Episode 34 – Better Humans, Better Performance: Leadership Lessons from Peter Rea

Todd Bertsch: 0:10

Welcome back to the Bolt Podcast. I’m Todd Bertsch and I’m thrilled to be your guide on this inspiring journey of personal growth and leadership. Together with my guests, we’ll dive into transformational stories, uncovering how small, intentional changes can create massive positive results in your life. From overcoming challenges and setting impactful goals to building lasting habits and living with confidence, health and positivity. We’ll explore it all, and if you’re ready to embrace a growth mindset and unlock the best version of yourself, then let’s spark that transformation today. Today on the Bolt Podcast, I’m excited to welcome Peter Rea, the founder of Better Humans, Better Performance, a nonprofit dedicated to helping individuals and teams thrive under pressure, while guided by character and integrity.

Todd Bertsch: 1:02

Peter brings a wealth of experience as the former vice president of integrity and ethics at Parker Hannifin and as a professor of business at Baldwin Wallace University. He has authored multiple influential publications, including Better Humans, Better Performance, and Leading with Integrity. His career spans over two decades, combining leadership, ethics, and entrepreneurial insight, and he is passionate about creating lasting social and economic value through virtuous leadership. He holds a PhD from the University of Akron, an MA from Bowling Green State University, and a BS from Ohio University. He has completed postdoctoral studies in international marketing and business, marketing strategy and entrepreneurship at the University of South Carolina, Memphis University, Carnegie Mellon, Duke, and MIT. Listeners, get ready for an educational episode on virtues and leadership, and get out your notepads, Peter. Welcome to the Bold Podcast, my friend.

Peter Rea: 2:04

Thanks for the invitation, todd, looking forward to the conversation.

Todd Bertsch: 2:07

Yes, thank you for giving us a little bit of your time today. I do want to give a shout out to our mutual friend, Scott J. Allen. Thank you, Scott, for making the introduction. Scott’s such a great guy, you know, Peter, the introduction that’s quite an introduction and to be honest, I had a heck of a time paring this down. Chat GPT wanted to cut a lot of that out and you know I wanted to give you the respect of this long history that you’ve had decades of experience in leadership and your educational background. So I wanted our audience to really get a sense of your background and who you are and what you’ve accomplished. So I have a lot of respect for you and what you’re doing and I’m excited about this conversation today. Me too. So I want to start off by this one phrase that you mentioned in your book when we get better at who we are, we get better at what we do, and that has been your life’s work in some ways. Is that correct?

Peter Rea: 3:14

Yeah, it is. You know. I think that what’s interesting and I don’t think I understood this until I started digging into the research and then applying it in companies. But I think what gets understated is character defined by virtue is a huge performance amplifier. So that gets at that first part of the statement, when we get better at who we are by practicing virtue and the word virtue means excellence and it’s not a virtue until I act. So that’s the amplifier to whatever competency I’m trying to develop, Right.

Todd Bertsch: 3:49

Yeah, and this is perfect because you know my personal mission and the mission of this podcast, the Bolt, is to help people reimagine how they live, lead and work and to become the best version of themselves.

Todd Bertsch: 4:05

I’ve been on a personal mission and I continue to do the work, and you’re a lifelong learner as well, and I assume you’re continuing to do that work. We’re all just trying to get 1% better every day, right? Yeah, exactly. So the theme of this episode is really better humans, better performance, simply put, and you’ve had a really long, impressive career, and we talked about your time with 12 years as vice president of integrity and ethics at Parker Hannafin, and this is a large corporation, fortune 250, publicly owned, annual sales of north of 20 billion and 65,000 employees in 50 different countries. I mean, we’re talking about a lot of humans right to be responsible for. So I’m really curious when I saw your title this Vice President of Integrity and Ethics. Is this something that is common in these very large corporations? And when you came into this role, was this role already there or was this created for you, and what was the impetus of creating this role? That’s what I’d like to just learn a little bit more about.

Peter Rea: 5:22

Yeah, so it had not been created before. Okay, and I think the way I would put it and it’s not common. I wish that it was common, but it’s not Okay. It’s more common, actually in the military Okay Than you would find in corporations, which is odd, because it’s got a huge performance benefit. Hmm, because it’s got a huge performance benefit.

Peter Rea: 5:45

So the catalyst for this that I think is still relevant is the then chief financial officer at Parker was in an executive MBA class that I was teaching and I was always wondering why do organizations limit their definition of ethics to compliance, which means a set of rules, and you need rules.

Peter Rea: 6:09

You can debate whether you got too many or too few, but zero is not the right answer. And not thinking about ethics as virtue, which is at least 3,000 years old and it’s got all kinds of performance benefits. So the CFO I think this is still true today he went to the CEO and said I’m not sure more rules are going to keep us safer and while we keep laying on more and more rules, we’re burdening the 99% of people who come to work every day and do their job properly and we’re not expressing appropriate gratitude to them and zero is not the right answer on rules, and you do need some form of compliance. Just so I’m being clear. And if you’re in a publicly owned company, you don’t have any choice. Anyway You’re required to do it. But you know, if you’ve got an ethical culture defined by virtue, at least trying to practice that, you both mitigate the risk of something going off the rails and you accelerate performance. So, in brief, that was the catalyst for it.

Todd Bertsch: 7:10

Okay, interesting. So how did that benefit Parker when COVID came? So you had already implemented this several years before COVID, one of arguably one of the toughest times that we’ve all faced.

Peter Rea: 7:28

Yeah, it’s a really good question. So here’s the context is, when everybody traveled a lot at Parker. I mean, I traveled all over the world and that was normal. We spent at the time $160 million a month on travel. To give you a sense of this, and we’re in 50 countries and 350 locations, so it’s kind of a massive organization, right.

Peter Rea: 7:59

So you go a dead stop from all this travel to now you’re going to try to run a Fortune 250 remote, and so I pivoted fast with Zoom and this answer is better to be lucky than good that I had taken the Better Humans, better Performance book and started to create e-learning modules and that went live in April of 2020, right when COVID hit. So it became a vehicle to pump in the practice of virtue into operations and it enabled scale in ways that I couldn’t achieve by traveling. Right, and I had done a lot of work around resilience of how do people become more resilient? What’s the science behind that? And PhD stands for permanent head damage that you look at pre post control treatment, randomization, right. So these aren’t personal opinions, it’s kind of it’s what’s the research say.

Todd Bertsch: 9:03

Right.

Peter Rea: 9:04

So there’s a lot of really interesting research on resilience, because the word gets used a lot but becomes kind of a tagline rather than a science-based approach to how is it learned Right? So it wouldn’t come as a surprise that that became. I mean, I must. I’ve done thousands of sessions on resilience. Well, thousands of people is tending to resilience, and I’ll just I’ll stop with one story, that when the Ukraine war broke out so that was not too far after COVID I got contacted by our Eastern European colleagues, and especially Poland that I don’t know, that it’s widely known that Poland’s population is about 40 million.

Peter Rea: 9:51

10 million Ukrainians became refugees in Poland. So imagine the percentage increase in your population overnight. And so the question was how do the Poles, how do the Czechs, how do other Eastern European countries become more resilient? And it was very humbling because I made it very clear. I’m sitting 6,000 miles from where you sit. I’m not on the border of a war, I’ve never experienced war, I don’t know what you’re going through. The best I can offer is here’s the science behind this, and then you tell me whether it’s worth, it’s useful and relevant. So it was a powerful experience on me what I learned from people that I thought were rock stars, that I was going through what they’re going through. I might be in a corner somewhere in a fetal position. So you learn a lot from others as you do it. And that became kind of the punchline around how do you perform well despite uncertainty, despite pressure, despite stress? What’s the science behind that? And it does come down to character, relationships and purpose.

Todd Bertsch: 11:01

Wow, and so you? You did not intend the timing of you launching that. What that was already there, right it?

Todd Bertsch: 11:10

wasn’t like you said, oh gosh, that was the dumb luck. Okay, Wow. Well, good for you. I mean, that’s, that’s awesome and wow. So in your, in your role at Parker’s or any, what types of challenges did you guys did you face that you’re able to talk about? You know, is there one in particular where this research and your model really came into play and you were able to put it in place and you’re able to overcome some major obstacles?

Peter Rea: 11:42

Yeah, I’ll offer two stories that perhaps answer your question. The first is, when I got started, the endowed chair I held at Baldwin Wallace was in entrepreneurship, so I approached it like an internal startup that was funded. So I had spent six months interviewing hundreds of leaders about what their pain point was, and what came out of it at a high level was all right. Why are we doing this? Why is Parker going to make this investment into not only character but virtue? And so I worked with the CFO. This is a financial argument. This was not an HR initiative, and it was protect the balance sheet, that our reputation and culture were the most important asset that we had, and so, like any asset, you need a non-purpose plan. That’s the why. So people, ok, that makes sense. So what does this mean? Well, there’s these seven classical virtues trust, compassion, courage, justice, wisdom, temperance and hope. And they’re classical, which means they cut across time, they cut across borders. So we’re in 50 countries. We can’t be US centric, it’s got to be universal. So I said, okay, I get that. So how are you going to do it? So it very much got into how, very fast, of how do you scale this? And so now I’ll fast forward.

Peter Rea: 13:11

This is the reason for writing a couple of books when I was there, so there was content that could be scaled and so I’m going to fast forward to right after COVID, I worked with our Asia Pacific team every month. This is the operations leadership team, all the folks that have P&L responsibility. As you can imagine, it’s a massive footprint. It’s India, china, japan, indonesia, australia, you name it and once a month we would keep kind of putting in virtue science of high performance. That’s the intersection that the science of high performance is really about the social aspects of it, and the most pro-social technology ever invented by humans is virtues. So to have an option to scale the virtues into such a big footprint, that was a big deal. And I created self-paced courses, which is still part of the nonprofit, where teams could learn about leadership or teamwork or coaching.

Peter Rea: 14:15

It’s a hybrid, so that you start with the team all together, then there’s modules they work on, then they come back together, modules they work on, then you check with the end, and so the punchline on this that we saw, I ran multiple studies when I was at Parker.

Peter Rea: 14:33

So in between that start the alpha and the omega that I described we did experimental designs where you have a control group, you do nothing with a treatment group, that you integrate the virtues into their daily operations. That’s a really important point. It’s integrated to what you’re already going to do and did pre and post tests and what we discovered is that we got jumps in engagement of 10 to 20% year over year. That it’s not going to get a fast, quick change, but over 12 months and it varied by. If it was a really strong team, they actually got the biggest jumps. If it was a dysfunctional team, it took longer but they did get the jumps and a lot of that was tied to the quality of leadership. So that’s long answered your question, but hopefully that starts to get at it.

Todd Bertsch: 15:24

Yeah, that’s amazing. Did the dysfunctional group see the same amount, same percentage, amount of increase? They did, but it was slower. It was just slower, okay so a year and a half. Yeah, you got it, you nailed it. It was 18 months, but still seeing the growth. Wow, that’s interesting. Wow, this, that’s interesting. Wow, this is much more than a book.

Peter Rea: 15:49

Yeah, I think that this is the piece, the business case for this is a layup, and I’m just surprised by how few businesses in particular are getting it. Military gets it Right, but you think most there’s lots of organizations that understand the importance of engagement and there’s two decades of research that shows big surprise, the more engaged your people are, you get the kind of outcomes we’re all interested in, whether that’s business growth, customer satisfaction, operational excellence, turnover rates, all those kinds of outcomes, right. So you say, all right, well, what’s engagement? Well, engagement is discretionary effort that you’ve got people that look around, they see what needs to be done, who do they need to work with, and they own it Okay.

Peter Rea: 16:36

Well then, how does that happen? Well, it’s largely about pro-social behavior. So engagement’s not about extrinsic changes where if I just pay you more, I get you to work harder. There’s no evidence that that works. And that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t pay people fairly. It just doesn’t mean I can get you to work harder. It’s the pro-social behavior that gets me to work harder, that when virtue is being practiced, I feel like I belong, I feel like I matter, I feel like I make a difference. And those three levers are which are all the soft stuff are the things that get you the kind of performance we’re all interested in yeah, absolutely.

Todd Bertsch: 17:14

Wow, this is good stuff, peter. So I just want to let our listeners know like this is what we’re talking about here Peter’s book Better Humans um, incredible book, peter. I have not made it all the way through for a couple of reasons. One, I’m a slow reader and two, I’m a slow reader because I take a lot of notes. I treat this as a research project. I used to really burn through books. I tried to get through them and check it off and say, oh man, I got through another one and then I realized less is more and I really want to immerse myself in the book and not blowing smoke here because you’re on the show.

Todd Bertsch: 17:55

This is a really incredible book. I have pages and pages of notes and excited to get all the way through it. I would arguably say I’d put this on the top of books that need to be read by every leader, with Stephen Covey and John Maxwell and James Clear, at least in my opinion. You know those staple books and I’m going to get a copy of this for all of my leadership team and I would encourage our listeners to at least read about the book and consider buying the book. So let’s just dig into this book. Even I feel like that’s what we’ve been talking about. But although, as you said, this is much more than a book and in fact, I think what you’re well trying to do, or what you’ve done and what you’re trying to build on, is a movement, and it’s funny because it’s going back to very simple principles, right?

Peter Rea: 18:55

Exactly yeah.

Todd Bertsch: 18:57

And it’s interesting, Peter, what I found in my coaching and my speaking and what I talk about, which is mainly focused on the power of positivity and cultivating a growth mindset. There are so many techniques that are very basic and most people just don’t practice them because they are so obvious, Right and they’re free. They take literally three to five minutes to start to build a habit, so oftentimes we just need a reminder to get back to the basics, Almost like I don’t know if you remember, Peter, back in the day, where they would have those PSA School of Rock. Do you know what I’m talking about?

Peter Rea: 19:47

Yeah, me too.

Todd Bertsch: 19:48

Yeah, and I think we just kind of need that in our company newsletters. If you will, let’s just get back to the basics. So yeah, incredible book and I want to dig into it. Let’s start with this, Peter. So I’m going through this and I read this quote from the poet Rumi A jackass attached to angel wings. You about. You mentioned this quite a few times in the book, so obviously this had some influence on you and it resonated with you. Why did you include this and just tell our audience about it? This was new to me, so I thought it was pretty interesting.

Peter Rea: 20:29

Yeah, I’ll start with the quote, then I’ll give some context for it. So Rumi’s take? He’s a 12th century Sufi poet and his description of humans is their jackasses attached to angel wings. So the point is, there’s a jackass in every one of us. We’d like to make it a little bit smaller, but you’re not going to go to zero.

Peter Rea: 20:50

So these virtues are aspirational. It’s not possible to be perfect. So these virtues are aspirational. It’s not possible to be perfect. But we are capable of being good and we tip most humans tip towards trying to do the right thing for the right reasons in the right way. But the hard part is making it a habit and so the practice. I think Rumi’s takeaway is you practice these virtues with humility, because no one’s earned the right to break out their moral yardstick and start measuring other people, and we tend to be better at seeing other people’s flaws and not as good about seeing our own flaws. Yes, so the humility piece is really really important.

Peter Rea: 21:28

How virtue is practiced is as important as what it means, and that ultimately, it’s about habits, and that’s the part that’s hard. So you know, if you go to your physician and you want to become more fit, move more, eat less, more green, less grease. Do you have any questions? It’s not a knowledge thing, but it turns out. It’s hard to get fit, fit and to exercise, and it’s not that you don’t know it. The hard part is making it a habit, and especially when we put you under pressure and stress. So if you take go from Rumi to all the service academies so I’ve been to West Point and the Air Force Academy, naval Academy so their number one mission is better leaders for the nation and the military. So how do they define better leaders Virtue?

Peter Rea: 22:22

So why would the military practice virtue? It’s about, again, making it a habit. Well, one reason is the performance benefit. So there’s a guy named Mike Matthews at West Point looked at 100 years of research. The dependent variable was academic and job performance, and 25% of the variance in performance could be explained by cognitive skills, things like IQ. 75% of the variance is non-cognitive, it’s character. That’s the part that I think most businesses are missing. It’s why the military is using it Now. On the other hand, it increases reliability under pressure, which is why the military does it.

Peter Rea: 23:08

So if I don’t even know what excellence means and again, that’s what virtue means and I don’t have a framework seven virtues, then under pressure, the variance is going to be pretty high. If at least people know what virtue is and they’re trying to practice it imperfectly, they go back to Rumi. The banded behavior is going to be tighter. It’s not perfect, but it’s going to be a little bit tighter, and that it’s a skill. So virtue is a skill and it can be learned like any skill, slowly over time, making it a habit. So what used to be hard and take a lot of effort becomes effortless. That’s what a habit is that you’ve internalized it but you can’t push it on people. It’s got to be a pull, not push. Now people want to do it, but you’ve got to figure out ways to get at it. So one more point that Rumi is, you’re right, he kind of got me rolling on this.

Peter Rea: 24:04

So one more data point Daniel Kahneman you’re probably quite familiar with. He argued that the single you know, if people don’t know who he is the only psychologist to win a Nobel Prize in economics. And he argued that the single greatest contribution of psychology to humankind is Kurt Lewin’s idea of restraining forces. Lewin’s research is 80 years old, so I like stuff that’s old, that’s been around for a long time and proven and what Lewin’s stuff demonstrated.

Peter Rea: 24:36

This is kind of a fundamental piece to what I continue to do. You have driving forces pushing you this way and restraining forces putting you this way. So let’s take virtue. I mean, who in the world wouldn’t want to be on a team where people trust each other, they care about each other, they’re fair and they’re hopeful? On a team where people trust each other, they care about each other, they’re fair and they’re hopeful, and who the heck wants to be on a team where people are distrustful, ruthless, cowards and they’re full of despair? So it’s kind of a no-brainer. That’s what you want. But the driving force to want to practice virtue. You have restraints, the pressure to perform, time limitations, a grouchy boss and none of those things. You can’t eliminate them, but you can weaken their restraints. So if I do nothing, I’m stuck. I can’t change my behavior. If I can define and weaken my restraints, I start to tip it. That’s a really key piece that takes you all the way from Rumi to Kurt Lohan 80 years ago. That still works today.

Todd Bertsch: 25:40

That’s interesting. I assume you’re familiar with Carol Dweck’s work.

Peter Rea: 25:44

Yes, very much.

Todd Bertsch: 25:46

It reminds me of that, talking about that kind of continuum of being in a fixed mindset over to an an open and growth mindset. I talk a lot about that on the show and it’s it’s a big part of my talk and my message is being able to shift, or educate people on how to shift, or the the idea that you can shift, and I think that is the. What I’m most interested in is that peace, those people who are in the mud, in the rock, and they feel like they can’t change. But we’ve been, you know, we’ve been built for change and we can, and it just takes time, like you said, and it takes effort and we just need to start small and make those small shifts so that we can build a habit right and I assume you’re a fan of James Clear and his work. You know small shifts, atomic habits, and then you start to build and compound, get that compounding interest right, and then you celebrate those wins and then you can start seeing, you know, the change take place, but anyhow.

Todd Bertsch: 26:59

So yeah, thank you Peter for that. That was a great setup. And I do want to show and we’ll include this for those of you who are listening and not watching this on YouTube, this illustration here. Peter, if we can kind of talk through this Greek architecture, because this is the model for this book, kind of take us through the top with Arute. Did I pronounce that correctly?

Todd Bertsch: 27:31

Arate, arate Itte it means excellence, right. So that’s the, uh, the goddess of virtue, right, and that’s the, the pediments in this kind of dork order of of greek architecture. So if just imagine somebody’s listening and kind of take us, because I think that’s to me, albeit simple, but in seeing that illustration in that Greek architecture, I was really able to internalize that Right, you used a key word there internalize.

Peter Rea: 28:08

I mean. That’s why you can’t push this stuff. It’s more caught than taught. So those virtues are known as the seven classical virtues. The word classical means these virtues cut across time and cut across borders back 10,000 years. So if you looked at what’s interesting when I did a lot of work in Asia, confucius and Aristotle were born about the same period of time. There’s no evidence that they knew each other and yet the virtues were virtually identical and all the work I would do in Asia that were around the world. That’s what was so fascinating is that these virtues are truly kind of part of every culture. They get expressed differently.

Peter Rea: 29:00

So are there cultural differences? Of course, and that’s been documented, not just with going back, you know, 2,500 years, but there was a group of 55 scientists who did a thorough review of all the virtues and how universal they were. So there’s science that backs up the philosophy. That’s high level. To drop into the details. What’s really important is, unless people know what excellence means, defined by seven virtues, and until they’re using common language, it’s pretty hard to move the culture. So we all know that culture is more powerful than strategy. I say that as a strategist If your culture is screwy, it won’t matter how good your strategy is, you can’t get it off the ground. And if the strategy is not bad but the culture is strong, you’ll be able to make movement. So the seven one way to remember these seven virtues is by catchphrases, because I can’t remember paragraphs but I can remember a catchphrase. So I’m going to just go through all seven very briefly.

Todd Bertsch: 30:04

That’s what I was hoping Excellent.

Peter Rea: 30:08

So for trust, the catchphrase is trust is efficient. We’ve all been on teams when they may be really smart people, they don’t trust each other. They’re going to cost you a lot of money. It’s going to take a long time to get stuff done. When teams trust each other, they move really quick. They’ll save you money.

Peter Rea: 30:25

Second virtue compassion. Service before self, service before self. So the more collaborative a team is, there’s overwhelming evidence that relationships need to come first and performance follows and the order matters, so that trust and compassion are kind of attached at the hip. Courage is doing the hard right rather than the easy wrong. Do the hard right rather than the easy wrong. Courage issues don’t tend to be complicated, but they come with risk and I already kind of know what I should be doing. I just don’t know if I want to pay the price and it’s hard for any of us. But again, it can become a habit with practice.

Peter Rea: 31:10

Justice is lived by conviction. Practice Justice is lived by conviction, not circumstances. And justice is by far the most complicated virtue because there’s not an objective standard. But if at least I’m clear about who I want to be guided by these virtues, independent of circumstances, I’m clear. Here’s how I want to show up, and wisdom is strive to understand rather than be understood. There’s overwhelming evidence that if someone doesn’t feel heard and understood, good luck trying to change behavior. They still may not change. But you don’t have a chance until they feel heard and understood. And temperance is. Calm is contagious, calm is contagious. This is a tagline from the Navy SEALs that when the leader is calm, the team is calm. When the leader is ruthless, the team is ruthless. Leaders confused, teams confused. And hope is better, not bitter, bitter. So we all go through tough times. It’s not a competition of how hard my blows are compared to somebody else, and so the outcome is does it make me better or does it make me better?

Todd Bertsch: 32:22

Yeah, yeah, I love these and in the book you have these and the key takeaways and I love that aspect of the book being able to go through the chapters and just kind of have that, that nice little takeaway at the end. I want to talk about a couple of these. Peter, trust, share that shipwreck story with us. I really enjoyed that and it just allowed me to visualize it a little bit. Obviously I know what trust is, but I think it was just a great little story yeah.

Peter Rea: 32:52

So there was a school in England in 1930 that their tagline is they wanted graduates who were adequate at a dance and invaluable in a shipwreck. And it turns out that’s not just a clever tagline that there was a study done on shipwrecks between 1500 and 1800. And they actually had really good records of how many sailors died or lived and they had their journals so you could look at the journals to see whether virtue was present or it was absent. And the outcome of the study is when virtue was present, high probability all or most sailors would live. When virtue was absent, high probability everyone would die or most people would die. And you know that’s 1500 to 1800. But again you can swing this stuff back arguably 10,000 years.

Peter Rea: 33:52

That Darwin kind of he wondered why are people moral, why would you do that? And that kind of whole survival of the fittest. He never said that there’s a guy named Henry Spencer who did so. What Darwin argued for is that morality was the solution to cooperation. Morality was the solution to cooperation and evolutionary biology is about competition of what conduct would lead to sustainability. And so when he looked at tribes other people have done the same the tribes that cared about each other and cooperated well, net-net, not always out-competed tribes who were ruthless and didn’t give a flip about each other. So that’s a way of stringing that school from 1930, 1500 to 1800, back to evolutionary biology. This is how we’re built to cooperate. And you can’t cooperate unless people are moral. The root word of morale is moral. That’s the piece that I think kind of can get missed, right.

Todd Bertsch: 35:00

Absolutely so. I do wonder you mentioned this and I was curious as I went through this list. I’m like where’s gratitude? And you do say that gratitude is by far the greatest virtue of all time. Where does that fall into this seven classical virtues?

Peter Rea: 35:21

Yeah, it’s a good question. It falls under hope. And here’s the story behind it is, if you would have asked me when I started at Parker which kind of practice had the biggest impact on engagement, I promise my answer was not gratitude. I look, I’m not against gratitude, but I thought it just seems a little bit fluffy. You know where’s the evidence. I mean, you know it’s a good thing to be gracious, but you know, at my core I look at research and at one level gratitude’s all this dirt. So the root word of gratitude is grace that you’ve been given a gift that you didn’t necessarily deserve. What’s new is now you bolt on social science research.

Peter Rea: 36:08

That started kind of in the late 90s and the initial study was was three groups. One group would write down three things they were grateful for for 21 days. The second group would write down three things that ticked them off for 21 days, and the last group, the control group. We didn’t do anything with them and a study came out with clarity that the grateful group was more grateful day 22 than day zero. The miserable group was more miserable day 22 than day zero and the control group there was no difference.

Peter Rea: 36:44

So I’m going to give that as a backdrop is when I was looking at the research on the impact on gratitude was so powerful in terms of resilience relationships. It just went on and on and on engagement. So there were two researchers that had done most of the work in this field, or at least were the ones that started it so I jumped on a plane, met with both of them and say just show me your data. I’m not going to do something at Parker without some confidence it would be effective and the data was really compelling. So that drove me back to Parker.

Peter Rea: 37:21

And now if you ask me, as all the years I was at Parker, which of the practices had the biggest impact on engagement? It was gratitude. Right, and then it becomes okay what are different ways to practice gratitude, as a team, as an individual and you want to get into that. I can share some details. But really, what if you cut to the chase with gratitude? I’m looking at what I have versus what I don’t have, and it’s a mind and it’s got a powerful impact on us, absolutely.

Todd Bertsch: 37:55

I’m all about gratitude. We talk a lot about it on the show. It’s infused into every speaking engagement and in my coaching work it is, bar none, in my opinion, the easiest and simplest thing to integrate into your life. That will have the most profound impact. I think you’re right, todd. Three minutes a day, whether that’s you could bookend it, start and end which I think has the most impact, or one or the other. For me, it’s the morning. I love to start my day with prayer, infused with gratitude, infused with meditation, for 5, 10, 15 minutes, whatever I’m feeling for that particular day, and then I’m set for the day. It really sets the tone and it’s a beautiful thing. And I’ve seen it personally, peter, in my business, albeit very, very small compared to what you’re accustomed to, but we’re still dealing with human beings, Right.

Todd Bertsch: 39:00

And we see it in our NPS surveys, year after year after year, even with very different groups of people. I think we’ve been through and you’ve probably seen this too. Every five years I feel like there’s just kind of a change in culture or people, but that has been tried and true. Feedback from employees is giving them the time and space to speak and listen to them so that they have a voice, caring, leading with empathy and giving them feeling value. That’s one of the top questions Do you feel valued in this organization? And we really take that to heart. So, yeah and hell, we could probably do a whole show on gratitude, peter, and maybe we do. And I feel like this is the biggest struggle with this conversation was I just want to. You are like. You have so much great information, all backed by research, and I would love to just talk for hours. Honestly, I just want to talk a little bit about. You talk a lot about and you reference a lot in the book about the neuroscience behind all this, and I’m a big fan of that. I don’t know if you’re familiar with positive intelligence High level, high level, high level. Okay, good, I highly recommend I think you would really enjoy Shirzad Shamim’s book Positive Intelligence.

Todd Bertsch: 40:25

It’s a New York Times bestseller. I’m actually a positive intelligence coach and I’m actually a client. So I’ve been through the program. I’m almost at mastery level. Five years I’ve rewired my brain. You will see it on an MRI. I’ve definitely built that gray matter. It’s a beautiful thing to be able to do that. So neuroscience is real and it’s life-changing. Tell us a little bit about just your experience with neuroscience and how you infuse this into the book briefly.

Peter Rea: 40:59

Yeah, so it’s kind of neuroscience caught up with Aristotle is how I would put it. And to keep it brief, you know the term neuroplasticity is incredible. We should be putting that in billboards. As you know, it means that my brain changes from the time I’m born to the time I croak. So just knowing that is useful. I think it’s also useful to understand that this three pound piece of meat on top of my shoulders is an energy hog and it uses 20 percent of my energy and it uses 20% of my energy. So my brain is actually not it’s not ethically driven, it’s driven by how do I preserve energy? So my brain is just kind of going to go where I want it to go.

Peter Rea: 41:52

So if I’m emphasizing social media and doing lots of clicks, then my brain starts to shut down on long-term thinking and you get the attention span of a nap. And if, on the other hand, I want to practice virtue, I move a little bit closer in that direction to your point. You get a dendrite. For us that you literally that’s what a habit is. You’ve got this thick bushel of neurons that have connected, which is why it is easy for one person to do one thing and another person do something else.

Peter Rea: 42:22

So if I cut to the chase, what I pay attention to and what I practice is who I become. That, if you summarized neuroscience, that’s one way to do it, that it’s about where I put my attention and what do I practice, and then it becomes habit. And that line of thinking, that little formula, is an alignment with what Aristotle said 2,500 years ago that habits are about practicing excellence. That I become more just by practicing just acts. I’ve become more courageous by practicing courageous acts. I’m not perfect at it. It’s a continuum, but maybe I move a little bit closer over time.

Todd Bertsch: 43:08

Love it Absolutely. And it just again starts with small shifts. I feel like people get overwhelmed. How am I going? How am I going to achieve this? Where do I start? I can’t begin. I can’t do this, I’m going to fail. Just get started.

Peter Rea: 43:24

The research is there.

Todd Bertsch: 43:26

The proof is in the pudding you will see better performance and you will have better relationships with everybody in your life. You will be able to serve everyone in your life so much better. I absolutely love it. You know there’s I’ll leave you with this.

Todd Bertsch: 43:41

In terms of positive intelligence, peter, there is kind of one core component which is called the sage perspective, and it talks about, in challenging situations, finding the gift and opportunity in every scenario, in every situation, and to me, that is really, really powerful, and I saw and I see this in the virtues, and I see this throughout your book If we can just come into every situation with an open mind, an empty cup right, and be open to exploring and not be judgmental, we’re going to be held a lot better. So, anyhow, I just wanted to say that, peter, there’s another component that I really felt like needed to be in this conversation and I took a screenshot of it and hell, I might even frame frame it the five enduring elements to creating a world which we want to live in. That truly resonated with me, and we’re talking about trust here. Can you take us, take us through that and make sure?

Peter Rea: 44:49

I’m kind of hitting on what you were and I’ll kick it off.

Todd Bertsch: 44:53

trust and practicing virtue, gotcha.

Peter Rea: 44:58

Trust and gratitude. So see if I’m taking it to where you were thinking, todd, that it starts with the common language around the virtues. If I don’t even know what excellence is, good luck trying to get there. And one of the distinctions is between it’s not uncommon that organizations have values and people go off into the woods. They think about what they’re interested in, what they care about. It’s not a bad exercise. But unless you’re Aristotle, it’s probably not going to result in the seven classical virtues.

Peter Rea: 45:34

So kind of starting with virtue is you’ve already defined excellence. Now we’re struggling to figure out how to practice it. It’s really critical that it’s practiced intrinsically. That’s what I want to do, it’s who I want to be, it’s how we’re trying to lead, it’s how we’re trying to focus as a team. But that’s a key piece to this, which is again back to the pull versus the push, being strength-based. You know what do I do? Well, how do I do more of it? That is not about self-esteem. So leveraging strengths doesn’t mean I ignore weakness.

Peter Rea: 46:09

In fact, this is an important point Carol Dweck and others have hit. This piece is if you ask people do I have to have high self-esteem in order to perform that? The order is high self-esteem, then you get performance. The answer is definitively no. That what that gets you.

Peter Rea: 46:28

I feel great about my math abilities, but I can’t add two and two together. You get a narcissist who feels great about themselves and they can’t do squat. So the order was wrong is you got to flip it. You do something hard and important, and that’s what results in feeling a little bit better about who we are, at least the progress that we’re making. But the humility is something that I would really kind of emphasize. And the last piece is about the evidence-based. So, rather than making tools that are just somebody’s made them up it’s a personal opinion I like the scientific method of pre post control, treatment, randomization, that you’ve tipped things in your favor, that it’s more likely to work. It’s not perfect. The scientific method isn’t perfect, there’s always more to learn, but it’s better than just making stuff up. So I’m not sure if I hit what you were thinking about, but that’s one way to imagine the practice of this.

Todd Bertsch: 47:29

Yeah, no, absolutely. Thank you for sharing that. And I just want to run through these and this is in the book and I’ll probably include this as a graphic when we promote this podcast, this episode. But number one, trust in practicing virtue. Two, trust in gratitude. Three, trust in reflection Slow down.

Todd Bertsch: 47:50

I just did a post on this the other day that basically said slow the hell down. If we can just slow down and reflect and be present in the moment, my gosh, what we can do is going to be incredible. And trust in being engaged and enjoying the process. I talk a lot about just embracing the journey. Don’t worry about the end game, don’t worry about perfection. This is an infinite game. We’re just trying to get better. And then, lastly, trust in creating a meaningful life, which almost always means serving others. So that was that piece. Peter man, I’m like this is the type of thing you put up on the wall in your frame and you just look at it every day, where you have this as a page in your journal. So it was just very powerful and it resonated with me. So I wanted to mention that in the show.

Peter Rea: 48:43

There’s something you said that I think it’s worth just putting a finer point on. It is reflection. There’s overwhelming evidence that disciplined reflection increases performance, and if I don’t reflect, I stagnate. And that’s applying it to reflection increases performance, and if I don’t reflect, I stagnate. And that’s applying it to athletics and performance. So I’m just going to give one concrete example of what this can look like If you have kids or a kid you care about either one niece, nephew.

Peter Rea: 49:10

What’s fascinating is these are global studies. They ask parents okay, you got to choose. Do you want a kid of high character or a high achiever? You got to pick. Which one would you go? 90% will say I want a kid of character. It’s global study, all right. And then you ask the kid what do your parents want? Do they want you to be a high achiever? Do they want you to be a kid of character? 90% of the kids say they want me to be an achiever.

Peter Rea: 49:37

So why the disconnect? Because obviously a kid cares deeply about what their parents view, and that’s where you get the kid that’s full of anxiety and pressure and all of that. So and it’s not that the parents don’t mean well, it’s a matter of not having tools. So here’s the toolkit that the message to the kid is look this unconditional love stuff. You’re good to go, you didn’t have to do anything to earn it and you’re not going to lose it. And the point of school is not to come back as starting quarterback, first chair, violinist, valedictorian. That’s not the point of school. Your job is to ask three questions every day. Your job is to ask three questions every day. Were you brave? Were you kind? Did?

Peter Rea: 50:20

you learn from your mistakes, and so, typically at a dinner table, you ask a kid what did you do today? Nothing. What did you learn today? Nothing. Those three questions start to change. You’ll get an eye roll initially.

Todd Bertsch: 50:33

But it’s fascinating.

Peter Rea: 50:36

You can ask a three-year-old these questions and it’s back to these virtues are in us, they have to be cultivated. And, from a performance point of view, when the kid is focusing and this is true for all of us when you focus on what you can’t control high grades what’s going to happen is your anxiety is going to go up and your performance will decline. When you look at, can I be brave, kind, learn from my mistakes, you flip it that you’re not going to drive anxiety to zero, but you’re going to up performance. There’s a notion in sports that amateurs focus on outcomes, professionals focus on process and character. So those three questions are the process and character, and that’s what drives higher levels of performance, because I can control that stuff. And that’s really a key piece in performance is tell me what you can control, or you can at least influence. You can’t control whether you’re going to become valedictorian or starting quarterback Doesn’t mean that isn’t your aspiration, but that’s the byproduct. The thing you control is character and process.

Todd Bertsch: 51:40

Yeah, yeah, wow, I love that, peter. Some good parenting tips there. I have a 13-year-old daughter, so it can be challenging. Ask the question How’s your day, sweetie? Fine, fine, fine, copy paste, fine. All right, I’m going to take some some Peter Ray questions to her today. Let’s see. See what my answers are.

Peter Rea: 52:08

Yeah, at some point she’s going to start asking you, so you tell me when you were kind, you were brave.

Todd Bertsch: 52:14

Yeah, all day long. I’m happy to have that conversation. No, I love that. I love that. All right, peter, so we’re going to put this book away for minutes and we have to talk about this nonprofit. So you retired recently. Congratulations and congratulations on starting this amazing nonprofit, which will have a link in the show notes Better humans, better performance, your life’s work. Tell us about this new venture, why you established it, what you hope the outcome will be.

Peter Rea: 52:50

Yeah, I think the goal is you know, it’s evidence based work that elite performers whether it’s a NASA or it’s evidence-based work that elite performers whether it’s a NASA or it’s an athletic is that the Spurs games last night. The Spurs do some. I’ve done some work with the Spurs. They do some remarkable stuff. So the elite organizations are taking the ideas in the nonprofit and applying them because they’re constantly trying to get better.

Peter Rea: 53:15

But most people are unaware of what these skills are, how they can be learned. That both frustrates me and makes me want to get this stuff more democratized. So that’s the overall objective. The punchline is how do you help people deal with stress, pressure, adversity and still perform well by practicing what you with stress, pressure, adversity and still perform well by practicing what you can control character and relationships, teamwork and purpose. It’s a nonprofit because the goal is to make money to give it away. So the focus is on first-generation college student scholarships. There may be other things I’ll invest in, but that’s kind of the thrust right now. And Parker was wonderful to me. They provided, gave me freedom to take the IP from Parker, take out the Parker piece of it that’s obviously a proprietary issue but offer it as something that could be available to anybody.

Peter Rea: 54:16

So, if you break it down, it’s what you’re. If you’ve got folks on this podcast who are interested, you can do a seven day trial to roam around the cabin and see what it looks like on the virtues and playbooks. And there’s over a hundred short articles. By short I mean a page or two activities and videos. And then if somebody wants to say this they think it might be useful for their team, then they can get a subscription for it. So they’ve got access to that content. And again, what I after expenses, I’ll use that money to uh for scholarships. I’ve got a donor fund at the Cleveland foundation, so that’s how I swing money to that. Awesome. They’re short courses. One’s defined as weekly wisdom. By short I mean it takes about 30 minutes. It’s just a one pager, two pages tops where you get an overview of a content area and some activities to practice individually or as a team.

Peter Rea: 55:17

And there’s another group of courses that are self-paced. So New York Presbyterian is a big academic medical center in New York City, so I’m doing work with them right now using self-paced courses. So I’ll just give an example to this. So we’ve got we started with 90 physicians and it’s trying to improve teamwork. What’s the science of teamwork. So there’s six modules and they’ll complete those six modules from march I think we started march 8, it’ll conclude about june 8 and the whole goal is take these ideas and plug them into what they’re going to do anyway, so that we can see if we can up the quality. And it’s a very good team, but they’re committed to continuous improvement. They keep looking for ways to improve the patient experience, reduce medical errors, all those kinds of outcomes that we’re all interested in. So those self-paced courses are available as well. On leadership, there’s one on coaching, one on teamwork, and I plan to keep fleshing all those out so that the menu keeps growing. Wow that’s awesome.

Todd Bertsch: 56:23

Are you going to be doing some consulting as well?

Peter Rea: 56:27

Yeah, that’s what I’m doing with New York Presbyterian right now and there’s work I’ve done. There’s a group in California, liminal Collective, so I’m part of their team. We do work with San Antonio Spurs, the Air Force, so I’ll continue to do that kind of work around and see if it’s for you. That’s the seven days, and then, if you want to have a short course, that’s the weekly wisdom. If you want a self-paced course, which is a bigger time commitment, you’ve got that. And then, yes, where it makes sense for some degree of consulting. So, new York Presbyterian, what’s attractive about that? I love their mission. I think the people are terrific, it’s huge. So I like big, hard problems, just like Parker. How do you reach 50,000 people in 11 hospitals throughout New York City and look for ways to kind of keep integrating that content to them?

Todd Bertsch: 57:31

Now that’s incredible and I love that you’re giving back. Obviously, you’ve had a passion for helping kind of build these young leaders. You’re 29 plus years at Baldwin Wallace as a professor, so this is great that you’re able to continue on with this mission and this message and this work, but also be able to give back in this message and this work, but also be able to give back. That’s something that I aspire to as well, so it’s a great example for us in terms of leaving a legacy of work. You know that’s going to continue well beyond your years, right.

Peter Rea: 58:10

Yeah, that’s where a shout out to Parker is. It’s a fantastic company. I learned a great deal. They gave me remarkable support and freedom. I couldn’t be doing this work at a lot of different levels without Parker. I was treated very generously, so it’s Parker that made it possible to start the nonprofit.

Todd Bertsch: 58:31

Yeah, gratitude, that’s right. All right, peter, this has been just a great, great show. Lots of wisdom here. So just in kind of ending the show here, with your extensive background in academia and the corporate world, you know, what do you see as the future of leadership? I mean there’s a know. What do you see as the future of leadership? I mean there’s a lot going on right now. Right, how can individuals and leaders prepare themselves for the challenges that are ahead?

Peter Rea: 59:06

Yeah, you won’t be surprised by the answer. That would start with character. I think there’s a number of reasons to start with character. One is how do I deal with uncertainty? I can’t control all the craziness in the planet, but I can control how I want to show up. And I won’t show up perfectly, I’m going to screw up, I’m going to make mistakes, but at least I’m clear about who I want to be. Then it’s a lifelong journey to get there. So that’s one. The second reason for character is the mercenary side, that 25-75 rule that I cited.

Peter Rea: 59:39

A guy named James Heckman was an economist at University of Chicago, not known as a warm and fuzzy place. He won a Nobel Prize demonstrating that non-cognitive things like character were better predictors of personal success, professional success, academic success, than things like standardized test scores. And then the flip side is when you don’t practice virtue, what happens? So one study that looked at 20,000 people over an 18-month period. Here’s what’s interesting 46% of them didn’t stay with the organization. 89% were let go because of reasons of character, not competence.

Peter Rea: 1:00:25

You think of all the cost of losing somebody, tangible costs of what you got to pay to go recruit somebody, the costs of what they do to a team and lost time. Typically, when you lose somebody, the cost to replace them is at least a third of their salary. That’s concrete costs. You protect yourself on the upside by practicing virtue and you protect yourself on the downside by hiring for character and training for competence. And that’s not a tagline. There’s a specific way that that can be done. That’s the missing piece, in my view. That we’re. Don’t get me wrong. You got to know what you’re doing. So competence matters just so I’m being very clear on this. And you have to have threshold competence. You know, just because you’re a nice person, we’re not going to put you in a surgical team, so you got to know what the heck you’re doing. But the big differentiator is going to be character. That’s the performance amplifier. That, to me, is a huge opportunity for any organization that wants to get better.

Todd Bertsch: 1:01:30

Yeah, yeah, I wholeheartedly agree, peter. And what’s interesting, with everything that you said in your book, I’ve experienced all of it as a small business owner. The first half of my 16 year tenure as president owner of my company not always felt like I’ve had good character and I’ve always been a very caring individual. But when you get into a role and you have those responsibilities, it can easily fall off the rails, right.

Todd Bertsch: 1:02:07

So I guess what I’m saying is, when I didn’t really uphold these virtues to the best of my ability you know I made many failures and that was very evident in the evidence of the company and not growing and not being able to retain employees and once that flip, once that switch flipped and really focused on all of these, I saw a tremendous difference and my company is in the best position it’s ever been. And I do wholeheartedly believe that it goes back to the virtues and sticking to, we say, our core values. But essentially those are these virtues, just maybe outlined and worded a little bit differently, and they’re not just, you know, some fancy graphic on a wall. Every decision we make is based off those and it makes things very easy, right in that matter. So all that to say, I’ve seen it, I’ve lived it and it’s a beautiful place to be in. You know when you, when you can actually see these virtues in place by each and every one of your employees.

Peter Rea: 1:03:19

So it works. Yeah, I’d. Here’s a kind of a simple tool and a quote from Aristotle that I can make brief. So do this routinely. That what I’m this exercise I’m going to describe is in the courses that I designed. I’m going to describe is in the courses that I designed.

Peter Rea: 1:03:39

You start with a group of people or individually. Tell me a story when virtue was present or absent and how did it impact performance. And you just put those catchphrases up there that I went through. People get it fast, so they already know that when it was absent, all kinds of bad crap occurred. When they were present. Boy, the outcomes are really favorable.

Peter Rea: 1:03:59

That’s piece one. The second part is tell me habits you want to use more and habits that you want to use less, and that kind of puts you on a track to at least I’m clear about who I’m trying to become realizing I’m never going to aspire to this stuff. The last piece that might be useful is a quote from Aristotle that he wanted to lead a happy life. Well, who the heck’s against that? But his definition of happiness is a little bit different than the way we tend to use it. That happiness is a byproduct of doing what is worthy, and to do what is worthy is to be a person of character, and to be a person of character is to be virtuous. Here’s the punchline. To be virtuous is about habits and discipline available to us all.

Todd Bertsch: 1:04:50

That’s it. We’ll just end there. I could continue to go on, peter, but I don’t want to take away from that. That was beautiful. We didn’t plan this, but that was a perfect ending. Peter, this has been amazing. I have so much respect for you and what you’re doing and I’m grateful that you allowed us to have some of your time today and I’m sure my listeners are going to feel the same some of your time today, and I’m sure my listeners are going to feel the same. I hope we continue to have conversations. I’m going to follow, read more of your publications and articles. I love that you have this intense focus on the research and the neuroscience which I’m very much interested in. So just thank you again for your time today. We’ll have links to your books and your nonprofits in the show notes and I’m just I’m excited for you in this new venture and look forward to seeing where this goes.

Peter Rea: 1:05:51

Well, I appreciate the invitation, Todd. This is a fun discussion. You’re a thoughtful person and you’ve obviously thought about these questions pretty deeply, so thanks for having me be part of your podcast. Appreciate it Absolutely.

Todd Bertsch: 1:06:06

Thank you for listening to this episode of the Bolt Podcast. You’re on an inspiring journey of growth, transformation and joy, and I’m honored to be a part of it. If you found this episode valuable, please like share it with your friends and consider leaving a review. It means the world to us For show notes, resources and to subscribe to the weekly Motivational Monday newsletter. Please visit toddbertsch. com and don’t forget to follow us on social media at the Bolt with Todd B for more inspiration. Remember, real change doesn’t happen overnight. Folks, start small, stay consistent, and watch as your growth unfolds. See you next time.