my circles of comfort. I was not leaning into my mom's ideals of leaving home base. And I, and I, so I created this for myself. And so every 6 to 12 months I go to events, experiences, or I engage with people in either which I don't know a lot about and/or I disagree with. And I build that in as a habit that I do on the 6-month rhythm or annually of what am I leaning into to learn? What did I learn about area that I don't know or disagree with? And that helps to cultivate what I heard somebody say recently on a podcast. They were talking about, we talked about emotional intelligence, EQ, and we talked about IQ, right, intelligence. But we need an LQ, and that's learning intelligence. And it's that, how are we positioning ourselves to learn? And so I go into that, the Circles of Grace challenge, asking two questions. What did I learn about this event, experiences, and the people? And what did I learn about myself as I experienced them? Now, I may not walk away, there's many Circles of Grace challenges that I walked away like, yep, they're exactly as I thought they were, but I learned it in a nuanced way and I was able to humanize the people that I was engaging with. So number one is taking a Circles of Grace challenge personally, but I'm gonna challenge this here, also professionally. We recently took the Four Family Foundation through it, and at the end of the 6 months, oh my gosh, they chose to focus in on communities in which they serve And they were like, let's lean in. And they gave people permission to ask questions and lean into the communities and, and do focus groups. And they walked away with such rich experience at the end of the 6 months during a debrief that they wanted to continue some of the learning that they had. They're like, oh, I got that wrong. I had that philosophy wrong. Or I thought, you know, I thought this was true, but it was actually not true. So that's one. The second thing is, y'all, let's ditch the open door policy. The open door policy doesn't work. We've created it behind closed doors, right? And so what we're advocating, advocating for global leaders to do this, as well as everyday people, is to adopt what we call the out the door policy. Open door implies passivity. If you need me, I'm here. If you have a problem, I'm here. But out the door is when we go to our people to hear their stories, their journeys. We create that emotional capital where people feel like, Again, building up that psychological safety that I can actually have a conversation with this person in ways that's helpful. And you may say, Justin, well, how do we do that? 'Cause that sounds really great and theoretical. Let me give you a strategy behind it. We call it 1 MC over W, right? And it's only math you have to do today. 1 MC over W stands for 1 meaningful connection per week. Build into your calendar 15 to 20 minutes to have conversations with people, to ask them how they're doing, how are things, what, how they see the company, how, how are things going? If that's too much, 'cause you're like, Justin, that's 15 2.14 times a year. Well, turn the W upside down and make it one meaningful connection per month. And maybe that's an hour-long lunch, but it allows you an opportunity to have deeper level conversations, to go out your door to hear the stories and experiences of your people.

Wow, that is great. All right, I got to double tap on a lot of things. So my process of doing podcast interviews is I will circle things that I'm like, I personally am going to take away, like my actual key takeaways. First of all, Circle of Grace Challenge— the intentionality behind doing that, I think, is exceptional. And I've, uh, we just crossed 5 years of having the podcast, and I have no idea— thank you— I have no idea how many hills I was willing to die on with business.

I don't know.

I'm gonna make up the number of 100. That means nothing, is for discussion purposes. In meeting people like you, the number of hills I'm willing to die on in business has gone down to like 5, you know, because you get perspective. And I get around, I'm like, wow, yeah, open door policy, that's a hill I'm willing to die on, until you hear Justin say, no, no, no, no, it's out the door. Policy. It's you being proactive and going out like, oh, that's a hill I'm not willing to die on anymore. You know, you see what I'm saying?

Like, that's really good.

I, I, I love that. Um, so how do you think— this is more of a broader question that I guess certainly has a, has a, um, uh, a take for sure that that is outside of business, you can apply it to what is the way when someone disagree— you disagree with someone. Like as an example, in the 5 years of probably 300 interviews or so, there has been people on here that not their entire message, but there's elements to the message that I thought, I don't think I agree with that. Now, it's not necessarily my role. I'm not the personality and in my seat in hosting you is not to just bring you up to start ping-ponging. That's not right. There are podcasts that do that. I'm not going to do it. I'm not going to start firing bullets into every one of your ideas. There was one situation the guy said, yeah, you agree with that, right? And I thought, how am I going to answer this? I actually don't. And so I did. I actually said on the podcast, it's like, respectfully, okay, because I wanted to be honest of like, no, I actually don't. But typically I don't do that. But in general though, we carry around a lot of so many emotions. And again, the easiest one to point to is politically. Okay.

Yeah.

And there's a friend that I have that I am— that, that I, I respect so much. His mother was actually very involved and has been involved in politics for a long time. He is probably the one of the most level-headed people that I've been able to— that he's able to articulate, uh, both sides and their positions. And I find myself like, man, I love the way he has his beliefs. Sure. Yeah. But he's not so stubborn in his beliefs. Again, I'm happy to bring— bringing up the topic around politics, but again, it can be brought around business, you know, strategy with my other business partner. How do we get to a place to where, like, I really do believe this, but I actually want to allow myself to be open to new and fresh ideas? How do we do that the right way?

Yeah, so it's a process of learning, and I'm gonna bring the psychology behind this because there's some good research behind this. One of those is the illusion of asymmetric insight. And essentially, illusion of asymmetric insight is that I know others better than they know me. So I go into situations thinking that, yeah, I know Bradley more than he knows me. Bradley, you're simple to understand. I'm just really complex, Bradley. It's hard to understand me. And so when we first know that, that we go into it with this cognitive bias that I see the world objectively, naive realism, right? But actually, we don't see the world objectively. We see the world as we are, right? We see the world, it's like, oh yeah, it's based upon my experiences, how I grew up, what I learned. And we have to first admit that, that we probably see the world in a skewed version. And I'll give you a great example. I tell people, I ask people all the time, and I was like, don't think about it. I want to do this test with you real quick, Bradley. Don't think about it, just give me really quick your response. All right, what's the right side of the road to drive on?

Go. Right.

Right, perfect, right? That makes sense based on your context. I was just on a podcast with someone from London and their response was left, right? I did one with a person in Australia and it was left. And I was like, why? It was like, because that's the safe side to drive. I was like, that's because of where you are and your context and the environment that shaped you, right? And that's how our brains work. It's not Well, it depends on where I live, right? It's based upon our experiences. Now I may get that, and I've sometimes gotten that with people who've done a lot of traveling or who spent time living in a space where you had to drive on the left side. And so their brain was like, well, I don't know because it depends on where I live, right? And that's their automatic response because of their context. So that is the thing that can drive us into having those deeper level conversations, one, admitting it. Number two, How do I say this? We've been so conditioned to operate from the fixed base mindsets in society that Carol Dweck talks about, where we don't want to be perceived as ignorant. We don't want to be perceived as not knowing. We even act like we know movies that we've never seen before just so that we can feel like we're in the know. And that's challenged us in ways because pretending isn't progress. And we've pretended to know things and to engage in conversations of things we didn't know rather than what we call in Pillar 2 is being a student. When we're the student, we take this posture of how can I learn? How do I develop this learner's mindset? All right, there's another term called the Inverted U Theory that applies to two places where people don't learn effectively. One is when they think they know absolutely nothing, and the other is when they think they know absolutely everything. And that's the dangerous part is that people don't lean into being the student, asking questions. So when I go into conversation, especially with people who have very politically different beliefs than I do, and I'm somewhat of moderate, I have things that I like on different sides, I go into it with like, Justin, be the student. Focus more on listening rather than lecturing.

Yeah.

And so I go and say, how many questions or what can I learn from this person? Right? What new idea or concept can I come away with that I didn't know before or nuanced in a way that I didn't think about it before? And so that's the last piece I'll say to this is to cultivate our curiosity. And you may say, well, Justin, how is that different than being a student? Being a student is a posture, right? Am I either a student or I'm a lecturer? If you're a lecturer, you're not listening. If you're a student, you're engaging. But when you cultivate your curiosity, it takes you deeper into the conversation. Let me give you one strategic, practical way to do this. It's what we call the power of 3, where you listen at least into the third level of the conversation. Let me give you a great example. Like we have a conversation, Bradley, how's your day today? I'm like, oh, my day's fine. Power of one is like, oh, my day's fine too. Power of two, oh, what made your day good or fine? Oh yeah, I heard this, I was talking to this guy from Charlotte and he talked about the da da da. I was like, oh yeah, I remember that guy from Charlotte. Power of three, oh, what else did he talk about that you think I could learn from?

Oh, I see. Yeah.

Or what else did he resonated with you? We often stop people at power of one or power of two because we can't wait to get it back to who.

Nice.

But the power of 3 allows us to do 2 things. One, for that person to fully share, but two, even some of the stuff we think we disagree on, once we've listened deeply, we realize we are actually having 2 different conversations.

Yeah.

This is one of the reasons I love when people tell me like, Justin, I don't think we need diversity anymore. And my first response isn't back like, I'll deck you. I can't believe it. This is da da da. I get it. I'm like, oh, tell me, tell me what your definition of diversity is. Because oftentimes we're talking about two very different definitions. I'm talking about everybody, right? No matter what you look like, what you believe, if you're in a majority or minority, we're all a part of diversity because it just means difference. So how do we create the spaces that we are able to abide and work with people in the midst of our differences? It doesn't matter if you're white, Black, Asian, all these other things, what you believe, you're Republican, Democrat, independent. It's about difference. And so, yeah, that Level 3 allows me to actually get common understanding to what are we actually talking about.

Man, I love the Level 3. I was thinking to myself, so just through my own journey, like, I, um, I can't think of a specific situation yesterday. A friend of mine, personal friend, it wasn't a business thing, we were chatting about some stuff and I was like Uh, he said, uh, I said, how was your day? He's like, honestly, I was kind of struggling today.

Okay.

And I said, tell me about struggle. Okay, good that I came back to a second level, I guess, right? But I didn't go to a third level. Then it was like, you know, and I love that, to go like, sometimes it's just one more level deep is where you actually get, get to the good stuff. You know what, I came into this podcast like, I'm gonna find a way to disagree with Justin today. I'm gonna find a way. Actually, I don't. I couldn't. I actually don't. I was like, we talk about sports, to respectfully disagree with Justin today is what I was looking for. But actually, I really actually agree with pretty much everything. So hopefully I respectfully agree. Justin, you're super well spoken, my man. It was great having you on. People want to connect with you. Where would you point them to? How would they get to know about your work and what you do?

Yeah, so 3 places. The first is workmeaningful.com, and that's our main umbrella website. The more work we're doing around respectful disagreement in the book, I Respectfully Disagree is howtorespectfullydisagree.com. And so you'll see a lot more specific work to that, to the work we're doing there. But I love LinkedIn. Justin Jones Fosu is a great, great way. And if I could give this last little piece, because I think this is the one thing that I've been really sharing from the heart is that y'all, sometimes in our disagreements, we're just seed planters. We think that every conversation has to have an end result, and it doesn't. Sometimes the end result is planting seeds of goodness and kindness. And here's the key thing. Even we can respectfully disagree with others, even when people don't respectfully disagree with us. And that's the seed planting moment. We don't have to match energy. And so I share this to say is that, you know, maybe your role in that conversation and that disagreement is to simply plant a seed. And you have no idea the years later that that may germinate.

As a son of a farmer, I love that analogy for sure. Justin, I really have picked up so much. Some of my circles I have. I loved your core value of HOV lane. I love creative core values. That is not an aspirational one or an accidental one or a one, uh, permission to play one. That's a good— that's a really good one. So open, honest, and vulnerable. Love that core value for you and your team, for sure. Circle of grace, specifically, I just love the intentionality behind that. That's really— and, and it's made me really think about Golly, I've never, I've never actually thought about putting myself, intentionally putting myself in areas, uh, where maybe I do disagree with that. So that's something I'm going to give some personal thought to. Certainly love the, the, uh, the Power of Three, or the three different levels. I think I can implement that both within my team but also even in my, my personal life for sure. And absolutely love no more open door policy, out the door policy. At first when you said it, I was like, where is he going with this? Like, I was thinking like they're out the door. And then when you said it, I was like, oh, that is actually really, really good. Justin, been a pleasure having you on, my man. Appreciate it.

Thank you, Bradley. Appreciate you, brother.

Well, as I said in the intro, I really enjoyed that conversation with Justin. I thought his comments around the out-the-door policy in particular, as opposed to open-door policy, to get out and go and specifically visit with your team members and be proactive and intentional with it, certainly sat with me. I think the other one was just His comments around the core value of HOV lane and doing it with other people I thought was great. I love creative, unique core values as opposed to permission to play or accidental core values, etc. So I really love that. And I also just love his, uh, the energy that he brings. I knew when having him on he was going to bring that. And when I'm around people like that that bring that type of energy, it just is hard not to want to reciprocate. That. So go and check him out. Follow him on LinkedIn. He's great. Follow on LinkedIn. Pick up his books and especially his most recent book, I Respectfully Disagree. Big shout out to our podcast sponsors, Club Capital, Coach PE Consulting, Autopilot Recruiting, and Today App Pro. If you want to get control of your finances, we're coming off of 2024, going now into a month into 2025. If 2024 financials, you didn't feel like you were on top of your numbers and want to be able to use your financial to make better decisions, book a no-obligation demo with Club.Capital. Many of you are making— I get so many messages. I had like 3 today really around just team members, not necessarily specifically around recruiting, but just around team and being able to, you know, raise performance and being able to, you know, how do you coach and train and develop and get people kind of up to speed where they need to go? Well, one of the biggest things that starts with having great people on your team to begin with. And a company that can help you to do that is Autopilot Recruiting. Go to autopilotrecruiting.com. Autopilotrecruiting.com. I personally have worked with a lot of different coaches in my time. Some of them I've gotten a lot out of, some of them I haven't. Primarily from me. Tell you what, when you work with David, you're going to find out behind the scenes exactly what it is that they're doing. They're going to peel back the curtain for not only you, but also your team members. Go to coachpconsulting.com and let him know that you heard about him on the Above the Business podcast. I did an episode not long ago around where we were— I was carving out some expenses and how that dropped straight to the bottom line. Well, I'm gonna tell you, there— that being said, if whether it's software or anything else, there still are some of those core tech stacks that you definitely want to keep in your, you know, tech that you're using with your team. And one of the best, if you're an insurance agency owner, is TodayApp Pro. Go to todayapppro.com. Let me tell you why. One, they're gonna sync seamlessly with your corporate-approved CRM, so you don't have any worries there. Secondly, team is going to love it. Third, the interface is easy. Fourth, it brings in your word tracks. Maybe you have picked up from Coach P, etc. It puts it right in where your team members are working on a day-to-day basis. Not only that, they're going to be able to help you to switch over from what you're currently using. Go to todayapppro.com. All right, everyone, that was a great episode with Justin. Look forward to seeing you back here next week. We got some really big plans that are coming from the podcast. Cannot wait to share those with you. Until next episode, lead well and go be great.