Remarkable Minds

Eliminating Emotional Waste

• Daniel Stark • Season 1 • Episode 3

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Emotional waste is the thief that robs us of productivity, creativity, and well-being in the workplace. 

Wes Lockett and Brittany Roberts share powerful personal journeys of recognizing and overcoming emotional waste in their own lives. From taking on others' emotional burdens to perfectionism that leads to endless anxiety, we explore how these patterns manifest and the toll they take on both individuals and organizations. 

You'll discover practical tools for identifying when you're trapped in emotional waste cycles and strategies to break free from them.


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Speaker 1:

You know, oftentimes the team members that I've had that struggle with that are really high anxiety people and it's just like the worst could happen. You know, and I'm just like you know what, let's just go do what the worst will happen. And I have them do an exercise where they go do something where they know they're going to be told no as stimulation. Yeah, like they just know this person's going to say no, it's, the worst case scenario is about to happen.

Speaker 2:

It's not so bad. Welcome to Remarkable Minds hosted by Daniel Stark Leaders. Here we share insights for professional growth. My name is Claudia Yanez. I do marketing and sales here, and joining me today is Wes Cagle, our Chief Operating Officer, and Brittany Roberts, our Associate Director of Operations. How are you doing, ladies? Hey, awesome, how you doing. If you love me some, joey, all right, I love the topic for today. It's on emotional waste. It's your favorite topic. It's one of my favorite topics, mostly because I have been working really hard on this one for the past couple of years and I still stumble and I got to always come back to like focus on my energy levels, because it's the one that just steals it. It just comes like a thief in the night and steals your energy and you don't even know that that's what's happening. So let's get into it. Let's first define emotional waste. What does that look like for you? What has been your experience on a personal level?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, absolutely. For me it's when I take feelings over facts.

Speaker 3:

Ooh, that's a good answer. Yes, For me it's when I start taking on other people's emotions and they start affecting my emotions. I think that's what that looks like for me.

Speaker 2:

Absolutely, and we'll get into like setting some good boundaries there and the things that we've done to overcome that, and I think for me it is the venting or the complaining or something, something, and those are ones that, oh my goodness, I, in my realization of emotional waste, have come to realize how selfish that can be when you do that onto others, because you just in your venting or in you complaining, you unloaded yourself to feel better and then you leave, but you just drop that big you know, pile of crap, big pile of emotions on somebody else Like all right guys, I'm good, I'm leaving now.

Speaker 2:

Thank you, bye. That's right, and it's not really solution focused. I think maybe in the past it's been. It comes from needing validation or needing to be heard or understood something along the lines of where that came from. And so, like I said, a lot of work has gone into emotional waste. But let's talk about it Like we've seen it ourselves like emotional waste, but now we've gotten really good about seeing it in others and our team members. Let's talk about why that's so critical for us to be able to help people identify what's emotional waste and then help them overcome, identify it, become very self-aware and then give them tools right so that they can see when they're doing that and then put in some healthy boundaries so they can be more productive with their energy.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, absolutely so. For me and my personal journey it was really hard the first two years of leadership. Just taking on, somebody would say you know, I feel like this isn't getting done, and that was truth in my book Then that's not getting done. You know, I didn't have a discovery phase and that was the missing piece. So now, like the tool that I have, it's like well, I don't know that to be true yet. You need to actually go out, have a discovery phase and get real examples. Those are the facts, right, and make sure that I do this so I can have a clear head, because that wasn't what was happening and I was failing my team because of it.

Speaker 2:

That makes me think that we're just again as a culture, we're going so fast. We're like moving on from one decision to another where, like you said, going based off of we feel this, or we make these assumptions without clarifying, or just you know, I love that, your discovery process, or like, whether it's self-reflection, to get factual confirmation before moving on. And that's a yeah, that's a really big one because we, I believe we do a really great job. I know, like I've seen y'all do this and I've seen other leaders do this where we encourage people to reflect on something. Our social contract says take some cool down time. That's literally the first step and that's why it's because you don't want to drain your energy, you don't want to head a problem with just feelings, and so so much of that goes into that. What about in your journey of emotional waste? What were some insights there?

Speaker 3:

Well, I think part of it was that I was getting to a place of burnout because I was taking on everyone's things. And it was when I got really good at being curious and so some of it that's Brittany's discovery phase and it was like well, tell me what you've done to work toward a solution. Tell me what you've done to work toward a solution. Tell me what you've done to work on this problem, where I was learning to put those boundaries in place, because I am a solution oriented person. I'm like, ok, well, let's tackle this right now.

Speaker 3:

Or they were coming inventing and I was ready to go ahead and fix the problem and I would take that on. So I was not only taking on their emotions, but I was taking on the problem and fixing it too, and I would take that on. So I was not only taking on their emotions, but I was taking on the problem and fixing it too. So I've really learned to say, okay, well, tell me, how have you worked on this problem, what have you done to fix this problem? And it has really stopped people from one coming to vent because they know they're going to get asked what they've done to fix the problem.

Speaker 3:

And so now, when people come to even begin to try to vent they already know what kind of questions are going to get asked, so that already put boundaries in place for people and that stopped a lot of that After a while. They're like oh, no I better not go in without a solution, that's right.

Speaker 2:

When we go and we take on other people's emotions like this is my mom brain immediately, because this is the first thing I do. When my children are coming in and they're just full of emotions, the first thing I want to do is help regulate their emotions, and I was transferring that over to the workplace.

Speaker 2:

And it's like you're not responsible to regulate other people's emotions. That's right, and especially when that's so harmful to you. I think people who are really great at doing this like you said, when you have a curious mindset and by asking those questions or facilitating it, allows them to do the self-regulating themselves by just imposing those questions, which is that's a really great tool is, brittany, I know that you're working on that cool down time, kind of to help them, like after some sort of maybe emotional incident, gives them the opportunity to discern, to self-reflect, and there's so much to be gained there and I think once we allow ourselves to do that, we can really look at something and see, okay, how much of this is feelings, how much of this is factual. If it's feelings feelings based like what is mine that I need to own, that's my own baggage that I'm bringing- to here and not necessarily the other person.

Speaker 2:

Maybe we're being triggered by something and you're responsible for your own triggers and how you're going to respond to that. So giving your team members toolbox obviously critical, but we must first model that for them and I would say for me, my one of the biggest tools is that I learned here is and you mentioned in another episode about the power of full engagement.

Speaker 2:

And I love that book and you encouraged me to read it, reread it again. That's always a really good advice, because when you first read books just side note it's like consumption first, like I'm reading it for consumption, I'm not really in the mindset to actually apply it. And then I go reread it again. I was like, okay, now I'm actually going to apply what I learned here. So the second time I read it was so much more impactful than the first time and obviously we're working so hard when you think about, like how little time you already have to plug into your source to renew your power, and then you're just like giving it away, yeah like easily, like currency and it's, and so you become a lot more disciplined and just more consciously aware of the things that are just draining you um, and so that was a really big tool to have so many more tools, and I wish I remember who wrote that book.

Speaker 3:

Powerful Engagement.

Speaker 2:

Such a great book to have your team members read. So what are you said? Promoting self reflection, that discovery phase? What are some other tools that people can use, that we can give them resources to encourage what's really draining them on an emotional level?

Speaker 1:

I think the first step is being vocal is telling somebody you're feeling that way, and whenever you're able to do that, it creates comfort across the board. You know, when I'm in a meeting and I'm like hold on pause for whatever reason, I just got really annoyed, I don't know why. And having a sounding board in real time it does help. And then it makes it to where it's quick. It's a two second thing instead of me just sitting on it and it festering and then I don't know why. And then if I bring it up a week later, they don't remember what happened in that meeting a week ago. And so I think being vocal is the first step.

Speaker 3:

Well, for a lot of people. They don't have the language to identify those things, and so everyone around me is irritated. They don't want to hear about this anymore, including my kids. But yes, get a feelings wheel, because you don't have the language. Most people only have two or three or four words to identify emotions, but it's much more nuanced than that. So if you can put language to it, then you can start. If you can identify it and figure out the source of it, then you can start to work through the emotion and solve the problem. You can get to a solution a lot faster. But most people try to avoid those things. They don't want to identify the feeling because it's associated with something negative or bad.

Speaker 3:

And so they do avoid it and therefore it lasts longer. So the longer you avoid it, the longer the emotion lasts, and that was a long lesson for me as a person. And now to try to teach other people like the longer you avoid it, the longer it's going to last.

Speaker 3:

Just have the feeling sit with the feeling, identify the feeling and let it. Let it pass. It's going to go by a lot faster. So you can, you can Google feelings wheel, get your image and put it up. So I do make all of our new leaders get a feelings wheel and I even make my kids. I'm like, OK, you don't want to talk about it, let's at least identify a feelings wheel and they're so annoyed.

Speaker 2:

I know that sounds so elementary.

Speaker 3:

It does To hear it.

Speaker 2:

But it is actually helpful.

Speaker 3:

It is no, absolutely. People are like I don't know, I need this. I'm like you do?

Speaker 1:

You don't know what word it is. You have to have emotional intelligence to get rid of emotional waste.

Speaker 2:

Oh, that's right, you have to start back at the basics. Absolutely, I love that you said that and I'm going to pause because I lost my train of thought here. I have a book for that. Oh, when people cannot, when people cannot identify their feelings or they're not being vocal about it, the things that we do see it manifesting into is passive, aggressive behavior. Absolutely, we see the passive aggressive behavior. We're arms out, thumbs up. That's one of our core values. We're going to be curious about it. Maybe now you see a pattern. So now you're going to go ask hey, what's going on?

Speaker 2:

And this is what I'm noticing and there has. Obviously, emotional safety is important because that needs to be established, or not. They won't really open up and talk about their feelings or they're not vocal about those things. But that's probably one of the things that I've noticed is often is the passive aggressiveness and these small little ways. I'm just like I'm just going to keep that away and then come back and touch on that and then and these people for emotional waste, like it's not the way you would think about it, because it's not so vocal in the sense that you're venting or you're complaining or you're taking on.

Speaker 2:

It's not a very visible way, but it's harboring, it's the faster way and that is emotional waste as well. Yeah, and so helping them identify like you're giving it away to this and and try to model for them or explain like solution focused behavior instead really get to the bottom, obviously, of the issue. But then that feedback needs to be obviously constructive and help them and guide them through what a healthy resolution of this looks like. Of course, you give them the tools, but then you hold them accountable, because we have some chronic emotional what do you call them Emotional wasters.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I don't know what the word is I identify as an emotional waster, but I'm not sure what that term is called.

Speaker 2:

But we do have people like that that are chronic and they've conditioned themselves or their environment and whatever They've been conditioned to, just in order to get your way. You just complain about it until someone does something about it, and that's not healthy.

Speaker 1:

No.

Speaker 2:

And I think our organization does a really good job of really creating and teaching people how to have healthy conversations and really have people understand the expectations of the environment that we want to foster and preserve, and a lot of that includes very specific like no complaining, no gossiping no drama. We lay out what the expectation is, but then, through the social contract, the other part of it is, and then we walk you through it. Like what does it actually look like, right?

Speaker 2:

Talk some cool take some cool down time. See it from the other person's perspectives, have a desire to reconcile, and so forth and so forth. That helps with that. Yeah, what are some ways that you've seen organizations let this go by the wayside?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, what are some ways that you've seen organizations let this go by the wayside?

Speaker 2:

I've seen it where the title matters more than the accountability.

Speaker 1:

Because someone has a specific title, you just kind of let it be and everybody else has to just deal with it, and that's not who we agree to be as people.

Speaker 1:

And so when you were speaking, one of the things I was thinking of is when it doesn't look like that, when it's not gossip or drama, but it's still somebody coming with an emotional waste and what that looks like. And there was a team member a bit ago and you know he just you felt the heaviness of like the call to duty and what it was, in a way that wasn't typical for him. And you know I was like what's actually going on? And so he's using me as a sounding board and I'm like, okay, but you have to talk about what the real issue is, because holding on to that, you rob yourself of creativity. And so when we were able to actually face it head on, which he did with his leader, he realized he was really doing two seats and there needed to be a second seat. But if you hold on to that, we can't grow as an organization.

Speaker 2:

I've had absolutely experiences like that with other people and it just feels like there's so much more than what's happening and digging in and not letting. And I encourage people that even if that's not your direct, you know person or that person that you have been entrusted with to lead anybody and it's one of the things I love about our social contracts because it's up down side to side Everybody just holds everybody accountable Should really go and be curious and ask those questions and move it up maybe to their team lead if someone really needs to investigate that. But there's something else that you mentioned there that I thought was really important. You said when the title matters more than the accountability, that's right.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it's so important. We've seen organizations where they hold on to high-level managers and I'm choosing to not say leader high-level managers, high-level execs, who model this emotional waste and toxicity that damages the production of their workforce, and because they're so scared, maybe, to lose that institutional knowledge, or because they're afraid to actually all those people accountable and to put all the structures in place to make the organization safe.

Speaker 3:

And usually the owners or the board or whatever aren't willing to put that kind of investment. And so for me, that's part of what makes us so special and that's part of why I stay for so long, because I know that our owners are willing to put in that kind of work, that kind of sacrifice to make sure that we have that level of safety, that organizational investment in our culture, because they would never stand for that. They're going to put in the work. It doesn't matter what the cost for us is. They're going to have an organization that has a culture that is like that, because it is not easy to do that.

Speaker 3:

And so when we go and talk to other law firms or sister firms or companies and they ask, how did you do this, how did you implement this? And we start talking about all the things you have to have in place in order to have high accountability, to have low waste or to have emotional safety, which all of this requires that you have emotional safety and all of your leadership buys into a social contract that allows these things to happen they're flabbergasted, they're like you do. All of that your owners allow, all of that you let go of a high-level leader that had all that knowledge. They cannot believe that we would do something like that, but that person was like they cannot believe that we would do something like that, but that person was there for 10 years. That person was there for this long like like their jaw is on the floor that we would do that.

Speaker 3:

But we would hold someone that you know had been in our organization that long accountable to this type of thing, because for a lot of companies that's seen as something like soft, whereas a resume or a degree or how long your tenure is much more important than something like this, and people just don't understand that. When you have a culture of accountability, when you make sure all this emotional waste goes away, like your productivity increases, that means your bottom line increases, and so it's really hard for people to grasp. When you have an incredible culture like this and you get rid of this emotional waste, like how much better your business actually runs Absolutely.

Speaker 3:

Like they can't like put those things together in their head and so, yeah, it's an investment. Yes, it's so much work every single day for the leaders in your team and to keep it going every single day because it's hard. It's really hard for the leaders to buy in and make sure it's scalable and there's a good structure in place that supports this kind of thing.

Speaker 3:

But it's absolutely worth the investment and it will grow your business and your bottom line and your revenue and your profitability, like it supports those things that businesses want and that they need to grow and be a good business. It just feels soft and that's back to your emotional waste point.

Speaker 2:

Bring it back, that's feelings, not facts.

Speaker 3:

That's right, yeah, and if you?

Speaker 2:

are. We see the culture slowly churning where you know our people that are coming into the workforce are demanding that kind of environment and that kind of culture. They want to be a part of that. And if you are an organization that does see the investment and is putting a lot of sweat equity into building that man, kudos to you. That's hard work and you're part of the 1%. Yeah, a lot of sweat equity into building that man, kudos to you. That's hard work and you're part of the 1%, because it's not only hard to get it there and it's just as hard to maintain it. It's a decision every single day that you're making and I don't ever want to undermine the work that goes into that.

Speaker 1:

To piggyback off of what Wes was saying. I think that you know another reason. Other organizations don't do that and a key point to the emotional waste is conflict avoidance. Some of them they just don't want to go talk to that person who's been there 12 years and they just don't have that skill set and they're not going and investing in themselves to gain it and they're just keeping it and it's trickling down.

Speaker 2:

Absolutely, and we see that, oh, we see that. And it always irks me a little bit and even you know, y'all have held me accountable, we have all held each other accountable. And when it irks me and I just get so flustered like why wouldn't you? Just, you know, it's good to get perspective. Yeah, again, these team members are babies, they're new.

Speaker 2:

They perspective Like yeah again, these, these team members are babies or new. You got to teach them the way and and I know there's there's been plenty of times as leaders that you don't know. You don't have it 100% of the time.

Speaker 1:

No, we fall short.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, we fall short Absolutely. So you got to recognize when you just need to pass that baton to someone else. Like I don't have the capacity today to deal with this, I'm going to give this over to you, and so that's always also a good reminder for me. And something that I've learned along the way is I don't have to be the leader to solve every single like problem or issues or go at it alone, and that's been really helpful.

Speaker 2:

Yes absolutely so we. You talked about emotional intelligence. You have to have emotional intelligence. So how do we do this as an organization? How do we teach this to our team members?

Speaker 3:

I it's hard for me to answer that because I I'm I'm still learning how to teach that and I may be a harder person to convince whether you can teach it or people come with a base level and you can just kind of give them some tools Like here's a calculator, yeah, yeah, no, that makes sense.

Speaker 2:

That's a great conversation because we have, like you said, like I don't know if it's something that you can fully teach, emotional intelligence. And that's such a big word, because we know it's a big umbrella that covers so many different facets, but let's talk about regulation emotional regulation. That's probably a key portion of the emotional intelligence that you need Self-awareness, one that you're actually doing it Emotional regulation. So let's just start there.

Speaker 1:

I think we give our team members three tools. So whenever somebody is hired, we have a culture day and what they get is they get a copy of Crucial Conversations, love that book, a copy of Powerful Engagement and our social contract, which, on one side, says who we agree to be as people, but the other side is what to do when conflict arises, and that's the base. Just starting there, you will gain some emotional regulation, absolutely.

Speaker 2:

And the other one is, again, the expectation we're giving this tool. We're investing in you, we're giving you this tool. And then we have, obviously, professional development. There's many things of where not only are you going to be responsible for reading it, we're going to talk about it, we're going to practice it, we are truly going to hold you accountable, because this is baseline what you need to work on, to just work here, because you're working with so many different individuals and personalities.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, but those three tools. Most people have never received any of those tools. Yeah, they don't know how to do any of those things, like they didn't grow up with those things, they've never talked about those things with anyone. And so how to handle a conflict? We just said most people are conflict averse, like that's just true. You don't want to hurt anyone's feelings or people pleasers, and they don't know how to do it. And so it is like a step-by-step guide, like literally just follow these steps and you're going to get a pretty good way there. And then Crucial Conversations is. The book teaches you what type of words to say, like how to approach the conversation. So it is a guide for when there's big feelings.

Speaker 2:

That are at stake. The objective focus.

Speaker 3:

Right, it's like what do I want for me, what do I want for the other person, what do I want for the relationship and how to approach some of those more difficult conversations. When it's, that's one of the best books ever, because a lot of books on professional development or emotional development are kind of like pie in the sky and don't give you any like step by step, whereas Crucial Conversation is like no just follow these steps and you're good to go.

Speaker 3:

And it gives you tons and tons of real life examples, both personally and professionally, and that's like a life changing book, like it'll help you here at DS and it'll help you in your whole life. It'll help you in your romantic relationships, your friendships, maybe even with your parents, and some stuff you maybe needed to deal with and you didn't even you weren't ready to do that. So that's the baseline. And then powerful engagement is. I am having all this emotional dysregulation and it's probably because I'm working too hard and I don't know how to stop. I don't know where my how to refuel myself, I don't know what the power source is, I don't know where my energy suck is going and how to identify that, because most people also don't know those things. And so, like, those three tools are probably transformative for most of our new team members. They're like oh wow.

Speaker 1:

Like, they're like whoa.

Speaker 3:

So that's a huge baseline of tools for them in just how to start identifying what's happening, how to fix what's happening Absolutely.

Speaker 2:

That book literally has changed my life. Crucial Conversations.

Speaker 3:

Me too, and my personal life. I tell people that.

Speaker 2:

I feel like my confidence went through the roof after I read that book, and that's definitely a book I read two, three times and I always go back and I look through things because there's always good nuggets in there, like chef's kiss to that book. I love it. It made me so much more confident in conflict and how I see conflict and I was like that's just a conversation. Yeah, you just go to that person like that's just a conversation.

Speaker 2:

I don't know, you just go to that person Like something that would have been like, oh like, because you would get in your head and you would start telling yourself stories and a narrative. You get yourself all worked up for nothing, and that book has just it just simplified it and it just made me look at things from a completely different perspective. It definitely like you can't just it's not just that book alone.

Speaker 2:

Like I got to put in some therapy work into working on those things, but it definitely brought a lot of things to the surface, but not a lot of emotional waste comes from, maybe, conflict or interpersonal relationships. Some of it just comes from like ourselves and like maybe in our normal day-to-day job performance. I have a person on my team. She is a perfectionist. Yeah, and that is emotional waste. Like letting go of perfectionism is hard work because from that comes from ruminating, overthinking things. Yeah, and that's probably one of the things we see most often when you have a team full of A players or just dominant, maybe dominant personalities or perfectionists.

Speaker 2:

So, tell me a little bit about the tools you give them. Yeah.

Speaker 1:

So, as a recovering perfectionist, I think the thing I had to do first was admit that I had these higher expectations for myself than others. It took me a bit to get to that point and then, after that, I had to take myself off this pedestal I had put myself on and that was really hard. It was going back to, you know, the sense of identity of you. Know what can I do to make sure I work through this? And, like Claudia said, like some of it it's personal work. I had to go to therapy and work through those things.

Speaker 1:

But what it has done now, the transformation, what you get out of it, is the same thing. I run towards conflict. I love it. I'm like, yes, it's getting the ring together. I love it. Let's have a good fight, because the best ideas come from whenever you're able to do that and really understand each other's point of view. And, with that being said, there's another side of it that I get to be silly and I'm not easily embarrassed anymore and people get to see that and it gives them permission to be able to not be perfect as well.

Speaker 2:

Makes you much more vulnerable.

Speaker 1:

Relatable yes, and relatable.

Speaker 2:

Yes, some of the things I know I do recently in trying to help my perfectionist team members Again, you know they're fixating on things beyond their control. They want things to be, they have a specific vision is being emotionally flexible and allowing yourself or allowing, allowing the process to take shape and wherever it takes us right and along is like, what does the outcome actually need to have? What are some of the needs? And if it happens to meet others or like, so we're just, we just kind of like, put some parameters around it.

Speaker 2:

So if it does this, are we OK with it? Can we be OK with this?

Speaker 3:

Oh, yes, let's try it.

Speaker 2:

Let's see, did it break anything? Did it hurt anyone? Was? It was the experience, and that's the other thing the experience for others, what was the experience for others? And working with you on this, keeping that in mind, so that has been really helpful. The other thing is just forcing a. Let's just take it through a particular process and let's put our time and effort in the process, take its place and let the process develop the outcome for it and step away. Like, imagine the opportunity and the capacity that's going to open up for you to grow in these other areas that you want to Think about, the things you do want to do. Like, if you had time and energy to do, like, what would that be? What would that look like? And let that be the goal. So what can we let go over here, so we can accomplish this over here and so changing that Perspective.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it's the perspective and also like the mindset to be more goal oriented to this, rather than fixating over here. Let's get you over here.

Speaker 1:

And so that's been helpful. I think another thing to add to that point of it is you know, oftentimes the team members that I've had that struggle with that are really high anxiety people and it's just like the worst could happen. You know what and I just like you know what. Let's just go do what the worst will happen and I have them do an exercise where they go do something where they know they're going to be told no as stimulation. Yeah, like they just know this person's going to say no, it's, the worst case scenario is about to happen. It's not so bad.

Speaker 2:

Absolutely, and it's not about you Maybe it's not it's about the circumstances or about other things beyond your control. So I think the most important things is being trying not to fixate or ruminate or be overwhelmed by things that are beyond your control, and really identify when your emotional struggle becomes extremely overwhelming and detrimental, like you need some help. Yeah, yeah, you need some professional help that we cannot provide, that your team leads or leaders. They can't provide you and and that's and I hope that comes across um respectful and and maybe with heart, because we're not trained to be counselors.

Speaker 1:

That's right.

Speaker 2:

As much as we love our team and we want to be there, we also need to understand our capacity and our ability on all fronts to be able to really give that person what they actually need Absolutely on all fronts to be able to like really give that person what they actually need.

Speaker 3:

So absolutely Well, there's lots of tools out there for perfectionism and and overcoming that outside of professional help, and helping like reorient the perspective. Like hey, is anything perfect? Have you ever experienced perfectionism? Like just helping them get curious with it, like that isn't how, reminding them that that's not a realistic expectation? Like whose expectation is that? Do you think that's my expectation? Did I ask you for perfection? What is my expectation of you? So that, as their leader, they understand like what you are wanting out of them. Like my request is not perfectionism. Like here is my expectation of you. Like I under no circumstance want perfectionism. I need you to do this, this and this and everything else I don't care about. Like you need to let that go.

Speaker 2:

We don't have time for that. Let it go. That's right, please.

Speaker 3:

And like I think Brene Brown says, like you need to go for healthy striving instead of perfectionism, like if you can get to healthy striving like we always want to improve, I always can be better. Could this project have been better? Like what did we learn? Like yes to all of that. Absolutely, I want you to keep growing, I want you to keep being better, but I never am asking for perfection. Yes, let's work toward those goals instead of perfection.

Speaker 2:

Yes, can we do that instead? Absolutely so, instead of putting your energy into the emotional ways of maybe complaining, overthinking any of that, put that energy into finding creative solutions. Yeah, do not vent without purpose, that's right, and make sure that your complaints actually turn into an action plan.

Speaker 2:

That's right and so if you are doing those in a healthy because it is that's right, have purpose, intentionality. There needs to be an action plan and if you're going to go in with someone who can be also high emotion, like I like to preface the conversation like, hey, I need a sounding board. You're really good at this as well.

Speaker 2:

Like I have some raw emotions and then also like, don't share in this with me, so I don't need you to emotionally process as I don't emotionally process because I just need to talk some things out, make sure my mind is where it needs to be, make sure that I have a good solution or action plan. So this is what I'm going to do. I know I do that with you. Often it's like yep, you got it, like, okay, like, and then I feel good about what my next steps are.

Speaker 1:

I think one of the ways we're able to be proactive about this too. As you were speaking, wes, I was thinking about our social contract culture interview and we asked them to bring up times there was conflict and where that was, and you find out if they're conflict avoidant. You find out if they have high anxiety or they have high expectations of themselves, and one of the questions I like to ask them is how comfortable they are in being uncomfortable. Yes, because you have to be able to be uncomfortable in order to get through emotional waste. That's right.

Speaker 2:

Be exposed, feel exposed, feel, yes, that vulnerability Absolutely. So, pausing, reflecting on whatever emotional overwhelming struggle they may be going through, having that growth mindset, having that curiosity, that discovery, self-care, so making sure we're plugging back into our sources. These are all great ways, all great tools to give and just reminding our leaders. And we want to build emotionally resilient team members, absolutely, people that can withstand struggle, conflict, that can withstand change, change Absolutely, yes, absolutely. I was like, yes, yes, I don't know why change always makes people feel so like, oh, something's about that, just, um, man, what the physiological effect that it has on a person. So, yes, building emotional resilient leaders and modeling that for your team members goes a long way into really making your organization healthy and very productive.

Speaker 1:

So, on that subject of change, wes, I think one of the biggest changes our organization went through was during COVID, and it was the whole world changing. So like seeing our team have that tenacity and all together, like go through that emotional waste and make sure that we were addressing the fears, because it's a scary time, we came out so much better on the other side because we were all having to push through it, and that's what happens when you are all focused together and going through change.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, love the conversation. It's one of my favorites. I want to keep talking about it, but we don't have enough time so we'll end it there. And if you have any insights on this topic, any suggestions for any other new topics, please send those over to podcast at DanielStarkcom. Thank you, ladies, for joining me today, yeah, having us. Yes, until next time, stay remarkable.

Speaker 1:

Oh, I love this topic.