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They're going to get there. Technology, AI, has just made it imperative that every organization has got to basically help their people bring their best self to work because we got so many organizations in every industry. There's going to be immense consolidation. We're going to end up with maybe two to three companies in a major big industry. That's it. The winners are going to be the people.
All right, not only who know how to use technology, but who have got the best people, the best thinkers, the best listeners, the best collaborators, the highly adaptive people.
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Welcome to the Ownership Game with Gary Montalvo. What would it take to get into the driver's seat of your life and leave your mark? The Ownership Game starts now. On November 30th, 2022, the launch of ChatGPT changed everything. A new AI revolution was birthed, and the speed at which it's moving is unlike anything that we have seen before.
It's exciting to see all these new tools and how much easier they're making our lives, especially around work. I know personally I've come to rely on them heavily to get my work done. But it's also a bit terrifying. A recent study from Oxford University predicts that 25 to 47 % of US workforce will be automated by the end of the decade. By the end of the decade. I mean, that's not a long time from now, folks.
All this means that we're facing some pretty significant existential questions for society as a whole, but also on a personal level for each and every one of us. How do I remain relevant? How do I continue to provide value? How do I remain employed and earn a living? These are all questions that millions and millions of people across the globe will have to ask themselves pretty soon. To help us dive into this topic, I invited Professor Edward Hess to the show.
He's the author of, How to Own Your Work Journey, The Path to Meaningful Work and Happiness in the Age of Smart Technology and Radical Change. Professor Hess has a pretty impressive resume. After spending 20 years as a senior executive for some of America's largest companies, he turned his attention to academia, where he's been teaching business at all levels since 2002. During that time, he's authored 15 books, more than 160 articles.
and 60 case studies. Oh, and he's been featured in over 400 media publications globally. Safe to say, the man knows his stuff. And probably the most impressive thing about him is that he simply goes by Ed. Ed brings a great deal of wisdom, experience, and kindness to the conversation. And I think that most of you will be very surprised and inspired by his approach to addressing this problem.
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Ed, I'm really excited to talk to you today. One of the things that really stood out is obviously we're in this AI revolution. It's like everywhere you turn is AI, AI, AI, everyone's going crazy. And a lot of people, I work with a lot of entrepreneurs, so a lot of people are trying to figure out how to use this, how to implement this, but there's a whole other segment that are trying to really figure out what this means for them and how this is gonna impact them and their future careers.
And it's probably too soon to make some solid predictions because this technology is changing so quickly. But what we do know is things are gonna change. Things are gonna change. There's definitely gonna be a lot more automation. And this is really the subject of your book, Own Your Own Work Journey, Own Your Work Journey. Take me to your thought process and how you ended up here and why this became an area of interest for you. Well, I've been...
First, just a little bit of background. I spent a lot of time out in the work world before going to academia. I came to academia 22 years ago. And so I got a lot of mileage and seen work from all sorts of levels. And so why this book? Basically, AI is going to transform how we live. Everybody's going to be impacted.
AI is going to transform work. And in order to be and work is going to continuously change because the AI is going to get smarter and smarter. All right. It's not just an AI now. They're talking about basically the brightest people, technology people and scientists are saying by 2030, there'll be minimal type of thinking that technology that humans can do better than technology.
So what does that mean for us as human beings? And so I wrote this book because it's a it's a it's a how to book. OK, how do I take ownership of what's going on inside of me? Because I got to come to the table in a way that I can be a highly adaptive learner, learn, unlearn and relearn it to speed of change. And the speed of change is going to be the fastest of anything we have ever experienced. All right. And that means.
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Again, I'll go back to the words, highly adaptable learner. Well, the challenge here is that generally speaking, all of us are poor learners. We are wired to go out in the world and seek confirmation of what we believe, affirmation of our ego. And when we are challenged, we generally emotionally, from an ego perspective,
come back with the three D's, we defend what we think, or we deflect what the other person's saying, or we deny. Well, we've never really been trained to how to learn, all right, with a real open mind, all right? And so what it brings to the table is, is that the journey to best self is what people are gonna be on. What does that mean? I gotta come to the table with quiet ego, quiet mind.
be a good reflective listener, all right, be able to relate to other people in positive emotional ways. I mean, the technology, probably the biggest plus that human beings can have in the A .I. world is the quality of our positive emotional engagement with other human beings. Technology, it's going to be a long, long time before technology can positively, positively, emotionally relate to other adults. Now, we're going to have.
miniature little robots that can talk to children, all right, and say what they think the children want to hear, all right? Well, that's not going to, you know, that's not going up in the world where organizations are going to have to change very fast and continuously change. Well, how can organizations change if the people don't change? That's the game here. The game here is, well, I take ownership and your title of your
podcast the ownership game you have nailed it you gotta take ownership of you ego mind how you think how you listen how you relate etc etc and there's tools to do that the great the great thing about this is it goes back thousands of years to the great religions and the great philosophies all right there's the tools that people can use to basically achieve
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And it's a lifelong journey. All right. I mean, I've been on the journey a long, long, long time. All right. I'm still learned. All right. I still do my practices every day. Okay. It's you never going to reach the point that I got it made. No, you got to keep being better. And that's what the purpose of the book about in the purposes is. I wrote the, it's an unusual book. It's a workbook and I wrote it for every person.
17, 18 years or older, regardless of their education level, regardless of their type of work, because you can be a great scientist, but you got the same challenge that a person that is not a great scientist has. How do we bring our best self to the table? Yeah. Something, so the two things that really stood out for me in looking at your book and number one is I was really
surprised but also touched by your focus because you've been an executive before you were in academia, you were an executive for 20 plus years. You focus on teaching business strategies and business administration, but the focus of your book is not growth strategies and implementation and how to scale your, the focus of your book is people and how to give people
the tools they need to succeed. And I was really touched by that and surprised that someone with like your background of growing companies took this approach for this book. Can you talk a little bit about that? Yeah, it really, it came about because of the technology, but it really goes back to, gosh, almost everything that I have.
over the years have learned that the human aspect in the business world, all right, and I was very, very fortunate in the business world to work with some very, very brilliant humanistic people, all right, and I studied them and I did work with them, et cetera. People like the founder of Southwest Airlines in the United States, a very humanistic person, the founder of the Ritz -Carlton Corporation.
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And I learned many years ago that the quality of the conversations in the workplace is highly, highly determines the success and how leaders treat people that report to them and people that report to that are down on the factory floor. I mean, I can't tell you over the years and they there were a small group of people. One, one.
company that I did work with, the number two person in the company and I were doing work together and I was there for two or three days and the first day I was there he said I want you to know we're gonna go all day but at 11 o 'clock I got to take a break, a break for about an hour and a half. You're welcome to come with me and I said what are you gonna do? He says well I'm going out into the factory in one part of the factory I'm gonna walk down the aisles and I'm gonna converse with my teammates.
the people that are doing the work. And so he says, you want to come? I said, yes. So I went with it. And this man, I mean, it's a big factory, lots of people. He knew the first name of every person. He told him to call me by the first name. He asked about their children. He asked what he can do to make their work better or what would they like to do going forward? And he did that. And he did that every day for an hour to hour and a half. And there's other people like that. So.
The human aspect, the human aspect is sort of, I guess I got there because I came from a very humble background, very humble background, and other people helped me become who I am. And I tended to go find people when I was out in the real world working, all right. But then when I was basically helping people build.
good high performance teams in companies, the human aspect of how you relate to people. And I learned somewhat the hard way. I mean, I can remember back when I was a very senior executive, I was very into my work, et cetera, et cetera. I got in, I got in very early every day and I got in early and I went to go get coffee and I'm thinking about all my important stuff. Oh, I'm thinking, walking down the, to get coffee.
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And I sort of just notice a younger person sort of being there and I walked past him and get coffee. So I go back to my office and about an hour later, one of the senior people who this person that I walked past reported to called me up and he says, Ed, I got to talk to you. I'm coming to see you. I says, well, talk to me now. He says, no, I'm coming to see you. So he came to see me and he says, do you...
Do you know that the number one young person in my entire group came in today and told me that he was going to leave because you walked past him and didn't acknowledge him and that means he'll never be successful here. So he's going to go find another job. He said, he's my best person. What in the world were you doing? And he says, I'm sorry. I just, I didn't, I'm sorry. And I said, I'll let me, let me make it up to him. And he says,
Well, if you're gonna make it up to him, excuse my word, get your butt out of your chair and go talk to him. All right? So I went down and the guy was in a cubicle. There were other people. And so I walked in and the other two or three people got scared because they went away. They wanted to get coffee and left me with him. And I said to him, I apologize and told him that I was just too consumed with my stuff. What can I do to basically help him be all he can be?
And he said, I'd like to do some work as part of your team. I says, done. And he says, when can I start that? I says, let me talk to the person you report to, but I can start you on something tomorrow. And the guy led him. The other person was said, okay, he can do that. That guy became, and he ended up for two years working totally for me. One of the people working for me and ultimately became the CEO of a major company in the United States. Wow.
And I didn't get him the CEO job. My point is, is that by how I treated him, all right, how you treat people. So it sort of goes back because I came up, as I said, very humble background and I got to where I was because people saw something in me and invested in me and helped me get there. I had many, many angels in my life. And, and so as I went into academia,
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Academia wasn't playing in that game. And so I started playing in that game and creating that game and etc I mean, that's why there's you know, 14 books out there and because it was it was a new way of working It's still not the not the in the United States not the dominant way of working we're most companies are not as humanistic as the companies that I've done work with and But they're going to get their technology
AI is just made it imperative that every organization has got to basically help their people bring their best self to work because we got so many organizations in every industry. There's going to be immense consolidation. We're going to end up with maybe two to three companies in a major big industry. That's it. The winners are going to be the people. All right. Not only who know how to use technology.
but who have got the best people, the best thinkers, the best listeners, the best collaborators, the highly adaptive people. And that is a requirement that requires humanistic ways of being in the organization, not command and control, not survival of the fittest. So we're going to be in a transformation that's going to shake up and the work that you're doing.
All right, and the work I'm doing will be even more needed because leaders are going to basically see it. Oh, wait a minute. I don't spend any time. It's not just how we're making more money and how we're how I'm talking to clients women. It's the people. It's the quality of the people, the quality of their thinking, their way of being. It's a whole new way of working that's going to occur. Yeah.
makes a lot of sense. So some of the stuff you're talking about sounds scary, but you don't seem scared. You don't seem scared and you seem, I mean, when you're speaking, you seem excited and hopeful about the future. I guess, are you scared? It doesn't seem like you are, but let's talk about that because I feel like some of the people listening could also be worried that.
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They have to adapt very highly. What if that look like? Can I adapt all that stuff? Yes, and they're right. Okay, they should be. I don't know if I guess the word scared is okay, but I try to basically downplay on the word scared because the fact is what people need to do, all right, is not rocket science.
It goes back thousands of years of how you behave. It's got, from the great philosophies, the great religions, and the ability to manage yourself is not rocket science. It takes work, it takes discipline. You have to do it every day, and you start out small. People start out small. Mindfulness meditation is a very important practice that people need to do.
So what do you do with it? You start out small, two to three minutes a day. You don't try to do 20 minutes or 30 minutes. It will take you months to get that far. But you start these practices and you build them little by little. And they get embedded. And what they do is they, it's this, as I've said, this journey to best self, ownership of your ego, your body. I mean, your mind.
And your mind, you basically have to bring a quiet mind to the plate so that you're open -minded, so that you can learn. Emotions are a big thing. And we have to manage our emotions. And people have to learn how to generate positive emotions. And then how, when they get negative emotions, how do they calm those negative emotions down? And it's possible to do that. Now...
I'll give you another story, which is a story, sort of embarrassing, but I mean, in my probably early, it was like late 20s, early 30s, my wife and I were having a conversation and I was a very smart guy in the sense that I married somebody much smarter than I was. And she's a scientist, a lawyer, oh no, no. And so we were having a conversation and it was getting a little tense and she says,
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Time out, time out. Do you realize just because you feel something, you don't have to say it? I said, no, I didn't realize that. I just, when I'm feeling it, I just, she says, no, you can actually stop, take a deep breath, calm yourself, and then say it in a way that someone's more likely to be willing to listen to it instead of being aggressive.
And I said, well, I need to work on that. She says, yes, you definitely do. And that was my sort of start of understanding about women. Just because I feel it, I don't have to blurt it out. There's practices to calm yourself, take deep breaths. Or act on it. Or act on it. Yeah. And I was in effect. Yeah. I was acting it through behaviors, telling her that she was off the rockets. But it's and so people, people,
have concern to be worried, no doubt about it, no doubt about it. We can't stay the way we are and gonna be successful. And then so that's the scary part. If we don't do our work, well, how do we do our work? And that's the purpose of that I tried to put out there in the world. 28 tools and practices, 35 separate personal workshops that people actually doing stuff and it all works.
because it's historical. And so you start out mindfulness meditation doing two minutes, you get up to five minutes, eventually you get up to 10 minutes, maybe in five to six months, you'll be at 20 to 30 minutes. Okay? When you're an old geezer like me, I can tell you that what's going on in our society and the change in the volatility, right? Because of AI, I am meditating
Twice as many minutes as I used to take meditate in order for me to try to bring my best self And I'm not saying I bring my best self every day. I'm not I'm not a big ego person I got problems like everybody else. Okay, but in order for me to be calm and silent inside and be fully present Listening, okay fully present in my thinking which allows new things to come into my mind. All right Yeah, a my
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meditation minutes are more than double what they were two years ago. And that's because of the stress in everywhere. I mean, whether it's social revisiting our country, whether it's AI in our country, whether it's what's going on in China or Russia, or I mean, the stress is huge. And that's even another reason why people, okay, I got to calm down.
I gotta be settled, I gotta be in control of myself. I want to basically behave in the right ways with my family, with my children, with my friends. I wanna be able to go to work and have an open mind and not get into emotional conversations. And I want to be also respected and treated right by the people I work with, all right? Because it goes both ways and how you do that. So.
The biggest competition any person's gonna have in this new world of smart technology is ourselves. We are our biggest competition. There's so many exciting things in what you're talking about. You're literally speaking to my heart and I wanna go dive in. I wanna respond to what you're saying because I often talk about how we're living in a time where our nervous system is under attack. Never before have we been so stimulated. Never before have we had so many
entities fighting for our attention. And there's very smart algorithms and very smart people creating systems. We are all attached to this thing. It's the first thing that we grab in the morning. It's like, and when you wake up, there's a bunch of notifications. So mindfulness practice is to me now not an option. It is really a matter of self care and survival, really, because you have to
create some space to undo, like, I mean, your nervous system is just fried. So all of that is gonna put you in fight or flight, it's gonna put you in a reaction, it's gonna have you just being an alert and not, and you need quiet to do the work that you are putting forward. You need to reflect, you need to create space. So...
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meditation and I'm also really big on daily practices here. I was so excited when you saw them, when I saw them in your book, I said, oh, this is fantastic. Because those morning rituals, as I like to call them, they really create the practice of you pausing and reflecting and creating an intention for your day instead of just, okay, I gotta go. What I got to do today? I have emails to like just being on the go, go, go, go.
Those practices have been like a game changer for me. And it's now one of the first things that I teach my clients. They come to me for business coaching. And it's really one of the first things that I implement with them is a morning practice. Yes, you are exactly right. You have nailed it. And the people, that is necessary because of everything you have said. And the good thing about it is it works. I mean, you...
You look at, let's just talk about sports for a moment. Basketball, professional basketball. All right. Great teams, great shooters, all this kind of stuff. Okay. I mean, you got a guy that can basically go to the halfway in the court and when he's practicing shoots 60 shots at the net and 60 shots go in. How in the world does that happen? Because he's got inner peace. And let me define inner peace. The state of inner stillness and calmness.
that enables you to go out in the world with your most non -judgmental, fearless, quiet ego and open mind, which enables you to learn, unlearn and relearn. Almost every NBA national basketball, almost every NBA team in the United States has a meditation coach full time working with all their players because this concept of inner peace, all right, this calmness.
Come in that's what you talking about you are helping people develop calmness which allows me to go out in the world and not be immediately highly reactive and immediately highly scared and none highly emotional but calmness which is okay what's going on here alright what's good what's the bad what could be the good okay how am i going to.
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Basically do what I need to do that type of thinking and how you come about and how you play the game so to speak you've nailed it all right and and and it is When I first started taking meditation long long time ago, I got so frustrated with it. I quit All right, and then I had a good friend who was a meditation coach and she said to me no Everything that happened to you is what's gonna happen. You just would
You thought it was going to happen faster. And she looked at me and she says, excuse me, but get your butt back out there and start meditating. And I did years ago. I mean, thankfully many years ago. And, and it comes in chunks. All right. You need to get to about 20 to 30 minutes to, to in today's world to be, to go out there and stay calm. All right. I don't know why for me, uh, but it takes me much more than that.
with everything that's going on. Good, but I know a lot of senior executives that meditate an hour every morning, all right? And then they come home at night. And the interesting thing about behavior change is one of the leading, and I know you're a leading one too, but I have a friend that's like the last 10 years been voted the number one leadership coach in the world, Marshall Goh Smith.
And Marshall has done all of the work that you're doing. I'm doing everything for years. But what's so interesting is, is that every night, I mean, he hired a person to be his sort of coach partner and every night she calls him at a certain time and wants the report on how his practices were today. Not how much money made, not how successful he was. Did you do what you have on your plan?
every day. So deliberate practice. That's why I had the basketball example. That's why I said that people have to understand, start small and do it deliberately and don't say, okay, I'm not going to do it on the weekend. I don't need it over the weekend. No, you do. Yeah. Because if you stop doing it, it cuts out sort of off the system. And so you're spot on. It's deliberate practices, meditation practices. It's
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It's the redefining your ego. It's the thing about the new smart principles that I have in the book. That's the purpose of that. So you're working on ego, you're working on my and you're working on emotions. All right. And how do you take care of your emotions and positive self -talk? You talk yourself out of it. Slow down it. It's what I say to myself. Slow down. OK.
Take a deep breath, alright? Deep breath is very important, alright? Whether you use coherent breathing or if you want to use the Navy SEALs, deep breath. Alright, those are the two big ones. Deep breath all the time. If you, all of a sudden you get in, if you're at work and somebody is really offensive at you and everything, you don't immediately just...
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I'm gonna take control of myself and and then you go back and you ask that person I think we need to talk through this this is what I'm hearing from you is this what you meant instead of coming back with I'm fixing to nail this person all right give the person a chance to change the way they're behaving this is this is not working for me what about for you etc etc and so all of this stuff comes together and it's and people are very busy.
People have families, okay? Workers have families, et cetera. People are very busy. But this will be, this is a pathway. I'm not gonna say it's the only pathway. There may be something else out there. I don't know that it's out there, okay? Because I know that this works. But just be thinking about, all right, how I want to behave and how I want to train myself to behave this way in.
not be so reactive is a beautiful thing about words that there's a Buddhist monk who basically has her Institute out in Santa Fe, New Mexico that I follow and read her work. She's amazing. And she talks about speech. She says, when you start feeling like getting emotional and everything, and you're getting ready to say something, ask yourself is what I'm willing thinking about saying.
Is it true? Is it kind? Is it beneficial? Is it necessary? Is it the right time? So there's just five little things you ask yourself. Is it true? Is it kind? Is it beneficial? Is it necessary? Is it the right time? The key is to pause and reflect. Pause and think before you go out. And then the other tool is to generate positive emotions. Smile. All right?
Let's both of us smile right now. All right? Now what happens when we smile? All right. It sends out. We're looking at each other smiling. That's sending a positive message to somebody. Also, emotionally, it secretes positive emotions. So smile. Be kind. Visualize what you may be doing. Okay? Say thank you after. Often.
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The more you say thank you to people, the more you embrace gratitude, all right? The happier you'll be and the better the relationships will be. Now, if somebody's being evil and all that, you don't say thank you. But just as a general, how many times does somebody say thank you during the day? Somebody says, would you like a cup of coffee? Yes. Oh no, that's not enough. Yes, thank you for asking. And as soon as you smile at somebody, they smile back at you and they start getting positive emotions.
So it's these, it's so easy to smile. You don't need a PhD degree to smile, all right? You don't need any, quite frankly, everything that we're talking about, the practices, so long as you're old enough to understand the words, generally speaking, you get to be 17, 18. Anybody 17, 18 years old, and no matter how old they get, all the stuff that you help people with, and all the stuff that we're talking about here, it applies.
Yeah, you don't need a college degree in order to do what we're trying to do here. Would it help? Yeah. In some instances, yes. But from an emotional viewpoint, from a how you feel viewpoint, from a being a good learner viewpoint, it's not necessary. For example, the. Oh, sorry. No, go ahead. I wanted to. I think it's also important to highlight the the word practice because.
something that I often find, especially with something like meditation that does require, it requires you to stick with it for a while. Just like our nervous system is under attack, our attention is also under attack. So we have the attention span of squirrels nowadays. And if we don't get a benefit, a payoff instantaneously, we want to move on. These practices are something that you, it's a practice.
And it's going to require you to stick with it for a while. And as you go, it's going to the practice will deepen and you will find something else that I find is also a great mindfulness practice is journaling and using that space to reflect and ask yourself deep questions and and to really call forward the work that you are are striving for.
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So I think it's really important that you also go with a mindset of learning, which requires patience, which requires grace. If you're watching a toddler learn how to walk, you wouldn't be like, oh, come on, give up, you're never gonna walk again. You would be encouraging, you would be tender, you would be loving, you would be nurturing. As you are taking on these practices, do that with yourself as well. And one of the things that I love about this book is that it,
It is a workbook. So if you follow the instructions, it is gonna nurture you and guide you into doing some of this work yourself. And I think that's really important because we're also in an era where we just, there's so much information coming at us all over the place, but we never stop to do the implementation. We're watching all these great videos and we're watching all these, we're reading all these books, but you're never stopping to do the work to implement that, how do I?
So you have these concepts running around your head that are really smart and great, but how does that work when you actually physically implement it? So it's important that you, as you take this on, you do that and be gracious with yourself and do the work, do the work. It requires work. And the last thing I want to say is, look at Ed here, he's still working at it. I've been a coach for...
20 years, I'm still working at it. You never get to a place, because that's the other pitfall that people think they're gonna arrive to some mountaintop and, oh, I'm mindful now. Okay, no. That's not how that works. You gotta stick with it. You gotta stick with it. But as you move along and you sense how you're improving, it becomes...
easier to stick with it, so to speak, because as much work that you have done on yourself, all right, and I'll just say me too, not that I'm better or anything, but I'm saying, I mean, there's no way I can stop, all right, because if I said, okay, I got everything made and I'm not gonna do it anymore, to be honest with you, I'd be scared to death to do that, all right, because...
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I know that the likelihood would be that I would revert, all right, go backwards. And the worst thing anybody needs to do in this crazy world we're in, all right, in this fast -paced world, which nobody really knows what's gonna happen the next three, four years, all right, from a work viewpoint, from a human being viewpoint, from a global...
perspective of countries, what countries are going to be doing? No. And so you're exactly right. Start small, okay? Start small. And you build up, and you build up slowly. Sometimes you can take some blocks, but then sometimes what you do is you keep the same amount of minutes for something you're doing, and you add sort of a new practice, a new practice that you start, okay, that has some help. But it really comes down to ego,
mind, emotions, or the three big keys to really that are foundational. All right. And so you make sure you're increasing there. And then when people are doing the work and they're feeling better, they need to generate some pats on the head. Okay. They need to smile at themselves and say, this stuff I feel, I feel
feel like it's working, okay? Well, that's great. And so, yourself a cookie, okay? Slice a cake or something. I mean, something to just say to, and I'm gonna then make the commitment, and I'm gonna keep going, okay? I'm gonna keep going. I think, Gary, he's got the right ideas. I'm gonna stay with that man. I'm gonna stay with that man. I'm gonna listen to him, and I'm gonna keep going. Then it gets, so you sort of build a,
You build a story that basically helps you stay on the practices and the reversal that's important and makes it hard for you to quit. Yeah. My, it, for me, it got to a point for, I want to say something else, two things. I'm not at 30 minutes meditating. I'm probably 12, maybe 15 is probably the most that I can do. And.
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is still a challenge for me. I've been doing it for probably a year and a half on and off. It's still a challenge for me at times, but here's what I wanna say. Even those 10 minutes are beneficial. Even those 10 minutes, and even in my struggle, I still find incredible value. And a big part of the value is just the honoring of the practice, that you are taking time.
to work on yourself, that you are taking time to be with yourself. I have found incredibly, not just rewarding, but a game changer in how I work. Because one of the things that I noticed, my last job I was a seed level executive for a skincare and cosmetic company, and I had become a really great fireman. I was putting out fires all day long. I was solving problems.
all day long. But what was taking a hit was the innovation work, the work that was actually going to get us to grow, the work that was actually going to get us to surpass the challenges that was taking a hit because there wasn't quite space, there wasn't quite moment. So implementing this practice really allowed me to start changing the way that I worked. So much so that my coach could immediately tell,
when my practices were out. And when she saw me challenge or struggle, the first thing she would ask me is, are you doing your morning practices? And not because she was even teaching me that, but because she understood that it was such an integral part of my performance at that point. So I cannot stress this enough. I really...
If you take nothing from this, our time together today, I really want you to pay attention to the, you're creating some rituals for yourself, some practices for yourself and developing the mindfulness and use Ed's book to really guide you to doing some of this self -awareness work. It's so important. And as we're noting, it's really the thing that's gonna differentiate you as we move into this uncertain time.
42:34
And as technology just starts to play a bigger, bigger, bigger and bigger, bigger role in our jobs and careers. Yeah. And your point, you make a, you make a, made a very, very good point. In fact, I posted something the other day. How you start the day will determine how your day goes. Yeah. And so you're, you're, you're spot on. I mean, you, you've got it. And, and, and the, the,
Good thing about this is that it's doable, it's chunkable, all right? And it works. It works because inner peace, inner happiness, calmness, I mean, if you just go to how people think, the best thinking comes about when you're basically, you're entirely calm in your body. You're not talking to yourself.
You're not feeling negativity, but calmness. All right. I mean, if you're out there in the business world and you're trying to be innovative, the research is overwhelming. All right. And you're working in teams generally. Okay. The calmer the teams. All right. The teams that emotionally relate to each other in positive ways are the teams that win. And I'm going to.
give you some science now, which may some people may find difficult to listen to. But a lot of work is going to be done in small teams going forward, no matter what the job is. All right. Because of AI will be doing and smart robots will be doing things that are going to be generally speaking, let's just say the easier things to do. But this this whole thing about us men.
people of the male persuasion are wired differently generally than women are wired. And so MIT and Carnegie Mellon did research on the field of collective intelligence. Teams coming together, collective intelligence is much smarter than any one person's intelligence. In order to do that, you've got to have a psychologically safe environment where people trust each other, et cetera.
44:58
So they did research, started out at MIT, and they did five different research projects, same project, five different times with different people. And the thing that they were testing was, okay, five people on a team, okay, and so it'd be teams with five men, no women, four men, one woman, you get the deal. The most successful teams of five people were teams with five women and no men.
The second best successful was four women and one man. The third was three women and two men. You see where this is going? Now Carnegie Mellon, Carnegie Mellon, another big, great Institute. All right. Said that's crazy. They went off and did, I can't remember whether it's two or three, two or three research projects, and they came up with the same answers. So the message I'm sending here is we men are wired differently than women, generally speaking.
There'll be men that can do it well at the beginning and there'll be women that do it awful, all right? Nobody's perfect. But the thing about it is the message here is that we men need to work on taming the ego, taming always having to be right, taming the macho stuff, all right? Learning how to ask questions, how to be compassionate, how to, instead of a team, me wanting to win all the time.
Okay, what's best the best answer for maybe something different? So I don't identify that I got to have the right answer else. This is wrong or I'm not going to be, you know, doing good. And so we men have to sort of sort of back off. And it's so it's generally speaking, harder for men to stay with these practices you and I are talking about than it is for women as a general rule.
So in today's world, since there's going to be lots of people losing their jobs, what's going to be the quality of the conversations in the workplace and the quality of the work is going to be highly determinative about who has work. Well, we all need to be working on ourselves to do this work, to take ownership of you. Amazing.
47:20
Thank you so much for your spending time with us and sharing your book and sharing your insights, Ed. It's been absolutely lovely. Well, thank you for having me and you're doing wonderful stuff, man. You're doing new ones. Wish you all the best and I hope our paths cross again. Thank you. I hope so too. I hope so too. Thank you so much. Artificial intelligence is moving fast. So it's still too early in the game to make specific predictions about how things are going to go.
But one thing is inevitable and 100 % certain, things are gonna change and it's gonna happen pretty fast. Pandora's box is fully open, so the time to start preparing is now. I for one agree 100 % with Ed. It's those of us that get in ownership, get off our automatic behavior and become highly adaptive learners that lean into our emotional intelligence that will lead the way.
The one area where you will be able to remain competitive with AI, at least for a while, it's emotional intelligence. That's first the ability to identify, use, and manage your own emotions in positive and constructive ways. And secondly, it's the ability to understand the emotions of others and to use those emotions to solve problems, communicate effectively, and to empathize. This work starts with developing your self -awareness.
Which is the ability to get off your autopilot and observe your actions, your thoughts, feelings and interpretations, and be able to discern if they're in alignment with your goals and commitments and intentions. The good news is that there are plenty of tools available to help you in this process. You can start with a tool like Ed's book, which will cost you less than 20 bucks and it's full of exercises and insights that really help you develop this practice.
Or if you want a more personal approach, you can invest in working with a coach who is trained in mindset distinctions like myself. There's also a ton of resources in the internet and in your local library that don't cost you any money at all and can help you take your first steps. But none of these solutions will work if you don't stick with it and develop the practice of consistency. Regardless of which mindfulness and emotional intelligence practices you begin to develop, just remember what Ed said.
49:42
Start small and start slow. Just one or two minutes a day and slowly over time when you feel ready, increase it. I can't stress enough that at the beginning it may feel hard. Just stick with it for 40 days and I think you'll be surprised what happens. You can do five minutes a day for 40 days. Trust me. Yes, these are uncertain times in the job market, but if you take ownership of yourself and your journey and do the work to prepare,
You don't have to be a victim of technology or anything else for that matter. I want to give a very special thank you to our guest this week, the very wise and the very kind Professor Ed. I will add a link to his latest books in the show notes. If you have a topic that you'd like us to talk about on the show, please visit theownershipgame .com and let us know all about it. Thank you for joining us. I'll see you next week. Thanks for listening to this episode of
The Ownership Game with your host, Gary Montalvo. Make sure to like and comment on your favorite podcast platform, as well as subscribe so that you never miss an episode.