High Performance Mindset | Learn from World-Class Leaders, Consultants, Athletes & Coaches about Mindset - 320: Managing and Leading Through Change and Adversity with Jacob Green

Episode Date: March 19, 2020

Jacob Green, who has been tasked with his company's response plan during COVID-19, joins me today on the podcast.   Jacob is a nationally recognized leadership and emergency management expert. As the #2 executive in a large city overseeing 1200 employees and a $500 million budget, Jacob was responsible for emergency management, risk management, and a variety of public safety functions. Jacob now provides leadership development, training, and coaching services through his roles as Managing Director at Interwest Consulting Group and CEO of JacobGreen.com.  Clients such as FedEx, Mattel, Hyundai Capital, Scripps, the US Air Force, and many other private and public organizations have hired Jacob to help their teams navigate change, leverage adversity and build organizational resilience. His new book “See Change Clearly” is an Amazon New Release Best Seller and hit #1 in five new release business categories. We talk: How to lead through adversity and change in this time How he is supporting 1200 employees across many companies through this change Why overcommunicate is key to leader during this time Do’s and Don’t related to the language you use to lead and keep service front and center. Individual tools and strategies YOU can use to cope And, why we all need “do-over-days” right now

Hi friends, my name is Dr. Sindra Kampoff, a national leader in the field of sport and performance psychology. Every week I'm on the local radio sharing my top tips on exactly how to develop the mindset of the world's best, so you can accomplish all your dreams. Get ready for a jammed, packed episode focused on practical tips to help you get after your goals and step out of your comfort zone. Let's go. When all of this crisis is going on and when the world is evolving very rapidly, it creates a very high level of anxiety. And so the best thing that we can do in leadership positions is give people something to do. Create a structure and a system where people feel like

they can contribute, that they can make impact, and they can be part of a larger plan helping carrying out the mission of the organization. Welcome to the High Performance Mindset Podcast. This is your host, Cinder Kampoff, and I'm so grateful that you're here, ready to listen to episode 320. And I'm more grateful than ever before that you're here, because this is an even more important time than ever before that you're here, because this is an even more important time than ever before to manage our mindset and our focus. Two days ago, I published an episode about three strategies to deal with that fear and anxiety. And I'm gonna continue on this topic because I have been reading your emails

and your comments to me and listening to what you need. I'm hearing that you need strategies as a leader to deal with a changing environment. And how do we handle anxiety and fear that we're experiencing right now? How do we handle the unknowns? And that's what we're talking about today. So I'm listening and I plan to follow what you need to provide value here. So please reach out to me on social. Let me know what topics you'd like me to explore more. What do you need to help you manage your mindset? On Twitter, I'm at Mentally Underscore Strong, and you can find me on all

the other social media channels like Instagram, LinkedIn, and Facebook at Cindra Campoff. And if you enjoyed this podcast today with Jacob Green, please subscribe and leave us a five-star review. Today, I talk with Jacob Green about managing and leading through change and adversity. And Jacob Green has been tasked with his company's response during COVID-19, and he joins me today on the podcast. So he is a nationally recognized leadership and emergency management expert. As the number two executive in a large city overseeing 1,200 employees and a $500 million budget, Jacob was responsible for emergency management, risk management, and a variety of other public safety functions. He now provides leadership training and development and coaching services through his

managing director role at InterWest Consulting Group and the CEO of JacobGreen.com. Clients such as FedEx, Mattel, Scripps, and the U.S. Air Force and many other private and public organizations have hired Jacob to help their teams manage change, leverage adversity, and build organizational resilience. His new book, See Change Clearly, is an Amazon new release bestseller and hit number one in five new release business categories. In this episode, we talk how to lead through adversity and change in this time, how he's supporting over 1,200 employees across many companies through this change, why over-communicating is key to leadership during this time, the do's and don'ts related to the language that

you use, and how to keep service front and center. And we talk about various tools and strategies to help you cope right now with the change and adversity within our world. My favorite part of this episode was at the end when Jacob talks about his personal story about leading himself through change and adversity, a situation that led to a brain injury.

And he says, I would never take back the brain injury. And the way I am moving forward in this time is to ask myself, what lessons can I learn? If you enjoyed today's podcast, please subscribe and leave us a five-star review. This helps us reach more and more people each week. And come back on Friday because I'm releasing a bonus episode

to help you manage yourself during this time. Without further ado, let's bring on Jacob. Hey, everybody. Thanks so much for joining us here today. I got Jacob Green, who's a nationally recognized leadership and emergency management expert on the show today. And Jacob, I'm just really looking forward to talking with you today. Really, the purpose of our conversation is to provide insight and leadership lessons that we can use really in this moment where there's a lot of adversity and change and during this time where our lives are rapidly changing in our business and our lives. So first of all, I'm just grateful that you're on the show. So thank you so much for joining me tonight.

Thank you for having me and thanks for what you're doing because this is the exact moment in our country and around the world that we need to be having these kinds of discussions. So thanks for what you do and I'm very excited to be here. I'm excited as well. I think you're going to really help a lot of people through this conversation today and all the different places that it's posted. So to start us off, tell us a little bit about your passion and what you do, Jacob, so that we can just get a little insight on who you are and your expertise. Sure. So I have sort of two areas of interest. One is organizational leadership development and the other is emergency management. I started my career as a police dispatcher and then working into emergency management and overseeing various public safety functions in city government. And then I really got into leadership and how teams work.

And I started traveling around the country, working with lots of different companies on issues of change and challenge and crisis, you know, everything from fortune 100 companies, all the small companies. And so I just really enjoy looking at how to help people through challenge, change and crisis. Okay, excellent. So I know that you've been really busy since the COVID-19 breakout. So tell us a bit about how you've been spending your days. Sure. So I'm very lucky. I'm managing director for a company called InterWest Consulting. We have about 430 employees here on the West Coast, and we provide a variety of different municipal consulting services for

cities, counties, and special districts. And so we've been monitoring COVID-19 for the last several weeks, specifically here in the United States and trying to determine what the impact would be on our cities and our clients. And so last week when things started really ramping up in the United States, our company and our parent company, which is SafeBuild, we work very, very closely together. And we put into place a virtual emergency operations center, literally brought together a really a new team, brought the team together to look at

in our area and across the country, how are our clients being impacted by COVID-19? How are employees being impacted by this crisis? And what can we do to try to provide our people and our clients the highest level of emergency management and leadership support? And I know you've been busy last night when we talked, or was it two nights ago? I can't even remember now. It all kind of blends together, like you had so many things going on. So give us a sense of where you think, you know, companies response plan should start. And I know you've been tasked to do this with, you know, supporting several thousand people. So tell us a little bit about how you think people should start

at this. Sure. Yeah. So this has been unprecedented. Obviously we're in very new territory, but the approach that we have to take is really the same. And so in the private sector, it's really about creating a continuity of operations crisis management plan. It's really about taking all of this information and all of like drinking from a fire hose and figuring out where to start. And there's sort of a three-tier process that I recommend and that we've been using in our company and using with our clients across the country, which is, you know, first figure out what the priorities are. You know, we set a series of five management objectives right away that were really every decision that we make needed to focus back to address these management priorities.

And this, again, is the same process that you can use in any company, no matter what industry or business that you're in. And third, have these people and this structure develop your plan and figure out how to implement that plan. And when all of this crisis is going on and when the world is evolving very rapidly, it creates a very high level of anxiety. And so the best thing that we can do in leadership positions is give people something to do. Create a structure and a system where people feel like they can contribute, that they can make

impact, and they can be part of a larger plan helping carrying out the mission of the organization. Okay, that's wonderful advice. Question for you. So maybe let's just apply it. One of my clients owns, one of the people I do individual coaching with owns like an auto shop. So today I was having a conversation with him and we were talking a lot about how to not go to the extreme and how as a leader, your stress level and your anxiety just trickles on down. So how might they establish their priorities? Like give us a sense of maybe some examples of priorities, people and plan. Yeah. Yeah. Really good example. So in that particular situation, you know, the leader

first needs to understand that the organization will reflect what the leader brings to the table. Yeah. So it's, it's about bringing authentic, calming leadership to the table. So it's about bringing authentic, calming leadership to the table. So it's perfectly 100% okay to tell your people, hey, you know what? This is new territory. I don't have all of the answers. A lot of this makes me concerned and nervous as well, but you know what? We're going to work together to focus all of that energy. We're going to make some mistakes. We're not going to do everything perfectly, but we're going to do our best to work collaboratively together to figure out how to navigate these very new waters. That will put everybody in that company, in your client's organization or client's company in the right framework, decreasing anxiety, but at the same time honoring the challenges and the issues that we're facing personally in this very new world. I have four little kids and they are off school for at least the next six weeks as we understand it right now. Just a couple hours ago, the county

that I'm in put out a shelter in place order. So we are, we're our family, it's it. And we, we are very limited in contact with the outside world. And I assume every County in California is going to be that same way in the next couple of days. So the world's changing and there's a lot of anxiety and stress, but we've got to really focus as leaders is bringing our people into alignment and having them focus first on where do we start? Who are, what are our people's needs? Okay. And what are our clients needs? What are our people's needs? Okay. And what are our clients' needs? What do our people need from us?

And what do our clients need from us? Yeah. And then starting on really developing sort of those objectives, those management priorities that we talked about. So how are we going to communicate with our employees? How are we going to communicate with our clients? What are we going to have our employees do? What kind of impact can they still make even if they're working in a remote environment? What do our clients need to know about us in terms of continuity of our operations,

accessibility? Do they have questions or concerns about the services that they're expecting us to deliver? Really focusing on that communications plan and bringing our people together. I've been telling our folks, I had the really good fortune of bringing together an incredible team right now. We're managing, you know, like I said, in a virtual environment, we call our emergency operations center, our way of organizing our company. And it's just an incredible team. And this team has been really focused on executing those objectives and over communicating with our people. And so really giving your folks things to do, ways to focus their energy and getting through this prioritization

people and planning process. So give us a sense of what that planning process would look like. So I'm going to use the shop owner again, right? Like his priorities might be keeping his employees safe. They still, their business is still open right now. I live in Minnesota. So we're a little bit further behind you in California. His priority might be to still serve his client and his customer. I would guess those are his two priorities. Give us a sense of like where you think the plan could be and how detailed it needs to be. And today I was having a conversation with him about, okay, what happens if somebody at his company gets sick, right? Like what's going to

be the plan just so that he can think through some of these things. So give us a sense of, you know, as leaders, what we should be thinking about in terms of our business. I'll take you through the process that we went through. And I think it applies to your clients, your coaching clients, your small business owners, your large companies and corporations that you serve, everybody. It's about creating what we call the contingency plan, right? And so you do if then statements. if city halls close in this community, what impact does that have our employees? What impact does that have on our clients? If employees are not allowed to go to the workplace, what impact does that have on our employees? What impact does that have on our clients? So first it's about figuring out and brainstorming what could occur. Second, it's looking at who's impacted and what is the impact. And third, giving some tools, solutions, and resources and

possible ways that we can deal with each one of those issues. So we can create this very large document that kind of went through all these possible scenarios. And just the process of having these discussions with your employees, engaging them in the solutions, don't keep this at the highest level of your organization. Try to really involve everybody because everybody has anxiety and everybody wants to be a part of the solution. So try to have some of these brainstorming sessions with your functional departments, depending on how big your company is, but involving everybody in the if-then process. Excellent. So I know you talk a lot about change in your book. That's like, you know, Amazon bestseller, which is called See Change Clearly, which is perfect for this time. Give us a little sense of like what other tools or tactics you would suggest, you know, that we can use to really in the business world right now, maybe in our lives in general. What are some things you'd tell us to do to navigate change? Yeah, so many, right?

A whole book full. So the first thing that comes to mind with this COVID-19 crisis is, you know, first of all, let's figure out what we're managing. We're not responsible for figuring out the solutions to the pandemic. Let's start where we can actually solve some problems. Okay, so really drilling down and figuring out what do I actually have control over? My favorite quote from Dr. Viktor Frankl is forces beyond your control can take away

everything you possess except for one thing, the freedom to choose how you respond to the situation. That power cannot be taken away by COVID-19. So we have the ability to figure out what our response is going to be. And so first is, what do I have control over? And the things that we talked about, Cyndra, the things that you pointed out, these are the things that we have control over. What is our company going to do? What are the choices that we're going to make? How are we going to continue to serve in this very difficult time? Second is figuring out when a problem comes our way, is it a crisis or is it a problem to be solved? And what I mean by that is talking about time urgency. So a lot of times in something like this, we run around,

we go, oh my gosh, we got to figure this out. We got to figure this out. We got to figure this out. Everything starts to get overwhelming. Wait, wait, wait, wait. Actually, there's just a whole bunch of problems to solve. Most of which are not necessarily time urgency sensitive. We can step back, take a little break, figure out as leaders how we're going to respond to these situations, the team that we're going to put together and create a plan to execute. It doesn't all have to be done in five minutes. We are not generally the fire department. We're not generally the county public health department or the police department. We're not responding on 911 calls. We may be figuring out our business operation, but we have the ability to take a step

back and think about what's a crisis and what is just a problem to be solved. The other thing that I think is really important in this process is keeping your people's tanks full and recognizing that while they're solving these challenges and working on these issues, they also need to eat, drink, hydrate, take care of their family, take care of their kids, build these things into all of your meetings. Sindra, how are you doing? What's going on with your family? Are you taking care of yourself? Are you eating lunch? Always making sure that we're looking out for our people and taking care of their needs and filling up their tanks. And then what I talk about in the book is celebrating our little wins. Let's not wait till COVID-19 is over to celebrate the fact that we got through this together.

Let's make sure that we're celebrating along the way all the little pieces and all the little accomplishments that we can recognize as a team. All the little parts of our plan that we're putting together, that we're successfully getting through, the little wins that we have when we send out a communication to our client, that's a win. And recognize that with the team so that they have fuel and energy to move on to the next problem to be solved. Yeah, Jacob, I can follow up on that in a lot of different ways. I think about, you know, like what I see people doing more and more is just coming together and caring for each other and checking in on people. So, you know, I love, I love that in terms of a, you know, an outcome of this. I also think about what Viktor Frankl said, if people haven't checked out his book and read his book, one of the

most bestselling self-development books, A Man's Search for Meaning. And he talked about how we can put space in between the stimulus and response, right? And I think that is really powerful that this is the stimulus coming at us, but we can choose how we respond. And I think about the things that we can't control from an individual perspective are things like our attention. What are we paying attention to? Are we consuming a lot of media? Maybe too much media.

You got to know the facts. Where are you consuming it too much? You control your attitude. You know, even despite something that you can't control, you can control your preparation and you can control your effort, your emotions, things like that. So I think that's also important to remember that we can control this, even though it doesn't, it does, we can control ourselves, which really, you know, in, in this time of fear and panic and stress, I think that's really important to remember. So, yeah. And just to add to that, Sandra, I think something that you talk about and something that I,

I think is important and refers back to Dr. Viktor Frankl's book as well is we will get through this. We don't know if it's in a week or two weeks or three weeks of, you know, staying indoors and building forts. Today, we built an incredible fort in the living room in the five minutes that I had to be able to run in and take a little bit of a breather, but I had to do that for my people and for my kids. Right. Amazing fort that we've built. We will get through this. We don't know the duration. We don't know all the details, but we will come through on the other side and keeping that in perspective

as we go through this. The other thing, just real quick, Sandra, is I think leaders and folks in organizations, I'm getting to work with this team, many of which have never been in an emergency environment ever before, never have managed a crisis or been an emergency operation center. It is unbelievable what my team is accomplishing. And the same thing for teams throughout the country, the best of people comes forward right now. So let's enable that. Let's empower that. Let's let people be a part of the solution process to help us figure out how do you send an entire workforce remote within four, five, six hours. I mean, these are incredibly, you know, new challenges to overcome, but people will step forward. People will rise to the occasion and let's empower people to be able to do that.

Yeah, that's what I've seen too. And it's pretty impressive how quickly we can get things done. You know, I was reading a study, Jacob, that I want to tell you a little bit about and those who are listening and then get your perspective on it. It's really about like how we as leaders manage our stress and anxiety. It was a study I saw done by Todd Herman. He wrote a book called The Alter Ego Effect. So that's why I was following him.

And last week he did this study where he interviewed 29 CEOs. And he found that they were in three groups. Okay, so this is the start of COVID-19 before like many of us thought it was, you know, they just really common flu and you know, our perceptions of that at the beginning, three groups. One that was fear focused and these fear focused CEOs were five times more likely to consume media. And they spent a lot of time blaming like whose fault is this? The unfocused group were three times more likely to use the word hysteria.

So just really like drastic words to explain what was going on. And I think that's important because we got to manage like the language we're using. Right. And we can easily go to extreme because of our fear and anxiety.

And the third type was a strategy focused group and they were more likely to lean on healthy networks and were overall more positive. They also, the, the, the ones that were the most calm and cool did a daily meditation practice. Yeah. So this kind of just shows you in my perspective, like why managing your mind is so incredibly important right now, because if you go to the survival mechanism of fear, you know, then,

you know, you just spin and you can't be strategy focused and that's what you need as a leader. So what are your thoughts on that? And like, what have you seen when you see like people come together at this point when they are more strategy focused, what are they doing versus those that maybe are more unfocused? Like a couple of days I was super unfocused, just like everyone maybe. And then the, the sphere focus, how are you seeing people respond to this? And, you know, just give us a little insight on how you might make sense of this. Yeah. I love that, Sandra. I mean, dead on. I'm hoping maybe you can send me that as well so I can take a look at that. What a great resource. And this is why I love what you do. And I think it's so important, especially for right now, just a couple of comments on it.

Number one is, like you said, the language is so critically important, the language that we use. And when you're in a meeting at your organizations or your company, and people are starting to spin and talk about, you know, using the word crisis and it's really important that we kind of stop the conversation and figure out, okay, wait a minute, is this really an emergency? Is this really a crisis or is this just a challenge and a problem that we need to solve? And just refocusing our attention and looking at things differently is important. And I can't underestimate the importance of the leader really being transparent about their own anxieties, but putting that in its right place. Because you want to honor the place where your employees are coming from.

And as a leader, you need to be able to have a connection with your people. So if you say, oh, there's nothing to worry about. Don't worry. We're all good. Everything's going to be great. Nothing to be concerned about. You're actually creating a barrier and a divide between you and your people. But you've got to put that anxiety in context, which is, hey, you know what? I'm also very concerned about what's going on. And there's a lot of stress and anxiety around. I realize that and I don't have all the answers, but together we're going to be really focused on taking care of our people and taking care of our clients. And we will get through this together. It doesn't mean that I'm, you know, negating all those challenges. It just means I'm getting a bigger, fuller context, a bigger picture about all the things that we're experiencing together.

And you're also giving them like a goal that we're in this together, we're working together for our people and our clients. So I love what you said about like, we all need a purpose in this time. And I have found that if I distract my mind, you know, get back into a project. I started writing on Sunday. I was writing my second book and over Christmas and got back into it. And it helped me really kind of deal with this and give me a sense of purpose during this time. Right. Some of the avoid words I wrote down is like crisis or hysteria. Some words we could use are challenge or problem. Do you have any other suggestions of words that, you know, you think we should use or shouldn't use? It actually reminds me, it kind of brings up an interesting side note in terms of the language

and using language like our mission and our purpose. This last week, you know, this last week, I probably gave what will be my last keynote for a long time. Just like you, Cinder, I know you travel all over the world, speaking to lots of different audiences. My last keynote was at the U S air force. It was for the U S air force at Nellis air force base last week on, I think it was Thursday. And all of my other events have been basically canceled like you, I'm sure as well. But, you know, I got to spend my last keynote for this period of time with the U.S. Air Force. And it was an extraordinary experience. And I'm reminded of the way that they approach the

issues. They get everyone rallied around a central mission. And by having that focus on words like mission and focusing on what's in front of them, they are able, they're our model for being able to deal with literally all the chaos and all the challenges around them. But they focus on that mission. And it was such, I'm so grateful that my last keynote in this period of time was with the men and women that are serving our country and that are giving us the example because day in and day out, all throughout the world people focused on the mission and give them purpose and things to do and use the right language in terms of getting alignment throughout the entire organization from the very front line. And just like you, we can't wait to get out there again and work with these groups and learn from the clients that we serve in those environments. Oh, wow. What a great opportunity to positively impact them. I was just thinking when you're

describing that my last keynote was with hospital CEOs. Oh, wow. Oh, wow. Yeah. Yeah. And I just think it was right. It was last Wednesday, right at the beginning of all of this. And we talked about some really important coping strategies, just showing what we do as speakers and as people leading in this space, how we can help people in these times of crisis. Oh, I was just gonna throw in there that, you know, like you've done a great job of,

and I try to take my reminders from your work and material, but also some of the other folks that you and I know, some of the other expert speakers that we know, I'm trying to focus right now also on gratitude. You know, in a time when we feel like we have a lot of restrictions and we have a lot of challenges, I'm really trying to reflect on what I'm grateful for and the things that we do have and the resources that we do have that make our ability to deal with this much easier than lots of other folks around the world. And so leaders and organizations focusing, taking a few minutes of every meeting to focus on gratitude, I think is another good strategy to keep people in alignment. Ooh, wouldn't that be amazing?

Go around, you know, even if it's on Zoom, go around and just say one thing you're grateful for. And you're right. There's so many small things we can be grateful for that we have food on our table and that we have the opportunity to even be on zoom or, you know, be on social media to share this message. So, um, and by the way, if, if, if, and if the gratitude going around and sharing something you're grateful for is to, you know, woo-woo for any of our, you know, folks listening, you can also go around and talk about an accomplishment of someone in your team. Just go around and share a little victory that happened in the last 24 hours.

Share something that you witnessed or realized that you're grateful for that someone else on your team did. Boy, what a great way to create connectivity and collaboration and fuel, put some fuel in everybody's tank. That's another way if you don't want to go into the woo-woo when I'm personally grateful for. Yeah, that's good. So when you think about giving a leader, maybe a CEO or just a leader in general in their company, what advice would you give them so they can lead from this place of like calmness and strategy? And I like what you said about, you know, they are sort of the model of how to respond in this environment because, you know, we know it's going to last for a little while at least, right? So

what advice would you give to a leader to be able to manage themselves in this time? Yeah. So number one, you know, like you talked about is self-care and making sure you have what I call a thunder buddy, somebody in the organization that is looking out for your needs through this, because as a leader, you're going to be placed in situations where you're probably not doing the best self-care. So you have to find someone that you can lean on and depend on as your thunder buddy that will tell you when you need to take breaks and take care of yourself. I have someone in my team that's been really good at reminding me that I need to take five minutes and build the fort with my kids and make sure that because I'm putting in,

you know, 15, 16, 17, 18 hour days that I'm also taking care of myself. The second thing that I would say to leaders is this is the time to over communicate. This is not the time to worry about talking too many times. Use different communication channels. My CEO, he was brilliant. He decided that he wanted to have a virtual town hall. So 430 of our employees in this region are going live on a virtual town hall. We've been selling daily situation status reports, daily emails, meetings with our top brass and leadership on a very regular basis, team meetings twice throughout the day. I mean, this is the time where we really need to bring everybody into the fold, make sure we're not forgetting anyone, and over-communicate.

You as a leader are in the trenches with this all day. Your people might be feeling very isolated at their various sites or wherever they are in the world. This is a time to really think about using technology and leveraging technology to over-communicate and make sure you can decrease the anxiety and focus your people. Yeah, awesome. Love it.

I think that's such a great advice that everybody can use right now. And I just appreciate like over-communicating and that message. I think about. And I like, I just appreciate like over communicating and that message. I think about, you know, the organizations I'm involved in and the places that have over communicated, it's made me feel a lot safer in terms of what's going on. And I'm feeling like people have my back, you know, so great message. Yes. Let's talk a little bit about, you know, either any other tools or strategies that you would encourage us to use at this time that you think could really help us manage the stress and anxiety.

And just the idea that we're not sure how long it's going to be. And maybe all around the United States, we might end up having to be sort of like you are in California where no leave in your house. Yeah. Yeah. This is unprecedented. I mean, it's really unbelievable how, how this order that came out is going to impact us now. And there's a lot of unknowns. One of the things that I would encourage your leadership to embrace is something that I call do over days. And when things are really difficult and when there's not a lot of instruction manuals

and when we haven't been through things like this before, we're gonna make some decisions that maybe don't go so well and we're gonna have some tough days. We're in this for the long haul. COVID-19 is not gonna be over tomorrow morning. It's gonna be at least months, not sure how long, but we're gonna be in this for a long time.

Every single day is not gonna be a victory and a perfect day. And so what I read about in the book is giving yourself and your team permission to say, okay, you know what? Stay didn't exactly go as planned. There were some major hurdles and challenges. We get to kind of have a do over day

and it starts again fresh tomorrow morning. Let's get some sleep. Let's think about this. Let's reflect, let's learn from what occurred and start again tomorrow morning. We have the gift, the ability to start again tomorrow morning. And so we're not going to always get it right. We've got to give ourselves permission to have some really challenging days, especially in this time that's not really, really well-defined for us.

So being good to ourselves in this time of unknown and uncertainty is also very important. We lead ourselves. We're maybe a leader of our family and how important it is even to have a do-over day in those places that, you know, I know there's a lot of people staying at home with their kids. Their kids usually go to school and maybe it's a little bit more stressful or, you know maybe it's a little bit more stressful or, you know, there's a lot of more anxiety at home. So just giving yourself a do over day, really good suggestion. So I'm thinking also about those entrepreneurs out there, people like you and me who aren't speaking for, I don't know, my speaking engagements for April

and May have all been postponed or canceled or those small business owners who, you know, maybe not have, they might not have a lot of income coming in for, you know, this time period. Yeah. So I'll kind of reiterate what my company leadership CEO and COO have said, and it's the same thing that a mutual friend of ours, Sandra Jane Atkinson has also recommended and has also said, which is, you know, when all of our trainings and all of our events and all of our speaking and a lot of our opportunities have been wiped out, we need to go to a place of asking our clients, what can we do to serve you differently?

And I think this has been really effective. It's reaching out to those event meeting planners or reaching out to those clients and saying, we understand that we're not going to be able to serve you in the exact same way that you were hoping for before. We're hoping that your events or activities are just postponed and not canceled, but let's work together in figuring out how I can be of service. What are your needs and not canceled, but let's work together in figuring out how I can be of service. What are your needs and how I can be of service? This is a time when we can do things differently and think really creatively together about providing support,

providing expertise, providing services in a much different way. And, you know, let's see what the outcome is that, but we have to ask the question of the people that we serve. How can I still provide value for you, even in this difficult and changing time? Yeah, wonderful. Today on a coaching call, so it was a client who's in financial services and I'm his coach. And today I asked him to just answer like, what's the opportunity here? What's the opportunity here? What's the opportunity here? Three times. So something in my book, I call the three ops strategy, you know, because like he was so stuck in thinking really kind of like this, you know, it's a terrible time. And some of the language that he was using was pretty extreme.

And then he was like, well, it's a time for me to call my clients and see what they need. It's a time for me to learn Zoom and how to schedule online, you know? And so I've been, the first couple of days, I'll have to be honest, I couldn't sleep very well, like Wednesday night, Saturday night, I couldn't sleep. And I feel like I have really good coping strategies, but I'm like, man, this is, this is impacting me this way. I was impacting others. Right. And, but now I've been really trying to reframe it. Okay. So what can I learn from this? How can I spend more time with my family and my loved ones? Last night we were playing hide and go seek in the basement in the dark. I'm like, okay, I'll be a kid again. And I also read how like Isaac Newton discovered calculus during a quarantine.

So it's like, all right, how can we use this time to be even a little bit more creative, get back to a project that we wanted or do a new project around our house, something like that. Yeah, yeah. Seeing what we can do, right?

And not negating all the disappointment and financial insecurity that could come as a result of this and anxiety, not negating all the disappointment and financial insecurity that could come as a result of this and anxiety, not negating that, but just making it part of a bigger picture, putting it in its place, making sure it's not the only thing that we're focused on both personally and professionally. Yeah, wonderful. So one of the last questions I wanted to ask you, Jacob, is tell us about your own personal story navigating change. So I've heard it. We met actually in Florida at an event.

We were both attending as entrepreneurs and speakers. And so I got to hear your story, but those who are listening didn't. So tell us a bit about how you even got to study this idea of change and dealing with adversity because you've had your own experience at that from a personal level. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you, Sandra. Yeah. Like you said, you know, I think it really dictated the rest of my career after this certain event in my life. It put me in a place where I wanted to always be able to provide impact for other leaders and for people in crisis and challenge and change. And so when I was a freshman at UC Berkeley, I was working, I had a part-time job as a Berkeley guide, and I walked into a robbery taking place, a gentleman attacking two subway workers. I intervened in that, trying

to get the gentleman away from the two subway workers. It worked, except for he charged at me and attacked me. And after about six or seven strikes on the side of the head with a metal object, I don't remember much after that, except for that I had a series of very significant injuries. I had a brain injury and some cervical injuries and skull injuries. I had to drop out of college, go through almost three years of full-time rehabilitation to learn a lot over again and learn how to do different, learn how to do things differently, learn how to learn again. And so I, in that experience, really became grateful for figuring out solutions to very difficult challenges and also getting very

clearly in touch with areas that were weaknesses and figuring out how to build really strong teams to compensate for those challenges. And so I applied those lessons learned into my own professional life, went back to school, got my bachelor's, got my master's, and then worked up in city government all the way up to the city manager's office, helping to oversee about 1200 employees and lots of different city functions. And then ultimately creating a book because I had a lot of struggles with reading after the situation. So I put it on my goal list, write a book someday, that would be something that maybe I could challenge myself with.

Did write a book where I took all those strategies and lessons that I learned from my own experience in brain injury rehabilitation and how could you apply them to your own business and to your own company for your personal and professional success. And so that's why I love working in environments of stress and challenge because I feel like I've learned a few things that have helped me along the way and I like to share those with others. And so I feel so grateful to be working now in a capacity, working and helping other companies and cities and clients and working in an organization like InterWest and Safe Built where I work now, where I can help people through times of challenge and shame. So

I'm just incredibly grateful of this, this part of my life. And, and that's how I kind of got here. Yeah. Your life led you to this moment and giving us, you know, this opportunity to learn from you and to better understand how to deal with change and adversity. And I also hear Jacob, that you turned your mess into your message, right? Like how you turned the difficulty into this opportunity for us to learn and grow. And I think about the things I've struggled with the most, or the things I'm most passionate about now, which is actually mindset. Yes. Yes. Well, and it's interesting, it's applicable to COVID-19, right? Because when I had the brain injury, I was in a really dark place, a really, really dark place. I was dropped out of college. I was a full-time patient. I had no purpose or meaning. I couldn't, but that actually ended up being the

defining event that led to the last 20 years of experiences that I've had. And I would never take back the brain injury. And so I'm daily asking myself, what can I learn right now in this challenge that will help me in the years to come? What are the lessons that I'm learning about my friends, my colleagues, my family, that I might be able to apply to help me through things in the future or make additional impact in the future? So I'm so grateful, Sandra, that you're really doing just that. You're leveraging this opportunity. You're figuring out how to have these difficult conversations, how to help your clients, how to help your companies and organizations. And I'm, I'm, I'm very honored that you've allowed me to be a very small part of that.

Yeah. Thank you, Jacob. Thanks for your wisdom today. Um, one other question I wanted to ask you to kind of close is what would be the advice you'd give to leaders listening? Is there anything else that you'd like to share with them? Oh, wow. Yeah. I mean, I think it's about being, if I had to summarize it all up, it's being authentic with your people about your own concerns, your own fears, maybe in this time of uncertainty, but then transitioning to challenging that energy into ways that people can be productive and help you create impact in your companies. And so if we just follow that sort of recipe,

think about our priorities, bring the right people together, create the plan and implement the plan as the best way to focus our people and learn as much as we can in this new and uncharted territory. And we can do it together. I'm going to attempt to summarize what we talked about today, Jacob. I have a whole bunch, a lot of scribbles, but I loved what you said about

at this moment in time as a leader, the key is to over-communicate and to make sure that we're really bringing the people together because they really want a part of this and they want to be, you know, to help solve the problem or at least whatever we're doing within our company. So I thought that was a really powerful point. The point of just focusing on what you can control at this point is really key. And the best of people are really moving forward and really coming together. And that's amazing to see that in our communities. Words you should avoid are things like crisis or hysteria. Words you could use are challenge and problem and mission, purpose. Love that.

And how the best right now are asking their clients how they can provide more value. So I thought that was really powerful. The importance of gratitude and self-care and having people to encourage you when you're overdoing it to have some do-over days, but have people supporting you. And at the end, wow, how powerful what you said about like you would never take away that brain injury and just the really powerful question about like what are the lessons that you're learning right now about yourself about your business about your family about your friends I think that's powerful and that's how we're going to continue to grow and learn from this opportunity and and continue to ask ourselves like what's the opportunity here so I'm grateful for you to be on tonight. I know you're really busy. So thank you so much for taking the time. And what are the ways that we can follow you and get in contact with you and love for you to tell us your social media handles if you have any, and we'd love for people to reach

out to us. Tell us what you enjoyed about the interview. What, what stood out to you and, you know, if there's any other questions that we can answer. So go ahead and tell us how we can contact you, Jacob. And of course, get your book. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you, Sindra. And I just have to also mention that you lay that out so perfectly and, um, you know, our mutual friend and speaker coach, Jane Atkinson, you know, she would say, don't just think about these things, actually journal them. Right. And you can use her journaling process, but capturing them and really writing down these lessons and journaling every day goes along with what you recommended earlier about meditation and reflection. These are all really, really great tools. So we all should be journaling right now to try to capture all this and not forget all these great lessons that you laid

out for us, Cendra, that you continue to lay out for us in your teachings. As far as contacting me, I play on LinkedIn. That's where I really feel comfortable. I'm not on so many of the other platforms, but LinkedIn, Jacob Green is where you can contact me. That's where I really like to engage. My company is InterWest Consulting. It's part of the SafeBuild companies and lots of information about how we serve our public sector clients, cities, counties, and special districts. And then I also, as you know, work with private sector companies throughout the world. And information on that is on my personal website at jacobgreen.com, but lots of information on there, but really love to hear your feedback

from your, all of your listeners. LinkedIn is the best way to do that. Connect with me on that. And Jacob's book, See Change Clearly, is an excellent resource for what you're dealing with right now. So head over to Amazon and check that out. See Change Clearly. The shameless plug, right? The leveraging the plug in this time of challenge. Of course. I'm like, this is a perfect book right now. So Jacob, I'm so grateful that you are on with us. Thank you so much for joining us on the High Performance Mindset. Thank you so much, Indra. It's really been an honor.

I appreciate it. Thank you. Way to go for finishing another episode of the High Performance Mindset. I'm giving you a virtual fist pump. Holy cow, did that go by way too fast for anyone else? If you want more, remember to subscribe and you can head over to Dr. Sindra for show notes

and to join my exclusive community for high performers, where you get access to videos about mindset each week. So again, you can head over to Dr. Sindra. That's D-R-I-C-I-N-D-R-A.com. See you next week.