Quick, are you a meerkat? A chimp? A snow leopard? A wolf?No, I’m not high. I’m talking about the 4 belonging personas developed by Dan Berger, today’s guest on the DesuckifyWork® podcast.This may be the most important work anyone is doing right now. We are in the midst of a belonging crisis, fueled by social media, egged on by COVID and reinforced by our own lack of clarity on how to make things better.Enter Dan.Dan’s whole life has been centered around belonging. It hasn’t always been easy. But his work has paid off—for him and for all of us.His quest began in the womb, a mother preparing to give him up for adoption, a son feeling that disconnect viscerally. As an adopted child, he always wondered if he belonged. As a 9 year old Israeli moving over 5,000 miles to the US, those feelings only intensified. As an adult navigating the business world and ultimately selling the startup he founded, his quest became a calling.Where do we find belonging? How do we cultivate it? Why does it feel so elusive at times?Dan has answers. And some practical tools that can help us find our way.You can start by taking the belonging persona quiz on his website. (I’m a snow leopard, btw.)Then, you should read his book, The Quest: The Definitive Guide to Finding Belonging.Lastly, you should listen to this episode. Dan goes deep on a bunch of practical ways to increase belonging. Including🐱 Creating a belonging mindset🐱 Fostering a belonging culture at work, which needs to come from top leadership, not HR🐱 And one I don’t fully agree with, but can appreciate… taking a more transactional view of work.That last one would be misery for me, but nirvana for others. I think the key is asking yourself the question I pose to every guest: What role does work play in your life?There’s no wrong answer. You get to decide. And I can help you figure it out, btw.(If you enjoy this episode, please like, share, rate, review or subscribe to the podcast.)Let the desuckifying begin.You can follow Dan on LinkedIn. And check out his site, belongingquest.com, where you’ll find his belonging quiz, info on his book and a ton of other helpful goodies.If you enjoyed the conversation and would like to dive deep into some of your own challenges at work, I invite you to schedule a free half-hour discovery session, where we can explore new, desuckified possibilities for your future.Bye, everyone!Bonus question for our audience:Ask this of anything you do in life: “Does (fill in the blank) give me belonging?”If you’d like to watch this episode on YouTube, please click here. #desuckifyworkpodcast #desuckifywork #findyourwhy #findyourcape #executivecoaching #belonging #DEI #connection #belongingpersona Get full access to DesuckifyWork® at tjbennett.substack.com/subscribe

From overseas battlegrounds to overseeing booze regulations to fighting human trafficking and cleaning up county government, Bentley Nettles has been a busy man.Oh, and he wrote a book, because of course he did.The book captures a leadership philosophy honed over the course of his impressive career. As a Brigadier General (JAG) in the Army, Executive Director of the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission (TABC) and Brazos County Commissioner.The philosophy? Pretty straightforward. Embrace different perspectives, invest in people, encourage creative problem solving, provide meaningful work and seek constant feedback.The results? Nothing short of amazing.🐱 Bentley was deployed to multiple combat theaters around the world, including Bosnia, Afghanistan, and Iraq and earned the Legion of Merit, Bronze Star Medal and Purple Heart Medal for his service.🐱 He reduced permit approval time from 85-89 days to 48 hours at TABC.🐱 While there, he created a system for identifying human traffickers that was so successful it’s been replicated in 12 states.🐱 He founded Brazos Valley Cares, a non-profit group dedicated to serving military veterans and their families.My takeaway? It’s not just about the philosophy, it’s about living it. That’s what Bentley Nettles has done. Is doing. And will continue to do.We’d do well to follow his lead.(If you enjoy this episode, please like, share, rate, review or subscribe to the podcast.)Let the desuckifying begin.You can follow Bentley on LinkedIn. And check out his book, “Creating Excellence: Insights for Leaders and Their Legacy” on Amazon.If you enjoyed the conversation and would like to dive deep into some of your own challenges at work, I invite you to schedule a free half-hour discovery session, where we can explore new, desuckified possibilities for your future.Bye, everyone!Bonus question for our audience:What do you like to see in your leaders? If you can answer that question, then you can probably help shape the leaders that you want to have over you—or become that leader.#desuckifyworkpodcast #desuckifywork #findyourwhy #executivecoaching #leadership #legacy #walkingthewalk Get full access to DesuckifyWork® at tjbennett.substack.com/subscribe

Work sucks? Maybe it’s not you. Maybe it’s the model you’re working in.Carlos Musquez came to this realization after 30+ years in the ad business. And he’d love it if you didn’t have to wait so long.He invites you to ask a very simple question. When was the last time you were really proud of your work? And if the answer is, “it’s been a minute,” ask yourself why?It might be time for something new. For Carlos, that new thing is Old School—a creative collective that lives the values learned throughout his career.You can check out those values on his site. Some of my favorites:🐱 Creativity is an Act of Defiance🐱 Risk is a Requirement🐱 Reject the Trend Trap🐱 Impact Over OpticsI’d argue those values are a solid recipe for good living, not matter what you’re doing. Good for life, good for advertising.A good foundation to start something new.Let the desuckifying begin.—————You can follow Carlos on LinkedIn. And check out his site at oldschool-collective.com. It’s full of inspiring goodness.If you enjoyed the conversation and would like to dive deep into some of your own challenges at work, I invite you to schedule a free half-hour discovery session, where we can explore new, desuckified possibilities for your future.Bye, everyone!#desuckifyworkpodcast #desuckifywork #findyourwhy #executivecoaching #creativity #advertising #neverstoplearning Get full access to DesuckifyWork® at tjbennett.substack.com/subscribe

No one lies on their deathbed and says, “I wish I was more productive.”But maybe they should. Because productivity is making progress towards our priorities. Towards the things that actually matter. That’s the definition shared by Sarah Ohanesian, today’s guest on the DesuckifyWork® podcast.At work, that might mean doing something we’re passionate about, or finding meaning where none seems to exist. Outside of work, with our families, our friends or off on our own, it simply means spending more time doing what we love.I think Sarah’s onto something here.Sarah is a former CMO turned productivity consultant. She saw (and experienced) the rampant burnout in the marketing world and decided she wanted to play a different game.We all need to figure out what game we’re playing.🐱 If you work for a company, you need to get clear on what game they’re playing and decide if you’re on board.🐱 If you’re a leader, get really clear on your game and bring in diverse teams who want to play it with you.🐱 No matter who you are, block your time for the stuff that matters. That’s your real work.🐱 Create conversations with your team, your boss, your peers and your clients to make sure everyone recognizes the importance of focusing on priorities🐱 If priorities aren’t clear, and this is just me talking, run! Life is too short to kill ourselves doing dumb s**t for no apparent reason.Ultimately, all of this needs to come back to the game we want to play. The game we’ll be happiest looking back and saying, yeah, that was worth it. That was fun. That was me.Let the desuckifying begin.You can follow Sarah on LinkedIn. And check out her site at so-productive.com, where she’ll help you get clear on what matters.If you enjoyed the conversation and would like to dive deep into some of your own challenges at work, I invite you to schedule a free half-hour discovery session, where we can explore new, desuckified possibilities for your future.Bye, everyone!Bonus Question from Sarah to our audience:When you're looking at your to do list next, what big impact do you want to make? What big impact are you capable of making? And what is that one task that's going to help to get you there?If you’d like to watch this episode on YouTube, please click here.#desuckifyworkpodcast #desuckifywork #findyourwhy #executivecoaching #productivity #meaning #priorities #alifethatmatters Get full access to DesuckifyWork® at tjbennett.substack.com/subscribe

I thought I had a bold mission, to desuckify work.Then, Maria DeLorenzis Reyes shows up and hits me with a Devil Went Down to Georgia throw down: “Sit down in that chair right there and let me show you how it’s done.”Her mission: to change the world of work forever.Okay, okay. I’m listening. How do we do that, exactly?Maria has some thoughts:🐱 Be vulnerable. This is a huge superpower for leaders, who think they need to know everything. No. They need to know how to navigate a world where they know almost nothing. And show others that this is okay.🐱 Stop the short-termism. Or it will (already has?) lead to long-term disaster. Time to hop off the hamster wheel of doom and actually go somewhere.🐱 Don’t wait to lead, no matter your title. Start walking and inspire others to join you. People are dying for some direction right now, you can be the source.🐱 Own and elevate our humanity. In the face of AI, we need to shift workplace cultures to nurture uniquely human capabilities. You know, the ones we’ve been ignoring for 100 years or so?I don’t know about you, but I’m ready to rosin up my bow and go all in on this. It’s time.Let the desuckifying begin.You can follow Maria on LinkedIn and on Instagram @themariadr. And check out her site at mariadr.com, where you can learn more about her life-changing work and her awesome podcast.If you enjoyed the conversation and would like to dive deep into some of your own challenges at work, I invite you to schedule a free half-hour discovery session, where we can explore new, desuckified possibilities for your future.Bye, everyone!Bonus Question from Maria to our audience:What is the one thing that could be done that could have a major impact on how we work?If you’d like to watch this episode on YouTube, please click here. #desuckifyworkpodcast #desuckifywork #findyourwhy #findyourcape #executivecoaching #workculture #changeworkforever #leadership #vulnerabilityisasuperpower Get full access to DesuckifyWork® at tjbennett.substack.com/subscribe

Baba Booey.The childish taunt of a crude shock jock or the cultural glue that helped build one of the world’s most successful media empires?Yes.The Leadership Lessons of Howard Stern is a provocative book from Michael Kublin, today’s guest on the DesuckifyWork® podcast.Michael is an entrepreneur, author and founder of PeopleTek—a leadership coaching and development company.He’s also one of the most positive, uplifting and thoughtful people I’ve met. His “unauthorized guidebook” on The King of All Media outlines the unconventional ways Howard has embodied some of the most universally beneficial approaches to leadership.Michael follows a similar blend of renegade thinking and time-tested wisdom with the work he does.🐱 It all starts with his 12-part compass framework, which helps you find your “Magic Dust,” the stuff that makes you sparkle.🐱 Then, you align your dust with the vision/mission/goals of the organization you’re supporting, or leading.🐱 Once we do that, we’re set up for the future that’s coming, like it or not (Michael loves it and so do I, btw). Where workers are independent contractors aligned to their strengths, not fixed roles. Jumping in and dropping their dust where it’s needed most.🐱 To make this system sustainable, we need a major shift in our education system. Teaching leadership skills (via Howard or not) in schools, instead of waiting until we’re 30, 50 or 80 (the age of one his recent, amazing clients!)He may not be the king of all media, but he’s a prince of a man and a near-endless source of leadership wisdom.Let the desuckifying begin.You can follow Michael on LinkedIn. And check out his site (with info on his Howard book) at michaelkublin.com. You can learn more about his company at peopletekcoaching.com.If you enjoyed the conversation and would like to dive deep into some of your own challenges at work, I invite you to schedule a free half-hour discovery session, where we can explore new, desuckified possibilities for your future.Bye, everyone!Bonus Question from Michael to our audience:What stops you from investing in the one of the most important things in your life—your career?To watch the episode on YouTube, please click here. #desuckifyworkpodcast #desuckifywork #findyourwhy #executivecoaching #leadership #howardstern #magicdust #values Get full access to DesuckifyWork® at tjbennett.substack.com/subscribe

Life gives us enough hard crap to deal with. Why would we add more to it, on purpose?Because that’s how we grow.Today’s guest on the DesuckifyWork® podcast, Luis Velazquez, should know. Luis was diagnosed with a brain tumor over 20 years ago. He was crushed. Angry. And at one point, suicidal. Everything he had every right to be.Today, he is an incredibly successful executive coach, working with leaders from companies like Google, Salesforce and more. His speciality? Coaching those deemed “uncoachable” by everyone else.How did he get here?He made a commitment to himself. That he would not put his mother through the pain of losing him. That he would do all the things he knew in his heart he was meant to do. That he would fully show up for life, just like his dad did after suffering a devastating accident that left him in a wheelchair.If anyone deserves to write a book about resilience, it’s Luis. And thank God he did, because it’s wonderful. It’s called Ordinary Resilience and it reminds us that each of has access to everything Luis has demonstrated in his own life.🐱 It starts with a simple formula: Resilience = Commitment + Persistence x Optimism. Optimism is a multiplier because without it we are simply grinding and on our way to burnout.🐱 There are 5 pillars to resilience: embrace the suck, face your fears, build relationships, find inner strength and solve for fulfillment. Notice he didn’t say solve for merely existing.🐱 To keep the resilience muscle strong, we must embrace intentional discomfort. Because living through a brain tumor isn’t enough? No, because living through a brain tumor proved to Luis that he became someone better through that pain—so why wouldn’t he invite more in?Luis’ brand of intentional discomfort includes things like giving up coffee for a full year and running ultra marathons. You decide which of those sounds harder.Such a beautiful irony, that we must embrace the suck to desuckify our lives.Let the desuckifying begin.You can follow Luis on LinkedIn. And check out his coaching company site at velas.com, where you can dive deep into the amazing work he does and learn more about his book—Ordinary Resilience: Rethinking How Effective Leaders Adapt And Thrive.If you enjoyed the conversation and would like to dive deep into some of your own challenges at work, I invite you to schedule a free half-hour discovery session, where we can explore new, desuckified possibilities for your future.Bye, everyone!Bonus Question from Luis to our audience:What can you do today, so that two years from now, you can say that this crisis, this situation, this stuck-in moment that you're going through is the best thing that happened to your career?To watch the episode on YouTube, please click here.#desuckifyworkpodcast #desuckifywork #findyourwhy #executivecoaching #resilience #ordinaryresilience #survivors #intentionaldiscomfort Get full access to DesuckifyWork® at tjbennett.substack.com/subscribe

If you stacked every sold copy of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, it would reach over 757 miles high. That’s about 550 miles higher than the International Space Station. The air so thin, molecules almost never run into each other, flying solo until they fall back to earth or get lost in space for eternity.Perfect time for a good book, no?There’s a reason over 40 million copies have been sold since it launched in 1989. It’s good. Really good. It’s wisdom timeless, grounded and, yeah, effective.Today’s guest on the DesuckifyWork® podcast, Kory Kogon, is here to share why that wisdom is more relevant than ever. Kory is a best selling author and the VP of Content Development at The Franklin Covey Institute.We talked about how their entire ecosystem of courses, content and technology has been transformed to meet the needs of the world we live in today. And will tomorrow.These habits can help our dopamine-addled minds navigate the uncertainty of AI, the complexities of modern leadership and the peculiarities of the people we live and work with every day.🐱 Habit 1: Be Proactive🐱 Habit 2: Begin with the End in Mind🐱 Habit 3: Put First Things First🐱 Habit 4: Think Win-Win🐱 Habit 5: Seek First to Understand, Then to Be Understood🐱 Habit 6: Synergize🐱 Habit 7: Sharpen the SawHere’s me being proactive:If you like this episode please like, share, rate, review, subscribe or consider naming your first born, “DesuckifyWork®.” Good news, our name is totally gender neutral!Let the desuckifying begin.You can follow Kory on LinkedIn. And check out the Franklin Covey Institute at franklincovey.com. Be sure to check out Kory’s book, The 5 Choices: The Path to Extraordinary Productivity as well.If you enjoyed the conversation and would like to dive deep into some of your own challenges at work, I invite you to schedule a free half-hour discovery session, where we can explore new, desuckified possibilities for your future.Bye, everyone!Bonus question from Kory to our audience:What are you really good at that you could pay forward as a coach/mentor to help others?If you’d like to watch the episode on YouTube, please click here.#desuckifyworkpodcast #desuckifywork #findyourwhy #executivecoaching #7Habits #franklincovey #leadership Get full access to DesuckifyWork® at tjbennett.substack.com/subscribe

Ever try to hold a beach ball underwater?You can do it for a few seconds, but it takes a shocking amount of effort. And that sucker will pop back up (and maybe nail you in the face) soon enough.That’s what our emotions are like. Especially at work. Where we try to stuff ‘em down all day long like good, rational girls and boys.Except we’re not rational. We’re human. Highly emotional meat bags under constant assault from a world that’s gone mad.Pop, pop, pop.How can we lead in the midst of the craziness? Dina Denham Smith, executive coach, author, speaker and today’s guest on the DesuckifyWork® podcast, has some ideas.🐱 We can start by accepting that our emotions are normal. Helpful, even.🐱 We can learn to regulate them, using simple techniques like BRAVE (breathe, refocus, accept, verbalize, engage)🐱 We can view them as information instead of judging them. What are they trying to tell us? And why does my eyelid keep twitching?Dina dives deep into all of this and more during our conversation… touching on a ton of helpful stuff she’s outlined in her awesome new book—Emotionally Charged: How to LEAD in the new world of work.Speaking of awesome stuff, if you like this episode please like, share, rate, review, subscribe or consider sending a letter to your congress person asking them to create an official DesuckifyWork® Day. Ask for a whole month if you’re feeling frisky.Let the desuckifying begin.You can follow Dina on LinkedIn. And check out her site at dinadsmith.com, where you can learn about her book, her coaching practice and her experience as a competitive equestrian.If you enjoyed the conversation and would like to dive deep into some of your own challenges at work, I invite you to schedule a free half-hour discovery session, where we can explore new, desuckified possibilities for your future.Bye, everyone!Bonus question from Dina to our audience:”How can I help make these tools even easier to implement, to bring them further into organizations?”If you’d like to watch the episode on YouTube, please click here. #desuckifyworkpodcast #desuckifywork #findyourwhy #executivecoaching #emotionsatwork #emotionalmeatbags #eq Get full access to DesuckifyWork® at tjbennett.substack.com/subscribe

If you grew up when I did, you had two big fears:🙀 Quicksand🙀 ImpostersBoth were everywhere, apparently. From Gilligan’s Island to Scooby Doo to random movies of the week where someone pretending to be someone else inevitably tied up the good guys and had them neck deep in a soupy death trap.Fast froward to today and quicksand is nowhere to be found. But imposters have simply relocated. From the small screens in our living rooms to the mirrors in our bathrooms.We are the imposters now. Convinced that everyone can see through our masks to the scared child underneath. The villain in own story, pulling one over on our friends and colleagues. Unaware that every one of them is doing the same, including (especially) the most successful among us.What if we just didn’t? What if we recognized that we’ll never have all the answers and that there is tremendous power in that fact?That’s the premise of Humble Confidence, a term coined by author, speaker and coach, Kris Kelso, today’s guest on the DesuckifyWork® podcast.With humble confidence, we move forward because we have the ability to learn, not because we have all the answers. We embrace vulnerability, the very thing we were so afraid of with our masks on, as the source of our strength. And we build teams and communities that celebrate and reward this mindset, so we can all simply show up and do cool s**t.Speaking of cool s**t, if you like this episode please like, share, rate, review, subscribe or consider writing a poem called DesuckifyWork® and submitting it to your favorite literary journals. Bonus points if you include the word, “twerk.”Let the desuckifying begin.You can follow Kris on LinkedIn. And check out his site at kriskelso.com, where you’ll find his amazing keynote and his must-have book, Overcoming the Imposter: Silence Your Inner Critic and Lead with Confidence.If you enjoyed the conversation and would like to dive deep into some of your own challenges at work, I invite you to schedule a free half-hour discovery session, where we can explore new, desuckified possibilities for your future.Bye, everyone!Bonus question from Kris to our audience:What are you doing in your circles of influence, whether that's your work, your social circles, et cetera, to make it safe for other people to admit when they don't know something, when they have a weakness, when they don't understand or they feel in over their head?If you’d like to watch the episode on YouTube, please click here.#desuckifyworkpodcast #desuckifywork #findyourwhy #executivecoaching #impostersyndrome #humbleconfidence #vulnerabilityisstrength Get full access to DesuckifyWork® at tjbennett.substack.com/subscribe