Leading for Belonging: The Brilliant Beckoning that Fosters Elevated Thinking, Connection, Performan

0:00 The topics and opinions express in the following show are solely those of the hosts and their guests, and not those of W FOURCY Radio. It's employees are affiliates. We make no recommendations or endorsements radio show, programs, services, or products mentioned on air or on our web. No liability, explicit or implied shall be extended to W FOURCY Radio or its employees are affiliates. Any questions or comments should be directed to those show hosts. Thank you for choosing W FOURCY Radio. What's working on Purpose? Anyway? Each week we ponder the answer to this question. People ache for meaning and purpose at work, to contribute their talents passionately and know their lives really matter. They crave being part of an organization that inspires them and helps them grow into realizing their highest potential. Business can be such a force for good in the world, elevating humanity. In our program, we provide guidance and inspiration to help usher in this world we all want working on Purpose. Now, here's your host, Doctor Relise Cortes. Welcome back to the Working and Purpose Program. Great to have you, Thanks tuning in this week. I'm your host, Doctor Elise Cortes. I have been hosting the show since February of twenty fifteen. It is a pride and joy of mine, so I hope you'll enjoy it.

1:15 If you don't know me and we've not met before, I am an organizational psychologist and logo therapist, speaker and author, and my team and I at Gusto Now help companies en liven and fortify their operations by articulating their purpose, building inspirational leaders and cultures activated by meaning and purpose to turn those companies from a flatline EKG to a vibrant destination workplace. There people are intrinsically motivity to perform at their best, can grow into the fuller potential, and are committed to stay and dynamically deliver on the company's mission. You can learn more about us and how we can work together at gusto dashnow dot com or my personal site Elitscortes dot com. Now getting into today's program, we have Brad Dutzer. He's the visionary leader behind Dutzer and Dutcter Clarity Institute with leadership learning labs in Houston, New York, Bermuda and Arizona. He has sought out is an authority and innovative thinker on matters of organizational change, belonging, in complexity, in leadership. He's the author of Leading Clarity, the breakthrough strategy Should I Do to unleash people? Profit and Performance? Today we're talking about his latest book, Belonging Rules, Five Crucial Actions that build unity and foster performance.

2:17 He joked it today from Austin, though his home base is Houston. Brad, welcome to Working on Purpose. Thanks for having me excited to be here. I'm so glad to hear that I terribly and horribly enjoyed this book, young man. This is really something you put out into the world. Thank you for writing it, Thank you for thank you for reading it and enjoying parts of it. I tell everybody, if there's something people like, then we did something good. And I'm hoping there's a few things people like. People things people question and say, what do you think of? Brad? It's wonderful And I, you know, as somebody who you know, I do a lot of work inside organizations to develop leaders and I certainly speak a fair amount on diversity, equity, inclusion, and also adding of course the belonging and accessibility in here and you taught me a ton about belonging, Brad, So let's bring it to life for our listeners and viewers, shall we. Let's do it? Okay, Well, let's first start with where some of this came from. One of the things I love about the work that I do in the purpose front is you know, really purpose is that very unique lens each of us has on the world that we can see things that no one else can see just because of our unique experiences, our personalities, everything else. And you have what I considered to be a pretty unique perspective on belonging, which, from what I could tell, happened to you or began to be formed with you in your childhood years. Can you tell us a little bit about some of those formative years that helped this along?

3:38 Absolutely? You know, it's interesting as I reflect back on my childhood. I knew that I belonged because I was blessed with a family that made sure I belonged. But in the world, I'm not sure that I was necessarily accepted. I was the outsider. At school, I was the outsider. I was not a good athlete, I wasn't a performed I didn't really have a place except for home, and then I went to camp. And I spent fifteen plus years at summer camp, two months out of every summer, and it was there that I found myself and I found where I did belong. I learned how to be a leader. And as I talk a lot about and we'll talk about today, so much of belonging is about an invitation, and Camp gave me that invitation, partly as a camper. But I think so much of who I am and what I am really came from when I was a counselor and I had the responsibility of young of leading young boys and young men. And it was those times that said, you know what, this is where I belong. I love to help. It's so beautiful and it's wonderful that you listen to that call, and now what you're doing with it today is just is beautiful. So you're welcome. Let's kick this off a little bit here and just let you situate why from you perspective that belonging is so important today. Belonging is the antidote to so many things that

5:08 are happening in society, in our families, in our communities, and most of all, in our companies. And what people aren't talking about today, is the fact that psychological safety, that balance of fear and trust is completely off kilter. Psychological safety is going down, down, down in organizations number one. Number two, our studies are showing in decrease in optimism. People are going to work not optimistic about what the future holds for them at their company. And I think there's a bigger probably issue to that. It's not just their company, but in their world. And then layer on top of that the political divide, the societal issues that we face, and then one more thing, this epidemic of loneliness. We have a cocktail for a pretty difficult period of time that leaders have to navigate through. And so what our work tells us, and what our work has proven is is that belonging is the antidote. Belonging is the answer to how we overcome that loneliness, how we begin to break the negative trends of psychological safety, how we address some of the issues that leaders are facing. And we're talking about them through a lens oftentimes of well, it's just our culture we got to fix or we have to address this strategically, and the answer is no, there's a real

6:39 focus that needs to be placed on the concept, on the construct that is belonging. It's so beautiful with how you've rendered that. And then of course we would be remiss at this point if we didn't really now situate your specific definition of belonging. What does it mean from your vantage point to belong So this was fast to me. So when I started the journey of writing the book and doing our research, we thought we're going to ask a few people and everyone's going to have the same definition and belonging. And then we started asking and asking more and asking more, and the more we ask, the more we realized there wasn't really a universally held definition that people walked around with.

7:25 So it's one of the things that we through research, through our work, we began to say, what is that definition? How do we want to define it? People can take the elements that they think are important to them and embrace them. So I define belonging as belonging as a place. It's a space where we hold space for something of shared importance. So at work, it may be our work and our community, it may be whatever that is that shared importance, but it's where we hold space for something of shared importance. It's where we come together on values, on purpose, identity. It's a place where it's a place of acceptance, where agreement is it required. We don't have to agree to belong, but there's a shared framework that is understood in an organization or in a family or whatever group we're thinking about. And it's where there is an invitation in to that space and an intentional choice to take part in that space. And we look at belonging as something that's really vital. It's vital to connection to our own safety, our own security, and our own acceptance. And so to me, the core elements as I think about this, it's that space. It could be a physical space, it could be another kind of space. It's the idea that we don't have to agree in order to belong, and it's understanding there's an

8:58 invitation, and sometimes in our society all that's missing is that hand reaching out and saying come on in red rover, red rovers and bread right over right. So one of the things that I've really really appreciated about your work, Brad, that I think is a beautiful and important nuance is you hear people talking about acceptance, and acceptance is great when it comes to belonging, but that is just so not enough. I love how you also emphasize that it's a it's about creating spaces where everyone feels enjoyed, supported and accepted. So enjoyed and supported are really critical, I think distinguishing elements here in your work.

9:43 Yeah, it goes back to the humanity. And I think that I think in so much of the things that you talk about in it's about being human again. And we've lost, we've we've lost. I don't know. I think leaders struggle thinking that you know, we just have to be accepted and just I've invited you in and that's enough, right, And what I think that society is telling us where our workforce is telling us, but the people around ut for telling us, No, we need more. We need to be enjoyed, we need to be supported, we need those human connections. And one of the concepts I talk a lot about is the idea of this human centered leader, the idea of a leader that is being vulnerable.

10:33 We don't have to be right, we don't have to be it's okay to be wrong, but it's leading with our hearts in a different kind of way that allows us to access that joy and emotions that we've been told that doesn't really belong in the workforce. M I can't tell you, Brad. I mean, I have so many guests. I've been hosting the show for nine years. In the last several years, we've been talking a lot about developing human leaders creating human centric works places, and the work that I do is something also very similar, doubling down on humanity in an age of technology. And it's amazing to me that it's twenty twenty four and we need to address these things, but we do. It's important. I look at it and I say, on one hand, it's amazing that we need to address it.

11:18 But on the other hand, my response to that is, thank goodness we're in this place where we can do that. Well we can. It gives us. It's an unbelievable tool that we have that is so underutilized, that is so misunderstood some of the basics of human leadership. If we bring that to the forefront, if we understand that positivity has a direct link to our performance, if we understand that joy and happiness are part of our retention plan, we don't have to pay people more, and we'll get into our research in a little bit. We don't have to pay people more to feel like they belong. Quite the contrary, we have to create an environment invite them in value belonging. M. Yeah, you're speaking to some of the similar content that I also practice. So I am singing right there in the choir with you. All Right, Well, let's let's treat our listeners and viewers here. I want to just do a sort of a slight a light tour, if you will, of the five crucial actions that you identify in your book to build unity and foster performance. We won't go into a lot of detail into each of them. Listeners and viewers, We want you to read the book to get the details of this, but I do want to give you a flavor. So the first rule is you call it turn into the power, which is really really really powerful fun intended. Talk about that one if you would please, so turn into the power. This is where we start. This is where the conversation starts. What's happening in society.

12:50 What's happening in society is we see the power structures, or sometimes we don't see them. They're there, and we're simply creating solutions, and we're creating workarounds. We're going around, and what's happening is the solutions we create they are not effective, be they're not sustainable. So all we're doing is putting temporary fixes. And what we encourage people to do with turning into the Power is first recognizing what are those structures in front of me. They can be leadership, they can be boards, they can be policies, they can be any number of things in our own personal lives that happen to be in our pathway forward. We are so used to and we're just we're used to walking around them. It's easier to walk around and not confront. But what our rules tell us is that when we turn into the power, it's the first step. And how we create that place for belonging that is it's so critical.

13:56 And then you also talk about in the book really how to start to get more aware of that those power structures. Where are they? Because they're so if you will, of the water that we swim in that it's hard sometimes to identify them. But that is critical work and I really appreciate how you DeLine delineate that in the book. It's it's it's there are things that are there, and so some people say, you know, it's easier for me to turn away and just go do what I need to do as a solution. But the reality is those structures are there, and sometimes they're necessary. Sometimes they're just part of our environment we can't change. That's great, let's have a conversation about them, why they exist, what the reason is, what the intention. At least we're on the same page. But the fact is we're often not willing to pause. I'm a big believer in the pause. We do a lot of work with mindfulness and meditation and breath work.

14:52 That pause is important, and that pause forces us or allows us, gives us space to say what is in front of us, what may be impeding my pathway to success? Mm hmm beautiful. All right, Well, on that note, let's let our listeners and viewers just kind of soak that in while we take our very first break. I'm your host, Doctor Release Cortez, wait on the air with Brad Dutzer, who's the author of Belonging Rules, Five crucial actions that build unity and foster performance. We've been talking about why belonging is important and what it really means, getting into some of the first rule here of his five. After the break, we're going to get into listening without labels and choosing identity over purpose. Stay with us, will be right back. Doctor Release Cortez is a management consultant specializing in meaning and purpose. An inspirational speaker and author, she helps companies visioneer for a greater purpose among stakeholders and develop purpose inspired leadership and meaning fuse cultures that elevate fulfillment, performance, and commitment within the workforce. To learn more or to invite a lease to speak to your organization, please visit her at elisecortes dot com. Let's talk about how to get your employees working on purpose. This is working on Purpose with doctor Elise Cortes. To reach our program today or

16:23 to open a conversation with Elise, send an email to a lease a lisee at elisecortes dot com. Now back to working on purpose. Thanks for staying with us, and welcome back to working on Purpose. I'm your host, doctor Elise Cortes, as I too, am dedicated to helping create a world where people realize their potential at work and are led by inspirational leaders that help them find and contribute their greatness. And we do business at betters the world. I keep researching and writing my own books. So my latest one came out in March of twenty twenty three. It's called The Great Revitalization. How active geting, meeting and purpose can radically enliven your business. And I wrote it for leaders to help them understand the new playing field of workplace that we find ourselves in today and in terms of what the workplace wants and how to motivate them. And then I offer twenty two best practice stuff you create the culture to actually create that for them. You can learn more about it on my website at at least cooretest dot com or just pick it up on Amazon if you are just joining me today. My guest is Brad Dutzer. He is known for coaching and leading leaders through his company Dutzer and Innovative consultancy that designs a human approach to change. Okay, so Brad, let's get into the next rule here. Number two is listening without labels. And I really found that one interesting because of your own experience with it. Yeah, so listen without labels is rule number two. And we live in a society that values the art of the response more than we value just the pause and the

17:56 thoughtfulness of listening. And so we're so conditioned, the brain is so conditioned to need to be right, to need to be relevant, that when we're in a conversation, the brain is telling us, all right, I need to distill this concept down so I can give you whatever answer I think is right. And what happens is when we listen with when we listen without labels, most of us are listening by labeling things. All right, I'm going to condense this the lowest common denominator. I've got this here so I can condense it. I'm ready to respond. I'm right on it. And what we encourage leaders to do is to listen without labels. And as you as you alluded to in my own story, I was working with a university on a very high profile, very complex issue, and a media outlet wrote a story, and the story when something like braddit's are comma, who is white?

19:00 Comma? And it went on to talk about my work with diversity, equity, inclusion and all the things that we do to build bridges and organizations. And for some you look at me and you go, well, yeah, you are white. But what they didn't understand is that label diminished the whole of my work, my expertise, my passion, my commitment to bringing people together. So labels can be true, but they often tell us only part of the story, and they often diminish the whole of the person, and so they become quite destructive. We see that with generations. I see that in organizations all the time. Well, this generation doesn't value this and this generation. But in my own workplace, and I think in some of your work, when you talk about meaning and purpose, what we know is is that different generations, they all value meaning and purpose. And so we can't use the broad brushstroke to say this big group or this person that looks like this, or this gender or this xyz is this. And so we really encourage leaders to again slow down the need to respond and be right and

20:30 be smart and be really intentional about hearing what is spoken. And I would argue, what is not spoken. Sometimes we hear more by without words, just by being in that moment and feeling someone's energy, watching the body language. And so it's the holistic kind of approach to how we listen. I think that's really powerful, and you know you also talked about it in the book of Course that, you know, the labeling piece. It's also part of our need and very fast paced lots of data thrown at us all the time, just to make a quick sense of things and try to organize it quickly. And so it's a natural thing that we do, and it's important to be intentional to intervene in that. Intentionality is everything. Yeah, yeah, okay, So the next one I have to say, I really chewed on because of what I do, but I really got where you were going.

21:26 Rule number three choose identity over a purpose. And now let's talk about that one, all right. So I knew we were going to have this conversation here. You were ready for me, were you? I don't know if I'm ready, But here's what I have to say with it. I think our work is very similar. It is so when you talk meaning, when you talk about meaning and you talk about purpose, I think it's it's an elevated this elevated sentence. And so when I think about identity, I think about identity through a lens of meaning, and purpose is one of the most important elements of identity. So when I think about it, it's purpose, the why we exist as an organization, as a group whatever it may be. But we go further to say that identity and the macro identity of an organization, building out that cultural ecosystem of an organization. It starts with purpose. It includes characteristics what is central, enduring, and distinct about our organization. We include values, what do we collectively value? And then we also are big believers in behavioral behaviors, behavioral competencies that are the me part of it. So I look at the me and we kind of give and take of an organization. I think about identity of values and behaviors, and so we can add traditions and rituals and things in that. But it's a

22:56 holistic way that we look at creating. What is that social contract that we have with our workforce, with our constituents, And it's based, it's grounded and purpose. But we simply add to create meaning to to to that whole. And so that's how we see it. And I and I in the book, I give the example we do a lot of work with NFL teams, with collegiate football teams, and I'm always fascinated that when we have the purpose conversation with NFL teams, there's the purpose from one organization to the next is often very similar. We want to win the super Bowl, we want entertained, we want to give back to our community, we want to you know, produce good returns for our shareholders, whatever those are. There's a series of things, but there's a there's a new does that differentiate and so to us, it's not about the different uniform, it's not about the different city we put on. It's the larger conversation around identity, starting with purpose as the driver to it. Okay, you're ready to really recognize even further how closely aligned we are? Tell me. So once I finished that section, I went, oh, this is I totally understand what he's saying for two reasons. One, I don't know if you know this or not.

24:26 But I'm a meaning in work and identity researcher. So when I did the I did a large research postdoc research, and I really I discovered the elements of identity we people talked about identity were the same segments that you were talking about, and there were also things like roles and life defining experiences and things like that, perspectives you know, kind of your mindset if you will. And so I went, I got totally. I totally knew where you're going with the identity thing. And then I also understood you really are talking about it as an overall package of culture, and I totally align with that. So different way of speaking about it, but we are completely aligned. So it was I was so delighted when I realized that, you know, the way you were talking about an organizational identity very much aligned with it, with the research, the inputs and the what I call the ingredients of identity that I found too. That makes me feel good. Yeah, people, people sometimes get tripped up and and I name this rule what it is on purpose because there's so much conversation about identity and we've we've gone to individual identities and enforcing those individual identities and saying, hey, company, you need to change, and so I really felt it was important to say, now we're going to have a bigger conversation. It's about being part of something again. It goes back to that that that that invitation into something of shared importance. This is what's important, and it is that identity. I love it. I'm aligned Lockstep and Barrel. Let's go okay. That brings us to Rule number

25:56 four. Challenge everything and that is so important to I can't. I know that you've seen it too, and you deal with complexity on a big time scale. But I'm always amazed at how I'm still hearing people say things like that's the way we've always done it. So Rule number four, challenge everything. Challenge everything. Challenge everything is one of my most powerful tools that I have as a leader. And what happens is most people think about challenge and conflict is the same thing. Yeah, so we think about conflict, and to me, conflict is two forces coming together, horns locked and one having to be right the other having to be right, and we're always staying where we are in that state of conflict. Challenge, on the other side, to me, is a creative force multiplier and it's not something Again, what is society telling us be polite, let's not speak out of turn, let's let's not challenge. I'm on for that, or social media saying if you do challenge me, you're canceled. And what we want to do is re orient the brain around challenge to say that it's the most creative thing that we can do as leaders. There's a powerful way to engage people in the art of challenge, and so in the book we go through what we call the effective challenge and how this is a way to create those environments. Again,

27:30 the identity, going back to what we just talked about, has to be right and safe for that conversation. But then here's how in the book, we never tell leaders what to do. We want to give them a roadmap how to do it. So on the challenge everything that's exactly how we think about creativity and creating. You know, our desired future states is challenge. We'll challenge the most basic things, you know TVD and we'll we may talk about that later TVD. The world says it's to be determined, but why give our power away? TBD is to be designed. Yeah, we need to challenge the future and our place in it as leaders, our control of it. And I think it's incredibly exciting. And you know, to involve everyone, invite everyone, and involve everyone in that design so exciting. It's that invitation in create belonging, bring people in, be vulnerable, be that human centered leader. And what are we going to get. We're going to get a solution that's bigger and better. We're going to create a more connected workforce and a workforce that stays with us and performs at higher levels. M I agree, we're in step again here. Okay, So this next one, I really there's so much to this next one, so so so much demand. One hundred percent of the truth is rule number five. And there's a few things I really want to make sure that we hit on this, But you start and then I'll feel in if there's something else that I want

29:02 you to talk more more about. This is the most obvious rule of them all. And most people would say, well, of course, I'm one hundred percent of the truth all the time. But the reality and our research in our work shows that the highest performing organizations are operating somewhere in that eighty eighty five percent range of the truth. What that means is we're not having the full conversation. You and I happen to agree on this, this and this, the rest of the group may not. So let's you and I go, let's the two of us. We're going to go talk about this later, because it's not worth getting these other people involved in the conversation.

29:47 What's happening is the most challenging conversations we're not having as leaders. We're putting the diversity, the inclusion conversations off to the side, the social, the political inputs that are impacting our workforce off the side. Oh, by the way, not many boardrooms are talking about loneliness. They're not talking about fear. That's stuff for that's the soft hr stuff we can talk about. Let those people talk about it. No, those are the real things. And what our research shows us is is that again, and you could be the company Yours could be the organization that you say, hey, I'm better than that. Awesome, Are you performing at ninety percent of the truth, because there's still a ten percent gap and that GAP's big. What I thought was also really useful about that particular rule, Brad, with what you know, really how you called out that you know, it's so easy imagining the people that the louder voices, the squeakier of the wheels, and so hearing them but not only them, and really inviting in and looking for the other voices I thought was really really important. And then the other thing that I thought was critical about that particular rule that I've never heard anybody talk about, and that was this idea of really gaining commitment from what you call the middle the people there there that are often feeling left out and underappreciated, and their talents go untapped, the contributions are not well recognized. I think that is such

31:18 a critical thing to talk about. It's one of my favorite things to talk about. I call it the movable middle. Yeah, And the problem we have today is that people don't know how big the middle is. We often view it through a political lens, and the right, the left, that's everybody politically, and and we take those numbers and we often transport them into our companies. The reality is in the workplace, the movable middle is a much larger section of our organization than anyone wants to give credit to. And with interesting our work with the middle, this movable middle tells us that they just come to work, they put their head down. This group is more afraid than any other group because I say the wrong thing over here or over here, it's not what it does to me at work. I lose my place at church, in my synagogue, I lose my place at my community.

32:22 So the fear is real in this area. This group wants to be heard, they want to be trusted, they want real information. And so this is a shift and it's a big shift leaders who have fancy communication people writing everything. So it's perfectly there's no there's no ambiguity, and we're very clear about all these different things. It's so carefully orchestrated that the middle often looks at it for what it is, not genuine, not authentic, not real, and so beating to them. They immediately don't trust it. And so if we give the middle what they want, and that's the respect, acknowledgment of their importance, the real, unvarnished, truthful information, and then the last thing, we trust them to do what they think is best with it. It may not always be what we as leaders think is best, but what they think is best with it, the vast majority of the time, they are going to create something far more powerful, a movement, far more profound than anything that we can orchestrate on our own. One love that bred all right. Let's also let our listeners and viewers chew on that as we finish our last break. Here, I'm your host, doctor Release Cortez.

33:52 We've been on the air with bread Dittzer. Is it Dittzer? Apologies? Is pronouncing your name the first two times? Brad Diitzer, who is the author of Belonging Rules, Five Crucial Actions that build unity and foster performance. We've been going through the five rules here in his book. After the break, we're going to get into this idea that he calls the Box of Belonging. Stay with us, me right back. Doctor Elise Cortez is a management consultant specializing in meaning and purpose. An inspirational speaker and author. She helps companies visioneer for greater purpose among stakeholders and develop purpose inspired leadership and meaning infused cultures that elevate fulfillment, performance, and commitment within the workforce. To learn more or to invite a lease to speak to your organization, please visit her at Eliscortes dot com. Let's talk about how to get your employees working on purpose. This is working on Purpose with doctor Elise Cortes. To reach our program today or to open a conversation with Elise, send an email to Elise A lisee at elisecortes dot com. Now back to working on Purpose.

35:21 Thanks for staying with us, and welcome back to working on Purpose. I'm your host, Doctor release Cortes. I mentioned in the last break about my latest book, The Great Revitalization. What I did for you is I created a three page assessment for you to be able to take off my website digit from the extent to which your workforce, your company is actually operating for today's standards. You can find it at Gusto dshnow dot com if you're just joining me today. My guest is Bratdittzer, who is the Brad Ditzer. He's known for his coaching and leading leaders through his company Diittzer, which is an innovative consultancy that designs a human approach to change. All right, So now I love what you had here before we get into the box of belonging or I was quite compelled and also once again aligned with your diets your leadership qualities.

36:04 Can you talk just about a few of those that you are trying to develop inside organizations? Yeah, we have. We've identified thirteen competencies that that we work to work with leaders on navigating, understanding, impacting in their own in their own unique way. The ones that that that I work on a lot. For me, I start right at the heart of it with positivity. It's a competency that I think is misunderstood and I think it's incredibly, incredibly powerful. So that's a that's an important competency. It's it's something that we work on in every meeting. I work on it every single day, and we we evaluate. We have a very unique positivity quotion evaluation, both for individual as well as or organizations, and so how that manifests itself through ourselves and through our organizations. I think about leading change, I think about dealing with ambiguity, communicating effectively, or some of the competencies that I spend a lot of time on for myself. Our company is known for being in the most complex environments, and so that dealing with ambiguity. If you're not comfortable with ambiguity, it's hard to be part of Dietzer or any of our

37:36 work with belonging because the work we do is by nature very ambiguous. And so those are things that I am constantly working on, assessing, evolving and trying to grow. And one of the things that's interesting to me is I accept that I have strengths and there's certain competence is that will never rise to the top of my list, and so I have a decision as a leader, do I focus on my strengths or do I focus on my weaknesses? And so much of our practice is about understanding areas where we're not as strong, but really focusing and accentuating on the strengths and the positivity of the strongest the strongest competency. So it's a it's a little different way to think about it, but it's so core to who we are. I aligned with that too. I'm a gallops or by strengths coach, so I certainly align with all of that. And there are the thirteen are listed in the book and well developed. Time. Thank you for just doing the light sprink looks.

38:42 I wanted to now spend more time here talking if we can first introduce in the idea of the Box of Belonging. Now I love whenever we can we can you can not reduce, simplify into a model that we can actually get our whole heads around. And you've done that with the Box of Belonging. Can you share than the basics of it with us? Sure? Start with the basics of the box. We're all asked the question are you in the inside the box thinker? Are you outside the box thinker? You know most people raise their hands out I'm outside the box because we think it's the right answer. And then there's some people say, well, I might be inside the box, and what our research has done is said, that's the wrong question. It doesn't matter if you're inside or outside, because what we what our research tells us is that it's the size of the box that matters.

39:32 It's the box that you create for yourself or your organization of what's appropriate to you. And so the most effective leaders are the ones who work within the box. And the right shaped, right sized box that drives creativity, it drives innovation, and it drives performance. So the box that we think about, the box of belonging, has foreside to it. And so the sides are we break them up into two quadrants, the agile or the the agility kind of system and and the relational system. And so the relational system, the two sides in the relational system are the social side of our box and the personal side of our box. And there's competencies that you can read about and kind of say, hey this this makes up each of these and and and and where are they? But I think about social and personal as as as as at half of the box. And that's how we deal with others, how we interact, how we see ourselves, and how we see others.

40:45 The the agile side, the agility system. The agile system is how we adapt how adaptable are we? And how intentional are we? And so there are things within each of those, each of those quadrance that said, Hey, the world is changing. The environments that we deal with as leaders are changing, and so how adaptable are we? How intentional are we? And so we take those competencies and we put some of the competencies, each of the competencies under each side of the box, and encourage leaders to simply reflect, to reflect on the social the personal. Again, I always tell people most of us aren't don't don't don't label ourselves as school teachers. Yet we tend to grade ourselves all the time. We greade others all the time, good bad, Well I'm not very social or you know, my personal side is not very good, And it's not how we see the world.

41:57 This is who we are. And as we try to understand our box of belonging where we're going to invite other people into. It's simply understanding where do our strengths lie. Yes, thank you for that. That was I think that that's so accessive. I also liked how you describe in the book people that have a strength in one of the four sides over the other and what that looks like, which is well distinguished. All right, So then for this last little bit here, I do want to get into that TBD that you were talking about. I love the whole notion of what you've situated in your book, the promise of leading to belonging. So I just that beautiful space, and I want to read a little bit and let you just kind of chime in and expand it. But you say to me, belonging is where we hold space for something of sheer importance, which you've said before.

42:47 But belonging is a way of life. And the only way to lead when you believe and belong and believe you in your future is TBD to be designed. You create the world you really want to live in, a lead in. And I love that, Brad, because it's there's so much promise in that, there's so much hope in that. There's there's evolution in that, there's lift in that. And that's how I see leadership. What do we do as leaders It's it's that constant evolution, it's the constant lift, it's the constant belief that no matter where we are, there can be something more. And so when we think about human centered leadership, when I think about what it means to be a belonging leader and saying, hey, this is the this is the only this is the only way to lead. It's the only way to lead because leading requires people to follow us. Leading requires people to buy in. And so if we can't give them a place, if we can't give them a vision, a dream to hold onto, it's hard for them to follow us. And as we think about to be to be determined tb D, it's just gonna happen to be determined. You know, we'll determine. We'll figure that out later. We're ceding our power to someone or something or somewhere else where we where we reorient the brain to say TBD

44:23 to be designed, we take control, We lead, We lead with purpose. We understand that if it is to be created, it is up to us collectively to create it. I love to talk about the fact that, you know, we all talk about the challenges we have in society and all these different things, and we keep waiting for a political answer, We keep waiting for society to come up with some magic cure to lowliness and all these different things. But I believe in our work shows that when we can lead and design in our own companies reconnect the hearts and souls of the people and our companies, we don't just lead our companies. We're leading a greater good.

45:16 And it's our companies that are going to be the solution. It's our communities that are going to be the solution for the greater society. And my argument and my belief and our research shows that it's belonging at the core. When we create that, and we create get the middle, that movable middle to belong they'll take us and they'll follow us, and often they'll lead us and to a much brighter place. That's the future I want to live in, Brad. So I'm going to be in the in the box with you, in the boat with you. Okay. So we're getting close to the end here, and I want to give you the chance to leave listeners with what you are, whatever is on your heart and your mind. You know, I think probably now that this show is listened to by people around the world, they're tuning in because they're either interested in elevating their own experience of work. They're wanting to help create those destination workplaces. They do want to become a more inspirational leader. What would you like to leave them with.

46:15 I think I would leave them with the simple idea you can one of my one of my one of my favorite business books is Other Places of the Places You'll Go by Doctor Seuss. Yes, outside yours in mind. But you know, I think that I think that leaders have to dream again. I think that we need to take the weights off of us and say that I can I can design a different future. I may be in a department, I may be in a division, and my company may not want all of that, but I can create this space to bring people in, to invite people in. The power of the rules is that they work for organizations, they work for individuals. Try the rules in your own lives. Think about the power structures that are in front of you. Listen to a family member without labels. They're just my kid, They're just frustrated. Listen to the whole of what they say. Think about the broader construct Take the rules one by one or all five wherever you are. They become powerful tools for you to TVD to design whatever future that you want. And that you dream.

47:38 And I just tell people all the time, turn the news off, turn social media off, turn all the negative influences, and realize we live in a pretty special place and it's a space that we can create and have control to create something really amazing, even in the dark times, something there's something bright just on the other side. That is a great way to finish. Brad, thank you so much. Thank you for being on, working on a purpose, share in your heart, your mind or research and what you know and practicing in your work. Thank you very much for being on. Thank you. I'm honored and thank you for what you do and the beauty that you share out into the world. It's important. Thank you, Brad.

48:22 Listeners and viewers. If you'll learn more about Brad Ditzer and the work he and team do at Dittzer or his books, you can start by visiting their website. It's just simply dyetzer dot com. But it's not the way that it's not. You're not going to be able to get this on your own, so let me spell it for you. It's d e u t s e r Dittzer dot com. D E d e u t s e r dot com. Last week If you missed the live show, you can always catch it be recorded podcast. We were on the here with Tamra Ryan, the author of The Third Law and the CEO of the Women's Being Project. We talked about the magnificent work this food manufacturing social enterprise is doing to provide job training and work to formally incarcerated women. They are working to nurture economic sustainability by enabling women to take to gain self worth and self sufficiency.

49:07 Acquiring the tools to sustain themselves and their families provide women with a second chance. Amazing conversation. Next week, we'll be on the air with Jerry Colonna talking about his new book, Reunion, Leadership and a Longing to Belong, which has another lens on the topic of belonging we discussed today with Brad see you there. Remember that work is one of the most is one of the best adventures and means of realizing our potential making the impact we crave. So let's work on Purpose. We hope you've enjoyed this week's program. Be sure to tune into Working on Purpose featuring your host, doctor Elise Cortes, each week on W four C. Why Together We'll create a world where business operates conscientiously, Leadership inspires and passion performance and employees are fulfilled in work that provides the meaning and purpose. They crave see you there. Let's work on purpose.