S4E17: Creating Peak Performance In the Midst of Disruption

This is the No Ego Podcast, where we ditch the drama, end entitlement, and transform your world place. I'm Sy Wakeman. Welcome everyone to another episode of the No Ego Podcast. I am so excited about today's episode. My guest is Jessica Teachon, and that might not be a household name yet. You might be thinking, who is Jessica? But I love our story together. Jessica is certified in reality-based leadership. A lot of you don't realize you can come get certified to teach our work throughout the world and help us, you know, spread the, the love. But more importantly, Jessica is coming on today. She has just joined that, uh, great movement, the big resignation. I'm not sure if it's a resignation It was planned for quite a while, but to start her own company, and the company is called Evolving to Exceptional. So she's the founder, and I had the privilege of endorsing a great book she's written that is really all about how we evolve as people. And if we evolve enough as people, we can start a whole revolution. So I'm absolutely thrilled about that. The book's called Exceptional Life Revolution, and it's a cool spelling because it's R dash evolution to high. Evolve ourselves, and then we can take part in the revolution. And, uh, more about her later. You're gonna love her. Welcome, Jessica, to the podcast.

Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited to be here.

It is so fun to have you on. I feel like this is like your graduation day or something. Um, not that you weren't ready and awesome way before this, but, um, you want to start and tell people our story of how we met and the great work that you did as a facilitator with RBL, and then we'll get into the great work you're doing now.

Yeah. So I'm going to go even a little bit further back. I actually first saw you, Sy, at a SHRM conference probably more than 5 years ago in Las Vegas. And, and as soon as you started talking, I knew immediately, this is my person. She gets it. And this is what my company needed. so desperately needed that call to accountability and that reality-based leadership.

And now so many people are talking about accountability, but so few people understand it.

Oh, you know, completely.

They think it's something you do to other people. I'm gonna hold these people accountable. I'm like, well, you might want to start with you. So I didn't realize that, that we connected first, or you saw me first at SHRM in Las Vegas.

I did. And that's what led me to come get certified, um, in your, in your program. And I had At the time, I had just found out I was pregnant. So I was like 8 weeks pregnant. Nobody even knew yet. And we did the Edit Your Story exercise. And I practiced all night that night and I couldn't have like a cocktail or anything. So it was the first of my ice cream cocktails where I would have an ice cream sundae when I was pregnant. And so that I could have the energy to power through practicing for the next day where I would present for you. And I told my story of That I had a really good friend who was working for me at the time, and I told her I was pregnant, and 2 weeks later she quit. And I just started telling all kinds of stories about how terrible she was, how she couldn't have ever been my friend. And you thought it was just hilarious at the time, and it was, it was a great interaction.

It was hilarious. I remember laughing like out loud. I probably interrupted you. And for those that don't know a lot about certification, you come in and you learn all these principles, and then And I don't know why people get nervous presenting in front of me, but to encourage you to really get in deep into the work. And we have teach-backs, and we also want to see, you know, how you're facilitating, and it helps bring up a lot of feedback. But I attend these teach-backs. So you get your assignment, people study it all through the evening, and they come back and, and teach a portion in front of me. And the stories you were telling weren't to other people, but definitely the stories in your head. For people not familiar, And we do that all the time, right? It's like we take full responsibility for another person's actions. We make it all about us. Somebody resigns, we're like, I can't believe she did that to me.

Mm-hmm.

It's like, well, it's not— we connect— I call it ego glue, where we connect facts with story. And it's the story really that brings us stress, but our ego takes this and And adds this, it means that. Like we add all kinds of stuff in that could be disastrous, right? Because your friend, you could pull outta that relationship. She's thinking like, what happened? I thought we were great friends. And that was hilarious. It was absolutely funny. So then fast forward, what, 5, how many years ago was that that you came and got certified?

5 years ago, almost 6 years ago actually.

Wow.

Yeah, 5, almost 6 years ago. And that was when I had my son. I've now had, twin 2-year-old girls as well. So I've got my hands full, but I wrote a book over the last 6 months. And a couple months ago, I knew even when I was writing it, I knew I wanted to ask you for an endorsement because the accountability principles and the calling people up to accountability and the accountability that starts with me, right? I love that you say that. I always tell people when I talk about accountability, I'm not talking about holding you accountable. I'm talking about each of us holding ourselves accountable. And I just found that so powerful and so critical in everything that I do. And so I thought and thought about how to send you an email to ask for it. And I ended up putting together an email that used the storytelling. So the subject line was, the story I'm telling myself is you'll never read and respond to this email. Sy is too busy, famous, talented to respond to someone like me. And then I did the, what do I know for sure? And I talked about you being a tremendous leader and helping to shape my philosophy and what you were like when I met you as a person and that you were really down to earth and funny and kind. And then I asked, well, what's the next best thing I can do? Send an email to Sy and see if she remembers me and if she might be willing to consider endorsing my book. So that was how I introed my email to you to ask for that endorsement, ask for that support of my new book.

I love it. I love your creativity. And I remember laughing when I read that as well. I love your sense of humor. But how many times do we talk ourselves out of asking for what we hope for or what we need by our own story? It's like we're negotiating with ourselves. It's like, well, who'd you ask? Well, I asked myself and I answered, she won't ever do that. And when I can, I love trying to help other people, give back to other people what I've been so freely given. So many people have supported me. I had no idea that I was making you suffer. I think I was really behind at that time and I had to triage client delivery stuff. So I think I took a while to respond, but made it more exciting that way.

Not too bad. It was a few weeks, but I mean, there was much longer waits. And it was funny since then, so many people People have asked me, how did you get Cy Wakeman's endorsement? Like, did you have to pay for that? How does that work? And I'm like, I just asked.

You just asked.

I just sent an email and asked. And I think that actually you're right, that is a really powerful example for people of sometimes you just have to take a chance and not talk yourself out of the greatest opportunity or the best things because you never know what can happen when you take a chance.

It's so true. We don't ask for help, and then we negotiate against ourselves. And, you know, the ego works hard to reinforce its, you know, belief system that no one's gonna help, and that if you have success, you're gonna ignore people who don't. Like, there's just so much we co-create that just isn't in any shape or way, form or shape, true. Um, Which I think a lot of us think— let's get back to the topic of what you write about and what you coach about because it's aligned. So many people think that someone's success was luck or that somebody made it easier for them rather than just gave them the gift of an endorsement. And it's almost like the ego wants to believe that so that I can just outsource my success and my wellbeing to my circumstances. It's like, oh, they were lucky. They're successful. I'm not lucky. And there really is a formula to this achieving peak performance, but it has a lot to do with taking risks and growing yourself, evolving yourself, accepting feedback, or mining your learning for lessons in there, for strategies. And that's why I loved your book so much, because it really does look at peak performance as something you have a ton of impact over, but you have to change your behavior. So when you started to think about it, write about peak performance, why was that so fascinating to you?

So I've kind of got a weird background. I actually went to law school, became a lawyer, pivoted into the area of talent management. So I was general counsel on talent management, and I just really fell in love with figuring out how to help people be at their best and what are the different components that people need to be doing in order to really be their best, in order to get the best results. And, um, that's really what started me on in that, in that passion or in that direction. And over the last, you know, 10 years I've worked to help my former organization, Experitech, become an exceptional workplace. And we were actually recognized 3 years in a row by Gallup as a Global Exceptional Workplace. And it's a small company. It's a 200-person company, an employee-owned business. It's not huge. And to be able to do that, to accomplish that without the big budgets that a lot of the larger organizations have, meant coming up with the strategies and really being in the details of what does it take to help people perform at their best. And when I talk about peak performance, I don't mean a destination where I get to this top point. But I mean how I'm operating every day, that I'm performing at my best, at my peak, and that in a way that I can really enjoy my journey, in a way that I can enjoy the process and, and what I'm accomplishing each and every day, and all of the experiences that we have along the way.

Love it. Love it. And I want to just connect what you said and the work that you've done. So many people want to change culture. And it's like aspirational. And it's kind of this untouchable thing. Like, you know, we have a value of accountability, or we have a value of, you know, being good for the world environmentally, or whatever that may be. But when they're aspirational, and they don't get down to essential behaviors and peak performance, not just, you know, what we performance manage, but peak performance, something that wouldn't even hit the the 1 to 5 on the performance management system. It's about getting it down to essential behaviors, individual expectations, not what they're expected to do work-wise, but what they're expected to do to show up evolved and be able to deliver on the work in low drama, effortlessly, without a ton of propping up from other places. And most people don't boil it down to this individual basis. And I really think that was the secret to your, you know, getting recognized as this exceptional workplace globally by Gallup year after year is that you cracked that code.

Yeah, and I think also, the other thing is belief. And you, I know you talk a lot about what we believe. And I think that first, we had to believe that it was possible, that a company our size could become a Gallup Exceptional Workplace. And we had to convince convince and really motivate all of our employees of that. And so we really had to put things in place to help people change their own belief systems about themselves. And we did reality-based, you know, reality-based workplace training, and we did engagement training. We did a lot of different things. But the training was really just the start. It was then how we incorporated it into the ongoing coaching, the ongoing activities. It was part of who we were and what we did. And so everybody knew. Right. Everybody knew that this is how we operated and this is what we believed in and this is what we achieved. And it's funny, when we first put the training together, this is one of my favorite stories around accountability. I had an employee who talked about how we wanted to have what was the problem we were trying to solve. And she was convinced that people could never be happy, that happiness was aspirational. And I let her talk me out of at the time, including happiness. We ended up going with success instead of happiness because she didn't believe that you could be happy. I remember her telling me, the only way I could be happy is if I was alone in the woods and I still wouldn't be happy because then I wouldn't be with the people that I love. And it took me a few years, but then I realized, no, she was wrong. Yeah. She couldn't be happy because she didn't believe it was possible. And I carry actually your quote, whether you believe it to be possible or impossible, you'll be right, on a keychain. So it's with me all the time to remind myself that it's my beliefs that are going to determine the outcome.

I love that. And I think that quote, the original is like Henry Ford. I say it a little differently, and I've never fact-checked that, but I think he said something like that. And belief is a choice. A lot of people are like, well, convince me. And I'm like, No, it is an active position of buying in, choosing to believe. And I think right now, one of the things that's really a struggle and that leaders are— everyone needs to, but leaders especially are falling down in this— is helping hope make a comeback. It is so easy to believe the storyline of we're all doomed or And it's like we hear that and we just go, oh well, our outcomes are predetermined, as if our choices have like zero impact. And I'm like, well, wait a minute, if you're in an unpreferred reality and you want a different future, don't argue with the current reality. You'll lose that argument, you know, 100% of the time. Stop just using kind of hope as a strategy, like, I hope, you know, things get back to normal, or I hope somebody figures it out. Don't sit on the sidelines doing the BMW drive like, ain't it awful? There's a tiny little space between an unpreferred reality and a different future. And that is the space that we need to reside in. And accountability is simply connecting what is today with something different. And that is all about buy-in. It is a verb. It's like, you know, you can You are choosing whether you believe in the negative or the positive. You know, just like we were talking before we came on this call about, you know, everybody's like, oh, I can't get people. Why? Well, you know, the great resignation, like everybody's just quitting. And I'm like, well, you don't have to beat this mass exodus. You just have to be the place that people want to work, that the, the, the place that attracts the high accountables. And, you know, people are are not necessarily just leaving and taking naps. You kind of shared with me the great reset that people are leaving to find places more aligned with their values, which is thrilling to me because if people can do the great reset, they can't blame work any longer for their lack of happiness. It's like, stay in joy or leave in peace, but go find something that aligns with your values rather than— Yeah. Trying to make your current workplace serve you. So I think it's just— there's so much there in what you're talking about. Buy-in is definitely a verb in your belief system. The other reason people can't be— they don't think they can be happy is they carry their own ego with them wherever they go. And if you believe your own thinking, you will never be happy if you don't reflect. So, what are some of the keys when you kind of broke down into the components peak performance? Like, I want to help people become their very best, their highest self, their most evolved self. What are some of the components that you help people focus on?

So, I always start with kind of foundationally that peak performance starts with getting prepared by really getting to know yourself. So, really taking the time to understand who you are, your talents, your values, your interests, your motivations, and your, what I call your performance mindset, which is, which really comes back to your beliefs, your experience, your environment, who you surround yourself with, and really taking time to understand who we are as people before we start digging into all the other performance concepts. And what I find is so many people have never done this. And the truth is I went to school as I went to law school, right? So I was in school forever for, for many, many years and I never learned any of this in school. It all came after. And so it's not something that we often think about. And especially for people that are not in the corporate space, I think the corporate space actually does a pretty good job of bringing training and assessments and other tools into their workplaces. But people that operate in either they're unpaid workers who work at home or they are workers who are gig workers or entrepreneurs, they don't have access to those same things, or they don't have exposure to those same things. And so in those, in those areas, really understanding who am I in those other roles that I perform? Who am I, you know, and what, how do I show up before I even start my performance journey? And I always talk about performance as being like climbing a mountain, that we each have mountains we're climbing. And we climb different ones throughout our lives. We go different places. We take different journeys. But as we're climbing that performance mountain, the goal is— Yeah. To have the most exceptional experiences along the way, to really enjoy it. And it's hard to enjoy it if we don't know who we are to begin with. So that's always kind of the foundational element. And then we need a guide for how we're going to get there. So how are we going to navigate our performance mountain? And I use the 4 keys, although I think I've seen this done multiple different ways and it's all generally the same concept. But the 4 keys that I use are expectations, feedback, development, and accountability. And that those are the 4 things that if you do those well, and you continually focus on them and the elements of them, that then you can really be operating at peak performance along your journey.

And I love that for you, it, you really emphasize that if you're involved in the activities of these things and these behaviors, the experiences along the way are really meaningful, really exceptional. It isn't this transaction thing like, if I do this, will I get promoted? Or if I do this, will, you know, I feel better? Because so many people defer their happiness to when this happens or when that happens. And you combine both of those, you can be happy along the way. A key I love that you found all of this in know yourself because most of us have patterns in our lives and we focus so much on how other people failed us or how other people let us down. We rarely turn to self-reflect. I think self-reflection's the missing element for so many people. Even as leaders sit in my class, they want to learn the information so that they can use it to get work out of others. And I'm like, no, that's skimming. Like, learn this so that you can start to reflect on yourself. Like, notice yourself, observe yourself. Like, what causes you stress or upsets you, and what's your thinking at the time? Like, notice what you're believing and what you're thinking, and stop believing your own thoughts. The only way to do this is really inquire, like, who am I and what are my preferences? And I think it's exposure. I think people have access if they go out there. Like, I just took an Enneagram test. It was $12. Like,

right,

there's so much out there right now, whether it's, you know, StrengthsFinders or Myers-Briggs or Enneagram or DiSC or, um, I think there's something called the Great 5. You take some amazing personality tests out there, but really coming to understand yourself mostly so you can. Quit making choices that don't serve yourself.

Yeah. And I think what you said about leaders is interesting too, because I think a lot of times, and I talk about a different mode of leadership or a leading together style. And I think one of the things that happens with a lot of leaders is they get, they treat leadership like a destination. Like I got here, so now I know what I need to know. And they stop really focusing on that self-reflection and that, am I really the best leader I can be? Just because I got here, just because I got this title or this position. And, and the truth is, the environment keeps changing. So the leader that worked great 10 years ago, or the leadership style and approaches, may not work anymore. And the people that you're coaching and managing, they're different. And so you've got to continually look at how you're evolving your performance and growing in terms of your development, even as a leader. And the only way to do that is, you're right, through reflection. And if we don't ever look in the mirror, we don't know, even know what we look like. So we've got to take the time to think about and reflect on the performance and the things that we're doing each and every day in terms of our performance.

It's so true. The worst thing that happens when you become a leader is you get power to manipulate your environment in your favor. So what keeps us from growing often is that with leadership comes power. Right now, instead of looking at what would best serve my organization, my company, and my employees and my customers, and having these open conversations about when do we need to be together and when do we not need to be together and how flexible can we be. If that's one of the things people are citing is flexibility, how flexible can we be? And most leaders are like, I'm not comfortable like that, so for my comfort, for my anxiety, I need everybody back to the office. So that I can see you. And it's like, or you could grow later, you could evolve beyond that. And I see that so often where when leaders get power, they use that power to try and resist change rather than welcome change.

Yeah. And I think one of the things I've seen and everything I've done, I haven't been a researcher or a professor. I've just been a person in the workplace applying these things. And one of the things that I I see all the time, or with, with our leaders and our managers, is the challenge with really understanding, especially as you get to a certain point in leadership, is understanding the perspectives of the people that you're leading and what their experiences really are. And I think what happens is, especially in the, in the environment where we're remote, is they can't see it. So now they don't know it. They don't know anymore. And there's not enough trust. that they can trust that it's still happening and trust that it's still being done in the best possible way. And so to me, it always comes back to that foundation. Have you built those foundational skill sets and built that trust up so that you can empower your people to be doing the work that they need to do and supporting and encouraging them to make the good decisions they need to make? And then The remote or flexibility issue, I think, kind of goes away. Now, our organization was a little different in that we always had an unlimited or an uncapped personal time policy. So we always had a practice where if your kid was sick, you had a doctor's appointment, we just always had that you could take personal time to do what you needed to do. You just needed to get your job done. As long as you're getting your job done, do what you need to do. And what we found was most of the time people go above and beyond so much that that little bit of flexibility is just so valuable to them that you make it up tenfold. You know, the goodwill from it is tenfold. So when you trust people, they tend to rise to your level of expectation.

And the fear is they won't. But that's what we have performance management for. Choose to trust people. And if they aren't performing, then manage their performance. But a lot of leaders want to trust people without having to manage performance. And it's like, well, it doesn't work that way. So I love the life-accommodating— I don't even like to call them policies, but philosophy that you had in your company. The revolution starts though when we all evolve Ourselves. Because I also see where employees feel emboldened to use ways of communicating, you know, with leaders, like in meetings, that, that if a leader communicated like that to an employee, an employee would be furious. And there are some double standards. And those double standards happen when we outsource our well-being to the organization, because then we feel victimized. And then we feel justified to act poorly because we feel like they've already injured us. It's like, no, the first injury is when you outsourced your happiness or your wellbeing. And so what I love about your philosophy that aligns with reality-based leadership is if everybody's working to evolve themselves, then we're coming into whether it's a conversation about expectations or it's working together with trust, we're coming in as evolved selves, as adults. It's like, There's a great book, How to Be an Adult. It's like, here, everyone read this book. I think Rico wrote it. Mark Rico, maybe. I'm not sure. But, and I think that's important as you choose people on your team. If everybody's pulling their weight, not in the work, but in the personal evolution, if they're all managing their own peak performance, then the work together is like a non-issue. Like, how you get the work done, super easy.

Well, and I think that, um, one of the things that worked really well for our organization, and one of the things I think is so important and, and could bring other organizations such value, is really approaching it from a not just managers are managing, but everyone is managing, everyone's leading, and everyone's coaching, and everyone can give each other feedback, and there's expectation setting. Because most of our organizations are so matrixed, And so hybrid anyway that, that if you can teach everybody and, and have— and I say teach lightly because I'm not actually— I, I'm— I like training. I think you have to have the training, but unless you translate it into real experience, it doesn't make much of a difference. Um, but, but giving everybody those key concepts, those key strategies, and then having them execute and implementing that regularly, that's the secret. So it's not Great managers, and Gallup talks a lot, and I'm a Gallup Certified Strengths Coach, so I work a lot with Gallup, and they talk a lot about it's the manager, and it is. The manager makes a tremendous difference, and working with your managers can make a ton of, or have a huge impact. But if you can train more employees and help more employees have those skill sets on how do they set expectations for themselves, how do they create expectations and align them with their manager, Or with their other constituents, the other people that they interact with regularly.

Oh, yes, totally.

Teach everybody how to give feedback. Teach everybody how to look for those development or growth opportunities and point them out. Teach everybody how to hold each other and hold themselves accountable. And then how to support people when they fall into what I like to call the accountability pit, right? And, and, and how do you, how do you equip everybody with those skill sets So that then you've got an abundance mentality and an abundance of resources to help keep it going, to help keep it progressing.

I love that. It's a great, great call out. And in fact, for most organizations right now, even the leader-manager role is so outdated and archaic with the matrix that we're in. And I think it removes responsibility or shared responsibility By putting it into the leaders responsible for giving feedback. If we all were adults, we could just have conversations. And if you keep things conversational, they never have to be confrontational.

What?

But way back when, we divided out personal development from professional development, which I actually think is kind of the work of the ego. It's like, you can teach me how to do my work and we can talk about that, but you cannot touch how I think. Or the ego kind of carved that out. And, and yet now people are saying, but my well-being is suffering, my brain health is suffering. And it's like, you got to know how your mind works, you got to know how the world works, yet you need these skills to be able to have those conversations.

One of my favorite— I think you'll appreciate this— one of the favorite exercises we created combining accountability and engagement. So we use Gallup Q12 for, for the engagement survey. And we took those questions, and we turned them into the question behind the question. So the, the blaming type of question, who's going to, you know, who's going to set my expectations? And the, you know, how does this get, you know, who's going to communicate with me? And those things. And then we have our employees rewrite them all, and then create actions. So rewrite the question, and then create the actions for what they're going to do to contribute to engagement, to their own engagement. And I can't tell you, having done that exercise, I've done it probably, I don't know, 100 times. And having done it so many times, I've seen how much employees, all of a sudden, it clicks. Oh, I can create relationships at work. Oh, I can ask for information when I need it. And suddenly, engagement becomes something not that is a corporate, you know, measure, or it's the job of my manager. But oh, it's actually all of our job. And if I'm disengaged, there's, there's an element of responsibility on myself. And I need to be asking questions, and I need to be speaking up, and I need to be, you know, engaging in order to make a change there.

I love it. So Question Behind the Question is a book John Miller wrote. The technique in there. If you went through social work or therapy training, counselor training, you got this. Is when clients are asking these questions like, why doesn't anyone tell me anything? And why am I the last to know? You know, or like, why didn't I see this coming? Like in a relationship. Or it's helping people just to break it down for folks that don't know this. Like take, you know, why and who, who thought of this and who's gonna, you know, Who's responsible for this? And it takes it down and just says, wait a minute, if you want better answers, let's have better questions and start with what or how and put in can I, and then try it on precise. So like, you know, a really kind of, you know, well-used engagement question is, I feel well informed about the future of my company, right? Or I understand where the company's going. And instead of like, I feel well-informed of company decisions, you know, putting that into what you're doing is like, what can I do to stay informed of company decisions? You know, it's like, my manager cares about my development. What can I do in communicating with my manager to outline my desired development? And that in a minute takes you from feeling like a victim, which is Toggled down ego, super frustrating because you don't see where you can have impact. And not one of us enjoys the feeling of not having impact. And it puts it back in. It's like, well, wait a minute, even when it comes to my own engagement, there are things I can do to change levers. And we know this because that's why we see such a difference in engagement when we take out low accountables and their experience and high accountables and their experience of these same work These are 2 groups in the same workplace. Their experience is completely different. Some are saying, there are plenty of development opportunities at this company. And the other one is saying, there are none and I don't feel appreciated or cared about. And if there's that disagreement between accountability levels, it usually indicates it's not the organization. The organization's not sophisticated enough to say you're low in accountability and therefore we'll create a different experience for you. It is the stepping down rather than stepping up. And that's why high accountables report feeling more engaged. And they tell us when we ask them different questions that engagement is more of a choice than you think it is. All those drivers of your engagement, you have a lot of control around. So that is a great exercise. Lots of people are doing engagement surveys right now, is helping teams take each question and dig into what's my part in my current status.

Yeah, and I, I think in my experience, 90%, maybe more than that, of performance problems are related to one of two things. Either it's an expectation problem— there's a misalignment and a lack of clarity around expectations or there's an accountability problem. It's almost always one of those 2 things. And the expectations is pretty easy to fix. It takes some work on both the manager and the employee's part, but it's usually remediable. It's the accountability piece that unless people want to change how they think and how they believe— and I've seen that, I've seen people who, who had a lack of accountability and didn't realize it and get the skills and become extremely accountable, uh, but if you don't choose it, then there's not much a manager can do to make a difference in performance when someone's choosing a lack of accountability.

It's so true. I can't buy you in. I can't engage you. I can't buy your love. I love how simple that is. It's like expectations. Let's have conversations. For me, I always diagnose as a skill set if they're not doing well. Like, are they trying to use an outdated skill set for a new reality? Is it an approach? Are they using a less than modern approach? Maybe they're like, I'm going to do it. It needs to be like a collective, or they aren't using good project management, or they aren't using business discipline to look at where their decision-making biases are. And the third category, is it willingness? Mm-hmm. And when it falls into willingness, that's why I tell people you can only work with the willing. And people are like, well, how do I know if people are willing? I'm like, you ask them, what— to what degree are you willing to improve in this area? And can you commit to that? And then when I see behavior that doesn't match that, like, what kept you from keeping your commitment? What do you want to change in your approach? And you test that for a while until you have to say, I know that you say you're willing, but your behavior really suggests otherwise. And I can't fix willingness. I just, I can't fix it. And too many people hold on so long to people that, you know, are unwilling. I'm like, I can't spend time helping you understand when your energy is going into misunderstanding. Like, I can't. Like,

yes,

you are working very hard at not, um, aligning to this. Like, you would have to actively work against this. And a lot of people say, you know, gosh, I need people. I can't, you know, just get rid of people. And it's like, you know what, you're gonna lose somebody. You're gonna lose somebody. You're gonna lose your high accountables. They have to work with unwilling people. And that's why, getting back to the resignation, and, and you educate me on the Great Reset, I think there's 2 parts to the resignation. I think there are some people who have outsourced and they blame, I'm leaving my manager. You know, and that was my only contradiction with Gallup's work is you can't blame the manager. Because if there's a problem with the manager, it's like, what have I done to rectify that? And then in— after I've done a lot, then I can step down. Maybe it's the manager. But your reality is you're going to have some leaders leading poorly at times, whether they're a bad leader or they just you know, have cycles in their life. But people are leaving right now. I think they're shopping for the grass is greener, geographical escape, better place. They outsource their happiness to their current employer. They think they'll be happy elsewhere. Unfortunately, they take their mind with them. But then there's also another, you know, group of people who are just looking for truly great work And you don't have to win the war on talent. You just have to— the true shortage is not labor. The true shortage is great places for high accountables to work. And you can collect those, in my opinion.

Yeah, I 100% agree. And I think, you know, one of the things I've seen is that sometimes too, you've almost got to take it to the extreme. And one of the stories I tell in my book that I just love is I had an intern in employee who had really screwed up, and she'd screwed up on a project. She was in a, I'm never going to be successful at that, I can't do it, um, you know, blaming mode. Uh, came into the room, started talking about how she, she probably failed because she didn't really care about the project, she didn't really care what she was doing. And I said to her, if that's true, if you don't care, then you can get up, walk out of this room, walk out of office and never come back. Just leave. I like— I can handle if this is a— if this is a growth problem, we can work through it. But if you're going to be unwilling to care about what you're doing and to put the effort in, uh, then there's— there's nothing I can do. And I remember her shocked look, and she was incredibly smart and talented. She'd screwed up managing a project. Nobody goes through life without screwing up managing a project. You don't even get good at project management without messing one or two up. That's just how projects work. And, and she ended up staying and she said, no, I, you know, I want to see this through. I want to make this right. And she completely changed her entire mindset, how she thought, you know, responded differently. And I wasn't trying to be her best friend, right? I think a lot of managers get into this mode of, you know, I want you to like me. And so I'm going to— but, but we do a disservice to people by, by doing that. Because we don't call them up to greatness. We don't call them up to what they can do and hold them up to our expectations. Instead, we coddle them and we try to manage around them and we try to meet all their needs. And it doesn't work. It ends up failing. And so I think with the Great Reset, I agree. I think there's a portion of people that are just done and they're looking for something different. And then there are some people that I think have really reflected on What matters to them, and they're looking for that realignment. They're looking for that value and to be be working for someone who values them as a person, and especially in like the food service industries, I think that's really true. Where people have just gotten fed up with being undervalued, underappreciated, and and not that you know that should be the only thing, but that we have to treat people as humans. We have to treat them as people first, and then when we do, we can really. Hold them to that higher standard.

Absolutely. I think it's so important. It's conscious capitalism because many people are undervalued and the margins going into the people who hold some of the capital, especially like our food service workers and some of that. It's like part of this is natural consequences where people are saying, look, I would rather live a different lifestyle, um, you know, with the, the realignment. And I think that's a great wake-up call for people who aren't treating their employees as valued people. They, you know, their, their foundation is, is, um, pretty shaky at that point because I think people are stepping into, um, you know, their own power and, and saying, I'm not gonna suffer If I don't have to, and and the Dalai Lama talks about like you either radically accept it so you don't suffer, or you impact it so you don't suffer. But staying and complaining is automatic suffering, and I I'm thrilled about what's going on. A lot of people aren't, but the great reset or resignation is that there's communication going back and forth about what's okay and what's not okay, and people are taking respons. way, for their own way through it, for their own health and happiness, which I absolutely love. Thank you. So as far as advising others, I love that you've talked about know yourself, get a guide, enjoy the experiences along the way. And you talked about your 4 keys, the expectations, feedback, go after your own development, go after your own accountability. Any of those you want to drill into that are important to you or other great tips? You have so many. The question behind the question on the engagement questions is fantastic.

Yeah. I mean, I, one of the things, um, that took me a while to really learn and understand is actually in the accountability and kind of mindset space. And one of those was the importance of that empathy piece when someone has fallen into a lack of accountability and as a leader, really recognizing what that person's experiencing. And understanding it in a way that then you can move them out of it. So understanding, because we've all been in a lack of accountability, it's the human condition, right? So we've all been there. So it's a, it's a, it's a relatable feeling, the feeling of frustration or the feeling of not want, you know, wanting to blame someone else because we're frustrated with what's happening. And so when we can connect around the emotion, It really makes a big difference. And one of the things I've found, and you've probably experienced this too, is, is I put up an emotion chart or a list of emotion words, is how few emotions a lot of people can identify or articulate.

Yes.

And so spending time with managers, helping them to understand and think about that, so that when they're with an employee, they can really connect on what's really going on here in order to help move them through it. Rather than come from a, you know, dictatorial type of approach of, get over it, you know, we got to move on, you know. But really connecting first makes it move so much faster, makes it move so much quicker.

And that's a great way to take venting and transmute it into— venting is something external. I am taking my anxiety and turning it into a grievance about my external world. And helping people go internal. It's like, I hear that you say you're angry. It's like, I would invite you to name it more specifically. Sit with your anger till it tells you its name. And instead of sympathizing and colluding with people and falling into that victim category, just helping people more accurately identify what they're feeling. And empathy is being able to really hold space for that. And then helping people identify their agency and their choices. and how they participated in that which brought them those negative feelings. You know, there's a word I'm kind of obsessed with lately called reciprocity. Rilke, the poet, talks a lot about reciprocity, that, that a flower has beauty, but it's not beauty until you behold it. Like, and the role in our lives with other people that Are really about acknowledging and shining a light on what's happening so that it gets emphasized that this is here, it's happening. It's not gaslighting, it's not crazy-making, it's not using my work for evil and saying, don't vent, let's move on with it. But it's saying, let's pause together and appropriately put a light on this. You have this feeling, I will behold this feeling. And that's super satisfying. That reciprocity kind of quenches that thirst that feeling has. Um, and, and that acceptance that we all go there. Like, if you're not reflecting, you can't give somebody else acceptance for their human condition. Like, I know what it feels like to drop the ball. Dang, I hate that when it happens. And we're human. And We gotta talk about how you're gonna get back on track with that. And if people could just learn that pause and empathy— doesn't always have to be my connection to it, but most of us can connect to the human condition— um, normalize it. But having compassion for it doesn't mean it's acceptable, but compassion comes first. Yeah. I have compassion for what's going on, then I can decide whether it's acceptable or fixable or Um, or any of that, but I think it's important.

I think it's amazing too, how many, um, how many people, uh, struggle to, to struggle with sharing that. How many managers or leaders struggle with, with actually taking the time to share those experiences. And what I found is when I share those moments, when I share those vulnerabilities and those challenges, That those are the things that transform people's perspectives. So when I talk about the first project I screwed up and how I screwed it up and how hard it was, and that then I learned all these things from it, all of a sudden the, the— and I work with a lot of interns over the years, and, and so they're— it's always their first experience. So I go through this a lot, and then they go, oh, okay, that's how it works. I don't have to succeed all the time. I can fail and still end up being successful. In fact, that's how it works. That's how you get successful is you fail a whole bunch of times. And so I think that is the thing that for a lot of managers, I feel like they have to get better at sharing those things and really being authentic and being willing to share when they've had those challenges or those situations in their experience.

Yeah. And the key to that is if you want to like love big in the world, I've got 2 hashtags, #LoveWins. But if you want to walk through the world with a lot of love for people, being able to do that, you've got to evolve yourself. And that takes us right back to what you talk about in the book. I can't share those experiences if I haven't processed and reflected what's my accountability in those experiences. Because as a leader, we don't share those experiences and get vulnerable because on some level we know how unclean it is. Yeah, I screwed up, but I still blame my boss and I still feel like I was set up and I still feel like it wasn't fair and nobody else got caught. Like, the reason we don't share some of our big experiences that could result in learning for us and others is we haven't processed our big experiences with an eye towards who am I and what was my part in this and how can I mine my successes and my failures for learning. Most people haven't processed or integrated their experiences. They just live through the day, which is why when they get to the end of their life, they can't honestly say, I've had exceptional— an exceptional life, an exceptional experience. They can just say, I lived through a bunch of crap, you know, and I had a few happy days. The unreflected life, the unintegrated life, is that. And right now, I think we have a lot of people who aren't sitting down and making sense of their lives. They aren't integrating. Like, this is my 3rd relationship that didn't work. What is my part in that? Do I ignore red flags? Do I— am I naive? Do I believe people, you know, when they— like, I cannot be a victim to that if I don't integrate it. I'll move forward and recreate it. Like, you integrate and evolve or recreate. That's it. Those are your choices.

I love it. And I also think And I talk about in my book, I look at performance in a lot of different roles. So performance in our workplaces, but also in our homes and in our communities. And when you look at your performance at home, I think this is so relevant too, and how we show up for our kids and how we show up for and how we call them up. And I can see, and my kids are young, so we're still early, but my son's 5 and when he is frustrated or They're experiencing something and I can say, yeah, I get that. I'm frustrated too. I had a really rough day. I had some people that really upset me too. But you know what? This is what we got to do. This is how we move through it and this is how we let it go and this is how we get to the next best thing we can do. And seeing those principles or seeing that play out with kids and really doing it with intention as my role of mom has, I think, made such a difference. And I actually, a lot of these principles, it's amazing in the workplace, but when I can do it at home, the impact on my kids is just phenomenal. And I just absolutely love the impact.

And I love it because you're actually just talking out loud. We call it in healthcare narrating your care so people can make sense of it. It's sense-making mentoring. It's the final step in our accountability model. where you've got somebody who says, frustration, yes, that's a feeling you're gonna feel a lot in life. Let's talk about it. And let's, you know, I'll help you. Let's practice moving through that. And I think so many of us don't do that self-reflection about home. At work, we're kind of forced to once in a while through performance management. But at home, we aren't looking at how we are as a partner. And that's why I see so often it's like people leave one marriage and they go out, and when they're dating somebody new, they pay all kinds of attention and they really give them the benefit of the doubt. And it's like, I bet if you did that in your marriage, you would have had a completely different, um, marriage. So awesome stuff, Jessica. We gotta, um, call it in. The Exceptional Life Revolution is your new book, and it is available at Barnes& Noble, Amazon. What I love about— I love a lot of things about the book, but what I love about what you do is you break things down into very simple form. And that's what we like to do at Reality-Based Leadership, just break things down to its essence. So it's performance expectations or it's willingness. Those are things that are so important. So I would just encourage everybody to get the book. And then how can they follow you or get in touch with— because you're doing coaching, you're doing work with organizations. Like, there's so much out there that you're doing now too. And you've done it. You come from practice. Your last company, you knew how to create this in the workplace. And so I love that you're bringing that to other companies. How do they find you?

Yeah. So you can go to my website, evolvingtoexceptional.com. And I've got a lot on there. I'm really going to be focusing on smaller businesses, smaller or medium-sized businesses who can't necessarily afford the same type of vice president of HR or C-suite type of executives to try to help them make the same transformation that, that we did in our smaller workplace to, to really become an exceptional workplace and integrate the right practices. So I've got a number of tools on there, but I also really want to help individuals. And I, like we just talked about, I think our role in our families is so important and we don't have the same tools necessarily. And so I'll also be providing a number of courses and tools and making those available there. So come look me up on my website, Evolving to Exceptional, and I'm also on all the social media platforms. So look forward to connecting in any way.

Fantastic. It's so important in that market, that small business market, we have so many people that follow us, and they're in that spot and they're looking for like what's a fit. So I love that you're here. Good luck on all the work that you have to come, and it's great to connect with you. And I love it that you're another female out there doing great things in the world, writing books with babies, lots of babies, a 5-year-old and 2 twin daughters. It's like, you know, you may not be able to Do it all, but you can have it all if what you're looking for is, as you call it, an exceptional life. There's just so much you can get in perspective and get aligned with your own values and make sure your life, you're living that out loud. So assignment for all of you, since I always end with one, I go back to what Jessica shared about taking your engagement questions and helping employees on the individual level work their part of that equation. What can I do and how can I, um, shore up my engagement through my own behaviors? I love it. Thank you, Jessica, and, uh, I look forward to hearing more from you.

Thank you so much for having me.

This is the No Ego Podcast, where we ditch the drama, end entitlement, and transform your workplace. I'm Cy Wakeman.