Bringing Back Human Connection In The Workplace With Greg Witz

I have a colleague that is as passionate about his work as I am about mine. It’s awesome because it’s all about humans, behaviors, and relationships. Rather than have me tell you about this incredible entrepreneur, let me introduce you to Greg Witz. He is the President and CEO of Witz Education and so much more. Welcome, Greg, to the show. Thank you so much for being a guest.

Thank you, Dr. Patty Ann. I’m super excited to be here. We got to geek out a little bit on all the topics that you spoke about. I’m a huge believer that one of the successes in life is our ability to manage our relationships with humans. I’m looking forward to this conversation.

This is going to be awesome. Let me ask you about what you said. Maybe I’m being picky. You said, “One of the successes.” My thought is all success is based upon the ability to create, nurture, and sustain healthy relationships. Do you agree with that, or do you see that differently?

I 1,000% agree. I said, “One of the successes,” but we might say that is the foundational or the most important. We’re a herd creature. We live in communities. We live in a village. There’s that wonderful saying, “It takes a village to raise a kid.” At the end of the day, what would we be without the people in our lives, our parental relationships, our spousal relationships, and our community? We might even take it to that. It’s the community that needs to be looked after so much.

When you say it’s the community that needs to be looked after so much, are you suggesting more so than the individual?

It’s one and the same or maybe two sides to a coin, which is individuals contributing to the community and the community contributing back to the individual. I was raised with this. It’s one of the foundational pieces that we work on at the beginning of our training and programs. There’s no substitute for taking responsibility. We have to be so accountable and responsible for how we are showing up. I call it professionalized for work. How are we showing up in people’s lives as a parent or as a spouse? We have a lot of opportunities to operate with consciousness.

There’s no substitute for taking responsibility.

We can be way better. We can serve and contribute to other people communicating better and being healthier. That simply comes from how I’m showing up. Back to the individual and community, what I’m doing individually in the community, the modeling, the behavior, and how I respond versus react is the thing that contributes to or affects the community itself.

We could define the community as your culture at the office or your home and your family. At the end of the day, it’s important we recognize that we have an impact. If you start to operate with more consciousness, you can understand whether your impact is coming across in a positive way and whether we’re positively impacting people and environments or negatively. We all have a ripple effect. What that ripple effect is has a lot to do with where you start your self-awareness and your consciousness.

I couldn’t imagine anybody feeling differently from what you said. However, I want to get your thoughts on this. Interestingly enough, since there has become an inordinate amount of ways to communicate, the main goal of all communication is to connect, yet I would suggest we have never been so disconnected before. My question to you is this. How can you care about a community that you’re not emotionally connected to? Let me throw fuel onto the fire because I believe many people are so disconnected from themselves. If you’re not connected to yourself, how on God’s green Earth can you possibly connect with somebody else?

I’m smirking and smiling because I’ve used that line myself.

Which one?

In the world of connection, we have never been more disconnected.

There you go. I knew we were connected, pun intended.

We have tools and communication. We have an opportunity to build such deep connections and relationships. In some regards, it’s those same tools that are creating disconnection. Let’s talk about the virtual hybrid world. I’m dealing with this with a lot of my clients. My clients will call and say, “Teams are feeling disconnected. People are feeling disconnected from their bosses. Bosses are feeling disconnected from their teams.”

I’m like, “When was the last time you were in an office together? When was the last time you went out for lunch together? When was the last time you got together as a group and spent time physically with each other?” I’ll have to credit my client for saying this because it’s his line. He says, “Sometimes these virtual walls are thicker than the actual concrete walls in the office.”

Sometimes, virtual walls are thicker than the actual concrete walls in an office.

In the event that readers are interpreting what you’re saying as that you have that virtual gets in the way of connection, the problem is people are trying to solve a new paradigm issue with old paradigm skillsets. As working moms, we have begged our entire careers to be able to work remotely. I’ll say this respectfully. All the old White men that are running these companies are not in our shoes.

You’re chuckling. He’s trying to be nice but I know he’s going to slam me for a moment. What is going on is companies have virtual, and people are feeling disconnected. That happens in person a lot also. There are a lot of false narratives going on in denial but what I’ve done with the companies that I work with that are virtual is that you have to then make a conscious effort to reach out virtually.

I’ve said to people, “When was the last time you spoke to someone and asked him how he was doing? Give it a try.” This is how it’s going to go, “Joe, how are you doing?” Joe’s thinking, “What do you want? What do you need? What are you going to complain about?” Say, “I wanted to touch base to see how you’re doing.” Joe is going to text his colleagues. You need to make that effort. Once a quarter, which happens pretty frequently fast, you have an offsite. That’s my solution to the whole virtual.

To the side of virtual, I’m not slamming virtual and saying it’s bad. What has been proven over the last couple of years is that companies have been as effective and efficient. In fact, sometimes even more efficient and effective, and had better revenue numbers for the last couple of years than they did in person. The advantage of a working mom is having the opportunity to start your day with your family, not have that travel, and be able to be available and present with not just our kids but be able to have that presence at work. This is the advantage of the virtual world. The disadvantage and what most people do is we don’t make these changes and incremental swings. We take these massive pendulum swings.

We had to with COVID. That was thrust upon us.

As we have gone through that, we have kept that swing where we’re not coming back to the office. One of the biggest challenges in North America is getting people to come into the office. For talent acquisition, if people are not advertising or marketing these jobs as hybrid and remote, they’re getting zero applicants. I’m a fan of all of this but I’m also aware that, back to us being a herd mentality, we need to be around each other.

For the readers, I want you to know this is a gift because you have two people that are so focused and committed to relationships. It’s about the human connection. It’s not just productivity.

Maybe an offsite once a quarter isn’t enough but forcing people to come in the office every single day is also not the answer either. It’s about having a strong balance. That’s part of the answer for all life, which is, “What do we do to create balance?” Even the work-life balance statement that has been thrown around for the last few years is BS in the sense that it’s not about having a work-life balance. It’s about having a balanced life.

It’s work-life balance at the end of your life you will feel you have.

What could we do to create balance? We were floating across this but what is the greatest way to teach? What’s the greatest way to influence? What’s the greatest way to lead?

Go back to the conversation about the individual being disconnected and the community because I interrupted you. You were saying that your clients have called you and said, “We’re so disconnected.” Many times I say, “Every time you hear a company or a boss tell you they want you in the office every day for culture, exchange the word control.”

If we’re going to define culture, culture is defined by attitudes and behaviors. It’s a tangible thing. It’s not this mystical, warm, and fuzzy thing. Most people will describe culture through feelings, “This feels like a cool place to work. We have lots of fun here. It’s a happy place,” but culture is very much defined by the attitude, my mindset, and how I’m showing up, “Am I showing up pessimistic or optimistic? Am I critical or open?” It’s my behavior and my actions that support that. Back to being disconnected, let’s give this example. Think about dating. What’s the greatest advantage of this digital technology world?

We have access to relationships and people that we might have never had access to because we were regionally set up. That can also go into work. I get to work with a copywriter in Italy. I get to have a social media person in LA and so on. The borders or boundaries have now been opened but if we come back to an intimate relationship and we meet each other virtually, we are starting to get to know each other, and we’re building a relationship, there has to be the next stage where we are physically together, not in a weird perverted way but in a way that we have to be around each other.

That’s an intimate relationship.

We might argue or acknowledge the fact that our professional relationships are sometimes as close, connected, and intimate, not in a sexual way but in an intimate way where I’m invested and I’m involved in your life.

If you want to use intimacy as being vulnerable, you can be vulnerable in ways that aren’t sexual.

There’s a guy that came up with a trust formula that says, “We can quantify trust in a relationship.” It was Charles Green. He might have used it. It says this, “Trust equals credibility plus reliability plus intimacy divided by self-orientation.” I’m coming to you as a therapist or a coach. Does Dr. Patty Ann have credibility? You’re a PhD in Clinical Psychology. You’ve got two MBAs. You’ve got a business. You’re credible. You’ve got the skill, knowledge, and reliability. Are you present in my sessions? Do you show up? Reliability might be as simple as people showing up late.

Trust is made up of credibility plus reliability plus intimacy divided by self-orientation.

You’re sitting around in a meeting. It has been 12 to 15 minutes. The person is not there. They stroll on in, “You’re always late.” That’s now attacking the reliability but reliability is showing up. I like the way you described vulnerability and interest in the other person’s life, “I know about your family. We have spent time together. We have a social intimacy and a social connection.” I could be perfect in those areas. What disrupts the trust is self-orientation. The higher the self-orientation score, the lower the trust factor.

You’re talking about emotional intelligence and self-awareness. Is that what you mean?

Partly. Let’s go back to self-orientation. Does it serve my team and my community to show up more in a physical space or an office together? Does that allow me to operate with more others’ orientations? Maybe. Back to what we talked about with this disconnection, what’s also challenging with all of this is we’re not present a lot in these conversations. We’re running from meeting to activity to task, and it’s functional.

You’re multitasking while you’re there.

The presence isn’t there. Therefore, the disconnection is contributed to. We’re living in some interesting times but one of the things I want to emphasize to the audience is you have a responsibility to be better tomorrow than you were now. You have a responsibility to show up in ways that are going to contribute to the health and well-being of not just yourself but others as well.

If we can all operate with a little bit of this, we might start to find that we’re finding connections again. I was using the example earlier with an intimate relationship when you’re dating someone. You might meet them through that virtual world but until we start hanging out with each other, dating, and physically being with each other, we’re never going to build that connection. Maybe you will agree with this. We’re primitive human beings.

We’re mammals. We’ve got a frontal lobe and the ability to problem solve, make decisions, process information from our environment, and think about our feelings even though we know that we feel before we think. We have this capacity but at the end of the day, it is the primitive stuff that contributes to that connection.

It is a primal need to be connected. If you leave someone with everything that they would need on a deserted island, they will die after exit. Years ago, there was a failure to thrive if you don’t touch people.

Look at isolation. Isolation is one of the worst things you could do to a human being. There are laws for prisoners of war that you’re not allowed to keep them isolated.

It would be nice if they followed them. It’s war. It’s crazy.

Isn’t it along this line, which is us all sitting in these Zoom rooms in our houses? We’re isolating in some capacity. We take these extreme pendulum swings instead of moving things a little slowly back. The old White man says, “Get your ass in the office because that’s about culture.” That’s about control. That’s about their preference and their need, which is another type of self-orientation. Here’s the ultimate question we might want to ask ourselves and our friendships, our business relationships, and our teams that we’re working on, “Have I shown up and contributed to them in a positive way?”

Before you go further, I want to go to what you said about the pendulum swinging. My understanding is that most paradigm shifts happen suddenly. It’s not the drip. In our lifetime, we are going to look back. I’m not there now but I was a native New Yorker. My family is in New York. I used to call it the cattle car. Get on the train and go to work. Many people will tell you the hardest part of their day is the stupid commute and the exhaustion. We’re going to look back on that in 10 to 20 years and say, “That was insane. Why did we ever think we had to do that?” There’s always a yin and yang. There’s always an upside to a negative and a negative to a positive. We said that before. We never would have made that shift.

The new-school tech companies were doing this. Traditional organizations would say, “Look at those tech companies with their foosball tables,” but they were on something. I remember I had a client years ago in the tech industry. He was a very early adopter of remote work. A lot of the staff were analysts, coders, and stuff. He’s like, “Most of these individuals want to work in the evening. All I need to know is, “Are we meeting milestones? Is the work getting done?”

I have another client that said to me, “There’s no reason for us to call people back to the office because the truth to it is people are more efficient and effective at home. We did better last year than we have done any previous year.” That same person said to me, “One of the things that we need is we need our leaders leading the human beings. We also need them managing the business.”

They have answered managing the business through that virtual but it’s about how you lead human beings through a screen. Sometimes that creative chaos or interruption during the day, you have those magical moments of connection, innovation, and ideation. Those moments of what we call creative combustion where all of a sudden, I come in, walk into your office, and disturb you, “Dr. Patty Ann, I’m sorry to interrupt. Can I speak to you for a second?”

What do you do? You roll your eyes like, “What do you want? Come on in.” You stop doing what you’re doing and get into it. The next thing you know, we have created this thing. That would never happen because we had a scheduled Zoom. When you were talking about the pendulum swing, we need these massive pendulum swings to evoke change. What we need to do is evolve. The change has happened. The impact has happened. COVID for us was good. We scaled.

You’re an online business. You do online education.

Once upon a time, years ago, if you said to me, “Would you live in Costa Rica and run all your executive coaching and training virtual and online?” I would have said, “You’re mad. The only way to be effective in this industry is in a room with people physically there.” What we have had to do in our coaching and online or virtual delivery is a tremendous amount. We broadcast. We don’t Zoom. We have eight camera shoots. We have experience boxes. We have had to spend the time and then reinvent a lot to ensure that we’re creating that connection, intimacy, and experiential stuff that you get in a room.

You created new ways to solve a new issue.

One of the things we have also very much emphasized is a combination of both. We can’t just be online and virtual. We need a balance of in-person and in-life. If businesses took that approach as well, it isn’t about, “You need to be in the office 2 days a week and 3 days remote,” but, “What are we doing to balance our virtual time with our time together?” Once a quarter is amazing.

Businesses need to start balancing their virtual time with their time together.

Along with other things like what you were saying about leaders having to connect and have a relationship, there’s that expression, “Nobody cares about how much you know until they know how much you care.” Interestingly, I have had clients tell me that their younger children in their 20s and early 30s will say, “I don’t want to be friends with the people I work with. I don’t care. I just have to work with them. I want to work with them.” I’ve heard other people say that too, “Why don’t you move to this community? A lot of people in your industry work there.” They said, “I have to work with these people. I sure as hell don’t want to live with them.”

That’s sad though. You spend 80% of your time in your professional life.

It’s sad. However, as we’re speaking now, Goldman Sachs said they’re laying off 3,200 people. All of a sudden, we’re friends until it’s between me or you getting laid off.

Is it Jamie Dimon that owns Goldman Sachs?

Jamie Dimon doesn’t own anything. He gets paid as if he owns it. He’s the CEO of JPMorgan Chase.

Jamie Dimon said, “You get your ass back in the office, or you’re fired.”

Pretty much that’s how he said it. He’s living in his penthouse and takes an elevator down.

Here’s the other problem to that, which is back to leadership. Leadership is more about modeling and role modeling versus anything else. It’s easy to say things.

I’ll play devil’s advocate with that though. He probably is in the office when he’s in the office but when was the last time he had to worry about his kids being picked up from school or somebody being sick and having to stay home? Jamie Dimon was anti–working from home way before COVID. He was almost militant about it. That’s a little controlling to me.

Let’s come back to people getting laid off because that was Goldman Sachs laying off 3,200 people. These are your friends, “I don’t want to be friends with people.” First, that shouldn’t and doesn’t have to affect your personal relationship or your friendship with this team member. People operate with self-preservation and survival but at the end of the day, if people are getting laid off, there are many factors that go into laying off.

It’s not personal in a bizarre way. Wall Street is also unique.

That decision could be made not out of an individual’s performance but out of titles, “We’re removing 30% of these titles. People with this type of salary need to be reduced by 10%.” It’s black and white. We call them the butcher, the ultimate analyst, or the ultimate rational logical Spock.

That’s also known as the CFO.

Sometimes the HR individual or people has too much empathy to do so. It’s a pure mathematical equation. Jack Welch who was the CEO of GE said he fired the bottom 10%.

Look at where they are too.

That created a high-performing organization, specifically within the sales groups. It wasn’t about me achieving my objective. It came to me about beating you. I didn’t want to be the last one in the race. I had to always be ahead. That becomes the joke around, “What do you need when you shark dive?” You need a friend and a little pocket knife. Hopefully, that friend’s also a little bit of a slower swimmer.

That became about competition as opposed to collaboration.

In my experience in the corporate world, and you probably see this as well, every year, there’s a new buzzword. I remember that coaching became a big buzzword.

Entrepreneurial too.

Entrepreneurs, collaboration, culture, connection, and hybrid. There’s always a new emphasis and word that corporate wants to push but let’s come back to what we said. At least before COVID, we were spending up to 80% of our time in our professional lives. That means you spent more time with your peers than your children and your spouse. If I’m spending that much time with someone, I would hope that I’ve got a good relationship and a friendship there because, without that, that would be a pretty crappy thing to do.

“I like you enough.”

We have moved to Costa Rica. We have had to rebuild our community here. My friend said to me, “Do you know what’s so amazing about what you’re doing? You get to define the friendships and the relationships.” I said, “What do you mean by that?” He said, “Most of us end up with relationships and friendships because of history. We grew up together. We might not have a deep connection but I still invite you to my party every year because we have been friends for 30 years. You get to define what those relationships look like.”

I thought that was interesting. I started to bump into people where I’m like, “I don’t like these people, not all of them.” I’ve met some amazing people but there are a few of them. I’m going, “This is not my cup of tea. I don’t know if I would be friends with this person without these.” I found myself moving into this critical mindset. I reminded myself, “I need to also be a steward in my community.”

There’s a new ex-pat community here. I can contribute to this community and build friendships. Through that exercise, I found common ground and connections. I’ve developed more of a fondness and likability with these individuals, which only happened because of the exercise of showing up like that. Maybe we could do that in our professional lives as well, “Technically, I don’t know if I would be friends with you but let me try to build a friendly relationship with you. Let me look for commonality and find some ways.”

I fly around the world. I meet a lot of people. I do a lot of different work in coaching and training even in my team. I work very hard. I intentionally try to build a friendship with you even though sometimes I’ve had to terminate you as the boss, or we have had to lay you off or have difficult conversations along these lines. I’ve said this for years.

I don’t know if I want to work with anyone unless I have that type of friendship with them because we do spend so much time together. Back to what we have started this episode around, which was community, how I as an individual showing up in that community is going to contribute to the energy, the vibe, the community, and the behaviors that we demonstrate. I’m a believer in the ripple effect. Your ripple effect can be small or big.

Emotions are contagious. If somebody walks into the room happy, you feel it. If somebody walks into the room like Eeyore, the whole energy goes down. We’re living in interesting times. I want people to hear more of your brilliance on another topic. I would agree with you. Who wants to spend 80% of your time with people that you don’t like at all?

The whole tribalism is playing into that, “If you’re on one side of the aisle as opposed to the other, we can’t be friends.” It’s absurd. I was thinking about what you were talking about and reading some of your stuff. You said something that I say all the time when I meet people, “How may I help you?” It sounds like that’s a cornerstone for a lot of your work and how you show up. Why don’t you talk a little bit about that?

I’m a believer in serving. It’s simple. Sometimes people don’t know how to ask for help. If you’re aware and you’re conscious, and you operate with the mindset of service and helping, you might save that person’s life sometimes. I fell into this work. I did not wake up and say, “This is what I want to do with my life.” My father was the one that started the company originally.

If you’re aware, curious, and operating with the mindset of service, you might just save someone’s life.

At the young age of twenty, I found myself doing some work and having to work there. It was difficult but then I got exposed to a lot of the programming and the concepts of clinical psychology and a number of others. I got into it. I don’t know where it comes from but I do know that my purpose every day is to contribute to us being a little bit better tomorrow. Back to the ripple effect piece, if I could do that for you, then maybe you could do it for someone else.

You’re paying it forward.

How many times have you let someone in when you’re driving a car? You come from New York. Maybe you took a lot of the trains there. New York traffic, LA traffic, or Chicago traffic is crazy. What happens when someone wants to merge into the lane? What’s the first thing people do? Speed up and they close the gap. What’s going on? This becomes the I mentality, “I own the road. It’s my right to drive. You will not get into the lane.” What happens if you slow down and make some eye contact? You’re like, “Go ahead.” What happens to that person? What’s the first thing they do? They smile. What do they do when they merge into the lane? What’s the first thing they do? They stick up their hand, wave, and say, “Thank you.”

Sometimes they don’t, and that pisses me off.

What happens when you do, and they merge into the lane and don’t say thank you? You get pissed off. Maybe you flash the lights, pull up next to them, give some silence, or grumble. What’s the danger next time someone wants to merge into the lane?

Hopefully, you won’t but then you’re like, “This happened once before. That’s the brain’s memory. I’m not going to let you in.”

If I’m not careful, I start to do this unconsciously. If I’m trying to do that on a road, what happens in a grocery store? What happens in an email? We’re colleagues. I’m like, “Can you help me?” “That’s not my job. It’s not my problem.” That’s a sad and dangerous place to be. If we’re not careful of human beings, we have the propensity to be selfish. If that swings too far, that community, this world, this village, and what we’re trying to achieve is jeopardized.

I would argue it has already swung too far.

To that point, if it has swung too far, it can swing the other way as well.

It’s still swinging.

That’s the analogy of momentum. It’s hard to start something without inertia behind it. There’s a great example, which is physics. There’s a big train and a little rock in the wheel. The train is not moving. The train now starts to try to move. It can’t because there’s this tiny little rock versus when the train is bombing down the tracks. That little rock will get smashed.

Maybe what we need to do with this swing is take that inertia or that momentum and start to swing it back the next way. How do we do this for the audience? Be the wind in someone else’s sail. I like what you said earlier. Call a friend. I picked up my phone because my buddy sent me this earlier. I’m going to read it to you. It’s a simple line. I haven’t spoken to him. The last time we spoke was in mid-December 2022. This is the message I got from him, “Bro! Have an epic week.” I’m like, “That’s amazing. Thanks, brother. You too.” We started doing that social and connection thing.

As we said, phone a friend, call a friend, send a message, and reach out to someone or leaders. Let’s get people back together again. It doesn’t have to be Monday to Friday from 9:00 to 5:00. Let’s create an opportunity to break bread together. Let’s take an opportunity to brainstorm, work, create, and organize to be together because nothing is more important than that. At the end of the day, I might be wrong, so maybe you will counter it or add to it a little bit. We are not going to be able to have success organizationally and relationally if we do not take the time to be together. It’s simple.

People cannot find success organizationally and relationally if they don’t take the time to be together.

To your point, it’s not the work together. It’s the community. You’re involved with education, so maybe you can address this because I do want you to talk about all your gifts to the world in your work. It’s the ability to critically think, not to be told what to think. When I’m working with clients, executives, or anyone, we now know we can teach empathy. It’s not this woo-woo thing. We know we can increase our emotional intelligence. One of the ways we do that is through gross oversimplification. Walk a mile in the other person’s shoes. Feel what they feel.

We know now that emotional resonance creates emotional resonance. When we watch a show even though we know it’s a show, we feel the emotions because our brain lights up as if we are doing it. That creates the ability to understand and create empathy but you have to be willing to move from your position. I feel like that’s where we’re getting stuck. In business, we need to be able to see the truth for the most part, religion aside, not to offend anybody. It’s subjective but everybody acts as if their truth is the only truth, “I have no reason to hear the other side.”

Amid the pandemic, I added a little title to my Instagram. It’s encouraging dialogue. It says, “Greg Witz, CEO and President of this company, Host of this Podcast, Speaker, and Author.” The next one said, “Encouraging dialogue.” I believe that one of the things that have been lost specifically in the pandemic but not just the pandemic and over the last several years is the willingness to listen, debate, and discuss.

It’s a healthy debate.

Once upon a time, you would be like, “The sky is blue.” I would be like, “There are some clouds.” We would get into a discussion. I would say, “Dr. Patty Ann, tell me more about that. What makes you think the sky is blue, green, red, or whatnot?”

What I say all the time is, “Help me understand that.”

Dialogue with me. Isn’t dialogue, storytelling, and communication foundational to who we are as human beings? One of the things that we know about the brain is we think and feel with stories. We see and process in stories. You’re talking about empathy and stuff. I remind people a lot about this. You said empathy can be learned. There’s a side of your personality or your nurturing side, which operates forgiving. In my world, we call it nurturing parents.

What does a nurturing parent look like in a leadership role? That’s someone that’s coaching, mentoring, helping, and guiding their teens. What does it look like as a parent? It’s someone supportive, caring, patient, and understanding. What does that look like in your intimate, spousal or partner relationships? That looks like support, You’re contributing to their success.

One of the things that we know about this side of your personality is it is learned. You’re not born with this nurturing side but you learn this side of your personality. It develops and grows. That comes from your immediate parental relationships, the nurturance, your experiences, and your relationships along the way. If that is true, then back to your point, we could not just learn empathy but we can learn how to contribute to the community way better. This now negates the arguments of, “That’s not who I am.”

That’s why I don’t like a lot of the tests, the Kolbes, or the DISCs, “I’m a quick start.” I’m like, “You have to finish stuff.”

You were talking about why we’re not open to other people’s ideas. What we do in our society and world is we have so much information that we use this information to argue our point.

It’s not to learn.

It becomes to reinforce my perception or my position, “This is not something that I believe. I looked it up on Google. There it is.” People miss the point with all of this. You were talking about critical thinking before. There are two things I want to teach my kids.

How many kids do you have? How old?

I’ve got two kids. Now, in 2023, they’re 6 and 8.

You’re still in the la–la land with rainbows and lollipops. It’s ending soon. It’s on the horizon.

What’s the joke? When I was eight, I was putting peanut butter in a dog’s mouth to see if the dog can talk. Now, an eight-year-old is coding, googling, and writing. It’s incredible.

They’re still only eight.

If there are only two things I can teach my kids, this is what I would teach them. This is my opinion, not my advice. In my opinion, the two most important things we can teach our kids are critical thinking and decision-making. If we can send our kids into the world with those two skillsets, the ability to critically think and decision-making skills, those kids will do well in life because at the end of the day, how they survive is going to be based on those two things.

The danger of being a critical thinker is what we spoke about. Society and the cancel culture that we live in will quickly reprimand you for that. The pandemic did that. You saw people that were critical thinkers and were starting to ask. I don’t want to go down this road. With the cancel culture, it’s almost difficult to be a critical thinker.

Everybody is in their echo chamber. Without getting into politics, you turn on Fox if you want one opinion. You turn on CNN if you want another opinion. Never the two shall talk because when somebody tries to encourage that conversation, you get canceled. How have you seen that show up in business? There are so many ways. You need to ask good questions in coaching but I’m not someone that asks five questions. To me, that means you don’t know what you’re doing but with coaching, you have to be able to challenge the premise of the leader. What do you do when a leader is in an environment where there’s no ability to challenge the status quo?

That usually becomes the reason they’re in coaching in the first place. I’m in this environment. I need to now impact it. I find this in two different ways. If you are sent to be coached, there’s a performance issue. We need you to improve.

I wish that wasn’t the case. I wish coaching was also for true growth and development to be the best you but nobody seems to want to go there. Entrepreneurs do, not the corporate world. That has been my experience.

I also find that career females are more open to coaching than males are.

That’s 1%.

In the world, you have to be careful even bringing that up. I find that if they have been sent to be coached, it’s like pulling teeth.

It’s almost a punishment.

We’ve got two hurdles to overcome. One is moving them from prisoner to participant, “I’m a prisoner. I have to do this.” How do we move them into a place of being more motivated and optimistic about the opportunity to learn and grow? Number two is getting them to a position where they’re more self-aware. Through those exercises, we might be able to make an impact but those are always very difficult coaching candidates and clients.

The ones that are self-motivated or the ones that sign up themselves are easy. They’re the ones that say, “Give me the tools. What do I do?” We were chatting about this before. I also have a problem with the certified coach world. You’re getting these individuals running and doing a weekend course or this modularized activity over a year. They come out with a stamp and go, “I’m a coach.”

The first reason I ask them is, “Why do you want to be a coach?” The worst answer I get is, “It’s because I want to help people.” I’m like, “You’re the most selfish individual in the world because the only reason you’re doing this is to be self-serving. Your ego, motivation, and perception is that you’ve given.” I said earlier that part of my purpose is to serve and help. That’s a little bit different. I don’t coach because I want to help people. I coach because, in a lot of cases, I have to.

What do you mean by that?

Coaching is a tasking exercise. It takes a lot out of an individual like a therapist, a psychologist, and a coach.

I’m a coach. I do the coaching. I have that as the platform but it’s coaching. It’s exhausting.

It’s exhausting because you are emoting. You have to let go of whatever distractions, stresses, problems, tasks, and things that you have to focus on because you have to give yourself to this other person. It’s a selfless exercise. That’s draining. If you’re not careful, your cup depletes. You’re still coaching, and now you’re coaching from a depleted cup. That’s one.

I do coach from a selfish perspective because I do truly believe it’s one of my gifts. I don’t have many. I have maybe two. Coaching is selfish. I do feel like it is a gift that I have, and I have the responsibility to give.

That’s a responsibility, not selfishness. You’re saying, “I have this gift. I have a responsibility to use it, demonstrate it, and deliver it. Otherwise, it’s a waste of talent.” Back to the certified coach, they’re coming in here and asking questions, “What are your goals?” It’s useless. Coaching has as much to do with challenging their perceptions, guiding them, training them, and using tools. Sometimes my coaching sessions have me speaking and telling them more than facilitating the conversation. It depends on the candidate.

I tell people sometimes, “You’re never supposed to tell them what to do.” They don’t need you.

I think about this. I want to improve my golf swing. Pickleball is a huge sport lately. We have been playing.

Do you play?

Yeah.

I want to learn.

It’s amazing. I was a tennis player before. Pickleball is like that. It’s in between ping-pong and tennis. It’s awesome. What I love about it the most is the social community, the laughter, and the getting together. I want to improve pickleball, and I call a coach. If he starts to ask me, “What do you think would be some good goals for me to focus on? How do you think I can get there?” If I went down that question road, I would fire him. “Do I hold it like this? Should I swing like that? Where should I stand? Guide me. Direct me. Tell me.” That’s an important part for the coaches out there.

Assuming you are the expert, I’m not going to go to a poor man and ask him, “How do I get rich?”

That’s the other problem we see in the coaching role. You got people that are fresh twenty being life coaches.

I don’t even know what a life coach is.

Neither do I.

To me, it’s, “Get a friend.”

I once posted a video that said, “What advice would you give someone if they wanted to become a life coach?” My advice was, “Don’t do it because, at the end of the day, you shouldn’t be a life coach. Maybe what you should do is work, run a company, become an expert, and do all of that. Become successful first if you have a model that you get to share, if you have a concept that works, or if you have tools that you’ve developed along the way.” I’ll often ask this. In a meeting with a prospect, an HR person asked me, “Are any of your coaches certified?” I was like, “Here we go. The answer is yes.”

That’s a classic HR question.

What I didn’t tell her was, “We don’t send the certified coaches out to come and do this type of work because they are not equipped, skilled, nor experienced to go and do that work but if you want the stamp, I’ve got a couple of people on staff that have that stamp. It’s super easy for them to do.” That was the thought around certification. I like what you said. If you’re an expert, then you have something to teach.

How do you vet your coaches? I don’t want to name names but I’ve coached people that have had access to supposedly good coaches or the coaches’ coaches. I wasn’t so impressed.

To be very truthful, they are few and far between. They are difficult to find as a training development company and as a coaching business that operates in this industry.

That’s what I do. I’m a boutique. You’re huge.

One of the most difficult things to do is to recruit facilitators and coaches. It’s a little bit of luck, time, the right place, and the right opportunity but what I look for most is if I’m speaking to someone, was I moved in that conversation? If I came and met Dr. Patty Ann, we were chatting away, and in our interaction, I’m like, “That was super intelligence. That was so helpful. She said this and that,” that’s my first cue, “This person has probably got something here.” The next thing is, “What does Dr. Patty Ann do? She’s a PhD in Clinical Psychology. She runs a practice. She’s in it. She’s doing it.”

She doesn’t say she’s doing it. She’s doing it.

The third thing I look for is, “What is your unique unicorn special factor?” One of the most recent coaches that we onboarded is a specialist in emotional intelligence. That’s all she does. She teaches emotional intelligence to leaders. She’s coaching emotional intelligence. She has spent years working on these different models. She has also a facilitator background. She’s got all these other things. When I met her, I was impacted. I was like, “I want to listen to her.” When people show up with, “I’m interested in being a coach. Here’s my resume. I’m certified,” there’s a solid chance that it doesn’t even cross the desk because, at that point, it’s someone checking the box, “I’ve got this. I should be able to now do this.”

It’s so interesting you say that. As you know, coaching is now the new best thing. Quite frankly and humbly, many people are asking me to come on board and be a coach with them or for them. One person asked me that was involved was very high–end and connected to running the executive coaching program. My skillset in emotional intelligence is how you get into a lot of companies. This guy had no coaching experience at all. He’s successful in a numbers way but I would daresay he’s an interpersonal genius. Let’s put it that way.

We started to have a conversation. He was trying to lump me into other areas that he was building. I paid executive coaches. Mind you, I was going to run it. I’m not getting paid to get that but my life coaches and my executive coaches are the same things. I’m like, “Stop the presses.” I wouldn’t even continue the conversation with him because I already knew he didn’t know what he was talking about. It’s so disheartening to me. You will meet people, “What do you do?” “I’m a coach.” A little obnoxiously, I try to be soft, “I’m curious. What qualifies you to do that?”

That’s what you said about the certifications and stuff. Here’s what I listen for with anybody even if I want to work with someone. I’m curious how you feel about this. I want to feel their passion for it. For example, when we will go out to new people or a party, my husband will say to me in the car on the way there, “When people ask you what you do for work, they don’t want to know.” I get so excited. The person will turn to my husband and say, “She loves this.” He’s like, “You have no idea.” Is that a huge factor for you?

It’s important. Passion is the fuel for purpose. You might have a strong purpose but if you don’t have that passion behind it or that enthusiasm, that intensity won’t come through because it’s the passion that’s going to push you through those crappy times. You don’t have the energy when you’re tired and when business isn’t going well. You’re completely drained because you’ve spent day upon day coaching and helping. It’s the passion that’s going to fuel that. That’s important. I’m a little weary of people that are too passionate at the risk of making you too passionate. Maybe they’re too enthusiastic about it and that type of stuff because there’s a potential of being disingenuous.

Passion is the fuel for purpose.

It’s dishonesty.

It’s not authentic.

Can’t you pick that up? You’re like, “They’re so full of crap. They’re trying too hard.”

Hopefully, you got a little bit of that radar that kicks in. The funny thing is if you slow down enough, shut up long enough, and listen long enough, people will show you exactly who they are. You need to let them do so.

I tell people all the time, “When people show you who they are, believe them the first time.”

You said a few things where I’m like, “We got those same lines.”

I am feeling a little self-conscious though. I’ll be honest. When I was saying that about my passion, I’m no dummy but I couldn’t do any other work because I don’t do anything I don’t want to do. If I don’t care, I’m not going to do it.

You are authentic. When you use the word passion, I hear what you’re saying versus what I was describing. Maybe we will use a different word. It’s the overly excited and enthusiastic individual that is saying everything as a pitch. I try to stay away from coaches and even friends still don’t know, in some capacity, what they do.

What do you do? I freak out because I have a Doctorate. I’m a therapist. I’m like, “I have nothing to do with therapy. That’s a pathology model. Coaching is very different.”

I am the CEO of a training and development company.

Tell us about your company.

Witz Education is a training and development company that does leadership development, sales, a lot of work around culture, and executive coaching. This was in the late ‘80s. The original name of the company was something called The Personal Development Institute.

Was that when your dad owned it?

Correct. What we did was we ran personal development programs and intrapersonal skills all built from the domain of psychology. I used to take this as an insult but my ex-partner would say it was a compliment. He would call me a street-smart psychologist.

That is a compliment.

I would be like, “What do you mean?” He is a PhD in Clinical and Behavioral Psychology. That was always my insecurity with him. I was like, “You’re the PhD. I don’t have a PhD.”

Do you know what PhD stands for, coming from someone that has it? BS is your Bachelor’s. MS is more of it. PhD is piled high and deep. You will never feel intimidated by that again. Don’t get me wrong. I am very proud of my degrees. I work hard but there’s a lot of bull in it.

As you should be. If I was a different academic student, I probably would have gone down the road but I suffered in barrels in school. I had a hard time academically. Interestingly enough, it was more with the environment and the teacher versus the actual subject because I would go fail in one subject, and the next year, I would be getting 99% in it. They would be like, “We don’t understand how this kid goes from failing in the same subject to acing it.” It was the teacher. It was my relationship with that leader or that coach. We’re back to street-smart psychology.

Street smarts are huge. That’s what I tell people, “Do you want my thirteen years of college or my The Kid from Brooklyn response?” Street smarts will get you every time.

He would say, “You’ve done as much learning, research, reading, and adopting all these concepts as I have. You did it in a roundabout way. You went this way. I went straight.” For the audience, I’m doing this big circle around the mountain versus going straight up the mountain.

You did experiential, which is always more valuable than theory.

That was always the way I learned. There’s a guy by the name of Kolb. He talks about adult learning and the different stages that we have to go through. I’m a concrete experience type of learner, “Give it to me, I’ll start touching it, feeling it, playing with it, pushing it, doing it, and then I’ll start to process and go through.” The company branding is, “Making humans better humans.” At the end of the day, from day one, we have been doing personal development but in the ‘90s, we couldn’t sell this because corporate didn’t want personal development. It was taboo neither did individuals.

We’re back to Jack Welch’s imprint.

I remember so many people coming in the early days being like, “This is confidential. I can’t have my company, my wife, or my husband know that I’m doing this course because it’s taboo.” I’ve got to learn communication skills, emotional management, and assertiveness. I need to be more assertive with my kids. I don’t want them to know that I’m not assertive. Self-esteem was a big piece of that program, which is developing our confidence and understanding the difference between self-esteem, self-image, and what are all the factors that go into this.

We changed the name to Witz. That’s the name ever since. It created quite a strong brand. Our effort and our purpose line are making humans better humans. I don’t care whether you’re a leader, a supervisor, a manager, an entrepreneur, a mom, a dad, a kid, or an adult. At the end of the day, you need to develop your people skills and interpersonal skills. You need to work your muscles of self-awareness. Self-awareness is a very difficult topic.

What you were talking about earlier with the whole world of the assessments, the Kolbes, the DISCs, the Meyers, the parrots, the animal, the fish, and the color is all known as what we call preference-based assessments. The first thing to understand about preference-based assessment is that every time you fill out that assessment, you can get a different result because it is the mindset or the perspective that you’re operating within the moment asking those questions versus a validated personality assessment. It doesn’t matter how long or how many times you fill that out. You are getting that same result because your blueprint is your blueprint. Your personality is your personality.

In our personality assessment, what we see most commonly happen is the person’s self-scores or self-evaluation remains the same year after year but what happens is other people’s profiles of them start to change because there’s a consciousness in how they’re behaving. Back to self-awareness being a difficult topic, this requires us to acknowledge our dysfunction more than our function. The true exercise is going, “What do I not do? Where is this not working for me? What are the muscles I need to develop?” It’s not “Look at me. I’m an analytical personality. I’m intelligent. I process wide loads of information at a very quick pace.” There’s your narcissistic personality being inflamed.

A fixed mind feeds into a fixed mindset.

We’re reinforcing what I was looking for. It’s my confirmation bias or my perception. If we could go through that type of exercise and then pack on tools thereafter, which is going to allow me to communicate differently with my kids, how do I respond instead of react? You see it all over social media, “Parenting hack number one.” I saw a post saying, “There is no such thing as parenting hacks. You’re screwed.” That was the post. The one thing that we’re never taught well is how to navigate people.

I always tell people, “Raise your hand if you took a course in history and math. Raise your hand if you ever took a course in emotional intelligence.” There’s zero.

Where do we learn our emotional intelligence from? Our nurturance and parental relationship. I grew up with a very critical reactive father. He passed away suddenly.

He did interpersonal development.

The reason the company started originally was he was so mad. When I say mad, he was a raging, critical, and aggressive personality. You didn’t know what you were getting from him. He passed away at 60 suddenly from cancer but I believe that what killed him was his anger and his emotions. My mother said to me, “Your father’s greatest gift to you was his death.” What she meant by that was we are two peas in a pod. We’re genetically, emotionally, and personality identical.

She said, “What he’s given you is everything that you need to work on. If you’re not going to end up down that road, it’s because you’re not going to carry that type of anger. You’re going to learn different tools to manage it.” He created the company because, in his madness, he needed an answer. He needed to know, “How do I deal with my anxiety and my depression? How do I manage my raging anger? What do I do to communicate more articulately?”

He turned to psychology. When he went to psychology, he went, “I don’t understand this. The principles are too big. The concepts are not relatable.” Here’s what he was very brilliant at doing with the help of a few others and other psychologists that were part of the programs. He developed these programs in a more simplistic manner, creating new terminology for some of this stuff and taking a process that was quite complicated and simplifying it. The whole exercise or the entire motivation for all of this stuff was, “Can I use it at the moment? Is there something I could use at the moment?” That was the birth of the organization. Years later, the organization is Witz.

Did you ever work with him?

For years.

How did that go down?

As long as you understood what the pecking order was, it was fine.

You were not the top dog.

The other side of this was that something interesting started to happen throughout the years of the company. Clients started to say, “Can you send the son instead of the father?” Why? If I was to toot my horn or put a feather in my cat, it’s because I have a gift. You talk about a gift when it comes down to emotional intelligence and coaching. I have that gift as well when it comes down to facilitating, training, and coaching. That’s how I got into this. It was forced. The way I took it on was like, “I’ve been told to do this. Let me go do it.” For many years, I worked for him, not for the purpose of the work.

It was very difficult working. There were early days when he would come into my office and go off yelling. Eventually, I said to him, “Dad, I can’t do it anymore. Every day you come into my office, you yell and scream, ‘F this and F that.’ It’s abuse. You don’t do this with anyone else. I get berated, attacked, and hammered every day.” It was 4:00 PM. The door banged. I would cringe, going, “It’s 3:30. It’s 30 minutes before this happens.” He looked at me and said, “Are you mad? You’re the only person I can communicate like this with. I come in because who else can I share and talk to?” That’s when I realized. I was like, “There’s something different happening.” There were many years of running interference.

What was the difference?

The difference was he wasn’t yelling at me. He was emotionally vomiting. He couldn’t do that with anyone else.

You were his whipping boy.

In some regards but when I realized that I wasn’t on the end of the whip, that changed everything. For people out there and the audience, one of the things that we can control even if we’re in these types of relationships is our perception, “Are we being whipped? Is this person reaching out for help?” There’s a fine line between toxic behavior in relationships but sometimes, it’s not the person always attacking. Sometimes what they’re doing is screaming for help.

Always, hurt people hurt people.

At an unconscious level, what that person is trying to do is to get people to empathize, “I need this person to feel my pain because all of a sudden, something happens. I’m not this weird person on an island by myself and the only person that feels it. There’s relatability.”

Your existence is validated.

“Hopefully, I can share the pain. The burden is not just on me.” That’s how the business began but now, the work we do is everywhere from the government to banks, extreme and large rollouts, and individual entrepreneurs.

What you said about the rollouts I find interesting too. I didn’t realize you did that. I didn’t even do this. When you’re going to roll out something new, how do you handle the objections? You work with the leaders. Who’s going to be the naysay? Who’s the cheerleader? Who’s going to say, “We can’t do it. That will never work.” Most new things don’t work because they’re not processed appropriately. It’s not that it’s not a good idea. The leaders don’t know how to get the buy-in. You have to get the buy-in.

We’re very gifted in what we do because our clients year after year are still working with these organizations and still training.

That is so awesome.

It speaks to the credibility of the organization but also the impact of the work. This happens often. I had a guy call me. His name was Dan. He was like, “I did your program.” It’s a five-module program. Those modules go over about three months. There’s one-on-one coaching in between. It’s developing interpersonal skills. He says, “It changed my life. Back then, you used to give us these cassette tapes. The whole program was recorded on audio. I still have some of them. I’m wondering if you still have those because I’ve lost them. I would love to listen to them again.” I said, “We don’t have any cassette tapes anymore. I’ve got CDs. I’ve got that program on iTunes but you can download the MP3s.” MP3 blew his mind. I said, “I’ve got something better for you.” We offered something called free-peat. Once you’ve come and done our programs, you could come and redo that program for the rest of your life. He came back to repeat the program. What was so magical about that is he was able to recall so many of the concepts and the tools from years prior.

He internalized it.

This is why we get out of bed every morning. This is the phone call you want to receive. I got a call in December 2022 from this individual. You could tell she sounded like she was elderly. She almost sounded like a grandma, “Hello there, dear. I’m wondering.” It turns out they run this huge global business. It’s a family business. The son is now the President-CEO. He has been running it for a few years. She’s retired. She’s like, “I did the program years ago. It changed my life. I want to buy that program again for my son and give it to him as a Christmas gift.” I thought, “This is powerful. This is impactful.” The work we do is that. That’s what the company is about.

That’s great. You’ve been so generous with your time. I have a couple of more questions for you. What’s the last book that you reread and why?

There are all the big ones, Highly Effective People and How to Win Friends. I was talking about this. It’s Gary Vaynerchuk’s book called The Thank You Economy. It’s one of his earlier books. It is his first book. At the end of the day, how do we show up in this economy when it comes down to creating success? It’s an excellent book. I’ve got a few others that I could drop. If you’re in sales, there’s an author by the name of Jeffrey Gitomer. His big famous book is called The Sales Bible but the one book that I picked up again is called Little Platinum Book: 32.5 Strategies to Ring Your Own (Cash) Register.

It’s a story of the guy that was selling cash registers back in the day. No one bought the cash register. After no one wanted to buy the cash register, he went up and said, “I’ve got this machine. You put money in it.” People went, “I’m not interested. Thank you very much. I’ve got a little book.” He changed his approach and said, “How do you know how much money people owe you?” People said, “I’ve got this little book here that I keep written down.” “What happens if you lose that book?” “I don’t know who owes me money.” “Can I show you something called a receipt?”

He sold the receipt, and the machine happened to produce the receipt. It’s an excellent book. You sell them the outcome or the solution, not the machine. The other part of the story that I found so interesting is all the sales training he started doing with his team because his team started to build. It was more around physical health, mental health, and sales training. He would make them work out. He would do mindset exercises and stuff even before it was called mindset.

There’s one more question. What is the one song that you cannot live without?

No Woman No Cry by Bob Marley.

Why?

I’ve traveled the world, and I’ve had an incredible experience doing so. That is a song that has popped up in some of the most extraordinary times and places around the world. It has left such a visceral memory. It’s a very popular song but it’s one of those songs that has always been around.

I love what you said, “A visceral memory.” What is it you want people to know? Answer the question I wasn’t smart enough to ask.

I thought all your questions are great.

Thank you.

One thing we want people to be reminded of is at the end of the day, the power of choice and decision-making is the thing that we need to lean on sometimes the most. What we tend to do as people is we don’t recognize the power of having a choice and making a decision. I talk a lot about this. Action creates the path. Sometimes we’re so busy trying to figure out, “What is the path? What is the decision I should make? Is this going to be the right one? What if we make this?” People spin themselves out of control. Sometimes it’s simply by making the decision to start walking that path. The path will present itself. The path will become clearer but the path will only become clearer when you’re walking down it, not when you’re standing back and trying to search out this path so much.

There’s too much paralysis by analysis.

Action creates the path. Take one step at a time and know the path can take different directions. We can veer left and right. We can veer off the path sometimes but we will find our way back there.

You will create a path that didn’t exist.

Lean into the power of choice and decision-making because, at the end of the day, that is going to take you to your path. It is the action that will start to make the path.

I love that. How can the readers get more of your wisdom? Where should we send them? Make your full pitch unapologetically.

First, let’s promote Dr. Patty Ann. If you like this episode, don’t forget to like, subscribe, and share it because, at the end of the day, it’s about sharing these types of stories.

It’s the ultimate connector right there.

If you want to get in touch with me, I am all over social media. We do a lot of content. We post multiple times a day. The exercise is always there. We’re sharing good thought leadership. I’m Greg Witz. I’m going to pop up everywhere from TikTok to LinkedIn. On Instagram, you could search Greg Witz, and I’ll pop up. You will see a little purple square with my face in it but the actual handle is @GMWitz. My website is also super easy, WitzEducation.com. You can come and see different programs, outlines, and stuff that we’re running. We also have a podcast called The betterHUMAN Podcast that I host where we meet amazing people like Dr. Patty Ann. We get to turn the tables on her and ask her all these questions.

I would love to be a guest. If that’s an invitation, the answer is yes.

It’s a total invitation. We will follow up after this episode and get that all scheduled. The betterHUMAN Podcast is on all the main audio platforms. Check that out. That’s where you could find me.

Thank you. You have been so generous with your time and your wisdom. This was one of the most enjoyable interviews I’ve done. I appreciate it sincerely from the bottom of my heart. That concludes this episode. I don’t have to tell you to like, comment, share, and subscribe because Greg already told you to do so. Thank you so much. Until next time, be well.

 

Important Links

• Witz Education
• Highly Effective People
• How to Win Friends
• The Thank You Economy
• The Sales Bible
• Little Platinum Book: 32.5 Strategies to Ring Your Own (Cash) Register
• TikTok – Greg Witz
• LinkedIn – Greg Witz
• @GMWitz – Instagram
• The betterHUMAN Podcast – Apple Podcasts
• https://www.Facebook.com/WitzEducationInc
• Greg@WitzEducation.com