Start With A Win - Master the Art of Respectful Disagreement with Justin Jones-Fosu

Episode Date: August 14, 2024

In this insightful episode of Start With a Win, Adam Contos engages in a compelling discussion with Justin Jones-Fosu, CEO of Work Meaningful, on the art of respectful disagreement. Justin delves into his new book, "I Respectfully Disagree," which provides a framework for navigating challenging conversations with empathy and respect. The conversation covers Justin's personal journey influenced by his mother's teachings and experiences, as well as practical strategies for fostering understanding and productive dialogue. With a focus on emotional intelligence and curiosity, this episode offers valuable insights for leaders seeking to create cultures of belonging and navigate ideological divides constructively.Justin Jones-Fosu is a full-time dad-e who also happens to be an international speaker, a social entrepreneur, a critically acclaimed author, and mountain climber (he recently conquered one of the famed 7 Summits). His passion for elevation extends beyond trekking, it’s mirrored in the work he does as the CEO of Work. Meaningful. and in his writing. His newly released book, I Respectfully Disagree, challenges the reader to focus on building bridges to people rather than barriers from them.⚡️FREE RESOURCE: 𝘞𝘩𝘢𝘵'𝘴 𝘞𝘳𝘰𝘯𝘨 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩 𝘠𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘓𝘦𝘢𝘥𝘦𝘳𝘴𝘩𝘪𝘱?  ➡︎ https://adamcontos.com/myleadership===========================Subscribe and Listen to the Start With a Win Podcast HERE:📱 ===========================YT ➡︎ https://www.youtube.com/@AdamContosCEOApple ➡︎ https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/start-with-a-win/id1438598347Spotify ➡︎ https://open.spotify.com/show/4w1qmb90KZOKoisbwj6cqT===========================Connect with Adam:===========================Website ➡︎ https://adamcontos.com/Facebook  ➡︎ https://facebook.com/AdamContosCEOTwitter  ➡︎ https://twitter.com/AdamContosCEOInstagram  ➡︎ https://instagram.com/adamcontosceo/#adamcontos #startwithawin #leadershipfactory

There's three ways that we can fully acknowledge others. We can fully acknowledge them when they 100% disagree, when they partially agree, and when they 100% agree. But we've conflated full acknowledgement with full agreement. So I'll give you a couple of ways to approach it. Welcome to Start With A Win, where we unpack franchising, leadership, and business growth. Let's go. Coming to you from Area 15 Ventures and Start With A Win headquarters,

it's Adam Kantos with Start With A Win. Have you ever wondered how to respectfully disagree with someone? I think there's a lot of people out there in society today that need to understand this. And I know you would agree because it seems like we're at this boiling point in so many different ways. Well, today we have on the show, Justin JonesFosu, a CEO of Work Meaningful, a firm focused on creating respectful disagreement and understanding so that we can move forward with the principles that we know we all need to accomplish in order to make things better. So today on the show, I look forward to talking to Justin about how to respectfully disagree. Justin, welcome to Start With A Win.

Thank you so, so much. So many kind words. I'm grateful. Awesome. Hey, first of all, I want to dive into this. In April, you released a new book that I love. I love this concept. I want to get right into this because I think this is something that maybe we've missed a couple generations or we as leaders need to focus on more or maybe just society is blocked out. But your book is called I Respectfully Disagree. And it's a powerful framework for navigating challenging conversations with respect and empathy. Tell us a little bit. Why did you write the book?

And give us a flyover of this book. Yeah. So it started back really when I was a ye lad. My mom used to take me to events that I disagreed with, that we didn't know a lot about. And I started asking questions as I got older because I didn't realize what she was doing. And as I got older, I realized my mom was planting some really powerful seeds. She was starting me younger with the win. And I remember interviewing my mom for my last two books. I was like, mom, why did you do this? And my mom shared a really powerful story. She was one of the first Black female air traffic controllers in the Air Force. And there are some times when she'd be stationed in Japan that she was there for two years. And there were some soldiers who in that same two-year timeframe never left base. And she was like, Justin, I don't want you to be like that, to never leave your home base to experience the beauty of people and cultures around you.

And so that really became the catalyst for how I started leaning into experiencing people who were different than me, who thought differently, because we would go to those events growing up. Now, fast forward, and I was doing a lot of work, working with clients and consulting around creating cultures of belonging. And I would always make this statement, Adam. I would make the statement that we can vehemently disagree with someone's ideology and yet still passionately pursue their humanity. And it was always this audible gasp, like, oh, wow. And then people would come up afterwards, like, Justin, I love that quote. I love it, but how do we do it? Or they would try to stump me like, but what if they believe or say this? And so this book became the answer to how do we do it from several of our participants.

And so that's what we did to create a practical guide. And we dug into the research, qualitative, quantitative, looked at things like conversational receptiveness, the neural science of disagreement, how leaders can create these cultures. And we created something that we felt was very simple, practical, relatable, and it still spoke to the heart of the issue about how do we grow first in our heart, then in our head, and then translate that to action. Wow. And it seems like disagreeing just means you've learned, you've noticed, learned, or heard a perspective that is not yours. And I mean, it just seems like from a foundational aspect, but we've seen a lot of this, you know, this disagreement or hearing something that is not somebody's perspective turned into anger and frustration or some sort of emotional response now.

Talk to me a little bit about that. Why does that happen? Well, some aspects of it happen because based upon our tightly held beliefs, our identity beliefs, there can be some things that are loosely coupled and tightly coupled, right? So if you said, hey, you know, I think that you're a great New York Yankees fan. For someone that's loosely coupled, right? They'd be like, oh, yeah, whatever. I don't really care. Right. But I've had these conversations where I've met a Yankee fan who would never marry a Boston Red Sox fan, right? There's a tightly coupled belief to that. And so the first piece of that is how tightly we hold our identity and our beliefs. The second aspect of that is we have started to confine ourselves to what we call our circles of comfort. And Adam, to be truthful with you, I was doing this as well. I started noticing this, especially during 2020. And I wasn't living up to my mom's ideals of leaving my home base to

experience the beauty of cultures around me. And I started doing some things. And so to give people a practical way to do that, one of the things we encourage people to do is the first pillar is challenge your perspective. And one way to practically do this, whether as an individual or as leader, is we call it the Circles of Grace Challenge, where every six months to 12 months, I go to events, experiences, or I engage with people, and either which I don't know a lot about and or that I disagree with. And now what's fascinating is that leaders can do the same thing for their whole team, for their organization. We just took the Four Family Foundation through this. And at the end of the six months, the learnings were so phenomenal as people talked about and debriefed

on what they were able to engage and learn. So that's one of the reasons it's because we're not often challenging ourselves. We're not leaving our home base. And so when we finally do, it feels very extreme. So this idea of a comfort zone is actually true. Oh, big time. Really, really big time. Awesome. So, okay. So you mentioned pillars. How many pillars are there in this process? Yeah. So we've summarized it into five pillars. Let's be real Adam, it can be a hundred pillars, but no one will read that book. So, so we, we, we, we subbed it up to what we call the five pillars of bridging the divide and these five pillars are simply challenge your perspective pillar number one pillar number two

is be the student pillar number three is cultivate your curiosity pillar number four is seek the gray and pillar number five is agree to respect wow i want, I want to unpack a few of these. Yeah. Um, the, I love obviously pillar number five, agree to respect. Yeah. I mean, and, and I think after running through these, that that's a great bookend to it. But I want to jump into something I always talk about, which is learners lead, leaders learn. And that's your pillar number two, be the student. Tell me about that. Why does that make it better for us to understand others and respectfully disagree? Yeah.

So be the student is so powerful. One of the things my mom taught me, and she can tell I learned a lot from my mom, is she's like, we can learn something from everyone, right? Even as leaders, we've learned from other leaders what not to do. And be the student is where we focus in on listening and learning rather than lecturing. When you approach people and perspectives and times as a teacher, I have to share with you my perspective. I have to teach you what I know. What it does, it doesn't allow us to operate in a frame where we hear people and ways that we can learn and listen and engage. And so there are times when I'm talking to somebody and I know I definitely disagree with what they're saying. And there's some conversations I don't need to respond. I don't need to tell them I disagree. I just listen. I learn. I put myself in a posture of, hey, Justin. And I tell myself, I literally tell to myself, whether verbally or in my head,

Justin, don't say anything about what you believe. Just listen today. And it gives me a great opportunity to be the student and engage and hear and listen deeply, which kind of dives into cultivate your curiosity. But when I take that posture, when people take that posture of what can I learn from this person? What's something that I haven't experienced before? It allows us to grow. Now, let me give you the research behind this. There's a theory called the inverted U theory. And it says there's two places where we don't learn effectively. Number one, when we think we know absolutely nothing. And number two, when we think we know absolutely everything. And so when we tell ourselves and condition our brains to say that there's something I can learn from this person,

this situation, this ideology, it allows us to open up to be able to receive and hear them as a student. Interesting. I mean, it seems fascinating because it seems like you can learn the most from people you disagree with the most, maybe. 100%. And it doesn't mean you'll agree. It just simply means that you're learning. You're understanding a different perspective. But what we've been conditioned on, and this is a challenging part, Adam, is that our society has conditioned people to be fixed mindset people. Now, I love Carol Dweck's work on mindset, growth versus fixed. And the fixed-based mindset says I only want to do things that I'm good at or compared to other people.

And I look at failure as final. But the growth mindset says that failure is just another data point for learning. And my only competition is myself. And that's what we've lost in our society. We've taught people the fixed mindset. You know how? I would tell you how, because like, say a Rubik's cube as an example, when's the last time you saw somebody come on like the nightly shows? And I was like, we want to welcome Adam to the show. And I was like, it took Adam five years to solve the Rubik's cube. And the crowd was like, we don't do that. Why? Because we don't want to know the person that took five years to solve the Rubik's cube and the crowd was like, we don't do that. Why? Because we don't want to know the person that took five years. We want to know the person that did

it behind their back, that did it with their two front teeth, that did it in Lake Michigan, right? Well, scuba diving, like all these things. But the people that are consistent, that are resilient, that have a deeper sense of grit, that continue to learn and grow, that's growth mindset. And unfortunately, in our society, we've operated by fixed mindset. A small aside, did you know that the world record as of my research for solving that was 4.22 seconds for the Rubik's Cube? And somebody in one of my recent sessions, they said, Justin, that's now like 3.8 something. So it took me longer to say that. And that's what we prioritize. So with leaders, guess what we can do? That person that took a little longer, that person that you saw grow, the person that

it may have taken a little bit longer than expected to lean in and learn something new, but they were persistent. They continued. Celebrate them too. Not just the person who did it the fastest. Wow. I think that's fascinating when we start to unpack that awareness. I mean, ultimately, we're talking about a deep dive into emotional intelligence here.

Yeah. And truly understanding other people, where they come from, what they've, you know, the talents that they have, or maybe the gaps that they have that they're trying to fill with talents. So this is incredible. Um, I, I love the, the aspect of asking questions or listening. You've already dove into that, but, but this next pillar, you know, about your cultivating curiosity more than anything, what does that do to the person that is delivering the message when you start asking them about that message? You know, because some people deliver a message that they're just, they're passionate about,

but they might not know about. So, I mean, are we uncovering vulnerabilities or are we helping them grow with it? What do you think about that? Yes, I think it's all of the above. I think that depending on the person that allows them to dive in deeper to their message, you might help them to explore aspects of their message that haven't been explored before as leaders. When we do this in our teams, right now I'm reading the biography of Nelson Mandela. And one of the things that he said he learned from the chiefs growing up is that the chief wouldn't say anything.

The chief wouldn't really sit there and listen and allow everyone to share their perspective and view and then share. And for some reason, our society, we feel like we have to share first rather than really deeply listening. And so we give people some pretty powerful tools to dive in deeper so that they can help cultivate their curiosity

with curiosity rather than conclusions. So one of those ways is to challenge our double-dutch style of communication. And some people who've never jumped rope, you don't know what double-dutch is. And so like a single rope is like one rope, like going around and double-dutch or two ropes, like whoosh, whoosh, whoosh, whoosh. And somebody waiting to jump in, like, let me go, let me go. And that's how we end up communicating with people. We're waiting to jump in, like, take a breath, take a pause, take a breath. And Adam, this is why I disagree with you, right? And then we jump in. But instead, what if we listen to what we call the power of three? And we've created this model

to help people to deeply listen rather than distracted listening. The power of three is simply this. You say, hey, Adam, how's your day today? And you're like, oh, my day's fine. I'm like, oh, my day's fine too. That's power of one. Power of two, hey, Adam, how's your day? My day's fine. What made your day fine? Oh, I was talking to this interesting bald-haired speaker. I remember that bald-haired guy. Like, that's power of two. But the power of three is where we go through that whole thing. I remember that. And I'm saying, what made it interesting? But we often stop at the power of one or power of two because we can't wait to get it back to ourselves.

And it's not because most of us are narcissistic or self-absorbed. It's simply, we hear this over and over again, is that people are trying to find and form connections. But we have to be very careful in our desire to form connections we don't take control. And so the next time I encourage people, not only in their team meetings, not only is there engaged with their colleagues at home in their communities, is to challenge yourself, even with your kids, right? For those who have them, is to listen to the power of three and challenge yourself to like, all right, did I ask at least three questions? If you don't know

what to say, use the power phrase, tell me more, because it allows people to open up. Now, when we do this in our workshops and we ask a really powerful question, like what's been a meaningful moment in your life that shaped who you are today? I've had some CEOs of international organizations say, Justin, I've been working with this person for 35 years and I've never have heard this. And while that excites me and I'm thankful, it also saddens me because it makes me realize that a lot of us, we really aren't deeply listening to others. There's some magic behind what Justin has just said. So I would encourage everybody to go back and listen to this again. The power of three and that power statement. Tell me more because it seems like we go through, I mean, you're 100% correct. And I, I can make a laundry list of people who just are listening to talk instead of

listening to hear. And they're waiting for that, you know, somebody to tap the brakes so they can jump into traffic real quick and start speaking. Yeah. But what if we as leaders and Justin's really onto something here. What if we as leaders weren't allowed to make a statement, but only make questions, think of where we would be. I mean, it'd be so much fun. Yes. But Adam, to your point, that's innovation. That when we ask those questions of our teammates, imagine you're in your team meeting, right? And this is one of the struggles as leaders. We talk about this from a drum perspective. I'm a dual citizen of Ghana and the United States, and drumming is really powerful. And so

when we're great individual contributors, we're like, we're just making these awesome drum solos and we're killing it. And then we get into leadership and we still feel like we have to go. But as leaders, we're really simply called at that point to simply keep rhythm, to allow other people as individual contributors to shine and give their awesome drum solos. And that's a great part of our listening. Part of us creating that space for people to give their great solos rather than us continuing to do that is by asking more meaningful questions and creating a solution that's more powerful than any one person. During my MBA, I had one of those amazing professors. It was like the late Robin Williams in Dead Poets Society. And one of the things is

we had to read a book that initially I was like, why do I have to read this book? But it was one of the most profound books that I ever read. It's a book called Dialogue, The Art of Thinking Together. And the challenge premise is it's not about A, right? And it's not about B, because normally person A is trying to convince B of A, and B is trying to convince person A of B. But it's about how do we create C together? Now, C is often not 50-50. But as leaders, when we can create those cultures within our teams, within our organizations, within even our project teams, it allows us to create and innovate in ways that we wouldn't have ever been able to do. And it's simply by starting with deep listening.

I love that. I mean, you're so correct on this and there's so much knowledge and wisdom in that. Ultimately, why are we having a meeting to begin with in a company? We're having a meeting to create positive outcomes for everybody in the organization or move it in a direction but we're not going to do that by just getting together and barking orders we're going to do that by getting together and exploring yeah and it's oh there's there's only one way to explore and that's by asking great questions and just shutting up to hear what comes out i mean it, it's, it's so much, and I'll tell you the, um, have you ever played the, or seen businesses where the employees go in and they have a bingo card in meetings because somebody always comes up with the same statements or phrases or whatever. And it's,

it's a horrible thing to have happen. But I, when you have leaders who come in, I remember a leader who would come in and say, it is what it is. You know, just things like that all the time. And others would come in and say, well, the problem with this is. So these different things would permeate these bingo cards that people would, you know, kind of quietly fill out. And then at the end, the employees would get together and go, who got the most on their bingo card? There's a problem in the culture of that organization because it's just people speaking to be heard instead of asking to find out. So it's interesting. So I want to dig into the next pillar, seek the gray. What does that mean? Yeah. And before I get to seek the gray, I want to share like just hearing you

deeply. One of your next books needs to be Leadership by Exploration. Because even that whole thing, I'm a trekker, a hiker, I like exploring, taking the non-known path. And that really spoke to me as you talked about leadership and exploring. I was like, oh, that's good, Adam. Leadership by Exploration, that's your next book. I love that. I was like, Oh, that's good. Adam leadership by exploration. That's your next book. Okay. Um, but I'm writing that down. Yeah. Seek the gray. And we know there's 50 shades of it, um, is that oftentimes it, we see things in very black and white terms. Our brains want to simplify things. Um, it wants to operate, um, what we call an autopilot, right? Because the brain science behind this is really fascinating. Imagine you're driving and you're supposed to take an exit. But Monday through Friday, you take this exit and one day you're supposed to go straight. But what do you do? You take the exit. It's because your brains want to conserve energy for things it thinks it doesn't know. And so when it gets second and third hand information, it categorizes it for future use. And as we engage people, we want to put it into nice,

you know, tied up bold buckets of, oh, this is what this person is. This is what this person is. And we end up taking the exit on people. That's what I did my TEDx on. And instead, what if we sought the gray? What if we said every person that we engage is complex, is nuanced, that there's some aspect of them that's very different and unique, that let me explore them as I ask more questions. And so Seeking the Gray is about realizing that one, we're all nuanced. Two, is that there's some aspect of common ground that exists. I love the body of work around conversational receptiveness. It talks about two things that are really awesome. aspect of common ground that exists. I love the body of work around conversational receptiveness. It talks about two things that are really awesome. One is identifying common ground,

but second is hedging your claim. Now, the common ground aspect, let me give you a great example, right? In a societal issue, gun rights versus gun control. Guess what the common ground is, right? Because people like it, there's no common ground. The common ground is we both care about the safety of our families. Now, how we get there is vastly different. But if we start there versus like, wow, like, you know, Adam, I can tell that we both really care about our families and their safety. I've already created a bridge in our conversation that is much better than, hey, I think you're wrong. I think your idea is stupid. I think what you do creates unsafety. And that's what we do.

And so even in the book, when people don't know the cover of the book, it looks like a black and white diagonal. But it's a very thin line of gray in between the black and white. And you have to be intentional to see it. And when I call it out, people actually go to the front of the book like, oh, actually, there is. Because that's what we can do is as leaders. Our question is, how do I find the gray? How do I find better understanding of how they got there? If we termed it up in this thing we talked about today, empathy, right? I talk about the conversation I had with my dad about not being in my life growing up. And when I wanted to go

confront him, but I had a great therapist who I still have. So please get there, be all. And I was in my Leadership Charlotte cohort. And they challenged me instead of going to confront my dad to go and hearing his story. And as I went to hear his story, wow, it was profound. I learned a lot that I didn't know before. And it allowed me to see the gray in something I thought was very black and white. And while I didn't walk away like, oh, I still love the outcome. No, I still disagreed with the outcome.

But I better understood how we got there. We developed a deeper sense of empathy and learning as leaders and as individuals when we seek the gray. That's an amazing story. And one that I think we can all learn from instead of confronting somebody, go, go hear their story. And that's just, imagine if more people did that. I mean, people come in hard with their, you know, this position and they're like, you know, I'm standing my ground on whatever it might be. And I think in this day and age we have you know, especially, you know, this position and they're like, you know, I'm standing my ground on whatever it might be. And I think in this day and age we have, um, you know, especially,

you know, we're in an election year and we're going to see a lot of political disagreement going on of, of a lot of different aspects of society. But the reality is, what if we just, I mean, like what Justin's saying, what if we just ask somebody, tell me your story and where you're at around this and just, and listen to them because there's either a reason or there's not a reason or maybe somewhere in the middle. I don't know, but, but what do they have to say about it? It's, it's fascinating. And I think once you do find people's story is so much easier to start to empathize and understand, oh, okay, that's a valid perspective. Yeah. Or I can see how you got there. Yeah. Even if we don't feel it's valid, it's like,

I see how you got there. And that's one of the tenets of Seeking the Gray is that we communicate better understanding. Not that we completely get it, not that we 100% agree, but that we better understand how they got there. I love that. I see how you got there. That's fascinating. I want to dig in a little bit to the fifth pillar, because I think this one is, I would love for people have to have, you know, like we have the swear jars when we're growing up, or if you say the wrong word, you got to throw a little money in a swear jar or something like that. Um, but what if we had like respect jars or disrespect jars or something like that? I mean, you were tested on your respectfulness every day of people, because I think this is something and use this as a bridge. And, um, you know, you talk about in your talks, Aretha Franklin had something going on here. Um, you know, when, when singing respect, tell me, how did you come up with this final pillar and why is it right there? Yeah,

exactly. Yeah. Yeah. So it's interesting. I talk about, you know, that I, I, I respectfully disagree with Aretha Franklin, the late queen of soul, because she said we needed a little respect. I was like, no, no, no, we need a lot of it. And one of the first pieces of understanding pillar five for me was we had to redefine respect. And we did that early in the book. Because we started saying things like, respect, you have to earn my respect. And we started asking why? Where did this whole principle come from that somebody has to earn your respect? We can choose to freely give it to them. We call respect the distant cousin of forgiveness because we finally realize that forgiveness is not about the other person. It's about us. And always our choice, period, is that we can choose. I hear a lot of people say, well, let's just agree to disagree. But what if instead of agree, because you can still agree to disagree very disrespectfully, right?

To be very dismissive. But what if we agreed to respect? And that is our choice. I can only control myself. I'm the only one. I give this in the story because it's really fascinating. It really got me here. One of my former colleagues was a former skinhead. I have very harmful beliefs towards other people in many categories. And I was very curious. I started cultivating the curiosity, all that kind of stuff of really learning how he got in and how he got out. And he shared, Adam, that he was like like justin we loved when people called us names he's like when they called us misogynist racist and he's like oh we love that he's like the thing that were the catalyst the seeds of change for us and for me specifically he said was was the very

same people i demeaned and disrespected that still chose to show me respect? He's like, they'll never know that because he's not in those circles. But he's like, I started to realize it didn't compute. Why would I continue to disrespect people who are respecting me? And so that led me to this place of what if we're just called to be seed planters? What if our respect is just a seed planted in someone of learning, of growth, and it's building a bridge to them that maybe one day they'll walk over. Maybe they won't, but we'll never know unless we leave that bridge, right? And so how do we do that, right? Because I'm about practical places and a place about how we agree to respect. It's a couple of ways. We call

it a 3FA framework. And 3FA is simply that there's three ways that we can fully acknowledge others, that we can fully acknowledge them when they 100% disagree, when they partially agree, and when they 100% agree. But we've conflated full acknowledgement with full agreement. So that'll give you a couple of ways to approach it. Adam, wow. I want to say thank you so much for choosing to have this conversation. I realize I've never heard some of what you shared before. Thank you for sharing that. Or, wow, you brought up three really interesting points. Number two, I want to dive in deeper. Would you have any other research or places I can go find out more information about that? Or, wow, this was a really tough one.

Thank you for leaning in. You didn't have to. And I really appreciate you doing that. Now, not in one of those instances, Adam, did I say I agree with you. But what I was able to do is leave you with a sense of full acknowledgement that, wow, I'm here with you, right? And I appreciate you taking the time to have a conversation or that point really stood out to me. I want to dig in deeper or whatever that may be.

I love what John Zhao, Stanford professor, she created this concept called yes, because. She said, because most people say no, because no, because you're stupid, right? Rather than like, you know, I'm sorry, it's thank you because, but thank you because I've never heard that before. Thank you because, but really appreciating the person for taking the time to share their viewpoint.

Now, here's where the rubber meets the road. Because I often get people asking me this all the time. So when do I share my perspective? So number one, you don't always have to share your perspective. You don't, right? Sometimes we feel like we do. But number two, and this is going to be countercultural because in our society, we don't always have to share your perspective. You don't, right? Sometimes we feel like we do. But number two, and this is going to be countercultural because in our society, we don't do this, is ask to share your perspective.

Ask whether you're a leader, right? Or you're in position of leadership or not. And why is that important? Hey, Adam, thank you for sharing your perspective. I really appreciate you sharing something you never shared before. Would you be open to me sharing my perspective? Now, what I've just done physiologically is I've allowed you to open up to receive what I'm going to share. But oftentimes, we simply just force our view or our perspective on others,

and we wonder why walls go up. But if we ask someone, if they say no, which very rarely happens, but sometimes it does, then why are we wasting our time? If they say yes, they've opened themselves up to receive it in a way that we may not have been able to have a conversation before. Oh man, this is deep. I love this. I love the gratitude and I love the permission and those things work so well together. I mean, you know, respect I think is a gift. And we have the ability to give that gift so much more than we think we do.

It's just so powerful. So thank you for sharing that. I mean, it's, you have enlightened me today, Justin. I mean, this is, this is fascinating. Um, Justin, I have a, I have a question for you. Where can our listeners find you online and find out more about your book, your, your talks, things of that nature? Yeah. Um, online specifically about the book, you go to how to respectfully disagree.com. Um, that's, you can find a lot of more information, quizzes, all that kind of stuff there. And for the work that we do with organizations, workmeaningful.com. And then I love LinkedIn. So I'm Justin Jones Fosu on LinkedIn. So that's where you can find more information. Awesome. Justin Jones Fosu, you have delivered a huge gift to us today of teaching us

about how to pursue more respectful conversations and understand others that we speak to. This is really a lesson in the soft skills of leadership. And it's fascinating to me because I think this will change organizations. It will help us develop our next set of leaders if we can fully deliver this and they can understand it or even just expose them to it, because I think people will start to have this realization. So Justin, I have a question I ask all the great leaders on this show and that's how do you start your day with a win? Wow. That's a good question. Wow. Wow.

Normally, I wish I could say it's a hundred percent of the time, but this is, uh, what I normally do. The first thing I do when I get up is, um, I read the scripture of the day and, um, uh, that's something I do kind of sets me a mindset and a good direction. The second thing I do is I ask myself, what's one thing I'm really excited about looking forward to today? And as well as it's kind of a two for one is what was I grateful for from yesterday? Like what happened yesterday that just made me really grateful? And then what am I looking forward to do? At least one thing I'm looking forward to today. And the third thing is I created this thing called a meaningful day template. And it's kind of about how we create our own meaningful day. And so I'll go on my phone and I have a little thing that's saved or put in my notes section right now.

And I've organized it into four piece. And so I start, the first thing is perspective, which I write down what I was grateful for from yesterday and what I'm looking forward to today. And then the other three Ps is I start to craft my day. And the first P is personal. What are one of the three things I'm going to do for myself that's going to have a meaningful impact in our day? The second is professional. What are one to three things I'm going to do that's going to have a meaningful impact and make progress in my professional journey today? And the last one is people. What are one to three things I'm going to do with and or for others today? Now, it's not always three, three, three. Sometimes it's one to one. Sometimes it's three to one, right? Or one, one,

one. The focus is not about how many of you you do, it's that you do at least one in each category. So if we started off with a powerful, positive perspective, if we started off with doing at least one thing for ourselves, one thing that had a meaningful impact on our professional day, and one thing with or for others, that's a meaningful day. Now here's the sweet sauce.

You got to put it in your calendar or else it just becomes another list. And so we started putting it in our calendar. And so that's what I'll do. Those are the three things I'll lean in to do before I start working out, before I take the dog for a walk, before I do all that stuff. And that's how I start off with a win. But Adam, I want to do something. I want to ask you a deeper, another question if you're open to.

Of course. Because you asked this question to a lot of people. Maybe people haven't heard it in a while, but how do you start your day with a win? Thank you. Thank you, Justin. I, I try to beat my alarm clock every day. So I set my alarm for five 30 and I have in my head that I want to see my alarm go off. So usually it's when I'm putting in my contacts or putting the collar on the dog to let them outside or something like that but i'll i'll try and start by winning in the race against my alarm clock and it kind of sets my brain up to try and over achieve so then i i mix up my my workout drink and grab a cup of coffee and grab one of the dogs and head off to the gym and get in a really good workout, go home,

get cleaned up and take, I finished my shower with an ice cold shower to stimulate the body and the brain and clear out all the toxins and focus on the day. And then I go and I, I take a look at my schedule that I've already scheduled ahead of time. So you plan the week before the week plans you. And so I've already got that planned time. So you plan the week before the week plans you. And so I've already got that planned and I hit the ground running. I love to see the people that we work with. I mean, it's fantastic to meet new friends and see people on virtually, but it's great to go and share time with human beings face-to-face also. So love to do that. And, you know, make

sure I spend my day being productive and reflect on that. I'll write down my productivity for the day, just, you know, the gratitudes, but it's, it's systematized just as yours is. And it's very similar in many ways. So thank you for asking. Wow. And thank you for sharing. What I love that you shared, because when I love because I love seeing the information about your podcast, just start with a win. I like to think about the opposite sometimes. How do people start with a loss? There's many ways to do that. And so kind of ending on this. One of the things we found in our research is that there are three things that are actually killing the productivity of our days when we start with them. Number one, when the first thing that we do is check email, sends us down an interesting rabbit hole and we lose sight of what we want to have

meaningfully accomplished today. Number two, when the first thing that we do is check social media. Yes, we love the kittens and the dances and all the kind of stuff that's moving, but it's still not making meaningful progress. Social media managers hate when I say that. And then number three, when the first thing that we do, this was surprising, is check the news. Harvard actually did a study on productivity. And one of the things they found is that people check the news first thing, that there's a decrease in their productivity compared to those who did it. Now, specifically, they targeted and focused on negative news. And what is majority of the news today? And so like, what if we did things the same way that you did, Adam, right? The way that you start

your day, beating the alarm clock, you know engaging taking a cold shower none of those things you mentioned about checking email checking social media and or checking the news and so all your listeners should be blessed by your wisdom and expertise well thank you justin thank you for sharing that uh i i this research-backed information like these things because it really is. I mean, it's self-validating to so many of us. And it's also allowing us to hold up the mirror and recognize where we can be better. And I think if we seek to be better every day, then we're going to deliver that inspiration to others also as a gift to help them find a way out of some of their challenges and into, you know, a lot of grace and happiness in their lives. So

thank you so much for being on Start With A Win. We thank you so much for all that you do. We sincerely appreciate you, my friend. Make sure you check out Justin online. We'll have those links in the show notes. And Justin, thank you for starting your day with a win. Thank you Adam.