Employee Motivation and Commitment is the lowest since June 2022, according to recent data from the ADP Research Institute. Why are employees feeling less motivated right now and what can be done about it? Join “Can You Hear Me?” co-hosts Eileen Rochford and Rob Johnson as they welcome special guest Mark Heisten, a brand strategy and enterprise storytelling expert who will answer the question “What do we do about disengaged workers?”
Employee Motivation and Commitment is the lowest since June 2022, according to recent data from the ADP Research Institute. Why are employees feeling less motivated right now and what can be done about it? Join “Can You Hear Me?” co-hosts Eileen Rochford and Rob Johnson as they welcome special guest Mark Heisten, a brand strategy and enterprise storytelling expert who will answer the question “What do we do about disengaged workers?”
Meet our Guest
Mark Heisten - Leadership Legend
Mark Heisten more than 25 years of experience in marketing, sales, and business development in global financial services brands and emerging growth start-ups. During his career, he cultivated a reputation as a brand and communications innovator and change agent, focusing on improvements in people, process, and measurement to increase the value of the companies and teams he’s led.
Mark is currently an brand strategy and strategic communication instructor at the University of Colorado – Boulder and a founder of an executive storybuilding start-up Leadership Legend, which works with executives and rising leaders to craft reputation-building stories.
Prior to CU-Boulder and Leadership Legend, Mark served as Chief Revenue Officer (CRO) at a FinTech start-up in San Francisco. Prior to that he was the Vice President/Head of Integrated Payments at Worldpay, a leading global payments technology company. There, he transformed the orientation of the team from work-product to work-results – data-driven and outcomes-focused. Mark oversaw the sales and marketing integration of the company’s $425mm acquisition of Moneris US, and shaped the new global business strategy resulting from the $10B acquisition of Worldpay Plc.
Mark served as the vice president of business development and a member of the executive team at Vanguard Cleaning Systems, a North American franchise system with more than 3,500 franchisees. During his tenure, he drove an overall increase in sales conversion rates, expanded the global footprint of the brand, and earned placement of the brand in the top 10 in the Franchise 500. Additionally, Mark implemented the company’s marketing automation and Net Promoter Score (NPS) programs, which increased lead flow and retained existing clients more effectively.
Prior to Vanguard Cleaning Systems, Mark was the head of commercial product marketing at Visa during the company’s $18B IPO and was the Head of Account Management & Strategy at Nimblefish Technologies, a SaaS-based marketing automation start-up with clients including Apple, Adobe, Microsoft, Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines, FedEx, Lowe's Home Improvement and the U.S. Army among many others.
Mark also worked at several start-ups and integrated marketing communication agencies. His programs earned numerous awards from the PRSA and DMA including a Silver Anvil of Excellence award and ECHO Diamond awards. Mark has worked with numerous clients including: American Express, Apple, AT&T, Adobe Systems, Business Objects, Capgemini, Chicago Bulls, Chicago White Sox, FedExKinkos, Holiday Inn, HP, IBM, IMD, Intuit, Lowe’s Home Improvement, MasterCard, Microsoft, Midas, Owens Corning, Ralston-Purina, Vantiv, Visa and Worldpay.
Mark earned his BA in English from the University of Missouri, his MBA from Santa Clara University’s Leavey School of Business, and is currently finishing his Ph.D. Media Research and Practice from the University of Colorado-Boulder. His research focus is on ethics, leadership, and socio-political engagement by corporations.
Mark adheres to the belief that great people make great cultures, and great cultures build valuable brands.
Eileen Rochford [00:00:18] Hello again, everybody, and welcome to Can you hear me? I'm Eileen Rochford. I'm the CEO of the marketing and strategy firm The Harbinger Group.
Rob Johnson [00:00:26] And I'm Rob Johnston, president of Rob Johnson Communications. Here at Can you hear me? We like to help executives keep their fingers on the pulse of the workplace. And today's topic, what to do about disengaged workers attempts to do just that.
Eileen Rochford [00:00:39] That's right, Rob. So some really interesting recent research made it clear that disengagement is way up. And as we know, communications can solve everything. Right. So that's what we're here to talk about today. What's the problem, which is the rate of disengagement that's very concerning and the solution, good communications delivered to the right people, etc., etc.. So let's cover what that research was. ADP Research Index has been collecting data from 2500 respondents every single month for nearly two years now, and they poll workers of all income managerial levels across multiple sectors. They cover it all. So that research is called the Employee Motivation and Commitment index, the EMC. In case, you know, we need to shorthand as we're talking today. Thank you. Now, the index is built on nine predictive elements, including engagement, resilience and inclusion and boasts this is impressive, a 73% accuracy rate, enforcing employee retention, the Holy Grail. So in August 2023, that EMC index fell to 100, its lowest point since June of 2022. That's like 14 months ago and the index peaked. This is for context. In December of 2022, that peak was 121, and that was after a year of robust pay growth, strong hiring, rise of remote work. And of course, let's point out that worker motivation and commitment, those things rise and fall. Everybody knows that over time. But this trend of plummeting, the plummeting level and the high rates of disengaged workers, it seems like this is a critical point, like what's going on. That's we're here to talk about.
Rob Johnson [00:02:14] And what's interesting, too, is the index peaked, as you mentioned, in December of 2022, less than a year ago, and already by August of 2023, it's dipping pretty severely according to the to the index. So that's a pretty interesting different numbers to kind of throw at you, to give you an idea of where the high has been and where the low has been just in recent months. So that's important to remember. So you may be asking yourself, why is this happening? Fortunately, Eileen has a long time friend that is an expert in this field. Mark Heisten has spent 25 years as a brand strategist, and enterprise storyteller for some iconic brands like Apple, Microsoft, Visa and many more. Currently, he's an instructor and teaching assistant at the University of Colorado, Boulder, where he's also working on his Ph.D. He'll be Dr. Heisten in short order, and he is somehow found a few minutes to spend with us here on can you hear me, Mark Heisten, Welcome to Can you hear me? Thanks for joining us.
Mark Heisten [00:03:08] Hey. Hello. Thanks for having me.
Eileen Rochford [00:03:10] I am just shocked that you were able to, you know, squeeze some minutes out of your crazy schedule. It really is impressive. All the things that you do and have done leading up to this point in your career. But I just wanted to mention one thing that I think is the coolest thing about, you know, this is totally aside from work. If I recall correctly, and please, you know, for the for the record, if I'm wrong, just correct it. You and your wife and your two children took a very long period of time off of work and you traveled around. And I think it was in like an RV, is that right?
Mark Heisten [00:03:45] Absolutely. That's 100% correct. The one thing I would change a little bit about it is so we took two years off.
Eileen Rochford [00:03:52] Yeah.
Mark Heisten [00:03:52] We homeschool or what they call road school or world schooled our kids, took them out of school and did that for two years. We did it in an RV for when we were in North America and then when we were in other parts of the world, we did it up with a backpack full of very heavy backpack, full of books and computers and everything we needed to do. So we did that. Yeah.
Eileen Rochford [00:04:12] Oh, my gosh. And I mean, if that doesn't speak to your appetite or learning and curiosity and adventure, I don't know what does. That's just I've always thought that was one of the coolest things I've ever heard. And to know you and you did that, that's amazing.
Mark Heisten [00:04:26] Yeah, Well, thank you.
Rob Johnson [00:04:26] And that road is the road less traveled. It was a long road, right? But it's the road less traveled, so that's really impressive.
Eileen Rochford [00:04:32] Oh, yeah. Yeah. Some days you want to get off that road. I bet.
Mark Heisten [00:04:36] You know, we were smart and strategic about it. We would do the heavy duty road work, and then we would go try to find some oasis of a nice hotel with a nice hot shower and things like that that we could huddle in for, like, a couple of days. And then we'd go back out of the grit and grime of the road.
Eileen Rochford [00:04:51] Nice. So that was like a reward. If they got like an A or something, like that's good. Yeah, you guys get to go take the shower now! That's what.
Mark Heisten [00:05:00] We did. Yeah. We left them in the RV. (laughs) No, yeah we, it was definitely a reward. We're having, you know, kind of muscle to it because they were little kids when they did it, too. So to carry a big heavy backpack for a 20 miles through the jungles in North Vietnam was not the easiest thing for them to do, but they did it.
Eileen Rochford [00:05:16] That's just grit in formation right there. I love it. Really good. All right. So let's get back to the topic at hand that I just want to point out. So you're not just like brilliant. You're also adventurous and all these marvelous things. Since you spend more time, then I think most people thinking about this issue of disengagement and kind of communications in general and leadership and all the things that you explore in your research. Talk to us a little bit about employee retention as it relates to company employee identification.
Mark Heisten [00:05:46] Well, thank you. Yeah, Let me kind of frame this in a way. The study that you referenced before other was done by ADP specifically really kind of focused in on that sort of disengagement or, you know, that decline in emotional engagement. And what that does, at least for me in reviewing that, that brings to light the significance of, you know, what you have identified as this employee company identification process. And this is really an alignment between the company and its employees, typically with respect to mission purpose, a sense of connection, that I've got a stake in what we're doing as an organization. And, you know, before I go too deep on that, let me also just kind of define what Identification is in. I mean, it's not uncommon for us to refer to brands or companies that we work for in a sort of anthropomorphic sort of way where we humanize these companies. And in fact, that's what identification really is rooted in. That's a sort of unique personality or brand of an organization that's held by most of both internal and external stakeholders. So it can be employees, it can be the board of directors, it can be consumers, it can be customers out in the world who don't actually buy the product. All of them have some sort of an idea of what that company really stands for and identification itself as really, like I said before, it's rooted in mission, a purpose in a sense of connection. But it also, you know, incorporates a lot of things that we are familiar with, like visual representation. We think of like the brand as the logo and things like that. It's also the tone and the textual identity. It's what we, you know, what we anticipate or believe to be the culture itself. Whether the brand has got a personality, what is that corporate culture? And then just generally speaking, you know, what is the reputation? That for me is what I look at. And when I read a study like what you shared before, to look at, there's definitely some problems between companies, what they stand for, what they represent for people, and then the sort of idea of how I as an employee connect with that.
Rob Johnson [00:07:40] So, Mark, there's another concept here I think that dovetails off of what you're talking about. And when we're talking about the engagement question, we also need to consider the employee self-concept as it relates to the organizational identity. So you've touched upon the organizational identity, but explain a little bit about the employee self-concept and how that marries the organizational identity and how important it is to have those in alignment.
Mark Heisten [00:08:03] So that's a great question. Rob. Well, let me go back a little bit to and I'm going to- there's three components I want to make sure that I outline to connect the dots on that self-concept. But before I do that, I want to route this back in a theory that we use quite a bit, especially when we're doing analysis or doing research or scholarship around corporate cultures and, you know, kind of leader behaviors and kind of the cultures that leaders implicate in their organizations. And that's social identity theory. And again, I'll describe this, but we all have a pretty even if you're not, you know, you don't have a background in the theoretical grounding of it, We all kind of intuitively, I think, understand this and what it is. This is a theory really, that suggests that employees categorize themselves into social groups. It applies outside of corporations too. Social identity theory is at play in everything that we do in our lives, but within the context of corporations is how we categorize ourselves into social groups, organizations that are based on shared characteristics. So some of the characteristics are categorization, right? We have a very natural tendency to organize ourselves and others according to perceived or shared characteristics or values that, you know, areas of overlap. You know, like we were talking about before in traveling with our kids. You know, a big part of that social identity for us was rooted in the idea of finding other families who were, you know, similarly adventurous, willing to take their kids out into the world and use the world as a classroom in a lot of ways. So we've naturally found ourselves kind of connecting with those types of people. That comes from categorization. The other part of it, which can have an insidious layer to it, is a sort of social comparison. That's where we all tend to compare ourselves with other groups or other individuals. But social identity itself is also one element of an individual self-concept, which I'll come back. Rob, to your point on that, and this comes from membership in a specific or a particular group. So I've got a self-concept, but my self-concept in many ways is reflected by the organization, the kind of group that I share a time and spend time with, I guess. And then salience. This is sort of where we have sort of this affective connection with others. Sharing at a very emotional level is how we connect with one another rooted in organizations and how organizations apply this sort of approach is what they consider to be factors of alignment, and these are things like first are going to be things like shared values and goals. You know, to what degree of the corporate, the department, the team values and the goals linked to individual values and goals themselves. Second is a perception of superiority that isn't as ominous as it sounds. What it is is just where we as members of this organization feel like we're more innovative, that we're leading or more supportive, that we're protective or loyal to one another. There's this sense of pride that comes from being a part of it. And, you know, honestly, humans constantly make comparisons to confirm that they're standing relative to others. So that's not uncommon either. Third, leadership or role models. That is, the leader who embodies those characteristics tend to be most valued by employees. And a lot of times these may be based on past, present or future observations of that performance and then forth communication. That seems obvious. But, you know, with all my years of experience in communication, corporate communication, public relations, marketing, advertising, you name it, strategic communication, the reality is that leadership is capital I-S, leadership IS communication. So communication is the way that we know whether or not a leader is worth following communications, how we know how we're organized, that aligned against that communication is how we make sure that we are engaged with things. And then kind of the fifth that I think is really important for us to note is recognition and acknowledgment. I think most people today certainly covered a lot of the business press that, you know, never underestimate that pat on the back. In many cases, that's worth more than money. You were talking before about the research showed that many you know, the kind of the high point of this index was related to people getting increases in their salary. But, you know, leaders know that a pat on the back recognition, especially strategic recognition that aligns with what I consider to be my values and goals is worth more in many cases than than money. Now, how this all fits is around what you asked Rob, which is about self-concept, and that's really the context of sort of this corporate identification process. And that's where employability of skills, values, experience of personality are really coupled and contrasted with those of the corporate entity. The hope is that self-concept and corporate identity are pretty close to one another. How they can be quite different. That's where you're going to run into issues. But kind of the core aspects of self-concept are really what are my skills and competencies? Do I have a chance to apply them to this job? I feel inspired by my leaders, to the values and ethics of this organization to line up with what I consider to be important. How do I feel about my professional identity? I'm sure that all of us, we go out, we meet other people, or we talk about people ask, What do you do? What is your role? And professional identity is a big part of this sort of pride that I have, a swell of pride that I have, and talking about the company that I work for. And if that's not there, that can be a problem with our self-concept, that corporate identification, all work together. Now, can I say one more thing, just to kind of link these as this gets us into this sort of sense giving and sense making process. Sense giving in the case of corporate identification is one where the corporation takes all sorts of information that comes into it, whether it be competitive threats, economic threats, COVID, that we all went through and provides some sort of sense giving for all of its employees. In other words, what it does is it captures that information. It translates that, into ways that we as an organization could start to address it as an organization and then as individual components within that organization. That's a big part of this. Getting back to what you asked about, Rob, which is that sort of self-concept is am I skeptical of what the corporation is sharing with me? Am I seeing things that the corporation is not? So those kinds of things. I think that sense giving a sense making really puts a lot of onus on leaders to do a lot of translation or translation work.
Eileen Rochford [00:13:52] So fascinating. I'm just like sitting here going-
Rob Johnson [00:13:54] Yeah, I'm glad you set the sort of baseline for us. You know, when when I ask that question, when Eileen does and it's like, "Well, here, let's go back and kind of define it." So you put some great color around that.
Eileen Rochford [00:14:04] You've made me really want to sit in one on one of your classes.
Rob Johnson [00:14:10] Classes he's teaching or the ones he's taking?
Eileen Rochford [00:14:12] Um, teaching I think? Because he just sounds like a great instructor. Like that was so crystal clear. And the way that you laid it out for us and you've piqued my curiosity on a number of levels. The first, which I'm going to ask you now, if that's okay, is I would really like to hear why so engagement is down. So some of the internal dynamics that you just covered and the kind of issues that impact engagement of every employee and their sense of self or self-concept, what are the external factors that would influence these results or, you know, levels of engagement? What do you think?
Mark Heisten [00:14:50] Yeah, I know. I think that's a great a great question. There's a lot of external factors that influence both the sense giving, a sense making and then specifically relative to what we're talking about today is this notion of engagement. And a lot of those can be generational. I know there's a lot of talk. About the generational shifts. I've certainly got my colleagues who, you know, there in Chicago who deal in commercial real estate, who are worried about the future of people coming together as an organization into a single location. When you've got a whole generation of of, you know, a lot of the students that are in my classes are going out into the world. I really like the idea of being able to work, say, for example, at a New York ad agency, but be able to do it from Boulder, Colorado, where they can go and ski and have fun. And I think there's an expectation of that. That's a generational change. Political differences. It seems that these days everything is political and politicized. And so that creates some really interesting dynamics in organizations that, again, no matter how hard you want to try to keep those outside of the organization and that they come in, you know, most recently, in fact, I just did some research on this, you know, with what Netflix went through with respect to Dave Chappelle, he did a special that had angered and upset and was disparaging to the LGBTQ community. And under those circumstances, their employees first came. It was an internal issue, initially, they came to Netflix and said, "Hey, look, we don't feel comfortable with this. This violates our core values as an organization." And they felt that they were not heard. And then that kind of spilled out into the street. So even when things are, you know, ideally encapsulated inside organizations where we as coworkers and leaders and an executive team can go through this sense giving process and sense making process and find ways where we can resolve our differences, even the way that stuff is spilling out into the world. So, you know, COVID 19 obviously sparked a lot. You know, certainly there a big contrast between older managers that wanted everybody to come back into the office as quickly as possible, Younger workers who wanted to advocate or were strongly advocating for extended or flexible remote work arrangements. And, you know, there were even some within organizations that were resistant to the original mandate. So all that kind of outside world comes in and I don't want to say it affects, but it alters or changes or shifts the way that internal engagement, internal relationships work. And so it's really important that, you know, to kind of recognize that these conflicts, conflicts may define or predict kind of the trajectory of engagement between companies and their employees. You know, there's Twitter events that always happen at some level at the organizational, the individual level. And just like with any sort of triggering activity, it activates a response that shapes really the direction that the company is going to do. The pandemic right, created a sense of isolation and that commingled work life, many people who didn't have the ability, you know, when schools closed, they had to bring that sort of education process in-house while they were also working a job, You know, that sort of forced return to the office, there was a kind of lost time and a disequilibrium of work life. And then, you know, I think just in general, the disharmony of sociopolitical issues these days has really created a number of areas of tension and conflict that, you know, again, I think leadership can play a major role in this and helping resolve it. And I think that's that's the kind of the next step with things.
Rob Johnson [00:18:02] There's a couple of things I want to unpack with with you here, Marc, and I'm glad you brought up the Netflix thing because I was fascinated because this is kind of politics in general, which is people have beliefs and I respect everybody's beliefs and I think we all do. But sometimes people's beliefs are based on things they haven't really researched. And I was really interested, as you related, the Dave Chappelle Netflix story, The Closer was the name of the stand up, and he was really taking a lot of heat from the LGBTQ community. And as you know, comedians are edgy and that's not to make an excuse for them, you know, kind of framing things in a certain way. But that whole thing that everybody was so offended by, he was talking about his trans friend who's passed away, who used to be a warm up act for him from San Francisco. And he was going on and on and on about what a great friend this person was and how difficult it was and everything else. And yes, does he crack jokes and yes, do some people get offended by it? But it was interesting because a lot of the Netflix people, I wonder how many of them watch the whole thing because if he'd watched the whole thing, he was holding this person up as a dear friend and how he got there, we can all debate that. So I think that's the first thing that you brought up that I thought was interesting. But that's politics. You know, people get something in their head. They may not have watched or read or researched a certain thing, but that's how the world works. So that's that's our world today. And I love what you said a little earlier about leadership is communication. And as a communications consultant, thank you for saying that, because I tried to drive that point home all the time to potential clients and clients that, you know, the world is different now. And if you're not communicating properly that you're not leading, which gets me to my question, how do leadership styles play a role in navigating all these issues that you're bringing out?
Mark Heisten [00:19:45] Yeah, I mean, so thanks for bringing it back up. The leadership is communication piece. That's something that I felt and believed for a really long time since, you know, I started my career and, you know, I was working with Eileen, you know, several years ago is, clearly leadership styles play a significant, pivotal role, especially when you're navigating really complex issues and. And like we're alluding to in all this is, you know, those issues are you know, there might have been a time 40 years ago where those issues were really, for the most part, kept within the company. Right. This isn't an episode of Severance, right on Apple TV. You know, where you've got your life outside of the business and then you forget all that when you come into the business, the, you know, the corporate, the tower, those things are co-mingled. And so these things kind of bleed into one another. And honestly, the command and control approach that was, you know, kind of that characterized by the demands of my way or the highway mentality, they're just simply not effective anymore. I think I will kind of draw in fiction as well. Another thing that I think is really important. You know, one of the most obvious considerations for leaders is matching their style to the needs of that organization, to the part of the team or the individuals. In that moment, there's a sort of what we call ethics of care, which is like, I'm talking to you, Rob, And it's clear as my employer, you've got an issue. I need to make this just a 1 to 1 communication. This isn't a mass communication. This is just between us. I'm trying to help you address the issues that you've got. In other words, great leadership is one of being situationally aware. And in the fictional component of this is that I often think of Shakespeare's Henry the Fifth, and that's one in which the king walks among his troops on the night before the big battle, recognizing that there are either, you know, outmaneuvered in a lot of ways. They don't have as much equipment. They certainly don't have as many people. And as he's doing this, he's cloaked so that no one recognizes him as anything other than another soldier. What he does is he adapts his tone so that each individual or group, they feel like he's connecting them. He really listens. He responds in a way that really sparks that inspiration and a hope. In fairness, even though leadership is communication generally, a leadership style itself is more fixed, right? And there's a lot of different contractors, transformational leadership. There's a there's books on all of these. There's kind of the historic of transactional leadership. We read a lot from about charismatic leadership. We're in a world today where we're asking questions about autocracies and democracies. Well, autocratic leaders exist in corporations, as do democratic leaders. You got servant leadership, you got player coaches, situational, you've got ethical leadership. All of those are things that are harder for me as an individual. I consider myself to be a charismatic leader. That's kind of the nature of who I am, but how I communicate, the tone, the approach that I take, that sort of situational awareness that I've got, allows me to take what is true of my style and really adapt it to a way that you need to hear. And I can adapt that sort of identification down to a level where it matches up with your self-concept. So I think that sort of leadership is powerful. In the best part of it is it's persistent. It lasts long after you and I have our discussion about what you need from our workplace. It's the kind of thing that will govern your activities, your actions, the decisions that you make, your sense of self-importance, your sense of impact on the organization that's sort of adapting my approach and how I talk to you as a leader really pays dividends over a very protracted, a long period of time. And by the way, Rob, one other thing on that, too. I do think that authentic storytelling is one of the ways that we can kind of get into a space where me as a leader, I can impart on you the sort of wisdom of my experience or wisdom of what it is that we need to do. I can kind of, through story, really kind of activate and spark that sort of connection that you make, that engagement that you've got with the organization. That's not an area that tends not to be all that comfortable for a lot of leaders to embark in storytelling.
Rob Johnson [00:23:33] That is such a great segway into I know what Eileen wants to get into right now.
Eileen Rochford [00:23:37] Do you? What is that. (laughs)
Eileen Rochford [00:23:41] Oh, yeah, I'm just getting it. Yeah, I do. I want to get into storytelling big time because I think what I'm curious about is when I think about disengagement, I think about disconnection right? Obviously. So how do you foster connection with, you know, everyone in your organization, especially the people you most need to as a leader? And I'm guessing you might you're going to start with storytelling, Mark, and you're going to tell me a lot more about effective storytelling. Certainly, you see it all the time in the role that you play, that leadership legends. That right?
Mark Heisten [00:24:16] That's right.
Eileen Rochford [00:24:17] Yeah.
Mark Heisten [00:24:17] Yeah. I think it also applies in the classroom. You know, I think that's the funny thing about leadership, right? Leadership is not per se, it's not a title. It's, you know, it's a role that people plan. So in every aspect of our lives, that sort of stuff comes up. I keep coming back to the context where we are right now in a Broadway society. We are in the midst of a trust crisis, right? That is, almost all of our venerable institutions have been attacked by some political leaders or some organization have been attacked from the inside, where they've made some missteps that undermine the trust that they've spent the last 40 years or 50 years building up again without picking on specific organizations. I think, you know, Netflix in that in that case, you know, they kind of they undermined a little bit of their own trust with the organization simply because rather than have the debate as to what was said and how it was said, it actually kind of violated the values that they put out and asked and expected of everybody else to, you know, to adhere to. They just didn't quite follow it, or at least they were a little loose in their interpretation of it. And, you know, you look around the world today, we are we're in the middle of a trust crisis. So this has created a world of insecurity for employees and for leaders, too. I don't want to leave them out of the mix on this, but nothing were rebuilt or instituted. Trust in leadership really like a good story, one that reveals a certain degree of authenticity. If I there's a thing in marketing called the Service Recovery paradox, it's a fancy way of saying that you actually are a more loyal customer to a brand if they make a mistake and respond in a way that really more than meets your expectations than if they'd made the mistake, if they'd never made the mistake in the first place, you'd have been loyal to them. But you're a lot more loyal to them. After they made the mistake and showed you just how authentically concerned they were with the problem that they created for you. And that's a really interesting and surprising counterintuitive point. Nothing also, you know, kind of institutes the sort of trust of leadership. But the good story component of it is good story models. The way a good story shows how my leadership, my path, my hero's journey, I want to call it that shows you how you can lead your life. It inspires you in some way. Perhaps most importantly, it inspires or activates a connection between us in terms of both transparency and trust. Transparency, because I'm willing to share something with you about my life that was not so easy and not so good. In order to show you how I rose from that, I was like a Phoenix. I rose from the ashes and I can show you that you too, can follow a similar path that institutes to what I consider to be the two sides of the coin, which is transparency and trust. If I've got trust, I don't need to be that transparent with you. I don't have trust. I have to be very transparent with you. So what we want is we want leaders that we can relate to at some level. That's, you know, human. Too many times we sat in meetings where a new leader steps into the organization and they're they're kind of reading their bio and their bio is a lot of things that have to do with, you know, their credentials. "Here I work for this company I achieved- I was the youngest SVP at such and such corporation." It's a lot of chest beating versus something that reveals something that's more emotional, it's deeper, it's more personal. That can be done in a way that is successful for them and for the organization. Now, HPR, it touts the benefits of leader vulnerability. It seems like every issue there's something about leader vulnerability, but not very many of those articles illustrate exactly how to do it, and the risks are very high. If I under disclose, I seem distant and aloof. I may even lead to misunderstandings, or I might even be a forgettable leader if, by contrast I over disclose with you, I reveal to you some really tragic thing that happened in my life, which is perfectly human. And sometimes that happens in just a raw moment. What I do is I may contribute to your own fear or frustration or hesitation about making any major decisions because you recognize in further, I'm anchoring myself, my legacy on this tragic event that happened to me, not the leader that I've become from that. So the way that we work with leaders, certainly a leadership legend, but I think it's a formula for everybody is really- We teach people how to follow what we call the wave story method, which is it's a formula that's got natural drama that's built into it. It's valuable for listeners and it's simply just four parts. It's let's start off with introducing a decision, a consequence. What was a really hard decision that you had to make in your life where you knew on the other side of that decision it was going to make a substantial impact on yourself, your professional career, your employees, your company, your family, your friends, your community, your church, whatever it is that you consider to be kind of your inner circle, that decision was going to impact them in some way, shape or form. That's part one. Part two, go back in time, find something in your life. And we call this the trough. And that is the reason why it's the way of method. You got the crust, the trough and the bread. The trough is that moment in your life where you weren't sure you were going to be able to make it through, but somehow you did. And that low point in your life, right, that moment of powerlessness is your greatest source of power going forward. And then we come back to the idea of what was the decision that you made? And then we talk about the bridge with this is where you start to say, okay, I made the decision that I was going to accept that job in Jacksonville, Florida. I lost friends. I embarked on a career that I found immensely fulfilling. I developed a team, I grew a brand. It gave me a chance to spend more time with my friends and family. You know, a lot of positives that come from that. And then the fourth part of this, finally wrap it up with the reason for the telling. I might tell that story to you, the two of you say, Oh, Mark, I totally understand why you're sharing the story with me. Not always. And so it's really important to say, So why did I share that story with you? Well, let me tell you, the challenges that we've got ahead for our organization requires us to be resilient. Or what we need to do is we need to have more faith in some of our other departments, in our organization. Or, you know, the reason I told you the story is because sometimes trust is broken. We need to do that long, hard road of rebuilding the trust. The point in all of it is that when you can put that into a story and a human story, the story it's based on my authentic life, it's something that's going to live forever in your hearts and minds, and it's going to guide the success of our organization going forward.
Rob Johnson [00:30:06] Oh, I love that. I absolutely love that, because I sit here all the time with leaders and I tell them to tell that story for the reason they don't get into the tale you have. Of course, I'm not going for a Ph.D. either, but that's the point. And you see people's response to it. It's got to be authentic. There's got to be a point to it, as you said, and it helps loosen them up and make them more identifiable. And when you're trying to get people to, you know, jump in the water with you, that's a great way to do it. So thank you for putting a nice big bow on the storytelling aspect. That was awesome.
Eileen Rochford [00:30:37] And may I also add that you basically just gave me my entire opening for an all day session tomorrow. Thank you. That was really helpful. You just said this was like, "Oh, I can say this. I can say that."
Rob Johnson [00:30:49] Oh, she has her transcription on ready. She's ready to go.
Eileen Rochford [00:30:53] Totally. No, I mean I will use the formula, as you just outlined it, to structure some comments for a really big thing that we have to tackle. And when you said don't- the fourth part your reason for the telling and why am I bothering to open up like this? Why am I sharing.
Eileen Rochford [00:31:16] And it's not always so clear to you. In my instance, I think I would spend the most time thinking about the reason for the tally to make it as credible as possible for the other components in there seem a little more logical, but like, really making that connection between this sharing of vulnerability, sharing of experience, etc., etc. to how does this impact how our organization needs to move forward at this exact moment, right? That's a huge connector. And I think it's one that lots of leaders mostly fumble or just maybe even leave out.
Mark Heisten [00:31:48] We do I will say this just as a couple of things that are related to us. A lot of times we start off by asking, you know, we ask before you even develop her story, what do you think is the story that your team or department or group or organization most needs to hear? And that's one of, that's a little bit of a test of the situational awareness. How connected are you to what's really going on in the organization? And if you've done a good job of it, in a lot of ways we think about how many stories, Eileen, that you could tell about yourself that really kind of capture that there's a million, there's a million iterations and permutations of what you got. And then the other thing is, so we ask that upfront, like what is the story that you think that they want to hear? And then afterwards you develop your story. The best part of that, too, is once you've developed your story, you keep coming back to the reason for the telling, because I'll bet your story it could be applied in different scenarios, right? It could address this issue of, say, reputation rebuilding. It could also be one of just, you know, your same story could be recast in a way of connection. And I think those are things that once you've kind of gone down that path and developed it, you have a really great flexible tool for how you engage with different organizations.
Rob Johnson [00:32:47] Your input has been incredible. Mark Heisten, thank you so much for joining us. Eileen, would you like to say good bye to your friend here?
Eileen Rochford [00:32:53] I would, but only for now. We'll be talking again soon because, you know, he's just a great guy. I'm lucky to have him in my life. And I'm really happy that you made time to be with us today. Super grateful for all of your guidance and advice, and I hope our listeners take tons of it to heart. We will include in our Shownotes information on how you can learn more about everything that Mark shared today and how you can even connect with him or seek him out on LinkedIn. Just a font of wisdom in this capacity. So thanks for being here and that will do it for another episode of Can You Hear Me?
Rob Johnson [00:33:28] That's right. Thanks for joining us, Mark. We appreciate it. Your expertise was awesome.
Mark Heisten [00:33:32] Thank you.
Rob Johnson [00:33:32] And so that's it for our latest edition here. I'm Rob Johnson. We'd love to hear from you, all our listeners. So if you have any thoughts on today's topic or any other topic you'd like us to cover in future episodes, please reach out to us on social media.