53. Happiness & Mental Energy

Andrea and Griff discuss a few of the speakers at the Iowa and Illinois Ready Mix Concrete Conventions, including topics like Preventing Burnout, Training your Brain for Happiness, and Giving your Employees C.R.A.P.

Also, Andrea nearly dies from a coughing attack.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:09

Welcome to Loaded, the Hahn Ready Mix podcast with Andrea Meyer and Griffin Hahn.

SPEAKER_00 0:13

How's it going?

SPEAKER_01 0:14

Great. We're on our own today.

SPEAKER_00 0:15

We're on our own.

SPEAKER_01 0:16

I hope everyone can hear us.

SPEAKER_00 0:17

Producer Lex showed me how to set up the computer.

SPEAKER_01 0:21

How to push the button.

SPEAKER_00 0:22

It's there's more to it than I expected. Okay. Uh, but he did it really fast. And he's like, next week, you know, I'm gonna be gone Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. So, or uh Wednesday, Thursday, Friday anyway. So this is how you do it. And uh there's like a 3% chance that I'll be able to replicate what he did.

SPEAKER_01 0:41

Oh no, I think we can do it.

SPEAKER_00 0:42

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 0:43

I don't even know, but I bet we can.

SPEAKER_00 0:44

Chad GPT will be a friend.

SPEAKER_01 0:47

Perfect. Well, you've been gone all week. What's new?

SPEAKER_00 0:49

Yeah, uh, was at the Iowa Ready Mixed Concrete Convention Sunday through Tuesday, and then the Illinois Ready Mixed Concrete Convention Wednesday, Thursday. So yeah, a lot of time out of the office, but had a lot of fun, learned a lot, and uh it's great to connect with people in the industry, vendors, other producers from you know, farther away areas, and and just really kind of touch base with what's going on in the industry and and what everybody's seeing. And yeah, I think it was uh it was a great experience. So good.

SPEAKER_01 1:23

I'm glad that there are people like you who like to do those things so that people like me don't have to do those things. It's really good. We're good, good team that way.

SPEAKER_00 1:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:33

We finished up our wellness screenings this week here. So that um is good to have that behind us. And that being said, our health insurance deductions, the benefits deductions start coming out of paychecks again this week. So this podcast is coming out the first week of March. That first paycheck of March is when the deductions start coming out again. So I'll probably say this a few times on the next few podcasts, but please take a look at your paycheck and make sure that those deductions look like what you selected. The whole system is automated, which is great because there's such a low chance of error on the on the system side. But if you accidentally signed up for something that you didn't want, yeah, this is the time to check that and find it and get it corrected. It's much easier to deal with it now than it is later, like when you have a claim or like at the end of the year when the deduct deductions have been happening over time. So please check that out.

SPEAKER_00 2:25

Sounds good.

SPEAKER_01 2:27

The other announcement that I had this podcast coming out on March 1st, and it's Kurt Brown's 32nd year with Han Ready Mix.

SPEAKER_00 2:34

Whoa.

SPEAKER_01 2:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:35

32nd year.

SPEAKER_01 2:37

Before our time.

SPEAKER_00 2:38

Yes. Wow. Well, congrats, Kurt. That is that's quite an achievement. Yeah, it's wonderful.

SPEAKER_01 2:43

Incredible. We appreciate him sticking around. I know he's toying with the idea of retirement, but I guess we'll we'll keep him busy as long as he wants to be here.

SPEAKER_00 2:51

Yeah, absolutely. Cool.

SPEAKER_01 2:53

All right. Well, tell us more. Tell us what you uh what you picked up at the conferences.

SPEAKER_00 2:58

So I thought it was interesting that at all these conferences there's sessions where there's speakers, a lot of times, you know, technical concrete speakers. Yeah. Um, not for me, but for you, sure. Uh lots of different topics are covered. I thought it was really interesting that two of the speakers at Iowa, at the Iowa conference, and one of the speakers at Illinois were all talking about kind of adjacent topics. And they were all really good. Particularly the one at Illinois was phenomenal. And I thought I would kind of try to synthesize what they were talking about in those three presentations and bring that back here. Because I thought the message was really good, really important, and potentially impactful for our team. Um, so I want I want to dive into those three. So I'm taking about three and a half hours.

SPEAKER_01 3:47

I was just gonna say I'm concerned that we're counting on you to be the guy to do the shortened summary of someone else's words.

SPEAKER_00 3:55

Not like the skill I'm best at, let's say, but yeah, three three and a half hours shortened into less than you know, 25 minutes or so.

SPEAKER_01 4:03

So okay, let's do it. Let's do it.

SPEAKER_00 4:05

All right. So I I probably should start by giving credit to the presenters and the information that you know where where this is all coming from. So the three presentations, the first one was High Performance Without Burnout by Robert Erkstem. That was at the Iowa uh association convention. And then Give Your Employees Crap, and CRAP is uh uh acronym, C-R-A-P, uh by Jeff Cortez, and we'll talk about what CRAP means. So um, and then Happiness Means Business by Paul Chris. So those are the the three, and then I actually ended up with a book from Jeff Cortez and Paul Chris. Each of them had books available, and so I have copies of those books and are willing to share them or get more copies for whoever uh would like them because I I think they were some pretty cool stuff that was in them. So I'm gonna kind of go kind of in order of the what I heard and and kind of not. I'm gonna start with the high performance without burnout. Again, we're really summarizing these down, boiling them down to just the highlights here. Yeah. So he was talking about avoiding burnout with employees and and people getting kind of overstretched at work. And how what do you need to have high performance from kind of um uh a 10,000-foot view, right? That something that could apply across all industries. And so he had a number of things here that he said that this is what it takes to have high performance. The first one, which is a term that I I guess I haven't spent a lot of time thinking about, but he spent the most time in, uh, was mental energy.

SPEAKER_01 5:47

So um, you know, being able to be present and and Oh my gosh, you're baiting me into saying something about the difference between women and men and mental energy. But I'm just gonna I'm just gonna say that. I'm not gonna go any further.

SPEAKER_00 6:00

Uh uh okay. Uh second was purpose, which is about does what I do matter? Do you feel like you have purpose in the work that you do? Uh the third one was confidence. Uh, obviously just feeling like you're capable of doing the work you need to do. Your health is important for high performance. So sleeping right, eating right, exercising right, and recovering right. Optimism, which I'm gonna spend a lot of time talking about later in this podcast. Flexibility and adaptability, which is basically, you know, being able to roll with the punches or or um allow plans to change and and pivot. Emotional awareness and regulation, which is, you know, just we've talked about it before, you know, keeping a positive attitude and not overreacting, right? That's what we we just did an episode on that a couple of weeks ago, and um being aware of how you present yourself emotionally, and then relationships. You can't be a high performer in most in most uh organizations without being able to build relationships with your teammates, with your customers, um, with your suppliers, whatever. So, anyway, those were the things that came away for this is what it takes to have high performance. And when one or more of those things are missing, uh the kind of the story he told is what happens? Well, stress starts to build. And stress in and of itself is not necessarily a bad thing, right? We cannot be at our best without a little bit of stress, a little bit of challenge, a little bit of um something being on the line. You know, that is that is where performance um is at its peak. But stress definitely has a tipping point. And it's very easy for, especially in this industry, for stress to boil over, so to speak. And and when you get over the tipping point, then things quickly fall apart. And in regards to performance, and a lot of times that means um we get more dramatic, more emotional uh when we're we're highly stressed. We think about only the short term. So we stop thinking strategically or long term. We think about how do we alleviate whatever is causing stress right now. And that's all we do, and at whatever cost, whatever consequence that might happen long term. Uh, we exhibit poor problem solving. So we don't aren't thinking clearly when we're under stress, and we tend to be pessimistic, right? So we look at the negative of all things. So those are um, those things are all important. And again, he went into depth of each of those items or on what it takes and and how we can uh avoid uh uh stress building from those items. And we're not gonna have time for that. So we're not gonna do it. Maybe a future podcast. But uh he did spend a lot of time talking about mental energy. And it's, I think of all those things that what does it take? Mental energy is maybe uh one that I hear talk about the least, or that maybe might not be the most clearly understood. I mean, I think everybody kind of knows what confidence or health is, right? And and so those are pretty clear. But mental energy is a little bit more vague. So I wanted to talk about that. He gave a long list of things that detract from mental energy, and then the other side of the coin, things that provide mental energy. And so I wanted to talk about those things and think about them in the context of um, especially for uh us as leaders of this company, that we are providing the context on on the framework that allows this to happen, if that makes sense. So, what promotes positive mental energy? A clear and inspiring mission. And I as I talk through these things, I'm like grading us ourselves. Like, how are we providing this here, right? And um, and some of these things I feel like we do well, and some of them we uh we have room for improvement, right? So a clear and inspiring mission. And I think it when it comes to this industry in general, I think it if you're not inspired by it, like let's talk about that because we are building the communities, the places where our friends and families live and work and play and and get from one place to another. And I think we more than any other industry out there have tangible, visible results of the fruits of our labor, right? So I think the industry uh helps us, but I think it's also important for us as a company to have a clear and inspiring mission. Clear expectations is another thing that promotes positive mental energy. You know, if if you don't have expectations of what you're supposed to be doing, and then that's that can be stressful and and and challenging. So uh clear expectations, and we've talked about that before with our clarity episode, one of our early ones. Yeah. Shared values. So we really focused that on the last couple of years. We've we've put our values up, we've we've declared to the world what we stand for. And we want people that work to that that we hire to work here to have people that share those values, that that's also important to them. And if um if we have an employee that doesn't share those values, it's harder to engage them, right? So um it's important to have shared values with the company you work with. Um, feel part of the team. That's one of the reasons we do this podcast. We want everybody to feel like they're part of the team, that everyone to feel like they're, you know, in the know and contributing, right? So feeling part of the team is important. Able to use our personal strengths. So you're really good at you talk about this all the time, Andrea, about um matching task with talent, right? So that's what this is about is if someone is really good at math, we should allow them to do math once in a while to make sure that they're leveraging that. And if, you know, if we made John do spelling all day long, we're not masking matching tasks with talent, right? So uh able to use our personal strengths is important. Recognition for excellent work is something we've talked about a lot. Um, and that's in our in celebrating successes, right? In our our values. Confidence in the future is in trusting where the organization is going and the people leading it, frankly, and that we things are going to continually get better and improve. And and so that's an important one. Um, we need to challenge our people to grow and learn. And I think we do that a lot. I mean, that is uh level up, right? That's what that is, and one of our values. Planned recovery. So this is a one that's a little bit uh he said something really interesting. He said, if you don't have, if you don't plan for cognitive recovery, you'll have forced cognitive recovery. So I think everybody can probably relate to a day where they just weren't on it, right?

SPEAKER_01 13:13

Right.

SPEAKER_00 13:13

You you know, I there certainly happens to me there's some days, and I look back at the day and I'm like, where'd it go? I don't feel like I didn't get much done. I wasn't really motivated to go out and find more stuff today. And a lot of times that's a symptom of you haven't given yourself a break, especially for those that, you know, have a busy life outside of work as well, right? So if you have kids or or other responsibilities and and you don't have that time to kind of just kind of relax and and let your your brain reset, then it will happen and at a time where you probably don't want it to happen, right? Fairness is important that you treat everybody the same. Autonomy, so we don't want to micromanage folks, and the right level of stress, so so not uh overworking and uh but but uh still providing that challenge. So anyway, those were the things that he said. If if you if an organization can be set up to do those things, you can drive positive mental energy and people will be kind of sharp and at the tip of the spear. And uh so I really liked that. So that was a lot, that was the most of the first per um presentation. So any any thoughts or anything you have uh feedback on that?

SPEAKER_01 14:29

Yeah, I like I like that concept of mental energy, and it it occurs to me most often when you're wasting mental energy by worrying about all the worst case scenarios. So I think you and I have those conversations a lot where you sort of love to speculate positively and negatively, and I want to only function in reality. So I think that's a good example of you know where mental energy can be productive and it can also be destructive if you're just yeah, always focusing on the negative.

SPEAKER_00 15:00

Yeah. Okay. So those are all things that that kind of come from the company needs to facilitate those things. But I think we also all need to look internally. And in kind of the third presentation, Paul Chrismer's uh presentation was about happiness means business. And it was about driving our own happiness and what can we do personally to to kind of train ourselves to be happy, uh, both at work and and in our personal lives. And it was this was really uh just kind of crazy um presentation that uh you know, I like getting into science of things, and and the science of happiness was really kind of wild. So anyway, success and happiness are correlated, which I think a lot of people assume, but they're correlated the opposite way than you think, according to the research that Mr. Chris Merrill had done. It's happiness drives success, not success drives happiness, which I thought was really interesting. So people that are happy, or people who channel positive emotions on average across the country out earn those who don't by 30% year over yeah. People that are happy and channel positive emotions are healthier than the norm, the average uh health of the American population, by the same amount than the norm is healthier than smokers. So the impact of being happy is positively the same as the negative impact of smoking, which is pretty profound.

SPEAKER_01 16:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 16:42

It's not a surprise, people that are uh positive have positive emotions have better relationships and friendships. They have been scientifically proven to have better cognitive functions such as creativity, logic, and memory. So they're literally smarter if you're happy. You're smarter, which is cool. Um is so weird. He he said that science can't explain this, but people that channel positive emotions have see, they literally see more. Their peripheral vision is wider and they take notice of details in the things they see. So, you know, if you're you can think about how that could be important in a safety context for somebody that's driving a mixer, for example. Uh a kid in your peripheral vision, uh the uh the science has shown that someone that is positive is more likely to see the kid than someone who's not. Um, and they don't really understand why that happens, he said. But um, it was it's pretty cool. And of course, people that channel positive emotions have more energy. So anyway, those are all those are those are all really big deals, I think.

SPEAKER_01 17:47

And uh, how do we interview for that?

SPEAKER_00 17:49

Right, exactly. Exactly. Well, okay, so so yes, but here's also the thing it's not, it's not necessarily yes, people are more predisposed to be happy or not, but it is a thing that you can train.

SPEAKER_01 18:04

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 18:04

Like anybody, if they put their mind to it, can train to run a marathon. And the same way, people can train their brain to to channel positive emotions. He talked a lot about the default for human beings is a negativity bias.

SPEAKER_01 18:23

So yeah, survival.

SPEAKER_00 18:25

Survival instinct, right? So this the caveman uh was came out of his cave and he saw this big cat with giant teeth down in the valley, and he didn't just like uh skip his way down there and say, What's up, cat? And you know, that guy died.

SPEAKER_01 18:39

Looking for danger.

SPEAKER_00 18:40

That guy died. His genes were not passed on. The one that went and hid in the cave, uh, that was suspicious of change, and and that's the genes that got passed on to humankind. Our negativity bias is built into everybody. That is the the survival instinct. How do you create what he called a positivity offset, which is creating the neural pathways um to change that dynamic? And you can create those neural pathways for performance improvement about anything. So he showed the world's greatest Tetris player of all time. He the old Tetris games went to a certain point and he would literally break the game because he would get beyond like the the points that you're allowed to accumulate. And this guy um spent thousands of hours practicing Tetris. And so he had trained his brain. And what happens when they train the brain is all the time our brains are making new brain cells called neurons, right? And these neurons are just kind of floating. Uh they kind of look like a star, like a starfish almost.

SPEAKER_01 19:43

Um I wish people could see the dance you're doing to demonstrate this, right?

SPEAKER_00 19:46

It's not really a dance, it's just like waving my arms in the air. Anyway, the they're kind of like a starfish looking thing. And but they connect with other brain cells, right? And when you uh to to form a pathway. So the first time you do something, the first time you ride a bike, because it's like, oh, this pathway is starting to be formed. And the more you ride your bike, the more that pathway grows and it becomes not a dirt path that somebody walked down once, uh, like a game trail or something, it becomes a four-lane superhighway. Right. So we most of us have that for when we drive. And that's why we're able to talk on the phone, you know, if I were in a personal vehicle, talk on the phone and zone out, uh, zone out. And and an hour later, we're out where we and we didn't think about driving at all because it the neural pathways for driving have been so they are a freeway in our mind, right? But um, with that performance can be happened for anything. Anything we put time and training into, it that can happen. So his argument is why don't we do that for happiness? Why don't we train our brain for positivity? Um, and it's about being intentional with positivity. That's how you do that. So he came up with one thing or a number of items to think about. First, a miracle ratio, which is if you make sure you're saying, saying or thinking three things positively for every one thing negatively, you will train your brain to be happy. Like you can do it yourself. He said, I love this. He said you should start every meeting with what's going well, which I was super validating for me because that's how we start our three o'clock meetings every day, right? So it's like, oh, great, we're doing that right. Um, you know, practice gratitude, you know, show appreciation for others. And I love this trick, he said, um every day, so pick something that you do every day, whether it's um eating dinner, brushing your teeth. He said, every day so far he's woken up was his joke. And he says, something that you do every day, and and tie to that, writing down three things that went well in the last 24 hours. So Write down every day three things that went well. And you literally will train your brain to be happy and look at things more positively. So it's it's it's not, and this is this is physiologically happening, right? It's physically these neurons are are connecting. And I just I have to tell you I loved the science of it. It was pretty great. Are you dying over there? What is happening?

SPEAKER_01 22:23

Okay, we're back.

SPEAKER_00 22:24

We're back. So we uh I listened to a soccer podcast that they do doorbell music, and it's pretty funny. I feel like we should insert doorbell music in for your coughing break. You're waiting for your coughing break. Okay, we'll get back to it. So so yeah, so it's a it's a way to physically train your brain to drive happiness and positive emotions. I just thought that was really, really neat. I got the book. I'm excited to read it, and if anybody else wants to, um I'm happy to share. Okay, so then the next step is how do we use that positivity to affect others here? And and for this section was more targeted towards people that manage others, but I think it definitely can apply to um kind of peer-to-peer relationships as well, right? So you're working with your coworkers. So this is where Jeff Cortez is uh give your employees crap. And again, that's an acronym. And the C in CRAP is caring, which you know is it showing kind of genuine concern and interest in your people. The R is respect, treating employees with dignity and honoring their contributions. The A is appreciation, which is acknowledging effort and value, you know, beyond just pay, right? So so giving them that. And then P is praise, celebrating performance and and when people go the extra mile.

SPEAKER_01 23:52

Go ahead.

SPEAKER_00 23:54

So that's what the acronym stands for. I don't know if we finished that before your second coughing.

SPEAKER_01 24:00

You got through caring and respect.

SPEAKER_00 24:02

Okay. Yeah, we talked about uh appreciation and acknowledging effort and value, like beyond uh just pay, right? And then praise is celebrating performance and going the extra mile. Um, so so real quick on each of those things. So caring, he said something that was really interesting. I thought that 48% of employees nationwide think their employers care about them. That's 48%. Let's less than half are working somewhere they think that the people they work for don't care about them. That's that's really sad and it blows my mind, and I never want that to be the case here. So he gave some kind of guidelines for how to do each of these things. And again, I have this book uh if anybody wants it. For caring, it's about being present and available, which I definitely uh sometimes struggle with being present.

SPEAKER_01 24:56

I was just gonna listening. You may physically be there, but uh mentally you might be checked out.

SPEAKER_00 25:04

Active listening is not one of my strengths. And so I'm trying to work on that.

SPEAKER_01 25:08

Actually, when someone tells you I need you to listen to me, then you you do.

SPEAKER_00 25:13

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 25:14

But you have to say start with those exact words. That's my advice to your. I don't think you cared about me. You cared about finishing this podcast in that moment.

SPEAKER_00 25:46

Both can be true. And and uh act on concerns instead of brushing them off. So this is if somebody comes to you and says, Hey, uh, you know, uh, I'm worried about this or I I see this issue that we don't just ignore them, right? So uh that that's caring. Respect is basically telling people that you matter here. And so that's using people employees' names when you talk to them, treat them fairly and consistently, and honor their skills and job responsibilities. So, you know, no one role or one job here is more important than another. This whole we need all the jobs that we have, all the roles that we have to function as an organization. And, you know, if if someone like me uh thinks that I'm high and mighty because of my position, well then this whole organization is bound to fail. It's not gonna happen. So we all need to to to understand and know how important everybody else's role is and and have respect for that. Appreciation is saying thank you genuinely and often. And so I think that we can always do more of that. Acknowledge specific actions when someone helps us or whatever, uh, and encourage peer-to-peer appreciation. So that's it's kind of the same thing when in this lens as we're talking about it.

SPEAKER_01 27:08

And then you're on a roll with that one, actually. Even before this conference, you were working on your specific appreciation journals.

SPEAKER_00 27:16

So yeah. It was funny. Sam pulled the guy uh um aside afterwards and and kind of explained our journaling process and said, you know, what do you think is more impactful? Uh a face-to-face appreciation or like a written journal appreciation? And the guy goes, Oh, face-to-face 100% of the time. Don't waste your time journaling.

SPEAKER_01 27:37

I I will disagree a little bit and say that both is best. I love for journals to be a recap of a conversation that's been had face to face.

SPEAKER_00 27:47

Yes. So I I made that point too. And and I also think on that specific topic, for me, it's a it's a self-accountability thing. If I have verbal conversations with people, that's great. But I can't always track that and say, like and challenge yourself to do, yeah. Am I doing this enough? If I put it in a place where I can count it up every day or every week and say, How'd I do? Then I can say, Oh, yeah, I did. Yeah, I made it or I need to do better. Um, so yeah, so that's good. And then praise is celebrating results that go beyond expectations. And so I think that is something we're all trying to do more of. And tie praise to specific outcomes and behaviors, which is a lot of stuff that we went through kind of in reviews, right? We gave goals and targets and we need to praise when they when they hit those. And use praise to motivate excellence, not just participation. So this is about, you know, we don't want to be an average Ready Mix company and and to be an excellent Ready Mix company, we need everyone to be excellent across the board at their roles. We want, you know, organizational citizens and not just employees, right? We want people that really care about the work and care about being great here. And and so that's what we want to use praise to motivate for and and and to achieve. One more thing that he says that hit really heavy, and I I like this, and I he I couldn't find it written down anywhere, so I'm trying to do it just by memory, but he said he talked to uh he worked in a factory for a little while as an HR guy, and he talked to one of the um the owners of that factory, and the owner would go walk the shop floor twice a day, every day. Just walk through, and without really an agenda, um, but he was uh trying to catch people do things right for one, just walk through and talking with all of his people. And he said, Why why do you why do you do this? Why do you go twice a day? You have other things you need to get done. And he said, presence is important. If you're present, um that bre breeds familiarity. If you're familiar, that breeds communication, communication breeds feedback, feedback breeds action, right? You can react to the feedback you get, and that action breeds trust and engagement and all those things. And so that was his whole process was it all can't start unless we're present. And so that's definitely, you know, uh a challenge for me and everybody that's in any kind of leadership is like we need to be present for the people that that report to us and and throughout the organization to, you know, uh my dad is always really good about the shop, right? Oh, yeah. You know, he he was constantly there, and so that was uh a way that people could constantly give feedback and updates and and he drove that engagement with that group.

SPEAKER_01 30:54

Yeah, yeah, he was really committed to even you know meeting new people on their first day. I'm sure most people that work here probably got to meet him on the first day. So it's really cool.

SPEAKER_00 31:03

Yep, yep. So I I really liked that. And and all three of these presentations I thought were really, really good. And I probably did a terrible job summarizing that.

SPEAKER_01 31:12

No, I I actually I'll give you some credit. You got through more than I thought you would in a in a reasonable period of time. Um, I was sort of skimming through some of the materials that you brought back, and one thing that caught my eye, um, a stat that was in the book said that 75% of people say that the worst thing about their job is their boss.

SPEAKER_00 31:30

Oh. Do you feel that way, Andrea?

SPEAKER_01 31:35

Um my statement on that is I don't think that anybody here hates their boss.

SPEAKER_00 31:39

I hope not.

SPEAKER_01 31:40

I think we have some really good bosses here and people that enjoy working together. And I think that obviously makes us different than a lot of places.

SPEAKER_00 31:48

Right. Well, we, you know, that's kind of the whole point. We want a positive experience because uh I truly believe that that's one of our values. That's what all of these things are kind of adjacent to that, and that's what's going to help us be great. And people will want to stay and want to work and build a career at a place where things are positive and things are people are happy and and working together.

SPEAKER_01 32:11

All right. Well, good job. Thanks. I'm glad we made it through this podcast.

SPEAKER_00 32:15

I'm glad you lived through it because I was not sure for a while.

SPEAKER_01 32:19

Thanks for listening to Loaded, the On ReadyMix podcast. And remember, check your paychecks this week.

SPEAKER_00 32:24

Adios.