The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk - 394: Todd Henry - The Hidden Forces That Drive Your Best Work (The Motivation Code)

Episode Date: November 30, 2020

Text LEARNERS to 44222 for more details about The Learning Leader Circle Full notes at www.LearningLeader.com Twitter: @RyanHawk12 #394: Todd Henry - The Hidden Forces That Drive Your Best Work Show notes: What is the most valuable land in the world? "The graveyard... All of the stuff we carry with us for our life and never put out into the world... All of that valued is buried in the ground." The two words that Todd wrote down after coming to this realization? "Die Empty." "The rough edges they decry you for now… Are the very rough edges they will celebrate you for later." What drives us to unleash our best work? Drawing on interviews with over 100,000 working professionals, the answer is no one size fits all. Todd Henry shows, in fact, that there are six unique "motivational archetypes"... They are: The Visionary strives to make her mark on the world by building an ideal future, even when others may not see as far ahead. The Achiever relishes a finished product and must conquer whatever obstacle comes his way, no matter how difficult or time-consuming. The Team Player values being part of a group and will go to great lengths to achieve unity and enhance collaboration. The Learner is obsessed with mastering new skills and showing off what she knows--which is often a lot. The Optimizer thrives when systems are running smoothly and finds great satisfaction when things are done the "right way." The Key Contributor shines at the center of the action, especially when others can recognize the value of his work. Todd's work teaches us to decode our motivational type so we can structure projects, have conversations, make decisions, and even choose career paths to amp up engagement and achieve fulfillment. Once we know how to activate our inner drivers, we can transform the work we do into the work we love. Why should you write? "If you can learn to write, you'll be invited into rooms." "Turn the ineffable into something." Read, comprehend, synthesize, write... "People won't follow you because of your position or title. You have to persuade them. You have to cut through the noise, hone your skills. It's a craft you must work on." Have empathy, uniqueness, precisions. Have empathy for the end user.  Have an intended audience: one person in mind. Ramp up your empathy for the end user... "We wait for tasks to motivate us and that's exactly backwards. We need to bring our motivation to what we do. We have to train ourselves to bring our motivation to our work instead of waiting for our tasks to motivate us." Because of the motivation code, "I have a language now that I never had a language for previously" A new framework for understanding people. It's created "aha" moments "Self-awareness is the first step to maturity." "It helps use discern areas where we're insecure."  What was Todd thinking five minutes prior to going on stage at the Global Leadership Summit? 10,000 in the audience and hundreds of thousands watching worldwide... "I reminded myself how grateful I was to be there..." It was calming.  

We wait for tasks to motivate us, and that's exactly backwards. We need to bring our motivation to what we do. There's no perfect job. There's no perfect set of tasks. We have to train ourselves to bring our motivation to our work and to our tasks instead of waiting for our tasks to motivate us. This episode is brought to you by a very special advertising partner for me. In fact, this is an endorsement of how great their product is.

Because this year for Father's Day, I got my dad. Storyworth and what it is. Each week, Storyworth will send a question to your loved one. Or you can choose the question. It is then sent through StoryWor's platform. The person you then buy this gift for will respond to your question and can add in some cool pictures to help with the memories. And at the end of 52 weeks, StoryWorth will compile all of your stories, including the photos into a beautiful keepsake book that's shipped for free. And this is a book that I know my family will treasure forever. It is a highlight of my week seeing the responses that my dad has given to these questions. In fact, I'm learning so much about him and his life that I didn't know before, which is

amazing considering how much we talk. And so I would urge you to give your loved ones the gift of spending time together wherever you lived with Storyworth. Get started right away with no shipping required by going to storyworth.com slash leader. You'll get $10 off your first purchase. That's storyworth.com slash leader. Welcome to the Learning Leader show presented by Brixie and Meyer. I am Ryan Hawk.

Thank you so much for being here. Text, learners to 4-4-222. In order to join tens of thousands of learning leaders from all over the world, receive Mindful Monday updates what I'm reading, writing, watching, thinking about, also give you more details about how my book, Welcome to Management, will help you become a more effective leader. Text, learners to 44222.2. On to tonight's featured leader, my friend Todd Henry is back, author of five bestselling books,

including the accidental creative, die empty, hurting tigers, and most recently the motivation code. A few of the topics we discussed. Todd answers the question, what is the most valuable land in the world? And what does that have to do with you as a leader? And then he shares the one commonality among all of the excellent leaders he's interviewed over the past 15 years. Then he shares the hidden forces that drive you to do your best work. Ladies and gentlemen, it's Todd Henry. So Todd, I want to start with you were in a. meeting at one point, I believe, and a question was asked of the group. And that question was,

what is the most valuable land in the world? Before answering, can you take us through what happened in that room when that question was asked and then answer the question to? Yeah. So this was a really formative moment in my life. This was, wow, almost 20 years ago now, which is kind of crazy to think about. So I was in a meeting. We were in the middle of a big project. It was a very risky project. And all of us were in the room. And there's a guy who was leading the meeting. And I think he could kind of sense the, I don't want to say trepidation in the room, but just we all had a really strong sense that this is kind of a risky thing that we were doing. And he in the middle of this meeting kind of out of the blue, he just said, what do you think is the most valuable land in the world? And we were all like, I don't know, I don't know,

like oil fields of the Middle East, right? Or gold mines in South Africa because that's where our colleague was from, right? So we started throwing out a bunch of guesses and he said, you're all wrong, you're all wrong. And then quoting the late Miles Monroe, he said, I believe the most valuable land in the world is the graveyard. Because in the graveyard are buried all of the unwritten novels, all of the untaken risks, all of the unlaunched businesses, all of the unexacted. executed ideas, all of the unreconsiled relationships. Basically, all of this stuff we carry with us our entire life and we never put it into the world. We think, well, tomorrow I'll get started. Tomorrow I'll start on that. Tomorrow's the day I'm going to take the first step. And so we push it,

we push it, we push it into the future until one day we reach the book end of our lives and all of that value is buried in the ground, never to be seen by human eyes. That's why it's the most valuable land in the world because all of that unexecutive value was buried with us in the ground. And so that day I went back to my office and I wrote two words on an index card and I put them on the wall of my office and I put them in my notebook. And those two words have defined the last almost two decades in my life now. Those two words were die empty. Because I wanted to know when I reached the book into my life, that I'm not taking my best work to the grave. I'm doing everything I'm doing everything each and every day to put that work into the world where it can be a value to others. And I'm building a body of work I can point to at the end of my life and say, yes, that represents me. It doesn't represent everything. None of us get to do everything. None of us get to do all of our ideas, right? course, but I just want to make sure that I'm not allowing myself to succumb to fear, to succumb to apathy, to succumb to some of these forces. You have sort of the paralysis that comes with uncertainty, especially right now in the midst of these times that we're living in. I want to make sure I'm doing what I can every single day to put my work into the world in the

way that it can be of value to other people so that someday I can die empty of regret but full of satisfaction for a life well lived. And I think that's all we can ask for. And I think that the 20 years since then, you know, you're a prolific writer, publish five, six, how many books are you? Five books since then. You started a podcast, Todd, 15 years ago, literally one of the OGs, a gangster when it comes to podcasting. Who else in the world was podcasting 15 years ago? Was it you? There were a number of people actually. Really?

Because iTunes had just started to, like the directory had just launched. So it had just sort of become a thing. So there are at least enough people doing it that there was room for a directory. But, you know, it was hard. Like we had to, uh, you know, we had to literally burn all of the episodes into vinyl discs and carry them to our listeners one by one. I'm kidding. I was like, wait, what?

I do remember having like plug in an iPod though, right? You're at a point. Like, you know, back then it was like, it's so easy to listen to podcasts. I mean, all you have to do is, you know, download the files to your computer or your computing device. And then you take your iPod and you plug a firewire cable into it. And then you drag the files over to your iPod. And then you can carry those with you anywhere you go.

It's so easy, right? Compared to now where it's literally you're like a one click away from listening to anything in the world. You can stream it over the air, whatever you want to do. So it's funny. It was such a hassle for people to listen to podcast back then. But the really funny part of that whole story is I thought at the time that I launched the Axone Creative Podcast, I thought I was coming in on the back end of all the podcasting stuff.

I was like, oh, man, I'm so late to the game. I don't know. You know, is there still room for me here? I don't know. So it's just, it's funny how perspective is everything when it comes to all of that. What made you, I feel like I should have already asked you this, but what made you start at a time when, like I said, a decade before the podcasting, boom, more than a decade before it, I would say, which is probably a few years ago, what was it that made you start it?

Like so many things in life, it was the confluence of my skills, my interests, and the demand of the marketplace. There was a demand for someone to talk about the pressures of creating on demand every day. The pressures of going to work, having to solve problems, figure it, out, collaborate with other people. And even though right now, like, there's so many people talking about that. Back then, you know, there really weren't that many talking about. So there's a demand for it. I come from a music background in my sort of early 20s. So I had command of the audio medium. You know, I had all the tools. I had microphones. I had the ability to edit, all the software. So, you know, the tools were there for me. It wasn't like, like, if I tried to jump into video

production, it would have been a totally different thing. But for me, audio was like breathing. Like, I just knew how to do it. And then I was looking for a way to start teaching other people some of the things I was learning because I had to, as a creative director, I had to solve a lot of problems that I myself couldn't find the answers to. And so I wanted to share what I'd discover with other people and then also just have some conversations with other people about what they were learning. And so it was really the confluence of all three of those things. And just podcasting was the natural hand and glove medium for me to do that. And over the years, I mean, I've had people say, well, you've got to do video. Well, you have to do, you know, be active in Instagram stories.

You have to be doing, you know, and I'm like, listen, I found my medium. Like, I found the thing I do that I do really well and it's gone very well for me. And I still do those things. But like, I spend most of my time doing the thing that I'm wired to do that I'm equipped to do that people know me for. And that is really creating audio content. And one of the other things you do, as mentioned, is write books. And I was, just today, as I was preparing and researching for you, Todd, I wanted to figure out and learn about writing and why it's such a powerful tool for learning. And I happened to stumble across this tweet storm, a thread by Kaylee Moore. And there's a number of things she wrote, but I'll just share the

one, and I'd love for you to talk a little bit more after I share this about how writing helps you. And she said, writing is a neuron pumping activity that challenges your brain to translate shapeless ideas into logical syntax conforming sentences. It's mental gymnastics when you have to take a fuzzy concept and transform it into words. It changes your vocabulary as you have to find the right words that match. up with your ideas. And I feel like this is something you live and have figured out and would love to hear you share more about the power of writing and why leaders should form some sort of a habit to write, even if they don't publish their work and how it could help them.

Yeah. I mean, I talk all the time about this with my kids. If you can learn to write, you are going to be invited into doorways that you're not going to be able to get into otherwise. A well-crafted email to your boss's boss. A well-crafted marketing piece of marketing collateral. Even your resume, how you write your resume. You know, my kids right now, my oldest is writing his college essay, you know, for college applications. I mean, you know, those kinds of things. Like if you can write, if you can read, comprehend, synthesize, and then write and reflect

back in compelling ways what you're seeing in the world around you, you're going to be able to write your own ticket, pun intended. So I do think working on the craft of writing is so critical for any professional. And I don't care if you're a visual designer. I don't care if you're a designer. That's what you do. You should work on the craft of writing because at some point, you're going to have to convince others through writing that your direction is the right direction. And they're not just going to get it. You're going to have to figure out a way to persuade them. to turn the ineffable into something tangible. So I think writing is one of those rare skills that transcends every profession, every role,

every job. And just to be completely candid, I am now an author of five books, which probably represents well over a million words I've had to write to get to those five books. And I don't like to write. It's not something I enjoy. The process of it is excruciating to me. But I love having written, and I love on the other side of it, the impact that I can have through my words and the ways I can influence other people.

So it's not about enjoying the task of writing. There aren't, you know, all the time I have people who come to me and say, I want to be a writer. I want to be an author. You know, how do I, how do I write? How do I be an author? And I'll say, well, write. Start writing. Like, what do you mean?

How do you do it? Like, you just sit down and you do it. And what they really mean is I want to get a book published. Or what they really mean is I want to, you know, I want to have my book in bookstores. or something like that. That's a totally different question. But, you know, the answer is the same. Sit down and start writing right now.

If you're not, if you want to be a writer but you're not writing, what are you doing? Like what you want to, you want to be a writer, but you don't want to do writing, you know? I don't like to write, but I recognize that writing is a medium that is best suited for some of the ideas I'm trying to share. You know, books are powerful instruments for getting ideas across, for shaping thoughts, for influencing people. So yeah, I would say if you want to be successful in this world, writing is one of just the handful of skills that you have to really work on and hone as far as craft. Todd, what about for that person who's an SVP and a Fortune 50 company, a mid-level manager and a $2 billion company trying to make their way? I've been pushing this for months now and

spoken with a number of writers about this. That person's listening and saying what Todd and Ryan just we're talking about. That's for those other people. And I'm saying, stop. That's for you. Why, why Todd is it so critical for that person working within corporate America, working their way up the ladder, that they develop skill as a leader to become a better, I learned this from my dad because my dad's published a couple books. And I did, I did this gift for him when he turned 60, where I asked like 30 people to send me. I asked them one question, why do you love Keith talk. And I asked them just to answer that question in writing so I could make a book for him and give it to him. And the number of people, Todd, this is crazy, the number of people that

commented and wrote in that Why I Love Him letter is there's nothing like a Keith email. I was like, what? And I read, I've read a lot of them. And then you realize the power and the impact a leader can have on their team, on their colleagues, going up, going down everywhere. where if they work on that skill of being a good writer. So I know I kind of answered the question, but from your perspective, I'd love for you to expand on why that person should work on this craft. Yeah, I mean, people don't follow you because of your position.

They'll do what you say, but they won't follow you. If you want them to follow you, you have to persuade them to follow you, which means you have to cut through the noise, which means your voice has to resonate. You must hone your leadership voice if you want to be effective. If you want to continue to climb the upper echelons of any organization, you have to be able to cut through the noise. And the way to do that is by honing your skills.

And again, the most important skill is writing. So if you want your voice to be authentic, you want it to resonate, you want it to influence people, then that's a craft thing. That's a, you know, that's something that you have to work on that you can develop over time. It's not something, some people just have that gift for sure. But even those people, once you get to the upper echelons where everybody kind of has that gift, you have to really work on developing it. Authenticity. Do people see you for who you are?

Are you putting skin in the game? Uniqueness. What makes your communication different from everyone else? Like you said, you know, nothing like a good Keith Hawk email, right? Like there's something unique about the way your father's emails came across, right? Precision. Are you speaking with precision? In other words, are you saying exactly what you mean and can people discern what you mean with complete clarity?

Or are you being foggy? Are you sort of equivocating? Or are you being precise with your language in a way that people can't mistake what you're saying? Empathy. Are you communicating with empathy for the end user? Are you putting yourself in their position? Are you writing from their perspective? One thing that's been effective for me as an author, and I've done this with every single one of my books,

I always have an intended audience for my books, every single book. But it's not an avatar and it's not a group of people. I'm not writing to a specific, like my last book before Motivation Code was called Herding Tigers, which is for leaders of creative people. I wasn't writing to leaders of creative people. I had one person in mind, a specific person, like an actual person with a real name. And I was writing the entire book as if I was sitting across the table speaking to that person. So if you're a leader crafting an email to your organization, think about one person in your

organization, think about that person who you're intending to reach and think about them sitting across the table from you, sitting across your desk from you. And I am right now writing this email as if I'm communicating in person to that one person. That will ramp up your empathy in untold ways if you do that. And then timing. Timing is important too. And this is something that people often overlook, but timing is critical. if you want to be effective.

Is there another idea that's gaining momentum organizationally that I can kind of attach this idea to, right? What are some of the other communications going on in our culture right now and how are they playing together and how am I be able to find some space within that in order to be able to make my ideas stand apart from the rest? So authenticity, uniqueness, precision, empathy, timing. Those are really five key things to consider

when you're crafting a communication if you want your leadership voice to resonate. Wow. I didn't need to go into all the house. I mean, I know we didn't even plan for that. I didn't plan for that, but it just popped up and you just crushed it. Todd,

I want to get your feelings. What do you think when you see this? When I see that book. Yeah, the cover, the actual, it's beautiful, it looks good.

It like has the nice little, for the people watching on the video, you can see what it looks like. What do you think? It's called the motivation code for audio, audio listeners. I feel incredible, incredible gratitude that I was invited.

into a deep stream of research that's been going on for more than 50 years. Wow. I am coming in very late to the game, unlike the podcasting thing where I came in very early to the game. I'm coming in very late to the game in all of this research. And some of my colleagues have been doing this research for years and years and years. And I feel incredibly grateful to have been invited into the fold and being given the opportunity to help share this research with the world.

So it draws on interviews with over 100,000 working professionals. There are six unique motivational archetypes. Now, I want to figure out the best way to share kind of the version of each one so that it's obviously something that you've got to dig deep and go through the whole assessment as well as read the book because it's like a normal Todd Henry book. Fantastic storytelling, practical application, science mixed with story, mixed with application, my favorite kind of book. I've told you this before, Todd. That's like the three-part framework that I love that you're really good at, that the good writers I get to talk to them on this show have. So the six types, let me introduce the first three, Todd,

and then maybe you can hit some highlights and then I'll introduce the second three. Is that cool? Oh, that's totally fine. Okay. The visionary, the achiever, the team player. Can you take us through some highlights of those three as we go? And maybe there might be a follow up before we hit the second three. Sure. Yeah. So just if it's okay, if I'll take a step back and describe the methodology and kind of how all of this came about. So you mentioned over 100,000 interviews with working professionals or people from all walks of life. Over a million achievement stories have been collected and analyzed, representing, we believe, the largest repository of achievement stories in the history of humankind. And what my colleagues and I have done, and primarily my colleagues, as I mentioned, because I'm coming a little bit late into all of this research.

but it's building on the work of a guy named Arthur Miller Jr., who began this work back in the 1960s, basically have distilled the ways in which people talk about why achievements are meaningful to them into a set of language that eventually created this taxonomy called the 27 motivational theme. So there are 27 unique ways that people talk about why achievements are gratifying to them, why work is engaging to them, why certain moments in their life are satisfying. And so those 27 motivational themes describe what we're like when we're at our peak, when we're most engaged, when we're most satisfied, but also describe some of the potential,

what we call shadow side attributes of those motivations. What we've discovered is that for most people, motivation is unique, meaning that my combination of motivational themes that drive my most engaged moments are very likely to be different from yours, Ryan. There are 17,550 possible combinations of top three motivations. So the chances that we have the exact same motivational drivers are pretty slim. What we found is that it's sustained, meaning that if you were to do something in one area of your life,

like your work life and then do something in another area of your life, say like a social group or something like that. What's driving engagement in both of those areas is going to be similar. And it's also going to be the same over long periods of time. I was just having a conversation with someone who took this assessment almost a decade ago and just recently took it again. And other than a few themes, like the number two and number three kind of flipping in the assessment, which they were already kind of close, basically the top themes are completely the same as they were a decade ago. So what we've discovered over the course of time is that your motivational drivers tend to remain about the same over the course of your life in spite of your circumstances and in

spite of how old you get because what these themes describe is the way that you respond to extrinsic stimulus. So we tend to think about motivation as intrinsic and extrinsic, right? Extrinsic being these external factors that motivate behavior like pay raises and per. and flexibility and words of encouragement, things like that. Now, then we think about intrinsic motivators, which typically mean our own personal motivation, the way we bring motivation to what we do. The reality is that intrinsic and extrinsic motivation

modify one another. So they're not completely discrete. So what these themes do is describe the way that you uniquely respond to extrinsic motivation. So a pay raise might be motivating for you in a very different way than it's motivating for. for me, depending on what your top motivational themes are. So it's still motivating to both of us.

But what I get from that, what it signifies to me is something very different than what it signifies to you. So that's kind of background on the entire framework. These 27 themes break out into, as you describe six families. And just like any biological family, just like you know, you with your brother, AJ, right? Like you have similar, you have, you share DNA, but you're also very different, right? Like you're different in terms of personality in terms of like how you, you live your life, the choices you make, that kind of thing.

So these families hold together because they share some DNA, but the themes themselves are very different in terms of how they play out in our life. So the first family, as you mentioned, is the visionary family. And the visionary family is primarily motivated to make an impact, to envision the future, to imagine something and to bring it into being. So these are themes like achieve potential or experience the ideal or make an impact, right? which, by the way, make an impact is my number one motivator. I want to see the direct impact of the work I'm doing.

If I don't see the direct impact, then not good for me, right? I'm not going to be as engaged. The second family is the Achiever family. And these are people who are driven primarily to move forward, to persevere, to complete challenging objectives. They want to check things off, move things forward, right? That's kind of what they're driven to do. So these themes are overcome, meet the challenge, advance, and bring the completion.

So again, they're all about moving the ball down the field, you know, getting things done. And the third family that you mentioned is the team player family. And the team player family, as you can imagine, are primarily themes that are about working together. People get their motivational energy from being with others, from being part of a group, from helping a group to succeed. So these are people who tend to pay close attention to others. love to serve others. They love to collaborate with others. So the themes in this family are collaborate, make the grade, which is about earning your spot on the team. So think of somebody who, like, they want to be in the military, but they don't just want to be in the military. They want

to be in the special forces, but not just the special forces. They want to be like a Navy SEAL, but not just a Navy SEAL. They want to be SEAL Team 6, right? Like, that's the exact person who's driven by Make the Grade. They're the person who like makes Eagle Scout earlier than everybody else, because they just want to be a part of that elite group. Like, that's who they are kind of thing. Influence behavior is a third theme in that family. And then serve is the fourth theme in that family. So those are the three that you had mentioned.

So you mentioned number one for you is your visionary because you want to make an impact. Prior to taking the assessment, is that what you would have guessed? No. What would you have guessed? I would have probably said that influence behavior would have been my number one, which actually is my number three. I probably would have said influence behavior is my top motivation. Or I would have used some words to describe that motivation, right?

But I would not have said make an impact, but it totally makes sense. So my top three motivations are make an impact, meet the challenge and influence behavior. And my number four motivation is overcome, which is about, working against an enemy. It's about overcoming an obstacle, you know, basically looking for opposition out there to sort of be against, right? Overcome people like arguments, not because they stumble into them, because they often look for them. And so when I look at all of my top motivations, they make complete sense as a unit because I like to see the impact that I'm making with my work, which is why, like I said earlier, I hate the right, but I love the impact of having written.

That's why I endure the difficulty of writing is because I want to see the impact on the other side. My number two is meet the challenge, right? So how do I keep myself writing? How do I make writing engaging for myself? Well, it's not, oh, I'm going to sit down and write a 60,000 word manuscript. The way I keep myself engaged is I say, I'm going to write 500 words before 930 this morning. That's how I meet the challenge. That's how I keep myself engaged with this long arc work because I understand that's part of my

motivation code is meet the challenge. So I have to find ways of challenging. myself. And then influence behavior is my number three, which means I want to change people's minds. I want to see that I'm influencing how they're behaving, how they're thinking, how they're acting. Well, when I'm speaking, that's very easy for me. When I'm on stage in front of a couple thousand people, as you know, like people are nodding. Like right now, you're nodding at me. People listening can't tell them you're nodding. Like that's like narcotics for somebody driven to influence behavior because I'm seeing like what I'm saying. You're like, yeah, I agree with

you, you know. But I don't know about you, but I could be giving a speech in front of 2,000 people 1,99 of them could be laughing and clapping and smiling and having a great time. And there's one person sitting in the front row with their arms crossed with a frown on their face. And I'm going to walk away from that talk thinking, oh, that was a miserable, miserable time. I was such a failure. I can't believe that I bombed like that. And people like, what are you talking about? What do you mean?

I'm like, well, there was a person in the front row with their arms crossed who wasn't, you know, paying attention. That's one of the shadow sides of influence behavior is I forget about the 1,000. and 999 people. And I just want to influence that one person's behavior, right? Make an impact. The shadow side of my make an impact motivation is I could be invited into a meeting where I'm supposed to just sit back and listen and just sort of take it in and maybe come up with a couple of opinions or something. And within three minutes, I'm standing at the whiteboard with the marker in my hand and I'm sketching out the next five years of this business or whatever, right? Because I want to see that I'm having an impact and it's important for me to have an impact on whatever meeting I'm in.

That's sometimes I try to make an impact where it's not welcomed. It's not wanted, right? So again, once we understand where we get our motivational energy, we can see not only the gifts that that brings, but also some of the potential shadow sides that exist and we can begin to discern why we slip into certain unhealthy patterns, why we have certain areas of conflict in our life, or maybe why leadership in certain areas is more difficult than in other areas. Wow. Okay. There's a lot there. I want to hit the second three and then talk about some of the practical application as well as the shadow sides because I think that's important for me because I want to think about how I implement this as well as than people who are watching or listening. So the next three, the learner, which immediately grabbed my attention like, oh, okay, this has got to be me, but I don't know if it is. The optimizer and the key contributor. Can you talk about these things? and some of the highlights as well as the shadow sides. Yeah, so the learners, you can imagine,

are people who are motivated to learn new things, to explore, to gain mastery, to teach. So teaching what they're learning is often an attribute of the themes in this family. I think the next one you mentioned is the optimizer family. Optimizer family is about developing systems, making systems work, making sure things are as efficient as possible.

You know, basically making the trains run on time. That's what they're driven to do, the optimizer family. And then the key contributor family, as it is pretty obvious from the name, they want to highlight their personal accomplishment, often their outstanding accomplishment. They want to be close to where decisions are being made. They want to gain control of things. They want to evoke recognition from people around them. These are the kinds of things that are a part of the themes in the key contributor family. Okay. And do you identify or with your assessment of any of these three or what hits the highest for you? Yeah. So none of the themes in any of these families are really high on my motivation code.

Yeah. So my highest themes, as I mentioned, are make an impact, meet the challenge, influence behavior, and overcome. And those are primarily in the visionary achiever family. Optimizer falls pretty far on my list. Like the themes in that family fall pretty far on my list. I don't care if things are optimized. I am quick and I am messy in my work, right? It's like I leave a wake of half-finished projects behind me because I've discovered something new.

I'm always moving toward the future, right? So I need to have people around me who are really good at getting things right at optimizing things. And again, once we understand our mood, we get our motivational energy from and we begin to identify some of those shadow sides. We can actually supplement our shadow side with people who are driven to do the opposite. So when I've been in organizations and leadership positions, I always had to have somebody who was really good at picking up the mess that I left behind.

Right. So I would be like in a meeting and this and this. We're going to do that. And let's go this way and let's try this. And hey, I want you to have this to me by tomorrow. And I would walk out. And everybody's like, all right. So what do we need to do?

And somebody had to be there to like say, okay, well, here's how we're going to implement. this, here's how we're going to execute, here's the, you know, because I'm just thinking about the future and trying to bring that future into being. But you need a good blend, a good mix of motivational identities of motivation codes on a team in order to ensure effectiveness. So if you have five people on your team, all of whom are driven to bring to completion, that's their primary motivational theme, they're going to get a lot of stuff done. They're going to check boxes. They're going to move things forward because really what they want to do is complete things

and move on. That's where they get their motivational energy is from completing. The problem is they don't care if it's completed the right way. They don't care if it's great. They don't care if you're thinking about everything properly. They just want to get it done and move on. That's where they're getting their energy. Somebody driven to explore is going to be saying, hold on, wait a minute.

Have we asked this question? Have we asked that question? What if we try this? What if we try that? Well, you can imagine there's going to be a lot of conflict on the team between somebody who's driven to bring to completion, somebody who's driven to explore because the explore person is going to be throwing a wrench in the process constantly, right? Like, why are we doing this? Why do we take that direction? Why are we choosing this path?

And to bring to completion person saying, are you kidding me? Why are we asking these questions? Let's get it done and move on. So once we understand where we're getting our motivational energy, we can have more meaningful conversations and approach one another with empathy. I think typically we would just say, well, I don't get along with that person. We just don't see things the same way. Well, what we mean by that is we're getting our motivational energy from different places. Once we understand where we're each getting our motivational energy, we can say, hey,

explore, dude, that's great. Right now is the time we really need to get this done because the client needs it by tomorrow, right? But early in the process, the explore dude can say, hey, bring the completion guy or gal, right? Now is not the time for us to be moving forward. now is the time for us to make sure that we're asking all the right questions, exploring all the possible ideas, really getting creative. And then we're going to move the ball forward. But for now, we need to really just make sure that we're asking all the right questions. So it creates the opportunity for us to have more meaningful conversations about what it is that really drives us

forward. Let's think about the practical application of this. And let's think of the one person who this book is for, perhaps. when we put this into play, because we are who we are in practice, not in theory, so we want to actually do this, what are the natural steps? If you're a senior leader, you have leaders working for you and they have people working for them. And you want to say, I just read this great book called The Motivation Code by Todd Henry and a bunch of really smart PhDs. Not that you're not, Kim Cross wrong, but I read this book. And now we have to go from theory to application to actually doing it. What are the first steps someone should take in order to put this into play?

Once you understand your motivation code, you understand the top three to five themes that really drive deep engagement for you. The first step to ask is, where in my life am I seeing this play out? So where am I seeing those moments of engagement? Maybe that I had never connected the dots on before. I didn't know that's why I was so deeply engaged. But now because I understand what it is that. really drives me. I can begin to connect the dots on those moments in my life when I am engaged,

and I can begin to think about how I can shape my work or at least bring myself to my work in the way that's more consistent with my motivation code. The second thing you can do is ask, what are the things in my life or in my job or in my leadership or my organization that I absolutely despise? What are the things that I put off for weeks and weeks and weeks, even though it would take me five minutes to do if I just did it right now, but instead I put off for weeks and weeks and weeks. Typically we think, well, it's because I don't like that task. But the reality is because that task doesn't naturally activate your core motivation. It doesn't naturally activate your motivation code. So you can learn to bring your motivation

code to your work. I mentioned earlier, I don't like writing, but by saying I'm going to write 500 words before 930 this morning. I activate my meet the challenge motivation. And that instantly creates engagement for me because what happens at 929 when I type words. 500. And by the way, when I get to 500, I'm done. I don't care if I'm mid-sentence. Like, I'm done writing for the day, right? What happens when I get the word 500? I feel great. I feel engaged. I feel like I did something, right? Why? Because meet the challenge is so important to me. Somebody driven to serve can be asking themselves, okay, I haven't felt right now in the midst of this COVID thing because we're working remotely. I haven't really felt engaged with my work. Why is that?

oh, it's because, you know what, I made it a habit of bringing coffee to my coworkers every day because that was just something I love to do. I love to serve them. Or, oh, you know what, I was always the one who would like clean up the conference room because it's just something I enjoyed doing. You know, even though like I'm a senior VP of the company, I just really enjoyed, you know, the act of cleaning up and just really sort of making sure our space was tidy or whatever it is. And I don't feel engaged now because I don't have those opportunities to serve my fellow teammates. And, And so maybe I can be looking for ways to serve people in my life right now and activate that motivation more consistently because that's been dormant since we've been in this remote working thing.

I've not had as many natural opportunities to do that. So you can begin to look for both the ways in which your motivation plays out, but also the ways in which you're frequently disengaged and consider how can I maybe shape the way I bring myself to my work so that I am more engaged while doing those tasks? we wait for tasks to motivate us and that's exactly backwards we need to bring our motivation to what we do there's no perfect job there's no perfect set of tasks we have to train ourselves to bring our motivation to our work into our tasks instead of waiting for our tasks to motivate us okay um this is really good what have you learned since the book has come out anything new anything surprising with some of the

feedback perhaps you're like oh i didn't think of it that way One example for you to maybe give you a second to think about this is, I remember when I published my book, it was like, okay, this is going to take care of first time frontline managers. And I started getting notes back from people who had been in management or leadership roles for 20, 30 years saying I'm implementing something new that I learned from reading your book, which wasn't my, that one person I was writing it for. It was not necessarily them. it was a pleasant surprise. And what have you found since the motivation code has come out? It hasn't been out for long, but since it's come out, that has been a little bit surprising. I think the thing that for me that has been most surprising are the number of people who have already written me and said,

I have language for what I've been experiencing my entire career and never had language for. and always suspected but never really knew how to describe it. And that is very, very gratifying because, you know, I sort of, I think this book was intended to give people a new framework for understanding themselves based on science. I mean, rooted in science, rooted in, you know, decades of research. But I hadn't anticipated that these are things people, sometimes already know about themselves, they just don't know how to put words to it. And so I think that was a little bit surprising to me was the familiarity that this has to people when they,

when they read about themselves and they say, oh, that's totally me. But it gives them a little more specificity about what that means and also how to implement that in their life. Right. So it's one thing to be descriptive about who you are. It's another thing then to prescribe next action based upon that description. And I think people always had the description. They just didn't know what the prescription was on the other side of it. So that's been really gratifying to hear those reports already. Like you said, it's only been out for a week, but to hear those reports from people has been pretty, pretty exciting. Well, it feels like you're creating these aha moments, moments of deepening or developing higher levels of self-awareness, which is one of the most

critical skills, all of us need to work on. And I think that's, that's one of the things I realized while I was preparing and reading your work is that this is going to make me more self-aware. And that is critical, critical if we want to lead, if we want to influence, if we want to have an impact on people, is to understand ourselves better. Right. Self-awareness is the first step toward maturity. As a human being, let alone as a leader, right, but especially as a leader. I believe firmly that your area of biggest insecurity is a place where you have the potential to do the most damage to people around you, especially as a leader. That's where you're going to do the most damage.

Whatever you're hiding or you're protecting, that's the place you're going to do the most damage to your team. So self-awareness helps us discern areas in our life where maybe we're insecure, where we are uncertain, where we don't really have a full grip on who we are or what we're trying to do in the world. the more aware we become of ourselves, of our motives, of why we're doing what we're doing, the less likely it is that those are going to become hindrances to our team, to the people around us, you know, because we're not going to be hiding, we're not going to be protecting,

we're not going to be lashing out when people start poking at that. We can call it something and then deal with it. And naming something is the first step to dealing with it always, always, always. I don't care if you're talking about something good or something bad, something damaging. naming it is the first step to to dealing with it, to solving it. Hey man, do you have time for a couple of questions that are not related to this book for a second?

Yeah, of course. Yeah, always. You spoke at Global Leadership Summit, GLS, correct? Yes. How many people were watching that? 405,000 people around the world. There were, I think, the day of, there were close to 200,000 people watching simultaneously, And then another 200,000 people over the course of a handful of months after that went to summit locations around the world.

So it's funny. I'll get like tweets from Brazil still. Like a couple months ago, I get tweets from Brazil from people who are watching my summit talk in Brazil or whatever. It's a pretty, pretty cool experience. So take me to the side or back of the stage. Your slot is five minutes away. You're getting ready to go on knowing the magnitude of what you're about to do. What's going through your head? Well, I think, you know, those of us who have the incredible privilege of sharing ideas and thoughts and shaping the ideas and thoughts of other people, I think we recognize the weight of that opportunity and that responsibility.

So I was in that moment just reminding myself of how deeply grateful I was to be in that situation because, I mean, it's, you know, I've spoken to some really great groups, and I know that you have as well. I've never done anything that's even close to this order of magnitude of people all at once. I mean, there are 10,000 people in the room, let alone, you know, the hundreds of thousands of people around the world. It's just a very, very different experience. And so I would say probably the biggest thing that came over me was an incredible calm within the five minutes before I went on that was really sourced, I think, and just deep gratitude and an enthusiasm, almost like an anticipation. It wasn't even nervousness. It was an anticipation of getting to go on stage and share what I'd spent the last decade of my life

working on, you know, with people. So it's just, it was such a privilege. I can't even begin to reflect what it meant to be invited to be a part of that. And with so many of my heroes and people who made the thing about people who had shared that stage, you know, over the course of the years. And it was just an incredible opportunity. You killed it, man. It was awesome. One more, Todd, I've been journaling and writing a lot about the craft of interviewing and the prep process and outlining and thinking of angles to take and ways to go.

You've done this on the mic for 15 years. When you think about interviewing other people, and I was lucky enough to go on your show around my book launch time. And I remember it was so, it was, I did like, 40 of them and and yours obviously stood out as as one of if not the best because of your level of curiosity, your depth of questions, how quick in and out you got to each one, much better than than I struggle with this at times. When you think about interviewing as a whole, what's like your overall mindset slash

philosophy slash framework as it comes to interviewing another person on your podcast? my job as an interviewer is to ask the question that's on the mind of the person listening. So if I hear something that I immediately think, oh, you know what, I'll bet the person driving in their car on their way to work, well, previously on their way to work, you know, now on their way of the grocery store or whatever, or the person running around their neighborhood, I'll bet the person listening right now is probably wondering about that thing that the person just said. I'll bet that this is probably the question they have in their mind right now. And I just go there. I just ask that question because your job as an interviewer is to be an advocate for the listener. That's your primary responsibility. I'm curious about a lot of things. But it doesn't matter what I'm curious about. People aren't tuning in to hear what I'm curious about. They're tuning in to satisfy their own curiosity. So my job is to try to. And again, we get back to the thing of like one person, one listener, you know, just imagining yourself with one person sitting across from you, listening to the conversation. and they can't speak and you have to ask questions on their behalf. I've had you on. I've had lots of, I mean,

you know, we've both interviewed some of the greats in our industry and the great business leaders, right? And if the question is, if the average person running around their neighborhood listening to a podcast right now could ask this person a question, what would they want to ask them?

That's the responsibility that we have as interviewers, as hosts. So that's primarily how I try to think. about structuring interviews. It's interesting because I've read about Tyler Cowan's style, for example. He has a podcast called Conversations with Tyler. Have you had him on by chance? I had him on. So I don't know if you heard of him. He says this is a, this is a, this conversation is for me. I hope you like it. It's great if you like it, but it's only for me. I just happen to publish them. And it's it's done done well. That is like polar opposite to what you just said. When

you hear that, what do you think of that? Listen, I think every piece of media has a purpose. And I would argue that probably the reason people listen to that show is because they really like the way he thinks and they resonate with the way he thinks. And so they're getting the same thing out of it that I'm probably giving to people that listen to my show, thinking about them and what they want to hear. It's just that it's going to attract a certain mindset of person who thinks the way this person things. And, you know, again, every, that's why podcasting is so great, because you can find

media that will satisfy any kind of interest or preference that you have in terms of listening. You know, some people love the 90 minute to 120 minute podcast interviews, you know, like Tim Ferriss does and others. My shows are like 20 to 30 minutes and that's it. You know, like, that's all you get. And I do it on purpose because I'm like, I want to do quick in, quick out. I want to give you the highlights. I want you to be able to just kind of get on with your day. But some people love those like long, I mean, the hardcore history episodes that are like hours and hours. They're like an audio book. Every episode is like an audio book, you know. That's great. That's fine. But like, you know, everybody's got a preference and everybody's kind of got a way to to scratch their

itch. I think that we just need to recognize that like Seth Godin, who we've both interviewed, I think even recently we both interviewed them because you know, got a project. coming out here soon. You know, you have to be willing to say it's not for you. Yep. Like you have to be willing to say people, hey, thank you for your feedback. It's not, I didn't make it for you. I made it for the person who wants the kind of thing that I'm doing. Yep. Exactly. I love it, man. Todd, you know I could go all day with you. I really appreciate your time. The book is called The Motivation Code. Discover the hidden forces that drive your best work. It actually looks really beautiful too here for the people watching this one. Highly suggest you pick it up and do the

assessment that goes along with it, especially if you're a leader of teams to do this for yourself, your boss, as well as your colleagues and the people who work on your team. I think that's ideal. Thanks so much for doing this, man. I really appreciate all of like you're just such a giver and so kind. And you have been, for me, God, what? Five, six years now. I remember our first phone calls where you just gave, gave, gave, gave, gave, with getting nothing in return. So I'm just very grateful for your friendship and for you always being willing to help, man. Of course, man. Thanks for having me on. Thanks for the great work that you do. I mean, seriously, it's been so fun to watch. Just talk about envy. Like, I see it all the time. I see you posting like, oh, just interviewed

this like greatest business person of all time. You know, they're like, how in the world are you doing this? But you're doing great work. So thank you. I appreciate it. It means a lot to hear you say that. All right, man. We'll certainly be talking as we both progress as always. Sounds good. All right. To close this one out, I'm going to answer another question from a listener who has emailed me. This comes from Jen Haley. Jen is a director of sales living on the West Coast. And her question. Ryan, you work with so many organizations across all verticals.

Are you seeing any trends within sales organizations that are growing out of stagnation? What traits slash qualities slash habits do you recognize the leaders who are able to pull their teams out of these laws? Great question. Thank you, Jen. A few thoughts. I think you have a choice to make as a leader. You can play offense or you can play defense. You can get aggressive or you can do your best to hang on to what you have and write it out and make it through this. If you look over the course in history and what I've been seeing with leaders and teams throughout the course of the pandemic is that the ones who are performing at very high levels are getting ultra aggressive. This is the time they're making acquisitions. This is the time that they are hiring top tier talent. This is the time when others are a little scared, they're getting aggressive. They're finding really high quality talent that's out there.

Either they got laid off from a convalued. company that was struggling or perhaps a top performer is not happy at their place of work based upon how their leaders have responded in tough times. And so I would urge you, if at all possible, to get aggressive, to think about how can I aggressively invest in my team? And it makes me think of something that happened today, in fact. Months ago, in early March, the leader team at Dell reached out to me asking if I would give a virtual keynote to their senior leadership team, helping them become learning leaders. Obviously, a company like that, I was happy to do so. And Dell invested paid the same rate as if I did it in person. I did it

virtually over Zoom. We had an incredibly engaging session today. And it's interesting when you look at the timing of when Dell reached out to me, and I'm sure they've reached out to many others as well to invest in their leaders. When they reached out to me was an early March. Their lowest point this year in the stock market, Dell, was at 28 bucks a share, and that was on March 18th. As of today, of this recording, they're at 71 bucks a share. They've gotten aggressive. They've heavily invested in their team, and the output shows. They are attracting top talent. They're doing everything they can to be aggressive in the midst of a scary time. And you may say, well, they're a huge company.

They can afford to do that. Maybe, maybe. But I've heard the same from companies not nearly the size of Dell that I've said, I'm going on offense. I'm going to be aggressive, even though there's a lot of uncertainty right now. So think about that for your team. And the other point I would bring up, again, I revert back to my conversation with Scott Belski. when he told me you are the emotional thermostat for your team.

They are watching you. They're seeing how you respond to both good news and bad. They're watching your response to adversity to see what you choose to do. They're mimicking you. They're following you. When we choose to raise our hand to be leaders, that is a massive responsibility, one that we shouldn't take lightly, knowing that others are watching. And it is our duty to bring positive energy to the space, to lift others up, to give them confidence that things are going to go well.

And we follow that up with an amazing work ethic, with a willingness to be there for the people on our team and to do the necessary work to get it done, especially when it's hard. And as Nancy Kane, Harvard Business School teacher, told me, crisis are a great, great. greenhouse for leaders. Now is the time to step up. Now is the time to show what it takes to lead. It's easy to be a leader when times are great. It's easy to be the captain of the team when you're winning every game. You know what's tough is to step up when it's really hard. To step up when you're losing. To step up when times get tough. And that's what I would challenge you to do. And to Jen, to answer your question, that is what I'm seeing. Out of the leader, who are growing out of stagnation.

Thanks again for the question, Jen. Keep sending them to me if you'd like Ryan at learningleader.com. And thank you once again for continuing to spread the word, telling a friend or two to listen to the Learning Leader show. Because you continue to do that, you give me the opportunity to do what I love on a daily basis. And for that, I will forever be grateful. Thank you so much. Talk with you soon.

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