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Lead The People is your guide to unlocking your true potential as an authentic leader. Hosted by Dr. Matt Poepsel—The Godfather of Talent Optimization—this podcast dives deep into the art and science of what it takes to lead at the next level. With insightful conversations and practical strategies, each episode equips executives, strategic HR pros, and aspiring leaders with the tools it takes to boost performance, inspire teams, and drive meaningful impact. Whether exploring the latest workplace trends or tackling real-world leadership challenges, Lead The People offers an enlightened approach to leadership. Embark on a rewarding journey to become the leader your people deserve—the leader you were meant to be.
Jackie Insinger (00:00):
There's so many different things that are going on and they're going on concurrently. Change used to be so polite that it would happen one at a time and there'd be spaces in between to get people recentered and resettled. It doesn't work that way anymore. You're being bombarded from all different directions internally and externally, much less our own lives where everything's just moving so much faster. We don't have time to catch up or feel like we've got to get our head above water.
Matt Poepsel (00:35):
Hey there, leader listeners. I think you're really going to enjoy this conversation with Jackie Insinger. She talks about the magnitude of change that we're seeing from all the different places and all the different paces. It's really incredible what we're up against and she really puts a fine point on it. She also talks about the new mindset and the new skill set that this new environment that we're in demands. So I really appreciated how she put a very fine point on specifically what we need to be prepared to let go of and what we need to run toward in order to be the change leaders that the situation demands from us. And finally, we end up talking about what's possible. So she really paints a clear picture about what we can do in our organizations and for those around us and for ourselves, all the things that get better if we are embracing this new way of approaching change leadership.
(01:23):
And she's certainly got the framework to help us do that. So without further ado, I'll let you listen to Jackie. Most change management models assume the turbulence eventually stops. Jackie Insinger's newest work starts from the opposite assumption. It doesn't. So leaders need a different kind of capacity altogether. Today we're getting into her new framework, the four drivers of change and what a leader actually has to generate, not just plan to bring to a team through disruption instead of losing them to it. Our guest Jackie is the founder of Spark Brilliance and author of the bestselling books Spark Brilliance: How the Science of Positive Psychology Will Ignite, Engage, and Transform Your Team, which hit number one on eight national bestseller lists. She holds degrees from Duke and Harvard and a certification in neuroscience for business from MIT. Jackie, welcome back to the show.
Jackie Insinger (02:09):
It's so good to be with you again.
Matt Poepsel (02:11):
I had to look it up. It has been over two years and over a hundred episodes later. Here we are again because you've been working on some amazing new stuff in the lab and I cannot wait to have the audience hear all about it.
Jackie Insinger (02:24):
Well, thank you. I'm so excited to be sharing and just doing our nerdy chat.
Matt Poepsel (02:29):
I know, that's what we do best. You're just such a numbers person and I just have such respect. You had shared such beautiful materials. I mean, they were just beautiful to look at, much less the thinking behind them. But you do something that not a lot of people could do well in my experience, which is to engage people in that sort of intentionality and purpose, but driven by grounded evidence and really thoughtful and insightful instructional design. So it's a real treat and I'm jealous of your clients every time I see them because they get to hang out with you and learn from you and it's just the best.
Jackie Insinger (02:59):
Thank you. We should come along next time.
Matt Poepsel (03:01):
But now you're talking about a topic that's near and dear to my heart because I see it being done so badly and that's what it comes down to change. And we always hear that business world's volatile, we get that, maybe more volatile than it's ever been. But my first question, Jackie, is give us some examples of what's driving the change. What are some of the trends your clients are talking about the most? I'm sure we'll have a couple of usual suspects, but just to get us started, what types of change are people enduring right now?
Jackie Insinger (03:24):
We've got kind of a double whammy because one is our client base is mainly companies in some kind of high stakes transformation, which means they've got a big strategy and your strategy is only as strong as your leaders. And that's one thing a lot of people forget. They're investing so much in their strategy and the board and the leaders and the teams and the finances into a strategy, yet we don't bring the people along through the strategy. So what kinds of things? We've got the internal transformations and changes like mergers and acquisitions, hyper growth, org structure changes, centralization models, all sorts of things like that, expansions, franchises, all sorts of things where you have internal changes. Then you look at the external world, we've got massive AI changes that are going on with almost everybody right now, and that comes then internally to the organizations.
(04:17):
We have economic uncertainty, consumer spending, supply chain changes, inflation, four generations in the workplace, hybrid or remote environments or back to the office environment. There's so many different things that are going on and they're going on concurrently. Change used to be so polite that it would happen one at a time and there'd be spaces in between to get people re-centered and resettled. It doesn't work that way anymore. You're being bombarded from all different directions internally and externally, much less our own lives where everything's just moving so much faster and we don't have time to catch up or feel like we've got to get our head above water.
Matt Poepsel (04:53):
It does feel that way that not only is the calls coming from inside the house as much because we tend to focus on the outside world and all the things happening from consumer trends shifting and business models disrupting and all these things, but inside too, people are changing. What people expect and want from work is changing. And as you mentioned, whether it's company growth or M&A, reorgs, all of it, it can all cause that kind of disruption as well. But Jackie, in your experience, what is it that kind of gets in the way? I mentioned at the top that I see change not going so well in many organizations. Is it because people lack the skills? Is it because of culture? Is it a lack of motivation and want to, poor engagement? What prevents us from being able to adapt as readily as we might need to?
Jackie Insinger (05:36):
Yes, yes and yes.
Matt Poepsel (05:38):
And sometimes I think we're our own worst enemy because I know a lot of times we might want change to happen really quickly and we kind of announce something badly or incompletely, or it's a way that suits us as executives real well, but it might not land quite the way we had intended. We get surprised sometimes when we get the pushback from the individual contributors and frontline managers. And so I think some of it is self-inflicted in that way. But I think to your point, and it's a really great one, we've just never had to operate this way before. We've always seen disruptions and technology changes and all kinds of things, but this many, this fast, inside and outside all at once, it is not for the faint of heart.
Jackie Insinger (06:18):
It's not. And I think what's interesting is from one perspective, we can look at it and say things have changed and that's why we need a new model for change, which is what I've been building and working so diligently on. And it never worked before anyway, the models that we had. So when you look at change management and you look at history, 70% of transformations fail, and that's not due to strategy, it's due to people. So we know this number is in agreement with all the big companies and all this stuff. We've known this number and this number hasn't changed in about 30 years. So whatever we're doing to manage change pre this craziness that we're in right now in this pace, it wasn't working anyway. So now you add on all of these layers on top of it and when people are really feeling the fatigue of the change, so it's showing up so much louder.
(07:06):
When you look back through the data, it wasn't working anyway. It's just screaming at us now. So we have to make a change. And the way that we look at this, if you think about change management, change management implies there's a beginning, there's an end, and there's a sequence of steps in between that you take. And so that's how we look at it. And you usually bring somebody in, change management consultants or company to help you through those steps. And if you think about it as like a river, we go through the river and we have a helper, helps us get through to the other side. We're on dry land, we got through the change. We're like, maybe we go out for tacos and celebrate. Then we go along the dry land until we hit another river. We bring somebody in, they help us cross the river.
(07:48):
There's no dry land anymore. We are an open ocean and we need to operate differently. So instead of managing through these sequence of changes, we need to build the leader's capacity to enable change in their organizations for what's now, but also whatever comes next because there's whatever it is, it's going to keep coming. We just don't know what it is yet.
Matt Poepsel (08:08):
Yeah. And you talk about this when you came up with your framework, which is the four drivers of change, and it really is starting with, we have to look at it entirely differently. I think this analogy that you just shared where there's no dry land on the other side where you're going to get to arrest yourself and really just declare victory even momentarily, it's almost like the entire navigational element has really shifted in that way. But what else were you seeing that led you to develop this new framework and really understand it? What else motivated you to say, "You know what? I got to do something about this. I have to look into this." You mentioned that you've been working on it for quite a while.
Jackie Insinger (08:44):
Yeah, and I think there's so much of the work that we were already doing that was based on the current data. And so these pieces and parts were all coming together and shaping. We work with these clients in high stakes transformation, high stakes transitions. They're really investing in big strategies, and we see the fatigue. We see the people where it's like, "Ooh, another thing we're going to ask them to do, another thing where people might detach, where they might start bracing." And it really starts at the top is how are we going to enable this versus manage this? And so much of leadership is the mindset of the leaders and then how we actually cascade that throughout the organization to see change, to view change, to have a different lens through it. And one of the examples, a visual that I share a lot with clients is, have you heard the term VUCA?
Matt Poepsel (09:30):
Yeah, definitely.
Jackie Insinger (09:31):
So VUCA stands for volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous, V-U-C-A, was a military term really for a time of a critical period of crisis moment where everybody hunkers down to get through this VUCA period, volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous. Started using it in the corporate world during times of something critical going on, like the housing crisis, a pandemic, a big leadership change, a merger acquisition, that's a VUCA thing. VUCA is our new normal. Everything, we can probably all agree, is a little bit volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous, and that's just what it is. And so when you look at leadership, you're the captain of your ship. Okay, so you've got your boat, you've got your crew, you've got your gear, you've got your systems and technology, and here comes a wave. The wave represents a change. Traditionally, that's when you bring someone in to help you through this wave and you look at what's the direction of the wind?
(10:19):
Is everybody in the right spot? Is your gear dry? Technology working? Wave comes, everybody's a little bit wet, little bit tired. That's when you do your little fist pump and celebrate for a second. You turn back around and here's the next wave and you're like, "Ooh, is your gear still wet? Is the technology still working? Everybody's standing back up again? You ready for this wave?" The wave comes. They're coming so fast that half the people are laying on the back of the boat, they're soaking wet, the technology's probably not working, and the leader somehow has to have the energy upfront to say, "Stand up guys. We got another wave coming." It doesn't work. So elevate up 30,000 feet and look down. It's just wavy water. That's all it is. It's wavy water. So do we have the right boat? Do we have the right people in the right positions, the right processes, the right gear, the right systems to navigate wavy water?
(11:07):
We're not going to know what the next wave or series of waves are going to look like, but we'll have confidence and faith that we've got the right people to figure it out. And when you can shift your leadership mindset to that and the team's mindset and make sure you have those pieces and pace, then it doesn't matter what you name the wave. Sometimes the waves are things you've been waiting for for decades. You're so excited. This is the greatest thing and it's still exhausting and you still get wet and it still makes your technology sometimes not work and it can still cause that stress. It's still a wave, but we have to be ready to enable whatever's coming and that's okay.
Matt Poepsel (11:43):
I'm so glad that you called out the exhaustion leaders can feel because I know my listeners can certainly relate to that. And sometimes it happens because we want to protect the team, we want to continue to be seen as a high performer, but if we don't investigate, just as you said, take that 30,000 foot view, look down and say, "Do we have the right ship, the right configuration for what we're trying to do? Do I need to make some changes, some new skills that we need to develop?" If we can't find a way to, as I say, to metabolize the stress that comes along with leadership, and in many cases that's adjusting to change, we will exhaust ourselves. We'll be depleted. And I know the research also is showing right now that that level of burnout isn't just among employees. I think CEOs are burning out right now.
(12:27):
They're emotionally drained, certainly the entire executive team. It takes a toll, but I think the toll is twice as bad if we're trying to do it ourselves in spite of an organization that's not quite up to the challenge, better to reconfigure, put the people in the right seats, just all the things you're teaching us to do so that it's still going to be taxing, but it doesn't have to be draining.
Jackie Insinger (12:50):
Right. And it is the new way. So how do we adapt to the new way where it doesn't have to feel so hard and so heavy? It's just the new way, right? The four drivers really represent the four things that the leader can generate that quickly shift the whole cascade of an organization to start to become not just open to change, but really getting on board and have buy-in to move with it. So I talk about moving from bracing to embracing. Everybody's bracing right now and leaders as well. It's interesting when you said how exhausted leaders are. I was with this executive team last week and I said, "Who in the room is exhausted?" And the CEO raised his hand first and then everybody's hand went up. And then I said, "Who in here is excited?" And everybody's hand went up. And what we talked about was at this level, yes, you're exhausted, but you also know what's coming and why you're doing the things you're doing with the changes that you're investing in and the strategies you have, so you're excited about it.
(13:58):
But below your level, and think about how many layers below, they're just exhausted because they don't know the why and what's coming and the reasons and the evolution and all the things, so they just feel the exhaustion. And that's where this model really creates such a fast difference is change fatigue is really just good people sprinting a race that has no finish line anymore. And so we have to be able to provide the resources, the foundation, the support and the mindset to be able to run without getting exhausted.
Matt Poepsel (14:33):
Yeah. I love that analogy too, because if you're bracing yourself, you're holding on to try to keep things solid and stable when that's just not going to be possible, then you can't embrace. You got to let go. You got to stop bracing if you're going to embrace. And what you're constantly bringing us back to is that this is just how it is now. This isn't something we're going to go through for six months, get to the side and say, "I'm glad that was over." This is the new operating environment. This is the new leadership command. This is basically what it takes from us and what it's going to ask of us. But I want to get into the four drivers too, because Jackie, you've laid it out so elegantly. So I'll name them real quickly and I want to pull them apart one by one briefly.
(15:10):
We've got signal, safety, agency, and purpose. Let's start with signal. So this is something a leader can control. So what does that mean? Signal's not a term we hear all the time, but if I'm a team leader trying to get my team excited about the change and clear about what's coming next, what is signal and how do I generate that?
Jackie Insinger (15:28):
So you are always sending a signal, whether you like it or not, and it always creates an echo. So when we take it back a step to emotional contagion, which is something I think we talked about a couple years ago on the show, I love talking about, emotional contagion is like a whole field of study where in 33 milliseconds, our brain will read and identify someone else's emotions and instantly take them on, 33 milliseconds. When it's a leader, it's not only the layer below them, but also the layer below them. When you send a positive outlook signal, productivity goes up 31%, sales 37%, and the negative impact of stress goes down 23%. These are big HBR studies. So the signal that you send intentionally will always create an echo. Whether you like it or not, you are. So let's be intentional about the signal that we're sending.
(16:19):
If you see the captain of your ship feeling so scared and unstable up there at the wheel, are you going to feel like this is somebody I want to follow, I'm going to get on board? No, you're going to hold on super tight and make sure that you've got your floaties on and you're like, I don't know what this guy's doing. I know this woman's doing. So the signal we send is always the first thing. And when you look at a leadership team and the whole top of the organization, that signal is the echo of the whole enterprise. And what I like to do is some of the work we do with the signals and echoes concept is we reverse engineer because the echoes, people try to fix the echoes. You look at your engagement scores, you look at your culture surveys and you say, this is what's going on.
(17:03):
This is what people are saying. Here's the actions we're going to take to fix those things. So we're going to address the echo. And I say the echo is the clearest mirror of leadership. That's what it is. It is a mirror of you. It is showing you exactly the signal that you are sending that's going to create this echo. How do we shift that to create the echo that we actually want? It always starts with you. So you get to decide what echo is going to happen based on the signal that you send.
Matt Poepsel (17:31):
And that is definitely something that we can control because we can listen for the echo we're getting back, and I'm sure you're helping your clients translate these signals and how to interpret them, but then also to be more intentional about raising awareness to the signal we send out. Sometimes it can be mixed messages. Sometimes it can be something that seems a little hollow. Oh, it's going to be fine. You're like, well, based on what? And you're like, well, we just hope it will.
Jackie Insinger (17:53):
Right. One of the greatest things that helps guide us with signal a little bit is 2025, biggest study from Gallup is what do people need most from their leaders? And the answer far and away globally was hope. And that was the coolest thing to me. And hope, by the way, was stronger than all of the other ones added up. That's how strong hope was. People want hope. So how do you bring hope to action? That's in your signal. To me, that is the intersection where authenticity and positivity meet. So authenticity, that connection builds trust. You need to trust and feel that your leader sees you, and then that positivity builds faith. You need to have trust and faith in your leader that we don't know what's coming. We don't know the answers yet, but we have confidence that we're going to figure this out, and that's what people need.
(18:45):
That's the signal. We're not pretending everything's easy. We're not pretending everything's fine. You can hold the challenge and hold the hope at the same time.
Matt Poepsel (18:53):
Well, let's talk about the next one, which is safety. Safety sounds like it would be hard to offer in a time in the wavy water that you described when people are getting splashed and we have an uncertain future ahead of us. What can a leader do to really offer up safety?
Jackie Insinger (19:06):
Yeah, so safety is so critical. We know psychological safety, people feeling some sense of I matter, I can speak up. When you create an environment where people know that their voice matters, they matter, they are seen, they can make mistakes, they can raise their hand, they can challenge ideas, not only will we move so much faster and accelerate through the change, which ultimately is the business goal, that happens because people will bring mistakes earlier. They're going to bring problems fast. They're going to say, "Hey, I think this might be off. I don't agree with this." So we need to create the situation where we're honest. "This is what I know, this is what I don't know yet, and this is when I should have some answers. "Having these ways of communicating where I'm not going to sugarcoat for you, but I also have a plan.
(19:57):
So there's the other side of the safety too, is not showing like," Yeah, this is just really hard. This really sucks. "Leaving it like that, that's not safe. So people think," Oh, if I'm honest and transparent, that's safety. "Now that can create a ton of anxiety. It's that then continuation of the signal through safety of," And this is why we're doing this. This is the evolution that we're going through. This is why we're fixing these things even if it feels hard. Let's talk about it. What are your questions? Let's get clarity. Put it out on the table. This is okay. There are no bad questions. I'm here to help answer whatever I can. "And so creating an environment where people are allowed to feel nervous, where they're allowed to share their questions, their challenges, all of that so that they can bring things earlier and get on board because they're like," It's safe here.
(20:44):
There's no gap between the say-do thing. There's usually this what we say and what we do gap, and people read that really easily now.
Matt Poepsel (20:51):
Yeah. I think when we punish people for making mistakes, it's bad in any environment, but certainly in one where that is as rapidly evolving the VUCA environment you described earlier. So it's one of those things where we have to evolve how we look at what performance really means because the rules of the game have just completely changed. A high performer may not be as high a performer when all of a sudden things are very volatile on them. So I really like that a lot.
Jackie Insinger (21:16):
Yeah. And part of safety is asking for clarity, right? There's so much that impacts people in different ways that we can make assumptions, or is this still a priority? Is it not? So now you're overwhelmed because you're not sure. So being able to even ask the questions, ask the hard questions, what does this mean for me and my team? Feeling safe enough to ask that I think is so critical. And we know from big project Aristotle, big Google studies, the number one factor for a high performing team is safety. Number one, far and away. So we need to create that for people to get along with change, but also for the organization to actually have the performance they need to meet the goals in this kind of environment.
Matt Poepsel (21:55):
Let's touch on the third one, which is agency. So is this the leader's agency? Is it the team member's agency or both?
Jackie Insinger (22:02):
Both. Mainly in this context, it's the team members. So people need to feel bought in. When you look at the difference between compliance and commitment, it's not necessarily that people are resisting change, they're resisting being changed. And so when you think about telling somebody what to do, when you look at the studies around AI compliance, we're rolling out this big AI initiative and this is what you have to do. Compliance numbers are very low. When it's this getting buy-in about how we're going to use this, why we're going to do this, how is this going to help your team? Think about how you can use this to amplify your impact and your team's impact. Very different type of response to it. It's like, oh, that's cool. That's how we're going to use it. I'm bought in. I have a sense of agency. I have a sense of ownership of this part of the process.
(22:53):
And when you're asking people to go through all this rapid shifts and change and bumps and waves and all the things and expectations, getting their buy-in for it is huge where they feel a sense of, it doesn't mean I got a vote. It just means I have some sense of ownership over what or how this impacts me or my team or how I'm going to navigate it.
Matt Poepsel (23:18):
Jack, I've been married 30 years. I know something about being changed. I'll tell you that, right? But in the world of work, I will tell you also, I love connecting the threads that when you have people who feel a sense of control, some ownership, that they have that agency, that they get to actually be a participant in their own rescue, so to speak, then hope goes up too. Because the only thing that's more devastating is if they're saying, we're hopeful that things are going to get better, but you don't have any control over how we get there. That doesn't engender hope in the people below us. And I feel like these things, I'm seeing so many connecting threads between what you're sharing with us, and it's cool to see that if we get a few of them right, it starts making the others a little bit easier too.
(23:57):
And before you know it, I see where we can get on top of that. Yeah.
Jackie Insinger (24:00):
Very purposeful order. You have to start with the signal. You have to show up in a way that feels steady for your people where you're sending the right signal to them. Then you have to create that safety. They're not going to feel trust if you're not sending a signal that emanates something that will make them create that trust with you. Once they have trust, then they can get to that sense of agency, but they're not going to buy into it if they don't trust you and they're going to trust you if they don't think your signal is legit and feeling like this is something I want to follow and be on this boat. And then the last one, which I think you're going to lead to now, is purpose. And this is where this gets a little, I don't know if controversial, provocative is the right word, but everything you read is like starts with why.
(24:50):
You have to start with purpose. You have to get people bought into the purpose. The why, and I'm going to clarify, the why is so important for context. Why are we doing this? Why does this matter? All of those whys are yes, but in terms of starting with the why of the purpose, that used to work. You can get people involved in the purpose, they buy into the purpose, and then the rest can fall into place. With the pace of change right now, if saved back to this boat, if the purpose is the horizon and you're like, "The horizon's so beautiful, that's the purpose." And you're like, "Here's a drunk captain, the wheel, and I'm holding on for my life and they don't know how to navigate this," it doesn't matter what the horizon looks like. You have to first go through those stages, and then the purpose is that activation energy.
(25:33):
I have to trust. I have a steady leader. I have to really know that we have some agency and some buy-in, and then I'm on board for this purpose. Let's go, let's get it. That's the collective momentum. That is the activation energy when you're moving towards something rather than away something. And that's where that neuroscience kicks in now. But with the type of change we're asking people to enable and bring all the rest of the organization along, you can't just start with, this is a really cool thing we're doing. These other pieces have to come first from the human side, from the neuroscience perspective, from the psychological perspective of being a human to get on board.
Matt Poepsel (26:10):
Yeah. So listeners, I think what Jackie's giving us here is not even just a very handy framework, but it's the order of attack we used to say. It's the stepwise way of building things. You have to put down the foundation before you put up the framing. If you're building a house, let's make sure we're sending out the right signal before we establish the safety, then ensure everybody's feeling that agency. And it's not that purpose isn't important, it's just that if you over-index on purpose and you don't get your house right when it comes to the other earlier bits, then people are going to be like, okay, that sounds great, but I'm really struggling with these predecessors, if you will, the prerequisites.
Jackie Insinger (26:43):
Yeah. If you don't trust your leader, it's very hard to say, but I'm here for the purpose. If you don't feel you have any ownership over your own role, over your own team or how you do the work, it's very hard to be bought in enough for that purpose. If you don't feel that your captain is steady at the wheel, very, very hard to say, but I'm here just for the purpose now because it's too bumpy, it's too hard, it's too exhausting. You're getting splashed in all the directions. These things have to go in a different order now to then activate and accelerate. And so when you drip this out and build it and it's all controllable and we say everything feels out of control, this is fully, all of these are within the leader's control. And when you get a whole group of leaders at an organization doing this work at the same time, aligning on what is the signal we want to send to create the echo that we need to see in our organization, we're going to send that signal.
(27:42):
How are we going to create this trust within our organization so people want to do this with us and they feel safe to bring us mistakes early, raise their hand, tell us what's going wrong, offer ideas, all of that. Then we give them that ownership so that it doesn't all fall on us either, but people actually can own it and buy into this and not just comply, but commit. Then we accelerate the journey together. When everybody's doing that in lockstep, it does not take long. It starts immediate when you start sending the signal that you get that good feedback and you start building that momentum and you move out of this fatigue, disengagement and the cost of that. What last year, $10 trillion was cost by disengagement. The numbers are staggering what's going on right now.
Matt Poepsel (28:25):
Well, no, 100%. I think where we started was what I would call sobering, the fact that there's no rest coming. This is just how it is. And that is sobering. And I think as leaders, we have to be grownups about this and realize that if we don't get good at this, we will suffer, our people will suffer, our businesses will suffer. We have to get good at this. So it is sobering. But at the same time, what you're sharing with us I find is uplifting because this is things that are in the leader's control. So for all my listeners, for myself, it really comes down to you've given us these techniques that we can actually do. We don't have to have some external party come in for us to start sending better signal and listening for the echo that we want to see come back and all the things that you've shared with us.
(29:06):
So I feel like it is at the same time you've got our attention. Absolutely. We have to get good at this, but you've also given us the way to get good at it. And I find that that's rare. I hear a lot of the first one, people saber rattling about how devastating it's going to be and there is no new normal. I get that. But to actually feel like, "Hey, I can do this." I think that's what you're leaving leaders with, and I think that's a really powerful and important thing.
Jackie Insinger (29:28):
Thank you, Matt. And I think part of with the go, go, go part, we have to look at self-care as infused in the model too, and that's part of supporting. That's part of the signal we send. It's part of the trust we build. It's part of the agency of let's talk about how you can get supported. What do you need for support? What do you need for resources? And it might not be dollars. It might be, I need a day to just take off. I need to make sure that everybody takes their vacation time because we're asking a lot of you. We need to reprioritize and maybe say this doesn't need to be a top right now, but really looking at the people, their capacity, how do we get them in their peak performance to be able to operate in this environment in a mental state and an emotional state that feels positive, that feels excited, that feels emotional.
(30:14):
Bringing it back up to the, yes, this is hard and it's a huge opportunity to ride this. How cool. So many people are doing really cool things right now, but people don't feel the excitement, they just feel the hard. So we need to really reinfuse a lot of the things and a lot of the changes are actually really cool and we get to do these things, but how do we get to do them in a way that actually feels like, I want to be part of this, I'm raising my hand. And that comes from the leader.
Matt Poepsel (30:43):
And that's where I think leadership has always been the key differentiator. And I think that the way you're teaching us to lead is what is going to set that differentiation because navigating change, it creates competitive advantage, it creates more loyalty when it comes to employees sticking around. We know the job markets are going to open up eventually. These things are cyclic. There's going to be a lot of moving around for those weak drunken captain leaders that you described earlier. So we don't want that to happen to us. So that's why I'm so glad that you've been able to share it with listeners. What I thought we would share next though, of course, is trivia segment. Here we go. Are we smarter than AI? You and I are a team. And I saw on a podcast that you were on that you had studied under
(31:20):
Dr. Eleanor Duckworth. She's a psychologist and you had to write about the moon every day for over a hundred days, I think. Something mind boggling and you took a great lesson from it, but I though I'd give us a trivia question about the moon for no reason at all other than that.
Jackie Insinger (31:35):
Okay.
Matt Poepsel (31:35):
But here it is, Jackie. Who's the first person to walk on the moon? Was it A, Buzz Aldrin, B, Neil Armstrong, or C, Yuri Gagarin?
Jackie Insinger (31:43):
I think it was me. I think it was in Dr. Duckworth’s class.
Matt Poepsel (31:47):
I think it was. I think it had to be you. So yeah, so we got Buzz Aldrin, Neil Armstrong, Yuri Gagarin. It's got to be Neil Armstrong, I'm thinking definitely here. So that turns out to be the one here, July 20th, 1969. I wasn't around for that one, but I tell you what, certainly a lot has changed since then. A lot's going to change
Jackie Insinger (32:04):
Moving forward. Yes. He wasn't the man on the moon when I was drawing pictures of it. Hundred days of drawing pictures of the moon, the most frustrating assignment, the most eye-opening assignment in history. Was not on the moon at the picture because I wasn't there yet either.
Matt Poepsel (32:20):
There you go. That's pretty incredible though that just as you shared, it's a frustrating experience. I've heard that too. I read an article about somebody who spent three hours staring at one painting and it was mind-numbing, but then all of a sudden it led to this breakthrough. I think leaders are going to look back at this change moment that we're in, this environment that we're in and realize this was one of the hardest yet most rewarding things that I ever went through in my career. I think it's going to be that transformative. But only if we navigate using techniques like what you showed us, Jackie.
Jackie Insinger (32:48):
Thank you. And it starts with mindset always.
Matt Poepsel (32:51):
Starts with mindset. Well, I know that my listeners are going to want to get started by connecting with you. Where's the best place they can go to do that?
Jackie Insinger (32:58):
They can do it through our website, which is just sparkbrilliance.com or feel free to email me, jackie@sparkbrilliance.com. I just love engaging, connecting, seeing how we can support. We've got cool leadership diagnostics to see where do you, even really taking an honest look at your teams and where do you need to focus in the most according to these models? And it's all free. Just go look these things up. Figure out how you can start supporting your people.
Matt Poepsel (33:25):
Self-awareness for the win. It's where it begins. I love it. Jackie, thanks so much for being with us. Listeners, I'll have those links for you in the show notes. You're only one click away from getting in touch with Jackie, learning more about how to navigate change. Holy cow. Jackie, it's great to see you again. Thanks for coming back on the show.
Jackie Insinger (33:39):
Thank you, Matt.