—<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s truly a pleasure to welcome you to the show,\u00a0Mark<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Thank you so very much. I\u2019m looking forward to our conversation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Me, too. I\u2019ve admired your work from all your books that you\u2019ve written so far. They\u2019ve all had a big impact on me. I\u2019m thrilled to be able to share your story and unwind how you get to be doing all this amazing work. This topic that you are diving into is so wonderful. We\u2019re going to have a good time. Before we get started, I wanted to share how we navigate on the show. We talk about what\u2019s called flashpoints. Flashpoints are the moments in your life that have ignited your gifts into the world. You can share what you\u2019re called to share, and along the way, we\u2019ll look at the themes that are showing up. In a moment, I\u2019ll turn it over to you. Are you ready?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n I\u2019m ready.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Awesome. Take it away.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Honestly, I could give you the whole journey because I realized that the whole sequence of why we\u2019re even talking connects to my early childhood and all the way through to now. What I\u2019ll try to do is encapsulate it as efficiently as I can. What I\u2019m going to try to do is tell you my life story in the next three minutes. My mom died when I was young. No one told me she was dying. It was a major shock.<\/p>\n\n\n\n From that point forward, I was raised by my father. He is a very successful business guy, but an ineffective and destructive human being who psychologically and emotionally abused me for the rest of my childhood. He pretty much crippled my self-esteem and then kicked me out of the house right after I graduated from high school.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He was a wealthy guy. He could have paid my tuition. He could have given me the first and last month\u2019s rent. He could have put food in the cupboard. There was none of that. I never went back for Christmas, and I never went back for a birthday. It was over. I had a real struggle to try to figure out how I was going to survive. I was working ten hours a week, thinking I was getting ready to go to college, and had the rug pulled out from under me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It took me six years to graduate. I ended up pretty much getting myself stable. The first couple of years were brutal. When I finally got to the point of graduating, I graduated from a top university, which is one of the top ten public schools in the country. While I didn\u2019t do well at the beginning, I did very well at the end. I started to see people who were graduating. They were going off to graduate schools and law schools, and I was feeling like, \u201cThank God I got through this.\u201d I didn\u2019t even believe that I had accomplished it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I started thinking, \u201cWhat is it about these people that made them so confident to go off to Harvard Business School? Nobody is going to want me. I don\u2019t deserve to go to any of these great schools or even apply to them.\u201d I realized what should be obvious. They had caring people in their lives. They had people who loved them, supported them, encouraged them, propped them back up when they weren\u2019t doing well, or approved of them when they got a good paper, and all those kinds of things. Also, they had a place to go home to. If you went away to school and you came home for a holiday, you knew Mom was going to cook something for you. There was that love, and I didn\u2019t have any of that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When I started managing people out of college, I unconsciously decided to give people what I always believed would\u2019ve made me infinitely more successful at that point in my life. I did it unconsciously until I was 43 years old, and I kept getting promoted. My teams did phenomenally well. I cared about them. I made them feel safe. I taught them everything that I knew. I wanted to grow them. I encouraged them. I loved these people while also setting very high expectations for being seen as a great leader. No one was looking under the hood to see what I was doing. They were like, \u201cGive that guy more responsibility because he is good at this.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n One day, a woman who\u2019d worked for me for 20 of my 43 years walked into my office and very aggressively said to me, \u201cYou realize you manage people very differently than everyone around you.\u201d I\u2019m like, \u201cCalm down. What are you talking about?\u201d She started to give me an illustration of the things that I did that were clear to me that my peers weren\u2019t doing. They were managing with command, control, fear, and intimidation. They were like, \u201cIf you don\u2019t get this done, bad things are going to happen to you,\u201d and that kind of stuff. Whereas I\u2019m coming at it with, \u201cWe\u2019re going to hit our goals. I know we are. I believe in you. I\u2019ve taught you everything I know. You\u2019re supported. You\u2019ve got everything you need. We\u2019re going to nail this,\u201d and we did.<\/p>\n\n\n\n She started to give me these examples, and my consciousness was finally open to the fact that I did this all in response to my childhood and the whole way that I\u2019ve been raised. What that taught me was that what I was doing was not only uncommon, but it had a profound impact on people. What that ended up leading me to was a 25-year career. I was named Leader of the Year for a business that I still have no business running. They said, \u201cHe is a good leader. Give it to him.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n When I left that and started to write a book, somebody challenged me. It was a friend of mine who I used to work with. He goes, \u201cYou know you\u2019re going to have to explain what you\u2019re writing about, the practices that you\u2019re talking about, and why they would work for anyone else, because otherwise, people are going to think that they need a shitty childhood in order to lead this way.\u201d I was sitting in the same place that I am right now and was like, \u201cI never even realized. I thought people would take me at my word.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n To complete the story, I spent over a year researching, trying to look to see if there was validation for what I thought I was doing to people. What I thought I was doing to people was affecting them so deeply in their hearts that this is why they were motivated to scale mountains for me. It didn\u2019t matter whether they were a man or a woman. Their age didn\u2019t matter. It didn\u2019t matter what job they were doing. Everywhere I went, it had the same impact on people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I found science that confirmed that the heart and mind are entwined, that they\u2019re communicating to each other all the time, and that we\u2019ve been ignoring the heart in leadership. We think everything has to be rational. What I\u2019m saying is that if you affect people emotionally, you\u2019re affecting them in their hearts. Their hearts are communicating to the brain on how to act. When people feel supported and they have all the experiences that I gave them, it turns out that I\u2019m setting them up for optimal performance. That\u2019s what science has concluded. That\u2019s what gave me the courage to call the book Lead from the Heart<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The next step of this is that there\u2019s science that simply says, \u201cAsk people how they\u2019re feeling and respond to that. That\u2019s all you need to do.\u201d We don\u2019t need twelve questions twice a year that no one pays attention to and no one\u2019s accountable for. Regularly ask people, \u201cHow are you feeling about the culture? How are you feeling about the support you\u2019re getting from your manager? How are you feeling about the growth that you\u2019re experiencing in your job?\u201d You do it with five quick counts, like, \u201cfive, four, three, two, one,\u201d a bright green emoji, which indicates, \u201cI\u2019m happy as can be,\u201d or a bright red that indicates, \u201cI\u2019m angry as can be.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n<\/div> There\u2019s Oxford\u2019s research. I went there and talked to the economist who had done it. He is a professor there. He has shown that if people are generally in the green, feeling positive emotions regularly, even though the work is hard, you\u2019re going to see productivity and all the key metrics that are important to you go up. When people are feeling the orange and the red, you\u2019re going to see a decline. It\u2019s like a natural progression of everything. I hope I didn\u2019t take any more than 4 or 5 minutes to tell the whole story. That\u2019s the fastest I\u2019ve ever done it. I want to go, \u201cYou can do that.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n That was mind-blowing. There was so much you packed into that. You made it sound simple, and in theory, it is. It is that simple, but you know it\u2019s not easy to apply. People have a hard time getting their head wrapped around this because of the fact that we\u2019ve done it in such a different way for so long. It\u2019s been so ingrained, like, \u201cIf we want to increase employee engagement, we need to do X, Y, and Z. We need to put all these perks in place and do all these things.\u201d The reality is, how often are you speaking to the heart? How are you communicating?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n I\u2019m glad that you shared the early origin stories of where you came from. Oftentimes, we go and try to replace the things that we most miss. When we don\u2019t feel that connection to people who see, care, and give us the compassion that we need, we find ways to almost give it even more to others. In return, we start to feel that more impactfully. In many ways, there\u2019s no surprise that you were the person who started to give that because it was almost a void. I\u2019m not trying to psychoanalyze you. I\u2019m reflecting on what I heard. It was a sense that you were missing an element, so you decided to give it more fully to others.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n I\u2019ve had a lot of discussions around this because it\u2019s the preface of Lead from the Heart<\/em>. People have heard the story. I tell more of the story when I speak, so I\u2019ve had a lot of interaction with people. The common reaction, and I know this to be true, is that most people who have the upbringing I have turn on people. They want to give people the same crappy experience because that\u2019s what they know. It was like, \u201cI didn\u2019t get it. You didn\u2019t get it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The unconscious part is what I find so interesting. There was something guiding me, but not telling me. It\u2019s like, \u201cWe\u2019re going to take over the steering wheel for the next twenty years of your life and let you manage to have this experience, and then we\u2019ll give you the wheel back with the knowledge that this is what you were doing all along.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The reason that I did it for all those years wasn\u2019t that I was getting promoted and getting bigger jobs. It was because of the satisfaction that I was getting in seeing people grow under my leadership and accomplish that was healing. It was massively healing. A part of my consciousness was going, \u201cIf only you had gotten that.\u201d It was a massive validation, but I had no knowledge of it. It was so amazing that this woman would say this so late. Forty-three isn\u2019t old, but it\u2019s long enough into a career to not be fully aware of what you were doing. After that, I paid close attention to what I was doing, refined it, and figured out exactly what the practices were that would inspire people to perform like that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I love how you doubled down on the idea, like, \u201cThere\u2019s got to be some science behind this. There\u2019s got to be some way.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Do you want to hear the truth?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Yeah.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n I would love to hear the things that have happened to me, but there have been so many synchronistic interventions. The guy that I told you about, his name was Doug Jackson. We\u2019re having a conversation. He goes, \u201cHow\u2019s the book going?\u201d I\u2019ve worked with him for many years. He was following what I was doing. I go, \u201cI\u2019m about to write it.\u201d He goes, \u201cYou are going to explain how this works, right?\u201d I go, \u201cWhat do you mean?\u201d He said, \u201cThe crappy childhood thing.\u201d I realized, like, \u201cOkay.\u201d His final sentence to me was, \u201cYou need to figure out what it was you were doing that motivated people to perform like that so consistently.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n I\u2019m looking out my window one day. I\u2019m trying to answer that question. I did not know the answer, but I knew he was right. One day, it hit me. I was affecting the hearts of people. That initial was euphoric. The idea that I could have been affecting people that deeply with the way that I was managing people and they were thriving and doing great work was like, \u201cWow.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Almost instantaneously, I turned on myself and was like, \u201cI am so screwed because the people that I used to work with are going to hear Lead from the Heart,<\/em> and they\u2019re going to go, \u2018What the heck happened to him?\u2019\u201d No one ever looked to see what I was doing. People who worked for me figured it out, but even then, they weren\u2019t aware because you\u2019re in the business setting all the time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What it came down to was that I was terrified that people were going to go, \u201cDid he have a mental breakdown? Did he have a religious conversion? This isn\u2019t the guy we knew.\u201d We all know you don\u2019t bring heart into leadership. I, at the end of the day, told my wife, \u201cI\u2019ve wasted ten months of my life thinking about this book and planning out this book.\u201d She said, \u201cDon\u2019t you already know it\u2019s true?\u201d I go, \u201cWhat do you mean?\u201d She goes, \u201cDon\u2019t you already know it\u2019s true? You\u2019ve already had the experience of your entire career. You know it\u2019s true. Go out there and find something.\u201d Had it not been for her pushing back, I may have put my resume back out there and said, \u201cThat didn\u2019t work.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n I then go out and spend over a year looking. Everything that I found was massively confirming. The heart sciences, no one was talking about this years ago when I wrote the book. Now, people are beginning to say, \u201cThat\u2019s impressive science.\u201d We were all resistant to it for the very reason that you said a minute ago. We\u2019ve been managing people so badly for so long, but that\u2019s the way we\u2019ve always believed we\u2019re supposed to do it. When you introduce a new idea, the first reaction is, \u201cThat\u2019s crap. We\u2019re not doing that.\u201d You have to hear it a bunch of times before they go, \u201cWhat\u2019d you say again?\u201d It has taken over a decade for, \u201cWhat\u2019d you say again?\u201d to sink in more generically.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We have been managing people badly for so long that when a new idea is introduced, our first reaction is to refuse it.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n There\u2019s something about the way you wrote this book, too. It\u2019s the way the best books are written. It\u2019s coming in with a thesis as opposed to an answer. Would you agree?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Tell me more about what you mean.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Sometimes, it\u2019s like, \u201cI have this book idea, but I don\u2019t necessarily know the answer to what the book\u2019s going to get to.\u201d In the exploration, you start to uncover what the true answer is. That\u2019s what makes the book interesting. It\u2019s because you uncover the truth through the writing process.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Correct.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That\u2019s going to be something we\u2019ll explore a bit when we talk about your next book, which I am looking forward to diving into, but not yet. I want to hear more about your journey and if there\u2019s another flashpoint that you would like to dive into of when you got into this work and started to do more and more exploration about your leadership style and what made an impact.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n This is a stream of consciousness. It\u2019s whatever comes. You remember my father\u2019s influence. Despite what he had done and the impact that it had on me, I figured out life. I ended up getting a job, doing well on the job, and making enough money that I could go to school. I then got into this routine where you wake up in the morning, go to school, go to work, and then go back to school. You keep doing this until finally, somebody tells you, \u201cYou don\u2019t have to come here anymore. You got a degree.\u201d I transcended what he had done to me, which was hard for me to see for much of my life. I\u2019ve always been very self-critical because that\u2019s what I was imbued with.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I put piles together of what I thought the original Lead from the Heart <\/em>book was going to be. I started to write, and I was completely crushed by it. There was a voice in my head saying, \u201cYou\u2019re not a writer. No one\u2019s going to be listening to you. What do you have to say?\u201d and all of that. There was something deeper. It was crippling. There were some days when I couldn\u2019t do anything. It was overwhelming to me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n My wife and I would go for drives, and it would clear my head. I\u2019d come back and be able to make a little progress, but it still wasn\u2019t making the progress that I needed. It was almost like going to Lords. It\u2019s like your last hope before you die kind of thing. You pray for a miracle. My wife says to me, \u201cI\u2019ve got this friend, and she\u2019s like not from this planet. She\u2019s a very spiritual person. Talk to her and see if she has any advice.\u201d I was like, \u201cI\u2019m willing to do anything.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n I knew about her but didn\u2019t know her. Her name was Lisa. I said, \u201cHi, Lisa.\u201d Without asking me a single question, she starts telling me, \u201cHere\u2019s what\u2019s going on. You\u2019re writing a book. You are representing major social change. You\u2019re going to be met with a lot of resistance. If you go out with a clinical, like, \u201cThis is how we need to do it in business,\u201d you\u2019re missing the point. What you need to do is to tell people your story, and you need to make it the preface of your book.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n I don\u2019t know if you have an editor, but I\u2019m going to tell you what I thought when she said it. I go, \u201cThere\u2019s no way I\u2019m going to tell my story because it\u2019s going to force me to write it, and it\u2019s going to force me to relive it. I can\u2019t do that.\u201d She said, \u201cNot only do you need to do it, but you need to do it now. Tomorrow, you need to do this. That\u2019s what will resonate most with your audience, how you went through this and how it impacted you.\u201d She was 100% right. When I speak, people come up to me and they go, \u201cI have the same experience. It resonates.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n I thought that the whole experience was going to kill me. I went from being, \u201cI can\u2019t do this,\u201d to, \u201cI absolutely can\u2019t do this.\u201d I was shaking. I then started to make sentences, and they started coming together. I\u2019m 50 years old when I\u2019m doing this. When I got to the end of it, I realized I\u2019ve only now healed this by going through it and reliving it in sequence, which is massively painful. You get up the next day, forget all the horrible stuff that occurred, and try to make it today. When you look at it in sequence and all the different experiences, it could have killed me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When I got to the other side of this, it was like, \u201cThat\u2019s why she was telling me to do it.\u201d She was also telling me to do it for my book, but she was telling me. She was like, \u201cYou’ve got to do this first if you want to write the rest of the book.\u201d The rest of the book came out like a court reporter once I had healed that and that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I can\u2019t explain people like this who have that kind of knowing and intuition. I never told her anything. I never said, \u201cThis is the book I\u2019m writing. This is what I\u2019m trying to do.\u201d She took it out of me. I find that remarkable that I\u2019ve been able to attract people into my life like this right at the moment that I need them. They\u2019re like, “Here’s where we are. Here\u2019s what you need to do.\u201d I have come to trust it because I\u2019m creating that on some level. I\u2019m manifesting the people in my life when I need them the most.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There\u2019s something about this. It resonates a lot with me because of this idea, like, \u201cWhy did I create this show?\u201d When we go back into our past and start to look at the moments that made us who we are, we have to sometimes reconcile and say, \u201cOkay.\u201d Understanding and going over the past helps us to lead forward.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The fact that your book is called\u00a0Lead From the Heart<\/em>\u00a0is because you had to almost connect with, \u201cWho am I in my heart? If I don\u2019t go back and look at the past stories of who I am, maybe I wouldn\u2019t be able to write this book, be able to do the next book, or do anything else in a different way without facing all of those pasts and the way that I am.\u201d Would you agree?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n I completely agree. In fact, it\u2019s a perfect moment to say that everyone should do this. You don\u2019t have to have the upbringing that I had. There are people who have had far worse. I had a friend who is another one of these supernatural people. She says it\u2019s her experience that most people are operating out of their childhood selves most of the time without realizing it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n They get into a conflict with someone, and they don\u2019t realize the conflict isn\u2019t with them. It\u2019s with some stupid thing their brother said to them 30 years earlier that\u2019s triggering them. The poor person is like, \u201cWhat did I do?\u201d When they say to not take it personally because it\u2019s not about you and it\u2019s about them, they\u2019re right. It\u2019s about whatever\u2019s going on with them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We\u2019re not talking about the new book, but that\u2019s the first chapter. Know Thyself. You can\u2019t lead other people if you don\u2019t understand that. In my case, I\u2019m dealing with loss. Mom gone. Family gone. I didn\u2019t tell you, but I had other brothers and sisters. My father moved me out to California and took me away from them. It was loss after loss. You\u2019re having to deal with all these kinds of things and make peace with them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Also, I found out that I could be sarcastic at times. Where did that come from? My father. I had to unwind that. I never wanted to be sarcastic. I picked it up out of observation. It was like, \u201cThis is what he did, and this is what I do.\u201d If you go by and you go, \u201cI have the best father in the world,\u201d God bless you. That\u2019s great. Green lights. Keep doing what he did if that\u2019s the example for you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It could also be your mom. Maybe you had an uncle. Look at it because there are aspects of all of our upbringings where you go, \u201cI don\u2019t need to carry that forward any further into my life. That doesn\u2019t serve me well.\u201d If people can do that, it\u2019s not only these massive epiphanies of, \u201cI have a bunch of people to apologize for because of my brother from 30 years ago that I\u2019ve been blaming,\u201d but also, \u201cI don\u2019t want to be like that. I don\u2019t want to do that anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n There are aspects of your upbringing that you do not want to carry forward in your life.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s even the little things that show up in the way you do things. It\u2019s the mannerisms, little habits, and quirks that come from all of that. Understanding it can help you maybe see if you want to shift that perspective and change those habits.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Completely.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I want to shift gears a little bit because I do want to get to your new book. Before I do, I want to talk about when you published your book. What did you decide to do next? What was the work you got into? You\u2019ve gotten into coaching, all of the speaking, and all the amazing things you\u2019re doing. Tell me what the shift was.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Are these what you are calling these pivotal moments?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Flashpoints.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Here\u2019s another one. When I was writing the book, in the process, I didn\u2019t have a title for the book. It had nothing to do with the heart when I set it out. It was only in the process of you\u2019re going to have to explain it to people. I then realized I was affecting the hearts of people. I needed to go confirm that. What I did was I met with a world-class cardio surgeon and laid it out. I asked, \u201cCould I have been affecting the hearts of people with my leadership?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n I went and met her. She graduated top of her class at one of the SUNY medical schools in New York. She said, \u201cYou\u2019re figuring out something that we\u2019re figuring out in science. We\u2019ve always believed the heart was just a pump. Now, science is showing that it\u2019s not. It\u2019s connected to the mind.\u201d I had tears in my eyes when she was telling me this because it was a massive validation. It was like, \u201cI was doing this.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n She introduced me to some people and gave me a very firm understanding of the science that was emerging years ago, which has now become more commonly known. I called the book Lead from the Heart<\/em>. I didn\u2019t have a platform. I had a speaking agent, and she goes, \u201cYou need to build the platform.\u201d Do you know this story?<\/p>\n\n\n\n No, but I love hearing it. You keep them going.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n What happened was that she introduced me to this woman. I paid her $10,000. That was way too much money, but at this time, years ago, I had no platform. I didn\u2019t even know what a platform was. I was paying this woman to help me with it. Instead, she comes back and goes, \u201cI\u2019m ready to have a meeting. I\u2019ve read your book. I\u2019ve read your articles in Fast Company. I have Plan A and Plan B.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Plan A, you\u2019re going to hate. Plan B is what you\u2019re going to want. I want you to go with Plan A, but you\u2019re going to fight.\u201d I go, \u201cCan you tell me what\u2019s Plan A?\u201d I apologize to your readers, but this is what she said. She goes, \u201cAll I\u2019m going to tell you is you\u2019re going to fail if you continue to call this book Lead from the Heart<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n She advised me to use it like a Trojan horse. She said, \u201cOne last thing. Don\u2019t mention it ever. Stop talking about it because you\u2019re going to fail in no uncertain terms.\u201d That was helpful. $10,000 to be told that everything you\u2019ve done at this point is not going to succeed. Are you familiar with a guy named Spencer Johnson? Does that name do anything for you?<\/p>\n\n\n\n It sounds very familiar.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Spencer, for your audience, is the co-author and, I have to say, the genius behind The One Minute Manager<\/a><\/em>. He had written very short books and fables for children. He believed that people don\u2019t have a lot of time to read, so if you can give them an important message in a short amount of time. The One Minute Manager is 100 pages. That was Spencer\u2019s whole motivation. Give something where you can read it quickly and feel the accomplishment of reading a book.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He went and wrote Who Moved My Cheese?<\/a><\/em>, which sold 35 to 40 million copies. I had dinner with him one night. This is another one of these synchronicities. It turned out my wife\u2019s sister started working for him as his personal assistant and editor. She was like, \u201cYou’ve got to meet him.\u201d She set up a dinner, and he was gracious. He has passed away since this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What happened was he said, \u201cTell me your thesis. Tell me what you\u2019re about,\u201d and so I told him. I said that we\u2019ve been managing people entirely misaligned to human nature, and that we think people don\u2019t want to work when they do. We need to support their needs. I<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n told him that the heart and the mind are connected and that we should be paying more attention to how people feel at work than how they think at work because feelings drive behavior. Up to 95% of human behavior is driven by feelings. Descartes said, \u201cI think, therefore I am.\u201d He was wrong, and science has proved that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He listens to this and goes, \u201cAre you up for a struggle? You\u2019re going to have one.\u201d It was deflating. I\u2019m like, \u201cI\u2019ve heard this before,\u201d in kinder terms from him than this woman. He then said, \u201cMark, what you\u2019re speaking is truth, and truth ultimately prevails.\u201d I had a fork in the rug. Do I listen to the, \u201cYou\u2019re going to effing fail,\u201d person, or do I listen to Spencer? You know what choice I made.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Somebody asked me, \u201cIf you knew it was going to take a decade before people figured out that you were right, would you have done it?\u201d I go, \u201cI probably wouldn\u2019t have, but maybe I would\u2019ve. I don\u2019t know.\u201d You wouldn\u2019t have had a lot of incentive if somebody from the future came in and said, \u201cIt\u2019s not going to be for another ten years.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n I started writing for Fast Company with the intention of dripping on people so that they could go, \u201cNot the nut I thought he was.\u201d I then started a podcast<\/a> a couple of years ago. One of the benefits of the podcast and the intention was that people could hear me and go, \u201cHe\u2019s not crazy. He\u2019s not insane. Some of what he\u2019s talking about makes sense to me.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n I don\u2019t know about that heart thing or whatever their fantasy was, but I started finding that a couple of years ago, there started a printing press of important, well-respected academics and researchers from the world\u2019s greatest universities who were writing books and adding some dimension of validation for my original thesis. I kept parading these people. They’re all important people, like Amy Edmondson at Harvard. I had her on before anybody was having her on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Why would I have a professor on? It was because she was writing about psychological safety. I said to her, \u201cCan we add a dimension to this that it\u2019s also emotional safety?\u201d She goes, \u201cAbsolutely.\u201d In my book, in the second edition, it says psychological and emotional safety because it\u2019s how people feel. What has happened is that people have finally come to realize, \u201cNot that I needed this, but I was right all along. In the progression of what I\u2019ve learned, I\u2019m even more firmly certain than year-to-year, week-to-week, day-to-day. Every day, I\u2019m learning something new that is another piece of validation.\u201d The world is coming to this because there are so many people who are bringing some dimension to this. That\u2019s where we are.<\/p>\n\n\n\n All good things take hard work to get there. The process of putting good thought leadership into the world is committing to the process of showing up even when people say, \u201cYou\u2019re crazy,\u201d or, \u201cThat\u2019s never going to work.\u201d Ultimately, that\u2019s where the payoff comes from. It\u2019s this ability to say, \u201cI know in my heart that this is right. There\u2019s something to this that we need to listen to.\u201d Eventually, the haters will start to turn around, or not the haters, but they will start to see.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n I agree with you. The thing is that you don\u2019t feel successful in that gap. For someone who was raised the way I was, that created a lot of emotional friction. You\u2019re like, \u201cI know I\u2019m right, but I\u2019m not getting any validation for it right now.\u201d You could easily say, \u201cI\u2019m going to go back to where I was most successful to get that feeling.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n I have neighbors across the street from me. This goes back to before I even wrote the book the first time. They\u2019re both doctors. They were getting up every morning, and I\u2019d be making coffee and seeing them go off to work. They were a reminder that I used to do that myself. I had a place, and I had a big responsibility that was all-consuming. I\u2019m like, \u201cWho am I? I\u2019m not an author because I haven\u2019t written anything yet. I\u2019m not an executive anywhere anymore.\u201d You\u2019re having to live with that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You find out, \u201cI\u2019ve accomplished it,\u201d and you\u2019re expecting a parade. You\u2019re expecting people to go, \u201cLook at what he\u2019s pulled off. He\u2019s going into medical science to demonstrate that we need a whole new paradigm of leadership.\u201d I\u2019m getting, \u201cSorry, but we\u2019re not interested.\u201d You\u2019re having to live with that for a long time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There were days when I was honestly arm wrestling with myself, like, \u201cDo I keep doing this?\u201d There was an inner knowing that when the days got where you\u2019re close to going, \u201cI\u2019m going to send some resumes out and get done with this because this is never going to happen,\u201d kind of a thing that you go, \u201cThis is why you\u2019re here. This is what your purpose is. You\u2019re stuck.\u201d I\u2019m glad that I made every decision that I made, but those were difficult decisions to make.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I hear that. There are so many people who are reading this and can say, \u201cI had those moments, too, where I doubted myself, like, \u2018What am I doing?. Maybe I should retreat back to safety. It\u2019s time for me to give this up.\u2019 The reality is sticking around a little longer and seeing if maybe I\u2019m in the liminal space or that middle space. If I commit a little longer to this process, it\u2019s going to pay off.\u201d Luckily, it does.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n People have regrets years later when they made the decision to flee to safety. It felt good at the moment. I know that when I die, I\u2019m not going to look back and go, \u201cI\u2019m sorry that I quit on something that was so important to me.\u201d I\u2019ve read since then that people have advised smartly that if you\u2019re going to do something like we\u2019re doing, you don\u2019t give up your day job.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You keep doing what you\u2019re doing, and you do it on the side so that you\u2019re not vulnerable. Pass the baton from traditional work experience to being an entrepreneur when you\u2019re ready to move and you don\u2019t feel that vulnerable. It\u2019s hard to start from ground zero, especially with an idea that people are like, \u201cI\u2019m not so sure.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Hindsight is 20\/20. We choose our paths and do what we need to do. At this point, you\u2019ve already chosen that battle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In many respects, the path was chosen for me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When I think about your next book, and I think about the challenge that is ahead of you on this one, it\u2019s related but unrelated. It seems like you\u2019ve chosen another big, audacious goal. I\u2019d like to hear from you. Tell us about this new book. How do you think people are going to receive this one?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n That\u2019s so massively astute of you to say what you said. I\u2019m like, \u201cWhy can\u2019t I write like a simple book, challenging anybody\u2019s assumptions?\u201d I\u2019m challenging 2 assumptions, and 1 is big. I wrote this article in 2013 with the support of Gallup, which said that only 30% of Americans are engaged at work. This was 2013. Since then, engagement has been the biggest topic in the world. It\u2019s like, \u201cHere is what you need to do.\u201d We start surveys as consultants. There are hundreds of books that have been written.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I\u2019m looking at this one day and I\u2019m like, \u201cThis is ridiculous. Twelve years later, and the numbers are the same?\u201d It was instantaneous for me because I\u2019ve been living in this for so long that I was like, \u201cNo one has ever taken this seriously. No one has ever been held accountable for it. They only give it twice a year. It takes them a month or two to get the results out.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div> Somebody\u2019s complaining about something that happened in April, and then you\u2019re doing your survey in December. The manager sees it and goes, \u201cThat happened so long ago. I\u2019m not taking that seriously.\u201d Wall Street never took it seriously. CEOs never took it seriously. It was this check-the-box activity. Gallup keeps presenting this as a dire situation where the companies keep meeting their goals, and the market keeps going up. It\u2019s almost irrelevant, this idea of engagement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Meanwhile, people are making money off of the idea.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Completely massive. You can imagine. I\u2019m not saying completely cave in on engagement. What I\u2019m saying is that we need to stop talking about engagement. We need to stop measuring twice a year, thinking that we\u2019re doing something with any sincerity. We need to create a system that\u2019s going to ensure that if you do ask people how they feel, which is something that is essential, you need to do it more regularly, and there needs to be accountability for it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There\u2019s technology. I can send you a survey and go, \u201cTell me how you feel about working for Mark and his support.\u201d It\u2019s bright green, bright red, and everything in between. I do this to you and 30 other people who are working for me. The very next day, I get the results, and I see how people are feeling and their comments. Guess who else gets my feedback? My boss, his or her boss, and on and on it goes. HR is seeing it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Let\u2019s say I\u2019m a toxic manager. Let\u2019s say that I get results every quarter. Everybody thinks I\u2019m a star, but then they start to see this trend. You\u2019re asking people, \u201cHow\u2019s Mark as a supportive person? How\u2019s Mark in terms of growing your career? How\u2019s Mark in terms of appreciating you?\u201d You start to see this trend that this star we think we have is someone who is disabling people, undermining people, and making people hate their jobs and probably quit at some point if we don\u2019t deal with this. This is a gap that\u2019s profoundly missing with engagement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Changing roles here, let\u2019s say I work for you. You get the feedback and go, \u201cAmongst all the people that work for me, Mark\u2019s not getting very good grades. He\u2019s getting a lot of red.\u201d You can meet with me immediately and go, \u201cDid you see the surveys? Did you see everybody else\u2019s surveys? Everybody\u2019s in the green. You\u2019re in the way red. We need to fix this. I need you to think about it. Go talk to some people in the green, come back to me in a week, and tell me what your plan is to turn this around. If you need some support from me, I\u2019m going to do it.\u201d You\u2019re making people accountable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Stop talking about engagement. Instead, create a system that asks people how they feel.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n If you don\u2019t improve Mark\u2019s behavior as a manager, then you can have a different conversation and say, \u201cIf you want to continue to be on my team, i.e., a manager, you have 30 days to turn this around. You can\u2019t go and browbeat people into giving you better results. You need to change as a leader.\u201d This, to me, is a profound thing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I agree.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Part of it is pulse surveying regularly as opposed to doing an insincere check-the-box massive study that is way in arrears, too late to get anything, and no one ever responds to it. It builds resentment. It ironically lowers engagement even further when employees go, \u201cWhat a stupid exercise. Nobody’s taking this seriously. No one\u2019s going to do anything about it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The other dimension of this is that there is such an amazing study. An economics professor has done a multi-year study. Jan-Emannuel De Neve is his name. He\u2019s at Oxford. What he\u2019s shown is that if you ask people, \u201cHow did you feel after this work week?\u201d You don\u2019t go, \u201cBefore you give me a grade, you don\u2019t have any marital problems, do you? You\u2019re not stressed out financially.\u201d You need to take all of that into consideration, but they just said, \u201cHow did you feel at the end of this week?\u201d They didn\u2019t ask for anything. No caveats, in other words.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What they did was week-to-week, they monitored the responses and then monitored their key performance metrics. They were able to demonstrate that they went up significantly and down significantly depending on people\u2019s well-being. You were laughing and smiling earlier when I said this. I loved it. You don\u2019t need to ask them twelve different questions in an engagement survey. You have to ask them specific to this topic, \u201cHow do you feel?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Feelings drive behavior, which is my thesis. Even though I\u2019m challenging assumptions again and there are going to be people who are going to want to resist what I\u2019m talking about again, it\u2019s directly aligned to everything that I\u2019ve been talking about. Well-being is attached to feelings and emotions, so I know I\u2019m right with what I\u2019m saying.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The final part of your question was how you think it\u2019s going to be received. People realize that I\u2019ve paid my dues.\u201d They can see that what I\u2019ve done proved to be right. What I\u2019m hoping is that people take a leap with me. With the early feedback so far, I\u2019m not getting, \u201cThat\u2019s wrong. That\u2019s stupid. You don\u2019t bring heart into leadership. I\u2019m not getting that this time.\u201d Maybe I\u2019ll get my parade after all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You deserve a parade for this one. This is a good one. Here\u2019s my perspective. One of the things about this, for the data geeks out there, is that this is a good data point, too. It\u2019s allowing people to see that we\u2019re collecting data on an ongoing basis, but it\u2019s based on something that\u2019s real. It\u2019s based on human emotions. It also allows you to see that it\u2019s not just how people are working. It\u2019s about how they are as humans and how they are showing up.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s not just about the work in general, but about all aspects of their lives. You said you\u2019re not having them check themselves at the door. You\u2019re saying, \u201cHow are you?\u201d What\u2019s great about this, and I hope this is also part of what you\u2019re thinking, is this idea that you\u2019re not going to come down on somebody for saying, \u201cEveryone on your team\u2019s red. Therefore, you\u2019re fired.\u201d It\u2019s more about, \u201cLet\u2019s talk about it. Let\u2019s take a compassionate lens.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Not only that, but even with the feedback itself. You go out to your 30 people and you say, \u201cHow are you feeling about the culture right now?\u201d You get some critical feedback, like, \u201cWhat is the culture? It seems vague to me. We\u2019re not living up to the values.\u201d You\u2019re like, \u201cThis isn\u2019t what I was hoping for. I wanted people to go, \u2018Everything\u2019s great. I love working here.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Instead of going, \u201cThat\u2019s too bad,\u201d the way that I\u2019m recommending this is that you\u2019re going to have a conversation with your people. You say, \u201cThis is what the feedback was. How do we make it better? What can we do?\u201d You can\u2019t solve every problem. You have to be clear with people, \u201cI\u2019m not in control of the world, but I can control what I can control. What can we do within our team to make this better?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n You\u2019re also going to be able to share that with your manager, other managers, and peers so that everybody\u2019s getting the benefit of all these conversations. How can you not improve an organization\u2019s engagement, ironically, by not doing that? If we come back five years from now and everybody\u2019s been doing this, engagement\u2019s going to be at 80%.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I love your approach to everything you do. It\u2019s groundbreaking but also simple. The problem is that we have had some resistance for so long that it\u2019s been hard for us to break through those barriers. I\u2019m so glad that you do the work you do.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Thank you very much.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Time-wise, we\u2019re running out of time. I want to make sure we leave some space for some of the important questions that I like to ask, and that is the last question. What are 1 or 2 books that have had an impact on you, and why?<\/p>\n\n\n\n The first one is called The Creative Act<\/a><\/em> by Rick Rubin, which is one of the most magnificent books I\u2019ve ever read. All I\u2019ll say is that I was walking on the beach one day, and I had this word pop into my head as I was getting off the beach after an hour. It was primer. I was like, \u201cThat\u2019s a word I don\u2019t use. That\u2019s a word I don\u2019t see. That\u2019s a word I don\u2019t hear. What\u2019s that about?\u201d I started thinking<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n I asked one of my clairvoyant friends. I go, \u201cAm I supposed to do something with this? It feels like I\u2019m supposed to write a primer.\u201d She goes, \u201cThat\u2019s your gift from the universe, so you\u2019re supposed to do it.\u201d That was it. There was a tug of war because I remember how painful it was to write originally. I was remembering that. I\u2019m like, \u201cDo I? Do I not?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n I read in Rick Rubin\u2019s book that the way that creativity works is that there\u2019s creative energy out in the ether, and that creative people know how to download it. There\u2019s an antenna. Everybody\u2019s creative is his point, but the ones that look like they\u2019re not creative don\u2019t do anything<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n with it. He goes, \u201cThe way this works is you\u2019re going to be given the gift, and if you don\u2019t do anything with it, it\u2019s going to be given to someone else.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s not because the universe wants to punish you, but because the timing for the information is right.\u201d I\u2019m reading this, and I swear to God, I was like, \u201cDon\u2019t take it away from me. I\u2019m your man. I\u2019m going to do this.\u201d I\u2019m not kidding. I had this sense of urgency, like, \u201cDon\u2019t take it away from me. I\u2019m sorry that I resisted this idea.\u201d I got the books not long ago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The other book is going to sound like it\u2019s completely out of context, but it changed my view. I\u2019ve told you about these people who have come into my life and have had these impacts. I\u2019m like, \u201cHow do you explain that?\u201d It\u2019s called the Autobiography of a Yogi<\/a><\/em>. It\u2019s the most successful spiritual book ever sold by Swami Yogananda.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The hermitage where he wrote it is about 30 miles from me. When I was struggling, I went up where he wrote the book and said, \u201cHelp me out here, Swami.\u201d I\u2019m not kidding. I was like, \u201cI\u2019m struggling here.\u201d That’s when everything turned for me. It\u2019s mystical and amazing. There are real people from when he wrote it many years ago. It was a life-changing book.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Both books are remarkable. Your perspective on both of those books is so spot on and amazing. I can\u2019t thank you enough for sharing that. I don\u2019t want to end this, but we have come to a close. I\u2019m so grateful for you sharing your stories and your insights. It has been a wonderful conversation.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Thank you so very much for having me on. I appreciate it. I loved having a conversation with you. Thank you so very much.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I appreciate it. Before I let you go, I want to make sure people know where to find you. What\u2019s the best place for them to find your work? Your podcast is amazing. Make sure you mention that as well.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nTalking Straight To The Heart<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
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<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\nDiscovering The Science Behind Heart-Based Leadership<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
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Why Authors Should Relive Their Experiences<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
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Building An Online Platform<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
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<\/figure>Recognizing The Power Of Employee Well-Being<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
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Mark\u2019s Most Recommended Books<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
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<\/figure>Get In Touch With Mark And Buy His Books<\/h4>\n\n\n\n