168 -How Mindset Can Help You Achieve Your Greatest Partnership Results in 2023?

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A High-Performance Leader Joins Ultimate Guide to Partnering

Dr. Michael Gervais is a high-performance psychologist working in the trenches of high-stakes environments with some of the best in the world, training the mindset skills and practices essential to pursuing and revealing one’s potential. His clients include:

World record holders.
Olympians and MVPs from every major sport.
Internationally acclaimed artists and musicians.
Fortune 100 CEOs like Satya Nadella of Microsoft.

Organizations like Microsoft, the Seattle Seahawks, and Olympic Gold Medalists have applied Dr. Michael Gervais’s principles. You will learn more about his work and why his principles are foundational to optimal organizations – especially those looking to shift to a partner mindset – especially during challenging times. You will walk away with an understanding of how Mike applies these principles and how mindset can help you achieve your greatest results in 2023!

NOTE: If you listen to the end, Mike and I discuss a unique offer and a gift we are giving away this holiday to one of our lucky podcast listeners.

In Dr. Mike’s words

Dr. Michael Gervais is a high-performance psychologist, author, and one of the world’s leading experts on the relationship between the mind and human performance. Throughout his 20-year career working with world-class performers and organizations, Dr. Gervais has developed a framework for the mental skills and practices that allow organizations, teams, and individuals to thrive in pressure-packed environments.

Dr. Gervais is the host of the Finding Mastery podcast that explores the psychology of the world’s most extraordinary thinkers and doers. In the top 1% of podcasts globally, Finding Mastery crossed the 25 million downloads milestone in 2021.

In 2020, Gervais wrote an Audible Original, Compete to Create: An Approach to Living and Leading Authentically, with NFL coach Pete Carroll. He has also authored a book published by Harvard Business Review in the fall of 2023.

Gervais created a six-week online course, Finding Your Best, to bring the principles and practices of high-performance psychology and well-being into businesses and homes.

What You’ll Learn in this Episode

Who is Dr. Michael Gervais? (2:38)
Moving Microsoft to a Growth Mindset (4:30)
The Five-Factor Model (11:44)
How did he get to the business success that took Microsoft from $30 to $240 share? (26:07)
How trust enters a partnership, and can you train it? (32:11)
How to stay in optimal health during this time? 37:52)
How to train your mind for optimal performance? (45:54)

Creating Ultimate Partnerships

Let’s face it, we all have seen partnerships that look good on paper but never live up to their expected results. There are many reasons why partnerships fail, and at Ultimate Partnerships, we help you get it right by applying a proven set of best practices and frameworks. If you want to learn more, follow the link in the show notes, or visit our website.

Other Episodes Featuring Dr. Mike

130 – Spotlight on High_perfromance Principles and Effective Partnerships

81 – HOW FIRST PRINCIPLES GUIDE AND IMPACT SUCCESSFUL PARTNERSHIPS – PART ONE.

82 – HOW FIRST PRINCIPLES GUIDE AND IMPACT SUCCESSFUL PARTNERSHIPS – PART TWO.

Transcription – by Otter.ai – Expect Typos

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

people, trust, microsoft, partner, organization, stress, important, environment, mindset, skills, threat, world, partnering, psychological, figure, leaders, psychology, partnership, training, growth mindset

SPEAKERS

Announcer, Dr. Michael Gervais, Vince Menzione

Vince Menzione 00:00

How applying high performance principles can set up your partnership and ecosystem strategy for optimal success. My next guest on Ultimate Guide to partnering has worked with the greatest business leaders, high performance athletes, and celebrities on the tools and training necessary to achieve high performance. His principles have been applied by organizations like Microsoft, the Seattle Seahawks, and Olympic gold medalists. In this episode, he will share how you can apply these principles to set up your organization to achieve its greatest results in 2023.

Announcer 00:42

This is the ultimate guide to partnering the top partnership podcast. In this podcast Vince Menzione, a proven partner sales executive shares his mission to help leaders like you achieve your greatest results through successful partnering. And now your host Vince Menzione.

Vince Menzione 01:01

Welcome to or welcome back to The Ultimate Guide to partnering. I’m Vince Menzione, your host and today I will Dr. Mike Gervais is a high performance psychologist working in the trenches of high stakes environments with some of the best in the world training the mindset skills and practices essential to pursuing and revealing one’s potential. His clients include world record holders, Olympians, internationally acclaimed artists and musicians MVPs from every major sport and fortune 100 CEOs, including Satya Nadella, you’ll learn more about his work and why his principles are foundational to optimal organizations, especially those looking to shift to a partner mindset. If you listen to the end of this podcast, Mike and I discuss a unique offer and a free gift. We’re giving away this holiday season to one of our lucky listeners. I hope you enjoy this discussion. As much as I enjoyed welcoming back, Mike drew Bay. Mike, welcome back to the podcast.

Dr. Michael Gervais 02:12

It’s great to be here with you.

Vince Menzione 02:14

I am so excited to welcome you back. This is your third appearance on Ultimate Guide to partner. And we always do this around a very festive time in our culture. And I was just excited. So excited that you could join us back again this year. So thank you,

Dr. Michael Gervais 02:27

your community is strong. And the questions I get after the way that I got after the first two conversations we had were awesome. And so I’m excited for another one.

Vince Menzione 02:38

We met at Microsoft, a lot of our listeners come out of that ecosystem that we all know and love. They’re either Microsoft employees, they work as Microsoft partners, they work for other tech giants. And so a lot of people have gotten to know you over the years as I have in fact, we got to work together when I was at Microsoft and you were working with the Microsoft organization. But for our listeners, many listeners today or listening that may not know you, can you describe yourself for them?

Dr. Michael Gervais 03:05

Vince, I love that question, because it’s the self discovery process is near and dear to my heart. And when I think about how do I describe myself that it feels like I can’t quite find the words to honor the way that it feels to be inside me. Okay, so that’s the first thing is like at a deep level. And I think most of us recognize that. But on a very surface level, I would describe my training. And so by trade and training, I am a high performance psychologist. And my purpose is to help people live in the present moment more often. And so that that gives you a sense of the value that I placed in psychological skills training in sport. And in business.

Vince Menzione 03:44

So much of what you have to say, Mike, about psychology applies to business and the work that I do specifically with organizations looking to optimize for success with partnerships, right. And I come at it from this framework that includes mindset is the first operating principle of successful partnering. And you talk about mindfulness, you talk about mindset. And in fact, the work that you’ve done and will I want to talk about this a little bit more we’ve talked about in other episodes, but when I talk about Microsoft in particular, and moving from a scarcity mindset to a growth mindset, you’re required a lot of heavy lifting a lot of work, both from a personal psychology perspective, as well as an organizational perspective. And I was wondering maybe for our listeners, you can share with them what it was like, when you first entered the room. I remember I was working with you, our organization was working with you. But then you were called upon by Satya Nadella, the new CEO of Microsoft to come and enter the room. tell our listeners what that was like, both from an organizational perspective, but also maybe from a personal psychology perspective.

Dr. Michael Gervais 04:54

First and foremost, what an extraordinary leader Sati is to be able to do fundamentally change the experience at Microsoft from a cultural and an individual experience. Remarkable. And so I have great regard and respect for how he’s done. What he has done to take us back to the story is he was about four weeks into his new role at Microsoft as a CEO. And I had just come off of an incredible run at the Seattle Seahawks, which is the NFL franchise, up in Seattle, Washington, and he was paying attention to what we’re building. And what we’re building, there was a culture where people could do their very best work. And we had this incredible external success. But what was happening in local media and national media, because we won what’s called the Super Bowl, we won one of them. And then we got to a second one back to back, which is unheard of, we lost the second one in dramatic fashion. So there was this, this buzz and awareness of the power of culture that we were intentional. And the culture we’re building was what we call the relationship based organization and relationship based culture where people could do their very best work. So it was meant just to be a just a kind of curious conversation like to meet each other. And we sat down, and he was full of questions. And he understood the value of culture. And he was intentional about what he wanted to build at Microsoft. So we talked about concepts, and we, he was still exploring the language that he wanted to really land for the culture. And one of the things that was, what stood out, was that he was going to start with the way he hoped people could feel while they were at Microsoft. And he was very clear that Microsoft is one of the most meaningful and potent companies on the planet, like there’s a legacy that he was inheriting. And he said, I hope that when people are at Microsoft, when they leave Microsoft, they look back. And they say, that was a time when I was able to have purpose and meaning. And it was a very special time for me while at Microsoft, whether they were retiring or going to the second place, whatever, he didn’t specify that, but that idea still sticks with me. And so that was it was exciting to hear him think about what he was trying to sort out and, and figure out and at that point, he said, I really like what you guys have done over at Seattle. And I’ve heard good news about the pilots that were running at Microsoft and some of the organizations yours included. And he said, why don’t why don’t we see if we can scale something and build something out to the full, nearly 200,000 Folks, it was just an awesome synergy and energy. And you could see the spark behind his eye and the way that he was thinking about people from an empathetic standpoint, like he really wants people to experience purpose and meaning while at Microsoft, which is incredible. And that’s so he landed on growth mindset, as a cultural attribute. And I think that we throw around the word culture, like it’s, I don’t know, like, it’s, it’s important work. But then we, we get the special words, and we agree on what those four or five, six words are that we’re going to build our culture around, and we make these fancy posters, and we put them on walls. And he was like, we’re not doing that, we’re going to make this real. And so to make a culture real is to invest in the relationship that people have with themselves, so that they can have a deeper, more meaningful, purposeful relationship with others. And for me, culture is simply the artifact of relationships, it’s the way that you work with each other. And when you invest in people psychology, tend to work at a deeper, more meaningful level. And then I’ll just just kind of pause on this last thought here is that we start, like trying to figure out the culture that we want, most people do, and we get the right words, and they’re aspirational. They’re wonderful, like I said, and then we kind of just point to it when things aren’t right when they don’t feel right. But in sport, what sport teaches us elite sport in particular, is that the external environment should not dictate our internal environment. So we get a Northstar of how we want to experience ourselves. Whether it’s in a calm environment, or hostile or rugged or stressful or high pressured, the external environment does not matter. What we’re trying to do is figure out how we want to operate. And that’s why we use this concept called front loading in sport. So we front load our physical training, we front load our technical training, so we don’t have to think about things. And then while we’re doing them, right, because that’s a substandard way to perform anything. And then we front load our mental training or psychological training, so that when we are environments of speed and accuracy, we’re not trying to figure out how to be confident, we’re speaking to ourselves and confident ways. We’re not trying to just keep our head above water, we’re able to have some buoyancy so that if somebody else is struggling, that we can reach out and to help them. And so it’s that relationship based approach that requires a front loading of psychological skills so that we can manage stress eloquently and That aspirationally. So is possible.

Vince Menzione 10:03

So what is front loading look like? You walk into this room, these are high powered executives at Microsoft, these are alpha individuals, each with their own agendas, set of expectations, businesses that they’re running. What is that front loading? Like? How do you get them to operate as a unit? What does the psychological skills and the front loading look like for that organization?

Dr. Michael Gervais 10:27

Okay. Yeah, cool question. So it from that meeting was Santee and I, it was probably another oh, let’s call it six weeks before I sat with his whole team. And so I think that’s what you’re referencing is the work we did early with his his team. And that is front loaded, which is we’re going to designate some time to understand best practices, core principles of psychology. And we’re going to understand what those are first. So the first thing is like, let’s make sure we’re on the same page of what the core principles and best practices are. Right? Okay. That’s good. That’s, that’s more academic, if you will, then the second part of that is to train the psychological skills that support the way that we want to operate together. What does that mean? That means that we, I work from a five factor model, I’ll explain those to make it simple. And then I’ll drill right underneath to give you the exact skills that we work from. But there’s five factors from a high performance psychology model, there’s a self discovery process, which is basically a life process to understand. What are your first principles in life? What is your personal philosophy? What is the vision you hold for yourself? Knowing your What are your character strengths, and the virtues that matter to you? So there’s a whole host of questions of self discovery that we go through. Because once you know who you are, Vincent, nobody can take it away from you. How about that, it’s a really powerful place to be from. And then we’ve got mental skills, which is helping people be confident and calm and deeply focused and knowing how to trust themselves. And that’s the second factor. And then we’ve got a third factor, which is psychological framework. And a psychological framework is the training of optimism, the training of locus of control, and the training of grit, being able to do the hard things and persevere with passion over time. And then the the fourth factor, that the five factor model is all the recovery strategies to complement and support the ambitious, the ones that are really getting after in life, we have to be irresponsible, say, do all of this technical and psychological work, and then not have a strategy at least in place, and some skills to be able to recover intelligently. And then the fifth factor is mindfulness, which is the practice of becoming more aware. And so those are the five factors. And underneath are all the skills that we that we work from. And the way you train your mind is no different than the way you train your body. You train it with sets and reps, you train it with practice, and you do it first in common environments. And then you do it in slightly more stressful environments. And then you do it in high pressured high stakes environments. So you’re practicing in those types of conditions so that you can be eloquently free in any environment, where the external world does not dictate your internal experience. Rather, you work to understand how you want to live in any environment, the unfolding of the present moment, how do you want to experience it. And when you have all the psychological skills and levers to pull on, you have a better chance of it. And so, I know it’s a mouthful, but those are the five factors set of skills that sit underneath of it. And an operating philosophy, which is we work from the inside out, not the outside in.

Vince Menzione 13:43

So you started with a foundation of five factors, you took them through all these these foundational principles, these five factors. This was a harsh environment, I’m going to be candid with you here. I, I know some of the Alpha individuals in the room and I knew what the experience of Microsoft was like before Saudi became the CEO. There had to be some some conversations that ensued while you were training, like it didn’t just like, Okay, we’re going to be a classroom. We’re going to learn this stuff. And then we’re going to talk about how we’re gonna take the organization forward, right? Those two happened together, did they not?

Dr. Michael Gervais 14:16

They did. And so there’s a unique part here then switches, I had spent 25 years working in some of the most high stressed rugged, pressure packed environments on the planet where people made mistakes, it could cost them their lives or somebody else’s that they loved. And so there’s football is a rugged environment. But what I’m talking about is my time before that, working in, again, the highest stakes environments in action and adventure. And action sport is when you know people are doing things that have never been done before, where Felix Baumgartner jumped from the edges of space and we’re trying to figure out how to help him have command of his mind. And I can go on and on about stories. So there’s there’s this legacy and this body of work that when I entered the room, I know what a real alpha is, when somebody’s going to put full command and trust in another person, that’s an alpha. Yeah, when they have the ability to fully trust a partner, it’s not what you think it is, right, which is like, look at the big person here. And let me flex how strong and smart I am. That’s not enough. But that’s somebody that’s working from a sub capability that I need to demonstrate a true alpha is, I have such self trust, I can trust myself at such a deep level, that I am trying to sort out your level of capability when you can establish I’m reliable, and I’m consistent, and I’m working my ass off to be great for the mission. I’m gonna trust you. And so the true offers are the ones that trust at a very deep level. So we go into the room, and yeah, there’s people that are kind of leaning back on their heels. They’re, they’re kind of sitting back on their chair saying, Well, we know what you’ve done, but like, how is this going to land here? And then we got to a moment, which is fine. That’s totally normal, by the way. I mean, that’s anticipated and expected,

Vince Menzione 16:06

the folding of the arms and the in the leaning back, as you say,

Dr. Michael Gervais 16:09

yeah, right, that’s totally normal. And it just means that it takes a little bit more time to get to speed, right of the change that they’re hoping to invent that they’ve made an investment of time, it just takes a little bit more time. When you’re, you’re have your arms folded with a bit of a skeptic critical lens. However, it takes incredibly, even more time, if you are naively trusting everybody, because somebody says, Hey, I got a swamp, I want to sell you a bridge, I want to sell you or whatever. And you’re like, okay, so that sounds good. So there is a healthy discernment that is required, that’s different than cynical, skeptical and critical. So discernment is not to be confused with being critical or skeptical. So this, so naive naivete takes an extraordinary amount of time to reef to fix, or to go backwards to try to figure out how to sort out the bad debt that you made or the naive trust. The cynic takes a little bit more time, because they’re not using discernment in an objective way. They’re using it in a protective mechanism. And the reason we are critics discerning and skeptical is because we felt some sort of deep disappointment in our family history or personal lives. So our parents taught us, Hey, don’t, you should not trust anybody, right? People, there are bad people in this world, which there are. And it’s a message that is talking about or speaking right into human nature. And then the takeaway is like, I don’t trust anybody, or you’ve been so let down or burned in your life that you you’ve put your armor up, okay, so, so I have compassion for people that are skeptics or cynics or I understand it, because they’re doing their very best to try to figure out how to be okay. And they’re just not going to get burned again, and be the stupid one that gets taken advantage of again, the again is the important piece there. And so Okay, so it just takes a little bit more time, then honest, objective discernment, no problems, I get it. We’re emotional beings. We’re social beings that are emotional. And we’d like to think we’re independent contributors, and cognitively intellectual thinkers, like we’re emotional. Do not be fooled by that. I’d love to play smart that or have a placeholder for that. Come back to it. So we’re in the room. And we get to a point where it’s about to get intimate. And because we’re going to talk about people’s first principles in life, the, the ideas and the philosophy that matters most to them, and sought to when we got to that point, and this is in his books, I’m not sharing something out of turn here. In his book, hit refresh, this is in the first handful of pages, he talks about how powerful it is to know one’s own philosophy of life, and to know the people that you are working with, to know their philosophy as well. So he took a moment. And he heard, he listened about to about what we’re the place the territory we’re going to go into. And he paused and he said, really want us to do the right work here. And I don’t care if this takes half a day, I want to make sure that we know each other. And we’re really honest with this segment of our work because we have some ambitious, lofty, world changing goals and a mission that is deep and purposeful and meaningful. And anybody that’s going to take on this level of ambition, we will be tested. And when we know each other, we’re more likely to do what Dr. Gervais saying we’re more likely to rely on each other when we really know each other. So let’s spend time here. And so we changed the room. He changed the room and he took them He gave them air cover as a great leader does to do the inner work, to be honest with oneself and then to have the vulnerability and the courage to take the risk. To be honest with the other folks about what the first principles that they’re operating from are, and if you think about events, all the all the words in your native tongue, if I were to say or challenge you to say, can you express in 25 words or less the principles that matter most to you, you go, okay, so I gotta get this thing down into something that really represents where I operate from that amount of work. That takes a deep dive. And so it’s awesome. It’s incredible. And so he started us off that way.

Vince Menzione 20:31

Yeah. And by the way, you’ve taken me through that deep dive so I can articulate that. But what you say here is so striking because I work with organizations on the art and science of partnering as I like to refer to it, right? And I come at it from this mindset. But I come at thinking organizational mindset. And I do a SWOT analysis. And I basically asked the leaders to articulate and let’s be honest, like, what are we doing, right? What are we doing wrong? Where do we need to take this organization further, but you’re saying, getting an understanding of people’s personal philosophy, like their vision of the world, their personal vision, as opposed to the organizational vision is critical first, so that we can understand each other. And I think what I’m hearing, you’re implying, instead that we can trust one another. That’s exactly.

Dr. Michael Gervais 21:17

So our brain, the organ that sits in our skull, the 3.2 pounds of tissue is optimized, it’s millions of years old. From a genetic standpoint, it’s the ancestry that it’s been passed on to us millions of years old. And that ancestor did something very purposeful is that it’s sorted out how to scan the world for danger. Above all else, it is designed and optimized for survival. But that means that there’s a nearly non conscious response to picking up the slightest of threats. And matter of fact, that as information is coming into your brain in my brain right now, through all of our senses, visual smell, and the whole the whole gamut is that information is coming in what we call the high road and the low road. So the high road is information is being funneled up into our thinking brain. At the same time, it’s being funneled down to our threat response mechanism, the amygdala, and the limbic system and big system. Now, what’s fascinating is that it’s going to the limbic system at nearly twice the speed. So what’s happening underneath the surface of this conversation and everything that we’re always doing, is we’re getting out nope, not a threat, not a threat. Still not a threat. No, we’re okay. Not a threat, not a threat. Then when we change our gaze or walk into a new environment, it’s doing the same thing. Is this threatening? Nope, we’re okay. We’re okay. We’re okay. So it’s always doing that. Now, at the slightest nearly nonconscious interpretation of something that is risky or threatening or, or perceived to be dangerous, Allah, somebody squinting their eyes and saying, What did you say? Can you say that again, in a smarter way? Wait, so you’re telling me that whatever those half sentences mixed with the body micro expressions that are like, oh, gosh, okay, I’m being inspected? Because the most dangerous thing for most people most days, is what other people are thinking about us. And so back to Satya is he saying, okay, look, if we really know each other, and we’re working from a deeper level, maybe we’re less likely to from this nonconscious bias that we’re working from on survival, maybe we’re less likely to interpret a behavior or non behavior, a microexpression, or some verbal language as not a threat. But maybe just maybe this will help us have a better sense of who the person is, so that we can work with greater speed to go, Yeah, but I know where Vince is coming from, I know what he’s trying to do in his life. And so if we can go to that depth will work with greater speed. And so the greater the pressure in the external environment, the greater the need for strong psychological skills, so that you can show up and be okay. And when you do just that, when you partner with yourself in that way, and then I’m with you, Vince, and I look over at you, and I see that you’re grounded, and you’re cool. Then I say Oh, well, he’s not seeing that there’s a threat in the world. So then I should, I should follow that too. Because I’m feeling kind of okay. So great. We’re okay. But if I look over at you events, and you haven’t done the internal work, to know what you’re about and know how you want to experience the world, and have the psychological skills to talk to yourself, well, to breathe well, to focus on the present moment, and to have an optimistic framework about what could be great in the future. If we just keep working at it. And I look over at you and your eyes are big and they’re darting around a little bit. Your hands are rattling you got a light sweat on and I can see in your micro expressions that your face that you’re stressed, my brain goes, Well, if that human is screwed up, then I gotta figure out what the threat is. So I start scanning the world to find the threat. And guess what I scan for, I don’t scan for like the snake in the corner of the boardroom. I don’t, I’m not scanning for those types of threats. I’m looking around at other people. And then so then I map my stress or interpreted risk and threat on to somebody else. Now we have problems because it’s not even, it’s not even real. I’ve just literally displaced my interpretation of your stress onto the threat. And I made up what that threat is, it must be Susie or Johnny, which is sounds crazy. But it Satya had the inherent understanding that if we can know each other and trust each other, we’re going to work out a better way. Secondarily, if we can invest in our psychology, we’re not going to walk into environments rattled, we’re gonna walk in calm and confident, present, optimistic, and more connected. So there’s a lot there, and

Vince Menzione 26:07

I’m happy to announce that partner tap has become a founding sponsor of ultimate guide to partnering. I’ve been friends with the founders of partner tap for many years. And partner tap is the only partner ecosystem platform designed for the enterprise. Their technology makes it easy to align channel teams with automated account mapping, letting you control what data you share, while building a partner revenue engine. I’m so excited to have them on board. Be on the lookout for events, content, and more. And I’m so excited to continue working together. And our exciting year ahead. I came at this question on mindset. But I also focus in on like, organizations need to set a clear vision, they need to be truly committed to the the outcomes or that that vision. And then they they need to focus like they need to apply maniacal focus to the execution of that plan. And it it sounds like this was the next series of things that happened in the room for you at Microsoft during that time. I’m interested in learning from you like how did you get there? Once we knew each other? Did Satya articulate the clear vision was decided upon? Was there consensus around it? Was there expressed commitment in the room? Or was it asked for at the time? And then how did the organization take that forward? Like we could apply the psychological skills but then how did we get to the business success that took Microsoft at the time was trading at around $30 a share? Last I looked it was a little over $240 A share maybe $250 a share. But how did he get there?

Dr. Michael Gervais 27:47

What’s the best way to say this like it was it’s a collective. And there’s there’s so many hard working smart, thoughtful humans at Microsoft, that what Satya did is tried to articulate a way that he was hoping that the people would partner and work well with each other. They made the deepest and richest investment in people psychology that I’ve ever seen. And that’s including in world sport. And so they really went after it. And they said, the culture attribute the one we’re going to put our flagpole on is growth mindset. And if you want to have a growth mindset, you have to train your mind. And so that’s where I was able to step in and help demonstrate from a science based best practices of high stress environments. This is how the best in the world train rides. And so there’s just a cascading when the leader of Microsoft says we’re going to invest in having a place where we’re doing our best work. And to do that, you need to feel really good about yourself. So one of those ways of doing it is making sure that you have the psychological skills to partner well with yourself and with other people. So there’s the cascade, start with a pilot, got some air cover, they did the deep work from from the leadership team. And then leaders on that team said, You know what, I’d love to do some of this work with my team. And then that cascaded and then we would just scale through there. We built a series of digital courses, which I know you’ve been through and and there’s a whole host of other assets to fit inside the rhythm of the business that they’ve helped us co create.

Vince Menzione 29:21

Well, I recall three things from my perspective, right one was we all got a copy of Carol Dweck book mindset. The second was the work that I recall you doing across the organization. I was part of the pilot, but then you took it across the organization, as you suggest, and then I think there was the institutionalizing into the systems and tools and the reward systems. People were paid on individual success prior they incorporated group success they incorporated working across and helping others be successful as part of the reward structure. And so they took down a lot of those barriers within the organizations or across the organizations if you will That’s exactly and all day here on this. But the reason why I wanted to focus here because Microsoft is such a great example of an organization that has shifted its mindset. And you were so instrumental. And I want to share that with our listeners, as they think about their own journey to a growth mindset, a forward leaning mindset, a partner lead mindset as they think about their business.

Dr. Michael Gervais 30:21

I love how you just simplify that because you added some dimension that that is really important, you can work from the outside in, and you can also work from the inside out. So the outside in or like, or design, structural compensation, rhythm of business, those are those are outside in. And if you’re not going to complement or rotate to the inside out mechanisms, which is the psychology that we’ve just learned in elite sport in elite sports about 15 years 10 to 15 years ahead of big business, which is they’re on the frontier of human potential. And about 15 years ago, they said, listen, we’ve tapped out words, as skilled as we can be on the frontier of technical training, physical training, nutritional training, what’s the frontier and about 15 years ago, they said, the unlock is psychology. And let’s, let’s go there, big sport is about 15 years ahead of big, big business. And so if you can get into the system, that is phenomenal, but it starts with, to your point, the aspiration to really invest in it, and then you’ll figure out your way, and I’m speaking right to the leaders of an organization, where the leaders have a family, you do need to know what you want your culture to be, if it’s a partner based culture, awesome. And then and then you have to figure out how to just give people the skills and tools, whether it’s from the inside out, or the outside in to be able to unlock that.

Vince Menzione 31:46

And I talk about when organizations lock arms with one another, right? So you get one organization and another organization, and they formed this thing called a partnership. In order to do that successfully, you talked about trust, but trust has to enter the room. And if trust is vacant, or is non existent, it’s almost like oxygen not being in the room. From my perspective. Now, you talk about trust, can you train trust?

Dr. Michael Gervais 32:11

Absolutely. Yeah, trust is. So trust is confusing for a couple of things. So let’s just let’s separate it out for just a moment. There’s trust of others. And there’s trust of self. And when we say the word Trust, most people think of trusting other people. But that comes second. And when you have this deep trust of yourself, when you have a knowing that you’ll figure it out that you’ll do whatever it takes to figure it out, then you can drop your shoulders and walk into any environment. And you can pivot and adjust and figure it out. So that comes the the more powerful part of the equation is knowing how to trust yourself, okay? That is the bigger rock to get in the container. And the way that you train that is by you have to earn it, you have to have done hard things and continually do hard things, to be able to say to yourself, in an honest and credible way, I can do hard things, I can figure things out that are difficult. That’s a very important way to invest your life. Because if you stop investing in doing hard things, then you also know in an honest way, that I’m afraid I don’t really do hard things that I don’t push myself anymore. So I don’t know, when I was in college, I did hard things or as early in my career, I did hard things, and I really challenged myself, but now I don’t, I don’t really know. So then when you are faced with a challenge, your your blood pressure rises, your shoulders come up to your ears, you tilt your head down just a little bit to protect yourself and to be aggressive. And now you’ve created this because of your insecurity and your inability to be grounded and to be calm in a stressful environment, you’ve now created some toxicity in the environment that slows everything down. So trust itself is paramount. The reason we start with trust itself, not only is it the bigger rock in the container, but the trust of other people is incredibly hard to develop is incredibly hard. And I’ll tell you why Vince is because from the ages of zero to two, pre verbal, that is where the water level, if you will of your level of trust is established. So your trust of other people was baked before you can even put words to it. And that was established by if your caretakers came to you and they were great. They had doe eyes each time that you began to kind of have a little cry or a little whimper that you had something or diapers or a little hungry and they came over to you with DOE eyed and had the soothing sounds and took care of you and and helped you write in the way that caretakers are supposed to at that age. And if you had selfish or drug addict or moody parents or some that had a mental disorder or they had incredibly high stress where you came second actually, to putting out the fires either inside themselves or in literally in, in the environment, trying to put money on the table that say that you would say, Okay, I gotta scream really loud to get my needs met. And I don’t know, I don’t know, it was unreliable if I, if I knew if I was gonna get taken care of. So before the ages of two, your level of trust was baked. And that’s why when you meet somebody, and someone says, Hey, what do you think. And then we say, if we don’t trust them, or we have something we say, I don’t know. In other words, I don’t have the words for a delicious feeling, because of all of the internal processes that are taking place that were established at an early age of trying to figure out if other people are trustworthy. And you’re mapping that now onto something that smelt like, early childhood experiences, which makes it really complicated. But that’s actually what’s happening. Okay. However, trust of other people is really important. So let me make it simple. If you can trust yourself in a deep way, you’ll be more likely to trust other people. I’m not suggesting do psychotherapy for this, although it could help but I’m not suggesting that. I’m saying do hard things you can earn the right to know that you can do hard things. That way, when you go into an environment that challenges you, you have this knowing this quiet knowing like I figure things out, I’m gonna figure this out too. And you don’t have to take care of yourself so much, you can be there to be curious about the other person’s experience. When you do that, they start to trust you a little bit more. And then in return, they demonstrate that they are trustworthy over time. If you want to speed that up, there is no shortcut to doing hard things. So you earn the right to say I can do hard things. But if you want to speed the trust process up, there’s three drivers of trust. And this was out of the built out of the work from Dr. Francis Frey and Anne Morris out of Harvard. And there’s three primary drivers of trust. The first is authenticity. So being able to work with somebody and know somebody that is consistent over time. So you have a sense of knowing what authenticity is when they’re consistent over time. The second is that they demonstrate that they’ve got competence, right, that they can do some stuff now. So I can trust that they can. They can demonstrate their competence and be consistent with their character over time. And the third is that, that you have a sense that you actually care about them. So it’s empathy, competence, and authenticity. And you and I have one in particular that we rely on more than others. So for me, if I’m going to trust somebody else, authenticity, authenticity really matters. So I want to know over time that they’re consistent, and they have to have a particular way about them that should keep showing up. And then I can trust myself more. And when that gets rattled, then it starts to kind of undo the whole thing for me. And for you. I don’t know which one is it like,

Vince Menzione 37:52

I think it is authenticity, its authenticity over competency. I will forgive lack of competency in an area, whether it be work or personal. But authenticity is so so important to me. And maybe it’s because I was burned at one point in my in my life. And that’s always been a factor for me.

Dr. Michael Gervais 38:09

And that’s exactly it. Yeah. So there’s a fun way to think about it. From an applied standpoint,

Vince Menzione 38:15

I’d love to shift gears here, the holidays are upon us, right? Both a joyous and a very stressful time conversations about relatives coming to visit us a lot of partying for a lot of people trying to cram a lot into a very short period of time, taking vacation time, but also having a lot to do before the end of the year, end of year business pressures and the like, what do you recommend for our listeners to stay in optimal health? This seems to be the time of year when people get sick, right? How do they stay in optimal health through the holidays and into this new year of 2023?

Dr. Michael Gervais 38:48

Okay, so let me give you the big rocks. And then the takeaway will be something I think counterintuitive. There’s four big rocks, right? Sleep. And so humans need between seven and nine, on average, below six is a problem for 100% of the population for an extended period of time. That’s a big number. That’s just the realm. So making sure that you’re investing in sleep, because if you perceive that there’s a level of stress, uptick, then sleep is the way to rotate. It’s the biggest rock to get in the container.

Vince Menzione 39:20

What do you say to the people who say I only need four to five hours of sleep a night? And there’s some very famous people who have said that before?

Dr. Michael Gervais 39:26

Well, they could be this the half percent outlier, like that could be so I’ll always leave a margin there for that. But for the most part, I would say they don’t understand human physiology. So they’re saying something that seems cool. They’re sending a message that they want their people to work hard because that’s how it works. But they’re wrong. It’s not how the human brain works. It’s not how physiology works.

Vince Menzione 39:51

I’m spending a lot more time on my sleep right now. I am focused in on it. I’ve taken a lot of your training and been applying it, making sure the room is quiet Dark, turning off all the distractions, right getting into a good, comfortable position. I’m aiming for eight and a half a night, if I can,

Dr. Michael Gervais 40:09

yeah, and you can use some technology to see kind of get to have a relatively accurate feedback loop to see if that’s what

Vince Menzione 40:15

you got, I got some of this technology out there now, right. And there’s others, there’s the rings, and so on that are out there to support you.

Dr. Michael Gervais 40:21

And, and more importantly, so if you’re using technology, I think it’s really important that you maintain fidelity of you being your own tuning fork. So before you check into your technology to say, How am I that you take a few moments in the morning to say, How am I and you just do an internal scan where you are the feedback loop, you are the tuning fork, so that you can calibrate honesty for yourself. And then you can say, okay, so if you say, Okay, I feel like I’m eight out of 10 on sleep or something. And then you look at your tech and it says two out of sleep, you’re like, wow, okay, what’s off? And then you come back, and you’re like, No, I feel great. Say, Okay, so I gotta figure this out. Or if you’re like, Wow, maybe I really, I forgotten what good sleep feels like. So there’s a calibration tool that’s in there, that’s very important to do before you check into technology, checking yourself. So if we go past sleep for just a moment, making sure hydration is spot on. With great nutrition. What does great nutrition mean? Nowadays, it means healthy protein, lots of vegetables, healthy fat. And if you don’t have a bunch of colors on your plate that came from Mother Nature, you’re probably wrong. And if you don’t have enough protein per plate, you’re probably wrong as well. And then so the fats you think about the fats more for brain health than anything else, brain and heart health. And so those fats are like lagoons, and avocados and nuts and olive oil. And, and and the vegetables, grandma and grandpa, they probably got it right, most would say these types of things. So when we’re kids, and the proteins are really important for people our age, and then the third, fourth, fifth, sixth decade, seventh decade of life, protein becomes more important, even more important than when we’re younger. And so I’m working to get about 30 to 35 grams of protein per meal. And that’s how I can support muscle health. And the muscle as one of the core drivers for overall health as well. So, so nutrition and hydration are critically important during this time, junk food, sugars, especially refined sugars, just wreak havoc on not only moderate term, energy levels, like if you eat a sugar bar or something candy or whatever, you’ll have an uptick in mood and energy for just a little bit of time. And then there’s a crash. So that’s like short term, it’s okay, but moderate, which is it’s not durable, though. So that’s why we want to have that healthy mix of macronutrients, starting with protein as one of the first drivers. And then the third pillar is making sure that you’re exercising properly, keep that game right, get into the rhythm right now start today, front load, going into the stressful phase for some people, making sure that it’s about five hours a week as a force, you approach about five hours a week of doing some some exercise where you get your heart rate up to where you can have a conversation, but it’s hard. And that’s about half of those hours and the other half of the hours, you’re doing some work on resistance, you’re lifting weights, or doing something that’s a little bit heavier than your body weight alone. And when you do that, you send signals to your brain that says That’s right, we got to be strong. We need to be strong here. So let’s get that neural chemistry dialed in for strength. And that’s just a really important process. And then I’ll end you with this counterintuitive approach is that it depends on how you see stress. So if you say the holidays are stressful, and I love it, I love the stress, then that costs less. So stress is expensive. But there’s two types of stress. There’s you stress, which is good stress, ie you mean good. So you stress is like yeah, this is this is a change. There’s something new happening. But I like it Overall, like I like it. And then there’s distress families coming into town. So seeing the stress that you’re about to engage in as distressful, and the bad stress, if you will, to oversimplify, that’s way more expensive. So each day you’ve got a bank, have the resources of energy that were built on yesterday’s activities, yesterday’s nutrition and hydration, yesterday’s exercise, and yesterday sleep, you wake up in the morning, depends on how full your bank account is. And if your bank account is let’s say it’s only eight out of 10 Because you made some compromised choices yesterday. And you go into the day thinking about all activity as distressful. You burn through that energy those resources at a much faster rate. So they can counterintuitive thing here is to, sometimes you got to compete with yourself to find why something could be good, you know, and reframing it, and I’m not saying being like, silly positive, like, let’s hold hands, everything’s a mess, but we’re going to be okay. I’m not saying or suggesting that those people, they don’t, I don’t want to be around those people I like, they drive me crazy. And it’s because it’s not born in like an authentic, grounded reality. But being able to say, You know what, I’m gonna find good in this, I’m going to figure my way out here. And I’m not going to be stupid with my resources. So I’m not going to walk around, opening up my energy source and allowing all the energy just the drain through. So there’s a couple of ways that think about it, and hopefully find some little gems or nuggets in there. Well,

Vince Menzione 45:46

you bring up several key points here that are fundamental, but you also talk about like 12 essential mindset principles. And I know we’re going to do a funnel offer. And I thought maybe we talk about that right now, we did this last couple of years. And it was amazing how many people gravitated to this offer. Mike, I was hoping you could tell us a little bit about what we’re gonna do here. Okay, this is, I love

Dr. Michael Gervais 46:09

doing this. And thank you for challenging me to in this way. So my life purpose is to help people live in the present moment more often, period, so that we can understand and experience the riches that life has to offer, all wisdom is revealed in the present moment, high performance, as expressed there. And everything that’s beautiful and amazing is experienced in the present moment. So we have to train our minds to be in the present moment. So I could not think of a better way to support that. And to partner with you on this to provide access. But we got to compete now provide access to members of your community to take this course that we built and did all the heavy lifting to organize it, to train the 12 principles that we spoke about, and to give that away into the holidays. So I would love if people could go on social tag, you tag me, and then explain why training their mind right now matters to them. And some of the most extraordinary athletes across the planet. And executives and artists are talking about why it’s so important for them to train their mind. Let’s do the same thing. Let’s make training the mind cool. Let’s make the internal world the most fascinating world we could adventure and travel. And let’s provide the skills for people to do that. And so we’ve got a course. And that course is, I think it’s honestly, it’s the best work I’ve done at scale. And so I’m honored to share it with you and your community. And if they tag us, and we can have some fun to say, yeah, that looks like a really important cause that somebody’s on right now.

Vince Menzione 47:38

Well, the masterclass you’re describing is finding your best and I’ve been through I’m gonna go through it again this year. And my gift to all of the partnership leaders listening today is go check out Michael’s work finding your best is an amazing masterclass, like the post, tag us both. And there’s going to be an opportunity to get a free subscription to this masterclass, which is amazing, as we’re all trying to optimize for success in 2023. But Mike, I gotta ask you one other question. And I was thinking about this, because last year, I think I asked you if you were having a dinner party, who would be the three guests from the present or the past. But I want to reframe that, like Mike, you have the opportunity to train an amazing leader from the present or the past to achieve their highest performance. Whom would you select? And why?

Dr. Michael Gervais 48:29

A great question since because I think I think so many of the leaders that I’m attracted to have already done an incredible amount of internal work. So the first thing that happens for me when you ask that question is like, I think about what what I possibly have to offer God. So aspirational leaders from the past get very complicated for me, because of their level of sophistication. But so if I stay with the future, and I think about, I’d love a chance to work with the President of the United States, whoever that might be nice, because that position is so powerful. And if that person is working from the inside out, the ripple effect that would take effect, I think would be commenced, and I think we need it. So I don’t know another person internationally that has that type of sweeping effect that I’d be incredibly honored to sit with and provide a mirror for them to do this, the work that they would love to scale from the inside out. So it would be at the president, and then another person that I think this would be fun because I think he’s kind of off his rails. But there’s two people that I think are absolutely off the rails right now, but are making a pretty big wave. Kanye West. And I think we’re seeing I don’t know Kanye, and so I’m just observing just like everybody else, but I think we’re seeing we’re seeing mental illness fused with power. And so his community is he holds great power in this community. And we’re seeing mental illness and we’re seeing high level cause of stress in ways that are incoherent and causing pain and potential danger to some people to community. So that feels like another one. And then I would say an imaginary figure of whoever is, is about to step onto the world stage that feels a little unprepared, in whatever realm that they’re in. And they know that they’ve, they’re really skilled at something. And they also know that they’d love to use that platform to be able to do good across the planet, whoever that person is. So that’s like the person I don’t know yet. The person that I think could use a lot of help right now. And then the person that’s about to step into a powerful position as the president,

Vince Menzione 50:38

such good answers. So good, Michael, to have you back. Again,

Dr. Michael Gervais 50:42

Vince, it is an honor, and a pleasure. And thank you for including me in your community. And I feel like there’s a kindred partnership in the work that we are doing. And so I just love having fun riffing and talking shop with you here. And if I can be of any service to what it is that you guys are doing, obviously, beyond this conversation, like I would love to. So thank you. And I love listening to your podcast and the way that you create space for people to share what matters most to them. So appreciate you. Thank you.

Vince Menzione 51:14

Thank you, Michael. And I love listening to your podcast as well finding mastery. We’ll put links to that in the show notes. You have some amazing guests and some really deep introspective conversations with those guests. So thank you again. So there you have it. Another amazing guest joins Ultimate Guide to partnering. And I hope you enjoyed this interview as much as I did. Odds are if you’re a technology partner, executive, and hearing my voice, chances are you too, are looking to accelerate your success through partnerships. I mean, let’s face it. We all have seen partnerships that look good on paper, but never live up to their expected results. There are a lot of reasons why partnerships fail, and at ultimate partnerships, we help you get it right by applying a proven set of best practices and framework that’s used by leading partners working with Microsoft, and other technology giants. If you want to learn more, follow the link in the show notes, or visit our website at Ultimate Guide to partnering.com.

Announcer 52:21

Thanks so much for listening to this episode of The Ultimate Guide to partnering with your host Vince Menzione online at Ultimate Guide to partnering.com and facebook.com/ultimate Guide to partner. We’ll catch you next time on The ultimate guide to partnering