The Recognition Factor: Transforming Workplace Culture | A Scratchie Podcast

Beyond Cash Rewards: Yusuf Khoja on Personalized Recognition Strategies | Episode 16

• Scratchie • Season 1 • Episode 16

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What separates truly resilient leaders from the rest? Yusuf Khoja brings decades of experience working alongside icons like Oprah Winfrey, Tony Robbins, and Richard Branson to answer this crucial question. His journey from failed law student to globally recognized leadership expert reveals powerful lessons about turning obstacles into opportunities.

At the heart of our conversation lies a compelling problem—the critical difference between what we recognize and how we recognize it. Yusuf shares a painfully honest story about losing valuable team members despite generous financial rewards. "We paid recognition from the extrinsic side," he explains, "but lost our ability to recognize the importance of intrinsic motivation." This candid admission unlocks a deeper understanding of what truly drives sustainable performance.

We explore emotional intelligence not as a trendy "soft skill" but as the foundational element that enables everything else. As Yusuf puts it, "If we focus on that element of emotional intelligence, that's foundational, that's never going to change." This perspective challenges leaders to reconsider how they approach team development and recognition.

The discussion takes a fascinating turn when we examine innovative recognition approaches like gamification. Our Scratchie app demonstrates how small, immediate rewards can transform workplace cultures by creating a framework that encourages supervisors to actively seek positive behaviors. In traditionally stoic industries like construction, this structured approach normalizes recognition without requiring uncomfortable emotional conversations.

Yusuf also introduces his new book, "The DNA of Great Storytellers," which distills decades of observations watching world-class communicators create powerful human connections. In a world facing unprecedented mental health challenges alongside technological revolution, rediscovering authentic communication may be our most powerful tool for building resilient teams and organizations.

Ready to transform how you recognize your team's contributions? Listen now and discover practical approaches to turn workplace obstacles into stepping stones for growth.

Ready to take the next step? Visit https://www.scratchie.com/book-a-demo to see how Scratchie can help you recognise and reward safe behaviour on your projects. The future of construction safety starts here.

Speaker 1:

Hello everyone. This week we have Yusuf Koja, who's the founder and CEO of Resilient Leaders, and I just I'm really happy to have you here. Yusuf, can you sort of, by way of intro, tell me about what got you into the space of dealing with the likes of Oprah Winfrey and Tony Robbins and those guys and Richard Branson and those guys? What was the lead up to all that?

Speaker 2:

Certainly. Thanks for having me, james. I'm excited to share some ideas with you in conversation. It was by default that I ended up down that journey, or path, if you will. The intended course as far as a professional ambition was for me to become a lawyer, and I did my undergrad in law and psychology. And as I was entering the mindset of writing the LSAT, which was the entrance exam to law school, it came as a bit of a shock to me that I seemed to have some trouble passing that exam. I wrote it three times and then I found myself in a place thinking well, now what do I do? I'm 19 years old, my career path is not what I thought it would be, and one of my professors said well, use this opportunity to explore other interests you might have, which was psychology.

Speaker 2:

It was my undergrad co-undergrad, if you will and my brother at the time, who was a serial entrepreneur, had just purchased a franchise for Tony Robbins this is in the early 90s where you could have a territory and deliver his, what was delivered by Ben in video and digital format. He would have his courses pre-recorded, so we would have the rights to be able to show those recordings and facilitate the lesson plan, if you will, to different audiences. And we had a small territory in the capital of Canada, ottawa, ontario, and we set a record in the first year with a number of subscriptions to those video programs which earned us a chance to work with Tony directly. And we dove into live events first with him. At one point we were promoting his one day strategic influence conferences, started in Canada, we ended up with doing 50% of the events in the United States, and then we branched out to take on different types of presenters, where we changed the model from one presenter to multiple speakers over the course of the day and we approached the likes of former President Bill Clinton, richard Branson, oprah Winfrey, as you mentioned, and that event series grew over the course of three decades to translate to not only North America but the Middle East, as well as India, and over that timeframe I met thousands of people, professionals from all walks of life.

Speaker 2:

I learned from their examples, their stories of challenges and triumphs that they had in running their business, their families, and also learning from the presenters. So it's equipped me with a knowledge base that has allowed me now to transition into founding this company, resilient Leaders, which is really about empowering people who may be facing obstacles or challenges in their personal or business life, to turn those obstacles into stepping stones. To elevate their performance by expanding on the power that we all have. To elevate their performance by expanding on the power that we all have, which is the capacity to turn obstacles into a new way of looking at life and business.

Speaker 1:

Got it Okay, so that's a fair summary. So I'm really interested. I mean, this is the recognition factor of this podcast, so it's about the power of recognition in groups of people, not just the workplace. But did you notice anything in particular in your travels meeting these people that struck you Particularly? Tony seems to be a very I mean positive kind of individual and promotes that and has done very well out of that and has coached some of the leaders in industry on that. What part does recognition play in all that?

Speaker 2:

Well in order for sustainability to happen in our lives or in our organizations.

Speaker 2:

So, whether you're leading a team, starting a business from scratch, and you want to be able to attract the right talent to be able to grow your business and to transition during times of adversity, it's important to recognize people for their contributions in terms of new ideas that they may bring forward, but also for the effort that they bring forward, because I think sometimes in society, especially in North America or Western society, we tend to recognize top performers, we give them the bonuses, we give them the trips, the vacations, we tend to give them the promotions, that type of thing, and that can detract from others who still have value to offer within the organization, but at the moment they may simply not be executing on all levels.

Speaker 2:

Recognition it comes in different forms, as we all know. It's important to understand the types of recognition that are out there and also from an individual standpoint. What is it that one person may find is important from a recognition standpoint that may be different from someone else? Because for some people, recognition is money, it is status, it's the extrinsic motivation, if you will and others it's internal, it's intrinsic, it's giving them a chance to learn, maybe take a seminar or maybe launch a new side to the business and pilot an adventure, for example, and let them know that, hey, even if you fail, the fact that you're trying is important. We want to recognize you for that ambition because ultimately it will pay dividends.

Speaker 1:

And do you think there's enough recognition, or at least do you think people are doing that part of the leadership management function well? Or are there you know from what you've listened to the Tony Robbins of the world and some of these guys are there sort of low-hanging fruit areas that can really optimize people's, I guess, leadership ability but ultimately outcomes that come through people working together?

Speaker 2:

I think you're going to find some people who are always on the leading edge. These can be defined as people who have a growth mindset. They recognize that for things to change, they have to change, and either they're leveling up their skill sets by attending seminars, taking certification courses, et cetera, or they're embracing the fact that their talent pool has innovative ideas themselves. So they're creating networks or foundations within their organizations that supports knowledge sharing and inclusivity.

Speaker 2:

There are those that have yet to learn that lesson, and I think the way society's developed when you look at the advent of artificial intelligence and the access to information that that provides, we're in a place now that, as leaders, if we think that what we've done in the past has created a sense of entitlement or a level of experience that quote unquote we know better, I think we'll find ourselves in a bit of a challenge, because the knowledge that got us to the place where we are today is not the knowledge that's required to get us to where things are going to go in the future. So, to answer your question, the old idea of the 80-20 rule does that apply in this particular instance? There's no real defined percentage. I think it is human nature that those who subscribe to continuously build upon their growth mindset will always be the true leaders in the sense of paving the way, and others will attempt to follow and do their best to play catch up, if you will.

Speaker 1:

Hopefully we can have a bit of debate, a bit of to and fro on this one, and I'm going to try with this initial one.

Speaker 1:

When you said the knowledge, uh, that's been required to date, um, is going to be different to the knowledge that's required in the future, can definitely. You know, there's an obvious agreement with that. But there's also what are the truths that are enduring, and that's what really we've drilled down on, particularly the Decky and Ryan's self-determination theory, which I think we might have touched upon in our call before, where there are these psychological needs that we have and that Deckeki and Ryan believe crosses culture, crosses time, you know, the need for autonomy, the need for to feel competent and the need to relate to others, those three fundamental needs to cause a healthy psyche. You know, should we look at the skills of the future or should we double down on some of those age old principles that we're probably not doing well? And the reason why I'm making it in one or the other? Because obviously we want to do a bit of both, but it's where are our energies best applied.

Speaker 2:

Well, it's interesting that you point out the skills of the future and the tried and true principles. I like to consider, just from the standpoint of emotional intelligence if that is the foundational piece that we can all agree upon is one of the most important elements of our psyche that we need to develop and to continuously focus on, then the skills of the future, the ability to recognize what those skills might be or to, in some instances, be innovative enough to develop those skill sets to pave the way for others to follow, will be a byproduct of the fact that we bought into the theory of emotional intelligence. So that begs the question. Well, what does emotional intelligence really mean?

Speaker 2:

And a lot of people refer to it as soft skills, which has a bit of a stigma associated, because people don't want to be defined, potentially, as being soft and not dealing with the real business acumen, if you will.

Speaker 2:

And yet it is the soft skills things like empathy, being authentic, being transparent, being a better communicator that ultimately is going to enable our organization, from a cultural standpoint, to elevate itself and to allow people to feel safe enough that they can offer their ideas without being judged upon or perhaps being excluded from future discussion because they didn't live up to expectations.

Speaker 2:

So when we focus on that element or definition of emotional intelligence, that's foundational, that's never going to change because it's built on the principle of continuous improvement which, if you look across any industry, in any sector, it operates on the basis whether you're selling nuts and bolts, a car business, with you as a human being, and we're all driven by these fundamental psychological factors a sense of belonging, a sense of autonomy, a sense of personal growth that we feel, a sense of fulfillment, and these are ultimately going to come back to these principles of self-improvement and emotional intelligence and the skills of the future. It's hard to predict what the skills of the future are going to be or what's going to be required, but fundamentally, I think that'll be a natural process that we'll evolve into over time.

Speaker 1:

It's funny that you mentioned soft skills having a bit of a stigma, because I immediately think of the leaders of industry and think what are they doing and how are they leading? And does, for example, my business, scratchy, which is involved in the recognition and reward piece in the workplace would that fit in? You know the Elon Musk type environment and does he exhibit soft skills? And when you mention some of those things like authenticity and that sort of stuff, love him or hate the guy, he's authentic, right? He tweets what he wants when he wants, and so it's interesting that, on that measure, his soft skills actually are very high. And I guess soft skills doesn't necessarily it doesn't mean you're kumbaya singing around the campfire all the time, does it. It's occasionally that comes across as super tough when you need to have I think they called it in Silicon Valley radical candor. I think they went to town on that one.

Speaker 2:

Soft scale is a definition that somebody introduced a while ago. We could call it a superpower scale, and it would totally transform how people view it.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, well said, well said, and I guess, when it reminds me a little bit of psychological or psychosocial safety, I should say which is something that I've spoken about with others recently and it's like okay, it seems to me like there's a balance that's required and we come from probably not enough, but there is such a thing as too much is such a thing as too much, and if you focus too much on this psychosocial or the soft skills piece and not the actual hard work, then you've got an imbalance. That's an issue. When you're so worried about how everyone's feeling that you forget about the task at hand, that's not good. When you're so involved in the task at hand and not worried about other people, that's not good either. Somewhere in the middle, right, is this balance, is what we're striving for, but I think it's useful to know that there is such a thing as too much on either side. Would you agree?

Speaker 2:

Well, that's really interesting because, in my own experience, when I think about soft scales, and what's allowed me to have a level of success, is the fact that confidence and self-esteem come from a byproduct of knowing that if you have a level of success is the fact that confidence and self-esteem come from a byproduct of knowing that, if you have a plan of action that's been proven and that you have the mindset to consistently execute on the little points, that eventually, over time, you're going to create exponential results. So what allows you to have that stickiness, if you will, to continue that path, even while you're dealing with adversities and setbacks? Because, let's not kid ourselves, adversity and setback is a requirement to get to the next level, because it forces us to say, well, what do we need to do to get better? And if we don't have adversity, the opposite is, people tend to have this sense of entitlement where they become complacent. So adversity is really important. You know the old saying if there wasn't for resistance in terms of error, a plane would never get off the ground. It serves a very valuable purpose.

Speaker 2:

So I think soft skills, if you look at it from the standpoint, at least from my own perspective it made me improve or allowed me, I should say, to improve my interpersonal communication skills. That made me more confident. So when I walk into a room, I'm not afraid to talk to people, I'm not afraid of making mistakes. I am willing to articulate my value proposition because I practice what it is that I have to offer to an organization or to a person and I understand, from a psychological standpoint, how do I communicate with this person so I can establish a level of trust with them where they feel a sense of connection with me that now differentiates me potentially from everyone else out there offering the exact same product, the exact same service. They're out there discounting their prices because they can't compete, because they've lost the ability, or perhaps lost the ability for the moment to understand that you're not going to win every line of business.

Speaker 2:

Understand that you're not going to win every line of business, but if people feel like they can trust you that authenticity you spoke about earlier, that comes from communication skills, the transparency that you talked about, elon Musk. It's knowing the value that you can create and standing by that identity. These all fall under the umbrella of soft skills, no-transcript and how we are going to compete with what's coming down the road, and we also have to have that segment of training and development, that recognition piece that you led off with, to let people know that, no matter what the environment is and we cannot always predict what the environment is going to be we're always going to be behind you, because we're always going to be focusing on investing in you, because, at the end of the day, you are the asset ultimately that's going to innovate, create, foresee challenges and build those meaningful relationships with people that are ultimately going to do business with us, not only now, but also for the long run.

Speaker 1:

Right. So, with that said, are there any? Can you think of any stories or examples in your that may prove or disprove this piece where recognition creates higher performance? I mean, stories are always good for this sort of stuff. Yeah, To put you on the spot.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, you are putting me on the spot, which is great. I can think of one example. This falls into the category of failures. We'll have to see if that actually answers the question that you pose. But when we talk about recognition, I'm going to talk about recognition not necessarily from a financial standpoint, but giving people a voice at the table. So when we started our business again this is from the early 1990s and we'll go until just past the financial crisis, so let's go to 2010 to give a little bit of a buffer we had had a number of growing pains developing the business, and any entrepreneur or leader in our organization already knows this.

Speaker 2:

You pay the price and eventually you get the reward, and then there's a sense of entitlement that crept in where we've paid our dues. Now is the time for us to enjoy these rewards, and there's nothing wrong with doing that. But we lost ourselves when we figured we're always going to reward our sales people who are out there hitting the road, our customer service people, our logistics people we're going to reward them financially. You do a good job, you're going to get a bonus. You show up to work X number of period of days in a row, you're going to get a bonus, and it was always either financial reward.

Speaker 2:

It was perhaps a vacation for two to go to a destination for a weekend, but what we stopped doing is we stopped listening to them when they were introducing ideas like hey, what if we tried this? Or we have been trying this for X, y, z. Here's what our customers are saying. It doesn't seem to be working. Should we try something different? And we lost our ability to listen to their ideas because we felt, based on our own history of quote unquote, paying our dues, that we knew better. And so, while we were paying recognition from the extrinsic side, we lost our ability to recognize the importance of the intrinsic motivation, more specifically, to listen, to be able to adapt some of their ideas and give them some runway, to let their ideas express themselves in the marketplace and see what could happen. Well, guess what happened?

Speaker 2:

In our experience, these people, although they were getting paid very well, especially for the age group where they were in at that time, they left. They simply left, piece by piece, not all at once, and we were left literally wondering what did we do wrong? How are we missing the boat here? We've done so much for them. And then we got mad. We said I can't believe they left, don't they know what we're doing for them?

Speaker 2:

Not only did they leave, but they took the ideas that they were trying to introduce to us. They started it themselves and went to direct competition with us and they literally took a big piece of our business away from us and our egos. Of course, you know, they took a big hit, not to mention our bottom line, and then, when I look back at it now, I said this is one of the most valuable lessons that I could have ever learned, because any business who's not listening to their talent that's out there showing up every day and, granted, not all the talent shows up in the same way, but you know who they are it's really important from a recognition standpoint to identify how do they want to be recognized and have the systems being built into your organization to give them the recognition they need at the pace in which it is required. It's going to take a little bit of work and effort and then I think you'll see some really amazing things continue to happen down the road.

Speaker 1:

It's really interesting. Thanks for sharing. So I've had something similar. We trained up. I started a climbing company in China and the moment we trained up we had the Canadian wilderness first aid. People come and the trained up people are best of like you know. So we were the best in the country at the time. And then immediately the local guides that we had trained up went and started their own firm. And so then you've got to decide again. It's an ego play. You've got to decide how am I going to play this? Because I'm so angry in one sense, but I'm it. It's not my home ground. I'm in the deepest, darkest, rural china uh, in the other sense.

Speaker 1:

So alexander, who was the co-founder of this company and my best mate through high school, alexander and I decided we're going to embrace them, we're going to embrace it. So it's totally counterintuitive, totally not what your ego is strongly telling you to do. And so we thought, no, we're going to do it anyway. So we embraced them. We said fair enough, you've left, you've done your own thing, we're busy marketing to schools. You can't really do that because you're two guys with a dog and a rope in this country town that's well-trained, and they became subcontractors to us. So when we needed to expand, you know. So it was a fantastic. So it's kind of like a sub lesson to what you're talking about, but I really appreciate you mentioning mentioning that because there's so there's so many lessons in that one question that I have and it's kind of more um a topic area from that whole story.

Speaker 1:

Charlie munger, one of my heroes, has is known to say, when anytime he gives these sort of top five or top 10 sort of pieces of wisdom, this always pops up again the power of incentives. And so he's he's known in his um poor charliemanac, he said I've always known how powerful incentives are, but every time I have guessed at how powerful it might be, I underestimated it. And so was that error that you and I have both made in different contexts? Was that error caused by mistaking, or at least using extrinsic when it should have been intrinsic? Is it a case of that, which is one hypothesis, or is it a case of simply the wrong incentives? So I'm going to incentivize an outcome and that's only what I'm going to incentivize, as opposed to saying, if you've got good ideas, I'm going to incentivize that If you've got other incentives always extrinsic in this sense. So you know, not saying we were doing extrinsic when we should have been doing intrinsic, but rather what could we have? How could we have changed our incentives so that they would have been fired up?

Speaker 2:

Is there an element to that? That is a deep question, I think, from the perspective of a paradigm that perhaps you and I grew up with. The schooling system and so forth is you either go work for a company or you start a business and you reward top performers and the bottom that aren't producing. You let them go, or you try to assign them to a different area and the top performer rewards, as I mentioned earlier, was usually financial-based or some type of status, material type of base. But today, when we look at organizations, you hear conversations around succession planning and innovation at the same time, and then inclusivity based on demographics as well as cultural challenges.

Speaker 2:

The world has certainly evolved in so many ways where the audience that we deal with are multi-language, multi-faith, multi-generational. So I think the old school mentality that we grew up with as far as how do we recognize or motivate people has certainly come under and rightfully so, I think review, and so when we are looking to elevate our organizations and develop teams, it's important to have a sit down with them to figure out what are the motivators that align with their needs and their values. Because if we look at multicultural organizations, what motivates somebody from this part of the world, a Western society compared to somebody who's a Southeastern society or European society, may be completely different, and so it's incumbent upon us, as business owners, leaders, managers, parents, students or teachers is to ask the question who's?

Speaker 1:

our audience.

Speaker 2:

Who is our audience? We tend to be a little bit myopic and thinking well, if I did it this way, then you must be able to do it this way because this is how we grew up. But that's just not the way it is, especially in an information aid society which is a little bit of an old school term in itself where people have access to so much data that they can learn almost instantaneously what someone else in the world is doing to address the same issue and come up with a different idea, and want to be recognized for coming up with a different idea that we may not even think of as value because we haven't been introduced to it. It really puts the onus on us to continue to have those types of conversations or create a format where people can feel like they they can continuously express their ideas, which I brought up earlier. It's not an easy question to answer, james, it's just. It's a byproduct of the society we live in now.

Speaker 1:

I think okay, perhaps I can put it in a different way what if let's? In this it's a now hypothetical, because we're sort of doing a counter history, so to speak. So, uh, you, you're starting up, you're kicking goals, you've got a good young team, they're well paid, they're paid on outcomes, and then you're having a talk with one of them and it says I've got this idea. And again, 2020 hindsight, there's no judgment. Like you say, both errors and mistakes is where it's at in terms of learning.

Speaker 1:

So and I'm it's talking to myself as much as anyone else, maybe more so this person, this young manager, comes up and says I've got this idea and you go okay, that's great, and you reward the ideas as they come. So how would that change have changed in our fictitious example here? How do you think that might change the outcome? So, both listening so it's the recognition piece but also actually rewarding, extrinsically rewarding good ideas, is to say that new idea, let's give it a crack and if it goes well, you'll get X percent of the upside, that sort of thing. How do you think that might sort of change history in that sense?

Speaker 2:

The idea of you get X percent. I like that. That's a deal in the making, something that I can quantify and get excited by, because I know if I bring you X number of ideas and three of them end up working, it's going to mean this to me, but for somebody else, the fact that you're willing to allow them to present their idea and run with it could be the reward in itself.

Speaker 1:

In itself true.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, that could be part of it. The other part is to say is have that discussion. Thank you for bringing the ideas, because this is how we're going to grow and innovate as an organization. How would you like to be compensated should this work out?

Speaker 1:

Right. What is your utopia look like in this situation? Are?

Speaker 2:

we launching a new business segment? Are we branding a new product line or service offering based on what you're bringing Like? How do you see this playing out? And now they're taking ownership of the idea that they can actually potentially come up with a business plan to run its course and you have extended potentially your business value proposition by inviting them to have this conversation.

Speaker 1:

It's a really good point. It's a really old bull kind of pushback to that person with the idea is to say what, what fires you up like how would this? And then you can respond to that and it reminds me. So we're doing. We've got this app called scratchy and we're doing user experience design for release three, and of course we're about it's about it's winning at work, in short.

Speaker 1:

So we're rewarding, we're providing ways to instantly reward people wearing hard hats and hairnets. We say and so if they do things well, they get an instant reward. There's so much psychology that supports that in terms of competence, relatedness, autonomy, that sort of stuff, and so that's fine and well, there's a way to. And so we're copying, we're emulating to use a better term a lot of the leading apps out there and their user experience, such as Duolingo. Duolingo is the king and queen of gamification as far as we're concerned. They've done all the A-B testing. They're absolutely brilliant at it. But one of their devices is to. You have these. I don't know if you've you've done duo lingo at all, because I might be. I have not, but okay, definitely be looking.

Speaker 1:

It's worth. It's worth having a look at um and one of their devices. They've got several ways to gamify language learning, right, um and, of course, uh, you. You have this pathway and you've got this little um character, the duo character, uh, and one of, and you've got a leaderboard and all that sort of thing. But one of the things I've got is and freezes your streaks. So if you go day by day and you have an unbroken streak, then it rewards that, it recognises that. So, yeah, so there's no cash rewards, but it's full of recognition. So it's an amazing app and you could you could argue we're simply pulling that in to the workplace to make a tool to do that in the workplace. Now, one of their devices is you have different leaderboards. You've got the amethyst leaderboard and the sapphire leaderboard and all that sort of thing.

Speaker 1:

And I was talking to our gamification consultant and said, well, I, I don't like that. Like that doesn't appeal to me at all, it means nothing to me. And he said he's got a deep psychological background. He was like James. There's four, let's say, in this model there's four archetypes. You're one of them, there's three others. It appeals to other archetypes. Not everyone's like others. It appeals to other archetypes. Not everyone's like you, and it's funny, because I regard myself as someone, reasonably, I think I'm open-minded, right, which is the first big mistake, because I think we all do. And so here am I wanting to dictate an app that suits my archetype. Accidentally, right, and thankfully I've got someone in the team who can both understand what's going on and feel free to sort of push me aside and say no, you're wrong on this one and you know. So then we can appeal to all four of these archetypes and, of course, depending on which model you're looking at, could be 8 or 12 or whatever.

Speaker 1:

But the point is there's more than one kind of way of thinking, even though it feels to me so logical, and so everything it suits my lens through which I see the world so clearly. So, yeah, that's, I thought that would. And that gets back to your point saying to the person what fires you up? Like what is it? Because, in a way, in a street psychologist sense, like what is it? Because, in a way, in a street psychologist sense, you're going, what kind of archetype are you? But you don't even have to have that weird question because you're just saying him or her what fires you up? And they go. This is what fires me up, and you go. Okay, well, there's the answer. Let's see if we can work towards that.

Speaker 1:

So that's a really good way to put it.

Speaker 2:

You referenced earlier, charlie Munger and, of course, warren Buffett would always say that when he looked at his breakthrough in terms of investing ways, when he, instead of looking at making X number of dollars on trading a stock, he looked at it from the mindset of owning the company versus owning the stock. So if we look at our employees in the same fashion as a part of inviting them to own the company, then we're going to have a lot of people then by asking the question if you were to own part of this company, what would you see as your future and the reward structure you would like to see in place? Then I think you get a different level of answer and commitment at the same time.

Speaker 1:

And even then, like, you and I are both owners of companies, and so I made the mistake earlier of assuming that everyone must want to own a company, like that's got to be, like it's always been what I've wanted. So therefore everyone must want to own a company, like that's got to be, like it's always been what I've wanted, so therefore it must apply to everyone. And um, right, and so I was. On more than one occasion I sort of said, um, and you know, we can talk about ownership in the company. And they're like, doesn't fire me up, you know'm on a different journey to you, and so it's so interesting how putting ourselves in other people's shoes is much, much harder than it first seems. And I think we can see when other people don't do it, but we can rarely see when we're not doing it.

Speaker 2:

That's right and we're all conditioned. We're creatures of habit and that's past conditioning. It's autonomic for us. We don't think about it because it just happens on autopilot. So it really forces us to take a step back from time to time and say how are things going, Notice what the results are getting. If the results are not exactly what we thought, then perhaps we need to do a check-in a little bit more often on our own way of thinking, as well as the organization and the people in it.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, what would you say is a counter to how you understand what the likes of Scratchy's doing, providing these instant rewards in the workplace? What do you see as good and what would you debate in that sense?

Speaker 2:

I like the idea of instant rewards or rewards where you can anticipate, based on performance, that there'll be some type of a kickback, providing that the I don't even know if kickback's the right term to use, but some type of a benefit, providing that there is value associated to it.

Speaker 2:

So here in North America we now see providers that do that from a standpoint of specifically for the younger demographic. So they'll get an allowance as part of their compensation package, so they may not get the big salary and the big bonus, but they get X number of points towards their fitness membership. Or perhaps they get a free rental car because they don't own cars. They prefer to walk, but sometimes they need a car so they can utilize it at their own discretion. So I think those types of rewards whether it's not A, b or C, but it's, here's an entire menu and you get to choose how you want to use them I think they can have a lot of value, and there's signs that suggest that it does, because there's a lot of take up and utilization ultimately is the differentiator between whether there is real value or not.

Speaker 2:

You want to see people utilizing, so that's part of it. I get excited by that. I suppose, if I were to throw a caveat out there, if there's too much of that and the intrinsic value of knowing that I have a seat at the table, potentially, or that I'm part of the business, that I'm shaping things, then I wonder when things don't go well and I again I look back to my own experience. When the financial crisis hit or when the pandemic hit, the people who stayed the course in the organization, who worked the extra hours, maybe they just showed up with a positive attitude when they could have said you know what, screw this. Or they came up with ideas to keep the employees engaged because they were now all working remotely and the mental health issues were starting to spike. You have to, or at least I would.

Speaker 2:

If we're too motivated on these instant rewards and we're not recognizing the intrinsic value, then when tough times happen, how many of these people are going to stick with us and how many of them are going to end up leaving? So I think there has to be a fine balance between both. It's not an easy answer, certainly for anybody to figure out, but I think, as far as a planning, a strategic plan. It's important to consider that and to recognize that. Who are those people that you know? Rewards they're not being utilized, but they seem to be coming to us to say, hey, I really want to do this. Can I run with this? It's important to notice who those people are, because this is just my guessing at it. Those are the people who are probably going to be there for the longer duration and they're probably going to stick it out during the tough times. I've seen it. I've seen it in the last couple of years and I'm sure I'm not the only one.

Speaker 1:

Okay, I'd love what you raised just then, because I want to sort of put to you a scenario and actually I want to put to you a proposition that something like Scratchy is not about the rewards primarily. So. What it does is when you give a reward let's say someone has a good idea, or they've kept their area tidy, or they've always had that bright attitude like you're talking about during hard times, or they've just turned up anything at all that's positive you give them a scratchy. Scratchy typically is 5, 10, 20, 50 bucks, something like that. It's like winning. You don't know what you're going to win. It has that dopamine, endorphin, serotonin kind of like boost. We call ourselves the dopamine dealers, you know Right. So the supervisor gets this person and says you've done, you've just come here and you've always got this bright attitude and I've really just want to thank you for that. Scan this, this is a scratchy. I don't know how much you're going to win, but it's what the workplace does here. It's the least I can do Scan this and thank you and everything. Worker goes oh, thank you. Scans, it wins some money enough for a lunch or something like that. Not a great amount, but what that does is it cements the conversation, the thought that that supervisor had it sort of underscores the recognition piece. So instead of the supervisor saying, look, thank you for coming in, that's actually really nice, is to one step further and have made it more concrete. So then that person has been officially awarded. As opposed to saying, you know, boss, said something nice to me, that was nice. It can go home to his or her partner and say I just won something today, you know, and they can have this sense of pride. So it's, the actual cash award for us is very much secondary or it's like it's not the important thing. The actual cash award for us is very much secondary, it's like it's not the important thing. But what it does is it sets it up for everything that you speak of. And that is the conversation, the positivity, the recognition, all those sorts of things. But it just gives it especially.

Speaker 1:

It came from originally the construction industry. Construction industry is male-dominated, not only male, only male dominated. But and I'm one of them we've, we've all got I joke and say we've all got asperger's, because it's like we love talking about concrete and steel, don't really much like talking about feelings if my dad, who's an old builder, my dad and I get in a room, then immediately we'll look at the ceiling, we'll talk, talk about the joists, we'll talk about the. You know we do not like talking about feelings so much, and so this is a way in the construction industry to bring these soft skills we introduced at the start of this into real life in a way that builders because you know, you could say to a supervisor in the construction industry have you recognised any of your workers? And they'll go yeah. And then you go and ask the workers have you been recognised? They go no, you know, and he might not be lying. He might think in his own mind that he has been recognising, but he hasn't.

Speaker 1:

Whereas with Scratchy in the construction industry context we're in mcdonald's and and logistics companies and all that sort of thing now. So we're in different contexts as well. But in the construction industry context you can say how many scratchies have you given out or haven't? Right, okay, how about you try giving out two or three scratchies tomorrow? Yeah, okay, you know. And then immediately they're primed. They have to look for the good, because they want to having to recognize the good. So it's like, oh well, that area is pretty tidy actually. Yeah, okay, that's joe. Hey, joe, that area is tidy mate. Well done, you know, you see what I'm. So it's a, it's a vehicle, it's a tool for creating those very conversations that you, you, speak of I'd love to hear your thoughts yeah well, I I think it.

Speaker 2:

I think it is a great idea and especially it almost gives you a when you ask somebody the question how many scratches have you given out? Puts the onus on recognizing what's working well. And I think, sometimes in society especially. You know, I don't watch the news for a reason. I watch the financial news for a whole different reason.

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

The news is just a cycle, a perpetual. What's going wrong?

Speaker 1:

I haven't watched it for 15 years. Well, there you go. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2:

But I think we talked earlier about conditioning and being on autopilot. Most people do watch the news and even if we consciously say to ourselves, well, I don't really let it affect me, I just want to know what's going on, which makes sense logically, it still does affect you. Over here when I do workshops for corporations, I'll always do a test, and it's an old commercial that used to run years and years ago. It's a coffee company.

Speaker 2:

I don't know if it runs in your part of the world, but I will do the first part of the tagline. And this commercial is 20, 30 years old. It's going way back In the middle of the conference. I'll say let's try this. We talk about this conditioning subject. I'll say let's try this out for an exercise. I'm going to do the first part of the tagline. I want you to do the best to answer the tagline and 90% of the people finish off that tagline Right. And I would say to them have you been practicing?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, of course the answer is no yeah but this is the power of conditioning Right and so when we look at things like the negativity of the use, it's going to carry over into the workforce. So what I love about what you just said is that it forces people in an instance to rethink holy cow. Maybe I am focusing on what's wrong instead of what's right, and maybe it allows me to focus on myself as a self-improvement tool while I'm handing out these rewards to others.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, well said, no, exactly right. It's funny what you say about the news. I'm on x now and I'm sort of you get it from the horse's mouth when it's on x, not curated, and it's quite an interesting uh. Yeah, it's very. It's all changing very quickly, isn't it? So yeah, certainly is. So, yusuf, we're coming sort of to the end. I I really appreciate what you've said. I'm wondering, if you're able to, I'd love to hear about the book I think that you've just recently published. Do you want to talk about that and what that addresses?

Speaker 2:

Thank you, I'd love to yes. The book is called the DNA of Great Storytellers and it focuses on how to harness the power of communication skills to build human connection and foster team effectiveness. And the reason I wrote the book is when I looked at the last three decades of my life in promoting, organizing and speaking at leadership and wellness events, I would say that the majority of the presenters who resonated with the audience and this would be justified based on feedback scores that audience members would fill out consistently did certain things in a certain way to create the highest level of results with the audience. They scored the highest, and I wanted to figure out what is it that they're doing? And so I would ask people like why do you like the speaker so much? Is it because of their popularity? Is it because of their topic? They said no, it's because they felt like they were speaking to me in a room of 1,000, 5,000 people. Because they felt like they were speaking to me in a room of 1,000, 5,000 people.

Speaker 2:

So I began to ask the question how is this possible, that people can do this? So I distinguished what the characteristics are, in terms of foundational principles, of great communicators, which is hence the title the DNA of Great Storytellers, but I wanted to present it in a way that anybody, in any walk of life, could utilize these skill sets to harness this communication tool. Because when we look at our society today, there is a mental health crisis. Anywhere in the world is a mental health crisis. There is a technological revolution that's continuous. Our state of health and wellness should be optimal based on the resources that are available, but it's not and I think fundamentally, we have lost the art of communicating and creating that sense of human connection.

Speaker 2:

So this book and it's a relatively short read, it's you know, it's basically you can get through it in two hours is about identifying whether you're a parent, a teacher, whether you're a business team leader or an entrepreneur or a CEO. What are the skill sets these great communicators utilize to create this level of connection and trust and rapport and engagement with their audience, and how can you use it in different contexts. But I've also designed it in a way where it can have some stickiness to it, because a lot of the books that I've read over the years, I remember reading Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill years and years ago and I was like, okay, I've got to write this down, and I've got to write this down, and, scrambling, I put notes in the margins and I put sticky notes on the pages so I could then transfer that knowledge into another book or journal later on.

Speaker 2:

So in the book, what I did is I created chapter summaries where I prompt you to write down what your takeaways were from the previous chapter.

Speaker 2:

I've created a storytelling journal in the back where I prompt you to ideate your own stories, your own experience. Too often we lose the brilliance of our own lives because we're so caught up in trying to create a future, and I think that's a lost opportunity for us all. So what I encourage people to do in the book, after you learn these foundational principles and tools, is go and daydream. Go, revisit your life in the best way possible. Take away those turning points in your life that have brought you where you are today in terms of what's great and perhaps what's not so great, and then create a story around that, utilizing some of the principles, and now you have something that you can deliver to different audiences while also leveling up your own skill sets. So if you feel nervous about presenting in public or that type of thing if you're not sure how to deliver an effective webinar. All of those resources are combined in this book, so I'm really excited.

Speaker 2:

I wrote it because I wanted to leave a legacy based on my experience in the industry, and I also wanted to make it easy for people to relate to. So thank you for asking. It's on. Amazon and it comes out February 1st in paperback version.

Speaker 1:

Cool. Well, I genuinely want to read it. The DNA of great storytellers, the one thing that I thought you know there's a few, you know when you sort of write a letter to yourself in the future and all those sorts of little exercises you do, and I found that what I'd like as an old man do, and I found that what I'd like as an old man, you know, fast forward decades. I would like to be a great storyteller, right, I would like for kids or whatever, to actually be, you know, entertained and taken with my stories and not just be one of these old men who talks about themselves and, you know, story is about what I did in the past and how good I was but rather a genuinely good storyteller, yes, so it's. It's, it's a great, it is a service actually to to, and a legacy to be able to, to share those tips that you've learned so thank you, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1:

So I'll definitely get a, get a book. I'll see if we can get some mates rates. So you don't have mates rates, do you no? So no, look, yusuf. Thank you so much for talking today and having this conversation. It was really interesting and I think we've explored, we've expanded around the topic, you know, leadership and incentives and recognition and, ultimately, storytelling.

Speaker 2:

It's been a robust conversation for sure, and I'm grateful. Thank you for this opportunity. I will look forward to reviewing it many times over.

Speaker 1:

Pleasure. Okay, cheers, yusuf, see you. Thanks, james, bye-bye.

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Garry Mansfield

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James Kell

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