Neuroscience Tools For Leadership and Change with Dr. Lisa Riegel

Your smartest plan can fail if the brain thinks it’s under threat. That’s why we brought on Dr. Lisa Riegel, a neuroscientist and author of Aspirations To Operations and NeuroWell, to translate brain science into leadership behaviors you can actually use when pressure is high and change is nonstop.

We start with Lisa’s “quarter-life crisis” reset and the moment she realized success on paper can still feel like failure inside. From there we get practical about choice, acceptance, and why “there’s no wrong step” if you stay curious and learn from the dots on your timeline. Then we go deep into the human operating system: how unconscious processing drives most of our behavior, how the amygdala fires fast, and how identity and old associations can hijack the present. Lisa’s “Bob” and “Harold” model makes complex neuroscience clear without watering it down.

If you’re leading through uncertainty, AI disruption, or fast organizational change, we connect the brain to implementation. Lisa shares her 8C commitment framework, including culture and belonging, collective identity, clarity, coherence, cadence, collaboration, coaching, communication, and celebration. We also cover quick vagus nerve and breath practices you can use to improve self-regulation, so you can make better decisions and help your team do the same.

Subscribe for more conversations on workforce behavior, share this with a leader who’s navigating change, and leave a review with your biggest takeaway. What’s one trigger or change you want to handle better this month?

About Lisa: Lisa Riegel started her career in education, driven by one goal: to help people reach their potential. Over time, she realized that fulfillment—whether in a classroom, company, or community—comes from understanding how the brain drives behavior and how systems shape success. That discovery became the foundation for her life’s work. As an educator, researcher, and author, she has spent two decades helping leaders and organizations align brain science with human systems—creating cultures where people feel connected, capable, and in control of their growth. She delivers keynotes, workshops, and individual leadership coaching that helps people connect the science of behavior, motivation, and fulfillment to their organization's strategic goals. Her counsel and support improves happiness, health, and success for individuals and organizations as a whole.

Connect with Lisa: https://lisariegel.com/

Interested in being a guest on The Talent Forge? Contact our producer, Madison Bennett, via email: madison@coeuscreativegroup.com.

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

Transcript

Welcome And Guest Introduction

Jay Johnson 0:39

Welcome to this episode of the Talent Forge, where together we're shaping workforce behavior. I am excited to talk to a fellow neuroscientist today who is studying the deep applications of how neuroscience can help us, author of two books, Aspirations to Operations as well as NeuroWell. Welcome to the show, Dr. Lisa Riegel. Thanks for joining us.

Dr. Lisa Riegel 1:01

Thank you so much.

From Sales To Brain Science

Jay Johnson 1:02

Thanks for having me. So, uh, Lisa, tell me, how did you get into this space? And uh, you know, I I looked at the sort of history, the trajectory. It may not be as common as maybe some others. I would love to get to know a little bit. How did you get into this space and what brought you to the study of neuroscience?

The Quarter Life Reset

Dr. Lisa Riegel 1:21

Yeah, my career and life path has not been a straight line. So I started, um, I graduated from college with a degree in English literature. So I ended up in sales because that was what you did with that degree. And um, I sold technology. So I sold what's now OnStar, but before Westinghouse bought it, I sold it when it was a startup. Um, and then I, when they bought it, they furloughed everybody. So I got to learn that word when I was like 24. And then I ended up um bouncing around a little bit and ended up selling automatic greasing systems for semis and off-road construction equipment, which was really not at all in my in my wheelhouse. I grew up in suburbia and had never even seen a truck. So um, so I was doing that for a while and I kind of woke up one day and I was like, I sort of hate this. Like, I kind of hate everything that I'm doing, and I don't care if anybody buys this stuff. And, you know, by all metrics, I was super successful, but I was miserable. And then I was engaged and I was like, I don't like him either. Like, what am I doing? Everything is wrong. So I quit everything and I put a backpack on and went to Florida and walked around for a while. And after a couple of weeks, I was like, you know what? I wanna, I wanna teach. I want to help people be their best selves and I I want to help people find happy. And so that was really the beginning of kind of planting this seed in my head that there's there's a choice, and you can choose to be happy and healthy and successful. And then um, so I became a teacher. I was a teacher for nine years. I had a really strong leader followed by several really bad leaders. Um, I then became a leader myself and was on an administrative team at a career center for a couple of years and had unfortunately a really, really poor leader above me there again. So I started really, I was in really interested in the human side of the system because all of my training was all for like how to build curriculum or how to teach a lesson or how to manage a classroom, but it wasn't about people. So when I went to Ohio State, I had the opportunity to do um a fellowship there for my doctorate. And so I was doing research and doing classes, and I was really interested in leadership, but not the structural side of it, but really the human system. So I started studying a lot of the psychology stuff, a lot of, you know, social psychology and motivation and all of that kind of literature around human behavior. And then I started thinking, well, you know, real change happens in the brain. So what's actually going on in the brain as opposed to just how we're thinking within the brain? And so then I started really getting into the neurology and really into the neuroscience of behavior and thinking. And once it, once I got into that, it was like this light bulb went off, like, wow, you can explain so much. And I went backwards then and looked at all the leadership and and where was good leadership. And it was at the intersection of brain science and leadership behaviors, and so I started thinking, and I've been doing consulting in um businesses for 15 years. So I help people, I'm kind of the implementation specialist. So anybody can help you kind of put your strategy in place, but there's a real art to engaging the system, right? So I was really good at that. And so I was helping businesses do that in implementation science. And I was like, man, if I layered brain science in there, we could really amplify the impact of what I'm doing. So I created what I call an 8C commitment framework, and it goes through all of the pieces and parts that you have to attend to when you're thinking of the human system, and then it's built off a foundation of brain science.

Jay Johnson 4:54

That's pretty amazing. I'm gonna I'm gonna go back to something you said because I think it's super fascinating. You had a hard reset button hit.

Dr. Lisa Riegel 5:04

I call it my quarter life crisis.

Jay Johnson 5:06

Yeah, you know, and and uh it's fascinating to me because I think that there's a lot of people out there that probably want to hit the button, hit a reset button, whether it's a relationship reset, whether it's a work reset, or hey, did what do I want to be when I grow up type reset. What was that experience like? Like what went through your brain as you were navigating that process? Because that's a lot of change in a very short amount of time. Help us understand that.

Dr. Lisa Riegel 5:33

Well, and it was um, it was very terrifying because I was a people pleaser. And, you know, I I always got good grades, I always made my parents proud, I always did what I was supposed to do. Like if I came home and had an A minus, it was like, what happened? What's wrong? Like it was I I came from a very high pressure family. And so the idea that I was successful by all the external metrics and miserable, I had to grapple with that first, with the idea of like, okay, I'm a success on paper, but a failure personally in my heart. So how do I, you know, write the ship here? And then um I finally just got to a point where I was like, you know what? I get to choose. And I was super depressed at the time, just like I would look around and I was like, how could anybody be happy? How could people be happy doing this or doing that? And one of the things my dad said to me, he was an infertility specialist. He grew up in West Virginia and went to medical school, and then we settled in um, we were in Akron, Ohio. But he said to me, You need to knock this off. He said, I grew up in West Virginia and he his his dad worked in a steel mill. He said, People came to work, they did their job, they went home, they sat in their chair, they played softball, and they were happy. And he said, You would not be happy in that. That's not how your head works. And he said, But they were, and you need to stop taking it away from them. And it was the first time in my life that I had this epiphany where I was like, hold, hold on, I get to choose. Like, I didn't think I got to choose. I thought I was on the same road as everybody else, and we were all going to the same ribbon at the finish line. I didn't realize I got to pick what road I wanted. And so that epiphany kind of gave me the courage to say, you know what? I'm on the wrong road. And so I need to literally like get off the highway altogether for a minute and figure out where I want to go. And it was wonderful. Once I once I accepted that, then it became like exciting and liberating, not scary.

Choice Acceptance And No Wrong Steps

Jay Johnson 7:28

I I think that acceptance piece that you're talking about, like the acceptance and acknowledgement of okay, I have to change. I was actually coaching an executive recently, and they were like, I don't know if I want to leave my position and I don't know if I want to stay. And I'm like, all right, well, here's the thing that you have to do. Make a choice and accept it. If you want to leave, that's gonna determine your next sets of behaviors, whether you're going to uh, you know, you're gonna be pushing this or you're gonna be not pushing this or anything else. If you decide to stay, that's gonna determine your next sets of behaviors. Right now, you're living in cognitive dissonance of one foot in, one foot out. That's not good for you, that's not good for the employer. It's make a choice in acceptance. And yeah, that can be really difficult for people. How how do you coach your clients or as you're talking to somebody that maybe is at that sort of fork in the road where they see the change or they feel something's off, maybe it's misaligned, and they're just they're they're not quite there to make that choice. How do you help them navigate that?

Dr. Lisa Riegel 8:32

Well, one thing I always tell people, first of all, that you have the freedom, you get to choose, right? So if you're unhappy where you are, doing what you're currently doing is your choice to do that. And it's a it's a valid choice. You might say the the fear of doing something different is worse than you know, the the creature I already know kind of thing. Um, but I think the other thing that I counsel people on is that there's almost always never a wrong step. Everything we do becomes a little dot in our timeline, right? And like my timelines are all over the place. But when I look back, all those dots connect.

Jay Johnson 9:09

Like there's some kind of line there, yeah. Yeah.

Dr. Lisa Riegel 9:12

And I think so. I think if you if you wander through life with curiosity and an open mind and an open heart to learn from your experiences, there's no such thing as a wrong decision. Like when I was floating around in some of the jobs, one of my jobs was with a um human resource company, and we would place temporary help. So I got to go to a lot of factories and see how things were made, which was super cool because I'd never seen the inside of a factory. Well, then, wouldn't you know? Flash forward, just last year, I did a huge project with Toyota, and it was like a project on how to get more girls and people of color engaged in their advanced manufacturing program. And I worked with uh, I was doing a thing for the state of Ohio for a couple of years. It was an economic education summit, and one of the sectors was manufacturing. And even though I had like this much, just the tiny like one inch of experience, I had enough of a lingo that it gave me some street credibility with the people that I was working with in these manufacturing organizations. And so, and then, you know, you think about like in my career in education, we shifted really to workforce development. Where I had this whole experience in a human resource company and going into multiple places and then, you know, running running a state conference and doing these things. So it's like at the time I was in grad school and I was basically taking whatever I could get and just I I just say yes because I needed the the money. And you know, I was like, okay, this is good experience. And and now when I look back, like almost every single thing I said yes to has become part of that fabric of what makes me an expert and what I do. So I think when people are scared to make that leap, it's like you can't, there is no wrong road. It's just a matter of how long do you stay on that road? But either way, it becomes a dot in your past. And when you turn your head and look in your past, you're gonna see it all connect.

Jay Johnson 11:03

Yeah, I I love that too. And and a long enough timeline when we zoom out, we do see how each of those things influence not only our moment and time, but how our brain's structured and the experiences that we have and and and all of that. It's so interesting. You know, as you were talking, I was thinking about like when I was in grad school and I started consulting. Uh, it was yes to everything. It was like, hey, how much does this cost? How much you got? Just tell me how much you got and we're gonna go with it.

Dr. Lisa Riegel 11:33

That's right. I will do it for whatever I need. I need gas money. That's what I think.

Bob Harold And Stress Hijacks

Jay Johnson 11:37

That's right. Yeah. Do you have a case of beer, a dinner, and maybe a little gas money? And I got you you brought up choice a few different times. We have a motto, one of the ones that I use, behavior's a choice, and how we choose to behave will determine our success and failure. So I love that you keep bringing choice into the play. I'm going to share one thing here real quick. You know, my partner, she says, and I love this quote. She says, You can look to the left and you can see the storms, the clouds, the rain, and all the trouble. You can look to the right and you can see the sun, you can see the rainbow, and you can see all the good things. But no matter which way you choose to look, you're standing in the same spot. And I think about that in terms of identity, you know, something that we kind of brought up at the beginning when we were just chatting, but choice and identity, because I think identity plays such a powerful impact. And some people might identify as an optimist, some, you know, the Simon Cynics of the world. There are others that maybe don't have such a positive outlook. Can you help us understand what choice look like when we are, you know, we are the experiences, the things we say yes to, the things we say no to. All of those choices have led to this very moment, whether the listeners are choosing to listen to this entire podcast, or whether they're driving and listening, or whether they're sitting in bed and listening, all of it is a choice. How can we make better choices, Lisa?

Dr. Lisa Riegel 13:06

Yeah. Um so glad you asked that because this is where the brain science intersects with this is, you know, you mentioned earlier that we choose how we behave. We do if and only if the part of our brain that makes choices for us, where we actually have control over those choices, is operating well.

Jay Johnson 13:25

And not tracked by the limbic system or the nervous system. And that yes.

Dr. Lisa Riegel 13:30

Yes. And so one of the things that I talk a lot about is that the the road to happy and the choice to be happy and the choice to figure out what you're meant to do while you're here, it starts with self-awareness. You have to have self-awareness, you have to be able to self-regulate if you want to have self-control. And so when we think about the brain science, um, so the way I describe the whole brain is that it's it's like a giant company. And just like a company has like a fulfillment center and a customer service and a C-suite area and marketing, all these different departments, we have departments in our brain. And we think of our brain as like it's our brain, it's one organ, we control it. But 80% of the traffic in our brain is unconscious, it's below our nose, doesn't know time, can't tell a story, it's just trying to keep us alive. That's its its entire reason for existence. We only have about 20% of the traffic coming from the top down. And so part of self-awareness is understanding, being aware of how those departments are working. What are the messages that are being sent around? So, like when you were talking about identity, so we have our thalamus as kind of like our data center. And I call my thalamus Harold. So Harold's job is Yeah. So Harold talks to my vagus nerve, and my vagus nerve is my systems manager. He's always, you know, where's my body in space? Is my heart beating? Do I feel okay? What's my emotional state? You know, all of that interoception, proprioception, internal, external.

Jay Johnson 15:01

He lets Let me let me pause for one second, just for the audience. The vagus nerve is what essentially connects your brain to the other systems. So it is what communicates directly with the neurons that we found in the heart, the neurons in the gut. This is what's sending signals back and forth, telling you, hey, I'm safe, I'm not safe, I'm having a heart attack, I'm not having a heart attack. Hey, keep breathing, everything's okay. So that vagus nerve is such an important aspect because when we start thinking about it, it is a pathway that can be like just like a just like a uh, you know, a freeway. It can get congested, it can get obstructed, and all of a sudden signals start going the wrong way. So I just wanted to bring that real quick, but keep going because I love this. I want to meet more of your people. Harold, yeah, uh it sounds like a great guy.

Dr. Lisa Riegel 15:50

Yeah. So so the vagus nerve, the other thing with the vagus nerve is like it goes around your heart and your stomach. And and it's the reason we have phrases like go with your gut or follow your heart. It's connected to that vagus nerve and it's responsibility. So if it is agitated, if it doesn't know where your body is in space, or it feels like your stomach's upset or something, it sends herald messages that say, hey, we're in danger. There's something not not functioning that in the systems right. And so your stress system ratchets up a little bit. Our lifestyle in the world today is sedentary, and that is not good for the vagus nerve. That is not good for our ability to have that mind-body connection of like where our limbs are. And so, what we find is a lot of people really struggle with interoception and proprioception. And so it ratchets up, they're already stressed, their bodies are stressed, they don't even know it. Also, a lot of neurodivergent folks, people with ADHD, people with autism, can have interoception issues where they can't, they can't discriminate very well the difference between some of the physical feelings and emotional feelings. So they there they have a hard time understanding that you know what does hunger feel like versus what does rage feel like, or things like that. Um, so, anyways, that's part of it. That all comes to Harold and he's writing it down. Then he looks around in the environment and he takes in all of the information from the sensory data, what we see, hear, smell, touch, feel, all of that. He goes into a sensory memory center, and people think that our memories are stored like a library, and they're not. They're fragmented and they're stored all over these different departments in our brain. So when we want to make a meaningful memory, then the thinking part of our brain has to say, Hey, I want to think about X, and then order up fragments of memories and construct them again, which is why every time we construct a memory, it changes a little bit because the brain isn't maybe always sending the same memories. All Harold has access to is sensory memories and associations. So he has access to identity. So the idea of I'm a good person, I'm a bad person, the world is safe, the world is dangerous, people are mean, people are not mean. He has access to our sensory memories. I smell cookies baking, and I relax my body because that sensory memory is associated with grandma. Yeah, memory associated with grandma and cooking. So he looks around and he pulls up these associations. So he writes up a report, he sends it to Bob. Bob is our amygdala, Bob's his name, my name for him. He is our security guard, and he has a couple different jobs to do. The first is to say, are we in danger? And if his answer is yes, and then it's like, are we in a little danger or a lot of danger? If we're in a little danger, he taps the panic button and a message immediately goes up to our president's office, to the CEO, and it says, Hey, we've got conflicting associations here, some good, some not so good. And your example, some I look to the right, some I look to the left. I'm not sure what to make of this. We need you to weigh in. You want that because that is it focuses you, you've got a little bit of stress, and and you're able to still have the boss of your brain operating at full speed. If Bob decides we're in danger, danger, and wails on that panic button, then he sends a message directly up that says, Hey, we're in danger. Run down the street to the coffee shop and go get a cup of coffee, and we'll call you when the building's safe again, right?

Jay Johnson 19:22

And I want to say something on this too, Lisa, because this is so important. Bob's also the fastest gunslinger in the West. Because all of the information goes through Bob before you get to anything else like that to be checked. I mean, this is your ultimate IT security, legal department, all wrapped into one saying, uh, if there's even a hint of risk, Bob's gonna hit the alarm. If there's a massive risk, guess what? Bob gets Bob gets first choice. And that can be really, really scary when we think about the fact that the limbic system does not have the cognitive capacity to make no rational decisions, essentially.

Vagus Nerve Habits For Control

Dr. Lisa Riegel 20:04

Right. And when it hijacks your brain, it's Bob and Harold who are making those decisions for you. And and when I go into companies, you know, even when you think about the disruption in companies today with AI and with, you know, just all the changes that we're seeing, everybody is stressed. And so when I go into companies a lot of times and and I talk to employees or I talk to leaders, I sit back and I think, I am talking to Bob and Harold right now. I'm not talking to this person. And I see conflict within the workplace where Bob and Harold are yelling at somebody else's Bob and Harold. And that's why sometimes when you calm down, you're like, why did I even say that? I didn't even mean that. And so being a good leader, being a good person, being self-aware means we have to understand that system. We have to understand what are the underlying fears that are in those filters that Harold is pulling up to filter reality and make it into our perception of reality. And so, like, for me, um, I'll give you a concrete example. I get very anxious about time. Like, I don't like being late at all. And, you know, it's it's funny because it's not about late, it's not about time. So people have a lot of these things, little triggers that set them off, but it's not about the trigger, it's about the fear underneath the trigger. And so for me, growing up, my parents were divorced. I spent a lot of time sitting on the front stoop waiting for my dad to pick me up, and he was always late. So that repeated experience in my little nine-year-old brain, Harold associated time with love or worth, right? And my body would dysregulate. And so then now, even into my 20s and 30s, if my husband was running late or I was running late, like I would, I would be dysregulated, even though logically I'm like, I know there's a reason, it's no big deal. This isn't a big deal. To your point, Bob and Harold are first, they're the first ones that get to respond. And they were dysregulating me. And sometimes I'd be so anxious or angry, it would take me a minute to kind of calm myself back down to enjoy my evening. Now that I understand that, the CEO of my brain, who's me, where my character and my morals and my personality live, I'm able to say, Harold, that is a faulty association. Stop making that association. And I get to be the true leader of my brain and tell them how to work for me versus the other way around. And so I think if we have self awareness, then we couple that with self regulation. There's vagal nerve exercises you can do, learning how to breathe. And one of the things I teach the leaders I work with is set your alarm first. For every 30 minutes on your phone. When it goes off, do a quick vagal nerve exercise. It could just be rolling wrists and ankles. It could be stretching your neck. You could rub your neck. You can hum, million different things you can do. Twists. Yeah. I mean, you can go on and ask the internet, give me a hundred different vagal nerve things, and it'll give them to you. So do some type of vagal nerve thing. It takes 30 seconds and take a couple deep breaths for a couple seconds. Maybe stand up. Pay attention to where your body is in space, right? Pay attention to your feet on the floor. Or maybe look out the window and just stare at a leaf or stare at some grass for 30 seconds and then go back to work and do it every 30 minutes. And what will happen is over time, your body will train itself that every 30 minutes you'll catch yourself doing a couple clarifying breaths. You don't have to think about it anymore. So you have the self-awareness piece, you've got self-regulation, and now you have self-control. And now you can make good decisions.

The 8C Framework For Change

Jay Johnson 23:32

And it's so powerful because these are things that so many times, I mean, for a long time, I would say, being present and grounded and you know, deep breath work or all of these things were kind of like uh the hippity dippity, yeah, whatever I breathe every day. But the reality is, is there is a very, very strong science behind these. And I think, you know, as as I'm gonna navigate this into talking about change, because I think that that's a really powerful place. Every organization is in the change. Um, Bob and Harold are taking the lead in so many of these different aspects. Uh, when we're thinking about, you know, and and I really what you said, and I love the primer because it's something that we talk about obviously a lot here. But when we start to get dysregulated, and you even brought up, like, hey, where are these patterns coming from? This doesn't just apply to you as the individual in the workplace. So, listener, hear this. This applies to every aspect of your life. Whether you're in the grocery store and go from zero to 11 because somebody cut in line, whether you have an argument with your spouse or partner over uh strawberry or grape jelly, you know, all of these different things, these are the patterns that ultimately create everything from our attachment styles. These are the patterns that come in from our past traumas, capital T and lowercase T, but they're changeable. And we can adapt when we do have that awareness and understand them. So, Lisa, I'm gonna walk through right now everything. The reality is, is in every organization, there is economic uncertainty, there is social uncertainty, there's political uncertainty, there is uh survival uncertainty, you know, in different aspects of you know, different uh different areas. And there's some people that believe the end of times are here, some people believe that, hey, we still got a little ways to go. We also have everything changing from a technological standpoint daily, every single day is changing. We thought the internet was fast, AI is faster. All of this change. Now, I I have made the joke before. When you get the call, hey, can you come down to my office from the boss? Most of us don't go, yes, we're getting a raise. We go, oh God, why am I in trouble? That uncertainty, cortisol, adrenaline, norepinephrine, all of Bob and Harold's fun stuff that they like to kick out into the system. The, you know, the the move from rest and digest to that sympathetic, uh, you know, active aroused state. Long term it can hurt us. So let's dig into this. We know these pieces. How do we manage change when change is occurring much faster than the speed of thought?

Dr. Lisa Riegel 26:34

Yeah. So I think so. I have um in the Aspirations to Operations book, it's a leader's guide to how to make these transformative changes stick. Um, and I start, I have an eight C framework. And the first C is culture. And so the first thing to calm the nerves down is to make sure that that everyone has a sense of belonging and that you have a sense of sort of what we call a collective identity. And so what that means is that when we are together in this particular setting or context, then I belong and I'm part of something bigger than myself. And what what we are here together is stronger than the things that make us different. And they've actually, the social scientists studied collective identity in the military because they said, How is it that people in the military form these long um relationships and really tight ties and they're so different? And in other areas of the world, you didn't see that. Well, what they found was they had this collective identity of like when we were in our context together, we were a soldier first. The other things didn't matter. They've also studied it in megachurches that that um Christian identity supersedes racial or socioeconomic. Um, and so when we think about the first step is calming that vagus nerve down, calming the baseline of the system with the idea of you belong here and that we're here together.

Jay Johnson 27:56

And that that belonging releases a really powerful neurotransmitter, oxytocin, which some people are familiar with, which can actually dampen those other things like cortisol, adrenaline, norepinephrine. So I love that that's the first part because any of the organizations I've done consulting with, whether they're like, hey, we have great pay, we have great benefits, we have show me how your people are connected, and I will tell you where your lowest performance teams are.

Dr. Lisa Riegel 28:26

Yep, yep. And I think the other piece too is that you know, we have all these polluted filters in our brain that Harold's using to decide how to respond. The solution to pollution is dilution, right? So you want positivity in your context. So how are you celebrating? How are you um authentically connecting people as humans? How are you seeing people and supporting them in different ways? And you know, companies spend thousands of dollars on t-shirts and wall hangings and words, and it's just word salad. It doesn't mean anything. Culture's built through action. And so the first part of the book really goes through how do you do that? How do you build that culture without being cheesy? Like, how do you actually form this? Then the next section is the planning sees. And, you know, you you already alluded to it. Uncertainty is we don't like uncertainty. Our brain does not like it.

Jay Johnson 29:17

So the first thing up story that's completely in act. Which way is uh, hey, can you tell me where the church is? I'm 99% sure it's down that way. No clue. Right. We'd rather have a made up wrong story than to not know. It's such an interesting aspect of our cognition.

Dr. Lisa Riegel 29:35

Yeah. Well, and you see it today. There's a lot of things that are unknowns, and people will believe things that they'll believe things that don't eat that that they saw something completely different, but they so it is. It's fascinating how we allow that. But the uncertainty, um, you know, we want positivity in the workplace, and then we want a plan, right? So the first three C's are clarity, coherence, and cadence. And so really thinking about what does, and and a lot of leaders look at the the 10,000 foot view at change, but they don't get down into the weeds to actually see what do I see and hear when this change is happening. I have asked that question so many times and had them just look at me like I have two heads. And I'm like, if you can't visualize the change for the people in the system of what are they going to be doing, then you can't really support the people as they make that change. So you got to be able to be clear about what you're doing. Because the other thing too is if I have clarity about what I'm supposed to do, at the end of the day, I get in my car and I feel good. I feel accomplished, I got it done, right? Whatever it is. If I don't know what I'm supposed to do, then I always have that uncertainty and anxiety. And the reality is if I know what I'm supposed to do and I did it and it doesn't move our outcomes, well, then our theory of change was wrong. It's not me. It's not that I failed, right? So that clarity, coherence, and and then the cadence is important. Like how fast do you want change to happen and is it realistic? And that's where you get into some identity issues is that I might be the leader. I'm the lady that they come to when they need that process. I have the institutional knowledge and I have some wisdom there. So I get a little street cred in the company. Now all of a sudden, I'm a rookie and that's not feeling comfortable, right? So I've lost my status and my identity. And so, like, how do we create a cadence of change? Then there's two C's for oh, yeah. Go ahead.

Jay Johnson 31:27

Let me pause you on that one before we go to the two C's. It seems to me, at least my from my experience, I am I am somebody that's very, very good with fast change. I mean, I we make a decision today, things are gonna change by tomorrow. And that has, I've learned that not everybody has the same threshold for speed when it comes to that adaptation, that some people are gonna need uh a week, some people are gonna need five weeks, some people are gonna need 10 weeks. How can a leader think through that? Because, like I said, for me, if you dropped it on me tomorrow, hey, this is what we're doing, this is our direction, we'd be like, cool, let's go. I'm gonna I'm gonna carve a new identity very, very quickly into this is what we do now. Let's let's run with it. Not everyone's wired that way. And you and part of it about that a little.

Dr. Lisa Riegel 32:15

Yeah, part of it's probably because your identity is an innovator, and so you don't see change as a threat, you see it as a constructive challenge to run into instead of run away from. So, one of the things I do with um leaders is an aptitude-attitude matrix, and we look at what are the reasons for change, like who on your staff is willing and able, ready to roll, right? Who on your staff is willing but not able, who's not able but very willing, you know, kind of go through and then to talk, yeah, and talk about the why underneath. Like, why is this person able but not willing? Is it an identity thing? Is it a lack of coherence because you're asking them to do something that they're totally capable of doing, but it's dumb because it's repeating something else that they've already done efficiently. So why are you making, you know, so really getting to the underneath because what I tell leaders all the time is your organization, your team is like a rowboat, uh a sailboat or a uh cruise ship, you know, crew boat. Two people are rowing as fast as they can in the right direction. Five people are staring at the scenery or periodically paddling, but sometimes they're paddling the wrong way and slowing things down. Sometimes they they get it in the right way. And you have two or three people that are actively trying to sink your boat. We spend way too much time on the boat sinkers, right? What we want to do instead when we're trying to move change forward is to say, okay, let's let those two that row like crazy go as fast as they want. And let's let them do some of the theory testing and help us to create something that's that's gonna work across the board. The people in the middle, let's have them, let's focus them on the the early adopters. I call them the coalition of the willing, right? Like let let them focus theirs. Yeah, yeah. They're willing to try, they're just you know looking at the scenery because maybe they don't know. And I and I always say to leaders, there's three reasons things don't happen. It's I don't know how, which is a training problem, I don't want to, which is an attitude problem or enthusiasm problem, or I literally can't, which is a logistics problem. And so you look at those people who are staring at the scenery or sinking the boat, and you say, Where's the barrier? Is it a training attitude or logistics barrier? And and how do we overcome that barrier? And so what you want to try to do is build collective efficacy on the eight. And then they're going, that becomes culture, then, right? This is how we do it here, this is how we work together here, and it becomes your culture, and then they turn around and look at the people behind them and go, come on.

Jay Johnson 34:46

So the boat sinkers eventually abandon ship when you have every beat when you have that strong sense of culture, that strong sense of direction. It's been my experience that the culture, the culture takes care of those boat sinkers pretty quickly. Yep.

Dr. Lisa Riegel 35:00

Yeah, they either start to row or they start to look for somewhere else to go.

Jay Johnson 35:04

Yep.

Dr. Lisa Riegel 35:04

Um, yeah. So so, anyways, you've got the culture C, you've got the planning C's, and then the engagement C's are collaboration and coaching. And I see people set up collaboration and it it doesn't work. It's just, you know, like I I'll hear leaders say, Oh, my staff hates meetings. No, your staff hates dumb meetings. If you have good meetings and good purposeful collaboration with a balance of autonomy and accountability, they will embrace that. But I mean, I remember we were on a trip with our neighbors and they do these stupid huddle meetings that they have way too many people on the call. So it's like they're huddling and there's like 40 people on this huddle. And so we were on a we were on a trip and we were playing Euchre and just like had this computer screen up. And I'm like, do you need to be on that meeting? They're like, No, it's the dumbest meeting in the world. And then they they literally had about 30 seconds that they had to say something, and then they hit mute and went right back to playing. So people hate dumb meetings. So it goes through teach you how to how to set collaboration up effectively and how to coach effectively using the brain science stuff we've been talking about.

Jay Johnson 36:08

And then the last two slides I I have a rule, Lisa, to that point. The two pizza rule. If you cannot feed your meeting participants with the two pizzas, two large pizzas, your meeting is too big.

Dr. Lisa Riegel 36:20

Yes, yep, a hundred percent. And you know, the thing is you can do like a large touch-base meeting periodically, but the whole purpose of that then is not collaboration, it's basically information sharing and status, right? Agreed. Um, so, anyways, you've got planning, and then you've got like how do we get people engaged, and then the sustainability sees are communication and celebration. And it's funny, I did my dissertation, um, part of my dissertation was really around celebration in leaders. And um this is an area that people just don't do well, they don't celebrate. And the thing is, if you're if you're a strategic celebrator and if you're doing authentic celebration, first of all, you have to have clarity so you know what to celebrate. And that, so sometimes a lack of celebration is because you don't have any clarity on what you're actually asking people to do, so you can't congratulate them when they do it. Or it's more um, it's not really celebration, it's just more of like appreciation or acknowledgement. We're gonna, you know, you have lunch in the staff room today, or we're giving everybody 15 minutes off or something. So, so really helping leaders to create celebration systems that have all the components necessary to build collective efficacy so that that boat starts to get more effective.

Jay Johnson 37:34

I love that too, because that celebration piece really trips into the behaviors that we reward, we reinforce. Celebration, savoring, actually digging in and being like, look at the accomplishments, look at the legacy we've created, look at the impact, the milestones. Hey, we're all on the same pathway and we are doing it. Yeah, winners win. And the brain goes, Yeah, we are. Let's keep going, let's keep pushing that. Whereas if it's never a celebration and every single day it's just like, well, I'm just I'm sitting here and banging my head against the wall again and not really getting anything done, it's yeah, it's so even worse.

Dr. Lisa Riegel 38:11

I don't even know what I'm supposed to be doing. So I'm just banging my head on. And you know, the thing is when you think about like trying to make change, like if you've ever tried to like lose weight or work out more or something, it takes a lot of energy to change. And it takes a lot of energy to build new connections in your brain so that things become automatic. And so if I say I've lost 15 pounds and not one person says, You look great. Have you lost weight? Or if I'm working out at the gym, hey, you look like you're really getting strong. Just those little comments that are authentic and that celebrate what I'm working on can give me the energy because when do we fall off the wagon? We're tired. I don't want to go home and food prep. I'm just gonna run through the drive-thru. Nobody notices, anyways. Nobody's gonna, nobody's I I don't have to be accountable because nobody really is even noticing that I've made a change. So, you know, that celebration fuels just enough of that energy to help keep us motivated to continue to try.

Jay Johnson 39:07

Lisa, where would the audience find your book, Aspirations to Operations?

Dr. Lisa Riegel 39:12

So they can find it on Amazon or if they go to Lisa Riegel.com, there's a picture of it, and they can click that and it'll take them directly to the the page.

Jay Johnson 39:20

Amazing. And they can they contact you through that website too?

Where To Find Lisa And Her Book

Dr. Lisa Riegel 39:24

Um, yeah, they can contact me or um I'm on LinkedIn if they want to link up with me. And then um, you know, I love to meet people. So I I come in and, you know, I do keynote addresses, I do workshops with leaders. Um, I can come in and help support like a book study. If they're working with another coach, kind of hand the baton off to another coach to do the deeper work. Uh, and then I usually take about five or six clients a year where I really go deep dive and say, you know, if they're ready for true transformative work, I get right in there and really help them every step of the way to create that that 8C framework. So if people are interested and liked what they were hearing today and just want to have a conversation, you know, just message me on LinkedIn and we can set up a time for for some coffee, have a virtual coffee hour.

Jay Johnson 40:10

I love it, Lisa. And I I really appreciate the way that you talked about Bob and Harold and and how you've created the conditions of uh accessibility, I'll call it, to some of those neuroscientific uh wonders that we've continued to learn. Because I think some people get a little intimidated by the science, but the science, when we understand it, it is so impactful because this is this is the human operating system. We keep looking at you know, the lean operations, the tech operations, and all of those. But that human operating system is something that's consistent no matter what industry, no matter what role, no matter what position. We have those different components. So getting a better understanding of that, I think is such a powerful way for us to navigate that change and that behavioral change. So I just want to say thank you. And on behalf of the audience, thank you for sharing your knowledge, your wisdom, and everything here today.

Dr. Lisa Riegel 41:03

Yeah, well, thank you so much for having me. I enjoyed this.

Jay Johnson 41:06

Yeah, me too. And we'll look forward to having you back at some point in time. And I there's so much more that we can dig into. So, again, thank you for your time today. And thank you, audience, for tuning into this episode of the Talent Forge, where together we are shaping workforce behaviors.