Autonomy in Leadership: Finding the Want-to

So without further ado, we're going to get up and running. If you've not been to one of these sessions or met me yet, my name is Kevin Spindt and I'm the Chief Growth Officer here at The Pacific Institute. And we do these sessions on the first Friday of every month. And the goal of what we're trying to do with these executive briefings, these beyond limit sessions, is we are trying to get individuals together in a group like this, professionals like yourself, predominantly leaders. We want to gather you together in a, a setting like this so that we can share insights, key topics from our core curriculum.

We want to tie it to current events. We want to tie it to the things that you're facing in your world that you're up against day in and day out. We want to provide an opportunity to network. We're going to have over a hundred folks here again today. So this is an opportunity to see how our curriculum, how our content can impact folks in all different industries and all different areas.

We want to promote what we do here at Pacific Institute to a larger and broader audience. Audience. And then of course, we want to engage. So a lot of folks here, your existing clients, and thank you so much for coming and sharing and spending time with us as an existing client. A lot of you are considering becoming a client.

Please, please do so. We love having new folks here and some this is your very first time engaging with us. And again, welcome. So what we're going to cover here during our time together is the, the core principles of The Pacific Institute. And if you have not worked with us before, it's important to know that our fundamental teaching is we elevate from the core, right?

We elevate from the very deepest level of the human brain. We're talking about the changes that happen between this right ear and that left ear, and those thoughts and beliefs that drive the behavior. Then we apply just everyday accessible cognitive science so that we can help ordinary humans, like the people in this room live more successful internal narratives. And that's our biggest and most primary objective is to just really help folks live more productive, more successful lives in every area. We believe the same thing that our founder Lou Teis believed 53 years ago, which is all meaningful and lasting change.

It starts on the inside and it works its way out. If you're going to make big changes in the world, it's going to start by making big changes with yourself. And when you can have those changes made and you can start to impact those around you, you can transform and impact those people around you. Maybe your small team, maybe your, uh, your family. And from there, when each one of those individuals can go through their core changes along with you, that's how we transform organizations.

That's how we can transform the collective group. So our topic for today and what we're doing and what we're going to be discussing is motivation. And it's a pretty good time of year to talk about motivation. 'cause a lot of us have some, uh, some higher bills than usual that are coming up. We might be motivated to pay, we might be coming up on some, uh, some New Year's resolutions for 2025.

So what we want to talk about today is how do we change our motivation from an internal mo, I'm sorry, from an external motivation to an internal. And another way of saying that is how do we make the things that we have to do in our life transition from have to over to want to, or to get to Now, what we mean by that is there's various different areas that we're going to focus on. We're going to focus on how that's accomplished through autonomy. We're going to focus on how that's accomplished through competence or mastery. And we're going to focus on how that's accomplished through contribution and how those are kind of the ingredients for how we can move from a half to, to a want to.

And that's what we're going to be doing through the workbook and through our time together today. So when we think about motivation, I always think about, there was a, there was a historical document that came out back in the late 1990s, and I bet a lot of you probably saw this historical, uh, video that that I'm referring to. You might even say it was go so far. It was a documentary. Um, I'm going to put it up on the screen, maybe you've heard of this, this particular documentary that I'm talking about.

So I'm going to play you just a short little clip from this historical document from the late nineties that talks just a little bit about motivation that I think is going to speak to some of you.

We're trying to get a feel for how people spend their day at work. So if you would, would you walk us through a typical day for you? Yeah, great. Well, I generally come in at least 15 minutes late. Uh, I use the side door that way lumber can't see me.

And uh, after that I just sort of space out for about an hour. Tell 'em, Hey, space out. Yeah, I just stare at my desk, but it looks like I'm working. I do that for, uh, probably another hour after lunch too. I'd say in a given week, I probably only do about 15 minutes of real actual work.

Uh, Peter, would you be a good sport and indulge us and just tell us a little more? Oh yeah. Let me tell you something about TPS reports. TPS the thing is, Bob, it's not that I'm lazy, it's that I just don't care. Don't, don't care.

It's a problem of motivation. All right? Now if I work my ass off and any tech ships a few extra units, I don't see another dime. So where's the motivation? And here's something else, Bob.

I have eight different bosses right now. Uh, beg your pardon? Eight bosses. Eight, eight bob. So that means that when I make a mistake, I have eight different people coming by to tell me about it.

That's my only real motivation is not to be hassled that in the fear of losing my job. But you know, Bob, it'll only make someone work just hard enough not to get fired. That'll only make someone work just hard enough not to get fired. If you're here and your camera's on show of hands, if you've been in a work environment that felt just a little bit like that before, thank you for those of you who are honest. So that comes up a lot.

And for those of you that haven't seen this, uh, this movie, that's not a documentary, it's a high recommend. We're trying to get skip over that real quick. So we want to talk a little bit about how we motivate and for the leaders that are in the room, how do we motivate our workforce? And a lot of times what happens is when you're in a workforce, when you're in a work environment where there the motivation's in the wrong place, when your motivation is to not screw up or to not have negative interactions, you're not really looking about moving forward. You're kind of just going from sick to medium when you really want to get to, well, so a lot of times you see this in environments where there's a lot of customer interactions.

This was uh, uh, something that was pulled from a wall. Adam Grant did a study and he was in an office of telemarketers. He saw this written on the wall. He put it in the category of languishing. And you get a lot of unappreciative feeling individuals in those environments.

One of those types of environments is call centers. Folks that ended up spending a lot of time on the phone, whether it's customer support, whether it's sales, and one of the ones that tends to kind of languish them is those that are dealing with the, the fundraising for alumni. Now, if you went to college and you paid for college and you graduated, you one day after graduation, started to experience something that we all receive after college, the phone calls, the phone calls that come in asking you to give more money to the university that you just gave a whole bunch of money to, to get a degree, they want you to make donations. And you get those calls starting the day after you graduate and they stop the day you die. They come in and they come in and they come in.

So you can imagine that the way that folks sometimes respond to those is maybe not the kindest on the other end of the phone. They sometimes get shouted at, they sometimes get yelled at. And meanwhile, you've got these quote salespeople on the other end that are trying to get them to generate revenue for the school to get donations so that these kids can go to college and maybe they're not putting their best foot forward all the time. And what you end up having is, is a discontent or an unhappy workforce. And this comes around a lot.

This happens a lot. But fast forward, I'm going to reference Daniel Pink again. Daniel Pink did a study, it was called a Purpose Motive. He did this with a one of these organizations, telemarketers, good old fashioned, picking up the phone, smiling and dialing, trying to get alumni donations. And he did a thing.

And I'm going to tell you what that thing is in just a minute, but I want to tell you how well the thing worked. And the thing didn't take long, it took about 15 minutes. I did it just once. And the results were almost instant after the thing was done, they noticed that the individuals, the representatives were spending twice as much time on their conversations. That meant they were doing a lot more good work.

They weren't getting off of those conversations resulting in three times the amount of donations that were made. Looking at those as sales numbers.

That's twice as much time being in sales conversations and three times the amount of revenue generated from them. What they also noted was noticed was those employees, they started to act a little bit differently. They started to innovate. They kind of stopped following the script, they started making some different adjustments to the way they were conducting their business, and suddenly the numbers were a whole lot better. Does anybody happen to know what that thing was?

You can put it in the chat. Do you know what the thing that was done by Daniel Pink in his purpose? Motive? Keep an eye on the chat for just a second. So the magic that he did was he brought in a student who had received contributions from these types of donations.

He brought in a college student who had just received donations like this and had supported them through school. And they did a 10 to 15 minute conversation where that college student would explain how these contributions that were made by these individuals had changed their life, had connected with them, and it showed that they could make a difference. And suddenly things started to change. Suddenly when they realized that they were making a difference, the whole idea of why they were doing their job changed. It was no longer, how do I get off this phone call so quickly because these jerks are yelling me?

It is. I need to help this young lady get a college education and the only way to do that is to stay on the call. They started to change their motivation from, I can make a few more dollars if I generate a few more dollars to I can make a difference in these people's lives. And when they realized that they could do that, they took the onus and the obligation on themselves to say, I'm going to help them change their lives. And as a result, it was a ton of innovation.

The job started to be done differently. So I'm going to play us one more video that talks just a little bit more detail about that. But one of the things that I want to emphasize that's really, really important is this study that was done back in 2011 through Harvard Business School. And it was said that the most critical factor in motivating workers is consistent progress in meaningful work, even if the steps are small, even if the steps are small. So what it's known as is the progress principle.

And it says that finding that sense of forward movement, when people feel ownership over their work and they build skills, they can see how their efforts contribute to something greater and that drives their perform, their performance, their motivation, and their wellbeing. So one more video. Go ahead and take some notes on this one if you'd like. There's a, there's places within your workbook to do so. We'll be using those in just a moment.

But the key points for this one that I really want you to focus on are the ideas of autonomy, the idea of competence or of mastery and the idea of contribution. Or you could look at that as purpose. One of the biggest challenges we have, whether it's establishing an exercise program that we can maintain making a healthier shift in our eating habits or even finding time to truly relax on a regular basis, is keeping ourselves motivated to keep up the good work. Forcing ourselves as if we had a drill sergeant in our heads yelling at us to move it, move it, move. It doesn't really work, at least not for very long.

Instead of lowering our stress, it actually pumps up the volume on it. If we force ourselves to do something, then it becomes a have to. And we don't like being told we have to do anything. Our inner teenager attitude shows up and we push back. We find ways to avoid slack off or just plain ignore that drill sergeant.

Ultimately we talk ourselves right out of the change. We say we want to make and return to our old habits. No growth, just the same old, same old. The thing is, it doesn't need to be this way. The trick is in finding valid reasons to want to make the change.

It's finding the personal pay value, the meaning and purpose our why. It's finding the answer to the what's in it for me and what does this help me achieve? Questions typically, we don't need to be pushed into something we want to do. Think back a moment as a child, did you really need to be pushed into going out to play or eating dessert or going on vacations? Probably not.

There are three ingredients or nutrients, if you will, that feed our internal motivation to accomplish our goals.

Autonomy means that we are living a want to life because we're making our own decisions for our own reasons. This facility to choose for ourselves gives us a sense of personal freedom and recharges our energy and creativity as we reach for higher levels of performance and wellbeing. When we are able to show competence in the areas of work and life that we enjoy, we give ourselves a sense of mastery and control. This goes hand in hand with a growth mindset. That belief that we can continue to grow, learn and change, and that our efforts make a difference.

Leveraging our strengths puts us in a state of flow where time seems to stand still because we're so absorbed in what we're doing. Increased energy nourishes our motivation to succeed. We have an innate need to belong and contribute to something larger than ourselves. Contribution to a common goal, whether at work or in the community fuels our internal drive. Meaningful work that makes a positive contribution and impact on the lives of others provides us with a compelling why that tremendous personal pay value to the soul that fills us up and moves us forward allowing us to truly flourish.

As you look at the goals you've set for yourself, and especially for those goals you haven't set yet, what is going to make you want to achieve them? Is it a raise in pay so you can take a special trip, get a new car, or put a down payment on a house. Is it time set aside for yourself so you can relax away from the hustle and bustle of the day's activities? Is it the opportunity for some volunteer work that feeds your soul and gives your life meaning and purpose? Whatever you determine that personal pay value to be?

This is the why you set the goals you do. The passion and enthusiasm that you bring to your goals is what guides you and speeds your way toward goal achievement. There is no pushback to gum up your goal achievement machine just a smooth path to ever greater engagement with your future. We covered a lot real quick there. So I want to take a minute to unpack some of that.

So this is an opportunity for you to go ahead and take out those digital workbooks. If you haven't done so, I want to give everybody an opportunity to open that up on their devices. Everybody's using multiple screens these days, I'm sure. What we want to do is just take a minute to run through those key main points that video referred to them as nutrients or ingredients. And the first of those is going to be autonomy.

So just kind of recapping what that's meant by that is that just means creating personal freedom. Another way of saving that is just making that personal freedom happen. So autonomy is the ability to make decisions and have control over how work is done. When you can do that, you start to foster some creativity. You start to create, uh, more engagement in the task at hand it gives you a lot of energy.

So if we think about what was going on in our story with our telemarketing friends in that purpose motive, when you looked at them and they had the opportunity for the autonomy to start to have control over how they were going to speak to the alumnis on the other end of the phone, they started to have ownership over what they were doing and the task at hand. And that made them start to connect more with what they were doing and the people they were talking to that led to higher levels of innovation. So they noticed that a lot of 'em were no longer following the script. It was what you could generically say, but instead, they were having a conversation with each and every person and they were really engaged in the work that they were doing. And remember that number one factor in being engaged is that daily progress.

So they started seeing that these were the steps that got them closer to it, and that happened because they were given autonomy. Now, if we move away from telemarketers and we move into a different type of an industry, this is something if you see the Australian company, Atlassian, the software company, they have a program that they run. It used to be called FedEx Days. Now they call it ship it days. And what they do is they give their employees an opportunity every month to spend 24 hours working on something that's not related to their job.

They want them to do something that has to be turned in in 24 hours and it may or may not be related to what the organization is doing. Now, if you're familiar with Atlassian, they've got some really interesting products and they've had a lot of very innovative, uh,

developments in the software world. The vast majority of those have come during those ShipIt days. So while they're running a successful software company, some of the most notable products like Jira that they sell and make available, those came from those FedEx or those that were outside of what the employees were normally doing because when they had the autonomy to do it on their own, they took ownership over the task and they started to innovate new and different ways of doing things. So my question or challenge for you is as we think about that, the key takeaway there is when people are given the freedom to choose their projects and direct their own efforts, it unlocks creativity, it unlocks a sense of ownership. So if you take a look at your workbooks, there's a little bit of a task or an assignment for you in there, and I'm going to give you about three or four minutes to work on that now.

So the workbook activity is this. At the top of the page, you're going to see that there's a prompt to think about a have to a quote, have to task that you have to do every day, every week, every month. You can choose whether or not that's a personal or a professional task. You can say, I have to drive carpool. Or you can say, I have to turn in my compliance reports at the end of the month.

Either way, put where your have to task is and then at the bottom, think about how you might be able to change or approach it for yourself or your team and in a way that would say there is more, uh, freedom or choice or autonomy. So I'm going to play just a teeny little bit of music for you. I'm going to give you about three minutes to discuss that, uh, to to write down your answers and then we'll move on to the next topic. From there, if anybody finishes up early, I would love to see in the chat what some of those have to tasks are that everybody has to do every day. Number one answer.

Tiffany Emails was the number one answer on things people have to do. I have to clear my inbox. Supervision, reconciliation, mandated online learning, all these have tos yucky. This is a good start to an activity. We could make an entire day workshop out of an activity like this, but that is designed to help give you just a little bit of a head start, a little bit of a jumpstart on what you're doing.

I'm curious, as I look through some of these half to tasks, really when you think about creating that personal freedom. So here's an example. When I tell my kids to do the dishes, there is a manner in which I want them to be done so that it doesn't make a giant mess of the kitchen. That's not the manner in which a 14-year-old boy wants to do dishes.

So when I put the restrictions on that, it is a task and he hates it and he does it poorly and I have a really not so well done set of dishes when I let him have the autonomy to be a crazy little 14-year-old and do things how he wants to, yes, it looks a little bit unusual from my standpoint as he stands across the, with with a, with a hose spraying across the kitchen to try to clean the dishes. But he has the autonomy to do it how he wants to, and he gets engaged and it becomes a game for him. And suddenly the task is something that he doesn't read doing. And in my world, when I don't have to beg and plead to get dishes done, that's a big win. So just think about when you're looking at the various different tasks that you have to do, really think about are there ways that you can modify them into a choose to or a want to?

If you're looking at that page and you really can't come up with anything that's a perfect opportunity to please come engage with us. We would love to be able to help you learn different ways to provide autonomy in your day-to-day for yourself and for your team. I'm going to keep a quick eye on the chat here just to see if there was any last minute questions or comments that come in. So far, it looks like weekly supervision. I have to service clients.

I have to work on my business. So all these, if we could figure out ways to make them things that we would want to do, just think about the energy and the creativity that might come along with it. Topic number two was on competence. Another way of saying that is mastery building mastery and confidence. Now this one's big 'cause remember, as we develop those skills and we make daily progress towards our goals, that's a big motivating factor.

In fact, it's the number one motivating factor. So competence is really about achieving mastery and developing various different skills that lead you towards the expectation of success. When the expectation is that my efforts are going to result in the outcome that I want, that's totally different. And as you build your skills, you start to expect more. Imagine somebody that had never shot a basketball before being told they had to go shoot free throws.

They wouldn't make very many. So when they made two instead of one, they would see that as progress. And that really helps people move forward and it changes the expectation that in turn will change the self image of the individual. And as we mentioned before, that leads to a lot of innovation, doing things in a different way that you have ownership over. So let's think about our friends at the call center when they were doing this, when they had the ability to do things in a different way, they were starting to keep track of the new skills that they were developing on their own.

When they created those new skills, they could build upon those. When I did this with the customer, it worked. So I'm going to build upon that. That leads to job satisfaction. When you get to do things your own way and it works, it feels really good.

It's that internal, I told you. So that feels really, really good. And when you develop that level of mastery, it leads to having more meaningful work because you start to take credit for the things you've done that you've done, and you can do things that are important to you. Anybody here on their desks right now happen to have one of these, a post-it note. Anybody have a post-it note on their desk?

I bet you do. Chances are if you've got a post-it note on your company, it came from the company 3M, and you've probably heard this story before, but post-it notes were created by accident. They were not intentional. They were trying to create a really, really sticky adhesive, and they did the opposite. They goofed up, they made a bad one.

But what you didn't know is that 3M did not say Go create this. That wasn't something that they worked on. This is a paper company, was really just thinking, how can we help our employees innovate? So at 3M, they give all of their employees a 15% policy, and that means 15% of your time, you are given the autonomy for exploration. You can work on whatever the heck you want to that interests you.

It may involve the company and be directly tied to them. It may not. But this leads to their open innovation. It leads to a very supportive culture because others are aware that everybody's spending 15% of their time on passion projects. They want to support that and it leads to a strong implementation pathway.

It allows them to be in an environment where they feel comfortable innovating. And then when they come up with something good like a post-it note, they feel empowered to pitch it to the organization not as a failed sticky substance that didn't work, but as something that they worked on and mastered. And now the company can. Perfect. And yes, it is the number one selling product in 3M history.

It was created by accident in a 15% of the time policy.

So how can we apply that to our work? How do we apply that to our businesses? The key takeaway here is encouraging employee employees to develop their skills, explore areas that interest them. It's going to lead to a greater sense of mastery satisfaction, innovation. So how do we apply that to our businesses?

If you take out those workbooks, again, there's another opportunity to get started on an activity at the top. Go ahead and identify an area in your work where you feel a high level of confidence. This can be absolutely anything. If you think that your emails are eloquently worded and you feel really competent that you write the best email in the whole company, great. Run with it.

If you think your conflict management skills are great or you're better at making presentations and spreadsheets, whatever that area is, write that down. And then at the bottom, identify how you can further build on this strength and create more opportunities to use it. Or if there's a skill that you really want to work on that you know that you need, what's one step that you can take to build competence and mastery in that area? I'm going to go ahead and play a little music again. Give you another couple of minutes to work on that.

Again, this is the start of an activity. I would encourage you to finish that later. As always, if you finish early, love to see your answers in the chat. There's Areas where you feel that high level of competence. Oh, I love the answers that are coming in the chat.

This is like an exercise in efficacy. Everybody's saying all the stuff they're good at. I really encourage everybody to spend additional time on each one of these areas in your workbook later on today over the holidays, some time when you have a little bit more time. Really spend some time with your team on this areas well. Now, if you're having a hard time identifying what your strengths are, if you are not crystal clear what your strengths are, and you can't say, my top strengths are 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, please let us know.

We would love to be able to do an assessment with you to help you identify your strengths so that you can build upon them and take advantage of the gifts that you have. I love the answers that are coming in the chat here. This is really good stuff. Collaborating, building relationships, building up the team, educating, guiding, connecting. We've got some very strong strengths.

I really hope that everybody goes out of their way to use those strengths on a day in and day out basis. Moving on to the next topic, the final one here is contribution. Another way to put that is saying maybe connecting or connecting to a greater purpose. Everybody has heard about finding your why. That's what we're talking about.

This is it. This is finding why you do something, right? So having contribution involves making a meaningful impact

on others, on the team, maybe even a greater cause, right? And when you feel like you're contributing to something, there's that warmness that exists in all of us that's maybe even a little bit higher than usual this time of year. That really helps. That's why people, even though that we're spending more money than we do every year, any other time throughout the year, we're also donating more than we are any other time of the year. 'cause it's the time of year when people really think about contribution.

So when we think about that with our friends at the telemarketing firm, the ones that were getting screamed at till they started to do work a little differently. When they were able to connect to that greater purpose, they started seeing meaning in what they were doing. It wasn't just, I have to make a hundred phone calls in my shift, or I'll get in trouble, or one of my eight bosses will yell at me. It's, I'm helping these students get a college education from the same university that I graduated from. I'm making an impact on their lives and their ability to have a greater future, which is a motivating factor for me and for those around me because I'm doing purposeful work.

Now, if you don't happen to work for an organization like the one that I do that does purposeful work every single day, you can use other examples of that. A company like Patagonia, does anybody know what Patagonia's mantra is? What's written on their walls? It's not built to endure, even though that's what it says on this one. We're in business to save our home planet.

That's right. Hiking, boots, jackets, sleeping bags, all that stuff. But their slogan, their motto, their guiding principle, their North star is we're in business to save our home planet. And as a result of that, it allows their employees to really, really take a lot of stock in the work that they're doing. It allows them to take a broader approach to the work that they do, and the amount of engagement that they have is through the roof.

The retention of Patagonia employees is best in class. So when they're able to connect a bigger picture, even though they're not actively saving their planet when they sell a jacket, or are they, they're not actively saving the planet when they sell a sleeping bag or are they? So when you can connect to that greater purpose, folks start realizing that what they're doing matters more than just the output upfront. It matters more than just the output of, oh, I got somebody to make a small donation, or I got through another phone call. It's taking those steps towards helping something bigger than themselves.

And when that happens, just like this time of year when people come up with donation dollars, when they really can't afford it, people come up with extra energy to work hard at their job because that comes from that level of contribution. So when we're connecting that greater purpose, key takeaway is connecting work to something of meaning inspires intrinsic motivation that drives people to their best efforts. If you take a pig at your workbooks, there's one more prompt in there for you and one more activity. Think of a task where you made a positive impact or contributed to a meaningful outcome. I don't mean solved world hunger.

This could be just as simple as you helped a coworker through a hard time. This could be just as simple as I offered some advice. It doesn't need to be earth shattering because what matters is what matters to you and it's your why. But put at the top that recent task, and at the bottom, do a little inventory. How did it make you feel?

And then consider how can you better connect your daily work to a larger purpose so that you can have that feeling more often for yourself and for your team. So we'll play a little bit more music again, give you a chance to write those in. And as always, put it in the chat when you're done.

I love Karen's answer, recognizing and praising for a great idea for a team member. Beautiful mentoring others. Great example. Oh, I like this. When shopping for our clients, make me feel helpful.

Yeah, For those of you that manage a team, I highly recommend taking this activity to them and doing this activity with them. You will be absolutely and utterly amazed at some of the things that folks can connect to a greater purpose, absolutely astonished from time to time, love. And the answers I'm seeing coming in through the chat here, a lot of very positive forward thinking. So let's talk about how we apply this, right? If you want to try to apply it real simply.

All right. We don't want to drink from a fire hose. We're not trying to boil the ocean all at once. Let's just break it down to three simple steps. You've got your workbooks.

Those are activities that I recommend over time. But when it comes right down to it, the action when it comes to autonomy is find opportunities to create freedom and choice in your work. And for those around you, if you want to figure out how to do that, ask a question. What can you change to create more freedom or choice? When you're doing something with yourself and your team?

What can you change to create more freedom or choice? When I tell my son to go do the dishes and I tell him, do 'em however the heck you want, they get done when I tell him to do 'em the way that I want to. It's a fight and an argument that doesn't go anywhere. So what can you change to create more freedom and choice to allow those individuals to do things the way they want to? When it comes to competence, leverage strengths, develop skills, build mastery.

You can do that by asking the question, what skill or strength can you leverage to make progress? You're working on a task? What strength that you have? What one of your top 3, 4, 5 strengths, can you go to the vault and say, I'm going to use this strength right now to make progress on this goal because it works. I'm good at it.

And finally, align tasks with greater purpose. And you do that by just asking, how does this connect with a larger purpose or impact? How does this connect with something bigger? I have to drive my daughter to gymnastics practice. Ugh, yucky.

I get to spend time with a teenager before she goes away to college. Ooh, I like when we change the motivation behind something, we change the behavior that goes along with that. And as leaders, our endeavor is always to get the most performance we can out of someone. And we want to get performance out of somebody we know from past sessions, if you've been to them before or if you're an existing client of ours, that performance, it comes from behaviors. You have to do something to get a result.

And the things that we do are reflections of the things that we think our values and our beliefs, those things that are running on in our head, that conversation that's 365 through our head and 70,000 thoughts per day. They guide our behaviors and they lead to our ultimate performance. And when our values and our beliefs are that our actions and our efforts do not make a difference, our internal self-talk and our behaviors are those that we have to do.

And science shows that when we have to do an activity versus an activity that we choose to do, the exact same activity can take as much as nine times the amount of energy to accomplish. It's a lot more energy to do the exact same thing. And as a result of that, when it takes a lot of energy and you run out of energy, you get disengaged. Nobody's engaged when the when the tank is empty. So the result is those limiting beliefs.

When I believe that my efforts don't make a difference, it creates overhead and it creates resistance to change. Good news is there's another side to that exact same coin. When your belief is that my efforts make a difference when the telemarketers are not just, oh, it's one more call and they're going to yell at me, but rather, the next call might be a student that gets to go to college because of me. It becomes activities that they want to do. And when you want to do something, you stay engaged in it, even when it's doing dishes as a 14-year-old boy.

Because when you believe that you have those liberating beliefs, sky's the limit that's going to enhance revenue, and that's going to drive innovation. If you're a leader, your options are, I want overhead and a resistance to change or more revenue and innovation. It's kind of an easy choice. And what does it look like when we're trying to drive those results? Usually there's a strategy.

Most good businesses have a strategy. In fact, most bad businesses have a strategy. And that strategy is a lever that you can pull on for leverage. And we know from what we mentioned before, that behavior is what's going to guide that. And we're going to get a lot more leverage focusing on the behavior.

But where does that behavior come from? Beliefs, those internal beliefs, what's going on behind the scenes? That's where you're going to get the most results. And when your beliefs say that my effort make a difference, I want to do these behaviors, I'm going to follow the strategy, we're going to get results. When it goes the other direction and it's, it doesn't make a difference, I have to do this, I'm disengaged.

The answer's obvious, it hurts the results. Now, this doesn't happen instantly. It happens as a process. I really wish that we sold magic beans because it'd be really easy. I just sell the magic beans and everybody here would be able to do this immediately.

But it's a process and it takes time. So if you'd like to know what our process looks like as far as changing those beliefs and making a difference to those underlying four step process that you've probably seen a million times before, but we're going to evaluate your leadership and make some recommendations.

We're going to craft a roadmap based on our curriculum and our mental technology. We're going to apply practical tools to you and to your organization, and we're going to develop a plan to sustain that over time. And when you can sustain that constant level of positive beliefs that my efforts make a difference, the revenue just keeps going up. So how do we, how do we stay engaged? How do we continue to work with The Pacific Institute moving forward?

Couple different ways. First and foremost, I am very excited that one week from today, not at noon eastern, but at 11:00 AM we're going to have another executive impact session, and it is going to be hosted by my associate, our chief products and service officer. Cheryl Hicks is going to be walking us through a presentation that is entitled Why Engagement Surveys Don't Work. If any of you here have ever launched an engagement survey and thought, what the heck are we doing? What are we supposed to do with this?

What do I do now that I have all those answers that I know how people are engaged, please come to that session. Cheryl's going to be walking us through the difference between climate and culture, and more importantly, how to make changes as well as how to measure properly. Another way to engage with us is scan that QR code. All feedback is a gift, even if we want to return some gifts. So please let us know what you thought of our presentation today.

You can give us feedback. This is also a way to stay engaged by getting a copy of today's slides. You can put in a request for another copy of the digital workbook if you needed it. We did record today's session, so if you'd like to send it out with that workbook, you can. There's an opportunity to explore working with us, our coaching and consulting options, and an opportunity to learn just a little bit more about curriculum.

So for anybody that wants to engage with us, please scan. There's also an email waiting in your inbox. Anna has sent you a message that should be waiting for you. So if you're resistant to technology and you don't feel like taking out your phone and you don't feel like scanning a QR code, go ahead and click your email inbox. You can open that right up and that'll give you an opportunity to be able to review the uh, the document there and register for the upcoming event.