The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Transforming Workplace Wellbeing Through Exceptional Leadership: The Happy Hires Approach

Episode Date: February 9, 2024

Transforming Workplace Wellbeing Through Exceptional Leadership: The Happy Hires Approach Happyhires.ca Show Notes About the Guest(s): Lindsay Tsang is the founder of Happy Hires, a company focused on transforming toxic work environments into places where people are energized and inspired by exceptional leadership. With a background as a trained therapist, Lindsay partners with CEOs and owner operators of small to medium-sized enterprises to excel in leadership. He offers strategic planning, executive coaching, job benchmarking, and dynamic team workshops. Lindsay is currently pursuing a PhD in organizational psychology, specializing in leadership and positive psychology. He is also a certified executive coach through the Center for Executive Coaching. Episode Summary: In this episode, host Chris Voss interviews Lindsay Tsang, the founder of Happy Hires. Lindsay shares his insights on the profound impact of leadership on workplace well-being and the importance of creating workplaces where people are energized and inspired. He discusses the concept of servant leadership and how it prioritizes the needs of individuals over the organization. Lindsay also highlights the five priorities of leadership: purpose, people, pace, perception, and profit. He explains the SOAR model of strategic planning, which focuses on strengths, opportunities, aspirations, and results. Throughout the conversation, Lindsay emphasizes the significance of psychological capital and positive mindsets in effective leadership. Key Takeaways: Servant leadership prioritizes the needs of individuals over the organization, creating workplaces where people are energized and inspired. The five priorities of leadership are purpose, people, pace, perception, and profit. When these priorities are aligned, organizations thrive. The SOAR model of strategic planning focuses on strengths, opportunities, aspirations, and results, fostering collaboration and positive dialogue. Psychological capital, including hope, efficacy, resilience, and optimism, plays a crucial role in effective leadership and positive outcomes in the workplace. Developing a clear vision, setting challenging goals, and achieving them are essential for building confidence and increasing efficacy. Notable Quotes: "The whole point of leadership is to align the strengths of the organization so well that the weaknesses become irrelevant." - Peter Drucker "Hope is when I can see the end goal that I'm trying to achieve and I can also see the pathway towards it." - Lindsay Tsang "Confidence is my belief in my abilities to make a positive outcome when I put effort into something." - Lindsay Tsang

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast. The hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show. The preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready. Get ready. Strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times. Because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks. This is Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com.

There you go, ladies and gentlemen. The Iron Lady sings it from the opera center of the Bugs Bunny show. Do I have to pay for the trademark on that? I don't think so. I just referenced it. So there you go. When she sings it, that makes it official. Welcome to the big show, our family and friends.

You know, we just recently pulled the numbers for the last three years. I'm sorry, four years ago. Four years ago, we changed the form of the show and expanded it to include all sorts of other people, the CEOs, the billionaires, the Pulitzer Prize winning authors, the astronauts, all the great people and minds on the show. It used to be just mostly Silicon Valley and talking about iPhones and Google for the first 10 years. But we changed the format of the show 1 405 percent not 100 not 200 percent 1405 percent so thanks to my audience for tuning in all these years supporting the show and loving everything we're doing we couldn't do it without you and as always we beg plead grovel that you would refer the show to your family and friends relatives go to goodreads.com for chest christmas linkedin.com for

chest christmas subscribe to that big linkedin newsletter the 130 000 group over there and all of our other places on the interwebs as well today we have an amazing gentleman on the show we're going to be talking to him about how he built his company and his company called happy hires he runs in and we have lindsey saying on the show with us today. In his career as a trained therapist, he's often encountered clients on stress leave triggered by toxic work environments. Oh, he must have talked to our employees at the Chris Foss show. The experience highlighted a recurring theme, the profound impact of leadership on workplace well-being. Happy Hours was born from a vision to transform this reality to create workplaces where people are energized and inspired by exceptional leadership. At Happy Hires,

Lindsay partners with CEOs and owner-operators of small to medium-sized enterprises committed to excelling in leadership. He offers strategic planning, executive coaching, job benchmarking, and dynamic team workshops his pursuit of excellence and leadership development has led him to the final stages of a phd in organizational psychology specializing in leadership and positive psychology and certification as an executive coach through the center for executive coaching when he's not coaching leaders he spends his time with his wife four children playing a board game or two with friends and reading avidly. That's what we love, reading books. We have so many great authors on the show. All the best, as it were. Lindsay, welcome to the show. How are you? Hey, I'm good.

Thanks so much for having me. Thanks for coming. Give us the.com of your website so people can check you out or wherever you want people to find you on the interwebs. Yeah, sure. It's happyhires.ca. So I am Canadian and that's where you'll go. There you go. We love our Canadian friends, especially when they say sorry and A. There might be some A's we bring out. The boots always give them away. So there you go. But the nicest people

on the planet over there are I always tease my Canadian friends that being next to us is like having this really bad drunken brother down South of you where that we're always, you know, picking fights, starting wars and beating up people and some sort of drunken stupidity that wastes a bunch of money. You guys are always up there. Like, do we have to get nuked when these guys get new? Cause we're

right next door. You know, it's like having that drunken brother who can't control himself. Anyway. So give us a 30,000 overview of happy hires and what you do there. Oh, yeah. So, I mean, you did a really great introduction already. The whole story behind it is that I, you know, when I did my therapy practice, I always knew I was going to work with individuals. I'll move on to couples and as organizations next. Because, you know, everyone had resonates with this, right, having been under good or bad leadership, and you know, the difference right

away. And so that's, that's where kind of the heart behind it was is to create those places where people love their jobs. Now, I'm thinking about happiness and effectiveness. And I really think you can't, you can't have one without the other, like you, if you have happiness, you know, you're a very happy happy leader, but you're not effective, then you're not going to be happy very much longer. And the same the other way around. So it's really more about partnering with the individuals, the leaders, the CEOs to help them to develop their leadership skills. And I do some strategic planning. I also do some things, role clarity and job benchmarking and things like that, those kinds of services as well. There you go. And I mentioned in the bio that you believe that

leadership is innately important to people feeling fulfilled at work. I know we've talked about this ad nauseum on the show because leadership is a big deal for me and the people we've had on like yourself. I know there's stats that show that most of the time when people leave a company, it's because of poor leadership. It isn't because of what they're being paid necessarily. That may be an influence of poor leadership, but their bosses are jerks. They can't lead well. Yeah, right now I'm just wrapping up my PhD in organizational psychology.

My dissertation study is actually kind of on this topic. I have, you know, I surveyed, we had 648 valid responses of Canadian nurses and doctors, just talking about surveying them about how to view their leader, whether they are a servant leader or not, which is someone who would prioritize the needs of the individuals, over even over the organization. And yeah. And what I found was pretty staggering. I mean,

one thing is that, you know, as a big statistic, 46% of my respondents who are mostly nurses and younger in Canada are actually considering leaving their jobs. Wow. Yeah. Which is a really high number.

It's actually in line with other articles I've read as well. One of those things, this is not from my my study but from other studies i've read is in the context here there's a bit of a bullying culture and that's why a lot of younger nurses really that doesn't like their job wow yeah so that's kind of surprising right and what we see and it's really in line with most studies, so we're seeing that, you know, people who exhibit this really good servant leadership would mean that people would have higher psychological capital, which is like positive mindsets at work, which would then act as a buffer. These two things would act as a buffer for turnover intention. So people are less likely wanting to leave when they have these two maybe we have this positive leadership causing positive

mindsets oh wow so what what are the two things there which two things that you mean the the servant leadership and the so servant leadership and psychological stuff we we talked a lot and it seems like there's a lot of conversation moving towards servant leadership these days and what it means. How do you define in your words and thought processes what servant leadership means? Yeah. Okay. So servant leadership, most people know about transformational leadership, which is you have a charismatic leader who's able to inspire transformation in somebody so that they can do better and more for a company. So if you look at the definition of servant leadership, there's actually a lot of overlap.

You can see a lot of similar kind of characteristics there. But the major defining differentiator is that a servant leader is going to prioritize the follower, the individual above that of the organization. So it's this kind of others oriented leadership. There you go. And it seems like that seems to be the new trend. You know, I, I was probably for a lot of my years, a transformational leader where, you know, I, there was a lot of rah, rah pumping and you know, let's go get them coaching sort of style. And I think some of it played into what you might call servant leadership and realizing that you needed to help them to grow and achieve. But yeah, the servant leadership seems to be something that

a lot more people are talking about these days and what goes into it. Tell us a little bit about your background. How did you get in this field? How did you learn what you know? What motivated you want to get into this field? Yeah, I, you know, I just love the topic of leadership. I think I'm one of those guys who now when I was growing up, I was really shy. So I'm kind of a not a outspoken person. That changed over time, I think. But one of the funny things in my lifetime was that leadership opportunities always came my way. I never sought for them really, but I would be approached and asked to take on a higher leadership role. So I had to learn about it. I had to read books. It got me loving the concept and the ideas. And so when i was doing the therapy i mean i'm still doing therapy but i

i i've always thought about the next step for this was moving on to helping leaders so part of that journey took me to this phd which is on an organizational leader psychology there you go and what motivates you want to help? What motivates you want to try and have an impact in people's lives? Wow, I think there's a lot of factors, faith being one of them, for sure. Right. Like you think about servant leadership, right? Like the person that you tie it to is usually Jesus. Right. So it's definitely about helping people. I realized in high school that I was aiming to become a computer engineer. And I was like, I realized I didn't like computers and I like people. So all of the other roles I went into since has been about helping, nonprofit, teaching. And so I went all over the world, really, but also all over the map in terms of my career. But all of it was leading towards helping people. And I think that helping leaders is going to have the biggest impact

because it means helping a lot of people that follow those leaders. Definitely. And I don't know, are you seeing market conditions? I mean, there's a lot of stuff going on in the U.S. market and probably in the Canadian market as well. You guys are kind of reflective of our economy, I think. What are you seeing as to why it's important more now than ever for leaders to become the best leaders they can be in the marketplace?

Yeah. Okay, so I'm going to touch on this quickly. One of the models that I'm following right now is called the prioritized leader. It's not made up by me. Brandon Schaefer's work. And so what, what the assumption there is that there are five priorities that every leader has to have, and it has to be in the right order. So it starts off with purpose and then it becomes the next thing is people. And then the third one is the pace of the organization.

The fourth one is perception, which is also innovation. And finally, profit comes and follows naturally when you have those four lined up. And so I think when, especially when things are economically not looking great, the biggest temptation is to bump that profit piece higher. And when you do that, that's when you feel there's something off, right? Thinking of a particular client right now who was feeling really demotivated from work, and, you know, an entrepreneur has a business. And when we got to the heart of it, it was, they were losing the vision of what they were meant to do because they were working on the premise of, you know, well, we got to keep the doors open.

We got to make the doors open. We got to make sure we make more money. So they were starting to do things that were outside the scope of what they wanted to aim for originally. So yeah, for me, it was a classic example of that, flipping the order of priorities. So yeah, more than ever, we need strong leadership with great vision.

I would agree with you too. Purpose, people, pace, perception, more than ever, we need strong leadership with great vision. Yeah. I would agree with you, too. Purpose, people, pace, perception, and profit. Purpose, knowing what your business purpose is, knowing what your life purpose is is important as well as a human being. Knowing maybe what your purpose is as a leader, being a servant leader. Maybe not, you know, I imagine it's possible to blend the transformative leader and the servant leadership into a useful case. I mean, you don't have to abandon one for the other.

I think people think too much in black and white. You can gray those, I suppose. But purpose is really important. What is the purpose of your company? What are you trying to do? And then people, your most important asset is people. And I think too many times companies look at them as expendable you know we're seeing lots of layoffs in the marketplace right now pace tell us about

how pace plays into execution in the servant leadership in servant leadership well okay so part of servant leadership is that prioritization another part of it is the emotional healing so you're able to slow down and listen to people when they're hurt right so that's that's part of it so what the pace module is all about is is really just about the predictability sorry the successful companies all successful companies big ones with legacy always has a predictability to them you know they have a you know so if you think about like school systems, they look very clear. Here's the summer.

Here's the, you know, our first term. We have a break. We have a second term. So you know what to expect. You know, whatever stakeholder is in that, you know, organization knows when to rest and when to work hard. Or like a really good example would be Apple, right? Like everyone knows in October is when the new launch is.

So earlier in the year, they are innovating, they're testing, they're creating their new products. And then later that year, they are executing and pushing forward their products. So because of that predictability, their clients know, their customers know what to expect, but so do the workers. They get us, you know, they are able to rest when necessary and execute really hard when necessary because they know the pace of their company. There you go. There you go. Pace and how everything's operating and going. The fourth one is called perception. And this, I think, is is really important being able to perceive that you

know you have good leadership you can trust your leadership that you know they do what they say that seems to be a big problem in companies where leadership teams will put out spit out you know some sort of pr about you know we're the greatest company in the world and we have high ethics and morals and and then you know you find out that that the CEO is stealing from a company or doing some sort of, whatever. Or, you know, just not talking his walk and walking his talk, he or she. And so perception is really everything. Because if you're, you know, you can pump out all sorts of PR things. But if people aren't seeing that the reality is you are living your purpose and living what you're telling other people to do, know you're not going to go far yeah yeah actually it's funny i i thought the same thing

when i was listening you know when i was learning the model uh fourth one is perception is how people view you know but it's actually not that i think they just want to use another p word but it's actually more about innovation for that whole whole part but i agree with you in terms of like the perception or the alignment of values that would probably go back to the first one which is purpose right and and that's where you know you can you can pretend to be something else and people will know right away so you have to you actually have to find out in my organization what is the actual value here like what what is celebrated and and works right because that might be different from context anyways.

Yeah. But perception, yeah. So the innovation part is more about this continuous, I mean, integrated, like a systemized way to keep improving, whether it's internal processes or the products or the services. And everything falls into place with the profit.

I mean, if you build a good organization, a lot of people don't think about this, but building culture from the get-go, or if you're coming into the office of CEO or whatever management area you are, the tone you set, the culture you set, the environment you set, the methodology, it sets the tone for the whole organization.

And right now, I mean, we live in this environment. I imagine you guys are kind of where we are in Canada, where we are now, where here in America, we have a shortage of employees. I think the number's been kicked around, but I think it's about 7 million. And so we have a shortage. And what happened is we always knew the baby boomers were going to tire and we were going to have problems but they retired early because of covid and some of the gens xers that could skip out did too as well and so they cashed out their chips

and the problem we have is we have for the for every every day we have people from the boomers retiring and so for every seven that retire we only have one new employee coming in. And usually those seven that retire have a lot of experience and are at the high ends of their jobs. The new people coming in, they're just journeymen coming in. I think journeymen is the right term. I don't know. They're just beginners in the thing. Maybe journeymen is more experienced.

So we have a real lack of employees. And so it's causing a lot of demand, especially since our economy is still growing pretty good. And so there's this fight for high-quality employees and high demand. And they're, of course, they know that they're in high demand. And between the unions having more power than they've ever had before,

between employers, employees having more power than they've ever had before, between employers, employees having more power than they ever had before in choices and demanding high wages and demanding great business, you know, you, you have to meet the mark. You can't just phone in leadership anymore. You've got to, you've got to really lead and make it, you know, your, your, your workplace a vibrant place that people enjoy because there's, there's a lot of options out there. Right. Yeah, definitely. So let's talk about your company, happy hires. What do you guys do there? What, uh, tell us about some of the offerings you guys have. Do you, now I know you're based in Canada. Do you cover places outside of Canada?

Well, so far my clients have been local, but I'm, I'm definitely open to, you know, because it's so easy to know, to do coaching over remotely. You do it worldwide now. Yeah, worldwide. Yeah, so definitely I'm open to more than that. Yeah, right now, the main kind of three areas, one is strategic planning. So that's more involved, right? That would be coming in and actually meeting the team and doing a couple of sessions together to work out that purpose level very well. Then I have some of the

smaller offerings would be more like, you know, one of my clients had a main member leaving, retiring soon. So we came together as the leadership team discussed, you know, as many reasons as we can for why this role exists. And we categorize those to key accountabilities, we rank them. So it gave a lot of clarity for everyone, or in that, you know, there was something they didn't know. So the CEO kind of like, you know, explain, explain to them, actually, I was hoping it to go in this direction. So everyone was like, Oh, so now they know what they're expecting. And so once we finished doing that, I would create a benchmark for them using personalities, drivers, competencies. So they together would, they would each fill out an assessment and we would make a composite assessment that now is going to be a benchmark. So whenever they are interviewing people, they can take the top candidates, assess them, and see how close they come to the benchmark.

And I see that they can take that assessment for free, I think, on your website. Yeah, no, I have a different assessment. It's a diagnostic on my website. And that's just kind of a smaller version of the bigger prioritized leader assessment uh so that's that's more for the leader to take to kind of find out you know how he scores or she scores on the the those five modules that we mentioned already and then they can see which one's on fire and maybe that's what they would need help with the most there you go that's it's really important so you can do a little self-assessment

as a leader on your thing, but then you have a deeper one that you do. Tell us about, I'm looking at the website, you have coaching programs, strategic success planning, team workshops, and job benchmark facilitation service. Walk us through some of these different things that you do. I see the Elevate Your Brand Vision Mastery Program, three times engagement accelerator. Walk us through some of these programs. Yeah, well, if you look at the titles of those ones, they're really just heading up those five different modules, right? So now as far as the coaching goes,

what I like to do is create six-month coaching engagements just because that's how long it takes for real change to happen. And although we do have these different branded ones in terms of like, you know, there's a whole module behind it that we can go through together. It's not, it doesn't have to be the main thing really, because it's tailored.

It's like, you know, when we get together and we talk about your needs, it might be outside of that scope completely. And we would just have to work with that. The most important thing though, is that we have a very, very clear idea of exactly what outcome you want in the next six months. The most important thing, though, is that we have a very, very clear idea

of exactly what outcome you want in the next six months. And then we set goals towards it and action points towards it until you reach those. So yeah, it's a six-month one-on-one bespoke, tailored coaching for executives. There you go. There you go. People can reach out to you,

engage in some of these things. So you work with companies, you work with individuals. What are you finding that most people are struggling with in your business coaching when you're talking to people and they're like, hey, I need help with this? What's one of the top topics that you see people trying to square around the square on yeah so i i'm thinking of two things right now one of them is you know i i i have these people who are not doing their jobs and i don't know how to fire them maybe i can't you know there's there's all these different rules around that yeah so what do i do and then there's the other one anyway no i'm just we're just doing comedy yeah or the other thing or the other thing is just that i'm tired you know i'm i'm working so hard so these a lot of the people i'm working with now they are small companies and they're the own they're owners right they're like you know the dream is to get to a place where everyone's just doing their thing and i can be a true owner, but not quite there yet.

So we need to fill in this role. We need to train that person. Yeah, that's the pain points that I'm hearing. So I am, you know, I haven't said it on the website or anywhere because I'm still developing it. But I am trying to come up with my own unique method right now, which is for exactly those pain points and those outcomes that we're looking for. There you go. You know, people have to really look at how the culture they're building, what they've done to contribute to it.

It's everything. I mean, it really does always come down to leadership in my mind. And the person on the white horse, the person who sets the tone for the organization, everything revolves from that and evolves from that. Even when it's in a large company, I mean, people look to the leader. I mean, I wrote about this in my book, Beacon's Leadership. People look to that beacon, that thing that sits on the shore and and sends forth the light that says hey this is who we are and it communicates people look to that

and they go okay so how do we direct our our ship over what the leader says and having those lighthouses are so important in in in doing what that is and if the community in there if the communication is mixed or contradictory or hypocritical, people see that and they just go, you're full of shit, as George Carlin used to say. And it's just really important that you walk your talk, you do your thing. I can think of a lot of great CEOs

that do a lot of wonderful things. I'm thinking of the CEO with T-Mobile who used to be such a great cheerleader. John, I forget his name now, but really great guy. You would always see him in a cheerleader position. You would always see him working amongst the frontline people, going out to events. He didn't wear the normal suit and everything else. He was a jump up and down sort of guy.

And the motivate teams. And people saw him as a, as a fellow, I think more so than a, than a, than, you know, well, there's, he's some guy in the ivory tower, you know, no one sees him every now and then he shows up in a suit. And I've been studying more leaders for my second book. And there's a lot of great leaders that spend a lot of time in the trenches. They get out there, they're, they there. They're dealing with the frontline people. They're doing a lot of listening sessions, a lot of servant sessions, as opposed to just being out there on a soapbox barking whatever the PR statement says. You know, they're getting the feedback from people.

Like, are we following through on living what our purpose is on what our intention is and i think that's real important i think it's i think it's really come due for time because you know you can try still using the old leadership method of barking orders and if you don't follow through we're just going to fire you and attitudes like that but you know people people demand more and i think i think with the new generations, too, I know millennials wanted more from work. I know Gen Z wants to feel more involved and feel like there's more of a purpose and stuff. And I imagine Generation Alpha, the next generation after Gen Z, they're just going to want more of the same. They're going to want a place that they feel like they're contributing, that matters, that they have a say, that it's doing something better for the world.

I think they're just going to take that to the next level. And so leaders have to adapt or die, really, when it comes down to it from a profit aspect. Yeah. It made me, as you were talking, it made me think of an old movie, Kingdom of Heaven with Orlando Bloom. Oh, really? Yeah, yeah. movie kingdom of heaven with orlando bloom oh really yeah yeah he's like a like a blacksmith and all these guys are having crusades fights you know the crusaders versus the muslims and

and so he created a lot of respect with his followers because he was always in the trenches digging yeah literally digging trenches with them for for. And then on the, you know, fight day, him and a whole small contingent of people were out front in front of the walls and running straight towards the enemies. And so that was, anyway, so it was the scene that just came to my mind. Yeah. Yeah. And also thinking about the book, you know, old book, again, Good to Great. Jim Collins, Good to Great is a classic. Yeah.

So he, you know, he went out to study why certain companies suddenly became so much greater than its peers. And the one thing they didn't want to discover but did discover was that it always came down to a CEO change. Wow. Yeah. And it was always a CEO they didn't expect. It wasn't a super charismatic person. It was actually someone very humble, someone who was really hardworking and someone who can set the direction and accountability of where they want to go.

So, yeah, it's a big deal who is at the helm. There you go. So you, one thing you talk about is something you call SOAR instead of SWOT. Yeah. What does it mean? S W O T SWOT. Okay. So SWOT is what most people use in strategic planning.

It's the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. So they get together to talk about those things. And then they use that as the, as one of the, you know, building blocks and threats. So they get together to talk about those things. And then they use that as one of the building blocks for building, okay, well, what's our initiatives for the next two years for our strategic plan, right?

I just found in my studies a model called appreciative inquiry. Have you heard of that before? No, what was it again? Appreciative inquiry. No. So it that before? No. What was it again? Appreciative inquiry. No. So it's still AI, but just different. So appreciative inquiry is, I guess you can call it a framework or a philosophy of sorts, which is very flexible.

You can work it into your company in many ways or into your personal life in many ways. But I like to use that as a model when it comes to strategic planning. So we switch up the letters to SOAR instead of SWOT. Okay. And in appreciative inquiry, you know, I mean, there's pushback against it because it kind of ignores the weaknesses and the threats. It just goes straight into what's the strengths, right? They really want to get the conversation going for what is going really, really well right

now in this organization. What makes you feel fully alive? What are the stories? So you want to get this to be a collaborative experiment with lots of people, stakeholders, customers, clients, people within the organizations to be at, you know, having these conversations. And so it builds up this momentum and energy from it. Because it's all about asking the right questions, right? Then you move on to, okay, well, based on these strengths now, in the SOAR model, I think they actually switched it,

they have opportunities and aspirations, I would like to go with aspirations first before opportunities. But you would go from, okay, well, since this is our positive core, this is what makes us really click, right? Then what's the dream forward? And that, again, becomes a collaborative

exercise where everyone is having conversations and dialogues and then finally honing down at the leadership level. So what's, what are those statements we want to put out aspirationally that we would want to become? And then from there, then you can look at opportunities, you can look at what are the strategic opportunities that we need to, or initiatives that we need to take in order to get towards that reality that aspiration that we are facing towards and and then you move on to results which is when you look at metrics

when you look at you know how do you know we're measuring up and and you know the to-do list to actually go and achieve it so that's yeah that's the SOAR model. Yeah. And so probably, I mean, probably identifying the strengths and then looking at results, the results kind of give you feedback on weaknesses. So maybe not accessing them or focusing on them so much, like, what the fuck is wrong with us? Why do we suck? Yeah. It can be a little disempowering or maybe disheartening or, you know, you can have finger pointing or lack of self-accountability or, you know, well, it's the sales department's fault, you know, that sort of crap. So maybe just focusing on strengths and building on those and then, you know, seeing the weaknesses in the reporting and they'll maybe self-address themselves or at least you can address them

in reporting and be like, okay, here's where we need to work. Maybe it's the positive spin instead of focusing on the negatives. It's like, how do we improve in these areas? Yeah, there's a quote by Peter Drucker, and I'm going to butcher it right now. But it goes along the line of, you know, the whole point of leadership is to align the strengths of the organization so well that the weaknesses become irrelevant.

It's on my website. The task of leadership is to create an alignment of strengths in ways that make weaknesses irrelevant. Does that sound right? Yeah, that's the one. Peter Drucker, the father of modern management. Man, that guy wrote some thick-ass books on management and stuff, but he defined it all. It was pretty interesting.

But yeah, alignment of strengths and ways that make weaknesses irrelevant. Definitely, definitely. There you go. There's one other thing you talk about, the hero aspect in leadership. Hero being the capital letters. Tell us about what that means. Okay, so this is based on something called psychological capital which is just a really fancy psychological word for positive mindsets

and so that's that's where you see my positive psychology spin come into things again right i i mean i'm a therapist so i deal with things like depression, anxiety, and so forth. And then there was a movement which is relatively new if you look at the span of science and psychology. But it's the positive psychology movement, right? Which is saying, you know, why do we not study thriving instead of just what's wrong. And so people who score higher on psychological capital actually do score lower on depression and anxiety. They also score all sorts of positive outcomes in the workplace, better job satisfaction, less likely to want to quit, and, you know, better behavior, like what do you call those?

Organizational behaviors that benefits the organizations. So what interested me about it is that it's very practical. You can develop these psychological states. They're not traits. They go up and down, but there are proven ways of how to increase them. I'll touch point quickly on what those four pieces are. So the acronym is HERO.

The first one is just developing hope. Okay. And here's the definition of hope in a psychological world. Hope is when I can see the end goal that I'm trying to achieve, and I can also see the pathway towards it or the goal paths towards it. So when I can see those two things, then I would score high on hope. And when I can't see those two things,

I would score low on hope. There you go. Yeah. So it's not something like pie in the sky is actually just like, you know, I, you know, I have a client come in and they're like,

Oh yeah, I'm feeling really depressed. I don't like, so what's your dream? What's your vision? You know, I don't know. Wow. And that's then i know yeah this person is scoring low on hope right now definitely yeah so that's why when you do good strategic planning when you do

purpose when you focus on that stuff you're creating hope not just for yourself but for your whole organization second one is efficacy So efficacy is another fancy word for confidence. And confidence is my belief in my abilities to make a positive outcome when I put effort into something. Oh, there you go. So when you have low efficacy, you're more likely to procrastinate on things.

When you have high efficacy, you're more likely to go and do those actions. Oh, really? Yeah. I mean, it's one of the factors. It's not just... But another easy way to look at efficacy is the way to develop it,

the best way, the strongest way to develop it is to set challenging goals and achieve them. So that's, again, leadership, right? When you put in... Let's not just put in the simple, easy goals, but let's look at the challenging goals that drives or motivates the whole group towards it. And then keep them simple enough, not in terms of difficulty,

but in terms of knowing whether we can do it or not, that increases everyone's confidence. Mm-hmm. There you go. Yeah. Yeah. Hope. Everyone needs hope. Hope is the great, what's the word I'm looking for? Hope is the great thing that we look for in life. Hope springs eternal, I think is the phrase I was

looking for. Cultivating hope, efficacy, resilience, and optimism for success. Psychological aspects of leadership. And I'm glad you're drilling down on this, the psychological aspects. And as a psychologist, you probably know better than most. And there is a psychology behind it. A lot of leaders, I ask them, you know, what is your leadership style? What sort of methodologies do you entertain? Or what do you think about yourself as a leader? How do you define yourself as a leader?

And they don't know usually. They're just like, I don't know. I just kind of operate on the toolbox of what's always worked for me. And I'm like, how do you really know what that is? How do you know what really works for you? I don't know. I just kind of do the same thing every day and it seems to work. Well, maybe it could work better.

That sort of thing is pretty interesting to me, how many people don't have a definition or haven't really thought about through their life. They're not intentional about their leadership style. And I find that very interesting. Yeah. I mean, a lot of people fall into it and, you know, practice does help. You're learning on the ropes on the job, right? Some people are developing those leadership skills. They're just not naming them per se. And you don't really think about it much. You just kind of go forward with it.

So there you go. So how can people onboard with you? How can they reach out to you, see if you're a fit, talk to you about the stuff that goes into your services, et cetera, et cetera? Yeah. I mean, they would definitely visit my website, right? Do the diagnostic, the quick, you know, just to get some numbers to it. And then you can book a call with me from there, right? Or you can send me an email and we can talk about your results.

I would be able to, for qualified clients, I would be able to offer maybe four per month, a complimentary, like the full assessment for the prioritized leader so that we can take a deeper, a much deeper look into it with you. And then based on that, we can talk about whatever is a good fit and move forward with coaching. So that's, that's the process.

Yeah. There you go. Give us the website one more time as we go out. Yeah. So it's happy hires.ca. There you go. Thank you very much, Lindsay, for coming on the show and sharing your thoughts with us. We really appreciate it.

Yeah, thanks for having me on the show. There you go. Thanks for tuning in. Go to goodreads.com, fortuneschrisfosslinkedin.com, fortuneschrisfoss, chrisfoss1 on the TikTokity, and chrisfossfacebook.com. Thanks for being here. Be good to each other. Stay safe. We'll see you guys next time.

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