Behavioral-Based Onboarding to Redefine Training with Matt Meyers
Episode Overview
In today's episode, we have a special guest joining us, Matthew Meyers. Matthew is a seasoned leadership development expert with over two decades of experience, having worked with renowned organizations such as T Mobile, Frontier Airlines, Crocs, and even TikTok. Our discussion with Matthew revolves around the importance of clear thinking, self-reflection, and questioning the information we encounter in various aspects of life, including personal decisions, business strategies, and even politics. We delve into the power of biases, the role of AI in talent development, the art of coaching, and practical strategies for effective onboarding and training. So grab your headphones and get ready to dive into this thought-provoking conversation with Matthew Meyers, right here on "Making Better"!
About Matthew Meyers
With over two decades of dedicated expertise in leadership development, Matthew Meyers has had the privilege of collaborating with esteemed organizations such as T-Mobile, Frontier Airlines, Crocs, and TikTok. Matthew’s career has been marked by amazing successes transforming leadership development programs to have a measurable impact all across the world. His passion lies in coaching and helping organizations achieve remarkable and sustainable results.
Full Transcript
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Matt Gjertsen [00:00:00]:
No matter what, even if we do this all the right ways and we build out this behavioral based training, you're going to have some people who adopt it and there's going to be some people who don't because it's not reinforced and what gets measured gets done, period. And so get really great at reinforcement and importantly, not your talent development team reinforcing it your leaders reinforcing what your talent development team does.
Matthew Meyers [00:00:26]:
Hello and welcome to the Making Better podcast, where we help you make yourself, your team, or your organization better. Whether you are a business owner, team leader, or a talent development professional, this show will give you actionable insights to help you develop your own performance and the performance of those around you. Our guest today is Matthew Myers. Now, Matt and I recently met while I was speaking at an ATD event for Dallas where I was talking about behavior change, essentially. And Matt stayed on the call a little bit longer to geek out about behavior change because it's what he does as well. With over two decades of dedicated expertise in leadership development, matt has had the privilege of collaborating with esteemed organizations such as T Mobile, Frontier Airlines, Crocs and TikTok. His career has been marked by some amazing successes, transforming leadership development programs to have a measurable impact all across the world. His passion lies in coaching and helping organizations achieve remarkable and sustainable results.
Matthew Meyers [00:01:34]:
So I am really excited to have him on the show today. Before we get into the discussion, I just want to remind anybody new to the show to make sure to subscribe so that you never miss a future episode. And if you're already subscribed, then I would just ask that you share this show with at least one other person because that, after all, is how we grow. And I can't tell you how much it means to me. So with that, let's get started. Matt, how are you doing on this fine Friday? Behavior change or behavior based learning? What does that mean to you and how do you think it's different from what maybe is normally occurring in training or talent development?
Matt Gjertsen [00:02:17]:
Yeah, the interesting thing is that behaviors are so necessary for everything that we do. I grew up in sports and really specific actions when we're being told to do different things like do it like this, come off the blocks like this, hit like this, put your hands here. And so then when I grew up and got into the corporate world, that was absent. There was just a lot of great trainings, profound trainings, like exciting. You felt energized, but there was really no actions to that. And so you felt like, really invigorated. But then what? What do we do now? It would die out and we would spend thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars going after some of these great trainings with little return on investment. So for me, as I moved forward in my career and built out coaching programs.
Matt Gjertsen [00:03:14]:
It's that specificity that I grew up kind of understanding and living in. That's where I have found fruit really quickly within organizations and my personal life as well.
Matthew Meyers [00:03:26]:
Yeah, it's interesting that you bring up sports, because I agree that I think that's where it came from in my life is the background is going from teaching people how to run marathons and then also teaching people how to fly planes. It's a very physical thing, and yeah, you're right. I think for some reason, when that transitions into the corporate world, there's just like a disconnect where everything else in your life and if you learn how to do something on your car or fix your sink or whatever, it's all physical actions. But for some reason, we don't often bring that into the office or just into our day to day work. You told me a story the other day about kind of how you first started doing this. You just mentioned you were kind of frustrated because you'd be spending all this money on great training, but it was like, okay, what's next? What were kind of your first efforts going into this?
Matt Gjertsen [00:04:27]:
I was blessed to be part of a program, so I worked for T Mobile for 16 years, and there was a program that we did. It was called Coach University. And it was just exceptional.
Matthew Meyers [00:04:38]:
Right?
Matt Gjertsen [00:04:39]:
And so I would go around state to state to state every other week and working with VP levels down and what you started to understand and the biggest miss was the inability to identify behaviors. What are those behaviors for? Success? We talked a lot about success and where especially these top leaders wanted to go, but none of them could really put their finger on it. And it was through that program that I was first introduced to behaviorists within the corporate world. Like I said, I experienced it growing up, but I was never able to pinpoint kind of where the misses were. But when I was part of that program, that was the AHA moment for me. Like, wow. It's not just wow of it was absent for some. It was absent for everyone.
Matt Gjertsen [00:05:22]:
And so we spent three days basically helping leaders understand, what does that trend look like, and then how do you find the behaviors within that? Just the amount of success we were able to find from that was extraordinary. And so then after that, that changed everything for me. That's how I thought, that's how I interacted. When clients would come to me and say, hey, we want this to happen great. What specifically are you looking for in them? And it was in that, like I said, that specificity, that we were able to make some great, extraordinary gains with it.
Matthew Meyers [00:05:57]:
Yeah, I think it's kind of a light bulb moment when you start to think of it that way. And so when you were getting this opportunity to work with all of these leaders and help them define those behaviors. How do you go about that? Because I think I've shared with you, and I always tell people my number one question to ask a subject matter expert is, what behavior are you trying to change? And I find that it can often be kind of a deer in headlights look. I've never thought about it before. So how do you coach people? How do you work with people to teach them to identify a behavior? Or even a simpler question, like, what is something that trips me up sometimes. What is a behavior?
Matt Gjertsen [00:06:37]:
Yeah, that is a great one, right? And what used to say at T Mobile was, you can see it, you can hear it, and you can measure it, and, like, there's there's something to right there's, especially from, like, a call center environment. But then as I've built out my own coaching programs and looked at this, I think that there's even you can't always necessarily hear something. You can see things, though. You can really catch it. And so what I tell my clients now is I say, listen, I should be able to come in off the street not knowing anything about your business and see specifically what it is that you want your employees to do. It shouldn't be, well, we've got this special language. What I always tell people is, listen, common language does not equate to common understanding. You've got to be so clear that anybody can do it, because so many people drop the ball thinking, well, I was doing this.
Matt Gjertsen [00:07:32]:
I thought I was doing this. So what I really just tell people is, what is that action? What specifically do you want them to do? How are you going to know if they do it? Or if you say, well, I want them to be better at this. Great. How are they going to do that?
Matthew Meyers [00:07:44]:
Right.
Matt Gjertsen [00:07:44]:
And so I always tell people also, just asking yourself those questions, like, what specifically do you want them to do? How do you want them to do that? How are you going to know if they're successful with that? And it's within that where you start to say, okay, yes, that is a little bit more specific than what we were trying to get to from here. Right. And I was working with one of my clients yesterday, and it was the person is too distracted with their work. Okay, what does that look like? What are you seeing? How are they distracted? What specifically are they perusing social media? Are they meeting over here? There's so many different things, but it's important for us to really pinpoint what is that distraction so that we can have a healthy conversation around it.
Matthew Meyers [00:08:29]:
Yeah, and I think it's so powerful, not just in the training realm, but if you think about it, of, like, how do you change yourself? You don't say, I want to be less distracted or maybe that's where you start. You're just like I just feel like I can't focus, and I'm not sure why, so I want to be less distracted. Okay, so what's distracting you? Oh, well, it's social media. Okay, well, what in social media? Well, I find that I'm opening TikTok a lot, or I'm opening Instagram a lot. Okay, well, maybe we should just get Instagram off your phone. Or we should specifically do another case like you mentioned, with measurement. We should look at your metrics on your phone and be like, how many hours are you spending on there? Okay, the goal is for you to spend less hours on Instagram. Boom.
Matthew Meyers [00:09:21]:
There's a clear metric that we can look at, a clear behavior that we can look at. And you're really right. I found this as well, that in the world, in the corporate world, we're just really bad at identifying what it is we do and want people to do. And it's almost like we are still catching up from the transition of 30 or 40 years ago when the norm was being at a company for decades. And it was because of that, it was very much apprentice journeyman kind of approach, where it was fine for people to just kind of hang out and absorb things, but when people move around a lot, there's no time for that, and it's really easy to get frustrated. And so then when you say, I've worked with a lot of smaller businesses, that during the Pandemic, when all of a sudden everybody went remote. They didn't know what to do for onboarding. They didn't know how to train anybody because they never had focused on those specific actions that they needed to train.
Matthew Meyers [00:10:34]:
They just kind of assumed people would learn everything they needed by osmosis eventually. I'm sure you've seen a lot of that. Have you seen a big change in that over the last few years as, like, all of a sudden more people are working remotely? Turnover is a lot higher. Average time at a company is getting lower and lower. I'm sure that just requires more and more of an emphasis on what you're talking about.
Matt Gjertsen [00:11:00]:
Absolutely. I think that it's the emphasis on that and also capturing that. And so when people think about these SOPs and other things and just capturing the tribal knowledge in a bottle, those links are being broke a lot faster. Like you talked about, turnover is different than it used to be. People don't have the loyalty that they used to be. And so one, how do you capture that and capture it specifically? And then two, how do you look back at that and say, are we capturing the right things? I was reading a book the other day. I wish I could remember the title, but it was a really good AHA moment for me as well. Don't create, like, lists of best practices, because then it's concrete, then it's not to be changed? No, you should always go back and look at that and say, are these the right behaviors that are driving this? That's one thing that I do a lot of times when I go into organizations is I immediately shift up what we do for Onboarding because we've got all that sludge where people have left and people are trying to piece things together and they pulled somebody over from marketing to lead onboarding for a little bit.
Matt Gjertsen [00:12:04]:
And so it's just like, what are we looking at here? And so going in and cleaning that up. But I think the organization should always go back and do that and saying, are we looking at the right behaviors? Are we doing the right things? Is this the right way to onboard our people? Because I think that Onboarding is a great example of where we do not lean into the behavioral based approach. I mean, not even close. It's just all these data dumps and all these things. And I always tell my companies, I'm like, how do you think that somebody's going to leave here? There's a reason why suddenly they start to either leave because they're not engaged, or two, they don't start to have any kind of pace until they actually get out and start to do this job because you're forced to then get into those behaviors where we should just be proactively doing some of that stuff.
Matthew Meyers [00:12:48]:
Yeah, absolutely. Something that I've learned a lot now that I'm responsible for doing kind of sales for my own organization and leaving every interaction with a clear call to action. And I think that's very true for all facilitators out there. Whether it's onboarding or anything else, or even if you're just somebody out in the business and you're giving a presentation for any reason, it's always just kind of what is the one thing you want people to walk away with? And in our case, in the case of facilitators or talent development, it really is what do you want them to do after this? What is the one thing they need to be able to do? It can really clarify the situation and almost I don't know what your thoughts are on this. I found the interesting thing about focusing on behavior is that to someone who hasn't done it before or really thought a lot about it, it can almost create a world that's too simplistic, really. I know I've mentioned this story before about when I first got involved in learning and development. It was at SpaceX doing health and safety training. And so I just remember looking at these health and safety presentations and realistically, 95% of it didn't matter.
Matthew Meyers [00:14:13]:
It's a course on how to prevent slips, trips and falls. And it has slides on. Once a platform is this many inches off the ground, it requires a railing that's this many inches tall. And the people taking this training aren't building railings. They're not responsible for any of this. Stuff. And so do you ever have that when you talk to your stakeholders and you really identify the behaviors and then really talk about, okay, this is what we should try to do, that they're kind of left with that's it almost because it seems so almost insubstantial compared to what they've done before. Even though it's probably going to be more effective.
Matthew Meyers [00:14:53]:
Do you ever get that feedback?
Matt Gjertsen [00:14:55]:
All the time. All the time. And I try to help them understand. Listen, especially people who have one year example when I was at Frontier Airlines, the safety manager.
Matthew Meyers [00:15:08]:
Yes.
Matt Gjertsen [00:15:09]:
When I talked about dwindling down some of that training, you would have thought I insulted his first baby.
Matthew Meyers [00:15:16]:
Never talked to a compliance.
Matt Gjertsen [00:15:19]:
So it was really bad. And I just helped him understand. Like, listen, at the end of the day, one, people aren't doing these things. We're not talking even about the same group that does this, just like you were talking about. And two, even if we were, they're not going to retain this. I mean, Ebbing House's forgetting curve keeps me up at night. As a talent development professional, I'm just like, oh my gosh, how much you forget in a very short period of time. What, 50% in 2 hours if you don't practice it? Which is why we need to build in some of that practice and so much more as that month goes on when you're practically forgetting everything.
Matt Gjertsen [00:15:54]:
And so when people get frustrated and they come back and say, well, they say they never got training on this, and then the talent development employees are saying, well, we definitely trained them on that.
Matthew Meyers [00:16:04]:
Listen, nobody's on blame 45. Come on, don't you remember it?
Matt Gjertsen [00:16:10]:
Of course. Look at this right here. It was right after lunch. But it's just like we need people to understand, listen, what is your objective? What are you really trying to take away from here? And if you can get really clear on that, then we can really come to an agreement on the best way to do that because that's where organizations miss it, in my opinion, is that they haven't learned how to trust their talent development teams yet. We're very much order takers and we allow it to happen. There's fear involved. I've even preached to my teams before and saying, listen, I know that this doesn't make sense right now, but we need to respond to a couple of these asks and then we can position ourselves better. But then that's a slippery slope as well.
Matt Gjertsen [00:17:01]:
But if organizations could start to trust their talent development professionals as consultants and allowing us to tell them what the best approach would be, the game would be different completely for those town development professionals that recognize kind of the things that we're talking about here today.
Matthew Meyers [00:17:19]:
Yeah. To combine kind of those two threads there a little bit. I do think the benefit or the hope for a talent development professional who feels overwhelmed. They don't feel trusted. They feel like an order taker is that behavior focused training doesn't have to involve a lot. It can be a very small intervention to have quite a bit of results. And so if you can find the one stakeholder who's willing to trust you with it or the one intervention that you can try to push on, you can probably fit it in with your other work and your other workflow 100%. Yeah.
Matthew Meyers [00:18:00]:
Because in general, I would say this is a great example of, I think something that's just rampant throughout the whole business world is we're just doing too much stuff. It's not really moving the needle. And so we all feel overwhelmed. Everybody's telling us we need to do more, and we feel overwhelmed. And so we're like, how can I possibly get more done? It's like, well, you just got to change what you're doing. You just got to change how you approach things. And this is a perfect example of that.
Matt Gjertsen [00:18:23]:
Right? Yeah. And if people could start to understand that right. It's just time. Time. Yeah. But let's look at how you're spending that time, and let me help you kind of carve that out, because like you said, these things don't have to be difficult. The coaching program that I talked about, I'm working with a very large client right now, a very well known client across the board. And in 45 days, just literally by shifting to a behavioral based type of coaching, they've dropped people errors by 82%.
Matt Gjertsen [00:18:55]:
In 45 days. 82%. And when we did this at T Mobile, attrition dropped over 4% in the first three months attrition. So you're keeping these employees as well. They're staying. I mean, there was just the numbers that we were able to see immediately just to shift, because behaviors, in my opinion, they're the answers to the test. That's why we get really clear with saying, listen, what specifically do you want them to do? Great. Let me help you help them do that one specific thing.
Matt Gjertsen [00:19:29]:
That's why it's so easy. And we make it so difficult by not focusing on some of those things.
Matthew Meyers [00:19:35]:
Yeah, exactly. Because I think what happens is if we go a level above behaviors, the thing that we all want to do is the impact. And that's what you were just talking about, of reducing people errors or reducing attrition. And then when you start with that and ask the question, what behavior am I trying to change? What behavior can influence us? You're realistically going to be left with a bunch of behaviors that could affect that outcome. And so then you're just kind of looking at that whole menu of behaviors and saying, okay, well, which ones of these can one, which ones of these are most likely to affect to create that impact? And then two, which of these behaviors can I realistically change? Right. If it's that they're using the wrong tool because they don't have the right tools, training can't change it. But yeah, if it's filling out a form wrong or not returning their tool to the toolbox afterwards so they all go missing or whatever, then you're like, okay, we can try to change that behavior. Once you identify that behavior, what are some examples of what that means now? How do you train on it? Because again, if you think about knowledge based training, which so much training is, it's just like a presentation is like, this is the correct behavior go, but I imagine you're doing a little bit doing something other than that.
Matt Gjertsen [00:21:04]:
Yeah, right, exactly. And it's really creating behavioral based practice. Because that's where I think that you can see a differentiation from typical training. I try to talk very little within my trainings and do a lot of practice.
Matthew Meyers [00:21:20]:
Yes, right.
Matt Gjertsen [00:21:22]:
Here's feedback. Here's the feedback model. Here's what I want you to think of. Now let's practice it. Okay, quickly. Here it is. Here's what my expectation is. Now let's practice as a group, and then they practice.
Matt Gjertsen [00:21:32]:
And then I provide them feedback. And then they do it again. And they do it again, and they do it again until when they leave that, it's not saying, oh, I learned a feedback model. I can't remember what it was. It was in my desk somewhere. I'll find it next year around performance reviews. No, they're really strengthening that. Because as people continue to practice, just like we talked about with the Ebbing House forgetting curve, when you do practice that, and you do practice that skill, that starts to level up on how much you're going to retain that.
Matt Gjertsen [00:21:59]:
And so when it's a go to and you need to utilize that, that's where you can go. And so thinking about as I design out my different trainings, it's really breaking that up. Breaking that up and practice, practice, practice and breaks and just even thinking about the hippocampus and what it can even retain, why Ted Talks are no more than, what do they say, 18 minutes? Because it becomes overflow at that point in time. So we need to not only do it for retention standpoint, but also for the whole reason why we're doing it, because we want to see a behavioral change.
Matthew Meyers [00:22:33]:
Yeah. And this too is how, when the focus is on the activities and you're giving the learners a lot more work, this is also how we can become a much more agile practice. Because who cares? You don't really care what the slides look like because you're not using many slides and you're not spending a lot of time with them. You don't have to come up with an hour of content for an hour presentation. You have to come up with ten minutes of content for an hour presentation. The creation process can be an iteration process can be so much faster and simpler because you just don't have to back to the earlier point that you made. You just don't have to focus on the wrong stuff. You're focusing on the right things.
Matt Gjertsen [00:23:24]:
Exactly. And the fruits you see from that, that's the thing. I'm not sure where the disconnect is for folks sometimes. Because if you're getting the results, that's what should matter, right? In a positive way, not in a negative way. I'm not saying that. I'm saying this is going to get you results in a positive way. When I rolled a coaching program out of T Mobile, I did a focus group right afterwards and I talked to the frontline employees that were experiencing this coaching. And I'll never forget what woman told me.
Matt Gjertsen [00:23:55]:
She said she came in and she says, I feel great. She says, for the first time in two years, I feel like I'm in control of my results. And she goes, also, for the first time in two years, I was able to take my son out to dinner and not worry if I was going to have a job that week. That is so beautiful. Right, but that's what I'm saying. You get results the right way. Because we make training way too difficult as well. We expect them to retain these eight hour trainings and even an hour long training without activity is not going to do it.
Matt Gjertsen [00:24:30]:
No.
Matthew Meyers [00:24:31]:
Yeah. And to make it really specific. And I'll ask you for an example of this as well, but just like a really specific example that I had used at a previous company where it was a sales team and this was a nationwide sales team, relatively. Complex product and we were making an onboarding for the new sales reps. And because it was a relatively complex product and people weren't coming from within the market, they're hiring people off the street kind of kind of thing. Or not people off the street, but just people. It's not like they were hiring like super seasoned sales professionals. The thing that they struggled with first was just the basic what's the elevator pitch? How can they describe the product well and so that's the behavior be able to clearly describe the product to a prospect that's it pretty simple.
Matthew Meyers [00:25:18]:
So we started with, okay, we did the 30 minutes of this is the product just kind of a presentation, right? Because it was a decent amount of information. And then we immediately shifted to, okay, write down your own description of what this is and why it's great in 500 words or less. And then we kind of read through them, talked about them. Okay, now redo it in 250 words or less. Now redo it in 50 words. And then each time we're stopping and talking about them. This is a group that's going to be talking on the phone. So we set up a Google Voice account with a voicemail where we said, okay, call this number and leave your pitch.
Matthew Meyers [00:25:57]:
And then we listened to it right there on the phone. So again, it's highly practical, highly practiced, lots of feedback and then they walk out. By the end of the day, they have given their pitch two or three times, right. So very focused and lots and lots of practice. Do you have any examples, again, for listeners who haven't done this before, it can be a big mind shift. So what's an example of something that you've identified? And it doesn't have to be super crazy specific, don't share anything that you can't share, obviously. But what's an example that you might give to people who are trying to wrap their head around this for the first time.
Matt Gjertsen [00:26:39]:
Yeah, I really love your example. I think that that is a great one. We have similar where we kind of build up around each other and just spitfired as well of saying, okay, here's the objection and you didn't know you kind of tossed the ball and as they caught that ball, they didn't know that they were going to be the ones that have to do it. And so there was like a pitch ball and then a response ball and you throw the practical application. And that practice there is really great. One other example, it was really cool little thing in Chicago for a company that I worked for. They try to call different pizza places around the city and try to talk them into giving away pizzas for free. And it was obviously it's also one to feel the rejection of it, right? And so that's a different side of the sales process because you're going to get rejected a lot.
Matt Gjertsen [00:27:41]:
But then what? One, you have to overcome the nerves of making the phone call. You've got to make the pitch as to why it's necessary for them to give away a free pizza and then deal with that rejection on what that does and then try to come back and try to talk them in to some more of those pizzas. But what was cool with that is one, they got some of the different people to deliver pizzas for free to people, which is awesome, but also it helped them kind of overcome some of that anxiety. And what's unique about the world that we're in today, especially with sales, is, and I never even thought about this until I worked with some of the younger populations, is they don't make phone calls, right? They're texting, they're on message. And so that new elevated concern with actually making a call is a new level that everybody was a little bit nervous making calls in the past with sales. Like an added anxiety, pressure. Getting creative with that I think is important.
Matthew Meyers [00:28:43]:
Yeah, exactly. And that's where I think when I talk about behavior, that's a perfect example of context. I think of it's different to be delivering your pitch in the front of the room to another participant as practice versus holding your phone up and talking into a phone. It's not a lot. But it is a little bit different.
Matt Gjertsen [00:29:04]:
Totally.
Matthew Meyers [00:29:05]:
And so the more contextual you can make that practice, the A, I love it. Reminded me what you were just saying reminded me of a thing that Tim Ferriss always talks about, author of The Four Hour Work Week, where if somebody it can have a million benefits for your life. What he says is like, if you're somebody say you're somebody that drinks coffee and go to Starbucks all the time for the next ten times you order coffee. Order your coffee and then ask for a 10% discount.
Matt Gjertsen [00:29:33]:
Yeah.
Matthew Meyers [00:29:35]:
No reason given. Don't say it's an experiment. You just have to say, like, I would really love 10% off. I was wondering if you could give that to me and see what happens. It's just such a good way to it's funny because the tagline we have for this show is where talent development and personal development meet. Because I think in the personal development world, for anybody that's ever kind of dove into that world, it's all behaviors, it's all hacks, it's all leverage. How do you find that one thing? How do you redo your morning routine or whatever? And obviously there's pluses and minuses to that. But yeah, it's interesting that when we're looking at ourselves, we're talking behaviors, but so often when we look at other people, we're not talking about right.
Matt Gjertsen [00:30:25]:
And I think it's that habit cycle as well. I would encourage every talent development professional to stop doing scripted role plays, either, because I think that that is a poor best practice in what we're talking about here. You need to make it authentic to somebody opposed to okay. Because what's the feedback you always get? One, people always hate roleplays, and I say, well, sorry, because that's a great way to experience it. However I can, guys, when they're doing these role plays that are, oh, Jack and Susie, and what would you do here? And you're no, no. I always tell people, think about somebody for who especially in my coaching, who's who's an employee that you have on your team today. What is a behavior that they're struggling with? After we get to what a behavior is, great. We're going to actually have this difficult conversation like we were just talking about with this person, okay? Because one, it helps them kind of go through that, but two, when they go and go back to the job and actually have this conversation, they've already run through this once before.
Matt Gjertsen [00:31:26]:
And the feedback that I've received from people is they say, oh, my gosh, did you know this person? You really channeled them. And I think that that's really important for us to do as we're leading these is make it real, make it authentic. Ask the questions. Have you coached them on us before? What was their response? How did they respond? How do they respond to difficult conversations? So that when you play this back and you do that role play. You are also exhibiting behaviors that they have seen, that they're comfortable with, that they know, and then they can get more comfortable with responding to those.
Matthew Meyers [00:31:58]:
Yeah. And the really neat thing about our world today, you can't have a talent development conversation without talking about AI right now. So the Chat GPT app I know Chat GPT is just like one app out of a million, and there's a million other applications, but this is just really relevant to me because I did it yesterday. The app on the phone now has voice capability and so you can just talk to it. And I just had a conversation with it yesterday. I was on a hike and had a hiking question, and I just asked it and then it not only answered my question, but then went on. It's like, how often do you hike? Are there particular hikes that you were like it just wanted to continue the conversation. And so I think to your exact example right now, that's what a great coach is doing is asking those questions so that you can try to embody that person that the manager or whoever is going to have to go to.
Matthew Meyers [00:32:52]:
But if not now, very soon we'll be able to do this en masse because you're going to be able to take the answers to those questions or anything else you know about an individual. You can put it in the prompt of saying they are talking to a person who's been on the job for two years. They're struggling with these things. They're relatively introverted. When they get feedback, they kind of tend to react in this way. They're having these struggles. I'm getting ready to do this. I want you to play them.
Matthew Meyers [00:33:24]:
I bet if you wrote a good prompt like that right now in Chat GBT, you could have a pretty reasonable discussion.
Matt Gjertsen [00:33:32]:
Very good. And that's now. Yeah, that's a great call out. I didn't even think about that. But you're so right. I mean, I utilize that tool so much for things just like that. Here's the environment. I've got warehouse workers, they're a little bit upset because of the workload.
Matt Gjertsen [00:33:48]:
They've just lost their leader. What's a great training that might benefit them. And boy, if it's not completely spot on to what I would have in the past spent hours, days creating, it just prompts out and then I can just kind of build things out from there. It's a tool that we all need to really understand and not be scared of it. I think that some people could hear that and say, well, great, that's going to replace me as a coach. Well, I don't think that that's true at all. I think that it helps supplement to make you more available because people still need that human side and to talk through that stuff.
Matthew Meyers [00:34:22]:
Yeah, because I think right now, the biggest challenge they are right now, or one of the biggest challenges right now. The one of the risks right now is that you're going to put information in a bad place, that you're going to share too much in this open environment, and you don't know where the data is. And everybody's very concerned about proprietary information. And I think that is a very valid and big concern that people have to be careful about right now. However, I believe it has a relatively easy fix. It's not going to be very long before these chat bots are operating in closed ecosystems where it's just your data that your company has it nobody else has access to it. It's still just as good at talking, and then so many of those concerns go away once the company themselves control it. And I think you're 100% right that it's your enabler, it's your tool.
Matthew Meyers [00:35:16]:
You as the coach, can now just have all the more impact. And I think this comes up a lot. There's a terrible aside, but this comes up a lot in software engineers. I hear it a lot because Chat, GBT, all these products are doing so much coding, and a lot of software engineers like, what are we going to do for jobs? There are plenty of software problems to be solved. There's never going to be an end to them. So no matter how much more productive an individual engineer is, there's not going to be a shortage of work. The same thing is true for us. The same thing is true for coaches, for instructional designers, for all talent development professionals.
Matthew Meyers [00:35:57]:
There are more than enough problems for us to solve. And if some of us become 100 x more effective, there's not going to be an end to the problems that we can solve.
Matt Gjertsen [00:36:08]:
Right? What we should look forward to is that it'll open us up to be able to focus on what matters even more, because how much are we bogged down with some of these things that can easily be done? Like I said, I used to spend days on this stuff. It can prompt it out for me, and I can focus on getting in there and observing and helping with our folks.
Matthew Meyers [00:36:29]:
Exactly. Awesome. Well, that was a fun AI aside that I wasn't expecting. So let's close this out a little bit with some rapid fire questions to the end. So what is one book podcast, Ted Talk, that kind of thing. What is one book recommendation that you have that everyone should read or listen to?
Matt Gjertsen [00:36:51]:
That's a tough one, just to narrow it down to.
Matthew Meyers [00:36:53]:
One.
Matt Gjertsen [00:36:53]:
Yeah, I think that the one that is going to be most important, especially aligned to the topic that we're talking about today is called The Art of Thinking Clearly, and it is exceptional. There is about 99 different biases, I believe, that he covers in that Ralph Dobel I'm probably butchering his name. The important part is that we all need to look at ourselves. We need to look at ourselves with the information that we're sharing. Just off the heels of that conversation we were just talking about with AI. There's bias built into AI. We have to make sure that we're not just blindly trusting what we read in here. And so, one, recognizing how you really think clearly in your life, in your business, in your decisions, from a political standpoint, from everything, and don't get bogged down with there's really manufactured ways.
Matt Gjertsen [00:37:49]:
I think that people can kind of go off courts right now when they don't recognize why they're believing the things that they're believing. Whatever it is that you're talking about, whatever it is that it is, it's essential for us to really get a clear mind and make decisions in the most productive ways.
Matthew Meyers [00:38:06]:
Absolutely. That's such a great recommendation. I haven't read that book, so that sounds like something that would be right up my alley, so thank you.
Matt Gjertsen [00:38:13]:
It's really great.
Matthew Meyers [00:38:15]:
Awesome. I'm excited. What skill has been most helpful for you in your life or career? Yeah.
Matt Gjertsen [00:38:24]:
Hands down. Hands down. And someday I'll figure out how to work this more into my professional life is improv. So I was an improv actor for ten years for a wonderful company here in Colorado, but that allows you to respond to everything in this world. I think that if anybody wants to think about a skill to develop themselves in, improv should be the one to go to you'll help prepare yourself.
Matthew Meyers [00:38:55]:
That's so great. Yeah. I did speech and debate in high school, and I did impromptu speaking.
Matt Gjertsen [00:39:00]:
Nice.
Matthew Meyers [00:39:00]:
And it was, yeah, great skill. Improv is even more because it's, like, right there. That's a great one. Thank you. Since you work with a lot of organizations you've worked with a lot of organizations, you're going inside and finding out what's going on there. In your experience, what is the most common opportunity you see that organizations can do better in or to improve talent development?
Matt Gjertsen [00:39:26]:
Well, I think that it links to what I was sharing earlier, first of all, of trusting your talent development teams as consultants and not order takers getting into that. You've got so many talented people at your disposal to be able to utilize to help you become even better. And I like what Steve Jobs said, hire smart people and get out of the way. And that's what we should really think about from a talent development. Excuse me. Additionally, I think what is even more important for organizations to start to get right is reinforcement of this training. Because no matter what, even if we do this all the right ways and we build out this behavioral based training, you're going to have some people who adopt it, and there's going to be some people who don't because it's not reinforced, and what gets measured gets done, period. And so get really great at reinforcement, and importantly, not your talent development team.
Matt Gjertsen [00:40:21]:
Reinforcing it your leaders. Reinforcing what your talent development team does.
Matthew Meyers [00:40:27]:
Yeah, that's a great point because there is nothing worse. There is no way you can inhibit training impact more than having the training not match the reality.
Matt Gjertsen [00:40:41]:
Right.
Matthew Meyers [00:40:42]:
We are a company that gives one on one feedback, but my manager has never given me one on one feedback and I've been here for a year. Those kinds of disconnects just destroy credibility. It's got to be all through the organization.
Matt Gjertsen [00:40:56]:
Yeah, I know immediately in a training session when it's not going to be effective, when my attendees, which happens a lot, say, hey, are my leaders going to go through this too? I'm like, okay, well, Dang, if the.
Matthew Meyers [00:41:14]:
Answer is anything but yes, then you're done.
Matt Gjertsen [00:41:17]:
Exactly.
Matthew Meyers [00:41:17]:
Just close up shop.
Matt Gjertsen [00:41:18]:
Absolutely. Well, I hope you guys enjoyed this. Thanks for the snag.
Matthew Meyers [00:41:25]:
That sounds right. Awesome. Well, that's a great way to end this. So, Matt, thank you so much for being here today. Where can people find you? How can they reach out to you?
Matt Gjertsen [00:41:36]:
Yeah, I think that contact me on LinkedIn. I think that's a great way to connect with me. And then you can always email me at Matthew Myers@myerscoaching.com if you've ever liked to have a conversation around coaching for your organization.
Matthew Meyers [00:41:50]:
Excellent. Well, thank you so much for the conversation today. I had a lot of fun. I'm sure our listeners had a lot of fun. So have a thank you.
Matt Gjertsen [00:41:57]:
Appreciate it.
Matthew Meyers [00:41:59]:
Bye.
Matt Gjertsen [00:42:00]:
Thank you so much for tuning in today. If you liked the discussion, make sure to hit like and subscribe so you never miss an episode. As a reminder, if your team is struggling keeping up with the training development demands of your organization, we want to help. Better Everyday Studios is a full service instructional design team that can help you with everything from ideation to actual content creation and delivery. Please reach out to us using the link in the episode notes below. Have a great day.
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