To Improve the Quality of Your Life, Relationships and Results, All You Need is “L.O.V.E.”

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 for 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 Release Cortez. Welcome back to the Working and Purpose Program. Thanks doing again and again this week. It's great to have you. This show has been on air since February of twenty fifteen. It is my pride and joy.

1:11 I'm your host, doctor Elise core Test, joining you live from Dallas home base for me. If we have not met, chat and you don't know me. I'm a management consultant, organizational logo therapist, speaker and author. My team and I at Gusto Now provide a system to enable companies to enliven and fortify their culture and operations by articulating their purpose and building inspirational leaders and cultures activated by meaning, purpose and shared learning. The system turns your company from a flatline EKG to a vibrant destination workplace where engagement, performance and retention are measurably elevated. You can learn more about us and we can work together at eliscoretest dot com and gustodashnow dot com. Now getting into today's program with us is Talia Fox. She's the CEO of Kusai Global, Inc. Which helps her clients to maximize human potential by leveraging strategic intelligence and helps individuals and organizations foster conected cultures and promote conscious equity. She's the author of the Power of Conscious Connection for habits to transform how you live and lead, which we'll be talking about today. She's Joys today just outside of Washington, d C.

2:12 Tell you, welcome to working on Purpose. So great to be here, Ha Lise, it is so great to have you. As we were saying before we got on air together, you know, one of the greatest things about hosting the show is because most of my guests come through public relations people, I meet people I wouldn't otherwise get to meet, including you. So I'm delighted to meet you. As you know, I've read your book cover to cover and because I know you better than maybe our listeners and guests do so far, would you just introduce yourself and say a little bit about where this beautiful love system that you created came from. Absolutely. So, I've been doing this work for almost twenty years. And what I mean by this work is I'm an executive leadership strategist, so I've been working with organizations and my journey for this book started as a mom. That was I became a single mom. I wanted to lose weight, I wanted to achieve a lot. I was studying psychology and I said, there's got to be a hack for our lives. So this book is really this combination of what I learned as a therapist, actually looking at cognitive behavioralism, which is how do you take your thinking and impact your behavior. I also think about the existential questions of what is this life about? And then combining that with the leadership skills that you need to achieve something. I feel like I'm onto something here.

3:28 At least I'm hacking our lives to figure out how to both be happy I love the word vibrant and excited, but also to achieve really important things. So this journey has been quite a ride, and in the book, I've tried to captivate that and to share what I know with the world. And you did it beautifully. As as I was saying to you, I really appreciate that you really let us into your life and your connection with your father and just some of those beautiful memories and the things that he taught you along the way that if you've infused into your life and your work too, it's really beautiful. Thank you so much. You're welcome. So as I want to do, I like to read sometimes direct passages from the book just because it's so beautiful how you rendered this, and then I'll ask you to comment on it. So you say toward the beginning of the book, you say, quote our behavior and habits can turn us into zombies, ignoring life, rejecting uniqueness, defying problem or denying problems, and forgetting to look up and gain clarity about how we choose to live. The nightmare is real when we are not conscious and connected to something bigger. Yet, as with all nightmares, you can wake up with a little shift, You can gasp back into the light to realize that you aren't really in danger. You just need to experience more conscious connection. And obviously to me, that's the promise of your whole book and your system. So I mean, that's gorgeous. That is just a gorgeous, compelling grab you in around your neck passage, Dahlia, thank you. Yeah, you know, we are in a very interesting time, and I think we've been in this time for several years where it just feels like we're not listening to each other. It feels like a nightmare.

5:00 People feel disconnected. One of the interesting things about working in with large corporations and businesses is I was just astonished at how much therapy is needed, how anxious people are, how sad this us, and we don't have tools. I think one of the issues that we're having in this world is that we think that we should know what to do, and we think that it's intuitive. So the promise of the book is definitely we don't have to choose this nightmare. There are some skills and there are some habits that we can practice that allow us to be present, to be happy, and to achieve some really great things. I love the words that we're used in the beginning of this podcast. To elevate humanity is really really critical here. Agreed.

5:47 You know, it's so interesting. There's some beautiful, nice overlap and congruence with our work. You use the word zombies. I use the phrase walking debt in my first book, and that really came to be when I'd be asking audiences or speaking audiences and I would pose the question what are you passionate about? There'd be this sea of faces that were struggling looking for the answer, and they didn't know what it was. And I could tell they didn't have an answer to the question. And I have been a member of the Walking Dead, I know if I've been a card Carring member, I understand. So there's no judgment in this this is about how do we help? So I want to next if we can just kind of now lay out first, because we're going to dive into your system here, If we can just lay out your beautiful love system here, the system of habits that you've created that will help transform how we live and lead talk us through them, please absolutely. And just to add on to what you were just saying, what's so critical about passion about waking up is I'm also a strategist, so I have learned that if you have a system of being, you will have an edge and likely be the most street, strategic and smartest person in the room.

6:55 Because we are surrounded by so many zombies, so there are two to this one you'll get really happy. But the other side is it's very strategic around accomplishing great things, moving people, driving change, all of those wonderful things. In the Love system, by the way, it is by not by design that it spells out the acronym love. I actually came up with the skills first, and then it happened to reflect love, and so it was so beautiful. I pulled it together and it was like, oh, it's actually love. So the love system is a set of habits that we practice on a regular basis, and it applies to anything that you may need to accomplish. Really, if you read ten thousand hours of leadership development training and books, it would boil down to these four habits. It's lve, listen, observe, align with your values, and engage and at each of these habits is connected to a very critical leadership skills that changes everything. It's so Chris. I love it. Of course, since we've laid that out at the beginning. Now I want to spend the rest of our time together really diving into your system here and again I just think it's so accessible.

8:09 So one of the things that you bring to life here that which I think is so important. You know, just being really talking about listening consciously is so transformative. And what I always say in my programs is, you know, when you really listen to someone, you just melt them, because so seldom do they get that experience of really being listened to. And there's something you can see it when you can. You know, I've witnessed it when I've been in restaurants and out and I could see the people that are really connected powerful through listening. And so you say you go on to talk about it will feel like a magic bullet. I completely agree with that. And so you say, you know, to connect to learn to access miracles. There's a few concrete steps that you can take to actually improve your listening and your emotional intelligence. But first you tell us you have to pay attention to how we listen, and you gave us five ways that we tend to listen.

8:56 Would you walk us through those? Yes, So we have these listening personalities, and part of this is what I like to look at as a leadership strategies or what are the barriers to listening. Some of us may say listening, I've heard this before. But there's a lot of deepness to this listening thing, and we're not doing so well at it. This is what's causing the zombie effect, and this is what's actually I will tell you give me any problem that you have, and I promise you that there's some level of your listening that is impacting that problem. Finances, relationship, you're not getting up, promotion, whatever it is. There is a listening strategy that we can implement to solve those problems, and it probably starts with your personality.

9:37 So there are several different ways that we have these personalities. We have the fact hunter that means you're bias every time you listen, you're just listening for the facts. We've got the plugger. These are people that are just constantly you think, you know, you have all this knowledge and you're literally just listening so that you can uplift yourself and you can get in there and share something, all right. We have the entertainer listeners, which they're always just kind of trying to put on They want to put on it. They want to get a show actually and observe a show. So we have these very specific personalities and I go into a couple of others in the book that really determine how we listen, and it filters out probably critical information that we need not only to make some real great decisions, but critical information that we need to form a more conscious connection and a more strategic connection with the people to whom we're speaking. Mm hm, remind me what the thrill seeker listening type is about. The thrill seeker is when they're listening, they're completely bored if you're not speaking in a way that's very you know, excited, and they have to be entertained a lot of people that are thrill seeking listeners.

10:48 They probably also binge a lot on Netflix. I'm one of them. I'm aware of my desire to thrill seek, but I actually meet those needs for myself and when I'm listening, I'm really listening for that use imp priorities. So I have some listening strategies to overcome what some of the natural tendencies may be in our personality. Mm hmm. That's so gorgeous. And I know you talk about in your book as well, and I do too, But it's just the power of employing curiosity, right, being generally curious. Years ago, what not them? And I guess that was maybe five years ago. He was teaching at Southern Methodist University. I was teaching junior and senior level students communication and things like that. And also one of the courses I took I taught them was how to get and keep their first job. So the one of the things I had them doing was I had them out going to network and they were like, oh, doctor c You're not going to make us go talk to people that you that we don't know, are you?

11:41 I said, Oh, I am, I am, I'm going to quip you with the ability to go do so, and they were like, you know, it's so nervous and just the last thing they wanted to do was to talk to someone they didn't know. And I said, you have this really powerful tool, it's curiosity, and it was so great, so many of them would come back, doctor C. I mean, these amazing people, am like, isn't it amazing what happens when you actually show up and go looking for and listening to what someone might have to tell you. It's so big, you know, it's interesting. This piece isn't in the book. I probably should have added it, but there are five ways to sort of fabricate love for someone to fall in love with you. And this is even you can use this romantically or in business. One of them's eye contact another one or you know, shared values, heightened experiences. And the fourth, the fifth I won't talk about here because it's not appropriate, but the fourth is getting someone to help you. So actually listening to someone and being able to listen for advice, listen for guidance, particularly those that are starting out in their career. That is a huge strategy to be able to form a relationship where people have buy in, but it can't happen if you're not willing to listen. You know this in the in the book at least that there is a tangible dollar amount that I have seen clients lose because of their poor listening. I had the opportunity to connect someone. They wanted to go into motivational speaking, and I connected them with someone I remember that story, Go ahead, Yes, I connected them with someone that was the person

13:15 to know in this space. This person only had fifteen minutes. They went on and on and on, never asking one question, and there were so many nonverbal cues that you know the other person was getting antsy. And so at the end of this experience, I asked this person I was coaching that I took there and said, you know, how do you think it went? And they were like, it went great. And it was so interesting because he was so well intentioned, but he just basically vomited his entire resume the whole time and he didn't get any information. So he went into a meeting already knowing everything that he spent fifteen minutes sharing. So it's the portal to wisdom, and it's the key to being able to even innovate and that you know, there's another person that I hooked up with, this exact same woman, and literally they made over a million dollars in public speaking, but they spent their experience with her. They spent the entire time asking a ton of questions and listening. So I've actually seen some tangible financial, you know, disparities just based on this little, seemingly you know, simple skill of listening. That's a great example. Okay, so then let's just go ahead and top this off with the cherry, shall we, Because you provide in your book a ninety day listening challenge. What's that? So a ninety day listening challenge is a challenge of actually intentional questions and conversations. So many of us when we engage with people, we ask questions, how's the weather,

14:48 what about that sports game? And so the listening challenge is to ask people things like, what's important to you these days? What are some of your goals, what are your values? And just listen, find a little bit about people that goes beyond just some of the superficial experiences, particularly those that you're working with and people in your personal life. The other thing is listen to your mind, ask, ask yourself questions, what's important to me, what am I liking? What are my goals these days? And listen to the answers that come to you. So this listening diet will support you in gaining wisdom about people and about yourself. And that wisdom is going The reason I call it a miracles because there's this organic, natural epiphanies that happen, ideas that come to mind based on you intentionally spending ninety days gathering information and listening to people. So beautiful, talk about changing somebody's lives. All right, And with that, let's give our listeners and viewers their first break.

15:46 I'm your host, doctor Releas Cortez. We on the area with Talia Fox. She's the author of the Power of Conscious Connections for Habits to transform how you live and lead. We've been talking about the first element of her habit cycle, that is listen. After Rick, we're going to get into the powers of keen observation. Stay with this will be right back. Doctor Elise Cortes 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 Elisecortes dot com. Let's talk about how to get your employees working on purpose. This is working on Purpose with doctor Elise Cortes.

16:55 To reach our program today or to open a conversation with Elise, send an email to Alise K A. L I se at at least Coortes dot com. Now back to working on Purpose. Thankteresting with us, and welcome back to working on purpose. I'm your host, doctor release Cortes, as I too, am dedicated to helping create a world where people realize their bit to let work are led by inspirational leaders that help them find and contribute their greatness, and we do business better in the world. I keep writing books, researching and writing books. So the last one I have at came out in March of twenty twenty three. It's called The Great Revitalization, How activating meaning and purpose can radically and liven your business. And I wrote it for leaders to understand today's new playing field, which Talia, you talk about too, and then I include twenty two best projreices to be able to fold into your culture to help you achieve that. You'll learn more about this book at at Leastcortes dot com or find it on Amazon if you are just joining.

17:51 My guest is Talia Fox. She's the CEO of Kusai Global, Inc. Which helps her clients to maximize human potential by leveraging strategic intelligence and helps individuals organization's foster connected cultures and promote conscious equity. Sounds really good to me. Okay, So now that we've covered listening and really helped our listeners and viewers understand the promise of really listening, well let's not talk about observation. Yes, So the first step, of course, is working on your listening, and then after that observation is connected to something called systems thinking. I love Yes, I systems thinking. I'm obsessed with it. It's not just this idea of sitting around and looking. It's about looking for connections. So one of the connections I made early on at Least was that there's a connection between going to the gym in the morning and getting enough sleep. Right, So that's the observation to get that it's not finding the perfect diet or finding the perfect trainer. You need to go to bed, and if you drink too much caffeine and if you work too much. All of these things are actually connected to whether or not you're going to feel good and healthy. So these kinds of connections are actually more concerned about outcomes than they are about our opinions what we think should be happening. So observation is really this whole opportunity to become very strategic about how what you're choosing on a regular basis is impacting your outcomes. I just think that is so so powerful, especially when you talk

19:25 about the system's piece. I also studied that for my doctoral work as well, and just it's so when you start to recognize just you know, the beauty of the interdependence of everything around you, it's so compelling, so alluring, and as you talk about in your book, it just it elevates your consciousness, your intelligence, your connection. It's so beautiful. Thank you. Yeah, you know, And what I love about this book when I told you kind of packed a lot in a small book. But the whole idea is that you do this and you'll be so smart innovative and strategic at work. But then you're happier because you're finding all of these other ways in your life to feel great and to look up and see how interdependent we are, and it really changes everything about how we live and how we lead and how we plan and structure our world. Completely agree, Okay, so we go on extra values. That's the V in this we want. I want to first if we can you really distinguish values in your book, really specific about value. So let's maybe if you can first start there of how you're distinguishing values. Yes, so you listen, you observed, so you have all this great information and you're smart about the information. And so now we've got to say, what is this for? This is that existential question, what is this life about? What's the meaning behind it? And this is where the values comes in. So values in the book, the V represents two things. One, it does represent both your values, so those things that you say are really important to you, and it represents the value that you

20:56 place on things and other people. And so I know that we like things to be tied in the box. With the V, We've packed in all of the things that support you onlining your behavior with what matters most, which is what you care about and who and what you care about. Okay, here's the delicious crossover between what you do and what I do. So I am a logo therapist. I don't know if you know doctor Victor Frankel's work, you know he he's you know, he created from the existential psychology around logo therapy, and he talks about three principal sources meaning. Meaning is our chief source of energy in life. It's our chief source of motivation, et cetera. And there's three three principal sources. And the way that we experience meaning is along our value system. So what you find meaningful will probably be different from what I find meaningful because we have different values. But the more that we can actually live our lives around actualizing or activating those values, the more meaning we have, and therefore the more energy we have. And that's how your work and mind connect. Isn't that cool? It's so cool?

22:00 And I think that it gets tricky right in this world that we live in, because what I think is happening is that once people understand that meaning right, and I love a search for meeting right, once people understand what's important to them. Now, we have to hold ourselves accountable, but whether or not we're choosing and aligning with that importance. And what I think is happening to many of us across every aspect of our lives is we're experiencing the intention behavior gap where we intend to be a particular way. You know, I'll tell you I teach classes over the past twenty years and if you have people raise their hand, if you ask who in here is kind? You'll have a thousand people raise their hand because it stribes. Then I say, what evidence do you have that you're a kind person? What have you done in the last twenty four hours that was kind? And so what we need to do is really start to hold ourselves accountable. What are our values? But are we choosing to stay aligned and committed to those values no matter what?

23:00 And the thing about values is that we actually need them in the face of conflicts. Right, So if someone is being rude to me, that's when my kindness is most needed, not when we're in a group of people that agree with us and that are you know, from our same neighborhood rights. That's where I think the value system can really help us change the way we live in lead and get different results and relationships. And you illustrate that beautifully. Tell you in your book when you talk about meeting with the CEO who asked you'd go get a cup of coffee for him before you sit down to talk business, and you went, what do you mean you want me to get a cup of coffee? Then you've got to check yourself though, and you went, hang out, what value? What are my values here?

23:41 And you checked in with your values. Then you could sit down with him and have a really good, productive conversation about the business. And then you realigned what does that productive business relationship look like anchored in respect? And as you say in the book, once you laid it out like that for him, he went, you know, realized the error of his ways. But if you had just like gotten mad and stomped off and said, you know, you're a jerk, you wouldn't have one gotten the probably the contract to the relationship that you wanted or the results that you want you'll be able to impact that organization. So I think that is such a really compelling example and it speaks to what you say so beautifully in the book about how your your values ought to be a roadmap for your behaviors. Absolutely, you know, thanks for bringing up the coffee with the CEO. That actually was such a powerful story. Well, and people have told me, you know, for our listeners. I literally just finished a Harvard fellowship. I was growing my business. It was a huge contract, and the CEO he just took his hand and showed me away like a fly, asking me to go get him a cup of coffee. And I felt really diminished in every way. And I was raised to speak up for myself and I had to stand there and say what's important to me and what am I committed to? And then, you know, part of this is about the listening and observation. I've been trained in that over the years. So my emotional intelligence tends you. You have high emotional intelligence when you listen well and you can you can control yourself right, You can control those impulses and so really it's so hard though when

25:12 people are triggering you. I was really triggered in that moment. But the idea that at the end of it, I made a decision align with my values. I feel like there's a professional consistency that is so helpful as you move and have many different experiences with different people. Yes, and there's two other things I want to say on this topic because it's so so, so powerful, and the way that you handled yourself, because you exercise that high emotional intelligence, you were in touch with your emotions, your emotions and your values, and you knew what you were what you wanted to do. There, you were able to have an extraordinary impact. And if you hadn't been able to control your response, your reactivity, your responsibility, as we say in local therapy, then you might have had a very different result. And so in the process, what you did was you gave that CEO some very powerful, loving coaching. Yes. You know what's interesting when it comes to values, I think we either think we have to be a doormat or we have to speak up and be direct, but there is actually a more strategic way. So what I think was so important about the story, and I shared it in the book, is that I wasn't just going to let that go. I had a conversation with him and shared my perspective and why the value of respect is so important to me. And what's interesting is not only do we get the contract you ended up after that he never did anything like that again, it was ultimate respect. So I set those boundaries, but I was able to do it in a way that was definitely more strategic and

26:45 didn't create conflict. We had a conscious connection and even became later on friends as we move forward in that relationship, which is the beautiful part of getting to work with people and really mattering in their lives. To the effect too, of your capacity to speak up for yourself. I really just want to call out and celebrate the story that you share in your book about when you and your dad go into this restaurant and are denied service, and you're eight years old, and he was going to just take it on the chin and say, Okay, we'll just take our business elsewhere, and you were like, hang on a minute here, I just sort of think I have something to say. I just watched that in my mind, tell you, and I just thought, from an early age, you just understood who you were in the world and what you could do, and you understood how to speak up. And you called the manager over and said, hey, this is what's happened. And not only did they seech you, I think you say in the book they treated you to the meal. Is that right? Yeah, they camped our meal. Yeah, it's so interesting. As you bring up this story, I'm surprised that it's still it still sometimes makes me a little teary eyed, because now I think eight years old is pretty young.

27:49 And you know, the story in the book is that my father I found out later on that he was a literate for most of his life, and he has a very thick accent, and so you know, my home they called it the King's English. I was able to speak and really articulate myself, and I also grew up with a family of speakers, and my grandmother was really strong, and my father was in a situation where he was a wonderful, brilliant but there were some things about him that people did not fully respect. He would be ignored, and yeah, they completely comped our meal. But I realized this is kind of this work. I came by honestly because my dad felt ashamed his eight year old having to stick up for him, and then the hostess that denied a service felt sad and embarrassed, and so I felt I did such a good thing. And I remember, at that very young age that I said, I want to do something where we all can get some relief right. I think we're all making decisions. Some of them are good, some of them are not. We get mad at each other, we hold grudges, but I really would love a world where we can really thrive, acknowledge our mistakes, and engage in consistent behaviors that connect us and not divide us. I'm with you. I'm with you.

29:03 Let's go on the road together. So much fun. Let's do it. Okay. So, now we've been talking about values and what you just said there about let's, you know, come together and connect. I want to know if we can bring that over to what you talk about in terms of cultural competence. I just I'm so and we talked about it before we began the show. The world is so neat in need of connection and stop the divisiveness and looking for what's right and good and other people and how we can connect with them. And so you have something in your book, a strategy that you call the Connection Accelerator Method. Can you talk a lot about that. That sounds amazing with regard to cultural competence. Yeah, so it's the CAM method. So cultural competence is your willingness to adapt your behavior to differences and to other people so many of us are in these silos, and we're on this zombie routine, and we're really drawn to people that are us like us, and drawn to ideas and thinking that matches our own thinking. So if we're going to drive change and thrive and even just have fun in the world, it's important to develop skills that allow us to be more comfortable about adapting who we are and how we behave to differences. So this CAM method is a process in which you intentionally expose yourself to different things. And I do it in a really fun way. I will go to a movie theater and watch a movie that I typically would not watch or want to watch, and I've just been able to learn so many different things. I will read

30:36 a book by an author that maybe I wouldn't normally read, And so I always ask myself, am I being drawn to things that are in my lane? How do I expand my thinking? There's a lot of research on creativity and innovation. Not only will this CAM this accelerator method help you be more culturally competent, it also will trigger level of innovation because the more exposure you have to various things and ways of thinking, the sharper your brain is so everything that I talk about the book. It's that threefold of meaning in life, how you can you know, adjust and be happier. But then also there's a lot of strategy behind it to achieve more and to do all the things that I know everyone is interested in in their own own lives and their own careers. I think that's brilliant you're reminding me, Talia. I'm working with an organization and developing their leadership team as well, and one of the leaders on the team told me something very interesting about his approach to learning, which speaks to what you're talking about. He says that he reads, forget how many books a year, I think it's thirty books a year, but he intentionally reads them across the different genres, and because he's trying to, you know, become well versed, you know, whether it's you know, politics or economics. He says, you know, the hardest one, the hardest genre for me to read is romance. I don't want to read romance.

31:53 But I just think that is so brilliant that he intentionally reads across the genres thirty books, especially because he doesn't want to read most of those genres. So to your point. It's so so smart. It is my favorite thing. So the thing I just got back from Elisa is I was in the Swiss Alps with people from literally ten different countries, and it was exhilarating. Here we are hiking, and I couldn't believe it how much we had in common. And I just learned so much about practices and thinking. And many of us have read some of the same books, but I learned some new books. And so in my life that is one of my biggest strategies. I'm very intentional about exposing myself to varat to so many different things, not just for work and for business to understand people, but for the joy of it all. I agree. I agree, travel is amazing, right, and it's like got to be the best drug out there, the best drug. All right, let's grab it our last break here, I'm your host, doctor Elese Cortez. We've been on the air with Talia Fox.

32:53 She's the author of the Power of Conscious Connection for Habits to transform how you live and lead. We've been talking about her full system of habits here. We covered listening, observing, and values. After the rik, we're going to get into engage. Stay with this will be right back. Doctor Elise Cortes 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 elisecortes dot com. Let's talk about how to get your employees working on purpose. This is working on Purpose with doctor Elise Cortes.

34:00 To reach our program today or to open a conversation with Elise, send an email to a lease a li se at elisecortes dot com. Now back to working on purpose. Thanks staying with us, and welcome back to working on Purpose. I'm your host, doctor release Cortes. I mentioned to you in our last break that I just want to put out another book, The Great Revitalization. I also wanted you to know that I created an assessment. It's a three page assessment that you can actually download from my website to see to what grade you actually have to the extend that you're actually meeting today's workforce needs. And interest. It's at both alascortest dot com and gustodashnow dot com if you are just joining us now. My guest is Talia Fox. She's the CEO of Kusai Global, Inc. Which helps her clients to maximize human potential by leveraging strategic intelligence and helps individuals and organizations foster connected cultures promote conscious equity. So, all right, tell you for this last bit here, I wanted to get a little bit further into the engagement before we do.

35:05 I really want a presence, just something really beautiful about your book, Just again the promise of the structure here and this idea of how love really harnesses the power to engage in the world, your family, your community, and your work. I think what I know from my work is that people crave connection. They want to know they matter, they want to know that their lives are worthwhile. And so I really see your system as a way to really catalyze, vitalize and activate that. So I just want to again speak to the promise of your book before we get into the engage part. Thank you so much. Yeah, you know, it's it's interesting because some of us also are looking for love in all the wrong places right. We want to feel that we matter. We want to align with our values. We really want to be happy. We want to make great choices that reed contentment you know there. We want connection. The thing is we may not be able to get that from everyone in the world because we are living among unfortunately zombies, people that aren't looking up. And so with this system, the love system, not only is it a way to step up and really be the leader of connection. If you are the model of how we can listen, how we can observe, how we can align with our values and engage, you begin to be the accelerator and the exponential impact on other people, and in turn you will get that love and get your needs met. But if we're constantly trying to get other people to give it to us, we're

36:35 off the mark. So we've got to make sure that we're finding our people and our clusters to be able to love without the need for other people to be in agreement or to do the same things, completely agree, completely align on that. Okay, So now let's hit the last habit here around engaging. And I really appreciate that a part of what you talk about here in which we hit upon a little bit when we were talking about observation, but you talk about how engaging includes developing the capacity for asking really good, provocative questions. And I completely agree with you that the quality of your questions, not the quality of your answers, as you're distinguished in the book, is really critical. So talk to us a little bit about engaging and developing this capacity to be provocative in our questions. Yes, so you've listened, you observed, You've got this great information, you know what's important to you.

37:27 So now it's time to go out into the world and connect. And so the skill that we need is to increase our capacity to have great social skills and to communicate effectively. Part of that communication is how do you ask questions that give you more information, that engage people, and that create environments and communities where we are really connecting in a conscious way. Right, So asking questions like you know, what's happening here, what's not happening here? Asking questions what are the opportunities that we have together, what are the key goals? There are so many different things that we can ask that go beyond just those surface questions that allow us to engage. The key here is that we need to be able to practice and plan how we communicate. And many of us communicate just like with the listening, we just have a habit of how we communicate. We don't think about our pauses, We don't have a structure in the book, I give you an outline and questions to ask. We just kind of go out and we just wing it. It's fine to have those moments, but we want to take our listening, our observations, and our values to actually develop a communication strategy that's engaging, and our connections will be more meaningful and our impact will be more meaningful. Yes, And I want to take it one step further because I think this is so great for anybody that's listening who is a leader or aspiring to be a leader. And what you talk about here with regard to asking the right questions is you talk

39:00 about how great leaders make rich connections by being great listeners and curious observers, honing their community and inspiring action. But they when they ask the right questions of their team, they enroll the team because they're asking them for their ideas. They're not just telling them what to do, which is not something that motivates or inspires people. And so that ability to ask those kind of questions and really get people involved and committed and on board is so so powerful. Absolutely, I call it. You know, I'm looking at the book here now. I really have enjoyed writing this book and just pulling it together. But I'm thinking about we have a chapter called the Million Dollar Leader, and in that chapter it's literally about do you ask the question, how can we leverage our collective skills? What are we willing to do to reach this goal?

39:52 What are we not willing to do to reach this goal? How do we encourage innovative and creative thinking. I think sometimes we want to get straight to the answers, but we forget that there is a lot of wisdom and connection in the journey right to the end of the We just want to hop to it. Give me your information, give me your brief, But have you asked the right questions and have you really done an assessment as to where people are in terms of how motivated they are, how much energy they have, and what. I find that when you stop to ask these kinds of provocative questions, the path and the strategy changes because you know a little bit more about how to go about solving some pretty big issues that lots of organizations have so so so powerful. And the other thing that we know, of course, this show has been on air for almost nine years, so I've had a lot of people coming on and talking about the how leadership is evolving, and what we definitely know is that leaders can't do it alone. The world is way too complex. They need to solicit the input, the ideas, that commitment of everybody on the team. And to what you're describing as a beautiful way to do that, Yeah, I mean, I think the bottom line is what do you do when you don't know what to do?

41:04 Right? And you ask questions? And then the other thing about these provocative questions is that many of us are still relying on outdated information and so we're making a lot of assumptions and until the question has been asked, it's an assumption until the question has been asked, and so many people it's funny. I talk to clients all the time. This is something I'm going to say. I would say off record, but it's on record. The clients are going to hear this. At this point, many of my clients give me a whole, you know, a whole mouthful about their interpretation or assumptions about the organization. And I secretly tell my team take it all with a grain of salt, because they haven't asked the questions. I really dig in to see where that information's coming from. And sometimes it's just outdated rumors that have been going around in an organization for many years, and there's not a lot of teeth in it. They're just opinions. And so asking these questions really helps us get to reality and gets the truth so that our strategies will actually work so good and we all need this kind of help. And the other thing I want to distinguish about your system that is will be interesting in juxtaposition against the next week's show with Ed Hess. He's talking about really developing your person so that you can make it in today's world of smart technology and remain employable, desirable in the world of work, et cetera. And one of those ways, of course, is to become more human, right and to become you know, are more emotionally intelligent, which is a part of what you're talking about as well. So there's a real there's real utility in this.

42:37 It used to be when I first started doing this. Maybe you too is what we're talking about in many ways would be considered what we used to be called soft skills and those things that we don't talk about that at all anymore. We never refer to the stuff as soft skills anymore. In fact, I could almost say that what you and I teaches the hard skills of actually making in today's world today. Yeah, well, you know, it's interesting because technology is constantly changing and because nobody is as smart as we once were because we don't know what's going to happen tomorrow. These skills of connection are really going to be the only thing that matters because the ability to predict the future has been hindered. So you were really smart because you have all this experience and so you really could do a whole lot. But now the whole game has changed. We don't know next week what's going to happen, and so we need that leader that it's the I kind of start to dance when I do this, but it's the it's the foundation of being agile.

43:37 The agility is critical, and the human piece of us is what allows that agility completely completely align with you on that. Yeah, one of the things that you did in the book just a beginning that I thought was so powerful, and I want you to kind of talk about this here for our listeners of yours who haven't seen this, is you have developed this powerful reframing exercise that you teach and conducting your workshops. And i'll quote from your book, you say the shift that you're trying to help people with. The shift is the art of reframing our perspective to get the energy we need to engage practice speaking about your life in terms of the things you love, things that make you happy, and things that promote your values rather than your misfortunes. So you have this really powerful exercise that you take people through on stage. Can you share that? Yes, So, just to give some context, the reason I created the art of the shift is because adults actually are very sensitive, and I think we get sad and our feelings get hurt pretty easily, and we can get very discouraged. And I don't think that we like to talk about how much that discouragement and the sadness and the disappointment impacts are the way that we show up and the decisions that we make at work and in our lives. We kind of have this thing. You're an adult, so you're supposed to be. You're a professional, you've been doing this for a long time, and so you're just supposed to deal with it. But people aren't dealing with it as well as one might think. So the art of the shift is based on the principle that if you are energized and you're feeling

45:07 good, and you have a different way of perceiving your life and your experience, that you are going to engage in a way that is totally energized and much more connected. And so what this is, I take people up on stage. It's very popular and I love it. I actually have people that call me offline saying can I have a shift? I just need a shift, Please give me a shift. I actually taught my sister how to do this because I was like, someone needs to shift me, so she shifts me sometimes. But what this is is if you share with me your three most important values, that's all I need to know, and then tell me a challenge that you are experiencing. I will almost kind of like that movie Freaky Friday, jump into your head and give you a line of thinking that supports feeling better, feeling more energized, and even support or it's your brain and getting online that frontal cortex and probably have talked about that on the show, so you're not having the amignal attack getting that frontal cortex online so that you can begin to think strategically and clearly about what your next steps can be.

46:15 And I've actually seen miracles with this shift. I've been doing it maybe for fifteen years, and it is one of my favorite tools that I use with leaders and people actually all all over the world. I do something within an identity shift too, that's really really powerful. So I really really relate to that. It's just so so and people can't necessarily do this by themselves. They need a little bit of you know, tell you drop in or divine drop in. So incredible. All right, we're almost out of time, but I do want to give you just an opportunity just to if you can share or say in about a minute maybe or a minute and a half, I want to just let our listeners and viewers understand, you know, what your work looks like. So when you go into an organization, you know, can give us an example of how what we're what was the organization up against, what are they trying to accomplish, and how did working with you and your team actually make a difference. So we have helped transform really complex, big organizations. From a consulting side, we go in and we do listening sessions. We observe what's really happening, we see what the values are, and then we engage the entire organization in change. And so many of our organizations have dealt with a lot of diversity, equity and inclusion issues.

47:24 Many of our organizations have dealt with actually hemorrhaging people and leaders. And so this one particular organization that we use the love system around and developed trainings. Before they had a ton of conflict. People were quitting, they weren't sure what was going on. After they developed communities of practice, people were signed up and had waiting lists to engage in learning experiences. There was literally someone that wrote a letter saying that if she worked at the organization for thirty years and she was on her way to quitting, and she's never been happier than than the last six weeks. And it was literally doing I call it a culture shot of love right going in and getting to the root of what matters for people and consciously connecting people, and it really drives outcomes and drives results really beautiful work. Okay, so we have managed to get to the end of the show already. You know, the show is listening by people around the world who care about elevating the workplace, elevating the experience of work, creating those cultures where people are led by inspirational leaders we do business and betters in the world. What would you like to leave them with. I'd like to leave you with this idea that happiness and fun absolutely matter, and for all of us that are dedicating our lives to helping other people, that it really starts with us making sure that you're shifted and you're ready so that you can see the opportunities that lie in our experiences with other people. So starting with us, Elise, you and I making sure we're right, and

48:57 then we can elevate humanity really important. I'm with you, Talia. I'm so grateful our pass across. I loved your book. Thank you for coming on working on purpose to share your beautiful perspective, ideas and your foe habits of love. Thank you so much, Talia. I'm going to grab your book to Elise. I'm so excited to know you. Likewise, likewise, and listeners of viewers are going to want to learn more about this woman, Talia Fox, and the work she and her team do at Kusai. You also want to check out her book, The Power of Conscious Connection. You can start just by going to her website. It's Kusai Training. Let me spell that for you. It's Kusi Training Kusi training dot com. Last week, give you missed the live show you can always catch to be a recorded podcast. We were on the here with Michael Levy, who's the CEO of work Proud and online engagement and recognition platform. We talked about the importance and ways companies can recognize the contributions of their people and how doing so activates that their sense of belonging and desire to contribute. Next week will be on the air with Ed has talking about his latest book, Own Your Work Journey, A path to meaningful work and happiness in the age of smart technology and radical change. See you there. Remember work as one of the best adventures and means of realizing our potential and 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 CY. Together, we'll create a world where business operates conscientiously.

50:23 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.