Robin Reed - A Tribute

The Bosshole® Transformation Nation lost one of its friends a few weeks ago, Mr. Robin Reed.  Robin and his wonderful wife Shawna joined us a few years ago to share their story and we thought it fitting to republish the episode to honor Robin and pay our respects to him and Shawna for what they gave the world as a team.  This is where I first heard the term "Go-Givers" - Robin always gave his best.  He is certainly missed...

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Visit us at www.realgoodventures.com.  We are a Talent Optimization consultancy specializing in people and business execution analytics.  Real Good Ventures was founded by Sara Best and John Broer who are both Certified Talent Optimization Consultants with over 50 years of combined consulting and organizational performance experience.  Sara is also certified in EQi and a member of the CAPA Pro membership network supported by The Table Group.  RGV is also a Certified Partner of Line-of-Sight, a powerful organizational health and execution platform.  RGV is known for its work in leadership development, executive coaching, and what we call organizational rebuild where we bring all our tools together to diagnose an organization's present state and how to grow toward a stronger future state. 

Transcript

John Broer: 0:06

A very warm welcome to all of our friends out there in the Bosshole Transformation Nation. This is your host, John Broer, welcoming you to this week's episode of the Bosshole Chronicles, which, in fact, is going to be a re-release of an episode we did a few years ago. Back in 2021, the early days of the Bosshole Chronicles we had a chance to sit down with a wonderful couple that we had met through our work in talent optimization and the predictive index. Robin and Shawna Reed from EmFluent had a chance to visit us in the in the Bosshole Chronicles studios and we got to learn more about their incredible work.

John Broer: 0:44

And, sadly, Robin passed away just a few weeks ago. As a matter of fact, his memorial service was yesterday and we wanted to re-release this episode as a tribute to him, to honor the work he and Shauna have done over the years and the far- reaching impact Robin has had on his community, not only locally but also nationally. I would invite you to learn more about this remarkable person. In the show notes, you will see a link to his tribute page. Just settle in and get a chance to know this wonderful person that we had a chance to know for far too short of a time. Once again our friends Robin and Shawna Reed.

Sara Best: 1:34

Hey everybody, welcome back to the Bosshole Chronicles. It is a delight to be with you again and, as our listeners continue to reinforce our subject matter, expert episodes really are bringing forth transformational information. Today is no exception. But before we get into that, I just wanted to say hello to the best partner and buddy on the planet, my co-host John Broer. John, how are you today?

John Broer: 2:00

Oh, Sara, thanks, I'm good. It's good to be back and good to have you back in the co-host seat. And, yeah, we got another subject matter expert. I'm sorry. We have two co-subject matter experts that are joining us today. Both are co-founders and principals of a consultancy called EmFluent, and we're going to learn about EmFluent in just a little bit. I am talking about none other than Shawna and Robin Reed. We have the privilege of being not only certified partners of the Predictive Index with them, but also certified partners of the Line of Site Organizational Health Index, and so we've had a chance over the last few months to get to know them.

John Broer: 2:39

Let me give you a little bit of background. I'll start with Shawna. So Shawna, as I had said, founded or co-founded EmFluent with Robin. Emfluent is a corporate coaching and consulting company that focuses on leadership strategy, talent optimization and sales arbitrage. Shauna's drive for reimagining what is possible in the workplace has been amplified over her extensive career, where she was a trusted advisor to business owners and HR executives across various industries. And, of course, one of the most important things we need to know is that she is an avid golfer, along with Robin. Is that correct? That is correct. She has corporate affiliations as follows a board and executive committee member with the Arizona Foundation for Women, co-chair of Fund Development Committee with the Arizona Foundation for Women as well, and an active member in she Leads program. Now let's also find out about Robin.

John Broer: 3:41

In addition to his work with Shawna at EmFluent, Robin is also the president and CEO of the Black Chamber of Arizona, president of Occam Sustainability Partners, an international sustainability solutions consulting firm that provides energy saving strategy, and he's also recognized as a professional speaker, spoken nationally and internationally on a number of topics and, of course, can be seen side by side with Shawna playing golf. I keep going back to golf because you both live in Arizona and I'm jealous because you get to go out there and play multiple times a week. Phoenix College President's Advisory Board. Also a board member of Treasure House since 2019, valley of the Sun United Way board member. Arizona State University Knowledge Exchange for Resilience Council of Resilience Leaders and ASUWP Carey School of Business. Aznext Steering Committee. Wow, I think we need now episode two to actually have them onto the podcast. But hey, Robin and Shawna, so glad to have you with us and welcome to the Bosshole Chronicles.

John Broer: 4:48

Thank you very much.

Robin Reed: 4:48

Thank you for having us.

John Broer: 4:49

I'm really happy to be here. So my first question is EmFluent's really interesting name for your consultancy. Please tell us about the name, the origin and how you came up with it.

Robin Reed: 5:02

Well, early on, what we understood was in the workplace. We call it culture, often right, there's a workplace culture, but Shawna and I believe it's a language, it's a communication. How well does leadership, management and frontline workers communicate what's important about the advancement of the organization? So, in looking at it as a language, we consider ourselves to be fluent in employee-employer communication. Nice, okay, EmFluent, I get it now.

John Broer: 5:36

And when did EmFluent start? July 2019. And so one of the things you shared with us, Robin, is the tagline, if you will, for EmFluent is helping leaders lead better companies. Is that accurate?

Robin Reed: 5:49

That is spot on. Yes, we help leaders lead better companies.

John Broer: 5:53

And I would imagine that stems from the past, both your past and Shawna's past and the work that you've done. But tell us about your interest in leaders and leadership. Why is that so central to EmFluent's work?

Robin Reed: 6:06

So for me, my background. I'm a serial entrepreneur. I've started companies, merged companies, sold companies, and when I wasn't doing that I was in financial services and I had A the dubious distinction of being a stockbroker on Black Monday. Back in the 80s. I got my series seven when I was 19 for the first time and I specialized. So I worked for Schwab when he had two offices in the entire country. I specialized in working with CEOs in the sale of their restricted stock, and so I became very good at that. But it also told me I had a real comfort in speaking to leaders. That was a more comfortable place for me and that kind of started me on my path. And throughout my career I've just always found that I'm more effective when I'm communicating with the leadership of an organization.

John Broer: 6:55

And Shawna for you the whole idea of working with leaders. What does that stem from?

Shawna Reed: 7:01

For me it stems from over 20 years before going out on my own with Robin being an employee, moving my way through the ranks of a specific industry and enjoying opportunities to be a leader. But, man, did I notice the difference between when I had a good leader and, as you would say, a Boss hole, and whenever I would leave one place to go to another? I'd always think, man, that was so avoidable. And so when I looked at how I could make a difference in another area and help leaders was, how can I get them before they lose their best talent and before they mess it up right just by not being self aware and not understanding how everyone can get what they want? So that was really where it came out. For me it's much more almost coming from like the bottom up and Robin coming from the top down, and it seemed like a great marriage together to be able to put those together.

John Broer: 7:48

Nice. So continuing on that, Shawna, if we may. In our preliminary conversation you were talking about conflict and obviously conflict is something that happens within the context of a work relationship and specifically, leaders needing to know how to use conflict or disagreement in a constructive way. But you've seen it work in both directions. But how do you help leaders really use conflict as a tool for good or in a productive or constructive way?

Shawna Reed: 8:19

Yeah, that's a great angle to take it from.

Shawna Reed: 8:21

So what I have noticed is that when we start with you know, when I'm working directly with a leader doing coaching and we're talking about whatever conflict may be arising with them and perhaps someone on their team, even sometimes the CEO, you know whatever level it is we're talking so much of, it comes down to the communication styles, lack of communication, maybe transparency, but very often if we can understand and I can help bring them back to the self awareness piece that we worked on, like understanding their own behaviors, the way they like to communicate and why they do it, why they're driven that way, and then the awareness of the people they're dealing with, and typically if we can take away that narrative that we as people tend to add.

Shawna Reed: 9:00

We see a behavior and then we add a backstory and very rarely do we assume positive intent. So we come in with this feeling of I've got to defend myself in all these scenarios and so often, if you can take that back like step back a couple steps and actually look at the conversation that you're about to have and assume to the best of your ability positive intent and then just understand the different styles, a lot of times, conflict just becomes a discussion. As Robin said earlier, we were talking a disagreement, but that's okay, that's healthy, that's how you get to the good place. So I find that when we start there, a lot of it kind of diffused itself a little bit naturally.

John Broer: 9:38

Well, and we conjure up all kinds of stories in our head. We had an episode a few months ago where our guest was talking about what was it, Sara? Her inner committee. You know the committee in your head that conjures up all kinds of crazy stories and jumps to conclusions about something maybe something a person said, or something that they did, and we arrive at this wrong conclusion, which only exacerbates conflict and disagreement. Isn't it amazing, though, when you put the data in front of them and they start to understand through self awareness and awareness of others, it is literally transformative.

Shawna Reed: 10:12

Absolutely, and I think you know I'm kind of stealing about Robin we were having a pre-talk made the comment about celebrating. So it's also not just understanding why people are the way they are, but finding out how to celebrate and be happy that you bring that specific, unique trait and way you communicate to the table. It really can change the entire perspective, which again takes conflict and it makes it difficult to get there unless you're just trying to.

John Broer: 10:35

Well, let's talk about that. And so, Robin, you know, continue on that, if you would, on the idea of celebrating your unique characteristics and qualities, because, as we know, as PI professionals, there are 17 reference profiles, all of which are unique and different and should be celebrated. But how do you, how do you help people or a person get to the idea that how you're wired really is unique and is should be celebrated?

Robin Reed: 11:01

Well, I can tell you because we did it just this past Saturday.

Robin Reed: 11:04

Shawna and I provided a workshop to a wonderful organization and one of the things we did as we went around the room and had each person share their profile, we asked the rest of the organization and this was the leadership team of a very successful Arizona nonprofit.

Robin Reed: 11:23

But we asked the rest of them tell me how this person's traits benefit the company. And when you hear 11 of your coworkers say, oh yeah, I do know that about him or her, and here's where it's really good for us it elevates the individual that they're referring to, but it also imprints in the minds of the people sharing that, oh, that's right, that's value. This individual's personality brings value because they're very good at, you know, moving the needle or they're very good at slowing us down when we get too excited and want to rush, you know head on, and they see that we're running toward a brick wall and they're telling us just slow down. And so that's one great way that it does it, because it allows people to realize not only individually are they great for the organization with where they work, but the others around them are as well, because often after you get hired, you become task oriented and you forget that there were values that your employer thought you had and that's why they hired you.

John Broer: 12:25

Yeah, I'm intrigued because recently we were working with a, an executive group, that is so I mean. So if we look at it from the team design standpoint, in other words, we know that every team is perfectly designed to get the results they get and we can identify or diagnose what kind of team they are. I mean, this was a, this was an exploring and a path finding team, meaning they were moving very fast but they had some balance. They had some people that we would call stabilizing individuals that actually were more quiet and when they slowed down to get their input and they realized, oh my gosh, you know, this is so critical for our success we can't we can't blow past that input. People start to recognize that every individual in this organization provides something unique, but if we don't take the time to really tap into that, we can really drive down this pathway way too fast to just ruination, and we've got to be very careful about.

Sara Best: 13:25

I think the self-awareness piece, Shawna, that you talked about, you know I think of it in terms of drives, needs and behaviors. When we help individuals who are in relationship with one another in the workplace understand that sometimes their drives are competing, it does cut through the drama and the tendency we have to create the story. I think that is so powerful and I love that you touched on that. And if I bring that together with celebrating who we are, it just it's occurred to me a lot recently.

Sara Best: 13:56

I've had a number of conversations with young people who have recently graduated from college and are now finding themselves in the workforce and they're kind of like what is going on? They're experiencing managers who project and sort of guess about what they're going to be good at, and they do that just based on some of the experience they've had with them. Maybe they're just kind of crossing their fingers and hoping this young person will be able to fulfill on that. So, as you guys were talking about just developing that kind of self-awareness, if anything, we would want to equip these young individuals to appreciate who they are, what their drives and needs are and then how they're going to have to adapt, because, of course, when you start off in a new job. It's not all you expect it's going to be and I don't want to go down a path in a different direction than we need to here but the celebrating who the person is.

Sara Best: 14:55

I think sometimes managers and hiring leaders think they're doing that based on the resume and the great conversation they had and what they observed. But unless they know the real essence of that person, based on their natural behavioral drives and needs, can they really optimize that individual? And I think the same is true in conflict. So I was picking up what you were putting down there about ways to help people cut through the baloney and get to real helpful solutions together so they don't go home at night replaying that videotape in their mind or that audio tape in their mind about the conversation. That was challenging.

Shawna Reed: 15:36

I was just going to say, Sara, one thing. I just want to add what you were saying. I feel like that exact reason. The other thing that we talk about, I know, within PI and stuff as well, is the common language. What I will tell you is, when we were done in each one of these that we have done recently it also after everyone got done celebrating and understanding and feeling good about each other's differences they were ready and they had a plan for okay. So in the future, when I am the person who asked all the questions or I'm the person who does this, we can kind of even laugh about.

Shawna Reed: 16:03

Remember, I'm the one that holds this down or I'm the one and now me saying, hey, can you give me a minute or whatever it was, doesn't feel like. Oh well, sorry, I offended. I mean it really just takes the sting out of the differences. And I think that other piece was what was so transformative, even just from a period of time where we all celebrated each other in a way that wasn't that it had substance right, it's not just a feel good, it's necessary. And then watching how they're going to change their behavior going forward, I think is probably the most unique part of all of this and that's what gets us excited.

Robin Reed: 16:35

And I think to add to that is that you know, along with being celebrated, the one universal thing that I think exists through any relationship work, marriage, kids, whatever is people want to feel valued. When you speak to someone in their language, they feel valued. So if someone is more deliberate in their process, so we coach employers. Hey, when you call a meeting, if you know that you've got an employee that prefers to see the agenda first, send them the agenda. Just send it. They're going to read it, but send it to everybody, because somebody else doesn't want to be left off. They have no intention of reading the agenda ahead of time but they don't want to be excluded.

Robin Reed: 17:18

By giving them that time, by giving them the permission to just walk into the meeting comfortably with ideas, you get a better outcome from the meeting. Of course, but that individual felt valued, they didn't feel like they had to fit into this one little box. Because if you have weekly meetings, they're feeling that anxiety every week. What if you took that away? What greater production and contribution could you get out of that individual if you took away weekly anxiety? Because we know, week over week over week, pretty soon they leave one meeting and the anxiety already starts for the next meeting a week from now. So we really work with them on understanding what the benefit of all of this is too. It's not. It really isn't supposed to be all warm and fuzzy, and you know kumbaya, it's no. This set actually has a very practical business benefit.

John Broer: 18:08

Right, and I think back about your example over the weekend of where you had this amazing awareness when people started to hear the value they brought to it. And without a very intentional step like that, we make some wild assumptions, or something that you know, based on the behavior that we see, and that's the only thing we get to see, based on drives, needs and behavior. But you know what we refer to as the fundamental attribution error, where we will see something and will make assumptions about a person's behavior. Let's say they don't contribute in a meeting, they're reticent, they just sit there. Well, somebody could very easily misinterpret that as well. They don't care, they're not even contributing. Well, they're processing that. Without the data that you're talking about, we go off in a different direction and we make these terrible, terrible errors.

John Broer: 18:54

But something, Robin, that you said as we were talking before the podcast about I love the phrase. You use the phrase holding on too tight. I'd like to unpack that a little bit more in the context of that. We've been having some conversations, as a matter of fact, this week's podcast with Robih Shanshiry. You know he talked about hey, if you ever played baseball, if you're holding that bat too tight, you got to be loose, but if you're holding it too tight, it's like a golf club. You're holding it too tight, you're going to be very ineffective in your swing. So when you say holding on too tight when it comes to leadership, tell us more about that.

Robin Reed: 19:32

And I've seen this certainly more recently. You know, as we call it, the great resignation as employees and employers are finding themselves at odds about things like remote work, hybrid work, etc. So you're seeing a lot of organizations, and management in particular, start to draw lines in the sand. You know this has to happen or you don't have a job, but conversely, you're seeing employees feeling empowered enough to say that's okay, I'll make it easy for you. I don't want the job, I'm going to go over here and I and I and don't let me forget, I want to share with you something. I had lunch with a gentleman who had a previous exit from his other tech company at $98 million and has jumped back in and is doing it all over again, and he really gave me a great overview of how he sees this.

Robin Reed: 20:20

But when I say holding on too tight, it's when people are uncomfortable. They hold on tight. Imagine being on a roller coaster or anything else. Right, when you aren't prepared for the next turn that's coming, the first thing you do is grip the bars tighter. On a roller coaster, even though it's safe, you could put your hands up in the air and you're still going to be fine, but instinctively we grip tighter.

Sara Best: 20:43

Yeah.

Robin Reed: 20:44

And as employers grip tighter, as managers grip tighter, they start to restrict the the contribution of employees, because you start to direct their behavior instead of value their contribution.

Robin Reed: 20:59

And that's really the key when you direct someone's behavior versus valuing their contribution, you begin to separate in your direction. Because to me, that's the time that a manager or a bosshole, if you will should actually be approaching these employees and saying hey, we're in this new place, let's come together and share ideas. How do we get to where we want to go from where we are, because we didn't intend to be here, but now that we're here, we all have an obligation to get to the next place from where we stand. How do we do that? You've got to assume you hired quality people, otherwise they shouldn't work for your company. They never. They never should have been hired if you didn't think they were quality individuals. But once you hire them, treat them that way and get that, get that involvement. Again, relax, loosen up. Don't assume that a bunch of adults who have households and families and are caregivers and contributors in their churches and everywhere else don't assume that all of a sudden they became completely inept and and need someone to tell them what to do and how to do it. But again, bring it together as more of a collaborative approach. That requires kind of loosening your grip, loosening that need to hold on and, if I can extend that a little bit.

Robin Reed: 22:15

One of the things I often see is when a manager is not setting their individual sites on advancing within an organization, then they hold too tight to the position they hold within the organization. But we know great leaders are always looking for someone to replace them. The best leaders on the planet always want someone. They're always grooming someone to take their job because their sites are set on the next job. They want the next opportunity they want. When someone is getting too restrictive, when they can't set their own, they can't chart their own course for advancement, then they hold on too tight to the job they have it. Then all of a sudden you've got a log jam because it starts to bottleneck at their position because now you've got two or three people that can do their job and now you've created conflict versus collaboration, which everybody should be moving within an organization when you're doing it right.

John Broer: 23:14

Absolutely. As it relates to relaxing, a phrase that comes to mind is leaders need to be comfortable with being uncomfortable, because that is uncomfortable for some people. Relaxing especially those of us with high dominance or very to extremely high dominance the need for control, the need to hold on and grip pretty tightly, is extreme and very profound. Do you think that that means we are looking at a different kind of leader moving forward?

Shawna Reed: 23:44

I'll weigh in on one thing. I was just thinking, as you were saying, that I do think that when one piece I've liked to see organizations are starting to get a little bit more open with the term leader versus manager, and I definitely would tell you, even for Robin and I, when we talk about as we grow and as we bring on additional help within Influent, we already know that Robin isn't a dynamic leader. He really enjoys being able to help chart a course and have vision and think in a certain way and be able to really take us in that direction. And I'm a different type of leader and we've already said that as we start to bring in new trainers and other people that need to be maybe have a little bit more of that. You know kind of people first. That would be, that would be my type of leadership. So even knowing within an organization, A leader can be a leader.

Shawna Reed: 24:30

They do not need to be a manager. If they should not be a manager, let's not put them in those positions. They're usually not enjoying it while it's happening. Nobody who's underneath them enjoys it. So that's another piece we work really hard is say we don't have to take people out of leadership roles if they're really good at one thing. But if we're finding that the people thing is the people part of it is making them unhappy and everyone they're supposed to be managing unhappy, how do we move that? How do we make it so?

Shawna Reed: 24:55

We don't have people going out the back end because of something so preventable. So I just I wanted to jump in because I think, as we're saying this, the term leader and manager are different. They sometimes are exactly the same. They should. If you're a good manager, you should be a good leader, but we're not just one in the same.

John Broer: 25:10

No, that's true. I mean, you know, in a recent presentation I said, you know, leadership is a state of influence with other people. Management is a position of authority over other people. Now, sometimes you get both, but you don't have to be a manager to be an awesome leader and you don't have to be a, you know, a leader to be just a manager. But when you can get both, sean at your point, yes, the thing that's interesting is that when people look at the reference profiles and there are 17 of them they say, well, who makes the best leaders? And I know that all of us answer the question everyone can lead. They're just going to lead from that point of origin. You just have to help them unpack and understand the beauty of their leadership DNA. But it's going to be different for all of them.

Sara Best: 25:54

The part that kind of concerns me is we're talking a lot about the way organizations need to structure themselves and approach leadership, but I don't know that many organizations know how to actualize that, because it sounds good in theory, but then if you sit with a group, say executive leadership team, or you sit with the CEO of an executive leadership team and you talk about each one of the individuals on the team and their superpower and where they might have challenges and traps, and you say to the CEO is that the right person for the job? And how often it is they say no. Sometimes they don't hesitate, sometimes they think for a long time and like not really we have to help organizations. Or said this way organizations need to do a better job of designing that leadership pathway. So if there is a superpower, does it have to entail management? I think there's some places where people need help with that. Would you agree?

Robin Reed: 26:52

Definitely. We were actually working with another technology company, very significant in size I think they do about a quarter billion in revenue and the CEO was telling us this he was walking through this process of explaining how he had hired. His HR director had hired someone but he didn't think the person was the right person for the job. So you now had conflict between the CEO and the CHRO and then the person ended up not working out. But because they didn't have an arbitrary tool to show why either one of them might be valid in their gut, they ended up wasting a lot of money Because now you have a disenchanted employee that you've now promoted, that you've now demoted, and it was a mess when it could have been. Wait here, let's show you why.

Robin Reed: 27:47

Because sometimes our gut feeling isn't a gut feeling, it's a personal feeling. That person isn't like me, so they rub me the wrong way. But truthfully, this person wouldn't have had direct communication on going with the CEO anyway. So the CEO's liking or disliking the individual was irrelevant. It's kind of meaningless To the purpose of the individual.

Shawna Reed: 28:09

Right.

Robin Reed: 28:10

So and, conversely, the CHRO might have just said oh, that person's so much like me, I get it, I get them, I like them. And that may have been irrelevant as well, where we can separate that out and say here, let's just look at the traits, let's look at the person, the responsibilities and the opportunity that we're trying to create from that, and is there a match there? Because maybe what we need to find is CEO, you, the two of you don't really work the same CHRO. You two work almost too much the same. Is there someone else within the organization that might be best suited to manage you? And again, we can show you that, we can just show to you so simply where it takes the guesswork and the personalities out and it just says let's use the science to do the work for us.

John Broer: 28:53

Yeah. Or, as we say, data, not drama. Let's get it off. Get that off the table really quick. It's funny.

John Broer: 28:59

We have a client that called me and said hey, we got this person. We love this person, by the way, Shawna, it's a promoter, by the way, everybody Shawna is a promoter and Robin is a captain, but they love this candidate. And I said, oh, that's nice. And. But they said not anywhere near the target. And I said All right, well, what do we do? And I said Well, I'm not going to tell you what to do in terms of hiring or not hiring. And I said but you know exactly what you're getting. And he said Well, my concern is that it's, it's not anything like the target and I think this person is going to struggle. And I said that's a reasonable conclusion. You know great briefcase, but we have to understand the behavioral match for this. And the funny thing is, as I said, of course you love them.

John Broer: 29:43

This was a promoter, this was a, this was somebody with extremely high extraversion, but that's not what you were looking for. And I said so these biases that can influence these decisions internally are made so much easier to manage when we just look at the data. Doesn't mean this person wouldn't be great in another capacity perhaps. Or if they hire this person, they know exactly what they're getting, exactly what they're getting. There's no mystery, no guessing, and so let's take the emotion and the drama out of it. Robin, I wanted to get back to your lunch example. I didn't want to gloss over that. You said hey, let me get back to this conversation.

Robin Reed: 30:18

I had over lunch.

John Broer: 30:19

What was that?

Robin Reed: 30:20

So he had this really interesting. He painted this picture. He said so what happened? How did we get where we are with the great resignation? And he said it dawned on me one day the pandemic has caused everybody to go home to work, so their portal to their employer is a computer.

Robin Reed: 30:43

So if you're there, focused on your portal to your employer, and an email comes in from a prospective employer saying, basically, point your portal this way and we'll give you another $10,000 a year, he said it's hard to say no, because in your mind all I did was point my computer this way and I'm doing the same work. He said because what isn't being considered is well, right now I have an 11 minute commute. If I actually went to work there, it would be a 37 minute commute. Right now they offer childcare the other place would not like. You don't have to consider all of those things. So he says there's a real shift in what an employer employee relationship is, because it's no longer all of the other conveniences relative to that individual. It is literally a portal to a workspace and now you're just getting offers from other portals for different dollar amounts just to log into somebody else's server.

John Broer: 31:40

Yeah, wow, yeah. That's a unique way to look at it.

Shawna Reed: 31:43

To me it was an epiphany when he said I'm like, oh my gosh, I never thought of all the things we don't think about now. We only think of being home. But when you think of all the things he just said, at all these factors and especially you're in a big city you would totally weigh the pros and cons.

John Broer: 31:57

Absolutely.

Sara Best: 31:58

It's just sobering that's the word I was thinking of or looking for. It's sobering to realize it's come down to that.

John Broer: 32:05

Right.

Sara Best: 32:06

And we've got to pay attention. We've got to pay much closer attention.

John Broer: 32:09

And I know all four of us have had conversations with our CEOs saying this is what you got to. You have to understand this is what's happening. And we've had pushback. I know you have two people saying, oh, no, no, no, I mean we're not going to get that kind of, but we're going to have people come back to work and this is the date we're going to do it. And I said, okay, you go ahead and test that and let people know that you're mandating they're coming back to work in a particular date.

John Broer: 32:30

And we had a CEO that was told by one of the middle manager saying if you require me to do that, I'm leaving, and he was shocked by it. And it's like don't be shocked, it's a different place, it's a different day. Bearing that in mind, I have a question for both of you, so for our listeners and our managers that are trying to avoid the boss hole zone and our business leaders that don't want those to exist for their managers, if you could pick one thing that you think, hey, over the horizon, keep your eyes on this. This is the one thing from Robin or from Shawna, and I'd like to get one from each of you just say, keep your eye on this, because this is really going to help you and be transformative as you grow and build your business.

Robin Reed: 33:12

Moving into the new year, you know and I don't mean this to sound like a sales pitch but I really do believe very much in predictive index. But I would say listen, if you want a really easy way to understand how to value your employees, because we all know we should, but we actually don't all know how. I think understanding their behavioral profile is really the shortcut. It is an amazing shortcut. Many companies lose employees while they're searching for that shortcut. Predictive Index provides that shortcut. It shows you how to value the individual you hired, not the resume you hired, not the job responsibility you hired, but the individual you hired. So I would say, you know the best thing they can do is figure out how to value the people they have.

John Broer: 34:05

Shawna, what do you think?

Shawna Reed: 34:06

You know, actually I agree with Robin. The only thing I would take a step further is this most recent workshop. I'm sure you're both are familiar with it, but the ones that we've we're just speaking of, where you get that you know a lot of times an immediate team together and there's just this opportunity for everyone. You know we said that they not only get to have people recognize and say, oh yeah, I do know what. I did notice that about too, and that is really good in this place, so we get that out of there. I noticed, while you're looking at the person who everyone's chiming in about, you see the look on their face to actually know that their coworkers recognize that about them, even leaders that are like wow. And then, lastly, when we're looking at everyone mapped out on this beautiful quadrant, how unique our team looks when it's just visually there.

Shawna Reed: 34:47

I have actually seen people who, contrary to what they would have done, looking for a new teammate, have actually said, wow, we don't really have anyone down here. Should we be looking for someone who can help fill this gap? So all of a sudden they're seeing, instead of us hiring like people we know that just are like us and they communicate like us. We actually are realizing we would be much more powerful if we got a couple more people here. And that to me, when you get people thinking like that, instead of going to the default of oh I have a friend who's just like me, I'll bring them over that creates the diversity in all the things we say we want, and so I just feel like that piece of it. If you can really do those two things and PI is the perfect conduit for that I think that it'll be very difficult for you to not have a better workplace.

John Broer: 35:29

I think something that's really very special and that we have learned about the two of them is they refer to themselves not as go getters but as go givers, and so Robin, Shawna, just tell us a little bit more about what that means.

Robin Reed: 35:46

You know, from our standpoint, a go giver is someone who is confident in being the first to give, to share, to help. We don't consider anyone to be a competitor because, living in an abundance mindset, there's enough for everyone. So if you can bring value to someone else's organization, even if they offer a similar service to your own, we're okay with that, because we know that, to get where we are, a number of people who didn't have to help us at all have given us an immense amount of help, and we'd love functioning in a world that's like that.

John Broer: 36:20

That's great. Well, thank you both so much. It has been such a pleasure getting to know you both more. I know we're gonna be working more in the future, but I would encourage everybody check out the resources in the show notes, and Shauna and Robin are some truly amazing people, and thanks for being on the podcast. We really appreciate it.

Robin Reed: 36:36

Thanks John, thanks Sara, we really enjoyed it.