Episode 142 - Dr. Bob Nelson & Mario Tamayo - Leaders On Leadership

Leadership takes a toll on leaders. It’s important to recognize that and have strategies in place for yourself and your team to balance it out. Joining Dr. Tracey Jones are Dr. Bob Nelson, the President of Nelson Motivation, Inc., and Mario Tamayo, the Principal of Tamayo Group, Inc. Bob is recognized as the leading authority on employee recognition and engagement. Mario is known as a no-nonsense consultant specializing in leadership and organizational performance. The two have come together to share insights from their latest book, Work Made Fun Gets Done!: Easy Ways to Boost Energy, Morale, and Results. In this episode, they discuss their thoughts on the burden of leaders and how to cope and manage loneliness, weariness, and the importance of having a vision. Stay tuned!

—-

Watch the episode here:

Listen to the podcast here:

Dr. Bob Nelson & Mario Tamayo - Leaders On Leadership

I have not one but I have two tremendous guests. Dr. Bob Nelson is the President of Nelson Motivation Inc. It's the world's leading authority on employee recognition and engagement. He has worked with 80% of Fortune 500 companies and is a Senior Fellow for The Conference Board, a top-thought leader for the Best Practices Institute and was named a top five management guru by Global Gurus. Fondly known as Dr. Bob, he has authored over 30 books on employee motivation and engagement, which have collectively sold over five million copies and been translated into 30 languages.

Our tremendous other guest is Mario Tamayo. Mario is the Principal of Tamayo Group Inc., a no-nonsense consulting firms specializing in leadership and organizational performance. He has more than 30 years of experience maximizing human performance, working with organizations such as Petco, General Dynamics and the US Men's Olympic Volleyball Team.

-—

Gentlemen, thank you so much for being my guests on the show.

I’m glad to be here.

Thank you for having us.

You want to tell them about the connection you have to Tremendous?

We've met your father. I know I hugged him. Did you, Mario?

He hugs everybody, so we hug him. This is many years ago we met him. Tremendous presence, tall man, a humble man, at the same time, he’s very invigorating and inspiring.

Funny and insightful. He was great.

When I got connected with these guys, I realized that we go way back. Many years, you guys were probably getting started.

You were two years old at the time.

Let's unpack this, gentlemen. You guys both have decades of leadership expertise. My father was exuberant, but he was also pragmatic. The top speech that he gave was titled The Price of Leadership, which was sobering because it talks about leadership is what we're meant to be, but there is a price you're going to have to pay. It isn't perks, Cadillacs, summer homes and big corner office desks. He unpacks this.

The first price he talks about is that to be a leader, you're going to experience loneliness. We've heard that. It’s slowly at the top. Can you both unpack for our readers out there what loneliness looks like in the leadership role, and maybe a time where you've been in a season and what you do to pull yourself out of that?

I've managed people for over thirty years. I find that where it strikes me is when you've got a question or something you want to discuss and can't think of who to do it with. That bounces around who I would connect with at that point. By default, it probably ends up more times than not to be my spouse. She has good and intuitive advice but a lot of times, I'm looking for something maybe richer or it's not that simple.

Through my mental Rolodex in who I call, it varies with the topic and the timing. That could be someone in New York. It could be a good friend from high school. It could be someone that's a current client colleague. There's moments that we go, “I wish I could talk this through with somebody.” How about you, Mario?

I remember back in the early 1980s, I was a Director at General Dynamics here in San Diego, a young guy and young-looking. I remember that I would be in a position sometimes because I was a director and I was supposed to be a young and up-and-coming leader, I should know everything that my role demanded. That wasn't the case. I found out that I was stuck between being honest with myself and say, “I don't know this particular area. I'm not very competent in this one area here.” I felt like I could not talk to anybody because I should have known. I got the job so I should know that. I should be competent and committed to doing whatever that particular task was.

Did you talk to your boss about that?

I didn't at first because I was embarrassed by it.

You want to confirm that he made the right decision hiring you.

The thing was I only saw my boss about once every two weeks, and that made it even harder. I didn't want to come to him with bad news. I felt like I had to buck it up and find a way. What I found out was that I couldn't hide. I had to be honest and say, “I don't know this.” The first person I went to was my wife. My wife was the youngest female manager in General Dynamics Incorporation at the time. What better person to talk with because she was promoted before I was. We struggled together early on to make it work. That's what we did. Number one, the bottom line is that I had to be honest with myself and be vulnerable.

My husband, who is often my sounding board, he's like, “Tracey, who pours into you?” I, like you, Mario, when I was younger, they promoted me. I'm an officer. Somebody told me, “A leader doesn't have to know everything but they have to know everybody.” Which Dr. Bob, goes to your point. You have to know who to go to. I think about the worst mistakes of my life where I stayed in the wilderness much longer is because I didn't find the right sounding board to share, “Should I do this? Is it okay to feel this way?” I love the fact that you guys said that. You can have the greatest advisement in the world and people that'll pull you out of that but if you're not honest with yourself, if you're wise in your own eyes, you can't be open to receive that. I appreciate you pulling that. Owning your loneliness is okay.

We're finding more of that. There are many people out there who are lonely, especially top athletes, actors and people out in the public domain. We’re starting to learn that it's okay to be human and to show the other side what's behind the curtain.

Not to mention an eighteen-month pandemic that isolate everybody.

That has taken this to a whole new level. I can go introvert or extrovert either way, but I can feel the strain on me like, “I'm missing this collective piece that we’re coded for.” To be conscious of it and say, “I need somebody to pour into me.” Along that line of thought with loneliness is weariness. When you're running that race and when you're heavy is the head that wears the crown, you have a lot of responsibilities on you for that. What would you guys recommend as far as staying at your top peak performance? How do you combat weariness?

Work Made Fun Gets Done!: Easy Ways to Boost Energy, Morale, and Results

When I was at General Dynamics, I was running their wellness program back in the days when wellness was a pretty new pioneering effort in most corporations. We were a top ten program in the country at the time. It was health wellness, I felt I had to be going at 100 miles an hour. Back then, there was something called the superwoman syndrome where women had to prove themselves. When you’re in wellness, you had to be almost perfect.

Charles Atlas, Jack LaLanne.

Not just physically, but spiritually, emotionally, cognitively and all that. Exercising, although there is no such thing as a panacea, it's the best thing that we have naturally to help us stay up. That was one of the things, running regularly, eating properly, getting good sleep, the basic stuff and having a good perspective about things, having positive self-taught

I practiced a lot of those things and even then I would struggle at times. I would get to the point where I felt like I was a phony even though I'm going 100 miles an hour. I'm still wary trying to do everything and I'm not quite able to make it happen. I learned early on that I've got to back out and I've got to get that balance. What about you, Bob?

That's a better answer than I have.

Says the guy who is hiking 5 miles a day.

Getting outside, having a break, being in nature is a huge retooling. When I'm weary at times in my career, I would never try to allow myself to be down about that. I would try to suck it up because I was hitting it so hard. I was traveling a lot and sleeping not enough. There was always more to do. I never threw up my hands. I never even thought about changing gears because I was doing the things I wanted to be doing. A more balanced approach would be the things you said and to say that you're worthless if you don't get enough sleep. I would work through the night at least once a week for decades sometimes two nights a week.

How about five times a week? When I first met Bob, we met at Disney World in Florida. Ken Blanchard invited us both down there. It was in early November of 1988. I'll never forget it. Bob and I met at the airport and we found out that we were going to be rooming together for five days. I had never met Bob before and vice versa. Was I shocked when Bob, it was 3:00, 4:00 in the morning, he was still working. I'm there in my bed.

I've got the pillow over my head, I go, “Would you turn the light off?” He kept working and he didn't do it one day. He did it five straight days. I found out later that the guy's a machine. He's right about bucking up because he would tell himself. He knew the power of self-talk and he was able to keep going. They didn't do it just for them. I've known Bob for many years, he's getting along with hardly any sleep.

What time do you get up, Bob?

I wouldn't recommend this as a lifestyle.

Do you get up early? A lot of our leaders are like, “I'm up at 4:00, an hour meditation and an hour working out.”

I'm more of a night owl. I find that you cannot work through the night unless you're highly motivated, driven to finish something. It wasn't just, “Maybe I'll work all through the night tonight.” I was into something. I've done 31 books. There is a lot of projects there. Those are all on top of the work I was doing.

There was a time when we were working together where Bob was working full-time as the VP of Product Development at the Blanchard Companies. At the same time, he was a full-time student up at the Claremont Schools studying under Peter Drucker. He was driving after work taking his night classes up there.

My dad was a night owl. People would call him at 2:00 in the morning and he'd pick up the phone. I get that too. My husband and I are up to 2:00 doing stuff. I'm working. If I'm up at 8:00, if I get six hours, I'm good. Whatever works for you. I love what you talked about with weariness. You're going to get weary but that's an emotion. You got to tell yourself. It all starts here in the thought, “I'm going to go on.” Dad would say, “I feel like quitting all the time.” I say, “You're not going to. Get back in there. Pick that towel up, wipe that sweat off and off you go.”

Early on, I learned about cognitive behavior therapy. It was all about the messaging and catching myself in the moment, “Cancel that thought. Replace it with something positive.”

That's a cancel culture.

It stopped. I just learned what cancel culture means.

You didn't know it?

I've heard all this stuff. I'm not a big social media person at all. I'm an old guy.

I'm rereading Psycho-Cybernetics.

I haven’t heard that title in many years.

Pick it up again. It’s heresy because God forbid, you capture what's going on in your mind and create your own self-image. It is so powerful about no, nip it, out. People think, “I feel this way.” Thoughts as a man thinketh, emotions then behaviors. That's why Napoleon Hill does the Definiteness of Purpose. We want to do self-care. I, like you, Mario, take care of your body. When you take care of your body, we're still on this mortal coil. You got this beautiful thing up here that you can say, “No.”

The key thing is you got to take care of your spirit and heart. With what's going on with cancel culture, we've got these polar opposites going on in our community, we got racial inequity. We got to stand up and hold hands together. You remember the old story about, hold hands before you cross the street? Bob, do you remember that book?

It’s Robert Fulghum, All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten.

We need to do that and realize that we're all in this together. We're only as good as we are together. It's not about just one person or the other person. Bob, you wrote a book about that. Wasn't that some African thing?

Leaders: We’ve got to have a reason. We’ve got to have meaning. We have that vision out there, and we keep pushing on and keep that momentum going.

Ubuntu!

Tell Tracey what’s that about.

It's a South African principle of unity and connectedness. It's very powerful that is pretty much foreign to our culture but we're in it together. This is an example of it. They had a study with a psychologist and sociologist that he told a bunch of African kids, “There's candy behind that tree up there. Whoever gets there first can have it.” He thought that they would do a foot race and the biggest person would win. Instead, they all joined hands and they ran together. Afterward, he interviews them, “Why did you do that? You could have had it all?” The kid said, “I wouldn't have enjoyed it if I couldn't share with my friends.” It was a different outlook on life.

What did they say? All boats rise together. People think, “I'm going to be at the top. A little goon. Everybody else is going to be in the Bermuda Triangle.” That's not how it works. You may think that but you're going to get sucked down there too one of these times. Let's get back on point. The next thing he talked about was abandonment. Abandonment typically gets a negative connotation, fear of abandonment. I'm in pet rescue. Abandonment is a bad thing. My dad talked about abandonment. He used to tell me, “Tracey, I waste more time in a day. In other words, thinking about things I like and want to think about instead of doing and thinking about things I ought to need to think about.”

It was very much about hyper-focus. Seizing every moment, dying to self every day. You're entrepreneurs and you're up all night and you could probably write a book a night, how do you guys stay focused? This is the struggle everybody has, that singularity. We're not linear do this then do that. We're radial. I call it the spiritual gift of complication. All things to everybody. We're ragged. How do you guys stay on point?

Peter Drucker used to say, “The only people that get anything done are the megalomaniacs that have this incredible focus. You can only do one thing at a time. You need to work on the thing that's most to import to you and then do a second thing as a break from that.” That's what he would advocate. There is a lot to that. We don't talk that much about approaches to getting work done but that's what it's all about. I think a lot about what's the most important thing I need to be doing. I don't always focus on that but I always have an awareness of what is most important. I do the things in the order of priority and that's a good day when that can happen.

He does it extremely well. He's got all these plates spinning in the air. Bob's one of the few guys I know that feels very comfortable with his feet planted firmly in midair.

Do you have any tools, Bob? How do you stay disciplined? Do you have a planner or do you plan the night before like laying out your shoes? Do you layout your task about what you want to focus on? How do you stay on point?

I sometimes do so that I don't have to waste time in the morning. Reflecting before I go to bed and maybe jot down a few things. I have a longtime friend, for example, he's committed to exercising and when he goes to bed at night, he always thinks of when he will exercise the next day, what time of the day and what he will do. As a result, he has exercised every day that I've known him for many years. It's simplicity but it then becomes a powerful habit.

I keep a mini spiral-bound little notebook, one of those little 3x5 things lined. I keep that on my nightstand. I have my phone there as well. What I do is I send myself email messages. I put in what I need to do in my subject line. I also write things on the pad. It's the same pad that I used for the gratitude list when I used to do those manually. I do them naturally.

I have a contentment journal at the end of the night where I list my blessings. Otherwise, it's all about the grind and not about all the miracles that happened. I do that, Dr. Bob, that Ivy Lee method. Write down the night before the six things and then rack and stack them. There are days where I'm so on point, it's like, “I got more done in four hours than people do in four years.” Other days where I'm a month of, “I haven't gotten anything done.” It's okay, leaders out there. You're going to ebb and flow.

It's important to start with the low hanging fruit early in the morning. There is a book I forgot. It was a few ago. It was about make your bed. He was a retired Admiral. He says, “If you start off with that, it's a no-brainer but then things can flow from that when you get into that habit.”

Like abandonment, when you dial in, you feel like you're being a good steward to your resources and time, which tends to combat weariness. I know when I'm most weary and the rundown is when I'm the most unfocused. Like Dr. Bob sitting up at 3:00 in the morning, the more focused I get, the more energy and intensity I have.

With that abandonment, the question that I always have is, “Who is abandoning me or making me being abandoned?” It gets back to the mental aspect of I'm not alone. It's a difference between being lonely and being alone and being comfortable with being by yourself because there’s nothing bad with that.

One of the guys on the show said, “The greatest leaders know what to say no to.” I was like, “That's pretty much abandonment in a nutshell right there.”

Staying focused, we all have to have that vision out there. One of the clients I was working with, I'm helping her. She's doing a keynote for the University of Michigan. She's an alumnus of the business school there. They brought her back because even though she is 30, she is fantastic. She's like you, Tracey, she's working miracles out there. She was singled out by NBC News when she was fourteen years old. Why? Because she had started a nonprofit to help kids. It was a give-back program in Ohio.

They took a film crew out to LA. They flew her out to LA for a week. They interviewed her and they did this huge profile on her. The long and the short is she had a vision when she was ten years old about helping people. Her thing is, “I want to help people have the most beautiful world for themselves as possible.” She's had that ever since she was a little kid and she keeps that focus. Every day when she gets up, it's always moving the needle, “What can I do to move the needle here?” She's been doing it all her life. It was tremendous. That's a good term.

You said the V-word, Mario. Let's go on to that. That's the last thing, vision. Some people get the calling when they're ten, others like us it takes a lifetime. It's different visions throughout life. My father would always say, “Vision is seeing what needs to be done and doing it.” You don't have to be Nostradamus or Oprah Winfrey or Mark Zuckerberg. It's seeing a need and then doing something about it. Dr. Bob, can you talk about how you craft your vision, how you clarify or amplify your vision?

It's something that you need to constantly refine. For my life, I had the vision of leveraging the assets that I had. I learned early on that I was a pretty good writer and I got a lot of passion. The books I write about are things I'm passionate about. They tend to follow my values, which are practical and positive. In everything I've done, that's a common theme. It's been a very specific vision. It wasn't curing world hunger or anything like that. It was things that I felt I could make an impact on.

How about you, Mario? What's your vision?

I came up with it early because, number one, my wife was a great leader. She was a forerunner for me. I also learned a lot from my sister Elsie, who is eight years older than me. She was a pioneer in the HR area in the ‘70s although she never wrote any best-selling books.

I wrote about her.

It’s not too late.

I was eighteen when I came up with a vision. It was helping people help themselves to be the best they can. It's pretty basic and broad. I thought, “I can do just about anything and it's still going sit underneath the vision there.” One thing I realized too is when you have a vision, you create it. If it's on paper, you put it down for a second. You start to think about, “How am I going to get there?” It dawns on me and people that, “Here's where I am. Here's where I say I want to be. Now I experienced this tension.”

It's a tension of, “I'm not there yet.” That cognitive dissonance of, “I'm here but I want to be there.” It’s that tension that at first I was uncomfortable with than I thought, “I can't do that. It's too hard.” I read a book by a guy named Fritz, Path of Least Resistance. He said, “Pick up a rubber band and hold one in here and stretch it out to your vision. What do you feel?” We feel the tension. He says, “Most people do this. They feel that tension. To relieve the tension, they let go of the finger where the vision's going.”

Leaders: People will forget what you said and what you did, but they will never forget how you made them feel.

Now that they no longer feel the tension but what do they have? They're stuck in the present where they are. He says, “We got to learn.” What I've been trying to learn over the years is how do I let go of my present and allow the tension to lessen toward my vision? That's the struggle that I've always had. That's what I always share with people is, feel the burn and do it anyway. You just trust that it's going to happen for you.

That's so important for our readers too because that is a universal truth. It's like a slingshot. That tension is lining you up and putting the extra force and vectoring you so you don't blop or miss the mark. You said rubber band but I remember I was in my classes and somebody explained that to me. That gave me such hope that this is all working together. It hasn't happened yet so that's okay. You've got to be okay with this equipping because these things take time.

For leaders out there and I love it, you guys are still out there at our age and stage still creating this great content. My dad would always tell me, “Tracey, we're all wet behind the ears until we're 55.” Somebody sent me an article that people's most productive years are 60 to 70, 70 to 80 was number two and 50 to 60 was number three. I'm only on number three. The best is yet to come. Isn’t that encouraging?

My wife's cousin is 99 years old. She has an idea that her next big venture is to start a museum of the body to teach kids that they got to be mindful of what we put into our body, both food-wise and drink-wise and also fat-wise and what it can do to you. She wants to have all these different examples of bodies. What happens when you do things to them? Back in 1940, she started probably the best-recognized top fitness spa facility in the world. It's still going on. It's called Rancho La Puerta. It's in Tecate, Mexico.

Since that time, she has done some tremendous things, no college degree but every few years she ran for Congress. She wrote a book for new congresspeople, their first 90 days, how to get set up in Congress. She ran foundations for the government. She worked with USAID and continues on a museum of new Americans that she started many years ago. It's amazing because she had that idea in her head, “If I'm breathing, I'm creating, producing and helping people.”

I got to get her on the show.

You should have her.

I'd love to get her contact information. There is no retirement in the Bible. If you're breathing, there is still something left. If God hasn't called you home, you haven't done something stupid to expedite that process or you haven't let your body catch a lifestyle illness. You don't live to be 99 treating your body like a toilet.

Methuselah was 970 years old. He kept saying, “When is this going to end?”

You got to believe back then, they're like, “Why are we living so long? I want to go home.” I appreciate you guys talking about vision and how it's constant and you never know what's going to pop up if you let it happen. If you're here, there are still callings to be done and followed.

They have to matter. Simon Sinek reminds us it's the importance of why. It's like, “Why am I here?” We’ve got to have a reason. We got to have meaning. We got that vision out there and we keep pushing on. We keep that momentum going.

As Victor Frankl said, “You assign the meeting.” We're still like, “What's life going to tell me?” It's like, “It already told you. You're living. Now go.” Do anything. It will unfold for you. Dr. Bob, anything else? We've covered loneliness, awareness, abandonment, vision, anything else you want to share with our leaders about leadership? We unpacked a lot but I'm sure there are some other things you'd love to cover.

It's a gem of a book your dad did. There is a lot of takes on leadership. All that's very inspirational. My take has been more towards the management of things and being more nuts and bolts on how to get the best out of people. That's where Mario and I have worked together to create our latest book, Work Made Fun Gets Done! which are simple ways to boost energy morale and results. A piece of what people can use to help be their best as work and play have merged.

As our lives have merged, we have to bring all aspects to the workplace in who we are. You work for a paycheck and then you play on the weekend are long gone. The best managers and companies are addressing that so that people can enjoy their work, who they work with and who they're working, who they're serving as a client and customer.

I read a Chambers quote, “People don't remember the results that somebody did but they remember the atmosphere they created while doing it.” That's exactly what you're talking about. Work made fun gets done.

Maya Angelou said something similar to that. How's it go, Bob?

I did know that. I'm groping on it.

“People will forget what you said and did but they'll never forget how you made them feel.”

As smart as we are, we're still emotive creatures. Where can people pick up the book?

Wherever books are sold Barnes and Noble, Amazon or if you're going to buy it online, please go to Bookshop.org because it supports small bookstores.

If you're looking for the best discount, then you go to Bob's website.

BobNelson.com got an online bookstore and all my books are sold at discount prices.

If you like listening to the book audibly, what's the name of that place, Audible?

Yes, I don't have that on my website. I probably should get that there.

Tracey, you know about all that stuff, you do all that promoting.

Leaders: It's very doable to set up a culture that's still highly productive but also gives people a sense of respect and belonging, where they want to come to work and do their best.

A thing or two. If people wanted to reach out to you both, what's the best way for them to get in touch with you? If they're thinking they'd like to work with you, who is your ideal market?

I've worked with 80% of the Fortune 500 and I work with companies of all sizes and all industries. Usually, the ideal is companies that want to create a work environment where people want to stay. We're in the midst of the great resignation and twelve million people have left their jobs and expect to continue. If you want to create a culture where people think twice about leaving and wanting to stay, I can show them how to do that. Mario helps me with a lot of those clients as well. It's very doable to set up a culture that's still highly productive but also gives people a sense of respect and belonging where they want to come to work and do their best work because of how the culture is set up.

The behaviors that occur on the part of all the managers and upper management. Another Peter Drucker quote, “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.” It was the expected behaviors and patterns. Celebrating success as Mario and I would be a strong advocate of catching people doing things right. Focusing on learnings rather than mistakes, involving people, asking for their ideas and opinions, involving them in decisions that affect them. All the most powerful motivators are things that don't cost money. I like helping organizations get a better handle on making that happen in the sphere of every one of their leaders.

I know you said Fortune 500 but we have quite a few in South Central PA small and mid-sized. What would you say, Bob, would you work with a company like 25 people?

I'd send them a book. For a lot of organizations, that's where it starts, a book and then maybe a training. You can have a small company that can run with it from there. I had a hospital in Hartford, not a big hospital but someone got one of my books and focused on first-year nurse retention. They did three things differently that they pulled from my book and that led to 20% savings and turnover, which for them, they worked it out to $1.5 million in savings from implant three ideas. Two of them didn't cost anything. One had a nominal cost. It's not what you're spending. It's the buttons you're pressing to accept a better workplace.

Those are 3 of over 400 ideas that we have in our book.

Which are all real-life examples of what companies are doing to create the type of cultures that make a difference.

They're mostly low to no cost. The greatest no-brainer in the history of mankind.

I love the fact that you talked about that. Get that book. We're big into the transformation but you said it, it's not what you're spending, it's the buttons you're pressing. I love that. That's profound. If you're a company, start with the book. If you're not willing to at least read a book collectively as a team, which is why we push reading together somebody coming in from the outside is going to waste a lot of money because if you're not already engaged with learning together, forget bringing somebody else in who's going to tell you stuff in one ear and out the other.

When I work with companies, I advise them not to start with a big budget, start with the behavioral practices and behavior, which are sometimes harder than we think because people haven't been doing them. Warm up that muscle. You can always spend some money later to make it bigger and better. The starting point is more times than not in my experience is behavioral, what the leaders are doing with their people.

The good news is people say, “Another book. I'm so busy. I've got a stack of books on my nightstand.” We don't want you to read the book. It's a reference book. We want you to peruse the first two chapters and then thumb through it. You find areas that have meaning for you and then you look at different ideas. If you don't find a great idea on one page, turn the page because it’s probably going to appear on the next page. Bob says this all the time.

Sharing that with the readers because we are busy but leaders, you cannot be a leader if you're not dialing in and trying to find this stuff out. These guys have distilled this down to these wonderful little gems. You don't get out of this, turn the page. Let's find something else. Thank you, Mario, for pointing that out.

Thank you.

Any last-minute readdresses or thoughts?

It's what you do with people, not to them. That thought crossed my mind as we were talking.

Work made fun together gets done together.

I see why you have found your calling and been so successful. Thank you in a world where people have hated their jobs since the dawn of time. It's one of those things but it doesn't have to be that way. As leaders, we're always looking for ways to dial in and look for new things. Thank you for sharing your thoughts and for all you do for many organizations.

Remember, nobody hates going out to play. If you make work like play, nobody hates it.

My dad did that. He's work and fun together. You don't separate the two because there's a duality to everything, even loneliness. There's a good and bad lonely. Don't be so dichotomous. Let's find a way to put them together because we're all living longer if we take care of ourselves. Make it fun or don't do it. Resign and go start your fun business.

We used to say that at Blanchard, if you're not having fun at work, find something that's fun or go home.

Evolve or evacuate. This is the choices here. Grousing, Psycho-Cybernetics, don't let your body catch a disease to your mind. That's never good. That grousing and stress and, “I can't believe.” Stop and go do something because the opportunities are unlimited. They always were but they are. Dr. Bob and Mario, thank you so much for being on our show.

To our readers out there, thank you so much for being a part of the show. If you liked what you read, please leave us the honor of a five-star review wherever you read this show. Be sure to connect with Dr. Bob and Mario. We've got all their connections out there. These gentlemen are going to be a tremendous resource for you. Go over to TremendousLeadership.com. Be sure to sign up for our free two weeks of eBooks and keep on paying the price of leadership. We are thankful for you. Have a tremendous rest of your day.

Important Links:

About Dr. Bob Nelson

BOB NELSON, PH.D., president of Nelson Motivation Inc., is the world’s leading authority on employee recognition and engagement. He’s worked with 80% of Fortune 500 companies, is a Senior Fellow for the Conference Board, a top thought leader for the Best Practice Institute, and was named a top-five management guru by Global Gurus. Fondly known as “Dr. Bob,” he has authored over 30 books on employee motivation and engagement, which have collectively sold over 5 million copies and been translated into more than 30 languages.


About Mario Tamayo

MARIO TAMAYO is a principal with Tamayo Group Inc., a no-nonsense consulting firm specializing in leadership and organizational performance. He has more than 30 years of experience in maximizing human performance, working with organizations such as Genentech, Amylin Pharmaceuticals, Petco, General Dynamics, and the U.S. Men’s Olympic Volleyball team.