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Welcome to this week’s episode of the HRDQ-U In Review podcast, where we bring you the latest insights and practical tools for enhancing soft skills training within your organization. This podcast is brought to you by HRDQU.com, and I am your host, Sarah, Learning Events Manager at HRDQ-U. Today, I have Terrence Gargiulo joining me to discuss the webinar, Using Stories to Beat Workplace.

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Burnout. Thanks so much for joining me today, Terrence. Thanks, Sarah. It’s great to be here. And just kind of get everybody familiarized with who you are. Can you share a little bit of your background, what you do and how you got to where you’re at today? Yeah. So, you know, I’m one of these guys that has a passion for inciting insight in others. And I guess maybe I got the big wallop on the head. So picture Terrence in college having to do one of those humanity classes that

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Everyone was in the lecture hall and I’m sitting in the back and in walks this professor and he’s wearing rainbow suspenders and he’s got this incredible just full on hair going in every witch’s direction. And he walks to the front of the room and he starts without saying anything to us. He starts reading the book, The Giving Tree. I don’t know. Do you remember the story, Sarah?

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I do remember the story that that’s a good one. To put you on the spot, know we didn’t rehearse any of this. What do you remember about the story? That the tree kept giving to the boy and then the boy kept taking and then one day the tree had no more to give. Yeah. And so that whole giving piece of it, it’s called the giving tree for crying out loud, just made us all sigh sentimentally because we remember sitting on mom’s

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dad’s lap and just that warm story. And yet, Professor Iglesias closed the book, opened it up again, and with a little mischievous twinkle in his eye and a different inflection in his voice, began reading the story. And so this story about this wonderful tree that gives and this wonderful boy and their relationship. And at the end of the story, the old man even has a stump to sit on because the tree just is always there to take care of him. How else, Sarah?

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Professor Iglesias here. How else possibly could we take that story? Well, the boy kept taking and he never gave anything in return. Exactly. And at that moment, Professor Iglesias kind of said to us, his class was imagining who and how we are. And I had this wake up call because he wasn’t trying to talk about relativism where, you know, anything goes in any which direction. He was saying that stories are how we imagine who and how we are.

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And he proceeded to just like literally open my heart, mind and soul. And that became the nexus for the work that I do today. I’m really at my core. I’m a facilitator of meaningful, intentional moments that connect people heart to heart and that activate performance through the power of story. So I’ve published books on this. My whole organizational practice is, has been about not just helping people to become

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uh motivational speakers standing on a stage and telling great stories, but really all the micro stories that happen between us, how in the face of change and burnout and chaos and all these things that are part of modern organizational life, how we can take a breath, how we can connect to ourselves and others more meaningful. That’s amazing. mean, it sounds like that experience really imprinted on you to take it to where.

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you know, all of these things that you have done in your lifetime today so far. I did. And anybody can email me, there’s a great, there’s actually a story, Professor Iglesias and I kind of went on to really begin to do some deep work around organizational storytelling and how do stories function, what are the different ways that stories function and what effects do they have and how can those be used? And to do that, we actually took this wonderful story about the man who had no story.

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wonderful um Irish story and then mapped this whole framework that later became the beginning of my publishing and my work. So, yeah, and happy to share that people just email me, can I have the story with the man with no story in the framework? I’d be happy to send that to I don’t know what they’re talking about. And I’d love to hear your perspective on what changes do you see happening in the L &D space right now? Yeah, it’s an exciting time. I wish, you know, I don’t want to pretend like I have

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the Sears hat, because with AI, with augmented reality, virtual reality, people looking more at performance support, real-time performance support. Some of the core things that we do in learning aren’t going to change. If you do compliance training, you got to do compliance training. There’s no kind of magic bullets, and people have done some really great things about, I think, making it more palatable, right, and making it rich. However, it is what it is.

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And yet there are all these new set of tools. But I think, you know, it’s about de-emphasizing the content in a cluttered world. uh I think kind of like what you’re doing here, people are really craving for conversation. So if we can find a way to, like, connect conversations, connect, you know, pieces of video, bring it to real-time support with these really flexible learning architectures and delivery mechanisms.

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and try to anticipate what people need before they need it. think that’s where kind of the AI and the machine learning, not just on the creative side of being generative, right? Like, oh, I can make graphics I can never make before, and I can speed up my uh development and my instructional design and all of that. Yeah, that’s some great technology. But I think it’s about always supporting people in real time so that they can succeed in their performance and organization.

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And Terrence, what exciting things are you up to next? Oh, so we are in throes of, I started getting a lot of clients asking me to sort of do cultural work and divestitures or M &As. And so that’s always been a core part of my work, but more and more and more. And then they were asking us to kind of stay on and help them through their transformation. So so many organizations have lots of projects going on at once.

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They’re all in one way or another really pushing people hard to adopt different ways of doing things, new technologies, having to like upskill themselves in new areas, right? So it’s just a lot of whitewater. And so we decided that it was time that we, you know, really got very disciplined around what we offer in terms of business transformation. So we’ve been, I created a firm that

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has, you know, it’s about, it’s called gravitas, transformacio, and that’s Latin. And you might ask, what does gravitas mean? See, I got to get you in this conversation. What does gravitas mean? If someone has gravitas. What does it mean? I don’t know. You know, oh, well, it means like the seriousness when someone shows up with gravitas, it’s seriousness. And transformacio is Latin for transformation. eh it’s really not about

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pointing the fingers and light at us saying, we show up and we’re so important. Yeah, we like to believe that we come with a lot of experience and certainly can bring the best of what we have to offer. But it’s that what people are going through in the organizations is so serious. And so it has gravitas. It’s really intense. And so that’s kind of why we called it. And it’s really about the people side of change.

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helping people. look at everything through the lens of people in performance. And you know, you can expect, you know, deep listening, you know, as storyteller the most. We’ll talk about this, I know a little bit late in just a few moments, but listening is the most important skill of storytelling. All right, here’s the riddle. What’s half of two plus two, Sarah? Two. Right. Sarah, what’s half of two?

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One. Oh, sorry, I cut you short there. That’s okay. It’s all about the inflection in the voice, right? It’s a trick question. But half of two plus two, I mean, I’m not great at math. That’s why I’m the story guy. But you know, it’s two, right? Four. It was four. We passed elementary math. Half of two plus two is three, right? So half of one, two, if I put the comma there, right? It’s all about listening really, really deeply. And that’s one of the things that we bring

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sort of to the work that we do. And it’s all about people-centered strategies that ensure and accelerate success and stories. And we also work multicultural. So my uh founder and co-partner in leading our firm has a background in um agriculture and having worked language. He’s obviously fluent in English and Spanish.

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we’re able to work culturally as well, which has been a need here where we are in the Central Valley of California. That’s awesome. And so we recently did the webinar on using stories to beat workplace burnout. Can you share what the key takeaways were for our registrants at this event? Yeah. And Bob would just want people to know that it’s really about the decisions we make.

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You know, I remember reading this anecdote about Mark Zuckerberg and how he wears like, he puts out the same clothes and never wants to think about what he’s going to wear on any given day. And because of decisions, the more decisions you make, the more overwhelmed you get. Think about someone who runs a restaurant. If you’ve ever like kind of shadowed a restaurant or worked in a restaurant and you’re in charge of the kitchen and, the hospitality staff.

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It’s overwhelming because in a single night, the number of decisions and the speed at which you have to make those decisions is very rapid. And so one of the ways that people can really, and this came out really clearly in the webinar was look at your decisions that you’re making because that’s often what’s overwhelming when you have too many decisions. Even just this morning, I was in physical therapy and I’m overhearing some people talk about

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Oh gosh, I hate having to decide what we’re gonna have for dinner. Like sometimes they say, can’t you figure it out? I’m sure you know, you with your husband, you’ve got an calorie, maybe come home like, Sarah, so what did you think? I was hoping you were gonna think about that. And it’s silly, but I think it points out that in modern organizations, the number of decisions people are making just has them overwhelmed. And that just takes energy and time and you know, people just need a break.

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12:02

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And so during the webinar, you talked about the three pillars of storytelling, story listening, storytelling, and story thinking. How do you measure these skills? ah What an awesome question. So first of all, a little bragging here, but I am proud to say that I developed an instrument for measuring. I just want to back up to and reemphasize these kind of three pillars because you hear storytelling and you think about

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kind of what a little bit of what I’ve modeled, which is the shortest distance between two people’s story. So even just a moment ago by grabbing you into whether it was a giving tree or just now, hey, what’s it like to come home after you’re really, really tired all day and you your husband look at each other and go, uh is it the frozen pizza outside or what are we doing? know? Frozen pizza sounds good to me. Yeah, I’m with you on that. So, but storytelling is…

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When we talk about storytelling, we have to look at the other aspects of what makes storytelling and then how we can apply that organizationally. Story listening, and I’ll talk about what that is in a moment here, and story thinking, which sounds really abstract, Terrence, what the heck do mean by that? I’ll… m

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I’ll get to that em as well. think storytelling, we can all agree, are things like being able to select a story to tell, being able to animate it, being able to um use really rich language, be able to draw people in, maybe even use your body language in ways so that physically the story is coming alive if you’re in a large setting and you need to really project yourself. So I think people can imagine what storytelling is. So this assessment,

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helps people look at these three sets of skills and breaks them down into nine different kind of sets of behaviors. So let’s look at one. So for example, with listening, one of the key skills is eliciting. So the way in which I can listen deeper, we know it right, is you ask a question. Or here’s some other eliciting, which is.

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finding ways to draw out meaningful and relevant information from others. So obviously questions are one way, but here are some other behaviors that we measure and that we look at. Do I create a climate of sharing? um Are you willing to be vulnerable with others? Because obviously the only way that you’re going to be able to open up and find common ground, navigate a future or navigate

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a decision that has to be collaborative in some way is being able to share, climbing or sharing, being vulnerable with each other and encouraging people to open up. And then there are the obvious things like rephrasing a question. um So I won’t go through all, obviously all nine of these. We don’t have the time to go through, but um let’s look at one more underneath the listening one, which is uh observing.

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So one of the other storytelling skills is observing. And simple anecdote would be, I walk into your office and I see a wonderful picture or I see something on your desk and we all do this, right? We wanna create a connection with someone. So we ask, oh, hey, I’m a Penn State fan too. Did you go to Penn State? Who in your family went to Penn State? And suddenly we have some common ground and we start sharing. So that requires observation. It’s not a big.

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deal and we do it all the time, but that can, that those skills of observation become really important. You know, being sensitive to the moods and energy and thoughts of others. I think the big one here I would emphasize is, are you purposefully reviewing your interactions with others? So when you come out of a meeting and you’re trying to understand, well, why did, why did Sarah say that? You know, what was really important to Sarah that maybe I’m missing?

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And so I replay that like a tape, like in my head. And then I try to come up with some thoughts around maybe what was important to you in that moment, maybe what I missed, maybe what I wasn’t listening to or hearing. I’m going to kind of pause there and maybe I should say something about story thinking, huh? You should. I think you should. I should. OK. So story thinking, learning professionals will love this.

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Because the fastest way to get at this is if we were having a leadership seminar and I said, um did you see Lord of the Rings? You know, I have to say I have not. My husband definitely wished I was more of a Lord of the Rings kind of gal. But you’ve seen Wizard of Oz, right? Oh, of course. Yes. Of course. So if we were in a group together and we were like, let’s try to understand some aspects of

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of leadership and I said, well, in what ways are any of the characters in the Wizard of Oz examples of leadership behaviors? now immediately I have a virtual reality simulator just by asking that question and we can start thinking using the abstraction of the Wizard of Oz. Well, hey, you know, the scarecrow, he doesn’t have a heart and in an organization you’ve got to have courage.

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And maybe heart has something also to do with caring about people. You have to have the courage to care about what’s important and care about other people. You know, is that a part of leadership you think we should be talking about today, Sarah? You know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So suddenly you’ve got a playground, a really fertile playground. So story thinking is a whole set of, again, behaviors that we don’t have time to go into all this, but just think that it gives you a way.

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actually quickly in a nonlinear way, work through a lot of detailed nuanced information. Because it’s kind of like a hologram. If you know any holograms are really fascinating because one pixel of the hologram is all the information for everything, for the entire picture. So it’s kind of like your DNA, like we take a piece of your DNA and like everything’s basically encoded in that in that little uh amazing, you know, miraculous kind of thing. So that’s what we’re doing. We’re

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able to work through complex information and work through it non-linearly. And then we can put things down in a logical sequenced way so that everybody can look at it and work with it. ah So that’s that story. Great. And and during the session, the statement was that burnout is the story we tell ourselves. You know, isn’t burnout more about the physical symptoms that people are dealing with?

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Yeah, well, so it’s definitely about the physical. ah So I think, you know, people, when they start to make lots of decisions, your heart rate goes up, cortisol, Bob really talked well about this, you know, in his research, you know, they’ve looked really, really carefully at kind of the organizational research about how people respond to pressures and how people become, you know, very anxious.

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And so there is a lot of physical symptoms and we want to be sensitive to those as we’re observing those and others. You know, sometimes lack of memory of people being really tired, people being irritable. So there’s a whole list of them. I know, I think you probably have them out on your website because I Bob shared them. might, you know, people might want to go out and actually get a list so that you can be helpful to your peers in your organization and see what behaviors should I be on the lookout for.

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And then, you the story piece of that is, often as people are going through so much in organizations, how can we help them to reframe what their experience? Now, I didn’t say spin. Now be really careful because sometimes we can get into these loops of trying to spin people or, or, you know, not being authentic with really what’s, what’s going on.

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Reframing is more about helping them to move their own, you it’s like putting on glasses and suddenly you’re focusing maybe on an area. I’ll use an analogy here. I used to be an avid scuba diver and I remember like going on my first night dive and that can be a really overwhelming experience. Super mysterious, here’s this ink, black ink water and you’re like.

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Oh, I can’t see where JAWS is coming from. You get really anxious and overwhelmed. Cortisol, all these kind of physiological things that we’re talking about that are part and parcel of burnout also kind of happen in anxious situations. So if you took your light, what I learned quickly is if I took my light and I just focused on what was in front of my light.

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it refocused all of that anxiety about what I didn’t know was all around me. And I could stay focused on what was right there. And I think that’s what I would want people to understand about this idea of reframing things and the story that we tell and we tell each other and we help each other to find, because it’s also about finding stories, is what calms us down, puts the light on. And now suddenly when we’re looking at this beautiful clownfish that was like,

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snuck inside of a coral and were like, wow, that’s beautiful. Instead of like, where’s jaws? And have you gone night diving since? I have. I’ve done a lot of night diving too. And so when you’re working with corporate leaders, what advice do you give them about dealing with the potential of burnout within their work environment? I think the big thing, and I know Bob really did a great job.

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you know, kind of coaching people on this one. Don’t call people out in public. Right. So you’re in a meeting and you may be irritated like, oh my God, you know, you’re leading the meeting and you see me nodding off, nodding off or whatever behavior and you need to get stuff done. And you’re really frustrated that I’m not showing up the way I need to, you know, even in a gentle way, you know, you, you might want to call me out because that’s our first instinct.

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But what you really should do is take that person aside and um let them save face, see how you might be able to support them. So I think that’s the big thing. um And find other colleagues that know that person trusts and has good relationships with. Sometimes you’re not the right person, particularly if you might be the leader or the manager. It just may be, hey, taking someone else aside and saying,

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and not gossiping and saying, do you know what’s going on in this person’s life? Why are they this way? But just like, hey, I have a $10 Starbucks card. Why don’t you take Sarah out for a cafe or something? Just find subtle, human, gentle, compassionate ways to work through it.

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And to clarify for those listening in today that didn’t have the chance to watch the webinar yet, Bob is Bob Wendover, who was the co-presenter for this webinar event, who was unable to join us during this podcast episode. So you have to check that out to hear more from Bob too in the link below uh to check out that webinar. And so if there’s just one piece of advice that you could share with individuals about dealing with their burnout, what would it be? Yeah. And I’m going to quote Bob on this.

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make fewer decisions where you can eliminate unnecessary things or unnecessary decisions, delegate where you can if you’re in a position, even people who are quote unquote not so high on the food chain can uh still delegate. And that may look like, hey Sarah, I know you have such and such, like swapping, because maybe something that you do

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really doesn’t cause me any consternation, doesn’t stress me out at all, but I know it’s causing you. And so we swap, know, we, hey, I support you this week and doing so and so. And you know what? I’m getting so stressed about doing X or Y, this daily, you know, this weekly report that I just can’t seem to get right. You would you help me with it this week? And then automate, you know, where and how you can add ad tech technology, you know, something that sounds silly.

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but like the browser support opening up multiple, if every day you have to open up five, six tabs, okay, automate that for crying out loud. Because as you’re having your cup of coffee, you’re drinking your first sips of coffee at your desk instead of like, oh my gosh, in five minutes I gotta be on the meeting and I still don’t have all these apps up that I have to have up in order to like, oh, and you’re stressing, right? Okay, that’s a simple thing.

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Simple fix. And Terrence, before we sign off today, where can listeners go to learn more about your work? Yes. So makingstories.net, that’s makingstories.net. And I know we have a uh 10 % special discount, HRVQ Pro, just fill in that coupon. know you’ve got it out there on the website. You’ll share it with folks. we’ve got uh self-development as well as group process activities.

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workshops and things. So around all of that storytelling plus the assessment. So I really encourage people, you you can insert any of these things like kind of as modules. And then for if anyone really is looking for help with change and transformation, that’s the service side of our, of our organization. If they would go check out Gravitas, G-R-A-V-I-T-A-S, transform, gravitas, transform.com. m

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And I’ll just give a plug for Bob. I know he’s got this wonderful new course that he’s developed and he’s like offering it at an unbelievable seal. It’s like $99 and the thing is like worth like $600. So this was real big special for HRDQ. And people can find that on commonsenseenterprises.net. And you’ll see a place where he has self-paced courses and underneath there you’ll see the burnout course. So that’s commonsenseenterprises.net.

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look underneath self-paced courses. Great. And yes, all of this information will be linked in the description below so you can check that out. And thank you so much, Terrence, for your time today. No, it’s great to be here. Thanks for having me, Sarah. And we hope you enjoy listening to the HRDQ-U In Review podcast, available at all major streaming platforms. If you did enjoy today’s episode, make sure to give us a follow and leave us a five-star review. It really helps us support

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this community and being able to provide you with this weekly content. Thank you all for tuning into this week’s episode of the HRDQ-U In Review podcast brought to you by HRDQU.com.