Bully Proof

Troy Blaser (00:05):

Hello, and welcome to Simply Feedback the podcast hosted by LearningBridge. I am your host, Troy Blaser. It's good to have you with us today. Our guest today is Dr. Rob Fazio. We had Dr. Rob on the podcast almost two years ago, but we're excited to have him on again to hear what is new and what's been happening. But Rob has worked with Fortune 500 companies around the globe for more than 15 years. He's the managing partner of OnPoint Advising and president of the nonprofit Hold the Door For Others. A 9/11 inspired nonprofit that helps people grow through adversity. He created the motivational currency calculator, which is an assessment of what drives people and how they can better lead. And Dr. Fazio is the author of the brand new book, BullyProof, which we'll be talking about today as well as Simple Is the New Smart, and he is often sought out to share his point of view on CNN, Fox News Channel, MSNBC, and in Forbes and the CEO magazine. Rob, it's great to have you back on the show with us today. Thanks so much for joining us.

Rob Fazio (01:12):

Absolutely. It's good to see you again, Troy.

Troy Blaser (01:15):

Well, it's been fun to catch up a little bit and of course we've chatted since we last recorded the podcast, just about the motivational currency calculator and other things, but I really enjoyed your book, BullyProof. It was great to read it, get to know some of the material in there and it helped me think about things in a way that I haven't done before, but maybe just to dive in a little bit to the book, the full title, BullyProof: Using Subtle Strength to Influence Alphas and Strengthen Society. Can you give us a little bit of background? What led you to write the book?

Rob Fazio (01:51):

Yeah, I think there's a couple of main reasons. My dad was a senior executive in New York City, and I didn't realize it at the time, but when he came home, he was often very stressed out. And I didn't know, I didn't know why, he was a great dad, and a family first type of person, but there were a lot of times where you could tell he was exhausted and stressed out. And my mom would always kind of drop little hints about his boss. And what I really learned was that his boss was a dominant, dysfunctional CFO, manipulative, narcissistic, and really beat my dad down. But my dad, you know, had three kids and, you know, kids in college and such, and always did what he needed to do for the family. And I didn't know it at the time, but I became obsessed about power and influence because I didn't feel like people needed to suffer at work.

Rob Fazio (02:50):

And there had to be a better way, to go about this, if you are in that situation. And the other thing is, you know, in our line of work, we get to interact with all different types of people and personalities. Not by choice, but I developed a niche when working with really strong, alpha personalities, surgeons, investment bankers, litigators, right. People that are really, really smart and have really, really strong personalities. And I had a lot of success advising and coaching them. And my wife kind of said, one day, you know, she's like, you really have a methodology and a recipe, which I wasn't as aware of. So, I set out to say, okay, can we do some good in the world by trying to help people be more effective at influencing these strong alpha personalities.

Troy Blaser (03:39):

That's cool. So, so maybe a combination of things, sort of that collective experience that you had as you dealt with some of these stronger personalities, but then also, you know, your wife pointing out that you've got something here. Kind of lets that, um, be a turning point where you can say, okay, I can organize these thoughts and organize this method and share it with some, with others.

Rob Fazio (04:04):

Yeah. Great. Now she's gonna want royalties. Thanks Troy.

Troy Blaser (04:06):

Oh, great. Not just an acknowledgement at the back of the book, but actual royalties. And it was also, it's interesting to me, to hear you talk about your dad and that difference, right. As with, I think for everybody, with their parents growing up, you really have no idea, what they're going through as an adult, what it's like to be out in the workforce have a career. And then you grow up, you start to have your own career and you have these realizations and maybe there's conversations that happen with you and your dad where you're an adult and you understand things much differently than you ever did as a child.

Rob Fazio (04:44):

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And I remember, you know, thinking back to this, that you just made me think of something. When I was in my master's program, I was in a stress management class and I wanted to do stress management in the workplace. And I was like, all right, I'm gonna call it, mind your biz-stress. And like, so, you know, I do any, like back then the best thing to do as a consultant was to get a flip chart. Right. And so I got one and I'm in my living room talking to my dad. And I'm like, dad, let me show you this presentation I got. And he is like, okay, cool. Yeah. All make sense. That's great. How in the world do you get people to actually apply this stuff? And I was like, huh. Right. So application's important, right? We can challenge attitudes, but we've got to make it tangible so people can actually do something with it.

Troy Blaser (05:28):

Yeah. Yep. I agree. Well, so you know, the full title of the book, Using Subtle Strength to Influence Alphas and Strengthen Society, I wanted to focus a little bit on that word subtle in there. Talk a little bit about why subtle strength.

Rob Fazio (05:45):

Yeah. So I found that in working with strong personalities, people often get pushed into a reactive state of mind. Right? So, someone does something and it triggers me into feeling like a victim. And then I either attack back or I avoid. And both of those things do not work because they, they really magnify the dysfunction and get permission for the bully, if they're a bully, to actually keep bullying. And so I created this continuum of strength styles that ranged from submissive, which is the avoidance part, goes all the way up through dominance, which is the attack part. And I wanted to have something in between. So it then after submissive, it goes to subtle, then overt and then dominant. So subtle and overt strength are really where I like people to play as far as increasing their chances of being influential. And overt is just what you would think about when someone says assertiveness, it's clear, it's direct, right?

Rob Fazio (06:56):

I don't give you permission to talk that way or hear my point of view. So it's what you would think of as assertiveness. Effective. What is more effective sometimes, and what I don't see people doing is subtle strength. And so I define subtle strength as intentional influence that uses calm confidence to demonstrate respect and backbone. So respect and backbone are the two key features. And oftentimes when people try to influence dominant people, they might use one or the other. So you might just be deferential and show respect because either you're in fear or you got to see this person, you don't want to ruffle the feathers or they go just a backbone and say, Hey, Troy, you know what? You need to listen to me. And it's the combination of those two and using calm confidence that I think gets you the win-win scenarios.

Rob Fazio (07:46):

And it's about using humor, asking questions, redirecting the questions in a different manner. So you'll see some people in the news media that are just masterful at this. One of my best examples is a woman Becky Quick, who's at CNBC. So she sits between Andrew Ross Sorkin and Joe Kernen, two alpha personalities on different sides of the political spectrum that are constantly pushing their agendas and trying to win. And she's so graceful and good and credible at not getting triggered and into the debate and more focusing on what do we need to accomplish in this conversation. It's pretty cool to see.

Troy Blaser (08:26):

That is cool. And I really like that idea of subtle strength. It's like, I know who I am. And because I keep that in mind, I can still influence those strong personalities or that bully, in a way that doesn't require me to give up who I am.

Rob Fazio (08:43):

Exactly. Right. You want to determine what your intentions are and how you behave. You don't want other people driving your behavior. And I think that happens quite a bit.

Troy Blaser (08:54):

Yeah. I would agree with you. I, you know, I've even had these discussions with my wife talking about, you know, I may choose to do the thing you want me to do, not my wife, but you know, a stronger personality. I may choose to do that, but I have chosen to do it. Not, I'm forced to do it. I haven't given up that ability for, for me to decide to do that thing.

Rob Fazio (09:14):

Yeah. And right. Let's face it, in the United States, I mean, we live in a extroverted alpha world, right? Those are the people who tend to rise up in organizations and become and become executives. And that creates a big power differential for people. So it almost magnifies and reinforces idea of like, I have power over you. And we lose so much collective wisdom from people who are more aimaible or more collaborative

Troy Blaser (09:41):

Well, let's talk about alphas for just a minute. You know, in our conversation we've used the word alpha we've used strong personalities. We've used the word bully. Those are, can be distinguished, right? Not every alpha is automatically a bully. We may find that having alpha personalities is important in what we're trying to get done. Can you clarify those a little bit? Yeah.

Rob Fazio (10:04):

Absolutely. Yeah. So all bullies are alphas, but not all alphas are bullies. And we need alphas and alphas are a good thing, as long as they have awareness and adaptivity. So I first help people figure out whether or not they're an alpha and then it's what type of alpha, or what type of alpha are you're dealing with, because that determines your influence approach. And so, there, it's a, every good consultant has a two by two. So my dimensions are awareness and adaptability, right? So the ones I want you to focus on are the aware adaptive and the unaware non-adaptive. And the unaware non-adaptive is typically who you would associate with a bully or even a narcissist, right. They're set in their ways. And I define a bully as someone who consistently gets, tries to get what they want regardless of the consequences. So they don't care about the impact they're having. They don't care how they come across. They don't care about the business. It's really their needs that they're trying to meet. Whereas an alpha and in particular, an aware alpha, an aware adaptive alpha is someone that is strong willed does take charge, but pays attention to the consequences of their behavior and is able to adapt in order to engage and influence other people.

Troy Blaser (11:26):

I loved in the book, you gave some great examples by pulling in characters from The Office. Yeah. And it was like that made it immediately recognizable for me. Oh, okay. Jim, I understand that. Or, you know, Michael Scott. Okay. I know exactly, you know, that kind of personality and that, that was, that made it easy to understand.

Rob Fazio (11:48):

Yeah. Right. So, so Michael, even though he may not be mal intended all the time, he's your unaware non-adaptive alpha, right. He's just stuck in that way. And he bullies constantly, obviously it's funny because he doesn't mean to do it, but stuff like that in the real world has major implications. And then Jim and Pam are probably the aware adapt is where you don't get something over on them and they'll take charge if they have to, but the way they take charge feels good to the audience, right? Humor and you know, yeah.

Troy Blaser (12:20):

I love it. The other thing, and I've loved this about the material that you produce in your books and elsewhere is that there's always a kind of a connection to a broader, a connection to the whole world to society. I mean, you know, that's in the title of the book, strengthen society, but you bring up this idea of values based power and talk about how it starts or it's a balance between yourself, others, the organization, and then society as a whole. And to me, as I was kind of reading through that, it seemed unusual a little bit to tie these ideas into the broader idea of strengthening society. How does what you talk about in the book really strengthen society?

Rob Fazio (13:02):

So if we are able to recognize in ourselves when we fall into the victim mentality and realize how we can coach ourselves out of that to be owners, we beat ourselves up less. We bully ourselves less. We're less likely to bully others. Also we are more productive because we're not fatigued and we take some of that pressure off ourselves. So that helps general productivity. It helps teamwork. And I think it helps society overall because if we're a positive force, creating psychological safety for ourselves and others, that is a net positive for society. I think also when you tap into your values, people are able to have more courage to take on negative behavior or toxic leadership that helps society. I think that if we are able to influence alphas, and point out in the way where their behavior might be negatively impacting me and therefore I don't go home feeling defeated and take it out on my kids, that's a net positive for society. I also think that one of the things I learned early on is, although we talk a lot about gender bias and different biases, most people don't actually take action on it. They'll have conversations about it. They'll bring it into awareness. They'll talk about diversity equity inclusion, but a lot of people don't even actually know how they help other people or what to do, how to build alliances, how to proactively advocate for other people, how to give more opportunities to underrepresented populations. I think that's a net positive for society.

Troy Blaser (14:38):

For sure. I, in fact, you know, it was interesting even perusing the table of contents, you have a chapter in the book about the importance of alpha women, which, you know, it's like, oh, we're calling that out as a whole its own chapter. And I found that fascinating to read through that and it gets at some of what you just talked about, the importance of alliances and being an ally. Why was it important to you to include that kind of a chapter in the book?

Rob Fazio (15:09):

Because we talk so much about this idea of evening the playing field from underrepresented populations. And whenever you say the word alpha, everyone thinks male. Right. And that's not fair. And that's not true. As a matter of fact, women that are alphas are much better positioned to be effective leaders because they have better natural interpersonal skills, empathy, understanding, influencing people based on others' cues collaborating. So for the most part, and if you have that combined with a person that isn't afraid to take the lead and take charge, that's a recipe for success. I also thought it was important to call out because it's not a very popular topic. I don't hear anyone else talking about it. I do hear people saying, oh, if I take charge as a woman, I'm called a dirty word. I also found in my own work doing interviews when I'm doing executive advising, people would say she needs to have more executive presence.

Rob Fazio (16:09):

And when you dig down on what that meant was it was an alpha male saying we want a woman to yell at other white men and to fight, right. And it's like, okay, well, that's not the best way to get what we need and to be collaborative. So I wanted to take that on and to highlight and put a spotlight on it that we need to give permission to more women to own their alpha-ness and to take charge of situations and to be okay with that and to reinforce that and to nurture that and for men to realize that they need to expand their definition of what an effective executive or leader is.

Troy Blaser (16:48):

I love it. I really, like I said, I was impressed to see that chapter in the, you know, as you're reading through the, even just the table of contents, but I really liked, kind of the material that you put in there. And I realize here we are two white males talking about the importance of alpha women in an organization. But, I think it's fantastic.

Rob Fazio (17:09):

Well, just real quick on that.

Troy Blaser (17:10):

Yeah, yeah, please.

Rob Fazio (17:12):

I used to always, I still do it to some extent, right. I become nervous about what I'm gonna say because I'm a white male and I don't want to say the wrong thing. I think too many white males do that and we need to push the dialogue and have safe conversations around that. I've got a lot of alpha women around me that I can dialogue around some of this. And I make missteps and sometimes but our rules of engagement are, if I make a misstep, they'll let me know. And we have a conversation, but I think too many white males don't initiate or take the conversation forward because they say, Hey, I can't take this on because I could say the wrong thing. So you've got to be smart about it. But I think that we need more white males being involved and pushing these conversations and opening up these dialogues.

Troy Blaser (18:02):

That's something my wife and I have had a lot of conversations about this. And I'm learning that from her, you know, the, if it is the white male who's in a position of power, that's the person that can help facilitate the change that needs to happen instead of just saying, oh, well, we will let women lead the way, you know. Well, how about the people that are in the positions of, currently in the positions of power helping facilitate that change?

Rob Fazio (18:31):

It's exactly. Your wife is very wise. Keep listening to her.

Troy Blaser (18:36):

I will try.

Rob Fazio (18:37):

Yeah. The, you know, the other thing is, you know, piece of advice I give to a lot of women, I'm fortunate that sometimes I get to advise or coach C-suite executive women, and one piece of advice I give them a lot of them will say, Hey, should I join this women's organization? Should I take on this initiative? And I answer to that question is, sure we need to advance things and possible, but I don't want that to be your only initiative. And I want you to put a lot of effort into things outside of just advocating for women, because I want men and other people to see women that are not just solely responsible for advancing the initiatives for other women. They've got to be seen as leaders in other ways, in my view, and other men need to be taking on women's initiatives as well.

Troy Blaser (19:27):

Mm. I love that. You talked about some advice that you sometimes give in that mode of giving advice and, you know, I'm not asking you necessarily to just give away all the secret sauce, but are there some advice or, well, you've got a chapter towards the end of the book, Finish With How. And thinking about that as our, for our listeners today, hearing about your book, BullyProof, what are some ways, maybe three ways for them to get started or to start to come to grips with dealing with a bully or figuring out if that if they are a bully in their organization and starting to work on that.

Rob Fazio (20:05):

Sure. So the, Finish With How might be my favorite chapter. I'm not sure. I also like the People Over Politics one as well, because there's some cool interviews with, with people there. But Finish With How came out of this idea of at least in the United States, we're obsessed with why we're obsessed with having a vision. And if you look at the literature, right, why isn't enough. We actually need, where things fall down is the plan and the strategy because we get caught up in how it feels to accomplish something as opposed to planning for roadblocks, and how. And there's a lot of good science around this. There's some researchers that came up this acronym. I use HOW, which is "Habit" and then "Obstacles" and then "Way forward." So what habits bring you closer away from what you want to accomplish your desired outcome?

Rob Fazio (20:58):

And then what internal obstacles might you have? Right. I have bad self talk. You know, I don't listen well, I get distracted easily and then what's the plan or way forward. So when we plan for our obstacles in our pursuit of an outcome or a vision, we have a much higher success rate of actually accomplishing that. So then it comes to, okay, well, what habits do I want to create? What do I put in the how? And I want people to rewire how they respond to alphas. I don't want people to get caught up in this triggering reactive state in I'm the victim. And I think that happens automatically to some people, especially when people are really, really dominant, it's just easier to not engage. And so one of the, one of the strategies I use is the acronym DEALS.

Rob Fazio (21:51):

I'll just give you a few of the things. This is all on my websites too. So feel free to, you know, get that. But DEALS is, to "Depersonalize," which is, once you realize that you're in an ownership midndset, meaning like you're not contributing to the problem, giving permission to be bullied, then what I want people to do. And this is really hard, but critical. I want you to say to yourself, I have very little to do with this person bullying me. This has to do with their insecurity. Their own need. Their need to be dominance. Maybe they were dominated. Maybe they were abused. We don't know. Once we depersonalize and we're not in an emotional state, we have all sorts of options. We can be much more strategic. Then the second step, which is highly controversial and it gets a lot of pushback, which I love is to "Empathize," empathize with the bully.

Rob Fazio (22:43):

No one feels bad for a bully. Bullies don't have positive emotional experiences. If you give a bully a positive, emotional experience, by trying to understand them in some way, understand their perspective, understand what they're trying to accomplish. They are, it's going to change the dynamic and oftentimes will disarm them. It's not gonna always work, but I never want people to just roll over, be empathetic and get pushed around. That's not what I'm talking about. Then the A in DEAlS is to "Align" with the person's ambitions. Really understand what is important to them? What are their priorities? Maybe even agree with some of their perspective. And then the L is "Looking" for the hook, looking for the situation where you can give a point of view or ask for a favor or ask a question where there's an opening somewhere, because you've done this other work. And then S is "Show" subtle strength. In some way they need to know that you're not a wallflower and you've got some power.

Troy Blaser (23:43):

That's awesome. That's great advice. Something, you know, our listeners can take away even today before they've had a chance to get the book in the mail. Right.

Rob Fazio (23:52):

Yeah, exactly.

Troy Blaser (23:54):

All right. I want to switch gears just a little bit. This is kind of maybe a personal question for me. For the last two. Well, so a little bit of background. I know that you, at some point in your career were a sports psychologist, did work with, with high end professional athletes. I, for the last couple of years, I have been coaching an assistant coach with my son's mountain bike team. So we live here in Utah, we're close to mountains. We love to go ride up in the hills and we've got a group of, well, there's about a hundred kids on the team and I coach about 10 of them. And, you know, I'm a pretty good mountain bike rider from a physical standpoint. I kind of know the skills. I can try to keep up with my son and his buddies, although that's not always successful as I get a little older. Right. But I'm still learning on the psychology side of things. Do you have some advice you could give me to help our riders kind of, you know, reach their potential, reach their goals, help them from a psychological standpoint to improve?

Rob Fazio (24:54):

Yeah, I think so. So first thing that comes to mind is there's a woman who's a friend of mine who is, was a United States Olympic committee psychologist for years with athletes. She's coming out with a book that's called When Grit's Not Enough. And I think she makes some awesome points around misperceptions around mental toughness, what it is what it isn't. So I'll just throw it out there as a resource in the future. The next thing I would say is, when I was early on in my sports psych career, I was studying resilience because I was fascinated about resilience. And I came across a lot of literature that was saying similar things, which of two key factors are support and challenge. So if I had to give advice to you, I would say in everything that you do, number one, make sure that your team knows that you're supported and you're with them and that you're always gonna challenge them and push them.

Rob Fazio (25:49):

So that kind of, that kind of pattern of support, challenge, support, challenge, support, challenge, I think goes a really long way in, you know, and I could share something that I learned about myself and I was coaching my daughters kindergarten soccer. Which we could probably talked about for years. What I found though was when the kids would lose, first of all, the parents took it harder than the kids did. I would literally get text from parents like, Hey, what do you think went wrong? What do you think the strategy is for next week? And I was like.

Troy Blaser (26:21):

Break down the game of these kindergartners.

Rob Fazio (26:23):

Right. I was like, well, number one, if everyone could show up with their Jersey that that's helpful. Number two. Let's not give them candy when they're sitting on the sideline, because they're running into the park and stuff like that, you know? Right.

Troy Blaser (26:36):

A different set of concerns for five year olds than the high school soccer team or the college soccer team.

Rob Fazio (26:42):

Yeah. But what I did learn was, I started to get pulling to that like loss, being a negative thing and losing's always gonna feel bad. But what I did was every time I lost the first thing I said in the circle, when we got together was like, okay, actually, I'm very big on not saying something that's not true. So even my kindergartners, if they didn't put an effort and they didn't hustle, I didn't say it. What I would say is, hey Susie, you listened well, here's what I liked that you guys did. I tried to stay true to never lying to the kids because what the instinct is, tell them they did great. I think you could still be supportive and let them know what's going well, but don't say you did great if they actually didn't show up that day.

Rob Fazio (27:30):

Even in kindergarten, when my kids showed up and didn't hustle, I let them know that. Right. Like, always in a kind supportive way. The other thing I did was every time we lost in any way, shape or form, I said, okay, when we lose, we learn. Right. So the first instinct, when they lose, they came back to the huddle every time then afterwards I said, all right, what did we learn? We lost. And like, they would be able to fire things off. As they're walking off the field, they're thinking coach is gonna ask me what we learned. So that might be something even with mountain bikers that are adults, just having that mindset in whatever they lost, that day, they weren't focused that day or whatnot. Like what did they learn about themselves? What did they learn about the team?

Troy Blaser (28:13):

I love it. I appreciate that. So in your case, you know, the parents were trying to break down the match, but you had the kindergartners breaking down the match for themselves. And I'm sure there were much different lessons being learned when they broke it down themselves compared to whatever it was the parents were trying to find.

Rob Fazio (28:28):

Yeah, exactly. And sometimes like, it was fascinating, like you would get like, I shouldn't go to a birthday party before a soccer game because I'm tired. Right. You know, we're like, that's okay, go to your birthday party. Like you's got time for that. But like, it was really interesting how much kids internalize and my whole goal was to get them to start self coaching.

Troy Blaser (28:48):

Yeah. And then it ties back into the resilience that you're talking about because they'll have times outside of sports when they maybe lose or come through a negative situation, but they can be resilient and say, well, what did I learn from it? That's fantastic.

Rob Fazio (29:06):

So, my probably greatest accomplished was my daughter's six years old, her name's Reese. And she, we were talking about something after the season and I was like, oh man, that's a loss. And she's like, dad, when we lose, we learn. I'm like victory! That is a victory. Right.

Troy Blaser (29:24):

You have just made the kindergarten soccer coaching hall of fame right there. Right. They're gonna take it with them, the rest of their lives. Well, thanks for indulging that, you know, a little foray into my own personal challenges as a coach, it's been a lot of fun. I've really enjoyed it and it's fun to see these guys progress and, you know, hopefully reach their potential. So it's been almost two years since we last had you on the podcast.

Rob Fazio (29:47):

Hey Troy, sorry. One last thing on that.

Troy Blaser (29:49):

Please, yeah. Go ahead.

Rob Fazio (29:50):

Another thing I think would be helpful for you because now that you asked is getting them to rely on one another to equip them what they need or want because you're not gonna be able to do everything. So figuring out how you can pair peers up and stuff like this person needs that and this person's really good at it. Sorry. Last thing.

Troy Blaser (30:08):

I love that. I can think of ways to apply that. Even I was thinking at our last practice, you know like, so and so comes in, he is like, I really struggle on the downhill parts of the trail and I'm thinking, well, this guy is amazing at downhill. Let's figure out how to learn from him, you know? So that's, I love it. So yeah, we had you on about two years ago, we talked a little bit about your nonprofit, Hold the Door For Others last time, give us an update. How's it going? You know, especially through the pandemic, what can you tell us about it?

Rob Fazio (30:38):

Yeah. You know, so just like everyone else that was doing in person things we had to pivot somewhat. So we started something called growth conversations where I was bringing different experts around the country, a sleep expert, an anxiety expert. A how do you talk to your children expert? And we really pivoted to trying to get some content out there around navigating COVID and it kind of gave us a bit of a time to reset. So us, you know, the board and I are now working on what's next. And you know, is it more in-person events? You know, what are we going to be doing? So we're figuring that out now. We know we have great resources and we're trying to figure out the best way to get them out. And our people are gonna be less likely to come to in-person events, but can we still get the same return on people's time when they're in pain, virtually?

Rob Fazio (31:31):

So we're trying to analyze that a bit and figure it out. We had an assessment called the GTAS, which is growth through adversity survey, which is a free assessment at holdthedoor.com, which helps you look at 11 resources or skills that buffer the negative impact of trauma or diversity and lead you towards growth. And what we were able to do between this time and last was update that and a professor, Dr. Andy High at Penn State actually validated it. And we figured out that our tool sets lead to post traumamatic growth as well as life satisfaction and being more happy. So we've got some validation of what we thought we were doing. So that's pretty cool. And you know, just like everything else during COVID, wasn't easy to, I'm looking forward to coming out of this and trying to have a further reach for people maybe getting, you know, hospital systems and healthcare has been so, drained and, so much pressure put on them. We're thinking of doing things specifically for healthcare workers potentially, but we want to, you know, we want to grow it and get it out there more.

Troy Blaser (32:44):

That's awesome. I appreciate that update, holdthedoor.com. Is that the website?

Rob Fazio (32:49):

Yes. Yes.

Troy Blaser (32:50):

Cool. Well, the book is BullyProof: Using Subtle Strength to Influence Alphas and Strengthen Society. The author is Dr. Rob Fazio. Rob, it's been a wonderful conversation again, thank you so much. What's the best way for our listeners to connect with you if they want to, I mean, the book is on the shelves now at Amazon, support your local bookstore, but what are some ways for them to connect with you?

Rob Fazio (33:14):

Yeah, you can, you can get anywhere before I get to that.

Troy Blaser (33:18):

Yes, please.

Rob Fazio (33:18):

There's a chapter in the book on motivational currency and how it's used in diversity initiatives and in sales teams. And the reason I throw that out there is the way we got connected through John Gates at Avion consulting. And you helped be a thought partner and LearningBridge created our assessment. And it's just awesome. And I like the chapter in there about people looking at different ways to understand what drives them and drive others. And it really fits into the importance of alphas and how to influence them. So thank you for that. You know, when we developed that tool, I don't know, maybe seven years ago or so. I had no idea it would be related to alphas, but it really is helping in that. How do you influence an alpha. So thank you for that.

Troy Blaser (34:04):

Makes sense. That's cool. Yeah.

Rob Fazio (34:05):

Yeah. And then, so easiest way is to just go to getbullyproof.com. There're free templates. There are four free quizzes. You can figure out whether or not you're a bully, if you want, and then I'm always on LinkedIn doing some microlearning videos and trying to connect people.

Troy Blaser (34:22):

I love it. I think about that quiz to figure out if you're a bully. I, my sense is probably more people are taking it to figure out if so and so is a bully, right? As opposed to the, you don't have a lot of actual bullies going to, oh let me think about that. Am I a bully figuring that out, but.

Rob Fazio (34:38):

Yes. So that was the twist in the book. Once you get through the chapters, you know, well we'll let people figure that out for themselves when they read it, right?

Troy Blaser (34:46):

Yes. Yes, exactly. Well, Rob, thanks again. I've really enjoyed the conversation. It's been great to have you on.

Rob Fazio (34:54):

All right, Troy, as always, really appreciate talking to you and Michael and your team. Thanks for having me on.

Troy Blaser (34:59):

You bet.