The Power of Happiness in the Workplace: Valerie Alexander's Approach to Corporate Culture

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I'll catch you later. Valerie, thanks for joining us today.

Thank you for inviting me. I'm so excited. We've been talking about this for a while.

Yes.

I'm excited to have you, my friend. So how would you get us started by telling us about yourself and what you do.

Oh, sure. I am the CEO of Speak Happiness. We do happiness and inclusion events, so we don't produce the events. I'm a keynote speaker where I speak about the concepts of happiness in the workplace as a strategic business advantage. And I talk about how you can lead for an inclusive workplace. You're going to get the best out of everybody if everybody feels like they belong. And you have to be able to, I say, fish from the largest pond, which means you have to have a big enough tent that everybody feels that they're welcome in there. And you're going to get much more excellent people. So you get more excellent people in the door. You make them feel like they belong, and then you increase their happiness with your managerial skills, your policies. So that's the area we focus on in our keynotes and our workshops and training, is happiness and inclusion. And then I also do corporate culture assessments. I will go into a company where they are having glitches, bumps, not achieving their top performance. And I speak to the employees to find out what behavior they'd like to see changed, what policies they'd like to see changed, what things they need management to hear that they're not hearing right now. I know this is one of your big points, Kwame, is that everybody wants to feel seen. Everybody wants to feel heard. And so if something's going wrong in your workplace, bring in a culture expert. Bring in somebody who can make people feel like they're being listened to, too.

I love this. And listeners, Valerie and I, we met each other in California for the California association of Realtors. And I was just overwhelmed by your positivity and positive energy. So I'm like, we need to get you on the podcast, and the work you do is exceptional. So I'm really happy you're here.

Thank you so much. I had the privilege at that conference of arriving a day early in time to see your talk as well, and watching everything just resonated everything about emotional intelligence and about the empathy loop and everything you were saying, I said, oh, I must connect with this man. So I'm super happy we connected there, and I'm happy we stayed in touch.

I appreciate that. Thank you. Thank you, thank you. This is great. And here's a little Easter egg for the listeners who follow on LinkedIn. So that picture, the blue background, that's now my LinkedIn profile background, that's from that event from where I met you. So that's a fun little nugget for folks, but. Oh, go ahead.

Oh, I was going to give them one more little nugget because I know you're going host soon. Hopefully, at that event they had an artist creating visual depictions of our talks as we did them. The skill set required for this eludes me. It is amazing that somebody was able to do this. But Kwame and I were just having a conversation about sharing those vision boards, essentially, and I hope that you will see his fairly soon.

Yeah. So this will be fun. I'll make a link, I'll make a post and then we'll link to it in the episode too, so people could see it. Because as we describe it, there's no way for us to do it justice to see. As I'm presenting, I'm seeing this artist in the background just drawing things. I'm like, how is this working? And it's just an incredible artistic summary of everything from the keynote. It's beautiful, Beautiful. So this is great. Well, now, listeners, you're probably saying, okay, well, this love fest must end at some point. Let's talk about negotiation. And this is going to be great because the things that you're going to hear today are going to instantly resonate with you. I know it will. And we're going to talk about how we can negotiate our way to higher performing teams. And before we jump into it, I think it would be great for us to just start with an operational definition for a high performing team. What do we really mean by that?

A high performing team is a team where everybody is fully engaged in their own task, but also in what they can contribute to the team. You have people who have the autonomy to do what they do best. They're not being micromanaged at all. They bring their best every day. You have people who are getting a sense of accomplishment out of their work and you have people who are being acknowledged for what they contribute. And I call that the aaa. That is, AAA comes and rescues your car when it's broken down. AAA comes and rescues your workplace. Because the three things people need to do to be able to function at their maximum ability, get a sense of accomplishment, have the autonomy to do their job the way they want to, and get acknowledgement for what they do or show, you know, appreciation. And that will make People love their jobs. And when people love their jobs, they're not on LinkedIn all day looking for other jobs. The statistics are off the charts as to the value of having a happy, engaged workforce. And we can get into that a little bit later or a little bit more if you want. But that's what a high performing team is. It's a team where management gets the engagement they want and the employees get the happiness they want.

What I love about this is that we're recognizing that happiness isn't just this ephemeral, fleeting concept that is kind of nebulous and doesn't belong in the business space. There is actually a true business case for happiness. Can you help the listeners understand what that is?

Absolutely. So there are three long ranging workplace happiness studies that are ongoing in this country. Harvard Business School conducts one Gallup has been conducting for years. They create a report biannually called the State of the American Workforce. Absolutely. Download this if you have. Not yet. It's a 60 to 80 page report. And that's where the statistics come from that the US economy loses $700 billion a year based on the unhappiness of our workforce. That if your workplace is in the top quartile of happiness and engagement, you have 41% less absenteeism than the workplaces in the bottom quartile of happiness and engagement, you have 28% less turnover. If it's a low turnover organization, but you have 58. I'm sorry, those reverse 28% less turnover. If it's a high turnover organization, you have 50, 58% less turnover. If it's a low turnover organization, you have less theft, you have lower workers compensation claims, you have less workplace bullying, you have less liability in medical settings, you have 28% or 21%. Sorry for not knowing the number off the top of my head. Fewer malpractice incidents, you have fewer product defects on an assembly line. Happy people are paying attention and doing their jobs well. The example I always use in a restaurant, I speak to a lot of restaurants, a lot of hospitality industry I work with on managerial training for happiness. And I say, if an employee has clocked out and they're walking out the back door and they look over and Notice that a 50 pound sack of shrimp was left out of the freezer. If that employee is happy and loves their job, what are they going to do about it? But if that employee is miserable and hates their job, what are they going to do when they see that 50 pound sack of shrimp? And that sounds a little like hypothetical and nebulous. But, oh, and the third, the third long ranging study is at UC Riverside, Sonia Lyubomirski. All three of them came to the same tangible conclusion that we are happy and engaged in our jobs. When UC Riverside calls it, we get a sense of accomplishment. Gallup calls it putting our skills to their best use. Harvard Business School calls it making a difference on work that matters. And the phrase I use for it is how we invest our time. Because so many workplaces and so many employers think that their workforce is trading their hours for dollars. We're trading hours for dollars. I give you hours and I get dollars and I will share with you. Hours are significantly more valuable than dollars. There's an extreme limit on hours. And so if people are figuring out how to invest their hours, they're going to do it in something that makes them feel they're making a difference. And that's why if you are in charge of a workforce, if you are a manager or if you are a CEO, you have to make sure that the people giving you their hours are also giving you their best effort. And they do that when you care about their happiness.

Wow, that was great. And for me, it's, it's tough doing this interview because I'm listening as a CEO doing professional development here mid conversation, and I'm also doing it as an interviewer. So this, this is really great. It's informative for me because I recognize again, a lot of times we can be so focused on the business concern, just making sure there's money coming in, making sure we're hitting payroll and doing those type of things, making sure people are being productive. But a lot of times we can almost assume that there is a clear connection for the people who are on our team. But that assumption is not reality. And it takes a lot of affirmative effort in order to make these things happen. Because we're not talking about this because it's easy and it happens organically in every single company. We're doing this because this is hard work. And a lot of times it's kind of like the saying, the sign of a brilliant insight is that it's obvious in hindsight. And a lot of times we're in this moment and now you're saying these things and makes sense, but unless it's articulated in this way, it's very easy to miss.

It's not intuitive how to get the best out of other people. And here's the problem. Most places, most leaders don't train for this because that leader falls into one of two camps they're either great at it naturally, and so therefore they think other people are great at it naturally, or they've never had any training. So they don't see any reason anybody needs any training because they're fine, even though they never got any training. And so I wish everybody listening could see how much Kwame is cracking up right now. I think he's probably remembering every leader he ever worked with.

I've got a quick story for you. So I was at this keynote and.

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Story, this ads for you and for the rest of you, I'll see you in Premium. Yeah. Oh, this is. This is so good. But really, it was that first part where you're like, oh, if this is something that you do naturally, you just assume other people do it. And again, very important, which is why you're so important, important in the world. The work that you do with the companies that you work with, and even in the preparation that we had before this, I just recognize that there are levels to this game. When you have somebody who has studied and dedicated their lives to this, the understanding is so much more profound. And one of those realizations was when you described the concept of accidental managers and the role that they can play as it relates to happiness and productivity. Can you tell the listeners about that one?

Sure. I love the moment when I'm giving a keynote and then we turn to the slide that says, beware of accidental managers. And I say it out loud at that moment and every room in the head starts nodding every. Oh, yep, yep. That's the problem. Accidental managers. Everybody has an idea when as soon as we start talking about accidental managers, everybody can remember one that they've had. Sometimes they can remember when they were one, I was one. And the idea of an accidental manager, it falls into one of two camps. Either you're an accidental manager because they made you a manager without making sure you had any managerial skills. People become managers by seniority or by title or by education level, or they're the only one who would take the job. And my father went to a military school and so he came out of military college with a commission as an officer. And it was during the Vietnam era. And a lot of his classmates got sent into situations where they were put in charge of people because of the degree they just earned and did not have the skills to do that job. And these are things that higher up leadership has to pay attention to. If somebody doesn't have the skills to be a manager, don't put them in that role without giving them training on that. One of the worst things we do to people. I was talking about why sense of accomplishment is the most important thing to your well being and how much you love your job. We take somebody who's great at a job and we take away that job and put them in charge of people who aren't as good. The best salesperson becomes the lead salesperson. The best software developer becomes the lead software developer, which means you take the thing they love doing and are great at, which is software development, and then you put them in charge of other people who aren't as good as they are, which is an absolute recipe for misery. Try to find other ways to reward people for being great at their job that don't involve stopping them from doing the job they're great at or work through a development process where they learn how to be great at another kind of function. Because being a great salesperson does not necessarily mean you're great at overseeing other salespeople. And so that's a real formula for an accidental manager. The other kind of accidental manager are the people who we put in charge of other people without having any idea that they're actual managers. I saw this when I was practicing law. I went back, I went to Berkeley Law and I went back and I taught there for a semester. And I took an hour out of my syllabus to teach my students how to speak to your assistant, how to speak to the attorneys who are eventually going to be answering to you. Some of them thought it was the biggest waste of time, like, why are we spending a class session on this? But boy, two years later I started getting those emails like, oh my Lord, I can't believe the way some people talk to their assistant. I was like, yes, because nobody in law school trains you that when you're a lawyer, you are also going to be a manager. When you're a doctor, you are also going to be a manager. How many people answer to one doctor in the course of a surgery? And I know for a fact doctors don't get any managerial skills. I have spoken at and to the leaders at multiple medical schools in this country, and they don't even offer a class in managerial skills in med school when that class should be mandatory.

I agree. As a lawyer who is married to a doctor, I can confirm everything that you just said. And Valerie, the timing of this is perfect too, because I'm going to be teaching at Ohio State next week, and so I am going to make sure. Thank you. I'm going to make a note of this for the class too, because this is important. It's going to be a blend of the law students and the business students, so it'll have a good mix. But yeah, because a lot of times you have people who are well trained in negotiation, but then they never take those collaborative problem solving skills and direct it internally within the organization. They are negotiators on the outside and they are dictators on the inside. And so this is something that I think everybody can relate to. And I love these two examples. So first, you're an all star, and then you, you get to this point where it's like, hey, you're great at this. You should be great at managing, which is a completely different skill. And then the people who don't even realize that they're managers. And I think that's a such a powerful thing because if you are person where people report to you in any capacity, then you're a manager of some sort. But if we don't think of ourselves that way, then we're not going to approach these conversations in that way. So I think this is just increasing our awareness is going to be helpful.

Yes. I spoke at a university where I was training their staff and faculty on happiness, and it was workplace happiness. And then I asked how many people in the room are managers? And about a dozen people raised their hands. And at the back of the room was a table of chemistry professors. Not one of them raised their hand. And I said, oh, I'm sorry, I didn't realize. The university didn't give any of you a lab. And it was a research university. They got very offended. Like, every one of them had a lab. One of them had a lab that had three, 30 people in it between the postgrads, the grad students, the undergrads. And that person didn't see himself as a manager. That's dangerous, because when you don't realize that you're the Manager, you don't realize the obligation you have to the well being of the people who answer to you and you're not going to be able to get their best. So it's to everyone's advantage. If you have one person who answers to you, if you have one person whose buy in you need to do your job, then you're a manager and these are skills you need.

Absolutely. And now let's think about even that recognition. Now somebody's listening to this podcast and they're saying, oh my gosh, I'm a manager. I never thought of myself as a manager, but I am a manager now. Even before we get into the specifics of the skills to have conversations, how does that mindset shift change the way that we show up in these conversations we have with people on our team?

I mentioned earlier that I was an accidental manager. And I started my career at Great America in Northern California. I, I fudged the date on my learner's permit so I could get a job there when I was 15. And then I came back the following year as a lead and I came back the following year as a supervisor and I finally got some training. I was 17 years old. I was a supervisor in the food service department and they trained me on food service. They trained me on ordering and provisions and the time card system and uniforms. They trained me on where to park. Nobody trained me on how to speak to the people who worked for me. And so my first day as a supervisor, I made one of my employees cry. She was doing a task kind of slowly and I made a funny joke about it and everybody laughed. And then I looked over a few minutes later, tears are streaming down her face and I said, what happened? And she goes, you made everybody laugh at me. And I had no concept. The week before I was her colleague and so now I was her supervisor. That shift in relationship was a shift in power and it was a shift in obligation. I ran a mentorship program in Los Angeles for a while where screenwriters went in and we mentored 10 year olds on creating the little scripts. It was super cute. And on the very first day, I would tell all the mentors under me, 10 year olds don't get sarcasm. You know, employees don't always get sarcasm and don't really need it and don't want to be subject to it. When you are in a leadership role, you have an obligation for how you speak to the people who answer to you. I will share. I have an assistant who is fabulous. She does, she is amazing and I love her, she has a lot of anxiety and a lot of anxiety around how she performs her job that I have to be cognizant of. And I was at a speaking function where they didn't have any of the prep we'd sent in advance. Not the bios, nothing. And. Or the intro. We send prepare intros. And the MC is like, I'll just wing it. Well, no, you won't. I. So I had to call her to say, we need to get this over here asap. And the very first thing I said when I she picked up the phone as I said, hi, I want to let you know they've made a mistake. You did everything right. Here's what we need. And by knowing that if I open with, they made a mistake, you did everything right. She is now in the mindset where she can give me her best. If I just say, hey, they don't have my intro here. I need you to send it, I can tell you her brain is going to be clouded with, okay, what did I do wrong? Did I not send it? Did I send it to the wrong person? And by just that little awareness, I can get the best out of her and I can make her feel a sense of accomplishment from when she does work, the work she's doing, rather than sending her home thinking, oh, I did something wrong today.

Incredible. Again, this is such a great example of the small shifts that we can make that make a massive difference in the way that everything is received. I love that. One of the things that comes up quite frequently, I'm sure that you get this all the time, and I know this because we talked about it in the prep, is talking about toxicity at work. So dealing with toxic people. And I think that, first of all, again, I think this is an opportunity for us to define things, because this is one of those terms that is thrown around quite frequently to the point point where the. The definition can get really muddy. So if we're talking about toxicity at work or people who have been labeled as toxic, what are we really talking about?

There are so many degrees of toxic. If you're looking for an overarching, the toxic person is the person who prevents other people from giving their best. And there's a range of behaviors that fall into that category. It's the gossip, the bully, the complainer. It can even be the know it all or the micromanager. I did a culture assessment at an organization that had a call center, and there was an employee in that call center that management loved. They thought she was the best person ever to work there. And everybody else in the call center could not stomach her because when she wasn't on a call, she would listen to the calls around her, and then she would tell those people what they should be doing differently or saying differently. And she wasn't the supervisor, and so nobody wanted to work anywhere near her. That I would call toxic behavior. And that is innocent, helpful. Toxic doesn't necessarily mean evil person. In fact, I was working with an organization, and the leader in the department I was in told me they had to get rid of somebody because he was just mediocre at his job, but everybody else was a stellar performer. And she said he was a great guy. He was a nice guy. He just wasn't really keeping up. And after they got rid of him, she had multiple people come over to her and say, oh, thank God. Thank you so much. It was killing me to have to work with him on the team. And again, good guy who just wasn't as good as everybody else. And I'm not saying that person is toxic. That's an extreme term for that. But I'm saying, be very aware of how dynamics in your workforce are happening in a way that prevent people from giving their best. And I do a thing with audiences where I ask, has anybody ever worked with somebody toxic? And every hand goes up. And then the next question is, leave your hand up if management knew that person was toxic and didn't do anything about it. And a lot of the hands stay up. And then the next question is, and leave your hand up if that toxic person is at least part of the reason you left that place and a lot of the hands are still up. And then I invite everyone look around the room, because that's the talent you're losing. That is the talent you're losing. I worked with the legal department of a major retailer and very quickly figured out that they had a toxic person in their department. And when I was talking to the general counsel who had brought me in, I said, oh, and you have somebody toxic here? And he said, oh, I know I have someone toxic here. And then he looked at me. He's like, wait a minute, You've been here an hour. I said, well, yeah, this came out pretty quickly. But I said, you've really got to do something about it. You got to get rid of that person. And he said, no, I need her too badly. And I said, all right, then I will give you a little homework, and I give everyone listening some homework. If you think there might be someone in your organization that you need so badly, you can't get rid of them despite their bad behavior, despite, you know, whatever, how that they go through assistance like Kleenex. If you have a person that you think is so valuable, you can't, you have no way of getting rid of them. Do some homework and write, make a list of everyone else you've lost in the last two years and then map how closely those people had to work with the person who is so valuable that despite their bad behavior, you won't get rid of them. And I promise you, they're costing you more than they're bringing in.

That is powerful. Powerful and probably very hard for some of the leaders that you talk to to stomach. And just a quick recap here before we move on to that point, because I think really what it comes down to in a lot of these cases is understanding the distinction between intent versus impact. Because one of the things I loved about the way that you describe toxicity is that you didn't put a value judgment on it. You talked about the degree to which somebody is preventing other people around them from being at their best. And when you think about it that way, people can be really, really well intentioned, but that could still have a negative impact on the team. And when you're able to really divorce the intent from the impact of the person's behavior or whatever it happens to be, then we can problem solve a lot more effectively because we're not playing the role of mind police to see whether or not the person's heart is pure as they engage in these actions, which can be a really challenging red herring. And for you, when you find yourself talking to a leader, let's say with that example, let's use that as a hypothetical where the leader says, this person is far too valuable for me to move on from them. Now this from you and that consulting perspective, now we kind of have to have a persuasive discussion. How do you approach that conversation when you actually start going back and forth with them in the conversational aspect of the consulting process?

A really interesting thing with a lot of leadership I have found, and I imagine you have too, is when you start to ask them what they value, what do you want? What are you looking for in your employees? And they will give you a list of traits. When I talk with large groups and they say at a single corporation, and I say, what are the two highest values of any leader in this corporation? And I have people write down the two words and then if it's small enough group, we go around the room and hear everybody. If it's a larger group pick, you know, five or 10 people to share theirs. Empathy is always on that list for a leader they want empathy. Development of talent is almost always on that list. Listening is almost always on that list. And then I get to take a step back and say, okay, empathy, listening, and development of talent. Where are those the three highest rewarded traits in your performance metrics? That's a really good way to get leaders to focus on who they're keeping and who they're rewarding. Because if you say, I really want everyone to be a good mentor, I value mentorship so highly. I want everyone to develop the people around them and bring everybody else up to their level as much as possible. I value mentorship like great. You had a salesperson who had more sales than everybody else in the department by 25% and has never mentored a single person. Did that person get your highest bonus? When you ask leaders to connect what they claim to value with what they're rewarding, they will see that they're not getting the outcomes they want because they're not rewarding the behavior they want. And it's a big challenge to fire what Netflix calls the brilliant jerk. But I promise you, that person is shadowing other people's brilliance that you're not seeing. And that when you take away, and by shadow, I mean casting into a shadow. Not, not that they're following, that they're hiding. Like we see a very shining light and we get attracted to that light and don't realize the, you know, damaging UV rays it's causing. And when we eliminate that light, a lot of other lights perk up and make space for people to give you their best. And I want to take a very quick moment and talk about inclusion here when I say make space for people to give you their best. And one point I have to make about how you reward people in recognizing the talent they bring, speaking of inclusion, is that be very aware when you have different standards for different people. And this takes much more self awareness than a lot of leaders possess. I share what I call the Jackie Robinson standard. If you look at how Jackie Robinson had to behave in order to just be seen as belonging when he joined the Dodgers, he had to be impeccable. He had to be perfect. And that was just to be allowed to belong. Look, in your workplace, is there anybody who you're requiring perfection of is if you think somebody is going to be a great leader and they falter and they're not very good in the job, you might give them more resources, you might mentor Them a little. You give them a couple more chances. If you think somebody is going to be a, you know, whatever, we'll see, like, give them a chance. But probably not. And they falter in the exact same way. Oh, that proves you're okay. See, I knew it. I knew they couldn't do it. And we suffer a lot of confirmation bias about what we believe about people when they walk through the door, especially the person who is breaking a barrier. And as a leader, as a manager, you have to have the insight and the strength of character to see, oh, I have to give this person the same chances, the same opportunities and the same opportunities to fail. Oh, I give everyone same chance to succeed. Great. Give everybody the same chance to fail. Because that's where you get the best from people. When people are able to recover and learn and come back and do better. And when we write people off because they don't look like anybody else doing the job, and we say, oh, see, they couldn't do it, that's when we lose really great talent. Because let me tell you, that person who's breaking a barrier and gets that opportunity to learn and grow and has your back while they're failing, that is going to be your most productive, most loyal, happiest employee ever. Also, make sure they're getting the same support from their subordinates that the people in their same position get. If somebody, you know doesn't really like working for a boss who looks like that, you know what? Get rid of that person. Don't penalize the boss who's already working so hard to bring you alternate perspectives, bring you diversity of thought that is going to be of value to you. So if you were going to create an absolute maximized performance team, it's got to have different perspectives, which means it's got to have diversity, which means everybody has to have the same opportunity to be heard, that you're amplifying their voices, you're mentoring them equally. You're not mentoring some people on the business skills they need and some people on how to fit in. You're examining how you assess performance to make sure everybody's performance is assessed equally. You give equal access to you, the boss. Some people don't get access to you because they're your golf buddy or you like playing pickup basketball with them. And other people don't get access to you. And you sponsor people, you speak for them when they're not in the room. If you do all of that, you will build a team that is so phenomenal that you're creating other leaders. And I promise you that gets you such better outcomes.

Oh, I love that point. And really, when it all comes down to putting your business in the best position to succeed, putting your team in the best position to succeed, and a lot of times if we don't take the time to look within ourselves to recognize that we might be treating people differently, then we don't have the opportunity to course correct. And that's really important, to have that humility and self awareness, to be able to reflect in that type of way. And I know we've been going for a while, I am already late for my next meeting because this conversation has been so great. But before we go, I want to make sure you get an opportunity to talk about the assessments because it's really great for us to come in and have this conversation. I'm sure there are lots of leaders who are saying, oh, this is great, I'm going to put a lot of this into practice, I'm going to be a better leader and things like that. And that's great, that is really great. But at the end of the day, being more self aware can get us part of the way, but then we need some objective data to get us the rest of the way. So can you tell us about those assessments?

Sure. I love doing a corporate culture assessment. If an organization has a hundred or more employees, it is so valuable to have someone come in from the outside who your employees will talk to. See, employees aren't a hundred percent confident being fully candid with the leadership within their own company and even your HR department. They're not always confident that they can tell all the truth all the time. So you have someone from the outside come in and talk to all of the employees about your culture and I'll share my secret sauce. I don't. The reason I'm not super protective of this is because nobody else can do it the same way and it's almost impossible to do it internally. I do it the full corporate culture assessment by speaking to a hundred employees with three questions. And CEOs go crazy when they hear. They're like, wait a minute, don't you have a 40 page questionnaire? I'm like, no, I have three questions. The questions are tell me about your best day ever working here. When I ask a hundred employees to tell me about their best day ever working there, I can share with you. That tells me everything I need to know about what works in that workplace and what's going well and what they're doing right. And then tell me about your worst day ever. Working here. And you can really identify pockets of toxicity very easily or policies that are costing you good employees. And I can share a dozen examples of things that come up when you say, tell me about your worst day ever working here. And five different employees have a different worst day, but they all involve the same policy. And then question number three is if you could wave a magic wand and change one thing at this place, what would it be? And that's where you get the ideas that people have been dying to share with somebody for the longest time. And the reason I share those questions openly, I hope they bring me in. But if they're not going to bring me in, I hope they will be able to have those three questions answered honestly and openly in their workplace without fear of retribution, with responses to the questions so that people feel like they're being heard again. Going back to everybody wants to feel seen and heard. And as you and I discussed earlier, Kwame, my definition of a consultant, it's the person who comes in and asks your employees the questions you should have asked them in the first place and then charges you a reasonable amount of money to tell you what your employees would have told you for free. I get paid to be the person who listens to them and the person who management will listen to. And it's incredibly rewarding.

I love this and bringing it all together. I can tell that your work makes you very happy, Valerie. So this is great. So thank you so much for coming on the show today. And again, before you go, just remind the listeners about what you do and how they can get in touch.

They can get in touch with me through speakhappiness.com that's speak s p e a k speakhappiness.com if you need a keynote speaker for your conference or for your corporate event, if you need some training on managerial skills that will maximize the value of your team, or if you want to do a corporate culture assessment to find out what your pain points are, what your bottlenecks are, and what kind of training is needed to overcome them, please reach out@speakhappiness.com and I have a twice monthly newsletter called the Happiness and Inclusion Newsletter. You get that@speakhappiness.com inclusion amazing.

Valerie, thank you so much for joining us. Really appreciate it.

It was an absolute pleasure. I'm so happy we did this.

Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.

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I'll catch you later.