This is a slightly edited version from a podcast interview conducted by Dr. Vic, Founder & CEO of TEP.Global.
To hear it as a podcast
Dr. Vic
The old paradigm is not working anymore: If we want to survive, we need a new paradigm of how we work and live our lives. If business organizations want to survive, they need to shift their approach to human resources, employment and leadership altogether. Let’s talk about it.
Welcome to the energy paradigm show.
Too many people are suffering, too many people medicate to get through a normal day, too many people live a life of quiet desperation instead of shining their light. That’s where the energy paradigm comes in a radical shift in mindset that takes us from the impersonal to the personal, from treating us like machines to treating us like human beings.
We need a new form of human sustainability, where organizations actually take care of their most important asset: You; And where you truly lead your life.
Each episode we have a fascinating discussion with an outstanding person, a game changer about what we can do to change the paradigm of how we work, do business and lead our lives. We talk about their struggles, what made them become a game changer and how they carry their message into the world, and we learn what ultimately drives those outstanding individuals to take a stand, to inspire, to build a legacy and leave their mark for humanity.
This show has been created because we believe the world will be a better place when we start treating people like human beings. We believe that everyone has talent and purpose and deserves the chance to shine, to matter, to make a difference, that’s The Energy Paradigm.
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In our third episode, I chat with Cherry Plett, an organizational development expert and researcher in neuroscience who is seeking to build brain friendly environments to improve performance in organizations and leadership. We discuss how she got into organizational development, her interests in neuroscience, what happens to our brain during a performance review, why it matters what we believe about other people, how experiential development can help your organization and why it matters to create brain friendly working environments. Sharing her Aha moments in life, Cherry is exemplifying how women in research and science can make a difference in our world.
And here’s Cherry! Welcome to the show, Cherie!
Cheri
Thank you Victor.
Dr. Vic
It’s an honor to have you. I’m really looking forward to our conversation!
Cheri
I am as well.
Dr. Vic
Let’s start from the beginning Cherry: How did you get into organizational development?
Cheri
That’s a really good question. I think I was doing organizational development long before I knew that’s what it was called for many years. I was involved in mostly just the training and teaching world, doing lots of facilitation across all levels from you know, K 12 and then into doing a lot of stuff with community college level and then found the whole corporate training environment and really fell in love with being able to step into an organization and do training and then the training kind of morphed into moving beyond training and starting to work with leaders and teams and um you know, helping groups move through change and helping teams in the midst of conflict and I just thought I was just still a trainer and then um you know,
I started to read about organizational development and realized, oh that’s what I’m doing. I am really actually doing more than training, so I kind of stumbled into it just kind of naturally progressed from doing a lot of facilitation and training.
Dr. Vic
Organizational development is all about helping people, teams and organizations grow.
What’s your secret?
Cheri
Gosh, if I tell you that it won’t be a secret anymore, but let’s see um you know, I think a lot of it really comes down to what you believe about people because when you talk about organizations and then that breaks down into teams and then, you know, those teams break down into individual people and I think so much revolves around what do you actually believe about people at a core level and I think that affects, certainly affects how leaders lead and there are, you know, different theories out there, but it kind of comes down to at the end of the day: Do you believe that put in the right environment that people have a natural desire to grow and be better? Or do you think that you constantly have to control the environment in order to get good performance? So I think that’s kind of the secret is believing the right thing about people at the core.
Dr. Vic
How do our beliefs or belief systems shape who we are and how we act?
Cheri
Uh you know, it’s funny because we can say, you know what we believe about people and you know, thinking that’s kind of outside of ourselves, but really it does come down to what do you believe about yourself? And there’s a lot of people out there talking about that from a lot of different angles and some of that really does get shaped by the family you grow up in. But really, you know what you believe deep, deep, deep down about yourself as a person, I think also shapes how you see other people and whether or not you think that there has to be a lot of control to have people doing the right thing or in contrast to that, are you gonna look for ways to develop character and growth? Um I was actually thinking the other day about what kind of words we use to describe different things because to me like an individual person and then, you know, groups and teams there like a plan, they’re like a living organism.
And when we think about, you know, talk about if you had a beautiful rose garden and you wouldn’t say I’m going to go out and manage my garden necessarily or I’m gonna go out and control my garden or supervise those plants growing. You know, you would think of it more of a gosh, what can I do to nurture them? What can I do to make the soil really good, you know, for what’s growing? And it seems like, you know, that’s more how we need to even think about ourselves, you know, that we’re doing things to nurture our own growth. Versus if you were talking about your car or your computer, you know, if you’re gonna go work on that,
you probably wouldn’t say I’m gonna go nurture my car, You know, those are more things you control and because it’s a machine. So at the end, do you see it as something living, or do you, you know, kind of see it as a machine? I think people approached their lives kind of based on how they see the world through either of those lenses.
Dr. Vic
Sounds to me very much like a constructivist theory or maybe even living organism theory. Is that something that you apply to your work?
Cheri
Absolutely. I really believe we need to create environments where people can construct their own meaning and give them an opportunity to kind of figure things out. One of my greatest personal joys is to watch somebody have an off moment and then they own it, they own what it is they learned and figured out. But sometimes you have to have more of that constructivist mindset that you’re going to create environments that allow people to, you know, experiment and innovate and figure things out for themselves. So absolutely, I love that way of thinking and approaching things.
Dr. Vic
Now, I have to ask: What’s your biggest aha moment?
Cheri
Oh gosh, that is a really good question. There have actually been a lot of them, I’ll actually tell you a story. Um this is getting kind of a little more personal. And going back to when I was in high school, um I was a freshman in high school and I had been sick for a really long time and came back to school and I had to take a test and so you know, this is gonna be like a full disclosure thing. I thought, oh my gosh, there’s no way I’m going to be able to pass this test if I don’t cheat. So I’m thinking okay, I’m just gonna write a few answers down on a little piece of paper in case I need them. Well of course I got caught and I remember sitting in the principal’s office thinking, oh no, I got caught cheating, this is horrible. But the principal asked me the wisest question, he could, if he said, are you sorry, you cheated or are you sorry, you got caught ? And honestly Victor, that was a turnaround moment for me in my life because it felt like I got something shined on the inside, as far as my own, like, internal motivation and how I was starting to develop as a person. And um, so it wasn’t really, you know about cheating, it was sorry I got caught. So it’s kind of an aha moment that there’s the external part of how you live your life, but then there’s the internal part of how you actually feel about yourself on an ongoing basis.
Dr. Vic
This is such a nice segue into what we are doing at The Energy Paradigm, because we believe that we are responsible for managing our own energy and that in the end, the energy that we have is all we have. So it’s on us to seek situations that build our energy and what situations that take it away. We also believe that it’s all about creating corporate cultures that support this energy, this engagement, you spoke about beliefs earlier. What role do beliefs play when it comes to the perception of workplaces? How much do relationships matter in the workplace?
At workplaces, people need to know how to respect each other’s differences, understand each other’s personalities, how to communicate and are able to work collaboratively
Cheri
I think it is a critical belief that shapes a lot. I mean, some people think, oh, you know, when you go to work, it’s completely depersonalized and you know, you have a job to do and keep the relationships out of it, but I think it’s critical that you also are aware that there’s so much revolves around, you know, the belief of the importance of the relationships that co workers have with each other that, you know, people have with those that they report to. And when you can get, you know, a healthy internal relationship in an organization. That always translates into the relationships you have with your customers and those that your business or organization serves.
Dr. Vic
Not everybody’s interested in relationships at the workplace. How do you deal with people who like their privacy, who want to be left alone, who closed their doors so they can think?
Cheri
Yeah, that’s a good question. Because there definitely are those who are extroverts. Um I tend to fall more in that category. Um I actually, am one of those unusual people who actually enjoy meetings because you know, I get to see people and talk to people and then there are definitely those who are more introverted and need more privacy. But it’s not, to me, it’s not about how much of your deep personal stuff are you making, you know, incredibly vulnerable to your coworkers, because there definitely is a private zone, but it’s more how do we appreciate each other’s differences and understand each other’s personalities and are able to work collaboratively with each other and know how to communicate. Well, know how to respect each other when I talk about relationships. That’s more what I mean. Rather than,
you know, tell me your personal marriage secrets I understand now.
Dr. Vic
Do you need to have a good understanding of yourself in order to understand somebody else?
Cheri
I think that is a really good question. And that reminds me a lot of the work that’s been done in the area of emotional intelligence and the four different parts of emotional intelligence. I love that topic. And it all really does start with self awareness, your awareness of your own being able to correctly label your own emotions and understanding that about yourself. You have to have that before you can manage your own emotions and you have to have both of those in place before you can be perceptive of what’s going on with other people and being able to understand the emotions and what they’re experiencing, and you have to have that before you can really have those good relationships and manage the relationship and you can’t have any of those out of order. You have to have the self awareness, self management and then you can have the relational awareness and then the really good relationships that you can manage.
Dr. Vic
Your doctorate is in neuroscience based performance management. What fascinates you about neuroscience and what is the link to the performance management part?
Cheri
Thank you for asking that. In fact, that’s one of those questions I love talking about that when I was telling people I was getting ready to do this podcast, I’m like, there’s actually somebody who wants me to talk about this because honestly, um you know, most of my family and coworkers, they kind of start to roll their eyes when I want to talk about this. So, thank you for giving me an opportunity to talk about this. Yeah, so neuroscience based performance management practices and how that really shapes um you know, employee engagement. Um It’s fascinating because for years we’ve had different theories of, you know, what’s the best way to motivate people and you know, there’s been behaviorist theory and this theory and that theory. Well, you know, about 20 years ago um a lot of the neuro technology around neuroscience allowed us to start actually looking and seeing what was going on in people’s brains. And so it gave us some of that really hard science to align with a lot of the softer sciences of, you know, the psychology and all of that, that now we actually had hard science,
you know, you could do a scan on someone’s brain and actually see how it’s reacting in different circumstances and being able to take what we actually know about how the brain functions because really everything you do, your brain is involved in and your every thought, every feeling it all runs through your brain. And so taking what we’ve learned in the field of neuroscience as far as you know, what helps people stay in their best state.
And now what if we applied that to the workplace and had like brain friendly work environments that were really supporting keeping people’s, you know, brains as engaged as possible. Um was fascinating to me and where I ended up taking my study more specifically around performance management, um and especially around those annual performance reviews that most people absolutely hate when they’ve done um like scan people’s brains during that. I mean literally, you know, your brain shuts down in those kinds of situations because it feels threatening and as soon as you feel threatened, um there’s just parts of your brain that starts shutting down.
So I have a passion for taking what we’ve learned in the field of neuroscience and applying it really to the workplace and then, um not just giving it as information to leaders, but ultimately changing organizational structures of how we structure things, how we um, you know, manage things, how we, what we do around performance and compensation and it’s kind of like what if we created a whole work environment that really aligned with something that was brain friendly and we kept everybody’s brains at optimal capacity. I mean, what else can improve productivity more than that fascinating in your opinion, are performance reviews obsolete and if yes, what would be the alternative. Um, obsolete? A pretty extreme word. Um, I don’t think right today, um, a lot of places can go there completely. It’s a pretty big jump. I think, you know, a lot of organizations are maybe gonna have to get there a little more slowly.
Um, but as far as what can replace it and maybe in like a parallel fashion and maybe you just kind of, you know, weed them out and make them not quite as important is doing things more around high performance coaching, giving people feedback and helping them really look forward to see, you know, what do they need to do to improve their performance and, you know, it’s funny Victor. A lot of other fields have already figured this out if you look at high performance athletes and the the way their coaches work with those with high performance athletes and you know what they’ve done, Steven Carter I think is the guy’s name, He’s written a lot around, like he calls them like flow hacks and um a lot around, you know, the thing of flow and high performance athletes have figured out how to kind of hack into their own biology and their own, you know, neurology and psychology to get them to perform optimally, and there’s a lot we can learn from what’s happening in the high performance um you know, sports area and bring some of that into the workplace. So, kind of a roundabout way to answer your question, a lot of it comes from knowing how to coach people rather than thinking I have to manage and control them.
Dr. Vic
You can read a lot about heartfelt leadership, about supportive leadership, maybe servant leadership approaches, is there a connection between the brain and the heart and is that something that neuroscience is looking into?
Cheri
Yes, there’s been a lot of people who have looked at that connection. I’m not sure if you’re familiar with something called heart math. Um I have a friend who’s done a lot of work around that and partly because I think, you know, we like to compartmentalize different parts of ourselves because it makes it nice and neat and tidy. But I think everything about us, our, you know, our hearts are mind, even our spirits, our physical body. Um they’re all interrelated. It’s very, it’s hard to completely compartmentalize those. It’s nice to do it, to look at them,
but in true functioning, I think they all work together. I think I remember that I read something that we actually do have brain cells all over our body and who are connected to the brain and and they are interacting. I think that would also explain why when we don’t feel well,
psychologically we can have physical symptoms and vice versa.
Dr. Vic
Now when we look into men and women in the workplace, are there any differences when it comes to brain function related to performance?
Cheri
The study that I have done hasn’t ever looked at the differences in gender. That would be something really fascinating to explore further. You might know more about that than I do.
Dr. Vic
Actually, frankly, I don’t! I thought this would be a smart question.
Cheri
Well, if any of your listeners know, maybe they can write in and let us know what they know. Right?
Dr. Vic
That’s a very good idea. I like it. I’ve heard that you’re working with material of best selling author and meditation expert Joe Dispenza.
Cheri
Yes. How do you use it? And how does it help with organizational development? Joe Dispenza wrote a book a few years ago called Breaking the habit of being yourself. And then they turned that into a program in the workplace called Better mind better results. And I was actually able to become one of his certified facilitators and I think there’s only like 23 of us around the world. And what we do is we really kind of like trace the anatomy of a thought that really every thought you have releases a chemical in your body. And then those chemicals trigger feelings and then those feelings trigger behavior and then actions and then habits and then how that affects you know, everything that you do and relationships.
And there’s some really powerful work around what we can do with our thoughts and our words. Just realizing that you can’t just have these, you know, wild renegade thoughts running through your head and thinking that they’re not gonna do anything. Because I just love this one thought. Um in that program is that every thought releases a chemical in your body, and you get to control what chemicals you want released in your body just by controlling your thoughts and and using them, you know strategically and effectively.
Dr. Vic
Do you believe that we create our reality with our thoughts?
Cheri
Absolutely, absolutely. I’m not even sure what else to say other than yes.
Dr. Vic
Where do you think is organizational development heading from here? What will be important in the years to come?
Cheri
Hmm. Well, if it gets to go my way, um, we will, it’ll, the whole field I think is going to start to um actually look at what works because honestly at the end of the day, um, you know, businesses need to make a profit and it’s what guides the bottom line. And just as we have more science and more studies are done that show that when you actually value the humans and the person themselves, but that really does influence the bottom line. Um, I think a lot of the practices that we do in organizations and how we really, um, I believe it’s important to invest in those human resources, there’s just going to become more and more evidence that really does influence the bottom line. And I think that’s gonna make a way for, you know, a lot less hierarchy, a lot of different ways and how we think about performance, what we think about compensation. There’s even companies out there Victor that have done away with having a certain number of vacation days that they just say, okay, here’s your job, you need to get it done and you work as a team and figure out who needs to be here when, and get the job done and you know, if this means you can take one day off this month or you can take half the day off this month if we get the job done, that’s what matters. I mean, that’s pretty extreme thinking, wow, I mean, they don’t have to keep track of, you know, when they’re there. I mean, that’s kind of an organization that’s really pushing it. But there’s companies out there that no longer do performance reviews, no longer have vacation days, have minimal hierarchy and they’re doing some amazing work and being incredibly profitable.
So I think as we see more and more of that evidence, um, that, wow, this actually works, that will start to learn, you know, how some of those things can be implied at different levels and lots of organizations.
Dr. Vic
Yes, actually, I read about a company, I don’t recall the name right now that has done away with work hours and I think they have reduced their presence time from eight hours a day to three hours. And during those three hours, the CEO expects people to be highly concentrated and work really on the task. The most important thing is that they get their job done. And I like that approach, you know, to give more liberty to the people to work as they want to. And I mean that actually ties very nicely into our approach here. The Energy Paradigm where we want companies to rethink how they employ people right now, it’s pretty much pegging people into positions and and expecting them to perform there, and what we advocate for is to develop positions and teams and organizations around the capabilities of their people, because then you have, the motivation is automatically there.
Cheri
I love that, Victor, I think that’s wonderful. Doesn’t that kind of tie back to what we were talking about earlier, is it? What do you basically think about people? I mean, do you believe that if you only require people to be there and focused for three hours a day, do you think they’re going to still take pride in their work and see it as a challenge, and, you know, look for ways to still, you know, own it and be really high level contributors. Or do you believe about people if you only keep an eye on them for three hours a day, that they’re basically not going to be motivated not gonna get anything done and that you better micromanage them? Yeah, I think, I think we’re past control. Right, that paradigm is not working, does that mean we’re out of control?
Dr. Vic
I think we’re out of control, it means we delegate the control to the people and that is true empowerment and trust. That is true empowerment for me, because I’m convinced everybody has potential, everybody has talent, everybody’s good at something, and I think it is the responsibility of organizations to find out what that is and put it to the best use possible.
And at the same time it’s a shared responsibility. It’s also the responsibility of the employee to not go in in a job interview and say, oh please, please please give me the job. No. They need to go in there and actually assess the organization. Is this organization going to set me up for success? Yes or no. And I think that is the empowerment of the employee that I would like to see and wouldn’t that make you way less nervous if you were going to a job interview and you thought I’m interviewing this company as much as they’re interviewing me.
Cheri
Of course, I think that would help people be much less nervous about the process of course,
because you’re in charge, right?
Dr. Vic
It’s you feel less delivered to the mercy of somebody.
Cheri
Yeah.
Dr. Vic
Now I know that and you mentioned it before, that training is also one of your specialties. How important is experiential training, such as having a team build something or solve a problem together or survive even in the wilderness.
Cheri
I think it’s essential and critical because when you discover something, you own it forever, when you’re told something, it may come and go out of your mind. You may only hold on to it for a moment. I did my Masters at Pepperdine University and they very much had that discovery learning constructivist kind of mindset. And the very first day what they did is they put us in a group and they gave us a pile of legos and it was the ones that were the robotic kind of legos with no instructions. Of course. They took all the instructions out of the box and they told us that we had um just a couple of days as a team to build a robot that we were going to have to race against the other team. And so none of us, and this was honestly pre being able to just Google how to do it. Um that technology was just emerging. And so we had to figure it out for ourselves. And it felt like it was very hard. It was actually one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. And it was, you know, you didn’t feel very in control, but let me tell you, as we developed that understanding together and experimented and figured out how these different things worked. Um I will never forget that. It’s like I own it now and I’ve been able to apply that kind of um you know, process to lots of different things. But I think it kind of goes back to I guess I keep saying this goes back to what do you believe about people? You believe there’s this innate curiosity and desire to learn and grow. And if you put somebody in a little bit of a complex situation where the answer is not so clear that there’s going to be a natural curiosity that will discover it and learn something. Do you believe that about people? And I think it helps you kind of trust using that kind of process and letting them be part of owning it, not just me, the experts, let me tell you all this important stuff and pour it into your brain, I don’t think that’s very effective.
Dr. Vic
How does that translate to letting employees make mistakes and learn from them?
Cheri
Yes, well I think it’s critical and that there’s something Carol Dweck wrote a book several years ago um on the growth mindset and that’s been one of those foundational kind of things for me, is that believing that when you have a growth mindset, how you think about mistakes is completely different than if you have a fixed mindset. A growth mindset, you know, believe that all throughout life you’re constantly growing and improving versus a fixed mindset believe, okay, I have a fixed amount of intelligence, I have a fixed amount of ability and so if you have a fixed mindset and you make a mistake, it is a huge um like wow, it can make you feel like a failure, it’s like when you fail, it means you’re a failure. If you have a fixed mindset versus when you have a growth mindset. If you fail, it’s a learning opportunity and I think helping people, you know, learn how to grow from their mistakes and not create environments that are punitive and make people afraid to make mistakes because then nobody tries and nobody grows.
Dr. Vic
I’m guilty of that. I was, I was raised in Germany exposed to a culture that is very punitive,
you don’t make mistakes and if you make a mistake you’re done um you can still see that today if a company doesn’t do well and the CEO loses the job, it’s very, very hard for that person to find a new employment. How do you help people overcome this limitation or this barrier?
Cheri
Yeah. You know, it all comes down to fear um a lot when I think about organizational cultures and what you’re creating for people, I like to ask people the question,
What are you most afraid of? Like what are you actually afraid of? Are you afraid of getting fired? Are you afraid of, are you afraid of being embarrassed? Is it a fear of failure? Is it fear of embarrassment? Is it a fear of ridicule and helping people really identify being able to answer that question? What am I most afraid of if they can actually label that and figure that out, then you can kind of help them think differently about it.
Dr. Vic
But that whole idea of creating an environment where there was no fear, wow. I mean could you imagine a work environment where nobody was afraid, I would love to work there.
Cheri
I would too,
Dr. Vic
Now Cheri, where do you get your own energy from, how do you recharge, How do you energize?
Cheri
I think, I take kind of a holistic approach to that because I don’t think you can do it just,
you know, through one thing um I believe as you know human beings that we are spirit,
mind and body and that we need to nurture and recharge and re enter all three of those,
you know, for me, there’s definitely a spiritual aspect to that and um you know, my relationship with God and what I think about God, um but you know, we talked about how you feel about people and how you feel about yourself and a lot of that, I think ties to people’s sense of spirituality and what they believe about God and there’s a lot of people that think, you know God is always mad at them and God is very punitive and God is very mean and we better be sure we act perfect, otherwise God is going to be mad at us versus seeing God is a loving father that wants our best, that picks us up when we fall. So for me that very much shapes how I feel about myself and that, so nurturing, that helps with the spiritual part, the mental, I am a lifelong learner, I love learning new things and growing in that area and so I’m a um you know, I constantly keep myself in an environment where I’m learning something and then the typical part, I think it’s important to um I pay attention to what I eat and exercise and but in the last few years I even started doing some martial art and um that has been a wonderful experience, so kind of a long answer of, you have to nurture all parts of yourself to stay energized and motivated 20 years from now.
Dr. Vic
Cheri when people mention your name, what do you want to be known for?
Cheri
Wow, that’s a really good question, You should’ve given me these questions ahead of time Victor. So I could have come up with some really good answers. Let’s see, you know what I would want to, when people would like think back about me, I would want them to say she helped me see my own potential. She changed how she changed how I felt about myself, she helped me see my work, she made me feel like there’s very treasure in me that I just need to go on an exploration and pull out whatever I do. If somehow it could help people.
Well, one believe that there’s a deep treasure in them, that they should go on a, you know,
an exploration to find that, that they would believe it’s there and then really be able to find their own potential.
Dr. Vic
What is the one piece of advice that would have changed your life early on, maybe even saved you from hardship?
Cheri
One of the things I ask myself when I’m kind of stressing about something is I’ll say a year from now, how much will this matter?
Dr. Vic
Thinking of the next generation millennials and beyond? What would be your advice for them?
Cheri
Finding that place where you feel okay about yourself enough that you can touch other people and make a difference in their lives.
Dr. Vic
Wonderful Sherry, thank you so much for that fascinating insight into neuroscience, organizational development and also in your personal thoughts. Thank you for sharing that with us.
Cheri
And thank you Victor. I appreciated the opportunity to be on your podcast.
Dr. Vic
How can people find you if they’re interested in your research?
So great to have you on our show. Thank you very much.
Cheri
Thank you Victor.
Dr. Vic
Thank you for listening. If you’re interested in learning more about The Energy Paradigm,
please visit our website: TheEnergyParadigm.com.
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It’s time to change the paradigm.
You can do your share by spreading the word and by shining your light.
Have an energized day.
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