Transforming Workplace Culture: Positivity and Productivity with Dr. Joey Faucette

Today we'll be talking about creating positive habits and creating a better work culture. The guest today is Dr. Joey Faucette, an executive coach, culture architect, and host of the Work Positive podcast. His best-selling book, Work Positive in a Negative World: Team Edition, is the manifesto for developing your positive work culture.

Dr. Joey has spoken to thousands of people within companies and associations annually for decades. He is a prolific writer of over 1,000 articles that have appeared on the websites of Fox News, CNBC, Wall Street Journal Market Watch, MSNBC, Entreprenur.com, and countless others.

Questions for Dr. Joey include:

• How do we focus on the positive at work?
• Why do familiar thoughts short-circuit success?
• How do our morning media habits cripple our work?
• What is the best, proven morning ritual to get ready for work?
• What one evening habit best silences our Inner Critic?

We do our best to ensure editorial objectivity. The views and ideas shared by our guests and sponsors are entirely independent of The HR Gazette, HRchat Podcast and Iceni Media Inc.

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:03

Welcome to the HR Chat Show, one of the world's most downloaded and shared podcasts designed for HR pros, talent execs, tech enthusiasts and business leaders. For hundreds more episodes and what's new in the world of work, subscribe to the show, follow us on social media and visit HRGazettecom and visit hrgazettecom.

Speaker 2: 0:26

Welcome to another episode of the HR Chat Show. Hello, this is Bill Bannam, your host today. Today we are talking about creating new habits and creating positive work cultures, and my amazing guest today is Dr Joey Fawcett. Dr Joey, what a lovely chap you are. We've had conversations before now. I think you're awesome. I love your work. Thank you very much for being my guest today.

Speaker 3: 0:51

Oh wow of all the places I could be today. I am so delighted to be with you, bill, on the hr chat show.

Speaker 2: 0:57

Thank you so much um, why don't you start, dr jerry, by taking a couple of minutes and telling our listeners all about yourself?

Speaker 3: 1:05

Wow, all about myself in two minutes or less. This is like American football, right, where you're trying to score in the last two minutes. Well, first of all, bill, I like to have fun. I think life and work is to be enjoyed, and work should be an expression of the best life we can possibly live. So today we're going to be talking about those new habits that create a positive work culture. And then it came not just from my experiences, but from the experiences of persons I call Great Depression gurus.

Speaker 3: 1:34

Some research I did during the Great Recession here in the US, in which I discovered persons who started businesses during the Great Depression when we use depression as an economic term instead of a medical term and therefore all business around the world was gone. Well, these amazing people started businesses that are still thriving today, and some of them are still billion, billion dollar companies today. So how did they do it? What were their habits? And so I discovered that those habits coalesced around what I call five groups of habits, or what I prefer to call core practices. So those five core practices drive a positive work culture, and, of course, a positive work culture grows people and profits for every company. So, if you're interested in increasing your operating income 19 percent, your revenue growth 28 percent year over year. This podcast episode is for you.

Speaker 4: 2:27

Thanks for listening to this episode of the HR Chat Podcast. If you enjoy the audio content we produce, you'll love our articles on the HR Gazette. Learn more at hrgazettecom. And now back to the show.

Speaker 2: 2:44

Love it. Thank you very much. Could I ask you to maybe share some of those five habits or practices that you just mentioned?

Speaker 3: 2:53

Absolutely. We're going to focus in today on the first one, and that is the perceived core practice, which the positive work culture starts and stops in your head, and so you train your brain to focus on the positive and filter out the negatives. We don't deny that there are negatives at work. Of course they are. They're human beings involved and the world's broken, and so are we right. So there are opportunities for us to focus on positive thoughts and to filter out the negative ones. The second core practice is the conceive. These are the social dynamics of work, whether it's the best characteristics of work positive dream teams or whether it's learning to deal with negative people or, as I like to call them, eeyore vampires, without becoming one yourself. The third core practice, bill, is the believe core practice. This is your emotional engagement. We're all wanting employees who engage, and here in the US, gallup tells us from its last survey that about 85% of all American workers are disengaged. What does that mean? That means we're losing out on innovation and creativity and people are just quietly quitting their jobs. So how do we reverse that trend? We help them believe. We help them emotionally engage in their jobs. So how do we reverse that trend? We help them believe. We help them emotionally engage in their work. So we perceive it mentally, conceive it socially, believe it emotionally and those three internal processes lead to achieve, which is the physical part of doing our work and that's where productivity comes involved. The achievement prescription we talk a lot about that in our coaching programs and in my best-selling book. And the achievement prescription is attention that is, focusing on positive thoughts and positive people, plus intention, and that is the emotional engagement of the belief.

Speaker 3: 4:37

Core practice plus action. It doesn't count until you do something, bill, and that equals a work, positive culture where companies grow people and profits and achieve the kind of remarkable results we were describing earlier. So when I was studying these great depression gurus, I thought those four core practices were it. Those four bundles of habits pretty much summed up how we achieve a positive P&L and positive human capital, those kinds of things. But I discovered one more, bill, and that one we call the receive core practice. These Great Depression gurus really had an ethical dynamic to their work and that is, they discovered that saying thank you and serving teams and customers really propelled the relationships that they had both internally and externally. So they became very philanthropic, great givers into their communities and really anybody that kept the lights on for the company they were demonstrating their gratitude to them. So gratitude is a huge player in the receive core practice realm. So those are the five core practices of a work positive culture no-transcript.

Speaker 2: 6:17

There is so much to unpack there. I was desperately taking down notes as you're going through those. I want to sort of delve a little bit further into a few of the things that you mentioned there, if that's okay. You started off by talking about the importance of kind of training your brain on on positives, to have a more of a positive outlook. Um, that's interesting. What? What's the responsibility of the manager, though, to create that positive culture? Is it, is it, should it be down to the employee? Are you saying that, um, that the employee's got to be ready to be positive? But, of course, what extent should the manager be there, the leader be there, to inspire and ensure psychological safety and a positive work culture?

Speaker 3: 6:57

The answer is yes, it's both and it's all of those. We as individual workers are responsible, of course, ultimately for our own state of attitude, state of mind, and so we do have certain responsibilities, and that's one of the things that we teach in our seven keys to work. Positive coaching program are some daily habits in which you as an individual regardless of how much your manager is wonderful or sucks, you know you as an individual can certainly train your brain to do the kinds of things we're talking about here. But in terms of a manager, supervisor, a leader within a company, yes, there are certain things that you can do, and we consult and facilitate processes within companies to train their managers to do those very things. We like to use coaching and we teach coaching.

Speaker 3: 7:48

I'm an ICF certified coach and we have an ICF certified or approved training program to train other coaches. What we find that, bill, is most managers don't want to go through a 60 hour program, necessarily. Some do so it's like we're ICF light. We use the same core competencies in our manager training program, but we tailor it specifically to the managers and create you talk about psychological safety. We create safe environments in which they can begin coaching with, you know, observing each other and we take them to the edge of their competence where they fail, graciously. Take them to the edge of their competence where they fail, graciously, and then we help them discover how to move forward. And having coaching for results, conversations as managers to really focus the thoughts of their people on what is the positive that's going on at work today.

Speaker 2: 8:39

Now, the next note that I made from your previous answer was around dealing with negative co-workers. I think you called them vampires. You are vampires, yeah.

Speaker 3: 8:50

Okay okay.

Speaker 2: 8:54

So how does an employee without a lot of training, perhaps in the effective ways to increase productivity within a team, to collaborate better, et cetera, et cetera? How do they deal with one of these vampires?

Speaker 3: 9:08

Tell us more, yeah the Eeyore vampires right, by the way, bill, I called them Eeyore vampires because AA Milne wrote a book about Christopher Robin and his playmates Winnie the Pooh, peglet, ti Doublegoo my personal favorite and then Eeyore is one of those. So if you think about that, the stuffed animals all got together and planned the perfect play date for Christopher Robin. Here's what we're going to do, and, of course, for Pooh, it always involved a honeypot, which I'm all for, to honeypot, which I'm all for. And so who walks up on the team meeting time after time after time and says it'll never work, right? And we've all been on teams with people like that who say, oh, bother, all right. And so what do we do? How do we deal with those people? Well, it would be wonderful if those toxic employees stayed at work, but unfortunately, when the sun goes down, they morph into vampires, and so they're flying around in the back of our heads as we're trying to do those things with people that we love, right?

Speaker 3: 10:11

And family, friends, community members, neighbors, and they're sucking time, energy and attention away from us. So that's why I call them Eeyore vampires. Now how do we deal with them? Let me give you three quick tips, three tactics that you can start doing today. First of all, you want to. When, let's say, you walk up on a conversation, or let's say you're on Zoom and one of these Eeyore vampires is talking about what a sorry boss Dr Joey is and can't believe that he's our supervisor and how do we all stand it working for him, well, the first thing you can do is to redirect that conversation. If the person, the or vampires going on and on and on like that just say wasn't the weather lovely this weekend? I got out with my family and you know we took a hike in the woods or we walked down by the river trail. Just redirect the conversation because literally, bill, what you're trying to do there is to change the polarity of the conversation, switch it from negative to positive. But Eeyore vampires are particularly pernicious and persistent, so that Eeyore vampire may look at you and say what are you talking about? We weren't talking about that. We were talking about what a sorry boss Dr Joey is. And so it continues on.

Speaker 3: 11:24

You have another marvelous opportunity there to reframe the conversation a bit. That is, you stay on the subject of Dr Joey as a boss. But you say, well, you know, dr Joey may not be the best leader in the world, but he does own the company and the last time I went to the bank my payroll check cleared. So at least he's helping provide for me and my family. You find some nugget of goodness that you think that the other person's listening would enjoy and latch on to. So that's reframing. So you redirect it, take it 180 degrees the other direction. Then you reframe it. Stay on the subject but give a different perspective. Then you reframe it. Stay on the subject but give a different perspective.

Speaker 3: 12:04

And thirdly, if this Eeyore Vampire Bill is particularly pernicious and persistent, you remove yourself from the conversation. Just consider this Eeyore Vampire as having a virus, flu bug, a variant of COVID, whatever you need to imagine to get yourself out of there. So you can mute yourself in Zoom. You can shut your speakers off for a bit so you don't have to listen to this or your vampire before the meeting starts or, if you're physically present with one another, walk out of the room because it's contagious and it's going to affect your own mental attitude and your own productivity, and personal development are going to suffer because you spend so much time with them.

Speaker 3: 12:45

My favorite business philosopher was Jim Rohn. I learned so much from him and I still do, even though he's passed on now. But Jim was fond of saying that you are the average of the five persons with whom you associate the most. So think about those five persons with whom you associate the most. Is one of them into your vampire? It's time to unfriend them. Even if they're on a work team, spend only a limited amount of time with them, and so the third R, if you will, for dealing with negative people without becoming one yourself is to remove yourself.

Speaker 6: 13:20

Thanks for tuning in to this episode of the HR Chat Show. Iea training provides professional development to a changing workforce with changing needs, and we're proud to support this episode of the HR Chat Podcast. Iea offers lots of courses, webinars and on-demand training to meet our students where they are and help them reach their goals. We're proud of our contribution to better risk analysis and high operating standards in the industry. Learn more at IEATrainingorg. And now back to the conversation.

Speaker 2: 13:54

That is interesting. You're getting me thinking now about those five people. I'm going to challenge you, though, on what you just said. There Isn't caution going back to this idea of the eel or the vampire? Isn't caution necessary? Don't we need to be cautious in a work environment, or is that detrimental to the positivity that you're talking about?

Speaker 3: 14:15

Well, I think caution is definitely an element. Some of us are early adopters. We're more open to new ideas. Others of us are late adopters and everybody knows the bell curve there. But what we're talking about as a New York vampire is not caution. We're talking about someone who wants to pour cold water on every idea, everything that comes along. They just have a negative mental mindset. They've chosen it and we can talk about that, if you want to, through their own interpretation of life and work experiences. So it's never good enough. There's always something wrong. The sky is falling constantly. That's far different than caution.

Speaker 3: 14:58

Caution I like to think of as necessary, particularly in decision-making processes, because people are naturally cautious. I want them nearby. In fact, I want people who are naturally resistant to any new idea nearby. Not that they have a negative mindset, necessarily, but they're resistant to new ideas because that makes early adopters slow down. Consider all the possible permutations that could come from this decision. But then you still reach a point where good enough has got to be good enough and you make the decision, and all decisions elicit a zigzag course, correction, response anyway. Right, because things rarely, if ever, turn out the way we think they will. Sometimes they're amazingly better.

Speaker 2: 15:41

Sometimes they don't even get close, so we zig and zag our way back on the course okay, I did mention in the intro we're going to talk a little bit about habits as well on this show, so let's do that now um how do our morning media habits? Dr joey cripple our work absolutely.

Speaker 3: 16:00

some of us have the good foresight to choose to listen to HR chat or some other podcast which help educate us in positive ways and really help get our mental mindset for the day. I like to think of it, bill, as a positive mental breakfast. You know, nutritionists tell us that breakfast is the most important meal of the day and yet so often people who are trying to lose weight say, oh, I just skip breakfast. Worst thing you can do Breakfast establishes your metabolic set point for that day and get your body to digesting food and your metabolism revved up. Same thing with your mental mindset in the mornings. And so you want to ensure that, rather than using push media, which is more traditional newspaper radio, those kinds of things where you abdicate your editorial license to someone else, and instead choose push media where you I mean you can listen to Bill and I converse at 2x speed if you want to, so that we sound like chipmunks as we're going through this, or you know. However, you want to do it, but you get to choose and you choose how much you listen to and how you do it. So we encourage people to use push media uh, to avoid push media and to use pull media instead push media.

Speaker 3: 17:17

Typically and I don't know about all the push media in the UK, but I know here in the US their mantra is if it bleeds, it leads. That is in newscasts, particularly the bloodiest story, the worst thing that could possibly happen or might could have happened, that's the headline story. There's this. They pull you through a funnel to where, if you're still mentally viable after a 30 minute newscast, they might put a warm and fuzzy story about the first responders rescuing a cat that day out of a high tree. You know, I don't know, but something like that. But typically if it bleeds, it leads, and so the worst news in your community I know, by the way, they'll import it from other communities as well Go into that push media. You don't have to train your brain that way. You can choose and use pull media instead.

Speaker 2: 18:13

I remember a quote many years ago that I was doing media studies and things, something like nobody's interested that all the dogs are not lost, so what that means is people like bad news stories, unfortunately that they're much more popular, which is that's. What does that say about us? That's a different conversation for a different time. We're going to wrap up shortly. Absolutely, it is, bill. We just briefly spoke about morning habits. Let's spend a minute or two on evening habits. What is one evening habit that best silences our inner critic?

Speaker 3: 18:53

Yeah well, we all have that inner critic that constantly are battling us, saying you suck, or you didn't do what you should have, or you could have done this. You know, it's that, that notion that you think of what you should have said or could have said after you're away from that situation, and then it just spirals and we're chasing alice down the rabbit hole at that point, right? So instead, let's unpack each day's activities just before we go to bed and write in what I like to call our gratitude diary. Fortunately, since I started this the Work Positive Culture creation back in 2011, more and more people have caught on to this notion and so, however, you take notes, whether it's in your mobile device or laptop or tablet, or good old-fashioned pen and paper, which is what I do with a three-ring binder, because there's just something concrete that organizes my thoughts about writing the physical activity of writing for me, that organizes my thoughts about writing the physical activity of writing for me, and you want to write down three activities from that day, three experiences, if you will, that you were surprised by positively, or that went well, or just something you're grateful for, like, for instance, in my gratitude diary. This evening, I'll write about having this conversation with Bill on HR chat, and that will be something that I'm grateful for, that I had an opportunity to help people create, discover how to create a positive work culture, so that'll be item one you can put.

Speaker 3: 20:33

I'm grateful I could afford to pay my mortgage today. You know it's that day of the month when the mortgage draws. People say to me constantly well, dr Joey, what if nothing? Positive's that day of the month when the mortgage draws. People say to me constantly well, dr Joey, what if nothing positive happened that day? There's always something, bill, even if you just have to write in your gratitude diary I did not get run over by a cement truck today. That's something positive, granted. You have to scratch to find that.

Speaker 3: 20:55

And what happens is, rather than chasing the evening news in your brain, as you sleep, you're actually processing. Your subconscious mind processes those three positive experiences as you sleep overnight. So I'm not a medical doctor, I've never played one on TV, even overnight. So I'm not a medical doctor, I've never played one on TV even. But I will tell you that some of our clients, many of our clients, have been able to come off sleep aids and have definitely reduced the amount of alcohol that they used to consume in order just to go to sleep at night, just to quiet their brains down. So it's deeper rest, more fitful rest, and you wake up more refreshed in the morning. If you're waking up in the morning as tired or nearly as tired as you went to sleep that night, something's off with your sleep. The gratitude diary will cure that. So just make it easy peasy for yourself and write down three positive things, experiences that you had that day.

Speaker 2: 21:54

Okay, Thank you very much. I feel like we've done something I always try to do on this show and we've done lots of it today and that's offer practical takeaways for our listeners. Dr Joey, before we do wrap up for today, how can our listeners connect with you, get a copy of one of your amazing books, learn more about events that you're speaking at, become your friend. All the rest of it.

Speaker 3: 22:15

Well, just tell me you're with Bill and you'll be my friend, so that one's easy peasy, right. You can go to our website at workpositivetoday, workpositivetoday and Bill. There you'll find an amazing free course that I love to give people called Something to Talk About. It helps you change the way you talk about work and therefore changes your mental attitude the very things that we're talking about as well as positively changes the mental attitude of others.

Speaker 3: 22:44

If you'd like to get a free copy of my manifesto about how you can create your own positive work culture the name of the bestseller is Work Positive in a Negative World Team Edition and I'll give you a free copy. You'll have to help me with shipping and handling, or you get to help me with shipping and handling, but if you'll go to workpositivebookcom, we'll be glad to send you a copy of that, and it's available on Amazon or wherever you buy your books. Also, if you would like to get weekly encouragement, information, inspiration from us about how you can create a positive work culture, please feel free to do that. If you'll go to workpositivetoday backslash newsletters, then we'll be glad to send you our weekly newsletter absolutely free.

Speaker 2: 23:29

Excellent. Well, that just leads me to say this is the first in a couple of conversations that Dr Jerry and I are going to have. Dr Jerry, you are an absolute gent. I enjoy your time. I love your values. Thank you very much for being my guest today.

Speaker 3: 23:43

Bill, you're a scholar and a gentleman and I thank you for having me on HR Chat.

Speaker 2: 23:47

And listeners as always. Until next time, happy working.

Speaker 1: 23:54

Thanks for listening to the HR Chat Show. Thanks for listening to the HR Chat Show. If you enjoyed this episode, why not subscribe and listen to some of the hundreds of episodes published by HR Gazette and remember for what's new in the world of work? Subscribe to the show, follow us on social media and visit hrgazettecom.