People First! with Morag Barrett

Welcome to this week's episode of People First. And one of the joys of being the host is that I get to invite my friends and colleagues to join me here on the show. And those of you who are eagle-eyed and eagle-eared, you will recall that Michelle Johnston has been part of the show in the past, but we are here today to talk about her brand new book, the seismic shift in you, the seven necessary shifts to create connection, and what does that say? Drive results. You see my eyes were going a little cross-eyed there. So for those of you who are meeting Michelle for the first time, welcome to People First. Where have you been? I hope you choose to hang around. Michelle is my friend and colleague. She is a top-ten executive coach, a top-five-hundred business leader, and is redefining what leadership looks like in today's world. Her best-selling first book, The Seismic Shift in Leadership, How to Thrive in a New Era of Connection, featured by Forbes four times, spots lights real-world leaders who have embraced this shift and are seeing stronger teams and better results because of it. She is a professor of business at Loyola University, and I am honored to call her a friend and collaborator. And so, Michelle, welcome to People First. And I can't wait to dive in. Look at all the sticky notes. Thank you, Morag. Look at you. I love it. And I love being on People First podcast. I love working with you. I love working with Sky Team. I feel incredibly grateful and honored. So thank you. See, now we've got a mutual love fest going. So this should be easy. All right, then. A second book, says the woman who's written three. Why now? Why the seismic shift in you? Yeah, we're in a crisis of disconnection. And I believe we're going down a very dark path unless we start to do some things differently. And my first book was about how to do some things differently from a leadership perspective. And then I realized it's so much bigger than just leadership. This is about being human, showing up human, and really leaning in because we all need better connection for better results. We need better connection for better lives. And so that's why I wrote the book. Better connection for better lives. You're speaking to the choir here. So of course my little heart is going, ah, but there may be one or two skeptics who are listening in here who are thinking, ah, group hugs, lollipops, what's this all about? So I know that from both our research, there is a real business cost to disconnection and therefore a business advantage to nurturing a sense of belonging and connection. Talk to us about those. Yeah. So all of the research is coming in. Dr. Vivek Murthy just actually released his latest research on this epidemic of loneliness. And now we have one in five globally who are feeling lonely, isolated, and disconnected. He says it's the equivalent of smoking. Sixteen cigarettes a day. Because disconnection, loneliness, and isolation is actually causing a sixty percent increase in premature deaths and a thirty three thirty three percent increase in strokes and heart attacks. So the research is startling that this happens. this environment that we're in right now where we're holding onto our chairs and saying, don't make me go into the office. I don't need to go meet friends for coffee. I don't need to leave my house. I'll have my groceries delivered. I'll work from my phone. I don't ever have to leave. And it's, again, taken us down a very, very dark path. We as humans need connection like we need food and water. And so if Dr. Vivek Murthy, our former U.S. Surgeon General, is saying, look, it's getting worse, it's not getting any better. So he wrote his book together, right, during the pandemic saying, OK, he went on a listening tour to try to figure out what health issues should he look at. And it startled him. He did not go into it thinking that he was going to be studying disconnection, loneliness, and isolation. And yet that's what everyone told him the problem was. So we have a really serious problem as humans right now. And it's interesting because the pandemic obviously shone a very bright spotlight on that sense of isolation and loneliness. I mean, you and I are professionals. We teach this for a living. And yet I remember sitting on my sofa feeling overwhelmed and just the enormity of it all. And yet that was, well, that was then. I mean, it feels like a lifetime ago. It was five years ago, but it seems like we're still stuck in the pattern. So what are some of the mistakes that the leaders you're coaching and working with, what are you seeing that is continuing to impact this epidemic of loneliness? So a couple of things. So my first seismic shift, right, was the pandemic. And so we had to figure out how to lead differently in this new hybrid environment. The second shift that I just wrote about is actually the AI shift. And so we're becoming more and more codependent on our phones, even though we're not talking on our phones. Our phones are automating our lives and they're giving us so many dopamine hits that that it's a true addiction and we won't put it down. So again, our lives are now being run by our phones. Again, let me emphasize, and we don't talk on them or we seldomly talk on them. So we have these dopamine hits that are keeping us attached right here and not looking up. I'll Years ago, when I first started working at universities, I actually never left really because I got my master's and then I got my PhD and then I started teaching. So I've been in the university environment since I was eighteen years old. And one of the things that I loved the most about it, Morag, was the energy and the electricity on campus. Oh, you could. I mean, you just couldn't beat it. And I was like, I never want to leave. I love the university. Well, you walk around. Believe me, I still love the university, but it is so different. You walk around and all the students have their earbuds in their ear. You go into a classroom and they're not talking to each other. I just taught my last leadership class last night of the semester, of fall semester, and And at the very end of class, I had them stand up and we did a huddle and I said, okay, you know, tell me like, what did you learn? And they said, this was the only class that I actually got to know my colleagues or my classmates. This was the only class where you asked for our opinion. And we sat around and we had dialogue and we talked together. So this second seismic shift, which is the dependence on our phones and technology, is really, really bad. And so back to your question about leaders, what we've got to instill in our leaders is we can't keep doing and leading and interacting and professing, in my case, the same that we always have. We can't show up and talk at people because that's just not working. Right. The competition with this is too much. We have to reinvent the way that we lead, the way that we interact, the way that we teach. I was looking down there because obviously the book title gives it away. You describe seven shifts. And I was checking as to which number shift your conversation was. Number five is the answer there. And so even that example of we're connected, we're so connected through technology, through whether it's Slack messages, it's WhatsApp messages, it's text messages, it's email. We're connected and yet we are the most disconnected we've ever been. And so shifting our conversations, actually having those conversations, looking at each other, whether it's through the camera or side by side on the sofa, I don't mind. But let's talk to each other, not just text each other. And one of the greatest gifts for your listeners is that Morag and I run the Benson Leadership Academy together. And the first couple, I hope you don't mind me telling everybody this. We don't know what the Benson Leadership Academy is, but yes, we do. Benson Leadership. Academy is Gail Benson. I'm in New Orleans, Louisiana, and Gail Benson owns the New Orleans Saints and the New Orleans Pelicans. So an NFL team and an NBA team. And they decided to invest in their leaders because they didn't have, and they, they didn't have a leadership Academy. And so they, they chose me and Morag to run the Benson leadership Academy. So what's what, one of the greatest gifts this past year, these past two years and working with Morag is she flies from Denver and And she stays with me. And we're like two sisters on the sofa. And we get to go out to dinner together. We watch movies together. We rehearse together. We go over our slides together. We walk the neighborhood together. We cuddle with my dog Millie together. And that has been such a gift to work that closely with somebody and have all of those conversations. And that's just not happening. happening as much anymore. I'll give you another example. I just gave a presentation downtown New Orleans and I had assumed that everybody in that office worked in New Orleans and they had come to hear me give my presentation. What ended up at the very end of the presentation, did I realize that only a couple of them lived in New Orleans. It was a remote workforce and they came in for this week to build connection. And after the talk I gave, so many of them admitted how isolated they feel. They were so happy to get a job, to work remotely and to have that flexibility. And yet how much they crave connection with people because just sitting alone in their apartment all day is hard. And so the CEO was there and she said, I'm so glad that I flew you all in this week and we need to do more of it. And that's it. That's an expense. That's an expense. So I think so many people were excited to have this opportunity to work remotely. And now we're all realizing, oh, my gosh, again, we need connection like we need food and water. And so it's going to cost money if you have an entirely remote workforce. But you've got to bring people together face to face. That's where it's an investment, because whilst there may be the transactional costs of getting people together, it's those conversations. It's the getting to know our journey. It's the hidden talents that I only ever see you on a Zoom call. So I don't know about your journey and the career you've had today. And how can I leverage that expertise to solve the real world business challenges that our team is facing. And that's the magic of bringing people together. Even if you can only do it once a year, even if you can do it twice a year, those three-dimensional connections transform the two-dimensional relationships that are happening over space and time. And so that goes back to your first which is shifting your perspective, you have to actually value this and be willing to collaborate with, let's face it, for those outside of your or my sofa would look at us and think, well, why would you do that? You are competitors. You shouldn't be sharing your trade secrets with each other. Thankfully, you and I believe that we are better together. So in what way are you encouraging leaders to think about how to shift their perspective when it comes to the power of connection. Yeah, so I've learned a lot. I took a sabbatical for an entire year to write this book, and I've learned so much that I believe can really, really help us as humans. And the first shift, which is shift your perspective, is I'm advocating a shift from the what to the who. And what I mean by that is so many of us just focus on the transactions and we focus on the tasks. And yet when all of the research is coming out, Dr. Bob Waldinger, and you and I talk about it in the Leadership Academy, and yet the biggest predictor of life satisfaction- right? It is connection. Yet we're not valuing or putting the emphasis on connection. We're still putting the emphasis on the what. And at the end of the day, we're supposed to feel so good because we crossed everything off of our list, but we might not have interacted with anybody in a meaningful capacity. And that therein lies the problem. That is why we were we are suffering on the withering on the vine and one in five of us are lonely, isolated because we've got to switch our model, our mindset. If we continue to focus on what I have a new quote, you ready for it? I've just, I just had it literally last week in the park while walking Millie. And my new quote is productivity without connection equals emptiness. I'm going to say that again, productivity without connection equals emptiness. So my coauthor, Marshall Goldsmith and I, have coached so many high-level leaders. And when we get together and we talk about what they complain about when they get to the very top, they're supposed to be happy. They're supposed to be satisfied. They're supposed to be fulfilled. They made it to the top. And yet so many of them feel empty because they look around, they're like, wait, where are my most important relationships? I only focused on the what. So I'm advocating a huge, that's the number one shift, a huge shift from what to who. I love that. It's music to my heart. So tell me about that collaboration with Marshall. So Marshall Goldsmith, the number one executive coach in the world. I don't know, is he written, co-authored, sixty, seventy, a hundred books? I mean, he is prolific and he is our friend and mentor. What was that collaboration like? Well, you had mentioned chapter five, the shift in conversation. So I took the year sabbatical to write this book, and I'd only written one book before, and I wrote it all by myself. So I only knew just to kind of forge ahead, and I just thought that then Marshall was going to be a part of this collaborative writing process. And I had an amazing friend to both of us, Michael Bungay-Stanier on my podcast. And he goes by MBS. And he wrote one of the bestsellers called The Coaching Habit. He wrote a book recently called... how to work with almost anyone. So I have him on my podcast and I'm talking to him and I'm like, okay, how do you work with almost anyone? He said, well, you have to have a Keystone conversation every time you start a new project. And he's walking me through the importance of having these conversations. I said, Michael, I am so embarrassed to tell you that I have been forcing myself on Marshall, trying to get on his calendar every single week because I thought that's what it was going to be like to write a book together. I said, I haven't had the Keystone Conversation. He goes, Michelle, you better have it. It's not too late. Better late than never. So I called Marshall. I said, can we have a Keystone Conversation? He said, yes. I said, I never asked you what success looked like as far as this collaboration. How do you want this to go? Because I keep trying to get you to meet with me every week to brainstorm. And he laughed. Yeah. He's like, no, that's not what I've written. Fifty or like you said, fifty, sixty, seventy books. I am supporting you and your brand. I love what you're what you're saying. We agreed to do this together. Will you just write a chapter, send it to me and then I'll work on it. You write a chapter, send it to me. We don't need to meet every week. So this collaboration means different things to different people. And the good news is that really worked because that allowed me, right, to really write what I wanted to write. And then he came in at the end and said, oh, leave this out, add this in, because he's the true expert, right? So it ended up working together. And those shifts and Morag and I have had to do, I mean, running a leadership academy takes a lot of detail, which she is so much better at than I am. a lot of planning, a lot of creativity. And we've spent hours on calls together, thankfully, having what I call delicate conversations like, okay, well, who's going to do that? By what? By when? And those questions and those answers, those delicate conversations are critical. And to me, that's connection, right? It is connection. Because communication, that's why there's this big shift from communication to connection. Communication, people think, I sent the email, I left a voice message, I communicated. Connection is we are both in the trenches together having a conversation. It requires reciprocity. So it's different. Okay. And you mentioned earlier your new quote, productivity without connection is emptiness. This explains why so many leaders at all levels feel disconnected from their work and from their colleagues is because they're not having those keystone conversations. Because as Michael points out, we're supposed we should. should have them every time we get together. You and I have them every time we launch a new cohort of the Benson Leadership Academy. It's what we're doing tomorrow. But what happens is as we get more senior, there becomes this implicit assumption of, oh, Michelle, you've been a professor for however many years. You know how to do this. You know, I don't need to ask, or I better not suggest because you're going to think I think you're incompetent or whatever story we're writing. But as you showed with you and Marshall, just taking a couple of minutes to say, what does success look like? What are your expectations around collaboration? Avoid the misunderstandings and set us all up for success so that we can be better together. It comes full circle. I love it. Full circle. I love it too. Thank you. So of the seven seismic shifts, I'm not going to do a spoiler alert and go through them all. But which is the one that you personally either are most surprised about? I'm going to do a double question. We're most surprised about as you researched it for the book. And which is the one that you personally are leaning into? My biggest game changer, and I just talked about this on Friday last week. I was in New York City and I was interviewed on NBC News by Kate Snow. And hopefully we're starting a connection series because this is such an important topic. And she had asked me the same question, thankfully, before the cameras started rolling. She said, what do you think is the most important shift right now to lean into connection? And so I had to think about it. And I holed up in my hotel room literally for three days thinking, trying to make a three-minute pitch out of this entire book. And here's what I have come to conclusion, is that the shift your calendar, I think, is the biggest game changer. And here's why. Show me your calendar and I will show you your priorities and it might make you really uncomfortable. Because just like the focus has been on the what and not the who, if you look at your calendar, so many leaders in their calendars will say, I'll say, okay, are the most important people in your life on your calendar? Oh, well, I've got a home calendar, a personal calendar. This is just my work calendar. I was like, you know what? But there's just one you and there's just one calendar and there's just one day to make a difference. So I'm really advocating this shift in calendar management so that you have one calendar that reflects the most important people in your life. So again, the shift from what to who, and guess what, Morag, which I learned personally, is the most important who is you. So if I'm not on my calendar, then I am not prioritizing myself. And if I'm not prioritizing myself, I can guarantee you I am not showing up as the best mom, as the best colleague to you, as the best professor to my students if I don't hold myself sacred on my own calendar. So I think this whole shift in calendar and how we manage it is huge for everybody. And I love that mindset shift. As you know, I've been working on my new keynote. Fine is a four letter word. And I focus specifically on that because when we talk about connection, when we talk about relationships, having a friend at work, which is part of my two books and obviously core to your two books, too. Immediately, our minds tend to go to them, the others, my colleagues, my boss. We forget that the longest relationship I have had on this planet is with me. And unless I am fueling and refueling me, taking care of me, I can't show up as the best for everybody else. I might be here in body, but mentally I might be thinking about the to-do list, the what I need to do, the fact that I've got a frozen shoulder. All of this is distracting us from this moment and deepening us. This connection. And so the calendar piece, making sure that not only the tasks and the results and the meetings are on there, but the family time, the anniversaries, the vacation and the fitness, the what I need for me. All of that needs to go on the same calendar because as you point out, we only get one Wednesday a week. We only have the same one hundred and sixty eight hours a week. So what are we going to choose to put into them? Oh, it's so important. And I really hit rock bottom just from a battery perspective a couple of summers ago. Actually, right before I started writing this book, I had such an incredible opportunity when my first book became a an Amazon bestseller. I had all these opportunities around the world and I just wanted to jump on them and help as many people as I could. So all of a sudden I gave away my calendar to everybody and everything. And I remember on this particular July fourth holiday, my girlfriend and I went to the beach and we're staring at the ocean. She said, do you want to do anything? I said, nope. Do you want to read a book? Nope. Do you want to go out? Nope. I had nothing. I had zero in my battery because I had given everything to everyone and never, ever, ever put myself on the calendar. So fast forward, and you remember this when this happened. So then I start writing the book and you would think at this point, I study connection. I'm good at it, right? And then I put myself on the calendar. I hire this performance coach, Taylor Johnson, who I write about in my book, who was a total game changer. He's the one who helped me restructure my calendar so that I can hold things sacred that fuel me so I can show up as the best version of myself. So all of a sudden, Elizabeth, my daughter, comes home from college and it never occurred to me to lift my head up and revise my calendar to reflect the fact that she was home. And two weeks into her Christmas break, she looked at me. She goes, mom, I've been home for two weeks and I have barely seen you. So, so this is not easy, y'all. This is, I know this stuff and yet I have to say, oh my gosh, you're right. I did not change my calendar over the holidays to reflect that my number one priority was After myself, after taking care of myself, my number one priority is my daughter. And she had to look at me and say, I haven't even seen you. So this is, I believe it's daily work. I believe you wake up every morning and you try to figure out how can I control my calendar so that it fuels me and it doesn't deflate me. Here's my tip and technique. It's a very scientific approach. Do you like it? It's a post-it note. And it's got my five priorities for what will be twenty twenty six on there. They all alliterate with the beginning with the letter F. But my calendar is color coded, too. And over the holidays, my fiance and I, a coincidental F, I've already primed that conversation of what are those big rocks that we want to put on the calendar for us next year? And then the family piece for my boys, I've got two weddings, well, a wedding and a planned elopement. So those will go on there so that I can... A, fit everything else around these important milestones, but also be more confident in the no, not that week, but how about. Plenty in advance, so I'm not scrabbling at the last moment. So thank you for that reminder. Thank you. What does the F stand for? The F, so number one is focus. It's the keynote and executive coaching. Number two is friends and family. Number three is fun. Number four is fitness. Back to orange theory. And number five, because I wanted it to alliterate, is furrowed, as in my brow. So this year I have been the student and I have so enjoyed it. So I want to continue the proactive learning. But that's the order. making sure I can pay my bills, doing the work I love with the people I love, but also hanging out with and spending time with friends and family, the people I love in my whole life. And then the rest of it, the fun, the fitness, that's for me. and furrowed is number five. Oh, I love that. I love that. I'm going to, I think I'm going to take that from you and bring out those sticky notes and just, and have five priorities for the year. Yeah. Yeah. I love it. Thank you. And then color coding the calendar allows me to look at a glance to say, am I doing those things? And if it's orange, that covers the fun and the fitness piece. But if it's orange, that's, that's Morag's fun time. And it's easier for me to then fit my other conversations around those. Orange is my favorite color. I love it. Yes. So Taylor Johnson taught me very similar things, how to stack my calendar. So now only on Tuesdays do I do my podcast. Before it was just whenever they were available, I said yes. And I was all over the place. I So now Tuesday podcast, right? Wednesdays, I do executive coaching. Thursdays, I try to do, if I can plan it out, my speeches. And just having structure to your calendar makes you feel like you're in a little bit more control versus a pinball and a pinball machine. And that doesn't work. Okay. So the seismic shift in you, the seven necessary shifts to create connection. Give us that three-minute elevator pitch. We've whetted the appetite for everybody who's listening and watching. But what do you hope that people take away from reading your fabulous new book? Yeah, so we need a seismic shift. Again, we're going down a dark road. It scares me. If we continue the habits that we've been doing right now, focusing on task, focusing on what, and not being intentional with relationships and and putting connection on our calendar, then it's going to get much worse. So after I finished writing the book, I was like, oh my gosh, I get to read whatever I want now. I don't have to read all the book. Wow, what am I going to read? And I had promised my daughter, Elizabeth, that I would live to a hundred. So there's this book, said living to a hundred. I was like, well, I'm going to read that. I made her a promise. I got to figure it out. Lo and behold, Morag, is it's not diet. It's not exercise. This researcher runs this longevity institute, and he went to all the blue zones, right, the diet. He looked at all the exercise, all the nutrition. He looked at socioeconomic class, how much money you make, where you live, your title. The key to health and longevity is social connection. Uh-huh. So my big elevator speech to you all is we have to start doing things differently because the path we're on is we're anxious, we're lonely, we're isolated and depressed. And if you're not, somebody right next to you is. So we have to start doing things differently. So if we lean in more and embed more connection on our calendar, if we embed more connection with our prioritization of ourselves and those we love, then we will have better lives, better results, better connection. I love it. Michelle, where can people learn more about you and your work? Oh, I would love it if give me a, you know, contact me on my website, michellekjohnston.com. And the book, The Seismic Shift in You is located in your local bookstore and on Amazon. Well, thank you for joining me again. And I wish you ongoing success with what is going to be a transformational book that's going to bring us all better together. Oh, thank you, Morag. Love being with you and love being with you all. Thank you.