Greg Voisen
Welcome back to Inside Personal Growth. This is Greg Voisen, host of Inside Personal Growth. And joining me from Elgin, Illinois is Brian Smith PhD. And we're going to be talking about Brian and his daughter's book, Mary Griffin, Positive Influence: Be the I in Team. Good day to you. How are you doing?

Dr. Brian Smith
Oh, good day to you too, Greg, I'm great. Thank you for having me.

Greg Voisen
Well, thank you for taking the time to speak with our listening audience about a really important topic. And it's something that I think, especially people in middle management, upper management need to know more about. It certainly is something that I would say is, can change the whole trajectory of an organization. And the work that you and your team do is just, it's important. Not everybody goes into doing this, but I'm going to let people know a bit about I a business advisors, Brian can be reached at iabusinessadvisors.com. This work because he's just in Illinois, doesn't mean he can't do it remotely, can a lot of this work, as I'm sure they're doing remotely. But since 1988, Brian has helped over 19,000 business owners and managers on all seven continents. Yes, he says Antarctica to come coming from companies of all sizes, he's helped them make decisions to help them grow personally. And as an organization. He's a lifelong learner. He has a PhD in organizational psychology, Master's degree in Management Information Systems, a master's degree in Occupational Safety and a bachelor's degree in accounting and is a certified Six Sigma Master Black Belt consultant. And he also has Microsoft MC s. E, has completed many certification courses supporting his work as an advisor. Well, Brian, it's a pleasure having you on and we're gonna speak about positive influence today. And, you know, I found it interesting, you know, who wrote the introduction was Rene, your wife to the book, and said, you at the time you owned an auto body shop, and you fired her, and I really liked her story. And then oh, by the way, then wink wink, you guys got married, and had children. But she, you asked your wife to write the foreword to this book. And you wrote, you co-wrote the book with your daughter, Mary. And your wife mentioned that during that time that she was pregnant, she was reading self-help books and when she was pregnant, and, and the advice she received was pretend that a video camera was recording her actions. She read that somewhere. And I went to and got a master's degree in spiritual psychology. And we always used to say, hey, if there was a camera following you all day long, which would what was recorded? Would you like it? Would you like it? Meaning how you were treating other people, and also how you kind of treated yourself because I think if most of us had a video camera run on us during the day, we may not like some of the things we say. We also might not like how we feel at the end of the day, personally as well. And I think this is great advice. Why do you believe this is a good tool to teach people about being a positive influence?

Dr. Brian Smith
Well, I think a lot of us find ourselves in what we like to call the comfortable focus of our lives. We're in our lane, we're focused on whatever our area of influence is, and we forget that our actions, our words, have influenced themselves. And so when we think like this, as you just pointed out, and we surround ourselves with the idea that we're being filmed, it makes us be a little bit more in the present a little bit more in the moment, a little bit more understanding of our current influence, and how we're acting. And when we slow down and do that we have the best opportunity for one to be our best selves, but for two to have a positive influence. And then we have our best opportunity to be not just positive, but we're not afraid to hold ourselves accountable for the actions that we take because we were deliberate about them.

Greg Voisen
Yeah, you know, in this case, in businesses, you see this a lot. And we're like actors on a stage in a play. And we've been given roles. Right? And it's interesting, you know, when the camera is on, depending on if the ego is high or something's happening. We see people that like to kind of take charge we see others that maybe aren't so happy with that, because of the way they do it. And you state that we diminish the value of our influence when we ignore the influence we have on others. And focus solely on the influence that we can have on ourselves. Why is it so important to remember the influence we're having on ourselves to transmute elements of our personality for the better?

Dr. Brian Smith
Well, everything we do has influenced. So if we're not our best selves, first, how could we ever want to be or ever be the best self for others and one we're reflective in, give ourselves that level of attention, we set ourselves up to be that best influence. And we don't have to look over our shoulder at what the ripple effect that might be of what we're saying and doing because we were deliberate about it. We planned those actions, we plan those words, we slowed ourselves down, and we didn't let environmental urgency or real or immediate reactions overtake us. And when were our best selves, we give ourselves the opportunity to have our best individual positive influence.

Greg Voisen
Yeah, it was interesting, Renee wrote in there, that she had two bits of advice from those personal growth books. And one of them was to take a deep breath. And the other one was to look at the thing as if a camera was following you, right? And she said that, that the camera following you was more important, she thought, than taking the deep breath, but they're all very important. And that other one, about taking a deep breath before, or if we're charged emotionally, is a really important one. And if you would speak with the audience about the importance of communications, because, you know, this is a big area, I've had lots of people on here that have written books about communications, the ADHD, marriage, communications, and marriage, the communications inside businesses, and how we can improve our communications to have a positive impact on others within our teams, right. So, you know, there's so many people that work in a team, whether it's a development team at Adobe, or Microsoft, or Google or wherever it might be. And I know my son is runs a team of 34 people at Adobe. And he says, Dad, it can be quite challenging, because I'm the one that has to kind of how you want to call it keep the peace but modulate what's going on inside there. Also, what are some of the key takeaways from this chapter, each one of your chapters has takeaways, actually, it's not even chapters, you'll write a section. And then then you'll have right after that key takeaways from that section. And I think I, I would just let our listeners know that that's a great way to have designed a book, because you can actually just go to the takeaways, if you want, you probably get just as much out of the book. So what are some of those takeaways on communications that you'd like to leave listeners with?

Dr. Brian Smith
Yeah, I think the number one takeaway that I've been talking about a lot recently, and we talked about it in the book, and this may not be specific to that section. But context matters in all of our communication. And one of the things that we like to teach is smart communication, being specific when you're communicating this somebody setting, boundaries measuring. So when we set boundaries, and communications, we outline for what the boundaries might be of the conversation, what we're asking for, what our expectation is in return. Also understanding attainability and reality of the context of the conversation. And is this the right time to have conversations? When we think in a smart way about how we communicate? It gives us that pause that deep breath that that we just talked about, it allows us to think about the contextuality of that conversation and what we want out of it, am I trying to delegate? Am I trying to get information back? Am I trying to give direction or give mandates? And when we approach communication in this smart way? It gives us that slow down opportunity, it gives us that in the moment opportunity. It gives us clarity. And it really sets a foundation for too many people to have open, honest and deliberate conversations about whatever topic it is, and whatever area of influence that we stay in. And I think that's the biggest takeaway I've been trying to focus on. Well Most recently, which by the way is in the book? I just we're just stating it a little differently here.

Greg Voisen
Well, you know, when you work inside companies, you've been you use the disk and the Kolbe assessments and you call it your business vision. And it helps you to analyze and understand people better. I think many people have taken the Myers Briggs, they can say there any NF T or whatever the letters are, again, I don't remember them all. But you do, I'm sure, or the call or the disk, speak with us about how important these assessments are, in your ability as a company to actually help organizations have stronger teams, more efficient, greater levels of productivity, greater levels of creativity, as a result of it, because when you get the right people on a team, it just kind of humps.

Dr. Brian Smith
Yeah, so we never use the assessments to choose people, we always use the assessments to identify communication, management and behavior, recommendations between different people. So when we do an assessment in an organization, it's to understand those people that you interact with on a regular basis and understand where they are in that cold Colby or DISC assessment, and how different types of communication tactics can be used when you're with that person. And when you understand what those assessments are, you create opportunities to communicate that are better, you create opportunities to communicate that flow better, you might have somebody that that communicates better in the written word than in the verbal word. And if you don't know these things, if you don't know that they assimilate information better in those ways. And that they, they require more details and other people do are less details that other people do, or that they are not quick to respond or a quick start kind of a person that they're going to require some more thoughtful understanding of what's going on. And if we approach those people in our areas of influence, opposite of what they are inherently what they inherently need, or what they inherently are used to, we set ourselves up for disruption and failure, before we even got started. So we use those assessments to develop communication tactics within teams, so that whatever's going on in the area of improvement, that they're dealing in, whatever tactics that are being done, whatever strategies that are being employed, are being done with a complete understanding of the team, and how that team comes together in this mix of humans, different behaviors, different backgrounds, different technical aspects, and how we can make it work together and move together in the same direction. Yeah, not

Greg Voisen
Everybody out there has a degree in organizational psychology, like you or me in psychology, right? So I think, for many of us, you can kind of Intuit things, right? But I know for some people, they don't Intuit things that way. And oftentimes, when you do I know for me, I've gotten so good at it, or at least I think I have that, that I've intuited right on, who might work better together. And I think you get a sense for that, which kind of leads me to, you know, leaders, influential leaders. And you said in the book, you mentioned that influential leaders can sometimes feel like they are above everyone else. And you say that you don't mean that they think they're better than everyone else. You state that when a leader takes the high road, it is always the right road. What are some of the attributes that a leader needs to take the high road and be successful at it? And then what are some of the high road takeaways from the book?

Dr. Brian Smith
So taking the high road means, you know, doing the right thing really is what the high road is, to us. It's, it's an analogy of getting above the fray getting above the noise. Getting above the chaos that can happen in day to day and as leaders when we set rules, and we set policies and we set procedures and we set precedent. If we are inconsistent that's not the high road, taking the inconsistent way off of the high road takes us back down and to the chaos of One of the stories we have about being a leader and taking the high road is when I go and visit some of the factories that we have. And I walk into an area of influence that somebody else has like our warehouse manager, I might own the company, but the minute that I walk into that person's area of influence, I am subordinate to them. It is their world, they control that warehouse, I have delegated to them the responsibility of managing that warehouse and if I walked in there and acted like I didn't have to listen to them, or I was above them or better them, I diminish their value as the leader of that warehouse, I diminish the value of the policies and procedures put in place for that warehouse, and I set a horrible precedent for the rest of the company or anybody else that might observe that, that behavior. That's what we mean, by the takeaways and, or by taking the high road and

Greg Voisen
kind of talking about the Greenleaf servant leadership model. Because the reality is, is you and I can imagine you're talking about you and your own warehouse, right. You know, the reality is, you are looking at it, you're there to serve the people that people aren't there to serve you.

Dr. Brian Smith
In? Precisely, yeah. Exactly. I never, and we teach this, nobody in our organization is hired to serve somebody else, I have an assistant, but she's not there to serve me. She's there to be my peer, she's there to protect me, I'm there to protect her. We work shoulder to shoulder all day, just because she's called My assistant doesn't mean that she's there to serve me. If I ever began to treat her that way. I would hope that not just her, but that the people around us would call us out on that and say that is just improper that that is inconsistent. You got off the high road, Brian, you're back down in the in the chaos.

Greg Voisen
Yeah, and it's more of a flat model. It isn't a hierarchical model. I mean, what you're talking about is a flat model of an organization, which works. A lot of people question whether or not that works. And one of the things that in this process, when you have an organization, the way you run it, is this power of accountability, and you living up to your word. What in your estimation, are some of the bad habits that get in the way of someone being accountable and trustworthy. As well speak about the takeaways, again, that you give in the book about accountability mean, look, we look at accountability, in your case, accountability equals autonomy. Because you've given people like your assistant complete autonomy to do what she needs to do with basically, I'm not saying without your direction, you guys co create together, you come together in a space of love and understanding. And you co create whatever it is you need to create to serve your clients. And I get that about you. And I'm wondering, because there's a lot of energy around this word accountability. You know, I just spoke with one of my business clients yesterday on the phone, and he's saying, hey, this general manager, I'm gonna let him go in September if he can't be more accountable. And I said, well, I think you have a guy there, who's really the one of the best general managers you've ever had. But the way you're looking at it, Steve, your perspective is those he says, well, he can't allow, he doesn't have the strength to have conversations with the other people in the organization of which there's about 35 to actually have them be accountable. And I say to him, that's because you're not supporting him. So how about that one? I have my own example from yesterday.

Dr. Brian Smith
Yeah, you know, as you just pointed out, holding people accountable means so many different things to so many different people. Some people think that accountability is discipline. That's how you hold them accountable for us. We make people revisit that which they're being held accountable for. And if they're being held accountable, it means they've done something contrary to what was expected. And, and that they understood that expectation. You can't hold somebody accountable for something that they didn't first understand what it is they were supposed to do. That takes us back to that whole smart communication model we talked about. And so accountability goes to root cause for us and understanding as an organization and in a flat hierarchy that we have, what our expectations are, and if we don't understand those More than you need to ask. And if you don't ask, you're held accountable for that. We take you on a journey through questions and answer through dialogue through smart communication, to get you to understand where you missed being smart. So accountability to us is a process of understanding smart. And in organizations, you have to find your own way of holding people accountable in a positive way so that they realize what their areas of expectation are, and so that they can act consistently within that area of expectation, and that area of influence. So accountability for us is built for our clients based on their environments, whatever that is, whatever area of influence they are, it's teaching their people, whoever those people are, what that means, and giving them the authority and the power to challenge. The process. If somebody's being held accountable for something that they didn't have an expectation of the next question is, is why did they not have that expectation? What wasn't smart about this? And would they follow the smart protocol, person to person shoulder to shoulder because it's flat, it actually works really well, because people help each other the question that you hear in our office, if something goes wrong, Greg is what wasn't smart about this. The first thing people do is take a step back and go, oh, I wasn't specific, or I didn't have a measurement or, you know, I never asked if this was attainable. I didn't ask you if you could get it done by next Tuesday. I didn't ask if it was realistic for you to be in two places at one time. That was my expectation. But I didn't ask if that was realistic. Or I didn't ask you if this was a good time for your help. You know, it's going to be that smart question. And everybody asked the same question. What wasn't smart about that? Yeah,

Greg Voisen
you know, and that's just a matter of training yourself, to look for those things, right? And making sure that there are top of mind instead of the bottom when you leave the meeting, and that there's agreement on those smart elements when you leave a meeting, like, hey, you got it, right. Oh, if I didn't hear you clearly, say, let me repeat what you've said. Okay. This is what I heard you say? That's a common way for people to actually get a greater level of understanding of communications. Is this what you said? No, that's not what I said, you didn't hear me, right? This is what I said. And I think it takes a little more of that, when you're working around these smart goals. So that you can get them clear or smart communications, but kind of pretty close to the same. And this brings me to Glenn.

Dr. Brian Smith
You know, I was gonna say you're so spot on that it takes practice, you know, accountability doesn't just happen overnight. It takes practice, it takes participation. And it takes leadership through the organization. And it takes trust, it takes trust in a smart process, or whatever you want to call it, I don't care what you call it, but it takes trust, and practice. And that leads to the accountability and accountability comes from when your peers will lightly tap you on the shoulder and say, you know, we weren't really smart about this, let's, let's get smart.

Greg Voisen
Yeah, and you talk about responsibility in the book, and I always break responsibility down is my ability to respond, okay. In other words, if you're giving something that's out of someone's comfort zone, so far out of the reach, that they can't do it, chances are, you're probably going to have a failure of them being able to respond. But if you're giving something to them in their comfort zone that you know, maybe pushes them a little bit, but not so much. You know, it'd be like giving somebody a big accounting project who's never done accounting, right? And saying, yeah, I gotta have this spreadsheet done. They don't know how to do formulas, they don't know how to work in Excel, they don't want to do any of that. You've got to walk before you can run to get there, right? So the single thing is, and I believe this, and I know you do, because you must teach this. We're 100% accountable for I should say accountable. We're 100% responsible, but all of our own actions and where we are in life. First thing to remember, no one else is responsible. Don't go around blaming somebody else, because you didn't get this or you didn't get that responsibility comes back to the finger pointing back to me, not out there. Okay. So what are the top three failures of somebody responsible? You talk about him, I should say being probably irresponsible, but no understanding about what responsibility means. And this, this dives into psychology really deep. Because people's understanding of responsibility. And I'm not going to say that this is good, bad or indifferent, it just is across generational lines. Right? I'm a baby boomer, I don't know what you are. But we got millennials, we got all kinds of people out there. And the way certain generations, I mean, if you look at the generation before me, responsibility was a really big deal. Right? As we've moved through this, we see it a little bit differently, don't we? What would you tell are the top three failures in your estimation that you see inside companies?

Dr. Brian Smith
Well, I think first is not communicating that you have some gap and understanding and just taking orders blindly. And in just going on and saying, yes, being a guest man. Not having context to what your area of responsibility is not understanding what your role is not understanding what your mission is. And that can be individually as a single person, or even your whole department of people. Not understanding your market and your customer. These are all common issues that we face, that we walk into an organization and we see failure in it almost always goes back to lack of clarity, lack of specifics, lack of measurables, lack of understanding of capability, giving people as you said, it's one thing to push somebody a little bit farther to do a little bit more get out of their comfort zone. And it's another thing to say, you know, go pick me apples, but I'm going to drop you off in an orange tree. Orange, orange. Yeah, exactly. You know, but that happens. It happens all the time. So when we do that, in whatever level we're at, in our organization, when we don't understand or set proper expectations, understand what's attainable from our team, what's attainable from that individual that we're speaking to what's realistic, and what's timely, whatever that means, in that moment, when we just blindly give orders and set expectations without understanding these things. We've lost it right there. Well, you

Greg Voisen
know, I think the some of the listeners out there might go well, this is practical knowledge. It's practical, common sense. It is in one sense, you would think, but because we see so many FOB faux pas occur. In organizations, we see breakdowns in communication, we see people quit, because there was a bad manager, we see turnover, we see all of these indicators, which all lead back to some of actually what you would think some pretty simple things that we're talking about here. And that brings me to the positive influence be the eye and team, you really explore the importance of building trust. And I think T with a capital T trust and relationships within a team. What are some of the strategies for building the big t trust? Meaning I can really count on you, Brian, and establishing strong relationships with other teammates?

Dr. Brian Smith
Yeah, well, top of mind is, of course, communication, being honest. It's okay to say I don't know it's okay to say I need help. It's okay to say, I need support. You don't diminish your value. When you share that you have a gap and your skill set or your understanding. You actually share you put yourself out there, you make yourself vulnerable to a certain aspect. But you also allow that person to transfer something from themselves to you, and you accept something from them to you. And that's investment that's equity. When you are honest with people and you allow them to invest in you mentor you teach you and you accept that from them. You focus on you understand it and then you turn around and act consistently and accordingly to what you were taught. You're creating equity in that relationship, not just with that person, but with your area of influence with your position and with any other people who are influenced by your actions, your tasks, your words, your behavior. I think that is probably the number one thing that I could say to the audience is invest, be honest and invest Just in those relationships, and don't be afraid to share, that you have gaps and allow those gaps to be filled by those people that rely on you or that you're going to rely on.

Greg Voisen
So important. So, so important in the context of, you know, working inside of business, and coaching, right, because the reality is, you know, you, in a sense are doing these things, but you guys are coaching these individuals on a regular basis to become better. And I reflect on a recent interview I had with Marshall Goldsmith, in his new book. And as Marshall was speaking with me, we got talking about regret, things that people regret. And we got talking about something that I didn't know that he basically, fundamentally has been using. And, you know, this may sound kind of strange, but expectation is suffering in the making. Right now, that's a Buddhist precept. But the reality is, when you and I are sitting there saying, well, we had an expectation to this person, and then they let us down, because they didn't complete it. A lot of the challenge is with the expectations that you and I had. And I know that sounds so far out, but it's really not. Because we kind of set ourselves up for our own disappointments in life in many ways. And that comes down to the book highlights the significance of empathy and understanding. And when it comes to positive influence, how can individuals develop and demonstrate more empathy toward their team members? And this, again, comes along with that. That preset that I just talked about, is that expectation is suffering in the making, because, you know, are you going to be empathetic? Or are you going to be a bastard, when that person doesn't match up to what you said, and what is going to be our giving us the carrot? Are you going to use the stick? And I virtually say that it's probably better to use a banana cream pie, than it is to say, I'm going to demote you and take away some of your salary here, whatever I'm going to do in the process. What would you say about that? The Empathy.

Dr. Brian Smith
Empathy is probably one of the best things that we could have as just humans. In general, if there was more empathy in the world, we'd have less chaos. Over the last five years that we've seen in every aspect of our human lives, especially us Americans with our political issues, and everything else, we just have lost that for some reason. But in the context of at work, and what you just said, expectations, not set. Clearly, improperly are, we're setting ourselves up to be very disappointed as leaders and empathy can be built. Part of what we talked about earlier, Colby and DiSC help build empathy, when we understand a person's basic psychological makeup. And we know what that is ahead of time and helps us be empathetic to the struggles that they have, in our work area of influence. When we open ourselves up to human empathy, and we hear that somebody had a failure because of an outside influence, you know, a child was sick, or a parent or an accident on the road, when we don't get overcome by that immediate urgency, and we actually listen to that other person. And when you've already built trust, and you know, that person has invested in you and invested in the process. Empathy falls out of that trust builds empathy. And when you start with a foundation, like we've talked about today, of positive influence, and layering it up, providing context, providing that smart structure, listening to learn, focusing on people being our best self or others. When we build that up, empathy is a byproduct, it becomes a byproduct, it doesn't become something that we have to work on. It becomes immediate. When somebody out here calls and says, the dog ate my homework. I don't immediately say, oh, that's a bunch of BS, I trust them. I trust that, you know, for once in my life, the dog actually ate the homework. It wasn't just an excuse, and I'm empathetic to them and I can give them a reaction that gives them the time to fix the gap that was created by not having the homework done, or the work done or being prepared for it. And I can do that in a positive way. And I can be a positive peer, a positive leader and a positive bit of support person to them.

Greg Voisen
Yeah, it, it is something and then you know, you rejigger and have deep conversations about the fact that, you know, we can't allow that to continue inside this organization. Because it's things like that, that kind of piss off our clients because they're expecting something from us that we didn't get done. And so now, it's like a slippery slope, it's gotta go like this, you know, now I'm going to have to make some kind of excuse to tell the client, hey, we didn't get that done with a spreadsheet, or this or that and report, it doesn't matter.

But part of the

Greg Voisen
problem that we all face, and we've all faced this into the digital world, has entered our lives, and to some point to a very large degree is distractions. Because the world is filled with these distractions, and you state if we can better manage our distractions, will have better retention and results, I agree. Said lightly, better managing distractions, because now we're getting people so stressed out by all the things that they have to do, because technology, let's face it as sped up all of our worlds. I mean, I come from an age when we didn't have to have immediate reactions. We weren't answering emails, because they were expected to be within 10 minutes of getting an email, right? What are some of the ways that we can manage distractions, and get rid of procrastination? That's the other word that came in there in your book, which results from our distractions, because the distractions are the things Oh, I'm gonna go play the video game, or I'm gonna go answer some emails, or I'm going on Facebook. I'm going on LinkedIn, and whatever it is that whatever the distraction might be, which then says, Add and get my work done, because I was doing these other things that appeared to be more fun than what I had to do.

Dr. Brian Smith
It's funny, you asked that question, I just finished recording our new podcast, and we were talking today. I was recording about focus, and about immediate gratification and distractions in particular, and some of the things we can do. If we find for example, if we find that we're distracted by our phones, you know, the easiest thing is, well to turn it off. But a lot of people don't like that. So some of the things we teach is turn the screen down. One of the most distracting things that happens to us as humans now is the screen flashes. And the first thing we want to do is pick it up and answer that text or answer that email. You have to be deliberate. You have to be deliberate about distracting the distractions, you have to set your environment up to provide distractions of those distractions. There's a sign on my door right now that says Do Not Disturb I'm in, in this meeting with you, Greg and with your audience. That stops people from distracting me. All of the things in my office are turned off. There's no phones available to distract me. There's no outside influences that can get in the way. You have to deliberately set those things up. You have to slow down first and understand what distracts you? Is it a video game? Is it the dog? Is it the child is it the phone is at the email? Once you identify that you can be deliberate about setting up your environment to support whatever level of focus you want to have. And it requires that level of understanding of self-understanding of your environment and understanding of your ability to actually focus. A lot of us as you may know or not know this, my dissertation was technology induced attention deficit disorder, and I wrote it in 1999. Before we had all of these distractions, but as you know, in the 90s, we were already starting to see how technology was distracting us. We went from 14 Four baud modem connections to instant access in a number of years. We went from email to text messages in a short number of years, we have raised our level of expectation of getting replies, giving replies and just being human with each other to a point where life is a distraction. It's noise constantly. You have to set those environments up to slow them down. You have to be very deliberate about them.

Greg Voisen
Yeah, I haven't made my T shirt yet. But I keep telling my wife I am many years ago I was in San Francisco with my son and I made an app servation Would you've made this as well. But, you know, I say down head syndrome. The reality is, is that I'm going to create a t shirt with a person, like looking at their phone walking into a pole. Because they have down in or walking off of a cliff. Where in the world did we ever see that people fell off the Grand Canyon from taking a selfie, right? It's like, come on. I mean, this is, and I'm not saying this happens a lot. But when it does happen, it just tells you how distracted somebody asked to be, to actually kill themselves in the process of taking a selfie. I mean, it's just it's kind of a bit ridiculous, but it is kind of where the world is, and the results can actually be life threatening.

Dr. Brian Smith
Hmm, you know, Greg, I'll share with you that story at the Grand Canyon might seem exceptional to people. But we in our area of influence in one of our companies know of a story where a gentleman walked off a roof because he was texting on his phone and he literally walked right off the roof. And these things are happening. More the media is not focused on this stuff. These types of distraction, these comfortable focuses we get in with our phones, or whatever area of influence where are happening more and more because of our propensity to get into our own heads and get too laser focused on one thing.

Greg Voisen
Yeah, I interviewed Adam Ghazali wrote the distracted mind and he is the neuroscientist at San Francisco State University and fascinating interview. But more importantly, in a from a neuroplasticity standpoint, or the way that brains, right brain left brain hemisphere, your frontal cortex. When you're imbalanced in that way, what's happening is it's misfiring. And the only way to reap is to get it firing back equal, because the brain looks for an equal firing between both hemispheres. To be honest with you, one side, you're coming from your emotional side, the other side, you're going for your logical side. And most people in those cases, you'll find are highly emotional at the time, I bet you if you looked at it, while they were trying to do the text, something either agitated them or made them really just exuberant with oxy toxins that came through their system because someone sent them a surf video or a skiing video or whatever it was, right. But to actually retrain the brain is more complicated than we think when it comes to this because we've become so I'm going to call it dependent, we at least think we're dependent on those things. So just for my listeners, hey, look, there's a lot you can learn about how to rewire and re fire your brain, there's a lot you can learn about being a positive influence. And with that Brandon's gonna wrap this up, the book is filled with tons of takeaways. If you were to leave the listener with some sound advice about becoming a more positive influence, both to themselves, and the people they work around, what key takeaways would you want to emphasize? Oh, and or what do you want them to remember from the book? There was two or three things?

Dr. Brian Smith
Yeah, I think the number one thing we'd like people to remember is that they mattered that they have influence. But they're important. And so understand that you, your influence is your responsibility, take ownership for it slow down, be as specific, measurable about what it is you do what it is you expect people to do. When you get or give instructions. And when you slow yourself down and understand that you matter. And that you have influence. You can be more deliberate, you can be more positive, you can take better ownership for yourself, and those around you. And you can probably look in the mirror and be happier with yourself and with where you're at. And the book is about understanding these things. And about allowing you and taking you on this journey to be your best self for you so you can be your best self or others and the most positive aspect that you can.

Greg Voisen
Well, it's an excellent book. And for my listeners, here's the book positive influence. Be the I in team coauthored it was Brian Smith and his daughter Mary Griffin, who wrote this book. Kudos to Mary as well because I'm sure that a lot of it was Mary's work as well as yours. Also for my listeners, to learn more about the disk reports the Call Reports his business vision is what he's doing. Just visit I a business advisors.com That's I a business advisors.com There you can reach Brian. I was complimenting him before we came on the air about the cool pictures. It's worth going to the website, just to see those cool graphic artists, the images of all the people that work with Brian and created this company that's trying to help organizations communicate better. Focus better, be more intentional, all the things that you need to do to drive more profitability, less turnover, a greater rates of creativity, and innovation within one organization. Brian's your guy, reach out to him if you would, Brian. It's been an honor and pleasure having me on insight, personal growth. Thanks for taking the time with us today to talk with us about your new book, and also to talk with us about how you actually approach businesses in helping them get where they need to go.

Dr. Brian Smith
Greg, thank you so much for having me. It's just been really a pleasure.

Greg Voisen
Thank you.