Colt Briner on Purpose, Workplace Conflict, Toxic Culture, and Difficult Leadership

In this episode of Civility Matters, Colt Briner joins us for a discussion about purpose, workplace conflict, toxic culture, and the leadership behaviors that undermine trust and performance. Briner, author of “The Race to Relevance” and co-creator of the “Wayfinding” system, discusses how purpose helps people navigate work and life with greater clarity and alignment. We explore how rudeness, poor communication, and unhealthy power dynamics show up in teams and why addressing them early matters for both people and organizations. 

Colt also shares practical strategies for leaders, HR professionals, and managers who want to improve workplace communication, strengthen leadership and respect, and create a healthier workplace culture. They explore how civility connects to purpose-driven leadership, why rudeness happens in organizations, and practical strategies for building more respectful workplaces. The conversation highlights that treating people well isn’t a soft skill—it’s a strategic advantage grounded in purpose-centered messaging and human-centered leadership

About Colt Briner:

Colt Briner is a strategist, speaker, and creator focused on helping individuals and organizations reconnect with what makes them fully human. As the founder of an award-winning marketing agency and a senior marketing leader in healthcare, Colt has spent over two decades driving growth at the intersection of strategy, creativity, and purpose. 

His work challenges conventional, performance-driven models by introducing more relational, intuitive, and holistic ways of thinking. Colt is the co-creator of Wayfinding, a reflective system designed to help people navigate life with greater clarity and alignment, and a leading voice behind the Invitation to Wholeness—an emerging body of work exploring the balance between logic and intuition, structure and flow, and the seen and unseen forces that shape our lives.

Whether working with executive teams or individuals, Colt’s approach is rooted in a simple idea: the path forward isn’t something we force, it’s something we learn to sense, trust, and follow.

Contact Colt at: https://coltbriner.com/

You can also contact him at: coltbriner@gmail.com

For more on my work on rudeness and incivility, you can find information at:

www.activatesuccess.org

www.rudenessrehab.com

https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnmobrienphd/

https://www.youtube.com/@RudenessRehab

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:08

Welcome to Civility Matters, the show that highlights well why civility matters. It also seeks to answer the important question why you gotta be so rude. More importantly, what can you do about it? So I'm your host, John O'Brien, author of the book Rudeness Rehab: Reclaiming Civility in the Workplace in your home space. I'm so glad to have those of you who are with us live here or also those who you may may be listening to the recording of this interview. Since we were last together in March, I'm excited to say that I've decided to make this podcast official. So it is now being hosted on BuzzSprote, which makes it available on a number of different uh podcast hosting sites, including Apple Podcasts and Spotify. So you can find that uh available there. I also want to say it's been interesting to see the number of uh downloads from people around the world with a special emphasis on my friends and not just my friends in Germany. So I want to say a special hello, Guten Tag, Sie sind herzlich willkommen uh to my friends in Germany. So that's good day. And the actual translation of that is you are heartily welcome to this podcast. And just a funny aside about that, years ago when I was traveling in Germany with a good friend of mine, uh Günther Spitzer, and we were sitting at a table and there was a little sign on the table that said Herzlich Willkommen, I asked him for the translation of that, and he translated it as uh hardly welcome. And I thought, gosh, that's rather rude of those Germans. Hard and we realized it was actually hardly welcome. So anyway, sometimes things can get lost in translation. And we will be certainly talking about the impact of culture when it comes to civility in future episodes. So as I travel around the country and talk to groups of people about uh the the problems of rudeness and incivility in our society, uh people often do resonate with that and say they think it's a problem. But then they ask, uh, is it really that bad, John? And that's what's motivated me to provide you each month with some startling statistics to illustrate that. This month we're talking about purpose, so I thought it'd be interesting to have some statistics on purpose. First, according to the Gallup survey in 2025, only 18% of Americans say that their job feels uh purposeful. 18% of those who do feel like this purpose, half of them say they feel engaged in their jobs, feeling connected, enthusiastic, and committed to their organization's success as compared to only 9% of those people who feel low purpose and 31% of workers overall. So purpose drives people feeling very obviously engaged and connected at work. Purpose also helps protect people against negative experiences. Only 13% of employees with strong purpose say that they feel burned out very often or always compared with to 38% of those people with a low sense of purpose. And finally, only 41% of people with strong work purpose are open to actively seeking another job compared to, no surprise, 68% of those with uh low purpose. So purpose matters in terms of workplace engagement, meaning, connection, and and uh desire to have your organization uh be successful. So each month on Civility Matters, I'm joined by an expert whose uh um area of expertise overlaps and uh quite nicely with the topic of civility. And this month I'm excited to be joined by Colt Breiner. And I'd like to tell you a little bit about Colt and his uh expertise. So uh Colt is a marketing executive and author of the book The Race to Relevance, which, oh, look at that, I just happened to have here. Uh he's a strategist, speaker, and creator focused on helping individuals and organizations reconnect with what makes them fully human. As the founder of an award-winning marketing agency and a senior marketing leader in healthcare, he has spent over two decades driving growth at the intersection of strategy, creativity, and purpose. His work challenges conventional performance-driven models by introducing more relational, intuitive, and holistic ways of thinking. And a leading voice behind something called the invitation to wholeness. Both of these things we'll talk with him about. An emerging body of work exploring the balance between logic and intuition, structure and flow. And the seen and unforeseen forces that shape our lives. So whether working with executive teams or individuals, Colt's approach is rooted in a simple idea that the path forward isn't something we force us for, but it's something we learn to we we learn to sense, trust, and follow. So let's give a very warm welcome to the Civility Matters guest of the month, Colt Reiner. Welcome, Colt. Right on. Thank you, John. I really appreciate you having me on. Yes, yes, glad to have you here. So just before we get into the business stuff, uh, I thought I'd like to have guests short uh start by sharing one fun fact about yourself. So would you share one fun fact about yourself with our audience?

SPEAKER_01 5:59

Uh in my conversations lately, the topic that comes up that seems to get people leaning in the most is the fact that I am midway through the process of moving to Portugal. We've been uh out here trying to establish essentially a retreat center, if you will, like a sanctuary retreat center. Uh, but when this idea of moving out of the country and moving to Portugal specifically comes up, people ask a lot of questions. And increasingly it seems they're interested in learning what it looks like to explore uh, you know, expatriating and finding other grounds to explore.

SPEAKER_00 6:36

Great. Well, that's um so uh it is an interesting thing to think about and and the kind of cross-cultural experience that you have. So whether people do that traveling or as you're saying, kind of in relocating and um and understanding how to navigate being in different cultures. So um that's great. Great. So let's get down to business. Enough fun stuff, right? So uh so let's start with um talk about your expertise and how you came to specialize in it.

SPEAKER_01 7:09

I I, you know, in in a word, I'm a storyteller. That's my expertise. I mean, I serve as chief marketing officer, I've been a marketing executive leader for uh almost two decades now. But I really do feel like it comes down to storytelling. Um, and I find that that's that has come about from in my personal experience with people, what I find very fulfilling, one thing that I find very fulfilling is the experience of reflecting back to both individuals and groups, what makes them amazing. Uh, that that's that's always been rewarding and fulfilling to me. You know, it feels great to watch somebody realize how they're seen in the eyes of others. And then finding that in organizations, companies, businesses, enterprises, and being able to craft that story first to reflect it back to them. This is who you guys are, this is what you're doing, this is the impact that you're having. And then basically taking responsibility for uh bringing that story, that narrative into a marketplace to tell what it is that this company is here to achieve, what they're about, who they are, what makes them amazing. I mean, that these this is just a natural fit for um I would say maybe a talent that I have, but more than more than it being a talent, it's a passion because of how fulfilling I find it.

SPEAKER_00 8:26

Yes, and I think um so often in organizations, people don't get to hear about the good work that they've done until they leave or until they're retiring. And and probably it's it's true that um many large the organizations itself rarely step back to appreciate the impact they're having. And I think you know, our healthcare system is so broken right now, that's an especially important place to be doing that.

SPEAKER_01 8:53

Well, that's really true. Yeah, the the healthcare system is in in America, it's like I tell people it's that's a rock you don't want to kick over. Uh, it's it's not attractive under there. It's uh it's a it's a challenging space. There's so much machinations between the payer organizations, the provider organizations, the government entities, so much interplay between patients, insurers, et cetera. It's uh it's ugly in there. And you know, a lot of organizations that are involved are in some ways very detached from the result of their work. They're very detached from the impact that they have. You know, vendors are supporting organizations that are hundreds or thousands of miles away. They don't have visibility to those health systems or those insurers, much less the patients and members that they serve. So there's a lot of disconnect in the industry between the work that people do and the impact that they're having.

SPEAKER_00 9:45

Yeah. Yes. And and therefore that's hard to connect with purpose if you have such a great. So we'll we'll certainly talk about that. Uh, what's one experience you've had that most changed the way you think about your work or about people at work?

SPEAKER_01 10:02

Yeah. I have uh I've had the opportunity to see how powerful purpose can be in an organization that started uh in a company that I was working with about 15 years ago. And not 15 years ago, that was about 10 years ago, sorry. And what we found was when we started to connect the dots between the work that the people were doing and the impact that they were having, things really started to take off. Power uh I think grow from uh kind of a startup stage to a unicorn company, meaning a privately held company worth over a billion dollars. And it'd be hard to overstate the importance of purpose in making that happen. So the first thing was to go and and I had the opportunity to sit down and directly interview some of the leaders of the client organizations that this company was partnered with and get it from them, like straight from them. What is it that the work we're doing for you, this company's doing for you, uh, is achieving for you? How is it tied to your purpose? What is it that the work that these people are doing is doing for you to improve your experience, to advance your career, to make your company better, to make the customers you serve have a better experience? All those kinds of questions. And then bringing those stories back to the people in the office that I was working in. And again, these people are in cubicles that are a thousand miles away from uh the companies that they support. And they didn't have a sense of the how the dots connected between what they did in their cubicles and how patient lives were being impacted. And once we started really connecting those dots and really telling those stories, putting purpose at the center of the organization, everything lined up beautifully. The commitment that people brought to their work, the way that they uh leaned into growing in their own roles, uh, the capacity that the company had to attract and retain talent, uh, to attract and retain clients, everything just really started to go up and to the right. And of course, it wasn't just purpose that made that happen. They had phenomenal teams, great technology, et cetera. But it would be impossible to have done it without putting purpose at the center of that organization.

SPEAKER_00 12:13

So interesting to think about how, you know, at the to a larger extent than other employers, you can't just assume your employees understand the meaning and purpose behind their work, but to actually try to connect what people are doing to what difference it's making in people's lives. Absolutely. Yes, totally. Um so uh tell us about your most recent book, which I oh look at that. I happen to have here. The race to relevance. Um and also I hope you don't mind, but I I love your story about um your mom and uh her, uh how she instilled purpose in you, if you wouldn't mind sharing that with the audience.

SPEAKER_01 12:50

No, I appreciate you asking about that. Um so I'll just touch briefly the race to relevance is kind of my field guide. I refer to it as my Indiana Jones' journal for reaching the treasure of a purpose-driven company. It's kind of it's kind of part journal and and part uh part how-to. I really wanted to make sure that people who read it would be equipped to to understand how do I actually put purpose at the center of my company. So that's that's really what that book is about. As far as like the deep roots of where that story came from, when I was growing up, uh, every day that I left the house, uh, my mom would call out, kind of regardless of whether I was walking out out the door with my friends or what have you. And she would always say, Do great things on the way out the door. And you know, I really at that time didn't understand what she was instructing me to do. At that time, you know, as a teenager hearing, you know, the mom say the thing that she says every time, and the reaction's like, Mom, come on, oh my gosh, my friends are here. Uh but eventually, actually, probably not until my 40s, that I really realized what she was instilling me to do is to be part of something that is great, which is something that you have to find for yourself, right? Great is a subjective kind of a term. Great is something that you make your own determinations about what that will be. But what she wanted me to do was to find something that I felt was great that I could be a part of. Uh, and that reminder, that everyday reminder has stuck with me. And I'll tell you, this actually happened three months ago. On the inside of the front door, she had a handwritten sign that said the same thing. It was just a regular eight and a half by eleven sheet of paper that she wrote with a pen, do great things. She just found that piece of paper. Yeah. Well, um, I didn't picture that. That was a touching moment.

SPEAKER_00 14:38

Yeah. I love that. I love that story, and I love the fact that your book is dedicated to your mom. Um and that's something that we share because as you know, my book was also dedicated to my mom, who helped me with the sense of civility. So okay, so yes, thanks, mom. We're thanking our moms. Uh so how does civility connect with purpose?

SPEAKER_01 15:01

Wow. I think it I think it starts with a deep respect for the humanity and others, uh, which is for me the concept of civility has to be rooted in a deep respect for the humanity and others. And the idea that if you're gonna come to work, if you're gonna exchange your life energy in the context of a business, uh, to do so with that organization respecting and recognizing your humanity by communicating that you're here to do more than get a paycheck, by communicating that you're here to do more than the function of your job, you're here to be a part of an impact that we're trying to have in the world. And I think that you know, there's a lot of organizations that operate on the philosophy of you're lucky to have a job. And I get it, that's how some businesses some businesses operate, but I think my argument would be I don't see that that being a way to respect the humanity in others. And if you, as an organization, choose to do so, choose to respect the humanity in others, helping them understand how their role, the work that they do, connects with a purpose that is meaningful to them is a great way to demonstrate that you recognize and respect the humanity in them. And I think that's that's also a strong pathway to civility.

SPEAKER_00 16:20

Absolutely. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 16:22

I think mostly I would say if you have if you have an organization where that mentality is, oh, you're lucky to have this job, the energy that comes out in that space is it can become uh well problematic in many ways. You know, employees can can not collaborate in meaningful ways. The way that they go home and think about the work that they did is very different. When people ask what they do, they maybe provide the title of their job instead of the impact that they're having. All those things shift when you're in a you're lucky to have this job environment.

SPEAKER_00 17:03

Absolutely. It becomes more personal. Absolutely. So uh you sort of responded to this question when you were talking about the the work uh with a specific employer. But my question, just to highlight, is how employers can connect employee purpose to organizational purpose.

SPEAKER_01 17:24

Wow. Well, first of all, finding employee purpose is like self-purpose. Finding self-purpose is an interesting exercise. We're going to talk about a couple approaches to figuring that out a little later on. The first thing is that you're not trying to make the person's purpose, the employee's purpose, align. That's not the that's not what you're trying to do. You're trying to identify people who have a purpose that is aligned and bring them on, develop them as well as you can and give them an environment that they want to stay in. You need to also, if you're being totally genuine about purpose and you're recognizing their humanity, when you find people who, through you know, whatever introspection or self-exercises they've done have determined, you know, this company may not be my purpose, then it needs to be your job to help them find something else. I mean, quite honestly, I think that's where where it really comes down to being genuine and authentic as an employer, that you're you're there respecting their humanity to allow that they can come to you and say, I'm not feeling this. Maybe it's in that role. And if it's in the role, then let's work on finding a role that that is better aligned with their sense of purpose. But if it's about the company and what the company's doing, then I think the right move is let's let's see if we can find a way to get you connected with work that would be more fulfilling.

SPEAKER_00 18:45

Yes, yes. Um, in other words, having employees' best interest as most prominent, and whether that's working for you as an employer or whether that's just recognizing that they need to be in a different role or at a different organization, right?

SPEAKER_01 19:00

100%, yes.

SPEAKER_00 19:01

Yeah. And I think it's about supervisors also being invested in uh employee professional development, and that uh ideally you want people to kind of outgrow you to be able to move on to a different role um in an organization, is the way I think about it.

SPEAKER_01 19:17

And I do love, I know you've heard this before. I I do love uh the axiom where the question comes, what if we invest all this money in training them and then they leave? It's like, well, what if we don't and they stay?

SPEAKER_00 19:28

Yeah. Right. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Um, so uh you are now involved in something called Wayfinder, right? So a co-creator of Wayfinders. So maybe tell tell us a little bit about that.

SPEAKER_01 19:45

Wayfinding was inspired by uh another sort of introspection tool that I encountered many years ago called Grok. Grok, uh uh, I'm gonna take this a little bit out of sequence because I know you wanted to talk about becoming a Sommelier of your inner state. Grok has been the tool that helped me do that, but it's basically just a system of two decks of cards. One of the decks is a set, uh just each card has a single feeling on it. One feeling on a card, this is the feeling of tense. Okay, that's an example. And the other deck is just a deck of needs. Friendship is a need. And uh there's lots of exercises you can undertake with this deck for you know, sort of self-reflection to understand your inner state, etc. And I have found this to be a very powerful tool for my own growth, very powerful, even though on the surface it looks like what I call it, like uh the crayons of emotional intelligence, just really basic stuff. But the reality is, I'll say just for myself, my my education did not include much depth for emotional education. So just encountering even the crayons of emotional intelligence is very powerful for me. Wayfinding uh was inspired by that system because it's also set up as a set of two decks of cards. Uh, but these cards are a little bit different. One of one side of this is the ways of being. So, ways of being could be descriptions of uh uh what's present for you or kind of your your current orientation internally. So you could be feeling present or independent or centered or proud would be ways of being. Uh, and each one of them has uh a correlate. So if you flip it over, you get essentially the shadow side of each of those states. So honest has a shadow of evasive, rested has a shadow of depleted, etc. And then on the other side, we have ways of becoming. So the ways of becoming are essentially how you can move towards a specific state of being that you're attracted to, or away from a state of being that you find yourself maybe in that you'd like to move away from. So this would be uh on the on the positive side, you can have something like take responsibility, and on the negative side of that, it could be deflect, or on the positive side to ground, right? To ground yourself. On the negative side of that. Would be to drift. So these become tools. There's a number of different uh exercises that you can undertake with Grok and with Wavefinding that are introspective and essentially give you the ability to self-author your own growth.

SPEAKER_00 22:15

Um, so let's follow up on that by just uh talking about being a sommelier of your inner state. I love that uh those terms. So maybe just talk about how those are the foundations of that as I see it.

SPEAKER_01 22:27

Yeah, I appreciate you asking that question because the the approach to finding purpose that I have found to be most effective is to first of all become a sommelier of your inner state. And the reason why that is the case is because if you become good at detecting when positive interstates are present, even subtle ones, you can also become good at identifying what activities or engagements led to that positive experience. So for me, using the Grok system was a really effective way to become a simolier of my interstate. And I use Simolier, meaning like this is the person who is the expert in wine. There's so much depth and dimension just in something as simple as a glass of wine. You can have the bouquet, the nose of the wine, you can have the mouthfeel, you can have the start and the finish of the wine, you know, the different aspects of flavor in there. Oh, it has black currant or it has citrus and those types of things. If you think about how delicately sensitive a Somalier has become to the nuances of wine, my guidance is to become that delicately sensitive to your own inner states. We don't tend to undertake that exercise in our lives. I think it's a pathway to civility. I think it's a pathway to purpose, and I think it's a pathway to growth.

SPEAKER_00 23:46

And I would add on to that certainly an emotional balance too, right? It's the more aware you are, the more control of you you have over your emotional function, right?

SPEAKER_01 23:55

Yeah, absolutely agree with you there. Step one is awareness.

SPEAKER_00 23:58

Right. So looking ahead, what challenges do you see organizations facing the next five years? And how can um employers solve them?

SPEAKER_01 24:10

In some ways, I think uh it's hard to get to that to the answer to that question without touching on AI. What I see is a lot of a lot of functions being automated. I've had visibility to functions being automated in my own in my own departments and in the companies that I work with and around. And I think people are feeling concerned. I think there's a lot of concern that's arising about what the next five years will look like. And as these roles do get automated and they will continue to be, what I want to encourage people to do is to lean into humanity. Because I don't foresee, at least for the foreseeable future, that AI is going to automate our humanity. And if you can start to look within yourself at what you're attracted to in the dimensions of interacting with people, in the dimensions of helping to coach or grow other folks, right? Or to have yourself grown or mentored is another aspect. But let's find what is possible in the dimension of our humanity as we look to the next five years, 10 years, because we have been phenomenal dreamers of what is possible in the dimension of technology, what's possible in the dimensions of business and capitalism, what's possible in so many dimensions, and I would argue that the dimension of our humanity has been perhaps neglected. I think you addressed that well in your book, uh, that's sort of become a concerning pattern, and you've offered a lot of guidance for how to interrupt that pattern and maybe set a better course. I share your observation in that. And I think that if we can start to become fantastical dreamers in the dimension of our humanity, rather than looking at the landscape of available jobs and being concerned that there are jobs going away, what I have found as I start to imagine that dimension is oh my gosh, the possibility of roles that we could play for each other, jobs we can search for each other, purposes that we can undertake for ourselves expands enormously just as soon as you dip a toe in that direction.

SPEAKER_00 26:14

So if you allow yourself to get around the fear that comes up when you first hear about AI, right? Yes. Um, well, so it's hard to believe our time is winding down. Um, but I wonder if you have some final piece of advice you would have for people who are viewing live or listening to this uh to this podcast.

SPEAKER_01 26:34

Yeah, I it's to it's kind of a summary of what we've touched on. So becoming a small yeah universe date is step one, right? Be sensitive to what's present in your being. Take time to be present with what's there, and then take time to ask why it's there. Consider the needs that you have that have led to that feeling arising. Uh, and then let those be the signposts that point you to your purpose. And once you have started to develop a sense of that purpose based on those signposts, then you can start to evaluate am I in a role that's aligned in that way? Or would there be other things that I could explore that would create better alignment for me in that way?

SPEAKER_00 27:10

It sounds like a very empowering approach, where sort of for people to grow their awareness and then be able to think about like, okay, um, yes, how can I contribute, but how can also whatever I'm doing my work contribute to me? And how can I get those aligned better rather than feeling kind of helpless about what's happening in the workplace? So yeah. Um and I love the birds in the background where you are. Uh so how can uh how can our viewers connect with you um after this podcast?

SPEAKER_01 27:41

Oh, I I like to take the Ezra Klein approach on that one. So it's as always my email, Coltbriner at gmail.com.

SPEAKER_00 27:49

Wow. Okay. Um we will um uh expect that you will get tons, tons of fan mail after this. Um and I know there's a whole lot we didn't get to uh talk about, and I hope that you might consider coming back down the road.

SPEAKER_01 28:05

I would I would be I would be delighted to come back with you, John. Yes.

SPEAKER_00 28:08

Great, because I think our large studio audience out there really is interested in having you return. So um it's the biggest audience ever, perhaps. Um so they really are thank you for that. Thank you for taking the time to um join me. And thank you to all the listeners too um who wanted to you know join me live and maybe who are listening, I I wish you continued success in all that you do. Um and so in closing, uh as always, I'd like all of us to recall how many psychologists does it take to change a light bulb? The answer is just one, but the light bulb has to want to change. So when it comes to the tidal wave of rudeness and incivility in our society, what kind of light bulb are you gonna be? Until next time, I'm John O'Brien, and remember civility matters.