Work Positive

EP 211 Choose Positivity Each Morning | Dr. Courtney Beck
she waited to salute, she rehearsed her routine and talked to herself: “Arms straight, you could do this, Court. Let’s go.” Years later, after her first pharmaceutical sales call, her manager asked her one question: “Did you listen to their needs?” In this week’s episode, Dr. Court shows Dr. Joey how communication, connection and community create a positive work culture. What energy do you choose for your team tomorrow morning?
ABOUT THE GUEST
Dr. Courtney Beck is the founder of Plenty of Positivity, a platform that creates a positive community for a better tomorrow. She hosts the Plenty of Positivity with Dr. Courtney Beck podcast and leads Courtney’s Korner, a monthly book club that celebrates education, literacy and critical thinking. She holds a PhD in sport management and serves as an adjunct professor. She began her career in pharmaceutical sales, where two managers taught her the power of undivided attention and active listening. She competed as an elite gymnast at the University of Florida, where she became an NCAA All-American and a member of two SEC championship teams. Her Three Cs, communication, connection and community, equip people leaders to create positive work cultures. She speaks at corporate events and associations, and you discover her work at plentyofpositivity.com.
Key Insights
Choose positivity each morning. Dr. Court teaches that positivity is a choice every person makes each day. As a people leader, your team feels the energy you bring.
See the human in front of you. After the U.S. Surgeon General named loneliness an epidemic, Dr. Court slowed down in the checkout line and told herself, “That’s a human being, Courtney.”
Talk to yourself like a champion. On the balance beam in front of 15,000 fans, Dr. Court rehearsed her routine with positive self-talk. You bring that same self-talk to your work culture as you name what your team does right.
Give your undivided attention. Her best managers in pharmaceutical sales kept their phones out of the conversation and asked where she wanted to be in two, five and 10 years.
Communication, connection, community. Dr. Court’s Three Cs start with communication. Communication grows connection, and connection grows a positive community.
Listen to their needs. After her first sales call, her manager asked, “Did you listen to their needs?” Active listening became her foundation.
Show top talent they belong. In an interview, a follow-up question that picks up one word the candidate said, “Tell me more about that,” tells them they belong on your team.
Ask how each person prefers to communicate. With up to five generations at work, you ask, “Do you prefer a text or a phone call?” Reverse mentoring then lets every generation teach the others.
Your Do One Thing Challenge
Dr. Court’s Do One Thing (DOT) for you this week: Choose positivity each morning. “Each and every individual has the opportunity each morning to choose positivity,” she says. Before your first meeting tomorrow, choose the energy you bring into the room, and watch it reach your team.
Connect with Dr. Courtney Beck
Website: https://plentyofpositivity.com
Podcast, Plenty of Positivity with Dr. Courtney Beck
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/courtneyannbeck/
Email: courtney@plentyofpositivity.com
At plentyofpositivity.com you discover her story, her podcast, the Courtney’s Korner book club and how to invite her to speak.
Connect with Dr. Joey
Podcasts: https://workpositive.today/podcasts
Newsletter: https://workpositive.today/newsletter
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@workpositive7529
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/drjoeyfaucette/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/WorkPositiveToday/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/workpositive.today/
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@dr.joeyfaucette
 
Enjoying the show?
Leave a rating and a review on Apple Podcasts so more people leaders discover the Work Positive Podcast. It takes a minute and helps the whole community.
Know a leader who would be a great guest? Send your recommendation to analiza@getpositive.today.

EP 210 | You Finish First | Dr. Joey Faucette
Mac Whitman stood at his plant whiteboard looking at 43 quarterly initiatives. Seven were checked. Three weeks earlier, a second-shift supervisor left with one sentence on his exit interview: “I came here to finish things. We finish nothing.” That night, Mac found his son’s three robotics kits in the basement, two started and one unopened. In this Work Positive Culture Live Experience, Dr. Joey shows you the five practices that transformed Mac’s team, and how they transform yours. What does your team leave a meeting with, one thing to do or 43?
ABOUT DR. JOEY
Dr. Joey Faucette is the creator of the Work Positive Culture framework. He serves people leaders as a Culture Architect, Executive Coach and host of the Work Positive Podcast. He helps you transform your work culture, so you attract top talent, reduce turnover, and grow productivity and profits. Dr. Joey is the bestselling author of 19 books, including F.O.R.G.E. @ Work: Five Practices That Transform How Your Team Achieves, a #1 Amazon best-seller in business teams. He invests four decades of culture work in every live experience, and he works from Pleasant Gap Farm in Dry Fork, Virginia.
Key Insights
You finish first. The team you lead finishes what you finish and stops where you stop. People leaders who transform their teams finish first, and the team follows them.
Focus on the One. Goal-setting research from Edwin Locke and Gary Latham, summarized across more than 1,000 studies, shows a team given one specific priority finishes more than a team given five vague ones.
Protect the focus. Cal Newport found the average knowledge worker spends roughly 60% of the day on email, meetings and status updates. You name the one priority and protect the conditions to work on it.
Own the Intention. James Clear teaches that identity-based intentions outlast outcome goals. Name the identity in the room: “We’re a team that ships work on the date we name.”
Release the Trailer. Perfectionism is the trailer strapped beneath the boat. Atul Gawande’s surgical checklist cut complications 35% and deaths 47% because the minimum ships and the work iterates.
Go Feed-forward. Marshall Goldsmith’s feedforward replaces “What went wrong?” with two questions: “What would you try differently next time?” and “What would help you try it?”
Endure the Pace. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s research on flow shows daily rhythm sustains high performance. Mac’s 11-minute morning huddle named one priority, one obstacle and one feed-forward question.
Your next best step. Pick the F.O.R.G.E. practice your culture does well right now, then the one that offers your team the best opportunity to transform how it finishes.
Your Do One Thing Challenge
Here’s your Do One Thing (DOT) this week: Focus on the One. Schedule a fifteen-minute call with each direct report and ask one question: “What’s the one initiative you finish by [a date you choose] regardless of what else gets cut?” Listen, take notes, and answer with one sentence: “Okay, that’s the one.”
Your free gifts
Message Dr. Joey on LinkedIn for a free digital copy of F.O.R.G.E. @ Work: Five Practices That Transform How Your Team Achieves https://www.linkedin.com/in/drjoeyfaucette/
Take the free Work Positive Culture Assessment and discover where your culture currently is on its Work Positive Culture journey: https://workpositive.today
Connect with Dr. Joey
Podcasts: https://workpositive.today/podcasts
Newsletter: https://workpositive.today/newsletter
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@workpositive7529
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/drjoeyfaucette/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/WorkPositiveToday/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/workpositive.today/
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@dr.joeyfaucette
 
Enjoying the show?
Leave a rating and a review on Apple Podcasts so more people leaders discover the Work Positive Podcast. It takes a minute and helps the whole community.
Know a leader who would be a great guest? Send your recommendation to analiza@getpositive.today.

EP 209 | Make Retention a HABIT | Dr. Sharon Grossman
An engineer at Hewlett-Packard ran into his manager’s office with a breakthrough. The manager wanted to say thank you on the spot. He reached into his lunch bag and handed over the only thing he had: a banana. It became the Golden Banana Award. In this week’s episode, psychologist Dr. Sharon Grossman talks with Dr. Joey about the fifteen-minute daily habit that keeps your top talent on your team. Who on your team earned a golden banana yesterday?
ABOUT THE GUEST
Dr. Sharon Grossman is a psychologist, keynote speaker and retention strategist. She helps organizations reduce turnover, strengthen leadership and create work cultures where people are motivated to stay. She combines behavioral science with practical systems that improve engagement, performance and retention, and she has for more than 25 years. Her executive coaching helps leaders recover from burnout, and her retention work extends that care to frontline teams. Her HABIT system equips people leaders to do five things in a fifteen-minute daily huddle: Huddles, Appreciation, Barometer, Improvement and Tracking. She’s the author of several books, including Don’t Buy Their Lunch! Buy Their Loyalty. You discover her books, speaking, coaching and consulting at drsharongrossman.com.
Key Insights
Know your turnover cost. Replacing one person costs two and a half to 10 times their annual salary. Dr. Sharon starts every engagement with your turnover rate.
Equip the top talent you promote. Your best frontline performers often step into management before anyone trains them. A simple daily system equips them to lead.
Huddle for fifteen minutes at the start of each shift. Most of the huddle centers on people, with small sections on operations and performance.
Turn your values into observable behaviors. “Safety first” becomes “If you see something on the ground, pick it up.”
Check the barometer. A QR code asks, “How are you doing today?” The huddle leader sees the team’s mood in real time.
Appreciate someone every day. Name one person and what they did the day before. Then open the floor to peer recognition.
Ask what your people need to do an even better job. Come back the next day with a follow-up report, and your people feel heard and valued.
Track the data. Trends in mood, retention and performance tell you what to ask next. Huddles, Appreciation, Barometer, Improvement and Tracking spell HABIT.
Your Do One Thing Challenge
Dr. Sharon’s Do One Thing (DOT) for you this week: Appreciate your people every day. “The more people feel appreciated for the work that they do, the more likely they’re going to stay,” she says. Name one person at your next team meeting and the specific thing they did yesterday. Then invite the team to recognize each other.
Connect with Dr. Sharon Grossman
Website: https://drsharongrossman.com
LinkedIn: Dr. Sharon Grossman | LinkedIn
Book: Don’t Buy Their Lunch! Buy Their Loyalty https://link.amazon/B04PA1Xq0
At drsharongrossman.com you discover her books, speaking, coaching and consulting on burnout and employee retention.
 
Connect with Dr. Joey
Podcasts: https://workpositive.today/podcasts
Newsletter: https://workpositive.today/newsletter
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@workpositive7529
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/drjoeyfaucette/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/WorkPositiveToday/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/workpositive.today/
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@dr.joeyfaucette
 
Enjoying the show?
Leave a rating and a review on Apple Podcasts so more people leaders discover the Work Positive Podcast. It takes a minute and helps the whole community.
Know a leader who would be a great guest? Send your recommendation to analiza@getpositive.today.

EP 208 | You Invest. Your People Invest Back. | Katherine Kobs
About a decade ago, a company told a young team member, "We wanna send you to college and we'll pay for it." Kate Kobs said yes. Nearly a decade later, she invests in people the way that company invested in her. In this week's episode, Kate talks with Dr. Joey about attracting top talent with total rewards and retaining them as you follow through. Who on your team waits for you to invest first?
ABOUT THE GUEST
Katherine (Kate) Kobs is a human resources leader who creates people-first HR functions. She created them across manufacturing, municipal government, energy, and retail companies. She loves translating compliance into practical guidance managers use to positively influence their culture. Today she leads HR for an organization with entities spread across Wisconsin. She also serves as a human resources sergeant in the Wisconsin Army National Guard. Kate lives in Sheboygan, Wisconsin. She shares inspiring stories about work culture on LinkedIn. She welcomes your questions there.
Key Insights
Attract top talent with total rewards. Base pay is one part of the package. Boomers through Gen Z each weigh it against their own values, from paid parental leave to time to care for an aging parent.
Let candidates hear your values lived out. A car dealership supervisor once walked Kate from site to site and told his team, "Tell her your story."
Follow through on every interview promise. Kate says, "If you invest in people, they're gonna invest back in you."
Listen, then tell your people what you heard. Stay interviews, exit interviews, and pulse checks work when you say, "We heard this. In response, we're doing this."
Little things retain people. One team asked Kate to bring back Doughnut Fridays. She brought them back.
Hire for culture fit. One rotten fruit in the bowl spoils the fresh fruit faster. Dr. Joey calls those team members, Eeyore Vampires.
Give continuous feedback. Kate asks, "Why wait until your annual review?"
Check in before anyone needs you. Kate calls her store managers so a call from HR becomes a touch point.
Your Do One Thing Challenge
Kate's Do One Thing (DOT) for you this week: Invest in your people. "They're gonna invest right back in you," she says. Discover which benefits your culture offers that align with your team members' values. Then use your total rewards to attract people who fit your culture.
Connect with Kate Kobs
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kate-kobs/Kate welcomes your LinkedIn message with a question about how she leads HR.
Connect with Dr. Joey
Podcasts: https://workpositive.today/podcasts
Newsletter: https://workpositive.today/newsletter
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@workpositive7529
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/drjoeyfaucette/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/WorkPositiveToday/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/workpositive.today/
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@dr.joeyfaucette
Enjoying the show?
Leave a rating and a review on Apple Podcasts so more people leaders discover the Work Positive Podcast. It takes a minute and helps the whole community.
Know a leader who would be a great guest? Send your recommendation to analiza@getpositive.today.

EP 207 | Slow Down to Grow Trust | Sara Valentine
Halloween comes every Monday at Give Kids The World Village. Christmas comes every Thursday. Sara Valentine says your culture happens on the days in between, on ordinary Tuesdays. In this week's episode, Sara talks with Dr. Joey about the HEART framework she discovered as she watched her team serve Wish families, and how a culture climbs back from rock bottom one conversation at a time. What does your team hear from you on an ordinary Tuesday?
ABOUT THE GUEST
Our guest on this episode is a human resources executive, leadership speaker, and creator of the Heart Leadership framework. It's a simple approach that helps leaders like you and me build trust through intentional conversations and everyday actions. She's led people and culture for nearly 20 years, and is passionate about helping organizations like yours create work cultures where employees feel heard, valued, and empowered. She currently serves as vice president of talent and culture at Give Kids The World Village, and hosts the Heart Leadership podcast. She believes that leadership is less about having all the answers and more about how we show up for our people.
Sara welcomes messages from the Work Positive community on LinkedIn.
KEY INSIGHTS
Sara's first job at 14 had her scaling fish at a bait and tackle store for $5 an hour. A difficult boss there showed her the effect a people leader has on everyone around them. She's been a guardian of people ever since.
Give Kids The World Village earns a 99.1% guest satisfaction score from families of critically ill children who get one wish. The team gets one opportunity to do it right.
Sara asks people leaders, "What do you do for the Wish families?" Then she tells them, "You need to do that for the employee." Dr. Joey calls it taking the external and bringing it internal.
HEART gives a busy people leader one word to remember in a difficult conversation: Hear, Empathize, Acknowledge, Respond, and Thank.
A culture transformation often gets worse before it gets better. The Village culture climbs back from rock bottom with a CEO who is all in, day by day and moment by moment.
Sara attracts top talent with one question: "Why should someone wanna work here?" People join people leaders. Attraction starts long before anyone submits an application.
Retention starts on day one. Sara says, "People don't leave because of one bad day. It's hundreds of moments of not feeling heard, appreciated or supported."
Sara says culture is "literally built on ordinary Tuesdays," created one conversation, one decision, and one response at a time. Every people leader shapes culture.
Sara coaches people leaders to "be consistently human." People forgive a people leader who makes a mistake and owns it.
Sara remembers standing at the gas tank deciding between gas and groceries. That memory centers her. Everybody brings their life with them to work.
YOUR DO ONE THING (DOT) CHALLENGE
Slow down and listen to your people. Sara says, "They already have the answer. They're waiting to tell you, because people want to be heard." Listen to understand rather than to respond. Then act on what you hear. As trust grows, your culture transforms.
CONNECT WITH SARA VALENTINE
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sara-valentine-09892221/
SimplyHR, LLC: https://simplyhrllc.com/
The Heart Leadership Podcast https://www.youtube.com/@TheHeartLeaderPodcast
Give Kids The World Village https://www.gktw.org/
CONNECT WITH DR. JOEY
Free Work Positive Culture Assessment: https://workpositive.today
Work Positive Newsletter: https://workpositive.today/newsletter
Work Positive Podcast archive: https://workpositive.today/podcasts
B.R.A.V.E. @ Work: https://amzn.to/3SWiOot
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@workpositive7529
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/drjoeyfaucette/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/WorkPositiveToday/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/workpositive.today/ 
Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@dr.joeyfaucette
 
Enjoying the show?
Leave a rating and a review on Apple Podcasts so more people leaders discover the Work Positive Podcast. It takes a minute and helps the whole community.
Know a leader who would be a great guest? Send your recommendation to analiza@getpositive.today.

EP 206 |  You Go First. Then Your Team Follows. | Dr. Joey Faucette
Every February at Dr. Joey's farm, the first crocus pushes through frozen ground before the daylilies stir. The crocus goes first. Then spring follows. In this week's episode, Dr. Joey coaches all five B.R.A.V.E. @ Work practices from the Work Positive Community Live Experience. Who on your team waits for you to go first?
ABOUT DR. JOEY
Dr. Joey Faucette is the creator of the Work Positive Culture framework and founder of Work Positive Today. He serves as a Positive Culture Architect, Executive Coach, and host of the Work Positive Podcast. He helps people leaders transform their work cultures so they attract top talent, reduce turnover, and grow productivity and profits. The bestselling author of 19 books, Dr. Joey brings more than four decades of culture coaching to every conversation. Each month he hosts the Work Positive Culture Live Experience, where he coaches the Work Positive Community through one framework at a time. He works from Pleasant Gap Farm in Dry Fork, Virginia.
KEY INSIGHTS
Believe First. Albert Bandura's research at Stanford shows self-efficacy predicts performance more reliably than skill alone.
Believe First. Teams with high collective efficacy, the shared belief in their joint capacity to achieve, outperform teams with high individual talent.
Believe First. In Martin Seligman's MetLife study, optimistic applicants who failed the standard hiring test outsold the pessimists by 37% in year two.
Release Your Ego. Tasha Eurich finds 95% of people believe they possess self-awareness. About 15% score high on both internal and external measures. Your ego lives in that gap.
Release Your Ego. Brené Brown's interviews with 150 senior leaders name vulnerability as the foundational skill of daring leadership. Ego is the most common armor people leaders wear that prevent vulnerability.
Activate What's Possible. Teresa Amabile's research names progress on meaningful work as the strongest predictor of positive workday emotion and engagement.
Activate What's Possible. Recognition is the activation energy. Shawn Achor's research links naming a team member's progress out loud with positive biochemistry.
Venture Forward. The step comes first. The bridge follows. Angela Duckworth's research on grit finds talent predicts achievement less reliably than the willingness to take the next step.
Embrace the Suck. In a 30,000-person study Kelly McGonigal documents, people under high stress who believed stress was harmful carried a 43% increased risk of dying. Those who held the opposite belief carried the lowest risk in the study.
Embrace the Suck. Robert Emmons's research suggests gratitude carries its highest leverage as the sour accompanies the sweet in your culture’s sauce.
YOUR DO ONE THING CHALLENGE
This week, identify one place where your team stopped believing because you stopped first. Write three sentences about it in pencil. Pencil is honest. Then send the three sentences to one person on your team who notices what you do.
CONNECT WITH DR. JOEY
Free Work Positive Culture Assessment: https://workpositive.today
Work Positive Newsletter: https://workpositive.today/newsletter
Work Positive Podcast archive: https://workpositive.today/podcasts
B.R.A.V.E. @ Work: https://amzn.to/3SWiOot
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@workpositive7529
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/drjoeyfaucette/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/WorkPositiveToday/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/workpositive.today/ 
Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@dr.joeyfaucette
 
Enjoying the show?
Leave a rating and a review on Apple Podcasts so more people leaders discover the Work Positive Podcast. It takes a minute and helps the whole community.
Know a leader who would be a great guest? Send your recommendation to analiza@getpositive.today.

EP 205 | Millions Hiding in Your Organization | Porschia Parker-Griffin
Two sisters bought a pearl necklace at a Goodwill for sixty-nine cents. The appraisal came back at $50,000. Do you undervalue your team in a similar way? One designer at an architecture firm shared her underappraisal with Glassdoor because her owner had yet to ask. Porschia Parker-Griffin helps organizations unlock the millions of dollars of potential hiding inside their own teams. What would an appraisal of your team discover that you priced too low?
ABOUT THE GUEST
Porschia Parker-Griffin is the founder and CEO of Fly High Coaching. She helps organizations attract, engage, and retain high-caliber professionals through tailored consulting, training, and coaching programs that achieve their business goals and enhance their culture. She holds the ICF Professional Certified Coach credential along with numerous other important certifications, including master practitioner status in the MBTI and certification in the Hogan assessments. She holds two psychology degrees, including a master's in industrial and organizational psychology, and she hosts the Career 101 Podcast, which she describes as everything you were never taught about career growth, development, and change. Her company tagline is soaring to your full potential. She especially enjoys helping companies unlock the millions of dollars of potential hiding in their organization, and she offers the Work Positive community her case studies, her podcast, and an open LinkedIn inbox.
KEY INSIGHTS
Three core essentials attract top talent: real values rather than aspirational ones, a clear mission, and the points of distinction that separate you from every similar organization.
Millennials and Gen Z team members tie themselves to mission and values. That alignment travels further than a salary bump or a full-time remote privilege.
Pensions retired with the generation that earned them, which leaves values, mission, and alignment as the answer to "what are you working for?"
What the executive team names as the problem is often a symptom or a byproduct of the real one.
Listening at every level of the organization surfaces the friction points. Support usually looks like resources.
One millennial designer posted on Glassdoor what she withheld from her owner and her manager. That post cost the firm its next round of top talent.
Employers who skip engagement surveys in an employer's market still pay for high turnover, which signals the culture challenge underneath.
Teresa Amabile's research across nearly 12,000 diary entries names progress on meaningful work as the strongest predictor of workday engagement.
An assessment gives you the deep read on your team's personality, and both Dr. Joey and Porschia hold decades of MBTI practitioner experience.
YOUR DO ONE THING CHALLENGE
Porschia's one thing: understand deeply the personality of your team.
This week, take these three steps:
Choose one assessment and run it with your whole team.
Sit down with each team member and ask what the results name that you had priced too low.
Focus on one strength of each person and strengthen it with a to-do this quarter.
CONNECT WITH PORSCHIA PARKER-GRIFFIN
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/porschiaparker/ Website: https://www.fly-highcoaching.com/ Career 101 Podcast: wherever you listen to podcasts
 
Connect with Dr. Joey & Work Positive
Work Positive Podcast: workpositive.today/podcasts
Free Work Positive Newsletter: workpositive.today/newsletter
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@workpositive7529
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/drjoeyfaucette/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/WorkPositiveToday/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/workpositive.today/ 
Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@dr.joeyfaucette
Enjoying the show?
Leave a rating and a review on Apple Podcasts so more people leaders discover the Work Positive Podcast. It takes a minute and helps the whole community.
Know a leader who would be a great guest? Send your recommendation to analiza@getpositive.today.

EP 204 | You Started Out an Octopus. | Michael Hunter
You started out an octopus. Curious, full of wonder, eight arms reaching in eight directions at once. Then the system folded you down to a grain of sand, coated the irritation layer by layer, and called the result beautiful. Michael Hunter spent 40 years debugging software before he discovered the bug was always in the people. Your team engages with whoever is inside that pearl. How do you crack the pearl open?
 
ABOUT MICHAEL HUNTER
Michael Hunter debugged software for 40 years at Microsoft, Tableau, and Salesforce. Somewhere in those 40 years he discovered that every technical problem he solved was actually a squishy people problem. So he switched to debugging people. That worked out about as well as you would expect. Now he helps people leaders debug themselves.
Michael founded Uncommon Teams and wrote The Resilient Tech Leader, which is for a lot more than tech leaders. He works with people leaders on the gap between who the system trains them to be and who they really are. He calls the return from that gap resilience. He treats resilience as a journey rather than a destination.
Michael gives the Work Positive community a free copy of The Resilient Tech Leader at theresilienttechleader.com, along with a complimentary 30-minute first conversation about where you are, where you want to be, and why that gap matters.
 
Key Insights
Michael spent 40 years debugging code before he discovered every technical problem was actually a people problem
Everybody qualifies as a people leader. Every person leads themselves at minimum
The world compacts a curious octopus into a grain of sand, then encases the irritation in a pearl the world calls beautiful
Tasha Eurich's research finds 95% of people believe they possess self-awareness. Roughly 15% score well on both the inward and the outward measure
A people leader who releases one layer shifts the room that same week, even before anyone names the shift out loud
The most common stall is inviting feedback out loud and then ignoring what comes back
An uncommon team holds the grain of sand, the glass, the sandpaper, the fuzzy bunny, the goofy seahorse, and the Martian rather than papering everyone into one snare drum
Flexing out of your preference costs energy, so Michael flexes toward structured colleagues on purpose and names the trade out loud
Setting the container is the people leader's job, which includes telling a poor fit honestly that a better team exists for them
Resilience means returning to yourself again and again, a journey rather than a destination
Your Do One Thing Challenge
Michael Hunter gives the Work Positive community three moves for today:
practice noticing where you are
be curious about why that matters
do one tiny thing to learn more about what you noticed
Michael names the trap himself. "It seems like it's way too simple to actually work. Yet when we put it into practice, I often find it is way more complex and challenging than these simple words might lead us to believe."
Connect with Michael Hunter
Website: https://uncommonteams.com/ Free copy of The Resilient Tech Leader: https://theresilienttechleader.com/ Book page: https://uncommonteams.com/the-resilient-tech-leader/ The Resilient Tech Leader on Amazon: https://amzn.to/4yjxLjy LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/humbugreality/
 
Michael offers the Work Positive community a free PDF of The Resilient Tech Leader and a complimentary 30-minute first conversation about where you are, where you want to be, and why that gap matters.
Connect with Dr. Joey & Work Positive
Work Positive Podcast: workpositive.today/podcasts
Free Work Positive Newsletter: workpositive.today/newsletter
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@workpositive7529
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/drjoeyfaucette/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/WorkPositiveToday/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/workpositive.today/ 
Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@dr.joeyfaucette
Free Work Positive Culture Assessment: https://workpositive.today
 
B.R.A.V.E. @ Work: Five Practices That Transform How Your Team Engages releases September 15.
A.L.I.G.N. @ Work: Five Practices That Transform How Your Team Collaborates: https://amzn.to/3SWRhTO
 
Enjoying the show?
Leave a rating and a review on Apple Podcasts so more people leaders discover the Work Positive Podcast. It takes a minute and helps the whole community.
Know a leader who would be a great guest? Send your recommendation to analiza@getpositive.today.
 

EP 203 | Unlock Your Team’s Hidden Potential  | Jordan Cole
Fence posts planted five feet apart in Irish soil grew back into trees. If your team’s culture is rich  enough, it can grow your people. Jordana Cole talks with Dr. Joey about the one question that transforms fence post performers into vibrant, tree-top contributors.
About Jordana Cole
Jordana Cole is an igniter of leadership and team potential, sparking behavioral change that doesn't just stick - it spreads. Jordana is the founder of Ignited, where she consults on l&d strategy, facilitates workshops, and serves as an ICF certified coach for leaders and organizations globally. Prior to founding Ignited, Jordana led enterprise learning and development functions within industries spanning financial services, technology, and ecommerce that featured companies both on the Fortune 50 and on Fortune's Best Places to Work list.
Jordana combines her rich background in organizational leadership with her master's degree in applied positive psychology from the University of Pennsylvania, to translate research and best practices into accessible and energizing actions that anyone can implement. She's been featured on podcasts and articles discussing the intersection of leadership, wellbeing, and organizational success. Her 2025 TEDx talk "What to Do When You Don't Know What's Next" currently ranks in the top 10% of views for all TEDx talks globally.
Key Insights
People carry far more capability inside them than they realize. Surfacing it takes somebody who spots what they miss and  offers challenge and support together. Jordana calls it, push and catch.
We spend 70% of our waking hours at work while 3 out of 4 people report working miserable. This misery spills into the rest of their lives.
The fastest way to attract top talent is investing in current talent. Think of current team members as brand ambassadors who already describe your culture to their friends.
Managers reach leadership roles cold, while teaching, healthcare, financial planning, and law all require education, certification, supervision, and continuing practice.
Leadership is a behavior. Core knowledge accounts for 20% of it. Practice and habit account for the other 80%.
Fixing what's broken reaches compliance and baseline. Growth arrives as you create clarity on what good looks like, create conditions that make it easy, and reward it.
Systems and incentives quietly overrule training, so great leaders who arrive excited take their skills elsewhere once the culture contradicts the classroom.
The pace and volume of change fills the mind the way clutter fills a hoarder's house. Such overcrowding shoves your people into survival mode where creativity and self-regulation both thin out.
Research from Oxford behavioral economist Jan-Emmanuel De Neve links an organizational focus on well-being to higher profitability, higher productivity, better retention, and better engagement.
Job security has thinned across industries once considered safe. Layoffs now arrive during profitable quarters which makes loyalty scarce.
Do One Thing
In your next interaction today, ask one person a real question and tell them one specific thing you appreciate about them.
Connect With Jordana Cole
Website: https://ignitedbyjordana.com/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jordana-cole-mapp-pcc-a8445a8/ TEDx talk: [TEDX URL PENDING - see Pending table]
Take Your Next Step
Discover where your culture stands in the free Work Positive Culture Assessment at workpositive.today. Four minutes.

EP 202 From Resistance to Results | Dr. Gleb Tsipursky
Have you woke up at 3:00am sure this whole train jumps the rails?
Dr. Gleb Tsipursky talks with Dr. Joey on this week's Work Positive Podcast to help. His diagnosis reorganizes your whole challenge. AI adoption stalls on psychology, because the technology turns out to be the easy part. Fear, identity threat, and shame stall your rollout, and each one takes a different answer.
Fair warning: We say AI a lot in this one.
Key Insights
Standard change management assumes difficulty blocks adoption. AI is easy, since you talk with it and let it teach you. Your challenge is emotional.
Three profiles drive resistance. AI alarmists fear job loss. Pragmatic resistors feel a threat to their professional and creative identity. Cautious adopters carry shame.
Identity threat explains why AI hits differently than a CRM or an ERP. A database storing a contact leaves everyone calm. A tool writing the policy, the analysis, or the images someone took pride in producing cuts deep.
Shadow AI usage runs wide. People use the tools privately and keep it to themselves, so individual productivity climbs while team productivity stays flat, and the gains disappear at every handoff.
Alarmists settle as leadership commits that AI adoption keeps everyone employed, and as they hear that skilled AI use makes their position more secure. Companies adopting AI well grow roughly ten percent faster than industry peers including headcount.
Pragmatic resistors move as you invert the rollout. Survey which tasks they find most annoying and train them there first. Leave the work they take pride in alone. They expand the tool themselves once they find it useful.
Cautious adopters follow the people leader who models it out loud, including admitting to drafting performance evaluations with AI. Baseline training for everyone and a channel for sharing prompts finish the job.
Measure two things separately. Efficiency does today's work in less time, like the five-day data reconciliation finished in under thirty minutes. Effectiveness does new work entirely, like the prospect research agent that lifted deal flow roughly 45%.
Organizations that grow slowly by design still have a route. An insurance FAIR plan poured its recovered hours into faster, more accurate claims service.
The future of your role looks like managing AI agents that handle the less important work while you hold direction and editing.
Do One Thing
Flip the narrative.
Find the person on your team who believes they train their own replacement. Then invite them back in with:
"AI adoption keeps everyone here employed."
"Learning these tools well makes your position more secure."
"Managing AI agents is the skill the future rewards."
These sentences move a team member out of their brain’s fear center and into the part of the brain that makes decisions. They hear it from you long before they believe it from anyone else.
About Dr. Gleb Tsipursky
Dr. Gleb Tsipursky, called the "Office Whisperer" by The New York Times, helps tech-forward leaders stop overpaying for AI while boosting engagement and innovation. He serves as CEO of the future-of-work consultancy Disaster Avoidance Experts. Dr. Gleb wrote seven bestselling books, including the forthcoming The Psychology of AI Adoption at Work: From Resistance to Results from Georgetown University Press. His thought leadership has appeared in more than 650 articles and 550 interviews in Harvard Business Review, CBS News, NPR, Time, Fortune, Business Insider, USA Today, and other outlets. His expertise draws on more than 25 years of consulting, coaching, speaking, and training, along with 15 years in academia at Ohio State University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Connect with Dr. Gleb
Book resource page: https://disasteravoidanceexperts.com/aibook
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-gleb-tsipursky/
The Psychology of AI Adoption at Work: From Resistance to Results on Amazon: https://amzn.to/4gpy7Ps
Message Dr. Gleb on LinkedIn, mention you heard him on the Work Positive Podcast, and he replies. His resource page carries a free introduction and sample chapter, so you can read before you buy. Enter your purchase receipt number there and you also receive a manual on the seven mistakes leaders make adopting AI, plus an assessment showing where you stand in your own adoption process.
Your Next Step
Curious where your culture stands? The free Work Positive Culture Assessment takes a few minutes at workpositive.today.
 
Connect with Dr. Joey & Work Positive
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