Episode 73: Compassion, Not Empathy with Dr. Nate Regier

Nate Reigier: 0:00

Your personality doesn't entitle you to inappropriate behavior. It should make you more capable and responsible to be a steward of what you've learned. So kind of what we say in these situations is, look, if you're not learning how to communicate with diversity, you haven't gone the last step, you really haven't taken the step you need to take.

Kyle Roed: 0:18

This is the rebel HR Podcast, the podcast where we talk to human resources, innovators, about innovation in the world of HR. If you're a people leader, or you're looking for a new way to think about how to help others be successful. This is the podcast for you. Rebel on HR rebels. All right, rebel HR listeners, welcome to this week's podcast. I'm super excited for our guests. We have with us Nate regear, PhD, he is the CEO and founding owner of next element consulting a global leadership firm dedicated to bringing compassion into the workplace. Dr. regear is a former practicing psychologist, and an expert in social emotional intelligence, interpersonal communication, and leadership. He's a top 100 keynote speaker. And he is a process communication model, Certified Master Trainer. Welcome to the show. Nate. Great to be here. Thank you. Well, we were talking before I hit record. And you know, we get a lot of lot of guest requests for this podcast. But when I saw your bio, hit my inbox, I said, I got to talk to this guy. So got a lot of questions really looking forward to the content here today. And there's there's a number of things that you've done, related to human capital management. You're also a founder and a CEO. So some really interesting background there. But I think the first question that I have is what led you into this path of studying people? And then helping businesses use that to make the workplaces better? Wow.

Nate Reigier: 2:07

It's a great question. I'll try to keep it short. Because the story starts way back in childhood, when I grew up the son of missionary parents in Africa. And so I observed a lot of interactions between my parents and other people, and just seeing social skills and seeing compassion and action. And always kind of me wanting to emulate my parents and saw them as role models for how to get along with people and how to deal with conflict, and how to bring diversity together around common goals. But I actually was a business major in college. And I switched my major to psychology after trying to after going to buy the economics three textbook, and it was massive, and it had a floppy disk attached to it. And I had heard that floppy disks could hold like 10 times as much information as a textbook. And I was like, forget that. I'm changing my major to something easy, like psychology, which wasn't easy at all. But I my whole life, I've been a student of the human of human behavior and human condition. I just love it. So yeah, I went into psychology got my doctorate there and practice for 11 years. And I'm only say I'm in recovery, because things are changing so fast. And I still use the skills every single day, but felt like I could make a bigger difference in the corporate world, working with leaders, applying the principles of psychology and social emotional intelligence to affect workplaces.

Kyle Roed: 3:33

Yeah, I love that I laughed out loud, because I was also a business major and I had the same, I had the exact same experience, I started getting into, like, you know, calculus, and you know, like, you know, things like algorithms and financial accounting, and I'm like, geez, I had and when it came time to pick my major, I thought about psychology, but I'm like, I'm too far gone. I wasn't that great of a student. So it's like, she's if I changed my major now I got another two years ahead of me. So I ended up going into marketing, which, for me, was the closest thing to psychology I could get within the business school. And then I did nothing with that, you know, marketing side of my degree, but I have that context as a Human Resources practitioner. So I yeah, I think seemed to work out fine. I don't know

Nate Reigier: 4:21

maybe I should go back and get a business degree because I probably need that as much as anything trying to run my own company.

Kyle Roed: 4:27

Well, I, you know, I think that's one of the things I wanted to touch on a little bit. And I think it's so fascinating. Because I agree with your perspective, you know, the study of human behavior is just a really, really fascinating thing for me, and it's, you know, it's it's part scientific curiosity. But the other piece of it is, you know, as a business professional, it's so much of the work that you do. I mean, there's there's almost no jobs where you don't have to interact with others in order to achieve a common goal, right. And so, and then It's It's funny, I reflect on my personal experience, you know, and just even over the last, you know, two years, there's talk about a lot of a lot of challenges. And pretty much all of them have been related to people, you know, whether it's COVID, or diversity, equity and inclusion or mental health in the workplace, you know, and one day my CEO turned to me and he goes, I don't know what to do. This is all HR stuff. Yeah. But I think you can insert psychology there as well in place of HR. So I know you've got a lot of content created, you've written three books, the newest book is seeing people through unleash your leadership potential with the process, communication model. So what got you into writing? And ultimately, what got you into writing this latest book? Yeah,

Nate Reigier: 5:49

yeah, well, I've been a practitioner of the process communication model, for a long time, I actually was trained and certified and used it in my clinical work before I was while I was still practicing psychologist. But you know, I, you're so right, you know, everything really comes down to human interaction. And when I was choosing my path, and clinical in psychology, there was the there was the academic folks that were going on to be professors and researchers. And then there was the clinical folks who are going on to practice therapy. And in my program, they didn't really they kind of looked down on the on the clinical folks is like, you're not legit, you're just gonna go do easy therapy, we're gonna go, you know, learn new things and study. But my problem always was in the ivory tower, I mean, not that I don't have anything against research and academics, but it's so far removed, from the day to day stuff we got to do. And it seems like it takes years for the things we learn there to be put into practice. So I'm much more of an action research guy, much more applied research. And that's how I really got into it. When I when I was introduced to the process communication model, I'd never heard of it in graduate school, I'd never heard of it before. And it like blew my mind because it was deep, psychologically informed, but also incredibly practical. And it gave me all kinds of insights that improved my clinical work. But also, I was in a leadership position at the time, and it really kind of jumped started and fast tracked my leadership skills. And so that's been a central part of my life ever since. And, and I've gone on up and become a Certified Master Trainer now. So I kind of helped oversee the global fidelity of the model and that but I was wanting to write a book about it. But I wanted the book to be super practical, super applied super relevant to leaders and people in business. And so finally, finally got around to doing that. And then published last year.

Kyle Roed: 7:44

So I'm fascinated to learn more about this. So I'll be honest, I have no idea what the process communication model is. So and I'm sure there's a number of listeners who are who are saying, Well, this sounds like something I should know about, but I don't know anything. So I will admit, I don't know what this is. Okay. So for me and our listeners, what is the process communication model?

Nate Reigier: 8:05

Well, you're not alone. It was new to me when I heard of it. But I knew about disc I heard of Myers Briggs, I mean, you can drop those names, everybody's heard of that stuff. So process communication model is a behavioral model of communication that identifies personality differences from the point of view of how we communicate. So the whole idea is that personality diversity is really only relevant when two or more people are trying to get something done. And people get something done by communicating with each other. So if we're going to understand personality, we have to understand it through communication behavior. And that's what makes it different from any other model is that it was actually discovered and developed by observing behavioral patterns, and behavioral consistencies in people. And so a psychologist by the name of Dr. Toby Kaler was studying how people behave when they're in distress, and started seeing these really unique and distinct patterns of behavior, which eventually became six distinct personality types that we all have inside of us. And then this model was further validated at NASA for the selection and training of astronauts in a space program, Space Shuttle Program. And it's been used all over the world, but it really finds niche markets. You know, it's in a lot of fortune 500 companies, but it also is in Pixar Animation Studios, they use it for character development, all of the movies since the Incredibles have used this model to develop the archetypes of all the characters. So it's a super accurate, super predictable, relevant model of individual differences. But it really is all about learning how to communicate with each other.

Kyle Roed: 9:47

That's fascinating and you know, a couple you know, mild name drops there, you know, NASA picks that's just cool. And if anybody knows me, I'm like, oh, yeah, let's I'll talk to stuff all day. Yeah, Myers Briggs, whatever, like, you know, which, you know, you take the quiz on Facebook, which, you know, Disney Princess, are you? Yeah, et cetera. So, but what I think is so fascinating about this, and I, you know, I'm getting all these kind of these aha moments, as you're just describing the model is, you know, it's behavioral, right? So it's to me, it almost it reminds me of kind of the competency model where you can actually measure behavior, once you define behavior, and then leverage that to figure out who can work together? And if they're not working together, why, as opposed to focusing on oh, this person needs it, this person has an issue with that person, and we need to just coach it out of them. Right? Am I Am I on the right track? There

Nate Reigier: 10:45

you are on the right track. And I'm not I'm not bagging other models of personality, the only thing is, is how many people have taken the quiz, taking the assessment, maybe gotten a little debrief at work, under the under the guise of, oh, we're gonna learn about individual differences, so we can get along better. And then that's the end of it. And then next thing, you know, people are using personality, like an entitlement program. Like, Well, I'm a high D. So I can, I can say whatever I want meetings, because you know, you need somebody that just tells it like it is, or I'm an introvert. So nobody talked to me before lunch. And I can take time off anywhere, anytime I want to, it's like, Wait, your personality doesn't entitle you to inappropriate behavior, it should make you more capable and responsible to be a steward of what you've learned. So kind of what we say in these situations is, look, if you're not learning how to communicate with diversity, you haven't gone the last step, you really haven't taken the step you need to take. And that's why I'm so glad that inclusion is like front and center now. Because diversity is great. We learn about differences, so maybe we can appreciate and tolerate, then we're like, oh, no, no, we need to leverage, you know, we need to celebrate diversity. And we do all that. But at the end of the day, we got stuff to get done. And the whole point of diversity is that differences are meant to be used together to achieve something wonderful. And we can't do that without communication. So PCM is kind of that that missing piece for a lot of companies we work with.

Kyle Roed: 12:18

Yeah, I love that. And I think about the, you know, the opportunity, as you said, to have actual practical application of a model. In the context of, you know, diversity and inclusion, I think about it in kind of like this, you know, diversity for me, that's the noun, right? Like, that's, that's the description. But the but inclusion is really the verb, right? That's the thing that you can do, you can be inclusive, and you can build inclusive structures. So I want to touch on something else that you mentioned. And and I know in your book, you you dive into this a little bit, but it's the fact that the process communication model, talks about types in people versus types of people as as a theme. So yeah, maybe explore that a little bit more for our listeners,

Nate Reigier: 13:12

I am so glad you picked up on that. And so glad you brought that up, because that is really a profound concept when you think about it, because what Dr. Kaler discovered is the six distinct patterns of communication that make up personality types, everyone has all six, and they're arranged in a preferred set order, and they're measurable, and they're observable. So it's kind of like six muscles, and we all have all six and they make up our personality. So with six dimensions, there are 720 possible combinations and over 4000 different ways in which it can go together. So what I love about Thomson people what that means, if you step back a little bit is that in order for me to appreciate include you I have to appreciate include that part in me. And if I'm going to other you or hate you, or or discriminate against you, I am hating that part in me. And so we are connected we are interconnected in that way. So when we teach PCM we say look, diversity, appreciator or inclusion starts inside of you, you have to include all six types in you first, and learn how to appreciate them and loved them and talk to them and motivate them and then you can reach out to other people. Otherwise, you're going out there with unconscious bias with limitations with blind spots and can do a lot of damage. So it means a lot. I think it's kind of spiritual if you really think about it, that we all have all six in us and so in me is a part of you and then use a part of me and we can find those parts and connect. But practically it really is cool to watch it happen when we teach people these tools.

Kyle Roed: 14:57

That's really that is really profound, you know, I don't think I've ever I've ever thought about, you know, kind of that in that way where, you know. So as I'm reflecting, it's kind of tying this back to kind of my personal experience. So there's, there's always people in the room that just connect with me, you know, and I'm sure that that has something to do with this, where, you know, it's just like, you know, how you can always feel like you have your tribe or you have like, your people, and you're, you're always kind of on the same level. And in the same context, there's always people who, there's just always this natural conflict there. Yeah, not negative, you know, I'm not, I'm not going in fisticuffs in a, you know, board meeting or anything. But there's always somebody who I know is going to be the contrarian to where I'm at. So is that is that what you're describing there? That that's actually because I don't exercise that muscle enough that I can appreciate that that perspective, or

Nate Reigier: 16:00

you are exactly describing the experience of the dynamic of miscommunication. So, you know, have you ever had those situations where someone calls, you look at the number and you're like, Oh, this is going to be rough. You just know that person. It's just hard. And it's just tougher, and and then there's those calls where it's like, oh, man, where'd the time go, I could just talk to that person forever. It's like you're on the same wavelength. And what Dr. Kaler discovered is that each personality type has a channel of communication. So think of it like being on the same wavelength of the same channel. And when you're on the same channel, it just goes smooth. And then within the channel is what we call a perceptual frame of reference. It's like a sub dialect in the English language. And there's six sub dialects. So if you come up, if you come up against someone, or someone is comes into your space, and they speak the same sub dialect, or perceptual frame of reference as you and you're on the same channel, it's easy peasy. It's like I trust this guy, we get each other you just naturally, it's easy. But when, let's say, let's say you're someone comes at you, and they're using a sub dialect, it's still English. But they're using a sub dialect that is your least developed muscle, you're going to be like, Man, this is tough, or I have to work really hard to understand what they're saying, or I just want to get away, or it's really easy for you to misunderstand each other. So what PCM does is it breaks it all down and shows you exactly what's happening. So it's understandable, and you can work on it and develop those muscles.

Kyle Roed: 17:32

That's fascinating. How does that interplay with with different cultures or even with different actual spoken languages? is, are these universal traits? Or is this a kind of a cultural phenomenon?

Nate Reigier: 17:47

It's universal. In fact, personality is beneath its, its beneath all of the other types of diversity. There's a couple models of diversity, like, oh, garden shorts and row, they put diversity at the center. And everything else comes out of that. There's another one called the iceberg model of diversity and like 12, out of the 20 dimensions of diversity that are kind of beneath the surface, our personality. So yeah, it's universal. I've trained and taught and coached trainers all over the world in multiple different countries and languages. And all six types are there. They're all beneath the surface, and they're independent of the language that is spoken. Now there are cultural influences on the expression of personality. Certain types, maybe are not as welcome in a culture, but they're still there. So So the short answer is yes, it's universal. It's beneath all the other types of diversity and it manifests itself in every language.

Kyle Roed: 18:46

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Nate Reigier: 21:22

In me, I was training, I was training a Dutch woman the other day in one of our models, and she is a PCM trainer. I'm a PCM trainer. And we thought just for fun, let's get rid of the words. So we turned off our note she, she spoke to me in Dutch, and I don't understand Dutch. And she, she did each of the four channels of communication in PCM that I just mentioned to you. And I tried to guess which one was good, right? And I got them all right, just by watching body language, because words is only about 10 12% of communication. So when you know what to look for, you can even see the channels without the words.

Kyle Roed: 22:01

Yeah, it's, that's it's really interesting, but I could see I could even, you know, when we're speaking different languages, or somebody, in my case, I'm an ignorant American. So I speak one language. Fortunately, that happens to be the language that almost everybody else in the organization speaks. So for that, I guess that's a, you know, an unintended benefit of being born, where I'm born. But I still have the exact same experience where, you know, there's individuals who you just connect with, and you just get it and it's, it's great conversation, and 45 minutes later, you're like, oh, shoot, I'm late for a meeting. Yeah. And then there's the one where it's like, this five minutes was the most, you know, grading experience. Yeah. Yeah. So I Yeah, miscommunication. Much deeper than language is, so, you know, I could just, I could completely nerd out on this all day, because I just think this is absolutely fascinating. But I want to make sure that we continue to kind of kind of dig into into some of your work. And one of the areas that I want to talk a lot about is is compassion in the workplace. And I think that, you know, you mentioned, inclusion is having a, you know, kind of a lot of focus, which is wonderful. But I also think, you know, compassion, mental health in the workplace, you know, and, you know, having a workplace that people actually want to be at is is actually a thing now, which, you know, I'm sitting on the sidelines, like, why weren't we talking about this 20 years ago, I mean, who wants work to suck every day. But, but I think that this is one of those things that gets a lot of lip service, where a business says, you know, we are compassionate, bring your authentic self were a safe place to, you know, to bring concerns and things like that. But what I found is, a lot of that is lip service, and a lot of times employees still aren't comfortable, you know, bringing issues forward or maybe aren't trusting that an organization means what it says when they say we want to be compassionate, we want to listen so. So I think maybe on a on a broader, broader question. So as you are helping an organization through this or you're looking at an organization, where do you start? How do you start to build a compassionate workplace?

Nate Reigier: 24:25

Wow. Um, yes, compassion is huge. It's needed. We desperately need it and we saw a surge of it when COVID was initially early on in the pandemic, and it was all under the flag of we're all in this together everybody's struggling so everybody, we're just going to give cut everybody some slack. And then came disagreements and division around masking and by and all of this stuff. And all of a sudden, there was not compassion anymore. Now there was divisiveness and and then we tried to get back on track. And then it came time to start reintegrating into work or who's got vaccines, who doesn't who wants to come back to work, who doesn't. And all of a sudden, we realize that we've experienced two ends of the of the spectrum which which we discovered and reconciled, which is compassion without accountability cuts, you know, where you can't nicey nice your way to high performance. You can't nicey nice your way out of an abusive relationship. You can't nicey nice your way to really tough conversations around inclusion and diversity. But the opposite is also true, is accountability without compassion gets you alienated. You can't just bring the hammer down and be the big, the big, bad, you know, rule fault rule enforcer all the time, and just focus on performance at the expense of people. So that caused us to step back and say, so if surely those two could coexist? How do you reconcile that and to reconcile it, we went back to the original definition of compassion. And what we realized, is, for the most part, people don't get what compassion is, they totally misunderstand it. They think compassion is like empathy and action, my heart goes out to you, I'm gonna give you the benefit of the doubt, I'm going to contribute to your cause. I just gonna get care about you, I'm gonna support you and I want to live alleviate your suffering. But calm passion means to suffer with commas with passion means to suffer. So how do you suffer with somebody instead of suffering instead of them are taking the suffering away. And we juxtapose that to drama, drama is struggling against each other, where we're at odds and it's adversarial, there's always a loser. But compassion is struggling with each other. But here's the thing is the cut is they both involve struggle. Yeah, you can't get rid of the struggle. And so that's because conflict is inevitable, if you're going to talk about diversity. So what I'm getting back down to is compassion is the is the practice of struggling with each other towards a common goal. And we have to do that, under certain conditions, we have to ensure people's value and their capability and their, you know, their responsibility. But this is way more than empathy. It's way more than alleviating suffering, this is about truly engaging with people towards a common goal, and let conflict be your energy source.

Kyle Roed: 27:20

Fascinating. You know, and I do think about that, that conflict, you know, here's a, you know, maybe, maybe an anecdote that recently just came across my desk, and it's an individual who it really likes working from home, and has a lot of personal reasons to work from home. But the the job itself is not a full work from home position. And so, you know, the, the natural tendency, and this isn't my company, and I won't name the company, but the natural tendency of the of the, the manager is, oh, it's a work from home issue, you know, this, or it's this person's issue, like they just they can't, they can't figure it out. But what it really, you know, as I think about it, in the context of compassion is it really is it's just a source of conflict, that, you know, the organization needs to maybe suffer through a little bit to understand, okay, how can we actually do this and not lose this employee? But the employee probably also needs to suffer through? How do I balance my, my personal goals with the demands of my workplace, and try to find a common understanding? Right, and I know, my assumption is, there's always there's always some sort of common understanding. And if there's not, then the common understanding is, this isn't gonna work.

Nate Reigier: 28:47

Right? Well, no, and compassion says, compassion says we're both inherently valuable as human beings. And we are both capable of contributing to the solution to our biggest problems. So we both are part of the solution. And we are both 100% responsible for our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. All of those things are true at the same time. So when, when, when a leader and HR says this is how we're going to be this is a kind of a culture we're going to build, where people are valuable, people are capable, and people are responsible all the time in every interaction, not one or the other. When we really hold all of those up, it really changes the way we see the ways we interact, the way we do policies, the way we deal with behavior, the deal, the way we deal with suffering, it changes everything. And so that's kind of why we we've talked about what we call the compassion mindset, which is it really is a fundamental shift in how you look at yourself and other people in these tough situations.

Kyle Roed: 29:53

No, I think that's, that makes perfect sense. And it's so interesting because it's not It's not what you would expect, if you were reading all the headlines around, you know, empathy, and you know, and emotional intelligence and all that there's so many buzzwords being thrown around, they're getting down to the base of it. This isn't just, you know, this this warm, squishy HR goal that, you know, let's all Let's hold hands and sing Kumbaya, you know, ants across America or whatever. It really it's, you know, having that accountability piece and that responsibility piece, while also balancing the the value of an individual. I mean, to me, that just makes business sense, right? Well, I gotta believe there's some some hard evidence here that this works.

Nate Reigier: 30:45

Yes. And let's go back to the psychology let's go back to HR, his role. Let's go back to what it really means to be the steward of the people. We've talked to so many HR directors, when we talk about drama and everything, they're like, Yeah, we're the buffers were the ones get called in whenever there's whatever, we're the ones that get in the middle of stuff and try to just smooth it all over. And it's like, no, HR should be the ones coming in and saying, let's teach you how to do this. Because let's teach you how to practice real compassion in this situation. Because if we're just buffering, we're not holding anyone responsible or accountable. If we're just, if we're just trying to make it all smoothed over, then we're not leveraging the potential of the conflict here. And we're not really doing our job, which is to teach people how to interact with each other in really powerful, healthy ways. And I think, if we tried to say people are our greatest asset. Well, that's also true when they're disagreeing. That's also true when there's conflict. Maybe conflict is really your greatest asset. So what are we going to do with that energy? And how can HR be a dynamic catalyst in coming in, in those situations and saying, let's show you how to do this and create something amazing. Because otherwise is burnout. And the research out of medical, you know, the, the medical field is saying that actually, compassion fatigue is a misnomer. There's no such thing. It's empathy. Fatigue is what everybody is crashing and burning around. Because empathy triggers the pain centers of the brain. Hmm. But compassion triggers the reward centers of the brain. So when you're practicing full compassion, like I'm talking about, it hurts so good. At the end of the day, that's rewarding, that's fulfilling, you have something to show for it, you want to get up and do it again. But when you're practicing empathy all day, nothing wrong with it, but it's gonna wear you out and tire you out. Because there's more than just that. So I got stopped myself about to sit on the soapbox here. But

Kyle Roed: 32:49

no, it says, This is so good. You know, there's so there's so many like, like truth bombs going on right now. You know, it's like, when you break it down to like, the science of how your brain actually works. That just makes perfect sense. But I've never thought about that before. Like, the days where I go home. And I'm like, and I'm in general, I'm, you know, I'm an extrovert. But, you know, the days I go home where I feel like I've just I've just absorbed people's issues, you know, and it's just like, you just like soaking in all the negativity. And it's like, you know, I can only take so much of this before I go home, and I'm a jerk to my kids. Right? Yeah. Like, talk about burnout. Like, that's, that's not, that's not a thing that I can do. And I did that a lot earlier in my career. Yeah, where now and I don't know if this is one of them. But you know, I don't know if one of the personality profiles in the ECM is, is conflict. But I like, like, I kind of feel like conflict is kind of like my spirit animal at this point. Like, my favorite thing is to go in and like figure out, Okay, let's get in the mix. Let's figure out what's going on. And then let's figure out how we can, you know, work together to fix it. And yeah, you feel good. Right? It energizes you if you if it's done correctly, and you feel like, okay, I don't have to deal with this again, tomorrow.

Nate Reigier: 33:59

There's no and there's a, there's a whole continuum. You know, there's the folks that just want to make conflict go away. And they'll do anything, including compromising their own boundaries, to just get rid of it. And then there's people that just start it, just for fun just to watch fires burn, you know, but in the middle are folks that say, we're not going to run away from conflict, we're going to see it as an opportunity. And we're going to start reframing conflict as an energy source to create something. And so like you said, we do it, right, we do it. Well, we, it doesn't ever make it easy, but it makes it productive. And it makes it something that brings people closer together, builds trust, drives innovation, and that's not a it's not an easy place to be. But it's a very rewarding, it's very rewarding work.

Kyle Roed: 34:47

Absolutely. Yeah. Really, really profound insights. And this is one of my favorite conversations in a long time. So I just really appreciate it. So unfortunately, this is going to be a little A bit of a teaser trailer for all the listeners who are like, yeah, give me more, give me more. Because we're running out of our time together. So I'll I'll pitch it again. But the the book is called seeing people through unleash your leadership potential with the process communication model. You know, check it out. I mean, it's just that I'm loving this content. It's really valuable. And I think I think the thing that's the most exciting about this work and about this approach is, it's actionable. Information, right? Like, like, this is something that I can that I'm thinking about right now in the context of a couple challenges that are in my email inbox right now, that I can think about in a different way because of this approach. So I really appreciate that. And with that being said, we're going to shift gears and we're going to go into the rebel HR flash round, Flash round. Alright, here we go. Question number one. What is your favorite people book?

Nate Reigier: 35:54

Well, I did limited to two. So I'm going to go quick. Leadership and self deception, hands down is the best book, it changed my life. It set me on a trajectory that everything else made sense. Fabulous, fabulous book, and then just recently published the unexpected learning moment by Gary rich, he's the CEO of the WD 40. Company. And he wrote a book about how that company navigated, COVID it's absolutely brilliant. And the lessons in there are, it's so relevant and so fresh right now. So great. It's a great HR book.

Kyle Roed: 36:27

I love that. Yeah, I've never heard of that book. I use WD 40 on a very regular, alright.

Nate Reigier: 36:32

It's an awesome book. I mean, that company, really an amazing culture, an amazing culture. I grew up on that stuff.

Kyle Roed: 36:40

Awesome. Awesome. Thank you very much. In addition to the books that you wrote, as well, you know, leaders, listeners, check out those books. Question number two, who should we be listening to?

Nate Reigier: 36:52

You should be listening to yourself. And more specifically, you should be listening to your body. Especially right now, at this place in the pandemic, our bodies speak their minds. And it's really easy to try to put that voice to sleep, or ignore it or medicate it, or avoid it. But right now, listen to your body. It's telling you things that are going to help you. Stay resilient, help you take care of yourself, help you be ready to show up to serve other people tomorrow.

Kyle Roed: 37:20

Very well said, Listen to Dr. Ray gear. He actually knows what he's talking about. But very, very good advice. Thank you so much. And last question, how can our listeners connect with you?

Nate Reigier: 37:33

I'm gonna just say go to our website, look for next element. And it's next dash element calm, and we've created the website so you can get in touch with us that way. And that's the best way to do it.

Kyle Roed: 37:45

Absolutely. We will have that link in the show notes. So just click into your podcast player, click on the show notes. You'll be able to click right in check it out. Really great content today. Nate, thank you so much for spending the time with us. And certainly looking forward to continued content to come. So thank you.

Nate Reigier: 38:03

You're so welcome. It's a pleasure. And it's great to always enjoy talking about this. Thanks for what you're doing.

Kyle Roed: 38:08

Thank you. All right. That does it for the rebel HR podcast. Big thank you to our guests. Follow us on Facebook at rebel HR podcast, Witter at rebel HR guy, or see our website at rebel human resources.com. The views and opinions expressed by rebel HR podcast are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any of the organizations that we represent. No animals were harmed during the filming of this podcast. Maybe