The Talent Forge: Shaping the Future of Training and Development with Jay Johnson

Redefining Success Through Transformational Relationships with Steven Falk

• Jay Johnson • Season 1 • Episode 15

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Steven Falk, CEO and founder of Switchback OS, reveals his transformative journey from a career in marriage and family therapy to a leader in talent development within heavy industry. With the backing of his supportive wife, he took a leap of faith, using his therapeutic expertise to bring about positive changes in various professional environments. In this episode, Steven highlights the significance of transformational relationships over transactional ones, showing the power of genuine care for individuals beyond mere business success. As he shares his passion for training and development, the episode is filled with insights that inspire listeners to create memorable moments that leave lasting impressions, transforming both lives and organizations.

Meet the Host
Jay Johnson works with people and organizations to empower teams, grow profits, and elevate leadership. He is a Co-Founder of Behavioral Elements®, a two-time TEDx speaker, and a designated Master Trainer by the Association for Talent Development. With a focus on behavioral intelligence, Jay has delivered transformational workshops to accelerate high-performance teams and cultures in more than 30 countries across four continents. For inquiries, contact jay@behavioralelements.com or connect below!

LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jayjohnsonccg/
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Speaker Website - https://jayjohnsonspeaks.com

Jay Johnson:

Is it Welcome to this episode of the Talent Forge, where we are shaping the future of talent development. Today I am joined by special guest Steven Falk. Steven, welcome to the show.

Steven Falk:

Thanks, Jay, and thanks for getting me on the Talent Forge. Hey, for those of you that want an introduction, Steven Falk, of course, I'm the CEO and founder of Switchback OS and we are a consulting firm that works primarily in heavy industry and wild on fire, but really our message and our methodology is transferable almost anywhere, so there's lots that we can get into, so I'm really looking forward to it.

Jay Johnson:

Yeah, I've been looking forward to this discussion all week. So, Steven, you had a transition right. So in reading your bio and understanding about you, you started in one place and then you have stepped into this talent development world and brought all of those skills with you. Give us a little bit of background on that.

Steven Falk:

Oh sure, and just for your listeners, you want to develop this story for yourselves as well, because this is a story that you want to be able to tell really naturally. So I married well to begin with, and that's what got me finished college, because she did half my homework and got me through graduate school. So I was the most unlikely graduate student to get a master's in marriage and family therapy. However, you know they were taking bets in the staff room how long I'd last and ended up being their valedictorian. I would say that is the power of teamwork as opposed to individual effort. And so we made it. It was amazing, and even my friends like Steven Falk you're gonna be a marriage and family therapist like we didn't see that coming. So so I loved it, I loved it, loved it, loved it.

Steven Falk:

My wife and I ran a private practice. She tested brains, I did. We ran that for 22 years, raised four kids, just did our thing right and just were so involved. But I always knew there was more. So in my story I have this little picture that says I just want to make it a little bit bigger splash. But we talked to each other as a couple and said, hey, no splashing going on here while we, committed to four kids, know like this is not the time, the season to be changing the world. So you know, as it would be, it's, it's. It's one of those interesting things you can study right into the minutiae. So my wife kind of slapped me on the rear end, basically said, steve, I think we're close, it's almost your time to go change the world. And I go, okay, so also, you kind of put your antennas up and go what's's going on? We were in the thick of it. So I was coaching like two hockey teams, like not fancy teams, just like house hockey teams. And we're starting a new season and I'm the only family therapist in the house league. Everyone else are just normal, regular, nice people, right, I'm the weirdo, right. And so we're making up the teams, the eight teams in the house hockey league, and we get this kid that's coming from rep. So, if you're not, that's like the travel team and that's like in Canada. I'm from Canada, vancouver Island, on the West coast. So travel team is like oh, you're definitely going pro, right, that's. And this is 14 year olds.

Steven Falk:

So this 14 year old got cut from the tryouts. He was hyper talented but he had a terrible toxic attitude, and so how many players does it take to ruin one hockey team? Just one. But how many you know middle managers that take to ruin an entire organization? Just one, right? So he was the one. So he got bumped into the house hockey league and they all sat around said steve, your, your team is just filled up with like nephews and nieces and non-skaters. I think you need. You need this guy. Plus you're kind of qualified and certified to hang out with him. So it was this amazing opportunity. He came down. He was like like a raccoon in the corner. He's just spitting and growling and his dad's all mad. So I asked your listeners uh, what kind of time frame do you have to win him over? Like half the season, okay, what do you think?

Jay Johnson:

Real fast, otherwise he ain't going to work on that team and in addition to that, he is going to drive the performance of the whole team down.

Steven Falk:

Yeah. So you talk quite a bit about like behavior, like chat, like how to go into the behavior world. So I literally used all the tricks I could think of, so walk in there, see him. I just plunked myself right down the bench beside him. I take out my space, I throw my tail up in the air as at the alpha you know wolf in the wolf pack, but I'm coming across real friendly. I lean into him and go sucks to be in house, lucky us. No, too bad for you. And I go what's your superpower man? He goes I got a really great shot. I go okay, we'll do it. I will set you up for success. It's going to be awesome.

Steven Falk:

Do you know anybody on this? I know this one guy goes hey, come over here, sit with us. We need to make a plan right now and smooth. This is like 20 seconds in and, of course, like three, four weeks into it. This kid is we call it in team. In switchback he went from out of team as an independent, rebellious, toxic 14 year old to in team and switch back. He went from out of team as an independent, rebellious, toxic working role to in team, loving his team. His dad, meanwhile, is out of team. So he's still wearing the black leather jacket and all the parents are like hanging out on the top row of the stands. And you know, in Canadian hockey culture he's at the far end of the ring standing there with the big pose. You know, like arms like this.

Steven Falk:

You're already not part of this house hockey culture. I'm a rap hockey coach, I'm a travel I mean, I'm a travel parent, not a house hockey parent. So it was fun. Finally, this kid had to tune up his dad and say, hey, dad, I'm happy, Like take a pill, Like seriously, I'm happy I'm having the time of my life. And he was great. We lined him up with a non-skater that had been playing soccer, but he was very talented but didn't know how to skate. And so this kid was fearless and said okay, we've got the booming shot coming from the point, You're willing to screen the goalie and tip everything in with your butt. So you guys are the magic combo.

Steven Falk:

Just see if you can get your skates to go there. And then we had that time of our life. So I tell you the story, because you never know, as a consultant, as a trainer, running your own entrepreneurial business, when sort of the magic is going to happen. You don't know when you're making contact with somebody that's going to all of a sudden become a referral for you or or open the door for you. And I love the saying that says stop for the one. I think Mother Teresa was the one that coined it first, but others have coined it since.

Steven Falk:

Mother Teresa some people asked her said how do you cope with world fame? She goes, I don't even think about it, I just think about the one person that's in front of me. So if I'm on a flight and someone's sitting beside me, that's it. The whole world just becomes the two of us. If I'm in Calcutta, I'm dragging someone out of you know, the slums and I'm washing them and holding their hand as they die one person. If I'm, you know, in the Oval Office, one person. And so I would encourage your listeners, just like, come on. It's like. Of course it's always great to visualize the big grand and everything else, but there is something that people perceive when we what's called stop for the one.

Jay Johnson:

And in this case, you know unpacking that just a little bit. I love how you approach that and I think about this. So any of you trainers, coaches or HR people out there that have that one outlier, really break down what Steven did there. First of all, he stepped in and he called out, more than likely, exactly how he was feeling. This sucks for you. It's great for us, but it sucks for you. I really like how you did that, because number one you're you're seeing them, you're validating how they're feeling and not telling them you know, don't feel bad, don't, don't, don't be upset, we'll, we'll get you taken care of. You didn't do any of that. You said, yep, this sucks. You're probably pissed. More than likely, you feel like you don't belong here. It's great for us, so let's see if we can make something of it.

Jay Johnson:

The second thing I've really, really loved that you did was you found what his superpower was, or you asked what that superpower was meaning what do you value about yourself? And then you jumped all over that and created the conditions for that person to leverage their strengths, bringing in somebody else from the team. You've now established oxytocin flowing through his brain, like I've got a coach that gets it. I got a coach that wants to use this, I've got a friend here. We're going to come up with a plan and we're going to go forward.

Jay Johnson:

I love the sequencing that you put together for this and I think about that from a training perspective. How many times have we had that one person in the audience that doesn't want to be there, that doesn't want to be there, that doesn't want to engage, that doesn't want to participate in the same way, or that one person that just constantly wants to pose a challenge? Really, think about that sequence audience, because it's a powerful one to take somebody and I don't want to mess up the language that you use at Switched On, but essentially in group versus out group and bringing somebody from that outside and team out of team.

Jay Johnson:

I love that. So you transition and you come into the talent development space helping CEOs, helping organizations and really sort of bridging it. And it was funny because as I was reading your bio and it was like, okay, 22 years of experience in marriage and family therapy and a lot of times the organizations that we're training, that we're leading, that we're organizing, you know they, they take on this sort of family dynamic. You know, even if it's a work family or anything else and I know that there's a lot of discussion, well, don't call it a family because it's not family. Or, yes, you know we are a family, so on and so forth. But can you share what are some insights that we should be thinking about that organizations that we're working in developing, how does that relate to, like, family therapy?

Steven Falk:

That's really good. So my bend of family therapy was systems theory. So system theory says that if you can understand the system, you understand the individual. And individuals are often manifesting what's going on in the system. So the rebellious 14-year-old is actually sometimes the healthiest person in the family group. You know dad's an alcoholic, mom's addicted to this, you know brother's you know doing this. And this 14-year-old goes my family, family's screwed up and so it used to be back in the day it was really fun, I enjoyed it.

Steven Falk:

Uh, someone would call me right, find me in the phone book back in those phone book days and go yeah, I wonder if you could, I could book an appointment for my daughter. Uh, she's, she needs a tune-up. I go oh, yeah, no problem, when's a good time for your family to come? She goes oh, hold on a second, no, I just want you to work with my daughter. I say, well, sorry, no sale, who's in your family? I say, well, there's my wife and our two sons. And I say, great. So when's a good time for, like the what's that five of you to come after school? Like what's going to work? They hated it. But what a corporate. What do you call it? Insight. You get to the boardroom if you get all the players in the room at the same time, and so there's a lot of crossover from a systems point of view as to what the dynamics that go on in a multi-generational family to what goes on within an organization. Can I pick up that hockey story just to close the loop there?

Jay Johnson:

Oh, yeah, absolutely.

Steven Falk:

Okay. So here's the story. There is, like, the biggest logging company on Vancouver Island. Uh, this guy with the black jacket he was a regional manager who knew I didn't even know. So they're having a conversation in their boardroom. They have 1,500 employees, they're killing about three to four people a year, which is not great, and they have this one operation that averages 50 grievances a year with 80 employees. So about 12 managers, 80 employees, and it's just rooted in toxic patterns of family dysfunction. So they're banging around ideas in the boardroom. We've got to turn this thing around because this operation is going to be the next one to kill somebody. And they're going well, this university, or maybe maybe Stephen Covey or this, this, like they're throwing all these different ideas around and this guy finally standing there in the you know how some people don't sit at the boardroom standing on the edge of the leaning against the wall Hold on, you know we're throwing around a bunch of BS he goes. I think we should give my kid's hockey coach a try a bunch of bs, he goes.

Jay Johnson:

I think we should give my kids hockey coach a try.

Steven Falk:

Call in coach, steven, that's awesome, so funny. And so this phone, my phone, rang and I said hey, this is, you know, in this case western forest products. And can you, can we have a conversation with you? We want you to work with one of our operations, out of the blue, other than my wife and I had set our intentions and saying, okay, it's our cycle of you know the seasons of life is you're almost ready to go change the world, so get ready. Like we were buckled in, ready to go. We were waiting at the red phone for it to ring. When it rang, I had positioned already, sort of from a neuroscience point of view, I positioned myself to go, I had the go bag ready, and so when they said, are you interested? Hello, thank you, perfect timing.

Steven Falk:

And so, without a program, without a training model, I just said yes and I took my. I know it's gonna sound wimpy, but I took my little Kia Rio to the North end of Vancouver Island and eventually they said you can't even drive it here. You have to give you a drive. You have to drive in my truck because you're not going to have a car. If you get all the way to our logging camps, no problem. Which is a man again, team driving in with, with the supervisors, with the managers, with these different people. I showed a level of vulnerability and need with my little Kia Rio and, as a result, they were able to, you know, escort me into all these hotspots of you know, talking. So I just talked and talked and trained and did everything that I normally do as a family therapist. Within one year, they went from 50 grievances to four with the same people and that turned heads. So I didn't go in to.

Steven Falk:

My goal was not to, you know, deliver some information. My goal was transformation and I think that is also for your listeners is have a little conversation with yourself, you know, because we get nervous and it's kind of high stakes, and high stakes for the other side too. They're on the other end of the phone going, hey, don't mess with my reputation, I'm taking a chance on you as a consultant or as a coach, I don't don't, don't embarrass me and elevate my status. And so we sometimes, as a result, we actually we dial it back rather than dial it up. So we go the safe route rather than the transformational route, and I would really encourage, you know, your listeners. Your careers are only so big. The window is actually shorter than you think. Go with the transformational model. It's better for you, it's better for your clients, it makes the world a better place. Jay, you're thinking. It's better for you, it's better for your, for your clients, makes the world a better place, jay, you're. You're thinking about something.

Jay Johnson:

Oh yeah, cause well, and I love so there's. There's a lot to unpack there. One of the things that I heard you say is you didn't walk into that room with a ready to go PowerPoint. You didn't walk into that room with all of these here's 16 ways that you can communicate more effectively. You walked into that room in an adaptable and agile way to probably listen, to probably bring about. You already have the knowledge. You've had the 22 years of experience of working with and I'm going to say, varying levels of functionality within a family unit. So you're probably not surprised when you walk into an organization and have varying levels of functionality within the organization. So you relied on your own skill, your own facilitation, your own knowledge, stepped into a space and was able to have a transformational conversation and obviously, some learning and some opportunities for them to engage. That's everything that I've been talking about with shaping the future of talent development. Is PowerPoint's not going to get us there? I mean, it's a great tool. You know worksheets slicked, branded worksheets are not always going to get us there. It's really about being able to have your finger on the pulse of what's happening in an organization.

Jay Johnson:

Walk me through maybe what that first you know, you walk in the door, you get driven to the space. And then I want to go back to this red phone thing. But you get driven to this space. You've set up the conditions that now you're in team, you're working together, both. You know when everybody's, when everybody feels like their butts on the line, everybody's going to be extra vigilant in making it work Right. So you're driven to the space. You walk in the door. You've got this. You know this forestry, forestry group. Now I'm imagining this audience being um, like kind of Vancouver. Tough, I don't know, I could be wrong, but like, may or may not, be missing teeth.

Jay Johnson:

Okay, so we're talking about some, like some tough guys that are out there working the forests and so on and so forth. You walk into this space as a family therapist. You had to be sweating at least a little on the inside, but maybe relying on your own. Talk me through this. What does that look like, Steven?

Steven Falk:

I think you start at the foundational level is is uh, I'm gonna I'm gonna use a word that's gonna throw some of your listeners off but do you actually love people? Because if you don't, they'll smell it. Sure, if you love building your consulting business, if you love the amount of money in your bank account if account, if you're an ideas person and you love your ideas, if you love building vector drawings with PowerPoint and you just love those, they will smell that and in this case, they'll run you off the claim. They really will. I honestly thank God for our first client, which was the biggest logging organization on Vancouver Island, because they put up with nothing. They weren't even remotely polite and so it was like I was in the forge, my friends, it really was. They were the talent forge. There was actually a moment where they had a conversation at their boardroom in Vancouver saying, hey, this thing that Steve is building, is it ours or is it his? Because they were so invested that they also felt like some of the intellectual property may have actually been theirs as well. So I think I know it sounds odd, but, man, if you start at the level of love, I'll give you a. I'm going to jump forward just a second.

Steven Falk:

So now I'm in Santa Fe and I'm working with interagency. Wildland fire leaders, like the top leaders in the United States, get together and they do a training to become certified as agency administrators, which those are the top decision maker on complex wildfires. So each one of them comes from a regular day job, maybe has 200, 300 employees under them. So a room of 80 people, 20 coaches and all these experts that come in it for five days and doing this thing and then me switchback. That just drips in our model and and facilitates throughout the five days. So the introduction was like yes, I'm in the back of the room, they go okay.

Steven Falk:

So some of you heard about steven and switch back. A lot of you haven't. Anyways, I'm not even going to try to introduce him. Steve, why don't you introduce yourself? So I'm in the very back of the room, they're all at tables and I've got this little headset thing on so I could just click my little mic on and go okay, here we go, everybody Buckle up, and then I go hey, who here has never hugged a canadian? And this is not a huggy crowd. This is like wildland fire, this is like montana tough. I said, if you you know I'm walking from here to there.

Steven Falk:

This is your opportunity. Don't miss the opportunity. All these people start popping up giving me a hug. I I feel like I'm a. You know how the fighters come into the ring, into the stadium. Oh yeah, I'd be like this is crazy, montana, tough guys with their belt buckles and their boots. They're standing there going. I'm going to give you a hug, but no cuddles, you know. So they lean in.

Steven Falk:

By the time I walked that 100 feet from the back room to the front room, everything had changed Because I've established that foundational piece Is this guy going to love us? And I know it's not everyone's cup of tea, and there's HR and there's issues. I understand that I've got really good boundaries, you know, and I've got a marriage that's lasted for 40 years and thriving, and 11 grandkids. Like I've got a great track record for knowing where the space is. But it's exactly the same thing I did with that 14 year old. I sat down on the bench beside him you know his very first practice with us and actually leaned into him. I made a physical contact with him and it's like think about all these power tools where you plug yourself in. I plugged into him and said I'm with you, man, I'm gonna feel your pain, I'm gonna. I'm gonna share your, I'm gonna share your, your victories. But we're we're team, whether we like it or not. And so I think, as as people that are trying to build loyalty with your, with your, your clients that you're working with, you got to figure out how are you going to make that very foundational connection go back to that, to that initial and you know the origin story. This is crazy.

Steven Falk:

The breakthrough had nothing to do with logging. The breakthrough was that the manager and the union chief were both brand new grandparents, so they're in their mid-50s, and both of their wives had had a little talk with them and said I've put up with a lot of your BS over the last 30 years and I probably should have left you a number of times. I'm just letting you know. If that BS spills into our relationship with our kids and our grandkids, I will leave you. I will choose my relationship with my grandkid over being married to you. So, buddy, figure out how to change how you react to stimulus, because your model sucks. I mean, I'm paraphrasing.

Jay Johnson:

Close enough, I'm sure.

Steven Falk:

How did I get that Intel? That's the main question. If I was buried in 80 slides of PowerPoint and all the lights were turned off and they were just working their way through the three ring binder, there wasn't a hope that I would have found that Intel. So there's something about the methodology of how you work with a crowd. You'll get a different result. You'll get a different outcome. You'll get a different story. When I got those two stories, it was like boom. Now they're motivated. So I said well, forget about your job, forget about the union. You want to retrain your brain for one specific reason so you don't get kicked out of your own home. Otherwise you're selling the boat, you're selling the cabin. You know your life is going to demolish if you don't sort this out. So I found their core motivation and the crazy thing had nothing to do with work. So in our minds, when we are setting ourselves up to make that initial bond with people through, let's say, a foundation of love or like, do you actually like people? The next part is how are you going to demonstrate that you like people?

Steven Falk:

In our company we measure home-cooked meals. I know it sounds crazy, right? That's one of our metrics. So we'll have a team in Santa Fe or New Mexico, or like we're doing a bunch of work in the Appalachian Mountains right now, which is crazy because we fly over 1700 opportunities to go to there. But that's just how life is right. Right, we, we, uh, we work typically a three-day model, strategically, on purpose, partly because of the travel costs and and what we do. On day one we'll say, hey, just kidding around here, but does anybody have like a nice, like mule deer roast sitting in their freezer that says that's a year old, you'd like to cook up for tomorrow? We'd love to join you for dinner. And we start laughing off. And then at the end of the thing we say, oh yeah, that dinner, we're serious, it's funny. And then I'm telling you, when you cross the threshold of a leader or a middle manager or just somebody, when you cross the threshold into their home, I'm telling you there is now no competition.

Jay Johnson:

You only have to think about that of a story that Robert Cialdini talks about in his book Persuasion about an insurance agent that one of the things that they would do is, you know, essentially, while they were having a conversation it was the knock on the door come in and you know. So they were allowed into so many homes. All of these insurance agents had the same tools, the same scripts, the same whatever, but this one outperformed all of the others over and over again, and one of the only things that cialdini saw them do was when they were inside. They would say I left my pen out in a car. If you don't mind, while you work on that form, I'm gonna go at it. Could I let myself in? And so, literally, that was the only thing that was different about this one agent. And actually Dr Cialdini had looked and was like this guy's a simpleton, he forgets stuff in the car, every single one of these things. And then when he asked him, he said you know what's happening there and he goes come on, bob, you should know this.

Jay Johnson:

Who do you just let walk into your home? Somebody that you trust, somebody that you engage with, and it was just activating that part of the brain that connects and trusts, and I don't care how big and how tough you are, everybody loves somebody and everybody needs to feel loved and when they don't, things go horribly awry. So the fact that you're tapping into that so early on obviously generates trust, generates that opportunity for them to feel validated, to feel connected and, let's be honest, we do nice things for people that care for us. We may not necessarily do nice things for people that we don't care for. So you know, I love that, I love that concept of really kind of getting in team. Now, one thing that you mentioned and I want to go back to this, and I know we're short on time here, but you said red telephone and that has stuck with me since you said it. I want to understand what is the red telephone, stephen?

Steven Falk:

Sure. So all of us have. I work just as hard as the next person and I answer emails and we have, you know, marketing campaigns and this and that we try that and this and we do all our things, which is great. But if I actually sit down and analyze the breakthrough moments in my life, they've almost all been red phone. The breakthrough moments in my life, they've almost all been red phone.

Steven Falk:

And I think when we accept that there's a humility that takes place in our lives, it says there's a bigger story than me going on here. I can't actually manipulate just the fact. You know how many clicks does it take to make a sale? That's not actually what's at play here. There's a bigger story, and so my, my wife and I, we have been really dedicated to tuning our minds to the red phone. So it sometimes happens this way back in my, my, my private practice, I had one day that all five clients cancelled and it was unusual, and so we just sat down we said it's a red phone day today, so prepare yourself. We waited and waited 11.15, the phone rang.

Steven Falk:

One of my neighbors, one of my farmer neighbors, had just committed suicide and I was the first to see. And then we actually his farm worker actually lived with us for the next six months because he was so traumatized by that experience. And so we go oh, how is it possible that I became available? So it's much bigger than myself, I think, like some people are like, oh, whatever, like Steve, you're getting all metaphysical or spiritual on me. But truth is, people can sense whether you have a hope, whether you're delivering information or whether you're tapping into something that's maybe bigger. And so, if I just I know we're short on time too, so I'm going to go close to a takeaway here is the story that we tell about our own lives, and so I'll just give two examples.

Steven Falk:

The one story I could tell, which was I've told it a thousand times which is you know, stephen Paul was a gifted kid and and he stores up in elementary school and I don't learn to read and write. So I become the gifted and talented underachiever, and then I have this cross, I have to bear all my life and I have to marry well in order just to be able to hand in essays, and blah, blah, blah, and eventually I train my brain and I become better at reading and writing and now I write for a living. Surprise, surprise. That's a neat story, but I have another story. The story is this when I was two years old, there was a meningitis outbreak in our farming community and a number of kids my age died and I got meningitis and I was paralyzed, stiff as a board. My parents drove me to the hospital, knowing that I was going to die. They had a prayer with God and they said we don't know why you're taking Steve, but we give him to you.

Steven Falk:

I show up at the hospital, the doctor touches me the nuns are hanging around because it's this dying kid. The second he touches me, I'm instantly miraculously healed. That messes up the narrative of PowerPoint and let's just get her done and clicks, and all that All of a sudden. It's like what in the world am I supposed to do with that? And so many ways. That origin story of a two-year-old miraculous healing has to trump dyslexia and people have to be able to they don't have to know the story, but they have to be able to sense it that when they hire you as a consultant, you're they're getting more than just information. They're getting more than just seven ways to increase communication during a conflict. They're getting something, something that's packaged in hope.

Jay Johnson:

You're getting a deeper story. You're getting a deeper story.

Steven Falk:

And then I mean, and then, once you tap into that story yourself and he's going holy moly, this here's another serendipitous moment. Here's another moment because you know what we'll say. Things like, oh, like, how do you sustain your training and how you do all those things. If you create that moment for people in the room, that training lives forever. I'm telling you it, it really does, because the experience yes, I've had 20 second moments with a leader that I carry in my DNA today. So I didn't need a follow-up call, I didn't need this, I didn't need all that whole sequence, I just needed that 20 seconds. And so I'm totally like I'm of both minds.

Steven Falk:

One is absolutely build a sustaining model right, so you can help an organization move forward, but also build into your belief system that one micro conversation with you could change their life. Or a micro conversation they have that you've set up with a question at a round table, that round table talking with each other, could change someone's life. So I'll often actually premise it that way. I'll say, hey, we're going to do a breakout. We've got 25 people in this room. I'm just letting you know three of you probably will be rocked in a way that you'll walk out of this room changed. So no pressure. But everybody, the way you interact with each other in the next 10 minutes is going to change somebody's life from maybe despair to hope to from here to here, from here to here. So let's get to work. I love that. So now there's an expectation that my story has that value, but so does their story have that value?

Jay Johnson:

It's so powerful.

Jay Johnson:

Does their story have that value? It's so powerful and when we think about how we live our life, I will say one of the most impactful trainings that I've ever been to was going to the Amazon and getting a tour from one of the indigenous locals there, teaching me all of the different flora, the fauna, the watchouts, the things to be looking for, the beauty in the space. I mean I can visually walk through that because it was an experience. I could have read all of that in a book, I could have read all of that in the farmer's almanac, for that matter, but it wouldn't have stuck the way that I can literally still smell, hear the birds that were chirping, to, see the red in the water from the tannins that had come off of the leaves. I mean all of that impacted me in a way.

Jay Johnson:

So I really resonate with what you're saying and I think there's so many great takeaways that we've had here is for that audience coming in with love and making sure that you're showing and demonstrating that you're on that team and that you are taking the actions, the behavioral actions, to make in team versus, you know, out of team, and to really kind of take a step back, share your story and watch for those red phone moments. We barely touched, scratched the surface here, stephen. You know, in the interest of, in the interest of my audience, if they want to get ahold of you, how would they reach out to you?

Steven Falk:

So the simplest way is switchbackoscom, so the OS stands for operating system. There's a whole story behind the name switchback as well, but we don't have time. But switchbackoscom, and then they can just contact us and, surprise, surprise, it goes to my inbox.

Jay Johnson:

Nice. Well, thank you, stephen, for your insights, for sharing these stories with us and for coming on here, because I can tell that you love what you do, you love your clients and you love the people that are listening, because you've dropped some incredible insights. So thank you so much for your time and energy today.

Steven Falk:

Yeah, Thank you, Jay. And thank you, you know Talent Forge for the invite.

Jay Johnson:

And thank you, audience, for tuning into this episode of the Talent Forge, where, together, we are shaping the future of training and development.

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Jay Johnson, CEO and Co-Founder of Behavioral Elements

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