Wiping Out Bad Leadership with Matthew Sandel

angela_r_howard (00:01.498)

Hey, Matt. Welcome to the podcast. Good morning. Yeah, I'm happy to have you here. It's funny because you and I work together pretty frequently. So I was just saying earlier that any of our conversations could have been a podcast episode and this one probably isn't going to be any different except we clicked record. So Matt, tell us who you are, what you do and what impact you're looking to make on the world.

matt_sandel (00:02.742)

Hey, good morning. Happy to be here.

matt_sandel (00:27.498)

Yeah. Hello. Uh, hello world. My name is Matthew Sandal. I'm a behavioral neuroscientist here at DX learning. And I'm very lucky because the impact I want to make in the world is actually the same as what my company is, is aiming to do, and that's to wipe out bad leadership. I think we can all think back to a time when we maybe had a bad boss or bad moment with some of our managers and how that really affected us and how that in many cases, maybe we're still carrying that.

on our shoulders as we're going into work and becomes a burden. When we think about the workplace, we spend so much of our lives at work. So trying to make that as beneficial, as effective, and developmental as we can. The majority of leaders don't have leadership training and they're put into leadership positions. So however we can arm them with the ability to change their people positively, that's our goal and that's my goal too.

angela_r_howard (01:23.154)

I love it. I love it. And, you know, I will just say that DX Learning has the best, the best leadership development training program that I have seen in the market. And that's one of the reasons why we partnered together because I think it is really just, it's very rich. It's based in research and neuroscience, which...

I would love to hear more about, I mean, I know all about it because we work really closely together, but I want you to kind of paint the picture as to why we're even talking about neuroscience in the context of leadership.

matt_sandel (02:02.134)

Yeah, I mean, we have this big, beautiful organ in between our ears here that really, it affects who we are and who we're with and our surroundings. And my big foray into neuroscience was trying to figure out how can I create positive habits for myself? And then ergo, how do I create those habits in others? And that's how I kind of stumbled upon DX, positive psychology. How can we take...

what we're learning about the brain, which is just a constant every single year. We're just learning so much more. Talk about neuroplasticity, the ability to change, growth mindset, all of these things kind of encapsulate the human experience. So the one thing that binds us all is we are all human and we all have a brain. So how can we use the neuroscience in our brain to be more effective? So really the first step for me was, hey, I want to change my life for the better. How can I create positive habits in my life?

And neuroscience was actually the answer to that. And then soon realized, if I want, you can only do two things with neuroscience. It's almost like a math degree. You either do something in economics or you're a math teacher. With neuroscience, it was, hey, are you going to be clinical? Are you going to be operating on brains? That was my original thought. I wanted to be a neurosurgeon. After realizing that would be eight to 10 years of school, I decided I want a job and I want to focus on something now.

angela_r_howard (03:21.26)

Mm-hmm.

matt_sandel (03:30.198)

So that's what I kind of jumped into to where I'm at now, which is professional development. And it all started with the curiosity about myself and habits and what's going on in the brain and how you can apply that to make yourself and your surroundings better, more impactful.

angela_r_howard (03:46.59)

Yeah, and we talk a lot about on this podcast about leadership being a responsibility. And, um, you know, I think one of the things that can hinder or improve leadership is a mindset and, but there's also a lot of just, um, I don't know, I'll call them primal elements of the brain, brain and how it operates that actually impacts our ability to lead. Well.

So we may have all the right intent about leadership. We're like, I wanna be a leader, I wanna have a team. But a lot of times we find it frustrating to lead. And I don't know, so tell us a little bit more about why and why it's really, actually leadership is not really a default. It's actually really tough to do from a neuroscience perspective.

matt_sandel (04:35.314)

Yeah, I'll kind of take a step back here. So we are operating with caveman hardware up here. And we have just been amassed with all this new technology and just a wonderful assortment of upgrades to our daily lives. Unfortunately, our brain is taking some time to evolve with everything that is evolving around us. So we're really operating on caveman hardware. So I always go back.

I say our job as a leader, one of our many jobs, because leadership is hard, it's difficult. So empathy for any leaders listening to this podcast. Going back to the olden days, our brain is still figuring out how we can develop ourselves and get stronger in the future. I'm gonna pause there. What was the original question? Because I think that you've meandered off that.

angela_r_howard (05:30.146)

Yeah, no, that's so we were talking, you were on the right track. So we were talking about why, to your point, the brain actually hasn't evolved. We haven't evolved as much as we thought we did, or as much as we thought we have. But the world around us has changed. So why does that make it hard for leadership in particular?

matt_sandel (05:49.778)

Yeah, our brain is wired for a lot of things, but the number one protocol of the brain is to survive. We want this thing up here to survive, but leadership needs to be selfless. In many cases, our brain is selfish. We want this beautiful thing up here to survive and continue. We want to be at cognitive ease. One of the models that we've developed here at DX is called the Care Model. It's four different...

dimensions that we focus on. It's clarity, autonomy, relationships, and equity. And these are actually all brain cravings. So we've done a lot of research to show and demonstrate that these are all things that we need at work in order to have cognitive ease. So as leaders we need to think about how can I provide clarity to my people, autonomy, relationships, and equity. Because this is what all brains as humans we crave and we need to be successful and impactful and really

to leave work and going home and either separating those two lives or not having one come into the other and affecting our lives even more than it already does and hopefully not in a dramatically negative way.

angela_r_howard (07:02.578)

Yeah, and this kind of gets into the topic of psychological safety, which I know is a topic that you probably heard the word or, you know, I talk a lot about it on this podcast, but it is a word and we have to really put meaning behind it. So I actually see the care model as a way to, like from a tactical perspective, operationalize psychological safety, because psychological safety...

matt_sandel (07:08.046)

Mm-hmm.

angela_r_howard (07:30.846)

In essence, I'm able to speak up, and be my authentic self without any retribution from the people around me. But that kind of gets down to just cognitive ease, being able to work in flow throughout my day without fear, essentially, without doing mental cartwheels. So how does care, I guess if people are looking for like, how do I do psychological safety, how does care kind of help with?

matt_sandel (07:40.511)

Right.

matt_sandel (08:02.47)

That's great and this is something we've been studying for the past few years in isolating the different dimensions and how they can affect psychological safety. So each one of those will actually, clarity, autonomy, relationship and equity affect psychological safety but the beauty of it is if you put them all together, it allows a person to bring their authentic selves to work. It's also great with conflict. There's just so many stats out there that will show you the power.

of psychological safety. And really, I think you said it best, the logic jump is, look, if you can put your people at cognitive ease in terms of clarity, autonomy, relationships, and if you care for your people, they're gonna be more likely to speak up and bring their authentic selves to work. What psychological safety is not, is it's not a nice culture, right? There's still conflict and there's gonna be conflict at any point. The goal of psychological safety is,

for there to be a civil discourse when there is conflict. And when people are feeling the ability to bring things up that they may have not been able to previously. I think the last statistic I saw was 85% of people said that they had a problem bringing up a tough issue or they kept it to themselves in the last month. And think about that, especially as leaders, how are you supposed to help someone if you don't know what needs to be helped? We need our people to be speaking up.

As a leader, it's your job to positively influence your people, but how are you supposed to do that if you don't know where they're at? And leadership is blah, blah. Meeting people where they're at, how do you know that if they're not speaking up? So there's the power of psychological safety.

angela_r_howard (09:45.382)

Yeah, yeah, and the care model, again, I think it's just, it's a really great way to consolidate this into a plan. You know, if leaders out there are thinking like, how do I create, you know, I've told people they can speak up, right? I've told everybody that we have an open door policy, but what I'd like to remind people is the fact that if you don't have

that base level psychological safety, you can't just proclaim it. You can't just say you have it. You have to actually build it intentionally and you actually have to, in a way it's kind of like building trust, maybe on a foundation where there wasn't some trust. So, you know, just a reminder to leaders who are thinking about that.

matt_sandel (10:35.054)

It's almost, I like to say it's group trust. There are a lot of parallels. One of the keys with psychological safety is there's no end to, you can't say, I have psychological safety on my team. It's a spectrum. You say, I believe I have high psychological safety on my team. The other curious tidbit, and Ry and my colleague were going over this, was it is a team dimension. It is a team measurement. So you need to really measure it at

the team level, you can't say, I feel like I have high psychological safety. It's like, yes, kind of, but what we're really measuring is how does the team incorporate this notion of psychological safety and the ability to speak up?

angela_r_howard (11:20.914)

Yeah, no, that's great. And of course, right in the middle of this podcast, everybody wants to mow their lawn. So I apologize for those of you who are hearing lawnmowers in the background here. But that's a great point, which I think kind of goes to this idea of inclusion. And I actually think psychological safety is the hack to inclusion. So.

That's a really, really important point that you just said, is you can have a team of 10 people, but there may be people on the margins who do not feel psychologically safe. And that's where we get into kind of the DE&I conversation around equity. And I know equity is a part of the model, so that helps. So tell us a little bit about how the letters work together to maybe solve that.

that challenge of like, I could be psychologically safe, but you can also feel completely on the margins of a group. And how do we manage that when it comes to an inclusive and equitable team environment?

matt_sandel (12:24.982)

That's a great question. So our philosophy is, they're all in DEI is all important. But what we're trying to focus on is what can leaders really make an impact on? So we're focusing on the E and the I. Diversity, we need it. But there's no point of having diversity if people don't feel comfortable speaking up. The whole power of diversity is to leverage the power of multiple experiences and backgrounds to just see

the world and perceive the world in different ways. It boosts creativity, just boosts the ability to understand and just empathy, which is something we're missing in the workplace and consistently getting lower scores on is the scores of empathy. So I think what the care model and psychological safety allows people to do is to one, include people, inclusion, having different steps following the care model.

To allow people to feel safe to speak up to feel included. We talked about equity a lot in our definition It's about the being able to proportionally provide resources in a fair manner So equity is not equality. You can't be the same to every single person So what we talked about the end of the care model is look everything we're talking about is a spectrum It's it's a balance that you need to walk. Some people want high amounts of clarity. Some people want low amount I'm sure you could think of people on your team even yourself

that want a high amount of autonomy or like, hey boss, look, give me a small box, give me the bullet points. And there's no right, there's no wrong. You can think about somebody who might be more operational when it comes to relationships. Hey, I want to, I'm here to work. I'm here to work, man. Look, we'll talk, we'll have a great relationship and we're poor, but I don't wanna hear about what you had for breakfast. And then there's other people that, this isn't what I had for breakfast. My dog is sick, this is the exact illness. And again, there's no right.

and there's no wrong, but you as a leader need to understand your people so you can lead them more effectively. So that's equity, that's inclusion. Diversity is, it kind of trails that. And I say that for two reasons. One, there's diversity no matter what on your team. So we need to just leverage the power of diversity that you might have already, which I think is more important. And then a lot of leaders are not hiring managers. So it's hard to...

matt_sandel (14:44.674)

to focus on the diversity when you don't have your hand in the pie and you're actually making those moves yourself. All equal bearing of what you need to focus on and it's a constant, there's no end result, just like psychological safety. You can't say, I have diversity, equity, and inclusion. It's like, no, you might have high amounts, low amounts, might be a little bit different, but it is a progress that you're needing to work towards on a consistent basis.

angela_r_howard (15:13.082)

Yes, yeah, and I think you brought up a really great point, which is equity is not equality, it's equal outcomes, but equitable treatment could look different. And so I think we're very, very focused on the D, right? Let's focus on hiring diverse talent, which I, by the way, hate that word, because we're all diverse. We're literally all diverse. But I think it's also, you know, diversity is simply a realization when you're in a room and you look around.

and you say, we don't have the right voices in the room. So to your point, how do you leverage the diversity within the organization? But if there are some large gaps, how do you start to change process and policy to ensure that you're bringing the right diversity into?

matt_sandel (15:59.306)

Right, and just going back, the logic to the K-Model is as follows, and I think this will answer some of the questions. Once you have clarity, and only once you have clarity, so it needs to start with clarity, which is one of the hardest things to do is to ensure accurate communication. There's over 160 biases in the brain, well-researched biases, actually probably thousands. Over 165 well-researched leadership biases.

more than likely there becomes more every single year. So once you have clarity, only then can you delegate and develop your people by giving them autonomy. If you try to give someone autonomy and delegate and develop them without clarity, we call that chaos. I'm sure you've all experienced that. It's, hey, go do this thing. And I say, I don't know what this thing is, but I'm gonna go ahead and go try to do it, right? And I might not have the psychological safety to say, I'm unaware of what's going on.

Back in maybe the college days when you had 200 people in the auditorium and you had a question, you're like, I don't want to be that person to ask a question in front of the whole auditorium. So once you have clarity, then you can delegate and develop your people, give them autonomy. Once they're doing the work and your head isn't down doing all the strategic stuff, hopefully that gives you more time. What's the one thing all leaders kind of cry about? I do too, is I don't have enough time.

With that time that you do get back, now that you're delegating and develop your people, you should be able to build those strong interpersonal relationships. Having empathy, being able to understand where your people are coming from. We have a great example. Chris in our operations took us, we didn't realize she didn't have babysitter on Tuesday. It took us like two weeks. She just had a kid that she adopted. Like, well, okay, let's not put meetings on Tuesdays for you. That's not a big deal. We'll move them around so you can focus on your new kid. It's like, oh my God.

I can understand now how this is going to work. So once you have clarity, delegate and develop your people, give them autonomy, understand your people by building relationships, then you can provide them equity. So that equity is about being fair. And about being fair is, hey, Kristen, we know you don't have a babysitter on Tuesday, so let's not put meetings on there. Look, get your work done when you need to get done because there still needs work to get done. We're a very results-orientated company, but it's about the people that are getting the results.

matt_sandel (18:23.15)

So yes, you have a job to do, but it's on how you get that job done. Look, I'll give you the when, this is what success looks like, this is the criteria, you figured out how to do it yourself within this manner. So I think that falls really nicely into how do you leverage that model, that hopefully more simplistic model than a lot of leadership models out there, to understand your people. And I think, I will go on record saying this, the most important part of that model is actually relationships.

It's understanding your people. It's the people that get the work done, not the work that gets done. They're both important, but your people, you can create a high performing team that will just kick butt continually if you can focus on the small little things that are gonna retain them and keep your high talent near you. Surround yourself by the best people and let them surprise you with the work that gets done.

angela_r_howard (19:11.461)

Mm.

angela_r_howard (19:17.966)

Yeah, yeah, no, it's, it's so important. I think the relationships part, you know, again, to your point about DE&I is don't even try to, you know, pretend that you have a culture of DE&I or a culture of inclusion without working on this stuff, right? I think there's a there's a lot of what was that? Yes, you cannot stop. It's not like you post a DE&I or a culture statement on your website and say we're

matt_sandel (19:36.332)

Constantly. You can't stop.

angela_r_howard (19:47.146)

We are inclusive. We are, you know, so I think there's a big performative piece to this. And, um, you know, for those who are really looking to make a change, I think the care model actually provides a beautiful, um, language, um, really rich content for a leadership team in particular. I think everyone could use it, but, um, the way that I've used it in the past when I was, you know, working as a head of people is, you know, really starting with that executive team.

and then bringing in the leadership team and then bringing everybody along to start to assess that psychological safety on an ongoing basis. So it's a really rich program. And I did wanna mention the fact that it's a formula. These concepts you mentioned are not like separate pieces. Like they flow together. And I also wanted to touch on the fact that

I know this because I know the content, but the thing with the C, the A, the R, and the E is that psychological safety, teams that are psychologically safe just interact with those things differently. They actually show up differently. We talk a lot about threat response, performance, and a reactionary response, that survival response. When it comes to clarity is under threat or...

Autonomy is under threat. Teams that are psychologically safe just react differently. So tell us a little bit about that and how that works.

matt_sandel (21:20.83)

Yeah, I think the best dimension to talk about, best construct is probably autonomy. So you think as stimuli comes into the brain, it really hit three, three parts. There's three main parts of the brain. So you have your old brain, which is your reptilian brain, which is just, it's freeze, flight, or it's fight. So stimuli comes through the brain, it'll go through and we're really threat scanning machines.

We always have been and we always will be, except now the threat might not be a saber-toothed tiger, might be your boss or something else that's happening at work. So as we look through autonomy, as threats will come through, what we see in a psychologically safe team is people will actually, if they're feeling like they are psychologically safe, they'll speak up and they'll challenge the status quo. They'll say, hey, just because we've done this a million times before, which is...

by least favorite sentences, well, we've done this a thousand times before, look, there's always ways you can improve. So people, as stimuli comes through, if it's a threat and they feel safe, they're gonna be more on, hey, I'm gonna challenge this, let's see if we can get even better. On the flip side, you have people, as stimuli will come through, that will be just in the survival mode. So the brain is just, look, I just need to survive, I don't wanna do anything else, I will comply and I will disengage.

angela_r_howard (22:18.446)

Thanks for watching!

matt_sandel (22:42.53)

So we're seeing a lot of people and we talk about motivation and engagement. A lot of times it's because they feel like, look, I'm just here to survive, not to thrive. So we have these two different, this dichotomy of, hey, if I'm feeling safe, this is what's going to happen. Challenger status quo. If I feel unsafe, this is what's going to happen. I'm just going to comply, disengage, put my head down and get the work done. And as leaders, what do we want more of? And we always say...

It's not a leader's job to create an army of followers, an army of yes men. Hey, look, I'll comply, disengage, whatever you say, boss, I'll get it done. We wanna create an army of leaders that'll say, hey, I thought of this new creative way to get this done. It'll save our efficiency, maximize it by 40%. We won't have to use any of this material. We can save money in this area. So it's just, they're all intertwined so nicely, but there's always, as stimuli comes in,

What are you going to do? Do you feel safe or you feel unsafe? And obviously we want to make people feel more safe, more productive, less stress, higher life satisfaction. Like there's really great statistics out there.

angela_r_howard (23:49.65)

Yeah, and just think about the impact to the organization, to the system. I mean, it is, you know, if you're thinking about a whole organization that lacks psychological safety, the waste, the potential that you have on the table. And again, I will just, you know, I'll bring the DEI conversation back in here. But typically when an organization is not psychologically safe, people who are on the margins, it's elevated, right? So if the organization is not psychologically safe,

your marginalized underrepresented people times that by 10. So not only are you missing out on great ideas, you're missing out on different diverse perspectives. And it's just waste, it's complete waste. Why are we hiring these people for not getting, for not giving them what they need to operate at their fullest potential?

matt_sandel (24:42.686)

Yeah, we want to build a world that we helped create. And that's just, there's a bias called IKEA effect, which is a funny one. And it states that, hey, if I build something, I'm more likely to put a higher price tag on it. It doesn't have to just... Price tag. We have a... Someone's at the front door. We have a doorbell and we put on the Halloween spooky thing. Was it?

angela_r_howard (24:52.578)

Hehehe

angela_r_howard (24:59.042)

Mmm.

What is that?

angela_r_howard (25:08.166)

I love it. Do you have Vivint by any chance? Is it Vivint? Because we have, yeah, we have the same one. We have the Halloween one too. Happy Halloween!

matt_sandel (25:13.567)

Yes, it is.

Yeah, we have the Halloween, so that was the, yeah, happy Halloween everybody. Um, we want to, we want to build a world we help create. So how can you, if you think about it with psychological safety, if you can increase, and by the way, it's 76%, there's a great study that just came out and it said psychological safety, high amounts of it will predict 76% more engagement. Who doesn't know who doesn't want more engaged, even if it was like 30% or 15%. The fact is.

angela_r_howard (25:34.452)

Mm.

matt_sandel (25:42.834)

If people feel like they have a hand in creating something, they're gonna put more value on it. They're gonna be more motivated, more engaged to get things done. Who doesn't want that?

angela_r_howard (25:45.989)

Mm.

angela_r_howard (25:51.294)

I love them. Yeah, no, who doesn't want that? And I just, I guess I love the work that you all are doing at DX. Love the fact that we're partnering on this work because it is so very important to, I keep using the word operationalize, but like truly, we can't just talk about it. Like we have to give people the tools. We have to, especially new leaders or even leaders who have been in place

decades. Like we have to reset the stage a little bit because there is research that is telling us that first of all these things are good for business but we have people are leaving and people are voting with their feet and it's typically about toxic cultures and toxic leaders. So if we don't get this right there is a lot on the line.

So we have to stop talking about it and we have to start really saying, okay, how do we make sure we're all on the same page about one, the fact that psychological safety is truly important, that DE&I is truly important. Now let's really work with research and a model that will help us apply this and make this a reality within our organization that we can actually measure, which is a very different, that is commitment. That is commitment, really getting to that point of action and implementation.

matt_sandel (27:01.846)

Mm-hmm.

matt_sandel (27:16.342)

Yeah, I think that's one of the hardest parts in our entire industry is what is the ROI and how do you measure the ROI? Because if you look at so many other companies that will hire out, similar to what we do, but they're just on the business side, it's like, I can increase your revenue by 50% and here's why. We're dealing with humans, which are just intense variables. So the ability and the goal with...

angela_r_howard (27:39.019)

Yes.

matt_sandel (27:45.11)

behind CARE was how can we create the most simple model, yet the most effective model, that if we hit these four things and do these well, we can see pays us dividends. And then psychological safety came out and we're like, we need to marry these two. How do we marry these two? So we've done a lot of research. We have a lot of studies coming, that are gonna be coming out soon, where we're going to try to validate, here are the measurements of psychological safety and here's how each one of these constructs kind of plays a role.

We're working with Chicago School of Professional Psychology to do that. Um, we're really excited for what's coming down the pipeline because we're, we, there's a fine balance between the academic and practitioner gap. And we're always trying to lean more on the side of science. And I'm not going to name drop, but there's a lot of leadership companies that they've had their chance. Look, that their stuff isn't working. We've not seen droves and changes in the statistics. We've actually seen them gone down. And I think this is a new and compelling.

simple model that people can actually apply effectively consistently over time. And that's really what we're trying to do. You change one, that person's gonna change 10, that person's gonna change 100. So really, we're, change one, change a million.

angela_r_howard (28:58.446)

Love it. Yeah, and the one thing that we didn't mention about the program and the model is the fact that you all use the power of micro habits as a part of the program. So I just wanna kind of paint the picture of what that is, which is, this is not just curriculum. So imagine your leadership team going through the program, but then, like oftentimes, people leave a leadership development program or a conference and they're all excited and pumped up.

matt_sandel (29:09.932)

Mm-hmm.

angela_r_howard (29:28.022)

then they just jump right back into their work environment where these things maybe aren't practiced consistently. So tell us more about micro habits, why that's important for learning, and then how that actually gets applied.

matt_sandel (29:42.258)

I think you said it best and that's usually the story I tell is, if you've ever been to a conference, get all excited and then Monday you're back to work and it's like completely thrown out the window. Habits are finicky. They're originally studied on how do you break habits, how do you break addiction. Now there's all this research on how do you create positive habits, how do you create positive habits in the workplace.

matt_sandel (30:12.498)

over and over again and repeating it. Because then your neurons will start connecting. That way when you have a trigger or something that happens, your brain's gonna instead of going to the wrong side and maybe doing some bad habits that you might have as a leader, it'll say, oh, key into here, we're gonna start going down this pathway. And then all of a sudden that old habit will start dying off. Those neural connectivities will actually, they're due to neuroplasticity in the brain. Your brain is constantly changing. You can create new neural pathways.

constantly. One of the tools that we are going to leverage and we do leverage partnering with a great company called Pro Habits, they have this reinforcement tool where we use micro actions. So these are we call them two-minute daily acts of kindness. Usually they take less than two minutes but it's something as simple as in the morning I'll say hey here's a quote here's a funny picture and here's the habit that we'd like you to practice this micro action. So it might be something like hey go find something new about

one of your coworkers today. Something simple, right? Then that one would be tied into the relationship construct of care. How do you get to know your people even more so you can lead them better? So then you'd say, hey, I can do that today. You get a chance to do it. At the end of the day, you'll get another notification and it'll say, were you able to do it? Yes or no, that's cool. And if you can't do it, no worries. You can try again the next day. So we built this multiple modalities.

angela_r_howard (31:13.922)

Mm-hmm.

matt_sandel (31:37.958)

of micro actions that will tie back into the care model or specific program that we're trying to work at. Psychological safety is a big one, so we have a psychological safety track that people can go through where they practice these small little interactions. And it's a small steps, but these small steps will be constantly adapting and changing yourself. So these new neural pathways, once the program is over, you'll actually be able to say, instead of going down the left side, which I always go, my brain is not telling me I'm gonna go to the right side.

which is the more likely habit to possibly influence others. So let's keep kind of going down that side.

angela_r_howard (32:14.554)

Yeah, yeah, and it's at the end of the day, when it comes to learning, we just have to, we have to do it. We know that we know that we have to actually apply these things. You know, much of learning happens in action. And the other thing that I really like about the Pro Habits is that you can share stories with the community that you've gone through the training with. So, you know, imagine your leadership team of 20 people, everyone's kind of around the same

angela_r_howard (32:45.946)

or micro actions and you're putting that into a platform and people are sharing stories. So now you're actually creating additional learning to say, I tried this and this is what happened. I failed at it. And you're also creating vulnerability, I feel like with the leadership team, because now people are sharing their kind of deepest, darkest fears about leadership. And I think the concept of community is so underrated when it comes to leadership.

matt_sandel (32:53.357)

Mm-hmm.

matt_sandel (33:12.673)

Mm-hmm.

angela_r_howard (33:13.622)

the groups that I work with or organizations I work with are like, yeah, no, we have this training, but we never talk about it. Everyone goes off to do their own training, then do they come back and share experiences? Because that is also, we're social learning beings. So community social learning is a really important part of this journey too.

matt_sandel (33:35.754)

Yeah, the more, and especially because when you're with your peers, you can really see their best practices and how it applies to your specific workplace. So in many cases, leadership could be a general topic, but once you tie it into, Hey, here at DX, this is something that I apply on this one over well, that's going to be way more likely for someone to perk up and say, Oh, that's something that I can do too. So just the ability to share.

angela_r_howard (34:01.806)

Mm-hmm.

matt_sandel (34:04.15)

best practices in a specific company setting is huge. And you said it, it's the community, it's the culture that you build where people do feel comfortable being vulnerable, sharing their best practices, and then sharing their worst practices or failures. Because that's a great learning opportunity. If I fail at something, I don't want my team to fail. I'm gonna let them know, hey, here's something that I've learned today. You guys, I don't want you to have to go through it too. Here's how we can move better, more effectively in the future.

angela_r_howard (34:29.429)

Mm-hmm.

angela_r_howard (34:32.914)

I love it. I love it. Well, I could have this conversation all day with you, Matt. We talked about a lot. We talked about the brain. We talked about neuroscience and how that impacts the way we lead and how we lead and the care model, which your organization has developed to, to help kind of combat and maybe hack the brain a little bit so that we could be better leaders. And then, you know, I just think about the idea of like how we actually learn, how do we actually create better leaders and wipe out bad leadership?

matt_sandel (34:54.039)

The goal.

angela_r_howard (35:02.622)

And so I just want to end with one more final question, which is what would a world look like with no bad leaders in it? Since that is like your life's work. What would that look like? Paint the picture for me, for us.

matt_sandel (35:17.806)

I think everyone would be motivated and engaged and happy to go to work. You'd wake up every day saying, I wonder what I can learn today. I wonder what I can learn from my leader, from my peers, from my direct reports. It would be an entire world that wants to learn more and apply these learnings to benefit all of humanity. If everyone had good leaders, I think we...

I genuinely believe this as a human race would become more of a, we're human, we're not USA versus XYZ, we're not white versus XYZ, we're not anything male versus, it just becomes we're humans and we need to try to benefit all of ourselves. And I think that's the power of leadership. And leadership, big L, is the ability to positively influence others. So if you are just constantly looking for ways to positively influence others, I think that

angela_r_howard (35:54.924)

Mm-hmm.

matt_sandel (36:15.586)

The sky's the limit and not even that, it's the universe. I hope that it can start bringing people together more effectively.

angela_r_howard (36:25.23)

All right, well, we have some work to do, Matt. Yes, thank you. Yes, exactly, exactly. We have a whole lifetime to work on it. So Matt, I just want to thank you for taking the time. And where can folks find you or DX Learning? We'll put things in the show notes, but let us know where we can find you.

matt_sandel (36:27.254)

They have a lot of work to do. Yeah, lots of job security.

matt_sandel (36:48.874)

Yeah, happy to reach out on LinkedIn, just Matthew Sandel, I think have pretty uncommon last names so you should be able to find me pretty quickly. But happy to talk about any of these topics and more. This is really a passion for me. So Angela, thank you for having me. I hope we can do this again in the near future and talk about some other fun topics.

angela_r_howard (37:09.746)

All right, thanks, Matt.

matt_sandel (37:11.278)

Thanks guys. Take care.