The Neuroscience of Culture: Driving Engagement through Brain Science | Ep. 91 ft. Lisa Riegel

Speaker A: Welcome everyone to Leadership in Quarters podcast, the interview series where leaders come to share their perspectives on different leadership topics. Josh I'm Josh Selden and today's guest is Lisa Riegel. Lisa Riegel started her career in education driven by one goal, to help people reach their potential. Over time, she realized that fulfillment, whether in a classroom, company or community, comes from understanding how the brain drives behavior and how systems shape success. That discovery became the foundation for her life's work as an educator, researcher, and author. She has spent two decades helping schools, leaders, parents and organizations align brain science with human systems, creating cultures where people feel connected, capable, and in control of their growth. Dr. Riegel earned a dual bachelor's degree in English and Secondary Education from Kent State University. She holds a Master's degree in Curriculum and Instruction from Otterbein university and a PhD in education policy and Leadership from the Ohio State University. Her work has appeared in peer reviewed journals and she's authored five books, including her two latest books, Neuro well and Aspirations to Operations focused on brain science and how we can leverage it to help people become happier, healthier and more successful. So welcome Lisa.

Speaker B: Thank you. Thank you for having me.

Speaker A: Glad to have you here. I'm glad to jump into these types of conversations because a lot of people don't really think the brain science side of how it impacts leadership and culture and how we do all this. And so I'm glad to have this episode really focus on how we use brain science to understand and build the culture. And hopefully you'll let us in on your 8C system too while we're at it.

Speaker B: Yeah, for sure.

Speaker A: Awesome. So if we can jump right in, I'd love to start just from the neurological perspective and standpoint in an employee's brain, the way we are today. I feel like we have two different perspectives that we approach, different tasks that we have. We've got the check the box compliant side and we've got the truly invested co creation side. From a neurological side, what really is the difference when an employee goes from check the box to investment?

Speaker B: So I think you can think of it through a, uh, motivation equation. So the motivation equation is expectancy times value equals motivation. When we think about why are we interested in working for the compliance piece, do I expect to do well? So in other words, do I know how to do this and I feel confident I can do it. And then also the value piece is this is compliance. If I don't do it, I lose my job. So pretty high value if it's pretty easy. Most Compliance tasks are not that difficult. So you'd have high motivation just to kind of do it and get it done. But that's not engagement. That's just motivation to act. So engaging in something is where you find a greater meaning in it and that it's really aligning your talents and your creativity and your brain power. And where engagement becomes a little different is, do I think I can do it? We don't necessarily have to believe we can do it as long as we have leadership support that I know I may not be able to do this yet, but I will have the support I need to get there. And then on the value side, I think this is where leaders oftentimes really miss, miss a lot of opportunities is thinking about who are their people and what do they value in their work, and how do I put the right people in the right places? And there's actually a guy named Robert Quinn. I don't know if you've ever heard of him, but I love his work and he did. The workplace values, it's a instrument you can use to kind of decide what is it about work that you value the most. And so some people value being really creative and thinking outside the box. Some people value stability and traditional. Some people value people in the system. And so when they're working in things that engage others or bring people together, that gives them value. And other people are really valuing the impact, the goal attainment and data and what is the impact we're having? So I see a lot of dysfunction in workplaces and a lot of disengagement because we don't have people engaged in the types of tasks at work that they really value, or we're going through the process of change or a new initiative that we're working on, and we're not lining up the right people to have the right conversation. So if you have somebody who really values tradition and hierarchy and structure, and you're bringing them into a conversation that's all about possibilities and what ifs, you have to maybe preface that conversation with, okay, we're going to be doing a brainstorm on what if. So right now there's no thinking about how or logistics or any of that. We're just going to enjoy the exploration of these ideas. So it gives that person a little bit of, okay, I'm less comfortable with this, but we're going to get to the part that I value.

Speaker A: Yeah. And I think there's a lot to unpack with that answer. So I do appreciate that. I think the easiest one is you mentioned Leadership support, and in these days, and that's why we have these kind of conversations, is for leaders to really understand that being in leadership and having direct reports, being managers of others is more than just yourself. And so you do need to provide that support. The other thing that you made me think of as well is I feel like today there's this mindset of Lisa's really good at this, but this is her growth opportunity area. And I'm gonna go put Lisa here and have that be her full time job in an area that she's probably not necessarily good at. Cause she hasn't had the opportunity to be there before. And she may not enjoy it, it may not align to her values, but I'm gonna build on her growth area and I'm gonna put you in a role for two to three years that you absolutely hate. Because I feel like that's the best thing for you.

Speaker B: And that's where it becomes important to have multiple pathways to leadership. Everybody doesn't have to follow the same path to get to the next level up. And it's funny when you think about leaders, when I taught at Ohio State, in some leadership courses, they always want people to write their leadership platform. Who am I as a leader? And I always think that's such a dumb assignment because the reality is who you are as a leader. If you're a good leader, you are whoever your people need in order to follow. Because if you're leading like crazy and nobody's behind you following, then you're not leading, you're just taking a hike. So getting people to start thinking about, it's not about you, it's about other people. And then I think a lot of the leadership preparation that we do, even if you go get an mba, it's a lot of the algorithmic prediction and how do we set structure around things, but they don't teach you how to interact with people and how to lead people. And so there's a huge gap between the leaders understanding of how to engage the human system and the leaders understanding and how to do the nuts and bolts of leadership. And I think as we get more and more AI tools that's going to become less important those nuts and bolts of leadership. Because be able to automate some of those. It really is going to be the great leaders are the ones that understand people and how to engage, engage and support those people so they feel fulfilled.

Speaker A: That's exactly right. Leadership is so fluid and needs to reflect what your team needs. And then when you move on to a new team, you can't just be what you were before because their needs may be different. And I think that gets me to the other thought and a question I had with your first answer is you mentioned that leaders need to understand what their team values. So then we can enable work that they enjoy and ideally have work that aligns with their values. That, uh, in my mind, is one set of work that for sure has to be done. Do you ever believe or run into situations where from the start, the individuals themselves aren't fully aware of what they truly value to be able to then verbalize it? So then a leader can align the work to what they value in the first place?

Speaker B: Yeah, and it's interesting, a lot of the work, because my work transcends different industries and organizations. So I work with families on how to help their children through neuroscience. I work with teachers and education systems, and then I work with business. But I think what I see as a pattern across all those different audiences is that people don't know what it feels like to be joyful or fulfilled. We pay a lot of attention to stress, what we feel like when we're angry. But if you ask somebody to describe what is your body feeling, what is the entire experience of joy? We don't always have the words to describe that. So one of the things I always recommend is to connect with your joy. I wake up every morning and I take about three or four minutes. It doesn't have to take a long time. But before I even put my feet on the floor, I visualize the beach, because that's my happy place. And so I visualize the sounds, the smells, the feel, everything about it, and my body just relaxes. So when I put my feet on the floor in the morning, I am coming from a place of feeling joy. And then throughout the day, you can kind of check in. But I think you're right. A lot of people don't know what brings them joy. And sometimes, too, they don't know what stresses them out. And so that's something I work with leaders quite a bit about, is that it's not about what is happening. It's about why is that happening. The way our brain works is it associates what's going on now with what's gone on in our past. Because if every new situation was brand new, our brain would explode. So we need to have patterns. It looks for these associations. And so when we think about that's your past, it doesn't matter here to your brain, it does. And so in that unconscious part of our brain, it's Making associations. So for example, for me, I hate being late and I don't like when people are late. And when I was a little girl, my parents were divorced, my dad was always late. And so my little 8 year old brain aligned ah worth or love with lateness. So it wasn't even until I was in my 30s because if I was late or if my husband was running late, I would be like insanely anxious or angry about it and sometimes it would ruin my evening for a while because my body was so dysregulated. So once I understood the whole way that my brain creates perceptions and where those things are stored, I was able to take self control and be able to say, hey, this is not that brain. Don't associate these two things because it's a faulty assumption. We have a lot of people in the workplace and in my one book I talk about how much conflict leaders deal with all the time. And sometimes that conflict say you and I are partners and I go to our boss and I'm like, Josh is constantly needling me, nothing I do is good enough. He's constantly correcting me and trying to tell me I'm doing things wrong. Okay, maybe you look at constructive feedback as a real gift and so you're giving it to me because you respect me and you want to work as a team and you want to grow together. Maybe I come from a background where constructive criticism was paired in my brain with you're not good enough, you're not smart enough, you're not as good as your sister, your brother, or whatever that history is that my brain has stored. And so now as a leader, if I just deal with the hey, Josh, don't give her feedback. I'm not solving a problem. But if I go beyond the what happened down into the why does it happen Now? I start to realize if I'm going to lead Lisa, if I'm leading myself, then I need to structure my constructive feedback in a different way. Or I need to really pay attention to doing a sandwich kind of thing where I'm giving a little positive and a little positive at the end. Or maybe instead of me giving my observations, I want to let my employee give hers first or something. So it just makes you smarter in how you deal with people by understanding. And you don't have to be a neuroscientist. But just a little bit about the brain can go a long way.

Speaker A: Yeah, understanding that why is so important and we always jump to assumptions instead of asking the curious questions to understand the why in the first place.

Speaker B: Yes. And I always listen for the information underneath the complaint. Sometimes leaders will be like, oh, my team just doesn't want to move. They're just set in their ways. They're super averse to change. And I'm like, okay, what's really going on here? So it might be that the change that you're asking of them contradicts something that they already do. So it's going to make it like they're going to lose either way, no matter what they do. It might be that you're dealing with somebody who has been in your company for a long time, and they feel like a resident expert in a certain area. So their identity is tied up in the tasks that they actually perform and the fact that they're the owner of that task for their team. And now all of a sudden, you've pulled the rug out from under them. Um, and now they're not the wise person or the owner. And so all that experience accounts to nothing. And it's very destabilizing. And so I think really thinking about, why are people not engaging, not just making assumptions that they don't want to, because we're programmed to want to. And I'll hear leaders say, oh, my team's allergic to meetings. They hate meetings. And I'm like, no, people don't hate meetings. They hate dumb meetings. So what that tells me right now is that you're not facilitating useful collaboration because if you do, people want to work together and be productive.

Speaker A: That's exactly right. I had a guest who said that a complaint is just a help request that an organization doesn't know how to ask yet. And that's exactly what it is. You need to understand the why, hear the complaint. There's probably something behind it. Sometimes it's just event of frustration, but there's always a why behind it. And if we take the time to just assume and say, oh, Josh is a complainer. He's just here to complain. I'm going to sit here for five minutes and listen. Then I'm going to move on with my life. If we really sit and listen to the why, and sometimes the why behind the why, it will make a huge difference.

Speaker B: Yeah, it tells you what they need. And you mentioned my 8C commitment framework. That commitment framework is built to smooth resistance because of all those reasons. Why are people complaining? Why are they not engaging? And when you go through the 8C, the first C is culture, which is really that psychological safety and the sense that I belong here, that I'm part of this team, and I See a lot of organizations that spend thousands of dollars on posters and bracelets and bugs. And that's not the wall. Oh yeah. And they're like, this is our values, this is what we stand for. But then their policies, their practices are like the antithesis of what you would do. So I work with leaders to say, how are we breathing and living this culture? So it's not what we say, it's what we do. And then the first three Cs are really critical for employees to engage. And it's clarity, coherence and cadence. And it's so interesting to me how many times, Because I'll ask leaders, okay, if, uh, people are doing your change or doing what you want, what do you see and what do you hear? And they can't get to that 10 foot level. They're looking at change at a 10,000 foot level. And so when you don't use collaborative decision making and when you're not really getting all of the information you need, then you can be setting people up with, I'm going to fail either way because this impacts this part of my job. And he doesn't even know I do this part of my job. And then the second piece is really that coherence of how these things work together. And also thinking about, say you're a company that's starting to embed AI into processes. A lot of companies are doing that right now. Or maybe you're buying a new software solution that has more automation in it. Thinking from that coherent level, how does this impact the other processes and softwares that we use? Are we implementing something that's now creating 10 extra steps for somebody in the name of efficiencies? And it's interesting. I have a very good friend of mine as a creative director at a financial company, and they were all in on AI and they were like, she was worried she was going to have to get rid of half her creative team. But what they're realizing is that AI doesn't do this solution. There's certain parts within the content creation pipeline that it can do much more efficiently. But the idea that we just bring it in and let AI do all this doesn't fit in nine different ways. And it actually makes more work for people. So that's that kind of coherence. And then I think cadence is really looking at the staff you had. Are people going to have to unlearn bad habits? Do you have a younger staff that will just do what you say from the jump? Do you have that identity piece where people are going to feel very out of sorts and stressed about losing their kind of informal leadership capacity. So dealing with those three, then the next two are collaboration and coaching. And that really gets into some of what we've already talked about, understanding people. And then the sustainability Cs are celebration and communication. And that's something else that I see in a lot of leadership and in a lot of organizations is really doing a crappy job on Celebration. And celebration fuels engagement. It fuels that sense of value, that sense of expectancy. And if we're not being strategic about it or we're just doing let's throw a luncheon for everybody, we're really missing opportunities to build collective efficacy in a strategic way. Using Celebration.

Speaker A: Yeah, Celebration. So I'm very passionate about that topic because I do think we are terrible at it. Terrible across the board. And for me, it's for two reasons. One is I. I think it gets back to what we originally talked about. People don't take the time to understand what others value as a celebration. And I always like to use the example. When I first got to the site I work at now we're on the leadership team and we gave monetary thank yous to a bunch of people to the point where we did it more than anybody else. And we got our hands slapped corporately because we went above and beyond. But then in our kind of culture, touchpoint that we had, one of the biggest opportunities our site told us was rewards, recognition and celebration. And we're like, how is that possible? I went so overboard here. We got our hand slapped. But you're telling me you don't feel like we celebrate because we didn't take the time to understand how they viewed celebration because sometimes they want that free lunch, Sometimes they do want the monetary value, sometimes they want whatever else it is. But we didn't take the time to ask those questions in the first place.

Speaker B: Yeah. And so many times it's not a prize, it's recognition and appreciation that can make a difference. And so one of the things I talk to leaders about doing is called 100 Ways in 100 Days. So you figure in an annual year you have about 100 days to really be creative. A lot of times you're spending your time doing other nuts and bolts stuff. So whatever your change is, first you have to see it and hear it. What does it look like? And then at each staff meeting, you have somebody and I tell people to fill out an index card. Not online, don't make a Google form, but fill out an index card so you have it and just Put in what they did and what they would do differently next time to make it better. And so now, uh, at each staff meeting or at each huddle, you're hearing from your peers something they've done that has helped to bring in whatever your strategic initiative or, uh, goal is. So you're getting that master experience. So there's four ways to build efficacy. So the first is just do it, and you try it, and you didn't die. So you're like, okay, I guess I can do this. So this forces them to do it. The second is, uh, vicarious experience, which is just watching a peer do it. So listening to people, hearing other people, and thinking, gosh, if Josh can do this, I can do this. So that builds a sense of efficacy. And then the third is peer persuasion, which is, this is how we do things here. And so you take those index cards and post them somewhere public. So if I'm in making copies or I'm at the lunch room or in a meeting room, and I look around and I'm like, okay, I have not gotten on board with this. But look at all around me are all these great things that people. People are doing. So it gives you a little sense to be part of this organization. I need to step onto the boat and start doing what everybody else is. And then the fourth is emotional arousal. And this is the biggest part with celebration that I think we don't do for people is, like, when you do something new, you get, like, excited, and then that energy just goes away if there's nobody there to catch you doing it. And so we don't let people toot their own horn. And I can't know all the little successes you've had in the day. So even building in an opportunity. So the 100 ways in a hundred days, people get positive reinforcement from their peers as they share what they've been doing. And the, oh, that was a great idea, or, oh, my gosh, I'd never thought of that. That gives you that little dopamine hit. But the other thing that I highly encourage in managers is to make a standing agenda item called the pity and pride. And so you go around and you say, okay, what's one thing we all need to pity you about? What's the one thing that you're just really feeling bad about? And you need people to understand that this is hard. And people can say, this is hard. And then we can be like, I pity you and I'll help you. And that's it. That's all we need. And then the so you do one pity and one pride, and you would be amazed how much this brings teams together, because everybody understands that we all have hard things we have to do that we're working through, and we're going to be fine, and we can do it. But I'm putting more effort in right now, and I need some recognition. I need a little bit of pity, and then I want some celebration for the things I'm doing really well. So I think just attending to that human need to be seen and heard and appreciated goes a long way in making people enjoy meetings, enjoy each other, builds that culture, and it moves you forward a lot faster and more efficiently.

Speaker A: I love both of those ideas and those examples for two reasons. One is because going back to how I think we fail at celebrations is that a lot of times we only celebrate the end point. And so, for me, I've got a lot of experience in projects, and my projects are two to three years out. And so if all I do is wait until the project's over to celebrate with my team, that means they're not getting any kind of celebration or recognition for three years, which isn't right. So this kind of forces the celebration, which is great. The other thing I firmly believe is we have so much going on today in the world of productivity, layoffs, everything. The people go away, but the work doesn't. And so the work then finds the few people that are left. And everybody's so over capacity that as soon as Lisa finishes this job, she doesn't have time to stop and recognize herself for what she did because she's jumping to the next fire. So your two examples give an environment for that to happen where we say, okay, Lisa, literally stop what you're doing and write down what you're happy about, or we're going to pause this meeting so you can tell us what we're going to pity and praise. That way, not only are we celebrating you, but you're celebrating yourself, which isn't happening today.

Speaker B: And sometimes you might celebrate something I do, but it's not really the thing that I think I deserve celebration. And you don't know. You can't read my mind. And so, um, giving people that autonomy and. And that agency to say, hey, clap for me. Look what I just did. This is amazing. And then everybody gets it. And then you get into a culture, we're working together and celebrating and smiling and giving each other props for your strengths becomes the norm, and that becomes a really strong culture with collective efficacy. And the other thing you said when you were talking about Only celebrating outcomes. One of the things I talk about in the book is that when we do strategy, what we should be measuring is outputs. So you have your resources, your actions, but then you have your outputs and then your outcomes. And so I talk a lot about the idea of a theory of change. So, for example, if you say, I want stronger teams that collaborate more effectively, use data, whatever it is, because what you're saying is if our team is stronger and more collaborative, our projects are going to get done faster and better. That's an outcome. That's what you hope will happen. Your theory of change is that if they're working more efficiently or they're collaborating better, that outcome is going to happen. What's the output that you have that they're doing that? So a lot of times we have a team that maybe they're working really hard and they're collaborating really great, but the outcomes didn't move, and it either A, had nothing to do with them, or B, wasn't the right theory of change. We thought this would impact our outcomes, and it didn't. That doesn't mean the people failed. It means our theory of change failed. And I think that focusing on those outputs of what are the adult behaviors that I control in this situation that I believe are going to impact our bottom dollar, our KPIs, whatever. But a lot of times companies do only celebrate the outcome as opposed to the actual work of the people who are in that theory of change.

Speaker A: The other word that you mentioned that I think is so critical for these celebrations was the word behavior. Because a lot of times we do celebrate the outcomes. And if we don't have the right behaviors, I can still force some of those outcomes. It isn't something that will last the test of time. It isn't a culture that you're building. But if you say this is the most important thing, if you don't get this done, your job's on the line. I will figure out a way to make that happen. I may not have the right behaviors. I may not do the right things. And then the next time we have to do that, we may not be successful, but I'll make sure it happens this time. And that is the dangerous thing about only celebrating those outcomes and not looking at the outputs of behaviors. Because we are not setting up an organization in a culture for longevity. We're setting up for immediate gratification, and then we're done.

Speaker B: Yeah, and you're setting your people up, uh, as subject to all these outside forces versus agents of change. When you're focused on the outputs. You're setting people up with power and agency and the ability to say, I did what I was supposed to do so I can get in this car tonight and drive home feeling really fulfilled versus outcomes. Almost any outcome you look at has a million different variables that impact it. It could be the economy, it could be who's in charge. It could be a storm off the coast of your suppliers land. It could be all kinds of things that we can't control. And so then that puts me as the victim of all these forces outside of my control. And it makes you feel powerless and it stresses you out. And then it becomes a cycle of disengagement because it's like I can't win.

Speaker A: And you keep using the word kind of agents of change and change. And a lot of this is about obviously change through the process. When we think of change a lot of time, and I think the most widely known phrase is the flight or fight response. We sometimes view change as a threat to what we're used to, a threat to our uh, work, a threat to the way we've always done it. Maybe it'll give us more work. How does change really trigger our own mental kind of neuroscience side and how do we view it differently? So it's not viewed as a threat, but something that is worth pursuing?

Speaker B: Yeah. So I think a couple of things in there. So first of all, threat and where we process change or process even what's happening in the moment is below our nose. It's in the limbic part of our brain. 80% of the traffic in our brain is bottoms up, which means that there is 80% of what we are thinking, we are not consciously thinking. And so we attribute a lot of thought to a person's character or personality or things like that. But 80% of our thoughts are not being controlled by the part of our brain that has our personality and our morals and our character. So what happens is our brain looks at right now and all the experiences from the past write up a little report. So we have. I call him Harold. He's our thalamus. Harold is my data manager. And what Harold's job is to look at all the information from the environment, make associations between what's going on now and what's going on in the past and to write up a report that he sends to Bob. Bob is my security manager and he lives in my amygdala. And his job is to decide do I hit the panic button or do I just tap it or do I just sit back and we're good. He taps the panic button, A message is sent to the CEO's office, to our prefrontal cortex and that's where our character and personality and morals lives. So sends a message up to the president of our brain and says, hey, we're not 100% sure. We got some good, some bad. We're a little uncomfortable. We put you on alert, we need you to be thinking. And that's when you get sharp. And that's why just a little bit of stress is really good for you. And then if he wails on that button, then the message goes directly up to the president that says, hey, we have a five alarm fire go down, get a coffee at the coffee shop, we're going to take over. And when the building's safe again, we'll call you back in. In. And so the CEO isn't even in our brain anymore. And that's why sometimes you have an argument with somebody and then you calm down and you're like, why did I say that? I don't even think that. Why did I say that? And it's because you didn't. Bob and Harold were the ones that were taking over control. And so then you get into the other decision that Bob makes is that if I am in a situation where I feel like I can get out of this, then he will stimulate my sympathetic nervous system. And that's your fight or flee kind of thing. And so you have your adrenaline. So if you think about being in traffic and getting cut off, you get the insta sweat, you get super focused and you swerve out of the way. That's when you know you can get away if you can't get away. So you're sitting in traffic, somebody's going to rear end you and you are boxed in at a red light, then Bob will make your parasympathetic nervous system go. And that's a dissociative practice. So it slows down time, it sends out kind of relaxation chemicals, it numbs you so that you can prepare for the pump. So when you think in the work setting, you've got people first of all who have broken stress response systems where the smallest little thing is making Bob hit that panic button like you're in real danger. And the more it happens, the more sensitive it gets. So that's where it becomes important to try to figure out that underlying why. Because if I understand, if I have self awareness, then I can have some self control and self regulation, but if I don't have the self awareness, then Bob and Harold are running my brain. The second is if I'm in a corporate culture where I can't get out of this, where I don't have voice, I don't have a way to reframe a problem or a way to maybe come up with a different solution, then I can't get out of it. I'm going to dissociate, I'm going to disengage and I'm going to become numb. I'm going to be low affect and that's going to be my reaction. And you look at like today's workforce and I think it's something horrible. Like 2/3 of the workforce is currently actively quietly quitting and disengaged. So we've got a whole lot of that lack of voice or agency or power that's making their brain say, I have no way to get out of this stress. What we want to do is set people up in that healthy zone of stress where it's like, okay, we're going to have a productive struggle together, but that involves good collaboration and how we bring people into the decision making process.

Speaker A: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense because like you said, it is 2/3 of our organizations now. The working world is just quietly disassociating with everything going on. And it is so interesting to look at that, that neurological side of it where I love your example of it moving up and going up to the president and the CEO, because it makes a lot of sense. And I work with plenty of people that embody everything that you just said. And it sounds like going back to those eight Cs that you talked about and really being intentional about those will help bypass a lot of these. Quick smashing of that panic button. That doesn't necessarily have to be a smashing of that panic button.

Speaker B: And every company I've worked for, whether I'm working with teams or doing one on one executive coaching, every single time they say, you not only helped me to make my job better at work, but you've also helped in my marriage. Because we come home and we're not decompressing and screaming about work all day. We're coming home more calm and having a good understanding as a leader of that basic brain science. So again, you're not the leader that you say, this is how I lead, but you're the leader your people need and you're supporting them and they see that you're there, you're supportive, you're clear, you're celebrating. Then all of a sudden these are people that are not just happier at work, but they're happier in life. And for you as leader, they're more productive, they're more efficient, they show up to work, you retain them. All kinds of those outcomes that you measure go up.

Speaker A: I think it's a great shift of mindset that a lot of people can take here and I think it's a lot that they can now keep in their pocket and adjust how they approach certain situations. And uh, I've loved everything we've talked about so far. Is there any final thoughts that you want to share with everybody before we wrap up?

Speaker B: The main thing is real change starts in the brain. Brain. Whether it's a change at work or a personal change you want to make, it starts in your brain. So if you understand, you don't have to be a neuroscientist, but understand a little bit about how that works. You have self awareness and then if you practice self regulation techniques to keep Bob and Harold at bay, then you have self control. And when you have self control, you're happier, healthier and more successful.

Speaker A: That's great. I feel like there should be and uh, I don't know if it's one of your books. I feel like there should be a book about Bob and Harold the adventure.

Speaker B: Yeah, they're in the books. Yeah, yeah. And the book's called Aspiration to Operations and it really helps leaders move from that wishing things could be different to operationalizing change and support and transformation.

Speaker A: Hopefully everybody can check that out again. This is Lisa Riegel. I will have all of her information in the description of the podcast and on the posting, including her books. Aspiration to Operation is one of them. But please make sure that you read that everything that she's talked about here as well as has more on Bob and Harold in there. Anything else that she wants to share, I'll make sure all that information's in there. If you want to get a hold of her and learn more about her work or her eight C's I know this is just like a tease and a taste of everything that could be shared. Definitely want to encourage everybody to reach out and learn more. You can like follow and subscribe to my podcast found on all podcast platforms. It's m my Instagram, YouTube and TikTok at Leading Quarters. And you can email me with any questions or ideas you have for future episodes@leadingquartersmail.com. um, but Lisa, I really appreciate you sharing everything that you have. I love the thought process of neuroscience in the brain and thinking differently, asking those curious questions, asking the why Because a lot of times we walk through life on autopilot and assumptions, and this reminds us to stop and think and use our brain, even if it's going this way, use our brain to really understand what's going on and why it's going on. And I think you've given everybody who's listening today a lot to think about and reflect on on.

Speaker B: Thanks for having me and please link up on LinkedIn and I'd love to hear what people think.