Matt Vance: Today, we’d like to welcome our special guest, a four-time author and inspiring leader. Michael Glauser. Thanks for joining us, Mike

Mike Glauser: It’s awesome to be here. I’m excited to visit with you today.

Matt Vance: We’re excited to have you and we have a little bit more about Michael Glauser is an entrepreneur author, business consultant and university professor. He has built successful companies in the retail, wholesale, and educational industries and has worked with hundreds of businesses from startups, to multinational enterprises and leadership development, communication, team building and organizational strategy today. Mike Serves as executive director of the Center for Entrepreneurship and I guess, We do have you proud to support that in the John M Huntsman School of Business,…

Mike Glauser: Yeah.

Matt Vance: which is also where Matt graduated and where you guys are connected at Utah State University. He’s also the director of the seed poverty alleviation program helping thousands of people out around the world to improve their standard of living and benefit their communities through entrepreneurship.

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Matt Vance: Mike has published three books on entrepreneurship, glorious accidents, the business of heart and Main Street entrepreneur which chronicles his 4,000 mile bicycle ride across America to interview 100 remarkable entrepreneurs who have successfully merch livelihood and lifestyle in places. They wanted to live in his latest book One planet, six universal truths for being happy together presenting six proven principles to help us increase our happiness, improve our relationships and create greater civility in organizations and communities. You can learn more from one person and one planet calm.

Mike Glauser: Wow, thank you.

Matt Vance: My kids so good to have you here and for everyone listening. I just wanted to give a little bit of the backstory of how we got connected with Mike. So as Crista mentioned, I went to the School of Business up at Utah State and Crista also went to Utah State. But Mike was one of the professors there. When I was there later on we got connected at an event. I was representing a company that I worked at and

Matt Vance: We got talking and I told Mike that I was writing a book. I was a couple years into writing the review cycle and Mike having been an author himself. He had lots of tips to share and some good advice and ended up acting as a mentor to me through the duration of the author process of publishing that book. And it was about the same time that I was writing the review cycle. Mike was also working on his own book. The most recent one planet they released within a couple months of each other, which was pretty cool. But Mike was just so willing to give up his time, share insights, and make connections. And for someone with so many things going on, it was incredibly impactful to learn from him. So, super grateful to have you here with us. Mike

Mike Glauser: Yeah, it’s great to be here and it was really fun to work with you and give a minor amount of input on your book, but I’m glad it turned out. It’s a great book.

Matt Vance: You’re always helping entrepreneurs, whether they’re at school or not anymore, we wanted to talk a little bit about your cycling experience,…

Mike Glauser: It’s kind of my mission these days. Yeah.

Matt Vance: We know that that’s obviously a big thing for you. Having written a book, you’re 4,000 miles cycling right across the nation and so tell us a little bit about what’s your favorite place that you’ve ridden, or maybe it’s your favorite place that you currently write about.

Mike Glauser: The favorite right thing I’ve ever done was that bicycle right across America? I’ve lived in America most of my life and That I’d never seen it until I got on a bike and went through 104 small towns across the country and it was just ul One of the best career experiences I’ve ever had and the book Main Street, entrepreneur came out of that bicycle ride, but right now I live in Salt Lake City, and I like to just go east of here up to one ship. And that’s 20 minutes from my home. There’s a staging area there and I can ride from one ship to Colville to echo to Lost Creek, Reservoir to Hannaford. East Canyon, I can ride for 30 miles to a hundred miles and hardly ever see any cars or any stop signs or stop lights? And so my wife and I tend to ride where it’s safer these days and so it’s getting up there in those mountains east of Salt Lake is where we really love to ride right now.

Matt Vance: That’s awesome that you’re right with your wife.

Mike Glauser: Yeah, I spent my whole life trying to keep up with her and everything we do and we have a lot of fun writing together.

Matt Vance: Amazing. So cool. Yeah, I agree. Gotta avoid the traffic, though.

Mike Glauser: lots safer when there are no cars, so,

Matt Vance: Definitely Kristen. I like to write as well and yeah, it’s definitely more fun when you don’t have to worry about busy traffic. So you’ve written four books, Mike Three or about Entrepreneurship. Your most recent book is a little bit different. Tell us about what makes it so different.

Mike Glauser: So this book addresses two very serious concerns we have in our country right now. They’re at the level of people referring them to epidemics and they do have a huge impact on our life in organizations. So they’re related to building great organizations. But the first one is this epidemic of despair that we’re facing and all the Latest statistics from the CDC and the National Institute of Mental Health, show that anxiety, depression, suicidal thoughts, and actual suicides have gone up in every single age demographic over the last decade or so. And last year 22% of Americans were treated for a diagnosable, emotional, and mental illness and the age group. I teach college age,…

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Matt Vance: Holy cow.

Mike Glauser: It’s even higher. It’s 33%. And, 46% of us. We don’t have close friendships.

Mike Glauser: And we’re the highest user of drugs, for mental and emotional health as a nation. Against all other developed nations. And so the epidemic of despair is one thing we’re very concerned about and it’s impacting organizations. The second we call the Epidemic of Incivility, and Recent survey show that 90% of all employees in America have seen a pretty serious uncivil act at work. And 50% of very, these are large, national surveys across multiple industries, 50% they see uncivil acts regularly. And when you see uncivil acts in organizations, it leads to what we call quiet quitting Their effort is reduced. Performance goes down and they basically start looking for something else.

Mike Glauser: And kind of shocking is about 25% of those people say, they take out their frustration on customers. So if you own a large organization, you have a lot of employees that aren’t doing much work and are angry and looking for a new job and you’re getting some serious problems and customer interaction. And so the epidemic of despair and the epidemic of instability have a huge impact on how well an organization functions. They’re a big part of the culture and as very clearly culture impacts the Big Four outcomes of recruiting retention performance, and satisfaction. And so that’s why this book is relevant at the time.

Matt Vance: And that is, huge, it shouldn’t seem like news in the sense of holy cow. I wouldn’t have even guessed but hearing some of those numbers. And the specific impact that, despair and lack of civility in the workplace is having

Matt Vance: On businesses, their operations and it trickles to customers that I know, Kronos had a study not long ago where they looked at the customer satisfaction metrics of highly engaged workforces and they found there was obviously a positive correlation and you were getting 30% higher customer satisfaction scores with a more engaged workforce. And so it can trend both ways, right? If people are happy and engaged and they like what they do, they feel connected, they have friendships, then there’s a lot of positive impacts to gain both on profitability and performance but the negative holy cow. Those are things that need to be addressed. We live in such a great country. We

Mike Glauser: Yeah, exactly.

Matt Vance: We’re improving if those statistics are coming out,

Mike Glauser: Yeah, so I get to travel all over the world with our seed poverty alleviation program and I work with governments across the globe and I come back to America. I’m so happy to be in this country and we have a lot of problems. We’re not perfect, but the cool thing is as citizens, we have the opportunity to work on our own problems and we can do that quickly through forming organizations and associations and creating causes. And so these are two concerns that I’m really interested in helping to resolve in our country and in our organizations right now,

Matt Vance: I think that’s very amenable and we want to talk a little bit more about a specific part of your book, corporate stability. You mentioned how employees are impacted in the workplace and how culture trickles to all the parts of profitability for a company. And so tell us a little bit about corporate stability. What is it? And why is it needed in today’s workplace?

Mike Glauser: Okay, corporate civility, really has to do with respectful dialogue. The ability to talk to each other respectfully and value each other’s opinions. So if we’re civil at work, we realize we’ve all had different experiences. We have different values. We have different perspectives and all those can come to bear on solving problems and organizations. And so no one is really left out of the conversation. But we listen deeply, we don’t try to process and think of what we’re going to say when the other person stops talking, but we listen deeply and then we respond to each other with respect. So it’s respectful conversation. It’s kind of part of what Joseph Granny calls crucial conversations

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Mike Glauser: And the reason it’s important is civility is a part of this overall culture that has such a huge impact on the big outcomes of organizations. and what we found is civility. It cannot be mandated, it can’t be monitored, it can’t be enforced, it can’t be rewarded and punished but it comes when we teach and people internalize and practice values and certain behaviors in the organization. And so in our book, one planet, we focus on some behaviors that help people enjoy being together and working well together. And that improves civility. But most importantly it improves culture as a subset of civility at work.

Matt Vance: It becomes the culture. How do you treat each other, that becomes the culture?

Mike Glauser: Yeah, and culture, Matt from your research culture has to do with the purpose of the organization, the vision of leadership, the example of leaders, the ability for people to interact positively, and then the ability to have growth opportunities and I just read the study by the American Psychological Association which is fascinating. It shows that 81% of everyone surveyed last year across America and all the surveys. They do say they want to work for an organization that deals with overall human being, emotional mental health. So we used to just focus on Skills in a silo, like you come to work, you do this job. You go home.

Mike Glauser: And now people are saying we want to be part of a community at work,…

Matt Vance: Yeah.

Mike Glauser: We want to be part of a family and we experience physical health and physical illnesses sometimes and we experience mental health and emotional illnesses at some time and we want an organization. To look at the whole individual and help us. With human flourishing at work.

Matt Vance: I think that’s so true and I have some friends in the space who talk about this focus of, the human experience looking at each individual as a person and recognizing that their experience at work is a part of their larger life, their human experience. And sometimes I felt that that’s a little bit overreaching that it needs to be focused more on the employee Expert.

Matt Vance: Is the transactional relationship that an employee has with their employer, but I think you’re right, that we have to recognize, there is a depth to each one of us. We each have a soul, we have innate needs. Some of them are more surface level and transactional of the other needs are much deeper, but one thing I wanted to mention Mike is with your book. one planet, I really appreciate it. Crystal will tell you this. I’m not a big reader, but this is a book that I actually read all the way through…

Mike Glauser: Wow, I’m impressed.

Matt Vance: which Ironics I wrote a book. but the way that it’s laid out is so logical looking at religious components to Philosophies, that bring happiness, the great philosophers of the world and the scientific approach to different behaviors. So you’ve got those three perspectives. And then you look at those three different layers across six core principles that can help people be happier. And I think, honestly, for me, this was a book that impacted my life. As far as the way I look at the world, but I think for people in the workplace, especially people leaders, especially those that don’t have company values, then that are looking for some

Matt Vance: Foundational values to anchor, their company values, to that have depth that have research that have backing to it. This is that blueprint where any organization could build from and customize their company values blended with their brand voice and with research, founded in human happiness. So I think it’s pretty remarkable. How it’s been laid out.

Mike Glauser: Yeah, this was a fabulous experience for me to write this book and I’ve been working on it for years and, I wanted to cast a broad net and look at everything. We know about humans, happiness, civility, and communities. And so I went back almost 5000 years, the early religious writings of the Hindus. And then Buddhism entered the world and then Christianity and then Islam. And if you read those original texts, not all the breakaway groups but the original text of the founders, you find that they teach pretty much the same concepts of happiness, relationship, building and civility almost identical.

Mike Glauser: And then modern science which we tend to value more in this world. That’s those concepts and shows that through hundreds of studies, those concepts have been taught for thousands of years, really help to be happier. Humans help us to have better and more satisfying relationships and help us to have more civil communities. So, I wanted it to be believable for everyone and so we included ancient wisdom with modern day science. But the cool thing is it really revealed for us a process that can be used in organizations. And so the first step is we look at our own limiting self perceptions at work and you made a great point Matt that to say we’re going to just teach you therapy at work is a little bit broad but to say, we’re going to teach you principles that improve your work and your career.

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Mike Glauser: And so, the first one is looking at limiting self perceptions that are affecting your career, and where did those come from? are And typically, they’re fabricated. They’re fed to us from communication from others. Then we say, Okay now looks we form perceptions of other people in the same way we form perceptions of ourselves and those are not accurate. We look at superficial cues, like race at nithys ethnicity, religion, political parties. And then we feel in all the missing pieces and construct personalities for others, and that builds walls and limits our interaction, and our desire to be friends with those people which limits our happiness and our success at work. And then if we realize that, hey I’m a work in progress, you’re a work in progress and you start doing good deeds for each other and sharing resources, time and talents and knowledge. It’s a cycle that just leads to

Mike Glauser: Better human flourishing, at work better satisfaction at work, better culture at work and better performance at work.

Matt Vance: That’s honestly remarkable. And honestly, I totally agree. the behaviors that people have at work. It connects the relationships that are present there and those relationships ripple to behaviors and performance. And I was looking for a quote in your book, from John M, Huntsman. I actually highlighted this one, so I just want to read it. This really stood out to me from the book, all businesses have a bottom line,

Matt Vance: And ours is not the building of profits. Our bottom line is the utilization of profits to enrich the human soul, and to alleviate human suffering, that’s a quote from John M Huntsman. Who the Utah State School business was named after and you quoted him in your book but that really stood out to me in the sense of, business can be better than what it has been in past ages and for me recognizing that people are

Matt Vance: People that we have emotions that there are needs to be fulfilled and if an organization understands that and can systemize ways to maximize need fulfillment for their team members, then they’re unlocking that discretionary effort. That only the individual can choose to give it’s not required transactionally with the relationship that contract that exists but the employee will be willing to give that to further the mission of the company but companies can exist for more than profit and I think we see more companies doing that today. with the rise of B, Corps spinner, benefit corporations, like Patagonia and Cotopaxi and many others. And I just think that this book really can help companies.

Matt Vance: Look at the way they support their teams with the people first approach that is proven and will actually help achieve these results.

Mike Glauser: Yeah, I think at some time in life, we have to all decide if we’re going to be givers or takers. And the research is so clear that if we get up in the morning and look at ourselves and say, do I look right as my hair, right and my dress, right? Am I gonna say the right things today that leads to a different, chemical reaction in the brain of difference. In neurotransmitters, cortisol, adrenaline that, if we get up and say, Hey, I’m a work in progress. I’m gonna go out and do some good today. I want to find someone that I can add value to their lives and we become a giver. It changes brain chemistry, which changes our emotional health and eventually our physical health And so it’s the best anecdote for all of these of the six principles, this is probably the most powerful in changing our lives in real time.

Mike Glauser: And, I work with people living in poverty, in Africa. And I work with billionaires and everyone in between. You’re not more needy if you lack income than someone that has a lot of income. And so if we go out and look for ways to add value to anyone and everyone, that’s the best medicine that we can take. and if organizations teach hey we want all of us to engage in acts of kindness and the leadership demonstrates that it makes a huge difference. One of the things I quote in the book is from Delancey Street. And now, the other side academy, which is they’re Both two of the most successful rehabilitation programs for Felons in the motto is When person A helps Person B person A gets better. So the helper gets better.

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Mike Glauser: and so yeah, that’s one of the concepts is to create a kinder organization of giving rather than taking

Matt Vance: We all have a desire to be happy. I think that’s a pretty universal goal is just to find happiness. And especially maybe in America, rife, we think that we’ll find that with business success and that’s a lot of what the American culture is, right? The American dream, go build a business and make lots of money. And I think we talked earlier before. Starting this recording about how that kind of success is actually not really correlated with our happiness. But that…

Mike Glauser: Yeah.

Matt Vance: how yeah go maybe you can share a little bit about that.

Mike Glauser: The most recent research shows that success is not linked to happiness in career success. So we used to think, Forget a great education and…

Matt Vance: What?

Mike Glauser: great school, I get a great job, I get raises, I get promotions, I have a great house, I have a nice car, several nice cars that would be the epitome of happiness. But the research shows that link is not their best. It’s a little fuzzy and at worst. It’s non-existent, The more recent research is showing that happiness in the workplace or emotional being at work is the key driver of success for individuals and teams. And people that are happy at work, this research is quite clear. They’re more likeable, they have better relationships, they perform better, they get more promotions. They stay with the organization longer, they don’t engage in quitting. And so, all the

Mike Glauser: Things that we would like to see at work happen, when people can be happy in the workplace.

Matt Vance: And that’s one of our main goals with this podcast, is to help everyone realize that connection that helps your employees be happy, is what makes your business more successful? Because a lot of that is the goal for a lot of people and for businesses is to be successful to make money, that’s probably why they exist. But to have even a greater mission and vision beyond that is amazing. so,

Mike Glauser: And a lot of companies try to promote happiness by creating pool tables and sleeping pods and time off. but really the best thing that we do. Now, we teach these classes and we teach them the values and behaviors for happiness that have to be implemented in the workplace. And this is one of the most exciting things we do. People know about these six principles. one has not heard of them, they’re simple. The problem is, we don’t practice them. And so in our courses and training programs, we require people to, for example, do three good deeds, a day for seven weeks, or 14 weeks, or full month and then journal, what that does for the person they serve as well as themselves and

Mike Glauser: We have them go through all their possessions and look at things. They haven’t used it for a year, and they have to go give things away, not just drop them off it, Salvation Army, or desert industry. But find someone that might need what they have. And so, they’re starting to do good deeds. They have to take the Harvard implicit bias test to see where their biases lie and work for several weeks on overcoming those, so they actually practice the concepts. And what that does is, it causes them to see a difference in who they are and who they become and how they feel about themselves and other people. and then our hope is that in three, four months or three or four years that they start slipping into despair, they’ll remember I quit doing those things and when I was doing those things, I was happier. So we’re trying to get people to become converted to the deeds of happiness and well-being and civility. Through practice through acting as if basically.

Matt Vance: Yeah, so as we talked about earlier with corporate civility, that’s what you want to train these companies. and how do you gauge that for people, our leader How did they engage that level of civility in their teams? And what should they do about it?

Mike Glauser: So it’s a long process to create a real positive culture, or to improve culture. And the first thing is that the leaders need to understand the behaviors and start practicing them. And then they need to provide training to teach others and allow them to practice those behaviors. And over time we start seeing shifts in organizational culture. It doesn’t have to take months, it can happen in weeks, but then the way that you assess it, there’s lots of ways to assess this. There’s employee surveys, there’s exit interviews. When people leave, there’s focus groups One of the best systems we’ve seen is from Mel Torre, who owns Automated Systems Up there in cash value, he has a program called Humble and he actually assesses how humble his organization is

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Mike Glauser: And again it’s promoting civility and positive relationships. Are you listening to people deeply? Do you respect others? Are you valuing their input or are you allowing for growth? And he actually creates a humble score which promotes civil interaction. But there are a lot of ways to measure it, but the most important thing is, you got to get started on modeling it and training it. And then there are ways to assess it, lots of different ways.

Matt Vance: Wow, that’s remarkable. And a pretty cool example from ASI of how they’re using the humble model that they created. I think it’s really cool. As you were talking about those different exercises and things that individuals can do to umen their happiness through, exercise of these different principles. It just made me think of athletes and how athletes have to exercise, and train and practice to perform. I think sometimes we’re surprised that other elements of our life.

Matt Vance: Also need that level of focus, practice attention and just being purposeful, but it really shouldn’t be a surprise. If we want to be happy, we can actually train and execute these different elements to strengthen relationships to be more giving and to see the world in a different light and that can help rewire our brain like the principle of positive psychology. There’s a book that we’ve read called the Happiness Factor. That talks a little bit about related teachings and principles and I think it’s awesome what you’re doing and the way that you’re approaching it and just such a systematic way, whether you’re a giver or a taker, I think, takers can become givers if they desire that and…

Mike Glauser: Yeah.

Matt Vance: They start practicing these principles. They can become that way and be happier.

Mike Glauser: And we’re all givers and takers at different times, throughout our life.

Matt Vance: Yeah.

Mike Glauser: And if we learn to give we’re happier than if we just take. But I’m glad you made that point about practicing all the great researchers you have, Matthew Ricard. You have Richard Davidson and they’ve concluded after years of research. That happiness is a skill that you learn and practice and you get better and better at it. And the human brain can develop these skills and Richard Davidson compares it to learning to play an instrument, you practice the cell or the guitar, the piano you get better at it. And if the concepts of happiness, we don’t practice them. They’re not going to do any good. And so you have to be committed to practicing them. And that’s why we have a university course. We have an MBA course, we have a corporate course. They’re required to actually practice

Mike Glauser: And journal and then come back and report on how their week went and why it was different than the week before. And, we’ve had just rave reviews about these courses. That people are saying they’re changing their lives as they learn to practice the concepts. So that’s the key.

Matt Vance: It’s just practice makes perfect. Yeah, and I think you’ve been such a great example of that. and we’ve learned from your experiences and checked out one planet to all our listeners. because I think you want to be happier too and you want to have a better life. Culture and your company. And this is definitely one of those foundational ways to accomplish that. So, thank you, Mike for being with us here today and to our listeners, to remember to subscribe. So you can check out our next episode. yep, and make sure to leave a review of the culture profit and check out the reviews of people on the planet on Amazon and thank you so much for being here with us today. Mike.

Mike Glauser: Thanks for having me, it was great visiting with you, I wish you all the best.