Gratitude has power. It can change our perspectives and the decisions that impact our future. It can put us in the right frame of mind to create a lasting impact on our teams and our organizations.
We are excited to discover, with you, the key commonalities and best practices that allow both public and private organizations from capital intensive industries to become stronger at managing their assets over time.
Learn more at: www.durablecapitalindex.com
John "GUCCI" Foley:
https://johnfoleyinc.com/john-foley/
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/johnfoleyinc_gladtobehere-gratitude-highperformance-activity-6696563457791193088-JsSy
President Russell M. Nelson on the Healing Power of Gratitude:
Ben Parker:
Today I'm going to talk about the power of gratitude in business and working with teams to get to the right answer. It's not always what you think.
Automated:
Welcome to the Durability Podcast. This is for those that are passionate about helping their organizations plan and prepare for the inevitable future. My name is Ben Parker, management consultant, chemist, creator, entrepreneur, co-founder, and member of the Durable Capital Group. I'm excited for you to join me as we discover what successful organizations do to build long-term durability. We explore the tactics and strategies that allow great organizations to combine the financial wisdom of asset management, the practical street smarts of the maintenance subculture with the real-world paranoia of managing risk to ensure their organizations last. We uncover what great leaders are doing from all types of capital intensive industries to make decisions, build strong management teams, and prepare to meet the future in whatever form it comes. This is the Durability Podcast.
Ben Parker:
Welcome back everyone to the Durability Podcast. I am your host, Ben Parker, and I am really glad to be here. This is Thanksgiving week and there is a lot to be grateful for, and I think that is something that has been resonating with me for several months now. When we have looked at all the things going on, COVID pandemic turmoil, political strife, all of the pieces that divide and separate, there's a general negative feeling about what's happening in the world, in people's lives. And there are challenges. I'm not going to demean or take away from the real challenges that are there. That is a fact. We see the same thing in business a lot of times, and in businesses, both small, large and everything in between, in all types of organizations where the general feeling becomes negative.
One of the core principles that I have resonated with and more lately is this principle of gratitude. I've been reminded of some very core fundamentals that we have seen in great leaders time and time again that have allowed them to be very successful in ways that others could not. And it comes down to how they treat others and what they do to help people understand how to get to the right answers. Some of them are classically known for setting up frameworks, like Ray Dalio's great example of building systems and frameworks, and working with people to get to the right answer. There have been countless others. Generals, local leaders, a variety of people who have a way to capture people's hearts and help them feel heard, and still help them move past weaknesses, push themselves to do extraordinary things and get to the right answer faster and with less energy, so to speak, than other approaches. And one of the things that I have been provided with is some deeper insight into different organizations and how they work and how they reach consensus.
One of the phrases that has stuck with me the last little bit is when people talk about individuals, right? Everybody in a room wants to feel heard and valued, and it's important to care deeply about individuals. The reason it's important is because it helps us keep things in perspective, and it allows us to see things clearly. It's amazing what happens when you're in a room, especially in a high-powered leadership room with lots of personalities, lots of various experiences, opinions, passions, and what typically happens in the base case is that people will start to convince others of their arguments. They will use passion and anger, sometimes aggression and various forms of other communication strategies to convince people to their side. A lot of times people come into a meeting or a decision with the opinion or decision already made, where they've kind of made their mind up on what they want to see happen and then they push for that agenda.
And it's interesting when you're in a group who cares deeply about each other and wants to truly understand different perspectives. My experience is, is you get to the right answer faster and with less confusion and strife. One of the challenges for many organizations is to work with owners, with managers, with decision-makers, in a way where those aspects of a decision can be debated, negotiated, worked through, to get to the right answer, not for any one individual, but for the organization as a whole. And I think one thing that is essential for people to be able to work in an environment with a team that will allow them to get to the right answers quickly, is this concept of gratitude. Leading by gratitude. There's a lot of biochemistry that happens when we focus on the things we're grateful for, and there's some really cool data on that aspect.
I'll throw some insights into the notes. One speaker that has been really fun to watch, his name is John Foley and he's been really fun to watch. He is a navy pilot. He was a captain in the Blue Angels, I believe. I'm not a military man so I don't know the correct details and rank and where he was in that group. He may have been a squad leader, I can't remember. But he has just been so fun to watch on LinkedIn because he focuses on fundamental principles of high-performance teams, group accountability and personal accountability. His tagline... I think his company's name is even Glad To Be Here, and that whole concept of gratitude fuels so many valuable things that are essential for teams and groups. So, go check him out.
It's been really fun to watch some of his stuff on LinkedIn, and it really resonates with me in this concept of showing gratitude and what that does for teams, and helping us get to the right answers, the right processes, the right structure of our businesses, of how we deal with people, how we deal with our customers, our vendors, all of the above. It definitely plays an important role. Another really good example this last week of leading by gratitude was the faith leader, president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Russell M. Nelson, who's like 96. He was a surgeon, he was part of the team that developed the first heart-lung machine, among other things. He came out last week and talked about a prescription of gratitude and how healing gratitude can be for us, and perspective changing. And so I really appreciate those examples of people who are encouraging others to have more gratitude for, not just the things that they have, but showing gratitude toward others helps connect us in ways that we typically wouldn't take the time to connect.
And so, those two examples I really have appreciated in this last week, of people trying to help bring this insight and concept more into the forefront. One last example that I will share is actually my wife, and I try not to make this podcast too personal, but there is an aspect here of gratitude that has really helped the organization of our marriage. My wife and I are business partners as well as a husband wife team in a couple of different businesses. But we actually see things very differently. And one of the things that has broughten some strength and clarity to us early on in our marriage, we were challenged to, every night, tell each other one thing we were grateful for that day. And good days, bad days, terrible days, stressful days, my wife has been so good at helping us remember to do that.
I can tell you that that simple practice has made a significant difference in how we communicate, how we talk to each other about hard things, about problems and challenges, but also how we make decisions going forward. So that simple practice has really helped us stretch. I mean, sometimes it's really hard when you're in a certain frame of mind to really find something that you're truly grateful for. And it's that process of digging deep to see things other than what you can see in the emotion of the moment that brings the clarity and power. And you can see that people who are negatively focused, that only worry about the negative outcomes tend to act in ways that prohibit them from creating other outcomes that could be synergistic and possibly more valuable. And so, it really helps with the stretching of, not just imagination, but also with meaning and purpose and value to get to better answers.
I know I'm pretty vague when I talk about the right answer in business or in family matters or marriage, but in this context, the process of thinking deeply about what you're grateful for, a feeling that gratitude changes your perspective about what's possible. And I think that's what organizations miss many times in a formal setting when they do not preface some of those decision-making processes and opportunities with something to reset their mindset around what's possible. There's just a lot of pieces that I think a lot of organizations really struggle with, and it doesn't have to be as complicated as people make it.
It doesn't have to be as dramatic as people make it when they can focus on the basics, showing gratitude to individuals on a personal level and caring deeply about the people that you're working with, and then caring deeply about getting to the right answer and pushing people to help them get there as well. And so, when everybody's looking for the right answer, they're not looking for their agenda or to move their own perspectives forward, it's a really interesting process that unfolds in terms of making clear, concise, data-driven decisions that affect the long-term health of an organization.
So, on behalf of the Durable Capital Group, thank you so much for listening, and I hope you have a wonderful Thanksgiving week. And no matter what circumstances you're in, good business days, bad business days, find at least three to four things that you're grateful for and focus on that. Breathe deeply and then get out there and crush it, whatever the next thing is. Thanks everyone. Have a fantastic day.
Automated:
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