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HR entrepreneur Mike Coffey, SPHR, SHRM-SCP engages business thought leaders about the strategic, psychological, legal, and practical implications of bringing people together to create value for shareholders, customers, and the community. As an HR consultant, mentor to first-stage businesses through EO’s Accelerator program, and owner of Imperative—Bulletproof Background Screening, Mike is passionate about helping other professionals improve how they recruit, select, and manage their people. Most thirty-minute episodes of Good Morning, HR will be eligible for half a recertification credit for both HRCI and SHRM-certified professionals. Mike is a member of Entrepreneurs Organization (EO) Fort Worth and active with the Texas Association of Business, the Fort Worth Chamber, and Texas SHRM.
The way you get people to follow you is if they know that following you is in their best interest. Okay? It's gonna help them to achieve whatever it is that they're trying to achieve. So a leader having emotional intelligence will be able to discern what it is that the people who are in the group that's following them need. And they are concerned about those people having what they need so that that group can be successful.
Mike Coffey:Good morning, HR. I'm Mike Coffey, president of Imperative. Bulletproof background checks with fast and friendly service. And this is the podcast where I talk to business leaders about bringing people together to create value for shareholders, customers, and the community. Please follow rate and review Good Morning HR wherever you get your podcast.
Mike Coffey:You can also find us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, or at good morning hr.com. For years, research evidence and employers' own experiences have pointed to the importance of soft skills in the workplace. And in the years after the COVID lockdowns and the proliferation of remote work environments, the anecdotal evidence I'm getting from employers is that those soft skills seem to have withered on the vine, not just for young workers but across generations. But what does that really mean? Soft skills?
Mike Coffey:When you start to dig into what employers are really looking for, it turns out that we're basically talking about emotional intelligence. We've spoken about EQ several times on the podcast, most recently with Stevie Dunn back in January, but there's so much more of this onion appeal away. So today, I'm joined by my friend, Darrell Owens, to discuss emotional intelligence in a multigenerational workforce. Daryl is the owner and CEO of Blue Palmetto Training, which specializes in upskilling today's workforce for maximum performance. Darryl retired from AT and T with 27 years experience in sales, training, performance development, and analytics.
Mike Coffey:Darryl is also the school board president of Kennedale ISD here in Texas. Welcome to Good Morning HR, Darrell.
Darryl Owens:Thank you, Mike, and, I appreciate you having me.
Mike Coffey:So by way of full disclosure, you and I both serve on a Fort Worth Chamber of Commerce Committee looking at this issue because the chambers receive so much feedback from business members that the workforce is lacking in these so called soft skills. And I think these are really the hard skills, the people skills, but these employers are talking about very demonstrated behaviors, the ability to have a civil conversation at work, showing up to work actually ready to work, and the ability to face a challenge or solve a problem. Am I right in connecting these kind of behaviors to emotional intelligence?
Darryl Owens:I think you're absolutely right in connecting these behaviors to emotional intelligence. A lot of, people who grew up in an age like you and I, you know, we had a lot of experience, in working with people face to face. And nowadays, as technology has taken us deeper and deeper into screens, you know, we don't have the opportunity to work as much face to face. So there's a lot of EQ that has fallen to the wayside. And it's important for us to, be able to, help people to enhance themselves, to upskill themselves in that area.
Darryl Owens:As as you probably know and what we used to talk about when I was in corporate America, you know, people don't leave companies. People leave other people. And, and your emotional intelligence quotient, you know, plays a lot in how people perceive you.
Mike Coffey:So let's define that. When we're talking about emotional intelligence, what are we really talking about? Is it just not being an a hole, or is there more to it than that?
Darryl Owens:Well, there's a lot more than just being an a hole. However, that helps a whole lot. You know, EQ is gonna be broken down into 5 different categories. There's the self awareness, you know, a person's, emotions, understanding their self worth, then there's the self regulation that's, you know, which you alluded to early about, you know, coming to time, you know, just your personal emotions and knowing how they impact you and how, that, helps or may even hinder your performance on any particular day, the motivation, their drive, your, you know, your drive to achieve your goals. And one of the big ones is the empathy factor so that, someone can understand, you know, a person's sense of compassion and being able to walk in a person's shoes or at least understand the shoes that a person is walking in and then using that to regulate, you know, your interactions with them.
Darryl Owens:And and final is the social skills section of it. So, you know and that is how you handle conflict management, communication, and that also ties into the leadership and the leadership styles of individual people. So it's a little more there's a lot there to bite on.
Mike Coffey:Do you think that it's just I mean, we're looking at the whole world through the lenses of of, you know, of the pandemic now. And so I wonder sometimes if if it's just a perception on our part that these skills have kind of withered away or and, you know, or did the pandemic do you think the lockdowns and all the stuff that's happened since then in the workplace, do you think that's really changed or, you know, really minimized some some workers' lack of EQ?
Darryl Owens:Well, the lockdown changed a lot of things, and it it started this revelation of, understanding for a lot of people that we can work at home and be productive. And when you are not in a social situation where you're forced to deal with people, a lot of people just choose not to. So, yes, a lot of those skill sets that we use that could be, considered our emotional intelligence, you know, just haven't had a lot of practice. And some people just feel that they're not as necessary as, other people think. And that and that forces, you know, the EQ level to go down.
Darryl Owens:But, you know, we're still human beings. We're social beings. And we want to communicate. At least I do. I want to communicate with people.
Darryl Owens:And, and that and that means that we need to be able to use our EQ and it becomes challenging for some other people. And if you don't mind me going a little bit further with that Yeah. As we take a look at the different generations and how we were socialized and how, you know, we were taught to solve problems and that changes to, you know, a situation where screens are so much more, you know, prevalent. You know, they're different skill sets in the EQ that we use. And that means that when they get in positions where they have to have these face to face interactions, they are uncomfortable.
Darryl Owens:And some of those simple tasks that you and I can do, Mike, with our eyes closed, it's difficult for them.
Mike Coffey:Yeah. And, you know, but even on our screens, a certain amount of EQs you know, if I'm replying to a Zoom message that, a coworker sent me or a text or an email, a lack of EQ is still gonna show through a lot of times. Right?
Darryl Owens:It does. You know, things so if things as simple as, you know, responding to a text or an email, in all caps, you know, and you have to understand that if you do that, that comes across as yelling, to a lot of people. And when you yell at someone that that elicits a response from someone that's being yelled to. So, you know, yes, there's different EQs that has to be, shared and communicated that, than those that are from an older generation.
Mike Coffey:And my I I tend to spend a lot of time when I'm working on an email to making sure that I've got the right tone and that whatever I know about the other person is reflected in, you know, like I'm a bullet point person. If you're sending me a long email it's gonna be really hard to get it read. I need bullet points But if I know the other person is a real detail per I'll I'll do all of that. But when I'm on my phone and I'm in a position where I have to reply to this email, it's usually brief and direct. And so I've even added to my signature line, you know, written from my iPhone.
Mike Coffey:Apologies for their brevity, and reach out if you need more information just because I know I'm not gonna have, you know, 15 minutes if I'm replying on my iPhone to, really craft a careful email. But at least letting the other person know that this is a weird situation and I'd prefer to do it, you know. I would love to do it on, you know, here in my office and really spend the time crafting the email. But it's easy to put somebody off. If I just give them a 2 sentence answer, I feel like I may be stepping on their toes if I'm not careful in how I I respond to them.
Darryl Owens:Absolutely. And when you, when you respond in a way that someone thinks that you're intentionally not wanting to have a conversation with them, if they perceive that, you know, then they can get a little turned off from you. Then all of a sudden that creates the impression that they have of you. And if you're not seeing them face to face on a regular basis, then sometimes that particular narrative is what they take with them, you know, whenever they do see you face to face, and that may be totally incorrect. You're just trying to be respectful of their time.
Darryl Owens:Right?
Mike Coffey:And I yeah. And I think on the flip side, if I receive that short terse email, the self awareness of, okay, that really annoyed me. Why did that annoy me? Asking myself those questions and saying, okay, I don't know what the circumstances were that they had to send that email in a very short and terse way. Why is it turning me off?
Mike Coffey:Is does this make sense? Is this logical? Or am I reading too much into it? And so I think both as the communicator and the communicator, I think you we've gotta pay attention to that. And I think older generations probably, and unfortunately, I'm I'm, yeah, I'm skewing towards older generations now.
Mike Coffey:We we don't like those shorter terse emails. I think the younger, you know, the younger generations used to texting is used to, you know, 3 letter, you know, acronyms and everything else and for them, it's perfectly fine. So I think there's, you know, so as we get into this generational conversation, I think there's a lot to unpeel there.
Darryl Owens:I have an uncle in Fort Worth, lives in Fort Worth, and he's been there for 60 years and he's 102 years old. Wow. World war veteran, you know, world war, 2 veteran, excuse me. And he's business owner in Fort Worth. And he's one of the reasons why I came to Fort Worth.
Darryl Owens:And we had this conversation, when I got here and he told me that, you know, he is a master of communicating to his generation and people who think like him. And people who are younger than him, you know, he has to learn how to communicate them. So he said he understood he understood that being uncomfortable in communicating with my generation, is normal and he has to learn to get through it. And I think a lot of people, you know, they understand how they want to be communicated to, but they don't understand how other people want them to communicate to them. So and that gets us all into, you know, personality
Mike Coffey:styles. And so when we're talking about these generational things, there are you know, we hear about generations in the workplace a lot and the challenges that come from that. Is do you think most of those challenges are really related to emotional intelligence issues?
Darryl Owens:Absolutely. You know, and a part of emotional intelligence, that empathy part and being able to see things from someone else's point of view, A lot of us don't wanna see it from someone else's point of view because either we are convinced that we are right and that's all that we really need to consider, or we don't wanna learn how someone else is seeing a particular situation and then adapting to them. When we take talk about communication, you know, it's really a two way street. It's not just if I can say the words that I need to, I can I can tell you what I want you to know, but I have to do it in a way in which you can receive it, and you're going to receive it and use it? Because if we're talking 2 different languages, it doesn't matter how much emphasis I put on, you know, line 1, line 2, if you don't understand it or you're unwilling to go ahead and grab it and use it.
Darryl Owens:Have we really done anything that's gonna better our situation?
Mike Coffey:Yeah. My friend, Francisco, is always asking me, do you want to be right or do you wanna get what you wanna get? And and I think it's a good lesson, and I asked myself that a lot, you know, how how important it is here that is this a hill I really wanna die on or do I just wanna achieve whatever the objective is and move on and I think that's, you know, it's got a lot to do with how we communicate. Is it fair? I mean, these these poor gen gen z kids, they get thrown under the bus a lot, and I try really hard not to do that.
Mike Coffey:But do you think that their emotional intelligence is inherently lower than, you know, I'm early gen x generation. Do you think it's you know, at their age, do you think that they're really lagging behind the where the rest of us were at our age, or is there something unique about this generation versus others? What's your take on
Darryl Owens:that? Well, the generations are different. And what we need to come to grips with is that the, you know, the bullet points that make up emotional intelligence for us may be different than the bullet points that make up the motion intelligence for them. And, you know, the fact that the, you know, the paradigm is shifting, you know, makes us feel a little uncomfortable. Okay.
Darryl Owens:Or anyone who again has mastered, you know, the old generation, you know, skewing to this newer generation is a little uncomfortable. It's a little uncomfortable. But I I don't think that is necessarily wrong because I've got 2 girls, that are, you know, Gen z, and they do some things that, you know, not necessarily wrong, but, you know, to me, it makes, you know, no sense. I my daughters live in Dallas, but in order for them to get home where they've lived for so many years or visited, you know, they use GPS. And my question is, don't you know how to get home by now?
Darryl Owens:So to me, it seems as if you shouldn't be doing that. To them, it's that's just how the world is. And my daughter tells me, dad, I know how to get home, but GPS will tell me what is the fastest way to get home under the current conditions. And that's, what's more important to her. So as we take a look at not just that other things as well, to understand there are some things that are more important to them, lifestyle, even lifestyle at work is more important than, to the amount of money they make sometimes, you know, the lifestyle, what type of lifestyle does this position offer me to have?
Darryl Owens:You know, and and that goes into the quotient whether or not I wanna work here or not. So it's a little bit different. I think we need to take into account.
Mike Coffey:And let's take a quick break. Good morning, HR is brought to you by Imperative, bulletproof background checks with fast and friendly service. Often, our clients are looking for really thorough and easy to understand criminal background checks delivered by friendly and knowledgeable experts. And, certainly, we do that better than anyone else. But we also provide other kinds of investigations to our clients to help them make well informed decisions about the people they involve in their business.
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Mike Coffey:If you're an HRCI or SHRM certified professional, this episode of Good Morning HR has been preapproved for 1 half hour of recertification credit. To obtain the recertification information, visit good morning hr.com and click on research credits, then select episode 147 and enter the keyword hard skills, that's all one word, h a r d s k I l l s. And if you're looking for even more recertification credit, check out the webinars page at imperativeinfo.com. And now back to my conversation with Daryl Owens. So if we have a multigenerational workforce and we're sensing that based on generational issues, groups aren't talking to each other in a in a way that's productive and and moving the organization forward.
Mike Coffey:What would you tell an employer to do to start to address that kind of issue?
Darryl Owens:Well, employer has to be a little more, creative. They have to foster communication. They have to create opportunities for these groups to communicate so they can find, you know, their own levels on how they communicate effectively. You know, team building is very important nowadays. So you have to find team building activities that both groups, you know, or or, you know, there's 5 generations in the workforce today, you know, so that they all can take part, and they all will communicate with one another.
Darryl Owens:And even though they may not like the fact that, you know, someone uses GPS to get from point a to point b, at least they can understand why they do it and accept it and move forward. Understand that's what's best for you. But I like to understand where I'm going, and that makes that's what's right for me. So it's time together. And when you have people that are working remotely, and you know, and it may not be remote every day, but, you know, I think it's a it's a very good thing to bring them together on, as many times as you possibly can.
Mike Coffey:Yeah. The I often 1, you know, it's that I think the biggest thing we lost, when we went remote I mean, my company went remote March of 2020, and I sold my office building in 2022 because it was clear out we were not going back. But the, the one thing I feel like we've really lost because my team collaborates well over Zoom. We do a lot. But I'm hiring a lot of introverts who don't want a lot of FaceTime anyway, because they're doing a lot of, you know, just high level data entry and staring at 2 or 3 computer monitors all day long, stuff that would kill me.
Mike Coffey:And, you know, I need the I'm the extrovert in the group. But they I think the one thing you know, they they collaborate well, and they really seem to support each other, but it seems like trust is the thing we not that there's distrust in our organization as much, but just that sense that they maybe they don't trust themselves or their processes, but they just don't have that reinforcement that I'm in this room or in this building with these other people who are gonna back me up. And, that's the one thing that I I feel like, you know, and my my employees are now spread all over the place because, you know, as soon as I said, we're not coming home, you know, we're not coming back to the office, you know, that everybody had wheels under their ass. They were going off and they were moving where they wanted to live, which is great, you know, but, you know, I feel like that's the one thing that that we we really are missing is that time together where people, you know, it's we haven't had all very much of it at all, but just that that that sense that I know this person's always gonna act in the best interest of the organization.
Mike Coffey:And and, you know, I don't have to worry about those kind of things.
Darryl Owens:You know, when we take a look at communication, you know, remember, there's a lot more communication that goes on between 2 people than just the words that are shared. You know, there's the body language, there's the feeling you get, sometime that butterflies in your stomach, whatever you want to call it, you know, but there are those things that you get from being together that you can't get from talking to one another on screen. So the way we get them together may have to change, but I still believe in the people that I work with still think that, getting together is very important. I work with a couple of companies, you know, that are construction companies and they're spread out all over, you know, but whenever they come together for the trainings that we do, they really appreciate it. And they turn it into a day long activity and they talk about how that has build camaraderie between, you know, each other, even though they've worked together for many years.
Darryl Owens:So if it's working together, working together does something positive for groups like that. I think it's going to work positive in a positive way for almost any group. And, so let's find ways to get together, whether it's a teamwork, a team building, multiple Christmas parties, okay, Easter parties, you know, Saint Patrick's Day, whatever it is. But, and make it fun, You know, let them see a different part of each other.
Mike Coffey:So you mentioned training. How much EQ can you train somebody versus just inherent in how they are and who they are?
Darryl Owens:Well, you we can train a lot. You know, you can you can give them the toolbox and you can show them how to use the tools, but but obviously the use of the tool is going to be up to them. You know, understanding how to look at a situation from someone else's point of view, you can tell them how to do that, but there are some people who just aren't interested in doing that. So we can't force that on them. But that person may be the outlier.
Darryl Owens:The other people in the group may think that it's one of the greatest things since sliced bread. And I think if it were not important, they would not still be around and still being talked about. And so much research research still being done on it and coming up, you know, with positive numbers, you know, that, you know, that it would go away. So I think we need to do that and continue to do that. And I think it's very important, the training of understanding what it is, you know, because sometimes people don't understand why they do certain things.
Darryl Owens:And when you allow them to, you know, discover themselves, so, oh, I didn't know that. Didn't realize that about myself. That's just the beginning. But the second part is have them use that. Okay?
Darryl Owens:To make their situation better. And those that wanna be better will use that training to get better. And so
Mike Coffey:that, you know, if we're talking about communication, I mean, you know, I assume we're talking about things like active listening. Actually, you know, that listening rather than thinking about what your next question is or or what you're gonna say next and also trying to understand, okay, when this person says that, what do they really mean? If we're talking about, you know, empathy and active listening and being really concerned about the other person, what kind of activities or course, you know, drills, I guess, can someone do to to improve their active listening skills?
Darryl Owens:Well, the first thing I think somebody wants to do is they wanna understand what their personality style is. Okay? And, you know, there's a 1,000,000 different, programs you can do to get your personality style. But, but if you understand that your personality is one that does not like to listen, then force yourself to listen first. And if you're a personality that tends to only want to listen and not be assertive, force yourself to come up with 2 or 3 bullet points that you are going to, to promote in the next meeting, and do not let yourself get out of that meeting without doing it.
Darryl Owens:Hold yourself accountable. So if you find out what your personality style is and then you find out what the, what the, challenges are for your personality style, then just hold yourself accountable to do those things that you are less likely to do if you left alone.
Mike Coffey:Yeah. I'm a big believer in whether it's disk or predictive index or what you know, I always say the science behind them is pretty much the same. It's just how they format the reports and find the report that is most helpful to you. But I found them so liberated. First time I did 125 years, 30 years ago, I was like, oh, okay.
Mike Coffey:Now I understand. This is, you know, what I've always the deficits that I've always, you know, felt, you know, bothered by or shamed by even or, you know, were really made me self conscious in in different, areas of my life. Suddenly, I said, okay. Well, but here's the strength and so I'm offsetting those. So I now I realize I'm not a detailed person.
Mike Coffey:If you want me to read a lot don't expect me to read a 15 paragraph email send me bullet points that's what I need need. But also, we do them in the organization, so I know who I know my organization I need to give a lot of detail to. And I set that time aside and do but it's really liberating because suddenly, you know, like you said, I've got the self awareness now, to say, okay, I'm a take charge person. I will run over everybody if I'm not careful. I rely on my intuition.
Mike Coffey:And often it's right, but I need to work backwards to demonstrate and explain to other people how I got to the solution even if I don't know what the you know, how I got there initially. And and we have to and I have to let them, you know, I can't just lay on my my team all these introverts. I can't just say, okay, here's here's what we're gonna do. Boom. Go do it.
Mike Coffey:They need to process. They need to think about it. They need to, you know, time to develop any feedback. That's hard for me, but I've gotten better at it over, you know, 3 decades. But I think those kind of tools are really valuable to employees.
Darryl Owens:Absolutely. And one of the things that I encourage businesses to do whenever they employ any type of training, you know, for their team, make it fun. Okay. Let's don't just, you know, remember Ferris Bueller's day off and they always made jokes about, the teachers are saying Bueller, Bueller, you know, putting everybody to sleep. You don't want to have it with that type of atmosphere.
Darryl Owens:Okay. Make it fun. All right. And everybody likes watching game shows. Okay.
Darryl Owens:I don't have very few people that I know don't like game shows. Okay. You know, that's why one of the reasons that a lot of people call us back is because we incorporate game show style training, in every everything that we do. Even if it's only in the knowledge check, we'll do it in a game show style fashion, but we'll, you know, we we incorporate that. So once we've been to a business, they're like, oh, we'll bring them back again because it was fun.
Darryl Owens:Well, there's an opportunity for me to
Mike Coffey:share more knowledge. And I think I think when when people are having fun, you get the, they open up and they're they have more they're more open in their communications. And I think those emotional cues that we get from each other that when we're having fun tends to make us trust each other and and and feel better about being around one another. I think those nonverbal cues are really key. I think they get underestimated, especially by people like me who just are, you know, real you know, give me the bullet points and let's go.
Mike Coffey:What about those nonverbal cues? Do we fake those, or or what do you think? How do we how do we develop that, in a way that that seems genuine?
Darryl Owens:Well, there are people that try to fake them, you know, but one of the great things about being in a room with somebody, it's a lot easier to pick up on, a fake laugh or, you know, someone giving you a false praise. You know, it's it's I just think it's better that way, you know, so take those cues. And if for those that have not been around someone who's faking, okay, laughs a lot, they may think that's real. But when you get together, you know, with more than 1 person around you, you can look around and take a look at the faces and the face expression of other people. And you can say to yourself, well, I think they think that that's really not, honest.
Darryl Owens:You know? That's not honest laugh or laughter or whatever it is. Another benefit of being together with your coworkers, you know, you learn from each other. It's not just me and who's on the other end of the screen.
Mike Coffey:One of the things I think we a lot of organizations struggle with, and this is almost a good morning HR drinking game, is that we have people who are good at doing the job, and so we make them leaders, you know, supervisors or managers, and we don't give them those skills. How it's obviously important. So I don't you know, but emotional intelligence and leadership, what's the what do you think, you know, where does that rank of a rant in the competencies of somebody being a good leader?
Darryl Owens:Okay. So, let's talk about leadership for a second. There's a lot of different, definitions you're gonna be given. One of the best ones that I was ever given was, you know, being a leader is the ability to get someone from, some place they are to some place that they don't know how to get to, and they never knew they'd need to get there. Okay?
Darryl Owens:The way you, you become a leader is if you have people who want to follow you. And the way you get people to follow you is if they know that following you is in their best interest. Okay? It's gonna help them to achieve whatever it is that they're trying to achieve. So a leader having emotional intelligence will be able to discern what it is that the people who are in the group that's following them need.
Darryl Owens:And they are concerned about those people having what they need so that that group can be successful. So I think that's an a skill that you have to have leadership, but you have to have emotional intelligence to be able to understand who it is that's in your group. You have to be able to understand and by, doing some type of assessment who's actually pulling for you and who's actually pulling against you and your team and what you're doing. You have to be able to understand who has, you know, a self regulation, but you also have to put into, into effect some type of a growth mechanism to help them become better. And when you're in a group organization and you know that, I am becoming a better person by following my coffee, then you're gonna follow my coffee because, you know, Daryl is going to change from who I was to Daryl 2.0.
Darryl Owens:Okay? And you you don't be a leader just because I want that person to benefit me if you're giving that person so that person will benefit themselves, and that person becomes a stronger self. And that means that that stronger self can make my team better. Now you've got some you've got some glue there. Okay.
Mike Coffey:That's great. Yeah.
Darryl Owens:So that's what I tried. That's what I try to do when something has been passed on to me for years. And they, you know, the, the, the leaders and the, the people that mentored me, you know, through corporate, it was all about building me. And, and that's why I considered him leader because I wanted what a better me
Mike Coffey:could be. So, you know, and we said generations have you know, every generation's different. And I mean, I think that's just, you know, one level of it. I mean, you know, people are different from where, you know, regions of the country that they came from or they went to school, what their, you know, all of the different components that make us who we are. And so I can imagine that a cry I know just from my my experience across the org you know, an organization of any, you know, whether it's Fort Worth Chamber or my company or any of the other groups I'm part of, everybody's bringing, you know, their own baggage and their own toolbox with them and, we just talk, too often, you know the way that we're used to talking to people and not picking up the way that, you know, they want you know, that they're gonna best receive it and and getting those cues.
Mike Coffey:And I guess it's just practice. I mean, once you've once you understand that the importance of self regulation and self awareness and empathy, active listening, all these things. You just, I guess, you know, it's, you know, we can't just look at somebody say, okay, he's gen x or he's a boomer and so I have to talk to him this way. We have to queue in on all those other details too and then just practice and sometimes we're gonna step on the rake, and it's gonna hit us in the head. But we just had to keep practicing.
Mike Coffey:Is that kind of the way it works?
Darryl Owens:Well, now there are some generalities. Okay. And those generalities are built on, what has been experienced, in common by those different generations. You go back to the great generation, some called the silent, silent generation. You know, they all grew up where they had to sacrifice.
Darryl Owens:Okay? They, there were all these different drives for the war effort. You know, there were paper drives or rubber drives, aluminum drives. You've sacrificed for the family. Somebody had to go out and help fight the war.
Darryl Owens:You went through the great depression. They went through the great depression. And then in the great depression, you know, it was about getting by on what you only needed to get by with. You sacrifice to help the neighbor who didn't have much at all. So that generation understands sacrifice and sacrifice to them is very important.
Darryl Owens:So that generality can be made to that group. Okay? Okay. Now how they apply that may be a little bit different, but that era of sacrifice is going to capture their attention because that was built in what I am now considering their social DNA.
Mike Coffey:Okay.
Darryl Owens:Okay? So each one of these groups, you know, the 5 generations, whether it's the, the great generation, the baby boomers, the gen xers, and y, whatever. Okay? There is some type of a social DNA that they all go they all carry. And if you tap into what that is, then you can capture their attention.
Darryl Owens:Now you have to have substance behind it to hold it, but you can capture their attention by doing those things that their social DNA share.
Mike Coffey:Interesting. Well, that is all the time we have. The half hour has flown by. Thank you, Daryl, for joining me.
Darryl Owens:Mike, thank you so much. You know, I love talking about these topics and, you know, any chance that you want me to come back, you let me know, and I'll be here for you.
Mike Coffey:Oh, definitely. I wanna dig deeper. And thank you all for listening. You can comment on this episode or search our previous episodes at goodmorninghr.com or on Facebook, Instagram, or YouTube. And don't forget to follow us wherever you get your podcast.
Mike Coffey:Rob Upchurch is our technical producer, and you can reach him at robmakespods.com. And thank you to Imperative's marketing coordinator, Mary Anne Hernandez, who keeps the trains running on time. And I'm Mike Coffey. As always, don't hesitate to reach out if I can be of service to you personally or professionally. I'll see you next week, and until then, be well, do good, and keep your chin up.