How to Make Work Fun with Dr. Christie McMullen

Dr. Christie McMullen: How to Make Work Fun – YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6BZagfAnvFk

Transcript:
(00:00) that I think we forget that work and fun can go together and the only time the neurons in our brain even fire is when there’s emotion evoked in what we’re doing well if it worked there’s no emotion involved then you’re not you’re not serving your best self so for me the fun is is my authentic self right you have to be your authentic self if it’s too much for you I totally get it but at the same time if you’re constantly trying to be somebody you’re not you’re exhausted and you can’t be your
(00:36) best self why is it so important that we be our authentic selves because we don’t truly know how to be anybody else and so we’re spending so much brain power trying to be that other person that we’re too tired to be our best at anything hello everyone and welcome to the flow over fear podcast where it is our mission to help you to rise above fear and realize your ultimate potential in leadership and life I’m your host Adam Hill and it is my goal to share with you the human side of high performance my
(01:09) guests share their experience with fear anxiety struggle Challenge and most importantly despite all of it how they Rose above it to achieve incredible results so if you’re ready to rise up let’s get started the flow over fear I’m very very grateful that you’re joining us today because we’re gonna have a great conversation on learning and we and my guest today Dr Christy McMullen is an expert and uh she’s a best-selling author of learning can stick a guide to make every interaction safe logical fun
(01:46) and memorable she’s a 24-year educator turned entrepreneur who can help you make work fun and who doesn’t want that right she has worked with thousands of adults in multiple Industries at organizations like Re Max Solaris and rise to improve human interactions with the Masters and doctorate in educational leadership and two and a half Decades of practical experience she is able to connect with CEOs directors Educators sales people anyone in between and as a coach networking specialist and keynote speaker she can help any human overcome
(02:24) mediocrity to experience it’s extraordinary interactions with others she can help you aim analyze your current interactions improve on those interactions and move toward extraordinary relationships thank you so much for joining me here Christy I’m so glad you’re here Adam I’m honored this is gonna be a lot of fun definitely yes um yeah and and you know one thing that you know I just kind of want to start I love getting into origin stories and finding out like why you got into what you got into and and how you got in
(02:57) there but before you do it what in your bio you mentioned that nobody wakes up in the morning and says I want to be terrible at my job today and I I definitely think that’s true and but you know and quite frequently because they don’t have uh the right Tools in their tool belt to be extraordinary and I kind of wanted to start with that because I wanted to get your take on what the right tools are and how we can start to get that how we could start to get those tools in our toolbox absolutely so um I believe that if you
(03:26) make work fun people don’t quit right but the reason that things are fun is that your talents are being utilized that somebody recognizes you for who you are you are valued you’re appreciated and you can’t do any of that if you yourself don’t know what you’re good at and your employer or your team doesn’t also know what you’re good at and so you know your question was really around um what what what are you doing how do you make work fun and um I think the fun part comes in just being able to do your
(04:01) jobs well I don’t think that people are often equipped to do their jobs well I think instead what happens is we assume because you have a certain job title that you’re good at X Y and Z and that’s just not true we all have our talents we all have our personalities and often those two things don’t match our job description and we have really great people pushing papers that should be on the phone and we’ve got others who are supposed to be on camera all day long and they would much much rather turn it
(04:34) off so we have to get good at letting people be good at what they’re good at and if they’re not we have to train them to be better that’s great yeah so and it sounds so simple to to in in theory and I think you know Oregon I I I’ve talked to a number of people too about you know fear obviously as individuals we experience fear but I think organizations too experience fear and it kind of revolves around the individuals in there and the uncertainty they face or maybe the misalignment it would is it safe to say
(05:05) that that the fear that people are experiencing are related to that lack of alignment they have and the lack of fun and that sort of thing and it’s also it’s also the the age-old old edge of this is the this has been um you know this is what this person does and this is what this job does and this is the way we’ve always done it therefore it must be the best way and my my experience has said that there’s probably a much better way if we get out of our own way and let something happen so I think in most businesses we assume
(05:44) that we’re doing it the best possible way it can be done and we’re probably not but it’s not because people want to be bad it’s just because they’ve never been exposed to doing it differently that’s interesting yeah so so we we just have to kind of be open-minded to change and ultimately what you know how how our team members are fitting in the right seats the right the right roles and and doing what they love and doing what they’re good at right right exactly and and not making assumptions that people just
(06:19) automatically know how to do things because you showed them once or because they went to school for a particular thing that’s not how you learn you learn by doing and believe it or not you have to do something you have to do something 18 times in front of others to master it but we often say all right I showed you how to do it on Tuesday you have to do it by yourself on Wednesday best of luck and it doesn’t work like that our brains don’t work like that we have to practice so what tends to happen to us as human
(06:45) beings is we spend about 90 percent of our time in the in the performance Zone where the stakes are really high and we have to get it right the problem with that is you don’t actually improve at all when you’re in the performance Zone you just do it the way your muscle memory says to do it the Learning Zone however is the space where you can actually get better at something so I’ll use an example that’s personal I can’t type the phrase let me know without screwing it up I am a fairly decent typist who probably
(07:18) can type 70 words a minute 80 words a minute I don’t know and do pretty well at it but the phrase let me know I can’t even though I probably type it six times a day but every time I type it I’m doing it in an email and I have to get it right if I were to take five minutes and just type the phrase over and over and over again that would be a learning Zone experience and I’d get better at it have I done it no do I need to yes that’s great that’s a great example and and so and and that’s really interesting
(07:46) how yeah we spend 90 of our time in the performance Zone we don’t learn in that zone we just kind of do uh how do we how do we shift that is there a way we could shift that into being spending more time in the Learning Zone or spending the right amount of time in the Learning Zone yes but it requires thought so like I’ll use a business example if you are a boss and you are in charge of a team um but every single time you ask your team to do something it’s in front of a client and you don’t ever give the space
(08:16) to role play with somebody else about a new sales technique or how to use Salesforce as an example you know whatever it is you’re trying to teach your people to do if the only time they’ve ever had a chance to do it is when it’s high stakes right money involved this is an actual merger we have to get this right that’s performance Zone work and that’s fear evoking and just flat out scary but the but the Learning Zone is all right guys we’ve got this new technique we’re going to try for this with the sales team
(08:45) let’s do it with each other for an hour and see how it goes we’ll switch Partners a couple times and when we’re done let’s see how much better we feel that those 18 times you have to practice now you’ve done it five right and you do that a couple times and all of a sudden you’re going to to be really really good at it instead of all right I showed you now go do it yourself okay so that’s that’s it that’s so so spending some time in a sandbox so to speak just like you know hanging out doing some practice
(09:13) that makes that makes a lot of sense and um um but and I’d like to take a little step back and and talk about you for a moment and kind of learn a little bit about how you got into this work because I’d I’d love to hear about you know your background what inspired you to get into this kind of work how you came up into it well maybe by default and design is that an option yeah so I always knew I wanted to be a teacher I I grew up knowing that I wanted to teach I had a chalkboard in my room and and at five
(09:43) years old and lined up my dolls and said you know all right guys we’re gonna learn something today I didn’t know however that my teaching career would go in the direction it went so I started out teaching high school and within about six or seven years I actually was was taken out of the classroom by choice um to teach adults I started teaching teacher teachers how to teach that’s the thing and so in teaching Educators how to teach what I realized is that I actually really enjoy adults they’re they’re not
(10:13) big kids but they kind of are they’re just adults who have developed their habits over a lot more years than the high schoolers had and so you have to figure out how to reach them and what motivates an adult learner is very different from a student an adult learner wants to know why and they want to know what’s in it for me right how is this relevant to what I do every day so I spent a lot of time in that space making sure that I knew why I was doing something and I could communicate that with whoever I was teaching and most of
(10:43) that space is 17 years I’ve been teaching adults mostly Educators and then I went wait a minute I don’t care what industry you’re in you’re teaching people things all day long right if you’re having a conversation with your spouse you’re teaching him or her something if you have a conversation with a co-worker her you’re teaching them something and so I realized that what I had been doing for all these years was actually repeatable and worked in any relationship so even though I still work in the education space I am
(11:16) now shifting over into the business space and I’ve worked with real estate agents and mortgage brokers and health care workers and nurses and in every one of those instances safe logical fun and memorable which we can talk about in a little bit works and so I realized that although every one of us is teaching people things all day long you were never taught how to make that stick so that’s what I do now is I help people get their point across in a way that will be sticky nice and so what is and and so by sticky you mean mean that just
(11:52) kind of stays with them that stays internal is that is that how that means yes that’s exactly what I mean so you know you don’t tell somebody something and then hope they forget it four minutes later you tell somebody something in the hopes that it’s that it sticks that it’s something that they continue to remember you want to be memorable but that doesn’t just happen so uh we’ve all set in a meeting where we thought Oh My Sweet Lord first of all this could have been an email and secondly I can never get that hour of my
(12:18) life back right right well it doesn’t have to be that way there is a way to deliver information that the person doing the talking is the person doing the learning so if I’m doing all the talking in a meeting I’m also doing all of the learning I just walked away knowing more about what I walked in knowing and nobody else in the room knows a thing and that’s not our point but it’s what tends to happen in most instances and I can fix it yeah yeah well that’s uh no that’s that’s fascinating and you have a lot of
(12:48) experience in that in that role being an educator going from that high school teacher to teaching teachers to teaching business people and and that sort of thing that’s a I mean there’s a lot of transition there and I imagine fear played a pretty significant role in a lot of those transitions right yes so how yes it did yeah it still does it’s interesting for sure so when I was teaching High School I was asked to start this new program called Avid Avid is an amazing organization that helps Educators get better at what they do so
(13:19) that students have options when they graduate right so I’m teaching these kids for the first time in their lives that they can go to college that they have a future that they’ve got all the possibility of the world and then they came to me because I taught it for a year and then 11 more schools came on board so I became the resident expert with one year of experience and they said hey we want to pull you out of the classroom and let you teach teachers that scared me to death I never wanted to leave the classroom however I
(13:47) realized I was telling my kids all day every day you’ve got to push yourself you’ve got to try new things you’ve got to do something that scares you so I had to do it too and I’m really grateful that I did because then I spent the next six years learning what it took to help people get better at what they do I learned how to guide groups I learned how to coach principals I learned how to do all kinds of things that I never would have learned had I stayed put but I was scared to death every single day
(14:15) sure I just learned to push past it yeah Didn’t I did in that first part did you have to deal with a lot of discomfort at the beginning I mean obviously you’re afraid to make the change but did you pick it up fast or did was it a gradual process there were parts of it I felt like I picked up really fast there were also also to learn right I am a old flavor that’s that’s a phrase my husband and I have used I am I’m a lot I’m a little extra right it’s it’s part of my personality I don’t know if you’re
(14:45) familiar with the Enneagram but I am an Enneagram seven which is the enthusiastic Optimist right and I know I’m a lot so I would come into these schools and I’m like you need to fix it all and you need to and then these principles are like get out what are you doing like we’re fine and so I had to realize okay wait first of all everybody doesn’t do it the way I would and so I had to overcome that fear of failure and that um I thought I was supposed to be the expert but I didn’t really know what
(15:14) I was doing and I had to be okay with the idea that maybe they’re not all gonna like me and maybe they’re not all gonna think that what I have has value but what ended up happening over the years is I became the person they came to even though I didn’t hold the title that they should have come to right I was I was technically what they call a teacher on special assignment which meant that I you know was still at the teacher level but here I was coaching administrators and so I had to be confident enough in what I knew to
(15:47) overcome a title shift and once I did that then they they respected me enough to say okay but I had to fail forward I had to try it and try it again and tweak it a little bit um and so I I think I would say something I’ve learned about myself is that I have a bias towards action I’m willing to try I’m probably gonna fall on my face but the fear of failure doesn’t stop me from trying it makes me nervous in the process but I’ll still try that’s that’s no that’s a great great Insight because and the idea of failing
(16:21) forward and the bias towards action because we you know I think we we have this natural tendency to fail and then think it’s a it’s that that we’re we’re done that that’s the end but if we can actually learn from that and I mean keep going um it’s it’s a great great way of looking at it and I love that you mentioned the Enneagram too because I I was finally introduced that to that about a year ago found out that I’m an Enneagram one so I’m supposed to lean into the seven which is which is I guess
(16:50) this is a good Dynamic yeah it’s uh my daughter’s a one and the perfectionist voices in your head are constantly um telling you no no and you gotta learn to listen to the right one right yeah that’s right yeah yeah and it still it still happens I’m just like yeah I know gosh I gotta be I can’t it doesn’t have to be perfect doesn’t have to be perfect so no this is uh yeah that’s and so that that that fear kind of sounds like it built some resiliency in you once you acknowledge or once you recognized what
(17:18) what that was and it happened again so uh you know I left the classroom I was working in the district office and I never had any desire to get my masters because you don’t have to have that you know in the teaching field but you can’t be an administrator without it and this gentleman I don’t know his name I don’t know where he worked I don’t know anything about him but we were having a conversation at a training one day and I had trained him and his entire staff and we’re having this conversation he goes
(17:46) well where’d you get your Masters and I said I don’t have it and he looked at me with this look and he said why not and I was like dang you I don’t know why not and so I decided uh no nobody’s gonna be able to look at me and say something like that again and so I got my masters it’s probably why I also have my doctorate because I just realized I don’t want anybody to be able to slam a door in my face because I was afraid of something and so that was another one of those imposter syndrome slash oh my gosh
(18:18) what am I doing moments in my life where I was like I don’t know if I can do this and yet as soon as I did I realized okay yeah I can and that was another that was another bias towards action moment where I thought I’m not sure why I’m here but I’m gonna do the best I can while I am so that I can do something now would you would you recommend that uh or do you do you have a a a uh a a belief that that everybody should adopt something of a bias towards action or do you believe that there’s some fault in that or what
(18:51) do you think well you can totally screw things up so the other thing my my sweet husband says to me sometimes is I I’m going to solve the problem whether I have a good solution or not right so I will often if something’s on fire grab what is whatever is closest to me and throw it on the fire even if it’s gasoline right right so the idea is that bias towards action can get you in trouble if you are not thoughtful with why you’re acting and I think what I’ve learned the older I get the the better I am at recognizing
(19:23) oh okay I need to take a breath or I need to slow down like my current boss I adore because she is so different from me and she has taught me so many things she’s had 45 years in education and she’s just brilliant but what she’s taught me is Christy you don’t have to do it right this second take a breath it’s okay to not send off that email it’s okay to to wait until morning just take a minute and I think the bias towards action is great as long as you aren’t always shooting from there right
(19:58) to use all that all the analogies at once yeah but sure but the idea is that if you have a bias towards action you’re doing something but that doesn’t always mean it’s the right thing so seek counsel um you know take a minute just don’t let fear stop you from doing something because I think that the flip side of it is well I better not do that because that might be bad well right but it might be really good yeah so give it a shot yeah I I agree I mean I I think and and yeah part of the reason I wanted to
(20:28) dig in that a little bit is because in this show you know I I I think a lot of fear comes from inaction I mean we we’re inactive because of fear and I you know want to encourage people to take those actions but the idea I love how you were able to kind of articulate that it’s really thoughtful action thoughtful you know thoughtful bias towards action that helps us to really discern what’s right and that’s an important important concept so you so then you took the step from you know teaching teachers to to
(20:58) teaching to getting into businesses and starting that the the teaching there and really helping businesses to thrive how is that process and did you learn a lot there Gary scary as heck um okay so I am definitely not your traditional trainer like oh so everybody’s experienced a teacher or a trainer right I give scratch and sniff stickers to adults I make them do ridiculous claps right like we do a thing where you put your fingers up like this and you say you are out of this world right like who does that it’s ridiculous and yet I own it
(21:35) because it’s who I am right it’s my authentic self and I know that so when I first shifted and I did my first presentation it was in front of a room full of mortgage brokers and it just so happened to be a group of people that my husband worked with closely they knew of me they did not know me but they took a chance on me bought everybody one of my books and I got my first opportunity to present to a non-educational group and at first I thought I better hold back right like I better not do the stickers and the name thing and the
(22:06) claps and the and I couldn’t help myself yeah and by the end not only were these grown people fighting over the stickers and wanting to get as many as possible but they were giving them to each other and they were they continued it throughout the rest of the conference and they still two years later talk about that and I went oh this does work right so I I was doing a conference um in Las Vegas just a couple weeks ago and it was all healthcare workers and they’re in Medicare specifically sales and marketing for Medicare and I
(22:39) probably gave out 600 stickers at this at this training right and and everybody had a scratch and sniff I told them what what flavor do you want whatever and this woman towards the end I asked in the keynote presentation I was like so what’s something that you’re walking away with and she said you handed me a sticker the other day and I was so oddly excited by that sticker that I am literally gonna give my team stickers for now and I’m like do that okay it’s it’s it’s owning who you are and making
(23:09) that your superpower that pushes you past fear and lets you say all right this can work so your question was really did that happen to you again when you shifted from Educators to people that are not in education and the answer is heck yes but I recognized when I was in front of them that it’s okay to be me because that’s the only person I know how to be and once I embraced that we were okay I love that so yeah you so I want to kind of I want to kind of put a pin in that and talk on that a little bit the owning
(23:40) who you are as a way to really push past fear um why so can we dig into that a little bit why why that why that is what what is it about authenticity that helps us to push past fear well I think we spend a lot of time in life wearing a mask and pretending that we’re somebody we’re not right I don’t really belong in this meeting so I better sound really serious or I better dress a certain way or I can’t wear my loud tennis shoes like I need to be something I need to fit in a box and unfortunately what that does is that
(24:15) keeps you from being comfortable at all and so you can’t communicate what you need to communicate you can’t give your best ideas because your whole energy is being spent trying to be something that you’re not and I’m not saying that there shouldn’t be personal and professional ways of work or or you know spaces but but my whole thought behind make work fun is that I think we forget that work and fun can go together and the only time the neurons in our brain even fire is when there’s emotion evoked in what
(24:51) we’re doing well if at work there’s no emotion involved then you’re not you’re not serving your best self so for me the fun is is my authentic self right right you have to be your authentic self if it’s too much for you I totally get it but at the same time if you’re constantly trying to be somebody you’re not you’re exhausted and you can’t be your best self so we have to one in a workplace allow people to be there themselves right like I have co-workers that I know I exhaust
(25:24) them and we talk about it I’m like I know I’m making you tired I’ll I’ll give you a minute it’s okay but if I don’t own that too and say it’s okay for you to not be wide open then that’s that’s shame on me so I think all the way back to your question why is it so important that we be our authentic selves because we don’t truly know how to be anybody else and so we’re spending so much brain power trying to be that other person that we’re too tired to be our best at anything that’s a great
(25:53) great Point um yeah because I know that there’s that there’s times in business and and even myself kind of internalizing this taking it to the business that that I run if if I’m trying to be you know too too businessy or not not yeah it’s exhausting it gets exhausting it is so you make a very very good point there and and um and and I love the idea of bringing fun into the workplace and and that that’s a focus so can you kind of share about that because you talked about making it safe logical fun and memorable
(26:26) um so I want to kind of get into some definitions there too but what do we mean by safe so safe is not that you’re not going to trip over a cord safe safe is psychological safety safe is you know who I am and I know who you are um I’m able to be my authentic self in this space I can ask questions I can make mistakes I can admit those mistakes it is okay for me to not know right so psychological safety can be created super quickly um that’s really where the stickers started right so when I when I’m getting
(27:03) ready to meet 600 new people I’m going to introduce myself and give you a sticker so that I can grab your name tag and read your name a couple times and say it to you so that I know your name is Adam and you don’t have to know my name that’s okay but I just made it safer for you to be in my space and learn right so that’s safe safe is is that psychological safety that I know it’s okay for me because remember adults want to know why and they want to know what’s in it for them so the why am I
(27:32) here and what’s in it for me is created when you make it safe for learning to happen that’s safe does that make sense absolutely yeah and that’s uh that’s powerful kind of brings it back around too to the uh to the authentic self you know that making sure that we’re giving the space for somebody to be authentic sounds like that’s the theme and that and that’s it in that instance definitely right so it’s okay for somebody to say to me I don’t want a sticker okay you don’t have to take a
(27:56) sticker that’s fine um and just a funny aside I did this with a with it was a Healthcare Group and um a CEO came in and you could tell he was a CEO by the way he carried himself right and so he walks in and he says to me um or I said hello you know I’m I’m Christy what flavor would you like strawberry or peppermint or chocolate and he goes they smell and I said yes and he said I don’t want one and I’m like okay totally fine so he goes and sits down I I am in the middle of my presentation and I’m giving out
(28:28) stickers and I said we’ve switched to Orange thin and stickers now and I’m giving orange scented stickers and this gentleman kid you not chased me down in the lobby after the session and he said Christy you said something about an orange scented sticker and I’m like yeah and he said I want one of those he didn’t feel safe to take a sticker to begin with but once he had spent some time with me and he knew I wasn’t going to hurt him and nobody was going to be making fun of him for having a sticker
(28:54) on his name tag he wanted one right so safety can take a little time but safety is the most important thing you can create with another human that’s important to know yeah yeah safety is the most important thing you can create with another human I love that aspect and then so kind of getting to the logical fun and memorable what are those elements play okay so I’m gonna go through off when you logic is that you have to have a plan and you have to stick to the plan but you can’t be the only person who knows
(29:26) the plan so what often happens this is the most prime example I could give is I need you in my office in an hour right well as the employee I’m in total panic mode for that hour what does he want to talk to me about I don’t know oh my gosh did I screw something up and I have spent all the anxiety and fear in that hour instead of Chrissy I need to see you in my office in an hour we need to talk about that file that you’ve been working on because I’m meeting with that client this afternoon and I need to talk to them
(29:56) about it I just need you to bring me up to speed that is a wholly different conversation then I need you in my office in an hour but we tend to be a little less logical right I know the plan you don’t need to know it what do you need to know and then I feel left out so so The Logical is about having a plan and sticking to the plan and then it’s also about making sure that people have a chance to process the information because if I am not processing as an adult learner I’m not going to remember I’m not going to be able to do anything
(30:25) with this information and how often do we tell somebody something that we don’t want them to do something with right we want people to do something with the information we’re giving them but we don’t often give them a chance to process it so that’s logical is that logical absolutely yeah definitely cool good good and then the fun as I mentioned before fun can be stickers um you know we live in the zoom space now right so we’re constantly on a virtual meeting with somebody you can still have fun you can kick off the
(30:56) meeting with a with a quick check-in of how are you doing show me your pet um you know how oh your kids are here that’s great it’s fun is evoking emotion and the stickers are are the quintessential emotion evoker for me um but it’s also laughter it’s an industry specific joke it’s uh an opportunity for people to connect and talk to each other in a in a virtual or physical space and we tend to blow right past that because we got a lot of work to do well yes and if you want people to be involved in the work you’ve got to
(31:33) evoke some emotion so fun is is everything from using people’s talents to making them laugh yeah and then there’s memorable okay so memorable’s fun but let’s talk about fun for just a second do you have questions on fun Adam no fun fun I think we’ve we’ve we’ve tackled it I I’ll have some follow-ups on all all of them but I think that this is great info because I think leaders who might be listening really need to hear this stuff so yeah well and they need to do it right so okay so memorable
(32:02) to me is um the one we forget to do and memorable means that people walk away with something and so I live in Florida and here in the beautiful state of Florida when it rains it means it so I live by the motto sprinkle splash flood drip drip drip okay so sprinkle splash flood drip drip drip is how we need to deliver information so the sprinkle Splash or the big fat drops that fall before the sky opens up and you know that that means you need to take cover but the sprinkle Splash is really like the preview to a movie or like the um
(32:40) well it’s the email before the meeting that says here are the three things we’re going to cover right it’s the conversation that you have with somebody that says I need you in my office in an hour to talk about this this and this that’s the sprinkle splash the flood is the meeting the training the experience the hey we’re gonna go buy a house and we’re going to look at 14 of them today the flood is all the information but the problem with a flood just like in Florida is that most of that water is
(33:08) lost in runoff right but the drip drip drip is where you absorb that water so the drip drip drip is what happens after the flood there’s a reason why there are three drips and not one one isn’t enough so that’s a follow-up email that says hey we talked about this in the meeting on Tuesday I’m going to be in your office on Friday and I would really like your take on what you learned or uh we met last week and I want to know what what help you need what support you need in implementing the thing that we talked
(33:38) about the drip drip drip is what we tend to forget to do and the problem with that is leaders is well I said it once yeah and I was doing 14 other things that day and you said it in passing without writing anything down how in the heck am I supposed to remember that so the drip drip drip is really the part that if we’re intentional about it can change every dynamic in your office because then you know that you’re going to get it that’s a great communication tool um and then and express like that it’s
(34:09) really helpful because you know I hear a lot of times that you know oh nobody’s communicating with us or nobody’s communicating with our group or or nobody’s or even as managers talking to their employees nobody’s listening to me but if there’s a simple framework for this where it’s like you know multiple Communications with the information flooding that’s that’s super helpful so I think that’s a really great framework as far as how we can how we can you know make the make the alignment in our
(34:36) organizations Better um now when when things aren’t going great within a company like or an environment or maybe we’re in a recession maybe maybe there’s difficult times how is this approach the same is it different how do we make that that process fun even when it’s not a fun environment maybe that’s outside of our control so although you need all four at all times you don’t need all four in a particular order order so in those situations where there’s a recession where something’s going wrong where
(35:10) you’ve made a major mistake you need to have built the safe logical fun and memorable previously right you can’t wait until you’re in a crisis and then be like oh well now we’re going to care about you as humans um that’s probably not going to go as well as you might think but it’s never too late to start either so you know your question is about what do you do when when things are going badly you rely on the relationships that you’ve built when things were going well if you don’t have those then you take the time
(35:39) to build the relationships first I think the other thing in a in a situation like that is to set aside assumptions so often in business the the leader assumes that he or she is has all the answers and all of the information necessary to make the decision the problem with that is that they’re not typically the one executing the work so if you don’t ask the person that’s actually doing the execution of work what they think should happen to solve it you’re not going to get the right answer and those people are going to end up
(36:16) very frustrated and the recession is going to get worse so the other piece to that is for the leader to be okay setting aside assumptions and to just simply ask that’s fun for the employee so it’s not the kind of fun like we’re going out to a party fun it’s my talents are being utilized I’m being heard I am contributing to the greater good that’s fun too you know fun isn’t always strobe lights and you know party music fun is is the idea that I’m bringing value yeah that’s that’s no I I appreciate that
(36:53) point because I know we’re entering a time of you know some kind of economic uncertainty there’s there’s people losing their jobs and and I know that’s creating a lot of fear and organizations so they’ll probably need to figure out how do I how to maintain you know that the the culture here and and get and keep it as we want to so um and yeah so that I I appreciate your feedback on that and um how do we so kind of Shifting Gears a little bit into the aim part of it so can you talk a little bit about about that
(37:25) yeah absolutely so so safe logical fun and memorable was born out of how do you interact with people but the reality is that you have to look at your current systems to figure out where that fits right so this kind of goes back to your recession question a little bit the first thing that aim does with an organization is it analyzes the current systems how do you onboard your employees are they do they feel equipped so your very first question to me that I feel like I could have answered a whole lot better had I given it a little more
(37:54) thought is that um when you when you first look at a situation you have to analyze what’s going well what’s going not so well and how can we get better so it’s looking at your your team it’s saying um you know what what onboarding do you do people don’t want to suck at their jobs but are you equipping them to be great no and so the analysis is the opportunity to Think Through what are we doing well what are we doing not so well and how can we fix it one organization that I work with that makes this really easy is a company
(38:26) called Elation so Elation is a well-being assessment company that they give the assessments to all the employees right so let’s pretend that we have an organization of 25 people or 250 people it doesn’t matter and we give everybody this assessment the assessment then gives you a personal well-being report and it tells me as a human am I getting enough sleep am I eating in good intervals am I exercising like I should and do I feel satisfied at my job and do I have knowledge acquisition right it’s
(38:58) all of the things so now I Christy know how I am but it also gives you a team report and I can look at my 18 to 25 year olds and I can see what their stressors are and I can look at my African-American group and I can see what their stressors are and I can look at my males versus females and see their stressors I can also see their buffers the buffers are the bright light the thing that’s going well so if everybody feels like they are super happy with their compensation it’s not a money issue it’s uh um they don’t feel like
(39:33) they’re asked questions about decisions in the organization so the analysis leads to the Improvement now that I know these things things heck do I do about it right and that’s where we that’s where we bring in the safe logical fun and memorable that’s how we improve on your current systems so okay this is what you were doing now we’re going to improve on them what have you done well what have you done not so well but the hardest part is the the move right is that we’re going to do it differently now and so I
(40:05) often say that the knowing doing Gap is a Chasm right so I might know that I’m supposed to do something but to actually get me to change my behaviors and do it is scary and I just told you that it takes 18 times of doing it to get it right so businesses will say well I tried doing X and it didn’t work well you tried it once on a Friday right before a holiday when everybody was already leaving and like why would you do it then so the move is the part that takes time six months right in the next six months what are we going to do
(40:39) differently as an organization so that we get different results so that’s the process of analyze improvements what questions does that bring up no that that that’s a great that’s a great uh feedback into how that ties into the safe logical fund memorable piece like so we so we’re we’re analyzing where we’re at now really it’s just taking an assessment of where we’re at analyzing that then making a plan to improve and then and then you know taking all that information and putting it into an
(41:07) action plan and then actually making the moves which is sounds like that’s the hardest part and how do you manage in that last part of the move resistance because I know there’s going to be natural resistance to that change that might be existing in in the culture for sure um and you have to have willing parties but you also have to drip drip drip right so I can’t come in and and say Here’s what you need to do to move I’ll see you in six months best of luck it’s got to be okay I’m gonna check in in
(41:38) three weeks and you’re gonna try this thing for those three weeks and then we’re gonna see whether or not those that thing is making a difference and then we’ll decide what new thing we need to do we tend to try to eat an elephant ineffectively and all at once and there’s really only one way to eat an elephant and that’s one bite at a time however I will add a caveat to that because over the years some are we have twins they’re 21.
(42:03) for all 21 of Jackson’s ears we have said to him son how do you eat an elephant and he says one bite at a time but I’ve discovered that it’s actually a whole lot easier to eat an elephant with friends right if you’re trying to eat the elephant alone you are not going to ever get to the whole thing before it rots so what if you had others doing it with you so if I’m working with leaders it’s the leadership team that we’re talking to about what do we need to do to eat this elephant and then we’re involving all
(42:35) the rest of the crew and we’re saying all right are we going to start at the front of the back how’s this going to go we need to chew on this for a little while digest move on I could get really gross I was a science teacher I walked but the idea is that you can’t you cannot eat that entire elephant all at once that’s so that’s so good I’m so glad you said that because I was waiting for that moment where the idea of community came into this conversation every interview I’ve had about fear
(42:59) about anxiety about Rising above it involves bringing in a community bringing in a team and and and so that’s the important part I’m so glad we got there uh because it’s keeping it’s keeping that Trend going so good all right look at that but no it’s a great way of putting it like yeah eating eating an elephant with friends is uh you know one by the time you’re going to accomplish a lot more on that on that front so this is such a it’s such a good framework and I’m so glad you you
(43:26) brought it here and I know it’s making such a dramatic difference in you know the lives of people and in organizations um and so thank you for sharing that with us here and I know you’re involved in a lot of other you know just kind of other things as well and I mean it’s just you know you’re I mean you mentioned in in your bio that you’re also you and your husband are marriage mentors so how but uh you help people get married married or how does that work so right so our church bill Chapel
(43:57) for this have to be affiliated with the church at all however you do have to go through four premarital mentoring sessions and those mentoring sessions are not done by the pastor they’re done by different couples in the church who’ve been married somewhere between 3 and 53 years and our job is to talk to you about four things we talked to you about your your story right so your family your faith your finances your friends and your foundation then we talk about your design and that’s important because your
(44:30) experiences are what make you who you are then and your stressors and your nature we do a personality test then we talk about communication and conflict resolution right it’s not about not fighting it’s about taking that fight that right now is an 11 on a scale of one to ten and bringing it down to a three and not three days but 30 minutes and then the last one we do talk about sex but we also talk about intimacy and relationships and the difference between romance and affection because there is not a guidebook to marriage but there
(45:02) are tools that you can have in your tool belt to make it more successful so we’ve done 66 couples in the last five years we love it we get better at our marriage every single time we meet with them and they have totally changed our lives so we they’ve had babies they’ve had you know built houses and moved and done all kinds of things and we get to kind of still be a part of it that’s so cool it must be so fulfilling to see that you know happen with other couples too not to mention as you said
(45:30) the benefit to your own marriage I mean and I’m sure oh my gosh that translates yeah it’s got to be incredible when you’re educating in the space that you are you’re probably learning a lot and just applying your to your to your well-being to your your benefit so that’s incredible and um and uh also as an author you you are coaching people to write books and things like that too so uh that’s that’s something I can relate to I wrote a book as well and and so that’s not an easy process so no it’s
(46:00) not how uh how are you helping people to do that so I work for a company called Two Penny publishing it’s a partnership publishing company and that’s who published my book so if you go through two Penny which I highly recommend you are assigned an author coach and that author coach meets with you throughout your book process and reads your first couple chapters and coaches you on how do you make it great so the my coach said to me as he read my book the first time he said Christy I need less Christy Kent and more Super
(46:30) McMullen I’m like I I don’t understand what that means and he said well he said this reads like a textbook which I had written a dissertation so that makes sense right he said but your personality is your superpower and you didn’t use it I was like oh I’m supposed to read some people want to read nobody wants to read a dissertation so I had to learn how to to channel who I was right that that superpower of my personality and that’s what I do with my authors is I talk to them about who are you it goes back to
(47:02) the authentic self who are you and who are you trying to reach with this book and how do you make sure that they are getting out of it what you want them to get out of of the book and that has been a game changer for me I now look at it that way so every book has a hero and a guide and if you make yourself the hero as the author you’ve lost your audience they’re the hero you’re just the guide and so you’re trying to get the reader to gain all the information it’s just like the person doing the talking is the
(47:32) person doing the learning back to being authentic because that’s uh I mean it’s so important that if your personalities are superpower if you’re being authentic that’s the way you’re going to make your work fun so very cool because I I know that there’s a lot a lot of need out there for helping authors get their message out there and get it out there in their own story so awesome and and so you are a keynote speaker you’re an author you are a coach you’re doing a lot of great things in
(48:01) the world where can people find you and uh and what’s what’s next for Dr Christy McMullen you to all my social media you can look up analyze improve move on Instagram but the space that I’m spending the most time in right now is LinkedIn because I’m really targeting leaders and that should be the space that they’re in so um if you just look up Dr Christy McMullen then you will find me and hopefully find some anecdotal evidence that I know what I’m talking about periodically um I do try to post every day a little
(48:40) something some kind of negative wisdom because I so fun fact this is random but an aside I have been doing a motivational email for the women at my job for the last seven years every day they get some kind of little christianism that is just trying to get them to to be their best selves and that is translating into LinkedIn now because I’m like well I’m doing it why wouldn’t I share it right like this is something because I don’t want to leave anybody um I always want to leave people better than I found them not because they were
(49:10) bad when I found them but because that’s the best I can do for them to make them better so that’s that’s where you find me is LinkedIn Dr Christy McMullen and aimwithus.com those are the two best places to find all my stuff that’s great thank you so much for sharing that and for sharing what you’re doing on LinkedIn to empower people and and motivate it’s uh it’s so important and um and thank you for being here and sharing all that story and sharing your story authentically and sharing your
(49:38) Frameworks and sharing all of that wisdom uh I know that if if you’re a leader and you’re listening to this and or you’re or you’re somebody within an organization that’s experiencing fear you’re going to get a lot from uh from Christie’s Dr Christie’s experience and uh and if you’d like to reach out to her please do and and user use her knowledge for for your good um thank you Dr Christy McMullen for joining me here today and uh thank you all for uh for joining us hey everyone
(50:07) Thanks for tuning in to the flow over fear podcast if you’d like to learn more about getting into flow and learn the foundations of flow I have a free video series on my website at www.adamcliffordill.com called the foundations slow feel free to go there and download it and start your journey to Rising above fear and achieving greater flow in your life if you like this episode and I’m guessing you did if you stuck around for this long then please do me a favor and hit the Subscribe button and you will receive
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