Right Fit: The Answer to Making Work Less Work

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 implies 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.

0:45 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 at Purpose program. Great to have you, Thanks for tuning again this week. This program has been brought to you since February of twenty fifteen with great pride and passion. I'm your host, doctor Elise Cortes. If we've not met before, I'm an organizational psychologist and loco therapist, speaker and author. My team and I at Gusto Now help companies to enlive it and fortify their operations by articulating their purpose and building inspirational leaders and cultures activated by meeting and purpose to turn those companies from a flatline EKG to a vibrant destination workplace. There, people are intrinsically motivated to perform with their best, can grow into their fuller potential, and are committed to stay and dynamically dillerun the company's mission. You can learn more about us and how we can work together at gustodashnow dot com and Elisecoortes dot com. Now getting into today's program, we have with us doctor Andre Martin and entrepreneur, operating advisor, board member, organizational psychologist and coach to top founders and C suite executives. He has held key C level leadership roles dedicated to talent, employee engagement, leadership, development and culture in some of the biggest consumer brands including Disney, Mars Incorporated, Nike, Target, and Google. He's the author of Wrong Fit, Right Fit, Why How We Work Matters More Than Ever, which we'll be talking about on today's program. He hails from Portland, Oregon, though he's joining us today from Los Angeles. Andre, Welcome

2:17 to Working on Purpose at Last. It's great to be here. Thanks for having me. You're so welcome. I'm so happy to know you and learn from you. Look at this magnificent thing you brought into the world, and you know, it's so cool. Andre. I'm on the board of Conscious Capitalism here in Dallas, and one of the members was saying something and we're having a conversation, and I forget what he said, but I said, oh my gosh, I have Andre coming on my show this next week. He goes, I know that guy. I've been following him for years. I just got his book. So you're getting around, Andre, you're getting around. Hey, Well, I got a cause that matters to me. It's easy to talk about it when you know you believe in the content. I totally get that. Well, that is the first question I wanted to ask you. You know, you could have chosen lots of things ondre.

2:59 You could be architecture, you know, it could have been marketing, it could have been accounting, but you chose, you know, organizational psychology and people. Why Well, at least for me, it starts way way back. So I grew up in the Ozark Mountains. I was the middle son of two college professors, and my parents decided to teach a college that gave rule first generation youth a chance to go to college and get a debt free education. So they were first from their family to go to college and they could walk out with all the opportunity and possibility in the world and none of the debt. And I just remember growing up in that environment thinking education is the greatest equalizer on earth. And that led me to organizational psychology, which has then led me to this amazing career in really helping talent to grow faster than their companies that they're part of, which means we all win in the end. It's wonderful and you have a very impressive career. And we must also talk about this little fun title that I found on LinkedIn. I see it here on the stream in residence at joyful. What is that? Yes, so joyful is a creative agency. So think about your best marketing and ad firms, and they turn that capability towards the internal company. And basically they exist to help make work more joyful, to help us talk about purpose and possibility and give people the truth about values and stories of great people doing great things. So as we come to work, which you know, at least like we will spend thirteen point five years of our adult lives at work,

4:31 that's secondly to sleep, and so they're just on this mission to make those years a little bit better, a little bit more joyful. And I join them to kind of do the strategy side of that work for them. Sounds just right up both of our allies. I love that, Okay, Well, as I think you probably have figured out now by now, I do read my guestbooks cover to cover, and then as I'm a researcher as well, so that's part of the way that I keep writing my own books. And so I was very intrigued to notice that you said that you began writing this book with the intention of writing about culture, but then you realized in your research interviews that this wasn't what we were talking about. That's not what people were really addressing. Yeah, so I originally got approached to write a book on and the subject was very definitive. You know, what does the word culture mean in this new world of work post COVID? And I did what every researcher would do, at least I hope most is I went out to everyone of my network that I respected, and I started asking these questions about, hey, what makes a great place to work? And I think two things happened really quickly at least that sort of changed the trajectory of the book. The first one was that there wasn't a definitive set of best practices. Yeah right, So, like I was finding this, like, what was really interesting that this person about culture didn't come up with this person The things that mattered here didn't matter over there. And then the second thing that happened is people started talking less about values and product and brands and more about just how it might feel to walk into a place on a random,

6:02 you know, Tuesday afternoon in March. And that had me thinking, Hey, maybe the question isn't good or bad culture. Maybe the question isn't toxic or engaging environments. Maybe it's really about this idea of how much does the way a company works match my preferences? How much does that way of working put me in a place where I can do the best work of my lives. And once I had that realization, that just started rolling. Hm. I get that, you know well. From my PhD, which is in human development I did for my dissertation research, I wanted to understand how people experienced meaning in their work and how their work related to their sense of self or identity. So I found these five modes of engagement at the time, and one of them was called resonant. It's just kind of like that natural, easy hand in glove fit that you're talking about. So I I really get what you've what you what you're doing here. There's also self expressive, detached, you know, conflicted. So it was so so I really got what you were doing. And so for our readers, our listeners and viewers, we haven't yet read your book, then maybe now is a good time for you to actually describe what do you actually mean by fit? Your definition?

7:11 Yeah, so the definition of fit in this in this context was really an authentic and deep dedication to a way a company works every day. And so I always use the interviews right, there were some just fascinating quotes in the interviews that sort of sum up what fit means. And for those who had right fit, they described it as like I just felt more like myself more days at work. Other people described it is that we were doing hard things, but the hard things weren't hard to do. You know another example, and I love this is you know this was a marketing director creative who talked about this idea of when I had right fit, I just got to practice my craft. Yeah, all my energy was going to the thing I was really good at, not to all the coordination and tax that happens in work when you're just trying to figure out how a system works day to day.

8:05 And I think on the wrong fit side, these were the most cathartic conversations. They were the most poignant conversations because they would say things like, when I'm in a wrong fit, it felt I was getting punched in the face a different way every single day. It felt like everyone had a secret decode to ring the success except for me. And in the end, every one of those stories resulted in someone saying to me, Hey, that moment in my career when I is the one where I felt least competent. I felt least competent, and it bled into every other area of my life. And so those interviews, everybody had them. There wasn't a person I talked to didn't have one of those work experiences, and they stay with us.

8:45 We hold on to them because in the end, the organizations are essentially telling us we're not good enough, when in fact it didn't have anything to do with that totally competent. We just weren't able to show it because the system didn't make sense to us in the way that it did other people. Oh, I know that we're doing. We're rowing in the same boat, Andrea. But I just want to I want to create workplaces where it's they're playgrounds of life, where people literally come alive, they can realize their best. And you've done You've done that. If you said that, the examples you gave from Mars, we're just we're so alluring, Andrea, so cool what you guys all got to do there? And if they do exist, we just need more of them. They do exist. They do exist, And the thing is is two things happen right on one side. They're really hard to find because the interviewing process is just a giant marketing machine, right.

9:33 It's geared to get us to say yes to something regardless of whether or not we want them. It's like it's like the equivalent of shopping in the cereal aisle without knowing what kind of cereal you want. Yeah, yeah, inherently are going to choose something that may not be what you want, but it's just the most attractive thing out there. I think the second thing that happens for me in this conversation is that when we have it, when we have right fit, when it really makes sense, we often fail to resp it. We often fail to respect that everything is actually working and that's okay, yeah, and we fail to see how much follow on ripple effect that has in our lives. Oh two things, Andre. So, one of the things that you you have in your book, I forget exactly what it was.

10:18 I didn't put it as part of our of our conversation here, but it was something about how today we are confronted with this notion of having it's the what I call the buffet of life. There's so many choices that people think that they're always looking for the next, the next, the next, even while there's there there there might be in a they might be in a good place and a good right fit, but they're still thinking about the next and what else is there. Yeah, we have this like endearing fomo, like the fear of missing out. And this is one of the drawbacks of having such a connected culture is that I can go on the Internet at any time. I can find someone who has the same experience as me, who's doing the same job as me, who might even look and feel the way that I look and feel, except they're different on one area. Their life looks awesome. And the thing we forget is that we're only seeing one percent of it, and that one percent is highly curated, right, But I think it's created this sort of really detrimental quality in all of us that we're infinitely browsing. Yeah, that was all. Yes, we're always on the lookout for something new, something different, something better, And the result of that, at least is that I don't think we're actually committing to anything at a deep level, right, And that's one of the places where we just end up unlocking ourselves from things that could be great experiences too early because we have this spear missing out. Yeah, I think that's so worth talking about in the showcasing. And then on the other side of that, there's a stat that you have in your book that blew me away, Andrea, and that was you said, somewhere in there you correct me if I don't have this quite right. Yep. When talent is a in a right fit place

11:52 and they can really bring their craft, they can they can outperform their appears by eight hundred percent or something like that. That is eight hundred percent. That is the stat and you'll see a lot of research that backs that up. And I think what you know, what it boils down to, in just the simplest of terms, is that you're getting discretionary effort right so right now, dis Yeah. And the thing we don't realize the least, and I think this might be one of the most profound lessons I've had since publishing the book, is is that creative energy is always flowing. It's always flowing, Like, don't pretend for a second that you're ever blocked. The thing that's happening to us is that often when we're in these wrong fit experiences, we're in these places that just don't work for us, our creative energy is going to context and the coordination of work, not to our craft, not to the thing we're trying to get better at. And I think in that that's what happens. Is is hey, all things being equal, it's the same talent with the same capability. The person that's performing eight hundred percent more just has more of their creative energy flowing, and so they're getting better while we're actually standing still or even worse yet getting worse at what we're supposed to be best in the world at. Right. Oh, it's just this is so instance. Work is such a profoundly important part of life. As you say, I mean not just from from the vantage point of the time that we spend, but just what does it do for our sense of self and how we feel about ourselves and our impact and how we're, how we're how we feel we matter. It's just huge. So so then I want to go into this is interesting. I thought I could really relate to it.

13:24 I found myself going through my own back history of the different kinds and three dimensions that you mentioned here the right fit inside of a company, And so I thought that was interesting if you talk a little bit about those characteristics in the three different ways that you talk about fit or nonfit. Yeah, So there are three basic concentric circles around this idea fit. The first one is how does a company work and what does it value? Right that that matters? I mean, you know, companies are distinct, they have very different ways of working. And then the other two are really about the individual who's a part of the company. On one side, it's who am I? What are all the characteristics, experiences, values that make me unique? And on the other side, it's how do I like to work? How do I like to set strategy, solve problems, manage conflict? How do I want to be developed? How do I want to get feedback? How do I like to gather and socialize? What's my relationship with time? Like all those things that are about how I can get work done. The more all of that matches, the more you have right fit. Yeah. The less that those things are there on any factor, the more you're going to struggle.

14:33 In. The metaphor we use in the book is it's going to feel like you're writing with your non dominant hand every day you can do it, you will have decent quality. It's going to be more stressful, more frustrating. You're going to see lower and lower levels of productivity over time because of the effort you have to put in to do it, and you're never going to be good as good as if you were able to write with your dominant hand every single day. Yeah, and by the way, I mean my handwriting my dominant has horrible. So dominant is just going to be just you know, just don't even bother. But the other thing that I found myself gravitating to with that regard is you talk about, you know, three kinds of misalignments. The total mismatch, right, so where the company does not value who the talent is or how they prefer to work. I mean, I'm trying to think if I've ever experienced that. And then there's the person mismatch. The company values the way the talent works but doesn't value who they are as a person. I think I've experienced that, and then the way of working mismatch, So the company values who the talent is but doesn't value how the talent prefers to work. I have totally experienced that. Sure, you know, those mismatches are I think super helpful to people who are in the process of assessing where they are. And you know, and the mismatch is interesting, right, The mismatch we experience most is often that ways of working, but it's subtle, it's nuanced. We can't really touch it or feel it because ways of working are kind of ethereal and they're sort of built in and they're in the fabric. And so we end up both organizations and

16:07 talent blaming performance. We blame skill and experience and ability, and it's like, that's not what it is. Yeah, it's just not what it is. And I remember talking to me. I was talking to CEOs and the interviews who were telling me stories of moments in their career twenty years ago that they were still carrying with them that were wrong fit. But they ended up personalizing those the point that they thought was about them. And so our tendency is then, at least all we try to do is we try to work harder, right, and in working harder, we yard sale the things about our life that matter most, which is our family, our friends, our community, our hobbies, all the things that happen outside of work. And then it just starts that vicious cycle that ends us in a place of at worst not feeling very confident or good. Every day burnout you know at even worse is you know, we get into mental health crisises, which we're seeing more and more of these days. M h ooh on that. No, let's take our first break, your host, doctor Release Cortes. We run near the doctor Andre Martin, the author of Wrong Fit, Right Fit?

17:04 How? Why how we worked? Sorry? Why how we work? Matters more than ever? So as we go in this break, listeners and viewers, why don't you just think about that for a second, in terms of person mismatch, way of working mismatch, or total mismatch, if you've ever experienced that. We'll be right back. Doctor Elise 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 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 a lease Alisee 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 creating a world where people can realize the potential at work and are led by inspirational leaders that

18:37 help them find and contribute their greatness and we do business a betters in the world. I keep writing my own books, so my last one came out in March of twenty twenty three. It's called a Great Revitalization How activating meeting and purpose can radically enliven your business. And I wrote it to help you leaders understand the lay of today's land of what does talent want? And then I give you twenty two best prectases to be able to fold into your culture to help create that. You can it on Amazon or check it out on my at least quorretes dot com site if you are just joining me today. My guest is doctor Andre Martin. He's an entrepreneur, operating advisor, board member, organizational psychologist and coach to top founders and C suite executives. He has held key C level leadership roles dedicated to talent, employee engagement, leadership development, and culture in some of the biggest consumer brands including Disney, Mars Incorporated, Nike, Target, and Google. Pretty good lineup. So, so, so what I want to do next here, Andre is I want to talk a little bit about what you hinted at before. So I think there's two parts of the equation. Obviously the person part of the the company part. One of the things I really like about your book. In fact, I just picked up I don't do a lot of one on one coaching anymore, but I just picked up a new coaching client and I told her go buy his book because it is chock full of worksheets that will help people to better understand their own drivers, their values and what it is they really really want a need from it, from a from a job and from a career. So it's just fantastic, Andre. So starting there, you know, just the no of I loved what you create. What you talked about is are you a company, craft or a cause? Right there? That was cool. So can we start with that on the individual side? Sure,

20:10 Lise I mean, I think those excursions were built to really help people do some deep self reflection before they get into the marketing machine of trying to figure out what job to go. And that was one of my favorite sort of pieces of the book was, you know, this idea of starting to see careers as a number of different paths you can take and depending on how what kind of career you're building, it sort of dictates how you manage that career. And we kind of bucket into three areas. The first one is are you of company? Now, you know these individuals, at least because they stayed a company for twenty twenty five years, they live and breathe the brand and the product. They are fanatics right as consumers, and they are so committed to the company that they literally could not see themselves working anywhere else.

20:55 Well, if you're that person, you know one of the things you have to do with your career is realize that your greatest asset is going to be the breadth of what you know about how that company makes money and also the strength of your strong and weak network across the entire organization. And so you have to build a career that allows you to get that breadth, which means you can't sit in a single function, you can't stay in a single team. And so the more you can sort of connect to the entire supply chain, you know, from the beginning to the end of the product, the more utility you have and the richer your careers over time, the more important you will be to that company. Different from someone who's of craft, and I think you and I are both of craft probably may be caused.

21:40 But the crafts men and women in the world, they are your artisans. They are the ones that are so deep in an area that all they want to do is work on this singular part of this really big and complex problem, and they spend their whole career trying to get depth of thought and experience. And to do that, you have to realize that the likelihood being able to become of craft and stay in a company for your whole career is probably zero, right, because part of what you have to do is you have to practice that craft in as many different contexts as you can, and so it demands that you sort of spend some time in a lot of systems in order to pick up all the nuances in different practices. And then the last sort of career that I came into contact was these people who are of cause right literally, And I think you've shifted that way. I think because of the book. I'm shifting That way is you are so committed to solving a great injustice in the world or fixing a big problem that it's all you think about, right, And if you have that career, you sort of have to move to where the action is. You have to be around the people who are doing the most progressive work. You have to be around the places that are on the edge, and that probably means you have to follow the energy. Right. So I'll give you an example. Right, Let's say that I cared I'm getting ready to to make a move down to California.

23:00 Let's say I cared about the ocean. Right. I can't do my best work on cause from southern Missouri and the Ozark Mountains, right, Right, So you have to get to a coast of body water. And that's the same with anyone who's got a big causes. You need to be in the middle of the action. And so these three types of careers. I watch people that want to try to have all three not say it's impossible, that's the purple unicorn of careers, or they have yet to define what they are and therefore they make choices on very short term, pretty meaningless criteria and they end up feeling less and less satisfied over time. Yeah. Yeah, so, Crisp, I think that helps our listeners and viewers really think about that for themselves. And you're right. I did identify myself as strongly craft which is why I read a book cover to cover and preparation for this conversation each week. That's part of my research, my ongoing study, my ongoing crafting.

23:56 Yeah, and you're right. I am absolutely think both of us are working toward that cause and that we do want to help create a world where they can more people can experience, you know, as you say, growing what you said before, growing faster than their company. Yep, I want that for people. I want that. So I love what you're doing. This is so cool, Andre, so happy to share you with people. Yeah, you're wanting to meet you too, Yeah, yeah, I mean this is the coolest thing. And I've been hosting the show for nine years and ninety eight percent of my guests come to me through a public relations person and says, do you want to have this person on my show, I wouldn't otherwise have a reason to meet you. Andre. Yeah, it's amazing, it's amazing, and now we're going to be connected forever. And I've got another fellow cause person out there in the world trying to trying to make work a little bit less work, right, absolutely, And let me just give you a fair warning. I have been known to show open people's doorsteps who've been on my show before. So just be ready, amazing, come to see me on the beach. I'll be there. I'll be there.

24:48 Okay. So we've been talking a little bit about just, you know, helping people get really clear, radically clear, if you will, about what they really want from their work experience and how they prefer to work. So so so good. But on the other side of that is you say so eloquently and I can only imagine what you saw in your career. We see organizations, companies putting their very very very best, but what they think is their best forward, their aspirational sell forward on their career websites and their interviews and everybody's but it's not real, and so they're giving this false view of what it's like to actually work here, and that's a huge part of the problem you identified your book. I completely see that. Yeah, yeah, I'll start with there's a really good piece of research out of MIT and Culture five hundred that sort of looked at this difference between aspirational values the things that leaders stand up and say or they say on their care sites, from the reality that employees feel every day. And they did it via looking at the communication of the leaders. What words did they use most often? That'll tell you what they value, and then they rank order those values, and then they compare that set of values to the experiences that employees were showcasing on employee review sites, and they found zero correlational lease. Well, amongst really good companies, the aspirational values that we talked about, we're not lived in the day to day experience and you know, employees we're having And so I think that's the first place to start is get really clear about how you work today.

26:15 How's it going to feel to the person that takes the job and lands in their job. Because right now we have three different versions of a company. We have the aspirational version that we're sharing during recruiting. You know, it's all sunshine and puppy dogs and great, you know. Days, then you have the version you see on the first day you get there. This is the onboarding orientation. You get the best leaders, you get the most impactful stories about the companies a little bit more true. But then you land in the third version of the company, which is where you're going to work every day, and it feels vastly different than what you bought. And in there, we're just destroying engagement because think about it, right, every time you've taken a job, and I'm sure you're like me, is I'm sitting there the night before, talking to my wife or my mom or my best and I'm nothing but pure excitement about exactly it, yep. And then I get there and because it doesn't live up to the expectation that was set by the company, it just chips away at my engagement every single day instead of it ticking up, which is what should be happening for people, right m hm, you know. Yeah, So two things on that I have to tell you. I am extremely proud. So I started my humano capital career almost exactly twenty five years ago in Portland sorry, Seattle, in recruiting, and I was recruiting first as a as a staffing person, and then TEA Mobile haired me as a consultant to develop the recruiting in house. And I can tell you that even today there are a couple of people that I placed there twenty five years ago there's still at T Mobile, and several of them were there for fifteen years, twenty years or whatever. And I believe that

27:48 part of that is because I did show the real story. Look, you know, we have some really really ugly warts, and you have some fantastic talents to be able to help us address those words you want to come play, you know. Yeah, And I love that, and you say that in the book so beautifully too, is if you can really show, you know, the this is who we are, and this is where we're trying to get to. It looks like you have some talents that can help us get there. Yeah. Yeah, and at least one is I love that. I wish that's what everybody did during recruiting, you know, because in the end, you want to provide a realistic job preview, right, and so what we should be doing is saying, hey, here's all the ways that work happens here. Yes, it's crazy, is it your branded crazy and exactly. If the answer is yes, then let's have the next conversation, which is, hey, here's the capabilities we're missing. If you have one of more of these capabilities, and if so, then we have the third conversation, which is, here's the three big projects you're going to do once you get here? Are these in your wheelhouse? Are these things you haven't done and you want to try? And if we just did that for people, imagine how much better the road into the company is. But what happens is two things. One is we sell aspirations, so we're disappointed there.

29:00 And secondly, as we make people really narrowed, right, So we give them this big job description, here's all the things that are part of this job, and we know the reality of lease is actually it's only two of them, right, And there's probably twenty other things you're going to have to do that we didn't tell you about. And again, it's just I've always wondered, like what do you get, Like, what do you get by telling them a story that inherently isn't a full version of the truth. And I just I want people to come more authentically. I want the talent to come more authentically. Be much more aware of what they stand for, what they want, what they're looking for. And I want companies to do the same. And I just think that conversation. I say it in the book, but it should feel less like a first date and more like a family re union. Yeah. I love that. And you have some fantastic examples in the book. Listeners and viewers, if this is what your jam is specifically on the hiring front, the recruiting and the onboarding front man Andrew, some of those examples of really how to write a job or job requisition and job description with the five point that you talked about that is that's a game changer for most companies that are doing it. Completely opposite of that, I appreciate that at least that means yeah, yeah, I mean I And so the other thing I was going to say too is I had the chance to one of my other clients here in Dallas is a sustainability consultancy and I help them hire a lot of their talent too. Same thing. You know, as we were doing their purpose and vision values sort of work, they said, gosh, we need we need some work. Can help us with that, and I thought I can. And same thing you know, let me tell you these are this is what you're walking into. This is where

30:30 we have struggles. This is where you know it's going to get kind of gets a little ugly over here, you know. And I it was so cool, and the founder of the organization was just it was delightful to work with. But anyway, anyhow, I want to stay there for a second because anymore, like people are looking for three things out of their companies. One is I want to know I'm going to do meaningful work. Absolutely, I want the job just to matter. Yeah, right. Secondly is I want authenticity. I don't need you to be perfect. I'm not perfect, right, I don't need you to be perfect, and I don't want you to ask me to be perfect. Right, So that whole idea of a five scale on performance, it's like nobody's perfect, so let's just start there.

31:11 And I think lastly is that I'm looking for flexibility and not in the ways that we're currently providing. It's not about how many days in the office. It's about providing flexibility in the ways that we can to allow me to move effectively through the system and regain my energy when I need to over time, And I think if we could just simplify the conversation, say hey, let's start building for that. It's a lot of work on hr to redo these systems, but it's going to provide what you just talked about, which is you're going to get talent. It's going to stay. I believe in the twenty year career. I don't think it's gone. I think we built these systems people want to stay because we inherently want community. The one thing we don't have right now is we're losing our communities, and I think companies could be the place where that could happen a little bit more for people than it does today. Well, we've got to keep reiterating this stuff completely with you, and I want to talk about some of those other things that you have, especially around some of your buffers. That's really interesting stuff, so to help kind of ease that. But let's grab our last break before we get there. Got it. I'm your host, doctor Elise Cortez. We've been on the air with doctor Andre Martin. He's the author of Wrongfoot, Right Fit. We've been talking a bit about the ways that individuals can start to really get clear about what they want and for companies to be clear, more transparent and genuine about what they want and who they are say with this will be right back for more. Doctor release Cortez is a management consultant specializing

32:46 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 infused cultures that elevate fulfillment, performance, and commitment within the workforce. To learn more or to invite Elise 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 to open a conversation with Elise, send an email to Elise A. LISEE at elisecortes dot com. Now back to working on Purpose. Thanks for staining Welson, Welcome back to working on Purpose. I'm your host, doctor Elise Cortes. I mentioned in the last break about My Last Boy that came out in March of twenty twenty three, the Great Revitalization. What I did for you is I built you a three page assessment and organizational best practices assessment to see the extent to which your organization is actually meeting the centers of today's discerning workforce. So you can find it at gustodashnow dot com if you are just joining us. My guest is doctor Andre Martin. He's an entrepreneur, operating advisor, board member, organizational psychologist, and coach to top founders and C suite executives. He has held key C level of leadership roles dedicated to talent, employee engagement, leadership, development and culture and some of the biggest consumer brands including Disney, Mars Incorporated, Nike, Target, and Google.

34:21 So I would just I think I might just call that an over at cheat. Andre, while we're while we're, while we're you know, bucketing things, I might just call that an over achiever. But I was. I was profoundly lucky and so filled with gratitude to be able to see, you know, just into some of these revered brands and companies struggling to continue to be great as they drive growth. So it's just it was an honor to be a part of all of them. And you know, it's such a such an amazing place to be considered. And I came from a tiny little town in the middle of nowhere. So it was it's been a blast. I'm so I'm super lucky. It's so wonderful. Now do you know who Aaron Hurst is? M hm Okay. So when I was doing his purpose stuff, go through his Purpose conferences and things like that, I met some people from Mars. Yeah, and I mean I was so impressed. I forget what year this was, twenty eighteen maybe anyway, So, yes, yes, you've been blessed. But let's just there's also a component of what you did to make all that happen too, And I get that part of being humble, but I can I can brag on you. Okay. So I thought this idea of buffers where it was quite interesting you talk about them, you know, buffers as vital tools of sustaining right foot if you have it, and managing wrongfit when you don't. I thought that was just really really interesting from an organizational vantage point. So I wanted to talk about a few of the inspirational buffers because of course a lot of them are smack over right in my lane. Starting with of course, you know, the authentic connection to purpose or cause within the organization. So could you just speak a little bit to some of these buffers for us, I'd be glad to and

35:51 I want to start at least just by saying, you know, they originated from the conversations with the interviewees saying, hey, we've all been there, if you could take yourself back, how could you have made those experiences just a little bit better interesting? And it really came from that conversation, which was, you know, these inspirational buffers are things that we can do. And I think the important part of this is is, Hey, it's not just up to the company to change, right. No place is a perfect fit. You're always going to face times in a career where it's going to be this ekg readout it's going to be really great and it's going to be really hard in the hard times. Instead of jumping ship and going to the greener grass, although I don't think it's out there, how can we buffer against this? And purpose is a big one, right, One of the fundamental questions every great company answers is why is the world better with us in it? Yep? And the unfortunate thing is, day to day we fail on many accounts to connect ourselves back to that, and so I'm just like, hey, I'm like to start every day, which simply asking this question of why is the world better with the company and I'm working in, what are we about, what are we trying to do? What's the injustice?

36:58 What's the opportunity we're looking at? And that alone is going to give your day a little bit more intention. It's the equivalent of the janitor who worked for NASA said, Hey, I'm not sweeping floors, right, I'm putting people on the moon, right. And that's what purpose does. But we have to connect to it more often than we do, you know. I think a couple of that also stood, you know, really tall for me was you have to make every day an opportunity to learn. One of my first jobs at Disney when I first got there, I struggled being in this big company for the first time, you know, working in Florida and trying to figure out the system. And one of my mentors on a day that was really a tough one for me. I remember, I was sitting in my car in the parking lot. I called him, like, Carl, I don't think I can do it, and he literally said one sentence to me that stayed with me the rest of my career is like, if you can be a success there in this moment where it's really hard, you're going to be a success anywhere you go. And so this idea of realizing, and this is to everybody that's listening, life is literally the greatest classroom on earth. You don't need to take a development program. You've got so much fodder. And if we walk in not as a victim, if we walk in not as an apathetic, you know, sort of tired employee, but we walk in saying, hey, like this day, this moment, this idea, this is a chance for me to learn and grow. That honestly does change the orientation. And then the last one for me is always you've got to keep a legitimate relationship with time. Yes, that was so powerful

38:30 what you write in there, that was so powerful. Yeah, And you and I both know this, right, I mean, I think we probably both in jobs where you become a professional meeting attendee or you're on zooms from eight in the morning until ten at night. And it's like, when we lose our relationship with time, two things happen to us. One is our company is going to take as much as we're willing to give. It's just how companies are created. It's okay, it's not evil, it's just, hey, if you're willing to give me the time, I've got plenty of work to get done, right. And if we don't set that boundary, no one's going to set that boundary for us. And the second thing is is the debt that we pay for not keeping a boundary on work is actually all the things that we say matter to us anyway. Right. We lose our wives, we lose our best friends, we lose our hobbies, we lose our connection to our home, and it's like that's fuel. Like if life's magic at home, hard things at work are a lot easier to handle.

39:27 And so just keep that in mind as you think about buffering against hard times. It's not about working More's actually about working the same amount you're working today, just in maybe a different way. What I love about this part of the conversation Andrena, again, I think you and I are quite aligned on this is what you're really speaking to is just how much empowerment or how much enablement and empowerment that people individually have for themselves to be able to create the experience that they actually want, and I want to emphasize that. So it's not you know, the company won't let me do this, I don't. There is so much you can do to be able to improve the quality of your experience at work and what your contribution is. And that's what I know I both of us want to celebrate. So I want to emphasize that point, and I want to stay there for a second, because there's two things in my life that have been huge contributors to you know, just the career being able to have. One is I tried to always walk into the day with an intention, right, like, what was this day supposed to give to me? Regardless of whether or not it did, I had a plan, right, And then every meeting. I tried to walk in every meeting saying, Hey, what's this meeting supposed to provide for me? So I can provide something to the company. And the other one is attention, Right. I always tried to pay attention to the places and spaces where there was opportunity, even in the hardest of times. Right. And it's not toxic positivity. It's actually saying, hey, there's a wide amount of information available to you in the world, right, Right, And if you choose

41:01 to point your attention towards a certain question, a certain feeling, you're just going to get more of it. Right. If I want to say this company is bad, I can find a million reasons why it's bad. If I want to say, hey, this company is a place I can learn, it changes the orientation the way that the information comes at me. And so those two ideas of attention and intention are really sort of fundamental to me as we think about it, and I think, you know, we'll get to the relational buffers. But one of them that is just dead center of that idea is this idea that you make your manager. Oh and I love that. We're going to talk about that. I love that absolutely jamming on that. Yeah, that one. I mean, it was a big one for me too, because I hear every day, you know, in the data, we talk about seventy percent of our engagements due to our manager.

41:45 Managers are burnout, most of them are under trained. And I'm like, I'm like, there's two realities on what everyone to hear from me, and I think you'll back these up. The first one is, as you move up in an organization, you are less and less prepared for the job you're getting ready to do, right, You just are. You're inherently getting these bigger, more complex jobs that you've never done before, and so you're not on your right foot, right, you're not on stable ground. And the second thing that's true is as you progress through an organization, you get less and less feedback. Let mephrase that you get less and less real feedback, right, And so what I always tell people is every leader in every company is starved for feedback. And so the simplest thing you can do at lease is make a list of the top ten qualities of the best leaders you've ever had and carry it in your back pocket, right, look at it every day, and then anytime one of your leaders does one of those things, as soon as humanly possible, stop them say hey, boss, I love that you open this meeting with an inspiration dose. It actually made me feel really connected to the company and changed my orientation to a really hard day.

42:52 Thank you. And you know what's funny about a lease is two things are going to happen, yep. One is you're going to feel just a little bit better by saying that out loud. And secondly, that manager the next time they open the meeting. Guess what they're gonna do. They're going to do that exact same behavior. Again, the inspiration dose is coming out. It's coming out, and you can train your manager, right. And I just I see so many people feel like they don't have a voice, and it's like feedback's the greatest tool on earth, is the most powerful thing you have, and nobody turns down a compliment. Yeah, I thought, I think that's really really powerful. Listeners and viewers think about that. I mean, if you don't like your boss, you can you can shape him or her to a better future. And and then there is so much power in that. So again, there are so many things Andre that iligned with you on that I that I you know, we're championing the same cause here.

43:44 And yeah, you've just said it's so much more clearer and crisper than I have. Though I don't believe that for a second. I don't believe that for a second. I'm just maybe saying it in a little bit different way. How about that? Well maybe, But so I'll just quickly say, because there's two of the things I want to cover up before we have to go leave for this conversation. But I love the idea of you know, you talk about this notion of meaningful mentors, and you talk about how organizations are well served to create a mentorship program and teach both parties what's involved and see if they're the right fit. But why because the mentors then have more skin in the game and feel that relational component they're giving something. The people that are being mentored feel that. And I'm a big believer in mentors too, so I just wanted to echo that as one of your relational buffers that you have in there too. Yeah, one percent, and you said most of what's there. You know, there's two things. There's many different kinds of mentors. Right. There's mentors that can teach us about how a company works. Those are our people who are of a company. There's mentors who are just unbelievable their craft. Right. There's mentors that are great storytellers.

44:49 There's mentors that are great at the financial elements of business. And I think first we have to do is we have to think about where do I want to get mentor that is, where do I want to learn somebody else's lessons of experience. We often look at mentorship as I just want to be you know, mentored by the highest most successful leader in the world, Like, that's probably not going to serve you, right, So if you want to get mentored, to be really clear about what you're looking for, because that helps somebody know how to lean in. I think secondly is there's a lot of people who just really aren't good mentors, right right. I mean, mentorship is is something that is is a fine sort of tuned skill, and I think we have to start training people on how to be a good mentor.

45:30 And also just the reality of like I can't be your mentor for the rest of your life, right right, right, but I can be this mentor in this moment with this question, and that can just be enough and setting that expectation really well. Otherwise, you know, you just you collect one hundred mentors over time and that's your whole week. Right. So I think recognizing how and where we can mentor and giving people the skill to be great in that relationship is vital to making it work. Love that two things, if we can squeeze them in. I love this whole idea of the rise of the team and really really creating an organization around that concept would be so powerful unleashing so much so if you can speak a little bit to this notion of how we can really ride that wave of rising the team member, this one I've been dumbfounded by my entire career, right, So, you know, we talk a lot about training managers to be great team leaders, and I've always come from a place I'm like, Hey, the truth is is you could take the best manager in the world and if you put them with you know, a group of prisoners at Alcatraz. I don't care how good they are, They're probably not forming a great team. Right. But here's the deal is that everybody in the organization has one fundamental thing in common, from the CEO all the way down to the next person that's going to join the company for the first time, and that is that we're all going to be members of a team. And if we understood fundamentally how teaming works, if we knew what it meant to be a great team member to actually create a space where the sum is bigger than the parts, and I knew

47:04 that I had an active role in that, Yeah, that just changes the entire dynamic. Instead of me sitting in the seat expecting someone else to make this a good meeting. Everybody that sits down understands that the success meeting is fundamentally about their skill and being a great team member. It would just change the game. And so I've always wanted to say, let's stop training team leaders right and let's start training everyone to take the seat in the right way as a team member and do your job on elevating all of us. I love that. I'm in. Let's do it all right, Let's do it. Okay, one last thing really quick. I can't close the show without you talking about this. So I think this is so amazing that you have some stats in the book here about how organizations. Here it is, I've got it over here. There was a study that PwC put out and they found they looked at five hundred listed from private companies. Fifty four percent have a defined and clear rel ofvance purpose, but only thirteen percent and publicly disclose how purpose is embedded in their cultural and operating models. So that's that deficit, that purpose gap. So it's one thing to declare a purpose, but operationalizing it is something totally different that most organizations are not doing. No, they're not. And here's what it comes down to is you know we've mistaken purpose for again being a giant marketing campaign. Ye right. And actually, one of the things we fundamentally have to realize about business now and every day moving forward, is that the cycles of re recruitment have radically sped up.

48:34 It used to be back in the day, like when we both start our career, like you could take a job, pick up your computer, do a little onboarding, and then they could kind of let you go just do your thing. Right now because everyone's got this fomo, everyone's infinitely browsing, we have to re recruit people every single day back to the company. As a leader, there's four fundamental questions you have to answer for your people every day you bump into them. First one is why is the world better with our company in it? That's purpose right. Second one is how do we make money or have impact? That's do I know how I fit in the context the way this thing actually operates. Third one is how do we do work right? And the last one is what's my promise to you? My unwavering promise to you for all the effort that you're going to put forth to make us better? What am I giving you in return? And I'm like if people know the answers of those four questions and they authentically feel them, nobody's going anywhere, right, right, and so on that note, recruit more often. Okay, sounds good. On the note we have to close, I didn't. I just couldn't let you go without that. I'm so happy to have you on the show and to know you. Thank you for coming on. Really appreciate your work and who you are in the world.

49:45 Same to you, a lease, thanks for having me, and let's keep making work better. Absolutely, listeners and viewers, you are going to want to follow this man to learn more about him, so the best thing you should do is check out his website. Start at wrongfitrightfit dot com. It's the best place to start. You can also find him on LinkedIn as well. Last week, you missed the live show, you can always catch it be a recorded podcast. We were on the doctor Naha Sanguan of Intuitive Intelligence. Having the experienced burnout at the tender age of thirty three. As an internal medicine pre physician, she has spent the last twenty years delving into the root causes of stress and miscommunication and exhaustion. We talked about her latest book, Powered by me from burned out to fully charged in work and in life. Next week, we'll be on air with Kevin Kelly talking about his new book Irreplaceable, How to create extraordinary places that bring people together. See you there and remembered. Work is one of the best adventures and means of realizing our potential and making the impact we crave, So let's work on Purpose.

50:43 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.