Episode 21 - John Robertson - Workforce Wellness Expert, Culture Alignment Specialist

Speaking with John not only made me laugh until I cried, but he also taught me a great deal. John is a brilliant man that founded FORTLOG Services. He is a coach, guide, and facilitator as well as the Author of Run Toward the Roar. John specializes in Workforce Wellness and Culture Alignment. This is a conversation that you should tune into!  

 

Leighann Lovely  00:19

If you are an HR professional business owner or at the operations level trying to understand what people want. You may be struggling, our systems have been shocked practices have been questioned and culture is the leading conversation. Let's learn how culture is created, sustained, and why it should be the leading conversation when discussing hiring, training and retention. This is the foundation of any business and it's time to address it. So tune in to Let's Talk HR humanizing the conversation. We tackle topics that influencers of change need to understand and struggle to overcome every day, such as where to start, and what the new workforce wants and how to attract and keep positive momentum going. I'm your host Leighann Lovely.

 

Leighann Lovely  01:07

I have the amazing privilege of speaking with John Robertson today. John is the founder and president of FORTLOG Services inspired and driven by his values, John acts as a facilitator, coach and guide for his clients as they trust, discover and expand what they can do, uses concrete, verifiable processes to help them achieve demonstratable solution focused results. remaining faithful to his passion and principles. John invests himself in his vocation without reservation, he provides spirit filled insightful guidance that his clients use to amplify their lives and their businesses. John truly provides leadership people can follow through storms. John, I am so excited to have you here to talk with me today. Why don't you start off by telling me a little bit about yourself?

 

John Robertson  02:06

Well, it's my pleasure to be here. And I'm looking forward to our conversation. And so John Robertson with FORTLOG Services. And one of the things that I do is, and I'm because I use personal examples. So I'm talking about what I do so that I can talk about the human being in a moment, but transforming traditional crisis response in workplaces and leveraging leadership that is trustable, followable, and respectable, even when they're not likable. And so one of the end because the event is never the real crisis, Leighann, this is becoming a huge significant impact on our well being on engagement, and so forth. And I've been doing it for 30 plus years, I got started in a small community, you know, I don't know if you know how small towns work. But everybody knows everybody, including some of the things that we shouldn't know. And a friend of mine called and said, My husband got really walloped psychologically at work, I need you to come and talk to him. And from there, it was just, you know, I like people, I care for people. And I'm not interested in fixing, diagnosing or stuff. So a little snippet of my background.

 

Leighann Lovely  03:26

So you said something that I find really, extremely fascinating is that the and I may get this verbiage wrong, but that the event is never the real crisis. Yes. So expand on on what you mean by that.

 

John Robertson  03:47

Well, perfect illustration happens in you and I are driving along in a vehicle and do you know what? Black ice is?

 

Leighann Lovely  03:56

yes

 

John Robertson  03:58

Okay, you and I hit black ice that that your pickup truck spins, you get back on the road, we carry on and you're well, that was kind of ugly, you want to stop for a coffee, and I still have both hands on the holy crap rail, because I'm still back where we started to spin. And, and most people react to things they think are crises, you know, somebody gets killed or job loss or so forth. But what about that beloved person who got diagnosed with cancer or that divorce or that that really, really, really well respected person and she's retiring. A leader, all of a sudden, now he or she is put in that position where they need to provide support to somebody for performance for constructive criticism. And it's not constructive feedback. It's criticism because some of the things that were done were wrong and you don't want this, I wasn't trained to do this, I was trained to productivity performance. And, and so the event is not the crisis.

 

Leighann Lovely  05:12

So it's, it's the, everything else that happens. Because of, you know, the preceding emotions the preceding reactions.

 

John Robertson  05:26

One and Leighann you're bang on a crisis is not over until the reactions subside. Okay.

 

Leighann Lovely  05:34

Wow, that and that's, I've never heard it put. So I guess, simply to make it more understandable, because you're right. You know, there are people who are still who are still in the middle of, for instance, just reached, obviously, we just went through a pandemic, there are people who are still, you know, emotionally recovering from that. So they are still in that, that we're still in that crisis, because people are still recovering from it.

 

John Robertson  06:06

And you've put your finger on a key problem, because a lot of people will think that quote, unquote, because the crisis is over, we'll go back to normal, right? Number one, normal died, when we hit Christ, a COVID. Whatever we were doing, then, is no longer what we're doing now. Things have shifted. But the second part of that is, while we're going through a storm, whatever that means to a person or an organization, 90% of humans will press through it, you know, the stiff upper lip, keep your chin up, you know, all this stuff that we we do to keep our head in the game to get through it. It's afterwards that we start as the things wind down, that we start to realize, you know, okay, this, this, and this, and I'm not going to comment on a woman's age, but I'm going to take a shot in the dark that you're over 21. And, yeah, and just my mom's voice is ringing in my head right now, John, don't ask a woman or age. So I'm not asking but, but one of the things that, you know, when you get to be over 21, the mind says, Well, you can play this game, it's not a big deal. It's the next two or three days that your body is saying, you moron. Why did you think you were taught you are so going to pay for this? It's the exact same premise that applies with significant events and crises. Change could be a crisis for some people.

 

Leighann Lovely  07:44

Right? Well, and it's, it's interesting, because usually for I guess, for me, when a crisis is taking place, depending on the length of it, usually, I go into an immediate fix, you know, fix what you can right now survive, survive, survive. And then when that event passes, it is when I feel the effects emotionally of what just took place. Because I'm in survival mode. I'm going you know, I'm trying to protect my family. I'm trying to figure out how to get through it. And then eventually, I feel all of the you know, the crushing weight of whatever that might have been or so and.

 

John Robertson  08:37

And Leighann, what you're putting your finger on is and I'm going to challenge your listeners to don't just focus on the emotional. Think about, and I call it charley horse effect, because if you've ever had a physical charley horse, many of us have had those coaches that say, oh, skated off, walk it off, you're fine. It doesn't hurt. If dirt on it. Yeah, drink more water, eat a banana, whatever. And, and Leighann, what you just put your finger on is emotionally after we come through that survive phase. Emotions are one charley horse area. But look around. Look at the relationship Charley horses that are going on right now. What was the term polarized is an understatement for what it seems to be happening right now. Murrell Charley horses relational turning horses psychological turning horses and of course spiritual and everybody's got a belief system don't go all get you know listeners don't go all getting religious on me. I'm not talking about religion. I'm talking about spiritual beliefs. Like if Leighann if you're my boss, and I believe you're out to get me. I'm now a spirit trouble person, because I have a belief system, right? It goes way beyond just the spirit, right? No, I get what you're saying. So you can and what's happening is going through events changes, crises, like including COVID. But nothing, maybe that long lasting. Think about all these Wallops that are happening as we're getting through it.

 

Leighann Lovely  10:26

Right? Yes, absolutely. So you started fORTLOG nearly 25 years ago,

 

John Robertson  10:34

It was actually it was longer than that. But I was trying to sound younger. But yeah, we'll just we'll go with 25 plus 25 plus years ago.

 

Leighann Lovely  10:44

Okay. So tell me a little bit about, you know, some of the highlights of the journey. So far, you kind of touched on how that began. Real briefly touched on that. But I mean, this obviously, 25 plus years, I'm sure that you have seen countless. I mean, we've had some traumatic events in our economy. We've Yeah, I mean, tell me a little bit about how you work with businesses, how you work with individuals.

 

John Robertson  11:23

So a couple things, I call it the hot water tea bag of fact, if we want to find out what's important to a person or an organization, put them in hot water, just like a tea bag, what's inside always leaks up. So I was talking with this woman not long ago, and she was telling me about her daughter, and her daughter's favorite color is orange. And the daughter came to her and said, Mom, I want my bedroom to be done in orange. And what leaks out of a person is, well, no, you're not going to paint your bedroom orange, or in five years, 10 years when my daughter realizes orange is not really that cool or trendy, or whatever the buzzword is she wanna changed and therefore pick my battles. And, and so you also use the term that I like that you said, Well, I've never heard it put so simply, well, people have heard the KISS principle before. But for Robertson, I use the kisser principle, which is keep it simple Robertson. And and so one of the things that I love are those moments when people are able to reframe stuff and say, I never looked at it that way. Well, yeah, that that makes complete sense. So for example, if my this is true story, my son borrowed our car. Sorry, that's a lie. Our son borrowed my car. And he hit ice corner to corner, bounce my car off the curb. Brand new like it was, I don't know if it was eight months old, brand new. And so he drives it home. And it drives like an old horse and buggy kind of carriage. It has a flat spot on the rim. And so there's two voices going on in my head. There's the one voice my new car. But there's the one that came out that said, William, you okay, well, yeah, but dad, you know, I can fix my car. Yeah, that doesn't mean that he can bounce the car off the curb whenever he feels like it. But in that moment, I wanted him to know that you know what, I've done death notifications for people who were more concerned about the damage to the car, because they were in the wrong than they were but the person who got killed. And in the workplace, so a woman was off work. And she came back COVID She came back to work. And it was almost a dementia like, and and it's not a criticism of those who have that disease. It's a calling a spade, a shovel, symptom, description. And this woman came back and she was just like she had dementia. And so finally somebody said, Well, John, we're dealing with a performance issue, yada, yada, yada. And I said, Well, why don't you just ask, I saw this behavior before you left. I'm seeing this behavior now. What changed? What's going on? What can I do? What do you mean make it that simple? Yeah, cuz you're just describing the behavior. We're not judging what the behavior is based. It turns out this woman while they were off, slipped and fell, smoked her head on the ground and got a bad concussion. One of the side effects of concussion is dementia like symptoms. Guess what happens in the workplace? Now they laugh when she forgets, because they're not upset because she's a human being. It's it's a result of the side effect of a concussion. Those are my stories. It's never the, you know, we increased our profit $400 million?

 

Leighann Lovely  15:32

Well, if you don't keep your people healthy and engaged and appreciated and valued, don't worry about your profit. Because your turnover costs, we'll look over at look after any profit, right? But it's interesting that you can walk into a company. And that's not what and I'm not saying all companies, you can walk into a company and that is not their concern at all. Their concern is oh, well, hey, we need we need to figure out how to pump more product out the door, we need people who are, you know, just gonna come in here and they don't, they don't care about how their people feel they don't. So I was working with a company that they were so short handed, that they made it mandatory that all of their office, people stay late and go out onto the manufacturing floor.

 

John Robertson  16:27

Wow, Will that ever motivate them?

 

Leighann Lovely  16:31

Right? What do you think? I mean, this is, you know, what do you think happened to the office people? You know,

 

John Robertson  16:39

They might have stayed late for a few days, until another job came up.

 

Leighann Lovely  16:47

Right? They immediately pissed every single person at the company off and lost a mass quantity of their office staff. So not only now, are they short handed on the manufacturing floor, they now have nobody in the office to run the front end of the business. It's like you what you.

 

John Robertson  17:12

You actually just reminded me of a scenario because I had this discussion. It was in a media company. And I don't remember how many they had maybe 30 employees, 40 employees. So it was decent size, but not big by some people's standards. And Mike is the owner operators, namely C, E L, I think he was but anyways, I said, why should we do this work? And I said, Okay, Mike, no names, but think about the last person who just left your company 80% of the reason that people leave a company has nothing to do with the job. Did this person leave as a result of the job? Well, no, he didn't. Okay, so now go back to yours. And think about how much money you spent training and resourcing and equipping him to do that job. I said, I don't need to know what the number is. But do you have a number in mind? Yeah, when you word it that way, it's actually quite depressing. I said, Okay. So now, why don't you take that same amount of money, go in your backyard and just use it to light a campfire? Because that's all you've done? You've just burned it. Yep. His response was really simple. He said, Well, we need to because remediate, we really need to get things up and running. And I said, Yeah, and you just burn through 10s of 1000s of dollars on training. And now you got to spend the same amount of money to get somebody else out, but you're two years behind. And his answer was beautiful was so where do you want to start? Yeah. And to your comment with that company, you mentioned, office, people are the unique anomalies, because it's like custodial people in a healthcare setting. Many times they're not noticed. But I can shut a hospital down in minutes. If the custodial and administrative people say, You know what, I'm not doing my job, that everything's shut down. Right?

 

Leighann Lovely  19:25

Right. It takes every single person at a job it doesn't matter what they do or not at a job at a company. Doesn't matter what they do. If if, if everybody is not doing their part of the work. A company can be shut down in minutes. And to your point at a hospital if you don't have those custodial people cleaning the proper way that they're supposed to be cleaning. Doing. You're right. You. I mean, you send in, you know the health department.

 

John Robertson  19:59

We have a friend of ours she works in a school. And all these schools were during COVID were at school at home. And then when they were allowed back in school and they had an outbreak, the school got closed. This one school that she worked at because of the custodian, never closed. He was one of those people that was so courteous, polite, even when a kid threw up the joke in the PA and the page system was protein spill in such a such a classroom and the custodial Peters is named Peter went and cleaned it up. The school never had an outbreak through the entire season.

 

Leighann Lovely  20:42

Wow. That's That's unheard of.

 

John Robertson  20:47

And, you know, it is, and Peter was one of those people that nobody would recognize typical custodial, he would wear jeans and all the normal work clothes. And one of the things that happens is and the way I teach a healthy workplace is teach it as a human body. When one part of the body is not doing what it's wired to do. Everything else goes out of alignment, including a sphincter.

 

Leighann Lovely  21:16

And it's and it's Sorry, sorry. And I find it I find it wildly interesting that companies don't that they don't get it. Put your office people to work on the manufacturing floor. You don't you don't already see that they're going to be I think it took four weeks, four weeks, for the VP of HR to be out the door. That's all it took four weeks. I mean, because this was not extremely long ago. So there were jobs everywhere, four weeks, and she was gone. She found a new job. She's and she had called me first. My day job. I'm in the staffing industry. Hey, Leon, do you know any? Do you know any jobs that they're looking for? Was she VP? Or was she I can't remember her title. But she I mean, she called me and I remember seeing her number come up on my phone. It was after hours. It was after it was like 515. And I'm like, I wonder why she's calling me after business hours. But you know, I picked it up. And she's like, I need a new job. And I'm like, What? What do you mean, you need why? I thought you were happy. She's like, Yeah, they just made a ruling that or they just made a notice of all in the employees that we have to go and work on manufacturing floor, she's like, I'm too old for this. I'm, you know, I'm, I can't my body can't even handle it. And I'm like, the fact that companies and that the higher ups don't have enough understanding and foresight to like to get that that's going to be the immediate reaction boggles my mind

 

John Robertson  22:49

But Leighann okay, but you use the key word. And that is foresight. And part of what happens. And this is where leaders are getting shot out from both sides. Because they got their productivity performance, they get all those demands of what they're supposed to be producing. And on the other side, they got all the people behind them saying hold it, we can't work all these hours, we can't do all these things. And leaders become a rope in a tug of war in and I'm talking HR as much than the C suite leaders because they're the ones responsible for executing on all this stuff. But the key in foresight is values. And I always always come back to values. And there's not the stuff that's posted on the website. And in brochures. It's the stuff that leaks out in hot water. Ideally, the work is done beforehand, so that when we're in hot water, the right stuff leaks out. But foresight can only happen through a values lens, because values are always short term costly for long term benefit. So my comment about that part of the body that has to function that you tried to get a grip when I use is when we're talking about all body parts have to work, right. And values mean, okay, you know, and that's like saying the heart to the heart. Okay, I'm tired of total total photo all day long. I want to do some breathing. I want to be like the lungs. I want to inhale, exhale, I'm done. I don't know. I'm just going to breathe. Nobody with any understanding of a human being would think that's a healthy sign in the human body. But we do it in organizations all the time, because our values are not clear. We're not sure why people are in the rules or in we're not clear on what they're wearing as their gifting is, what their passion is, or the personality, and as a result, we think we can shift the bladder to be the lungs and the lungs to be the heart. And we think we're going to have a healthy, thriving organization, right? It's the, it's the common mistake that that organizations make of, we've got somebody who's successful in this role, but we're gonna, we're gonna see if they can fit into this seat on the bus and be successful at it. Or we're gonna, we're gonna promote somebody into a management role, but we're not going to give them any management training, we're just going to let them figure it out on their own. Well, and, and to that comment, the old adage of we rise to the level of our incompetence, is my sister was a beautiful example of this. My sister was one of the best principals and I'm not bragging because she's my sister. In fact, there was many days I didn't like her. But that's a family dynamic, no. But she was one of the most gifted principals in a school context, because she went in values were really clear. And if you didn't step up to the plate, she found you another place to work. She got promoted to be a superintendent at the Board Office. And, and I remember talking with her one day, and she said, yeah, I gotta get out of here. Why? Cuz if I stay, I think I might be off for homicide charges, cuz there are some people that I'm going to kill. And, and, and she, she was promoted, like she wrote curriculums, she wrote leadership principles. But she couldn't be in the office where it was all politics, and not actually doing that stuff.

 

Leighann Lovely  26:50

And that's, and that is a mistake that happens all the time. Is that over correct. And then if you are the person that's accidentally been promoted up, and then you say, You know what, I want to step back down. In our society right now. They're just like, what it is looked at as, Oh, my God, well, no, yeah. I mean, what are you failing? How dare there, if there are just there's some times where we don't realize that we are in the perfect role. And I see this happen at companies where, especially in salespeople who are promoted to being managers, you're awesome, amazing producer, you are great at your job, you're and then all of a sudden, they get a promotion into being managing other people.

 

John Robertson  27:44

That you've probably seen, because I have is somebody who's really good in an engineering role, whether they're an engineer or not, but they're really good in their engineering role. And they get promoted to be the leader of the engineering team, and everybody hates them within a month. Now, one of the things that you just perfectly described is, there's an adage that in the book or row run toward the roar, but the premise behind it is, there is no greater failure in life, than to succeed in a way that does not matter in the long run. And so there are two ladders in life. There's the ladder of significance. And there's the ladder of success. And we're climbing these two ladders against two different walls. Sometimes significance will give us success. Sometimes success gives us significance. All of us are ladder climbers, if you're not growing forward. Basically, if you're not growing, you're dying. It's a really simple biology principle. However, what happens and where I work with organizations that have done the ladder climbing on the rung ladder, is we actually help reframe the communication strategy to say, You know what, we haven't failed. We just lost our way. We're reclaiming what success means for us, because we got motivated and steered by what people thought she was. Success should mean for us.

 

Leighann Lovely  29:23

And that you made a comment if we're not growing. We're dying. I'm not exactly well, some people assume that growing means that you are moving you know, climbing that ladder and continuously I disagree that you have to absolutely be climbing the ladder. Growing means so many different things. And I truly believe that you know, growing can just be learning new things every day and expanding your knowledge and it can it just becoming more emotionally you know, emotional intelligence plays a key role into that, you know? So growth can be so many different things. Expression.

 

John Robertson  30:08

Yeah, and your your right lamp. And when I talk about climbing a ladder, I'm not talking about the rungs of success. I'm talking about growing a tree that is growing as climbing ladders called height. Yes. And, and so like a child, you know, a child that is growing will stand straighter. But, but what's your perfectly describing? Is how am I maturing? Now I'm still working on that part of my humor gives me a way, you know, I'm getting older. Maturity is, is still a little bit behind on my you can be wildly successful and have limited maturity, as long as you have a little bit of emotional intelligence. I think those are two completely different things. You don't have to be mature to have emotional. Well, and the kid and I'm overqualified. And, and part of part of what happens is, it's a simple question. How do you how do I want people to describe me in a non physical way? Because at my, at my funeral, I'm probably not going to be in attendance, but at my funeral, how do I want people you know, John, dad, whoever loves his job, if that's all they can say about me, have I succeeded? And I also want people there, you know, for more than my will, dark humor alert from a funeral home director, Mike's comment was, Don't ever forget John, where there's a will there's relative and, and so one of the things that that I want from my journey, is I want people to say, You know what, he was such a stone in the shoe, sometimes. He was a pain in the neck if he was that high up. But man, I knew that he was in my boat rowing, even when I felt the boat was sinking. He was encouraging. And he made the adventure, and I am so glad that he helped me get on my path.

 

Leighann Lovely  32:24

So you had mentioned you and I want to briefly talk about this your book, run towards the roar, right? Yes. So tell me a little bit about that.

 

John Robertson  32:36

Well, the premise is really, it's the term I coined is Passio Fidelis. Passio is the root word of passion. Fidelis is the root word of fidelity, faithfulness, loyalty. When we define our refined double new norm, what we want to grow towards what our definition of success means. And for me, success is not about being the one with the most toys is it's about being that significance. So Passio Fidelis is what am I passionately faithful to and committed to that in spite of the storms, I will find a way to get back in the game and finish well, and the title is based on the old adage, the proverb, whatever it's called story of as a lion ages, his mane, his teeth, his muscle tone, deteriorate, all the lion has to keep his pride is roar. And so the way a lion hunts is he will go to one side of a herd of antelope. The pride will go to the other side. When the lion roars animal instinct is fight flight freeze appease, majority of those animals will flight will run away from the roar and aka run into bigger hunting have bigger problems, the hunting party, humans are the only ones that we can train to run toward the roar. Thus Passio Fidelis what you just described in that woman calling you at 515 is an organizational approach that was fight flight, freeze appease based and therefore heard a roar and as a result, everybody ran away and now they ran into bigger problems.

 

Leighann Lovely  34:33

Wow, that is that's awesome. I'm gonna, I'm going to I have not had the opportunity to read the book. I have a four year old at home. And you know, to get five minutes to myself to go to the bathroom is a struggle. So I am going to definitely read the book just based on that description alone. Sounds amazing.

 

John Robertson  34:55

So well and it's kisser based it's write a lot of us get stuck, keep it simple Robertson based, it's a lot of people get sucked into what I call the eddy effect. We have our emotions, we feel a certain way b, we behave according to our emotions. And all of a sudden, we end up with stinky thinking. When we define what our values are, and are we passionate about them, then we behave according to those values, which means our emotions follow. It's like going to the gym. I've very, very, very, very seldom have I ever heard anybody saying, Oh, I'm really looking forward to exercising, I am so excited to get to go to the gym. But almost everybody. So if we start with the emotions, we never go, if we start with the thinking that says, I'm going to go and then we behave and do it, our emotions follow and say, I'm so glad I went to the gym, exact same principle with our values. Right? If we if we constantly allowed our emotions to lead our, our actions, we would we would do much less than what we do, because our emotions are usually. Yeah, I'll leave it at that. Yeah. And if you to vote Thumper out of Bambi if you can't say something nice, yeah, yeah. So, so But the premise is, is I mean, think about the term. How many times a day do we hear people say, Well, we're just evaluating our decision. Okay. What are the values that you are E-value ating. On?

 

Leighann Lovely  36:45

I absolutely. Well, first of all, I'm a salesperson, I hate when somebody says, we're going to evaluate, we're going to review this and get back to you. It is the most irritating thing I also in my personal life can stand. I'll get back to you on that. When somebody presents something to me. I make a decision immediately. I am one of those people that's, you know, you want to buy this. No, I don't do you? Do you need this? I look, no, I don't. I mean, it's it's hands down. I make a decision. Unless it's, you know, buying a house, you know, I'm not gonna immediately walk, buying a car buying large items, obviously. But when it's minimal risk things, people who can't make a decision. It it's just yes or no.

 

John Robertson  37:38

But make a decision. And this is part of the change that happened, the transformation that happened during COVID. Pre COVID. People saw busy as a badge of honor. Yeah. I'm busy. I'm busy. And in I used to spin people out to say, John, are you busy? No. Why? Are you not busy? No. Really. Not, I would clarify. I have a full calendar. But no, I'm not busy. Busy is determined by other people's values. Full is mine. Right? Post COVID. People are trying to figure out because they don't want to be busy anymore. What they're trying to figure out what's important,

 

Leighann Lovely  38:28

Right? And this is the rise of the virtual assistant. This is the rise of, you know, the delegation of duties. This is the rise of so many different ways of living life. And, and I absolutely love it, because for the first time people are going I don't want to work until 10 o'clock at night. Because I look at somebody and they say, oh, yeah, I I put in 60 hours a week and I'm like, What's wrong with you? And they're like, Well, what do you mean? I'm like, You're you're saying that as if I should be like, oh, good for you. That's awesome. That's not It's not Where are you living your life? Where is your work life?

 

John Robertson  39:10

And I'm gonna be rude on that. Because part of the advantage of being busy and being away is my wife misses me. If I'm always at home, I've actually heard the expression of how can I miss you if you never go away?

 

Leighann Lovely  39:28

So yes, there's that there's it and I, I love the opportunity to, I mean, don't get me wrong. I work from home sometimes. But there are times where I'm like, I have to get like Mondays Tuesdays and Wednesdays. I have to be out of the house. My dog my puppies driving me crazy. My child's following me around my husband, you know, it's like, I know. I need to get away from you people. I love you. But I got to get away from you.

 

John Robertson  40:03

And that's, but isn't that the whole premise of balance and, and ironically, when I'm talking about Passio, Fidelis and other things for leadership and people to thrive, one of the first things that we do is exactly what you're putting your finger on. I just use it in a different context. Many times people think that unplugging from work will recharge them. That's the same thinking that says we can put our cell phones and cell phones on airplane mode to recharge them. Now I'm not an IT specialist.

 

Leighann Lovely  40:40

Yeah, no, right? No, go just put it on airplane mode, it'll, be ready to go and a little bit, its not connected, it's not connected to Wi Fi, it'll recharge. Right. Now one of the things that actually you just mentioned a term that I learned, so we have a cottage hunt camp property that has, it's off the grid, there's excetera, etc, no cell, well, there's cell coverage, but it's spotty at best.

 

John Robertson  41:09

If we leave our signal on, at or our Wi Fi on, we might normally get a day or two out of our battery. If we leave those signals on, or whatever that piece of technologies software is called. Our battery will not last half a day. Think about the human being that the things that are we're running minimized in the background, that if we don't plug into recharge, we're not going to have the battery to finish well.

 

Leighann Lovely  41:44

Right. And that's it's wow, that's really interesting. So the battery's being worn down because it's constantly being bumped with with Wi Fi on because it's constantly being beamed, pinged, banged, and constantly getting emails and notifications sent to it. So it's being linked on and blinked off, blinked on and blinked off, blinked on and blinked off. So when you put that as a human, the human being, when they are still in their own element, they're still living, you know, they're at home. They're, regardless of whether or not they are working, physically working or not. You've got TV, you've got social media, you've got all of these things happening, that your brain is still processing and intaking. And you've got your full life still happening around you that you can't shut off. Regardless, it's still an emotional draining on you. People think that, Oh, you have to recharge because you were on your feet running around all day. Sometimes people and this was a conversation my husband and I used to argue about he's like, Well, I'm more tired than you because I work a physical job. And I'm like, Whoa, wait a second, wait a second. You may or may physically be more, your body may physically feel more exhausted. But emotionally, that does not mean that I am not just as tired as you because all day long I've been, you know, I'm being bombarded with phone calls. And this and that. And I get irritated when people think that an office job is less exhausting than a physical job, or that they can't be at least compared in one way or another because it's,

 

John Robertson  43:30

I'm sitting here laughing, smirking. Because I was stupid enough to make that comment to my wife, because I was standing, doing training. And she works in an office and put it this way I was enlightened. By the time she was done. enlightening me. And, and, but to understand the neuroscience behind why this happens, is have you ever taken a holiday or cruise or whatever it is, you do? You have done. But you go on your holiday and you come back and you actually hear yourself saying, Jeepers, I took this holiday, but now I need a holiday because I'm tired from my holiday. Oh, yeah. What happens is when we go to a place that we're not familiar with, our brain doesn't go on to minimize. So for example, putting your coffee on at home shouldn't take all of our mental faculties. We should do a lot of it on routine. When we go away to a strange place. We don't have those routines we're focused on Okay, where's the coffee? What if we're doing a cruise or resort? Where do we get our food yada, yada, yada. And what happens is the brain is never on routine mode. So therefore, it's always on duty, which is why we come back tired, right? Yeah, and there's and my husband and I just went on a trip and it came

 

Leighann Lovely  44:59

I can I'm like, I need like two days to recover. I just want to crawl into bed and not get out of bed for two days and have somebody just bring me my meals. We went to we went to Colorado to, for a wedding. That was a destination wedding right in the Rocky Mountains. And it was just nonstop like all all the whole time. It was nonstop. You know, not to mention, we're also at, you know, altitudes, and everywhere we walked, I was like I might pass out. But, you know, you come back and you're like, there was an amazing trip. I feel rejuvenated from not, you know, from not working but physically exhausted from all of the activity.

 

John Robertson  45:38

I mean, and that's part of why, OK, what are those habits, hobbies and routines that we have to plug into, to keep recharging our batteries?

 

Leighann Lovely  45:51

So we are at time we've actually gone over, but I do want to get to the question of the season and let you you tell people how they can reach out to you, where they can get your book and all that kind of fun stuff. The question of the season, if you could go back to your younger self and give yourself advice, when would you go back? And what advice would you give yourself?

 

John Robertson  46:10

So I would go back to kind of the between college us between high school, college university and not listen to what people think would be success by clarify what my passion is, how I want to serve people, and then develop those skills. That's awesome. And easiest way to get hold of me is well, there's three, three things. So the domain is four. So the book is Run Toward The Roar dot online. But to get hold of me, the business is FORTLOG, because you got to have a fort safe place in the frontier, you know where you're going. A log is a journal to sail the seas because people are going to get seasick get going to the fort. And you don't want to go along fort log.co I work with people called a coach collaborator is Dotco. And just email me John at Fort log dot Cole. The other thing is the landing page is really simple. fortlog.co forward slash just like your website, let's dash talk. Dash HR.

 

Leighann Lovely  47:27

Awesome. John, this has been such an amazing conversation. I think we could probably talk for the next hour. But we are at time. And again, thank you so much for joining me.

 

John Robertson  47:40

It's been my pleasure and I really enjoyed the conversation and also the humor. It is very relaxed, therapeutic and energizing. So thank you. Thank you again for listening to Let's Talk HR. I appreciate your time and support without you the audience this would not be possible. So don't forget that if you enjoyed this episode to follow us like us or share us. Have a wonderful day

 

Contact John

 

LinkedIN – linkedin.com/in/johnrobertson-fortlog

 

E-mail – John@fortlog.co

 

Website – www.fortlog.co

 

Book – Run Toward the Roar

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Music from Uppbeat (free for Creators!): https://uppbeat.io/t/cruen/family-time License code: 2330NZD3BLNDKPYI

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

people, called, values, day, custodial, crisis, passio, happening, roar, talking, john, person, run, job, recharge, long, promoted, emotions, charley horse, company

 

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