Getting Unstuck Part IV | Strategies for Breakthrough Growth

Join Brooke Page-Thompson and Alec in "Getting Unstuck Part IV" as they explore strategies to overcome workplace challenges, foster innovation, and achieve breakthrough growth. Discover actionable insights to navigate career and business roadblocks effectively.

Transcript

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Music. Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of The SCORR cast. I am once again joined by the fantastic Brooke Page-Thompson, and I am so excited for our conversation today. Now you've you've heard Brooke Page-Thompson's name a ton of times on the podcast. You've probably seen us live on LinkedIn, at times, annoying you with LinkedIn messages and invites to come and watch us live. And we've done three fantastic episodes that you could actually listen to on the SCORR cast on Spotify Apple, wherever you get your podcast, you could also find it on my page, Brooke's page and then SCORR marketing's page on on LinkedIn as well. But today, we are recording a special episode of our getting unstuck series that we thought we would take offline, if you will, record this so we can really get into the nitty gritty here, which I am really excited about. Our first couple of episodes, Brooke, if you recall, and for those who haven't listened, we had three previous episodes on getting unstuck. And Part one was how work has changed over the last six months, over the last 18 months, over the last five years, since the beginning of the COVID epidemic or pandemic, we had unstuck. Part two, successful work life integration, which I have a feeling is going to come up today a little bit as well. And then number three, right before the holiday, had a really important conversation around unpacking mental health and understanding how to deal with how busy I am and, oh, I'm always busy. And all of three of those lead right into this topic today that I think maybe we shied away from a little bit you texted me maybe, maybe a couple weeks ago and said, I think it's time that we we finally record this episode on control. And right away, I said, That's a hell of an idea. Let's do it. And then as we led up to today, I thought, shit i I'm now a little bit more nervous to talk about this and to talk about the impact that control has from a positive lens, from a negative lens, how it goes in with what we can control at work, what we can control at home, what we can control in the world, and then how that balances everything. So Brooke, before we get started and talk about control, control as humans, control as a leader, control in the workforce and at home. Let's just, let's just check in a little bit, we've had a lot of conversations over the last couple of months, in three full episodes of The getting unstuck series. How are you? How's 2025? Treating you. How is the getting unstuck series treating you so far. What thoughts do you have leading into this? This episode on control here today? Well, it's a pleasure to be back, and I'm with you. I'm kind of, like, super excited to talk about this, but also no shit. Moment of you know this is, this is a meaty topic. And if I look, if I look at just the last two months, or end of, almost end of February, and just look at like how all the other topics have led up to today, 2025 is, if I'm going to be honest, it's been tough. It's been I've had to do a lot of self reflection on, how am I treating boundaries that I thought I had really good control over, that have had to change or shift. And, you know, I ended 2024, pretty burnout myself, even though I was doing all the things and I really had to have a little come to Brooke moment and think about like, what am I? What am I still doing that is causing this pain that I will call some of the boundary setting that we try to do, and why am I still so tired? And why do I still feel like I'm not doing all the things that I should do? And I actually have taken a huge step back in the last two months, really prioritizing sleep and self care and not working like crazy at night. And I've and it's hard for me because I'm such a a type control freak, that to not just push, push, push, push push is really hard for me, and so I've had to get really comfortable with, like pausing, taking more breaks, making sure I'm eating, going to bed at a normal time, letting myself sleep if I need to sleep. And I just didn't realize how I think chronic, how much chronic fatigue I had in my own system that I'm a whole. Full that some of the tools that I'm doing I get back to somewhat homeostasis in the next couple of months. But for me, this year has been definitely a self reflection year. How about you? Yeah, well, I think your answer goes to some of the intros that we've had on the last episode, which which is that you and I are not mental health experts. We are human beings that are in the workforce who are also trying to enjoy being in the workforce, and are almost talking as we experience a lot of the same things that everybody else is experiencing, and trying our best to shed light on hey, if I'm experiencing this, maybe Brooke is maybe so and so is maybe so and so is and so that's why we're having these conversations. Is not from the lens of expertise, but from the lens of I'm in it, I'm in it, I'm in it with you. And that's how I have felt. 2025 has been the longest year of my life, and it's two months and 25 days, or a month and 25 days in. Part of that is, we're expecting our first child in April, and so by the time this airs, I'll be, like, days away, you know, a couple of weeks away from from that coming and being really exciting. But it's just felt so long. The weather hasn't helped. The the market, the just the way that people are talking about things from an economic standpoint, the level of optimism, frankly, the level of rage. Right now is a problem again, no matter how you slice it, no matter how you look at it, there is just a lot of animosity and a lot of pain that's happening. And then, you know, I talked about this before we we started to record, but the topic of control is so interesting right now, because you can look at it in such a positive way, you can look at it in such a negative way. And last week, now, maybe, maybe three or four weeks ago now, in February, I thought I was going to be in control, and my wife and I were going to have just a killer week, and we were going to be really productive baby oriented things. The family was coming in town for the baby shower, X, Y and Z. And so we made a list of all the things that we could control before the baby comes. And the first thing on that list was, let's just get a tune up for our furnace. And about eight hours later, we were stranded in a hotel room because our furnace was leaking carbon monoxide, and then it led to me working from the hotel bar, a co worker's living room, the hotel floor, all of the above for four days, including one day of having to be at the house, working in 37 degree temperatures, wearing a parka and a beanie Because of how cold it was in the house. And I think that's such an interesting lens of this conversation, because it went from something that I thought that I had control over to legitimately having control over nothing, and then just trying to survive the work week. And what's funny is I actually felt like I had a productive work week. But by the end of it, it felt like I had had 17 productive work weeks because of the exhaustion and the noise and all of the other things crumbling down around you that work is almost irrelevant at that point, and so I think it's just a really interesting topic and a really interesting time, given everything that happened last week, and it was a real test of my type A and my version of ADHD, and my version of control, which is having a pulse on basically everything right now. And that's that's not always the easiest, easiest thing to have, no and and when we came up kind of with this idea of control, we knew it was going to be tricky, because it has so many different lenses, like you were talking about. It's got there's a personal lens, there's a work lens, and then there's wanting to control people and situations around you, right? And if we just want to jump in with what is a definition absolutely control, right? If people are like, well, but because some control is good, right? And we're not saying that control isn't a good thing. It's just you need to be mindful of some of this. And so if we look at a definition of control, it's the power to influence or direct people's behavior or the course of events. So if you just break down that that one definition, it's a control of people's behaviors. If you think about especially type A personalities, we have people that like to try and control what happens in their home. They try to control what happens with their children or their spouse, right? I want to control that person's behavior because I don't I don't like how they're showing up in the world. We never flip the mirror around and say, Well, how am I contributing to this? And we want to try and control the core. Course of events. So if you look at just what's happening in the world around us, regardless if it's at work or at home, we've all been put in our places in the last year, really, but the last six months, we've all been put in our places. Of you can't control what's going on around you, really at all. And I think the more aware you become of the fact that the more I try to control something, the harder it becomes. There's a reason for that, because we're trying to control a situation, a person, a thing that's external to us, versus recognizing the only thing I have control over is myself and the way I show up in the world and how I treat other people, and that is a journey that will take a lifetime to learn how to do. But the more aware we become of that, the better we are at the rest of this. So that's our that's our kind of preview definition of where we're starting with, with some of this discussion, yeah, and there's no, there's no ceiling here. In my opinion, you don't get better at this and then stop and you're the best. It's something that is going to change. And I think you talked about this before we went live and or started recording. And I'm curious if you could talk about it in terms of at the workforce, right? We talk about how work was prior to 2020, and then all of a sudden, everybody loses control with everything, day to day existence, but specifically in work is, hey, we need to go home, and then we have this semblance of normal, that new normal phase that everyone referred to. And then now we're in a completely different phase, and we're losing control again, or control might be shifting. And so can you just talk a little bit about that process and what control has looked like, and how that's kind of shifted hands, and what that, what that impact actually is on on individuals at the business level, at the individual level, too. Yeah, I was thinking about it as I was getting ready for this. And I thought, you know, I think part of where people are really struggling right now with this concept of return to office isn't necessarily the ask of returning to the office. It's the loss of something. And when we had the pandemic in March of 2020, right, everybody was mandated to stay home, unless you were critical in the in the world, and that was, you know, a handful of positions or roles, but you didn't have a choice. You couldn't leave your house. You You were mandated to do certain things if you did leave your house, and you needed to have a really good reason to do that, that that had a tail on it for quite some time, and people fell out of control in their ability to travel and their ability to go into the office and see people to have control over how they structured their day and time, because they had children at home, their spouses were working next to them. There was no control, quote, unquote, from that standpoint. Yet at the same time, companies started to relax their control over people. By saying, you work the hours that you need to work, you create the boundaries and space that you need to be productive in the workforce, we saw the great resignation happen, where people started boomeranging all around the place because they got more money, especially in your industry, in life sciences, we saw people even like crazy from jobs, because everyone else was paying really high dollar because there's so much research happening in the world, and now a lot of that's dried up. And so now there's a shift that's happening again. But if you look at the last 12 months, really, this is when this all started. Ai came into play in a big way that's challenging the way people work, and no one knows what to do with it right now, all these corporations are mandating return to office and and I think we talked about this. I think it was in the third one, because Amazon had just announced, maybe it was a second, yeah, and I just announced their return to office policy, and we had a little debate about that. But I think had the employees, if employees feel like they're being part of the discussion, or at least, I had a chance to voice an opinion. There's, there's a sense of control. I feel like I have some control over the decision, and companies are just like, Too bad there's no you have no control over this, and it's not so much the ask to return to office. I think it is. People have had a lot of leeway and a lot of control over how their life evolved during the pandemic, and now there's this stark. A line in the sand of no more. And if you want to do this, go find another job, and then everybody's laying everybody off, and there's nowhere to go. And so you're like, Well, I'm kind of, once again, I'm being forced to do something I had no control over. I have no decision on, and I'm expected to show up and be happy about this, this thing called work, and if you really think about it, Alec people, people are so out of control in general, with what's happening in the world. There's no control over inflation. There's no control over how my family is responding to things. There's no control over what my boss asks me to do. And now I'm I have no control over where I get to work. And it's almost like that little nugget right there was the was the catalyst explosion for people of now you've taken one more thing away from me. I have no control. And they're they're pushing against the system a little bit, because where else can I do it? I can't do it anywhere else, so I'm going to do it at my job. And now companies are feeling that a little bit. So how are they supposed to respond? And you've got two sides of a coin that I don't know is ever gonna equally meld together because both want control. Yeah, well, I think you make a really good point on both want control. The reason that, the reason that we're seeing a lot of these back to Office mandates, is because the company is feeling like they don't have control, and so they are making those decisions to try to, you know, understand exactly what you're doing 24 hours, like there is a control narrative that's happening there as well. And then saw a report just maybe last week about how, as Amazon employees are coming back to Office, there's not desks for them, there's not desktops, there's not laptops, there's not in that, in that episode, and so it's like, okay, so now I, I'm, I'm doing this thing, but I'm not supported. It's, there's a big difference, right? Like, okay, if I'm gonna, if someone is gonna control where I work, I better have damn good amenities, right? Like, everything better be lined up for me now it's not so now. Why would I even put up with that control? And so I think there's, there's huge layers to this. And then, you know, this was back in January, but the the new administration in office right now has come out pretty harshly against working from home, and believes that maybe 10% of the time people who work from home are working from home, and I vehemently disagree with that, because I'm I tend to be more productive at my house. I also feel better about it when I'm at my house and I'm able to do things. But that's that's another angle of this, and I find it really curious, because remote work existed before 2020 and it wasn't the same, but SCORR had remote work before 2020 The difference was, is that, instead of everybody being on camera, we use those, you know, those awful little phone things that sat in the middle of the office, and we all would lean in to speak over and so, but we did it. There was remote work before. There will be remote work forever after. It's just now. Who knows how long that exists? Who knows what? What role the organization's going to have in it, what role the person's going to have in it. I want to be able to wake up in the morning and choose where I want to work from. And that is like core to who that's core to the control that I have to have. And if I like, I'm at the office today. I'll be at the office every day this week, because last week, I didn't work at the office once because of the furnace situation. That's I have to be able to have that flexibility. It would break me as an individual, if someone said from eight to five, this is where you have to be the entire time I physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, would not be able to handle that. And that's it's crazy that some people are being put in that position right now and then being blamed for wanting to work elsewhere and having their loyalty questions and all of those things when that's so it's such a core, in my opinion, it's such a core aspect of of being a human being. There's a theory that we talk about in some of our leadership programs. It's called Theory X, Theory Y. We might have briefly brought it up before. Theory X leadership believes that people only show up to work for a paycheck, that there's no intrinsic motivation or reason for them to be there, and theory why believes the opposite, that people intrinsically want to be creative and support each other and be surrounded by others. And I think what we're starting to see is there's some there's definitely. Definitely some underlying currents that we're probably not going to talk about today, because that would totally derail the conversation. But, yeah, but I think what I what I do hear from some leaders, is just to that point. There's when I can't physically see someone working. I'm having to, I'm having to trust, trust that they are a decent enough human being, that they're not, quote, stealing from me, yep. And that's how companies feel right now, for people working from home, where they, you know, look at your calendar and it's not completely stacked. There's, there's a lot of white space. Well, if you have white space, my assumption is, is is that you're not doing anything? Yeah, and that's been around for years, that that didn't happen in the pandemic, that even took place in offices, where, if people looked at your calendar, it was like, well, you must not be busy. And it's like, the work I have do, the actual work at some so when am I supposed to do that? And I think we're we had a pendulum swing. We had a pendulum swing completely in one direction during the pandemic. Of you know, I think we've mentioned this before. I used to have people that would put stuff on their signatures at the bottom of their emails. If you receive this in a in a time that you're not working, please don't feel obligated to respond. Yeah, those are gone, right? Because this flexibility that we thought was necessary at the time, all of a sudden, drastically swung back the other way. And at some point, I do think there'll be a healthy balance in the middle. But I think what's happening is there's there's ecosystems and structures that are being challenged by not having office space full. Yeah, there's a whole real estate side of this that we're not even going to talk about. But there's, there's that aspect. There's, you know, people that don't didn't commute, you didn't have as many car purchases, you didn't have there's, there's a whole ecosystem that is surrounding some of this that I think is driving some of the decisions, whether it's inherent or not inherent. I think it's all driving certain things. And who's getting stuck in the middle. It's the it's the humans that are middle class, you know, just trying to make a good life for themselves. Now they're stuck with these decisions that they have no control over, and they have nowhere else to go. And it's and it's frustrating for people, and they're, they're responding in very negative ways. Think you're seeing a lot of that in some of the just posts externally, and the way people are reacting to things, it's this sense of, I feel like my world is on fire. I have no control over the fire, and it's about to consume everything around me. And and they might actually feel that way, depending on where they live and their views on climate change, but that's not why we're here to talk about that. If you're still listening, please don't hang up the phone just because I said that. But I do. I want to. I want to segue in a minute to some of the business side and the control and trust and hiring that that's that side of things, but really quick. I do want to ask a question. I had mentioned this before, but I had reached out to a friend who works at another organization now, and just said, how are you? And the answer was just right away, you know, essentially trying to not let everything that's happening and the crumbling of what they're seeing in the world impact their every thought and intrude everything they're doing at work. And so I'm just trying to survive, and I think that this is where I want to flip control a little bit as a positive and controlling what we consume and controlling the narrative that we're telling. Because I know that there are days and there are weeks, especially since 2025 started, that I have consumed everything, and by the end of the day, there is no hope left. There is I have to, I have to restart the engines, and I have, I have let in every piece of information that possibly exists enter into my brain, and I have consumed it all, and I have felt every piece of that puzzle. And then the severance idea sounds like a pretty decent concept for me by the end of that day. So what can you say about just a little bit of control and taking back the boundary setting that we've talked about before, and just, you know, really understanding the duality of it used to be work life balance, and now it's way bigger than that. And so how do we take a little bit of control, use that as a positive thing, to maintain. Maintains, I don't know, just stability in our day to day existence right now. It's a tough question, because some people are going to listen to this and be like, You guys are living a pipe dream. And there's no way this is possible, because when we do allow ourselves to consume a lot of content that that seems doom and gloom and like the world is truly ending tomorrow. It's hard to understand that there's that you have some control over this. And I think what's been helpful for me with my team and people that I surround myself with is is I always remind people you have to remove yourself from the need to feel like you need to control it. So the minute you start to that, there's there's an actual physical reaction that starts to happen for people, you can sense it right, like your your muscles get tighter, your jaw starts to clench, your brain goes into all these different scenarios of, well, if they would just do this, or if I could just do this, or if I could change this, that that is what we call a self reinforcing loop. Yeah, we talked about shame spiraling the last time, and that's where all this kind of starts, and I think when we can step back and recognize there's only so much one human is allowed to control, and there's only so much content we actually should consume in a day, and social media has taken that construct and thrown it out the window. Right? If you read the book, it's called the burn book by Kiera Swisher. I love her stuff if you've ever listened to her podcast, but she did a lot with Facebook, Twitter, Google, early on and in the early 2000s when the tech boom was happening. And she's like, the whole point of these social media platforms is for screen time, so all they're looking for is, how long can I hold Alex attention? And that's why reels are becoming such a thing. And so people are either drowning all this out by getting sucked into social media with all the positivity quote out that's out there, or sucked in on all the negativity that's out there. And I think when we talk about boundary setting, that is really a personal decision that you need to make of how much content should I be consuming in a daily basis? If that means I need to limit my screen time these these devices called iPhones or galaxies or whatever you have, they are like addictive like crack, and they're designed to do that. There are optimization tools, but they're also designed to keep you tethered to them, and so putting it down and actually recognizing I can control the information that's coming into my system, I can't control that. I can control who I spend my time with. I don't have to go spend time with that friend that just wants to talk about all the problems in the end of days, right? I can control that. It may be hard because I have a relationship with someone that now I'm maybe changing or putting a boundary around which they may not understand. But the control that we do have is I can control the time that I have every day and what I do with it. So sitting on a couch and binge watching severance might be fun for a while, but then you may have to stop because it's like, wow, this is starting to hit home a little too much. Yeah, right. And then you need to go find something else to do with your time. I've started a routine at night now, as much as I can, I try to end screens by 830 and I don't. I don't sleep with my phone in my room. I know some people you know, need it for family and stuff, but I don't. So I leave my phone downstairs, and I go into my space and I meditate for 10 minutes. I just try to clear out the day. I'll do a little bit of journaling, and then I'll just let my body start to decompress. I'll throw my legs up the wall, or I'll do something that's just very relaxing. Maybe turn on some ocean sounds with, you know, whatever system I have up there? But I've recognized that if I don't give myself some space between when I turn a screen off and I go to bed, my sleep is disrupted. I have horrible dreams I'm like reliving the whole day. And I've had to really get mindful of that this year in particular, that that is a non negotiable I have to keep because it lets me shut off all that stuff that came at me during the day, and now I feel like I'm a human again. And I think we all need to find something, whether it's in the morning, middle of the day, or the evening, or all three of those, you control the time you. Have you control what you consume, and you you need to be more conscious of that so that you can have more appreciation for life. I think that's where we're getting a little stuck. If I'm being honest, and winter's hard for people, I get that there's especially if you live in the Midwest where it's, yeah, nasty, gray and cold. I I've lived there, I've been there, but I think we forget sometimes, when we're so consumed with social media and people's opinions and all the stuff that's coming from us at the world, we have this beautiful moment in time where we have a short amount of time on this earth. Call it chi. Is a certain amount of chi, and when it's gone, you're gone. And if we waste all of our time worrying about or trying to control a situation, we miss the moments where life is life. We talked about it in one of our podcasts, live in the moments of pause, right? And I think if we can come back to these moments of where can I pause or just go outside and take a deep breath, be grateful every day for the things that I have. Be grateful for the the experience of life that is mine, whether it's beautiful right now or it's hard right now? Can I have gratitude in this moment? And the more you remove yourself from needing to control it and being grateful for what you do have right the need to control starts to diminish a little bit, because you don't need to control that stuff anymore. It's just that's life. You can't control other people. We can't control the government. We can't control inflation. Control inflation, but we can control how we spend our time, who we spend it with, and having little moments of gratitude throughout the day. Yeah, just going to pull that entire answer and broadcast it on national TV for everybody to to listen, because I think we all need it. And I think it's, you know, it comes down to all life really is, is the passage of time, and you have to decide how you want to spend that passage of time. So I love love, love that, and I think it's great advice to anybody that's feeling this way. I do want to pivot for the end of this episode, next 1012, minutes or so, to talk business side of things. And I know we both kind of went out and did some anecdotal research on things that were tough to let control go of in our settings. And you know, for my side, it's more on the marketing and business development side, which is letting control, letting go of the control of the economy of buyer buying behaviors and buying cycles, and that that's going to be extended on the leadership side. It's you know how to let let go of some of that control as a leader, letting the people that you hire come in and actually do the work that that you hired them for. And I thought that one of the things that you said earlier was really interesting about the control over like watching someone in the white space on their calendar. And I think that the less control you have as a leader, the more pressure is on you to be a good leader and to be good at hiring and identifying talent and building and investing in talent and then giving them the opportunity to succeed. So I know through your research, you had a couple of themes. Is there any theme that stood out from the business perspective? I know we talked about, you know, the control with high standards and quality of work, trusting others, the personal investment in every outcome, and like needing to have hands in every project to make sure things are going okay, communication and delegation challenges. And then, you know, just the importance of surrounding ourselves with the right talent, the right people. Was there something that stood out there, or one of those areas that you're like, Oh, I really want to talk about, because I think all of them are interesting. But anything that stands out right out of the gate, on on control as a leader, specifically? Yeah, I think there were two that really resonated with me out of kind of the five themes that we had. The first one was letting go of high standards and quality of work, not that we're saying that you shouldn't have high standards and that things shouldn't be done the right way, but I think the more you move into a leadership role, you forget how you approach things, even five years ago, before you had the knowledge that you have today. So I'll give you a perfect example. I used to have a boss who will not be named, and she had moments right where she self implode and temper tantrums and the whole nine yards, and she had very high standards for anything that we presented to her, because she had to go to a board of directors or to an executive team and everyone. One there had high standards. It was a everyone there had a had a marketing bend, and so everything had to be beautiful. And I remember presenting things to her, and she would just like, look at me like I was a complete idiot, and I didn't have the knowledge that she had, so I didn't know what she needed, and she wouldn't tell me. And so I learned over time. Now that I'm in the role I'm in at velocity, I'm getting the same thing from people that I was doing to her, and I'm recognizing I have a choice on how I'm going to choose to control this situation. I'm either going to implode and get pissed off and mad because you didn't do it like I wanted you to do it, or look at it as a learning moment, to say you didn't know because you've never had the experience that I've had. So can I teach you what to do next time? So I'm not frustrated now, if we keep having the same discussion over and over again, then there's probably going to be a problem. I do have high standards, but I've had to get better at not judging people, because the standard that they bring to me isn't what I would have expected. They if they can get there over time, that's awesome, but this concept of quality of work needing to be the way that you as a leader, assume it's going to be is, one, stifling creativity for other people, and two, it's not allowing for innovation to do it differently, right? And that's really hard as you take on leadership positions, because you got to that role because of the work that you did, and now you're possibly presenting information that someone else did on quote, your behalf, that's different, not up to the same standards. And you have to be okay with that, yeah, or you're going to burn yourself out because you're going to do all the work yourself so well. That's exactly right. It goes into there's a ton of leaders that I, I've seen over the last three or four years that shouldn't be involved in some of the things that they're involved in. And they see a little mistake, they see a big mistake, they see a little bit of a different way to do things. And it's just, I'll just do it, I'll just handle it, just throw it on my plate, and I'll just get it done. And that it's just terrible for the culture of the the training. It's terrible for the individual leader. It's terrible for the individual who was trying to do the work. And it also creates a like really big gap between leadership and executioners and individual talent. And I think that I understand that at really large companies, there are a lot of steps between the individual contributors and middle management, senior management and upper management and so on down the line. But I think the companies that are bridging that gap and letting there be involvement across the board and ideation on how to do things better and not needing that sense of control. I think those are the companies that are winning and are going to continue to win in 2025 and beyond, from a from an employee engagement perspective, from an employee recognition and a turnover perspective, I think that's a huge piece of the puzzle that I think is often overlooked is that leadership involvement and more of the coaching, and not just, Hey, I'm going to step in and do this thing in a completely different way, because I think it's better how I do it type of deal, yeah, and, and it comes to the second one that really stood out, which was leadership growth and strategy. And this one went into things like right talent to delegate effectively in a proper delegation, which we talk a lot about with our leaders as well, but less control and relying more on the team. And then the one I know you love is the tension between efficiency, trust and personal attachment. To quote, how things should be done. And that, I think, is the Achilles heel of a lot of leaders is, if you've been in the industry, or you've been in your in your physical form, in a work environment for 20 plus years, you have a lot of knowledge on how things have been done over time. And we're in a very unique moment right now where, how, you know, I'm talking to companies about succession planning right now, and a lot of them are, you know, we ask the question of the executive team, is there any industry knowledge that would leave with you if you left tomorrow? And more and more, I'm hearing No, which five years ago wouldn't have been the case, because they're like, it's not, it's not about what the past had to tell us. It's about what the future is going to bring and preparing ourselves for the future and and yet, there's still the leaders that sometimes will say, but that's not how we've done it before, and they can. Can't quite break out of that rut of I want it this way because it worked before, not recognizing it may not work now, because we've evolved in three or four years, things have shifted so dramatically that to assume that the way we used to do financial reporting or marketing or business development is going to look the same. That that should not be the assumption anymore. It should be more of the mindset of, what is the possibility here? Right? How can we do it differently? And allowing your teams to come up with those solutions? That's where leaders, I do think struggle sometimes, because as a leader, I'm just going to be honest, it's not fun. Yeah, being a leader over a company is not always fun, yeah, because you're dealing with everything that comes at you, plus all the crap in the administration side of stuff that no one ever talks about, but when a new idea pops up, the leader sometimes gets frustrated or jealous because it's something they want to be a part of. Yeah, and maybe they can have a small role in all of it, but honestly, you need to let your people do it, because that's what we hired them for, and that's not your job anymore. And you need to let go of needing to control that and letting it evolve as it needs to, and them doing a good job. Yes, good for you is good for you. And you know one that you brought up that this is my favorite area of this concept than it is and and the what we've always done language, I think, is even bigger in the in this specific aspect of marketing and sales for a lot of companies, because tried and true is, is what we throw out there time and time again. But you mentioned, you know, finances and other areas of business operations, if you hire the right people and they are trying to change something, I promise you, there is a reason. They are trying to change it, like I always get the you know, if it's not broke, don't fix it. I know. I'm not talking about something that is not broke. I'm talking about something that we have been doing. And yes, we have always done it this way. And yes, it worked from 1990 to 2014 but starting in 2014 we have struggled 1011, years in a row, and we have not adapted. It's not that we've fallen off the face of the cliff, but we are not as efficient as we were in 2002 when we first started doing this. And I think that a lot of this goes back to again, your principles as an organization and as a leader from your hiring perspective, if you hire somebody that you're confident in and then you are telling them actively, hey, don't try to change that. Don't try to change that either. Two things are the case. One, you hired somebody that you do not believe in, or two, they're going to quit, like, flat out, if that is a really smart person, and you tell them numerous times, don't worry about that. We've we've got a good pathway for it. I know you have ideas, but I don't want them that person, if they are as good as they were when they were hired, will not work at your company in a year. And I think that's the harsh realization that leaders need to come to here in in 2025 as we go forward, agreed, and they need to be comfortable with one of my teammates, sat on, we, do we? I love Burson. Josh Burson, he's in the industry, in the HR industry, talent management industry, is kind of the guy that looks for future trends. And this year, she sat on a webinar with his team, and they were talking about 2025, trends, and the the new term for the work worker in the workforce is it's like a super talent. And they they're recognizing that it's no longer this linear path. That super worker, I think, is what they called it. There's no longer a linear path of capability a lot of the incoming workforce, and even those that have been here for 10 years, don't, don't want to just follow the traditional path of lead. And a lot of don't even know if they want to be in leadership, and yeah, but they want, they want to learn, and they want to grow, and they want to be involved with things, and they want to know that they have purpose and they belong in the organization, which is a lot of the cultural nuances that I think we're starting to see is it's not it's not necessarily that it's the company that's causing a lot of this churn. It's the company is pushing on a boundary that they didn't know they'd already created. Right? And now the employee is starting to question, what is my purpose? What is my role? And they're not getting answers to that in a way that's meaningful. And so when they don't have the answer, they create their own, and it's either a positive answer or a negative answer, and then they start to resent the organization for not doing the things that they felt they were promised in a job interview or an offer or fill in the blank, someone else gets accommodation, someone else gets something, and you're not giving me the same and and it it comes down to a couple of and we could probably do the next podcast on this. Is this concept that we call them snowflakes. And there's a lot of individualization happening in the world right now where everybody thinks my issue or my needs should circumvent everybody else's, when we've forgotten we're all in this together. And so where I need to give you grace, at some point you'll have to do the same for me. And so by limiting ourselves, by saying, Well, what about me? Every single time, takes away the humanality around we're all struggling. We all come with our own baggage every day. Some of us have more than others, and we can't hold to your point. If a return to Office mandate is happening, there still needs to be some flexibility in it, and we can't go back to well, if you need to work from home today, you're going to have to take part of your PTO or sick day. We've already proven we can do it. There shouldn't be a discussion, right? It should be an option that we can have a collective dialog about and figure out what the best solution is. But whenever there's these hard and fast rules, I think that's where people are just like, Screw you. I'm not going to do it. Yeah? I mean, I just feel like that should be the end of the podcast. We just have Braden cut it right there. Just screw you. I'm not going to do it. This was 50 minutes of fast paced content, and I think we're not going to be able to wait three months before the next recording because of how relevant the topic is. Final final takeaway from me, and then I'm gonna toss to you for final takeaway, and then we'll sign off is you gotta give yourself grace. You just mentioned it at the end. It was kind of what I was thinking about the entire time. Is the not an easy time as a leader, if you're able to give yourself grace, it'll be easier for you to give others grace. Also your team will see that you're giving yourself grace, but also at the individual level. If there is a day that you over consume, you know, and then you shame spiral, it's going to go the other way around. Or if you under consume, you could still shame spiral. And so you have to give yourself grace, and you have to have those touch points and checkpoints to remind yourself. I've been, I've been sending a text to one of our, one of my good friends here at SCORR test, I just say feet on the ground, and I'll go, sometimes I'll take off my shoes and I will just put my feet on the ground, and that's just like I am. I'm not necessarily saying that I'm grounding myself, but I'm just reminding myself that I have feet and they are on the ground, and that is a good it's a good place to be. And so that's, that's my final takeaway. Brooke, what's your final takeaway? So something I put in a newsletter a couple weeks ago that really still resonates with me is you are the only one who has control to change the tide of your energy. Only you. No one else can do it for you. No control over yourself or someone else is going to change it. You have to be in control of where you're putting your energy. And we talk about this a lot, your energy will follow your attention. So if your attention is on the negativity, negativity of the world, your energy is going to become a negative energy tool, because that's where your attention is so to your point, giving yourself grace, but also recognizing you are the one in control of how you show up in the world, how you're interacting with other people, how you're consuming content and information. You're the only one who can change it. If it's something you're not enjoying or liking about your life. You're the only one who can change it. No. Tiktok is not going to stop sending you reels. Facebook is not going to stop posting events or ads on your page. You're the only one who can say, I'm not going to look at this right now. So just recognizing that your energy will follow your attention, find moments of gratitude, to be grateful for the the life that you've been given, and do the best that you can with it, because it's all you have. That's it, that's it, that's it, that's worth that's worth the price of admission, as always broke. I always leave our podcast recordings feeling smarter and more equipped and also a little bit happier having the opportunity to connect with you. I know anybody that does have the opportunity to listen to this, they feel the same way. So thank you, Brooke Paige Thompson, once again, for taking time out of your day to talk and appear on this episode of The SCORR cast. If you are listening to this episode, don't forget, you really gotta leave us some five star reviews. I don't ask for them enough. I'm trying to get my podcast host capabilities down, but I'm being hounded to say, Hey, make sure you listen to this. And we're on all the platforms and but I always joke that I'm the worst podcast host there is I just like talking. And I like talking to people like you, Brooke, so thank you again. If you do listen and you want to reach out, Brooke and I would be happy to have a conversation on LinkedIn, send us an email, maybe we'll have you on a future episode of The getting unstuck series. And as always, thank you so much for listening. Have a great day. As always. Thank you for tuning in to this episode of The SCORR cast, brought to you by SCORR marketing. We appreciate your time and hope you found this discussion insightful, don't forget to subscribe and join us for our next episode. Until then, remember, marketing is supposed to be fun.