Podcast Episode124 Full Transcript: What Employers Are Really Looking For in People

Welcome to the Show

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to this episode of the How People Work Podcast. My name is Shane Jacob, your host, and I thank you for taking your time to be here with me today. Now, if you're watching and not listening, well, if you're listening and not watching, I'll tell you, I am not wearing or sponsor Cowboy Cuffs a Cowboy Cuff shirt today. But I am wearing a nice shirt that I like a lot.

It's it's kind of a baby blue, it's got some stripes, it's got a little pattern in it, super nice material. This I mean it's this cowboy shirt, man. It's a it's a nice shirt, just regular cuffs, but buttons. You know, it's got buttons. I mean it's even got a button-down collar.

They're not so much in style as what they used to be, this button-down collar, but I don't think buttons are either, but style or not, and by the way, style's important to me, and I hope it is to you as well. All of our cowboy cuff shirts are have snaps, and usually there are colored snaps, some cool looking snaps.

Easy on, easy off, man, for people on the fly, got snaps. Anyway, just making an observation. I'm seeing my reflection of of this video being taken and noticing the the buttons instead of the snaps and the no cuff links and even so nice shirt that I like, maybe we'll have a similar color to this in Cowboy Cuffs when when we finally launch.

What Employers Are Really Looking For

So today, how people work. Listen, I'm talking today about what employers are actually what they're really looking for in people okay and what to look for if you hire people and what to focus on if you want to be if you want to be the one to be hired.

I got an invitation. I was recently asked to speak at UNLV, the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, here in Las Vegas, Nevada, to speak to a group of students who will soon be entering the job market. And I was asked to speak to them because I think that their leaders think believe that I have a grasp on what should be important to them as they enter the job market. In other words, what employers are looking for.

And I have a pretty I have a real perspective on that. Now you know I thought back to when I entered the job market and let me just tell you something, it was pretty scary. I was scared but I wanted a job and I wanted make some money and I was willing to do what people wanted me to do. I wanted to do a good job.

I wanted to be a good employee, but I had no idea what employees were what employers were actually looking for. I knew that they had a job, in other words, some amount of work. They wanted me to accomplish a thing. One of the things I did was I worked in meat cutting plant.

So they wanted me to work on that assembly line. I worked on assembly also I was a assembly line treadmill line assembly line manager for Proform, that was the name of the company. It was a Westlow Proform. And I think they're still around today, believe it or not.

And they make exercise equipment. We were making treadmills on the graveyard shift. And I knew that they wanted me to make treadmills, end of story. I was hired to make treadmills.

Hey Shane, we're gonna pay you, you make treadmills. That's really kind of how I thought for most of my life that the transaction went.

More Than a Paycheck

It's kind of like this. Hey person, Shane, you come to work for us, you make treadmills we pay you, end of story. Any questions? Okay, make treadmills, we pay you. You make treadmills, we pay you, that's the deal, that's the contract. And there's just so much more to it. You know, there really is so much more to it that I didn't understand or even have a grasp of as the I entered the job market for the first few times, first couple of jobs I had.

And as leaders, a lot of times, we don't know exactly what we're looking for either. Even some of us who've been in this for a long time, I think we have a pretty good idea, but really narrowing it down is what I'm talking about. I'm going to try to make this an efficient, easy process that'll help you pin down what's important and be able to lower your turnover.

Some most companies, most all of us have established guidelines, and some of us have, you know, like established published guidelines. Some of us are but some of us are just hiring people mainly on, you know, like a gut feeling, you know, like like instincts or intuition or somebody seems to have a good attitude at the time. And I'm suggesting that it's time well spent to get crystal laser focus clear on what actually makes the difference in people in a good to be able to have a good long-term relationship. Okay.

Basic Requirements Are Just the Starting Point

The basic requirements are just the starting point. So every every job has basic requirements, okay, depending on the job. Maybe it's a degree, a college degree, maybe it's a certification, maybe it's some amount of experience, maybe it's a driver's license, maybe it's a certain age.

I know if you work here, at Jacob Livestock at my horse feed company here in Las Vegas, we have established bare minimum requirements. Okay, for example, you have to be at least 26 years old because the cost of insurance, if you're not, is too high for the roadways here in Las Vegas. You need to be able to speak English clearly enough that we can understand each other. That's important, that's a basic requirement.

And you need to have a valid driver's license with no tickets in the last three years. Okay, now without those things, in this example, we don't even have a starting place. Okay, those are just the basic requirements. But those requirements really aren't what I'm looking for.

Okay, I'm looking for those. Those are necessary and needed, but those are just the basics, okay, those are that's the starting point. The less tangible attributes are equal probably more important. They're well, they're definitely more important for the long-term success, they are definitely more important.

If ten people beat meet the basic requirements and you have one job, what makes the difference? Who's gonna get the job? And why would you hire? Because you felt better about this one, because they of this what what can you narrow it down to to be able to have keep your turnover down because the cost of hiring new people is so high?

Turnover is extremely expensive and it that's something have a lot of experience in having high turnover, getting clear about what can keep turnover down is what I'm I'm talking about.

The Three Things I Look For

There's three things that I mainly look for, okay? And I am suggesting that if you're looking for people that you consider these three things. Number one is dependability, okay?

Dependability

Dependability, can we trust you? Are you going to be dependable? Really, I'm just saying if I put you on the schedule, okay, and you agree to the schedule, will you show up on the days that you're scheduled and will you show up on time?

Okay, that is basic dependability according to me, and we must have basic dependability because again, that is part of a starting point. If you don't have the basics, and the first thing, the first like less tangible thing is dependability, you must have dependability.

And when I think about again, Jacob Livestock, my horse feed company here in Las Vegas, I think about if you don't show up and come through, walk through the gate, we call it the gates kind of like the front door. There's a a gate to the hay yard, a gate from the side street. If you don't walk through the gate, that represents coming, showing up for work.

If you don't come through the gate that morning when you're scheduled, you can't even do poorly you can't even do a horrible job at your job because you're not even there to be able to do it. And then I'm not gonna be able to be out doing my job, I'll be out loading, hay, doing your job because you didn't make it and you're not you weren't dependable that day.

You did not act in a dependable way. So dependability is you know, it's a must-have. It's something that's totally within people's control. And dependability also means you know, are you gonna be honest?

I need to know that you're basically that you're gonna be honest, that you're gonna tell me the truth and you're gonna be here. I need to be able to depend on you. Okay, reliability, dependability.

I want you to be honest with me, okay? I need I need you to tell me the truth and I need you to to be here.

Personal Responsibility

Number two is personal I think that's a no brainer, but I'm just going to say it out loud because it's so important. You know what I'm saying? I need somebody who's gonna show up and do the damn job.

You've got to show up, okay? And I and I see this, by the way, I'm not just talking about entry level hay delivery positions. I am talking about the people that I see at the other end of the spectrum. I'm talking about C suite, leaders who, you know, they're just not there, they don't show up.

They don't put in the time to be able to do the job, yet they're taking home several hundred grand, you know, plus bonuses. And that happens just in my experience, in my experience, it also happens very often. I was just about to say just as often as the entry level, but I don't know if that's true or not, probably not, but it does happen often, okay, at every level of of employment.

Okay, dependability, personal responsibility, this is the big one here, and this is this is one of the big ones. Number two is again is personal responsibility. Are you do you even understand what that I mean by that?

Do you understand what being accountable, what being responsible for your own outcomes means? Do you understand that excuses and blaming are the blockers of your own progress? They're stopping you and impeding you from getting what you want in this lifetime.

You know, somebody rolls in and they're an hour late for work or a half hour or whatever, and here's the response number one: hey man, I'm sorry I'm late, traffic was horrible, and there's really nothing I could do about it. You know what I'm saying? With this Las Vegas traffic, you see what I'm saying?

Compared with hey, I'm sorry I'm late, traffic was horrible, and I didn't add it, I didn't plan for that. I didn't I didn't take take into consideration that traffic could be that bad and and I and tomorrow and in the future I'm going to plan for fact that traffic. I'll be here early. I don't intend to be late again because of traffic and I just want to let you know that. Woo!

I mean, can you see the difference? The first one says that, hey, there's nothing I can do about it, I mean, it's out of my control. What do you want me to do? It's Las Vegas traffic for hell's sakes, it's unpredictable, Shane, you know, there's no hope for any change.

It's something out there's got to change because I mean, what do you want me to do? The other one says, Hey, I know it's my responsibility for my outcome. And regardless of the circumstances I encounter and get in the work, I'm gonna do everything I can, including these steps to make sure that I'm two books on time.

Okay, now this goes with dependability, but it's an example of personal responsibility, that just so happened to be about dependability. The question is, is the thing with personal responsibility is can you look at yourself objectively? Meaning, if I come to you and say, hey hey Shane, hey what you're doing just isn't working.

Okay, it's not it's not what I need you to do, it's not getting the right result. I need you to change what you're doing, and I need you to do it this way, not do what you've been doing. I need you to stop doing this, and I need you to do it to do it this way.

Now is your first reaction, do you automatically have a reaction with a thought? Or do you respond with, Well, here's what I hear a lot. I was told or the way I was trained. Well, I thought, well somebody told me, well, I didn't know and so well I was doing the best that I could, well, you know, and so here's all the reasons, quote unquote reasons, all the excuses of why I'm getting defensive and why I'm focusing on something else rather than me doing it the way you want me to do it.

Can I look at myself objective objectively? Can I say, hey, I see that? Hey, I'm on your team and I'll be happy to change how I'm doing it. Hey, that's what you're paying me for to do what you want me to do and that's what I'm here for.

How can I do this better for the success of the company? Show me exactly how you want it done so I can make sure you get it done that way in the future. Okay? If the question is is do you have enough personal belief in yourself to accept responsibility?

Now, I'm gonna talk a little bit more about this, but as I was preparing for this podcast, I had kind of an epiphany, epiphany, epiphany, however you say that. I had a a lightning bolt moment, sort of. And what I wrote down was, and I I've known this before, but it hit me harder today in prep for this, and that is is the connection between personal responsibility and what what that means about us.

So why we are irresponsible compared to why we accept responsibility. And I would just want to say that that I'm gonna I'm gonna talk about how to act in a responsible way, what it takes and how to put to put that into a habit. I want to emphasize the connection between the meaning we make about the things we do.

Okay? The meaning we make about the things we do. For example, if I make a bad decision and I recognize it, I made a bad decision and I recognize it. If I make that bad decision mean, if in other words, if that means to me that I'm an idiot or I can't make good decisions or if it makes if I make that mean something negative about my value.

I'm an idiot, I'm bad at making decisions, I suck as a human being, something's wrong with me. There's a million thoughts I could think, but if I make that think anything negative about my value, that's called a negative value judgment, then it's more likely that I'm not going to accept responsibility. Because our brain has this thing called cognitive dissonance.

I think that's how you say it. Basically, what I'm talking about is your brain doesn't it's not likely to accept the idea that you're an idiot. So if you think it means that you're an idiot because you made a bad decision, this is an example. What could your other thought be besides you're an idiot?

I suck, I every time I get in a hurry, I make a bad decision. There's one, okay? Every time I get in a hurry, I make bad decision. I can't make decisions in a hurry.

I am not capable of making decisions in the spur of the moment I always make bad decisions. Maybe that's one of them. Maybe it's just you're an idiot. Maybe you suck, I don't know, whatever your thought is.

You're making a negative value judgment based because you made a bad decision. You're making that mean something negative about you, your being, your worth. You're making it mean like you're damaged or deficient in some way. When you do that, your brain goes, Hey, we're not gonna accept that you are flawed.

And so we're gonna fight for that, we're gonna like it's they did that. It was because of traffic, it was because of you know the sun was in your eyes. There's all here's a thousand reasons to prove your brain's feeding you these ideas.

Here's a thousand reasons to prove that that was one you're okay, Shane, you're okay, it wasn't you, it wasn't you. Because if you make it mean something negative about you, your brain is gonna fight back and say, nothing's wrong with you. Now your brain's there to protect you.

The problem is in the meaning that you're having it mean. So when you can change the meaning by using the separation skill skill, and I'm gonna talk more about this here in just a minute, but but by separating what you do from who you are, when you can separate that and you can make it and you can say, hey, I made a bad decision, and that doesn't make a shit or difference about me and my value or my worth and my kind of person I am.

Well, it doesn't make any difference whatsoever. It just means that, hey, you're a human being that made the bad decision. And that's j that's all there is to it. That doesn't mean that something's wrong with you, it means you're normal.

So my meaning is hey, you're normal, or you're deficient. Now if I mean it mean make it mean that hey it's just part of living, that sometimes I'm gonna make a damn bad decision. Okay, and that's just fine, and that is normal.

See that's my thought, my belief is is bad decisions sometimes are normal. Human beings make bad behavior sometimes, just the way it's gonna be. Now, I'm not gonna set out to doing it and accept it and have it be okay.

I'm just telling you that it doesn't mean that you're deficient or something's wrong with you fund that's wrong with you because you made a bad decision. It doesn't mean anything about it doesn't make you damage your value, it doesn't make anything wrong with your worth as a human.

If I believe that, that nothing's wrong with me, I can look at I can objectively look at it and I can say, hey, yeah, that was me, of course I did that. I made that bad decision, no problem. What would you like me to do different next time?

And I can I can objectively look at it because I don't attach a negative meaning to it. So my brain can accept that it was okay that I did it. And so therefore I can look at it and I can make accept responsibility for it. Hey, I'm responsible for my outcome, I did this, you want me to do this, how can I do that in the future?

So my defensive goes down and my responsibility and my personal responsibility and my accountability goes up. Okay? Because of the way you think. I'm gonna come back to that and I'm gonna share a little bit more about how to develop the beliefs to help people be responsible.

But personal responsibility is something I look for. If you don't have it, you if if people if human beings don't have that. Philosophy, if they don't practice and utilize and move towards and pursue personal responsibility, the long term it's not gonna work out.

It's not gonna work out in their lifetime and for their life well, and it's not gonna work out in the employee-employer relationship. The number three thing that I look for that I recommend is what I call, I'm gonna call the internal strength to engage. Okay? So what do I mean by that?

The Internal Strength to Engage

I've used a lot of words I I've I've used courage, I've used trust, I've used psychological safety, I use internal strength, and I used engagement. For this podcast I'm calling it the internal strength to engage. Okay, so what is the internal what is the internal strength to engage, okay.

Psychological Safety and Value Judgment

Let me talk a little bit about psychological safety and value judgment. My definition definition of psychological safety, and if you've listened to this podcast, you've probably heard it, is this that you trust if you have psychological safety, and it's not something that just like exists.

So like if you go over there, you'll have some. It's not something that's just there. It's something that only exists in people's thoughts. So psychological safety is not you can measure how much a group has based on each individual's relationship with each people and with each individual relationship inside the group, you can get an idea of like overall how much psychological safety we have.

We can do some kind of measurement like that. But really psychological safety is the amount of trust that I have. Me, one individual with either my co-worker, z, either with one of them or all of them, or with my leaders or all them. My manager, my supervisor, my leaders.

It's how much how safe I feel in the group. Okay, how much trust do I have in the group with my co-workers and with my leaders? If psychological safety means to me that you trust that you are safe in the group, that you are safe in the group from value judgment.

So it's value judgment. Okay? Value judgment means that you feel you believe that you have trust that no one's gonna negatively d devalue you. They're not going to make a negative judgment about you as a human being, your worth or your value as a human being based on what you do.

Based on all the bad decisions and all the screw-ups and mistakes and all the stuff you do wrong at work and all the things that you say that were not relevant or not good ideas and all that, that nobody's going to think you're an idiot.

I keep saying think you're an idiot, but that's that's a a negative value judgment. They're not gonna think something's wrong with you that you're deficient, defective, or less than in some way because of what you do. Okay, if you feel safe that everybody in the group is only gonna judge the work, judge the behavior and not you, then you feel a high degree of trust or a high degree of psychological safety if you're more willing to engage.

Okay, you're more in willing to exercise your courage and override your fear and participate and in in in engage. Okay, engagement goes up. And by the way, productivity goes up, it's the number one effector, is that even a word of productivity in the workplace.

Psychological safety means that I feel accepted in the group, and that I that I trust that whatever I do or don't do won't cause people to negatively judge my value. Okay, I won't be judged on my behavior. People just don't we don't want we want other people to like us.

We want other people to accept us. I mean, these are what are called emotional needs. The need for belonging, the need for acceptance, the need for connection, the need for significance. I need to feel like you think I'm okay.

And I will go to great lengths including not doing nothing and just laying low because it's too scary. 'Cause if I say something you might think I'm an idiot instead of wanting to think I'm significant or wanting to connect with me or wanting me to help me feel important.

I mean I'm trying to control how you think over there. That's what I'm doing, because it's important to me what I think you think. So I spend all my time trying to figure out how to get you to think what I think you're thinking.

And I can't believe how much time we spend. I do this so much and we all do. But we don't want people to think that we're foolish, that we're not smart, that we're incapable, that we're not good enough, that we're fundamentally deficient in any way.

We want to feel safe from all that value judgment. Okay, we want to feel like it's okay.

Extending Trust as an Employer

And as an employer I extend trust to people. Okay? In other words, when you come to work for me, I'm going to I'm going to open myself up and I'm going to extend trust to you. I'm going to trust that you're going to tell me the truth and I'm going to trust that you're not going to steal from me.

And I don't have any reason to not trust you, so I'm going to give you, I'm going to extend trust, I'm going trust you until you prove to me or until you show me that I shouldn't trust you by either being dishonest, or stealing from me or something like that.

I'm suggesting that employees do something similar. Okay? If you're entering the workplace and you want to be a total badass and you want to you want to be a badass employee, I'm suggesting that you show up to the workplace, to the job, to the interview, or to your current place of employment, and show up and take something to work with you tomorrow that you've been leaving, some that you haven't brought before.

You're gonna have to dig it out of its wherever you keep it, I don't know, in the closet or whatever, in the recesses of your mind, and bring your own psychological safety to work. Okay, because that you're not gonna go there and get it. It's not something that they pass out.

They can do things to create a space for you to feel trust. But if you don't show up and do your part, you're not gonna be able to participate in what's gonna make you a spectacular employ employee. This is important, okay?

Because this isn't all about this is about the reason that we all participate in this work, in this career, in this company, in this organization, is so that we can increase the quality of our lives. Otherwise, what the hell would we be doing here?

We wouldn't even show up. Who the hell would have a job? It's too much work, right? If we didn't increase the quality of our lives, so that's what this is what I'm talking about, and that's why this is important.

So I'm saying if you can take this to work with you, start taking it to work, or for sure, if you're going into the workplace, take this to your job interviews. Okay, what I mean by that is be willing to extend trust even thought here's a risk.

Okay, so just start out with having the courage to bypass your fear. Now I know there's a lot at stake, it's our money, man, it's our money. We got bills to pay, we got goals, we need to have some dough in the bank.

And so there's a lot at risk and what those leaders the ones over there controlling my paycheck are thinking about me is some serious you know what I'm saying? So but I'm suggesting as frightening as it is and you know I I don't even I am not making fun of this it's for real.

I've lived it I see it all the time and sometimes I do a good at creating a space to have it and sometimes I don't do as well as I know what to do. But it's something I work at a lot in creating the environment for people to feel this psychological safety, to have trust.

Okay. And but I'm suggesting that you show up with courage and the internal strength to override that fear. The fear that you're having of not wanting to engage, not wanting to say anything, is because of the risk of what somebody else could think.

They could put a negative value judgment on you, and your what they think about you is at risk, and that could affect your money and your position and your title and all these things. I'm suggesting that you have the courage to override your fear.

Do the best you can to speak up, to engage, to participate, and to give yourself fully to this job. Give it all everything that you have. Okay, have an example, okay?

A Real Example: The Bale of Hay

So let's just say that you work at Jacob Livestock here and you're delivering horse hay to horse facilities here in southern Nevada and you go around a corner too fast and you a bale of hay falls off the truck, okay?

And it breaks loose and you lose the bale of hay and you can't fix it and it's just gone and the wind blows it away and it's all over. Okay, so you're the driver and you were flying around the corner and you come back and you say that you go to your leader and you say, Hey, I went around that corner too fast and I lost to Bale of Hay.

Okay, you don't hide it, you don't ignore it, you bring it to your attention. And then you make a recommendation to say, hey, and here's what I think I should do. I don't know exactly how you handle this, but here's what I think I should do.

Is there better process than what I'm suggesting? What would you like me to do about it? Here's what I think we need to do. So that here's what I think I need to do to make sure it doesn't happen again.

And I'm going to be doing that and making sure: is there anything else that you can help me with to make sure that this doesn't happen again? Okay. And now the leader still has to deal with what happened, okay?

What happened matters. Okay, the fact that you're going around a corner, you're gonna you could you could have endangered yourself or other drivers on the road, you could have had an accident, there could have been lot of potential people could have been hurt or injured or even killed.

But what we want to do as leaders in this situation is we want to judge the work. We don't wanna make them a bad person because this happened. They're just a person that went around the corner too fast. Nothing wrong with them.

That's sometimes people do stuff like that. They do make bad decisions. So the leader must deal with what happened and what we do matters. Okay, we have to like, you know, who's gonna pay for it?

Who's gonna be get cleaned up? Did anybody get hurt? What are all the repercussions? Are you gonna have to write your written warning?

What needs to change so it doesn't happen again? Is there any disciplinary action that we need to do? Is that the way that we do things? What are the consequences for this behavior?

And what we don't do, what we don't want to do as leaders, is make the behavior mean you suck. You suck as a driver, you're an idiot, you're stupid, you're a bad decision maker. That's what you are.

You're you drive too fast, period. You always drive too fast. You're a bad driver. You're a bad driver, okay.

Judge the Work

You're not a bad decision maker. You made a bad decision. Okay, you're a pro you're a a human being with perfect value value that made a bad decision, like all of us do every day, just for the record.

And and so we we deal with that consequence, we judge the work. We do what we need to do with the work because what we do matters, and there are consequences for our behavior. We deal with the behavior. We don't make it mean something negative about the person's value or their worth as a human being.

What happens? So, what happens when an employee extends the trust? Okay, what happens when the employee extends the trust? Let's just say that in this example, the employee reports what happened, he makes a recommendation, and the leader blows up, he loses his marbles.

Wow, I can't believe you did that, you blah blah blah, you this, you, that. There's all these negative value judgments flying around. And the leader doesn't honor the trust that the employee extended. Okay, now the employee has to decide, well, am I gonna keep working here?

How much am I gonna deal with? How long am I gonna keep extending trust? I'm gonna what am I gonna do with the fact that I extended the trust and my trust wasn't honored? And and then you know, at one point am I gonna find somewhere else to work where people actually judge the work and don't judge me?

Because extending trust is a risk, okay? However, you still wanna be the kind of a person who extends trust, who operates on courage, who does their job and acts with courage rather than hiding, rather than lying, rather than ignoring problems, rather than not engaging, rather than not fully participating, rather than not being all in, rather than kinda sitting on the sidelines, rather than playing it safe and laying it low laying low and not, you know, trying to don't rock the boat.

Don't say too much. Don't even if it's a great idea you say, they might think it's a horrible idea, so make sure you don't say anything. You know let's just let's look at the a different response, okay?

Same bale of hay, the employee decides to do the same thing. He tells the truth, he brings a recommendation, and now this time the leader said, Hey, you know, I appreciate the way that you've thought this through, and I appreciate the recommendation that you're bringing to me about this.

And you're right, you can't keep you this can't keep happening what you've done. And your ideas are either this or that about your ideas about what to do. Here's what else I need you to do. There still may be a written warning or not because of our policies and our insurance and the way that you handled it was I think the way that you handled this, however, was exceptional.

And I can tell you that if you continue addressing problems in this way, you're gonna have a super successful future, play a big part in this company. Same event, same circumstance, same bad decision. The difference is how the leader responds to it.

Okay, having the internal strength to engage, what it looks like is the willingness, is showing up with the willingness to extend trust. Okay, even though you might it it might not work, it might not be honored, okay.

The willingness to engage, even though there's a high risk, okay? The willingness to bring recommendations, to bring new ideas, which lead to innovation, to bring suggestions, to to bring questions, to be open and honest with the people in the group about what your thoughts are, to value yourself and your own thinking in your own self enough to participate, to lay it out there for the people in the group to be able to see and to contribute.

Make your contribution, is what I'm trying to say. It's caring enough about the outcome of what the group is trying to comp the company is trying to accomplish. Okay, it's it's caring more about the outcome than yourself.

Okay, being willing to contribute your ideas regardless of the risk. Because here's the thing, like I said, nobody wants people we don't want other people thinking we're incapable, that we're not smart, that we're an idiot, that we're not good enough, that we're just not able to do the job.

But and and because of that, the easiest thing to do is nothing. Okay? Don't engage, don't say anything, lay low, be quiet, you know.

Asking Questions Instead of Making Assumptions

What I'm looking for when people work for me is I'm looking for the internal strength to participate, the internal strength to engage, you know. When people start, they don't know what to do. They don't know what the expectation is the first few days or weeks or even months sometimes across the job.

And when you start a job or when a new employee starts, you're gonna run across something that you don't know the answer to. Matter of fact, you're gonna have that's gonna happen a lot. Okay, you don't know how we roll here.

You don't your training hasn't told you, they you're you don't know the answer, okay. And there's no way for you to know you just because you just haven't been here that long. You haven't experienced it enough times to know.

Okay. And but you what you don't you don't want people to think that you don't know. You don't want to be perceived as incapable. You don't want to look like the kind of person that can't solve problems.

You don't want to look like you're not resourceful. So what you do is you try to control. This is not always a conscious thought, but in the back of your mind you're trying to control what you think other people are going to think about you.

So instead of asking we make an assumption that may or not be not be the way they want us to me to do something around here. And you say, well, I'll do I'm I'm gonna do this. So you make a guess.

You're operating on your assumption that's based on who the hell knows what. And you make a guess, you make an assumption, you act on that assumption. And most of the time you're wrong. Okay?

And then when it comes, when when when it's time to find out, when somebody asks what the hell happened, you're gonna say, Well, it seemed to me, well, I didn't know, and so well I thought this and that and the other. And all this fear of negative value judgment was stronger than my willingness simply to be seen and to ask the question.

Okay, my fear of what you would think about me was stronger than my courage to to to care about the outcome. So I just made a guest and hoped the hell it worked. Because I didn't want you to think that I wasn't smart, even though we cost the company, you know, a gajilion dollars and risked a whole bunch of really big, you know, important things.

You know, like I said, a lot of this isn't conscious thought. We're just reacting to fear. We're feeling things and we're made like human beings do, and we're reacting, we're acting based on our feelings. And when we feel fear, we hunker down and make usually not very good decisions.

We quiet, we zip it, we don't participate, we're not we kinda close we we like hunker down, I I guess I'll call it. We don't open up and engage, okay? The internal strength to engage means asking questions instead of operating on assumptions.

That's what I'm trying to try to say. People with the internal strength to engage ask more questions, they bring more suggestions, they make fewer assumptions. These matter so much, okay. The three things dependability, personal responsibility and internal strength to engage.

These are the three of the most important things I look for when I hire somebody. Because if you haven't got these things, you you know, if you if if you have these things, okay, if you practice these things, these three things, you can learn the process, okay?

You can learn the system, you can learn how we roll around here, you can learn how you know you can fill in all the other blanks. These are the really important ones. If you have the willingness to succeed, if you're dependable, you're responsible and you're willing to engage, you've already you've got a lot.

Okay, you've already got most of it handled. Then you just learn the process and then you keep following through and you're gonna have a great career. Okay.

How to Recognize These Qualities

How do you recognize this if you're a leader? How do you recognize these three? How do you recognize dependability? People will tell you if they're dependable.

You know, look at their track lip record, you can look back at the previous employees, you can look at their work history, sometimes you're still gonna have to make your best decision and see what happens, but it kind of tells on itself and it doesn't take very long if people are dependable or not. Personal responsibility, you'll hear it pretty quickly.

Listen to how people talk about their previous employer. Listen to people how explain how things have had negative outcomes, things that they didn't things that haven't went that they want them to, listen to how they explain why.

Okay, if every when people talk about their previous employer, I mean if everything went wrong in that situation with the employer's fault, it's all somebody else's problem because everybody else is horrible. You can expect that same lack of responsibility and eventually it's gonna sh it's gonna show up.

It's already there. You just it's gonna be louder and louder. And that's one of the reasons that we start people on a trial basis, so that we can have at a little bit more of a time to evaluate people.

Because in a short period of time you can see people's attitudes towards learning, their attitude towards growing, how they accept correction and training, and whether they can objectively look at themselves, whether they take responsibility or whether they blame other people.

The Separation Skill

I want to come back to this personal responsibility and where it comes from. A lack of personal responsibility is rooted in a lack of how I feel about me, in a lack of confidence, in low low self-image and low self-esteem. If I judge myself based on my behavior, okay, then this is what I but this is what I call in The Worth Work System, this is what I call the separation skill, meaning that mentally I separate behavior, what I do and what I don't do, with my value, my worth and my value as a human soul, as a human being.

Okay, and these are totally two separate things. Sometimes I do things great, sometimes I don't do things too well. And none of it changes my perfect value. Okay, that's what I call the separation skill, is that belief that I can separate what I do from who I am.

Excuse me. If I judge myself on my behavior, in other words, if I do something what I judge to be poorly, if I do something poorly, if I make a bad decision, it if I believe that that means something's wrong with me, my brain doesn't want to accept that something's wrong with me, so my brain starts going, What else was it then?

And then it starts coming up with a whole bunch of reasons that look a lot like excuses, okay, and a lot of other people to blame and other circumstances, and I'm blaming somebody else, so my brain can realize hey, it wasn't you, it was all this other, it was all somebody else, okay.

The purpose is to prove that, hey, it wasn't you, there was not there's nothing wrong with you, okay. If you change what the behavior means instead of I made a bad decision, so I'm an idiot, if you change it to I made a bad decision, and that makes me nothing wrong with me, that makes me normal, that makes me a human being who made a bad decision, and I'm a human being who made a bad decision who wants to make better decisions.

I can look at that, I can look at what happened, I can change what I can do. I can accept that it was okay for me to do that, that I did it, and that I'm responsible for my outcomes. It's not somebody else. When I accept the responsibility, then I'm able to make progress.

I've eliminated the blockers. The blockers are I can't do anything to make progress as long as I'm focused on what everybody else contributed to this, all the circumstances and all the when I'm totally focused out there with somebody else or something else, I'm not able to say to myself, what can I doin order to improve my outcome?

That has to do with your internal thinking. That's the separation skill and personal responsibility. That's the the connection between personal responsibility and the again what I call the separation skill where I separate behavior from value or worth. I put them in separate columns.

Nothing I do or don't do can change my value as a human being. If I believe my behavior affects my value, it's then I'm it's easy for me and it's going to be normal and natural for me to think that other people are going to see think the same way.

They're going to think that what I do means something about my value. So if I think that way about me, I'm going to think other people think the same way. So if I make a bad decision, that means me an idiot, then it it and that makes me an idiot, then I think everybody else thinks I'm an idiot too.

Then my brain starts protecting me. It's like, the sun was in my eyes, the traffic was bad, and here's all the reasons why it really wasn't my fault, because I don't want to be an idiot. My brain doesn't want me to accept the idea that I'm an idiot.

Unless I keep feeding it and eventually it it will accept it if I keep continue to feed it that thought. But when I believe that my behavior doesn't affect my value, I can objectively look at myself and I don't even get defensive.

I can say, hey, yeah, I made a bad decision, and I can ask what I need to change and I can make progress instead of making excuses. Okay. Behaving that believing, having the belief that behavior doesn't affect value and that your value is non-negotiable is a choice that you can make.

You can begin to make that choice. You can begin to develop the belief if you so choose to do so, that what you do has no impact on who you are. And making that choice is what is what helps, is what allows you to practice personal responsibility.

Where Courage Comes From

Now, where does the internal strength to engage come from? Where do I get that? How do I figure all that out? By the way, more on belief systems and how to develop the beliefs that you want to.

For the best resource for that, I'm going to tell you what that is. The best resource I have ever heard of is going to be at the onehorserace.com, get a copy of my book, The One Horse Race. Period. That's I'm just that's what itis, is it's a system to develop beliefs that you want to believe.

Now, where does the internal strength to engage come from? Okay, courage is feeling fear and then just doing it anyway. Okay, and there's a lot on the line in the at the in the workplace. Okay, I want to make money.

I want to make think I want people to think I'm amazing. I have and by the way, I have bills to pay. And fully participating just feels, well, too damn risky. Okay.

Making recommendations feels risky. Well, I don't know what you're gonna think about me if I you know, what if you don't like my idea? Extending trust to be willing to open myself up and lay myself out there feels just too risky.

So where the hell am I going to get this courage from with all this risk that I'm I'm taking? Okay? And again, it's the same answer. It's a choice about what you believe to be true about yourself.

Okay? When you believe that nothing, nothing that you can that you do or don't do can change your perfect value okay, that nothing that you do or don't do can change your perfect value. Okay, and you and and as you develop that into a solid core belief that you can operate your life on, okay.

And if you commit to the pursuit of unconditionally loving yourself, okay? Committing to the pursuit of unconditionally loving yourself, regardless of what you do. By the way, hey, just let me say something about that. You're going to be the one that's gonna be spending the most time with you out of anyone between right now and the time you die.

So why wouldn't you want, just saying, why wouldn't you want the relationship that you have with you to be as good as it can be, including unconditional love, total acceptance, total forgiveness, and total unconditional meaning, regardless of anything you do or don't do, or what's been done to you, nothing can change your perfect value.

Okay? When you commit, that's a belief that that's a choice that you can choose to believe or not. When you come with that to believe, okay? What somebody else thinks about you doesn't matter.

Okay? It doesn't matter anymore. It becomes a lot easier to show up in the group and say something. And say and and and invest yourself and fully open yourself up and participate.

Okay, I work on this, you know, I got a long ways to go on this, but it's something that I work on. I worry about what other people think about me sometimes. Sometimes I don't. I I still try to control what other people think about me, it's it's just a habit, and I've had it for such a long time.

I still do it, but I do it less and less. I'm constantly overriding this idea that I have that you know that I'm gonna control what other people think. And and I'm getting better at not allowing my fear of what I think somebody else might think, isn't this great?

My fear of what you might think about me is what's keeping me from fully being me, from fully participating and engaging in my life. I mean, what the hell? Seriously, Shane?

Your Value Is Non-Negotiable

Seriously, listeners, that we're not gonna that we're not gonna fully participate, okay? I'm saying go for it, man. The hell with be damned with what somebody else thinks. First of all, accept you for all you are as it is right now, and realize and practice the belief that no matter what you do or don't do, or whatever has been done to you and will be done to you, nothing can change your perfect value.

And when you have that, okay, it makes it so much easier. It makes it so much easier to have the courage to show up in the group, whatever the group is, wherever it is, and give up everything you have.

Fully participate with all that you have. Give everything you have to this world, to this life, to this breath that you're breathing to this day. Okay? And I think it's that's something that I want to do, and I think that's something that you want to do too.

Living in fear and holding back because we're afraid of what somebody else might think keeps us from fully participating. And that's just not how I want to go through my wife. I want to go through it and I want to give everything.

I want to extend the trust. I want to participate. I want to say it. I want to do it. I want to be.

You. Say it, do it, participate, be you. You know why it's good to be you? I'll tell you why it's good to be you.

Because you are amazing right now as you are. Okay? And that is what to look for in other people. That's what to develop in yourself.

Closing Thoughts

And that's if you're in the job market or going into it, that's the thing to focus on. These three things. There's three things I look for: dependability number one, personal responsibility number two, and number three is the internal strength to engage.

I've told you what I look for, what they mean, how to get it, how to doit, how to practice it. If you have any more, I've giving you the resource of the one horse race my book. You can also check ShaneJacob.com.

In my experience, these are the kinds of skills I have seen in the people that succeed in the workplace and in all areas of life. Okay, if you're going to work at Jacob Livestock, you still have to have a driver's license.

Okay, sometimes you still should still get your degree, still get your certification, still get your experience and whatever else is just the start.

Places to get you started. This is what is going to allow you to excel in the workplace and in your life. I appreciate you taking your time to be herewith me today.

Your time is valuable and I appreciate it very much. Remember, my friends, if you remember nothing else, and that is this: your value is non-negotiable. Stay with me.

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