Ep12: Developing resilience and positivity with Doug Hensch
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Do you want to become more resilient in the face of all the change and chaos of our daily lives nowadays? On this episode of the TalentGrow Show podcast, executive coach and resilience expert Doug Hensch takes a break from writing his book on resilience to share some of his key tips on how to develop more resilience as a leader, both in yourself and in your team. We discuss Doug’s interesting career journey and major shift (and what book catalyzed a huge change for him), as well as lots of insights and stories that bring to life some of the research from the world of Positive Psychology that you can apply to the world of work. Be sure to check out Doug’s “front door and back door” strategies that he shares at the end of the episode to help you become more resilient, starting today!
What you’ll learn:
A way that Doug leveraged a strengths workshop to transform a troubled team (and perhaps you can try this with your team – Doug shares his resource and method!)
What is resilience and how it can propel you forward, not just help you bounce back from adversity
Discover the idea of Post Traumatic Strength Growth (What is it? What can we learn from it?)
What emerged from Doug’s research as the core skills for being resilient?
How can the idea of Keystone Habits be related to the core skills of resilience, and which one of the core skills is most like the keystone skill for resilience – to trigger and support all the others?
What two suggestions does Doug give that can help you develop your own resilience – one through the ‘front door’ and one through the ‘back door’, and that you can easily begin applying today?
What book completely changed Doug’s career trajectory (and the specific course of action he took to make that shift in his work a reality)?
How Doug built a bridge from his former career into his dream career
What is Positive Psychology and what use can it be for your work and life in general, and how Doug is bringing it into the world of work
About Doug Hensch
Doug Hensch is an ICF (International Coaching Federation) credentialed coach who brings a wealth of experience and passion to the work he does for his clients. His philosophy is simple: Set meaningful goals. Identify your strengths. Work in them regularly.
This philosophy guided him at Nextel Communications where he led the company’s eCare efforts that resulted in yearly savings that exceeded $10 million. Working in his strengths with purpose helped him launch a leading self-improvement web site that helped over 100,000 people increase their well-being and resilience. Doug has touched the lives of business executives, managers, and individual contributors with innovative coaching, engaging workshops, and thought-provoking consulting. Dr. Martin Seligman, Fox Leadership Professor of Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania and the ‘father of Positive Psychology,’ referred to Doug as one of his “most talented young colleagues.”
The father of two active little boys, Doug lives in the Washington, DC, metro area, coaches his son’s sports teams, and is active in the community. He tries to use his signature strengths every day (Gratitude, Judgment, Modesty/Humility, Fairness/Equity/Justice, and Capacity to Love & be Loved) in his personal and professional life.
When he’s not working with clients or brainstorming with colleagues, he is wrestling with his kids, hanging out with friends, rooting for the Red Sox, working out, or just spending time with his family.
Resources
Doug’s company, DRH Group
Connect with Doug on LinkedIn and Twitter and sign up for his newsletter
Join Doug’s LinkedIn group, Positive Psychology Professionals
Now, Discover Your Strengths by Marcus Buckingham and Donald Clifton – the book that changed Doug’s career trajectory!
(You might also like to check out Halelly’s book about strengths titled Strength to Strength: How working from your strengths can help you lead a more fulfilling life.)
VIA Character Strengths survey
Check out Halelly’s interview with Shannon Polly on episode 9 of the TalentGrow Show about her book that helps you understand these VIA character strengths even better.
The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg
Dr. Martin “Marty” Seligman, the “Father of Positive Psychology”
The Resilience Factor by Karen Reivich and Andrew Shatte
Intro/outro music for The TalentGrow Show: "Why-Y" by Esta - a great band of exquisitely talented musicians, and good friends of mine.
TRANSCRIPT
Announcer: Welcome to the TalentGrow Show, where you can get actionable results-oriented insight and advice on how to take your leadership, communication and people skills to the next level and become the kind of leader people want to follow. And now, your host and leadership development strategist, Halelly Azulay.
Halelly: Welcome back to the TalentGrow Show. This is Halelly Azulay. I’m your leadership development strategist and this time I am interviewing my friend and college Doug Hensch, who is a Certified Executive Coach, who has a lot of very diverse experience, and has really made a big career transformation several years ago and he talks about that transformation right at the beginning of our conversation, and how actually reading a book has really changed the entire trajectory of his career, bringing him to where he is today which is researching positive psychology and ways that people can become happier and enjoy greater well-being, and more importantly, more resilient. But he doesn’t just research it. What he does is he translates it into the language that people in business talk, and he coaches people and facilitates workshops around how to bring all of the great, juicy bits of information that we get from the field of positive psychology, and especially on resilience into the world of work. At the end of the conversation, Doug also shares a couple of tips about how to get the front door and the back door to more resilience. So I hope that you will enjoy this conversation. Thanks for tuning in, and as always, I really welcome your feedback and requests. So at the end, leave me a comment. And if you like this episode, please share it with a friend. Please give us a rating on iTunes and/or just do something to let us know how we’re doing here. Because that’s the way we can bring even more value to you and everyone else who listens. So enjoy this conversation and thanks for tuning in.
Welcome back to the TalentGrow Show. I’m happy to be here with my friend Doug Hensch, who is an expert on positive psychology and bringing all of the wealth of the research of positive psychology to the workplace. Doug is a Certified Executive Coach, and I Doug and I actually met because he also facilitates a lot of workshops like I do, and we have a client in common that we often work side-by-side and sometimes even together. So I’ve had the opportunity of working with Doug lots of times, and getting to know him. He’s a great guy and I really look forward to speaking with him today, for you to learn more from Doug. Doug, welcome to the show.
Doug: Thanks Halelly. Great to be here.
Halelly: Awesome. So, I always think that it’s very interesting to hear how people meander through life and find themselves where they are in their journey, because it seems like it’s never a very prescribed or one-size-fits-all kind of way. And it also helps people get a little bit of a sense of who you are through your words. So if you don’t mind, in a very short amount of time, can you distill down your professional journey? Where did you start, where have you been and how did you get to here?
Doug: Good question. So I’ve done everything from be a college football coach to a substitute teacher to selling payroll services for a major firm in the United States and a couple things in between there – product management, corporate trainer, instructional designer, all these things. And it was a book for me, it was actually Now Discover Your Strengths. I started reading that probably 10 or 11 years ago. That got me really thinking differently about what was important and what I wanted to do and the next thing you know, I’m just following my strengths and my passions and here I am, working for myself, living the dream.
Halelly: Wow. Well, that’s really fantastic, and I think that a lot of people experience that. Having some kind of epiphany or a book or something like that that triggers maybe some soul searching or exploration, and possibly a detour. But I can’t imagine how you go from reading a book to living the dream. I’m sure that it wasn’t that simple and easy, so I don’t want to go too deep into it, but can you share maybe how did you know that you were ready to make that kind of a change, and what did you do first?
Doug: The first thing I did was I bought the book for the team I was managing. And this was back in a time – and it still happens in organizations – you buy a book, someone thinks Who Moved My Cheese is the greatest thing ever, and they buy it for the whole company and nobody does anything with it. Well, I bought the book, we ran a little workshop with it, and I could tell something was different with the team I was leading. And we actually had somebody observing us and he was, believe it or not, doing a project for his Masters in Organization Development and he came up to me and said, “Doug, this is magic. This is crazy.” And so the next thing you know, I actually created a full-day workshop and I implemented it. I got lucky, again, with a merger. I was at a telecom that was bought by another big telecom and I flew around the country using that strengths workshop as an integration team-building device. And it was working so well that someone came up to me one day at my desk and he was the guy that measured everything for our internal university – whether the training worked or not, everything from attendance to engagement to business ROI, and he looked to me, holding a piece of paper I’ll never forget it. And he said, “Doug, you know, you could sell this one day.” So it actually was a lot easier than you think, and I took the steps. I got in touch with a bunch of … I kept talking about this stuff, and then next thing you know a good friend of mine was running a small company that Marty Seligman was a consultant for, and the next thing you know I was running that small company for about three years and I got really hooked into the whole positive psych community. And then I went off and did my own thing after that.
Halelly: Wow! What a cool story. So let’s, just to make sure we don’t leave anybody behind, people that are not big positive psychology geeks like us might not know who Marty Seligman is, so he is considered the father of positive psychology and he’s a professor at University of Pennsylvania that kind of kicked off this entire new faction in the world of psychology, that instead of looking at disorder or disruption or what’s wrong with people in terms of psychology and how to fix people, it kind of looks at what’s right with people and how to help them flourish. Would you say that’s a good description?
Doug: Absolutely. And getting a chance to work with him was magical. Marty and others in other top names in the field as well. I think you nailed it, yes.
Halelly: Oh cool. Well that is a really cool opportunity. I love that, because people just never … if you can’t really cook this thing up, you can’t prescribe it. It’s just being interested, curious, following your curiosity and your passion, and being open to opportunities and then they just sort of present themselves in ways that you would have never been able to predict.
Doug: Absolutely. Lot of obstacles in between. It didn’t happen overnight. There was a lot of hard work and a lot of mistakes and other things, but it has been a great journey.
Halelly: And I think that the other lesson that listeners can really take from this, because a lot of times people are looking for, “How do I make a transition?” If I realize that there is something that I want to change, how co I make a transition? I’ve got responsibilities, I’ve got our mortgage to pay, people to feed and so on. And it just sounds like – and again, I can’t dig too deep into it right now in the amount of time we have together – but it sounds like from your story you didn’t just sort of jump off the deep end. You built this bridge, right? You sort of found a way to merge what you were already doing with something that you discovered and you could do and that created sort of this launching pad into this other world?
Doug: Yeah. It’s a little bit of both, actually. I built the bridge in the beginning, and then when our happiness company came across the great recession, that unfortunately went away. And that’s when I had to jump. And that’s when I decided not to go back to corporate or work for somebody else. That’s when I went out on my own, and that’s when we’re looking at a full year of not having a lot of business, almost four business for a good nine or 10 months, but staying with it because I knew it was the right thing to do.
Halelly: It’s a mix of opportunity and courage and we need that to be successful. And I’m glad that you stuck with it because you’re doing such good work and you are extremely successful now, so yay. Now, the ideas that are in the world of positive psychology, there are so many good ideas. And I know that you kind of are bringing what is in the research, because I know that you love to read and explore what is going on in the research, but I think what you do so well and what brings so much value is that you’re able to translate it and make it apply by bringing it into the world of business. And you’ve been doing a lot of coaching, so is there a story that really stands out to you, where a coaching client or just in general, somebody you worked with or maybe a team you worked with, a company you worked with, really made a big shift as a result of implementing something that you taught them that came from this massive amount of research and positive psychology? Could you share that story?
Doug: Yeah. You know, in fact it comes from that strengths research. That’s the first thing that comes to mind. Another thing that comes to mind, but when it comes to what really jumps out, there was … I kind of stumbled across it during the merger with these two great companies, where you had Company A on one side and Company B on the other side, and here I was facilitating this workshop for this retail organization who is coming together and they had very different ideas, very different personalities, very different cultures. And they flew me out to California – in fact, I’ll never forget. We were in Napa Valley at this wonderful bed and breakfast with these really tight quarters. It wasn’t ideal for a corporate training, but it was a nice setting. And we had them all take the VIA - the Values In Actions and strengths survey – which I can share at the end, in terms of the URL and so forth – and everybody took it and we did this one thing, and I had set it up as, “Hey, I’m going to teach you about strengths.” That was the real mindset I was in.
And I stumbled across this one activity that just popped into my head, which was I had people go around the room and name what they thought was the top strengths of their colleagues. So if you were sitting all the way to my left, Halelly, I said, “Hey, Halelly, tell the group what you think your top strengths are. Out of your top five.” Because everyone had the spreadsheet, every saw what everyone else had, how they had come out on the test. And you said, “Well, I actually think love of learning is my top strength. And here’s how I use it at work.” And then the person seated to your left would say, “You know, Halelly, you know, that’s a really good one, but I’ll be honest with you – your capacity to love and be loved, that’s the one I see everyday at work. You constantly show up and just connect with people and you’re concerned for their health.” And then the next person goes and the next person goes. And we went around this room, and here we are with this team, and they were giving real examples. This wasn’t made up stuff. This was rooted, it had one foot in the science and one foot in experience. And the positive emotions in the room were absolutely unbelievable. And you know, what’s funny is I had thought, “Hey, this would be like a 20-minute activity.” We did it for like two and a half hours, with a team of 12 people! And we took a break, of course, in the middle of that, and the leader of the team came up to me and I said, “Hey, just so you know, we’re way behind, because I know we have dinner reservations tonight.” And she goes, “I really don’t give a crap. Keep going. This is awesome.”
And I brought this to several other very dysfunctional teams over the years – whether you’re dysfunctional or not, that’s not a prerequisite – but some really dysfunctional teams. You know what, I’m not telling you that it fixes the problems. What it does is it creates just enough positivity, and Barbara Frederickson at the University of North Carolina, who does a lot of work in emotions, period, but positive emotions in particular, she talks about positive emotions being the seeds of resilience. And you need to plant those and then the team of course has to then go work in their strengths and challenge each other in collaborative ways and there’s a lot more to it, but at least that’s the first step on the ladder in a way.
Halelly: Cool. So, you’re saying that it created positivity. Would you say that’s the main benefit that it delivered, or did it help them figure out new ways to work with each other also?
Doug: I think it was both. I think it was “and.” There was so much positive emotion in the room that they opened their minds. Their minds were then opened to how they could work with each other differently. And when they heard about Steve or Mary really liking to get into the nitty-gritty details of things, well then magically they started to talk about things they didn’t like to do, and people started actually handing off assignments. They started partnering with each other, and you started to see these little informal teams. And then it propelled them into doing more of what they all loved to do and people were less stressed out, they were more in their comfort zones, and they were more likely to collaborate.
Halelly: Cool. You mentioned resilience. I know that’s a big passion of yours, and I know that you probably work a lot with organizations about how to develop more resilience in the leaders and in employees. So what are some of the course skills you think are the most important for developing resilience? Maybe you can define resilience first. How do you define it? And then what are the things people need to do to become more resilient?
Doug: I think resilience has to do with how we deal with adversity, but it’s also being motivated by challenges, connecting with other people, and learning from your mistakes. You know, the dictionary definition is really going to focus on things like bouncing back, and elasticity, coming back to your original state, things like that. I think resilience is a lot richer and deeper concept, and I think it takes, it can help propel you forward as well. When we think about it usually as just bouncing back. Does that make sense?
Halelly: Yeah. So you’re not just coming right back to where you before, you’re coming farther.
Doug: In fact, there’s some research now pointing to the concept of posttraumatic stress growth. I mean, we’ve all heard about PTSD – post traumatic stress disorder – where we’ve got particularly our military are dealing with things like that, with long deployments and of course really difficult war circumstances and so forth. Other people get it from terrorist attacks and violent crime and so forth. But we also know that there’s a certain number of people who grow out of these situations, and actually propel forward as well, yeah.
Halelly: It makes me think of that old cliché proverb – what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. Maybe it’s true after all.
Doug: You know, my dad used to say that to me after we’d lose a high school basketball game or I didn’t get to play as much as I wanted, and I would just grind my teeth. And not want to listen to him. And I find myself saying that same exact statement to my kids!
Halelly: There’s a long list of things I find myself saying that my mother and dad used to say. Did that just come out of my mouth? Uh-oh!
Doug: Agreed.
Halelly: But that’s a different story. So what are the core skills for resilience in your mind?
Doug: So that’s a great question, and it’s really easy for me to launch into this in terms of I think what’s at the center of my life right now. One of the things I always tell my executive coaching clients, whether I’m working with them one-on-one or I’m in front of a group of people facilitating a workshop, and what I tell them at the beginning of the day or the beginning of the engagement is if you hear me say “you should” or “you need to” or “you have to,” please stop me. Interrupt me. Throw something at me, whatever it is. And I mention that, because these core skills come with a grain of salt. Context matters. I’m quoting Todd Kashdan from George Mason University. Good friend and author of some fantastic books that whatever is important, wherever you are and wherever you find yourself is really, that’s where the complexity of this comes in, is that you’re going to have to find the skills that make the most sense for you at that moment. With that said, I do think there are some core skills – things like psychological flexibility, being able to see things from different points of view and arguing with yourself, not thinking you’re right – I think realistic optimism is a huge … Karen Reivich her research at the University of Pennsylvania points to optimism being the foundational skill. And then I also think there’s curiosity and mindfulness, which are in a sense cousins with each other. Very similar things. Positive emotions, we just talked about that from Barbara Frederickson and others. And then any discussion around well-being, I think has to include connection to other human beings. And what’s also interesting about them is I do think they can feed each other. If we’re with people we really like, we experience love and hope and inspiration, which creates positive emotions. And then when we’re with other people we can also get psychological flexibility because they’re going to bring us other points of view, or we can bring that to other people, which helps us to connect to other people. So these have crossover, if you think of a Venn diagram in a sense, a bunch of five circles or so, they all do really connect and cross over with each other, and they help build on each other.
Halelly: And so if somebody wanted to become more resilient, and all of these things are necessary but maybe not sufficient, any one of them – you kind of need all of them, I’m guessing, maybe I’m wrong – and they all feed off of each other. Is there one that you start with or is it just more like which one do you already have kind of low hanging fruit to build on? How do you suggest people get started with that?
Doug: That’s a good question. I would say again work context matters. If I were just to pick some, if I really had to go and give my opinion on what I think the foundational skills are – because that really is all it is, my opinion – I do think mindfulness and curiosity, being open to new experiences, being in the moment without judgment, helps you see these other things for what they really are, the connection and also the adversity, and you recognize that in a sense, the adversity is usually not as bad as you thought it was.
Halelly: Very interesting. Okay. So being mindful and curious rather than judgmental allows you to be open to everything else. I like that. So is that kind of like a keystone habit, would you say? I bet you already are familiar with Charles Duhigg’s book The Power of Habit, and how he defines keystone habits, so I like that idea a lot. I love that idea, which he says that all habits are important, but there are some habits that kind of trigger all the other ones to fall into place. This is just for the listeners, who may not be familiar with that – what that means, keystone habit. It’s almost like that first domino in a chain of dominoes. When you knock that first domino over, everything else is a reaction or triggered by it. So, maybe that’s –
Doug: You know, that’s a good point Halelly. And I’m sorry to cut you off, but let me give you a quick example, very quick example around how these different skills come in. I started my own business and I was going through a divorce about five years ago, and I have to tell you that at that time, connection probably was the most important thing for me, of those five things I just talked about. So connecting with my friends, going out for dinners, not being at home by myself. I would say probably about a year and a half, two years after that, when I felt connected and I did have a support system in my life, I really started focusing on mindfulness, a little bit more. And I went hardcore. I started meditating, 25, 30 minutes in the morning, five, 10 minutes before I went to bed, wearing a mindfulness bracelet so I was paying attention to my thoughts, when I was being kind to myself and so forth. Now I’m so focused on my work that I have to find time to play, so I find great music that I love. I watch comedies with my kids on TV. I make sure that we do something fun every weekend to generate more positive emotions, and also more connection. So again, I think I’ll go back to the keystone is a great idea, and I think mindfulness really might be that one, but recognize again where you find your life. What’s needed for you is going to change.
Halelly: That makes so much sense. I really appreciate that description and thank you for sharing the specific examples from your life, because I do think that that helps me get it. I think it probably helps folks listening too. So I’m interested in hearing what’s new and exciting for you. What’s next on your horizon?
Doug: Thank you for asking. I am in the very early stages of writing a book on resilience. And very excited about it. Even thinking about it, talking about it to other people gets me really excited, and I’m in the process of talking to some of the scientists that I mentioned, just doing some quick interviews. Bouncing some ideas. I’m already writing. And super excited about getting what I know from the research and marrying that to my own personal experience as I mentioned, as someone who has been on the face of this earth for 46 years, who is a single dad and gone through some adversity of his own in the last five years, and then also just getting some feedback of my coaching clients and the people who sit in our workshops. I get some really, really interesting feedback from them and I want to put that in a very practical book that like I said, has one foot in science and one foot in wisdom and experience.
Halelly: That sounds awesome. Good for you. A lot of people talk about writing a book, but a very small percentage of them actually do it. So yay you! Awesome.
Doug: Agreed.
Halelly: And I can’t wait to get my hands on it when it’s published. That’s really fantastic. So you just said something that I think is so important, which is making something practical. Because while some people enjoy reading about theory and concepts and abstractions, most people either don’t find that at all interesting, or maybe insufficient. And I find that whenever I’m talking to leaders out there, my clients, workshop participants, people in my audience when I’m speaking, I can totally tell that they need things that they can actually see themselves doing. And it needs to be broken down into something that’s really practical, really applied, and that’s not too kind of “out there.” You’re not asking me to move to Tibet and be a monk. It’s something I can do tomorrow, to be happy, resilient, to be a good leader. So since you’re writing a book about resilience, and since you’re very steeped in the research, what would you say is one very actionable suggestion that people that are listening right now could take action on today or this week that you think is going to start really ratcheting up the resilience. What’s something really specific and practical?
Doug: I love the fact that you’re asking that question, because I’m the same way. I don’t want to talk theory – although I think it’s important for adults to understand why they’re doing something or why something is being suggested, which usually mandates a little bit of theory and research is going to come out there – and I was hoping you’d ask this question, and I have to tell you, I’m going to come at this with two answers if you don’t mind. The first is I think there’s a front door and a back door to resilience. The front door is some of these things we’ve talked about – how do you, how can you change your thought patterns, and that’s the mindfulness that’s generating more positive emotions. It’s connecting with other people on an intimate level. So I’ll give you one tip with that one and I do think if you’re interested in mindfulness, it doesn’t have to be meditation, although I have to tell you I think it’s life changing if you give it a try and you stick with it. And what I would suggest people do is just download an app for guided meditations. There’s tons of free ones out there for both Android and Apple, at least that I know of, for those two operating systems. And they will guide you through this and it can be absolutely life changing. If you don’t feel like giving that a try, simply get one of those bracelets, those colored rubber band bracelets that everybody has, and practice mindfulness during the course of the day. So if you’re having unkind thoughts – maybe you’ve got a coworker who is really not nice to you or other people, and every time you have an unkind thought about that person, you just simple move the band from one hand to the other. It’s not about judging yourself and punishing yourself. Like you’re not taking this and snapping your wrist. You’re just moving it. You’re just moving it, okay? So that’s one simple tip.
The other side of this is the back door to resilience.
Halelly: Hang on a second. Let me interrupt you for a second, just so I’m really clear. The pragmatics of it. So you’re moving the band, from one wrist to the other, and then you do what? Do you think about it, say something to yourself? What are you doing?
Doug: You are simply calling it to your attention. That’s it. And what happens is, and I’ll give you a quick example – I had a coaching client who was trying to invest in mindfulness. And he was becoming aware of how he was cutting other people off and he was raising his voice and other things. And he said to me one day, “You know, Doug, this is starting to work but I’m hitting a little bit of a wall. The other day, I yelled at my two-year-old daughter, and then I cut someone off in a meeting, and then I yelled at my VP of sales, and I’m like, ‘Gosh, what a jerk I am.’” And he went on for a couple of minutes, railing against himself. And I said, “Mindfulness starts with being kind to yourself.” And that’s when I said, “Every time you find yourself saying, ‘Oh, I can’t believe how stupid I am or I can’t believe I just did that,’ and you’re judging yourself, just switch the band from one hand to the other.” That’s it. Just be aware of it. And it’s the awareness that allows you to then change the behavior.
Halelly: I get it. Okay, thanks for that. I just wasn’t totally clear. Okay, so I interrupted you – talking about interruptions, I do that a lot. So you’re going to talk about the back door, so go for it.
Doug: So by the way, it was a good interruption because I was going too fast. The back door to resilience has a whole bunch of things that can fit into that door as well. One of them is living and working in your strengths. And by the way, it’s www.VIAcharacter.org, if you want to go take a free test. It’s 120 questions. It’s not my website, but it’s steeped in the research, and Marty Seligman who we mentioned before and Chris Peterson were the lead researchers on that one. So living and working in your strengths. But the other thing is so basic, if I were really to talk to anybody – I’m not a nutrition expert, I’m not a physical health expert – get the right amount of sleep. Get a little bit of exercise. And then invest in eating fruits and vegetables and good food, because those things, if your body is not right, it’s really hard for the mind to be right.
Halelly: Cool. I like that. And of course there’s absolutely no downside to that, that I can think of. But it can create more resilience, right? Because it allows you to become stronger and maybe primes you to be able to handle stuff when it comes your way.
Doug: Absolutely.
Halelly: Awesome. I love that. Thank you Doug. I appreciate that you shared. So we got two for the price of one, which is such a great bargain while you’re listening to this podcast, right? So how can people stay in touch with you? I’m going to link in the show notes to everything that we’ve mentioned so far. We talked about discover your strengths and the VIA Strength Assessment, which is one of my favorite tools, and of course your website. So where can people stay in touch and what would you like them to know about getting in touch with you?
Doug: Sure. So the website, our consulting website, is www.DRH-group.com. Douglas Richard Hensch. And if you click on the blog, I do a monthly blog at this point. I’m going to pick that up a little bit, and I just review a book once a month because I read so much and I enjoy learning. I decided to start sharing it. And you can sign up for the newsletter on there as well, so you can just get it pushed to you. The other place that I think is really good for people where I’m active, but it’s also you’re going to get some community benefit is on LinkedIn, we’ve got, I started a group about six or seven years ago called Positive Psychology Professionals. And there are almost 17,000 members in the group now. And there’s all types of articles that are submitted everyday and great discussions by some really smart people. And what I’ll tell you is I approve every person that comes in. I also approve every new article, so there’s no spam in there. And I kick people out if they start promoting their services or trying to recruit people. And I think it’s a great place to learn about positive psychology.
Halelly: That is awesome. I can’t believe I didn’t know about that. I am going, as soon as we finish this recording, I am going to join you and I hope that you will not kick me out! Very cool.
Doug: Of course.
Halelly: It’s been fun talking to you, and I’m really glad that I’m able to share some of your brilliance with the folks that are listening. I appreciate that you took the time today to share it, and I hope that everyone will go check out your website, your blog, your newsletter, your LinkedIn group and everything that we’ve shared, and take that one or two actions that can help you become more resilient. Doug, make it a great day.
Doug: Thanks Halelly.
Halelly: I hope that you recognize that being resilient is one of those things we all need to work on mastering. It’s not very easy, but life is so full of turmoil and change that it is one of those skills that is extremely important, both for ourselves and also for the people that are on our team. So I hope that you take Doug’s suggestions to heart, and take action on them. Because action on goals is the only way to make progress and improve and as always, thank you for tuning in. Please give me any kind of suggestions or questions, or comments in the comments below the show notes page, which is at www.talentgrow.com/podcast/episode12. And until the next time, make today great.
Announcer: Thanks for listening to the TalentGrow Show, where we help you develop your talent to become the kind of leader that people want to follow. For more information, visit TalentGrow.com.
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