WAYNE BROWN: Hello, I’m your host, Wayne Brown, and welcome to the ET project. We’re delighted to be delivering this podcast for executive talent all over the world, whom we’re affectionately referring to as Team ET. Today, we’re flying into Farmington Hills, Michigan to chat with the founder of Employee Success Company, Mr. Ian Watts. Ian helps executives enhance employee engagement, boost team performance, and reduce employee turnover in 90 days or less, guaranteed. He does this through transformative keynotes, hands-on workshops, and his proprietary ACTS Method, a breakthrough system developed scaling an HR department that grew from six to 60 locations and recruited 400 loyal team members nationwide who knew exactly how much he cared about their personal success. An accomplished author, speaker, business consultant and breakthrough coach, Ian built his first multi-million-dollar business at age 26. He has raised millions in capital, launched multi-ventures, and guided global clients across 30-plus industries and 40-plus U.S. states, as well as internationally in China, Hong Kong, Canada, the UK, Saudi Arabia, and Australia. Ian’s personal mission is simple but powerful; build businesses that bless the world. Ian shares why the best leaders work themselves out of a job by making themselves unnecessary, why vulnerability combined with security creates magnetic leadership people want to follow and how systematic support during critical life moments builds loyalty that salary alone can never buy. We also have the opportunity to unpack some of Ian’s latest book, Cliché: Enhance Your Mindset, Drive, and Joy by Unlocking the Psychology & Neuroscience Behind Common Phrases. Team, as always, I love the opportunity to dig in with authors to explore their insights and wisdom, and Ian certainly has an abundance of both that he brings to the table during our conversation. So please sit back now and get ready for this enthralling and crucial discussion. 

INTRO: Welcome to the ET project, a podcast for those executive talents determined to release their true potential and create an impact. Join our veteran coach and mentor, Wayne Brown, as we unpack an exciting future together.

WAYNE BROWN: Hello, team. Thanks for joining us for another conversation this week. I want to start by naming what we’re going to explore in this discussion. At its heart, we’re embracing three challenges; staff engagement, performance, and retention. And beneath them lie two fundamental forces; influence, how we move one another, and reciprocity, how we respond when somebody invests in us. In preparation for this conversation, I looked at these two forces through three different lenses. First, the psychological lens, the cognitive shortcuts and the social norms that shape how we respond to one another. Then second, the neuroscience lens, what’s happening in the brain when trust is built and when employees either lean in or check out. And third, the organizational lens, how these forces show up in a culture as well as in the staff actions. And our guest, Mr. Ian Watts, through his work, sits at the intersection of all three. So, with that, Ian, welcome to the ET project, great to have you here.

IAN WATTS: Wayne, it is most certainly my honor, I’m excited about our conversation. Thanks for having me.

WAYNE BROWN: Yeah, perfect. Let’s start with influence, we all talk about it. When you think back to the leaders who have influenced you the most, is there one or more of those three lenses, psychology, neuroscience, organizations, that best explain how they shaped your own mindset as well as your trajectory?

IAN WATTS: My goodness, that question and the way that you framed it has my brain moving in a number of different directions. So, I will see if I can do the question justice by answering and saying this, just as a preface, just to talk a little bit about psychology and neuroscience. Unlike what most of us think, our brain is not necessarily designed to make us happy and successful, our brain typically wants to save energy and keep us safe. And so, as we talk about influence from that or through that lens, the people who demonstrate to us that they’re psychologically safe for us, where the boogie monster is not going to get us, where how they treat us or potentially mistreat us because we have to be open, that’s what influence is. 

[00:05:00] 

IAN WATTS: We have to be open to their direction. It does not mean that I’m going to be hurt, which our brain wants to protect us from, it’s really interesting. Though we’ve evolved over many years, our brain still likes to react to both real and perceived dangers. And that’s not just the old saber-toothed tiger or not having food or shelter, that also is, is this person looking to do me harm? So, the people who’ve influenced me most have demonstrated that, first, they’re safe. Because when they’re safe, we can let down our shield, we can let down our guard, and it gives us the opportunity to be influenced by them. And there are two people in particular that come to mind. When I was younger, I was born and raised on the east side of Detroit in Michigan in the United States, and my story is somewhat familiar to a lot of boys and girls that grew up in urban areas. Not all, but some, in that my father was in prison, my mother, my brother, and I lived on welfare, we lived on less than $580 per month. And so, as you can imagine, for me I wanted to get as fast and as far away from that reality as possible. I’ll put a pin note there we can pick that back up if you like. But I mentioned that to say this, my father wasn’t there, but the leader who stepped in was my uncle, my mother’s brother. And he was the first image that I saw that I admired of what it meant to be a man and what it meant to be a leader, what it meant to honor your word, what it meant to labor with me to teach me a skill or multiple skills. He’s a barber, and one of the first skills I had as a young entrepreneur when I was 12 or 13 years old was learning how to cut hair. I remember one time when he, I believe was working in the house and he cut his hand on a window that broke on glass. And so, he couldn’t cut any hair, his clients didn’t know what to do. I remember making $500 or $600 for several weeks because I took on his clients because he had taught me that well, as a little kid. So, he was one of the very first leaders that influenced me because he gave me time, he demonstrated to me that he cared, he made me trust him or allowed me to trust him because he was consistent. And so, he was the very first person. And the second person that I’ll mention and then I’ll pause because I know I’ve shared a lot, the second person is a pastor by the name of Pastor Christopher W. Brooks. When I, during my first foray into entrepreneurship had achieved my goals, and when I thought that I had achieved the very thing that would allow my heart to be settled, it’s interesting that when you get there, wherever there is, it almost feels like fool’s gold, because you may have been working, at least in my case, obsessively and you thought that it was going to give you this feeling that it never does. Many people try money and they try drugs and they try status and prestige. And they’re trying to fill a void that only a deep sense of purpose and meaning can fulfill, but he labored with me until Christ was formed in me. So those were two leaders who demonstrated that they were trustworthy, they demonstrated how much they cared because they labored with me during critical moments in my life. So going back to the original statement, they demonstrated that they were psychologically safe. And when they did that, it made a world of difference in how it transformed my life.

WAYNE BROWN: Right. And what I find interesting, and you talk about it in the book and I’ll introduce the book in a moment, but what I find interesting is whether it’s psychology or it’s neuroscience, they have a tendency to play off each other. 

IAN WATTS: They do.

WAYNE BROWN: So just as you mentioned there, they both created that psychologically safe environment, which then enabled you neurologically to be able to build up that trust, you know, via the neurotic… 

IAN WATTS: Yeah, I don’t have to be in fight or flight, I don’t have to worry about, can I trust you? I don’t have to have all of the blood leave my prefrontal cortex to go into my muscles, to stop my digestion, right? I don’t have to be in the sympathetic nervous system, I can move into what’s considered rest and digest, I can move into the parasympathetic because I’m not wrestling with fight or flight or freeze. And that makes a huge difference. So, when I am convinced that I can trust you, my body is going to react differently. 

WAYNE BROWN: Perfect. And then from the third lens that I mentioned, the organization, if you put that into a work context, that then enables you to really lean in to actually focus on the task at hand to really embrace everything that you have to do, all three bring themselves together very nicely. That’s a great example to emphasize those three different lenses, I appreciate that. 

[00:10:00]

WAYNE BROWN: I mentioned you’ve written a book, it’s called Cliché and you might have to hold it up because it has a long subtitle. 

IAN WATTS: Yeah, I’ll hold it up for your audience, it’s Cliché: Enhance Your Mindset, Drive, and Joy by Unlocking the Psychology & Neuroscience Behind Common Phrases. So, it does have a long subtitle, but hopefully it’ll resonate with the audience. 

WAYNE BROWN: Yeah, well, it’s very much on point for our conversation, that’s why I think it’s useful to bring it up. There’s a lot of great stuff in there, one of the areas that stood out to me was you talk about how belief systems unlock potential. And from a psychological perspective, I was curious, what is it about a leader’s belief about people, about potential, about growth even, that determines whether they’ll actually influence others or simply manage them. 

IAN WATTS: I love that question. So, as we consider beliefs, let me take a step back and say this. A big part of, and I’ll be speaking on this, I have an event in Naples, Florida that I’ll be flying out for in a few days and we’re going to be talking about three leverage points for a breakthrough. Beliefs are so important because they drive the stories that we tell ourselves. And it’s interesting, it’s a cycle, beliefs drive our stories and our stories drive beliefs. And our stories, the beliefs and the meaning that we have, it creates emotions in us. And whether we choose to admit it or not, most of what we do is we make decisions emotionally and we often justify it rationally. 

WAYNE BROWN: Yeah.  

IAN WATTS: So, we could have beliefs that are completely irrational, I’ll give you a good example of this, I will tell you that the smile that you see and the silliness that you may be exposed to is genuine, but there was one area in my life that it would turn me into the incredible Hulk. When I was driving and I promise I’m going to tie this immediately back into exactly what we’re talking about regarding beliefs and stories. When I was driving and I had my family in the car, and particularly it was when I had my family with me and someone did something illegal and not just illegal, a move, a driver did something illegal and dangerous that could have not only killed themselves, but my family and I. I used to be completely hot, all of the smiles, all of the giggles, all of the joy would leave me and it would be replaced by red hot flames because the story that I had is that this person not only had no regard for their own life, but they had no regard for the life of my family. So, the meaning behind that story, this means that he’s trying to cause me pain. So instantly I developed a story and that story had me hot from an emotional perspective. And unfortunately, this went on to my chagrin for way too long that I’m embarrassed to admit. However, probably after wrestling with this for at least three to four years, I resolved that enough is enough, I have to do better. So, what I learned in studying psychology and neuroscience is this, in between stimulus and my emotion and my response, there’s a gap and inside of that gap, we get to determine the meaning. So, the meaning used to be this guy wants to hurt me because he’s completely reckless and has no regard for not only his life, but my family’s life and even other drivers. That’s the story that had me hot and would affect my immune system and would trigger me. And then I decided to tell myself different stories and that was so impactful. And I’ll tell you why in just a moment, but first let me share some of the stories. After I made this resolve, when someone did something illegal and really dangerous that could have killed themselves, my family, other people on the road, to avoid me getting triggered and completely heated, I started telling myself three different stories, two of which are pretty extreme, so let me apologize in advance, but I share them not for clickbait, but because this was really real and I really had such a challenge, I had to tell myself these types of stories to get through it. 

[00:15:00] 

IAN WATTS: One story was, oh my goodness, this guy must be headed to the hospital because his mom is about to take her last breath, that was one story. Another story, oh my goodness, this is really tough, his little baby son is at home, mom is knocked out, the baby was old enough to put in a phone call and the police can’t get there fast enough, there’s a fire in the house, he has to go home to get to his son. And here’s the most extreme and I’ll ask for forgiveness in advance. But again, these were literally stories that I told myself. Oh my God, there’s a serial rapist who has just escaped and his baby girl is at home in the closet hiding and someone has just broken in. So, I shared all of that to say this, one story used to… and perhaps wanting to shoot the tires out. I didn’t want to hurt anyone, but I was so angry, I’m like, get off the road, right? The other three sets of stories had me deeply empathetic, even prayerful and grateful even that I wasn’t wrestling with whatever that driver had. So, the story created the meaning and the meaning drove from a physiological perspective, drove the emotions. I used to be hot, I used to be heated and upset versus now simply by telling myself different stories, I now have an opportunity to even pray for this person. So that’s the importance of stories. We tell ourselves stories all the time and we would do well to do what’s called cognitive appraisals. Is this true? Right? Is this true? And then some reframing. What else could this mean? I know I told myself this story, but is it actually empowering me right now or not? 

WAYNE BROWN: Yes. Talking about neurological influence, if you like, it’s not just an abstract, it’s actually that biological event. Perhaps you can talk to what’s happening in the brain when a leader truly starts to influence someone, not through their position or their authority, but through genuine investment. 

IAN WATTS: There are a few things that are coming to mind, and we’ve already talked about psychological safety. One thing that begins to happen is, and this is not necessarily just with the leader, but mirror neurons are always causing us to mimic those we’re in close proximity with. So, the question that often comes to mind for me is, as a leader, what behavior are you modeling? You know, I love a phrase, it’s an Irish phrase that, life is better felt than telt. So, so much of our influence is not necessarily what we say, it’s based upon what we do. And when we have great leaders who we have a deep affection and respect for, we are looking to model that behavior, we’re wired to do so. And a huge part of the reason, and this was really so interesting, part of the reason that we are a tribal bunch goes back to the safety, not necessarily psychological safety, but physical safety. Because years and years and years ago, if we were ostracized from the group, that meant sheer death, it meant sure death. So, when we have leaders who really know how to influence us and who can drive us forward with a vision and goals that are exciting, and they’re influencing us based upon the respect that they have for us, not lording their leadership over us, which is different depending upon, and you could probably speak to this much better than I could, it’s different depending upon the cultural context that you’re in. Because in the West, we are finding, and though a lot of the cultural norms are being exported, I still don’t think that there has been a full embracing of much of the leadership styles that we see. So, in the West, I want you to challenge me, I want to get your feedback, the best ideas win. Now you have some leaders that lord it over them, but outside of the West, you have more directive leadership where feedback is not going to be shared as openly, right? Because there is this fear of being dishonored, and again, of being ostracized. So, that’s one of the things that came to mind right away, and I hate to repeat this, but psychological safety is really important, and you see that a lot in cultural norms. These are not necessarily things that are written in a handbook, right? 

WAYNE BROWN: Yeah. 

[00:20:00]

IAN WATTS: We have to understand the cultural context that we’re in so that we can have that safety, so that we’re mimicking the right things, so that we don’t become ostracized. So, I’ll stop there, but that’s just one of the things that came to mind. Does that hit on what you were looking to uncover? 

WAYNE BROWN: Yeah, sure. Look, I think the critical thing here is that we need to learn to be intentional with our actions and with the things that we’re doing rather than just be reactive, and that was a great example. What I’m also wondering based on what you just said is, how does that kind of loyalty that you talk about in your work, how does that shape that kind of loyalty that you talk about?

IAN WATTS: I think that that loyalty is shaped based upon creating a deep sense of reciprocity among your people, because when someone has been so influential in your life, when they’ve been so transformative in your life. Psychologically, we want to reciprocate that, that is a natural phenomenon that when someone has been instrumental in helping you achieve your goals and dreams and transforming your life from different perspectives, not just professionally, but personally as well, that’s what creates that deep sense of reciprocity, that’s what will boost engagement. And again, though it is implemented differently and we have to make sure that the cultural context is relevant for where we are, I created, and I would love to be able to share it, I created the ACTS method not to be a Western construct, but a human one. So, if I could share… 

WAYNE BROWN: Please.

IAN WATTS: A methodology that I’ve developed to be able to help with that deep sense of reciprocity, we can spend just a few moments here and then we can, you know, I’m happy to go deeper in whatever, in any of these areas that you mentioned. So, to enhance employee engagement, which immediately will transfer over into better performance and keeping some of your best people. And again, I know because of where you are, because of the work that you do in Eastern countries around the world, I recognize that longevity is often tied to honor and there’s more focus on the team and there’s much more focus on the families versus the individuality. But still having stated that, I created the ACTS method so that it would be a human construct, not a Western philosophy. The A and the ACTS method stands for aspirations. So, when you help your people achieve their greatest goals and dreams in the West, be it personal or perhaps in the East, more family-oriented, when you help them create their personal goals and dreams, or their family goals and dreams, their greatest aspirations, you’re going to drive engagement. That’s going to give you the influence because you see me and I am not a human doing, I’m a human being. I’m not just a cog in a wheel, I’m a human being and I have feelings and I have thoughts. And so, this is again, it’s a human construct. So, the A stands for aspirations. The C stands for calling, because I think many of us know what it’s like to, and when I started, I mentioned this earlier, many of us know what it’s like to strive for something, to invest a significant amount of time, effort, energy, resources to achieve a goal that we thought would give us this sustaining sense of joy, only to find out that it was fool’s gold. And I believe that’s because all of us have been uniquely called to a particular work and until you discover and demonstrate that, the emptiness that you may feel after achieving a major dream or goal that you thought was going to be sustaining, that’s only going to be fulfilled once you are doing something that you feel like you have been uniquely created to do. So, the A stands for aspirations, the C stands for calling, and the T stands for transformation, not just professionally, but personally. Coaching and training that’s designed to not just make me better for this job or maybe the job that I aspire to up the ladder, but it makes me a better husband when I go home. I’m a better wife when I go home, I’m better to my kids, I’ve learned how to engage with them differently. So, the first three letters in the ACTS method are employee-centric, the last letter, S, is support. How do we institutionalize support during the most critical times in your employee’s life? 

[00:25:00] 

IAN WATTS: So, when a child goes off to college, do we have a special fund that we’ve set aside in a communication mechanism where we can encourage them with sending them a special care package? When a new home is purchased or perhaps even more challenging, the loss of a spouse. Have we budgeted and have we institutionalized a system so that during the most critical moments in your employee’s lives, you can demonstrate that I see you, I hear you, and that I care? All of that creates a deep sense of reciprocity. And so, as we talk about influence of a leader, when you have so transformed someone’s life, they can’t help but be overflowing with the deep sense of gratitude. And because of reciprocity, they want to do all that they can. Them staying is the bare minimum bar, I don’t just want to stay, I want to give you everything that I have. Because here’s what we know, in particular, in the West, salary and benefits may bring you in the door, but it’s culture that’s going to get you to stay. So, you can buy a hand for a season, but you have to win a heart. And so that’s what the ACTS method is designed to do. And that’s, I think, what some of the greatest leaders are able to do. I care about you so much and your success because you’ve shown an interest in how much you care about me. 

WAYNE BROWN: Yeah. What happens if there’s one of those four elements missing? Is it sustainable if all four are not happening?

IAN WATTS: Yeah. So, there is a massive movement called the Dream Manager, where if I were to make a parallel to the ACTS method, I think the ACTS method extends well beyond the Dream Manager. They focus more on the A; it’s the personal dreams of their people where they literally insert a person into a physical space where employees come in and outside of what they’re doing with their regular projects and their regular work, this dream manager’s job is to work with them to create specific plans, support and accountability to help them achieve their personal goals and dreams. So doing that alone to the question that you asked directly, just helping people achieve their goals and dreams alone helps them to reframe, employees to reframe how they see this job. It is not just coming to work but when I come to work they’re helping me do what makes my heart pain. So that alone will increase engagement. So, I just happen to think that the ACTS method is the most comprehensive methodology to be able to create deep and lasting engagement and a deep sense of reciprocity. But yes, if you, what I will say, what many companies do is some of them thrive a little bit better with the S, the support. We see that in employee assistance programs, but I believe that the results are not as exciting and they’re a bit more lackluster, it’s because there’s not this sense of trust. I don’t want to connect with the employee assistance program because I don’t know how this might be used, yep. I know that you say that this is supposed to be completely private. So, some people have challenges with privacy, that’s one of the reasons why it’s not really taken advantage of as much. But if you have somebody who you deeply respect and they say, you know what? You’re having a really hard time right now, I think you should take advantage of this resource, I’ve vetted it out because you trust me. You’ve dropped your defenses and you trust me to make this recommendation because you’ve been laboring with me all of this time. So, I see, I think different companies have different sprinklings of this, but here’s what I’ll share, more than anything else, we are social creatures, it’s based upon relationship. This is based upon a leader investing the time because as an individual performer, before we become a manager or a leader, we’re an individual performer. Now the workload is, and even if we’re doing double duty, even if we are making tents and running a factory to help make the tents with teams, which is tough and I get it, our goal at this point then is to produce through other people, we simply don’t have the capacity to do it alone. And if we treat people just like they are robots or they’re machines and they again are human doings as opposed to human beings, we do so at our own peril. So, I think at the heart of this, what you cannot get beyond is the people aspect of it. 

[00:30:00]

IAN WATTS: And I believe I’ve seen a stat recently to say as upwards of 70% of managers are promoted into management or leadership positions without actually having any training on how to better lead their people. And this is a… we’re in the people business. And I think if people embrace that they’ll do well. So, if we, as a blanket statement, if we try not to avoid the idea and the reality more appropriately stated, the actual reality that we’re in the people business as leaders, then I think we’ll do well. 

WAYNE BROWN: One of the words we haven’t used yet, but you’ve sort of indicated or suggested a few times is gratitude, and I often think about how gratitude transforms perspective. So, from a neurological point of view, what’s actually beginning to happen when we express gratitude in a workplace? 

IAN WATTS: Sure. So, we have what many people, this is not a scientific term, we have feel-good chemicals. And so, you have feel-good chemicals like dopamine, which a lot of people think is the chemical of joy, but it’s actually the molecule of drive, even though it can make you feel good. And then you also have things like serotonin. So, when you’re deeply grateful for things, it releases these wonderful chemicals in our body which changes our state, because our state is, what are we thinking? How are we feeling? And what is the condition in our body from a moment-to-moment perspective. And the beautiful thing about practicing gratitude is when you’re practicing gratitude, and when I say practicing, I mean, not just having a fleeting thought, I mean, really trying to relive or embody the moment, that’s a really important nuance. When you really go back and you try to relive a moment that you were tremendously grateful for, you try to think about what was I feeling? What was I smelling? What was going through my head at the moment? And when you’re doing that, when you’re in a moment of gratitude, you’re not in a moment of fear, you’re not in fight or flight. When you’re in a moment of gratitude, you’re not feeling depressed. So, it’s just amazing how these brains and these bodies work, it just behooves us to understand a little bit more about them because it’s not just us, it’s our people as well. Our people are wrestling with the exact same thing. So, understanding a little bit about how we are made and how these brains and bodies tick is helpful as a leader. 

WAYNE BROWN: Yeah. Oxytocin is another chemical that gets released. 

IAN WATTS: Absolutely. 

WAYNE BROWN: One of the things that we encourage a lot of our clients to do is when we come to gratitude, it’s one thing to acknowledge, you mentioned a very important point, we need to be specific in what it is that we’ve identified and we’re being grateful for. 

IAN WATTS: Yeah, you can’t just be grateful to be grateful, that’s not the way it works. 

WAYNE BROWN: Exactly. But then to go deeper and to really get those chemicals flowing and bringing that joy and realization with the other person, it’s often useful to ask the question, so what were you feeling at that time? Or, what was the thing that was exciting you at that moment? Or, how did that impact you? And it really then helps the person reflect and look inwardly and sort of build that connection. I think it’s such a powerful tool that if we learn to use it well, it really has a major impact and it builds that reciprocity. 

IAN WATTS: Yeah, it does. And the beautiful thing that I love about the practice of gratitude, I love how Tony Robbins says it, he says, “what’s wrong is available, but so is what’s right.” And what cognitive behavioral therapy helps us to do is what’s called pattern interrupts. So, focusing on what’s right, not to say that we neglect the challenges that we have, but after we’ve turned it over as much as we can, after we have sought wisdom, there’s no need in continually dwelling upon it because we feel what we focus on, it’s going to create negative emotions, it’s going to cause anxiety, it’s going to cause challenges. So, redirecting our focus of things that we’re grateful for is really, really helpful. And the more we redirect our focus and find things to be grateful for, the more things we find to be grateful for. There’s a part of our brain called the RAS, the reticular activating system, and predominantly it is designed to filter things out of our brain, because again, our brain wants to save energy and keep us safe. 

[00:35:00] 

IAN WATTS: So, anything that requires energy or too much of our focus, it does not want it, we would go crazy if we were to perceive everything that’s going on around us. So, the RAS filters it out, but once you tell your RAS what’s important, it’s going to find more of those things. So, you hear a lot of people talking about it, and I promise we’re not going to get woo-woo, but the law of attraction. Well, there’s really neuroscience behind that, it’s the RAS at work. The things that you tend to focus on, your brain says this is important, so it’s going to give you more of those things to focus on, it will allow you to see or pay attention to things that have always been there. Here’s a good example of the RAS at work and then we can move on to wherever else you like. But when was the last time you got a new car? Let me ask you, Wayne, whether it was new used or completely new. When was the last time you got a new car?

WAYNE BROWN: Gosh, many years back now, maybe a decade back for a new car.

IAN WATTS: A decade ago? Okay, cool deal. Well, let me just ask this. Do you recall when you got your new car, did it seem to you like everyone now has your new car? Did you see a whole lot of those same cars on the road? 

WAYNE BROWN: Absolutely. 

IAN WATTS: That’s our RAS at work. The reality is the cars were always there, but our brain, our RAS was filtering it out because it was not important to us, and so, we got one. So, moving back to the point of gratitude, when we tell our brains that being grateful is important, the more we practice gratitude, the more our brain is going to find things for us to be grateful for, which is going to change our mental and emotional state on a regular basis. And so, the quality of our lives to a huge extent is going to be based upon how we’re feeling, the quality of how we feel, because we can have everything but if we’re still… if we can have everything materially, right? We have all the money that we want, you can have the largest house and you have all of the toys, but you’re broken and filled with anxiety, you still have a pretty poor quality of life. So, one of the remedies for that, and I don’t want to provide an oversimplification because clinical depression is a very real thing, so I want to be sensitive there. But there’s so much that we can do just by taking a hold of our own thinking and our emotions by understanding a little bit more about psychology and neuroscience. And it helps our people do as well.

WAYNE BROWN: Yeah. Well, that was what you triggered in my thinking just at that moment, because I know you offer a 90-day guarantee for results with organizations you work with. And when we think about 90 days, I mean, three months, it’s not a significant period of time to bring about this level of change, I would imagine. Is there a threshold where reciprocity loops start to appear or solidify or fracture? What is the significance of the 90 days? 

IAN WATTS: Wow. So that was not neuro-scientifically or psychologically-driven, that was a business decision, and it was somewhat subjective in nature. But if you have the opportunity to spend a half-day and do a half-day kickoff event that’s designed to start rewiring people from a neurobiological perspective and get them excited about what’s more to come, and then you spend time helping to provide training so that they understand it, and then they can experience it so that they also experience the transformation surrounding it. So, in 90 days, that’s enough time to have had multiple coaching sessions to get people excited, that’s enough time to have had maybe six trainings, including a kickoff event. So that was more of a business decision than anything else, because I recognize that this is new. And I know that for a lot of HR professionals, many of them have gotten beaten up because they’ve tried a number of initiatives that didn’t necessarily move the needle. So, I wanted to demonstrate that if we approach this the right way, then the approximate $50,000 that you have to pay for every person who leaves or the one to 400% of their salary, depending upon the position, we can begin to cut that immediately simply by letting people know that you care and you already start engaging in the process of helping me achieve my goals and dreams, helping me discover what I’m called to do and this training is not just for my job now I can use this at home. That’s why I thought that 90 days was more than sufficient to expose people to the services that we provide at Employee Success Company so that they can start to experience what this looks like. 

[00:40:00] 

IAN WATTS: So, if we don’t move the needle, we don’t decrease turnover by 10% or increase engagement by 10%, then we want to put our money where our mouths are because this is not just fluff, this is really hard science behind what we’re doing. So, 90 days is not the magic elixir for psychology and neuroscience, but that was more born of a business decision to be able to demonstrate real results. 

WAYNE BROWN: I fully understand, thanks for the clarification. It’s the fact that we haven’t touched on yet, but it’s really more of today’s enterprises and it’s driven through technology, AI in particular, but fear. So many people today are living in fear because they fear they’re going to lose their job, fear of being replaced to some form of technology. How does any or all of this support or help to calm that fear?

IAN WATTS: I think it is all the more important, especially in the age of AI, when a lot of companies, not just tech, but tech companies are typically leading the way in mass layoffs like Block, for example, where you got over 4,000 layoffs. I think it is so much more important if you have to go through, albeit from reckless management and over-staffing or legitimate demands based upon where the market is going, if you have to make a major contraction of your team, it is all the more important for you to embrace something like the ACTS Method, because when you have cut your team significantly trust plummets. And most of your people are going to be looking, even if they made the cut, they’re going to be looking for another job because now there’s this great sense of insecurity. So, it becomes so much more important for you to visibly demonstrate to your people how important they are by showing them the amount that you’re investing in them, by showing them that you care for them as a person, by acknowledging that this has been a really difficult thing and we did not want to do it, but we thought it was better to, for example, rip the Band-Aid off now rather than slowly, but surely having people trickle out, which would really be demoralizing. So, let’s just do this now and then let us demonstrate to you how much we really want to pour into you, how much we appreciate you staying with us and building this vision. And it’s important for all companies, but knowledge workers especially, because the amount of money that you lose with a high-paid knowledge worker leaves is significant. So, you really have to demonstrate how much you care about them as an individual, especially because of AI and all of the layoffs, because trust plummets.

WAYNE BROWN: Yeah, we’re coming towards the end time-wise, but you have a mission and I love the mission; build businesses that bless the world. When I first read it I thought, I was trying to make the connection between the ACTS Method which sounds, you know, it’s very grounded in psychology, neuroscience, et cetera, but it’s very articulated, but the mission sounds quite soft, what’s the driver behind your mission? 

IAN WATTS: Sure. So, I happen to have a Christian worldview and I happen to believe that I’m living for that day and not this one. So, I’m going to have to give an account for the ability to think for the resources that I have be given, for the access that I have, and I happen to believe that everyone is called for a specific purpose, I happen to believe that I’ve been called to use business as a means of being able to bless people. And so, what that means practically for me is that the same way that GE pumped out leaders of great renown, I want to buy and build a family of companies known for transforming the lives of people. So, for me, it’s all about the people, it’s not just about the customers, clients or patients that we will serve with amazing products or services. You have a significant amount of time to impact people who are spending eight, nine, sometimes upwards 10 to 12 hours at your place of employment. And so, it gives you such an opportunity to transform their lives. So, the same way GE was known for pumping out leaders of great renown, I want the family of companies that I have an opportunity to buy and build to be known for completely transforming the lives of those who are a part of it. 

[00:45:00] 

IAN WATTS: So, that’s what it means for me, it’s not just pumping out great products or services, I want to be able to deeply impact the people who are there. Because these are things that I would love, these are all things that I wanted. Like the reason that I started my coaching company is because I wanted to be what I didn’t see, I had dreams of being a millionaire when I was younger because I naively thought that that was the answer to all of my problems. And I achieved my goal four years ahead of what I was planning for, at 30, but the bottom fell out of my first business. But all along the way I was looking for a mentorship and for whatever reason, it just didn’t work out for me so that created a burning passion in me to be that for other people. And I’m a guy who loves to put joy on people’s, on their hearts and smiles on their faces. And I think the greatest way of doing that, at least for me, the way that I’m called to impact the world is through business. So, for me, business in many ways is a ministry, I believe that I’m simply called to serve people and business is the vehicle that I can use to transform the lives of not just my employees, but the people that we serve with our products and services.

WAYNE BROWN: If a leader walks away from our conversation today and they want to build this culture where influence is something that gets earned, reciprocity is a livelihood and engagement maybe is a natural result from that, what’s the single most important mindset shift that they need to make?

IAN WATTS: I think the single most important mindset that they need to make is they are leading people, not just a group. If they embrace the idea that I am leading people and that as the leader, I need to be the chameleon and I need to adjust so that I can lead my people well, because I know that we’re all different, though there are certain things that I want to impose, for lack of better terms, on the culture, there are certain characteristics that I want to model and I want to demonstrate, I have to understand that how I say things versus how you hear things may be completely different. So how I need to communicate with you based upon perhaps the trauma that you had or based upon you filtering things through the lens of how you see the world is different. So, you’re dealing with individuals, not just a group, it’s not just a caulk and you’re not just trying to produce output as a team, the teams are made up of individuals. And when you take a deep interest in getting to know individuals and transforming their individual lives, then I believe that will allow you to build a cohesive team that is going to perform well and stay because they’re deeply appreciative that you took an interest in them as an individual. I think that’s the greatest mindset shift that I think is most important, you need to care about your people and treat them as individuals.

WAYNE BROWN: Well, Ian, a great conversation. Where can people connect with you, what’s the best place?

IAN WATTS: Thank you so much, Wayne, for having me. People can connect with me in two places; they can check out the website, which is EmployeeSuccessCompany.com or connect with me on social on LinkedIn at Ian M. Watts. Ian, M as in Miles, which is my middle name, Watts. Again, Wayne, thank you so much, this has been more than a treat, sir.

OUTRO: Thank you for joining us on the ET project, a show for executive talent development, until next time, check out our site for free videos, eBooks, webinars, and blogs at ‘coaching4companies.com.’

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