Wake Up Eager Workforce 
Episode 118 Transcript

Today we are sharing another TriMetrix university episode. We have over 30 episodes in all of our podcasts. This one is focused on growing our ability to get things done immediately, thoroughly, and cheerfully. We're going to look at practical thinking. It's one of the six focus areas measured in the under the hood horsepower science in the assessment TriMetrix, and this assessment will be helpful to you even Even if you don't have a TriMetrix assessment or you don't use it if you are feeling overwhelmed. So if you're feeling overwhelmed, you've got too much to do. There are going to be tools and resources here that are going to help you get a handle on that. It'll also be helpful to you if you do use TriMetrix. You'll be able to understand this focus area that is measured on each candidate so that you can hire the strongest candidates. And then if you are focused on your own growth, you've got your own TriMetrix assessment. And you want to understand practical thinking and how you get things done immediately, thoroughly and cheerfully in your score there you're going to want this information. And if you're coaching others who have taken the TriMetrix assessment, these are going to be tools and resources that you can share with them. So I can't wait to share it with you. We put a lot of work into this. I know it's going to be helpful to those who are interested, and I can't wait for you to learn all about it. Michael. Hit it!

Intro/Outro: Welcome to the Wake Up Eager Workforce podcast, a show designed for leaders, trainers and consultants who are responsible for employee selection and professional development. Each episode is packed full with insider tips, best practices, expert interviews and inspiration. Please welcome the host to his helping leaders, trainers and consultants everywhere Suzie Price.

[00:01:48] Suzie Price: Hi there, my name is Suzie Price and I am the producer of the Wake Up Your Workforce podcast, where we cover everything related to helping you and the employees in your organizations. Build a high commitment, low drama, wake up eager workforce. I am also the founder of Priceless Professional Development, and what we do in our company is help leaders and organizations make good decisions about their people, and that often involves using the TriMetrix assessment, which allows you to understand yourself and others, allows you to use the tool throughout the employee life cycle. And what we're focused on is creating a wake up, eager workforce. And so much of a wake up, eager workforce is people understanding who they are, what power and strength they bring to the work, and then helping them use their strengths on the job, and then also helping us all manage anything that we could overdo, or anywhere where we have opportunities. And the beauty of the TriMetrix assessment is allows us to pinpoint areas where there could be some gaps, as opposed to guessing where the challenge might be. We have a very specific insight into things we can work on and improve. And I'm going to tell you a little bit about my story in this episode today. It is episode 118 and the title is Practical Thinking Getting Things Done immediately, thoroughly, and cheerfully. We're going to have show notes, and you're going to want to access the show notes, because we're going to have a handout for you with all the exercises and the sample interview questions.

Suzie Price: And you'll also be able to go look at an image of of what is it we're talking about on the assessment. So to find the show notes go to pricelessprofessional.com/practicalthinking, pricelessprofessional.com/practicalthinking all one word lowercase. So here's what we're going to cover today. We're going to talk about what is practical thinking exactly. What is it. Why does it matter. We're going to give you real life examples of people who have a high score. People have a low score. And the beauty about this part of the assessment and TriMetrix is it doesn't matter if you have a low score, because once you know about it being a low score, you can improve it. This is an area that we can grow. It's it's the horsepower. It's where you could go in there and tune the engine. You have to know what you need to tune, but you can tune it. And that was my situation with practical Thinking. So I'm going to share a little bit more about that. So real life examples including my own. We're going to look at seven competency behavior based interview questions that you can use to ask your candidates. If somebody's score is not exactly where you want it to be or you're wondering, you'll be able to use these interview questions.

Suzie Price: And then lastly, we're going to give you coaching improvement tips and information. We've got three must haves. Things you have to have in place in order for someone to even want to make improvement. And then once you have that, you've got eight tools and coaching exercises and then 13 quick tips. And again, I mentioned earlier that we'll have a handout for you. So you can find all of that at priceless professional.com/practical thinking okay. So let's look at practical thinking. It's a measurement around our ability to get things done. And it is one of the key measurements in the TriMetrix assessment. So I mentioned that we have had done over 30 episodes in the TriMetrix university. And what is TriMetrix? TriMetrix is a trimodal tool that is used throughout the employee lifecycle. We've got companies large and small, global and local, using it to make better hiring decisions to improve commitment and retention by revealing our strengths, highlighting development areas, and ensuring that we can have individual and collective growth and success in that growth and expansion. So people know who they are. They have greater self awareness, greater other awareness. And, you know, most of my work these days is in being a coach of coaches through the training and certifying of others to use TriMetrix. So I like the idea of empowering many other people to take this insight that has helped me so much and use it to help others, help themselves and others make better decisions.

Suzie Price: So if you want to understand more about axiology, here's a quick, quick overview about what this is. This is the trimodal, is a is a trimodal tool, and it measures three sciences. And one of the sciences is axiology. And I've got episodes around this. But a quick synopsis is with axiology. The beauty of it is it's under the hood, it's It's horsepower. It's something you don't see. It's something you can tune up like you can tune an engine. And the beauty of it is, is that it is. We have one mind. When you look at me or I look at you, I think, oh, Suzie has one brain. That's how she makes decisions. Well, in that decision making, we have two views or two worlds. We have our inner world. You know how we're thinking and feeling and making decisions about ourself. And we have our outer world. So when we're working in the world. And so this science measures the inner world and the outer outer world with three focus areas thinking how we think about ourself and our future and how we how we think about the big picture in the world. And then the doing is in the in the inner world. It's, you know, our roles and responsibilities. And then in the outer world, it's the doing, getting things done, which is the practical thinking that we're talking about today.

[00:07:30] Suzie Price: And then the other, other focus area is the being. So how how well are we able to be with others in the outer world, you know, listening, tuning into others, understanding, you know, what they're interested in and what they value, understanding what's not being said. And then in the inner world, it's about being like ourselves, our own self-worth. So one mind, two worlds, inner world and outer world. And then in each of those worlds, three focus areas thinking, doing and being. So if you want to know more about axiology, there's an episode that we recorded called making axiology easier to Understand and Apply, and we use an analogy of the board of directors. So when we're making a decision, it's like we have a board of directors in our mind that is the one mind those two worlds. And then those three focus areas thinking, doing and being in those two worlds. So you can check out that episode at priceless professional.com forward slash. Easy. And again, you can go to the show notes to get links to this. I mentioned that we we will have other episodes around TriMetrix University and we'll have a link to that here. So in the show notes at priceless professional.com/practical thinking, and one of the other dimensions that we've already done an episode for in the TriMetrix a university around the six areas measured in TriMetrix or the axiology part is the understanding others episodes.

Suzie Price: So you'll find that in the show notes and then other related episodes in the show notes. So let's talk a little bit about this assessment. I've been studying the assessment and using it with clients for 20 years, and it's become my life's work to share it and use it. I want people to become all that they can be, just like I want that for myself. And this tool has been a big part of it for me to date. We've had I just did a run to see how many assessments we've used over the years that I've been using the tools. We've had 27,000 people complete this assessment with us. So I am very interested in the science and I'm so kind of obsessed with it that I got a master's certification in it, which meant quite a bit of dedication and study, and I've studied it over these 20 years. I still don't feel like I'm the master. I need to be in it. I've spent countless hours volunteering at the Hartman Institute, which is a 50 year old nonprofit that's devoted to keeping the science that I'm talking about alive, because the Hartman Institute is related to the Hartman Value profile and the person who discovered this, uncovered or discovered this science. And so I've been really focused on making sure that that institute stays alive and revitalized.

Suzie Price: I've dedicated to this science because my book, How to Hire Superior Performance, and almost every article in social media posts that we do. And and as I said, over 30 episodes are related to TriMetrix and how to understand it and how to use it. And all our social media posts on LinkedIn almost are related to it. We want to create wake up eager leaders, wake up eager teams, wake up eager organizations. We want people to live, wake up eager lives. You know, to me, wake up eager. What do you think when you hear that? What? What do I think? I think I wake up and I'm. I'm eager to be here. I'm forward looking, I'm growth oriented. I feel good about myself. I feel good about other people. I feel good and hopeful about my future and the work that I do. I'm in alignment with that. And so when I'm with people, I understand them. I have clear thinking. And so that is what wake up eager means. And I believe that this tool, the TriMetrix tool, particularly this science, the science of axiology, the underhood under the hood, horsepower is one of the tools that can help us be all that we can be. Because that was what Hartman, the originator of this Hartman value profile, which is at the basis of a lot of other assessments, you You know, TriMetrix is one tool that uses this science, but it's in other, other tools.

Suzie Price: That is what Hartman was trying to do. He wanted people to be able to become all that they could be. It's a very hopeful tool. It's a tool that says we can self-actualized, actualize. We can become all that we can be. We can bring out all of our goodness. And so be and we. We can't know where we need to improve unless we have some type of measurement. And so that's what started this interest and obsession for me with this tool. So I first took the TriMetrix assessment, and I was blown away by the insights that it provided me. It was it made so much sense once I understood. And it's that's something I hear all the time from others when they learn about their results or they're trying to help others. And in fact, last week I had a CFO say to me, wow, this explains so much. I'm blown away. I think black and white. I didn't know the nuances, but I knew this was going on. Now I understand, and this was in relation to how he was trying to help one of his employees. So I get that from people all the time. Well, I experienced that first wow for myself when I received my results and what I noticed in my results. One of the things that was not strong scoring was practical thinking. I scored just below average and I had a what they call a negative focus and a strong negative focus.

Suzie Price: So I didn't, I didn't wasn't, according to the assessment, clear on getting things done, which is what practical thinking measures. And I didn't feel good about it. So I didn't understand what that meant. But I could look at the colorful graph. And when you go over to our show notes page, that priceless professional.com/practical thinking, you'll see these those six dimensions. You know the one mind with the two worlds, and then the three three focus areas in each world. You'll see some some graphs have a lot of color and some graphs don't. Well, I could see why I didn't have much color in the area of practical thinking. It wasn't the lowest, it wasn't halfway down, but I was at about 70, which is below population scores or slightly below population average of other people who have taken the assessment the highest you can go as 100. 100 would mean I fully see this. And and so it measures a number and it measures how we feel. So the number is 0 to 100. We floor it at 40. So you'll never see anyone score below 40 though some people might be. But we floor what we share. So when you see the color somebody scores 100 on things or 80 or 90, 80 to 100 is high. And so you'll see a lot more color on their graphs.

Suzie Price: And that just means they see these areas. What if I see something that means I can practically do it if I get the right training or the right understanding. And then the arrows next to each of the areas in the graph, when you go look at that at priceless professional.com/practical thinking, or you look at your graphs, the arrow up means I am moving towards this. I feel good about it. It could be you could say I have a positive attitude. I'm I'm leaning into it. An arrow down is I undervalue it or I have a negative feeling about it or I'm moving away from it. So I had a below average score in practical thinking and I was 100% negative biased so strongly. So I didn't see it as clear as I could, and I didn't feel good about it. So it looked like I was getting poor grades. And I didn't like that. You feel embarrassed and you feel stressed and you don't like it. And what I learned is that life is a journey and things like this go up and down. If we are, you know, if you're not growing, you're dying. And I was growing. It was at a point when I had started my business and I had a lot going on. And so when you're taking leaps and taking chances, you're going to have sometimes not everybody has ups and downs on it, but some of us do.

Suzie Price: And for me, my practical thinking was not as strong. And so I'm happy to say that I worked on this, and most recently I took the assessment. And where I'm at today is a much higher score, 88, which 80 to 100 is high, right. With a positive bias. So I, I see what needs to be done and I feel good about it. And it's made a big difference in my effectiveness in my role and happiness in my work and happiness in my life, I feel steady. I have a stick with it attitude. I'm persistent, resourceful, I feel it. I mean, I know it, my mind feels more like water and I can compare the difference. So I think that's the thing too. So seeing it, knowing, okay, that's not really a failing grade, but I would have never known to attack that if I hadn't seen this lower score. And then I love the hope of the assessment, which is you aren't just your score. The score is not a label. If you're not growing, you're if you're not growing, you're dying. And if you're taking a lot of chances, sometimes these things go up and down and with awareness, we can fix it and make it better. And we will feel better because higher scores, more color means we have more resiliency. We're using more of who we are. Hartman wanted us come all that we can be.

Suzie Price: He was. He influenced Abraham Maslow. They worked together and Maslow talked about, you know, self-actualization and transcendence. So somebody who has a higher score on practical thinking is some of the things I described. I feel more prepared. I'm eager about the things I need to do. My mind is like water, meaning I'm not anxious all the time. And so some other ways you could describe someone who scored. They have a clear and objective understanding of what needs to be done. They spend more time working toward the goals than they do putting out fires. So I'm ahead of things. We're ahead of things if we've got stronger practical thinking. When I didn't have it, I was putting out fires and, you know, really wanted to go crawl under my bed because it was very stressful. But I wanted to do the work. So the skills associated with practical thinking is the ability to look critically at current events and patterns of activity, anticipating opportunities and problems. So you're not so busy putting out fires that you can't see what's coming. You've developed your problem solving skills and you're able to look at problems critically and analytically. You're confident in your abilities to manage new situations. You have calm. That's that mind. Like water. You feel more calm and collected in stressful or busy times. Doesn't mean you might not feel the stress, but it's not pure chaos inside. Which I certainly was having those feelings of chaos inside when I first took the assessment.

Suzie Price: You're organized and efficient. You know, you prioritize and you know when to delegate to make sure projects are met. You've got realistic, achievable goals for yourself and others. You like things to look good. You. You approach, work immediately and gladly. You do things well. You feel organized and on top of things and you know how to get get a lot done. You're a good multitasker. So here's a good famous example. Tim Cook of Apple might be somebody who has a high practical thinking. You know, he's been praised for his pragmatic approach to business decision making. He's delivered products and services that meet consumer needs while maintaining a strong commitment to sustainability and social responsibility. He's helped Apple navigate complex markets. Another everyday example I kind of shared mine where I'm I'm so much better at this. But here's a financial analyst that we worked with at a consulting firm. And so she is able to analyze complex financial data for clients. She's identifies practical solutions with objectives and budget constraints. She she's able to see the actionable insights. So she's very she's able to see the doing part with clients and she has a positive orientation towards that. So let's talk about low scores and what they look and feel like. So as I said, I had a 68 out of 100 which is below the mean. And and it was an attitude of undervaluing with the arrow down meant I was frustrated.

Suzie Price: I had too many things to do, and I didn't know how to get it all done. And so many people feel this way. I see a lot of assessments where people are challenged here, and the beauty of it is it's so fixable if we just know about it. If we need to develop our practical thinking skills, we might be unable to balance the need for timely work with the need for quality work. So we're either. We're either the nitpicker who says, I'm going to spend a lot of time trying to get it perfect regardless of when you need it or what the budgetary constraints are. So I'm just overfocused on it, and so much so that I don't think about timeliness. Or on the other hand, I'm so focused on timeliness. So I want to hurry up and get it done, which that was my case, that I didn't give as much attention to quality. So then you have more mistakes. And so we've all kind of known we might even be one a nitpicker or the person who is just the, you know, results pusher. You know, so we, we we all known that and seen people that do that. They either want to get it done quick or they're just not going to get it done quick, and they're going to make it perfect. And a little both of those you can tell are a little bit out of balance.

[00:21:37] Suzie Price: So what it can mean here are some of the descriptors of someone who scores low. They feel impatient with the process, or the length of time it takes to get things done. They might be seen as a procrastinator, or they might actually procrastinate, and they're not doing the job cheerfully, so they're not at one with the work. They feel disorganized. And you know, you heard me describe some of that. They're not don't feel on top of things. They get sidetracked easily. They feel unsettled and tense when things are changing because they're not in charge of what's already happening. So when change comes, it's even more throws you in a tailspin. That can be frustration. They're not as efficient or organized. They're not not prioritizing and delegating effectively. They might have unrealistic objectives for themselves and others because they're not taking their time to analyze the workload. And so there are things come up on them. And so it turns into a firefighting kind of situation that can be a general tension and angst about what needs to get done. So often when I hear people say, I have several people that I work with where they'll say, I'm not sleeping well, I have so much anxiety. They are not on top of their activities. And so those daily things are just a burden. So they can't plan proactively, they can't get ahead of the problems and they might be feeling disengaged from the work.

Suzie Price: So there's confusion, inefficiency. Someone might be someone who misinterprets instructions or overlooks a details, doesn't see faults and mistakes. So so much of that I can relate to. The 20 years ago of me. My mind never stopped running and I couldn't order my thoughts. We had someone who was a project manager who had a much lower score of 50, and this person had a difficulty understanding and communicating project requirements to the team. It led to a lot of misunderstandings and project delays, missed deadlines, cost overruns, decreased client satisfaction. There was a client, a CEO that we worked with, and his score was a bit where mine was at about 70 with a negative bias. So he's right at the mean. He had a really high score on the other world, you know, working in the world dimensions. And so one explanation, sometimes when you're an executive, the practical thinking is the doing part of working in the world can be that, well they're doing a lot of delegating. So that makes sense. So I'm doing a lot of delegating. I'm not necessarily the daily implementer. But here's what would happen. So even if you're not implementing, you don't want to take your eye off the ball of the doing aspects of the work. Because here's what would happen is team the executive team that was around him really liked him as a leader who was a visionary, had great ideas, and he cared about people.

Suzie Price: So when he was working in the world, the thinking and the people being with people was really high and very much respected for that. But his executive team said, you know, there's a lot of stress and chaos because his visions for the people, and it weren't always practical. They were great visions and they were very inspirational. But the actual feet on the street doing aspect of it wasn't given consideration, even though he was not the one implementing it, it didn't factor into the decisions that he was making. So a lot of tension on the team because of that. There was a team that we worked with where 84% of the departments, so pretty much everybody had lower practical thinking scores, kind of where I was not low, like, you know, 40 to 60 is low. So they were above low. They were kind of in the medium, but it was below the mean. So this whole department, they were making mistakes, putting out fires, people were becoming disengaged. And so I want to give you some resources now on this. So I've kind of outlined what it looks like to have high practical thinking, what the problems can be with low practical thinking. And you can go to our show notes at priceless professional.com/practical thinking to look at the graph and sample graphs. So you can see some examples.

Suzie Price: But if you have a candidate who has lower scores, I'm going to show you give you some interview questions, and then I'm going to talk to you a little bit about how you can help yourself or others grow their practical thinking scores. So if a candidate has lower scores on practical thinking, that means they're between 40 and 60. Or maybe they're below the mean, which would be about 40 to 68. We've got seven interview questions and they're competency behavioral based interview questions. So what you want to do is you want to assess where they are. We don't want to hire or fire based on the assessment. The assessment is less than 30% of any decision management wise. But you can use some of these questions to kind of get an idea of is that score a temporary score or how how are they doing some things that have to do with getting things done, this idea of implementation. So one of the questions that I like is give me an example of a project you completed and the outcome give me the essential components of that project that played the most significant role in its completion. So can they think about getting things done talk. And there's another one. Have there have results ever been less than stellar for a project you've worked on? What caused the results to be less than great? How did it happen? So they should be able to, if they're a good project manager, give you some insight on that.

Suzie Price: Talk a little bit about. Here's a question. There's seven total, but I'm just giving you a few of those. How would you approach a new task that you've been assigned without giving much direction. So can they think about problem solving. So problem solving questions getting it done type questions. One question is how are you finding new and more efficient ways to do things. Can you provide a specific example. So those are we'll have seven practical thinking questions that you can use competency behavioral based interview questions. And you can find those at priceless professional.com/practical thinking. We'll have a handout there that you can print out and they'll be in the show notes. So with coaching if you want to coach people to high scores, there's three things that must happen. And the first and the three things are awareness readiness and knowledge. So awareness is what TriMetrix gives you. So for me when I saw my score and I thought about how I had been feeling, which was complete overwhelm. I wanted this business to work and I was taking on a lot, and I wasn't seeing how to order all of it. And so the awareness was when I saw the score, it made sense to me and I was ready. So sometimes people will see the score, but they're the practical thinking. Like the CEO that I talked about that scored lower in practical thinking.

Suzie Price: He was not ready to address that. And I didn't push him because you don't you don't push people into wanting to make these changes. It has to be an objective that they feel is important. And so business business situations came about where that became important. But in his case it was a little too late. But so but awareness and readiness are really important. So knowing that the gap exists is the first step to making a change. And so that's what this assessment does. And for me when I read it it's like oh my gosh, this is this is on track. And the readiness is that, you know, again, it was on track for me, it was something that I was already feeling. If you're not growing, you're dying. And I'm very committed to a growth mindset. And it was very relevant to what was happening in my objectives of of. I so much wanted to create a business that was positive and helped others and so much wanted to learn. And so I wanted to correct this blind spot. So two things awareness and readiness. And then the knowledge. What I love about TriMetrix is this part of the assessment. All of it can be improved, but this one is the area where we actually can grow or change how we scored the other other areas measured in trimesters.

[00:29:46] Suzie Price: We're not trying to change those, we're just trying to manage the strings and manage the overdues here. We can actually grow it. You are not. If you scored a practical thinking and it's not where you want it to be, you can improve it and grow it. It's a very hopeful tool. It's helped me become so patient and much more naturally appreciative of where people are and with the knowing that they can grow if they ever, ever want to, that there's some awareness here and readiness. So that's a beautiful thing. The knowledge that it can be improved is very hopeful. And the assessment, you know, helps us with that. There are two key concepts that will give us keen insight that will help us understand improving. So first is that we all have a bit of a negativity bias, and that is we can have a human tendency to focus on negative experience and stimuli. It's a biologically hardwired cognitive bias that has helped us survive in the natural environment. And so while we have positive experiences and they're enjoyable, sometimes we don't contribute those to, you know, while we need that for our survival, so they don't carry the same weight and importance in our brain. So negative experiences can be threats to our survival. And so we are hardwired to pay attention to the negative. And so there's a newer neuropsychologist, Rick Hanson, who says our brains are like Teflon for positive experiences and Velcro for negative experiences.

Suzie Price: And it can be a recipe for unhappiness. And so it positive things happen and we say, oh, we discount those negative things happens and they stick in our brain like Velcro. That's a really good Teflon. They bounce off. That's the positive Velcro. They stick to our brains. But the good news is we can rewire our brain for positivity and happiness. And that is. So we've got a negativity bias, but we also have neuroplasticity in our brain. And it's a it's a principle that says we can change the structure and function of having positivity be like Teflon and bounce off. We can change that. We can change that throughout our lives and our thoughts and our emotions. And neuroplasticity means that we can overcome this inherent negativity bias and rewire our brains. So negativity bias if we have it. And it's interesting that TriMetrix measures this is unhappiness. It's anxiety. It's depression. Now I didn't my practical thinking scores I had some clarity. So I wasn't in the anxiety completely or depression, but it really was stress related to it. So I had a negative orientation undervaluing arrow down around getting things done. And today I have a positive bias towards getting things done and I see it more clearly. So the color is higher and the arrow is up and I feel more happiness and more contentedness and more zest for life. Do I have stressful days? Absolutely.

Suzie Price: Is the level of stress anything like it? What it used to be? Absolutely not. So we're talking today about awareness. These are the three must haves. We have to be aware that it's something that we can improve upon. The TriMetrix assessment is one tool to clarify that we have to be ready. Our life, our objectives, our goals, our willingness to see these areas or take what is shared in the assessment, for example, and say, oh, you know, I could improve that. And then knowledge saying, okay, yeah, I can improve that. And understanding this bias that we can have toward negativity and that we have the neuroplasticity in our brain to change it. It is flexible. We can overcome these biases. So with all of that hopeful information and I call this the A-R-K-T. So A is awareness, R is readiness, K is knowledge, and then the T are tools. And so here are some different tools. These are things that I personally have done and things that I share with clients and that I know work. The first is a favorite mindset mantra that I learned through Doctor Medford, Doctor Vera, and Dave Medford, who trained me and TriMetrix 20 years ago. I was so curious about I gotta understand this, how did I score this way? How do I get better? How do I help other people get better? But it's a mantra and it really helped me.

Suzie Price: I get things done immediately, thoroughly and cheerfully. I'll say it again if we have high practical thinking, we would know and say and feel that I get things done immediately, thoroughly, and cheerfully. So notice that there are three different and equally important descriptors in this mantra. Immediate. I get things done immediately. I don't procrastinate, so somebody with low practical thinking might be a procrastinator. That's the ego that I was telling you about. Great human. But he was known as a procrastinator. So immediate I get things done immediately. So I have higher practical thinking, I am thorough, I don't rush and make mistakes, and then cheerfully, I feel happy in the doing. I'm enjoying the doing. So that mantra I want you to write it down. If you're if you're not getting things done immediately, thoroughly and cheerfully, put that right, that that's the first start. That's the first thing that Ron Price, who I've interviewed on this podcast, who's a wonderful human, we're not related. He's a wonderful human. You probably want to check out his episode because he is all about axiology as well. But I remember him, me talking to him about I want to improve my practical thinking scores. He gave me that mantra and then later on I found out it was through the Medfords where that was first kind of brought out in some of their writings. So that is a mantra.

Suzie Price: It's just having that. It's a vision. It's a vision, okay. I'm not doing any of those things. I'm not getting things done immediately, thoroughly or cheerfully. But as soon as the first, first week or two when I started to grow this and get better at practical thinking, I thought to myself, I just did that. And I did it immediately, thoroughly and cheerfully. And so if I'm ever not feeling those things, that mantra just sticks with me. So I hope that's helpful to you. The other thing that I've been doing for years, and it's probably around this same time frame of, of this growth focus that I had 20 years ago, is an appreciation journal. So I have had notebooks all everywhere that I am in one of my my car, in my office, anywhere in the kitchen. I had it on my iPad. I'd use the day one app for that, but every day I list what am I? What am I thankful for? It rewires my brain. It leads to changes in all kinds of things about how it leads to changes in gene gene expression. And there was a pilot study about patients with heart failure, and some received standard care and the others received a gratitude journal. I like I like appreciation better than gratitude, but I'll tell you about that in a minute. But they did a they some of the patients did standard care and others received standard care.

Suzie Price: Also did the gratitude journal and the remark the results were impressive. The patients who did the gratitude journal saw a decrease in their inflammatory markers and an increase in heart rate variability, which is, according to this information, corresponds with a decrease in stress response. In other words, just writing down what they were grateful for each day reduced inflammation and relieve stress in measurable ways. So that's pretty cool, right? So every day, if I am stuck and I can't figure out what to do next, I don't move forward. I just go take a minute. It's like, I'm going to go sit, and I'm just going to make a list of things I appreciate. And they're not things I appreciate about what I'm trying to get done, just in general, get me out of my stuck mode and reminding me about what is good. At the end of every day, I make a list of things, and pretty much every day. I have done this for probably 20 years and I know it has changed my orientation. What I noticed initially when I started doing this is I just feel better, I sleep better, I feel better. There is so much to appreciate even in the worst situation. And you make lists of real things. And if you can't think of a lot of specifics, go very general in your descriptors of what you appreciate. I love the sun and that's be a general.

Suzie Price: I love that the sun comes up every day. And you know, I love that we had good weather today. I love that I had good food and I ate clean and healthy. I appreciate that I worked out. I appreciate that conversation I had with my colleague. I appreciate that email I got from that executive. I mean, before you know it, you're in the flow and so you don't force it. And I like appreciation better than gratitude. Sometimes gratitude is a little bit of I'm glad I have this because I used to have that. There's a little, little less alignment when I'm gratitude. Oh, I'm so grateful. I'm so grateful. I'm not sick anymore. So sick is still kind of in the equation. But if you said, I just feel better, I feel good. I love my body. I love the health I have in my body. If you're just feeling appreciation, it's just cleaner and I'm just going by how I feel. And so anyway, can't overstate it too much. But appreciation journal, I don't share it with anybody else. I use it to raise my own energy, and I can't tell you how many times when I make a list of appreciation. It's like meditation for me, and it helps me direct my thoughts. And every time I meditate, I get clarity about something else that has nothing to do with the list of appreciation. So to me, appreciation is the pathway to joy.

Suzie Price: It's the pathway to knowing. It's a pathway to understanding. And in the case of TriMetrix, it's this pathway of getting to I get things done immediately, thoroughly and cheerfully because it changes our brain and it changes, you know, makes us more, less having the negativity bias, which is, you know, what do they say? It sticks like Velcro negative stuff. Well, make the positive stick and it will become your orientation. So that is the second tool. We've got the mantra. We've got the appreciation journal. Very simple things that are super powerful. The third tool is overcoming the planning fallacy. The planning fallacy. This is something I have had in a big, big way and I have really continued to work on this. I'm better and better, and I'm much more specific than I used to be. But the planning fallacy is our tendency to underestimate the amount of time it will take to complete a task, as well as what it's going to cost and the risk associated with that task. And so even if we know that something takes a lot more time, we tend to just the planning fallacy is we just underestimate the time. And I was the queen of that. I'm a high I in the disc assessment. And I think the high I's are where kind of tend to lean toward a little bit more optimistic and and you know, we might if the, if our procedural focus, the high compliance is not there, we tend to just want to wing it.

Suzie Price: But we could manage that with awareness. And that is by growing this practical thinking. Practical thinker is in the flow. They don't have chaos, they don't do planning fallacy. They take time and they say, it's going to be my friend, not my enemy. We only have so many hours in the day, so we can't do it all. We can't. And I my natural a little bit optimism, which was causing me to feel very negative, which is, oh yeah, we can do that, I can do it all. And then signing myself up for things that I could not get done, and then being in a tailspin, putting out fires. So let time be your friend, not your enemy. And if you want to be stronger in this area of practical thinking, there's five PS proper planning prevents poor performance. Five P's. Proper planning prevents poor performance. And so it's been very helpful to me. My husband is a wonderful planner. We've been together for 30 years. He is on the risk assessment of very high C high compliance. So he plans he's an executive. He runs a company, he cares about people, it cares about strategy, and he's good at those. But he would be like, he would be the CEO who scores high in all of those dimensions in the world. The people piece, the practical thinking piece and the strategy piece.

Suzie Price: So he is good at planning. And so I don't know if I, you know, based on, I think seeing him in person and seeing him having a mind like water and knowing that I wanted more of that has helped me grow, that we are not our disk style. In other words, that we can have those tendencies. I'm still not someone who wants to sit and do do accounting or not that there's anything wrong with accounting, but that's not how I want to spend my time. But I don't have to be the one who just because I don't want to focus on procedure five days a week in my job that I have poor planning because poor planning creates chaos and frustration and all those things we talked about. So proper planning prevents poor performance. Don't let planning the planning fallacy get you down and take you under. Okay, so that was when I learned about that fallacy. And then I just watched my husband, and then I saw my practical thinking scores. And I wanted to not feel that chaos. Okay, so that's that's the third tool overcoming the planning fallacy and remembering the five P's. The proper planning prevents poor performance. The fourth tool is I can't say too much about this. I'm doing getting ready to do a bunch of episodes on this too. Is the book Getting Things Done The Art of Stress Free Productivity by David Allen.

Suzie Price: So we got future podcast episodes coming up on this. I'm going to interview, uh, getting Things Done coach, and I'm going to interview a training and development colleague who is also a fan of getting things done. And he and I are both going to talk about why we love this process. It's a methodology. So what I needed to get things done immediately, thoroughly and cheerfully is a method, a process. It is something that was a little bit more natural to my husband and his engineering. You know, he's very technical and an engineer and an executive. You know, he's naturally oriented that way. His family was also very orderly. My family was kind of chaotic. And so this book gave me a method, and it's a very popular book. It's a self-help book by David Allen. It's a approach to personal and professional productivity. It was published in 2001. There's been several editions of it, and the primary goal is to help us focus our energy on completing tasks rather than remembering them, so it helps you capture all your ideas. It becomes a framework for managing tasks and projects, and there's five stages that you go through. So it just gave me a whole model. And I when I first took the assessment 20 years ago, I found that book because I knew I was out of control with my email and I wasn't organized enough and studied it, and I implemented it a little bit over time.

[00:45:26] Suzie Price: And now today, I full blown have a full blown system, but even the just implementing 10% of what he recommends in that book helps you get more organized and feel that less anxiety and frustration about getting things done. So he talked about Alan talks about in the book David. Alan does that. Our brains are much better at processing information than storing it. So he says, your head's a crappy office, which I think is funny, but it is. So all these things running around your head, the meth, this method, the GTD is how it's referred getting things done GTD this method lays out a workflow where you dump all this mental clutter into this external system, and you organize it so you can confidently answer, what should I be working on now? You know, what should I do next? At any given moment, without worrying that you might forget something important that you need to do later? I mean, that's an excellent summary of the book. So I love this methodology. It supports stress free productivity, which is in the title the Art of Stress Free Productivity. It increases in a major way a sense of control. It helps me plan, which isn't my natural strength, but I am a much better planner. It's a structured approach to tasks, and it helps me manage my daily routines and long term goals.

Suzie Price: I can't say enough about it. You can look on YouTube, of course. We're going to have some podcast episodes for you on the book because it's so important. I've been revisiting it lately. I've listened to the book I know 3 or 4 times, and then they have a podcast, and I've downloaded a lot of the workbooks. I use an app that is on my iPad, my iPhone, and of course, my computer, and that's what drives my daily tasks. And so it's it's the app is called Nirvana HQ. And I'll put a link to it in the show notes. It's it's designed around the GTD methodology, the Getting Things Done methodology. It helps me prioritize my daily actions. It's a trusted space. I have a lot of ideas, and it helps me capture those ideas and organize them. And all the incoming that comes in personally and professionally. And so that I feel much more on top of everything that's going on and almost little to no anxiety, so can't say enough about that getting things Done book. There'll be a link to it in the show notes look on YouTube and there's all kind of summary documents. And of course his book. I listen to it on audible and then his web page and then the Nirvana HQ app. And then another thing that ties with getting things done is setting priorities for everything you do. Something that I do every day at the end of every day is, I know what six things I'm going to focus on the next day.

Suzie Price: I call it my list of six. And so I'm going to give you a link to that. I've done an article about it. It's very simple. The getting things done helps me do it better, so that I understand that I'm doing the six things that are most important. If we can't manage our daily intake, how can we ever be a visionary? Because the daily things are going to take us under, whether it's, you know, getting your car serviced, getting your kids picked up, picking up your grandson and then also doing all the work. So if we if all of that is running around our heads, we're never able to look at the bigger picture. So we've got to have prioritize and we need to know every day what we're doing. So look at the show notes at priceless professional.com/practical thinking for all the information about that app and getting things done. And then my article about the list of six. And so you'll kind of see what that is. It's a very simple tool that aligns with getting things done and what also another tool that aligns with anything getting things done and many of you might be familiar with it, is the 80 over 20 rule. And this is a rule. And I've helped coaching clients a lot.

Suzie Price: When they're overwhelmed, it's like, okay, let's stop and let's look at, you know, are you spending 80% of your time on the most important 20% of your projects? So are you 80 over 20 rule is spend most of your time on the things that matter most. And so there's a process and I'm listening. I'll list the process in the in the handout is you know, the questions are do you know what your most important 20% is? Do you know what that is getting things done that helps you get there. But do you spend 80% of your time on the 20% that matters the most? Why or why not? What can you do to reprioritize your projects? What projects can you delegate to someone? Which projects don't really need to be done? Which projects should you add to your list? It's a great exercise, so if you are ever overwhelmed and you need somebody to coach you through that, either coach yourself or give us a call or the coach you work with to kind of think it through and you will get clarity in the moment, even if you're not implementing all of the GTD stuff. But the 80 over 20 rule is is big and it's been taught for a long time. Just don't forget it and use that. So a little bit more a couple more exercises about practical thinking and then we'll come to a close. Another one is think about people you know.

Suzie Price: If you want to learn more about practical thinking and see real life examples of it, um, you know, we teach what we want to learn. And sometimes if you're looking at others that can help you learn more about practical thinking, think about someone you know who pays too much attention to perfection at the expense of time and money. And that was the nitpicker that we talked about. And then the results pusher. Think about someone you know who rushes through projects to get results at the expense of quality. And then and then the questions you could ask, you could just kind of as an exercise, a coaching exercise. How does each person reveal his or her lack of practical thinking? So if you were looking at me, I would have been the results pusher. So what happens when Suzie does this? What kind of situations does he or she seem to get him or herself into? So what happens there? And we have already talked a little bit about what was going on there, but you can just a way to kind of think about it and learn more about it. This be a good exercise for a team to to kind of a simple exercise to kind of really put this in perspective. And then if you could give advice to either one of these people about practical thinking more practically, what would it be? Another exercise is the fighting fires exercise, and I've mentioned fighting fires quite a bit.

Suzie Price: You know, a key trait of good practical thinkers is they they spend more time working diligently towards important goals than they do spending time putting out fires. There's always going to be fires sometimes, but they're not running around with their hair on fire all the time, you know? So sometimes the fires are urgent, but they're potentially less important in the long run. So. So if you're finding yourself putting out fires, what were they? Why did they seem so important at the time? So do a little bit of reflection. Think about that. And now that some time has passed and you're looking at the list of fires that you put out, you're going to make a list of those fires. Could each of the things the fires been avoided or at least anticipated? How would that have changed things? In retrospect, what do you think you should have been spending your time on instead of putting out the fire? And how can you work toward anticipating the fires that are in the works right now? So those are eight different exercises or ideas or little tools that can help us. That's the A-R-K-T when we have awareness, readiness and knowledge that we can grow and improve. We've got eight tools to go with that. And also in the show notes you'll get quick tips. So there are 13 quick tips that are kind of just ideas.

[00:53:10] Suzie Price: And when you read it it's, you know, simple things. But break large projects into smaller tasks. Be realistic about what you can accomplish, and don't be afraid to delegate statements like that. So you might read those as a couple of things might stand out for you. So this is the end of our episode on practical thinking. I'm hoping that it was helpful for to you, we talked about what practical thinking is, why it matters. It gave you some real life examples, including my own. The impact of having high and low scores. I gave you some competency behavioral based interview questions to ask your candidates, and then provide coaching improvement with those three must haves awareness, readiness and knowledge. And then those eight tools. And then the quick trip tips so you can find the show notes for all of that information, plus images of what the practical thinking looks like on the assessment at priceless professional.com/practical thinking. I hope that you can feel as hopeful and inspired about your assessment results and the possibility in those assessment results, and I kind of want to make a differentiation too. So I want to remind you that when you're hiring candidates, they're not already a part of your company. And so you are. It is your job to figure out whether they're going to be a great fit, whether they're going to be successful. It's important for the company.

Suzie Price: It's important for your team. It's important for that individual. You don't want to put somebody in a job where they're not going to thrive, and they they don't have the strengths to match what the job needs. So when you're hiring, you're going to be much more objective and maybe even critical about scores. So you'll see a lower practical thinking and you say, hmm, I need to follow up on that. And you might you might even, you know, feel some intensity around the negativity of that. And it's actually okay, because that's what your job is. That's the hat you're wearing, you're hiring, and you're trying to see if they can do the job. And there's always a risk when you hire and you're trying to mitigate as much risk as possible. So you can have somebody who has high practical thinking with a positive bias. And they, you know, might not make it in the job. I mean, it's just one aspect, but we definitely know if they have low practical thinking with a negative orientation. We want to follow up on that. So it's okay to be the critiquer and the analyzer when we're hiring. But when we're looking at our own assessment results or we're looking at assessment results of people who work for us and we're trying to help them be successful. We're going to be put on a different hat, and it's the hat of a coach, and it's the understanding that they can grow.

[00:55:50] Suzie Price: I mean, your candidates can grow too, but it you don't know what the awareness is of the candidate and the willingness of the candidate to readiness to change and grow. And you don't want to hire somebody new. And then you've got to work on this major area with them. But if they're your employee and you already are invested in them and they are already invested in you, then what you want to do is is put on a different hat, which is, okay, how can we help you grow? Here are some actions you can take. Here's some coaching exercises, here's some awareness. And then we have a lot of tools that we give our clients through our TriMetrix university to help grow in those areas. So we have different perspectives. We're going to appreciate and value people no matter what their scores are, always knowing that they can grow. When hiring, we're going to be a little bit more objective and rule oriented, and in coaching, we're going to be a little bit more subjective. And we can depending on how somebody is performing, we're going to go to, you know, we can set expectations that they need to perform and then give them the tools to help them grow in that area. So if somebody had been managing me, I had my own company at the time and continued to have my own company.

Suzie Price: But, you know, they they could have said, okay, now we really need to improve this. You have to have less chaos in your work environment and less overwhelm. Let's get organized. And that's okay. But they need to know it. They need to have the tools, and they need to help them understand that they can improve. So different ways to look at it. I think people get uncomfortable sometimes when we're talking about this and need to just make the differentiation between hiring and coaching and the different hats we wear when we're working with assessment. And just the hopeful piece is everything in the assessment and especially in the under the hood axiology part of the assessment is we can grow that if we're willing. And that's the beauty of all of this. It's so exciting. We want to all be all that we can be. We want to enjoy life and live fully. And, you know, it's it's, um, a powerful tool and powerful insight. So we want to wake up eager and we want to wake up eager workforce. And our objective is to help you, help you with that. So I know we've covered a lot today in this episode and I appreciate you hanging in and listening. I appreciate your desire for growth and learning. I appreciate your desire for learning more and understanding how to practically use TriMetrix. We believe it's a very important tool because it helps us understand how we think, feel, and make decisions.

Suzie Price: It helps us in our hiring so that we can see how somebody thinks, feels and decides. We can see how they score in the personal skills that we measure, that are related to this graph and to axiology, which is the measure of what we value and what we value indicates where our strengths are. And today's episode has been about valuing doing really well, our practical thinking, getting things done and doing it in a focused and non-chaotic way. Being able to be the feet on the street. And that's sometimes what I call it, feet on the street. Okay, so we've got an idea and now I got to do something with it. And how do I do it effectively? And I know I shared my personal story and journey with this, the difference it's made in my life. To have more clarity in this area helps me make better decisions, helps me be more effective every day. And you think about you're doing part of every day. It's good to have ideas, and it's even better to love and take care of people. But in the middle there is the practical thinking, and that is how do I get things done with energy and focus and accuracy? You know, I get things done immediately, thoroughly and cheerfully. We're all about creating a wake up, eager life here and a wake up, eager workforce.

Suzie Price: And so if we can't get things done, then we're behind. We're stressed out, our manager's talking to us, or we're just frustrated. And then if we do get things done but we're not, we don't do them thoroughly. Then we've got to go back and do rework. And then if we're doing it in a state of frustration, it's so interesting how this tool will show us. Okay, you're frustrated. According to the assessment. You know, if you score practical thinking with the arrow down and the practical number, the clarity is a little bit lower. The arrow down will show us, okay. You're frustrated. You've got you don't see what needs to be done according to the assessment and you're frustrated around it. So just turning that around is a huge life difference maker. And each of the focus areas, you know, the one mind, two worlds, inner world and outer world. And we're talking about the outer world here with the three focus areas think, do, be. This is the doing piece all matter. If we're if we're not in alignment or seeing clarity in any one of those areas, the way we operate in the world isn't as strong as it could be. And same thing goes for our inner world as well. And so it's just such an opportunity with this tool. And so I feel blessed to be able to talk about it. I feel blessed to continually learn about it and gain my own knowledge.

[01:01:07] Suzie Price: I feel blessed that I learned about this and have created a life and work that I love. Um, personally and professionally. It has made a huge difference in my life. So thank you for tuning in to the Wake Up Eager Workforce podcast. Thank you for being a part of our community. If you have any suggestions, please reach out. If you have ideas for topics or people you think we should interview, please reach out at Suzie@pricelessprofessional.com. If you have questions about this, or if you use this and you find it helpful, please let me know. And also, if you would be open to leaving us a review on Apple or Spotify, we will send you a complimentary assessment. Just let me know that you left it. It helps other people who are interested in this idea of wake up eager, or this ability to create a wake up eager life and a wake up eager workforce helps others that are interested in the same things that you and I are interested in find us. So a review would always be helpful if you've gotten something out of any of our episodes. We do this with interest and love, and it's it's my joy to create it. So thank you for tuning in. All the best. Uh, have a wake up eager week day and and do a lot of getting things done immediately, thoroughly and cheerfully. And we'll see you on our next episode. Take care.

Intro/Outro: This episode of the Wake Up Eager Workforce podcast was brought to you by Priceless professional Development. Thank you for tuning in. If you enjoyed today's show, head over to PricelessProfessional.com to gain access to more professional development resources.