Create A Culture Of Honesty With Justin Jones-Fosu

Life happens, and not always the way we expect it to. Every single day we face change, stress, and uncertainty. What if you could learn to thrive no matter what life throws your way? Resilience expert Adam Markel and his inspiring guests explore breakthrough strategies to fully embrace change and build the resilience required to become change-proof.

Hey everybody, it's Adam Markel, and welcome Welcome back to another episode of the Change Proof Podcast. I absolutely love the guest that I've got in store for you today. You're going to love this guy. He's just full of insight, full of energy, just a heck of a great guy. And this conversation I know is going to resonate with so many of you. Let me share a little bit more about him and then we'll bring him out. So, Justin Jones Basu is the embodiment of energy both at home and as a dedicated father of 4 spirited children and atop the world's highest peaks, having recently conquered one of the famed 7 summits. But Justin's passion for elevation doesn't end with trekking. It's mirrored in his professional ascent as a captivating business speaker, innovative social entrepreneur, and insightful workplace researcher. At the helm of Work Meaningful, Justin is the driving force and CEO behind a movement that empowers organizations across the globe, delivering over 50 keynote addresses each year on the pivotal topics of meaningful work and inclusion. His mission is to ignite a transformation in corporate culture, guiding organizations and individuals to ascend to their peak potential through mastery of mindset, purpose, and performance. Again, find a comfortable spot to sit down and listen or do something active because this conversation is gonna go places. You're gonna enjoy very much listening to the insights of Justin Jones-Fossitt. All right, Justin. So you're a keynote speaker. You're out there in the business world regularly being introduced and all that. It's fun to hear your bio. I mean, it's weird, I think, too, when people kind of frame you or you have provided that frame for other people to edify you in the presence of other folks. But my question at the beginning is really about something that's not in your bio. Like, what's one thing that is not a part of your introduction or your bio that in this moment right now you would love for people to know about you? Right.

Hmm. I think one thing that is actually pretty central to the work we're doing with I Respectfully Disagree is every 6 to 12 months, I take what I call the Circles of Grace Challenge. And it's a challenge that I created for myself because I realized I was not living up to the seeds that my mom planted in me years ago, challenging me to leave my circles of comfort, to get to experience the beauty of people and cultures around me. And so because I wasn't doing that, I'm a strategy guy. So I was like, let me create a strategy behind this. And so every 6 to 12 months, And I'll go to events, experiences, or I engage with people, either which I don't know a lot about or I disagree with, to ask 2 questions. One, what did I learn about these events, experiences, and/or people? And what did I learn about myself as I experienced them? And so that is something that is not in my bio, but it's a central part of who I am.

Why is that a central part of who you are? Tell me a little bit.

Yeah, it stems from my mom. So my mom, I remember growing up, we would go to events that I was like, why are we here? We would go to Oktoberfest and Polish festivals and First Peoples powwows and Hispanic Heritage Month events, and we would even go to events that we disagreed with. And I'd be sitting there like, Mom, we don't even agree with this. Why are we here? But what I realized is my mom was planting these seeds, and I didn't realize until later that even in the midst of disagreement, that there was humanity before us. And so as I interviewed my mom for my last 2 books, I was like, Mom, where did this come from for you? And so my mom shared a story, as I leaned into my mom's story, that she was one of the first Black female air traffic controllers in the Air Force. Wow. And she shared a very interesting story that there were some times she'd be stationed in Japan for 2 years, and there were some soldiers in that same 2-year timeframe that never left base. And I remember her sharing with my brother and I, she was like, I never want you all to be like this, to not leave your home base, metaphorically, and not get to experience the beauty of people and cultures around you. So I really do believe that it was the seeds that my mom planted years ago that have been the basis of who I am, of being curious about people and cultures. But I haven't always been that way, and I had to kind of put some strategy behind it and make sure I was intentional.

Wow. The pace of change over the last couple of years has been rapid. And if you're a leader, a business owner, an entrepreneur, you know exactly what I'm talking about. Every day it's something different and something new. But the one thing that I've learned in performing at the height of all of those roles has been that we must be resilient. In fact, it's the unsung hero in every success story that you will ever hear about, and it's the reason why My team and I created the resilience assessment that more than 5,000 business leaders across the globe have taken, and all you have to do to get your own free resilient leader assessment is go to resiliencerank.com. It takes less than 3 minutes, and it's our gift to you for being the leader that you already are. Other free resources and tools will accompany your score instantly. So go to resiliencerank.com and find out just how resilient you are. I forget the old quote. I think it might be a Mark Twain quote about travel being sort of the enemy of bigotry, the enemy of closed-mindedness and the like. Yeah. I mean, so, you know, there's travel for travel's sake and for the enjoyment and, you know, sort of stepping outside of your comfort zone. And there's so many benefits associated with that. But there's also just this idea that when you travel, you really get to see I mean, for me anyway, I'm just speaking my own personal experience. There's very little difference between us. We have different food tastes. Yes. We have different worldviews, different— like, we wear different clothes depending on the climates that we live in. There's all those differences that are clearly differentiators and they're the most obvious. And yet, wherever I've traveled, whether it's been to Abu Dhabi last year, the most faraway place I traveled this year, I guess, earlier in 2024, I'm already like in my brain going to 2025. Right. But wherever I've been, that's been the one thing that just continually comes back to me, that it's a reminder. I don't even know why. I don't know, Justin, how you feel about this, but I want to know. I need the reminder seemingly that we have so much in common. Every time I travel someplace, whether it's the middle of Missouri in a place that I've never been to or some place on the other side of the globe, I just come back to the same thing that— We're just baked the same way. The things we love are really rooted in the same sort of— it's the same seeds. Yeah. And yet, I need reminders that that's the case because my mind perpetually goes to those places where I see the differences or the differences of what's most obvious. Like, unpack it for me a little bit, like what your curiosity— what are you most curious about? And do you feel the same way that you need those reminders or not so much?

Yeah, absolutely. I think we need those reminders. And I do, to your point, Adam, I think how you travel matters. I've noticed some people who go to different countries and they'll go to the all-inclusive resorts, which is not bad because I've been to those and I love them, but they never get to actually experience the real country. They get to experience what the country or that specific resort has manufactured for them to experience. And so for me, I try my best to go and experience the beauty. So like, you know, great example, international backpacking trip once a year. And part of that is I want to spend at least 3 or 4 days just in the country experiencing what the people experience, going to the restaurants, challenging myself to learn a lot more about it. And so this upcoming one is Colombia. And so I'm going to Cartagena and just engaging and we'll do an Airbnb in Santa Marta and then doing a 4-day backpacking trip to the Lost City. But a similar thing happened in Patagonia when I was in Chile last year and just being able to experience the beauty of Chile and see the unique things. And so I think how you travel does matter. So just traveling by itself won't allow you to experience it unless you're intentional of going off the manufactured or manicured plan. The second piece of that I think is I actually like both. I love the reminders of our commonalities, but I also love the reminders of our differences. And for me, I like digging into understanding, like, so one of the things in the States is that you'll sometimes go to like restaurants and there'll be like bottle service or bottle people or in some places specifically. Typically bottle girls for certain places and establishments. But I was in Chile. It was interesting because I saw the same thing for coffee, and I'd never seen this before. It was like the morning coffee, and then you saw these bottle women who were coffee women who would come out and bring the coffee and talk to the guys. And it was very interesting to see. I was like, oh, that's different. I haven't experienced that. And I was like, now I'm curious. Like, oh, why does that happen? Is this so— Just learning And so that's why for me, I think the most important thing is not only I get to experience and see like, wow, there's some great commonalities, like some things I didn't think of. I was like, oh, Santiago is like New York, just with mountains. And that's why they call it Sanhattan. And so that commonality, however, seeing some of the differences, I was like, wow, this is actually pretty cool. And I love learning. And so one of that unique superpowers of just choosing to learn and be intentional is helpful. So I love both the commonalities reminders as well as the difference reminders. And I get to understand better why certain things happen differently in some parts of the world and/or some parts of our country.

There's a front and back to things, 2 sides of the same coin. Yeah, I did. So glad that you brought that up. And you've done quite a bit of traveling, extensive traveling. Share, if you could, a little bit about the more adventurous traveling you've done. I heard recently you summited a pretty big mountain.

Yes.

One of the 7 biggest or whatever, right? Tell us about that small trek.

So for those that don't know, there's this whole concept called Seven Summits, and I didn't know about it until probably before 2015. I was on a plane watching the movie Everest, and for some strange reason, watching the movie Everest where 17 people died on Mount Everest inspired me to want to start hiking mountains. So I went home and started doing this research, and they— in the movie, they talked about, you know, one of the people doing the Seven Summits, and this was the last summit. I was like, oh, what are the Seven Summits? And so I looked and this is the tallest mountain on a continent, tallest mountain on every continent. So there's 7. So I was like, uh, how many of these are actually non-technical climbs? Because I'm not like an ice picker or belayer, you know? So I found out Mount Kilimanjaro, continent of Africa, which is very significant to me being a dual citizen of both Ghana and the United States. I was like, oh my gosh, this would be great for my first really big international trek. And so boy, was I in for it. I had no idea what I was leaning into. But that was one of the most adventurous things for me in several different ways. One, there are several times I wanted to give up. So it taught me about the power of resilience and power of community. Two, there were moments where I leaned heavily into ego and realized that I needed to be, to operate in some more humility because of how much I was operating in ego. And so there was some great lessons that I learned and actually took with me to future hikes and treks. And 3, I just loved experiencing the different parts of Tanzania. So I was able to get to experience the Indian Ocean in Zanzibar and the turtle orphanage and this one cool restaurant where you could sometimes walk up to it, but sometimes you have to take a boat because the tide would come in and out. But then also to go and experience Tanzania and because our guide was from Tanzania and to experience the real Tanzania and go out dancing where everyday Tanzanians were and to be out there with them and engage and just be in the presence of that. So there was just this beautiful exchange of both challenging for myself, but then also just the learning about the culture that I didn't know a lot about.

Yeah. I want to know more about the actual hike too. So like, or yeah, it's not really a hike. What do they call that? I mean, it's like you're—

Well, they call it a trek. There's different names for it. I mean, the way I talk about it is the 3. There's 3 different versions. There's There's hiking, there's trekking, and there's mountain climbing. So for me, hiking could just be the woods, right? Just really, it's not— you're just going for a walk essentially. For me, trekking is where you're hiking to a specific place or for a specific purpose in that way. And then mountain climbing is what you'll see in terms of where the people are like the Netflix specials where they're climbing the mountains with their hands, whether they're using gear or not gear. And so I don't do mountain climbing. I love indoor mountain climbing, the fake mountains, but trekking is my thing. And so I love, like when I did Machu Picchu, we backpacked and hiked to get to Machu Picchu. Patagonia, we did the W Trek. So we were going to the glacier to get there, but there was a very specific focus. So— I'm

going to be specific then now. So on this trek that you were on, you mentioned humility. Can you share with us? I mean, I feel like humility is is such an unsung hero in so many important things in life, in terms of our journey in life. I really want to understand when you say humility, what's that based on? Was it an experience in particular? Was it more revelatory of the whole, just the whole thing? What did humility look like? When did it pop up for you, I guess?

Yeah. So as a person, I've been hiking before, right? I did 4 days in the Grand Canyon. There are some people, this is their first hike. Like their first major hike. And so I went into it from, this is my hike and I'm going to hike my own pace, my own way that I go. I'm still going to follow the guides, but it's going to be my personal hike.

Going in.

And there are some times where I thought that was still a good idea because there are times where I felt like they tried to keep the group together, but we were all at different levels. We were at different fitness levels. We were at different things. And I was just like, there's sometimes I'm going slower than I should and my body temperature is decreasing. I need to be able to continue to keep my body temperature going forward. And that's super important to me. Another piece of this is where I was really like, oh, wow, like, I need to actually be with the group more. And so it's just this interesting balance of being able to also be with the group and realizing that it's not just me, that it's not just Can I do it? But how am I encouraging others? And so where that came up, because there's some times I was just off by myself where I was just off ahead. I didn't care where the group was. And I realized that there could— while the whole group didn't need to stay together, I could have been more humble and be like, well, let me go with one or two people who are still relatively faster and do the hike. Why is that important? Because on the next hike I did in Machu Picchu, I started day 1 that way. And I remember journaling when I was on Kilimanjaro of like, hey, Justin, you need to check your ego a little bit. It's not just about you and your pace and your hike. It's about how do you encourage and inspire other people? And so I invited one of my buddies to go on Machu Picchu, and I realized, oh man, this is his first hike, and I left him. And I was just like, Justin, remember what you learned on Kili. And so I chose, instead of saying, how fast can I go? How much can I push myself? My mission was to be there lock and step with him. And so, no matter what pace he went, I chose to walk his pace. And it was actually a much enjoyable, much more enjoyable hike because I had somebody to talk to constantly and I was able to be there to support and encourage him in the process. And so, that was one thing that I learned.

And you mentioned the power of community as well. So, what were the sort of the ways in which you saw the power of community and maybe—

The encouragement. The noticing what everybody else had done, right? So I had one the last day where it was like these ridges that never ended. I felt like DJ Khaled was at the top of each ridge, like, and another one. And I was just sitting there like, wait a minute, and wanting to give up. And when I turned around, everybody had already given up their backpacks. And I was like, wait a minute, why haven't I given up my backpack yet? Because I was on the verge of giving up. And so one, acknowledging and being exposed to the community and the choices other people have made that may impact my choices. Number 2. 2, I also missed out on encouragement. Not only being encouraged by other people, but also encouraging others. And that was a unique aspect that I learned through Machu Picchu of that enjoyment I got from just telling my buddy, you got this, you're here. And I really, I was challenged by even perceptions, external perceptions. There was one woman on our hike, Alicia, who she had lost close to 100 pounds. She was a schoolteacher. She was about 10 years older than me. And guess what? When I was at that last day, when I was just like, I'm just going to go and I'm going to challenge myself and go, guess who was right behind me? Alicia. Right. And I was just like, oh, wow. Wow. And so also just even challenging my own perceptions, because I would have never imagined or guessed that she would have been there. And so we were all— it was Alicia and I and our 2 guides, and there was 9 other people who were behind us. She and I went and we were able to talk. And when I got sick from altitude sickness, she had some altitude sickness pills that were helpful for me that had I not gotten, I'm not sure I would have made it, Adam. And so you just talk about just the power of community, of who's around us, that we can actually go further, we can actually do more, and we can actually have a much more enjoyable experience when we have true powerful community with us.

Yeah. Beautiful. I would love for you to build a bridge between, if you can, and I know you can, I'm confident you can. Let's talk through this. Is there a bridge between that experience or parts of that experience and what you see in and among community in a different context? So in the work world, the world of work, I know it's meaningful to you. It is for me. We both have companies in that space. You do keynote work as well. How do you bring those lessons? Do you bring those lessons back into that space? What's the connection between these 2 things, the world of work and what you have learned and what you learn in these experiences where you're trekking both in a sort of a solo fashion as well as being really more interwoven into a community of people that are doing— that are all about that one goal, if you will, getting to a point, a summit, or another point on a map?

Yeah. I'm glad you asked that question. It's actually a brilliant question because actually this last trip in Patagonia started capturing what have I learned about companies, business culture from my trekking experiences. So instead of boring you with all the things I've learned, I'll share with you the 3 things that I think are the bridge to that. Number one is that we all operate at different paces. Like, one of the things I've loved about mountain climbing, trekking, hiking is that nobody takes the exact same path, even when we're following someone else. There's a slightly different version of the way that we go, our stride, our step, our thing. Even in snowshoeing, which I did in Colorado, climbing a mountain, doing that, like trying your best to operate in that person's step that we all have different steps. So just first acknowledging that all of our ways up the corporate organizational culture mountain are vastly different. And it doesn't mean that one person's wrong all the time. It means that we just take different approaches. And so that's been helpful just as an acknowledgment piece of that everybody has a different journey. Not every journey is the same. Now, number one. Number two is that we can actually go further with each other. There's an old African proverb that if you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together. In Kili, I may not have been able to go far without Alicia. And that's the same thing in our corporate world, in the culture. is that there's an opportunity when we have meaningful relationships, when we build this aspect of collaboration. And one of the things that a lot of organizations are struggling with now is siloed approaches. Marketing is vastly different than finance, and finance is vastly different than HR, and sometimes a competition rather than a collaboration about how do we have the biggest impact towards the organizational why in getting to this point. And so that being a bridge, I think, is helpful in seeing that. The last thing I would say Is this pole pole, and that's actually on Kili they talk about pole pole means slow slow. Right now, I want to change that narrative and not slow slow. Sometimes slow is good, but strategic strategic. And I feel as a strategy person, I feel like we often approach society and our organizations with what I call the hare approach. One of my favorite fables growing up is the tortoise and the hare, and I loved it because you know we called the story the tortoise was slow and steady. But I've been like we've been calling a tortoise wrong all these years. These years, the tortoise wasn't slow. The tortoise was strategic. We only called the tortoise slow because we compared it to the hare. But we find out in our society there's a lot of hares. There's a lot of people who they want to change culture, and it looks good really quick because they put up a new mission statement. They created a new person. They added new body counts or all these kind of things to the organization. But there wasn't strategic, long-lasting foundation. foundational focus building that allowed for there to be sustainable change and growth. And that's meaningful for me because during my MBA, my focus was leadership and organizational change. And that aspect of long-lasting sustainable change is important. So those are the 3 things that I really saw come to light in my tracks.

Yeah, this is literally why you and I are having this conversation, I'm sure, because our teams found that there was synergy in our philosophy, if you will, our way of looking at the world and at business in particular. And I'm wearing a Got Your Back t-shirt today for a reason. Love that. You know, for those that are watching this on YouTube and those that are listening, you just imagine that bald two— we're, by the way, for those who are just consuming by way of audio only, we are two bald brothers. That is—

Yes.

And we are shiny, relatively shiny bald brothers.

Yeah.

You're a little more mocha than me, but I'm a little mocha myself. I try to get my cream coffee. You know, I'm not pasty.

You're cream vanilla, right? You're not just vanilla, you're cream vanilla, right?

I'm definitely not pure white. Let's put it that way.

You're not Snow White.

Yes, you're not Snow White. In so many ways, I am not Snow White. That is so true. And you know, it's funny you mentioned the tortoise and the hare. My wife, She has used that analogy for so long in certain respects because I'm an entrepreneur. Like a lot of people that are entrepreneurs, we want to go fast. We're right now writing a book, doing research and interviews and some things regarding culture. And in that process, I'm not only exploring what I've learned and what I see and observe in other organizations and other leaders and their approach to culture, I also just see what's been my path looking backwards. It's always easy to see that path, you know, like walking through the snow and you can look back and you can see what led you here. Right. I have at times been more the hare. And that's why my wife has been that one to say sometimes, think about slow and steady. Because look, the moral of that story, which is why it is a moral, why we read that story and tell that story to kids, is that The tortoise wins that race.

Yeah.

So, I mean, and we get it that faster is, again, it's a part of the DNA. It's genetic material for entrepreneurs to go fast. Yeah. Why wait to build the plane to fly it kind of thing? Yeah. Right? I mean, so, and there's an element of that being required. So, I'm not discounting that. No, I'm not bitch-slapping it because the truth is I know it's gotten— it's not just gotten me, to certain places, but I've seen it get a lot of other business leaders to places where you might not have gotten there if you weren't ready to giddy up, right?

Yeah.

But that's not the whole story. And if that is the whole story, there's likely to be an accident. There's likely to be a fall. There's likely to be more drama. There's likely to be more struggle, frankly, than is absolutely necessary. I mean, struggle is optional on some level when you gain some humility, to go back to what you said earlier. When it's about ego, well, then, you know, it's just about plowing ahead, damn the torpedoes, whatever. Just— you just go full steam ahead. Right. And you work in that space of culture regularly. I would love to understand from your perspective when you see that there are— and I dare not— I don't really want to call them mistakes, but when you see that the culture, that an approach, a strategic culture approach to culture is off the mark, what does that look like in your experience? Is it sort of that going too fast? Is it ego? Is it— trying to sort of paint a pretty picture that doesn't really exist and get everybody to buy into something that you're wishing to be the case but really isn't. Seeds of it aren't in the ground. Everything that grows above the ground is the result of what was in the ground, right?

Yeah.

Right? That's how nature works. So, I'm just curious, what's your thought when you're working inside an organization? I guess I'm asking is, where do you see them struggling In terms of culture where you would say, hey, this is unnecessary struggle? Do you see that?

Yeah, I do see it. And I think there is not one standard thing because what I found is every organization have been very different. But the number one thing that I constantly see that's the miss is organizations who aren't willing to be honest with where they really are. And that is the number one place because we can't map out a chart or map out a map of where we're going if we haven't fully assessed where we are. And that's the number one thing that I feel I've faced resistance from organizations of not wanting to really identify where they are. So part of my training comes from— used to work for a top financial firm in global HR, and our work around adult learning was what we call the 4-stage analysis model. And so I've worked with organizations and boards to implement this. of where we simply go and ask 4 questions. And sometimes this has taken 2 days. First question is, where are we now? And that's a very interesting thing because people often disagree, but finding consensus on where we are now. Second is, where do we want to be? Third is, what are the barriers preventing us from getting there? And then fourth is, how do we remove the barriers? Now, that's a very strategic focus because you're looking at different steps about fully addressing where we are first right now. And so that's the number one thing I feel like that's been missing. I've gone into some organizations where I've sensed an aspect of what I call toxic positivity.

Yes.

That nobody wants to say anything bad about the company, the organization. The leader is one that's very positive. And so nobody likes to challenge. And so what ends up happening is— it's interesting because even in the book I Respectfully Disagree, we identified a whole nother part of research that we we weren't even looking for because initially we were just trying to solve for helping people to go from disrespectful disagreement to respectful disagreement. But Adam, there's a whole nother category called disrespectful agreement. And disrespectful agreement occurs when in a couple of ways where I may say, Adam, that's a great idea in the team meeting, but then behind closed doors I'm like, that was stupid. I don't even know why we're doing that.

Yeah.

Because we may have created a culture where everybody has to go along and agree and, and there has to be this cohesion and collaboration. And, and so you don't feel like you can disagree. But on the other side, there's some people who have been taught that as children or even in cultures that children should be seen and not heard.

Interesting.

And so we bring that into the workplace with us. And so we go in and we agree or sometimes are silent in places where we could disagree and we end up disrespecting ourselves in the process. And so to answer that question succinctly, I say the number one thing is organizations and teams not being honest and doing an honest assessment of where they really are.

I so appreciate that answer, love that answer. And it also really rings true in my experience. One of the things we do at the very outset of any of our engagements is create a specific, you know, not a canned culture, canned assessment, but something that's really unique to that organization. So, on the side of culture, we have a particular tool that we use there. And what we find often, so I guess our research, if we were doing a Venn diagram right now, we would— Yeah. be seeing that our research, our findings are very similar, ours and yours, in that what is sometimes referred to as psychological safety today is lacking. Yeah. That people don't either feel empowered to actually speak their minds or they just don't speak their mind for some other reason, including that they have fear of, or that it's not, again, that's not how we do it around here. We speak in a certain kind of way, we have a certain kind of language, and you putting a name to that or the phrase, using that phrase toxic positivity. Sometimes we call it magic thinking, this magical thinking that's happening, which again, from an entrepreneurial standpoint, I get that. That's a Steve Jobs, like, what did he call it? The distortion field or what was the name that was given to that? I

know what you're talking about. Yes.

Yeah. Right? Because it's his reality was like his reality that everybody just had to get on board with. So there are very few leaders that have that level of gravitas and also that in hindsight you could say, well, he was right. Yes. Or that he was on point. But often it's just, this is the view, like this is a senior leader's view of the state of affairs, like the State of the Union. And nobody can really question it. It's like the emperor. Again, we're bringing in all these tales of yesteryear, right? But it reminds me of The Emperor's New Clothes, that story. You remember that one? Yeah, I do. So it's like everybody's telling the emperor, hey, you look great, right? But he's naked. He's riding around and he's nude. But nobody has the guts to say, yo, dude, you're nude. Because then you're like, oh, he'd kill that guy. So I do think that we still run those prehistoric— that's part of the rhythm. of our minds that we fear. So much of how we show up is based, seems to be based in fear. So, and I think that's what gets in the way of that honesty. When you pointed out that one thing that seems to be a through line, which I so appreciated you bringing that up, that if organizations were just simply more honest about where they are, even if, right, we were saying, hey, by the way, we don't know where we are.

Yeah.

Because like the last thing that, and I'm going to make a funny joke about this, but the last, you know, it's an old stereotype about guys and, you know, men and women and they're in like in the In a car and maybe the guy's in the driver's seat and they go, honey, are you lost? It's like, hell no. I know exactly where I am. It's like, can you stop and get directions? I mean, this is back when we didn't have a GPS. It's like you either had a map or when I started to learn to drive, if you were lost, man, you had to go pull into a gas station and ask somebody where the heck you were.

Yes.

Right? And that took humility to do that. So we're back again, these sort of threads here. To be honest, you have to be humble. To be honest, you also have to not be operating from a place of fear.

And/or lean into the fear. Yeah. Or— Yes. Say more about this. Yeah. It's not operating, I think, without— with the absence of fear, because that's almost impossible. And I tell people, if you're never afraid, then you're not pushing hard enough. It's like you have to do things intentionally that scare you. That's a part of our growth. And that's one of the things that I lean into. And that's one of the things that I think a lot of the corporations and organizations have done. Now, I want to give some nuance. to people like Steve Jobs, because I do believe there was this distortion field.

Reality distortion field. That's right.

Reality distortion, yes. With products and services where I don't think that works as well as with people. And that's where the difference— if we can think through and be creative and innovative and think about products and services and what things could be, and that takes the level of kind of reality distortion. However, I think there were people who challenged Steve Jobs on the products, challenged him on services, challenged and disagreed and said, it's not— what if we did this? So it wasn't just Steve Jobs that came up with the iPhone idea.

We shouldn't be looking for end-to-end control.

You're right.

Everything. Yeah. Yeah. There were people who challenged

him. Yes. All right. Now, you had to prove yourself to have been able to challenge him. Right? You had to be a person that he trusted, valued, and thought was smarter than him. And there are several people who did those things and helped Apple become who the company that it became. Where it's slightly different is as it relates to people. Do people feel like they can challenge? And that's one of the things that we've been challenging and encouraging leaders to do. 3 things. And so if you're a leader, you have direct reports, you're influencing other people, here are 3 ways that you can lean into helping to create this culture on your team and organization. Number one, to Tell people you want disagreement. You would think that that's simple, but no, because you have no idea the journey people have been on. We're right now doing a tour with some Toyota manufacturing plants. And one of the things, this one lady, and she's like, I don't speak for all my culture, but she's like, from her experience as a Latina, she's like, I grew up and was taught that children should be seen and not heard. And that a woman's place was here in a specific thing, in a home, a different thing. And she was like, I carried that with me to work. And realized as a leader, I struggled at times because I was trying to keep the peace, not rock the boat too much, and realizing that that wasn't helping with the creativity, innovation, and overall productivity of our team. And so one, one has to be honest with oneself of what their journey has been. And so I think with people, we have to be able to tell them, yes, you can disagree with me. Number 2, we have to reward that disagreement. And I don't mean monetarily. I mean, in the meeting, if somebody disagrees with you after you've asked for it, reward it in the moment. You know what, Adam? Thank you so much for bringing up that point. It makes me think about X, or thank you for challenging me because that's a really important thing to consider. I tell my team, hey, I want you to disagree with me. Not just disagree with me, prove how I'm wrong, right? Because if you can't prove how I'm wrong, then I may have the wrong team around me. And so that's the second thing is to reward people verbally because people are paying attention. To what you are reinforcing. And number 3 is to follow up. So if you came to a solution, had some innovative idea, were able to come back to this, come back 2 months later, a month later, or 3 months later and say, you know what, in that meeting when you disagreed, that was super valuable. And say it in front of other people, because not only are you now asking for disagreement, you're rewarding it, but you're following it up and showing that this is something that I actually value. Those are the things that help to shape culture. And it actually follows perfectly with my favorite change management model called ADKAR that shows that A is awareness. Why do we need to change in the first place? D, what is the desire? What's in it for me? Why should this be important to me? K, what knowledge do I need to be able to have? A, do I have the ability, the resources, funds, time, all these things? And last piece that they state most people miss is the R, the reinforcement. What change are you now reinforcing? Because people will go back to what they're used to without strong positive reinforcement.

Yes, indeed. I want to go to the reality. So these are all the scenarios where improvement can occur and a shift can happen. Let's just get into the place where honesty is lacking, where there's a reason that the whole story isn't being shared. And we said earlier, fear, and I love, again, the distinction around we need fear. Fear You know, fear is healthy at times and it's not going anywhere anyway. It's just a part of how we're baked. So trying to remove it is kind of foolish. But there's another way that you can look at the reality. And I like to think of it as if we can't necessarily change reality, we can't distort reality for our own purposes the way Steve Jobs was accused of doing. Right. Then what can we do with it? And to me, the answer is resilience. So on our side of the field, when we're working with organizations, We're looking at operationalizing resilience organizationally. And the reason for that is because in that case, we're agnostic to the challenge. It's not like we don't care, but we know, we take it for granted that we're going to get disrupted, that there's going to be headwinds, that it's likely that the market's going to change. There'll be macro factors that are well beyond our control. Yes. As we see all the time, right? What's the answer to that? Again, so our answer to that is you develop resilience. And it was interesting. I don't know if you saw this interview, and if you didn't, I'm going to totally send this to you. Short clip of a commencement address or part of a commencement interview, really. It wasn't even an address, but Jensen Huang, who's the CEO of Nvidia, was being interviewed by somebody at Stanford Business School. And he's speaking to a group of Stanford, then soon-to-be graduate Stanford business folks, the brightest, the best, like the great minds and people that have tremendous potential careers ahead of them, have great expectations for what their business life is going to look like. And he basically says to them, he goes, you guys all have high expectations. You should. You're graduating from this amazing school, one of the best. You also were able to pay tuition. Got a little laugh from the audience, right? If I managed to do that, right? And now you're going to graduate. But in my experience, and this is a guy who's running that company now for 30 years, I don't know that everybody knows that that's how old or how long Nvidia has been around before it became a household name and a $3, $4 trillion company or whatever. But he says, look, people with high expectations, in his experience, have low resilience. That's what he said. And I have used that clip with when we are, again, embedded, and it is one of the great honors, right? You tell me you feel the same. You're nodding your head, right? Yeah. Because it is a great honor. when any leadership team, any organization lets you get in there with their people because it's like saying, hey, take my kids in my— you know, like, right, put my kids in your bus. Yeah. You know, that's a big responsibility. So, you know, sometimes consultants get a bad rap, and deservedly, I guess. But I know we take that super seriously. And so, I will challenge their way of thinking sometimes by bringing this video up and just asking for conversation around what's he talking about here and do Do you disagree with that principle? And what does it mean to you? Because ultimately, he comes out of that conversation saying, look, you just can't succeed without resilience. It's in that process of building resilience that you're building character. You build the character of your team, your companies, and that's a requirement. It's not a— that ingredient must be in the mix for you to be successful. Yeah. For the long, like you say, not in the short term necessarily, but for the long term. He's a 30-year-long company that's only just now hitting its stride and its greatest potential is still ahead of it, which is remarkable.

Isn't that fascinating?

Tell me.

That's what's fascinating, Adam. And that's where I think we missed the mark. What I can say from a larger aspect of what I see from our society is that we are short-term thinkers and short-term actors. And what I mean by that is we care more about the short term at times than the long term. So organizations, right? Again, it comes back to the tortoise and the hare for me. There's some organizations who make some very hare choices. Like we want to turn around the company in the next 2 years. And so we make some decisions. We cut costs. We do, we cut team members. We change recipes of our food to do all these things and not realizing the potential impact of 5 years from now that people will not like our food as much and not shop at our restaurant as much and all of these things. But in those first 2 years, our stock prices shot up. We were able to manage and navigate stakeholder expectations. And all these things, but there isn't a plan of how does this impact us now and how will this impact us 5, 10, 15, 20 years from now? We don't want to know that. And the first place I can take you to is our sports culture. Think about how many coaches, right? There's been a very big narrative right now for those who love sports and the football is how many rookie quarterbacks are actually playing now their first rookie season. And it's because we want the turnaround Immediately. And because coaches' jobs are on the line, and so they're pressured to play these rookies that may not be ready yet, right? Because you think about some of the ones who had to sit back— Tom Brady, Patrick Mahomes, Aaron Rodgers— like, all these people didn't play their first year. They sat back and some of them didn't play the first 2, 3 years because Brett Favre was before Aaron Rodgers. And so what ends up happening is because we're so shortsighted, we make shortsighted decisions rather than asking the question of what is the potential of this decision 10, 15, 20 years from now? Which is one of the reasons I love the Steelers. I'm sorry, go

ahead. And I was just going to say, and the reason I'm so— come back to that Jensen piece of this is that we have high expectations.

Yes.

So those high expectations demand, right? They demand certain immediacy.

Yes.

And if you're not achieving those high expectations, then something knee-jerky or something radical or something immediate, whatever you want to call it, has to be done about it. Yes. And so we make really— we make a lot of those mistakes, including laying people off through a constant— the waves in the ocean. Like, we hire, we fire, we hire, we fire, we hire, we fire. And they go through that, whether it's every 18 months or sooner, but it repeats itself over and over and over again. And it's so wasteful as well as destroys trust. You talk about the value of things that are valuable in the creation of a strong culture, trust being, again, fundamental, and that trust is eroded every single time that cycle repeats itself. So I want to understand, because we're going to wrap up here in a little bit, but I want to get your take on resilience because, again, to me, when he says high expectations creates low resilience, it's because Because when stuff happens, we need to be able to understand the process of moving through those challenges. Yeah. When stuff goes sideways, we need to understand that we will be better on the other end or better in the process of getting to the resolution of that thing and know that upfront, know that ahead of time. Otherwise, what we're doing is responding or reacting to it from a pure— from a place of emotion. place of fear, from, again, a place of, we need to win, or these are the results. We need to win or we lose our dollars here or there or elsewhere. We need to win. I need to win, or somebody's going to— heads are going to come off. Yeah. We're going to make a change at the top, or whatever it might be. And again, I think you put your finger on it. It's short-term thinking. It's a very tricky bit here. But when so many of these companies are so fundamentally focused on shareholder value. That's short-term thinking. If you're a shareholder— 100%. The way it used to be, you're a shareholder for a long period of time and companies are going to go through good times and bad times. But you wouldn't— no shareholder would say, hey, I think you should lay off 10% of your workforce so that my stock price is higher next year than it is this year. As opposed to, if you don't lay off 10% of your workforce and instead you weather that, whatever that downturn or that headwind is, more effectively, So that 3 years from now, you're better equipped to then not have to rehire or get up to speed, but you've been innovating and you've been strengthening and you're more ready to capture market share. And 3 years or 5 years later, you're ready for even more exponential growth because you didn't waste— you didn't go through that period of waste and also displace trust in the process.

Yeah.

Then that's better for me as a shareholder 5 years from now than it is today. But that's not the way the compensation packages work for those at the very top. And it's not what we seem to be focused on in terms of how we approach stakeholders. I went off a little on a tangent there, but I'd love to hear your thoughts on any of that. And I want to come back to how you think about resilience as well.

Yeah. So I love that because it actually speaks to— I worked for a top financial firm during the time of 2008, 2009. And there's a lot of fear what was going on in society in terms of with the stock market and the crash and all those things that were happening. I use the word crash in quotations. But one thing I appreciated about that organization is there was not a single layoff based upon what was happening in an environment. If somebody got laid off, it was because of— they were fired because of poor performance. And they were intentional. They talked to leadership, they talked to management, And management and leadership looked past some potential bonuses, looked past some raises, even some reduced their salaries in order to keep everybody during that time. They had a very long-term thinking, long-term thinking and mindset for their organization. So they didn't have to go through a hiring frenzy when the market rebounded. They didn't have to, where a lot of other companies were either folding And are doing amazing layoffs. And I think that principle really stood out to me of the sacrifice of leadership in order for the overall organization to perform and lead well. That takes a different type of thinking. That takes a different type of leadership to think that long-term and not just about what I get out of this, but how do I serve all of our stakeholders, including our employees and their families as well? So I think you're spot on. I think it's an interesting balance. Because that's not what a lot of organizations are looking for right now. It's about the immediacy of the moment. And so back to your point about resilience, I think your approach to resilience is great. I want to simplify it. And then, and I think people, organizations like yours come in and operationalize it. But one of the things is I share in a story. So I do this thing called a birthday challenge where I challenge myself to do one thing that I've never done before, but always thought about doing, right? And so one year I was learning how to mountain bike. And so I went mountain biking here in Charlotte and had a great time and I captured video of it. And so I sometimes show it in my presentations where riding and it's great and it looked great. You're not supposed to sit on the bike when you're mountain biking, you're supposed to hover, right? It's all these things. And I show the very next thing and I see people like, oh, I can watch my position. And then I fall off a bridge. Now it was my first time mountain biking and I fell off a bridge and I walked the rest of the way. Yes. And I ran into this guy who was super fit like you. And it was like, you could tell, like a mountain biker extraordinaire I met earlier. And he was like, hey, man, like, how was your first time mountain biking? And I kind of looked at the bike that I was walking up the hill and I was like, I fell off a bridge. Right? And without skipping a beat, Adam, he was like, man, that's cool. He said, because if you're not falling, you're not really riding. And it hit me. It's something that resonated with me because the statement I've often challenged myself to live by is that if you're not failing, you're not trying hard enough. And so one aspect I think that has been missing in some aspects of resilience is encouraging failure in our teams, encouraging challenging and trying new things, encouraging thinking outside of the box that might cause us to go off. I remember the stories about— I'm forgetting her name, but the person who didn't lean in, right? Sheryl Sandberg. She talked about how she was brought before her organization at the time. I think it was at Google at that time. And rewarded for a million-dollar, multimillion-dollar failure, right? And it was just like, she tried and we really appreciated that. And that resonated with me for 2 reasons, personal and professional. I now talk to my kids about, where have you failed recently and what have you learned? Like my daughter, they lost the basketball game and I was like, oh, that's cool. And she was mad at me for saying that. I was just like, no, we need to lose at times because sometimes in losing we learn How we actually can win better, right? And how do we perform? Which leads to another aspect of professional. And leaders, if you're listening, hear Carol Dweck's work. Part of the way that we develop resilience is in praising on progress, not performance. Praising on progress, not performance. How does that play out? Say you completed a project and I'm like, oh, Adam, thank you so much. The multimillion dollars we were able to come from your creativity and innovation is awesome. That's what we need more of. Just praise your performance. Now, what Carol Dweck's work has shown is that people will try to get to that performance because that's what's reinforced, even if they have to steal, cheat, or not utilize integrity in order to get there. But when we praise on progress, you know, Adam, talk to me about what it took for you to successfully get to this place where this multimillion-dollar deal came through. And you said, well, I had to do this, and sometimes I was up late, and sometimes I had to take some self-care and go to the beach and just think and quiet my brain. And I had to have difficult conversations with the team members, and somebody challenged me. I was like, that's what we need to praise. Keep doing that, Adam, because that got you to this. So I want to encourage you to keep having the conversations with other departments, to keep challenging yourself, taking care of self-care to think through that. And that praising on progress, she's found in her research, not just theoretical, And her research has kept people continuing to lean into what they did to get there rather than manufacturing the performance that you praise.

Yeah.

That's one way that we can build resilience.

It's, again, such a great alignment here. It's really similar to this because when I have that conversation around what low expectations and how low expectations— nobody wants to say, I want my team to have low expectations. I want to, as a leader, have low expectations. of others. That's what's controversial about what— about his statement, that high expectations create low resilience. It's not that you water down your expectations. It's understanding, as you said, that failure is a part of success. It's not just— Yeah. Like the part of success we don't ever want to talk about. It's a part we need to talk about more and more and more. In fact, I think he says in that same interview something to the effect that when And he says, when people— when there's pain and suffering at NVIDIA, he meets it with glee. With glee. And what he says to these grads, these Stanford Business School grads, he says, you know what I wish you? If I could wish you anything, what I wish you are ample doses of pain and suffering.

Yeah.

And I think the audience is laughing, but uncomfortably so, because he understands that through pain and suffering— and that's not the language I would would've used to describe it. Yeah. But because, again, from a resilience standpoint, it's when we know what doesn't work, and this is what our research tells us as well, when we know what doesn't work, we know what does. Yeah. It's a really interesting thing. If you look at any area of your life and you just test this out for, again, the people listening to this and going, hmm, do I buy that? Do I not buy that? Do I understand? It's a simple litmus test. Just look at any area of your life and see something that didn't work. And when you know When you can look at what didn't work, you already know what does work. When you know what you don't want, you know what you do want. You know, like, you could even do a T-chart. Sometimes the simplest of exercises is so easy to see it. You know, on the left-hand side, just again, what— anything you don't want, anything that didn't work, anything that was a failure or a mistake on the left-hand side of this T-chart. On the right-hand side, what's the wisdom? What do you automatically have crystal clear? clarity about— because of that. That's where resilience is built. That's where we don't care on some level what's the disruption. Look, we just had an election. We're not going to talk politics here, but regardless of which side was going to win or did win, it's like we're going to be all right on either side of that. Yeah. So, but if you're thinking somehow like that there's an existential threat to life itself, to the world, because one thing happens versus the other, That's a BS story. It's unnecessary drama, and drama is depleting. When we think about the things mentally, emotionally, physically, even spiritually that deplete us, deplete our resilience in the face of the world that is complex and ambiguous and filled with things that we should be afraid of, that we— all of those things exist simultaneously. How are you resilient in the face of that? By getting drawn into the drama of what-ifs? Mm-hmm. No. And that's certainly not the way of business from a system standpoint. It's just, that's wasteful. It's wasteful of energy. It's wasteful of resources. It's wasteful of opportunities. So, I so love how you and I, we interweaving our own little, like our own threads in this fabric. We're a little over time. I want to ask you one other thing.

Oh, if you allow me just briefly to give some context to that, just 2 really quick things. I don't think, and I want to encourage people, even as you mentioned the things about politics, I would be very careful about ascertaining in terms of where people should be, because I think we can get there, but not everybody gets there at the same time. And some people I've had encouraged to take a break because there are some people I've had conversations with that do feel as if their identity may no longer be valued, cherished, appreciated, and they have to work through that and then get through the other side. We often, I think, incorrectly appreciate resilience for immediate resilience rather than being able to walk through the process of getting there. And so one thing that's been important for me, which gets to the personal aspect, is that I learned from my first marriage that ended in divorce, and we were married for 15 years, is that one thing that I felt would have been central— 2 things. One was that we would never stop going to marriage counseling. So what didn't work, I learned what did work and that I told my now wife, Tanya, I was like, hey, if you can't go to marriage counseling with me for the rest of your life, I'm not your person. Because I realized what didn't work as well as the second thing of like, I now go to counseling every single month. I will never stop going to counseling, not because there's something wrong with me, even though my kids may say something different, but because I want to keep things going right. And so to your point, is I want people to see this doesn't— this stuff isn't just about business and workplace. Now, the former HR leader, we used to tell people, leave work at work, get home at home, but that doesn't work. But the same aspect of resilience in the T-chart of realizing, like, this didn't work in my first marriage, we're never stopping going to counseling in this current marriage. And so, the things that I think can lead into—

It's a tool for clarity. That's the reason I mentioned it, because to me, you can apply it in any area, again, whether it's whether it's a personal one, a professional one, whether it's— we're talking about even just your belief system, your worldview, or what's happening in the world around you that you have no control over or limited control, limited control, highly— Yes. Very limited control.

Yes.

But again, to me, anything that provides clarity where you can get clear, your clarity becomes in many ways not only a beacon for other people to gain clarity, but it helps you to show up in the way that you're capable of showing up. And I don't know that there's more that we're charged with Even from a spiritual perspective. Yeah. I don't know if there's more that is our true responsibility because so often I think it's, again, clarifying to understand what's my work to do, what's mine to do, what's not mine to do. If we set ourselves up for struggle and frustration and any of those things, I ultimately look at it like that depletes the energy that we would otherwise have to be problem solvers, to be working on the side of where my clarity leads me and where the world is different and the people around me are somehow impacted positively because I'm coming from a place of clarity, not a place of anger or any of the other things that come. We're drawn into that which is not truly either ours to do or when we're in that, again, that reactive state that is threatening to our very identity or very existence, right? Right. And that's what you're saying. Yeah. So clarity is so key. You know what, at the risk of this going just a little longer, I really do want to get this question in front of you, which is about culture, because it's such an amorphous topic, right? I mean, it's defined in so many different ways. And so I'm not looking to define it. I want to get a sense of, do you feel like this concept of culture in business, which by the way, it's funny, the word cult is embedded in that, right? Right. The cult that is our team and our family, if you use it right, with at work. Are we regressing? Is culture regressing or is it evolving? Do you feel like the tide is going backward post-pandemic, or do you feel like the things that change, the radical changes that occurred in the workplace as a result of the pandemic, are propelling us to— in some bold, evolved, or more evolved direction? And I know that's not an easy question, by

the way. Yeah, it's a very great question. that I'm going to give a very gray response. The answer is yes to both of those things, I think. And there's some cultures that are regressing and that didn't necessarily take lessons that they learned from the pandemic and are trying to operate from a pre-pandemic playbook when people are now post-pandemic in many ways and have a different way of thinking and living and engaging in the world of work as well as their personal lives. And There, I have seen some organizations that are regressing and are not paying attention to what has shifted for their people, right? Because if we just identify like a high-level culture, it's a way of life for a group of people, shared beliefs, shared values, shared traditions and behaviors. And one thing the pandemic did is it shifted a lot of what we thought were our staple belief standards, operating procedures. So there are companies that are regressing. I think there are companies that are evolving and cultures that are evolving because they're taking into account How things have shifted and they're paying attention to their people. They're taking assessments like yours and identifying where we really are. All right. They're hearing from their people versus creating a set standard without even asking their people, how would this impact you? And that's the thing, because sometimes it's not about even what we enact. It's did we care enough to even ask the people? Did we care? Did we say, I'd love to hear from you about how this impacts you? But sometimes as organizations and leaders, we make decisions that will impact the culture without even hearing how our people will respond to this. How will it impact them, their family lives, the way they care for their children if they have children, their parents who are aging with them, all of these things? And that's where the place of regression happens. So when you're paying attention from a cultural perspective, will you make decisions that will please everybody? Absolutely not. Will you at least hear your people? That's the place that I think we can lean into as leaders, whether that's surveys, assessments, whether that's focus groups, whether that's you actually listen to the data and it's not just earmarked for it because you're trying to get the best company to work for, but you're actually looking and saying, oh, our frontline associates are showing us that this new safety standard would actually hurt them more than help them. Let's talk to them to figure out, do they have another solution of ways that we can approach that? We can get to see. So this is so powerful for me. If people want to dive into something deeper, one of the best books I ever read came from my MBA professor, and he was the type of professor that was a little different. He would have us sit in the middle of a room for 10 minutes, not say anything, not do anything, and then write a 10-page paper about it. He was like that Dead Poets Society, like Carpe Diem type professor. But he had us read this book called Dialogue: The Art of Thinking Together by William Isaacs that has had such a profound impact on how I approach society in the world today. And the essence of that book is I come to you, Adam, trying to prove to you A, and you come to me trying to prove B. But his challenge is, what if we ask what's C? Now, C doesn't mean 50/50. C could be 95/5. C could be 40/60. C could be 20/80. But it's this concept of creating something together that is energizing, that is resilient, that is helping us collaboratively to grow together. And that's even— that's one of the reasons pillar 4 in our book of I Respectfully Disagree is seek the gray. It's how we find this gray, this common ground, not middle ground, but common ground together that I think helps us in our society, in our world today, to be more resilient in the face of what's going on in society. Those are ways that we lean in.

Wow. Justin, I literally could talk to you all day. This podcast is not sort of the Joe Rogan model of 3-hour longs and all that. So we're going to land the plane right here and now. I'm sure people are going, oh, shit, man, keep going. Maybe somebody's going, you guys should shut up already. I don't know. Regardless, we're going to land the plane. And I want to say to my ball brother, thank you so much, man, for your time and for this whole Just great, great vibe, great conversation, and there'll be more to come. And for our folks, as you know, check out the show notes because I want you to learn more about Justin and his work in the world and where you can find him and hire him and bring him on, not only to speak but also to facilitate and provide insight. So, and if you've got a comment, question for Justin or myself, you can go to adamarkel.com/podcast, leave a question or comment there, and we would love it as always. This is an ask. I say this humbly, that our community has grown and it's grown because of you. It's grown because you've shared these podcasts with other people, friends, colleagues, whoever it is that might benefit. And you've also taken even the couple of minutes it does take to provide your rating, you know, the ranking. So on whatever platform you're consuming this, if you, you know, if it's a 5-star, it's 4-star, it's 1-star, whatever it is, the feedback is just so welcome and helpful. And that's, that's how we've grown. And so we appreciate you doing that whenever that's That's time for you to do, and you have made the time for it. We, again, are so grateful. Justin, speaking of gratitude, buddy, thank you again for your time today.

Thank you, Adam. Appreciate you, brother.

Hey now. I don't know. That was so much fun. I love to podcast. It is definitely into our, I don't know, 350th episode or something over the last 6 years plus. It can be like anything else, can get old and become stale and even Dull, I guess, but somehow or another, it just hasn't for me. And in part, I want to just shout out to our team because frankly, it would have a long time ago lost my interest if it weren't for the great guests that I am constantly being served up. I feel like I have the easiest job of all, which is to just ask some questions and maybe do some good listening and whatnot. But our team, they do the really hard work of Finding these great, these amazing people and leaders, these just really interesting souls that I get to speak to. And so, I do have the easiest job of all in that. And I wanted to take this moment to simply acknowledge our team and all that they do to make this podcast ever interesting, enlivening, and something that I look forward to doing. I don't have any dread feelings about it. And I can't say that about everything that I've done for long periods of time. But I'm the pivot guy, right? Yeah. Change-proof. So, when stuff isn't working, I tend not to continue to do it. And it's a testament to the fact that I'm still doing this podcast that it is still, to me, a place of growth and aliveness and something valuable. Like, I think it's a valuable service to anybody that gets to listen to the insights of the people that we find somewhere. Again, that's definitely above my pay grade and I'm just so grateful That they're doing the work that they're doing. So shout out to our team. Our conversation today, Justin and I, we really covered so many things. It would be difficult for me to summarize it, and I won't. I would just say listen to it again, share it with a friend, a colleague, a family member, somebody that might also vibe with some of the stuff that was being shared today. It was definitely a very interesting ride, a bit of a roller coaster, up and all over the place. And we just kept finding new heights, new higher and higher heights. That's what it felt like. I felt like the conversation was elevating in consciousness the whole way through. So what a blast. And if you did love it, please feel free to leave us a comment or rate the podcast. Give us that rating that makes it possible for other people to find this show or for the show to be— to find them, I guess, is really the way to put it. And lastly, if you're in a place where you'd like to check out how resilient your culture is, how resilient you as a leader are, you as an individual contributor You can start with a very simple tool, takes 2.5 minutes, and it's absolutely free. Go to rankmyresilience.com, rankmyresilience.com, and 2.5 minutes and 16 questions later, you're going to get your own personalized assessment score, confidential information, and resources. And then of course, we can talk about how it is that you can leverage that information or use it, and also how to assess greater numbers of people, greater subsets whether it's by team, by function, by geography in your organization, and how to use those insights more importantly or as importantly to make methodical, well-thought-out, long— change for the long term, to really be adopting that long-term thinking approach, that tortoise approach to winning the race in life and winning the race in business. And with that, I would just say once again, thank you so much for being a part of this community. Thank you for all that you contribute to it. And for now, I will just say ciao and thank you again.

Thanks for listening. We hope you now have even more tools and greater insights to build resilience and become change-proof. Remember to leave a review on Apple Podcasts and you may be featured in an upcoming episode. For more resilience tips and strategies, including support for building change-proof teams, visit adammarkel.com. To get your own free resilience assessment, go to rankmyresilience.com.