The Talent Forge: Shaping Workforce Behaviors with Jay Johnson

Wiring the Brain for Leadership Excellence with Dr. Conor Hogan

• Jay Johnson • Season 1 • Episode 55

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Dr. Conor Hogan takes us on a fascinating journey through the neural pathways of effective leadership in this mind-expanding conversation. Drawing from his unique background—from coaching sports as a teenager to working with special needs children and eventually earning his PhD—Hogan reveals how neuroscience principles can transform your leadership approach.

The discussion begins with Hogan's remarkable early leadership experiences at just 14 years old, directing adults at his family's golf course. These formative moments taught him to read group dynamics, identify key influencers, and communicate effectively across age gaps—skills that translate perfectly to today's complex workplace environments. 

The conversation takes a deeply human turn when discussing authenticity in leadership. Both host and guest share vulnerable personal stories, including Jay's experience caring for his father with dementia. These moments underscore Hogan's key message: vulnerability creates connection rather than weakness.

Connect with Dr. Hogan at XFactorFlow.com and discover how neuroscience can unlock your leadership potential.

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/
Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/jayjohnsonccg/
Speaker Website - https://jayjohnsonspeaks.com

Jay Johnson:

Welcome to this episode of the Talent Forge, where together, we're shaping workforce behaviors. Today, my special guest is Dr Conor Hogan, coming at us from Ireland. Welcome to the show, conor. Thanks for having me Jay. So I'm really excited to get into a conversation with you because our backgrounds are very much aligned. Can you help the audience understand how did you get into this space of neuroscience and coaching and talent development?

Dr. Conor Hogan:

Yeah, well, I mean the last piece first. I think initially I was a sportsman and even when I was very young, probably 10 to 14 years of age, I was training and coaching young players under the age of 10. And so I was quite talented and I used to go down on my Saturday mornings, my one time off during the week, every other evening, was training myself and practicing. And so then by 14, well, even by 12, my family started up a golf course business, believe it or not, and so essentially I brought up in a golf course. So it was all sport, I was playing sport, and by the time I was 14, I was out on the golf course, rangering, answering questions, directing adults, two, three times, four, four times my age, seeing the behavior of everybody. And then by my late teens, unfortunately, I was big and tall, six foot four, very athletic, playing a lot of sport beyond my years. Because when you're young and when you're big and you have a bit of talent, obviously the adult teams come calling. But I had a kind of a problem, but nobody can put their finger on it, no medic or anything. So eventually I went to a specialist and they figured out that my spine was very twisted in an s-shaped manner, in a 3d shape. It's called scoliosis, and it was quite profound, and so my performance decreased so much.

Dr. Conor Hogan:

So I was always into improvement. I was always around sport at that stage, but now I had time off, so physically, I was trying everything, read everything. You go to all these therapies and therapists. You're lying either on the flat of your back, your stomach or whatever. You're having conversations, and a lot of them are interconnected. Like you opened up this particular podcast where we have connections. We have things in common. A lot of the therapists would have trained at several different things, and so it gets your mind wandering and gets your mind thinking about how can I improve and how can I just get out of this hole that I'm in.

Jay Johnson:

Yeah, so, and I'm sorry for that experience, but I would imagine that that probably shaped a lot of where you're at today and, with that being said, I can share a little of my story in in a moment. But how did that shape you? What? What did that ultimately push you towards?

Dr. Conor Hogan:

you know driving towards so at that stage, where my biggest physical problems you know, I was a big, tall guy, I was 17, 18 leaving school. What do you do with your time? And so all that time that you're spending in sport I decided to train as a teacher, and so I went to college and trained as a what we call here primary teacher, but that's also elementary and stateside high school as well, so I trained in both and I ended up then in special needs. Long story short, I'd been everywhere teaching and with special needs. Then a lot of the issues are certainly not straight down the line, they're not out of the book, so you have to be looking up things.

Dr. Conor Hogan:

And of course, back then and to the age that I am now, hint hint the internet was just starting at that time as well, and so information was becoming more free online.

Dr. Conor Hogan:

You're being to surf the web, as you can quite recall I'm sure Jay the term at the time even before social media, and so a lot of the content was very, very good, it was very solid and, of course, courses and things of that became available. So I ended up doing a master's in behavioral change and doing studies, getting involved with universities and eventually a PhD, all the while while I was teaching and trying to the teaching world, sort out the unruly behavioral change that was happening with children that were not allowed or not going into certain mainstream schools. They could have been eight years of age up until like 18 years of age. These are really intelligent children, but children that had issues, be it at home, be it psychologically, neurologically and so on. So you're all the time doing courses with that as well, you're all the time sinking in that line, and then in the evenings I was working with a lot of leaders and coaching in that regard as well.

Jay Johnson:

So you know and I'm going to go back to something that you said, connor, because I I see so much and it's so interesting, and I'm sure that the audience can now figure out exactly why I was really excited to talk to you with the background in sports, uh, I played hockey, I was a mixed martial artist, I moved into competitive debate shortly after that, uh, and then moved into learning about behavior Because, quite frankly, my sports career came to an end not because of scoliosis but because, well, quite frankly, I was not going to make the highest levels of the NHL or anything else and I had to make a really difficult decision to pursue a pathway towards academics, education, et cetera.

Jay Johnson:

Now I got a question for you because this was something I experienced and I guarantee some of our listeners, some of those leaders who might be young, some of those leaders who are coaching people who are two, three, four times their age, some of those leaders who walked into a leadership position and immediately had somebody that was in the company maybe 30 years, that they're now leading what was it like when you were on that golf course and you were leading people who were maybe older, um, who did maybe have more years in service, maybe not as talented. What was that experience like for you?

Dr. Conor Hogan:

God, that's a question I don't think I've been asked, and if ever, in a long time for sure. I was 14 at that stage and, look, all the people that were there were essentially much, much older, at least 20. You could have people coming, you know, very busy weekends for pleasure, maybe book nights or stag nights or things like that as well groups of men. And then you have like golf course tees which were similar I think it was like the tee number one, number eight and number 18, if my memory serves correct, were all very closely aligned and so you had to like shuffle people about from one hole the first four holes. If they were busy, you had to kind of push them towards maybe eight and say, hey, go over there and play a couple of holes. So communication you had to have good communication skills. You had to be able to be in the moment, straight away and see what's going on, read the groups, see how they're getting on when they're closely beside each other. And that's very linked to office culture, of course. If you're sitting beside somebody or near people, if you have different projects and you have to find out who the leader is, if you can find out who the leader is and who the person is that perhaps has paid the money in that regard on the golf course. That's the person that you need to communicate most with.

Dr. Conor Hogan:

The simple things, the soft skills that we often refer to and we often stay away from or just overlook, are so vital, I think, now more than ever with technology, it's so, so vital. If we have people at home behind a computer all day I know you mentioned at the top of this off camera out of the podcast that you've been so busy today doing your own coaching and you're on camera all day. So what are you supposed to do? Are you supposed to read the mind of the leader or is the leader supposed to read the mind of the employee? Or perhaps go to the well-worn skills and sharpen your skills in that regard, the softer skills, because that's what's required now more than ever, and especially if you have employees.

Dr. Conor Hogan:

We're coming out of three years or so after a pandemic and people's lives have been thrown upside down, and I know we're not like blaming the pandemic for everything or anything like that performance at work, but people may have issues at home personally and in their own personal lives.

Dr. Conor Hogan:

They may be lonely at home, things like that.

Dr. Conor Hogan:

So there's a huge variety of things and trying to, as I said, do the opposite of read the mind of people and just communicate sharply and to be able to I think, going back to sports as well to be able to and I think in a very similar sense, if you're in a pressurized game and the scoreboard is very close, there's only a couple of minutes left and you're trying to make a huge decision big crowd, all pressure, end of season this is the thing.

Dr. Conor Hogan:

This is when it really matters. We can all sit back and watch video and analyze things for hours on end, but in that moment you have to be able to make the decision. So the more you do these things and keep these skills up to date, the more you bounce off a coach, the more you can learn, and you have to be open and be coachable to learning. You have to be able to go I was yeah, I shouldn't have said that, or I said things too quickly Again go back to that person's life. You don't know what's going on, so it's just about honing your skills all of the time.

Jay Johnson:

I think there's some great insight there, connor, and thank you for that, because you know a lot of leaders. They may be walking into a position where they have that sort of hey. I'm looking up and these people have more experience and I'm pulling from your conversation or from your comment. One of the things is to find the places in the network where there's influence. You know if it's that leader amongst that stag group, whether that's the leader amongst your team at work or whether that's the leader that's going to have the best ability to essentially influence the mass. Such a great insight. Now I've got to imagine at some point in time you face some level of resistance. You know a 14 year old's coming over telling me what to do. Now, you had size as an advantage. We don't always get to leverage that in the workplace, but if we're thinking about, hey, you're experiencing some resistance, how did you maintain your cool? And then how did you maybe shift when you felt that pushback at any of those times?

Dr. Conor Hogan:

And then how did you maybe shift when you felt that pushback at any of those times? Well, it's about knowing your surroundings, knowing your environment, knowing the rules of the game that you have. So, in that context, obviously I was in my home area. I knew it inside out, physically, I knew the layout of the course, like I previously said, I knew the timing of how quick a person was going to play a hole. I could you begin to size up people and say, well, they're more athletic than the others, or they've a stronger drive or whatever else. So you can estimate.

Dr. Conor Hogan:

So you need to trust your judgment. Again, that comes from experience. But again, go back to study. Go back to you have a new employee, you have a new person. You've got to know them inside out. At the end of the day, if you're trusting them, and even if your office is down the hall and they're in the building, you got to make sure that they're not looking up stuff online that's taking them from their productivity and work. Looking up stuff online, that's taking them from their productivity and work.

Dr. Conor Hogan:

So, by knowing a person and by showing the trust to them in their face, through their face to their face as such, but by getting to know them, showing that you're interested in them, and all of these things are like you can't fake it. You know, you often hear these things like fake confidence and just put it out there, fake it till you make it. No, because people have this innate ability where, ok, the broads ladies listening here are very clever, they're very intuitive, but, as a male, we have to tap into our skills and realize that you come from a mother as well and think of how you were reared, or think of all the little nitty gritty with conversations, the times where you're upset when you're growing up, and it's those little things that if you can treat a person right at the right time, if you can put your arm around them in one situation but also give them a little bit of a whip in other situations and know when to do that, that's what makes great leadership as well.

Jay Johnson:

I love that. So knowing your team, knowing your capabilities, being able to pull the best out of those capabilities in those moments. But I think there's some wisdom, too in having that home court advantage and really being comfortable in the environment. Such a powerful lesson there. So let's transition, because one of the things that you work with directly is being able to help navigate situations where there might be anxiety or frustration or those sort of stress-related things. Listening right now, they're thinking to themselves it's never been more stressful to be a leader or manager in the workplace. You have everything from economic uncertainties and tariffs. You have supply chain challenges. You have issues with workforces that we've been dealing with since COVID. Can you give us an example of what are maybe some of the things that we should be thinking about as leaders, managers or even trainers? What should we be thinking about in terms of stress and anxiety? What can neuroscience really help us with here?

Dr. Conor Hogan:

Yeah, well, the first thing is that, with all those things that are huge, they're huge things that are inconsistent right now and probably will be when this podcast is way off out there in the future as well. So the one thing we can't control is ourselves. We have the ability to do that. So we have to look inside ourselves, look to our own weaknesses. Okay, we don't have to be shouting them from the rooftop, but we have to say look, I'm good at this, I was chosen for this. Like, for example, a client there recently said to me very honestly look, I'm very good with the numbers, I'm very good technologically, but I'm nervous about taking on this new role now because it's, as they put it, the water cooler conversations. So you have to be able to adapt in that regard. And the next thing is, of course, your resources. Your greatest resources of all are your people. We talk about artificial intelligence fantastic, but there's nothing artificial about a person, and if you can get them motivated, we know we can sustain them and keep the links going within teamwork for many years to come. We have things now that we've discovered in the last couple of decades, like neuroplasticity and learning design, and here we're looking at how the brain can rewire itself. So, rather than going over old neural pathways, we're actually, if you're inspired, if you're learning, if you're doing the right type of learning design within your specific company, you're actually starting off brand new, almost buzz in your brain where you can spring forward, and that's a wonderful thing. That means you can, to a certain degree, teach, teach old dogs new tricks. So think of the experienced one. Maybe they're demotivated for whatever reason, but they have such such experience and they keep the culture going. Maybe they have that bit of leadership as well, but they're they're not inspired. So we have to find ways to get in there and realize that the brain can rewire itself. Okay, I'll be at a slower pace, but that's where other things come in, like the role of emotion. If we can check out what's going on with our amygdala, which is a tricky tongue twister at the very best of times, and look at the hippocampus within our brains as well and how that integrates together and how the emotions. Like we know, often for some reason in our human psych, we know how to get at people. We know how to like, bug them, like our partners, like our children, if we want to get them out of bed on a summer's morning or something, when they're not in school and they're sleeping a bit later, we can whip the sheets off them or something like that and just get them out open the window, put on the hairdryer, whatever else. But how can we actually the skills are doing it in a way where the person realizes, yes, it's emotional, but it's inspiring me rather than actually threatening me. And so all those different things together, if we get one moment of emotion, it can make that loyalty back and that trust within your team and for you as a leader. And then the attention limits just to know that when we're doing anything, the attention limits are much less than we realize, like it's only 10 to 20 minutes at most.

Dr. Conor Hogan:

There's a guy called richard bandler. I think everybody should look him up. Wonderful guy, I know. You know him very, very well and he started off neuro-linguistic programming and one of the interesting things he was saying at the start, of course, was that our attention spans are much smaller than we actually think.

Dr. Conor Hogan:

Now. That's back decades ago. That's when, if we look at a movie, even from 30 years ago, 20 years ago, great movies like two, three hour movies, which are much longer than what they are nowadays and there was a very slow start. We had a big long credits coming in at the start and then a very slow burn or maybe 30 minutes. Nowadays it's even less than the 10 to 20 minutes we look at TikTok. So that's like growing so much and it's rewiring. Going back to that earlier point about like growing so much and it's rewiring. Going back to that earlier point about the neuroplasticity, it's rewiring not only what people are learning through the screen, so the education of that, or the entertainment, or the lack of truth, but also the way we learn, which is very important too.

Dr. Conor Hogan:

So, again, going back to communication, how we communicate, the phrases we use have to be so accurate, the words have to be so accurate. And then we have like things like rest and sleep and how we, again, if we have people working from home, just knowing having kind of those water side, those water cooler conversations with them and finding out, eliciting very subtly what is going on there, what time are they going to bed, what time are they getting up, because there's wake sleep cycles going on there at the different times you wake, be it a half hour earlier or half hour late. So all of that is out there. Um, memory, memory is a huge thing as well. We've learned, for example, through the brain, from alzheimer's and the likes of dementia, where a person can be totally gone, they don't even understand their nearest carer. But when it comes to things like music again eliciting the emotion, again, we can consolidate something that should have been learned maybe 20 years ago.

Dr. Conor Hogan:

And there's a thing called latent learning as well, where the aha moment comes in when you're on the job, where very talented people, for example, you put somebody on a course but they just don't get it until they put their activity into place. And that's where we need to have interaction. That's positive. So we have teamwork exercises, we use the activity and that's when a person who really has talent and you go gosh, they have so much. They can glue people together. They can be like my sidekick here, but they just technically don't have the skills yet or they don't really get it, and suddenly that's where the aha moment comes. So people can learn after the fact, things can come all together for them. So knowing all these things like it's a bunch of tricks really, but just being able to adapt them to your particular situation is so important.

Jay Johnson:

That adaptability is a key skill, for sure. And it's interesting, you know, as you were talking about the dementia and Alzheimer's, it's actually something that kind of hits a little close. My dad had suffered from dementia and Alzheimer's before he had passed and it was really interesting because my sister was the primary caretaker and I would take him on a weekend when I was home and I wasn't traveling and speaking, and so on and so forth. I'd have him come stay with me. Well, where I live now is actually it was his cottage, it was his summer home, so it was almost as though it was really interesting. The experiences that my sister would have were very different than some of the experiences that I would. It was almost like I was transporting him back into a younger time and his mobility was different, his cognition was slightly different, his thought processing was a little bit different. So I want to pair this into what you're talking about.

Jay Johnson:

Specifically for some of those leaders, the environment that we're in is going to change. It's going to shift, you know, just like that patient who's going from one place to another. How can we protect ourselves from that sort of uncertainty that we know is going to happen? We know there's going to be future uncertainty? How can we prepare ourselves, either environmentally or setting ourselves up for success, to make sure that we're putting ourselves in the right positions to shift a behavior when it becomes time to shift that behavior?

Dr. Conor Hogan:

when it becomes time to shift our behavior. Or even ideally, if we imagine a stick car and I'll say car because you know I know the accent can be a little bit tricky on that word, but if you can imagine going from first gear, second gear, third gear, fourth gear, fifth gear, and then back into second, third, up and down the highway, going off the side roads and so on, that is work, that is leadership, that is being able to deal with different people. A lot of leaders, unfortunately, are very good at fourth and fifth gear. They can go, they have big thinking, they have all the great things that are needed higher order skills, higher performance but they can't pull back to second or third gear. So when they come off the highway and encounter that windy, twisty road, that's when it becomes difficult. And so the answer of all of that, and to be able to change your behavior in many different ways and to be open to it, is to be present throughout all the studies, throughout East and West of the world, throughout history, throughout east and west of the world, throughout history, and now more so than ever.

Dr. Conor Hogan:

Being present in the moment is so difficult. Now I challenge every listener or every watcher of this and think to yourself are you doing two things at once? Well, if you are, you're not. You're not being fully present. That is the truth of it all. And so being fully present allows us to change those gears up and down and, if we can do, and going back to the analogy of the sports performer, the sports manager, in that moment we know when the clock is ticking. You're taking that last shot in basketball, for example, and the buzzer goes, or you have that time out and you have a couple of seconds left. You have to make that decision at the right time. Decision at the right time. People, your team members, will respect you if you're present. They will respect you if you seem to be doing research, thinking about things, thinking about the things that you already know and you've learned. You've only a couple of seconds to do that. And when you have that presence of mind, then, even if it goes wrong, most people will continue to be on your side and you can learn from that experience.

Dr. Conor Hogan:

Of course, when things go right, wonderful, but it's the person who's lacking the presence. That's where stress pops in the little crevices there. And things from home, or a text you got from home, or a phone call or something you're worried about somebody in your family, that's when it all comes on top of us. It kind of crescendos.

Dr. Conor Hogan:

But if we're present in the perfect way and you mentioned and I'm very sorry for your your loss there with your parent, but I can throw this back on you just to finally finish on this point is that I'm sure it was very, very difficult at that time and at all times for anybody in that regard, when they have a loved one and they're caring for them. But if you can get through the nine to five and then do your evening things, do your things with your family and then be attentive to their needs, then if you can like ideally block off time at the end of the day to have your upset time, to have your emotional time. But unfortunately we're not human beings, we're not wired like that no-transcript and thank you for that.

Jay Johnson:

It was a six year journey with my dad and I remember at the very beginning of it I was a little reluctant or hesitant, to kind of speak it about. You know, to my team. I've got a team of 14 and I didn't say anything and I was just going to carry that weight and not really bring it up. I didn't want to bother people and I'm going to get to a question that comes along with this too but at one point in time my team noticed my behavior was shifting. And it was shifting because I was experiencing stress, I was getting burned out, I was feeling anxiety about not necessarily knowing what was going to happen next or what the next part of the process was. And one of my teammates empathetically and very kindly said Jay, look, I know there's something going on, we know you, we know your behavior. Spill it what's happening. And I did. And it was a pivotal moment for me because when I opened up that emotion, when I opened up that emotion, I got kindness and I got that empathy back and we were able to have some shared moments and it really did shift the way that I showed up at work, the way that I showed up as CEO the way that I showed up probably as a caretaker as well.

Jay Johnson:

Now the question that I have here, connor, and I think that a lot of people have, is we struggle sometimes, and I'm not going to say that it's just males that struggle. I think females struggle in a different way. Sometimes they don't want to struggle by showing emotion because they will be painted and or perceived as weak Males, kind of the same thing. The same thing when we think about emotion and from a leadership perspective, how do we navigate that resistance that we feel internally of saying I don't want to tell people that I'm upset, I don't want to tell people I'm frustrated, I don't want to disclose or be vulnerable, or I'm not allowed to not know something, and we have these sort of like embedded fears in our brain. How do we get past that? How do we navigate that and how do we create balance where we're maybe not sharing too much but we're sharing enough. That's creating connections.

Dr. Conor Hogan:

Yeah, I think part of the answer of that question is in the question, to be honest, and you mentioned the word vulnerability, and I would also kind of align that with think to yourself, approaching every situation, every tricky situation, a meeting or conversation with a person you don't want to have but you have to have, be it a client or some employee. Think to yourself what's the worst thing that can happen here. What's the worst thing that, if I offload this, even in a very subtle manner, that can happen? Well, you might get all teary-eyed, you might actually have a wobbler, but that's when they can see the human side of you too. At the end of the day, we're trying to like the word.

Dr. Conor Hogan:

Authenticity is banded about on social media and if we go back over, I think it's around 2010, where social media started off first, and if we look at even our most favorite particular social media platform, like youtube, or any of those that are around since then facebook they have all augmented in some way. They have all altered or changed human behavior slightly changed throughout that, and one of the things that's been banded about in the last few years has been be authentic, whereas prior to that, people would have been like hiring out like almost news crews to record everything. Now we have the technology, of course, to, and you're doing it right here to almost do it all yourself, which is wonderful. But we have to be authentic. You mentioned burnout there previously as well. You'll burn out if you're not being authentic. So it's not about reading all of the books, the Brian Tracy's and these wonderful books on leadership, and then trying to be Brian Tracy. It's about just if you can take one little thing from that book and then look for another book, maybe that I mentioned, and try and get a little bit from that. But at the end of it, during the core, it must be yourself.

Dr. Conor Hogan:

And again, if you're hiring somebody new, that's when you have to show them your authentic side. You have to be personal from the very start. If you're personal from the very start, that's when you're giving yourself leeway. That if something does go wrong externally you mentioned tariffs, you mentioned all those things externally, economically, that we cannot. We just cannot plan for All the things that have happened the last couple of years.

Dr. Conor Hogan:

Here in Europe, where I am, you've got war, so close to us it's changing everything overnight. You've got the pandemic part of that. God knows what comes next. So there will be external factors, no matter what business or company you're in or sector.

Dr. Conor Hogan:

So by just giving yourself your real self, your true self, say you know, almost like Alcoholics Anonymous, I'm Jay and I'm standing up here and you know what? I don't have it all together at home. I've got to do the groceries because my wife is this or whatever, and you know that might be seen as well. God, I have the same problem, or I won't say it for now, but they'll feel they owe you because of that Right. So we have a culture, the Western culture, where it's go, go, go. Going back to the gears of the car, we need to be able to cruise a little bit, but in order to do the work and know we have the work done beforehand, it's a lot about energising our people, influencing our people in the right way and the best and only way to do that, so that they feel the mask is not slipping here when the pressure and that's such good advice.

Jay Johnson:

You know, when we think about coming in authentically, I've always, I've always kind of had my own personal I'm going to call it a leadership signature right Of where I see, like what my? And it's like hey, I strive to be a courageous, courageous leader who values excellence and learning through my work in behavioral intelligence. How does that, how does that land for you? And I would share that with them because I wanted them to get a sense of who do I try to show up as, as a leader, in my authentic self, every day. And then I asked them a question Connor, I say, do you feel comfortable helping me get back on track if I seem to fall off that wagon?

Jay Johnson:

And you know, the pause there for a moment is often kind of like I don't know. You're the CEO, should I? I want you to feel empowered this way, because this is who I should be, living as my authentic self. And if you see me not doing that, I'm going to be heading to burnout and I need your help. And it's been such an interesting exercise in having that conversation with my team. Should they be communicating? Hey, this is my authentic self, this is who I want to show up, should they be asking for support to say can you help, keep me on track?

Dr. Conor Hogan:

What are your thoughts on that? Yeah, I love the way you kind of phrase that there, just in one sentence, one question. And I think you can just, if you get one thing from this particular recording as a leader, if you can just come up with one phrase that you can learn yourself for yourself, think of your biggest weakness and think about saying, ok, I want to put that out there and say, look, I'm not actually very, very talented with this technology, believe it or not. I'm very good at other things and this is why I'm the CEO, but I'm not really good at this. But I believe you have that skill in you, even if it's not on the resume.

Dr. Conor Hogan:

If it is on the resume, cool Empowerment, like you said.

Dr. Conor Hogan:

I mean all the research that's out there.

Dr. Conor Hogan:

Yes, people want money, they want to be able to get promotions for sure, but people know that promotions don't come every day, so it takes a while.

Dr. Conor Hogan:

But if you can empower people to fill the gap that the CAO feels requires, they then know that that trust is imparted to you for that, say, special skill.

Dr. Conor Hogan:

They link that, that you've linked that with them, and if you can get to the heart of what it is they love or they feel they really want to be at in 10 years time or something like that their quest for life. If you can get to that, well then these guys are going to just know that you're almost. You're talking about behavioural change, you're talking about reading their mind, and if you can do that with several employees, you'll have people that will work outside hours, and that's where a lot of productivity can be done, because they'll be going for a jog or they'll be in the gym or with friends where they're bored, and they're thinking about solving the issue at work, but they're doing it not in a burnout focused way or on the road to burnout, more so in a way that they're focused on delivering at work and being able to lead, because it's been empowered to them to do so.

Jay Johnson:

It's really insightful. I love that. So here's my last question, that I'm really curious what your perspective is, because I know that you're working with executives and I know that you've worked with a bunch of leaders as well. What do you see is what's keeping them up at night? Is there anything specifically that you're seeing in the trends in workforce behavior or in the workforce that's really catching them and saying, hey, you know, connor, this is what I worry about. What are some of those things that are keeping them up at night?

Dr. Conor Hogan:

out. What are some of those things that are keeping them up at night? Well, rather than giving, say, an exhaustive list of this and that it's more, when you get to the nitty gritty of it, it's more about that. What's keeping them up at night is that their mind is racing. Essentially, it's what all of these different things in different industries and so on are doing to them and essentially, their mind is not synced with their body. They're tired, it's 9, 10, whatever time at night, it's their usual time, and suddenly they're staring at the clock three, four, five hours later and then they get up, maybe, then they eat and they're throwing everything off, all their routine, their body, their mind, everything is just out of sync. But we need to be able to go back to, like I said, the present and like things where, if we look at, say, the Eastern therapies of, say, yoga and Tai Chi, all these type of things, the central core to these are to be able to have the mind and body in sync.

Dr. Conor Hogan:

Balance in sync, and the technologies we have nowadays are fantastic in the moment, from the nine to five set, where we can check out an email, send it back while we're also leaning over an employee that needs our help with their spreadsheet or something like that, so we can do two things at once, or at least we think we can. But the mind then is racing all the way through the day and then if there's any little worry or pressure that comes on on top of that, that's where it comes on top of us. So essentially, the mind is out of sync, the brain is out of sync with the body there, and that's where meditation and all these wonderful skills to slow ourselves down. And if we go back to the analogy of the car car with the stick the gear shift where we're going from one to five, that we're actually faster and more sustainable in gear three, if we can realize, ideally to go from five back down to two to four, to three and average of three, and then, yeah, of course, go to five at some stage too. But we then can see what's coming up around the corner.

Dr. Conor Hogan:

We can, other skills are coming along. We can empower people. We can actually delegate further and deeper to people. They feel more empowered. So there's only me. But if you can have 10, you mentioned 14, that's a lot of people who assume leadership, if done correctly.

Jay Johnson:

No, and that's a great insight. You know, when we think about how we keep ourselves present, that is one of the biggest challenges, as you mentioned a couple of times, and I think so rightly so. The number of distractions, the number of different things that can penetrate our daily lives, the things that can draw our attention away from really what matters or what's important the list is infinite and there's an infinite amount of time that could be spent on that list. So if you were to give one last piece of advice how to pull ourselves back, you know when we lose that, when we get distracted as a leader, when I get distracted, when I start to lose focus, what is one great way that I can pull myself back into presence and really kind of realign my perception?

Dr. Conor Hogan:

Well, it's one of the greatest, perhaps philosophical questions of all time. What is it all for? And only you, the individual listener, watcher, viewer, can answer that for themselves. Maybe this particular business or company is just the first of many. Maybe it's just the bread winning one and they're going to funnel money into something else. Maybe it's to get children or young people through college. Well then, if that's the case, you need to spend time with those people too. So you need to pull it back to the balance. Take time out during the day. Our brain, by the way, loves that. This is where ideas come from when I mentioned the jog, the run earlier on.

Dr. Conor Hogan:

When you're actually actively going out there to do something totally different outside the nine to five, you're trying to do other things in your life. That's when solutions come through and you kind of go aha, why didn't I think of that before? Simple things, but that's what happens with stress. Before you know it, it's like the darkness of night just falls at the end of autumn. So you need to be able to have the headlights on the whole time, and to do that is to pull back. I'm not saying go slower, I'm saying pull back. Have a more holistic viewpoint, be more objective, as if you're on the top of the mountain to be able to see everything and to put yourself in the center of it all. And if you do that, believe it or not, everything and everybody around you will reciprocate from that, and then they'll see that presence is greater than you first made out to be.

Jay Johnson:

I love that question what's it all for? I think that's such a powerful way for us to kind of realign and just really kind of take into hey, where am I at, what do I need to focus on, and what's it all for Love that? So this has been such a fascinating conversation and I knew that it would be, dr Con Connor, if our audience wanted to get in touch with you, how would they connect with you?

Dr. Conor Hogan:

Sure, yeah, you can get in touch on X Factor Flow dot com. So you have the X Factor and we'll give you the flow.

Jay Johnson:

I love it. Well, I want to say thank you for taking the time to be here with me I know that it's in the later hours of the evening for you and for making the time to come and share your knowledge and experience with the audience and with me. It's been a great conversation, so thank you. Thank you, jay, and thank you, audience, for tuning into this episode of the Talent Forge where, together, we're shaping the workforce behaviors.

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Jay Johnson, CEO and Co-Founder of Behavioral Elements

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