Join the conversation with Michael, an entrepreneur and virtuoso of change, as we unravel the secrets to navigating the treacherous 'messy middle' of personal evolution and goal attainment. On the Big Dog Talk podcast with me, Big Charles, we're not just talking change - we're living it. Michael, with his impressive background in sports, the military, and consulting, imparts actionable strategies and mindsets that empower you to stay the course when enthusiasm wanes. We're tackling the gritty reality of performance improvement and organizational transformation, diving straight into the cultural and behavioral shifts that forge champions.
Get ready to conquer change and bust through the barriers of fear with authenticity and leadership that resonate beyond mere words. This episode is a masterclass in initiating those tough, transformative conversations that can turn resistance into readiness. We're not just chatting about adaptability; we're applying the 'Jedi mind trick' of change management, guaranteeing that you'll walk away with a blueprint for emotional, experiential, and explanatory growth. Whether you're an individual seeking personal development or a leader aiming to steer an organization through change, Michael's insights offer a tailored approach to overcoming the challenges that stand in your way.
Finally, brace for an exploration of confronting challenges to fuel personal growth, where volunteering for the toughest gigs becomes a badge of courage. I share my mantra of leaping into the fray, where even failures become victories cloaked in lessons learned. It's all about stepping outside comfort zones and into a space where character and capability flourish. So tune in to an episode that's as inspiring as it is informative, and let's stretch our minds together to reach unprecedented heights with the guidance of Michael on the Big Dog Talk podcast.
Join the conversation with Michael, an entrepreneur and virtuoso of change, as we unravel the secrets to navigating the treacherous 'messy middle' of personal evolution and goal attainment. On the Big Dog Talk podcast with me, Big Charles, we're not just talking change - we're living it. Michael, with his impressive background in sports, the military, and consulting, imparts actionable strategies and mindsets that empower you to stay the course when enthusiasm wanes. We're tackling the gritty reality of performance improvement and organizational transformation, diving straight into the cultural and behavioral shifts that forge champions.
Get ready to conquer change and bust through the barriers of fear with authenticity and leadership that resonate beyond mere words. This episode is a masterclass in initiating those tough, transformative conversations that can turn resistance into readiness. We're not just chatting about adaptability; we're applying the 'Jedi mind trick' of change management, guaranteeing that you'll walk away with a blueprint for emotional, experiential, and explanatory growth. Whether you're an individual seeking personal development or a leader aiming to steer an organization through change, Michael's insights offer a tailored approach to overcoming the challenges that stand in your way.
Finally, brace for an exploration of confronting challenges to fuel personal growth, where volunteering for the toughest gigs becomes a badge of courage. I share my mantra of leaping into the fray, where even failures become victories cloaked in lessons learned. It's all about stepping outside comfort zones and into a space where character and capability flourish. So tune in to an episode that's as inspiring as it is informative, and let's stretch our minds together to reach unprecedented heights with the guidance of Michael on the Big Dog Talk podcast.
Okay, now we're on this journey to get past January 19th. That's right, that's right, you know. And now we're in the middle of it. We lose the motivation, we lose the. The why gets foggy, and now we're in the middle of it. Now we're too far to turn around, and we have to make a decision to either turn around or keep going, but we're in the middle of the ocean. How do we go from there, though? How do we figure?
Speaker 3:that out. So, first thing is, we'll use the January 1st thing right. What's the experience we all go through right December 31st?
Speaker 3:having a good New Year's, right. I wake up, it's the start of dry January. I want to read three books this month. I'm going to be a better spouse. I'm going to sleep eight hours a day. I'm going to work out every day of the week. Right, we have stacked so many things. We are guaranteeing failures. So the first part of overcoming the messy middle is to pick one thing for which you are going to pursue. So you've got to do less. Okay. Fewer things.
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Speaker 1:Welcome back to another episode of the Big Dog Talk podcast. It's me, the one and only Big Charles, and I am excited. I'm excited today because I have a special guest. I told you guys, I told you guys in the beginning of 2024 that my goal for this community is to bring the most qualified guests on this podcast that's very knowledgeable and experienced, because I believe that applied knowledge is the tool to bring your life to the next level. It's the tool to bring your life to the next level.
Speaker 1:So, before we even get into it, this gentleman he is a Michael. He's an entrepreneur and an advisor to some of the world's leading companies. Now Michael is a coach to companies, leaders, teams and individuals seeking to improve performance through transformation. Specifically, he works together with clients to identify the cultural structural teams and individuals seeking to improve performance through transformation. Specifically, he works together with clients to identify the cultural, structural, operational and behavioral shifts needed to increase performance. Then he shortens the time it takes to implement them. So, to make a long story short, michael is a hack to get you further faster. Actually, that's your number one goal, correct? That's right. That's right.
Speaker 1:Now I just gave a quick little summary of you. Do you mind sharing some of your background, where you come from? Absolutely let's dive into it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, no, I appreciate it.
Speaker 1:Everyone knows about Stella. That was awesome. I'm going to get one of those.
Speaker 3:She's excited. Well, you summed it up, but I guess what I'd say is my job and my mission is to help people change and to reach their potential, and so I've been in and around the experience of change whether that's in companies, whether that's for leaders or teams almost my whole career. Some of the time I didn't even know that that's what I was doing. I started out, I played college football. I still coach sports. Sports are a big part of my life. My kids play. I just feel like it's such an applied experience of how to learn how to become a leader and how to become a good teammate. And then I started out from there, working with the military for years, which is just a great environment to understand how an organization of that scale can drive performance. And then, as a consultant, it really just became. How do I think differently about this thing called an organization?
Speaker 3:which is really just a group of people, right? I mean, companies are just made up of human beings, right? And so what I took as an athlete, what I took as a coach and then what I took as a consultant, I've been on this journey to kind of take a new perspective, because a lot of the things that I saw we were doing to help people get better weren't really getting the results we wanted. So there's more to that we'll talk about, but that's really been the arc of my career and just started my own company because I realized that that we needed to do things differently, and and I needed to do things differently, which meant going out on my own and kind of creating something that was going to be a bit of a new formula for how to change across many dimensions.
Speaker 1:So Speaking of journey, um, I was most intrigued by our conversation that we had before you got on the show, yeah, so first I want to say thank you for being on the big dog talk podcast wonderful to be here but what I was in, what I was intrigued by I'm gonna speak in sports terms, sure um, when you and I got off of the phone, I asked myself could I see myself being his friend?
Speaker 1:And the true, honest answer that I gave myself was like yes, this guy is an intelligent guy. He seems very experienced. He seems like we speak the same terminology. It's like this you know, when you're, when you're running track, in order to become faster, you have to race someone that is that that's faster than you. So I was like, hmm, michael and I are on the same journey, but he's, he's a little bit further than I am, than I am, and I would love to bring this guest on the show and give it, give it to our, our community.
Speaker 1:Yeah, um, one question that you asked me, and I was impressed. You said what is it that you expect of me? Do you remember that question? And I said I want you to be the person that you say. You are everything that you say on the mic. I want your life to be able to speak for that. And your words were I am. I am that In so many words. I was like I have to come on the show. So thank you for being a part of the Big Dog Talk podcast. I know you told me that you have a son that plays football. You were a football coach, or our football coach. Beautiful wife, I just want to get the I want the community to get. We want to invite them in a little bit Basics. Yes.
Speaker 1:But just to have you on the show. I think it's going to be a really good episode. I just feel like you're going to give our community some jewels that they can take home and apply and make their life better.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I hope so and I appreciate that. I guess maybe you said I was a little bit in front of you. I think for most people it means I'm older which is okay. It means I'm older which is okay.
Speaker 3:You know, my amazing, beautiful wife is sitting just over here to my left and she's one of the best things that's ever happened to me, without question, and she'll describe quite often, it is true, that the things that I talk about I really do live this way. Let's talk about it. It can be a bit exhausting, I'm a lot, but I really do live this way. Let's talk about it. It can be a bit exhausting, I'm a lot, but I really think I have three responsibilities and I've raised my kids this way. We're going to have another one in about three weeks and I'm going to raise her this way, thank you.
Speaker 3:Which is my first responsibility is to help introduce to others difficult and uncomfortable but necessary conversations and experiences, because that's where we grow. The second thing is to help them do that. I can't help usher someone into a conversation like that and then leave them alone to go through that experience. And the third one is to lead by example, and I've always said this, I say this to my children I will never ask you to do something that I haven't done or I'm not willing to do myself, because I think that experience number one is important in terms of how to coach someone through something that they're going through. But number two, the authenticity that's required to say I've been there and I can empathize with what's happening to you in this moment, and so it really truly is the ethos with which I live my life.
Speaker 1:So, which are great signs of a great leader. But on the flip side, just from experience, great leaders can seem annoying at times to others, especially to those that not ready for change. Yeah, so my question is to you how do you initiate change to someone that's possibly not ready, but you feel the urge to pull it out of them, the change?
Speaker 3:Yeah Well, so there's a. It sort of depends on the person.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 3:But, and the circumstance but I say this a lot when I run workshops is to the teams of people I'm working with. Number one at some point in this next, whatever it is eight to 10 hours you're going to be upset with me. Okay.
Speaker 3:And if you're not, you're not participating in the right way. The second is I'm going to Jedi mind trick you more than once, and what that means is you're going to think we're working on something over here, but the purpose of that exercise is actually to give you an experience of change in a way that maybe you aren't familiar with, because people who aren't ready and this is a great we do a lot of Peloton workouts. Jess Sims, who's the Saturday 60, if you ever do that, we do that all the time. One of my favorite sayings and she says it all the time that ready is a decision. It's not a feeling.
Speaker 1:Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Can you say that again?
Speaker 3:Well, I can't take credit for it. So Jess gets this all the time. But ready is a decision, it's not a feeling. And so we are often not ready to change because we don't understand either a the experience we're going to embark on, or we've told ourselves a story about what we think that's going to feel like, and most of the time that story isn't always positive. Wow, and so a couple of things, and that was a long way of setting up the answer. But so there's three ways we can get people to start the process of change. One is we can spend time explaining to them what that experience is going to be like. Here's the process, what's the outcome, how long does it take. And we can go through that.
Speaker 3:Uh, some people are more experiential right, they want to just they want to see it, they want to watch someone else go through that process, Right. And others are more emotional, right, and and and sometimes we were just talking about this on the car and on the way down that you know, some of the most memorable experiences of our lives are the things that are most emotionally salient, right? So things that are really really stressful, that are really really happy, those are the things we remember most, and so a lot of times, what you need to tap into it could be it could be fear, it could be something that's holding them back, it could be something that they're aspiring to but don't know how to take the first step, and so my job as a coach is I just can't wave a magic wand and have that. Have everyone respond the same way.
Speaker 1:So it's tailored, then, due to the individual.
Speaker 3:And one of the mistakes we make in changing, particularly in big organizations, is we. We treat everyone the same, right? There's four people in this room. Each of our brains is a unique fingerprint of our life that only we can have, and so multiply that by a thousand people, by 5,000 people in a company, and you know, the same 30 minute training that we all take online isn't going to work for everyone in the same way, right? So that's, that's a big part of my job.
Speaker 1:I like that. So what do you? What would you say? The biggest myth around change? Because earlier you said you spoke on fear. Yeah, and a lot of times fear does paralyze us. So what would you say? The biggest, some of the biggest myths about fear that you've experienced on your journey?
Speaker 3:Yeah Well, it's sort of like. It's like doing home projects it never goes as quickly as you want. And so you know, if you've ever fixed something in your house or done some remodeling or whatever it is right, there's always this time it takes. Oh, it'll take me a weekend. Before you know it, it's a week later. You're still working on something. Change is the same way. I mean, you're laughing because you probably had the same experience, right? So the first myth, I think, is that it doesn't happen as quickly as we want, and this is particularly true as we get older, and there's some things we have to unlearn when we try to change that are really important, and that process is very frustrating for us.
Speaker 3:So first one is it it never happens as quickly as you want. The second is that it's easier than it is now, and this is a double-edged sword, or two sides of the same coin is look we, the human species was designed under stress. We perform under stress, muscles grow under stress, bones grow under stress. We perform under stress, muscles grow under stress, bones grow under stress, we learn under stress, and yet stress is very uncomfortable, and so we can't change anything about ourselves unless we're willing to experience the stress of that moment, and so one of the myths that we have is that it's not going to be uncomfortable right, it's going to be smooth, it's going to be linear, but the truth is, change is asymmetric, right, it takes repetition, and so those are, I think, two things that are really, really important.
Speaker 3:I think the last thing I'd say about change and the myth is that we tend to define our future self in terms of the nouns in which we want to attain. Maybe we want to lose a certain amount of weight, maybe we want to make a certain amount of money, have a certain type of job, have a certain type of relationship. Those things are fine, but that time dimension, it takes me to get there. It's really hard to measure. That's why people give up, right? Do you know what quitter's day is? No, so quitter's day is.
Speaker 1:January 19th. That's why people give up right?
Speaker 3:Do you know what Quitter's Day is? No, so Quitter's Day is January 19th, that's the day that most people give up on their New Year's resolutions.
Speaker 1:I didn't know that 19 days, right.
Speaker 3:And so part of that reason is because of the time dimension it's. I'm searching for the noun of that outcome I want to lose 20 pounds. I'm not going to lose it by January 19th. Outcome I want to lose 20 pounds, I'm not going to lose it by January 19th. So I have to shift my thinking into understanding. But I can run for 30 minutes three times a week, right. I can read a book. I can read for 30 minutes three times a week. Whatever your goal is, we need to shift our thinking to tracking the actions we take, that ladder up to that noun. And so I always say measure verbs and not nouns. Don't measure how much weight you lost today. Measure the actions you took in pursuit of the thing that you're trying. And so that myth of I'll be happy when here's the goal, it's going to take me six, eight, 12 months. The reason most people give up is because they're measuring the wrong thing in the pursuit of that goal.
Speaker 1:So you say that we need to shift the way that we basically think. But my question is as a coach, michael, how do you get the student or the client to recondition their mind, to reshift their, to unlearn? How do you get to that phase first, because that's a project all by itself, yeah. So can you explain? Break that down a little bit? How do you get the client to take the first step and say you know what I have to recondition my mindset? How do you make them aware?
Speaker 3:Yeah, there's a couple of things in there. I I I'm a believer that any problem in your life can be solved with three questions, just about any problem. The first one is how have I done something in the past, what, whatever that action is it could be? How did I approach a job situation? How did I approach a argument with my spouse? How did I approach a parenting moment? Whatever that thing is that you have some desire to shift. The second question you have to ask yourself is how did that serve me? And and and I use that question specifically I didn't ask what was the outcome. What I asked was how did it serve me? Which is, what was the experience of how I've approached that problem in the past, positively and negatively, and you need to like really answer that question.
Speaker 3:This is not a superficial answering of that question. This is you got to get under the hood. The third one is how might I do it differently? And the way you recondition somebody's mind is to get them to rethink their understanding of the experience they're having right now. Most of the time when people want to change back to that vision of the future, we tend to design a future state that's so inspiring and so happy and so perfect right, vision boards and all these things. We put it all up and there's actually real chemical reactions that happen when we do that.
Speaker 3:There's been some really fun studies about how vision boards actually aren't good for you, because they make you experience the happiness of the future today, which makes you less motivated to act which is kind of interesting, but what I try to do with people is actually to help them understand how did I get here in this moment and, more importantly, how did I contribute to the experience that I'm having, positively and negatively, or whatever that may be? And this is why coaches matter because you can't perceive yourself right, you have to have someone that can give you a reflection is you have to be willing to challenge your beliefs and, and I think too many people and I'm not saying challenge- your values. By the way, values are different right Values are what we think are important.
Speaker 3:Beliefs are what we think are true. Okay, and, and too often, our attachment to our beliefs limit our ability to answer those three questions. Because if I can answer those three questions differently and put myself in the middle of that experience, then I realize and here's the God's honest truth, right, the only person you can change is you. I love it. You have zero control over any other human in your life, and so that's the process that we go through now, to use your phrase about a project. You know, I wish it was just as easy as asking those three questions, because a lot of times, people are fighting the experience, right? Someone, someone, told me to sit here and listen to you talk.
Speaker 4:I don't want to go through that.
Speaker 3:Right. So, uh, so that's the part where they get mad at me in the workshop.
Speaker 1:I like. I like the way you just broke it down because it reminds me of a um, a time where I wasn't proud of my parenting style and I found myself under stress, under under stress due to circumstances, and I was really snappy. I went through this process of because I wanted to recondition myself. I had to unlearn some things, I had to relearn. I had to unlearn some habits and some. Just as long it took me me, let's just say 10, 15 years to get there. So you know, the habits wasn't going to break overnight.
Speaker 1:That's right.
Speaker 1:And I'm saying this to relate to your story. So every time that my kids would aggravate me, I found myself getting snappy. But I got an index card, put it on my phone and I said I'm going to respond and not react. Love that. And every time that I got upset, something would pop up every hour or so respond and not react. And what I realized, though? Although my internal world? It felt like it was really being challenged. But every time that I would go a step further and respond, I win that battle. I lose the next battle. I win the next two or three battles. I found myself getting stronger and stronger and stronger. Then the reconditioning started happening in my mind and I started overcoming that. Then everyone around me started seeing the change. Everyone else started to change. So I just love the way that you broke it down.
Speaker 3:And I just had to just say 100% on instead of just reacting. So you can. You can train that, right. I mean, as athletes, as people who have been in that world, we learn to, to quiet the noise around you, right, to be calm in the moment. And that takes repetition, it takes simulation, it takes failure. Right, you have to know what it feels like to mess up in order to know what it feels like to do it right and so those same.
Speaker 3:It's really interesting. Part of my job is and as a coach we're we're very quick to apply physical training in our lives stress, tension, repetition, failure, coaching. We do that as athletes and in the world of athletics, because the performance happens on the field. We see the body moving, we see the action happening the touchdown, the home run, the strikeout, whatever it is. But behavior requires the same methods. But because it's not as clear that that's what's happening in the moment, right.
Speaker 3:To use your example of your kids. All they see is maybe dad taking a deep breath right and walking away. They'll notice, hey, that reaction is new, but it takes time. It's not, as a parent, right being empathetic.
Speaker 3:You want to know how you learn to be empathetic. Practice being empathetic, right? You know we don't learn patience because it just happens, right, we have to be in moments where patience is required, but we don't. We don't think about behavior in the same way because it's not as physically obvious. And that's my job, and I spend a lot of time in moments with teams and I'll, I'll, I'll stop a conversation and I'll go right there. Did you see that moment? Did everybody feel it? That was X, that was Y, that was whatever thing we're working on, because people just pass by behavior.
Speaker 3:They don't if it's not visually apparent to them. It's sort of like a tree falling in the forest.
Speaker 1:Right, you use the word practice Yep. When you say practice, I think about, I think of another terminology is application Yep. Knowledge is application Yep. How do we get or how do we inspire someone to apply? Because it's easy to attain read knowledge, go, search for knowledge. That's easy, you know. But the one of the hardest things I found, I found find it to find it to do, is apply the things that you learn. So how, as a coach, how do you motivate, inspire or even invite application?
Speaker 3:Yeah, well, one of the things I always say is it changes in applied science, right? So if you want to be different, you have to do different. There is no other way. Right, you can read something, and that's great and knowledge is helpful. But I always say this about our kids right, we can't give our kids wisdom. We could give them knowledge. Wisdom comes from experience, right, so we don't lose the 20 pounds by reading about going to the gym. We lose 20 pounds by going to the gym, right, we don't become a better spouse by reading about it.
Speaker 3:That may be a start, but we have to actively practice, right, which is, I think, even things like meditation, right? I love why they call that word practice. It's a constant struggle for mastery and I think that's the first step is understanding that anything you want to change in your life, if I shift it from this idea of moving away from something but moving towards something, that's a really big first step. So there's two types of goals that we have in our life. One is an approach goal I want to go towards something and the other is an avoidance goal I want to do less of something. And approach goals tend to be more motivating to us, but we tend to define our lives in terms of avoidance goals. Right, I don't want to eat the donut.
Speaker 3:I don't want to have the fight. I don't want to scroll on Instagram, whatever it may be right, because those behaviors are the ones that we feel are a little bit more emotionally salient to us, and so part of that is helping people figure out what is it that you actually want to achieve, right? So, understanding that I'll work with you to sort of redefine your experience and then going back is to say let's tap into this experience you're having right now. Right, don't always think about the inspiring future. That's somewhere 100 years from now. Think about this idea of how do I rethink what I'm going through and then design a goal that's actually motivating. And again, there's science behind this, like there's real dopamine experience. That happens when we define goals in that way. The other problem we have, the other challenge, is that it's never the beginning or the end of an experience. It's the middle, right, and so we know that when we approach, when we kick something off, we've got a lot of energy for it. Right, you're moving fast.
Speaker 1:I was getting ready to say okay, now we're on this journey to get past January 19th, that's right, that's right, you know. And now we're in the middle of it. We lose the motivation. We lose uh we we lose the the why it gets foggy. And now we're in the middle of it. Now we're too far to turn around, and we have to make a decision to either turn around and keep going. But we're in the middle of the ocean, yeah, how do we go from there, though?
Speaker 3:how do we figure that out? So, first thing is um, we'll use the January 1st thing, right? What's the experience we all go through? Right, it's December 31st.
Speaker 4:I'm having a good new year's.
Speaker 3:Right. I wake up, it's the start of dry January. I want to read three books this month. I'm going to be a better spouse. I'm going to sleep eight hours a day. I'm going to work out every day of the week. Right, we have stacked so many things. We are guaranteeing failure. So the first part of overcoming the messy middle is to pick one thing for which you are going to pursue. So you've got to do less, do fewer things.
Speaker 3:The second part is you've got to break up the experience and the goal setting process so that maybe the first goal is actually just January 20th, it's not the next December 31st, right?
Speaker 3:So part of the way I fix the messy middle is by not making the messy middle so long, right? So if my goal in 2024 is to get a new job and at the end of this year I want to have X kind of job, well, again, I've got to do certain things. I've got to brush up my resume. I've got a network, I've got to post on social media. You know, whatever my strategy is, but instead of thinking about it as December 31st, think about in January. What can I do in January? What are the five actions I want to take? And then back that up even further and go what's my first week goal and ladder that up. So the way we solve the messy middle is by making sure the messy middle doesn't feel like it's six months worth of effort because, we know, by the way, that when we get to the end of a goal, we also get a spike of energy right.
Speaker 3:So I'll just use an example from my own, like fitness world, so once a week I do a pretty long cardio run.
Speaker 3:It's like 60 minutes, 75 minutes, and I didn't used to do that, I used to be more of a weights kind of high intensity guy. I started doing that. So I play a trick with myself. I don't really like running. I've gotten better at it.
Speaker 3:But so I start off and my first goal is to get to 15 minutes. I'm not worried about distance, I'm not worried about speed. I want to get to 15 minutes and I say, wow, I'm a quarter of the way done. Now my next goal is to get to five more minutes beyond that, Because I know that if I get to the next five minutes, I went from 25% done to 33% done, and so five minutes of effort is whatever that you know, 8% of total proportion. Then I go, wow, I'm a third of the way done.
Speaker 3:If I do half of what I just did, I'm 50% of the way done, and if I do that again, I'm 66% of the way done. And by that point I shift from thinking about time and I look at my mileage and I go. I'm going to go from mile four to mile five as quickly as I can, because I know that in the last 20 minutes I'm actually going to get more, more sort of dopamine and adrenaline that's going to push me through that. And then I get to the end and I go you know what? I could run for five more minutes and I add to the end, and so that that's an example like that's a trick in the mind.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and, and, and. Before you know it, you look back and you've done all this work.
Speaker 1:I love it. Yeah, I love it because it also so I'm pretty sure you heard of this terminology the singular mid-cortex.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Because, every time we do something Anterior mid cortex Anterior yes, so I didn't know it was a term, that it was a terminology, until I heard it on the Hubberman lab, but I didn't know that this was a practice that I had always applied in my life.
Speaker 1:But basically, doing things that are hard and overcoming it, the more you do it, the more you do things that are uncomfortable, the more confidence and the more mental catalyst that you build. So I love the way you just broke it down, because you were just all you. All you were doing was conditioning your mind and reconditioning and you was having like small wins along the journey that kept inspiring you right to keep going. So it sounds like and you can correct me if I'm wrong every time that you hit a let's just say, a pivotal part of the let's go back to the treadmill you're running experience. Every time you hit the mark, it built a certain level of confidence. Do you find that true? The same experience when you're training your clients when they hit a certain mark that they didn't think that they can hit. What does it do for their internal world, their confidence.
Speaker 3:Again. It's the same experience, right. So that's one of the reasons, as I mentioned, I'll stop a workshop and I'll actually say, hey, everybody see that moment right there, we just did something that was a win. Let's feel good about the win that we just had, and then let's look at the next one, and so I will often not tell the teams I work with what's going to happen to them. I'll give them big, rough, big blocks, but that does two things. One, the minute you tell them what the entire journey is, they just look at the end and then they get that same messy middle problem.
Speaker 3:Are we done yet. The second thing is is it allows me to shift in the middle of that experience to something that might actually help them grow in the moment Right. So part of the again the value of coaches and we do this with athletes all the time is you know, they're the ones that have to run the play right, I coach football right.
Speaker 3:So coaches stand on the sideline, you call a play and it's. It's their resilience, it's their flexibility, it's their adaptability in the moment. But what I've hopefully done in the week leading up to the game is simulate those experiences so that it's at least not the first time they've seen it right. So what we do with teams is and this is really true in the corporate world, I would say right, we think about what we do, what my job is, what the roles are, what the outcomes are, what my responsibilities are. We don't always think about how we do it right, which is the method that I use to treat the other human being next to me in that experience, right. So one of my big clients, maybe, as an example, is a nuclear power station.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 3:And so very technical, very dangerous, very engineering, heavy world, and there's a procedure for everything, as you would expect heavy world. And there's a procedure for everything, as you would expect, right, we don't want bad stuff to happen. They have extended that behavior into everything, so much so at times that they've replaced their responsibility to interact with another human with a checklist, right? And so what I'll often say to them is right, there's no checklist that'll ever replace the fact that someone next to you is having an emotional experience, whether you decided to acknowledge it or not. And so what we'll do is we'll sort of unwind behaviors that have extended beyond their kind of useful application and stack wins that way, by removing things. So that's another way of saying here's a win. It's not just I did something new. Sometimes that win is I didn't do something bad. So that's kind of the game you got to play with teams as you go through the process.
Speaker 1:You use this word shift. Yeah, it sounds like you like to use that word shift. I do, I do. I shift a lot of stuff all the time. What is the importance of shifting?
Speaker 3:Yeah, well, I think it goes. Go back to those three questions, right? How have I done something in the past? How has it served me and how might I do it differently? We can't change and we can't grow unless we change and shift something about ourselves, right? Whether that's diet, sleep, relationships, exercise, reading, right? Change, by definition, because it's an applied science, it requires us to do something new, and so for me, by, what I try to focus on is giving people a sense to go. I want to go from one spot to another, right? So maybe, to use example of my client in this one case, they had a hard time with things like delegation. They were very directive go do X, go finish Y but not a lot of description about like coaching and mentoring and guiding. I wasn't teaching anyone?
Speaker 3:I was just telling people. Okay. So we wanted them to shift from being a directive culture to being a mentoring and coaching culture. When I have that frame now, I understand okay, I used to be like this, I want to be like that and these are the behaviors that I execute. And so that I know I'm making that change. Right right.
Speaker 3:So, whatever shift it is whether it's a shift in culture, process, technology, behavior, right, there's a lot of different ways you can do it. What it does is it gives people a language to identify when I'm getting it right. And, more importantly and this is probably the part that I think for teams is so critical is to hold each other accountable when we're not doing it right. Right.
Speaker 3:So so one of the things that we say is people in teams, right, you're only responsible for you, but you're accountable to the person to your left and right, right. And so my job is, if you're not pulling your weight, is to remind you of that, not punitively, but to remind you of that and help you correct the behavior. And vice versa, I give you that power over me and you give me that power over you when we do that right. A, we create culture, but we build trust, and so, in order for me to understand what shifts we're making, I have to give you a language for that, so that if we're in the middle of a meeting right, the best version of a shit, like when I see a team that's really kind of gotten it somebody in the room will go hey, we don't do that here.
Speaker 3:That's not our standard right Teams that police themselves are the, that's kind of the most trusting teams, and I've I've seen it happen. I've seen people in meetings. What they do is they go hey, we're not a directive culture, we're a teaching culture. They've given it a name, they've given it a language and then they've used it as a reminder for the standard. And once we start doing that right, we see performance rise pretty dramatically.
Speaker 1:So what do you say to the leader that's saying, hey, I'm the leader of this company, but it doesn't take this much demand to transform?
Speaker 3:That's why I have a job.
Speaker 1:But how do you really respond to that, though? How do you respond? Because it sounds easy to be a coach, but it not no so how? How do give me an example how do you change? How do you influence me to change when I'm not ready to transform?
Speaker 3:because it sounds like shifting demands transformation yeah, yeah, look, there are some people that um will, maybe we'll never get there, right? They, they just have a view. I sort of call these this mindset. I don't want to call people, cause that's probably unfair this mindset of if you build it, they will come right. All I need is an inspiring strategy, all I need is a well-designed process, all I need is the perfect new company to buy in.
Speaker 3:But, as I will often say to them, all of this sounds great, so you get actual humans involved and we don't follow the script, we don't follow the formula, and so a lot of times, people like that, that mindset can be a real challenge, because if I'm battling with you as a leader for why we need to take a more human approach to change, you're probably not going to enjoy working with me, and maybe vice versa. Right, we have to talk about and get past the why and into the what and the how. Right, how are we going to do this? And I spend a lot of time with leaders looking at their strategies and just saying, okay, now let me tell you what's really going to happen. Here's the part where this is going to go off the rails. Here's the part where people are going to struggle. This is the part that's going to take longer than you think, and so if I can get to that point with a leader, then we're going to have it's not going to be easy, but it's going to be a productive discussion about what's required. Part of the way I do that is a really it's a question I find is really really helpful. I just did a post on this the other day.
Speaker 3:Actually, a lot of times in the change world, we'll describe the what's in it for me, okay, okay. It's a phrase that people will hear, right, and it's this idea of all. Right, charles, if you participate in this process with me, here's what you get, and it's a well-intentioned document. It's usually a couple of pages. We write it for four or five different groups of people. You sit down, you talk about it and it's designed to give you some inspiration to be able to move into the process of change.
Speaker 3:I've seen almost none of these documents work. I've written them, so I know, you know I speak from experience. The question we need to ask, and particularly that leader, is what's holding us back? Not what's in it for me, but what's holding us back, because what that does for the leader who's maybe thinking about performance is there's a gap between what you desire and what you're getting, and that gap is filled by the people that work in your company, who are designed to deliver that strategy. So, if I can get you asking what's holding the humans back? It's a little bit it's a it's sort of I'm giving away my tricks. It's a little bit of a Jedi.
Speaker 1:This is why you're here.
Speaker 3:Is that if I can get you thinking, as a leader, about how do I equip the players on the team with the skills to deliver the strategy, now I've got you in a place where I'm thinking about human performance, and if I get you thinking about that, then I get you appreciating the nuance of all these different dimensions that we're talking about. If you're just on strategy and operations, it can be really hard, right, because we don't win a football game because of the game plan. We win a football game because of the players on the field that execute that. And we win because we got to the end of the first quarter and you know what we wanted to run the ball and it's not working.
Speaker 3:So, we have to shift right.
Speaker 3:And that's why I love coaching, because it it I love stressing myself and kind of going through that work. So again, companies are are really no different. So we we have to just work with the leader who's maybe resisting an appreciation for what's required, and helping them reframe their again their experience of the present. I would much rather have a leader rethink why they're here than spend a lot of time planning where they're going. Say that last part again, I would much rather have a leader rethink why they're here than spend a lot of time thinking about where they're going Nice.
Speaker 1:That makes a lot of sense, but here's the only thing that I struggle with here.
Speaker 3:Just one. That's pretty. I'm doing pretty good.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you're doing good.
Speaker 3:If there's just one thing you're struggling with, and that's just in a corporate, corporate America.
Speaker 1:Yeah, most leaders do not have that. From my experience, I can be wrong, you can correct me anytime I'm wrong. You can correct me anytime I'm wrong. You normally don't meet a leader that says, hey, it requires, just because it requires, it demands transformation. I know that I'm the leader here, but it doesn't take all of that. I don't see the corporations Having this type of like awareness is of it takes all of everything that you're speaking of today. It doesn't take this. Yeah, they gave me the title to be a leader for a reason. Yeah, so I honestly, I must know what I'm doing because I'm here, I'm the leader. It's how do you get the leaders to to realize that it takes more than just the title of being a leader?
Speaker 3:Yeah, Well, I think it's tough to look. I've worked with amazing leaders and I've worked with difficult leaders. I mean, we're a spectrum and so we would expect that to be the case, and I think companies get a bad rap and that's probably not fair. Um, because, again, there's a lot of I think it's there's a lot of structural financial incentives that go into. You know, companies are designed with a purpose and that purpose is to deliver value to shareholders and to customers. Now you can?
Speaker 3:you can strip all that away, and some people get really sort of militant about it and say hey, it's just about money and all that sort of stuff and look so that I think it's important to understand that there's levels to this right and to understand that those levels influence behavior, as you would any structure or any network or any experience, Right? So I think it's important to acknowledge that. I also think it's important and I just I I always want to expect the best of people and.
Speaker 3:I just try to operate that way, and when I do that, it puts me into a mode of educating people as to, maybe, experiences they haven't had, knowledge they don't possess, things that they can do to move themselves forward. Um, I also think it's important structurally to understand, and this is where I think change in the body is just like changing companies. Right, like efficiency in companies is very profitable, right, the faster I deliver my product or service, the more money I make, and so we design systems to be able to do that really, really quick. And so that's just like the human body, right. Homeostasis is a thing for a reason, and so that's just like the human body, right, homeostasis is a thing for a reason. Right, I want to deliver.
Speaker 3:My brain's job is to keep me alive, right, and so it makes sure my heart's still beating. And anything that's going to take me longer and be more uncomfortable than I thought For leaders in companies, changing something is inefficient, which means it's going to be less than profitable for some period of time. It's going to be complicated, it's going to be messy, right, and yet on the other side of that, hopefully, is a better future state for that company, and so my job is to a lot of times, times leaders that are resisting it. It's the impatience of understanding what's required and then the strategy to move through the process to get to the other side.
Speaker 1:Patience and strategy. I like those two words. You want to know why? Because now, on this journey past January 19th, that's right, we got to the middle. We made it Matter of fact. You've done your job and got me to January 19th. Matter of fact, I'm on January 30th, nice. How do I stay inspired when I get there, though? What? What do you do as a coach to keep me inspired? Once I've accomplished the goal, I've transformed and now I'm comfortable. What's?
Speaker 3:next? What's the next goal? Right, so? So you mentioned it. Right, the anterior mid cingulate cortex. So, um you. This is a cliche that we hear in a lot of places right, but falling in love with the process of growth is the path to perpetual growth. And so pick your next thing right. Pick whatever it may be. A year and a half ago I'll just use a personal example I was not very active on social media and I didn't do much. I'd write the occasional article on LinkedIn or whatever it may be, and I just started November 2022. I started posting a lot of these concepts we're talking about, and the goal was I knew I had a mission to change the conversation around change and transformation. What I saw coming out was not new and I wanted to poke the bear right.
Speaker 3:I wanted to be provocative. I'm a little bit of a troublemaker, I'm not going to lie.
Speaker 1:A lot of troublemakers.
Speaker 3:I've been this way my whole life.
Speaker 1:Good Love it.
Speaker 3:And it is just what it is. And I started down a process of I had about six weeks of things. I knew one post a week that I wanted to put out, and so I did that. I got to like early January whatever it was end of the year and I said, all right, what's the next four things maybe I want to talk about? And I wrote those down and I did those. And then I went on a client project and I had a new insight and I just made one up on a plane one day and I put that one in there. And then I read an article and then I did that one, and then I thought of something else.
Speaker 3:And then I got back to and before you knew it, I had been posting for like a year. And then I was like I did it for a year, I got to keep going Well, what's? Rather than think about the act of posting, I shifted to what's the next topic, what's the next conversation I want to have? And then I posted that. And then I did a couple of videos and I wasn't really comfortable doing my own videos. I did a couple of videos and I was like, oh, this is awful right, and I'm filming myself and I'm doing the whole thing.
Speaker 2:And, yeah, here I am right now sitting. It probably was awful, yeah, no it.
Speaker 3:You can see it, it's posted on there so you can go find it. And so I did that. And so it was a process of shifting, not moving the goalpost in terms of delaying my accomplishment, but moving the goal, because I had mastered or at least accomplished the goal that I just did. And so there's this small moment when we accomplish a goal, where we can, either we should feel good, we should feel productive and accomplished. But you can't let that moment go on too long before you set the next goal, right, because then you'll just be like, oh, I'm done. Well, yeah, you're done with that one, but what's the next one? Well, yeah, you're done with that one, but what's the next one? And you've got to fall in love with this process of finding the next challenge, introducing the next mountain or hill, whatever it may be, right. And so that, before you know it, you've come all this way. And now you're like, oh my God, I, you know it's it's.
Speaker 3:It's like college, right, we go to college. You don't finish college in a day, you finish it in four years. And as you're going through it, right, you're like this sucks or that's great, right, you have a, you have a final, you have a hard class, you have a tough relationship, whatever it is, and I've I've never heard anyone not say this, which is a bad grammatical way of saying that which is you get to the end and you go yeah, it wasn't so bad, right, because you've you've laddered through all these experiences, right. And now my interior mid cingulate cortex is bigger and I'm like all right, let's go get a job, let's go start a company, let's go do whatever. The next thing is Right. So that process of goal setting has to just be something that becomes a muscle and and you just perpetually introduce new things to go after.
Speaker 1:It's so. It's not okay to get comfortable.
Speaker 3:Well, yes.
Speaker 1:Basically, it's what you just said. It's not okay, right, it's not okay to get. That's a hard one.
Speaker 3:It is. So I'm a I always say this so I'm a, I'm a cold shower guy. I take it. Yeah, I take it. I didn't take one this morning and I usually do on the weekends and I was like I probably should have taken one and my wife was like, no, it's going to be fine, but it. I found that the conversation I have with myself in the moment before that happens is so different than the conversation I have with myself the moment it's over, and my choice is to put myself into that experience. It's like two minutes right, it's. It's too. It feels like an hour right.
Speaker 3:But it's two minutes, but but that's the the. The person that you have to start to get comfortable with is the. The. The guy or the woman that's on the other side and understand my future self is going to thank my present self for doing something difficult and and I've never seen anyone regret doing something hard- Do something hard.
Speaker 1:Oh, I love that because I teach my kids that as well. I live by that as well. Michael, before we get out of here, where can we find you? Where can we find you? How can we stay connected to you?
Speaker 3:Yeah, my website, michaeljlopezcoach. You, yeah, uh, my website, michaeljlopezcoach. Uh, all of my socials are on there and so it's easy to find. Um, I'm pretty active on LinkedIn, instagram uh not as much in some of the other ones, but that's a. That's a great place to start. Anyone can schedule 15 minutes with me if they want to learn more or talk more, whether it's a coaching or a client thing that you're interested in. I am working on a book and that'll come out later this year. So talk about doing something hard. I wish I had known what was required before I said yes, but that's what I'm working on, and then I'm doing a little bit more speaking and that sort of thing, so you'll see more of those things come out here in the weeks and months to come.
Speaker 1:Congratulations. Thank you, before we go, I always do a call to action to my community, so it's your decision. Sure, you choose one to three call to actions that you would give to the community. Yeah, and we're going to take it out of here. From there, I like it.
Speaker 3:Uh my, my wife will. She'll smile when I say this, but I say it to everyone and I have lived my life by this. But I would say always raise your hand for the most difficult job available, even if you fail. People will a respect you for being brave enough to step into something really difficult, but B you really can't fail because what you learn from that experience is going to be worth its weight in gold. So when you're in a meeting, when you're in a team, when you're sitting around a room and someone says who wants to volunteer, be the first hand that goes up, I don't care what it is. You will never regret that moment. And you know, I've raised my hand for some tough things and and every time I've been scared, but the outcome has been so growth fueling for me that it's. It's the one thing I hope everybody does and takes away from our conversation.
Speaker 1:This has been fun. This is why you have to love the Big Dog Talk podcast, because why? Number one, I know my brain is stretched, I know I'm inspired, and if I'm inspired, I know the community inspired. Michael, I just want to say thank you for coming on the Big Dog Talk podcast. This has been a pleasure. I hope that we get to see you again. Man, this was fun. I appreciate it. Thanks for having me. Thanks for everything man, this was good.
Speaker 1:We got past anywhere to 19. You got it. Good job, man Good job, good job, good job Nice.