Transcript:

Angie 

Welcome to No More Mondays, the podcast that helps you navigate career challenges through the wisdom of professionals who have been at the same crossroads. I’m your host, Angie Callen, and I welcome you to join me each week as I chat with leaders, entrepreneurs, and employees who are here to share their practical, tactical advice and some inspiration on how they arrived at career and life satisfaction. From job searching and career changes to going out on your own. We are breaking down barriers and providing actionable takeaways to help you take charge of your Mondays and ditch those Sunday blues. Welcome to no more Mondays. Hey, everybody, and welcome to another edition of no more Monday if you might be able to hear, I’m already kind of laughing and in a good mood. So this is gonna be a good one. As always, I’m your host, Angie Callen. And I’m going to ask you a question, as I usually do at the beginning of these shows, they’ll hook up today; how’s your team morale over there? How are your people, whether you are an employee and employer or a business owner? At some point in your career path, you’re gonna have to deal with people, whether it’s staff, freelancers, contractors, or an actual team whose performance you’re responsible for. People can mean problems, no matter how they’re in your life, but they don’t necessarily have to. And today, we welcome Scott Warwick to the show to talk about exactly that. He is a best-selling author, speaker, practicing employment law attorney, and an HR professional; he’s got more experience and knowledge in his little finger than I’ll ever have. He also has more baseball paraphernalia hanging on his wall, which might make my dad so jealous. However, we’re going to talk to Scott about how he uses his diverse background to help organizations get to where they want to be by embracing employee engagement and culture and solving people’s problems before they even start. He’s a master in conflict resolution. He’s a white guy who has figured out how to build tolerance for other human beings. And he understands how we can heal our brains by rewiring our own mental health. I just don’t even know where to start with this guy. But let’s go with it and see what happens. He’s one of the business’s first 20 people to know in HR, and I am super lucky to have him as my captive audience today. Help me welcome to the show. Scott Warwick Scott, welcome to no more Mondays. Hey,

Scott 

thank you so much. I’m thrilled to be here. Obviously, we’ve had a good time before we can get started probably should have started recording 20 minutes ago,

Angie 

I was thinking of that we were we were chatting baseball, we were chatting, both from Ohio, Pennsylvania Rust Belt, we had all kinds of good, good stuff happening. But now we’re capturing, let’s say, the stuff that everybody else out there cares about outside of just you and me. So there are a lot of different angles, and I’d have a feeling we’re gonna dig into some good nooks and crannies. So let’s just start with giving everybody a little bit more backstory to kind of set up these various topics we’re gonna get into. Tell everybody a little bit about you and what you do, give us your Reader’s Digest version,

Scott 

okay, real quick. My whole life is basically one mistake after another. And I’m, and I’ll tell you, I’m one of one of my favorite authors of all time, actually picked as one of the best books ever written is Man’s Search for Meaning by a guy by the name of Viktor Frankl. It was a psychologist who was in Dachau and lived for years there. And when he got out, he wrote the book Man’s Search for Meaning. And he said that I could always find strength. And I could always find a way to get through anything as long as I could see the meaning in it. Like, why is this happening to me? What can I do, and that’s motivation. And so I’m been in human resources for 40 years, I have been a practicing employment attorney. For 27 of those years, I’ve got my own practice. And I work with companies to try to raise morale and make things better. And what really has spearheaded my practice by pure accident is that my oldest son was born in 1993. Now that was back in the Stone Age of neuroscience, and he was born with autism, it took us years to get diagnosed. And when we did get him diagnosed, we were going to our $500 and our high price, didn’t take insurance, psychiatrists, board certified. And so they were all telling us. This is just the way he’s wired. He might not go to high school, he might not be mainstreamed, and he probably isn’t gonna go to college. It’s just the way he was born. Well, I started doing my own research. And that was back in 2001, 2002, 2003, 2014, 2005. And I discovered everything that my high-priced psychiatrists were telling me was wrong. You, the brain grows 100,000 new neurons in your brain every month. Baby stem cells, you can grow 10 to 100 connections; you can grow a million new connections in your brain mean, every month if you take care of it, but if you work with a bunch of bullies or what I refer to as trolls, all right? You got to coach Coach Warren and get rid of the trolls. They will kill 85,000 brain cells a day. So I started learning all this went to the Amen Clinics, some of your audience might be familiar with Dr. Daniel Amon. He’s on PBS quite a bit. That’s who I work with. We got Michael’s brain scanned in 2006. And it was a mess, with blood flow issues and hotspots that were just on fire. And so we started a new diet water therapies and took him back in 2008. And his brain had been rewired about 15% and 15% better. At the same time, my wife told me, Oh, while we’re there, you’re getting the scan. And I said, No, I don’t need a scan. We’re here for Michaels. Because, Oh, no, you’re nuts.

Angie 

I don’t want to know that much about my own brain. Are you kidding me?

Scott 

I thought it was normal. I thought everybody, we all think we’re normal. That’s right. Because when you’re in a, you know, house of mirrors, everything looks fine.

Angie 

So what did you find out from that scan?

Scott 

I had raging Well, six hours of intake and the scans. Oh, you could see it right there as big as God-raging post-traumatic stress disorder. My brain was severely damaged from years of abuse; make a long story short, we both got on our horse and changed our diet. I fired clients who are not worth the cortisol and adrenaline. And 2020, Michael’s brain had been rewired about 75%. Actually, he graduated from The Ohio State University with honors and went on to graduate from Roosevelt University with his master’s degree with a 3.91 grade point average. Now, here’s a kid with autism that I took up by the Buckingham Fountain and left him there in the middle of Chicago, and he thrived. My brain in 2020 is about 85% cured. And I’ll tell you, that’s my gospel right now. So it sounds like, yeah, we got to have good morale. Yeah, we got to deal with the bullies; you are the number one health threat. Worse than smoking is working with a bully; they will kill you and will damage your brain. First, your brain is the first organ to be destroyed. So Oh, I love getting on here and preaching the gospel of brain health because people have no idea. And we take our psychiatric meds, which I applaud that, but we keep treating our brains like soccer balls. And then eventually, those psychiatric meds that used to work, you know, four or five months, years later, they don’t work anymore. Got to up the dose because you’ve been treating your brain a pinata. And eventually, they won’t work anymore. And let me clue you in that massive amount of cortisol and adrenaline that you get flooded from bullies causes Alzheimer’s.

Angie 

There’s the entire episode in a nutshell, right there. Because there are several there are several key points here I want to call out, and in a way, I appreciate the scientific backing of things. I tell people common themes we see on this podcast; I would say new information that has come to light around the kind of corporate culture and mental health. And that is creating safe workspaces. Because I have, I actually own the website career. ptsd.com is just gonna let you know that because it is a thing. And I feel like we don’t give it a voice enough. And recognize that you go to work. You do your job, whether it’s a business you own, whether it is a company you lead for somebody else, or whether you are a cog in the wheel. You do your job more than you do anything else in your life, including sleep. Yes, yes. And if that is an unhealthy environment, it is worse than not sleeping. And it is a huge component to kind of our overall well-being. I’ll throw I’ll throw a book wreck in here too. I’m a big I’m a big Gallup fan and strengths finders, obviously. Yeah, but there’s another kind of book series that Gallup has called well being okay, and it’s the five pills. It’s the five pillars to your overall well-being, of which career is one, and when I read this, four or five years ago, started thinking about my own experiences in toxic work environments and being bullied by my boss, by the way, everybody, you can’t see Scott, but he’s got a little, and this is just a nod to my 80s upbringing. Yeah, he’s got a little orange-haired troll pin on his lapel, and when I asked him about it before we came on, he goes those are the bullies, this American black, but when I started thinking about my own experience, you know, it I used to have this boss when I worked in construction that would call me at 6am and leave me voicemails on my office line because I was before we all had cell phones. What are you doing work in banking? is ours, and he had a thick Boston accent. So in hindsight, it makes it hilarious. But just all of those kinds of things do build up trauma. And it’s just like any relationship where you begin to build triggers and mechanisms to either cope or react to those kinds of things that just like you would in a personal relationship, no, oh, yes. And

Scott 

I’ll tell you, you hit so many things right on the head there. And let me just make sure that your audience Nirbhay is on the same page and understands I’m an HR guy and I’m a researcher. I mean, it’s kind of funny when I work on different legal teams for trials or something like this; I always get the research stuff. Because if it’s there, I’ll find it. I’m just one of those nerdy little guys. Everything I say, I can enter into evidence in court. I’ve got citations, I’ve got data, so I will never make anything up. Believe me. If your car won’t start. That will get your gut going. That’s releasing massive amounts of adrenaline and cortisol. If you lose your phone, oh my god, we’d rather lose a kidney than a phone, right? I mean,

Angie 

well, that’s like losing a hand. It’s glued to it.

Scott 

Yeah. But you see, your body knows that your phone in your car won’t kill you. Your body knows that that human is dangerous. And if you go back to Fred Flintstone’s time, then oh, my gods. Humans are seven times more homicidal than any other mammal on the planet. So your good is going to release three times that cortisol and adrenaline. Now think about that. That’s gasoline. 20% of all of that is going to go to only 2% of your body weight, which is your brain. And your brain feels like soft room-temperature butter. So I will tell you what you’ve just described as why most people seven, according to a Gallup poll 75 ish, 80% of all Americans are miserable.

Angie 

Miserable work. Yeah. In our recent events of late days of 2020 to 23, which I’m no longer giving a name to. Yeah, thank you. Yeah. There was a statistic out there that, yes, 70% of people are not satisfied with work. But during that period of time we recently just experienced, there was a statistic floating around that 40% of people wouldn’t wish their job on their worst enemy. Yeah. Which is effectively like, hi, I would rather like to kill myself and do this job. But we do it. Yeah. And what I appreciate about you is you’re trying to help people rewire their thinking and create new habits and seek out and create cultures that break this cycle. And so I’m curious, and I love how you brought up that idea of, like, your intersection of law research and fact that can hold up in court with, like colliding in this world of HR and corporate culture. And so I’m curious how all of that and these mental health realizations in your life experiences kind of triggered all that? Have you had kind of defined or created your perspective on what we can do in corporate culture to help this ecosystem?

Scott 

Thank you. That is absolutely perfect. And let me tell you right now, I’ve been an HR guy for actually 41 years, and I’ve been teaching tolerance, which means I’m not going to pick on someone just because they’re different. Okay, I’m not going to pick on you because we disagree. Okay, now, picture our society today. Let’s say we’re all going to sit down and, you know, take a dark and a map of the United States, throw a dart, hit anywhere in the country. And that’s the lunch room we’re going to go into, and we’re going to bring in free pizza, and Dairy Queen disorders are something everybody’s gonna love. And we’re going to have a good, honest, intellectual discussion about abortion. Okay, now, I always love this because this, this is how it went there. Oh, yeah. Yeah, you’re going to get a spork and a hit. Someone is going to attack you and understand it’s going to be someone from the far, far, far, far right. Like a skinhead who’s going to hit you with a coffee cup. Or just as bad is gonna be someone from the far, far, far, far, far left, who’s going to attack you and cancel, you know, you have a right to your opinion. And here’s where I get my buy-in. And understand this is your brain health safety program. This is your harassment and bullying program, which everybody in this country is required to do. And when put it this way, if you don’t do it, if you don’t do harassment training, and someone is harassing somebody else, and you’re an employer, you’re gonna be darned sorry, you’re gonna get religion quick. This is your diversity program. So guess what, if you live in an intolerant workplace where you’re getting bullied by trolls, that you’re you are going to burn your brain like me, and like 30% of all Americans who have active post-traumatic stress disorder, and really get this. This is the same thing that our soldiers got over in the war in Canada. our comeback. Four times more soldiers are killing themselves at home than got killed in battle. It is safe to neglect the brain. It’s safer for our soldiers to run into battle than to sit at home with a gun in the afternoon. And that’s what’s happening to corporate America. And I will tell you right now, I’m a white Anglo-Saxon, Protestant, straight male. And I go all over the country because I’ll tell you, I scare the bejesus out of you. People change because it’s pleasurable. Like if we discovered Godiva chocolate, which made your heart better and cured cancer. Whoa, everybody beaten.

Angie 

Amen. Oh, yeah. Yeah. But that’s, that’s an easy fix versus a systemic culture shift. That is harder and takes more time.

Scott 

Right? Absolutely. And I’ll tell you right now, have you ever noticed that the mall go to any mall in this country? Look at the walkers; a lot of them are heart attack victims. They’ve seen the light in your brains the same way. So when I go in, it’s kind of funny. I just finished with a group out in actually Nevada, Las Vegas. If you want to go train someplace, Las Vegas is a fun place to go. Okay, it’s all fake. Okay, so I’m teaching these these these workers, okay. They’re all hospitality workers in horrible environments. And I looked at the psychiatric meds 94% of everybody in that organization is on psychiatric meds. So I’m coming back. And that’s normal. I mean, the norm is like 80 85%. So I came in, I said, All right, how many people in here want to attempt suicide? How many people want to get Alzheimer’s if you don’t do what I’m talking about? And I mean, you’ve got to change the way you treat each other. You’ve got to change the weight. Now we’re back to conflict resolution. It’s okay, emotional intelligence. And I have this baseball diamond that I use as a diagram. Very simple. The first base is emotional intelligence. You got to control your ego and emotions. And if you’ve got a damaged brain, you can’t do that. So we got to fix that brain. And there’s all kinds of things water, I teach people, you got to drink half your weight in ounces of water every day, you got to meditate. And here’s what this does in your brain. When you work with good people who are supportive. Have you ever integrated your listeners? Have they ever come to work, and the day just shot by it? Was it like it was wonderful? It was, you know, really challenging, but I loved it. We call that the flow. A guy from the University of Chicago McHale chick sent me Hi; took me a long term, time to learn how to say that chick sent me. I came up with this theory, what you’re doing is you’re actually releasing all these us stress. Can good stress, chemicals that are not bad stress chemicals, heal your brain? And so we talk about emotional intelligence. The second base is addressing and resolving conflict, and a very simple process I use is called EPR, empathic listening, parroting, and rewards. And so you see, it’s how we address conflict because you will have conflict every 10 minutes in an organization. But can I control myself not to hit you with a coffee cup? Understand that tolerance is mandatory here. I’ll tell you, I will fire somebody faster for bullying somebody else and attacking them or talking about him behind your back then smoking in the office. Because smoking, smoking, if you smoke, has a mortality factor of 1.6, which means in English, it means you’ve increased your chance of premature death by 60% and 60%. If you work with a bully, you’ve doubled your chance of premature death. And you will get Alzheimer’s

Angie 

100%. Everyone versus 60. Yes, yes, absolutely. That is significant. So we hold you on second base for a second while we do pitcher change right ahead. So the fact that, by the way, I don’t know how much I ever talked about baseball on here. But I grew up in a baseball lovers’ house. So when I saw Scott have all the baseball stuff, we started chatting about it. I love that you have a baseball analogy and framework in your Oh, me. So I can’t help but, you know, throw that in a little bit. Where so have you seen a bigger awareness around this kind of, let’s say, mental health in the workspace thing? So over the last 40 to 41 years? How have you seen this all evolve and become a little bit in the forefront? Because I believe it is, but I’d be curious for somebody who works in this space so intently to kind of give me your observations in that you.

Scott 

I’ll tell you that’s another one. That’s a whole great discussion because it’s like we don’t even live in the same country anymore. All right now, I started, now really isn’t. I’m 62 and a half years old. I feel like I’m 22, but what the heck,

Angie 

you know, look like you’re 62 and a half. Well, you tell my wife, and I really mean that. I’m not just saying that as a compliment, but that it’s good. think everybody out there a visual once in this audio conversation.

Scott 

I feel young. I love coming to work. I love doing this because I’m helping people. Okay. And when I started in human resources, it was the Dark Ages. I had a boss once. He was president of this bank; he spanked an employee once, spanked her put her over, and not in a good way, okay. ramie really wailed on her because she did something wrong. Sexual and illegal harassment, in a lot of parts of this country, was legal in 1983, 84 and 85. We didn’t get it everywhere till 96 or till 86. Now, mental health was not. We didn’t care. Okay. Now, just within the last two, and this comes from the Sherm Society for Human Resource managers, the number of employees who don’t want but demand wellness programs is 77%. And that’s double what it was just 10 years ago, in 2013.

Angie 

That’s really fast growth in a short amount of time,

Scott 

because everybody’s on psychiatric medications. We were at critical mass; the American Psychological Association said we were at critical mass in the first quarter of 2020. Then we had jobs, and that thing happened to happen. Yeah. And it pushed everybody over the edge. And I will tell you it is really interesting because this is your recruitment retention. I’ll tell you right now, if you do not have a safe environment, more of the Gen Wires, and Gen Z years, who are making up a bulk of our hiring right now, under the age of 30, will spend more time googling your culture than your pay scales.

Angie 

I was actually curious; I was going to ask you; I wanted to bring the generation of this discussion because I think it’s fascinating. But I also think it’s a big reason that the trends have the change in the trends has escalated and sped up. And it’s because they’re forcing it to

Scott 

Oh, you are so right. And let me just give you the demographics here. I mean, I’ve fought the baby boomers all my life; I’m just right on the edge. Oh, and they’re ahead of me; they had all the good jobs; I had to go get three college degrees to compete. Because I mean, I was always behind the ball. It’s not like I wanted to go back to school again. But you know, you had to; they are now retiring or dying. And there are not enough under 30s coming in to make up for that. So as of right now, in the United States, from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there are 1.7 jobs for every unemployed person. Now, do the math. Some of your folks out there who are running businesses in five years, they won’t be there. These people will not work for you. And if you do this 1980s And Gallup poll, I love Gallup, they came back and said, the way we manage people is 40 years out of date, they got emotional intelligence, you got to do the proper conflict resolution, you got to create safe environments, it’s safe to disagree. It’s okay. And if you don’t do that, I mean, I, I mean, I’ll tell you, I had a nurse working for a hospital over in Missouri, and she was a contract nurse. I mean, first, if you’re going to be a contract nurse, you got to compete with Miami; who in the heck is want gonna want to go to Missouri when you can go to the beach, okay? And the beach at the Mississippi River is not the same thing. Okay, so she was making $250 an hour to come in just to get her. And at the end of her shift, she told her supervisor to go to hell and quit. That is annualized. That is a half a million dollar a year job. And I can tell you, within a week, she was down in Houston, making more. So I’ll tell you, it’s not what you pay him. It’s how you treat them. And I’ve heard this all the time. I am not going to be on antidepressants like my mom and dad. So get with the ball game, folks.

Angie 

Oh, back to the ball game, rain delays almost over everyone. So I am like you but at the next generational cusp. So I’m 42 and a half. I was born in 1980. By definition, I think I am a Xenial of the Star Wars generation born in a very unique six-year period that is more distinct than many other generational customers. But it’s just so interesting that I was raised by young younger, like slightly younger baby boomers. But still that, but also in a place the country that I would say geographically was slightly behind the times. So slower, slower rollout of technology. Dad was a teacher in the same school district, and my grandfather worked in this, so it was still that very traditional thinking of you just go to work to pay the bills and then die and all, and that is what I think all of these different generations these newer generations have are kind of more aware of some of these things. They want more satisfying, aligned career paths. They know they don’t have to do the same thing forever. And I think it’s interesting when we Think about, like, the statistics of that 1.7 jobs per person, there’s a disparity there. And that’s why, from a from a company and an owner and a hiring manager perspective, we’ve got to make sure we’re keeping up because, yeah, if you’re out there anybody who’s listening in their jobs, you either go Yeah, based on how hard it is for me to get a new job right now. That’s crap. Right? That’s 1.7, but it’s not. It’s an apples and oranges situation that, the one point, there aren’t 1.7 Oranges out there looking for the 1.7 apples that exist. And that’s where this whole shift needs to continue.

Scott 

Right? Right. Don’t assume that all of those people who are in the unemployed ranks are looking.

Angie 

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Cuz a lot of people left. Well, a lot of people left the workforce both, like you said, age, older baby boomers finally decided to phase out, especially in the 20 to 2020 to 23 changes, and then stay-at-home parents, people starting businesses, you get into the qualification. So there’s, there’s a lot of reasons for that disparity. But as we pick up our ballgame, we can we can continue giving this advice in this recommendation or this framework on how you can get ahead of this game. Right. So we, we single the first with our EQ, yeah, stole second. Yeah, conflict resolution. How do we like now to bring it home? So what? So what’s the rest of that thought process? As you know, we’re intentional about this culture, building stuff

Scott 

and, and understand all of this, you should not have a diversity program, a harassment program, or a bullying program; a safety for wellness party should all be one program. It should all be your culture. And so, okay, you and I have a conflict, I sit down, use my EPR skills. So I would say, Well, tell me where you’re coming from. And then I shut up, and I listen from where you’re, now I’m 20 years older than you, okay? I was graduating college, or so when you were born, we see things differently. Okay, so I gotta twist my head, and I gotta listen. But then I got a P, E, P, I got a parrot it back. And if you agree with me, we move on. Now, if I disagree with you, there’s a reward. I’m going to thank you for disagreeing. But I’m gonna say, I see where you’re coming from, and you got a right to your beliefs. I’ll defend the way that you think. Here’s what I think. Now you see what I’ve done. I disagree with you. I’ve shown you it’s safe. I get to steal third base. Third base means trust. It’s safe in Ontario right now. Is it? And what’s home, that’s team building. Everybody’s focused on the same goals. You kind of see our team building falls apart with no trust. And we have, and we got Chrome, magnums, and Neandertals. As supervisors, they just don’t know what they’re doing. And so they attack, they stab you in the back, fight or flight. Okay. And there’s no hope for trust, there’s no hope for retention, those employers that stress, emotional intelligence, EPR conflict resolution, you get to third base automatically, because you’ve built trust, I’ve shown you it’s safe, then I go home. And that’s where I get everybody focused on the common goals. I’ve just described to you some great organizations. I mean, like Southwest Airlines, okay. Now understand Southwest Airlines, they’re the only airline that is always in Glassdoor. And they’re always in the top 10. And they have an employee satisfaction rate of anywhere between 84% and 60. And 84 and 86%. Now, I always love this because some of these oh my gosh, 80. You mean like 15% of their employees aren’t happy there? Yeah. Think about it. That’s fan

Angie 

70% of the workforce is unhappy; that statistic is astronomically high,

Scott 

it sounds like it, but I think there’s no if you gave a $1,000 bonus to everybody who works for you. You’d have five to 10% complain; you took out too much in tax there; they would be a home run because now there’s nobody on base.

Angie 

So then you’d have another five to 10%, who told you you didn’t get a vendor big enough boat?

Scott 

That’s right. I can’t please all the

Angie 

people all the time.

Scott 

So we’re talking about the most successful airline out there. And always, I’m really sarcastic. I go back to my clients and say, Oh, my gosh, what would you do? If 85% of your people loved you? What would you do? And so we always get well; we need to get that in the 90s. You aren’t going to do that. Even

Angie 

if you’re giving away so it’s about realistic expectations

Scott 

to know but look at the momentum you got. Those are truly great companies because you’ve got momentum. And I tell you, if somebody lights up a cigarette, somebody’s going to speak up because that’s the culture in these other organizations. You get somebody who’s a bully; they’re going to speak up because, hey, this is my organization, and this does not fit In our culture,

Angie 

yep. Well, so there are two points that came out of this. Yeah, that I want to talk about; you brought up this idea and how important it is to have tolerance and empathy in the workplace. And I think I think the world needs more tolerance and empathy because we have very much moved into these extreme polls. Have like your right left your right, left example earlier; social media perpetuates that, right, you can go find any answer to any question or any situation that you want. And it’ll perpetuate that self-bias. And I think that we, we could all live in the middle, much happier. And that’s where this, like, tolerance and empathy comes in. So I want to talk about that. Yeah, but I’m going to just add the second piece, and we can just go, which is we’ve talked a lot about how from a company and leader perspective, we approach these bases in this game, but I want to talk about tolerance and empathy, and how, as an individual within that framework, you also support the whole 360 effort.

Scott 

Yeah, you, you, and I’m gonna tell you, this is exactly it. Like, here’s what we’re gonna do at ABC Company, okay? You got to don’t go develop those individual people. Because what’s happening in society right now is going to destroy us all. Quite frankly, it’s going to destroy us all. And you’re going to see more psychiatric medications and more psychiatric medications not working. Now, I need to develop, and I work with a lot of companies on this. It’s like, okay, we need to have this strategic plan. Okay, great. What are you doing at the grassroots level with each and every person? You got to develop each person? Like, as if this is a million-dollar draft pick? Because it’s the biggest part of your budget? These are the people who are actually going to do the work, and you might

Angie 

Using your human capital is your biggest investment, and typically, the last line paid attention to on the p&l.

Scott 

Absolutely. And it’s kind of funny that because I’ll get this from CFOs all the time. Well, you know, we pay them. Why can’t they just come in and do their job? Because you’re dealing with the human animal, the most fickle, the most emotional, the most dangerous animal on the planet? So have you met them? We’re people; we’re human. So empathy, okay. I, you cannot separate empathy from tolerance. And let me just make a distinction here. I get a lot of feedback for this. It’s like, oh, no, you have to be accepting of somebody’s differences. Now, let’s think about this. Tolerance means I’m not going to pick on you because you’re different. It’s your behavior. This is required by the EEOC and your training. If first of all, you’re not training your people in harassment,, anti-harassment, you you are, you’re really looking the outlet, it’s going to get you one day, and you’re going to be liable. That’s what they require your training to be. Second, the United States Supreme Court requires this in the Bostick decision that we got three years ago that gave us gender identity and sexual orientation. So think about this. Now. Let me just give you a good one for tolerance versus acceptance in Amish country. Way up in Ohio Amish country. I had a young woman break away from the Amish. She was working for an Amish company. And she turns Satanist. Now picture that.

Angie 

Yeah, that is about as extreme. For those of us who grew up in proximity to Amish country. We understand how extreme that is. But it’s, I mean, it’s basically, I mean, do we say an evangelical somebody who grew up in Evangelical, you know, Southern Baptist home now becomes an atheist. Yeah, it’s probably even more severe than that.

Scott 

Oh, you’re that far from stoning. Oh, yeah. It’s extreme. Yeah. So it was the, I mean, literally, hell was breaking loose. And so this woman was bringing her Satanic Bible in to read it when these other women were reading their Bible. So I drove all the way up. Now first base, I got his que se calm, highly emotional, highly tense situations. So I sit down and use my EPR skills. Now think of the tolerance. Tell me what’s happening with the Satanists and explain everything to me about how they’re being bullied. Bullies always say they’re being bullied. They always say that. Okay, well, we’re being bullied because we have to work with a Satanist, and she asked to go. Okay, so I repeat it back, and I say, All right, let me make sure I got this. You’re saying that you’re the one who’s being bullied because she’s a Satanist. And you’re a Christian organization and good Christian ladies. And you’re being offended; you’re being bullied. And they say yes. Okay, now if they said, No, you told me again. Okay, now, if I come back and I say you’re right, we should get some wooden burner now that we should I be a hero. But I’m not going to say that. So now think about it. If I tell these Amish ladies, they have to be accepting of her satanic beliefs. Oh, oh, it’s like hidden Bozo that punching results. said, Oh, they’ll

Angie, 

get it. We’re gonna get revolts.

Scott 

They’ll still. They’ll still, Yeah, right there. Yeah. But I say I see I give them a reward. Now here’s a great one. Do they have a right to their belief? Right.

Angie 

But so does the other person. And I feel like that’s what we miss. And this is we are getting into the facility philosophical, what is wrong with the world, and we’re going to solve it because that is the crux of all of it, whether it’s social or professional interaction,

Scott 

you’re so right now, think of the grassroots down here. I say I see where you’re coming from. And you’ve got a right to believe that I will defend to the death, your right to your beliefs. This is still America, at least for the rest of the day. This is still America, and you got a right to your beliefs. But let me clue you in here. She has a right to her beliefs here.

Angie 

Are you making it safe? That’s third base. Are you making it safe for her? And they go, Well, we

Scott 

don’t want to make it safe. She has to leave. And I said, No. I would never tell you what to believe. And you can’t tell her what to believe. And I got news for you. She’s going to sue you. You live in a state where there’s personal liability. She isn’t Amish anymore. She has recorded what you’ve said. She’s going to sue you, and she’s going to take your house. I am not here to hurt you. I’m here to help you. And this one woman, she goes well gal, but she’s but she’s gonna burn in hell, she’s gonna burn in hell. I said I know. That’s what she’s shooting for. And, and we had I not tell you this is this right there. You talked about the crux of it. It never dawned on these ladies that their behavior would be different than their beliefs. That’s most of America. If I don’t, if I disagree with you on abortion or immigration, I have a right and a duty to attack. You know, you can disagree. That’s acceptance; you can disagree. But I’m going to control your behavior; you are not going to attack somebody. And I’ll tell you, someone to the far, far, far, far radical right will go 180 degrees. And someone to the far, far, far radical left will go 180 degrees, and they meet in the middle and become the same. We had a great conversation. Actually, the owner stuck his head in because I think she thought that they were doing me harm. Is everything. Okay? And here’s entry within an hour. We had a wonderful conversation about beliefs and tolerance and religion. And they go back up every so often now, and they make my muffins. Oh, that’s why people don’t Amish country, man.

Angie 

And I’m going to tell you right now Amish baked goods. Yeah. Worth it at all anonymous dry goods stores. Yes. Yeah. So you go to Sugar Creek when I was a kid. I agree.

Scott 

Yeah, they made the door. Yeah. Walnut Creek. Yeah. But that’s Yep. Isn’t that simple? But honestly, when I have these conversations with employees, it is a revelation that you mean I shouldn’t attack somebody because they morally offend me.

Angie 

No, why does it work? So I love that I feel like we just got to the message here. And it is we complicate things, humans, a very complicated organism that doesn’t need to be complicated. And these situations, we force them to become more complicated than they need to be. Because we’re unwilling to go with the one ad when How easy it is just to respect that we have different views. But as individuals, we’re going to bring the tolerance for those different views, maybe even try to be empathetic to it to understand your point of view. So that we can create and support the ecosystem that, hopefully from the top down, has those same fundamentals. And that is that whole like 360, everybody is, is on everybody’s on the same page. Even everybody’s in the same book, even if they might be on a different page. But they’re willing to live in that book.

Scott 

And you hit it just right the ecosystem, the ecosystem of the world right now is to attack. I like to put biospheres around all of my clients and say, This is how we operate here. And if you don’t do it, you will get Alzheimer’s. You will destroy your brain. If you act like a regular American, you will destroy your brain, and it’s the first organ to be damaged if you have it worth it. Oh, it’s not. That’s not from someone who had been raised with post-traumatic stress disorder and thought every day, it was normal to think about whether or not you’d kill yourself. That is not normal. And you don’t want that you I’ve been there man; you do not want to go where I was. And my whole thing is, okay, if you don’t agree with a philosophical difference, if you still think you should attack somebody, then think of the neurology of it, and honestly, you are committing suicide, you’re smoking one and a half cigarettes every time you do that.

Angie 

When, you started off the show, I love it when things come full circle; you started off the show with some of these statistics, even in your own life, you and Mike, about being able to heal your brain. So maybe whether you’re in this environment now if you’re in it, you have you have the ability to change by getting out of it. However, if you if, if you will have been, have been conditioned through professional trauma. Now you’ve got some rewiring to do. Yes. So how do you how does someone fix this for themselves individually, right?

Scott 

That’s honestly the first half of the Healing the human brain book. I talk about what did to me, kind in how I came about, how Michael was born, and how these scans work; you don’t necessarily need a nuclear SPECT scan. The second half of the book is all about our programs. It’s not any one thing, and the whole thing is I’m trying to get as many US stress chemicals into my body as I can that will knock out the distress chemicals, and distress chemicals are massive amounts of adrenaline and cortisol. So what do I do? Eat a proper diet? 25% of all of our meals in America come from fast food. It would, and I am not kidding. I’m not being hyperbolic. It would be better for you to eat the bag in the box. If someone has not seen Supersize Me, you got to see this that is

Angie 

you got to see that. Oh my god, I’m still disturbed by it. No offense to McDonald’s can’t tell you last shocked at how many cars are in the drive-thru. And we live in like a little resort town in Colorado, where people generally are healthy. Yeah. And I am still shocked at how many cars are in that drive-thru at, like, in the off chance I’m actually out driving and not asleep at 930 at night, right? I’m still shocked, kind of, by that. Oh, that’s but But it’s amazing food. So first of all, there are a couple of points I want to make that are like your gut tells you way more than you listened to. Yeah. And if you feed it, well, it can change your overall wellbeing. So that’s a good first, that’s it. That is a huge first how do you take charge of this kind of healing and rewiring? Right? What else? What other steps can we take?

Scott 

A good one is you got to get hobbies that you relax mine is photography. I love watching sports, gardening, and I just got a new patch. I love this patch. It’s it’s gardening. Because it’s better than murder. Well true. And so

Angie 

I gotta tell Scott, I gotta tell you that so forever. I hope this makes this needs to stay in the cut. Everybody out there knows Jim. My husband is our producer, and he’s on the other end of the house. I am wearing noise-canceling headphones, and I just heard him laugh out loud. Okay, good. That’s a good word. I have a feeling a patch. That’s because he’s a gardener too. I have a feeling that the patch is going to be arriving in our mailbox quite soon. But hobbies Yeah, outlets, oh, yeah, outlets to turn off your brain give you something else constructive to do. Amazing

Scott 

exercise walking meditation. And I will tell you that all that’s nice and fuzzy feel good. No, our Navy SEALs are doing meditational techniques. And it increased the pass rate for the Navy SEALs from 25% to 30 to 33%. And what you’re doing is you are actually building up the connections in your frontal lobes to give you better control. And actually, the connections that exist between your frontal lobes, your control, and your fight or flight response. And your emotional system to give you more control, okay, cookout hanging out with good people. All of these things you’ve got, and here’s one some everybody can start doing right now. Right now, drink half your weight in ounces of water every day. Every day, your brain is mostly water, and you’re flushing it, you’re flushing adrenaline and cortisol out. Okay? All of these different get a massage once a month, a real massage, and it releases all of these stress chemicals, and you know that because think about this any of your people who have you ever had a massage, let’s say they’re pulling out and they feel so good. They’re gonna pull out, and someone almost hits their front end and cuts them off. Well, ordinarily, we in be enraged, do some hand signals, all kinds of stuff. But someone hits it or almost hits us after a massage. We’re like, you missed. It’s okay. xiao Those are those we stress, chemicals, all of these things, lifestyle, all these things that I talk about. And I’ve gotten posted on my website of videos for free because I think if people don’t like to read, they can always watch a video because they learn how to heal their brain. That’s your safety program. I’ve done four or five national safety konkret conferences in the last year. And I’m not what you expect. I’m not talking about your fingers and toes; I’m talking about Teach Your people how to care for their brains. So they don’t do stupid Things like, okay, but none of this is going to work. If you go to work every day and your gut clenches up over the thought of going in there, you’re going to wipe out all that stuff; you absolutely have to work in an environment that you enjoy. And if you’re a business leader, you change that environment; you don’t let people smoke inside, don’t let them bully each other. And if your environment doesn’t change, I will tell you right now, if somebody were if somebody smoked for 40 years, would you be surprised that they got lung cancer can kind of ask for it, right? That’s why we know that cortisol causes Alzheimer’s. So you work in a pit for 3040 years, do not be surprised if you get Alzheimer’s, okay? Because you will have Alzheimer’s cells in your brain. And there was a fantastic study a few years ago, and I showed my brain that none of your people out there listening probably have more Alzheimer’s cells in their brain right now than me. But I’m here to tell you; I get Alzheimer’s because I’m going to grow a million connections every month; I’m going to have reserves that are stronger. There were these nuns that were wonderful, just like Betty White. And these people were a wonderful sense of humor. They’re just great. And then they died, like we all do. And they performed autopsies on these nuns; they all had Alzheimer’s, every single one of them. But they were not symptomatic. Because they built up so many reserves, by the way they lived that it never became symptomatic. That’s what I plan on doing. And that’s what I’m telling my folks right now. But I’ll tell you right now, if you work like a normal American in an environment that you hate, you’re doomed.

Angie 

You’re doing you’re, you’re choosing you’re in Yes. So, this is a little bit unfair, unfair because some people don’t have as much choice when it comes to career changes. However, in most situations, it’s a choice. And I think what you know, Scott is doing, and I think what we’re trying to do here is kind of inspire and motivate you and tell you that you can choose differently. And luckily, from a bigger perspective, corporate culture is starting to shift in that direction. And if we all play our small part from the top down, changing the culture, individually supporting those cultures, and making a move out of a culture, we don’t have the ability to withstand, everything shifts in the positive, and we become healthier in all aspects of our well being. How’s that for a summary of this conversation? Virtually

Scott 

right. And I would advise anybody who hears this that is working in that type of environment, have the CEO, President CFO see, Oh, listen to this, go learn about it. Because once they get religion, the culture changes.

Angie 

Game Changer. Yeah. Oh, yeah. So this is a perfect point; I want to know; I want you to tell everybody about your books because this conversation is a great starting point. The books are great next level, and then you just call Scott and me after that, right? So so we’ll we’ll Well, we will, we will drip you into the religion. But tell everybody a little bit about your books because you have a few that kind of range the multiple topics that we have talked about. Yeah. So what are they? How does everybody find them? Yeah,

Scott 

well, first of all, everything, the books, my videos for free, everything, are at Scott word.com as CO T T WA, R IC K. And I love it when people go and just learn. And if you’re right, we’ve hit on all the books because they are actually it’s actually a trilogy; they all fit together. And they were published in order. The first one was to solve employee problems before they happened. And that’s all about emotional intelligence and those EPR conflict resolution skills. The second book is about living the five skills of tolerance. And it’s all about; I’m not going to pick on you because you’re different. But I’m not going to tell you what to think. And that’s for every white, black, Republican, Democrat. And if you don’t do what’s in the first two books, like most Americans, you really got to get the third book, which is healing the human brain because you’ve damaged your brain. And now you got to fix it. And here’s the logic, if you know what damages your brain, and honestly, the greatest threat to your brain is not what you eat is not getting enough sleep is not a lack of exercise. It’s that other humans are sitting next to you. So if you know it damages your brain, you can fix it. And if you know how to take care of it with the things we’ve talked about, you will actually rewire your brain. A million connections a month, and I’ll tell you the most convincing thing when I do this presentation or when somebody reads the book; you compare my brain scan into that was an aid that was a mess, to 2020. They’re not recognizable,

Angie 

you would think it’s a different human; you created a different being for yourself; oh, I’m

Scott 

a very different person than when I had now than when I had raging post-traumatic stress disorder. I mean, honestly, I will tell you, if, if you don’t have somebody in your life, like my wife, that will tell you what’s what you gotta go read somebody, you got to have somebody that’s going to tell you, Hey, you’re being a jerk you’re being and that gets you back online. And that’s one thing. In my coaching, I do a lot of coaching for people on emotional intelligence. And we always talk about healing the brain, some are so bad, I’ve sent them for brain scans, 43 people in 10 years, they’ve all come back red hot, and they thought they were normal. So I’ve got a wealth of stuff at Scott work.com that I just love it when somebody and I get in, let me know, I get people that read the book, I’ve got folks that have come back from getting their brain scans or have improved their lives. I love to hear those stories as to how the that they’ve improved. And I’m getting a lot of these from people with kids with autism. And the kids with autism are now mainstreamed. It’s not a cure. Don’t get me wrong, but you can now live as full of a life as possible. Because you rewire your brain if we hadn’t done this with Michael. Okay, I couldn’t have left him in the middle of Chicago by himself in the mid-20s. Okay. Oh, he might be working at Burger King for the rest of his life.

Angie 

And now he has a master’s degree.

Scott 

And he is a behavioral specialist, health specialist.

Angie 

This is perfect because he’s working on something that he literally has empathy for. Oh, which is it? Oh my gosh, that’s gonna start a whole different episode. But yeah, so. Yeah, well, and I think the message here is you find your thing, and you feed yourself and are intentional about where you put yourself. Yeah, and, and everything becomes healthier, and you can heal and repair, and Scott has a million amazing resources. I love that you refer to the books as a trilogy because you can really see how they do they follow your baseball diamond. In a way. We’re gonna link to the website and a couple of the book recommendations that came the additional book recommendations that we threw out at no more Mondays dot info. And, you know, while Scott is still my captive audience, everybody, we’re gonna get one more piece of advice before we say goodbye for now because I feel like I want to have seven more episodes. However, as we kind of wrap things up, I’m gonna give you a loaded question. Because I know, I know you giving one piece of advice is going to be hard. But so I’m just gonna say, what is your number one tip on what everybody out there can do to get one step closer to career and life satisfaction, and I’m going to add health, health, what’s your number one

Scott 

hang around as many good people as possible. They’re the therapists that tell you Harvard Medical Review just published a study where these people are going to work. They’re working in great environments, and the release of these huge stress chemicals like oxytocin, the happiness chemical ,was flooding their body. Hanging around good people is therapy, and that is that those who use stress chemicals will knock out the bad chemicals. Act like a salve for your brain. It’s so healing. Why would you not want to hang around good people?

Angie 

hang around with good people, eliminate the trolls? Oh, yeah.

Scott 

Oh, yeah. It’s like Whack a Mole. Get rid of them. Oh, yeah.

Angie 

There you go, everybody, Scott Warwick, helping us change culture, one brain at a time. Thank you. Thank you so much for being here and sharing all of these things with us. I think this is such an important message and an important foundational element of where we’re at in society and in corporate America. And on the whole, no more Mondays movement, we’re trying to help people be more satisfied, which means healthier. And I really appreciate your perspective on it. The research you’ve done on it, your approach to it, and everything that you give people to help. So thank you for being here and giving us your time and wisdom. Oh, my pleasure. Thank you. Scott is now officially part of the No More Mondays movement. I think he may have been the no more Monday’s movement before I coined the term, but hey, we always love talking to people who have navigated their own career crossroads, improved their own health, and are helping others chart a path to success and fulfillment. And there are some amazing words of wisdom here, everybody, and I particularly love the idea that you listen to this episode, get the books, and engage resources if and when you need them. Whether you You’re an individual trying to manage or get out of a situation or whether you are an individual who has an influence over what those situations can look like, right? You don’t have to stay with the bullies, and Scott and I are here to give you permission to make a change. So that’s the message for today, along with about 17 other really, really great themes. And so, if you enjoyed this episode, rate us and give us a five-star review because it is a huge help as we continue to inspire competent professionals. With amazing stories and resources like Scott’s got to offer. You can grab all of his stuff at no more Mondays dot info, and I will see you next week for another edition of no more Monday’s podcast. Thanks for joining us for another episode of no more Mondays. Tune in next week as we bring you more insights and actions to help you improve your life and career. Don’t forget, visit us online at no more Mondays dot info to get all the details show notes and recommendations from this episode. No more Mondays we drop new episodes every Wednesday. No More Mondays is brought to you by career benders, Inc, in partnership with executive producer Jane Durkee. For more information about career coaching, resume writing, personal branding, recruiting, and entrepreneurship coaching services, visit us online at career benders.com