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Hosts Spencer Horn and Christian Napier discuss a better way to build and strengthen teams in any organization.
00:13 - 00:49
Spencer Horn: Well, hello listeners. Welcome to the Teamwork a Better Way podcast. My name is Spencer Horne. And you may notice that my co-host Christian Napier is not here today. He is out at a special IT conference that he's so excited about. I'm sad that He's not with me to meet our incredible guest today, Karl Tischler. Karl, I am so glad to have you as my wingman today. And I'm excited for our listeners to get to know a little bit about you. Karl is the founder of HPNA Central Academy. And I'm gonna talk a little bit about that
00:49 - 00:57
Spencer Horn: in a second, but we usually do just a second of banter, Christian and I, so you're gonna replace him. But you're coming to us from Central London, is that right?
00:58 - 01:06
Carl Tishler: I am definitely coming from Central London, and hopefully, like we were just talking about, the internet will hold up here because for whatever reason. We were
01:06 - 01:09
Spencer Horn: laughing about that. Why would it be an issue in central London?
01:09 - 01:16
Carl Tishler: Yeah, it's amazing. It really is amazing. But it's nice to be here as long as I'm here and the network's open.
01:16 - 01:52
Spencer Horn: Fingers crossed that you'll stay. And of course, this show is produced live by me. And so I'm running the technology. Now I'm asking questions with you. So we get to be patient with each other. And hopefully, our listeners will have fun. And they're going to, for sure, learn some great information while you and I are on the show. But let me introduce you to those who are listening today. So listeners, Carl has had a lifelong interest in people and specifically in what it takes to sustain performance at high levels. And there is no more fascinating and
01:52 - 02:31
Spencer Horn: complex machine than ourselves. I agree with that. And while burnout and passivity come easy, sustainable performance requires real work, professionalism and humanity. And Carl's journey started 30 plus years ago when he decidedly, with a decidedly unsuccessful university tennis career, leading to a sports psychology study and ongoing focus on sustainable performance for individuals and teams. You know, I didn't know that about you. I've got more to read, but I wanna chat about this. So my family, we're huge tennis fans. My son-in-law played tennis growing up in high school, actually played for Harvard University tennis team. He now
02:31 - 03:07
Spencer Horn: sits on the board of the tennis association here in the United States in, I believe it's Connecticut where it's based, but huge, huge tennis fans. And hopefully he's going to be listening and love to introduce you to. But Carl has worked for 25 years in private equity and finance, observing individual and team performance through a variety of economic and market cycles. And if you listen to Dr. Nadia Zeksembaeva, you've seen a lot of economic uncertainty in the last 30 years, haven't
03:07 - 03:11
Carl Tishler: you? That was amazing. That number of recessions was unbelievable.
03:12 - 03:51
Spencer Horn: If you think about it, she's like once a week, somewhere in the world, and it makes sense. Along the way, he served in numerous positions, including chief investment officer, CFO, COO, and chief people officer, as well as an executive and non-executive board member, each providing the opportunity to learn and observe more. For the majority of those years, his focus was with the renewable energy and infrastructure sectors. And that's how you and I actually met each other. We have a common friend, Peter Rosbeck. Hopefully you're listening, Peter, and who's in the renewable energy investment field as well.
03:52 - 04:03
Spencer Horn: And started out in London, I guess that's maybe where you met? Yeah. And then Carl founded the Central Academy in 2000. Is it just the Academy or Central Academy in 2008?
04:05 - 04:06
Carl Tishler: 1 and the same.
04:06 - 04:48
Spencer Horn: 1 and the same. In the wake of the global financial crisis, so he began working with high performing law partners and other professionals, including yourself. And really, who had been made redundant, Something previously unimaginable. His early work and curriculums focused on building perspectives and resilience, important cornerstones of sustainable performance. And so, oh my gosh, for the last 6 years, Carl has been the Chief People Officer of Venture and Microsoft-backed synthetic data company, Hazy, where he implemented the Academy tools and approach. And I've had the opportunity to learn a little bit about those. I'm really excited for
04:48 - 05:08
Spencer Horn: our listeners to learn about your tools and approach. But during that time, the company had exceptionally high retention and staff development and NPS. And you have been a guest lecturer at Cambridge University's Chief People Officer Executive Educational Program. How cool is that? I want to go.
05:09 - 05:12
Carl Tishler: I do too, actually. It's a great course.
05:13 - 05:52
Spencer Horn: And early In his career, Carl co-wrote and received grant funding from the Chase Manhattan Foundation for developing curriculum teaching corporate finance to visually impaired students. Welcome Carl. That's a, you know, it's a worthy, it's a worthy bio. So I wanted to, I wanted to share it all with you. You know, today we wanted to talk about how CEOs of self make great team members. Would you just give us some background? What caused you to focus on sustainable performance and how does your sports psychology background influence your work?
05:54 - 06:34
Carl Tishler: Well, I think on the sports psychology side, It was really beginning to just appreciate how difficult it is to do anything as a sort of individual contributor, to do anything sustainably at a high level. That was 1 thing I really learned in college. You have as much that goes on in your life outside off the court as on and You really get an appreciation of how you've got to Understand and sort of look at the total person as I say, there's no more complex machine than a person So I think that really got me interested in
06:34 - 07:16
Carl Tishler: that topic of sustainable, consistent performance being really the objective, more than sort of individual achievements. And then I really started with the Academy stuff in 2008 with this whole disruption in the market. I was working for a company that totally blew up and it was sort of like a slow motion train wreck happened over a period of time. And I just saw a lot of people who are much more talented than I have also disrupted in careers there. And it just, in that kind of slow motion time period, it just really focused on this observation that
07:16 - 07:55
Carl Tishler: people could be very high performing in their jobs and unfortunately very low performing when it comes to taking care of themselves. So if you give a person like that you know a third-party client they do an amazing job but when they're the client themselves so to speak whether that's self-care or resilience or career management, we tend to unfortunately just do a very amateur kind of a job on that. And So I focused on that and then the sort of related observation that in so many other areas of our life, we have structure and support. If you
07:55 - 08:37
Carl Tishler: want to be a software developer, individual contributor, level 3, you know exactly what's required to do that. And there's plenty of other people that could tutor you or you could, you know, peers you could reach out to. There's structure, there's structure, you know, in the USTA with your, with your rankings or We have it in all of these other places, but when it comes to ourselves, no 1 teaches us how to have a structure or support. CEOs of real businesses have a whole set cadence of meetings, SLT meetings, board meetings, et cetera. And that's what's required
08:37 - 08:47
Carl Tishler: to executively manage something complex. Again, with us personally, we don't have that. And that's the problem.
08:47 - 09:16
Spencer Horn: It's interesting. It's kind of like the cobbler syndrome. You're dealing with high functioning, intelligent, hardworking individuals who bring incredible talent to their role. Yet when it comes to self-care, and we're going to highlight that a little. What you're saying is they neglect that. And I've got to believe that there's a correlation to however sustainable team performance. You mentioned you've been a student of that when you go back to your tennis years And how
09:16 - 09:16
Carl Tishler: do you
09:16 - 09:59
Spencer Horn: sustain high performance? I am a certified team performance coach and I use a tool. The reason I'm highlighting this because the tool that I use comes from an organization called Team coaching international out of Sausalito, California, north of San Francisco, and they've been doing worldwide team performance assessments for about 30 years. And this is their findings, and there was a report in the Harvard business review in January that corroborates what their results are. But they say that around 10% of teams worldwide are higher performing. So that's team performance. And the whole point of team performance is
09:59 - 10:32
Spencer Horn: to create sustainable performance. Because the bottom line of every organization comes from discretionary effort of those team members to work hard to solve the problems of business. So I'm just curious if that matches what you see and how does a high performing CEO or executive maybe struggle to maintain high performing teams? And does this lack of self care have a correlation? Or is there a corollary between the rest of the team struggling and them struggling to care for themselves?
10:33 - 11:20
Carl Tishler: Yeah, that's a great question. Sort of in reverse order, I think there definitely is a correlation, in my opinion. Obviously, you can have very, very different types of organizations where these things are different. If we talk about some place like Hazy or places where you need to really be collaborative, things are challenging, things are nuanced, I really do believe the bedrock of teamwork starts with the person taking care of themselves, basically. Even at the most fundamental level, I think there's a thing around active career management and being in this job with intentionality and opting in and
11:20 - 11:59
Carl Tishler: not being there as so easily can happen, we can drift and we can have a lot of passivity in it, which is 1 of the major symptoms, I would say, of not being a CEO of yourself, of not having a level of professionalism. So I think, again, in these types of organizations, the core of it is that the person is there intentionally and on purpose, And secondly, that they're there sustainably. And I do believe that organizations have a critical role to play in ensuring or looking to ensure managing burnout and looking after people and their wellbeing.
12:00 - 12:43
Carl Tishler: I do think it's two-way street. And I think that, you know, a lot of that is also incumbent on us. And I think as with anything else in life, trying to perform to a high level, you know, just by accident or just by, you know, with some unconnected actions is just not successful. So I do think that level of intentionality and professionalism, when you can bring those same great skills that people have at work and start to bring it to yourself, I think that's 1 of the key preconditions for being able to show up and collaborate
12:44 - 12:53
Carl Tishler: in a way that is value added and not in a way that's tinged with either fixed mindedness or with these other things.
12:53 - 13:30
Spencer Horn: You know, that's, I love to hear you say that it's incumbent upon the organization to be able to create that environment where self-care can happen. I imagine, I mean, just based on experience of even people that I know and 1 of them being a member of our family here who's worked in the investment world, there is a culture of just grind until you drop. In some ways, that might add to the impetus of how you focus so much on this to just, you're a family man and you know how important it is to spend time with
13:30 - 13:40
Spencer Horn: family yet You're fighting this culture that says you need to work 80-100 hours a week to be able to make hay while the sun shines, right? I mean, am I off base with that?
13:41 - 14:19
Carl Tishler: No, I think it's spot on. And I think If you're going to put yourself in an environment where you're going to have to work realistically 100 hours a week, you better be doing it with intentionality and with a plan. I say that because not everyone does that. I didn't do that, for instance. I came into it, didn't really realize what it was. And if you're not very careful, you're going to be really burnt out as a result. So I think there is a threshold thing, as I said before, about active career management and trying to put
14:19 - 14:58
Carl Tishler: yourself as best you can in working conditions and in places that suit what your lifestyle is and what you're looking to do. I mean, I think that's a big part of it. Of course, we've always got to optimize, right? Tough job markets, et cetera. But I learned a lot when I was a very young banker from 1 of my bosses who came out of West Point and had a young family and worked to do that, make that transition into investment banking. And he was working like a hundred odd hours a week, supporting a family of like
14:58 - 15:34
Carl Tishler: 3. And what always stuck in my mind about that is he explained that he did that in a very purposeful way, a lot of clarity that this was a necessary stepping stone to get from 1 thing to the other. And again, just the sort of intentionality, if it went up to 10, the intentionality would be like at 11 or 12, in his case. So I think if you're going in with that type of intentionality to whatever it is, I think you stand a much better chance of being able to manage it and get out of it,
15:35 - 16:12
Carl Tishler: whatever you want. I think where people get into trouble is when, is basically with the word should, which if I could, I would completely ban. But for instance, people feel that they get out of university and I should work in investment banking or I should do this. It's fine and it's, I think, necessary and great to experiment and go in things. But when you're driven with either passivity or by something like should, I think that's a recipe for a lot of trouble, even if you succeed in the job, right? Because a person like that 5 or
16:12 - 16:18
Carl Tishler: 6 years on is a lot more likely to not be the greatest teammate basically.
16:20 - 16:57
Spencer Horn: So let me come back to you know doing this live sometimes we have those technical problems. I was trying to do a bumper and it didn't work and so then the system freaked out on me. So you said a lot of very important things and I'm a big believer that we shouldn't should on ourselves. We should on ourselves too often. And that gets messy, right? You've heard that, but that's just a little play on words. But I wanna come back to this intentionality and hearing about your friend, he was able to do that. But in some
16:57 - 17:37
Spencer Horn: cultures, not everybody that's listening to us is in investment banking or finance or in the consulting world, which is just, again, saying crazy long hours. But there are people who are project managers who are regular leaders and managers in retail, hospitality, IT, and they're still working crazy hours. How do you navigate, I want you to answer a few things. Number 1, describe what a CEO of self is. And second, how do you create that self care, create that CEO of self in an environment or a culture that may not value that yet?
17:38 - 18:02
Carl Tishler: Yeah, I could just add 1 thing at the beginning of that. I completely agree. There's nothing glorious or great or special at all about anything on Wall Street or any professional services. I worked for a period of time in a slaughterhouse and I feel like I learned a lot more about a lot of things through that experience.
18:02 - 18:04
Spencer Horn: Including like where our food comes from, right?
18:04 - 18:20
Carl Tishler: Yeah, where it comes from, what it's like to get up at 04:00 in the morning, you know, to work 12 hours to support your family. Yeah. Minimum wage job. I mean, like those are real lessons. And so I just, I totally agree with that.
18:20 - 18:21
Spencer Horn: I love that.
18:23 - 19:08
Carl Tishler: To me the key thing of a CEO of self is that you're literally you're characterized by the fact that you're trying to actively manage 3 areas of your life. Number 1, your self-care, right, which is, for instance, managing burnout or trying to get proper exercise, whatever it is, that's kind of category 1. Category 2 is sort of your general operations. It's your resilience, it's your intentional attitudes, it's your habits, your core habits. And then the third is your career management. And that means not the immediate job. That means I think of us all as having 60
19:08 - 19:49
Carl Tishler: years, you know, health permitting. We've got to allocate and navigate what we do. And the thing about those 3 areas is no 1 is telling you to actively manage them. People can be telling you, or you could be focused on lots of aspects. I'm gonna do yoga, or I'm gonna do this job. What we focus on the Academy has nothing to do with the decisions you make. Those are completely up to you. What we focus on is trying to equip people with structure and some tools to be able to literally just manage those areas. Managing doesn't
19:49 - 20:32
Carl Tishler: mean controlling them. You can only control what you can control. But managing them means consistently looking after them. And we teach to a weekly, very brief habit of checking in on those 3 areas of your life every week, but in a way that anyone, no matter how many hours you're working in the week, you can spare the 5 or the 20 minutes to do it. And so the key thing that characterizes CEO of Stealth is not outcomes or whatever, but it's an attempt to try to manage those areas, right? To pay regular attention. 1 of the
20:32 - 21:15
Carl Tishler: ways we say is that over the years I've observed that, myself included by the way, that people tend to do most of their quality thinking about their careers when they're in between jobs. Obviously you're gonna spend more time working on your, interviewing, et cetera, in between jobs. But I'm talking about quality time thinking about it. And if you were the CEO of a company and you only focused on strategy when you were at a time of despair or crisis, you wouldn't be doing a very good job as a CEO because as CEO of a company, there
21:15 - 22:00
Carl Tishler: are certain things that you're always mindful of. Strategy, operations, your people. And for that, you've got this regular structures. It's organized. That's why they call it an organization. But again, what we're trying to do as a CEO of self is just mimic the same thing. And instead of spending all your time thinking about career when you're in between jobs, spreading it out in small, regular ways. Instead of only thinking about how do I recover from burnout, which I've had 3 times badly, instead of thinking about that when it's a crisis, managing it, looking at it regularly.
22:00 - 22:07
Carl Tishler: What are very small actions in these areas that we can do? That to me is what a CEO of self is about.
22:08 - 22:43
Spencer Horn: I really love that concept because you're as you spread it out, it doesn't become onerous or difficult, It just becomes something that you do. And I believe what you were talking about CEOs is true. Actually, I didn't think about my career until after I was a CEO for a company. I worked for this company for 7 and a half years. I became the CEO for the last 2 years working there. And the company was struggling in so many ways. I was the fourth CEO in 5 years. And so you could see they were really firing people.
22:43 - 23:15
Spencer Horn: And so they hired me to turn it around. There was a tremendous amount of pressure on me to turn things around for the owners, for the employees, for our customers. And I remember I got to a point where the owners and some of the people in the company, I failed to make the changes that I wanted. I mean, pressure was enormous. So they decided to go back. I think this was in 2015. They decided to go back to what they did in the 90s, which I thought was a huge mistake. But I was in the way
23:15 - 23:50
Spencer Horn: of that, and so they let me go. I remember my wife, Carl, talking to me saying, I have been praying for the last 6 months that you'd get fired because I knew you wouldn't change, make a change on your own until that happened just because of the responsibility I felt to everybody. So I'm putting everybody else's needs before my own. And you're saying, wait a minute, that sounds good. The problem is if we're not caring for ourselves, we're not caring for the rest of the organization as well as they need to be because we're so burned
23:50 - 24:19
Spencer Horn: out. We're so stressed. We're so anxious. I, it's hard to do. And you're exactly right. That's when I totally reinvented my career. Cause I, and I left actually joyful when I was leaving. I was actually, I'm glad. And it became a huge benefit to me to leave that organization. But boy, when you're in it, it's hard to do what you're talking about. How do you, so how do you get CEOs like I was to, to slow down and actually become that CEO self.
24:21 - 25:07
Carl Tishler: That's a great point. I think the things are just learned mostly by, you know, by mistakes and failures and experimentations over the years are that, we have a system that's designed by and for super busy people and I think that's really a critical sort of a first critical thing is it would be very very very rare in our system to have anyone spend more than 20 minutes on anything. And it has to be at that level because the alternative, which is someone will say, well, I want to, you know, I've gone for 5 days to Montana
25:07 - 25:48
Carl Tishler: to think big thoughts about a career. I mean, that's great, but it's not really that helpful unless it's implemented, unless it's managed over time. So having, first of all, having things be very bite size and really focusing on high impact, small things is the first thing. The second thing is I don't think of anything that we teach in the Academy as being complex. In fact, I would take simple as like a compliment because that's what we try to do. So it's not that it's complex actually, it's just it's very hard to do it. If you think
25:48 - 26:29
Carl Tishler: about it, like it's very hard to take a meeting with yourself as seriously as if it was a meeting with a client. But that's the standard that we work to. And what we've learned over the years is the way that you stand, we all stand the best chance of doing that, is learning together as a group. And so like our foundation course goes over the entire year because sticking with people over time matters because we're really looking to operationalize this very time-limited but high-impact habit of this weekly meeting. And if you stick with people, first of
26:29 - 27:05
Carl Tishler: all as a group, second of all over a year, where in the course of any year, we're all gonna have disruptions and things that would challenge our habits. But when you're together and you're able to kind of build resilience, because everyone's falling off the horse, so to speak, That's a big thing. And then the last thing that's part of that is is accountability. And I've had people say to me, well, you know, your system it seems very professional and rigid and I don't, I mean, I think it's rigid on structure because it's there to protect ourselves.
27:06 - 27:30
Carl Tishler: It's not at all rigid in terms of the choices people make. And I think that's a critical difference. It's like, you know, between like necessary infrastructure that's there to help even the busiest person versus the ability for people to make decisions on it, I think is a key difference. But I think those are sort of the 3 elements, I think, Spencer.
27:30 - 28:09
Spencer Horn: I think it's really important that you create that structure because if the structure wasn't there then the pressure to continue on as you are currently operating is so much easier. We usually take the path of least resistance. So I find that in my life, because I am a low conforming individual, I have to manufacture structure to keep me focused. And I think that's a great thing. And I love the fact that you talk about how simple the process or the principles are. I talk to CEO groups regularly. I just was talking to a CEO group in
28:09 - 28:40
Spencer Horn: San Jose, California last Thursday. And 1 of the very things that I said to them is there can be a tendency to discount what I'm going to share with you about delegation. Because a lot of leaders struggle to delegate, which is 1 of the reasons why they experience burnout. They hold on to too much. I know I did. And so I teach a lot from my experience. Based on personality, some people can want to control everything. Other people are afraid of conflict. So if I delegate something to you, Carl, and you don't do it, that means
28:40 - 29:15
Spencer Horn: I have to have a conversation. I just want to avoid that. So I'll just do it myself. Or opposite of controlling things the way you want, controlling things the way they must be, so they need to be accurate, and that's a different personality. So all of these things can cause people to hold on to more responsibility than is healthy, instead of letting it go to their team and empowering their team. But how to do that is so basic that so many CEOs will discount it. Like, it seems so simple, but they're not doing it. So I
29:15 - 29:49
Spencer Horn: love the idea of creating a structure for them to be able to implement simple and yet valuable tools. Can you describe some of those? I mean, just share a little bit of what those processes are like. And then, I mean, I want you to talk a little bit about, you've been doing this since 2008. You've been doing it in many fields, but I think you got started in a couple of industries. You know, we've talked about law and renewable energy and tech, and I'm sure you've got CEOs from all over, but what are you seeing? So
29:49 - 29:57
Spencer Horn: describe the process, if you can, and then what are you seeing? What are you noticing as the CEOs start implementing your process?
30:01 - 30:43
Carl Tishler: Great. Sure. I think the process really starts with a commitment to having a five-minute session scheduled. And it starts really with the very basic thing. We have a kind of a 7 step process where for this meeting with yourself that starts with scheduling it, showing up on time for it, which is actually tends to be the hardest thing. Having the meeting, taking some notes, effectively, and then effectively reporting back in to the rest of the group once you've had the meeting. And so, as I
30:43 - 30:49
Spencer Horn: say, accountability is best. Okay, so hold on, so there's peer accountability, not just accountability to the group, right?
30:49 - 31:28
Carl Tishler: Absolutely, pure accountability. Never shame, though. That's a big thing. I mean, that's my issue with the word should, because to me, should is just a contraction of shame and could. And fortunately, I've just seen working with people over time, and again certainly with myself, that people just use the word should to hurt themselves, basically. So I don't believe in shame, at least, you know, I don't believe in it generally, and I don't believe in it in what we do at the Academy. So the accountability is not based on, you know, telling people, counting them out and
31:28 - 32:08
Carl Tishler: saying, oh, you didn't do this. It's the opposite. It's a positive accountability. So each cohort, which usually ranges from about 10 to 20 people, and they come from all different backgrounds because the object is to make people a CEO of self. Some of the people on our course are CEOs or C-suite, some are ex-professional athletes, but we also get some mid and earlier in career. Because what we're looking for is people that have interest and grit and can work together as part of this cohort to help everybody achieve this. So what you're doing is you're doing
32:08 - 32:43
Carl Tishler: this scheduling and going through this process of this short impactful meeting. And then everyone goes on to the same, currently we do it on WhatsApp. You go into a WhatsApp group and you just write the word done. And so again, I don't go through that list every week and say, oh, Bob, Bob didn't do it. Shame on you, Bob. It's not like that at all, but going through and seeing your peers who are all busy no matter sort of what age or or role they have that everybody is managing to doing their best to carve out
32:43 - 33:20
Carl Tishler: time and to see done done done done done done all the way through is it's the accountability in that constructive accountability that's a big major part of it. And so we really believe in that weekly cadence. And So at month end, you have a slightly longer meeting of about 20 minutes. In between, it's just 5 minutes. And then at the end of the quarter, you have a more extended meeting. And that just continues indefinitely on the same basis. And I sort of think of that as being like a heartbeat. I think of it as the consistency
33:20 - 33:38
Carl Tishler: of it is something that's very, very, very important because it's the opposite of what we have otherwise, which is just kind of randomness. And we'll think about self-care or career just at random times in a, in a passive and kind of reactionary way. And kind
33:38 - 33:41
Spencer Horn: of like a rhythmia instead of a good,
33:42 - 34:25
Carl Tishler: yeah, exactly. Exactly. Exactly. But I think just 1 thing coming back to what you asked before that is in a sense, it's got to be almost a tie for first in terms of the most important thing that we're really trying to get across to people through doing this and through doing this in cohorts, is the importance of what I'll call tactical self-compassion. Because a huge issue with people is that there's an operative belief that you can't be both driven and self-compassionate. When you ask people that they say, oh of course you can I see the difference,
34:25 - 35:04
Carl Tishler: but when they really think about it there is this deep operative belief? And So all of these times that we've either ourselves or seen others do these quote unquote heroic things at work and you know not brush their teeth or slept for 2 weeks and and that's glorified what that's really getting to is this idea that you can't be driven and self-compassionate. And that is such a destructive and pervasive thing. Because again, even if you just distanced yourself emotionally from all of that and look at it, you can't possibly perform consistently, sustainably over time with all
35:04 - 35:46
Carl Tishler: of the setbacks and challenges that just will always happen unless you've got a way of picking yourself up and taking care of yourself and having a kinder voice. People try and people do it for large stretches of their career. There's no law that says you have to be have this kind of tactical self-compassion. And by the way when I'm saying tactical what I mean is people have a definition where they think of self-compassion as, well, I'm just making excuses for myself. It's not performing. And people sometimes, honestly, will have almost like a gag reflux to the
35:46 - 36:25
Carl Tishler: word self-compassion. And so we gave it a different name and a different definition. We call it Sierra Charlie. It's just NATO code for the same first letters. But it kind of gets rid of that that misconstrued self-compassion and says, hey, this is not about you being weak somehow and taking care of yourself. This is a performance tool, right? This is part of what high performers do to be able to pick themselves back up, you know, and deal with it. And to me, out of the whole, again, course, other than giving people this weekly cadence and this
36:25 - 36:41
Carl Tishler: weekly heartbeat of it, I think it's really trying to embed and operationalize this tactical self-compassion that to me is at the top of the list because I think that's the thing that's in massive short supply.
36:42 - 37:13
Spencer Horn: I love that, Sierra Charlie, because I know I have friends that, for example, that work at Deloitte. You know, my son-in-law worked at Bain. You know, the people who work at, you know, McKinsey or investment banking or your Goldman Sachs, whoever you're working for, the culture is you grind and tell you drop. And then what happens is they last a couple of years and then they go start their own companies where they do it again because they start up those companies and they get a little break, go to Montana as you talked about, a little downtime.
37:15 - 37:54
Spencer Horn: I really am interested to know how it sounds like the initial reaction is the gag reflex from some of these executives at these types of organizations. But I'm so in agreement with you because This concept was taught by a lot of people, but 1 that comes to mind is Stephen Covey. He talks about, think about the metaphor of sawing a log with 1 of those saws that you go back and forth. If you're just cutting all the time and never stopping to sharpen the saw, eventually you get diminishing returns on the time and effort you are
37:54 - 38:38
Spencer Horn: expending. What I'm hearing you say is the self-care, the tactical Self-care, the Sierra Charlie is enabling us to still be driven, but have a more holistic approach to life, which then probably brings the better self to work every single day and can be more productive. I did 1 of my behavioral assessments with you, the ProScan, and if you remember, there's a section on there about kinetic energy. That's how much physical and emotional energy you have to do the work without having to recharge your battery. The idea is that somebody that is 7 could probably work 18
38:38 - 39:00
Spencer Horn: hours a day without taking a break. But sometimes they're no less effective as someone that's in a 3 or 4 energy who's maybe taking more breaks because they're not context switching, they're being more focused, they're being more intentional about the work that they're doing and they're not just dissipating the excess energy that they have. I don't know if that's making any sense to you.
39:00 - 39:04
Carl Tishler: No, definitely, definitely makes sense. Yeah.
39:06 - 39:29
Spencer Horn: So, well, so I mean, I love that you're doing that. So, I know there's lots more that you have to measure. I love the 3 areas of managing self-care, managing burnout, developing resilience through habits, and then career. Is it always in that order? Because caring for yourself, developing habits, and that's kind of another Stephen Covey idea, right? First things first.
39:30 - 40:03
Carl Tishler: Yeah, definitely, Definitely. Yeah, it is those 3 areas. The way it works in these meetings, divide things into 3 categories, which broadly match those, which is strategic, where you're heading, tactical, what are you navigating through at the moment, and then pastoral, meaning in this case, self-care. So yeah, those are the 3. It's interesting, Spencer, I was thinking about what you were saying before about your, was it your son-in-law that played tennis at Harvard?
40:03 - 40:03
Spencer Horn: Yeah.
40:04 - 40:49
Carl Tishler: That is real tennis, that is super impressive. But I think of the thing, what we try to emphasize on our course is that the Sierra Charlie, this tactical self-compassion, that belongs to the family of mental toughness, which is to say these are intentional, constructive performance perspectives. And that's part of, again, sort of rescuing it out of the other area where people say, well, taking care of myself or thinking about myself as a weakness. Like it's not, it belongs with mental toughness. It belongs, you know, in that area. And I think kind of reclaiming that and reframing
40:49 - 40:50
Carl Tishler: it is very important.
40:51 - 41:16
Spencer Horn: Yeah. And it's not just for CEOs. I mean, I have my other son a lot brilliant. He's an attorney and he specifically works with venture capital. And so, you know, he's, I guess in his third year, so, you know, as an associate, they push you really, really hard. The same principles got to apply there, even if you're not at the C-suite, if you are just getting started.
41:18 - 41:20
Carl Tishler: Yeah, definitely. As I said, we,
41:21 - 41:24
Spencer Horn: CEO of self, not the CEO of company, right?
41:24 - 41:52
Carl Tishler: Yeah, it's that it, and it's getting people at the, at different points when they're receptive and they have a grit, you know, what we do, we, we very, very, very mindful of people's time because that is the most precious thing. And but yeah, but we can get you can get someone early in career who's kind of gets it basically and cares about it and I'm happy to have them on the course.
41:52 - 42:02
Spencer Horn: Would it be great to start those get those talents or get those habits developed early on so that they can do it throughout the the career lifecycle as you described?
42:03 - 42:16
Carl Tishler: I think so definitely. I think the 1 thing is it does help to know what bad looks like. So a couple of years of experience, you know, is helpful. For sure.
42:16 - 42:46
Spencer Horn: No, I get that, especially if you've got a cohort. You want to have people that are in a cohort that are peer level, right? And I think that really helps with the experience that is relatable to each other. However, there are some pretty sharp people out there that work with people at high levels. And even though I just, I'm so impressed with, you know, I hear a lot of trash talk of the younger generations that they're this or that. And there's a lot of hardworking kids out there right now that I'm very impressed with.
42:47 - 43:25
Carl Tishler: Definitely. And I think a lot of what you hear, I mean, the last 6 years I've been in deep tech, not so much within Hazy, but just people you come across elsewhere. You hear the criticism of the younger generation, oh, they're not willing to work hard, so on and so forth. I think there's a lot in that that actually is kind of positive, right? A natural desire to have some work-life balance, whatever that means, or sort of more focus on wellbeing. I think the thing is that even if you're able to better construct or limit working
43:25 - 43:50
Carl Tishler: hours, that's not the same as managing them, if you know what I mean. It's a step in the right direction, but you can be working 4 days or shorter hours, et cetera, and still be, unfortunately, passive in career, not managing stress or burnout. So it's, yeah, I'm, I'm hopeful about them, but I think it still takes, you know, that step of- A couple
43:51 - 44:13
Spencer Horn: years? To get your head handed to you a little bit? Yeah. So let's, so go back to my earlier question about what you're seeing with the program since 2008, because let's get to the theme of today's episode, the CEO of Self make better team members. What are you seeing and how is that showing up?
44:15 - 45:00
Carl Tishler: Well, I think, I mean, in terms of just teamwork and overall performance, I think there's 3 things. It always, to my mind, starts with leadership, whether that's of an organization or of a team. And It's funny in reflecting on this, I've realized I've had 5 different stretches of working in groups or teams that were all actually characterized by similar things, which is to say, in my opinion, really good leadership, which is low ego, high competence, interest and inherent kind of interest in people, even if that wasn't a strength necessarily, but there was always an interest and
45:00 - 45:39
Carl Tishler: a clear chain of command on where we worked. And I think I definitely just fell into that, the first couple of places, and I guess without really thinking about it at the time, I've kind of navigated towards that first condition that I think is conducive to a lot of things, including teamwork and higher performance. I think the second thing is, as we've been talking about people that are CEO of career, that are showing up with intentionality, I really do think, at least in the areas, as I say, that are collaborative and nuanced and challenging like that
45:39 - 46:15
Carl Tishler: that require the sort of teamwork. I think people that show up with intentionality and purpose, I think tend to perform well. And I think with the balance of both of those 2 are conducive to the third key thing for teamwork and performance, which is what the operative culture is. And I know there have been apparently some great books written on this about how the anthropologists have it right in terms of looking at corporate culture and stuff like that. But the nuts and bolts of how a place, again, whether it's just a group of a company or
46:15 - 46:52
Carl Tishler: whether it's a bigger company, how it actually functions de facto. And I think the thing that kind of going through those, always, I say in my mind, actually been really fortunate to be in those types of places. And I think the main thing that I've learned along the way in doing that, which is in addition to having those first couple of conditions and in addition to having a culture in the group of, you know, if it's like I think of an ice hockey team, if it's a success, it's a collective success, that kind of a thing.
46:52 - 47:37
Carl Tishler: I really do believe that, you know, going back to the beginning, that there's no more complex entity than a human and that to really make an organization or team work, having much greater focus than is normally the case on this pastoral role or function, I think is a critical thing, again, for enabling teamwork and performance. And so we had again a great CEO at Hazy and Harry Keene. And the last 6 years we have run this where every 2 weeks people have a 30 minute check-in have it do it with me until we scaled. That was
47:37 - 48:15
Carl Tishler: time to prompt and process. And, you know, we talk about CEO self stuff as well, but having that time, having that awareness that if you've got an employee, they're much more than just an employee. People don't just show up at work in absence to what else is happening in their life. And I think when you begin to sort of really understand that and try to cater for that, obviously respecting people's privacy, but when you cater for that consistently over time, I think that's a, I mean, for us at Hazy, that's been a tremendous enabler of success
48:15 - 48:31
Carl Tishler: and having those things together. And again, I think if people have had that time and space to clear out what's on their mind and process it and to show up and opt in, they tend to collaborate and do work together as a team much better.
48:32 - 49:17
Spencer Horn: It would seem that the advantage that you gain is an increase in, in, in emotional and intelligence. And here's why I say that, because if you are taking the time, to prompt and process, as you talk about, Instead of reacting under stress to all the situations, which a lot of times can lead to poor decisions and poor behavior, you are processing in a safe space so that you come with a more productive and resourceful or growth mindset as you talked about earlier. And you are less operating under flight or flight, which sometimes we have to admit
49:17 - 49:55
Spencer Horn: we are actually working with our worst brain, right? We're working with our reactionary brain instead of our thinking brain. And you can be a highly competent individual and yet be thinking impaired because of the level of stress you're under. And if you're taking the time to do all these things with intentionality as you're talking about and tactical self-care and time to prompt and process, you come more resourceful to the team And you are able to process with your thinking brain and bring your level of competence to at a higher level to create that sustainability that you
49:55 - 49:57
Spencer Horn: were talking about, I imagine. Yeah, definitely.
49:59 - 50:11
Carl Tishler: I mean, We go back to maybe we're dating ourselves here, Spencer. Do you remember the old computer monitors? They used to have a button that was like degaussing, right?
50:11 - 50:13
Spencer Horn: Yeah, oh, it totally degaussed the screen.
50:14 - 50:19
Carl Tishler: It degaussed the screen. So that's what I think a big function of these pastoral things are. Oh my
50:19 - 50:27
Spencer Horn: gosh. I haven't thought of that in a long time. I bet some of our tech people have no idea what that means. Sorry to interrupt. That was funny.
50:28 - 50:35
Carl Tishler: No, we build up static as we go. And I mean, essentially what we did at Hazy with this pastoral
50:36 - 50:41
Spencer Horn: is- Would you also define, I don't know if everyone listening knows what Hazy is, so explain what that is.
50:42 - 51:19
Carl Tishler: Well, I kind of pride myself at being there for 6 years and not really understanding what we do either, because it's deep tech and I'm not technical and I just focus on the people in the place. But Hazy is a pioneer of the space that's called Synthetic Data. And synthetic data is a software that customers use to look at huge data sets of information like tens of millions of rows. So it's full of valuable insights, et cetera but it's also full of personal information. So you've got-
51:19 - 51:20
Spencer Horn: So you make that less hazy.
51:21 - 52:01
Carl Tishler: Exactly. It's funny because we had that name first, but it ended up weirdly just by coincidence actually being a helpful name. So hazy studies that extracts the connections that exist, and then is able to, at the data set level, produce a set of data that's got the insights without the personal information. And therefore, you can move it around the organization or monetize it safely, but at very high fidelity of it. I don't know if the technical people at AC are listening. They're probably, you know, shaking their heads at that definition, but that's my best definition.
52:01 - 52:04
Spencer Horn: And there may be apoplectic right now.
52:04 - 52:07
Carl Tishler: It could be apoplectic. I hope not. I hope they're taking care of themselves.
52:10 - 52:29
Spencer Horn: Well, we've been talking for a while and I've kind of been steering the conversation a little bit just because I based on what I know of you and the work you're doing, but perhaps as we start to wrap up here, is there anything that you would like to share with our listeners that we haven't covered?
52:34 - 53:10
Carl Tishler: I think that small directionally correct things make a huge difference and if I was going to give this example If if you wake up January 2nd I'm not picking on yoga here, but If you wake up January 2nd, I'm not picking on yoga here, but if you wake up January 2nd, and you just kind of randomly decide, I'm gonna do yoga, likelihood it's not gonna stick. And I'm not saying that from a negative way, just that happened to me for instance. And the problem with that is, it's kind of a triple negative because you don't get
53:10 - 53:51
Carl Tishler: the benefit of yoga, you sort of feel like you failed at something and it kind of erodes a more general sense of confidence and competence that you can get things done. And I think we really, really underestimate how kind of damaging that can be. Again, failures are great. You just want to have good failures that you learn from, not ones that have this eroding effect. So a big part of what we focus on in these weekly activities and actions is taking very small steps in the right direction. So let's say, I don't know, you were an
53:51 - 54:28
Carl Tishler: architect and you wanted to move into being a lawyer, for instance. I hope that wouldn't be the case, but if you did, that's a longer-term objective. And instead of trying to be frustrated that it doesn't happen or doing a whole bunch, what we get people do is take a very small step on it. So you might say, well, you know what? This month, I'm going to try and reach out just to 1 or 2 lawyers just to have a conversation. It's very small, and we set the bar at what seems to be a very low rate.
54:28 - 55:06
Carl Tishler: You can always do more, but we set it so you don't do less. And when you get to the end of a week, or you get to the end of a month, and you've had these small, directionally correct steps, it's kind of the opposite of a triple negative. It really does give you a sense that you've accomplished something. There's a cumulative effect on it. Take enough small steps. They add up, but most importantly, feel it within this area. That's kind of Controllable that you're doing something positive for yourself and I would just say I've learned over
55:06 - 55:39
Carl Tishler: the years that When you can define things in these small steps and take them and again, that's why having a weekly habit is so important so you have time to check in on them. You can really have a lot of good things happen and have it be therapeutic. And I guess my wish for everyone, you certainly don't have to come to the Academy to do that. You can do that on your own. But my wish for people would be to really think micro and directionally correct on this and just try and move whatever it is you're
55:39 - 56:12
Carl Tishler: trying to do just do it in small steps. In fact, for the first, I don't know, maybe 10 years, we were known as the Aim Low Academy which didn't mean Aim Low in aspiration. It meant Aim Low that let's take 1 small step right 1 1 little small step in the right direction and that was Aim Low And then a friend of mine said, Hey, you can't name your academy that you got to change it. So he changed it. But I do think that principle of aiming low is a critical thing. And other than getting rid
56:12 - 56:16
Carl Tishler: of the word should, that would be my second wish for people.
56:17 - 56:54
Spencer Horn: That is a great advice. You know, it's interesting. A lot of high performers feel like they have to have. You've heard of the BHAG, right? Big, hairy, audacious goal. And I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that. However, the challenge is if we say, hey, well, I'm going to start yoga and we don't do it, we actually set a precedent of regularly failing and not following through with our desired actions. And so what I hear you saying is by making these small and implementable goals. We compound the behavior change over time, and we actually have a
56:54 - 57:24
Spencer Horn: greater ability to reach that big, hairy, audacious goal than if we just focused on the big thing at once. And I agree with that. I think a lot of high performers struggle with that concept. I was just coaching 1. I just finished coaching this individual in Chechia and she's a high performer. And so it was always beating herself up for not accomplishing more. And so 1 of the things that I had her do was keep a journal of everything she accomplished every week. And she just all of a sudden, after a period of like 36 weeks,
57:25 - 57:49
Spencer Horn: realized how much she had been missing that she was actually accomplishing because it's just like growing, right? You grow every day a little bit. You don't notice it. But if you haven't seen somebody in a year, all of a sudden, like, wow, you you're different, you've really grown. But you don't see it because you're in it every day. And so you're taking that same approach. And over a year's time, massive behavior shifts will happen.
57:50 - 58:23
Carl Tishler: Yeah, and I think, I mean, there's so much written about all the fields that we do, career management, self. The way I think about what we do is We have a really narrow lane that we focus on. I want people to go have the best habit, books and skills, et cetera. Do you know what I mean? That's like a, I think what we do is like an API, right? But in this 1 thing, we are focused. I think 1 thing that just perhaps I haven't explained well enough is HPNA. So HP stands for high performing, but
58:23 - 58:58
Carl Tishler: I don't mean SAT scores or rankings at all. Really, actually, what I mean is effectively growth mindedness, someone who genuinely wants to get better. Again, people will say, and I'm not saying this so that they, you know, to make people feel bad, but people will say, oh yeah, I want to grow, et cetera. But there is a difference, you know, There are people that really want it. And to me, that's what high performing is. NA is effectively non-arrogant, which really what I mean is, because everything we do is cohort based, is someone willing and able to
58:58 - 58:59
Carl Tishler: think bigger than themselves.
59:00 - 59:19
Spencer Horn: Well, and not only that, if you work with a cohort, you have to be vulnerable. Because receiving feedback is not ever easy. And if you have an ego, then you're not going to make the small shifts that you need to have and listen to the feedback that you're getting. I imagine I'm just,
59:19 - 59:20
Carl Tishler: so. Definitely.
59:22 - 59:49
Spencer Horn: Well, it's been so great to have you on the show, Carl, I've really enjoyed the conversation listening to you, I just, when I met you, I really enjoyed our conversations and the coaching that you've given me has been so valuable. If people want to learn more about the academy and HPNA, how can they find you and your team and to find more about the services that you provide.
59:50 - 01:00:00
Carl Tishler: Sure. So our website is hpna.pro. Pro is in professionalism of the standard. That's where it comes from. So I'm just simply...
01:00:00 - 01:00:41
Speaker 1: Carly at HPNA Pro and that or on LinkedIn. Always happy to connect to people. That's wonderful. I would love it if you'd just stick on for a second. I'm having a little bit of technical difficulty as you've seen with my 3 faces or showing up. I'm going to run our closing bumper and just hang on the show for a little bit. Listeners, like and subscribe. Our podcast, Teamwork a Better Way, we are so grateful for all your support. And people all over the world that are listening to us. So thank you until next time. ["Spring Day