EntreLeadership - #109: Tom Rath—3 Secrets to Energize Your Work and Life 

Episode Date: August 24, 2015

Called one of the greatest thinkers and nonfiction writers of his generation, author and researcher Tom Rath returns to our podcast to reveal the three keys that matter most for your daily health, well-being, and engagement in your work. entreleadership.com/podcast 7-Day Plan to Triple Your ProductivityAnother great episode sponsored by our friends at Infusionsoft. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

helping business leaders grow themselves, their team, and their profits. This is the Entree Leadership Podcast. Now, here is your host, Ken Coleman. Hello, leaders. We are coming to you from the Music City, and this is the podcast of leaders, by leaders, four leaders, wherever you are, whatever you're doing. We're grateful that you've downloaded us.

Fantastic episode coming. Pat Lynch-Joni is going to sound off on over-communicating, And you're going to love our feature conversation. It's with Tom Rath. He's got a new book out called Are You Fully Charged? Right now we kind of have a disconnect there in the modern workplace where organizations have become really good at figuring out if they're getting enough out of a person. But yet most organizations aren't really helping people to see if and how their lives are better off because they're a part of the organization. And so there's a lot of opportunity to improve that in the American workplace.

That and so much more coming right around the corner. Hey, we want to hear from you. We want you to talk back to us the way you do that with your questions or your suggestions. Email us, podcast at entreleadership.com. Podcast at entreleadership.com. For those of you who have emailed us recently, Eric, the producer and I love it. We really do. We really want to hear from you.

Two other ways. You can engage with us on Twitter at Entree Leadership at Ken Coleman. And by the way, I respond to everybody who tweets to me. Love your feedback. We want to know what you think. So make sure that you take us up on the offer. All right, this past spring, we talked about this a lot on this podcast. We had our very first Entree Leadership Summit at the beautiful, On the La Costa out in Southern California.

And it was an unbelievable event. Pat Lynchione, one of my favorite interviews all time. In fact, he's been on this podcast. I love the guy. He's fascinating to talk to, and he's a great speaker. He delivered a great talk. And so we thought it would be fun if we got into the archives and pull a little bit of Pat talk. It was so good, it was so hard to choose, just a few minutes. So we've got a two-minute

clip here on the topic of over-communicating. And I think you're going to be so encouraged by what Pat says. This is Pat Lynch-Yoni on the topic of over-communicating. Research says now that employees in an organization have to hear something seven times, I said six, seven times before they'll believe it. I call it the Dilbert effect, you know, I mean, that we all work in organizations that say the same things, like, well, the employee is our greatest asset, and, oh, the customer is always right. And quality, well, that's job one. Want, want, want, want, want, want. It sounds like the parents on peanuts, you know, on Charlie Brown, you're just like, whatever. Every company I've ever worked with said those same things, right?

It's only when you hear your leaders say something again and again and again and repeat it and reinforce it and find other ways to reinforce it. After a while, employees are going to say, oh my gosh, I think they're serious. Most leaders do not like to over-communicate, though. They say, well, that's redundant. I think that's wasteful. It could be insulting to my audience. We don't want to repeat things.

Now, in many businesses, redundancy isn't a good thing. When it comes to communication, it's the best thing. But leaders don't like to do it. They're like that husband whose wife says to him, why don't you ever tell me you love me? And he's like, whoa, I mean, I told you when we got married. I'll let you know if it changes, right? And too many CEOs are like that too.

It's like, well, I gave that presentation at the beginning of the year, and I put those slides on the intranet, or I posted it on the break room wall. I mean, you know, nothing's changed. Great leaders are not afraid to repeat themselves, just like great parents aren't. I like to say this. If your people can't do a good impression of you

and you're not around, you're probably not communicating enough. As a parent, I don't mind it at all. When my kids are like, so you're going to the prom, you know, but like, Dad, if you tell me not to do drugs or have sex, one more time, I'm not going to do it. I'm not like, oh, I feel so embarrassed that I repeated my. I'm like, good. Thank you. I'm really glad you know. We as parents understand the importance of overcommunication.

We as leaders have to understand that as well. No employees ever left an organization. If my boss reiterated the company values for me, I couldn't take it anymore. That was it. He was just keeping me too abreast of the strategy. it was driving me crazy. And yet we're somehow afraid to over-communicate. It's crazy.

All right, I hope you enjoyed that as much as I did. Unbelievable talk. He gave a two-hour presentation, and it was just unbelievable. And so he'll be back. Pat Lynchione, joining us again for our second Entree Leadership Summit. This time, we're going to be in Dallas at the Omni Dallas Hotel, May 22 through 25. Here's the lineup. Dave Ramsey, Seth Godin, Jim Collins,

Pat Lynchione, as I mentioned, Dr. Henry Cloud joining us again, and Chris Hogan and Christy Wright, Ramsey personalities. Now, there's one other big, giant name. But as I said in the last podcast, by contract, I'm not allowed to tell you over the sound waves, if you will, even though it's podcasting, can't do it over radio as well. But we can put it on our website. So you just got to go to date ramsay.com and click on events,

and this is a big name. It's going to be great. It's in Texas, Dallas, Texas, May 22 through 25, 2016 again dave ramsayd com click on events it's going to be a great event folks infusionsoft is the most powerfully integrated small business sales and marketing software on the planet i'm not just telling you that we know that at entre leadership so we're really excited about our series we call it one question with jeff mask from infusionsoft here it is i want you to address a challenge that any successful business has to deal with and that is success sometimes we think

about all the other things we have to focus on to be successful. Yeah, one of the greatest challenges is managing your success. What I mean by that is how has Infusion Soft? Stay grounded. As the company has grown, the influence has grown, success has happened. How do you stay grounded? It's all about going back to your mission. Staying rooted in what you know to be true, what you've declared, and what your North Star is.

If you don't have that, any distraction will. come, any opportunity, any shiny object that we like to say, don't get distracted or the squirrel moments, right? Be sensitive, would you? Because people like me, we live with that. All right? I deal with that every day. As do we, which is why we like to challenge ourselves.

But here's an interesting story about that. When we started growing, we bootstrapped the business for the first several years to the time where we realized we need to take this globally and we will take on investments. And that was a big, scary time for us. We didn't want to take on other people's money. There's all kinds of principles behind that that we weren't fans of. But we knew that there was a certain level of capital that we would need to actually acquire to take this to the masses, to actually accomplish our mission by 2016.

So we started shopping around to different venture capital firms. And we were going through one by one and kind of courting each other. And there were several top-tier firms that were interested. We were really excited and we got a little enamored. And as we got close to closing the deal, there were a few, just in the language, some of the firms were talking about where quote-unquote the big money is, upstream, enterprise, mid-level market, and hinting to the fact that they might want to go there. And we were very clear, and we said, now, just to be clear, we serve small business.

And when we say small business, we mean small business, not 5,000 employees or less. We mean 25 employees or less. We care about the entrepreneur. If that's not aligned with what you want to do, let's just agree to disagree now instead of trying to do something that will just cause friction and not really enable us to stay rooted in our purpose. That paid off in dividends. We ended up being able to partner with people that actually cared about small business, not in words, but indeed in action, in heart. And when that occurred, we partnered with the right partners to enable us to help more small businesses succeed. But had we been distracted, we would have been enamored by those top-tier firms,

all the other things regarding that. But we wanted to find the right ones that ultimately were top-tier as well, but they were rooted in our same purpose and our mission of helping small businesses succeed. It made all the difference in the world. All right, folks, Infusionsoft has a phenomenal free offer for you, okay? Very simple. They've got a free book called the Small Business Icon Playbook. This is filled with case studies and campaigns from their top performance.

customers. So this is like an actual playbook of plans that actually work. Did you catch that? And it's free. It's a $399 value completely free to you, the Entree Leadership podcast listener. All you got to do is go to infusionsoft.com slash Entree. Infusionsoft.com slash Entree and get it for free. It's a playbook of what really works. Jump on it. Our feature conversation this episode is with none other than Tom Rath. Now, Tom has been on this podcast a few times, and Tom is the author of a book I think you have heard of. If you haven't, write this down. Strength Finders 2.0, I'm just going to tell you this briefly. It is absolutely a must read, in my opinion.

For all of the personality tests that are out there, whether it be Myers-Briggs, disk, on and on and on, the list goes, those are important. But I think that book, Stringtenders 2.0, where it spits out your top five strengths, is absolutely mandatory. for high achievers. It will read your mail and it works beautifully with a personality test. It doesn't replace it. I think it enhances it because strengths and knowing what your strengths are is absolutely huge. Incredible work by Tom Rath. So I want to give a huge endorsement to that because it is a must read. Well, he's got a new book out called Are You Fully Charged? The Three Keys to energizing your work in life. So we hopped on the phone with Tom and you're going to love this conversation. Here it is, Tom Rath on Are You Fully Charged?

Tom, this is a real treat to talk with you. You've been a guest on our podcast a few times before, but my first time ever speaking with you, and I'm a huge fan of Strength Finder's 2.0, so I've got to ask right out of the gate here, why this new book? What was the impetus to write this book? You know, I've spent my career studying health and well-being and kind of strengths and performance in the workplace, as you mentioned. And across all of this research, I'm just like most readers out there where I'm trying to figure out what are all the little things. things that I can do differently or build into my daily routine that not only will help me to lead better days where I have more energy and I'm more productive, but most importantly, what are all the little things that we can do today that make a difference for other people and kind of

continue to carry forward even in our absence? So with the book, Are You Fully Charged? I attempted to go back and look through decades of research and figure out what are kind of the central elements, not of a good life, but what are the central elements of really great days where we feel fully charged and are making a difference for the people we care about and serve. I think this is an interesting distinction because it's not just about a great life. It's making the most of each day because the reality is there are some days where we're up against it, rather. It's a tough day.

We know that there are circumstances that we're going to have to face that aren't great, but we still want to make it the best day possible. And that's a really big challenge and a big shift. What surprised you about the research that maybe you didn't expect to see? Yeah, what surprised me most along those lines and really got my attention early on is we surveyed about 10,000 people in the United States, and just 11% said they had a great deal of physical energy yesterday when they reflected on that day. So my concern isn't that, you know, we're making so many bad choices that it's causing issues decades later. And my concern isn't that, I mean, most of us kind of know how to get by on a day-to-day basis and pretend like we know what we're doing and not get fired and so forth. But the bigger problem I see in all this data is that we're operating and living nowhere near our real capacity on a day-to-day basis.

And we're not the only ones that suffer as a product of that. Our children suffer. Our loved ones suffer and our customers and our communities suffer because we're not able to be our best each day like we could be. All right. So there are three keys. This is the subtitle of the book, the three keys to energizing your work in life. So give us a summary of those three keys that really came out of these four. findings. Yeah, the three keys that I found that need to be present every day in order to truly

be fully charged, the first one is about doing a little bit of meaningful work on a day-to-day basis. And I know meaning might sound like some term that descends from the heavens on a sunny day or takes decades to work on. But what I learned through this research is that meaning is infinitely practical, and it occurs several times throughout the day. And so if I help my daughter to recognize a new word, that's meaningful work. If I turn a customer around, who is irate, that's meaningful work. So that's the first key. The second key is just having far more positive than negative interactions throughout the day. And it may sound obvious, but a negative interaction with another human being carries such a heavy load that we need three, four,

five positives just to get back to neutral. And then the third element is to make sure that we're focusing on our own physical health and energy so that we can be our best for other people. And that starts with these little choices about how we eat, moving throughout the day instead of sitting all day. And then prioritizing sleep is a really important investment. That's the way that you have the energy you need to feel great each day and to still be effective at three or four in the afternoon at work and to have energy with your kids and spouse and loved ones when you get home at night. So there you go, folks. There's a summary, the three keys to energizing your work and life.

Now, what Tom has done in this book, I love how you have laid out the three, keys and then you dive deep. And so we can't cover all of this, but Tom, I want to pull out a couple of things that I gleaned or that jumped off the page to me through each of these categories. So let's look at the first one, which is meaning. That's one of the three keys. I love that chapter five, you talk about the idea that we need to double down on our talents. I want you to unpack that thought. What are you telling us in the book about doubling down on the talents. Yeah, you know, there's been a conventional wisdom out there, and I see it in children's books when I'm reading to my son or daughter who are four and six right now, where you always hear that

you can be anything you want to be if you just try hard enough. And a lot of us have read the little engine that could as kids, or you think I can, I think I can. But the problem is that the more I've studied how human talent grows and develops over the years, and from all the Gallup's great research, it's increasingly clear that we just have more room for growth in the areas where we have a little natural talent to start with. So while I would never recommend that you ignore weaknesses or blind spots that are causing problems, we just have exponential room for growth in areas where we have natural talent. So instead of essentially trying to be a little bit good at everything or be well-rounded over a lifetime, the most effective performers and leaders and teachers I've studied,

they know that they have to invest a disproportionate amount of their time and energy in the areas where they do have some natural talent to build on. So this is huge, Tom. I mean, camp here for a moment because this is good for leaders, but all of you leaders that are parents, this is, this is massive. I mean, we're meaning well with our kids, but the fact of the matter is Johnny can't do whatever he wants to do. Let's pick on me, Tom. I'm a five-foot-nine white guy who can't jump. I can try all I want to to dunk, but I'm not going to dunk without the aid of a trampoline. I mean, this is just a fact. Why can't we figure this out and tell our kids this? No, Johnny, you may not be able to play in the NBA one day.

We'll try. We'll see how you develop, but you might not be able to. Is that too harsh? Yeah, I don't think it is too harsh. And I learned that kind of the exact same lesson myself growing up where I spent probably five hours a day practicing a basketball and wanting to be a star. But I couldn't jump fast enough, run fast enough, wasn't tall enough, no matter how many thousands of hours of practice I put into it, I just wasn't going to get there. And it's still hard for me to accept. But I think to your point, you know, the challenge for us as parents in particular is, I mean, I see this, my daughter, to start kindergarten, the report card comes home, and it's such, there's a natural gravity to focus on the areas where a young person's struggling. And, of course, it's important to spend some time there, but what we found through research a decade ago is that if, when we ask parents, if their kids show up at home with an A, a C, and an F, in every country that Gallup studied, the vast majority of parents said the F deserves the most time and attention. But I'm really convinced from all the other research I've looked at that if you ask yourself,

where does the young woman in that example have the most potential for success and development and growth, 10, 20, 30 years down the road, it's clearly where she's getting an A in grade school, not where she's getting an F. So to all but ignore the A is probably a much bigger mistake than ignoring the F. And it's hard to keep that in mind, but it carries forward into the way managers treat people in the workplace and the way we talk to our friends and loved ones as adults as well. Oh, yeah, let's stay there. Let's carry that out.

That's a great thought. So what does that look like for managers and leaders? Honestly, we were asking people these questions about, does your manager focus more on your strengths, your weaknesses? And what we learned in the data is that there are all these people in our data set, essentially putting their hands up and shouting at us saying, what are you talking about? My manager's not paying attention to either one of those things.

Right. And so the first thing managers need to do is just pay attention. It's the same thing with parenting, right? So start by making sure you're listening, you're paying attention, you're not reading your device while you're someone who works for you is trying to tell you something important. Then if you're paying attention, it's important, I'd say to focus at least 75, 80% of your time reviewing successes, talking about victories and focusing on people's talents instead of focusing

75% of the time on their so-called gaps or areas for improvement or their weaknesses, essentially. So there's always a balance in there, and we've got to have tough conversations in the workplace and in any setting. But it's probably a much better idea just for human development to spend three quarters of the time on strengths and opportunities and to spend a quarter of the time talking about the things that you need to fill in. Boy, that's rich. The thought that really jumped out at me from interactions, that section, is this idea

of winning while others succeed. I really love this. I think this is really great. And this is from Chapter 14, this idea of avoid fly. solo, you say win while others succeed. How do we do that? Well, you know, when you think back to some of the most enjoyable moments in life and the biggest successes we've had, you can almost always trace that back to a moment with another person. And so I think that most of the things that we're proud of and the create meaning are created at the intersection, not just with one other person, but in most cases

with many other people who you work with and collaborate with. And that's where a lot of the fun and joy comes from, but yet, as you mentioned, there's that temptation to assume that if you win, someone else has to lose, and it's a zero-sum game, as researchers have described it, but when two people or a group of people come together, they can achieve more, and each person's well-being on their own can improve in the process as well. But yet, right now, we kind of have a disconnect there in the modern workplace where organizations have become really good at figuring out if they're getting enough out of a person, but yet most organizations, aren't really helping people to see if and how their lives are better off because they're a part of the organization.

And so there's a lot of opportunity to improve that in the American workplace. And Tom, this seems to me to be just a classic study of teams. When we see great teams, no matter what the sport, no matter what the level, when we see them win, you see an unselfish team. You see a team that's willing to let one guy or gal maybe be the hero one night and play a supporting role. Isn't that essentially what we're looking at? And that really leads into this idea of I'm fully charged because I'm a part of something way bigger than me. Yeah, the fundamental desire to be a part of something larger than ourselves is really what differentiates a really rich and meaningful life from one where you're chasing your own happiness, in my opinion. And so a fundamental part of that is making sure that you surround yourself with people who can be much better at certain things than you ever could be.

And as soon as you have that balance and configuration of talents around a team, boy, does that lead to really explosive growth and creativity and all kinds of important things in a work context. Which lifts everybody. I found personally, Tom, that when I can work with a team that is so amazing, the finished product, which only has a part of what I'm doing, is so much better. And I end up getting much bigger bump, much bigger credit, much bigger high fives. and I was just a small part of it, but it really does lift everyone a little bit higher in their own professional journey, correct? It absolutely does. And I don't know if there's anything more important that we can all do as leaders and team members than to help other people that we're working with to call out and spot things that

they're doing at levels of excellence, to spot their talents, to spot their strengths, and to help them invest and develop and grow that even more. Because really, the more you focus outward on how you're doing. can boost the well-being and engagement of another person. That's the best way to lift yourself up in the process instead of just focusing inward. All right. So now I want to look at the energy section. I love chapter 21, Tom.

Respond with resiliency. This is a great message that, again, hits so many different people in so many areas of their life. Grin to bear it. Boy, that's a good message. What do you mean by grin to bear it? Well, the way that we choose to respond, even to extreme stressors and very difficult conversations, is usually more important than the stressor itself.

So if you think about that, I mean, all of us have somewhat stressful lives, and there are things that are frustrating flying at us on an hour by hour basis. But we get to choose the way we respond. So, you know, I talk about in the book how I've been blind in my, I lost my left eye to cancer when I was about 16 years old and as a product of that, when I'm in real tight space as like a coffee shop,

I just bump into people all the time and it's kind of an inevitable part of my life. And the other person, I have a prosthetic, so the other person can't tell that I'm blind on that side. So they don't know. They think I'm just careless

or rushing or whatever. Right. And so it's, but I've, I've had this happen so many hundreds of times now that it's more of a psychological experiment for me about what's going on

another person's life. So I can now see when someone bumps into me if they're rushed and hurried and stressed, that I'm always quick to apologize and try and diffuse a situation, but in some cases, even when I profusely apologize, they continue to escalate and escalate and escalate and it's turned into an experiment for me and how do you continue to come back with things that are likely to turn that other person in the right direction instead of doing anything to worsen that at that moment,

because if you put yourself in the other person's shoes, you have no idea what's going on in their lives. And so even when you get these big stressors coming at you, you get to make your choice about how you respond and assume that that other person probably has positive intent that's buried somewhere that behind the scenes there. Tom, I'm curious. You chose three keys, meaning interactions, energy. Did you find in your research or through writing the book that there is a disconnect when maybe you have two, not three or one, kind of fully moving along?

What did you see about how all three of these work together? The real interesting thing for me is that what I learned through this work is even if you just want to be as effective as possible as a hospice nurse for a patient who really needs you or for a family member at a real dire time of need, you need to focus on your own physical health and energy first in order to be your best for that patient and that family member at three or four o'clock in the afternoon. And so even if you look at it from a completely selfless standpoint, you've got to put your own energy first. Otherwise, we're all going to wind up in meetings at three or four in the clock in the afternoon with people who haven't slept, who have been eating the wrong things, who have been sitting in a chair for eight hours, and really can't make an effective contribution to a team or a business or a family. It's important to point out to you folks that are listening that in the energy section, several chapters within the energy section, I just kind of pulled out this grin to Barrett thought, but so much of what Tom is writing about in the whole energy section really is health related. And Tom, that's what I love about this. It's research-based, but you've kind of touched on meaning, right? That's that significance. This really is a well-rounded book. And I'm curious to know, for you, the author, you're such a research guy. I mean, you understand this. You've been breathing this to kind of pass this on to so many people. What did you personally take away from the book? You know, one of the most interesting sections of the book for me personally was some research I dug into around the importance of minimizing distraction and some of the devices that have come into our lives. So the average person in the United States unlocks their phone about 115 times a day, and that's Android phones.

iPhones are probably more. Wow. And if you think about that, and that doesn't even count all the dings and pop-up windows and notifications and social networks, on our desktop or laptop or other devices coming up. That's just your smartphone. So we've become so wired for kind of permanent distraction throughout the day. I'm increasingly convinced that our biggest challenge

over the next decade is paying attention to the people who matter most in our lives. And it's gotten to the point where in an experiment that we talk about in the book, if I simply take my smartphone now and I set it on the table when I'm having dinner with my wife and kids, or I set it on the table, on the table in the middle of a meeting, even if the phone is turned off, it's not ringing, it's not dinging, it's not blinking, that sends a message to everyone else around the table

that I don't care very much about what they're saying and that I'm not listening and that they take second, third, fourth priority. And so the more I get into instead of this topic, I think we've got a responsibility to figure out how we, I mean, even in the messaging we send subtly, keep our devices stowed away, ask people great questions, genuinely close our mouths, keep our ringers off, and listen to what's going on and figure out how we can be present for the sake of the people we care about most. And as a father of young kids, that's something that I've been very deliberate since working on this book to try and practice every night. Thomas Jefferson is one of my favorite Americans, Tom, certainly one of my favorite presidents. He penned the phrase, at least we believe he's fully credited for pinning the phrase, the pursuit of happiness in the Declaration of Independence.

I don't know where he got it from. I don't know who gave it to him or if he came up with it on his own, but he gets the credit for it, and it's a wonderful phrase. And you challenge us early on in this book, fully charged, to abandon the pursuit of happiness. Now, I know what you mean by that because I've gotten to read the book, but I think this is a wonderful point. I'd love for you to tell us why you suggest. suggest that we abandon the pursuit of happiness?

You know, I did do a little homework before taking on that phrase in the Declaration of Independence. And in Jefferson's original drafts, it started out as the pursuit of property, which meant slaves at that point. So it actually got a lot better with happiness. That's right. So not to critique it too much, but when you get into the very latest research on this topic, what we've learned is that meaning is a condition that it has overlap with happiness,

but it's also distinct. And sometimes when people hear the phrase happiness or especially the pursuit of happiness, they start thinking about, well, what can I do to make myself happy? And most of the experiments that I've studied show that if you go out and whether you buy things or try some new technique or do some journaling around,

just with the sole intent of improving your own happiness, it's nowhere near as effective as if someone assigned you to go out and pick up someone else's spirits, which researchers know will do even more to pick up your well-being behind the scenes in the process. So it's that other orientation that really does the heavy lifting and the best work at creating collective well-being for all of us in the process. So I think over the next decade or two, even more work will emerge showing how it's that

kind of altruistic, intrinsic other orientation and serving a purpose higher than yourself that really creates most of the well-being in our lives. I agree with you, and I would say that when we pursue and find significance, which is obviously, I think, a synonym for meaning, and you believe in that, then that's what it's all about. Is it fair to strike the word happiness and put significance in there? Would you agree with that as a wholesome sentence and wholesome goal? Yes, and I think pursuing significance that makes a difference for other people,

or even, I mean, you could even modify it to pursuing happiness for other people. I think pursuing happiness for other people is a great idea. It's just when you focus all your attention inward that it can backfire pretty quickly. That's right. Okay, I love that. That's really good. I've got to shift the conversation to Strength Finder's 2.0. I told you before we started to record it, it's one of my favorite books.

I've told so many people they need to get the book, go through the actual assessment, and get those five top strengths. to spit back at you because I feel like it reads so many people's mail, but more importantly, Tom, when you look at those five strengths that come back in the assessment, I want you to talk to folks who may have not read the book yet. And folks, if you haven't read the book, you need to read it and take the assessment online. Those top five strengths, Tom, if you could sit down with every one of our listeners and say, here's what you need to do with that finding. Once you get those top five, what would you tell them they need to do? I've got a real simple answer to that, and that is

to have a conversation with another person about your talents and most importantly have a conversation about their top five and help them to see how it plays out in their lives. What I've learned from all this work on strengths over the years is that that assessment is a real good starting point. So people have a common language to talk about what's unique about them. But it's really having four or five, six conversations at a minimum every year with your teams. That's where most of the growth exists that's created by that language of talent is at the intersection with other people. So when you talk about the way that you've asked a lot of other people to take it and talk to them about it, I'm increasingly convinced that the most valuable strength is helping another

person to identify their talents. My grandfather, who originally created Strengths Finder and had worked on the science for 30, 40 years, he always talked about the way our strengths grow and the context of a relationship. And that's rung very true for me over the years. I'm a parent. You're a parent. Mine are 9, 7, and 6. And I want you again to tell our audience, I know you have the strength finders for young people. At what point do you recommend that kids take the test? And again, speak to us honestly and plainly here because I think so many parents we want to project certain strengths on our kids that may not exist. And I think, this is a wonderful parenting tool as well.

Speak to us about that. Yeah, you know, I'm glad you mentioned that because it's something I talked about in the book Are You Fully Charged as well, where it's so easy to kind of fall into that default of either what your parents did or in many cases what they kind of want you to do through projection. Yes. And, boy, I mean, there's good research we talk about in the book where that happens a lot more than I even would have guessed.

And in one study about, I think about 50% of a young man, it was a 30-year launch student study, mostly men in the workforce in the 70s, ended up working for the exact same company, let alone in the same industry as a father. So it is a huge challenge. And I think that's where an assessment like Strengths Finder, there's a version for youth that's more in the ages of 12 to 16, and then the full adult Strengths Finder is usually kind of a reading level of 15 or 16 and older. In my opinion, the best time to take the main strengths finder assessment is towards the end of high school or at the very start of college. And what's been most...

Because is that, is that, I hate to interrupt, Tom, but is that because there is a definite developmental shift, even if a 12-year-old takes it between the time they get to that 18-year-old age? Is that why? Well, it's... I think ideally you do take the Strengths Explorer that's for younger kids, a little bit younger age, if you've got parents who are real close in the development there. I think the place where I've seen Strengths Finder really have the most long-term

widespread meaningful impact is with a couple of million students who have taken it in their freshman year of college because that's where it's plugged into the infrastructure and gets real specific about what classes should you take, what are majors you should explore, how do you build relationships, what are some careers you can think about? And so frankly, there's just more infrastructure at the last year of high school, first year of college for doing something real systemic there. And that's also the time when a lot of kids and parents are asking pretty serious questions about now that Johnny's almost grown up, what's it going to be and what can he do and can he get paid for it?

I think it's great, Tom. I really do because this combats the whole American Idol debacle where the kids go in and they sing for the judges and they've been told that they're good and we know they're awful. And the judge tells them they're awful and they're just absolutely mystified and mortified and angry when they find help. You can't sing. This is a big problem. And I'm glad you're there, Tom.

I really am because I think this is massive. You know, we've got to do a better job with early identification of talents. And, you know, I mean, even before kids can answer this and take an assessment like Strengths Finder, I mean, I think as a parent, my primary job is probably to spot some early traces of talent and help kids build on it, whether it's what I would have projected or imagined or not. Wow, it's so good. The book is, are you fully charged the three keys to energizing your work in life?

Tom, you're a good friend to our podcast. and I think you're a good friend to our culture and our society because of the very valuable work you do. We really do appreciate you hanging out with us today and thanks for talking about the book. Thanks so much. It's been an honor and a lot of fun. All right, we want to thank Tom Rath for taking time out of his schedule. If you'd like to learn more about what Tom is doing, Tomrath.org. Tomrath.org. And incidentally, he sent me the kid's book, Are You Fully Charged? and I've read it multiple times with my three kids, six, seven, and nine, they love it, and it really is a great message.

So there you go. That's just a great resource for parents as well. Tomrath.org. Well, folks, all month, we've been telling you about our free seven-day plan to triple your productivity. It's free. And in seven days, you can actually triple your productivity. I promise, it's free, by the way. All you have to do to get it, text the word triple to 334.

444. Text the word triple to 3344. Or if you're in our international audience or having some type of phone texting issues, you can go to entreleadership.com slash podcast. And on this episode, the link to get the free resource is there as well. So again, entreleadership.com slash podcast. The link is in this episode for our international audience. Well, folks, that's going to do it for this edition of the Entree Leadership podcast. On behalf of Eric the producer and our entire Entree Leadership team,

We appreciate you listening and we'll talk with you again very soon.