Building Business w/ the Mount Pleasant Chamber of Commerce
The Building Business podcast provides compelling stories of the Mount Pleasant Chamber of Commerce's journey, its steadfast commitment to the local community, and its forward-thinking approach to addressing the needs of businesses in an ever-changing landscape. It stands as an invitation to listeners to become part of a movement that values growth, connection, and the collective progress of the Mount Pleasant, South Carolina community.
Be prepared to be inspired, informed, and motivated, as we provide a rich tapestry of stories that celebrate the dynamic interplay of business and personal growth right here, in our own backyard.
Building Business w/ the Mount Pleasant Chamber of Commerce
Unleashing Organizational Success: Dr. Troy Hall on Talent Retention and Cohesive Leadership
Ever wondered how to retain top talent and create a thriving organizational culture? Join us for an essential conversation with Dr. Troy Hall, a celebrated talent retention consultant, international speaker, and best-selling author, as he unpacks the secrets behind his award-winning success. From his humble beginnings in West Virginia to his influential life on Daniel Island, Dr. Hall offers a deeply personal glimpse into his experiences, including the heartwarming story of officiating his grandson's wedding. His insights blend personal and professional wisdom, making this episode a treasure trove for leaders eager to build cohesive, high-performing teams.
Discover the strategic pillars of organizational cohesion—belonging, value, and shared mutual commitment—and their direct impact on employee engagement and performance. Dr. Hall elucidates the importance of inclusion and meaningful work and how these factors interplay with fair compensation to retain talent. Engaging anecdotes and practical tips highlight how leaders can cultivate a culture of empathy, emotional intelligence, and authentic apologies. This episode is a masterclass in understanding and implementing the seven key traits of effective leadership, making it a must-listen for anyone invested in fostering a supportive and productive work environment.
Dive into innovative strategies for enhancing employee wellbeing, from mental health and stress management to navigating generational differences in the workforce. Dr. Hall introduces concepts like "Back After Burnout" and the "FAIR play" approach, providing actionable steps for leaders to manage a diverse and remote workforce effectively. Learn about the power of daily cohesion huddles and productivity metrics in creating an inclusive environment where every team member feels valued and engaged. Don't miss out on this opportunity to revolutionize your leadership approach and transform your organizational culture for the better.
Presenting Sponsor: Mount Pleasant Chamber of Commerce
Studio Sponsor: Charleston Radio Group
Production Sponsor: rūmbo advertising
Committee:
Kathleen Herrmann | Host | MPCC President
Michael Cochran | Co-host | Foundation Chair
John Carroll | Co-host | Member at Large
Mike Compton | Co-host | Marketing Chair
Rebecca Imholz | Co-host | MPCC Director
Amanda Bunting Comen | Co-host | Social ABCs
Scott Labarowski | Co-host | Membership Chair
Jennifer Maxwell | Co-host | Immediate Past President
Darius Kelly | Creative Director | DK Design
Well, hello and welcome to the Building Business Podcast powered by the Mount Pleasant Chamber of Commerce. We're recording with our friends in the Charleston Radio Group Studios here with Brian Cleary, both the huge supporters of the Mount Pleasant Chamber. My name is Kathy Herman. I am your current president of the Mount Pleasant Chamber and in my real time, I'm the marketing director for Mount Pleasant Chamber and in my real time, I'm the marketing director for Mount Pleasant Town Center. Thank you all for joining us and listening to us today. I'm so excited to have my co-host with me today.
Speaker 2:Hey, hey, hey, what's happening? Everybody yes.
Speaker 1:Mike Compton. Mike is the president of Roomba Advertising, that's right, and the current marketing committee chair for the chamber. Mike, thank you for joining us.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, thanks for having me. I'm really excited to have this conversation with dr. Oh wait, we haven't even mentioned who it is yet. No, we haven't, we have a secret.
Speaker 1:We have a really exciting announcement to make, so don't go anywhere um, mike, just say a little bit about yourself to our list. You just did, kathy.
Speaker 2:Uh, let's see. President of roombo gorumbocom. We're an advertising agency based out of tampa. Now we're up here in the beautiful charleston area. Uh, love every second of mount pleasant, love every second of charleston. Uh, growing the business, growing the chamber, uh and um, and yeah, we're always looking for help on the marketing team. Uh, so the marketing uh behind uh, the chamber always need some new ideas and some fresh legs, if you will. So contact me if you want to get involved. Awesome, yeah, how about that? I'm on the marketing committee too. I love it. Well, you're the leader, I know, but I'm still on the marketing committee too.
Speaker 1:I love it.
Speaker 2:Cheers to the marketing committee.
Speaker 1:I do we are so excited about today's podcast everyone. I have my little intro and then I've got a little something special to add to it today, so we're very excited. I'm going to tell you a little bit about our guest. He is recognized as one of the top 20 business leaders by Valiant CEO Magazine and featured on the Today Show, abc, the Global BVTV Network, beyond the Business Radio Show and CEO World. Our guest today is an award-winning talent retention consultant, international speaker and multiple best-selling author. Did I get all that right so far?
Speaker 2:Okay, good.
Speaker 1:Now this is even better. Everybody, and can you believe? He's here with us. I can In our little Mount Pleasant studio.
Speaker 2:This is a podcast. This is amazing. This is what podcasts are all about.
Speaker 1:We are thrilled to celebrate Strategic Alliance Partner, our guest I'm still holding your name, hold on for being named Top Talent Retention Expert of the Year by the International Association of Top Professionals, the International Association of Top Professionals. With this prestigious award, he has joined a select class of individuals recognized for their professional accomplishments, academic achievements, leadership abilities, longevity in the field, other affiliations and contributions to their communities. I am so honored. Please welcome Dr Troy Hall.
Speaker 2:And the crowd goes wild.
Speaker 3:Thank you, oh wow, you read everything just like I wrote it. Fantastic, that was the plan. Oh, that was great. Thank you, dr.
Speaker 1:Hall. Thank you so much here. Our businesses, I know, are going to be so excited to hear from you. I know you've got such a busy schedule. Thank you so much for taking the time out to be with us here today Global schedule.
Speaker 3:I know global schedule.
Speaker 1:now Tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got started in this business.
Speaker 3:Well, I like to start with a little personal knowledge. I think it helps kind of relate and connect to individuals. So it answers the question like what you would find out about me that's not on my resume my.
Speaker 3:LinkedIn profile. So I'm a simple man of faith. Uh, I married my high school sweetheart in 1977 and we have two children, six grandchildren. We live on Daniel Island. Uh, we got together and had a crazy idea we were going to build a multi-generational house, and so our daughter, husband and four kids live on one side and my wife and I live on the other. Oh my gosh, yeah. So it's kind of. It's really it's so wonderful to be surrounded by these grandchildren that totally love you so unconditionally, unlike your children who sort of love you when you know how that goes right, but um, but it's just really been a great experience to to be able to do that. How old are your grandchildren, nick? They range in age from three years to 23.
Speaker 1:Holy smokes, that's the best of all worlds, right there.
Speaker 3:And the 23-year-old is getting married later this year to his high school sweetheart and they have asked me to officiate the wedding. Stop it, I know, I think.
Speaker 1:I've got tears in my eyes.
Speaker 3:I know it's like awesome. I can't even believe that this sort of thing, is happening, so it's really been.
Speaker 2:So where are you?
Speaker 3:from. Well, I was born and raised in West Virginia, okay, and from a very small town there in central West Virginia. We were really an abandoned coal mining town that my grandfather moved there when mining was really important and the town tended to dry up once mining changed. But my mom was born and raised in the same house for 80 years before they came to live with us, so this multi-generational living is not new. For five years, during that 2008 and 2012 crisis that we all want to forget, that was the time that my parents ended up living with us.
Speaker 3:My mom had dementia and Parkinson's. My dad had macular degeneration. Our son, who had custody of his two children, who are the two oldest of the grandchildren group, had lost his job and place to live and so they came to live with us. So we had four generations all living under the same roof and I remember one of my friends asked me. He said he says Troy, he goes. You know, with all this commotion in your house, what space do you call your own? And I thought for a minute and I said well, I've been married for a while, so I can't claim the bathroom.
Speaker 2:I can't claim the closet you know I can't claim the bathroom, I can't claim the closet.
Speaker 3:You know I can't claim the bedroom, you know. So what could I claim? And I thought for a moment. I said I'm going to claim the hallway. And he started laughing, slapping his leg, and I'm like what's so funny? And he said hallway. Your last name is hall, hallway, and so it became life in the hallway. And so I have another book that is in the future works, that is about life in the hallway and it's about the blessings of living in a multi-generational family, and now that we've done it twice, we seem to be destined to do that it worked out really great.
Speaker 2:Do you talk about it in your book, Franny?
Speaker 3:Oh yeah, thanks for asking, meanny rules. Fanny rules is a book. It's fanny rules, it's a mother's leadership lessons that never grow old your mother's yes, my mother, and so we have to use the word.
Speaker 3:I had to clarify that it was a mother's leadership lessons, because the book sold internationally as well, and so the word fanny means something else in other places. So fanny was my mom's nickname, and so cute little story of how she got that nickname was her girlfriends. My mom was 98 pounds, soaking wet, and so my mom was not very flirtatious and so she was really reserved, but she really liked my dad, who was nicknamed Slim. So, by the way, slim and Fanny 65 years Slim and Fanny, that's awesome. And so the girlfriends gave her the nickname and they said, okay, if you're ever going to have one, we've got to name it. So they named her Fanny.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's wonderful. So her name is.
Speaker 3:Frances, but they named her Fanny, and so mom was really known like for her whole life as Fanny and I learned so much leadership from that woman. Now, my dad was good and I had a great relationship with him, and when I told my brother I was writing the book, he says, well, don't leave dad out. And I said there's a section for dad, but mom is the star of the book.
Speaker 2:Amazing.
Speaker 3:Because of what she provided to me during the leadership lessons. When I was 12 years old, my mom was diagnosed with cancer breast cancer and when you lived in a rural town poor economic conditions, no education outlets for you we were bused an hour to the nearest school. You think your mom's going to die, but mom had a whole different perspective on life. So these leadership lessons that I have the pleasure of working with organizations to expand upon really has a lot of foundation in with my mom and what she taught me. She would tell me that my character would always be defined by the choices I made, not the circumstances I found myself in. She said we were poor by circumstance, not by choice. I have cancer by circumstance, not by choice, and so she made it her opportunity to live as long as she possibly could and my job was to take care of her.
Speaker 3:I was the oldest that was at home at the time. My job was to make sure that she recovered from the surgery and there were a lot of bedside opportunities for bedside messages and stories that she would tell me. So the Fannie Rule's book is paying homage to my mother's leadership legacy. I really believe this. I think that a person might want to try to control a legacy, but the reality is that the legacy is determined by all the other people around them, not by them. And my mom would be so embarrassed about the stories because she was such a humble woman and just the great things. And the good news is she lived 43 years beyond that awful.
Speaker 3:So, because dementia took her memories. I said, you know, let's give back. So we kind of like created some memories you know from the stories people was involved in them, but 31 memories wrapped around nine rules that would be effective in leading, and everything was always wrapped around treating people. Which is why when I speak about culture and I speak about things to organizations, I remind folks that culture is about how you treat people, not the treats you give them.
Speaker 1:And then when did you realize that your whole career and everything that you've accomplished I know it's about from your mom and those basic, but when did you realize, wow, I can make a living with all of this knowledge.
Speaker 3:I don't know that I ever had that epiphany where you had that moment and you go, oh yeah, I got it. I think it just sort of evolved and sort of came out of the experiences that I was having and what I was doing. I always felt like I was destined to be in charge somewhere, like I always thought about that, like yeah, I think I want to be in charge, I want to do that.
Speaker 2:You know, I mean you know as a small kid, you know you kind of like you want to yeah, you want to be president.
Speaker 3:So I don't know that I ever said I wanted to be president, but I thought being in charge would be good, and so in my professional career then I just pursued opportunities that said, oh well, how can I advance and how can I move up in the organization where I have an opportunity to influence more people and just you know, and to have the organization trust me to do that?
Speaker 3:And so that sort of evolved. And the next thing, you know, I'm in a C-suite position and so I've been in organizations, small organizations to multi-billion dollar companies. I've had somewhere in the neighborhood of maybe 400, 450 people reporting into my structure. So I really got a chance to take all of those life lessons that I was learning along the way and really package them for what I consider to be my second half, which is the opportunity that I do today, which is I guide leaders to retain the talent in their organizations, and we do that by helping them infuse cohesion into their culture so that they can create these safe workspaces for individuals to thrive in. And you may want to know what cohesion is.
Speaker 1:I do. I think everybody wants to know what cohesion is.
Speaker 3:So cohesion is around three strategic elements and they are belonging, value and commitment or shared mutual commitment. And what's really interesting is that it's not just belonging in the sense that I'm a part of it, but I have to be included, so it's inclusion. Without the inclusion you don't have the full part of belonging. And the reason that that's so important is it goes back to Maslow's theory If people are psychologically or physically in harm, they fear. They have some fear. That's happening, regardless of what source that may be. They don't get to a point where they belong. They don't get to a point where they have self-esteem. They don't get to a point where they self-actualize. And what do organizations want? They want employees who are self-actualizing, because then they're performing, then they're doing things, then they're engaged. So you have to have the inclusion part of belonging.
Speaker 3:And value is not just how you treat people, because we expect you to treat people well. That is the foundation. Value is about meaningful work. I need to know that what I'm doing matters, like what you do matters, like when you open up this podcast and when you talk to the individuals who are listening, when you are watching on the YouTube and experiencing this. Again, that is meaningful work, and if you understand that it's meaningful work, then you start to operate in that realm of a cohesive mind, and then what really pulls it all together is shared mutual commitments, and we really are focusing on.
Speaker 3:Well, what would that look like? It looks like collaboration, and in collaboration we teach that you need two things you need everyone has to agree, they need each other, and you have to trust that people will do their job. And so that becomes the strategic framework that we look to have organizations adopt, and so we refer to it as infusing cohesion into their culture. So we're not changing their culture. So you have a culture of service, of joy, of innovation, of excellence. Whatever it happens to be, it's still your culture, but now we can level it up and we can give you finite direction as to how to do it, without it just being a string of tactical things that you do. You now have a strategic way in which you can approach that to help you really level up your culture.
Speaker 1:I think the most important thing too, dr Hall, is that this can be implemented in Fortune 500 companies as well as mom and pop down the street, because they're just as important.
Speaker 3:Absolutely. And the one thing for the programs that and when I mentioned we, it's because I have a team of five of us who actually interact with our clients it's all about helping them really experience and then implement what they experience. So we're not about selling software and selling programs that cost an organization a lot of money. I think one of the questions that you had me think about before coming today was what would you say is an untraditional or nontraditional way of doing something. I'm like, seriously, if you want to have extraordinary, do the ordinary, but do it all the time. Do the ordinary to a level that makes it so pristine, so excellent, that it becomes extraordinary. Because people don't expect it. They say, oh, you might get it right once in a while, but what would it be like if you could do it over and over and over again?
Speaker 3:So our opportunity is to try to help leaders do these things over and over and over again in a way that they can retain the individuals who are in their organization. The first thing to clear up is this Money has to be right, but money is not the reason that people leave, but the money has to be right. So when the money is right. So if I work with an organization that has good salary administration concepts, then everything that I bring forward, everything our team brings forward you- can now implement and be assured that you will see a difference in the way your employees stick around.
Speaker 1:Well, I mean, I think a lot of people can say in their careers I have either chosen to go to or chosen not to go to a company or a job because of how I felt during the interview process. Things I've read and you know, and this is a long time ago- right.
Speaker 1:So now it's even worse. All you have to do is get on social media and hear one bad thing about a company. But to me it was very important and when I moved here it was one of the best things I ever did, because I was leaving a company after 25 years. That was not my favorite. I stayed for a long time but it was convenient, which is not a reason to stay, but I did. But then I came here to work for a company that just I've I'd never experienced anything like it. It makes huge world of difference, gets more out of me right as an employee, and this is the the longest um shopping center I have worked at my entire career and so one of the things that I want to say to you is don't apologize about the reason that you stayed anywhere.
Speaker 3:It is what it right. You don't have to apologize, and you don't have to explain it, over-explain it to somebody else. It's about being so. A lot of who we are as leaders. Where we can be really effective is in the moment, and so you know, through the coaching programs that we offer, one of the things that we do is we teach leaders to stop apologizing for things because you don't need to, unless, of course, you've done something wrong, and if so, then apologize for it Like no, that's the reason you're doing it. We also like to have them engage emotional intelligence, which means they apologize for things they've done wrong before somebody else points it out, because if you don't do that, then we can't tell the difference between I'm apologizing because I was caught or because I really meant it. That is a great point.
Speaker 1:Oh my gosh, that's good. Yes, that is a great point right there, absolutely right. Other things that I've.
Speaker 2:I did a little research, but when it comes down to leadership conversation, the past doesn't dictate our future Right. You know, almost like a manifesting your future type of situation I'm a big fan of manifesting and you don't have to know everything. Your future type of situation I'm a big fan of manifesting and you don't have to know everything. You just have to be teachable. That's right, those are your words.
Speaker 3:That's right, I'm just spitting your words back to you. You don't have to know everything, you just need to be teachable, and when you can do that, your mind is open to accepting new ideas and new ways of doing it. If you are so filled with yourself that there's no room for anyone else, you really almost represent yourself as a rock where, like water, might be the knowledge or information or good things that you would want to know. And so the water is on the rock and it actually goes over the rock. And because we're talking about leadership, leadership is always spoken in a positive. So when I say this, there are things in life that you should be a rock, because water will hit it. You want it to run off, you don't want it to soak in. But for leaders who are really practicing, you want them to be like sponges, you want them to soak the information in.
Speaker 3:Don't be so full that you can't take in an idea from somebody who just started in the organization a few days ago. Do you have to implement it? No, but you should listen to it, you should explore it. You should not dismiss them immediately, because individuals want to be included. They want to have there to be a part of that, and so a little bit of that message about you know, not looking at the past is, I guess, like a talking point that I have, and that is you can't be a victor of your future if you're held captive by your past. You will never be to the place that's been destined for you or where you feel like you want to go, because you spent so much time being mired in the comfortableness of the past.
Speaker 3:And so I try to help leaders through the coaching is to break out of that and to understand that the past has a purpose. It is to provide a frame of reference, but it's not where you get stuck that if you get stuck there, it's unhealthy. So you need to move forward and think about it. You don't get to the present, you get to I'm sorry, you don't get to the future by being in the past. You get to the future by being in the present. So you have to go from the past to the present, which is what you're doing, which also goes back to mom, my dear, lovely Fanny, and that is when she would say to me she goes. Why are you lamenting over something that has already happened? You cannot change it. What you can change is what you are doing today and what you will do tomorrow. She said focus on that. Focus on what you're doing today and what you're going to do tomorrow. Learn from whatever it was that happened for you in the past, consider it a frame of reference and move forward.
Speaker 1:And this can all be used in personal life too, because I have an issue.
Speaker 2:Well, more personally it comes from leaving things.
Speaker 1:I mean I just some things I just can't get over and I just need. I just need to be like, yes, it happened 25. It happened 25 years ago, just move on.
Speaker 3:It is. It actually works really well, and so people ask me a little bit about the background, because I have a PhD in global leadership and entrepreneurship Same. So there's a lot of I'm just kidding.
Speaker 2:I'm just kidding, I don't, I don't, I don't.
Speaker 3:Well, I've got two of you in the same room. That's not yet self-proclaim manifesting. Yeah, oh, that's good, you could do that but um, but in that, um, in that story.
Speaker 3:I'm not even sure where I was going now. Oh, I know, yes, they were. They would ask me about, uh, you know, like the degree, it's a philosophy degree but there's a lot of psychology in it, and so I like to say that when I'm coaching and working with individuals, uh, because I have a psych, there's some psychology as part of the background is that my clients are usually sitting up or standing up, not laying on a couch.
Speaker 2:Yeah, okay, yes, that's the difference amazing and my heart just swells when I talk about Fannie's leadership skills from back in the day when you were growing up. Yeah, and on her bedside resonates to corporate USA business, global corporate, not just USA global corporate business skills.
Speaker 3:Like that's crazy to me how those connect so well, so well, and so it's interesting that we are talking about the Fannie Rules book because it has so much in leadership. But the first book that I started out with was Coetion Culture Proven Principles to Retain your Top Talent, and so my dissertation was in group dynamics, with an emphasis on cohesion, and when I thought about oh, this is going to be the second half of my career, what would that look like? It was well, someone suggested, why don't you leverage what you did in your degree? And I'm like, oh, wow, that's great. Thank goodness I'm being-.
Speaker 1:Great advice.
Speaker 3:Thank you, thank goodness I'm being teachable. By the way, teachable is one of the seven attributes of an effective leader found on page 20 of the book. Anybody who has the book? Yes, please, but I mean just. These things really work and I wanted to put the book out for the leadership book and the book, the Cohesion Culture book, has three parts. It starts with leadership, because if leadership doesn't get right, then it doesn't matter what happens after that.
Speaker 3:Then next is about culture and like what culture looks like and some of the dynamics of the stories, the rituals, traditions and customs. And then the final two chapters is on how you bring it to life, how you put it all together, and so it's a collection. So it's a little different business book. It's a collection of stories and poetry, it's movies, references, and so I take and I'm a metaphorical teacher, I basically take these ideas and situations and I kind of wrap them into oh, what can we learn from it? Because we learn so much from stories, we learn so much from our experiences, and so it's a matter of us framing some questions to ask and having some principles and philosophies around them that really go forward. So I did that book to start with, and then I did another book after that, which was a collaboration with world leaders on providing some tips, and that was good and it was kind of fun.
Speaker 3:But the third book was the Fannie Rules that we're talking about today. That book was an opportunity for people to see inside me. You know, there's something about that veil of transparency that's so important in leadership and I couldn't cover that in the Cohesion Culture book. I was basically establishing an authority within the space and I hope people hear that in the right way. Culture book I was basically establishing an authority within the space and I hope people hear that in the right way.
Speaker 3:I'm not asking, like you know, I'm so big and important, but what I wanted was to create a voice in the space that said, I know this topic well, I can help you with this topic, you can rely on me with this topic. And then I wanted to make sure that you knew where my leadership, you know acumen, came from. Where did it begin? It wasn't just textbooks, it was really these experiences with a woman who had so much energy and teaching and and coaching me and guiding me, and so I think it's what motivated me to actually do that when you asked in the very beginning. And so I think it's what motivated me to actually do that when you asked in the very beginning, like, did I know? No, but that I think, created all of the, the stimulus, the motivation to kind of move it forward was those experiences with mom what did mom do?
Speaker 2:what did Fannie do?
Speaker 1:Fannie was a social uh domestic engineer yes, yeah, okay, that means she was mom. Yeah, she was mom. Yeah, she's one of the hard, you know the hardest job on the planet, and it is.
Speaker 3:And it's the role that she chose to play, and she never looked down at individuals. Other women who chose to work and raise kids Like mom, never judged in that.
Speaker 2:Why would you right?
Speaker 3:I mean, I don't like, I have to tell you some of the judgments that people put out today. It just makes me cringe Because I can't figure out like why do you have to hate? Like why do you have to hate so much? If an individual has a different lifestyle or a different way of doing it, then, even though it's contrary to your faith or your belief, you don't have to make them wrong because it's contrary. And if we were much more teachable, we would have an open mind to it, we would know the difference between what we want to agree with but what we want to understand. And there is a difference between agreeing with someone and understanding someone. And that is so important, especially in the workforce.
Speaker 1:We need to understand it. Dr Duhal, I'm taking that little snippet right there and I'm going to just keep playing it over, and over and over again for the people that make me insane with what you just said, because I'm like some of the things that I hear or read, I I just I shake my head and just say how, why? It's not worth it, and that is amazing advice thanks and some of the leadership conversation.
Speaker 2:Bringing it back to the leadership. So, uh, grace versus compassion, uh, good to great like. These are your words that I'll can you dive into a little bit more of?
Speaker 3:what you? Well, let's just talk about the seven attributes of an effective leader.
Speaker 2:That's all part of them, right.
Speaker 3:It's all part of it. So the first one is teachable, and the way I looked at it was you know you can have all the other six that I'll talk about, but if you don't have the mindset right is there going to be a lot of great value in the dynamics of them working together, because these characteristics or attributes all work together. So it was having a teachable mindset. The next one is compassion, and this is your opportunity to have empathy Not sympathy, but empathy. Empathy is an understanding. So some of the work that we do is an empathy mapping exercise that allows you to think about individuals who might be marginalized and to find out like what is that individual thinking? What are they saying, feeling and doing around that story or around that situation? So that's compassion.
Speaker 3:Grace is probably the hardest of all of those attributes for most leaders to get, because, you see, we grow up in a world that says you do something to get something. It's a quid pro quo, and grace isn't like that. Grace is the unmerited favor that you receive simply for being who you are, like you didn't do anything. You don't have to do anything to get grace. And so the opportunity is could the leader practice those moments where they were extending grace without it being attached to well they're an okay employee or they're a good employee and oh, they don't screw up that often, and then whatever.
Speaker 3:I mean you can do all of that, but it's not grace. So imagine if you could have the distinction between that. I'm going to just do it because of who you are, not because of anything I expect to get back, not because I'm going to attach it to anything. What if I could just do it? Wow, what would that be like? So it's a hard experience for most leaders to have. And then seeking the truth. Seeking the truth is extremely important, and that's the reference to Good to Great, because Jim Collins, when he wrote that book, was really trying to look for the level of leader that he thought would really be the best leader, and what he came out with was not only seeking the truth he used the truth as the foundation but what he found was humility, which is the next one is having humility. The truth will do that to you.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and the truth will do that. And especially if you're teachable and you're also compassionate and you also understand grace, you see how the dynamics now work right. And then it's about being authentic, being original, being truthful to yourself and to others. So you have to have that aspect and then the last part is making peace. Are you able to make peace? So those seven attributes are to be teachable, to be compassionate, extend grace, to seek the truth, practice humility, be authentic in how you think and speak and do, and then look to serve peace and to find peace in everything you do.
Speaker 2:This is going to be the best podcast episode yet. Well, I'm just going to say listeners too, make sure.
Speaker 1:I mean, I know we just got all this really valuable information, but you still need to go out and get Dr Hall's book.
Speaker 2:Thank, you Get them all. All three Make it a hat trick. Oh there's a fourth one.
Speaker 1:Oh hey, is it out yet.
Speaker 3:Oh yes, so it's called Back After Burnout and I did it with Dennis Consorti and it is looking at the mental health and the stress that people have in the environment today. We feel that's an important leadership component to be able to do, and so we focus on those exercises and activities. And so my section was really how does cohesion actually impact the leader's ability to reduce burnout, stress and fatigue inside the organization? What tips would they do? And so I do a little workshop on this back after burnout. It's called Seven Ways. Cohesion Combats Burnout Perfect.
Speaker 2:Wow, it's true I mean it's the most important, one of the most important things.
Speaker 1:Well, you know, and then I didn't mean to interrupt you, Mike, but you know, especially in Mount Pleasant, where all of our Pleasant, where most of our members are, one of the largest issues going on is employees and then a lot of the millennial, Gen X I hate using terms, but that age group is a little bit different than you said Gen X.
Speaker 2:What are you talking about?
Speaker 1:You mean millennials and Gen Z, gen Z, take it easy, I don't even like, I don't even like. Don't mess with gen x, okay, no gen x. I know what a gen x is, uh you're the forgotten generation.
Speaker 3:You know that. I know it's terrible, but you are, but we're the best.
Speaker 1:We're the best I am the best, okay, the um, but there's things have changed that you know from um people that I've been working with that you know there's a little bit more that. There's a little bit more demand. There's a little bit more of they want. I worked 830 to 5 every day for 30 years because that's what you did and that's just not the way it is anymore. So, with this new workforce coming in and everything, how can our businesses retain these new blood employees? I don't want it, because it's just different. It's a different, it's a different time yes.
Speaker 3:So when we think about so, there's a couple of things. One, I don't like to generationally label people either. I don't like to put labels because we spent a lot of time in the in the last three years working on diversity, equity and inclusion and creating some foundations to have people really not only think but to maybe more experience an equality sense right that you have. So, with that being said, I don't like to use those generational categories because, quite frankly, I am a Gen Y trapped in a baby boomer body. So I kind of understand that. But it's the thinking. So what I like to think is each generation provides a different way to think. So we want to take a look at that generation's influence of thinking, because we all influence each other and the thinking that's occurring within this newest realm of workers who come in are byproducts of what's been happening in our culture and in our world. Whether it be here in the US or over across the pond, it all interacts.
Speaker 3:What I have found is that I look more at the behaviors of individuals in the workforce as a collective as opposed to them individually. But I still rely on research that's done and research. When they say they do the Gen Z. That means they have interviewed individuals within an age bracket that would identify them as Gen Z and say, oh, here are the characteristics of Gen Z, which is okay. But I think it's also cautionary in that you should be thinking more of how is the collective working, because you're not just hiring gen z, you've got all these other folks that are interacting, so you need to be thinking how does it work? So I created what I refer to as my fair play that I think is helpful for leaders to. If they adopt these four behaviors within their organization or these four ways of thinking about the workforce, this might be helpful. Okay, got my pen and paper here, Really Write this down everybody.
Speaker 3:And I, as I told you, it's metaphorical. I'm also I like acronyms because it helps people remember things. So it's FAIR, f-a-i-r play and it's flexible hours and locations. That's what people want. They want that flexibility of what's going on. They want autonomy. They want to know what they're supposed to do for the job. Then leave them alone and let them do the job. Give them the tools that they need. Give them the instructions they need. Let them know whether they have monetary authority to buy something. Do they need to be working with other people to accomplish the task? Are there other departments where they can get resources? You know all of those types of things. They want to know that from the autonomy so they can do the work. Then they want to be included.
Speaker 3:So up until most recent surveys, the number one reason that a person left a company, aside from having to move or they had a life-changing event, was the relationship, or the lack of relationship, with their immediate supervisor. Today, they more accurately define it as lack of inclusion. That makes sense. Yeah, so, but the lack of inclusion is attributed to the leadership, because it's a supervisor, because people think of their job the way they're connected to their most immediate supervisor. That's how it's all about. It's really relational driven, so it is really looking for inclusion.
Speaker 3:And the last one is readiness. It's being ready for the next job, the next promotion, being ready to do things at a very high level, whether you want to take a job in leadership or not. What I also mention in this readiness why it's important is that 71% of all employees seek growth, development and advancement of some kind, so that allows you to take in all of the five generations that are currently working today in the workforce. The thing, though, that I should mention is a little bit of an issue that we might be seeing in the next five to ten years, and that is the age group. The Gen Z age group is less likely to take a leadership role than previous generations, and they're less likely because they believe in more of work-life integration. By the way, don't call it work-life balance, it's work-life integration.
Speaker 3:Because when you think of balance? What do you think you think of? I've got multiple things in both hands and I'm juggling them and I'm doing this. Well, that's not healthy. What's healthy is integrating them, because we can't separate what we're doing in our life with our work. We can't separate work with our life. I mean, we know, like for just some of the statistics around stress, we know a large number of employees somewhere in the neighborhood of 70 to 80% have stress issues that are at work that are just like very demanding for them on on the job. Um, of that group there's a a half of them bring that work home and integrated into the home and some of them have blamed stress on their negative behavior.
Speaker 3:And I said, oh, thank goodness, somebody has a reason to to blame their poor behavior on, so they're going to blame stress to do it. Yeah, that's. My mom wouldn't go for that. She'd say there's no character building in that. Dude. You've got to own. You're being negative and rude and whatever. You own it and you figure out what it is and then figure out how to stop it. Come back to me. You don't get an excuse. I was never allowed to be rude to somebody because they were rude to me. I was never allowed to do something bad to someone or harm someone because they may have harmed me. That was just not part of the game.
Speaker 1:What you said earlier too. I'm not going to give my age away, but when I started in the workforce, there was no computers.
Speaker 3:You did give your age away. That's it I gave you a whole range. Okay, range. I gave you a range of age. I love that.
Speaker 1:But there was no computers. There was no. Our office was one of the first fax machines Obviously no cell phones or anything like that. So when I went to work, I went to work, I did my job and I went home, yeah, and so I was lucky to have worked in that time. Now, like you said, my phone rings 24-7. It is what it is, and you're expected to be there or answer unless you have a good excuse. So I am really trying and I love this advice of yours.
Speaker 3:Okay, so you're not trying. I just want to make sure you know you're not trying. You're doing. I'm doing Because trying is limiting language. So there's no trying just doing so. I'm doing my best. I doing.
Speaker 1:I'm doing everything I can perfect to um make sure that I have a integration of my work and my home, because both are very important to me.
Speaker 3:So very important. Yeah, congratulations, thank you, congratulations great uh.
Speaker 2:What else can she do, though, to to help integrate that? What do you? Do you have any questions behind that? How can you better integrate the work like?
Speaker 1:shut my phone off and throw in the pool. I'm not, you know, I don't know.
Speaker 3:I don't know well. Okay, so there's just a few little things that I would mention to you about that. The first thing is you have to set boundaries. There you go, so you make sure you know the boundaries that you're setting. What are the rules of engagement for work? What are the rules engagement for home? You have to set aside your time, just like at work. You set around project time or time that you want to work on something.
Speaker 3:I'm a big believer in calendar blocking. I don't know how I would survive without it. It's been so helpful to me to even put in time when I want to read, or time I want to look at an article. I may put 15 minutes on the calendar to make sure that I know that I had that time dedicated to do it, because I'm very much a task person. It comes a list. You know like I like lists and things and I can accomplish and do that, so it works really well. So I would do that. Something else that you can do very simply is you can change your clothes when you come home from work.
Speaker 1:Immediately.
Speaker 3:Immediately, because when you do, it gives a separation between that. I just spoke at a conference earlier this week and we were sharing some of the things that individuals do, and one of the participants said she likes to wash her hands and she says anytime that she feels stress, she just goes to the restroom and she washes her hands. She follows that 22nd happy birthday rule Are you seeing the happy birthday rule? And she does that, and so she offered it and I thought yes, this is great that you're being creative and you're finding the things that that allow you to take that break away so that you can come back and be energized again.
Speaker 3:It's like working on a problem. You can drive yourself crazy, working hours and hours on a problem, but it's amazing what happens when you walk away and come back. It's like you see it differently. It's like I'm looking at the same stuff I was looking at before, but I see it so differently. It's the craziest thing. Why is that? Why is it like that? It's your brain. You're giving your brain a break, okay, and your brain gets a chance to refresh.
Speaker 3:Unplug the computer, plug it back in type of thing. Yeah, which is the typical it response anytime it doesn't work.
Speaker 1:Have you turned it off and turned it on, and is it plugged in? Yes, so, yes, so I can be an it expert. No, I'm just kidding my friends who are it experts. I love you, I love you, I need you, I'm not it. What would fanny say about the guilt I feel sometimes about that, though?
Speaker 3:she would say let it go. She would say, girl, let it go. What good is guilt? Good you guilt? What good is the guilt? You know what, I'm not sure, right, if?
Speaker 1:I was invited to something and I couldn't go because I had something that's just Maybe. That's the way my mom raised me. You accept the feeling, the guilt factor on that?
Speaker 3:That's the not apologizing. There's nothing to apologize for when you do it. You would apologize if you said you're event, then you would apologize.
Speaker 1:Yes, I would never do that. Then you would absolutely apologize.
Speaker 2:So that would be something.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's a huge difference in doing that.
Speaker 1:So no, that's what she would do. Okay, well, every time I start to feel guilty, I'm going to go Fanny Fanny, fanny Fanny from now on, and I'm sure it's going to help me.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so she has a lot of. I think that to happen. You know I've got all these little really are little little sayings, because I also find it's easier for people to remember the message when you wrap it around, the the uh, a concept, right, right it's. The concepts can be there, but you can ground the concept in something you can kind of remember or focus on.
Speaker 2:It really helps you I had an idea, um, through this research and conversation, uh, we, we, as the chamber, should hold a best place to work gala. Like have a best place to work award and throw a gala around that it's probably been done locally right, but not by the chamber. Yeah, there you go.
Speaker 3:He's brainstorming in the moment, I know, and so here's the advice I always give Like if brainstorming is someone who's going to take the pressure off of, is that you don't make policy and procedures in front of the room.
Speaker 1:I've never, so that's the thing for leaders.
Speaker 3:Like, you have ideas, you can talk about it, but don't make policy and procedure in front of the room and don't feel pressured to make that policy or procedure difference in front of the room because it's too much pressure. And then what if you want to like in the moment it moment it sounded really good and then all of a sudden you think about it later and you go oh my gosh what was that?
Speaker 1:I have a lot of those dumb ideas. One that's gonna have to do it.
Speaker 3:I have a lot of those listen, and he was talking about the fresh legs earlier today and I. I wanted to tell you like you hadn't introduced me yet so I couldn't jump in, but I was going like, okay, now there's an interesting approach.
Speaker 2:Yes, so we look for fresh legs, yeah yeah, so we, we need retention, we need people, we need membership here, so that was a great point.
Speaker 3:So focus on belonging, value and commitment. Make sure that the individuals within the chamber feel that they're included. Is their voice heard? Are there ways in which they can bring forward ideas that they can work on? How do you make what they do meaningful to the chamber? How is that work meaningful for them and meaningful for the chamber? So, again, it has to have that because it leads to the shared mutual commitment which is collaboration. And are you looking for opportunities? And what I will tell you is it could be a little interesting exercise to determine how many of the chamber members truly believe they need each person who's a part of the chamber interesting sort of conversation that they need everyone. They have to understand the concept that they need now. Does that mean I'm going to go buy a service from every particular person? Yeah, anybody who heard that and wrote that down like no, that's not what I meant. So what I'm saying is that you have to need them, meaning that their contribution, their mind power, their energy into the space, their resources, you need that.
Speaker 3:That has to be a part of it. And then you have to trust that they're going to do the job that they said they were going to do. Whatever is sort of the covenants of belonging to the chamber they are going to support that. You have to trust that they're going to put it into place, that they're going to pay their dues. They're going to contribute into activities. That's to do every activity.
Speaker 1:No, but there would be some participation that would be necessary and that's that's what you do well, I think we always talk about one of the one of the reasons we believe people do not renew their membership after they join because we do offer a lot is that they don't take advantage of anything, of anything that we have to offer. Then they say, oh, it's just not for me right, because you haven't created the inclusion exactly all you did, okay, so one of the things that we'll do.
Speaker 3:So if you're game for this, I'm going to ask you some questions.
Speaker 2:Okay, let's go, I'm good. If you're good, okay, yeah lots of little things.
Speaker 3:So we're good. So I'm going to ask you the question. Okay, so have you. So I think let's see what question I want to ask you first. I'm scared. Let me think about this. I know me too. I want to think about this, Am I?
Speaker 1:answering from chamber or my work.
Speaker 3:Chamber president Okay, chamber president, very good. You might want to do this one. This will be a home, okay.
Speaker 1:Okay, so you throw parties.
Speaker 3:Yeah, okay. So everyone listening now has an invitation to a party for Kathy right, because she's throwing a party.
Speaker 1:Can't wait.
Speaker 3:All right. So you got that invitation, and so the initial idea is you feel like you belong right Because, oh, I got an invitation.
Speaker 2:I feel like I belong.
Speaker 3:Now think about this. In the work environment, you extend an offer to an employee. Oh my gosh, I got the offer right. Now we come to the party. So in the party, you've made some preparations for the party and the doorbell rings. And then what's your normal reaction? What do you do when the doorbell rings? Come in, Come in, right.
Speaker 3:Let's go Join the party. Right, you might tell them about the food. You might let them know where the restroom is. You might tell them about some music, where the drinks are. You might even give them a drink. I mean, maybe you even have somebody standing there with drinks and ready to take one when you go in. Well, you know that little concept. And, of course, the invitation to dance is really important. So those people who are now seeing me, you know.
Speaker 1:now I see the little dancing Listeners. He's dancing and we're doing this little dancing and I kind of do this.
Speaker 3:And then my daughter says dad, stop dancing. And I go honey, why would I stop dancing? And she says because you're embarrassing me. And I go great, my work here is done, so, but all of those things that you did now make me feel included. So on the first day that the employee shows up, what is the onboarding experience?
Speaker 3:like, are you including them? And for those individuals who aren't taking advantage of the things that are happening, how do you help them feel included without making them feel guilty or wrong that they chose not to do it? How do you encourage them to get to that particular space? Then you can distinguish the difference between someone who signed up who said, yeah, I've kind of had all these opportunities, but it's really not right for me, they're not wrong, it's really not right for them, so they get to leave. To the person who said I signed up for it but nobody talked to me, nobody asked me information. I went to a luncheon and I sort of was sitting by myself because everybody else, who all knew each other, they were all talking and they were all including and no one included me. And so it's real important that we also expand this to.
Speaker 3:If you're really engaged in leadership and for me the conversation is anyone who works at a company is a leader. Whether you're answering questions, moving files, supporting something else, I mean you're a leader. You've got to think about that leadership. But specifically, I want to think about this you go to a chamber, function, do the same people sit at the same table all the time. If you do, that's okay, but can you not just shake it up, or could you not just invite somebody new to come and sit with you every now and then kind of rotate a little bit around? You have to do those types of things when you are standing up and talking and three or four people are together.
Speaker 3:I recommend and so this is again part of some of the teaching is that you assume that there's a fourth person, so there's three of you. You assume the fourth person, so you stand assuming that there's a fourth person standing there, because that open space now allows somebody to walk up into that conversation and know that they are accepted. They can be accepted into it. They don't have to worry about am I catching up with the conversation? You don't have to worry about a special invitation. So when they join, then what do you do? Well, you move again and now create a space for five.
Speaker 3:And so that's the idea behind Nonverbal there too. That's right. So that's the idea behind that. It's not just getting an invitation, but now I have to be included and you have to make. It's gotta be your job. Everybody has to assume it's their job to include someone else. It even works for consumers.
Speaker 3:This idea of belonging value and shared commitment. We have built a sales programs around it, member service programs around it, because we want the culture that you have inside the organization to be extended outside the four walls. And so giving you some structure by saying think about belonging value and commitment. And what does that look like from the consumer's experience, not only from the employee experience, but the consumer's experience as well? And what are you doing and how are you, as an employee, making that connection with the consumer? And it's not just about them taking products and services which might mean value for you. It's saying how meaningful is it? So are you making sure that the products and services that people have are meeting the needs that they have? If it's not meeting the needs, it's not going to be meaningful work, it's just going to be you've taken advantage.
Speaker 3:Or it could very well be that a person just wants a product or service. They don't want meaningful work so great, so they understand that. But we're talking about that as an exception, not the rule. The rule is most individuals, we all have an innate desire, as human beings, to want to cohabitate, to want to be involved, to want to connect, to want to relate. Whether we do so person to person or whether we do it through a remote environment, it doesn't matter. We still want connection. And then we like to know that we have purpose. Rick Warren spent a lifetime, he spent an entire career, creating the purpose-driven life, and it's really fundamentally so. It doesn't matter whether it's purpose-driven for faith or whether it's purpose-driven for my social or social-driven for my work. Whatever it is, it's like I want to know that what I'm doing is meaningful and valuable, and then I want to have those opportunities to really exercise all of that. And that's where collaboration comes in for my shared mutual commitments.
Speaker 2:And then that's where Tuckman comes into play.
Speaker 3:Yes, you asked me about Tuckman, so I might just choose to use my English accent. I noticed you had an English accent. I have an English accent every now and then. Once he gets important, once he sounds important, I feel like he goes the English. Oh, yes, I sound so important whenever I go English. That's right.
Speaker 2:So isn't that? You were just talking about 1965, tuckman made these stages right? Yes, so he did.
Speaker 3:And that's what you? Yeah, so my research used Tuckman's theory and it's all about group dynamics. So it's the forming of the group, it's the storming that happens after people kind of get together. You know, when people first show up, everyone's happy. Then I spend a little more time with them, and then you've got that storming personality and you're trying to figure out what is the identity of the group and you know how will people interact with the group and then you move to where you are conforming and so now the group is actually gelling. They've created the boundaries and all that, and then you go to performing and that's where the group is now rocking and rolling. And just for the record for those people who might be listening, in 1970, tuckman worked with Janice and created the fifth stage, which is adjourning, and I didn't use that in my research because a journey was the end of it and I was focusing on the activities of the group dynamics in that group life cycle.
Speaker 2:And then you did something else different too, didn't you? You went single versus group. Yes, yeah.
Speaker 3:So the research basically was always group dynamics. Things around cohesion were always studied as a group. So it was taking a group of people together and asking them questions, interviewing them, getting some responses, because they had that familiarity that they were in a group, they were in the same space, what it would be. So I said, oh, wait a minute, there is research out there that says that I can self-describe or self-indicate where I am based on a description. If I give a really good description of what those four stages are, I could say, oh, in this I'm over here, no, no, no, I'm over here, like I would know, based on the definition. So we ask the individuals and I always tend to use the word we, even though it was my research, because I have a committee that was involved in the evaluation of, even though it was my research, because I have a committee that was involved in the evaluation of it to make it yeah.
Speaker 3:So it's kind of like they were the team that made me honest and held me accountable for what it was I was doing so. But I can have individuals now declare pick wherever you are in any project, any company, wherever you are, are you? Are you at which one of those four stages? So you individually declared where you were. You were not part of a whole big group, you were an individual. Then you answered the questions to determine how cohesive are you? Based on the answers to those questions. That would be the scale or the model that we that was put together for those questions to determine those answers and what the research was able to prove.
Speaker 3:The hypothesis proved that cohesion positively impacts performance in all stages of a group's life cycle. The level of performance that you get is engagement. Engagement is defined as helpful, active, vested and eager. Those four elements are part of that engagement and that's what organizations want. So I'm sort of like active, vested and eager. Those four elements are part of that engagement and that's what organizations want.
Speaker 3:So I'm sort of like oh wait, here's a secret sauce you don't have to worry about. Oh, my job is to make my employees happy today, or my job is to make individuals satisfied. No, that's you individually. You take care of the happiness and satisfaction on your own, but as a leader, you create a cohesive environment where people can get along and you put that out there. That's what your job is. Your job and I often said it's not your job to make people happy or satisfied it's to make sure that you don't become the reason that they are unhappy or unsatisfied. That's another problem. So focus on those cohesive elements and really bring that forward in the things that you do, in the coaching, in the training programs, in the things that you put in place. Make sure all of that is sort of is all considered, because cohesion is a causal phenomenon. It's not correlational. So I'm now going to do another question.
Speaker 2:Please do, mike. It's time, oh, oh, so I want to do you. You're on the spot, mike. What did you just say there, doc?
Speaker 3:Hold on, repeat what you just said, though, and break it down a little bit that cohesion is causal, it's not correlational, okay, and so we'll do this little question and answer, and then we'll do further to help you understand what that is.
Speaker 1:It's okay, you have to wait for the question.
Speaker 3:So have you experienced a rainy day? Yes, yes not in charleston well in charleston I like to say yesterday I like to say that I that I live in charleston, where, even when it rains, the sun still shines, yeah okay good, so true all right. Yes, and if I live in mel pleasant, then it's I.
Speaker 2:It rains with unicorns and uh skittles and all kinds of other fun stuff. Exactly that, that's all good.
Speaker 3:Yes, okay. So rainy day, you've experienced a rainy day. How do you prepare for the rainy day? So I go ahead and get my umbrella, you get an umbrella and do you always take an umbrella with you for a rainy day? Yes, yes. And do you ever have other equipment or other things that you take with you or are part of rainy days?
Speaker 3:A uh other equipment or other things that you take with you, or a part of rainy days, a raincoat, okay, so raincoat, or slicker poncho, something else. So you've got all these, this, so all this serves as equipment for you for a rainy day. Yep, okay, great, and um, have you been to the beach? Yes, I'm not going to ask him what he was wearing, okay.
Speaker 2:So we'll keep that between us, okay, no?
Speaker 3:we'll keep that between us. Okay, no, we'll keep that between us. And then, have you seen umbrellas on the beach? Yes, and were those umbrellas opened? Yes, and was it raining? No, okay, I can make a correlation between umbrellas and rainy days. Whether you take an umbrella or won't take an umbrella, whether you'll open an umbrella, won't open an umbrella, and it's all forecasting. So forecasting is great, and so organizations will continue to forecast all they want. They'll be able to use the data, information, statistics, to kind of say, hey, I kind of reasonably think this is going to happen, but you cannot predict employee behavior without a cause and effect. Cohesion is cause and effect. When cohesion is present, you get performance every single time. It's not just my research, it's 50 years of research that continues to improve it. All I did was say, oh, I can show you how it works on an individual level. So that was my little add to the literature.
Speaker 2:Awesome.
Speaker 3:And so that's what it is. So if you want to predict the behavior of your employees, focus on putting cohesion in. And how I equate, that is Newton's law of gravity or gravativity.
Speaker 1:I guess I probably have to say it with an English accent, yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm going to say gravativity, and when you say it like that, it doesn't matter what you say, it makes perfect sense.
Speaker 3:Is it a word? It is now. But his theory of gravity. And what happens is, when the apple separated from the branch, it fell to the ground, and so gravity is the cause to produce the effect of falling. Yeah, and we understand that as cause and effect. That's what cohesion is. It's a cause and effect, uh, scenario. We. I refer to it as the cohesion phenomenon.
Speaker 2:I love it that's amazing I can't follow that up with anything else. I do want to one more thing. I do have another one of our friends.
Speaker 1:Just one more our friend, um benjamin toy oh, very dear friend of benjamin benjamin, uh, and I understand that you're working with him on some aspects, so we'd love to hear a little bit about that.
Speaker 3:So Ben Jammin and I have come together to take the programs and services around the trademarked cohesion culture program to a whole new level the education and training that we provide to organizations. So we have a whole consulting program that we do, but the training is what really is so unique and different. There are no trust falls, no rope courses and no death by PowerPoint. So unique and different there are no trust falls, no rope courses and no death by PowerPoint. And so it's all about creating hands-on experiential activities that teach you leadership principles and allow you to experience them, allow you to ask questions about them, to learn from them so that you can apply them. We call it experience today, implement tomorrow, and it is what is different about what we do?
Speaker 3:It makes our courses unique, and it was that was important to me and from a marketing perspective, you'll appreciate this. This is how do you distinguish yourself in the market from everybody else who's doing this? Leadership programs. What do you do? That's different?
Speaker 3:We do it through experiential, hands-on activities, and imagine going into it where you don't have the classroom set up anymore.
Speaker 3:You have people getting up and moving around and interacting and then sharing information. We do create a discussion guide, which is a single sheet, because what we found early on is the absence of them being able to make notes or to write things down. They felt like, oh, you're giving us all this great information, but I have no way to record it. So now we provide a small single-sheet discussion guide that they can use. Through the program, we give them time to make some of their thoughts down on paper. The other thing we also do is everyone commits to a habit, either something that they have been doing that they now understand why they were doing it, or something new that they picked up from the session, and so we then bring life to it by asking them to speak it. Sometimes they speak it into the room and sometimes they speak it to individuals at their table, depending upon how large our groups are, because I mean we've done groups up to 300 people.
Speaker 2:Oh my, what's the name of?
Speaker 3:the program again, we do it's. Cohesion Culture is our program and specifically we've got sessions that we offer for executives of organizations, for the VPs and middle managers. We have a new supervisor program that we launched. It's three specific courses two-hour courses. We've launched them to be online because we've not talked much about remote, but we should probably touch on it if we've got a couple of minutes to do that. And then we offer sessions to what we call the individual contributors of the organization and it's a core program that we do.
Speaker 2:Is there a URL?
Speaker 3:Yes, so you would go to either one of our websites Mine would be drtroyhallcom. That's drtroyallcom. Look up Cohesion Culture. You'll find the information. Or you can go to Ben's website, which is onpurposeadventurescom, and go to his Cohesion Culture program and again same information. We sort of package it just a little differently because of our audiences that we speak to.
Speaker 2:I'm interested how long has that been going on that partnership between?
Speaker 3:you and Ben. So it is a strategic alliance, so it's not a partnership, and I have to declare that because we do not have a formal partnership agreement. We're not like this.
Speaker 2:It's part of where I'm headed. Okay, that's right.
Speaker 3:So we create a strategic alliance network, and so we're colleagues that have come together to work on similar projects and to make things happen. And so there are five of us who are part of what we call the Cohesion Culture Crew, and so they are prepared to help facilitate these programs for organizations. Most of the consulting work either myself or Ben handles the consulting work with the client. To do that.
Speaker 2:So when did that start though?
Speaker 3:Oh yeah, you asked when it started. It started in 2019. So, okay, and, and so we were, and so ben and I had this whole thing all put together. We were going to take his outdoor programs that he originally had.
Speaker 2:He actually he invited me to a session which actually I met from a chamber function my question is how would my next we met at a chamber function and perfect, I love that he invited me and said would you like to come see?
Speaker 3:we're doing a session for a group out of town here at the park and I went, okay, that'd be great, I'll come. And I saw it and he was quoting like four or five other books, their leadership principles, and I just got to thinking as I was sitting there going let me think here I have a book on leadership principles all in one space.
Speaker 3:everything you're talking about it's all in one book. And so, um, through the conversation, I talked to him about it and said, hey, I want you to consider using the cohesion culture book as your framework for for that. What would that look like? And he was like, yeah, I'm interested. We had some meetings. We had so much energy and excitement that came from it. And listen, for a guy whose name is ben jammin, come on, you would expect energy to be in the room. He brings it every time he brings it every single time.
Speaker 3:Plus, he is one of the nicest humans I have ever met. I would put him on the nice human list for anyone that has interacted with Ben that would feel that way, and so we were all prepared to do. Our program was Cohesion Culture Camp. We were rolling out Cohesion Culture Camp in.
Speaker 2:February of 20, right.
Speaker 3:And then March of 20 happens and then it's like, oh, what do we do? We pivot and I then write a five-week, five-module Cohesion Culture Camp course.
Speaker 1:So they take it online.
Speaker 3:So now they can take it online. It's cohesionculturecoursecom, so people can go and do the program. We have corporations who run this program internally and then all their new employees will then take it, and so once everyone's been trained, then this is a way to bring everybody on board. It's interesting, and what makes this program different is it's five modules, five weeks. You can't do all five modules in one sitting. We open up a new module every seven days. That way you are allowing the information to live and breathe, even if you may not be actively involved in it.
Speaker 3:The lessons that we are instructing, the lessons that we're talking about, we do it through video. We do it through little workbook exercises. We give you a weekly challenge to do. We teach you things that you can implement at work through a video series. I mean it's just all these things that will allow you to really make it interactive and appealing.
Speaker 3:The thing about the course is three things. One you have to be teachable. You've already heard I'm a big big, you have to be teachable. You've already heard I'm a big big, you have to be teachable. Take the course. If you're not gonna be teachable, don't take the course. You're just wasting your money. The second thing is we want you to understand that you're a leader. And then the third thing is we want to make sure that you will approach what you're learning through the lens CEO. So it doesn't matter whether you are in executive leadership or you are an individual contributor you are learning about leadership. What is really awesome when you put it in place in a company is that the employees understand how leadership should behave. Leadership knows how they're supposed to behave, because all the employees now know it creates such wonderful transparency and accountability that happens through the program.
Speaker 3:That's really good. I think we're out of time, aren't we?
Speaker 2:No, oh no, are we good. You brought up something, I mean it's 22. Are we good? Yeah, we're good.
Speaker 3:Okay, great, as long as people will continue to listen. Exactly, exactly.
Speaker 2:A lot of businesses. Oh, something happened on the computer.
Speaker 1:The iPad there, a lot of companies. It's probably been off for an hour.
Speaker 2:I don't know, I haven't noticed, but it's fine, it is what it is.
Speaker 3:It is what it is A lot of companies.
Speaker 2:This is podcast first anyways. Nowadays they're having challenges keeping the culture cohesive in the virtual and having virtual employees. Do you have any best practices or any kind of thoughts? I'm sure you do have many thoughts behind.
Speaker 3:How do you keep a culture cohesive with a virtual so the first thing I want to say is this I do not instruct organizations or consult with them to make sure that they do remote. They have to make that decision on their own. Okay, so I'm saying, if you feel that remote work works in your organization for your structure and the types of things you do, great. But what I do tell everyone is this Stop calling it work from home. It's demeaning. It is not necessarily work from home. When I was on my way over here and I was in the parking lot, I was working remotely.
Speaker 3:Right, exactly, I agree, I was working, so it is not just work from home, and you have individuals where you have allowed their home base to serve as an office, so you've already given permission to do that, so it should just be remote work. Language is extremely important. We latch on to words. Words have meaning and they have power in what we do. I like to think that when we speak, life uh, when we speak we're actually creating life. So what we speak makes a difference. So be careful what you say choose wisely.
Speaker 3:So it is understanding that, first of all, in remote work, you still have to have boundaries, just like you do if you were in the office. What are the requirements? Spell them out. One of the things that is definitely important is the visualization connection. So certainly when you have the opportunity to connect with coworkers or with clients, then the opportunity should always be visual first and then voice second. So you should be thinking about visual meetings that you would want to have and conduct, and then you would then think about phone as being another secondary option or the no screen option. I've had people in the beginning tell me things like oh, but my hair doesn't look good. And I'm like well, what would happen if you went into work? What would you put a brown paper bag on your head? What? You'd still go into work, right? Your hair look good or not, right? So yeah, you got to think about that.
Speaker 1:So I also think there's a misconception out there that people who work remotely which I agree, I love that word Don't work as hard as people who are in the office. And I'm going to say the exact opposite for me. I am not a fan of working remotely. I like to be in my office, but I work harder when I'm remote. I don't know if it's a mental thing, but I set up my computer, I set everything up, I go into my little office and I just don't stop At the office, I take a walk.
Speaker 2:At home. No.
Speaker 1:When I'm in the office. I will take a walk on the property I'll get a couple of calls when I'm working remotely. I don't seem to move. So I'm the opposite of that misconception. What I think is funny I work harder when I'm remote than I do in my office.
Speaker 3:So part of the remote work, though, is making sure that you have set up metrics to help you evaluate, because the worst thing that can happen is you have a preconceived idea of something and then you express that preconceived idea. The other thing, too, is, as strongly as you feel about the remote work that you might be harder working or more productive, you have to be careful, as a leader, that you don't impose your biases into the group. You can influence people so much by what you say and what you do that you don't want it to be like make an assumption that everybody who works remotely works harder than people who work in the office, and vice versa, and vice versa.
Speaker 3:So what you would need to do is to make sure you've got some metrics to measure the work that is actually being done, that sometimes the difference in a remote work environment versus an in-office environment is you may have less distractions when you're working remotely than you might do when you're in the office, where people just pop into your office or they yell something over the cubicle or whatever is happening that sort of dynamics and or people are taking walks or they're going into the lunchroom and then they're having a 20-minute conversation in the lunchroom. They don't have that when they're working remotely, and the opportunity is that to be effective. When you work remotely, it's not managing the person for the number of hours they're working, but you're managing them for the quality of the work they're doing, and that's what you'll focus on. So that's what we try to teach supervisors. It's managing them very different.
Speaker 3:When they're in the office, everyone's looking to make sure everybody's sitting at their desk. If they're not at their desk, they go. Where's Johnny? Where's Timmy? Where's Lucy? Where's Belinda? I want to know where these people are when they're working remotely. They just have to rely that the work is being done. That's why they need a metric to ensure that they're actually completing the work that they need to do. So I believe that to be important. The other thing is when you think about connections and getting people together. How often do you connect with the individuals who are working remotely as opposed to the individuals who are in the office? Are you creating an environment where individuals are brought together? One of the programs that we offer is called a cohesion huddle. It's a two to three minute, and I want you both to say two to three minutes.
Speaker 2:Two to three minutes.
Speaker 3:Okay, good, it's two to three minute huddle and it's called a cohesion huddle. So you might have huddles already, so your company may have that as a company name. So we call it a cohesion huddle. So you might have huddles already, so your company may have that as a company name. So we call it a cohesion huddle because our two to three minutes get started. We're at the beginning, then you can do whatever else you want afterwards. The two to three minutes sets the tone for the day. It is your opportunity to acknowledge the individual, to provide some recognition, some affirmation. It's to set the tone. Here's a quote that I want you to think about. Here's some poetry. I have one client they do a song, they actually do dancing, so they do it on Fridays. So that's their huddle. It only happens once a week, again, although we recommend it happen daily because it's how long?
Speaker 3:Two to three minutes Perfect, you guys are such quick learners.
Speaker 1:I know we're teachable. We're really listening to you today. We're very teachable.
Speaker 3:It's two to three minutes, and so they do this dancing. And they had individuals, consumers, who would then come into the office afterwards so they would see them dancing through the glass doors and then, when the doors opened and the music stopped, nobody was dancing and those individuals were like wait a minute, what's going on? Why can't we do it? So they now incorporate and allow their consumers to do the dancing part of it, and so individuals would be on the screen in their remote environment. Individuals there, they were all participating in this huddle. We were creating not only this belonging, but inclusion. Everyone was now included.
Speaker 3:And what I love about that story? It goes back to what I said earlier, which is how you extend the culture from inside the organization to the outside of the organization. The same principles you think about for the employees, you should be thinking about for the consumers, and it bridges and brings it together. If you do meetings virtually, when we got together for our physical meeting because we were meeting here in person and we knew we were going to start our session at 1230, did we come in at 1230 and sit down and just get started?
Speaker 1:No.
Speaker 3:No, what did we do?
Speaker 1:We met first. We met a few minutes right beforehand.
Speaker 3:So what we find happens with these online programs whether it's Zoom, whether it's Teams, whether it's Skype for Business, whatever system you're using for virtual individuals come at the moment the meeting starts and they don't come early. They haven't built enough margin. So what we try to teach is to make sure the employee is building margin into these activities and then, as a leader, you should be signing on at least five minutes ahead of time so that when people sign on and to welcome people when they come in, your job is not to turn it on and then go do something else. You should be doing the something else, so that five minutes minimum of five minutes, it can be 10 or 15, depending upon what your culture is and what you want to do but when you come in, you should be greeting the individual and asking them what we call a cohesion conversation starter. And so we have questions that we design.
Speaker 3:We design 52 questions that organizations can ask their employees in the beginnings of meetings so that they can talk, because it's about relationships, that work gets done with people, and people use technology, they use tools, but it's still people involved in doing it. I understand there's robotics and people might say, yes, but what about that and that's another whole topic altogether, and we're talking about the interactions of the human component into this. So that's just one example. And, of course, having the screen on everyone should have the screen on when they actually are doing any of those types of meetings, when they do it. And then the question is what is the? There's a nuance that happens after a meeting. Sometimes some of the best brainchild stuff happens when you're walking down the hallway going back to your office where you have some interaction afterwards.
Speaker 3:Do you set up for that to happen.
Speaker 1:No, you click that leave meeting as fast as possible and you're done and then you don't even talk about it again, right?
Speaker 3:So you should be thinking about what would be an appropriate debrief Interesting. And then I have another little theory, and that is so we're going to work remote and a person is working in the office, so we've got this hybrid environment, these two individuals typically maybe, they interact and they sometimes have some reasons to talk back and forth with each other. So what I recommend is that they set up a time for them to both be on the screens, on mute, visibly on the screens. They see each other. I have my human connection. If I have something I want to say, I unmute and say something, and you now create those nuances. So you have to go forward and think what were the things I did, maybe that I didn't think about when I was doing them face-to-face, that I now want to incorporate in a remote environment? And then you implement them. And did that cost any more money? No, all these suggestions are things that you can do without costing you more money, and but it's not enough just to write it down and for you to go oh, from this podcast. I now got it, because you have to infuse behavior into your workforce. So we use the cohesion infusion framework and we help them then make sure that all these things that we bring forward that you want to incorporate.
Speaker 3:The other thing that has to happen is you have to have infrastructure. Think about it this way you say, oh, I want to infuse cohesion into my neighborhood, and so that means you want to build houses. Oh, I don't have any streets, I have no utilities, I don't have any of that stuff put up. You've got to put in infrastructure, otherwise you just get a lot of great ideas from other people that you think are going to work, that don't work, and then you don't want to do them because they don't work. Meanwhile you didn't put the infrastructure in. No wonder they didn't work.
Speaker 1:That's amazing information. I cannot thank you enough for all these words of wisdom to all of our business this year. But before I let you go.
Speaker 2:It's almost too much, Dr Troy. Well, that's what I'm saying.
Speaker 1:So, before you go, please remind our listeners the names of your books and where they can get more information on purchasing those and more information on your services.
Speaker 3:So I'm just going to focus on the Cohesion Culture book, because that's the basis of the work we do, and then, of course, the Fannie rules, which is the leadership. So focus on those two books for you, and you can get them on Amazon. You can connect with me at drtroyhallcom. There's an opportunity for you to schedule an appointment. If you want to make a phone call or want to do something, it's right there for you. It's very easy. It's drtroyhallcom. And then LinkedIn is where I primarily spend a lot of my time. That's where most of my clients are, so I spend my time where my clients are. My clients are not on TikTok.
Speaker 1:So I don't spend time on TikTok Not yet.
Speaker 3:And they may not be if certain rules and things follow through. We'll see what happens there, so I don't know about that, but LinkedIn, and then you can find me as DR Troy Hall.
Speaker 1:Thank you so very much for spending all this time with us. You're welcome, really great having you. And, of course, a thank you to Charleston Radio Group and our friend Brian Cleary here for having us in their studios. If you would like to be a sponsor or be a guest on our show, you can reach out to us and we'll get back to you, and I always want to make sure I get these right. Mike, be sure to LIKE and subscribe to all of our media channels Spotify, itunes, youtube, instagram, facebook and LinkedIn yeah, right, yeah, got them all.
Speaker 2:I can't review too, yeah you know right reviews also thought about this episode.
Speaker 3:If you want to hear more well, thank you so much for allowing me to be here, and so I'll just leave you with this message. And we talked about it earlier, and that is you don't have to know everything, you just need to be teachable fantastic, that's great.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much for being with us today. Until next time out pleasant, until next time, listeners.
