Humans Not Resources

Far too often the people who serve on teams at work fail to receive value from them. That’s a real shame considering the potential for peers to support each other to transform the company or to succeed in the face of challenge. Within every team lies the potential for everyone to “co-elevate” each other to new heights, and that includes the executive team at the heart of the organization. Keith Ferrazzi is the founder and CEO of Ferrazzi Greenlight, a managing, consulting, and team coaching company. He is recognized as a global thought leader in the relational and collaborative sciences, and is a New York Times best-selling author. Keith identifies behaviors that block organizations from reaching their goals and transforms them by coaching new behaviors that increase growth. Keith has unique knowledge on the value of working together, since he and his team have done twenty years of research on how to coach high performing teams. They have discovered that 74% of people on teams say that they do not have permis

We’re all changing all the time. The events and cultures we’re immersed in have an impact on our development. This, in turn, impacts our organizations. Sometimes these changes reveal a new personal and professional mission that we never could have imagined. Max Yoder is the CEO and co-founder of Lessonly, the training software company that helps people learn, practice, and do better work. He is grateful that he was cut from the basketball team two years in a row. He’s also the author of Do Better Work, a book about being a better teammate.  Max works to enable people to improve their time at work. That workplace success naturally affects people’s lives in all aspects. Max found that hearing people and empowering them to be their best selves at work leads to better fulfillment all around. He built his company on this premise. Emotions are key to high-performance. Traditionally, workplaces have rebelled against this idea. The workplace is now in a place of transition. Integrating emotional safety in work and al

Best-Self Management is returning for Season 4 on April 28th! This upcoming season is devoted exclusively to exploring the brave new world of remote work and how leaders can adapt to changing conditions to not only preserve but strengthen their cultures. With a long history of building culture for a remote team, David and Shane will share what's worked for 15Five, while also featuring more incredible expert interviews, techniques, and mindset shifts to help transform your company's culture and drive incredible results.  On the Best-Self Management podcast, we explore the brave new world of bringing your whole self to work. Best-Self Management proposes that if leaders build cultures and institute practices that support people in being and becoming their Best Selves, then high performance and uncommon loyalty is the result. Co-hosts, David Hassell and Shane Metcalf, regularly discuss the uniquely healthy and productive cofounder relationship they’ve built at 15Five over the last 7 years. They also interview a

Note: This podcast interview was recorded earlier in 2020, but is still filled with lessons and advice applicable to challenges presented by the new world of remote work, though it will not reflect an awareness of just how much things have transformed.  Employee development is one of the most strategic decision-making areas for any company. Developing your people’s skills and creating a positive employee experience requires thoughtful, deliberate action. Today’s guest has built his career around helping businesses do just that.  John Foster is a business designer who helps people and organizations perform at their best. He has served many of the world’s most innovative companies in both internal roles and consulting relationships. John has broad experience designing, building, and managing internal operations for talent-driven companies. In this episode, John describes the most crucial components of helping your people perform at their best. First of all, it is important to place them in roles where they are

In this special episode, we talk about what it takes to build successful distributed teams. With the spread of COVID 19, many businesses are being forced into remote work models, which may have a permanent effect on the modern workplace. Since this is nothing new to us at 15Five, we want to share how we do this with you. In 2012, 15Five began as a distributed company. While this has its challenges, it also presents many opportunities to build a culture with strengths that wouldn’t exist otherwise. After over eight years, we are still globally distributed and have won just about every major culture award—no easy feat when you triple headcount to over 200 employees in one year.  Even though we’re physically separated, there are ways to intentionally create a sense of belonging to fill the gaps left by remote working. Having a weekly check-in and regular all-hands meetings by video conference, provide qualitative insight into how your people are feeling. And regular cultural rituals like gratitude meditations cr

Research is showing that we all can show up with trauma even if we haven’t personally experienced it, because it can be passed along through our genes! Business leaders and culture architects can benefit from incorporating an awareness of past traumas along with an understanding of neuroscience as it impacts our sense of belonging. Few people understand this better than today’s guest. As an executive coach with a particular focus on epigenetics and neurobiology, Rajkumari Neogy takes a novel look at how these fields can help us to live better lives. Rajkumari is the creator of the iRestart framework, the Disruptive Diversity Boot Camp and the author of The WIT Factor: Shifting the Workplace Paradigm by Becoming Your Optimal Self. Rajkumari explains how, as leaders, we need to look at and consider why our people behave in certain ways. Often, this is the result of traumas that our ancestors experienced. In fact, science has shown that we still carry the burden generations later. We may have inherited aspects o

Ever wonder how you will achieve the monumental tasks required of you at work? Few people realize that they’re already surrounded by all the resources they need to reach their goals. There are people around you who would be happy to help. All you have to do is ask, but most people simply don’t make the request. Today, we’ve brought in an expert who has helped people and organizations successfully build cultures where anyone can tap into the giving power of what is actually a massive network of resources.  Dr. Wayne Barker is a Professor of Business Administration and Professor of Management & Organizations at University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business, and Faculty Director of the Center for Positive Organizations. His work focuses on social networks, generosity, values, and positive organizational scholarship. He is the author of All You Have To Do Is Ask: How To Master the Most Important Skill For Success as well as five other books and many scholarly articles. Today, Dr. Baker describes his findin

In order to do the extraordinary, we have to work with other people. No matter how great a single person’s efforts, it’s not going to be enough on its own. That’s why the third pillar of best-self management, cultivating relational mastery, is essential in any business. Today, we’re diving into just what cultivating relational mastery is. We discuss its many benefits and how it can’t help but lead to great success within an organization. Often, cultivating relational skill is overlooked. However, we have found that the benefits of intentionally teaching and practicing them is essential to separating our organization apart. What’s great is that any organization can create and practice this. Often this means having difficult conversations. While they may be uncomfortable at the time, open and honest communication is key to keeping emotions from festering. This is how a toxic culture is prevented. We discuss how to use clearing conversations to keep workplace dynamics running smoothly. We’ve seen first hand how

Today we’re diving into an important pillar of Best-Self Management -- Being and Becoming Your Best Self. While everyone must take responsibility for their own evolution, managers and leaders have an opportunity to contribute. By creating an environment that invites your people to be their best on a daily basis, you will inherently have an organization in which people produce high-quality work.  Accepting that things are already great does not mean that no one should strive for improvement. Rather, it becomes a good jumping-off point for striving to fulfill your highest potential. Recognizing this will provide the space and compassion needed to support your people as whole human beings. As leaders, compassion is one of the most powerful tools you have to accomplish this. It will allow you to support your people through their crises and challenges and help them grow towards their best selves throughout that journey. Often at work, we want people to push through these challenges and get sh*t done, but making sp

Our second episode of this podcast detailed one of the most impactful experiences we create for our employees—transformational business retreats.  We have just returned from our 2020 retreat, which was nearly three times the size and even more powerful than last year’s. As a follow-up to last year’s episode, we interview some of our new employees, so you can hear from the attendees themselves. Chris Hloros, our business analytics manager and Jeff Smith, director of the Best-Self Academy share the profound impact that they experienced in January.  For Chris and Jeff, this retreat really crystallized our company’s new values and brought them to life. We’ve found that these retreats have the power to have everyone create their own personal relationship with our mission, vision, and values in a way that is difficult by simply sharing them in a deck.  More than that, we create experiences that break down barriers, create authentic connection, so that we can deeply see the humans that comprise the company, and then

We’re constantly trying to answer the question of how to do the extraordinary in the workplace by building a culture that people love and thrive in while achieving extraordinary business performance. That’s how we’ve strived to build our own organization. Previously, we went over five important elements of Best-Self management. Today, we’re helping you conceptualize the methodology by presenting three key pillars to help you run a successful company: Create a Powerful Shared Context  Support People In Being & Becoming Their Best-Selves  Cultivate Relational Self-Mastery  Once you understand and make a commitment to these three pillars, you can implement practices that contribute to a healthy work culture, such as positivity, psychological safety, and growth mindset. This all begins with creating a powerful shared context. This will lead to a sense of meaning within your organization. The context of your company is more than its mission. It is where the work culture is created and from where its creativ

In less than a year, 15Five has rapidly scaled up from about 70 employees to over 200. Now many people might assume that the company culture that we strive to nurture has suffered as a result. However, we’re happy to say that our culture is now stronger than it has ever been (and we know this because 15Five is ranked as the #3 best place to work in the country on Glassdoor.)  So today we’re talking about how to scale culture while simultaneously undergoing hyper-growth. We share what we have learned as leaders of a company during this period of rapid growth. We discovered that being attuned to what your people are feeling and thinking is a key part of supporting them during this process. To that end, we discuss how we listen to our people and use their feedback in constructive ways. While there were a number of things we had in place prior to growing that helped create a strong culture, we also made many changes in the past year. We chat about what those were, such as revamping our onboarding process, to make

David and Shane tease a little bit of what's to come when Season 3 of Best-Self Management returns on January 14th. This upcoming season will feature David and Shane going deeper on the pillars of building an incredible culture, plus more incredible expert interviews, techniques, and mindset shifts to help transform your company's culture and drive incredible results.  Best-Self Management podcast where we explore the brave new world of bringing your whole self to work. Best-Self Management proposes that if leaders build cultures and institute practices that support people in being and becoming their Best Selves, then high performance and uncommon loyalty is the result. Co-hosts, David Hassell and Shane Metcalf, regularly discuss the uniquely healthy and productive cofounder relationship they’ve built at 15Five over the last 7 years. They also interview academics, business leaders, and coaches, who are revolutionizing our understanding of human performance and what it takes to build a thriving culture that c

Everyone has unique abilities and skills, and we are all “geniuses” in our own ways. Genius is not an exclusive trait nor linked to intellect, but something that resides in everyone. When our Zone of Genius is realized, that’s when we can find and do work that truly brings us joy. Today’s guest has extensively studied this concept and is here to tell you how to apply it in your workplace. Laura Garnett is a talent strategist who works with Fortune 500 companies and startups alike, helping business leaders reach their true potential and tap into and understand their zone of genius — all while inspiring the people they work with to do the same.  Today, we’re talking with Laura about how we can inspire other people to identify and pursue their Zones of Genius. It really is something that we all have innately within us. However, not trusting in your zone of genius is all too common and can lead to false feelings of inadequacy. To truly operate within the zone is to actually best align with who you are and share y

With positivity being one of the most important aspects of Best-Self Management, we’re devoting this entire episode to this principle. A lot is wrapped up in this single word - be it gratitude, appreciation, and just having more positive interactions than negative ones.  Throughout this episode, we tell you about what we’ve learned from the field of positive psychology about how our brains tend to default towards the negative. However, by consciously and deliberately supporting a culture of positivity, you’ll be benefiting both your people and your organization in countless ways. We explain how a focus on positivity is one of the easiest ways to help the relationships in your organization thrive. When that happens not only does the bottom line improve, but you and your people will be more connected and committed to your company’s mission and feel better overall. What can you do to increase the positivity ratio in your organization? Leave a comment below! In this episode How building a culture of positivity w

This is part two of our discussion on how to help inspire your people by connecting them to their internal and intrinsic motivators. In this episode, we’re going deeper into self-actualization and mastery. By helping the people around you develop and nourish a growth-mindset, meaningful and effective progress is inevitable. At 15Five we routinely help our people set self-development objectives in addition to business goals. We’ve found that although this can be challenging, it ultimately leads to more introspection on the part of participants and creates opportunities for overall growth. Finally, we discuss the importance of giving each other true autonomy. This means granting people the trust they need to do the work that’s required. Really, it’s about treating everyone like capable adults. As managers, we can choose to let our people take the lead and make the right decisions. To this end, we talk about how we can better focus on the outcome rather than the process to reach it. How can you help your people

Motivation bleeds into everything we do, and it helps us choose where to focus in our busy lives. We have motivations for why we’re in relationships, listen to certain podcasts, and even how we work. Where we derive our motivation is connected to how we expend our energy long-term. Intrinsic motivation is the sustainable way to drive employee performance. It’s all about incentive and deriving pleasure from the activity itself (e.g., a genuine interest in a project or strategic initiative) rather than because of any external benefits that might be obtained. In other words, doing an act that is intrinsically motivated means you are doing it to achieve a deeper, more personal reward than money or any other external validation can offer.  External motivators can only go so far to drive someone’s performance in life and in business. Personal fulfillment doesn’t come from a paycheck or the end-goal five years down the road; true motivation comes from waking up day-to-day excited to use our unique strengths and capa

Psychological safety is something that is getting a lot of attention in the business world lately. It’s also one of the main themes of our Best-Self Management methodology. That’s why we’re devoting this episode to telling you what psychological safety means to us and how you can make it an integral part of how you structure your work environment. Today we explain the various components of psychological safety and how they fit into the workplace. It all hinges on making sure your people feel both respected and accepted. Removing the fear of making mistakes is such an important part of this and we talk about how supporting risk-taking is part of our company’s ethos. There are several practical ways to build psychological safety inside your organization. We share what has worked for us at 15Five and how you can do it too. It involves building a supportive culture at work, having open and honest communication between managers and employees, and having high degrees of vulnerable trust at the leadership level. Wha

If you’ve ever wondered how different your workplace experience would be if your day was full of positive emotional interactions, then you’re ready to hear about the philosophy that drives our company ethos. Tune in today for an overview of our philosophy which we call “Best-Self Management.” We’re explaining the principles and notions that we believe point the way to a better way of working. leading, and developing our people so that we can thrive as companies, individuals, and ultimately as a society. We’re David Hassell and Shane Metcalf, co-founders of 15Five, a leading continuous performance management software company with a strong focus on creating healthy and thriving workplaces. On today’s episode, you’re going to hear us tell you why and how we came up with our philosophy of Best-Self Management and how it can make all the difference in any workplace. We delve into how the workplace has changed in recent years and why we need to change along with it. We explain how our experience with promoting Best

David and Shane tease a little bit of what's to come in Season 2 of Best-Self Management which will feature more incredible expert interviews, techniques, and mindset shifts to help transform your company's culture and drive incredible results.  Best-Self Management podcast where we explore the brave new world of bringing your whole self to work. Best-Self Management proposes that if leaders build cultures and institute practices that support people in being and becoming their Best Selves, then high performance and uncommon loyalty is the result. Co-hosts, David Hassell and Shane Metcalf, regularly discuss the uniquely healthy and productive cofounder relationship they’ve built at 15Five over the last 7 years. They also interview academics, business leaders, and coaches, who are revolutionizing our understanding of human performance and what it takes to build a thriving culture that celebrates every employee and guides them towards greatness.   Links Listen to Season 1 of Best-Self Management Here Find 15Five