Lead With A Culture Focused Mindset

A recent study revealed that companies that cultivate a positive and strong workplace culture could see as much as a 400% growth in revenue. 400%! A positive workplace culture is so important because it helps attract new talent, drives engagement, impacts happiness, and positively affects performance – do you know where your workplace culture rates?

 In this episode of “Bring Out The Talent,” we take a deep dive into the importance of workplace culture. We explore why leaders need to think differently in order to keep culture thriving, how to align your practices with your mission and values, how to adopt behaviors associated with an “employee-centered” leadership culture, common pitfalls leaders make when trying to change corporate culture—and how to avoid them, and so much more with our special guest, John Mancuso. John is a seasoned educator, writer, founder of Authentic Communication Matters, and beloved TTA consultant.

 Tune in as we learn how you can lead with a culture-focused mindset and shape your organization’s culture and ensure stellar productivity.

Transcript

intro: Bring Out The Talent, Bring Out The Talent, Bring Out The Talent. Welcome to Bring Out The Talent, the podcast featuring learning and development experts, discussing innovative approaches and industry insights. Tune in to hear our talent... help develop yours. Now, here are your hosts. TTA's CEO and president Maria Melfa and Talent Manager. Jocelyn Allen.

Maria Melfa: Jocelyn. I am so excited about our podcast today because it's something that I am very passionate about.

Jocelyn Allen: Passion, you? I don't believe it. Hi everybody. It's Jocelyn. We are really excited about the topic today and to bring you another fabulous guest and we love that you're here with us again.

Maria Melfa: So how can executives lead with a culture focused mindset and shape their organization's culture and ensure stellar productivity? We dive into that today with our special guest John Mancuso.

John is a seasoned educator writer, founder of authentic communication matters, and a beloved TTA consultant. Welcome, John. We're so excited to have you with us today.

John Mancuso: I'm thrilled to be here, Maria. Thank you.

Jocelyn Allen: Yay. John. I love, I have to say it real quick, John and I have a really, like, I love John so much. I'm so glad you're here. We work together very frequently. He was the first TTA resource I ever interviewed as a recruiter. And so it's just like that little piece of art right there,

So we're very excited, John, to get to introduce you to, you know, all of our listeners and tell them exactly why we, we love working with you as much as we do. You've been a partner at TTA for many years. Can you tell us what led you to become a learning and development consultant?

John Mancuso: Sure. So, I started out teaching English college students and I loved it. But I was seduced by the administrator's salary. So I switched over to being a thankless administration worker and found out because the faculty was unionized. I could no longer be in the classroom, but I had that drive to teach. So I started teaching faculty members to be better.

And that started my love of adult learners. And so I went from there to educational publisher and then you know, went in-house at several organizations, and now I'm out on my own with adult learners and in the L and D space. And I have to say that what I've learned from my experience in college is that you have to sell the relevance and the value immediately and that people will sense if you don't have any passion.

I mean, immediately, they have to know that you're passionate about your subject. So I got a lot of good training there. What's different about the adult learner in the L and D space is that you really don't teach adults anything. I mean, pretty much know what you already have, what you're presenting, but you're giving them a sort of formality and a vocabulary to talk about it.

You're raising your consciousness about the subjects they could apply back in their workplaces. So it's similar and different, but I wouldn't be, I would, I'm happier here than. Then I was there. So thrilled to be here in this space.

Maria Melfa: Just almost giving them the framework on how to be successful.

John Mancuso: I think so. I think they know it intuitively, but again, it's sort of formalizing giving them a vocabulary, giving them a place to apply the knowledge.

Maria Melfa: Absolutely.

Jocelyn Allen: You said part of what you were saying was that you were teaching educators, like how to be better. That's how you got started and kind of like fell in love with that.

What does that mean? Like what kind of things did you do that meant, you know, I'm gonna teach you to be better.

John Mancuso: Well, just being recorded. Teacher teachers. I, I shouldn't say. I won't say category, the teachers are admittedly poor students, right? So they almost think that they're, can't be taught anything about how to be better.

So that's where you have to reach people to say, it's science, just like anything else on some level, right. It's now all intuitive. And there are a set of best practices for reaching people. And that's really about. How you would teach an L and D person, right? You have to have some kind of engagement. You don't talk to them.

You don't know everything. You show some humility, that kind of things makes sense. Absolutely.

Maria Melfa: So how has your work changed since we moved to this hybrid world?

John Mancuso: Well, my commute shorter to the living room yeah. Sounds right. That's right. Which has gotta, you know, it's interesting. I commuted for years on New York City subway.

And hated every minute of standing an hour back and forth for many, many years. And I have to say, now I'm almost missing that pallet cleanser and having to get out. Right. I think we're all sort of tied to our desks. And especially if we work at home largely, there's really no separation. And there's a lot of that, you know, it's interesting that I think most people have embraced the virtual model, most clients in L and D it's almost like sometimes not even discussed, it's just assumed it will be virtual and maybe that'll change.

And I, I'm not really sure, but definitely moving into the hybrid challenges of the hybrid workplace and most subjects around there or are, are, it's becoming a more common topic.

Maria Melfa: So what are some of the topics, because I know we're hearing at the same time, all about the great resignation. So how do leaders work differently to keep the culture alive in this hybrid environment?

John Mancuso: Well, first of all, you know, it's interesting that I think the feeds of the great resignation and being an employee, the mandate to be employee centered happened before. Right. So it's interesting because now. You're either with a client who understood that and now is just kind of transitioning to a hybrid workplace.

Or some people are kind of getting hit on the head with both. Oh, now I have to change my philosophy and the way we work. So I would say Maria, the biggest thing about the hybrid workplace is that you have to individualize. Your initiative. So for instance, there's a lot of talk about, we need to replace the water cooler conversation.

We need to replace social interactions virtually. Well, you still have to individualize that, you know, if you work all day with people and then you have to do an engagement with them in the evening, a happy hour or something like that, that might not work for everybody. Right? So you have to individualize and reach people.

Then, they wanna be the way they are. Be reached. The other big thing I think is we need to look at the metrics by which we measure performance in a hybrid workplace. Now, the number of direct reports for a manager say is no longer an accurate metric. How many of those reports are purely remote, with whom they've never met?

How many of them are across time zone? Those things have to be factored in now, what is the new reality of how we measure employee performance or even the ROI of the company based on the realities of the hybrid workplace. And then finally, I would say you really need to rethink how you work. What's best synchronously what's best asynchronously.

Right. And then of course, What's the point of going to the office. If you're working on a large project, you need privacy. You should probably do that at home. So you wanna think about why are you asking people to go back in the office? What's the best to use a language again, ROI that we can get from that?

Is it, what form of collaboration or brainstorming are we gonna offer people? Really good points.

Jocelyn Allen: You recently led a series with TTA focused on emerging leaders and discussed leading with a more culture focused mindset. So can you tell us a little bit more about that? How do you help leaders shape their organization's culture and keep it effectively?

John Mancuso: I start with the idea that we, we sort of overplay a lot, the idea of servant leadership, and then I underscore that, but it's the leader's responsibility.

That part of being a servant leader is that you have. Sorry. You, part of being a servant leader is creating a culture in which people understand that leadership is distributed throughout the organization. In other words, everyone should be thinking like a leader. So let me first start talking a little bit about what the responsibility is on employees.

Because when we think servant leader leaders start to think it's all about everything I do, right. It's all up to me. So there is a responsibility on the employee. Is that we want employees to think like leaders and how do we, so for example, is that we gotta get people out of that SME that subject matter expertise, focus, and think about the larger context.

Why are they doing the work that they're doing? How does it fit into the overall architecture of the organization? This way gives people an understanding of competing stakeholders. Right? So one of the, parts of the maturity that we have as professionals is understanding that we might. Aiming for the same goal, but the way we go about it might almost seem to conflict because someone's in charge of the money.

Someone's in charge of the engagement. Someone's in charge of client relations and often on a day-to-day basis, that creates conflict. So people have to think like leaders to say, what is the greater good, how I can't be married to only my stakeholder interest and finally, leaders and employees alike have to understand how everyone's contribution big or contributes to the collective mission, right? Why do we go to work every day. And how does that support the foundational beliefs, the values, and the output every day of the entire organization? Now, specifically with leaders, I would say data gathering and collaboration, are the hallmark of an employee-centered.

The workforce is the idea that we collaborate, that you ask your employees for input, but you do that strategically. And a lot of times I get pushback and I say, have I accepted every time? Thank God. I would think anything different. right. Well, I, you know, you gotta be strategic about it. You only wanna collect data that you're gonna do your due diligence to possibly implement. You don't implement everything. You never give that promise, but there is so much research that says the more input we get, especially from people that have no skin in the game, the more dynamic and accurate our solutions. Are you also wanna think about appropriate engagement in a culture focused organization?

Right? We have. Those go-to's like, oh, Google is such a, an innovative workplace. Could they let you bring dogs to work? Well, when I worked at New York city transit, imagine if conductors and train operators could bring their dogs to work, that wouldn't work. Right. So how do we make that kind of engagement work for the organization?

I got it. Why don't you ask the employees what they want, right? So those are ways to engage them and that these sort of one size fits all or these cool companies get Fridays off or have these free granola bars. I mean, what, what are your employees really gonna value? Another one of course is the commitment to coaching and our consultative culture versus a top-down culture and public and private industry.

Across the board struggle with this. There are progressive companies that still have very top-down leadership and there are other you know, other organizations that you would think I've worked with paramilitary organizations, you, that you might have associations about who actually very progressive idea and consulting people about you know, their own professional development.

The continuous cycle of feedback, corrective feedback, positive feedback on the spot feedback, things like that com having a consultative role with your employees, and finally, a commitment to professional development no longer is a nice to have, right? It's part of our jobs as managers and leaders. To provide a professional development pathway or at least understand what the goals of your employees are interfering with professional development, and think about ways that you could vary their work experience that meet your business needs.

Meaning that we don't have to have these traditional ideas of, of succession planning. Uh, I work with a lot of public industry. That is sort of strangle held if you will, by that because they're civil service exams, things like that. But if you have the luxury to think about how you can broaden people's experience by giving them lateral moves or moving them from saying operations to marketing or things like that, if it's possible this way when you do that, you engage employees with their skill set, you develop them professionally, and hopefully, you have a bigger bench at the end of the day for your company to draw from when people.

Jocelyn Allen: I'm gonna play devil's advocate here for a second. Sure. Because I love everything you're saying, because it is, it's really inclusive. And I agree that there are, there's an opportunity for leaders to like go to their people because you also have to think that there are plenty of their people who like don't want to go to them and like contribute their information or think that it's lackluster or not necessary.

But then there's also. The flip side of that transparently where people like there are people who talk a lot and, but always have terrible ideas. Do you know what I mean? And like, they can be really good at their job, but there's like a skill gap there where it's like, are you? I'm not gonna be rude.

It's like ideas is horrible. Yeah. Like what's really going on here. Like, are you new here? No, I'm just kidding. But really like, how do you, how do you navigate than the inclusion for all? And, you know, I wanna pay attention to the fact that you're communicating to me, but, but the reality of. Time wasted because it's like not a great idea.

Like, how do you, like, how do you coach beyond that? There's a lot of facets here that I'm like, well, what do you do if it's like really a waste of time to kind of try. To make that inclusive, right? Or am I the bad guy here? so you that too, which one of your coworkers has horrible ideas? I mean, listen, we're only scheduled 35 minutes.

Okay. I'm just kidding. Let they would say the same about me. It's all in. Good fun. No, we're all. We're all joking here. Okay. But really, you know what I mean?

John Mancuso: Really great question. I think one of the things is that you have to go into thinking that you apply these rules in ways that work for you. Right? So one of the things about that I would say is that you, it, it, it doesn't mean everyone has an equal voice, but you give people a voice to the things that are going to ultimately affect them more.

If, if people are being impacted, they should have some voice. But some things have to come out of reactivity. Right. You know, some things have to be top down. They just, because people aren't privy to certain confidential information. And I'm now going to directly answer the question about when people give bad ideas is that you have to build corporate culture.

Hopefully, it's not overnight in which there's enough trustful that you can say to someone that's a bad idea. And I don't need and diplomatically and also develop a culture where people understand where you're going and your vision enough to maybe mitigate the bad ideas that they wouldn't. If they're so privy to your direction, they might not, their ideas might not be so bad or they wouldn't volunteer them cuz they're gonna be schooled enough.

So I guess those two things, those are not magic bullets and they're not. You know, but it, it, they're not full proof, but I would say those, those two things they're very insightful and it still gives a direction because I know like, I, I just immediately think, well, that's great. And all, but one of them is, they're just they're I think you would have to explain the why, like why it would not work for the organization and your like opinion, you know?

Yeah. Based on, you know, we based on what we're doing right now, or it's typically. I know, you know, people will give me ideas. And I would say that the majority are very good ideas, but sometimes it just doesn't align with the priorities. We have too many things going on, but no, that's and that's great.

Maria Melfa: That's interesting. Yes. I think that's what you have to do to explain why, because then I think. They'll eventually close up and not wanna give any more ideas. And it's very constructive. And like you said, it doesn't allow for closing up. It's like, okay, I got direction on this one. So now my next idea's probably gonna be more aligned and I can't wait to hear what the feedback is there. Yeah, I get it. Wow. What a breakthrough.

And I also would agree to piggyback on Maria's point, the other great way to do that is to put it back on them, which is sort of implying open-ended questions. Well, how does your suggestion fit into this overall plan of B, B, B BBA? Do you know what I mean? Then, then.

The onus is on them to explain and align their connection. And so it might come to them while they're doing that. Ooh, this isn't bad. Ideal.

when you're working with organizations, how do they go from, okay, this is what I want for our company, mission, and values, but how do I practice that? How do you help them with that?

John Mancuso: So you are zeroing right in on what I call my dog and pony show Maria. This is my favorite thing to do with clients is to, first of all, bring attention to that we assume way too much, that people defy and interpret words that we throw around the same way we throw around professionalism, detail, oriented, inclusive you know, conscientious, all of those things.

That litter, if you will, our job descriptions and our. Performance reviews that we just assume people as define them, interpret them the same way. So a lot of times those definitions are the company owners or the leaders, and people are expected to guess what professionalism needs to this company or that, you know, if they wanna apply there or if they wanna be successful there.

So what I try to do is get everybody to work on coming up. Actionable behaviors that underpin the words that they use that are important to the company. So those value words, right. That is part of the mission or words like I said, that are soft skills, like being professional. That is in job descriptions and performance reviews.

So I would encourage everyone to come up with actionable behaviors that define them. So for instance, say professional, we say on time, well, on time to Maria means muffin coffee at nine o'clock and to Joscelyn, it means 10 minutes before nine with your Coda or you work for John, it's like, eh, as long as you get your work done well, what does that be?

Right. So we wanna make sure that. Are very clear about how we can communicate actionable behaviors to underpin the words that we use. A lot, of the soft skills, the value workers spread those behaviors around the organization as much best you can. and then you wanna go one step further now, right? In this, the world of value-driven employees, younger people tend to see a lot of meaning in their work.

So you wanna think about what is the larger context of these value words and your position on the world stage, right. You know, or what, what, what causes are you defending publicly in your social media fees? And what do you, you know, look right now, what we have with the conflict in the war, you know, companies are under the gun to you.

Have the public publicly declare their position on certain things. So I would say it's internal shaping the culture by really focusing on defining value words, key soft skills that are important, and then thinking about the larger context of your social position in the world, as a company.

Jocelyn Allen: I love this idea of identifying actionable behaviors, because I, really resonated with what you said because I've heard it time and time again, whether it's somebody's excuse because they're always late that like time is a manmade concept.

Like what is time really? Right. but, but the reality is, is like, what does that mean? Because I've worked for. You know, bosses in the past who have been, you know, if you're getting your work done and we don't seem like a certain pattern like we're good to go, or, you know, on time means that like, if your phone is ringing at eight 30 because you're supposed to be there like you're already sitting at your desk ready to answer for it.

So like, you know, on time is actually 10 minutes before, but how, you know, culture is so important right now, companies are thinking about it nonstop. What do they need to do? Or how do they go about identifying what it is like, and what those actionable behaviors need to be for them in order to start implementing more of a culture focused mindset?

John Mancuso: Right. So one of the things you said right there is, you know, what's the business need. What's great, it's a great question. Jocelyn so is there really a need for people to be there at nine? Right. Is one thing, but I would say what's most important, honestly. The communication around the directive, so, or the behavior.

So let me give you an example. If I, you, if I tell you, you, you, your job is customer service and you have to answer these phones and you put out every single fire that comes to you and you don't bring anything to me, your manager to tell me, tell me about that. And then when it comes to your review, I say that you, you know, your.

Not responsive. You are, you know, you're, you're not responsive. You, you're not thorough. And you're thinking, wait a minute, I'm completely thorough. I go above my, my job duties every day to solve problems that are often beyond my responsibility to not bother you with them. because I've never communicated with you.

That problem-solving thoroughness is about communicating everything to me. So I know what the problems are. Do you see that disconnect? So all it is is about explaining the behavior as it, as an expectation, then it is to just assume, you know what I. And you're doing actually a better job than I'm asking you to do, but you're getting punished because it's stopping the job I want you to do.

So that's where you shape the culture as being crystal clear first about what the behaviors mean. And second, to your point, how do those behaviors reflect the business need, why those behaviors, and why am I asking you to do those behaviors? Why am I asking you to be UN thought?

Jocelyn Allen: How often do you see disconnects like that?

John Mancuso: Where it really is just a difference of, well, this is what it means to me. And here's how you interpreted it. It sounds like that all the time. I say a lot too. Yeah.

Maria Melfa: Yeah. Most of the time it's misunderstanding and just not proper communication.

Jocelyn Allen: I appreciate communication more than anything else. I just it's the most important thing to me, whether it be good news or bad news or in between.

What if I'm involved or need to be involved, just like keep me in the loop and I'll go to action. Like, as I know, I need to go to action. I will be here when you need to call me to action. And even if it's just, Hey, I don't need you. Like, we're good to go. Then that's still communication that like, I can proceed to other things.

I just, I, I value over communication more than I do under communication. Cuz I wanna know how things are changing and what's expected of me at that time. Yeah. I love.

Maria Melfa: Sometimes you just have people that are just, they have no, self-awareness, that's true as much. That's true. As you can, you know, talk to them mm-hmm they just can't say it.

And then you have to come to a point where is it going to, you know, work out or do you have to part ways, right.

Jocelyn Allen: And then sometimes that's the most difficult decision to make too is, you know, and maybe a good point for you too, John is, you know, what, what happens when the amount of effort that you're putting in starts to affect the culture in the opposite way. Like, is that something that you encounter too?

John Mancuso: Of course. And I think, again, it goes back to you can't mandate people's self-awareness you could lead them to water to be more self-aware, but you just like, you can't really mandate what motivates people.

Like I, I will admit I was a terrible high school student cuz my ego and identity would not involve my self-esteem, and not involved in being a good student. It was to all my other friends. And of course, you know, Self esteem went down when they got accepted to these great schools. And I didn't, but the point is you can't do the same thing with employees.

There might be people doing an amazing job, cuz they're motivated by something that's so beyond your ability to manage. So that's why the behaviors are so important. Someone. Be completely UN self-aware, but you could say, you know what, these 10 behaviors are, how we define inclusiveness. And these actionable behaviors are measurable and doable.

They're not abstract. They're not like have a good attitude. It's I thank everyone that comes into, you know, the store or whatever it is in whatever be, you know, mil you are working in. And so that, again, it, you want people to be self-aware. But grounding things in actionable measurable behaviors can show people success in the right way without them having to do anything, just following an expectation.

Jocelyn Allen: Right. Alleviate some frustration too, because you're giving them a guide. You know? I, yeah. So I just spoke about some challenges. What are some common pitfalls leaders face when they're trying to change corporate culture? What you're advice on how they can avoid these.

John Mancuso: You know, it's funny, you, you sort of alluded to that earlier. I think when Jocelyn was playing devil's advocate, right. You know, for the, I, you know, a lot of times they'll say, you know, ask you, ask your disengaged employees, what they think would be a great idea, da, da, da. And they'll say to them, you don't pay me enough. You know what I mean, to, to answer. So you have to be open to that, that some of these best practices don't work.

And it's a matter of trial and error, which Jocelyn was saying earlier in a collaborative. Employee centered culture, you might get more input than you want. I've also a big pitfall that I've gotten is that companies went from being so top down to being inclusive overnight. That, and this is true. This is true.

I'm not picking this up, that they're so collaborative now that they can't make a decision because they're so worried about everybody having a say, well, so accept that change is a process. There's something, they call the gap in change management, right? Where things are happening in a vortex and the old ways are happening along with the new ones.

You have to be open that change takes time. And not that things don't happen overnight. And eventually, you'll get to the other side. And that certainly not everybody's opinion matters all of the time. That's not a way to be inclu. So right there is just accepting change and being patient with.

Jocelyn Allen: This has been a very intriguing conversation. I love how many different channels we can take, because we're talking about emotional intelligence. We're talking about change management. We're talking about culture, like so many things that are important right now, as culture, as organizations are growing and making changes. So I'd love if you've got like a top five fast tips for leaders that you can share with them who wanna start in moving towards this culture focus mindset, like real quick tips from John Mancuso. So quick. Okay. That could be long.

And Maria changes the scope. That could be whatever you want.

John Mancuso: Okay. So top five, I would say. One is be an active listener. I used to be so skeptical about teaching listening, but I have what I would call longitudinal study. I did one on one follow ups with the client for six months after everyone, went through the training. It was 64 hours of instruction. Listening was probably 30 minutes of those 64 hours.

And that's what they remembered and saw the most value active listening, not thinking about your response. Seeking to understand what follow up and not bringing it back to you or giving advice or anything like that. Just being an active listener. There's plenty of, you know, we could do a whole day on that.

So number one, active listening, number two, do a 360 or something that is going to give you some criticism as a leader because there's research that says that people who move up higher and higher surround them more with yes. People. So they become less self-aware as you become, you know, Higher up with the power to use that language because you, you know, you're not used to having people or people are scared to tell you what you're doing wrong.

So have a mechanism by which you get criticism and, you know, live it, you know, work on it. So those are two. So I've got three more. Let me think that definitely step the culture. By thinking about common value words in your organization and thinking about actionable behaviors that represent them.

And I will piggyback that this is still number three, live by those. I have a friend who was a whistleblower in her organization, come to find out that one of their valuable words in their mission is bravery. How about that? Right. You get in trouble for being a strong person and then insult to injury. Bravery is supposed to be a, you know, competency, a core competency of the organization, and that's really insulting. So be a role model and live by your values. Number four would be to make sure that you are always thinking like a leader and that you are not being reactive. I mean, there's just a responsibility come to that.

We're all human beings, but try to regulate your reactivity, know your triggers, and resolve conflict in a professional way, as much as you can. And finally, I would say. Be one step ahead of things in your balance of reactivity and proactivity. And what I mean by that is so many people say, oh, this place is so reactive, so reactive.

And I say to them a lot of times that's okay. Especially think about a safety organization. It's okay to be reactive. If you spend your entire time trying to be proactive and spending all of these resources. Planning for something that's never gonna come to fruition. That's a complete waste of time. So you have to be strategic about what you're gonna be proactive and reactive for and, you know, plan for the future.

Because look what happened to COVID, you know, look what with COVID I should say, but, but, but know that there's, you know, you don't always have to be doing that.

Jocelyn Allen: Those are great tips and I could relate to each one of them. So thank you. Agree. Mm-hmm, I agree. Thank you very much. So, I guess we're coming to a close and we're going to start our final TTA 10 segment.

John Mancuso: I'm scared. Okay.

n/a: it's the TTA 10, 10 final questions for our guests.

Jocelyn Allen: All right, Mr. John, don't be scared. This is the fun part of the show. Not that this whole thing. Wasn't fun. I mean, I didn't mean to, to do a few big breaks. But these are just some fun, playful questions that we are gonna ask you. We have 90 seconds. We're gonna try to get it. 10 of them. If you win, you will get some mighty, some mighty find sound effects from our producer, David along with some bragging rights.

And if not, then look, we might shame you a little bit, but there are playful questions. Some like, you know, math problems might be in there, but we're just here to have a good time. So if you're ready, John, we're gonna get started. Are you ready? All right, here we go. If you were a superhero, what your super, what would your superpower be?

John Mancuso: Empathy.

Jocelyn Allen: Yes, absolutely. What's the 10th letter of the alphabet

John Mancuso: J..

Jocelyn Allen: What 2020 phrase would you like to officially retire?

John Mancuso: We're all of this together.

Maria Melfa: Yeah, you're on, you're on mute.

John Mancuso: We're all of this together.

Jocelyn Allen: What is your go-to karaoke song?

John Mancuso: Short people.

Jocelyn Allen: What's your, what's your favorite place that you've ever traveled to?

John Mancuso: Berlin

Jocelyn Allen: If you could have coffee with any living person, who would it be?

John Mancuso: Any living person. Oh, wow. Wow. That's a tough one. Oh, man. B I'm oh, wow.

Jocelyn Allen: You can say me. Geez. I'm right here.

John Mancuso: Yeah. Gonna, no, yeah. Why not? Jocelyn Allen. Sure. I've never met you in person because it's so

Jocelyn Allen: I know we need to make that happen. What is Scooby do's treats called

John Mancuso: Scooby snacks.

Jocelyn Allen: If you could eat one meal for the rest of your life, what would you choose?

John Mancuso: Peanut butter. You mean like a real meal.

Jocelyn Allen: You can make peanut butter a meal. We're not judging here.

John Mancuso: Seafood Fra Diablo.

Jocelyn Allen: That would be, oh, even better.

In the little mermaid, what is the name of Ariel's pet fish?

John Mancuso: I don't have children. I have no idea.

Jocelyn Allen: What's your favorite reality TV show?

John Mancuso: Oh, that's a tough one. I, I would say 90-day fiance and all its franchises.

Jocelyn Allen: Fantastic. And we did it.

David Yas: Yes. Well, completed the TTA 10, unfortunately final count one minute, 50 seconds.

Jocelyn Allen: Oh no. We're 20 seconds over.

David Yas: That's right. That's right.

Sorry. John, you have failed in your quest to complete the TTA 10. We extend our deepest sympathies to you in the hopes that you can someday move past this profound humiliation. We still respect you, John. Just not nearly as much as we did before. Really, in a way, we're all winners, but in a more accurate way, you are not a winner.

Just remember tomorrow's another day and who knows. It might not be as bad as this one. Godspeed to you friend. And congratulations for completing, although not successfully completing the TTA 10, we still give you a round of applause.

Maria Melfa: I think you did an amazing job. And how about saying that 10 letter in the alphabet so quickly? I mean, that was so quick,

John Mancuso: John. Yeah. I have no idea where that came, I guess. Cause my name starts with the J

Jocelyn Allen: it's why I picked the 10th letter ask the question because I knew that it was J oh my, I was like, at least I'll know when somebody gets it wrong.

That was really fun, John. We do still love you, even though you are technically, you know, like I a loser, but you are always a winner in our,

Maria Melfa: oh, don't say that word. See, I see my empathy. Like to never say that.

Jocelyn Allen: No, I all right. I take it back. We can delete it. John you know, I was kidding and I had to.

Maria Melfa: Okay, so, John, thank you so much. It was a pleasure to finally speak to you. Yeah, again, I've heard so many wonderful things, and thank you for joining us at Bring Out The Talent.

John Mancuso: Thank you. All right.

Jocelyn Allen: To learn more about John and bringing a culture focused mindset to your organization. Visit us at thetrainingassociates.com. We'll see you later.