The ROI of Team Happiness with Tia Graham
Watch/Listen here or on Apple Podcast, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your podcasts“I believe as the leadership team goes, so goes the rest of the company. So if you don't have that consistent and significant sustainable growth, you've got some work to do.” — Mike Goldman
“I believe that organizations have an ethical responsibility to care for the humans that are working for them, to care about their wellbeing and not just about their contribution to the company's profit.”
— Tia Graham
Importance of Psychological Safety in Leadership
- Psychological safety is the most important characteristic of a great leadership team.
- Encourages authenticity and trust.
- Promotes open communication and vulnerability.
Defining Happiness and Its Role in Leadership
- Definition of Happiness:
- More positive experiences than pain.
- Having meaning and purpose.
- Gaining psychological richness and wisdom from experiences.
- Importance of Happiness at Work:
- Ethical responsibility of organizations.
- Happier employees are healthier, more productive, and more creative.
- Higher retention rates and better customer satisfaction.
- Companies with happy employees outperform the stock market.
Measuring Happiness in the Workplace
- Measurement Frequency: Weekly or monthly pulse surveys instead of annual engagement surveys.
- Four Key Questions:
- How happy are you at work?
- Do you find work to be meaningful and purposeful?
- Are you satisfied with your job?
- How much stress do you have?
The Happy Leader Methodology
1. Start with You: Leaders need to take their own happiness seriously.
2. Zoom Out: Have a wide perspective and avoid working in silos.
3. Execute Brilliantly: Work smart to make time for personal life.
4. Prioritize Relationships over To-Do Lists: Build strong connections with team members.
5. Your Number One Priority is Your Team: Create psychological safety and a strong team culture.
6. Measure to Excel: Focus on lead measures to exceed results.
7. Be the Spark: Increase optimism and positivity.
8. Master Your Mindset: Continuously nourish and protect your mind.
Coaching and Building Strong Relationships
- Coaching Approach: Be a coach rather than just a manager.
- Increases belief in oneself and accountability.
Recommended book: "The Coaching Habit" by Michael Bungay Stanier.
Optimism and Positive Leadership
- Challenges: Leaders may not naturally be optimistic or positive.
- Solution: Small changes in thinking and behavior can increase positivity.
Thanks for listening!
Apply for a free coaching call with me
Get a Free Gift ⬇️
🆓 The limitless organization short video course
Connect with me
www.instagram.com/mikegoldmancoach/
www.facebook.com/mikegoldmancoach/
www.www.linkedin.com/in/mgoldman10/
I invite you to assess your team In all these areas by taking an online 30-question assessment for both you and your team at
-
Mike Goldman: Tia Graham is a keynote speaker, bestselling author, and leadership trainer on positive psychology, positive work cultures, and business growth. She's worked with dozens of global companies such as Marriott Hotels, Hewlett Packard, and the American Heart Association to elevate employee engagement and drive bottom line results.
She has multiple certifications in neuroscience, positive psychology. Coaching and employee retention and over 14 years of leadership experience. Her insights have been featured in major media, such as CNN, Forbes, and fast company to name a few. Her bestselling book, be a happy leader. Teachers are proprietary eight step methodology on driving productivity and business growth through a culture of happiness.
Tia, welcome to the show.
Tia Graham: Thank you for having
Mike Goldman: I'm looking forward to being happier by the time we're done. I guess I'm putting that responsibility on you that I'm very happy now. I'm a nine out of 10. But maybe I'll be a nine, five or 10
by the time
Tia Graham: get you a 9.9.
Mike Goldman: no pressure at all.
so Tia, this is the better leadership team show.
So before we dive into specifically what you do and some amazing information for our audience, from all of that great experience you've got, what do you believe is the one most important characteristic of a great leadership team?
Tia Graham: The one most important characteristic to me and research supports it is psychological safety, where the leader and everyone on the team creates an environment of authenticity and trust and people know each other as the human beings, know aspects of their lives outside of work. People are able to communicate when they're okay or not okay, including the leader. And it's again, very open and, yeah, a cultural psychological
Mike Goldman: Love that. I love, you know, and it's a level of vulnerability
and quick
Tia Graham: Good old Brené
Mike Goldman: Brown
real.
Tia Graham: Yes.
Mike Goldman: Yeah. Brené Brown. quick story. I've got to tell kind of based on that just because I think it's appropriate given what you said and it's not quite a leadership team, but it's a team is way back God way back. This wasor it was at early nineties or late?
Somewhere in the nineties. That's how old I am somewhere in there. I've had way more than 14 years. I've got the gray hairs to show it, but somewhere in the early
Tia Graham: I
have gray hair too
I just dye it.
Mike Goldman: I was working with Chanel was one of my clients. You could tell by my fashion sense.
but Chanel was one of my clients back in my management consulting days, and I was, Lee, I was co leading a project.
I was on the consulting side. I was working for, who was I working for at the time, for, Accenture. and
I had a head of all of Chanel's boutique operations over on the client side. And we had a good working relationship. Like, it was good. It was nothing Crazy good, but it was, we were working together.
It was fine. And one of my team members said, Mike, why don't we take them all out to dinner. To kind of get to know them better? We went out for dinner. We went out for drinks. I barely remember getting home. We had an amazing time and probably a little too much to drink or maybe a lot too much to drink. I roll into the office the next day and my co-lead Jessica, who I'm still friends with, says, looks at me and goes, that was fun last night.
And I said, yeah. And she gave me the most backhanded compliment I've ever got. She said, I didn't realize you guys had a personality. And was like, well, thank you very much. I think, and it wound up that one thing in breaking down the brick wall and getting to know each other allowed us to just treat each other like human beings, have some fun, laugh, be brutally honest with each other.
And that was. God, I can't even count, you know, 30 years ago or so. And I've worked together multiple times at every different company. I've been a part of our own since then. And we've stayed in touch because we broke down that brick wall and just learned to get to know each other. So it,
it reflects exactly what you said.
Tia Graham: Absolutely. And, you know, at different levels, I think people can have more of a, I don't know, a mask, a suit of armor, a suit, if you will, right. With leadership teams and executives, but really you know, understanding what's going on in people's personal lives and understanding what's challenging and yeah, Again, just being real and authentic
Mike Goldman: Love it. Love it.
so from real and authentic, let's kind of pivot, but it's not a total pivot because it's so related is, you know, your book is be a happy leader. That's a lot of what you talk about. So start off with the most basic of questions just to provide context is what's your definition of happiness?
I
Tia Graham: My definition of happiness is truly comes from the world of positive psychology, the science of happiness, which I've been studying for years. And my definition of happiness, and I say a happy life.
is about having more positive than pain in your life. I love pain, but more positive than pain, having meaning and purpose, feeling like your life is purposeful, your work is purposeful, and also about having different experiences that make you psychologically rich and wiser as you grow.
Mike Goldman: love that and I love that and it's not having pain It's just having more positive than pain and I would guess sometimes it's the pain. Although painful in the moment that may bring on the positive later, right?
Tia Graham: Absolutely. I mean, we can't, experience the positive without pain and a lot of growth and I'm gonna say the word wisdom again comes from the pain. and we can, if we invest in ourselves, you know, the pain, the painful times, whether it's, in your career or in your personal life, the painful times don't have to be as difficult or, you know, you won't be unhappy for as long because you can build up a psychological immune system.
Mike Goldman: Love it. I imagine with more experience, you know, I'm in pain now, but it's not going to last forever. The first time may be tough, but after a while, it's not going to last forever. Now. So, then the next kind of foundational question is if that's what happiness is all about, why is it important for people to be happy at work?
Now I'm going to say that sounding like I'm a skeptic and I am not, but for those out there that are skeptics, you know, isn't work just about getting the job done? We could, we don't have to be happy. We can just go get the job done. Why is it important for people to be happy at work?
Tia Graham: Several reasons. So the first is I believe that organizations have an ethical responsibility to care for the humans that are working for them, to care about their wellbeing and not just about their contribution to the company's profit or the country's GDP, right? Going up to organizational level of a country, right?
So one is, I believe it's important because it's ethical. Also, people are healthier when they are happy. So you're going to have less sick days, less call outs, etcetera. There's a direct connection between happiness and productivity. This is research out of Oxford and MIT. When you're happy while you're working, you are more productive, which means that you work smarter and you're, and you work faster, people who are happy at work are more creative and innovative.
They're able to solve problems better. This is Dr Barbara Fredrickson. another reason is you will have higher levels of retention, less turnover. If you care about growing revenue and you want to grow your sales, when sales people are happier, they sell more, and customers are happier. And, again, Oxford Center for Wellbeing has proven by with millions of points of data and researching over 1600 publicly held companies, that companies where employees are happy, and they feel like their work is purposeful, and they have high job satisfaction.
They will greatly outperform the stock market. And it's a predictor of future firm growth as well.
Mike Goldman: So it's not just this soft, squishy. I want to make people happy. There's an ROI here.
Tia Graham: Hard dollars.
Mike Goldman: Love it. So, so I want to, I certainly want to dive into the happy leader methodology and the eight steps you've got.
But the other question I have before we get there ishow do we know if our folks are happy?
How do we measure that? How do I know whether, man, I got to dive into all eight of these steps or, hey, I'm doing pretty good. Maybe I only need a couple. How do I know? How do I measure that?
Tia Graham: Yes. So most companies measure way too infrequently. What's very common in. Corporate America is an annual engagement survey. So I tell all of my clients do not do that, that if you want to be proactive about the happiness and engagement of everyone in your organization, that you should be measuring weekly or monthly.
And a lot of people are like, wait, what? The measurement is very important. very short. I'm talking about one or two minute pulse surveys and weekly might be too much for a lot, but at least once a month. You want to know, is there a challenge in the finance team? Well, oh my gosh, the sales team, you know, has dropped significantly.
Is it because of our new sales leader, etcetera? So, what the research has shown is you can ask four simple questions. How happy are you at work? Do you find work to be meaningful and purposeful? Are you satisfied with your job? And, how much stress do you have? Because if you have unmanageable levels of stress, you're not going to be happy. And by measuring that on a monthly basis, executive teams, leadership teams are going to know how everyone is feeling. Now you can also look at additional data such as conversations in one on one meetings, in team meetings, whenever there's, you know, coffee with maybe the CEO or executive, sometimes, you know, you do those as well.
and of course you can look at, turnover. You can look at how many people are calling in sick, you know,other, but really I encourage all of my, the companies that I work with to be very proactive.
Mike Goldman: And I want to get, I love this and I want to get, and here's why I love it so much is. the thing that I have recommended for years, but recommended it and just known there's got to be a better way is the idea of an employee net promoter score that, that question on a scale of one to 10, how likely you to refer working here to somewhere else, someone else, it's the whole Fred Rykel thing that he built it, it hurts for customers that, you know, but the problem with that is people typically do that like once or twice a year.
And it's just not enough. It's a good tool, especially if you've got that open ended question, like, and how could I improve that score? Then you get some open ended information. But once or twice a year is not enough to your point of an annual engagement survey. It's not enough. So if you could do something weekly or monthly, I love that.
So for those, so I think, those four questions, you know, the happiness question, meaning,satisfaction, stress, all that, is it, are folks scoring that on a scale of 1 to 10 every week or every month, how does that actually look like?
Tia Graham: Yes. So, I believe Oxford recommends a scale of 1 to 5. And if you want in the show notes, I can include the, How to measure happiness and well being at work from Oxford, center of well being.yes. So it's a scale of one to five. And so it's very simple. And we're not talking about high costs here.
An organization can use SurveyMonkey. This isn't something you need to outsource. This isn't super complicated and engagement and happiness are different. They're not the same thing. Someone can be engaged and doing their work, but might not be very happy.
And of course, we know our emotions drive our behavior. Emotions are very important and the best person to let an executive leadership team know if they're happy are the team members, the employees themselves. You might have a bunch of managers or assistant directors or supervisors going, my team's great. But really? The true information are from all those people that are working, you know, the actual employees,
Mike Goldman: and I imagine it, these questions are anonymous or do people put their name on it?
Tia Graham: Yes. they're anonymous.
Mike Goldman: Beautiful.
Okay.
Tia Graham: And so you can do a very quick, like I said, it's one minute, maybe two minutes, two minutes at the end of every month rolls up. And of course, you want to have it. You want to get try and get everyone to answer and then what's equally as important is the information is acted upon.
Of course, because what happens in a lot of organizations is employee satisfaction engagement is measured and maybe there's. A few things change, maybe not, they might not hear from about it for three months. The team members need to feel that these leaders truly care about my happiness and well being.
And I got certified as a chief happiness officer in Denmark and employees are significantly happier in Denmark than in the United States. Of course, many differences in the country and, you know, but anyway. It was very clear listening to the Danish CEOs that came to speak to our group that their number one priority is frontline employee happiness. That's what they think about. How can we help them? How can we alleviate Their challenges, we are here to serve them.
Mike Goldman: what drives them to think about that? So much more often than maybe the U S counterparts, do you think?
Tia Graham: So the organizations are a lot flatter. There's, which is interesting. because I've been seeing some of the big pharma companies taking out a lot of middle management. and we're reading about it,
but
anyway, it seems like us might be moving this way in some industries, but. A lot flatter organization. So the executives at the very top are a lot closer to the front line.
That's one. and your question was
Mike Goldman: So you said the Danish folks, the Danish CEOs, they put front and center happiness sounds like
relative, you know, more so than I guess the, their U S counterparts. I was just wondering what, that's an important lesson, but also maybe why do they put it front and center?
What's behind that? And maybe it is the flatness of the organization.
Tia Graham: Yeah, that's one. I mean, culturally, well being and happiness is very ingrained in Scandinavian countries.that could be a whole episode just about what, how the governments are run as well, where wellbeing is of all citizens is a top priority as important as GDP. I would say where. It's not necessarily the case here. but from the training and from listening to the CEOs, they believe that. They don't, they're not smarter and that they don't have all the answers. They believe that the people dealing with customers all day, every day, or for example, that are working in back, but maybe not dealing with customers, but I just want to call it like frontline. Know what's going on with the company more than let's say, middle management or executive management. Of course, there's insight and there's perspective that executives has. And I don't not like downplaying how important it is, but their philosophy is like, if something isn't going right, and there's problems, we know who to go ask first, as opposed to. Solving it up here and then pushing it down.
Mike Goldman: I want to go back to the questions, which I love. And by the way, the biggest reason I do the show is it gives me great ideas to go back and work with my clients on. So thank you. I now have a better answer than the employee net promoter score it. So the question I have.
So you've got those four questions. They're scoring on, I guess, a scale of one to five, as you said. right? But if I've, if I see that I've got, you know, man are happy that you know, the first question about happiness is 20 percent lower than it's been. You know, stress has gone up the last two months we've done this.
I have those scores, but how do I know what to do about it? Unless I know what's underlying that increase or that decrease in scores.
Tia Graham: Yes. Yes. So, Jen Fisher, who is the, human sustainability director at Deloitte and Deloitte has done incredible research around happiness and well being at work.
She really emphasizes, and I agree completely is consistent. Employee listening strategies and tactics. So in that example, if you see, Oh, my gosh, over the last many days, happiness has gone up, stress has gone.
Be immediately like,
okay, we need to go listen and it can't just be the director of that department because maybe there isn't that psychological safety. Maybe the director is actually the cause. So having whether it's, you know, people from the people in culture to human resources or others really sitting down with these team members and going, we've noticed that your stress has completely increased.tell us what's going on. How can we help? you know, Do you need more stress recovery or is your workload unsustainable is, you know, do we roll out our technology too fast without enough training, whatever it is, right. But just listening and, and you can, excuse me, of course you can do this in one on one meetings. You can do this in team meetings. You can have the focus groups, right? You can do a couple hour of just focus groups and really get a clear understanding of, okay, what's going on and what's not working. and they'll tell you
Mike Goldman: Love it. So it's not so that the monthly pulse is not, that's not a magic bullet by itself is going to answer your questions, but that plus all of the listening and the conversations is going to tell you what you need to know.
Love that. so let's get into let's so let's imagine. That, that we want to improve the level of happiness, which could be, we're really happy and we want to be even more happy or It could be, Oh my God, we got real trouble and we've got to improve. Take us through kind of at a high level, your methodology. What are the major things? And I think you've got your eight steps. What are the major things that we can do to have an impact on this as leaders?
Tia Graham: on happiness. So the very first step is, it starts with you. It's going to be very challenging for a leader to have a happy, high performing, productive team if they themselves are not. Well, and I talk about this holistically in terms of physical wellbeing, mind and body, intellectual wellbeing, your relationships, emotional wellbeing. So, I really, encourage leaders to take their happiness. Very seriously to understand the positive psychology and neuroscience research because emotions are contagious. We have mirror neurons and whether leaders like it or not how they feel impacts how their team feels. Virtually, over email, in person, the number one factor for an employee's happiness is their leader. So it's going to be again, that it's going to be,uh, challenging. So the number one, step one is start with you.
Step two is zoom out. So zooming out is about having a very wide perspective and not. Not operating in silos. And I work a lot with hotel companies. This is the number, always in the top three challenges with working with hotel companies is people are working with in silos. So I teach and inspire people to look at the organization as if you were the owner.
You're not just in this area when you're making decisions, how you lead your team to really zoom out and have a wide perspective and work with your colleagues as if it's. you know, one big team. Step three is execute brilliantly. So I say that it's very hard, almost impossible unless you're maybe Elon Musk, but I don't know how happy he is. Execute brilliantly is about It's challenging to be happy if you are working all the time. And we actually have a culture of overwork, which is one of the reasons, why there's mental health challenges. But, we need to have time for our friends and family as leaders. We need to have time to sleep and exercise and maybe even enjoy a hobby or two, be with our parents, etcetera.
So Iteach leaders how to work really smart and fast so that you don't need to be at your desk. You don't need to be answering emails at 10 pm or sitting working all day Sunday. You should be with your kids if you're going to be a happy leader. step four is prioritize relationships over to do lists. So I, in this step, I, teach strategies and tactics on how to create really strong connections with every person on your team and, to have them feel really invested in you for them to feel that you're their coach and that you really care about their growth. and even though you're always going to have 175 things on your to do list. Put relationships first and your to do list will shrink and your results will grow. Step five is your number one priority. Your number one priority is your team. So in this step I talk about creating psychological safety, making sure that there's friendships within the team, making sure that people are working collaboratively and learning together and growing together and creating such a tight knit unit. So that when a competitor calls and says, Hey, I'm going to offer you 15,000 more, the person's going to go, yeah, but I don't know if it's worth the risk because I really like this team so much.step six is measure to excel. So in this step, I talk about the four disciplines of execution and measure what matters.
It's really about measuring lead measures, so that you exceed your results everyone's focused on one big goal. I find that a lot of leaders have never been taught how to measure lead measures and get everyone motivated and excited and rallying behind this. and having it again, not having people not feel like they're just individual contributors, but everyone's working towards one big goal. Step seven is be the spark. This is where I teach people how to teach leaders, how to increase their optimism and positivity and how to really be someone who energizes people so that people don't leave feeling drained at 6 p. m. but they're actually as energetic as they were when they arrived. and I will say, this is not about being bubbly and super extroverted. You don't have to be that to be a happy leader, but it's how you make people feel.
And then step eight is master your mindset. Of course, for leaders, for people, our mindset can inhibit us or can truly serve us. So in this step, I talk about how to always be nourishing your mind with, with content that uplifts you and that motivates you to be a lifelong student that even if you are a managing director, you don't know everything the world keeps changing. And to keep investing in personal and professional growth and to protect your mind from all the negative content that we're bombarded with, especially in this day and age.
Mike Goldman: Negative content. What
Tia Graham: those are the
Mike Goldman: That's only for people that make the mistake of watching the news. You just have to stop doing that
Tia Graham: I tell people do not watch the news ever, it makes you feel 31% more negative for the rest of the day.
or night.
So I tell people read the news, stay informed, but never turn it on the TV's
Mike Goldman: 31% I love somehow somebody's measuring all this stuff. It's crazy.
Tia Graham: Yes. Someone's measuring it. Exactly. And our brains already have a negativity bias. So the news is not helping.
Mike Goldman: So I want to drill into not all eight, of course, they could read your book if they want to know all eight, we'll have that a link to that in the show notes, I'm sure, but I want to drill into to maybe one or two of these. And the first one, I find them all really interesting. but your fourth one, which is prioritizing relationships over, to-do lists, let's get real tactical for a minute.
if a leader says, Hey, that sounds interesting. I want to do that. I want to build stronger relationships on my team. what's one powerful action a leader can take later today or tomorrow to do this.
Cause it sounds like a nice concept. How do you do it?
Tia Graham: Yes.
So one tactic is for the leader to learn about how to be a coach and not a manager. To truly be a coach and coaches believe in partnering
with their team members to inspire them to reach their full potential. So I always use the example of like Serena and Venus Williams, right? They are incredible yet they have coaches because everyone can get better. And what coaching does is it increases how much people believe in themselves. It makes them dream and visualize. Where they could be in their career, which then positively affects their personal life. And it provides new awareness, new insight, holds people accountable, challenges them. And, really just like puts a lot of wind in people's sails. So, and you know, you don't necessarily have to become a certified coach to do this. You could read one great coaching book, grab one off Amazon for 10 dollars and design your one on one meetings. To coach and you will. Get incredible results out of your people, but they will feel like, Oh my gosh, this person cares about me so much. They're invested in me and your relationship will become super strong.
Mike Goldman: and by the way, the book I would recommend, I don't know if you read it, is The Coaching Habit by Michael Bungay
Stanier. Love that book. There are a lot of great books, but that's a great one. But I love this. and I was surprised by your answer, but then came around to say, Ah, of course that's true is when you talk about coaching, because to me, coaching could still be like, yeah, I'm coaching someone to help them get their to dos all done and help them hit their results.
But the point you brought out that I think was super important. To think about as you're coaching is if you're coaching, right, you're showing that you actually care about the other person, not just getting the job done.
Tia Graham: Not just the results. And
the Harvard research shows, and this is, you know, of course, there's incredible different leadership research out there, but I've read Harvard research shows that most leaders are really strong in driving results, or they're really strong on the relationship side. And it's actually very challenging to be strong at both.and you have to continuously work at and grow and have mentors, et cetera, to drive results and have great relationships. And I think being a leader that drives results personally. is easier. You can do it authoritatively. You could do it with fear.
You can use sticks and carrots. You can use bonuses, yada, yada, yada, right? Having really close relationships with people where, yeah, you, you said it, it's care. You made me think Hyatt hotels has an incredible culture, huge global hotel company, and their one word that trickles from the top all the way down, which is their ethos of how they want people to feel is the word care. And people say, everyone I know that works at Hyatt is like, Hyatt is such a great company to work for because they have this word and people actually. Walk the talk.
Mike Goldman: You know, I think leaders need to understand the more you care, ultimately. the more it's going to get done. I mean, it's like the whole reason for hap, happiness is driving this ROI.
It shouldn't be an either or, but I think a lot of folks think of it as an either or the other one I want to drill into.
And when I drill into these, I always have specific clients in mind. I'm like, oh, he's going to have a challenge with this one. So I want to understand it better, but your seventh one, be the spark.
and it was about, you know, optimism and energy.
So. so how, yeah, the optimism, the positivity, how do you know, there are leaders that I'm sure we both knowthat's just not, their nature is not to be that cheerleader, positive, optimistic.
Tia Graham: genetics play a huge part.
Mike Goldman: So how do you, how would you coach? How would you help someone who says, Hey, I'm all for this happiness stuff. And I want to be happy and I want to, and I get it all, but I'm not a cheerleader. And if I try to be the optimistic, positive rah, that's fake. That's not who I am.
How do you, yeah. How do you coach someone like that to say, yeah, I understand that. But, or do you say, Hey, not everybody can do these eight steps. Don't worry about number seven. You don't have to be the spark. You can do the other things like, what do you do? How do you coach someone like that?
Tia Graham: So no, I don't say don't worry about number seven. And, I'm very, obsessed with research if you can't tell. So there's,
Mike Goldman: By the way, you're 35 percent more obsessed than most people. I know.
Tia Graham: um, so first of all, for someone, I would say, I would acknowledge that yes, this isn't naturally, and it could be because of your genetics as well as your life circumstances, like if you don't grow up with really positive, optimistic parents, going to be. more challenging, etcetera.
So just acknowledging where they are and that it's completely okay. I would then show them the research on the business results of positive leadership of again, productivity, revenue, profit sales, etcetera, because. If you're a leader, you care about achieving your results. Otherwise you probably wouldn't be in a leadership position. So I would start with that foundation. And then I would show them that they have agency over two areas of their life. They have agency over their thinking and they have agency over their behavior. That's what humans have agency over. And so I would actually get really granular and I would like grab a typical Monday and I would break it up.
I would say, let's talk through like your time before you get to work, your morning, your lunch, your afternoon, maybe later, and then your evening. And let's walk through. Let's like, talk me through what you're doing. What are your behaviors? What are you choosing to do? And what are you thinking about? And I would just have them be reflective with, you know, me as their coach. And I am going to very quickly see behaviors. and thinking patterns that are contributing to negativity and pessimism. And it's not about getting everyone to be a level 10 cheerleader. No, like no one would want to work at a company like that. People would go nuts, right? There has to be all different types, but just like a happy life or happiness. Leaders need to be more positive than negative in how they show up and how they communicate and how they write or their results are going to be lower. So, I would start with micro thinking choices and micro behavior changes to help them increase how optimistic and positive they are while they're working and in their personal life.
Mike Goldman: Excellent. Excellent.
I.where should people, if people want to, well, actually for, I was going to say, where should people go? They want to find out more about you, but I want to ask you a different question first, then we're going to get there very last is tell me a little bit more about how you.
Help your clients. I know you do a lot of keynote speaking and you've got your book, but give me a sense of all the different ways that you help clients and, you know, and help leaders and everyone else in the organization. Then I'll talk about, you know, where people could find you.
Tia Graham: Okay. Yes. So it's really three main areas of my company. So one are keynote talks. in person and virtually. The second is executive team retreats. And the third is ongoing leadership development programs where I'm spending four months or six months. the longest I've done is 12 with a leadership team to inspire and teach them how to implement it and how to create a sustainable, happy culture. where people love working.
Mike Goldman: So if people want to find out more about your keynote, your retreats,your programs, where should they go?
Tia Graham: My website is arriveathappy.com and everything's there.
Mike Goldman: Love it. Love it. That'll all be in the show notes. I always say, if you want to have a great company, you need a great leadership team. Tia, thanks for helping us get a little closer there today.
Tia Graham: Oh, thank you for having me
Mike Goldman: You're welcome. Bye bye.