.png)
The Talent Forge: Shaping Workforce Behaviors with Jay Johnson
Welcome to The Talent Forge: Shaping Workforce Behavior with Jay Johnson — the podcast where behavioral science meets the day-to-day challenges of leadership and talent development.
Each week, Jay Johnson, behavioral architect, two-time TEDx speaker, and corporate trainer, brings you bold conversations and tactical insights to help organizations develop better managers, improve communication, and shape workplace behavior that drives results.
Whether you're an emerging leader, a C-suite executive, an operations manager, or an individual seeking growth, this show delivers behavior-based strategies that stick. Jay and experts in the field come together to share a behind-the-scenes look at the tools that build high-performing teams, reduce burnout, and foster cultures of accountability and trust.
From leadership development and management coaching to behavioral intelligence and culture transformation, you'll walk away with actionable tools to improve your people, processes, and performance.
This isn’t theory. This is real-world behavior, transformed. Welcome to the Forge.
The Talent Forge: Shaping Workforce Behaviors with Jay Johnson
Behavior is a Choice and Choices Build Culture: A Conversation with Our Host Jay Johnson
A single question from a colleague—“Can you look at this?”—set off a chain of events that reshaped our host Jay Johnson's career.
In this episode, he walks through the moment misaligned expectations between faculty and international students became visible, how listening and clear onboarding turned conflict into engagement, and why that experience pushed him toward a practical approach to behavior change that goes beyond feel-good ideas.
Jay shares the personal detours that mattered: early math anxiety, a third-grade comment that stuck, and the realization that his brain processes emotion and decisions a bit differently. Debate and theater gave Jay a stage, but research gave him a mission: help people explain what they see, predict what will likely happen, influence with integrity, and manage themselves under pressure.
This story isn’t about perfection or hacks; it’s about building culture through patterns you can actually change. When teams learn to see repeatable loops—meetings that kill debate, feedback that arrives only in a crisis, calendars that glorify burnout—they earn the power to intervene early and ethically. Knowledge becomes action when we pair it with timing, structure, and accountability. If you’re curious about turning awareness into habits that stick, or you want a roadmap you can use tomorrow, you’ll find it here—straight talk, field-tested tools, and a clear path to more trust, better performance, and calmer conflict.
Enjoyed this solo mission? Follow the show, share it with someone who needs a reset, and leave a review.
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
Welcome to this episode of the Talent Forge, where together we are shaping workforce behaviors. My name's Jay Johnson, and I'm the special guest today. In fact, this is a solo mission. So, what I wanted to do is I'm asked a lot, and I find it really interesting to share this whenever I'm having conversations with other people in the talent development world or the speaking world. Jay, how did you get into this space? And uh those the story is pretty consistent with a lot of people that end up finding themselves doing what I do by accident, to be perfectly honest. Uh, when I was a researcher at Wayne State University, I was actually hired right out of uh right out of school, out of my bachelor's, and uh I didn't even finish my bachelor's yet. That's kind of a funny story that comes later, but I had just gotten out of school and essentially was looking for an opportunity for a job. And I was hired by the Industrial and Systems Engineering Department at Wayne State University. So awesome place to work. I really enjoyed it, learned a lot through that experience. But, you know, one of the things that uh, and this is where the story is kind of funny, I was terrified of mathematics. I was so afraid to take the math proficiency exam that I deferred my graduation. Now, this this does go back to a long time ago. I think I was in third grade when a teacher had said, Jay, maybe mathematics isn't your thing. Now, I later on, you know, 40 years later, I understand that I'm actually quite good at mathematics. Uh, when I did end up taking the math exam at Wayne State University, I ended up passing about four levels higher than I was than I needed to. So it's really moderately entertaining just how much I avoided it. But uh the the good news is I took a whole lot of extra communication, interpersonal relationship, and psychology courses uh and ended up graduating with a ton of extra credit hours. Um it wasn't all that bad. And it did help shape me. But, anyways, so I was at Wayne State University and I'm studying these things, and we had a little bit of an issue with some expectations, not for myself, but we were a very, very populated graduate student destination. So we had a lot of students that were coming from overseas and joining into our programs, which is pretty common in the university space. Well, the students on paper, they looked like they were going to be all-stars. And that wasn't really lining up with what the outcomes were once they were here and in the classroom. So I had one of the faculty members actually ask me and say, Jay, you know, you study behavior, you study these organizational things. Would you mind taking a look and maybe seeing if you could figure out some of the reasons that this could be occurring? I said, Yeah, sure. So I did what any uh, you know, fresh communication behavioralist starts to do is I put together some surveys and uh I scheduled some time to speak with faculty, scheduled some time to speak with the students. I even sat in on a class or two to get a better understanding of what the dynamic was. And it was pretty apparent pretty quickly. And uh I think that this is really why I ended up following this pathway, amongst other things. But it was apparent to me very quickly that the expectations from the faculty and the students were completely misaligned. And uh, you know, the international students, a lot of them had come from cultures where the expectations were you just sit in the classroom, you keep your mouth shut, you put your head down, you take notes, and that's how you show up. That's that's how you be a student uh in the classroom. Well, a lot of the American faculty expected engagement, interaction. They wanted uh, you know, questions, they wanted debate, discussion, et cetera. And that just wasn't occurring. So, well, what happens when we have a story that we're telling ourselves? If I'm a faculty and I'm standing up there and that people aren't engaging or asking questions, I might get the impression that maybe they're not interested. Maybe they are uh, you know, maybe they didn't finish the reading assignments, maybe they're distracted, maybe this isn't, you know, maybe they're not wanting uh, you know, to engage because they just, you know, don't like the degree or don't like me or whatever it is. Well, when we think something or when we start to tell ourselves a story, we generally behave towards that story. So now you've got a little bit of animosity that's brewing. Well, the students who think they're doing exactly what they should be doing start to feel some of that sort of vitriol, start to feel some of that, you know, pressure, start to feel you know the faculty, you know, digging into them just a little bit. And they're not really understanding, so they start to generate some animosity. And as we all know, in any kind of conflict situation, behaviors build upon behaviors. So now all of a sudden you've got this uh animosity-based relationship, lack of trust happening. And it's really because they weren't seeing each other's cultural identities and the expectations that were created were essentially creating the conditions for failed system. So I was asked to put together a little bit of an onboarding program. So I did that to help the international students acclimate more effectively to the American classroom, helping them better understand what the expectations were. But I also created another training program to I was able to deliver to the faculty and give to the faculty that helped them better understand what the gap was and how to really bring out the engagement that they were looking for. This was almost the very, very beginning of the train-to-trainer type program. So fast forward, uh, the program's really successful, and we ultimately end up seeing the results of the students starting to achieve the expected outcomes that we had from the very beginning. And I had a faculty member come up to me and tap me on the shoulder and say, Hey, you did a really nice job with this. You're pretty good at it. You should do this for a living. And that was really all it took. That was uh, that was uh, I was like, maybe I will. Now, when I when I first started training and speaking and everything else like that, I had a background from debate. I was uh I was one of the competitive debaters at Wayne State University. Uh, it started off really, really not good and ended up being somewhat good. I'm not gonna say uh the best or anything, but I learned a lot from that experience and I loved speaking, I loved performing. Uh, I also did some acting when I was in high school and with a couple of different theater troops. So I really enjoyed that stage presence. And when I first started, it was, you know, it was a side hustle. It was, I would uh I would go and it was like, do you have food? All right, I'll speak for, you know, I'll speak for dinner and uh maybe a cocktail. I never really anticipated that that would be the direction of my future career. So, you know, fast forward to today, and I've had some of the most amazing experiences and been able to meet and work with some of the most amazing people throughout my journey. And it really all started with that one day of hey, can you look at this for us? I got so much satisfaction out of helping those students who were really frustrated and also helping the faculty navigate what they were looking at. But that behavioral string never left me. And part of the reason that I was studying behavioral and behavior in the first place was to get a better understanding of myself. You know, throughout my uh youth, throughout my college days, there were just decisions. And, you know, every adolescent or every, you know, young person makes decisions, and but I was very reflective on my decisions. I noticed that the way that I thought about things or the way that I saw things was a little bit different. And that's what helped me understand that maybe I don't have the same uh neurotypical way of approaching things like emotions or decision making or anything else. Now, I didn't know what that word was, but I just knew that there was something different. And my study into behavior was really to help me better understand myself. What became, you know, a research is me search approach and really trying to get a better handle on, well, how can I hack into this or what can I do differently, or how can I shift this? You know, that self-improvement approach. When I realized a lot of these things could be behaviorally orchestrated, it really made me wonder is this something that could work for other people? You know, other people that might be struggling with things like conflict or frustration or burnout or anger or any of those other emotions that might pop up that lead to a certain set of behaviors that maybe we regret later, or potentially it's, you know, something that um potentially something that creates a barrier or slows us down in our progress, our journey. And when I first started giving talks about some of the different things, like even managing fear, managing anxiety in public speaking, or being able to maintain control over our reactions and emotions in a debate, in an argumentative context. Giving some of those talks, it really did help me better understand, wow, the way that I'm approaching this is a little bit different. And I think very early on, after attending a number of different trainings, that I really felt like, okay, awesome. Now what? You know, what are we going to do with that? How do I operationalize it? It seems like great ideas that were shared, but I don't know where to go with this. So from a very early on stage in my training and speaking career, I always wanted to be able to offer the audience a tactical roadmap to being able to change and shift a behavior. And that really is where behavioral intelligence started, you know, starting to better understand. Can I explain these behaviors? The behaviors that I see each and every day, what do they mean? Where do they come from? What's the stimulus? Is it culture? Is it environment? Is it emotions? Is it personality? Is it all of the above? And the answer is yes, it's all of the above. But the reality is, is we can identify different patterns of behaviors. And we've all heard the word triggers. We have them. Um certain things trigger us. Like I'll give you a quick example of mine. Send me a text message that just has the letter K. That is a trigger. I'm gonna immediately react to that and not in a in a positive way. But once I can explain, well, what is it about that? Okay, well, maybe it's uh maybe it's I'm feeling disrespected. Maybe it's I'm feeling, maybe the person's just doing this because it's expedient. Maybe they're doing it because they are, you know, pushing you off or blowing you off, whatever that is. Being able to explain the behavior gives us the ability to name it. If we can name it and we understand that behaviors are patternistic, well, then we can start predicting them. So explaining is the first part of behavioral intelligence. Then taking that, understanding the patterns, we can then predict those patterns. If we can predict it, well, then we can intervene. And that is such a powerful uh inspirational aspect to me because if I know how I'm going to react to a trigger, well, what if I could put an intervention in there that would help me control my own behavior? Uh, you know, maybe it's uh maybe it's something simple like pausing for two seconds or taking a deep breath, whatever the tactic is to be able to intervene and keep myself in control. Well, I can't control other people. So if I can predict their patterns, maybe I could influence them. If I know what's meaningful to them or what lays beneath the surface, how they look at things, how they understand things, how they emotionally connect to things, well, that gives me the superpower to be influential. And I can align their motivations alongside of my own. And I do that in a very ethical way, right? We don't want to influence, we don't want to manipulate somebody into something that's not going to be helpful to them. Influence and manipulation, very, very different. And that's one of the things that we definitely teach is how do we maintain influence and build trust and create connections without crossing that line into unethical persuasion or manipulation. But those are the four tenets of behavioral intelligence, explaining existing behaviors, predicting future behaviors, influencing other people's behaviors, and then managing and controlling our own behaviors. One of the things that I have said from the very beginning is behavior's a choice, and how we choose to behave will determine our success and failure. You've probably at some point in time had an emotion, a reaction. Um, somebody may have wronged you in some kind of way, and a thought could have occurred of how you're gonna react or respond to that. And maybe you acted it out. Maybe you didn't, maybe you held back. Ultimately, behavioral intelligence is our ability to take those stimuli, slow it down, and make a decision that we're not gonna regret later. I mean, think of how many different moments in our lives that we regretted saying something and going, oh gosh, that's gonna cost me later. Or maybe we didn't say something and we go, I really wish I would have spoken up in that moment. That's where behavioral intelligence comes into play. We want people to be able to more quickly, more effectively, and more accurately predict behaviors so that way they can put the right intervention into place and in the right time. Part of the way that we do that too is teaching very, very simple behavioral science-based tactics, something as simple as the two-second pause, as I mentioned earlier. You know, if you look at literature, there's such a powerful set of studies that have been done about how people uh say answer standardized questions on a test. And, you know, they take group A and they have group A answer questions and they just say, just give us your gut reaction. And they take group B and they say, okay, we want you to pause for two seconds, reflect on the question, and then give the answer. Well, in those studies, what ends up happening is the groups that take that moment to reflect ultimately end up producing higher level results over and over again. And part of that is that we initially may have some kind of uh visceral or cognitive reaction to something. But if we give ourselves just that moment of time to slow down, adrenaline, cortisol may not be the chemicals that are pushing the action forward. We can actually take a more calculated approach. So, this is really the foundations of what I like to focus on and to help. And like I said, research was me search. This was about helping me navigate some of those different things. And it's still a journey. I mean, there's still always things to learn and grow. It's not like being becoming a behavioral scientist, all of a sudden all the bad behaviors go away. We're all human. And that's part of the beauty of the journey is really getting a better understanding of how I was today and how can I be just a little bit better tomorrow. So when we take that mindset and walk into our training spaces or walk into our organizations and really start helping them better explain and predict the behaviors, they start to see the patterns that ultimately create culture, the patterns of things that maybe have stopped them from achieving their goals in the past, the patterns that have created difficulties in some of their relationships. When they see those, you can't unsee them. That's where the interventions and the behavioral tactics really come into play. So very, very early on in my training career, I knew I didn't want to just be somebody that got up there and inspired people. That's great. I love when somebody's inspired to go out and take action. But if we don't provide an opportunity for them to actually change the habit, change the behavior, change the pattern, then we know a lot of things. But it doesn't mean that we're going to act on them. I mean, think about this. I make this joke all the time when I'm speaking to talent development people. Uh, how many of you, how many of you get 30 minutes of exercise every single day? No miss. How many of you get seven and a half hours of sleep every single night? No miss. How many of you eat whole foods and uh healthy choices every single meal? No miss. How many of you go to your preventative appointments every single time without missing? How many of you do all of the above? And if you say yes to that, I you're super, you're you're a super person. There's, you know, I've yet to find somebody that's like, oh, I do all of those. All right. We try, but just because we know something doesn't mean that we're going to act upon it. Okay. Behavior is not just about knowing. I know that I should not snap at my boss. That doesn't mean that that doesn't happen. Part of that is understanding the patterns and the stimulus. So I wanted to give you just a little bit about how I got started, maybe a little of the origin story of Jay Johnson, the trainer, the speaker, the consultant. Uh, I think it's important. I don't often talk about it when I have guests on. I'm much more focused on understanding their stories and what their insights are. I always find that to be valuable. But I wanted to share it with you, audience, and give you a little bit of background of how did I get here? What's important to me and what's valuable. I think that that is something that each of us can take some time to really understand our own origin story. How did you get to where you're at? I'd love to hear your comments. So if you want to check this out, whether you're checking it out on Apple, Spotify, or YouTube, leave me a comment. Tell me a little bit about your origin story because I'd like to hear it and uh I'll respond. So thank you for joining this episode of the Talent Forge, speaking, uh featuring special guest Jay Johnson and a little bit of the origin story. I'm gonna be doing some of these solo missions as we navigate forward. So, one of the things that a few audience members have said is Jay, we really want to hear a little bit more about your story and some of your perspectives. So I'm gonna be covering a whole host of different workforce behaviors. We'll label these solo missions, or we'll we'll definitely put a label on it so that way if it's something that you want a quick hit and understanding, okay, what are the behaviors related to meeting culture? What are some of the behaviors that we see in burnout, behaviors that we see in motivation, drive, leadership, management, feedback, delegation? We're gonna dig into all of those different things that occur in the workplace. So you can watch for those solo missions as they come. If there's a topic that you would love to learn more about, let us know. I'll be happy to do some research, find out what the science is behind it. It's always something that I love the exploration process. So if that's something that's interesting to you, by all means, give me a shout and uh leave a comment. We'll be happy to explore it and put that into it. And if I can find an amazing guest, I'll be happy to bring them into the space too. So, on behalf of myself and uh the entire talent forge team, I just want to say thank you for tuning in. Thank you for learning a little bit more about us, and we will look forward to shaping workforce behaviors together. Until then, be well.
