Episode 13: To Achieve Optimal Results, You Need to Truly Understand Your People... and Yourself

Hello everybody, welcome to episode number 13, dated May 17th, 2016, of my Banker Education Series webinar show. This is Eric Cook, and I'm with WSI Digital Marketing, where we work with businesses and organizations on helping them better understand and leverage the power of the internet as a strategic business tool, particularly in the community banking and financial services space. You can learn more about me kind of picking around the poweredbywsi.com website if you are so inclined. And I'm very excited that you are joining me for what I know is going to be an awesome show with my good friend Don Crosby, otherwise referred to as the— let me just see— the behavioral— let me see, what was the— the behavioral locksmith. I drew a little blank there. Sorry about that, Don. Before we go ahead and get started, I'm just so excited to jump in and I completely blew my intro there, but before we get started, I just want to welcome again everybody. If you joined us because you saw maybe a post on social media or referred by a friend and you would like to sign up for future webinars for the Banker Education Series, if you visit poweredbywsi.com/BES or Banker Education Series, you'll notice that there's a link in the first paragraph where you can actually put your email address in there and that will sign you up for future Notifications, and you can join us on the show. I also want to let everybody know that all Banker Education Series webinars are recorded and made available at this BES page. So if you scroll down, you'll notice that episode 12, which was with Jill Castile and Tim Marshall, a couple of bank CEOs that are completely killing it on social media and leading the charge for their organization, uh, that was a great show. You can see that the big green buttons there will take you directly to our YouTube channel, and you can go ahead and view those at your leisure. So we will get this one updated as well, and if you would like to share this or any of the other shows with friends or colleagues, please feel free to do so and just send them the link. They can register as well, and hopefully we'll see you and maybe them on future shows. So with that intro and kind of some housekeeping items, I do want to make, I guess, one other housekeeping notification here. If you are interested in asking a question, Or making a comment, please feel free to do so during the show. I will keep an eye on those, and you can use the chat functionality, which is located over on the right-hand side of your screen, and that will give you the ability to go ahead and send your comments to us. Very much appreciate and like when we have engagement from our live audience, so feel free to do so if you have something that you would like to talk about. With that out of the way, while I work the magic of GoToWebinar and I send the presentation and screen over to Don Crosby. I would like to provide a little bit of an intro about how I know Don and kind of set the stage maybe a little bit for today. Back when I was a community banker, oh, many moons ago, I had somebody that worked for me. I kind of oversaw the marketing department as the Chief Operating Officer for Marshall Savings Bank. I'll call her Becky. She worked for me, and we had a good relationship, and everything worked really well between us, but there were times when I would give her a project or she would ask me something, and it just— until I had an opportunity to chat with Dawn, it seemed like there was just— Something wasn't quite right. It wasn't her, it wasn't me. It was just I felt like I had to explain things to her multiple times. And after Don and I and Becky actually sat down and went through everything together, we came to the realization once we understood one another's personality and decision-making style that I was very much— I don't want to say a pie-in-the-sky kind of guy. But I was very much a big picture person and didn't realize that she was very much a detail-oriented person. And when we both had an opportunity to get to know one another through what Dawn does, it gave me a realization that I needed to be a little bit more exact and detailed when I provided her with instructions on things to do or tasks or projects. And she needed to be comfortable approaching me and saying, hey, I need a little bit more detail, and knowing that that wouldn't offend me or put her in a position of maybe looking bad. And literally, it took us 5 minutes to do the questions that Don has. And after about 15 minutes of let me introduce you to each other, and this is where I think you guys might be experiencing some challenges, Don. Didn't know her at all, knew me pretty well, and I would dare say that the relationship between her and myself was forever changed. Way more efficient, way more productive, and we even joke about instances where I reverted back to my old style or she was asking questions and we kind of played off of the ProScan report and said, now you know, your ProScan says, and we chuckled about it, but it made our relationship so much better. And even though we had worked together for a number of years, It wasn't until Don helped us literally flatten that learning curve that the true value of our working relationship really blossomed. And so I promise I'm going to let Don talk here in a little bit, but I just— I'm really excited that Don is here because he did a lot of great things for us at our bank when he had an opportunity to come in and talk to people and do the assessments. And We know all too well that success in almost everything in life is either knowing yourself or knowing the people that you're interacting with and the best way to go about doing that. And Don has an amazing talent and some pretty impressive technology that helps him do that. So with that rather long-winded intro, but I wanted to build you up because, you know, Don, I am a huge fan of yours. I'm really excited that we finally were able to get this to work.

Thank you.

And you're here joining me on my latest episode of the BES. So, Don, I will let you talk. Welcome to the Banker Education Series.

Eric, thank you very much.

So, I think we've got some audio.

Are you—

if we could have, if we could have the audience just confirm, it sounds to me a little bit like Donn is kind of losing audio. Can we have some folks out there in the live audience maybe comment back and let us know whether you're hearing Donn okay or if it's on my end? Go ahead and post a note into the chat area if you would, please.

Yep. Testing 1, 2, 3. Testing 5, 6, 7, 8. Yes.

Yeah, we're getting some bad audio connection too.

Can you hear me?

Yep, that's better. Go ahead and keep talking. We've got a couple people that are commenting.

Mark, can you hear me okay? Testing, 5, 6, 7, 8.

Yeah, looks like what we may need you to do, Don, is we might need to have you switch your audio from voice over IP to the telephone and just dial up that phone number and come on.

So should I transfer permission right now before I do that?

Nope, you can just go to your audio settings and flip it from mic and speakers to phone and then dial back in. We've got your slides here, so we can go ahead and just wait for you to do that. Sorry for that, everybody. When Don and I were talking pre-show, everything seemed to be working just fine. But as those of you that have joined me either here on BES or on my Free Webinar Wednesdays weekly show, we know all too well that the gremlins over at GoToMeeting and GoToWebinar tend to raise their ugly heads right when You least expect it. So we'll let Don go ahead and switch his audio around and get dialed back in. So we should be good to go here in just a little bit. So while Don is doing that, I do want to let everybody know we did, as part of today's presentation, I know hopefully you caught it, but as part of the notification for today's show, we were asking for volunteers and we actually Had an individual give back, and we were able to get this individual— we will refer to her as Sally in today's show— but Sally was able to go ahead and get connected with Don and went through the process of actually filling out the questionnaire and answering the questions. And about midway through today's show, Don is actually Going to take an opportunity, we'll pull Sally on, and we're going to go and introduce Sally to herself and share some insights and just kind of get some validation. Don knows me really well. I've done the ProScan assessment a number of times as I've gone through and done DiSC analysis and Myers-Briggs, some of the other personality profiling platforms. And so Don knows me pretty well, so it wouldn't really be super revealing if we were to just have Don introduce me to the rest of you because That's really not a challenge. So, Don, just to confirm if you are back.

There we go. I'm back.

Excellent.

Thank you for that. I appreciate that very much. And one of the things I was just mentioning is that the assets of what I do is the relationships that I meet through the years. And Eric, you are one of those assets that I dearly cherish. So I appreciate the friendship and the opportunity to be here.

It's absolutely We're venturing on a kumbaya moment here. You know that, don't you?

Well, you know, there's nothing wrong with that. But, you know, one of the things I always talk about is, you know, why do we do what we do? And mine is through passion and really through the technology that's pretty interesting and very deep and very dynamic, yet simple and very profound. But, you know, through the years of working with so many companies and people, I guess one of the things, Eric, that we're talking about today is that there's a direct correlation between the career of being at the bank and then also the personal side of life because it's one and the same.

Right.

When we work with companies, it's really, you know, the person represents, you know, the workforce, but it's not just one person. It's actually the entire substance of their personal life.

And family. Yes.

And so, you know, we've got the experience. But one of the questions I've asked myself ever since, Eric, you know, since I was very young, which is actually very profound that I do what I do, but have you ever wondered why you do what you do? When you looked around when you were young and you saw your brothers and sisters and mom and dad and aunts and uncles, the natural behavior is to compare ourselves among ourselves. So many people just, you know, they don't necessarily want to venture in to really ask themselves, why do I do what I do? They may wonder, but they don't really get too very deep to it. One of my favorite quotes is one by Mark Twain, where the 2 most important days in your life, the day you're born and the day you find out why. And boy, I tell you, the aspect of not finding Who you are is a very sad circumstance. A lot of people really, really don't know. Eric, you mentioned the ProScan, you mentioned the tool, and one of the biggest obstacles that we have with what I do basically is that we don't think of an assessment as a tool. We think of an assessment as something that is something that maybe I've done or haven't done or I'm not really interested in doing. They think maybe it's costly. But when we put things in perspective of tools, there's very little that we can do today without the use of tools. As a slide, we have a picture of a hammer and a nail, but if we were going to hang a picture, we'd want a very delicate hammer. We wouldn't want a large hammer. And so the success of what we do in today's life is really— has a direct correlation of the type of tool we use. And it can be very—

Yes, just, just, uh, if, uh, I think maybe your screen might be paused. Um, we are still showing just a smaller version of PowerPoint and, uh, we're still on the title slide. So I just want to double-check and make sure that we mistakenly hit the pause button. So go ahead and make sure that you've got the play. I don't know if others can, uh, can comment if you're seeing the same screen as what I am with the, uh, the Why You Do. Which, by the way, I forgot to mention, Don is also a published author, and the book Why You Do is available, and I'm a lucky owner of one of those copies, and reading it makes me feel like I'm talking to you, which is kind of a joy. I actually keep that up at the lake cottage. That's a good read while I'm up there just kind of relaxing.

Thank you. So can you see my screen now, Eric?

We're still seeing the Why You Do slide.

I don't know. I don't understand. Would you like to just take back the permission and then you handle the slides and then I'll just talk?

Why don't I go ahead and do that? So let me change the presenter back to myself.

I don't know what the difficulty is. I apologize for the— Technology.

Show my screen. We're going to go into presentation mode. And let me know if the screen has changed for everybody. Now we should see the nice big fluffy Why You Do screen with Don Crosby and moving forward. There's a lovely picture of Don, 25 years experience. I think we are in good shape now.

Perfect.

All right, there we go. So now we are on slide number 2. Don, where would you like me to go next?

Just keep going to slide number probably 5.

There's your Mark Twain quote. See, when you said your Mark Twain quote and the slides weren't changing, I got a little concerned that maybe something might be off, but I didn't want to Perfect. Derailed as you were, you were on a roll there. So there's the Mark Twain quote that Don referenced earlier, and then we've got some hammers and some nails and the tools that we're using in order to accomplish what it is that we need to do in life. And now we're at the ProScan, the actual tool that you use to peer into the psyche.

Excellent, perfect. And one of the things that draws us in today's culture is having the finest tools. Whether it be a new phone, the fastest computer, whatever it might be, is really drawn to the sharpest and most applicable tools. And a ProScan tool is one of those tools. I did not invent the tool, but the inventor, a gentleman by the name of Bruce Hubby, he was my mentor. He was the designer of the instrument. It's been out 40 years, and I've had the privilege of implementing it for the last 25. But the brilliance of the tools goes along with the simplicity, where you get 60 adjectives, and you'll see on one side there's 30 adjectives, and on the other side there are another 30. But these 60 adjectives mathematically are cross-referenced to 148,000 factors, which means that the immediacy of what it Measures is very equivalent to, say, a behavioral MRI. Measures the entirety of someone's behavior. It measures their natural behavior, who they are. It measures the energies, stresses, and energies and energy drains and perceptions. So it's, it's a very comprehensive process which takes most people anywhere from 4 to 6, maybe 7 minutes. And then, of course, it was founded for the business environment. It was designed for hiring and workforce development, so it's EEOC and ADA compliant, and it's a very powerful statistical tool. And for years, I had a nationally hosted radio show where I introduced people to themselves, and never did we have someone that came on the show where they said that the accuracy wasn't absolutely very, very point-on. Next slide, please, Eric.

Well, actually, while we're on this slide, one of the questions that I typically will get, because I try to introduce you to every organization that I talk to because every organization deals with people, I'll often get, well, we're using DiSC, or I mentioned Myers-Briggs, or it seems to be one of the more popular ones these days is PI, the Predictive You know, for banks that may be either using a service like that or thinking about it, I know some of the banking schools are actually using some of these other tools as part of their curriculum when you get into the management functionality. Any pros or cons, or is this a complementary service to some of the other services that are out there? I don't want to put you in a position where you're badmouthing other tools, but what's the difference or similarities, or can they work kind of hand in hand with one another?

That is— that's a perfect question. First of all, I applaud any company that's using a tool. If they have it, I hope they thoroughly use it. I have met so many companies that have— that use several tools. Different departments will use a tool, Rather than having one tool go across the board throughout different departments, typically a lot of companies will have a variety of instruments. The main difference of the ProScan is really the measurement of what it has to deliver. For example, the disc is, you know, it's a good 4-inch ruler. It just doesn't measure the amount of behavior that the ProSchemes. In the same way, the Myers-Briggs, it's a different— it's with fixed norming. It doesn't really measure change. And with PI, PI is a nice tool. The biggest comparison between the PDP and the PI, Eric, is that the job modeling of the ProScheme is fascinating. You can build behavioral model for any position within the bank in 30 to 45 minutes, and you just can't do that with any of these other tools. So it's just— this is just a better tool. But once again, if someone has another tool and they're using it, I applaud them. Typically, many companies are not trained in their tools, and therefore they're not using them effectively. So, great question. Thank you. This happens to be my scan here. And, you know, people ask me, what do I do? And I've labeled myself as a behavioral locksmith simply because I look at this graph and I can practically feel a person's heartbeat. When I look at the graph, I just know them practically better than their parents know them. And I know it sounds really, really weird. And it sounds maybe even a little egotistical, but I don't mean it to sound that way. It just means that with this information, the statistical information that someone else completes, that the accuracy is just really quite phenomenal. And I've looked at I don't know how many thousands of these graphs, and that's the reason that I think that I get such an in-depth— clarity. With the instrument though, there's a variety of different reports. For example, we have a person that's completed the scan and she received a 20-page report. So someone doesn't have to just look at this page to understand who they are, but there's a variety of different reports that we use. So next slide, please. Are you still there, Eric?

I put myself on mute. Sorry about that. I was talking away and you couldn't hear what I was saying. What I was saying before I realized that I had the mute button pressed on my phone is, can you provide a little bit of overview? And I know during today's show we're not going to have nearly enough time to dive into the details, but some of the dots, the bars, you've got the natural self, the priority environment, what that means. and then kind of the outward self predictor area. Maybe give the audience a little bit about this and kind of what this says about Don Crosby.

Well, another good question. The first column is the natural behavior, and in any relationship, we just really need to know who is this person and honestly, why do they do what they do. And in building a job model, we always take the natural behavior, this column. The DiSCs and many of the other programs, not to default or bash them in any way, but just out of comparison, pretty much stop at the 4th or 5th column. And with my style, Eric, my style is very similar to yours. The highest trait is the area of extraversion, which is that ease of intermixing. And enjoying the company of people and so forth. What the PDP looks at, we look at the combination of the traits, and you'll see in the first 3 columns I have 3 above the line, which means my primary is extroversion, but right next to it is the area of patience, so I have the ability to listen naturally, and then also dominance, where if I need to, I can take charge and feel comfortable being in a leadership role. And then, of course, like conformity, which is 4 traits below the line, which simply means that regulations and structures and details are something I prefer someone else to do rather than for me to abide by them. And a real intuitive guy with lots of energy. But so that's the natural behavior. In the red is the area of priority environment. And the priority environment is the element of change. And in roles of life, everybody has something that we're trying to be more or less of. At the bank, maybe it's— maybe you're up for a promotion. If you're a teller, maybe you just had some hard conversations with some of the clients who come to the bank. All these different types of things can cause us stress. And the stress is measured in this red environment based on the length of the lines and the positioning of the lines. And then in the area of the green, the green is the perception of how people perceive them to be. And a lot of times what happens is people will try very hard to be somebody that they feel they need to be, and thus they are perceived differently than they really are because they're trying so hard. That fit the role, that fit the responsibility. So, Bob. Next slide, my friend. Good.

Made sure I was off of mute when I said good.

So let me—

if you want to maybe kind of introduce this, I'm going to go ahead and find Sally, and I'm going to unmute Okay. Take a look here. All right. So Sally is now unmuted, although depending on your computer settings, you may be using— looks like you're using voice over IP. I don't know if you have a microphone connected to the computer that you're on. For some reason you don't, we would like to get some audio feedback from you, obviously. The way— maybe you could talk a little bit just to see if we can hear you, Sally. Yeah, I think what may have happened is it looks like Sally may be using a computer maybe at the office that does not have a microphone. So assuming that you are hearing me okay, Sally, what you may want to do like what Don did just a little bit ago. Don, you can probably talk her through this. In the audio settings of your control panel, if you click on that, you'll see there are 2 options to connect to today's audio. You probably have computer mic and speaker selected. If you change that to telephone, it'll temporarily drop you off and you'll be provided with a phone number that you can call.

There we go.

Looks like she's gonna go ahead and do that real quick. So we'll, we'll get Sally working on that right now.

Perfect. Good job, Eric.

There we go. Nothing like running a live show. I've got a good friend of mine, we did the bank social media conference out in New Jersey, and he does a weekly podcast called Bank On It. And it's a podcast, so you never know when you're gonna kind of participate in the conversation with him. He records it and then he's got a bunch of post-editing where he cleans it up and takes out the ums and the ands and the oopses. It's not really something we do here at either the Banker Education Series or on my Free Webinar Wednesday show. It's kind of like operating without a net and we've got to think on our feet and be a little spontaneous.

Right.

We've got our own little radio show. You can't rewind and do it over again.

That's what I used to love about live radio. It seemed like you were always just, you're always on stage.

Yep, absolutely. So let's go ahead and I have unmuted Sally. Looks like Sally has dialed back in over telephone. Sally, can you hear us okay? I can hear you. There we go, excellent. We got you.

Perfect, well thank you, Sally. And one of the things that Eric mentioned earlier When he was introducing me, and he didn't even— I don't think you caught how powerful your comment was, Eric. But in eliminating— you mentioned reducing the learning curve, and what this process does, Sally, is basically eliminate the learning curve. We've never met. I don't know where you are. I don't know what you do, and all that doesn't really matter. You sat down and you took the How long did it take you to fill it out? Do you remember? Oh, less than 5 minutes. Less than 5 minutes. And so when you got done, it was probably even refreshing that there wasn't any more to it. What I'm going to do, Sally, is I'm going to invest just a few minutes. I'm going to introduce you to yourself and to our listening audience. And what I always look for is I look at giftings of who a person is. person is. And we're all familiar with StrengthsFinder, but this is a little bit deeper than that. The giftings is a deeper correlation of how we're designed. And you've got— part of your real gifting is your ability to be adaptable. Your adaptability provides you the ability to wear a variety of hats Wear them well and do it at home, at work, if you're volunteering somewhere. That's just who Sally is. Does that make sense, Pam? Yes, I think so. Thank you. Thank you. And one of the other parts of your giftings goes along with questions. You're a very factual person, meaning that when you were a little girl, maybe you were very inquisitive when you'd ask You know, your parents or grandparents or people at school or someone. Just lots of questions. I'd say that your mind is very curious. And part of your gifting is the ability to ask probably the right questions at the right time. And/or at times maybe ask a few too many questions just depending on the environment. Does that make sense at all?

Mm-hmm.

Excellent. Now, one of the reasons, Sally, I asked if it makes sense, and I know for people listening it may be a little bit Annoying, but the reason I do this is simply to extend you the professional courtesy to confirm who you are, not to tell you who you are. So that's basically the purpose I do this. You're assertive when you need to be, and you take charge, as well as part of the other gifting is the ability with structure and detail. Your structure and detail is your higher trait, but all 4 traits are so tight You can be very adaptable depending upon the role. For example, if you had a hat rack in your office or in your study at home and you had a variety of different hats on the rack and the hats really were an example of all the different responsibilities, you simply take it on and take it off very easily. But your primary style is structure and detail. Then allowing people or whatever it is to happen, and then the ease of either doing it or delegating it or driving it. You're very persistent, very tenacious. Has anyone ever mentioned that you could be a little stubborn at times?

No.

Really?

That's not sarcasm, is it?

No, no. And when I say that, I don't mean it in a negative way. Stubbornness to me is the ability to be steadfast. And so we use steadfast rather than stubborn. I was just having fun with you since we know each other so well. Part of that gifting is the ability to be a lot of things to a lot of people. I would say from different environments, either work or non-work related, there's times when you feel like you're always trying to be the best of the best for each relationship, each responsibility. And does that make sense to you? It does. Can you tell me how to stop doing that? Well, probably. Part of it comes— part of it really depends on the responsibility that you feel that you have to those involved.

Okay.

And what I'd like to recommend to you is that we don't want— we're not going to take the entire time here, but I would— I'd like to offer you that we'll have a private conversation. We'll go over your scan. We'll go over the stresses. satisfaction, and you're actually doing pretty well in life, and we'll go over all those things together. But we'll do a lot of that off the air because of— for the sake of time and courtesy to the rest of the group. How's that sound? Sure. Thank you. So, yeah, in summarizing, you know, you've got that natural gifting. I don't know what your title is of what you do. But I would say that it could be anywhere in management and leadership. And, you know, dealing with facts and figures and information, that's part of your gifting. So being in the banking world, you probably— it's probably a very, very good fit for you. So any questions before we move right along, Sally? I don't think so. Okay, perfect. Thank you. How was the accuracy for you? It was pretty good. I had a couple of questions, but I'll save them. Okay. That's fair enough. That's fair enough. I appreciate that. All righty.

Thanks, Sally.

Appreciate it.

Thank you, Sally. I'm going to go ahead and mute your line again. So if you want to hop back on or ask a question, just go ahead and type it into the chat area, and I can go ahead and unmute you. Thanks again for participating and being a brave volunteer.

One of the factual— yeah, one of the things is that when people are very tight to the line, the challenge of doing a quick, quick— I call it one-on-one— is very, very difficult. And for the sake of time, we just couldn't invest much more.

Yeah.

Now, one of the things—

I was going to say, since you know me, and I'm suspecting I recognize a lot of names that are part of today's live session, there are a few that I don't recognize, obviously, which is a good thing. That means new people are coming around. But using the example that I shared kind of at the beginning as it relates to, you know, myself and my assistant, and you've already said you and I are very similar in nature, a little bit on the extroverted side, a little low conformity, kind of like to do our own thing. thing a little bit. If I worked for Sally, maybe I reported to her, are there any areas maybe from an insight now that you know what kind of makes Sally tick a little bit that potentially cause a little friction if she were to either work with either you or myself and how those maybe could be alleviated?

Excellent. Yeah, perfect question. Yeah, first of all, because both you and I are intuitive, with Sally's behavior being factual, her natural style would be to ask us questions. And over time, the situation may— with you and I not needing a lot of information to make our decisions, Sometimes when an intuitive decision-maker hears a person asking a lot of questions, it can sound like maybe that person doesn't trust us. So what I would suggest to Sally would be that when you're working with Eric and I, that hopefully you won't need as much information, or tell us the information that you have to have, But please try to limit it at just so much, but don't continue to ask us the same questions day in and day out, or so on and so forth.

Yeah.

So the biggest challenge between any relationship at work or home is the style in which a person makes their decisions, which in her case is logic, which in our case is feeling. And that would be the big— that would be the number one. And then you and I would have to be a lot more detailed with her.

Right.

In fact, she could be our glue because she's got that natural gifting to put together the substance of things, whereas you and I are just not wired that way. And so that would be the 2 areas which would be— actually, she'd be a very good fit for us knowing what we know. Right.

But I think that's the trick is knowing what we know and didn't have really any intent of having it being a similar situation. But in my circumstance, it was also a very factual, detail-oriented individual. And we didn't realize it until after the light bulb went off, but we were actually driving each other nuts by feeling, you know, and so I suspect that that probably happens more often than not where It's a thinker-feeler, pie-in-the-sky, get your head out of the clouds, give me some details versus, you know, this is just going to work, trust me, and let's just do it and then we'll figure it out later. Those, I suspect, are probably two that really are at odds when it comes to interpersonality relationships.

Yeah, it really is. It's sad that That people can't figure that out before there is an issue because that factual style has got that natural ability to be such a gift that if they don't feel they're appreciated and/or, you know, it just really causes a hiccup.

So—

Yeah. So, all right. Let's continue.

We're on the company similarities here.

Click it again, please. I don't see anything on my end other than company similarities. All I see is the title. There we go. One of the areas, Eric, is that if you have people, you have behavior-related issues. There's just no way to get around it. And most companies have similar challenges, but the difference is really the leadership. It's really what the leadership believes and if they're ready to fix The problems in banking are similar to the problems in manufacturing, and the manufacturers have similar projects in retail. It just boils down to people and misunderstanding of people. So, but people have to be ready to fix it and move on. You can't keep doing things the same old ways. So in Leadership Steps, what's really fascinating is in all the team discovery and development that I do, and I hand out a questionnaire, the number one problem that I hear in all companies, all companies, is we don't communicate. We can have emails and newsletters and meetings and potlucks and all these wonderful things, But the employees of the company still say we don't communicate. And so next slide, please. You can just keep moving right along for the sake of time. So what goes along with the communications is really the area of being trustworthy. A lot of people, when they say that we don't communicate, it's that it starts from not communicating or we feel misunderstood. And then the next area of flow, it goes to the area of trust. And then when that breaks, it tarnishes the morale. And then when the morale is tarnished, it moves into turnover. And I say unwanted because some turnover is healthy. But the unwanted, the people that need to be there, all of a sudden don't feel like they're really a part of the team anymore. And when you have that, that has a direct correlation on the customer excellence, the customer service. So very— the first and most is to understand so you can improve communications, and then that kind of peels back the onion. Any questions there, Eric?

Unmute myself here.

Shall we go? Yeah, perfect. So we go from the business environment to flowing and now to the personal achievement, and it's knowing yourself. And when I talk with people, it's not— you know, a lot of people, when we talk about knowing yourself, they just go, yeah, I know myself, or I kind of know myself, or so on and so forth. But they really— there's really a misperception of who they are. The next thing is really accepting the design, accepting yourself. A lot of people feel they aren't— I mean, I grew up most of my life probably feeling that I was flawed. My behavior, Eric, I've got very high energy, and it's— my energy is so high that I really felt that God didn't break the mold when he provided me life on this earth because it was just— I just felt so out of place. But by knowing yourself and accepting yourself, the third thing is really to celebrate who you are, celebrate your design no matter how flawed you may think. You know, you've got that natural gifting, and when we have the ability to know and understand and celebrate, there's something really special, Eric, about when someone celebrates who they are and Wonderful things take place. And then the next thing is really understanding the roles that we're involved in. These roles can be the role of a husband or a wife. Then you go to work and you have the role of being either a manager or president or vice president or a teller or whomever you might be. The role of a daughter, the role of a brother. We have all these different roles and we're trying to be or not to be. a different person based on the demands of our roles. So understanding those roles of who you need to be to those responsibilities are pretty important as well. And then understanding the difference between changing and adjusting. And this is what really throws a lot of folks off, Eric, because if I told you that, dude, you know, I love you, but you got to change. Eric, you need to— tone down your social style, and you just need to change. What would go through your head, Eric?

I would say, yeah, right. That's who I am. Deal with it.

Exactly. But what happens is that what does go through our head is that, what's wrong with me? Who am I that I need to change? And so in a culture of trying to have people change based on, for whatever reason, What we need to understand that we all need to adjust. Adjusting is a short-term commitment where change is a long-term commitment. And based on our behaviors, if we can remember that we all need to adjust to be the type of person that we need to be rather than to try to change and be that type of person all the time. And so that's a deal— that's a dealmaker. great therapy when people can have this concept of adjusting rather than changing. Next slide, Seth.

One quick comment on that. Prior to being exposed to the wonders that came with Don Crosby and the PDP and my kind of revelation with my assistant, in my early years at the bank, there was one employee that for whatever reason, she was getting under my skin significantly to the point where I just wasn't enjoying my job. She was not somebody that I necessarily reported to, although we sat close to one another. And I, I don't know what the reason for it was, but I seem to have been exposed to a book called How to Win Friends and Influence People. And in that book, one of the things that it talked about was the fact that you can't really change somebody else. You have to understand why they do what they do and figure out how you can manipulate and modify your behavior. Because even though you're changing a little bit, the relationship is going to be so much better, and they may never even know that you're bending a little bit to make things easier. That was about a 6-month process for me where I bought the book, I read it, I tried different things. And I will tell you, at the end, we had a much better relationship. I don't think she even knew that that was going on, but our relationship was so, so much better.

Mm-hmm.

But I can tell you, a 5-minute little questionnaire and a 15-minute conversation with you was much faster and more efficient than me trying to self-diagnose. what was going on and manipulate things. So it's not to say that understanding others and making changes for the better and adjusting your behavior can't be done without a tool like this, but that light bulb just went off as you were talking with before and after, and wow, what a difference. So a little bit of a— I hadn't even thought of that until this point, actually, so I just wanted to make sure I shared that.

That's excellent. See, one of the things that I don't know if you remember, but before you and I met, you know, I was working with the president of the bank, and we worked with the main office and all the tellers. We worked— I worked with the entire staff, and before we got out to your branch, you know, so that's what we did with what you and I accomplished. We did that with 150 other employees. So, you know, if we think about life's greatest challenges, most of our greatest challenges includes our behavior, someone else's, or both. And I mean, I do a lot in the nonprofit world, and I always have to take a deep breath, Eric. It's like I just have to sit back and go, you know, they didn't mean to make me angry. I'm not going to take it personal. The reality is all behavioral traits have the ability to take things personal. And that's where we just have to take a deep breath and just really understand our behaviors to be the best of the best no matter what type of things that we're going through. Next slide, please. And another great quote, this one's by Socrates. who's credited for saying, know thyself. And here's my spin to that, Eric. By knowing ourselves, it can be a fluid action to control ourselves. And that's what makes this process so powerful. And giving of ourselves is more natural. And so it's hard for a lot of people to give when they're honestly not in control of their lives. And when all that happens, then we become more effective, successful, killing people. And this is a very, very powerful underlying comment to the know thyself quote, but the fluid action of controlling ourselves is so, so important. You know, how many times have— I do a lot of work in a prison in Louisiana. We just did a year-and-a-half project working with inmates, and it was based all on their behavior. Introducing to them why they did certain things. What they did was, in the criminal world, was not much different reasons why people do things outside in the natural world. I thought that was interesting. Next slide, sir. Our objective really is to slow down. You never know whose life you're affecting, either positively or otherwise. Depending upon how Our behavior is wired will determine— see, everything starts, Eric, in the mind. And once it starts in the mind and we start thinking about it, when it actually is implemented, it comes through our behavior. So we have starting in the mind, and then based on our behavior, we've got that ability to either be verbal and just throw it out there. Or be harsh and insulting and just controlling and just maybe steamroller-wise, or— but there's such predictability when you know someone's behavior of how they're going to act or react based on what they're going through. Next slide, please.

I forgot that was on there. That's a good—

Good point. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And if your spouse has a good day, you'll probably have a good night. And I've told that to people for a long, long time, and they kind of laugh, but it was true, is that when my wife worked, I could always tell how her day went. And that's why when I work with companies here, I don't look at just the employee, but I look at the family unit behind the employee. And the responsibility that a manager or a company has to the community based on a family. And it's just pretty profound. I thought we took this piece out of there, but I guess I'm glad we left it in.

Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah. So even with our hiccups of audio and audiovisual, I guess, We finished pretty much on time.

We did.

One of the things that I did— one of the things that I failed to really recognize in the presentation was emphasizing too much on the role. And I think if anybody— if I had one thing to leave behind for everyone, it would be to really look at your roles of life, both professionally and personally. You know, how does your behavior need to be to be that kind of guy?

Right.

That kind of woman. And I'll give a short story, Eric, and I'll turn it back over to you. But a month ago or so, I was working with a family and 2 kids, 14-year-old daughter and a 12-year-old son. The 12-year-old is autistic. And he took the scan and I introduced him to his mother prior to meeting the young man. And the mother sat there and cried because of confirmation. She said, this doesn't make sense. I don't understand how you know my autistic son when you've never met him and when he's got these challenges. And basically, the young man was gifted with the ability to read and his behavior is such where it's disruptive, but he still has that ability to slow down and do the things that he likes to do. But where I was going with that, Eric, is the role of the husband and the wife with that type of challenge is where it gets— that's where the rubber hits the road. So it's all of us really understanding our own behavior so well so we can slow down to understand those issues that we have with our kids. Or grandkids or coworkers. And that really kind of summarizes it, I think, for me, Eric.

Absolutely. I do— I got a question from the audience, and then I also want to make sure before we get to the end of the hour, Don has been very gracious with an offer. If you are interested, I know we did have a volunteer who's going to get a more detailed session with Don to kind of go through some stuff that might have been a little bit more private than what we necessarily want to share in a webinar for the rest of the world. But if you're interested in taking one of these 60-question assessments and having Don introduce you to yourself and seeing your, you know, kind of firsthand what can be revealed, and then maybe having a conversation about how this could be useful either in your family life or at the bank or in an organization or a nonprofit, Or something along those lines, Don has agreed to allow the Banker Education Series folks 20% discounts. Don, maybe you can talk a little bit about what an assessment typically costs if somebody were just to coordinate one through you and just basically email you at that don@globalbehavior.com and mention the show, and you'll go ahead and take care of everything. What economically speaking are we talking about here?

We have a nonprofit rate on my website, donkrosby.net, of $47. The 20%, we just round it off and it would only be $37 for each person. On the website too, there's a variety of different things that I offer on how we use this with the family unit, And/or in the business environment. What happened, Eric, is through the years I get a phone call from the president of a company and he'd say, can you do for my family what you did for my company? And so because of that happening so often, I created the personal market to fill that. So yeah, $37, it changed my life 26 years ago.

Yeah, well, it's certainly a validator. And I remember when, when you met Alicia for the first time, you introduced her to herself and, um, you know, kind of freaked her out a little bit but talked about things. And, uh, you know, so it's— if nothing else, I mean, I know that what you do and what is provided is way more than entertainment value, but, um, the, the benefit that you get for just that is, in my opinion, tremendous. So the question came through. There was mention earlier about— let's see— mention earlier about job descriptions. How does this work to help create job descriptions or roles for employees?

Yeah, perfect question. It's not necessarily the job description, but we call it a job model. And the job model is the accumulation of the behavior that a successful person would need to have on the job. So what we do is you'd still use the job description that you'd have for that particular position, use the essential function of the job, and then through our technology, we train you on how to create a job model. And the way— there's 2 ways of creating a job model. Let's say you've got several existing employees that do a really nice job. If we just had 2 or 3 more people like Sally and Becky and Pete, then things would be a lot easier around here. And so you can take— you take their behavior and the averages of those behavior And along— in addition to another survey that we have for the management, which they complete, and it helps create the different intensities of each trait that's necessary for the position. So the science behind the job modeling is very, very nice, very wonderful. And theoretically, what it does is work out where they have the turnover. And then they start— they create a model for that position, and then they just continue to create job models for each position within the company. And then you also use that same job modeling for position coaching, measuring people that aren't really performing well to the model, Eric, to see, well, showing them how different they are from the model. And this is how they need to be if they're going to be the type of person that they desire to be.

Yeah.

I think the—

and we did participate in the modeling process, so I'm very familiar with it. And the analogy that jumps to my mind is people will oftentimes say, you know, you're either on the bus or you're under the bus. Get with it. You know, are you going to come with us or not? And I think what this platform does is it says, okay, well, are the right people actually on the bus? And are they in the right seats? Because somebody that, like a Sally, that might be more detailed, factual orientated, you know, if they're asked to put on a you know some sort of a creative seminar or come up with something, or they need to do things that aren't necessarily within their personality style, it's going to be very uncomfortable. And frustrating, and if you were to put somebody like myself in a role as an accountant, it's going to drive me nuts because numbers and you know those sorts of things. I'm going to be very unhappy. And you may find that you have individuals that are good quality individuals, but when you do their analysis, you find out that you know no wonder they're not super happy and elated in doing just a so-so job because that job or that role or that function just doesn't fit who they are, and it's causing them. A little bit of angst every time they come in because they're having to fight their natural style. But if you put them in a different role, they could exceed and, you know, the sky's the limit.

Yeah, you're absolutely right. And the biggest drawback in companies today is the role. And I'll have people call me, executives, and say, Don, can you take a look at this person's profile? And they say, should I hire her? And I always answer it with a question. I say, well, what's the model? What type of behavior does this person need to have to be successful? And so the job modeling is almost like really creating the target first so you know the ideal person that you need to have rather than going out and trying to find the person and make the person fit into a position without having the role defined.

Yeah.

The problem is that so many people are burned out with job descriptions that when you think of measuring a position, all you think of is a job description and how painful it is. And so that piece of it is always misunderstood. But the secret sauce to reducing turnover and improving morale is really job modeling and measuring applicants to the model to see where they fit the best. That was a great question.

Yeah, good. Well, we are a little bit over, and I could sit here and jaw with you pretty much all afternoon long. I love our opportunities to catch up and talk, and I've told you before, if I could clone myself, this would certainly be an area that I would love to spend more time in because I think it is such a powerful tool on so many different levels. So I commend you for what you're doing, and it's always great to see your success. Kudos on the new book, and I honestly do hope that you get several people to take you up on the opportunity to have you introduce themselves, or you to introduce them to themselves when they go ahead and take you up on the offer.

Yeah, the other thing along with that offer, Eric, is that generally that $47 is just the report, and then we charge for my time. Because of what you do, I'm throwing my time in for free. Once they buy the report for $37, I mean, they get the free consultation with it. It's just a gift because of you and who you are and how you get this. I compliment you because you're a champion on this stuff. Not everybody sees the importance, so kudos to you, my friend. Cool. Good.

Well, thanks everybody for joining us live. Appreciate those of you that stuck around and spent an extra 5 minutes and cut into the next hour of your day, but hopefully you got some good ideas. Don, have an excellent conversation with Sally, and we'll be curious to hear how that goes, if there's any feedback beyond that. Look forward to seeing those of you that would like to join me next month on the show. We're going to be back again in June. I believe the one and only Lee Wetherington is going to be joining us, and looking forward to his insight in the world of fintech and what's kind of new and cutting-edge in the world of financial technologies. If you've ever had the opportunity to hear Lee speak or present at a banking conference, you'll know that it's going to be an excellent show, and I'm pleased that he's become a good friend of mine over the years and going to join us. So with that, we'll draw today's session to a close. We'll get the recording available online here shortly. And, again, certainly appreciate everybody's time, and thank you, Donn, for making this fit into your schedule. I'm so glad we were able to get this to work today.

My pleasure. Thank you, Eric, and thank you everyone for attending. Appreciate it. Alright.

Thank you, everybody. Have a wonderful week, and hopefully we'll see you back here again in June. Until then, take care.