If you want your people to work harder, try helping them feel more welcome.

You know, the exact opposite of how most companies feel when you step through the doors. So many offices are sterile, inhuman habitats, designed to crush souls while cranking up productivity.

But here’s the rub: crushed souls won’t stay productive for very long. You can squeeze so much blood from a stone until that stone is so tired and pissed off it decides to roll itself right out the door and write a zero star Glassdoor review.

What if people at your company felt like someone walking into a Disney Resort? Or The Cosmopolitan in Vegas? Or the Rupp Arena at the University of Kentucky for a game against Louisville?

These are the places where Taylor Scott honed his hospitality craft. Working at Disney and Cosmopolitan and growing up in Kentucky as a rabid basketball fan and athlete. Now, he helps others bring that same level of welcome into their own businesses.

What changes when you lead with hospitality and people actually feel welcome? Everything.

🐱 People will go all in to support your mission

🐱 People feel comfortable sharing more of their strengths and passions

🐱 People feel inspired to push beyond their self-imposed limits

🐱 People start bringing that hospitality to their own teams and to your customers

That’s how you get to real, lasting productivity. And that’s how you create workplaces the light people up like the Magic Kingdom or the chandeliers at Cosmo.

You’ll feel lit up after listening to Taylor, I guarantee it.

——

Welcome to the DesuckifyWork podcast. The show where we cut through the BS and find ways to make work more fun, more human and less ridiculous. All of which makes your business more profitable, by the way.

(If you enjoy this episode, please like, share, rate, review or subscribe to the podcast.)

Let the desuckifying begin.

——

You can follow Taylor on LinkedIn. And check out his site at leadwithhospitality.com where you can learn more about his awesome work and his eye opening books.

If you enjoyed the conversation and would like to help your teams bring their absolute best to work, I invite you to schedule a free half-hour discovery session. Type “meow” in the calendar invite and I’ll also send you a free DesuckifyWork® t-shirt!

Bye, everyone!

Bonus question from Taylor to our audience:(Actually three questions that help you create your purpose statement)

* What are your strengths?

* What breaks your heart?

* Who do you want to help?

Purpose Statement: My personal purpose is to give my (fill-in-the-blank strengths), to help (fill-in-the-blank people) achieve (fill-in-the-blank thing).

If you’d like to listen to the episode on YouTube, please click here:

“My work should speak for itself.”

Yeah, sorry, it doesn’t. Even Jesus had a PR guy. Four of them, actually (Matthew, Mark, Luke and John).

So what makes you think you’re so special?

None of us are. Which means all of us have to put the work in to make ourselves visible. Good thing Sue Barber already did a bunch of the work for us. Her book, The Visibility Factor, outlines the stuff we can do to get others to take notice of our awesomeness.

She had to learn the hard way, when a mentor called her out for being “invisible” as an executive with Kraft Heinz.

Being invisible may sound like a fun superpower but it sucks at work. You get overlooked for the good assignments and promotions and you get stuck playing short field on the company softball team.

Sue and I talked about how you can step up your visibility game without bragging or sucking up to the boss.

🐱 Observe others who do it well🐱 Offer to help team members more often🐱 Share ideas in meetings and ask for input🐱 Invite key team members to important meetings to see you in action🐱 Talk about your cats (okay, that one’s from me)

We talk about a lot more than cats during our conversation. Sue really knows her stuff.

Welcome to the DesuckifyWork podcast. The show where we cut through the BS and find ways to make work more fun, more human and less ridiculous. All of which makes your business more profitable, by the way.

(If you enjoy this episode, please like, share, rate, review or subscribe to the podcast.)

Let the desuckifying begin.

You can follow Sue on LinkedIn. And check out her site at susanmbarber.com—where you can learn more about her book, her podcast and all the awesome work she’s doing, including this free guide to help introverts be more visible at work.

If you enjoyed the conversation and would like to help your teams bring their absolute best to work, I invite you to schedule a free half-hour discovery session. Type “meow” in the calendar invite and I’ll also send you a free DesuckifyWork® t-shirt!

Bye, everyone!

Bonus question from Sue to our audience:What are you doing to be visible? Do people know you? Do they know what you’re doing?

If you’d like to watch the episode on YouTube, please click here.

You can’t fix collaboration issues with software.

Some tools actually make things worse, stressing the nervous system and putting us in a perpetual state of fight of flight. Others are so damn confusing we pretend they don’t exist until Stu from HR sends us a stern reminder email.

Someone should tell Stu (and the rest of us) to step away from Outlook and have some actual conversations with people.

That’s the advice Mark Kenny would give. Mark is a speaker, author and teamwork strategist—and today’s guest on the DesuckifyWork® podcast.

Mark believes collaboration gets better when we have the conversations we’ve been avoiding. When we create relationships with folks across the organization, with no agenda. When we treat people like human beings, not obstacles or a means to an end.

When we do all that, work sucks a whole lot less.

🐱 We get more useful stuff done.

🐱 We gain an edge on competitors who are still praying that Slack and Teams will save the day.

🐱 And we unlock group intelligence to solve seemingly unsolvable challenges, like the group of eight observatories around the world who came together to create a massive, collective “telescope” to take the first picture ever of a black hole. An image no single telescope could ever capture.

You don’t need a telescope to observe Mark’s wisdom during this conversation.

(If you enjoy this episode, please like, share, rate, review or subscribe to the podcast.)

Let the desuckifying begin.

You can follow Mark on LinkedIn. And check out his site at markskenny.com.

If you enjoyed the conversation and would like to help your teams bring their absolute best to work, I invite you to schedule a free half-hour discovery session. Type “meow” in the calendar invite and I’ll also send you a free DesuckifyWork® t-shirt!

Bye, everyone!

Bonus question from Mark to our audience:When was the last time your team had a conversation you've never had before, but really needed to?

Hiring sucks.

It sucks for the company. It sucks for the candidates. It sucks for ai notetakers who are forced to generate useful bullet points from the inane interviews that take place in almost every corner of corporate America. “Sally and Jethro discussed the importance of the company’s Third-Thursday pizza parties and agreed that pineapple is actually an acceptable topping.”

Who you bring into your organization affects everything. From culture to competitiveness to the quality of the jokes on your slack channels. But we often treat hiring like a chore. Or an afterthought. What if we made it a strategic priority and stripped all the suck out of the experience?

That’s Everett Reiss’ mission. He co-founded Jane HR to create a more human approach to hiring. Sounds pretty cool to me.

🐱 They create detailed "ideal candidate profiles" so you actually know who you’re looking for instead of just relying on vibes.

🐱 They design job descriptions that are actually relevant to the person reading it, not just the legal compliance team.

🐱 They use technology to improve human connection, not replace it.

🐱 They align incentives with actual hiring needs so companies aren’t wasting everyone’s time creating BS “ghost jobs” that fill up around half of most job listing sites.

We also talked about ways candidates can make their own experience less tortuous. Like prioritizing applications where you have 1st or 2nd degree connections. And focusing on relationship-building (coffees, lunches, zoom chats) vs. stabbing every apply button you see on LinkedIn or Indeed.

There was no stabbing during this conversation. Just a fun chat with a guy who’s putting great work into the world.

(If you enjoy this episode, please like, share, rate, review or subscribe to the podcast.)

Let the desuckifying begin.

——

You can follow Everett on LinkedIn. And check out Jane’s site at Jane.hr.

If you enjoyed the conversation and would like to help your teams bring their absolute best to work, I invite you to schedule a free half-hour discovery session. Type “meow” in the calendar invite and I’ll also send you a free DesuckifyWork® t-shirt!

Bye, everyone!

——

Bonus question from Everett to our audience:What is the world that you want to live in and want to be creating? And how are you actually contributing to the creation of that world?

If you’d like to watch this episode on YouTube, please click here.

🐱 Hollywood has created nearly 500,000 movies.

🐱 It has developed over 10,000 TV shows.

🐱 It has entertained literally billions of people over the years.

🐱 And generated at least $5 trillion in revenue since its inception.

And it did all of this using a remote and hybrid workforce. Even before we had machines on every desk and in every pocket, folks were dreaming, writing and strategizing wherever the heck they wanted. And then coming together to collaborate and create TV and movie magic in person.

Imagine that.

Now imagine someone steeped in Hollywood’s culture creating an app that helps you be more productive and find more fulfillment in your work every day. Meet Steven Puri, an entrepreneur with a background in tech that led him to a career in digital effects that took a left turn into work as a studio exec with DreamWorks and Fox.

You know, the typical path.

His platform, called Sukha (Sanskrit for “the good place”), is like a breath of fresh air for folks trying to make the remote/hybrid thing work in a distraction filled universe. It helps you focus, find your vibe with the right music and uses AI to offer personalized work recommendations based on your habits and patterns. It does a whole bunch of other cools stuff too.

Steven and I also dug into the importance of great leadership as teams navigate this nutty world that literally no one has a firm grasp on, despite all the pontificating we see on LinkedIn and elsewhere.

(If you enjoy this episode, please like, share, rate, review or subscribe to the podcast.)

Let the desuckifying begin.

You can follow Steven on LinkedIn. And check out Sukha’s site at thesukha.co. Your blood pressure will drop 10 points just by visiting.

If you enjoyed the conversation and would like to help your teams bring their absolute best to work, I invite you to schedule a free half-hour discovery session. Type “meow” in the calendar invite and I’ll also send you a free DesuckifyWork® t-shirt!

Bye, everyone!

Bonus question from Steven to our audience:What is the thing that you on your deathbed will be very proud that you've done? And if you haven't done it, why not?

If you’d like to watch the episode on YouTube, please click here.

What role does faith play at work?

If you’d asked me 15 years ago I’d probably have scolded you for even asking such a crazy question. Keep your faith out of my peanut butter, dammit.

Now? I’m not so sure.

Mai Moore is certain that keeping faith out of the workplace is keeping the suck firmly in place. Mai is the founder of two social impact companies and previously spent 20 years in the tech space.

How can we possibly bring our whole selves to work if we’re ditching this giant piece of ourselves at the door each day? This is personal for Mai, as her faith has helped her through some incredibly tough times, including being homeless.

So how do we bring this topic into the workplace without alienating everyone?

🐱 We need to create space for honest, respectful conversations around faith and spirituality.

🐱 We need to make room for all belief systems, including the lack of belief.

🐱 We need to understand our customers better, many of whom place faith or spirituality at the center of their lives.

We dig into all the nooks and crannies of this and more during our conversation. We touch on the idea of vulnerability at work, lifting up ideas from everyone (not just leaders) and the importance of doing work that makes an impact on something we actually care about.

(If you enjoy this episode, please like, share, rate, review or subscribe to the podcast.)

Let the desuckifying begin.

—————

You can follow Mai on LinkedIn. And check out her site at maimoore.com, where you can learn more about all the good stuff she’s putting into the world.

If you enjoyed the conversation and would like to help your teams bring their absolute best to work, I invite you to schedule a free half-hour discovery session. Type “meow” in the calendar invite and I’ll also send you a free DesuckifyWork® t-shirt!

Bye, everyone!

—————

Bonus question from Mai to our audience:“As my daughter says, who are you?”

If you’d like to watch the episode on YouTube, please click here.

#desuckifyworkpodcast #desuckifywork #findyourwhy #executivecoaching #faithatwork #diversity #authenticityatwork

What’s a person worth?

If we based the answer on our own self assessments, not much.

And then we bring that “not much” feeling everywhere we go, including work. Where we’re expected to influence people, lead people inspire people. And we wonder why we struggle.

“Not much” has a scent. So strong it can actually travel through Zoom screens.. It’s also contagious. Infecting everyone who gets a whiff with a bit more “not much” than they already bring to the table.

It’s tough to do useful, meaningful things when you’re swimming in the “not much” soup. If only we could add some ingredients to create a delightfully hearty “more than enough” stew.

Endre Hoffman (aka The Doctor of Self Worth) is the man with those ingredients. All you have to do is a little time travel to get what you need.

That’s what NLP (neurolinguistic programming) is all about, Endre’s primary tool for helping folks see how good they really are. A reframing of our life story that allows us to release the dickhead voice that’s been holding us back and create a new voice that says things like, “you’re alright, man” and “you’re actually kinda smart, lady.”

Endre had his own, long, exhaustive journey through dozens of countries and over a hundred thousand dollars before he finally found the ingredients to turn his life around, after years of childhood trauma and a struggling marriage kept him stuck in the “not much” story.

Now, he helps people do the same. From high-powered execs to first-time entrepreneurs. His work helps people get out of the victim mindset and see clearly (often for the first time) just how much agency they have.

Endre is a cool dude with an inspiring mission to impact over one million lives. I like the moxie.

(If you enjoy this episode, please like, share, rate, review or subscribe to the podcast.)

Let the desuckifying begin.

You can follow Endre on LinkedIn. And check out his site at doctorofselfworth.com where you’ll find a bunch of cool free resources. And a cat pic too!

If you enjoyed the conversation and would like to help your teams find their superpower (aka their pudding) so they can bring their absolute best to work, I invite you to schedule a free half-hour discovery session.

Bye, everyone!

Bonus question from Endre to our audience:How long will you postpone having that conversation where you can finally get to the root of your challenges and the problem that you have created? Will you do it this year, In five years' time?

If you’d like to watch the episode on YouTube, please click here.

#desuckifyworkpodcast #desuckifywork #findyourwhy #executivecoaching #selfworth #nlp #changeyourstory