Why is company culture necessary for technical skills to make a difference?
Who is more essential: workers or executives?
Was Jack Welsh good for business?
These and other highly relevant questions are addressed when Career Success Accelerator Mark Herschberg joins The Rabbi and the Shrink.
https://www.thecareertoolkitbook.com/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/hershey/
0:45 Origins of the career toolkit
How can an engineer (or anyone else) learn leadership, communicating, networking, teambuilding, and negotiating?
Not just for senior leaders but for everyone
3:00 What do you believe that others don’t?
Why soft skills need another name, and technical skills are not enough
Ben Parker’s wisdom
Expand your rectangle for greater success
Improve your weakness as well as your strengths
9:00 How to build a high-power network
More is not always better
Seek quality over quantity
What can I give, not what can I get
14:00 How to make quality connections:
Show that you know who they are
“Here’s an offer to help (not sell)”
Follow up without hounding
17:00 Leadership mistakes
Unlike authority, leadership is not positional
Why the best CEO does nothing
Who is more essential: workers or executives?
Why salary differential is both unethical and destabilizing
Was Jack Welsh good for business?
24:00 The importance of uncomfortable conversations
We need to change quarterly projections and optimization
B-corps vs. C-corps
Not maximizing profits may be the key to success
Create longer term incentives and obligations
30:00 Temperament and consistency
Stated vs. practiced values
“Blame me” for asking about corporate culture
34:00 The word of the day: instantiate
Embody, epitomize
to represent (an abstraction) by a concrete instance.
Having real-life examples the demonstrate principles of wisdom, we can better put those principles into practice
Create your own community to develop these skills and mindset
Why is company culture necessary for technical skills to make a difference?
Who is more essential: workers or executives?
Was Jack Welsh good for business?
These and other highly relevant questions are addressed when Career Success Accelerator Mark Herschberg joins The Rabbi and the Shrink.
https://www.thecareertoolkitbook.com/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/hershey/
0:45 Origins of the career toolkit
How can an engineer (or anyone else) learn leadership, communicating, networking, teambuilding, and negotiating?
Not just for senior leaders but for everyone
3:00 What do you believe that others don’t?
Why soft skills need another name, and technical skills are not enough
Ben Parker’s wisdom
Expand your rectangle for greater success
Improve your weakness as well as your strengths
9:00 How to build a high-power network
More is not always better
Seek quality over quantity
What can I give, not what can I get
14:00 How to make quality connections:
Show that you know who they are
“Here’s an offer to help (not sell)”
Follow up without hounding
17:00 Leadership mistakes
Unlike authority, leadership is not positional
Why the best CEO does nothing
Who is more essential: workers or executives?
Why salary differential is both unethical and destabilizing
Was Jack Welsh good for business?
24:00 The importance of uncomfortable conversations
We need to change quarterly projections and optimization
B-corps vs. C-corps
Not maximizing profits may be the key to success
Create longer term incentives and obligations
30:00 Temperament and consistency
Stated vs. practiced values
“Blame me” for asking about corporate culture
34:00 The word of the day: instantiate
Embody, epitomize
to represent (an abstraction) by a concrete instance.
Having real-life examples the demonstrate principles of wisdom, we can better put those principles into practice
Create your own community to develop these skills and mindset
Welcome to the Rabbi and the Shrink. This is Dr. Margarita Gurri, Dr. Red Shoe. And my favorite rabbi,
Yonason Goldson:Yonason Goldson.
Margarita Gurri:Well, the good rabbi and I are excited today we get to talk to Mark Herschberg. Hi, Mark.
Mark Herschberg:Hi, thanks for having me on the show.
Margarita Gurri:The reason we're psyched about having you is because you created something that we think is really cool. It's the career toolkit. And as I was teasing you earlier, it's all about the common sense, but it's so uncommon, and all the wisdom on how someone can either start a new career, pivot to change their career, or boost their existing career. So where do you want to start? What made you start all this career toolkit sir.
Mark Herschberg:When I began my career, when I came out of school back in the 1990s, I started as a software engineer, and realized quickly, I had a goal, I wanted to become a CTO, Chief Technology Officer. But to get that job, it wasn't just about being a good engineer, there were all these other skills, I needed. Leadership, team building, communicating, networking, negotiating, no one ever taught me this stuff. So I had to develop it in myself. And as I did, so I realized this is not just for senior leaders, this is for everyone in the organization. It's also for solopreneurs, and founders, all of us can benefit from these skills. So I began to teach up my team. As I was doing this, MIT was conducting surveys of the companies who hire our students. And what they heard was that company said, These are the skills we want to see in people, leadership, communication, team building all the same skills, but we can't find them. Not just from MIT students, not just from college grads, but anywhere with anyone we hire, we want these skills but can't find it. So MIT wanted to put together a program to get this into our courses into our students. And we heard about I reached out to them, I said, Oh, I hear you doing this program. I've been doing some content, let me know if I can be of help if I can share anything with you. So they asked me to help create the program, and then invited me to teach it, which I've been doing for last 20 years. Wow. That's how I got into this. I've had this dual career, being a CTO, but also teaching these skills at MIT and elsewhere. And more recently turned it into the book and the app.
Margarita Gurri:So you are a speaker and author, an MIT instructor. And I think you've been changing the world a little here and there, haven't you, sir.
Unknown:I've been trying through my nonprofit work through my teaching, and through my primary job.
Margarita Gurri:Well, the rabbi and I were talking about a principle in, in the community in terms of obligation. Rabbi wanted to talk about that, because I think that what what our guest Mark Hirschberg is do is exactly one of the most ethical things that the rabbi and I really love, Rabbi.
Yonason Goldson:Well, as you were speaking, Mark, I just published a short post this week about I was asked a question, what do you believe that many in your industry don't, and, and I homed in on soft skills, which I think are terribly Miss named, and one of our previous guests, Kimi Zemsky, she's as she calls them power skills. Because ultimately, relationships are built on the way we treat people, and leadership communication. This is all part of the interpersonal relationships that create solid teams and vibrant and healthy communities. And without that, all your technical skills are simply not going to be effective. And I'm not fulfilling my obligation to be of service to perform a job to offer whatever it is I'm offering. If I'm not a fully integrated person, where my technical skills and my personal skills are balanced against one another, is that consistent with your message
Unknown:100%. Now the philosopher I quote is Ben Parker, Spider Man's uncle, I was great power comes great responsibility. And I truly believe in all of us who have some skill, have some capability, have an obligation to share it, to help others. Now, the reason these skills are valuable, I'm going to use an analogy I used to open the book. This comes from my friend, Charles Lazarus, who's professor at MIT. We're gonna do a little bit of math. Imagine for a moment you've got a rectangle that's four by 10. And you have to eat Increase one of the sides by two units to maximize the area. So which side? Do you increase the four or the 10? Feel free to pause the podcast if you need to think about. Alright, but now that you're back, the answer is the short side, you go from four to six, that's 60 units. Okay, great. We remember middle school math was this have to do with what we've been talking about? Consider someone who is extremely brilliant in some area, that deep genius at longside, that 10, maybe 20, maybe 100. Really great. But if you have that very short side, this genius, can't communicate, can build a team to execute on the vision can't share the ideas with others through his network. And so that short side limits you. Now, we all have more than just two sides. But we have long sides and short sides, we all focus our long sides, that's probably our area of study. For me, it's technology. For others, it's different areas could be accounting, finance, sales, but these other skills, soft skills, power skills, firm skills, whatever term you want to use, help us be more effective with that strength of ours. So all of us have to recognize, continue to invest in that big skill, your long side, but also focus on those short sides to have the maximum impact you can and step up to that responsibility.
Yonason Goldson:You know, when you're using that that image, what also comes to mind is that if you extend the short side, you now have a greater base of stability. If you expend stem alongside you, you may improve that skill, but you may become increasingly less stable.
Unknown:Very true. And if we torture the analogy a little as you really expand a think of having many sides, you can almost envision becoming a sphere. And that's how you become a well rounded individual.
Margarita Gurri:Ah, that was very clever. Very clever. So what gave you the idea to start this career career toolkit because I love it.
Unknown:We've been doing the class for years. And I know the impact that we've had with these students, as well as the people who I mentor who I manage, who I've engaged with professionally. And not only do we know, these are the skills desire, these aren't things we just made up. These are skills that we've seen the research at MIT and elsewhere have said this is what's important. We know how to teach them, because we've been teaching it for years. And I know when I say this, here are the next three questions that will come up. So I know exactly how to explain it, how to address the different questions by wanting to reach a larger audience. And for years, I was encouraging MIT to expand this program, MIT led online courseware, we're the first school to take our content. So it's going online for free. We're here to help anyone we can. For various reasons, we couldn't put this content online, we just didn't have the time and resources to do it. Our students also they don't take a lot of notes. This is not a class where we lecture at the students. It's hands on, it's interactive, so they don't take many notes. And I feel they're gonna forget it later on. So I wanted to write up some notes. And just I was traveling a lot for work, I thought, let me start writing some notes. And I can share it with the students, we can share it with others, I really thought it'd be 20 pages of notes. But 20 pages became 40 became 80. And once it passed 100. I said, you know, I don't think this is just a couple notes. This is a book and of course, the subsequent app.
Margarita Gurri:Well, good. Well, during the COVID time, many people have had to rethink themselves, whether add a new arm, or a new way of delivering their services or just start all over. You talk about negotiating jobs and and building high value networks and leadership skills and all that. I want to focus right now on one of the things that I think makes people most upset, which is the idea that need lots and lots of people in a network. And it's not true. My friend, Robbie Samuels says that we already know about 80% of the people we need to know to be successful. And in reading what I did read about your book and listening to your interviews, I believe that you you have a good take on this building a high value network tell us what is the secret? What and what are the steps to get there?
Unknown:So certainly there are our networks follow a power law. There are a smaller number of people who were very close with who we have deep relationships, and there's that long tail. But I think we should just keep extending that tail. We should just grow that whole network, both the head and the tail as much as we can. I would never say I already have too many people in my network. But now here's the thing that people get wrong about networking. They have this view of network That's just adding more and more people collecting whoever may people you can get. And we have that image, that salesperson, he goes into the conference in 20 minutes comes out with 10 business cards, like, oh, wow, he's such a great networker. That is the wrong view of networking. That really kind of turns it into this artificial metric this number, what I always tell young folks saying someone who you added on LinkedIn saying that person's in your network. That's like saying someone who swiped right on you on a dating app is now your significant other. That's not how it works. I wouldn't say like she swiped right on me on Tinder we're dating. There's no March, she's interested. But now you have to build that relationship. The same is true when you add someone on LinkedIn or when you walk out the conference with that business card, and you spoken the person for five minutes, you've got the interest, but you don't yet have a relationship. And we need to focus on the relationship building on the time we spend together, getting to know each other and building trust. And when you view it this way, not only do you have better, healthier connections, but also means those of us who are introverted, we realize we don't have to go into that crowded conference room. This is what scares a lot of people who don't like big crowds. When we're in Traverse, I can't meet 10 People in 20 minutes. You don't have to, you have to somehow get that first connection, maybe an introduction through a friend, maybe you met someone somewhere, but then it's building that relationship. And that can happen one on one, it usually does. And we all know how to make friends. That's all it is when you're building relationships for your network.
Margarita Gurri:And it's sincere. I think if we focus on one person at a time, the rabbi and I have both found that to be very satisfying. You meet people on LinkedIn. And he showed me some about how he does it. And some people do it in a very insincere way. But I like the way that the rabbi does it. And my friend, Maryland. She does an amazing job, marital subtle, she, she makes connections based on how can I help you? And then gets to know people and tell me more about your business and whatever. And then that kind of valuable network, I think, helps everybody a little bit better.
Yonason Goldson:Yeah, I'm going around a year or two ago, about a young woman who had I think it was 2 million Instagram followers. And so she marketed some T shirts. And she sold 36. You know, 2 million followers. Wow. But if there's no relationship there, there's no serious engagement there, then it really doesn't mean anything, does it?
Margarita Gurri:No, I don't think so.
Unknown:And you hit upon something they think is really important, which is recognizing what are we doing in that relationship building? It's not just about what can I get from you? Imagine if you're out one night, you meet a bunch of people and you say, hey, so glad we met tonight. Listen, this weekend, I got packed up my apartment move. I don't have a movers coming. So Why don't y'all come over to my apartment? Help me pack up new friends, you're not gonna get a lot of takers, you're gonna sell those 36 F 2 million T shirts. And because you showed up, you met people you began with that ask you began with here's what I need from you. Instead, we want to begin by that offer? How can I help you, the people I can ask to help me move that apartment are people who I've known for 1020 years, where I have that solid friendship where I've helped them and they've helped me and we don't bother keeping score. So when we network, it's important to show up with the How can I help you mentality? Instead of what can I get from you? Because that's
Margarita Gurri:things online. Let's say I'm on LinkedIn, or the audience is on LinkedIn. What are three things I can say? Or do type or do that show that? How can I help you attitude? Just let's be real basic for people who don't get it.
Unknown:Now, I personally am not a fan on Hey, stranger on LinkedIn, I'd like to connect with you. I don't like that either. But if you want to do it, three things you can do first, read the person's profile. Look them up, look up at least their LinkedIn profile, look them up on social media. do a web search, find out who they are. And when you reach out, show that you've put in that effort. I've been reading up on you I see that you start a podcast a year ago and your area of work is in this area. Okay, so I've shown I've put in some effort. I'm not just going Hey, stranger number one. Hey, stranger number two. Hey, stranger number three.
Margarita Gurri:That's the 10 cards in an hour. Yeah, yes.
Unknown:Second, now they know something about you. I've shown it. I'm going to begin with an offer something that I think is relevant to you. I noticed that you are doing a podcast. You know, I've been on a lot. And let me know if you need any tips, because I've seen lots of things that can help make a podcast Great. Now I'm hopefully doing this not as, and I want to sell you my 10 secrets do a great podcast, because that's not helping you, that's helping me get a sale. That's not true networking. But if I'm just genuinely offering saying, Hey, here's something I think that might be of interest to you that might help you. So now I've shown they've taken the time to learn about you, and I'm offering you something. But then I want to make it in a very non obligatory way. Just here you go. It's the give, and not that hard sell. Maybe I follow up after a week, just in case you missed my earlier message, while make sure you saw it. But I don't want to hound you, I don't want to pressure you to have to act on this. Because I'm not asking anything of you, including your time, it's up to you, if you want to respond to me.
Yonason Goldson:That's why I think that ethics is so fundamental to this type of interaction. Because if I approach people in situations with a sense of what do I have to offer, as opposed to what do I have to gain, then it's a whole different dynamic. And people can smell that they can feel it, they can taste it, and you want to connect with people who have something valuable to offer. And we're typically repelled by people who start off making it clear, I will see you as a commodity. And I'm going to I'm trying to figure out what I can get from you. So that that mindset is really the ethical mindset. What is my impact on the world around me? How am I making a positive difference in other people's lives?
Unknown:Absolutely. Are you going to give or take.
Margarita Gurri:And luckily, as we give, we often receive things that we were so unexpectedly delighted by, you know, it's amazing what you get when you have the pure, pure attitude of giving. So in terms of leadership skills, what are some of the mistakes, you're seeing that your career toolkit might address the leadership mistakes.
Unknown:The first is the belief that leadership is positional. And I've seen in lots of younger folks, I don't just mean the students I teach, but people well into their 20s, or even 30s, and even more senior folks, but the thinking that I will be a leader when when I have this title when I have authority over others. That's what we call positional leadership, but through positional authority, and the military is the ultimate example a more senior person can walk up to more junior person say you need to do this. This is an order a junior person says yes, sir. And they do it. You have to follow that chain of seniority. But in real companies, that's not how leadership works. I can't just order people, certainly, as the leader as a person in charge, I can say we're working on this not that. Even then, if I just say we're working on this, not that because I said so my team isn't going to be happy that I can respond well to that. I work in a very competitive industry engineers can find a job just about anywhere. Absolutely. No, I won't understand why if I don't have a good explanation, they're going to get upset, and they're going to leave. So even though I technically have authority over them. That is not how I lead them that will not be effective. But equally important. Anyone can lead, no matter your title, no matter your level of authority. And this is what companies mean when they say they want leaders is they want someone who can stand up and say, I have an idea. I think we should go in this direction. And here's why. That type of initiative. That's the leadership they want to
Margarita Gurri:see. And that's where they're missing out in terms of innovation and creativity. A lot of times, leaders don't listen to all ideas, whether it's the newbie or the janitor, or whatever anyone's idea could become that spark that makes the difference?
Unknown:Absolutely. Sometimes people are afraid to raise that idea. And if they do, they're not always listened to and that does limit absolutely
Yonason Goldson:hear an idea a while back that the best CEO does nothing. What he does or she does is create an environment in which all the people for whom the leader is responsible, have the opportunity to utilize their talents to contribute what they're capable of contributing to make the largest possible contribution. And creating such an environment is a full time job. But without the micromanaging, without looking over the shoulders, leadership really is bringing out the best in others.
Unknown:That's exactly right. In fact, in the book I talked about, we should look at our org charts inverted. Because if we think about a company, if you got rid of all the executives, all the senior leadership, you just have the workers, okay, might be disorganized, might be a little chaotic, but things would move forward. On the other half, you get rid of all the workers and just have the executives, executives only no have produced meetings and emails, if you got rid of all the workers at General Motors, the plant just sits there, no car actually gets produced. So really, we as executives, and the more senior you are, the more this is true, but this is even true for middle managers. We are there to support those technically below us. That is our job, as you noted. So we really need to look at the org chart inverted that we support from below. So the people we normally think of at the bottom, they're the ones doing the work. They're the ones who are delivering value to the customer. Well, Mark,
Yonason Goldson:I've heard that in terms of salary, that CEO salaries in the last 50 years or so have gone up something on the order of 2020 times 2,000%. Whereas workers salaries and stay pretty much flat is adjusted for inflation. That strikes me as being not only an equitable, but destabilizing, is that contribute to people's discontent, the sense that I'm not being recognized and compensated for my contribution?
Unknown:Yes, indeed, part of the reason for that is a man named Jack Welsh. And fact there is a book coming out in May by my friend, David Gillis, who really looks at the impact that Jack Welch had on the American corporate system, including He's normally been held up as what a genius a revolutionize things. But there are some negative consequences. And this is one, I believe, David's going to talk about that in his book. Now his argument was, well, if you bring me in a CEO, and I generate $15 million more in profits for the company, well, then it's reasonable for me to say pay me 10 Of those, because you're still better off, you did $5 million dollars more, without me. So you're better off even paying me these outside salaries. And the companies who looked only at the bottom line only at what that number is in the short term said, well, that logic holds, here's more money, and of course, created that drive, then another CEO said, Hey, wait, if he's getting 10 million, I want to get the 10 million. And it really drove it up looking at nothing but the short term profits. Now that creates a number of problems, including obviously societal issues where we have disparity in incomes. But even in the company, what that saying is, this CEO is responsible for all of that 10 million for all of that increased value. And sure she or he should get some significant value from it should be recognized for you did create more value, but it was certainly not you alone. And when you have that mentality, then the workers are interchangeable cogs, they're not delivering the value. And that's a bad way to think about your employees. That's a bad way to think about your corporate culture.
Margarita Gurri:So let's go back to something I've noticed, I consult with a variety of different industries, teams, leaders, organizations. And one thing that's exciting that I've noticed, is in since COVID, with all the changes and sometimes shortage of workers, either because they were getting paid and didn't want to work or because they had to be home or whatever the reason. We've had an interesting trend in women or other groups that maybe have not been noticed as key leaders or key innovators stepping up. And some of that is even like on a line like on plants. So some of the plants that I've consulted with the some of the guys and Bye guys, it's gender free, on the line are brilliant and they know the stuff they know the flow, but sometimes people don't listen, the people who are allegedly at the top with these COVID shortages, I see that people are forgetting about Title kind of what you recommend, and treating leaders and innovators just for that the it's an interesting worthwhile idea from someone who knows their stuff. And I I urge everybody to do that, you know Who have you overlooked? And maybe it's time to speak up and time to go for that conversation that you've been avoiding having about an idea you have, and listening differently. So the the idea of a CEO having a bigger salary? What, what would you do about that? So we're talking about a toolkit, if you will make a toolkit for the people who make those laws or rules, what would you say to them?
Unknown:How do they fix it? Companies certainly could choose to do what they want, yes, but the way I look at things, really, we need to change the quarterly optimization, a board, a board of directors has a responsibility to maximize shareholder value. And the way that's typically interpreted is in maximizing it in the short term. Now, there are two potential things we can do differently. One, we're starting to do with what's known as B corpse, B corpse as opposed to C corpse. So most of the corporations, most of what you see traded on the stock market are C corporations, B corpse are referred to as public benefit corporations. And they have what's known as a double bottom line, profits is one of them. But the other is some type of public benefit. That might be helping people get out of poverty, it might be helping small business owners, it's something else that they set. So let's just understand, we might choose to not always maximize profits as much as we could, because we're gonna hit this other goal. So these have been created relatively recently. We're still learning how they work. I don't think they've been as successful as people have hoped. But it's early, and hopefully, we can continue to develop them. The other thing that we should look at as shareholders as board members, is optimizing not just for this quarter or this year, but even long term long term shareholder value. How do we make sure we're setting up the company for success, not just for today, but five years from now. And note that when we award executive bonuses, typically it's based on shareholder price. It's either saying, Oh, your share prices hit this, and therefore, you're getting a cash bonus, or we're rewarding you with shares with stock options. If we can create a sense of that aligns to longer term incentives. If we say you're not just paid on December 31, based on the share price, but you have something that's going to pay you based on the share price over the next three years, we're going to create this longer term obligation, especially for a CEO who might be leaving, she could say, Okay, I'm just gonna do something that in the short term, really juices us to get to that high point. And then after I quit, well, that's someone else's problem. I'm gonna walk out with my big bonus, even said, well, guess what your bonus is partially based on how the company does the next few years. And here again, if the CEO wants to say, I'm the one who has such influence over the company, long term influence, which you do? Well, then you should accept the long term consequences. So I'd like to see more of that.
Yonason Goldson:You remind me I was I was talking to Dr. Before we began, I had to take my wife to to urgent care last week. And she said, make sure we don't go to this one. Let's go to that one. And we came in and as we walked in the door, the fellow at the counter, said, Hi, how can I help you big smile on his face? I finally got her name out said yep, I have all your all your files right here. Because they had asked for the information texted ahead of time. And every single person who came in with smiling was pleasant, was was affable. And my wife asked one of the technicians who was also the manager, this is such a, it's such a pleasure to come here. And he said, we only hire cheerful people. He said, when you're not feeling well, when you need medical attention, the last thing you need is somebody grumpy, or somebody who really doesn't want to be there. And we've been in those types of places to now I don't know what the business model of urgent care is. I don't know whether they're for profit, not for profit. But doesn't this principle apply across the board? You create a culture of employees of workers who have the attitude that creates a vibrant atmosphere and the customers are going to be happy, the employers are going to be happier. Isn't that automatically going to raise the bottom line?
Unknown:I think it depends on the company. I think that ideas right now the actual implementation will vary. If you have an automotive manufacturing plant, cheeriness probably isn't going to move the needle on how well your plant performs. And so you might be overpaying for cheeriness, which isn't going to have a big impact. On the other hand in service industries, medical, as you noted, we can imagine in hotels, for example, you very much I get a value from having cheery people and overall creates a better experience. There might be other cases where cheeriness isn't as important as attention to detail, or maybe even efficiency. at the post office, for example, it's probably less important to have cheeriness than to have people who are very efficient at what they do. Because they're working at high volume, I'm not going to decide whether or not to use the post office based on how cheery someone is. But how efficient it is certainly is going to be an impact.
Margarita Gurri:Well, and one of the things I think that your book addresses your toolkit is something that the rabbi and I've been consulting with different organizations on ethical issues and whatever. And grumpy people end up having more ethical concerns. Because when we're tired and grumpy and anxious and feeling resentful, it's easier to misbehave. But one thing I've noticed is that companies don't often have the same ethics, whether online versus in real life. So for instance, maybe a group is great live, but they're terrible online. And so I think that now that we've upped the ante, companies, if and individuals who want to do well in their jobs, have to have a good presentation strategy, in real life and online.
Unknown:Very true. And in fact, so many companies have their corporate values online, that web page listing the values, and they're all great, wonderful values. But how they actually live them can be very different. Or even if they do live those values, there are some other values that go into either the company or a division or a group. I used the example a guy No said the company he was asked the culture was whoever yelled the loudest one, the argument that was not listed on the corporate website. But that was a very important part of the culture to understand if you were working there. And so we need to understand what are those values? Before we get in, in fact, I have a blog post that just came out today on how you can inquire about corporate culture. During the interview process. It scares a lot of people. They're not sure what to ask, and they're not sure how to ask it. But I go through a number of techniques you can use to make it easier to ask these questions, including, here's a very simple technique. Blame me. When you want to raise these questions, you can say, Hey, listen, this is all looks great. I'm really interested in the job. But there is this guy, Mark Hirschberg, and he said, We should go over these questions for both the company's interest and mine. So do you mind if we go over a few? So now you're not worried about who are they going to think why am I asking or saying Oh, no, no, Mark Hirschberg said, we should ask these questions. It's an industry standard to do this and doesn't seem so abnormal.
Margarita Gurri:So and they can find those blogs on the career Toolkit book.com.
Unknown:That's where if you go to the website, the career Toolkit book.com, there's a number of things you can do. If you go to blogs, you'll see articles. And this one is called How to ask about corporate culture blaming
Margarita Gurri:you write well, it's to the point and it makes sense. I very much appreciated your blog, I urge everyone to read Mark's blog, very helpful. Well, I'm thinking we've come to the point where we're going to ask the rabbi for the word of the day. And when we come back, Mark, we would like final words of wisdom from you, because I think you have a lot of wisdom that will make a big difference. Rabbi.
Yonason Goldson:You know, Mark, you were talking about the core values that somehow don't seem to manifest in behavior. And that's 90 of that is relevant to the word of the day, which is instantiate, instantiate, which means to embody, or epitomize to represent an abstraction by a concrete instance. And now there's a challenge that I face because I'm a big idea person. And I sometimes have trouble bringing those big ideas down into concrete reality. But when we can look at businesses that stand out, I often point to Trader Joe's and Zappos companies that have reputations for a tremendous, worker friendly environment that becomes or creates a customer friendly environment, when you when you walk into a place of business, and you and you just enjoy being there, and the service is good, and the and the the product is good. Well, this whole experience makes you want to come back again. And again, once you make makes you want to tell other people about it. We understand the principles of these skills and these attitudes that we've been talking about. But it's so important for us to have concrete examples that can help us connect the dots and see, okay, I understand this idea conceptually, let's see how it manifests in a way that is, is really working. And when we can, when we can sort of make that journey from the abstract to the concrete, then we can start applying those lessons in our own lives, and extending them into new environments, and helping others recognize the wisdom there as well. So I think you've done a really good job of giving us those kinds of tools that help us take the concepts and put them into practice. Do you have a final message for us that you'd like to leave us with?
Unknown:I do, and it ties into what you were talking about that we can get the ideas abstractly, but it really helps to have that concrete understanding the skills I cover in the book, leadership, communicating, networking, negotiating ethics, these are not skills, we can simply say I just read it, and I know exactly what to do. There is no magic formula, there's no three steps, and it always works. These are subtle and complex. And you have to understand the different facets of these skills. So the best way to learn them is to do so with others. I strongly recommend creating a group of people to learn with if you want to learn how to do this, on the resources page of the website, the career Toolkit book.com/resources. The very first download explains how to do this at a company if you want to do this at your company, or you can do it on your own, create a local meetup group or get friends together. What you want to do is start to explore these topics. Yes, you can use my book, you can use some of the other books I recommend on the website. You can use articles, videos, use a great podcast like this one, as you listen to each episode, discuss it with other people, because it's in that discussion, you're going to get to those different facets, people will bring up different examples. And you're going to get a deeper, richer understanding of these topics.
Yonason Goldson:Well, thank you, you've certainly given us a lot of tools, and a lot of direction that we can start really taking the abstractions and bringing them home. So thank you for your time with us. And best of luck in continuing to spread the word.
Unknown:Thank you for having me on the show. And thank you What's
Yonason Goldson:the last word?
Margarita Gurri:Last Word is we're grateful to you Mark Hirschberg. If anyone has questions for us, please send them a podcast at the rabbi in the shrink. And remember that the issue of how we move forward in the world all depends on us paying attention to who we are, and all of us around us. And just as the rabbi always say, the hardest part is to really listen and notice other people, and what impact are we having on them? And what are we called to do differently? So I think your toolkit gives people some concrete ideas on how maybe they can update their skills and their awareness of who they are and how they're presenting. So that's all I have to say. Gentlemen, thank you for being on the show. And, Mark, please do come again. We'd love to hear more about your, the, you know how your book is being received, and about the next book because you're already writing a next book, I'm sure right.
Unknown:I've got a few lined up. I have another app
Margarita Gurri:up first. Alright, well, we're looking forward to that. Everyone, please be well, on this is the rabbi in the string, and we will see you in another episode. Thank you.