0:10

Welcome to another episode of At The Table with

0:12

Patrick Lincione where everything we talk about

0:14

is related to organizational health and

0:16

the world of work. I'm Pat Lincione, your

0:18

host, joined by

0:20

Cody, Tracy on mic. How

0:22

are you guys doing? Doing great. Awesome.

0:25

It's great to be in the same room together. Not doing this on

0:27

Zoom. Pat's in the house producing,

0:30

Karen's here feeding me wisdom

0:33

throughout the day. And Cody, what's our

0:35

topic today? The company you

0:37

keep. That's right. The company

0:39

you keep, which has two meanings.

0:42

The company you keep, people say, that's what determines

0:44

who you become, the company you keep. And

0:47

then the company where you work, the one

0:49

you decide to work at and to stay

0:51

there and how it impacts your life. And

0:53

this came about because we were talking the other day

0:55

about how everybody knows that saying you're an amalgam

0:57

of the five people you spend the most time with

1:00

or something like that. And I actually had

1:02

this conversation with my son, my 17 year

1:04

old son two days ago, and

1:06

he was surprisingly interested in this. I

1:08

said, who are your five closest friends? Because

1:10

they determine a bunch about who you are. And

1:12

we went through it and talked about who had the most positive

1:15

impact and how it was different and what they did.

1:17

And then we thought, everybody knows that. But

1:20

in the world of work, we don't think about that

1:22

very often. And then we thought

1:24

about the macro impact of that,

1:26

the

1:27

company you keep, the place where you work,

1:30

how it impacts your life and it brings out

1:33

good things in you or might accentuate not good things.

1:35

And that's what we're going to talk about today. Yeah. And

1:38

I'd be remiss to not say that's why Bo's

1:40

not here. Right. No, no. I'm

1:43

just teasing Bo as you're listening to this. We miss you,

1:45

buddy. But yeah, I love this conversation we were having

1:47

around the lunch table about this very thing

1:49

is, boy, you think about that often in

1:52

terms of your personal relationships,

1:53

but it's even more, it's just

1:55

as important and maybe even more of a trap

1:58

as it can become more of a trap.

1:59

up at work. And so

2:02

how do we

2:04

help people understand, how should

2:06

we think about this? Because it really, you're in the

2:09

act of actively becoming something and

2:11

the environment and the people that are in your environment

2:14

are molding you into that. And I don't

2:16

think we often take a step back and realize that's

2:19

happening from nine to five every day we're at our job.

2:21

And what's interesting is when you think about me talking to my 17

2:24

year old son, who spends a lot of time with his friends,

2:26

but he's at school and he's in different classes

2:28

and he plays a sport and he has a job

2:30

and he's at home with his family, he

2:33

probably spends 20% of his time

2:36

with them. I've worked

2:39

with Karen and Tracy for 28

2:41

years. And we spend eight hours

2:46

a day together. And so if

2:48

you think and I went back and I thought about my career like

2:50

my first job and my second job and how

2:52

that shaped me sometimes

2:55

for good oftentimes against

2:57

the grain. And oftentimes

2:59

I think when I look back, I think I left there

3:02

because I didn't feel like I belonged

3:04

and it was actually accentuating my good

3:06

qualities. And I wasn't really having

3:08

an impact on them because I didn't

3:11

really fit. And that's something we should

3:13

all think about. What do the people you

3:15

spend the most time with, what kind of impact

3:17

are they having on you? Is it good? Is it not? What

3:20

kind of impact are you having on them? And

3:22

maybe more than any other question when

3:24

people say, how do I know where I should work? Work

3:27

someplace where the people you're with are

3:29

going to make you better. I think that was one of, as we

3:31

were having that conversation out there around the

3:33

lunch table, I with a little

3:36

empathy said, hey, or

3:38

maybe empathy toward another person, but retroactively

3:41

looking at my own career, I thought, boy,

3:43

I'm now I'm almost 10 years in at the table group.

3:46

And I've told my story before

3:48

the table group, you know, I worked at a small startup in San

3:50

Francisco, I'd be a different person.

3:53

If I had stayed at that company for the last 10 years,

3:56

I'm not sure in a good way. I'm

3:58

pretty convinced that they rely relationships

4:00

that we built here and the way that we Become

4:03

more self-aware and challenge each other and have good conflict

4:05

has shaped me in a very positive way And

4:07

I think so many people have hazard league don't

4:09

think that they would be shaped that much

4:12

Mm-hmm, and I look back and go

4:14

boy that would have been I'd be a different

4:16

person now ten years later Had I not made the

4:18

change and we should be more grateful to God and to want

4:20

to end to others We can't go. Yeah,

4:22

I'm the person I want to be it's like

4:25

no if you had worked someplace

4:27

else And that we should have mercy for other people to embrace

4:30

for people that have worked in really difficult environments

4:32

Mm-hmm, they're a little rough around the edges. It's

4:34

like yeah, they've been Shaped

4:37

even unintentionally and

4:39

they're not being the way they're being because they want

4:41

to be Oftentimes if they've been

4:43

in an environment, maybe that a job they couldn't leave

4:46

Sure, and

4:47

do you think people understand the power

4:50

of of influence in the workplace? No,

4:53

I

4:54

Think we go to work and think I'm

4:56

coming as myself My

4:58

transactional and while I'm there I'm just being

5:00

myself and then I leave and I go home and

5:02

my family impacts me

5:04

Yeah, and that's dangerous.

5:05

It is because then

5:08

we're more susceptible to letting The

5:10

company we keep influence in ways. We're

5:12

not even aware of and it's a slow creep Yeah,

5:15

and if you do work in a place where very few of the people you're

5:18

around you want to emulate them You want

5:20

them to shape you you better

5:22

go in and be protective

5:24

and careful Every day

5:27

because like you said, it's the frog in the pot of boiling

5:29

water Suddenly you look around you go gosh, I'm kind

5:31

of like these people. I never really

5:33

intended to be Mm-hmm, and I would say even

5:36

even the idea of you could go in with your best

5:38

defenses people might go in and say hey I don't love

5:40

the people I work with or I'm gonna put up my

5:43

guard. You're still like a semi permeable

5:45

membrane When you think of it in

5:47

terms of years and decades It's

5:49

totally reasonable to think that the

5:52

environment where you spend half of your waking time

5:55

is going to impact you and that Can either

5:57

be a positive impact. It's gonna shape you in a way

5:59

or negative impact. Right. Imagine

6:02

leaving your house and your spouse saying, okay,

6:04

go out there and protect yourself. After

6:07

a while you should go, do I really want to work someplace

6:10

where protecting myself is what I want to do? But

6:12

if you have no choice, protecting yourself is better.

6:14

But go someplace where you can actually go there

6:16

and open yourself up and say, please influence

6:19

me and let me influence

6:21

you. Because I think the

6:23

company you keep, make sure

6:25

your company is actually influencing who

6:27

you are. Let's talk about experiences we've had

6:29

in other jobs and how it influenced

6:32

us without naming names of companies or individuals.

6:35

Well, it's interesting. I think back

6:38

to my first job, which I took was

6:40

a heating and air conditioning specialist. Right. Specialist

6:44

is a term I use very loosely because

6:46

I really was installing heater

6:49

furnaces and AC units and digging and

6:51

going into people's crawl spaces. And I

6:53

was young and I took the job

6:55

because it was a good friend of ours dad

6:58

owned the business and it was a summer job. But

7:01

even then I thought, oh man, some of these guys

7:03

have worked here for 10 years. And

7:06

while the culture was pretty decent for a HVAC

7:09

company, they felt trapped

7:11

or resigned. This is the company I keep.

7:13

This has been 10 years now. They didn't have

7:15

aspirations for anything outside of

7:17

that or maybe thought that they got trapped in

7:19

a skill set that was just there. The

7:22

opposite is also true. It was like when you're around

7:25

people or an environment where they're constantly

7:27

challenging you to learn new things or be excellent

7:29

in what you do, it can have that

7:31

effect. I think that environment is, it can

7:34

feel like a trap sometimes if you're not conscious

7:36

about it and intentional about

7:38

who you're spending your time with and what company

7:40

you actually work for. The second job I had

7:43

out of college was a company that was known

7:45

for being ruthless in the competitive environment

7:47

and internally. They were just as competitive

7:50

against other companies as they were internally. They

7:52

were stabbing each other in the back and everything like that. And

7:55

you spend two and a half years there. Even

7:58

if you're kind of aware of that. If you're

8:00

trying to succeed and fit in, you

8:02

have to adopt their

8:05

ways. And even if you go

8:07

home at night and go, gosh, I don't want to be like that, every

8:10

day you're learning muscle memory to succeed

8:13

in that environment. And I remember when I left

8:15

that company and went to one of their competitors that

8:18

was known to be different, the founder of the company

8:20

said to me, Pat, we're going to detox you. We

8:23

like you even though you worked at a company whose culture

8:25

we think is poisonous. So it's going to take a few

8:27

months to detox you. And that's

8:29

how we should be thinking about it. What is this place

8:31

doing? What did that place I worked with do

8:33

to me? And now how can I go back and make

8:35

sure it didn't infiltrate me in ways I don't

8:37

want? As we're having this conversation, I actually

8:40

think one of the really interesting

8:42

things is a company, especially when

8:44

you're at a job, it's really rare

8:46

for you to get to experience another

8:48

job. Like, you know, I

8:51

just had a conversation with a friend of mine

8:53

who lives in Seattle, who

8:55

had lived in Seattle for a long time. And they have this thing called

8:57

the Seattle Freeze or whatever, where the people of

9:00

Seattle are going from there. Yeah. Well,

9:02

just in general, like the culture there is a little

9:04

cold. They don't, they're not as warm than I was welcoming

9:07

or hospitable. And they took a vacation

9:09

to Texas. And there it

9:11

was, it was shocking for

9:13

them because someone was holding up on the door

9:15

and asking them how their day was and all. And she was like,

9:18

I had no idea that the Seattle Freeze is that real.

9:20

I had heard about it, but you live in that environment

9:22

so much. Now she has the ability

9:25

to go travel somewhere,

9:27

but in your job, you don't really

9:30

know. You go to the same office with the same people

9:32

all the time. It may be even more dangerous because

9:34

you have nothing to juxtapose it to, to say,

9:37

oh man, I didn't realize

9:39

my eyes weren't open to the way this culture is affecting

9:42

me. You don't get exposed to that. What

9:44

do you think about that? Oh yeah. It's

9:46

like when you're a kid, you only have one family, one

9:48

set of parents. And so it's not until your adult

9:50

did realize, oh, that wasn't the only model. And

9:53

you think, well, I guess everybody gets parented this way.

9:55

I guess I'm just going to, and then you get older

9:57

and you go, oh, I have to choose the kind of person I'm going to

9:59

be. Maybe you had fantastic parents and you go,

10:01

yeah, most of what they gave me I want to emulate.

10:04

But sometimes you go, so not everybody dealt with that? And

10:08

so that's childhood is riddled

10:10

with that. But even our careers can be like

10:12

that. And my dad worked at the same company for 40

10:14

years. It's like that

10:16

was how he saw the people

10:19

that influenced him every day. I don't think

10:21

he knew there was a different way. I remember

10:23

when I went into this field, I think he found it interesting.

10:26

Once I had an opportunity to do something with him and the

10:29

place he worked, and I think he was just like, whoa,

10:31

I didn't even know there were other ways to do this.

10:34

And so we have to be aware of the fact that there's

10:37

more than one way and there's other places out there.

10:40

And we should choose it based on that. Yeah,

10:42

I think that's a unique part of our job.

10:45

A little bit we get to, because

10:48

of the consulting side of what we do, we get to

10:50

pop into other people's jobs. We

10:53

get to see the company culture, and we were just

10:55

at a company that we're working on a partnership

10:58

with that we'll announce when it's ready. But

11:00

we went down there and got to be in their offices. And

11:03

it was like people were bouncing off the walls to

11:05

be there. They were playing walk up songs when they made a sale

11:07

call. And that type of exposure, we're

11:10

talking about how it can be a trap sometimes, is actually

11:12

there's cultures out there that are causing

11:14

more people because of the culture of the

11:17

company and the team that they're on to aspire

11:19

to more, to be happy, to be better,

11:21

to sharpen each other. Rather

11:24

than sit here and lament, you should

11:26

be aware if you're going to work and thinking, I have

11:28

to put my defenses up. And

11:30

then maybe we could even talk about, hey, what

11:33

should you do? But the other thing is to know that's

11:35

out there too. Yeah, I was just thinking,

11:39

you're probably going to be made a better person

11:41

or a worse person wherever you are. People that my

11:43

son was telling me he hangs out with, they're either

11:45

making you better than you want to be or not

11:47

as good as you want to be. And so the person

11:50

that's in that company where they know they don't want the people

11:52

to make them less good, they're just fighting

11:54

it off to hold neutral, just to keep their head above

11:56

water.

11:57

And so people ask us for advice like, when

11:59

I go to...

11:59

a company and I interview, what should I be looking

12:02

for? And we say, look, core values

12:04

and think about your Myers, your working genius, your Myers

12:06

Briggs and all these different things. But the

12:09

first thing you should ask yourself is, do

12:11

I want to let these people influence

12:13

me? Will these people make me a better

12:15

father, husband, friend, person? Or

12:18

will I have to fight against

12:21

the influence? And I would probably, I had

12:23

a friend who for years would take a job in

12:25

a startup, in another startup, and as always, are they going to IPO

12:27

and how much could I make? And I finally just said, hey,

12:30

just go to someplace where you like being with the people. And

12:32

he finally did. And he goes, it's made all the difference.

12:35

I should have listened to that long ago. But

12:39

I do think we look at things like, well, they're not going to

12:41

influence me. They are going to have

12:43

a massive influence on your marriage, on your

12:45

whole look at your worldview. One

12:47

of the ways that I've seen this play out, this very conversation

12:50

is I've had friends who are

12:52

at a certain stage of their career and

12:55

people listening to this have probably done this at some point. And

12:57

they say they look at their boss's

13:00

boss and the boss above them. And they would

13:02

not just look at the title and the salary,

13:04

but they are like, oh, do I want that

13:06

life? Don't want to become that person,

13:09

the person that has that job. And

13:11

when they, when the answer is no, it's

13:13

like this sort of the floor falls

13:16

out under them as like, oh, why am I here? Is

13:18

that what I'm aspiring to? If I spend seven more years

13:20

here and I get promoted three times, is that the

13:22

life that I want? And I think that's

13:24

a pretty good indicator that you should start maybe

13:28

even writing down like, what is it? What is the

13:30

group of people that I'd want to say yes to that are making

13:32

me better that I want to become like, oh gosh,

13:34

you know, it's so funny what my, my youngest son

13:36

is getting ready to go to college

13:39

next year. So he's in that process right now. And

13:41

all these people are like, oh, what school are you going to? Is

13:44

that a good school? And I would say, no, go

13:46

to a school where

13:48

you want to be around those people because they're

13:51

going to rub off on you and you're going to rub off on them. And

13:53

that's going to make you better and forget

13:56

about rankings because everybody has a different

13:58

ranking and that is what's the. number one

14:00

school in the country for you becoming the person you're

14:02

meant to be. And when I think about the job

14:05

situation, my first job shaped

14:07

me in ways I had no understanding of. It

14:10

took me years to recover. Now, in our case, it was a blessing. Thank

14:12

you, God, because it led me into this field because it was so dysfunctional

14:15

that I thought, that's what I want to do. I want to help companies

14:18

become more functional. But I didn't realize

14:20

as I went in there, for the next 20 years,

14:23

everything I thought about work was influenced by my

14:25

first job experience. And

14:28

so I want to say to people out there, if you're

14:30

talking to somebody who's about to start work,

14:33

make sure they go into it with their

14:35

eyes wide open and try to choose the job

14:39

that they think will help them move in the

14:41

right direction. Because in my case,

14:43

my first two jobs moved me in the wrong direction.

14:47

And it was years of detox.

14:49

Okay,

14:51

so what you guys don't know is that we just

14:54

edited out like a 30-second gap

14:56

when none of us knew what to say. And I want to talk

14:58

about this because when we're doing a podcast, I've always wanted

15:01

to say this, when somebody's talking,

15:04

you're thinking, oh, we're listening

15:06

to each other, but we're also going, what am

15:08

I going to say to that? And sometimes

15:10

I know this because I listen to the podcast as

15:12

painful as it is. And I don't always

15:15

comment on the thing the person said before

15:17

me. And I sound and

15:19

I'm always like, oh, I sound so shallow. Yeah,

15:21

whatever you said, Cody. But let me tell you what I'm thinking.

15:24

So sometimes we're all sitting here and it's dead

15:26

silence because we're like, I don't know what

15:28

to say. So that's just something about

15:30

doing a podcast. But now you remember what you were

15:32

going to say? I love this conversation

15:34

the more we're having it. I think it's more important

15:37

than I thought it was when we started this podcast

15:39

because I think that it's really

15:41

true. We're constantly becoming

15:44

something, the future version of ourselves

15:46

and the environment we're in, the friends we surround ourselves

15:49

with, even the work that we do is making

15:51

us into that person. And I

15:53

think that's very in the spirit

15:55

of what this podcast, the meta narrative of

15:57

this which

16:00

is, hey, work is not a transaction for

16:02

you. It's not a, I'm gonna go trade

16:04

my skills for a dollar amount

16:06

that seems reasonable, for X

16:08

amount of hours a day. It's actually

16:10

way more important than that.

16:13

And we're meant to work, we're meant to

16:15

be dignified in the work that we do and do

16:17

it with people that will make us better. And

16:20

I think if you're listening

16:22

to this and you're like, man, I don't have that, it's

16:24

out there, you gotta go find it and take a risk and

16:26

say, man, I wanna know what that

16:28

is, I wanna know who those people are, and I want

16:31

that life that's different than

16:33

the one I have now. And I don't know how to quantify

16:35

or monetize that. I think

16:37

it's priceless. I think it's priceless to

16:39

find a place to work where you want

16:41

the people to influence you and they

16:43

want you to influence them. And I'll just say,

16:46

Tracy and Karen, you're a big part of who

16:48

I am. I would be a different person had

16:50

I not spent the last 25 years with you and Cody

16:52

of the 10 years with you. And I'm proud

16:54

of that and thankful to God and to you

16:57

that I'm a better person for having worked with

16:59

you. I want so many other people to have

17:01

that same experience. And so that's

17:03

what it's all about having dignity and

17:05

fulfillment at work and that's a big part of it. So

17:08

I think that's all that we need to say. Cody, you are doing

17:10

the unpaid ad. Yeah, that was the 30

17:12

second gap. That's what I was thinking about while you

17:14

were talking. I was like, oh, it's my turn to do the ad.

17:17

I don't know what I'm gonna do it for. And in

17:19

that 30 seconds, while you were saying, I'm sure something

17:21

very wise that I wasn't listening to, I

17:24

thought the unpaid ad should be for

17:26

friends. I was thinking about who

17:28

are the five people that I have in my life

17:30

and how are they shaping me? And so

17:33

as much as I made fun of my brother on the last

17:35

podcast who came on, he's one of them. And

17:37

I've got some really good people in my life that want

17:41

me to be a better person than I

17:43

am even in my current state and push for that.

17:46

And so, and I know there's a lot of lonely people

17:48

out there. Go find some friends who care about you and wanna push

17:50

you. Yeah, when I did this with my son, half the

17:52

time I talked to my 17 year old, my wife and I are constantly

17:55

trying to get deep conversation with him. He's like,

17:57

oh, thanks mom and dad, I'm fine. I'm gonna get him a

17:59

shirt that says I'm fine. who you just pointed to. But

18:01

he really liked this. Because

18:03

I said, and so your commercialist, I think everybody

18:06

should do a little audit. And do it with

18:08

another person and go, who are your five? And

18:10

he went through his friends and he like, Leo. And

18:13

I was like, love Leo, he has a great

18:15

impact on you and you doing him. And then he went to others.

18:17

And the fifth one he told me, I was like, he's sketchy

18:20

at times. He goes, I know, here's what he brings to the table

18:22

and what I love about him. Here's the parts that

18:24

I don't try to emulate. But being that

18:26

intentional about that and

18:29

knowing who those five are, I have

18:31

to say, this is not something I should be ashamed

18:33

of. I should be glad about this.

18:36

So in my life, I have a couple friends outside

18:38

of work. But you guys, in

18:40

fact, me more than anybody. When I have to make a decision

18:43

in life, I'll ask you guys. And

18:45

so do the audit. Go,

18:47

who are the five? Don't be ashamed about

18:49

where you know I'm from or whatever else. And ask

18:52

yourself, what are they helping me with and what

18:54

do I need to be aware of? So

18:56

that's our unpaid ad. All right, I love

18:58

doing this. This is so fun. Thank you all for listening.

19:01

And we will talk to you next time on

19:03

At the Table. God bless.