Finding Trust and Clarity in Teams with Cali Ressler

Speaker 1: Welcome to the Future of Teamwork podcast, where we explore cutting edge strategies to keep teams human- centered, drive innovation, and empower you with the tools and insights needed to help your team excel and thrive in today's rapidly changing world. Your host is Dan Grenville, a seasoned expert with over 20 years of experience in enhancing team dynamics and innovation. Have you ever felt like your work life is just a series of tasks without real impact or fulfillment? Today, we're excited to welcome Cali Ressler, a transformative figure in reshaping not just how we work, but also why we work. As the co- creator of the results- only work environment, Cali champions a workplace where every task, every project, and every team member are rooted in purpose and results. Today, we'll delve into three concepts that are reshaping our work culture. First, the essence of a results- only work environment. Understand how this innovative approach shifts the focus from hours worked to actual results achieved. Second, the significance of trust and autonomy. Explore how empowering employees with trust and independence can enhance creativity and productivity. Finally, Dane and Cali will discuss strategies for balancing work and life, gain insights into maintaining wellbeing, and managing burnout in a demanding work landscape. So, teamwork makes the dream work, and we're here to inspire your next collaborative breakthrough. Gather your team or put on your headphones and let's dive in together.

Dane Groeneveld: Welcome to the Future of Teamwork podcast. My name's Dane Groeneveld, CEO of the HUDDL3 Group, and today I'm joined by Cali Ressler. Cali is an author, she's written some very cool titles. Why Work Sucks and Why Managing Sucks and How to Fix it. They're going to be fun to dive into and explore today. Cali's also Director of Talent and Organizational Consulting, doing a lot of great work across a number of organizations, so we're going to learn a lot today. Welcome to the show, Cali.

Cali Ressler: Thank you so much, Dane. It's exciting to be here.

Dane Groeneveld: It's fun, and a big shout- out to Tanil Miller for introducing us both.

Cali Ressler: Absolutely, yes. I'll double that shout- out.

Dane Groeneveld: She's great. So we were just talking before the show around some really cool dynamics around teams and the future of the workplace and what it is that's challenging in workplaces in this modern era. What was it that brought you to be doing this work in this space? What was your story to get excited and to be making this impact?

Cali Ressler: Yeah, it's a great question and one that I have reflected on quite a bit over the last couple of years. I think I've actually landed on three words that describe how I got to where I am. The three words are, unexpected, fulfilling, and never ending. I'll explain a little bit about unexpected because that was the first phase of how things got to where they are. So if we rewind back to my very first job out of college, with a degree by the way, in criminal justice and psychology, actually double. I took a job as an HR assistant at a Fortune 200 company and that started out as I'll do this for six months and I'll find a job that's more up my alley. Within the first year in that first job, I was approached to design a way that the organization could increase employee retention at the corporate headquarters. People were leaving left and right, there was a real problem with that. So I created a methodical approach to making sure that people feel trusted. The avenue to feeling trusted was to measure them based on what they achieved, versus how much time they put in or how often they were physically present at the office. That was really the beginning, Dane, of my, I would say, fortitude journey, in terms of what it takes to create change in a large organization, but also, what happens when people have an avenue to rise up and have an avenue that allows them to thrive both professionally but also personally in their entire life. That was the beginnings of things, and I can keep going here.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah, let's go. Well, tell me about fulfilling. So you moved from unexpected, that work starts happening. Is that the beginning of the fulfillment cycle?

Cali Ressler: Yes, you got it. I will say personally, part of that fulfillment was becoming the mother of four amazing kids.

Dane Groeneveld: Awesome.

Cali Ressler: So at the same time as the career trajectory is moving forward, I'm also birthing these humans and having the amazing journey of parenthood as well. So with the fulfilling, other pieces of that came in the form of publishing the couple books that you just mentioned. Came in the form of consulting with various organizations across industries, really helping them transform their cultures and elevate their employee experiences, so that again, people could thrive. That became just such a source of fuel for me and just the excitement I had in my everyday life, in terms of the impact that I was making. Part of the fulfillment was being able to speak on these topics. I was on the speakers circuit for about a decade, again, talking with various audiences about these ideas. Then ultimately kind of getting to a place where I realized that my fulfillment journey wasn't done, but as I looked around, I realized that with people reading the books, with people experiencing various things that I was doing out in the world, whether it be speaking, consulting, there was a movement that was being created. I was seeing the types of ideas that I was evangelizing and touting, being also spoken through other voices, in other books that I was being interviewed for, in various blogs, in how organizations were starting to talk about their culture being a results driven culture, for example. So that then led to this next chapter because I realized, I feel like what I set out to do on those fronts, it was gaining its own life. So I stepped back and said, okay, what will my next adventure look like? That's really where I got to where I am or how I got to where I am now. I came back into a big organization and I'm focused on employee experience for clients around the globe, some of the world's biggest brands I'm lucky enough to work with. I'm always... And this is where my third word comes in, which goes back to-

Dane Groeneveld: Never ending.

Cali Ressler: Yes, and part of that is you never know what's around the next corner. I'm in this place in my life where I'm saying yes a lot. One of my former bosses gave me the book, The Year of Yes, by Shonda Rhimes. It's an amazing book for anyone who hasn't read it, but it gets to that point of we only live one life and hey, if we could say yes to things that might scare us a little bit or that might be somewhat unknown, who knows what that can lead to? I think my life up until now has proven that, and so I'm like, let's just keep doing that. Let's keep saying yes to things that I might be nervous about, but you never know where that could lead.

Dane Groeneveld: I love that I hadn't come across the title, The Year of Yes. So I see so much talk out there right now, particularly around burnout and everything else, about the importance of saying no, but it's a continuum. If you say no to a lot of things, you're not going to run into those opportunities. I was on the phone with a friend this morning and he and I were talking about building businesses over the last 30 years, and he was just like, I never really had to be too intentional about where I was going because I always seemed to get pulled into and stumble into the right opportunities. So it's really interesting in a world that's so precise, some people are like, say no unless it's your core, and yet your story's a great story of just exploring saying yes and trying new things and building this energy and being part of this movement. It's very cool.

Cali Ressler: I agree, that there's definitely a fine balance of the yeses and where they fit, but yeah, I mean for me, I was never a person, for example, who had ever thought about writing a book. It had never even crossed my mind. When that opportunity presented itself, I got a little anxious about the fact I didn't know what the process was, I had never researched it. I didn't know what I would need to bring to publishers, as far as a manuscript or anything like that. I knew nothing. So the fact that I said yes to that was a big moment in my life where I learned a lot through the process, but it was definitely something daunting that I could have very well said no, I'm not into that right now in my life. I don't see how that fits in. But yeah, yeses can be powerful for us.

Dane Groeneveld: Very powerful, very powerful. Well, something that you said in your LinkedIn profile flashed a light bulb in my mind. So when you were building that system around employee retention and trust, and you said you were measuring on achievement, not time, it makes me think of results- only work environment. I saw that you worked at Best Buy, so was that where you had some experience with this program?

Cali Ressler: Yes, yes. As a matter of fact, that is the effort that I was speaking of. I was one of the co- creators.

Dane Groeneveld: Unreal.

Cali Ressler: Of the the results- only work environment. inaudible, yeah.

Dane Groeneveld: That's very cool, because I was on a round table recently, and here's me joining this conversation, not knowing the specific background, but I was on a round table recently and I was asked about some approaches in modern teams and teamwork, and I said, I love the concept of results- only work environment. Someone came and said to me, well, best Buy did it and then they stopped doing it. I was like, well, I'm not the scientist here, so that's interesting. But I'll tell you what I think is interesting about it, but I'm not here to say what's good, bad or otherwise because every team, every organization's different, but it's fascinating. It's such an interesting model. I didn't realize the evolution of it in that Best Buy context. So what was it about measuring on achievement that gave you all that lift and that retention that you were looking for in the early phases of the program?

Cali Ressler: It was quite impactful as I think back. I think one of the things that made it so impactful is that prior to the results- only work environment, people were showing up, they were showing up and they were doing what traditional work looks like. They were going to a lot of meetings, and were very busy. Yes, some work was getting done and some good things were happening, but it was more happenstance that things would happen versus being on purpose and versus being really connected and anchored to priorities and results and measures. It wasn't until, I vividly remember some moments both at Best Buy, but with other clients, where the moment you're sitting with leadership and say, well, what we're creating is an environment where people will really be able to make their own decisions about how when and where the work gets done, they will have the autonomy to be able to do that, as well as the accountability to deliver results. Oftentimes a reaction from leaders would be, but how will we know what people are doing? Dane, it was in that moment or several moments, like I said, where I would just pause and let that question just sit in the air, because the question back obviously is, how do you know now? I'm going to let that sit for a second, because it was the looks on their faces that some of them just would go white, like, how do I know now? Right?

Dane Groeneveld: It's amazing.

Cali Ressler: It is, and it's then when some of those things would start to be uncovered like, well, I see them here all the time. I think they're working weekends, I think. Again, beautiful moments where it was like what we're saying is those are the current measures for how we think we know the work is getting done. This is where if we fast- forward to pandemic times, and all of a sudden we were in a world where many people were not physically present anymore, they couldn't be, but yet the work had to continue. So it was a forced point in time and the period of time where leaders of organizations needed to find other ways to feel that security of whether or not work was happening because they couldn't use those kind of old school ways of feeling that comfort anymore.

Dane Groeneveld: That's fascinating. I like the way you tie it into, you roll forward it that pandemic and the way that it brought us into a very different way of working. It reminds me of that old fashioned, that well- known quote of, lead or manage by walking around, and all of a sudden that gets taken away from you. Now, I don't believe in leading or managing by walking around. I prefer to lead or manage by doing with your team, but it is a big shift.

Cali Ressler: It's a huge shift. I think sometimes we think we've moved past it. Even that phrase or that acronym MBWA, manage by walking around, oh, we're not doing that anymore. I mean, that's old. But yet when we really start to dig underneath every day behaviors and mindsets and practices, we find that it's more alive than we might think.

Dane Groeneveld: Sadly, I think you're absolutely right. What would be an example of that? What do you see out there that reinforces the management by walking around in a virtual, remote, or modern work setting?

Cali Ressler: One of the things that I think about often is with technology, for example, in Microsoft Teams. I'll just use that as an example, where people are color coding themselves all the time. Am I busy? Am I away? Do not disturb me right now. I see and hear judgment around that, not consciously I don't think, but you might hear somebody say, well, gosh, yeah, I tried to get ahold of Dane, but he's been away for a while. Even just that in and of itself, it's again, it's this subconscious managed by walking around. I'm checking in on, what is Dane's status right now and how long has he been on that status? When, I mean, I myself have many times, I haven't gone up and updated my status. Am I working? Yes, but I haven't updated my status, so that color can do things to-

Dane Groeneveld: Absolutely.

Cali Ressler: ...The things we think or even the things that we say. So I think that example comes front of mind for me, yeah.

Dane Groeneveld: It definitely does. It actually reminds me at the beginning of the pandemic, we started all of a sudden looking at our phone reports. We were like, are our teams actually making phone calls? We can't walk through the office and see them on the call anymore. We've got a sales organization here. How many hours, how many inbound calls, outbound calls, minutes per call? Then all of a sudden we're sitting there going, but they could be on their phone to their buddy. That data's not going to tell me anything. So let's get back to the outputs rather than the inputs.

Cali Ressler: Yes, oh my gosh, such a good example in that because you were not alone at all, in thinking about, how are we going to figure this out? Running reports like that and talking about hours, time being spent on calls. It's not until someone brings up those questions or makes those observations like you just mentioned. Well, who are they really talking with? We don't know that. It's those questions that prompt the new thinking. Well, how should we be looking at this then? That's where the goodness comes.

Dane Groeneveld: It totally does. It shows you the power of a good question, doesn't it? I like how earlier you said, let's just pause on that a minute. How do we know what they're doing today? Or how did we know six months ago? We get so stuck in our assumptions and our mental stories, internal stories about what we think is happening and we don't get curious. That really breaks down talking about trust in teams, that's going to break down trust really quickly.

Cali Ressler: Absolutely, and I think going back to what happened during the pandemic. I think that prior to that time period, it's almost like people were asleep in a way, moving in and out of their days resigned to the fact that we just do things in a certain way. So for many people, that meant traveling through rush hour in the morning, rush traffic to be in a place at a certain time, attending, like we talked about earlier, umpteen meetings and moving throughout the day with the assumption that whatever you might need and whomever you might need it from, you would get it because you were all physically present together. Then getting back into the car and driving through rush traffic again, rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat. So during the pandemic, it was like people woke up. Their eyes opened and they not only opened to a new way of looking at work and how it gets done, but then that paved the way for what life could be like. So now you have these wide awake people who are back to the point of asking questions, asking a lot of really good questions about, why would we even consider going back to the way we used to do things when we've proven that we can not only continue doing what needs to be done for our customers, for the bottom line, but we're living a better life too. So you're not going to put me back to sleep. I am awake and I am fully awake going forward.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah, I like that analogy of being asleep and becoming awake because it's not been available to everyone but for those people who did get the opportunity to ask some questions, a lot of people have found a little bit more energy, a little bit more freedom or flexibility, sharper way of getting something to do. So it really decentralized the responsibility for workplace design and I think largely for the better. Some people are overemphasized, but I think most teams, most companies, are better off for it right now.

Cali Ressler: I wholeheartedly agree. I think work really did become something that for a lot of people, for most people, became something that they do. Work isn't one place we go, it's something that we can do from so many places. With that revelation that I think a lot of people had, we know now that work in and of itself revolves around shared goals. It revolves around what it is we are all collaborating to do together and the best, most effective ways that we can serve our customers. In the end, the employee experience is the fuel for all of that to succeed.

Dane Groeneveld: It is. I like the fuel analogy too, because we've all worked in busy, confused, stressful work environments, and it just feels like everyone's on fumes. They're just operating on the last drops in the tank and nothing feels clear, nothing feels sharp, you don't really, they're pretty hollow celebrations even if they happen. Where when people are encouraged to have those shared goals, have some freedom and flexibility, going back to that results- driven work environment, that energy lift is palpable. It's really there.

Cali Ressler: It definitely is. There's been research done that shows that there's really four fundamental needs that all people have regardless of the job they do, regardless of industry, just by the pure fact that we are all human beings, we have a need to feel healthy and well. That includes my financial wellbeing, my mental wellbeing, my physical wellbeing. We have a need to feel relevant and confident, and that hits on our skills. I want to feel like I have the skills not only that I need now, but that I will need in the future so that I'm relevant in the marketplace and to the organizations I might work for. There's a need to feel purpose in the work that I do. Agency, again, going back to the control over how, when, and where it happens. Then the last dimension is the need to feel connected and included. I always think about these dimensions because they're core to who we are as humans. So it's not just me that needs that, Dane needs that, Dane's team needs that, my team needs that, it's a thread that connects all of us. So being able to have the right ingredients so that people can, you talked about running on fumes. We need to fill people's tanks with the types of things that are going to help them get to the place where those four dimensions are increasing, improving, getting higher. Actually, I'm going to turn the tables and bring you back to something that you mentioned as we were talking before, which is the person in your life who has talked to you about the fact that human bodies were never meant to only have fumes to work on, or we're putting our bodies in a place that they were never meant to be. I thought that was so spot on. So talk to me about that, Dane.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah, you bet. No, I love it. Let's flip it. It really is, and I'm glad to bring it up. So Dan Miller is a health coach that I had the pleasure of working with through my Vistage group, which is a CEO Roundtable of sorts. Dan came in and he did great presentation on health, and he really touched on the fact that just chemically, our bodies aren't designed to be running on adrenaline and cortisol for 14 hours a day. Yet for the points that you just realized and recognized around wellness, it's not just my physical wellness. It's my mental wellness, it's my financial stability, it's my relationships. It all creates this, particularly with social media and work on your phone and email, you just constantly feel like you're fighting something off every waking minute of the day. Where actually, when you think about for most of humans' time on earth, we've lived in small groups and we've hunted or gathered together in the mornings, we've made tools that we needed. So we haven't been running that hard, we've been fairly self- sufficient as a species. Then every now and again, a tiger or a predator or a enemy clan walks in and there's a spike and a survival moment, but you're not on all day in the same way. That's a problem. I guess I haven't found the answer to it, but it really sparks my imagination to try and find those answers, and it's a big reason that we're having these conversations.

Cali Ressler: Yeah. I'm also thinking about, my husband is now into the whole intermittent fasting. One of the things that he goes back to as well is well, Cali, back in the day, way back in the day, there was a different way of living and getting and finding that nourishment that would sustain us. We've fallen into this place of not at all following that natural way that our bodies were used to a long time ago. So as you were talking, I was like, there's just so much we can probably learn by going back in time, and-

Dane Groeneveld: There really is, it's-

Cali Ressler: ...Understanding, yeah, all of that and bringing-

Dane Groeneveld: Back to basics.

Cali Ressler: ...These valuable things forward. One thing that you just mentioned about how none of us have figured out the answer for, how do we get that moment or that time back when humans were not operating 14 hours a day, on the cortisol levels that we are today and things like that. One of the things that I have thought about a lot is how for even myself, how can I recognize the starts of burnout, for example, or the early days of what might turn out to be burnout? For me, there's three things that we can do to at least try to get ourselves in a place where maybe that won't happen, but if it does then, what? For me, number one is prioritizing sleep and exercise. We hear it all the time, but I have felt it in myself when that doesn't happen, things go down.

Dane Groeneveld: Bang, yep.

Cali Ressler: So huge priority there. Number two is practicing asking for help. For me, that doesn't come easily, but what I found is that the more I practice it, the more I do it, the more comfortable I feel in making that ask. Then third is having a list of people that I can reach out to if I do feel myself like stumbling and falling down the rabbit hole of bad things. I can reach out to these people and say, hey, I need you to help me get back on track. A few of them are people who have seen me when I'm not on track, and they've experienced the Cali that they don't ever want me to be, and I don't ever want myself to be, when it comes to mental health and wellbeing, when it comes to being in a place that maybe could have been prevented but I didn't exercise, I didn't sleep, I didn't do the things that I needed to do. So a few of those people, again, are people that have seen me in that place. So when I do reach out to them and say, I need help, I need help getting back on track, they themselves can reach into those moments that they've seen me and say, Cali, that if you're not taking those daily walks, if you're staying up till two in the morning doing X, Y, Z, this is where you're going to get. Remember what that was like? They can live with me in that space again. We can both kind of say, no, that is not the place that I want to be and having that list. I remember when I first started making it, and you make it in a time when you're feeling well. So for me, when I had that thought of, I should have a list of people, and you hear it, that's often a strategy that you read about. You should have people that can help you. When you're feeling well, it's like, I don't need a list. When am I ever going to use a list like that? But that's, for anyone listening, and if you've thought about making a list like that, I would encourage you to do it because when you're in a state that you need to be pulled back from, that's not the time to make your list. That's the time when you need the list, so.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah, because you can't think clearly when you're on the edge of burnout or you just stepped over the precipice. You're absolutely right. You need to build those patterns and behaviors. There's value also in building that list and keeping in touch with those folks when you're feeling good because you become accountability partners too. You can check in on each other's health and wellness, particularly if there's someone who operates in a similar realm to you and similar stage of life, similar profession, that type of thing probably helps a little bit too. You can help each other spot blind spots.

Cali Ressler: 100%, 100%, yes. I mean, again, going back to our needs as humans and feeling connected and included, it's just a base level foundational thing that we need. So I wholeheartedly agree, that list serves so many purposes, and that's one of them, feeling connected.

Dane Groeneveld: Yep, and you can get comfortable as well, being vulnerable, because it's hard to be vulnerable with a stranger or an immediate supervisor. So that's a big plus.

Cali Ressler: Yes. I mean, there's so many of these things, Dane. I feel like when you're saying them, we could spend the next several days talking about all these topics.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah, you bet. So moving on from that trust and the mental health and wellbeing, the other point that we talked about in the lead up to this show was clarity. I see clarity as a essential ingredient for teams now and in the future. I think it's particularly important in times of change, but I've often looked at clarity and spoken to guests around clarity at the capital P purpose level of, this is our why, this is our purpose, this is our vision, this is where we're going. But you had an interesting view on clarity, more at the work level, more in and amongst the team, which we talked about as maybe purpose with a small P. Can you talk a little bit more about how you see that manifesting and playing out in healthy teams?

Cali Ressler: Yes, and I did love, as we were talking earlier, how you put the two branches out there with the big P purpose and the small P purpose. I will also give a shout- out to somebody that Tanil Miller actually knows as well, Rebecca Maklad, she does a podcast called DNA of Purpose, purpose with a big P. Part of what I love about her thinking and her framework around the DNA of purpose, is that purpose with a big P is something that we are all born with. We are our purpose. So it is not necessarily something that we need to find and go out and, what is my purpose, but we are born with it. So if we keep that, I like that thinking for the big P. Then as we think about all those people that have big P purposes coming together in a work setting and being part of a team. They have their big P that they are innately born with an R, and then we have the P, purpose that is, what are we all here to do as a team, as an organization? So that becomes another layer that we're rallying around and that we come together on, but even if we're in the right frame of mind with those two Ps, we're now left with, well now I have my days to move again in and out of, where I have a set of demands that I need to meet and I want to have as much control as possible over how I meet those demands. So in my personal life, the demands are pretty clear. I know there's things that I need to do like laundry and grocery shopping and those kinds of things. Then there's things that I want to do. Those might be things like hobbies or things that, do I need to do them? Well, not necessarily, if I don't read part of my book today, the world's not going to fall apart, but I want to do those things. So I have all that, but then I have this job and these people that I'm working with to achieve our level P, big, big- ish P purpose. How am I going to figure out how I use my precious time, that non- renewable resource, day in and day out to make sure that I am able to do the things I need and want to do in my personal life? What I need to be able to make that happen is that small P. Okay, so how are we getting from point A to point B? Use the words milestones. We have these big milestones, these big rocks that we have to hit to get to that big- ish P, but to do that, we need to figure out together what are those steps every day that we're going to take? Not only what are they and how are we measuring them, but then we have to figure out and probably want to figure out, the how. Now we know the what. We have the small P that's leading to the big-ish P that might relate to my really big enate P. But the day to day to day, now I know the what. The how is this whole other thing. It's the ways of working, and to even get there, what are going to be the most productive, effective ways of working together? We need to know what we're accomplishing. What is it that we're going after day to day to day? When that becomes clear, that's what I've seen. I've seen firsthand people's, again, they wake up. It's like this, oh, so now that I know in a 24- hour day, because we all have the same 24 hours. Now I know that I can carve out this time for reading my book. I can carve out this time for having breakfast with my kids because I'm really clear over here on exactly what I need to do by when, at what level, and that it makes me feel secure. It makes me feel like I have some control over how I'm going to carve out my days.

Dane Groeneveld: I think that's brilliant, and I like the way that you go down to the what level and the how, but you're also talking about who, and you see that all the time. Let's think about the products that we love to engage with as consumers. When a product is really clearly serving us for who we are, like if I'm all about the outdoor venture and I'm a Patagonia person. They're directly talking to me and serving me with sustainable, rugged, cool products, you get excited. In our businesses sometimes, and I think it's a global phenomenon, I think the work that is getting done gets detached from the customer that we're serving. We almost get a little bit too caught up in, well, we do it that way because we've always done it, or we're trying this new tool out, but we're not really thinking about the person doing the work and the end customer experience. So there's definitely something there in interweaving those various purposes.

Cali Ressler: Oh my gosh, yes. Again, topic we could riff on forever, but yes. I'm a big thread person. The thread that needs to stay alive through so many different things. You're hitting on that. In some cases, you're right, we're losing the thread, we're losing the plot in the story, and we need to bring it back, yeah.

Dane Groeneveld: It ties into really nicely, like you said, to the awakening at work. So many things we could continue to explore. I could probably do a whole podcast just on your book titles too. If I summarize what we've covered in the last 40 minutes or so, I really like the way that you draw attention to trust in teams and achieving that through the clarity that we've just talked about, but also just that employee experience and driving fuel through giving people a little bit of agency autonomy over their work. That's huge, and it's really cool to know that you were one of the early architects and advocates. So I'm going to circle back to you on a few of my questions as I keep playing in that space.

Cali Ressler: Absolutely, I'm here. You know where to find me, yeah.

Dane Groeneveld: That's neat. Then you hit on some other great points around burnout. Sleep and exercise, asking for help, building the right connections to people to go to. I think every leader, every team should be thinking about those elements. I think my other really big takeaway from this conversation is just the importance of stopping for a minute, slowing down, asking those important questions. I love that kind of like, how do you know what they're doing now? Break down some of those mental models and assumptions and invite a little bit of exploration and curiosity into the team. That seems to be like a pretty powerful approach and method.

Cali Ressler: I think so. I actually try to be really on purpose letting people in my, especially in my work life, know how much I appreciate being able to sit in silence with them for a beat or two or three. We're so used to instant gratification. The amount of calls I'm on where someone will ask a question and it's like if there's more than a second of silence, you can feel people just want to jump in, just somebody say something. Silence is actually okay. So that's my work. So when I encounter people who, they take a breath before they answer and they reflect a little bit, I'm often like, thank you for doing that. I'm really glad because you've made me not feel comfortable doing that. Another, a personal example on that front is I have a 14- year- old daughter. We travel in the car together to practices and things like that, and one of the things that she said to me recently was, mom, one of the things I really love about you is that we can just drive to practice and not talk sometimes. We don't have to fill the silence all the time. Sometimes it's okay, we get to practice, and I'm like, have a good practice. She's like, yeah. It was just again, days in, days out, to just have 15 minutes where we're in our own thoughts or just breathing. It's okay.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah, I like that power of silence, power of the pause, and it is, I hear lots of important relationships and honoring people that we're close to comes through that the car drive with the child sitting, just sitting down and taking it all in, thinking about what you really want to spend your time on together. It's something none of us do enough of.

Cali Ressler: No, no, but we can, we can.

Dane Groeneveld: We can, yeah.

Cali Ressler: If we're on purpose about it, yep.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah, So being on purpose and using that power, I'll add that to my list of points from today. It's been a wonderful conversation. Cali, if any of our listeners out there want to go and find out more about your books or connect with you, how do they best find you out there?

Cali Ressler: Yes, best place is right through LinkedIn. I'm at Cali Ressler, C- A- L- I R- E- S- S- L- E- R. You can find me there, and I would welcome any new connections that come of this. I have had an amazing time with you, so thank you for this opportunity.

Dane Groeneveld: It's been wonderful, and thanks for sharing your energy and experience with the listeners.

Cali Ressler: It's been wonderful, thank you.

Dane Groeneveld: Thanks, Cali.

Speaker 1: Thank you for joining us. Remember that by embracing vulnerability, trusting our intuition, and approaching challenges with compassion, we not only strengthen our teams, but also pave the way for a future where collaboration thrives. If you're hungry for more insights, strategies, and research on collaboration, head over to thefutureofteamwork. com. There you can join our mailing list to stay updated with the latest episodes and get access to exclusive content tailored to make your team thrive. Together we can build the future of teamwork. Until next time.