Maura Nevel Thomas | Effective Communication and Productivity - Unlocking Success through Language and Clarity

Dallas Burnett: 00:00:00

Hey, everybody.

Dallas Burnett: 00:00:00

We're talking to Maura Neville Thomas today.

Dallas Burnett: 00:00:03

What an amazing woman.

Dallas Burnett: 00:00:04

She's a top leader speaker, but you don't have to take my word for it.

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That comes from Inc Magazine.

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She's an author, a trainer, and has some incredible stories

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related to managing time.

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She's a great new friend of mine.

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You don't want to miss this incredible conversation.

Dallas Burnett: 00:01:04

Welcome, welcome, welcome to the last 10%.

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I am Dallas Burnett in Thrive Studios, sitting in my 1905

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Koch Brothers Barber chair.

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But more importantly, we have an amazing guest today, Maura Neville Thomas.

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She's an award-winning international speaker trainer.

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She's been on the TEDx stage.

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She has been featured in Fast Company Business Insider, the Washington Post.

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She contributes to Forbes and Harvard Business Review.

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just two small publications a few people have heard about, right?

Dallas Burnett: 00:01:42

Welcome to the show, Maura.

Muara Thomas: 00:01:45

I'm so happy to be here.

Muara Thomas: 00:01:46

Thanks.

Dallas Burnett: 00:01:47

that is just a such an honor.

Dallas Burnett: 00:01:48

I ran across your material and was just intrigued by some of the things

Dallas Burnett: 00:01:53

you've got, just some great content around time management and productivity

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and such a unique perspective on it.

Dallas Burnett: 00:02:00

I just was thinking we have got to get her on the show.

Dallas Burnett: 00:02:03

We've got to share this with our audience cuz there's some

Dallas Burnett: 00:02:06

really valuable information here.

Dallas Burnett: 00:02:08

So tell us about, your background and your story and how does one get to be an

Dallas Burnett: 00:02:13

international productivity expert guru?

Muara Thomas: 00:02:19

Oh, it's a long road.

Muara Thomas: 00:02:21

It only took me 20 years to become an overnight success.

Muara Thomas: 00:02:23

Right?

Muara Thomas: 00:02:23

That's what, cause everybody knows it takes forever, but, um, Yeah, I

Muara Thomas: 00:02:29

mean, I spent my whole professional career in the productivity industry.

Muara Thomas: 00:02:34

I worked for a company right outta college, fresh outta college that

Muara Thomas: 00:02:38

sold paper-based planners and training to go with them, and

Muara Thomas: 00:02:44

I had some great mentors there.

Muara Thomas: 00:02:46

I worked there for, almost 10 years.

Muara Thomas: 00:02:49

And during my time there, it, part of my job was to understand the whole market and

Muara Thomas: 00:02:55

what everybody was selling, competitors.

Muara Thomas: 00:02:57

so I read all the books, I went to all the trainings.

Muara Thomas: 00:03:00

I, saw all the planners and then software was.

Muara Thomas: 00:03:03

Starting and smartphones and all this kind of stuff, and it was really

Muara Thomas: 00:03:07

my job to know about all of that.

Muara Thomas: 00:03:08

So when I left and I thought about, I knew that I wanted to, I'm not

Muara Thomas: 00:03:13

an awesome employee, so I knew I really wanted to sort of go.

Muara Thomas: 00:03:19

Into business for myself and have more control.

Muara Thomas: 00:03:22

And I just really thought about what's a skillset that I have

Muara Thomas: 00:03:25

that a lot of people don't?

Muara Thomas: 00:03:26

And productivity was it.

Muara Thomas: 00:03:28

And it just started getting more and more important, right?

Muara Thomas: 00:03:32

It used to be that like, oh yeah, if you have a planner, it's helpful, But

Muara Thomas: 00:03:35

now it's if you don't know how to run your life, you are screwed, right?

Muara Thomas: 00:03:38

You are just drowning.

Muara Thomas: 00:03:41

And so it was always productivity.

Muara Thomas: 00:03:44

And then, In about 2009, people always said to me, oh, so you're a

Muara Thomas: 00:03:49

time management, expert or whatever.

Muara Thomas: 00:03:52

and that just started to bother me because I am a control freak.

Muara Thomas: 00:03:56

I admit it.

Muara Thomas: 00:03:57

And I just started thinking like, who can manage time?

Muara Thomas: 00:04:01

I try to back it up and slow it down every day.

Muara Thomas: 00:04:04

It doesn't work if I can get more hours.

Muara Thomas: 00:04:06

Nobody can manage time, but.

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Really how you manage your time only matters to the extent that

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you also devote your attention.

Muara Thomas: 00:04:17

Whether you are doing a task, whether you are in a meeting, whether you, whatever

Muara Thomas: 00:04:21

you're doing, if you switch what you're doing, or if you're only half present,

Muara Thomas: 00:04:27

if you switch what you're doing every few minutes, the task isn't gonna get done.

Dallas Burnett: 00:04:31

Yes.

Muara Thomas: 00:04:32

And or it'll take forever to get done and it will be full of mistakes.

Muara Thomas: 00:04:37

And if you're not present with a person, then what's the point?

Muara Thomas: 00:04:41

Right?

Muara Thomas: 00:04:41

If I sat here and been like, yeah, Dallas, ask me whatever you want,

Muara Thomas: 00:04:44

I'm just gonna be scrolling my email.

Muara Thomas: 00:04:46

it's not a big deal.

Muara Thomas: 00:04:46

I can totally do both, right?

Muara Thomas: 00:04:48

It would be a really boring interview.

Muara Thomas: 00:04:50

Okay.

Muara Thomas: 00:04:51

And so I just came to this conclusion and started, I wrote my first article on

Muara Thomas: 00:04:55

it in 2000, I don't know, 2009 or 2010.

Muara Thomas: 00:04:59

That time management is dead and we need to stop talking

Muara Thomas: 00:05:03

about it because who cares?

Muara Thomas: 00:05:04

We can't manage time.

Muara Thomas: 00:05:06

But if you start talking and thinking to yourself about how you manage

Muara Thomas: 00:05:09

your attention, everything changes

Dallas Burnett: 00:05:13

re it reorients everything.

Dallas Burnett: 00:05:15

When you say that, it's, instead of me trying to literally grapple with something

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that's this constant in the universe, that's just always moving forward, that I

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lose every second of it seems overwhelming cuz you know, I only have so much.

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So if I only got so many seconds in a day and hours in a day and hours in my

Dallas Burnett: 00:05:31

life, days in my life, then all of a sudden I try to cram everything into

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the time but when you turn back and you say, oh, wait a minute, it's not

Dallas Burnett: 00:05:39

about the time, it's about my attention.

Dallas Burnett: 00:05:41

That just opens up a whole new perspective.

Dallas Burnett: 00:05:44

I love that.

Dallas Burnett: 00:05:45

I love that.

Dallas Burnett: 00:05:46

so now you've written about this, so you started with a, just a blog article

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or an article, for Magazine 2009, but you've since written a lot more.

Dallas Burnett: 00:05:55

you've written several books and you've got one that's just recently out.

Dallas Burnett: 00:05:59

So tell us about the latest book.

Muara Thomas: 00:06:02

Sure.

Muara Thomas: 00:06:03

The latest book is called Everyone Wants to Work Here, attract the

Muara Thomas: 00:06:08

Best Talent, energize Your Team, and Be the Leader in Your Market.

Muara Thomas: 00:06:12

And the reason what this book came out of is that I work with leaders a lot.

Muara Thomas: 00:06:19

leadership groups and leadership teams, and just.

Muara Thomas: 00:06:22

Spend a lot of time with leaders and , I felt like they just really didn't

Muara Thomas: 00:06:28

realize how A, how much influence they have, and B, how much somebody's ability

Muara Thomas: 00:06:36

to have a productive day at work.

Muara Thomas: 00:06:39

Which makes a good day at work, is impacted by the behavior of the

Muara Thomas: 00:06:43

leaders and the culture of the company

Dallas Burnett: 00:06:46

Hmm.

Muara Thomas: 00:06:46

and how the company operates.

Muara Thomas: 00:06:49

And so my goal is really to help people, to help busy people have

Muara Thomas: 00:06:53

more days that end with, oh my gosh, that was such a good day.

Muara Thomas: 00:06:57

I got so much done in fewer days.

Muara Thomas: 00:07:00

That end with, oh my gosh, I was busy all day and I'm exhausted and somehow I.

Muara Thomas: 00:07:06

And whether or not those two things happen is really impacted a lot by how

Muara Thomas: 00:07:12

the company operates, how the leaders behave, and the culture of the company.

Muara Thomas: 00:07:16

And when I say the culture of the company, I really just mean like

Muara Thomas: 00:07:19

how do people interact with each other and what kind of language,

Muara Thomas: 00:07:24

what kind of language do people use?

Muara Thomas: 00:07:27

And I think words are so important and we say a word and we think it means a thing.

Muara Thomas: 00:07:33

And it means something totally different to some somebody else.

Muara Thomas: 00:07:37

And I think leaders just don't think about, are we on the

Muara Thomas: 00:07:40

same page when I say this word?

Muara Thomas: 00:07:43

Right.

Dallas Burnett: 00:07:43

many Assumptions.

Dallas Burnett: 00:07:44

Yeah, I completely agree that there's so many times that

Dallas Burnett: 00:07:47

I'm a victim of this myself.

Dallas Burnett: 00:07:48

It's just when you're communicating, you're thinking, yeah, I did a great

Dallas Burnett: 00:07:52

job of communicating that idea.

Dallas Burnett: 00:07:54

But the message sent is not the message received at all unless we have,

Dallas Burnett: 00:07:59

like what you're saying this shared language, this common model that we're

Dallas Burnett: 00:08:03

approaching things with, and I love that.

Dallas Burnett: 00:08:05

That's so good.

Muara Thomas: 00:08:07

Yes, and I know many communication experts who could talk

Muara Thomas: 00:08:10

about language models and all that kinda stuff, and that is super important.

Muara Thomas: 00:08:13

But really the first thing, and the thing that I talk about is words.

Muara Thomas: 00:08:18

When you say, for example, we need to be responsive to customers,

Dallas Burnett: 00:08:22

Yes.

Muara Thomas: 00:08:23

what do you mean by that?

Muara Thomas: 00:08:25

When you say that we have an open door policy here, what do you mean by that?

Muara Thomas: 00:08:30

When you say, I'm going on vacation, do you really mean I'm gonna be working

Muara Thomas: 00:08:37

from the beach in Aruba this week?

Dallas Burnett: 00:08:39

correct.

Muara Thomas: 00:08:40

What, what do words mean?

Muara Thomas: 00:08:43

And that causes so many, it, it doesn't, yes.

Muara Thomas: 00:08:47

Models and being on the same, you know, sort of having the same kind of systems.

Muara Thomas: 00:08:52

All of that is super important, but let's just talk about

Muara Thomas: 00:08:55

individual words and phrases

Dallas Burnett: 00:08:57

I think that's so true, and I think the first place

Dallas Burnett: 00:08:59

that you see it start breaking down.

Dallas Burnett: 00:09:02

It's when you walk in the door of a company and they've got their

Dallas Burnett: 00:09:05

values plastered all over the wall, and then you go into the office of

Dallas Burnett: 00:09:09

the person on the left of that sign and you say, Hey, you know this

Dallas Burnett: 00:09:13

value right here that says respect.

Dallas Burnett: 00:09:15

what does that actually mean?

Dallas Burnett: 00:09:16

what does that, how do you have that respect?

Dallas Burnett: 00:09:18

And they say an answer.

Dallas Burnett: 00:09:19

And then you go to the door on the right of that sign and you

Dallas Burnett: 00:09:22

ask the same question and you get totally different answers for the.

Dallas Burnett: 00:09:25

Same word, respect, it's unbelievable.

Dallas Burnett: 00:09:29

And you sit there and you go, man, and we've had this experience too.

Dallas Burnett: 00:09:32

You say, if we don't even know what the words that we post on the,

Dallas Burnett: 00:09:36

main header on the wall out here.

Dallas Burnett: 00:09:38

Actually we don't even know how that actually, it's like you said these

Dallas Burnett: 00:09:41

words, what these words actually mean in the walking around everyday actions.

Dallas Burnett: 00:09:45

Man, how do we move?

Dallas Burnett: 00:09:47

How do we move forward?

Dallas Burnett: 00:09:47

How do we move together?

Dallas Burnett: 00:09:48

How do we have alignment if we don't even know?

Dallas Burnett: 00:09:50

so I think you're, I think you're spot on with that.

Dallas Burnett: 00:09:53

let's talk about, let's talk about, because I think leaders, there's a ton

Dallas Burnett: 00:09:57

of leaders that probably feel completely.

Dallas Burnett: 00:10:00

Overwhelmed, overworked.

Dallas Burnett: 00:10:02

, I remember a quote, I think it was, I think it was Coach Wooden that said,

Dallas Burnett: 00:10:06

don't mistake activity for progress.

Dallas Burnett: 00:10:09

And it's kind of goes to what you were saying , I've been busy all

Dallas Burnett: 00:10:12

day, and I, but what have I done?

Dallas Burnett: 00:10:15

have I got anything done?

Dallas Burnett: 00:10:16

So how would you, how do you approach leaders when they're feeling

Dallas Burnett: 00:10:19

completely overwhelmed and underwater?

Muara Thomas: 00:10:22

Yeah, and leaders have the same problem that teams

Muara Thomas: 00:10:24

have, and from a foundational level.

Muara Thomas: 00:10:27

In fact, right before this call, I was just talking to a client

Muara Thomas: 00:10:30

about, here's what's going on in our company, how can you help us?

Muara Thomas: 00:10:33

And.

Muara Thomas: 00:10:35

The truth is, most busy professionals today, most leaders included,

Muara Thomas: 00:10:41

do not have, a way to get a system for getting work done.

Muara Thomas: 00:10:47

In my world, I talk about it as a workflow management system.

Muara Thomas: 00:10:51

I.

Muara Thomas: 00:10:52

But if you have a software background, when I say workflow management,

Muara Thomas: 00:10:55

you think, software or apps, and that's not at all what I mean.

Muara Thomas: 00:10:59

the collection of habits and behaviors you have, and you could even think of

Muara Thomas: 00:11:03

it as a life flow management system, cuz it's not just about work, it's

Muara Thomas: 00:11:07

the, if you think about how do I manage all of the responsibilities

Muara Thomas: 00:11:13

involved in being a grownup, right?

Dallas Burnett: 00:11:17

yeah, yeah.

Dallas Burnett: 00:11:19

Adulting, right?

Muara Thomas: 00:11:20

How do I adulting is hard.

Muara Thomas: 00:11:22

How do I adult successfully and the older I get and the more I advance in

Muara Thomas: 00:11:27

my career, the more I advance in life.

Muara Thomas: 00:11:30

I take on more and more responsibilities.

Muara Thomas: 00:11:32

And the way, my sticky notes flagged email system is just not scalable and.

Muara Thomas: 00:11:39

So most people just don't have a system for how they manage their work.

Muara Thomas: 00:11:47

And James Clear in Atomic Habits says we don't rise to the level of our goals,

Muara Thomas: 00:11:51

we fall to the level of our systems.

Dallas Burnett: 00:11:53

Mm.

Muara Thomas: 00:11:54

Right.

Muara Thomas: 00:11:54

And so if you don't have a system for how you operate, how you adult at work

Muara Thomas: 00:12:01

and at home, because if your life is chaotic at home, it's gonna be hard for

Muara Thomas: 00:12:05

you to be present at work and be organized and efficient at work and vice versa.

Muara Thomas: 00:12:10

so the first thing is that we need a work.

Muara Thomas: 00:12:13

Everybody needs workflow management skills and most people don't have them.

Muara Thomas: 00:12:17

And then we can start to build company systems.

Muara Thomas: 00:12:21

We need individual systems

Dallas Burnett: 00:12:23

Yeah.

Dallas Burnett: 00:12:23

If you can't manage yourself, how do you manage others?

Dallas Burnett: 00:12:25

it really goes back and it starts with managing yourself.

Dallas Burnett: 00:12:28

And I do think that there's not a lot of, there's not a lot of people.

Dallas Burnett: 00:12:32

it's that whole, it's what's important, but not urgent.

Dallas Burnett: 00:12:36

There's not some flashing light that's gonna, that, shines in your face when

Dallas Burnett: 00:12:39

you get up in the morning and it says the world has changed around you.

Dallas Burnett: 00:12:43

You've taken on more responsibility, you've got more

Dallas Burnett: 00:12:45

things that you're doing now.

Dallas Burnett: 00:12:47

You have to change the way you're doing.

Dallas Burnett: 00:12:49

You have to.

Dallas Burnett: 00:12:49

there's nobody.

Dallas Burnett: 00:12:50

All we feel is this tension and pressure and stress that continues to mount and

Dallas Burnett: 00:12:55

we're like, what in the world is going on?

Dallas Burnett: 00:12:58

I didn't have this before and yet.

Dallas Burnett: 00:13:00

Yeah, but you didn't, you weren't doing all these other things.

Dallas Burnett: 00:13:02

that's really interesting.

Dallas Burnett: 00:13:03

how do you walk with people and help change their mindsets or their open, their

Dallas Burnett: 00:13:08

kind of, their thinking around that idea?

Muara Thomas: 00:13:12

Yeah.

Muara Thomas: 00:13:13

Explaining the whole idea that there's this thing, like this has a name like

Muara Thomas: 00:13:17

how We Adults Successfully can be named, I call it workflow management,

Muara Thomas: 00:13:21

but call it whatever you want, but.

Muara Thomas: 00:13:24

But you can systematize the way you operate.

Muara Thomas: 00:13:27

So that realization for a lot of people is a light bulb because you

Muara Thomas: 00:13:31

don't, you mean I don't have to reinvent the wheel every morning?

Muara Thomas: 00:13:34

Most people, a lot of time management advice says, spend the night before

Muara Thomas: 00:13:39

planning for the next day and writing down all the things you

Muara Thomas: 00:13:42

have to do, and then you go to bed.

Muara Thomas: 00:13:44

And like you said, the whole world has changed when you wake up.

Muara Thomas: 00:13:46

So you're listed out the window, And so how I, and so people say isn't that

Muara Thomas: 00:13:51

a good practice to plan every night?

Muara Thomas: 00:13:52

And I was like, if you live your life, if you have a system, your system is dynamic.

Muara Thomas: 00:13:59

Your system changes.

Muara Thomas: 00:14:00

Eisenhower said, I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is

Dallas Burnett: 00:14:06

Mm.

Dallas Burnett: 00:14:07

Yeah.

Muara Thomas: 00:14:07

So your system is your plan for your days.

Muara Thomas: 00:14:11

Plans change and, but you have a dynamic system that adapts to those changes so

Muara Thomas: 00:14:16

you know what you are responsible for.

Muara Thomas: 00:14:19

You know, everything on your plate so that you can prioritize it.

Muara Thomas: 00:14:23

Your system gives you a place to collect and store and organize and prioritize,

Muara Thomas: 00:14:29

and most importantly, execute on all of that stuff that you have to get done.

Muara Thomas: 00:14:35

Because most people, it just takes so long to figure out.

Muara Thomas: 00:14:38

What's the best thing I should do right now?

Muara Thomas: 00:14:41

Because I don't know, it's, I have things in my head.

Muara Thomas: 00:14:44

I have things on my list from yesterday.

Muara Thomas: 00:14:46

I have things on my sticky notes.

Muara Thomas: 00:14:48

I have flags in my email.

Muara Thomas: 00:14:49

I don't know.

Muara Thomas: 00:14:50

I better just, go get a cup of coffee, I guess,

Dallas Burnett: 00:14:54

Well, you know, I think we do have this analysis paralysis.

Dallas Burnett: 00:14:57

You just get overwhelmed with data, and then you say, well,

Dallas Burnett: 00:15:01

okay, I just need to take a break.

Dallas Burnett: 00:15:04

I've done, I haven't done anything yet, but I just need to take a

Dallas Burnett: 00:15:06

break, and so I think that's so true.

Dallas Burnett: 00:15:09

I love how you.

Dallas Burnett: 00:15:10

I love how you capture that and you, the way you said dynamic system, it's

Dallas Burnett: 00:15:14

that it's not a system that's so rigid because I think when people hear system,

Dallas Burnett: 00:15:19

they think, okay, it's more of a process.

Dallas Burnett: 00:15:21

Step one, lay out your sticky note and write everything down

Dallas Burnett: 00:15:24

tomorrow step, step two, wake up and execute everything on that list.

Dallas Burnett: 00:15:27

and I love how you describe it cuz it's exactly the opposite your way of saying

Dallas Burnett: 00:15:32

dynamic because our days are dynamic.

Dallas Burnett: 00:15:34

We get up and we have a flat tire before we, even make it to the office.

Dallas Burnett: 00:15:36

that.

Dallas Burnett: 00:15:37

That obviously changes, the list, and so it, it is gonna change my day's dynamic.

Dallas Burnett: 00:15:42

So I love how you talked about that as it relates to responsibilities.

Dallas Burnett: 00:15:46

So, I'm gonna get real with, I'm gonna get real with a lister.

Dallas Burnett: 00:15:48

So I'm gonna let you coach me a little bit.

Dallas Burnett: 00:15:50

I need some coaching in this area.

Dallas Burnett: 00:15:51

So this is a very interesting area for me because I am a number seven.

Dallas Burnett: 00:15:55

On the Enneagram, so I'm an Enneagram seven, so I'm a creative.

Dallas Burnett: 00:16:01

I'm a, I got about 17,000 things juggling because I love mixing things

Dallas Burnett: 00:16:06

up and seeing, but the problem with that is, Is that even when I'm,

Dallas Burnett: 00:16:10

running a business or whatever is that I'm constantly having these squirrel

Dallas Burnett: 00:16:15

moments, like I can be present.

Dallas Burnett: 00:16:17

I like being present with people.

Dallas Burnett: 00:16:18

I love connecting, but I'm totally the one that will get

Dallas Burnett: 00:16:22

lost in a conversation and miss.

Dallas Burnett: 00:16:24

The next meeting by like 20 min, have no idea.

Dallas Burnett: 00:16:27

You know?

Dallas Burnett: 00:16:27

And then, I'm also one that's like talking and then has this idea and it's boom, we

Dallas Burnett: 00:16:32

go off on a rabbit, trail for 20 minutes.

Dallas Burnett: 00:16:34

And so coach me up.

Dallas Burnett: 00:16:36

I need some advice.

Dallas Burnett: 00:16:37

So what are some things that you would tell a number seven on the Enneagram?

Dallas Burnett: 00:16:40

that's a business owner.

Dallas Burnett: 00:16:41

Business leader that's, that needs to do better managing

Dallas Burnett: 00:16:44

their activities in the day.

Muara Thomas: 00:16:47

Yeah, so.

Muara Thomas: 00:16:51

You can be a creative person and still have a system, right?

Muara Thomas: 00:16:54

In fact, your system frees your creativity because you don't

Muara Thomas: 00:16:58

have to manage all the minutiae.

Muara Thomas: 00:17:00

And, and again, by system I don't mean software, tools, calendars, and

Muara Thomas: 00:17:04

task managers and all that stuff.

Muara Thomas: 00:17:05

It's important, but it's not about the tool.

Muara Thomas: 00:17:07

It's how you use the tool.

Muara Thomas: 00:17:09

So it's the behaviors that matter.

Muara Thomas: 00:17:11

And We need to be able to take in what's happening to us and make

Muara Thomas: 00:17:18

conscious decisions in the moment.

Muara Thomas: 00:17:20

I love that thing you just said, and I would love to spend the

Muara Thomas: 00:17:23

next 30 minutes talking about it.

Muara Thomas: 00:17:24

Let me just see if that's okay to do that.

Muara Thomas: 00:17:28

Oh yeah, this thing I was gonna do next that can wait.

Muara Thomas: 00:17:30

Okay, let's do it.

Muara Thomas: 00:17:31

Let's go for it.

Muara Thomas: 00:17:31

Right?

Muara Thomas: 00:17:32

Instead of, most people just wake up and do whatever happens to

Muara Thomas: 00:17:36

them every day because, without a good way to manage your life.

Muara Thomas: 00:17:43

You, everybody just goes home at the end of the day and says,

Muara Thomas: 00:17:45

I think everything's done.

Muara Thomas: 00:17:48

I'm not really sure.

Muara Thomas: 00:17:51

And with a system you can be like, no, these are the things

Muara Thomas: 00:17:53

that I haven't done yet.

Muara Thomas: 00:17:54

And you know what?

Muara Thomas: 00:17:55

I'm just gonna make this phone call and then I can leave cuz everything

Muara Thomas: 00:17:58

else can wait until tomorrow.

Muara Thomas: 00:18:00

It's about, ma, it's about putting you in the driver's seat of your life

Muara Thomas: 00:18:05

and your work and making intentional decisions about where your attention goes.

Muara Thomas: 00:18:11

Because here's the thing about, the other thing about attention management.

Muara Thomas: 00:18:15

Your attention determines the experiences you have, right?

Muara Thomas: 00:18:20

if you are like a golfer, You give your attention to golf.

Muara Thomas: 00:18:26

So you golf and you shop for golf clubs, and you look for places to golf

Muara Thomas: 00:18:30

and you talk to people about golf.

Muara Thomas: 00:18:33

You give your attention to golf.

Muara Thomas: 00:18:34

So you have all those experiences.

Muara Thomas: 00:18:36

If I'm not a golfer, I don't have any of those experiences,

Dallas Burnett: 00:18:40

That's

Muara Thomas: 00:18:40

right?

Dallas Burnett: 00:18:41

That's true.

Muara Thomas: 00:18:42

attention And you ever talk to someone, you talk to people all

Muara Thomas: 00:18:45

the time, what are you interested in?

Muara Thomas: 00:18:46

And you're like, Ooh, attention.

Muara Thomas: 00:18:48

I never thought about that.

Muara Thomas: 00:18:49

Right?

Muara Thomas: 00:18:49

It wasn't on your radar.

Muara Thomas: 00:18:52

Right.

Muara Thomas: 00:18:52

So your attention determines your experiences, but here's the next thing.

Muara Thomas: 00:18:57

Your experiences determine your life.

Muara Thomas: 00:19:00

So if you are not in what, what if too often you don't control

Muara Thomas: 00:19:04

where your attention goes, you just inadvertently allow it to be stolen by

Muara Thomas: 00:19:09

this shiny thing and that shiny thing.

Muara Thomas: 00:19:11

And make no mistake, the world is literally conspiring

Muara Thomas: 00:19:15

to steal your attention

Dallas Burnett: 00:19:16

I agree with that.

Dallas Burnett: 00:19:18

I agree with that.

Muara Thomas: 00:19:19

So we have two choices.

Muara Thomas: 00:19:21

We can live a life of reaction and distraction, or we can live

Muara Thomas: 00:19:25

a life of intention and choice.

Muara Thomas: 00:19:29

And here's the good news, that decision is 100% and entirely up to us.

Dallas Burnett: 00:19:34

Mm.

Dallas Burnett: 00:19:35

That's great.

Dallas Burnett: 00:19:36

I love that it's in totally in your control.

Dallas Burnett: 00:19:38

Totally in your control.

Dallas Burnett: 00:19:40

And I love how you do put that in control.

Dallas Burnett: 00:19:43

When you set up this dynamic system, you're running off that system.

Dallas Burnett: 00:19:47

So that's your boundary really for the day.

Dallas Burnett: 00:19:49

Because you're saying, as part of that, you've got your

Dallas Burnett: 00:19:51

responsibilities and your priorities.

Dallas Burnett: 00:19:53

And then let's say I have this great idea with this person that

Dallas Burnett: 00:19:57

comes by the office door and says, Hey, have you thought about this?

Dallas Burnett: 00:20:00

And it's like, oh, you know, or they send me a slack message or whatever it is.

Dallas Burnett: 00:20:04

You got this great thing, but now you're saying hold up.

Dallas Burnett: 00:20:07

You have, you can check that back against and say, Hey, is this fit?

Dallas Burnett: 00:20:10

Or do I need to put this in another spot?

Dallas Burnett: 00:20:12

I love how you use the system as kind of a boundary for, whether it's a creative

Dallas Burnett: 00:20:16

type or just a busy professional.

Dallas Burnett: 00:20:18

I think it's really good.

Dallas Burnett: 00:20:19

I think it's really good.

Dallas Burnett: 00:20:20

So I wanna talk a little bit about companies because we've got some

Dallas Burnett: 00:20:23

things everybody hears in the news.

Dallas Burnett: 00:20:25

back during post covid it was this, the great resignation and now it's

Dallas Burnett: 00:20:30

morphed into, quiet, quitting.

Dallas Burnett: 00:20:32

we have a lot of people that talk about and ask us to talk about burnout,

Dallas Burnett: 00:20:36

and I think that's a, another one of those three kind of components.

Dallas Burnett: 00:20:40

what do you think is causing a lot of this turmoil in companies

Dallas Burnett: 00:20:46

and so much employee discontent?

Muara Thomas: 00:20:50

Well, let me start again with the premise and the words.

Muara Thomas: 00:20:55

So I believe that this idea of quiet quitting is primarily business propaganda

Dallas Burnett: 00:21:03

Hmm.

Muara Thomas: 00:21:04

because I don't know, I honestly have never, I mean, I guess

Muara Thomas: 00:21:09

there was one guy on TikTok who, who got lazy or something, I don't know.

Muara Thomas: 00:21:15

But then like the business press latched onto this and started talking

Muara Thomas: 00:21:19

about all these lazy employees who were just trying to skate by and

Muara Thomas: 00:21:23

doing as little as possible without telling their boss and getting caught.

Muara Thomas: 00:21:27

I'm like, I dunno, any, I have never met one single person like that.

Muara Thomas: 00:21:31

Never in

Dallas Burnett: 00:21:31

It's a new phenomenon.

Dallas Burnett: 00:21:33

In just the last, like in the last two or three years, all of a sudden

Dallas Burnett: 00:21:36

all these employees all of a sudden just decided, I'm laying out.

Dallas Burnett: 00:21:40

I'm just sitting back in coasting.

Muara Thomas: 00:21:42

nobody does that.

Muara Thomas: 00:21:43

I wrote an article for Forbes called Why Leaders Should Want Their

Muara Thomas: 00:21:48

Employees to Quiet Quit, because here's what, here's what quit.

Muara Thomas: 00:21:52

Quitting really is quiet.

Muara Thomas: 00:21:53

Quitting is really just in my view and in my experience, I've worked with probably

Muara Thomas: 00:21:58

40,000 professionals in the last 20 years.

Muara Thomas: 00:22:01

In my experience, quiet quitting is.

Muara Thomas: 00:22:05

Control and boundaries and saying, you know what?

Muara Thomas: 00:22:08

There is more to life than work number one, but number two, I will be better

Muara Thomas: 00:22:13

at work if I don't work too much.

Muara Thomas: 00:22:16

If I have time for sleep, if I have time for exercise, if I have time with my

Muara Thomas: 00:22:21

family, if I have time to give back to my community, I will be a better employee.

Muara Thomas: 00:22:25

And so I'm not working 60 hours a week anymore.

Muara Thomas: 00:22:28

I'm gonna create some boundaries and as a result, I'm gonna be a better employee.

Muara Thomas: 00:22:32

That I think is what.

Muara Thomas: 00:22:34

Quiet,

Dallas Burnett: 00:22:35

Oh, wow.

Dallas Burnett: 00:22:36

That's interesting.

Muara Thomas: 00:22:37

This is why I wrote, everyone wants to

Muara Thomas: 00:22:39

work here because people.

Muara Thomas: 00:22:44

People are people were working an excessive amount.

Muara Thomas: 00:22:48

I talk in the book about what I call unconscious calculations.

Muara Thomas: 00:22:52

Unconscious.

Muara Thomas: 00:22:52

Unconscious calculations are things that it would seem that we believe,

Muara Thomas: 00:22:59

like our behavior indicates that we believe this, but we've never actually

Muara Thomas: 00:23:04

decided if we believe this or not.

Muara Thomas: 00:23:06

Like we haven't really looked at the underlying assumption that is guided.

Muara Thomas: 00:23:10

And so I believe that people have begun, that people started to work more because

Muara Thomas: 00:23:17

in part, again, more of that sort of the business media hustle culture and

Muara Thomas: 00:23:22

how do you get somewhere if you don't, if you're not hustling all the time.

Muara Thomas: 00:23:27

A and I think that people feel like they need, like my boss is

Muara Thomas: 00:23:31

sending me emails 24 7, so I have to be checking those emails 24 7.

Muara Thomas: 00:23:36

they want, it's so the opposite of quite quitting.

Muara Thomas: 00:23:39

They want to do a good job

Dallas Burnett: 00:23:41

hundred percent.

Muara Thomas: 00:23:42

and meanwhile, the boss is like, oh my gosh, I never expected you to

Muara Thomas: 00:23:45

be checking emails at 11 o'clock at night.

Muara Thomas: 00:23:47

I just to be thinking about it.

Muara Thomas: 00:23:49

Right?

Muara Thomas: 00:23:49

It's.

Muara Thomas: 00:23:50

It's not that the employees are bad, and it's not that the bosses are bad.

Muara Thomas: 00:23:53

Everybody is honestly, in my experience, trying to do the best they can.

Muara Thomas: 00:23:59

And just like the employees aren't realizing maybe your job

Muara Thomas: 00:24:03

really doesn't require 60 hours.

Muara Thomas: 00:24:06

And helping the leaders realize, did you know that when you send emails at night,

Muara Thomas: 00:24:10

people feel like they have to check them?

Muara Thomas: 00:24:12

And so, right.

Muara Thomas: 00:24:14

And so I have so many leaders who just tell me like, oh my gosh, I had no idea I

Muara Thomas: 00:24:19

was doing this to my employees, and it's absolutely not what I wanna be doing.

Muara Thomas: 00:24:22

So there's a lot that, that's really what the book is about.

Muara Thomas: 00:24:26

Let me just point out when you do this, here's how this is

Muara Thomas: 00:24:29

perceived by your employees.

Muara Thomas: 00:24:31

Somebody called me the Boss Whisperer, right?

Muara Thomas: 00:24:34

Okay,

Dallas Burnett: 00:24:35

I

Muara Thomas: 00:24:35

just tell you the things that the employees don't wanna tell

Muara Thomas: 00:24:38

you and don't wanna say that makes you know that's contributing to

Dallas Burnett: 00:24:42

I love that because, it's like you said,

Dallas Burnett: 00:24:44

you wouldn't call it shaming.

Dallas Burnett: 00:24:45

I think that's true because it's more that would be an intentional,

Dallas Burnett: 00:24:48

something done intentionally.

Dallas Burnett: 00:24:50

in, in, in what you're describing is, and it's been my experience too.

Dallas Burnett: 00:24:53

Most of the time it's just a lack of awareness.

Dallas Burnett: 00:24:55

the owner or the leader is, has certain habits or has a certain

Dallas Burnett: 00:25:00

personality, and they're running and it's oh gosh, I forgot to say

Dallas Burnett: 00:25:03

this I'm gonna go ahead and send it.

Dallas Burnett: 00:25:05

Which is in their mind, they're thinking, I'm great because I didn't forget.

Dallas Burnett: 00:25:08

And three weeks from now go, oh, I forgot to tell you this, But on

Dallas Burnett: 00:25:11

the flip side from the other side, that message sent, message received.

Dallas Burnett: 00:25:15

It's very hard for a team member to say, I don't need

Dallas Burnett: 00:25:17

to respond to it til tomorrow.

Dallas Burnett: 00:25:19

, there's some boundaries there.

Dallas Burnett: 00:25:20

And it's not boundaries that are these hard line things as much as it's just

Dallas Burnett: 00:25:24

an understanding between the two parties goes back to those words and what they

Dallas Burnett: 00:25:27

mean and how they, how we interact and behave with each other based on those.

Dallas Burnett: 00:25:31

I think that's really great.

Dallas Burnett: 00:25:33

I think that's

Muara Thomas: 00:25:33

Here's something, here's something that bosses don't realize.

Muara Thomas: 00:25:37

So I wrote an article for Harvard Business Review called Your Late Night

Muara Thomas: 00:25:40

Emails Are Hurting Your Team, and it became one of the most popular articles

Muara Thomas: 00:25:45

on HBR that year because again, because I think people didn't recognize,

Muara Thomas: 00:25:51

but here's what this is like, right?

Muara Thomas: 00:25:53

If you are my boss Dallas, and you send me an email at night, It would be

Muara Thomas: 00:25:58

the same as if you said to me at the end of the day, Hey, Maura, go home.

Muara Thomas: 00:26:02

Have a great night.

Muara Thomas: 00:26:03

I hope you enjoy your time with your family.

Muara Thomas: 00:26:05

Looking forward to seeing you on Monday or tomorrow or whatever.

Muara Thomas: 00:26:08

I, by the way, I'm gonna wanna tell you something later.

Muara Thomas: 00:26:12

Don't worry about it.

Muara Thomas: 00:26:13

Don't worry about it, don't about it.

Muara Thomas: 00:26:16

Go home and have a great night with your family.

Muara Thomas: 00:26:18

what?

Dallas Burnett: 00:26:19

yeah.

Dallas Burnett: 00:26:19

That's just running in the background the whole night.

Dallas Burnett: 00:26:21

I can't even be with my family cuz I'm sitting there going, what's he,

Muara Thomas: 00:26:24

What is it?

Muara Thomas: 00:26:25

What is it?

Muara Thomas: 00:26:25

When is it gonna come?

Muara Thomas: 00:26:26

When is it gonna come?

Muara Thomas: 00:26:27

What's it gonna say?

Muara Thomas: 00:26:28

Is it good?

Muara Thomas: 00:26:28

Is it bad?

Muara Thomas: 00:26:29

Right?

Muara Thomas: 00:26:29

I gave a keynote to a group of leaders yesterday and one of them

Muara Thomas: 00:26:33

said to me, oh my gosh, you're, so, I had, I think we don't realize.

Muara Thomas: 00:26:36

She said, I emailed two of my team members and I said, I wanna have lunch tomorrow.

Muara Thomas: 00:26:41

And she said, I found out later that the two of them, she's like, I wanted

Muara Thomas: 00:26:45

to tell them about their race, but the two of them got on the phone

Muara Thomas: 00:26:47

and said, why don't we have lunch?

Muara Thomas: 00:26:49

Are we getting fired?

Muara Thomas: 00:26:49

What's gonna happen?

Muara Thomas: 00:26:50

Why does she wanna right?

Muara Thomas: 00:26:51

And she was like, I had no idea I was doing that to

Dallas Burnett: 00:26:54

And I think there's a rule that I heard about human behavior

Dallas Burnett: 00:26:57

that I think that speaks to, that's been a truism for me in my experience as well.

Dallas Burnett: 00:27:02

And that is, is that we always, typically, most people will fill in the

Dallas Burnett: 00:27:07

gaps in information with a negative.

Dallas Burnett: 00:27:09

So they don't say when they, when she says, we gotta meet for lunch

Dallas Burnett: 00:27:13

tomorrow, they're not saying, Wow.

Dallas Burnett: 00:27:15

You know, maybe she's gonna give an us an extra week vacation.

Dallas Burnett: 00:27:18

why not?

Dallas Burnett: 00:27:19

It's just as, it's just as probable as she's gonna let us go.

Dallas Burnett: 00:27:22

but we just, typically, our minds tend to just go to the negative and we're

Dallas Burnett: 00:27:27

like, what if she's gonna let us go?

Dallas Burnett: 00:27:28

And so I think that goes back to that leader behavior you

Dallas Burnett: 00:27:30

were talking about as well.

Dallas Burnett: 00:27:32

And the words, it's so important not only what we say, but how we say

Dallas Burnett: 00:27:38

it, and that the more clear we can be when we communicate as leaders,

Dallas Burnett: 00:27:41

the more information we can give.

Dallas Burnett: 00:27:43

So I think that's really good.

Muara Thomas: 00:27:46

And the truth is, honestly, Dallas, whether or not

Muara Thomas: 00:27:48

when we know news is coming, whether it's good or whether it's bad, we

Muara Thomas: 00:27:53

still wanna know what it is, right?

Muara Thomas: 00:27:54

think about like you.

Muara Thomas: 00:27:56

You took a test, one of the grades.

Muara Thomas: 00:27:58

Is it?

Muara Thomas: 00:27:58

I think I did okay, but I'm not sure.

Muara Thomas: 00:28:00

Maybe I did.

Muara Thomas: 00:28:01

maybe I failed.

Muara Thomas: 00:28:02

I dunno.

Muara Thomas: 00:28:02

But when are the results coming out?

Muara Thomas: 00:28:04

Cause I wanna know, right?

Dallas Burnett: 00:28:06

Yes.

Muara Thomas: 00:28:07

It's, we just want to know when it's something that matters.

Muara Thomas: 00:28:12

And information that my boss is sharing with me matters.

Muara Thomas: 00:28:16

So I don't if maybe it's good, maybe it's bad, but I just wanna know what it is.

Dallas Burnett: 00:28:21

I think that's so good.

Dallas Burnett: 00:28:22

So if you're coaching a team right now, if you're leading an organization,

Dallas Burnett: 00:28:26

I think that is fantastic advice.

Dallas Burnett: 00:28:28

You need to mark it down.

Dallas Burnett: 00:28:29

It's already been a, most read article on HBR when you communicate with your team.

Dallas Burnett: 00:28:35

you need to make sure you're thorough and you need to make sure you communicate,

Dallas Burnett: 00:28:39

in completeness as much as you can so that you're not leaving these gaps in

Dallas Burnett: 00:28:43

information that people can fill in.

Dallas Burnett: 00:28:45

And also the timing of that.

Dallas Burnett: 00:28:47

you want to give all the information when you can and not leave people hanging.

Dallas Burnett: 00:28:50

I just think that's fantastic and I think it's great advice and it's also so easy.

Dallas Burnett: 00:28:55

it's like back to the basics.

Dallas Burnett: 00:28:56

That makes sense.

Dallas Burnett: 00:28:57

I think when most people hear you say that, they're

Dallas Burnett: 00:28:59

like, Yeah, that makes sense.

Dallas Burnett: 00:29:01

That makes sense.

Dallas Burnett: 00:29:01

That's the way I feel.

Dallas Burnett: 00:29:02

but it's putting that back to the basics in practice that's so difficult.

Dallas Burnett: 00:29:06

It's a fundamental.

Dallas Burnett: 00:29:07

We've gotta be, go back to the basics, the fundamentals.

Dallas Burnett: 00:29:10

If you're a leader, don't overlook it.

Dallas Burnett: 00:29:11

It's the little things.

Dallas Burnett: 00:29:12

It's the simple things that can trip people up and create some dissonance on

Dallas Burnett: 00:29:15

your team and frustration or anxiety.

Dallas Burnett: 00:29:18

So now when you talk about, in the book, you talk about, unconscious calculations,

Dallas Burnett: 00:29:24

tell us about what that means and and how, leaders and individuals, how that

Dallas Burnett: 00:29:28

can reinforce, unproductive habits.

Muara Thomas: 00:29:31

Yeah.

Muara Thomas: 00:29:32

I mean, we have so many of them.

Muara Thomas: 00:29:34

They are they are assumptions.

Muara Thomas: 00:29:37

You know what I tell my clients is just question your assumptions, right?

Muara Thomas: 00:29:41

So one unconscious calculation is that, that I think companies end up.

Muara Thomas: 00:29:49

Creating this whole, their company operations end up with this false metric.

Muara Thomas: 00:29:56

So we have this unconscious calculation that if we don't get back to customers

Muara Thomas: 00:30:01

or potential customers immediately, they will not do business with us.

Muara Thomas: 00:30:06

They will quit us, they will go to somebody else, they

Muara Thomas: 00:30:08

will go to our competitor and.

Muara Thomas: 00:30:14

So I think the world that is a very competitive view of the world.

Muara Thomas: 00:30:19

And I think actually the world, a lot of people think the world is

Muara Thomas: 00:30:23

more competitive than it used to be.

Muara Thomas: 00:30:25

And I think it's less competitive than it used to be in some ways.

Muara Thomas: 00:30:28

Because now it used to be, back in the day, if you needed like a

Muara Thomas: 00:30:32

dentist, you would open the yellow pages and be like a dentist.

Muara Thomas: 00:30:36

Oh, I'll just call that one.

Muara Thomas: 00:30:37

I don't know.

Muara Thomas: 00:30:38

Or.

Muara Thomas: 00:30:38

Maybe you'd go to your neighbor and be like, who's your dentist?

Muara Thomas: 00:30:41

And you'd maybe ask one person, right?

Muara Thomas: 00:30:44

And you didn't know anything about them.

Muara Thomas: 00:30:45

You just picked a dentist.

Muara Thomas: 00:30:47

Now, if you want a dentist, you're like asking a million of your Facebook

Muara Thomas: 00:30:52

friends, who's the best dentist?

Muara Thomas: 00:30:54

You go on their website, you read the reviews, you do, right?

Muara Thomas: 00:30:56

You go on all these sites and you've done some research and you've

Muara Thomas: 00:31:00

decided this is the best dentist.

Muara Thomas: 00:31:03

And so if you are the best dentist, I want you, And so if you don't answer

Muara Thomas: 00:31:10

the phone now, if the phone just rings and rings and goes into the abyss, and I

Muara Thomas: 00:31:14

have no idea, did you go out of business?

Muara Thomas: 00:31:16

What's happening?

Muara Thomas: 00:31:16

Yes, that's a problem.

Muara Thomas: 00:31:18

But if I get a voicemail and it's our staff is busy helping other

Muara Thomas: 00:31:22

people, but your call is so important, what a lot of us say, right?

Muara Thomas: 00:31:24

we, and we will get back to you by, within one business day.

Muara Thomas: 00:31:28

I'm like, sure they're busy.

Muara Thomas: 00:31:30

They're the best dentist.

Muara Thomas: 00:31:31

Of course they're busy, and as long as you keep that commitment

Muara Thomas: 00:31:34

to me, I am going to wait.

Muara Thomas: 00:31:37

But instead we say, oh my gosh, we have to answer the phone.

Muara Thomas: 00:31:41

we have to hurry up.

Muara Thomas: 00:31:42

We have to get back to everybody right away, and they're never

Muara Thomas: 00:31:44

gonna wait for anything.

Muara Thomas: 00:31:45

And that just makes your employees insane.

Muara Thomas: 00:31:49

It creates what I call a culture of urgency because it, because then if every

Muara Thomas: 00:31:56

message might be a message that I have to respond to right now, then every message

Muara Thomas: 00:32:02

becomes automatically the most important thing happening to me in that moment until

Muara Thomas: 00:32:07

I know it's not the most important thing.

Muara Thomas: 00:32:10

I read it and I go, oh no, that can wait.

Muara Thomas: 00:32:13

Oh, but there's another message.

Muara Thomas: 00:32:14

Oh no, that can wait.

Muara Thomas: 00:32:15

Oh no, there's another message.

Muara Thomas: 00:32:16

Okay.

Muara Thomas: 00:32:16

I should answer that one.

Muara Thomas: 00:32:17

So then you just, you create this environment with every employee just

Muara Thomas: 00:32:21

sits at their desk like, because a message comes literally every minute.

Muara Thomas: 00:32:26

Every minute Gloria Marks research shows that we switch her.

Muara Thomas: 00:32:30

Most recent research, uc, Irvine, shows that we, when we are sitting in

Muara Thomas: 00:32:34

our computers, we switch what we're doing every 47 seconds on average.

Muara Thomas: 00:32:38

47 seconds.

Muara Thomas: 00:32:40

How you, if you have like a law firm or a creative agency or any

Muara Thomas: 00:32:46

kind of service provider or any kind of company, the people who

Muara Thomas: 00:32:49

work in the office, on the computer, you literally hired them to think.

Dallas Burnett: 00:32:54

That's

Muara Thomas: 00:32:55

And you can't think.

Muara Thomas: 00:32:56

You can't think if you have to read every message as it arrives

Muara Thomas: 00:33:00

to see if it's an emergency.

Muara Thomas: 00:33:02

So I spend a lot of time on communication guidelines with my clients, right?

Muara Thomas: 00:33:06

Like you need a bat signal,

Dallas Burnett: 00:33:08

Yeah.

Dallas Burnett: 00:33:08

Yeah, yeah.

Muara Thomas: 00:33:10

right?

Muara Thomas: 00:33:11

You need a bat signal for an emergency, and routine communication

Muara Thomas: 00:33:15

will get answered like within a few hours, and it'll all be

Dallas Burnett: 00:33:19

Well, and I think too, to your point, and that is so true, and

Dallas Burnett: 00:33:22

I think that is, it's, it goes back to those habits and behaviors that you were

Dallas Burnett: 00:33:28

talking about earlier, and that workflow management, because you're communicating.

Dallas Burnett: 00:33:32

our habits and our workflow communicates things that maybe our words don't.

Dallas Burnett: 00:33:37

And so when you go and like you're saying, we've gotta get back

Dallas Burnett: 00:33:41

to that customer's gonna leave.

Dallas Burnett: 00:33:42

That's communicating to your employees like the house is on fire all the time.

Dallas Burnett: 00:33:47

The hamster wheel's running.

Dallas Burnett: 00:33:48

I gotta keep up.

Dallas Burnett: 00:33:49

The second thing though, and I've seen this in clients that we've worked with.

Dallas Burnett: 00:33:53

As well.

Dallas Burnett: 00:33:53

And actually one of 'em said they were really a stickler on

Dallas Burnett: 00:33:56

training, training your customer.

Dallas Burnett: 00:33:59

And I thought that was a cool way of putting it.

Dallas Burnett: 00:34:01

But because he was on getting on to one of the team members because

Dallas Burnett: 00:34:04

they were responding to the clients' emails on a project late at night

Dallas Burnett: 00:34:09

and they were sending emails out to their project team, led 'em out.

Dallas Burnett: 00:34:12

And it gets right back to what you were saying earlier, but the, but what

Dallas Burnett: 00:34:16

happened was the client, Got used to being able to send emails at dinner time.

Dallas Burnett: 00:34:22

To this project manager and expect a reply by nine o'clock that night.

Dallas Burnett: 00:34:28

And then the project manager's having to get online and work

Dallas Burnett: 00:34:30

till 11 to get this stuff done.

Dallas Burnett: 00:34:32

Then showing up and working a full day the next day.

Dallas Burnett: 00:34:34

And he's complaining cuz he's burnt out.

Dallas Burnett: 00:34:36

And the, and the lever's like, Hey, you gotta learn how to train.

Dallas Burnett: 00:34:39

Your client and then the person's freaking out because they're

Dallas Burnett: 00:34:42

like, but what if they leave?

Dallas Burnett: 00:34:43

Nah, we're doing a great job for 'em.

Dallas Burnett: 00:34:45

They're not gonna leave.

Dallas Burnett: 00:34:46

You.

Dallas Burnett: 00:34:46

Just gotta be honest with 'em and tell 'em.

Dallas Burnett: 00:34:48

So I think it goes both ways.

Dallas Burnett: 00:34:49

I think you're exactly right.

Dallas Burnett: 00:34:50

There is less competition if you do a really great job in good

Dallas Burnett: 00:34:53

service or give a good product.

Dallas Burnett: 00:34:55

people enjoy that.

Dallas Burnett: 00:34:56

that's a luxury, and so train them and say, Hey, this is normal life.

Dallas Burnett: 00:35:00

you want to have dinner with your family, your kids, and so do we.

Dallas Burnett: 00:35:03

So you can get this tomorrow.

Muara Thomas: 00:35:06

the software industry has something called SLAs, right?

Muara Thomas: 00:35:09

Service level agreements.

Muara Thomas: 00:35:11

If you're gonna do business with us, this is how we do business, and I

Muara Thomas: 00:35:14

don't see why every company shouldn't have service level agreements, right?

Muara Thomas: 00:35:17

This.

Muara Thomas: 00:35:18

I, we're so excited to have you as a client.

Muara Thomas: 00:35:20

Here's how we do business, and we are here for you in an emergency,

Muara Thomas: 00:35:22

but here's our bat signal, right?

Muara Thomas: 00:35:25

If there's, if you meet us, you send up the bat signal, and we are

Muara Thomas: 00:35:28

there for routine communication.

Muara Thomas: 00:35:31

We'll update you like this, and it'll take this long, and this is how it goes, right?

Muara Thomas: 00:35:35

Set expectations, and then everybody's happy.

Dallas Burnett: 00:35:39

think that's, I think that's fantastic.

Dallas Burnett: 00:35:41

I love that model.

Dallas Burnett: 00:35:42

I love that.

Dallas Burnett: 00:35:42

and I think that if you.

Dallas Burnett: 00:35:44

Our finding that your team is swamped or you have this tremendous amount

Dallas Burnett: 00:35:48

of communications that you're doing.

Dallas Burnett: 00:35:49

I think one of the things you're saying that everybody needs to

Dallas Burnett: 00:35:52

write down is, what's my bat signal?

Dallas Burnett: 00:35:54

So if everything's an emergency, nothing's an emergency.

Dallas Burnett: 00:35:56

I think it's fantastic.

Dallas Burnett: 00:35:58

We talked a little bit about, burnout.

Dallas Burnett: 00:36:00

Let's talk about that a little bit as it relates to business leaders and coaches.

Dallas Burnett: 00:36:03

Cause I feel like it's an epidemic right now.

Dallas Burnett: 00:36:05

People struggle with burnout.

Dallas Burnett: 00:36:07

What's some things that they could do to balance life and prevent that burnout?

Muara Thomas: 00:36:13

I think one thing that a lot of.

Muara Thomas: 00:36:15

Leaders.

Muara Thomas: 00:36:16

I can walk leaders through this, through this exercise and educate

Muara Thomas: 00:36:20

them like, these are all the things that contribute to burnout.

Muara Thomas: 00:36:24

These are all the things that cause burnout in your employees.

Muara Thomas: 00:36:26

Which ones are present here?

Muara Thomas: 00:36:29

And honestly, for many, Industries, right?

Muara Thomas: 00:36:32

There are some exceptions, like direct patient care and healthcare and even hr.

Muara Thomas: 00:36:38

There, there are some jobs that are just very emotionally taxing, but

Muara Thomas: 00:36:44

putting those aside for a minute, for the average, like account manager or

Muara Thomas: 00:36:48

creative director, something who sits in a company, the most common cause of.

Muara Thomas: 00:36:55

Burnout that I see is simply working too much, too many hours.

Muara Thomas: 00:37:02

Right.

Muara Thomas: 00:37:02

And not getting any sort of fresh break disconnection.

Muara Thomas: 00:37:09

Right.

Muara Thomas: 00:37:09

when we cut the cord, whether it's for an evening, for a weekend, for a vacation,

Muara Thomas: 00:37:16

We get to think about other things, right?

Muara Thomas: 00:37:19

We get to do other things and that when we do other things, that is literally

Muara Thomas: 00:37:23

where creativity comes from, right?

Muara Thomas: 00:37:25

We get new ideas and we see new people and we eat new food and we travel to new

Muara Thomas: 00:37:29

places, and we read a new book and we see a TV show, and then that creates these

Muara Thomas: 00:37:34

new neural pathways in our brain that allows us to be like, Hey, you know what?

Muara Thomas: 00:37:38

That thing I saw on TV last night that would work here, right?

Muara Thomas: 00:37:42

But.

Muara Thomas: 00:37:43

But if the way I see most people, the image I have in my head is

Muara Thomas: 00:37:48

the I Love Lucy clip with the chocolates on the assembly line,

Dallas Burnett: 00:37:51

Oh,

Muara Thomas: 00:37:52

right?

Muara Thomas: 00:37:52

Where

Dallas Burnett: 00:37:52

totally.

Muara Thomas: 00:37:53

there's just no space in your day.

Muara Thomas: 00:37:56

It's just go.

Muara Thomas: 00:37:58

and a lot of.

Muara Thomas: 00:37:59

Leaders just think about, it's their job to manage their work, and if they're

Muara Thomas: 00:38:04

gonna work at 11 o'clock at night, who am I to tell them that they shouldn't?

Muara Thomas: 00:38:07

Right Now if you are working at 11 o'clock at night because you took

Muara Thomas: 00:38:11

the day off to go to like your kids' camp thing or whatever, fine.

Muara Thomas: 00:38:16

That's right.

Muara Thomas: 00:38:17

But if you are putting in a full day, like you said, and then also,

Muara Thomas: 00:38:22

here's the thing, and this comes back to attention management.

Muara Thomas: 00:38:24

Most people, here's another unconscious calculation.

Muara Thomas: 00:38:28

At work, it is loud, it's noisy, it's distracting.

Muara Thomas: 00:38:33

People need me all day long.

Muara Thomas: 00:38:35

I have meetings all day.

Muara Thomas: 00:38:37

It's just go.

Muara Thomas: 00:38:38

The only time I can get my work done is when nobody's bothering me.

Muara Thomas: 00:38:42

when is nobody bothering you?

Muara Thomas: 00:38:43

Nights, weekends, holidays, when you're on vacation.

Muara Thomas: 00:38:46

And so part of what I talk about, and everyone wants to work here, is.

Muara Thomas: 00:38:51

That leaders need to create an environment at the office where, or during the workday

Muara Thomas: 00:38:58

where people can get their jobs done.

Muara Thomas: 00:39:00

At

Dallas Burnett: 00:39:01

Sure.

Muara Thomas: 00:39:03

At work, right?

Muara Thomas: 00:39:04

And yes, it is part of your job to be responsible to other people, and it's

Muara Thomas: 00:39:08

part of your job to be collaborative and to work with others, but it's

Muara Thomas: 00:39:11

also part of your job to get done all those things on your to-do list.

Muara Thomas: 00:39:16

And if your strategy for that is to be available for other people 40 hours a week

Muara Thomas: 00:39:20

and do my own job another 20 or 30 or 40 hours a week, that is not sustainable.

Muara Thomas: 00:39:26

And even if you're sitting on the couch with your family watching

Muara Thomas: 00:39:30

TV while also scrolling your work email, that counts as work.

Dallas Burnett: 00:39:35

That does,

Muara Thomas: 00:39:36

So yeah, as you can see, I have a

Dallas Burnett: 00:39:38

No, I think that's so good.

Dallas Burnett: 00:39:40

I love your perspective and I love how you're just bold with it and

Dallas Burnett: 00:39:43

you just say it because I think a lot of people just need to be given

Dallas Burnett: 00:39:46

permission to turn their phone off, to put it down, to not check email.

Dallas Burnett: 00:39:51

It's almost like people, a lot of people are just waiting for

Dallas Burnett: 00:39:53

somebody to say, Hey, it's okay.

Dallas Burnett: 00:39:56

Stop.

Dallas Burnett: 00:39:57

Take a break for a minute, and I think that's cool.

Dallas Burnett: 00:39:59

And I love what you said because you really put down some, a cool challenge

Dallas Burnett: 00:40:03

to I think leaders, and owners, business owners, anyone that's managing people.

Dallas Burnett: 00:40:08

Because we had another guest one time.

Dallas Burnett: 00:40:10

It was a.

Dallas Burnett: 00:40:10

PGA golf course said that the stress is not the cause of burnout.

Dallas Burnett: 00:40:13

It's stress without recovery.

Dallas Burnett: 00:40:16

and I was like, oh, that's pretty cool.

Dallas Burnett: 00:40:17

That's a good idea.

Dallas Burnett: 00:40:18

And that's exactly what you're describing.

Dallas Burnett: 00:40:21

You're saying, Hey, go to work if it's stressful day, that's called work.

Dallas Burnett: 00:40:25

Get it done.

Dallas Burnett: 00:40:26

But when you're done.

Dallas Burnett: 00:40:27

And you need to put it down at home or when you go off on vacation

Dallas Burnett: 00:40:30

because you need that time to recover.

Dallas Burnett: 00:40:33

But I love how you put it because you said if you're leading people.

Dallas Burnett: 00:40:37

You're wanting to guard their margin, you know you're saying not only do you

Dallas Burnett: 00:40:43

personally guard your own margin, And that's our personal responsibility.

Dallas Burnett: 00:40:46

if we're going and having dinner with the family, put the phone down

Dallas Burnett: 00:40:49

and don't check work email while we're watching the movie or whatever.

Dallas Burnett: 00:40:51

That's, I'm guarding my own margin, my own recovery time.

Dallas Burnett: 00:40:54

But as a leader, I think what we lose sometimes is the awareness

Dallas Burnett: 00:41:00

of how are we protecting our team.

Dallas Burnett: 00:41:03

And one of the ways that we protect our team is we as leaders guard their margin.

Dallas Burnett: 00:41:09

So when's the last time that somebody sent you an email while you're on

Dallas Burnett: 00:41:12

vacation and you said, I'm not taking any more emails from you on vacation.

Dallas Burnett: 00:41:17

If you send another one, you know you're in trouble.

Dallas Burnett: 00:41:19

You know what I mean?

Dallas Burnett: 00:41:20

you know what I'm saying?

Muara Thomas: 00:41:22

yes.

Muara Thomas: 00:41:22

so here's where, here's where I sort of talk about, right?

Muara Thomas: 00:41:26

Different hats.

Muara Thomas: 00:41:27

So if you are a leader, Yes, you need to recognize people are on vacation.

Muara Thomas: 00:41:33

Don't email them when they're on vacation.

Muara Thomas: 00:41:35

You gotta help, because if the boss is sending me stuff I want,

Muara Thomas: 00:41:39

I'm gonna wanna know what it says.

Muara Thomas: 00:41:40

So as a leader, you have to help.

Muara Thomas: 00:41:42

However, as an employee, if you are checking your work email

Muara Thomas: 00:41:49

from, I mean, what are you doing?

Muara Thomas: 00:41:50

Just checking your email going, probably everybody knows I'm on

Muara Thomas: 00:41:53

vacation, so there's gonna be nothing here, but I'll just check.

Dallas Burnett: 00:41:57

That's right.

Muara Thomas: 00:41:59

If you are checking your email when you're on vacation, that is

Muara Thomas: 00:42:02

not work invading your personal life.

Muara Thomas: 00:42:04

That is you inviting

Dallas Burnett: 00:42:05

That's true.

Dallas Burnett: 00:42:06

That is true.

Dallas Burnett: 00:42:08

It's a both and.

Dallas Burnett: 00:42:09

Yeah.

Dallas Burnett: 00:42:09

It's not just the leader's responsibility, I guess what I mean is as a leader,

Dallas Burnett: 00:42:14

we're trying to create an atmosphere where people feel like it's okay.

Dallas Burnett: 00:42:18

To take a break and have margin in their life.

Dallas Burnett: 00:42:20

And they're not constantly, like you were saying earlier, not constantly

Dallas Burnett: 00:42:23

having to respond to late night emails.

Dallas Burnett: 00:42:25

And that's one of the ways leaders can guard that.

Dallas Burnett: 00:42:28

However, as an employee, if you go and check your email, then your boss is

Dallas Burnett: 00:42:32

probably gonna be like, Hey, you're supposed to be taking a vacation, but

Dallas Burnett: 00:42:35

I really appreciate the fact that you looked at our accounting numbers and sent

Dallas Burnett: 00:42:38

me that report while you're on vacation.

Dallas Burnett: 00:42:40

what's he, what's, what are, what is he or she supposed to do?

Dallas Burnett: 00:42:42

I mean, hey, If you're sending it and they didn't ask for it, but you're

Dallas Burnett: 00:42:45

doing it, then you're okay with that.

Dallas Burnett: 00:42:47

And sometimes I get it, like I don't wanna be, I don't wanna be

Dallas Burnett: 00:42:49

so generalized that it's like you never can, do this on a vacation.

Dallas Burnett: 00:42:53

I had somebody that was talking to, I was doing a burnout talk.

Dallas Burnett: 00:42:56

And it was a business owner.

Dallas Burnett: 00:42:58

And, she stood up and at the talk she says, I know I'm burn out.

Dallas Burnett: 00:43:03

I was like, hey, you know what?

Dallas Burnett: 00:43:04

when we admit these things, that's the kinda the first step, recovery.

Dallas Burnett: 00:43:07

And then she says, and I know that it's causing me to burn out all my employees.

Dallas Burnett: 00:43:12

And then I was just like, mm, you're right.

Dallas Burnett: 00:43:16

So if you're in that camp, if you know that you're doing stuff, then then it's

Dallas Burnett: 00:43:21

time to make some dramatic changes.

Dallas Burnett: 00:43:22

And you need to start thinking you, what you need to do is you need to buy

Dallas Burnett: 00:43:26

Maura's books and you need to start, you need to start contacting her and

Dallas Burnett: 00:43:29

get her to, to come and help you out.

Dallas Burnett: 00:43:31

and so let's, let's do this cuz I, it's just been a fantastic show today.

Dallas Burnett: 00:43:35

I love your perspective.

Dallas Burnett: 00:43:36

I love how you just bold with everything.

Dallas Burnett: 00:43:39

I love how you came out and you're just like, I think quiet

Dallas Burnett: 00:43:41

quitting is a, this is ridiculous.

Dallas Burnett: 00:43:43

I love that.

Dallas Burnett: 00:43:44

I think that's fantastic cuz we need people pushing on ideas and checking that.

Dallas Burnett: 00:43:48

And you just do a fantastic job with that.

Dallas Burnett: 00:43:50

Is there, and we always ask this to our sh guest on the show.

Dallas Burnett: 00:43:53

Is there anybody that you would like to hear on the last 10%?

Muara Thomas: 00:44:00

Oh my gosh.

Muara Thomas: 00:44:01

this is a day that, you are asked, this is maybe the wrong day.

Muara Thomas: 00:44:05

I just came back from the National Speakers Association annual

Dallas Burnett: 00:44:10

Wow.

Dallas Burnett: 00:44:11

Wow.

Muara Thomas: 00:44:12

With 1200 of the most gifted, caring, smart, dedicated

Muara Thomas: 00:44:23

colleagues you could ever imagine.

Muara Thomas: 00:44:26

And so that would, that's, yes.

Muara Thomas: 00:44:30

That I couldn't even, it's who do I thank?

Muara Thomas: 00:44:32

Right.

Muara Thomas: 00:44:33

I, there's so many people to think I don't miss.

Muara Thomas: 00:44:39

Right.

Muara Thomas: 00:44:41

There are certainly people who come to mind, but, oh my gosh, I couldn't

Muara Thomas: 00:44:44

even begin to know where to start.

Muara Thomas: 00:44:46

Aside from saying start at the National Speakers Association.

Dallas Burnett: 00:44:49

there you go.

Dallas Burnett: 00:44:50

All right, thank you for your time today.

Dallas Burnett: 00:44:51

Let me ask, where can people, if they want to buy your books, and we'll

Dallas Burnett: 00:44:55

obviously put the links in the show notes so that people can check that out.

Dallas Burnett: 00:44:58

But if people wanna connect with you, if they maybe have more questions or they

Dallas Burnett: 00:45:02

wanna hire you, or have you come on as a speaker, where can people find you?

Muara Thomas: 00:45:07

Sure.

Muara Thomas: 00:45:07

The best place to go is my website, Maura thomas.com slash books has information

Muara Thomas: 00:45:13

about all the books which can be purchased in any format anywhere books are sold.

Muara Thomas: 00:45:17

Then slash contact tomorrow, thomas.com/contact is where you

Muara Thomas: 00:45:22

can put in just some information.

Muara Thomas: 00:45:23

What do you wanna talk about?

Muara Thomas: 00:45:24

I'll send you a link to my calendar.

Muara Thomas: 00:45:26

It'll be great.

Muara Thomas: 00:45:26

we'll go from there and I'll figure out how I can help you

Muara Thomas: 00:45:30

or make a referral to, if I can.

Dallas Burnett: 00:45:33

That's awesome.

Dallas Burnett: 00:45:34

Maura, thank you again for being on the last 10%.

Dallas Burnett: 00:45:37

It's been a fantastic show today.

Dallas Burnett: 00:45:39

It's been so much fun just hearing all your wisdom and all the value

Dallas Burnett: 00:45:44

that you brought to our listeners.

Dallas Burnett: 00:45:45

I know they really appreciate it, and they're gonna go out and buy your books

Dallas Burnett: 00:45:48

and see all the things that you're into.

Dallas Burnett: 00:45:49

And so thank you again for being on the last 10%.

Muara Thomas: 00:45:53

Thanks for having me, Dallas.