Who is Brain Poindexter? Discover His Powerful Story – Hart & Hustle Podcast

[0:00]  all right everybody Welcome to the heart and hustle podcast here we talk about important subjects that have to do with heart and have to do with hustle and my first guest today is going to be Brian Poindexter Brian is a community Builder he is the leader of the beehive on LinkedIn which is one of the ways which I continue to see you kind of churning up Community making connections with other but having important conversations so Brian is an HR consultant he's been working with some amazing organizations and he was on my previous podcast where we talked about the importance of people the importance of connection and the importance of culture and today's today's conversation is really going to be focusing on those things Brian thanks so much for coming on the show man I really appreciate you hey thank you so much for having me I'm super excited to be here absolutely so let's just get into it you know the current state of our economy 2023 has been very

[0:49]  challenging for so many people and when I hop on the news when I see the media I see breaking news more layoffs are coming and it's a super challenging time for so many people Google 12 000 people Zoom recently laying off 1300 3M 2500 Microsoft 10 000 crypto.com 20 of their staff Amazon eighteen thousand here twelve thousand there Disney Vimeo Pinterest GoDaddy the list goes on so from an HR perspective what is your current analysis of the marketplace why are we seeing so many jobs being laid off and how are you think people are handling this kind of current time in our economy no great question so the first part of it and while we're singing it uh there could be a lot of different ways that you can look at that and one thing I like to kind of dispel immediately is

[1:37]  that the first thing that we think is just oh it was gross mismanagement when they have these type of layoffs to happen or you know they just didn't care about people that they just were talking about profit and so on and so forth but the truth be told a lot of these companies were trying to do the right thing they were you know they saw an opportunity they had a boon of success and they wanted to bring the people in to support it uh not knowing what effects a pandemic could have and things like that and what would happen afterward uh so it was something that couldn't have been planned for so you know not making excuses for it uh but at the end of the day that is a part of it as well is that the the market has changed and the other side of it is at the end of the day Everything Has Changed as far as how we operate business uh and companies are having to try to find different ways to be able to be sustainable

[2:25]  um and unfortunately we're seeing a shift into well let me say away from people being the center of that Universe right so for so long it was about how many people can I have and how many specialists can I have and how can I be able to bring all that together to make us work but now we're seeing some new things to start to show up in our lives whether it's uh AI or you know ways that they're able to do certain things that they don't necessarily need that Workforce and we all know if we see anything that happens when it comes to a lack of profitability a loss of funding so on and so forth the number one thing we're going to cut and the best controllable is going to be labor right but the truth of the matter is if they can find a way to be able to cut labor but also be able to find ways to still remain productive and in some ways even

[3:12]  become more productive with a smaller Workforce then they're doing that so we have to separate the business side of it from how they're handling it because that's two different things right so how they've handled it and what we've seen yes very scary uh there's nothing people-centric about most of these layoffs and how they've been handled but let's not make it seem like that some of these aren't true business moves it's just that there are real people behind those uh decisions once you make those absolutely and you know one thing I really like kind of think about these days is the impact of technology on our businesses and we're going to get into the whole AI conversation and how leaders are kind of looking at these tools that are becoming such a huge part of the future for how somebody runs a business and how they impact the culture of an organization but what I want to

[3:59]  kind of go back to really quick is from an HR perspective we're talking about being the managers of important assets and that's people how are HR leaders kind of handling hardship in organizations when it comes to laying people off because you know it's very difficult to from my perspective it's very much easier to turn off somebody's email it's a different experience from an HR leader to have to let somebody go so how do you kind of from an HR leadership perspective kind of bona fide yourself to be able to have the personality and be able to deliver tough news to people when it's coming to you know we have to lay off staff we're going to have to kind of figure out how we can be as lean as possible what does that mindset look like for an HR leader when tough times are coming you're gonna have to let people go so a little bit of a loaded question uh and here's why I say that uh it's really

[4:47]  because of whatever Equity that you've built up before that situation so those the organizations or companies that have been uh people-centric from the beginning that have built that type of relationship with people that they've been working with as opposed to just having people that work for them that is a lot easier to be able to have that conversation because I can discuss it with you to where you know and understand that this is not a personal decision this is not uh not caring about your decision I know and understand who you are and how this may affect you but this is how I you know this is what we have to do and we want to be upfront with you and let you know so you can prepare right so that's one school of thought of being able to do it unfortunately most organizations and companies right now have not built that type of equity with their staffs right so

[5:33]  um there is no connection when it comes to having believability when you say that this is just business uh and then when you do it in a cohort fashion to where there's no communication to where there's no respect of how this may affect you after you walk out of those doors then that is a totally different mindset and you're treating people as numbers instead of names uh so it really just depends on what's been built up before then uh and so what HR Executives specifically have to look at is if we haven't built that Equity before then then we have to do what it takes as quickly as possible to let people know what's going on and to let them know that we care right because at the end of the day once you finish your layoffs there are still people that are going to be there there are still people that are there working for you there are still people in the future that may be

[6:20]  thinking about working for you so we have to get out in front of that and one of the big things that goes along with that to me personally is helping people to understand the power of transparency so if this is happening and we have to do these layoffs and we also haven't built the type of equity that we should have in you and then as people-centric as we should be we have to own up to all of those facts right so some people will find a little bit of comfort in your ability to be transparent when those situations come up especially when they weren't expected right so you have a quick downturn in your economy and we have to make moves to be able to keep the doors open as an organization that I have to be honest with that and let them know that hey I know this is a shock I know this is crazy I understand how this may affect you and I also know that we haven't done

[7:08]  our best to be able to give you that feeling of comfort and Trust in our company but this is what's happening this is why we have to share with you now and try that transparency role that's the best thing you could do if you put your head in the sand and just make it seem like that it's just business that people will understand that that's not sustainable because you still have people that work for you and you still have people that may want to work for you yeah I mean that's the thing that I think about is when we talk about being a people-centric organization you know something that really just rubs me wrong and I get kind of the chills is when I hear Mass layoffs being delivered via an email with no heads up it seems so impersonal and it seems so transactional so what's your two cents when you hear a big story like 18 000 people got laid off the only reason that they heard was their email didn't work in the morning then they received a cold letter from HR that said hey unfortunately your

[7:56]  position's been eliminated best of luck basically out there we'll let you know if your position opens back up how do you feel about that kind of you know rhetoric in business so it makes me feel a couple of things shame disappointment uh frustration um it's a really a point to where we have made putting people first as if it were rocket science we have created this situation to where we think that it is so difficult to make people feel significant and to treat them in a manner that lets them know that they actually have a name uh so I I get frustrated by it because it's all about intention so we can be intentional about what we choose to be intentional about so if we choose to be intentional about treating

[8:45]  people like that then that's a problem that is so much bigger than just the layoffs right I mean we're talking about a societal issue we're talking about what happened to the point to where you know a long time ago the workforce was basically treated like a family like we all worked together we were part of something that was bigger than ourselves uh but as capitalism has grown as we've gotten to a different part of our society now it's a lot more reverse it's a lot more let me protect on number one um and then what happens to the to people they're treated as collateral right it's collateral damage that's how people are treated it's almost like we're in a war as opposed to just in business and working with people so it's definitely frustrating um and it's definitely something that hurts me from an HR standpoint because I know so many HR Executives that are

[9:32]  caught in the middle of it they have no choice because they're trying to hold on to their job they're scared so they're like hey I have to do whatever I can just to keep my job and then they're forced to be put in these situations to where they have no win in that at all so just as quickly as people want to point the finger at HR as well as like well we have to be cognizant that there are situations where they're trying to just hang on and survive themselves right so now it's become a situational survival of the fittest and that's a scary place to be when it comes to business but I will say this the one thing that I do like about all of this is happening is that there is a window to business that we've never had before these types of things would have been happening behind closed doors for the most part in the past but that was technology a lot of things that have been put out there there's a voice

[10:19]  that's out there that's different so now a lot of these companies are being put to the Forefront and putting their feet to the fire and they're having to explain why they're doing what they're doing and face the fire not only from the people that they let go but the general public as well uh so if anything that's good has come out of it is that there is a little bit more of an eye now on how they are handling their business when it comes to people and there's a way to be able to hit the reset button yeah I mean there's a there's a transparency to culture you know one of the best um analogies that I love is when you hear about people's glass door right their Glass Door reviews how people give transparent and understandings of how or what how the business runs behind the doors right that glass door is a great analogy for having kind of the transparency that we see today so my question is going back a little bit you know one of

[11:09]  the things that I think a lot of people don't recognize is a lot of these Mass layoffs have to do with the economic state of how a business is performing and it does create more of a transactional relationship between employer and employee you know I often hear people say I don't understand why they had to lay off so many people Zoom is a great example love the organization I saw them when they were very small they had a team of like 96 people back when I came across them in 2014 and hearing that they laid off 1300 people was heartbreaking because I know the culture of that organization but the one thing that a lot of people don't recognize is when you end up going public you take VC money it ends up it ends up being about the dollars that are made at the end of the quarter and so when you guys don't perform to a certain level then it creates that transactional relationship between employer and

[11:57]  employee and that feeling of family has almost been lost because it's all about the Benjamins at the end of the day what's your kind of two cents on where the status of you know current business looks and how it's kind of all about the money all about the dollar rather than the people the family like you said that kind of make up the organization well I mean you've hit the nail on the head uh we we've become a business society that is caught up in the burden of the hand right so I have to hold on to what I have at all costs um because we're afraid of Taking Chances um the thing that makes the the biggest impact in business as it evolves and there's change happens are the ones that are bold enough to do something different right so those that have sustained are companies that are built their way your apples your Nikes your people like that that really are not

[12:44]  afraid to be able to Cutting Edge not only with their product but also with how they handle the people with it right but then unfortunately you still see situations like Azul you brought up a great point that have a pretty good culture and have really done some things right but an economic term can cause you to have to make quick decisions um to be able to again keep your doors open um and it's something that you can look prepared for right you know so if we think back to when the pandemic started pandemic starts boom all of a sudden everybody's out of the office offices we need to be able to communicate what's the best way Zoom is here so now they have a boon of people trying to get onto these conference calls on the cloud so they have to build up people right you have to ask them to be able to handle that influx of business that you have

[13:32]  but what they couldn't have saw was as we come out of the pandemic and people start returning to the office how much it was going to go back to a little bit of the norm so we thought and predicted that hey this is going to be the beginning of so much more Cloud meetings and so many more opportunities to do things hyper and remote yes they're still there but it's not as sustainable as people thought so as there's been a lot more of going back to status quo and even companies pushing people to come back to the office right so even though Zoom may have wanted to do it that way and keep it that way business didn't dictate that so they had to make some moves right and so that's why I'm big on being able to separate the situation so sometimes from the organization or those that run it because sometimes business

[14:19]  is cool sometimes business business hurts but still the way that they handle it was better than what you saw with some of those other organizations that didn't even think to treat people as if they were more than just that number on their sheet yeah that makes a lot of sense and what I heard you kind of say there what popped into my mind was maybe this isn't a correction as much as it is a normalization of the market right we saw such boom that it's only normal for us to come down to a certain point where we can now be stable and continue to operate our businesses the best that we possibly can I want to transition a little bit kind of into the topic of heart so an organization that leaves that lays off a mass number of people they have to be leaving a certain taste in people's mouth when they hear about the big bad organization who let 1300 people 18 000 people go so how does an

[15:08]  organization now start to kind of nurture the culture of their organization to be able to attract the top talent that maybe got let go from another organization how do they kind of position themselves as still being like Hey we're a great company to work for we still deserve the best talent the best people to come here but maybe the way that everybody got laid off kind of wasn't handled in the best way does that make sense how does an organization eliminate the bad taste from an organization or from in in the community's mouth and then kind of start nurturing that people first mentality again so the first thing I would say would be Contrition right um we have to be able to to discuss what happened clearly and openly uh and and not try to make it seem like that it wasn't what it was we had to make a hard decision and we did it in a way that wasn't something that

[15:55]  was very palatable for people that didn't know the inside workings of what happened and then there were some things that we didn't handle properly because we were scared we were frightened think about when you're in a situation where you know something is threatening something that you love and you have to do everything that it takes to preserve it I have to make tough decisions and sometimes those decisions aren't as people focused as I would like them to be so we have to start with confusion we have to talk about this is what happened this is why it happened also we understand that it wasn't the best way to handle it right and then to move forward and to be able to build something different you have to talk about what you're going to do differently right how are we going to protect ourselves from this happening again so instead of pivoting right back into the money or pivoting right back

[16:42]  into the bottom line and talking about that pivots are talking about we are doing some structural work we're doing some cultural work right we are building our workplace again to make sure that we are insulating ourselves from having to ever have to deal with that again and putting our people who are our greatest resource at risk that way and force us to have to make a bad decision so when you start off with nutrition and then also be able to Pivot and then show people what you learned from it and what you'll do differently you can rebuild that right there there's not too many situations where you don't have an opportunity to be able to recover it's all about how you handle the adversity and the challenge after it happens so that's my best way of doing it and when we go in and deal with you know Executives receive talk to them about what can you

[17:29]  do to be able to repair those some of the biggest things that you can do and it's hard right because when you are an executive you're not built that way a lot of times right is you're you're forced to have to think of things at 35 000 feet and above as opposed to thinking of it as if this is happening to somebody right now uh in that moment because you're not boots to the ground uh so you have to own that right and it's very difficult it's very difficult but it can be done again it just has to be intentional absolutely makes a lot of sense so now so we've talked about the organization let's kind of pivot to the employee the people of the organization so let's say that I am you know someone who contributed 10 15 years to an organization right I get let go because of the current economic State maybe new

[18:16]  leadership has come in they let me go I've got a bad taste in my mouth right now that's going to hinder the way I approach engaging with a new organization so what type of questions as an employee should I be asking of an organization to kind of start building that trust and kind of make sure that if I'm going to be putting my valuable time into a new organization they're going to protect me as a person I just won't end up as another person who kind of gets cast aside because I came from that experience and it didn't feel good what type of questions do you think I as an employee should be asking when I go through the interview process when I'm trying to get myself back out there right and I'm so glad that you went there first of all because that's the first key right is that people have to transition from thinking that the interview only belongs to the company and interview is a two-way street and it all it belongs to both of you and there are some things that are your

[19:03]  responsibility to ask to make sure that you're getting into the best situation especially when you've seen something happen previously like that with said company right uh so number one don't be afraid to ask about the elephant of the road you know ask them to hey talk to us about what they felt like to have to complete those layoffs and what are you doing differently going forward I I should be able to get an answer for that right and if you shy away from that or if you feel like that it's not important then it's always already a red flag of like okay I'm not sure that this may be the place for me um and then secondly ask about things like what are you doing from a development standpoint how are people growing their careers when they're working with you I saw that there are situations where people have been let go uh there's a

[19:50]  little fear now that I have about you know joining a company and being able to grow within it if I'm just going to be pushing the Wayside so you know what do you do to be able to not only you know strengthen me to be able to move up within your company but also what are you giving me to be able to transition if I ever had to leave your company based on something like that's happening right development is a big key if a company can't tell you about some of the tough things that they've dealt with and if they cannot talk to you about development and culture then I would say you probably want to start thinking about running for the Hills right because that should be a place of Pride for you right when somebody asks me about performance point of what we're about you're going to be hard-pressed for not getting at some point our talk about the culture that we have with our in our firm right and how we handle the people that are there and

[20:38]  how we feel like a family and how that comes first before anything that we do and the standards that we said and values that are not just on the wall but to come off the wall and and are actually in the people right if a company shies away from that what does that tell you right or if there's no answer what does that tell you so we have to start asking those tough questions about the elephant in the room ask about the development and career protection for yourself and then how is the culture there and what are they doing Society yeah it makes a lot of sense and I just think that you know if you don't ask those types of questions when you're engaging with a new organization you're going to find yourself kind of getting set up for heartbreak there was an individual who reached out to me um in late 2022 on LinkedIn and I saw that she was upset on a post and she said I just got let go from a large healthcare insurance company I was there

[21:26]  for 20 years new leadership came in and they let me go and to be honest I don't know what I'm gonna do in my next phase of life and so me and her had a conversation kind of in the DMS about like Hey listen this is a setback for sure but that does not diminish you as an individual nor what you contributed to your previous organization the fact that they let you go might just meant that hey we're in a tough economic State we had to prune back a couple trees and you were just a part of that now since then she's also found a new organization that she works for and me and her checked in on each other the other day and she was like you know what I'm just so appreciative for the fact that you reminded me that I wasn't tied to that role I took a couple days to step back but then I put myself back out there and now I feel like I'm in a better situation and I feel like that's going to be the story for how a lot of people handle this time of hardship or

[22:14]  normalization in the ecosystem right I think it's just so important to remember that you as a person have so much to contribute you're not just the role that you performed in the organization you were at before you know what I'm saying yes yes I mean at the end of the day we have to remember that we're more than our task in our title yeah and so we have to stay in touch with that we have to stay in touch with who we are and what we think of ourselves just as much as we tend to give away all of that to the organization that we work for right we basically put our worth in how we are being viewed and one of the things that's hard is for a lot of people even as I coach leaders and things like that as well is helping them to understand this it's okay to be able to say that I do things very well right this is something that I specialize in this is something that I feel like that I have mastered so on and so forth right but if

[23:03]  we never get the important to where we can validate ourselves then we are totally dependent on what others may see of us and then to your point where there's a situation that happens with a suggest business we take it as personal because everything is tied to the business yeah absolutely so I'm bigger on the impact that I have as opposed to the metrics that I have performed with right you know so what impact am I having on people in the organization that's what lasts and that's what is the bridge to be able to get you to where you need to go absolutely you know one of my favorite leaders um from a business perspective is garyvee so Gary vaynerchuk has a book called 12 and a half where he talks about the importance of the soft skills and as I kind of look at some of the soft skills that he talks about in this book I want to get your opinion on some of these and why they're so important as

[23:49]  a leader exactly okay so a couple things that he talks about is self-awareness as a leader incredibly important and when we see kind of the transactional nature of business today I feel like many leaders feel like they are separate from the organization and maybe the actions that they're taking don't impact everybody else's perception of them so how do you think self-awareness from a leadership perspective in 2023 is important and why should more people be leaning into that factor of self-awareness it is even more so announced in my opinion because of the different types of workplaces that we have uh when there's the introduction of remote or hybrid type of situations um how we present ourselves and how we create connectivity is more important than it ever has been before and we have to create a trust system that is bigger

[24:37]  than just you are coming here to work because of security where you're coming here to work because I have to put food on the table so on and so forth people's values have changed right so so for so long that's the only reason that we would stay in a job is because we had to now for the first time in decades if not centuries the employee actually has leverage and they're actually able to choose the type of environment they're they're wanting right they're wanting situations right so if people are looking for the best situation and not the best money and all of that as the number one goal then as a leader I have to be very aware of my actions and what things come of those actions so if I do something or if I make a decision or if I communicate in a certain type of certain type of way how does that impact the people that are working for me the

[25:24]  purple people that are my peers and also those that are employing me that I'm a direct report too right and now you have to have much more of a finger at the pulse on the pulse of what your actions actually cause that's why I'm big on that impact that's why I just talked about a couple of minutes ago impact is powerful now more so than it ever has before and the question is what type of impact are you having if you're not aware of it then those are times where you have an inflated view of self or you have a total distancing of self either one our total disaster is when it comes to really being a people-centric type of leader or servant leader absolutely a couple of the other factors in here or the elements of those soft skills one is curiosity another is patience conviction and the last is humility now I love

[26:12]  humility because it speaks to something that you and I have talked about offline as well as in our previous podcast together which is many people think about businesses as being B2B businesses or b2c businesses but at the end of the day people do business with people so it's a P2P business and that's one of my favorite small analogies because it really does talk about the human connection that's necessary so what is an example of a leader who you engage with that was just top-notch when it came to that human connection and communicating humility in kind of their organization and what was the impact that you kind of took away from you know being exposed to somebody who had that just dialed in right now I could I could give a lot of a lot of people I could talk about a lot of people but I can talk about what I'm actually dealing with right now right

[26:58]  you know so so my uh CEO and performance point is Brad fetterman um and he is a person that is about people from the beginning to the end right so he and I were introduced uh to one another by a third party uh and this third party we didn't know you know that they knew either one of us but the thing that to her brought us together where she's like you know what Brad has a really strong feeling about people and you are so passionate about people I got a feeling that you might got you guys might want to meet so we go and meet we have a talk we talk for hours and we don't talk about the business we don't talk about any of that we talk about people we literally talked about people for hours and then he had no idea what he wanted to do with me I had no idea

[27:46]  why I wanted to work with them other than that connection right there um and then we say you know what we're going to make this work however you know this will work we're gonna have to make it work because it's hard to find people that feel that way right and the thing that he believes in and why I believe in him is that he believes that values and morals are something that I'm living and breathing they are not something that we just talk about and put out there on a mission statement and then just say that's who we are but we don't ever live that so in everything that he does uh whether it's the way that he communicates with us every day uh whether it's the check-ins that you get that are non-business whether it's the Curiosity that you talked about before of wanting to know about us as people as opposed to what we do for him right those are big differences so that Curiosity that he has about who I am is

[28:36]  what actually led us to be able to figure out what my role was going to be you know in this consulting firm because he was like well what you know what do you like to do what is it that you know drives you I was like well I love leadership development I love coaching um so on and so forth he was like yes yes yes like you could do all that right so that's how I got my son it was like you could talk you can be a leadership coach but you'll be able to facilitate and trade um but it was all based on his curiosity simple as that he didn't look at my resume it was about curiosity right so and the other part that I love about him is that the what what you just brought up with the humility right so the one thing that he despises and we laugh about it all the time was that he hates if I ever call him his boss or my boss or my supervisor he's like you know we're colleagues right I don't like this how

[29:23]  weird my colleagues so this is your business it has your name on the business what are you talking about right it was like no um and we actually had this conversation just yesterday which is funny uh but he was like no I really believe that my success is based on what we can do together right I need this from you and then you get this from me so on and so forth and then when we collaborate we can do special things that's what leadership means with its true leadership as opposed to just managing so he is he is humble he is curious he has those soft skills that make you want to work for him I always As Leaders is I was like do people want to work for you or do they work for you because you want them to the best way to do that is kind of leading from the front right one of my favorite little like memes that I've seen on the

[30:10]  Internet is the difference between a boss and a leader and now there's a guy who's standing on top of a brick while everybody else is pulling the brick forward and that is a boss but a leader is somebody who is in the trenches with the group of people helping them participate helping them execute every single day and going back to Gary vaynerchuk he always talks about you know if you think as the leader of an organization other people work for you you've got it completely backwards because you work for these people and I think that type of servant leader or servant leadership in itself is just incredibly powerful because they want to know the people who you work with keyword that you're in the trenches with them and you're not just separate from the entire where you know organization making shots and calls from the very top because that doesn't feel good and that's not a part of the culture that I think a lot of people want to be a part of these days yeah it's it's something again that has

[30:57]  to be intentional you have to really believe that because I've heard a lot of leaders say that that they are willing to work beside their peoples on and so forth but when the rubber hits the road but when the challenge hits or whatever the case may be it becomes what did you do or what did you not do or you know you could have done this better like well that's interesting because you were just talking about how you were in this together but there's little literally no accountability for yourself right so one of the things that shows that ability to be able to work with people is that accountability and self-awareness that we just talked about right if I make a mistake as a leader then I have to Auto to it right if I don't put you in the best position to succeed that is on me right just as much as they may be arguing this situation or it might be

[31:44]  even more so me uh so that's what people are looking for they're looking for actual relationships with their you know supervisors and leaders as opposed to just going in and being a number and just doing tasking and just being someone that is very insignificant because if I'm just a tasker anybody can do my job right and then if I have somebody that's not in there with me I know I'm expendable and if it becomes investment right that's my favorite word when it comes to leadership are you investing in people because if you're investing in them they feel that connection they feel like they're significant to you and to the business right and that's going to drive me to push harder to work harder to be the best form of myself that I can be if

[32:33]  I'm only a tasker or if I'm only a person that's a a title then I'm not going to be able to give you everything that I have I would never reach my Max potential it just doesn't happen because human nature won't allow it sure whether we like it or not that's the mental health aspect of it right yeah we're not mentally healthily mentally healthy then we would never be at the top of our game so if mental health is is strained if emotional intelligence is rare then that's not a workplace that's going to be conducive of high performing people that want to stay that's right bottom line I totally agree with that I totally agree with that you know one of the things that you said there that's very interesting to me is I've gotten a little bit older and become a better leader I have started to take more accountability for everything that happens in my ecosystem and Brian there's extreme power in taking accountability for everything now I'm

[33:21]  not saying that you have to be responsible for everything but being a leader and recognizing that the buck stops with me so when things don't go well you don't blame others but you say how could I have improved in this situation how could I have been a better Communicator how could I be a better leader to help us execute on all these initiatives is something that I take incredible pride in give you an example you know sometimes we have things when we go do an implementation we have a hospital system right now that my team's standing up and we've got a large patient observation program that's going out there right and so one of the things that we've had trouble with is getting the nurses up and going with the actual system and so when we do our rounds for training the organization kind of comes back and we hear oh we didn't know that this program was live we didn't know that we were supposed to be doing these things and as a team we meet in week

[34:08]  chart trying to naturally point fingers and say we've done everything that we should have done but you guys the organization of this Hospital should have done these things better and so it is incredibly powerful for me to slow the team down and say hey if this is the thing that we're seeing how could we have done better in this situation so the next time this comes up we're not going to have to deal with the issues the I didn't knows so how can we look inward first to take that sense of accountability to take the power away from our failures and own them and say we're in control of this situation I just love being able to take accountability in all those situations it's huge for me you know that that's huge and I love that you know because that's a great example of something that that I'm personally passionate about is that there are two things that I want to remove the negative stigmas from number one is mental health number two is

[34:56]  accountability because when we hear mental health we think of mental illness which are which are not the same thing right uh and then also when we hear accountability we think of Performance Management pointing to finger what did you do wrong right accountability is not about that accountability is the the opportunity for learning it's an actual stepping stone to the next level if we decide you know that okay I want to receive what I did well I want to receive what I didn't do well and then to me it's basically data more so than anything else it's just data right so if I'm not doing this well and the data supports that I have to own that and say you know what I can do this differently so the accountability doesn't always reflect negatively on who you are as a person or even your intent sometimes

[35:43]  it's literally just data that we need to use to be able to move forward and get better that's what training and development is about that's what all of that is about is just learning from the things that we may have erred on or mistakes that we may have made that's human nature as well right everything that we have gained from a society in evolution that has come from the mistakes that we've made and the areas that we've made and things that we learned from it the question is how do you deal with that do you own that and let people know that I see it and I know that I have flaws just like you do if that is something that makes leaders palatable is because you are humanized right unfortunately so many of our leaders think that they have to be robots they think they're supposed to be perfect they think that I'm supposed to have all of the answers and then if I have any chinks in my armor then people

[36:29]  won't believe in me that is personal pressure that if you've put on yourself that is not the person that people have put on you that are your direct reports you have to know the difference right so we have to own our Humanity ourselves even before we ask people that are working you know with us to do the same so we have to own that all those mistakes all those errors say hey this is a stepping stone for us get better I'm gonna do this and in fact this is what you can do to be able to help me with that so on and so forth and what can I do to help you and once we are doing all of those things and asking those right questions at that point that's what builds that cohesive unit that's what builds that culture and that's what makes people want to continue to work with you and not think they're not just working for you absolutely I mean what we're really talking about here is near and dear to my heart which is kind of a growth

[37:17]  mindset you know Carol dweck came from the University of Stanford talks about in her book um a growth mindset and how we are not limiting ourselves based on our idea of perfection but the progress and the steps that we take in improvements are the entire Mission and I love you know hearing about a mindset from a leadership perspective that is based on a growth mindset it's not the end goal but is the process that we're in of self-improvement of recognizing the data like you talked about and how we can utilize it to be better next time and if we can put ourselves in that situation of we are never going to be perfect but we're always growing Roy's evolving and kind of putting ourselves in the perspective of a growth mindset incredibly powerful now based on your reaction you kind of seem like you rock with the growth mindset idea as well

[38:05]  why that's so important so I mean the it's something that we can all own right the the more opportunities that we take as Leaders to be able to show the people that are working with us that we can own things together the more cohesive unit that we can be able to create so part of that is growth right so as you're as you're developing and I'm helping you along your way you know your career path I'm also doing the same thing so I should not be the same leader this year as I was last year or the year prior to that as well and then the second part of that is also giving people their roses when they are the ones that have helped to open your eyes to one of those things that you may have not done well right that's something that I had to grow with earlier on in my leadership that I got later ordered my leadership was you know what I had to thank you and hug you for

[38:55]  that feedback that you gave me that was the thing that pushed me to be able to do something differently right we don't tend to do that and then we miss that opportunity to create that connectivity once again uh because we don't have those things that we share so we should feel like that growth is something that we all own one of my favorite uh authors that's out there from a leadership standpoint uh is Liz Wiseman and she had uh her book multipliers I mean that that that was like a life-changing book for me like you know what I read that and we've talked about whether you can be someone that is a multiplier which means that you'd have to add to people uh or you could also as a leader be a diminisher right so even though your intent may be that I'm going to do everything I I care to help this person to grow sometimes we can diminish them because we are so protective of

[39:41]  ourselves and what we want to own so on and so forth that we that we don't allow people to grow and then we actually take away from their opportunity to be able to be better than they are uh so at that point what I what I read that um I was like okay my my mission is going to be I'm going to find ways to be a multiplier how do we do that is that we both have to own growth it has to happen on both ends it cannot be a one-way Street absolutely I mean there's a tremendous power in that and I love you know that we are on the same page when it comes to that growth mindset and putting yourself in a position to be able to grow which means being able to take a transparent feedback from the people who you engage with who you work with who you collaborate with on how you can improve but man I got to tell you that is some scary stuff putting yourself in that situation to be able to ask you know how can I improve especially as a leader you know what I mean like that takes some real balls you

[40:28]  got to be able to kind of lean into that it you know it does in some ways and then in some ways it doesn't I think it's just we have to again adjust the mindset when it comes to it right uh one of the things that that we're passionate about is Performance Management right and the the reason that people are so like I always ask people you know think about the first time that you're going to get your employee reviewed and what did you feel and most people were like I was scared to death I was sweating I was like well why was that they're like Wheels because I didn't really know how I was going to be viewed now these are some people that are a plus plus performers and nobody was better than them and they are concerned about what's going to happen in an evaluation why because there was no management there right it's Performance Management for a reason we've managed that throughout the

[41:15]  year we're constantly talking and getting feedback and finding out how we're performing so on and so forth right so when we're doing that that takes the sting away from feeling like that there's just one conversation that you're going to have where somebody's gonna undress you basically and tell you you know what you do horribly and that applies to leadership as well when we are doing Performance Management properly that is a 360 situation we are not just talking about how well you've performed but we also have to deal with and uncover am I doing everything that I should be doing as a leader to prepare you for success so if you are you know underperforming but we uncovered that I did something or overlooked something that kept you from being the best you then that's my opportunity to say I need to hear that that makes sense and let's set a plan

[42:02]  together to make sure that I don't do that to you and that you can succeed going forward and when it happens it takes this thing away from having to be caught to the carpet because that's something that you're doing all year long right it's not one conversation it's something that we're doing together so that creates that growth mindset rich is growing together and that I can be able to get that tough conversation and put myself out there hey what do you think about how I live right and then for instance one of the things I love to ask now before I got into the Consulting side one of the things I love to ask was how do you like to be led and people don't ever ask that question I'm like no you have to ask them sometimes it doesn't diminish your ability to be a leader that's the Curiosity piece as well and that's finding out how do you like to be led if you can get that

[42:50]  question answered off the bat man you know how much better it's going to be from how you lead and then how they are being led oh my gosh one simple question right but that's intent we have to use those intentional things that that takes the sting away from being held accountable it takes the stink away from being a leader and being put you know up front and saying that hey there's some things that I can do better because we're doing it together absolutely and that makes a lot of sense you know when I want to kind of switch gears here and kind of talk about hustle a little bit the game has changed in how we hustle right and specifically I want to drive this conversation towards technology now since November 2022 we've seen technology completely morph and change right in front of us one of the biggest things that I pay attention to is AI and earlier in our conversation

[43:37]  you had mentioned you know organizations are looking at how they can use technology to be as lean as possible but still get a lot of stuff done so what is your perspective when it comes to technology like chat GPT the AI that people can now utilize to kind of supercharge themselves when it comes to productivity and then kind of how are you seeing it integrate into business in general what is your two cents on AI and how are we going to be able to use it in the future okay so so for me personally it goes to it right here's why because you know obviously my business side uh in my HR side uh can understand why and how AI can be a huge huge component of productivity of being able to get to the point to where we can be the best that

[44:23]  we can be with less time which means that it gives people their lives back so on and so forth so there's a lot of positives that comes from that however the other side of me is a creative that's who I am right so I went to school for graphic design and that's I'm an artist and I have all of that as well in my in my background so part of me is scared to death as well of you know how is this going to affect you know the creators out there whether it's in writing you know I love writing I love designing I love you know illustrations on and so forth all those things that I love now something's being generated you know with AI to do all of those things um so but what I had to do was get past the initial fear right because that was real I had that point you know when it first started to come out I was like okay yeah all the creatives are screwed uh but then what you learned is that no

[45:11]  we have to learn how to create use this creation as a tool right yes at the end of the day it can only do what you feed it right so chat gbt can only be as effective as the creativity in you in telling it what to be able to produce right so the really the only thing that it becomes it just becomes a tool to be able to help you to work faster right uh so if we think about yeah in Past Times centuries ago they were making amazing architecture right and they're doing it with their hands you know hitting that stone and doing everything that they can some things that we can't even explain to this day how do they make those pyramids that's impossible to have that kind of precision so on and so forth right but now when you fast forward to today and the things that we are building and how that they're being built the same

[45:59]  Ingenuity is there the same architectural knowledge is there but we just have tools that make that a lot easier to be able to do quicker and faster and it's always more efficient and then you know being able to protect us better when it comes to what can happen you know in in our natural world so that's how I view AI at the end of the day it's something that we have to appreciate and something that we need to get out in front of when it comes to being a business to say how can we leverage that how can we use that to make sure that we can be as productive as we can be that we can use this to be able to adjust our labor force and be a little bit more strategic as opposed to just throwing throwing people at it so as much as I want a ton of people to get jobs I do want businesses to be a little bit more strategic in how they're actually setting up their product

[46:47]  productivity Logistics right you know you want to be able to get to the point to where you don't just throw another body at it we need to find better ways to be able to do that with less because that's what we've all been asked to do right if you've ever been a leadership the one thing you're asked to do is do more or less that's that's right that thing that's that thing right so use the tool right so I have to get past the creative side of it get past the fear of it and say how can I use this and then feel comfort in my creativity my creativity my Humanity my thought processes are something that an AI can never do right so how could I leverage that so use it so get on the front of it get to the point to where you're the best in the game at using that AI to be able to produce what you needed to produce and then you'll be justified right so it doesn't take away the creativity it's

[47:34]  just a different tool it's whether you're using a pencil or a paintbrush that's right and that's a great point and that's the same way that I look at it with my team you know early in our 2023 strategy session I challenge everybody to be curious because we talked about curiosity a little bit earlier how can we utilize this tool to be more productive and quicker you know I'm sure that when you know the ballpoint pen manufacturers from back in the day saw computers and the WordPress and everything else that started coming out there like dude this is it this is done for us but us as humans have a continuous way to innovate and execute on the tasks that we have utilizing the technology that's at our fingertips so I'm very much like you I believe that chat gbt and all these tools are amazing because of what they are and their execution right the execution has become the commodity now but the creativeness your unique touch your perspect effective your ability to communicate

[48:22]  emotion and ideas will never be able to be regenerated through AI in my opinion and so I have that sense of curiosity that I think we can lean into that is going to become a part of all of us as we kind of supercharge ourselves with the technology like apple watches and iPhones and everything else this is just the next chapter of how technology is going to be integrated into our lives you know what I mean you know I mean you're spot on I mean what what I joke about now what I tell people is that you know think of yourself as Iron Man right so every year Iron Man Has a different suit adds more and more technology to the suit but at the end of the day it's still him that has to be able to to fly that suit and to be able to use that too so you can add everything to it and you need these things to be able to protect yourself against what the world may have they'll come in against you going forward

[49:09]  but Tony Stark is still Tony Stark right yeah so the coming kids know what that means right I mean he he is the Mind behind that and he had to create all those things that were needed from a technology standpoint there's always going to be us behind the scenes that's always going to be us driving it right so why not use that why not become the best Iron Man that you can be you know strengthen your art create you know reactor make sure that's good in your chest and that you're strong uh and then just use the technology as best you can so you can be a superhero without having to come naturally because you just use the technology that makes you that way so you know that's that's just my inner Iron Man that's that's how I see it man be the best Iron Man that you can be I think that's a great place for us to be able to end today Brian you know it's been a pleasure kind of getting your feedback on why we need to be people-centric how leaders today can start positioning themselves and

[49:57]  nurturing the culture that we know is going to be important to attract the truest Assets in the future it's not Chachi BT but we do need the people to come back into our organizations and leaning into that's incredibly important you know I can't thank you enough for coming on the podcast Brian thank you so much my friend it's been an absolute pleasure with you today thank you so much for coming on it's been a joy thank you for having me I'm just super pumped that you chose me to be the first one on the reboot here so I'm just excited to be here for you and you know that I support everything that you do and the reason that you do it so it was a no-brainer for me to be a part of it really appreciate you man everybody thank you so much for tuning in today we got more awesome conversations to come but Brian thanks for kicking us off man really appreciate it love you guys take it easy