We shrunk Bryan Boyd in order to create a safe space!
Watch as we talk about how Chicago's lowest-performing school improves due to psychological safety. The principal gave the students a safe space to learn. Learn how just knowing about emotional intelligence and psychological safety won't change behavior. Awareness of actions is the first step, evaluating is the next.
Today we have Brian Boyd and we're going to talk about psychological safety and emotional intelligence. Bryan is a director of learning and development at Grand Pacific Resorts. He's a lifelong learner that wants to provide skills for people to grow. His goals and aspirations are to run a large-scale, learning and development department. He's been Teacher of the Year, owns a business with his wife, and has two beautiful daughters.
EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE 2.0
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(Transcript has been edited for clarity and grammar, some errors may still exist...)
Rahel
Hello, everybody. And welcome back to the interchange where we discuss everything and anything to do with interpersonal communication. I am Rahel and this is Matt, and we're your host. And today we have an awesome guest. Tell us about it.
Matt
That's right. Today we have Bryan Boyd. He's a director of l&d at Grand Pacific resorts. He's a lifelong learner that wants to provide skills for people to grow. His goals and aspirations are to run a large scale, l&d development department. Alright, let me say that again, his goals and aspirations are to run a large l&d now, his goals and aspirations are to run a large scale l&d department. He's been Teacher of the Year, owns a business with his wife and has two beautiful daughters. Today. Today we're going to talk about psychological safety and emotional intelligence. Welcome, Brian.
Bryan
Thanks, guys. Appreciate it. Glad to be here. And I'm excited to have an enriching conversation with both of you. Awesome.
Matt
So now Oh, usually you asked the first question, but I don't have it. Oh. So the first one,
Rahel
okay. Okay. All right. Okay. I'm spacing out. Right. So as the first question to set the tone on an icebreaker, can you tell us something fun or quirky about you?
Bryan
Oh, wow. Something fun or quirky. I have visited every single state in the United States. Wow, I have been to all 50 states. Wow, is that driving or flying all of it? That's all of it. So I mean, it's by car, plane and boat. So yeah, the way I visited Alaska was on a cruise. So I went on a cruise to Alaska. But my parents both worked in the education industry. So they had summers off.
And it was their idea to take a road trip every summer and we would take three to four weeks every summer and just pick different parts of the United States and travel around. And over the course of that combined with you know, other just vacations here and there. I have, I have been to all 50 states. Oh my goodness, I'm so jealous. Whatever, it's fair to be fair on some of those states were literally like, you just drove through a little bit like didn't like spend, you know, time there or maybe one night but I have stepped foot in all 50 states
Matt
you stepped foot in there. That counts. Cool. So are there any states that do that? Were your favorites?
Bryan
Yeah, I mean, I'm a mountain person. You know, I'm from Salt Lake. So I love the mountains. I was born and raised in the mountains. So I love Montana. I absolutely love Idaho. I loved Alaska, Alaska is just one of the most breathtaking places I've ever been to in my life. But then, of course, you know, I love little island life. And I love the island of Hawaii. It's absolutely beautiful. So I can sit on a beach or I can sit on a ski slope all day long. That's cool.
Matt
Now I hear you, Tom and myself. I really love the Rockies. And yeah, why once and I love it. Yes. Beautiful out there. Yeah.
Bryan
So you know, um, but I also loved the areas of the United States that are very historical. So I love Boston, I love doing the Freedom Trail in Boston. And just learning about kind of how this you know, how the United States was formed. I loved my dad, who was a high school history teacher. So he would always take us to different places that were like battlefields or like Native American battlefields of Gettysburg, or just different things like that. And, you know, you go and experience those types of things.
And it's, it's, it's pretty inspiring when you when you're there, and you're kind of in the moment of what maybe was like, when, when these types of things were happening, which, which then in turn, you know, when you visit other countries or other places, you want to learn about their history as well. So it's, you know, not just always about going on vacation for pleasure. Sometimes it's about learning about other places, like you said, I'm a lifelong learner, and I geek out about that stuff. So Oh, that's awesome.
Matt
That's cool. Yeah, we live in North Carolina. So there's a lot of War history, civil war. Wars were pretty cool.
Bryan
Yeah, yeah. It's, it's wild, going to some of those battlefields. I will never forget being in Gettysburg. And it was, it was just almost eerie. It was like a very foggy morning, kind of cold, and was very silent, and was like, wow, this place is kind of freaking me out. Yeah, right. Right.
Matt
Very nice. Very nice. So yeah, we'll jump into it. Talking about psychological safety. So just what are your thoughts about psychological safety? What can you tell us about?
Bryan
Yeah, I think when it comes to psychological safety, you know, it, it's, it's everywhere, you know, it's in order to, to be productive in any form of society, you need to be psychologically safe. And you know, there's a lot of, unfortunately, there's a lot of stuff going on in our own country right now, where there's a lot of people that feel psychologically unsafe in their own communities, which is very unfortunate. And it starts with building culture.
You know, the only way you can develop psychological safety in any realm is through the culture that you have or the culture that you develop. You know, you have to be psychologically safe in your own household, with your family, you know, your children have to be psychologically safe with you as their parents, you have to be psychologically safe with your partner, to have deep-rooted conversations, to trust that they are going to listen to you and be there for you and not condemn or criticize you. And then all of that, you know, all of that stems and roots into everything that we do in our work environment.
And I think the work environment's psychological safety is so important because we spend so much time at work. It's just now really something that's coming to the forefront. And, you know, I know I read a study a while ago, I think it was four or five years ago that Google came out with a study around psychological safety. Well,, they came around, they came out to study around the culture of their company, and, and they wanted to find out what was making certain departments more successful than other departments around culture, around business initiatives around revenue, all these types of different measurables.
And the one thing that they came back to that was leaps and bounds over everything else was the psychological safety of the associates or the employees in those departments. If those people felt psychologically safe, they were seeing a huge ROI in those areas within the business. And I think it just speaks to how important those types of things are. And, you know, I've worked in both environments, I've worked in environments where I've felt psychologically safe, and I've worked in environments where I have not, and, you know, the feeling of not feeling safe in a work environment, and then not saying physically unsafe, you know, there's mental safety, and there's emotional safety, we're going to hit on emotional intelligence in a little bit. You know, it's, it's really just, it makes you either perform or not perform, to your capabilities in.
And I have, I taught in the Chicago Public Schools for two years, and I taught in a very intense work environment, very intense work environment, mice, the elementary school that I worked out was a K eight elementary school. And it was the lowest-performing Elementary School in all of the Chicago Public Schools. It was in District 12, area 12. And it was on the south side of Chicago. And it was in a neighborhood called Englewood. And it was, it was insanely intense. And psychological safety. It was really interesting because we had a new principal come in, that really developed this fantastic culture, and developed this psychological safety not only the, with the administrator or with the faculty, but with the kids.
And that was so important to their learning. I mean, you could see it was literally like overnight, that these children just blossomed, it was amazing. And in the first year that we were there, with Him as our administrator, our test scores rose to Above Average, we went from the lowest-performing Elementary School in all of the Chicago Public Schools, which probably put us close to the lowest performing school in like the nation, to an above average, or just an average performing school in just a year. And that was all due to psychological safety. The things that we provided for the parents and the things that we provided for the students outside of just their day to day coming and going from school, it gave them a space to learn and it gave them a space to feel safe. And when you can do that, when you feel that way. It's just amazing what the human body will do. And it was a true testament to why psychological safety is so important.
Matt
No, I agree. And just in case any listeners out there are familiar with psychological safety, psychological safety is the concept where you have enough courage and bravery to speak out to share your ideas, your thoughts, your opinions, without any fear of being criticized or condemned for what you say. And I think a lot of people, like you said in the workplace, and schools and everywhere, don't feel like they can say what they want to say what they they feel like saying they're afraid like, if I say this, my boss will be upset, you won't like my idea, or I'll look stupid, or, you know, I'll get yelled at.
And probably a lot of that is maybe coming from parents, I think, as parents, you know, your kid does something wrong. And you're like, why did you do that? You know, and so then I'm not gonna say anything anymore. I'll just keep my mouth shut, you know? Yeah. But it's Yeah, that's really cool. And so, can you tell me a little bit more? Tell us a little bit more about what kind of steps were put into place? How did you teach the faculty and the children this concept of psychological safety?
Bryan
Yeah, it's, you know, it's difficult. It's a difficult thing to teach. Because it's so much about awareness and when we talk about emotional intelligence, um, you know, emotional intelligence is the same thing. You can tell somebody how to be emotionally intelligent, right? You can tell them till they're blue till you're blue in the face, well, you should do this. But if they're not aware, like they have their own emotions, it doesn't matter. It's just it's not, it's never going to change the way that they behave. So with psychological safety, it's very similar in regards to that concept.
We could tell our teachers how to create a psychologically safe environment. And we could tell our students, you are safe, this is a safe space like this if you are safe here. But if we aren't living up to that expectation, and creating that culture, that it's not going to happen, no matter how often we tell them that they are safe, or that the environment is safe. Or this is what you can do to be a psychologically safe administrator, or instructor or teacher or whatever. It's about, are you aware of the actions that you're doing to create that safe space?
And let's take a look at your space. Let's take a look at who you are and what you do. And then let's evaluate how you could make it more psychologically safe. So to your point, like with the kids, like with your own children, you know, they say something and you say something back to them, and all of a sudden, they're feeling, and they're like, Wow, I didn't know that they were going to react that way. Because I felt that what I was saying was a safe environment. And that it's reflecting on that and saying, how could I address that differently? What could I say next time? Or? Or what kind of conversation Could I derive from that? per night interaction?
And then just continually reassessing yourself? You know, I always learned about emotional intelligence is that you're never going to be 100% emotionally intelligent, it's just impossible. It's one of those traits where you have to work on it every day of your life. Because you're, you're human. At the end of the day, we are not robots, we are human, and our emotions can get the best of us. I have a three-year-old daughter. I never thought my emotions would get the best of me as much as they can with her, right? And it's, and I have to just, I have to take a step back. And I have to be willing to reflect and say, Okay, this is how I handled it this time, how can I handle it better next time and when you're willing to do that, and when you're willing to get people to understand that, that is what you need to do.
That's when you can really transform that culture. And that's what that principle did. So well. He was the catalyst because that's what he did. He was the leader, because he led by example, he did not tell us that this is what we needed to do. He showed us how to do it. He showed us through His actions through the way he was thoughtful in his conversations, his receiving of information, his reflecting of information, and then responding to that information. It was masterful, it was magical, and he did it in such a short amount of time. I think that that's what it boils down to. You have to be the example setter, and you have to lead by that example.
Matt
Yeah, no, I think that's amazing. And, and you're I, when I look at just everything in general that we learned, it seems to all come down to behavior. And in what you said is true, I think were the first step to changing any kind of behavior, whether you want to go to the gym, or go on a diet or be more emotionally intelligent, you need to recognize what's going on inside of your brain inside of your body and realize, okay, this is what's happening.
And then once you recognize that, then you can say, Well, what, what behavior can I replace, but in different behavior than I do to replace that old behavior. And it's not easy, because, you know, the neural networks, your brain creates these ways of doing things throughout your life. And it's hard to get those neurons to change positions in your brain. So it takes work.
Bryan
Yeah, it's very difficult.
Matt
And so, as far as emotional intelligence Do you lose my train of thought, have to edit this time out. So you've talked about, you know, emotional intelligence in, in the school and also at home. And I agree that, you know, it's something that should be taught at a young age. Is it something that you teach to your children?
Bryan
Great question. Great, great question. It is something that I'm trying to do for my child, but it has, it has challenged me. I don't know how to do it. quite yet, I'm getting there. We talk a lot. So it's funny, we always when my wife and I are or when we're all sitting at the dinner table, you know, my wife and I Converse back and forth, and my daughter is three.
And she's got a pretty good vocabulary for three years old. She's, she's, she's getting to where we can start to have dialogue, back and forth and meaningful dialogue. And so we'll be talking and, you know, of course, she'll want to interject and, and then we, you know, we try to tell her, Hey, you know, we're having a conversation, would you like to be a part of the conversation? Because, you know, if you want to be a part of the conversation, that's great, but you have to, you have to provide something to the conversation, you don't just get a babble.
Because it's rude to interrupt, right? Like, you're gonna be able to go straight. And then and so we've had that. And so we'll be talking now. And now she will say to us, she'll say, Dad, I want to, I want to be a part of the conversation. Yeah, she'll actually use that word. So at a very, like, low level of awareness. You know, I think what that exercise or what I've, what we've done to help her be successful in that is her understanding, like, the emotion is that she wants to be involved with what we're doing, right. But it's also important for us to make her aware that it's like sharing like conversations, or like, it's like sharing a toy, right? When you're speaking, I'm listening.
And when you're, when I'm speaking, you're listening, like you have to share time if you don't share time, then people are gonna wanna have a conversation with you, because you're being rude. And it's the same concept with a toy. Like, if you're playing with the toy, then you get to play it, I'm going to wait. And, and it's, it's kind of funny how those two things really interact with each other. Right? You wouldn't really think that a conversation is like sharing a toy, but it really is.
And so now getting her to understand the emotion that she's having of what she wants to be engaged with us because she's excited, I would put the emotion is excited. But she also needs to be mindful of where we are and what we're doing. And if she wants to be a part of that she has to emotionally tell us without crying or screaming or interrupting. And being like Mom, Mom, Mom, Mom, mom, just because her and I, my wife and I are having a conversation, and she wants to be involved. And she says, Mommy, Mommy, Mommy, Mommy, Mommy, like, that is kind of essence. I think the route of developing emotional intelligence, but I don't know. I'm trying, I don't know.
Unknown Speaker
You know, I'm taking notes over here because of your field as well. And it's a seven-year-old who just jumped into the conversation. So I'm taking notes, I'm gonna try that.
Bryan
Well, I'll let you know that a few years out works. But it's, it's I mean, I'm not saying by any means. Like, she does that every time. But I'm kind of planting the seed in that regard, you know, but there are things where, oh, my gosh, she does not want to go to bed at night. You know, and that is like, we have been fighting that one for like three months.
And we're like, we don't know what to do. together. So we're not alone now I know. That I think that is where my emotional intelligence gets the best of me, right? Because it's the end of the day, I'm tired. I've, you know, been working all day. And when I came home, we interacted with the kids. And now it's, you know, we kind of want a little bit of our own time. And so it's trying to get her to understand the importance of sleep, the importance of our time, the importance of her time. And, man, I'll tell you what gets you emotional intelligence. That's, that's where it gets me and I'm gonna own that. I'll own that all day long, but it gets to me.
Matt
Absolutely. Yeah, they can definitely test your emotions. Yeah. And I noticed that you know, maybe it's, maybe it's a cliche, or it's society, but it seems like the the, the girls because we have three girls 18 nine, and three, three, and then two boys, boys 15. In other words, seven. And so the boys seem to have more difficulty expressing their emotions or understanding their emotions than girls. So it makes me think there's maybe some genetic part to that.
But I watched a TED talk yesterday. I wish I could remember who it was, but it was about this lady who had lived through 30 years of research and data on, on the brain and on emotions. And what she came up with, after looking at all this data and MRI scans and neuroscientists was that we all have emotions, emotions are built into us. But the people used to think that the emotions were the emotions. Are they just kind of running their course, like you don't have that much control over them? And she said, No, the data clearly points out that the emotions are just, they're sitting there by themselves, it's us, and our memory and our brain that decides how to interpret the way our body feels.
So your body can feel a certain way. It can feel kind of uncomfortable and sweaty, and you can say, Okay, I'm nervous. Or maybe you're just hot, you know, or maybe you didn't get enough sleep. So she says, it's really this is our brain is interpreting how we feel and saying, that's this emotion, when it may not be so sure. It was really cool. Yeah,
Bryan
yeah, that's, uh, I love that I would love to watch that Ted Talk. Because, um, you know, in the book, emotional intelligence 2.0, they really hit on that is, how do you identify your feeling with the actual emotion? And it's so easy to be confused with your emotion, you think it's actually something else? Or do you think it's at a different level than it actually is? Right? So there are different types of emotions. But then there's also different levels of those types of emotions, you know, everything from extreme to low? Whereas I'm upset, or I'm furious, right?
Those are two different levels of anger. And being able to not only see like, what is your emotion, that you're feeling? Why are you feeling it? But at what level? Are you feeling it? And then what do you need to do to either bring that level down or get control of that emotion in another way? That stuff is so fascinating to me, it's wild, it's just, it's so crazy, the way the brain and how quickly the brain just gathers all this information. And then all of a sudden, you're feeling a certain way, it's so wild. To me,
Matt
That is too much. It's just it's, you know, your brain from what I've learned is, it's, it's looking at all the past experiences that you've had, right? It can grab all of them. That's way too overwhelming. So it grabs little bits and pieces, and every time it grabs those bits and pieces, it's making a prediction based on what it's learned in the past. But most of the time, that prediction is wrong. Yeah. It's like, wow, I know, we really are that bad. But I mean, it's just like we survived, we survived somehow. But I think now we're in an age when we're more really super aware of ourselves where we haven't ever been before.
Unknown Speaker
Yeah. And just to add to that, it not only creates this memory of a video of your past experience, but it doesn't do it in order either. It doesn't know this, and this, it doesn't remember this and this way together, it takes something else and puts it there because it's always trying to find logic. Yeah, this is what makes sense. So you should feel this way. Well, guess. But that's what he does.
Bryan
Oh, that's, that's very true. And to your point of us, as a society getting there, I agree. We are getting there. But I I
Matt
Oh, man.
Bryan
We need to get there faster. Yeah, no, but it's, I think, you know, it's the last four years in this country that have really tested the emotional quotient of our country. And I think it's brought a lot of things to the surface that maybe we were not blind to, but we were ignorant to, or we didn't want to admit to Yeah, as a society. And it's I this is what excites me about our younger generation. Some of the things that don't excite me about our younger generation are, are these, but what does excite me about our younger generation is that they do seem to be more aligned with the way humans should function in society. There's first and I don't know why that's happened. I don't know what has caused this.
But I speak to a lot of younger people. And it seems to be the ones I speak to have a really good grasp on how society should be and how people should be treated. And I think one thing that I've noticed in regards to studies I've read is that people will take jobs based on what they're going to learn Or what they're going to gain personally, instead of how much money they're going to make. And that takes a very intelligent person and a very aware person to have that type of mindset. Because I don't think that that was the mindset 10 1520 years ago, it was always about how much money am I going to make? How do I get to that next level of income? Where now I think it's what am I going to learn? And how am I going to grow myself?
And I don't know where that culture shift happened. I don't know why it happened. But it's happening. And it's a really cool thing. And, when people are self-aware about themselves in regards to learning more about themselves and becoming better at what they do, that's innately going to make them want to just be better people and lifelong learners in regards to everything because it's a completely different mindset. So I do agree with you, we're getting there. And I'd like to know, I'd like to find a study or read something about what's kind of changed that culture and why have we gotten there? It's pretty cool.
Matt
Yeah, no, I agree. My, I think my kids are way, way more mature than I ever was, and probably are even more mature than I am right now. Youngest, and I think, Well, I think part of it is that, and I'm not trying to take all the credit, but some of it is that I have been brutally honest with them about my life and the mistakes that I've made. And I think my parents, they can never say that. And so I think it's, you know, as a parent, it's hard to do that. It's hard to admit that I messed up, you know, I did this. But I think by doing that, they will never if I never did that they would never have a chance to learn that lesson unless they learn it on their own.
Bryan
Yeah, I also think they wouldn't have the psychological safety to come and talk to you about and if they were in that situation.
Matt
Yeah, that too. Yeah. And I feel like that, that feeling like they can come to me and tell me, I tell him that you can talk to me about anything, I'm not gonna fly off the handle. And, you know, you're my daughter, she's 18. So I'm like, you're 18 you're an adult? What am I gonna do? I can't punish you. You know, so I have to, like you said, create that psychologically safe space so that when she does need my help, she feels comfortable asking for it.
Bryan
Yeah. And that's, you know, that's something I just do I still do on a night, you know, when my girls grow up, you know, how have I created that space for them? And, you know, God willing, and I hope, I hope I do. Because that's, to me, the most important thing in my life are those two little girls and making sure that they are successful, productive society members. And then success is such a broad, broad term, you know, whatever success is in their eyes will be a success in my eyes, but just that they're, they're happy. And they're enjoying every moment of this life that they were blessed to be born into. You know, my wife and I are reading this book.
Oh, hold on one second. I forgot the title. Oh, it's called, um, it's called happiness is a serious problem. And, and it talks about, it talks about the focus on happiness, and everybody's trying to achieve happiness. And one of the first things in this book that the author talks about is we shouldn't necessarily achieve to be happy, we should achieve to be not. Or we should, we should, yeah, we should achieve to not be unhappy. Because Happy Happiness is something that's very difficult to define. But it's very easy to define happiness, right? It's very easy for you to say, like, tell me exactly when you're unhappy. And I could be like, well, it's when my three-year-old doesn't go to bed at night.
Like, I could give you something very specific, but then it's like, tell me when you are most happy. And I'm like, I don't really know when I'm most happy. I know when I feel good. And I know when there are things that either excite me, but I don't really know when I'm most happy. Because there are so many things throughout the day that will elevate my levels of what you might consider happiness. And maybe yesterday was a good day, but maybe today I'm happier. But Why wasn't I happy yesterday? So it's a really interesting concept. Don't try to focus on just being happy, focus on being not unhappy. And I think that goes back to your emotional intelligence. Right.
And, and, and how are you staying in that emotional state of not being unhappy? So it's a really good book if you guys ever get a chance to read it by Dennis Prager. Okay, we read we've just the two of us just read a couple of pages to each other. And just kind of keep it at that. Oh, that's nice. Cool. Yeah.
Matt
There's another book called The power of agency. Okay, that one, but it's basically saying that every moment of your life, you have the agency to choose whatever you want. You can choose to be happy or choose to be unhappy, you can choose, there's always a choice somewhere along the way. So having that choice gives you more power and freedom throughout your life. So it's kind of a cool, cool concept.
Bryan
Yeah, yeah. And that's, that's something that I used to always tell my students when I was teaching, and that's something I tell my daughter all the time, like, in life, there are two consequences. There are positive consequences, and there are negative consequences. I don't decide which consequence you get, you decide which your actions decide the consequence. If you do the right things, you will have positive consequences, right, we will trust you more, you will, you'll get more things, you'll get to go more places, if you do the wrong. If you do what we can, I would consider the wrong things or things that are not acceptable in our family, then you're going to have negative consequences.
And that means visiting and thinking about time or getting a toy is taken away, or whatever it may be. Right. And I love what you're saying. Because I agree. And I think when I was teaching, it was amazing when I would have those conversations with my students. And I put the blame back on them. Because they would always say to me, Mr. Boyd, you don't let me go to recess? No, no, no, it's all nothing to trust me. I don't want you in here. I got 15 minutes of quiet time, I don't want you in here. Again, not my choice that you're in here. You chose to do the things that led you to, to be in here, like that was your choice. And it was, it was amazing how after the first month or so of me teaching a group of students, how they would start to grasp that understanding.
And it would be like, Okay, why are you here? Well, I did this. I did. Why? Why did you get to go and have 10 minutes of extra time doing this? Well, it's because I did this, I was thinking I was doing this, you know, so those positive and negative, what we call positive and negative consequences because I don't know, black for a better term, I don't really like the word negative. But at the end of the day, it's what it is. You know, it's, they start to own it, they start to own a little bit of their action, the reason that that is happening is because of the actions that they're choosing to make. So I love what you're saying about that book is that you have a choice. And that's a beautiful thing. You have it, you have a choice.
Matt
Yeah. And to bring it back to psychological safety. You know, I've read that a lot of people think, oh, you make it psychological safeties like everybody loves each other. And we don't, you know, but it's not about, you still have accountability, you need to have accountability, along with psychological safety, they both go together, if, if you don't have one, you can the other so, and I think one other thing I was just thinking about is with our kids, and, you know, the psychological safety and all of that in consequences.
I realized that sometimes I had been, you know, maybe a little bit too hard, like on our son, and not allowing him to, to explore and experiment, you know, and so I switched that around, I said, Alright, go ahead, make a mistake. Yeah, I want you to make as many mistakes as possible. I want you to make lots of mistakes. And he was like, really? And he got really excited. Yeah. Because I said, the more mistakes you make, the more you're going to learn. So just don't do anything dangerous, or that's gonna hurt anybody, but don't just buy stuff, you know, it's okay, if you make a mistake.
Bryan
Yeah, that's and that's that that is so important in the workforce too, you know, because one of the things that excite me about my job in the learning and development role, and what I do within the company I work for, is I have a lot of autonomy in regards to content creation, in regards to the development of the department, in regards to the timelines of when we're implementing certain initiatives and not. And I'm fortunate in regards to that, that I have a space where they've allowed me, to make mistakes.
They've allowed me to reflect on it. It has not been driven with an iron fist. And because of that, I think the outcomes have been good. I wouldn't say they've been great because I'm always going to be my harshest critic. But if it were the other way, though. If it were, why did you do this or why did you do it that way, or I don't want you to do it that way.
Well, I don't want you to do it that way, you need to do it this way. I think the creativity would be lost. I think the drive to want to succeed would be lost and, and the culture for myself within the company would be minimal. So I love that concept of Yeah, make as many mistakes as you can. And I can't even imagine saying that to my daughter, but I probably need to,
Matt
As entrepreneurs, they say they fail often and fail fast.
Bryan
That's right. That's right. That's true. And so, and, you know, all of our greatest successes have come from our biggest failures. You know, that's, you know, you don't learn from winning, because you want to learn. I didn't do everything right. Yeah, it's a great point. Thanks for motivating me to have that conversation with my daughter.
Matt
No, great. Well, thanks, Brian, I'm going to ask one more question. In terms of the conversation that we've had today, what is your key takeaway? What do you want our listeners to bring home with them? From all this?
Bryan
I'm just immersing myself in myself. understand yourself. And don't be afraid. Because what you're going to find when you start to understand yourself is things that you don't want to know. And that's okay. If you are really wanting to make a change in your life, then understand who you are, understand why you are and understand who you are, and why you are what you want to be. Because that's the only way you can get there. And I am on a lifelong journey.
To understand who I am. You know, I was asked to be a What do you call it the the person that marries somebody, I forget what you what the term is, oh, it's an officiant, a wedding. And so I was a couple about a month and a half ago, I was an officiant for the wedding. And really the best advice that I could tell them when I was officiating our wedding was. And the theme of my sermon was changed. And the reason I say that is because what I told them was 10 years ago, the two of you were not the person you are today. 10 minutes ago, you're more of the person you are today, but 10 years from now, you will not be the person you are today.
And if you are not willing to change to the person that the other person is going to become, because it's not about you, it's about the other person, if you're not willing to change to what your partner is going to become, then this isn't going to work out. And if you're not willing to look at yourself and who you are becoming in regards to who your partner is becoming, then it's not going to work out. So it's a reciprocal relationship in regards to change.
And when you think about emotional intelligence, and when you think about psychological safety, it is that because you are going to either change who you are, as an individual over the course of years, you're going to change the environment in which you either live or work or play in over the course of years. And if you aren't aware of who you are, when those changes happen, it's going to be a culture shock to your body, it's going to be a culture shock to your system.
And you're not going to come out on the other end, a more productive and happier person, you're going to do one of two things, you're either going to withdraw, and you're going to go into a state of shock. Or you're going to go back to what was comfortable. And you're just going to continue to live the life that you are currently living, which you were trying to get out of in the first place, moving on to something different. So I think that the biggest piece of advice is to invest in yourself, get to know yourself. Don't be scared of it, embrace it. And then my wife and I like to say embrace the suck. And, and then and then move forward and then realize that in five years, you gotta do it all over again.
Rahel
That's good advice.
Matt
Great. Thank you so much, Brian. It was a pleasure having you on our show and really enjoyed speaking with you today.
Bryan
Yeah, thanks so much for the time I love this stuff and great when you two are doing I love the idea and the concepts of what you guys are doing to maximize. So keep moving forward and just keep me updated on your progress and let me know how things go out and how things come out. Future grades. Good. Thank you. Thank you. Hello. Thanks, Matt. Thanks. Bye,
Matt
All right, everybody. So, once again, I'm Matthew.
Rahel
And I'm Rahel.
Matt
And this was the interchange by MAXIMYZ. Make sure you like and subscribe and join us next time for our next guest.
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