Cultural Dissonance: Solving Your Talent Problem

In the past, I've joked that businesses would be a cinch if it wasn't for all the people. By far in our businesses, people are our number one issue. For many of us, as you have— actually, for as many people as you have on your team, you have that many issues to contend with. But what if you had a way to evaluate where your weaknesses are Figure out how you could adjust the team dynamic and move each individual to becoming a champion in your business. Would that make a difference? And that's what we're talking about today on Marc Haine Live. Welcome to this episode of Marc Haine Live. This is where small business owners and entrepreneurs pick up core skill sets to help them create the jaw-dropping, show-stopping experience that customers and employees deserve. I am your host, Service Expert and Master of Experiences Marc Haine. And today, my guest is Culture Expert Warren Barry. We will be discussing how you could see your people, your staff from a different perspective. We will uncover an aspect of who you are that drives your behavior and your problem solving as a leader and how you can leverage it to build better teams. So, stay with us. If this is your first time joining us, I'd like to say welcome. If you find this episode value, please go ahead and check out the other past episodes. There's 144 of them on the channel. So, there's a lot to choose from. And I'd love it if you found value, if you could leave a review as well. I want to say thank you for investing the number one commodity that you have today and that is your time. I hope that we can give you the value it deserves. We've talked a lot on this show about the importance of employee engagement. Now that we have a mixture of hybrid, remote, in-person jobs, employee engagement has fallen to an all-time low. You can pretty much bank that only 1 out of every 3 of your employees working for you right now are actively engaged in the work that they are doing. So that brings me to our Question of the Day. You know, corporate culture has been a buzzword since the early '90s, if not before. But what does corporate culture mean to you? And what is your role as a leader in defining that culture? Well, okay, that was 2 questions. But go ahead and share this episode on your favorite social media platform. Hashtag it #ExperienceLeadership and put your comments down. What does corporate culture mean to you? My guest for this episode is the The purveyor of the pond and human performance expert, Warren Barry. After being an entrepreneur and working in medicine for 30 years, he made a connection between the mind, the body, and performance, and what makes people healthy and happy at work or not. Having that experience for himself and always being an odd duck, he decided to leave the nest and help other entrepreneurs and business owners escape Warren, welcome to the show. It is so great to have you here.

Marc, I am absolutely super excited to be here. You're so engaging. It's gonna be a lot of fun. And I just can't wait to tell your listeners or explain to your listeners a little bit of how to see their people from just a little different angle from what they did when they came on the podcast today.

I love it. I love anything that shifts mindset. And I have a sneaking suspicion our audience today will get a huge mindset shift on opening up their perspective. But before we get started, could you tell us a little bit about how you serve your clients?

The best way I serve my clients is really getting into organizations and really helping them understand Number one, who they are as a leader first and foremost. How do they serve? And then getting into how, who do you have in your team? Sort of as I say, who's who in the zoo or in my metaphor in the flying V of geese is like, who do you have in your flock? So, how we best serve them is really start to understand who are you, who do you have, where are you going, which is a huge piece. And then, how do we align your team in order to actually get them and everybody not only in the same direction but going into what again, as I say about their golden pond? So, it's really getting into a deep understanding of who you have and what are you having them do. Because as you said, that disengagement is becoming a really big issue and it's in a steep decline. So, serving those people that way is to really get to really a deep understanding in performance.

So, I'd like to dig a little bit deeper into what you just said about the low engagement aspect. We have low engagement. We're hearing quiet quitting, quiet firing. What do you think is going on in the workplace today?

Well, I mean, I think with the whole hybrid piece that really shook things up quite a bit. But what I'm finding and something that I've been really working on a lot about lately, just recently is that in our generation, and I don't want to age ourselves here. But there was a time that was just do your job. You're getting a paycheck. Do your job. Do the work. And that's what mattered. That's what was important. And now, what I'm finding in talking to organizations is that people want to be cared for. They want to belong. They want to be part of something bigger than themselves. And they want to have a purpose. It's no longer about the job anymore. I mean, that's part of it. But they want to be able to be that they want to have a feeling that I'm actually part of something bigger. And I think that's what really matters. And I think that's why this whole disengagement piece is really happening because I don't think, I'm speculating here, but a lot of organizations know exactly. They know what they do but don't sometimes know where they're going or even better, why they're doing what they're doing.

Yeah, or somewhere along the way, they've lost that. And I think to that point, when I worked in economic development, I would go out to all these businesses which the businesses were there but When you walked in, you sensed that there was a lack of passion. And when you talk to business operators, a lot of times it's like, what's going on? Oh well, my business is like this and my people are like this. And then, when you asked— I asked one very powerful question and that was, how did you get started in this business? And all of a sudden, their eyes would light up. They'd become more passionate. All of a sudden, they were more animated in how they talked about it. And it's like, where is that passion? So, what do you think is happening? Do you think in the scope— I mean, obviously, we've had generational differences between— I remember reading The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People back in the '80s when we were talking about we're now in the Knowledge Age. And we've gone from kind of the Industrial Age where we wanted hands, the Knowledge Age where we want the hands and the brain. And now, we're more into the Relational Age where we want the hands, we want the brain, and we want what's in the heart as well. So, why What shifted do you think now more than I think even before the pandemic? What do you think that big catalyst was?

Oh, that is a great question. Boy, you're gonna make me think on this one of what— I guess what I'm seeing and I don't know exactly why. I don't have the why actually in my head. But what I see the shift, but it is more about purpose. And I'm going to give you sort of 2 lines that I'd say because it goes into culture. And I mean, maybe bring this back around was that number one, culture is best defined by the level of behavior that a leader is willing to tolerate.

Hmm.

So, that's line number one. The second one is, as a leader, if you do not clearly define the culture of your organization, everyone else will make it up. And I think that that's the piece. I think it's a communication piece. We've gotten really fast-paced. We're trying to move really quickly. But I'm not sure if that message is actually being taken out through the organization. Again, I think people before had jobs and now they want purpose. And I don't know exactly where that turned. But I think that is the shift that I'm seeing occur in organizations.

Yeah, I mean, one of the catalysts that I think I've noticed with a lot of people and businesses was the remote working. We went from work-life balance to work-life integration. And the minute that happened, leaders were now able to see kind of the people on their screen when they were remote as human beings with another life. They were able to see that Karen had a dog and that they have a 5-year-old child who keeps running in and out and that she's a busy mom. And they were able to all of a sudden, that awareness kind of came to the forefront. But at the same token, when people are being pushed back now into the workplace, it's almost like leaders wanted to go back to the way it was. But the employees want what happened in COVID to stay. So, I want to be seen as that human being. Does that make sense?

Oh, absolutely. I guess that's that whole purpose thing. And just, there's two— I have two thoughts on this is that Number one, that people want to be cared for. And I think the next wave and what I predict in the future is that people want to belong to something from where we want to take care of them from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., right? We want to take care of our people while they're at work and while they're doing the job, whether they're at home or whether they're in the office. I think the next shift is we want to figure out how to take care of people from 5 p.m. to 8 a.m. And bring, you know, and take care of the whole person. And that goes back to the whole person, which is they have a dog and they have their 3-year-old and have a 5-year-old and they are soccer and there's this and there's that. And I really think from a leadership standpoint that through the whole COVID experience is that leaders really had a hard time being leaders because they all became counselors.

Hmm.

And they just then, they were reacting and responding. So, that was really hard to, I think, for people to lead in that time because everything was on the reactionary stage. We didn't know what was going to happen next. So, and we're now trying to console. And now, we're trying to get back at it again. So, it's kind of like when something gets stalled out, when you have momentum and it gets stalled, how much energy it takes to get that back going again. And I think that's kind of the phase that we're in of just we want to get back there. But There's only so much energy.

It's interesting as you were saying that, an image popped into my head of Wile E. Coyote and the sheepdog. Fred, do you remember when they'd be out in the field and the coyote is going to do the thing that coyotes do and sheepdog's there to protect the sheep. And then, the whistle blows and they both go to the time clock and stamp out and you go, okay Fred, see you tomorrow. It's kind of like that, right? It's like we have this one role from 8:30 to 4:30. And then, this other role from 4:30 on that we might not be privy to understanding within the human dynamic of our team members.

Yeah. But I sort of cut you off there. But I really think that that is extremely important in this next shift, this next generation. And whether I mean, some of us are a little bit more old school. But whether we like it or not, I think it's going to happen.

Yeah, I believe it will too. I believe this. I think we've pulled back the sheet on this work-life balance into this work-life integration. And people are going to want work to be part of a whole, not to be a standalone kind of role definition. And it's like, okay, I'm putting this hat on now. Now, I'm going to put on this hat.

Right.

I've spoken to a lot of business operators who really are in denial when we talk about employee engagement. Like when they say, oh no, I've heard the stat. But oh, you know, all my people are super engaged. What are some of the signs that leaders should be aware of that might point to the damage that low employee engagement is causing in their organization? What's the checklist?

Oh boy. Well, number one.

Oh, by the way, I only ask small questions.

Yes, I'm glad that you keep them very simple. Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, number one is money. But I really think, and I'll say this, when you have that employee, gauge back to your high performers. Gauge back to your champions. The people that are really involved and engaged in your business. And when you talk to them and integrate with them and you interact with them, you will see that spark, that glimmer, that energy that you either are going to feel or hear. And I still think it's palpable. And so, when you look at those people and say, what are they doing in order to to do what they're doing. And I believe that there's a proper alignment in their role. There's a proper alignment in their belief. There's a proper line and purpose. And so, those are the things you want to try to measure back in. Now, on the flip side of that is, are they showing up for work? Are they complaining? And I will say that complaining is not a strategy. Are they looking— what else are they looking for? And if they're complaining about Work-life balance that they're complaining about, how much money I'm getting paid. If they're complaining about the things that at the end of the day, they matter to a point but they really don't matter, is I think those are the things you got to start being wary of in the checklist to start looking. And do you see that spark in their eye? Do you see them smile and engage and show up happy? And do you actually feel the energy in the room when they're in there? And which way does it take you? Does it swing to the way of a bit of an energy vampire? And you know who they are. Don't kid yourself. You know who they are, right? Or does it swing the other way when you're actually around them, you actually feel that they're uplifted? And one of the things I will say, Marc, when I work with organizations and I have a— I won't give away the secret sauce. But there's a A little game that I play with them, which is learning should always be fun. But what I do is I set these— I have these people do some things. But I have them in line with who they are, how they problem solve because we're measuring it. We know instinctively how they problem solve. So, what I do is I set them up for success and I get them to do some tasks, right? And you watch it. And anybody else in the room, you can feel the energy. It's fun. It's exciting. We're setting them up for success.

Right.

And this is great. Everybody's having a great time. We're in the party. And then, what I do is because they did such a great job and we give them a big round of applause, we pat on the back. All right. And then, we incentivize them with 6 more weeks of vacation and double their salary. Right? And then, we give them a promotion because they did such a great job. And then, what we do then is I flip their roles on them of what they need to do. I'm really simplifying this down. But this is really fascinating. When I flip their roles upside down, they're new into their new job descriptions. And what I'm doing is I'm actually setting them up for failure because again, I know how they problem solve. And it's really amazing. It's a 4-minute exercise but it's the 4 longest minutes of their life. And some people will actually quit before they start. On average, it's about 2 minutes and 30 seconds. One of them will bail out. And by 4 minutes, they can't wait for it to be over. But when you feel the energy in the room when we do it one way and you feel the energy in the room the other way, I said, no, it is absolutely palpable. And I say, so, we had them do the exact same. We had them do the same task, same job.

Right.

But they got a new— but the task itself was the same. How we made them do was different. That was the key. So, I said, if you're in the cubicle, if you're in the boardroom, if you're around the water cooler, I don't care where it is. Pay attention to that energy around you and you will know what's going on around you. Pay attention to that. Now, there are no words there but the energy will speak a lot.

And you can always feel it. And what I find really interesting is when I work with some operators, business operators either in retail or hospitality, To your point, you can feel when people are walking on eggshells. You can feel when people have something negative going on. And I think what a lot of leaders do is, I'm just so busy. I don't have time to address this. So, I'm just going to leave it go and let it sort itself out. How is that as a strategy?

Well, here's the funny thing. And this is actually called the Law of Thirds. We'll talk about that for a second because this I think is really interesting. And I talk about a lot with organizations. Is the Law of Thirds basically saying, if you look at the stats even on disengagement, they'll say there's basically up to 35% of your people are disengaged. Now remember, there are 2 kinds of disengagement. There's one is the disengaged, which is, should I quit or should I stay? And then, there's the actively disengaged, which is the quit-stay. So, they quit. They stayed. But the Law of Thirds states that basically, you got a third of your people that are basically your complainers. They're unhappy. They're disengaged. You have a third of your people in the middle, which are your, yeah, I'm doing my job. This is okay. I get paid. I'm showing up to work and life is good. I'm not in one side or the other. I'm sitting in the middle. And then, a third of your people are your champions. And they love being there. They're always full of ideas. They're always full of energy and they want to keep everything moving forward. So, you love them. Now, Marc, and if you come back on, I'll ask you the question on typically, As a business leader, right, we've got our complainers, the people in the middle, and we got our champions. Where do we spend our energy? Where do we spend our time?

It's always on the bottom of the barrel. It's always problem solving the bad performers, the misbehaviors, and so on. And we leave the top performers alone, wallowing in whatever they think they're doing right.

Right. And so, but here's the interesting thing. We spend all this time. So, if we just win them over, If we could just get this. If we can only just. And we spend all this energy. And what happens in that pattern is that when— so basically, the people in the middle start to move over because they say, well, that's how I get attention in this organization. I guess that's what I need to do too. And then, the half of the top third go, well, if this is how this works around here, I guess I'll come over too as well. And the top, your top, top performers, that other half of that 33%, They leave because this is not for me and I can't put up with this. And so, but then this is the pattern. And then, we're in it and then we go, well, I don't know how we got here. So now, if we actually flip the narrative and say, well, what are our champions doing? What are they doing really well? What keeps them happy? What keeps them engaged? Let me get to know them and all the things about them. And then, so we put all our attention there. Then, the people in the middle, they come over and they say, well, I guess this is how I get attention. This is what needs to get done. Half of the bottom third then go, oh well, if I'm going to want to be part of this, I guess that's what I need to do too. Right? And then, the bottom third on the other side, they self-select out, which is even better. That's a business. They will automatically leave because they say, well, I'm not getting attention. Then, they'll complain their way out the door.

Yes.

But I've seen this narrative happen. I was in and I talk all across Canada with Tech Canada. And the same pattern is happening over and over and over again. I said, we need to start from a cultural piece is who are our top performers, who are champions. And I really think, and I would get your thoughts on this, Marc, is that because we pay attention to the bottom, the people that are top performers, we leave them alone. Right? Well, they're doing a great job already. Like, I don't need to do anything with them. Right? But wait a second. Isn't that where we should be spending our energy?

You know, it's interesting that you say that because the other thing that happens when we're focusing on the bottom tier is that we then are— our business is reactionary to that bottom tier. That's where we're starting to set policies. That says, thou shalt not whatever because we're trying to compensate for bad behavior, which in its spin-off will affect the people at the top end who are like, well, why am I being punished when I don't behave badly? But now, it's affecting my work and what I'm doing as well. So, we're kind of fanning those flames and making sure that it's going to be all-consuming at some point in the corporate culture.

And I'll get into trouble for saying this. But this is where as a business leader and then, when I ask them, I'll say, if there was one part of your job, like CEOs especially, if there's one part of your job that you give away that would just magically disappear with a magic wand, what would it be? The number one answer?

People.

HR people. Wherever there's people, there's people problems. So, Now, but so what do they do then? Well, let's hire HR, which really didn't solve the problem. It just sort of just moves it over, right? And but now, this is where I get into trouble. And a lot of times in HR, they take the human out of human resources. And then now, it becomes masters of policies and procedures and rules and regulations if you don't follow them, right? And then, the people at the top, yeah, it goes back to your point and saying, Yeah, well, why am I getting punished with all this? Well, because we're trying to control this bad behavior, which really isn't human resources. It's sort of inhuman resources. I get in trouble for saying that.

And it goes from, I think Stephen Covey said it really great. He said, we manage things and we lead people.

Right.

And so, when you go on to what you just talked about with human resources coming on board and the leaders becoming, now I want to manage people. And I want to manage their behavior. And I've always said from day one on this podcast, I love the phrase, what gets recognized and rewarded gets repeated. It is the best way to change behavior within an organization is you find even with your bad performers, you find something that they're doing right. You recognize it. You reward it very specifically. And you just reinforce the good behavior. And all too often, I think the good behavior is what we're ignoring. And we are just working on that one squeaky wheel.

Yes, the squeaky wheel as they say gets the grease, right? And that's just typically what happens. And one of the things on that same note in the work that I do, again, since serving my clients and really I go get into what's called the conative aspect of your mind. And that is actually a real word. Conative is a real word. But it's your instincts. And it is your— it's a part of your mind that doesn't change over time. So, it actually— this is your problem-solving strategy. And so, when I'm going to come up with problem A and I'm going to come at it my way subconsciously. It's a subconscious part of your mind. You may come at it your way. We're still trying to solve the same problem but you see it through your lens. And then, somebody else, one of your audience is going to say, well, I wouldn't. Why would you do it that way? I'm going to do it this way.

Right.

Right? Your eyes and ears only see and hear what your brain is looking for.

Yeah.

So, we all see the same thing but we're all trying to come at it different ways. But what really becomes interesting and this talks about culture and going back to this whole podcast is that when we put somebody just like I said, when I flip those people's roles in this little game that I play, right? What we actually realize at the end of it all once we debrief it all and they can understand what's going on Right. If anybody's going to be blamed for the problem, it was me. I created the problem. I'm the one who put them there, right? I can point out and say, well, how come you didn't do your job? And how come this? And why are you so upset? And all these, all the questions around it. But I'm the one who actually created it. And it does go back to the point of you don't know what you don't know. And so, if I don't know what makes that person tick, if I don't know what lights them up, if I don't know what's going to make them the best performer Performer for the role that they're in, then I just, well, you know, Jesus, just because they had previous experience doesn't make him good at it. And so, going back to this whole instinctive drive piece is that it's really important that we actually understand that this, you know, when I put this person in this role for what they do naturally, again, goes back to what you said earlier, right? We can hire their hands. We can We can train their heads. But until we have their hearts, we'll never have the whole person. We can train skill. We can try to— we can have ice cream Sundays. We can have ice cream Fridays or whatever the case is. But the thing is that heart is actually when we're aligning that person with the role. And one of the really prime examples is probably overused, but I'm going to say it anyway, is that we take our top— you take your top salesperson, right?

Yeah.

I mean, they're They're doing great. They're knocking it out of the park. They're making money. They're having fun doing it. And then, the promotion to sales manager. Oh, why wouldn't we, right? And the person's like, well, I got my title now and this is great. And they get in the role. And about 6 to 8 months later, you realize that you promoted an ogre and you cannot figure out why. And I think another piece of this too is that what we don't understand and business is that when we give that promotion, we're actually rehiring. But we don't— we see it as a rehire. We see because they're already hired. They're already working for us. But they don't see it as a rehire. And when we're rehiring again, now what are you asking them to do? Now, whether they like it or not. And I think then that becomes again, that becomes a cultural piece. So, when we put the person there and then they're not performing, And then, we spend all our time again trying to get them to come around because they were so good before. What happened?

Yes, yeah. And we've seen this time and time again, right? And to your point, I think you make a really interesting differential there is when we do make that promotion, I think it's important that we turn around and say, this is a new hire. What do we need to do to onboard them? into this new position rather than saying, okay Steve, you were great at sales. So now, if we promote you as a sales manager, you could teach everybody how to be amazing like you, which just doesn't work. And it sets them up for failure.

And it sets them up. Yeah, and then we can't figure out why. And I really want to, being that I wanted to help you be on this podcast and help you help your audience to again think differently, change perspective on things. So, I'll just give you just an example. Let's just run with the sales example because sales is really actually kind of fascinating. But there are people out there instinctively, whether again subconsciously, who love sales. Now, there are different aspects of sales. And I've seen this when helping organizations hiring, helping them hire the right people for the right roles. So, there are people that are driven by the sales, by the— it's all about eat what you kill. It's all about sign the deal because Because it's a game. It's a crisis. It's chaos. It's fun. It's exciting. And because I get to like, ah, I seal the deal. This is great. And that's then, that for them is very, very exciting and fun because instinctively, it's a natural connection. It's an energetic connection. Now, there's people at the other end of the spectrum who don't want to sell anything. Now, we have them in sales. They don't want to sell anything. And they're like, they sit back and they don't want to go out and do cold calls. They don't want to go out and drive. They don't want to do those things. Now, both are in sales roles. And I want to just keep— I want to make this thinking differently. The people that are the real heavy sales go out, let's call them car salespeople just for fun. They love being on commission-based because everything is a challenge. Everything is strive to something new. Everything is what can I go and gain from this? And I want again, as I said, I want to eat what I kill. And the people at the other end of the spectrum who don't, they don't want to sell. But they're great customer service people. But don't ever put them on commission-based sales because what they're looking for is they're looking for stability. What's going to be the same? How can I be sure? I want to— they're going to fight, fight, fight for stability. And to actually be in the known. Now, those people never want to sell because the fact is they're not driven by sales. But they're driven more by maybe, you know, let me give the client or the customer more information and give them— let me follow through on this process. And let's carry this through and have a conversation and all those things. And hopefully, they will buy. Now again, Both are in sales. 2 totally different aspects of sales. But when you take the one person who's been, let's say, the inside salesperson and you want to promote them to outside sales and you change their pay format and you change their commission structure and you try to get them on sales calls and they stop performing, right? They're the same person. We're still trying to do sales and they're checking out and they're starting to disengage. And most people, they can't figure out why. Well, it's because of this instinctive drive they have. They have experience. But experience isn't enough. I always tell people at organizations is that you can take someone who's really smart, educated, lots of experience, ton of skill. Great! We've checked off all the boxes. And they seem to be outgoing and our values match. And they have good beliefs and they have a nice person. They have a good personality. We get along. This is great! Oh my God! I found the perfect hire. Don't only hire smart, nice people. It is not enough. You have to know, not guess. You have to know what instinctively drives them because you're actually, believe it or not, you're talking to their subconscious mind, not their conscious mind. And when you start to align that, and it goes back to my metaphor of it's geese flying in the V formation. Geese fly 71% more efficiently in the V formation than they do than flying alone. And because everyone leads off, everyone feeds off the one in front of it, the lead goose never stays the lead goose. So, that means that in nature, pay attention to nature. It'll teach you a lot about business. Nature doesn't do. Nature doesn't try. Nature just does.

Yeah.

But that lead goose is always changing out, right? Which means that everyone in your organization now becomes a leader. Because when I'm going to drive outside sales, oh, there's my lead goose. When I'm going to drive inside sales, there's my lead goose. When I'm going to create a structure and a plan and a system, I have a lead goose for that. When I want to have somebody find an alternative, see around corners and see patterns really quick, I now have a different goose. But once again, once you know that and you're rotating them out, there's your effectiveness. And everyone plays a role and it's always moving. And the one last thing I want to say about this, Marc, is that when geese fly in the V formation, and I think this is really important, is that they can all see where they're going. Every geese can. It's not blind faith. You don't ever see them flying in a straight line. They're always flying because everyone can see. So, until that leader clearly defines north, it's not enough.

Right.

Right? It's like, Marc, here's a compass. Don't get lost. Right? If you don't know how to use a compass, what good is it going to do you? So, north is not enough. Yes, we're going north and we're going to here and we're going— right? And then clearly define where we're going. And then, that's where everyone starts to actually fly together. And I think that's really key.

You've talked about so many different aspects of this idea of zone of genius. And so, I'd like to kind of dig deeper a little bit On getting people and being able to pinpoint where people's zone of genius might be. And we'll get to that right after this. When the spotlight shines on your business, are customers applauding or yawning? In other words, how is your business performing? Make your business a star with a new book, Lights!

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today at your favorite online retailer or directly at marchaine.com. I am speaking with sought-after speaker and Purveyor of the Pond, Warren Barry. Warren, I have to ask you, why Purveyor of the Pond?

Well, you see, my whole metaphor that I work with is the Flying V. So, it's all about ducks and it's all about geese and it's all about nature. And again, watching nature. Nature doesn't try. Nature just does. So, the purveyor of the pond is we're all in the same pond. We're all in this together. And so therefore, I become the purveyor of the pond and hopefully the lead goose that I can actually help organizations fly. And once they figure out what their golden pond is, I get to go off and find another pond. And then find another pond. Got it.

And so, it's not about holding into the same pond. It's about how do we evolve it, right?

Yep.

Now, you talked about this conative aspect of the mind. And there's a phrase called conative stress. This was a new phrase. I actually had to look it up because my spell check when I wrote down conative, it changed it to cognitive. And so, can we just With probably a little bit more clarity, I guess, is what is cognitive aspect of the mind or cognitive stress? And how does it drive our decision-making?

Oh, fantastic question, Marc. Beautiful. So, every person has 3 parts of their mind. Every single human. And so, we have now again, let's go to the spell check. This happened to me just the other day. It's actually pretty Pretty funny when it spell checks into cognitive. So, Microsoft, listen to this podcast. So, we have 3 parts of the mind. And the cognitive is your skills, your experience, your knowledge, your IQ, your education. These are the things. This is the thinking part of your mind. So, these are the things you learn over time. So, if you think about education, well, education from kindergarten to grade 12 or after, I keep learning new things. But that piece of your mind is always changing. It's always developing. Or if it's not, there's a bigger problem. But the cognitive is where we— is our thinking piece. The affective part of our mind is the feeling side of us. And so, that is again, it's your emotions, your values, your beliefs, your personality lives there, your motivation. And that piece of your mind is always changing. Again, so when we look at things like, as an example for an assessment, it's a business podcast. So, we have DISC and Predictive Index and Myers-Briggs and StrengthsFinder. All those ones that are out there are all measuring the affect. It's how do you feel about things and whether you like them or prefer them. That piece of your mind is always changing. Because it depends on our external environment, right? How we want to react. So again, when I always say about don't hire only smart, nice people because the smart is they got all this experience. The nice is they're outgoing and our values align, whatever the case may be. The conative is now, that is our doing. So, this is how we take action. And so, this is your drive, your mental energy. Your instincts, your talent. It's your problem-solving strategy. This is how you do. So, when we think about this, try to break this down and make this understandable. So, let's say we have your zone of genius. It sort of falls into this because that's more affect. It's what you like. And so, that becomes potential energy. It's, this is where I want something to occur or I'm moving towards this. I sure like this. I want to have a new car. Whatever. It doesn't matter what it is. But that's our potential energy. And as soon as we say yes to that, the conative aspect of your mind— again, this piece doesn't change. This drives your behavior. And it's subconscious. There are no words to it. There are no words in your subconscious mind. And what happens is that starts your problem-solving strategy. So, you're going to approach it. Like for myself, I'm very like, hey, I got an idea. Hey, why don't we try this? Everything for me is about experimenting and jumping in. And all the bean counter financial people, I drive insane because they say, well, where's the report? Where's the data? What's the history? What's the evidence? What have we done before? And I'm like, yeah, but why? Why are we looking in the past? We've got to look in the future. And they'd be, yeah, but if you don't know the past, how are you going to know the future? How are you going to pace the future? Well, we'll worry about that later. Let's go. Right? And so again, you've got 2 people trying to get to the same place, 2 completely different ways. And again, this is how it's going to drive their behavior. And as soon as you say, yeah, as soon as you say, yes, you're going to keep on moving forward. You've got free will. Then, the cognitive comes into mind and that's where we evaluate. So, this is like, do I have— what experience do I have? What knowledge do I have? What budget do I have? It's the analysis. So, it's affective, conative, cognitive. And this sits in cycles every day as you're problem solving. And again, the cognitive piece is really fascinating to understand and get other people or people on the podcast to listen to is that it's mental. It's battery packs of mental energy. So, we all came with rechargeable batteries. But when you're doing something, and I'll give you just this really quick example because this will lead into the cognitive stress piece, is one of the things we measure is called Fact Finder. It's how we gather and share information. So, I have a little bitty 2 in Fact Finder. I don't have much battery power there. And it has nothing to do with intelligence.

Right.

But if I'm having to read a document or I'm having to get specifics or details on something, I just have this very little bit of time and I'll do it for so long and my brain goes, er, and it just stops. It doesn't mean I don't know what I'm doing. It means that I've run out of battery pack. So, I have to wind sprint my way through it. So, it's burn off energy, then recharge it, burn off energy, recharge it, burn off energy. That's my way of doing it. Now, growing up, I used to think I was stupid because the fact is I couldn't read for very long and I have to read these long things. I'm like, I just don't get it. In school, show your work made no sense to me. That was just— it's so illogical in my brain. So, right? Again, so using myself as an example of that. But yeah, there are other people who would just love to dive into the details and love to get the specifics and love to research and love to get all the data. And I could really care less. So, not that I don't care. That's the wrong way to put it. I do care. It's how I'm going to go about getting it. I don't need a lot of information to start.

Right.

where other people need a lot. So, I take procrastination and really turn it on its head. So, the cognitive stress piece, right, which is I started actually, believe it or not, started doing research. I call it case studies because it makes me feel better. But it was— I was looking at patients being in medicine for 30 years. And I dealt with what's called the fascial system of the human body. And it's the connective tissue system. So, if anybody's ever heard of myofascial release. And what I discovered was there were people that were getting these really kind of weird symptoms such as fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome, myofascial pain syndrome, irritable bowel syndrome, migraine headaches. The real messy things that people, we really don't understand. And I started looking at and asking deeper questions and started figuring out about their work and what they were having to do. Now again, it wasn't about their experience. It wasn't about their tenure. It's what we're having them do. And what I found was That who they were instinctively, what role they were in, what they had to do on a daily basis could not be sustained over time. So, my theory is and it's sort of shown it is that people will either make a conscious choice and they will leave the organization or they'll disengage or they'll do whatever they have to do because they're going to mentally, cognitively make a decision and say, I can't make this work. Or They will get sick and their body will take them out one way or the other. You can't sustain it over time. The energy cannot be sustained over time. And so, I look at this energy and we've seen it on brain mapping and on the MRIs when people are in cognitive stress. When I'm up against myself. I mean, I did a keynote not too long ago. My first line of my keynote was, get a good government job, she said. And that was my opening line because my mother telling me to get a good government job and it was worst 3.5 years of my life. And I've never been so sick. And I never had so much back pain. I never had so much bronchitis as that period of time that I was there. I couldn't be myself. And I could tell you all sorts of stories. But it was my aha that I was like, that actually happened to me. I was trying so hard. And could I do the work? Yes. But I couldn't sustain it over time. And that was the corner of stress. And I started to see in patients, I started to see the patterns. And one of them was a doctor and she'd really care about her patients. But so, to make a long story short, she went from being a GP, which is actually a lot of repetition, not a lot of creativity. How many runny noses do you see in a day, right? To eventually— and had fibromyalgia and eventually got into doing hair transplants.

Hmm!

And was happy as a clam because then she could— there was no repetition. She could be creative. She could create a work of art. And that was— but that's who she is. Now, you think, well, as a physician, you think, but all this time you've spent and all the money you've spent on being a physician. I mean, why would you change? I mean, right? And it was pulling her out. It was trying to get her out of there. It was trying to protect her. But we saw it as a disease. It really wasn't a disease. It was a protective mechanism.

Gotcha!

And once we started to move that over, Then everything changed.

It's interesting because you're talking about— so this has become what you've been describing is more of a self-reflective exercise. I'd like to talk a little bit and we don't have a lot of time left. But I'd like to talk a little bit about how leaders can spot this in others. And really, because to our point, we're calling it Zone of Genius. But now, you've kind of broken it out to these 3 different aspects. How do leaders pinpoint where their employees are within the realm of cognitive stress and their cognitive frame of mind?

Well, there's 2 ways to do it. Number one, you can measure it. So, there is a tool out there that it's one that I use called Kolbe. So, K-O-L-B-E. So, that's one way you can actually— again, I always tell people, do you want to guess or do you want to know? So, one way is to actually measure it. Otherwise, you actually have to like talk to the individual. Like, ask them what they're doing, right? And then, here's an interesting thing is that if people say want or like, it's called the affective part of your mind. That's the languaging they'll use. If someone says need, need is instinct. So, it's like, I need more information. If you start listening to that, if you start to understand this and you start listening to their dialogue, you will start picking it out. And if they're starting to disengage and they're starting to pull away, or stuff's going to the side of their desk that they're not doing, have the conversation and find out why. And it's not again, it's not about whether they like it or not. It's what do they need in order to be successful. And the leader themselves, right? I mean, the CEO, like we have this idea we got to be everything to everybody all the time. Try to be the lead goose over Over the entire trip. Let me know how that works for you.

Yeah, yeah. And that's where burnout happens, right?

That's where burnout happens.

I'm loving this. Warren, for everything that we've been talking about today, are there any cautionaries as people start to uncover this? I mean, first of all, is there any resources out there that people can get more information about cognitive stress and cognitive frames of mind as well as what are some of the cautionaries we should be aware of when we're trying to instigate maybe this new awareness?

Well, there's one. I mean, there's 2 places you go. I mean, if you want to go to my website, which is www.instinctivesolutions.ca, you can see my case study that's actually on there. So, you can actually read up my case study. And I also wrote an ebook also on what we call transition. is where people are in transition. I wrote it through COVID because I was seeing these people being pushed and pulled. So, there's that resource there. And there's Kolbe. So, kolbe.com has a lot of information on the conative aspect of the mind. Otherwise, go looking. It's going to be tough to find just like you did too. But those are 2 great resources to look. And then, Kathy Kolbe, I think it's got a few books as well. So, that's 2 great resources and look at that. That's a great place to go. And again, your question was about the— not the dangers. What?

The cautionaries of being able to uncover this and trying to implement some sort of awareness around this.

Well, I think one of the cautionary things is to find— sometimes you might find out. Careful what you find because— and I see this happen quite a bit where we have people in the wrong roles. And I've seen it over and over again where they've tried. And what we do is we measure who they are. And we also measure what their self-expectation of their role is. We also measure what the leader's expectation of the role is. So, we can measure these things. But what I found was there's some people that were trying so hard to try to conform. And once we opened up Pandora's box, then it was number one, the floodgates came down. But what we found is we actually had them in the wrong role. And so, that gets cautionary because the fact is we discovered they're in the wrong role. So, if they're a really good human being and we really like them, we want to take care of them, we have to find another role for them in the organization. And if you're a really small business, you may not have. And maybe, and at that point, I always say there's nothing wrong to be a great company to be from.

Yes.

Help them find something else that actually aligns with who they are in another organization and lead them that way.

And that's a-okay too. Yeah, I love that.

That's great.

Warren, do you have any last thoughts about what we've been talking about today?

I just think that I always, for business leaders, I think this is one. Number one, I think it's really important that people just don't understand this part of the mind. They think it's a personality problem and a lot of times, it's not. And it's not personal. It's not personal. It is just people are coming at it their own way. And I think it's really important to really discover who do you have. And I always say, who is the who to your what, right? Who is the person who does it better than you can for what needs to get done? And then, get out of the way and let them be their best selves. And they'll let you be your best self. And I think that when you can start doing that, that's when the business— I call it the Rolex watch or it's the flywheel.

Yeah.

Effect, right? You start to gain perpetual motion because it just starts to feed upon itself. And there is your culture.

There is the culture. And you mentioned at the very beginning of the show the definition of culture. Could you just repeat it one more time?

So, that's the level of behavior that a leader is willing to tolerate is number one.

Behavior that a leader is willing to tolerate.

And the second one is if you don't Clearly define the culture of your organization. Everyone else will make it up.

I love it. Could you remind everybody one more time how they can get a hold of you?

Yeah, so my website is www.instinctive, just like it sounds, instinctivesolutions.ca. My email is warren@instinctivesolutions.ca. And you can find me, Warren Berry, on Facebook. I'm on LinkedIn as well. That's probably my primary way because then, you know, we're getting hold of me because I mean, it's business. So, that's probably the best way. Love it!

Warren, thank you so much for being here today. Thank you so much for sharing your knowledge, your passion, your expertise. This has been the quickest 51 minutes I think I've had on this show. It's been brilliant. Thank you so much for joining us today.

I really appreciate this, Marc. And I love everything that you're doing. And We're definitely going to promote your show because I think you're doing a great thing for business leaders. Well done, my friend.

Thank you very much. And I will put it out there that Warren and I are passionate about the topic that we talked about today. If you're going to be setting yourself up to do a leadership retreat or any kind of convention conference center and you think you need a keynote speaker or breakout speaker that could really enhance your attendees' experience within your conference, then please check us out. Have a conversation with us. Let's see if we can uncover how we can serve you and your attendees. Likewise, if you have any questions about today's episode or you would like a complimentary 30-minute brainstorming session with me, and I'm sure Warren is going to be more than willing to do the same thing, feel free to book yourself on my online calendar. The link is down below. And if you want to get hold of Warren, check out his website. Connect with him on LinkedIn. As always, I am at your service. And if you haven't done so yet, why don't you subscribe to this feed and follow me on social media? You'll get the first posts. You'll get first notifications when I bring you fresh new content each and every week with new experts, new topics that are relevant to you. My name is Marc Haine. I hope that you stay safe. I hope you stay healthy. And I dare you, Dare you to be the exception. Thanks for joining me today.