Jim Rembach (00:00):
Okay, fast leader Legion today. I’m excited because we have somebody on the show today that
Jim Rembach (00:04):
For me, brings together several different worlds that I have some passions for one being in the area of sports and in sports excellence, uh, as well as leadership excellence, all to impact the customer experience. Uh, Dr. Jim Blair grew up in a suburb of Denver, Colorado called wheat Ridge. He has a younger brother and an older sister Jim’s brother studied to be a Jesuit priest right out of high school. And his sister became a nun. His brother left the Jesuit order after seven years, and his sister remains a nun today. Jim has three sons, all of whom have their own businesses. And he has seven grandchildren. All of whom are boys with the exception of one girl played multiple sports baseball for nine years basketball through college and tennis. His entire lifetime. One of his sons played professional tennis for several years after receiving his doctorate in psychology and becoming a licensed psychologist in the state of Colorado.
Jim Rembach (01:00):
Jim became chief psychologist and executive director of a large community mental health center that served the central and Southern parts of Colorado. Even in grad school, Jim was interested in the application of psychology to human performance, particularly to elite performers in sport. Eventually Jim decided to pursue his dream, left the clinical world much to the shock of his colleagues and opened a private practice in Denver specializing in sports psychology. He went on to set up a research Institute at the NIC military tennis Academy, where he collected data on performance for six years in 1992, Jim started a business with his long time friend, Dr. Jack Groppel who possessed a doctorate in bioengineering together. They formed a company called the human performance Institute, which became a living lab of high performance to date. Nearly 400,000 clients have gone through programs, offered by the Institute. Clients include 17 number ones in the world in their sport, military forces, FBI anti-terrorist teams, physicians, and surgeons from nearly every specialty and business executives from throughout the world.
Jim Rembach (02:09):
And Johnson and Johnson purchased the Institute in 2008. And Jim remained with the company for another six years. Jim has authored 17 books and is a New York times bestselling author. According to Jim, his two most important accomplishments accomplishments were his breaks breakthroughs in energy management and his pioneering work in linking character strengths to sustain high performance. Jim is currently applying his insights to youth development. The new company is called the youth performance Institute. Jim currently lives in golden, Colorado, a suburb of Denver and all three of his sons and his grandchildren reside just minutes from where he lives. Dr. Jim lair, are you ready to help us get over the hump?
Jim Rembach (02:48):
I am ready. Thank you for having me a jam. I hope we can create some value here
Jim Rembach (02:54):
While I’m doing that all your life. So I know we’re going to be able to do that here for the fast Legion, but, uh, you know, before, before we get into some real meany discussions and dialogue, if you could share with us how, what you’re going to, um, help us with today is going to impact the customer experience.
Jim Loehr (03:13):
Well, it’s been a really interesting journey for me. I mean, we started the human performance Institute and how I got to character was, you know, there was nothing in my training as a psychologist that brought me to that point. It was all this data. I’m a data guy. I love big data sets and data trends. And we had this living laboratory and the more data we got over a year after year after year, we began, began to see that in every high-performance arena, something kept surfacing and that was the connection people had to other people the way they treated other people. And when you talk about the customer experience, I think that’s probably base camp that’s ground zero for the way in which you treat others, they never forgot it. And so we began to realize that one of our biggest insights was that health ignites performance and health is physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual.
Jim Loehr (04:11):
And we actually came to understand spirituals, character health, your deepest values and beliefs, and the highest level of health was really represented in your treatment of other people, integrity, honesty, kindness, compassion, humility, gratefulness, and so forth. Those are the gold stars that represent the most important connection that we have to the world. We are social creatures. And so that I think is really the core of what customer service is they want. We all want to be treated with respect, with dignity and be in, have people speak truth to us. And that is not easy, but that was what our data led us to. And that’s why the last 10 years of my professional career have been devoted to that character space.
Jim Rembach (05:03):
As you’re saying that, I start thinking for me, being in this realm of, of customer experience and customer service for so many years, I start thinking about the additional layers of the complexity of what you talked about. I understand the base camp thing. Um, but then some people talk about, Oh, it’s more than just the golden rule, which is, you know, treating, treating others similar to how you’d want to be treated. It’s more of a platinum role. It’s like, how do they want to be treated? And then therefore, even as a leader, I need to do some adaptations in order to be able to serve them at that higher and or deeper level, depending on how you look at it.
Jim Loehr (05:38):
So that we found, we worked with some of the most extraordinary leaders and we track leaders for long periods of time. And we began to realize that we tend to follow people. We can trust. We tend to follow people that represent integrity. We tend to follow people that speak the truth that, um, have a compassion and caring and empathy for others, even though they have to make hard and tough decisions. There’s something about them that people know that they’ve actually really, really weighed this carefully. And it really probably pains them dearly to have to furlough this number of people or have to make these tough decisions. And so, um, sustained high performance was critically connected to the way in which you interact with others and hold the sacred ground of moral and ethical character.
Jim Rembach (06:33):
Okay. So for me, uh, I talking about analytics being analytical and analytically minded, I start thinking about the formula of all of this that ultimately should, you know, equate to success. And I start thinking about something that you said in the book where you say that, um, the morality system shared by most all leaders is deeply flawed. Um, first of all, how so is a deeply flawed?
Jim Loehr (07:02):
Well, the more we look at this, that what I call the moral machinery, it’s actually quite amazing that we actually end up making as many good decisions morally and ethically as we do. The system has so many what I call coding errors. Uh, there are so many flaws and really unfortunate hiccups in the system. Um, you know, if you ask people where did you get your moral and ethical, you know, kind of source code, where did it come from? Most will say, parents and parents are often deeply flawed themselves. They have things that actually are quite embarrassing for anyone to even talk about because there are so misaligned with what you might call this, you know, uh, ethical and moral line that you’d like to maintain for yourself. Um, your parents didn’t have it in all cases. Um, also we often get what we, uh, what we believe to be the truth and, and how we hold ourselves accountable to something from religion.
Jim Loehr (08:06):
Religion oftentimes gets it completely crazy. Um, in some cases it’s, there, there are things that just don’t really represent the, the intentional harming of others because people don’t believe what you believe in or on and on and on. I could go into that in some detail, but we all benefit from religion. We all benefit from our parents, but there are things that have we’ve carried into our own personal morality that are, that cause our morality to get easily hijacked. So we know strong emotion, we know vengeance, we know anger, we know frustration. We know survival needs all of these things, powerful emotion can completely sort circuit our, um, our, our judgment of what’s right? And what’s, you can look in politics and you see the power of political persuasion. Our ideology can overwhelm what we think is right and wrong. In fact, we take the party line, even though we know that’s not what we truly believe, and, but we have to follow the party politics.
Jim Loehr (09:11):
We know we were born and raised in a culture. Maybe you had a culture of, uh, of gangs and you had a certain amount of morality. Now you carry that with you. And, uh, so when we looked at how flaw the system is, if we don’t do a lot of heavy lifting and become critically aware of how easy it is for this system to get hijacked. And that’s why the whole book is how do we repair it? We, we didn’t really own this. We just somehow got it. And now we have to look at it and we have to go to work and make sure that it is robust enough to take us home moral and unethically, because if we don’t, we’re probably going to get along the way some serious, unfortunate consequences will come our way.
Jim Rembach (09:59):
And, and we’re going to definitely, and we’ll talk about this. We’ll put a link to the book in the show notes page, uh, leading with character. And again, Jim has several books, but, um, this, this one, I mean, for me also comes with a companion, uh, and they talk and we’ll talk about what that is in a second as well. But when I start, you know, going back to this whole hijacking the system and B being somebody who is wanting to lead with character have higher moral value. Um, but yet we’re talking about success. I start thinking that those people, I mean, I would like to consider myself one is attempting to do so, you know, lead with character, um, is oftentimes, um, put it put in a position where you can’t succeed because you have, because we can’t do it alone. We can’t find half success in isolation. It just does not happen. So when we start talking about, you know, finding employees, finding team members, when we start talking about collaborating with colleagues and other organizations and things like that, if we’re dealing with a corrupt system, how in the heck can we find success?
Jim Loehr (11:07):
Well, boy, Jim, you’ve raised a really, really big and important question. Um, so many of the systems that we are coming into have serious flaws in them, and we carry our flaws into that system. And so often we’re swept into that culture and the culture may be highly corrupt in various ways, a sales culture, or culture, where when we really step back and look at what the underlying kind of principles are that represent the company, we really get on easy. We’re really beginning to feel like there’s something isn’t quite jelling with my sense of what, but I got to make a living. I got to succeed here and we spend a lot of time. I wrote a whole book, the only way to win it was the book I wrote previously to this one. And the only way to win is to win with character.
Jim Loehr (11:58):
And the only way to lose is still lose with character. We learned something very important in the, in the laboratory was that there is hidden scorecard inside all of us, and most of us are not aware of it. And that hits scorecard is how we’re really representing the value of who we are to ourselves. And that scorecard, there is a society scorecard, how much fame, glory, money, how you know, how successful you are, extrinsically, how many cars, house, suburbs, everything. And I’ve worked with all these number ones in the world. And so often they would communicate to me, I don’t feel right inside. I still feel empty. I guess I need more national championships. I need more Olympic rings. I need, and it never ends. They’re only as good as their last performance. And then we began to dig deeper into really what is it that people are looking for that give them a sense of fulfillment and satisfaction that lasts that’s real.
Jim Loehr (12:55):
And we found out, it goes back to this ethical and moral scorecard, your treatment of other people. You cannot fill this with extrinsic achievement. The only thing that fills it is because I think we’re social creatures for thousands of years, the way in which we survived, we had to, we had to connect, tend to and care for others. Those who were cast outside of the tribe or the unit went off on their own and just decided to be independent. They didn’t survive. Those that survived were the ones who actually took care of each other. We’re trusted. We’re trustworthy. How to sense that people bonded together. They were caring, they were loving, they were softened minded, but there were a unit. And when you go in and it’s all about you and your, you have all these achievements, but you’ve had to kind of walk over dead bodies to get there.
Jim Loehr (13:48):
And there’s no sense of connection truly to those around you. That, um, there’s an empty space you can’t fill. And, uh, so you may, we’ll be at a disadvantage, Jim, when you say that, well, everybody’s cutting corners. Everyone is fudging. If I don’t fudge, I can’t, I can’t make it. And I will tell you, that’s probably true in the short run, but sustained performance we learned was a key, was clearly connected to your moral and ethical character and how you represented yourself in that space. People will follow you. Your customers will come back. People want to be around someone who represents this because in a sense, that’s how we’re engineered. We want to be connected to people we can trust. And so we’re drawn to those people and those businesses tend to, if it’s a good, solid business will last for a very long time. And only when they start cutting corners and they, their brand, they D they actually do something to their customer base that is so shocking that their customers start to begin to doubt whether or not this is real. And that’s something we have to struggle with every single day of our lives.
Jim Rembach (15:06):
Yeah. Okay. So you bring up a very, also the opportunity for a very important discussion in regards to customer experience. And that is, you know, the demanding customer and yielding to the influential customer, because oftentimes, you know, it’s, I want what I want and I’m going to get, get it, whatever it takes. Right. So I, you know, how does a company draw that line, especially when you start talking about many of those decisions have to be made at the frontline, and we have to give them guidance and guide rails and all of that in order for us to be able to find success. Um, so how do we keep from yielding?
Jim Loehr (15:46):
Well, again, this is a really great question. And first of all, I would say, you know, everyone is a leader, you’re a leader at home. You’re a leader at work. You’re a leader at your community, in your churches or whatever you tend to lead. And the whole important, uh, the greatest importance I believe in that space is that you represent that if you want people to follow you in some way, you need to model, you need to be what it is that you want them to represent. So if you want your, you know, your folks to represent patients and kindness, no matter how bad or how rude this person is, that’s calling in, or this person that’s coming in as demanding everything, what they have to represent is you, and you have to be representative of all of them. So the way you treat your people is the way they’re going to treat their customers.
Jim Loehr (16:42):
And so if you want them to show empathy, kindness, understanding, and patience, then you’re going to have to represent that to them. And it starts from the top. You lead with that ethos and people pick it up. If you are artificial, if you tell people what to do and act very differently, they know it’s like this, isn’t a real culture. This is all artificial. I will be. If I have a bad day, I’m going to have the people who give me a bad day, a bad day, and that, uh, it’s a licensed to kind of be whoever you are in that moment. And you are on stage and people are watching you and your interactions with others, whether it be with a janitor or with a valet attendant, everyone is watching and you are always leading in some way in the character space.
Jim Rembach (17:32):
Okay. So, um, you, you talk about having character, not being something that is static, uh, and that we can build it just like a muscle. So if you can explain that a little bit. Yeah.
Jim Loehr (17:44):
So we learned, and this will probably sound a little crazy to the listeners, but the viewers, but we learned something at the Institute that is still evolving. And we had a review abilitation we had a large nine acre campus, unbelievable corporate training center, all kinds of things that, uh, all kinds of things going on at all times. But we found that the more, the more we could understand how to train in this space in a practical way, how do you teach these things? How to parents teach them. And we had this rehabilitation center and I used to go in and watch these physiotherapists, a rehabilitation therapist, rehab, a broken arm, or broken leg, a, uh, someone coming out of surgery. And I used to watch how they would very carefully, how they tended, how they would allow stress to be exposed to that area, body very carefully and then allow recovery to occur.
Jim Loehr (18:53):
And they would progressingly stress the system and to so growth manifested itself, and then gradually increase that until they could put that system under more stress perhaps than it ever was, even prior to the accident or the injury. And we began and realize, and this is the unusual thing. Once you learn how to train anything in the body, anything at all, it represents how to train across the spectrum. You can train kindness in the same way. You train a bicep, you can train focus in the same way. You train a quadricep, you expose it to energy. And these are all muscles of the body. Basically kindness, compassion, trustworthiness, integrity. These, it can be trained in the same way, rehab therapists, rehab, or train people in within their purview with their physical body. So if you want to build a bicep, the first thing you do is you expose to, to distress, exposure, to stress, and then you allow it to recover.
Jim Loehr (19:59):
And if you don’t stress it beyond its normal limits, it’s not going to grow. And so the more you understand, it’s stress exposure that leads to growth and recovery is when growth actually takes place place. So we can try again, all of these dynamics, most importantly, these character mussels and I divide character into performance character, which are all those things that help you to achieve. It’s what you achieve. Everything like resilience and mental toughness and discipline and time management and on and on and on. These are all things that apply to you, skills that you can possess. And these are muscles, competitiveness. Yeah. Ambition motivated. All these things can be taught and nourished in the same way that these ethical and moral character strengths and another category, your treatment of others can be learned. So all we have to do is identify what it is.
Jim Loehr (20:56):
We want to train. Let’s say, we want to train gratefulness. You start in the morning and you write down maybe for three or four minutes, all the things you are grateful for, and you try to feel grateful for all those things. Every day. Let’s say you do that for 10 days. You will notice something happens in this capacity you have for being, and feeling grateful. And it was had happened because you stressed it, you put demand on it, you a lot of to recover, and then you came back and did it again. And somehow the system goes, I don’t know what’s going on out there, but we need more gratefulness.
Jim Rembach (21:34):
Well, I want you to just hit on right there, I think is really what all about the personal credo journal. And you talk about creating a robust personal credo and what that’s, what that’s all about. And so, as you’re talking about that, to me, it, it oftentimes, so I’m, uh, I’m a certified pitching coach and I have been trained in a system that is all about mobility and stability is actually what creates mechanics. Yes. And biomechanics. Exactly. Um, unfortunately most pitching coaches and even how I was brought up, it was all about telling, you know, you’re telling a person to move this way. That’s not the way it works.
Jim Loehr (22:11):
Right. It’s not how we learn generally. That’s not how we learn.
Jim Rembach (22:15):
It’s not a so. And so for me that the whole personal, you know, robust, personal credo, um, is unique to you. Totally completely just explain it. It’s like, Oh, well, if I want to work on gratefulness, this is what I need to do. If I want to work on time management, this is what I need to do. And I think, and the, in the beginning of the book, you know, it’s all about that whole, you know, self reflection, self realization, you know, all of those important internal, emotional intelligence skills that we have to build muscle in as well. Is that correct?
Jim Loehr (22:46):
Yes, that is correct. So one of the things we found in this, this credo, uh, journal is, uh, the result of 10 years of work at the Institute. We piloted this. It was the hardest work I ever did. This was by far the hardest book I’ve written 17. There’s no book that required this kind of effort. And this one does. This was, and I think it’s the most important work, but it’s something that really requires a lot of heavy lifting for people to see the benefit and the consequences of doing this are profound. That’s all I can say. And you have to kind of experience that yourself. But the whole idea is this. We somehow inherited a moral and ethical, uh, operating system, the moral machinery we have, we really didn’t have much to do with we, most people we ask, how did you get this?
Jim Loehr (23:41):
They don’t have a clue. It just kind of showed up. This is what they use to make all these decisions about what is wrong. And we make about eight to 10 moral and ethical decisions. Most of which, we’re not even aware of what we referenced something for deciding, should I do this or not do that? And then, yeah, we have another system once I know what’s the right thing to do. Do I actually do it? That’s another operating system. So, but we don’t own that. It’s the right kid came to us. It was given to us. We might be even leasing it or renting it. This, this personal credo work, which is 150 days, is an opportunity for you to build what you believe is the most insane, most important, most clearly articulated source code that kind of fills in all the gaps and kind of fixes all the coding errors that are in the one you’re now carrying forward and whatever it is, it is yours.
Jim Loehr (24:39):
You own it. You’ve created it out of the fabric of your life, out of what you believe to be the most important values, your sense of purpose, uh, all the things that you believe most ardently in are going to be reflected in that document. And that document is never static evolve until you die, because we keep learning. We get more, but at least you’ll have something. And we have a system where before you make an ethical and moral decision decision, you actually filter it through this document. You can be a lot more certain that whatever you decide, you’ve actually vetted it carefully. And you haven’t used someone else’s moron. The system that you really never properly looked at for making some of the most important decisions in your life. And we have a very simple system that you’ve gone through this yet. Yeah. You know, when you have a tough decision to make, the first thing you do is you get all the facts on the table and you look at the facts on both sides.
Jim Loehr (25:44):
Even though you’re motivated to go this way, you spend the time getting the facts on the P on the table, then you check your heart. What does your heart say here? So that’s a different system. You have the, the analytics system, the factual system. Now we’re going to look at what the heart has to say, and the heart may have a very message. Then you check your gut. Your God is kind of this in of sense, what, what is the right thing to do is my gut. Tell me, and then once you’ve put all that information into the hopper and mixed it up and looked at it and bounce it off your credo, then you make a decision. You make a decision that is the best decision you can make. And then you act on it. You actually do what that’s, what integrity is. Moral integrity and courage are very much connected, do the right thing. And so, um, the more we have a defined system for these decisions, the more we can rest at night, it may not make it any easier, but we’re going to understand that it’s probably a lot. We have a lot more confidence in the decision that we made and the action that we took to follow up on it.
Jim Rembach (26:57):
And if I think about that from a muscle perspective, if you do that, what you’re just talking about and go through that process, you know, with time, you’re gonna be able to do it faster.
Jim Loehr (27:06):
A hundred percent. Our goal is to get it to the point where this is almost instantaneous. There are two systems of the body neurologically that one is called system one by Daniel Coleman, that, um, you know, you you’re, you’re much more pensive. You’re thinking about things you are. I mean, we have an intuitive system that’s very fast. And then we have another system that’s very logical and very, very clear. All the analytic abilities that we have are, um, are, and you may come to a very different decision. In fact, our intuitive system is often wrong. Uh, we never want to use that as the basis for our making decisions occasionally it’s right. But a lot of times it’s wrong. Well, what we want, sometimes we have to make a decision almost instantly. We’d like to move this moral operating system from something that might take quite a while to something that’s pretty quick. And it’s actually been processed through this remarkable system that you’ve created, and it’s almost instantaneous. And it’s the right thing. When you reflect on it later to go, it was really the right decision. I can trust myself a lot more now that I will do the right thing.
Jim Rembach (28:18):
Well, I think what you’re alluding to there in the book, you talk about, uh, three minds, two brains, and one body. Elaborate on that a little bit more. Cause I think you were touching on it quite a bit there.
Jim Loehr (28:30):
Well, the, you know, we’re very complicated creatures, man. It’s just not simple. And so we have the conscious mind we have, and that’s the, that’s the mind that’s where we are at this moment. We’re, we’re fully aware of what’s going on in the moment. And that’s a small piece of what’s going on. Then we have the subconscious mind and that is something that we’re not currently thinking about, but we have access to, we want to call it up. We can. And then, and that’s another kind of a smaller slice. It’s a little bigger than the conscious mind, but then we have this vast unconscious mind, which is this reservoir of a lot of things that are, are beyond our consciousness. And we can’t just go get them that easily. There are much more difficult, a lot of stored bad images and experiences and it’s, uh, but it’s has a lot of influence over how we operate and how we think and how we feel.
Jim Loehr (29:26):
It’s very, um, it’s a very intriguing part of, of how we’re designed for that. We’re all made conscious. Initially we’d all become just overwhelmed with the contents of that. And the more we can bring the contents of that unconscious through the subconscious and up into conscious deal with it, the less our bodies have to spend energy, keeping it all concealed. We use all kinds of defensive measures to keep that stuff from bubbling up because it’s just too disruptive. So we have that conscious mind and unconscious and subconscious mind. And then we have to, in a sense, two brains, we have this analytical brain and then we have this intuitive brain and the, uh, and the two of those are often at loggerheads. They don’t always come up with the same conclusion and we want to, and it’s, it’s not that we want to exclude the intuitive processor from our decision-making.
Jim Loehr (30:24):
We want to include that data. We also want to include what’s going on on the, on the rational side. We want to look at all the data, all the facts, verifiable truths, put it all together. And then we also want to look at the heart, this, this empathy circuit that is so critical to getting it right, because it’s a connection to other people. And then we have one body. So it’s account, we have this physical body, we have this operating system neurologically that’s really powerful and has two powerful arms. And then we have this consciousness all the way to unconscious and those all have to work together. And that’s why it’s not as easy as we like to think in terms of coming up with the right decision and making sure it’s the best we’ve got to offer something, I would call your best moral self.
Jim Rembach (31:18):
Okay. So there’s also been a whole lot of, uh, you know, insights and study around how we can, uh, essentially unite all of those minds and you know, that we can even influence and impact that subconscious mind that we can’t, you know, um, or the, the mind that we can’t even access the reactionary one. I mean, and, and, and being able to be a master of our mind, people have tried to study that a lot of people have attempted to do that. You know, going back to even one of the books, that’s, I think probably one of the biggest sellers around the world, you know, think and grow rich by nibble when he’s looking at all these mega magnets of, of money back in the 19 hundreds. So I mean, how, how, I mean is the credo and building this credo and going through these activities and exercises away for us to unite all of these.
Jim Loehr (32:08):
Yes. Um, because it brings all of this together in a, in a magnificent kind of process of learning. We have to keep bringing people all of this information forward, our insights. What do we want to keep very conscious? How do we make sure that we are on the, the right kind of channel to make sure that we are holding the line on the most important things that matter to so making sure our purposes, right, or connection to others, our values, and that actually helps all the entire system get loaded properly. Um, if it’s all about you, you know, it’s, it gets really messy because you can take advantage of people. You take shortcuts, but if you really establish, and this creative building processes, 10 minutes a day with your hand, we actually found that writing it out. And this journal is it’s, there’s a scripted journal that you write 10 minutes a day for 150 days.
Jim Loehr (33:18):
And, uh, within three months you put that together, you actually build your cradle and then you will apply it on a regular basis for another, you know, period of time to, to make it more habituated so that it actually becomes part. It’s not something that you read. It’s now embedded in this neural processor between your ears. Now, this is how you operate. It is your core identity, the core identity of how everything actually is vetted moving forward. And so it’s an attempt to integrate the complexities and also to override the, um, the unfortunate, uh, machinery that we inherited that is flawed, that actually has glitches in it that are easily hijacked. And it gets us into territory. We wake up one day was a, how in the heck did we get here? This isn’t like me. This is not who I really think I am, but here I am. I started out here. I don’t know how I got here. Well, that’s how you got there. And I’m not saying we’re going to make excuses for that, but we’re going to take responsibility for every day that we go forward, because we now have a template that will define a scorecard. That is our own. Okay.
Jim Rembach (34:42):
So gosh, there’s so many other things I don’t want to talk about. We need, but we need to keep moving on. And now I want to share something that for me, w w was also, uh, really, um, impactful. Um, and, and we’ll share it actually on our, on our zip notes to our, to our members. Um, and the appendix B of the book. You talk about forces and factors that may corrupt your moral reasoning and judgment. And I think for me, these things are like, uh, Oh gosh, I didn’t, I didn’t think about it. I didn’t realize that. Oh yeah, that’s correct. And there’s 25 of them that you have listed here, but it’s things like, for example, the more uncertain and uninformed you are, the more susceptible you are to influence, you know, it’s just things that we need to remind ourselves and they need to, uh, you know, be on the forefront so that we don’t get corrupted. Right.
Jim Loehr (35:27):
You know, it’s so interesting. I spent a good bit of my career. I was always interested and, um, in brainwashing, um, because I was really interested. If someone could steal your brain, wash it clean and put something else in there that somebody else wanted, how do they do that? How, how does brainwashing occur? And I spent a lot of years studying the brainwashing techniques, um, at Hunter identified in his, um, book on a called brainwashing Mao, Tse-tung in China and so forth. And I’ve studied every single thing that I possibly can. And the whole idea is, is that our brains are very vulnerable to being stolen. And everyone wants a piece of the real estate between your ears, because that’s their buying influence. And the more I get, the more influence I have over your behavior. So every television, commercial, every car salesman, every your mother and your father want influence your coach want N’s wants influence your religious teachers want influence.
Jim Loehr (36:33):
Everybody wants in, some of them wanted for in politics. They want it a hundred percent. They want you to buy into whatever that political belief is. And they’re all vying to own that real estate so they can have control over your behavior. And I got to thinking, well, what are the things that actually cause you to be much more vulnerable to being indoctrinated in ways you don’t really want to be? And those are just 25 of the ones that research has identified actually contribute to your being washed away, um, in the, in the stream of material that you don’t even know what’s happening. And one of them, the one you mentioned is the, the more uncertain you are about, um, your position on things, the, the more likely it is that someone’s going to come in and steal that position for you and fill it with something else, but motivated blindness, uh, you can is if you’re motivated by something enough, you kind of see your close the door to anything that’s oppositional to that.
Jim Loehr (37:44):
So you don’t even look at it. And, um, we are, we’re very interested, you know, we have self motivations and if we hear things enough that support that belief, we’re gonna, we’re gonna lock it in. We’ll never question it. And one day we wake up and we have these powerful beliefs. We have no idea how they were embedded, but now it’s who we are. And we find out we’ve been hoodwinked. The whole thing was a ruse. And it was brought upon us in a, in a very, very secretive, almost a seductive way that, and so in the, in the military, they have programs. The more aware you are of, of your vulnerabilities and how people can get to you, the more resistant you can become to being indoctrinated by forces and influences that you want to resist. You can resist if you know what people are doing to you.
Jim Loehr (38:41):
And so the book actually outlines a lot of that to bring you to a higher level of awareness. I want you to run your ship. I don’t want, if you decide to go that way, I want it to, because you decided to do it. And someone didn’t steal that real estate, because you were simply not awake enough to understand what was happening and that’s happening at levels that is so disturbing. And some of it is entire countries are using those techniques. And even in our political system, there’s a lot of those techniques that are being used that I think are really unfortunate. And that’s why I would like to see people really work on their own understanding of how to resist and become a force in making sure that whatever in that who owns that real estate between your ears, you have your stamp on it. It is yours.
Jim Rembach (39:34):
Well, I mean, for me, and thank you for sharing all this insight, I see a multitude of ways that this knowing, and then therefore doing a kiss, both employee experience and engagement, as well as the customer engagement. And so it’s very inspirational. And one of the things that we look at on the show are quotes because they can help us focus. Is there a quote or two that you like that you can share that can inspire us?
Jim Loehr (40:01):
Well, I guess one that I, that I am most, uh, you know, move by always is Mark Twain. He said the two most important days of your life, number one is the day you were born. And number two was the day you find out why, and that’s understanding your purpose. And once you understand that all of it will come and you make sure that you’re on a mission to fulfill something extraordinary beyond your own self-interest and you can have a life, but you’re going to have to make it your own. And that’s why this credo is so important.
Jim Rembach (40:41):
Yeah. And just to be clear, credo, credo, tomato, tomato,
Jim Loehr (40:46):
Those are all the same. It’s all the same.
Jim Rembach (40:51):
That’s very impactful, you know, but there’s times where that doesn’t happen, even finding the way you know, that we struggle. And we talk about getting over the hump, you know, is there a time that you’ve gotten over the hump that you can share?
Jim Loehr (41:02):
Well, in my business, I’ve had to get over the hump. Thousands of times we were told by countless people that this human performance Institute was a boondoggle, uh, would never be successful, would never financially make it. It would be a contribution, but it would never, we weren’t funded by a university. We didn’t have, it was a funded by people who really felt like it was something that brought value. I was committed to bringing real value and, or not doing anything if I couldn’t it. And if Jack Groppel my partner, if we couldn’t do it and make something happen, that was real and substantial. We were going to turn it down. And I’m always looking at the data I’m always looking at, are we having an impact? And so we used a lot of our resources to track people for 90 days. And then for up to 18 months to try to make sure that this is not just another fluff ball, that we actually are doing something that has sustainability.
Jim Loehr (42:02):
So, um, it’s a, you know, it’s a process that I think w we all have to be held accountable for what we do. And I was, I must, I don’t know how many, uh, obstacles that we overcame, but it seemed like almost every week, we had an extraordinary challenge in front of us from something. But, um, the thing that I’m most proud of is that we amassed a faculty that I think was almost second to none. People who really understood the world of high performance, AMA Ray Smith, uh, who was the commander of the seals. Um, commander George Dom was who commanded the blue angels. Uh, we had, um, a lot of military people who served in the air force who had, um, there were fighter pilots who were, who understood performance under pressure. And then we had a lot of people from the medical world. And when we put all those people together, when you were being tutored, when you’re being somehow mentored by someone who’s been in those incredible situations, you listen because you know, this is, it cannot be funny. This is the real deal.
Speaker 4 (43:24):
Well, now you’re doing that work with youth so that hopefully, uh, we’ll have a little bit less corruption than the world with all.
Jim Loehr (43:32):
Yeah, that’s my biggest challenge. Now that’s where my passion is to try to take, why, wait till we’re 50 to figure this all out. Why don’t we try to bring this understanding of building your credo and having a source document that you really rely on and as early an age as possible and carrying it through. So that’s what we’re pioneering now. And it’s another great challenge, but we’re going to figure it out. It’s tough to get to kids today. But, uh, the whole idea is really kids, mentoring kids, the more kids actually talk to kids about these things. The more they tend to listen, they tend not to listen to us
Speaker 4 (44:11):
Most definitely. And the fast leader Legion wishes you the very best. Now, before we move on, let’s get a quick word from our sponsor. And even better place to work is an easy to use solution that gives you a continuous diagnostic on employee engagement, along with integrated activities that will improve employee engagement and leadership skills in everyone. Using this award-winning solution is guaranteed to create motivated, productive, and loyal employees who have great relationships with our colleagues and your customers to learn more about an even better place to work visit [inaudible] dot com slash better. All right, here we go. Fast leader Legion. It’s time for the Oh, down. Okay. Dr. Jim, the hump, they hold on as a part of our show where you give us good insights fast. So I’m going to ask you several questions and your job is to give us robust and rapid responses that are gonna help us move onward and upward faster. Jim lair. Are you ready to hold down? I don’t know. I guess so it’s holding you back from being an even better leader today. I would say the most important thing
Jim Loehr (45:07):
To not listen to what people say as possible and not possible like the youth performance Institute. Um, I have to really follow my own instincts and a lot of opportunities I have, but that’s what I want to do. Even though say people say you can’t do it because it’s, the obstacles are so great with parents and everyone else out there. You’ve got to believe that things are possible and you got to continue to dig and don’t surrender. And what is the best leadership advice you’ve ever received? You know, I really think one person told me this in business and that is stale hive, whatever you do, figure out how to keep the thing alive. And you will figure out how to get it done, stay alive, keep working and never forget what your purpose is. And the mission hopefully is one that is truly noble in what is one of your best tools that helps you lead in business or life?
Jim Loehr (46:03):
I think awareness, you’ve gotta be aware. And I, the most important capacity I think that leaders have is humility because humility opens the door to continued and never ending learning. We’ve got to learn every day. You got to keep pushing the envelope back and resist what I call hardening of the categories. Once your categories have hardened, just like with your arteries, you are done. There’s going to be problems. So keep, keep open to new learning, never stop exploring new possibilities in what would be one book you’d recommend to our Legion. It could be from any genre. Of course, we’ll put a link to leading with calendar character on your show notes page as well. Um, I would say a man’s search for meaning by Viktor Frankl. Okay. Magnificent publication. I’ve read it 20 times at least. Okay. Fastly Allegion. You can find links to bonus information and this particular episode, by going to fast leader.net and putting Jim layer in the search box search bar.
Jim Loehr (47:03):
Okay. Dr. Jen, this is my last hump they had on question. Imagine you’ve been given the opportunity to go back to the age of 25 and you have the, you have the opportunity to go back to the age of 25 and you can take the knowledge that you have now back with you, but you can’t take it all. You can only take one. So what skill or piece of knowledge would you take back with you and why? Well, it took me a lifetime to get to where I am. So I would that character moral and ethical character above all else. That is the key to everything. It’s the key to a fulfilled life is the key to a sustained success in anything we do. And, uh, it’s, it’s the highest level of personal health and individual can achieve and health ignites performance. You do it right. And everything works out. Dr.
Jim Rembach (47:53):
I had a great time with you today. Can you please share with the fast leader Legion, how they can connect with you so you can reach me on my LinkedIn.
Jim Loehr (48:01):
Uh it’s uh, my website is gym dash layer, L O E H r.com. And my LinkedIn page, you can just Google, just put my name in and you’ll see all the things I’m doing. And, uh, hopefully that we created some value here for folks,
Jim Rembach (48:19):
Jim Lehrer. Thank you for sharing your knowledge and wisdom and helping the fast leader, Legion and myself all get over the hump.