The Talent Forge: Shaping Workforce Behaviors with Jay Johnson

Remote Culture, Real Results with Chris Dyer

• Jay Johnson

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The biggest blocker to remote success isn’t the tool you picked. It’s the clarity you haven’t written down. Jay sits with culture expert Chris Dyer to unpack how a recession forced him to ditch the office, kill the bottlenecks, and build a remote-first system where people make smart decisions without waiting for the boss. The story starts with hard lessons from a coach-style leadership approach and lands on a repeatable playbook any team can use, on-site or distributed.

Chris lays out the mindset shift that changed everything: keep only one control—own the culture—and give away the rest. We dig into practical mechanics that make autonomy real, like cockroach meetings for quick problems, ostrich meetings for learning and re-entry after time off, and monthly company-wide briefings that demystify financials, pipeline, and priorities. He shares why hybrid is hardest, why process beats platform, and how simple rituals—“How are you showing up?” and “How are you leaving?”—create psychological safety that actually protects output.

Expect concrete tips you can test this week: stop answering every question, start asking better ones, let people make safe mistakes, and replace your annual survey with a weekly pulse. You’ll hear how radical transparency aligns effort, reduces microaggressions born from confusion, and sparks the ownership leaders say they want. Whether you’re scaling a startup or retooling an enterprise, this is a field guide for building trust, speed, and profit in a distributed world—without burning people out.

If this conversation gave you a useful idea, follow the show, share it with a leader who needs it, and leave a quick review so more teams can find it.

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, I am excited to discuss remote work and culture with Chris Dyer. Chris is a keynote speaker and an expert in this field. And I think that the insights from this conversation are really going to make an impact on how you think about remote work and the culture of your organization. So welcome to the show, Chris. Thanks so much for having me. Yeah, Chris, let's let's dig in. You are definitely an acclaimed expert in the field of culture, remote work. You've done a lot of uh put a lot of energy into this space. Tell me, what brought you into that area of expertise?

SPEAKER_02:

Um, just by complete accident and screwing it all up.

Jay Johnson:

I love that because I swear all of the best conversations start with, I'm here by accident. So, all right, tell me the story, my friend. Let's hear it.

SPEAKER_02:

I mean, listen, I started a company and it was fine and we were doing fine. And but I was pretty much running it like a sports team, you know, like my experience in life was as an athlete and as a you know, having someone coach me. And then then I was coaching kids, and then next thing I know, I'm running started a business, and I'm kind of managing them like I did my teams, and that kind of works and it kind of doesn't. You know, like you can't make people go run laps or do windsprints because they don't didn't turn them to that report on time. So, like your management style is a bit limited. Um, but like it was fine until it wasn't fine, until we really had big challenges and big things happening, and like I didn't have that next level of leadership and and a team and the process in place to really step up and and and go where we wanted to go to achieve what we wanted to achieve, and to listen. I mean, my goal has always been for my employees, this whatever business I'm running at the time, that this is the best company they're ever gonna work for. Right? That's the goal. That is the North Star. If you ever leave, you this is you this is gonna be one of the biggest regrets of your life that you ever left here. Not because I'm mad at you or are spiteful, but because you're gonna be like, oh my gosh, that was the best place I ever worked. What was I thinking? Like that, that's my goal. And but it was we were just running into walls, and I wasn't ever getting there using that kind of methodology, right? We had to kind of really change.

Jay Johnson:

So I love that. We share that passion. I've actually only had one person leave in the last several years. Um, and they were taken by this company in California, actually, this little company called Nickelodeon. And I was so devastated. No, it they were an amazing employee, but uh ultimately got to follow their passion of writing stories for Nickelodeon, which is pretty cool. So let me let me let me ask this first because I've got to know what was the sport of choice for you?

SPEAKER_02:

Um, so I played and coached water polo swimming, I did uh Olympic pre-Olympic level swimmers for many years. Wow, um, soccer, basketball. I mean, it was like all over, but I'm probably my big thing is I probably spend more time in my life in a pool than anywhere else.

Jay Johnson:

That's that's incredible. So uh I was in a pool too, except mine was frozen. I was a hockey player coming from Michigan. So all right. Well, I wanna I wanna go to something that you said because at some point in time the switch flipped. You you figured out, hey, what got me here is not going to get me there. Uh, in the words of Marshall Goldsmith, like, hey, I've gotten far enough with this coaching concept, but there's a gap. What was what was the what was the genesis of that gap? Well, like what brought your understanding of, hey, I need to do something different.

SPEAKER_02:

Um, it was the recession of 2008, 2009. During that time, um, again, that was when I so here we have this really big problem, and I'm maybe gonna have to lay people off with the business may not survive. And I'm saying, you know, come on, guys, let's figure this out. And they're all just staring at me, wanting me to fix the problem, to tell them what to do. And I'm I'm angry and I'm pissed off that they're not more involved, that they're not, you know, it's like are they not taking this seriously? Do they not get it? Are they apathetic? Are they just stupid? Like, what's the problem? And it didn't take long before I realized that I was the problem. I had created a culture where I was the idea guy, all decisions came through me, I was the bottleneck, and of course they were waiting for me to tell them what to do because that's what I always did. Because you're the coach, because I'm the coach, right? I'm the I'm hey, this is what offense we're running, this is the defense we're running, this is what we're doing, and like we're all gonna do it together, and it's great, but until you know, something happens, and and you need people to be able to make good decisions. And so I had to really figure out that I had to design uh a fantastic culture. We had we had a good culture, we were fine. I mean, people liked working for us, we made money. It wasn't like you know, it wasn't terrible, but it wasn't great to where we could handle the kind of adversity we were going through.

Jay Johnson:

Yeah, and it becomes very difficult when you're the CEO and you're solving all the problems, and the larger you get, the more problems that you're having to solve, and then all of a sudden you're spending all of your time solving other people's problems rather than necessarily doing the things that we need to as a CEO. So when you noticed this and when this became a reality to you, what was your first steps in sort of rethinking and rebuilding some of that culture?

SPEAKER_02:

Well, I was solving for two problems. Um, one, I had to figure out how to save the company. And at the same time, I was sort of going through this process of like, well, if if and when we survive, what is going to change? And so sort of thinking about this all together. And so I was reading every book I could on culture and leadership and talking to really smart people, going to conferences and like, you know, cornering that really smart person I met, or that keynote speaker, or whatever it was, and like trying to be a sponge for what I was what what I was missing and where I could find inspiration. Um so you mentioned Marshall Goldsmith earlier. He wrote the forward for a couple of my books, and like I spent a lot of time on walks with him in San Diego, you know, trying to pick his brain and understand what he was thinking about. And um so that was the beginning, but at the same time, I was also ended up pivoting us to go fully remote. And we went fully remote for no other reason than we were just trying to not go out of business. Um we sent everybody home because the lease just happened to be coming up and we could get rid of all these costs and not have to lay anybody off. And I thought this remote work thing was just gonna be a temporary kind of thing, right? And again, it was completely accidental because I was just like, well, how do we not die? Well, let's get rid of a bunch of costs and we can come back later, only to discover that it was amazing and everyone loved working from home, and we were actually better for it and actually made our culture better because we had to define things and we had to be more explicit about things, and we had to create better processes and have better intentionality about everything we were doing because we weren't just in the office to just, you know, hope people would figure it out or they would watch how somebody else did it, or you know, ask someone in the lunchroom, like, how do you fill out this report? Like we had to be much more intentional, and and all of that just kind of kicked us in the butt, you know, it was I've often heard people say, like, when you go through something really terrible, you know, like this, you may look back on this and say, this is the best thing that could have ever happened to you. And that really was the case for us.

Jay Johnson:

Yeah, necessity can definitely be the mother of innovation and problem solving. So I did pick up, you used, and I I definitely want to dig into the remote work. I want to go a little deeper into something before I do that, but I picked up on the word processes. You've said that maybe twice, maybe even three times. And I think that that's something that's super important to dig in on too. Before we go in that direction, I think every CEO, at least on the forefront of their prefrontal cortex, wants a team that can make decisions, that can do it without their coaching. But I think that there's also a tension. And it seems to me, like any of the CEOs that I've ever worked with, that they want that, but then they also want to maintain some level of control. They don't want to decentralize all the command. When you were making this transition, did you have any of that sort of internal battle of like, hey, I want these people to step up, innovate, solve the problem, move forward, do the thing, but I also want some control over it. What did that look like for you?

SPEAKER_02:

The only control that I needed to keep was that it was my job to create that great culture. So I couldn't outsource that to anybody. It was my job as the CEO to define, um, sort of, you know, uh nourish and and continue to direct that culture how I wanted. And that was the only control I ever wanted ever again.

Jay Johnson:

Okay.

SPEAKER_02:

And and from there, if I'm doing my job there, right? It's it's sort of if we want to use a stupid example, we want to use a captain on a ship. My job is to say we're going this direction, right? And we need to avoid that over there because we know that's dangerous, and we want to avoid this over here, but like this is where we're going. I don't need to be involved in the chef's job, and I don't need to be involved in in the purser's job, and I don't need I don't need to ever be have any control over those people ever again.

Jay Johnson:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

Because my job is to say we're going this way, and we're gonna, and this is how we're going to do it. We're a luxury clues cruise liner, we're a fun cruise liner, we're a like whatever the thing is, and then that's it. Everyone else knows what to do. And I don't need that that that that I guess kind of habit or that desire to want to keep a little bit of control is ego, is self-importance, and it doesn't help you at all.

Jay Johnson:

So, did you find any difficulty in making that transition, or was that a pretty easy sell for you right out of the gate?

SPEAKER_02:

Oh, yeah, it was totally easy. Oh, yeah, like just you know, turn a snow is terrible. It was really hard because I had a bunch of really bad habits. Um, and so I had to start putting in my own little processes. Like one of them was I said for the next year, I will not give the answer to anyone. Like, I'm not going to solve your problem. I will help them think about it. Right? But I'm not gonna tell you the even though they owe the answer, and you're like, hey Chris, where's this thing? Like, no, I have to get them out of the habit of they come to me, they come to me, they come to me for everything.

Jay Johnson:

So I you have no idea how much this lands for me because I was that I was that CEO as well. And then I felt like I was becoming everybody's Google or everybody's AI. And I for me, and and and love to hear how you did it, for me, I actually instituted a three-to-one rule in my company. And this was this is actually something I teach external, is if people came to me and they asked for something, I required, and we had a conversation to set the culture and set the expectations in advance. It wasn't like I just dropped this on them, said, Hey, I want us all to be the problem solvers. Come to me with three ideas, and out of those three ideas, you have to have one recommendation for a forward pathway. And what I ended up finding was 95% of the time, whatever the recommendation was, because it required three ideas going into it, they had thought it out, they'd thought out at least one to two alternatives, and then they had made a selection that was the most logical selection out of this. And that really shifted like how I was experiencing time and again, answering everybody's problem. What did that system process look like for you? Because I know, I know we are not alone, my friend. There are plenty of CEOs out there who are still to this day solving every problem, getting their fingers in every pot, and not being able to let go. What did that look like for you?

SPEAKER_02:

So, what this allowed people to do was to have the freedom to go and have to talk and have to create have other meetings and other collaborations internally to go find the answer. Or if they couldn't find the answer, again, they had to go and make a decision. They had to try, they had to go out on a limb and take a risk and figure that out. Now, if someone would have come into my office and asked me something so ridiculous that it was going to cost the company a million dollars, I would have stopped them. Fortunately, that never happened. But I let people go and make$10,000 mistakes because it was worth that investment. It was worth me letting them screw it up and learn from it because then they were going to have figured out how to problem solve, how to think, how to come up with solutions by going through the experiences that I went through when I started the business and and to see how that goes. Because there's there's there's nothing better than actually screwing it up yourself uh as a teacher. Because you can have when people just tell you what's gonna happen, it doesn't hit the same way.

Jay Johnson:

It doesn't know you're absolutely right.

SPEAKER_02:

And so I created this entire workforce of people who later on leveled up into management leadership positions, some of them into senior management positions, because they had been through so much. And I didn't ever have to not ever, but almost never did I have to go and hire from the outside and overpay for some other person who had been through all of this stuff because my people went through it. So I was investing in them there. Um, so they had to take the risk. I had to sit and watch and let them, I had to be okay with letting them fail sometimes. Um for me, I didn't want them to have to come up with three ideas, I just wanted them to come up with uh idea and then go execute it, go do it and and see what happens.

Jay Johnson:

Uh I love that. Um I'm gonna ask a follow-up to that because I know what's going on in every CEO's brain is but how can how can the business continue? And you know, if if they make this mistake and I lose this client, or if this happens and the factory shuts down for a day, and like how did you navigate? Because I I know that I'm sure that it it it hit the forefront of your risk assessments of if they screw this up, this could be really, really bad. How were you able to navigate that? Or maybe even did you guide? Did you you said you didn't have to stop a multi-million dollar problem, which is awesome. That's great. Um, how are you able to balance that of trusting, creating space, and also mitigating some of the higher level risks? Because I know that that's what's going through any CEO that's listening to this head right now.

SPEAKER_02:

So let me give you the beginning and the end, just so if you're a CEO out there and you're listening, that you understand where I'm going. The beginning is I'm so frustrated, and I know I cannot continue to go this way. My business will not reach the goals. I will never hit the sales revenue and sell my company one day and do all the things that I want to do if I don't make a change. That's my that's my starting point.

Jay Johnson:

So it felt like a do-or-it was a do-or die almost in that regard.

SPEAKER_02:

Right. Okay. And I and I think any CEO who has any is feeling any parallels to what we've been talking about so far, that you're in that position now. Okay. The finish line is when I made the shift, we we went from never getting an award, never getting recognized, to getting tons of press, getting uh 15 years of being a best place to work. And I was my company was named on the Inc. 5000's fastest growing list five times. So you know what the start was and you know what the finish was. Do you really need the middle? Like, do I really need to tell you the other I I'll tell you, I'll tell anyone the other stuff. But that's the proof point. And every CEO I've ever talked to that took this approach, that was the same endpoint for that. Right? You've got to empower people, you have got to put them in the position of this is again the best place we're ever gonna work, and I'm gonna trust you to make these decisions. I'm going to put my full confidence, trust but verify, but like I'm going, I'm not gonna run this as my little ego shop and that I'm the only one who can make a good decision. And I know we're all gonna make good decisions and we're all gonna make bad decisions together, but we're gonna keep working on it and iterating and figuring this out together. And when we do that, people take ownership. I it drives me nuts if people go, Oh, how do you get people to take ownership? Let them own things. Ding dong. Like, seriously, right? You own the whole thing, and then you're just like sending them off to go to this little task and they go, how come they don't care about my business like I do? Because you're you're having a completely different interaction with your business than they do every single day, right?

Jay Johnson:

So, like I don't know if that's giving you enough, but like I No, it it totally is because I the two things, and you know, from the behavioral science that I'm gonna look at, is I see two things that you're saying is number one, don't let your ego get in the way of thinking that you're the only person that can do a job. Because at the end of the day, and this is this is a shock, I think, to some managers. People don't want to suck at their job. Like we spend a lot of energy on our profession, and for any of those that are disengaged, it's usually because somebody has not given ownership, not delegated, not given the gift of opportunity or anything else, and they feel like an automaton. People don't want to feel that way. So give them some space. And then I think the second thing is that I've heard you that I heard you say is the reason that they can probably make a decent decision is because they were afforded the opportunity to make decisions and fail. Yeah. I I mean it for me that's really, really clear. I and and I love the direction of that. So let's shift over because I want to go back to where we were talking. You had shifted completely to you were remote working before remote working was cool, which probably gave you one hell of an advantage when you hit the the COVID era and like, hey, what? This is this makes a lot of sense. We're all gonna just keep doing what we're doing and maybe modify and adapt based on the fact that nobody else knows what the hell they're doing. So let's talk about it. What was that experience like? Because you transitioned even before a lot of these tools like Zoom. And everything else had optimized remote communication, remote work. You were remote working before even something like Slack was at its highest level or whatever. What did that transition look like for you, Chris?

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, I mean, we just had to it was a good time to be in this mindset because suddenly we were experimenting with so many different things. We were experimenting with how we meet. We were experimenting with like Zoom was our first, not Zoom, um uh Skype was our first phone system. Skype actually had a phone, like you could a number and we could dial, and like it was it sucked. We could transfer calls to each other. Um, eventually we ended up on like Ring Central, that was a much better platform, you know. We used free conference callhd.com, like we get on conference calls, but it's like a little free number, you know, and like, but it was horrible, and you know, but we just like figured it out. Um, and the biggest challenge was we never told anybody we were remote because it wasn't cool, like you said. And it was actually could be a considered a negative, and so we had like one office where our mail went. And if a client ever wanted to come visit us, it was a place that we could pretend was our office, um, which only happened like one time. But you know, we had to just keep figuring these things out, and then like hip chat came out. Hip chat was like a Skype competitor, they ended up buying them. Um, so we we as these little tools would show up, we would try and experiment, let a team use them. Did it help us, did it hurt us, it was just an annoyance, and we iterated all this stuff. Um, it really, though, it wasn't the tools that mattered. Um, so people are always the most important thing. You have to figure your your people have to be in line, you have to be again treating them right, setting them up for success, like all that stuff. And then you got to get your processes correct.

SPEAKER_01:

Okay.

SPEAKER_02:

Um then you think about what tools you want to give your people. That could be their computers, that could be, you know, there's tools, and then what's the technology behind it? And that's you know, if you're using Zoom or you're using whatever, but like it was more important that we had great people who had a pro a better process on how to meet, then it mattered what where they like what piece of what tool or what piece of technology they use to actually meet. Like that was just the last piece, and we whatever. And the mistake I see people using is like, oh, we're gonna go go get Teams, and Teams has all these things, and like people will be able to meet and they'll be da da da da, but they don't ever like talk about it, not making sure that their people are communicating well and that they have a good process for that communication, right? Teams is irrelevant.

Jay Johnson:

It was and in a lot of those companies, I would say a lot of the bad behaviors that happened face to face just transitioned to the same bad behaviors that were occurring with whatever technological solution they applied. So I I feel that that that really lands and it's so interesting to me because what you said about like at that time, the need for I lost a$90,000 potential client because we didn't have a brick and mortar. We started, we were fully remote too, all over, displaced across the country, and we started that way. So, like when COVID happened, it was like we got rid of our lease, saved a bunch of money, and it was like, all right, well, back to the back to the original. So I I feel you on that, that it was such a mindset shift. Um, for others, not necessarily for us, is like we most of the people have no idea that we are even fully remote. Now, here's the question, and and I mentioned this before, and you've you've said it a couple of times, processes. What were some of those key processes or even things that we should be thinking about in terms of remote work? And and I'm gonna draw out one that you've already said, the process for communication, like what does meetings look like? What does interaction look like? What does engagement look like? So setting up some kind of expectations process for those types of things. What are some of the other processes that we really need to be considering in this world of remote slash hybrid slash some organizations wanting people only to come back face to face because they're failing in the remote work area? What does that look like?

SPEAKER_02:

So there's what's good for the employee, there's what's good for the leader, and there's what's good for the organization. And the good news is they're all good for each other, but like let's start with what's good for the employee. Giving people very concrete and specifically tailored ways in which we are going to meet in different types of meetings so people know what the rules are, is so vital. It's vital in general, but it is life or death in remote work because we don't have the option, we lose so much from being in the same proximity. We lose that context of body language, we lose that walking by someone in the hall and all that. But good news is actually you actually get more out of being super intentional, being remote, like it actually is better. But if you just go from being in one place to just being remote, then it's a it's a hindrance, right? Like remote, hybrid is the hardest, then remote and then being in person.

Jay Johnson:

I agree with that. 100% in fact, and you probably because as a speaker, if you want me to do a hybrid, it is a higher cost than if you want me to just do it face-to-face, or if you just want me to do an online, and it is it is twice as hard. I I 100% agree with that.

SPEAKER_02:

So if we're talking about what's good for the employee, um, and I give you a very quick example, uh, a very quick story. I went to Germany with my boys and my wife one time. And so, like, we went to Germany, Austria, Czech Republic, and like I had made the mistake of telling them that if we went to a beer garden, they could have a beer. And so, of course, they manufacture themselves into a beer garden every single day. Like they couldn't possibly have anything else but a pretzel on a beer today and uh and a sausage, right? So we love the whole beer garden culture so much that I came home and said, instead of our usual summer party where we invite 40 people and 20 or 25 people show up, let's have a beer garden this year. Let's like recreate the magic and the fun. So I go and invite our friends. I invite four of the same 45 people, but at this time I tell them we're only drinking German beer, we're only eating German food, you've got to dress up German, either Bavarian or show up in German colors. Like kids are allowed during the day. Um, and always an open house, but when the sun goes down, your kids better be the heck out of here. It's now an adult party. Like I gave so many rules I thought no one would ever show up.

Jay Johnson:

45 people plus, didn't they?

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, yeah, not 45, 60 people showed up. People I didn't even invite showed up to the now. Why is that? That's because I gave them all the rules. I told them how to have fun. I removed so much anxiety for them about what they're supposed to do, when they're supposed to show up. Now, there wasn't that 60 all one time. I had people come during the day that had kids. I had people that didn't like kids that showed up at night for that part of the Egermeister part of the evening. Like it was it was such a light bulb moment for me of like, oh my gosh, brilliant. We've got to do this at work. And so what we did is we created all these different meeting types for different focuses, different lengths, and different roles on how it would happen. So the most popular meeting that happened like 40 times a day was called a cockroach meeting. 15 minutes or less. There's a cockroach in your bathroom, it's a small problem. You may not want to be the one who picks it up, but like it's one issue, one problem, really quick. Hey, I need four or five people to come and help me with this one thing. I have a quick problem. You might be showing up to find out what the heck the answer is. You might be showing up to say, you know what? This is what I did last time. You really should talk to Tom and IT. Like, we're getting, we're recreating that. I'm walking along the cubicle farm or I'm in the hallway and I'm asking people, hey, does anyone know how to do this thing? I'm empowering them. They don't have to wait for their team meeting, they don't have to wait for their boss. They can invite anybody they want in the entire company. But it's optional for everyone to attend. No one has to come to your cockroach meeting. If you want to invite me the CEO, you can do that. But if I don't want to go or I don't think I'm the right person, I'm gonna get decline. That's fine. If I invite you as the CEO, you can hit decline too. If it's not a meeting for you or you're busy, you're things to so we create this like meeting that empowered people to get their answers now. Nice and stop them from spending hours picking up the phone and talking to someone one at a time, over and over and over. And spending now, and when you do that, now you're spending 30 minutes jibber-jabbering with somebody, talking about the kids and whatever. Or you're spending three hours on YouTube or on Google researching it yourself when Tom and IT could have told you in two seconds how to fix this problem, right? So we had to like remove this. We find a way to re-engineer the how do I like get people to bump into each other and reconnect and talk.

Jay Johnson:

Collisions.

SPEAKER_02:

Collisions and also remove the complete inefficiency of these single calls that we were noticing were happening all the time.

Jay Johnson:

Yeah, brilliant.

SPEAKER_02:

Um so that was one. The second one was we took that format, all the same thing, except it's called an ostrich meeting. Who knows how can you help me? Like, I don't know how to do a pivot table in Excel. Who can train me? Like, who can help me get my head out of the sand? And that was a nice little small shift of I it's not a problem. I just need someone to help. Like, can you show me? Can you train me? Can you just it's a slight difference in in the purpose? Later, the ostrich meeting was also added on to anyone who was gone for four or more days. That when you returned, you had to have an ostrich meeting with your team, and they would tell you what you missed, they would tell you what was going on, right? So that you didn't have to again start making all these phone calls and trying to figure out what the heck was going on. We also, on that ostrich meeting, had you share your screen, go in, grab all of your emails from when you were gone and delete them. So when you came back to work for whatever reason, four days or more, in box zero, when you came back, your team told you which emails you probably need to go back and look at because it was going to be relevant and which things they'd already taken care of, and you don't need to even worry about it. Okay. Right. And when we did that, burnout crashed, right? Vacation time went up, people happiness scores went up because they didn't come back from vacation or being vacation. Right. Yeah, being sick or taking care of a sick, you know, family member, yeah, and and having a thousand emails and feeling total dread about their work, right?

SPEAKER_01:

That's huge, right?

SPEAKER_02:

Huge. And then we created tiger team meetings and tsunami planning meetings and team meetings and stand-ups and like uh company-wide meeting we had every month, and it was there were distinct rules and and what you do and what you don't do, and who's in charge, and what so you knew it was again like that party, was no guessing about what you were supposed to do in that meeting. It was very, very quick.

Jay Johnson:

I love that. So you've now established what's good for the employee, and you had taken that to that next level of what's good for the leader.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. So the processes that we had to create for leaders was how do they lead better, right, in a remote environment. And one of the things that we came up with was this exercise called bonding. And bonding you can do no more than once a day. I would say my leaders probably did it three times a week, four times a week. But in a team meeting that you might have in a day, you would, and only with people you work with all the time. You don't do this with like Sally and accounting you never talk to, right? Because there's not a psychological safety. Go around the room and you ask everyone, how are you showing up before we start the meeting? Very specific wording. How are you showing up? First time you do this, you're gonna get a bunch of very vanilla answers. You do this for two months, and you're gonna be getting answers like, My wife is going through cancer, you know, like the chemo is really hard on her. I've been exhausted, we've been up all night, she's been really sick, like I'm really struggling this week. I'm having a hard time keeping up with my my load of work. Like you're getting really important answers, and it's to the team. And the team is going, Oh my gosh, I didn't realize it was such a hard week for you. How can I help you? How can I jump in? Let me let me cover that for you. Right? And and but as a leader, I'm giving you a process of how do you know how people are doing? Because when we pop up on the Zoom screen, I can be crying and miserable, and all of a sudden, ding, and I'm totally fine and everything's great, and I do my little thing, and then it turns off. We've saw this on like social media, the moment the thing would go off, people would crash on the floor and they couldn't hold it together anymore, like during COVID, you know.

SPEAKER_01:

Yep.

SPEAKER_02:

And so if they go around and share and they're all doing good, which sometimes happens, then you as the leader get to share how you're showing up. But if they're having a bad time and they're doing terrible, you've got to stop and take care of them as a leader. And nobody gives a flying crap about whether or not you're doing okay if they're struggling. Yeah, you've got to go uphill for that support. So if you're the middle manager, you've got to go to your boss and get that support. But your team can't, that's a moment for you to be vulnerable if they're okay with that.

Jay Johnson:

Yeah. Well, and it seems to me like that that bond, I love that bonding moment. I mean, it's one of our core biological drives, is our drive to bond. You're creating space. And as you said, it's gonna be incremental. I share something small today, oh, didn't go bad. Okay, I can share something small tomorrow, didn't go so bad the next day, the next day, until until psychological safety gradually increases. So I do have a question for you. Was it ever your experience, or did you ever have to manage? You know, there are some managers out there, and and maybe if you're listening and you're a manager and you're like, oh my God, I wouldn't know what to do if somebody came and said they're having all of these issues with their relationship and so on, and I would just freeze and lock up. How did you handle supporting those leaders or managers in maybe demonstrating empathy or creating connection when maybe that wasn't their primary drive, or maybe that wasn't necessarily their they didn't know how to handle when somebody says, Yeah, Chris, I'm getting a divorce and life sucks right now, and all of this big bag of stuck, suck, stuck, stuck, stuck. And Chris is sitting there as the manager going, why did I have to ask this question? How did you navigate some of that tension?

SPEAKER_02:

I mean, again, it was giving them a process. So here's the process of how you check in and figure out if they're okay. So ask them how they show up. At the end, we ask them how they're leaving. So we understand, did they was it a good meeting for them or not? Are they leaving feeling better or worse or whatever? So, you know, because if they came in saying, Hey, I I'm really struggling with my divorce, and when we take a moment to talk about that or support them, then we have our meeting and we say, How are you leaving? And that person says, I'm feeling a lot better. Thanks for listening to me. Like, okay, they're they're okay. Like, yeah, I can't do anything in this moment. But if they're like, I'm leaving the meeting worse off than I want, okay. Well, I need to go and talk to that person.

Jay Johnson:

Right.

SPEAKER_02:

Right. I need to get support. Or maybe I'm the wrong person. Can I get somebody else in the organization? It's an HR. Like, how do I help them figure that out? So again, it was like, do this thing on a regular basis. And if you run into this issue, well, then here's the next thing you can do.

Jay Johnson:

Right. So it's helping them with the playbook, basically, is what it sounds like. Is giving them uh, hey, QB, here's how you throw a pass, and guess what? If they're rushing, hand it off.

SPEAKER_02:

So yeah, they're not gonna get about every time, but like we're just putting that in there. But I what I found when the most important thing was to put that process in to help them get the information. They generally, because they were a leader, they generally had knew that there was their job to do something about something, right? They weren't just gonna be like, Oh, I'm so sorry, you have cancer, and you're going through a divorce, and your dog died. See you tomorrow. Like that we just didn't have those kind of things. There's that report. Yeah, yeah, there's that report. Where's that TPS report? Yeah, like I just didn't have that from people, and then maybe that's because we cared and we could demonstrate we cared. And if you didn't care and you weren't gonna do something, we didn't last in my organization. Just it was uncomfortable to be here with this much kumbay on going on, you know. Like we you just you couldn't be that kind of person.

Jay Johnson:

Culture weeds out those that don't fit within the culture, it does it pretty efficiently. So, all right, so we've we've established some processes for the leaders for helping them create connection and bonding, um, empathy, listening, and etc. And you said for the company, what does that look like?

SPEAKER_02:

For the company, we had to um be far more transparent. So, what was good for the company is we started being radically transparent about our financials, about our sales, about reports, about goals, about everything in the organization. So instead of everything flowing up to the organization or up to the senior level team, it was the senior level uh leaders' jobs once a month to show up and try to tell people everything we could possibly tell them so that they understood why we were making the decisions we were making, they understood what we were up against, what we were trying to do, so that they could align themselves in their work to try to help us and channel their best efforts towards what we were trying to do. Because most of our bad interactions, microaggressions, all of these things happening that drive us nuts at work is really misalignment and miscommunication. And so what's good for the company is to show up and give generously to share and be transparent and then watch everyone go, oh, that's what we're doing. Okay, I can help you with that. Like, oh, I didn't know that was the goal. Like, okay, like you know, and and oh, maybe now I understand why you don't really care about getting that kind of client in the door because that kind of client is not profitable for us, but these kind of clients are like, oh, now I get it. So it was so important, it's important for any organization, but especially in remote work, for us to spend that time every month. We had a 30-minute type meeting. Every senior leader got like five to seven minutes that just to go through here's our goals, here's here's the big things happening, and then we left time for QA for people, anyone in the organization to ask anybody who would answer. It wasn't like, oh, we'll get back to you on that, you know, next month that no one ever does. Like we gave them real deal answers in real time.

Jay Johnson:

So I'm gonna I'm gonna pose the question that I think is probably hitting the brains of those CEOs again, and then I'm gonna pose your response. And then if you want to add anything to it, so that the the thought process transparent, but what if they what if they see that, you know, blah, blah, blah, salary? What if they see this? What if they recognize that sometimes we're struggling or this week we might be low because of cash flow, and next week, you know, we might be higher, and so on and so forth. How can I tell my team that? And I'm gonna say what you said. Earlier. Look at where we started. Look at where we finished. Do I need to tell you the middle? But is there anything you would add to that, Chris? Because I know that that's something that especially I would say, even, and I I'm going to look and say startups, founders, some of those early creators, maybe early on in the business that are maybe not that do have some of those high fluctuations or you know different flows could feel like, well, if I tell people this, they might go, Oh my gosh, what who's this idiot that's running the company? I need to get out of here, rather than saying, hey, let's rally and let's get this up to where it needs to be, which I think is probably what ends up happening when you do demonstrate radical transparency like that. Um, what would you say to those leaders?

SPEAKER_02:

So we we didn't give them every tiny little detail. Like I gave them the copy of the PL, but I gave them the summary.

unknown:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

They knew what we pay spent on payroll, but I didn't know like who made exactly what or what, right? And some companies do do that. We we've never got to that point. But um when I told people how we were doing every month and over the course of the year, they began to understand our seasonal ebbs and flows. They understood why just because we had a good three months, I wasn't gonna go hire 10 more people because we we knew at the end of the year we always had a lower three months. Right. They understood that. When I showed up and said we had a bad three months, we didn't expect, but here's what we're gonna do about it, here's what's happening, and sales showed up and said, Look, our pipeline is really, really good. We expect us to be able to course correct this, and like it actually gave people more confidence. Yeah, because they were like, Okay, you're admitting that we have a challenge, you're telling me what you're gonna do about it, right? You're not hiding behind anything. What gives people the most amount of fear is when they know there's a problem, they know something is happening, but they don't know the information in the middle, and instead of filling it in with, but Chris is a nice guy, he'll figure it out. They they go with in my last company when there was a problem and I didn't know what was happening, we went out of business. I got fired, I got laid off, my best friend got laid off. Like they fill it in with the crap that actually happened before, some negative experience. So, do you want to control the narrative? Do you want to be able to tell them what you're doing? You want to be able to be open and honest, and then watch them help you solve the problem. That's or do you want to sit and have to solve it all by yourself?

Jay Johnson:

Uh, so huge. And I love that. You know, I make a joke, Chris. Uh, in the history of no one, when they got that call, I need you to come down to my office. Did they start celebrating thinking that they're getting a raise? When there's uncertainty, we fill it in with the worst possible scenarios. That's our drive to defend. And what I hear you saying is cutting that off, creating the conditions of we're in this together, creating the conditions of this is what we know, this is where we need to get to, who's got some ideas? And I I just I'm in love with that concept. I can see why you hit that top of you know, best companies to work for. Any other last, because we've talked a little bit about the people, we've talked about the process. Anything else that we should be thinking about in this world of remote work, whether it's hybrid, whether it's fully remote, what are the what are some of your final thoughts, recommendations, things that we can do as managers, leaders, teams, coaches, trainers, whatever that looks like for our audience?

SPEAKER_02:

Uh I one of the big things I think you need to do is get rid of the annual survey and switch that to a one question per week survey and ask your people one question a week to get micro bits of information to be able to make changes over the course, like week, week by week improvements and understanding where they are and what they're focused on and what they need and what's going well and what's not going well, instead of waiting once a year to do some giant thing, right? And that's also a way to get them to think about how do they change things at a micro level as well, and how do they get a little bit better themselves, that the organization is trying to get a little bit better all the time. Um, by doing this, right? We and by giving people the PL and do we like we say 30 our profit margins got better by 35% in one year. If you don't want 35% free money, I guess just turn off this podcast right now and ignore everything I think. I love it. I'll you know, somebody else will, and I'm gonna run circles around you by next year, one of your competitors. So, like that's the kind of things that we're talking about. Um, if anybody would like a little PDF, it's got 25 starter questions and has all my little meeting types in it that I mentioned. You can text 33777 and um on the message just put Chris, my name, and you'll get a little PDF right back under text message. It'll kind of download that and use that and go talk to your team about it, be like I heard this insane person on the podcast and talk about these crazy ideas and see what happens.

Jay Johnson:

I love it. And we'll make sure we put that into the show notes. Thank you for that, Chris. You know, I that that micro survey in real time, that pulse, I think is so important. I I actually, you know, there's a one question survey that Delta does after any of its customer service. And it's just, would you hire the person that you talk to in your company? It's something like that. And it's just like, what a brilliant way to ask a question about your customer experience. And I think if we take that sort of like thought process, we can probably ask the right questions, small ones, throughout the year that's gonna give us a an opportunity to shift behaviors in real time. So I think that's a brilliant, brilliant, brilliant um strategy. And thank you. It was you said 3377.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, 3377. And then that's the number, then Chris for the message.

Jay Johnson:

That's beautiful. And Chris, if our audience, I mean, this has been incredible. If our audience wanted to reach out to you, if they wanted to connect with you, if they wanted to learn more, how would they do so?

SPEAKER_02:

Happy to connect on LinkedIn. You can go to my website, ChrisDyer.com. I'm on TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, X, whatever you're on. I'm I'm there. I'm Chris Dyer, the author, not Chris Dyer. There's a uh a psychedelic artist with dreads that's not me. Um, so if you find him, keep looking. There's another one of us out there. So I love it.

Jay Johnson:

I'm Jay Johnson, the speaker and the podcast host, not Jay Johnson, the ventriloquist or the coach for LSU football.

SPEAKER_01:

There you go.

Jay Johnson:

So uh Chris, thank you so much for spending some time with us on the Talent Forge, for sharing your wisdom. It has definitely been insightful, I think, not just from a, you know, and and these lessons that you're sharing, yeah, they are phenomenal for remote work. But I mean, all of these things I think can be translated into the brick and mortar, into the day to day, into the face to face as well. So thank you for being here and sharing your insight.

SPEAKER_02:

Thanks for having me.

Jay Johnson:

And thank you, audience, for tuning into this episode of the Talent Forge, where together we're shaping workforce behaviors.

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Jay Johnson, CEO and Co-Founder of Behavioral Elements

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