Unpacked with Ron Harvey
People Always Matter. Join Ron as he unpacks leadership with his guests.
Unpacked with Ron Harvey
Unpacking Digital Overwhelm: Leadership, Listening, and Connection in a Changing World with Craig Mattson
We explore how leaders can trade command-and-control for curiosity, build digital flexibility instead of defaulting to one channel, and use community to protect attention in a noisy, hybrid world. Craig shares stories behind Digital Overwhelm and practical ways to switch modes, set boundaries, and grow social capital that lasts.
• leading amid fast, relentless change
• listening as a core leadership skill
• filtering noise versus flexibility with modes
• practical boundaries and single-use tools
• old tech for deep focus and brain health
• teams, pit stops and shared norms
• why Craig wrote Digital Overwhelm
• two takeaways: mindfulness and mode switching
• communicating across generations with respect
• questions over commands and tracking consequences
• social capital and the “relationship score”
• task and gift: a healthier view of communication
You can find our book wherever books are sold. It’s called Digital Overwhelm: A Mid-Career Guide for Coping at Work. Connect with Craig at themodeswitch.com. Remember to join us every Monday as Ron Unpacks Sound Advice, providing real answers for real leadership challenges. Until next time, remember to add value and make a difference where you are or the people you serve. Because people always matter.
Connect with Ron
Just Make A Difference: Leading Under Pressure by Ron Harvey
“If you don’t have something to measure your growth, you won’t be self-aware or intentional about your growth.”
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Disclaimer:
The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the speakers and guests and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any organization or entity. The information provided in this podcast is intended for educational and informational purposes only and should not be considered as professional advice. Listeners should consult with their own professional advisors before implementing any suggestions or recommendations made in this podcast. The speakers and guests are not responsible for any actions taken by listeners based on the information presented in this podcast. The podcast is not intended to be a substitute for professional advice or services. The speakers and guests make no representations or warranties of any kind, express or implied, about the completeness, accuracy, reliability, suitability or availability with respect to the information, products, services, or related graphics contained in this ...
Welcome to Unpack Podcast with your host, Leadership Consultant, Ron Harvey of Global Core Strategies and Consulting. Ron believes that leadership is the fundamental driver towards making a difference. So now, to find out more of what it means to unpack leadership, here's your host, Ron Harvey.
SPEAKER_01:Good morning, everyone. This is Ron Harvey, the Vice President and Chief Operating Officer for Global Core Strategies and Consulting. We're a professional leadership development firm based out of Columbia, South Carolina. And what we really do at the end of the day in a nutshell is we help leaders be better connected to the workforce and adapt to the changes in the workforce and environment that's happening constantly around all of us. So how do we adjust as leaders to do the thing that people need from us, which is take care of them? We do that all day, every day. We love it. There are multiple ways we do it, but but I don't do the podcast to really talk about that. But I do want you to know who we are and what we do in case you need our services. I bring guests on from around the world, and it's called Unpack with Ron Harvey intentionally because we don't know what we're going to actually discuss throughout the day, with exception of leadership. Our guests are invited to the opportunity to share what they want to share, hold back what they want to hold back. But we're really transparent and candid about our challenges. So I'm super excited. Um, so we can go ahead and dive into this. I'm excited, but I guess he's coming in from Michigan or calling in from Michigan. Um different weather than South Carolina. Um, but I'm happy to have you, Craig. Welcome to the show and thank you for saying yes uh in advance for to be a part of this show.
SPEAKER_00:Thank you, Ron. You've used two words in your intro that are really important to me: adjustment. We do need to adapt to these kind of changing contexts, and that requires a lot of wisdom. And then the other word you use was challenge, and I focus a lot on the challenges of the contemporary workplace. I'm an organizational researcher, and I serve as a professor of communication at Calvin University in not so warm Grand Rapids. I have written several books, lots of essays, and I am fascinated by the work of communication in organizational life. I also like to hike, and my wife and I live in Grand Rapids, obviously. Our four adult kids are scattered across the Midwest. And I'm eager to talk with you about some of the adjustments we're having to make today and some of the challenges we're facing, especially in hybrid and remote and digital spaces. Yes, I'm excited to have you here.
SPEAKER_01:I mean, even with just the background, there's a lot that I want to unpack. Everybody knows I use that word every time on this podcast, and that's just my way of letting you know a question is coming up. But there's a lot to unpack. But what I would tell everyone that's listening, you're talking to real people that live everyday lives that manage and navigate just like you do. And sometimes we make it look real easy, Craig, how we do it. And this show really says, Well, let me tell you the real recipe of how to make that famous pound cake, if you wish. It looks real easy and it tastes real good. But there's a recipe to that pound cake, and that's what we try to do here on Unpack is share some of the tips, the things we've learned, the mistakes we've made, for you to get it right and don't have to literally take the stairs like we did. Hopefully, we'll put you on the escalator or we'll put you on the elevator to make this a little faster, but still very, very effective. So, so Craig, as you lean in and you think about it, let's dive a little bit into it's everything's changing right now. You got AI, you got all kinds of you know, technology, you got things that have everything around us is changing super fast and it's not going to slow down anytime soon. What's the challenge with the fact that everything's changing?
SPEAKER_00:Where are leaders really having a hard time with change? I think one of the hardest things to do in times of radical change, like we're experiencing, is to listen well to other people. For this book project, Digital Overwhelm, I spent a lot of time, about a year, listening to dozens of Gen Z and millennial professionals asking them, how are you coping with the intensities of the early 2020s? And that exercise in listening really taught me a lot. But one of the most important things it taught me is just the vitality of listenership, making sure that you're hearing people around you. And in times of tectonic shifting, like we're experiencing today, technologically, politically, culturally, and often personally, it's really hard to hear the people around you. You just have so many stories in your head and so many panicky voices in your head. So that's where I try to put my energies is listening carefully to people in times of change.
SPEAKER_01:I love it, Craig. I think you're spot on. I love it, and you've done the research and have a phenomenal book out there. So super excited about that. But when you think about all the social media, everybody has a microphone now, everybody has a voice now, everybody immediately can be on screen and you know, with just a camera and a microphone, like you and I are here on this one. How do you get us to listen when everybody's given the opportunity to speak now? How do you literally slow down and listen?
SPEAKER_00:Way to start with a hard question, Ron. That's like that's a great one. Yeah, I mean, I will be the first to say, first to admit, that you do have to filter. There's a certain amount of filtering out of the noise in our lives that is essential to just being a person today. And there are a lot of wise voices telling us how to do this. I think of voices like LM Sakasis. He writes a newsletter every, you know, regularly about the challenges of living in a technologized society. I think about Cal Newport talking about, you know, he wrote a book called A World Without Email and another one called Digital Minimalism. And uh Nicholas Carr is another author, really talking wisely about this. So I'll be the first to admit, as you have pointed out, that there's a lot of reason for us to filter today. And sometimes that means pulling back. It means quieting down our lives, going analog. But this book that I was waving at the screen a moment ago, Digital Overwhelm, attempts to help people not just sort of filter things out, but to practice flexibility. So not digital minimalism exactly, but digital flexibility. So that's not an easy piece of advice, but I do think it's an important piece of advice when so many of us are required by our many callings and vocations to be on screens a lot.
SPEAKER_01:It is a perfect topic and a lot to unpack here because it's happening. I mean, every day there's something new coming digitally for all of us. You know, we're on a on a platform yesterday, and the question they asked us was if you can get rid of three apps that will make your life more convenient, what would it be? It was amazing how many people would shut down, you know, apps that they're constantly on that's uh consuming their time, that's not very productive, but easily caught up in, as I call it, the scrolling, the the swipe to the right or swipe to the left or swipe down. You get sucked into this space of I gotta keep up with everything going on around me. And people are literally locked in with the heads down into these. How do we manage this digital platform effectively and listen to people?
SPEAKER_00:Well, actually, we might learn a little bit from the kids you were just referencing. I was reading, I think it was just two days ago, that social media usage is it's never been higher in the US, and people distrust social media also to a huge degree. So that's a weird statistic. Like people are using it a lot, but they don't trust it. But Gen Alpha, the younger rising generation, is maybe the most leery generation about social media. But your question's about quieting things down, and I think to the degree that you have choice in that, I mean, you should exercise your agency. Uh, you should think about what you're after, what your goals are, what your aspirations are. And then don't be afraid of technology and the tools, but try as much as you can just to use those tools that really serve your goals, the things that you're hoping for in your life. And then I think it's also important to recognize that you can't just quiet things down on your own. It's terribly difficult as an individual to combat some of the biggest, you know, most moneyed corporations in the world who are exerting all of the power of their billions to harvest your attention. And who of us could resist them alone? So we really need community. In my book, Digital Overwhelm, I'm talking about working community. For other people, that might be church community or a school community, it might be a neighborhood, it might be your own household. But I think more than ever, yeah, in the sort of attempt to keep our balance in digital overwhelm, we really need people. That's a truth I'll stand by.
SPEAKER_01:How do you balance it, Craig? You know, if you're coming up and you got leaders that are coming up that are younger and they're climbing this corporate ladder or they're running organizations, or they're like me, I'm a business owner, where you can't stay totally unplugged from it because you kind of got to be able to have a conversation, know enough about it where you walk into the room, you feel pretty intelligent as a leader. And some of us got imposter syndrome, think we have to know it all. Nobody knows it all. If you're listening, nobody knows it all. If you find that person, get away from them. But the reality is, how do you balance it effectively where you consume just enough to be effective, but not so much that you become distracted?
SPEAKER_00:I should probably ask you that question. I'll give two ideas, and then I'd like to hear how you've managed to do this maybe a bit in your own experience. Yeah. So two ideas from me is one, use single-use technology as much as you can, or maybe fewer use technology. I'm talking to you on my laptop right now, and it's the convergence of so many parts of my life. The classes I'm teaching, the research I'm doing, the family stuff I'm keeping up with. And so recently I bought a notepad, a digital notepad, but it really can't do anything. I can write with it, and that's it. It doesn't really have any apps or anything. And that is, you know, it cost about 400 bucks. And I realized after I bought it that it was really a way to buy attention for myself, to buy some concentration. So I think sometimes we can use technology to help us filter out technology and get some quiet for ourselves. Well, let me just turn that around to you. Like, how have you managed to find ways to quiet down the digital noise in your life as a business owner?
SPEAKER_01:I love that you shared, like, you know, using technology to reduce some technology. And I'll tell you for everyone that's listening, a phenomenal question is I intentionally on my calendar block out quiet times. Like literally, if you go to my calendar, you'll really see the word block. Personal time. And I put it on there just like I would put for this podcast, I would put for client work and engagement. And that's daily for me. And so I get up and I work out every morning, but I work out an hour that no one's looking for me. And I have a downtime, like at the end of the day for me, I shut down at a certain time of the day. And people, I've trained people that are clients and customers and friends and relatives. Like after this time, he's not taking any calls, he's not on any emails, he's not checking any messages. Like, if you want him, these are the hours that he functions, that he does it, because the rest of the time I he needs to recuperate and practice self-care. So for everyone that's listening, I practice a lot of self-care and it's very intentional.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I like that. I need to discipline myself a bit more about setting aside time actually on my Outlook calendar, you know, like marking it off. I think that's a great practice, a good tactic. Another one that comes to mind for me for again sort of quieting down your life is to use older technology. So uh there's a technology called a pen and a technology called a book. When those first came out, you know, the pen came out 2,400 years ago, people were pretty freaked out about it. Like, what is this gonna do to us? But sometimes using an older form of technology can help to orient you a bit. It can connect you to older conventions and traditions and customs and communities. And I've certainly found that with using a physical book, you know, just I know it's a little self-serving because I write books, so I hope people read books, but I think it's also just a really good healthy practice to I think your brain will love you if you take some time to hold a book, even if it's just for 15 or 20 minutes.
SPEAKER_01:So I get it, Craig. I mean, for those people that but I will tell you like as you're listening to us, you know how important it is to have a book to slow your brain down. Some you know, the brain is is multifast and it does some amazing things, but it's also good for brain health to slow it down sometimes. I kind of the analogy I would love to use, Craig, is it's like a race car driver. As fast as that car is at the Daytona 500 or any race that you may follow if you follow race car driving, there's a pit stop that it has to make to refresh and refuel and refit the tires and slow. They literally have to, if they're in first place, they have to come out of the race, go into the pit stop so they can stay in the race. And I think as humans, we're gonna have to figure out where's the pit stop for us so we can stay in this thing called life. Because the world is moving like that race car, 350 miles per hour, and it's not gonna slow down. And but there's a pit crew chief that says you must come in, you have no option, the tires are going bald, your fuel is running low, the car is running hot, you're exhausted, you need a break, you need some those things that keep you in the race. How do you make sure you can stay in the race long term versus stay in the lead all the time?
SPEAKER_00:I don't know if you've heard of the author Yurian Kamer, but he uses an analogy very like what you're saying. He wrote a book called Unblocked, which I highly recommend. But Kammer studied the sort of pit stops of Formula One racers. Yes. And he watched the teams. And again, I think that's a reminder that we can't do this alone, that those pit stops are not just, you know, sort of self-care. They're also times where we need to just be with other humans in a sort of non-performance focused way. I guess in a Formula One pit stop, though, that's pretty performance focused. So I'll have to think about that a bit more. But I like the reminder again that we're usually functioning on some kind of team or partnership or collaboration. And attending to those group dynamics is challenging today. We work remotely so often. We're in hybrid conditions. So I guess I keep coming back to this sort of group dynamics of leadership and working community. Yes, yes. You have the book.
SPEAKER_01:I mean, you got digital overwhelm. What were you seeing that said, I need to write this book, you know, and then I have a follow-up question. But what made you write the book? People's stories.
SPEAKER_00:I started having some conversations with people who had graduated from the program where I was teaching, and I was reaching out to them five, 10 years out from their graduation, and like I said, just asking, How are you coping? And the stories I was hearing were so stunning that I was like, oh wow, there's a book here. There's a set of stories here, and there's really wisdom here. Some of the stories were really painful stories, like stories of harassment in the workplace. I remember talking with an in a person who was describing her internship. She was now well into her career, but she was describing her internship and, you know, being summoned into a back office by her internship manager who was inviting her to have a drink. And it was just so creepy and scary to her. And she really didn't have the kind of leverage and power to just be decisive in that moment. I also heard stories that were really encouraging. I talked with a guy who was a team lead. He was a tester at a major video game company. And he was all about the logistics and the process and the technology involved in designing games. He loved it. He was his passion. He was a gamer himself. So this was his dream job. And then, yeah, I think we reconnected six months later. And he said, Hey, my job's changed. And I am now working as I'm managing a team here. I'm not just testing games, I'm managing people. And he said that for him, a little surprisingly, maybe, it was a chance to take a deep breath and say, okay, I've got to do some people care here. And that was a really inspirational story to me about this guy making this shift from being really like task-focused and you know, project-oriented, and then shifting towards that sort of almost like pastoral or therapeutic work with his team. So it was those stories that made me want to write, Ron. It was just hearing those stories. Wow.
SPEAKER_01:What do you hope for the people that are going to pick it up and become readers of what you've written in the books? What do you hope they walk away with?
SPEAKER_00:I think two things. One is just paying attention to the way the digital has altered our working arrangements and just becoming mindful of that at all times, that, like, yeah, this is making this weird right now. And how do I stay human in the middle of that weirdness? I think being aware, being mindful of the role of technology in our everyday lives, so often it's invisible. So often it's just sort of something we're using without thinking about. We're just thinking about the task. But to sort of pull back and pay attention to that, it's a little bit like looking at your windshield while you're driving. You're trying to spot a crack or something in your windshield, it's a little disconcerting and it can feel strange. But I think, you know, looking at what you're usually looking through can really be a help in the workplace. And then the second thing I've already mentioned, and that is that I hope people can, by reading my book, cultivate more communicational flexibility, not getting stuck in a particular approach to communication, but developing multiple approaches, multiple modes is what I call them. And that digital flexibility, I think, is one way to really help our working communities to thrive.
SPEAKER_01:So, Craig, you've been in you've been in the space, you've been in education, I learned for a while, and you've watched it changed. If you can share something with people that are watching these different generations, and you even mentioned another generation, you know, as you were speaking earlier, what advice would you give to people? Because I'm sure you have to modify your teaching style, your ability to listen, where do you lean in? And it's changed over the years. What advice do we give to leaders that are trying to figure out how do they take care of five or six generations in the workforce?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, that's a terrifically difficult task. I mean, every week I podcast with an intergenerational team. We have a boomer, Xer, millennial, and Gen Z. And yeah, it's complicated. There are lots of different kinds of feelings and perspectives in the room, even for a podcast where we're all trying to do the same thing. But I think, first of all, my sympathies to the leaders today, like it's hard work. There's a layer of labor working with remote teams, working with hybrid groups that managers 30 years ago would find completely alienating or strange. So my compassion, my sympathies with leaders today, you're doing important work and it's not easy work. But I guess in some ways, I think I'm recapping here, Ron. I think that not dismissing other generations, but saying they're probably able to see something that I'm not seeing. So the analogy that works for me is if you can imagine a collection of concentric rows of chairs. So you've got a circle within a circle within a circle within a circle until you finally have just one chair in the middle. And that's the CEO. But as you move outward on that circle, you also find that the people on the outer edges of the circle can see things that the people in the middle cannot. So people who are on the margins of our organizations, which often is our younger folk, the just hireds, they see things that those of us who might be closer to the middle aren't able to see. We're sort of focused on what's going on right in front of us. But they see that and they also see from their perspective. So I think not dismissing that perspective, recognizing that it is limited. I mean, there are ways that they are just very new to this whole thing called work culture and working community, but also acknowledging, conceding that they can see things that you probably can't easily see. And um, that's I think my biggest piece of advice and my takeaway from doing this work.
SPEAKER_01:You know, one of the things that we always try to unpack is for those people that are in spaces that we get to talk about on the podcast is what's the real practical thing that you can do that doesn't require you to go get another higher level educational degree, but just things that you can actually do every day that you can work that muscle and get better at it. Communication has changed drastically for all of us. Um, how we communicate, when we communicate, what we say, what we don't say. Some of our leaders are saying, well, people are too sensitive. I mean, judgment, you know, um, or people are not listening, or people are too busy, or people don't want to slow down. I mean, there are a lot of things that we're using to label what we see, and sometimes accurate, sometimes inaccurate, most times pretty ineffective because people don't like to be labeled. How have you seen, you know, for us to be more effective, what does that communication style look like? Because I know you love split playing in the space of communication.
SPEAKER_00:I think that's a$64,000 question. So here's something I've been thinking about lately. I mean, just this morning, honestly, I've been thinking about this. There's a body of theory called relational frame theory. And people who use relational frame theory try to help other people to become more flexible in their thinking. When I was reading that, I was like, that's what managers are often trying to do. They're trying to help their team move from a small picture perspective to a bigger picture perspective. And sometimes they need the team to do that to them too, right? The leaders are micromanaging or they're obsessed on a particular metric or something, and they need their team to say, hey, look, there's a bigger picture here. So we all need this. So I was like, yeah, how do we use communication to move from small picture to big picture thinking? And there's this concept called tracking. And tracking is when you look very carefully at your context, and then you look at what's happening in that context and you ask about the consequences of that. In other words, like Dr. Phil used to ask, you ask, how's that working for you? When you do this thing, what are the consequences of it? Because a surprising lot of us are unwilling to face the consequences of what happens when we do this or that. But I don't think as a leader or a manager, you can just tell people, look, you're stop doing that. What you can do is to use communication, everyday conversation, to help people to notice the consequences of their actions in a particular context. And so that's, I think, my piece of advice today is help people to track what's going on by asking simple questions. And then what happened, you know, is a good question. Or another one that I've heard is if yourself from five years ago could look at what's going on here, like what would that self say? Or if yourself from five years down the road could look at your situation now, like what would they say? Those sorts of conversational moves help people to like loosen up their perspective and begin to track what's actually happening in the workplace. And I think that's one way to move towards a big picture perspective.
SPEAKER_01:I love it, Greg. I mean, the asking of the questions, you know, telling all of our leaders the day of command and control are telling everybody what to do are far gone. And whether we agree or disagree with it, the reality is that that's not as effective as it used to be. That we've changed as people. I mean, pretty brilliant and intelligent people. So if you're telling everybody what to do, it's about how smart you are. But if you ask questions, just giving them permission to be smart and help you get it done. So I would tell you, slow down and ask more questions. Yeah, you know, if you're the leader that's telling everybody everything to do all day long, yeah. If you disappear, your organization's in trouble. Yeah, that's exhausting. Yeah, it is very exhausting. And I think sometimes I, you know, when I was younger, I used to want to have the answer. I felt like I had to have the answer. And often back in those days, you kind of had to have the answer to get promoted. But there was some ego that came along with that too. I felt good about having all the answers, and people had to come to me. So you gotta kind of get over yourself too if you're gonna do this really, really well. Because it may feel nice, but it's not sustainable long term for you to have all the answers.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, that's good. That's really good advice, Ron. I like that. It may feel nice, it may feel good for the moment, but it might not be working for you. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Yes, yes. So, where can we find the book at? I mean, we've mentioned the book a couple of times, so you have digital overwhelm, and I'm sure it's out. Where can we find it at? And then we'll we'll go into how do people reach out to you, come on your podcast, answer some questions. But I love to do this for business development. I love for us to have answers for people and they can reach out to you or me. You know, this is a community platform for us to help people while at the same time serving people.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. I'm afraid my answer is kind of boring. I mean, you can find this book wherever books are sold. I'm from Grand Rapids, so I love Schuler books. You can find them online. You can also go to Amazon and find the book. It's called simply Digital Overwhelm: A Mid-Career Guide for Coping at Work. And it examines six different modes of communication and looks at the strengths and weaknesses of each. So I think it's a pretty practical book, but it's also a reflective book. So it's not one of those kind of airport self-helpy books. It's a book that will help you to, I don't know, dig deep in your own soul, in your own work. You can find ways to connect with me at my website, themodeswitch.com.com. And I would be so pleased. I'm not one of those authors who never wants to connect with a reader. I'm I'm absolutely delighted. If you pick up a copy of my book, I would be so happy to jump on a call with you and hear how you're experiencing it. So thanks for facilitating those connections, Ron. I'd I'd love to connect with some of your listeners.
SPEAKER_01:Yes, I love it. And that's really what it's about for us being able to stay connected to the people. I kind of like it too. No, you can be as smart and as brilliant and as talented as you wish. If you don't have a connection, it stays with you. So we're meant to be connected to other human beings. So stay connected, reach out to people, ask questions, make yourself accessible, and constantly learn and figure out who's smarter than you in the room and who can help you in the room. That's what I've done in my entire career and still do it in my business. Any last-minute advice you would give that you got from someone that's still serving you well today?
SPEAKER_00:Well, you talked about being real on this podcast, and I'll say something that has been kind of a difficult experience for me over the years. Just three years ago, I switched institutions and I went from one college to another, a larger college, a university, and I was very excited to make this move. And I'm still happy to be at this university very much. But one thing I wasn't expecting was a kind of drain on social capital. So when you're in one place for a while, you you build up some connections and some networks and some friendships and collegiality. And yeah, I sort of took that for granted. And I came to a new institution, and there was a whole nother layer to the work. And that was a work I was willing to do, but it took quite a lot of time, a lot of coffee shops, a lot of shared lunches, a lot of walks with people to try to build the connections that we all so much need. So I guess so many leaders today are having rather short terms in their work. They're at an institution that's a little bit unstable, perhaps, and they might be there for just a couple of years. When you do move from one institution to another, and I don't wish this on you, but if you do move, yeah, keep in mind the important work of connection making and network building and even friendship cultivation in each place that you work. Wow, great.
SPEAKER_01:I mean, people that follow me know that you're you're speaking my language all the time. So I tell people it's my social capital has opened up doors and got me places and allowed me to do things that sometimes my education wasn't the entry point. It literally was social capital. So I tell all of our leaders, you you gotta have a good social capital. iPhone is a phenomenal phone. Shut off the Wi-Fi and all connection, and it's just a paperweight. And I think oftentimes we walk in rooms with a lot of wisdom and knowledge, but we don't have the connection and we don't serve the way we could serve because we are not connected, so we can do the work. So no matter how talented, how good, what your title, who you are, where you sit at in the building, your connections are what get things done. Now I still want you to be intelligent, but I don't want you to be intelligent and not social. I still want you to have the position, but I don't want you to be the highest ranking person, but nobody has access to you.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah, that sounds right to me too, Ron.
SPEAKER_01:Thanks. Yeah, so I you're speaking my language, like, man, that's another podcast. We need to bring it back on because you know that's something that I will tell you that for us. I here's what I would like it to for all our listeners, Craig. I compare my I call it relationship score. I treat it just as I treat my credit score. Because when I want to be able to purchase something that's important to my family, I want to be able to get it at the lowest interest rate. I don't want to have so I want people to be willing to want to help me purchase this big item. What's your relationship score with the people that you need to help you with? Is it a 400 or is it 800? Yeah, and I and I and I monitor that daily.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, that's a good metric. That's a really good metric.
SPEAKER_01:I use it and it served me well. And people, I say it's just what I watch. I literally watched, you know, people will pick up my when I call them, they'll pick it up versus swipe to the left or don't answer. They'll respond to an email. When I call them, they're pretty, you know, people come on our podcast because of relationships. You know, uh, I don't do it because of you know, phenomenal guests like you, but I stay in touch with our guests.
SPEAKER_00:Thank you. Yeah, well, that's a great promise. I I look forward to staying in touch with you, Ron. That's good to hear. Awesome, awesome.
SPEAKER_01:Craig, you've been phenomenal for everyone on the show. I'm gonna give some contact information, then I'm gonna ask Craig if there's anything he wants to close out with. I always invite our guests to close out the show. So before Craig closes us out, you can always find us on our website, Global Course Strategies and Consulting. Everything leadership, how do you be sustainable? There are plenty of ways to do that. And if you're interested in you know someone that'll be a phenomenal guest that has value to add to the show, we'd love to welcome and invite our guests to the show. Um, just let them know in advance there are no questions in advance. This is a real conversation in real time um with all of our guests, and we share a lot of value. So for now, I'm gonna pause, I'm gonna hand the microphone to Craig and let him close us out.
SPEAKER_00:I'm so honored. So I guess my last word would be to keep in mind that every organizational communication between leaders and followers, between followers and leaders, is both a task and a gift. It's easy to see it as just a task and to forget that it's a gift. It's also easy to think, you know, get sort of so wrapped up in the pleasure of it or the joy of it to forget that, oh no, we've got a shared mission here. So keeping in mind that every digital communication is a task and a gift is a piece of wisdom I think your leaders can walk with.
SPEAKER_01:Awesome. Thanks, Craig. And until next time, Craig and I are signing off, and thank you for joining us on Unpack with Ron Harvey.
SPEAKER_02:Well, we hope you enjoyed this edition of Unpack Podcast with leadership consultant Ron Harvey. Remember to join us every Monday as Ron Unpacks Sound Advice, providing real answers for real leadership challenges. Until next time, remember to add value and make a difference where you are or the people you serve. Because people always matter.
